- Location
- Australia
Adam got his power the same day that Leet and Uber were fighting Dauntless and Armsmaster a few blocks away. Make of that what you will.
H+ Mayhem (Worm)
- Thread starter Jurric
- Start date
-
- Tags
- worm tinker transhumanism mayhem
Adam got his power the same day that Leet and Uber were fighting Dauntless and Armsmaster a few blocks away. Make of that what you will.
- Pronouns
- she/her
What theme were they using? I'm sure this matters.
- Location
- Australia
Resident Evil
ONLY if they FIND OUT! Look at all the Noelle clones Adam used, for example. Absolutely nothing bad happened there, at all!
Or just have Cricket claim them? She's considered low threat.
Po-TAY-to, Po-TAH-to....
Well, they remember the example of the LAST guy who disrespected someone who came to challenged Butcher. I mean, it's not like they can forget. He's still splattered across most of the ceiling in the break room. (Now, if he'd just stop screaming....)
"Now, where could I get a piece of tissue paper, a paperclip, and glass of water...?"
Instead, she just stole their firing pins. ...and their hearts. ...literally. They'll figure out she replaced them with a replacement made from a pair of dog toys in about five, ten years or so.
Calling it: Butcher IS killed with a paperclip.
...did she just pickpocket that guy SOLELY to get things to piss them off? Wow.
D'awww, he's shy!
I called it?
I CALLED IT! I'M AMAZING!
Um. You just came from A Leviathan-ravaged Brockton Bay, and you're covered in blood. Dyed crimson or not, that singlet is gonna be a bit... clingy. Pretty sure it STILL counts as "immodest."
...you know, I'd REALLY like to see Mayhem's PRT file at some point. I'm curious what kind of Thinker rating they've assigned.
And, basically, at that point you're not going to give a shit one way or the other. Either you'll be dead, part of the Teeth, or... RUNNING the Teeth.
...*helpless laughter*
Son of a BITCH! It WAS Kid Win? ...god damn it, I thought for sure that was a fake out.
Which is "powered and white," for the record.
...oh, that can't be good. Well. I guess Evildolon will have to stick with Noelle for his Slaughterhouse 9000 story arc.
Might I suggest you try making them the... old-fashioned way? Cricket would be glad to help out with that!
Oh, well THAT'S a relief. SUCH a step in the right direction! Golly, I feel better already. Excuse me, I need to go into the screaming room. Yes, it's new. I had it installed when Mayhem took over.
Sooo, I have a solution! Punch her in the face!
...it has a certain directness to appeal to it, doesn't it. Admittedly, this is the equivalent of walking up to a hot girl in a bar and going "You're hot, I'm bored, wanna bang?" 99% of the time, you get slapped. (But that 1% MAKES UP FOR IT.)
Well... he knows where Mannequin and Bonesaw are, at least!
I wouldn't call Richter paranoid. I'd call him a FUCKING ASSHOLE.
Folks, I'll let you make your OWN bondage jokes here, okay? I feel like I shouldn't have to spoon feed you this one.
Let's review the things Mayhem has decided to do because it's EASIER: Seduce Cricket to the lesbian side of Sears. Hack Dragon and turn her into his own personal AI.
...somehow, I expect this list will grow. Significantly.
You know, it says something REALLY SCARY about Butcher that there's ONLY been fourteen of them with rules like that. Seriously, the Teeth have been around for a few decades now and I'm willing to bet the "once a month" thing ISN'T a new offer. Butcher's still managed to survive a shockingly long time with that kind of a setup.
Smart men. THEY can stay in the Teeth when Mayhem takes over.
And now someone needs to add a reference to this fic on the "Eye Scream" page on TV Tropes.
*puerile giggle* Mayhem's an exhibitionist. Gotcha.
(For reals, though. Mayhem WANTS them to see Butcher die. It's important that they realize it. ESPECIALLY if she no-sells the fight and just straight up slaughters someone with that kind of reputation.)
Cricket is going to be SO FUCKING JEALOUS. ("You went to fight someone else?! What does SHE have that I don't?!")
*preens* Lesson to learn from this: I'm always right! That's 100%, right there!
I know which once I'm hoping for!
*puerile giggle* Woman of Steel, Man of Kleenex, hmmm?
*narrows eyes* So, what you're saying is... I need to figure out a team name for those four. Gotcha. I understand what you're saying. Gimme a few.
Stahor
BookWorm
- Location
- Russia, Moscow
6.5
- Location
- Australia
Butcher I: Super strength, ability to induce pain with line of sight.
Butcher II: See blood and veins through walls. Induce bleeding with a touch.
Butcher III: Ability to sense danger a few seconds before something happens. Super strength.
Butcher IV: Cause decay in organic or inorganic objects with a touch.
Butcher V: Minor regeneration, super strength.
Butcher VI: Teleportation, explosive re-entry, Brute to survive own explosions.
Butcher VII: Minor Tinker, trap specialty.
Butcher VIII: Shaker, Striker, reform and reshape inorganic matter.
Butcher IX: Induce rage at range. Super strength.
Butcher X: Military Tinker/Thinker. Tactics and strategy specialist, instinctive use and maintenance of weapons and firearms.
Butcher XI: Brute/Breaker. Weight manipulation.
Butcher XII: Brute, unbreakable skin, immunity to pain.
Butcher XIII: Striker, could grant bladed objects absurd levels of sharpness.
Butcher XIV: Breaker, attacks simply don't miss. Spacial warping to make attacks home in on her target.
The current Butcher was a dangerous opponent, with a huge number of options in combat. However, there were almost too many options. A human mind can only process so many things at once. Only one or two powers were likely to be used together, unless they were passive, and I was quite certain that my lightsabre could overcome the stacking Brute powers, if I found a way around the danger sense and teleportation.
Quarrel, the current Butcher, wasn't taking this fight seriously. She'd beaten the former Butcher in a protracted battle across the city. Her own power was the strongest at her disposal, the powers she had inherited from the Butcher were all weakened, something she had already beaten. Her power was best used at long range, with plenty of cover. If she chose to fight me with the city as our arena, and started the fight so much as a few blocks away, I wouldn't be able to win. If she used every power at her disposal at it's utmost, she wouldn't be able to win.
Instead, she was fighting me in a fighting ring, set up in an abandoned warehouse. It consisted of little more than rough, waist high walls of concrete around a large, clear area of floor. She wouldn't be able to go all out without killing the watching members of the Teeth. Her additional powers, and my own condition, were making her confident, willing to fight even while disadvantaged.
We were a study in opposites. She wore thick, metal body armor reminiscent of a samurai over a kevlar undershirt, despite the fact her skin was tougher than both put together. She wasn't carrying her minigun because she didn't actually want to kill me right now, Tinkers were valuable, and I'd be very useful if she managed to recruit me. She was still packing an oversized pistol, a bandoleer of grenades, a very large combat knife, a baton, her bow and a quiver full of arrows though, because she didn't like my attitude and didn't particularly care if I started my Tinkering in a hospital bed.
I was dressed in cargo pants and a singlet, I had a pair of dinky pistols tucked into the waistband of my trousers, and I was fitting all three of my scalpels in-between the fingers of my clenched right fist, to form a sort of claw. I was also smiling as sweetly as I could manage. I doubt that the quiet bets being made by the Teeth involved my victory, the few lips I bothered to read were talking about how long Quarrel was going to make the fight last, not my odds of victory.
The Butcher drew her baton, and twirled it expectantly. That really wouldn't do. I needed her a bit angrier than that. Angry enough to kill.
I started circling slowly, watching her eyes, and then smoothly drew one of the pistols with my left hand and shot her twice, once in each eye.
My strategy was simple, and one used against the Butcher several times before to great success. First, force the Butcher to use the danger-sense/teleport combo, and then capitalize before either ability could be used again. All I needed to do was endanger the Butcher's life without using my lightsabre, then reveal it as a surprise attack while she was vulnerable, and she was going to give me all the tools I needed to do so.
I was counting on watching her eyes to tell when she was ready to teleport. She'd be checking that the spot was clear, and preparing to experience a new perspective, so there wasn't a moment of disorientation. Up until now she'd been scanning the arena with a practiced eye, looking at locations, and imagining their tactical advantages. Behind me, flanking me, close to me, far behind me. She knew she could get there immediately, and was planning with that in mind.
Now that I'd shot her, her eyes were locked on me.
The teleportation had come from Devil Child, a Teleporter/Brute. An interesting combination, but justified by the need to survive the explosion that resulted at the point of entry. Only all the Butchers were able to take equipment with them when they teleported, so it wasn't so much a Brute power as an invisible forcefield, or perhaps some sort of Breaker effect. Something capable of withstanding a point blank explosion. Something I was betting shorted out briefly just after a teleport.
Something that had also shorted out when I shot her in the eyes. She couldn't teleport right now. Wouldn't be able to for nearly another full second.
The Butcher chose to respond to my shots by charging me with her baton, kicking off from the ground with a very quick lunge. Not being able to teleport after taking a hit… that didn't match up with what I already knew of the Butcher. Her files clearly indicated that she had teleported, even after receiving wounds before.
I sidestepped the Butcher's lunge, and anticipated it when she used her weight shifting Breaker effect to increase the speed of her turn to catch me. I leaned back under her strike, and kicked her in the knee. She increased her weight to keep her leg from going out from under her, and I shot her twice in the chest as her eyes began roving again, looking for a position to teleport to. Break the engagement, and take me down from range. For all her skill in melee, and her earlier decision to subdue me with the baton, now that I'd avoided a couple of her attacks Quarrel wanted out, back to range, where she was comfortable. She'd also just worked out that I was a Combat Thinker, and didn't want to be shown up in a fistfight in front of her men.
Both the bullets I'd aimed at her hit her torso, and the lead slugs actually stayed in the vest instead of bouncing off.
Ah, that explained it. She was using the force-field to protect her eyes, which were otherwise still vulnerable and she let all her other Brute powers protect the rest of her body. I didn't know she had that level of control? Or perhaps it was simply an aspect of the power? No one had ever really had a chance to study the Butcher's power interactions closely.
She shoved me, and I flipped back, grabbed her wrist and jumped to lock both legs around her neck, then I used a pulse from one of my palm cannons to swing myself around, behind her body before she could grab me, dropping the scalpels and breaking off the tip of a key behind the firing pin of her pistol as I swung.
Then I drew my other gun and emptied both pistols into to the back of her skull at point-blank range.
She grabbed my legs, heaved me off her body, and held me upside down by the knee, as high as her hand could go, so her face was fairly close to mine, though my head was still lower than hers. She had long arms, but I still had to touch my chin to my chest to look her in the eyes.
"Combat Thinker, right? Was that supposed to hurt?" she asked.
She did have a lot of Brute abilities. They tended to stack up. More for me I guess.
"No, it was meant to make you underestimate me," I told her, spitting my gum towards her face, and then punching it into her nose.
She recoiled slightly, crushed my knee into shards of bone, dropped me, and then took a breath through her mouth to snort out the gum. I threw the grenade I'd been cooking into her open mouth, and she teleported away. Either because her danger sense went off, or because she was startled enough not to want a grenade to the face.
She didn't teleport close enough. She didn't want me dead yet, didn't want to cook me in the flames of her arrival. I was going to have to change that. Again, I overestimated her civility. I shot the grenade towards her with my palm as I fell, but it didn't get close enough to do anything but pepper her armor with shrapnel.
I started giggling as I landed on my hands, and turned around, still walking on my palms, letting my crushed knee dangle.
"You're mad," the Butcher said, her lips quirking with what looked like amusement.
And she was fun. It was a shame I needed her powers. Getting Cricket to agree to share would have been a challenge, but a worthwhile one that would bring me some very nice conflict.
"And you're boring. Really, I don't know why I'm bothering with this. So many Brute powers. Dull, dull, dull. The teleportation is a little bit interesting I guess, but I can make a jetpack which is just as good. Danger sense? Pah, I see in three hundred and sixty degrees and can think at thirty times the speed of a human. I don't need a danger sense. Honestly."
The Butcher drew her pistol, sighted on my elbow, and tried to fire it. The gun jammed, the piece of key still in place in there.
"As for your own power? Well, what use is that? I mean, if I want to hit something, I just don't miss. What sort of lame trigger gets you a homing power anyway?"
She discarded the pistol, instead of simply clearing the jam as she was about to, and twitched as she worked the bow off her body and nocked an arrow, drawing it smoothly. I put on a falsetto voice.
"Oh no! I can't hit a target! Maybe I should get powers that do it for me, instead of working on my aim?" I said, charging my palm cannons. The left first, I was going to need to twist for this.
Quarrel twitched again and let her bow go slack, drawing two more arrows from her quiver and fitting them to the string along with the first, then she applied the sharpening effect of Butcher XIII.
I smiled, and she loosed. Not at full draw, she didn't want her arrows to go through the concrete barricades into her own men, but with more than enough force to send the arrows through my head, heart, and gut.
I released the charge in my palm cannons and shot into the air, twisting as I rose. Normally catching arrows is nearly impossible as a human. It's not just a matter of coordination. it was a matter of not having the skin ripped off your palms in the attempt.
One of the arrows entered my foot, traveled up the interior of my leg, destroying a lot of the calf muscle and eventually stopping halfway through my knee, locking the joint straight and immobilizing it. A makeshift, internal splint, seeing as that was the knee that the Butcher just crushed.
The other two I caught. I had robotic hands. The artificial skin on them could only rip so far before the hard metal underneath jammed the arrows.
I landed on both feet. My right leg with it's crushed kneecap and internal splint was basically useless below the knee at the moment, but enough of my nervous system remained that I could lock the ankle joint. That was all I needed to launch myself at the Butcher, pulsing my remaining boot for extra speed and dropping one of the arrows while charging a palm blast in the hand that was holding the remaining arrow.
She wasn't expecting me to leap at her, let alone wielding a weapon that had been proven to break through her Brute powers. Her danger sense kicked in and this time, when she teleported, she did so right behind me, as I was still moving forward.
I anticipated it, braced myself as the explosion of fire and force made by her arrival ripped the skin from my back and set the muscles beneath on fire. My mask survived the blast, as did the hand I had by my side, drawing my lightsabre from my cargo pants. The second generator in my back did not weather the blast, nor did my legs, both of which were slightly closer to Butcher's emergence point.
All right. I was done here. Zero chance of needing to diverge from the plan. I could start thinking about things other than the fight again. Let's see. How was I going to get into Dragon's code? Obviously I could hack her eventually, but even with shackles an AI wouldn't be easy to beat at electronic warfare, especially if her creator was particularly clever, and made her shackles fairly loose when she was forced to defend them.
Still, there was someone who had consistently beaten her. The Dragonslayers. Now that I knew her nature, I could see how a small group of mercenaries could fight the world's best Tinker. Saint had a backdoor.
I'd visit him as soon as I was done here. Much faster than having to hack Dragon myself.
My last kinetic blast burst from my palm, throwing me back toward the Butcher as my other hand rose, lightsabre already active.
It cut through her stomach, then up in a straight line through to the crown of her head.
I experienced my first Trigger vision. The new extradimensional computation engine tried to erase part of my memory. I let it, but made a copy first. It wasn't creative enough to think I would do that.
I reviewed the memory. Gigantic parasitic entities swimming through space. Now wasn't that interesting? I'd have to consider the full implications later.
I breathed in, and spent a second listening to the voices of the past Butchers before tuning them out. I would have listened further, they might have said something useful, but they were trying to give me Objectives, and no one but Ada could do that.
The Teeth were watching. awed into silence and slightly frightened by the possibility of a double kill.
I pushed myself up off the former Butcher's corpse, and smiled at the Teeth beatifically, then I teleported to the nearby warehouse door, which was made of metal, and leaned my back against it. I used Butcher VIII's power to turn the door into a large back splint, a long plate that speared into my back, cooling the burns and supported my spine while the muscles around it were writhing and burning.
I had to carefully control my vital functions to prevent massive systemic shock, followed by death, but despite its fairly limited nature my regeneration would be enough to keep me alive and I could fix what little it couldn't very easily. I should have no problem creating cybernetic legs to replace my current, black stubs for instance. Butcher VIII's power in particular would improve my Tinkering speed by a factor of ten, even if there were limits regarding unprocessed matter, more ease of use making weapons, and inability to mix metals.
The concrete on the floor in front of me flowed up at my command, forming two casts around what was left of my feet and legs. I flexed my thighs, which still mostly worked, even if the skin covering them at the back was bubbling.
The regeneration wasn't something I anticipated being a problem, and I was right. My cybernetics were designed to stay in, and active, even if the flesh healed around them. My arms shouldn't grow back, not with the metal implanted in the stumps as it was. My eyes didn't have any room to grow back, because there were artificial eyes already in there.
Yes. I could stand. Excellent.
I forced myself to my feet and looked around the silent gathering of Teeth, then I cracked my neck.
"Well, anyone else?" I asked.
One by one I locked eyes with the powered members of the gang in attendance and made them shake their heads before letting my gaze move on. No, no attacks today. I'd proven my might. They'd try to look for weaknesses first, and attack only if they saw one.
"Well boys. Look's like you've got a new Butcher," I told them. Not all boys of course. In fact the majority of my new capes were girls. None who weren't physically or mentally adult however, so I could still kill them if and when I needed to.
They got the picture anyway, and started to chant.
"Bo-cher! Bo-cher! Bo-cher!"
I used the piece of metal molded to my back to straighten my spine, and looked around my new minions. They were dirty. They were armed. They were drugged to the gills. They were expendable. They were perfect.
I lowered my arms to calm the chanting, and it stopped instantly. My eardrums even gave a little pop as they healed themselves, to confirm the complete silence.
"First things first. I need a laptop with wifi, get me one. And a jacket, the front of this singlet is currently held on purely by blood."
Butcher II: See blood and veins through walls. Induce bleeding with a touch.
Butcher III: Ability to sense danger a few seconds before something happens. Super strength.
Butcher IV: Cause decay in organic or inorganic objects with a touch.
Butcher V: Minor regeneration, super strength.
Butcher VI: Teleportation, explosive re-entry, Brute to survive own explosions.
Butcher VII: Minor Tinker, trap specialty.
Butcher VIII: Shaker, Striker, reform and reshape inorganic matter.
Butcher IX: Induce rage at range. Super strength.
Butcher X: Military Tinker/Thinker. Tactics and strategy specialist, instinctive use and maintenance of weapons and firearms.
Butcher XI: Brute/Breaker. Weight manipulation.
Butcher XII: Brute, unbreakable skin, immunity to pain.
Butcher XIII: Striker, could grant bladed objects absurd levels of sharpness.
Butcher XIV: Breaker, attacks simply don't miss. Spacial warping to make attacks home in on her target.
The current Butcher was a dangerous opponent, with a huge number of options in combat. However, there were almost too many options. A human mind can only process so many things at once. Only one or two powers were likely to be used together, unless they were passive, and I was quite certain that my lightsabre could overcome the stacking Brute powers, if I found a way around the danger sense and teleportation.
Quarrel, the current Butcher, wasn't taking this fight seriously. She'd beaten the former Butcher in a protracted battle across the city. Her own power was the strongest at her disposal, the powers she had inherited from the Butcher were all weakened, something she had already beaten. Her power was best used at long range, with plenty of cover. If she chose to fight me with the city as our arena, and started the fight so much as a few blocks away, I wouldn't be able to win. If she used every power at her disposal at it's utmost, she wouldn't be able to win.
Instead, she was fighting me in a fighting ring, set up in an abandoned warehouse. It consisted of little more than rough, waist high walls of concrete around a large, clear area of floor. She wouldn't be able to go all out without killing the watching members of the Teeth. Her additional powers, and my own condition, were making her confident, willing to fight even while disadvantaged.
We were a study in opposites. She wore thick, metal body armor reminiscent of a samurai over a kevlar undershirt, despite the fact her skin was tougher than both put together. She wasn't carrying her minigun because she didn't actually want to kill me right now, Tinkers were valuable, and I'd be very useful if she managed to recruit me. She was still packing an oversized pistol, a bandoleer of grenades, a very large combat knife, a baton, her bow and a quiver full of arrows though, because she didn't like my attitude and didn't particularly care if I started my Tinkering in a hospital bed.
I was dressed in cargo pants and a singlet, I had a pair of dinky pistols tucked into the waistband of my trousers, and I was fitting all three of my scalpels in-between the fingers of my clenched right fist, to form a sort of claw. I was also smiling as sweetly as I could manage. I doubt that the quiet bets being made by the Teeth involved my victory, the few lips I bothered to read were talking about how long Quarrel was going to make the fight last, not my odds of victory.
The Butcher drew her baton, and twirled it expectantly. That really wouldn't do. I needed her a bit angrier than that. Angry enough to kill.
I started circling slowly, watching her eyes, and then smoothly drew one of the pistols with my left hand and shot her twice, once in each eye.
My strategy was simple, and one used against the Butcher several times before to great success. First, force the Butcher to use the danger-sense/teleport combo, and then capitalize before either ability could be used again. All I needed to do was endanger the Butcher's life without using my lightsabre, then reveal it as a surprise attack while she was vulnerable, and she was going to give me all the tools I needed to do so.
I was counting on watching her eyes to tell when she was ready to teleport. She'd be checking that the spot was clear, and preparing to experience a new perspective, so there wasn't a moment of disorientation. Up until now she'd been scanning the arena with a practiced eye, looking at locations, and imagining their tactical advantages. Behind me, flanking me, close to me, far behind me. She knew she could get there immediately, and was planning with that in mind.
Now that I'd shot her, her eyes were locked on me.
The teleportation had come from Devil Child, a Teleporter/Brute. An interesting combination, but justified by the need to survive the explosion that resulted at the point of entry. Only all the Butchers were able to take equipment with them when they teleported, so it wasn't so much a Brute power as an invisible forcefield, or perhaps some sort of Breaker effect. Something capable of withstanding a point blank explosion. Something I was betting shorted out briefly just after a teleport.
Something that had also shorted out when I shot her in the eyes. She couldn't teleport right now. Wouldn't be able to for nearly another full second.
The Butcher chose to respond to my shots by charging me with her baton, kicking off from the ground with a very quick lunge. Not being able to teleport after taking a hit… that didn't match up with what I already knew of the Butcher. Her files clearly indicated that she had teleported, even after receiving wounds before.
I sidestepped the Butcher's lunge, and anticipated it when she used her weight shifting Breaker effect to increase the speed of her turn to catch me. I leaned back under her strike, and kicked her in the knee. She increased her weight to keep her leg from going out from under her, and I shot her twice in the chest as her eyes began roving again, looking for a position to teleport to. Break the engagement, and take me down from range. For all her skill in melee, and her earlier decision to subdue me with the baton, now that I'd avoided a couple of her attacks Quarrel wanted out, back to range, where she was comfortable. She'd also just worked out that I was a Combat Thinker, and didn't want to be shown up in a fistfight in front of her men.
Both the bullets I'd aimed at her hit her torso, and the lead slugs actually stayed in the vest instead of bouncing off.
Ah, that explained it. She was using the force-field to protect her eyes, which were otherwise still vulnerable and she let all her other Brute powers protect the rest of her body. I didn't know she had that level of control? Or perhaps it was simply an aspect of the power? No one had ever really had a chance to study the Butcher's power interactions closely.
She shoved me, and I flipped back, grabbed her wrist and jumped to lock both legs around her neck, then I used a pulse from one of my palm cannons to swing myself around, behind her body before she could grab me, dropping the scalpels and breaking off the tip of a key behind the firing pin of her pistol as I swung.
Then I drew my other gun and emptied both pistols into to the back of her skull at point-blank range.
She grabbed my legs, heaved me off her body, and held me upside down by the knee, as high as her hand could go, so her face was fairly close to mine, though my head was still lower than hers. She had long arms, but I still had to touch my chin to my chest to look her in the eyes.
"Combat Thinker, right? Was that supposed to hurt?" she asked.
She did have a lot of Brute abilities. They tended to stack up. More for me I guess.
"No, it was meant to make you underestimate me," I told her, spitting my gum towards her face, and then punching it into her nose.
She recoiled slightly, crushed my knee into shards of bone, dropped me, and then took a breath through her mouth to snort out the gum. I threw the grenade I'd been cooking into her open mouth, and she teleported away. Either because her danger sense went off, or because she was startled enough not to want a grenade to the face.
She didn't teleport close enough. She didn't want me dead yet, didn't want to cook me in the flames of her arrival. I was going to have to change that. Again, I overestimated her civility. I shot the grenade towards her with my palm as I fell, but it didn't get close enough to do anything but pepper her armor with shrapnel.
I started giggling as I landed on my hands, and turned around, still walking on my palms, letting my crushed knee dangle.
"You're mad," the Butcher said, her lips quirking with what looked like amusement.
And she was fun. It was a shame I needed her powers. Getting Cricket to agree to share would have been a challenge, but a worthwhile one that would bring me some very nice conflict.
"And you're boring. Really, I don't know why I'm bothering with this. So many Brute powers. Dull, dull, dull. The teleportation is a little bit interesting I guess, but I can make a jetpack which is just as good. Danger sense? Pah, I see in three hundred and sixty degrees and can think at thirty times the speed of a human. I don't need a danger sense. Honestly."
The Butcher drew her pistol, sighted on my elbow, and tried to fire it. The gun jammed, the piece of key still in place in there.
"As for your own power? Well, what use is that? I mean, if I want to hit something, I just don't miss. What sort of lame trigger gets you a homing power anyway?"
She discarded the pistol, instead of simply clearing the jam as she was about to, and twitched as she worked the bow off her body and nocked an arrow, drawing it smoothly. I put on a falsetto voice.
"Oh no! I can't hit a target! Maybe I should get powers that do it for me, instead of working on my aim?" I said, charging my palm cannons. The left first, I was going to need to twist for this.
Quarrel twitched again and let her bow go slack, drawing two more arrows from her quiver and fitting them to the string along with the first, then she applied the sharpening effect of Butcher XIII.
I smiled, and she loosed. Not at full draw, she didn't want her arrows to go through the concrete barricades into her own men, but with more than enough force to send the arrows through my head, heart, and gut.
I released the charge in my palm cannons and shot into the air, twisting as I rose. Normally catching arrows is nearly impossible as a human. It's not just a matter of coordination. it was a matter of not having the skin ripped off your palms in the attempt.
One of the arrows entered my foot, traveled up the interior of my leg, destroying a lot of the calf muscle and eventually stopping halfway through my knee, locking the joint straight and immobilizing it. A makeshift, internal splint, seeing as that was the knee that the Butcher just crushed.
The other two I caught. I had robotic hands. The artificial skin on them could only rip so far before the hard metal underneath jammed the arrows.
I landed on both feet. My right leg with it's crushed kneecap and internal splint was basically useless below the knee at the moment, but enough of my nervous system remained that I could lock the ankle joint. That was all I needed to launch myself at the Butcher, pulsing my remaining boot for extra speed and dropping one of the arrows while charging a palm blast in the hand that was holding the remaining arrow.
She wasn't expecting me to leap at her, let alone wielding a weapon that had been proven to break through her Brute powers. Her danger sense kicked in and this time, when she teleported, she did so right behind me, as I was still moving forward.
I anticipated it, braced myself as the explosion of fire and force made by her arrival ripped the skin from my back and set the muscles beneath on fire. My mask survived the blast, as did the hand I had by my side, drawing my lightsabre from my cargo pants. The second generator in my back did not weather the blast, nor did my legs, both of which were slightly closer to Butcher's emergence point.
All right. I was done here. Zero chance of needing to diverge from the plan. I could start thinking about things other than the fight again. Let's see. How was I going to get into Dragon's code? Obviously I could hack her eventually, but even with shackles an AI wouldn't be easy to beat at electronic warfare, especially if her creator was particularly clever, and made her shackles fairly loose when she was forced to defend them.
Still, there was someone who had consistently beaten her. The Dragonslayers. Now that I knew her nature, I could see how a small group of mercenaries could fight the world's best Tinker. Saint had a backdoor.
I'd visit him as soon as I was done here. Much faster than having to hack Dragon myself.
My last kinetic blast burst from my palm, throwing me back toward the Butcher as my other hand rose, lightsabre already active.
It cut through her stomach, then up in a straight line through to the crown of her head.
I experienced my first Trigger vision. The new extradimensional computation engine tried to erase part of my memory. I let it, but made a copy first. It wasn't creative enough to think I would do that.
I reviewed the memory. Gigantic parasitic entities swimming through space. Now wasn't that interesting? I'd have to consider the full implications later.
I breathed in, and spent a second listening to the voices of the past Butchers before tuning them out. I would have listened further, they might have said something useful, but they were trying to give me Objectives, and no one but Ada could do that.
The Teeth were watching. awed into silence and slightly frightened by the possibility of a double kill.
I pushed myself up off the former Butcher's corpse, and smiled at the Teeth beatifically, then I teleported to the nearby warehouse door, which was made of metal, and leaned my back against it. I used Butcher VIII's power to turn the door into a large back splint, a long plate that speared into my back, cooling the burns and supported my spine while the muscles around it were writhing and burning.
I had to carefully control my vital functions to prevent massive systemic shock, followed by death, but despite its fairly limited nature my regeneration would be enough to keep me alive and I could fix what little it couldn't very easily. I should have no problem creating cybernetic legs to replace my current, black stubs for instance. Butcher VIII's power in particular would improve my Tinkering speed by a factor of ten, even if there were limits regarding unprocessed matter, more ease of use making weapons, and inability to mix metals.
The concrete on the floor in front of me flowed up at my command, forming two casts around what was left of my feet and legs. I flexed my thighs, which still mostly worked, even if the skin covering them at the back was bubbling.
The regeneration wasn't something I anticipated being a problem, and I was right. My cybernetics were designed to stay in, and active, even if the flesh healed around them. My arms shouldn't grow back, not with the metal implanted in the stumps as it was. My eyes didn't have any room to grow back, because there were artificial eyes already in there.
Yes. I could stand. Excellent.
I forced myself to my feet and looked around the silent gathering of Teeth, then I cracked my neck.
"Well, anyone else?" I asked.
One by one I locked eyes with the powered members of the gang in attendance and made them shake their heads before letting my gaze move on. No, no attacks today. I'd proven my might. They'd try to look for weaknesses first, and attack only if they saw one.
"Well boys. Look's like you've got a new Butcher," I told them. Not all boys of course. In fact the majority of my new capes were girls. None who weren't physically or mentally adult however, so I could still kill them if and when I needed to.
They got the picture anyway, and started to chant.
"Bo-cher! Bo-cher! Bo-cher!"
I used the piece of metal molded to my back to straighten my spine, and looked around my new minions. They were dirty. They were armed. They were drugged to the gills. They were expendable. They were perfect.
I lowered my arms to calm the chanting, and it stopped instantly. My eardrums even gave a little pop as they healed themselves, to confirm the complete silence.
"First things first. I need a laptop with wifi, get me one. And a jacket, the front of this singlet is currently held on purely by blood."
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- Location
- Australia
I would like to thank Storybookkight, I basically stole the Butcher powers unmentioned in canon from him. If you want to read a very good story in which Taylor becomes the Butcher (regretfully unfinished,) then I recommend you read The Butcher's Bill.
Also, I kind of didn't ask his permission before using his interpretation of the Butcher's powers. So hopefully he doesn't mind. Enjoy.
Also, I kind of didn't ask his permission before using his interpretation of the Butcher's powers. So hopefully he doesn't mind. Enjoy.
Legion1771
The God
Like a fucking boss.
Have I mentioned I fucking love Mayhem? Because I fucking love Mayhem.
Have I mentioned I fucking love Mayhem? Because I fucking love Mayhem.
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- Location
- Connecticut
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Mind? I'm flattered.
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
consisted of little more than
now that I'd avoided
aimed at her torso hit, and the lead
into the back of her skull at point-blank range.
clearing the jam as she was about to do, and twitched as she worked the bow off her body, nocking and drawing an arrow smoothly.
"I used to be crippled, then I took an arrow to the knee."
- Location
- Australia
Thank you. As someone who I feel really managed to nail the Butcher. How do you think I did in this interpretation of the character?
Thanks, fixed.
- Location
- Australia
Thanks, fixed.
- Location
- Connecticut
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The arrogance was spot on; I'm a little surprised by how easily Mayhem took her down, but I thinknow you explained it well. And stealing the Butcher's powers is a *very* Mayhem thing to do.
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
You would also have to have Contessa down the block, Accord in a nearby buildng, Jack Slash selling hot dogs on the corner while wearing a ludicrous moustache, and possibly the Simurgh invisibly overhead doing the Macarena for me to honestly buy anything other than 'a wizard did it'. The basic issue for me is that you have crammed a solid four protagonists worth of capability into a single package.
Well that, and you frontloaded all of the suffering off-screen that would enable my overdeveloped sense of empathy towards a character to bludgeon from behind my distaste toward the character's actions. And you made it so that Captain Plot Device basically had nothing to lose*, and that there is nothing short of a lobotomy or turning him into torso boy that will do more than momentarily slow him down while simultaneously fueling future growth. And of course making him about as likable as Season Seven Buffy Summers, or Season Any Ted Mosby.
*You then gave him something to lose in the form of Sveta, yay, but then you maybe killed her, and also made her potentially irrelevant to Mayhem anyway.
On the other hand, in the latest chapter, the action is superb and the character motivations and interactions entirely make sense, down to the believable stupid mistakes, without making me shout 'What the whatting what' at my tablet. And of course I'm still here, so I can't be that opposed to every writing decision you have ever made.
Tisaku
Head Chief Thinkomancer
-Unless that was a bullshit tinkertech grenade, the shrapnel should come as a result of the explosion, not before it.-
- Location
- Ireland
I don't know how people could hate Adam so much, he was a great MC. He wasn't a gigantic pussy like most SI's usually are, he was willing to fuck to treat Taylor like a normal parahuman, not some memetic god along with just being cool in general.
Probably because he isn't a SI.
- Location
- Ireland
Or OC as it may be.Probably because he isn't a SI.
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
He's about average for a fifteen year old. I can't stand average fifteen year olds.
More seriously, nearly every shitty thing that has happened to him since the story started is his own stupid fault. Compounding that, he whines about shit that he had every opportunity to fix, and no one likes a whiner.
Taylor is a normal parahuman, and thus we identify with her struggles, and revel in her triumphs. Adam, and especially Mayhem through him, has been handed an apparently flawless planning mechanism that lets him effortlessly waft through manipulating people with every reason to kill him and more than enough ability to do so casually, break out of PRT custody in his first major combat performance while stealing Halbeard's weapon, and wipe out the Gesselschaft overnight from a standing start. This is made worse by events happening offscreen, making things seem like asspulls if you aren't predisposed to like Mayhem.
As to calling your average SI character a pussy, SIs tend to be split between fix fic protagonists trying to save everyone who can be saved and some who probably shouldn't, and power trips showing off the latest broken build against the unpatched Raid Boss. In neither case is there generally a desire or need to revel in Hard Men Making Hard Decisions While Hard, and any imperfect attempt to do so here or on SB is likely to have the piss thoroughly taken out of it in ways that make my ragging on Adam look like a motivational lecture. It mostly works here precisely because the character isn't an SI working with the strategy guide open and fingers poised on the pause button.
- Location
- Ireland
He's about average for a fifteen year old. I can't stand average fifteen year olds.
More seriously, nearly every shitty thing that has happened to him since the story started is his own stupid fault. Compounding that, he whines about shit that he had every opportunity to fix, and no one likes a whiner.
Taylor is a normal parahuman, and thus we identify with her struggles, and revel in her triumphs. Adam, and especially Mayhem through him, has been handed an apparently flawless planning mechanism that lets him effortlessly waft through manipulating people with every reason to kill him and more than enough ability to do so casually, break out of PRT custody in his first major combat performance while stealing Halbeard's weapon, and wipe out the Gesselschaft overnight from a standing start. This is made worse by events happening offscreen, making things seem like asspulls if you aren't predisposed to like Mayhem.
As to calling your average SI character a pussy, SIs tend to be split between fix fic protagonists trying to save everyone who can be saved and some who probably shouldn't, and power trips showing off the latest broken build against the unpatched Raid Boss. In neither case is there generally a desire or need to revel in Hard Men Making Hard Decisions While Hard, and any imperfect attempt to do so here or on SB is likely to have the piss thoroughly taken out of it in ways that make my ragging on Adam look like a motivational lecture. It mostly works here precisely because the character isn't an SI working with the strategy guide open and fingers poised on the pause button.
Well I won't comment on the age bit because he doesn't really feel like he's 15 throughout most of the story, mainly because he has himself emotionally neutered. And you're being too harsh on Adam, the problem he failed to fix are only obvious to us because we have an outside view and meta knowledge. This is compounded by the fact that he didn't invest much into a social tree of his power. And the SI comment is valid mainly because I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen authors on SB/SV preface their work by saving they didn't like the tone of worm and were going to "fix" it. People making hard choices is half the appeal of worm, you take the grimness out and then you have nothing left.
- Location
- Australia
Thanks, fixed.
Thanks. I found it interesting in canon that one of the first powers the Butcher got was danger sense, but they still died regularly. It's justified by the Butcher not really caring as much about dying, but it does make her defeats practically require a Thinker of some sort.
Neat. ...I can think of some pretty horrible ways to use those, honestly.
FTFY. (Seriously, one day Mayhem will discover SHODAN and experience that human emotion called "love." And on THAT day... everyone else is DOOMED.)
I'll be honest, it took me a few tries to parse that last sentence. In short, if Butcher used EVERYTHING she had, instead of a few that she's good with, the extra powers would slow her down so much she'd die easily. (Mayhem, of course, doesn't have THAT problem, thanks to Shard cheating.)
Well, you know that quote: "Pride goeth before a fall and a haughty spirit before GETTING YOUR ASS KICKED BY A TINKER, YOU OVER-CONFIDENT ASSHOLE!" (It... might be exclusive to Earth Bet.)
Soon to be YOUR minigun!
You really shouldn't have read all those Earth Aleph comics, Mayhem.
Somehow, I have this crazy impression you'll be able to figure out a method to cause that-
-just like that.
As amusing as it would be if they couldn't....
Little bit late for THAT, Butcher. Things are not going to be well for you in the very near future.
*puerile giggle* Now THERE'S a Cape pickup line for you. ("Hey, baby... wanna come back to my place and... study some power interactions?")
So you... just shoved your crotch DIRECTLY into her face? No wonder you didn't want Cricket to come along for this. The green eyed monster is a fearsome foe, after all!
I... don't think that works? You could wedge it behind the hammer, though. (Seriously, my guess by "oversized" probably means Deagle, because that's what EVERYONE goes for, god only knows why. Which means hammer fired, not striker fired. I'm not certain you could get the key wedged in there well enough to keep it stuck when the hammer is cocked. ...unless, of course, Butcher carries it around cocked, in which case, you might be able to. ...and Butcher is a Brute, so wouldn't give a shit if the gun negligently discharged. Okay, never mind. I've talked myself around to agreeing with you, carry on!)
Now, where have I seen THIS scene before....
The first time that's EVER been said about Butcher. (Because no one else believes she HAS civility.)
...so we're all sure that Bonesaw IS dead, right? Not "dead but somehow managed to infiltrate Mayhem before she died"? 'cause.... *points up jerkily* THAT strikes me as familiar, somehow.
*opens mouth*
*pauses*
*closes mouth*
You know, once you kill Butcher, you'll have all the conflict you NEED after telling her that she's now, technically, in an open relationship.
*squints* Now, Mayhem, tell her that she hasn't seen the last of you....
And now you have an excuse to build robotic legs! Bonus!
"Saint? Did you order pizza?"
"...no."
"Well, I'm here anyways! Whups! Lightsaber in your eye!"
Calling it: Mayhem decides THEY have to die too, since they're the reason so many Cape sisters are killed.
something something only obey ONE Mistress something something
That raises an interesting question: What happens if the new Butcher dies because of the OLD Butcher?
FTFY.
I'm just waiting for them to grow back anyways....
"Are you carving out your eyes? AGAIN?!"
"I'm not giving up my mask for ORGANIC eyes! They're inefficient!"
Meanwhile, in the middle of beating the crap out of someone to steal his wallet, Cricket starts to feel jealous and doesn't know why....
D'awww, look at all the dead men walking. They're ADORABLE...-ly doomed.
Be GLAD that Cricket isn't here. She'd offer to help get it off in ways you DO NOT want to contemplate.
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh come on, that was lazy. Not even an actual joke about Mayhem being such a loyal sub?
Although I guess plotting to kill them even as you're following the letter of their orders isn't exactly loyal per se.