The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
- Location
- Spaaaaace~!
Is that anything like Wafflebot...? Seriosuly, I tried looking up Waffbot and got nothing.
H+ Mayhem (Worm)
- Thread starter Jurric
- Start date
-
- Tags
- worm tinker transhumanism mayhem
GiftOfLove
From the Heart
WAFFbotIs that anything like Wafflebot...? Seriosuly, I tried looking up Waffbot and got nothing.
- Pronouns
- she/her
When given a choice between installing a waffle maker and missiles, Adam gave Sveta more missiles.Is that anything like Wafflebot...? Seriosuly, I tried looking up Waffbot and got nothing.
Mandabar
Waifu of choice is Rem. Give that girl some hugs!
- Location
- Florida, USA [Yes. Florida *FacePalm*]
I thought this made sense. For some darn reason they don't trust this fully robotic cyborg Mouse Protector that was made/rescued by Mayhem. I mean anything she says could be trap...
God damnit Tagg
I don't care which is declared as canon, mostly because I'm going to believe that the Regent interlude is canon and I'll promptly ignore any evidence to the contrary.
That definition sucks. "Warm and Fuzzy Feelings."
Sveta generates them as her primary function.
Adam has turned those off, deeming them unnecessary in his quest to kill the Slaughterhouse Nine. Tragic, really.
...huh. Welcome to the internet! Here's your cat pictures. The incredibly specific fetish section is right over here... but you won't need it, since you're after genderbending. That's in the "cute 'n' cuddly" section to your left. Ignore the section marked "Skitter." She... has odd ideas of what's cute OR cuddly.
No, there's a far simpler answer to that: Tagg's an asshole.
Solidarity, brother! Waffbot forever!
She'd be down with it. I mean, as long as she gets to fight someone while Mayhem is out and about, really.
- Location
- Upstate NY, USA
- Pronouns
- Fjf
Sigh.
I've told you about this many times. Japanese hornets and funnel Web spiders are EXTREMELY cuddly.
They're just very fussy about who they will cuddle with.
Hey! Where are you going? Don't you want some hugs?
5.1
- Location
- Australia
"What are they doing now?" I asked, carefully prepping an instant freeze capsule. It was basically just a pair of chemicals that would rapidly draw in heat energy when they combined, with a sort of liquid nitrogen effect, though not quite. I was putting them together in a capsule that could be easily broken, so the effect could be triggered with a simple flick of the wrist. Then I carefully wrapped that capsule, a knife, and a very large syringe filled with another chemical in a folded plastic garbage bag.
I'd already trained Taylor and the Travelers in using these. Although the Travelers might be a little too… squeamish to do what would have to be done. Hopefully they'd overcome their revulsion if or when it became necessary. Even our best case scenarios for fighting the Nine involved losing people. With a little luck, those losses would not be permanent. I'd already contacted Dragon, and offered recordings of all my medical Tinkering in exchange for her aid. She'd informed me that she already had a suit in the Bay, waiting to ambush the Nine should they arrive. If either her or I survived this fight, then the bags would be of some use.
"They're unloading men from the vans. Setting up a perimeter. Armsmaster's there. So are Velocity, Dauntless, Battery, Assault, Triumph… another van just opened up. Looks like the Wards are here as well." Skitter told me.
I wonder what she told her dad to get the day off school? She'd been fussing about some sort of conversation with him before the PRT arrived, but I'd needed her nearby to test the clones.
I sighed, and started making another head bag.
This had all begun fifteen hours ago, when Mouse Protector teleported in and apologized for telling her superiors the location of my base. Apparently she hadn't thought they would be this stupid. I couldn't really blame her. I hadn't thought that they would be this stupid either. I hadn't thought of a lot of things.
"We need to talk to them. Should I make a Swarm Clone?" Taylor asked.
"No, save that trick for the Nine. The drone I made you should have speakers."
"I'm just a little worried that they might shoot it down or something. You can't replace it easily, can you?" Taylor said.
"About six hours work now that I've upgraded my hands, but yes, time is precious right now." I told Taylor, who nodded, and frowned.
"We could call them. The PRT do have a hotline?" She suggested.
"Will that be fast enough?"
Taylor sighed, and her drone bobbed out of the lab and down the empty hallways. The Mercenaries had vanished quite quickly, a lot of them started disappearing as soon as rumors of the Nine coming started to circle, and as soon as it became apparent that no one was paying them anymore, the remainder basically just evaporated.
I had considered picking up the bill myself, but the money Mayhem had somehow gotten me wasn't endless. In fact it was starting to run out. I had expensive taste in electronics these days. Neural implants don't come cheap.
"All right, I'll give it a try. Interesting, Armsmaster is arguing into a hand-held radio, can't quite make out what he's saying with the bugs nearby, I'm moving some in closer. Now he's taking the radio apart…" Taylor said.
I tapped into the drone's feed as Taylor directed it out the front door. The PRT had loosely surrounded the building, but their perimeter wasn't large enough to cover the three escape tunnels that Coil had built into the base.
What tech did I have with me that I could take if we needed to run?
There was what I'd built into myself of course. My arms and generators. There were two disintegration grenades, and five kinetic bombs. Dozens of sedative scalpels, three poison scalpels. Cricket, Cricket's laser scythe, which I'd managed to recover from Coil's men after they left. My jetpack. Taylor's stilio, the clones, Murder Rat's body, which was sort of lumped in with the clones right now.
I hope I was right about Taylor. I'd given her a lot of power. She could use it better than I could right now. Her multitasking was just cheating when it came to squad tactics, but still, I hadn't had time to build in the normal safeguards. Better try to keep Taylor away from Cherish.
The head bags. My male clone's arms, which weren't finished yet. Genesis framework. Taylor's drone. Anything else? Oh yeah, couple of lightsabres.
"What do you want?" The drone said. It had taken a fair amount of work to let Taylor talk through it originally, but back when we were testing the drone I came up with a workaround. Just a microphone in her left mandible that could be linked into the drone's speakers when necessary.
A PRT trooper shot at the drone with containment foam, and Taylor nimbly made it dodge the blast of goop, bringing it back into the safety of the lab. Vista could probably have stretched the distance, and Velocity might have been able to grab the drone before it escaped, but neither of them moved, and Taylor formed a swarm clone in front of the lab door instead. I switched from looking through the drone to looking through the external cameras. Same view, less resolution and no special scanning modes. I didn't build those cameras, they came with the base.
Armsmaster grabbed the foam gun from the trooper who fired, and then grabbed their radio, and yelled into it.
The Swarm clone turned what passed for it's head to survey the barricade being erected. I wonder if Armsmaster bought any bug zapping stuff?
"Do you mind repeating stuff in here. I don't have audio without the drone." I told Taylor. She nodded, and the bugs she had in the lab started to chatter and chirp in an approximation of human speech.
"I say again. What do you want?" the clone asked. I liked what Skitter was doing with it's voice. Very scary, make them fear you and the battle was half won. Tattletale was right about her being a better villain than hero.
"Tagg would like to take Mayhem into custody. He will be held in an interstate prison, there he will be protected, should his claims of being hunted by the Slaughterhouse Nine turn out to be true." Armsmaster said, glaring at the radio like it had personally offended him. I knew he had a full communications suite in his helmet, that sort of thing was Tinker 101. Wonder why he had to use radios?
"No." I said, and Taylor's drone echoed the sentiment. "Also tell him that the traps in this base were designed with the Slaughterhouse Nine in mind. I cannot disable some of them, and if he sends anyone in here, I am not responsible for what happens to them."
Armsmaster nodded, and took some sort of remote out of his backpack. It was basically just a small slab of metal, which had four retractable wheels and a camera. A bomb disposal bot perhaps?
Most of the inner base was wired up, but I hadn't gotten around to doing anything fancy with the front doors. They were open, because shutting them wouldn't do any good, and I couldn't open them automatically for drones and Taylor's bugs, like I could most of the others. Armsmaster's bomb disposal robot rolled right through into the first room, where it promptly exploded.
That was rather odd, because the first room was filled with knockout gas. I wanted the Slaughterhouse to start off by underestimating me, I planned to make them less cautious with a few non-lethal traps to start with.
Armsmaster started yelling into a radio again, and I looked at Taylor, who seemed to be concentrating hard.
"Any idea what he's saying?" I asked.
"Some, I don't have enough bugs nearby to get everything, but I think that whoever is on the other side of the radio is talking about 'controlling the asset' and Armsmaster is yelling about how he should be in his lab, preparing for the Nine." Taylor told me.
"I'm glad Armsmaster is taking this threat seriously. I was worried that the Nine failing to show like this would lead to a sort of 'boy who cried wolf' scenario." I said, finishing the last of the head bags, and laying them out for the Travelers to collect. They were relatively light, fairly easy to carry, and they didn't take very long to make, so I had made three per person. I even set aside three for Grue, should he decide to join. He was still sitting on the fence. Unlike Trainwreck, who had joined, and unlike Purity, who had left the city along with Regent. Apparently she planned to put the wealth that Theo had inherited from Kaiser to use starting a charity organization. I gave her three months before she was fleeced out of it. Kaiser hadn't planned to die, so it wasn't left in a trust or anything, just given to his only son's guardian until such time as Theo turned eighteen.
It was a shame, we could really have used the Bay's most powerful blaster, but I'm not sure that Purity would have liked what I was doing with the clones anyway, and I disliked the hovering feeling that one day she'd figure out why I came to her apartment that night. That was one of my worst plans, and I am very glad that things changed in such a way I didn't go through with it.
The situation outside continued to develop as I worked on the fake cybernetic arms for my male clone. I had to get him looking as much like me as possible, and that meant wearing some of my tech. Not all of it, not even fully functional stuff, maybe, but enough that he looked like a Tinker, and could perhaps appear to fight like one, for a brief time.
I was quite hopeful about these clones. Cutting out their brains and replacing them with the brains of an insect left quite a bit of room in the skull, and I put that room to good use. Why suicide bomb the Nine once, when I could do it multiple times?
Of course I only had the one male clone. The formula made changes at a genetic level, so the rest of my clones looked female. I'd done what I could to hide the physical distortions that the clones were prone to, and they'd all pass as my female self at a glance, except for the one with the melted face, that one just looked weird, the face was hidden by a mask, but the whole head was sort of... droopy.
The male clone would get some of my tech, all the clones got a big bomb in their skulls, and the one clone of Taylor that we'd made was wearing her stilio, because as Taylor said, she wasn't really meant to be a close ranged fighter.
Getting that clone had been dangerous. My clones were relatively harmless now that they couldn't activate my fail-safes, because they were Tinker clones. Taylor's clone was supposed to be a decoy, like my first, male clone, and so I'd just nicked it with a scalpel while it was still disorientated from being thrown up by Noelle. Instead of shooting it in the head, and then sticking a mask over the scars, like I was doing for my female clones.
The Skitter clone had then mastered me into stabbing myself in the stomach with a lightsabre, in the few seconds between gaining it's senses and losing consciousness. I'd been lucky I didn't damage my spine, and that I had a few spare kidneys growing in the lab.
Well, you live and learn, and we only needed the one Skitter clone. In fact I was pretty much done with the clones all together. I had wanted to make more, but Noelle was having more and more trouble controlling herself, and she'd been reluctant to make any clones at all to begin with, so now I was focusing on other options.
"Why do you think the Nine are taking so long?" Taylor asked.
It had been four days since the Nine sent Murder Rat to deliver their message, more than long enough for them to travel to the Bay, unless they were deliberately dawdling.
"If I had to guess, I'd say that Jack is trying to break me before he even gets here. He told me what he was going to do five years ago, and the anticipation was enough to make me trigger. Then he told me that the time had arrived, and now he's continuing to make me wait. Ratcheting up the tension, and not letting it go. Trying to kill me by sheer reputation. It would probably work if I wasn't able to regulate my emotions." I told Taylor, who nodded slowly.
"I still don't see why he would send word ahead. The Nine are powerful, but they're not powerful enough to fight the Protectorate if the Protectorate is prepared for them." Taylor said.
I finished the armor structure that would go on the left arm of my male clone, and plugged in a drill so I could attach it. My own arms linked to my neural chip, but the clone had the brain of a bug, meaning that I had to let the bug control the arms, and let the strength-enhancing framework take its cue from the arms themselves, instead of tying them into a brain.
I wouldn't be adding anything more complex than external strength enhancing structures, well, maybe a bit of plating to make it look complete, and if the Nine waited another two or three days I'd get around to installing a flight system, but for now this would have to do.
"Maybe he wants the challenge?" I said, as Taylor directed my clone to hold it's arm out obligingly. "Jack did side with the Siberian to fight the Triumvirate, back when Hero was still around. He might want a repeat performance."
"I suppose so." Taylor said, focusing on something else. Then she frowned.
Being surrounded by the PRT hadn't particularly bothered me. I had escape routes, I had traps, and I already knew that the PRT were idiots who liked their power plays. Tagg wanted to control me, and take the battle out of the city. He just didn't seem to get that the Nine wouldn't fight if they didn't have hostages to hide behind, and the best way to kill them was not to care about the hostages.
Taylor didn't get that either. She still thought we were going to try and meet the Nine outside the city. Still, I think she was hard enough to deal out a bit of collateral damage, when the time came. She'd be forced to.
I knew Jack about as well as anyone could. I'd studied him for even longer than I'd had powers. The Nine were probably already in the city, spying out the lay of the land, checking for threats. Jack was surprisingly cautious for an insane anarchist who sought challenge. He'd probably sabotage a few things, make my sister create something that would force people to play by his rules, or lose the city. I didn't mind much. The more time I had to Tinker, the better.
Skitter watched as she made Murder Rat's body do a couple of stretches, her eyes and her mind split, seeing and considering multiple things. She was upset about the PRT, I could tell. She really wanted the heroes not to be bumbling incompetents who just got in the way.
Honestly, I wouldn't have minded either. One less thing to worry about.
Skitter wasn't meant for heroism. It had been downright impressive, the way she destroyed the RBB. A pathetic gang to begin with, of course, but Skitter shut it down in a single night, just so we didn't have to divide our forces when the real threat came. Those few members she didn't find were too terrified to admit ever being part of the organization. For all that the Grey were splintered, the Bay underworld was peaceful. Those smart enough to leave had left.
She'd been training herself in squad tactics, she was incredibly accurate with a gun, provided she could mark her target with a bug first, and that skill extended itself to the clones she controlled, and the guns that they wielded.
She was currently controlling her own clone, wearing the stilio, Murder Rat, with both brains replaced by flies, (no powers, but still a useful body,) my male clone, and my five female clones. A combination that should be able to confuse, surprise and then kill a couple of the more vulnerable members of the Nine. If we were lucky.
Her, the Travelers, Trainwreck, maybe Grue, and my tech. Not the best match up against the Nine, but our odds weren't zero. I was actually kind of hopeful.
Naturally, that was when the Endbringer alarm went off.
We'd had three 'Endbringer drills' since I sent Mouse Protector to the Protectorate. Obviously Tagg was taking some steps to prepare, even if they were the wrong ones. Still, they always announced drills, too easy for people to die in the panic of a false alarm otherwise. This one hadn't been announced.
"It's starting." I said as large, fat drops of rain started to pour down outside.
Blast, most of my tech was internal and waterproof now, but my jetpack wasn't. I could fly with just rocket boots and my palm thrusters, but not fast, and not with as much precision or maneuverability. I also wouldn't be able to fly and fire at the same time.
Also, rain hadn't been forecast.
A sick feeling started to rise in my stomach as I put it together. Leviathan was a little bit late for his scheduled attack. The Bay had been fairly peaceful, but there had been those bombings. It would have to be a coastal city, and America hadn't been hit in a while. Besides, the Bay had two parahumans who grew in power. Dauntless and myself. Both of us could pose a threat if we were allowed to continue existing long enough. Sooner or later, we would be nipped in the bud. I planned to be on a deserted island at the time, make them waste an attack maybe, but this…
"I really thought it would be the Simurgh." I said.
I'd already trained Taylor and the Travelers in using these. Although the Travelers might be a little too… squeamish to do what would have to be done. Hopefully they'd overcome their revulsion if or when it became necessary. Even our best case scenarios for fighting the Nine involved losing people. With a little luck, those losses would not be permanent. I'd already contacted Dragon, and offered recordings of all my medical Tinkering in exchange for her aid. She'd informed me that she already had a suit in the Bay, waiting to ambush the Nine should they arrive. If either her or I survived this fight, then the bags would be of some use.
"They're unloading men from the vans. Setting up a perimeter. Armsmaster's there. So are Velocity, Dauntless, Battery, Assault, Triumph… another van just opened up. Looks like the Wards are here as well." Skitter told me.
I wonder what she told her dad to get the day off school? She'd been fussing about some sort of conversation with him before the PRT arrived, but I'd needed her nearby to test the clones.
I sighed, and started making another head bag.
This had all begun fifteen hours ago, when Mouse Protector teleported in and apologized for telling her superiors the location of my base. Apparently she hadn't thought they would be this stupid. I couldn't really blame her. I hadn't thought that they would be this stupid either. I hadn't thought of a lot of things.
"We need to talk to them. Should I make a Swarm Clone?" Taylor asked.
"No, save that trick for the Nine. The drone I made you should have speakers."
"I'm just a little worried that they might shoot it down or something. You can't replace it easily, can you?" Taylor said.
"About six hours work now that I've upgraded my hands, but yes, time is precious right now." I told Taylor, who nodded, and frowned.
"We could call them. The PRT do have a hotline?" She suggested.
"Will that be fast enough?"
Taylor sighed, and her drone bobbed out of the lab and down the empty hallways. The Mercenaries had vanished quite quickly, a lot of them started disappearing as soon as rumors of the Nine coming started to circle, and as soon as it became apparent that no one was paying them anymore, the remainder basically just evaporated.
I had considered picking up the bill myself, but the money Mayhem had somehow gotten me wasn't endless. In fact it was starting to run out. I had expensive taste in electronics these days. Neural implants don't come cheap.
"All right, I'll give it a try. Interesting, Armsmaster is arguing into a hand-held radio, can't quite make out what he's saying with the bugs nearby, I'm moving some in closer. Now he's taking the radio apart…" Taylor said.
I tapped into the drone's feed as Taylor directed it out the front door. The PRT had loosely surrounded the building, but their perimeter wasn't large enough to cover the three escape tunnels that Coil had built into the base.
What tech did I have with me that I could take if we needed to run?
There was what I'd built into myself of course. My arms and generators. There were two disintegration grenades, and five kinetic bombs. Dozens of sedative scalpels, three poison scalpels. Cricket, Cricket's laser scythe, which I'd managed to recover from Coil's men after they left. My jetpack. Taylor's stilio, the clones, Murder Rat's body, which was sort of lumped in with the clones right now.
I hope I was right about Taylor. I'd given her a lot of power. She could use it better than I could right now. Her multitasking was just cheating when it came to squad tactics, but still, I hadn't had time to build in the normal safeguards. Better try to keep Taylor away from Cherish.
The head bags. My male clone's arms, which weren't finished yet. Genesis framework. Taylor's drone. Anything else? Oh yeah, couple of lightsabres.
"What do you want?" The drone said. It had taken a fair amount of work to let Taylor talk through it originally, but back when we were testing the drone I came up with a workaround. Just a microphone in her left mandible that could be linked into the drone's speakers when necessary.
A PRT trooper shot at the drone with containment foam, and Taylor nimbly made it dodge the blast of goop, bringing it back into the safety of the lab. Vista could probably have stretched the distance, and Velocity might have been able to grab the drone before it escaped, but neither of them moved, and Taylor formed a swarm clone in front of the lab door instead. I switched from looking through the drone to looking through the external cameras. Same view, less resolution and no special scanning modes. I didn't build those cameras, they came with the base.
Armsmaster grabbed the foam gun from the trooper who fired, and then grabbed their radio, and yelled into it.
The Swarm clone turned what passed for it's head to survey the barricade being erected. I wonder if Armsmaster bought any bug zapping stuff?
"Do you mind repeating stuff in here. I don't have audio without the drone." I told Taylor. She nodded, and the bugs she had in the lab started to chatter and chirp in an approximation of human speech.
"I say again. What do you want?" the clone asked. I liked what Skitter was doing with it's voice. Very scary, make them fear you and the battle was half won. Tattletale was right about her being a better villain than hero.
"Tagg would like to take Mayhem into custody. He will be held in an interstate prison, there he will be protected, should his claims of being hunted by the Slaughterhouse Nine turn out to be true." Armsmaster said, glaring at the radio like it had personally offended him. I knew he had a full communications suite in his helmet, that sort of thing was Tinker 101. Wonder why he had to use radios?
"No." I said, and Taylor's drone echoed the sentiment. "Also tell him that the traps in this base were designed with the Slaughterhouse Nine in mind. I cannot disable some of them, and if he sends anyone in here, I am not responsible for what happens to them."
Armsmaster nodded, and took some sort of remote out of his backpack. It was basically just a small slab of metal, which had four retractable wheels and a camera. A bomb disposal bot perhaps?
Most of the inner base was wired up, but I hadn't gotten around to doing anything fancy with the front doors. They were open, because shutting them wouldn't do any good, and I couldn't open them automatically for drones and Taylor's bugs, like I could most of the others. Armsmaster's bomb disposal robot rolled right through into the first room, where it promptly exploded.
That was rather odd, because the first room was filled with knockout gas. I wanted the Slaughterhouse to start off by underestimating me, I planned to make them less cautious with a few non-lethal traps to start with.
Armsmaster started yelling into a radio again, and I looked at Taylor, who seemed to be concentrating hard.
"Any idea what he's saying?" I asked.
"Some, I don't have enough bugs nearby to get everything, but I think that whoever is on the other side of the radio is talking about 'controlling the asset' and Armsmaster is yelling about how he should be in his lab, preparing for the Nine." Taylor told me.
"I'm glad Armsmaster is taking this threat seriously. I was worried that the Nine failing to show like this would lead to a sort of 'boy who cried wolf' scenario." I said, finishing the last of the head bags, and laying them out for the Travelers to collect. They were relatively light, fairly easy to carry, and they didn't take very long to make, so I had made three per person. I even set aside three for Grue, should he decide to join. He was still sitting on the fence. Unlike Trainwreck, who had joined, and unlike Purity, who had left the city along with Regent. Apparently she planned to put the wealth that Theo had inherited from Kaiser to use starting a charity organization. I gave her three months before she was fleeced out of it. Kaiser hadn't planned to die, so it wasn't left in a trust or anything, just given to his only son's guardian until such time as Theo turned eighteen.
It was a shame, we could really have used the Bay's most powerful blaster, but I'm not sure that Purity would have liked what I was doing with the clones anyway, and I disliked the hovering feeling that one day she'd figure out why I came to her apartment that night. That was one of my worst plans, and I am very glad that things changed in such a way I didn't go through with it.
The situation outside continued to develop as I worked on the fake cybernetic arms for my male clone. I had to get him looking as much like me as possible, and that meant wearing some of my tech. Not all of it, not even fully functional stuff, maybe, but enough that he looked like a Tinker, and could perhaps appear to fight like one, for a brief time.
I was quite hopeful about these clones. Cutting out their brains and replacing them with the brains of an insect left quite a bit of room in the skull, and I put that room to good use. Why suicide bomb the Nine once, when I could do it multiple times?
Of course I only had the one male clone. The formula made changes at a genetic level, so the rest of my clones looked female. I'd done what I could to hide the physical distortions that the clones were prone to, and they'd all pass as my female self at a glance, except for the one with the melted face, that one just looked weird, the face was hidden by a mask, but the whole head was sort of... droopy.
The male clone would get some of my tech, all the clones got a big bomb in their skulls, and the one clone of Taylor that we'd made was wearing her stilio, because as Taylor said, she wasn't really meant to be a close ranged fighter.
Getting that clone had been dangerous. My clones were relatively harmless now that they couldn't activate my fail-safes, because they were Tinker clones. Taylor's clone was supposed to be a decoy, like my first, male clone, and so I'd just nicked it with a scalpel while it was still disorientated from being thrown up by Noelle. Instead of shooting it in the head, and then sticking a mask over the scars, like I was doing for my female clones.
The Skitter clone had then mastered me into stabbing myself in the stomach with a lightsabre, in the few seconds between gaining it's senses and losing consciousness. I'd been lucky I didn't damage my spine, and that I had a few spare kidneys growing in the lab.
Well, you live and learn, and we only needed the one Skitter clone. In fact I was pretty much done with the clones all together. I had wanted to make more, but Noelle was having more and more trouble controlling herself, and she'd been reluctant to make any clones at all to begin with, so now I was focusing on other options.
"Why do you think the Nine are taking so long?" Taylor asked.
It had been four days since the Nine sent Murder Rat to deliver their message, more than long enough for them to travel to the Bay, unless they were deliberately dawdling.
"If I had to guess, I'd say that Jack is trying to break me before he even gets here. He told me what he was going to do five years ago, and the anticipation was enough to make me trigger. Then he told me that the time had arrived, and now he's continuing to make me wait. Ratcheting up the tension, and not letting it go. Trying to kill me by sheer reputation. It would probably work if I wasn't able to regulate my emotions." I told Taylor, who nodded slowly.
"I still don't see why he would send word ahead. The Nine are powerful, but they're not powerful enough to fight the Protectorate if the Protectorate is prepared for them." Taylor said.
I finished the armor structure that would go on the left arm of my male clone, and plugged in a drill so I could attach it. My own arms linked to my neural chip, but the clone had the brain of a bug, meaning that I had to let the bug control the arms, and let the strength-enhancing framework take its cue from the arms themselves, instead of tying them into a brain.
I wouldn't be adding anything more complex than external strength enhancing structures, well, maybe a bit of plating to make it look complete, and if the Nine waited another two or three days I'd get around to installing a flight system, but for now this would have to do.
"Maybe he wants the challenge?" I said, as Taylor directed my clone to hold it's arm out obligingly. "Jack did side with the Siberian to fight the Triumvirate, back when Hero was still around. He might want a repeat performance."
"I suppose so." Taylor said, focusing on something else. Then she frowned.
Being surrounded by the PRT hadn't particularly bothered me. I had escape routes, I had traps, and I already knew that the PRT were idiots who liked their power plays. Tagg wanted to control me, and take the battle out of the city. He just didn't seem to get that the Nine wouldn't fight if they didn't have hostages to hide behind, and the best way to kill them was not to care about the hostages.
Taylor didn't get that either. She still thought we were going to try and meet the Nine outside the city. Still, I think she was hard enough to deal out a bit of collateral damage, when the time came. She'd be forced to.
I knew Jack about as well as anyone could. I'd studied him for even longer than I'd had powers. The Nine were probably already in the city, spying out the lay of the land, checking for threats. Jack was surprisingly cautious for an insane anarchist who sought challenge. He'd probably sabotage a few things, make my sister create something that would force people to play by his rules, or lose the city. I didn't mind much. The more time I had to Tinker, the better.
Skitter watched as she made Murder Rat's body do a couple of stretches, her eyes and her mind split, seeing and considering multiple things. She was upset about the PRT, I could tell. She really wanted the heroes not to be bumbling incompetents who just got in the way.
Honestly, I wouldn't have minded either. One less thing to worry about.
Skitter wasn't meant for heroism. It had been downright impressive, the way she destroyed the RBB. A pathetic gang to begin with, of course, but Skitter shut it down in a single night, just so we didn't have to divide our forces when the real threat came. Those few members she didn't find were too terrified to admit ever being part of the organization. For all that the Grey were splintered, the Bay underworld was peaceful. Those smart enough to leave had left.
She'd been training herself in squad tactics, she was incredibly accurate with a gun, provided she could mark her target with a bug first, and that skill extended itself to the clones she controlled, and the guns that they wielded.
She was currently controlling her own clone, wearing the stilio, Murder Rat, with both brains replaced by flies, (no powers, but still a useful body,) my male clone, and my five female clones. A combination that should be able to confuse, surprise and then kill a couple of the more vulnerable members of the Nine. If we were lucky.
Her, the Travelers, Trainwreck, maybe Grue, and my tech. Not the best match up against the Nine, but our odds weren't zero. I was actually kind of hopeful.
Naturally, that was when the Endbringer alarm went off.
We'd had three 'Endbringer drills' since I sent Mouse Protector to the Protectorate. Obviously Tagg was taking some steps to prepare, even if they were the wrong ones. Still, they always announced drills, too easy for people to die in the panic of a false alarm otherwise. This one hadn't been announced.
"It's starting." I said as large, fat drops of rain started to pour down outside.
Blast, most of my tech was internal and waterproof now, but my jetpack wasn't. I could fly with just rocket boots and my palm thrusters, but not fast, and not with as much precision or maneuverability. I also wouldn't be able to fly and fire at the same time.
Also, rain hadn't been forecast.
A sick feeling started to rise in my stomach as I put it together. Leviathan was a little bit late for his scheduled attack. The Bay had been fairly peaceful, but there had been those bombings. It would have to be a coastal city, and America hadn't been hit in a while. Besides, the Bay had two parahumans who grew in power. Dauntless and myself. Both of us could pose a threat if we were allowed to continue existing long enough. Sooner or later, we would be nipped in the bud. I planned to be on a deserted island at the time, make them waste an attack maybe, but this…
"I really thought it would be the Simurgh." I said.
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- Location
- Australia
I'm sorry to say that neither of the updates prior to this were real, the Regent one or the Cranial one. I was going to make the Regent one real, but some very good points were raised, and I realized that my justifications didn't lead to a good story. I apologize for tricking people.
Still, both updates do hold hints for the future, and I have a solid plan for arc five now. Let's see how this goes.
Still, both updates do hold hints for the future, and I have a solid plan for arc five now. Let's see how this goes.
Tisaku
Head Chief Thinkomancer
- Location
- Poland
That's called a retcon. Nothing to be ashamed of. At least now that you admitted it you can clearly threadmark it as non-canon and move on.
- Location
- Canada
See, I wasn't sure it was a Worm fic, but now that we're back on the It Got Worse Train, I surely am.
- Location
- Upstate NY, USA
- Pronouns
- Fjf
I see no way this can go horribly wrong.
- Pronouns
- she/her
Sveta will save the day.
- Location
- Canada
Ooo! Ooo! I see about seven!
- Location
- Brazil
inb4 Tagg breaks the Truce.
Khepri14
Thus kindly I scatter...
- Location
- Following the wind
Believe you mean ABB???
Raviollius
...but what happens afterwards?
- Location
- .
Real Bad Boyz, the remnants of the ABB and Merchants who huddled together.
Khepri14
Thus kindly I scatter...
- Location
- Following the wind
How did I forget? I stand corrected.
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
those losses
in the Bay, waiting to ambush
day off
strength-enhancing framework
too easy
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
- Location
- Spaaaaace~!
The derPRT strikes again. Leviathan sure knows how to fuck up plans, though, that's for sure.
- Location
- Germany
Looks like the S9 saw Leviathans attack coming and decided to send Mayhem into a pickle? Or more probably, Leviathan's attack was timed right. (Leviathan's attack on Richter was timed right even before the Simurgh revealed itself, right?)
This is precisely the sort of non-committal vague statement that I can use to declare with 100% certainty that Waffbot: Big Damn Hero is officially canon.