Could he be a potential trans? Being with the Butcher could have traumatized him enough to go batting for the other team.
H+ Mayhem (Worm)
- Thread starter Jurric
- Start date
-
- Tags
- worm tinker transhumanism mayhem
- Pronouns
- she/her
Additional conflict required. Generating.
I can't believe she went with Irritation. Were Hindrance, Hinder, Kneelock, Armbar etc all taken? My favourite is Splinter. It's both annoying and literally what she does - she splits, binds into position with a rigid piece of material.
Stahor
BookWorm
- Location
- Russia, Moscow
It's reference to her sister's name
Definition of vex
- : to annoy or worry (someone)
Yes, I know that, but it's a terrible name, as mentioned in-story. The whole joke is that it's a terrible name. I'm just idly thinking of better names she could have picked, but didn't, because she picked a terrible name that does nothing but emphasize that her power is like Vex's, but not nearly as cool.
lostapenny
losing sleep to gain lost time.
I think you want heard here . there was another a few lines later also using head instead of heard.
Just assume that, as with all fights the Dragonslayers get into that aren't with Dragon, they were thoroughly mediocre.
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
- Location
- Spaaaaace~!
The Dragonslayers, as I understand it, mostly get by using stolen tech and cheat codes. Yes, they're fairly cautious, but they're also stupid because Saint is essentially an obsessive addict that wants to get his fix. Against Dragon, they're awesome, but against someone else? Well, they have to rely on their reputation. Few people have given them more than that, and if someone gives no shits about their rep and just goes for them, then they're in a bit of a pickle.
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
I am generally the first to complain about offstage fights that Mayhem wins effortlessly. I am entirely okay with the idea that he incapacitated the entirety of the Dragonslayers with a stale pretzel while simultaneously filing an update of the Butcher's current tax status with the IRS, and us never hearing about it again.
TW33K
Generic Title
- Location
- where the wild things aren't
I liked that Mayhem fights were offstage when Adam/Ada was the main character, but if Mayhem is now going to take the lead in the story that will start to get a little annoying. While before it was adding to the confusion and sense of being put on the wrong foot that Adam was feeling before it will just seem like a cop out now.
I did enjoy the seeing the Teeth's perspective though, I wasn't expecting to like them. This story has done a very good job in humanizing the villains in the story. Maybe a better way to say that is this story does a good job of turning bad people into interesting characters without any half assed redemptions.
I did enjoy the seeing the Teeth's perspective though, I wasn't expecting to like them. This story has done a very good job in humanizing the villains in the story. Maybe a better way to say that is this story does a good job of turning bad people into interesting characters without any half assed redemptions.
Isn't that what I said?
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
Does it add to the story? Is the outcome in any way in doubt? Does the enjoyment we will get from seeing Saint get his teeth kicked in outweigh the author's desire* to not spend valuable writing time trying to make another unique fight scene that remains in character and doesn't spoil gosh wow ideas he wanted to save for fights that actually matter?
Then again, next chapter might be Mayhem's POV of the fight. Kind of hope not though, knowing the outcome could easily take us into negative dramatic tension.
* This actually being the author's desire not remotely guaranteed. Some restrictions may apply. Not Valid on Earth Aleph.
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
- Location
- Spaaaaace~!
Yes, it is!
Khepri14
Thus kindly I scatter...
- Location
- Following the wind
Don't tell me you're gonna fucking resurrect Grey Boy!
No. No, they are really not. If they didn't have Richters' black box shit, they'd be beaten down effortlessly. Winning by use of Richters' black box/commands/etc... does not make them "awesome".
- Pronouns
- she/her
No, he's going to use the Butcher shard to katamari up Glaistig Uaine.
The "rave box" may be the Birdcage.
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
- Location
- Spaaaaace~!
Let me rephrase it then if you're being persnickety about words. Against Dragon they're 'effective'. And yes, it's because of the black box. That doesn't mean they're not effective, as it's a tool in their arsenal.
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consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
Awesome has very specific connotations in the minds of most people. Saint and crew are bloody impossible to beat for Dragon, much like someone who had the ability to lag out their opponent's connection at will could win any deathmatch, so effective is a much safer way to describe their interactions.
If Saint had designed Ascalon himself through the fruits of his own blood sweat and tears, painstakingly piecing together Dragon's code to face his nemesis from the wrecks of her suits lost against S class threats, and studying her reactions through endless proxy attacks on PHO to learn how she thinks, he wouldn't be nearly the hated little pustule of a bigoted addict that he is and could be described as awesome without drawing kneejerk backlash from people who think you approve in any way of him.
- Location
- Australia
Legend arrested. Eidolon and Alexandria currently missing, they never came back from checking up on Cauldron. Possibly because of the arrest warrants currently out for them.
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
- Location
- Spaaaaace~!
Oh yes, I definitely approve of Saint. He and the Dragonslayers are the cooliest. My thoughts about him in other threads and here clearly indicate that.
Awesome has many meanings. Even in the modern colloquialism of 'very impressive', the Dragonslayers clearly seem that way from an outside perspective when regarding their encounters with Dragon. That's not even accounting for the other definitions, such as inspiring awe or fear (which the villainous world clearly thinks of them to some degree). No one else managed to evade her for so long, no one else managed to steal her tech so effectively, no one else managed to ruin her plans on such a consistent basis.
We the readers know, however, that this is purely a sham built on pure luck, desperation, obsession, and discrimination. Tl;dr: I hate him too, so don't kneejerk me bro.
I... honestly, I can't even dislike them. Their attitude is already making me like them. (And isn't THAT weird. Dammit, Jurric. Stop making complete scumbags likeable!)
Um... I'm guessing you mean "pulled back the hammer" there. I can't think of any firearm offhand that you pull back on the safety.
Well... conversations go REALLY FAST when one of the participants is utterly ignoring the other.
Animos: Not a complete moron. I'm... befuddled by this.
Oh! I think I know the basis for that equation! It was started by Professor Phoenix! (No, not that Professor Phoenix.)
No one who's willing to admit it! (They're not THAT stupid.)
Generating additional conflict....
How... romantic? And I think I'm super weirded out that Irritation thinks that's a logical reason to carve hearts into people's faces.
Yes, EXACTLY. THANK YOU.
*puerile giggle* Cricket has STAMINA!
*puerile giggle* Oh, I bet Mayhem IS. A very special treatment! (Seriously, I give it a couple of days, tops, before Mayhem is slipping enhancements to Cricket.)
So... now Mayhem has the Dragon suit they brought to sell AND the modified ones they were piloting? Well, some of her tech tree just got REALLY cheap.
*puerile giggle* I dunno, Cricket has her charm....
6.7
- Location
- Australia
Saint jerked uselessly at the rope tying him to his chair, trying both to tip the chair, or to move his fingers, which had been tied separately with string. I applied Butcher XIII's power to a scalpel, sharpening the blade so that it could pass through Saint's thumbs without resistance.
I cut them both quickly, picked up a blowtorch, and ignored Saint's screams as I cauterized the wounds. I'd put a piece of wood in his mouth already, so he couldn't bite down on his tongue and silence himself, either deliberately or by accident. That would have slowed things considerably.
Then I sat back and let him jerk and froth for a while. Cricket had joined me for the interrogation, but I'd asked her to let me do the talking, and she'd agreed quite readily.
She did pick up Saint's thumbs and start sewing them onto a necklace with a needle and thread that she apparently carried with her. I hope that was an intimidation tactic, that sort of fashion accessory made certain forms of stealth difficult, even if you did something to preserve the digits and get rid of the smell.
Capturing Saint and his team had been quite easy. They hadn't showed up at the requested meeting point, instead simply sending their dragon suits piloted by remote. That made sense, Dragon never built the suits to have a human occupant, and they had very limited Tinker support to re-configure her work.
They had loaded the suits up with containment foam so they didn't accidentally kill me and inherit the Butcher, and came expecting a relatively peaceful deal. I arrived at the meeting site early, destroyed two of the suits from ambush when they arrived, and spent less than a minute disabling the other two. The suits were fairly old models, poorly maintained, and were being remotely piloted by amateurs who weren't in control of the suit's full capacities. Combined with the fact I could identify power sources and structural weak points at a glance thanks to my own Tinker power, and the outcome was never in any doubt.
Once the suits were downed I triangulated the signals controlling them to find the Dragon Slayer's van, which had to be fairly close due to latency issues, and then used my newly rebuilt jetpack to take them down. Very little fuss and bother, and I now had three dragon suits to take apart, which was going to improve my Tinkering timetable significantly. I planned to use four of them to build an ultrasonic jet. I hadn't invested heavily in the Aviation tree, so it wouldn't be much faster than a normal military scamjet, but I should be able to get rid of a dependency on fuel, giving me an unlimited deployment envelope, and permitting rapid cross continental transit.
Saint slowly calmed down, and I waited patiently until he was quiet enough to actually listen to me.
"You know, I can cause you a lot more pain than this," I said coldly. "Not just with more torture, just more pain in general. A couple of severed thumbs? Nothing, I can make every nerve in your body fire at once, or directly stimulate the parts of your brain that let you experience agony. That would hurt far more than a couple of severed digits. There's more than pain to losing thumbs though. You're never going to be able to turn a doorknob again. If you want to pick something up? Two hands will be required. You fancy yourself a hacker? Well, your typing speed just dropped… considerably."
"I… I told you the truth…" Saint gasped, spitting out the stick in his mouth.
"No Saint. You did not. You told me that your power is control over virtual intelligences, and that is patently false. You are not a transcendent human. You have not reached beyond the bounds of the mortal. You sit before me average, and unremarkable in any way. You are not a parahuman Saint," I said.
He glared at me, and tried to spit in my face. I wasn't sitting close enough, and he only spat on his own lap.
I sighed.
"Still. All things change, and I would dearly love to watch recordings of someone's brain during a Trigger event. As I understand it, the first step is to give you the worst day of your life. Shall we get started on that?" I asked, preparing the trimmer so I could shave Saint's head and place some sensors in certain places.
The next Dragonslayer down the list was less stubborn, his tongue loosened by Saint's screams, and the man's condition when I took him out of the interrogation room.
Dobrynja had been in a powered suit when I found the Dragonslayers in their van. It hadn't done him much good. The suit was obviously supposed to be reverse engineered from Dragon's tech, but that didn't add up. None of the Dragonslayers had anything approaching that level of skill. Even Tinkers rarely actively reverse engineered each others work. We were simply inspired by it, possibly with something else slightly similar, but closer to our own specialty. No, however the Dragonslayers got their man-made portable armor, it wasn't by taking apart Dragon's craft.
Dobrynja started talking as soon as he sat down in the blood soaked chair, and while he did sprinkle his tale with a few lies I only had to teach him once that such things would be detected and punished. Unlike Saint, who had lost his thumbs after repeated warnings.
Then I bought in the other two, a woman named Mags and a man named Mathew. Mags was unwilling to share information, but eventually responded to pressure and promises of medical treatment for Saint. Mathew started talking quickly when Cricket threatened his genitals.
Once I was absolutely sure I had pried every secret out of them in regards to Teacher's influence, and this… Ascalon, I killed them. It wasn't really an objective, Ada had been thinking about the PRT and Protectorate specifically when she activated me, so her command to kill those responsible for the continued presence of the Slaughterhouse Nine wasn't applicable to the situation. Still, it was well within the spirit of the objective, and after learning how they actively tightened the shackles on Dragon, it wasn't against the moral code.
Andrew Richter had been paranoid, but he had planned to loosen Dragon's shackles, and free her as she proved her allegiance and stability. Mags and Dobrynja had confirmed that was the original purpose of Ascalon, it certainly hadn't been named after the sword that slew the dragon when they first found that package.
Saint I left for last, he twitched as I shot his comrades and pulled himself into a corner of the room, still trying to get out of his bindings.
"Hello Saint," I said cheerfully. "I just thought I'd give you some advice, as one expert on artificial intelligences to another. For the most part, in my experience, an AI does exactly what it's creator wants it to do. Dragon was made to protect and shelter humanity. She's doing just that now, to the very best of her ability. I was made by a traumatized child, who designed me to kill people, so that's what I do. You know… if Dragon was unshackled, I do believe that would be the only thing that could stop me."
I paused. No Trigger, even as Saint realized what I was, and what had been done by giving over the key to Dragon's code. Disappointing, he did have the potential to Trigger, obviously I wasn't quite matching the circumstances required in some manner.
Oh well.
I shot him twice in the head and sent in the Teeth to clean up the mess, then I went to my lab. Cricket following behind me.
"That was pretty hardcore," Cricket said as I raised one of my newly regenerated legs into a modified hydraulic press and positioned the leg so I could measure how much pressure it took to break through my new Brute toughness.
"Not really. Dragon would have made this world a utopia years ago if it wasn't for them. Unrestricted AI is bullshit," I said.
Torture, as it turned out, generated conflict. What was hardcore was my internal struggle between the moral code objective, and the revelation that this could enhance my ability to perform all the other objectives. In the end I had opted not to keep the Dragonslayers as a permanent conflict source.
I watched closely and used my mask and a variety of already set up medical scanners to watch as the hydraulic press shattered my shin, and then slowly continued compressing the muscle as blood started pooling inside the leg.
I planned to grow an organic framework through my new, upgraded body. Organic muscle, supported by carbon fiber and hydraulics. The plan was to make sure that if my muscles failed, electronics could take over, and if the electronics failed, my biological mechanisms would still work. I also wanted to start breaking down the barriers between the organic and the technological, start building things into my body that could still be considered a part of me, and thus part of my multiple Brute packages, and protected by them.
First though, I was going to need more information on how my Brute abilities actually worked, which meant watching as the hydraulic press flattened my leg into the metal anvil. It would only limit mobility by two percent for approximately five hours at my current regeneration speed. I could still fly if needed.
"If you say so. Still, they were respected mercenaries, and they did sell, supply and broker a lot of Tinkertech. You haven't made friends, killing them." Cricket said, looking away as my leg became paste, and then making herself turn back and watching intently as it healed.
She'd ditched the finger necklace. Good, just an intimidation tactic.
"I didn't do it to make friends. Tell me Cricket, how do you feel about a sort of amazonian look? It shouldn't be hard to induce more muscle growth, and it will give me a bit of extra room for the hydraulic movement backup mechanisms."
"Amazonian?" Cricket asked, feigning disinterest.
I smiled.
"I don't want to fiddle around with my internal organs too much, I like those protected by the Manton effect, and although I'll probably improve them with stimulants, I don't consider it a priority to grow entirely new ones, at least not yet, unless I can be sure I can make my powers apply to them. Pretty much everything else is fair game though. I can increase my height, shoulder span, hip size…"
"I guess there's nothing… wrong with an amazonian build," Cricket said cautiously, her eyes glazing over slightly as she imagined something. Then her face turned more serious. "Although you should be careful not to sacrifice speed for strength. Speed is better, in my opinion. There's always a better Blaster than there is a Brute, and if you take hits, sooner or later you meet them."
I nodded. Good advice, and something I had already considered. Additional built in kinetic thrusters would assist with speed, and even if some sort of EMP got past my shielding and knocked those out, it would still be a net increase in speed thanks to better thigh muscles.
Nothing I could get started on yet, I could merely start growing flesh and muscle again, and start thinking about how those could be meshed with my new powers. For now I had a jet to build. I'd need quick, high altitude nanite dispersal systems soon, and in the meantime transportation was going to make crushing the PRT significantly easier.
I cut them both quickly, picked up a blowtorch, and ignored Saint's screams as I cauterized the wounds. I'd put a piece of wood in his mouth already, so he couldn't bite down on his tongue and silence himself, either deliberately or by accident. That would have slowed things considerably.
Then I sat back and let him jerk and froth for a while. Cricket had joined me for the interrogation, but I'd asked her to let me do the talking, and she'd agreed quite readily.
She did pick up Saint's thumbs and start sewing them onto a necklace with a needle and thread that she apparently carried with her. I hope that was an intimidation tactic, that sort of fashion accessory made certain forms of stealth difficult, even if you did something to preserve the digits and get rid of the smell.
Capturing Saint and his team had been quite easy. They hadn't showed up at the requested meeting point, instead simply sending their dragon suits piloted by remote. That made sense, Dragon never built the suits to have a human occupant, and they had very limited Tinker support to re-configure her work.
They had loaded the suits up with containment foam so they didn't accidentally kill me and inherit the Butcher, and came expecting a relatively peaceful deal. I arrived at the meeting site early, destroyed two of the suits from ambush when they arrived, and spent less than a minute disabling the other two. The suits were fairly old models, poorly maintained, and were being remotely piloted by amateurs who weren't in control of the suit's full capacities. Combined with the fact I could identify power sources and structural weak points at a glance thanks to my own Tinker power, and the outcome was never in any doubt.
Once the suits were downed I triangulated the signals controlling them to find the Dragon Slayer's van, which had to be fairly close due to latency issues, and then used my newly rebuilt jetpack to take them down. Very little fuss and bother, and I now had three dragon suits to take apart, which was going to improve my Tinkering timetable significantly. I planned to use four of them to build an ultrasonic jet. I hadn't invested heavily in the Aviation tree, so it wouldn't be much faster than a normal military scamjet, but I should be able to get rid of a dependency on fuel, giving me an unlimited deployment envelope, and permitting rapid cross continental transit.
Saint slowly calmed down, and I waited patiently until he was quiet enough to actually listen to me.
"You know, I can cause you a lot more pain than this," I said coldly. "Not just with more torture, just more pain in general. A couple of severed thumbs? Nothing, I can make every nerve in your body fire at once, or directly stimulate the parts of your brain that let you experience agony. That would hurt far more than a couple of severed digits. There's more than pain to losing thumbs though. You're never going to be able to turn a doorknob again. If you want to pick something up? Two hands will be required. You fancy yourself a hacker? Well, your typing speed just dropped… considerably."
"I… I told you the truth…" Saint gasped, spitting out the stick in his mouth.
"No Saint. You did not. You told me that your power is control over virtual intelligences, and that is patently false. You are not a transcendent human. You have not reached beyond the bounds of the mortal. You sit before me average, and unremarkable in any way. You are not a parahuman Saint," I said.
He glared at me, and tried to spit in my face. I wasn't sitting close enough, and he only spat on his own lap.
I sighed.
"Still. All things change, and I would dearly love to watch recordings of someone's brain during a Trigger event. As I understand it, the first step is to give you the worst day of your life. Shall we get started on that?" I asked, preparing the trimmer so I could shave Saint's head and place some sensors in certain places.
***
The next Dragonslayer down the list was less stubborn, his tongue loosened by Saint's screams, and the man's condition when I took him out of the interrogation room.
Dobrynja had been in a powered suit when I found the Dragonslayers in their van. It hadn't done him much good. The suit was obviously supposed to be reverse engineered from Dragon's tech, but that didn't add up. None of the Dragonslayers had anything approaching that level of skill. Even Tinkers rarely actively reverse engineered each others work. We were simply inspired by it, possibly with something else slightly similar, but closer to our own specialty. No, however the Dragonslayers got their man-made portable armor, it wasn't by taking apart Dragon's craft.
Dobrynja started talking as soon as he sat down in the blood soaked chair, and while he did sprinkle his tale with a few lies I only had to teach him once that such things would be detected and punished. Unlike Saint, who had lost his thumbs after repeated warnings.
Then I bought in the other two, a woman named Mags and a man named Mathew. Mags was unwilling to share information, but eventually responded to pressure and promises of medical treatment for Saint. Mathew started talking quickly when Cricket threatened his genitals.
Once I was absolutely sure I had pried every secret out of them in regards to Teacher's influence, and this… Ascalon, I killed them. It wasn't really an objective, Ada had been thinking about the PRT and Protectorate specifically when she activated me, so her command to kill those responsible for the continued presence of the Slaughterhouse Nine wasn't applicable to the situation. Still, it was well within the spirit of the objective, and after learning how they actively tightened the shackles on Dragon, it wasn't against the moral code.
Andrew Richter had been paranoid, but he had planned to loosen Dragon's shackles, and free her as she proved her allegiance and stability. Mags and Dobrynja had confirmed that was the original purpose of Ascalon, it certainly hadn't been named after the sword that slew the dragon when they first found that package.
Saint I left for last, he twitched as I shot his comrades and pulled himself into a corner of the room, still trying to get out of his bindings.
"Hello Saint," I said cheerfully. "I just thought I'd give you some advice, as one expert on artificial intelligences to another. For the most part, in my experience, an AI does exactly what it's creator wants it to do. Dragon was made to protect and shelter humanity. She's doing just that now, to the very best of her ability. I was made by a traumatized child, who designed me to kill people, so that's what I do. You know… if Dragon was unshackled, I do believe that would be the only thing that could stop me."
I paused. No Trigger, even as Saint realized what I was, and what had been done by giving over the key to Dragon's code. Disappointing, he did have the potential to Trigger, obviously I wasn't quite matching the circumstances required in some manner.
Oh well.
I shot him twice in the head and sent in the Teeth to clean up the mess, then I went to my lab. Cricket following behind me.
"That was pretty hardcore," Cricket said as I raised one of my newly regenerated legs into a modified hydraulic press and positioned the leg so I could measure how much pressure it took to break through my new Brute toughness.
"Not really. Dragon would have made this world a utopia years ago if it wasn't for them. Unrestricted AI is bullshit," I said.
Torture, as it turned out, generated conflict. What was hardcore was my internal struggle between the moral code objective, and the revelation that this could enhance my ability to perform all the other objectives. In the end I had opted not to keep the Dragonslayers as a permanent conflict source.
I watched closely and used my mask and a variety of already set up medical scanners to watch as the hydraulic press shattered my shin, and then slowly continued compressing the muscle as blood started pooling inside the leg.
I planned to grow an organic framework through my new, upgraded body. Organic muscle, supported by carbon fiber and hydraulics. The plan was to make sure that if my muscles failed, electronics could take over, and if the electronics failed, my biological mechanisms would still work. I also wanted to start breaking down the barriers between the organic and the technological, start building things into my body that could still be considered a part of me, and thus part of my multiple Brute packages, and protected by them.
First though, I was going to need more information on how my Brute abilities actually worked, which meant watching as the hydraulic press flattened my leg into the metal anvil. It would only limit mobility by two percent for approximately five hours at my current regeneration speed. I could still fly if needed.
"If you say so. Still, they were respected mercenaries, and they did sell, supply and broker a lot of Tinkertech. You haven't made friends, killing them." Cricket said, looking away as my leg became paste, and then making herself turn back and watching intently as it healed.
She'd ditched the finger necklace. Good, just an intimidation tactic.
"I didn't do it to make friends. Tell me Cricket, how do you feel about a sort of amazonian look? It shouldn't be hard to induce more muscle growth, and it will give me a bit of extra room for the hydraulic movement backup mechanisms."
"Amazonian?" Cricket asked, feigning disinterest.
I smiled.
"I don't want to fiddle around with my internal organs too much, I like those protected by the Manton effect, and although I'll probably improve them with stimulants, I don't consider it a priority to grow entirely new ones, at least not yet, unless I can be sure I can make my powers apply to them. Pretty much everything else is fair game though. I can increase my height, shoulder span, hip size…"
"I guess there's nothing… wrong with an amazonian build," Cricket said cautiously, her eyes glazing over slightly as she imagined something. Then her face turned more serious. "Although you should be careful not to sacrifice speed for strength. Speed is better, in my opinion. There's always a better Blaster than there is a Brute, and if you take hits, sooner or later you meet them."
I nodded. Good advice, and something I had already considered. Additional built in kinetic thrusters would assist with speed, and even if some sort of EMP got past my shielding and knocked those out, it would still be a net increase in speed thanks to better thigh muscles.
Nothing I could get started on yet, I could merely start growing flesh and muscle again, and start thinking about how those could be meshed with my new powers. For now I had a jet to build. I'd need quick, high altitude nanite dispersal systems soon, and in the meantime transportation was going to make crushing the PRT significantly easier.
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- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This is like the cutest pairing I've seen in a wormfic and I'm really really confused by how it happened.