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Fiend: Thread Two, the Rethreading [Exalted/Worm]

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And that's what happens when a bunch of mortals try to take on an exalt, they die, terribly.

She needs to leave New York quickly. This isn't going to get overlooked and the precog disruption this event will cause could easily give it away that she caused this. When the PRT finds out she did this she'll go from "teen running away because we fucked up" to "lost it and went crazy".
 
Note who just got slaughtered.

A Gang.

A known bunch of criminals packing heat and parahuman powers.

As shocking and violent as it was, Tylor's going to be held up as the worst kind of vigilant.

Odds are good somebody will be tempted to turn Tylor into an attack dog to take down the worst of the criminal parahumans, and hope that it kills her in the process.
 
Well. That was a thing.

I'm not sure if this is enough for them to put a kill order out on her, but I'm pretty sure the Protectorate is about to revise their policy towards her from "Hands off" to "Apprehend" at the very least. Now would be a good time for her to learn Our Little Secret.

Too bad that that's also going to increase her limit.
 
fitzgerald said:
Note who just got slaughtered.

A Gang.

A known bunch of criminals packing heat and parahuman powers.
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True but she also beat an, as far as I know, innocent women half to death for the lolz. Which will be especially horrifying for Taylor since that was the women she was trying to save.

Honestly assuming Taylor isn't straight up arrested by the time she regains consciousness I'm betting she'll turn herself in. She's just proven to herself that she can loose control and beat an innocent women before murdering over a dozen people.

She'll be asking the PRT to put her in the Birdcage shortly after she realizes this.
 
*mouth open.*
...
*mouth closed*

That certainly didn't go where it seemed it would. Wasn't she trying to save that woman?

In any case, it seems like time for Infernal-Punisher Taylor to skip town again.
 
Weeeheheeee, that was fun. So, yeah, Taylor went all Shadow Stalker on them right there, indeed. Torment is 'fun'.

Maybe skipping town again might be good, but it's honestly not that easy to tell this is Defiler who did this, especially if she does manage to get to the woman first and make her her minion or some such.

And, yeah, i don't think Taylor can get this as anything else than a very big Wake-Up call.
 
So... Taylor's now a mass-murderer. I see freakouts and possible suicide attempts in her immediate future.
 
illhousen said:
Wow. That... went well. For a certain value of "well".
So, her torment is ruthless annihilation of all who oppose her. Fitting.
The funny thing about it is that the woman is going to tell the PRT that a new vigilante was totally not Defiler. I mean, Defiler wasn't turning into ruthless shadow monster.

As for precog disruption... It is actually interesting. As far as I can tell, once the Blasphemous effect passed, precogs were able to function as normal. They still can't get a reading on Brockton Bay, but I think it's a consequence of Blasphemy, not Taylor's innate power. What her power does is make her and her actions undetectable by precogs. If they were asked about a possibility of some troubles in city during this day, they said everything is going to be chill, nothing out of the ordinary... And they are going to continue saying that. They will also still predict problems that Taylor "solved".

What's funny about it, is that it's more subtle effect than "can't get a reading on city, period". It still may be connected to Defiler, of course, just not immediately. It also should be noted that Protectorate doesn't have good precogs. Just people who can say "the problem is purple" and stuff like this.

What really connects Defiler to this scene is her blood, provided the PRT is able to collect it and compare to her medical data.
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It's not ruthless elimination of all who oppose her. It's ruthless elemination of anybody in the immediate area, and probably beyond as well. Which is, y'know. Worse.

However, if she gets away before the authorities show up, then they probably won't twig that it was her. IIRC, she had her disguise up, and she didn't use hatefire on any of them; she shot or stabbed them. The likely conclusion is some sort of parahuman gang war gone overboard, not the work of an on-the-run almost-hero who hasn't left any sign of her known distinguishing attack.

If they do catch her, though, then yeah, things go badly. Which makes me suspect that that is what is going to happen, because this is Worm, and nothing can ever go well unless it's setting things up for a bigger fall later.
 
If the PRT goes with the megamanning theory, it'll seriously suck for Taylor. You can forget about Birdcage in that scenario. The potential risk is just too high.
Can you imagine an amalgam of the whole facility? Every power, every mental issue, all concentrated in a single individual. That's the sort of thing that gives the people in charge nightmares.

They'll jump straight to a kill order, since they'll rightly reckon that she'll only get worse - more powerful, more psychotic. Especially when you consider that most capes tend to have more than a couple of screws lose, even those that didn't earn their place in the Birdcage honestly.

As for the effects on Taylor herself, I'd say that she won't go all Ophidian on us. Rather, I can see her either disassociating herself from the deed, starting to go Adorjani, or explaining it away in a Kimberrian fashion - they were all bad, bad people who asked for it and so it's okay that bad things happened to them. Possibly even going SWLiHN and getting in on that Cosmic Transcendence of Compassion, provided she gets the prerequisite.

But she has to deal with it somehow, otherwise this is the kind of situation that ends with her blowing her brains out (or turning herself in, for what difference it makes).
 
You know, people who should be freaking out the most are Cauldron. Because they have took everything that there was to know about Taylor. And I mean everything. They likely scouted parallel dimensions for files on close Taylor duplicates. They probably had Eidolon raise Taylor's mother from the grave, or use psychometry on Taylor's room to get the better picture of her. They have to have her complete psychological profile by now, with predictive models of her behavior.

And then, out of nowhere, she goes and does this thing. And they can't predict what would happen next. Like, at all.
 
Xanrag said:
I like the idea that they somehow think she can absorb the powers of those she kills (kills girl with shadow powers, she gets shadow powers), and thus end up avoiding her with everyone powerful since they can't risk her getting any more good powers and thus getting even more powerful. :)
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What they'll be asking if they go with this theory is: who did she kill to get the monster transformation and flame powers she originally showed?
 
Blade4 said:
Fun thing is people like Dragon trying to figure out why Taylor keeps flipping out every once and a while. Hell given enough data she probable could decipher it.
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Because she's a natural first generation parahuman. They're all insane to one degree or another, thanks to traumatic trigger events and passenger influence that only compounds the trauma's effects. Taylor clearly has some major anger issues stemming from being talked down to and disrespected* after her bullying, so it shouldn't be a massive surprise when she flips out and brutalizes someone for not showing her sufficient regard.

*the hospitalizing locker incident recorded on file seems the most likely candidate for a trigger event, moreso than her mother's death given the timescale involved - perhaps she feels that orders and insults confine her verbally as much the locker did physically?


It's all perfectly simple to explain.
 
Revlid said:
Because she's a natural first generation parahuman. They're all insane to one degree or another, thanks to traumatic trigger events and passenger influence that only compounds the trauma's effects. Taylor clearly has some major anger issues stemming from being talked down to and disrespected* after her bullying, so it shouldn't be a massive surprise when she flips out and brutalizes someone for not showing her sufficient regard.

*the hospitalizing locker incident recorded on file seems the most likely candidate for a trigger event, moreso than her mother's death given the timescale involved - perhaps she feels that orders and insults confine her verbally as much the locker did physically?


It's all perfectly simple to explain.
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Not to mention that it's well documented that some powers actively screw up your emotions and reasoning ability (Bitch, Labyrinth, Burnscar, etc).
 
Well, that escalated quickly.

Seems like I'll have to adjust my notes:
- Joy in Violence Approach: Unlikely. Not in character for now. Plausible.

Now is the time to take Sacred Kamilla's Inhalation. "Oh shit, bodies everywhere"
 
Auks said:
Well, that was bad. And to make things worse she's probably going to wake up in a cell.

Hmm. How quickly is she going to accumulate limit if she's taken into custody? Because after this I could see her letting them arrest her, which is all well and good until she flips out again and murderhobos her way out of a PRT holding facility. Because that would be about right for her luck.
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Probably pretty slowly. The only reason she hit Torment this fast here was because of the 'insta-skill gain = gain Limit' thing that logiccosmic is doing. Normally it'd be a lot slower, and in jail she's less likely to encounter situations that would generate it as well.
 
Well.
If things like this keep happening, somebody is going to have to learn Our Little Secret.
 
arthurh3535 said:
That did seem sorta fast to hit limit break.
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Logiccosmic's using a rule where Taylor gaining skills instantly also gives her limit. With that in mind, I'm surprised she didn't enter Torment even earlier.
 
NSMS said:
Logiccosmic's using a rule where Taylor gaining skills instantly also gives her limit. With that in mind, I'm surprised she didn't enter Torment even earlier.
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No, only when she bypasses training time. Taking a skill from 0 to 1 takes three weeks. Charms take several days. When she stunt-buys, she gets limit
 
...isn't gaining ranks in a skill instantly the same thing as bypassing training times? I guess I did forget to mention instant charm gain, though.
 
NSMS said:
...isn't gaining ranks in a skill instantly the same thing as bypassing training times? I guess I did forget to mention instant charm gain, though.
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Caste and Favored skills have no training time. She can gain them instantly. Except, for, ya know, buying em from 0 to 1.
 
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