A Flung Light (Worm/minor toaru cross)

[LightLan]

I think he lights a cigarette twice in that scene?

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That's intentional.
Can anyone figure out what is happening there?

Glad to see an update, although the mind controller girl veered straight into viciousness at the idea of her mum being threatened there.

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For all the options Nozomi has with her power, she still qualified for a normal trigger event with all the trauma that implies. Trauma that is concentrated both on her losing her Mother and her Mother sacrificing herself for her.
It's a very good thing she has people left to tell her to take a step back and make calmer decisions.
Something she wouldn't have had she gotten a normal shard-power.

Edit: Btw, did she remember to start removing other ppl from the time bubble to prevent her from being linked?

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I don't think I mentioned any of that in any update.
As for this specific bubble, it only contains the corpse of the poor guy who had the time-stop bomb in his skull.

Wasn't that due to Lung being pretty ramped up before the fight started and there being other capes to boost his ramp speed like Vista. There's also the simple fact that as espers they are naturally getting stronger anyway and can refine their approaches far more than normal capes so they'd be more effective if they tried again. For example even something as simple as taking out Lung's leg instead of an arm would be huge to say nothing of how much more effective Mental Out would be from the data of how his brain changes.

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The assessment is made from what Tsang Hao knows and believes and indirectly from what Lung does.
Powers that get (permanently) stronger in Worm are beyond rare.
I think the only known ones are: Dauntless and arguably Crawler. In the entire world. That's how rare a list it is.

Thing is, his mindstate is backed up to the shard, and when fully transformed he should be running on the shard.

Even if you got him while untransformed he'd probably realize what happened the next time he fully transformed. You'd have to kill him then.

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Mhm. We've seen that briefly before with Alabaster.

What an utterly disappointing human being.

Your oppressor wants you to be the better person. That way he never has to face consequences for his actions.

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I took what her mother said completely differently: always strive to be the better person, consider better options, lest you follow your oppressor down to their level.

Your oppressor wants you to be the weaker person; outfoxing them is a strength.

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Outfoxing them is what she does. And she keeps it secret from the mother.

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And she didn't need to go with her original vengeful instinct of rewriting personalities and removing long-term memories to do it!

(that's more Cauldron/Fallen/Gesellschaft's stick; don't be Cauldron/Fallen/Gesellschaft)

As her mum said, "You have a lot of power now. More, I think, than I understand. You will have to decide what sort of person you want to be, because no one else can do that for you anymore."

Her mum may not have power but does still have some wisdom to impart. To riff on a certain dinosaur guy, "You were so preoccupied with what you could do, you didn't stop to think what you should do."

It's a good thing she listened to her mum, at least mostly.

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Yeah, getting into the habit of mind****ing away any and all of your problems is a rather nasty habit to get into. And it's an easy habit/knee-jerk reaction for her to get into because of how easy it is for her.

Aside from the moral/ethical considerations, if she starts to constantly rely on that one there would be trouble if she ever runs into a situation where it doesn't work.

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Her Mother is a bit afraid of how much power Nozomi now has. (And trying to hide it)
She also has heard the many many stories of how mind-controllers go wrong, vigilantes go too far and is now in over her head trying to steer Nozomi away from the worst decisions.
It's a scene I've struggled a lot with, and I am happy at least some got across of what I meant to get across.

On a definitely related note. Keiko is glad she got a power that lets her resist Nozomi, even if she won't admit so to her.
She too remembers having to talk down Nozomi from killing Bakuda.

No, obviously she whammies Lung, turns him over to the PRT, he's shipped to the Birdcage, problem solved

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If she can manage to hold him for the 5-15 minutes until the PRT/Protectorate comes running and secure a ramped up Lung, that is what will happen.
But he'll continue to ramp up all the while.
Lung is at his shard's mercy for ramping up or not. And so is Nozomi.

 

[Jonen C]

That's intentional.
Can anyone figure out what is happening there?

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He gets mindwammied and doesn't actually smoke the cig, it either burns out and he lights a new one, or goes out and he relights it

 

[JumperPrime]

If she can manage to hold him for the 5-15 minutes until the PRT/Protectorate comes running and secure a ramped up Lung, that is what will happen.
But he'll continue to ramp up all the while.
Lung is at his shard's mercy for ramping up or not. And so is Nozomi.

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What if she whammies him when he's calm? Keep his adrenaline down, dopamine up. if she makes him think there's no danger, would Lung still ramp up?

 

[veekie]

What if she whammies him when he's calm? Keep his adrenaline down, dopamine up. if she makes him think there's no danger, would Lung still ramp up?

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The only way that was likely to happen is if she got him out of costume, possibly in bed.

 

[saganatsu]

If she can manage to hold him for the 5-15 minutes until the PRT/Protectorate comes running and secure a ramped up Lung, that is what will happen.
But he'll continue to ramp up all the while.
Lung is at his shard's mercy for ramping up or not. And so is Nozomi.

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From a Doylist perspective, obviously Nozomi can't just shut him down; between him and Hookwolf, having the villains she most wants to take down be the most immune leaves opportunities for drama. From a Watsonian perspective, canonically, he gets knocked unconscious by Armsmaster's tinkertech drug, what's stopping Nozomi from just dropping him? A lack of understanding of Lung's power?

edit:

The only way that was likely to happen is if she got him out of costume, possibly in bed.

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Which she could easily do, but would represent an obvious breach of the unwritten rules, which she has avoided so far.

 

[Taijutsu]

The smartest way to handle Lung, would be to contact Armsmaster--propose working together to take him down-- Mental Out locates him, and Blink teleports Armsmaster's tranqs directly into him.

 

[Iridesce]

The smartest way to handle Lung, would be to contact Armsmaster--propose working together to take him down-- Mental Out locates him, and Blink teleports Armsmaster's tranqs directly into him.

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I feel like Armsmaster would probably actually be pretty thrilled with this plan. It's impossible without him, and has basically no chance of collateral damage. It makes him look great.

 

[FailLord]

That's intentional.
Can anyone figure out what is happening there?

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Double Cigs

Double the cigs double the nicotine

:|

 

[fuddler]

If she can manage to hold him for the 5-15 minutes until the PRT/Protectorate comes running and secure a ramped up Lung, that is what will happen.
But he'll continue to ramp up all the while.
Lung is at his shard's mercy for ramping up or not. And so is Nozomi.

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Whats stopping her from just knocking him unconscious and keeping him like that?

Saying Lung is at his shards mercy feels a bit disingenuous, all parahumans are at the mercy of their shard, but the shards almost never "cheat" to give a host an advantage.

So if she flooded his brain with calming chemicals and made him forget he was in a fight, he would stop ramping up and start reverting.

 

[AmberSlime]

Whats stopping her from just knocking him unconscious and keeping him like that?

Saying Lung is at his shards mercy feels a bit disingenuous, all parahumans are at the mercy of their shard, but the shards almost never "cheat" to give a host an advantage.

So if she flooded his brain with calming chemicals and made him forget he was in a fight, he would stop ramping up and start reverting.

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If I recall correctly, Nozomi's whole issue with Lung is that his brain changed a lot and at a fast pace. It's probably something like that she can't apply changes fast enough to keep up with how quickly his brain changes, not as she is now, because she has to adjust her calculations to account for Lung's altered mind, but then Lung's mind alters again, so she has to start over, so on and so forth.

As for calming him down... I don't think it works like that, solely because if that was how it worked surely somebody would've noticed the instant Gallant shot a Calm Down Beam at Lung. (i mean, it had to have happened at some point, right?)

 

[famfrit]

Whats stopping her from just knocking him unconscious and keeping him like that?

Saying Lung is at his shards mercy feels a bit disingenuous, all parahumans are at the mercy of their shard, but the shards almost never "cheat" to give a host an advantage.

So if she flooded his brain with calming chemicals and made him forget he was in a fight, he would stop ramping up and start reverting.

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Going to guess you've not read ward but from what we know it's the opposite shards tend to get very attached to their hosts and look to tip the scales in their favour which includes doing lots of things that count as cheating. May's for example recognises at one point that the nature of Narwhal's forcefields means it'd hard counter her sting explosions so tweaks her emotions to get her to be cautious of them and subtly use it on one during the posturing to learn that and Cradle's outright rigs his cluster setup to heavily favour Cradle and sets it up so most of the mechanics will be obvious to him and not the other 3 and then sets up him learning the rest.

 

[veekie]

Note that Lung's ramping has very little to do with how much HE wants it and everything to do with how much his shard thinks he should be packing at the moment.
Lung staring at a target and working himself into a rage so he transforms is in actuality Lung focusing his attention on a target and then letting the shard know to tune in and see how much power to dispense.

 

[Iridesce]

Once again the solution to Lung is to alpha strike him. If in his untransformed state his brain is close enough to human baseline it doesn't matter if he is immune while transformed. He detransforms when unconscious, so if he's knocked out he won't be having his brain changed.

 

[BlackCoat13]

I think the only known ones are: Dauntless and arguably Crawler. In the entire world. That's how rare a list it is.

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And the main character, whose range has essentially doubled by the Behemoth fight. Every power grows. The more you use it, the more you win fights, the more you are in tune with the Shard. And I'm not talking about the Sechen range. Imp started off having to struggle her own power from being an always on power at the start of her own career and by her WORM epilogue is able to flash it up and down in split seconds, and by the the time of WARD is able to talk to people without dropping her power at all.

Scion Cape powers will gradually over time grow is small increments. Cauldron powers will not, the user gets more skilled / experienced at using them, but the Shards will not perform minute adjustments. Not emergency adjustments like how Valefor's power went from working through his eyes to working through his voice after Taylor removed his eyes as vectors, or consistency changes like Victoria's Fragile One adjusting her shield to cover her shambled body pile shape, or cluster mates winning / stealing each others power connections, but outright growth in power. Vista also demonstrated this with her powers being faster and more reactive by the time of WARD.

Though you're technically correct. Powers whose own functions include substantial growth in power (without being a Tinker) as a function of the power itself are very rare. And include Glaistig Uaine, who gets more powerful with collected shadows, alongside Moord Nag whose projection gets more powerful the more it kills, The Butcher, Chevalier whose combined items grow in power -
Huh it's not that rare after all.
And I'd argue that Dauntless sort of doesn't count anyways, because his category of 'Totemic Trump' has a couple other examples. Like that one lady whose name I can't remember who gains enhanced abilities based on wearing animal pelts and trophies.

Then I'd argue about the Flint Quarantine Zone, which was caused by a Cape whose sole power was that he caused people around him to Trigger and who could cause triggers by touching them.

This is a link to a document with every canon cape in both WORM and WARD:

parahumanList - Edited by Wildbow

docs.google.com

 

[Shance]

Never understood the mentality of if you do this you are as bad as them. there is a difference bettween killing a serial killer, a slaver and rapist, and killing inocent people.

The girls are young, and I hope they do not have to, but the guilt that comes with it from people telling you, you are a monster for doing so even in self defense is harsh. there is no nuance in the take. Which comes from youth in general, but still. my peeve is in general, not here.

 

[drake_azathoth]

He gets mindwammied and doesn't actually smoke the cig, it either burns out and he lights a new one, or goes out and he relights it

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My guess is that she is mindwhammying everyone to ignore her anyway and she doesn't want to deal with cigarette smoke, so the first time he 'lit a cigarette' he didn't actually do it but just thought he did along with the other two in the room. Then after Mental Out leaves, he's free to light his cigarette again and does so without thinking about why his cigarette wasn't lit before.