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A Finely Honed Blade [Worm/Kara no Kyoukai | Garden of Sinners]

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zer0light said:
Yes, that works. She could use a single. Piece of paper if she wanted to.
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I'm now imagining the look of horror on Fanon!Clockblocker when she starts killing and maiming people, structures and concepts with paper cuts.

That and using paper to destroy his timelocked paper shields.
 
Technically, the owners of MEoDP don't even need knives, they can cut the Lines with their Fingers... it is just that they tend to default to bladed weapons since they are both trained to use such things, IIRC.
 
well in guran-no-dou shiki breaks her fingers tracing lines with then against a possessed corpse. so using a bladed tool might have a purpose
 
linkhyrule5 said:
Ryougi Shiki once cut the locked-ness of a cabinet with a ruler. Her "knife" doesn't even need to be all that sharp. >.>
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So... a foam sword? teacup? a plastic spoon? :D

Megaolix said:
So, moving on... Who's gonna be the first to imagine they can take down Taylor and ignoring that she got Lung, Oni Lee and Bakuda all by herself? Merchants or E88? Coil's probably not going to make the first move regardless of what he think about the situation.
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Coil.. the last non-interlude chapter kinda implies he might not get to see the sunrise, so he could think that he could take her... while she's in his base, killing his d00ds.

After him tho.. well, if he's taken out of the game that early, things get interesting. Tt could, for example, take over the Coil thing too and then rope the undersiders into the whole thing, so that'd be more than just one cape, enough to give the Merchants some pause, but not enough to discourage the E88 unless Bakuda did enough damage to them to have them liking their wounds.

Not that I expect Bakuda to have gotten the capes, but I wouldn't be surprised if she hit a lot of their non-parahuman muscle, enough to make holding the ABB region unfeasible for a while.

If the E88's gangers are too damaged to try first, then the group I think more likely to try is not the Merchants, but the heroes. Their PR is going to be hurting a lot now: couldn't stop the gang war, Bakuda playing terrorist, and now the whole thing was solved without them being seen doing anything? ouch. That's not a nice place to be, so taking down the cape now in charge of the ABB would look rather tempting.

Another factor for the heroes is that if the Undersiders become the Asiansiders, the dynamic regarding the group changes: they were a group that was slippery, who stole stuff and ran, but that's not an MO that's conductive to leading a gang, a gang cape needs to defend the gang's interests, attack those of the other gangs, demonstrate their superiority to the other capes. The Protectorate may very well think that this change would make them easier to capture, or that if they stick to their MO they'd be able to shatter the ABB and make their new overlords look cowardly.
 
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aabbcc said:
Another factor for the heroes is that if the Undersiders become the Asiansiders, the dynamic regarding the group changes: they were a group that was slippery, who stole stuff and ran, but that's not an MO that's conductive to leading a gang, a gang cape needs to defend the gang's interests, attack those of the other gangs, demonstrate their superiority to the other capes. The Protectorate may very well think that this change would make them easier to capture, or that if they stick to their MO they'd be able to shatter the ABB and make their new overlords look cowardly.
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Going to be hard to sell the idea to Grue, I'll have you know. Remember he need Coil's help currently to make sure he get the custody of Aisha. And he wanted nothing to do with her to start with.
 
I think tats will probably become op support to the undersiders and taylor, moving out of the lime light leaving the undersiders as her personal snatch and grab team
 
Megaolix said:
Going to be hard to sell the idea to Grue, I'll have you know. Remember he need Coil's help currently to make sure he get the custody of Aisha. And he wanted nothing to do with her to start with.
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Tt also suggested having someone else be the front, but without that, yeah, it'd be a hard sell. That doesn't mean it is impossible given the factors involved:

First, if Coil is out of the picture (a requirement to trying to get the Undersiders in the first place), then Brian no longer has a method for doing petty supervillainy in exchange for a fake legitimate job. He could try to stay as a thief or go back to bouncering, but neither will give him what he wants.
Tattletale and Taylor would be the ones able to do so, Tattletale, through whatever method Coil was using in the first place, and Taylor, through whatever money-laundering fronts the ABB has.

Well, he could try his luck with the Wards, but his less-than-pleasant encounters with Shadow Stalker would make him averse to do so.

Second is that he tends to cave when the rest of the group wants to do something. Regent already demonstrated interest, and Bitch shouldn't be too hard to convince given the amount of money that will be involved.

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The ABB really needs more capes now, if only to give the appearance of strength and give things a chance to calm down. Tt could employ Coil's resources, true, but he just didn't have the merc numbers to pull that off, so unless the Travelers are early or the timeline is further than what I think it's at, the only real option is the Undersiders.
 
You'd think the ABB would be rather apt to launder money loads of small restaurants and lower stock businesses, just double charge everything sold legitimately filling the difference on the books with dirty money, and boom legitimate cash to take to the bank, the IRS won't touch it if it looks cleanish on paper and they get their cut.
 
aabbcc said:
So... a foam sword? teacup? a plastic spoon? :D
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Actually, that's kind of interesting. If you look at the Tsukihime manga, the lines are not depicted in an X-ray [lines on underlying objects show too] manner IIRC. So how can they be traced by finger? (ie. wouldn't the finger block vision of the line being traced, so accuracy would be fairly bad?)

IMO on the same principle all of the things you listed should be workable.
I find it rather dubious though, unless we say that the perception of the lines is not actually a visual thing but something that is literally extra-sensory and just gets 'mirrored' into visual perception.

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Considering 'hand control and accuracy', the choice of a butter knife makes a lot of sense -- things that are too sharp will respond -too- easily to slight movements --> excessive amount of fine motor skills / control over involuntary movements needed.

Basically like the difference between drawing over something with a HB pencil and a technical pencil; the latter is more accurate but is also more touchy as a direct consequence of the accuracy.
 
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Megaolix said:
She took down Lung, Oni Lee and Kaiser. You can't have a better show of power than that.
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Ah, but it wasn't a show of power. Lung, she got in the middle of the night with no known witnesses, while Bakuda and Oni Lee were also in a private location. Nobody saw these.

And, well, capes aren't indestructible, both Bakuda and Oni Lee were as squishy as any human, so it's feasible for an otherwise weak parahuman to kill them provided surprise or trickery. Lung is a different case, but I'm not sure how much of what happened leaked from the PRT beyond the fact that he died, so it could have been before he ramped as well.

And if the info did leak out, then it's someone with a power that was a direct counter to his regen... something none of the Empire or Merchant capes have to worry about except perhaps indirectly through Othala. Only Aegis in the Bay is a regenerator.

The strong cutting power isn't that much of a concern either, of the Merchant and E88 capes that fight close, they either avoid getting hit (Cricket), or their Bruteness is something that 'strong cutting' wouldn't be a worry: Mush and Hookwolf are balls of trash/blades, the twins get bigger and make incoming attacks smaller so the cuts would be tiny, and Alabaster resets.

So a case could be argued that Taylor is just lucky/ruthless instead of strong, that Lung got taken down due to bad power matchup or stealth instead of strength. Her feats are too easy to downplay without witnesses.

We know otherwise, but the rest of the Bay except Tattletale don't.
Megaolix said:
I think Kaiser amy pause and look at what she can do first befoer sending in anyone.
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Kaiser has people in his team that could feasibly engage any parahuman with little to no danger, he has Alabaster, Crusader and Hookwolf, all but tailor-made to poke at capes with little to no risk and see what they can do.

I think the opportunity to take out the ABB is too tempting and he'll poke, much like it was too tempting when the ABB only had a bomb tinker and the infinite suicide bomber (ain't that combination terrifying?).

Of course, if his non-parahuman assets are just not in the shape to take over the ABB territory thanks to Bakuda, then he'd decide not to poke the issue and let someone else try, since there'd be no benefit for him.

tilkau said:
I find it rather dubious though, unless we say that the perception of the lines is not actually a visual thing but something that is literally extra-sensory and just gets 'mirrored' into visual perception.
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That seems to be the case in this fic, Taylor 'felt' the location of the line she used to kill Oni Lee's cloning ability and hit it without looking... soo... +1 spoon of slaying? :D

IdTheSwordsman said:
You'd think the ABB would be rather apt to launder money loads of small restaurants and lower stock businesses, just double charge everything sold legitimately filling the difference on the books with dirty money, and boom legitimate cash to take to the bank, the IRS won't touch it if it looks cleanish on paper and they get their cut.
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I figure all the gangs are good at this... except the merchants, fuck the merchants.
 
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tilkau said:
I find it rather dubious though, unless we say that the perception of the lines is not actually a visual thing but something that is literally extra-sensory and just gets 'mirrored' into visual perception.
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It is explicitly that.
The lines could be said to be a form of synesthesia that appears because humans don't have an actual "Death sense".
It has both been outright stated by Taylor in this fic, and in canon KnK that both Taylor and Shiki can see the lines with their eyes closed, and that they would still 'see' them even if their eyes were gouged out.
 
It occurs to me that the PRT showed a lack of imagination in labeling the killer of Lung "Switchblade". Why not "Mack"? :whistle:
 
One scene I'd really, REALLY want to see either in the story itself or as an omake is Tattletale complaining about the Thinker migraine only for Taylor to kill it (by stabbing her in the forehead without actually causing any wound) and the ensuing meltdown.
 
Deathwings said:
One scene I'd really, REALLY want to see either in the story itself or as an omake is Tattletale complaining about the Thinker migraine only for Taylor to kill it (by stabbing her in the forehead without actually causing any wound) and the ensuing meltdown.
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And of course the 'migraines' are just another one of the restrictions the shards were given. Taylor has now killed the restrictions. Say hello to unlimited use, no blind spotsand 4x as effective Lisa Holmes
 
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