An Imago of Rust and Crimson (Worm crossover)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
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Just read Speck 30.1...Holy shoot!
This story takes a whole new meaning!
I might be biased, haveing read this first, but it feels like the same power as in canon, or the power it became- except, due to the differing circumstances (reading that book?) her power lacks the bug theme. Instead it's an... I guess it would be an essence theme, or something. The same powers, but instead of the emphesis on controling, it's the sensing/self image/thinking/memory aspect, the understanding aspect that in-canon allows her to understand what her bugs can do.
It's a different Lense, but the same power. Awesome, man!
1.08
An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Chapter 1.08
I leant on the counter, staring at myself in the mirror. Whoever designed the ladies' bathrooms had focussed on making them easy to scrub rather than easy on the eyes, and they stank of chlorine, but at least they were clean. The harsh whiteness was a relief, in its way. It was a reassuring contrast to the dripping, stained and cracked surfaces of the last bathroom I'd been in, the first time I'd looked into the Other Place.
That relief was too shallow to really comfort me. I knew, now, how close that weirdness actually was. Detergent was no defence against it. The Other Place was out there, lurking behind my eyes. All it would take was for me to look into it and I'd see rot and filth and worse things all around me. My mind was already running through possibilities, wildly speculating about what I might see in this ever-so-clean bathroom, scrubbed down so carefully, so recently. What might some crazy person have done, here? Did I really want to see?
Yes, that was clearly why I was prevaricating. I wasn't just trying to chicken out of seeing what I looked like in the Other Place.
An older woman came out of one of the cubicles, and left without washing her hands. I shuddered in disgust, and then closed my eyes. Well, here went nothing. Time to see what I looked like in a mirror darkly. After a moment's hesitation, I shifted my head slightly, so I wasn't directly facing myself. It'd probably be better to ease myself in to looking at myself.
I cracked open my eyes and saw the lipstick scrawled on the mirror. That seemed to be one of the marker signs of the Other Place. I couldn't read the writing, if it even meant anything. Readying myself to turn, I took a deep breath and instantly gagged, tasting bile and the morning's cereal. The smell was indescribable. There was rot, death, sick, shit, ammonia, and that was just a small selection from the nasal cacophony. The once-white walls were encrusted with organicness, and black-red oil pooled on the floor in a shape like a chalk outline of a corpse. I could feel the misery and pain radiating from it like heat, and I shuddered, a horrible suspicion dawning on me as to what the red-black oil meant.
I shuddered, the meaning of the red-black oil dawning on me. Had someone died right here? Had someone killed themselves in my room? Or tried to? My skin crawled as I remembered how the black-red oil covered the bed and spilled down onto the floor. Did that mean they'd done it on the bed where I slept?
My stomach churned, and I dashed for a cubicle, retching into the toilet. I emptied about half of my breakfast into the bowl, which hardly made it any more filthy. Refocusing on the real world, which at least smelt more pleasant, I retched some more. The rest of my food stayed down, but I wasn't feeling too good.
Memo to self; in the future I would not use my powers in toilets. Not if I could avoid it.
It was probably just sheer stubborn spite which forced me back to the mirror, wiping my mouth. At least if I found out what I looked like here, I wouldn't need to do it again. Since I'd been sick already, I had less to throw up if I turned out to be a monster. I didn't think I'd looked very monstrous in the brief glance I got while gagging on my cereal.
This time, I held my nose, and looked straight ahead, avoiding the floor.
Again, the lipstick appeared from nowhere. Holding my breath, I peered at my reflection. A girl with lank, mussed curly brown hair and dark bags under her eyes gazed back. That was a relief, at least. I looked like myself. I breathed out a sign of relief, and regretted it. I coughed, spluttering on the stench, and the motion revealed the nasty-looking scab just under my collar.
My eyes widened, and I tugged the neck of my top down slightly. Yes, there was a big brown scab on the left side. And another one on the right. And several vicious ones on my arms and even my hands – my unbandaged hands. Running my hands down my front, I could feel more under my clothing. I must look like I'd fallen on broken-
Ah. The nails. Yes. I shuddered as I thought back to that agony. So in the Other Place, I was still scarred by what I'd done to get those insects out of me. That made sense. That had been the first time I'd seen the Other Place – when I had triggered.
But the thing was, as scabs, they looked about the right age. So did that mean that they were healing? That would be something to look for, I thought, peering closer at myself.
Wait a moment. My reflection wasn't fuzzy at all. I was short-sighted, and my eyesight was bad enough that it was more convenient for me to just wear glasses all the time, but they'd been taken away at the entrance. They counted as a potential hazard, apparently, so I had an appointment to get a pair of 'safety' glasses which probably wouldn't have the best lenses for me, but would do. Even without them, I could see perfectly well in the Other Place. I'd been walking around all day, switching between reality and the Other Place, and I hadn't noticed at all.
Right now, of course, I could have done with a bit of blurriness.
With a sigh of relief, I forced my senses back to reality. I permitted myself a small smile. I was getting the hang of it. I hadn't needed to close my eyes this time, I thought, rubbing my left collarbone where the scab had been. I could still almost feel it. And then pain spiked through my hands as my damaged fingers protested. That was something I hadn't missed.
Shaking my head, I went and flushed the toilet I'd been sick in, and went to wash my hands. I had been sweating. I should probably wash my face before I left. I could see to my hair at the same time, which was a mess. I promised myself that I wasn't going to sink into despair. I'd pay attention to my appearance while I was here. Not because I was vain, of course, but because if I looked normal and healthy and like I was caring about how I looked – but not too much – then the psychiatrists would have less reason to wrongly believe that I was suicidal.
I averted my eyes as I turned on the tap in the bathroom. I let it run and stared up at the ceiling, making sure I didn't catch the flow out of the corner of my eye. By the time I looked back, any rust there may have been in the water had long since gone, and I breathed out a sigh of relief.
Despite the fact that I'd put it to the warmest temperature I could, the flow was still lukewarm at best. That produced a spasm of worry, before I thought back to the school I'd gone to when I was a little girl. The taps there had never been able to run too hot either. I guessed this was another sign of how this place made us all into children.
So I'd promised myself I'd look pretty as well as shape up? Something told me that mental health wards would never take off as a makeover place, I thought, wincing as I tried to wash what bits of my hands I could without getting the dressings wet.
Then I went and told Hannah that I'd been sick. "It's just nerves, I think," I said, looking her straight in the eye and trying not to blink. "I sometimes get a bit queasy when I feel nervous." I swallowed. "Uh, and given what I just ate came back up, is there any toast or something like that? Something which doesn't have milk in it." I gave a wry smile. "I don't think I can face the taste again."
The toast was pretty good, and I ate four slices under Hannah's watchful eye which seemed to leave her satisfied. Oh, I realised. I hoped she didn't suspect I was bulimic. I should avoid going to the bathrooms for several hours, so she was satisfied I wasn't about to throw it up. It was possible she was just worried about the fact that I'd been ill, but acting in a way to minimise the chance that she might think I wasn't right in the head couldn't be a bad idea.
Well, in moderation. If I went too far, I might get paranoid about looking crazy, and that would only end in tears.
My first appointment with my assigned psychiatrist wasn't until the afternoon, and so I had a few hours to kill. I awkwardly and poorly tried to talk with the other girls in Wilson. It was a conversation which involved a lot of dancing around the point, but I did manage to find out what the protocol for getting internet access was. Sam also asked me if I wanted to come to one of the meditation classes which they ran.
"It's from eleven to twelve," she said, "and it's something to do. I mean, in a strict sense it's kinda boring, but it's a relaxing kind of boring. And I think it does kind of help. I mean, the breathing stuff helps you calm down when you get a bit wobbly, so that's worth it alone." Then she went off for blood tests, leaving me alone with Leah, who was reading a plain-covered book. She was very evasive about what it was about, and I didn't care enough to push her on its contents.
I entertained myself by reading a magazine left lying around, and put my name down for the meditation class and the waiting list for computer access. There was a long list of conditions and reminders that it was a privilege, not a right, and that our communications would be monitored, and so on and so forth. Well, I didn't care about that. I was almost certain that there would be an unrestricted wiki on parahumans out there. It wasn't like I was trying to look for anything objectionable. I just wanted information.
Damn. If only I had known Kirsty's surname. I could have googled it to see what might have come up about her. She had looked pretty normal, too. The fact that we both had shared scars raised my suspicions. Did she have similar powers to me? That'd certainly be something which might get someone winding up in an asylum, if she'd let people know she saw monsters everywhere. What if she had the same thing, but couldn't turn it off? I'd go crazy if that happened to me. Wait, no, I realised, they'd be tracking my search history here, and I'd probably face some hard questions if I started googling other girls' names. Well, I'd just remember it for when I got out of here and see what I could get from the others.
I got my printed out slip of paper with my sign-in name and password. It would give me thirty minutes, which wasn't all that long. It would have to do. I could already see why I should behave here. Even half an hour of internet access was a precious link to the outside world that could be easily revoked.
I did the thing which probably anyone who has ever triggered and wondered what their power could do does. Which is to say, I went and flicked through the summaries for the Triumvirate. They were the big three parahumans, the ones that everyone secretly – and not so secretly – wanted to be like. And the ones I was pretty sure I was nothing like. I wasn't like Legend or any of the other Legend-alikes. I couldn't fly, or project energy, or make forcefields or anything cool or flashy. Brockton Bay had New Wave, an entire team who pretty much all had powers like that. I remembered that I needed to see if I could find out who the white-glowing lady I'd seen from my hospital room was. Not now. Anyway, I could rule out being like that.
Then you had your Alexandria packages, like… uh, Alexandria, and the various 'knock-offs' out there, like Caestus Pacis, one of the second tier of Protectorate capes operating out of Washington DC along with Justice, who combined that with some kind of incendiary blaster skill. Then there was the lengthy disambiguation page for 'Heracles – see also Hercules' with about seven heroes listed, and some either self-aware or congenitally unimaginative Australian hero calling himself Superbrick. Oh, huh, no, he did in fact appear to be made of bricks, I realised when I found a picture of him. Weird.
I sighed. I certainly wasn't an Alexandria or Legend, given the fact I couldn't fly, punch down buildings, or fire lasers from my hands. And as for having powers like Eidolon's, and his capacity to do pretty much anything – I closed the tab, because it was depressing me. That wasn't the sensible way to get as much information as possible in thirty minutes, and I'd already used up five.
I went straight to the Classifications page, because that would be the fastest way to narrow down people with similar powers and what they could do. I was sure there probably were people out there who would say that you should learn how your powers work yourself and it's some kind of moral weakness to just try to find a list of everyone else whose powers sound even a little similar and then copy them, but they could shut up. They probably had nice easy powers which let them know immediately that they were super-strong, could fly, and were nearly invulnerable. They didn't have to put up with their main power being 'seeing things which weren't there'.
I could immediately rule out a bunch of classifications. Mover? No, I didn't seem to be physically better in any way. Blaster? No. Striker? No sign of contact-based powers. I could try seeing if I could show other people the Other Place by touching them, but that would only be a secondary power. Brute? Not a chance. Trump? How would I even tell? Tinker? No sign of any gifts with technology, and it didn't logically flow from what I knew I could do. Master? No indication of that, though in fairness the Other Place was a creepy hell dimension, and maybe I could make monsters as well as seeing them? On the other hand, maybe those monsters would eat me. That wasn't a field for experimentation without precautions.
Breaker, Shaker, Stranger or Changer? Maybe? The Other Place did seem to be sort of another world where things worked differently, and maybe, depending on how my power worked, I was changing how my eyes worked to be able to see it. They'd be a lower priority for experimentation, but they weren't out of the question. Maybe I could turn myself into a monster from the Other Place or step out of normal reality entirely – which meant I should also include Mover in my list of prospects and I really shouldn't even think a little bit of trying this in public. Not until I had confirmed that I wouldn't turn into some big-eyed spider-legged monster who'd terrify the other patients.
Aware of the fact that I was running low on time, I decided to focus on Thinkers. 'Often show abilities related to planning, information acquisition and cognitive or sensory enhancement,' the page on them said, and that fit the things I saw in the Other Place to a tee.
Unfortunately, there was a disgraceful lack of attention given to the capes with less impressi- more covert powers. Their wiki pages were much shorter, and usually came with fewer pictures. That didn't look good for any future cape career I might have. Didn't look like I would be getting my own action figure.
Probably for the best. What would it say when you pressed the button on its back? 'Someone died here?' Or maybe 'Everyone around me looks like monsters'. Maybe it would just scream, and then make an excuse about how it wasn't crazy.
Back in the here-and-now, of course, it meant that I had a lot less information to help me work out what my power did. I seemed to have some kind of... clairvoyance, I guessed the word was. Some kind of reading ability. I could see into the Other Place, and in the Other Place things were all allegorical. And also horrible. But in the Thinkers category, a lot more of the cape entries were stubs, and even the ones who had a proper page were very unhelpful.
Take Hourglass, a cape operating out of Miami and according to the wiki a known rival of Florida Man. He could stop time, and when time was stopped he was apparently frozen, but displayed 'cognitive and sensory enhancements including perception of short wavelength electromagnetic radiation and the ability to prepare actions in advance'. That didn't help at all when I was trying to work out what it was like being him. There was a fairly new cape marked as Thinker/Trump, called Flashside, who could apparently 'spontaneously develop new skills by minor alterations to her personal timeline'. How did it feel to use that power? What were the limitations on what she could do? It made sense to not list these things online where anyone could get to them, but I was anyone and I wanted to get to them. The villain entries were even less helpful. Another cape operating in Brockton Bay was a petty villain called Tattletale, whose power was just described as 'enhanced analytical ability'. That was it. I could understand the articles on criminals being shorter, but that was ridiculous compared to what the more overt villains like Lung got.
An untrustingmind might even suspect that the smart people – which was to say, the people whose power category was 'Thinker' – tended to give much fewer details about what they could and couldn't do. So, naturally I suspected that.
After much futile searching, I managed to find a half-way useful page on Psychometric Powers. That was the point when the timer ran out, and I was kicked off back to the login screen. I bit my lip in frustration, and then rose to let the next person on, who was already hovering behind me. Shaking my head, I checked the clock and went to get to a drink of water. The meditation session was in quarter of an hour, and – I yawned – my lack of sleep was catching up with me. I was probably going to fall asleep in the middle of it.
I would try not to, though. I needed to learn to calm my breathing and my everything else when I saw things that reminded me of the locker. If increased calmness helped me avoid panicking the next time the Other Place upped the ante on horribleness, all the better. I wasn't sure they really planned to help me get better at seeing things which other people would argue weren't there, but I'd take all the help I could get.
The man leading the group spent some time plugging in and setting up his CD player, and then put on slow, soft music. After dimming the lights, he began to explain in a soft voice how we should breathe – inhaling for a count, holding it, and then letting it out. The music and the dim lighting and the way he sounded really didn't help. Given how little sleep I had been getting, I was dozing off where I sat fairly quickly. I supposed that was a sign that I was relaxed, which meant the entire exercise was a partial success.
The sound of someone fidgeting behind me half-woke me, and I cracked an eye open. I'd noticed that some places were worse than others in the Other Place. The toilets and my room were awful, while the cafeteria hadn't been terrible. This room was calm, quiet, and everyone around me looked fairly relaxed. If I took a peek at its reflection, I could check my theory that the emotions that had been felt in a room affected how it appeared to me.
I didn't know why I kept on looking into that place, when so much of what I saw was disgusting or even made me physically ill. Simple curiosity wasn't enough, surely? Maybe it was just that I really wanted to be special. This thing, this talent was mine, and no one else could take it away.
Still, regardless of why, I focussed and thought of it. I was right. Yes, the walls were bare concrete, stripped of any paint, but that was all. There was almost no rust, and no blood or any of the black-red oil. A glance showed that my fellow attendees still had an edge of inhumanity to their features, but their monstrousness was muted, softened. Their calmness seemed to be influencing their appearance in the Other Place.
I frowned. That couldn't be right. Kirsty was the only other 'normal' person I'd seen in the Other Place, but she was clearly a nervous wreck and hadn't spoken a single word since I'd met her. She certainly wasn't right in the head. It didn't make sense that she looked normal when she wasn't normal. What was going on here?
At the front of the room, the man with wax-smoothed features sagging down his bones cleared his throat. "Remember," he repeated, a slight liquid quality the only thing that had changed about his voice in the Other Place, "cast away your problems. Don't think of them. Don't let them eat you up from the inside. Relax, and breathe."
Problems? I didn't have problems. But I'd learned to turn off my crazy-vision by emptying my mind. Maybe calm emptiness would be the best state of mind to try doing something more involved with the Other Place. Just something small, simple – that would be all I would need. I focussed on my breathing, and folded my hands in my lap. Breathe in. Breathe out. Be calm, Taylor. You just want to see if you can change things in the Other Place. Sure, part of that's because you read the article on Shakers and thought that sounded really cool, but that's not important right now. Breathe and focus.
I sneezed once, twice, and there was suddenly something inside and outside and separate and the same and countless other feelings I couldn't describe. But when I looked up, there was someone, something standing in front of me.
I swallowed hard.
The thing looked… well, it looked like me. That was the only way to describe it. But it was a me wrought in taffy, and stretched and drawn by the whims of a bored and sugar-hyped child. Fingers almost as long as forearms trailed along the floor, touching and feeling everything. An elongated nose – mine wasn't anywhere near that big! – sniffed the air. And two eyes the size of grapefruits bulged out of her warped skull, dilated pupils trying to stare at everything and anything.
And despite that, she still looked like me. And she sounded like me, breathed like me as she leaned in, snuffling. A finger that felt like an insect feeling out the shape of my face stroked my cheek, leaving my hair standing on end.
A whimper escaped my lips. I tried to suppress the noise, and stared at the monster, eyes watering.
It snuffled, and looked away from me. Half-drifting, as if it was suspended from strings, it picked its way across the floor to the nearest person on the next mat over. It reached out with its long fingers, and stroked her cheek. And then it snuffled again, nostrils flaring.
What had I just done? What was that thing? I clenched my jaw, and thought of nothing. But no, that wouldn't work! If I thought of nothing, I wouldn't be able to see the Other Place, and if I couldn't see the Other Place, I couldn't see if the thing was still there. Helplessly, I watched as it with almost child-like glee put both hands on Sam's head. What was it doing?
"No!" I blurted out loud, and it stopped, staring at me with its too-large eyes. "Don't! I mean it!"
The not-me spectre came apart like mist, which came rolling back in towards me. I inhaled sharply, and it crept in with the breath. I didn't breathe out, but there was no sign of anything else. I sighed in relief, and focussed back on the real world.
Everyone was staring at me.
Chapter 1.08
I leant on the counter, staring at myself in the mirror. Whoever designed the ladies' bathrooms had focussed on making them easy to scrub rather than easy on the eyes, and they stank of chlorine, but at least they were clean. The harsh whiteness was a relief, in its way. It was a reassuring contrast to the dripping, stained and cracked surfaces of the last bathroom I'd been in, the first time I'd looked into the Other Place.
That relief was too shallow to really comfort me. I knew, now, how close that weirdness actually was. Detergent was no defence against it. The Other Place was out there, lurking behind my eyes. All it would take was for me to look into it and I'd see rot and filth and worse things all around me. My mind was already running through possibilities, wildly speculating about what I might see in this ever-so-clean bathroom, scrubbed down so carefully, so recently. What might some crazy person have done, here? Did I really want to see?
Yes, that was clearly why I was prevaricating. I wasn't just trying to chicken out of seeing what I looked like in the Other Place.
An older woman came out of one of the cubicles, and left without washing her hands. I shuddered in disgust, and then closed my eyes. Well, here went nothing. Time to see what I looked like in a mirror darkly. After a moment's hesitation, I shifted my head slightly, so I wasn't directly facing myself. It'd probably be better to ease myself in to looking at myself.
I cracked open my eyes and saw the lipstick scrawled on the mirror. That seemed to be one of the marker signs of the Other Place. I couldn't read the writing, if it even meant anything. Readying myself to turn, I took a deep breath and instantly gagged, tasting bile and the morning's cereal. The smell was indescribable. There was rot, death, sick, shit, ammonia, and that was just a small selection from the nasal cacophony. The once-white walls were encrusted with organicness, and black-red oil pooled on the floor in a shape like a chalk outline of a corpse. I could feel the misery and pain radiating from it like heat, and I shuddered, a horrible suspicion dawning on me as to what the red-black oil meant.
I shuddered, the meaning of the red-black oil dawning on me. Had someone died right here? Had someone killed themselves in my room? Or tried to? My skin crawled as I remembered how the black-red oil covered the bed and spilled down onto the floor. Did that mean they'd done it on the bed where I slept?
My stomach churned, and I dashed for a cubicle, retching into the toilet. I emptied about half of my breakfast into the bowl, which hardly made it any more filthy. Refocusing on the real world, which at least smelt more pleasant, I retched some more. The rest of my food stayed down, but I wasn't feeling too good.
Memo to self; in the future I would not use my powers in toilets. Not if I could avoid it.
It was probably just sheer stubborn spite which forced me back to the mirror, wiping my mouth. At least if I found out what I looked like here, I wouldn't need to do it again. Since I'd been sick already, I had less to throw up if I turned out to be a monster. I didn't think I'd looked very monstrous in the brief glance I got while gagging on my cereal.
This time, I held my nose, and looked straight ahead, avoiding the floor.
Again, the lipstick appeared from nowhere. Holding my breath, I peered at my reflection. A girl with lank, mussed curly brown hair and dark bags under her eyes gazed back. That was a relief, at least. I looked like myself. I breathed out a sign of relief, and regretted it. I coughed, spluttering on the stench, and the motion revealed the nasty-looking scab just under my collar.
My eyes widened, and I tugged the neck of my top down slightly. Yes, there was a big brown scab on the left side. And another one on the right. And several vicious ones on my arms and even my hands – my unbandaged hands. Running my hands down my front, I could feel more under my clothing. I must look like I'd fallen on broken-
Ah. The nails. Yes. I shuddered as I thought back to that agony. So in the Other Place, I was still scarred by what I'd done to get those insects out of me. That made sense. That had been the first time I'd seen the Other Place – when I had triggered.
But the thing was, as scabs, they looked about the right age. So did that mean that they were healing? That would be something to look for, I thought, peering closer at myself.
Wait a moment. My reflection wasn't fuzzy at all. I was short-sighted, and my eyesight was bad enough that it was more convenient for me to just wear glasses all the time, but they'd been taken away at the entrance. They counted as a potential hazard, apparently, so I had an appointment to get a pair of 'safety' glasses which probably wouldn't have the best lenses for me, but would do. Even without them, I could see perfectly well in the Other Place. I'd been walking around all day, switching between reality and the Other Place, and I hadn't noticed at all.
Right now, of course, I could have done with a bit of blurriness.
With a sigh of relief, I forced my senses back to reality. I permitted myself a small smile. I was getting the hang of it. I hadn't needed to close my eyes this time, I thought, rubbing my left collarbone where the scab had been. I could still almost feel it. And then pain spiked through my hands as my damaged fingers protested. That was something I hadn't missed.
Shaking my head, I went and flushed the toilet I'd been sick in, and went to wash my hands. I had been sweating. I should probably wash my face before I left. I could see to my hair at the same time, which was a mess. I promised myself that I wasn't going to sink into despair. I'd pay attention to my appearance while I was here. Not because I was vain, of course, but because if I looked normal and healthy and like I was caring about how I looked – but not too much – then the psychiatrists would have less reason to wrongly believe that I was suicidal.
I averted my eyes as I turned on the tap in the bathroom. I let it run and stared up at the ceiling, making sure I didn't catch the flow out of the corner of my eye. By the time I looked back, any rust there may have been in the water had long since gone, and I breathed out a sigh of relief.
Despite the fact that I'd put it to the warmest temperature I could, the flow was still lukewarm at best. That produced a spasm of worry, before I thought back to the school I'd gone to when I was a little girl. The taps there had never been able to run too hot either. I guessed this was another sign of how this place made us all into children.
So I'd promised myself I'd look pretty as well as shape up? Something told me that mental health wards would never take off as a makeover place, I thought, wincing as I tried to wash what bits of my hands I could without getting the dressings wet.
Then I went and told Hannah that I'd been sick. "It's just nerves, I think," I said, looking her straight in the eye and trying not to blink. "I sometimes get a bit queasy when I feel nervous." I swallowed. "Uh, and given what I just ate came back up, is there any toast or something like that? Something which doesn't have milk in it." I gave a wry smile. "I don't think I can face the taste again."
The toast was pretty good, and I ate four slices under Hannah's watchful eye which seemed to leave her satisfied. Oh, I realised. I hoped she didn't suspect I was bulimic. I should avoid going to the bathrooms for several hours, so she was satisfied I wasn't about to throw it up. It was possible she was just worried about the fact that I'd been ill, but acting in a way to minimise the chance that she might think I wasn't right in the head couldn't be a bad idea.
Well, in moderation. If I went too far, I might get paranoid about looking crazy, and that would only end in tears.
My first appointment with my assigned psychiatrist wasn't until the afternoon, and so I had a few hours to kill. I awkwardly and poorly tried to talk with the other girls in Wilson. It was a conversation which involved a lot of dancing around the point, but I did manage to find out what the protocol for getting internet access was. Sam also asked me if I wanted to come to one of the meditation classes which they ran.
"It's from eleven to twelve," she said, "and it's something to do. I mean, in a strict sense it's kinda boring, but it's a relaxing kind of boring. And I think it does kind of help. I mean, the breathing stuff helps you calm down when you get a bit wobbly, so that's worth it alone." Then she went off for blood tests, leaving me alone with Leah, who was reading a plain-covered book. She was very evasive about what it was about, and I didn't care enough to push her on its contents.
I entertained myself by reading a magazine left lying around, and put my name down for the meditation class and the waiting list for computer access. There was a long list of conditions and reminders that it was a privilege, not a right, and that our communications would be monitored, and so on and so forth. Well, I didn't care about that. I was almost certain that there would be an unrestricted wiki on parahumans out there. It wasn't like I was trying to look for anything objectionable. I just wanted information.
Damn. If only I had known Kirsty's surname. I could have googled it to see what might have come up about her. She had looked pretty normal, too. The fact that we both had shared scars raised my suspicions. Did she have similar powers to me? That'd certainly be something which might get someone winding up in an asylum, if she'd let people know she saw monsters everywhere. What if she had the same thing, but couldn't turn it off? I'd go crazy if that happened to me. Wait, no, I realised, they'd be tracking my search history here, and I'd probably face some hard questions if I started googling other girls' names. Well, I'd just remember it for when I got out of here and see what I could get from the others.
I got my printed out slip of paper with my sign-in name and password. It would give me thirty minutes, which wasn't all that long. It would have to do. I could already see why I should behave here. Even half an hour of internet access was a precious link to the outside world that could be easily revoked.
I did the thing which probably anyone who has ever triggered and wondered what their power could do does. Which is to say, I went and flicked through the summaries for the Triumvirate. They were the big three parahumans, the ones that everyone secretly – and not so secretly – wanted to be like. And the ones I was pretty sure I was nothing like. I wasn't like Legend or any of the other Legend-alikes. I couldn't fly, or project energy, or make forcefields or anything cool or flashy. Brockton Bay had New Wave, an entire team who pretty much all had powers like that. I remembered that I needed to see if I could find out who the white-glowing lady I'd seen from my hospital room was. Not now. Anyway, I could rule out being like that.
Then you had your Alexandria packages, like… uh, Alexandria, and the various 'knock-offs' out there, like Caestus Pacis, one of the second tier of Protectorate capes operating out of Washington DC along with Justice, who combined that with some kind of incendiary blaster skill. Then there was the lengthy disambiguation page for 'Heracles – see also Hercules' with about seven heroes listed, and some either self-aware or congenitally unimaginative Australian hero calling himself Superbrick. Oh, huh, no, he did in fact appear to be made of bricks, I realised when I found a picture of him. Weird.
I sighed. I certainly wasn't an Alexandria or Legend, given the fact I couldn't fly, punch down buildings, or fire lasers from my hands. And as for having powers like Eidolon's, and his capacity to do pretty much anything – I closed the tab, because it was depressing me. That wasn't the sensible way to get as much information as possible in thirty minutes, and I'd already used up five.
I went straight to the Classifications page, because that would be the fastest way to narrow down people with similar powers and what they could do. I was sure there probably were people out there who would say that you should learn how your powers work yourself and it's some kind of moral weakness to just try to find a list of everyone else whose powers sound even a little similar and then copy them, but they could shut up. They probably had nice easy powers which let them know immediately that they were super-strong, could fly, and were nearly invulnerable. They didn't have to put up with their main power being 'seeing things which weren't there'.
I could immediately rule out a bunch of classifications. Mover? No, I didn't seem to be physically better in any way. Blaster? No. Striker? No sign of contact-based powers. I could try seeing if I could show other people the Other Place by touching them, but that would only be a secondary power. Brute? Not a chance. Trump? How would I even tell? Tinker? No sign of any gifts with technology, and it didn't logically flow from what I knew I could do. Master? No indication of that, though in fairness the Other Place was a creepy hell dimension, and maybe I could make monsters as well as seeing them? On the other hand, maybe those monsters would eat me. That wasn't a field for experimentation without precautions.
Breaker, Shaker, Stranger or Changer? Maybe? The Other Place did seem to be sort of another world where things worked differently, and maybe, depending on how my power worked, I was changing how my eyes worked to be able to see it. They'd be a lower priority for experimentation, but they weren't out of the question. Maybe I could turn myself into a monster from the Other Place or step out of normal reality entirely – which meant I should also include Mover in my list of prospects and I really shouldn't even think a little bit of trying this in public. Not until I had confirmed that I wouldn't turn into some big-eyed spider-legged monster who'd terrify the other patients.
Aware of the fact that I was running low on time, I decided to focus on Thinkers. 'Often show abilities related to planning, information acquisition and cognitive or sensory enhancement,' the page on them said, and that fit the things I saw in the Other Place to a tee.
Unfortunately, there was a disgraceful lack of attention given to the capes with less impressi- more covert powers. Their wiki pages were much shorter, and usually came with fewer pictures. That didn't look good for any future cape career I might have. Didn't look like I would be getting my own action figure.
Probably for the best. What would it say when you pressed the button on its back? 'Someone died here?' Or maybe 'Everyone around me looks like monsters'. Maybe it would just scream, and then make an excuse about how it wasn't crazy.
Back in the here-and-now, of course, it meant that I had a lot less information to help me work out what my power did. I seemed to have some kind of... clairvoyance, I guessed the word was. Some kind of reading ability. I could see into the Other Place, and in the Other Place things were all allegorical. And also horrible. But in the Thinkers category, a lot more of the cape entries were stubs, and even the ones who had a proper page were very unhelpful.
Take Hourglass, a cape operating out of Miami and according to the wiki a known rival of Florida Man. He could stop time, and when time was stopped he was apparently frozen, but displayed 'cognitive and sensory enhancements including perception of short wavelength electromagnetic radiation and the ability to prepare actions in advance'. That didn't help at all when I was trying to work out what it was like being him. There was a fairly new cape marked as Thinker/Trump, called Flashside, who could apparently 'spontaneously develop new skills by minor alterations to her personal timeline'. How did it feel to use that power? What were the limitations on what she could do? It made sense to not list these things online where anyone could get to them, but I was anyone and I wanted to get to them. The villain entries were even less helpful. Another cape operating in Brockton Bay was a petty villain called Tattletale, whose power was just described as 'enhanced analytical ability'. That was it. I could understand the articles on criminals being shorter, but that was ridiculous compared to what the more overt villains like Lung got.
An untrustingmind might even suspect that the smart people – which was to say, the people whose power category was 'Thinker' – tended to give much fewer details about what they could and couldn't do. So, naturally I suspected that.
After much futile searching, I managed to find a half-way useful page on Psychometric Powers. That was the point when the timer ran out, and I was kicked off back to the login screen. I bit my lip in frustration, and then rose to let the next person on, who was already hovering behind me. Shaking my head, I checked the clock and went to get to a drink of water. The meditation session was in quarter of an hour, and – I yawned – my lack of sleep was catching up with me. I was probably going to fall asleep in the middle of it.
I would try not to, though. I needed to learn to calm my breathing and my everything else when I saw things that reminded me of the locker. If increased calmness helped me avoid panicking the next time the Other Place upped the ante on horribleness, all the better. I wasn't sure they really planned to help me get better at seeing things which other people would argue weren't there, but I'd take all the help I could get.
The man leading the group spent some time plugging in and setting up his CD player, and then put on slow, soft music. After dimming the lights, he began to explain in a soft voice how we should breathe – inhaling for a count, holding it, and then letting it out. The music and the dim lighting and the way he sounded really didn't help. Given how little sleep I had been getting, I was dozing off where I sat fairly quickly. I supposed that was a sign that I was relaxed, which meant the entire exercise was a partial success.
The sound of someone fidgeting behind me half-woke me, and I cracked an eye open. I'd noticed that some places were worse than others in the Other Place. The toilets and my room were awful, while the cafeteria hadn't been terrible. This room was calm, quiet, and everyone around me looked fairly relaxed. If I took a peek at its reflection, I could check my theory that the emotions that had been felt in a room affected how it appeared to me.
I didn't know why I kept on looking into that place, when so much of what I saw was disgusting or even made me physically ill. Simple curiosity wasn't enough, surely? Maybe it was just that I really wanted to be special. This thing, this talent was mine, and no one else could take it away.
Still, regardless of why, I focussed and thought of it. I was right. Yes, the walls were bare concrete, stripped of any paint, but that was all. There was almost no rust, and no blood or any of the black-red oil. A glance showed that my fellow attendees still had an edge of inhumanity to their features, but their monstrousness was muted, softened. Their calmness seemed to be influencing their appearance in the Other Place.
I frowned. That couldn't be right. Kirsty was the only other 'normal' person I'd seen in the Other Place, but she was clearly a nervous wreck and hadn't spoken a single word since I'd met her. She certainly wasn't right in the head. It didn't make sense that she looked normal when she wasn't normal. What was going on here?
At the front of the room, the man with wax-smoothed features sagging down his bones cleared his throat. "Remember," he repeated, a slight liquid quality the only thing that had changed about his voice in the Other Place, "cast away your problems. Don't think of them. Don't let them eat you up from the inside. Relax, and breathe."
Problems? I didn't have problems. But I'd learned to turn off my crazy-vision by emptying my mind. Maybe calm emptiness would be the best state of mind to try doing something more involved with the Other Place. Just something small, simple – that would be all I would need. I focussed on my breathing, and folded my hands in my lap. Breathe in. Breathe out. Be calm, Taylor. You just want to see if you can change things in the Other Place. Sure, part of that's because you read the article on Shakers and thought that sounded really cool, but that's not important right now. Breathe and focus.
I sneezed once, twice, and there was suddenly something inside and outside and separate and the same and countless other feelings I couldn't describe. But when I looked up, there was someone, something standing in front of me.
I swallowed hard.
The thing looked… well, it looked like me. That was the only way to describe it. But it was a me wrought in taffy, and stretched and drawn by the whims of a bored and sugar-hyped child. Fingers almost as long as forearms trailed along the floor, touching and feeling everything. An elongated nose – mine wasn't anywhere near that big! – sniffed the air. And two eyes the size of grapefruits bulged out of her warped skull, dilated pupils trying to stare at everything and anything.
And despite that, she still looked like me. And she sounded like me, breathed like me as she leaned in, snuffling. A finger that felt like an insect feeling out the shape of my face stroked my cheek, leaving my hair standing on end.
A whimper escaped my lips. I tried to suppress the noise, and stared at the monster, eyes watering.
It snuffled, and looked away from me. Half-drifting, as if it was suspended from strings, it picked its way across the floor to the nearest person on the next mat over. It reached out with its long fingers, and stroked her cheek. And then it snuffled again, nostrils flaring.
What had I just done? What was that thing? I clenched my jaw, and thought of nothing. But no, that wouldn't work! If I thought of nothing, I wouldn't be able to see the Other Place, and if I couldn't see the Other Place, I couldn't see if the thing was still there. Helplessly, I watched as it with almost child-like glee put both hands on Sam's head. What was it doing?
"No!" I blurted out loud, and it stopped, staring at me with its too-large eyes. "Don't! I mean it!"
The not-me spectre came apart like mist, which came rolling back in towards me. I inhaled sharply, and it crept in with the breath. I didn't breathe out, but there was no sign of anything else. I sighed in relief, and focussed back on the real world.
Everyone was staring at me.
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And there go trying to seem sane.
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
Enjoying the story, ES, but one minor canon nitpick:
Unless this is foreshadowing something you changed up to fit the crossover, in which case, I look forward to it paying off.
Outside of the Undersiders, nobody knows what Tattletales power is at this point. Insinuation 2.2 has Taylor visit Parahumans Online, and its describe as a wiki stub with no hint as to her power. Armsmaster's mentions of her 1.6 indicate that the heroes don't know much more.EarthScorpion said:
Unless this is foreshadowing something you changed up to fit the crossover, in which case, I look forward to it paying off.
HioH
Gentleman, Scholar, Dinosaur
It might be better for her if she just shared her suspicions; they should be rather easy to prove if they work like she thinks they do. Just ask if someone killed herself on her bed.SolipsistSerpen said:
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
"What lives in the Other Place, Taylor?"EarthScorpion said:
"ANIME."
Taylor would, funnily enough, think this exact sentence in the offshoot timeline where her mother survived the car crash, upon returning home and using her mage sight in her bedroom.EarthScorpion said:
"I'M IN DESPAIR! MY UNINTUITVE POWERS HAVE LEFT ME IN DESPAIR!"EarthScorpion said:
"P-Parahuman?! That's impossible. How could a parahuman, something I've only seen on TV or in the newspaper, exist so close to me? Come on. She's only acting out of pure insanity! Yes, she shows her intense craziness in a direct way. It's a case of deep madness!"
EarthScorpion said:
Taylor. Take your own advice.EarthScorpion said:
Heh. A sensory homunculus version of herself. Nice.
Yes, but to be blunt, that doesn't quite fit in with how not-exactly-secretive she is about using it among the villain community. If you interact with the Undersiders, it's not exactly hard to pick up that she's good at noticing and analysing things, and that's what the Undersiders use her for.Kylar said:
Therefore, at least in the Imago universe there's a low-level and irregular edit war going on over her page, where various people she's pissed off [1] go and put up information on her (which admittedly isn't all that detailed), and she tags it with [citation needed] and as per wiki policy it gets taken down (because it's kind of hard to provide evidence on what she does if you're an anonymous contributor as a villain who's trying to stop her from finding out you were behind it and taking some petty revenge usually is [2]). Canon!Taylor just happened to look at the page on one of the days it was empty.
(At a Doylian level, the difference is due to the different narrative role she fills; simple deductive ability would give one a pretty good clue that she's not going to be filling her canon role to Taylor exactly, and hence things are slightly shifted so if they ever do meet, Taylor has a one-line sentence description of her powers)
[1] And she does have a talent for pissing people off.
[2] She usually finds out anyway.
No, that's Caestus Pax. Completely different guy.uju32 said:
Caestus Pax does not know how to conjugate his Latin and has not mastered the genitive.
Biigoh
Tanuki
- Location
- Tanukia
Worm DOES seem to take quite a fair bit of inspiration from Aberrant, concept-wise.uju32 said:
Scion and the Trivium IS a good analog to Divis Mal (in the Deus Ex Machina sense).
PRT and the Protectorate... well... if you're an Aberrant fan, it's obvious the nod.
The Corona Pollentia is the M-R-Node http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Mazarin-Rashoud_Node
Parahumans with the natural parahumans and Case 53s kind of do map over into the Novas and Aberrants... ^_^
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
That would be Red Mage, and I don't think this is likely to be an Eight-Bit Theater crossover.Drakeneisen said:
More seriously, if this does turn out to be a M:tAw crossover, that would be a pretty reasonable thing to be able to do with the Time Arcana.
Although I'm really not sure if that's what we have here, given the most recent snip. Unless somebody knows a spell that's likely to work that way?
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Heh, that didn't take long.EarthScorpion said:
You know, it strikes me that Taylor coming clean to them might even be the best outcome, especially if she is seeing where people died. I mean, parahumans are a known thing, and she has just been through an extremely traumatic experience after which she's showing signs that something is definitely not normal, and she certainly thinks that she's triggered. An astute doctor would probably schedule an MRI scan, just to check whether she's actually crazy before starting on the medication and sectioning her indefinitely.
After all, the 'treatment' would be rather different if what she's seeing is the result of a parahuman power rather than just in her head. Of course, on the other hand, that might just lead to her being permanently incarcerated as a result.
After all, the 'treatment' would be rather different if what she's seeing is the result of a parahuman power rather than just in her head. Of course, on the other hand, that might just lead to her being permanently incarcerated as a result.
The easiest way to get out of this is to play it off. Claim the meditation dude is dead wrong. For to truly banish your inner demons, and cast away your problems, you must dance!
If only the staff would sanction a field trip to an abandoned factory. Then you would see. You would ALL see!
If only the staff would sanction a field trip to an abandoned factory. Then you would see. You would ALL see!
Glorious!EarthScorpion said:
I'll give you the play-by play!
Interesting... she hasen't seen anyone I'd classify as 'possible killer' yet, but I wonder if this effect extends to people? I've mentioned the possability of 'filters' or different kinds of uses for her sight. She might be able to decide what kind of... stimuli are revealed. It would make the power a hell of a lot more useful.
Again, the argument for Taylor's cape name becomeing 'Alma'.
I was bored, so I took the time to look up the Wiki:
"The exact origin of the name Alma is debated, but it is most likely derived, in the female form,[6] from the Latin word almus, which means "kind", "fostering", or "nourishing".-[1] ... ...
-Also, the Arabic word for "the water" and "on the water" are el-ma and al-ma, respectively. It may also be of Greek derivation, where the word αλμη means "salt water".["
"The Water", or "Salt Water" Kind of fits. There are three kinds of saltwater produced by the human body, after all. Blood, sweat, tears. Taylor sees these all, I think. In one form or another.
Taylor should know better than to think the metaphysical realm(s) follow any rational model...
Aaaaaaand, Hannah knows she's lying...
... Sounds like more foreshadow...
I really like this running gag, weird heroes and villains makeing Taylor look twice.
Eidolon depresses everyone. Everyone.
Sounds like you're reading the discussions!
Neat... That sounds kind of like Doctor Who, in a way. I wonder what the limitations are- is there a 'only so many hours in a day' thing, or can she remember her previous 'incarnaions' like Coil?
ES- your comments on Tattletale moddifying her own entry is inspired. If Taylor keeps checking the Parahuman wiki, it would be awesome if every time all Thinker entries have been changed for this very reason. Simply because it'd be hilarious, and stuff.
This sounds... this sounds kind of like Echidna... Come on, somebody back me up here...
This can only end one way:
Please do something like this... Please?
(If you cannot see the pic, go here: http://drunken-novice.deviantart.co...4#/art/2gag-Hypocrazy-270214813?_sid=13c07a91 )
BlackoutSampler
So Easily Forgotten
And Thus Taylor learned an important lesson, do not deliberately look into your hellworld during group therapy, or any other kind of therapy for that matter.
anyways, I don't know if this has been said yet, but anyone else wonder if she gouged out her shard during her first trip into the Other World? like the caterpillars were supposed to represent her canon powers and she tears them out? that would suck.
another question is if the psychiatric ward has other parahumans with shitty/pointless powers to go with their trauma. she could have a bonding experience with them!
anyways, I don't know if this has been said yet, but anyone else wonder if she gouged out her shard during her first trip into the Other World? like the caterpillars were supposed to represent her canon powers and she tears them out? that would suck.
another question is if the psychiatric ward has other parahumans with shitty/pointless powers to go with their trauma. she could have a bonding experience with them!
Noooo, that won't work. Even if she's right, the probability she's delusional is likely to be considered higher than the probability that she's a parahuman. After all, it could have been a wild guess - and it's quite possible that the institute has neither the resources nor the will to try and test if she actually has a power.HioH said:
It's not likely that claiming to be a parahuman is that rare, all things considered.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'd say that would depend entirely on what the powers she got instead are.BlackoutSampler said:
I mean, if she is a Mage, that's like chucking away your brand-new Apple cell phone in exchange for the entire Google infrastructure. Along with a jet plane. Made of solid gold. Which is full of money.
Heh. Fun note: Given that this is a crossover, it is entirely possible that Taylor both has superpowers and isn't technically a cape.illhousen said:
In which case the standard test to see if she has superpowers will come up negative.
Xexilf
Oblivion Sempiternum Daemonis
Some capes have so vastly different or messed up biology (or not biology) that corona pollentia isnt really always the end all. Just most of the time.Candesce said:
Guile
Having a really great time right now
I like to think that they'd find the gouged-out-with-a-hook section of her brain where her corona potentia (or whatever it's called) should be.illhousen said:
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Do what you have to do in order to make the story work, but I do think putting it as bluntly as, "enhanced analytical ability," which is an loose but accurate description of how her power actually works, gives too much of the game away. Something much more vague, such as, "She knows stuff she should have no way of knowing and loves rubbing your nose in it," also accurately describes what her power looks like to others but does so without revealing the mechanics behind it.EarthScorpion said:
Also: Good idea, poor timing 1 / Taylor 0
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
I don't think you can come up with a definition of "can see weak points in objects and people" that isn't covered by "enhanced analytical abilities".illhousen said:
Hell, "enhanced analytical abilities" is basically just a roundabout way of saying "Thinker". You might say that Gallant's analytical abilities are enhanced because he can analyze someone's emotions more easily, for example.
And while the Undersiders have avoided conflict with the PRT thus far, they're not the only ones with access to computers. She might well have already settled into her rivalry with Faultline, and she's almost certainly tangled with the Merchants (insofar as everyone has tangled with the Merchants because they're the fucking Merchants). Lung is less likely as an edit source, even if she has gone up against him at this point. I'm not sure if he or Oni Lee can even use a computer.
Olive
Silent Princess
So Bonesaw was essentially stitching two vegetables together then?Carrnage said: