A fantasy addict triggers with the world's most inconvenient Tinker/Thinker combo, and finally gets a chance to use all those fencing and HEMA classes she took in high school. In a city infested by nazis, human traffickers, Fury Road rejects, and Max Anders's All-American hero team, maybe what Brockton really needs is a knight in shining armor.
But be wary: with great knowledge comes great clarity, and sometimes there's a reason no one looks behind a curtain. Maybe, just maybe, it might be better that the stagehands wear all-black.
A fantasy addict triggers with the world's most inconvenient Tinker/Thinker combo, and finally gets a chance to use all those fencing and HEMA classes she took in high school. In a city infested by nazis, slavers, and a PRT that acts more like a gang than some of the actual gangs, maybe when Brockton really needs is a knight in shining armor.
But be wary: with great knowledge comes great clarity, and sometimes there's a reason no one looks behind a curtain. Maybe, just maybe, it might be better that the stagehands wear all-black.
It's time to get medieval on Brockton's ass.
Of all the Tinker powers in the world, why did I have to end up with this one?
Why couldn't I be one of the normal Tinkers? Hell, I don't even need my specialty to be particularly strong, just not… this!
Armsmaster can make incredible miniaturized pieces of technology, like a sci-fi swiss army knife.
Dragon can build whole armies of mechas and battlesuits strong enough to tangle with an Endbringer.
Hero can build just about anything, and even String theory (villain that she is) an build lasers strong enough to shoot down the moon.
Even Squealer can take a dumpster full of old TVs and turn them into a hovercar.
But me? I get to build swords made from other people's body parts.
…
Okay, it's not that bad.
They don't have to be dead or anything, or even seriously injured. Just a little blood will do, and then I can incorporate some of the "essence" of their powers into my blades.
I mean, without a significant sacrifice those weapons won't be very strong, but still.
And as to how those powers get connected to the weapons?
Well… I'm half-convinced it's just me seeing what I want to see, given that I've always had a soft spot for Glaistig Uaine, but, well… I can see Faeries.
Yes, Faeries. The invisible, supernatural "agents" of powers that the Faerie Queen attributed all parahuman phenomena too, whose bargains would let mortals channel their great power in exchange for feeding the Fae's amusement…
I can see them.
Okay okay, I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out.
Even before all this, I was always skeptical of the stigma aimed at "magic-y" capes.
Because really, who's to say that powers aren't granted by Faeries? They say that sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic, but they forget that means the opposite as well: magic is just insufficiently understood science. The alchemists of medieval Europe were wizards as well… up until they gained a good enough understanding of their craft that "alchemy" became "chemistry", and entered the realm of serious, respectable fields of study.
Whatever the source of powers is, it's obviously so far beyond our understanding that we have no way of even beginning to approach it, so why not use the schema of magic, instead of the one of quantum physics? It's not like one is going to be any more accurate than the other: it's like we're all just cavemen, having serious, reasoned discussions to figure out whether thunder is caused by the snoring of Frost Giants or Raijin beating on his drums.
Also, y'know… I can see them.
That kinda blows any theorizing out of the water.
But regardless of what they are, the core of my power seems to involve the Fae: seeing them, hearing them, speaking to them, and above all pacting with them.
Yes, that's the real core of my power, granted to me by my Faerie: the ability to use the blood, bones, or other body parts of any cape to connect with their Faerie and create a pact with them, letting them bless a forged tool with a fraction of their power.
This can range from a mild blessing, gained with a small bit of blood, to powers that could make the career of a low-level hero or villain, gained through a sacrifice of a bone or a limb, to a masterwork ken blessed with abilities that can rival the stronger capes in the city, created by quenching my works in the blood from a cape's heart.
Yes, like I said… swords made from other people's body parts.
Moving this quest over from ficlive, because my work schedule makes a forum quest easier to manage.
Votes NO VOTING BY PLAN
First Name (none from popular canon characters for the sake of clarity):
[ ] Octavia
[ ] Guinevere
[ ] Dakota
[ ] Alexandra
[ ] Write-In
Last Name:
[ ] Ravencroft
[ ] Frost
[ ] St. Cloud
[ ] Knightwood
[ ] LeBlanc
[ ] van Leeuwenhoek
[ ] Write-In
School
[ ] Arcadia (Wards, Vicky, Amy, virtually no OCs)
[ ] Brockton University (Crystal, Sabah, Othala, Bakuda, Professor Annette Hebert (RIP Danny), a few OCs)
[ ] Winslow (Taylor, Sophia, Wards!Emma, some OCs)
[ ] Write-In
Who died to make our first masterpiece? Warning: powers will NOT be a one-to-one equivalent in the slightest, there will be massive differences in power expression. For instance, killing Clockblocker would get us an Alexandria-tier invincible sword, not one that can freeze things in time. See "Forging Mechanics" for more info. No write-ins
[ ] Crusader (Empire)
[ ] Oni Lee (ABB)
[ ] Vex (Teeth)
[ ] Grue (Marche)
The power of the crafted item depends on the "significance" of the sacrafice used to forge it, which is determined via a combination of how difficult it is for the victim to lose, and how difficult it was for us to obtain.
For example, a normal cape's arm would make an extremely powerful, high-level blade (Masterwork Quality), since it's a huge sacrafice . But Alabaster's arm would offer us shit-quality blades, since it's really easy to chop his arm off, and he regrows it in 4 seconds. Lung's arm, on the other hand, would produce somewhat powerful blades, although nothing too powerful, because Lung's ability to regrow his arm would be balanced out by the difficulty we'd have in separating it.
Also, having another cape like Othala or Panacea will lower the significance, but ONLY if the body part is still difficult for us to obtain. So no organ farming.
Items can also be used by the "donators" as a way to focus, refine, strengthen, or otherwise channel their powers. It is unknown to us at this time if this will help capes with unstable powers gain control.
Items come in three categories: Weapons, Shields, Armor, and Jewelry/Accessories
The tiers of sacrifice (and the resulting blades) are as follows
Beginner Quality
options: nothing
no parahuman material required, but can only use very basic cantrips
Cantrip Enchantments: 1, and that's ALL we get
Power Rating: 1, 2 if you're lucky
Novice Quality
options: blood, skin fingernails, etc.
Cantrip Enchantments: 1
Power rating: 1 (depending on power of source shard)
Apprentice Quality
options: teeth, chunks of flesh, etc
Cantrip Enchantments: 1
Rating: 2-3 (depending on power of source shard)
Journeyman Quality
options: ear, large chunks of flesh, large quantity of blood, etc.
Cantrip Enchantments: 1
Rating: 3 (depending on power of source shard)
Professional Quality
options: minor crippling (nose, fingers, hand, foot, massive quantity of flesh, near-fatal quantity of blood)
Cantrip Enchantments: 1
Rating: 4-5 (depending on power of source shard)
Expert Quality
options: major crippling (arm, leg, eye, both hands, etc.), or the body of a cape not killed by us
Cantrip Enchantments: 2
Highest level of power, item has power equivalent in strength to full-strength power of host.
Rating: 5-6 (depending on power of source shard)
Supreme Masterwork
options: a human life, taken by us
Cantrip Enchantments: 2, quality increased
Initially identical in power level to a normal Masterwork, a Supreme Masterwork blade distinguishes itself by being able to slowly grow in power over time, unlocking
The best way I can describe the Fae are… strange. Strange and, more than anything, diverse.
If I ever had any doubts about the sources of powers being inhuman, triggering laid them all to rest. After all, it's a bit hard to think of the being behind someone's powers as an "agent" (the "logical and rational" scientific name for faeries that totally isn't referring to magical power-granting beings at all, guize, we promise) when you can actually see them.
An "agent" is a nice lady in a yellow skirt who helps plan your vacation. A Faerie is a blob-like, thousand-limbed biomonstrosity named Queen Shaper, constantly weeping blood and ooze that exists in more dimensions than the human mind can comprehend, a trillion tiny hairs inside each of a hundred misshapen mouths ready to rend living things to bits and reshape them in its own unholy image.
Yeah, I am never looking at Panacea the same way again.
Good god girl, how do you fit all that junk in your trunk?
By "junk" of course I mean "raw power" and by "trunk" I mean "decision to act solely in a limited capacity as a healer".
Also, ass. Say what you will about Amy Dallon, but that girl is thicc.
That's just one of what are doubt doubt a nigh-infinite number of Faeries though, each as different from the others as a zebra is from a shark. For example Luminous Archer, the Faerie that pacted with Laserdream (saw her patroling my neighborhood) was about as far from her cousin's as it's possible for a Fae to be.
While of a much lower rank, as indicated by the lack of titles in the name of his current incarnation (don't ask me how I know, I just know), he was a lot more… well, normal-looking, if it's possible for a Faerie to look normal. Instead of an eldritch horror like her cousin's, Laserdream's Fae was a lithe, semi-human figure, like one glowing mass of crimson and pink light, whose hands seemed to be constantly pulling at a bow.
He also seemed more passive than the near-overbearing Queen Shaper, content to gaze over his host's shoulder while offering neither help nor harm, bane not boon.
Don't mistake this for me saying the most powerful Fae are also the most active or eldritch though, I think the case of New Wave is a mere coincidence. For example Fleet-Footed Messenger of the Scales, Velocity's contractor, is one of the weakest I've ever seen, barely a page even in the lowest Fae court, and he looks like a blurrier Hookwolf: a barely-perceptible blur of constantly-shifting spikes and edges.
But that is the nature of my power: to take these multifaceted beings and harness their power, forging them into new forms to suit my needs.
I smile as I look down at her, my weapon, my masterpiece… Mirror Devil.
Unlike the other tools I've forged — things with minor cantrips at best — this blade was powerful, as fitting of one blessed by the whole of a Faerie's might.
Forged in fire, quenched in the cooling heart of a slaving gangster and former head of the Japanese Triads, it captured his last dying breaths in in the smoky metal, trapping his spirit and using it to forge a link between the steel and his Faerie.
I have to hide a smirk. I couldn't think of a more fitting end for the bastard
When I first started mixing bits of his fat into the molten steel, I thought I'd get a mace that could shoot clones of itself, or a helmet that would let me teleport.
But no, it seems that when I used his blood and bone to seal a pact with his Faerie, something in the process fundamentally altered that connection. Pattern Alchemist of the Self, as I divined her name in this incarnation — I don't know if it's part of my power of just my imagination, but their genders and the name of their current forms just come to me — seems to be a tricky sort, and one who would never make the same pact twice.
I must say, working this closely with a Faerie is an illuminating experience. If I thought I could gather details from observing the Fae as they empowered their contractors, that was nothing like what I could glean from a full, uninterrupted scan of them when they're still lingering around their previous host's corpse.
Apparently, despite common misconceptions, Oni Lee's power wasn't really teleporting. No, it seems the "teleportation" aspect of it is more incidental than anything, a little treat Pattern Alchemist gave him to make his power more versatile. If anything, the Fae seemed almost sheepish about it, like it was tacked on at the last minute and not very well thought-out, which-… which actually goes a long way towards explaining just how robotic Oni Lee seemed, like a barely functioning automaton: I can't imagine going through a wormhole is easy on your body, let alone one as jury-rigged as Pattern Alchemist of the Self is making hers out to be.
What? Just because I believe in magic doesn't mean I can't talk about wormholes. Sufficiently advanced science, people.
Anyways, regardless of Pattern Alchemist's reduction of her contractor's brain to a ball of gelatin with the consistency of melted beeswax, her main purpose was actually something I didn't expect.
It's… there's no real word for it in English, but the closest I can get to the concept is something like "pattern imposition".
It takes the higher-order pattern (or "vibe", if you're one of the cool young'ins) of something more complex (like a human mind, a body, or a set of grenades) and superimposes it over something more simple (like a lump of carbon ash), letting the latter temporarily function as the former despite possessing none of the physical parts.
In any case, I think it's less appropriate to say Oni Lee made "clones" of himself that disintegrated into ash, as is stated on his entry in the PHO wikia, and more that he created piles of ash which he temporarily possessed by a spirit of himself (and whatever he happened to be carrying).
I would reckon that if Pattern Alchemist had been feeling a bit different on the day Oni Lee triggered, he very easily could have ended up with a Tinker power, something which let him raise inanimate objects into sentience.
How this ended up manifesting in the end product is a bit complicated, but I'm happy with the result.
Mirror Devil can "copy" the pattern of anything it touches, and store it within an internal memory. Later, I can shoot out projectiles made of the thing it's copied, made by applying part of that pattern to ash to form a construct.
For example, once I finished my masterpiece, quenching it inside Oni Lee's heart, I stuck it inside some of the molten iron from one of my other projects.
Unfortunately, Mirror Devil couldn't actually absorb the iron — I expect I'd need to form a contract with a different Faerie to add that effect — only copy it once placed inside… but that didn't matter as much, given how once I lifted it out I could make gouts of molten iron fly across the room.
Hmm, I wonder, would this apply to the effects of parahuman powers as well? I get the feeling that it does.
Wait, does that mean Oni Lee could have replicated Tinkertech?
I shudder at the thought of an infinite army of Onis kitted out like Hero.
Unfortunately, my initial excitement with the discovery died down some when I realized I wouldn't be finding Clockblocker and getting a shortcut to invincible quantum-locked waves of ash.
It seems that the patterns get stored in a pool of sorts within the metal, one with limited capacity. Some patterns, like the heat of a candle flame, took up barely any space at all, while others, like the red-hot molten metal of my forge, took up quite a bit more. Some, like — I suspect — Clockblocker's frozen objects, would take up the entirety of the pool, if not exceed its capacity entirely.
AN: Yes, I decided to make Oni Lee's shard something more than bog-standard teleportation or cloning, given his ability to replicate the effects of Tinkertech. What do you guys think of the solution? Oni Lee's shard, [Overlay 178.Carbon 2], is intended as a sort of quick patch for injuries in the entity, like a temporary stem cell to keep things functioning until a more dedicated fix can be implemented.
For reference, if Crusader had won, the result would have been a intangible sword-whip which would only become tangible when standing still, giving it insane telefragging abilities. If you're thinking "this sounds like Shadow Stalker's power", you're right! They're siblings, which would drive Crusader insane if he knew.
There was a tie in the voting between Arcadia and Brockton U… but then I remembered hey, Vicky canonically is dual-enrolled and attends a parahuman studies class at BBU, so we can get the best of both worlds!
Minor Effect Addon
[ ] Ash Control
[ ] Recall to hand
[ ] (WHIP ONLY) Telekinesis to make whip prehensile
[ ] Disguise for civilian identity
[ ] User Strength Enhancement
[ ] User Dexterity/Accuracy Enhancement
[ ] Write-In (cantrip-level effects only)
Weapon Style (think practically about how we'd use the weapon to shoot bolts/gouts/slashes of fire, water, etc. guys, not just the coolness factor)
[ ] Sword
[ ] Whip
[ ] Axe
[ ] Bow (energy arrows)
[ ] Write-In (subject to veto)
What to copy? Mirror Devil Capacity is 0/100, so we can fill it to the brim with mundane stuff.
[ ] Write-In
Family
[ ] Orphan
[ ] Arrrrrphan (Orphan, but one of our parents was a Pirate)
[ ] 1 Parent
- [ ] Single Dad
- [ ] Single Mom
[ ] 2 parents
- [ ] Mom and Dad
- [ ] Two Moms
- [ ] Two Dads
Friends/Associates (1st place will be our BFF, 2nd will be a normal friend, and 3rd will be and acquaintance). If you pick a villain, they'll have a sympathetic backstory. this definitely isn't a shipping poll in disguise
[ ] Crystal Pelham / Laserdream
[ ] Vicky Dallon / Glory Girl (dual-enrolled)
[ ] Sabah al-Basri / Parian
[ ] Grace Tanaka / Bakuda
[ ] Izumi Eguchi (Lung's daughter, Azula expy)
[ ] Eve McCarron / Othala
[ ] Prof. Annette Hebert
[ ] Sherrell Bailey / Squealer
[ ] Write-In (must be a character at Brockton Bay University)
[X] Sword
[X] Recall to Hand
[X] Arrrrrphan (Orphan, but one of our parents was a Pirate)
[X] 2 parents
[X] 2 Siblings
- [X] Boy and girl
AN: since I know people only voted for the Pirate option because of the gimmick, I'm going to combine it with the #2 option, which was both parents being alive.
My name is Guinevere de Winter, and I'm a parahuman.
I know, I know, with a comic book name like that how could I not be one, right? Trust me, I've heard it all before.
Scratching my sides, I sit up in bed, yawning, still tired after my long night of building my equipment. One thing they never tell you about being a Tinker? It's damn hard.
I may be lucky with my materials — it's not exactly hard to find scrap iron in the bay, after all, and my power-granted knowledge of metallurgy makes it a breeze to refine it into something usable — but industrial forges don't exactly grow on trees, you know? I had to break into something like two dozen warehouses to find one that fit me needs, and even after I found it I had to spend a good week and a half constructing some very basic noise-dampening charms to place around the anvil.
The last thing I want is to have some homeless guy hear me banging away, and then run off to tell the March, Empire, or (god forbid) the Teeth.
Unfortunately, all that precaution takes time, and a whole lot of sleepless nights, and I've been more oozing out of my bed than anything these past few days.
I groan something unintelligible as I stumble down the stairs, almost running in to my younger brother Patrick at the bottom.
The first thing that most people think of when they see Pádraig Sétanta de Winter is "tall". Standing at six foot five at the tender age of sixteen, he takes after our Dutch father more than anyone in the family, with sandy blonde hair and light green eyes.
Despite this, he has the most Irish name out of all of us, although he usually chooses to go by the English version when not talking to our mother's side of the family. What? Our mother is very proud of her culture, and she felt the need to to overcompensate after my father got to name me, and chose the name of one of his oldest friends who happened to be *shudder* Welsh.
But c'mon, "Patrick Setanta"? A bit on the nose there, ma, might as well name him Finn McCool or something.
"Guinevere? Patrick says, snapping his fingers in front of my eyes, "you in there?"
I grumble, shoving his arm away. "Fuck off, Pad."
"Long night?" he says with a smile, handing me a cup of coffee.
God bless this boy.
I close my eyes in ecstasy as I gulp down the black brew. Ah, coffee, nature's sweetest narcotic.
I groan once I finish the cup. "Like you wouldn't fucking believe."
"Anything I can help with?"
I have to hide my grimace, cursing my self. Shit.
"Ah… no, it's just college stuff. A lot of shit to study, you know. Calculus is kicking my ass".
Patrick just hums, clearly skeptical, but gives in with a roll of his eyes once I make it clear no answer will be forthcoming.
"Gwen…" he eventually says, pursing his lips, "you know, if you're… involved in anything, anything you want out of… I'm here for you, alright?"
Sweet Christ he thinks I'm falling in with the gangs.
"Pad…" I say.
"It's just… You've been really distant really, and I know you've been staying out late. You know you can trust me, right?"
I envelop him in a hug. "I swear Patrick, it's nothing like what you're thinking. It's just… it's complicated. Give me a while, ok? I'll tell you when I'm ready."
He bites his lip. "…are you seeing someone? Because you know I know you're gay, right?"
I roll my eyes. "No little brother, I promise I'd tell you if I was seeing someone."
"Alright…" he says, clearly uncertain, "just… just make sure you tell me before anything happens you can't take back, alright?"
I grimace, but nod.
"Speaking of girlfriends" I say, trying to break the awkward silence, "what is this I hear about you and Victoria Dallon going to a party together?"
I huffs in exasperation, but can't prevent a red tinge from coming to his cheeks. "Honestly, it was nothing, really. Dean was busy with his dad's company, and all her other male friends were on vacation."
I huff. "I still can't believe you get two weeks off for Spring Break."
He raises an eyebrow. "You guys only got one?"
"One?" I snort, "we got five days."
He crosses his chest solemnly. "God bless Arcadia's lottery system, I guess. Or Gallant, since the only reason they picked me was because they needed a few other tall blonde white guys. Otherwise I'd have to slum it at Winslow with you filthy peasants."
"We're literally from the same family."
"I've always thought aristocracy was more a state of mind than anything."
"Huh, no wonder the Empire's costumes look like shit, then."
He chuckles, and we fall into a comfortable silence.
"Dean…" I say eventually, "that's Dean Stansfield, right? The son of the investment banker?
He nods.
"Jesus Chri-"
We both stop wide-eyed, eyes darting around looking for our mother, despite knowing she's out at work. Constance O'Connolly is a very devout woman, and tolerates no blasphemy in her house.
We both relax after a second, suppressing shudders at the memories of spoon-whippings.
"Seriously though" I say with a roll of my eyes. Do the the lunchladies serve escargot and caviar, or something? What do rich people even eat?"
"It's nothing like that" he says with scoff, "normally, we get basic stuff, like fillet mignon, or organic beef noodle soup, nothing special."
My jaw drops, before his blank looks breaks and he bursts out laughing.
"You asshole!" I shriek, hitting him on the arm, "you honestly- ugh!"
"Y-You honestly thought-…"
I roll my eyes as he doubles over in laughter, giving a huff of fond exasperation.
A minute or so later he's calmed down, wiping tears from his eyes. "F-Fillet Mignon, really?"
"Shut up" I say with a pout.
"Make me."
Before I can slap him again, a voice pipes up from the top of the stairs.
"Hey! What are you two laughing about in there!"
I roll my eyes as Patrick snickers. "Nothing, Rosie!"
With an incredibly adorable growl, our little sister stomps down the stairs. "You better not be talking about me, you hear?"
Roisin (or "Rosie", as everyone calls her) is an adorable little nine year old, with our mother's bright red hair, and a matching temper.
She harrumphs, tilting her head up. "I don't know…"
I roll my eyes. "Is there anything I can do to convince you?"
"Well…" she says, an expression of concentration on her face, "a forehead kiss might help…"
I snort, leaning down, and pressing a kiss to her forehead as she beams.
She looks up at me with an angelic expression. "Okay big sister, I forgive you now!"
Patrick snorts, but obligingly leans down to give her a kiss. "Thank you big brother!"
"No problem, Rosie."
"Alright!" she says, clapping her hands together, "now what's for breakfast!"
"You're nine Rosie, you can make breakfast yourself."
She turns to me, eyes wide. "B-But b-big s-sister… the counter… i-it's so far awaaaaaaay~… Can you pleeeaaaaassssseeeee make me some Cheerios?"
I try to hold out for as long as I can, but her puppy dog eyes are strong. "T-The counter is closer to you, Rosie."
"B-But you're so tall, and I'm a shortie! I can't r-reach all the way up there!"
Finally, as her eyes start to water, I give in. "Fine. I'll make you cereal."
She brightens up instantly. "Thanks big sister! You're the best!"
I roll my eyes at her very obvious duplicity, but move to make cereal anyways.
Damn brat.
Also, the friend votes were all tied up, so we're having a second round! I'm going to add a bit of specificity, because — for example — I know some people wanted Annette in a more mentor-ish role, but NOT a BFF Annette.
Before voting on Laserdream, just be aware our brother goes to Arcadia, and runs in the same social circles as Vicky and Dean. In case you're voting for her so we have the New Wave connection.
AN: Short one today, just wanted to bang it out. We'll get Bakuda in the next chapter.
Saying goodbye to Patrick and Rosie, I step outside our small little house, walking out to meet my ride. As I approach, a massive man rolls down the window of the bright orange 1994 Oldsmobile Cutlass, jerking his arm back and forth in something an epileptic grandmother might say vaguely resembles a wave.
"Jenny!" the figure inside yells, stepping out to give me a big hug, "how you doin' bro? How's your weekend?!"
Chad Maximus Gaines is an… interesting figure. We met during one of my high school HEMA classes, which he mistakenly signed up for thinking the flier said "HE-MAN".
To quote him: "In all caps because the paper was being intense".
But despite the misunderstanding, Chad soon became enamored with Historical European Martial Arts, calling it a wonderful break from his normal routine. After all, he said, he may box at the gym daily, but HEMA is boxing… with swords.
Again, his words, not mine.
But despite his… eccentricities, Chad is a good friend, and more than that, a good person. As a blonde-haired, blue-eyed bodybuilder in Brockton Bay, you'd expect a man like him to be all up in the Hookwolf's business, but no: Chad's a momma's boy, through and through, and Becky Gaines (formerly Rebbecca Stacy, of Girls Gone Wild fame) raised her son to respect everybody, no matter what they look like.
"My weekend was… interesting. I'll say that."
"Yeah, me too bro. Mad interesting weekend."
You know with how he's constantly calling me "bro", I originally thought he was insulting me for being gay… then I realzied that's just the way he is after he stubbed his toe and yelled "what the fuck bro?" at his coffee table.
"What'd you do this weekend, Jenny?"
I keep telling him not to call me that, but he never listens. "Nothing much, just stayed up late a bit studying. Learned some interesting stuff."
He nods. "Oh, I totally get that bro. I was in History yesterday, did you know the Mexicans invented basketball like a million years ago? Insane."
"…you mean Aztecs?"
"Nah, the Mexicans. Professor Magellan kept spelling it wrong in the notes though, he forgot a letter."
"You mean Professor McMillian?"
"Yeah him the mustache dude."
"Anyways" he says, "it was really crazy seeing their setup. Did you know they had the hoops sideways? That's gotta be murder on their triceps, you'd get mad decreases in muscle efficiency. It probably would have made their tendons all fucked up in a decade, like they were deadlifting without their legs."
I just nod along.
"Yeah, it was nuts. I asked Magellen 'hey dude, how did the Mexicans not all get wrist problems? Their form is totally wrong', and you know he got mad at me? Like, it's not my fault some dude a billion years go didn't understand physiotherapy, bro, don't get mad at me."
Smile and nod, Gwen.
"Oh, and did you know those guys like to eat other dudes? That made it make a lot more sense, since those types of moves make more sense if you're moving laterally like you'd need to do to get someone's heart."
I raise an eyebrow. McMillian is a known Empire sympathizer, and the faculty adviser for the college's youth wing of the Empire-adjacent American Patriots Society. I can't imagine he was unbiased in his discussion of Mesoamerican history, especially not with such a blood example of their "backwardsness" in front of him.
"It was weird though, he started talking about how savage it was to kill dudes? I don't get it though, there's nothing savage about human sacrifice. Like, scoring a three-pointer from across the court? That's fucking savage, bro. Benching 800? You're a fucking savage. Punching some dude so hard his heard explodes? …Actually that is kinda rad, now that I think about it."
I roll my eyes. Typical. It's not enough that the A.P.S. has to be the largest civil organization in the city, they have to start spreading their rhetoric here on campus too.
Chad continues to tell me about the "rad Mexicans" he has to do a project on, giving a masters-level breakdown of the exact physiology of human sacrifice rituals and how they effect the perpetrator's body, while simultaneously ignoring basic things like "time" and "distance" when it comes to discussing the history of Mesoamerica. I can't say I've ever heard the "Maya were Samurai" thesis before, but according to Chad, it's "100% confirmed" as a historical fact because of how "metal" they both were, and because of the technical similarities in their martial arts styles.
He really is hopeless for anything that isn't fitness.
While he rambles, I fell into a comfortable silence, and gaze up at the Faerie above his head: a bright pink and red pulsing figure of pure muscle, flexing and preening beneath my sight.
What? I'm not exactly surprised. Chad might be the least subtle man this side of Guy Fieri, it's a bit of an open secret at this point that he's the Protectorate hero Browbeat; this is just confirmation.
Honestly, it's actually pretty fitting: a Faerie granting the power is to grow stronger the more the contractor exercises with no as-of-yet-found upper limit, given to a gym nut with a protein powder addiction.
Also, the "healing a lost limb overnight" thing probably helps with how many accidents he gets into.
Looking at his contractor — Cultivator of Muscular Growth — I can see that he's a distant descendant of Panacea's Queen Shaper, far weaker than his sire. I guess all I know the answer those PHO threads speculating about Chad's potential upper limit: unlike Dauntless's Dragon King, it doesn't look like Cultivator of Muscular Growth has the power to bring his contractor to anywhere near Triumvirate level.
…Actually, now that I'm imagining Chad with Alexandria's powerset, I'm suddenly very thankful that's the case.
After a few more minutes of light conversation, we finally arrive at campus, and we part ways.
AN: How do you guys like my version of Browbeat? Yes, I know he's a bit older, but his personality just doesn't work with a high school guy. Also, his power is a bit different, but he still has the same shard as canon: he even has the tactile telekinesis, he just doesn't think about physics enough to wonder why he's suddenly able to pick up cars by their bumper without them tearing.
Alright, we're voting on an out-of-costume character image this time
AN: As one reader astutely pointed out, there's no real reason to have both Bakuda and an Azula expy, when Bakuda by herself is basically already a less exercise-y. So I decided to nix the "Lung's daughter" character, and just used Azula fanart for Bakuda's appearance.
On my way to my first class I run into probably my closest friend on campus: Grace Tanaka.
The familiar sight of the physics/engineering double major warms my heart, her dour face serving as a reminder of some of the better times in my life, before… well, before this whole mess began.
I met her during the "Under the Sea" dance in Sophomore year at Winslow: she was moping by the drink table, scaring off anyone who tried to talk with her with her fierce scowl, and I was cruising around looking for cute girls to "befriend".
What? Fifteen year olds are chronically incapable of being subtle, even in a city with the Empire.
She tried shooting me down with all eloquence she reserved for the horny teenage boys flocking around her (admittedly very attractive) behind like flies on a wildebeest, but I pride myself on being a bit tougher than your average drooling dick-swinger, and so fired back with a few cutting remarks of my own. I insulted her family, her (lack of) friends, her appearance, and, if I'm recalling it correctly, made several highly unflattering allusions about her, our gym teacher, and the psychological scars left by her absentee father, and how she chose to fill them.
She responded by trying to strangle me, and a friendship was born.
Well, I know we're friends, even if she'll never admit it.
If I'm being honest though, I'm shocked our friendship has managed to last this long. Grace, for all her bright spots, is a self-admitted massive bitch, and I would have thought she'd have run me off long before now.
Or killed me and hid the body, either-or.
I pause a minute, noting a strange distortion above her head… a peeping Fae.
Interesting, it looks like Grace is part of the 10% of the population that has the potential to gain powers. I wonder if… no, best not even conider something like that, with Thinkers around. I don't want to be locked up in a dark little basement for the rest of my life, after all.
"Tanaka" I say blandly, doing my best to give her my usual smug smirk.. It's nice having someone who you know can take all your banter without flinching, and respond in kind.
"De Winter" she says in a flat voice, accompanied by an equally flat look, her eyes dead enough to be voids sucking out my soul.
What? I'm not being racist! Grace doesn't have soul-sucking pits for eyes because she's Asian, she has them because she's dead inside!
Unfortunately, it looks like said soul-sucking pits are a bit more observant than I give them credit for, and she notices something is off with me immediately.
Her amber eyes pierce me for a minute as I try to put up a front of normality, until eventually she sighs, and rolls her eyes.
"…Fine. What's wrong, Guinevere."
I shoot her a flat look. "I'm sure that must have been very hard for you."
She rolls her eyes again. "You have my sympathy, don't waste it on petty spite. Now, what happened."
I feel my shoulders tense. "What makes you think something happened?"
She stares at me, exasperated, arching a single brow.
Eventually, I cave. "Fine, fine. I've been having some late nights, some… stuff happened. Don't really want to talk about."
I shudder, remembering Oni Lee's rough hands, the sound of screams, the smell of gunpowder.
"…Alright" she eventually concedes, a minute frown on her face, "I suppose I can't make you say anything. Keep your secrets"
I have to hide a smirk at her classic Grace-ness. No "you can talk to me any time you want"s, or "I'm here for you"s: just a blunt analysis of the situation, treating it like it's a minor irritation on her path to glory.
I forcefully perk myself up, trying to change the subject.
"How'd you weekend go, then?"
The girl just grunts, giving me the side-eye. "I know what you're doing, you know."
"Doing what?" I smile beatifically.
She rolls her eyes, but long years of knowing her let me spot the almost non-existent upwards twitch of her lips. "Fine, whatever. But tone it down, I'm too tired today for your… perkiness." She hisses out the last word like she's Bruce Wayne talking about the man who killed his parents. "Go take your sociability to the glee club."
I roll my eyes, feeling myself relax as I slide into familiar banter. "My perkiness is just fine, thank you very much. I've certainly caught you looking enough times."
She rolls her eyes. "In your dreams, you thirsty slut."
I wink. "No, in your dreams, babygirl." We both chuckle at that.
In a shocking defiance of stereotypes, despite both being attracted to women — well, Grace said she's "as open to women as she is to men", so she might just be asexual — Grace and I have never really been all that interested in the other as a romantic partner.
I know, I know, all the baby lesbians are screaming "but Gwen, I have a crush on my straight best friend she can't possibly reciprocate, you have a gay best friend and don't even bother to have the common decency to steal her panties and sniff them in the shower? For shame!"
Yes, hypothetical readers, I know, it's a waste, but the chemistry has never really been there, you know? We're too similar.
"Anyways" I say with a chuckle, "what do you have against the Glee club? I've never understood your weird grudge."
She grimaces like the bartender just spit in her drink. "What's to understand? They're so… cheerful and peppy. Their name is literally 'the happy club', they have those big fake smiles, trying to get you to clap along and participate."
Again, I am in honest astonishment at how she manages to infuse ordinary words with more spite and disdain than a Confederate General talking about William T. Sherman.
I hum at her grumpiness, only resisting the urge to condescendingly pat her head thanks to the distance between us. "Couldn't you know just… ignore them? Like you do with literally everything and everyone else?"
The engineering student rolls her eyes. "Obviously not, you dullard. They're practically everywhere on this campus, B.U. has an infestation."
I quirk my brow. "Well, someone's parents forced them to go to eight years of choir practice. But actually, you might be right. Now that I think about it we do have a weirdly active musical scene here."
Sabah shoots me a flat look. "A, shut up, and B, yes we do, it's absolutely bizzare."
"I wonder why?"
Grace hums, looking pensive (well, as pensive as Grace gets). "Do you think all the kids that would go into theater are too worried about getting bullied, so they go with music instead? I've heard rock stars are bastions of heterosexuality, with their tours and fangirls and"—she gestures vaguely into the middle distance—"groupies, or what other ridiculous things they have."
I let out an earnest laugh at that, and pretend to not notice Grace's tiny smile of victory. "Well, you're not wrong. I can see some closeted gay guy tricking his dad into letting him learn showtunes on the piano by talking about how much pussy Billy Joel probably got."
Grace chuckles.
"After all," I continue, putting on a deep voice, "doesn't he want his son to be an ultra-masculine keyboard-playing rock star that gets all the chicks? Like Warren Zevon, or uh… Elton John? Jerry Lee Lewis? Maybe Freddie Mercur-… Jesus, are all famous rock keyboardists gay besides Billy Joel?"
"No. Kieth Emerson, Rick Wakeman, Geddy Lee…"
"…I don't know who any of those people are."
"You've never head of Yes?"
"Yes what?"
"No, 'Yes'. It was one of the most influential progressive rock bands of the seventies."
"…They chose to call themselves 'no yes'? Were they all high?"
"No, y-… That is incorrect, they chose to call themselves 'yes'. And given what I know of them, I wouldn't be surprised."
"Seriously, just like that. How the hell are they supposed to respond to questions? 'What's your band's name?' 'Yes.' 'I said what's your bands name.' 'Yes' 'No I said what's your bands name'!"
She shoots me a flat look, and I give her an equally impassive one in return.
What? It's a stupid name for a band.
She rolls her eyes and breaks our impromptu staring match.
Hah! De Winter 1 : Tanaka 0!
"Seriously though" I say, "I get playing in a band, but how the hell did they manage to convince the WASPs that a capella groups were an acceptable pastime for their good heterosexual boys? Traveling all over the country with a group of guys and singing showtunes, you literally couldn't be gayer if you held an orgy with all your friends dressed up like the Village People."
"Oh? You watch many of those?"
"Not a lot, but I actually did see one once. Which is more than enough, let me tell you."
She raises a silent eyebrow.
"I know, right! It was in the backroom of that gay bar down on Sullivan before it got burnt down, it was the wildest thing I'd ever seen. Here I am, trying to find the bathroom after three hours of buying drink after drink for pretty girls, and bam! It's the most homoerotic depitction of working-class and multiracial solidarity after those weird posters Khrushchev made for Mao."
"…would you like to explain that reference?"
"What? Is there something else you'd call an ethnically, diverse group representing a large swathe of various working-class professions all learning to cum together in harmony?"
"Have some tact, Guinevere."
"You know you love me."
"Patently false, I merely tolerate your presence."
"Bah! One day your tsun-tsun exterior will melt away, my sweet Cherry Blossom, and you will embrace your rightful place as my tradwife!"
We manage to hold serious expressions for about thirty seconds before breaking: me down into laughter, and her into a tiny, yet nonetheless present snort of amusement.
"Anyways" Grace says, shaking her head, "I'm fairly certain Freddie Mercury was actually one of you."
I scoff. "As if that matters."
She snorts. "…You seem remarkably eager to denigrate your own people"
"'My own people'? Who are you, gay Farrakhan? And Bisexual shmisexual, I'm just saying that Freddie was queerer than a twelve dollar bill, and that's all that should matter."
"Yes, I too agree that you are a 'fake gay', as they put it."
I continue, blithely ignoring her deadpan snark. "Also wait, wasn't Freddie Mercury indian? Shit yeah, he was, so so that leaves him right out our hypothetical suburban WASP-dad."
She stops, shooting me a strange look. "…Freddie Mercury was indian?"
I nod. "Oh yeah, his real name was Farroukh Bulsara. Seriously, look at a photo of young him, it's nuts how obvious it is once you're aware of it."
I patiently wait for her to google it on her end.
"…Jesus Christ, he's Indian."
"I know, right! And the APS opens almost every one of their rallies with We Are the Champions. Dumbasses."
She has to hold back a laugh at that, and I mentally tally another victory.
"He was Zoroastrian too, if I'm remembering right, it was crazy. Like, the most percent-of-a-percent-of-a-percent minority, and he become one of the world's biggest rock stars."
"There are still Zoroastrians? I thought they died out fifteen hundred years ago."
"That's what I said! But hey, go them. Good to know the better Christianity is still out there. Satan ain't got nothin' on Angra Mainyu".
"I feel like I should be offended at that."
"Why? I'm not offended, and I'm Catholic."
"…you realize I am also a Christian, yes? Also, I wasn't aware the Vatican had changed its stance on homosexuality."
"Oh not Vatican Catholic. I believe the Pope hasn't been legitimate since Vatican Two, and the true occupant of the Holy See is that dude in Florida who thinks god told him he was the new pope during an acid trip. Definitely the only legitimate church, all hail Pope Larry the First of Okefenokee, who's totally cool with lesbians as long as they're in porn."
She snorts at that, and I give myself another mental poin-… wait.
"…You're Christian?!"
"…"
"…"
"…Yes, I am. Is that surprising?"
I grimace as her eyes narrow "Uh…"
"Guinevere Octavia de Winter, is there something about me that would make you assume I'm not a Christian, the majority religion of most people in Brockton Bay?"
I grimace, full names. Oof. "…Anything I say in response to that is gonna make me seem racist, isn't it?"
She holds up her fingers with a raised eyebrow. "A little bit, yeah."
"Fuck it, let's double down then, go for gold. Have you ever noticed how black people drive like-"
"Guinevere?"
"Yes, my best and dearest Asian-American friend, whose culture I respect immensely?"
"Shut up, please."
"Better men than you have tried, Grace."
"…I am a woman."
"Oh I know, I'm not a soy SJW gender libcuck who does pronouns. It's just that every woman who's tried to shut me up has been better than you, so you're only superior to the men."
"…I choose to take that as a compliment."
"It wasn't meant as one."
"Irrelevant."
With that, we fall into a companionable silence, just enjoying each others' presence.
After a minute or so, I pipe up. "Okay okay, so hear me out."
"No."
"Statistically, most Japanese immigrants are Buddhist."
"Gwen, no."
"So really, it isn't racist of me at all to assume you're a idolatrous statue-worshiping heathen, it's just common sense."
"…I feel like the second part of that sentence undermines the first."
"Why? You're Christian, right? Why are you offended?"
"You've insulted the vast majority of all people from my country, as well as large portions of my relatives and their ancestors."
"Why does that matter? It's not like they can hear us, they're not in heaven, the heretics."
"Jesus Christ, Gwen."
"He is the one true god, yes. Inshallah the whole world will see his light and join the ummah of Christ."
I can tell she's also holding in a laugh at this point, despite her legendary poker face and an eye-roll so intense it would send less healthy women into a coma. "That's arabic, you jus-… Just… no."
"You just can't handle my fax and logic, bro."
"I am of half a mind to kill you in a way that pays tribute to your god, 'bro'. I just need to find a place that sells wooden planks."
"Hah! 'Your god', I knew you weren't Christian!"
"Oh I'm a Christian, I just doubt you are. I don't want any part of a religion that would take someone like you as a follower."
I tip my head, and we break off into chuckles that gradually fade into another comfortable silence.
The nice, peaceful quiet goes on for about five minutes as we walk across campus, and I feel myself untensing as I breathe in the crisp morning air.
A few minutes away from my first class of the day though, I break the silence. "…In all seriousness, are you actually Christian? I can't tell if you were joking or not."
She shoots me a look of fond exasperation, and rolls her eyes. "Yes Guinevere, I am. My mother's Korean, and my father converted for him."
She frowns. "Well, culturally at least. I've never found much solace in the whole thing. Don't tell my parents, it would break their hearts."
I hum in agreement. "Yeah, I can see that. Kinda hard to believe in a god when you have fucking Kaiju destroying cities every three months."
I see Grace grimacing, to mirror the frown on my own face. Yeah, maybe let's not talk about Endbringers on our casual walk to morning classes.
This time, our silence is distinctly uncomfortable, and my mind races for ways to break it.
"Uh, hey" I begin awkwardly, turning towards her. "I don't think that's actually why you're an atheist, though."
She raises an eyebrow, but accepts the topic change for what it is. "Oh? Do tell?"
"Yeah" I say, picking up steam, "I think you just looked in the mirror one day, saw your face, and then realized no loving god would curse one of his children with a malady that horrific."
"…Are you implying I'm literally uglier than cancer?"
"Hey, if the shoe fits. Or doesn't fit, in your case, with those jawbreaker-cankles you got."
"Once again: Jesus Christ, Gwen."
"Don't repeat yourself"
"Oh, now who's blasphemous."
AN: No vote today, I've had a long few days and just wanted to get something out. I'm working on a fairly significant vote though, so stay tuned.
Powers:
Trump/Tinker 3-10: Ability to smith powerful items out of the body parts of other capes.
Shard: [Relay] (warrior version of Eidolon's shard)
Faerie: King of Ways
Shard:
Faerie:
Other Info
Nickname(s): Gwen, Jen
Age: 21
Gender: F
Ethnicity: White (Irish, Dutch)
Hair: Light blonde (dyed silver-white)
Eyes: Green
Kinsey Scale: 5 (mainly girls, but sufficiently girly boys)
Traits:
Incapable of Lying
Just like the Fae of old, Nivianë is physically incapable of saying falsehoods. She's not prevented from deception though, and is capable to talking her way around all but the most adept listeners without uttering a single lie. This is a limit hard-coded by her shard in exchange for the massive potential of her power, like Burnscar's apathy or Sophia's rage.
Real Name: Rachel Lindt
Summary: Formerly a vigilante focused on stopping dogfighting, no one really cared about her but Hookwolf, whose rings she repeatedly hits. She has a difficult time understanding or empathizing with humans, but adheres religiously to the letter and spirit of all agreements, seeing them as a way to make sense of the chaos of human interactions.
Powers:
Master 7-8: Can empower dogs to vastly increased size - up to the size of a shortbus - enhanced strength, durability, agility, and an asymmetrical covering of bony plates, spikes, exposed muscles, calcified flesh, prehensile tails, along with a slow but complete healing factor that eliminates exhaustion as a concern. Dogs are strong enough to bite through non-industrial steel like butter, fast enough to match cars at highway speeds, and durable enough to shrug off low-caliber bullets like flies.
Master 5: Can empower dogs to vastly increased size - on the order of three thousand or more pounds - enhanced strength, durability, agility, and an asymmetrical covering of bony plates, spikes, exposed muscles, calcified flesh, and prehensile tails
Shard: [Shaper 50.Growth 82.Reinforcement 5]
Faerie: Second Kennelmaster
Items: Canis Avenger
A silvery tungsten ring sculpted into the shape of a snarling wolf's head, this artifact gives Bitch the following abilities.
– Allows her to "specialize" her dogs' transformations in a specific direction, enhancing one aspect to the detriment of others
– Allows for an increased size of transformation, capping out at about 25 feet for a standard Rottweiler.
– Grants dogs's enhanced biosuits a slow healing factor. Can regenerate cuts, burns, gouges, etc. over the course of a battle, provides nearly limitless stamina as it also works on exhaustion.
– Drastically increases the base strength, speed, and durability of her enhanced hounds, to the point they can bite through weaker steel like butter, slam a person across a football field with a casual swipe of their paw, withstand almost a minute of a high-intensity flamethrower, and shrug off any projectiles smaller than anti-material rifles.
Peg Leg
– A dog-themed peg leg to replace her missing left foot, the end is a dog's paw.
– Able to be recalled to her leg within a limited radius if knocked away.
Eyepatch
– A felt eyepatch, it has a pattern of a dog's jaws woven on the front in enchanted aluminum wire. Grants the user an increased sense of balance
Tri-Corner Hat
– A tri-corner hat, increases user's night vision
This is the corporate team for the American Patriot Society.
The APS is the largest civil society organization within the Bay, a mostly white right-wing community org dedicated to ensuring and protecting the rights of "native-born Americans". Massivley swelled in popularity as America declined post-Scion, Brockton Bay is their seat of power in the Northeast. Has created an entire alternative social archetecture, with churches, clubs, youth orgs, etc. For those that know anything about the Weimar Republic, think of it like a right-wing version of the SPD. Multiple factions within the organization, some of which are close to several factions within the Empire. Contains everyone from wealthy corporate donors like the Stansfields to poor, racist evangelical christians who are scared of black people bringing crime to their neighborhood.
The major civilian backers and nominal heads are Max Anders, CEO of Medhall Pahrmeceutical, and Thomas Stansfield, head of the Stansfield Investment Group.
Desc: The leader of the American Patriot Society's associated cape team, his identity is a bit of an open secret ever since his father and sister were killed while in their own cape identities.
Nicknames:
Full Name: Maximilian Richard Anders
Nickname(s): Max, "The Kaiser"
Power:
Shaker 7: Can generate spikes of metal from any metal within a radius of himself. NOT MANTON LIMITED, includes metal inside body, including tinkertech.
Desc: The heavy hitter of her team, Kayden loves her jobas a hero, and passionately believes she is making the streets a better place for her daughter and stepson. She doesn't like Max's associations with those skinhead thugs in the Empire, but has been convinced it's an unfortunate necessity, as long as he keeps it away from her and the kids.
Civilian Info
Full Name: Kayden Jennifer Anders
Nickname(s): Kay (family and close friends), Karen (the staff of her local Starbucks), Soccer MILF (teen boys in her neighborhood)
Age: 36
Occupation: Interior Decorator
Lives: Brockton Bay, New Hampshire
Cape Info
Name: Purity
Faction: APF
Appearance
Ethnicity: White (Anglo-Saxon, Cherokee)
Hair Color: Brown
Eyes: Brown
Height: 5'3" (160cm)
Kinsey Scale
Believed: 0
Actual: 2
Powers:
Blaster 8, Energy: FWOOOSH, building go bye-bye
Notes: power fits the name way too well for me to do anything else
The team's obligatory black guy so no one can call them racist. Brian perfectly fits the image of one of the "good ones". Brian is willingly blind to the dark undertones of his own movement, because the APS was easily able to pull strings to get him Aisha's guardianship.
Real Name: Heith Anders (née Biermann)
Summary: She preferred to fight in a form where her head and torso were the size of buses, and able to tank grenades without a scratch, and her arms were the size of grenades, but able to punch buses in half
Powers:
Changer/Brute 5: Ability to increase and decrease the size of her body parts, the larger the more durable, and the smaller the stronger/more penetrating.
Shard: [Overlay 307.Bond*]
Faerie:
Summary: Dean's parents are friends with Max Anders, and are low-key supporters of the less radical elements of the APS.
Civilian Info
Full Name: Dean Montgomery Spencer Stansfield
Nickname(s): None
Father: Johnathan Spencer Sinclair Stansfield
Mother: Mary-Anne Duchess Stansfield (née McKinley)
Age: 18
Description: A semi-decent person, if a bit self-absorbed, his emotion-reading power lets him think he's the most emotionally inteelignt person in any room he's in. He confesses to Vicky while drunk that he's tired of how "boring" and predictable everyone else is, and likes how he can't read her.
He doesn't like how headstrong Vicky is, desiring to be the dominant partner in his relationships, partially thanks to the old-fashioned ideas he grew up with. But Vicky is just so assertive that he keeps folding, which she hates, because she feels like she has to make all the decisions.
He isn't too involved in the political side of his team, but doesn't hold any serious resentment towards it, even though his parents made him join it instead of the Wards (thanks to their longstanding ties with the APS). He holds vaguely conservative views based on the environemtn he grew up in, but honestly doesn't view himself as all that political. His greatest wish is for tensions between the Legion and the PRT to cool down, so they can focus on the real threats like the gangs instead of pointless political posturing.
His personal heroes are Gregory Peck, Cary Grant, and Clark Gable.
Powers:
– Blaster 4: Ability to generate from nothing, blades of varying design formed of almost any kind/alloy of ferrous metal, then impart velocity to them.
Shard: [Kinetic 80.Metallic 2.Ferrous]
Faerie:
Real Name: Heith Anders
– Breaker 6: Ability to change the sizes of various parts of her body, either choosing to make them large and durable, or small and more damaging.
Note: It was said that when Marquis killed her and her sister-in-law, she had a bus-sized body capable withstanding tank shells, and three-inch long arms capable of shredding through steel like butter
Powers:
– Blaster 3-7: Ability to materialize various objects made of many kinds of ferrous metals (but few alloys) in mid-air, and direct their flight. Force comes from gravity's effect on the falling object. She can "steer" objects with minor ferrokinesis, and even apply minor boosts to penetrating force at the cost of accuracy. Her most common choices are spears, blades, weights, and other bludgeoning implements. Variable rating depends on the "charge" of her power: by intensely concentrating for up to a minute she can charge her power, resulting in more objects being created. At her maximum, she is able to fill the sky with knives and bludgeons.
Born: Burger King Bathroom in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Lives: Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, USA
Cape Info
Name: Browbeat (originally wanted to call himself "the Chadinator", "Bro-fender", or "Beefsmash", was convinced otherwise by PR department)
Age: 22
Occupation: Assistant at Grodd's Gym
Shard: [Shaper 806]
Faerie Name: Cultivator of Muscular Growth
Appearance
Ethnicity: Nordic
Hair Color: Blonde
Eyes: Blue
Height: 6'8" (206 cm)
Kinsey Scale
Believed: 0
Actual: X (Narcissism)
Description: The ultimate himbo, Chad Gaines triggered when he thought he would be able to swim in freezing water and then couldn't. He immediately went back to try again when he regained consciousness, and attributed his newfound immunity to "whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger, bro!" It took him eight weeks to realize he was a cape. Despite being the model aryan übermensch, he never joined the empire because his mother once told him racism was bad, and she can't be wrong.
Also, he's too dumb to feel consistent malice, so if he was ever convinced to hate a certain group, it would last until the next time he went to the gym, where he'd completely forget about it after having a conversation about protein shakes. Owns a pet iguana, convinced it can understand him.
Greatest quotes:
"Ay yo spot me. *proceeds to dislocate arms* "
"Bring back Jim Crow? Nah bro I like lizards better, birds are fuckin' gay. I see all these dudes with eagles and shit all over them, and I'm just like: lizards are better bro, everyone knows that shit. I mean, can your fuckin' parrot smoke from a bong? I didn't think so."
"Bro, your dad kicked you out 'cause you kiss your boyfriend? That's bullshit bro, he's totally fuckin' gay. You wanna crash on my couch?"
"So there was this one time this ripped guy came up to me covered in some bird and skill tattoos, saying how I should be hanging out with the right sort. He handed me this flier with this weird plus sign on it, I just told him 'no thanks bro, I don't fuck with that math shit.'" GraphiteCrow
"Pain? Is that some sort of gay cheese? We don't eat that shit here, bro."
Traits: Himbo, too dumb to feel malice, lovechild of Kronk, every one of the guys from Jackass, and Andy Dwyer
Powers
Brute 5: No as-of-yet seen upper limit to permanant muscle growth and body refinement gained through exercise. Currently he is at Brute 5 strength, speed, etc., but this may be subject to change in future as he gets gains.
Brute 6: Can recover from nearly any non-fatal injury given enough time and calories. Speed is recovering a limb overnight.
Striker 2: Tacticle Telekinesis allows him a supernatural leverage on otherwise clumsy objects, enabling him to pick up things like cars without just tearing off the bumped
Real Name: Annette Anne Hebert
Shard: [Administrator]
Faerie: Queen Administrator
Summary: Triggering after the death of her husband, his Faerie moved to her. She is best known for the two massive paper wings she constructs behind her, which can act as both shields and clubs. It is speculated she has thin sheets of kevlar supported in between the paper in order to strengthen them.
Powers: (Basicaly Konan from Naruto)
Shaker 7: Ability to telekinetically control of slips of paper in a wide area around herself. Controlled paper is as durable as normal paper, so must be grouped together in order to create stronger structures. However, as long as the material integrity of the scrap is maintained, her power can push against it with great force. Think of a hydraulic press up against a scrap of paper that disengages if you tear the scrap of paper enough.
Breaker 5: Ability to transform parts of self into pieces of paper in order to heal/regenerate by replacing lost mass with paper. Damage taken in this form carries over to flesh unless it's healed, so she can't transform back if she's too damaged.
Thinker 4-6: Ability to multitask and individually control each piece of paper, and has perfect proprioception of where every slip of paper is. Will frequently leave tiny slips of paper floating freely in the air, letting her sense large air currents in an area including those created by moving objects.
Powers:
Thinker 3: danger sense
Brute 2: enhanced strength, reflexes, and proprioception
Blaster 5: ability to project strikes through solid mediums
Summary: The daughter of a senator, Brianna is a judgemental, high-achieving perfectionist.
Powers
Blaster/Shaker 7: Gravity manipulator who can create multiple conflicting gravity fields within an area.[11][12] Seemingly able to manipulate overlapping gravity environments to throw people around.
Thinker 2: Can percieve gravity wells
Notes: canon cape
Real Name:
Summary: decided that the safest place for him was under the protection of the PRT, since everyone knows the Triumvirate came down like the hammer of god the last time someone leaked one of the wards identities. Not heroic in the slightest, only really cares about his video games. "Friends" with Clockblocker. Homeschooled by PRT officials.
A gang made up of various racist criminals, the largest cape gang in the city.
Has murky connections with the more extreme parts of the APS.
Three major factions in the gang
Neutral: Victor, Sanctify/Othala (officially)
The KKK faction: Formed from rural white immigrants into Brockton, its main fous is on preventing race-mixing, upholding white supremacy, and preservation of a particular type of Protestant Christian values. Secondary focus on stopping the "horde" of asian immigration to Brockton. This is the faction with connections and overlap with the APS.
Members: Crusader (leader), Rune, Skinner, Backwoods, Sanctify/Othala (unofficially)
Rank-and-file: 40%
Fascist faction: the faction of the more well-read, politically active European-style white supremacists, a la the Daily Stormer, the Proud Boys, or /pol/. Main focus is political action, particularly focused on anti-semitism and fighting "degeneracy". Has connections with Geselleschaft in Europe. Has the most financial backing, despite its smaller number of capes and rank-and-file memebrs, so it makes upa disporportionate amount of the leadership.
Members: Krieg (leader), Jotun, Night & Fog-ish (insofar as they take orders from Krieg before anyone else)
Rank-and-file: 15%
Skinhead faction: Known for it's violent, dirty, prison-oriented culture, has connections with the Aryan Brotherhood. The most "gang-like" of the factions, it far more focused on the reputation and expansion of the gang than any specific ideology.
Members: Hookwolf (leader), Einherjar, Skinner, Armistace, Cricket, Stormtiger
Rank-and-file: 45%
Summary: the leader of the Empire, is known for his excellent rhetorical skills. Max would have assigned him to the APS, but the Empire needed a good speaker, and his power isn't exactly PR-friendly
Notes: An incredibly arrogant and self-obsessed man, almost to the point of sociopathy, Victor knew from a very young age how to manipulate people to get what he wanted, this was only exacerbated after his trigger, caused by his school choosing to honor a disabled classmate as prom king, instead of him, who won the most votes. Extremely Insecure about his masculinity, he takes steroids and obsessively body-builds to compensate
Eve Beardsley (née McCarron)
Full Name: Eve Nativity McCarron
Age: 19
Summary: He
Shard: [Relay 203]
Title: Giver of Gifts
–Rank: Commoner
Desc: wears a KKK outfit as his costume
Real Name:
Summary:
Powers:
Blaster/Shaker 5: Produces branches from his back. When he hurls these branches, they explode into a dozen spikes and impale everything around.
Shaker 4: Branches can bloom with poisonous flowers, eventually releasing a gas
Shard:
Faerie:
Notes: CANON CAPE
Real Name:
Summary: Obsessed with machismo, extremely prideful. Not educated enough to realize "Einherjar" is actually the plural form.
Powers:
Brute 4: Supre strength and durability
Shard:
Faerie:
Notes: Canon cape
Real Name:
Summary:
Powers:
Brute 3: Biologically reinforced durability and size, seven and a half feet tall
Striker 7: Ability to turn people inside out with a touch.
Notes: Caonically one of Glaistig Uaine's shades
Shard:
Faerie: Torturer's Son
Real Name:
Summary:
Powers:
Shaker 4: Ability to generate monstrous arms from self or ground, seem to be from thousands of various species.
Shard:
Faerie:
Notes: canonically one of Glaistig Uaine's shades
Real Name:
Summary:
Powers:
Breaker/Shaker 4: Can turn into an "ice giant" form with increased durability and cryokinesis. Is immune to cold in this form.
Formed by Lung out of the various triads and yakuza brotherhoods of the Bay's asian population, ethnic tensions are kept on a low simmer solely by his presence. Ethnic composition reflect Brockton's Asian demographics.
Japanese: 54% (Kyūshū survivors)
Chinese: 4% (most are refugees from CUI)
Korean: 2% (most are refugees from CUI)
Vietnamese, Thai, & Other Indochinese: 10% (refugees from both CUI and Kyūshū)
Indonesian, Malaysian, Filipino, & Other SE Asian: 30% (most are refugees from Kyūshū)
He's Lung. 'nuff said, folks
former right-hand-man and enforcer for Lung, after Lung killed the cape that was his former boss in the Yakuza.
Summary: Former Yakuza cape
Powers
Mover 3: Can "swim" through soild surfaces at high speed.
Name: Pun on "Doukutsu", which mans "cave" in Japanese
Summary: Former enforcer for SE Asian triads, head of Filipino groups within it.
Powers
Shaker 5: Lightning control
Note: his name comes from the Tagalog god of lightning and thunder
Real Name:
Summary: Former head of the Indochinese Triads. He worked with two other capes (one Vietnamese, one Thai) but Lung killed them.
Powers:
Blaster/Stranger 5: Fires blasts which render victims unable to recognize or identify people within twenty feet of themselves.
Shard:
Faerie:
Notes: name literally means "to estrange, to be cold to" in Vietnamese
Summary: Balinese/Indonesian, former enforcer of SE Asian triads.
Powers
Changer 5: Ability to shift into snake-man form
Brute 2-5: Snake-man forms grows stronger the more people are observing him, to a maximum of a Brute 6 rating. Electornics count.
Thinker 3: Ability to know apporxamately how many people are watching him, accurate within 5 people.
Notes: Name means "great snake" or "dragon" in Balinese, Lung almost made him change it
NOT the Merchants, since Skidmark and Squealer fit in best with the Teeth, and the Merchants without Skiddy isn't the Merchants. Has been on a slow and steady decline ever since Marquis got arrested, but has managed to hang on out of the sheer necessity for a gang accepting non-white and non-asian people in the Bay. All of Marquis's inner circle was arrested along with him, including the 3 people who knew of Amy's existence. The arrest and subsequent RICO-ing of the majority of Marquis's leadership was so effective in part because of the covert support of the Empire and APS, and their sympathizers within the Police's ranks.
Summary: Where in canon he lived in New York, in this universe his parents decided to move to Brockton instead, and he triggered as a much younger age (and not in a cluster). He was a parahuman enforcer for Marquis, but managed to evade the RICO purges and keep the gang together (barely) in the following years. Slowly the New Marche has regained some shred of its former power, although it's never risen anywhere close to its former heights under Marquis.
Power:
Blaster 6: Enhanced accuracy, fires projectiles so they will inevitably hit their target's weakest point. Power of projectilve increases with each ricochet.
Note: there is no possible way for him to use this power non-lethally on anyone without a Brute rating. Clustermate of Flechette and March
Powers
Blaster 5: Able to create and throw needles that disintegrate material on contact, producing high-velocity shrapnel.
Notes: canon cape
Power
Thinker 8: enhanced intuition, sherlock-style
Notes: she knows Amy is Marquis's daughter, but is keeping the knowledge in her back pocket for a rainy day.
A small, petty gang kept alive entirely by Chain Man's powerful abilities and their rivalry with the Teeth, despite being exactly like them.
Real Name:
Summary: A sadist with a rivalry with the Butcher, traveled from Boston to Brockton solely to match her.
Powers:
Blaster 9: Telekinetically controls a 100-foot long chain with a hook on the end. As of yet, nothing found can break, damage, or impede this chain.
Shard:
Faerie:
Notes: Combined with canon Hookline
Real Name:
Summary: A sadist in a relationship with Chain Man
Powers:
Shaker 5: Can push objects into ground and raise innumerable copies of them from an area around herself
The capes are a multi-state band of roving party animals, and are more used as enforcers by the civilian elements of the gang, which handle almost all of the actual structure and money-making. teeth Capes don't have any one base, and tend to rove between the various Teeth cities (Brockton, Boston, and NYC) as the mood takes them, only rarely being assigned to one by the Butcher.
After being driven from Brockton by the Slaughterhouse 9 under the tenure of Butcher V, the Teeth made a triumphant return almost a decade later under Butcher VII to find a small gang called the "Merchants" had taken their place. It was a small gang led by a single cape ("Mosh", who would later go on to become Butcher IX), and the Teeth ended up absorbing most of their civilian infrastructure and turning it into the Brockton branch of the Teeth. Since it was basically just a name change which gave them access to a new set of cape enforcers, the ex-Merchants were all for this, and it went largely bloodlessly. This is why the name "Merchants" is still occasionally used to refer to the Brockton Bay branch of the Teeth.
Real Name: Sofia
Shard: [Viral Infiltrator]
Faerie: Great Plague
Rank: Royal
Powers:
Butcher I: Butcher (Male)
Powers: Pain Blast, Enhanced Strength, One For All, except it's an asshole Parasitic Transfer.
Butcher II: Vladimir (Male)
Powers: Veinsight, Blood Control.
Butcher IV: Dirty Rotter (Female)
Powers: Rot Touch
Notes: Annette Hebert's ex-girlfriend, they both worked for Lustrum
Butcher V: Mistic Eyes/Mr. Kaiz (Male)
Powers: Ability to see the weakest point in objects and/or people
Note: deadly when combined with Quarrell's accuracy power.
Butcher VII: Winter (Female)
Powers: Creates a dampening effect that decreases momentum, inertia, and human will
Notes: Arms dealer that canonically joined the S9 by pure chance when running into them, so it's easy to butterfly that away into running into the Teeth instead. One of the longest-serving Butchers
Butcher IX: Mosh (Male)
Power: Mindless rage aura, super strength scaling off of anger of both self and surrounding people
Butcher X: Rifle
Powers: Tinker specializing in projectile weaponry. Supplementary powers of minorly increasing the range of projectile weapons, and enhanced perception.
Notes: Canon Brockton-adjacent cape, joined the Red Hand post-Levitathan. Every Butcher since Quarrel has used his abilities to create a compound bow with a terrifyingly high draw capacity.
Butcher XI: Carnal (Male)
Powers: Super-strength and regeneration that increases by bathing in blood
Notes: canon cape, one of the two that went into Pagoda
Butcher XII: Nemean (Female)
Powers, Brute/Changer Case 53- Enhanced durability including bulletproof skin, total pain immunity, enhanced senses, enhanced reflexes, can extend claws and teeth.
Butcher XIII: Anchorage (Female)
Powers: Low-level super strength, can manipulate the durability and mass of inanimate objects she is touching, choice if she will interact with normal mass or "new" mass
Notes: she loved to use a big Harley Quinn mallet, tremendously increasing the mass of the head for everyone else while keeping it light for herself. Fore!
Butcher XIV: Quarrel (Female)
Powers: can apply homing effect to objects to impart perfect accuracy. Objects can still be blocked, however.
Butcher XV: Simon Says (Male)
Powers: Can apply "bans" to limited area, tinting the air: yellow is ban on speech, red is ban on voluntary movement, blue is a ban on breathing. Bans last four seconds, have a second of warning before they come into effect, and a secondary Master power means all effected by the ban will have an intuitive knowledge of what the ban is on. If anyone in the area violates the ban, they are affected with crippling depression and insanity.
Butcher XVI: Skinslip (Male)
Powers: Skin manipulation, both self an others. Increased regeneration based on skin.
Notes: Canon cape, recruited to the Nine after Echidna incident. His enhanced durability is applied to all his skin, leading the Teeth to make armor out of his discarded skin.
Butcher XVII: Hemorrhagia (Female)
Powers: Telekinetic control of own blood, ability to harden it to be stronger than steel. Can slowly "assimilate" blood of others by touching it and control it like her own. Full blood control takes five minutes of focus and uninterrupted contact.
Notes: Her real name is "Sofia". More like Hemorrhağia, amiright? ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜)(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
Powers:
Changer 4: ability to change into animalian form
Trump 8: scream temporarily cancels out powers of all who are caught in its cone of effect
Shard:
Faerie:
Real Name: Aisha Laborn
Summary: not happy with her brother's selling out to the racists, she decided to go join a gang that lets her party as much as she wants in a fit of teenage rebellion
A minor player, only controls a bit of area. People doubt if Coil is even a cape. Some speculate Coil is bankrolling some of the independent capes of the city.
Real Name: Thomas Calvert
Summary: Tommy-boy is up to his old tricks, acting both as a gang leader and Deputy Director of the PRT.
Powers:
Thinker 6: Can split his personal timeline, and choose which one he keeps
Real Name:
Summary: A dangerous solo villain, she's a lot like Brockton's version of Damsel of Distress. She is ruthless, largely amoral, and has little regard or care for the lives of others. Canon cape. Has been approached for forced recruitment multiple times by the Empire, but has managed to escape or drive them off every time.
Powers:
Shaker/Breaker 8: In her Breaker form, she can transmute her surrounding environment into a special material by 'infecting' it. The longer she stays still, the more the infection will spread. Can reform body from infected environment
Shard:
Faerie:
Notes: Canonically only recruited to the 9 AFTER echidna, presumably close enough to BB to be there
Real Name: Lauren Horovitz
Reputation: She thinks you're a
Summary: Canonically Blasto's on-again, off-again girlfriend, after a particularly nasty fight she has decided to strike out on her own in neighborhing Brockton as an independent villain. Only time will tell whether this split lasts, or they get back together. Any attempt on her life risks bringing Blasto into Brockton's affairs, so she's largely left alone. She knows this, and hates it, increasingly taking greater and greater risks.
Powers:
Blaster/Shaker 4-6: Creates fragile, billiard-ball sized spheres of poison that explode on contact with hard surfaces, creating weak concussive blasts strong enough to knock a person over and a splash or cloud of poison. Color depends on severity of toxin, from a light yellow that inflicts mild nausea to a deep black near-instantly fatal neurotoxin.
Shard: [Shaper 52.Toxic 3.Aresol]
Faerie: Miasmatician
Rank: Common
Other Info
Age: 25
Gender: F
Born: Rochester, New York, USA
Ethnicity: Ashkenazi Jewish
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Brown
Kinsey Scale:
Actual: 2
Believed: 0
Team of thieves, in canon would go on to form the Red Hand. Members are Rook, Cozen, and Getaway.
Biography: His parents were Dutch immigrants, coming from Slikkerveer in the Ridderkerk Province.
Full Name: Constance Roisin O'Connolly (never officially married, so she kept her maiden name)
Birthplace: Crossmaglen, County Armagh, Northern Ireland
Biography: Originally joining the Irish Republican Socialist Party at just 17 years old, Constance O'Connolly is a lifelong Irish Nationalist and commited socialist. Later going on to join the IRSP's armed wing the INLI, she ended up as a commander in the IRA when the two organizations merged post-Scion. As a member of the IRA, she was credited with a large number of sucessful operations against boats containing government officials, as well as the Northern Ireland Squadron of Her Majesty's Royal Navy. Her two most notable operations were aiding in the Kidnapping of Tom King (Secretary of State for Northern Ireland under Margaret Thatcher), and masterminding the hijacking of the HMS Nurton (although her role in this is known only to a few), which enabled large shipments of rifles to pass into rebel hands unimpeded.
She was briefly imprisoned in 1988 after another attempted hijacking, but was later freed after the Shrove Tuesday Agreement was signed in the aftermath of Glaistig Uaine's rampage through British capes and Loyalist forces, which gave many PoWs the choice between exile or continuing their sentences as part of the secession of Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland. As part of several backrooms agreements with the US government, the lesser-known of the released felons were given green cards in the US as "victims of political violence". As she was facing over 20 years if she chose to stay in Ireland, Constance reluctantly chose to immigrate to America, where she was settled in Brockton Bay and qucikly fell into an on-again off-again relationship with Arthur DeWinter.
She eventually ended up falling in with the Marche along with many other Irish immigrants, her experience in guerilla warfare and naval hijackings proving attractive to Marquis and his organization. She eventually began a fling with the mob boss during one of her "off" periods, and she suspects he is the true father of her youngest child Rosie.
They eventually broke things off, and after Marquis's imprisonment, she retired to a less physically laborious job of acting as an accountant for some of the New Marche's various gambling operations.
Note: The HMS Nurton was assigned to N.I. in 1990 irl, but I'm assuming the advent of capes made them transfer it a few years early.
Full Name: Pádraig Sétanta DeWinter
Nicknames: Patrick, Pad, Snowy/Frosty (Vicky)
Birthplace: Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, USA
Biography: He managed to avoid going to Winsow, getting a scholarship to go to Arcadia thanks to his high grades and their need for tall blond dudes to act as Gallant decoys.
He is bisexual, and is generally comfortable with the fact, but hides it for very obvious reasons. The deception is helped by the fact that he is very much interested in woman, and has been caught several times in broom closets with girls in his year. Because of this, he has a (not inaccurate) reputation as a playboy and womanizer.
Name: Roisin Ashley DeWinter
Nicknames: Rosie
Age: 11 (and a half!)
Birthplace: Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, USA
Biography: Her mother was having an affair (well, she's broken up with her father, so it wasn't technically cheating at the time) with Marquis nine months before her birth, meaning Marquis is potentially her father.
Head of Stansfield Investment Group, one of the major backers and nominal leaders of the APS. Father of Dean via his totally-not-a-trophy-wife.
As I'm walking to my next class of the day, my mind turns to cape business.
Namely… how to get more power.
The first thing my mind turns to is, obviously, the masterpiece blade sitting back at my apartment.
Mirror Devil has the ability to copy various objects and effects and shoot ash clones back out that disintegrate after a few seconds, albeit with a limited capacity that shrinks the more "complex" the object it.
I already have oil, pepper spray, boiling water, non-boiling water, and (as a last resort) a few hundred pounds of molten iron and some actual freaking lightning that I caught from the top of a building during a storm stored up in there, but if I want to be a serious cape, I'll need to have something more heavy-hitting.
From the Armsmaster's chemical analysis of Newter's sweat — which he published online in a futile attempt to get him captured — it looks all the actual bodily fluids do is flip the biological "switch" to put you in an temporarily altered state, meaning that even if it disintegrates after a few seconds, my cloned serum should still be just as effective as Newter's regular stuff.
I don't have any money to pay them for samples with, but honestly, with my power I may not need it. It's clear that something has gone wrong in the contract between a Case 53 and their Faerie, and if I can do something to help fix it, I'll have a debt worth far more than an arm or a leg, let alone a bit of saliva.
Although if she turns me down (or worse, if she doesn't) that runs the risk of letting people know I may be able to fix Case 53s, and then getting me locked in someone's basement for the next two decades.
And of course, there's also how to procure some new tools.
…If I want to play it safe, I do know where some capes are buried, I should be able to make something out of their corpses.
Despite it not technically being confirmed thanks to NEPEA-5, it's common knowledge that the former CEO of Medhall and his daughter were the capes Allfather and Shade-fighter, leader and second-in-command of the right wing cape group Liberty Legion. And I can't say for certain, but I'd bet a good deal of money that Max Anders's first wife Heith was Loyalty, the deceased third sister of the Liberty Belles.
Their grave locations are public knowledge thanks to their celebrity, but are in areas that would be difficult to break into. On the positive side, they're right next to each other, so if I break into one, I'd get a second body for free.
Their powers would make good tools, too. Somewhat like Prosperity and Hospitality, her two giant-sized twin sisters, she had the ability to change the sizes of various parts of her body, either choosing to make them large and durable, or small and more damaging. It was said that when Marquis killed her and her sister-in-law, she had a bus-sized body capable withstanding tank shells, and three-inch long arms capable of shredding through steel like butter. I have a few interesting ideas on what I could do with a Faerie capable of something like that.
The real prize though is the two related capes: Allfather, the former leader of the American Patriot Society's corporate team, was capable of forming dozens of ultra-sharp blades mid-air and firing them at his enemies, while his daughter was capable of much the same, only with a greater variety of metal objects, which in exchange only lasted for a temporary amount of time. Since their powers are almost certainly related, getting both their faeries to bless a single item would make for a powerful enchantment, maybe even something as powerful as a living sacrifice.
Also, c'mon, "Shade-Fighter"? Real subtle with the 300 reference there, guys, not worrying in the least.
Alternatively, if I want to stay off the radar of the government, the APS, and the god-forsaken Empire (because it's also a bit of an open secret there's more than a little overlap between the latter two), Fleur might be a good option: I know where her graves is thanks to hearing Crystal vaguely mention it once, and the location seems fairly private. Sure, I like New Wave, but their former comrade's body isn't doing any good mouldering in the ground. People like to forget thanks to her tragic murder, but Fleur's explosive hard-light mines were powerful, capable of vaporizing sections of the foot-thick steel that makes up the inner walls of Endbringer shelters.
Of course, if I was to be caught, this would put a rather quick stop to any attempt to good relations with the hero group, and stymie and plans I had to ally myself with the experienced hero group and get them to fire lasers into Mirror Devil (and ask for some blood and flesh samples down the line, the family has a good streak of powerful abilities.)
Speaking of New Wave, they're always an option, if I'm willing to unmask. I know Crystal Pelham well enough from working together in Professor Hebert's class, so I could probably find some excuse to pull her aside and explain things.
Or maybe I could just ask for friendship, without the need to fully join?
I don't know though, I've always gotten some serious "karen" vibes from Carol Dallon, I don't know how accepting she'd be of the more… gruesome details of my power. Panacea's situation suggests a lot of unpleasant things about how they'd treat my potential: the girl's contracted to the strongest Faerie I've ever seen besides my own, but for whatever reason pretends to just be a simple healer.
If not New Wave, maybe the PRT then? It'd be nice to work with Chad, I guess.
…Eh. Do I really want to act as a vanity bodyguard for the rich folks downtown, not even considering the PRT ENE is known to be leakier than my pants when I see a goth girl in heels.
Okay, I'll give the Protectorate's civilian counterpart some credit: Director Piggot seems like she has a good head on her shoulders, at least, and Deputy Director Calvert is practically a legend.
But hey, if I'm going to be coming out to heroes, I might as well consider the Liberty Legi- ahahahahahahahaha no I can't even finish that thought with a straight face. No way in hell I'm joining Max Anders's all-white neighborhood watch.
Actually wait no, doesn't Liberty Legion have that one black guy on it? Creates big black clouds of darkness, or something.
A black guy who's power is that he is neither seen nor heard? A little on the nose Max, even for you.
Seriously though, I'm absolutely spoiled for choices, and I don't think I've ever been happier.
Alternatively, I could always go looking for a cape to partner up with. I know an amulet made of a cape's blood will help refine their connection with their Faerie, increasing their power, and while I don't think it would be wise to advertise that ability quite yet, I could probably do what I could to fix his mangled Faerie contract, just to see if I can do it before talking to Faultline's Crew. And unlike with them, if I succeed at this one, he'd be joining me if I succeed, not just owing me a debt.
I've also been hearing reports of some monster-riding cape hitting some of Hookwolf's dogfighting rings, someone with a moral crusade like that should be open to a team-up as long as it's aimed at the right target. That would risk making an enemy of Hookwolf's faction of the Empire before I'm ready to, though…
If I'm trying to avoid the Empire, there are also reports of a Brute taking on New Marche near the coast, some new cape no one is really sure about, but is (in my mind) quite smart for picking on the least powerful of the major gangs. Being new, he's also the least likely to have any attachment to working alone, meaning I think I have good odds if I try to convince him.
There's also the Red Hand, if I'm looking for teams. Three relatively inoffensive thieves, they mainly stick to corporate jobs or hitting the gangs, which is something I don't have too much objection to in principle. But that does risk alienating some heroes down the line…
Hell, if I'm going with villains, I think Poison Apple has also been sighted in Brockton recently, presumably after another one of her near-legendary breakups with Blasto. This fight must have been really bad if she's striking out on her own in a different city.
Augh, so many options, I'm just spoiled for choice!
NOTE: Remember, this isn't canon, so don't assume anything about any of these characters based on meta-knowledge. For instance, Trainwreck isn't certain to work for Coil, and Faultline isn't certain to be an outwardly-amoral mercenary with a soft spot for her team. They still might be though…
Actions
[ ] Dig up a cape
- - [ ] Fleur (DC 25 for not getting caught by New Wave)
- - [ ] Richard, Margot, and Heith Anders (DC 65 for not getting caught by Liberty Legion, APS, or Empire 88)
[ ] Try to team up with an indie
- - [ ] Case 53 in the Trainyard
- - [ ] Monster rider harassing Hookwolf's dog fighting rings
- - [ ] Mystery Brute???
- - [ ] Red Hand (Rook, Cozen, and Getaway)
- - [ ] Poison Apple
[ ] Talk to New Wave
- - [ ] Ask to join (publicly unmask)
- - [ ] Privately unmask, ask for an alliance
- - [ ] Stay masked, ask for an alliance
[ ] Talk to the PRT
- - [ ] Ask to join the Protectorate
- - [ ] Ask to register as an independent hero, and see if you can finagle some aid (DC 80)
[ ] Talk to Faultline
- - [ ] Ask if you can examine Newter and Gregor in exchange for fluid samples for Mirror Devil (DC 12 for acceptance, 1d100 for level of success, DC 75 for making her keep quiet if you succeed)
[X] Try to team up with an indie
--[X] Poison Apple
AN: Gotta say, I did NOT expect this one to win, I expected Trainwreck, Bitch, or the Mystery Brute. I threw it in last minute because I remembered I had her in the city, I didn't expect this much interest. Because of that, I didn't really have anything planned, so we're going to need a second vote on the next post for what we actually want to team up with her FOR.
Hmm… I don't want to risk pissing off New Wave, but the only other reliable way to get some new items would be to steal from the Tools…
Heh, get it? Liberty Legion, Two L's. Tools.
You can accuse Brocktonites of many things, but uncreativity isn't one of them.
But regardless of the specific name, stealing from the right-wing group is a bad idea, especially since it runs the risk of getting the Empire involved.
Hell, since corpse desecration is a crime, there's a chance the Protectorate might even show up if I'm unlucky enough.
So no, I think I'm going to wait until I'm a bit more powerful to risk pissing off so many strong capes… or wait until I can get a team of my own.
Hmm…
You know, if I really want to kill two birds with one stone, I should probably go for Poison Apple.
As the longtime on-again, off-again girlfriend and collaborator of Boston's resident biotinker Blasto, there's plenty of information about her available online, and from what I see she's a safe bet to approach, in addition to being a fairly powerful cape.
She has the ability to create and throw fragile "balls" of poison gas that shatter against solid objects, creating a wave of kinetic force that scatters the poison inside… poison that I reckon I might be able to copy into Mirror Devil for use in future fights.
From what I've read on PHO, her poisons range in severity from a light-yellow mist that makes you nauseous, to a jet-black neurotoxin that was filmed killing a Teeth cape in a matter of seconds, leaving the man bleeding out of every orifice, including his pores.
Despite that, I'm not too worried. She only resorted to lethality once it became clear the Teeth cape was gunning for her Blasto, and seemed sickened by the man's grisly demise after she'd killed him. As far as I can tell that's the only time she's ever killed someone, with her mainly sticking with severe nausea, cramps, and other debilitating-but-nonlethal measures to down her opponents.
So unlike most of the other options who are unknown quantities, even if Poison Apple says no, I should be able to just walk away, and approach someone else.
In retrospect, tracking someone down is hard.
I don't know if it's cape dramas tainting my view of reality, or the fact that villains don't go on public patrols like heroes do, but for some reason finding Poison Apple was a lot more of a struggle than I was expecting.
The first thing I tried was sending a PM to her public PHO account, but after about a day of waiting, it turns out that expecting a public villain to respond to random solicitations is a really dumb idea.
I ended up having to use my Fae sight to track her down, wandering areas she's known to frequent and looking for the tiny glimpses I could get of her Faerie from such a distance.
Her Faerie, Miasmatician, is an eldritch one, a hunched, beaked figure, its face a real version of a venetian plague-doctor's mask, surrounded by boughs of incense I can tell are meant to drive off miasmas.
I found her out of costume a few times, since my Fae sight can reach quite a distance if I focus in on a single target, but I had to wait until the night when I could actually run across her heading out to rob some jewelry shop to actually approach her.
Ugh, it took all day.
With a near-silent whump (see mom, those martial arts classes do come in handy!) I drop down behind the masked thief, and straighten up.
"Greetings…" I say formally, affecting my most mysterious, royal tone.
To give her credit, she regroups quickly, spinning around and holding up a lime-green orb threateningly.
Hey, I know the type of cape I am. Why not lean into it? Every cape needs to have a persona. For my enemies, I will be the Faerie Queen returned, a mysterious and powerful witch of great power. For my allies, or those undecided?
Well, no one says a bit of showmanship harms anything.
"Hail, contractor" I say gently, showing her my hands, "Stay your hand, for I bring you no ill tidings."
"Who are you" she barks out, eyes narrowed. "What do you want?"
"I come seeking an alliance, lovely maiden, for I am the great…"
Name Vote (Round One)
[ ] Nimuë
[ ] Nimianne (alt. version of Nimuë)
[ ] Nivienne (alt. version of Nimuë)
[ ] Brigid (goddess of smiths)
[ ] Exalt
[ ] Revenant
[ ] Enchantress
[ ] Maeve
[ ] Write-In
What do we offer Poison Apple?
[ ] If you can have your sword copy some of her poison gasses (DC ??)
[ ] User her flesh to craft her a tool to enhance her powers (DC ??)
[ ] Team-up to steal corpses of the Richard, Margot, and Heith Anders (DC ??)
[ ] Team-up to fight and kill/main/capture another cape (DC ??)
[ ] Team up on a single robbery (DC??)
[ ] Full team-up on robberies (DC ??)
[ ] Write-In
