Goddamn Teenagers (Worm, AU/time travel)

[dc2008]

Within seconds of the emergency tone, and before coming fully awake, Colin had rolled out of bed and answered the comm unit.

"Armsmaster."

"This is Legend."

"Sir."

"You, Dragon and others have been working on a prediction algorithm for Leviathan."

"Yes, sir."

"Run it now."

"Sir? It is still in development, and due to resource constraints—"

"Armsmaster," Legend interrupted. "Run it now."

"Yes, sir. It will take a few minutes to—"

"I'll wait." Legend muted his end of the line.

A few minutes later

"Legend?"

"Here."

"It is showing a probability of a near term attack, most likely in the area of the Red Sea, but—"

"The algorithm. Is its prediction accuracy better or worse than coin-flip odds?"

"Better, but—"

"Armsmaster. Hypothetically, what would you do if you had intelligence from a source whose existence and limitations you absolutely could not divulge?"

"Confirm and launder as best I can through other means?"

High above, the Endbringer sirens began to wail.

---

Notes: As for what is getting laundered here, I am deliberately non-specific, but it likely includes without limitation some vibes from David's subconscious, along with possibly a question or three from Dinah.

Note note:
One of the many, many tragedies embedded in Worm is that walking into the canon Levi fight? Armsmaster was critical in deploying an early warning system that substantially increased advanced notice of an Endbringer attack. That one accomplishment may well have saved more lives, done more good, than literally everything else Colin had ever done, combined. We also know, as readers, that even if he had killed Levi, another EB would have popped up. So that would have been pointless.

Colin had his big breakout success, done and dusted, and he then went and threw it away, pointlessly.

Wildbow, ladies and gentlemen. Say what you will about the man, but this is some Greek tragedy level shit right here.

 

[dc2008]

Lisa jumped at the pounding on her door. Bleary eyed, she peered through the peephole and was surprised to see Dr. Weaver.

"Hi?" She said, opening the door. She felt somehow both proud and embarrassed to be meeting the woman while wearing pajamas covered in little cartoon foxes.

"Shoes, coat and vest," the older woman said without preamble. She gestured to the TV and laptop behind Lisa. "I can't keep you away from the news, so you're coming with me to where your inevitable migraine will do some good."

A few minutes later

Lisa maintained her white-knuckled grip on the seat. "Holy fuck! Where did you learn to drive, a war zone?"

"No comment," the older woman replied, as she swerved to overtake an ambulance. She then returned to speeding down the center of the road, sirens blaring, right on the double line, going, oh, way too fast. "But this is good practice."

She is telling the truth.

Jesus. Lisa was torn between bracing herself, and staying loose to mitigate injury in a crash. She has substantial experience driving in emergency and combat situations. SUV has many added safety precautions, including tinkertech.

Who is this woman?

She is less likely to get in a crash in current conditions than Lisa Wilbourn driving on a clear sunny day.

Oh, fuck you too.

---

Note:

Taylor is not taking a door for many reasons, including (1) she does have time to drive, (2) it really is good practice, and it's rare these days that she actually gets to drive like this in a city, (3) she's not sure how Lisa will react to seeing her summon a door and doesn't want to deal with a power-driven speculative fit, and (4) Armsmaster will be on a hair trigger and she doesn't want to distract him with an alert if his recently improved equipment detects the door.

 

[dc2008]

Amy was in her room, in her bed, trying to block out the sound of the sirens with her pillow, while reminding herself again and again what Dr. Weaver said about her not feeling guilt for not going.

She was indeed, so very focused that she nearly jumped out of her skin when her sister started shaking her.

"Go 'way!" Amy grumped.

"Nope we need to go!"

"Not going to Endbringer fight and neither are you!"

"No silly we need to go to your apartment!"

Bleary-eyed, Amy peeked out of her cocoon to see Vicky wearing a ridiculous assortment of straps over pajamas. The aura light was blinking merrily.

"Bwah?" Amy replied, articulately.

"You said Dr. Weaver said your apartment is safer than home! And while it's not likely there might be riots or something! So we need to go to your apartment to keep you safe come on!"

---

Note:

Convincing Vicky that she is too young to fight endbringers is an unsatisfying, Sisyphean task. It is much easier to convince her that her Amy is the most important person on the planet and bad people might try to use the truce to attack her and she needs protecting!"

Remember, jaded!Taylor has decades of experience dealing with the sort of bullshit common from Lisa and later Victoria. Dealing with young!Vicky is almost relaxing.

 

[dc2008]

"Hey dumbass let's go!"

Alec did a double-take. "Why are you here, Aisha?" He paused, "wait, how are you here, I know I didn't give you a key!"

"Safety in numbers. Grab your shit and come on! You can hang out with me and bro until we know if there's gonna be riots or anything."

Alec grumbled and began putting his console and energy drinks into a bag. "I'm still stuck on how are you here?You're lucky I'm wearing pants!"

Aisha wiggled her fingers. "I am awesome and no door can stop me." She gave him an unimpressed look. "And you got nothing mom's dumbass boyfriends ain't showed me."

Elsewhere

"Is it weird that I'm more scared than usual?" Taylor asked her father as they sat on the couch.

"Oh?" He asked, putting an arm around her shoulder. "Why do you think that is?"

Taylor burrowed into her father's comforting warmth. "I guess because I know more now? Before they were just these sort of natural disasters. But now? I hope older!me is safe."

"Me too," said her Father. "Me too."

---

Note: Aisha is very proud that she lifted Dr. Weaver's master keycard. She hasn't figured out yet that it only works on certain doors, and it hasn't occurred to her yet that key card use can be monitored.

 

[dc2008]

"Aisha, where have you been I was worried— why is Alec here and who are these kids?"

"Yo," said Aisha, shutting and locking the door behind her guests. "Safety in numbers! And this is May and Derek, their parents do something PRT. They are old enough to stay by themselves but I figured they'd do better not alone."

The two tweens were already setting up a game console with Alec.

"Aisha—is that a gun?"

"Tinkertech taser or stunner or something? Dr. Weaver gave it to me for emergencies. Oh, Glory Girl and Panacea might come by in a bit."

"What? How?"

"Saw them in the hall, invited them. Think they want to get out of pajamas first?"

"Where are you getting all this?"

She stared at him. "You have watched me read PRT manuals for how long?"

---

Note: Aisha has a good thing here and is going to be super helpful! If she does good they won't make her go back! She doesn't want no one thinking she's just a dumb kid!

 

[dc2008]

Lisa looked around the windowless conference room. "Here?"

"Get set up," Dr. Weaver said, retrieving a laptop from the cart in the corner. "I'm not letting Thinktank near you and there is no reason to waste mover resources."

She removed a small device from her pocket, plugged it in, and a holographic multi-screen setup appeared.

"That's more like it! Where's mine?"

Dr. Weaver gave her a look.

Shortly Thereafter

Dr. Weaver looked at Lisa intently. "This is a marathon, not a sprint. Your objective today is to learn how to in the futurebest apply your power to such events. Actual contributions are optional."

Lisa gave Dr. Weaver her best unimpressed look.

A few minutes later

"HOW THE FUCK DOES ANYONE KEEP TRACK OF ANYTHING?!" Lisa exclaimed in frustration. Dr. Weaver was somehow monitoring, like, fiftydifferent audio, video and text feeds, while occasionally passing on to… well actually Lisa wasn't sure, but the messages all were, in Lisa's very expert opinion, utter gibberish.

Dr. Weaver shrugged, "You get used to it. You can calibrate it to focus on fewer things, most people don't monitor at such a high level."

Fortunately power seemed on-board with not immediately debilitating her, but the sense of excited interest she was getting was all kinds of concerning.

---

Notes:
Taylor: Basically mainlines ALL THE FEEDS, since she's been doing this sort of thing for decades.
Power: {DATA}
QA:Best host is BEST HOST
Lisa: Wait, why don't I have a migraine?

 

[dc2008]

Jaded!Taylor has made sure that her no-powers MRI got leaked. Thing is, threat ratings aren't about powers, they are about threat. And, well, Taylor is running around knowing things she absolutely should not know, apparently has a bullshit mover ability (actually Doormaker), and a knowledge of power psychology and behavior as good or better than any thinker or tinker or trump.

You start running into the problem that under PRT guidelines, even people with perfectly mundane abilities, once they hit a high enough level of performance, should earn a threat rating because they are so far from the mean. And, again, threat ratings are intended as a short hand to help some 19-year old trooper prepare for a confrontation. No, you don't say the dude is an Olympic sprinter, you just call him a low-level mover and be done with it.

Similarly, although the PRT bizarrely refuses to issue a threat rating for jaded!Taylor, you've got various other groups doing informal work-ups who come with all kinds of theories.

Heck, Tagg and Armstrong are still open to the possibility that she is some sort of high level master or stranger. But, on the other hand, her info continues to be good, she appears benevolent, and at some point what do you do?

 

[dc2008]

Yahtzee!" Glory Girl, no Vicky, shouted triumphantly, as the tweens giggled.

"Keep it down!" Alec grumped in response from the couch, where he and Panacea were playing… some fighting game? It involved "parody" versions of female heroes in swimwear.

"Yo," said Aisha, from by the stove. "We out of rice, can you grab some?"

"Aisha," Brian replied, exasperated, "I'm not leaving you all here to do a grocery run, don't we have pasta?"

"No, no," Aisha replied. "I've got more in the emergency supplies Dr. Weaver helped me get, it's in the back of my closet in the big box labeled 'sex toys'."

Alec cackled, although Brian chose to believe it was in response to the game and not Aisha's comment.

---

Notes:

"Do I want to know what's in the box labeled 'Emergency Supplies'?"

"No comment."

"What about 'Pony Shit'?"

"Actual pony shit, as far as you know."

"How 'bout I leave your weirdly labeled boxes alone."

"Smart boy!"

 

[dc2008]

Lisa rested her head on the table and let the audio feeds wash over her. "How are you still going?"

"Experience. It's nearly over."

"Oh my god how the fuck can you know! They're moving around so much I barely know what time zone they're in and I couldn't begin to guess when it will end."

"I think it's going fairly well, actually."

Lisa lifted up her head and gave the older woman a disbelieving stare. "Wat."

The older woman shrugged. "You get a feel for these things."

Elsewhere

Rachel carefully checked over the last of her dogs. In her mind, it was simple. This was a chance to show her dogs were the best dogs at rescuing people. Then people would want more. Training dogs meant money for more dogs, and that the trained dogs were safe.

Rachel still wasn't entirely sure how Dr. Weaver had convinced the PRT to pay Rachel for the privilege of taking good care of dogs. Before they didn't like her, or her dogs, or really any dogs. But cops were stupid, and she wasn't going to complain.

---

Note: Rachel the master is terrifying. She's a half feral wolf girl with monster wolves. Rachel the tinker-adjacent dog trainer is much less alarming. Yes, she is wildly neurodivergent but… have you met tinkers? Yeah she gets upset if you are mean to her pets, but have you seen what Armsmaster is like if you scuff his bike? And what tinker doesn't have some stupidly excessive emergency fuck-you measure? Monster dogs fit right in.

 

[dc2008]

Keith was beyond drained. Endbringer battles were always exhausting but few had been chaotic and fluid as this most recent attack by Leviathan, a running fight lasting most of a day, starting in the Red Sea and ending a couple hundred kilometers northeast of Madagascar. Still, his presence as Legend at this initial Cauldron debrief was necessary, and at least allowed an opportunity to zone out and rest his mind as reports flowed over him.

"…desecrated a dozen shipwrecks including several recognized war graves for use as impromptu projectiles…"

"…devastating two hundred kilometers of Red Sea coastline, leaving in some spots gorges so deep they might be suitable for deep water harbors…"

"…doubled the width of the Bab-el-Mandeb…"

"…detonated a tinkertech chemical weapons stockpile…"

"…provoked and then conclusively ended a multi-lateral engagement involving Gessellschaft, a CUI offshore black site, the Three Blasphemies and Moord Nag, as well as the multinational forces present under truce…"

"…and yet somehow casualties were an order of magnitude less than usual?"

"Yes!" David's triumphant declaration drew Keith's attention. "Clearly I need to further refine targeting criteria but this is obviously an improvement!"

---

Note: Pretty sure this was actually the first bit I wrote in this chain.