Exploding Canon (Worm SI)
- Thread starter Ghoul King
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Do we know that cauldron vials even gave trigger visions?
Could be that its not built in to cauldron vials.
The whole 'trigger vision wipeout' thing was always pretty weird, I mean tattletale struggles with the concept of an entity, but when capes entered cauldrons base they were fine looking at Edens corpse?
I actually would NOT like that, having a interlude kills the mystery of what Taylor is thinking.
Would rather be on edge, with not knowing how Taylor will react/plan.
Eventually Taylor will trust Bakuda enough to give her own opinion about events.
Mizu
Software Developer
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- Victoria, Australia
The speedster seems quite odd, yup, being able to fire some sort of energy blast which leaves S marks on you. Not what I picture from 'someone who can move fast', that! Also curious as to what the drone guy was trying to do, and whether he actually made the big ape-man seeing as drones and bio-engineering are quite different fields.
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Can you weaponize that? It occurs to me that you could make a barrier that contains that imagery, inherent to the shape of the barrier, and paraumans would interpret it as an invisible forcefield blocking their way, since they would see nothing in that space. An image on a wall looks like a blank wall, but if the image is inherent to the shape of a physical object, it would probably give that object a really amazing Stranger rating to parahumans.
Make the image a hologram using anti-Brute lasers, and you have a gate that Abaddon-missiles and regular humans can duck and weave through, but any parahuman short of Alexandria, Othala's invulnerability or the Siberian will never see what kills them!
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- Wherever
For reference, this chapter involved a lot of research. I'm not going to say everything I'm depicting is believably accurate, but I looked into
-What typically goes into first aid kits (Answer: varies. A lot)
-What helps with bruising, and the effects therein (Heat and cold, for different reasons, among other things)
-How hot water in buildings works, so I could determine if it made the slightest bit of sense for Bakuda to still have access to hot water (Yes, to my surprise)
-How hotel ice maker machines work, for similar reasons, which led to the discovery that hotel ice machines often have germs and whatnot growing inside them before a local apocalypse leaves them with zero cleaning for several weeks
and some lesser stuff I've already forgotten.
So that's why Bakuda has hot water, and stumbled into helping Taylor's bruises even though I genuinely had no idea what treats bruises before writing the chapter and therefore neither did she.
I'm probably going to do another Taylor Interlude at some point. Not sure when it'll happen -I've been inclined to do it this Arc, but I'll need to see if I can actually make it work, so no promises- but yeah, this kind of thing has been on my mind in the writing, and there's... other reasons I feel it would be good to write her perspective at some point. (For one thing, my concept of how to write canon-ish Taylor has changed a lot since I wrote her last Interlude)
I don't follow?
Battery's Interlude indicates Cauldron capes are inconsistent -some experience a trigger vision, some don't. Some experience it and forget it immediately, some experience it and forget it eventually, some experience it and never lose it, at least not any more than a regular memory. It doesn't address the topic of the memetic block, though logically this would imply the memetic block is applied inconsistently to Cauldron capes.
This is all a bit eyebrow-raising given that Scion informs us that trigger visions are 100% unavoidable due to human memory and Entity memory having some compatibilities that allow leakage, mind, as I really would expect trigger visions to be 100% reliable for Cauldron capes and it only be a question of whether the memetic block occurs or not, given this info. On the plus side, Doctor Mother is a known liar (And it's also possible she's mistakenly assuming 'they didn't mention a vision' means 'they didn't have a vision') and the only data point Battery's experience gives us is that Cauldron capes can experience a trigger vision and retain it, which doesn't contradict Scion's explanation. Krouse's event is frustratingly ambiguous, in that we see he has a trigger vision, but then it goes entirely unacknowledged, where you can't tell whether his memory of the vision is being suppressed or if he's just too focused on other things to mention it.
Most surprising is the blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment in Alexandria's Interlude:
So... Alexandria, now of the perfect memory, did have a trigger vision, and it got blocked successfully. That's a bit alarming, and emphasizes what a dirty cheater Tattletale is.
Unless I'm forgetting another case we see the view of -ie Scrub doesn't count- that's a 100% consistent pattern of 'take vial, have trigger vision', and it's just variable whether it gets blocked from their memory. Which is actually about what I'd intuitively expect, given everything else canon tells us.
In any event I didn't check any of this until just now, deliberately writing Bakuda's guesses/conclusions off memory with intent to research later to determine what will actually turn out to be true.
But yeah, the memetic block doing nothing to people seeing Eden's corpse has always been one of those things that stood out to me about later canon in terms of not making a lick of sense. I usually focus on the people and actions of Cauldron for 'WTF no', but it's impressive how total the nonsensicalness of later Cauldron is.
A Taylor Interlude will at minimum wait until Taylor has given her, uh, spin of events to Bakuda. Not sure when either will happen.
That's... legitimately a terrifying thought, and exactly the kind of thing I'd expect canon Cauldron to have abused the hell out of. You could probably keep some difficult-to-contain capes trapped in a box with this kind of shenanigans, as they wouldn't be able to properly perceive the box to work on escaping it...
-What typically goes into first aid kits (Answer: varies. A lot)
-What helps with bruising, and the effects therein (Heat and cold, for different reasons, among other things)
-How hot water in buildings works, so I could determine if it made the slightest bit of sense for Bakuda to still have access to hot water (Yes, to my surprise)
-How hotel ice maker machines work, for similar reasons, which led to the discovery that hotel ice machines often have germs and whatnot growing inside them before a local apocalypse leaves them with zero cleaning for several weeks
and some lesser stuff I've already forgotten.
So that's why Bakuda has hot water, and stumbled into helping Taylor's bruises even though I genuinely had no idea what treats bruises before writing the chapter and therefore neither did she.
I'm probably going to do another Taylor Interlude at some point. Not sure when it'll happen -I've been inclined to do it this Arc, but I'll need to see if I can actually make it work, so no promises- but yeah, this kind of thing has been on my mind in the writing, and there's... other reasons I feel it would be good to write her perspective at some point. (For one thing, my concept of how to write canon-ish Taylor has changed a lot since I wrote her last Interlude)
I don't follow?
Battery's Interlude indicates Cauldron capes are inconsistent -some experience a trigger vision, some don't. Some experience it and forget it immediately, some experience it and forget it eventually, some experience it and never lose it, at least not any more than a regular memory. It doesn't address the topic of the memetic block, though logically this would imply the memetic block is applied inconsistently to Cauldron capes.
This is all a bit eyebrow-raising given that Scion informs us that trigger visions are 100% unavoidable due to human memory and Entity memory having some compatibilities that allow leakage, mind, as I really would expect trigger visions to be 100% reliable for Cauldron capes and it only be a question of whether the memetic block occurs or not, given this info. On the plus side, Doctor Mother is a known liar (And it's also possible she's mistakenly assuming 'they didn't mention a vision' means 'they didn't have a vision') and the only data point Battery's experience gives us is that Cauldron capes can experience a trigger vision and retain it, which doesn't contradict Scion's explanation. Krouse's event is frustratingly ambiguous, in that we see he has a trigger vision, but then it goes entirely unacknowledged, where you can't tell whether his memory of the vision is being suppressed or if he's just too focused on other things to mention it.
Most surprising is the blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment in Alexandria's Interlude:
Interlude 15.z said:
So... Alexandria, now of the perfect memory, did have a trigger vision, and it got blocked successfully. That's a bit alarming, and emphasizes what a dirty cheater Tattletale is.
Unless I'm forgetting another case we see the view of -ie Scrub doesn't count- that's a 100% consistent pattern of 'take vial, have trigger vision', and it's just variable whether it gets blocked from their memory. Which is actually about what I'd intuitively expect, given everything else canon tells us.
In any event I didn't check any of this until just now, deliberately writing Bakuda's guesses/conclusions off memory with intent to research later to determine what will actually turn out to be true.
But yeah, the memetic block doing nothing to people seeing Eden's corpse has always been one of those things that stood out to me about later canon in terms of not making a lick of sense. I usually focus on the people and actions of Cauldron for 'WTF no', but it's impressive how total the nonsensicalness of later Cauldron is.
A Taylor Interlude will at minimum wait until Taylor has given her, uh, spin of events to Bakuda. Not sure when either will happen.
Can you weaponize that? It occurs to me that you could make a barrier that contains that imagery, inherent to the shape of the barrier, and paraumans would interpret it as an invisible forcefield blocking their way, since they would see nothing in that space. An image on a wall looks like a blank wall, but if the image is inherent to the shape of a physical object, it would probably give that object a really amazing Stranger rating to parahumans.
Make the image a hologram using anti-Brute lasers, and you have a gate that Abaddon-missiles and regular humans can duck and weave through, but any parahuman short of Alexandria, Othala's invulnerability or the Siberian will never see what kills them!
That's... legitimately a terrifying thought, and exactly the kind of thing I'd expect canon Cauldron to have abused the hell out of. You could probably keep some difficult-to-contain capes trapped in a box with this kind of shenanigans, as they wouldn't be able to properly perceive the box to work on escaping it...
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While plausible, it seems like it would be difficult to make such a thing so inherent to the shape of the barrier that the entire barrier is hidden rather than just seeming smoothed. Then again, by that metric Taylor would have seen the smiley-face and just not the Entity-pattern detailing making up the lines, which seems weird. Also: I don't think it made the paper invisible to Tattletale, did it? She just couldn't process what was on it. So perhaps it would just get blackboxed, rather than made invisible.
I think cauldron would try and keep a good track of whether people have / remember trigger visions or not, so I don't think its people 'not mentioning'.
In terms for why cauldron vials could actually have no vision at all, it could be one or more of:
1. They forget the trigger vision before they finish triggering, thus it seems like they had no trigger vision at all.
(Instead of forgetting in the seconds after like normal capes, since capes have so much going on in their mind during a trigger event, and thinker powers don't work properly on trigger events, it may appear no vision happened.)
2. Dr mother was considering forgets it immediately to be 'some don't experience it'. Though I don't remember the context of the scene your talking about.
3. The lack of a trigger vision is because cauldron shards don't always link properly to the hosts brain. Shards may normally have in their program to connect in a certain way to collect the best data, that also causes some memories to leak through because of the partial mind meld. It could be that some of the cauldron shards don't properly set this link, which may mean that they aren't getting as good information about what the host is thinking about, especially about their power and its usage.
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- Location
- France
I just reread this whole fic. It holds up well, even knowing how the plot goes! Rereading Bakuda's endless internal monologue can get a little boring when you already know exactly what's coming, but I'd forgotten all the interesting tidbits hidden in there before Arc 5, so it wasn't much of an issue.
A few thoughts!
The "Coil" plotline was excellent. Good fight scenes, good pacing, good plot, and excellent Bakuda-panic internal monologues.
I'm also weirdly happy that the "was Noelle actually sexually attracted to Bakuda" question wasn't resolved in the Noelle interlude. Keeps us wondering if the SI is being weird or not.
And I'd love some information about what happened to Noelle in the Guild in the future! Do they ever tell Dragon that they're Simurgh bomb from Earth Aleph? Are they still primed to go off and wreck everything in the future? [Not that I expect you to answer these questions here, this is probably a future plot point]
Good luck to Paige, too! Dragon's doing good work with that power-suppressing tech, isn't she?
Upon rereading the fic, I was struck by how weird it was that Bakuda is both so obviously unused to fighting and yet so ready to five into battle. I'm sure that the conflict drive mattered and that fear of Lung played a big part in this, but it would have been nice to have it emphasized in her endless internal monologue.
There wasn't much existential panic in the "I'm trapped here forever and will probably die painfully soon" at the start, either. In Arc 5 we're seeing a lot of "what is the purpose of my life, why did Abbaddon create me" stuff, but the SI doesn't seem to be much affected by the quasi-certainty of violent death/maiming/loss of previous life, home and friends.
Oh, and the Armsmaster interlude was a good read. His "voice" sounds very different from Bakuda's, his way of thinking fits what we know of his character and motivations (and you handled the whole "my brain parasite says efficiency" thing quite well), and he really does come across as an asshole who's also an incredible badass.
His performance in combat against the Simurgh was shockingly good, it's crazy.
My respect for the SI's strange way of thinking increased quite a bit upon reading this line. It was written before Covid, but it turned out to be so true!
A few thoughts!
The "Coil" plotline was excellent. Good fight scenes, good pacing, good plot, and excellent Bakuda-panic internal monologues.
I'm also weirdly happy that the "was Noelle actually sexually attracted to Bakuda" question wasn't resolved in the Noelle interlude. Keeps us wondering if the SI is being weird or not.
And I'd love some information about what happened to Noelle in the Guild in the future! Do they ever tell Dragon that they're Simurgh bomb from Earth Aleph? Are they still primed to go off and wreck everything in the future? [Not that I expect you to answer these questions here, this is probably a future plot point]
Good luck to Paige, too! Dragon's doing good work with that power-suppressing tech, isn't she?
Upon rereading the fic, I was struck by how weird it was that Bakuda is both so obviously unused to fighting and yet so ready to five into battle. I'm sure that the conflict drive mattered and that fear of Lung played a big part in this, but it would have been nice to have it emphasized in her endless internal monologue.
There wasn't much existential panic in the "I'm trapped here forever and will probably die painfully soon" at the start, either. In Arc 5 we're seeing a lot of "what is the purpose of my life, why did Abbaddon create me" stuff, but the SI doesn't seem to be much affected by the quasi-certainty of violent death/maiming/loss of previous life, home and friends.
Oh, and the Armsmaster interlude was a good read. His "voice" sounds very different from Bakuda's, his way of thinking fits what we know of his character and motivations (and you handled the whole "my brain parasite says efficiency" thing quite well), and he really does come across as an asshole who's also an incredible badass.
His performance in combat against the Simurgh was shockingly good, it's crazy.
However, I still haven't figured out what exactly this means. Didn't this fight go rather well for the heroes, as Endbringer fights go? Why would it end Armsmaster's career? Didn't he explicitly want to be moved to another city whatever happened to this one?
Wow, you really can see the future.
My respect for the SI's strange way of thinking increased quite a bit upon reading this line. It was written before Covid, but it turned out to be so true!
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- The Great Beyond
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- He/She/They
It's not about his career;
Consider this line. Look back at canon. Look at Armsmaster's canonical efforts to arrange a one on one so he can kill Leviathan. By really sketchy means. Armsmaster is angling to kill an Endbringer for fame.
Armsmaster is taking the damage to the Simurgh as the death of his ambition to become That Guy Who Killed An Endbringer, most likely.
Like obviously I'm not the author of the fic, so I can't say for sure my read is correct, but that's what the signs point towards.
- Location
- A place.
Went back to reread the chapter where Scrub triggers and it makes me wonder about disrupting the memory modification. It looks Taylor and Lisa getting hit on the head was enough to knock them out of the stunning effect of the trigger vision, at least a little bit, but it didn't actually stop the erasure from finishing.
There's also the part where, immediately after getting decked in the face, Taylor's mind goes right to the "soft chest" pressed to her back and wondering who it is. Got a kick out of that.
- Location
- France
Wow, my sympathy for poor Armsmaster suddenly vanished after reading this.
...
You know, I got thinking about the "worst case scenario" for Armsmaster (which in his eyes seems to be a stalled career as a minor hero).
If that happened, do you think he'd resign from the Protectorate and join the Guild? It's not like he'll be a nobody there, it seems to be a much smaller team with more opportunities to shine as the Guild often travels to go after major threats outside of Canada. Armsmaster doesn't seem to resent being overshadowed by Dragon, and he's likely aware that Dragon wouldn't steal his credit if he does manage to get his moment of glory.
One of the advantages of dating Dragon (and being a strong Tinker) is that this option will likely be available to him if he asks. I just don't know if his pride (and/or commitment to his goal of being a respected Protectorate leader) would stop him from trying to join the Guild.
IvanDead
My bones are made of schadenfreude.
- Location
- Brasil
I wonder how difficult it would be for Bakuda/Alicia to write pseudo-theses about the multidimensional nature of powers, and the properties of Simurgh dust. Or at least try to advise Chivalry Chevalier to use Simurgh dust for its anti-powers properties.
I'm really curious about Taylor's opinion about the fight, and more specifically about Bakuda's actions in it.
Like, Taylor's mental image of Bakuda was that of a villainess who tried to blow up her university, joined ABB, did destroyed a school, and feels no remorse for inflicting equal or worse fates than death on others. And it's without taking into account the whole "probably a Simurgh-bomb".
But now Taylor has discovered that Bakuda has goes (figurative and literal) 12 blocks out of her way for several days to help and befriend Taylor, and has not just sticked to her side in a fight that she may have (in theory) walked away from, but also has extended a great deal of trust (even if part of it is only from Taylor's pov) and care¹ for Taylor. This gives a whole other context for Bakuda going to visit Taylor while showing more skin than expected, and offering to share her base/lair with Taylor.
Also, Taylor initially thought Bakuda was interacting with her because Bakuda wanted to recruit her, but the new interactions/information may have changed the context of it from "because she wants a parahuman ally" to "because she is that thirsty/lonely".
But that may just be me being wishful, because the mental image of it (plus Taylor feeling awkward by not knowing how to deal with the possibility, and Bakuda being totally oblivious to the possibility) amuses me to no end.
¹It reminds me of the most positive interactions she had with the Undersiders, but I'm not sure if she stayed with them long enough to make the association.
Also, there aren't many cities as big as BB whose local Protectorate doesn't have a leader, and I don't think he would get fame/glory for being the leader of the Protectorate of a small town.
Edit:
Also, other things that I'm very looking forward for includes:
Taylor learning first hand about tinker fugues (and how vulnerable it leaves Bakuda) and how positively and negatively bullshit tinker powers are.
Taylor's reaction to finding that Bakuda bombs routinely disappear and are replaced by supplies. Mainly because I doubt that she will not eventually realize it with her local omniscience.
Bakuda explaining for Taylor how dimensional portals are an integral part of the powers.
Taylor making a better costume for Bakuda, and/or a more modest outfit for Alicia.
And I'm really hoping for a scene where Alicia and Taylor end up watching cartoons together, or at least Taylor finds out that Alicia/Bakuda likes to watch cartoons. Aaaand now I'm imagining the two bonding over watching that Protectorate cartoon.
I'm really curious about Taylor's opinion about the fight, and more specifically about Bakuda's actions in it.
I'm somewhat convinced that part of the interlude would be filled with Taylor thinking (or coming to the conclusion of) that Bakuda is hit on her.
Like, Taylor's mental image of Bakuda was that of a villainess who tried to blow up her university, joined ABB, did destroyed a school, and feels no remorse for inflicting equal or worse fates than death on others. And it's without taking into account the whole "probably a Simurgh-bomb".
But now Taylor has discovered that Bakuda has goes (figurative and literal) 12 blocks out of her way for several days to help and befriend Taylor, and has not just sticked to her side in a fight that she may have (in theory) walked away from, but also has extended a great deal of trust (even if part of it is only from Taylor's pov) and care¹ for Taylor. This gives a whole other context for Bakuda going to visit Taylor while showing more skin than expected, and offering to share her base/lair with Taylor.
Also, Taylor initially thought Bakuda was interacting with her because Bakuda wanted to recruit her, but the new interactions/information may have changed the context of it from "because she wants a parahuman ally" to "because she is that thirsty/lonely".
But that may just be me being wishful, because the mental image of it (plus Taylor feeling awkward by not knowing how to deal with the possibility, and Bakuda being totally oblivious to the possibility) amuses me to no end.
¹It reminds me of the most positive interactions she had with the Undersiders, but I'm not sure if she stayed with them long enough to make the association.
I don't think that goal is still possible. The loss of Brockton Bay is a heavy hit on his record, even if he had no direct blame for it.
Also, there aren't many cities as big as BB whose local Protectorate doesn't have a leader, and I don't think he would get fame/glory for being the leader of the Protectorate of a small town.
Edit:
Huh, I forgot, has Bakuda lost her hyper-insulation helmet? If so, it's, uh, bad, because I'm very sure that she never realized how much insulation/protection it granted her.
...Okay, this is fucking suspect, and definitely an intentional feature because no way that a tinkertech TV is less interesting than freaking mundane locks.
Also, other things that I'm very looking forward for includes:
Taylor learning first hand about tinker fugues (and how vulnerable it leaves Bakuda) and how positively and negatively bullshit tinker powers are.
Taylor's reaction to finding that Bakuda bombs routinely disappear and are replaced by supplies. Mainly because I doubt that she will not eventually realize it with her local omniscience.
Bakuda explaining for Taylor how dimensional portals are an integral part of the powers.
Taylor making a better costume for Bakuda, and/or a more modest outfit for Alicia.
And I'm really hoping for a scene where Alicia and Taylor end up watching cartoons together, or at least Taylor finds out that Alicia/Bakuda likes to watch cartoons. Aaaand now I'm imagining the two bonding over watching that Protectorate cartoon.
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- Wherever
The meme effect is literally Imp's power, which basically functions as a superior form of invisibility because even if Imp does stuff to people they rationalize it as somehow making sense to have happened via an explanation that refuses to acknowledge Imp's presence. (Where with typical invisibility you can tell pretty quickly that something invisible is trying to kill you or whatever, and it's just a matter of accounting for your eyeballs not helping)
As for Tattletale... she saw the paper, then set it aside and promptly forgot she'd ever handled it and refused to acknowledge it until Sierra tried to shove her attention toward it. Like Imp, the paper wasn't invisible per se, but in a lot of ways it was more invisible than stock invisibility.
So take all that to its logical conclusion, and yes, if one could contrive to trigger the effect using... death lasers or something... most capes probably would just fail to recognize they were about to get themselves killed. Or maybe not most, but at least a non-trivial fraction. (It's a little too easy to imagine various power effects cluing various parahumans into something, even if they can't pick up on the thing itself: Taylor doesn't need to properly recognize the danger zone's appearance and so on to notice that her bugs keep dying in a particular area for no clear reason and decide to steer clear, for example)
I suspect we're supposed to think Doctor Mother is stating a true fact when she says not all capes experience trigger visions, but logically speaking Cauldron wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 'experienced it, but immediately forgot and didn't mention it before forgetting' and 'didn't experience a trigger vision', unless one assumes that eg PtV can cheat and just give Contessa the answer directly. ("Did this parahuman experience a trigger vision when they took that vial just now? Thanks for magically telling me the answer even though trigger events are invisible to precog, my ostensibly-precog power.")
Which I wouldn't put past Wildbow, mind.
It's also worth pointing out that not only is Doctor Mother a known liar, but that it would specifically make sense for her to lie on this topic so that if two different clients meet, one of whom remembers their vision and the other does not, this doesn't seem inconsistent, without Doctor Mother having to mention anything about the memory suppression. If we accept that Cauldron wants the truth of Entities largely kept secret for some reason (And gloss over how the narrative failed to properly sell this), then Doctor Mother is going to want to pre-emptively provide an explanation that doesn't touch on the memory suppression, since the memory suppression itself is one of the more openly suspicious elements of Entity activity and the alternative obvious explanation for memory suppression is, of course, to become hella suspicious of Cauldron. And that's undesirable for more obvious reasons.
I will admit it's possible to imagine mechanics where no trigger event vision occurring in some cases makes sense. A power that's entirely passive (And thus doesn't need to know whether the host is trying to activate it or not) and has no interference with their brain could function consistently without needing to interface with their brain, and with no brain interface there'd be no trigger vision, and since Eden's shards are 'broken' it's plausible one might execute 'give power to host' but fail to execute 'tap host's brain to monitor them for data and to make sure they stay in line with what the cycle needs done'. Since none of the Cauldron capes we saw trigger from the inside fit this profile, canon doesn't have any evidence I can recall to disprove such a scenario being possible.
I still don't find it compelling, though, in part because our one point of evidence that is pro-'some don't have visions' comes from a known liar who we have no specific reason to believe could know the information she's claiming to know.
Of course, that touches on part of why I suspect we're supposed to think Doctor Mother is relating something true, never mind how little sense it makes to take Doctor Mother at her word here: because Wildbow has a habit, at this point, of having characters arrive at particular conclusions off of limited data, where the narrative then carries forward as if their conclusion is 100% accurate... sometimes even when the conclusion is actively contraindicated by the data we're supposed to think lead to the conclusion. Including that he's done this with habitual liars, in situations it would make much more sense for them to be lying in.
Oh, yeah, that was a thing I sidestepped somewhat deliberately. In part because it's actually a pet peeve of mine that certain topics -romantic interest among them- will always be rapidly answered unambiguously in SIs, regardless of how plausible it is for the answer to be delivered organically, and regardless of how pertinent it is to the core plot.
That's... how I actually am.
I haven't, as it happens, gotten into many physical, violent conflicts in my life. People tend to be all bark and no bite, or I end up sidestepping any possibility of a violent confrontation before things can reach that point, or I move to a new place before the tension can reach a boiling point, or they move to a new place, and the final result is that if I counted out how many times I've thrown a punch or similar I'd probably not need more than my fingers to count it up.
Nonetheless, I'm not terribly frightened by the possibility of confrontation. I don't like it -pounding adrenaline is not any kind of high for me, it's just all stress- but if I feel I have to throw punches or similar I don't hesitate. Pain does not move me particularly, and a lot of the cliche fictional reasons for being reluctant to fight, such as feeling bad about hurting others even when they're actively trying to kill you, simply don't apply to me. (And, to be honest, I'm a bit skeptical that many of those are as common in reality as their prevalence in fiction would seem to imply)
Thus, Bakuda is an inexperienced fighter, but isn't particularly uncomfortable with the process.
I started the story when I was homeless. Bakuda hasn't directly explicated it to the audience -partly because historically I didn't want to mention it, partly because I honestly wouldn't have dwelled on the topic in such a situation- but being trapped in Worm as Bakuda is only horrible inasmuch as the Worm setting as a whole is horrible, not so much in the sense of having left behind a bunch of important stuff. In conjunction with 'logically speaking, this means Scion might well have wiped out my original world down the line', there's not a lot of reason to feel like the trapped state per se is a reason to angst.
Also there was a fairly continuous state of imminent danger, if only 'Oni Lee will kill me if I don't put my all into rescuing Lung', so... not a lot of time for introspection about the situation.
Terrabrand is basically right, here. Canon Armsmaster tries to use the very next Endbringer fight to become That Guy Who Killed An Endbringer, deliberately sacrificing dozens of lives to arrange a 1v1 where he'd unambiguously get all the credit if he won.
So take that, and then have Eidolon pre-empt him on making major progress in the field of harming Endbringers.
... I probably should've prioritized clarity a bit more than drama in this particular case, honestly, but I wass still getting a handle on my writing at the time.
Yeah. I... have had a lot of experiences in this regard. In spite of germ theory being taught in high school and being pretty simple, I routinely run into problems from people regularly
-violently blowing their nose at other people from gratuitously close range
-attempting to shake hands immediately after blowing their nose, having not even bothered to wash their hands
-being confused when someone is not thrilled by this behavior
COVID hitting has actually made people less bad about this kind of thing, and I still find myself regularly thinking didn't you get a high school education?
I haven't historically talked about it because this kind of thing is so widespread it seemed unlikely people would take my position seriously, honestly.
... wow. That bit of 'Wildbow, you do realize you're writing Taylor as at least bi-curious, right?' had completely slipped my mind.
A big part of what Armsmaster seems to pride himself on is his professionalism, his career having a more-or-less spotless track record, and other stuff that... ties him to staying in the Protectorate and trying to make it work. In canon he turns into Defiant to atone when he realizes he's become just as much of a monster as some of the people he fights. I have difficulty imagining him exiting the Protectorate entirely without either a variation on that, or a major scandal that killed his faith in the Protectorate, such as the Rebecca=Alexandria reveal happening before he goes too far.
... which actually sounds like a genuinely interesting 'fic idea. Hm.
Going by canon, it'd probably be easy to produce a paper her fellow tinkers nod along at the bevy of shard-assisted made-up words while everyone else is wondering what any of this means. Going by my own difficulties getting people online to get what I mean, making such a paper widely understood would likely be... a lot harder.
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IvanDead
My bones are made of schadenfreude.
- Location
- Brasil
Okay, firstly I really should have checked the hero's name before I clicked reply.
And secondly, it is very convenient that you, someone with so much information and understanding of the nature of the Cycle and of the Entities, have such difficulties. One more point for the "Abaddon missile" theory? The confirmation bias with this theory is being a lot of fun, for me at least.
Edit: Like, what better way to prevent the dissemination of dangerous information than impairing the ability to disseminate it?
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The lying and the reason for lying is a good point...
However in terms of 'figuring out whether a person has a trigger event', I was mostly talking about Number man reading off micro-expressions.
But considering the trigger event seems to get deleted in the seconds after, not during, the trigger event. Its possible Contessa's power or an Eidolon power or some other thinker power they can get access to would be able to tell them also. Or maybe some sort of tinker-brain scan.
And they do have some reason to try and get that information / try and keep semi-decent track of it, since that data might help them refine the formula more.
Though yeah its probably more likely a lie / misdirection.
Mechasaurian
Big Bossu
- Location
- Lost among fields of history
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I don't have much to say about this chapter, other than that I liked it.
The one snag for me was that I found it hard to keep track of the antagonist capes, but this was probably intentional on your part given that your POV character explicitly drifted off when Taylor was explaining them.
The one snag for me was that I found it hard to keep track of the antagonist capes, but this was probably intentional on your part given that your POV character explicitly drifted off when Taylor was explaining them.
Mechasaurian
Big Bossu
- Location
- Lost among fields of history
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Oh, wow. I missed this implication. And this, in addition to Armsmaster hating SI-kuda for what she did to Miss Militia...this looks like the setup for a rather intense conflict down the line.
Mechasaurian
Big Bossu
- Location
- Lost among fields of history
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Oh, hey. How long has that story image been there?
What is it anyway? Makes me think of the gas mask I always picture canon Bakuda wearing (though I can't remember if the canon text mentioned a gas mask or not - only that her costume was based on Bomberman on Uber and Leet's behest). Buuuuuuut Goul King Bakuda wears an Oni mask, so...???
What is it anyway? Makes me think of the gas mask I always picture canon Bakuda wearing (though I can't remember if the canon text mentioned a gas mask or not - only that her costume was based on Bomberman on Uber and Leet's behest). Buuuuuuut Goul King Bakuda wears an Oni mask, so...???
- Location
- Wherever
Since January 30th, according to the 'last edited' bit.
Canon Bakuda wears a gas mask explicitly, yes.
I figured that image would better point a viewer who is considering reading the story to the Bakuda focus, as she's the only Worm canon character to wear a gas mask, even if this Bakuda has never worn such. An Oni mask with the name would probably get people expecting an Oni Lee focus... which would feel like a bit of a bait-and-switch on my part.
5.5
- Location
- Wherever
5.5
I can't rig up turrets, but I can rig up high-altitude bouncing betties and calibrate their sensors to react to various things unlikely to be seen in my airspace unless a tinker is involved. (Iron, plastics, etc, in large enough quantities it's not just... the iron in a bird's blood tripping the sensors) This would be a really dumb idea with normal explosives, but a large number of my effects do the video game explosion thing of only reaching out a certain set distance before stopping, so I don't have to worry about a drone triggering a bouncing betty while I'm outside the building and so being killed by shrapnel from my own trap. Just have to make sure I don't carelessly include any of the exceptions.
I also lean heavy on the effects that are relatively unlikely to end up with a drone beaning someone on the head after it's been downed, like the black hole bombs and a couple of time stop ones, but I don't have a ton of variety in that range and don't want to risk the tinker having or being able to build a countermeasure to just one or two specific effects and so be gold. As such, while they're only maybe 30% of the bouncing betties I set up on the roof and throughout the grounds, I include freeze bombs, 'EMP' bombs (They're not EMP bombs. I don't know what the fuck they do, as they work on tinkertech that should never in a million years care about an electromagnetic pulse. So video game EMP bombs, basically), some thunderclap bombs, and some one-off examples of weirder shit I'm hesitant to actually test on-site. Like the one my power insists will release a short-lived swarm of flying.... things that will eat anything that moves for the thirty seconds or so before their arbitrary lifespan times out.
Once that's done I make a sweep of everything reasonably readily checked to make sure no drones have already infiltrated -wondering idly if bugs scattering to get out of my way at times is just normal bug behavior while Taylor sleeps or some kind of subconscious Taylor input- but aside one of the anti-portal mines in the floor having already suffered adequate decay its light is blinking red so I have to repair it I don't find any problems.
Well. Tinkertech problems.
I see the speedster lurking on a roof at one point, probably watching me. I wonder for a minute if they're going to jump down over the fence or something, but when I very obviously stare in their direction for a minute while continuing to work they retreat out of sight. Not sure if they're scared of me or just don't want me to know about them watching or what. Maybe reporting whatever they saw.
So uh yeah they're not giving up. They really want to push this. Or maybe they think it won't be so bad attacking my tinkerfortress bristling with hellish weaponry while bug control girl is also around to make everything worse for them. I've... seen stupider, admittedly, but I'm more inclined to take this as evidence that they're seriously committed to coming after Taylor. Definitely need to pull the rest of the story out of her once she's had some rest.
It's getting late enough I might normally consider going to bed -past dark, specifically- but instead I start adding more claymores, covering the fencing more thoroughly. I already had the fencing covered to some extent, just in case the phasing lunatics swung by, but it was a bit light, more a just-in-case measure than something I found likely to be seriously tested, and I especially lost interest in reinforcing it once I worked out the phasing lunatics are pretty passive. Now I add a second line of claymores behind/between the existing claymores.
That takes long enough I really just want to collapse, but I also feel it's rather important that I see if I can develop that scanner I was thinking of building.
And lo, it fucking works first try.
… I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Tinkers studying powers is supposed to be a standard capability. So there'd... have to be standard support for it. Or. Consistent support for it. Whatever. Scanning devices of some kind broadly makes sense to be a common capability, regardless of core specialty.
Point is, I now have a box with a screen on one side and antenna-looking bits on the other side, with some knobs and buttons for changing how sensitive it is, tuning what it's focused on, and sundry other reasonable-sounding things, but frankly it's a magic fucking box. I didn't sit down and spend time coding up a reasonable list of things for it to analyze, and write up models for how to represent the info being studied, but when I point it at shit it spontaneously produces graphs and words that describe the thing in vaguely useful detail.
I want to say this seems like evidence of my power being really lazy about pretending plausibility, but from what I recall of canon touching on tinker-made scanners I kinda suspect this type of bullshit might actually be normal. Like, I've got my time stop grenades. I've got them because canon Bakuda already knew how to make them when I showed up so I had a few to start and haven't found it too hard to replicate them when I've gone into tinkering sessions. And my recollection is that canon Bakuda, like, claimed to have derived them from 'studying' Clockblocker's power by... watching videos of him using his power. Which, if I'm recalling that correctly, is on the level of saying you watched someone type at a keyboard, so now inspiration has struck and you know how to assemble a motherboard with its own OS and so on.
… put like that, my power might be trying harder to pretend plausibility than what I'm recalling from canon...
Regardless, I scan the weird injury on my forehead. Does it have distinctive chemical traces, or anything else useful like that?
… not that the scanner can tell. It gives me a bunch of vaguely medical-sounding mumbo-jumbo about how deep the cut is, and informs me that infectious organisms in the wound are at a 'sustainable' level -which I think is supposed to mean my body has it under control, given the injury isn't bothering me, but who knows with powers- and gives me an approximated timetable until it'll be 'fully healed' (13 days), but no, it doesn't detect S Particles or even anything more conventionally weird like... I dunno, mercury in the wound?
As I make my way to Taylor, I wave the scanner at any clumps of bugs I pass close-ish to. The scanner keeps giving me error messages about 'not in the library', with minimal actual useful info -stuff like how much infectious-to-me stuff is on their carapace, not anything about the state of their own health. Not useless, but not nearly as helpful as I'd have liked. I'm certainly not going to be Building Better Bugs or anything.
I don't feel inspired as a result, either. I get to Taylor's room and wave the scanner at her sleeping, drooling form, disappointed.
Her injury registers as... pretty badly infected. Something about 'purulent discharge'. Ahhhh, fuck. Why is it rattling off two dozen separate microbial species in the injury? I hope that's normal and not a sign this is heinously bad.
There's also a bunch of other, less urgent data. Mostly-healed cuts concentrated around Taylor's lower legs, a healing injury on the right side of Taylor's pelvis -was I right about the 'embarrassing injury' theory?- and assorted scratches, bruises, and some secondary signs of minor malnutrition, particularly of specific vitamins. Vitamin D is listed as the worst, which feels odd. Isn't that the sun vitamin? Has... Taylor been ranging out less than I'd have expected? Might want to ask later.
Still. I'm mostly worried about that infection.
Off to the workshop.
I wake up in my corner, and that's confusing, because I'd planned on going to my workshop to see if I could tinker up something for the infection, or at least tinker up something based on Taylor's power now that I've tried scanning her and her bugs.
It takes a minute, but... right. I took a shower because I was all kinds of gross and am not fully confident a scrubbing bubble grenade is fully equivalent in utility to good ol' water (Fuck, forgot to use the scanner to try to gather data for comparing), then laid down in my corner and pulled up the blankets for 'just a minute'.
And then I woke up to sunlight in my face.
So yeah, I slept the entire night away.
… well. We don't seem to have been attacked in the night, anyway.
The first thing I do, after getting dressed up a bit more, is head over to where I left Taylor. I'd like to tinker first, honestly, but I don't trust myself to not get lost in the fugues. I was bad enough at losing track of time before all this. (Assuming that was real, which... well... that aspect of my memories could be preparation for tinker fugues? I suppose?)
When I arrive, it's to the discovery that all the pillowcases are gone, while Taylor is laying in the other bed under the blanket, awake and staring at the TV. It's still on national news or some such. I note that the first bed has a pretty large stain, matching to where the ice-pillowcase was laying. So. That apparently didn't work very well. Dangit. Her costume got moved too, though I'm not seeing where any of it is aside the helmet, which is currently sitting on the desk between the beds, where hotels usually have a phone. (The phone itself has been shoved into the alcove below)
Taylor herself says, "Hey," in a quiet voice as I come in, not looking my way or indicating surprise or anything. Because she knew I was coming via bug control, I assume.
"Hey," I say back, because mirroring people's greetings or saying 'you, too' is an excellent fallback option when I have no clue what to say myself. Taylor sounds better, at least. Uh, physically. Not so sure about emotionally. Never been good at reading that, though, so whatever. "Need anything before I get to tinkering? Food, for example?" Hmmm. Wonder if the scanner would get real-time data on food's effects?
Taylor shakes her head a little, which gets a raised eyebrow from me. After a second she clarifies, "I already ate. Woke up... an hour ago."
I blink at that. "I keep almost all the food in the work- the foyer. I'm pretty sure you shouldn't be walking that much in your current condition." This isn't remotely the furthest room from the foyer, but it's still a decent chunk of walking away, given how injured she is. The infection in particular is... eating up a good chunk of her right side.
"'m fine," she once again says in an extremely unconvincing way. She apparently catches my skeptical expression, because she turns to look me roughly in the eye and speaks a little louder, clarifying. "I had help," her less-bruised arm going up so a spider can be lowered onto it by a... wasp, I think. I... really hope Taylor's control over her bugs is as good as canon made it seem. I do not like wasps. I assume she's trying to convey her bugs helped somehow. I'm... not sure how that would negate my point about walking, but I'm also not entirely sure it's worth pressing the point.
"Fine," I say, pretty sure my tone conveys that I don't think it's fine at all, "I've got tinker workshop things to do, then, before those assholes show up again." I stop, reconsidering. "Actually, no, if you're up for walking you're up for talking. I need to know what these people can do, so I can best construct counters to them." Then I'll tinker. Fuck, not sure if I should prioritize defenses or Taylor's health.
Taylor looks mildly surprised for reasons utterly beyond me, slightly shakes her head, but then contradicts what I was expecting that to mean by pulling herself into slightly more of a sitting position and saying, "We're several blocks away from their current border. We're fine." I think I can see her treating the infected area as tender? Not sure if I'm imagining it.
I shake my head. "A drone followed us to the hotel, and last night the mover lady was watching me work on the defenses from a rooftop."
Taylor looks surprised, then distinctly put out, then resigned. She mutters something under her breath, though I don't catch what -I see I'm not the only one who's gotten into a habit of talking out loud unnecessarily due to lack of human interaction- and then takes a deep breath, wincing partway through. She powers on before I can bring the wince up, though. "They're Merchants." She pauses, and I'm not entirely sure what her expression is about. "I said that already." It's clearly not really a question, but I nod anyway. Taylor wipes at her face with her less-injured hand, sighing, sounding tired. I'm probably going to need to push her to rest properly, if canon... and fanon... is anything to go by. Especially given she's really not acting like she has a big infection in her side.
After taking a few moments to collect herself, Taylor... changes the subject? "Why did you fight them?"
Oof. Um. Not sure how to answer that. The truthiest truths are not the ones that are a good idea to share. I shrug to stall, thinking. Um, she thinks I was trying to recruit her for the ABB, she knows I'm the Cornell Bomber, she probably was trying to feel out if I regretted my mad supervillainy and was apparently put out pretty badly when I enthused about her successfully defending herself in a murderous manner... this isn't helpful. Okay, different angle: a truth that's probably not answering her real question but is answering her stated question, which is something I do enough without realizing it that she may already know it's a thing I do from prior conversations and not jump to being suspicious of it. "I didn't like how the talky guy was trying to make nice with me when he has every reason to suspect I'm a murderous lunatic. If he approves of me killing PRT goons, I don't want anything to do with him, and if he's just faking making nice with me that makes me doubt his story and his intentions."
Taylor's face goes conspicuously blank when I refer to myself as a 'murderous lunatic', and twitches very slightly when I mention killing PRT goons. Did... she not know about that incident? "You... distrusted him because he was being nice." I note the tone is flat and not a question. Uuuuusually that means people are annoyed with my answer, but not always.
I shrug noncommittally. "I know I have a reputation. He clearly knew who I was, and was clearly nervous around me, and still decided to schmooze. That doesn't read as honest, to me."
Taylor stares at me in possibly-judgmental silence for a minute before speaking. "So why help me," she says in this flattened tone that makes me think she's trying to not let on whatever she's thinking. I... think I hear a bit of nervousness in there? Maybe? Though isn't voice trembling one of those nervousness things? I might just be hearing the strain on her from the infection.
True answer: because I have memories of reading a story from your perspective wherein I broadly found you relatable and likable and cool, and have since drawn the conclusion that you're probably important in some precognitively-obvious way whereby I should default to keeping you safe and probably on my side to boot.
No way that's going to fly. So I shrug and go with something... plausible. "To be honest, I've been staying away from the Northern area, and basically everyone I've met so far has either been one of the exploding lunatics or the Simurgh had very, very obviously warped them into something horrific. You're... the first person I've met since things settled down who I didn't think needed to die." This is technically, like, not really true now that I'm thinking about it, as I have spotted seemingly-fine people, I just keep avoiding them. Plus the ABB guys, who seemed normal enough. Okay, so I just straight-up lied here, whoops. Not sure if I should backpedal or not, I'm not sure if Taylor is one of those people who treats admitting to shitty memory as shifty evidence of deliberate lying.
Taylor stares at me for a bit, unusually still. I wonder if this has to do with her power? Or could just be normal person creepy stillness. That happens. Then she closes her eyes and takes a deep, ragged breath, though to my surprise she doesn't wince or otherwise react problematically to doing so (Did the scanner mislead me on how bad the infection is? Or... is she just that good at hiding the pain and all?), and after she's let it out she starts talking, eyes still closed. "I've had... four run-ins with them." That's... pretty frequent. "Not counting this time," she clarifies before continuing.
"I think they're Merchants." I consider pointing out she's said that twice already, then decide that would probably be too assholish given her current condition. "I haven't heard them call themselves anything in particular, but they're starting from the right area, and they're all addicts." I raise an eyebrow at that, because I'm unsure how Taylor would know that, and also unsure how they'd keep doing drugs in a post-apocalyptic situation, but Taylor is already explaining before I can ask. "The tinker's drones aren't... actually for scouting, or fighting. He started giving them wings and legs after our second encounter. Normally he attaches them to the outside of a person, or originally small animals like stray cats, and more recently opens them up to put a drone inside them, and it does something to their blood, processes it so it goes in as regular blood and comes out with something more inside it."
Well. That's unpleasant. And now I'm wondering if the big guy was controlled or just... under the influence.
"They mentioned territory. What they didn't say is they keep growing their territory, drawing the line wider as they gangpress more people, get them under the tinker's influence. Each time we had a conflict, it was closer to where-" Taylor's breath hitches for a second. Unsure if emotional or infection-related. "-to where I was staying. I didn't pick fights with them, and they wouldn't let me apologize and back off for 'violating their territory'." She doesn't physically air-quote there, but I can hear it in her voice, alongside a bit of, you know, scorn. "I'm not sure how rational they are, with the drugs in them." I'm abruptly remembering canon Taylor was kind of terrified of drugs, didn't understand them, just kinda vaguely knew addiction was a thing and didn't know anything about how it worked beyond drugs being involved. This is... probably harder for her than it would be for me.
It dawns on me, as Taylor continues talking, that when those capes were talking about wanting Taylor, wanting 'justice', they probably meant they wanted to get her hooked on their tinkerdrugs and try to more or less enslave her, given the modus operandi Taylor is describing. I end up interrupting Taylor. "Sorry, I didn't catch that last bit, got distracted." I... don't think I want to mention this to Taylor, certainly not while she's laid up. Either she's already figured it out, or she hasn't and it'll be likely to horrify her, and given everything that might be... very bad.
Taylor shoots a slightly skeptical look my way before re-focusing on the TV and, I assume, re-iterating what she was last saying. "The tinker is the anchor to their operations, but he's not in charge. That's the mover-" I startle slightly at that, as it really came across like the talky guy was the boss, but now that I think about it he didn't issue actual orders or do anything else unambiguously boss-like. None of them did, mind, but still. "-who might be a Case 53?" Taylor sounds unhappy to be uncertain about this point.
There's a lull here, and Taylor looks sufficiently out of it I'm genuinely wondering if she's drifting off or forgetting about the conversation or something, so I prompt with, "You've never seen her without the kit, or something?" That seems the most obvious scenario for why Taylor would theorize such.
Taylor nods slightly as she resumes talking, not seeming surprised so probably she was just thinking? "I've gotten bugs on her, so I know it's not all growing out of her flesh, but some of it might be." She takes a slightly shuddery breath. Still not sure if pain or emotion. "I still don't entirely understand her power. She charges up, she can share her speed when she unleashes it, she doesn't lose momentum when bouncing off of walls or other reasonably solid and flat surfaces-" Oh. Is that what Taylor meant when she said walls wouldn't help? Slightly less concerning than phasing, if so. "-she picks a target to control her charge, she's actually used non-capes as focal points twice before, but there's a cooldown period after she's attacked where she acts like she feels vulnerable. And during the attack she-"
Taylor pauses for a second here, looking at me out the side of one eye, and asks, "Do you know how Velocity's power works?"
Sorta-kinda-maybe? Canon Taylor said something about him being less able to interact with the world when speedstering, there was a comment about how without a mechanic like that super-speed would mean annihilating the concrete with your super-footsteps, but we barely saw Velocity himself in canon and canon was pretty quick to show us capes like Night who show Worm canon doesn't give a shit about how Taylor thinks super-speed should work. And fanon just treats him as the Flash, down at the lower end of the power scale instead of Justice League most-super-bullshit-League-member. And I never personally saw him since arriving here. And he's dead now. Wait, does Taylor know that's partially my fault? Shit, is that why she's bringing him up in particular? I'd just assumed she picked him as a local example.
In the end, I shrug, and tack on, "Fast, but some kinda tradeoff?" after it occurs to me a shrug could be taken as 'kinda', as I'm intending, or as 'no, not even slightly', the way some people use shrugs.
Taylor takes another deep breath, though no wince this time. "The faster he went, the less able he was to interact with the world around him. This woman seems to work like that, but more binary, and... she keeps trying to touch my skin, I think I said that before?" I nod, and Taylor continues, sounding a little relieved. "So I suspect there's more to it than that, like she can hurt people if she gets skin contact."
Okay, so... kinda like if Battery and Velocity had a kid, but with teamwork thrown in. And with some kinda targeting mechanic. My power isn't immediately trying to throw up counter-tech ideas, but I'm not sitting down to tinker yet and I'm not sure how normal intrusive thoughts are for tinkers. I think Kid Win was the only tinker we got indications of having such experiences... and he had dyscalculia and whatnot, that might've been part of that whole thing. Though on the other hand I probably have dyscalculia myself... except if I'm an Abbadon missile with fake memories I'm not sure whether to trust that and I haven't had a clear opportunity to check how terrible I am at math since arriving here...
… fuckit, point is 'we'll see what happens when I start tinkering'. Right now, I still want the rest of Taylor's explanation anyway.
Fortunately, while I was distracted, Taylor herself seems to have been focused on... Armsmaster looking angry while text scrolls by, talking about his 'exemplary performance' in... San Diego? Huh. That's California. Wouldn't have expected Armsmaster to end up at the opposite end of the country from Brockton Bay. Wonder why?
After another ten seconds or so, Taylor rouses herself, apparently no longer interested in Armsmaster's explanation about how he just wants to show that everyone can be their best selves, or whatever it is he means exactly. She looks at me, glances away, looks at me again, then starts talking, which... uh... okay? "Lastly, Glacius-"
"Wait," I interrupt. "They have cape names?" I do not believe for a second some asshole named their kid Glacius.
Taylor looks extremely confused, stares a bit more directly at my face, and after a second of studying my face closely her confusion visibly intensifies. Why? Regardless, after a second Taylor continues in an extremely dubious tone with, "I assume so. Glacius is the only one I've heard."
I sigh heavily to myself. The Mover was the only one in anything resembling an identity-obscuring costume! If she had a cape-name, I'd be dubious on the practicality of her committing to a cape identity but at least be able to follow a train of thought. Glacius and the tinker were not in costumes, let alone costumes that concealed anything. So unless that tinker is extra bullshit, where they only look like normal folks in normal clothes... fuckin' why?
Taylor, meanwhile, is continuing to stare at me like she's deeply concerned. I don't get that, either. Eventually she apparently decides I'm done interrupting her, I guess, because with one last dubious glance in my direction she goes back to looking at the TV but talking. "Glacius is the big guy. The... not the big guy you..." She pauses and her expression is... carefully blank? I think? I've honestly never been able to tell the difference between 'carefully blank' and 'neutral non-expression', but something feels different about her expression. Then Taylor looks me in the eye, which, uh, great, I hate it when people do that, I'm already habitually focusing elsewhere, latching onto a clock on one wall before she can resume talking. "Did you kill him?"
It takes me a second to parse the swerve, because no I did not kill the shield guy. Whatever it is he does. The... weird giant guy, that's what she's asking about. I shrug. "Before you laid out the tinker guy's basics, I'd have said 'probably'. Now I'd say 'probably, but with a question mark'." Like there was definitely chunks breaking apart, but a tinker with unclear biological manipulation ability makes that a bit less certain of a lethal thing.
Taylor takes a minute to respond, still trying to stare at my eyes and goddammit I just remembered that guilty conscience stereotype she better not be thinking I'm avoiding looking her in the eye out of guilt. "... 'but with a question mark'?" is the entirety of her response, while I'm still studying the clock and oh hey there's some intrusive tinkerthoughts. Not... very useful ones, but still.
I make an aggrieved noise. "I have no idea what you're reacting to."
Taylor's still trying to look me in the eye even as my gaze wanders around the room -ah. I should clear out some of the sheets, or something. Before I can get started on that, Taylor says, "Who actually says 'question mark'?"
Sarcastically, I respond with, "Me, clearly." Okay yeah let's start... cleaning up this room. Or at least getting the gross stuff piled together so I can deal with it all at once later.
Taylor's quiet for a minute as I bustle about, dropping assorted gross things on the bathroom floor. She speaks up when I reach for an indeterminate dark mass, saying, "Don't touch that. It's part of my costume."
I consider pointing out her costume cannot possibly be clean after everything that's happened, but having just been intensely sarcastic I suspect it would be taken as more snark rather than a legitimate point. And hey, I do have scrubbing bubble grenades. So I leave it, and go back to combing through the room.
"Seriously, why did you say 'but with a question mark'?" Taylor asks as I'm eyeballing the room's phone, murky tinkerthoughts suggesting it might have parts of use to... something.
I sigh, because okay clearly Taylor isn't going to let this... thing... go. "I have something of a history of being taken very differently from my intent, particularly when I'm talking." Taylor makes a confused noise here, but I'm not sure why and don't want to get derailed. "I ask an earnest question, and the teacher thinks I'm being a smart-alec. I make a bland observation about current events, and whoever is around takes it as a pointed remark about their failings as a human being. I say something straightforward, and it gets taken as sarcastic. I make a joke, and it gets taken as me being earnest, with an attendant belief that I'm being deliberately a giant asshole. I don't make a joke, but what I say gets taken as a joke. People who've been around me a while generally clue in and get what I'm saying and what it means, but even then there's still times I get taken as sarcastic when I'm not, hurtful when I was trying to help, etc." I finally decide yeah sure let's pull this stupid phone out the wall, it's not like we're going to use it for its intended purpose. "Doesn't matter whether I try as hard as I can to be polite and distant in word choice, or casual and friendly, or otherwise adjust my diction and so on to try to get people to get what I'm saying. Something about my tone, or body language, or something else nobody consciously pays attention to, something I don't really have control over."
It occurs to me as I'm laying all that out that really this is another thing that makes way more sense if I'm an Abbadon missile instead of a regular human being interdimensionally transplanted. Like if I'm a kinda crappy simulation remote-controlling Bakuda's body from... wherever my power's shard is lurking... it'd make a certain amount of sense for there to be, like, a loss in fidelity. Maybe Abbadon didn't get a good look at humans as he passed, and the damage done to Bakuda's brain by... her original power plugging in, or the Abbadon shard plugging in, or both... took away the ability to just tap the brain for regular ol' human... tone control or whatever... and I'm just manually steering this whole thing without a lot of fine control human brains are supposed to have.
I've just finished disconnecting the phone from the wall, speculatively eyeing the cord for reasons I can't quite put into words, when Taylor speaks in a low tone. "The whole world out to get you."
It takes a second for that to properly register, and when it does my head whips around to look at Taylor directly before I'm even thinking. "Wha- what are you talking about?"
Taylor startles, eyes locking with mine for a split-second before she re-focuses on the TV. "Nothing. I didn't say anything."
What the fuck was that about? God- forget it. She doesn't want to talk about it, and frankly I'm not sure I want to hear about it, even though I'm pretty sure I got misunderstood a-fucking-gain and theoretically really want to clear that up. But no, I just... this is dumb, and we have threats, and I need info. "Okay whatever, go back to forcefield guy. Or whatever he does."
Once Taylor resumes talking, I go back to handling the room situation. Almost done finding and stockpiling gross sheets and all. "Glacius is the... big guy you didn't kill." There's a noticeable pause in there while I'm crawling under the bed she's not currently using, and... why is there a wallet with dollar coins in it down here? Like okay I'd honestly forgotten Earth Bet America uses dollar coins instead of dollar bills, but no seriously why is there a wallet down here? Annoying, really, a wallet of cash is worthless to me in these current circumstances. Nice leather on the wallet, but I... don't think there's tinkerpotential there? "I think of his power like saran wrap." No, my power doesn't call anything to mind. "He can wrap it around other people, but it 'breaks' if they get too far apart, and he can't put it back up immediately."
Okay, so I was right about that guy, more or less. There's a lull in Taylor's monologue, so I prompt her with, "Any other times it breaks that you've noticed?" Hm, maybe the money has tinkerpotential? Money is surprisingly sophisticated stuff. Raw metals, at minimum.
I think I see Taylor shrugging out of the corner of one eye. I certainly hear her, hissing in pain. "No, I don't think so. I'm assuming enough force would work, because he doesn't act like he's invincible." Yeah, my brain's bubbling looking at this coin. Wait, gold? Why does my power think there's gold in this coin? "But I've never made it happen except by separating them."
Hm. Powers can be weird. "Has he ever had the shield up without having it wrapped around other people?" I'm wondering if it's, like, invulnerability tied specifically to hanging with others.
Taylor takes long enough to respond I glance over to check if she's fallen asleep before re-focusing on the wallet because no, she's just lost in thought. Probably. "I... don't know. It's almost invisible. I'd assumed he kept it up whenever he could."
Hmmm. Depending on how the effect discriminates and all, I might be able to work around that. Like, maybe a teleport effect would bypass his power, and then the protection would break from him being separated from his buddies. I've got a few one-offs I refused to replicate because they seemed of dubious utility to my defenses, like a random-teleport mine that shunts anybody in its 'blast' sphere to somewhere within a mile of the mine. "Okay, so separating him from his buddies is an idea." A worrying thought occurs abruptly. "It doesn't, like, explode when it fails, right?"
Taylor gives me a look I don't know how to parse, but after a second says, "No. It stretches, and then rips. The remains melt into a... fog, I think." So back to this coin, yeah, my power is insisting I can... strain out the gold using some magnetic bullshit... I realize gold isn't magnetic and so that sort of makes sense from a distance, but I have to question the mechanics of what my power is telling me. Always wondered what the point of tinker powers was supposed to be in the cycle, especially given how much fakery is clearly involved. What are the Entities hoping to get out of technology testing when the technology doesn't even actually work the way the test monkeys are told it works? Scion and Eden don't even get the soft sciences stuff, so it's probably not a psychology thing...
"The fog do anything? Suffocate bugs or the like?" Later Worm got bad about treating a lot of power visuals as basically just visual flair, like how Peach suddenly had heart effects in Brawl but the physics of the affected attacks weren't actually changed, not even Peach Bomber when it was switching away from an explosion, but early Worm tended to have power visuals more meaningful and, like, nuanced. Which fits with the precog-theory...
"What are you doing?" Taylor asks instead of answering my question.
I look up for a second to assess Taylor's expression, but there's nothing unexpected there. Curiosity and exasperation like I'd expect. "I'm a Tinker, Taylor." I gesture at the coin, then the phone. "I need raw materials, and I have to be perpetually on the lookout for inspiration." Actually, I'm not sure how normal that is now that I think about it. One of my perpetual disappointments with Worm was early Worm and WoG persistently indicate there's a lot of the creative process you'd expect in Tinkering, trying out ideas and having them turn out to be better in your head than in your hands, or the world not working quite the way it would need to for your idea to work as imagined, or the materials you have available not working for what you want to do but leading to different ideas... and then canon avoided depicting said process, and got quite bad about Tinkers just getting to produce a perfect answer first time every time. And don't even get me started on fanfic...
… so maybe it's actually just me.
That's a worrying thought.
Meanwhile, Taylor has finished mulling over that response. "Even the dirty laundry?" she asks, doubtfully. Not sure if joke.
I'm just going to go ahead and blame this on Taylor being sick and injured and all. "No, that's just dirty laundry that needs cleaning."
Taylor continues to stare doubtfully at me. "Why are you shoving it in the bathroom, then?"
"So it's not on the carpet?" I'm not sure why Taylor is asking this. Minimize stains, and minimize opportunities for shit to grow in the carpet, which is harder to clean than the sheets... blankets... whatever the terminology here is...
"Aren't you-" She hesitates for a second here, no idea why. "Aren't you going to use a... 'scrubber grenade' to clean it all anyway?"
It takes me a second to work out she means my scrubbing bubble grenades. I guess the exact wording didn't really stick with her. Also: um, good point. "Okay, thoughtless habit is your explanation then. I'm on autopilot here, mostly listening to your explanations. Like whether the clingwrap shield kills bugs when it breaks?" This is deliberately pointed of a comment.
Taylor's lips twitch in what might be an aborted smile at my initial comment, but it's difficult to be sure, especially knowing how bad that infection is. Could just be a twitch of pain. In any event, she nods -to herself? In acknowledgment of my pointed remark?- and says, "No," very firmly.
I bristle slightly at that, that level of surety is rarely justified in my experience... and then take a calming breath. Picking a fight with Taylor while she's sick and I know it would be dumb. "Is it problematic for them to breathe it, or anything?"
Taylor visibly mulls that over. Or maybe she's mulling over whatever Protectorate-cape-I-don't-recognize on the TV just said, I haven't been paying attention to her. "Not that I've noticed, but I hadn't th-" Her breathing hitches for a second, but she bulls on. "-thought of that." I'm considering what to ask next when Taylor remarks, "His power might be ice-based, given the name."
I space for a second, a kind of incoherent rage at the universe itself arising at the possibility that Taylor might be right and Glacius might, in fact, have unnecessarily provided a clue to his enemies by picking a meaningful name alluding to a non-obvious element of his power. Normally I'd dismiss it out of hand as stupid, but Worm also gives us Tattletale, who had zero need to pick such an accurately-revealing name. Fuck, maybe my expectations of how inane it is for people to do such are also a product of being an Abbaddon missile, if he was using a similar process as Scion and Eden with prior worlds and so got a lot of thought into yomi and similar I might've inherited a lot of assumptions therein, vs actual random humans with powers shoved into their skulls totally seeing nothing wrong with passing out hints to all their enemies via their fucking names.
Fingers being snapped reminds me Taylor is in the room. "What was that about?"
My gaze follows Taylor's pointing arm to the wallet I picked up earlier, which is currently twisted up in my hands. Whoops. Been a while since I've done that. "Anger habit I thought had gone away, where I twist or otherwise put pressure on stuff in my hands, sometimes without noticing if I'm focused on other stuff."
Taylor goggles at me, and it finally registers on me that she's wearing her glasses and has been this entire time. Right, right, she actually had a compartment in her costume for her glasses, didn't she? That simplifies things. "Anger over what?" Taylor asks in this mildly anxious way I can't quite put my finger on.
I carefully try to get the wallet back to its default shape as I answer. "The possibility that you might be right, and this cape might be stupid enough to have put a hint to a non-obvious element of his power into his cape name, and attendant implication I live in a universe in which an actual person actually thinks this makes sense." Wait, is this croc leather? I thought it was regular leather with a pattern inlaid afterward was all, but this isn't bending quite the way I'm used to leather wallets bending.
Taylor stares at me for a long, long chunk of time, absorbing that statement, before finally remarking, "You didn't seem that mad when they were trying to kill us." She sounds bothered. Probably. Great.
I sigh again, then double-take. "Wait, they were?"
There's a pause where I'm pretty sure Taylor is giving me an are you serious? look, before she says, "They had guns," and I have to wonder if she sounds pained due to the infection or if this is more psychological pain at having to point it out to me or what.
"Well, sure," I start out, because it's not like that's a terrible point, but it's still... kinda bizarre for Taylor to jump to. "But you're-" Wait shit amend presentation! Avoid spoilers! "-You threw yourself in front of me like you thought you were bulletproof, and they didn't treat that as weird or anything, and you've fought them a lot before. They probably didn't think guns would kill you, and you already told me they want to coopt you. And they were bluntly there for you. Like okay yeah now that you mention it they were probably okay with killing me, but I'd probably be okay with killing me if I were in their position with their likely knowledge of what I've done and why I've likely done it." Should I bring up blowing up Taylor's school here as an example? Would that be forced?
Taylor stares at me in silence for so long I eventually heave a sigh and stand back up. "If that's all you've got to tell me vis-à-vis their powers and all, I'm going to see if I can tinker up something to counter them and/or to hurry up your recovery now."
Taylor doesn't respond as I head out, phone, coinage, and wallet in tow.
I can't rig up turrets, but I can rig up high-altitude bouncing betties and calibrate their sensors to react to various things unlikely to be seen in my airspace unless a tinker is involved. (Iron, plastics, etc, in large enough quantities it's not just... the iron in a bird's blood tripping the sensors) This would be a really dumb idea with normal explosives, but a large number of my effects do the video game explosion thing of only reaching out a certain set distance before stopping, so I don't have to worry about a drone triggering a bouncing betty while I'm outside the building and so being killed by shrapnel from my own trap. Just have to make sure I don't carelessly include any of the exceptions.
I also lean heavy on the effects that are relatively unlikely to end up with a drone beaning someone on the head after it's been downed, like the black hole bombs and a couple of time stop ones, but I don't have a ton of variety in that range and don't want to risk the tinker having or being able to build a countermeasure to just one or two specific effects and so be gold. As such, while they're only maybe 30% of the bouncing betties I set up on the roof and throughout the grounds, I include freeze bombs, 'EMP' bombs (They're not EMP bombs. I don't know what the fuck they do, as they work on tinkertech that should never in a million years care about an electromagnetic pulse. So video game EMP bombs, basically), some thunderclap bombs, and some one-off examples of weirder shit I'm hesitant to actually test on-site. Like the one my power insists will release a short-lived swarm of flying.... things that will eat anything that moves for the thirty seconds or so before their arbitrary lifespan times out.
Once that's done I make a sweep of everything reasonably readily checked to make sure no drones have already infiltrated -wondering idly if bugs scattering to get out of my way at times is just normal bug behavior while Taylor sleeps or some kind of subconscious Taylor input- but aside one of the anti-portal mines in the floor having already suffered adequate decay its light is blinking red so I have to repair it I don't find any problems.
Well. Tinkertech problems.
I see the speedster lurking on a roof at one point, probably watching me. I wonder for a minute if they're going to jump down over the fence or something, but when I very obviously stare in their direction for a minute while continuing to work they retreat out of sight. Not sure if they're scared of me or just don't want me to know about them watching or what. Maybe reporting whatever they saw.
So uh yeah they're not giving up. They really want to push this. Or maybe they think it won't be so bad attacking my tinkerfortress bristling with hellish weaponry while bug control girl is also around to make everything worse for them. I've... seen stupider, admittedly, but I'm more inclined to take this as evidence that they're seriously committed to coming after Taylor. Definitely need to pull the rest of the story out of her once she's had some rest.
It's getting late enough I might normally consider going to bed -past dark, specifically- but instead I start adding more claymores, covering the fencing more thoroughly. I already had the fencing covered to some extent, just in case the phasing lunatics swung by, but it was a bit light, more a just-in-case measure than something I found likely to be seriously tested, and I especially lost interest in reinforcing it once I worked out the phasing lunatics are pretty passive. Now I add a second line of claymores behind/between the existing claymores.
That takes long enough I really just want to collapse, but I also feel it's rather important that I see if I can develop that scanner I was thinking of building.
And lo, it fucking works first try.
… I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Tinkers studying powers is supposed to be a standard capability. So there'd... have to be standard support for it. Or. Consistent support for it. Whatever. Scanning devices of some kind broadly makes sense to be a common capability, regardless of core specialty.
Point is, I now have a box with a screen on one side and antenna-looking bits on the other side, with some knobs and buttons for changing how sensitive it is, tuning what it's focused on, and sundry other reasonable-sounding things, but frankly it's a magic fucking box. I didn't sit down and spend time coding up a reasonable list of things for it to analyze, and write up models for how to represent the info being studied, but when I point it at shit it spontaneously produces graphs and words that describe the thing in vaguely useful detail.
I want to say this seems like evidence of my power being really lazy about pretending plausibility, but from what I recall of canon touching on tinker-made scanners I kinda suspect this type of bullshit might actually be normal. Like, I've got my time stop grenades. I've got them because canon Bakuda already knew how to make them when I showed up so I had a few to start and haven't found it too hard to replicate them when I've gone into tinkering sessions. And my recollection is that canon Bakuda, like, claimed to have derived them from 'studying' Clockblocker's power by... watching videos of him using his power. Which, if I'm recalling that correctly, is on the level of saying you watched someone type at a keyboard, so now inspiration has struck and you know how to assemble a motherboard with its own OS and so on.
… put like that, my power might be trying harder to pretend plausibility than what I'm recalling from canon...
Regardless, I scan the weird injury on my forehead. Does it have distinctive chemical traces, or anything else useful like that?
… not that the scanner can tell. It gives me a bunch of vaguely medical-sounding mumbo-jumbo about how deep the cut is, and informs me that infectious organisms in the wound are at a 'sustainable' level -which I think is supposed to mean my body has it under control, given the injury isn't bothering me, but who knows with powers- and gives me an approximated timetable until it'll be 'fully healed' (13 days), but no, it doesn't detect S Particles or even anything more conventionally weird like... I dunno, mercury in the wound?
As I make my way to Taylor, I wave the scanner at any clumps of bugs I pass close-ish to. The scanner keeps giving me error messages about 'not in the library', with minimal actual useful info -stuff like how much infectious-to-me stuff is on their carapace, not anything about the state of their own health. Not useless, but not nearly as helpful as I'd have liked. I'm certainly not going to be Building Better Bugs or anything.
I don't feel inspired as a result, either. I get to Taylor's room and wave the scanner at her sleeping, drooling form, disappointed.
Her injury registers as... pretty badly infected. Something about 'purulent discharge'. Ahhhh, fuck. Why is it rattling off two dozen separate microbial species in the injury? I hope that's normal and not a sign this is heinously bad.
There's also a bunch of other, less urgent data. Mostly-healed cuts concentrated around Taylor's lower legs, a healing injury on the right side of Taylor's pelvis -was I right about the 'embarrassing injury' theory?- and assorted scratches, bruises, and some secondary signs of minor malnutrition, particularly of specific vitamins. Vitamin D is listed as the worst, which feels odd. Isn't that the sun vitamin? Has... Taylor been ranging out less than I'd have expected? Might want to ask later.
Still. I'm mostly worried about that infection.
Off to the workshop.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wake up in my corner, and that's confusing, because I'd planned on going to my workshop to see if I could tinker up something for the infection, or at least tinker up something based on Taylor's power now that I've tried scanning her and her bugs.
It takes a minute, but... right. I took a shower because I was all kinds of gross and am not fully confident a scrubbing bubble grenade is fully equivalent in utility to good ol' water (Fuck, forgot to use the scanner to try to gather data for comparing), then laid down in my corner and pulled up the blankets for 'just a minute'.
And then I woke up to sunlight in my face.
So yeah, I slept the entire night away.
… well. We don't seem to have been attacked in the night, anyway.
The first thing I do, after getting dressed up a bit more, is head over to where I left Taylor. I'd like to tinker first, honestly, but I don't trust myself to not get lost in the fugues. I was bad enough at losing track of time before all this. (Assuming that was real, which... well... that aspect of my memories could be preparation for tinker fugues? I suppose?)
When I arrive, it's to the discovery that all the pillowcases are gone, while Taylor is laying in the other bed under the blanket, awake and staring at the TV. It's still on national news or some such. I note that the first bed has a pretty large stain, matching to where the ice-pillowcase was laying. So. That apparently didn't work very well. Dangit. Her costume got moved too, though I'm not seeing where any of it is aside the helmet, which is currently sitting on the desk between the beds, where hotels usually have a phone. (The phone itself has been shoved into the alcove below)
Taylor herself says, "Hey," in a quiet voice as I come in, not looking my way or indicating surprise or anything. Because she knew I was coming via bug control, I assume.
"Hey," I say back, because mirroring people's greetings or saying 'you, too' is an excellent fallback option when I have no clue what to say myself. Taylor sounds better, at least. Uh, physically. Not so sure about emotionally. Never been good at reading that, though, so whatever. "Need anything before I get to tinkering? Food, for example?" Hmmm. Wonder if the scanner would get real-time data on food's effects?
Taylor shakes her head a little, which gets a raised eyebrow from me. After a second she clarifies, "I already ate. Woke up... an hour ago."
I blink at that. "I keep almost all the food in the work- the foyer. I'm pretty sure you shouldn't be walking that much in your current condition." This isn't remotely the furthest room from the foyer, but it's still a decent chunk of walking away, given how injured she is. The infection in particular is... eating up a good chunk of her right side.
"'m fine," she once again says in an extremely unconvincing way. She apparently catches my skeptical expression, because she turns to look me roughly in the eye and speaks a little louder, clarifying. "I had help," her less-bruised arm going up so a spider can be lowered onto it by a... wasp, I think. I... really hope Taylor's control over her bugs is as good as canon made it seem. I do not like wasps. I assume she's trying to convey her bugs helped somehow. I'm... not sure how that would negate my point about walking, but I'm also not entirely sure it's worth pressing the point.
"Fine," I say, pretty sure my tone conveys that I don't think it's fine at all, "I've got tinker workshop things to do, then, before those assholes show up again." I stop, reconsidering. "Actually, no, if you're up for walking you're up for talking. I need to know what these people can do, so I can best construct counters to them." Then I'll tinker. Fuck, not sure if I should prioritize defenses or Taylor's health.
Taylor looks mildly surprised for reasons utterly beyond me, slightly shakes her head, but then contradicts what I was expecting that to mean by pulling herself into slightly more of a sitting position and saying, "We're several blocks away from their current border. We're fine." I think I can see her treating the infected area as tender? Not sure if I'm imagining it.
I shake my head. "A drone followed us to the hotel, and last night the mover lady was watching me work on the defenses from a rooftop."
Taylor looks surprised, then distinctly put out, then resigned. She mutters something under her breath, though I don't catch what -I see I'm not the only one who's gotten into a habit of talking out loud unnecessarily due to lack of human interaction- and then takes a deep breath, wincing partway through. She powers on before I can bring the wince up, though. "They're Merchants." She pauses, and I'm not entirely sure what her expression is about. "I said that already." It's clearly not really a question, but I nod anyway. Taylor wipes at her face with her less-injured hand, sighing, sounding tired. I'm probably going to need to push her to rest properly, if canon... and fanon... is anything to go by. Especially given she's really not acting like she has a big infection in her side.
After taking a few moments to collect herself, Taylor... changes the subject? "Why did you fight them?"
Oof. Um. Not sure how to answer that. The truthiest truths are not the ones that are a good idea to share. I shrug to stall, thinking. Um, she thinks I was trying to recruit her for the ABB, she knows I'm the Cornell Bomber, she probably was trying to feel out if I regretted my mad supervillainy and was apparently put out pretty badly when I enthused about her successfully defending herself in a murderous manner... this isn't helpful. Okay, different angle: a truth that's probably not answering her real question but is answering her stated question, which is something I do enough without realizing it that she may already know it's a thing I do from prior conversations and not jump to being suspicious of it. "I didn't like how the talky guy was trying to make nice with me when he has every reason to suspect I'm a murderous lunatic. If he approves of me killing PRT goons, I don't want anything to do with him, and if he's just faking making nice with me that makes me doubt his story and his intentions."
Taylor's face goes conspicuously blank when I refer to myself as a 'murderous lunatic', and twitches very slightly when I mention killing PRT goons. Did... she not know about that incident? "You... distrusted him because he was being nice." I note the tone is flat and not a question. Uuuuusually that means people are annoyed with my answer, but not always.
I shrug noncommittally. "I know I have a reputation. He clearly knew who I was, and was clearly nervous around me, and still decided to schmooze. That doesn't read as honest, to me."
Taylor stares at me in possibly-judgmental silence for a minute before speaking. "So why help me," she says in this flattened tone that makes me think she's trying to not let on whatever she's thinking. I... think I hear a bit of nervousness in there? Maybe? Though isn't voice trembling one of those nervousness things? I might just be hearing the strain on her from the infection.
True answer: because I have memories of reading a story from your perspective wherein I broadly found you relatable and likable and cool, and have since drawn the conclusion that you're probably important in some precognitively-obvious way whereby I should default to keeping you safe and probably on my side to boot.
No way that's going to fly. So I shrug and go with something... plausible. "To be honest, I've been staying away from the Northern area, and basically everyone I've met so far has either been one of the exploding lunatics or the Simurgh had very, very obviously warped them into something horrific. You're... the first person I've met since things settled down who I didn't think needed to die." This is technically, like, not really true now that I'm thinking about it, as I have spotted seemingly-fine people, I just keep avoiding them. Plus the ABB guys, who seemed normal enough. Okay, so I just straight-up lied here, whoops. Not sure if I should backpedal or not, I'm not sure if Taylor is one of those people who treats admitting to shitty memory as shifty evidence of deliberate lying.
Taylor stares at me for a bit, unusually still. I wonder if this has to do with her power? Or could just be normal person creepy stillness. That happens. Then she closes her eyes and takes a deep, ragged breath, though to my surprise she doesn't wince or otherwise react problematically to doing so (Did the scanner mislead me on how bad the infection is? Or... is she just that good at hiding the pain and all?), and after she's let it out she starts talking, eyes still closed. "I've had... four run-ins with them." That's... pretty frequent. "Not counting this time," she clarifies before continuing.
"I think they're Merchants." I consider pointing out she's said that twice already, then decide that would probably be too assholish given her current condition. "I haven't heard them call themselves anything in particular, but they're starting from the right area, and they're all addicts." I raise an eyebrow at that, because I'm unsure how Taylor would know that, and also unsure how they'd keep doing drugs in a post-apocalyptic situation, but Taylor is already explaining before I can ask. "The tinker's drones aren't... actually for scouting, or fighting. He started giving them wings and legs after our second encounter. Normally he attaches them to the outside of a person, or originally small animals like stray cats, and more recently opens them up to put a drone inside them, and it does something to their blood, processes it so it goes in as regular blood and comes out with something more inside it."
Well. That's unpleasant. And now I'm wondering if the big guy was controlled or just... under the influence.
"They mentioned territory. What they didn't say is they keep growing their territory, drawing the line wider as they gangpress more people, get them under the tinker's influence. Each time we had a conflict, it was closer to where-" Taylor's breath hitches for a second. Unsure if emotional or infection-related. "-to where I was staying. I didn't pick fights with them, and they wouldn't let me apologize and back off for 'violating their territory'." She doesn't physically air-quote there, but I can hear it in her voice, alongside a bit of, you know, scorn. "I'm not sure how rational they are, with the drugs in them." I'm abruptly remembering canon Taylor was kind of terrified of drugs, didn't understand them, just kinda vaguely knew addiction was a thing and didn't know anything about how it worked beyond drugs being involved. This is... probably harder for her than it would be for me.
It dawns on me, as Taylor continues talking, that when those capes were talking about wanting Taylor, wanting 'justice', they probably meant they wanted to get her hooked on their tinkerdrugs and try to more or less enslave her, given the modus operandi Taylor is describing. I end up interrupting Taylor. "Sorry, I didn't catch that last bit, got distracted." I... don't think I want to mention this to Taylor, certainly not while she's laid up. Either she's already figured it out, or she hasn't and it'll be likely to horrify her, and given everything that might be... very bad.
Taylor shoots a slightly skeptical look my way before re-focusing on the TV and, I assume, re-iterating what she was last saying. "The tinker is the anchor to their operations, but he's not in charge. That's the mover-" I startle slightly at that, as it really came across like the talky guy was the boss, but now that I think about it he didn't issue actual orders or do anything else unambiguously boss-like. None of them did, mind, but still. "-who might be a Case 53?" Taylor sounds unhappy to be uncertain about this point.
There's a lull here, and Taylor looks sufficiently out of it I'm genuinely wondering if she's drifting off or forgetting about the conversation or something, so I prompt with, "You've never seen her without the kit, or something?" That seems the most obvious scenario for why Taylor would theorize such.
Taylor nods slightly as she resumes talking, not seeming surprised so probably she was just thinking? "I've gotten bugs on her, so I know it's not all growing out of her flesh, but some of it might be." She takes a slightly shuddery breath. Still not sure if pain or emotion. "I still don't entirely understand her power. She charges up, she can share her speed when she unleashes it, she doesn't lose momentum when bouncing off of walls or other reasonably solid and flat surfaces-" Oh. Is that what Taylor meant when she said walls wouldn't help? Slightly less concerning than phasing, if so. "-she picks a target to control her charge, she's actually used non-capes as focal points twice before, but there's a cooldown period after she's attacked where she acts like she feels vulnerable. And during the attack she-"
Taylor pauses for a second here, looking at me out the side of one eye, and asks, "Do you know how Velocity's power works?"
Sorta-kinda-maybe? Canon Taylor said something about him being less able to interact with the world when speedstering, there was a comment about how without a mechanic like that super-speed would mean annihilating the concrete with your super-footsteps, but we barely saw Velocity himself in canon and canon was pretty quick to show us capes like Night who show Worm canon doesn't give a shit about how Taylor thinks super-speed should work. And fanon just treats him as the Flash, down at the lower end of the power scale instead of Justice League most-super-bullshit-League-member. And I never personally saw him since arriving here. And he's dead now. Wait, does Taylor know that's partially my fault? Shit, is that why she's bringing him up in particular? I'd just assumed she picked him as a local example.
In the end, I shrug, and tack on, "Fast, but some kinda tradeoff?" after it occurs to me a shrug could be taken as 'kinda', as I'm intending, or as 'no, not even slightly', the way some people use shrugs.
Taylor takes another deep breath, though no wince this time. "The faster he went, the less able he was to interact with the world around him. This woman seems to work like that, but more binary, and... she keeps trying to touch my skin, I think I said that before?" I nod, and Taylor continues, sounding a little relieved. "So I suspect there's more to it than that, like she can hurt people if she gets skin contact."
Okay, so... kinda like if Battery and Velocity had a kid, but with teamwork thrown in. And with some kinda targeting mechanic. My power isn't immediately trying to throw up counter-tech ideas, but I'm not sitting down to tinker yet and I'm not sure how normal intrusive thoughts are for tinkers. I think Kid Win was the only tinker we got indications of having such experiences... and he had dyscalculia and whatnot, that might've been part of that whole thing. Though on the other hand I probably have dyscalculia myself... except if I'm an Abbadon missile with fake memories I'm not sure whether to trust that and I haven't had a clear opportunity to check how terrible I am at math since arriving here...
… fuckit, point is 'we'll see what happens when I start tinkering'. Right now, I still want the rest of Taylor's explanation anyway.
Fortunately, while I was distracted, Taylor herself seems to have been focused on... Armsmaster looking angry while text scrolls by, talking about his 'exemplary performance' in... San Diego? Huh. That's California. Wouldn't have expected Armsmaster to end up at the opposite end of the country from Brockton Bay. Wonder why?
After another ten seconds or so, Taylor rouses herself, apparently no longer interested in Armsmaster's explanation about how he just wants to show that everyone can be their best selves, or whatever it is he means exactly. She looks at me, glances away, looks at me again, then starts talking, which... uh... okay? "Lastly, Glacius-"
"Wait," I interrupt. "They have cape names?" I do not believe for a second some asshole named their kid Glacius.
Taylor looks extremely confused, stares a bit more directly at my face, and after a second of studying my face closely her confusion visibly intensifies. Why? Regardless, after a second Taylor continues in an extremely dubious tone with, "I assume so. Glacius is the only one I've heard."
I sigh heavily to myself. The Mover was the only one in anything resembling an identity-obscuring costume! If she had a cape-name, I'd be dubious on the practicality of her committing to a cape identity but at least be able to follow a train of thought. Glacius and the tinker were not in costumes, let alone costumes that concealed anything. So unless that tinker is extra bullshit, where they only look like normal folks in normal clothes... fuckin' why?
Taylor, meanwhile, is continuing to stare at me like she's deeply concerned. I don't get that, either. Eventually she apparently decides I'm done interrupting her, I guess, because with one last dubious glance in my direction she goes back to looking at the TV but talking. "Glacius is the big guy. The... not the big guy you..." She pauses and her expression is... carefully blank? I think? I've honestly never been able to tell the difference between 'carefully blank' and 'neutral non-expression', but something feels different about her expression. Then Taylor looks me in the eye, which, uh, great, I hate it when people do that, I'm already habitually focusing elsewhere, latching onto a clock on one wall before she can resume talking. "Did you kill him?"
It takes me a second to parse the swerve, because no I did not kill the shield guy. Whatever it is he does. The... weird giant guy, that's what she's asking about. I shrug. "Before you laid out the tinker guy's basics, I'd have said 'probably'. Now I'd say 'probably, but with a question mark'." Like there was definitely chunks breaking apart, but a tinker with unclear biological manipulation ability makes that a bit less certain of a lethal thing.
Taylor takes a minute to respond, still trying to stare at my eyes and goddammit I just remembered that guilty conscience stereotype she better not be thinking I'm avoiding looking her in the eye out of guilt. "... 'but with a question mark'?" is the entirety of her response, while I'm still studying the clock and oh hey there's some intrusive tinkerthoughts. Not... very useful ones, but still.
I make an aggrieved noise. "I have no idea what you're reacting to."
Taylor's still trying to look me in the eye even as my gaze wanders around the room -ah. I should clear out some of the sheets, or something. Before I can get started on that, Taylor says, "Who actually says 'question mark'?"
Sarcastically, I respond with, "Me, clearly." Okay yeah let's start... cleaning up this room. Or at least getting the gross stuff piled together so I can deal with it all at once later.
Taylor's quiet for a minute as I bustle about, dropping assorted gross things on the bathroom floor. She speaks up when I reach for an indeterminate dark mass, saying, "Don't touch that. It's part of my costume."
I consider pointing out her costume cannot possibly be clean after everything that's happened, but having just been intensely sarcastic I suspect it would be taken as more snark rather than a legitimate point. And hey, I do have scrubbing bubble grenades. So I leave it, and go back to combing through the room.
"Seriously, why did you say 'but with a question mark'?" Taylor asks as I'm eyeballing the room's phone, murky tinkerthoughts suggesting it might have parts of use to... something.
I sigh, because okay clearly Taylor isn't going to let this... thing... go. "I have something of a history of being taken very differently from my intent, particularly when I'm talking." Taylor makes a confused noise here, but I'm not sure why and don't want to get derailed. "I ask an earnest question, and the teacher thinks I'm being a smart-alec. I make a bland observation about current events, and whoever is around takes it as a pointed remark about their failings as a human being. I say something straightforward, and it gets taken as sarcastic. I make a joke, and it gets taken as me being earnest, with an attendant belief that I'm being deliberately a giant asshole. I don't make a joke, but what I say gets taken as a joke. People who've been around me a while generally clue in and get what I'm saying and what it means, but even then there's still times I get taken as sarcastic when I'm not, hurtful when I was trying to help, etc." I finally decide yeah sure let's pull this stupid phone out the wall, it's not like we're going to use it for its intended purpose. "Doesn't matter whether I try as hard as I can to be polite and distant in word choice, or casual and friendly, or otherwise adjust my diction and so on to try to get people to get what I'm saying. Something about my tone, or body language, or something else nobody consciously pays attention to, something I don't really have control over."
It occurs to me as I'm laying all that out that really this is another thing that makes way more sense if I'm an Abbadon missile instead of a regular human being interdimensionally transplanted. Like if I'm a kinda crappy simulation remote-controlling Bakuda's body from... wherever my power's shard is lurking... it'd make a certain amount of sense for there to be, like, a loss in fidelity. Maybe Abbadon didn't get a good look at humans as he passed, and the damage done to Bakuda's brain by... her original power plugging in, or the Abbadon shard plugging in, or both... took away the ability to just tap the brain for regular ol' human... tone control or whatever... and I'm just manually steering this whole thing without a lot of fine control human brains are supposed to have.
I've just finished disconnecting the phone from the wall, speculatively eyeing the cord for reasons I can't quite put into words, when Taylor speaks in a low tone. "The whole world out to get you."
It takes a second for that to properly register, and when it does my head whips around to look at Taylor directly before I'm even thinking. "Wha- what are you talking about?"
Taylor startles, eyes locking with mine for a split-second before she re-focuses on the TV. "Nothing. I didn't say anything."
What the fuck was that about? God- forget it. She doesn't want to talk about it, and frankly I'm not sure I want to hear about it, even though I'm pretty sure I got misunderstood a-fucking-gain and theoretically really want to clear that up. But no, I just... this is dumb, and we have threats, and I need info. "Okay whatever, go back to forcefield guy. Or whatever he does."
Once Taylor resumes talking, I go back to handling the room situation. Almost done finding and stockpiling gross sheets and all. "Glacius is the... big guy you didn't kill." There's a noticeable pause in there while I'm crawling under the bed she's not currently using, and... why is there a wallet with dollar coins in it down here? Like okay I'd honestly forgotten Earth Bet America uses dollar coins instead of dollar bills, but no seriously why is there a wallet down here? Annoying, really, a wallet of cash is worthless to me in these current circumstances. Nice leather on the wallet, but I... don't think there's tinkerpotential there? "I think of his power like saran wrap." No, my power doesn't call anything to mind. "He can wrap it around other people, but it 'breaks' if they get too far apart, and he can't put it back up immediately."
Okay, so I was right about that guy, more or less. There's a lull in Taylor's monologue, so I prompt her with, "Any other times it breaks that you've noticed?" Hm, maybe the money has tinkerpotential? Money is surprisingly sophisticated stuff. Raw metals, at minimum.
I think I see Taylor shrugging out of the corner of one eye. I certainly hear her, hissing in pain. "No, I don't think so. I'm assuming enough force would work, because he doesn't act like he's invincible." Yeah, my brain's bubbling looking at this coin. Wait, gold? Why does my power think there's gold in this coin? "But I've never made it happen except by separating them."
Hm. Powers can be weird. "Has he ever had the shield up without having it wrapped around other people?" I'm wondering if it's, like, invulnerability tied specifically to hanging with others.
Taylor takes long enough to respond I glance over to check if she's fallen asleep before re-focusing on the wallet because no, she's just lost in thought. Probably. "I... don't know. It's almost invisible. I'd assumed he kept it up whenever he could."
Hmmm. Depending on how the effect discriminates and all, I might be able to work around that. Like, maybe a teleport effect would bypass his power, and then the protection would break from him being separated from his buddies. I've got a few one-offs I refused to replicate because they seemed of dubious utility to my defenses, like a random-teleport mine that shunts anybody in its 'blast' sphere to somewhere within a mile of the mine. "Okay, so separating him from his buddies is an idea." A worrying thought occurs abruptly. "It doesn't, like, explode when it fails, right?"
Taylor gives me a look I don't know how to parse, but after a second says, "No. It stretches, and then rips. The remains melt into a... fog, I think." So back to this coin, yeah, my power is insisting I can... strain out the gold using some magnetic bullshit... I realize gold isn't magnetic and so that sort of makes sense from a distance, but I have to question the mechanics of what my power is telling me. Always wondered what the point of tinker powers was supposed to be in the cycle, especially given how much fakery is clearly involved. What are the Entities hoping to get out of technology testing when the technology doesn't even actually work the way the test monkeys are told it works? Scion and Eden don't even get the soft sciences stuff, so it's probably not a psychology thing...
"The fog do anything? Suffocate bugs or the like?" Later Worm got bad about treating a lot of power visuals as basically just visual flair, like how Peach suddenly had heart effects in Brawl but the physics of the affected attacks weren't actually changed, not even Peach Bomber when it was switching away from an explosion, but early Worm tended to have power visuals more meaningful and, like, nuanced. Which fits with the precog-theory...
"What are you doing?" Taylor asks instead of answering my question.
I look up for a second to assess Taylor's expression, but there's nothing unexpected there. Curiosity and exasperation like I'd expect. "I'm a Tinker, Taylor." I gesture at the coin, then the phone. "I need raw materials, and I have to be perpetually on the lookout for inspiration." Actually, I'm not sure how normal that is now that I think about it. One of my perpetual disappointments with Worm was early Worm and WoG persistently indicate there's a lot of the creative process you'd expect in Tinkering, trying out ideas and having them turn out to be better in your head than in your hands, or the world not working quite the way it would need to for your idea to work as imagined, or the materials you have available not working for what you want to do but leading to different ideas... and then canon avoided depicting said process, and got quite bad about Tinkers just getting to produce a perfect answer first time every time. And don't even get me started on fanfic...
… so maybe it's actually just me.
That's a worrying thought.
Meanwhile, Taylor has finished mulling over that response. "Even the dirty laundry?" she asks, doubtfully. Not sure if joke.
I'm just going to go ahead and blame this on Taylor being sick and injured and all. "No, that's just dirty laundry that needs cleaning."
Taylor continues to stare doubtfully at me. "Why are you shoving it in the bathroom, then?"
"So it's not on the carpet?" I'm not sure why Taylor is asking this. Minimize stains, and minimize opportunities for shit to grow in the carpet, which is harder to clean than the sheets... blankets... whatever the terminology here is...
"Aren't you-" She hesitates for a second here, no idea why. "Aren't you going to use a... 'scrubber grenade' to clean it all anyway?"
It takes me a second to work out she means my scrubbing bubble grenades. I guess the exact wording didn't really stick with her. Also: um, good point. "Okay, thoughtless habit is your explanation then. I'm on autopilot here, mostly listening to your explanations. Like whether the clingwrap shield kills bugs when it breaks?" This is deliberately pointed of a comment.
Taylor's lips twitch in what might be an aborted smile at my initial comment, but it's difficult to be sure, especially knowing how bad that infection is. Could just be a twitch of pain. In any event, she nods -to herself? In acknowledgment of my pointed remark?- and says, "No," very firmly.
I bristle slightly at that, that level of surety is rarely justified in my experience... and then take a calming breath. Picking a fight with Taylor while she's sick and I know it would be dumb. "Is it problematic for them to breathe it, or anything?"
Taylor visibly mulls that over. Or maybe she's mulling over whatever Protectorate-cape-I-don't-recognize on the TV just said, I haven't been paying attention to her. "Not that I've noticed, but I hadn't th-" Her breathing hitches for a second, but she bulls on. "-thought of that." I'm considering what to ask next when Taylor remarks, "His power might be ice-based, given the name."
I space for a second, a kind of incoherent rage at the universe itself arising at the possibility that Taylor might be right and Glacius might, in fact, have unnecessarily provided a clue to his enemies by picking a meaningful name alluding to a non-obvious element of his power. Normally I'd dismiss it out of hand as stupid, but Worm also gives us Tattletale, who had zero need to pick such an accurately-revealing name. Fuck, maybe my expectations of how inane it is for people to do such are also a product of being an Abbaddon missile, if he was using a similar process as Scion and Eden with prior worlds and so got a lot of thought into yomi and similar I might've inherited a lot of assumptions therein, vs actual random humans with powers shoved into their skulls totally seeing nothing wrong with passing out hints to all their enemies via their fucking names.
Fingers being snapped reminds me Taylor is in the room. "What was that about?"
My gaze follows Taylor's pointing arm to the wallet I picked up earlier, which is currently twisted up in my hands. Whoops. Been a while since I've done that. "Anger habit I thought had gone away, where I twist or otherwise put pressure on stuff in my hands, sometimes without noticing if I'm focused on other stuff."
Taylor goggles at me, and it finally registers on me that she's wearing her glasses and has been this entire time. Right, right, she actually had a compartment in her costume for her glasses, didn't she? That simplifies things. "Anger over what?" Taylor asks in this mildly anxious way I can't quite put my finger on.
I carefully try to get the wallet back to its default shape as I answer. "The possibility that you might be right, and this cape might be stupid enough to have put a hint to a non-obvious element of his power into his cape name, and attendant implication I live in a universe in which an actual person actually thinks this makes sense." Wait, is this croc leather? I thought it was regular leather with a pattern inlaid afterward was all, but this isn't bending quite the way I'm used to leather wallets bending.
Taylor stares at me for a long, long chunk of time, absorbing that statement, before finally remarking, "You didn't seem that mad when they were trying to kill us." She sounds bothered. Probably. Great.
I sigh again, then double-take. "Wait, they were?"
There's a pause where I'm pretty sure Taylor is giving me an are you serious? look, before she says, "They had guns," and I have to wonder if she sounds pained due to the infection or if this is more psychological pain at having to point it out to me or what.
"Well, sure," I start out, because it's not like that's a terrible point, but it's still... kinda bizarre for Taylor to jump to. "But you're-" Wait shit amend presentation! Avoid spoilers! "-You threw yourself in front of me like you thought you were bulletproof, and they didn't treat that as weird or anything, and you've fought them a lot before. They probably didn't think guns would kill you, and you already told me they want to coopt you. And they were bluntly there for you. Like okay yeah now that you mention it they were probably okay with killing me, but I'd probably be okay with killing me if I were in their position with their likely knowledge of what I've done and why I've likely done it." Should I bring up blowing up Taylor's school here as an example? Would that be forced?
Taylor stares at me in silence for so long I eventually heave a sigh and stand back up. "If that's all you've got to tell me vis-à-vis their powers and all, I'm going to see if I can tinker up something to counter them and/or to hurry up your recovery now."
Taylor doesn't respond as I head out, phone, coinage, and wallet in tow.
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Mechasaurian
Big Bossu
- Location
- Lost among fields of history
- Pronouns
- They/Them
IT LIVES
...I'm very much enjoying this character self study, as well as seeing Taylor from an outside perspective responding to SI Bakuda.
...I'm very much enjoying this character self study, as well as seeing Taylor from an outside perspective responding to SI Bakuda.
One of the things I've been thinking about is could she use time-stop grenades to create invincible walls?
If she permanently time-stops all the outer windows of her building they can no longer be breached (even by Endbringer level powers).
What about using her black hole bombs to tunnel or create a moat around her base!
I don't see a reason she couldn't use her matter 'creation' bombs to pull in materials from other dimensions for tinkering.
.
My main point is she has the option to weaponize the after effects of her bombs and not just the explosion itself, it doesn't seem like she's realized this yet.
If she permanently time-stops all the outer windows of her building they can no longer be breached (even by Endbringer level powers).
What about using her black hole bombs to tunnel or create a moat around her base!
I don't see a reason she couldn't use her matter 'creation' bombs to pull in materials from other dimensions for tinkering.
.
My main point is she has the option to weaponize the after effects of her bombs and not just the explosion itself, it doesn't seem like she's realized this yet.
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PrognosticHannya
Far Too Enthusiastic About Etymology
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hey, great to see this story back!! It's one of my faves.