A Flung Light (Worm/minor toaru cross)
I feel like the most practical way of dealing with Coil isn't to go after his base. The base doesn't really matter. If you have mental out you establish a search pattern that takes advantage of your range. Then spend a couple days driving. During this you check and ransack the knowledge of every single parahuman you run across. When you find Coil, make him come to you, and then stage a capture. Then alter his memory. Turn the idiot into the PRT after taking care of his fail-safes.
Winslow is a hellhole.
Keiko's annoyance is pretty understandable.
Yeah it's one of the downsides of being an Esper rather than a parahuman but honestly it's worth it.
That's a pretty good description of how Esper powers work and emotions in general, she'd have a better understanding of both due to her powers and knowledge.
She could've killed Hookwolf but choose not to.
Really happy to know that happened.
LOL nice try though.
Props to the spy for his paranoia, it's really paying off for the MC though.
The explanation is something like Esper powers are tied to their personal reality which I think is the same thing as their aim field and the greater belief in themselves the stronger it is and the greater their belief in their ability to do or control something the easier it is for their reality to effect it as such. However, there are downsides to it in that in reverse losing fights, being shut down like Charlotte did to Trickster or confidence would logically weaken it, they can be distracted from doing calculations by things like flashbangs and they do have limited resources so in things like the sister's arc even lv 5s can hit stamina issues.
It's about Guts! Also not thinking about it too hard.
Sogiita Gunha
Being injured and pain can also make esper powers harder to use. Loss of a body part can weaken you as well because that makes you lesser in a way and because esper powers are low-key magic which runs on life-force.
I have left some hints what he was up to, but as Nozomi missed them you might as well
Well, we know Coil is partially on the defensive. His 3 available options that I can see available to him are:
- Proactively hunt down Mental Out. Without a useful Thinker ability this is effectively impossible, and with Dinah alone, just prohibitively difficult.
- There are ~350000 people in Brockton. Assuming Coil asks Dinah 2 questions a day on identifying Mental Out, he can cut that number in 1/2 each day: (asking what's the chance of finding her civilian identity searching "A" vs "B", and noting tiny differences. As LightLan has pointed out each number would be small, objectively. But you'd presumably still get a higher number about "searching winslow students" vs "searching arcadia students", which helps.
- Mathematically it'd take 19 days on average to track her down, if each day cut the number of potential identies in half. So effective, but too slow when Mental Out is hunting you as well.
- Set up an ambush for when Mental Out attacks his base. As I've gone over before, unless he blows the base up remotely, unlikely to actually work against her, he lacks people immune to her power.
- Give her something else to worry about.
- With Mental Out busy tracking down Coil, she's not paying attention to Hookwolf or the ABB. While the ABB isn't about to do anything useful for Coil, leaking the latest prison transport schedule to Hookwolf through Coil's spies in both organizations would be incredibly useful to Hookwolf.
As a fourth option, he could hire/ bring in more capes. But "new local Master stomps largest gang in the city" doesn't make for a good recruiting pitch. Frankly it's the type of thing that probably pushes the more sensible capes away more than brings them in.
He might hire Faultline? Her group, with a bunch of Case 53s would be the most effective counter available; but I don't know if Coil knows that. While Dinah could confirm it, Case 53's immunity to her power is not obvious at this point: while Hookwolf, Alabaster, Fog, and Purity were immune, Case 53s are typically more humanoid than most Breaker forms.
- Location
- Earth
It's a bit of a tightrope: Make the school bad enough something like Taylor getting shoved into the locker gets shoved under the rug, but not so bad it gets closed down.
Yeah, Piggot is not someone who likes the Unwritten Rules(No unmasking capes, softballing villains). It's something she and Nozomi do have in common actually.
Toaru had technology that could slow down or prevent Mental Out from taking over.
Tinker-shards grant knowledge from past cycles.
There's Trainwreck. Unless he's busy with the Merchants. Who knows?
Nozomi should try building some of the anti mental out tech, because she definitely can. Then train to get past it.
The Unwritten Rules is basically the day to day operation where people keep the kiddie gloves on for everyone. When it stops being a factor everyone starts knifing each other which can get bloody. But both Piggot and Nozomi are of the belief that some people need to get knifed which is pretty understandable. It's just that they have different circumstances in which it's okay to pull the knives out.
I'd imagine that developing anti mind control tech from tinker tech would need to have native mind control from that species whihc isn't really a natural trait in nature.
It's been pretty heavily implied by the first chapter that the Toaru universe was eaten in a previous cycle, at around the time of Daihaseisai. Thus, actual anti-esper tech is presumably available to Tinkers. But whether it's both available to Armsmaster specifically, and whether he knows enough to build the right things (presumably manton unlimited hydro-kinesis based mind control is not the obvious mechanism) is an open question
More like the unwritten rules are everyone pretending to use kiddie gloves and if they get caught often rely on their power to avoid getting pressed on it. Even Dragon thought nothing of accessing data from a ton of sources she shouldn't have been able to freely access to investigate Taylor in canon because she had a hunch she might have been Skitter who she was interested in following Regent dumping the contents of Sophia's phone online and when she finally found a several years old photo she ran analysis software of it against Skitter and got a match.
Heck even the endbringer truce is broken pretty often with Legend outright saying so plus Armsy, Cauldron, Taylor, Cody (tho he was a Ziz bomb), the yangban, arguably Phir Se and one of the wards with Taylor all breaking it in the first 2 we see. Considering the truce also states as part of the written portion that no one or faction shall take advantage of the circumstances of the truce for their own gain the prt also break it every fight since they send big name capes who have thinker powers and never leave their cities outside of truces such as Alexandria to do things like make deals and recruitment pitches.
The prt or at least Armsy are also unlikely to shield from mental out due to both not knowing it's a hydrokinetic ability and their whole no telepathy is impossible because we say so and we are experts in parahuman powers and know all about them attitude despite how little they actually know since the field is so young.
Its more about diversifying vectors of attack. Electricity works because hydrokinetic ion manipulation is easily scrambled by it.
If she could link with an electrokinetic she could just turn that off. Of course, Case 53s sometimes don't actually think in their body at all, she'd need to bypass the hydrokinetic vector
- Location
- Germany
I thought he was building an infrared blocker. Because she 'apparently' needs a remote to mind control people and infrared does in fact travel through walls (somewhat).
Depends on the wall, but it's more likely that he noted that certain members of the E88 were not affected by her power, and was able to draw enough conclusions from that (Alabaster's resets, and any of their changers who were changed) to let his power make some guesses at what was causing their immunity.
He may or may not be right, but if he's wrong, and doesn't get his brain taken over due to Nozomi just plain not wanting/needing to, how will he know the difference? If she ignores it, it will at least give him enough of a feeling of self confidence to talk to her in person. And probably try something stupid of course, but that was going to happen anyway.
Did a reread and I have some comments and corrections.
It's possible that Noxomi is simply wrong but I find that unlikely because I think she got this knowledge from reading minds. The people she would have gotten the information from would know the difference.
I also think that there are two additional things she might be able to gain from New Wave. Or maybe one thing. Manpower actually has a force field around his body. Because this force field doesn't only work on ferrous metals or something I think that it works via what I think is the Pauli exclusion principle, not sure if that's what it's called. Anyway this is how atoms don't pass through each other. Atoms have a negative electrical charge on the outside this results in them repelling each other. I think this means that Keiko could learn to use her electromaster abilities to make force fields. She could also fly by making a platform under her feet or wrapping her body in them.
This is impossible. A machine gun is by definition fully automatic. Semi-automatic means that when you fire the gun it immediately chambers a new bullet, then you need to pull the trigger to fire again. Fully automatic means that as long as you hold down the trigger the gun will fire, chamber a new bullet, and then fire again.
It's possible that Noxomi is simply wrong but I find that unlikely because I think she got this knowledge from reading minds. The people she would have gotten the information from would know the difference.
There is another electrical brute in the city. Manpower's power is stated to work through some form of electrical manipulation. Don't know the specifics though. It does seem to be much longer lasting however. So that would fix Keiko's main weakness if she can figure that out. It has an additional effect of enhancing his base physical body making him giant and possibly really strong even if his power was negated or something.
I also think that there are two additional things she might be able to gain from New Wave. Or maybe one thing. Manpower actually has a force field around his body. Because this force field doesn't only work on ferrous metals or something I think that it works via what I think is the Pauli exclusion principle, not sure if that's what it's called. Anyway this is how atoms don't pass through each other. Atoms have a negative electrical charge on the outside this results in them repelling each other. I think this means that Keiko could learn to use her electromaster abilities to make force fields. She could also fly by making a platform under her feet or wrapping her body in them.
Pretty sure this isn't correct English. Technically spaghetti is plural but it's always treated as a single unit. So the proper way to say this would be. "The spaghetti is nearly ready," Charlotte informed me.
They're clearly tinkertech bullshit machine guns, which laugh at simple definitions and physics alike.
- Location
- Earth
Fixed.
Pretty sure English is wrong there
Yeah, it's one of those cases where English is being three languages standing on top of each other in a trenchcoat. Then stealing other languages lose vocabulary and proceeding to use them wrong. Spaghetti is extra weird because it's still treated as one unit even in cases where it definitely shouldn't be. For example, if you were to have multiple bowls of Spaghetti on a table logically you would say the spaghetti are on the table just as you would say the pizzas are on the table for multiple pizzas. You don't though for some reason.Fixed.
Pretty sure English is wrong there
Snake Hunt
- Location
- Earth
Snake Hunt
Friday, 29th April – Brockton Bay, Downtown – a high rise in constructionI looked through the fence of the construction site in concern.
The steel frame of the high-rise crisscrossed towards the sky for nearly twenty stories. Construction vehicles stood still and abandoned in the darkness. The site itself had no lights. Stray light from the surrounding buildings and streetlights left it in near darkness.
"This feels like a dozen transformer stations down below," BiriBiri tugged with her fingers at something only she could see.
"Yes. This cuts down my range a lot," I sighed, "I'll barely manage ten meters." Slightly more with ice, it didn't need as much precision.
I hated that. I had become used to knowing everything that happened around me.
"Coincidence?" she frowned at the fence.
"I am not that lucky."
"We need to take that base without knowing who exactly is inside?" Charlotte was fidgeting with one of her darts.
"We got to do it without Coil noticing too," I frowned.
"Yep. Easy peasy," Keiko smiled.
"Will he even be there?" Charlotte asked.
"He'll be both there and not. Which is the entire trouble," I grumbled.
Even if he chose to not be here, he'd lose this base. Lose a lot of his mercenaries. Lose the Travelers, if they were at this base. But I didn't want to keep nibbling away at his resources, at his personnel. I wanted the head of the snake.
But if he lost and knew he lost, he wouldn't be here at all. So annoying.
This would be much easier if I could be certain mind-controlling him into dropping a time-line would drop it. But it wasn't truly him who made that choice. I thought of those huge beings again, the single vision I had of them. He had one, just as I did. It was the one to truly choose. Would it follow the controlled Coil's choice or would it decide as if he wasn't controlled?
Did it love him?
Did mine? Bolted down with metal as it was?
What exactly did the warning of the golden haired girl mean?
Nothing good. That much was clear.
"I can't sense any people from here," I told them, "cameras, BiriBiri?"
"None for now," she answered, "I'll keep looking."
"Nothing for it then, let's go," I began walking towards the fence.
The first obstacle was so very mundane. Two segments of the fence were connected by a chain and a lock. It would be easy to go break, but we could not afford to leave a sign.
Charlotte stepped forward. She held out a hand into empty air and touched the chain with the other. The links of the chain clinked against each other as they fell into her hand, now free of the fence.
BiriBiri opened the fence, we stepped through and closed it behind us.
Charlotte carefully swung the chain and with the sound of hushed clattering it connected the segments once again.
We walked towards the metal skeleton of the to-be-built high-rise.
"There," I pointed at the metal hatch. We ignored the yellow warning sign of a man in a hazmat suit. It was fake.
"Locked," BiriBiri told us after she lightly pulled it, "I could rip it open?"
I shook my head. "Infiltration. Let me." I put my hand over the keyhole and concentrated.
I felt out the lock with water vapor, then formed it into ice. I turned the key with a satisfying click.
"Ugh, smells like sewage," BiriBiri complained as she pulled the hatch open.
"He didn't have to go for authenticity in everything," Charlotte agreed.
A single dim light-bulb illuminated the descending stairs.
Down the surprisingly dry stairs we went past another door though this one was unlocked.
I kept my eyes and senses open as we walked the hallway past that door, but it was Keiko who noticed it first.
"Camera," she held out her arm to stop us.
The hallway opened into a room. I saw another door at its end.
I did not see a camera.
"Got it. It's looping the same empty room now," she waved us onward.
The door had no handle.
I stepped next to it.
"There's a mercenary behind it," I whispered.
Dimitri was bored. He sat on an office chair in front of a monitor he was watching diligently. It showed the video feed of an empty room. The room we were in.
He didn't hear us through the solid steel door.
The sound of paper clued me in. There was someone else in the same room as the mercenary. Outside my range.
"He isn't alone. We'll have to wait until he looks around the room," I pressed myself against the door to get a few more precious centimeters.
"Hah. I can do better. The cameras are on the same closed circuit network," BiriBiri pulled out her phone. "All of them."
"Well done."
We clustered around her as she flicked through the different camera feeds.
She showed us the room past the door first. The one I had in range and the other one further inside. He was leaning against the wall near the other door, lazily flicking through a magazine, the resolution on the phone too low to read it. An assault rifle was slung over his shoulder. On the undersides of the gun's barrel was an attachment. Tinkertech. This would be the laser. A quick check showed Dimitri had an assault rifle too. Beside the desk.
Past that room was a wide open room with metal walkways around the perimeter of the room, because you could see right down to the lower level which had a lot of crates and boxes. And mercenaries who were busy carting those around.
"We have to take the next room silently or we are rumbled," I winced. At least the door inwards was closed. Small mercies.
She flicked through a few more cameras, most showed single rooms which were still bare. But there also was a medical bay, a kitchen, a room with bunk beds, a weapon's storage room.
"That's the generator," I made a mental note of the room. It looked haphazard in the way only tinkertech was.
"That's around four dozen mercenaries," Charlotte whispered. Forty-Five so far, I had kept count.
"Found the Travelers," BiriBiri showed us their rooms. Nicely furnished with beds dressers and mannequins for their costumes.
Trickster and Ballistic were asleep in their rooms. Sundancer and Genesis were playing cards in Sundancer's room. Perdition's room was empty, though he had no mannequin.
Then it flicked to another room. It showed a girl with brown hair. If you ignored that she had no feet. Instead from the pelvis downward there was a mad amalgamation of animal heads and limbs, like someone had tried to make a centaur, but used dozens of different animals like a chimera instead. She seemed to be talking to someone, but her sheer bulk was blocking the view.
"She might be part of the Travelers. Perdition is talking to her," Keiko split the screen in half to show him watching and talking to a screen that showed the unknown girl. They seemed familiar with each other.
"There was no mention of her anywhere," I frowned.
"Looks like a brute," BiriBiri guessed.
"Looks out of control," Charlotte pointed out, "or they wouldn't have her locked behind that thick vault door."
"Best to keep her out of the loop," I decided.
"Now for the trouble," BiriBiri flicked to a gym.
"Hookwolf," I snarled. He was hitting a sand bag.
"Infiltration," Keiko reminded me, "at least the gym is somewhat out of the way."
Damn it. We had to keep him distracted.
She hesitated before the next one.
A little girl in a white dress lay on a small cot.
Dinah Alcott.
I looked at her fallen cheeks, her regular but shallow breathing. Her eyes were open, but looking nowhere.
"Drugged," I stated my conclusion. The fucker had drugged a child.
"This has just become a rescue mission," Charlotte decided.
"It has," I agreed and so did BiriBiri.
"There is no camera that found Coil," Keiko told us, "but.. there's a room all the camera feeds go and it has a phone."
Her phone played the sound of someone typing on a keyboard.
"Nothing useful yet, but I'll keep listening."
"Great work." It was a lot of very useful information.
Time to get to work.
"Keep manipulating the camera feeds," I told BiriBiri, "it's time to get into the next room."
I formed a little snow ball in my hands. Barely a mouthful. I gave it to Charlotte and told her what to do.
I waited for the right moment and Dimitri's eyes briefly flickered with stars.
"Huh, squad Heroux is returning," he mentioned and stood up to open the door to us.
The other mercenary frowned, and looked up from his magazine into Dimitri's normal eyes. "You're supposed to call it in before opening. He's gotten worse about it the last few days."
Dimitri ignored him.
He pulled down the door handle.
BiriBiri pushed the door open, sparking and speeding towards the other mercenary. He opened his mouth to shout in alarm and chocked on the snowball appearing in his mouth. Too quiet to be heard.
BiriBiri reached him before he recovered and pushed his hands away from his rifle.
I moved inside the room. "Got them, you can let go."
She did.
"A pity we are all too small to fake being one of them with their uniform," BiriBiri eyed their sizes.
I rifled through the mercenaries' memories. Everyone gossiped. Especially if one's life might depend on it.
"The girl in the vault is called Noelle and yes, she does have control problems. High-level brute and striker. They got warned specifically about not even touching her though not why," I relayed the information I found. "The guy talking to her is a member of the Travelers, but does not have powers." Weird. "They lost Perdition back in Boston." A shame, I had hoped to get some scans of his time manipulation.
"Huh, oh well. One less problem for us," BiriBiri shrugged.
"And I know where Coil's office is," I told them. "Right next to where Dinah is." I wouldn't call it her room. It wasn't.
"Good. I got a few words for him." Small sparks flickered around BiriBiri's fingers.
I set some temporary commands on the two mercenaries.
"Those two won't remember that they let anyone in. Won't notice us for a couple hours either even if they see us." I didn't like setting commands for when they left my range, but I needed to. They needed to stay in place in case Coil checked on them.
Onward we went.
The next room had the most walking traffic, but the boxes broke up any sight-lines. We hid behind them and I slowly placed the same "ignore us" command into mercenaries who came into my range whenever their eyes weren't visible to anyone. Due to boxes, or because they were literally below us. The thin metal walkways weren't much of a hindrance. BiriBiri kept both removing us from the camera feed and ensuring no one sneaked up on us.
With each mercenary thus affected the infiltration became easier and easier.
We went directly towards Coil, avoiding all the Travelers and Hookwolf.
I counted thirty-five mercenaries on our way there who won't trouble us even if we get noticed.
We stood before the door to Coil's office. Dinah's room could only be reached through his.
It was closed shut. It mattered not. He was close enough. I felt him sitting in front of his computer.
I reached into his thoughts.
He was studying PRT reports on his computer.
He was asleep in the other timeline. Elsewhere.
It was time for a bet, best to make sure the choice was his to increase my odds.
Thomas Calvert suddenly shook awake.
"Found you," he heard Mental Out say. She pointed her remo- He dropped the timeline in panic.
Before he could even consider how he got found I took control and he opened the door for us.
Charlotte pushed past him towards Dinah, but the door was already opening.
"Oh. You're the one that makes everyone die," Dinah Alcott said looking right at me.
"What."
A/N.:
Coil didn't ask the right questions
I don't truly like this chapter, but it'll have to do.
At least Keiko got to stretch herself due to Coil focusing too much on Nozomi.
Accelerator maybe unbeatable when it comes to a direct fight but Misaka is the absolute best when it comes to sheer versatility. In a modern world Misaka and Misaki working together would make them completely unstoppable when it comes to infiltration. Enjoyed this chapter immensely. Can't wait for the next chapter to know why Dinah thinks Nozomi will kill everyone.
Not really needed since Dinah's power alone is enough to have her set for life because tho we only see the top tiers in canon worm thinkers suck to the point the kind of precogs that the prt calls on in a crisis give vague stuff like a danger rating as a number or colour so she can charge crazy amounts of money to answer a single question.
It's also not really the best idea because canon Dinah isn't actually that good of a person to have as an ally because she's prone to the whole thinker arrogance of thinking she knows best so does horrible things to people including betraying them or screwing them over to push them towards decisions she wants them to make usually without even consulting them. Then there's all the complications of her already being a parahuman.
FailLord
2050 lb bombs?
- Location
- Orange Star
To quote Hokaze.
"Ah, oh no, if these two team up, they could easily commit the perfect crime"