Waking up in a fictional world in the body of a stranger is far from easy to navigate, especially to someone with poor social skills and low self-confidence.
If they can conquer their impostor syndrome, there's great power waiting in their future.
But first, they have to make it through today.
(This is a Worm/Celestial Forge fic with an SI/OC protagonist. I'm using a modified version of the Celestial Forge v3 - I've removed the perks I wasn't confident enough in their source material to write, and I've added ~500 new perks that I do know how to write. Every 1k words, 100 CP are added to a bank and a random power is rolled from a list. If there's enough banked CP, the power is purchased.)
A/N: If you're a new reader, hi! If you're a returning reader, welcome back and, uh, sorry for the long hiatus, my brain was kicking my ass.
In the time since posting the original 12 chapters, I've gone through and edited Chapters 1-10, and I'm planning to rewrite Chapter 11 onwards from the ground up. I'll probably go into more detail in the Ch11v2 author's note.
Original Chapter 1 below for anyone interested:
Maybe if I hadn't recently moved my bed, I would've noticed sooner that the room I'd woken up in wasn't mine. Maybe if it had been a weekday, I wouldn't have just kept my eyes shut and slept in.
So then, there I was, in an unfamiliar bedroom, hearing the jingle of keys in a too-close front door.
What the hell? Had I been kidnapped? But why? I was one of the least interesting people I could name, a university student from a middle-class family.
The probably-front-door's hinges weren't as creaky as the ones at home, nor were the heavy footsteps ones I recognised.
My hand flew to the bedroom door's doorknob. Should I open it? Hold it closed?
In the end, I kept the door shut. Not out of any sort of logic or good decision-making – I was barely able to breathe, let alone move.
All I could do was stand there, my hand frozen on the doorknob, listening as the maybe-captor walked around the house.
Plastic bags rustled, and something was dropped onto a table. Shopping…? They could've been reusing old bags to carry other stuff in, though. God knows my parents loved keeping the bags from shopping trips, back before paper bags became more common.
More footsteps. A door opening – not the front door again, but not my door. Then, several excruciating minutes later, the steady pitter-patter of a shower started.
I sucked in a shaky breath, pried my hand from the doorknob, and dropped back onto the bed. Whatever was going on, I wasn't in the line of fire quite yet.
Okay. I needed to think logically about this.
…What would be logical, though? It's not like I was some kidnapping expert. I didn't even have shitty Hollywood 'advice' on my side, since it's not like I watched mystery shows that often.
Questions, first. If I had a list of questions, I could figure out how to answer them, right? Writing them down might've helped if I wasn't on a time limit, so I'd have to hope my poor short-term memory and attention span wouldn't let me down on this one.
So.
- What is this place?
- How did I get here?
- Why am I here at all? Why me?
Second and third would probably need me to talk to someone. If I was lucky, maybe there'd be some letters or a diary or something lying around somewhere, but it wasn't like things were that easy in real life.
Really, none of this was coming down to anything other than 'just look around and don't get caught'.
With that decided, I stood up to look around- and nearly fell over. It took a moment of frantic arm-waving to steady myself, and even then, a few tentative steps told me all I needed to know about my sense of balance.
Drugs? Had I been kept unconscious with some sort of knock-out drugs, and they were still wearing off? Come to think of it, my vision was pretty blurry, too. Whether or not that was true, I couldn't exactly do much about it.
The bedroom was small, smaller than my one at home. Even the ceiling was lower down. There was probably more floor space in this room, though; whoever owned it must've been a lot tidier than I was.
Next to the window, there was a desk with a computer and what I thought was a drawing tablet sitting on it.
…Wait.
Computer!
I could check the internet! Send a message to someo-
No. It'd have a password.
I pressed the power button and, sure enough, a login page came up from an OS I didn't recognise.
Fuck. So much for that.
The shower was still on, but it wouldn't be forever. I needed to keep looking.
Pressed against the back wall was a shelf and a chest of drawers. The shelf was filled with a variety of knick-knacks, the sort that you keep more for the memories you have with them over any practical reason.
…Had someone lived here before me?
It seemed like it. Except, why had I been kept in someone else's room?
There's no way of knowing. No point in thinking about it. Just keep looking.
The drawers just had clothes in them that were, to my discomfort, my size. In fact, the pyjamas I was wearing weren't actually mine, either. Did someone change me while I was asleep? The thought sent a wave of tension across my shoulders. I tried to put it out of my mind.
There were a few other things on the desk by the window, including a pair of glasses and some sort of oval-shaped electronic device I couldn't place. Three screens fanned out from the bottom like some sort of bizarro flip-phone and, like a phone, asked for a pin. Great. I put the phone-y thing back down on the table and turned towards the-
Idiot! There's a window!
I threw open the curtains.
Outside was a street, four lanes across, though it seemed early (or late?) enough that traffic is on the lighter side.
Oh, yeah, and the street was several stories down from the window.
So, that's one escape I couldn't take, if need be. At the very least, though, the fact that there's people outside probably means that they'd hear me screaming for help if things came down to that. The thought wasn't exactly comforting.
Something about the street bothered me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it, so I left it be.
I walked to the bedroom door and put one hand on the knob.
A few seconds passed.
The other person is still in the shower. It's safe. There's nothing to worry about.
With a shuddering breath, I swung the door open.
In hindsight, I probably should've realised this was an apartment and not a full house when I found out it was five stories off the ground. Or when I saw how small the bedroom was.
The rest of the apartment was… an apartment.
There was a main living area, with a giant window on one side, the front door on the other side, and four more doors lining the left and right walls. There was a dining table, as well as a sofa facing a TV.
The bathroom… well. I was not about to go in there right now.
There was a kitchen, too, with grocery bags on one side of the bench.
The fifth room was locked. Now, if I had learned anything from video games, locked doors meant something good behind them.
Of course, there weren't any easy-to-find keys lying around, and there's no 'press X to examine' popping up in a HUD to give me any idea where one could be hidden.
If only-
A searing feeling spilled from my chest, like someone had taken my heart and turned it into a crucible, molten metal spreading through my veins and dripping out through my pores.
Or like someone had plunged me into the heart of a star.
The strangest thing was that it wasn't painful. It was closer to sinking into a sauna than being burned at a stake.
Then, as quickly as it had come, the heat vanished, leaving a hollow feeling in its wake.
What the hell had that been?
I'd heard about hot flashes, but that was something else entirely.
Right?
Was I exaggerating the memory in my head? I wasn't a psychologist by any means, but wouldn't a person register something that shocking in exaggerated detail?
But it literally JUST happened. How the hell would I misremember it like that?
Fuck. Refocus. Just standing there and letting my mind spin in circles wasn't going to do me any good. Maybe I should've just splashed my face with water or something, to see if that would help with my mental state or my blurry vision or whatever.
The kitchen tap worked just fine. With the plug in, the sink started to fill with frigid water. I leaned over, and-
A stranger stared back at me from the reflection in the water.
I staggered back, slamming a hand over my mouth before the scream that rose up my throat reached my lips.
What the hell. What the hell?
I took a breath and looked at it more closely. The person in the reflection had a few superficial similarities to me, but they were just that, superficial.
Her hair was brown and straight like mine, but the tips weren't dyed purple. She was Caucasian too, but her skin was more tanned than mine. Unlike my hazel eyes, hers were a piercing blue, almost accusatory.
I looked away, heart pounding.
Between this, the hot flash, and waking up in someone else's house… this wasn't normal. There's no way in hell this would be normal.
…Plastic surgery? Contact lenses?
Contacts were something I had zero experience with. There must've been an easier way to prove I didn't have them than poking myself in the eye.
Wait, did I- did this body need glasses? It would make more sense than magic blurry vision drugs.
In fact, I was probably taller, too. The 'lower ceiling than mine' in the bedroom, my just-after-a-growth-spurt-tier balance…
I leaned on the kitchen counter and buried my head in my arms.
Question.
Who was I?
I don't hear the shower any more.
Fuck! I'd been too occupied to notice, and then, the kidnapper-
…Were they a kidnapper, though? I'd woken up in someone else's body, apparently. Chances are, they have no idea what happened.
There's still a good possibility they're responsible for whatever this is, but if they were, why were they acting so casually? If I'd soul-napped someone, I wouldn't just go grocery shopping and have a shower.
Maybe they're-
Footsteps. Softer than before, but still audible.
Idiot! Don't get distracted and go off on tangents!
Fuck. What do I do now? Act natural? How the hell can I act like someone I've never met?
I cast my eyes about, searching for something, anything, that could help.
The groceries.
Heart pounding, I grabbed one of the grocery bags and started putting them away. If I couldn't risk talking to them, I could occupy myself with busywork, hope they go away.
The footsteps transition from carpet to linoleum.
"Morning," they called. Their voice was baritone, and slightly gruff. Almost certainly male.
I forced the choking sensation flat and replied.
"Morning." I'd tried to not sound scared out of my mind, and it had kind of worked, at the cost of sounding flat.
He didn't reply for a moment.
Had I been too flat? Had I come across as apathetic, that I felt like he was barely worth the trouble?
…Wait, what sort of relationship did this body have with him? If they were best friends or something, what if he took it badly?
"You planning to put away the shopping?" He asked, unbothered by my tone and oblivious to my fretting.
Oh, and he had a very American accent. Which meant this body probably had, too.
Shit. I was terrible at accents at the best of times, let alone when I was desperately trying to act normal in someone else's body.
"Mm," I say. If I kept talking to a minimum, he wouldn't notice, right? Not that I talked much anyway. Severe cases of 'terminally online' tend to tie up social skills in text-only conversation. Ha ha.
By the time he started to talk again, I'd put away several cartons of soy milk (blech) in the fridge and moved on to the vegetables.
"You have any homework to do?" He asked.
To avoid talking, I just shook my head.
He meant university assignments, right? He had to. This body looked around my age, and I was a second year university student. I wasn't a teenager again, right?
If I had to deal with high school drama, if this body's history wouldn't let me reclude away from it all again, that would be a serious problem. Dealing with whatever friend group she might have, putting myself right in the line of scrutiny…
I grit my teeth as I dumped a new bag of carrots next to the older looking one, and-
The burning feeling boiled up in my chest again.
I'd remembered perfectly well what it was like last time, and this time, I knew the current situation wasn't exactly natural. Whatever this was, magic or superpowers or just unexplained phenomena, it was real.
And I didn't know if it was a good thing or an indication that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.
"...Everything alright? You look a bit flushed," the man asked.
"'M fine."
An unfamiliar hand brushed against my forehead.
I jerked away, even as I desperately tried to keep the tension out of my face.
"Brianne. You're feverish. Did you catch something?"
'Brianne'? Was that the body's name?
For the first time, I turned to look at the man.
He was half a foot taller than me and looked about a decade or so older, with short-cropped brown hair, a neat beard, and the same piercing blue eyes I'd seen on the body's - Brianne's - face.
Family. Great. Just what I needed, an older brother or something who would've known her for her entire life.
Unlike Brianne, though, his facial features suggested he had an Asian parent or grandparent. More worryingly, he was muscular, with a soldier-like posture. If he found me out and attacked me, there was no way I'd be able to fend him off.
The stuck-in-a-hot-forge sensation vanished again, leaving me feeling just like I had before it had started.
That had lasted, what, twice as long as last time?
…How long was it going to last next time?
The man continued. "Do you have any other symptoms?"
Fuck uh…
"Tiredness?" I hazarded. Best case scenario, I get an excuse to stay in Brianne's room and do nothing. Worst case, he turns out to be the overprotective type and tries to dote over me. If that happened, though, I could ideally chase him off by saying I didn't want to infect him.
Well, no. The worst case would be him taking me to a hospital and the doctors asking about personal details I couldn't give.
He nodded curtly. "I see. In that case, get some bed rest, and I'll check back in on you tomorrow."
'Check back in on me tomorrow'? Did he not live here? But, if that were the case, why had he used the shower?
But, that was beside the point. If he was going to leave, I wouldn't have to worry about him noticing any weird behaviour, at least for a while. Procrastination, ho!
"Thanks," I murmured, putting the last can into the pantry.
"Thank me by looking after yourself."
There was a pause.
"And," he said, "if you want to tell me what's actually going on, I'd be ready to hear you out."
Conversation apparently over, he left the kitchen.
Shit. Shit shit fuck that was not good.
Was he onto me? There was only so much I could excuse by pretending to be sick and tired. I still didn't know how Brianne behaved at all. For all I know, I'd been acting like the exact opposite of her.
Would he immediately jump to possession, though? It was so outlandish that I still had a hard time believing it, and I was the one doing the possessing.
…Was this a world where mind control was a problem?
I'd just assumed I was in a different place in my normal world, but if this was some sort of isekai, I wouldn't even be able to trust my own knowledge of the world.
Should I really just jump right to 'alternate universes' like that, though? Interdimensional travel was even crazier than somehow bodyjacking someone.
…The computer's operating system. The thing that might've actually been a cell phone.
Well. I could deal with that later.
When I'd finished packing the groceries away, I started making my way back to Brianne's room. The locked room was open, now, revealing a spartan bedroom with a row of cardboard boxes lined up along the back wall. The man who's name I still didn't know was inside, packing things into a bag.
Kinda disappointing, but it's not like locked doors in real life were going to have treasure behind them.
Back in Brianne's room, I closed the door and collapsed back onto the bed. Not long after, the front door opened and shut again.
He's gone.
Finally, I was able to break down.
I curled around someone else's pillow, sobs wracking someone else's body.
My friends and family. My home. My life. Would I be able to get them back? I didn't know how whatever this was had happened. Could I reverse it, or would I be stuck here, acting out the life of a stranger, until…
Until I was found out, and they did to me whatever they did to body snatchers.
Eventually, the tears ran out, and I was left laying on top of the bedsheets, shivering.
There were probably better things I could've been doing. Searching the apartment top–to-bottom for clues. Trying to see if this body had the muscle memory to get into the maybe-phone or computer. Even just making something for breakfast.
Breakfast sounded good, actually. I could only mope for so long before boredom started to seep in.
Making scrambled eggs wasn't exactly eventful, unless you counted me zoning out and nearly sticking an eggy spoon in my pocket. I sat down on the sofa, swiping the TV remote out of the way, and dug in. They came out fine, maybe a bit overcooked.
…TV remote. TV. You goddamn idiot.
Thankfully, the TV was just a normal TV. No circular shape or weird OS.
Less thankfully, though, was the content.
"-tween the Empire 88 and Coil's mercenaries has calmed down."
I-
"The Protectorate arrested several of the unpowered henchmen, as well as the Empire cape Heimdall, who is expected to be convicted to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Centre."
What? That's- it can't- no.
Worm?
The TV announcer droned on, even as-
Fire coursed through my veins again.
For a moment, I could almost feel tongues of flame licking against the inside of my skin. Except, when I looked down at my hand, there was a flicker of flame, leaking out of a fissure in the palm.
Did I have powers? Was I a cape? Did I have a shard in my head? Was Brianne a cape, or…
…Was that my trigger event, just then?
The fissure on my hand yawned open and, inside, there was a row of human teeth. Maybe it wouldn't have been quite as bad if I hadn't been able to feel it, feel the flames inside taking form into a human tongue, feeling more cracks splitting open across my body.
The heat faded.
The cracks remained.
Pairs of lips and gnashing teeth wound around my flesh, gullets going deeper than my body should allow.
When I screamed, I screamed with fifty mouths.
Maybe if I hadn't recently moved my bed, I would've noticed sooner that the room I'd woken up in wasn't mine. Maybe if it had been a weekday, I wouldn't have just kept my eyes shut and slept in. Maybe if I'd had even a shred of competency, I would've realised what was going on.
Instead, by the time I opened my eyes to see an unfamiliar bedroom, I was already hearing the jingle of keys in a too-close front door.
I threw off my blankets and shot to my feet, heart and thoughts racing.
What the hell? Had I been kidnapped?
But why me? I was one of the least interesting people I could name, a mediocre university student from a middle-class family. Sick as the thought made me, there were much more attractive girls out there if that was the kidnapper's motive. My last memory had been going to sleep in my own bed, so they would've specifically been targeting me.
If there was an explanation other than kidnapping, though, it wasn't an obvious one.
The front door's hinges creaked as it swung open. Heavy, deliberate, unfamiliar footsteps passed by outside. I flew to the bedroom door and gripped the doorknob. It's not like I was confident I could hold the door shut against the probably-kidnapper, especially if they had a weapon–
Oh god, what if they have a gun? If they could kidnap me in my sleep, they could almost certainly figure out how to get their hands on a gun.
Even after the footsteps grew further away, it took me several seconds to remember how to breathe. Longer to release my death-grip on the doorknob.
Plastic bags rustled. There was the clunk of something heavy being put down. If I was lucky, they'd just gone out shopping. If I was unlucky, they'd brought back something illicit and the plastic bag was just a cover.
The government had banned one-use plastic bags a few years ago.
Fuck.
More footsteps. A door opening – not the front door again. Not my door, either. Several excruciating minutes later, the steady pitter-patter of a shower started.
I sucked in a shaky breath, backed away from the door, and dropped back onto the bed. Whatever was going on, the kidnapper wasn't checking up on me yet.
Okay. I need to think logically about this.
What would be 'logical', though? It's not like I was some kidnapping expert. I didn't even have shitty Hollywood 'advice' on my side; I barely watched mystery shows.
Questions, first. If I had a list of questions, I could figure out how to answer them, right? Writing them down might've helped if I wasn't on a time limit, so I'd have to trust my own memory.
Joy.
So:
- What is this place?
- How was I brought here? Why didn't I wake up until now, and why didn't anyone notice I was being taken?
- Why am I here at all? Why me, specifically?
- And, who's the kidnapper?
Most of those would probably need me to talk to someone. If this had been a TV show, maybe there'd be some letters or a diary or something lying around somewhere. But, it wasn't like things were that easy in real life. Either way, those options were off the table.
I guess my best bet was to just look around and try not to get caught.
With that decided, I stood up to look around– and nearly tripped. I choked back a startled yelp, pinwheeling my arms until I wasn't about to topple over. A few tentative steps told me all I needed to know about my sense of balance; it almost felt like walking on stilts.
Drugs? If I'd been kept unconscious with some sort of knock-out drugs – which was probably the case – they might not have worn off yet. Come to think of it, my vision was pretty blurry, too. Another side effect? Not like I could do much about it if I was right.
Once I was sure I wouldn't fall over, I looked around the room.
For a kidnapping victim's cell, it looked a lot like a normal bedroom. It was small, smaller than my room at home. Even the furniture was smaller. There was more floor space in this room, though, despite how lived-in it looked. Whoever owned it must've been a lot tidier than I was.
Next to the window, there was a desk with a computer and something I'm pretty sure was a drawing tablet. A maths workbook was open on the desk, with–
Wait.
Computer!
I could check the internet! Look at Google Maps and send a message to someone!
No. It'd have a password.
I pressed the power button and, sure enough, a login page came up, not even from an OS I recognised.
Fuck. So much for that.
The shower was still on, but the kidnapper wouldn't be in there forever. If I was going to look around the place before they got out, I couldn't afford to waste time.
Pressed against the back wall was a shelf and a chest of drawers. The shelf was filled with a variety of knick-knacks, the sort that you keep more for the memories
Evidence was stacking up – someone had definitely been living in this room.
So, why had I been put in someone else's room?
No way of knowing. No point in thinking about it. Just keep looking.
The drawers just had clothes in them. Not mine, but they were my size, even if I couldn't tell until I held a shirt against myself for reference.
My pyjamas also weren't mine. The kidnapper must've changed me while I was asleep. I shivered and drew my shoulders together.
Don't think about it.
There were a few other things on the desk by the window, including a pair of glasses and some sort of oval-shaped gizmo. Three screens fanned out from the bottom like some sort of gimmicky flip-phone equivalent. Also like a phone, it needed a pin. Great. I put the phone-y thing back down on the table and turned towards the–
Idiot! There's a window!
I threw open the curtains, ready to slip outside.
Several stories below, traffic dotted the twilit road.
…Oh.
The four-lane road wasn't one I recognised at all. Worse, there was a bus driving by, and it was a completely different design from the ones in my city. Something about the traffic was bothering me, too, and it took a few more seconds to realise it was because everyone was driving on the wrong side of the road.
Trembling, I gripped the windowsill and pushed myself away.
At least the fact that there were people out there meant someone might hear if I screamed for help, which had to be the thinnest silver lining I'd ever heard.
A loud clunk echoed from the bathroom, then a muffled curse.
Can't waste time. Keep going.
I walked to the bedroom door and put a hand on the knob.
The kidnapper is still in the shower. It's safe. There's nothing to worry about.
I took a shuddering breath. Paused. Then, swung the door open.
Turns out, it wasn't just the bedroom that was small. We were in an apartment.
In hindsight, I probably should've realised this wasn't a normal house when I saw we were five stories off the ground.
Outside the bedroom was the main living area, with a giant window on one side, and five identical doors lining the other three walls. There was something that might've been a dining table before being overrun by books and loose papers, as well as a sofa facing a TV.
If 'my' bedroom was Door 1, Door 2 was the one the shower sounds were coming from. Bathroom. I didn't need to use it, anyway – I was more dehydrated than anything.
The kitchen was behind Door 2. It had a stack of takeout boxes on one side and several plastic bags on the other side. I peeped inside. Groceries, not guns – the kidnapper wasn't likely to be armed.
Guess I was just being paranoid, but it was better to check than to risk the kidnapper gunning me down.
Unlike the rest of the doors, Door 3 was locked. Not even the door to my room had been locked. If I had learned anything from video games, locked doors meant something good behind them. Of course, there weren't any easy-to-find keys lying around, and there's no 'press X to examine' popping up in a HUD to give me any idea where one could be hidden.
If only–
A searing feeling spilled from my chest. My heart felt like a crucible, pumping molten metal through my veins, or like a star that had been plunged into my chest.
Strangest thing is, it wasn't painful. It was closer to sinking into a sauna than being thrown onto a fire pit.
Then, as quickly as it had come, the heat vanished, leaving a hollow feeling in its wake.
What the hell had that been?
I'd heard about hot flashes, but that was something else entirely.
There was no way that could've actually happened. Right?
The longer I thought about it, the more I started to wonder if I'd somehow misremembered. Maybe the memory had been stored wrong somehow due to stress.
Even if I hadn't somehow gaslit myself into thinking the weird heat had been hotter than it actually was, there was no way that wasn't some sort of hallucination. Fuck. Refocus.
Just standing there and letting my mind spin in circles wasn't going to do me any good.
Door 5 opened into the hallway outside, which was fucking obvious in hindsight – it was the only door with a wall to itself. Part of me wanted to leave as soon as I could, but I stopped myself.
Shower's still on. After it stops, they'll need to towel off and get dressed. There's time to think.
There was no way a single person could've done all of this without help. If I ran, there could be a lot of people looking for me. Plus, I didn't know how long it'd be until I could contact the police.
Lucky for me, there were several already-packed bags of food I could grab. I dashed into the kitchen – fuck, I'm still barefoot – and scanned the shopping bags. Mostly raw ingredients I couldn't eat on the go, from a quick scan. One had a package of one-use foil baking trays at the top, so I pulled them out to check underneath.
A stranger was reflected in the baking trays. I whipped around, ready to fight or run.
Nobody was there.
Was I hallucinating? I looked back down at the foil container to make sure I hadn't mistaken a face on the packaging for a reflection.
I hadn't.
The stranger's reflection – it was my reflection.
My hand slammed over my mouth before the scream that rose up my throat could reach my lips. The pans clattered to the floor.
What the hell. What the hell?
I took a breath and picked the pans up again for a closer look. The person in the reflection had a few superficial similarities to me, but they were just that, superficial.
Though her hair was brown and straight like mine. It was darker and much longer, missing the purple-dyed tips. She was Caucasian too, but tanned in a way I'd always been too pasty to reach.
Her face was much more angular than mine, and if she'd been a few decades older, I might've said it made her look like a strict school teacher. My eyes had been hazel, but hers were blue, piercing in a way that felt almost accusatory.
I looked away, heart pounding.
Between this, the hot flash, and waking up in someone else's house… this wasn't normal. There's no way in hell this would be normal.
Plastic surgery? Contact lenses?
Contacts were something I had zero experience with. There must've been an easier way to prove I didn't have them than poking myself in the eye.
Wait, did I– did this body need glasses? It would make more sense than knockout drugs somehow affecting my eyes, not that I had any actual experience with that sort of thing.
My lack of balance from earlier was starting to feel suspiciously close to the sort of clumsiness people got after growth spurts. If I was taller, the plastic surgery theory would fall through.
I leaned on the kitchen counter and buried my head in my arms.
There was no kidnapping, I hadn't been picked up in my sleep. I'd woken up in another person's body in a completely different country. It was the sort of thing that only happened in stories and, yet, here I was.
The sound of the pans scraping against the counter as I shivered was the only sound in the apartment other than my breathing.
…
The shower.
It had stopped.
Fuck! I'd been too occupied to notice, and then, the kidnapper–
Not necessarily a kidnapper. There was still a good possibility they were responsible for whatever this is. But if they were, why were they acting so casually? If I'd soul-napped someone, I wouldn't just go grocery shopping and have a shower.
Footsteps. Softer than before, but still audible.
Idiot! Don't get distracted and go off on tangents!
Fuck. What do I do now? Act natural? How the hell can I act like someone I've never met?
I cast my eyes about, searching for something, anything, that could help.
The groceries.
Heart in my throat, I started checking through the kitchen drawers to find where the one-use pans should go. If I couldn't risk talking to them, I could occupy myself with busywork, in case they thought I was the real owner of the body and left me alone.
The footsteps transition from carpet to linoleum.
"Morning," they called. Their voice was baritone and slightly gruff. Almost certainly a guy.
I forced the choking sensation flat and replied "Morning."
I'd tried to not sound scared out of my mind, but it just came out as emotionless. He didn't reply immediately. Had my voice been too flat? Had I sounded apathetic to someone I shouldn't sound apathetic to?
…Wait, what sort of relationship did this body have with him? If they were best friends or something, what if he took it badly?
"You planning to put away the shopping?" He asked, unbothered by my tone and oblivious to my fretting.
Oh, and he had a very American accent. Which meant this body probably would've had one, too. Shit. I was terrible at accents at the best of times, let alone when I was desperately trying to act normal in someone else's body.
"Mm," I said. If I kept talking to a minimum, he wouldn't notice, right? Not that I normally talked much anyway.
By the time he started to talk again, I'd put away several cartons of soy milk (blech) in the fridge and moved on to the vegetables.
"You have any homework to do?" He asked.
To avoid talking, I just shook my head.
He meant university assignments, right? He had to. This body looked around my age, and I was a second year university student. I wasn't a teenager again, right? …Right?
If I had to deal with high school drama, if this body's history wouldn't let me reclude away from it all again, that would be a serious problem. Dealing with whatever friends she might have would be bad enough. Worse still, without any of her memories for context… I grit my teeth as I dumped a new bag of carrots next to the older looking one.
The burning feeling boiled up in my chest again.
I hadn't misremembered a thing last time and, this time, I knew the current situation wasn't exactly normal. Whatever this was, magic or powers or whatever kind of supernatural thing this was, it was real.
And I didn't know if it was a good thing or an indication that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.
I felt someone looking at me, the not-kidnapper.
"Everything alright? You look a bit flushed," he asked.
"'M fine."
An unfamiliar hand brushed against my forehead.
I jerked away, even as I desperately tried to keep the tension out of my face.
"Brianne. You're feverish. Did you catch something?"
Just 'feverish'?
And, 'Brianne'? Was that the body's name?
For the first time, I turned to look at the man.
He was half a foot taller than me and looked about a decade or so older, with short-cropped brown hair, a neat beard, and the same piercing blue eyes I'd seen on the body's – Brianne's – face.
Family. Great. Just what I needed, an older brother or something who would've known her for her entire life.
Unlike Brianne, though, his facial features suggested he had an Asian parent or grandparent. More worryingly, he was muscular, with a soldier's posture. If he figured me out and attacked me, there was no way I'd be able to fend him off.
The stuck-in-a-hot-forge sensation vanished again, leaving me feeling just like I had before it had started. That had lasted, what, twice as long as last time? Would it be twice again as long next time? If the duration increased exponentially, there was no way I'd be able to hide it.
The man continued. "Do you have any other symptoms?"
Fuck, uh…
"Tiredness?" I hazarded. Best case scenario, I get an excuse to stay in Brianne's room and do nothing. Worst case, he turns out to be the overprotective type and tries to dote over me. If that happened, I might be able to chase him off by saying I didn't want to get him sick, too.
Or, well, the worst case would be him taking me to a hospital and the doctors asking about money I couldn't pay and personal details I couldn't give.
He nodded curtly. "I see. In that case, get some rest, and I'll check back in on you tomorrow."
'Check back in on me tomorrow'? Did he not live here? But, if that were the case, why had he used the shower?
That was beside the point. If he was going to leave, I wouldn't have to worry about him noticing any weird behaviour, at least for a while. Procrastinating, in this case, was probably the best thing I could do if I didn't want to risk tipping him off.
"Thanks," I murmured, putting the last can into the pantry.
"Thank me by looking after yourself."
There was a pause.
"And," he said, "if you want to tell me what's actually going on, I'll be ready to hear you out."
Conversation apparently over, he left the kitchen.
Shit.
Shit shit fuck that was not good.
Was he onto me? I started to pace back and forth, caught between keeping my footsteps quiet and bleeding off the nervous energy.
There was only so much I could excuse by pretending to be sick and tired. I still didn't know how Brianne behaved at all. For all I know, I'd been acting like the exact opposite of her.
Would he immediately jump to possession, though? It was so outlandish that I still had a hard time believing it, and I was the one doing the possessing.
I stopped pacing.
What if this was a world where mind control was a known factor? I'd just assumed I was in a different place in my normal world, but if this was some sort of isekai, I wouldn't even be able to trust my own common sense.
Should I really just jump right to 'alternate universes' like that, though? Interdimensional travel was even crazier than somehow bodyjacking someone.
But, the more I thought about it, the more things started to click together. The computer's weird operating system. The round thing that might've actually been a cell phone. Neither of them had been any more advanced than what I was used to – maybe even the opposite – but they were foreign in a way that didn't make me think the creators were familiar with the versions I knew.
Well. One more thing to think about later.
When I'd finished packing the rest of the groceries away, I started making my way back towards Brianne's room. The locked door was open, now, revealing a somewhat messier bedroom with a row of cardboard boxes lined up along the back wall. The man (who's name I still didn't know) was inside, packing things into a bag.
Kinda disappointing, but it's not like locked doors in real life were going to have treasure behind them.
Back in Brianne's room, I closed the door and collapsed back onto the bed. Not long after, the front door opened and shut again.
He's gone.
Finally, I was able to break down.
I curled around someone else's pillow, sobs wracking someone else's body.
My friends and family. My home. My life. What if I could never get back to them? I didn't know how whatever this was had happened. Could I reverse it? Would I be stuck here? Forced to act out the life of a stranger, until…
Until I was found out and they did to me whatever they did to body snatchers.
Eventually, the tears ran out. I was left laying on top of the bedsheets, shivering.
There were probably better things I could've been doing. Searching the apartment top-to-bottom for clues. Trying to see if this body had the muscle memory to get into the maybe-phone or the computer. Even just making something to eat.
Actually, now that I thought about it, breakfast sounded good. Eating something could make me feel a bit better, maybe.
Making scrambled eggs wasn't exactly eventful, unless you counted me zoning out and nearly sticking an eggy spoon in my pocket. I sat down on the sofa, swiping the TV remote out of the way, and dug in. The eggs had come out fine, if maybe a bit overcooked.
…TV remote. TV. You goddamn idiot.
Thankfully, the TV was just a normal TV. No circular shape or weird OS.
Less thankfully, though, was the content. A reporter, male, with slicked-back hair and a charming smile. 'Stan Vickery – Channel 12' was emblazoned across the bottom of the screen, and images of people in strange costumes were on either side. The reporter continued to speak.
"–tween the Empire 88 and Coil's mercenaries has calmed down."
I–
"The Protectorate arrested several of the unpowered henchmen, as well as the Empire cape Heimdall, who is expected to be convicted to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Centre."
What? That's– it can't– no.
Worm?
The TV announcer droned on, even as fire coursed through my veins again.
For a moment, I could almost feel tongues of flame licking against the inside of my skin. Except, when I looked down at my hand, there was a flicker of flame leaking out of a fissure in the palm.
Did I have powers? Was I a cape? Did I have a shard in my head? Was Brianne a cape, or…
…
…Did I have a trigger event just now?
The fissure on my hand yawned open and, inside, there was a row of human teeth. Maybe it wouldn't have been quite as bad if I hadn't been able to feel it, feel the flames inside taking form into a human tongue, feeling more cracks splitting open across my body.
The heat faded.
The cracks remained, pairs of lips and gnashing teeth winding around every surface of my body.
When I screamed, I screamed with fifty mouths.
A/N: I'll be keeping the original author's notes, but I'll be putting them in spoiler boxes like so:
(Pre-Edit) A/N: Want more? Feel free to leave a review! Reviews, even one-word reviews, are like crack cocaine for creative-types. There's no better encouragement than nice words.
I have a three-chapter backlog right now. Whenever I go over that, or whenever it's been a week since my last post, I'll upload a new chapter.
6.0280 Plentiful Mouths (300 CP) (Haroun and the Sea of Stories) (Toolkit Magical)
A Plentimaw Fish is called such due to it having dozens of maws [i.e., mouths] all over its body. You now have the same trait, with several dozen mouths scattered across your body. They can be retracted and concealed from the view of others if you like. When exposed, you can control the many mouths individually or in unison, such that they can speak in many different voices or all as one. As a result, you could say multiple statements, songs, or spells (voice-activated ones) simultaneously. But the greatest strength of having so many mouths is the ability to mix different things together. By absorbing different things in each mouth, whether it is normal food or various stories, they will all meet in your singular stomach and blend together into something new, which combines the best qualities of each ingredient into something special. For instance, two different power-ups would merge as one, and three stories would link into a single narrative. You can also regurgitate the combined mixture.
6.0280 Plentiful Mouths (300 CP) (Haroun and the Sea of Stories) (Toolkit Magical)
A Plentimaw Fish is called such due to it having dozens of maws [i.e., mouths] all over its body. You now have the same trait, with several dozen mouths scattered across your body. They can be retracted and concealed from the view of others if you like. When exposed, you can control the many mouths individually or in unison, such that they can speak in many different voices or all as one. As a result, you could say multiple statements, songs, or spells (voice-activated ones) simultaneously. But the greatest strength of having so many mouths is the ability to mix different things together. By absorbing different things in each mouth, whether it is normal food or various stories, they will all meet in your singular stomach and blend together into something new, which combines the best qualities of each ingredient into something special. For instance, two different power-ups would merge as one, and three stories would link into a single narrative. You can also regurgitate the combined mixture.
(300 CP gained. 300 CP spent. 0 CP remaining.)
(300 CP gained. 0 CP spent. 300 CP remaining.)
42.0010 STANDO POWA (0 CP) (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders) (Variable Abilities)
You have a stand, go to the Stand Builder and build your stand. You can also convert CP to Stand Points on a 1:1 ratio from your Forge's CP pool. A/N: Though it's not an option on the doc yet, Electric Aeon is an Acts stand.
Name: It's named after the Aeon arcana from the Thoth (or Crowley) Tarot Deck. It's the equivalent of the Rider-Waite deck's Judgement. The Aeon Upright represents self-reflection, periods of awakening, and phoenix-like renewal. The Aeon Reversed represents self-doubt holding you back, lack of self-awareness, and 'missing the call'.
Appearance: It looks like a robotic chameleon, made up of screens connected by a metal frame. Its eyes look like cameras set into ball bearings. Its tongue looks like a wire with an exposed tip, and its tail is a two-pronged American-style power plug.
Ability: An automatic stand with a taser-tail, as well as a wire-tongue it can use to swing around on. It has a limited amount of charge that regenerates over time, but it can also plug into a socket or chew on a battery to absorb more charge. It's a long-ranged automatic stand, so it can wander away from the user. Damage doesn't transfer in Era 1 - if it's destroyed, it can be restored from an electricity source.
Stats: Power D, Speed C, Range A, Durability C, Precision C, Potential A.
Import Options (0 CP)
You may import yourself into any family you wish if you're not a Drop In. If you choose to be a member of the Joestar family your "in jump" name must be able to be combined with Joestar (or Kujo) to make the nickname JoJo. In addition, you have a star shaped birthmark on the base of your neck. If you choose to be a member of the Brando family you will have three dots on your left earlobe.
Poise and Pose (0 CP)
JoJo is a series involving incredible amounts of flamboyant speech, actions, and posing. Now you can pose with the best of them. You have a great sense of balance and a flamboyant air around you that is seen as somehow a perfect mixture of extreme masculinity and extreme femininity. You'll fit right in here. Also you can redesign your appearance to be more in line with this part's artstyle.
33.0030 Hull Architect (100 CP) (Endless Space) (Quality Design)
You know how to design ships. From nose to engine, you could draft up a functional space-worthy ship. On paper. Putting all the pieces together may be beyond you, but anyone who puts it together will agree, it's a mighty fine ship
Scout Ship (0 CP)
An engine, a cockpit, some life support. This is as bare bones of a ship as you can get, about the same size as a modern day space shuttle. It is essentially a space faring RV with sensors and a couple point defence weapons, designed for long journeys to the edges of known space.
(300 CP gained. 100 CP spent. 500 CP remaining.)
34.022 Extended Warranty (600 CP) (Ben 10 0.1) (Quality Durability)
Let's get real for a second: You are a scientist, not a repair monkey. You shouldn't have to teleport all the way from your home planet to fix something one of your assistants managed to break in the time you took your eyes off of them. As a result, your technology is now durable and long-lasting...you can go years without seeing a prototype of your creation before it actually needs you to fix it directly, even the most idiotic and primitive species being able to guesswork how to fix it even if they don't know how it works. Also when I say durable, I mean the universe could collapse into nothingness and that device of yours would still be floating in the empty void that used to be said universe. Point being, technology you create is both insanely durable and is easily maintained. Now maybe you don't have to handle everything yourself.
(300 CP gained. 600 CP spent. 200 CP remaining.)
38.0200 Miniaturisation/Efficiency (400 CP) (Worm) (Quality: Size)
You can miniaturise anything down to levels that any sane man would consider impossible. A fusion reactor the size of a watch battery would be the absolute minimum of what you are capable of, and you'd be able to make it far smaller than that. Your power also makes you a master of technological efficiency, anything you make needing barely any energy to run compared to what it should and continue to do so for a very long time. These specialties also make you a master of nanotechnology and similar pursuits. Of course you aren't barred from building something big like a giant robot, just that it'll be impossibly efficient and crammed full of more weapons and subsystems then should be possible
Outside Context Problem (0 CP)
It'd be boring if you were to just die right at the start so for free you'll have a selective immunity to the powers of a few rather nasty plot device level opponents that by all rights would probably want to kill you right out of the gate. Contessa, Ziz, and Zion's precog doesn't seem to be able to pick you up, instead returning a zero-sum error whenever they try to force the issue. They won't notice this until you garner enough attention for them to try and then they might take further measures to see what the problem is. But at the moment you'll be safe from being instantly killed due to the threat you pose to their plans. This works on all shard/entity derived precog. Your peculiar inter-dimensional nature just messes up their ability to predict you. Coil is an exception due to the weird nature of his power.
Tinker-Tech Cache (300 CP, Free Tinker)
You get a decent sized cache of Tinker-Tech whose nature is up to you. Whether you want a large variety of computing and programming devices, an armoury full of futuristic guns and weapons, or maybe just a ton of Tinker tools for your personal use. There is nothing crazy in here, but even basic Tinker tech is far more advanced than anything on modern earth. If you have a Tinker ability you get one purchase of this free for tech that corresponds to your specialty, giving you more than enough to get started. Note: Even the worst Tinker-Tech is hundreds of years ahead of modern day earth, and the samples you get here aren't bargain bin by any means, just not anything earth shaking.
(300 CP gained. 400 CP spent. 100 CP remaining.)
4.0040 Mechanic (100 CP) (Fast and Furious) (Vehicles)
Machines, especially ones that go fast, just speak to you. You have no problem fixing up and tuning any motor vehicle, and can rebuild them after the most devastating crashes. You can keep anything in top condition with just a few simple tools. Of course, you also need to understand the electronics, so hotwiring cars (and sometimes, alarm systems) is not a problem either.
The Vehicle (0 CP)
This object barely deserves the title of car, at least in your opinion. A Volkswagen Beetle, a Pinto, or a Yugo, this car technically meets all the criteria and is very cheap, but it would take a master mechanic and a driving god to let it rival even the worst other racers can bring to the table.
(400 CP gained. 100 CP spent. 400 CP remaining.)
3.0330 Workaholic (300 CP) (Sonic the Hedgehog) (Time)
Sometimes you wonder how some geniuses are able to build entire armadas within days or weeks of their last defeat. You become a walking factory of production. Building en masse is something that comes without issue to you. That one bot that took a week to build? Now that one bot is now 5. Or roughly 3x the size it was before. How do you even have the resources to build so much you say? The hell if I know.
1.0450 Sans (300 CP) (Undertale) (Assistants)
A short and stocky skeletal prankster who's supposedly a sentry in Snowdin, but is always slacking off (usually by doing another job instead). Very lazy and laid-back, Sans is a good friend to have, if only for the bad laughs and good food. He's not very good at fighting... Supposedly. In reali- hey, you want to make me your companion? that's pretty cool, but you could have just asked to be my friend, buddo. and i make a mean 'dog. yeah. apostrophe-dog. it's short for hot dog.
(300 CP gained. 600 CP spent. 100 CP remaining.)
(200 CP gained. 0 CP spent. 300 CP remaining.)
36.0730 Minecraft (400 CP) (Quality Resources) (Generic Minecraft)
I mean, this is a rather obvious pun isn't it. Purchasing this Perk grants you the ability to Mine and Craft much, much better. As in you can gather resources at twice the speed, quantity and quality of resource gathered and craft with twice the item's quality and speed. This Perk also applies to any operations you oversee to do the above and is also the Capstone Booster for this Jump.
Modding (0 CP)
Now, here comes the section about altering the various aspects of the world you're about to be dropped into via "mods". You gain a stipend of 400 CP for purchases here and the first 3 mods you choose are Discounted.
Tier 2 Mods x2 - Sync, Waystones (200 CP)
For a moderate cost, you may purchase a mod that significantly adds onto your experience, whether that be lower-tier tech mods, or some of the more obscure magic mods. Things like the Iron Chest mods, or other mods that make your life significantly easier are also priced here. Sync
Sync is a mod that lets you grow spare, soulless bodies that you can enter upon dying or going into a Shell Storage. Inventories, exp levels, health, hunger etc. are not retained between different bodies. Waystones
This mod adds waystone blocks that the player can return to once they've been activated, either through a Warp Scroll, a rechargeable Warp Stone, or by using an existing waystone to hop from one to the other.
Tier 3 Mods - Ex Nihilo: Creatio (400 CP)
For a major cost, this is where most of the iconic mods are priced at, from Thaumcraft to AE to Botania, Witchery and Industrialcraft. These all reside here and are celebrated. As a note, the tech mod that creates universes is priced here while Mystcraft is priced above due to the need for extreme amounts of power for the former. Ex Nihilo
Ex Nihilo, Latin for 'From Nothing', is a mod about getting basically every Minecraft resource from starting with as little as a single tree. It's mostly based around low-tech methods - hammering cobblestone into gravel and sifting through it to find chunks of different ores or even things like diamonds.
3.0060 Tasks (100 CP) (Among Us) (Time)
The tasks required to maintain an operational nightmare like a spaceship are bound to be incredibly complex, involving an in-depth understanding of quantum physics and hours of painstaking labour. However, when it comes to completing tasks and regular maintenance in this fashion, it has now become significantly easier for you. Fix a whole electrical grid by connecting two wires, chart a course through the stars by dragging your finger across a screen, or fire on asteroids via a HUD reminiscent of an arcade game. Whatever the maintenance tasks you have to complete, you'll find that they have been massively simplified to the point that most can be finished in seconds.
(400 CP gained. 500 CP spent. 200 CP remaining.)
(No rolls and halved CP gain during interludes.)
(600 CP gained. 0 CP spent. 800 CP remaining.)
I'll start by saying I'm a sucker for Celestial Forge stories so I might be a bit biased.
Not too much to say yet. Ouch what a horror perk she got, especially when she's has no idea.
A girl tries to navigate through her stolen life in Brockton Bay while dealing with the power and whims of the Celestial Forge. She really has no idea what she's doing.
This disappointed me somehow. Something with "she really has no idea what she's doing" struck me as it will be more crack than a normal semi serious story can hold.
Looking forward to the next chapter. Hopefully she won't out herself. That would suck.
Have no idea from where this perk, but ability is really useful one. I like this kind of 'conceptual forging' things, if I understood mechanics right, of course. Also, if it can blend together best properties of things, than what are limits? Can I combine identical things infinitely and in pairs, than result of this pairs with other results, etc. For filter and infinitely improve specific property. Does the law of conservation of energy/matter work? What MC can and cannot use as a material? Every time something blending there is some randomness involved to create unique things? Like, if I take copies of items and will mix them, the results will be different almost every time or there are some 'crafting recipes' to be found?
Apologies, if it's too many questions, but I am curious. And maybe want to find some ways to break this ability... Like, if MC gets power to grow new limbs, than it theoretically possible to eat with those mouth new hands full of this kind of mouths and blend it together into something odd. Something, which possibly will be better, than original hangry-palms in it's abilities to blend thing together. Wait, then there is need to eat stomach too... Create non-sentient clone of MC with the same power maybe...
This disappointed me somehow. Something with "she really has no idea what she's doing" struck me as it will be more crack than a normal semi serious story can hold.
Don't worry, that was meant to be her underconfidence talking. This isn't going to be humourless, but I'm very much not planning to make it crack, either. The main character is going to vary between 'realistically doesn't know how to do something', 'fucks up but in a Drama(TM) way', or 'is actually more competent than she gives herself credit for'.
Have no idea from where this perk, but ability is really useful one. I like this kind of 'conceptual forging' things, if I understood mechanics right, of course. Also, if it can blend together best properties of things, than what are limits? Can I combine identical things infinitely and in pairs, than result of this pairs with other results, etc. For filter and infinitely improve specific property. Does the law of conservation of energy/matter work? What MC can and cannot use as a material? Every time something blending there is some randomness involved to create unique things? Like, if I take copies of items and will mix them, the results will be different almost every time or there are some 'crafting recipes' to be found?
The main character is going to explore this more next chapter, but the way I imagine it is a permanent version of Chevalier's power that automatically picks out what it thinks are the 'best' properties of each object. It does work like crafting recipes that somewhat depend on the MC's own point of view.
The thing that differentiates this from other fusion perks (which tend to be more expensive) is the fact she can't pick and choose properties like she could've with, say, Self-Made Shopkeeper from Recettear. That and Plentiful Mouths is able to alloy stories and such into items.
It doesn't act additively - combining two normal eggs would just result in an egg with all the best parts of its components, not an egg that's twice as tasty. Combining 100 flawed, mundane daggers would give a really good mundane dagger, assuming they all have different enough flaws.
A/N: This is an edited version of Chapter 2. Ch1-10 have been edited, anything beyond that is being rewritten.
Original Chapter 2 below:
As it turned out, I was right about being able to scream to attract attention if something went wrong.
"What's going on in there?! Are you alright?" Someone yelled, pounding on the front door.
I shot to my feet, opening my mouth to reply. And my other mouth, and my other mouth, and...
Pressing a hand to the side of my li- my original lips helped me to centre myself, and I closed every mouth but the real one.
"I'm fine!" I called, turning off the TV. "Just a movie!"
The probably-neighbour groaned. "Don't watch it so loud, then. I was worried."
"Sorry!"
If they could tell I had a different accent from what Brianne should, they didn't say anything.
Once I was sure they'd left, I collapsed back onto the sofa.
So. There I was, stuck in a fictional hellworld, with an alien parasite messing with my head, horrifying mouths all over my body, and an apocalypse coming in…
What was the date, for that matter?
Neither the computer nor the probably-phone showed the date on their lock screens, but Brianne's muscle memory was able to get the phone unlocked after a few tries.
And yes, it was a phone, even if it was circular with rotary-phone-themed menus. I repeated the pin in my head over and over, 0425, 0425, as I tried to navigate through the thing. Partway through, I got frustrated enough with my blurry vision that I went to fetch Brianne's glasses. Sure enough, they worked perfectly.
Holding the centre of the radial menu brought up a shortcuts screen, including a time and date. The fourth of February- no, Americans.
The second of April, 2011.
Canon start was the… 9th? I knew it was a Friday, and the Lung fight was a Sunday night. So, the 8th, not the 9th. Lung was on the 10th, maybe the 11th if it had been past midnight.
Taylor had gone to meet the Undersiders on the day after the Lung fight - she'd been browsing PHO for info on the ABB and the Undersiders, and she'd gotten a message from the account named 'TT'.
So. I had eight or nine days until I had to decide whether or not to interfere with canon.
What would I even be able to do? All I had were mouths. A reasonably fit person with a weapon or fighting skills at any level above 'none' could take me out.
Well, I had mouths, and some sort of fire thing.
Trying to call the feeling of heat forth didn't work. Neither did my attempts at breathing fire, from any of my mouths.
What I did learn was that, in whatever non-euclidean biology they had, each one could breathe independently of the others. So, not only did I have dozens of mouths, I probably also had dozens of pairs of extradimensional lungs.
Putting a hand on my stomach (ignoring the pairs of lips pressing together) and breathing through the extra mouths still made my chest rise and fall. Though, if I balanced inhaling and exhaling the same amount at the same time, the chest motion balanced out, too.
So, I could never go to a hospital ever, if I didn't want anyone finding out about whavever fucked-up biology I had, now.
Or, you know, go out in public in anything short of a balaclava.
I grit dozens of sets of teeth and tried not to cry again.
Forget the deadline on the 10th, I'd be screwed the moment the guy from earlier came back.
There's no way I'd have a power that's just mouths, though. 'Body covered in mouths' is barely fit for a grab-bag cape's secondary power, let alone a singular primary one.
And would a power fuck over my secret identity like that?
…There was a very minor character, a shaker, whose power was an ear-splitting sound that they couldn't turn off. There was Alabaster, permanently pale. There was every Case-53.
So, it absolutely would fuck me over.
Maybe I'm a Changer or a Breaker? Maybe I can make them go away?
I pressed my lips together, willing them to turn back into normal flesh, and…
They vanished, the lips melding back into smooth skin.
I almost burst into laughter out of sheer relief.
I guess all that worrying was for nothing, huh?
The mouths were still there, though, even if they weren't visible. Dozens of tongues pressed against the sealed-over flesh where the lips had been. Even then, it was still better than I'd hoped.
Crisis averted, I got back to testing.
Each mouth had a different voice, depending on the size. The normal-sized mouth on my collarbone had my - Brianne's - voice, the largest one on my stomach had a deep, bassy voice, the tiny one on the side of my left wrist sounded like a cartoon mouse, etc.
Once I'd gotten a little more used to them, I found that I could coordinate them with inhuman precision. I could sing duets with myself, or even several different songs at the same time.
The multitasking didn't seem to apply to anything else - I couldn't write with both hands at the same time - but it was still just weirdly fun to be a one-person choir.
The heat came and went again, and despite my best efforts, I couldn't use or manipulate it in any way.
As well as having a weird lungs situation, the mouths had an even funkier stomach. Anything I ate, even with my normal mouth, would be stored in some sort of special stomach. My power listed everything in there, with amounts so precise I could see how fast the stomach acids were dissolving my breakfast down to six decimal points.
What's more, I could combine them and spit them out again in perfect condition. Scrambled eggs and fizzy drink came out as a sort of Sprite-flavoured egg pudding, entirely whole and ready to be eaten, other than the coating of saliva.
Two pieces of paper I'd drawn a rabbit and a bird on had come out as a single piece of paper with a rabbit-bird that Google said was called a skvader.
On that note, for some reason, I was able to draw, now. Really well.
There'd been a drawing tablet in Brianne's room, right? Did her skills carry over to me? So, not only had I stolen her body, I'd somehow stolen her hard-practised art expertise.
No. Don't think about it. Just get back to testing.
The insides of the mouths seemed to be tough, far tougher than normal. While the lips were still vulnerable, I could pour pure hot sauce or boiling water straight into a mouth and be just fine.
While I didn't have the jaw strength to chew up a teaspoon, I could still cut one up with a pair of bolt cutters and eat it without cutting myself, even if I only regurgitated spoon pieces.
Or, testing with a new spoon and a stud from Brianne's jewellery box, I could spit up a golden spoon, encrusted with diamonds.
Actual gold, all the way through, according to the tests I'd looked up. Turns out, the myth about 'biting gold' isn't about biting all the way through, just about denting it.
Cutting a piece off the spoon handle and combining it with an empty egg carton resulted in me laboriously pulling a solid metal egg carton out of my largest mouth. The carton, weirdly enough, had proper hinges where the cardboard had just been pliable enough to open and close.
The foot-long golden box in my hands almost made the throat constipation worth it. Still, I wasn't about to make another one of these. I'd just have to settle for a half-dozen egg-shaped, egg-sized diamonds to put in it.
Unlike the spoon, combining gold with a pencil just gave me a pencil with a gold core. I could draw with it, too, so it must've been cut with something to make it soft enough to scrape off onto paper like that.
It's not like I had any idea how I'd convince anyone to buy these off me in a world where NEPEA-5 stopped capes from selling the things they made. The power of Shiny was just too alluring to resist.
Wait, didn't parahuman-made material decay over time? It was the other reason people with powers like Kaiser's couldn't just crank out cheap materials all day to sell.
Well, I hadn't used this power on anything too important, so it'd probably be a worthwhile test, seeing how long it lasted.
After some consideration, I hid the more conspicuous transmuted objects at the back of my underwear drawer. If the man from earlier was Brianne's legal guardian, it was pretty unlikely for him to look in there. Hopefully, he wouldn't notice the missing spoons.
I probably shouldn't use this power on anything else, for now. It would be bad if I turned half the house to gold. Who was I, King Midas?
…I googled the name Midas. While it wasn't taken, 'Little Midas' was, by a minor villain known for working with mercenaries. Well, not like it would've been a good hero name, anyway.
Was I going to be a hero? It's not like I was eager to put on spandex and beat people up. Or that I was good at fighting in any way, shape, or form. As cool as the idea of being a superhero was, law enforcement was hardly my dream job.
What would I even do? Bite people? Throw gold at them? I didn't want to use my power on any electronics and risk Brianne's guardian asking after them, so I couldn't see if I could spoof being a tinker.
…If I got my hands on some explosives and poison and whatnot, I could probably make some canned war crimes.
…
Either way, this power would need a ton of prep and resources I didn't have for me to be able to use it in a fight.
For now, I'd just try to keep to the status quo. No risking my life by going after dragon-men or neo-nazis. If I was going to do anything to kick canon off its path, it'd just be calling the Protectorate with my information, leaving the fighting up to the actual heroes.
I had enough info on them that I could convince them I wasn't full of shit. I'd just need to get my hands on a burner phone, go to a park or something so they don't trace me back to this apartment, and ask after Colin Wallis or Robin Swoyer or something.
I'd have over a week to think it over, anyway. There was time to figure out what I needed to do for this, or think of a better idea.
I spent the rest of the day browsing the internet, trying to bring myself up to speed on Earth Bet culture.
Facebook seemed to be the dominant social media platform on Earth Bet, because of course it was. Youtube existed, Twitter didn't, Tumblr did because that cockroach of a website wasn't about to die from something as small as diverging history.
Then, of course, there was PHO.
The URL was apparently 'parahumans.net' as opposed to 'parahumansonline.com' or something. I didn't know what devil they'd sold their souls to for them to get their hands on that one.
Heat spilled through my chest again, leaving after twice the time it had taken the previous time and maybe 2/3 of the time it had taken with the mouths.
There didn't seem to be any regular intervals it came in at. Unless there's a pattern I hadn't figured out? I fumbled my way to the phone's clock app and started a timer. No guarantee I wouldn't forget to record it half the time, but there was no reason I shouldn't try.
Was this something that built up? If the duration increased by one 'unit' each time, and it reset after it did the mouths, would I get something new on the next cycle?
…If I turned out to be the Dauntless of Crawlers, I was going to scream. With all of my mouths.
It would also mean I'd been isekai'd to Worm with a Trump power, which was about the most generic fanfiction premise I could think of.
Except, this wasn't fanfiction. I wasn't an omnicompetent Mary Sue or Gary Stu who could run up to Taylor and be her instant best friend, hitting the ground running and charging right into heroism with enough plot armour to outfit an army while their enemies rustled up enough idiot balls to fit their own army.
This was very real, very dangerous, and I had a very, very good chance of fucking things up.
The most practical plan would be to say 'Door to Cauldron' and go straight to Doctor Mother with all of my canon knowledge. Knowing Scion's weakness would let them plan for Gold Morning better, and probably minimise deaths in the long run.
If Word of God was to be trusted, they'd had a net positive result on society, as awful as they were, and I didn't think I had any reason not to believe Wildbow on this, if I was in his world.
Unless this version of Earth Bet was a fanfiction one.
Shit.
There was an easy way to check. I searched up as many fanon terms as I could think of.
'The Rig' - nothing but normal oil rigs. As per canon, people were just calling the Protectorate ENE 'The PHQ'. That one had fucked me up when I'd learned it, and I'd refused to believe it until I'd run a ctrl-f search through a .txt file of Worm.
'Fortress Construction' - nothing. There was a Brockton-based construction company called Rock Bay Construction that did Endbringer shelters, but Thomas Calvert wasn't mentioned once on their website. 50/50 chance he had fingers in it, at the very least.
Using 'Mastered' to mean brainwashed - nothing. The term 'Master' wasn't even in wide use outside of boards for Parahuman Studies students and PRT reports and such, as far as I could tell. The only power classification that seemed to see mainstream use was 'Tinker', according to Google Trends.
A few more searches of similar calibre got the same results. So, me being in fanfiction Earth Bet was pretty firmly ruled out, for better or for worse.
What was I- right, Cauldron. Thanks for the continued support, attention span.
So, if I could trust canon, contacting Cauldron would be the most efficient way to make a positive change.
Except…
Without a moral compass like Hero in their inner circle, Cauldron's humanity had eroded over the years until they were as monstrous on the inside as the Case-53s they created were on the outside.
Maybe it was a bad choice to want to stay away from them. Maybe it would cost millions or billions of lives down the line. Maybe I wasn't being perfectly rational about this.
Wildbow had built them to be a moral conundrum, and I'd seen enough arguments break out about Cauldron that I was thoroughly sick of them. There was no easy answer as to whether they were right or wrong.
Right then, I was definitely falling on the deontological side of the argument. Their actions were bad enough that I couldn't help them in good conscience.
If I wanted to consider working with Cauldron in the future, I'd damn well get as many second opinions from Earth Bet natives as I could before I committed.
From the fact I hadn't been assassinated by Contessa already, they didn't seem to think I was going to be a possible leak, so I was safe on that front.
That or she was severely overworked and just hadn't gotten around to taking me out, yet. Comforting.
Well, if she did come after me, there'd be nothing I could do, so there was no point in worrying about it.
The Simurgh's next attack was at least four months away, so that was another scary Thinker I didn't need to worry about yet. Unless she went after a satellite and kicked off a Rube Goldberg assassination plot.
Again, if she tried that, I'd be screwed no matter what. Again, I shouldn't worry about it.
I spent the next several hours trying not to worry about it while scrolling through PHO.
PHO was somehow exactly the same as and completely different from the Worm fandom. It was the same sort of content - debates, memes, fanfiction, etc - but it was seen through a completely different lens.
Heroes were more akin to celebrities than fictional characters. (Well, yes, because that was exactly the case.) Turns out, celebrity-soldier-cops tend to stoke more interest in their cool costumes and fights, as opposed to talks about their actions and the content of their characters a more behind-the-scenes narrative like Worm gave.
None of the wiki pages or discussions seemed to indicate any AU elements, which was both comforting and seriously worrying. Canon Worm was a terrible place to be. I'd deal with it when I dealt with it.
Eating lunch and dinner were both ordeals, with a power like mine. Everything I ate, I was given a detailed rundown on. Not only was each dish getting mixed together into some god-awful frankenfood, the stuff I'd read on the internet had somehow gotten in there.
I specifically did not regurgitate whatever a ham sandwich, a coffee, and a half-dozen news stories about Armsmaster would mutate into. A drawback of this power - I'd need to use it on an empty stomach if I didn't want contaminants getting in.
The computer's password continued to evade me. It wasn't written down anywhere I could find in the phone, and Brianne's muscle memory wasn't good enough for me to get the password before the computer locked me out for the next 24 hours.
Maybe I could-
The heat came back, and I checked the timer. 7:13:08.37. I typed 'a bit over 7hrs' into a notes app and reset the timer. Three 'units' of power-time later, the heat faded, leaving everything the same as it had been before.
So, there went the theory that it does something every third go. Hopefully, it wasn't winding up just to hit me harder later.
Well, for all I knew, the mouths were the worst the power would have to give, and I'd get an Alexandria package or something. Or change to one? There was a chance the mouths could disappear.
Honestly, I wasn't that cut-up about the idea. The power was neat to use, I could do some cool stuff with it, but the sensory parts weren't the sort of thing I wanted to live with for the rest of my life.
…Was I going to have powers for the rest of my life?
How long would 'the rest of my life' be?
Don't think about it. You can't do anything about it, either way.
The thoughts still stuck to me, even as I showered and went to bed. I didn't brush my teeth; as gross as my mouth(s) felt, I had no idea which toothbrush was even mine. Plus, I was tired, and I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about brushing fifty sets of teeth.
Trying to go to sleep was like sleeping in a hotel room. The bed was just wrong, not springy enough, and it was nearly as wide as it was long. The pyjamas I'd worn all day were sweaty enough that I had to sleep in a t-shirt instead.
Falling asleep was difficult enough on a good day. This was probably the worst day I'd had in… ever.
What's more, waiting for me in the morning was Brianne's guardian, and I hadn't come up with a single idea for how to deal with that.
As it turned out, I was right about being able to scream to attract attention if something went wrong.
"What's going on in there?! Are you alright?" Someone yelled, pounding on the front door.
I shot to my feet, opening my mouth to reply. And my other mouth, and my other mouth, and...
Pressing a hand to the side of my li– my original lips let me centre myself and focus on the real mouth, pressing all the other ones shut.
"I'm fine!" I called, turning off the TV. "Just a movie!"
The probably-neighbour groaned. "Don't watch it so loud, then. I was worried."
"Sorry!"
If they could tell I had a different accent from what Brianne should, they didn't say anything.
Once I was sure they'd left, I collapsed back onto the sofa.
So. I was stuck in a fictional hellworld. There was an alien parasite messing with my head, horrifying mouths all over my body, and an apocalypse coming in only…
What was the date, for that matter?
Neither the computer nor the probably-phone showed the date on their lock screens, but the body's muscle memory was able to get the phone unlocked after a few tries.
And yes, it was a phone, even if it had a circular screen and rotary menus. I repeated the pin in my head over and over, 0425, 0425, as I tried to navigate through the thing's blurry UI. It took an annoyingly long amount of time for me to remember that glasses would probably help with that. The ones on Brianne's desk worked perfectly, though they were a bit tight around the nose.
Pressing and holding the centre of the radial menu brought up a shortcuts screen, and– gotcha. A time and date. Today was the third of May– no, Americans.
The fifth of March, 2011.
Canon start was April the… 9th? I knew it was a Friday, and the Lung fight was a Sunday night. So, the 8th, not the 9th, by the phone's calendar. Lung was on the night between the 10th and the 11th.
Taylor had gone to meet the Undersiders on the day after the Lung fight – she'd been browsing PHO for info on the ABB and the Undersiders, and she'd gotten a message from the account named 'TT'.
So. I had one month and eight days until I had to decide whether or not to interfere with canon.
What would I even be able to do? All I had were extra mouths. A reasonably fit person with a weapon or fighting skills at any level above "none" could take me out.
Well, I didn't just have the mouths. They'd come from some sort of fire thing. Trying to call the feeling of heat forth didn't work. Neither did my attempts at breathing fire, no matter which mouth I tried.
What I did learn was that, in whatever non-euclidean biology they had, each one could breathe independently of the others. So, not only did I have dozens of mouths, tongues, and pairs of teeth, I probably also had dozens of pairs of extradimensional lungs.
Given the fact I couldn't hold my breath for any longer than before, it was probably more like quantumly entangled lungs or some other fancy buzzword I didn't actually understand, rather than a whole bunch of separate ones.
Putting a hand on my stomach (ignoring the pairs of lips pressing on the other side of the fabric) and breathing through the extra mouths, I could still feel my chest rising and falling. Though, if I balanced inhaling and exhaling the same amount at the same time, the chest motion balanced out, too.
So, I could never go to a hospital ever, if I didn't want anyone finding out about whatever fucked-up biology I had. There was also no way I could ever go out in public in anything short of a balaclava.
I grit dozens of sets of teeth and tried to not cry again.
Forget the deadline on the 10th, I'd be screwed the moment the guy from earlier came back.
There's no way I'd have a power that's just mouths, though. 'Body covered in mouths' is barely fit for a grab-bag cape's secondary power, let alone a singular primary one. And would a power fuck over my secret identity like that?
I sat down.
There was a very minor character, a shaker, whose power was an ear-splitting sound that they couldn't turn off, loud enough to be audible from half a city away. There was Alabaster, permanently pale. There was every Case-53.
So, a shard absolutely would pick out powers that'd fuck me over.
Maybe I'm a Changer or a Breaker? Maybe I can make them go away?
I pressed my lips together, willing them to turn back into normal flesh, and…
They vanished, the lips melding back into smooth skin. A relieved laugh burst from my mouth – my one mouth – before I could stifle it.
I guess all that worrying was for nothing, huh?
The mouths were still there, though, even if they weren't visible. Dozens of tongues pressed against the sealed-over flesh where the lips had been. Even then, it was still better than I'd hoped.
Crisis averted.
Now, I should probably learn how these things work. I'd rather work stuff out now than be caught off-guard later, especially in public.
Each mouth had a different voice, depending on the size. The normal-sized mouth on my collarbone had my – Brianne's – voice. The largest one on my stomach had a deep, bassy voice. The tiny one on the side of my left wrist sounded like a cartoon mouse.
Once I'd gotten a little more used to them, I found that I could coordinate them with inhuman precision. I could sing duets with myself, or even several different songs at the same time. It didn't make my singing any less off-key – it made things worse, if anything – but it took my mind off things for a moment, and that's all that mattered.
The multitasking didn't seem to apply to anything else – I couldn't write with both hands at the same time – but it was still just weirdly fun to be a one-person choir.
The heat came and went again, and despite my best efforts, I couldn't use or manipulate it in any way.
As well as having a weird lungs situation, the mouths had an even weirder stomach. My power listed everything I'd eaten recently, if I focused on it, with amounts so precise I could see how fast the stomach acids were dissolving my breakfast down to six decimal points.
What's more, I could combine them and spit them out again in perfect condition. Scrambled eggs and fizzy drink came out as a sort of Sprite-flavoured egg pudding, entirely whole and ready to be eaten, other than the coating of saliva. It didn't matter which mouth I put them in, either. Every single one of them led to the same place, and everything tasted just the same in each mouth.
Two pieces of paper I'd drawn a rabbit and a bird on had come out as a single piece of paper with a rabbit-bird that Google said was called a skvader.
On that note, for some reason, I was able to draw now. Really well.
There'd been a drawing tablet in Brianne's room, right? Did some of her skills carry over to me? Not all of them, of course – walking around when I was nearly a foot taller was still a nightmare. Still, unless that somehow came from the mouths thing, it must be from her.
So, not only had I stolen her body, I'd stolen her talents, too.
No. Don't think about it. Just get back to testing.
The insides of the mouths seemed to be tough, far tougher than normal. While the lips were still vulnerable, I could pour hot sauce or boiling water straight into a mouth and be just fine. I registered the spice and the temperature, but they didn't hurt.
While I didn't have the jaw strength to chew up a teaspoon, I could still cut one up with a pair of bolt cutters and eat it without the jagged edges cutting my oesophagus, even if I only regurgitated spoon pieces.
Or, testing with a new spoon and a stud from Brianne's jewellery box, I could spit up a golden spoon, encrusted with diamonds. Solid gold, and high-enough karat that the tests I was getting off Google were coming up as 'pure or near-pure'.
Cutting a piece off the spoon handle and combining it with an empty egg carton resulted in me laboriously pulling a solid metal egg carton out of my largest mouth. The carton, weirdly enough, had a proper hinge where the cardboard had just been pliable enough to open and close.
The power must be detecting the purpose of the things I was combining – I hadn't eaten anything with hinges that it could've drawn from. Shards worked off the host's understanding of the world around it, so it made sense.
Maybe I would've been more disturbed by the thought of an alien in my head if I hadn't been holding a foot-long golden box. I wasn't about to make another one of these, though, even if I got another egg carton – I only had so much tolerance for the throat constipation. I just settled for making half a dozen egg-shaped, egg-sized diamonds (complete with yellow-diamond yolks) to put in it.
Combining gold with a pencil just gave me a pencil with a gold core, unlike the solid gold spoon. I could draw with it, too, so the 'lead' must've been alloyed with something else to make it soft enough to scrape off on paper like that.
It's not like I had any idea how to sell these things, especially in a world where NEPEA-5 existed. The power of Shiny was just too alluring to resist.
Wait, didn't parahuman-made material decay over time? It was the other reason people with powers like Kaiser's couldn't just crank out cheap materials all day to sell.
I hadn't used this power on anything too important, so it'd probably be a worthwhile test, seeing how long it lasted. If they reverted, I could just put them back in the fridge and hope the guardian didn't notice. Maybe I shouldn't have done that right after he went shopping…
After some consideration, I hid the more conspicuous transmuted objects at the back of my underwear drawer. The man from earlier was almost certainly related to Brianne, and possibly even her legal guardian, so it was pretty unlikely for him to look in there. Hopefully, he wouldn't notice the missing spoons.
I probably shouldn't use this power on anything else, for now. It would be bad if I turned half the house to gold. Who was I, King Midas?
Out of curiosity, I googled "Midas cape". While 'Midas' wasn't taken, 'Little Midas' was, by a minor villain known for working with mercenaries. Well, not like it would've been a good hero name anyway.
Was I going to be a hero? It's not like I was eager to put on spandex and beat people up. Nor was I good at fighting in any way, shape, or form. As cool as the idea of being a superhero was, law enforcement was far from a dream job.
What would I even do? Bite people? Throw gold at them? I didn't want to use my power on any electronics since missing tech was much more conspicuous than missing food, so I couldn't check whether I could spoof being a tinker.
If I got my hands on some explosives and poison and whatnot, I could probably combine them into some pretty nasty stuff. Canned war crimes. I didn't know much about chemical weapons or improvised explosives, but even just drinking my way through a chemical cupboard would probably give me something suitably flesh-melting.
I shuddered and shook my head.
Either way, this power would need a ton of prep and resources – that I didn't have – for me to be able to use it in a fight.
For now, I'd just try to keep to the status quo. No risking my life by going after dragon-men or neo-nazis. If I was going to do anything to kick canon off its path, it'd just be calling the Protectorate with my information, leaving the fighting up to the actual heroes.
I had enough info on them that I could convince them I wasn't full of shit. I'd just need to get my hands on a burner phone, go to a park or something so they don't trace me back to this apartment, and ask after Colin Wallis or Robin Swoyer or something. Risky, bringing up secret identities, but it'd make sure I was taken seriously.
Possibly too seriously. Hm.
Well, I could workshop it. I had over a month to think it over before the Lung fight. There was time to figure out what I needed to do for this, or think of a better idea.
I spent the rest of the day browsing the internet, trying to bring myself up to speed on Earth Bet culture.
My first stop, a news website, was headed by an article on the Simurgh attack nine days ago, and holy shit I am very lucky I didn't arrive too much earlier. Scrolling further down, there were remarkably few other articles on the attack. Information suppression? Probably for the best.
Instead, I had the misfortune of coming across articles on Canary. The Master whose power had caused someone harm against her will. Logically, I could connect the severity of the scaremongering in the articles to the genuine, rational fear of the recent Simurgh attack. That didn't stop me from feeling like someone had punched a sinkhole into my stomach.
Stop. Go do something else.
Facebook seemed to be the dominant social media platform on Earth Bet, because of course it was. Youtube existed, Twitter didn't, Reddit didn't, and Tumblr did because that cockroach of a website wasn't about to die from something as small as diverging history.
Then, of course, there was PHO. Not just snippets of it from PHO interludes in Worm and Wormfic; this was the whole damn site. Every bit of cape geekery, every who-would-win debate, every fanfiction (which felt weird, now that they were about real people). For some reason, it was actually located at 'parahumans.net' as opposed to 'parahumansonline.com' or something. I didn't know what devil they'd sold their souls to for them to get their hands on that URL.
Heat spilled through my chest again, leaving after twice the time it had taken the previous time and maybe two thirds of the time it had taken with the mouths.
There didn't seem to be any regular intervals it came in at. Unless there's a pattern I hadn't figured out? I fumbled my way to the phone's clock app and started a timer. No guarantee I wouldn't forget to record it half the time, but there was no reason I shouldn't try.
Was this something that built up? If the duration increased by one 'unit' each time, and it reset after it did the mouths, would I get something new on the next cycle?
…If I turned out to be Dauntless but with mutations, I was going to scream. With all of my mouths.
It would also mean I'd been isekai'd to Worm with a Trump power, which was about the most generic fanfiction premise I could think of.
Except, this wasn't fanfiction. I wasn't an omnicompetent Mary Sue or Gary Stu who could run up to Taylor and be her instant best friend, hitting the ground running and charging right into heroism with enough plot armour to outfit an army while their enemies put all their resources into mass-producing idiot balls to juggle.
This was very real. This was very dangerous. I had a very, very good chance of fucking things up – same as normal for me, except the stakes were way the fuck higher than how good my grades were.
The most practical plan would be to say 'Door to Cauldron' and go straight to Doctor Mother with all of my canon knowledge. Knowing Scion's weakness would let them plan for Gold Morning better, and probably minimise deaths in the long run. If Word of God was to be trusted, they did have a net positive result on society, as awful as they were. I didn't have any reason not to believe Wildbow on this, if I was in his world.
Unless this version of Earth Bet was a fanfiction one.
Shit.
There was an easy way to check. I searched up as many fanon terms as I could think of.
'The Rig' – nothing but normal oil rigs. As per canon, people were just calling the Protectorate ENE 'The PHQ'. That one had fucked me up when I'd learned it, and I'd refused to believe it until I'd run a ctrl-f search through a .txt file of Worm.
'Fortress Construction' – nothing. There was a Brockton-based construction company called Rock Bay Construction that did Endbringer shelters, but Thomas Calvert wasn't mentioned once on their website. I wouldn't rule out the idea that he still had fingers in it anyway.
Using 'Mastered' to refer to mind control – still nothing. 'Master' – the term for the power classification – wasn't even in wide use outside of boards for Parahuman Studies students (Boards ► Parahuman Science ► Non-Articles) and cape nerds (Boards ► Parahumans) and such, as far as I could tell. The only power classification that seemed to see mainstream use was 'Tinker', according to a Google Trends knockoff.
A few more searches of similar calibre got the same results. So, me being in fanfiction Earth Bet was pretty firmly ruled out, for better or for worse.
What was I– right, Cauldron. Thanks for the continued support, attention span.
So, if I could trust canon, contacting Cauldron would be the most efficient way to make a positive change.
Except…
Without a moral compass like Hero in their inner circle, Cauldron's humanity had eroded over the years until there was nothing left but the worst, most pragmatic parts of them.
Maybe it was a bad choice to want to stay away from them. Maybe it would cost millions or billions of lives down the line. Maybe I wasn't being perfectly rational about this.
Wildbow had built them to be a moral conundrum, and I'd seen enough arguments break out about Cauldron that I was thoroughly sick of them. There was no easy answer as to whether they were right or wrong.
Right then, I was definitely falling on the deontological side of the argument (and, ironically, that was a word I only knew from the Worm fandom). I wasn't being objective enough. But, fuck that. Fuck them. Their actions were bad enough that I couldn't help them in good conscience.
If I wanted to consider working with Cauldron in the future, I'd damn well get as many second opinions from Earth Bet natives as I could before I committed. Healthy communication was one of the core themes of Worm, and a choice with as wide-reaching consequences as this wasn't something I could afford to decide unilaterally.
From the fact I hadn't been assassinated by Contessa already, they didn't seem to think I was going to be a possible leak, so I was safe on that front. That or the fact she was so severely overworked meant she just hadn't gotten around to taking me out, yet.
Comforting.
Well, if she did come after me, there'd be nothing I could do, so there was no point in worrying about it. The Simurgh's next attack was at least five months away, so that was another scary Thinker I didn't need to worry about yet.
Unless she went after a satellite and kicked off a Rube Goldberg assassination plot.
Again, if she tried that, I'd be screwed no matter what.
Again, I shouldn't worry about it.
I spent the next several hours trying not to worry about it while scrolling through PHO.
PHO was somehow exactly the same as and completely different from the Worm fandom. It was the same sort of content – debates, memes, news, trolling, fanfiction, etc – but it was seen through a completely different lens.
Heroes were celebrities. To the people living here, they weren't fictional characters. They were real, living humans, even if they took on made-up identities. It was an obvious statement, but it summed the difference up better than anything else I could think of.
Capes were real people, in this world, using real powers making real decisions. There were very real PR people making sure they were putting their best feet forward. While there were still plenty of morality debates and powers discussion, there was a lot more focus on the lives of the heroes, both in-costume and out-of-costume.
If there were AU elements in this world, nothing on any of the wiki pages seemed to indicate it, which was both comforting and seriously worrying. Canon Worm was a terrible place to be.
Well, I'd deal with it when I dealt with it.
Eating lunch and dinner were both ordeals, with the mouths power. Everything I ate, I was given a detailed rundown on. Not only was each dish getting mixed together into god-awful frankenfood, the stuff I'd read on the internet had somehow gotten in there.
I specifically did not regurgitate whatever a ham sandwich, a coffee, and a half-dozen news stories about Armsmaster had mutated into. A drawback of this power – I'd need to use it on an empty stomach if I didn't want contaminants getting in.
The computer's password continued to evade me. It wasn't written down anywhere I could find in the phone, and muscle memory was a whole lot harder to rely on with an 8-or-more-character password than a 4-number pin. I had to quit before the thing locked me out for 24 hours or, god forbid, sent an alert to Brianne's guardian.
The heat came back, and I checked the timer. 7:13:08.37. I took a screenshot, reset the timer, and renamed the screenshot to "1 – March 5th". Three 'units' of 'power-time' later, the heat faded.
So. There went the theory that it does something every third go. Hopefully, it wasn't winding up just to hit me harder later.
Well, for all I knew, the mouths were the worst the power would have to give, and I'd get an Alexandria package or something. Or change to one? There was a chance the mouths could disappear.
Honestly, I wasn't that cut-up about the idea. The power was neat to use, I could do some cool stuff with it, but the sensory parts weren't the sort of thing I wanted to live with for the rest of my life.
…Was I going to have powers for the rest of my life?
How long would 'the rest of my life' be?
Don't think about it. You can't do anything about it, either way.
The thoughts still stuck to me, even as I showered and went to bed. I didn't brush my teeth; as gross as my mouths felt, I had no idea which toothbrush was even mine. Plus, I was tired, and I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about brushing fifty sets of teeth.
Trying to go to sleep was like sleeping in a hotel room. The bed was just wrong, not springy enough, and it was nearly as wide as it was long. The pyjamas I'd worn all day were sweaty enough that I had to sleep in a t-shirt instead.
Falling asleep was difficult enough on a good day. This was probably the worst day I'd had in… ever. It didn't help when I heard the front door open around 1 AM.
Brianne's guardian was going to be waiting for me in the morning, and I hadn't come up with a single idea for how to deal with him.
If things went wrong, the PRT would be carting me off before breakfast.
A/N: For any returning readers wondering, I changed the date of Brianne's arrival from April 2nd to March 5th, as I'll be increasing the time frame the fic takes place across.
(Pre-Edit) A/N: Please note that, if people start discussing Cauldron in the comments, I won't be joining in. Cauldron are a contentious topic, and I'd rather spend my time writing than getting into arguments. If you disagree with my portrayal of them enough to want to drop the fic, then please, drop the fic. It'd be more enjoyable for you to read something you actually do like.
On a lighter note, I'm completely improvising with my portrayal of Plentiful Mouths. I haven't read Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and there's not a nice, clean wiki page addressing every ability of the Plentimaw fish. If you're a fan of HatSoS, I'm sorry.
No rolls this chapter! That just means Brianne's going to have 300 CP banked for an XL roll in the next chapters, though.
Sure, if she can safely fit them in her mouth. There's the risk of digestion, or getting whatever it is mixed up with something else, or spitting them out at the wrong angle. But, with skill, this is absolutely possible.
I'll be honest, the start's going to be slow for a while. I have a backlog of chapters drafted, and things still don't start to pick up for two or three chapters.
I tried to go hard on realism with the main character, for better or for worse. I wanted to explore a story where the MC was far from omnicompetent, and had to deal with some of the stuff some stories tend to skim over. Brianne's backstory is somewhat inspired by the Tinker of Fiction line of fics, and I wanted to write about a character who fretted about the life of the person they possessed.
"~500 new perks that I do know how to write."- whistling, It sounds like huge number of different features. Hard to imagine from where all those perks came from, because It felt like Celestial Forge already include in itself almost everything I know. Well, maybe if I sit down and take it seriously, I would be able to think about so many perks... But it still huge number.
A/N: This is an edited version of Chapter 3. Ch1-10 have been edited, anything beyond that is being rewritten.
Original Chapter 3 below:
"You killed me," she snarled, one hand wrapped around my throat.
I screamed, lashed out, but my foot hit her hoodie and went right through her torso, as if there was nothing under her clothes.
Her grip tightened.
"Murderer, murderer, murderer," the mouths lining my body sang.
Despite the fact she was hollow, her grip was unbreakable, no matter how hard my fingers scrabbled against hers.
"I'm dead now, and you've stolen everything I had."
"Thief, thief, thief," the mouths crowed.
Piercing blue eyes caught my gaze, and something stopped me from looking away.
Someone gripped my shoulder from behind, and when he spoke, his voice was cold judgement.
"You came after my family. And since she's dead, that means I won't feel guilty about cutting her up until you scream."
The mouths didn't speak. They just laughed, an asynchronous chorus, the jury cackling at the executioner's grip constricted.
I thrashed, swung at her again, teeth gnashing, and bit into cloth, tearing at the bedsheets, and rolled off the side of the bed.
The room wasn't mine, smaller, with a bookshelf filled with keepsakes and a computer on a desk. An unfamiliar alarm tone was ringing.
Oh.
Right.
I was here.
For a while, I just laid on the floor, panting.
The nightmare- it's not like I'd wanted this to happen! It was just- shitty circumstance. Both Brianne and I were victims in this. In a way, we'd both lost our lives, hadn't we? She'd lost her personality, and I'd lost everything but my personality.
I had no reason to feel guilty over this.
…
So stop thinking about it.
…
Brianne's guardian. How would I deal with him?
If only he'd been a Worm character, maybe I would've had an idea of how to tackle things. There'd be details I could dredge up, information that wasn't locked away behind a heavy door.
Even if I didn't know his name, I couldn't think of any characters that fit the description of 'Soldierly half-Asian man'. Lung was half-Chinese half-Japanese, and the guy clearly wasn't Oni Lee. If there were more characters from Brockton Bay that fit the bill, they were escaping me.
I'd set my alarm for 7 in the morning so I'd have time to prepare for his arrival. Big mistake. Waking up early after falling asleep late felt awful.
If I'd used the extra time well, maybe it could've been worth it. Instead, I just spent my time flitting between planning in a notes app and watching vapid animal videos to try and stave off the crushing dread.
By the time I heard keys jingling in the door, my plan looked something like:
- Show that I'm not sick. Ideally, without my power heating me up.
- Say as little as possible to avoid him realising I have the wrong accent.
- If he figures me out (or already has figured me out) and starts getting aggressive, I scream for help.
Which. Fantastic plan. Very well thought-out, clearly.
I was fucked, wasn't I.
The man knocked on my bedroom door. "Are you decent?"
"Just a sec!"
I struggled into a pair of jeans, trying to ignore the cat videos roiling in my stomach.
Better to get this over with before I lost my nerve.
When I opened the door, he was standing outside, arms folded and expression unreadable.
Before I could say anything, he lobbed a small white container to me. I nearly fumbled it, but I was able to catch it.
"I checked your medication yesterday, and you were running low, so I picked up another bottle," he said.
I looked down at the label. Vyvanse. That was the name of an ADHD medication, wasn't it? Did Brianne have ADHD too? Or did Earth Bet still call the inattentive type 'ADD'?
"Thanks," I said, slipping it into my pocket. I'd put it… wherever it was meant to go later.
He put a hand against my forehead, and I froze.
"Fever's gone," he said, "that's good."
I shrugged, and we both fell silent.
If nothing else, it didn't seem like he knew what to say, either. Maybe there was a chance I could make it through this without incident?
A burning feeling welled up in my chest.
Not now!
Brianne's guardian had moved away to lean against the door frame, leaving about a metre's distance between us. As long as I didn't give him a reason to move closer, hopefully, he wouldn't notice.
Even if my internal body temperature felt like molten iron was flooding my veins, my external temperature was apparently just at 'fever' levels, so it's not like he'd feel any heat radiating from me.
The guardian opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Was he trying to figure out how to confront me? I was almost certainly acting wildly out of character. Even if he didn't jump to 'cape', he could assume I was, I dunno, on drugs. Or coming off a bad breakup. Whatever normal teenagers did.
Hold on, if he thought I was a cape, did he think I had a power I could use on him? Was he scared of me?
Somehow, I really didn't feel like it.
He inhaled again, and-
"I'm sorry," he said.
…
Uh.
What the hell could I say to that?
He apparently took my silence as an invitation to continue. "I've been thinking about what I said last week. While I still stand by the points I made, I worded them poorly, and some of the things I said weren't necessary at all."
Context? Please?
So… he'd said something to Brianne a week or so ago, and it had devolved into an argument? I think? What could I even do with that? Nearly anything I could say might arouse suspicion.
I should probably just try to shut this conversation down.
"S'fine. Rather not think about it," I said, hoping desperately that no accent was slipping through.
He stiffened.
Shit shit shit.
"If what we said was so bad to you that you can't even think about it a week later, then it's exactly the sort of thing I'm worried about," he said.
Okay so I just fucked that one up entirely. Awesome! I loved getting the exact opposite reaction to what I wanted!
If only I just had to worry about him trying to attack me. Right now, I was walking through a minefield in a foreign country, and nothing on the warning pamphlets was in English.
I shook my head.
"Save it?" I pleaded.
Procrastinating was a terrible idea in 90% of cases, but at least this way, I'd have more time to look around the house and try to get a better handle on things.
(Because that had worked out so well last time. I'd done a wonderful job at thinking of a game plan for my next encounter with him.)
He pinned me with a stare, and I couldn't help but remember the nightmare I'd had last night.
"On one condition," he said. "Don't put yourself in danger."
Put myself in-?
Wait, did he think I triggered? Or rather, that Brianne triggered from whatever the argument had been? Had it been that bad?
To be fair, he could've meant something else. The argument could've been about, I dunno, her getting blackout drunk at parties. Not everything was about capes.
"I won't," I said.
"You promise?"
"I promise."
He nodded, but his gaze didn't become any less penetrating.
"Just…" He paused, searching for words. "Things get better, even if it doesn't feel like it. I was never particularly close with my own parents, so I don't know what it's like, but I think I know enough to get a general picture."
So it's a parents thing. Did they die, and I was sent to stay with him? Or was it something more sinister? Were her parents… less than kind, let's say?
"It's not easy," he continued, "but you find ways to get away from it. Ways to become the sort of person that'll never be in a situation like that again."
…The phrase 'A situation like that' made me lean towards the latter of the two options.
Well. Shit.
There was a silver lining, though. It sounded like he was a more distant relative who'd only recently become my guardian. What's more, if I'd just been through something awful, I'd have an excuse for shutting down after an argument.
"Thanks," I said, and my relieved smile was entirely genuine.
"Don't mention it," he replied, and his smile looked relieved, too.
We lapsed into silence for a while and, for once, I didn't want to bolt as soon as I could.
"Will you be well enough to go to school tomorrow?" He asked.
I didn't want to go. I really didn't want to go, except I wasn't 'feverish' any more, and if I was, he'd probably take me to a hospital or something. If the doctors looked too closely, they could find out about the mouths or, even worse, ask me for details I wasn't going to be able to give.
Besides, there was a limit to how much I could put that off, no matter how much I wanted to. I was probably going to flunk any American history classes, but maths and literature should be fine.
…I didn't even know which high school I went to.
If I was a Winslow student, I was going to quit.
Maybe I could ask him to drive me there? But, I didn't know how long I'd been living with him. Hell, maybe she'd been living in Brockton Bay before moving in with him. Besides, I'd rather not give him more opportunities to find me out.
Looks like I was going to have to wing it.
"I don't have a fever, and I'm only tired now from not getting enough sleep last night. I should be fine." It was the longest thing I'd said to him so far, but it didn't seem like he was getting suspicious.
"Good."
Another pause.
"That should be all. Remember to stay out of trouble, okay?" He said.
"I will."
"And text me if anything goes wrong."
I had no idea which contact in my phone he'd be.
Molten iron pumped through my chest again as I considered my options.
"My phone's been acting up, can you text me to make sure it's working?"
He shrugged and pulled out his own much more sensible-looking rectangular smartphone.
My phone beeped, and I had to swipe away the weird pie chart lock screen menu so I could check the text.
…His number was stored as 'Asshole' in the contacts. Great. It was revealing of something, but not anything actually useful.
I gave a thumbs up as I changed the contact name to 'Guardian'. While I was there, I reset the heat timer and wrote down the results. I'd missed one, but it had only been a few minutes between that and this current one, for some reason.
Interaction? Maybe it perceived me trying to get my way through the conversation as 'conflict'?
"If that's all?" He asked.
"Can't think of anything else."
"Then I'll take my leave."
The heat rose to a fever pitch then flickered out as he walked out the door.
When he was gone, I walked over to the apartment window. Several minutes later, he walked out the front of the apartment block and drove off on a well-worn red motorcycle.
"Sure, he was all sympathetic and nice at the end there," a snide voice said from behind me, "but that was the most half-assed non-apology I'd ever heard."
I whipped around, bearing a dozen pairs of teeth.
Lying on the bed was a robotic chameleon, lazily slapping its tail against the sheets. One of its ball bearing eyes rolled around in its socket, while the other had its pin-sized camera focused on me. The screens that made up most of its skin were showing scale textures, rotating through an RGB cycle.
Oddly, I could feel a sort of connection to it, as if there was an invisible string tying it to me, or an unseen force pulling us together.
"I'm sorry that I was right and you got offended over it," it said in a synthesised-sounding version of the guardian's voice.
"What are you?" I hissed. "How long have you been there?"
Its other eye turned to focus on me as well. "Chill out. I just got here, and it's not like Mr Soldierguy would be able to see me anyway."
I tentatively put a hand on its back, and it passed right through. "Are you a hallucination or something?"
It lashed out with its power-plug tail, and I yelped at the joy-buzzer shock it gave.
"I can go at a higher voltage than that," it said, going back to tapping its tail against the sheets.
"Up to?"
"'Bout a taser, but if I use it too many times, I need to plug in and charge."
That was… underwhelming.
"I have a long tongue, too." It stuck out its tongue, a cord with an inch of exposed copper wire at the tip.
"That's it?"
"What, like you're any better, mouth-girl? At least I can zap people, not just bite them or bash them with gold egg cartons or whatever." It snarked.
So, whatever it was, it knew what my power was.
"Did you come from my power?" I asked.
It gave me a flat stare, and the screen on its left side changed to display 'I'm with stupid', with a 3D-rendered arrow pointing at me. "No shit."
"Right," I muttered.
I tested one of the mouths. Still there.
So, I was some sort of trump? That was good news. Even if my power was Discount Eidolon and I'd only get three powers at a time, that was still two more powers than most capes. Plus, I could fully admit that I thought trumps were just cool.
The heat had intensified both times I'd gotten powers, but it had been for different durations each time. For the mouths, it had been for all three units of time, the full 20-30 seconds, but this time had been a minute of normal intensity with a less-than-a-second flash at the end.
The chameleon, still with the 'I'm with stupid' pattern, clambered up my arm to rest on my shoulders.
"Do you have a name?" I asked.
Its tail thwapped against my back. "Nah."
It paused.
"I'm an electric-age lizard for an electric-age world. How about Electric Age? …No, Electric Aeon, that's much cooler."
I politely didn't mention how chunni it sounded.
"Oh, shut it. It's not like you have a cool name. Imagine being called 'Brianne'? Couldn't be me," it said.
"That's not my name."
"Well, you'd better get used to it, because that's what everyone's gonna be calling you from now on."
My name. I wasn't even going to have my own name, maybe even for the rest of my life. The name my parents gave me, that I'd had for 20 years. I wasn't particularly attached to the name, by any means, but it was mine, and it had just been stolen from me.
And now I was going to have to steal someone else's name. I was stealing someone else's name, and I didn't even know what the whole thing was.
"Check her wallet, dipshit."
Check-? Oh, for an ID card?
Her wallet - actually a purse - was in a handbag on her desk. Which meant I was probably going to have to wear a handbag. I wasn't disgusted or anything, it was just new and weird enough to me to be offputting.
The name on her Arcadia High ID - that answers that question - was 'Brianne Steele', no middle name. Also something to get used to.
Did that mean the guardian's name was Mr Steele? If there was anything with his name on it in the apartment, it'd be locked in his room.
Unlike my old house, this place was very much clutter-free - no old letters or name-tagged belongings lying around. The only sentimental items I'd even seen were Brianne's.
Some searching through the bedroom came up with a printed-out schedule for her classes. The only half-days were one every Wednesday, oddly. Didn't the Wards go to Arcadia for half-days, or was I misremembering?
If I'd been at home, I could've just opened up the wiki to check, click down to the citations and read whichever quote was applicable. Right now, I wasn't at home.
More heat. I hit the timer and wrote down the time.
So that was three hot flashes in quick succession. Something had to have triggered it. Or was it just random? For all I knew, it could be going off some arbitrary shard logic. I wouldn't think so, not with shards, but it could very well be the case.
Thirty-three seconds into the new timer, Aeon perked up, tail going still.
The heat intensified.
And-
Information flooded into my mind, like someone had jammed a coherent optical transceiver into my head and started pumping it full of information.
I staggered, then shook my head, as if it would make the knowledge of hard kinetic weapons and layered hulls settle into place faster.
Forty seconds into the timer, the floodgates shut again, the heat vanishing.
Dazed, I staggered to the bedroom shelf and pulled a box of art supplies off the bottom. Then, I cleared the desk and began to draw.
Time passed. I wasn't sure how much. Every time I thought I was getting into a rhythm, I'd reach for the computer and realise no, of course the designs for induction drive tuners wouldn't be on a public database, so I'd have to write them up myself.
By the time I was done, my fingers were stiff, my arms were sore, and my stomach was growling. I spread the sheaf of papers out on the floor, moving out to the living area when I realised there wasn't enough space in the bedroom.
Blueprints crawled across the floor and up the walls, adhesive putty holding it in place. The primary design was in the centre, with strings connecting each part in the ship to the blueprint that represented it.
Even covering the floor and two walls, I'd still skipped out on a whole lot of detail. But, staring up at it, knowing exactly what it meant and how each part worked, was making my head spin.
It was a motherfucking spaceship.
"You killed me," she snarled, one hand wrapped around my throat.
I screamed, lashed out, but my foot hit her hoodie and went right through her torso – there was nothing under her clothes but thin air and hate.
Her grip tightened.
"Murderer, murderer, murderer," the mouths lining my body sang.
Despite the fact she was hollow, her grip was unbreakable, no matter how hard my fingers scrabbled against hers.
"I'm dead, and you robbed my corpse of everything I had."
"Thief, thief, thief," the mouths crowed.
Piercing blue eyes caught my gaze. A heavy, leaden, guilt stopped me from looking away.
Someone grabbed my shoulder from behind. When he spoke, his voice was cold judgement.
"You came after my family. Since she's dead, I won't feel guilty about cutting her body apart piece by piece until you have no mouths left to scream."
The mouths didn't speak; they just laughed, fifty voices in an asynchronous chorus, the jury cackling as the judge snarled and the executioner's grip constricted.
I thrashed. Swung at her again. Teeth gnashed and bit into–
–cloth, tearing at the bedsheets, and I rolled off the side of the bed.
The room wasn't mine, smaller, with a bookshelf filled with keepsakes and a computer on a desk. An unfamiliar alarm tone was ringing.
Oh.
Right.
I was here.
For a while, I just laid on the floor, panting.
The nightmare– it's not like I'd wanted this to happen! It was just– shitty circumstance. Both Brianne and I were victims in this. In a way, we'd both lost our lives, hadn't we? She'd lost everything but her body, and I'd lost everything but my personality and memories.
I had no reason to feel guilty over this.
So stop thinking about it.
I clutched my pillow to my chest, digging my fingers into the fabric until they hurt. Fifty pairs of teeth bit the insides of my cheeks. Focus. Fucking focus.
Brianne's guardian. How would I deal with him?
If only he'd been a Worm character, maybe I would've had an idea of how to tackle things. There'd be details I could dredge up, information that wasn't locked away behind his bedroom door.
Even if I didn't know his name, I couldn't think of any characters that fit the description of 'Soldierly half-Asian man'. Lung was half-Chinese half-Japanese and thus without Caucasian ancestry. The guy clearly wasn't Oni Lee from how he behaved. If there were more characters from Brockton Bay that fit the bill, they were escaping me.
I'd set my alarm for 6 in the morning so I'd have time to prepare for the talk. Big mistake. Waking up early after falling asleep late felt awful. Having a different body wasn't about to let me get away with a shit sleep schedule.
If I'd used the extra time well, maybe it could've been worth it. Instead, I just spent my time flitting between planning in a notes app and watching vapid animal videos to try and stave off the crushing dread.
By the time I heard the guardian starting to traipse around the apartment, my plan looked something like:
- Show that I'm not sick. Ideally, without my power heating me up.
- Say as little as possible to avoid him realising I have the wrong accent.
- If he figures me out (or already has figured me out) and starts getting aggressive, I scream for help.
Which. Fantastic plan. Very well thought-out, clearly.
I was fucked, wasn't I?
There was a knock on my bedroom door.
"Are you decent?" The guardian called.
"Just a sec!"
I struggled into a pair of jeans, trying to ignore the cat videos roiling in my stomach.
Better to get this over with before I lost my nerve.
When I opened the door, he was standing outside, arms folded and expression unreadable.
Before I could say anything, he lobbed a small white container to me. I nearly fumbled it, but I was able to catch it.
"I checked your medication yesterday, and you hadn't picked up the refill yet," he said.
I looked down at the label. Vyvanse. That was the name of an ADHD medication, wasn't it? Did Brianne have ADHD too? Or did Earth Bet still call the inattentive type 'ADD'?
"Thanks," I said, slipping it into my pocket. I'd put it wherever it was meant to go once this was over.
He put a hand against my forehead. I froze.
"Fever's gone," he said, "that's good."
I shrugged, and we both fell silent.
If nothing else, it didn't seem like he knew what to say, either. Maybe there was a chance I could make it through this without incident?
A burning feeling welled up in my chest.
Not now!
Brianne's guardian had moved away to lean against the door frame, leaving about a metre's distance between us. As long as I didn't give him a reason to move closer, hopefully, he wouldn't notice.
Even if my internal body temperature felt like molten iron was flooding my veins, my external temperature was apparently just at 'fever' levels, so it's not like he'd feel any heat radiating from me.
The guardian opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Was he trying to figure out how to confront me? I was almost certainly acting wildly out of character. Even if he didn't jump to 'cape', he could assume I was, I dunno, on drugs. Or coming off a bad breakup. Whatever normal teenagers did.
Hold on, if he thought I was a cape, did he think I had a power I could use on him? Was he scared of me?
Somehow, that didn't feel likely to me.
He inhaled again, and–
"I'm sorry," he said.
…
Uh.
What the hell could I say to that?
He apparently took my silence as an invitation to continue. "I've been thinking about what I said last week. While I still stand by the points I made, I worded them poorly, and some of the things I said weren't necessary at all."
Context? Please?
So… he'd said something to Brianne a week or so ago, and it had devolved into an argument? I think? What could I even do with that? If there was something I could ask without seeming suspicious, it wasn't occurring to me.
I should probably just try to shut this conversation down.
"S'fine. I'd rather not think about it," I said, hoping desperately that no accent was slipping through.
He stiffened.
Shit shit shit.
"If what we said was so bad to you that you can't even think about it a week later, then it's exactly the sort of thing I'm worried about."
Okay so I just fucked that one up entirely. Awesome! I loved getting the exact opposite reaction to what I wanted!
If only I just had to worry about him trying to attack me. Right now, I was walking through a minefield in a foreign country, and nothing on the warning pamphlets was in English.
I shook my head.
"Save it?" I pleaded.
Procrastinating was a terrible idea in 90% of cases, but at least this way, I'd have more time to look around the house and try to get a better handle on things.
(Because that had worked out so well last time. I'd done a wonderful job at thinking of a game plan instead of procrastinating like a useless piece of shit.)
He pinned me with a stare, and I couldn't help but remember the nightmare I'd had last night.
"On one condition," he said. "Don't put yourself in danger."
Put myself in–?
Wait, did he think I triggered? Or rather, that Brianne triggered from whatever the argument had been? Had it been that bad?
To be fair, he could've meant something else. The argument could've been about, I dunno, her getting blackout drunk at parties. Not everything was about capes.
"I won't," I said.
"You promise?"
"I promise."
He nodded, but his gaze didn't become any less penetrating.
"Just…" He paused, searching for words. "Things get better, even if it doesn't feel like it. I was never very close with my own parents, so I don't know what it's like, but I think I know enough to get a general picture."
So it's a parents thing. Did they die, and I was sent to stay with him? Or was it something more sinister? Had they been abusive?
"It's not easy," he continued, "but you find ways to get away from it. Ways to become the sort of person that'll be able to avoid situations like that."
The phrase 'situations like that' made me lean towards abuse.
I hadn't just overwritten a random person, I'd probably overwritten an abuse survivor, not long after they'd gotten away from their abusers. Please don't let that be the case.
There was a silver lining, though. It sounded like he was a more distant relative who'd only recently become her guardian. What's more, if I'd just been through something awful, I'd have an excuse for shutting down any future arguments he tried to start.
"Thanks," I said, and my relieved smile was entirely genuine.
"Don't mention it," he replied, and his smile was just as relieved as mine.
We lapsed into silence for a while and, for once, I didn't want to bolt as soon as I could.
"Will you be well enough to go to school tomorrow?" He asked.
Fuck. School.
I didn't want to go. I really didn't want to go, except I wasn't 'feverish' any more, and if I was, he'd probably take me to a hospital or something. If the doctors looked too closely, they could find out about the mouths or, even worse, ask me for details I wasn't going to be able to give.
Besides, there was a limit to how much I could put that off, no matter how much I wanted to. I was probably going to flunk any American history classes, but maths and literature should be fine.
…I didn't even know which high school I went to, or where it was.
If I was a Winslow student, I was going to quit.
Maybe I could ask him to drive me there? But, I didn't know how long I'd been living with him. Hell, maybe she'd been living in Brockton Bay before moving in with him. Besides, I'd rather not give him more opportunities to find me out.
Looks like I was going to have to wing it.
"I don't have a fever anymore, and I'm only tired now from not getting enough sleep last night. I should be fine." It was the longest thing I'd said to him so far, but it didn't seem like he was getting suspicious.
"Good."
Another pause.
"That should be all. Remember to stay out of trouble, okay?" He said.
"I will."
"Text me if anything goes wrong."
I had no idea which contact in my phone he'd be.
Molten iron pumped through my chest again as I considered my options.
"My phone's been acting up, can you text me to make sure it's working?"
He shrugged and pulled out his own much more sensible-looking rectangular smartphone.
My phone beeped, and I had to swipe away the weird pie chart lock screen menu so I could check the text.
Aaaaaand his number was stored as 'Asshole' in the contacts. Great. It was revealing of something, but not anything actually useful.
Glad he couldn't see the phone's screen, I gave a thumbs up, then changed the contact name to 'Guardian'. While I was there, I reset the heat timer and recorded the results. I'd missed one, but it had only been a few minutes between that and this current one, for some reason.
Interaction? Maybe it perceived me trying to manoeuvre through the conversation as 'conflict'?
"If that's all?" He asked.
"Can't think of anything else."
"Then I'll see you tonight, if you're still awake when I get home."
The heat rose to a fever pitch then flickered out as he walked out the door.
When he was gone, I went over to the apartment window to watch him go. Several minutes later, he walked out the front of the apartment building and drove off on a worn motorcycle.
"Sure, he was all sympathetic and nice at the end there," a snide, synthetic voice spoke up, "but that was the most half-assed non-apology I'd ever heard."
I whipped around, baring a dozen pairs of teeth.
Lying on the bed was a robotic chameleon, lazily slapping its tail against the sheets.
One of its ball-bearing eyes rolled around in its socket, while the other had its pin-sized camera focused on me. The screens that made up most of its skin were showing scale textures, shifting through an RGB cycle.
"'I'm sorry that I was right and you got offended over it'," it said, mimicking the guardian's voice.
"What are you?" I hissed. "How long have you been there?"
Its other eye turned to focus on me as well. "Relax. I just got here. It's not like Mr Soldierguy would be able to see me anyway."
I tentatively put a hand on its back, and it passed right through. "Are you a hallucination or something?"
It lashed out with its power-plug tail. I was a bit too slow in jerking my hand back, and when the prongs touched my skin, I got a joy-buzzer shock.
"I can go at a higher voltage than that," it warned, going back to tapping its tail against the sheets.
"Up to?"
"'Bout a taser, but if I use it too many times, I need to plug in and charge."
That was… underwhelming.
"I have a long tongue, too." It stuck out its tongue, a cord with an inch of exposed copper wire at the tip.
"That's it?"
"What, like you're any better, mouth-girl? At least I can zap people, not just bite them or bash them with gold egg cartons or whatever." It snarked.
So, whatever it was, it knew about the mouths and the ways I'd goofed off with them.
"Did you come from my power?" I asked.
It gave me a flat stare, and the screen on its left side changed to display 'I'm with stupid', with a 3D-rendered arrow pointing at me. "No shit."
"Right," I muttered.
I tested one of the mouths. Still there.
So, I was some sort of trump? That was good news. Even if my power turned out to be Discount Eidolon and only gave me three powers at a time, that was still two more powers than most capes. Plus, trumps were just cool.
The heat had intensified both times I'd gotten powers, but it had been for different durations each time. For the mouths, it had been for all three units of time, the full 20 or 30 seconds. This time had been a minute of normal intensity with a less-than-a-second flash at the end.
The chameleon, still with the 'I'm with stupid' pattern, clambered up my arm to rest on my shoulders.
"Do you have a name?" I asked.
Its tail thwapped against my back. "Nah."
It paused.
"I'm an electric-age lizard for an electric-age world. How about Electric Age? …No, Electric Aeon, that's much cooler."
I politely didn't mention how chunni it sounded.
"Oh, shut it. It's not like you have a cool name, Brianne," it said.
"That's not my name."
"Well, you'd better get used to it, because that's what everyone's gonna be calling you from now on."
My name. I wasn't even going to have my own name, maybe even for the rest of my life. The name my parents gave me, that I'd had for 20 years. I wasn't particularly attached to it, by any means, but it was mine, and it had just been stolen from me.
And now I was going to have to steal someone else's name. I was stealing someone else's name, and I didn't even know what the whole thing was.
"Check her wallet, dumbass."
Check–? Oh, for an ID card?
Her wallet – actually a purse – was in a handbag on her desk. Which meant I was probably going to have to wear a handbag. Not really my first choice, but if I couldn't find a jacket with big enough pockets, I'd have to get used to it.
The name on her Arcadia High ID – which answered the school question – was 'Brianne Steele', no middle name. Also something to get used to.
Did that mean the guardian's name was Mr Steele? If there was anything with his name on it in the apartment, it'd be locked in his room.
While there had been a stack of papers on the table last night, they'd vanished at some point, and I couldn't find anything else. If there was any clutter, it was locked in the guardian's room. Weirdly enough, there didn't seem to be any sentimental stuff lying around other than the things on Brianne's shelves.
Some searching through her room let me find a printed-out schedule for her classes, which was lucky for me. The only half-days were one every Wednesday, oddly enough. Didn't the Wards have half-days every day, or was I misremembering?
If I'd been at home, I could've just opened up the wiki to check, clicked down to the citations, and read the quote from the story about it. Right now, I wasn't at home.
More heat. I hit the timer and recorded the time.
So that was three hot flashes in quick succession. Something had to have triggered it. Or was it just random? For all I knew, it could be going off some arbitrary shard logic. I wouldn't think so, not with shards, but it could very well be the case.
Thirty-three seconds into the new timer, Aeon perked up, tail going still.
The heat intensified.
Information flooded into my mind, like someone had jammed a coherent optical transceiver into my head and started pumping it full of information.
I staggered, then shook my head, as if it would make the knowledge of hard kinetic weapons and layered hulls settle into place faster.
Forty seconds into the timer, the floodgates shut again, the heat vanishing.
Still dazed, I staggered to the bedroom shelf and pulled a box of art supplies off the bottom. Then, I cleared the desk and began to draw.
Time passed. I wasn't sure how much. Every time I thought I was getting into a rhythm, I'd reach for the computer and realise no, of course the designs for induction drive tuners wouldn't be on a public database, I'd have to write them up myself.
By the time I was done, my fingers were stiff, my arms were sore, and my stomach was growling. I spread the sheaf of papers out on the floor, moving out to the living room when I realised there wasn't enough space.
Blueprints crawled across the floor and up the walls, adhesive putty holding them in place. The drawing of the finished product was in the centre of the arrangement, with the individual components spread out around it.
Even covering the floor and two walls, I'd still skipped out on a whole lot of detail. But, staring up at it, knowing exactly what it meant and how each part worked, was making my head spin.
It was a motherfucking spaceship.
(Pre-Edit) A/N: It occurs to me that I completely forgot to thank the wonderful people on Discord for being my sounding boards and general supporters. Guide RP Discord, Irregulars Discord, Celestial Forge Discord - you guys are all awesome.
Another note, like Haroun and the Sea of Stories, I was completely unfamiliar with Endless Space until today as well. If I misrepresent anything, my apologies.
I'm very much familiar with JoJo, though, so I should be a bit better there.
42.0010 STANDO POWA (0 CP) (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders) (Variable Abilities)
You have a stand, go to the Stand Builder and build your stand. You can also convert CP to Stand Points on a 1:1 ratio from your Forge's CP pool. A/N: Though it's not an option on the doc yet, Electric Aeon is an Acts stand.
Name: It's named after the Aeon arcana from the Thoth (or Crowley) Tarot Deck. It's the equivalent of the Rider-Waite deck's Judgement. The Aeon Upright represents self-reflection, periods of awakening, and phoenix-like renewal. The Aeon Reversed represents self-doubt holding you back, lack of self-awareness, and 'missing the call'.
Appearance: It looks like a robotic chameleon, made up of screens connected by a metal frame. Its eyes look like cameras set into ball bearings. Its tongue looks like a wire with an exposed tip, and its tail is a two-pronged American-style power plug.
Ability: An automatic stand with a taser-tail, as well as a wire-tongue it can use to swing around on. It has a limited amount of charge that regenerates over time, but it can also plug into a socket or chew on a battery to absorb more charge. It's a long-ranged automatic stand, so it can wander away from the user. Damage doesn't transfer in Era 1 - if it's destroyed, it can be restored from an electricity source.
Stats: Power D, Speed C, Range A, Durability C, Precision C, Potential A.
Import Options (0 CP)
You may import yourself into any family you wish if you're not a Drop In. If you choose to be a member of the Joestar family your "in jump" name must be able to be combined with Joestar (or Kujo) to make the nickname JoJo. In addition, you have a star shaped birthmark on the base of your neck. If you choose to be a member of the Brando family you will have three dots on your left earlobe.
Poise and Pose (0 CP)
JoJo is a series involving incredible amounts of flamboyant speech, actions, and posing. Now you can pose with the best of them. You have a great sense of balance and a flamboyant air around you that is seen as somehow a perfect mixture of extreme masculinity and extreme femininity. You'll fit right in here. Also you can redesign your appearance to be more in line with this part's artstyle.
33.0030 Hull Architect (100 CP) (Endless Space) (Quality Design)
You know how to design ships. From nose to engine, you could draft up a functional space-worthy ship. On paper. Putting all the pieces together may be beyond you, but anyone who puts it together will agree, it's a mighty fine ship
Scout Ship (0 CP)
An engine, a cockpit, some life support. This is as bare bones of a ship as you can get, about the same size as a modern day space shuttle. It is essentially a space faring RV with sensors and a couple point defence weapons, designed for long journeys to the edges of known space.
"~500 new perks that I do know how to write."- whistling, It sounds like huge number of different features. Hard to imagine from where all those perks came from, because It felt like Celestial Forge already include in itself almost everything I know. Well, maybe if I sit down and take it seriously, I would be able to think about so many perks... But it still huge number.
Most of them were from jumps that weren't in the Celestial Forge in the first place. I will admit, there were a lot of perks that fit into one of these categories:
- Forge-relevant Canon companion options in the Assistants constellation.
- Magic powerups and such in the Skills: Magic constellation.
- Five new constellations to fit perks into.
Only one of the new constellations - Variable Abilities - is on the roll table right now. Variable Abilities is for perks/items with high customisability, like Stands from JoJo.
Three of the others are Boosters: Powerups for flat power multipliers, Boosters: Growth for training effectiveness increases, and Boosters: Trainees for training people up into mini-forgers. I don't know when I'll unlock these, but they're currently locked because I want to focus on crafting perks for now.
The last one I won't be using at all, since it's literally just perks I liked that have nothing to do with the CF. I made this CF mod for use in silly RPs, so that's part of its roots.
A/N: This is an edited version of Chapter 4. Ch1-10 have been edited, anything beyond that is being rewritten.
Original Chapter 4 below:
"Ah yes, a fucking spaceship is something you can easily construct with what you have on hand. Great use of your time, blueprinting that."
Aeon had been silent for the drawing process, but it was speaking up now.
"Look, I…" It was objectively correct. What could I say to justify myself? "I just… I had to make sure I wasn't going insane."
The 'I'm with stupid' graphic appeared on its side again. "Riiiight, because getting fifty extra mouths and a robot ghost lizard is something that just happens every day."
"Look, those are different. They're actual physical things. I just… I had to get this down on paper. To prove it wasn't just in my head."
"And now you have something else to hide from your guardian."
I did, didn't I.
"Eat it," it suggested, "or burn it."
"I'd rather not."
"Why? The thing's only a liability. You can't even use it for anything. Besides, it's a basic-ass design. You can just remake it."
I really didn't want to. If Aeon asked why, I wouldn't have a good answer for it. The blueprints were a concrete thing I'd made, far beyond the basic programs I'd made for my computer science degree.
The objectively best option was to get rid of it. The objectively best option made my heart clench.
It sighed. "At this rate, you're going to have more powers stuff in your underwear drawer than actual underwear."
"I know, I know," I said, gathering up the papers.
"And I'm not even sure that thing will fit."
I held up the sheaf of papers next to the much larger drawer and gave the lizard a flat look.
"No, not the papers," it said, "that thing."
"What thing?"
"I dunno. The thing. The thing that's somewhere."
Very illuminating.
"Look," it snapped, pointing with its tail, "it's that way, and it's big. That's all I know."
Right.
Well, I was going to have to investigate the bus route to Arcadia from here, so I could look at whatever 'that thing' is when I did that.
I hid the last of the papers away and started packing a bag. Brianne had a debit card who's pin number I didn't know, but she also had maybe $40 in loose bills and change that I could use if there was an emergency. America's, or America-Bet's, $2 denominations were in bills, not coins. I knew it was right, but it just felt weird.
There was also a bus pass in the wallet, one of the ones with a grid the bus driver would punch a hole into each time you caught a bus. Between that and the map on my phone, I'd be able to navigate my way to Arcadia today. If I did it today and got lost, I wouldn't be late for school like I would've been if I'd just winged it tomorrow.
Ugh. I was really going to high school again, huh?
"You could always wag," Aeon suggested.
"This is America, don't they call truancy 'playing hooky' here?"
"Awesome! You're already sounding like a Yank."
I sighed. "I'm not skipping school. They'd call my guardian, and I'd have a whole lot of explaining to do."
Aeon groaned theatrically and flopped onto its side.
"Look, I'm not exactly excited about it either."
It groaned louder. "Just get it over with. Rip the bandaid off, and we can get back to lazing around and browsing the internet."
Hearing it admit that so frankly was embarrassing, but was that not what I was hoping to do?
"Let's just go," I muttered.
Back at home, there had been new buses added to the fleet every few years, replacing old diesel models with more modern electric ones.
The buses in Brockton Bay were scuffed up, worn down, and loud as sin.
"Well, if all the rich, important people have fancy cars, they're not going to care about how shit the buses are, as long as they work," Aeon said, clinging to the top of my head.
I didn't want to make a judgement on that without actually researching it, but it would make sense that-
Heat.
Intense heat, from the start.
And I was on public transport.
I fumbled for my phone to hit the timer, while Aeon pulled my hood up over my face. Being in public without a face mask felt bad enough, but right then, that was cranked up to 11.
For the first heat, my body had mutated, mouths growing all over it. Three units of intense heat.
The second, I'd gotten a mouthy robot ghost. A fraction of a unit.
The third, spaceship design from a thousand years in the future. One unit.
This fourth one?
By the time the heat had died down, 40 seconds had passed. Six units.
And I had no idea what had changed.
"Boring," Aeon muttered, oblivious to the thoughts whirring through my head.
I'd just gotten a new power. If I subscribed to the theory that more units equaled some combination of more power and ease of use, then this was the strongest one yet.
And I had no idea what it was.
When I stepped off the bus in front of Arcadia High, the worries had boiled down into something smaller and easy to push down. The problem with simmering something, though, was that it became concentrated, and I wasn't exactly looking forward to dealing with that particular anxiety demi-glace.
The school was, unsurprisingly, closed. I'm not sure what I expected. Part of me wanted to try the door, see if I could explore a while to figure out where my classes were, but I'd rather not be seen trying to break into a building.
"You just don't want to confront people," Aeon said.
…Touché.
It slapped its tail against the back of my head. "Anyway, let's blow this popsicle stand and go find the cool power thing."
Who unironically says 'let's blow this popsicle stand', anyway?
"Me, weren't you listening?"
I sighed. "Okay, we're going to find the cool power thing."
"Finally."
The 'cool power thing' was a whole lot less easy to find than Arcadia was. In the case of the large public school, I could just look it up on a map. For this, all I had was Aeon's weird compass sense for the thing, and I wasn't even sure it wasn't just yanking my chain.
"That- no, that way."
'That way' was directly through a building.
I sighed.
"Stop with that. We're close!"
I sighed louder.
Finding the way to get to the other side of the building took five minutes. It would've been nice if the way wasn't cordoned off by white and purple police tape.
Someone in dark military-esque body armour looked over to me. "This area is closed off to civilian access at the moment. If you need to go though, find another route."
Whatever this was had appeared hours ago, according to Aeon. More than enough time for the PRT to find it and seize it, apparently.
I nodded numbly and left.
"Well, shit," Aeon sighed.
"What now?" It's not like I had any stealth powers or anything. There didn't seem to be any better option than to just wait for the news cycle to talk about whatever it was. Even then, there was no guarantee the PRT wouldn't hide things, or just outright lie.
Aeon's side lit up with a now-familiar message. "I'm invisible," it spoke slowly, like it was talking to a child.
Oh. Duh.
"Right."
"I'll be back in five."
Knowing Electric Aeon, I wasn't sure it was a good idea. Between its laziness and its devil-may-care attitude, its personality didn't seem to be that of someone who'd be very good at infiltration.
It hopped off my head and scampered towards the cordoned-off area. I walked back to the bus stop and sat down to wait.
Five minutes passed, by my phone timer.
Then ten.
By fifteen, I was really starting to regret this whole idea.
Nineteen minutes later, when a bus was just pulling up, Aeon came scampering back, its screens showing an urban camouflage pattern instead of its normal gaudy RGB scales.
"Get on the bus get on the bus!"
Confused, I hopped onto the bus and took a seat at the back so nobody would hear us talking. It dropped from my shoulder onto my lap.
"What happened?" I asked.
"Fucking Tinkers." Its tail swiped from side to side, then thudded against my leg. "Armsmaster's visor lets him see electricity or something. I had to book it before I learned what an EMP does to me."
Fuck. There went using Aeon for any major plans involving the heroes, probably. I didn't want its snooping around to be associated with whatever else I did in the future.
"We shouldn't do anything like that again," I said. "What if he'd used the EMP and it had hurt you?"
"I can come back if I die, idiot."
"Wh- you never told me that!" I hissed, struggling to keep my voice down.
It paused. "Huh. Guess not."
I groaned.
"Are there any other abilities you forgot to tell me?"
It thought for a bit, then said "The only thing I can think of is that my intangibility is kinda selective. I can pick shit up if I want." To demonstrate, it tugged at my sleeve. If I didn't know better, I'd say it reminded me of the Stands from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - they worked like that, too.
"That's it?"
"Think so."
If it revealed later that it had a new ability or a Pokemon evolution or something that it had just forgotten, I was going to Scream.
"So, what was actually there?" I asked.
It stopped waving its tail and looked up at me.
"So. You know how you have that spaceship power you can't use because you don't have the resources?"
…Where was it going with this?
"Basically," it said, "it came with a starter spaceship. Just a little one, smaller than the one you designed."
Whatever I'd expected, it hadn't been that. My power had come with an object? A ready-made spaceship? And it hadn't even appeared near me. There was maybe one parahuman I could name with a power like that, and even then, the tech was generated in his vicinity, not miles away in the city docks area.
For that matter, why would a shard power give me spaceships in the first place? They were clearly meant to be space-worthy, which would be counter to everything the shards were trying to do. They didn't want their test subjects to escape.
The heat came and went, lasting only a single unit of time. I'd actually stopped to count it, this time. It lasted exactly seven seconds, which tracked with previous occasions, though fumbling for my phone to reset the timer had taken a couple of seconds from those totals.
Anyway, It was certainly possible for a shard to give out a spaceship power. There were natural Eden triggers - Leet, Vikare, even Contessa if you counted the shards Abaddon had given to Eden. If I had gotten an improperly-optimised power that accidentally gave me access to a space-flight database, that would explain it.
The power-gaining over time was strange, though. Maybe I'd gotten Eden's version of Dauntless' shard or something? Or, more concerningly, Abaddon had given Eden his version of High Priest and Queen Administrator, and I was Eidolon 2.0.
God. What kind of Worm fanfiction bullshit would that be? An SI/OC getting a Trump power from Abaddon's version of Skitter and Eidolon's shards.
Maybe if I hadn't proven myself to be so utterly incompetent, I'd consider believing it.
A thought occurred to me.
"So wait, the PRT just got their hands on a spaceship?" I asked.
"Yeah. I think they were planning to just lock down the area, because they were too dumb to get it to start up and they didn't have a big enough vehicle to carry it back to their base without chopping it up."
That or it had good security and a biometric lock or something.
"What class was it? A smaller Corvette?" I asked.
"Scout," Aeon said confidently.
So it had the ship knowledge too? It seemed to know what I was thinking, most of the time, so it made sense.
A Scout-class ship wasn't so bad. They were about as bare-bones as you could get, essentially just the campervan - or RV, since we're in the US - of spaceships. They were still the size of a modern-day space shuttle, so 30-40 metres across.
(It was a very, very good thing it hadn't parked itself on the roof of the apartment. Or on the road outside.)
While I knew a lot about designing spaceships, I didn't actually have a very large tech-base, compared to space operas. No lasers, no forcefields, just reinforced hulls and kinetic weapons and such.
If the Scout was matched to those tech levels, it meant it was just a moderately speedy ship with a couple of regular guns that would still take a year or so just to get to Alpha Centauri. No superspeed WMD.
The bus ground to a halt at my stop and I hopped off, Aeon clinging to the front of my shirt.
Back in the apartment, the lizard plugged itself into the wall and closed the shutters on its camera-eyes. I laid down on the sofa and turned on the TV, then pulled out my phone to scroll through Brianne's texting history.
Her contacts list… each contact fell into one of three categories.
The first were people she'd ghosted, who'd stopped texting weeks ago. This was 'Amanda', 'Casey', 'Jackson', etc. From their messages, they seemed to be friends.
The second category were people who had ghosted her, and she'd sent them enough emotional messages that I'd had to look away. 'Mom', 'Dad', and 'James' were in that one, with the latter being her brother. From the few messages I could bear to read, it was apparent that none of them were still alive.
The third were the people she'd gotten into arguments with recently. This included the Guardian, formerly 'Asshole', and someone labelled as 'Fucker' who seemed to be a social worker.
Brianne's life… it hadn't been that great, had it?
"Well hey, at least you were already miserable before you became actual you, so it's not like you were taking much away from your other self," Aeon said.
It had sort of occurred to me, too, but I'd derailed that train of thought before it could reach the end.
If only I wasn't the only one this was happening to. It was a shitty thought to have, but it would at least give me other people in the same situation to commiserate with and bounce ideas off.
…What if I wasn't the only one? It's not like I'd know if there were other people who'd been pulled into this world.
Okay. Search terms. Worm Parahumans. Khepri and Weaver. Gold Morning. Khonsu, Tohu, and Bohu. Echidna. More capes - Defiant, Golem, Imp, anyone I knew who had either triggered later on or changed their name. Wildbow and John C McCrae, just to be sure.
All I got from that was that there was a worm-themed cape who'd been killed by the Three Blasphemies some years ago, and that Aisha apparently hadn't checked whether or not Imp was taken before using it herself.
Oh, and the fact that Wildbow had somehow become a successful childrens' book author in this world. 'Maggie Holt', 'Good Simon', and 'Kennet Three' were bestsellers, with the first taking a very Harry Potter-like position in pop culture, minus the transphobia.
Well, anyway, if there weren't any posts, there's no reason not to make one myself. Just in case. If there wasn't anyone else, it'd just fade into obscurity. If there were others, their search terms should hopefully bring them to that page. I wrote up a post with as many keywords as I could without making it sound janky or too close to describing real life, then settled into bed.
Electric Aeon, who'd apparently finished charging, curled up under my chin. Maybe it would've been cute if its screens hadn't been set to flashing RGB lights.
High school tomorrow wasn't going to be great, but I could deal. I'd gotten this far. These were solvable, achievable problems. Aeon's screens dimmed, leaving the room in more comfortable darkness.
Tomorrow was going to go well. I'd make sure of it.
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♦ Topic: Has anyone heard of a story called Worm?
In: Boards ► Creative Forums ► Creative Writing
IHaveYesMouth&IMustScream (Original Poster)
Posted On Apr 3rd 2011:
There's a story I read on the internet years ago called Worm. It's a web serial about capes, released chapter by chapter onto the author's blog iirc. It got pretty dark, but the characters were compelling and it was one hell of a page-turner. It got a sequel at one point called Ward, too.
I lost all the bookmarks on my old computer, and I think it had a weird URL which I can't remember? So I don't know where to find it. Google searches didn't help.
Here's some of the details I can remember.
- The final fight was called Gold Morning, where all the characters fought a guy called The Warrior.
- The main character went by both Weaver and Khepri, and she had a bug theme and wore a flight pack with dragonfly wings later in the book. She...
[...]
- ...author's penname was Wildbow. I can't remember his real name - my brain is refusing to offer me anything other than 'John C McCrae'
I think that's it! I'll edit this post if I remember anything else.
(Showing page 3 of 3)
►Coyote-C
Replied On Apr 3rd 2011:
Okay, I was definitely thinking of something else. Good luck finding the story, though.
►IHaveYesMouth&IMustScream (Original Poster)
Replied On Apr 3rd 2011:
@WhedonRipperFan I know villain protagonists aren't for everyone, but I personally think Weaver is a very well characterised protagonist. All of her motivations make sense to her from the inside, even if they're just her justifications. I can totally understand being put off by her, though.
@FlippinMad No.
@.Coyote-C Thanks anyway! Capes and Candles sounds interesting, I'll have to see if I can find a copy at the library.
►Media_Kingdom_Tsadei (Banned)
Replied On Apr 3rd 2011: [Mod Edit]: Stop. We don't know how you keep getting your account reactivated, but until we figure it out, have another ban.
►FlippinMad
Replied On Apr 3rd 2011:
@IHaveYesMouth&IMustScream Aww
End of Page. 1, 2, 3
"Ah yes, a fucking spaceship is something that you can hide in your sock drawer. It won't even take too much time or resources to make. Great use of your time, blueprinting that."
Aeon had been silent during the drawing process, but was talking now.
"Look, I…" It was objectively correct. What could I say to justify myself? "I just… I had to make sure I wasn't going insane."
The 'I'm with stupid' graphic appeared on its side again. "Riiiight, because getting fifty extra mouths and a robot ghost lizard is something that just happens every day."
"Look, those are different. They're actual physical things. I just… I had to get this down on paper. To prove it wasn't just in my head."
"And now you have something else to hide from your guardian."
I did, didn't I.
"Eat it," it suggested, "or burn it."
"I'd rather not."
"Why? The thing's only a liability. You can't even use it for anything. Besides, it's a basic-ass design. You can just remake it."
I really didn't want to. If Aeon asked why, I wouldn't have a good answer for it. The blueprints were a concrete thing I'd made, far beyond the basic programs I'd written for computer science assignments.
The objectively best option was to get rid of it. The objectively best option made my chest clench.
It sighed. "At this rate, you're going to have more powers stuff in your underwear drawer than actual underwear."
"I know, I know," I said, gathering up the papers.
"And I'm not even sure that thing will fit."
I held up the sheaf of papers next to the much larger drawer and gave the lizard a look.
"No, not the papers," it said, "that thing."
"What thing?"
"I dunno. The thing. The thing that's somewhere."
Very illuminating.
"Look," it snapped, pointing with its tail, "it's that way, and it's big. That's all I know."
'Big'? There was no way this was a good thing, whatever it was.
I'd been planning to check out the bus route to Arcadia as a test run for tomorrow, and whatever 'that thing' was seemed to be in that direction.
I hid the last of the papers away and started packing a bag. Brianne had a debit card, and she'd had the good sense not to write her pin number down anywhere I could find. Luckily, though, she also had $40 or so in loose bills and change, so I wouldn't be strapped for cash if something went wrong.
There was a bus pass in the wallet that'd apparently give me unlimited rides for the month, so I didn't have to worry about rationing anything out for that. Between that and the map on my phone, I'd be able to navigate my way to Arcadia today. If I got lost, I wouldn't be late for school.
Ugh. I'm really going to high school again, huh?
"You could always wag," Aeon suggested.
"This is America, don't they call truancy 'playing hooky' here?"
"Awesome! You're already sounding like a Yank."
I sighed. "I'm not skipping school. They'd call my guardian, and I'd have a whole lot of explaining to do."
Aeon groaned theatrically and flopped onto its side.
"Look, I'm not exactly excited about it either."
It groaned louder. "Just get it over with. Rip the bandaid off, and we can get back to lazing around and browsing the internet."
Hearing it admit that so frankly was embarrassing, but it's not like that wasn't what I'd been planning to do.
"Let's just go," I muttered.
Back at home, there had been new buses added to the fleet every few years, slowly replacing the old diesel models with more modern electric ones.
The buses in Brockton Bay were scuffed up, worn down, and fucking loud.
"Well, if all the rich, important people have fancy cars, they're not going to care about how shit the buses are, as long as they work," Aeon said, clinging to the top of my head.
I didn't want to make a judgement on that without actually researching it, but it would make sense that–
Heat.
Intense heat, from the start.
And I was on public transport.
I fumbled for my phone to hit the timer, while Aeon pulled my hood up over my face. Being in public without a sick mask felt bad enough but, right then, that was cranked up to 11.
For the first heat, my body had mutated, mouths with fantastical properties growing all over it. Three units of intense heat.
The second, I'd gotten a robot ghost lizard with a weak taser power. A fraction of a unit.
The third, basic spaceship designs from a thousand years in the future. One unit.
This fourth one?
By the time the heat had died down, 40 seconds had passed. Six units.
And I had no idea what had changed.
"Boring," Aeon muttered, oblivious to the thoughts whirring through my head.
I'd just gotten a new power. There weren't enough examples to tell what longer periods of intense heat did, but I wouldn't be surprised if it correlated to the strength of the abilities. If that were true, this was the strongest one yet.
And I had no idea what it was.
When I stepped off the bus in front of Arcadia High, the worries had boiled down into something smaller and easy to push down. The problem with simmering something, though, was that it became concentrated, and I wasn't exactly looking forward to dealing with that particular anxiety demi-glace.
The school was, unsurprisingly, closed. I'm not sure what I expected. Part of me wanted to try the door, see if I could explore a while to figure out where my classes were, but I'd rather not be seen trying to break into a building.
"You just don't want to confront people," Aeon said.
Touché.
It slapped its tail against the back of my head. "Anyway, let's blow this popsicle stand and go find your cool powers thing."
Who unironically says "let's blow this popsicle stand", anyway?
"Me, weren't you listening?"
I sighed. "Okay, we're going to find the cool power thing."
"Finally."
The "cool power thing" was a whole lot less easy to find than Arcadia was. In the case of the large public school, I could just look it up on a map. For this rather less publicly known thing, all I had was Aeon's weird compass sense for the thing. I wasn't even sure it wasn't just messing with me – I'm 90% sure it's pointing me to a different location than it was at first.
"That– no, that way."
'That way' was directly through a building.
I sighed.
"Stop with that. We're close!"
I sighed louder.
Finding the way to get to the other side of the building took five minutes. It would've been nice if the way wasn't cordoned off by white and purple police tape.
Someone in dark militaryesque body armour looked over to me. "This area is closed off to civilians at the moment. If you need to go though, find another route."
Whatever this was had appeared hours ago, according to Aeon. More than enough time for the PRT to find it and seize it, apparently.
I nodded numbly and left.
"Well, shit," Aeon sighed.
"What now?" It's not like I had any stealth powers or anything. There didn't seem to be any better option than to just wait for the news cycle to talk about whatever it was. Even then, there was no guarantee the PRT wouldn't hide things, or just outright lie.
Aeon's side lit up with the now-familiar "I'm with stupid" message.
"I'm invisible," it said slowly, like it was talking to a child.
Oh. Duh.
"I'll be back in five."
Knowing Electric Aeon, I wasn't sure it was a good idea. Between its laziness and its devil-may-care attitude, its personality didn't seem to be very suited for delicate infiltration missions.
It hopped off my head and scampered towards the cordoned-off area while I walked back to the bus stop and sat down to wait.
Five minutes passed, by my phone timer.
Then ten.
By fifteen, I was really starting to regret this whole idea.
Nineteen minutes later, when a bus was just pulling up, Aeon came scampering back. Its screens were showing an urban camouflage pattern instead of its normal gaudy RGB scales.
"Get on the bus get on the bus!"
Confused, I hopped onto the empty bus and took a seat at the back so the driver would hear us talking. It dropped from my shoulder onto my lap.
"What happened?" I asked.
"Fucking Tinkers." Its tail swiped from side to side, then thudded against my leg. "Armsmaster's visor lets him see electricity or something. I had to book it before I learned if EMPs hurt me or not."
Fuck. If I was lucky, Aeon would've been dismissed as a glitch or harmless snooping or something. More likely, though, the heroes would assume it was connected to whatever my power had made and, thus, that I was connected to it.
"We shouldn't do anything like that again," I said. "He shouldn't have the EMP yet, I think, but what if he had something else that could've hurt you? Killed you?"
"I can come back if I die, idiot."
"Wh– you never told me that!" I hissed, struggling to keep my voice down.
It paused. "Huh. Guess not."
I groaned.
"Are there any other abilities you forgot to tell me?"
It thought for a bit, then said "Just one thing. You know how I'm intangible?"
I nodded.
"It's selective. I can still pick shit up if I want." To demonstrate, it tugged at my sleeve. If I didn't know better, I'd say it reminded me of Stands from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure – they worked like that, too.
"That's it?"
"Think so."
If it said later that it had a new ability or a Pokemon evolution or something that it had just forgotten, I was going to Scream.
"So, what was actually there?" I asked.
It stopped waving its tail and looked up at me.
"So. You know how you have that spaceship power you can't use because you don't have the resources?"
…Where was it going with this?
"Basically," it said, "it came with a starter spaceship. Just a little one, smaller than the one you designed."
Whatever I'd expected, it hadn't been that. My power had come with something tacked on? A ready-made spaceship? And it hadn't even appeared near me. There was maybe one parahuman I could name with a power that could do stuff like that – Ogun – and even then, the tech was generated in his vicinity, not miles away in the city docks area.
For that matter, why would a shard power give me spaceships in the first place? They were clearly meant to be space-worthy, which would be counter to everything the shards were trying to do. They didn't want their test subjects to escape.
The heat came and went, lasting only a single unit of time. I'd actually stopped to count it, this time. One unit of power-time lasted exactly seven seconds, as far as I could tell.
Anyway, It was certainly possible for a shard to give out a spaceship power. There were natural Eden triggers – Leet, Vikare… even Contessa, if you counted the shards Abaddon had given to Eden. I could've gotten a power she hadn't properly restricted before she died.
The gaining-powers-over-time was strange, though. Maybe I'd gotten Eden's version of Dauntless' shard or something? Or, more concerningly, Abaddon had given Eden his version of High Priest and Queen Administrator, and I was Eidolon 2.0.
God. What kind of Worm fanfiction bullshit would that be? An SI/OC getting a Trump power from Abaddon's version of Khepri and Eidolon's shards. Maybe if I wasn't too much of a fucking idiot to be a power fantasy fanfic's protagonist, I might've even considered believing it.
A thought occurred to me.
"So, wait, the PRT just got their hands on a spaceship?" I asked.
"Yeah. Think I saw Vista there too. Guess they were too dumb to actually get it to start up so they had to use child labour to move it instead."
Whether or not they could figure out how it worked, I doubt they'd want to activate an unknown piece of tinkertech. That or they couldn't get past the ship's security. To bypass the biometric lock, they'd probably need Shadow Stalker or to phase through the door and open it from the inside.
"What class of ship was it? A smaller Corvette?"
"A Scout," Aeon said, more confidently than I'd expected.
So it had the ship knowledge too? It seemed to know what I was thinking, most of the time, so it made sense.
A Scout-class ship wasn't so bad. They were about as bare-bones as you could get, essentially just the campervan – or RV, since we're in the US – of spaceships. They were still the size of a modern-day space shuttle, so 30-40 metres long, but it could've been much, much worse.
Imagine if it had appeared in the apartment's parking lot instead.
While I knew a lot about designing spaceships, I didn't actually have a very large tech-base, compared to space operas. No lasers, no forcefields, no warp drives, just reinforced hulls and kinetic weapons and such.
If the Scout's design was like the ones in my head, it'd only have a few weapons for emergencies, more focused on speed than combat. Seven parsecs per year really wasn't that much in the grand scheme of things, either. That'd still be, what, two or three months to get to Alpha Centauri?
"Oh boo hoo, your ship only goes twenty-two times the speed of light," Aeon groused.
Maybe later, I'd realise just how crazy that was. Right now, I was spoiled by sci-fi's warp-speed space travel, of being able to make a 15-minute detour halfway across a galaxy for lunch. The idea of even seeing a spaceship still felt like fiction.
The bus ground to a halt at my stop and I hopped off, Aeon hanging from my hoodie's drawstrings.
Back in the apartment, the lizard plugged itself into the wall and closed the shutters on its camera-eyes. I laid down on the sofa and turned on the TV, then pulled out my phone to scroll through Brianne's texting history.
Her contacts list… each contact fell into one of three categories.
The first were people she'd ghosted, who'd stopped texting weeks ago. This was 'Amanda', 'Rey', 'Jackson', etc. From their messages, they seemed to be friends.
The second category were people who hadn't responded to her emotional text messages. 'Mom', 'Dad', and 'James' were in that group, James seeming to be her brother. From the few messages I could bear to read, it was apparent that none of them were still alive.
The third were the people she'd gotten into arguments with recently. This included the Guardian, formerly 'Asshole', and someone labelled as 'Fucker' who seemed to be her social worker.
Brianne's life… it hadn't been that great when I'd arrived, had it?
"Well hey, at least you were already miserable before you became the current you, so it's not like you were taking much away from your other self," Aeon said.
It had sort of occurred to me, too, but I'd derailed that train of thought before it could reach the end.
If only I wasn't the only one from my world who'd ended up here like me. It was a shitty thought to have, but it would at least give me other people going through the same stuff as me to talk to, or maybe even to bounce ideas off of.
…What if I wasn't the only one? It's not like I'd know if there were other people who'd been pulled into this world.
Okay. Search terms. Worm Parahumans. Khepri and Weaver. Gold Morning. Khonsu, Tohu, and Bohu. Echidna. More capes – Defiant, Golem, Imp, anyone I knew who had either triggered later on or changed their name. Wildbow and John Charles McCrae, just to be sure.
All I got from that was that there was a worm-themed cape who'd been killed by the Three Blasphemies some years ago, and that Aisha apparently hadn't checked whether or not Imp was taken before using it herself.
Oh, and the fact that Wildbow had somehow become a successful childrens' book author in this world. 'Maggie Holt', 'Good Simon', and 'Kennet Three' were bestsellers, with the first taking a Harry Potter-like role in Earth Bet's pop culture, minus the author being a transphobe.
That aside, if there weren't any posts about Worm, there's no reason not to make one myself. Just in case. If there wasn't anyone else who knew Worm, it'd just fade into obscurity. If there were others, their search terms should hopefully bring them to that page. I wrote up a post with as many keywords as I could without making it sound janky or too close to describing real life, then settled into bed.
Electric Aeon, who'd apparently finished charging, curled up under my chin. Maybe it would've been cute if its screens hadn't been set to flashing RGB lights.
High school tomorrow wasn't going to be great, but I could deal. I'd gotten this far. These were solvable, achievable problems. Aeon's screens dimmed, leaving the room in more comfortable darkness.
Next week was going to go well. I'd make sure of it.
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♦ Topic: Has anyone heard of a story called Worm?
In: Boards ► Creative Forums ► Creative Writing
IHaveYesMouth&IMustScream (Original Poster)
Posted On Mar 6th 2011:
There's a story I read on the internet years ago called Worm. It's a web serial about capes, released chapter by chapter onto the author's blog iirc. It got pretty dark, but the characters were compelling and the worldbuilding was great. It got a sequel at one point called Ward, which apparently had a slower pace and more of a character focus.
I haven't been able to find it – I lost all the bookmarks on my old computer, I can't remember the URL, and my Google-Fu isn't getting me anything.
Here's some of the details I can remember:
- The final fight was called Gold Morning, where all the characters fought a guy called The Warrior.
- The main character went by both Weaver and Khepri, and she had a bug theme and wore a flight pack with dragonfly wings later in the book. She...
[...]
- ...author's penname was Wildbow. I can't remember his real name – my brain keeps going back to JC McCrae, even though he doesn't publish online.
I think that's it! I'll edit this post if I remember anything else.
(Showing page 3 of 3)
►Coyote-C
Replied On Mar 7th 2011:
Okay, I was definitely thinking of something else. Good luck finding the story, though.
►IHaveYesMouth&IMustScream (Original Poster)
Replied On Mar 7th 2011:
@WhedonRipperFan I know villain protagonists aren't for everyone, but I personally think Weaver is a very well characterised protagonist. All of her motivations make sense to her from the inside, even if they're just her justifications. I can totally understand being put off by her, though.
@FlippinMad No.
@.Coyote-C Thanks anyway! Capes and Candles sounds interesting, I'll have to see if I can find a copy at the library.
►Media_Kingdom_Tsadei (Banned)
Replied On Mar 7th 2011: [Mod Edit]: Stop. We don't know how you keep getting your account reactivated, but until we figure it out, have another ban.
►FlippinMad
Replied On Mar 7th 2011:
@IHaveYesMouth&IMustScream Aww
End of Page. 1, 2, 3
(Pre-Edit) A/N: Finally, finally, we get to see outside the apartment. The days of Brikikomori are over!
The spaceship... honestly, I wasn't planning to add it at all until I realised I could cause some Fun Drama with it. So, now, Armsmaster, Kid Win, and any other Tinkers that are sent in to help with the ship are going to have access to spaceflight technology. What's more, Jumpchain rules say that any lost or stolen items purchased from the jumpdocs are returned after 24 hours, so it's not like the can move the thing out of Brockton Bay.
In other news, don't go just yet, because I'm going to be adding another threadmarked post for media. I'm not an artist, not by a long shot, but between tracing and avatar makers, I've made some visual representations of what I imagine a few characters looking like.
34.022 Extended Warranty (600 CP) (Ben 10 0.1) (Quality Durability)
Let's get real for a second: You are a scientist, not a repair monkey. You shouldn't have to teleport all the way from your home planet to fix something one of your assistants managed to break in the time you took your eyes off of them. As a result, your technology is now durable and long-lasting...you can go years without seeing a prototype of your creation before it actually needs you to fix it directly, even the most idiotic and primitive species being able to guesswork how to fix it even if they don't know how it works. Also when I say durable, I mean the universe could collapse into nothingness and that device of yours would still be floating in the empty void that used to be said universe. Point being, technology you create is both insanely durable and is easily maintained. Now maybe you don't have to handle everything yourself.
I made this in a visual novel character creator called Mannequin. No relation to the S9 member.
Chapter 3 - Electric Aeon
For Aeon, I booted up Gimp and traced over a photo of a chameleon.
Chapter 1 - 'The guardian'
Another Mannequin creation. I actually made this a while before story start. I've used him in RPs before - I've used Brianne in RPs before, for that matter - and I'd made a Mannequin version at one point. Good thing too - it was crashing whenever I tried to use a male body.
Chapter 6 - Lisa Medina
It her! Unfortunately, Mannequin is very light on black hairstyles, but at least the one it did have was the one I wanted. I had to edit in the hairclip, too, since Mannequin didn't have it either, but I'd say it came out well.
The Cast, starting from Chapter 7
(This is just all the Mannequin avatars in one image.)
The guy on the far left is Lisa M's father. I was playing around in Mannequin, and when I asked for ideas of what to make, a good friend of mine asked that I do him. I've also added Aeon, un-blur-ified the guardian, and adjusted Lisa M's proportions so she looks less like a middle-schooler.
The Cast, starting from Chapter 6 - Alternate Outfits
This one still has middle schooler Lisa M, but otherwise, it was me playing around with different outfits. I'm about the opposite of being 'good at fashion', and Mannequin has a limited clothing selection (since it's mostly focused on high-school Japanese-style dating sims and such), but I think it came out nicely.
Just imagine when a 'garage' warehouse attachement/expansion gets rolled. Then the spaceship is going to disappear.
Well, that, or one of the 'blackbox' perks. Especially since one of them can be applied retroactively, where they won't be able to use it, or anything they derived from it. Even if it's something simple that they would have already known, for the 'using' it part.
Now that would be hilarious to happen. And they'd probably chalk it up to a security feature that they triggered.
Amusing; "Extended Warranty" is almost an anti-tinker power. Your stuff doesn't break down quickly without maintenance and only you can repair it—no, it needs virtually no maintenance, virtually never breaks down, and if it does somehow break it's so easy to fix that any random person can do so without issue.
If it weren't for the "return-if-stolen" jumpchain mechanic, that could end up being a significant long-run problem.
(Though the "can survive even the destruction of the universe" thing implies a degree of automatic durability that seems likely to be a lot more important than simple ease of repair.)
Just imagine when a 'garage' warehouse attachement/expansion gets rolled. Then the spaceship is going to disappear.
Well, that, or one of the 'blackbox' perks. Especially since one of them can be applied retroactively, where they won't be able to use it, or anything they derived from it. Even if it's something simple that they would have already known, for the 'using' it part.
Now that would be hilarious to happen. And they'd probably chalk it up to a security feature that they triggered.
I can't remember if I've already talked about it on SV, but item fiat insurance is very much already in affect. If the ship is damaged or 'stolen', it'll return to where it started, fully repaired. Great for destructive reverse-engineering, but not so great for getting it out of a public area.
Once Brianne gets a Warehouse (ie if she rolls any facility that would need to be in the Warehouse), the ship's respawn point would be set to there instead.
As for blackbox perks, it'd depend on the wording. If it's 'any technology you own', then yeah, the PRT's investigation into the ship would absolutely run right into a wall.
Amusing; "Extended Warranty" is almost an anti-tinker power. Your stuff doesn't break down quickly without maintenance and only you can repair it—no, it needs virtually no maintenance, virtually never breaks down, and if it does somehow break it's so easy to fix that any random person can do so without issue.
If it weren't for the "return-if-stolen" jumpchain mechanic, that could end up being a significant long-run problem.
(Though the "can survive even the destruction of the universe" thing implies a degree of automatic durability that seems likely to be a lot more important than simple ease of repair.)
The 'return if stolen' thing only applies to items that are rolled in the CF (like the spaceship) or items that are made in a Personal Reality workshop. And it just so happens that Brianne doesn't have one of those workshops yet...
The durability thing is very much the main selling point of the perk, here. There's been some discussion on the Celestial Forge discord about how things like Sting would interact with what Bri makes
I can't remember if I've already talked about it on SV, but item fiat insurance is very much already in affect. If the ship is damaged or 'stolen', it'll return to where it started, fully repaired. Great for destructive reverse-engineering, but not so great for getting it out of a public area.
Once Brianne gets a Warehouse (ie if she rolls any facility that would need to be in the Warehouse), the ship's respawn point would be set to there instead.
As for blackbox perks, it'd depend on the wording. If it's 'any technology you own', then yeah, the PRT's investigation into the ship would absolutely run right into a wall.
Well yeah, I was specifically meaning the Warehouse/garage perk popping up. Since that would cause the spaceship to vanish entirely from trace, rather than back to that one location. Your A/N makes it clear that it'll still return to the closed off place for now. Although I kind of wonder if the pieces that they set separately get vanished when the time limit is reached. I think that's one of the limitations of Jumpchain; can't take a fiat protected item apart, to start making new ones/harvest the material. Outside of specific perks allowing it, though I can't think of any that specifically allow that. The closet would be the 'resupply of material' type of perk, but that's a separate thing. And that's not really 'fiat-backed repair'.
And I'm pretty sure that there are a few blackboxing perks that are worded like that. Or at least something akin to that, where you don't have to worry about accidentally leaving some advanced tech behind in some random location in a lower-tech jump.
I'm not entirely sure if the perks would be in whichever setup you have, though. With duplicate perks from different jumps kind of cut down. Which makes sense for being used in a writing prompt/challenge that the CF has become. (I think the original version was meant as a 'this is a list of all crafting related perks and purchases, and the jumps they are from', to help build a regular jumpchain route. So if you passed on a option in x jump, there's an alternative here kind of thing.)
Although I kind of wonder if the pieces that they set separately get vanished when the time limit is reached. I think that's one of the limitations of Jumpchain; can't take a fiat protected item apart, to start making new ones/harvest the material. Outside of specific perks allowing it, though I can't think of any that specifically allow that. The closet would be the 'resupply of material' type of perk, but that's a separate thing. And that's not really 'fiat-backed repair'.
Even if there's a chance it's not specified in Jumpchain, I'd rule that a fiat-backed item that's in pieces would have all the pieces returned to a single whole when it's fixed.
And I'm pretty sure that there are a few blackboxing perks that are worded like that. Or at least something akin to that, where you don't have to worry about accidentally leaving some advanced tech behind in some random location in a lower-tech jump.
They'd be in the Quality: Security domain, I believe. Let me check.
...
Okay, here's the ones I found there.
37.0090
Jumper Technology Activation
200 CP
Stargate Atlantis
Quality Safety
This isn't so much an item as an upgrade for any item that you've bought with CP or personally made; its user interface will now only work for you and those(if any)you specify. You can change the lock on an affected device just by giving it new orders, but for any given individual this access is all or nothing. The upgrade will also prevent the interface from being bypassed unless it is physically removed, replaced or destroyed. * 200CP is for a la carte
37.0130
Deep-Layer Protocols
400 CP
Crysis
Quality Safety
Technology in your possession is unique in the manner that it is incapable of deviation from your stated goals. Normally, nanomachines detached from the collective whole would run the risk of having their original goals corrupted or subverted without the greater collective to issue orders, but technology held by you can be proofed so such errors are self-correcting. The only way to remove your tech from play is to destroy or disable it. Hacking or other 'tricks' short of a full rewrite by someone who knows what they're doing will not work.
37.0240
Alien Hardware
200 CP
Generic AI
Quality Safety
Your technology is not native to Earth (or whatever setting this is). No one owns you. You're just there. Now, this doesn't stop anyone from finding you and claiming they own you, but the very nature of your technology means that they won't be able to understand what makes you run unless they're a comic book level genius and spend billions on research. This applies to all technology you make or bring with you from outside context, here or in future jumps.
I'm not entirely sure if the perks would be in whichever setup you have, though. With duplicate perks from different jumps kind of cut down. Which makes sense for being used in a writing prompt/challenge that the CF has become. (I think the original version was meant as a 'this is a list of all crafting related perks and purchases, and the jumps they are from', to help build a regular jumpchain route. So if you passed on a option in x jump, there's an alternative here kind of thing.)
I've read the original .txt document on Pastebin, commentary included, but that was a hot minute ago. Iirc it was sort of like a guide for how to become the best possible crafter via Jumpchain. There were several other docs by the same person, and they were all kinda tutorial-y - for instance, The Garden of Eternity is all about making a giant magitech garden, Build a Genetic Augmentation Machine does what it says on the tin, etc.
It's my impression that the Celestial Forge v2 was a collection of every crafting-related perk the Celestial Forge discord could find, while v3 is a cut-down version of v2. My setup was basically 'remove the stuff from series I don't know how to portray' (which LordRoutabout did in Brockton's Celestial Forge) and 'add as many crafting perks as I can find from jumps that weren't already in the CFv3'.
I'd like to add that I really enjoyed the minor PHO interlude at the end of the last chapter. That was not only amusing, but a smart move I've never seen any SI make before.
After all, with the cause unknown, there's no reason to think there couldn't have been more people isekai'd into this world, and this is a beautifully subtle way to get the attention of anyone else in that position.
(Assuming they have some degree of familiarity with Worm. But if they don't it's likely hopeless to find them anyway, short of openly announcing yourself and seeing if anyone bites—probably an extremely bad idea.)
I'd like to add that I really enjoyed the minor PHO interlude at the end of the last chapter. That was not only amusing, but a smart move I've never seen any SI make before.
After all, with the cause unknown, there's no reason to think there couldn't have been more people isekai'd into this world, and this is a beautifully subtle way to get the attention of anyone else in that position.
(Assuming they have some degree of familiarity with Worm. But if they don't it's likely hopeless to find them anyway, short of openly announcing yourself and seeing if anyone bites—probably an extremely bad idea.)
I'm a sucker for SIs, and I've done both a lot of thinking about them and a lot of roleplaying as Worm SIs, sometimes with other SIOCs in the world at the same time. In the most notable of those RPs, there was a wide range of Worm knowledge between the SIOCs, and they were all from different versions of Earth with different versions of Worm (TV show, TTRPG campaign, published book...)
This post isn't going to get any SIOCs who don't know Worm, as you said - she would've needed to make another post about, say, a book about a virus called Covid-19 or something, and even then, that wouldn't cover anyone who was taken from 'Earth Tsadi' before Covid started.
She didn't think about that, though - despite her insistence that it was real life and not a fanfiction, she was very much thinking in terms of fanfiction SIs who have metaknowledge. If there was anyone who hadn't read Worm, didn't think to use google, or just flat-out doesn't have internet access, they wouldn't find that post.
I know how to make bombs from this principle, if it work as I imagine.
Had this idea from other fic discussion. Something like this:
"Also, if I eat something temporarily summoned, it's mass will subtracted from my body? Or I can melt some materia, mix with permanent one and create alloy. In this case summoned matter stay here because of strong physical connection or every atom will be torn out and sent to oblivion? Because maybe there are ways to safe summoned material, if process it properly. Or there are also many dangers, if summoned stuff cannot be saved in any way. For example, summoned substance mixed with real. However, this real matter is unstable without non-real part and what will happen, when some particles suddenly disappear? It will become unstable very quickly or even hot, because atoms disappeared, but energy of molecular bonds did not = radiation -> heat -> expansion -> BOOM! So method and rules of disappearance can be extremely important." - from here The Contest of Power
P.S. Why all my ideas are predominantly destructive in nature?
I know how to make bombs from this principle, if it work as I imagine.
Had this idea from other fic discussion. Something like this:
"Also, if I eat something temporarily summoned, it's mass will subtracted from my body? Or I can melt some materia, mix with permanent one and create alloy. In this case summoned matter stay here because of strong physical connection or every atom will be torn out and sent to oblivion? Because maybe there are ways to safe summoned material, if process it properly. Or there are also many dangers, if summoned stuff cannot be saved in any way. For example, summoned substance mixed with real. However, this real matter is unstable without non-real part and what will happen, when some particles suddenly disappear? It will become unstable very quickly or even hot, because atoms disappeared, but energy of molecular bonds did not = radiation -> heat -> expansion -> BOOM! So method and rules of disappearance can be extremely important." - from here The Contest of Power
