- Location
- Space
EVERYONE: Wait, your self destructs are voice controlled?
H+ Mayhem (Worm)
- Thread starter Jurric
- Start date
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- Tags
- worm tinker transhumanism mayhem
I'm hoping he fixed that particular security hole after that event.
Aside of that, it's kind of scary how well Trickster and Mayhem can get along in figuring out how to speed up results. The only other thing I can think Trickster doing for this is getting Mayhem more money, so he can build some of his more resource intensive manufacturing technologies...
I guess that's going to happen as well, isn't it?
I'm helping!
Also, I'm pretty certain you're deliberately taunting me. Let's see... Burnscar gets a beard, so.... I'm going to assume it's Adam and she's gonna actually be dating... Eeny meeny minnie.... TATTLETALE. Tattletale, you've been chosen to date the sociopath pyrokinetic! Come on doooooown, you're the next contestant on "Datcord's gotta fill in The Chart!" No, don't run. Don't run. IT WON'T HELP.
(Unless, of course, it's a LITERAL beard, which is a distinct possibility in a story with TWO bio-Tinkers. "Adam? Did you STAPLE a fake beard to Burnscar?" "No, it's not fake! I made it from her hair!" "But she still has all her-OH, EWWWW!")
Yes. Premature activation is something he should DEFINITELY avoid. I mean, look at that situation with Cricket! If he'd been able to keep her from setting him off unexpectedly, that never would have happened!
Cricket got a laser scythe from Mayhem a few chapters ago:
Given that he's ALREADY had Tattletale do something of the sort, I think it'd be a very short jump of logic to including something like this in his own tech, yeah.
No worries, cap'n! I will somehow soldier through the horror of reading it.
Good lord. What the hell are they attacking? Fort Knox?
...wow. This isn't even going to be a fight at all. I ALMOST feel sorry for the Merchants. ...ALMOST.
If anyone DID get shot, he had a chainsaw handy to remove the damaged bits and replace them!
Also, those should be masculine pronouns, shouldn't they? Thanks to Adam's
...this is the kind of surgery *I* want to have! (Seriously, it reminds me of the doctors from Empowered.)
I... I don't know what this is that I'm feeling. Is... is this joy? Is it joy I'm feeling? Whatever it is, Sveta is causing it.
You put FOURTEEN capes against the Merchants. The MERCHANTS. Calling this a slaughter would be SERIOUSLY understating it.
...please stop sounding so sad about that, Adam. You're really starting to creep people out.
Adam. Adam, listen to me. LISTEN TO ME. When you have the same idea as a member of the MERCHANTS... CHANGE YOUR FUCKING PLAN, YOU KNOB.
Oh, god! I recognize this feeling! This is the feeling of my heart growing two sizes! Damn you, Sveta! DAMN YOU! You're trying to make me feel feelings again and I WON'T HAVE IT!
Maybe she just doesn't want you to FUCKING KILL YOURSELF? Good lord, someone get this guy Yamada's phone number.
....*headdesk* From "I might have to live" to "I need to become a nuclear power" in 2.3 seconds. It's a new record for the "Jump from one bad idea to the other" Olympics!
And then Regent kicked him. A few times.
Couple things on this bit that I liked, for the record:
- The professionalism and speed that you showed them handling the fight with. When they work together, capes can be HORRIFICALLY effective. (I'm pretty sure the PRT is soiling themselves at this moment. Well, not Tagg. Tagg's probably already dead. Coil isn't known for delays in activating his plans.)
- The fact that you didn't let Skidmark talk. At all. (Seriously, fuck that guy.)
Also, the E88 aren't being written by Wildbow as an example of HOW CORRUPT THE SYSTEM IS NEVER TRUST PEOPLE IN AUTHORITY, so there's that.
...dear lord. Okay, you're never allowed to go anywhere without someone like Sveta ever again. Sort of an auxiliary conscience, basically.
NEVER MIND. DON'T WANT SURGERY FROM ADAM. IN FACT, I'M JUST GOING TO BE OVER HERE. CLUTCHING MYSELF AND WHIMPERING.
Said Mr. "My bedroom wasn't the best operating theater, but I still carved open my own skull there."
Well... Adam still has a few morals kicking around in there, at least. (Even if he IS rapidly following his sister's footsteps.)
"HHHHEEEEEEERRRREEEEE'S.... JACKY!"
Now THERE'S a motto!
Sveta is a GOOD lab assistant!
Think about that for a few minutes... and then try not to let the nightmares make you scream yourself awake.
Adam: "Not... ALL of them?"
Problem is, its just one big in-joke. It might be okay if you were writing crack, but it says absolutely nothing of relevance about the story.
- Location
- Australia
They should be, thanks, fixed.
Probably true. If a few other people feel the same way I'll have another go at it. I just thought that an in joke might encourage people to read and discover what the joke is all about.
4.3
- Location
- Australia
New Wave did show up, in that Laserdream and Lady Photon flew overhead once, but they didn't stop, land, or otherwise do anything but turn around and make a tactical retreat, possibly to get reinforcements.
I didn't blame them. Not all of us were outdoors at the time, but it was obvious that they were severely outnumbered.
Our little statement was over. Coil and Tattletale were working together with Regent and Grue to sort anyone in any sort of official position within the Merchants, and make sure that they were zip tied to something sturdy so the PRT could pick them up when they eventually arrived. The rest of the gang members we'd bothered to capture were going to be allowed to run, with a simple warning that all illegal activity now had to be done with the direct permission of The Gray.
I didn't like the name. I wanted something a little less bland. Something Latin maybe? But I wasn't going to kick up a fuss about it. It had been the only name we'd managed to all agree on in the end, when we met up and planned this strike. At least Coil didn't try to name the whole gang after himself, and we didn't have a snake motif as our symbol or anything. Worse names had been suggested.
Purity predictably had no problems prying Squealer from her half finished flamethrower truck, and the glowing woman brought the Tinker back for sedation with the rest of her gang.
This wasn't the only hideout the Merchants had, but it was the one that Skidmark had been using as his headquarters. Mush had been upstairs, and he did give Trainwreck something of a fight despite the fact he still had cracked ribs from his last clash with Glory Girl, but he surrendered when Circus and Genesis came in to assist. Whirlygig was still out there, but Trainwreck knew the hospital that she'd been left in, and felt that it probably wasn't necessary to go after her in her civilian ID. She'd run, if she was sensible, or ask to join, as Trainwreck had. And that was it. The Merchants were decapitated now. Between tazers, restraints and a couple of scalpels I'd handed out earlier the PRT shouldn't have any problems collecting and securing the Merchants we were leaving for them, even if they only sent out a skeleton squad.
So… I guess that was it. I was now part of the only gang remaining in the Bay, and they'd agreed to not be too evil. I still had things to do; Fix Noelle, finish Sveta's body, start sending out bomb drones targeting the Nine and whatever twisted organization made Sveta…
Hmm, I wonder what happened to Bakuda? I still remembered the frequencies I'd need to fiddle with her brain implant, but I hadn't had time to install a tracking device in it. Maybe I should try and find out where the PRT was keeping her? We were planning a jailbreak in the near future, and I really wanted to try some of her more exotic bombs against Crawler and the Siberian.
Coil had cars waiting to take us back to the base for a debriefing. I managed to get into the same one as Purity. I had the skeletal structure and false muscles completed and I'd left room for the flight system, pulse lasers and missile pods, but I still didn't know what Sveta actually wanted to look like, and it was important I knew now, because we were nearing the point where adjusting muscle and skeletal frame lengths became tricky.
A horrible thought occurred to me. If Sveta wanted an actually functional womb, I was going to have to cut out the primary missile pod. She'd only have the two smaller ones implanted in her shoulders. I wouldn't be able to put much ordinance at all into those. What could I remove to get a bit more space?
"Um, Purity. I was wondering if you could do me a favor." I said.
"Oh, what would you like me to do?" She asked. She wasn't glowing much at the moment, not even enough to conceal her face, and it made her significantly less intimidating.
"There are certain aspects of making Sveta's body that might be sort of… embarrassing to discuss with her. I was wondering if you could ask her exactly what sort of body she wants, and just how uh… realistic she wants it to be. Then you could write it down or something." I said.
Purity giggled.
"You think talking about these things is going to be more embarrassing than making them?" She said.
I became very interested in the houses blurring past outside the tinted window.
"Don't know." I said.
Purity laughed.
"I'm sorry Mayhem, but I don't think I'd be able to do that. Only you know what you can make, and it sounds like a very important discussion." She said.
I sighed. Well, there went that hope. Sure I could turn off my embarrassment, but if this little talk went the way I thought it would it was going to be absolutely mortifying when I thought back on it later. Again I considered trying to get Mayhem to do it. Again I quashed that idea as incredibly stupid.
We arrived back at the base, and I found several tasks waiting for me. My clone lay restrained and sedated on a side table. Noelle's scans might still hold secrets I hadn't pried from them. Taylor's spider legs were nearly finished fabricating. My organ growth farms would need tending.
In the end I did two things. First I made all my codewords require both verbal and mental commands so I wouldn't have another repeat of what nearly happened with my clone, and then I finished work on my new right hand, and cut off the original to install it. I'd be able to Tinker faster with the new prosthetic, and I'd nearly had it finished anyway. It was just delaying the issue though. Sooner or later I was going to have to talk with Sveta.
The next morning I was in my lab, putting the finishing touches on the molds for Taylor's spider legs while the cup of coffee in my hand slowly woke me up, when Trainwreck knocked on the lab door.
Sveta opened it for him. She seemed to like doing little things like opening doors, or at least she always smiled when she turned a door-knob. I didn't think much of it. Sveta was a happy person.
"Do you have a medical matter I need to deal with?" I asked as Sveta showed Trainwreck into my lab proper.
I'd had a good look at his tech while we were at Somer's Rock. I wasn't particularly impressed. Sure, I couldn't make armor like that without purchasing into the right tree, but it ran on steam power. When I made myself body armor it would run on small, high tech infinite energy generators, and it would be made of force-fields, or possibly some sort of lightweight super alloy. Or both. It would not look like someone had wrapped a truck around me. It would not be powered by steam.
The large man tilted his head a bit, and then sighed.
"Best if I showed you." He said.
The armor started to peel back around him, opening up the central compartment, which Trainwreck floated out of easily.
I looked him up and down, and sighed as well.
"I really am going to have to find a way to production line new bodies. Aren't I?" I said.
"'S not that bad. I am a Tinker, if you let me look at the bodies you're already making right now, maybe give me a few tips, I make my own." Trainwreck said, sort of lurching and drifting back into his suit.
I raised an eyebrow. Techno-organic full body replacement was a step up from harnessing steam. Still, he might be able to save me a bit of work.
"Do you have the control issues that Sveta and Noelle have?" I asked.
"Who is Noelle?"
Oh, right. The Travelers were keeping her secret. Forgot that.
"Another patient, forget I mentioned her. Do you?" I said. It might be hard to sedate someone who was partially gaseous.
"No, at least not dangerous control issues. Can force parts of my body to be steam or human, except head, that is always human. Body likes to be fifty fifty, human and steam, hard work to make it something else, even for little while. Can control which parts are which, to some degree." Trainwreck said.
I couldn't quite place his accent. I thought it was Russian at first, but that wasn't quite right. Considering he was a Case 53 I doubt even he knew quite where he was from.
His chest, right arm and leg had been nothing but billowing mist. It raised questions about how exactly his biology worked, but Sveta and Noelle raised similar questions. If my power didn't have an answer for me I just assumed that it was the same physics violating bullshit that let Aegis fly without any form of propulsion, or otherwise let any other cape do their thing.
"Interesting, and you can produce unlimited amounts of steam whenever you want to?" I said.
"Not quite unlimited, can still make things work." Trainwreck said with a shrug.
Well, I guess there wasn't anything particularly secret about Sveta's designs, I'd have to ask Noelle if she minded Trainwreck watching as I built her body, but I don't think she would, at least not until I started to put skin on it. Possibly not even until I actually put her in it.
No, wait, there was something else. Something I was trying to remember to do.
"What do you think Sveta, do you mind him studying my work?" I said.
"Of course not. It's nice to meet another Case 53." Sveta said, holding out her hand to shake Trainwrecks large, shoddily designed mitt.
I was going to have to install some sort of fumigator in the lab. Excess water vapor was not going to be any good for the electronics.
Trainwreck left to pick up parts, and to help Coil's mercenaries move his lab into this building. I looked around, and realized that if I didn't get this out of the way now then I might have to have this conversation with Trainwreck standing nearby, offering helpful advice. I could probably send him out the room while I made the external cosmetic components, but he would want to know the underlying method for making artificial skin, the difficulty of mimicking various body parts, etc, etc.
This was going to get worse before it got better.
I gulped, turned off my embarrassment, sat Sveta down in a comfortable chair and began spelling out the options that she had available.
Sveta's face slowly came to resemble a tomato. It was a long explanation.
"… but I thought I'd better get your input on the matter before I started." I said.
"I… um. Whatever is easiest." Sveta squeaked, looking like she really wanted to run away.
"Are you sure? This will be the body you're probably going to spend the rest of your life in." I told her.
"Yes?" She said, with a sort of hopeful wistfulness that I couldn't quite place.
It was really handy, being able to turn off emotions. If I still had my embarrassment enabled I'd probably want to take the easy way out as well. Still, even without embarrassment, other emotions were filling in to make this uncomfortable for me, empathy in particular was acting up.
I shook my head.
"Well Sveta, most of what I just described is fairly easy to make, why don't you just tell me which options you prefer?" I said.
"Um… the, um…"
Tattletale. Gods damn I could have got Tattletale to ask all this for me. Her power would make this whole thing easy. I could have given her some boxes to check on a form, she could pick whatever Sveta actually wanted, we'd have been golden. Why didn't I think of that earlier?
I didn't blame them. Not all of us were outdoors at the time, but it was obvious that they were severely outnumbered.
Our little statement was over. Coil and Tattletale were working together with Regent and Grue to sort anyone in any sort of official position within the Merchants, and make sure that they were zip tied to something sturdy so the PRT could pick them up when they eventually arrived. The rest of the gang members we'd bothered to capture were going to be allowed to run, with a simple warning that all illegal activity now had to be done with the direct permission of The Gray.
I didn't like the name. I wanted something a little less bland. Something Latin maybe? But I wasn't going to kick up a fuss about it. It had been the only name we'd managed to all agree on in the end, when we met up and planned this strike. At least Coil didn't try to name the whole gang after himself, and we didn't have a snake motif as our symbol or anything. Worse names had been suggested.
Purity predictably had no problems prying Squealer from her half finished flamethrower truck, and the glowing woman brought the Tinker back for sedation with the rest of her gang.
This wasn't the only hideout the Merchants had, but it was the one that Skidmark had been using as his headquarters. Mush had been upstairs, and he did give Trainwreck something of a fight despite the fact he still had cracked ribs from his last clash with Glory Girl, but he surrendered when Circus and Genesis came in to assist. Whirlygig was still out there, but Trainwreck knew the hospital that she'd been left in, and felt that it probably wasn't necessary to go after her in her civilian ID. She'd run, if she was sensible, or ask to join, as Trainwreck had. And that was it. The Merchants were decapitated now. Between tazers, restraints and a couple of scalpels I'd handed out earlier the PRT shouldn't have any problems collecting and securing the Merchants we were leaving for them, even if they only sent out a skeleton squad.
So… I guess that was it. I was now part of the only gang remaining in the Bay, and they'd agreed to not be too evil. I still had things to do; Fix Noelle, finish Sveta's body, start sending out bomb drones targeting the Nine and whatever twisted organization made Sveta…
Hmm, I wonder what happened to Bakuda? I still remembered the frequencies I'd need to fiddle with her brain implant, but I hadn't had time to install a tracking device in it. Maybe I should try and find out where the PRT was keeping her? We were planning a jailbreak in the near future, and I really wanted to try some of her more exotic bombs against Crawler and the Siberian.
Coil had cars waiting to take us back to the base for a debriefing. I managed to get into the same one as Purity. I had the skeletal structure and false muscles completed and I'd left room for the flight system, pulse lasers and missile pods, but I still didn't know what Sveta actually wanted to look like, and it was important I knew now, because we were nearing the point where adjusting muscle and skeletal frame lengths became tricky.
A horrible thought occurred to me. If Sveta wanted an actually functional womb, I was going to have to cut out the primary missile pod. She'd only have the two smaller ones implanted in her shoulders. I wouldn't be able to put much ordinance at all into those. What could I remove to get a bit more space?
"Um, Purity. I was wondering if you could do me a favor." I said.
"Oh, what would you like me to do?" She asked. She wasn't glowing much at the moment, not even enough to conceal her face, and it made her significantly less intimidating.
"There are certain aspects of making Sveta's body that might be sort of… embarrassing to discuss with her. I was wondering if you could ask her exactly what sort of body she wants, and just how uh… realistic she wants it to be. Then you could write it down or something." I said.
Purity giggled.
"You think talking about these things is going to be more embarrassing than making them?" She said.
I became very interested in the houses blurring past outside the tinted window.
"Don't know." I said.
Purity laughed.
"I'm sorry Mayhem, but I don't think I'd be able to do that. Only you know what you can make, and it sounds like a very important discussion." She said.
I sighed. Well, there went that hope. Sure I could turn off my embarrassment, but if this little talk went the way I thought it would it was going to be absolutely mortifying when I thought back on it later. Again I considered trying to get Mayhem to do it. Again I quashed that idea as incredibly stupid.
We arrived back at the base, and I found several tasks waiting for me. My clone lay restrained and sedated on a side table. Noelle's scans might still hold secrets I hadn't pried from them. Taylor's spider legs were nearly finished fabricating. My organ growth farms would need tending.
In the end I did two things. First I made all my codewords require both verbal and mental commands so I wouldn't have another repeat of what nearly happened with my clone, and then I finished work on my new right hand, and cut off the original to install it. I'd be able to Tinker faster with the new prosthetic, and I'd nearly had it finished anyway. It was just delaying the issue though. Sooner or later I was going to have to talk with Sveta.
The next morning I was in my lab, putting the finishing touches on the molds for Taylor's spider legs while the cup of coffee in my hand slowly woke me up, when Trainwreck knocked on the lab door.
Sveta opened it for him. She seemed to like doing little things like opening doors, or at least she always smiled when she turned a door-knob. I didn't think much of it. Sveta was a happy person.
"Do you have a medical matter I need to deal with?" I asked as Sveta showed Trainwreck into my lab proper.
I'd had a good look at his tech while we were at Somer's Rock. I wasn't particularly impressed. Sure, I couldn't make armor like that without purchasing into the right tree, but it ran on steam power. When I made myself body armor it would run on small, high tech infinite energy generators, and it would be made of force-fields, or possibly some sort of lightweight super alloy. Or both. It would not look like someone had wrapped a truck around me. It would not be powered by steam.
The large man tilted his head a bit, and then sighed.
"Best if I showed you." He said.
The armor started to peel back around him, opening up the central compartment, which Trainwreck floated out of easily.
I looked him up and down, and sighed as well.
"I really am going to have to find a way to production line new bodies. Aren't I?" I said.
"'S not that bad. I am a Tinker, if you let me look at the bodies you're already making right now, maybe give me a few tips, I make my own." Trainwreck said, sort of lurching and drifting back into his suit.
I raised an eyebrow. Techno-organic full body replacement was a step up from harnessing steam. Still, he might be able to save me a bit of work.
"Do you have the control issues that Sveta and Noelle have?" I asked.
"Who is Noelle?"
Oh, right. The Travelers were keeping her secret. Forgot that.
"Another patient, forget I mentioned her. Do you?" I said. It might be hard to sedate someone who was partially gaseous.
"No, at least not dangerous control issues. Can force parts of my body to be steam or human, except head, that is always human. Body likes to be fifty fifty, human and steam, hard work to make it something else, even for little while. Can control which parts are which, to some degree." Trainwreck said.
I couldn't quite place his accent. I thought it was Russian at first, but that wasn't quite right. Considering he was a Case 53 I doubt even he knew quite where he was from.
His chest, right arm and leg had been nothing but billowing mist. It raised questions about how exactly his biology worked, but Sveta and Noelle raised similar questions. If my power didn't have an answer for me I just assumed that it was the same physics violating bullshit that let Aegis fly without any form of propulsion, or otherwise let any other cape do their thing.
"Interesting, and you can produce unlimited amounts of steam whenever you want to?" I said.
"Not quite unlimited, can still make things work." Trainwreck said with a shrug.
Well, I guess there wasn't anything particularly secret about Sveta's designs, I'd have to ask Noelle if she minded Trainwreck watching as I built her body, but I don't think she would, at least not until I started to put skin on it. Possibly not even until I actually put her in it.
No, wait, there was something else. Something I was trying to remember to do.
"What do you think Sveta, do you mind him studying my work?" I said.
"Of course not. It's nice to meet another Case 53." Sveta said, holding out her hand to shake Trainwrecks large, shoddily designed mitt.
I was going to have to install some sort of fumigator in the lab. Excess water vapor was not going to be any good for the electronics.
Trainwreck left to pick up parts, and to help Coil's mercenaries move his lab into this building. I looked around, and realized that if I didn't get this out of the way now then I might have to have this conversation with Trainwreck standing nearby, offering helpful advice. I could probably send him out the room while I made the external cosmetic components, but he would want to know the underlying method for making artificial skin, the difficulty of mimicking various body parts, etc, etc.
This was going to get worse before it got better.
I gulped, turned off my embarrassment, sat Sveta down in a comfortable chair and began spelling out the options that she had available.
Sveta's face slowly came to resemble a tomato. It was a long explanation.
"… but I thought I'd better get your input on the matter before I started." I said.
"I… um. Whatever is easiest." Sveta squeaked, looking like she really wanted to run away.
"Are you sure? This will be the body you're probably going to spend the rest of your life in." I told her.
"Yes?" She said, with a sort of hopeful wistfulness that I couldn't quite place.
It was really handy, being able to turn off emotions. If I still had my embarrassment enabled I'd probably want to take the easy way out as well. Still, even without embarrassment, other emotions were filling in to make this uncomfortable for me, empathy in particular was acting up.
I shook my head.
"Well Sveta, most of what I just described is fairly easy to make, why don't you just tell me which options you prefer?" I said.
"Um… the, um…"
Tattletale. Gods damn I could have got Tattletale to ask all this for me. Her power would make this whole thing easy. I could have given her some boxes to check on a form, she could pick whatever Sveta actually wanted, we'd have been golden. Why didn't I think of that earlier?
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- Pronouns
- she/her
Doors have knobs, not nobs, and I'm glad to see Adam can recognise terrible ideas but still sad he didn't try delegating to Mayhem.
- Location
- Australia
Thanks, fixed.
You already tried that once, and you fucked it up.
The statement is, apparently, "There are dozens of us! Dozens!"
I haven't actually read Worm, so I'm just going to assume that the PRT uses the undead.
I love how Adam broadening the list of targets he wants to drone-bomb counts as a positive personal development for him. Way to overcome your tunnel vision, buddy!
If Sveta catches on to how excited Adam is about loading her up with weapons, she's going to ask him to turn her into a tank the size of a house just because she thinks that's what he would want. She'd probably be right.
And now I've got a mental image of Sveta the unstoppable Tinker-tank offering nervous apologies as she crushes all those who stand against her beneath her massive treads.
If you're really lucky, Sveta will tell you that she sexually identifies as an attack helicopter.
Weren't you just complaining about how Sveta is too careless about this sort of thing?
I love the contrast between Sveta's happy acceptance of other people and Adam's casual contempt for what other Tinkers can do. Stupid steam power.
Hey, I bet Trainwreck could make you a steam powered one!
Because this is way more funny. And also 'cause you're retarded, anti-matter missiles notwithstanding.
At this point I think delegating ANYTHING to Mayhem is a horrible idea.
He'd turn "Watch this paint dry." Into a running battle withe very faction of Brockton Bay at this point.
He'd turn "Watch this paint dry." Into a running battle withe very faction of Brockton Bay at this point.
In one easy, three step process.
1) This is boring.
2) Insufficient conflict.
3) Generating...
Good thought on the end of using a Thinker there, and it still isn't to late Mayhem, why not get Tattletale to help out on it?
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I find the contrast between casually considering murder and being unable to talk about female reproductive organs hilarious. And so very accurate for a character that's grown up in the United States.
I can't help but imagine this involving the sound of squealing brakes as they stop and make a HASTY retreat.
A statement with FOURTEEN capes. What do they consider a BIG statement, I wonder?
Really? THAT'S the name they went with? Sounds awfully... NEUTRAL!
Liam Neeson: "Tell me about it."
Purity's "The Whitewashers," for example. Circus suggested "Cake and Sodomy." (No one wanted ask if that was a name suggestion or an invitation for after the meeting.) Sveta offered "The Fixers (Who Help You By Cutting Your Brain Out And Have A Cute Butt Why Are You All Looking At Me Like That Excuse Me I Have To Go)." Regent, of course, opted for "The Pimpatorium."
Adam. ADAM. Normally, I wouldn't need to ask this, but... it's you. You... you didn't LITERALLY decapitate any of them, did you? It's just that I know you. You start getting these "great ideas" and....
Why do I get this feeling that either putting people in robot bodies or sending out bomb drones will end up being Adam's catch-all solution to everything?
"Hey, anyone want to order a pizza?"
"I've got just the thing to-"
"NO."
*helpless laughter* Oh, your god. Adam, you're... oh, man. Freud would have a FIELD DAY with you, dude. Plus, I *love* his priorities, here.
*puerile giggle* A line that features PROMINENTLY in various members of the E88's late night fantasies....
Five bucks says Tattletale already brought it up with her and they BOTH think Sveta's (HUGELY OBVIOUS) crush on Adam is both adorable AND something to be encouraged.
...well, we've discovered that there are levels of stupid that even ADAM won't stoop to. ...one level. One level of stupid.
Seriously, Adam, are you TRYING to get yourself put on a "too creepy to live" kill order? (Again, mental pictures of Adam standing over a row of vats in bib overalls and a straw hat going "Yeeep, the spleens are comin' in nice!")
Do you think that people just get inured to this sort of thing? You know, walk into his lab, see ANOTHER limb laying on the floor, and just sigh and shake their heads?
Also, why the hell hasn't he lopped off his legs yet? That's a LOT of wasted space and pointless meat, dude! You could fit SO MANY MISSILES in your femurs! Get the chainsaw already, you dope!
*puerile giggle*
...wait. Just how realistic looking are these prosthetics, anyways? I mean, are they obviously just big hunks of metal he's nailed to his own body? Because if they are, the PRT must shit themselves every time he's seen in public, you know? A day goes by and BAM! Mayhem has a new piece of hardware attached to himself. That whole "Never attack a Tinker in their lab" maxim REALLY works against you when the Tinker is wearing their lab all the time.
You haven't installed some sort of caffeine IV system already? You fucking SCRUB.
HNNNNG. Oh, god... I'm think I'm getting the diabeetus....
Which is down the road. VERY FAR down the road. Unless he figures out how to make body armor out of exploding drones....
It's okay, Adam. Pretty sure you're not legally required to abide by HIPAA. ...because you're not a doctor AND you're a villain. Technically. Until you kill a few of the S9, at least.
Maybe not even then! You don't know, maybe she's into that sorta thing! (Or maybe she won't give a shit, since she'll no longer be a multi-ton abomination and happy to show off that fact.)
A point: A dehumidifier is for removing excess water from the air. A fumigator is for removing excess bugs from the everything. (And if he doesn't have one of those already made and installed with SKITTER around, I'd be very disappointed in him.)
It had DIAGRAMS. It had EXAMPLES. It had BRANCHING OPTIONS, SOME OF WHICH HE FOUND ON TRICKSTER'S LAPTOP. (If Trickster didn't want Adam to look through his laptop, he shouldn't have left it in his room locked in that easily pickable safe buried under three feet of concrete and secured with that cheap 4096 RSA encryption!)
Uh... from what I can gather, that'd be Squealer, Sveta. Squealer is the easiest.
Seriously, she probably WOULD be happy with any body. Any body at ALL. It's better than what she had before. She can turn doorknobs now! DOORKNOBS!
Calling it: She's going to go with "Well, what do YOU think looks good? Yes, let's go with exactly that. EXACTLY. Whatever YOU would like to look at every day. Or night. Whenever you want, really. Or where ever...." (Adam, of course, would STILL MISS THE HINT.)
No, I don't think you could have. I'm almost CERTAIN she's decided that Sveta is the best way to keep your stupid ass alive at this point and is going to push her at your every chance she gets. ...possibly literally.
Well... it'd be one sure-fire method to get him inside her. *eyebrow waggle*
I want you to know that I'm reading key portions of that sentence as euphemisms and there's nothing you can do to stop me.
*puerile giggle* IT'S ON THE CHART.
Tisaku
Head Chief Thinkomancer
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
- Location
- Spaaaaace~!
Sveta gets to be a real girl after all! He still hasn't added skin and a touch component yet though, so it's all visual for now. Hopefully she's happy, aside from being traumatized from embarrassment?
He still hasn't added skin and a touch component yet though, so it's all visual for now. Hopefully she's happy, aside from being traumatized from embarrassment?I'm pretty sure they look extremely normal, right up until the tips split open and dozens of precision tinkering tentacles shoot out.
Like so:
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Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
I confess, typing on a keyboard like that does nothing but look cool. Having precision to that level could be neat for numerous tasks, but inputting keyboard commands aren't one of them.I'm pretty sure they look extremely normal, right up until the tips split open and dozens of precision tinkering tentacles shoot out.
Like so:
esotericist
A Weary Hand
- Location
- Lacey, WA
And great. Now here's that giggling I was afraid of.
I'm damaged goods now.
Re: story update: Yeah. Adam is still hilariously clueless and in the best of terrible ways.
Looking forward to seeing how this whole Noelle thing blows up on ... uh. Everyone?
Also, we haven't seen a whole lot about skitter. I'd think she'd be all over pestering Adam for shinies at this point.
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
Presumably they built a better keyboard, and possibly an interface to let specific subsets of finger tentacles operate in separate tabs at some point in between the stealth tanks, AI, and Borg Bikini Babes.
- Location
- Australia
4.4
- Location
- Australia
I didn't really think of Skitter as Taylor anymore. She'd grown into her cape name. It fit her, in a way that it hadn't just a few weeks ago. Something to do with the costume, with the way she moved, with how she didn't flinch when a door was thrown open by Trainwreck behind her, because she knew it was him, and there was no need to look around as he carried a tray of components into his own lab.
The spider legs I'd made would also help with the whole 'Skitter' image. She glanced at them as soon as she came into the lab, examining my work with a slightly critical tilt of her head.
I had plans to augment the other capes on the team as well, obviously, the trick was leveraging their parahuman power in such a way that it was easy for me to make things for them. I hadn't had a lot of ideas yet, and I was slightly hampered by not knowing exactly how many of their powers worked. Testing would be required, and I doubted that all of them would trust me enough for that. Perhaps if I just focused on fixing Noelle first, that might earn me some brownie points.
"I'm activating it now. The four legs are mapped to four of the legs on the spider. It should be even easier for you to manipulate than the drone." I told her.
Skitter nodded, and the legs lurched a bit, unfurling themselves from the boxlike shape they took when they were retracted and packed up.
They wobbled as they found purchase on the ground, and moved off the bench the package had been on, but they didn't fall as Skitter commanded them to come to her. She even figured out how to open the simple rings that would bind the legs around her chest and stomach, and she carefully lined them up so she could back into the spider-legs-backpack's embrace.
I was going to need a name for it. Something interesting. Something that encapsulated the design. Nope, couldn't think of anything. A quick Google said that the Latin word for spider was Stilio, so I'd call the backpack thing a Stilio. It was good enough.
"I don't think I ever actually thanked you, for getting the bullies in trouble. So thanks for that." Skitter said.
"It was good for me. It taught me never to trust the PRT. I was always going to have to learn that lesson sooner or later. I lost less work because it was sooner." I told her.
Skitter tilted her head a bit, her mask maintaining the same neutral expression it always held.
"Nevertheless, thank you. Arcadia is a far better school than Winslow."
"Manage to make any friends?" I asked, because it was something to say, and because Skitter wasn't having any problems figuring out the Stilio on her own. She was already held tightly in it, and as I watched all four legs braced carefully on the floor, and Skitter's body rose, supported by the new limbs.
"A few. No real close friends yet, but there are people I can actually talk to there." She said, carefully shifting one limb of the Stilio forward.
"The legs grip the ground in much the same way an insect's legs do, it won't be enough to hold your weight on a wall, but they'll have excellent grip on almost any surface. Make sure you lift the legs, instead of sliding them, I don't want to have to replace the pads too often." I told her.
Skitter nodded, lifted the leg carefully, and put it down, then lifted the next and did the same thing.
"Of course there are climbing spikes that you can use if you do need to climb walls." I said. Those spikes would also be useful weapons, but I trusted that Skitter would be inventive enough to use them that way against the Nine.
"How do I use them?" Skitter asked.
"They're mapped to the other four legs of the spider but I haven't enabled them yet. I wanted you to get the hang of the basics first, and I don't need holes in the walls of my lab. I was thinking once you had a chance to figure the rest out I'd enable the spikes, and send you to the boat graveyard to practice."
Skitter nodded, and took a few more steps.
"How fast can I push them?" She asked.
"No idea. That probably depends on how fast you can think of making the legs move. I imagine it will take a bit of practice."
Although the drone hadn't taken her much. Quite surprising really, just how quickly she was able to learn to control these things.
Skitter nodded, and lowered herself to the ground, then supported herself with her own legs, and two legs behind her while the two legs in front of her reared up and slashed the air a bit. Yep, she was already getting it. I wonder just what her power told her about my devices? Surely she could only sense the bugs brain, and the impulses I had mapped to it's motor neurons?
"On the subject of school, did you hear what happened to Emma?" Skitter asked. There was a note of something in her voice, but I couldn't identify what it was, not after it was distorted around the mask.
I knew a little. I didn't listen to the microphone in Tattletale's throat all the time, but I did have a program recording what it sent me, and that program flagged every mention of my name. Tattletale had talked about me to Skitter during their shopping trip yesterday afternoon. Mentioned this. Another recruit in the 'stop Mayhem killing himself club.' Maybe, maybe Tattletale had a bit of a point. That didn't mean that I wanted every man and his dog getting together in some sort of heartwarming intervention. That would be incredibly annoying and embarrassing.
Tattletale had taken Sveta shopping as well, that was where the two of them were right now, because, for what I understand was the first time in her memory, Sveta now needed clothes. I hadn't gotten around to finishing her completely yet, but she had skin over the majority of her body. It would be well worth whatever inevitable scheme Tattletale hatched not to have to take Sveta shopping myself.
"No. What happened to her?" I said, pulling my mind back to the current conversation. It was annoying, on the one hand the microphone in Tattletale's throat wouldn't be as effective if anyone knew about it, on the other hand, action on information I got from it was almost certainly going to tip Tattletale off, so I couldn't use that information. Ugh.
"She managed to get out of juvenile detention. There was this… plea bargain thing. She turned evidence on the others, and so she only got house arrest." Skitter said. "I wasn't particularly upset about that. I was going to Arcadia, which was all I really wanted, and Emma ruined her own social life for that privilege. I stayed up the night I heard what happened to her, thinking that maybe if I'd insisted, or tried to give a more damning testimony, I might have saved her. I've thought about it a long time, and I've talked about it with Zoe Barns, her mother, and with my dad. In the end, it wasn't my fault. I've come to accept that."
"What do you mean?" I said, idly sketching out a version of the Stilio that had kinetic emitters for flight and long range attacks. It would be quite easy to make and I might upgrade the one I'd made eventually, but for now it was a secondary concern. I needed to finish Noelle's new body as well, and help Trainwreck, and figure out how to get past Noelle's regeneration, and I wanted to upgrade my own body before I got into too much else.
Skitters power lent itself well to augmentations, I could use her as the equivalent of a decent AI, and it saved me from having to buy into the communications tree so I could get long range instant signal transmission. I was even fairly convinced that she would fight the Nine when the time came. Admittedly I had no real proof of this, I just had a hard time imagining her backing down. Still, Mayhem had said that she wanted to 'Shine as a hero,' and he was the one with the social analytic program, even if I had no idea how he designed it or where he got the processing power to run it, my brain shouldn't have had much space left over after it was converted to run combat prediction software.
"Emma wanted powers." Skitter explained. "Even under house arrest she was allowed to use the internet. Eventually she thought she found something. She left the house alone, in the dead of night, stole her dad's credit card, and her mothers jewelry. The anklet went off when she left her home of course, but it took the police a while to respond. I don't know why she thought she would get away with it. The anklet wasn't tampered with. Maybe she thought she'd be able to fix things once she got powers?"
Skitter sighed, somewhere between resignation and sadness.
"It's obvious in retrospect. If someone was selling powers, they wouldn't do so to teenage girls with barely enough money to buy a cheap car. When someone on the internet promises you things if you come alone to a dark and secluded place, that's a warning flag, right there."
I winced. I hadn't head that part, just that Skitter should tell me about Emma, and then I'd looked up the news story, and skimmed it very quickly.
"It went badly?" I said.
"Yeah, it went badly. I don't know specifics, Zoe didn't tell me, but the anklet saved her, at least sort of. Maybe whoever was waiting for her saw it, maybe they didn't. I don't know. Either way the police tracked her down, took her to a hospital. I don't know if they arrested anyone else, Zoe said the police were tight lipped. It was ongoing case, or something like that. They should probably have… I don't know, handcuffed her to the bed or something, but they didn't. She got up to the roof of the hospital somehow, and jumped."
"I… don't really know what to say. You're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, and all that." I said.
"She was stupid." Skitter said, in a soft voice without malice.
"Yeah. She was." I said.
"Are you stupid as well?" Skitter asked.
"You talked with Tattletale?" I said. I think I would have guessed that, even if I hadn't known. It was hard to tell just what I'd be able to figure out if I wasn't listening in on everything Tattletale said about me.
"Yes." She admitted.
I sighed, and made my way over to the desk, on which I was trying to construct a basic kinetic pulse gun. I was having trouble. Guns just weren't a field I'd bought into yet. I could augment humans, I could create modes of transport, I could create a few gadgets designed to be simple and not to draw attention. I even had a very limited command of reality altering energies in the form of my lightsabres, but taking the kinetic pulse weapon out of the human body, or a method of transportation? That was hard. I had to actually figure out how to make the trigger myself, instead of tying it into the flight system or the nervous system.
Guns were at the base of the weapons tree, but I was leery of breaking into it. The best tech was higher in the trees, it might be better to keep climbing, rather than continue to diversify. Three trees was enough. It wasn't like it was impossible to design a trigger on my own, I could make it so the tiny electrical signals flying through the brain of an insect controlled complex autonomous devices, obviously it was a simple matter of being creative enough with what I already knew. It was just taking me a little longer than I thought.
"Tell Tattletale that nothing will ever convince me not to attack the Nine." I said, leaning over my work. "But no. I'm not stupid. She can stop now. The suicide bomb idea is no longer relevant or necessary."
Skitter nodded.
"I'm glad. I know we're not exactly close Adam, but I do consider you a friend. It would be a shame to lose another one."
She was buttering me up. She'd probably seen the diagram, somehow figured out that it involved flight systems. She probably wanted to fly, or something. That had to be it.
Then I remembered the painfully shy, reserved girl at Winslow. The one with the ability to quietly kill her tormentors with spider venom. With a little thought it wouldn't be hard to make that sort of thing difficult to trace, but she'd held back, she hadn't tried to fit in, or fight back.
Emma really had been her friend once. Now I was her friend, and I was planning how to betray her before she betrayed me.
Shine as a hero, huh?
But she'd befriended the villains instead. Mayhem had pretended that he thought she was a villain, because he was an ass that way, and she probably went along with it out of some sort of misplaced loyalty and perhaps a desire to do the same sort of thing I did to the E88.
This was going to be an incredible mess when it all came out. She'd seen faces, learned names. And it would come out, there was no doubt about that. Tattletale probably already knew, although why she was keeping silent was beyond me. Sooner or later, Taylor would feel the need to act like a hero. I don't think it was in her nature to do otherwise.
But maybe, maybe that wasn't a bad thing. We were The Gray. Skitter could be a slightly lighter shade than the rest of us. Maybe, things could be manipulated in such a way that she was the team conscience. Or even just a moderating voice. Heroes didn't betray their friends.
I was going to have to think about this further.
The spider legs I'd made would also help with the whole 'Skitter' image. She glanced at them as soon as she came into the lab, examining my work with a slightly critical tilt of her head.
I had plans to augment the other capes on the team as well, obviously, the trick was leveraging their parahuman power in such a way that it was easy for me to make things for them. I hadn't had a lot of ideas yet, and I was slightly hampered by not knowing exactly how many of their powers worked. Testing would be required, and I doubted that all of them would trust me enough for that. Perhaps if I just focused on fixing Noelle first, that might earn me some brownie points.
"I'm activating it now. The four legs are mapped to four of the legs on the spider. It should be even easier for you to manipulate than the drone." I told her.
Skitter nodded, and the legs lurched a bit, unfurling themselves from the boxlike shape they took when they were retracted and packed up.
They wobbled as they found purchase on the ground, and moved off the bench the package had been on, but they didn't fall as Skitter commanded them to come to her. She even figured out how to open the simple rings that would bind the legs around her chest and stomach, and she carefully lined them up so she could back into the spider-legs-backpack's embrace.
I was going to need a name for it. Something interesting. Something that encapsulated the design. Nope, couldn't think of anything. A quick Google said that the Latin word for spider was Stilio, so I'd call the backpack thing a Stilio. It was good enough.
"I don't think I ever actually thanked you, for getting the bullies in trouble. So thanks for that." Skitter said.
"It was good for me. It taught me never to trust the PRT. I was always going to have to learn that lesson sooner or later. I lost less work because it was sooner." I told her.
Skitter tilted her head a bit, her mask maintaining the same neutral expression it always held.
"Nevertheless, thank you. Arcadia is a far better school than Winslow."
"Manage to make any friends?" I asked, because it was something to say, and because Skitter wasn't having any problems figuring out the Stilio on her own. She was already held tightly in it, and as I watched all four legs braced carefully on the floor, and Skitter's body rose, supported by the new limbs.
"A few. No real close friends yet, but there are people I can actually talk to there." She said, carefully shifting one limb of the Stilio forward.
"The legs grip the ground in much the same way an insect's legs do, it won't be enough to hold your weight on a wall, but they'll have excellent grip on almost any surface. Make sure you lift the legs, instead of sliding them, I don't want to have to replace the pads too often." I told her.
Skitter nodded, lifted the leg carefully, and put it down, then lifted the next and did the same thing.
"Of course there are climbing spikes that you can use if you do need to climb walls." I said. Those spikes would also be useful weapons, but I trusted that Skitter would be inventive enough to use them that way against the Nine.
"How do I use them?" Skitter asked.
"They're mapped to the other four legs of the spider but I haven't enabled them yet. I wanted you to get the hang of the basics first, and I don't need holes in the walls of my lab. I was thinking once you had a chance to figure the rest out I'd enable the spikes, and send you to the boat graveyard to practice."
Skitter nodded, and took a few more steps.
"How fast can I push them?" She asked.
"No idea. That probably depends on how fast you can think of making the legs move. I imagine it will take a bit of practice."
Although the drone hadn't taken her much. Quite surprising really, just how quickly she was able to learn to control these things.
Skitter nodded, and lowered herself to the ground, then supported herself with her own legs, and two legs behind her while the two legs in front of her reared up and slashed the air a bit. Yep, she was already getting it. I wonder just what her power told her about my devices? Surely she could only sense the bugs brain, and the impulses I had mapped to it's motor neurons?
"On the subject of school, did you hear what happened to Emma?" Skitter asked. There was a note of something in her voice, but I couldn't identify what it was, not after it was distorted around the mask.
I knew a little. I didn't listen to the microphone in Tattletale's throat all the time, but I did have a program recording what it sent me, and that program flagged every mention of my name. Tattletale had talked about me to Skitter during their shopping trip yesterday afternoon. Mentioned this. Another recruit in the 'stop Mayhem killing himself club.' Maybe, maybe Tattletale had a bit of a point. That didn't mean that I wanted every man and his dog getting together in some sort of heartwarming intervention. That would be incredibly annoying and embarrassing.
Tattletale had taken Sveta shopping as well, that was where the two of them were right now, because, for what I understand was the first time in her memory, Sveta now needed clothes. I hadn't gotten around to finishing her completely yet, but she had skin over the majority of her body. It would be well worth whatever inevitable scheme Tattletale hatched not to have to take Sveta shopping myself.
"No. What happened to her?" I said, pulling my mind back to the current conversation. It was annoying, on the one hand the microphone in Tattletale's throat wouldn't be as effective if anyone knew about it, on the other hand, action on information I got from it was almost certainly going to tip Tattletale off, so I couldn't use that information. Ugh.
"She managed to get out of juvenile detention. There was this… plea bargain thing. She turned evidence on the others, and so she only got house arrest." Skitter said. "I wasn't particularly upset about that. I was going to Arcadia, which was all I really wanted, and Emma ruined her own social life for that privilege. I stayed up the night I heard what happened to her, thinking that maybe if I'd insisted, or tried to give a more damning testimony, I might have saved her. I've thought about it a long time, and I've talked about it with Zoe Barns, her mother, and with my dad. In the end, it wasn't my fault. I've come to accept that."
"What do you mean?" I said, idly sketching out a version of the Stilio that had kinetic emitters for flight and long range attacks. It would be quite easy to make and I might upgrade the one I'd made eventually, but for now it was a secondary concern. I needed to finish Noelle's new body as well, and help Trainwreck, and figure out how to get past Noelle's regeneration, and I wanted to upgrade my own body before I got into too much else.
Skitters power lent itself well to augmentations, I could use her as the equivalent of a decent AI, and it saved me from having to buy into the communications tree so I could get long range instant signal transmission. I was even fairly convinced that she would fight the Nine when the time came. Admittedly I had no real proof of this, I just had a hard time imagining her backing down. Still, Mayhem had said that she wanted to 'Shine as a hero,' and he was the one with the social analytic program, even if I had no idea how he designed it or where he got the processing power to run it, my brain shouldn't have had much space left over after it was converted to run combat prediction software.
"Emma wanted powers." Skitter explained. "Even under house arrest she was allowed to use the internet. Eventually she thought she found something. She left the house alone, in the dead of night, stole her dad's credit card, and her mothers jewelry. The anklet went off when she left her home of course, but it took the police a while to respond. I don't know why she thought she would get away with it. The anklet wasn't tampered with. Maybe she thought she'd be able to fix things once she got powers?"
Skitter sighed, somewhere between resignation and sadness.
"It's obvious in retrospect. If someone was selling powers, they wouldn't do so to teenage girls with barely enough money to buy a cheap car. When someone on the internet promises you things if you come alone to a dark and secluded place, that's a warning flag, right there."
I winced. I hadn't head that part, just that Skitter should tell me about Emma, and then I'd looked up the news story, and skimmed it very quickly.
"It went badly?" I said.
"Yeah, it went badly. I don't know specifics, Zoe didn't tell me, but the anklet saved her, at least sort of. Maybe whoever was waiting for her saw it, maybe they didn't. I don't know. Either way the police tracked her down, took her to a hospital. I don't know if they arrested anyone else, Zoe said the police were tight lipped. It was ongoing case, or something like that. They should probably have… I don't know, handcuffed her to the bed or something, but they didn't. She got up to the roof of the hospital somehow, and jumped."
"I… don't really know what to say. You're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, and all that." I said.
"She was stupid." Skitter said, in a soft voice without malice.
"Yeah. She was." I said.
"Are you stupid as well?" Skitter asked.
"You talked with Tattletale?" I said. I think I would have guessed that, even if I hadn't known. It was hard to tell just what I'd be able to figure out if I wasn't listening in on everything Tattletale said about me.
"Yes." She admitted.
I sighed, and made my way over to the desk, on which I was trying to construct a basic kinetic pulse gun. I was having trouble. Guns just weren't a field I'd bought into yet. I could augment humans, I could create modes of transport, I could create a few gadgets designed to be simple and not to draw attention. I even had a very limited command of reality altering energies in the form of my lightsabres, but taking the kinetic pulse weapon out of the human body, or a method of transportation? That was hard. I had to actually figure out how to make the trigger myself, instead of tying it into the flight system or the nervous system.
Guns were at the base of the weapons tree, but I was leery of breaking into it. The best tech was higher in the trees, it might be better to keep climbing, rather than continue to diversify. Three trees was enough. It wasn't like it was impossible to design a trigger on my own, I could make it so the tiny electrical signals flying through the brain of an insect controlled complex autonomous devices, obviously it was a simple matter of being creative enough with what I already knew. It was just taking me a little longer than I thought.
"Tell Tattletale that nothing will ever convince me not to attack the Nine." I said, leaning over my work. "But no. I'm not stupid. She can stop now. The suicide bomb idea is no longer relevant or necessary."
Skitter nodded.
"I'm glad. I know we're not exactly close Adam, but I do consider you a friend. It would be a shame to lose another one."
She was buttering me up. She'd probably seen the diagram, somehow figured out that it involved flight systems. She probably wanted to fly, or something. That had to be it.
Then I remembered the painfully shy, reserved girl at Winslow. The one with the ability to quietly kill her tormentors with spider venom. With a little thought it wouldn't be hard to make that sort of thing difficult to trace, but she'd held back, she hadn't tried to fit in, or fight back.
Emma really had been her friend once. Now I was her friend, and I was planning how to betray her before she betrayed me.
Shine as a hero, huh?
But she'd befriended the villains instead. Mayhem had pretended that he thought she was a villain, because he was an ass that way, and she probably went along with it out of some sort of misplaced loyalty and perhaps a desire to do the same sort of thing I did to the E88.
This was going to be an incredible mess when it all came out. She'd seen faces, learned names. And it would come out, there was no doubt about that. Tattletale probably already knew, although why she was keeping silent was beyond me. Sooner or later, Taylor would feel the need to act like a hero. I don't think it was in her nature to do otherwise.
But maybe, maybe that wasn't a bad thing. We were The Gray. Skitter could be a slightly lighter shade than the rest of us. Maybe, things could be manipulated in such a way that she was the team conscience. Or even just a moderating voice. Heroes didn't betray their friends.
I was going to have to think about this further.
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- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Nevertheless
"Manage to make any friends?"
So, Adam's given up on suicide, huh? That's good news. I'll be interested to see what effect it has on Mayhem.
VoiceoftheAbyss
May or may not stare back.
- Location
- The Depths of the Eternal Abyss
This is going to end with Mayhem giving Taylor Global range. It will be glorious.
"The Broken Doll lists from puppet-strings, Adam, but what dangles may tug in turn and turn the hand above. We must survive."