I think one of the fanfics put it best. When both Rebecca and Taylor get isekaid to another world and Alexandria asks how good Cauldron efforts were - Taylor answers "fifteen minutes".
A Flung Light (Worm/minor toaru cross)
SV5195R
C-Weapon
- Location
- Russian Federation
At that point, she'd probably have too many ethical objections about the way they do things.
EDIT: mind you, she doesn't know that, in some respects, things were hardly better in the place her powers and knowledge came from.
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They actually were worse. A good chunk of problems for Cauldron stem from incompetence. They simply don't have the people they need to do better. And after Simurgh ganked their Case 53 facility they also lost a good chunk of their unpowered researchers. Which weren't the best in the first place - just those who can be relied on to keep the whole thing a secret.
Kiharas and Magi from To Aru world perform their atrocities with full knowledge of what and why they are doing. And they don't give a fuck about any consequences that don't fall on their own heads. Academy City, with all of its orphan crushing machines, is actually nowhere near the worst place on To Aru world.
Jiven
With the power of the moon...
- Location
- Strasbourg, France
Wrong, it was Dennis/Clockblocker who said that in his grief. It was neither a justified or a thoughtful statement. Jedi!Taylor from that fic didn't pass a judgement on Cauldron when talking about what happened.
It's actually even worse than you think because people forget this but Scion's defeat wasn't solely down to Taylor and those she enthralled but in the full account it comes down to like 20 odd non Cauldron people. It was also such an unlikely, fragile and convoluted sequence of events no-one sane should rely on doing it.
The full thing regarding Kephri and ignoring how stuff before that was needed to have her learn certain info was that Taylor has a ton of mental issues including self worth ones where she feels the need to constantly prove her worth which she does by personally achieving things. However, as should be obvious and was then shown in the various fights she couldn't really personally directly do anything to Scion beyond slightly messing with his senses by surrounding him in minions. Due to that she started chasing ways to including putting together a team and chasing after Cauldron to try to get them to second trigger her except Scion got into their base and she learned from number man that she'd double triggered so couldn't second trigger anyway.
That meant with some background setup from Ziz and Dinah she then chased after Bonesaw remembering her monologue when she had Taylor on her experimentation table during the s9's atk on the bay about messing with her corona to tweak her power. She got told that doing so would kill her and probably not even do anything useful so Amy flat out refused to until Bonesaw agreed because why not so then Amy took over because better her than Bonesaw doing it and hence Kephri was created.
However, even with that and her huge army she couldn't win the fight so instead chose to take advantage of the fact Scion had been following Jack's advice and revelling in his emotions by experimenting with ways of killing people and started to throw Eden's image in his face via changers and shakers. However, Doormaker's power then ran out which basically turned the whole thing into a mess and a series of hail marys to stop everything falling apart since it meant her range dropped back to the 16 or so feet and basically all the capes got free of her.
Outside of her control a ton of people then stopped things falling apart from the endbringers buying time by fighting scion on another earth to Teacher and Lisa communicating with drained doormaker who she let go and hence telling other capes what they needed to do and getting Canary to both sing and it to be broadcast around. Fletchette and Parian were also vital for willing returning to Taylor's control and even running back into it a few times when they fell out of range as was Dinah convincing Scrub and Labyrinth to do the same which let her regain portal use plus Aisha who punted a key cape into Taylor's range.
That let them hammer the images back at scion who had returned until he recovered and used his powers to shut it down only for Ziz to return and use her powers to turn it up to 11 which was the final straw and he went catatonic but also released a death wave that GU saved everyone other than Taylor's group from with doormaker's power since she'd reaped him and Taylor barely got her group out from thanks to the power of that cape Aisha punted into her range. From there Taylor got close enough to GU who let herself be controlled so doormaker's portal could be used to allow Fletchette to hit scion with sting now his auto ptv use of it had been turned off and thus the giant tinker collaboration gun could be turned on his real body.
tldr: all that Cauldron can be credited with out of the 20 or so capes that were vital to scion dying are doormaker, clairvoyant and possibly shen yu, null and one since we know some of the yangban's core capes were vial capes but not which.
Hubris
- Location
- Earth
Hubris
Saturday, 30th April 2011 – Brockton Bay, The TrainyardThe drug lab hid itself well. You wouldn't suspect it as one from the outside. Which was the point. The general emptiness of the train yard served it well, too. In its heydays this area was bustling with trains and all the people needed to operate, unload and reload them. Now most of the rails were overgrown with weeds and in some cases weed. Many of the boxcars were left abandoned and rusting on them.
The lab was inside one of them. There were no more and no less gang tags on it than the others. Someone had drilled a few holes into the side for ventilation and voila. Drug lab.
"That was boring," Keiko grumbled.
We stood amid the defeated Merchants.
Skidmark, Squealer and Mush sat on the ground staring into nothing at all with starry eyes. This was one messed up naming scheme.
Squealer's latest creation was parked in front of the lab. An overblown truck which she somehow had mounted a cannon on and bolted a lot of metal plates onto to armor it up.
Half a dozen goons who had arrived with them in a beaten down and rusted car joined them in staring at nothing. Skidmark hadn't managed to gather more who were still capable of driving.
He hadn't even tried for sober.
"Boring is good," I shrugged. With every fight I've gotten into, the most I've learned is that I disliked fighting. I wished someone else would take care of it, but no one looked to be doing it to my disappointment.
"Trainwreck had the only brain cells in the entire gang," Charlotte said.
"Smart enough to run for the hills," Keiko kicked a piece of rubble right between two boxcars to clang against a third on the next rail. She had been looking forward to the rematch.
It hadn't been hard to do catch all the Merchants. Telling Aisha that she wasn't coming along was harder, but we ditched her when we returned the mice to the workshop. That experiment was a success so far; tomorrow I'd see if any of them showed anything detrimental. As for the Merchant: We tracked down a known dealer. Then we rifled through his mind to go up the chain until we found this drug lab.
Then we woke up the guards, because they were sleeping on the job. I had them call Skidmark in faked panic that some new cape brute in a hoodie and scarf was trashing them.
We had to wait entirely too long for them to show up. Any competent cape would've been long gone if that was their plan.
But their leaders were as drugged up as the rest of them.
We were waiting for the Protectorate to take them off our hands now.
It did not take that long for two of their PRT vans to make their way towards us. They turned into the street that lead to us on a pretty much straight road in the distance. It felt like two troopers and three parahumans. Then suddenly the distance between us shrank and I lost my awareness of their minds.
I needed accurate coordinates for my power to work with. My equations did not account for space suddenly becoming a variable. I made a mental note to work on that. It'd make working together with Vista awkward. It'd make working against her a nightmare, if Cauldron used their influence to send her after us. I started to see why the PRT made threat assessments about everyone, but I'd still roast them for losing them.
The vans screeched to a sudden stop right in front of us as space snapped back into normality behind us. And their minds were once again available to me.
A blonde girl in a white and green costume jumped out of the first van followed by cursing. She was Vista, the youngest ward in Brockton Bay, but also one of the currently longest serving wards now that Triumph had graduated to the Protectorate. Two years or so. Her green visor hid part of her face. I'll never understand how the PRT could let any non-brute get away without a full helmet in a city where every two bit goon had a gun. The tragic headline wrote itself. At least the rest of her costume had some armor and that skirt did not inhibit her mobility.
"Don't do that, the agent almost crashed the van," Triumph admonished her.
He had a full helmet styled after a lions head. His mouth was left bare, but considering his shouting powers that was a necessary trade-off. His shoulder pads sported golden lions as well and his gloves were styled like lion claws.
"He managed just fine," Vista brushed him off, "it would've taken forever otherwise."
Kid Win climbed out of the van after Triumph. "You could've at least warned him." He too wore only a visor and not a helmet which left his short brown hair in the open. Once again I had to hold back a harsh critique for how vulnerable that left him. At least the rest of his red and gold costume was decent body armor as expected for a tinker.
She grumbled under her breath too quiet for anyone to hear. "They would've said no."
"Hello Triumph, hello Vista. Hello again Kid Win," I greeted them then turned my body a little, "troopers." And greeted the troopers as well who were rather surprised at that. Most capes tended to ignore them. They gave a nod, but immediately moved to secure the capes and goons.
"Mental Out, BiriBiri, uh"-"Blink" "Blink," he nodded in thanks at the introduction. "Thank you for taking down Coil. No one who kidnaps children should run free." Huh. Dinah was his cousin. No wonder he was grateful.
"A sentiment we can all agree with," I held back any comments on how I had to badger the Protectorate to go after the ABB brothel. They had still gone after all.
"It's great to finally meet you," Vista greeted us exuberantly. "You should come visit us in the ward's base sometime. We'd love to have you." It seemed Armsmaster hadn't told the wards that Shadow Stalker got canned due to what I reported to him. That or she literally did not care enough to think about it.
"We would," Kid Win agreed absently. His attention was on the monstrous truck. "Is that Squealer's?"
"It is," BiriBiri confirmed for him. It was useless to pretend otherwise.
"I'm sure I can get Armsmaster to agree to have a look at it together," he addressed me.
This was why I hadn't told them about any Bakuda bombs I still had. They assumed every villain's tinkertech was theirs even if an independent brought them in. Worse, by law they were right. It was probably the most flouted law by independent tinkers.
"I'm sure we can find a time that's amenable for everyone," I still agreed. It'd be interesting to see how a genuine tinker worked.
"Congrats on your date," BiriBiri teased.
Kid Win sputtered. I rolled my eyes. "We are both aware it's no such thing."
Triumph brought attention to him with a little faked cough. "I also do have a message from Legend for you. Bakuda has been successfully imprisoned in the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center."
"That is relieving news," I smiled.
"Damn straight it is," BiriBiri smiled as well, "too many get broken out on the way there."
There was some irritation at that statement, but not at aimed at her. Only at the world in which this was true.
"That's most of the Merchants gone," Triumph changed the topic.
"All their capes," Blink chimed in. "Trainwreck left the city. He was smart enough to not tell anyone where he went."
"All of them then," he smiled.
"You've done quite a number on Brockton's gangs," Vista couldn't quite believe that two of the gangs that were there for longer than she remembered were gone. It was a little premature in my opinion.
"With no one free to attack a transport, I do like those odds much more," I said instead. "It might be their end this time." If no one fucked up their birdcage transport.
"Coil's gang got teleported out of the Bay already," Triumph told us. "Though we'll have to see how exactly we get those three accommodated. We're rather filled. Uh, not that that's a bad thing. Just still a problem."
"We can make another field trip," BiriBiri suggested too innocently. "New York again or Boston this time?"
"We wouldn't want there to be problems because of overcrowding," I supported her.
"No. No, there's no need. We'll manage," Triumph quickly assured us. Legend had words to say about what I spoke to him in New York. Even if he hadn't brought up his concerns as due to me they still knew. Which was the reason wards were running together with the Protectorate and PRT agents more often.
I turned my head to a point in the distance with a frown. Someone there was very afraid. A few calculations later I knew exactly why.
The frightened taxi driver came to a stop about six-hundred meters – my range had increased; nice – away from me. A tall guy dressed in jeans and an ornate steel mask with a dragon's face left the taxi. His torso was bare except for his tattoos of dragons. The eastern style serpentine ones. He tossed a wallet inside the taxi and a bag under a balcony. Then he started sprinting towards us.
Lung was here.
The taxi driver left as fast as he could. Smart guy.
"Lung incoming," I warned them.
Triumph froze for an instant. Then training reasserted itself. He put a finger on the side of his helmet. "Console, Lung incoming on our location. Send reinforcements."
How fast could a guy run six-hundred meters? A minute? Two? Lung was faster. More power to hit someone also meant more power to kick of the ground.
He wasn't yet in sight due to all the boxcars, but it wouldn't be much longer.
Fuck subtlety. I scanned his brain – different from the norm, but I had practice with that – and ordered him to kneel. His legs went out under him, he hit the boxcar he had been about to jump over. Then my control slipped. His brain transformed and my control went with it. Fuck.
The sound of metal crunching had everyone turning in that direction. Not that there was anything to see yet with all the other boxcars in the way. Four-hundred meters.
"We are not cleared to engage," Triumph informed us. "Troopers, leave with the prisoners and the vans. We'll cover the retreat and leave with Vista on foot."
"Can't she simply, uh-" Kid Win vaguely gestured at my remote.
"I wouldn't bet on it," I grimaced. Which was enough to tell BiriBiri and Blink that there would be trouble. I considered it for a moment. "No one's here to protect. We are leaving with you." There was nothing for us here to win, except perhaps Lung's arrest if we stayed. In exchange he might kill us all.
He chose this moment to attack. He wouldn't do it if he didn't at least think he'd win. He might be wrong, but why chance it? Especially since I knew I'd have trouble.
Fair fights were for suckers. I wanted a stacked deck.
The troopers drove the vans with the prisoners away from Lung. They had to go off road, because Lung was too close to the only good road. They drove parallel to the tracks instead. Vista cut down their distance to get them gone. She even leveled out the ground for them.
Lung jumped another set of boxcars merely three-hundred meters away from us. He was noticeably bigger and fully covered in metallic scales.
"He shouldn't have grown this much already. This is too fast," Vista frowned and increased the distance between us and Lung with an idle gesture. And completely ruined my targeting again.
BiriBiri sent a bolt of lightning at him. He crashed to ground, twitching. Then he flared up and was hidden by flames. Now she couldn't see where to aim anymore.
I rifled through Vista's mind to see about a fix for my targeting equation. But parahumans did not know the details about their powers. They had a black box with a couple buttons and dials and vague instincts what they did. So I instead grabbed what Blink sensed. A few seconds later I was ready.
Just in time for Lung, three meters tall already, to appear out of the flames much closer to us. I pointed my remote at him and he threw himself on the ground. Literally skidding to a stop with his chin on the ground, carving a furrow in the ground. His brown eyes kept flickering in the starburst pattern as I fought to keep him under control.
"You got him?" Blink asked.
"No, he keeps slipping," I grunted. He did not stop transforming. Worse, it was speeding up. I couldn't keep up.
Vista pinched the space behind us and we all took a step back before she let it snap back into normality again.
Lung stood with a growl and exploded into a ball of fire. Vista extended the space and his fireball fell well short of us.
BiriBiri shot another bolt of lightning and Kid Win added some sparks from his pistol, but both missed him in the smoke. "He's at your one, BiriBiri," I told her and her next shot nailed him. The smoke was getting worse.
We kept retreating while Vista allowed us to keep our distance.
"We need to go faster," Triumph insisted.
"I am trying," Vista said. "Fucking weeds."
"Language."
Triumph shouted to clear the smoke. It blew back and revealed a flying boxcar high in the air.
A fireball was sprinting at us on the ground. Oh, that's Lung.
Vista was too busy dealing with the boxcar. Lung would- BiriBiri crashed into him crackling with lightning. They crashed into another boxcar to the side, but the flames continued past her towards us.
I summoned cold. Ice and flame clashed and left mist as the edges of the flame flickered over my costume. I quickly put it out with more ice before it caught.
Triumph shouted again to clear his sight.
The boxcar had crashed to the side, trajectory altered by Vista. Lung towered over BiriBiri, now four and half meters tall. Whatever damage she had done was already healed. His mouth opened into four parts. I could see the beginnings of wings on his body.
Blue flames gathered in Lung's mouth. Oh fuck.
A boxcar door was suddenly between his arm and body. The arm fell to the ground. "You fire that off and we'll find out if you can regrow from the neck, you oversized lizard," Blink threatened with her hand on another door.
He looked at her for a tense moment. Could he regrow from the neck?
Then he took off without a word.
I let myself fall to the ground and sucked in air.
Fighting was exhausting.
A/N.:
Who remembers that Lung transform faster if he waits patiently for a while?
He was very patient.
Also you go Charlotte, you haven't caused nearly enough limb loss yet.
Lung's just glad it's not the crotch again.
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- Location
- Sweden
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Her threat rating just got bumped, showing off no Manton limit like that. Lung can not take this lying down. He prob understands that with a "parahuman" that can hard counter him like that his days are numbered in the bay unless he does something drastic.
With Taylor temporarily out of commission someone needs to take up the slack.
It's not that much of a hard counter. Blink can kill him, yes (she can kill most everyone short of the Triumvirate, tbh). But given that she didn't kill him immediately, she probably won't do so lightly. And with his regeneration and growing power, it's possible that if he does get fully transformed she wouldn't be able to kill him (or at least he might think so: Mental Out provided targeting the telefrag at the Corona Gemma would presumably be effective no matter what)
But if Lung avoids provoking her to that point, Blink can't actually beat him. He just regenerates all the damage away, presumably. Mental Out actually has a better chance of a non-lethal takedown, either by ambushing him while untransformed (and immediately sleeping/coma) or by just getting familiar with how his brain transforms, and being able to keep up the transformation.
The Merchants have some low cunning.
I like that the whole thing was off-screened.
Good on her for working against her weaknesses, she's also very aware of Cauldron's reach.
Most people don't acknowledge the help.
Good to know Legend has his shit together.
WELP SHIT.
BiriBiri is scary like that, also people now know she isn't Manton Limited.
You'll be getting more practice at it soon.
Props to Lung for waiting that long it clearly payed off.
Yeah, the "Blink" file is going to get a lot of attention in the coming days. Telefrag capable teleporters are scary.
Probably could've just made him faint. Fight over.
Aminadab_Brulle
Decimus Computator
Ahhh, here's the all time classic of Worm fanfics - somebody loses an arm.
- Location
- Earth
An unnamed partner of Phir Se puts his arm through some poor cape in the Behemoth battle in New Deli.
That is definitely going to push Blink's threat rating much higher, though there will be a lot of questions on if she was bluffing that she could do it again, because why wouldn't she have done it earlier. But it does mean that the entire team are going to be considered major possible threats.
So all they need to do now is hunt down and ambush Lung, and they will have solved the major problems in Brockton Bay, right? That means they will then be able to focus on preparing for Scion, because once you sweep out all of the trash from a city, new trash doesn't just move in right afterwards, right?
There was one bit of fairly pervasive fanon that I want to nitpick. Feel free to ignore this.
Gallant is harder to tell, but there are some indications he joined prior to Vista as well. Specifically, he had his powers when Vicky gained hers, and she got them (probably) in spring 2009. Because it was a major basketball game with people observing, it was likely a playoff or final, which tend to be Feb-March. So if she gained her powers in March, then Gallant would have already had them and would have been in the wards longer than Vista as well.
The quote that gets brought up about Vista being the longest serving Ward was after Leviathan, so Aegis and Gallant were dead by that point (though it probably rules out Clockblocker because he was still alive).
So all they need to do now is hunt down and ambush Lung, and they will have solved the major problems in Brockton Bay, right? That means they will then be able to focus on preparing for Scion, because once you sweep out all of the trash from a city, new trash doesn't just move in right afterwards, right?
There was one bit of fairly pervasive fanon that I want to nitpick. Feel free to ignore this.
Vista is not the longest serving ward at this time. She gained her powers in April 2009. Aegis joined the wards in 2008, so he definitely has been a ward longer. Clockblocker joined at some point in 2009, but the timing there isn't any more specific, and he probably joined after Vista.
Gallant is harder to tell, but there are some indications he joined prior to Vista as well. Specifically, he had his powers when Vicky gained hers, and she got them (probably) in spring 2009. Because it was a major basketball game with people observing, it was likely a playoff or final, which tend to be Feb-March. So if she gained her powers in March, then Gallant would have already had them and would have been in the wards longer than Vista as well.
The quote that gets brought up about Vista being the longest serving Ward was after Leviathan, so Aegis and Gallant were dead by that point (though it probably rules out Clockblocker because he was still alive).
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
You're assuming she'd know to do that. As this chapter demonstrates it's hard to see what triggers Parahuman powers, and the powered individual themselves certainly won't know everything.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That's an understatement.
Her thread rating just went from "Minor object teleportation power mostly useful for utility" to "Oh fuck no, Jesus fuck, start running away right now"
Aside from breaker powers there are very few capes with any kind of defense against this kind of remote instant decapitation
In terms of psychology, though, Lung doesn't seem to me to be the type who will ever be comfortable with an opponent that's unwilling to kill him. He's willing to go lethal himself, and he won't trust that his foes won't do likewise if they'd lose otherwise. Blink's presence in town as an opponent will be an intolerable problem to Lung, but not a problem he has any clear way to address, and I don't know how he'll handle that.
Running away. To my understanding that's basically what he did to get away from the Yanban or whatever they are called. If he honestly, truly believes he can't win he runs. Blink will join his nightmares with Contessa and Leviathan.
Depends how much history they know/the prt tells them cause aside from the Boston Games both the Teeth and the nine consider their defeat and forced retreat from the bay the sole black mark in their history and want to return for revenge on top of the general motives like Bonesaw's interest in Amy and Mannequin's in tinkers. From the sounds of things some focus will also be on countering the prt/cauldron. There should also still be some minor capes like Uber, Leet, Circus and Stain left who they may also take out.
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SV5195R
C-Weapon
- Location
- Russian Federation
Mental Out's threat rating must have gone up from all that too, considering that:
A) She was able to detect and affect Lung hundreds of metres away, and the PRT will most likely put two and two together, regardless of whether they know which mechanism she uses;
B) She pulled off macroscopic cryokinesis, and I don't remember if she displayed something like that within the sight of PRT/Protectorate before.
Narwhal could. After her second trigger her forcefields aren't manton limited anymore IIRC, at a considerable tradeoff in range.
E: The thing with teleportation is that telefrag is EASY. Doing it safely is the hard part that needs additional effort.
FailLord
2050 lb bombs?
- Location
- very high up
Actually that's Charlotte, Kuroko's teleport skill is actually super fucking scary once you look past the memes.
Serious if Charlotte gets to Lv5 she gets super scary super quickly.
SV5195R
C-Weapon
- Location
- Russian Federation
Speaking of which, all three main characters have displayed a rather meteoric rise in power, dear god.
I'm pretty sure that the boxcar door Charlotte teleported weighs more than 30 kg.
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