Goddamn Teenagers (Worm, AU/time travel)

[dc2008]

Thomas walked confidently toward his office in the PRT building. Now, with the support of Cauldron, his victory was assured. Sure, he would have to change his approach with the PRT, but that was doable. Emily was one medical crisis from retirement, and Rennick would never be given the job, not without more seasoning first in a less troubled region. Plenty of time for him to maneuver one of his people into position to…

Opening his office door, Thomas saw something unexpected. A box on his desk, with an attached infra-office routing slip. Curious, Thomas opened the box, and extracted a smaller package, clad in bright wrapping paper. Even more curious, Thomas opened the gift wrap to reveal a polished hardwood box engraved with his name. He opened the box and holy shit.

Thomas found himself on the floor, back pressed against the opposite wall, breathing heavily. Hand grenades. Who the FUCK sends hand grenades through inter-office mail? HOW did they even get them through security, ever since Assault's last 'harmless prank' they've been screening internal packages as well!

Slowly, Thomas calmed his breathing. He had a safe timeline, he could afford to get some additional information. He crept forward and peered into the box. Yep, this are fragmentation grenades. at least the box was well-padded, the grenades each in their own compartment, and the pins safely secured.

And then he realized, and his blood ran cold. They knew! Who else could slip such a package into the PRT!?

This required careful reconsideration.

---

Note:

How do they know?! Which precise details of his plan offended them?! He will have to more carefully tie the line, until the coast seems clear… but what if that's what they expect!?

Also, a major law firm once actually did something close to this. The grenades were fake, but looked real enough, and they sent them to lots of clients in an ill-conceived marketing campaign. This was not long after 9/11.

Needless to say, neither the clients or the postal service were amused.

 

[dc2008]

"Why does David look constipated?" Rebecca asked.

"He is communing with his subconscious," said Kurt, explaining nothing. It was too early for this shit.

Rebecca frowned.

"Our time traveler told him that he might be subconsciously influencing Endbringers. He's trying to learn how to do it consciously."

Rebecca's blood ran cold. "Explain."

"In her world, after David died, Endbringer behavior changed…" and then he described a nightmare scenario where the Simurgh simply wandered around 24/7, constantly doing things.

Then she paused, and considered. "But from what she said, a lot of thing happened around that time. How does she know it was him?"

And then he launched into a long, tortured explanation of agent networking and hierarchies, massive parallel agent connections due to those fucking boosters, and tinker/thinker studies led by Bonesaw and The Fairy Queen.

I'm beginning to see why she sees us as amateurs…

 

[dc2008]

"So what do you think?" Lisa asked excitedly.

"Thank you for checking with me first. What did your power say about the plan?"

"Power said it would work, and would do so within the specified time horizon of one month!"

"And what does power think would happen after?"

"After?"

"One month later, three months later, six months later, etc."

"I'm sure it will be fine, he's just a teenage boy how hard can it be oh. Shit"

"Lisa. You should not need me to tell you that catfishing is not the answer."

 

[dc2008]

"It's not fair!" Exclaimed Victoria. "Some lady from the PRT talks to mom and now suddenly I have to wear this stupid thing!"

"Vicky," Amy said with forced patience, "ever since you got powers, literally everyone has been telling you to better control your aura. Besides, all it does it track aura activation."

"But that's just the start, before you know it they'll OH GODDAMNIT." The monitor was lit up again.

"LANGUAGE!" Carol's voice drifted up the stairs.

"Like that. I admit the light is a nice touch."

"I don't know what's changed! They said it was fine before!"

"They said occasional short term exposure was probably no more harmful than other previously approved shaker effects. That's not the same as 'fine'. Your power directly affects emotions, which means it directly affects brain chemistry. Do you know what effects might come from long term or repeated exposure?"

"No but I'm sure it's fine I mean you and Mom and Dad are all fine OH FOR FUCK SAKES!"

"VICTORIA DALLON DON'T MAKE ME COME UP THERE!"

---

Note: The Dallons are a perfectly functional happy family. You can tell because literally everyone in the house triggered. That means they're doing something right, right?

 

[dc2008]

"Bro, PRT lady is so cool, I can't believe you didn't want me to meet her!"

"Aisha, what are you talking about?" Brian turned to look at his sister and was shocked to see her wearing… smart looking clothes, in a conservative cut.

"She taught me how to master people with clothes! Except it's only sort of like a power so the pigs can't even get mad at me for it!"

"How do you? What?"

"Like, she went through all this brain stuff about how brains are super lazy and make super-fast judgments and by making them see what you want you can literally hack their brains"!"

"Aisha that's…" just how first impressions work, I've tried to explain it to you a thousand times. But she was still going.

"I was down on the boardwalk for like two hours and the Enforcers didn't bother me once because I hacked their brains!"

You know what, if it gets her to behave, I'll take it.

---

Note:
Significantly, Brian didn't ask her what she was doingat the boardwalk, or he would have heard about the awesome pockets her dress has and how you can fit so much stuff in there and the Enforcers didn't stop her once and look at all this cool stuff she swiped!

Honestly the biggest thing Taylor is doing is framing things in a way that clearly and unambiguously align with Aisha's own goals, as perceived by Aisha.

It's the difference between saying "don't do this he cause you'll get in trouble" and saying "getting in trouble would cramp your style, which would suck, so let's talk about how to avoid the suck"

 

[dc2008]

Compiling here from the other places some of the author comments from the other places. Will do this periodically to compile some of the stuff that is individually too short to make sense as its own thread mark. Will still use full informational thread marks for the longer ones.

Chapter 2: What Kind of Sickos Does The PRT Hire?

This is partly a riff on the physical therapist idea. Partly, it's going off Alec's perception that his power is all about pratfalls and body jacking. He doesn't actually know whether his power causes nerve damage, but the fact that it might be used for healing has never occurred to him.

I have not had a chance to bring it up in game yet, and I'm not sure when I'm the timeline it happens, but Alec has been given assurances by jaded!Taylor that his family will not be allowed to exert malign influence in BB (although she is open to 'saving' more of his siblings). Scion and Endbringers will be dealt with off-screen, which makes PRT, Protectorate and Cauldron more comfortable taking strong action against threats like HB.


Chapter 9: An Attempt at Outreach

Jaded!Taylor has perhaps forgotten that while Teen!Taylor's social skills are underdeveloped, Teen!Taylor is excellent at detecting bullshit and manipulation. You see it's the bit where someone's mouth is moving.

Or, Teen!Taylor's trust issues have trust issues, to a degree that Jaded!Taylor has allowed herself to, not forget so much, she knows intellectually. But it's not something Jaded!Taylor likes to dwell on because thinking about it is painful.


Chapter 11: Slither Slither

Coil: Oh noes, I has learned the world is full of scary monsters!
Coil: I know, I will go to the biggest monster I can find and sell my soul for power! I'm sure that nothing can go wrong!
Coil: Ants! You are ants! I SHALL NEVER FEAR AGAIN!
<Door opens>
Coil: Oh no! How could I ever have foreseen this! <rolls over, shows belly>


Chapter 14: Lisa Has AWESOME Plan

Also keep in mind this is very early Lisa. No S9, no warlord, no Leviathan. Heck, no bank. She had a lot of growing up to do before she got to where she was by the end of Worm.

And as much as jaded!Taylor loves her uptime!Lisa, jaded!Taylor has no intention of letting her friend's counterpart go through even a tenth of that trauma.


Chapter 15: The Use Of Cocaine To Facilitate Custody Proceedings

To be fair, this only worked because Taylor had Coil's people get the recording, and then had someone from the PRT presenting the evidence. Coil could have done this on his own but it would have taken longer. At this point in the story TT likely would have messed it up somehow. Brain couldn't do it himself, he doesn't have the knowledge or contacts.

Although this hasn't come up yet in story, this is more for Aisha than Brian. For her Alec and Brian are people she is vaguely fond of who are long dead, she has a vague sense of goodwill to their counterparts but not a huge amount of motivation. She actually feels closer to some of the heartbroken (although I'm not sure yet if they will be addressed on-screen). Aisha, Rachel and Lisa are all people she knows uptime. Taylor is not precisely conscious of this aspect of her thinking and would not be pleased with herself if she did realize it. I haven't decided yet if Lisa will eventually point out how sentimental and irrational some of Taylor's behavior is, and how much that diverges from Taylor's self-image as a cold-hearted operator (which is a lot easier when your peers, friends and family can all either take care of themselves quite


Chapter 18: Family Matters

You've also got the things where uptime!Aidha has been Jaded!Taylor's friend, ally, and general pain in the ass for decades. While Brian is merely That Guy I Dated Once God That Was Awkward, and the she went to Chicago and stuff happened and he died horribly.

Or rather, Taylor is more invested in helping Aisha (and Lisa and Rachel and even the Heartbroken) than she is invested in helping Brian. Jaded!Taylor hasn't articulated this to herself yet and would feel vaguely bad if she did, but Taylor despite the progress she's made is still far better at compartmentalization and denial than she cares to admit. Uptime she kind of leaned on uptime!Lisa to call her on it when it got bad (I don't have a *problem* it's just a one-off).


Chapter 22: Meditation Is The Answer

Yep. And for all that Zion's grand pronouncement to Eidolon was dramatic, remember that Zion said it in a context where he was trying to kill Eidolon. And by using that line, Zion succeeded.

 

[dc2008]

It's not Brian getting custody. Mom loses custody, Aisha goes to dad. I'm going to say that the reason this didn't work before is that dad and Aisha were not capable of pretending to get along long enough for him to win a contested custody fight against mom, even if that was something he wanted to do, which I'm pretty sure he was not.

Dad immediately signs something saying he is ok with Brian and Aisha living independently, because hell no she is not living with him. Even if mom complains, mom is persona non grata at CPS so no one listens, and anyway BB is such a shithole that even if CPS did investigate, she's happy, getting fed, there are no drugs around and the heat works. For the Bay, that's good enough.

Aisha could still mess things up if she gets into enough trouble with the law, but Taylor will run interference for that. And even if Brian struggles to deal with Aisha, Taylor has decades of experience dealing with Aisha bullshit, and little!Aisha is basically easy mode.

They might actually run into more trouble if they relocated to a less shit city with more functional CPS, but even then Taylor could set up some sort of witness protection plausible deniability thing. There is real, not even fake evidence of a creepy villain stalking Aisha (Coil), and if need be Taylor can make Coil generate more proof of such on demand. And soon enough Brian will be eighteen or emancipated, and with mom not able to contest dad will sign WHATEVER IS NEEDED to let Aisha legally stay with Brian and not him.

 

[dc2008]

"Ready for school, Little Owl?"

"I guess. It feels weird after all this time to be starting over at Arcadia."

"What did Dr. Weaver say?"

"Some stuff about a second chance to make a first impression. She also gave me some books and a laptop and, ah, a cell phone."

"Yeah," Danny shrugged. "I still don't like it, but she was very convincing about the safety concerns."

"Yeah." Taylor shuffled her feet. "The books are interesting though?"

"Oh?"

"Yeah, there's a translation of Beowulf, from Aleph, that we don't have here. Also a collection of some pre-cape comics, and a book on insects."

"Insects?"

"Yeah." Taylor shuffled her feet again. "She said she was into insect-ology as a teen and thought I might find it interesting too."

---

Notes:

They're trying!

Comics are a collection of The Shadow. Yes, it is a shout out to The Weaver's Web.

Jaded!Taylor is not being subtle with the entomology book. At least she resisted the urge to annotate it.

Jesus Christ I just realized—I'm pretty sure I'm older now than Danny is at the start of Worm.

 

[dc2008]

"Director Piggot," the woman said respectfully.

"Dr. Weaver. I felt that going forward, it would be helpful to schedule these little check-ins periodically so as to make sure things go smoothly."

"Of course," the woman nodded.

"Firstly, I'm not sure if you've heard, but Calvert has put in for retirement. Medical. Unfortunate, but these things happen."

"I'm sure we will all feel his departure deeply."

"Hmm. Do you recall the incident with the package."

"Yes." Whatever else could be said, the woman had an amazing poker face. "What an unusual incident"

"I wonder why he never reported it. Really, he seemed remarkably unconcerned by it, as if being mailed a hand grenade was something entirely understandable and expected."

"Might it be related to the medical retirement?"

"It's possible. I pulled the security footage from his office. Perhaps your thinker can make something of it?"

There. Finally a small crack in her facade.

---

Note: Piggot is not stupid, but just maybe she can work with this madwoman.

 

[dc2008]

"What's all this?" Lisa looked at the equipment curiously.

"Director Piggot suggested you watch something to see what information you can derive, however I am concerned about how your power might react. Accordingly, we are taking cognitohazard precautions. You put it on, it starts the process, we expose you to the possible cognitohazard, and then we see what happens. Absent deliberate and conscious action by you, at the end of a short period your mind will be reset to the start."

Lisa laughed. "I don't know whether to be intrigued or insulted! Hit me, I can take it!"

Shortly thereafter

"Ow, my head." Lisa mumbled as she blinked her eyes. "What happened."

"In order, we watched a video, you discovered, quote, 'The Truth' behind, well, various things, and had a sort of power-driven fit. You were too distraught to trigger the retention process, so you reverted. Unfortunately the process doesn't do anything for the migraine."

---

Note: Yes, this was the Coil video. Lisa enjoyed the Coil reveal, then realized what he was afraid of, and things went downward from there