Probably still not. You might be able to sing it yourself, but using a musical playback object tends to lead to the offending device being destroyed in the moments before any applicable theme songs of magical girls reassert themselves.
Probably still not. You might be able to sing it yourself, but using a musical playback object tends to lead to the offending device being destroyed in the moments before any applicable theme songs of magical girls reassert themselves.
Since player music tastes may differ from those of Celes, Skye, Evelyn, and Upgrade, I'm going to have to go with "probably not." Due to possible copyright shenanigans and me wanting to get a Patreon soonish, there's also a pretty good chance any songs they get will be parodies of real-life ones or not really explicit at all.
It'd also be a bit painful to hold song-votes for all the different themes Celes is going to want to try out.
Since player music tastes may differ from those of Celes, Skye, Evelyn, and Upgrade, I'm going to have to go with "probably not." Due to possible copyright shenanigans and me wanting to get a Patreon soonish, there's also a pretty good chance any songs they get will be parodies of real-life ones or not really explicit at all.
It'd also be a bit painful to hold song-votes for all the different themes Celes is going to want to try out.
QM's Note: In order to more easily distinguish Upgrade's Collaborate-speak quotation marks from bleeding into the emoticons Upgrade speaks with, they will be left uncolored from now on.
[x] Run plan past parents and Skye first.
"I think I have a plan, but we really should consult Mom, Dad, and Skye for this."
Celes blinks and tilts her head to one side.
"...Mom and Skye specifically said we didn't have to do that, remember?"
Not quite.
"Having permission to do something does not automatically mean it's a good idea. I think they're — Prism, I mean — pretty likely to come down on us like a ton of bricks once we actually use the artifact, so we need a plan in place for that. Our Rings of Recall are the obvious solution, but I don't really know how expensive those are or if Mom can make Skye a duplicate so soon. Having Upgrade framed as an OP evil side might work, but we are going to be dealing with adult magical girls. Dragon has a whole unit on why you should stay away from those. I think they'll probably start out with trying an Introduction to the Upper Tiers or possibly Overwhelmingly Induced Surrender, either of which I think would boost Upgrade a lot when she took over, but again, adults. They probably know ways to sidestep the problem or crush it with overwhelming force."
"And I think Upgrade knows it. Being confusingly cute might throw off some of what they throw at us, but Prism's MGs are probably trained to have multiple parallel narratives going simultaneously. So some of them might engage us for an attempted Introduction to the Upper Tiers, one might sneak off for Carefully Perfected Sniper Shot, another for Charged Ritual of Doom,another for Anticlimactic Sneak Attack, and so on. I don't think any of those really run the risk of interfering with the others if they fail. They'll probably also have precedent in the form of Former Darks Attending School on Probation or whatever that narrative is called."
Celes waggles one hand.
"Snipers never have their targets go down during aiming even if they do sometimes miss and have said targets go down afterward, so maybe not that one. Still, couldn't we just order the artifact not to set off alarms or have Skye disable them or whatever?"
"One, I don't think she gets extra senses. Invisible or hidden alarms would work great on her. Two, would you put all your alarms on the artifact itself?"
Celes wrinkles her nose. "Point. 'Always overestimate foes; if you're overprepared, it'll be a pleasant surprise.' At least Skye has her spiffy new Retreat power, so she doesn't actually need a Recall Ring. Brainstorming with Mom and Skye sounds fine, though, I guess."
[x] Use the identities that you'll be taking to DIS-13.
-[x] Dress magical-girlishly to help you bluff your way past situations.
[x] Arrive late at night
-[x] But not past J+A's bedtime, because you need to bait them.
-[x] Get near Prism and call up a familiar. Tell it that you want to become magical girls and ask for advice/help.
[x] Narratives
-[x] Your goal: "Heist" or "arc villain introduction" (friendly equivalent of "villain's troops burn down hero's village").
-[x] Narratives you need to specifically counter: Monster-of-the-week, villain's prophesized defeat, plucky magical girls defeat villain's super-mode
-[x] Major techniques: Try hard to be in the initial upswing of the narrative structure. Keep heroes reactive. Provide no warnings. Be stylish. Deliver no answers. Create questions and mysteries. Foreshadow/introduce your own further narratives. Give J+A a foregone conclusion and run away laughing.
[x] Rename every familiar you come across, taking inspiration from the thread.
-[x] Goals: Pranks. Privately bait Julia and Ayna into reacting to you.
-[x] Don't publicly name J+A, but do use a few quotes from earlier so they'll know it was you.
[x] Head for the Artifact.
-[x] You need to get there ahead of Julia and Ayna so you can use your combat pool on it and then gain your powers in front of their eyes while they're helpless to stop you.
[x] Upgrade artifact. Gain magical girl powers. Revert upgrades to artifact.
[x] Mess up the Artifact in some appropriately hilarious fashion.
[x] Defeat or break contact with J+A. Use the chaos (from response to renamed familiars) to GTFO.
"...And I know the original plan was to go to Dragon as Dark MGs and everything, but some of the teachers might be biased against those."
"Also, I might, sorta, kiiiinda want to flirt with some heroes sometime?" Celes hedges. "Not really something we can do as faceless black masses. I mean, unless we're trolling them, but still! And I mean the fun kind of trolling, not the I'm-being-a-prick-and-am-claiming-it's-just-a-joke-sis kind."
Skye continues to work on some sort of ceramic bowl at the far corner of the workshop. Your father sits off to one side, well away from either side of the conversation and just as unhelpful as he usually is with criminal planning. You love him dearly, but you're really glad he was never a single dad. He would've been terrible at it.
"I did interfere with the original plan," Mother admits sheepishly. You don't think you've ever seen her sheepish and it's a little jarring. "It slipped my mind. Regardless, for school photos, I already sent in your true forms and your father already..."
Mother pauses delicately.
"...Frightened the schoolmaster into accepting the inadequate files I sent in. It is, in fact, a good thing you've made alternative plans."
""Video?"" You and Celes ask together.
Your mother shakes her head sadly.
"I'm afraid your father did it all the way from the car. Too soon for me to even plant a drone, I'm afraid. If it's any recompense, I fear he may have traumatized the poor man, so I expect your own appearances will make him at least uneasy. Assuming he didn't have the memories purged, of course, which I wouldn't put past him."
You and Celes turn to stare at your father. His act of inspecting his fingernails fools absolutely nobody there, especially since he doesn't have any right now. You're pretty sure you'd seen Dragon's offices before, and since they're about a hundred meters or more from the closest road, Dad should not have had that kind of range. Wyrm being a Reciever-type Telepath of some kind might explain it, but if that was the case, why is Dad pretending he's innocent of all wrongdoing? Deliberately suspicious behavior might be one reason, but...
You look at the impassive visage of your mother. She wouldn't be concealing anything save amusement if Dad was just messing with you.
"You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"The odds are in favor. Dad might actually be OP or even inhuman?"
"Yeah. I'll go first."
"Has Dad been downplaying his power or something?" Celes asks aloud.
"Inherited powers haven't been normal since Progenitor took over. Inherited forms, even less so. If you two actually, um..."
"Had us," Celes provides.
"And we were void-colored when we were born, which implies a normal human pregnancy with—"
A loud pop interrupts you and heralds the presence of Progenitor. You try reflexively moving for cover, but your limbs refuse to respond. As far as you can tell, everyone save Skye is suffering from the same temporary paralysis. The 'lowercase-g god' glances around the room before rolling his eyes.
"Of course it would involve you guys," Progenitor sighs and waves one hand aimlessly. "Just tracking down the key to a silly lock, don't mind me. Eve, mind passing on whatever hint Upgrade gives you?"
" (*≧▽≦) ψ__ -> (✿◕.◕) ψ__ -> (^..^) ψ__ "
"Or that works too. Sorry for the interruption."
Progenitor vanishes with another loud pop, releasing your family at the same time. Skye doesn't even look up from her work. Meanwhile, Mother closes her eyes and takes several long, deep breaths.
"...That resulted in two semi-human children," you finish lamely.
"Ignore that, powers are just dicking with—"
"Language," Dad warns.
"Are just messing with him?" Celes tries. "Some kind of a mandatory treasure hunt, I think."
"Better."
Your mother continues her breathing exercises. Deciding that a surprise hug probably wouldn't help right now, you opt for distraction instead. You're not even sure what you're trying to say, but if you and Celes bounce off one another long enough, maybe you'll actually come up with something viable.
"And the process needed your help, Mom, which means the physics of another universe were involved."
"Historically, Capes are about thirty percent more likely to have children compared to the average person..."
"Really?"
"Nah, I pulled that number out of my butt. I think it's actually supposed to be something like thirteen or sixteen or whatever."
"...Which implies that powers actually like it when their partners have kids."
"Um, actually, I found Dad's power in the selection dimension? If you're leading up to saying he doesn't have one, I think that might be the wrong track. Also, some powers might just want their partners to be chaste or something."
"Oh. Huh. What was it called?"
"Aberration. Mom's was Emissary."
"Cool beans. Derail what I was saying?"
"Basically, Dad, we're leading up to asking if you're actually human."
"One from Earth-Zero, anyway. I guess a variant might have normal people that are like you?"
"We promise not to freak out even if you're a demon over there. You're our Dad."
Skye puts down the bowl and silently stares at your father. Whatever the answer, you get the feeling she might already know.
After a long, drawn-out silence, your father exhales the tortured death knell of an old star.
"You might be half singularity," Dad hedges.
Whatever you'd been expecting to hear, that wasn't it. Judging by Skye's sudden loss of balance, you don't think that was on her list either. Your new sibling recovers remarkably quickly and climbs back onto her seat unharmed.
You hesitate and try to figure out Dad's claim would possibly work. Does that mean half artificial intelligence, half energy being, half black hole, or something completely different?
"More than half," Mom mutters, still keeping her eyes closed. "I'm convinced most of what I gave you was fuel."
Your father produces another eldritch sigh and runs one hand over his head, uncharacteristically serious.
"Long story short? I'm an extension of a black hole that accidentally formed a mind out of compressed matter. Will produces power in my home universe and I'd eaten most of that before I got bored, so despite my severe lack of manipulative digits, I was able to... well, remake myself. You two — actually, three now, and that was a surprise — are extensions of celestial bodies that are themselves orbiting me. I believe the term is 'genius loci'?"
Staring down at your hands, you try to imagine yourself as a planet. It doesn't really click. You look up and tilt your head questioningly and see Celes doing the same out of the corner of one eye. Skye just stares at Dad as though she'd never seen him before.
"One consciousness at a time until you're much older," Dad explains. "You won't be feeling yourself until you're a few centuries older or someone manages to 'kill' this extension. But don't take that as an excuse to be reckless — I wouldn't be surprised if it took you years how to make yourself a new one. Smart as you are, months is more likely, but it'd still mess up your social life."
Celes's hand shoots up and she speaks without waiting.
"Question. Are we immortal?"
Dad nods soberly. "By even the strictest definitions of the word, yes. I wouldn't have had you otherwise. Even if I'd recover from heartache eventually, withdrawing and passing grief on to the greater part of myself could lead to the creation of otherworldly monstrosities of the world-devouring variety."
You take it upon yourself to ask the more uncomfortable question.
"And Mom?"
Your concerned query earns a smile from the parent in question.
"Still human, but she has a... backup that'll make her like us. It's not a perfect solution since she's liable to lose a significant fraction of her memories during the first transfer, but unfortunately, it's the best one I have."
Mother smiles, opens her eyes, and holds out her wedding ring for inspection. Honestly, it looks pretty normal to you.
"He wanted to kill me early, you know," she remarks casually.
Having long since adapted to Dad's provocative phrasing, it takes little effort for you to suppress any immediate questions and only raise your eyebrows.
"It seemed like a good idea at the time,"Dad stresses.
"He had the best apology, I'll give him that much, " Mother allows. "Invited me to a nebula the next day and proposed using the heart of a star."
There's a slight pause.
"Well?"
"I am not dignifying your pun by passing it on to the next generation," Mother says haughtily.
Dad produces a surprisingly human-sounding sigh.
"See, since I had to eat the star first, that meant I gave her a piece of myself. She thought it was great when she figured it out. Couldn't even breathe, she was laughing too hard."
Your mother straightens as far as possible and raises her chin high.
"You shouldn't tell your children lies."
"Really?" Celes asks innocently. "But you do it all the time!"
Mother unsuccessfully tries to disguise her snort as a cough. You take the conversational opening and try bringing up a topic that's been bothering you.
"You said an extension. Does that mean you have more than one?"
Dad's otherworldly maw opens in his version of a toothy grin. The two rows of stars replacing his teeth rapidly begin to warp and collide in response to the decreased distance.
"I was wondering when you'd get around to that. Yeah, there are a bunch of me wandering around. Only a few with families, though, and none in universes near one another. I thought it best not to mix experiences."
Dad's newest claim is almost as shocking as your own nature. You have stepparents and half-siblings, relatives who aren't trying to kill you, and you've never met any of them.
Celes recovers well before you do, clapping one hand over her open mouth in pretended shock and betrayal. Your sibling turns to Mother, wide-eyed.
"Mooooom, Dad is cheating on you!"
For all her pretended haughtiness, your mother isn't above participating in family shenanigans when she deems them sufficiently dignified. Mother matches Celes's expression and turns to face Dad, crocodile tears glittering at the edges of her eyes within seconds. You make a mental note to ask her for lessons later. You didn't think people could actually do that.
"Aidan, how could you? I thought what we had was real!"
Dad raises both hands defensively.
"Now, Sheila, a guy has needs, you know? I still love you!"
There's a slight pause.
"Sheila? Really? We get the joke, but where is she supposed to go with that?"
"Yeah, outrage over it not being her actual name? That's kinda boring, Dad."
Joke ruined, your mother drops the false grief and picks her impassive facade right back up. After an awkward pause, she raises her eyebrows and waves at Dad.
"You tell them. It's your mind."
Dad reaches back and scratches at his neck with one hand.
"Yeah, okay. Girls, it's best for all of us if you just think of those as being different people. Part of the point is to make sure the greater me doesn't get bored. So each version of me has a personality radically different from the others and we don't really mix. And before you ask, no, I can't really strengthen this extension without making reality just a bit fragile and, uh, driving everyone nearby insane with fear. Thoughts equal power and all that."
"Can we learn to do that? Because that sounds awesome."
Dad smiles and shakes his head.
"I've devoured the vast majority of galaxies in my original universe. It's a smaller universe than usual, true, but a big mind equals big thoughts. You're not even as big as Earth yet; I don't expect you to be able to do much of anything for a millennium or two. Except, perhaps, emulating your current powers and their Nodesets. They're sure to want to leave eventually."
"Moooom, Dad is calling us underweight!" Celes whines as soon as Dad finishes speaking. "We've been following the food pyramid and everything, so could you please get him to leave us alone?"
Your dad brightens, casting shadows around his chair in the process. You scoot behind your sister and use her as a human shield.
"Speaking of which, I know we've told you girls to use proper protection if you ever get physical with—"
"Don't get pregnant unless we want baby planetoids, we know," Celes interrupts frantically.
"Please don't explain. We understand the implications."
"Please."
Your dad slumps back down and shakes his head sadly.
"I'd intended to make an innuendo-laden joke about fighting people, but I suppose my wishes will forever remain..." Dad pauses and frowns. "I can't actually remember the word I'm looking for. Never mind."
There's a long, long pause. Skye has long since gone back to her bowl, but you and Celes need more time to digest your nature. You grew up your entire life thinking you'd die within a century and go to some afterlife or another. Now Dad is talking about hundreds or thousands of years before you actually get to do anything interesting with your nature.
...Eh, you can agonize over it later.
"So I realize we're the ones who derailed it in the first place, but can we get some actual feedback on our plan? Advice? Prism isn't going to invade itself."
"That's my advice," Dad replies immediately. "Get Prism to invade itself. Do your plan, then, uh, Celes? Order the building to block everyone except you and just walk out through the wall next to the basement door."
You and Celes both stare blankly at Dad. He's been a little serious for the last few minutes, sure, but since when did he actually support your criminal endeavors? You've had to pelt Dad with artificial snowballs before when he and Mom got into arguments about law and civilization and stuff.
"All the normal paths in the school deliberately go through the heavily-warded central courtyard," Mother adds. "When you set off the alarm, they'll gather there. Avoid it and you'll be fine."
Celes holds up her hands in a T."Dad? Um, are you okay? You just gave us advice on an actual crime."
"A victimless crime," Dad stresses. "This isn't like quietly hitting a shop and making their insurance premiums go up with nothing to show for it. All you're doing is grabbing a bit of power so you can have fun and boost local tourism in the process. Trust me, I have a Master's Degree in Economics. "
"He's lying," Mother adds immediately. "Your father didn't go to college."
Dad reels back, one hand over his heart.
"I could've gone to classes all those times I said I was playing cards with Null and the other guys."
"That's a lie, too," Celes remarks helpfully. "Mom had us tail you some of those times."
A high-pitched wail emanates from Dad as he snorts derisively.
"Null teaches Shade classes. He noticed you guys every time you showed up. We used to place bets on how long it'd take you to make a loud noise."
"Did he, though?"
"Did he really?"
"How would you know if we were there and you didn't see us?"
"Whole point of being sneaky."
You and Celes simultaneously nod with the confidence granted by complete and utter nonsense. You were supposed to be noticed. Mom was the one being sneaky, and for that, she needed to lead by example. You remain sworn to secrecy until and unless Dad realizes you're being bribed and doubles your effective allowance. Demonstrating how long it takes a hero to notice corruption in his own household is, after all, part of Mom's lessons.
[x] Use the identities that you'll be taking to DIS-13.
-[x] Dress magical-girlishly to help you bluff your way past situations.
[x] Arrive late at night
-[x] But not past J+A's bedtime, because you need to bait them.
-[x] Get near Prism and call up a familiar. Tell it that you want to become magical girls and ask for advice/help.
[x] Narratives
-[x] Your goal: "Heist" or "arc villain introduction" (friendly equivalent of "villain's troops burn down hero's village").
-[x] Narratives you need to specifically counter: Monster-of-the-week, villain's prophesized defeat, plucky magical girls defeat villain's super-mode
-[x] Major techniques: Try hard to be in the initial upswing of the narrative structure. Keep heroes reactive. Provide no warnings. Be stylish. Deliver no answers. Create questions and mysteries. Foreshadow/introduce your own further narratives. Give J+A a foregone conclusion and run away laughing.
[x] Rename every familiar you come across, taking inspiration from the thread.
-[x] Goals: Pranks. Privately bait Julia and Ayna into reacting to you.
-[x] Don't publicly name J+A, but do use a few quotes from earlier so they'll know it was you.
[x] Head for the Artifact.
-[x] You need to get there ahead of Julia and Ayna so you can use your combat pool on it and then gain your powers in front of their eyes while they're helpless to stop you.
[x] Upgrade artifact. Gain magical girl powers. Revert upgrades to artifact.
[x] Mess upModify the Artifact in some appropriately hilarious fashion. Vetoed by Dad.
[x] Defeat or break contact with J+A. Use the chaos (from response to renamed familiars) to GTFO.
I'll allow write-ins to ask your family questions, but I'll be working on the rest of the post in the meantime; consider most of it locked. It's going to be another long one.
EDIT: You don't know if your father can run out of stuff to eat. Hopefully, the answer is "No;" he did say he hadn't even polished off his original one yet.
You think the issue might be that you're simply not big enough to do the sorts of things he can, and won't be for a long, long time. Speaking of which, alternative chapter title: Sirs-not-appearing-in-this-quest.
...I have no words other than we have the best family. Whoever did the Eldritch Abomination write-in way back when (I'm too lazy to look it up, but I'm fairly sure it was a write-in), they are brilliant.
A star-dotted whirlpool revealed itself as Aidan silently opened his mouth. After several seconds, he tossed his old prop aside and picked up models of the Earth, Luna, and a large asteroid.
"Let's start over. When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, they might want to have a child. So the two get together..."
Aidan flicks the asteroid toward the model earth and pretends the moon was broken off by the ensuing collision.
You and Celes simultaneously nod with the confidence granted by complete and utter nonsense. You were supposed to be noticed. Mom was the one being sneaky, and for that, she needed to lead by example. You remain sworn to secrecy until and unless Dad realizes you're being bribed and doubles your effective allowance. Demonstrating how long it takes a hero to notice corruption in his own household is, after all, part of Mom's lessons.
"Still human, but she has a... backup that'll make her like us. It's not a perfect solution since she's liable to lose a significant fraction of her memories during the first transfer, but unfortunately, it's the best one I have."
Is...is the emphasis intentionally making it sound like we have an evil cousin out there somewhere trying to kill us? Am I forgetting an older brother who was shunned by the family and has sworn revenge? Given what we just learned about our dad, I'm kind of scared who else we're related to.
Is...is the emphasis intentionally making it sound like we have an evil cousin out there somewhere trying to kill us? Am I forgetting an older brother who was shunned by the family and has sworn revenge? Given what we just learned about our dad, I'm kind of scared who else we're related to.
The "family" part is irrelevant. Your parents aren't even on speaking terms with most of your blood-relatives, and one of them (an uncle, Mother's side of the family) has tried to kill you before. He was babbling something about you being the "monstrous spawn of an eldritch horror" at the time.
"That's my advice," Dad replies immediately. "Get Prism to invade itself. Do your plan, then, uh, Celes? Order the building to block everyone except you and just walk out through the wall next to the basement door."
...Hah! They'll have to break through their own school's walls to get to the control center or artifact to undo what we've done.
...Hm. Do we think that we could order the school to eject everyone before locking them out? And then make them assault the school through that heavily defended arch?
Post it in pieces! That way we get to react to every individual segment!
Also, I'm kind of surprised that we won't get any opportunities to interact with the plan failing to survive contact with the enemy. I didn't think that it was that good of a plan...
A loud pop interrupts you and heralds the presence of Progenitor. You try reflexively moving for cover, but your limbs refuse to respond. As far as you can tell, everyone save Skye is suffering from the same temporary paralysis. The 'lowercase-g god' glances around the room before rolling his eyes.
"Of course it would involve you guys," Progenitor sighs and waves one hand aimlessly. "Just tracking down the key to a silly lock, don't mind me. Eve, mind passing on whatever hint Upgrade gives you?"
" (*≧▽≦) ψ__ -> (✿◕.◕) ψ__ -> (^..^) ψ__ "
"Or that works too. Sorry for the interruption."
Progenitor vanishes with another loud pop, releasing your family at the same time. Skye doesn't even look up from her work. Meanwhile, Mother closes her eyes and takes several long, deep breaths.
Poor Mom. She's living a perfectly normal life as a perfectly normal, if wildly successful, supervillain, raising her children with no drama or shenanigans save those small reality excursions inadvertently caused by her perfectly normal beloved eldritch abomination of a husband and their perfectly normal trolltastic genius children, and then suddenly Progenitor is randomly popping into her kitchen to retrieve the next key in a punitive treasure-hunt inflicted on him by the sentient superpowers that he claims to administrate despite the now-mounting evidence that they're just indulging him.
"Can we learn to do that? Because that sounds awesome."
Dad smiles and shakes his head.
"I've devoured the vast majority of galaxies in my original universe. It's a smaller universe than usual, true, but a big mind equals big thoughts. You're not even as big as Earth yet; I don't expect you to be able to do much of anything for a millennium or two. Except, perhaps, emulating your current powers and their Nodesets. They're sure to want to leave eventually."
This is perfect. Everything about it is perfect. Dad brightening up both expressively and literally because the narration keeps conveniently forgetting to mention that he's a mind-warping sentient space-time monster, Eve hiding behind her sister in response, the clever bit of visual language, the visual incongruity of mind-warping sentient space-time monster sitting in a chair, it's just fantastic.
You and Celes simultaneously nod with the confidence granted by complete and utter nonsense. You were supposed to be noticed. Mom was the one being sneaky, and for that, she needed to lead by example. You remain sworn to secrecy until and unless Dad realizes you're being bribed and doubles your effective allowance. Demonstrating how long it takes a hero to notice corruption in his own household is, after all, part of Mom's lessons.
I got the general impression he's...maybe not quite a Power, but certainly somehow related. Or, at the very least, more knowledgeable about the behind-the-scenes stuff than most. The presence of what is supposedly our dad's Abomination Power in our Power selection seems to indicate he is either seen as an honorary Power, or that Progenitor was trying to cover for him. Or there's some reason for It that I just can't come up with, I guess.
