I really like that Adam has come around to understanding Lisa's point of view on Taylor by accident. Yes, she really could be a friend, and will fight the 9 for and with you. As for the Grey, well, she's even easier to keep on side once you realize she just wants to be a hero. Right now the Grey are eliminating gangs. Just finish that job up, and make sure all your crime afterwards are property crimes rather than personal crimes. Let her know why the change, that it's her presence that has shaped the Grey into what they are and how they act. She's smart, she will realize that she can do a lot more to help as a 'villain' than a hero. And more, that they aren't really villains but rogues.
H+ Mayhem (Worm)
- Thread starter Jurric
- Start date
-
- Tags
- worm tinker transhumanism mayhem
"Brownie points" are evidently the currency used to get other people to let you replace their organs with missile launchers.
More Latin names for stuff. Adam, you are such a fucking nerd.
Of course there are.
"She tripped on the sidewalk and accidentally landed in a huge pile of lethally venomous spiders. I'm pretty sure it was the fall that killed her."
Oh, yes. Annoying and embarrassing. You can turn that off, you know. Pretty much turns the whole thing into a harmless team-building exercise.
Yes, and he's also suicidal, which is what you're asking here, but maybe you should find a less ambiguous way of asking the question so he doesn't blow up the moon to prove a point. Remember: Tinker with mad scientist tendencies. Gotta be careful to channel his revenge in useful directions.
"Man, it's really hard to design a force field with a manual activation instead of just turning on whenever I clench my butt."
"Why would you even design something like that?"
"Automatic response to danger. Nothing activates faster."
Sufficiently practical villains don't betray their friends either. I'm serious: one day Mayhem will be Hokage.
- Location
- Poland
A lot of people called Adam bad names and generally didn't like him, but I think this scene is a really good way to make him more sympathetic.
Don't get me wrong, Mayhem did steal the show and outshines Adam by a big margin, but this was kinda-sorta almost heartwarming. A couple more of things like this and we can go straight into dawww and waff territory. Plan "Redeem Adam with friendship" is a go.
Don't get me wrong, Mayhem did steal the show and outshines Adam by a big margin, but this was kinda-sorta almost heartwarming. A couple more of things like this and we can go straight into dawww and waff territory. Plan "Redeem Adam with friendship" is a go.
Don't get me wrong: I like Adam too, and Operation Get Adam Not to Kill Himself is entertaining and adorable (possibly just because Sveta is involved). I just call him an idiot all the time because he is kind of an idiot. Doesn't mean I don't like him, or that I don't think his social blind spots make the story better or anything like that.
Sveta is waffbot. There's really no way around that, and Adam's flaws make them good foils for each other.
Adam is such a loveable nerd.
- Pronouns
- she/her
-- Sveta
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
any friends?
an insect's legs
to her?
hadn't known.
was leery of
- Location
- Australia
Gotcha. Adam has "magic fingers." *eyebrow waggle*
Actually, related to that, I'm reminded of THIS.
However, despite offers from Adam "as long as he was making some", that was the ONLY thing that had grown on her.
"Hi, I'm Mike Rowe. Today, I'm going to... well, let's let Adam tell us that. Adam?"
"Well, Mike, we're gonna carve open a Case 53, cut her brain out, and shove it into a robot body!"
"Oh, neat! Is it him?"
"No, that's Trainwreck. He's building his own body still. We're gonna be working on HER!"
"I'LL KILL YOU ALL! EAT YOU! YOU'RE ALL MEAT! MEEEEAAATTT!"
"...."
"Don't worry, she does that sometimes. Whelp, let's begin! Hand me that scalpel!"
Okay, Adam? I *know* somewhere in those trees of yours there's some sort of design for a thing that names other things. GET IT AND BUILD IT.
Yes, Skitter, but... to be fair, that toothless guy on the street corner screaming about how the aliens have sent him to destroy the earth one atom at a time is a better school than Winslow.
I mean, ADAM has! ...technically. Sveta counts, right? ...and I guess technically Bakuda?
And, suddenly, multiple villains and "heroes" had a MAJOR shiver go up their spines.
*snerk* I appreciate how Adam just automatically assumes Skitter's going to help him. ...and he's probably right.
Eventually, we're going to get a Skitter interlude and I can't wait to see it!
C'mon, something horrible.... *crosses fingers*
Well, the discount card that comes with membership is accepted as so many places....
Well, I suppose it depends on how cold she is.... *eyebrow waggle*
*puerile giggle*
"Whatever. Don't let me kill the S9, make me be a 'better human being', don't give a shit. JUST NOT SHOPPING."
Welcome to I/CI, Adam. It's almost entirely annoying shit like that.
Wow. She rolled on them FAST.
Wow. Did your dad turn into a butcher, Taylor? Because THAT was ham handed as FUCK.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the Bay, Cricket gets this sudden hopeful tingle....
Huh. Shit, maybe Adam's NOT as dumb as we all thought! He's got Skitter pegged pretty much exactly!
So he convinced her to wash and wax his car!
So... I should cancel my date tonight, then? But they promised me candy!
Yes. "jumped." Somehow, I have a few doubts about this story. Perhaps I'm just suspicious and paranoid, though.
"A little."
All joking aside, though, this was a good little scene. I think that's the first time I've seen Emma handled like that (or at least handled like that WELL) and it worked very nicely. Also, the fact that Taylor's MOVED ON and can talk about Emme without bitterness or anger is... a good bit of character advancement without being maudlin or sappy.
Well done, Jurric!
"Now I'm going to use MULTIPLE bombs!"
*facepalm* You dumbass.
Which is REALLY ironic, because I'm honestly not so sure she wouldn't go the same way she did in canon.
*puerile giggle*
No, just EVERYONE ELSE.
Well, shit, son. I guess there's a first time for everything with you!
So... like... do I need to give actual Brownies, or...? I'm just asking because there's not a lot of Girl Scouts in my area, so I need to know the exact details before I go... "shopping."
It's the hat, isn't it. Everyone loves the hat....
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
Oh, I'm still going to call him bad names and generally dislike him, but this puts him at least twenty feet down the road to me finding some other target at which I shall explosively vent my spleen.
4.S
- Location
- Australia
In one timeline Sveta stood in front of a mirror, and giggled happily, spinning and letting the momentum lightly lift her arms, feeling the gentle flow of air wash over them, and the strands of her hair whip against her bare shoulders.
She stopped, slightly breathless when she started to get dizzy, and giggled as she gently moved her hair out of her eyes, and looked in the mirror again.
She was in a light summer dress, and it was enough to make her look completely human. There were still very subtle signs of her nature underneath the dress. Adam had needed access hatches, so he could perform maintenance, and while the edges of those hatches were barely visible lines, they were there, thin lines where her skin was designed to part whenever she needed her internal workings fixed. One large hatch on her back, one on each shoulder. Not much, easy to keep covered when she needed to.
That didn't matter, Adam had said her body was finished, and it was perfect.
Sveta pulled her fingers through her hair, enjoying the sensation of the strands tugging lightly on her fingers, and then looked at her hand and traced the faint lines on the palm of it with her eyes and the finger tips of her other hand, marveling at the soft, pale skin, and the way she could feel every bump and ridge in her own palm.
There was a very faint whirling noise when she clenched her fingers tightly, but she had to have her hand next to her ear to hear it, so that was fine. She kind of liked it, Adam's hands made the same noise.
In one timeline Sveta screamed as a flamethrower seared her skin from the metallic undercoating beneath. She raised her arm desperately, firing on instinct. She screamed again when the pulse ruptured the tank on the flamethrower, killing the man standing on it and three men around him. It was a gasping cry of horror and fear, a cry of pain less physical, but no less real.
She was a killer again.
It didn't stop her, she continued through the base, ignoring the hail of bullets.
Sveta looked around the large, empty concrete room, checking again that there wasn't anyone around to see her, bit her lip lightly and then addressed the mirror. She'd gotten into the habit of talking to her tendrils, it had helped a little, vocalizing what she wanted them to do. That habit had transferred over to her new body. It was embarrassing though, the one time Adam had caught her talking to her new arm, the first body part he'd made, he'd just looked at her, to see if she was talking to him.
"So… you're my new body now. You're very nice. And pretty." Sveta said awkwardly. Her tendrils had been different, there had been this odd feeling… like they were listening to her. Not in the way a human did, but in the way an animal did, listening to the tone of her voice. Sometimes, when she was very calm, they'd done what she said.
"Adam says that I'll need weekly maintenance. I hope that you don't give him any trouble." She admonished.
As much as she searched, she couldn't feel that sensation from her new body. It didn't listen to her, it was her. There was no intelligence in there that wasn't her own. It was comforting, to talk and have nothing listen.
Sveta sobbed as the lasers cut into the metal of her body. She raised her arm and fired, and fired again, but the mercenaries were expecting that now, they moved out of the way, or let the kinetic pulses fling them to the ground, getting back up immediately. They were wearing gas masks, so she couldn't knock them out, they were moving too fast for her to grab them, they flanked her, attacking when her back was turned, focusing their fire on the same spot to increase their cutting speed.
The lasers that struck her face weren't a problem, even the one that hit her in the eye did nothing but temporarily dazzle her. The ones that struck her new body though, the body Adam had barely been able to finish. The only body she'd ever had that obeyed her will…
Slowly Sveta's tears dried. It terrified her how easily her mind went to her next option. It terrified her how easily her mind let her think the phrase she needed. The words 'release protocol' didn't even seem to choke her as they left her dry throat.
Sveta's back split open, her artificial spine widened, and her tendrils poured out, floating in soft waves beneath her hair. She'd wanted them locked away forever, Adam wanted to see if he could get them under her control. She could probably have convinced him to do what she wanted, if she'd summoned the courage to ask. The tendrils flickered briefly. Found targets. Tightened. The men who were shooting her died as blood flowed from their broken bodies.
"Are you going to turn on me now?" She asked quietly, as the last of the mercenaries fell.
She paused, and the tendrils didn't answer, floating serenely, dripping blood onto the concrete floor.
"I'm glad you approve." She said, walking forward purposefully.
Sveta looked around the room again, and then carefully took the mirror off the wall, and placed it outside in the hallway. She walked back into the concrete room, and checked that there wasn't anything breakable in it. The room was very bare, without windows, but the lightbulb might be a problem. The trouble was that if she took it out, she wouldn't be able to see. Or would she? Adam had said something about a flashlight.
Sveta went back outside, to where she'd left her backpack. It was a kit of things that she or Adam might need at any given time. A book and a sedative gas grenade for her, and a lot of surgical tools and chemicals for Adam.
She took out the book, which was a collection of both her and Adam's notes about her body. He'd tried to write a manual, so she knew what she could do, but he'd been barely a page into it before he sighed, and banged his head against the keyboard repeatedly. He had given her some instructions, and a lot of it was fairly easy to figure out, but after a while he wanted to get back to working on Noelle's body, and so he told her to go practice on her own for a while, and passed her his notes from when he was still working on her body.
She'd read those notes, though she couldn't understand any of it. The part that had been written with coffee stains was particularly hard to read, but she'd soldiered on, and maybe, if she paid a lot of attention while Adam was working, she'd figure some of it out later. It would be nice if she could look after herself a bit, instead of having to rely on him all the time. He was very busy.
She found the section she was looking for, and beamed.
"Luminous." She said, and her pale skin started glowing with a soft blue.
"He he." She giggled. "I'm a glow lamp." She looked down at at her arms and legs, and she realised she had no idea how to turn this off.
She hoped she hadn't broken her body already.
"Um. Luminous?" She said.
The glow flickered out.
Phew. That was a relief.
She went to the janitors closet she used when she wanted to clean things and found a ladder, and took it back to the large concrete room, then she turned on her glow again, turned out the light, and carefully unscrewed the light bulb. The holder for the light might get broken if she hit it, which was worrying, but if she tried to take that out there would probably be wires and things. She wasn't sure if she knew how to do that properly.
She put the ladder back, went back into the concrete room, and looked around again. She realized she'd left the sturdy steel door open, and closed it. She really didn't want to break anything when she tried to fly. Adam had assured her that she couldn't damage her body, nothing except her skin, which would heal and grow back quickly, but she was still heavy and quite hard if she hit something, so she'd looked through Coil's base for a nice place to practice, where she couldn't hurt anyone, or anything.
Sveta winced as something exploded outside. Coil had somehow called New Wave in to save himself. Noelle was fighting them now, along with two of Sveta's clones. Her friend was too big to hide after this. New Wave or the Protectorate would find a way to stop the rampaging monster, and save the day. There would be congratulation, and a news report on the brave heroes. That was probably for the best. Sveta hoped that someone found a way to stop her as well.
Mines detonated in the stairwell in front of her, badly mangling one arm, and leaving the inner workings of her chest exposed and sparking. The simple bags that contained her organs were damaged, but Sveta didn't feel like they were hurt. They were as tough as the rest of her, really.
The metal in her body groaned as she forced herself to keep climbing the destroyed stairs, her tendrils now angrily lashing the walls ahead of her, tripping the extra mines before they could detonate. Ahead a large steel door loomed, solid despite the detonations of the mines in front of it.
Sveta glared at it, and two hatches on her shoulders rose, and a small swarm of missiles struck the door.
It was still standing when the smoke cleared, but Sveta was able to grab an edge of hot, bent metal and pull. Metal ground on metal, and for a second it looked like her arm was going to give way before the door did, but then her tendrils wrapped themselves around the cooling steel, and pulled with her. The door shrieked as it was pulled from it's hinges.
Sveta leaned back slightly, in a room lit softly by the glow of her own body, and the glow increased as her palms, feet and small ports in her back started to gently release kinetic energy. She gulped, the glow stopped rising, and Sveta walked once around the room, humming a tune she had heard earlier.
It wasn't that Sveta didn't like flying exactly. It was just that walking was more fun. Walking got you places. You picked a direction, and your legs took you there, they didn't do it on their own, you had to tell them to take each step, and that was part of what made it so fun.
Flying was fun too, but it could be very scary if you lost control. She had asked Adam how he could fly so easily, and he said that his powers probably helped him use the technology he created. That made sense. Adam had a really cool power.
Sveta finished her walk, and then started crouched slightly to practice hovering again. This time she dialed up the energy output until her feet left the ground. The sensation of floating freely was odd, but not particularly unpleasant.
There was the sound of footsteps outside, and Sveta cut the generators with a soft eep and landed on her bottom. It wasn't particularly dignified, but what if Adam had walked in here, and she lost control and ran into him? That would be really bad.
The footsteps passed, and Sveta smiled at herself for being a worrywart. It was probably just one of the patrolling mercenaries. They were a bit scary, but they'd always been nice to her. She'd gotten lost once, when she first came to this base, and they were very polite when they escorted her back to Adam's lab. They'd barely stared at her mechanical body at all.
Her bottom felt a bit sore, but that just made Sveta smile more. Adam had told her of a way to turn off the pain she could feel through her new skin, but it didn't hurt much, and it reminded her that she actually had a body. It made her feel it, in the same way that the wind flowing against her skin and the coarse fabric of her dress made her feel it. It made it real.
Please let it be real.
"WHY DID YOU DO THIS!" Sveta yelled, throwing a chair out of her way hard enough for it to splinter against the far wall.
"The Grey was yours, why would you destroy it?" Sveta said, her volume dropping and her words taking on an almost pleading tone as she remembered the meeting. The bomb. The dead.
"Please. Please I'm just the body double. He told me I'd be safe, told me to subtly ask you what other contingencies Mayhem had in place. Please, I can tell you which way he went!" The man in Coil's clothes said, as her tendrils dragged him from under his desk.
Sveta turned away, sickened by the screams as his body was broken and torn apart. She could turn her tendrils off now. She should. She should turn them off, and hide, and try to find Coil before her body broke beyond repair.
"I'm sorry." She whispered. "You looked like him."
Then there was a white hot flare, something that melted the concrete she was standing on.
When she woke she was buried, suffocating, her tendrils working quickly, seeking gaps and leverage to pull her from the rubble of Coil's main base. They pulled her head after them, pulled it through the gaps and cracks, making them when it was needed. They pulled her organs, wrapped in a thin protective layer of tendrils, despite the sacks of tissue being able to survive the blast that had destroyed her new body.
Sveta rose a little bit higher this time, and tried to be a little bit adventurous, and straighten up. It didn't work well, she tilted too far forwards. Her instincts said to fling her hands around, and to try to correct, but she didn't like those instincts, they tried to make her do things she wasn't really thinking about. Things that might hurt someone if she wasn't careful. Instead she let herself tilt over and smash head first into the concrete floor. It didn't hurt at all, which was fine. She should try and land on her head more in future, so her body didn't get damaged.
The third time she tried hovering she just stayed there, slowly growing accustomed to being out of contact with the ground, she started to drift slightly left, but it was slow enough that she didn't mind it much. She marginally increased thrust to her left side flight thingies, (Adam had called them everything from kinetic thrusters, to emitters, to flight disks, she tried to use those words when she was around him, but she was sure she was always getting it wrong somehow,) and that changed her direction. It wasn't that hard.
"Yay for flying." She said eventually, bobbing a little in place before settling down gently on the floor. Flying wasn't bad, she just had to be careful, and make sure she didn't lose control. It was fine, all her flying bits did what she told them to, just like her new body did. Walking was still better though.
She went back outside the room, grabbed the ladder, put the light bulb back in, and then put on the backpack, and took the mirror back to where she found it.
She didn't particularly like being very strong, it wasn't bad exactly, she would have been careful with how she moved anyway, but it did mean she had to be careful, or else she might hurt someone. Still, being strong let her carry a lot of things in the backpack very easily. She was slowly assembling a sort of mobile lab for Adam, and it would be very difficult to carry all that if she was a normal girl.
In one timeline Sveta went back to the lab, and watched Adam Tinker, and smiled happily as she gave him tools when he absentmindedly demanded them.
In one timeline, Sveta was taken aside by a mercenary, who told her that an important emergency meeting had been called, and she was to meet with the other capes in the upstairs meeting room as soon as possible.
She stopped, slightly breathless when she started to get dizzy, and giggled as she gently moved her hair out of her eyes, and looked in the mirror again.
She was in a light summer dress, and it was enough to make her look completely human. There were still very subtle signs of her nature underneath the dress. Adam had needed access hatches, so he could perform maintenance, and while the edges of those hatches were barely visible lines, they were there, thin lines where her skin was designed to part whenever she needed her internal workings fixed. One large hatch on her back, one on each shoulder. Not much, easy to keep covered when she needed to.
That didn't matter, Adam had said her body was finished, and it was perfect.
Sveta pulled her fingers through her hair, enjoying the sensation of the strands tugging lightly on her fingers, and then looked at her hand and traced the faint lines on the palm of it with her eyes and the finger tips of her other hand, marveling at the soft, pale skin, and the way she could feel every bump and ridge in her own palm.
There was a very faint whirling noise when she clenched her fingers tightly, but she had to have her hand next to her ear to hear it, so that was fine. She kind of liked it, Adam's hands made the same noise.
In one timeline Sveta screamed as a flamethrower seared her skin from the metallic undercoating beneath. She raised her arm desperately, firing on instinct. She screamed again when the pulse ruptured the tank on the flamethrower, killing the man standing on it and three men around him. It was a gasping cry of horror and fear, a cry of pain less physical, but no less real.
She was a killer again.
It didn't stop her, she continued through the base, ignoring the hail of bullets.
Sveta looked around the large, empty concrete room, checking again that there wasn't anyone around to see her, bit her lip lightly and then addressed the mirror. She'd gotten into the habit of talking to her tendrils, it had helped a little, vocalizing what she wanted them to do. That habit had transferred over to her new body. It was embarrassing though, the one time Adam had caught her talking to her new arm, the first body part he'd made, he'd just looked at her, to see if she was talking to him.
"So… you're my new body now. You're very nice. And pretty." Sveta said awkwardly. Her tendrils had been different, there had been this odd feeling… like they were listening to her. Not in the way a human did, but in the way an animal did, listening to the tone of her voice. Sometimes, when she was very calm, they'd done what she said.
"Adam says that I'll need weekly maintenance. I hope that you don't give him any trouble." She admonished.
As much as she searched, she couldn't feel that sensation from her new body. It didn't listen to her, it was her. There was no intelligence in there that wasn't her own. It was comforting, to talk and have nothing listen.
Sveta sobbed as the lasers cut into the metal of her body. She raised her arm and fired, and fired again, but the mercenaries were expecting that now, they moved out of the way, or let the kinetic pulses fling them to the ground, getting back up immediately. They were wearing gas masks, so she couldn't knock them out, they were moving too fast for her to grab them, they flanked her, attacking when her back was turned, focusing their fire on the same spot to increase their cutting speed.
The lasers that struck her face weren't a problem, even the one that hit her in the eye did nothing but temporarily dazzle her. The ones that struck her new body though, the body Adam had barely been able to finish. The only body she'd ever had that obeyed her will…
Slowly Sveta's tears dried. It terrified her how easily her mind went to her next option. It terrified her how easily her mind let her think the phrase she needed. The words 'release protocol' didn't even seem to choke her as they left her dry throat.
Sveta's back split open, her artificial spine widened, and her tendrils poured out, floating in soft waves beneath her hair. She'd wanted them locked away forever, Adam wanted to see if he could get them under her control. She could probably have convinced him to do what she wanted, if she'd summoned the courage to ask. The tendrils flickered briefly. Found targets. Tightened. The men who were shooting her died as blood flowed from their broken bodies.
"Are you going to turn on me now?" She asked quietly, as the last of the mercenaries fell.
She paused, and the tendrils didn't answer, floating serenely, dripping blood onto the concrete floor.
"I'm glad you approve." She said, walking forward purposefully.
Sveta looked around the room again, and then carefully took the mirror off the wall, and placed it outside in the hallway. She walked back into the concrete room, and checked that there wasn't anything breakable in it. The room was very bare, without windows, but the lightbulb might be a problem. The trouble was that if she took it out, she wouldn't be able to see. Or would she? Adam had said something about a flashlight.
Sveta went back outside, to where she'd left her backpack. It was a kit of things that she or Adam might need at any given time. A book and a sedative gas grenade for her, and a lot of surgical tools and chemicals for Adam.
She took out the book, which was a collection of both her and Adam's notes about her body. He'd tried to write a manual, so she knew what she could do, but he'd been barely a page into it before he sighed, and banged his head against the keyboard repeatedly. He had given her some instructions, and a lot of it was fairly easy to figure out, but after a while he wanted to get back to working on Noelle's body, and so he told her to go practice on her own for a while, and passed her his notes from when he was still working on her body.
She'd read those notes, though she couldn't understand any of it. The part that had been written with coffee stains was particularly hard to read, but she'd soldiered on, and maybe, if she paid a lot of attention while Adam was working, she'd figure some of it out later. It would be nice if she could look after herself a bit, instead of having to rely on him all the time. He was very busy.
She found the section she was looking for, and beamed.
"Luminous." She said, and her pale skin started glowing with a soft blue.
"He he." She giggled. "I'm a glow lamp." She looked down at at her arms and legs, and she realised she had no idea how to turn this off.
She hoped she hadn't broken her body already.
"Um. Luminous?" She said.
The glow flickered out.
Phew. That was a relief.
She went to the janitors closet she used when she wanted to clean things and found a ladder, and took it back to the large concrete room, then she turned on her glow again, turned out the light, and carefully unscrewed the light bulb. The holder for the light might get broken if she hit it, which was worrying, but if she tried to take that out there would probably be wires and things. She wasn't sure if she knew how to do that properly.
She put the ladder back, went back into the concrete room, and looked around again. She realized she'd left the sturdy steel door open, and closed it. She really didn't want to break anything when she tried to fly. Adam had assured her that she couldn't damage her body, nothing except her skin, which would heal and grow back quickly, but she was still heavy and quite hard if she hit something, so she'd looked through Coil's base for a nice place to practice, where she couldn't hurt anyone, or anything.
Sveta winced as something exploded outside. Coil had somehow called New Wave in to save himself. Noelle was fighting them now, along with two of Sveta's clones. Her friend was too big to hide after this. New Wave or the Protectorate would find a way to stop the rampaging monster, and save the day. There would be congratulation, and a news report on the brave heroes. That was probably for the best. Sveta hoped that someone found a way to stop her as well.
Mines detonated in the stairwell in front of her, badly mangling one arm, and leaving the inner workings of her chest exposed and sparking. The simple bags that contained her organs were damaged, but Sveta didn't feel like they were hurt. They were as tough as the rest of her, really.
The metal in her body groaned as she forced herself to keep climbing the destroyed stairs, her tendrils now angrily lashing the walls ahead of her, tripping the extra mines before they could detonate. Ahead a large steel door loomed, solid despite the detonations of the mines in front of it.
Sveta glared at it, and two hatches on her shoulders rose, and a small swarm of missiles struck the door.
It was still standing when the smoke cleared, but Sveta was able to grab an edge of hot, bent metal and pull. Metal ground on metal, and for a second it looked like her arm was going to give way before the door did, but then her tendrils wrapped themselves around the cooling steel, and pulled with her. The door shrieked as it was pulled from it's hinges.
Sveta leaned back slightly, in a room lit softly by the glow of her own body, and the glow increased as her palms, feet and small ports in her back started to gently release kinetic energy. She gulped, the glow stopped rising, and Sveta walked once around the room, humming a tune she had heard earlier.
It wasn't that Sveta didn't like flying exactly. It was just that walking was more fun. Walking got you places. You picked a direction, and your legs took you there, they didn't do it on their own, you had to tell them to take each step, and that was part of what made it so fun.
Flying was fun too, but it could be very scary if you lost control. She had asked Adam how he could fly so easily, and he said that his powers probably helped him use the technology he created. That made sense. Adam had a really cool power.
Sveta finished her walk, and then started crouched slightly to practice hovering again. This time she dialed up the energy output until her feet left the ground. The sensation of floating freely was odd, but not particularly unpleasant.
There was the sound of footsteps outside, and Sveta cut the generators with a soft eep and landed on her bottom. It wasn't particularly dignified, but what if Adam had walked in here, and she lost control and ran into him? That would be really bad.
The footsteps passed, and Sveta smiled at herself for being a worrywart. It was probably just one of the patrolling mercenaries. They were a bit scary, but they'd always been nice to her. She'd gotten lost once, when she first came to this base, and they were very polite when they escorted her back to Adam's lab. They'd barely stared at her mechanical body at all.
Her bottom felt a bit sore, but that just made Sveta smile more. Adam had told her of a way to turn off the pain she could feel through her new skin, but it didn't hurt much, and it reminded her that she actually had a body. It made her feel it, in the same way that the wind flowing against her skin and the coarse fabric of her dress made her feel it. It made it real.
Please let it be real.
"WHY DID YOU DO THIS!" Sveta yelled, throwing a chair out of her way hard enough for it to splinter against the far wall.
"The Grey was yours, why would you destroy it?" Sveta said, her volume dropping and her words taking on an almost pleading tone as she remembered the meeting. The bomb. The dead.
"Please. Please I'm just the body double. He told me I'd be safe, told me to subtly ask you what other contingencies Mayhem had in place. Please, I can tell you which way he went!" The man in Coil's clothes said, as her tendrils dragged him from under his desk.
Sveta turned away, sickened by the screams as his body was broken and torn apart. She could turn her tendrils off now. She should. She should turn them off, and hide, and try to find Coil before her body broke beyond repair.
"I'm sorry." She whispered. "You looked like him."
Then there was a white hot flare, something that melted the concrete she was standing on.
When she woke she was buried, suffocating, her tendrils working quickly, seeking gaps and leverage to pull her from the rubble of Coil's main base. They pulled her head after them, pulled it through the gaps and cracks, making them when it was needed. They pulled her organs, wrapped in a thin protective layer of tendrils, despite the sacks of tissue being able to survive the blast that had destroyed her new body.
Sveta rose a little bit higher this time, and tried to be a little bit adventurous, and straighten up. It didn't work well, she tilted too far forwards. Her instincts said to fling her hands around, and to try to correct, but she didn't like those instincts, they tried to make her do things she wasn't really thinking about. Things that might hurt someone if she wasn't careful. Instead she let herself tilt over and smash head first into the concrete floor. It didn't hurt at all, which was fine. She should try and land on her head more in future, so her body didn't get damaged.
The third time she tried hovering she just stayed there, slowly growing accustomed to being out of contact with the ground, she started to drift slightly left, but it was slow enough that she didn't mind it much. She marginally increased thrust to her left side flight thingies, (Adam had called them everything from kinetic thrusters, to emitters, to flight disks, she tried to use those words when she was around him, but she was sure she was always getting it wrong somehow,) and that changed her direction. It wasn't that hard.
"Yay for flying." She said eventually, bobbing a little in place before settling down gently on the floor. Flying wasn't bad, she just had to be careful, and make sure she didn't lose control. It was fine, all her flying bits did what she told them to, just like her new body did. Walking was still better though.
She went back outside the room, grabbed the ladder, put the light bulb back in, and then put on the backpack, and took the mirror back to where she found it.
She didn't particularly like being very strong, it wasn't bad exactly, she would have been careful with how she moved anyway, but it did mean she had to be careful, or else she might hurt someone. Still, being strong let her carry a lot of things in the backpack very easily. She was slowly assembling a sort of mobile lab for Adam, and it would be very difficult to carry all that if she was a normal girl.
In one timeline Sveta went back to the lab, and watched Adam Tinker, and smiled happily as she gave him tools when he absentmindedly demanded them.
In one timeline, Sveta was taken aside by a mercenary, who told her that an important emergency meeting had been called, and she was to meet with the other capes in the upstairs meeting room as soon as possible.
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Legion1771
The God
Fucking Coil. Always causing problems even when he might not actually be causing problems.
- Location
- Canada
A lack of consequences can make even good men do some horrible things. Coil was never a good man.
All of those stories about people losing their morality due to immortality or time loops? Coil effectively lives them.
And he wasn't the most stable of the bunch before that either.
Tisaku
Head Chief Thinkomancer
I am somewhat curious as to how you reached that conclusion. The only mention of either of those groups was that Coil called in New Wave against Noelle, everything else was, basically Coil being a... Well, Coil.
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
in front of her
grab and edge off hot, bent
Wonder what Coil is up to. He wants to find out Mayhem's plans, certainly, but what else...
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Sveta is just as adorable as ever. Not quite at the levels of "Wheeee!" but close.
As to the whole "Coil killing everyone" thing -- things never have consequences for him unless he allows it or gets stuck in a very strange position. I find it perfectly believable that he would occasionally try things like destructive testing.
As to the whole "Coil killing everyone" thing -- things never have consequences for him unless he allows it or gets stuck in a very strange position. I find it perfectly believable that he would occasionally try things like destructive testing.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Legion1771
The God
apeljohn
Non-Player Character
- Location
- Earth Aleph
How is this idiotic? Mayhem has already betrayed and destroyed one organisation he was part of; keeping an eye on his capabilities is just common sense. And, as a Thinker, the main way Coil can do that is by using his powers to find out how Mayhem reacts to being attacked. If Tattletale was in charge of the Grey, you can bet that she'd be frantically using her powers on Adam, and no-one would bat an eyelid.
If Coil was doing it because he enjoyed their pain, you might have a point. It's like how even people who don't care about animals can be against animal cruelty: sadistic tendencies aren't something you can just switch off once you've developed them.
But this doesn't seem to be that kind of attack: he's genuinely trying to understand people who might one day be a threat to him by harmlessly exploring hypotheticals. That's pretty much a textbook sensible use of his power.
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
- Location
- Spaaaaace~!
Poor Sveta. 
Being forced to work with her tendrils again, even if it was just in a simulation.
Being forced to work with her tendrils again, even if it was just in a simulation.
RazorSmile
ROB Used To Be A Knife Missile
Coil gonna Coil ... and for once, that's actually the right thing to do. Our boy Mayhem is a crazy mofo and anyone looking to work with him (especially if a Thinker) needs to know the parameters for his particular brand of crazy.
The fact that he gets to remember being brutally Sveta'd is still icing on the cake though
The fact that he gets to remember being brutally Sveta'd is still icing on the cake though
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