Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)

Besides, federal prisons are subject to accountability and actual standards compared to state-run ones. I've head of lawyers legitimately advising (well, not very subtly reminding) clients who have no chance of avoiding prison that a federal crime with the same tariff would be served concurrently and in the federal system, so if they happened to also have one of those they could admit to they would avoid the local hellhole….
 
Besides, federal prisons are subject to accountability and actual standards compared to state-run ones. I've head of lawyers legitimately advising (well, not very subtly reminding) clients who have no chance of avoiding prison that a federal crime with the same tariff would be served concurrently and in the federal system, so if they happened to also have one of those they could admit to they would avoid the local hellhole….
Depends on the facility. But generally Federal prisons are better funded and the staff better trained and run professionally. Every now and again you catch a corrupt CO but they are rare in comparison to the corrupt gang infested hell that is state. They have more oversight, Corcoran is infamous for a reason.
 
Last edited:
Please lets just leave the Pariah stuff behind, I get that people want to see her cry and suffer and maybe die or smt but Garment is literally about to ruin her whole carreer.

I was honestly more annoyed with hoe everyone decided it was a good idea to not tell Joe her identity... Fekin idiots.

Anyways I would love some Omakes about Joe pranking people with the phone.

Call piggot, tell her she is now mastered, hang up.

Enjoy the the M/S protocol piggy!
 
Please lets just leave the Pariah stuff behind, I get that people want to see her cry and suffer and maybe die or smt but Garment is literally about to ruin her whole carreer.

I was honestly more annoyed with hoe everyone decided it was a good idea to not tell Joe her identity... Fekin idiots.
This is grossly misunderstanding what people thought was wrong with the chapter (not to say there wasn't anti-Sabah squad); thankfully, new chapter corrected almost all of what I've seen people argue about (including me) so there's that.

Also revealing Parian's identity is kind of useless and doesnt change the situation much if at all; sure, Joe would get more context why Parian jumped him but ultimately it would only ruin Joe's mood because he start thinking that he was part of Parian's trigger. Literally counter-productive move.

Call piggot, tell her she is now mastered, hang up.
Man, Joe's doubles would have field fucking day if they are allowed to cut lose with that thing lmao.
 
This is grossly misunderstanding what people thought was wrong with the chapter (not to say there wasn't anti-Sabah squad); thankfully, new chapter corrected almost all of what I've seen people argue about (including me) so there's that.

Also revealing Parian's identity is kind of useless and doesnt change the situation much if at all; sure, Joe would get more context why Parian jumped him but ultimately it would only ruin Joe's mood because he start thinking that he was part of Parian's trigger. Literally counter-productive move.


Man, Joe's doubles would have field fucking day if they are allowed to cut lose with that thing lmao.

I was exagerating what people wanted to do to Sabah.

As for the identity stuff...

The problem is that they are shoving that reveal to the side and hoping they can just ignore it and wont be a problem later. Which mean it will likely become a much bigger problem later.

Its something that he should know even if it hurts him, cuz if it hurts him now it would only devastate him later.
 
I was exagerating what people wanted to do to Sabah.

As for the identity stuff...

The problem is that they are shoving that reveal to the side and hoping they can just ignore it and wont be a problem later. Which mean it will likely become a much bigger problem later.

Its something that he should know even if it hurts him, cuz if it hurts him now it would only devastate him later.
You know, something to consider here is looking at it from the other way.

What if Sabah learned that Joe 'triggered' after the whole mess she was involved and became Apeiron? How badly would that screw with her head? Not to mention other people around him that discover it who could have fingers pointed at them for the whole mess Joe getting the Forge caused.
 
The problem is that they are shoving that reveal to the side and hoping they can just ignore it and wont be a problem later. Which mean it will likely become a much bigger problem later.

Its something that he should know even if it hurts him, cuz if it hurts him now it would only devastate him later.

I really don't think it will, the information doesn't get worse over time. It's not like knowing now will stop a tragedy later. I can only think this would make Joe more lienent in the moment and try to stop Garment.

He's basically leaving everything to Survey who does know and WoG is Sabah won't be an issue in a time frame that would matter. At the rate Joe is gaining powers I could see full planetary upgrade happening before Garment wrecks Sabah's reputation.
 
He's basically leaving everything to Survey who does know and WoG is Sabah won't be an issue in a time frame that would matter. At the rate Joe is gaining powers I could see full planetary upgrade happening before Garment wrecks Sabah's reputation.

By the time Garment can wreck Sabah's reputation (Like, a month in story, if that?), the uplift should be underway, which means that Joe would have already, as an early step, spread replicators around the globe.

Which would mean the economy wouldn't just crash, it would be taken out back and shot like Old Yeller. The very concept of economy and money would be dead. Deader than Eden. Unlike Trek, Joe can even mass produce space for housing and land through expansion charms, pocket dimensions, genesis devices, and space colonies so not even land would have scarcity to have value.

In the face of that debacle, Garment explicitly making new fashions to spite Parian will be such a small thing in the background, I have my doubts Sabah herself will notice, because she might be a bit more shell shocked about the cultural tsunami sweeping over her and the rest of the world.

And that's just the economy. Joe's medical tech is already on the level of fixing any disease or disorder, and has several dozen flavors of gifting super-powers. The only real limit for him is death right now, and even that's already one foot, ironically, in the grave given all of his soul perks and newly acquired reincarnation tech. If Joe gets to the point he can just resurrect all the dead people in history ever, which he's just a time travel perk away from doing, then Sabah might be a bit distracted by the fact her dad is alive again. And every other dead family members and friends. Oh, and the little tidbit that no one including her ever has to die again.

The sheer cataclysmic table flipping Joe's about to give human civilization is going to make the drama about Sabah so completely and utterly insignificant, Sabah herself could react, unironically, to Garment going on the warpath against her like this:
 
Last edited:
By the time Garment can wreck Sabah's reputation (Like, a month in story, if that?), the uplift should be underway, which means that Joe would have already, as an early step, spread replicators around the globe.

Which would mean the economy wouldn't just crash, it would be taken out back and shot like Old Yeller. The very concept of economy and money would be dead. Deader than Eden. Unlike Trek, Joe can even mass produce space for housing and land through expansion charms, pocket dimensions, genesis devices, and space colonies so not even land would have scarcity to have value.

In the face of that debacle, Garment explicitly making new fashions to spite Parian will be such a small thing in the background, I have my doubts Sabah herself will notice, because she might be a bit more shell shocked about the cultural tsunami sweeping over her and the rest of the world.

And that's just the economy. Joe's medical tech is already on the level of fixing any disease or disorder, and has several dozen flavors of gifting super-powers. The only real limit for him is death right now, and even that's already one foot, ironically, in the grave given all of his soul perks and newly acquired reincarnation tech. If Joe gets to the point he can just resurrect all the dead people in history ever, which he's just a time travel perk away from doing, then Sabah might be a bit distracted by the fact her dad is alive again. And every other dead family members and friends. Oh, and the little tidbit that no one including her ever has to die again.

The sheer cataclysmic table flipping Joe's about to give human civilization is going to make the drama about Sabah so completely and utterly insignificant, Sabah herself could react, unironically, to Garment going on the warpath against her like this:
I do think that Sabah will notice. Specifically because in a day or two Garment is going to be releasing entire fashion lines and styles based on her stuff but infinitely better. Sure she won't care about it after the uplift is underway but she will notice in the time period before. But it is very much a short term problem and a post scarcity society problem.
 
I do think that Sabah will notice. Specifically because in a day or two Garment is going to be releasing entire fashion lines and styles based on her stuff but infinitely better. Sure she won't care about it after the uplift is underway but she will notice in the time period before. But it is very much a short term problem and a post scarcity society problem.
All because Garment did something amazing, miraculous, and thought to be impossible.

Add actual functional pockets to women's clothing.
 
I do think that Sabah will notice. Specifically because in a day or two Garment is going to be releasing entire fashion lines and styles based on her stuff but infinitely better. Sure she won't care about it after the uplift is underway but she will notice in the time period before. But it is very much a short term problem and a post scarcity society problem.

Fashion and reputation should both remain valuable in a post-scarcity situation. Garment's hitting Parian in one of the few ways that will matter after the uplift.

Well, post-scarcity wise, a bad reputation mainly means not getting invited to all of the cool parties. And post-uplift, depending upon how Joe handles the Shards, if Sabah gets forcibly disconnected from her Shard, there's a chance she can get some therapy and eventually apologize for what she did given Delphine's going to be explaining exactly what the consequences of her actions are.

Fashion-wise post-uplift, the main thing Parian doesn't have to worry about is her clothes paying any bills, nor does she have to even bother with fundraisers or her puppet shows ever again. So, being showed up isn't directly threatening her finances like it would be. I also expect an explosion of art and culture from all the people who couldn't afford to be artists suddenly no longer having to worry about money, so there's going to be tons of new fashion designers everywhere, especially since you don't need to know any tailoring with a replicator there to hold your hand.

Just imagine what a few fashion interested people can do with a publicly released version of the Spiritron computer? If that ever happens, you're giong to have tons of people getting years of experience overnight. While I expect Garment to stay on top, the fashion crowd will probably get a bit bigger in the Bay (and everywhere) when money becomes inconsequintal, and that could take some attention away from exactly what Garment is doing with her new clothing lines. Given the few lines about Sabah not really gronking the art of fashion and doing it more mechanically, it's a good chance she won't know what Garment is doing unless Garment is very obvious in her actions or Delphine is actively explaining what's going on is a consequence of her pissing Garment off from what she did.

Of course, if things get really bad for her and Sabah can calmly think through things, she can always just discard her cape persona as Parian. It was always intended to be ultimately discarded. And then she can just start from the ground up again.

Things do depend upon the timeline of upcoming actions. We've got two or three days for Garment to unveil her new fashion lines, and I expect it to take time for the news to spread about that. If Garment just puts them up in her shop, it'll take more time for the news to spread then if she did a proper event for it. With Joe deciding he's not dealing with it, I'm assuming that extends to his duplicates, there won't be super event skills going into anything Garment does with this fashion line.

And if Joe kills the Nine in the next two to three days, and immediately goes full Uplift right after... well that's probably going to get all the attention over Garment's new fashion line, especially with every cape organization in the world going Ape-con 1.

Whenever the S9 die is when the roller coaster starts.
 
Random idea: ask Survey (through her divine connection with machines) to make sure Parian never sees Garment's "how to pockets" video by mysterious technical errors that always occur when she tries. Subtle yet sublime vengeance.
 
Apeiron's Transformation
Looks pretty good.
But the shield needs more Edge.
The way it was described, I was picturing something designed for the movie Saw and then further Edge'd after it visited Silent Hill.
It doesn't have enough hooks, blades and barbed wire.

It needs to look so Emo, that just gazing at it makes you want to watch Edward Scissorhands while listening to My Chemical Romance while having a 'sex' scene from the fanfiction My Immortal open on your browser for anyone to see.

It needs to look so Edgy, that it's presence can lightly cut wrists in a 30 foot radius and increase Revenue Streams for every Hot Topic within two counties distance.
 
Last edited:
Looks pretty good.
But the shield needs more Edge.
The way it was described, I was picturing something designed for the movie Saw and then further Edge'd after it visited Silent Hill.
It doesn't have enough hooks, blades and barbed wire.

It needs to look so Emo, that just gazing at it makes you want to watch Edward Scissorhands while listening to My Chemical Romance while having a 'sex' scene from the fanfiction My Immortal open on your browser for anyone to see.

It needs to look so Edgy, that it's presence can lightly cut wrists in a 30 foot radius and increase Revenue Streams for every Hot Topic within two counties distance.
Your forgetting making every physician and suicide hotline worried just from hearing about it.
 
Ape of Iron's image needs more Ape and Iron, maybe a dash of hot rod red as accent glow for pure vanta black shield main color.
 
I added this to the first part of the series and cleaned it up a bit to fix inconsistencies and to maintain a general style

Aperion Come Home 2 (edited):

"I want to know what happened to the others. I was the weakest one... I am starting to remember". Or more like he was forced to know. Aperion was looking decidedly sick, almost like he was remembering something horrible that happened to him. Memories seemed to flow behind his eyes. She had seen that haunted look to many times to mistake it as anything else. To live something unforgettable. She had seen that face in a mirror on enough occasions that it was instantly recognizable.

"Where are my brothers and sisters! They are not in this dimension. I would know. I checked. What kind of sick games are you playing with our lives! You were supposed to be there for us, or something..." The words trailed off getting more distant and seemingly farther away. The red monster had jumped off his shoulder at some point to stand in line with the rest of the forge.

A lone slap rang out with a sonic boom.

Aperion left the office via the wall at several times the speed of sound. Alexandria knew she had really done it now. Casus belli. As the shredded walls and ceiling crashed around her she knew she had made a mistake. The Aperion sized hole in the wall was her testament. Part of it was the personal accusation; a loss of control. That part of her was out there alone, standing right in front of her might be the one thing she dreaded the most. A child grown into a man but hers. She couldn't stand the fact that fate might have just slapped her so hard.

The other part was the loss of Hero. They had a thing, maybe, once. Life and death situations drove people together like nothing else. If the rumors were true and he had been made from both of their genetics she was more than terrified of whatever Cauldron might be planning.

As the wall between the CRT and and the Celestial Forge were blown away everyone got a good look at the whole situation. The entire floor was rubble. The thankfully tinkered support columns tanking the damage mostly intact. The last valiant bit of plaster fell. Smashing to the ground caused her to cease introspection. She had to pick up the pieces. This was her mistake. The threat rating said non-confrontational unless attacked. She would have found it hard not to believe that every member of the forge had a least a minor undocumented Trump rating.

Her biology was atypical and impervious to anything besides certain Trump powers. She knew she would never have children, the impossibility of it made the prospect of a serious relationship that resulted in children unimaginable and impossible. For all that Hero was, he still talked about being able to retire and watch his children grow up. He wanted to have an apple orchard and a swing on a hill. All the things he talked about she couldn't forget. He really did talk about that often.

The Celestial Forge looked almost comically unperturbed as the Critical Response Team did their best to pick themselves and look imposing and dangerous. If such a thing was even possible, covered in dust and coughing powder, but they were making an effort. She was thankful they had cleared the floor of all PRT personnel that couldn't take a hit. The pulsing red mink now was a girl suddenly? She must have missed the transformation or it was to fast to observe. She was sure that the girl was the same one in Dauntless's report. The pulsing girl slapped her hands together with sparks of electricity seeming to bloom from every surface. The room started to come back together. She had to shake her head a little to get the image of a white being with flanked in black with teeth and endless black hands stretching forth. I was probably some memetic cost or side effect. She chose to ignore it.

The purple armored woman was still there but was had her head at an odd angle to the bare wall opposite her while she swung a heeled shoe and looked like she would rather be anywhere else. Survey's eyes never left her for a moment. The cat was paced around looking like it was was waiting for things to get put back together enough to find somewhere soft enough to take a nap. The golden man hadn't moved but a bow in his hands had a appeared at some point. The man with the helmet looked left and right and took a step back with a 'go-a-head' gesture.

Not knowing what was happening but if they weren't becoming hostile she was going to go with the flow. She had to have a conversation.

Opening the newly restored door to her office she stepped in, the Critical Response Team, with billowing streamers of dust coming off their bodies to rejoin with the ceiling, floors, and walls. Chubster stepped up, "Mam', situation report?" "All is good so far, looks like the Celestial Forge is not considering this an attack by me and is standing down; don't anyone give them an excuse to consider otherwise." Chubster wisely kept his mouth shut. Alexandria leveraged her considerable force towards the Mach diamonds laid into the collapsed piles of concrete where she was sure she had just killed thousands just from the collapsed buildings alone.

The force of the deceleration of any hypersonic object with the drag coefficient of a large tumbling human alone would be devastation. It had left a large circle of shattered windows on the periphery of several kilometers. As she descended she could see the results of her attack. In his wake of being shot through several buildings. All the buildings in the immediate path were reduced to powder and simply didn't exist any more. Beyond those, everything look like what you would expect if a buildings were pushed sideways, everywhere, all at once. A turbulent over-pressure/under-pressure wave guaranteed deaths and countless bodies would surely be covered in rubble. Of those that didn't die immediately from the collapsed building anyone standing to near a window that wasn't shredded by the shattered glass or die bleeding from a thousand wounds would be lucky to keep their eyesight but would invariably be horribly scarred. She had been there and done that. They said outside of six to seven meters binocular vision was useless but maybe it worked differently for parahumans. The irony wasn't lost on her.

It was quiet. Normally there would be sirens wailing in the distance. Screams and crying and people gurgling on their last breath. She had seen people running away from the area. There was nothing. No fire hydrants, no shouts of alarms or radio chatter. When she did hear something and her head snapped to the sound. It was came from the largest crater. Where Aperion impacted. With a breeze she did not feel all the rubble in the immediate area started to disintegrate seemingly blowing away into nothing as he stood there without a scratch.

The red lock of hair seemed to be glow much more brightly and she could swear she could see a spiral pattern glowing in electric blue laid on to the ground before it was gone. Slowly and with no sound a sphere of disintegration started to become evident around the man. The strangest thing was there was still no sound. Aperion looked directly at her. He was standing in the empty air with no obvious Tinker means for the effect. That didn't mean much but it made the sound of his footsteps make a ringing sound as they collided with empty air as the expansion stopped and he started to approach her.

In a burst of sparks and flame the rest of the Celestial Forge was standing behind him. She could feel the ground quake as some giant robots seemed to appear and disappear in a misty gloom that wasn't there a few seconds ago. Was this the start of the robot hell apocolypse that had been postulated as one of the most survivable if Aperion decided to attack. The sun had already dimmed. and seemed to only get darker. The fog grew thicker by the second until it was just her. A table sprung up from the middle of the ground. A chair on each side, a high-backed affair with royal overtones with ornate engravings covering everything she was struggled to see of her journey to save the world chronicled in elaborate and excruciating detail. Within the periphery in a hemi-circle, smaller but no less intricate chairs rose up flanking Aperion as if to bear witness. Each of the smaller throne chairs cradling a member of the Celestial Forge to bear witness.

Sitting down, he poured out two cups of some liquid into two cups and a pitcher that seemed to rise ominously from the surface of the the table. He drank from his deeply. "I can see them, you know? The passengers. You are connected with a dead one. Its grinding itself down into dust. Your ending will not be a good one. Eternity, forever, infinity.... However you choose to describe it; it will be hell. Tell me what I need to know about Cauldron and I will save you. No one will know what happened here. I switched everything and everyone in this city before I came. No one died, there is no damage, I can erase the memories of your CRT. Where are they keeping 'it'".

There it was again! That look behind his eyes like looking into a flowing river. She didn't miss him shudder as she contemplated her next words. "I was offered a deal. A deal so good I couldn't say no. Part of that deal was that I never spoke of it to a second person. We obviously have an audience here. Its a little hard to speak." Part of being able to speak authoritatively was the leeway it granted her to give an inch and gain a mile. "Perhaps we could speak more succinctly in a private venue." Alexandria wasn't sure of the source of his breaker powers, maybe some some sort of apocalypse scenario no one could remember. He might be be some genetic some sort of genetic chimera with her, Eidolon and Hero's DNA mixed in a cocktail of nightmare proportions with Haywire or Dodge's add added for flavor. That might explain things but not how Cauldron thought such an individual would mean in a broader context.

Sorry. My part one IDK where it went.
 
Last edited:
24 hour Delay Announcement
I had very much hoped to avoid a delay, but it doesn't look like I will be able to complete the chapter to my satisfaction by tonight. Rather than put out a truncated chapter, I'm announcing a 24-hour delay so that I can properly polish and close out the chapter. My apologies for the short notice, but I believe this is preferable to releasing a rough, half-length chapter.
 
Obligatory...

*HEADDESK*
*HEADDESK*
*HEADDESK*

...in any case, @LordRoustabout, if these delays keep continuing, wouldn't you take some time thinking about whether changing the posting schedule to something like every other Friday be better?

Or are these sorts of delays irregular enough that you don't feel such measures are necessary?
 
I had very much hoped to avoid a delay, but it doesn't look like I will be able to complete the chapter to my satisfaction by tonight. Rather than put out a truncated chapter, I'm announcing a 24-hour delay so that I can properly polish and close out the chapter. My apologies for the short notice, but I believe this is preferable to releasing a rough, half-length chapter.
*Inhales**exhales* Alright then, see you tomorrow then chief.
 
Back
Top