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CmptrWz's Random Snippets

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    • As a general note: All snippets in this thread can be considered up for adoption, with a couple of basic conditions:
    1. If you use my actual text, in whole or in part, please credit me.
    2. Please drop a note here stating that you've started a story based on a snippet, with link(s) as appropriate. Even if the site says "there haven't been any posts here for a while..."
    Though as of this posting, people without a sufficient messages count can't bypass the warning on replies. Feel free to message me directly if that's the case.
     
  • Informational
    • A ping from Amy has already been done in Paths Diverged, and seems less likely here due to distance.

    That Taylor's life recently has been devoted to learning medical terminology may well factor in, though I doubt she'd be a straight medical tinker. She may also be more focused on wanting to know why Emma betrayed her, which would point to a pure Thinker ability. There's clearly something that needs an adjustment period, though, which is more likely to be extreme sensory overload than an inability to control a Changer power.

    Putting that together, what if she can see or feel the medical state of everyone in range, but can't directly affect anything?
     
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    Possible power: Thinker/Tinker. Brought about from a long standing issue reaching a breaking point (Tinker) and great mental/emotional distress in the moment (Thinker).
    Thinker: 'Khepri without the mind control' to anyone she is linked with via a Tinker-tech implant. Runs off canon unlimited multitasking. Functions something like Star Wars Battle Meditation. The more diverse perceptions and Thinker powers in the mix, the better. (all QA)
    Tinker: Does not need surgery to implant module; shadowy limbs allow reaching into body (SS ping). Implanted modules are biological in nature; when implanted are treated as organs by the body, so no rejection and upkeep is handled through natural bodily functions (Shaper ping).
     
    B00ki5h said:
    Taylor pinging off Amy is giving me Mauling vibes, so I wouldn't lean too heavily on it. Her just having her cannon powers but Amy's tweaks being dialed up would be interesting. Turning Taylor into Spider-Man with Antman's helmet; I don't think I've ever seen it done.
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    If she ends up with a Shaper bud on top of QA insect control, I'd be getting Tales of Transmigration vibes.
     
    QA concentrates on multiple simultaneous actions while Shaper deals with altering biological systems, Sophia's shard is some sort of phase shift setup, don't recall the shard's name. Now if QA adds trumps options, since Taylor was triggered by the direct actions of a parahuman, and she pinged off the pair... Well the options are as many and varied as we can all think up.

    Hell, you could claim shard settings caused it to connect to the network, as their were two high level shards involved and justify any powers you want.

    1. Taylor gains forcefields. Not one huge one, but tons of little hexagons that she can easily use for movement, defense, and battlefield control as she can make them permeable to anything she chooses.

    2. Taylor gains the ability to shift from one world to another, memorizing and navigating dimensional co-ordinates by trial and error.

    3. Taylor gains the ability to alter biology, steadily improving biological systems as she is exposed to different life forms or it can be limited to the scans of the same species.

    4. Taylor becomes a tinker specializing in bio-androids that are unable to be told from regular humans as the android parts are phase shifted so they can't be scanned. Think Guyver systems.

    5. Taylor becomes The Gamer! (Shaper) Body improves through use, never degrades, completely heals when she sleeps in a bed for 8 hours. (QA) Learns and improves without limits all neatly defined on her character sheet. (Phase Shift) Is given quests to complete in simulated world as well as a nifty inventory system.

    6. Taylor is a Trump! Taylor gains the ability to give out lesser versions of all parahuman powers she has been exposed to while connecting them to a mental message board that is slightly better than PHO as the human mind is pretty filthy at the best of times so overshare is a constant problem.

    7. Taylor is a technopath! Able to connect to and repair all technology beyond a certain complexity by touch.
     
    Thinker/trump seems like the most probable outcome and given how she works with Panacea all the time and is working to write up her biokinesis babble, what about: she has the same biological sense as Amy but for everything within her range and she can share it with anyone else in her range. So the doctors and other staff can see/feel what Amy is doing. But more importantly the trump aspect is that when she's touching Amy or vice versa, the biokinesis can be applied to any target she can sense in range.
     
    Splattered Cloak said:
    A ping from Amy has already been done in Paths Diverged, and seems less likely here due to distance.
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    Physical distance may not be necessary after how close they've grown and spending so much time together.
    Splattered Cloak said:
    what if she can see or feel the medical state of everyone in range, but can't directly affect anything?
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    This, like some others I didn't think to quote, feels unlikely, or at least incomplete, to me for not having any apparent offensive use.
    Kytheros said:
    We're talking about a full on bud from Shaper.
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    I don't know if that would work with Taylor already a latent QA host. A ping, adding aspects of Shaper to QA, sounds more possible than a bud.
    dogbertcarroll said:
    1. Taylor gains forcefields. Not one huge one, but tons of little hexagons
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    Sounds Like Pisces Taylor. I think that was from Billymorph's Implacable IIRC.
     
    I think with how Taylors been managing Amy she'll get a thinker power with a "soft" master component like Jack Slash. Infinite multitasking with inherent understanding of managing people with a focus on parahumans.
    Maybe a bit too close to Accord mixed with Jack Slash.
     
    If this were to be expanded into a proper story, nothing resembling canon powers is useable. Master Triggers come from prolonged social isolation, and that wasn't here.
    But if there is a Trigger at all, it can now just about anything. Regular interactions with several capes and less often with some others opens the door for all sorts of interesting buds if a Shard feels like experimenting.
    Freshly Triggered Brandish conjured a baseball bat with her powers and cut a man's leg off no issue. Turn that power into all offense, no defense via use of portals like Allfather with his weapons, and you have something capable of putting down even most brutes, but no defenses except for overwhelming first strike.
     
    On the subject of Taylor's powers (way too many people to quote), and "there's no way she'd get a master power" in particular: Despite her friendship with Amy, she's still socially isolated. Not to the extent of canon in her entire life, but she's definitely dealing with it at Winslow. Add in that QA really likes the "control minions" power sets and it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that Taylor still gets control over bugs due to some being in the locker with her. Granted, probably a broader-strokes version, due to factoring in a ping from Shaper, more like Chicken Little got with minimal "control everything individually" abilities.

    Now onto some direct responses:

    johnnyobinome said:
    I really like how Taylor gets amy to subtly fuck with the gang members she heals, that's not something I've thought of before.
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    Most powers aim for big, obvious things and I suspect that this would never have occurred to Amy due to Shaper pushing her to do obvious things. That Taylor came up with it means that she's teaching Shaper, through Amy, how subtle infiltration and sabotage can make a difference in a fight, not to mention subtle boosts to allies.
    tacomuerte said:
    Her calling 911 from inside the locker is definitely the logical way to go. Although maybe it fell out of her pocket? Maybe it was in her bag outside the locker? There are a bunch of different ways it could be dealt with narratively.
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    "I cannot reach the phone because I'm crammed inside of a locker with little to no room to move" seems like a perfectly reasonable justification for Taylor not making the call, even before "I'm in a metal box that may very well be acting like a faraday cage and preventing my phone from getting a signal" is factored in.
    Sotek said:
    If she didn't trigger, why is Panacea off healing for a meaningful length of time "until she recovers"? The locker was unpleasant and all, but she'd be healed already of anything Amy is willing to heal and in canon she was catatonic for a week or so due to sensory overload from her new power - that's much closer to the kind of thing that would actually meaningfully disable her and isn't an easy Panacea-fix.
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    Concussion with complications due to slamming her head when shoved into the locker could be enough on its own, honestly, but see my thoughts on things at the start of this post too.
    YuffieK said:
    Note: This happened in August of 2010 rather than January 2011. Sophia's presumably just been pressganged into the Wards (under Piggot's protests) and has already burned every bridge.
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    It's a subtle one, but the "post-break review" scene with Vicky is post Winter break. The gifts she was thinking about were Christmas gifts.

    Sophia's been in the Wards for half a year or so at this point.
    YuffieK said:
    Regarding other Trigger timings. Vicky's was roughly March 2009 (State HS championship basketball game during her sophomore year) and Amy's was a couple months afterward. (after Vicky found out she wasn't as bulletproof as she thought she was)
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    We have multiple conflicting statements from different characters about a number of trigger events, Vicky and Amy included. Hence my opening author's note stating I was going for earlier interpretations.
    FaerieKnight79 said:
    Heh, Sophia realizing only after it's far too late that she royally screwed herself over? Amusing
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    I mean, she realized early enough to avoid being immediately ambushed by a capture team...
     
    Taylor gets her standard bug control, but can have her insects feed on people's vitality, applying Amy's various negative adjustments and giving her a pool that she can use to positively boost people.
     
    CmptrWz said:
    Most powers aim for big, obvious things and I suspect that this would never have occurred to Amy due to Shaper pushing her to do obvious things. That Taylor came up with it means that she's teaching Shaper, through Amy, how subtle infiltration and sabotage can make a difference in a fight, not to mention subtle boosts to allies.
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    With QA seeing Shaper playing with this new DATA about subtle attacks, I feel like it's going to be a big factor in whatever Taylor's power expression will lean towards.
     
    I feel the most obvious is a 'altered biological minions', with a cap on the amount she can control and the range.

    Balancing that would be a challenge. The first idea that comes to mind is to treat it -- behind the scenes -- like an RTS game does. Some total unit cap. Bigger minions cost more than smaller minions. Upgraded minions cost more than unaugmented ones. The usual multi-tasking and full control over any creature she's taken over, and the ability to upgrade them by touch. Upgrades take time and experimentation, but they're faster to upgrade the same sort of creature in the future, once she's worked out a template. Maybe she's got a much smaller 'capture creatures' range, but augmented creatures she can control over a larger range.

    And maybe have a 'revert to normal' sort of thing when she releases control, preventing her from basically storing units to replaced lost ones to cheat the cap.

    If I'm thinking in game terms, with the suggestions she's made to Shaper -- ranged cleric. The ability to heal within her range, as well as apply temporary biological buffs and debuffs. Not as fast a healer as Amy, the more serious the injury the more she has to focus and the longer it takes (so heal everyone a little, or one person a lot more). For the buff/debuff -- the milder the result, the faster and more people she can do it to.
     
    Taylor did not trigger and Amy could not heal becouse QA and Shaper are at war righ now.

    On one side QA wants her best host on the other one Shaper found a more interesting host with ideas
     
    From what I remember a friend telling me, I haven't read canon myself, when Taylor triggered in the locker she was in there before classes and left in there at least until the end of the day. She triggered with command of insects at first, fell unconscious and woke up later, struggled to escape again and second triggered with direct control of insects.

    It doesn't seem like Taylor was in the locker for nearly as long, so I'd assume that she didn't second trigger like in cannon. Sophia didn't fall unconscious (which I'm led to believe is a thing that happens when a parahuman is within range of a fresh trigger) from what I read so it's unlikely that QA has pinged off her shard.

    I think I was told that masters occur when the cape in question feels like they have no control over their situation at all, but Taylor acknowledged that she had a potential way out (talking to new wave about transferring to Arcadia) and didn't take it because she didn't want the extra attention it would bring.

    Mind you, I think Taylor having direct control over tiny mechanical insects that can scan biological systems either by landing on someone's skin or a specialised camera would be pretty awesome.
     
    Captain Dodgers said:
    And people say Earth Bet is a nothing but a hellhole. Including me, but this shows that even in such a place you can find some rays of light. This implies that phones and other devices may actually be easy to repair.

    Lucky them. Its a small thing, but still.
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    Keep in mind this is still 2011.
    The flip phone I had from 2009-2013 has a removable battery. The first phone I had without a removable battery I got in 2013 which was also my first smart phone. I found my mother still had her flip phone in storage at her home for some reason even though she replaced it with an iPhone 5 back when the 7's were out and it has a removable battery as well.
    The previous phones had removable batteries as well.
    I'm pretty sure most flip phones from 2011 had removable batteries, I'm not sure about smart phones from the era. I only really handled a Blackberry in 2006-2007 and I honestly don't recall if it could be opened or not as it belonged to a company I worked for.

    From my perspective, I didn't start seeing phones without removable batteries until 2013, so this isn't as auspicious as you make it out to be given the time period of 2011.
     
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    CmptrWz said:
    It hadn't been too surprising when her father had returned home with two cell phones. They already had each other's numbers programmed into them, and the one handed to Taylor had a lot more than that. Two numbers for every hospital in the city, all of New Wave's numbers, and a set of local non-emergency contact numbers. Police, fire, PRT, and Protectorate specifically. A helpful guide as to what kinds of issues to call each of those numbers for had been included, that started with a note that in an emergency you should always just call 911 and let them contact everyone that might be needed.
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    I'm vaguely curious what a non-emergency fire department call would be for.
     
    Random832 said:
    I'm vaguely curious what a non-emergency fire department call would be for.
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    Fire safety inspections, notifications for planned burning things or hosting a bonfire (which sometimes needs permits, other towns just require you notify the fire department so proper safety precautions can be taken), inquiries about fire safety or where to recharge fire extinguishers (I don't think they do this anymore, I think they are all disposable, but in the '80s they did this), schools planning trips to the fire stations for educational purposes.
    I know the fire department sometimes provides some educational services as well.
     
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