Cross-posted from Spacebattles because I love attention. I'm also a beginning writer and any...
Mushroom Cloud (Worm CYOA v4, Amnesiac SI)
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1.1
Cross-posted from Spacebattles because I love attention. I'm also a beginning writer and any comments you have are worth their weight in gold to me ^_^
I'm using Worm CYOA v4, and was highly inspired by a snip from BeaconHill's Morning Worm.
1.1
Getting around the halls of… wherever I ended up… is stressful as hell. It's not just the blindness – I mean, that's part of it, but it's not like that's specific to here. No, the problem is that this building is set up like a maze, there's nobody around – or, at least, I'm wandering around with my Stranger power suppressed and nobody's talking to me – and I have no idea where the fuck I am or what the layout is.
When the hand I'm trailing along the wall brushes against a doorknob, I switch my Stranger power back on and duck inside. Finally in private, I focus on my body. The specifications of my own biology flood into my head – my own nerves, muscles, blood vessels, everything laid out easily and cleanly for me to toy with.
…not that I would do that. That would be irresponsible.
Instead, all I'm going to do right now is give myself some basic echolocation. It's a small change, not at all hard to accomplish within the same amount of space that a typical human ear takes up. The end result is a pretty huge improvement on my normal ears, but my Tinker power keeps feeding me more ideas on how to improve. But I don't want to stay here and Tinker on myself forever. Instead, I shunt my bio-Tinkering to the back of my head and focus on Tinkering up some software to optimize my auditory processing. That's how my Tinker power works: I can design my Tinkertech in my head without hindering my ability to focus on other things – even to the point of letting me develop and even run my own Tinkertech programs and algorithms in my own brain – but even if I'm capable of multitasking like that, it's not easy to conceal the rearrangement of my flesh while it's happening, so I can't bio-Tinker on myself while I'm out in the open.
I could've probably been an A-list hero even if Tinkering was my only power, honestly. Too bad that my powers seemed to come with the price of showing up in the middle of nowhere with no memories. I've got my name, I've got an instinctive understanding of my powers, I've got some vague recollection of being a college student – studying politics, I think, since that's the one topic that I can remember a lot of details about without drawing on my Tinker expertise – and I would assume that my personality is intact.
I click my tongue experimentally to test the echolocation. There's a brief delay where the incoming data is blurry and indistinct, and then my Tinkertech algorithms kick in. The sensory data is analyzed and controlled for atmospheric interferences, giving me a more detailed picture, and then a second program runs a predictive analysis of the room, cross-referencing the details and contours of the room against known materials and common shapes to develop a best-guess of the room's contents and all of their properties.
The pile of Tinker-tech explosives on the table next to the short Asian woman stands out.
Um.
She hasn't noticed me, due to the Stranger power. It keeps anyone from noticing me until I draw attention to myself intentionally, and then convinces them that I'm a close friend or family member if they do notice me.
…yeah, my powers are pretty ridiculous. But I kind of have a bit of a guilt complex about Strangering random people, even if the situation is, um, suspicious.
I suppress my Stranger power and knock on the door frame cautiously. The noise is enough to let me, um, echolocate her startled jump.
"Hey! I- I'm working on an engineering project, I don't want to be disturbed…" she trails off as I wave my hand in front of my face and shrug. "Um. You're blind? Are you lost?"
I nod.
"Um, can you talk?"
I shake my head. Pretty sure I remember being labeled nonverbal and autistic, but the fact that I'm also apparently an amnesiac calls that all into question.
Even if I hadn't enhanced my hearing, I could've heard her mutter "great". You're not subtle, sweetheart.
"Look," she begins. She's talking louder, as if she thinks that'll help me understand. "I'm really busy right now, and… there's going to be a lot happening on campus today, so I really think you should go home."
I start walking towards her. "Hey, listen, I'm sorry you're lost, but I really can't go anywhere right-" She abruptly cuts off in a hiss when I reach the desk and pick up one of her bombs. I resist the urge to snicker. "Hey! Put that down!" She plucks it out of my hand and cradles it like a baby. "Jesus Christ, kid, don't touch that."
I raise an eyebrow at her and hold up my hands, flashing ten fingers twice and then one finger once. "What?" I point at myself, then repeat the gesture. "You're twenty-one?" she repeats. I nod. "Um, so, not a kid, right. Sorry. You're short, you know?" I shrug. She didn't treat me like a kid because I'm short, and we both know it.
But I've got her attention focused on me now, instead of the Tinkering. And that's a start. I hold my hand out in front of me, and she takes it and gives it a cautious shake. As though worried I might break.
Ironic, considering my powers.
I let go of her hand and point to myself and try to mime out the letters of my name. If I ever knew sign language, I don't remember it now, so I have to make do until I can learn again. "C…" she echoes. "A… T. H. Y. You're Cathy?" I nod, smiling. I'm relieved she got it in one try, that could've been a pain otherwise. "I'm Erin. Uh, nice to meet you."
I curtsey. She goggles at me and sort of half-laughs. I grin and laugh with her.
…now, how do I actually broach the topic of her Tinker-tech bombs without a voice or sign language? I point at the table – trying not to point too directly at the bombs I can sense with my echolocation – and tilt my head.
"Oh… um, that's an engineering project. Very delicate. I'm, um…" Her posture shifts. "You know what? Fuck it. You're not going to tell anyone. I'm bombing this shithole."
The expression on her face… well, I suppose I could call it a grin, the same way she'd called her work an "engineering project".
"I don't expect you to get it… hell, actually, maybe you do. You must get all sorts of shit for being blind and mute, right? It's like that, you know, getting powers, it doesn't happen until you've gone through loads and loads and loads of shit for years and then when you finally crack, that's when you get the powers, not when they would have actually helped things, or stopped things from getting worse."
I reach out to take her hand, but she jerks away. "Fuck, don't touch me! You don't get it, you don't know what those racist fucks have put me through, I'm only fucking half-Vietnamese and they just never fucking stop, they stole my notes, they ruined my room, they're following me around every fucking day and I can't get any work done and I could get it done if they'd just leave me alone, I'm fucking brilliant compared to them and they know it and they hate that their rich White asses can't keep up with me so they fucking stalk me every fucking day because I don't have fucking nine-hundred-dollar clothes and a sports car or whatever, and nobody ever does shit about it and they're going to get away with everything-"
I push off the ground away from her, floating up and back towards the door, hovering about a foot off the ground and well away from any of the walls. And then I activate my Breaker state.
It's… hard to describe exactly how it works. It doesn't transform me, not exactly, it's not a Changer power. It's more like the properties of my body are being overlaid with additional properties, merging with a new material. The structures remain the same – all the organs still in place, including my modified ears, though most of them are probably nonfunctional – but… well, I take on the temperature and strength and appearance of super-dense, superheated molten metal. My energy absorption power activates immediately, draining the excess heat I'm generating back out of the environment and feeding the energy back into my power, which makes my body tougher and denser and hotter, which gives off more heat to be absorbed, and since my Breaker state essentially reverses thermodynamics somehow, I'm gaining more energy than I'm putting out. In the three seconds that Erin stops and stares at me, I think I climb a couple dozen degrees.
…yeah, I have some bullshit powers.
"Holy shit," she breathes. "Okay, so, I guess you do kind of get it. Jesus. Some sort of… quantum-state overlay, right? Replicating select properties of a sample material over the whole…" She grabs a couple of tools and one of her bombs, then blinks and looks back at me when I float a bit closer and deactivate the Breaker form. "Right. Sorry. Focusing. It's hard, since I got my powers. So many ideas, things to build, and I have to use them, you know? Can't let them go to waste, and can't let those fucks get away with everything. I guess you get it, though, right? What happened to you? How'd you, you know?" She gestures at my floating form.
I shrug and grimace. Something half-remembered flits through my head, and I shiver. I don't try to focus on the memory; I know I don't want to. I tap the side of my head and shrug again.
"Brain injury?" she guesses. I shake my head. "Um, mental illness?" Shake head. I tap it again and shrug, trying to make my face look confused. What does a confused face even look like?
It takes her a couple tries – and some of her guesses are a bit insulting, but I try to brush it off – but she eventually arrives at amnesia. "Damn. You weren't kidding about being lost. You're at Cornell University, in Ithaca," she tells me. "That's gotta suck… don't even know how to get back at the people who ruined your life bad enough to get you powers, huh?" Grimace and shrug. "How long have you been wandering around like this?"
I hold my thumb and index finger very close together.
"Not long? Less than a week?" I nod and try to bring the fingers closer. "Less than a day?" I nod and bring them even closer. "Holy shit, did you just get your powers and then wander in here right after?" Nod.
She bursts out laughing. I laugh a little too, but not quite as hard as she does. Her laugh is kind of… maniacal. She keeps going for a while.
"Holy shit…" she gasps, out of breath. "Fucking unbelievable… random amnesiac cape girl turns up right before I bomb the school. Jesus Christ. Are you a student here? I feel like I'd have heard of the blind mute girl, especially if you're in the same year as I am… Whatever. Hey, you got any plans for what you're gonna do with your powers?"
I shake my head and shrug.
"Seems like a high-quality power, you could do well for yourself." You have no idea. "Trust me, though, you don't want to be a hero. I looked into it, when I got my powers. You beat up random people on the street while you're in costume, maybe get into a good fight with some capes if you're lucky, then go home and have to pretend you're nothing. You can't actually use your powers for anything. It sounds like hell."
I shrug and nod. I'm not big on cops or arresting people anyways, so – wait, I'm not? That's… well, it's good to know that I have, like, an actual personality and ideas in my head.
She nods firmly and grins. "Glad you agree. And if you don't have any ideas… well, why don't you join up with me? I'm gonna be living the big life, living it up in Brockton Bay – have you heard of it? Or, um, remember hearing about it? It's this big cape city, pretty close to here, and they've got this awesome villain gang run by this guy Lung – oh, I guess you're White, so I dunno if they'd let you join, but if you're tagging along with me I'm sure it'd work out fine." She grins. "Come on, I totally need a henchman. Henchgirl. And you seem chill enough. Need to get you some way to talk, but I can totally Tinker up something for that… whaddya think?"
I tilt my head and tap the table with the bombs on it.
"Oh, that? Come on, it's harmless. I mean, it's not, but it is, you know?" She rolls her eyes. "Look, if it'll get you to sign on, I promise we can bomb the school without killing that many people."
I tilt my head and tap my foot.
She glares. "What the fuck, bitch, why do you have to be all over me like this? Fine, whatever, we bomb the college without killing anyone. Not even fucking Chadwick."
I grin brightly. She rolls her eyes and reaches over to give me a quick hug.
"Fucking dork. We'll make a good team."
I'm literally the best negotiator ever.
---
Mission complete: Henching! +1 point.
Mission complete: Getting the Band Together! +1 point.
Mission complete: Joining the Band! +1 point.
I'm using Worm CYOA v4, and was highly inspired by a snip from BeaconHill's Morning Worm.
· Endbringer Mode (50)
· Canon (52)
· Pre-Worm (53)
· Marked +3 (Coil, Merchants, E88) (56)
· Murderhoboism (58)
· Outed (59)
· Blind II (61)
· Mute (62)
· Arch Enemy 3 (Heartbreaker, Alexandria, Crawler) (65)
· Event Triggered (66)
· Shardless (64)
· Meta(less) Knight (66)
· Conflict Driven (68)
· Canon (52)
· Pre-Worm (53)
· Marked +3 (Coil, Merchants, E88) (56)
· Murderhoboism (58)
· Outed (59)
· Blind II (61)
· Mute (62)
· Arch Enemy 3 (Heartbreaker, Alexandria, Crawler) (65)
· Event Triggered (66)
· Shardless (64)
· Meta(less) Knight (66)
· Conflict Driven (68)
· Law Breaker: space (66)
· Timeless (64)
· Law Breaker: probability (62)
· Law Breaker: thermodynamics (60)
· Law Breaker: force (58)
· Law Breaker: energy (56)
· Law Breaker: time (54)
· Law Breaker: mass (52)
· Speedster (50)
· Super Strength (48)
· Duper Durability (46)
· Radical Regeneration (44)
· True Multitasking: Think Tinker (Programming) (40)
· Battle Form: molten metal (38)
· Blaster IV: molten metal (36)
· Genetically Mapped (35)
· Hear Me Roar (34)
· Fidelis (32)
· Strangerless (31)
· Kinetic Field: metallokinesis (29)
· Energy Absorption: heat, ambient (27)
· Energy Absorption: electromagnetic, organic (25)
· Flier (23)
· Persistent Physiology (22)
· Recruiter (21)
· Mr. Celophane (20)
· Brain Bunker (19)
· Phase Shifter (18)
· Biological Self-Manipulation (16)
· True Multitasking: Bio Tinker (12)
· True Multitasking: Chemical Tinker (9)
· MacGuyver+ (8)
· True Multitasking: Tech Tinker: Power Armor (4)
· True Multitasking: Tech Tinker: Drones (0)
· Timeless (64)
· Law Breaker: probability (62)
· Law Breaker: thermodynamics (60)
· Law Breaker: force (58)
· Law Breaker: energy (56)
· Law Breaker: time (54)
· Law Breaker: mass (52)
· Speedster (50)
· Super Strength (48)
· Duper Durability (46)
· Radical Regeneration (44)
· True Multitasking: Think Tinker (Programming) (40)
· Battle Form: molten metal (38)
· Blaster IV: molten metal (36)
· Genetically Mapped (35)
· Hear Me Roar (34)
· Fidelis (32)
· Strangerless (31)
· Kinetic Field: metallokinesis (29)
· Energy Absorption: heat, ambient (27)
· Energy Absorption: electromagnetic, organic (25)
· Flier (23)
· Persistent Physiology (22)
· Recruiter (21)
· Mr. Celophane (20)
· Brain Bunker (19)
· Phase Shifter (18)
· Biological Self-Manipulation (16)
· True Multitasking: Bio Tinker (12)
· True Multitasking: Chemical Tinker (9)
· MacGuyver+ (8)
· True Multitasking: Tech Tinker: Power Armor (4)
· True Multitasking: Tech Tinker: Drones (0)
1.1
Getting around the halls of… wherever I ended up… is stressful as hell. It's not just the blindness – I mean, that's part of it, but it's not like that's specific to here. No, the problem is that this building is set up like a maze, there's nobody around – or, at least, I'm wandering around with my Stranger power suppressed and nobody's talking to me – and I have no idea where the fuck I am or what the layout is.
When the hand I'm trailing along the wall brushes against a doorknob, I switch my Stranger power back on and duck inside. Finally in private, I focus on my body. The specifications of my own biology flood into my head – my own nerves, muscles, blood vessels, everything laid out easily and cleanly for me to toy with.
…not that I would do that. That would be irresponsible.
Instead, all I'm going to do right now is give myself some basic echolocation. It's a small change, not at all hard to accomplish within the same amount of space that a typical human ear takes up. The end result is a pretty huge improvement on my normal ears, but my Tinker power keeps feeding me more ideas on how to improve. But I don't want to stay here and Tinker on myself forever. Instead, I shunt my bio-Tinkering to the back of my head and focus on Tinkering up some software to optimize my auditory processing. That's how my Tinker power works: I can design my Tinkertech in my head without hindering my ability to focus on other things – even to the point of letting me develop and even run my own Tinkertech programs and algorithms in my own brain – but even if I'm capable of multitasking like that, it's not easy to conceal the rearrangement of my flesh while it's happening, so I can't bio-Tinker on myself while I'm out in the open.
I could've probably been an A-list hero even if Tinkering was my only power, honestly. Too bad that my powers seemed to come with the price of showing up in the middle of nowhere with no memories. I've got my name, I've got an instinctive understanding of my powers, I've got some vague recollection of being a college student – studying politics, I think, since that's the one topic that I can remember a lot of details about without drawing on my Tinker expertise – and I would assume that my personality is intact.
I click my tongue experimentally to test the echolocation. There's a brief delay where the incoming data is blurry and indistinct, and then my Tinkertech algorithms kick in. The sensory data is analyzed and controlled for atmospheric interferences, giving me a more detailed picture, and then a second program runs a predictive analysis of the room, cross-referencing the details and contours of the room against known materials and common shapes to develop a best-guess of the room's contents and all of their properties.
The pile of Tinker-tech explosives on the table next to the short Asian woman stands out.
Um.
She hasn't noticed me, due to the Stranger power. It keeps anyone from noticing me until I draw attention to myself intentionally, and then convinces them that I'm a close friend or family member if they do notice me.
…yeah, my powers are pretty ridiculous. But I kind of have a bit of a guilt complex about Strangering random people, even if the situation is, um, suspicious.
I suppress my Stranger power and knock on the door frame cautiously. The noise is enough to let me, um, echolocate her startled jump.
"Hey! I- I'm working on an engineering project, I don't want to be disturbed…" she trails off as I wave my hand in front of my face and shrug. "Um. You're blind? Are you lost?"
I nod.
"Um, can you talk?"
I shake my head. Pretty sure I remember being labeled nonverbal and autistic, but the fact that I'm also apparently an amnesiac calls that all into question.
Even if I hadn't enhanced my hearing, I could've heard her mutter "great". You're not subtle, sweetheart.
"Look," she begins. She's talking louder, as if she thinks that'll help me understand. "I'm really busy right now, and… there's going to be a lot happening on campus today, so I really think you should go home."
I start walking towards her. "Hey, listen, I'm sorry you're lost, but I really can't go anywhere right-" She abruptly cuts off in a hiss when I reach the desk and pick up one of her bombs. I resist the urge to snicker. "Hey! Put that down!" She plucks it out of my hand and cradles it like a baby. "Jesus Christ, kid, don't touch that."
I raise an eyebrow at her and hold up my hands, flashing ten fingers twice and then one finger once. "What?" I point at myself, then repeat the gesture. "You're twenty-one?" she repeats. I nod. "Um, so, not a kid, right. Sorry. You're short, you know?" I shrug. She didn't treat me like a kid because I'm short, and we both know it.
But I've got her attention focused on me now, instead of the Tinkering. And that's a start. I hold my hand out in front of me, and she takes it and gives it a cautious shake. As though worried I might break.
Ironic, considering my powers.
I let go of her hand and point to myself and try to mime out the letters of my name. If I ever knew sign language, I don't remember it now, so I have to make do until I can learn again. "C…" she echoes. "A… T. H. Y. You're Cathy?" I nod, smiling. I'm relieved she got it in one try, that could've been a pain otherwise. "I'm Erin. Uh, nice to meet you."
I curtsey. She goggles at me and sort of half-laughs. I grin and laugh with her.
…now, how do I actually broach the topic of her Tinker-tech bombs without a voice or sign language? I point at the table – trying not to point too directly at the bombs I can sense with my echolocation – and tilt my head.
"Oh… um, that's an engineering project. Very delicate. I'm, um…" Her posture shifts. "You know what? Fuck it. You're not going to tell anyone. I'm bombing this shithole."
The expression on her face… well, I suppose I could call it a grin, the same way she'd called her work an "engineering project".
"I don't expect you to get it… hell, actually, maybe you do. You must get all sorts of shit for being blind and mute, right? It's like that, you know, getting powers, it doesn't happen until you've gone through loads and loads and loads of shit for years and then when you finally crack, that's when you get the powers, not when they would have actually helped things, or stopped things from getting worse."
I reach out to take her hand, but she jerks away. "Fuck, don't touch me! You don't get it, you don't know what those racist fucks have put me through, I'm only fucking half-Vietnamese and they just never fucking stop, they stole my notes, they ruined my room, they're following me around every fucking day and I can't get any work done and I could get it done if they'd just leave me alone, I'm fucking brilliant compared to them and they know it and they hate that their rich White asses can't keep up with me so they fucking stalk me every fucking day because I don't have fucking nine-hundred-dollar clothes and a sports car or whatever, and nobody ever does shit about it and they're going to get away with everything-"
I push off the ground away from her, floating up and back towards the door, hovering about a foot off the ground and well away from any of the walls. And then I activate my Breaker state.
It's… hard to describe exactly how it works. It doesn't transform me, not exactly, it's not a Changer power. It's more like the properties of my body are being overlaid with additional properties, merging with a new material. The structures remain the same – all the organs still in place, including my modified ears, though most of them are probably nonfunctional – but… well, I take on the temperature and strength and appearance of super-dense, superheated molten metal. My energy absorption power activates immediately, draining the excess heat I'm generating back out of the environment and feeding the energy back into my power, which makes my body tougher and denser and hotter, which gives off more heat to be absorbed, and since my Breaker state essentially reverses thermodynamics somehow, I'm gaining more energy than I'm putting out. In the three seconds that Erin stops and stares at me, I think I climb a couple dozen degrees.
…yeah, I have some bullshit powers.
"Holy shit," she breathes. "Okay, so, I guess you do kind of get it. Jesus. Some sort of… quantum-state overlay, right? Replicating select properties of a sample material over the whole…" She grabs a couple of tools and one of her bombs, then blinks and looks back at me when I float a bit closer and deactivate the Breaker form. "Right. Sorry. Focusing. It's hard, since I got my powers. So many ideas, things to build, and I have to use them, you know? Can't let them go to waste, and can't let those fucks get away with everything. I guess you get it, though, right? What happened to you? How'd you, you know?" She gestures at my floating form.
I shrug and grimace. Something half-remembered flits through my head, and I shiver. I don't try to focus on the memory; I know I don't want to. I tap the side of my head and shrug again.
"Brain injury?" she guesses. I shake my head. "Um, mental illness?" Shake head. I tap it again and shrug, trying to make my face look confused. What does a confused face even look like?
It takes her a couple tries – and some of her guesses are a bit insulting, but I try to brush it off – but she eventually arrives at amnesia. "Damn. You weren't kidding about being lost. You're at Cornell University, in Ithaca," she tells me. "That's gotta suck… don't even know how to get back at the people who ruined your life bad enough to get you powers, huh?" Grimace and shrug. "How long have you been wandering around like this?"
I hold my thumb and index finger very close together.
"Not long? Less than a week?" I nod and try to bring the fingers closer. "Less than a day?" I nod and bring them even closer. "Holy shit, did you just get your powers and then wander in here right after?" Nod.
She bursts out laughing. I laugh a little too, but not quite as hard as she does. Her laugh is kind of… maniacal. She keeps going for a while.
"Holy shit…" she gasps, out of breath. "Fucking unbelievable… random amnesiac cape girl turns up right before I bomb the school. Jesus Christ. Are you a student here? I feel like I'd have heard of the blind mute girl, especially if you're in the same year as I am… Whatever. Hey, you got any plans for what you're gonna do with your powers?"
I shake my head and shrug.
"Seems like a high-quality power, you could do well for yourself." You have no idea. "Trust me, though, you don't want to be a hero. I looked into it, when I got my powers. You beat up random people on the street while you're in costume, maybe get into a good fight with some capes if you're lucky, then go home and have to pretend you're nothing. You can't actually use your powers for anything. It sounds like hell."
I shrug and nod. I'm not big on cops or arresting people anyways, so – wait, I'm not? That's… well, it's good to know that I have, like, an actual personality and ideas in my head.
She nods firmly and grins. "Glad you agree. And if you don't have any ideas… well, why don't you join up with me? I'm gonna be living the big life, living it up in Brockton Bay – have you heard of it? Or, um, remember hearing about it? It's this big cape city, pretty close to here, and they've got this awesome villain gang run by this guy Lung – oh, I guess you're White, so I dunno if they'd let you join, but if you're tagging along with me I'm sure it'd work out fine." She grins. "Come on, I totally need a henchman. Henchgirl. And you seem chill enough. Need to get you some way to talk, but I can totally Tinker up something for that… whaddya think?"
I tilt my head and tap the table with the bombs on it.
"Oh, that? Come on, it's harmless. I mean, it's not, but it is, you know?" She rolls her eyes. "Look, if it'll get you to sign on, I promise we can bomb the school without killing that many people."
I tilt my head and tap my foot.
She glares. "What the fuck, bitch, why do you have to be all over me like this? Fine, whatever, we bomb the college without killing anyone. Not even fucking Chadwick."
I grin brightly. She rolls her eyes and reaches over to give me a quick hug.
"Fucking dork. We'll make a good team."
I'm literally the best negotiator ever.
---
Mission complete: Henching! +1 point.
Mission complete: Getting the Band Together! +1 point.
Mission complete: Joining the Band! +1 point.
Last edited by a moderator:
1.2
1.2
By the time the Protectorate arrives, Erin and I are well on our way to Brockton in the sports car we stole from Chadwick. She'd tried to point him out to me on campus, actually, before remembering I couldn't see him anyways. I'd needed to restrain her from going after him with the Number 14 bomb. She'd been pissed, but eventually we'd managed to satisfy her desire for revenge without actually killing anyone. In the end, all we'd done was destroy a lot of really old and ostentatious property. It was hard to feel guilty about that, between the adrenaline rush and the fact that I'd stopped Erin from following through on her original, kind of slightly horrific plan.
She even let me throw a couple of the bombs. I'd needed to switch out of my Breaker state so I could hold them without, yknow, melting them and/or setting them off, and she'd insisted on basically holding my hand and guiding me to throw it at the target she chose, because of my blindness. But she giggled the whole time. And then hugged me and lovingly described the effects of the bombs I'd thrown. It was really nice.
And we'd looted a couple science buildings for chemicals and stuff, so that was pretty awesome. I still need to tell her about my Tinker power, but for now I'm just relaxing and enjoying the ride. We could probably arrive sooner if I just flew us there – and we should probably ditch the car and fly the rest of the way before much longer, actually – but, well, Chadwick had a nice car. It's comfy, probably a lot comfier than Erin will be when she's being carried by me while I fly. We stashed our costumes in the backseat – Erin let me borrow a spare gas mask, just as an extra layer of security over my Breaker form – and now we're cruising along the highway, probably well above the speed limit, with the windows rolled down.
"-little is known about the villains responsible. We have been waiting to hear from the police, Tom, but so far they have been very tight-lipped. We're expecting the local Protectorate to make a statement any minute now, but for now there is just very little information available-"
Erin scoffs and fiddles with the radio. She'd insisted on listening to the news stories about us, but it had been pretty disappointing so far. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've been saying that for like twenty minutes. Jesus, we should've given a monologue or something. They probably don't even remember our names." I hum sympathetically. I wouldn't mind if they forgot my cape name – Erin had announced that I was called Mushroom Cloud, but I hadn't exactly had any say in that and it was kind of a really shitty name – but I know she'd be disappointed if she got stuck with something other than Bakuda.
I tap her shoulder and then tap the car's built-in GPS screen. "Hm? We really need to figure out some way for you to talk… You want to know how close we are?"
I shake my head.
"Um…?" She shrugs, focusing back on the road. It takes her a bit to come up with her next guess. "You want to know about Brockton Bay?"
I shake my head, then stop and nod and shrug. Yes, but that wasn't what I was trying to ask.
"Um… no, but yes? Maybe? You had something else to ask?"
I smile and nod.
"You know, this is basically texting and driving if I keep looking at you while we're moving."
I snort. That's exactly the problem I'm trying to solve. My mutism is psychological rather than physiological, so I'll probably need to build some sort of assistive technology rather than relying on my biokinesis. Oh well. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, I guess.
I pry the GPS screen out of the dashboard – "What the fuck? Hey! Jesus Christ!" – and start fiddling with the wires.
"Seriously? Are you fucking with me right now? Are you some kind of Tinker or are you just-" She's cut off by a loud honk behind us – she'd swerved partway into the passing lane. "Shit. You better not fucking break the car while I'm driving it."
Eh. I could probably just keep the car moving with my metallokinesis even if I fucked it up, but whatever. I only need to swap a few things around. The GPS already has a speaker and a text-to-speech program and everything, so…
"How's this?" the GPS chirps. I'm fiddling with the wires manually to program the speech, so it's not exactly an amazing user interface, but it's better than miming.
Erin blinks and glances towards me before focusing back on the road. "Damn, that was fast. You're a Tinker? What do you do? We should totally work together, I have these great ideas for the next round of bombs – and, um, good to talk to you."
"Thanks. Wish I'd thought of it earlier. You suck at charades." She snorts. "And yes, I Tinker. Bio-Tinkering, mostly. Have a Changer power that lets me modify myself without tools."
She whistles. "Holy shit, you like hit the jackpot. Wait. Bio-Tinkering? So, like, why are you still blind and mute?" I roll my eyes. "Sorry, was that like insensitive or something?"
"It's fine," the GPS answers. "My mutism is a psychological thing. Want to be careful before trying to Tinker with that. And the blindness is kind of irrelevant, I just gave myself echolocation and use an algorithm to extrapolate details from there. Probably won't bother replacing the eyes until I've got designs for something more useful for them to do."
"Huh. Yeah, makes sense, bet you have loads of other projects you could be focusing on instead…" The car starts to drift to the side again, and I snap my fingers hastily. "Huh? Oh, shit. Yeah, do you get that too? It's like I've got fucking ADD now."
"Same. But my power comes with better multitasking, so I think I have it easier." I can practically feel her mood darkening – she has a bit of a touchy ego – so I hastily continue, "I think the fact that you're a pure Tinker probably makes it worse for you, you've got more schematics and everything going through your head."
She nods thoughtfully. "Yeah, that's probably part of it. Damn, though, you got some sick powers. Lucky I ran into you, huh?" She grins at me and nudges my shoulder. I grin right back.
"Yeah, no kidding. Can you imagine if I'd still been wandering around lost when you went out with your bombs alone?"
She snorts, then cracks up laughing. I didn't think it was that funny, but I laugh at her laughing.
"Oh my god, that would've been… so fucked up. Would you have fought me? I wonder if… I bet Number 11 could've taken you out, maybe Number 6."
"Nah, I would've totally made you waste all twenty."
She snorts. "Bitch, please. Number 16 alone-"
"Nope, Breaker form."
"Shit, right. Well, Number 11 still would've-"
"I am way too fast for that thing, it practically explodes in slow motion-"
"It boxes you in, though! Leaves you a sitting duck for Number 19!"
I shrug. "I can phase through stuff."
"Seriously? That's awesome… can I run some tests on how you do that? Can you imagine a bomb that did that? Phase through layers of armor or cover, then BAM!"
"Hey, Erin-"
"Oh, maybe we could make shrapnel that fused into people and then made their body start phasing, so their blood would like phase through the walls of their arteries or their organs would ghost right out-"
"Erin." I tap her shoulder and she whirls around to glare at me.
"What?" I point over my shoulder.
My echolocation is thrown off a bit by our speed and the wind, but the fliers following us are close enough that I can sense them anyways. She glances at the side-view mirror and swears.
"Guess we should've ditched the car sooner, huh?" I nod. "Too late now, though! Looks like it'll be a fight!" She's grinning. I roll my eyes.
"Let's try not to kill anyone. It'll bring down the whole Protectorate on our head before we have any time to get settled."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I get it. I can think strategically, you know. But come on, it's a cape fight! We're gonna kick some ass!"
"You seem really eager for a-" My "voice" cuts out as she reaches over with one hand and starts fiddling with the exposed wiring as well. I swat at her hands.
"Hey, sorry, not my fault! I'm out of bombs, you already pried the casing open, figured I might as well!"
I hit her on the shoulder.
"Aw, come on, baby, don't be like that!"
…that makes me blush a bit, and I look away. She cackles.
"I knew it! I knew it I knew it I knew it! Oh my god, this is just like that anime-"
She cuts herself off by slamming the brakes. I'm unaffected as the car skids to a stop – my Breaker and Brute package at work – but she shoots forward in her seat, only restrained by her seatbelt from flying right out the window.
We end up stopping about two feet in front of the cape who'd swooped down in front of us. Cars are honking and swerving around us, the cape's friends directing them towards the exit we'd just passed as a detour. Police sirens abruptly start up not far from us and rapidly start moving closer. Like they'd planned to stop us here. Fuck.
The cape floats over towards Erin's window. He's big, burly, probably an Alexandria package… huh, didn't realize I remembered those words. His costume is skintight; I can't imagine what the color scheme might be, but I doubt it's easy on the eyes. "Erin Phan. You and your friend are wanted for questioning in relation to the bombing attack at Cornell University this morning."
Erin is sagging against her seat, wincing, her long hair covering most of her face. Probably gonna have a seatbelt-shaped bruise down the front of her body. Her hand is still tangled in the GPS's exposed wiring. And it's moving. I sigh.
"Erin, you and your friend need to step out of the car and come with us. We just need to ask you some questions."
I almost laugh at that, before I realize that the sudden stop made our gas masks go sliding off the back seat and under the front. The Protectorate cape can't see them. They actually might not know for sure who we are.
…and by the time I realize that, Erin is hastily pulling her hand out of the GPS wiring. Her free hand flips a switch on her chair, bending it over backwards. I enter my Breaker state just in time for the whole front half of the car to explode in a spray of shrapnel and arcs of electricity. The blast crashes against me ineffectually and flies over Erin without touching her, but the cape who pulled us over gets blown clear of the car by a blast of lightning. The engine ignites and explodes, filling the air with smoke and heat – heat that I promptly absorb to start powering up.
I have no idea how Erin managed that.
I whirl to my feet – my molten body cuts through the wreckage of the car like it's not even there, but I absorb all the heat I give off so that I don't accidentally like set Erin on fire just by being near her – and take stock.
Two flying capes, one rapidly approaching, the other flying straight up – probably a Blaster, I guess, taking up a better position. A PRT van is swerving to a stop not far behind them, the doors already opening; there are four occupants, three in typical skintight costumes and one in power armor. One of the ones in a skintight costume is moving much faster than the others. Behind the van, four cop cars are rapidly closing in. None of them are nearly as fast as I am.
So my dilemma is how to get us out of here without killing anyone or letting Erin get hurt.
I drop my Breaker state; it's too deadly for this, I'll need to rely on my regular Brute abilities without the coating of molten metal. I start Tinkering up some software – combat algorithms related to aim, damage estimation, trajectory optimization – but this fight will probably be over by the time it finishes. So I'm just gonna have to eyeball it.
I step off towards the flier who's closing in, and by the time he has a chance to react I've body-checked him about twenty feet away. He makes more snaps and crackles than a Rice Krispie Treat.
Oops.
I arc upwards, aiming towards the probably-Blaster flier but overshooting her. Didn't turn tightly enough. I double back around for another pass but miss her again.
Oh. Probably a power at work there.
I reach out to the flaming scrap of the car with my metallokinesis and send a few chunks flying her way experimentally while I turn around and swoop down at the PRT van. I have to rein myself in to keep my speed subsonic. Echolocation is clearly not going to be a very reliable sensory technique for me; sound waves are just too slow.
I hit the van at a shallow angle, just behind the passenger seat, and rip through to the other side… and then make a small crater in the road when I pull up too slowly. The van tips over onto its side in my wake, but the capes are all clear of it by then.
The pieces of shrapnel I sent flying at the floating cape finally reach her, but their trajectories swerve slightly away from her. Some kind of repulsion field, I guess? Maybe that's how she flies, too. But if that's her only power, what does she use to attack?
She unhooks a pair of grenades from her belt and sends them flying at Erin, who's just managed to climb out of the car and put her mask on. Oh. I flip around in midair and accelerate back towards her as fast as I can, phasing through the van and reaching out with my metallokinesis as soon as I'm in range – and I manage to grab one of the grenades and fling it back towards the van. The other detonates into a rapidly-expanding cloud of foam. I phase through it and grab Erin before it can reach her – thankfully, my passive Breaker field that modifies force and energy keeps me from, like, yknow, ripping her in half by impacting her at the speed I'm going. Instead, I just send her rolling away from the foam.
There's another two grenades heading our way by the time she comes to a stop – along with one pissed Mover. He's coated in some kind of force field that's getting thicker and stronger as he runs. The other two heroes in skintight suits are jogging our way too; one of them is holding a grenade, and the other is slowly growing some kind of orb in between her hands. My echolocation goes weird when the sound hits it. The power-armored cape is running towards the flier I tackled.
I grab the grenades heading towards us with my metallokinesis and hurl one at the Mover and one at the two capes behind him. The Mover flits out of the way of his grenade without a problem, and it explodes into foam too far behind him to catch him. The other grenade gets intercepted when the cape with the orb hurls it our way; the grenade gets sucked into the orb as it passes near. I have just enough time to think huh, guess that's what happened to the first grenade I threw their way before the orb reaches us and explodes into two grenades' worth of containment foam. I lash out with my Blaster power on instinct, shooting a wild spray of explosive, superheated liquid steel as the foam rapidly bursts towards us. The bolt hits the foam and disintegrates a good portion of it – and then expands into a cone-shaped burst.
A woman screams – sudden and short – and my echolocation snaps back to normal as the orb flickers out. I freeze. But only for a moment.
I turn, grab Erin, and take off.
She'll be fine she'll be fine she'll be fine she'll be fine
---
Mission Complete: The Dark Side. +1 point.
Mission Complete: Cape Combat. +1 point.
Mission Complete: Bloodying Noses. +1 point.
Mission Complete: Crossing the Line. +1 point.
Mission Complete: Capekiller. +1 point.
By the time the Protectorate arrives, Erin and I are well on our way to Brockton in the sports car we stole from Chadwick. She'd tried to point him out to me on campus, actually, before remembering I couldn't see him anyways. I'd needed to restrain her from going after him with the Number 14 bomb. She'd been pissed, but eventually we'd managed to satisfy her desire for revenge without actually killing anyone. In the end, all we'd done was destroy a lot of really old and ostentatious property. It was hard to feel guilty about that, between the adrenaline rush and the fact that I'd stopped Erin from following through on her original, kind of slightly horrific plan.
She even let me throw a couple of the bombs. I'd needed to switch out of my Breaker state so I could hold them without, yknow, melting them and/or setting them off, and she'd insisted on basically holding my hand and guiding me to throw it at the target she chose, because of my blindness. But she giggled the whole time. And then hugged me and lovingly described the effects of the bombs I'd thrown. It was really nice.
And we'd looted a couple science buildings for chemicals and stuff, so that was pretty awesome. I still need to tell her about my Tinker power, but for now I'm just relaxing and enjoying the ride. We could probably arrive sooner if I just flew us there – and we should probably ditch the car and fly the rest of the way before much longer, actually – but, well, Chadwick had a nice car. It's comfy, probably a lot comfier than Erin will be when she's being carried by me while I fly. We stashed our costumes in the backseat – Erin let me borrow a spare gas mask, just as an extra layer of security over my Breaker form – and now we're cruising along the highway, probably well above the speed limit, with the windows rolled down.
"-little is known about the villains responsible. We have been waiting to hear from the police, Tom, but so far they have been very tight-lipped. We're expecting the local Protectorate to make a statement any minute now, but for now there is just very little information available-"
Erin scoffs and fiddles with the radio. She'd insisted on listening to the news stories about us, but it had been pretty disappointing so far. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've been saying that for like twenty minutes. Jesus, we should've given a monologue or something. They probably don't even remember our names." I hum sympathetically. I wouldn't mind if they forgot my cape name – Erin had announced that I was called Mushroom Cloud, but I hadn't exactly had any say in that and it was kind of a really shitty name – but I know she'd be disappointed if she got stuck with something other than Bakuda.
I tap her shoulder and then tap the car's built-in GPS screen. "Hm? We really need to figure out some way for you to talk… You want to know how close we are?"
I shake my head.
"Um…?" She shrugs, focusing back on the road. It takes her a bit to come up with her next guess. "You want to know about Brockton Bay?"
I shake my head, then stop and nod and shrug. Yes, but that wasn't what I was trying to ask.
"Um… no, but yes? Maybe? You had something else to ask?"
I smile and nod.
"You know, this is basically texting and driving if I keep looking at you while we're moving."
I snort. That's exactly the problem I'm trying to solve. My mutism is psychological rather than physiological, so I'll probably need to build some sort of assistive technology rather than relying on my biokinesis. Oh well. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, I guess.
I pry the GPS screen out of the dashboard – "What the fuck? Hey! Jesus Christ!" – and start fiddling with the wires.
"Seriously? Are you fucking with me right now? Are you some kind of Tinker or are you just-" She's cut off by a loud honk behind us – she'd swerved partway into the passing lane. "Shit. You better not fucking break the car while I'm driving it."
Eh. I could probably just keep the car moving with my metallokinesis even if I fucked it up, but whatever. I only need to swap a few things around. The GPS already has a speaker and a text-to-speech program and everything, so…
"How's this?" the GPS chirps. I'm fiddling with the wires manually to program the speech, so it's not exactly an amazing user interface, but it's better than miming.
Erin blinks and glances towards me before focusing back on the road. "Damn, that was fast. You're a Tinker? What do you do? We should totally work together, I have these great ideas for the next round of bombs – and, um, good to talk to you."
"Thanks. Wish I'd thought of it earlier. You suck at charades." She snorts. "And yes, I Tinker. Bio-Tinkering, mostly. Have a Changer power that lets me modify myself without tools."
She whistles. "Holy shit, you like hit the jackpot. Wait. Bio-Tinkering? So, like, why are you still blind and mute?" I roll my eyes. "Sorry, was that like insensitive or something?"
"It's fine," the GPS answers. "My mutism is a psychological thing. Want to be careful before trying to Tinker with that. And the blindness is kind of irrelevant, I just gave myself echolocation and use an algorithm to extrapolate details from there. Probably won't bother replacing the eyes until I've got designs for something more useful for them to do."
"Huh. Yeah, makes sense, bet you have loads of other projects you could be focusing on instead…" The car starts to drift to the side again, and I snap my fingers hastily. "Huh? Oh, shit. Yeah, do you get that too? It's like I've got fucking ADD now."
"Same. But my power comes with better multitasking, so I think I have it easier." I can practically feel her mood darkening – she has a bit of a touchy ego – so I hastily continue, "I think the fact that you're a pure Tinker probably makes it worse for you, you've got more schematics and everything going through your head."
She nods thoughtfully. "Yeah, that's probably part of it. Damn, though, you got some sick powers. Lucky I ran into you, huh?" She grins at me and nudges my shoulder. I grin right back.
"Yeah, no kidding. Can you imagine if I'd still been wandering around lost when you went out with your bombs alone?"
She snorts, then cracks up laughing. I didn't think it was that funny, but I laugh at her laughing.
"Oh my god, that would've been… so fucked up. Would you have fought me? I wonder if… I bet Number 11 could've taken you out, maybe Number 6."
"Nah, I would've totally made you waste all twenty."
She snorts. "Bitch, please. Number 16 alone-"
"Nope, Breaker form."
"Shit, right. Well, Number 11 still would've-"
"I am way too fast for that thing, it practically explodes in slow motion-"
"It boxes you in, though! Leaves you a sitting duck for Number 19!"
I shrug. "I can phase through stuff."
"Seriously? That's awesome… can I run some tests on how you do that? Can you imagine a bomb that did that? Phase through layers of armor or cover, then BAM!"
"Hey, Erin-"
"Oh, maybe we could make shrapnel that fused into people and then made their body start phasing, so their blood would like phase through the walls of their arteries or their organs would ghost right out-"
"Erin." I tap her shoulder and she whirls around to glare at me.
"What?" I point over my shoulder.
My echolocation is thrown off a bit by our speed and the wind, but the fliers following us are close enough that I can sense them anyways. She glances at the side-view mirror and swears.
"Guess we should've ditched the car sooner, huh?" I nod. "Too late now, though! Looks like it'll be a fight!" She's grinning. I roll my eyes.
"Let's try not to kill anyone. It'll bring down the whole Protectorate on our head before we have any time to get settled."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I get it. I can think strategically, you know. But come on, it's a cape fight! We're gonna kick some ass!"
"You seem really eager for a-" My "voice" cuts out as she reaches over with one hand and starts fiddling with the exposed wiring as well. I swat at her hands.
"Hey, sorry, not my fault! I'm out of bombs, you already pried the casing open, figured I might as well!"
I hit her on the shoulder.
"Aw, come on, baby, don't be like that!"
…that makes me blush a bit, and I look away. She cackles.
"I knew it! I knew it I knew it I knew it! Oh my god, this is just like that anime-"
She cuts herself off by slamming the brakes. I'm unaffected as the car skids to a stop – my Breaker and Brute package at work – but she shoots forward in her seat, only restrained by her seatbelt from flying right out the window.
We end up stopping about two feet in front of the cape who'd swooped down in front of us. Cars are honking and swerving around us, the cape's friends directing them towards the exit we'd just passed as a detour. Police sirens abruptly start up not far from us and rapidly start moving closer. Like they'd planned to stop us here. Fuck.
The cape floats over towards Erin's window. He's big, burly, probably an Alexandria package… huh, didn't realize I remembered those words. His costume is skintight; I can't imagine what the color scheme might be, but I doubt it's easy on the eyes. "Erin Phan. You and your friend are wanted for questioning in relation to the bombing attack at Cornell University this morning."
Erin is sagging against her seat, wincing, her long hair covering most of her face. Probably gonna have a seatbelt-shaped bruise down the front of her body. Her hand is still tangled in the GPS's exposed wiring. And it's moving. I sigh.
"Erin, you and your friend need to step out of the car and come with us. We just need to ask you some questions."
I almost laugh at that, before I realize that the sudden stop made our gas masks go sliding off the back seat and under the front. The Protectorate cape can't see them. They actually might not know for sure who we are.
…and by the time I realize that, Erin is hastily pulling her hand out of the GPS wiring. Her free hand flips a switch on her chair, bending it over backwards. I enter my Breaker state just in time for the whole front half of the car to explode in a spray of shrapnel and arcs of electricity. The blast crashes against me ineffectually and flies over Erin without touching her, but the cape who pulled us over gets blown clear of the car by a blast of lightning. The engine ignites and explodes, filling the air with smoke and heat – heat that I promptly absorb to start powering up.
I have no idea how Erin managed that.
I whirl to my feet – my molten body cuts through the wreckage of the car like it's not even there, but I absorb all the heat I give off so that I don't accidentally like set Erin on fire just by being near her – and take stock.
Two flying capes, one rapidly approaching, the other flying straight up – probably a Blaster, I guess, taking up a better position. A PRT van is swerving to a stop not far behind them, the doors already opening; there are four occupants, three in typical skintight costumes and one in power armor. One of the ones in a skintight costume is moving much faster than the others. Behind the van, four cop cars are rapidly closing in. None of them are nearly as fast as I am.
So my dilemma is how to get us out of here without killing anyone or letting Erin get hurt.
I drop my Breaker state; it's too deadly for this, I'll need to rely on my regular Brute abilities without the coating of molten metal. I start Tinkering up some software – combat algorithms related to aim, damage estimation, trajectory optimization – but this fight will probably be over by the time it finishes. So I'm just gonna have to eyeball it.
I step off towards the flier who's closing in, and by the time he has a chance to react I've body-checked him about twenty feet away. He makes more snaps and crackles than a Rice Krispie Treat.
Oops.
I arc upwards, aiming towards the probably-Blaster flier but overshooting her. Didn't turn tightly enough. I double back around for another pass but miss her again.
Oh. Probably a power at work there.
I reach out to the flaming scrap of the car with my metallokinesis and send a few chunks flying her way experimentally while I turn around and swoop down at the PRT van. I have to rein myself in to keep my speed subsonic. Echolocation is clearly not going to be a very reliable sensory technique for me; sound waves are just too slow.
I hit the van at a shallow angle, just behind the passenger seat, and rip through to the other side… and then make a small crater in the road when I pull up too slowly. The van tips over onto its side in my wake, but the capes are all clear of it by then.
The pieces of shrapnel I sent flying at the floating cape finally reach her, but their trajectories swerve slightly away from her. Some kind of repulsion field, I guess? Maybe that's how she flies, too. But if that's her only power, what does she use to attack?
She unhooks a pair of grenades from her belt and sends them flying at Erin, who's just managed to climb out of the car and put her mask on. Oh. I flip around in midair and accelerate back towards her as fast as I can, phasing through the van and reaching out with my metallokinesis as soon as I'm in range – and I manage to grab one of the grenades and fling it back towards the van. The other detonates into a rapidly-expanding cloud of foam. I phase through it and grab Erin before it can reach her – thankfully, my passive Breaker field that modifies force and energy keeps me from, like, yknow, ripping her in half by impacting her at the speed I'm going. Instead, I just send her rolling away from the foam.
There's another two grenades heading our way by the time she comes to a stop – along with one pissed Mover. He's coated in some kind of force field that's getting thicker and stronger as he runs. The other two heroes in skintight suits are jogging our way too; one of them is holding a grenade, and the other is slowly growing some kind of orb in between her hands. My echolocation goes weird when the sound hits it. The power-armored cape is running towards the flier I tackled.
I grab the grenades heading towards us with my metallokinesis and hurl one at the Mover and one at the two capes behind him. The Mover flits out of the way of his grenade without a problem, and it explodes into foam too far behind him to catch him. The other grenade gets intercepted when the cape with the orb hurls it our way; the grenade gets sucked into the orb as it passes near. I have just enough time to think huh, guess that's what happened to the first grenade I threw their way before the orb reaches us and explodes into two grenades' worth of containment foam. I lash out with my Blaster power on instinct, shooting a wild spray of explosive, superheated liquid steel as the foam rapidly bursts towards us. The bolt hits the foam and disintegrates a good portion of it – and then expands into a cone-shaped burst.
A woman screams – sudden and short – and my echolocation snaps back to normal as the orb flickers out. I freeze. But only for a moment.
I turn, grab Erin, and take off.
She'll be fine she'll be fine she'll be fine she'll be fine
---
Mission Complete: The Dark Side. +1 point.
Mission Complete: Cape Combat. +1 point.
Mission Complete: Bloodying Noses. +1 point.
Mission Complete: Crossing the Line. +1 point.
Mission Complete: Capekiller. +1 point.
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1.3
1.3
"This is really fucking gross, you know that?"
I tilt my head up at Erin and give her a flat look.
"I mean, don't stop, it helps and all. It's just kind of disgusting when you think about it."
I snort and return to my ministrations. I've modified my palms to secrete a medical lotion, which I'm slathering over her hands and arms. They're covered in electrical burns and small cuts from her fiddling with the car's computer, as well as a healthy amount of bruising from when she tried to catch herself when I sent her flying out of the way of the containment foam grenade.
We arrived in Brockton Bay about an hour ago. Didn't take us long to find somewhere to squat; the city's kind of a wreck. The docks are surrounded by all these wrecked tankers and boats, rusting and abandoned, like it got hit by Leviathan or something a while back. We took over the nicest one we could find; I would've liked to squat in, like, an actual house, but Erin was too excited by the prospect of salvaging old electrical equipment and engines. It took some convincing to get her to let me look her over for injuries before she went out scavenging. She'd bargained me into at least letting her put a radio together so we could find out how the Protectorate's reacting to us.
I wish I'd bargained harder. It's been nonstop memorial programs for Roundabout. The heroine I killed.
The other three we'd hurt – Solar Sail, the one who got hit with Erin's improvised bomb, Stormbreaker, the one I'd tackled, and Morning Star, who'd been caught in the same blast as Roundabout – had apparently needed Panacea to fly out and save their lives.
The fight had lasted twenty seconds.
I sigh and hang my head when the current song finishes and the radio launches back into a report on Roundabout's charity work, and Erin twists in her seat to give it a kick. The front casing falls off and the sound cuts out.
"Alright, I can take a hint. You're beating yourself up over that Roundabout girl."
I shrug and grimace. I don't think it counts as beating yourself up to acknowledge you actually killed someone. Hell, if anything, I should probably feel a lot worse than I do. I just feel sort of… vaguely guilty. Maybe it just doesn't seem real yet. Or maybe I was some kind of serial killer before getting amnesia. Or maybe my powers messed up my psychology.
Whatever. I just focus on my work, kneading the lotion into Erin's injuries.
"Hey, that's actually feeling pretty good. You should give me a massage after this." She snickers when I blush. "Seriously, though, you did fine. It was an accident, you were defending yourself. And me." She pauses and blows a strand of hair out of her face. "I did notice that, you know. You can phase through containment foam, but you went all out to keep me from getting caught. I appreciate that, you know? It's a lot to do for someone you just met."
I tilt my head up towards her – I don't technically look at her, I'm still designing the new eyes – and smile. She smiles back. It's a surprisingly gentle expression on her; my echolocation maps out every inch of it. Most of her smiles are a bit more… manic.
"Well, you proved you got my back, I'll make sure to return the favor."
I nod, still smiling.
"Dork. So you good?"
I grimace and shrug. She sighs and leans forward, putting her hands on my cheeks. Her very oily, lotion-crusted hands.
Okay, maybe it is a bit gross.
"Seriously, listen to me. Come on. We're villains. We're not doing any of this right-side-of-the-law, come-quietly bullshit. If they come after us, we put up a fight. That's all we did. We just trashed some shitty pretentious university, they were the ones who decided to send a whole army of capes after us. So it's not our fault if some of them were fragile as fuck." I shrug, and she continues, "Christ, come on, Cathy. Seriously, you were the one who insisted we be all gentle with everyone and not kill anyone or whatever, it's their fault for attacking you anyways."
I shrug and nod. I'm weirdly thankful that I haven't got any way to actually speak at the moment; I don't know what words I would even use. She pats my cheek lightly and grins before leaning back and pushing her arms against my hands again. I obligingly continue rubbing my lotion admixture over her wounds.
"That's the spirit. So come on, quit moping! Let's start brainstorming our plans and stuff now that we're in Brockton Bay." I raise an eyebrow and open and close my mouth a couple times. She grins. "Nah, it's okay, I'm the brains of the operation anyways. You just keep it up with the massage."
I roll my eyes, but I'm not really complaining. I don't feel like I have much to contribute to a planning session. What kind of goals am I gonna pursue? Getting my memory back? My amnesia leaves me feeling like I haven't got much in the way of motivation.
"So I've got like a dozen or so new ideas for bombs I want to build and test, first off, but we're going to need more supplies." The bags of chemicals we'd stolen from Cornell had been left behind in the car when I grabbed her and flew us out of there, so we're starting over from scratch. "These boats will hopefully be a decent start, but I'm going to need a lot of chemicals we're not likely to find here, so we'll probably need to – wait, actually, if you can make this gunk shit medicine stuff, what other chemicals can you synthesize biologically?"
I purse my lips and shrug and absently start coding a series of Tinkertech programs into my head to construct a database of biochemical synthesis organs I could grow and their possible outputs.
"I'm make up a list for you, then, and you can see what works. Damn, this'll be awesome. Good synergy and stuff, you know?" She grins and starts tapping her foot rapidly – probably eager to start Tinkering. "Okay, so, we need that, and we need a better lab to work out of. Like, a lair. Maybe we can find an abandoned warehouse or take over an apartment building or something, I dunno. Oh, and we should like approach the ABB early on, see about joining up. Lung's supposed to be a total badass and the docks are his territory anyways. Um, I don't know what they'll think of you, but I'll just tell them you're my sidekick-" I snort, but that only makes her grin wider. "-and hopefully that'll be enough for them, I dunno. But we're pretty awesome on our own, so if that doesn't work out we could just start our own gang. Use henchmen to make us money and buy materials and tools and workspace, that kind of thing. Hey, I bet you could synthesize some awesome designer drugs for us to deal!"
I tilt my head and start fiddling with a few designs that pop into my head when she mentions that. Hell, forget designer drugs, I could probably make something that would give mid-level Brute abilities when injected… would be pretty useful for keeping Erin safe. I absently continue rubbing her hands and forearms, collecting samples of my medicinal poultice and refining the formula as I do.
"We should focus on taking out the E88 – they're this neo-Nazi gang that's huge here – right away. They'll wanna pick fights with us no matter what we do – well, me mostly, but you because you're my sidekick too. So if we like attack them first that'll give us the advantage or whatever. Plus, they've got loads of capes and money so it'll be good fights and great chances to test out bombs and good loot."
I grin and nod along. Killing Nazis and stealing their stuff does sound like something I can get behind.
"We should build you a more permanent voicebox thing soon, though. I like the whole strong-and-silent thing, but sometimes we're gonna need you to be more than a pretty face."
I blush again, and she laughs. "Oh my god, it's so easy to tease you. You're a lot like my friend Viv, you know?"
She goes quiet for a moment after that. I squeeze her hands.
"So, meet with Lung, stake out some territory, sell some drugs, kill Nazis. That's my plan." She gently pulls her hands free from mine and rubs her wrists. "Hey, nice job. Good as new. We might want to bottle that stuff or something, keep it on hand for emergencies." She stands and pats my head. "Yo, put something together to talk with so we can finish figuring out our plans, okay? You've got a say in it too. I'm gonna, like, build us a bathroom quick."
She takes a few steps towards the exist of the little cabin we're in, then hesitates and paces back my way. "And, hey, thanks again for getting me out of there. We're gonna be a good team, you know?" She smiles again and gives me a quick hug before dashing back out.
I watch her leave, grinning, then turn to the radio and rip it apart.
---
Power purchased: Styxxian Skinship (-1).
Power purchased: Tech Tinker: Miniaturization (-2).
Power purchased: True Multitasking: Tech Tinker: Miniaturization (-2).
Power purchased: Buff de Buffer (-2).
Power purchased: Ultimate Nullifier (-1).
---
It ends up being a couple hours before we get back together to finish planning – we both got sucked into Tinkering. By the time we realize we needed to finish talking about plans, a couple hours have passed, I've got a thoroughly upgraded body and Erin's built probably the world's most dangerous bathroom, along with two new hand grenades.
I'm really glad I was able to eliminate the need for that particular function during my upgrades.
My body doesn't look very different – if anything, I'm a bit shorter and skinnier now, since I was able to rearrange and replace pretty much all my normal organs with more streamlined and miniaturized versions, so it's all much denser now – but it's much improved over the original. I've reconfigured my skin to absorb impacts and deflect shrapnel better, to try to maximize the effectiveness of my Brute power. And I used the extra biomass and space leftover after miniaturizing my vitals to add internal shock absorbers and a few of the chemical factories that Erin had mentioned might be useful, along with systems for secreting those chemicals through my skin or injecting them with stinger cells in my fingers, sort of similar to jellyfish. I've got access to four chemicals so far: a healing gel, a sedative, a weird sort of chemical formula that should be able to pump someone up with a decent level of super-strength and toughness and this viscous lava-ish spit, and a sort of hallucinogen/stimulant hybrid that I think could be a good one to sell. I've got Tinkertech software drivers for all of my new and refined bodily systems, to optimize my performance in a fight and to collect data on possible improvements for the new organs. I even activated and upgraded my eyes.
Only thing I wasn't able to do was get myself talking on my own power; apparently my psychological block extends to all sound-making organs I attach to my body, so for now I'm going to have to settle for using the little black voicebox I built out of the radio. It's plugged into an outlet I grew on my collar and I can operate it without needing hands, so it's no big deal. I still don't want to mess with my own psychology – especially since I suspect that getting powers has already messed with my head – so I'm just going to have to work on overcoming the block the old fashion way, I guess.
I'm really excited to get my hands on more biomass now, though. My Tinker power is always on – schematics and designs are always going through my head, refining and improving themselves – and I really want to try some of these new possibilities out. I'm pretty sure I could develop my skin into power armor, or grow and launch little biological drones from my body, that kind of thing. Just a matter of needing more biomass to work with. I need to like eat a dog or two or something.
Erin had been impressed by the upgrades, and made me promise to let her try my drug and my superpower formula soon. I'm lucky I had the foresight to make sure she didn't intend to use them at the same time.
When we get back to discussing plans, I really only have one thing to add.
"I want to hunt. Bad guys, I mean. Ones I don't have to feel bad about killing. E88 is a good start. But my powers can probably cut through most capes pretty easily, so I'm gonna need a constant stream."
Erin grins wildly. It's a novel experience to actually see it. "Yo, now you're talking. Absolutely. We've gotta keep fighting and experimenting all the time, keep growing. You got any targets in mind?"
"I dunno, don't remember that much. More Nazis, I guess. Rapists. Killers. That kind of thing. But parahumans. Ideally ones who can be an entertaining fight, or ones no one else can take out."
She nods, pensive. "Well, E88 has like fifteen capes, so that's a good start. After that, who knows? Maybe we can tour the countryside. Take out Heartbreaker or nuke Nilbog or something. I'm up for it if you are." She grins.
I nod. "…Heartbreaker actually would be a good target, I'm immune to Master powers."
"Damn, really? How do you know? Actually, you really do need to like list your powers for me, you've apparently got a million different ones."
I give her a quick run-down, then pause. "And I think I got new ones today."
"What do you mean? Didn't you get all your powers today?"
"No, I mean, I got a second round of powers. Like, after the fight. I can feel them. I think my Tinkering powers got better, and I think I can enhance or suppress other people's powers too now."
She straightens up fast at that and shoots me her wildest grin yet.
…by the time we go to visit Lung the next morning, we're a nuclear power.
"This is really fucking gross, you know that?"
I tilt my head up at Erin and give her a flat look.
"I mean, don't stop, it helps and all. It's just kind of disgusting when you think about it."
I snort and return to my ministrations. I've modified my palms to secrete a medical lotion, which I'm slathering over her hands and arms. They're covered in electrical burns and small cuts from her fiddling with the car's computer, as well as a healthy amount of bruising from when she tried to catch herself when I sent her flying out of the way of the containment foam grenade.
We arrived in Brockton Bay about an hour ago. Didn't take us long to find somewhere to squat; the city's kind of a wreck. The docks are surrounded by all these wrecked tankers and boats, rusting and abandoned, like it got hit by Leviathan or something a while back. We took over the nicest one we could find; I would've liked to squat in, like, an actual house, but Erin was too excited by the prospect of salvaging old electrical equipment and engines. It took some convincing to get her to let me look her over for injuries before she went out scavenging. She'd bargained me into at least letting her put a radio together so we could find out how the Protectorate's reacting to us.
I wish I'd bargained harder. It's been nonstop memorial programs for Roundabout. The heroine I killed.
The other three we'd hurt – Solar Sail, the one who got hit with Erin's improvised bomb, Stormbreaker, the one I'd tackled, and Morning Star, who'd been caught in the same blast as Roundabout – had apparently needed Panacea to fly out and save their lives.
The fight had lasted twenty seconds.
I sigh and hang my head when the current song finishes and the radio launches back into a report on Roundabout's charity work, and Erin twists in her seat to give it a kick. The front casing falls off and the sound cuts out.
"Alright, I can take a hint. You're beating yourself up over that Roundabout girl."
I shrug and grimace. I don't think it counts as beating yourself up to acknowledge you actually killed someone. Hell, if anything, I should probably feel a lot worse than I do. I just feel sort of… vaguely guilty. Maybe it just doesn't seem real yet. Or maybe I was some kind of serial killer before getting amnesia. Or maybe my powers messed up my psychology.
Whatever. I just focus on my work, kneading the lotion into Erin's injuries.
"Hey, that's actually feeling pretty good. You should give me a massage after this." She snickers when I blush. "Seriously, though, you did fine. It was an accident, you were defending yourself. And me." She pauses and blows a strand of hair out of her face. "I did notice that, you know. You can phase through containment foam, but you went all out to keep me from getting caught. I appreciate that, you know? It's a lot to do for someone you just met."
I tilt my head up towards her – I don't technically look at her, I'm still designing the new eyes – and smile. She smiles back. It's a surprisingly gentle expression on her; my echolocation maps out every inch of it. Most of her smiles are a bit more… manic.
"Well, you proved you got my back, I'll make sure to return the favor."
I nod, still smiling.
"Dork. So you good?"
I grimace and shrug. She sighs and leans forward, putting her hands on my cheeks. Her very oily, lotion-crusted hands.
Okay, maybe it is a bit gross.
"Seriously, listen to me. Come on. We're villains. We're not doing any of this right-side-of-the-law, come-quietly bullshit. If they come after us, we put up a fight. That's all we did. We just trashed some shitty pretentious university, they were the ones who decided to send a whole army of capes after us. So it's not our fault if some of them were fragile as fuck." I shrug, and she continues, "Christ, come on, Cathy. Seriously, you were the one who insisted we be all gentle with everyone and not kill anyone or whatever, it's their fault for attacking you anyways."
I shrug and nod. I'm weirdly thankful that I haven't got any way to actually speak at the moment; I don't know what words I would even use. She pats my cheek lightly and grins before leaning back and pushing her arms against my hands again. I obligingly continue rubbing my lotion admixture over her wounds.
"That's the spirit. So come on, quit moping! Let's start brainstorming our plans and stuff now that we're in Brockton Bay." I raise an eyebrow and open and close my mouth a couple times. She grins. "Nah, it's okay, I'm the brains of the operation anyways. You just keep it up with the massage."
I roll my eyes, but I'm not really complaining. I don't feel like I have much to contribute to a planning session. What kind of goals am I gonna pursue? Getting my memory back? My amnesia leaves me feeling like I haven't got much in the way of motivation.
"So I've got like a dozen or so new ideas for bombs I want to build and test, first off, but we're going to need more supplies." The bags of chemicals we'd stolen from Cornell had been left behind in the car when I grabbed her and flew us out of there, so we're starting over from scratch. "These boats will hopefully be a decent start, but I'm going to need a lot of chemicals we're not likely to find here, so we'll probably need to – wait, actually, if you can make this gunk shit medicine stuff, what other chemicals can you synthesize biologically?"
I purse my lips and shrug and absently start coding a series of Tinkertech programs into my head to construct a database of biochemical synthesis organs I could grow and their possible outputs.
"I'm make up a list for you, then, and you can see what works. Damn, this'll be awesome. Good synergy and stuff, you know?" She grins and starts tapping her foot rapidly – probably eager to start Tinkering. "Okay, so, we need that, and we need a better lab to work out of. Like, a lair. Maybe we can find an abandoned warehouse or take over an apartment building or something, I dunno. Oh, and we should like approach the ABB early on, see about joining up. Lung's supposed to be a total badass and the docks are his territory anyways. Um, I don't know what they'll think of you, but I'll just tell them you're my sidekick-" I snort, but that only makes her grin wider. "-and hopefully that'll be enough for them, I dunno. But we're pretty awesome on our own, so if that doesn't work out we could just start our own gang. Use henchmen to make us money and buy materials and tools and workspace, that kind of thing. Hey, I bet you could synthesize some awesome designer drugs for us to deal!"
I tilt my head and start fiddling with a few designs that pop into my head when she mentions that. Hell, forget designer drugs, I could probably make something that would give mid-level Brute abilities when injected… would be pretty useful for keeping Erin safe. I absently continue rubbing her hands and forearms, collecting samples of my medicinal poultice and refining the formula as I do.
"We should focus on taking out the E88 – they're this neo-Nazi gang that's huge here – right away. They'll wanna pick fights with us no matter what we do – well, me mostly, but you because you're my sidekick too. So if we like attack them first that'll give us the advantage or whatever. Plus, they've got loads of capes and money so it'll be good fights and great chances to test out bombs and good loot."
I grin and nod along. Killing Nazis and stealing their stuff does sound like something I can get behind.
"We should build you a more permanent voicebox thing soon, though. I like the whole strong-and-silent thing, but sometimes we're gonna need you to be more than a pretty face."
I blush again, and she laughs. "Oh my god, it's so easy to tease you. You're a lot like my friend Viv, you know?"
She goes quiet for a moment after that. I squeeze her hands.
"So, meet with Lung, stake out some territory, sell some drugs, kill Nazis. That's my plan." She gently pulls her hands free from mine and rubs her wrists. "Hey, nice job. Good as new. We might want to bottle that stuff or something, keep it on hand for emergencies." She stands and pats my head. "Yo, put something together to talk with so we can finish figuring out our plans, okay? You've got a say in it too. I'm gonna, like, build us a bathroom quick."
She takes a few steps towards the exist of the little cabin we're in, then hesitates and paces back my way. "And, hey, thanks again for getting me out of there. We're gonna be a good team, you know?" She smiles again and gives me a quick hug before dashing back out.
I watch her leave, grinning, then turn to the radio and rip it apart.
---
Power purchased: Styxxian Skinship (-1).
Power purchased: Tech Tinker: Miniaturization (-2).
Power purchased: True Multitasking: Tech Tinker: Miniaturization (-2).
Power purchased: Buff de Buffer (-2).
Power purchased: Ultimate Nullifier (-1).
---
It ends up being a couple hours before we get back together to finish planning – we both got sucked into Tinkering. By the time we realize we needed to finish talking about plans, a couple hours have passed, I've got a thoroughly upgraded body and Erin's built probably the world's most dangerous bathroom, along with two new hand grenades.
I'm really glad I was able to eliminate the need for that particular function during my upgrades.
My body doesn't look very different – if anything, I'm a bit shorter and skinnier now, since I was able to rearrange and replace pretty much all my normal organs with more streamlined and miniaturized versions, so it's all much denser now – but it's much improved over the original. I've reconfigured my skin to absorb impacts and deflect shrapnel better, to try to maximize the effectiveness of my Brute power. And I used the extra biomass and space leftover after miniaturizing my vitals to add internal shock absorbers and a few of the chemical factories that Erin had mentioned might be useful, along with systems for secreting those chemicals through my skin or injecting them with stinger cells in my fingers, sort of similar to jellyfish. I've got access to four chemicals so far: a healing gel, a sedative, a weird sort of chemical formula that should be able to pump someone up with a decent level of super-strength and toughness and this viscous lava-ish spit, and a sort of hallucinogen/stimulant hybrid that I think could be a good one to sell. I've got Tinkertech software drivers for all of my new and refined bodily systems, to optimize my performance in a fight and to collect data on possible improvements for the new organs. I even activated and upgraded my eyes.
Only thing I wasn't able to do was get myself talking on my own power; apparently my psychological block extends to all sound-making organs I attach to my body, so for now I'm going to have to settle for using the little black voicebox I built out of the radio. It's plugged into an outlet I grew on my collar and I can operate it without needing hands, so it's no big deal. I still don't want to mess with my own psychology – especially since I suspect that getting powers has already messed with my head – so I'm just going to have to work on overcoming the block the old fashion way, I guess.
I'm really excited to get my hands on more biomass now, though. My Tinker power is always on – schematics and designs are always going through my head, refining and improving themselves – and I really want to try some of these new possibilities out. I'm pretty sure I could develop my skin into power armor, or grow and launch little biological drones from my body, that kind of thing. Just a matter of needing more biomass to work with. I need to like eat a dog or two or something.
Erin had been impressed by the upgrades, and made me promise to let her try my drug and my superpower formula soon. I'm lucky I had the foresight to make sure she didn't intend to use them at the same time.
When we get back to discussing plans, I really only have one thing to add.
"I want to hunt. Bad guys, I mean. Ones I don't have to feel bad about killing. E88 is a good start. But my powers can probably cut through most capes pretty easily, so I'm gonna need a constant stream."
Erin grins wildly. It's a novel experience to actually see it. "Yo, now you're talking. Absolutely. We've gotta keep fighting and experimenting all the time, keep growing. You got any targets in mind?"
"I dunno, don't remember that much. More Nazis, I guess. Rapists. Killers. That kind of thing. But parahumans. Ideally ones who can be an entertaining fight, or ones no one else can take out."
She nods, pensive. "Well, E88 has like fifteen capes, so that's a good start. After that, who knows? Maybe we can tour the countryside. Take out Heartbreaker or nuke Nilbog or something. I'm up for it if you are." She grins.
I nod. "…Heartbreaker actually would be a good target, I'm immune to Master powers."
"Damn, really? How do you know? Actually, you really do need to like list your powers for me, you've apparently got a million different ones."
I give her a quick run-down, then pause. "And I think I got new ones today."
"What do you mean? Didn't you get all your powers today?"
"No, I mean, I got a second round of powers. Like, after the fight. I can feel them. I think my Tinkering powers got better, and I think I can enhance or suppress other people's powers too now."
She straightens up fast at that and shoots me her wildest grin yet.
…by the time we go to visit Lung the next morning, we're a nuclear power.
This is very interesting. An excellent premise.
Curbstomps can be a good read if well written. Good job so far.
Two lines are repeated.
That's bizarre, thanks for pointing it out. Fixed.
Did she get waifu mode in secret because that would be hilarious.rofl:
Bakuda is best waifu <3
Looks like Bakuda found out she's with a BULLSHIT Cape.
1.4
Just a tiny snippet today, since I've been busy. All comments are much appreciated, I'm pretty new as a writer and appreciate any feedback that can help me grow. ^_^ I drew pretty heavily from Lung and Bakuda's canon speeches about fear for this.
1.4
He has us meet him in a brothel. It's a classy one, though. Almost to a weird degree; some of the girls are basically so dressed up they practically look like high-power businesswomen.
…or maybe those are the clients.
"Are you sure this is the right place?" my voicebox hisses to Erin, volume set low. We stand out severely in our costumes; I look frumpy as hell, since all I've got right now is my street clothes and a mask made of scrap metal. She's in her gas mask and longcoat, since she actually grabbed her costume before we fled the Protectorate yesterday. A few grenades are hidden in there, along with several flasks full of my healing gel and Brute formula. I'd managed to persuade her to disassemble and hide the nuclear-grade armaments before we came here.
Barely.
"Of course it is," she snaps, her voice tinny through the gas mask. She's definitely not sure.
"Bakuda?" a woman asks from our left. She's East Asian, I think, and she's one of the ones wearing a business suit. Her hair is pinned up delicately and she's actually carrying a clipboard and purse.
Erin is so preoccupied looking around the room that I have to nudge her to get her to notice. "Yes? I'm Bakuda."
The woman says something I can't even follow.
"…I'm sorry, I don't really speak Chinese." Looks like Erin's in the same boat.
The woman's face twists subtly, and I'm pretty sure Erin just got put on her shit list. "Lung is waiting for you," she says, then turns and walks briskly off. "This way," she calls over her shoulder, sounding about 110% done with us already. Erin and I trade glances before rushing after her. She takes us down a set of stairs and through a door that has more locks on it than the pope's chastity belt.
That thought makes me blink. I think I'm kind of in an odd headspace.
The room we're led to is… well, I guess it looks like the kind of place you'd see a business meeting in. If you were watching porn. There's a huge, fancy table in the center of the room, but nobody's sitting at it. Instead, people are milling around the cushions and loveseats scattered around the rest of the place. The room is huge and garish and filled with smoke from probably a dozen different drugs or whatever. Unlike the ground floor, this room has plenty of men sitting around and being sat on. Maybe they like cycle the men out of the ground floor on purpose, to make people think it's some kind of lesbian paradise. Then again, I'm probably not their target audience, so what do I know?
I try not to stare at the handful of really hot girls pole-dancing on a stage against the far wall. I sneak glances at Erin to try to see if she's in the same predicament, but it's hard to get a good read on her with my gaydar while she's got the gas mask on.
Life is hard sometimes.
"This way," our guide snaps, her tone clipped. Really clipped. Like, I really hope she just has a resting-bitch-face personality in general, because right now it sounds like she has a lower opinion of us than she does of the last thing she scraped off the bottom of her shoe.
We're led to the far end of the room, weaving around the drunk and high patrons and the scantily-clad waitresses. I nearly run into someone when we pass the stage, which gets Erin's attention for a moment. I can't tell what her expression is under her mask. Finally, we're led to a back room. It's cozy, with puffy furniture everywhere and a huge flatscreen TV on the wall.
Lung's sitting there on a recliner, shirtless, with a beer in his hand and an almost-naked woman in his lap. I'm surprised to see he's not wearing a mask, but I guess there's no point in it if he's showing off his tattoos like that. And he definitely doesn't seem like the kind of guy who wants to go about his day pretending to be a normal human being. Oni Lee is sitting on the couch, watching TV in full costume. It's a Japanese news show.
I think the intent is to intimidate us, but, well, I'm pretty sure I can take them both.
"Bakuda and 'Mushroom Cloud', sir," our guide says, bowing deeply. Her distaste for us is almost covered by the deferential tone she takes with Lung. Lung gives her a nod, and she straightens up and leaves the room without giving us a second glance.
Lung watches us both for a long moment. The girl on his lap curls up against his chest and watches us too. She's pretty cute, honestly. Has a tattoo on her cheek. It's edgy.
"Bakuda," Lung begins, making Erin jump slightly. He says something I can't follow. I start drafting a Tinkertech translation program in my head, because that's getting old.
"I'm sorry, I don't speak Chinese," Erin repeats.
Lung raises an eyebrow. "Japanese."
Oh. Maybe that's how we offended the other lady. Erin pauses for a long moment before repeating, "Yes. Sorry."
"Where are you from?" he asks.
"Vietnam," she answers. Her family's from there, though she was born in Boston.
Lung nods. "You speak your language?"
Erin nods and says something. Lung responds in kind. Does he just know like every Asian language?
He turns to me next. "And you?"
"She's-" Erin tries to cut in, but Lung silences her with a look.
"I have amnesia," I tell him. "Don't remember anything before getting my power."
He grunts. "But your nationality?" he presses.
"I'm White," I admit. Erin says something under her breath. I need to enhance my hearing again.
Lung straightens, looking back at Erin. The girl wraps her arms around his neck to keep from being pushed off his lap and glares at me. "Do you understand why we are called the ABB?" he asks, voice dry.
"Yes, but-"
"We do not have White members."
"She's-"
"A White woman."
"-my henchwoman, so I brought her along." Erin finishes.
"And you expected me to… what?" Lung asks, eyebrow raised. "Declare her Asian?"
"She works for me," Erin repeats, and I nod along with her. "She's an asset that I'd bring with me."
"You think a White girl will choose you over the E88," Lung says flatly, looking at me with an eyebrow raised.
"She will." Erin sounds completely confident, which makes me want to give her a hug. I nod emphatically.
"I've got no problem killing E88 Nazis," I tell him.
He doesn't even act like he heard us. "Your voice. Why do you alter it?" I blink at the sudden change in topic.
"I'm mute. I built this device to speak for me."
"You're both Tinkers, then."
I bite my lip. Fuck. I mean, we hadn't planned on lying about my powers, exactly, but we weren't trying to advertise the fact I was anything more than a Breaker-Brute either. "She's the real Tinker. I just have this voicebox."
He grunts, then stands. The girl on his lap falls unceremoniously to the floor, and shoots me another glare before crawling out of Lung's way.
"I'm not afraid of you, you know," Erin states.
He stares at her, face expressionless.
"This whole thing? Meeting us in a whorehouse, the whole bullshit with the Japanese or whatever when you knew I was Vietnamese before we met, all this power play shit. It's not working. I'm not afraid of you."
"You will be," he tells her.
"I won't." She straightens. "I'm here to talk about joining as equals. You have two capes, I have two capes. You're a badass because you've fought off a team of capes before, well, so have we."
He snorts. "You escaped a team of capes, you mean. I do not run."
"We fought them for twenty seconds, killed one, and put three more in the hospital. We didn't run, we just decided not to waste our time."
Lung takes a step closer. I tense. Erin doesn't.
"You are inexperienced. You do not understand what fear is, Bakuda."
"Enlighten me, then."
Lung's girl is sitting on the floor, looking distinctly uncomfortable. I don't blame her. If this turns into a fight, she's kind of fucked.
"There are two kinds of fear. Fear of the unknown, and fear of the known."
"Mhm." Erin actually kind of sounds interested.
"The first is weak. It can be questioned. 'If I fought them, who would win?' 'How will they hurt me?' 'What are their strengths, their weaknesses?' This fear breaks. It is challenged and tempted, whenever support is found or opportunity presents itself. And this is the only fear that you have earned with your brief 'fight' on the highway."
Erin doesn't answer, and Lung continues. "The second fear is not weak. It is known, it is fact. 'I fight him, and I lose'. 'He will hurt me, and it will be the worst pain imaginable'. This fear does not dissipate in numbers. It breeds. It is a disease. This is the fear that I have built here. The people know me. I take what and who I want. The heroes fear me, and leave me be to amass yet more power and reputation."
I can't read Erin's reaction behind her mask.
"Whether you will join me is not in question. It is inevitable. Because you think like me. Power and fear."
There's a long silence, and then Erin turns and walks out the door.
"Maybe I'll come by the next time I need someone to spout koans in my ear. C'mon Cloud, we're leaving."
The girl on the floor is still glaring at me. I shoot her a nasty look of my own before following Erin out.
---
1.4
He has us meet him in a brothel. It's a classy one, though. Almost to a weird degree; some of the girls are basically so dressed up they practically look like high-power businesswomen.
…or maybe those are the clients.
"Are you sure this is the right place?" my voicebox hisses to Erin, volume set low. We stand out severely in our costumes; I look frumpy as hell, since all I've got right now is my street clothes and a mask made of scrap metal. She's in her gas mask and longcoat, since she actually grabbed her costume before we fled the Protectorate yesterday. A few grenades are hidden in there, along with several flasks full of my healing gel and Brute formula. I'd managed to persuade her to disassemble and hide the nuclear-grade armaments before we came here.
Barely.
"Of course it is," she snaps, her voice tinny through the gas mask. She's definitely not sure.
"Bakuda?" a woman asks from our left. She's East Asian, I think, and she's one of the ones wearing a business suit. Her hair is pinned up delicately and she's actually carrying a clipboard and purse.
Erin is so preoccupied looking around the room that I have to nudge her to get her to notice. "Yes? I'm Bakuda."
The woman says something I can't even follow.
"…I'm sorry, I don't really speak Chinese." Looks like Erin's in the same boat.
The woman's face twists subtly, and I'm pretty sure Erin just got put on her shit list. "Lung is waiting for you," she says, then turns and walks briskly off. "This way," she calls over her shoulder, sounding about 110% done with us already. Erin and I trade glances before rushing after her. She takes us down a set of stairs and through a door that has more locks on it than the pope's chastity belt.
That thought makes me blink. I think I'm kind of in an odd headspace.
The room we're led to is… well, I guess it looks like the kind of place you'd see a business meeting in. If you were watching porn. There's a huge, fancy table in the center of the room, but nobody's sitting at it. Instead, people are milling around the cushions and loveseats scattered around the rest of the place. The room is huge and garish and filled with smoke from probably a dozen different drugs or whatever. Unlike the ground floor, this room has plenty of men sitting around and being sat on. Maybe they like cycle the men out of the ground floor on purpose, to make people think it's some kind of lesbian paradise. Then again, I'm probably not their target audience, so what do I know?
I try not to stare at the handful of really hot girls pole-dancing on a stage against the far wall. I sneak glances at Erin to try to see if she's in the same predicament, but it's hard to get a good read on her with my gaydar while she's got the gas mask on.
Life is hard sometimes.
"This way," our guide snaps, her tone clipped. Really clipped. Like, I really hope she just has a resting-bitch-face personality in general, because right now it sounds like she has a lower opinion of us than she does of the last thing she scraped off the bottom of her shoe.
We're led to the far end of the room, weaving around the drunk and high patrons and the scantily-clad waitresses. I nearly run into someone when we pass the stage, which gets Erin's attention for a moment. I can't tell what her expression is under her mask. Finally, we're led to a back room. It's cozy, with puffy furniture everywhere and a huge flatscreen TV on the wall.
Lung's sitting there on a recliner, shirtless, with a beer in his hand and an almost-naked woman in his lap. I'm surprised to see he's not wearing a mask, but I guess there's no point in it if he's showing off his tattoos like that. And he definitely doesn't seem like the kind of guy who wants to go about his day pretending to be a normal human being. Oni Lee is sitting on the couch, watching TV in full costume. It's a Japanese news show.
I think the intent is to intimidate us, but, well, I'm pretty sure I can take them both.
"Bakuda and 'Mushroom Cloud', sir," our guide says, bowing deeply. Her distaste for us is almost covered by the deferential tone she takes with Lung. Lung gives her a nod, and she straightens up and leaves the room without giving us a second glance.
Lung watches us both for a long moment. The girl on his lap curls up against his chest and watches us too. She's pretty cute, honestly. Has a tattoo on her cheek. It's edgy.
"Bakuda," Lung begins, making Erin jump slightly. He says something I can't follow. I start drafting a Tinkertech translation program in my head, because that's getting old.
"I'm sorry, I don't speak Chinese," Erin repeats.
Lung raises an eyebrow. "Japanese."
Oh. Maybe that's how we offended the other lady. Erin pauses for a long moment before repeating, "Yes. Sorry."
"Where are you from?" he asks.
"Vietnam," she answers. Her family's from there, though she was born in Boston.
Lung nods. "You speak your language?"
Erin nods and says something. Lung responds in kind. Does he just know like every Asian language?
He turns to me next. "And you?"
"She's-" Erin tries to cut in, but Lung silences her with a look.
"I have amnesia," I tell him. "Don't remember anything before getting my power."
He grunts. "But your nationality?" he presses.
"I'm White," I admit. Erin says something under her breath. I need to enhance my hearing again.
Lung straightens, looking back at Erin. The girl wraps her arms around his neck to keep from being pushed off his lap and glares at me. "Do you understand why we are called the ABB?" he asks, voice dry.
"Yes, but-"
"We do not have White members."
"She's-"
"A White woman."
"-my henchwoman, so I brought her along." Erin finishes.
"And you expected me to… what?" Lung asks, eyebrow raised. "Declare her Asian?"
"She works for me," Erin repeats, and I nod along with her. "She's an asset that I'd bring with me."
"You think a White girl will choose you over the E88," Lung says flatly, looking at me with an eyebrow raised.
"She will." Erin sounds completely confident, which makes me want to give her a hug. I nod emphatically.
"I've got no problem killing E88 Nazis," I tell him.
He doesn't even act like he heard us. "Your voice. Why do you alter it?" I blink at the sudden change in topic.
"I'm mute. I built this device to speak for me."
"You're both Tinkers, then."
I bite my lip. Fuck. I mean, we hadn't planned on lying about my powers, exactly, but we weren't trying to advertise the fact I was anything more than a Breaker-Brute either. "She's the real Tinker. I just have this voicebox."
He grunts, then stands. The girl on his lap falls unceremoniously to the floor, and shoots me another glare before crawling out of Lung's way.
"I'm not afraid of you, you know," Erin states.
He stares at her, face expressionless.
"This whole thing? Meeting us in a whorehouse, the whole bullshit with the Japanese or whatever when you knew I was Vietnamese before we met, all this power play shit. It's not working. I'm not afraid of you."
"You will be," he tells her.
"I won't." She straightens. "I'm here to talk about joining as equals. You have two capes, I have two capes. You're a badass because you've fought off a team of capes before, well, so have we."
He snorts. "You escaped a team of capes, you mean. I do not run."
"We fought them for twenty seconds, killed one, and put three more in the hospital. We didn't run, we just decided not to waste our time."
Lung takes a step closer. I tense. Erin doesn't.
"You are inexperienced. You do not understand what fear is, Bakuda."
"Enlighten me, then."
Lung's girl is sitting on the floor, looking distinctly uncomfortable. I don't blame her. If this turns into a fight, she's kind of fucked.
"There are two kinds of fear. Fear of the unknown, and fear of the known."
"Mhm." Erin actually kind of sounds interested.
"The first is weak. It can be questioned. 'If I fought them, who would win?' 'How will they hurt me?' 'What are their strengths, their weaknesses?' This fear breaks. It is challenged and tempted, whenever support is found or opportunity presents itself. And this is the only fear that you have earned with your brief 'fight' on the highway."
Erin doesn't answer, and Lung continues. "The second fear is not weak. It is known, it is fact. 'I fight him, and I lose'. 'He will hurt me, and it will be the worst pain imaginable'. This fear does not dissipate in numbers. It breeds. It is a disease. This is the fear that I have built here. The people know me. I take what and who I want. The heroes fear me, and leave me be to amass yet more power and reputation."
I can't read Erin's reaction behind her mask.
"Whether you will join me is not in question. It is inevitable. Because you think like me. Power and fear."
There's a long silence, and then Erin turns and walks out the door.
"Maybe I'll come by the next time I need someone to spout koans in my ear. C'mon Cloud, we're leaving."
The girl on the floor is still glaring at me. I shoot her a nasty look of my own before following Erin out.
---
I was expecting Shrooms or Mushy; I like Cloud better.
Easter
Laziest lazier
- Location
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I think that those names wouldnt fit in this situation maybe when there alone.
After reading this, I'm quite sure that Mushroom Cloud is the waifu in this relationship.
Easter
Laziest lazier
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That just makes it even better when the drama happens!
Is it weird that im realy hoping for a waifu(love) triangle?
I'm always hoping for a love triangle tbh. But most Worm characters are high school kiddos, so there's not too many shipping options. XD I mean, the only female characters that would be around my age that I can think of are like maybe Canary, or Cherish, or Burnscar. So that would be quite the romantic comedy.
Maybe we'll try to recruit Panacea and Skitter and Tattletale and set them up with each other.
Maybe we'll try to recruit Panacea and Skitter and Tattletale and set them up with each other.
Easter
Laziest lazier
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Persoly never liked tattle tail too much but that would be interisting.
Also for them being too young just age them up this should work for almost everyone other then taylor because of how she triggers.
*Edit or the wards since they have to be younger then 18.
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Not bad, but I would suggest Meltdown as the Cape name for your SI. Keeps the nuclear theme, but incorporates the breaker state, without sounding as lame as Mushroom Cloud.
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
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I like it! Despite the ridiculous list of powers and other things, you're not making everything seem too trivial or jumping the gun. You're taking your time, pacing yourself.
Good job, Mom!
Good job, Mom!
That's a really good idea. But because of how high-profile they already are, SI is kind of stuck to deal with the consequences of Bakuda's inability to come up with good names on short notice.
Besides, I like dorky names. As you can probably tell. XD
I like it! Despite the ridiculous list of powers and other things, you're not making everything seem too trivial or jumping the gun. You're taking your time, pacing yourself.
Good job, Mom!
I'm glad you think so! ^_^ I think that not having meta knowledge really helps, since it prevents me from just going through a laundry list of "stop scion, use xyz to deal with endbringers, deal with cauldron/coil/etc". It also keeps the SI from knowing any of the combos or applications that I intended when I picked out the powers, which keeps her from getting too powerful too quickly.
Thank you for the feedback My Child XD
Easter
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You know if you do end up beating worm super fast you could always make it into a multicross.
Then bakuda could find new types of bombs to make.:lol
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
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earthboy
(verified ape)
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Laserdream is college-age.
Parian is a recent college drop-out.
The Nazi Twins are probably legal for Kaiser to fuck.
Sundancer, Genesis, and Noelle are all college-age +2 years.
Battery is a grown woman (though her kisses may taste Assault-y).
The CYOA does seem designed for you to go on and do multicrosses. It even has options for gaining extra points on future CYOAs. So who knows where Mushroom will end up? ^_^
This is all highly useful information. I will keep this in mind when thinking about shipping. XD
Parian is bizarre to me though, I thought she dated Flechette - a Ward? Cradle snatcher.
No snippet for tonight, I was busy all day moving out of my apartment.
A poster on SB did point out that my initial math with the powers was off, though, so I'm retconning out Event Triggerer to make the points balance out. I'll have to earn it back with missions eventually. Bakuda says hi, and she thinks that you all are really the bomb.