Undead-Spaceman
Skeleton Supreme
- Location
- Somewhere in Orbit
IIRC, Cuff was from Hawaii and that it got hit by an Endbringer. I don't recall the exact city or Endbringer though.Satori said:
An Imago of Rust and Crimson (Worm crossover)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
I'm... not entirely sure why you would assume that nothing else is changed by the fact that if Scion or something else like him exists, he's certainly less overt.TheAnt said:
I mean, come on. Look at things from a Doylist level here - because that's what I do, to the extent that the weather in Imago traces out the pathetic fallacy. Worm sets things up so Only Scion Can Save Us, in theory to make the betrayal worse when he turns on them. The success of this is... questionable, and is certainly hurt by how bloated the text is, because the narrative focus gets shot to hell by that. But the same focus isn't in place here, and so if the story doesn't require "Only Scion Can Save Us", then why assume that the threats are calibrated to make that the case?
chinger
Alien Spy
Even than it would be very weak nuclear explosion. Because as soon as you are running chain reaction your fission core starts to tears itself apart with pressure and radiation destroying conditions for chain reaction. The trick of making effective nuclear bombs is to keep it intact as long as possible. That is one of the reasons why implosive scheme is so much better then the gun one. Granted, Behemoth could be able to simulate implosion with his dynakynesis - but I doubt he is smart enough for itAleph said:
Nice lesson btw
Ben Who Devours
Hater Eternal
Even if Scion isn't around, the Endbringers were jobbing anyway. ES wouldn't even have to change their natures to stop them from disrupting the world/story through increased damage in Scion's absence (though he might have. We* don't exactly know what he has planned, other than 'tease readers with what I may or may not be doing' ): if they want they can just job more.
*Exempting Aleph et al, who obviously aren't telling
): if they want they can just job more.*Exempting Aleph et al, who obviously aren't telling
FalseDead
Consuming Fear
- Location
- Boatmurdered
and Uber and Leet just became terrifyingVarano said:
"The Endbringer Leviathan has come! A great feature less humanoid. It has a pair of grasping claws and a slashing tail, and it strides and Floods. Beware its deadly water!"
Power plants are things that capes will defend; that some models can be exploited is icing on the cake.RazorSmile said:
Trier
Trying fate
- Location
- Digitally existent
I should've been more specific. I meant the reproducible tinkerfab stuff. Why aren't there more mundane Thinker-Tinker factories around? Non-parahuman scientists and engineers have been mentioned to be focusing on reverse engineering everything they can, so why is Imago's tech still so... late?Tavar said:
But not enough has been shown yet. Like the average wages and salaries, price brackets, the state of the import-export industry, or how different the Endbringers are acting in Imago.
- I'll take the chance to ask for a Danny-Interlude, if possible. It doesn't matter what it's about so long as it's him narrating.
- You're already weaving this in the regular narration, ES, but something more condensed would be great, I think. An Interlude detailing some of the major divergences in Imago's alternate history.
Just two thoughts; entertain them if you wish and please update soon!
To be fair a flying aircraft carrier seems like it would be great for response after an endbringer attack if it can be brought to the city in question quickly enough being a mobile logistics hub that can drop humanitarian supplies like food and such, considering that it can take days to get airports operational enough again to accept supplies. wet carriers are used for the same, so I can see a flying carrier used as such, esspecially since it can reach inland cities which might be hit by behemoth or simurg.EarthScorpion said:
Trier
Trying fate
- Location
- Digitally existent
Well, I don't like "Yes, I agree" posts, so I only reply if I have a 'but'.Tavar said:
And I did say we haven't been shown much yet, so the rest of my post was a very innocent request to do that sooner.
Still, the Internet...
On reverse engineering: You have the original 'inventor', who can build and rebuild the whole thing under your eyes; and the tech in question is decades ahead of its time. If cold fusion is proven possible (let alone feasible) in the upcoming years, in RL, and if we assume it is, for the sake of the story, then Thinker-Tinkers (a shorter term, ES?) should've first made use of it by the early 90s at the latest. So the earliest tinerfab devices they had for RE should've been amazing by our current standards.
But again, this depends on (1) when Tinkers started showing up, which type the first ones were, how advanced their knowledge was at first; and (2) general politics, the politics of the specific industry, how much the Tinkers were sought after at the beginning, etc.
And I might be digging a hole for myself here, treading unfamiliar ground. Not much has been shown and the updates are infrequent so I'm just banging my head on the forum waiting for the new chapter. I only had one 'complaint' when I first posted here; now, I'll shut up and watch.
When did the first Endbringer show up? What's the trio's one-city-wreck schedule? How busy are they when they're not actively wreaking havoc (so are just covertly wreaking havoc)? That might be the major reason, actually. The military gets the good Tinkers early on, some other good ones don't get the support they need and go wasted, and by the time the world has acknowledged them and they're being sought, the other other good ones have taken the [edit] exclusively-proprietary route (ex. Apple's) and have become producers for the wealthy.
Well, sure. If you ignore the 100+ gigawatts of power the fusion reactor inside is generating, which could power basically all of Japan, the multi-billion dollar engines that are needed to channel that power, the multi-billion dollar hull that needs to be capable of taking the stresses of flight and maintaining integrity in a combat environment, the multi-billion dollar electronic warfare suite, the multi-billion dollar aircraft complement, and the multi-billion dollar investment in technicians and engineers.Catty Nebulart said:
Meanwhile, if they had been building regular old-fashioned disaster relief things, they could get 200% of the capability for 1% of the price.
Yeah, but now that they've got the thing, they'd certainly use it for something, to justify the sunk costs if nothing else.MJ12 Commando said:
The problem with almost all military equipment re-purposed for disaster relief. Point well taken it is not efficient, but it;s hardly useless either, and there is precedent with the US spending as much on it's military as the rest of the world combined.MJ12 Commando said:
2.08
An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Chapter 2.08
Oh no. Oh no no no.
What were the odds? The first place I walked into was selling clothes from the sweatshop. Either I was really unlucky, or there was some vast conspiracy which led most of the shops on the Boardwalk to source their products from slave labour. Or both.
Some of the clothes on the racks before me reeked of the warehouse. They were wrapped in a red haze of misery.
I covered my mouth with my hands, hyperventilating into my gloves. What was I going to do? What could I do? I shed the Other Place, but somehow I could still smell it. It was all around me. The entire building stank of misery and suffering and… and I had to calm down. I couldn't freak out, not in public. Even if I knew the truth behind this place and how all these people were buying things that had been made… no!
If I made a scene, I might end up back in the hospital. I didn't want to go back. I couldn't. I wouldn't. They wouldn't make me!
I only realised I was standing around at the entrance to the shop when I got jostled by an overweight man, who glared at me. I had to get out the way, to stay under the radar. I didn't want people paying attention to me. Looking around wildly, I headed over to the women section, and pretended to be paying attention to shoes. I needed to sit down, so found a seat and began to unlace my shoes as slowly as possible.
The sheer mundanity of untying my shoes calmed me down a little. I thought I could still smell the sweatshop, though, like a whiff of smoke caught in the back of my throat.
"Are you looking for anything in particular," one of the shop assistants asked me. The world shifted to grey and rust for a moment, and goat horns of tarnished metal forced their way out of her chalky skin. Then the Other Place vision faded, and she was talking again. "We have a sale currently on. So if you want me to check if we have anything in your size in the backroom, I'll be happy to help, but sale items are going quickly."
"Just checking what size I am, I'm still looking," I said hastily. "I'll ask if I see anything." Urgh. Why did people come over and try to talk to me? Pretending they cared. They were just as bad as some of the teachers at school, faking their interest. They didn't help me, and right now they couldn't even if they'd actually wanted to. No one could.
Fortunately, the assistant moved on. I had to calm down. I took a deep breath, tapping my gloved index fingers against my teeth. I hadn't lost control like this since I'd taught myself to control how I saw the Other Place. I was on the edge of tears. I couldn't lose control. I mustn't start crying.
But it was just too much. It was more than I could face. One illegal factory was one thing. But this was a large department store. I'd vaguely considered that there might be some dodgy shop getting under the table consignments from that place, but somewhere this big? What would I do? What could I do against something like this?
Was it even an illegal factory? Yes, I decided. It had to be. Something that looked that bad, felt that bad couldn't be legal. Shouldn't be legal.
I went and found the bathrooms, and locked myself in one of the cubicles until I had calmed down. I dried my eyes with tissue paper, and washed off my face. Staring at myself in the mirror, I sighed.
"You're so fucked up," I told the girl in the mirror softly. "Get a better grip of yourself."
Of course, I could do that. That was my thing. So I breathed out my worry and my agitation, and nailed it to the ceiling.
I felt better as I strolled out of the bathroom, leaving the squirming thing that wore my face behind. I didn't have to worry about anything. The sweatshop was horrible, and I was going to make sure that it was shut down. And then I'd make this place pay. Yes, it was perfectly clear and logical.
I almost felt like laughing. Yes, this shop was large. But if I shut down the sweatshop, their supply would be cut off there. And then if I could get evidence linking them to it, then I'd be able to make them pay. I hated bullies. I hated them so much. And what they were doing here, making people suffer for no good reason at all – for cheap clothing – was the worst kind of bullying, because they didn't even care.
Well. I'd make them care.
First things first. I needed to know for sure that the clothes here were being made in that particular sweatshop. That probably wasn't the only one in Brockton Bay. I nodded to myself. Yes. Sniffer managed to find my mother's flute, so she could almost certainly follow a trail back to where these clothes had been made. I opened my eyes to the Other Place, staring at the rot and the filth. The sweatshop clothes were the cheap ones, the ones which I could actually afford. I felt like I should have been feeling bad about that, but nothing registered. Anyway, I was going to make things all better.
You, I thought at Sniffer. I'm not going to let you out this time. You're staying in here, and you're going to show me what you see. I balled my hands into fists, and the prickling of pain helped me focus. I felt like I was pushing up against a wall, like I had my face pressed against a cellophane wrap. The skin all over my body felt taut, and not quite the right shape.
And it suddenly gave way.
It didn't come as naturally as seeing the Other Place normally. There was a feeling of depth about it. Have you ever opened your eyes at the bottom of a swimming pool, and felt the pressure against your eyeballs? It wasn't like that, but it wasn't entirely unlike that. The pressure was behind my closed eyes. It was like the world around me was thinner, less dense than I was.
Swaying, I tried to fight off the sudden wave of vertigo which nearly overcame me. I should have been sitting down when I tried this, I thought, with a trace of tipsy whimsy.
The light was dimmer, faded. There were almost no colours. But the changes went far beyond petty things like the spectrum. I saw shapes, and they meant nothing to me. In this iron-grey, formless world, my sight was almost meaningless. Or maybe my mind wasn't working correctly, because if I focussed I could just about put together that I was staring at my own face in a mirror. It took me long, long seconds to realise that.
But that didn't matter. I didn't need normal sight. I could feel the shape of the area around me in the same way I could feel where my arms and legs were when I wasn't looking at them. Eyes wide, I drifted around the main shop floor. I knew that what I was looking at was a man, a rack of clothes, the escalators up to the next level. I was effectively blind, but I simply knew where everything was even without looking at it.
And more than that, I could see the threads Sniffer followed when she tracked things down. I could see the hair-thin strands a tall, thin man left whenever he touched one of the pieces of clothing, spiderwebs in the air quickly lost among the haze of threads that surrounded him. I could see the hand-thick iron chain which linked him by the neck to the curvy woman who stood next to him. When I paid attention to the terminal point of the chain, I could see so many other chains and threads and wires, all wrapped around the blurred, unfocussed shape of the man.
But I didn't have to just focus on that nexus. I could focus on the nexus next to him – the woman, I dimly remembered – at the same time. And the nexus behind me. And that nexus that they were standing by. So many central points. All these chains. I could see them all. I – Sniffer – didn't care that I wasn't even facing most of them.
I covered up my eyes with my hands, trying to shut it out. It didn't help. I could still see everything. Seeing without eyes. I swayed, and staggered to grab a blurred shape I knew to be a rack of winter jackets. It was all too much. My attention shifted to the jacket-nexus, and I could see the chains stretching away from it. I reached out and grabbed at the thickest one, trying to pull myself upright with something which wasn't real, and when I touched it, I knew it connected up to the sweatshop. The sensory impressions flooded in and I desperately thrust Sniffer's awareness away from me.
A wave of light and sound hit me as the world returned to something approaching normalcy. Shaking, I found somewhere to sit and tried to catch my breath. I could feel the cold sweat prickling on my brow.
That… that thing I'd made from me saw the world like that all the time. No wonder it was a monster. What kind of person could deal with all that and stay sane? I stared blearily at the world around me. The lights seemed so bright, and yet my awareness seemed so limited compared to what had happened then.
I took a deep breath, and wiped my forehead against my sleeve. Staring up at the humming electric lights above me, I thought about what to do next. I couldn't buy a costume from here. The things I could afford were made in that place. I could go looking for some other place. Get out of here. Return only when it was time to make them pay.
Except there was another way I could make them pay. Literally. And by doing so, I could get a proper, good-quality costume made of expensive tinkerfab-cloth. I'd just need to take what I needed from here, without paying. Technically it would be theft. Technically, and legally. But would it be morally wrong?
I considered it for a while. I knew for a fact that this shop was directly profiting from what I'd seen down in the Docks. And they had to know from how much they were getting the clothes for that everything wasn't quite above board. Even if they didn't know, I bet they weren't asking the questions they should have been asking. Which made them party to the crimes.
From a certain point of view, that would make it karmic justice if I 'obtained' my disguise from this place. I wouldn't need to roll up the clothes and stick them under my coat or anything risky like that. All I'd need to do would be to send a doll-cherub or two to take the things I'd use back home. I could hide them under my bed. No one would ever know.
Legally it would be stealing. And would remain so even if things like 'my parahuman talent tells me that they're benefitting from slave labour' were admissible as evidence. Maybe they were. I wasn't up to date on parahuman law. They totally had to have some kind of way for psychic FBI agents and the like to submit evidence, right? No, I was getting distracted.
I had to be honest with myself. Was I doing this for the right reasons? I weighed up the option. On one hand, I was going to be stealing… oh, probably over a hundred dollars. At least. The coats alone were selling for more than that. That was wrong, at least normally.
But on the other hand, I wasn't doing it for my own benefit. I couldn't wear these clothes around normally. They were going to be part of my superhero costume. And the shop was benefitting from really, really horrible things. So I would be depriving the bad guys of stuff, and using it to help the people they were hurting. And I needed a good disguise, or they might trace me back and then they might hurt Dad. And me, too.
In the balance, it was probably morally acceptable for me to do this. As long as I didn't get into the habit.
And I couldn't wear things made in the sweatshop. I just couldn't. It was wrong. And, I realised, if I was doing things in the Other Place when wearing those clothes, I'd be smelling it all the time. It'd be up against my skin. I'd be touching it.
No. I couldn't. I wouldn't.
I took a deep breath, and made my choice.
I didn't bother trying to look innocent or like I didn't want to be noticed. Years of bullying had taught me that trying to look like you didn't want other people to pay attention to you just made them pay more attention to you. So I just checked out the place like I was looking around, and probably wanted to compare the coats in several shops before I bought anything. I wanted something black or grey, which would be hard to see at night. I made sure to ask one of the shop assistants for help, too. Her name, according to her badge, was Hello-My-Name-Is-Mary.
"Um, so," I asked her, "are these clothes ethically made?"
"Excuse me?" she said.
"Well, you hear about these sweatshops where clothing gets made," I said. "None of this comes from sweatshops, right? Everything is all above board?"
Hello-My-Name-is-Mary shook her head. "It's all ethically sourced," she told me.
Well. She was lying to me. Or didn't know. Either way, that meant that the shop was lying to its customers and pretending things were all above board. Some of my reluctance melted away at that. They had it coming.
"Is there anything in particular you're looking for?" she asked.
I frowned. "Something warm, but not too heavy," I said. "I want to… you know, be able to move in it properly. Not one of those long coats which you can't run for the bus in."
"Three-quarter lengths are coming in," she said encouragingly. "Frock coats were very big this Christmas. We have our selection over here."
I poked around, examining the various coats. These weren't cheap. Hundreds of dollars each, minimum. But they were very nice looking. I stroked the sleeve of a charcoal grey double-breasted coat, and held it up against me. Oh God, it would work so well. That shade would totally be almost invisible in the shadows at night, I was sure. I tried it on, and it was a little big around the shoulders, but it felt really nice.
"Won't that get wet and heavy?" I asked.
"It might look like it's wool, but it's not," Hello-My-Name-is-Mary said helpfully. "It's machine-washable. It's made of really clever synthetic stuff which feels like wool, but doesn't absorb water in the same way. You don't need to have it dry cleaned."
That was helpful. I was probably going to get muddy or dirty at some point, and there was no way I could get away with taking anything I wore to be dry cleaned. If I could just take it down to a Laundromat when Dad was at work, though… yes, that'd work. Hello-My-Name-is-Mary had just sold me on it. 'Sold' me. I tried a few more on, but I'd made my mind up.
"Thanks for the help," I told her, "but all these things just seem to be too big around the shoulders and feel loose. I mean, I like the length, but…" I shrugged. "It's so hard finding stuff when you're a beanpole," I said self-effacingly.
"Have you considered a different cut?" she asked. "Frock coats are kind of designed to make you look thinner by having a narrow wait and wider shoulders and," she waved her hands, "the flared bit at the bottom, but you'd probably look better with something more straight up-and-down."
I shook my head. "I might come back," I said, "but I think I might need to look somewhere else. Your sizes are a bit on the wide side."
She snickered. "I've noticed that too," she said. "Well, if you want to try one of our other styles, come back and I'll try and help."
I sighed to myself as she went off to someone else. She had seemed nice, but this whole place was so fake I couldn't trust it. Especially when they sold things from that sweatshop down at the Docks. Shifting my vision to the Other Place, I made a winged doll, and started to walk away from the coats.
"Go, take it, put it under my bed," I told the doll. When I turned around, the coat I'd tried on was gone. I smiled faintly to myself. Drifting around the shop, I slowly added a few more things to my collection, making sure to check each thing I was 'buying' was a good size. By the end of my browsing, I'd picked up two pairs of business dress pants in nearly the same shade of grey, and a black high-necked sweater. They were all on the more expensive side, but of course that was just so I could avoid the stuff that were tainted in the Other Place. Besides, it hurt this place more if I took those things. After a moment's thought, I grabbed a dark grey hat, of the sort PIs wore in those old films. I was being a detective, after all. Oh, and a very nice pair of black leather gloves which fit like… uh, like a glove.
To stop anyone getting suspicious of what I'd been doing in there, I paid for a cheap pair of gloves that fortunately didn't stink of the sweatshop. Then I walked out, feeling lightheaded, even a little giddy. That had been so easy. The world was spinning slightly and I was hyperventilating, so I sat down for a moment, on a bench outside the shop.. I couldn't let it go to my head. I just had to go on and be normal and get the rest of my shopping done. 'Shopping'. Heh.
My giddiness was spiked by an irrational surge of jealousy as I watched some of the people walking out of the shop. And the worst thing was that it wasn't irrational. I must have taken over $500 dollars of clothes – the coat alone had been $250. The stuff I'd swiped was worth more than we'd normally spend on half a year of my clothes, but people were wandering out with even more than that. Just casually bought. They didn't even think about how much money they'd just spent. They were too busy talking on their smartphones or doing things on smartglasses. That wool-but-better fabric sounded like tinkerfab, too - was there anything these people had that wasn't some kind of futuristic luxury dreamed up in a parahuman's lab?
If I was going to be honest, my turmoil had two layers. There was the bit of me which wanted to shake them and shout about where their toys and finery had come from, the conditions facing the workers who'd made some of them. Surely they'd do something, change how they acted if they knew? But there was also simple jealousy. I wasn't the sort of girl who obsessed over clothing, but… it'd be nice to get expensive things like that. Like what Emma got. Back when we were friends, I used to get really nice presents from her, and even now I knew that she always got the latest stuff. Because her dad was rich.
It wasn't fair.
I had a headache, a dull ache right behind the eyes, so I went to buy lunch and find a place to sit. I deliberately didn't check the Other Place at all when I was doing it. I didn't want to see anything that would put me off my food.
With a packaged ham sandwich, a bag of chips and a bottled drink, I sat down on one of the gardens under the false blue sky of the Boardwalk. And it was just as well that I was sitting down, because just as I unscrewed the bottle, a sudden wave of cold shivers hit me. They ran up and down up my spine and I cramped up, my abdomen aching. I whimpered.
Nothing strange seemed to be going on. Just people going about their day. There were several other people in this small garden, eating lunch, and none of them seemed to be having any problems.
Maybe it was a sign I'd been overusing my powers. I wasn't sure if I'd ever used my power so often, in such quick succession. I certainly hadn't been moving things around like that. And I'd read online that most Thinkers got headaches if they used their abilities too often. I was basically a Thinker, too – just one who made constructs from the things they thought of – so it looked like that limitation applied to me to. And by my best guess, making teleporting wiredolls was much more 'exhausting' than smaller effects, or just looking into the Other Place.
I sighed, and took a deep breath, trying to settle the unpleasant nausea and dizziness I felt. I supposed that was another place I paid for the flexibility in my powers. Chris Bankron had been able to teleport things around all day in Going Places . Or, rather, the guy he played had. And it hadn't been a particularly good movie.
Shouting drew my attention, and I half-turned to see a kid about my age being manhandled by a pair of boardwalk security guards. The overturned skateboard on the ground by him told me everything I needed to know. There were "No Skating" signs up all over the Boardwalk, and the security enforced that pretty strictly. He tried to protest, but they didn't pay any attention.
I wanted to intervene. Yeah, sure, he had been skating where he wasn't meant to, but you heard rumours about what the security guards did here. Well, I heard rumours, mostly from Dad, who called them a bunch of thugs with badges and said they had all the worst traits of the police and none of the good ones. But what could I do?
Boredom, I thought suddenly. If I could make the guards bored, they wouldn't keep on doing what they were doing. Boredom, boredom, boredom… grey, clinging, smoky, like the days I spent in the psychiatric hospital I'd spent with nothing to do. I imagined it, recalled it, and exhaled. It took shape immediately, a grey column of fireless smoke with no features or details.
Huh. Boredom seemed to be pretty easy to imagine and didn't require much detailing. That might be useful later.
"Go," I whispered to it. The grey fog crept along the ground, roiling and boiling, and sunk into the two guards, who faded to a greyer shade in the Other Place. I smiled, and waited for it to take effect.
Nothing had happened, though. Not in the time it took for them to leave my line of sight. Why hadn't it worked? Surely if they were bored, they would have just gone off and done something else? Maybe I hadn't made the construct strong enough. Or maybe they were well trained enough that they did their job even if they were bored.
I sighed. That had been a no-show. Although apparently I wasn't all that great at affecting emotions which weren't my own, if that was anything to go by. Urgh. Apparently, I'd need to learn how to get people to do what I wanted, if this was going to be really useful. Great. Thank you, power. If I knew how to get people to do what I wanted, I'd have friends.
Dusting down my clothes, I rose and dumped my rubbish in a bin. I might as finish getting everything I needed, and then I could just go find a place to read. Maybe the library.
But first I needed some gear which wasn't sold in normal clothing shops, so I headed toward the army surplus store on the edge of the Boardwalk. It smelt slightly of stale sweat, and I got the distinct feeling that it didn't see too many women.
The adverts in the shop were all talking about patriotism and the need to be ready and 'What would you do if an Endbringer attacked?'. Well, let's see, I would end up a refugee or die of drowning, end up a refugee or die of radiation poisoning, or get to stay in Brockton Bay because I was now stuck in an internment camp or die from weird psychic bullshit. Sorry, Sammy's Surplus, but I'm not sure you're going to be as much help as you think.
A sudden cloud of depression descended on me. Except now I was a cape. I should be volunteering with the PPD for one of the parahuman reserve groups, even if I wasn't going to register with the government. Even some criminals did that, though that was probably because they thought it bought them lighter sentences and a route for rehabilitation. And I wasn't a criminal.
But… I mostly just had Thinker powers. What could I do? They didn't release actual figures, but everyone knew the casualty rate for fighting an Endbringer was really high. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to see an Endbringer. I paled at the thought of what one of those things, those living natural disasters would look like in the Other Place. I'd have to look at it if I wanted to do something against it. If the sweatshop had been that bad, what would something which had killed millions look like?
But surely it was my responsibility to help, right? I just… didn't want to face something like that. I didn't want to die.
No. I shouldn't think about things like that. The Protectorate didn't send parahumans who couldn't help to those things, and I was too young anyway. If it came to it, I'd deal with it, but for now I didn't have to think about that kind of thing. To get away from these morbid thoughts, I continued looking for the final parts of my costume.
My mother had managed to avoid getting caught when carrying out acts of villainy with a gas mask and balaclava, so apparently that set-up worked. It made sense. It would make it hard to identify me, and on top of that, it might help against gas or smoke, or even some cape powers. There was bound to be a villain with poison gas powers or someone who made worm things that tried to crawl in your mouth. I had considered trying to dig through the junk in the basement or the attic to see if I could find her old one, but it probably wouldn't be in great shape after twenty years even if I could find it.
Also, I really didn't want Dad going 'Hmm, new superhero in town wearing what looks to be my wife's old costume from her days as a henchwoman. I wonder who that could be?'.
It wouldn't end well.
It wasn't too hard to find where they were stocking the gas masks, and they had an entire range of balaclavas. I decided to go for one of the better ones, with a foil lining. It looked warmer and more comfortable, and I'd be wearing it quite a bit. I also vaguely remembered seeing on some crime show that foil linings could block microwave cameras, so maybe it would make it harder to see who I was.
I had enough cash for it, but – I pursed my lips, and winced slightly from the cracked skin – I didn't want to be associated as someone buying something like that. Gas masks weren't exactly regular purchases. And if I was in charge of a group looking for criminals, I'd be suspicious of people buying gas masks and balaclavas.
Well, the solution to that was obvious. Three barbed wire doll cherubs later, and the gas mask and balaclava were under my bed, while the money for them was in the cash register. That wasn't stealing at all. In fact, I was technically being cheated, because I couldn't return them if they weren't up to standard.
And I was feeling rotten. No, really, really bad. I felt sick and dizzy, and my lips had started bleeding again. The guy behind the register looked worried, and asked if I was feeling okay.
"A bit dizzy," I admitted. "I'm just going to go outside and find somewhere to sit down for a bit. I'm sorry, I just get low blood sugar when I don't eat for a while and everything goes a bit fuzzy and I just realised I missed lunch, sorry. It's not diabetes. I'll be fine."
I'm not sure if he believed me – in fact, I'm certain he didn't, but he let me go and I managed to find a bench out in the fresh air and sit down, holding my head in my hands. Ow. Ow ow ow. I guess I had proof that overusing my powers did a number on my body. Great. Just great.
But on the other hand, I now had my costume, hidden under my bed. I could go about making the world a better place. Or at least, I thought with a sinking feeling, I could do so the day after tomorrow. Because tomorrow I had that stupid meeting up at the school, talking about when I was going to be back. I really wasn't looking forwards to it. I was trying to shut down an illegal sweatshop and really help people, and I didn't need a school which couldn't even keep me safe getting in my way. They didn't care about me, anyway. They probably didn't want me back.
Maybe Dad would be feeling stressed enough with the whole thing with his friend that he would reschedule it?
Chapter 2.08
Oh no. Oh no no no.
What were the odds? The first place I walked into was selling clothes from the sweatshop. Either I was really unlucky, or there was some vast conspiracy which led most of the shops on the Boardwalk to source their products from slave labour. Or both.
Some of the clothes on the racks before me reeked of the warehouse. They were wrapped in a red haze of misery.
I covered my mouth with my hands, hyperventilating into my gloves. What was I going to do? What could I do? I shed the Other Place, but somehow I could still smell it. It was all around me. The entire building stank of misery and suffering and… and I had to calm down. I couldn't freak out, not in public. Even if I knew the truth behind this place and how all these people were buying things that had been made… no!
If I made a scene, I might end up back in the hospital. I didn't want to go back. I couldn't. I wouldn't. They wouldn't make me!
I only realised I was standing around at the entrance to the shop when I got jostled by an overweight man, who glared at me. I had to get out the way, to stay under the radar. I didn't want people paying attention to me. Looking around wildly, I headed over to the women section, and pretended to be paying attention to shoes. I needed to sit down, so found a seat and began to unlace my shoes as slowly as possible.
The sheer mundanity of untying my shoes calmed me down a little. I thought I could still smell the sweatshop, though, like a whiff of smoke caught in the back of my throat.
"Are you looking for anything in particular," one of the shop assistants asked me. The world shifted to grey and rust for a moment, and goat horns of tarnished metal forced their way out of her chalky skin. Then the Other Place vision faded, and she was talking again. "We have a sale currently on. So if you want me to check if we have anything in your size in the backroom, I'll be happy to help, but sale items are going quickly."
"Just checking what size I am, I'm still looking," I said hastily. "I'll ask if I see anything." Urgh. Why did people come over and try to talk to me? Pretending they cared. They were just as bad as some of the teachers at school, faking their interest. They didn't help me, and right now they couldn't even if they'd actually wanted to. No one could.
Fortunately, the assistant moved on. I had to calm down. I took a deep breath, tapping my gloved index fingers against my teeth. I hadn't lost control like this since I'd taught myself to control how I saw the Other Place. I was on the edge of tears. I couldn't lose control. I mustn't start crying.
But it was just too much. It was more than I could face. One illegal factory was one thing. But this was a large department store. I'd vaguely considered that there might be some dodgy shop getting under the table consignments from that place, but somewhere this big? What would I do? What could I do against something like this?
Was it even an illegal factory? Yes, I decided. It had to be. Something that looked that bad, felt that bad couldn't be legal. Shouldn't be legal.
I went and found the bathrooms, and locked myself in one of the cubicles until I had calmed down. I dried my eyes with tissue paper, and washed off my face. Staring at myself in the mirror, I sighed.
"You're so fucked up," I told the girl in the mirror softly. "Get a better grip of yourself."
Of course, I could do that. That was my thing. So I breathed out my worry and my agitation, and nailed it to the ceiling.
I felt better as I strolled out of the bathroom, leaving the squirming thing that wore my face behind. I didn't have to worry about anything. The sweatshop was horrible, and I was going to make sure that it was shut down. And then I'd make this place pay. Yes, it was perfectly clear and logical.
I almost felt like laughing. Yes, this shop was large. But if I shut down the sweatshop, their supply would be cut off there. And then if I could get evidence linking them to it, then I'd be able to make them pay. I hated bullies. I hated them so much. And what they were doing here, making people suffer for no good reason at all – for cheap clothing – was the worst kind of bullying, because they didn't even care.
Well. I'd make them care.
First things first. I needed to know for sure that the clothes here were being made in that particular sweatshop. That probably wasn't the only one in Brockton Bay. I nodded to myself. Yes. Sniffer managed to find my mother's flute, so she could almost certainly follow a trail back to where these clothes had been made. I opened my eyes to the Other Place, staring at the rot and the filth. The sweatshop clothes were the cheap ones, the ones which I could actually afford. I felt like I should have been feeling bad about that, but nothing registered. Anyway, I was going to make things all better.
You, I thought at Sniffer. I'm not going to let you out this time. You're staying in here, and you're going to show me what you see. I balled my hands into fists, and the prickling of pain helped me focus. I felt like I was pushing up against a wall, like I had my face pressed against a cellophane wrap. The skin all over my body felt taut, and not quite the right shape.
And it suddenly gave way.
It didn't come as naturally as seeing the Other Place normally. There was a feeling of depth about it. Have you ever opened your eyes at the bottom of a swimming pool, and felt the pressure against your eyeballs? It wasn't like that, but it wasn't entirely unlike that. The pressure was behind my closed eyes. It was like the world around me was thinner, less dense than I was.
Swaying, I tried to fight off the sudden wave of vertigo which nearly overcame me. I should have been sitting down when I tried this, I thought, with a trace of tipsy whimsy.
The light was dimmer, faded. There were almost no colours. But the changes went far beyond petty things like the spectrum. I saw shapes, and they meant nothing to me. In this iron-grey, formless world, my sight was almost meaningless. Or maybe my mind wasn't working correctly, because if I focussed I could just about put together that I was staring at my own face in a mirror. It took me long, long seconds to realise that.
But that didn't matter. I didn't need normal sight. I could feel the shape of the area around me in the same way I could feel where my arms and legs were when I wasn't looking at them. Eyes wide, I drifted around the main shop floor. I knew that what I was looking at was a man, a rack of clothes, the escalators up to the next level. I was effectively blind, but I simply knew where everything was even without looking at it.
And more than that, I could see the threads Sniffer followed when she tracked things down. I could see the hair-thin strands a tall, thin man left whenever he touched one of the pieces of clothing, spiderwebs in the air quickly lost among the haze of threads that surrounded him. I could see the hand-thick iron chain which linked him by the neck to the curvy woman who stood next to him. When I paid attention to the terminal point of the chain, I could see so many other chains and threads and wires, all wrapped around the blurred, unfocussed shape of the man.
But I didn't have to just focus on that nexus. I could focus on the nexus next to him – the woman, I dimly remembered – at the same time. And the nexus behind me. And that nexus that they were standing by. So many central points. All these chains. I could see them all. I – Sniffer – didn't care that I wasn't even facing most of them.
I covered up my eyes with my hands, trying to shut it out. It didn't help. I could still see everything. Seeing without eyes. I swayed, and staggered to grab a blurred shape I knew to be a rack of winter jackets. It was all too much. My attention shifted to the jacket-nexus, and I could see the chains stretching away from it. I reached out and grabbed at the thickest one, trying to pull myself upright with something which wasn't real, and when I touched it, I knew it connected up to the sweatshop. The sensory impressions flooded in and I desperately thrust Sniffer's awareness away from me.
A wave of light and sound hit me as the world returned to something approaching normalcy. Shaking, I found somewhere to sit and tried to catch my breath. I could feel the cold sweat prickling on my brow.
That… that thing I'd made from me saw the world like that all the time. No wonder it was a monster. What kind of person could deal with all that and stay sane? I stared blearily at the world around me. The lights seemed so bright, and yet my awareness seemed so limited compared to what had happened then.
I took a deep breath, and wiped my forehead against my sleeve. Staring up at the humming electric lights above me, I thought about what to do next. I couldn't buy a costume from here. The things I could afford were made in that place. I could go looking for some other place. Get out of here. Return only when it was time to make them pay.
Except there was another way I could make them pay. Literally. And by doing so, I could get a proper, good-quality costume made of expensive tinkerfab-cloth. I'd just need to take what I needed from here, without paying. Technically it would be theft. Technically, and legally. But would it be morally wrong?
I considered it for a while. I knew for a fact that this shop was directly profiting from what I'd seen down in the Docks. And they had to know from how much they were getting the clothes for that everything wasn't quite above board. Even if they didn't know, I bet they weren't asking the questions they should have been asking. Which made them party to the crimes.
From a certain point of view, that would make it karmic justice if I 'obtained' my disguise from this place. I wouldn't need to roll up the clothes and stick them under my coat or anything risky like that. All I'd need to do would be to send a doll-cherub or two to take the things I'd use back home. I could hide them under my bed. No one would ever know.
Legally it would be stealing. And would remain so even if things like 'my parahuman talent tells me that they're benefitting from slave labour' were admissible as evidence. Maybe they were. I wasn't up to date on parahuman law. They totally had to have some kind of way for psychic FBI agents and the like to submit evidence, right? No, I was getting distracted.
I had to be honest with myself. Was I doing this for the right reasons? I weighed up the option. On one hand, I was going to be stealing… oh, probably over a hundred dollars. At least. The coats alone were selling for more than that. That was wrong, at least normally.
But on the other hand, I wasn't doing it for my own benefit. I couldn't wear these clothes around normally. They were going to be part of my superhero costume. And the shop was benefitting from really, really horrible things. So I would be depriving the bad guys of stuff, and using it to help the people they were hurting. And I needed a good disguise, or they might trace me back and then they might hurt Dad. And me, too.
In the balance, it was probably morally acceptable for me to do this. As long as I didn't get into the habit.
And I couldn't wear things made in the sweatshop. I just couldn't. It was wrong. And, I realised, if I was doing things in the Other Place when wearing those clothes, I'd be smelling it all the time. It'd be up against my skin. I'd be touching it.
No. I couldn't. I wouldn't.
I took a deep breath, and made my choice.
I didn't bother trying to look innocent or like I didn't want to be noticed. Years of bullying had taught me that trying to look like you didn't want other people to pay attention to you just made them pay more attention to you. So I just checked out the place like I was looking around, and probably wanted to compare the coats in several shops before I bought anything. I wanted something black or grey, which would be hard to see at night. I made sure to ask one of the shop assistants for help, too. Her name, according to her badge, was Hello-My-Name-Is-Mary.
"Um, so," I asked her, "are these clothes ethically made?"
"Excuse me?" she said.
"Well, you hear about these sweatshops where clothing gets made," I said. "None of this comes from sweatshops, right? Everything is all above board?"
Hello-My-Name-is-Mary shook her head. "It's all ethically sourced," she told me.
Well. She was lying to me. Or didn't know. Either way, that meant that the shop was lying to its customers and pretending things were all above board. Some of my reluctance melted away at that. They had it coming.
"Is there anything in particular you're looking for?" she asked.
I frowned. "Something warm, but not too heavy," I said. "I want to… you know, be able to move in it properly. Not one of those long coats which you can't run for the bus in."
"Three-quarter lengths are coming in," she said encouragingly. "Frock coats were very big this Christmas. We have our selection over here."
I poked around, examining the various coats. These weren't cheap. Hundreds of dollars each, minimum. But they were very nice looking. I stroked the sleeve of a charcoal grey double-breasted coat, and held it up against me. Oh God, it would work so well. That shade would totally be almost invisible in the shadows at night, I was sure. I tried it on, and it was a little big around the shoulders, but it felt really nice.
"Won't that get wet and heavy?" I asked.
"It might look like it's wool, but it's not," Hello-My-Name-is-Mary said helpfully. "It's machine-washable. It's made of really clever synthetic stuff which feels like wool, but doesn't absorb water in the same way. You don't need to have it dry cleaned."
That was helpful. I was probably going to get muddy or dirty at some point, and there was no way I could get away with taking anything I wore to be dry cleaned. If I could just take it down to a Laundromat when Dad was at work, though… yes, that'd work. Hello-My-Name-is-Mary had just sold me on it. 'Sold' me. I tried a few more on, but I'd made my mind up.
"Thanks for the help," I told her, "but all these things just seem to be too big around the shoulders and feel loose. I mean, I like the length, but…" I shrugged. "It's so hard finding stuff when you're a beanpole," I said self-effacingly.
"Have you considered a different cut?" she asked. "Frock coats are kind of designed to make you look thinner by having a narrow wait and wider shoulders and," she waved her hands, "the flared bit at the bottom, but you'd probably look better with something more straight up-and-down."
I shook my head. "I might come back," I said, "but I think I might need to look somewhere else. Your sizes are a bit on the wide side."
She snickered. "I've noticed that too," she said. "Well, if you want to try one of our other styles, come back and I'll try and help."
I sighed to myself as she went off to someone else. She had seemed nice, but this whole place was so fake I couldn't trust it. Especially when they sold things from that sweatshop down at the Docks. Shifting my vision to the Other Place, I made a winged doll, and started to walk away from the coats.
"Go, take it, put it under my bed," I told the doll. When I turned around, the coat I'd tried on was gone. I smiled faintly to myself. Drifting around the shop, I slowly added a few more things to my collection, making sure to check each thing I was 'buying' was a good size. By the end of my browsing, I'd picked up two pairs of business dress pants in nearly the same shade of grey, and a black high-necked sweater. They were all on the more expensive side, but of course that was just so I could avoid the stuff that were tainted in the Other Place. Besides, it hurt this place more if I took those things. After a moment's thought, I grabbed a dark grey hat, of the sort PIs wore in those old films. I was being a detective, after all. Oh, and a very nice pair of black leather gloves which fit like… uh, like a glove.
To stop anyone getting suspicious of what I'd been doing in there, I paid for a cheap pair of gloves that fortunately didn't stink of the sweatshop. Then I walked out, feeling lightheaded, even a little giddy. That had been so easy. The world was spinning slightly and I was hyperventilating, so I sat down for a moment, on a bench outside the shop.. I couldn't let it go to my head. I just had to go on and be normal and get the rest of my shopping done. 'Shopping'. Heh.
My giddiness was spiked by an irrational surge of jealousy as I watched some of the people walking out of the shop. And the worst thing was that it wasn't irrational. I must have taken over $500 dollars of clothes – the coat alone had been $250. The stuff I'd swiped was worth more than we'd normally spend on half a year of my clothes, but people were wandering out with even more than that. Just casually bought. They didn't even think about how much money they'd just spent. They were too busy talking on their smartphones or doing things on smartglasses. That wool-but-better fabric sounded like tinkerfab, too - was there anything these people had that wasn't some kind of futuristic luxury dreamed up in a parahuman's lab?
If I was going to be honest, my turmoil had two layers. There was the bit of me which wanted to shake them and shout about where their toys and finery had come from, the conditions facing the workers who'd made some of them. Surely they'd do something, change how they acted if they knew? But there was also simple jealousy. I wasn't the sort of girl who obsessed over clothing, but… it'd be nice to get expensive things like that. Like what Emma got. Back when we were friends, I used to get really nice presents from her, and even now I knew that she always got the latest stuff. Because her dad was rich.
It wasn't fair.
I had a headache, a dull ache right behind the eyes, so I went to buy lunch and find a place to sit. I deliberately didn't check the Other Place at all when I was doing it. I didn't want to see anything that would put me off my food.
With a packaged ham sandwich, a bag of chips and a bottled drink, I sat down on one of the gardens under the false blue sky of the Boardwalk. And it was just as well that I was sitting down, because just as I unscrewed the bottle, a sudden wave of cold shivers hit me. They ran up and down up my spine and I cramped up, my abdomen aching. I whimpered.
Nothing strange seemed to be going on. Just people going about their day. There were several other people in this small garden, eating lunch, and none of them seemed to be having any problems.
Maybe it was a sign I'd been overusing my powers. I wasn't sure if I'd ever used my power so often, in such quick succession. I certainly hadn't been moving things around like that. And I'd read online that most Thinkers got headaches if they used their abilities too often. I was basically a Thinker, too – just one who made constructs from the things they thought of – so it looked like that limitation applied to me to. And by my best guess, making teleporting wiredolls was much more 'exhausting' than smaller effects, or just looking into the Other Place.
I sighed, and took a deep breath, trying to settle the unpleasant nausea and dizziness I felt. I supposed that was another place I paid for the flexibility in my powers. Chris Bankron had been able to teleport things around all day in Going Places . Or, rather, the guy he played had. And it hadn't been a particularly good movie.
Shouting drew my attention, and I half-turned to see a kid about my age being manhandled by a pair of boardwalk security guards. The overturned skateboard on the ground by him told me everything I needed to know. There were "No Skating" signs up all over the Boardwalk, and the security enforced that pretty strictly. He tried to protest, but they didn't pay any attention.
I wanted to intervene. Yeah, sure, he had been skating where he wasn't meant to, but you heard rumours about what the security guards did here. Well, I heard rumours, mostly from Dad, who called them a bunch of thugs with badges and said they had all the worst traits of the police and none of the good ones. But what could I do?
Boredom, I thought suddenly. If I could make the guards bored, they wouldn't keep on doing what they were doing. Boredom, boredom, boredom… grey, clinging, smoky, like the days I spent in the psychiatric hospital I'd spent with nothing to do. I imagined it, recalled it, and exhaled. It took shape immediately, a grey column of fireless smoke with no features or details.
Huh. Boredom seemed to be pretty easy to imagine and didn't require much detailing. That might be useful later.
"Go," I whispered to it. The grey fog crept along the ground, roiling and boiling, and sunk into the two guards, who faded to a greyer shade in the Other Place. I smiled, and waited for it to take effect.
Nothing had happened, though. Not in the time it took for them to leave my line of sight. Why hadn't it worked? Surely if they were bored, they would have just gone off and done something else? Maybe I hadn't made the construct strong enough. Or maybe they were well trained enough that they did their job even if they were bored.
I sighed. That had been a no-show. Although apparently I wasn't all that great at affecting emotions which weren't my own, if that was anything to go by. Urgh. Apparently, I'd need to learn how to get people to do what I wanted, if this was going to be really useful. Great. Thank you, power. If I knew how to get people to do what I wanted, I'd have friends.
Dusting down my clothes, I rose and dumped my rubbish in a bin. I might as finish getting everything I needed, and then I could just go find a place to read. Maybe the library.
But first I needed some gear which wasn't sold in normal clothing shops, so I headed toward the army surplus store on the edge of the Boardwalk. It smelt slightly of stale sweat, and I got the distinct feeling that it didn't see too many women.
The adverts in the shop were all talking about patriotism and the need to be ready and 'What would you do if an Endbringer attacked?'. Well, let's see, I would end up a refugee or die of drowning, end up a refugee or die of radiation poisoning, or get to stay in Brockton Bay because I was now stuck in an internment camp or die from weird psychic bullshit. Sorry, Sammy's Surplus, but I'm not sure you're going to be as much help as you think.
A sudden cloud of depression descended on me. Except now I was a cape. I should be volunteering with the PPD for one of the parahuman reserve groups, even if I wasn't going to register with the government. Even some criminals did that, though that was probably because they thought it bought them lighter sentences and a route for rehabilitation. And I wasn't a criminal.
But… I mostly just had Thinker powers. What could I do? They didn't release actual figures, but everyone knew the casualty rate for fighting an Endbringer was really high. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to see an Endbringer. I paled at the thought of what one of those things, those living natural disasters would look like in the Other Place. I'd have to look at it if I wanted to do something against it. If the sweatshop had been that bad, what would something which had killed millions look like?
But surely it was my responsibility to help, right? I just… didn't want to face something like that. I didn't want to die.
No. I shouldn't think about things like that. The Protectorate didn't send parahumans who couldn't help to those things, and I was too young anyway. If it came to it, I'd deal with it, but for now I didn't have to think about that kind of thing. To get away from these morbid thoughts, I continued looking for the final parts of my costume.
My mother had managed to avoid getting caught when carrying out acts of villainy with a gas mask and balaclava, so apparently that set-up worked. It made sense. It would make it hard to identify me, and on top of that, it might help against gas or smoke, or even some cape powers. There was bound to be a villain with poison gas powers or someone who made worm things that tried to crawl in your mouth. I had considered trying to dig through the junk in the basement or the attic to see if I could find her old one, but it probably wouldn't be in great shape after twenty years even if I could find it.
Also, I really didn't want Dad going 'Hmm, new superhero in town wearing what looks to be my wife's old costume from her days as a henchwoman. I wonder who that could be?'.
It wouldn't end well.
It wasn't too hard to find where they were stocking the gas masks, and they had an entire range of balaclavas. I decided to go for one of the better ones, with a foil lining. It looked warmer and more comfortable, and I'd be wearing it quite a bit. I also vaguely remembered seeing on some crime show that foil linings could block microwave cameras, so maybe it would make it harder to see who I was.
I had enough cash for it, but – I pursed my lips, and winced slightly from the cracked skin – I didn't want to be associated as someone buying something like that. Gas masks weren't exactly regular purchases. And if I was in charge of a group looking for criminals, I'd be suspicious of people buying gas masks and balaclavas.
Well, the solution to that was obvious. Three barbed wire doll cherubs later, and the gas mask and balaclava were under my bed, while the money for them was in the cash register. That wasn't stealing at all. In fact, I was technically being cheated, because I couldn't return them if they weren't up to standard.
And I was feeling rotten. No, really, really bad. I felt sick and dizzy, and my lips had started bleeding again. The guy behind the register looked worried, and asked if I was feeling okay.
"A bit dizzy," I admitted. "I'm just going to go outside and find somewhere to sit down for a bit. I'm sorry, I just get low blood sugar when I don't eat for a while and everything goes a bit fuzzy and I just realised I missed lunch, sorry. It's not diabetes. I'll be fine."
I'm not sure if he believed me – in fact, I'm certain he didn't, but he let me go and I managed to find a bench out in the fresh air and sit down, holding my head in my hands. Ow. Ow ow ow. I guess I had proof that overusing my powers did a number on my body. Great. Just great.
But on the other hand, I now had my costume, hidden under my bed. I could go about making the world a better place. Or at least, I thought with a sinking feeling, I could do so the day after tomorrow. Because tomorrow I had that stupid meeting up at the school, talking about when I was going to be back. I really wasn't looking forwards to it. I was trying to shut down an illegal sweatshop and really help people, and I didn't need a school which couldn't even keep me safe getting in my way. They didn't care about me, anyway. They probably didn't want me back.
Maybe Dad would be feeling stressed enough with the whole thing with his friend that he would reschedule it?
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Being able to pin your death wish to a wall and send your rationalization out on the town to beat people up will do that for you, yeah.Mutton said:
Also, nice costume. Gas mask, grey coat, black leather gloves... and psychic powers to top it all off.
"I'm uncomfortable. I'll pin that to the ceiling and go about my day!" Oh, Taylor.
Leviathan attacking halfway around the world made it rain blood (ok ok I didn't actually check where he attacked), so getting too close to an Endbringer is proooobably a bad idea.
Also, that's what, six things from the first shop (coat, two pants, sweater, expensive gloves) and then three cherubs in the second shop (gas mask, balaclava, money to register)? Plus Boredom, Sniffer-overload and pinning her anxiety to the ceiling. Hmm.
Leviathan attacking halfway around the world made it rain blood (ok ok I didn't actually check where he attacked), so getting too close to an Endbringer is proooobably a bad idea.
Also, that's what, six things from the first shop (coat, two pants, sweater, expensive gloves) and then three cherubs in the second shop (gas mask, balaclava, money to register)? Plus Boredom, Sniffer-overload and pinning her anxiety to the ceiling. Hmm.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Eh, I wouldn't feel that guilty stealing from a store I knew was actively and knowingly buying from a sweatshop - I wouldn't call that rationalization. Taylor in canon went out of her way to make friends with people she was planning on betraying because they were criminals. She has a pretty unforgiving sense of justice, and she always gives herself a bit of wiggle room despite that.Mutton said:
She did pay for the gas mask, so while that might be under-board in how she did it, it's not immoral behavior. Just paranoid.
The Death Wish, I'll give you though.
As Noliar said, I wouldn't be surprised if it made them want to relieve their boredom by, say, beating up this little punk more than they normally would.drakind said:
Something like apathy would have been a better choice there.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
You know, if it was anyone but Taylor who decided that stealing from the sweatshop-supplied store was moral because fuck them, I'd probably agree with them. But coming from the Rationalization Queen Admin... yeah.
Also, I expect that the boredom didn't dissuade the security guards because that was why they were fucking with the skateboarder in the first place.
Also, I expect that the boredom didn't dissuade the security guards because that was why they were fucking with the skateboarder in the first place.
Amorous Intent
Love the future
- Location
- Octavia, Venus
- Pronouns
- She/her
Actually, it's probably just Paradox from performing a bunch of vulgar teleports in rapid succession--assuming that Taylor really is a Mage or Proximi, of course.Jorlem said:
BlackoutSampler
So Easily Forgotten
I wonder if she can fly by combining herself with one of the Barbed Cherubs like she did with the Sniffer (probably would hurt like hell though what with the barbed wire and all), or maybe even teleport. for further Psycho Mantas fun she can start listing peoples Guilty Pleasures while floating around.
Also, I wonder how her powers interact with Gallant's. Could she bind an Emotion Beam before it hits her, and if so, would it still be a visible ball of light while stuck?
Also, I wonder how her powers interact with Gallant's. Could she bind an Emotion Beam before it hits her, and if so, would it still be a visible ball of light while stuck?
I'm only tangentially familiar with non-Exalted WW materials, and since I've started reading this story, I haven't gone looking for that source material, so I could judge what is happening in the story solely by what is in the story. Not sure how good an idea it is, but I've been enjoying it.Amorous Intent said:
No, worse.Cancelled for A said:
She's gone sane. All the ways normal people have to avoid facing the suffering and harm society creates? Well, she can see past those, and has to if she wants to use her powers. Kind of like the people in the Omelas thread who said "BURN IT ALL! SOCIETY SUCKS!"... except she's applying this to the society she's living in because she's gotten the rationalizations stripped from her.
Also, can you spell proper nouns with their proper spellings? Please? It's annoying and jarring when everything else is spelled correctly but a fairly easily spelled name.
The people of Imago live in a strange and scary world. One where the central character does not have bug control superpowers [1], and hence there is not some strange mystic force preventing people from realising, "Gosh, asphyxiation gets past a lot of defences. I should probably protect myself against that", or non-central characters realising "Gosh, asphyxiation gets past a lot of defences. Let's see if we can make a non-breathable version of containment foam and spray it over that bastard's face".Stormseed said:
People tried to asphyxiate Alexandria. Didn't end well for them. Turned out she didn't actually need air, because when your entire biology works by magical parahuman bullshitonium, "oh yeah I totally need oxygen" seems remarkably like a weakness put in specifically for a protagonist to exploit.
[1] Imago!Taylor: "Hey! I could probably... well, maybe control a bug! If they feel emotions. But I could probably make an ant really angry!" Wait, do bug-themed Other Place monsters count as bugs?"
zergloli said:
I just felt it was so terribly appropriate for her, that thing.
Justice/Pride. Explains everything. Including her capacity to keep going through anything; she's just spending willpower earned from constantly indulging in her virtue and vice alike.TheLastOne said: