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Firebird, a Worm AU/Xover?

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Sixtyforty said:
You know, this whole debate puts me in mind of something. The Wards and Protectorate very clearly have police powers, but they also appear to receive little or none of the applicable training to go along with that. Even before you're a day one cop, you're going to sit through at the very minimum two or more hours of a use of force training, where they're going to beat into your head exactly how much force you can and should use based on the subject actions, officer's perception of the situation, and so on.

I'm not going to teach the fucking thing, but suffice to say even if they hand you a taser you're going to be trained damned well on when you should be using it. I get that they're using comic version "nonlethal" weapons (which don't exist in real life, by the way), but Shadow Stalker alone was crazy fucking lethal even with needles. But the subject never even comes up, which makes me wonder how the whole thing works out legally.

I mean, Taylor right here can claim she felt the headbutt was an attempt to kill her, which if you extrapolate the situation, if she'd been knocked down or out, she'd have died. She's never been legally educated on how much force she can use in that situation, so technically I'd think the PRT would be liable.
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Well...... a few things.

- standardised training and regulations are a lot harder when everyone's got really variable superpowers. Like what's reasonable force training for someone with telekinesis? Or what's reasonable force on any specific parahuman with abilities that make normal rules irrelevant. Like a police officer using a minigun is pretty clearly not reasonable force in any real world situation short of an actual military invasion. Miss Militia whipping one out against a high end brute though, it might be well below reasonable force. Basically the heroes probably have standards based on their powers for normal goons, but they probably have much looser regulations when against enemy capes and probably give independents a fair bit of leeway just because they kind of need them to eep things getting worse.

- with independent heroes, well there's already an appalling lack of regulation with bounty hunters in real life in many US States. In a world where non police/government people running around attacking criminals is an actual necessity rather than just an idiotic side effect of the bail system being really poorly run I can't see that being any better.

- a lot of police departments are... pretty bad about reasonable force. Sure it's handled in training but well that doesn't always stick for a variety of reasons. Not all departments obviously but there's definitely plenty of bad ones out there (and incompetent/bad/off their game cops in generally good departments too), both in actually keeping people remembering/using it and dealing with it being breached.

- and yeah it's running on comic book rules for the most part got to give it some leeway, as running things too realistically tends to be pretty shit to read for this genre.

- Capes inherently have brain problems that make normal discipline not work that well. Canonically this is why they needed to seed Cauldron capes into the the large scale organisations. Trying to run large cape orgs without them (or an overwhelmingly powerful Master enslaving everybody ala the Yangban or the Blue Empress) doesn't work and degenerates into feudalism (see Russia and Africa in Worm). Basically they can't really be run like well run police force because 80% of the members have significant mental issues. And ones whose issues make them good at disciplined work (like Miss Militia) seem pretty rare. So basically they can't run them like a good police force, because that just isn't going to work.

Taylor's big issue is

- she's a Ward which means the Protectorate/PRT is liable, o they have to do something unlike with say New Wave where they can turn a blind eye unless something really goes to shit

- she did it in public and on camera.



achaput said:
I don't really like your changes to Avatar. They don't make sense. The Fire Nation attacking made sense symbolically. I mean, you had to make it the Air Empire to make it make any kind of sense. The attitudes of the four nations in the original lined up with the emotions and personalities associated with the four elements.
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It was a side joke dude. Besides there have been aggressive Buddhist empires before, it wouldn't be too hard to twist Air Nomad beliefs into something unpleasant.
 
achaput said:
I don't really like your changes to Avatar. They don't make sense. The Fire Nation attacking made sense symbolically. I mean, you had to make it the Air Empire to make it make any kind of sense. The attitudes of the four nations in the original lined up with the emotions and personalities associated with the four elements.
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It's a MirrorUniverse, where the pacifists are warmongering conquerors. It's been done quite a few of times (Star Trek, Transformers). It's funny reference, not meant to be taken seriously.
 
The doctrine that's being taught now is you use the force reasonable and necessary to effect compliance, based on officer perception. What that means in human is that if you can justify what you did based on what you knew at the time, it's kosher. Yeah, it'd get complicated based on the powers involved, but that's really on the back end, when the board is investigating the incident. And yeah, I know cops myself who have what we might call a disciple issue, but that's not a deficiency in training, it's in the officer. What blows my mind is that they put their people in the field with minimal to no guidance at all. Legally that's nuts, because if I was Taylor's lawyer? "My client believed her life and the lives of other bystanders at the scene were under threat, and acted to incapacitate the suspect." "Why did she keep beating her after she was down?" "My client has never been trained on the apprehension of criminals or the principle of reasonable force, so to her it was an entirely reasonable use." she gets found liable (obviously, since in America we have this thing called equal protection under the law, criminal or no) and then they start looking at why the PRT can't be bothered to give their people two second's worth of training before putting them into fights to the death.
 
Sixtyforty said:
The doctrine that's being taught now is you use the force reasonable and necessary to effect compliance, based on officer perception. What that means in human is that if you can justify what you did based on what you knew at the time, it's kosher. Yeah, it'd get complicated based on the powers involved, but that's really on the back end, when the board is investigating the incident. And yeah, I know cops myself who have what we might call a disciple issue, but that's not a deficiency in training, it's in the officer. What blows my mind is that they put their people in the field with minimal to no guidance at all. Legally that's nuts, because if I was Taylor's lawyer? "My client believed her life and the lives of other bystanders at the scene were under threat, and acted to incapacitate the suspect." "Why did she keep beating her after she was down?" "My client has never been trained on the apprehension of criminals or the principle of reasonable force, so to her it was an entirely reasonable use." she gets found liable (obviously, since in America we have this thing called equal protection under the law, criminal or no) and then they start looking at why the PRT can't be bothered to give their people two second's worth of training before putting them into fights to the death.
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It probably blows your mind cause it's not true?


The only ones who get off on min no training are upstart independents.

Wards and capes get trained even in bb. Piggot just doesn't do interdepartment work.

In any case no one would be looking at the prt. It would go my client has not been trained. Then it goes she refused training then it comes back to both of them Taylor and the department getting nailed and her losing her friends.
 
landcollector said:
*winces*
Cricket certainly jammed on one of Taylor's berserk buttons.


Battery is right. Taylor used an extremely excessive amount of force after giving in to Cricket's goading. Piggot's going to have a field day with this.

Great chapter, chibipoe.
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She'll try. Enforcing her demands on Taylor, especially with her telepathy and telekinesis having grown this powerful. Piggot will fail.
 
Thank you for a very nice chapter. I enjoyed Taylor's meeting with Lisa, the fight scene was very good and Battery's words and posture at the end of the chapter... Well, she's really not looking forward to what comes next.

I have to say that I liked the way Lisa joked about her own situation.

chibipoe said:
"The health benefits are unreal," the blonde said with a lopsided grin.
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Keep working for Coil and stay healthy / alive. Dark, but appropriate considering her situation. (The "girl to girl" talk might also have been meant to be a bit of graveyard humor, one girl telling the other what kind of situation's heading her way, almost the same kind that the first girl is stuck in.)

Now for Assault and Battery. What surprised me was how fast they arrived on the scene, considering that Taylor's fight probably didn't last more than a minute or two. I can spot four possibilities from where I'm sitting.

Possibility One. They were on their way to either try and stop the breakout on their own and / or slow the criminals down until reinforcements could arrive. (Although they would still have been too late if something hadn't slowed Hookwolf & Co down.) This would require them to be the only Protectorate members that were close enough to get there in time.

Possibility Two. They were part of a team that were sent to try and stop the breakout and capture any Empire 88 members involved in the attempt. This would require the team leader to know that the rest weren't needed any more and send Assault and Battery on ahead so as not to have Taylor fly away.

Possibility Three. They were shadowing Taylor so that they could have a meeting with Sirin and arrived as soon as they were able to get in costume. This would require them knowing where she was going, most likely by having her hideout bugged or under long distance observation.

Possibility Four. The two of them being there was a complete coincidence.

Considering that Piggot and Miss Militia talked about making Assault and Battery the Protectorate's primary means of contact with Taylor I believe that Possibilities One and Four can be ignored, which leaves Possibilities Two, Three and whatever Chibipoe actually used.

And now of course they're going to tell Taylor she hasn't got a choice, she has to join the Wards for real.
 
chibipoe said:
"I…" I shook my head, feeling the rage that had been fueling me ebb slightly.
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Good good. Give into your hate, your anger. It makes you stronger...

chibipoe said:
I snorted, the anger buoying me once more. "Oh, trust me, it won't be a fight."
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Do what must be done! Do not hesitate, show no mercy.

chibipoe said:
"Assault," I said, taking in a slow breath as my eyes flicked toward approaching PRT squads. The anger fled in a rush, leaving me feeling empty. "Fine."
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Damn, Assault is like the happy puppy who always shows up to kill the mood. :p

chibipoe said:
"Well, good thing is," he finally said, clapping a hand on my shoulder, "nothing is broken. I would recommend getting some ice on it soon, though. A lot of ice. You're kind of burning up, you know?"
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Chekhov gun loaded!

I predict the next time she goes out to fight or gets prodded too hard, shes going to light up into full phoenix mode.

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Stop: Stop
  • Staff Post
    • armorfiend said:
    I mean... really. They're Nazis. There's literally nothing you can do to a Nazi that they haven't already cheerfully and happily volunteered for by virtue of voluntarily deciding to become Nazis.
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    stop You don't get to advocate for violence against anyone.

    I hope the 25 point infraction will make you think twice about doing it again.
     
  • Staff Post
    • Larekko12 said:
    Not all of them just the friends on her side in the prt. In the scenario where Taylor is playing blame the protectorate after being told they were liable and piggot doing her best to not starts a fight over it she'll lose friends and fence sitters.
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    Meh. Doesn't matter much anyway.

    Taylor wasn't out to make friends of the PRT.

    -edit-

    Also, Piggot wasn't trying her best to not start a fight. I know she could have done worse, but no. She did not due her best in this situation.
     
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    OverReactionGuy said:
    Meh. Doesn't matter much anyway.

    Taylor wasn't out to make friends of the PRT.
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    It might also cost her legs with Victoria the Minako's catherine's oversight. One's a lawyer's daughter who beleives in accountability and the other's a soldier. In the specifc turn liability onto the protectorate for this scenario not the got overwhelmed flashbacked one.
     
    Larekko12 said:
    It might also cost her legs with Victoria the Minako's catherine's oversight. One's a lawyer's daughter who beleives in accountability and the other's a soldier. In the specifc turn liability onto the protectorate for this scenario not the got overwhelmed flashbacked one.
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    There are a lot of problems with what you've said just now.

    But I honestly don't want to derail the thread anymore so lets agree to disagree.
     
    Advocating violence
    Always Late said:
    snip.
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    They will do this how exactly? How do you force a precognitive, telepathic, Pyro-kinetic focused Psionic to do anything that won't have that psion kill you one day? Besides that they were Nazi scum and murderers that should already have gotten the electric chair in America. Fucking incompetent LEOs.

    Edited some spelling and grammar corrections.
     
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