Dial (Ben10/Marvel Cinematic Universe SI)

[ParadoxicAbyss8]

It's a mix of both, childhood indoctrination telling her she's going to be a warrior all her life not just one the greatest one. The ego goes to her head and now she's in a teenage rebellion stage so yeah it's a mix of both.

Wait now that I think of it how old is Shuri and Peter right now. Teens right or preteens, seeing all three together and a teen grooth will be amusing to watch.

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Peter and Shuri are the same age, both being 9 or so? Going by Dial's check up on him anyway.

So, Between Dial, Trainer Red, and Wukong, which is the strongest?

Also great chapter, the tea had me worried for a bit.

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I mean it's basically impossible to beat a Omnitrix user in terms of hax so while I've no idea what Wukong is a SI in or his load out I'd say Dial is in the top spot being the strongest/smartest etc.

 

[Tobi]

Do you guys think Ruby is going to be jealous of Peter when he gets powers and meets him. By he way Dial acts he's going to semi fanboy over peter and give him some special privileges like eating with them or tours around the Avenger compound and stuff things she might have to earn due to black widow way of deprogrammimg her.

It be funny to see but also I can see her getting jealous and taking it out on him. Tbh Peter lucked out on his powers and he's naturally gifted to begin with as he makes his own stufff so she will see him as potential competition.

 

[ParadoxicAbyss8]

Do you guys think Ruby is going to be jealous of Peter when he gets powers and meets him. By he way Dial acts he's going to semi fanboy over peter and give him some special privileges like eating with them or tours around the Avenger compound and stuff things she might have to earn due to black widow way of deprogrammimg her.

It be funny to see but also I can see her getting jealous and taking it out on him. Tbh Peter lucked out on his powers and he's naturally gifted to begin with as he makes his own stufff so she will see him as potential competition.

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I mean she shouldn't be jealous. Dial can give her powers just fine... as well as anyone else really.

Of course she has to earn it lol. She was part of a terrorist organization. Peter is just your average genius kid that somehow stumbled upon a irradiated spider that gave him precog and spider powers.

Speaking of his Spider Sense, I hope Dial remembers to tell him to train it since it can grow to full blown pre cog with time.

 

[Tobi]

I mean she shouldn't be jealous. Dial can give her powers just fine... as well as anyone else really.

Of course she has to earn it lol. She was part of a terrorist organization. Peter is just your average genius kid that somehow stumbled upon a irradiated spider that gave him precog and spider powers.

Speaking of his Spider Sense, I hope Dial remembers to tell him to train it since it can grow to full blown pre cog with time.

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I can see a Blue Spider Monkey and Spider-Man swinging around New York. Cracking jokes as a part of the mentor ship.

Iron man and rescue coming in every now and then as part of thier dates or day out. Lol Homecomimg is going to be awesome.

Also agreed Spider Sense can be op and Miles is a lap a thing so your going to have two spiders to train. And one of the best things right now is venom maynot be a thing so no Symbiotes.

 

[WolfsTrinity]

Sorry these quotes are out of order. I have a bad habit of spontaneously writing near-essays and believe it or not, this is the trimmed down version, which made everything a bit more scattered. Jesus Christ, though, friggin sunk cost fallacy . . .

It doesn't matter if you know the plot of the setting because it's bound to change anyway due to the butterfly effect, you'd just effectively have very specific precog that dilutes in usefulness with changes made and your very existence that would eventually just serve as a plot outline of another story.

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The problem with this is that writing true, genuine butterfly effect into a story never happens because it's basically impossible to get right. You can justify basically anything with butterfly effect logic so narrative concerns will always leak in -- and if you try to go really dedicated with it, you'll figure out why no one else does; pretending that your universe runs on RNG instead of writer's whim makes actually writing the story an absolute nightmare.

For a quick Harry Potter example; narrative logic means that X attack on Hogsmeade goes ahead on schedule because your SI did nothing that would directly change that. Butterfly effect logic could easily justify it so that tossing out that sandwich a few weeks ago led to an alley cat eating it instead of pissing off the Death Eater who suggested the attack in the first place because he was in a bad mood, leading to a completely different attack a week later. Rolling the dice on casualties there kills off an important side character you wanted to use in a later arc -- or the attack goes ahead on schedule because your SI did nothing that would reasonably change it.

In other words, the writer always has to choose what the butterfly effect actually applies to -- but on other hand, if you know that Loki originally stuck the portal generator on Stark Tower to piss off Iron Man, you can pretty reasonably guess that he'll stick it on some other monument to be a dick if he decides to go towards Washington DC or Paris this time.

The route of just blocking off one specific version of events... doesn't really do much at all considering Marvel/DC and the like have largely the same important characters/icons/important events due to necessity no matter the universe.

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I'd argue that it does change a lot because removing knowledge of the timeline blocks off a great deal of certainty -- and just because the same characters are always important doesn't mean that those characters are the same people. Dial ran headlong into that here; Tony Stark doesn't act anything like his 616 self -- his characterization is something that only Robert Downy Junior does with the character. Besides that, if Dial knew about the MCU specifically then even with the butterfly effect excuse, everything that happens before his insertion point is rock solid and extremely useful intel. Quite a bit of the stuff that would happen in the future is still useful, too, because you still know what people might do and what they have the ability to do that they might not know about yet.

Toss a Self-Insert way back before the first Iron Man, for example, and they'll know that if they can get Tony Stark to listen to them, they can tell him that he's fully capable of taking that failed, tourist-bait Arc Reactor and miniaturizing it into something really special. If they can get him to trust them, they can tell him that Stane is a traitorous dickbag who's been selling weapons behind his back. The SI might be even be tempted to try this just to spare Tony the amount of torture that would turn him into Iron Man and hang the consequences. Yoink the MCU knowledge, though, and all the SI will know is that Stark will probably, at some point in the future, get captured and become desperate enough to become Iron Man -- and since he's a billionaire, "might get captured at some point" will get you laughed out of the office. Considering his villains weren't terribly well known pre-MCU, the SI might not get the hint about Stane, either, assuming that they find out about him at all. Either way, no potential story arc about trying to prevent the events of Iron Man from happening.

As for it being boring to have meta knowledge... I mean how? It'd only be boring if it was a 1 to 1 with canon since you might as well view the original material and the MC might as well not be there for all the changes that happen.

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Well, first off, you might be surprised at how close some of the more middling-to-bad fanfics out there tread to canon. More to the point, though, this is boring primarily because of similarity. It's an internal conflict that the Self-Insert is going to have and they're going to need to address it for almost every single self-insert fic that has ever not wiped the self-insert's memories. It's possible to make that interesting, yes, but not wanting to retread the same points that so many other self-insert fics have already done to death? I see nothing wrong with that -- especially if the writer knows that their SI would try to do something about it. That's the other big thing about meta knowledge potentially being boring; the writer knows the SI pretty well and if they know that it's going to be boring if they do X but also that they would do X with Y knowledge, that turns into a problem and they need to find a way to prevent it from happening.

On the one hand, anything can always be justified if you're good enough but on the other, part of the fun of writing a self-insert 'fic is using it as a one-man roleplay. Having to warp a character's personality to achieve a result is bad writing in general and when brainstorming ways to get around that, removing the meta-knowledge that directly causes the problem in the first place is often a pretty good solution. For an example of this type of issue, I'll use myself. I'm both a shut-in and a very honest person so if I SI'ed myself into Game of Thrones, I'd have to find a way to get the SI actually involved in the plot and not dead by pissed-off nobles. Keeping detailed Meta Knowledge helps the first one(There's an apocalypse coming. I know useful things) and hurts the second(I am now involved in Westerosi politics, where honest people have a tendency to get Sean Bean'ed).

It's akin to putting a bandaid on a open wound, it seems like you're fixing the problem but you're still free to bleed out (in the sense that blood loss equals meta gaming).

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On the other hand, if you know a guy's going to get shot -- and it's not like the butterfly effect is this crazy obscure thing -- then most of the same supplies will help you bandage a leg wound or a gut wound. A gut shot is probably a lot more complicated but it's still a lot better than bringing no supplies at all, especially if you know that you might be wrong and plan accordingly. Bit of a different metaphor in that in my version, metagaming is the bandages but the bleeding out can be meta knowledge -- if you're prepared enough for some of it, you'll still get a lot more benefit than being prepared for none at all.

For the SI ethics bit, doing so to a OC/established character is fine since they aren't real. SIs though (regardless if they are from real life or not) assume they are real and having what's supposed to be their most private place vandalized is... well not good. Especially when paired with being dumped into a fictional setting.

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Well, yeah. Every character assumes that they're real unless they're Deadpool or sometimes The Joker. I don't see what makes a Self Insert any more real or less fictional than any other character -- especially since it's the author doing it to him(or her)self. Thus, their little(massive) identity crisis is only important in how it impacts the story -- and like I said before, that all depends on the person but anyone would have to accept it eventually. Humans are pretty good at adapting like that.

Sure, tossing a representation of someone else into that situation would be kind of a dick move towards them and a little morally shady but torturing a little puppet version of yourself is, honestly? Perfectly fine. A writer has the right to do that and it's okay because, well, it's based on them. If you personally would feel uncomfortable writing a self-insert story that has horrible things happen to the SI then that's fine, too -- but a Self-Insert is still a character. It's just based on a person that the writer has full legal and moral rights to portray however they wish. Personally, I think messing with a little fictional version of myself sounds like a lot of fun. Haven't written a Self-Insert story yet because I'm still tossing around ideas and haven't found one I'm confident in turning into a proper story -- plus like half of them are for Worm and I'm not letting myself write a full story for that until I actually read canon XD.

The subset of fanfiction called Real-Person fic? Yeah, that makes me uncomfortable on principle -- but it's because the 'ficwriters are directly messing with other real people. They have every right to do it to themselves.

I get that Paradox is meant to fill the role of ROB but... it's a weird choice honestly. Unless it was ROB just disguised as Paradox for shiggles.

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My guess is that MidnightChocolate does plan to revisit this at some point because you're completely right. That is a weird choice and there are totally easier ways he could've done it.

 

[ParadoxicAbyss8]

Sorry these quotes are out of order. I have a bad habit of spontaneously writing near-essays and believe it or not, this is the trimmed down version, which made everything a bit more scattered. Jesus Christ, though, friggin sunk cost fallacy . . .


The problem with this is that writing true, genuine butterfly effect into a story never happens because it's basically impossible to get right. You can justify basically anything with butterfly effect logic so narrative concerns will always leak in -- and if you try to go really dedicated with it, you'll figure out why no one else does; pretending that your universe runs on RNG instead of writer's whim makes actually writing the story an absolute nightmare.

For a quick Harry Potter example; narrative logic means that X attack on Hogsmeade goes ahead on schedule because your SI did nothing that would directly change that. Butterfly effect logic could easily justify it so that tossing out that sandwich a few weeks ago led to an alley cat eating it instead of pissing off the Death Eater who suggested the attack in the first place because he was in a bad mood, leading to a completely different attack a week later. Rolling the dice on casualties there kills off an important side character you wanted to use in a later arc -- or the attack goes ahead on schedule because your SI did nothing that would reasonably change it.

In other words, the writer always has to choose what the butterfly effect actually applies to -- but on other hand, if you know that Loki originally stuck the portal generator on Stark Tower to piss off Iron Man, you can pretty reasonably guess that he'll stick it on some other monument to be a dick if he decides to go towards Washington DC or Paris this time.


I'd argue that it does change a lot because removing knowledge of the timeline blocks off a great deal of certainty -- and just because the same characters are always important doesn't mean that those characters are the same people. Dial ran headlong into that here; Tony Stark doesn't act anything like his 616 self -- his characterization is something that only Robert Downy Junior does with the character. Besides that, if Dial knew about the MCU specifically then even with the butterfly effect excuse, everything that happens before his insertion point is rock solid and extremely useful intel. Quite a bit of the stuff that would happen in the future is still useful, too, because you still know what people might do and what they have the ability to do that they might not know about yet.

Toss a Self-Insert way back before the first Iron Man, for example, and they'll know that if they can get Tony Stark to listen to them, they can tell him that he's fully capable of taking that failed, tourist-bait Arc Reactor and miniaturizing it into something really special. If they can get him to trust them, they can tell him that Stane is a traitorous dickbag who's been selling weapons behind his back. The SI might be even be tempted to try this just to spare Tony the amount of torture that would turn him into Iron Man and hang the consequences. Yoink the MCU knowledge, though, and all the SI will know is that Stark will probably, at some point in the future, get captured and become desperate enough to become Iron Man -- and since he's a billionaire, "might get captured at some point" will get you laughed out of the office. Considering his villains weren't terribly well known pre-MCU, the SI might not get the hint about Stane, either, assuming that they find out about him at all. Either way, no potential story arc about trying to prevent the events of Iron Man from happening.


Well, first off, you might be surprised at how close some of the more middling-to-bad fanfics out there tread to canon. More to the point, though, this is boring primarily because of similarity. It's an internal conflict that the Self-Insert is going to have and they're going to need to address it for almost every single self-insert fic that has ever not wiped the self-insert's memories. It's possible to make that interesting, yes, but not wanting to retread the same points that so many other self-insert fics have already done to death? I see nothing wrong with that -- especially if the writer knows that their SI would try to do something about it. That's the other big thing about meta knowledge potentially being boring; the writer knows the SI pretty well and if they know that it's going to be boring if they do X but also that they would do X with Y knowledge, that turns into a problem and they need to find a way to prevent it from happening.

On the one hand, anything can always be justified if you're good enough but on the other, part of the fun of writing a self-insert 'fic is using it as a one-man roleplay. Having to warp a character's personality to achieve a result is bad writing in general and when brainstorming ways to get around that, removing the meta-knowledge that directly causes the problem in the first place is often a pretty good solution. For an example of this type of issue, I'll use myself. I'm both a shut-in and a very honest person so if I SI'ed myself into Game of Thrones, I'd have to find a way to get the SI actually involved in the plot and not dead by pissed-off nobles. Keeping detailed Meta Knowledge helps the first one(There's an apocalypse coming. I know useful things) and hurts the second(I am now involved in Westerosi politics, where honest people have a tendency to get Sean Bean'ed).


On the other hand, if you know a guy's going to get shot -- and it's not like the butterfly effect is this crazy obscure thing -- then most of the same supplies will help you bandage a leg wound or a gut wound. A gut shot is probably a lot more complicated but it's still a lot better than bringing no supplies at all, especially if you know that you might be wrong and plan accordingly. Bit of a different metaphor in that in my version, metagaming is the bandages but the bleeding out can be meta knowledge -- if you're prepared enough for some of it, you'll still get a lot more benefit than being prepared for none at all.



Well, yeah. Every character assumes that they're real unless they're Deadpool or sometimes The Joker. I don't see what makes a Self Insert any more real or less fictional than any other character -- especially since it's the author doing it to him(or her)self. Thus, their little(massive) identity crisis is only important in how it impacts the story -- and like I said before, that all depends on the person but anyone would have to accept it eventually. Humans are pretty good at adapting like that.

Sure, tossing a representation of someone else into that situation would be kind of a dick move towards them and a little morally shady but torturing a little puppet version of yourself is, honestly? Perfectly fine. A writer has the right to do that and it's okay because, well, it's based on them. If you personally would feel uncomfortable writing a self-insert story that has horrible things happen to the SI then that's fine, too -- but a Self-Insert is still a character. It's just based on a person that the writer has full legal and moral rights to portray however they wish. Personally, I think messing with a little fictional version of myself sounds like a lot of fun. Haven't written a Self-Insert story yet because I'm still tossing around ideas and haven't found one I'm confident in turning into a proper story -- plus like half of them are for Worm and I'm not letting myself write a full story for that until I actually read canon XD.

The subset of fanfiction called Real-Person fic? Yeah, that makes me uncomfortable on principle -- but it's because the 'ficwriters are directly messing with other real people. They have every right to do it to themselves.


My guess is that MidnightChocolate does plan to revisit this at some point because you're completely right. That is a weird choice and there are totally easier ways he could've done it.

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Lol it's ok with me this is a interesting discussion.

Why are you using meta reasons for the removal of meta knowledge? I'm talking about from a in universe prospective because of course people do it (even someone in cases like Dial/WTR/The Spider etc) to help write an easier story (just like how most authors disregard the scanning function of the Omnitrix or hyper evolving nature of Blacklight).

I'm asking for what the in universe reason is for doing so. What need or want would beings in said universe have to block of meta knowledge In such a way? Why block off just one universe if the goal is for them to not use their outside knowledge? Why not just remove it wholesale? In the case of The Spider why make it so the SI doesn't have knowledge of the MCU but still keeps other Marvel knowledge while making his mind a black box for meta knowledge with him unable to leak it?

I'm not talking about purely random chance butterfly effect. I'm talking about in universe actions/dialogue/thoughts etc leading to characters/organizations etc doing different actions.

So long as you write a story realistically (as in making people/organizations act like real entities in the scope of their MO/with the knowledge they have available and general personality making decisions) you wouldn't have to worry about making it interesting because the situation would evolve that way naturally. It'll snowball to the point where any meta knowledge you did have would be useless and only accurate prior to your insertion.

Having a consistent internal conflict isn't a bad thing though?

I kind of feel we are talking past each other?

 

[Cambion]

I wonder if Dial would be able to help Killmonger let go of his anger

 

[ParadoxicAbyss8]

I wonder if Dial would be able to help Killmonger let go of his anger

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I don't see how unless he rezzes his father.

 

[BigBacon]

but on other hand, if you know that Loki originally stuck the portal generator on Stark Tower to piss off Iron Man, you can pretty reasonably guess that he'll stick it on some other monument to be a dick if he decides to go towards Washington DC or Paris this time.

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Just going to point this out, but this is a bad example for what you're trying to get across. Loki couldn't pick a different spot for the Portal Generator. Remember, Stark set the tower up with a massive self-sustaining arc reactor at the start of Avengers, which was then used to power said generator later in the film.

 

[KillingYouNicely]

SI-ing in general is utter nightmare fuel since being fictional is a fate worse than death no matter how you spin it for a variety of things, like having no privacy/agency etc. This isn't even getting into whatever happens when a story ends or is abandoned.

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Honestly, I'd be fine with finding knowing that my entire being is fictional, so long as some actual interesting shit happens at one point. If you aren't directly aware of each individual reader, you can easily disregard the lack of privacy, and agency wise - if everything I do is in-character, does it really matter if someone else thought up my actions for me? I mean, I'd still think they were my own actions, and as long as my writer isn't shit I'd probably be fine with most everything.

The story ending or being abandoned would be a concern. But then, even if that happened, the story that is my world would still exist as long as the internet does. Eventually, my story might even be picked up by another author, or adapted into another story entirely. I might even get my own fanfiction. And it isn't as if i'd be conscious of my world being put on pause between those times.

I doubt that most people would agree with me, but I think an eternal existence as written word wouldn't be all too bad, considering that the real world is so utterly boring.

 

[ParadoxicAbyss8]

Honestly, I'd be fine with finding knowing that my entire being is fictional, so long as some actual interesting shit happens at one point. If you aren't directly aware of each individual reader, you can easily disregard the lack of privacy, and agency wise - if everything I do is in-character, does it really matter if someone else thought up my actions for me? I mean, I'd still think they were my own actions, and as long as my writer isn't shit I'd probably be fine with most everything.

The story ending or being abandoned would be a concern. But then, even if that happened, the story that is my world would still exist as long as the internet does. Eventually, my story might even be picked up by another author, or adapted into another story entirely. I might even get my own fanfiction. And it isn't as if i'd be conscious of my world being put on pause between those times.

I doubt that most people would agree with me, but I think an eternal existence as written word wouldn't be all too bad, considering that the real world is so utterly boring.

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I mean... yeah on one hand being fictional would be the ultimate expression of freedom (since you can do/think/feel anything at all and it'd have a zero sum on a morality scale due to you not really being in control of your actions) but... that's also the main downside. Who cares if you have power enough to destroy all of reality or make it into a utopia*? Any action/amount of power/friends made etc are utterly meaningless due to both the fact you can't influence anything that's outside the scope of your story and the fact that your fate is literally set in stone. It automatically makes all those One True Paths/prophecy stories absolute truths even if things like time travel are used.

* There's also the simple fact that no matter how good your mental defenses you can't stop the readers from lolnoping your most private of places since mist any SI fic is first person and even those that aren't still have you as the MC.... Which leads to one of the less talked about downsides. All of reality is counting on you being alive since you're the focal point the story is around. If you die the setting dies with you... even more literally if you actually for real die in real life.

As you can see... it's distressingly depressing.

 

[WolfsTrinity]

Had most of this typed last night. Decided to revisit it when properly awake to(again) try to trim it down, ended up rewriting most of it in a way that I, uhh, think is shorter?

Why are you using meta reasons for the removal of meta knowledge? I'm talking about from a in universe prospective

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Why do you want in-universe reasons for something most writers barely even touch on in the first place? Or: Yeah, I completely missed that part.

It generally is a huge weak point in this sort of 'fic but the problem with trying to explain it in-universe is that you immediately run into the issue of why the Random Omnipotent Bastard cares in the first place. There has to be some reason for the SI to be there as a necessary conceit of the story but actually fleshing it out takes a lot of time and effort that's usually better spent on more interesting parts of the story -- especially because if you do flesh it out, you're just as likely to end up with an annoying cliche-fest as you are something actually new and interesting.

I think the usual handwave explanation for why ROB cares is that "omnipotent" is a bit of a misnomer: the supposed ROB has a set of nebulous rules that he has to follow which somehow align so that tossing the SI into things, memory-redacted or otherwise, is the best way for him to achieve his goals. If I had to do it, I'd probably have the ROB explain that enough omnipotent-types have a bug up their ass about things like "noninterference" and "free will" that the easiest way to get what he wanted was to pluck out the SI who would freely, by his own choice, do the things that help the ROB achieve his goal, whatever that may be. Probably something either incomprehensible to mere mortals or just too finicky and tedious to explain. Why the SI's metaknowledge might get fiddled with could be that the killjoy Omnipotent-types don't have that much influence among their peers and do have to accept a small compromise or two.

Alternately, I'd just explain it as this particular SI being just one of many that the ROB is throwing around the multiverse for the lulz. Still lazy and cliche but it at least lampshades the speshulness of it all.

And yes, we were definitely talking past each other a bit since where you thought the out of universe explanation was so obvious it didn't even need to be mentioned, I thought the lack of an in-universe one was pretty obvious itself and only merited a footnote. Again, it's just one of those necessary little genre conventions that it's usually easier to just ignore.

I'm not talking about purely random chance butterfly effect. I'm talking about in universe actions/dialogue/thoughts etc leading to characters/organizations etc doing different actions.

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In hindsight, I did sort of go off on you in that bit because I guess I've seen "but teh butterfly effect!!" used as a dismissal a few too many times. Sorry about that. Thinking about it, when we're talking about breaking the canon timeline, there's sort of a spectrum of ways it could go. On one end, there's pure Butterfly Effect where chaos theory almost immediately derails everything. On the other, there's a borrowed time travel idea called Temporal Inertia, which states that the timeline likes to stay the same, meaning that it's tough to make any changes and those that are made tend to self-correct towards the original timeline instead of spiraling outwards into chaos theory. Most stories hover somewhere in between, though I've read a few decent ones that cut extremely close to either end.

Because most stories have at least some temporal inertia, though, metaknowledge doesn't really lose potency anywhere near as fast as you'd expect if you were looking at things from a pure butterfly effect perspective. Take my Iron Man example from my last post: even if you don't have the exact details, knowing what Tony Stark could potentially make in the future is still a pretty big advantage. Sure, it might not work well with the stupid plasticman bullshit nanotech armor from Infinity War but tipping him off about some of his other stuff early on might lead him to build them years ahead of schedule. That one actually does work with butterfly effect but again, you'd also already know about Stane and the Jericho test and even if that exact event has been butterflied away, knowing how things might have happened is still a good advantage.

Having only broad, multiverse-level knowledge as in this 'fic is still somewhat useful; temporal inertia will still be in play to some extent so the SI can still give people ideas and help them realize their potential. It's not completely game-breaking, though, because some of their ideas will be wrong and they can't point to any single, specific event and say, "This needs to happen. How do we make sure this happens?" -- or, alternately, "We cannot let this happen. How do we prevent it from happening?" Even if they fail, the ability to try could still be a major factor -- like with my self to Game of Thrones example; it would be bad to use a version of myself that had just enough info to get himself killed trying to do something stupid. Granted, this is why I'll probably never write a GoT SI but still XD

This also assumes that the SI will have some level of influence but, well, they usually do. That's how the writer generally makes it interesting.

Also, deliberately stuck this one at the end because it's a complete tangent:

(just like how most authors disregard the scanning function of the Omnitrix or hyper evolving nature of Blacklight).

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Interesting examples. Not to go all "fite me, bro," but I've personally not seen either of these happen. Haven't read an insane amount of Ben 10 'fics but of what I have read, most of them use the scanning function perfectly well -- the "add new forms to the database" one, at least, in case there's a different one I'm unaware of, which is cool because I quite like that feature and especially how it seems to be the most semi-reliable way to bypass the watch's usual "whenever the hell I feel like it" way of unlocking new forms. As for Prototype, there aren't that many decent stories to find but none of the ones I've managed have jumped out at me for being lazy about that. Something to remember with Mercer, though, is that he's already pretty ridiculously tough by the end of the game. By that point, there might not be that many new mutations he could grab that are actually useful -- I guess I see your point on that one, then, since it's not usually a major factor but I dunno, I don't really think massively exploiting it necessarily fits Mercer's personality -- and no, the sequel that completely disregards his interesting character development and replaces him with a cackling cardboard cutout does not exist.

 

[DesertChocolate]

Okay, then. Thread has been derailed at this point. Both of you, take it to PM or change the subject.

 

[ParadoxicAbyss8]

Okay, then. Thread has been derailed at this point. Both of you, take it to PM or change the subject.

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PM is made. Anyone wanting to participate in it is free to leave a comment on my profile.

I can't wait until Dial makes nuclear fission grenades. Those have a utterly ridiculous blast radius and considering they are standard issues to the Plumbers (what they have to fight off for THAT to be standard issue I'm super interested in because just a handful of those would basically fuck up any planet/army trivially).

Speaking of Plumber tech their armor should be incorporated into BRIDGE standard ware since it allows you to operate in basically any environment just fine and doubles as really good protection. It's also one size fits all due to nanotech basically being the number one method of manufacturing in the setting.

Has Coulson's team been searching for... what's that Imhuman city called again? Speaking of Inhuman though, I'm surprised there hasn't been blood work done to see if any BRIDGE member has any special genes in them given they know of Bruce's Gamma Gene. Having a archive of what the various enhancing genes looks like would make it really really easy to help everyone bridge the gap between normal and mundane. That and it'd give BRIDGE a constantly updating list of people who potentially need help/saving etc.

 

[WolfsTrinity]

Okay, then. Thread has been derailed at this point. Both of you, take it to PM or change the subject.

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Sorry! My sense of proportion seems to be stuck between "short, snarky comments" and "holy shit, how'd that essay get there?" and it can sometimes be hard to judge anything else(like how off-topic I'm getting) while I'm desperately trying to turn the accidental essay into something shorter and saner looking. Will definitely try to be more focused from here on.

And now, completely by coincidence, I shall reply to the exact same person but actually on topic this time! XD

Speaking of Plumber tech their armor should be incorporated into BRIDGE standard ware since it allows you to operate in basically any environment just fine and doubles as really good protection. It's also one size fits all due to nanotech basically being the number one method of manufacturing in the setting.

Click to shrink...

That implies that Dial has access to the schematics for Plumber Tech, which does not seem to be the case. Thus far, he's been using "just" the inherent abilities of the different forms -- Jury Rigg's sheer genius and Upgrade's nanotech integration hax. Fortunately, though, the suits he's already made for everyone pretty much do all of that. I'm not sure if environmental protections have been explicitly stated but it's nanotech power armor; if they don't work in extreme environments by default, there are probably alternate-form macros put in for that. Creel isn't wearing power armor, though, come to think, so it might be a problem for him . . .

Has Coulson's team been searching for... what's that Imhuman city called again?

Click to shrink...

Pretty sure the MC mentioned searching for it, though if the one in Agents of Shield isn't on the moon, that might be a problem -- I only watched the first few episodes of it, myself.

Speaking of Inhuman though, I'm surprised there hasn't been blood work done to see if any BRIDGE member has any special genes in them given they know of Bruce's Gamma Gene. Having a archive of what the various enhancing genes looks like would make it really really easy to help every bridge the gap between normal and mundane. That and it'd give BRIDGE a constantly updating list of people who potentially need help/saving etc.

Click to shrink...

They probably do have everyone's bloodwork on file but the problem is that actually figuring out that sort of thing is tough without something like a jailbroken omnitrix* to clarketech-analyze everything for you. If the abilities aren't really obvious, they wouldn't know what to look for in the first place and even after that, it would take a decent sample size to isolate it down to the exact genetic code, assuming there even is one. With the Gamma Gene, they do have a decent sample size; Bruce, whatsisface the genius guy, and the massive amount of people they've blasted with radiation that didn't turn out well. That's at least two groups to internally compare with each other even if the first group is small. It also helps that at least two people working on the issue are genii.

If it's just the guys in BRIDGE, though, they'd need to first figure out that there's something to look for -- and if it was obvious, they'd probably already know about it -- then if they do find people with something special about them, it may or may not have anything to do with genetics at all and if there's only one person in the entire organization to have a given set of abilities, it's even tougher since they can't try to see if there's one trait that everyone with the abilities has and everyone with the abilities lacks.

EDIT: That said, looking into doing that for the general population and any powered people they do find is a good idea -- though a bit, uhh, Big Brother-ish.

*I'm assuming that if you completely jailbroke the omnitrix, you'd be able to freely use all of the technology it uses to scan and transform -- and considering it can easily fix genetic corruption, alter alien forms to look slightly more like Ben, and that one thing with the alien werewolf transformation, this type of scanning and analysis is probably pretty easy in devkit mode.

 

[ParadoxicAbyss8]

Sorry! My sense of proportion seems to be stuck between "short, snarky comments" and "holy shit, how'd that essay get there?" and it can sometimes be hard to judge anything else(like how off-topic I'm getting) while I'm desperately trying to turn the accidental essay into something shorter and saner looking. Will definitely try to be more focused from here on.

And now, completely by coincidence, I shall reply to the exact same person but actually on topic this time! XD


That implies that Dial has access to the schematics for Plumber Tech, which does not seem to be the case. Thus far, he's been using "just" the inherent abilities of the different forms -- Jury Rigg's sheer genius and Upgrade's nanotech integration hax. Fortunately, though, the suits he's already made for everyone pretty much do all of that. I'm not sure if environmental protections have been explicitly stated but it's nanotech power armor; if they don't work in extreme environments by default, there are probably alternate-form macros put in for that. Creel isn't wearing power armor, though, come to think, so it might be a problem for him . . .


Pretty sure the MC mentioned searching for it, though if the one in Agents of Shield isn't on the moon, that might be a problem -- I only watched the first few episodes of it, myself.


They probably do have everyone's bloodwork on file but the problem is that actually figuring out that sort of thing is tough without something like a jailbroken omnitrix* to clarketech-analyze everything for you. If the abilities aren't really obvious, they wouldn't know what to look for in the first place and even after that, it would take a decent sample size to isolate it down to the exact genetic code, assuming there even is one. With the Gamma Gene, they do have a decent sample size; Bruce, whatsisface the genius guy, and the massive amount of people they've blasted with radiation that didn't turn out well. That's at least two groups to internally compare with each other even if the first group is small. It also helps that at least two people working on the issue are genii.

If it's just the guys in BRIDGE, though, they'd need to first figure out that there's something to look for -- and if it was obvious, they'd probably already know about it -- then if they do find people with something special about them, it may or may not have anything to do with genetics at all and if there's only one person in the entire organization to have a given set of abilities, it's even tougher since they can't try to see if there's one trait that everyone with the abilities has and everyone with the abilities lacks.

EDIT: That said, looking into doing that for the general population and any powered people they do find is a good idea -- though a bit, uhh, Big Brother-ish.

*I'm assuming that if you completely jailbroke the omnitrix, you'd be able to freely use all of the technology it uses to scan and transform -- and considering it can easily fix genetic corruption, alter alien forms to look slightly more like Ben, and that one thing with the alien werewolf transformation, this type of scanning and analysis is probably pretty easy in devkit mode.

Click to shrink...

He doesn't need schematics for it though? It'd be easier to make yes but not necessary.

He's perfectly able to make anything in Ben 10 (including ships that kill stars, hide in hyperspace etc etc) perfectly fine with enough time/resources. Once he unlocks Grey Matter/Brainstorm he'd be able to do so with a ridiculous amount of ease.

You can do that via the process of elimination though. Iirc even by RL standards they've already had the human genome outlined. All they'd have to do is compare the base to any irregularities they find.

Hell given Dial has asked the Omnitrix to heal Banner and it's responded in the negative he could just ask it to scan at least the Hellicarriers (if not the whole world) using his decidedly average unenhanced genome as a base and than send the data for various irregularities to X/Jarvis. That way they can see the results instantly and have sections eventually named for all genetic enhancers (with the first being the Gamma Gene, than the Inhuman one via Daisy etc etc). Hell with such a scan and available data I wouldn't at all be surprised if they can pull a AIDA and enhance anyone with any amount of powers.

 

[WolfsTrinity]

On topic and also not a giant essay for once!

He doesn't need schematics for it though? It'd be easier to make yes but not necessary.

He's perfectly able to make anything in Ben 10 (including ships that kill stars, hide in hyperspace etc etc) perfectly fine with enough time/resources. Once he unlocks Grey Matter/Brainstorm he'd be able to do so with a ridiculous amount of ease.

Click to shrink...

In that case, then, he's pretty much already doing it. It just doesn't have that shiny Plumber logo on it.

EDIT: with the caveat that yeah, his current options are pretty bad at mass production. It's not quite Worm's tinker problem but Upgrade is too subconscious and Jury Rigg too much of a hyperactive spaz.

Hell given Dial has asked the Omnitrix to heal Banner and it's responded in the negative he could just ask it to scan at least the Hellicarriers (if not the whole world) using his decidedly average unenhanced genome as a base and than send the data for various irregularities to X/Jarvis.

Click to shrink...

If it were up to me, I'd rule that something like that would take the Master Control. Sure, it worked on the HYDRA base but that might've been the watch just being nice to him. Really up to DesertChocolate on that one, though.

 

[ParadoxicAbyss8]

Seriously though. Even if Dial made one that's 1/10th as effective as canon it'd still be more more effective than the Tsar Bomb, by at least a factor of 10. Hand held throwable nukes.

For reference just so you can see the crazy


It still hurt Ult Echo Echo as well.

On topic and also not a giant essay for once!

In that case, then, he's pretty much already doing it. It just doesn't have that shiny Plumber logo on it.

If it were up to me, I'd rule that something like that would take the Master Control. Sure, it worked on the HYDRA base but that might've been the watch just being nice to him. Really up to DesertChocolate on that one, though.

Click to shrink...

I mean it's a pretty consistent thing that's happened twice. The AI isn't that much of a troll.

Edit to respond to edit: Mass production has never actually been a problem though. Upgrade should be perfectly able to make a machine that spits out this or that tech via never ending nanites. All of Ben 10 tech is basically that.

 

[DesertChocolate]

January 18th, 2014

There's a Superman/Wonder Woman comic I read once, called Whom Gods Destroy. It was really weird, had Superman turn into a centaur at one point. But there's a line in it that I love that goes something like this.

'That's the nature of destiny. Some volunteer, others get drafted. Either way, they're all in the fight. And considering the stakes... it's a fight we have to win.'

Wakanda had it's draft notice, courtesy of me. Now it was up to them to accept or pretend they had bone spurs.

Might have lost the metaphor. Point was, the ball was in their court. In the meantime, I had a job to do.

"So then he taught me how to punch people for three hours while yelling at me about protocol," I told Hawkeye as we walked on a rooftop the next day, telling him about how Steve had 'punished' me the day before for running off with Bruce.

Clint laughed.

The two of us were in the middle of Manhattan, listening to police bands and Foo Fighters. The Pretender was coming out of my Bubble Speaker, the device Jury Rigg had made for me weeks back.

"Well, he's right," Clint said with a grin. "You kinda went off without a plan, didn't you?"

I winced.

"Bet you didn't even know that would work."

I winced again.

"How close was the Hulk to taking your head off before you transformed?"

I winced one last time, sighing. "I made a guess. Killed two birds with one stone, you know?"

"Mahmoud," Clint sighed. "You need to think things through. You've got more power in that watch than anyone I've seen who wasn't named Thor. But you can't just go off for no reason, man. You've got a team to look after and to help look after you. You ain't patrolling alone anymore. As a super spy, I can personally attest to how important having backup is," Clint said, putting emphasis on 'super'.

I sighed, nodding. I'd gotten used to being on a team the past few days, but I still tended to think of myself fighting on my own. But even Ben, with six years of experience fighting the likes of Vilgax, Animo, Kevin, Aggregor, and everything else in the universe had depended on Kevin, Gwen, Rook, and others to have his back.

As I was thinking about that, the police band on our comms flared.

"Fire on Eastern Parkway and Buffalo Avenue in Brownsville, the address is," The woman on the radio rattled off the number over the radio as I activated the Omnitrix and Hawkeye turned on his armor.

The suit that came across him was very similar to Bobbi's, with a purple coloration to it. Interestingly, he'd chosen a helmet that looked a lot like the one from his 616 counterparts Ronin costume. A cloak came across his body as well, flowing around him to wind that didn't exist. "This is Hawkeye and Dial of the Avengers, we're on it."

"...Say again?" came the response from a likely very confused dispatcher.

Hawkeye leaped off the building as I pushed down the Omnitrix and went Astrodactyl. Hawkeye's cloak snapped out into a large glider, allowing him to float down until I got to him and grabbed his shoulders by my foot talons. In seconds we were shooting through the air towards Brooklyn, flying past office buildings under to the speed of sound so we didn't shatter windows with sonic booms.

Even with me modulating my speed, it didn't take long to reach the fire. Hawkeye, on seeing the flames, waved up at me, speaking over comms since the wind would have drowned him out otherwise. "Go in the top floor and drop me over there!" Clint pointed at the top of a nearby building.

"Got it, squawk!"

I fired an energy blast at one of the windows and flew in, letting go of Hawkeye, who glided to land on the building he'd chosen on the way. As I flew inside, an arrow tipped with a bulbous canister flew past me. My feet hit the carpeted floor at the same time as the arrow hit. Hawkeye's arrow exploded outwards in a burst of foam that spread across the flame-filled room, covering me and everything else in the chilly white bubbles. The flames were instantly extinguished, and I tapped the Omnitrix.

"Fasttrack!"

I ran through the hallway with all of my speed, noting the arrow flying through windows and the various holes created by the fire, exploding into more foam, covering desks, bookshelves, and beds around us with the foam, all the arrows moving in slow motion to my enhanced speed. I slowed down slightly as Hawkeye spoke over comms, the light of the Omnitrix on chest flashing with each word.

"Got three people in a closet in the next room to the left. Older woman and two kids," he told me. When the Avengers had chosen their new armor, Clint had gone for every audio and visual enhancement he could get. In moments like this, he'd be the eyes in the sky, while using his bow to snipe and aid.

I ran into the room he indicated and opened the closet, looking down at the elderly Asian women clutching tightly to a pair of young children, one girl slightly older looking than the other.

"Hi!" I said with a smile. "Sorry I can't be more polite!"

Before they said anything, I picked three of them up and ran for the stairs, moving past the people already escaping, rushing the three out to the sidewalk and running back in.

"One guy, stumbling on the second floor."

I picked that guy up, a young Hispanic man, and rushed him out as more arrows landed around me.

"I've got two on the top floor, trying to run to the roof."

It was a white couple, young and panicking. I picked them up and rushed them out as well, the sidewalk getting full.

Over and over, as Hawkeye fired his fire suppression arrows and I picked people up, we emptied out the building. My fur was slightly singed but not much considering my natural toughness and speed and Clint firing suppression foam to keep the worst of the blaze contained until the fire department arrived. Finally, only one person was left.

"It's a kid," Hawkeye said calmly. "She's hiding under a bed, third floor, middle room on the right."

"Got it!" I said, running into that room and bending down to look under the bed.

A young black girl stared at me, clutching a stuffed blue T-Rex to her chest in the shadows as flames roared behind me, illuminating her tearful face. "Hey, sweetie," I said softly, wondering where the hell her parents were. Had I taken them already? Worry later. She was crying, covering her eyes to avoid looking at me. "Hey, it's okay. I'm an Avenger. You know them, right?"

Still crying, her eyes clenched tight, she nodded. "D-Daddy doesn't like them."

"Oh," the hell do I do now? "Well, I promise I won't hurt you. I'm just going to take you out of the fire, okay? Then you can be with your parents."

She looked at me. I reached a hand out and smiled as reassuringly as a blue-furred alien can. Must have been enough because as hesitantly as she did it, she still slowly reached a hand out to hold mine. I helped out from under the bed, tucking the small child into my arms and turned to leave.

Of course, that was when the stairs collapsed. Yeesh, the building was seriously not up to code.

"Huh," I blinked at that. "Sweetie, hold tight. I think I'm going to make my own exit."

She nodded, the tiny thing tucking her face into my fur and holding her stuffed T-Rex close. I smiled at that, then reached for the Omnitrix. I entertained the idea of turning into Four Arms before dismissing it. Better to keep him a secret for as long as possible. Plus, his strength and size might end up destroying the building due to how weak the building was. I'd go for strength without going overboard. I tapped the Omnitrix, transforming into something tough and strong enough to tear a hole in the building without hurting the child.

"Rath!"

The little girl seemed to find the sudden thicker fur of my new form comfortable. I gave her fond smile, then bent my legs, holding in my typical bombastic personality as Rath to keep from scaring her. With explosive force, I leaped upwards, crashing through the ceiling. The girl screamed, tiny right hand clutching at my fur and left hand holding her T-Rex close. I landed on the roof and jumped one more, landing on the sidewalk in front of the building, causing only minor cracks in the sidewalk, people leaping away from me and screaming in surprise at the giant tiger man coming out of the sky.

Firetrucks had shown up, staring at the foam covered building as they moved quickly to douse the remaining fire, water beginning to fall onto the crowd as they sprayed the building. I felt some water drip on me and held in a growl of annoyance. Rath didn't like water.

Hawkeye came gliding to join me as I looked around. I noticed the phones filming me, but ignored them. "Listen up! Rath wants to know who's cub this is!?" I raised her high over my head to make sure everyone in the crowd saw her and she could look for her parents. The girl looked around, rubbing at the tears on her chubby cheeks.

"That's my daughter!" A black woman cried out, rushing away from EMT's to come over to me. She had tear tracks going through the soot on her cheeks as she rushed forward. She hesitated, for the barest moment, when she realized just what was holding her daughter.

"Mommy!" the little girl wiggled in my grip. I gently put her down, and she rushed for her mother, who hugged her, the two crying openly.

I smiled at that as Hawkeye came over to join me. It was heartwarming.

"G-Get down on the ground!" the heartwarming moment was shattered when someone yelled at me. I blinked, turning to look.

A cop was pointing his gun at me. For a moment, we all stared at the guy.

"... No?" I said, confused. "Rath just helped everyone. Rath is starting to wonder if you're dumb, and that's saying something coming from Rath!" I finished bombastically.

People in the crowd giggled nervously. Hawkeye tapped his chest, his armor turning into his quiver. "Officer, we're Avengers. Please, put your-"

"Hawkeye, Dial," Maria said suddenly. "We just got a message from a former SHIELD scientist by the name of Bill Foster! He's asking to be pulled in with an asset, and you two are the closest to him. I'm sending in a Quinjet."

A Quinjet, one of the newer models, dropped out of the sky just a few moments after that message, hovering into the street and opening its back doors as people shouted and pointed. "X tells us HYDRA is after them."

Hawkeye and I shared a fast look then, turned and ran for the Quinjet.

"I said freeze!" the nervous cop yelled, shooting me in the back.

I ignored the bullet that bounced off me, leaping into the Quinjet and turning to look out. "Rath is going to go fight HYDRA! STAY BEAUTIFUL NEW YORK!" I raised my fists in the air, the Quinjet closing as cameras stayed on me and a laughing Hawkeye.

------

"That building there," the Quinjet pilot Maria had sent said. Apparently, he'd been on his way to the helicarrier and had been moved to pick Hawkeye and me up instead. He pointed at a warehouse next to the harbor, where another three Quinjets, HYDRA, were parked by the docks. Our Quinjet's cloaking was keeping us hidden for now. We were hundreds of feet above the building in question and still heading to it.

"Okay, swing over those Quinjets," Hawkeye said, his bow shifting as he moved towards the back of the Quinjet, with me following quickly.

"You want me to lower down, sir?" The pilot called back at Clint.

"Nah, I'm good," Clint lifted his purple bow and clenched his hand around the grip. When enough pressure was put on it, the bows catoms moved and flowed, more moving from the quiver on his back to add to it, making the overall bow thicker and longer, increasing its poundage. He picked an arrow tipped with a three-pronged hook from his quiver and pulled back on the bowstring as the Quinjets back door opened up, aiming for the enemy Quinjets' when we passed over them. "So, you think you'll take up archery?"

"I'm thinking about it," I admitted, watching him.

He fired three times. Seriously, that was how it felt. As though the motion of picking out an arrow, nocking it, pulling on the bow, and firing, was all as fast as though he'd simply been firing a gun. Damn. All three Quinjets had been hit at the exact point where the power could most easily be interfered with and the arrows sent catoms flooding through them, the tiny robots transforming to 'eat' at a three-foot radius from their point of entry.

"Let me know if you ever want lessons," Hawkeye said with a grin.

The Quinjet flew toward the warehouse and landed in front of it. I leaped out and landed on the ground.

"I'll keep an eye out!" Hawkeye yelled. I nodded, then activated the Omnitrix. Hawkeye's armor flowed back over him, turning him once more into an intimidatingly cloaked and armored being. He pointed his arm at a nearby building and tapped his fingers to his palm. A line shot out, the end tipped in a chemical based on Goop's adhesive, the end attaching. The powerful motor on the other end reeled in the line, shooting Hawkeye towards the roof. As he left, so did I.

I ran into the warehouse through a door that had been blown off its hinges while activating the Omnitrix.

"Fasttrack!"

"There's a man being chased through one of the hallways," Hawkeye said. "That will be Bill Foster. I've got him. You want to focus on Ava Starr, she's the Enhanced HYDRA's after," I heard the twang of a bow firing several times. "Foster's headed to the extraction point. Looks like Ava was distracting the other soldiers. She's down the hall in a big room. She's fighting Centipede soldiers along with the normal HYDRA assholes. I'm giving her support."

"Got it!" In seconds, I was down the hall and looking at a big room filled with crates. One of the doors was open, revealing the river outside the warehouse and giving the whole room the smell of the murky river. Soldiers were standing around pointing at a crate with their guns. Right up until an exploding arrow slammed into one's chest, piercing through the metal roof to make the shot.

BOOM!

More arrows fly in, scattering the forces. I grabbed a soldier running by me and punched him a bunch of times in the chest, turning his ribs into dust, then rushing to the crate they'd been pointing at. Figuring this was where Ava was hiding, I ran around to get to her, only to blink at the sight.

Ava was Ghost. Except Ghost in the comics was a man. I mean, she had the same costume and everything, but she was clearly a woman. Pushing away my brief confusion, I waved at the white-helmeted woman.

"Hi, I'm Dial," I winced at how cheesy that sounded. "Wanna get out of here-"

"Look out!" she yelled, pointing behind me.

Time slowed from my speedy perspective. I turned to see a Centipede soldier coming out of the smoke, aiming to wrap his arms around me. I stepped into his grasp with my hands raised and started hitting him. Damn. Felt like punching steel. I bashed him in the chest as fast as I could, jabs, uppercuts, and hooks until I felt a couple of my knuckles split from the constant meeting of my fists to enhanced flesh covered in metal.

When he went flying back, I tried to smirk to make Ava feel less nervous. "Yeah, got to hit these guys a lot to cause any damage," I turned to her. "Come on!"

She got up and I quickly swept her into my arms. I ran out to the extraction point, slipping around soldiers with ease and keeping myself moving until we were outside.

Suddenly, Ava did... something, turning into the Ghost that gave her her codename. She went through my arms, falling to the floor.

"What just happened!?" she yelled up at me as I blinked in surprise. "Did you just-"

"Ava!" the two of us looked up at the Quinjet parked in front of the warehouse, the back open. I found myself staring because inside was Laurence Fishburne, the guy who'd played one of my favorite characters in one of my favorite standalone movies ever. Because it had NEVER gotten a sequel.

I watched as Ava ran into the Quinjet, hugging Bill Foster. "Huh. Morpheus. That's cool."

With that, I ran back into the warehouse as the Quinjet took off into the sky.

Inside, Hawkeye had pretty much finished most of the infantry, who were running out towards the Quinjets, leaving thirty of their people behind. The Centipede soldiers were still up and fighting though, six of them left. I entered the warehouse and tapped the Omnitrix, turning into someone a little stronger.

"Blitzwolfer!"

In my werewolf-like form, I towered over the men and women around me. One of the Centipede soldiers stepped forward to punch at me. I blocked it on my forearm and punched her in the face, dropping her to the ground. Two others rushing me got a quick sonic blast that sent them flying into crates, wood shattering under their bulk.

A hit to my lower back got a grunt of pain from me. I turned to see a tall man, who backflipped to hit me in the muzzle. I stumbled back as two other Centipede soldiers stepped in to punch me in the stomach.

"ENOUGH!" I roared/sonic blasted, sending all three flying. As they fell to the floor, I jumped on top of one and punched him in the face, knocking him out, blocked another as he rolled up to kick at me, and clawed his chest, leaving deep line across it. I roared once more, my sonic blast destroying crates behind the guy as he flew back into a wall, denting it massively. Then I tapped the Omnitrix symbol on my chest.

"Goop!"

Flying above the room, I spun at high speed and started firing pieces of myself at the soldiers still on the floor and the female one who'd just started to stand back up. I flowed through the room in my spinning form, adhesive goop slamming into the Centipede soldiers until they were all struggling to fight out of the powerful grip of the green slime surrounding their bodies. I stopped and shifted to my bipedal form to look around.

The female Centipede soldier, apparently thinking she'd snuck up on me, swung her fist into my back, coming out the other side in a splash of green liquid. I shifted my body, my head and limbs going the other way so I was facing her. Her blank face looked up at me.

"Rude," I said from the floating Anti-Gravity Projector above my Goop form. I flowed around and surrounded her, soaking her in my adhesive form, then moved away to leave her in a pile of adhesive. She struggled, left unable to move in the makeshifts bonds I'd created. For a moment, the room was quiet except for the sounds of Centipede soldiers fighting to escape. I noted how none of them really had expressions. It was kinda creepy. Even movie zombies at least growled or something. These guys and girls simply stared at me.

"All done?" I shifted my body to look at Hawkeye in his full armor, who shivered at the way my fluid body moved. "Seriously, that is crazy looking."

"Sorry!" I said in the robotic voice from my projector. In a flash of green light, I turned back into my human form. "Well, we have prisoners now, right?"

Suddenly, one of the Centipede soldiers began to scream. Hawkeye ran to him, leaning down. "Shit! They're trying to activate the kill switch in their eyes!"

It was something Coulson's Team had told us about. All Centipede soldiers had some useful upgrades, among them a slick eye implant that let them see through walls. But, it was also able to be used to kill the soldier. The ultimate way to keep your soldier from being interrogated was to simply kill them.

"Jarvis!" Hawkeye yelled.

"I'm stopping them," Jarvis said to us over comms. "But their programming has been upgraded from what Skye and Fisk have told us. I'm pulling in X to help."

More Centipede soldiers began to scream until all six of those awake were wailing in pain. Others, the ones I, Ava, and Hawkeye had killed or knocked out, started to shake before going still.

I tried to think of some way to help. Brute strength was off the table, Jury Rigg would take to long, soooo...

In a quick turn of the Omnitrix, I flipped through my Omnitrix's menu. In that time, two soldiers died, their right eyes twisting around in their sockets. I pushed the Omnitrix down and transformed. My skin became inky-black with green circuitry.

"Upgrade!"

I leaped towards the female soldier, my body slipping into her eye as she screeched in horror and pain.

"Oh my god!" Hawkeye yelled, the sight of my massive nanite form flowing into a woman through her right eye apparently surprising him. As the last of me entered with a 'slurp-slurp' sound, he held a hand over where his mouth would be under his helmet. "I'm going to be sick."

I ignored him, instead joining with the woman's implant. It was the work of a quick thought to disconnect her from her handlers network. I flowed through the rest of her only to meet with something interesting.

She had other nanotechnology in her body. And it was angry.

Where I had been thinking of myself as a fluid being, I was suddenly split into millions of tiny bodies, battling nano-sized beings that were constantly rewriting the woman's genetic code, giving her some of her superhuman strength and healing. They were also fucking crazy. If it wasn't for the strange makeup of her body, she would have started exploding at some point. As it was, her platelets had been modified to stop herself from doing that.

The nanotech, obviously Extremis, tried to attack my form, tearing at me. I took the blows and absorbed them, shifting them into becoming a part of me. I flowed through her, into the Centipede device, and winced mentally at the feel of the gamma radiation within it. Seriously, with the way her body had been set up, she'd soon self-destruct without constant maintenance. I didn't have time to fix it, however. The surviving Centipede soldiers were dying. Once I took over her form, I connected to the wireless unit that had been trying to kill her, piggybacking onto it and connecting with the surviving soldiers, Jarvis moving aside to allow me in. One more man died in that time. Then I disconnected them from the wireless, leaving the women connected. I flowed into that link, Jarvis joining with me as we bounced through the internet chasing our opponent. They tried to fight us, but I went through it. Just before I could find it, we received a message. A message that had been sent to someone on the other side. With some work, I realized I'd hacked the email of one of the Centipede soldiers handlers. The soldiers were being controlled. And the people controlling them were... Fuck.

In the millisecond it took to read it, I changed tactics.

"Shit, they're dying!" I said, sending malfunction reports, moving a portion of my body off the woman's shoulder to look around.

Hawkeye stared at me, giving the clearly alive Centipede soldiers a look.

"Go with it, sir," Jarvis sent him.

"Well, stop them!" Hawkeye yelled, moving to take a mans pulse.

"I'm trying!" I yelled dramatically, rereading the message. Once I knew what I had, Jarvis moved with me, calling out for X.

Soon the three of us had gotten everything. Some of the volunteers had been hired. But most were former computer technicians and such, normal people. They'd been pulled in using what HYDRA called the 'incentives program'. Blackmail.

What we found was a series of images of people. Women, men, children, all locked in rooms, some crying, some angry or confused. They all had guns aimed at them. Over each image was something simple, each personalized. Each horrific.

If you do not follow our orders we will kill them.

You want to see your wife again, don't you?

Do as we say, or we'll kill your son.

Hostages. They were threatening to kill hostages in return for someone to help them. I pulled back, furious. If I went too far, then I'd end up getting innocents killed. I needed to work around HYDRA. We needed to find the facilities they were being held in first. Hill had to hear about this.

I sent false reports of the Centipede soldiers with us dying to the kill switch in their eyes before pulling back into the woman. I concentrated on her for a bit. First, use the Extremis nanotechnology to heal her. Then pull the cybernetics out of her, Extremis repairing her organs and right eye back as I removed the machinery connected to them. The Centipede device and Backscatter eye implant were joined to me.

I left her body through her eyes. In seconds, I was standing in front of her. She gave me a shuddering look. Then she passed out. As she slumped within Goop's green adhesive, I focused on the Extremis nanotech, Centipede implant, and the backscatter eye implant that were part of me, 'spitting' them onto the floor.

"...That was gross," Hawkeye stated, likely a little green under his helmet

"We have issues," I said, trying to show how I wasn't even sure what the hell I'd just done. "We need to talk to the Director."
------
Author's Note: By the way, Dial does know about the Matrix sequels. He just doesn't like them. Who does, really? I mean, I like some of the small portions, but the movies as a whole are not great. And even the first is kind of overrated.

As for the chapter as a whole, I had some trouble with the Upgrade scene. The point was to make it so that Dial would find out about the incentives program. Now that he knows, some ramifications he's not ready for might come up. After all, what's the point of hostages that might get rescued?

 

[Tobi]

Huh don't people know that Dial is an avenger... or was the cop honestly lost at the sight of a giant tiger man and is responding to his first instinct arrest and detain. Also shoot, forgot about the shooting.

I'm pretty sure after this Tony and Pepper are going to do a PR thing so this doesn't happen again.

Also it was really funny when the Police operator on the radio was so confused.

 

[TimEd]

Well, being shot and seen as running away would suck from bystanders perspective. That cop just endangered the lives of all the bystanders.

 

[Krazyfan1]

Brilliant as always!
...Clints cape glider totally looks like hawk wings...

and if Upgrade can Slorp into an eye implant...
wonder what other small things he can fit into?
might be good for stealth?

 

[DesertChocolate]

Spoiler: Photo of Subject

Spoiler: Video of Subject

• Species Name: Tetramand
  
  
• Appearance: Over fourteen feet tall, built with muscle, Four Arms is by far the largest alien thus far in Dial's arsenal. He has four arms, each tipped with four fingers and covered in spikes, two talons on his feet, red skin made of supple and smooth armor, a ponytail, and four eyes. He wears a variation of Ben's original costume, with his Omnitrix in the center of his chest, and golden arm bands on all of his wrists.
  
  
• Personality: Funnily enough, Dial never learned how to really spell Four Arms. He tends to think of it as one word (FourArms) or adds a dash (Four-Arms). Along with that, he becomes more inclined to fight, though not to the extent of Rath. This makes Four Arms one of the best combat forms, since his natural ability and multiple powerful arms aren't held back by a lack of intellect.
  
  
• Powers: Four Arms is massively strong, capable of tossing tanks aside with ease, able to battle with the most powerful beings on Earth and the galaxy. He's also fast and agile, able to leap massive distances. His four arms also give him incredible versatility in close combat, allowing him to strike in ways few others can without enhanced speed. He is also proficient in the Thunderclap skill.
  
  
• Weaknesses: While fast, Four Arms is still a massive target, and can be hit more easily than most forms by long range attacks. It would take a lot to damage him, but enough power can beat him.

 

[Krazyfan1]

....for some reason i get a insectile vibe from Tetramands....
like i half expect them to suddenly be great climbers....

 

[TimEd]

....for some reason i get a insectile vibe from Tetramands....
like i half expect them to suddenly be great climbers....

Click to shrink...

must be the eyes and weird spike things.

And who says Tetramands arent great climbers? Aside from their weight which could break the thing they are climbing on, having two extra arms should help massively in anchoring someone climbing a sheer cliff face.