Let's read Worm and its sequel Ward by Wildbow (One chapter/every day)

rafuki22 · Jun 21, 2018

blackarrow said:
Hello, wonderful friends who told me about Mannequin five chapters ago, hoping that I'm gonna remember this- aren't you sweethearts? , and welcome to the FIGHT of the CENTURY in Plague 12.7 In the left corner: Taylor Hebert aka Skitter, Undersider, Crime Lady, philanthropist, amateur doctor, protector of the weak and helpless VS In the right corner: The most crazy Tinker you can possible meet, Mannequin aka Dr Manny, Slaughterhouse 9 member, evil MUHAHAHAHAHAHA super-scientist (he can't laugh but I think he can use Morse Code for a sweet evil laugh when he wants. I can hear him laughing in Morse Code in my head ). Alright, Skitter have like 50% chances to defeat him (of course I wants 100000000% her to win: she's MY DEAR Skitter, I hate Mannequin more than anyone else, and her people should be protected with any costs) but let's be honest: I only give her half of chances in this fight because Mannequin is very powerful and very smart and very well prepared. I can't be unrealistic and say that she can beat him in like few minutes, or without being injured by him or he doesn't have any chance to win. Even if I hate 98% S9 members with a burning passion (except for Bonesaw who I love to hate and Burnscar- half hate/half pity her), I admit that they're very strong, very resistant and most of them are intelligent and have a strategic mind in combat. Mannequin is one of those intelligent and strategic minds+ even if his weapons might not cut through Skitter's super-resistant costume, he can still twist her head, break her limbs or even break her in half. They're many ways to kill a 15 years old girl especially when you have a body made of hard shell. Besides, the same shell body might protect him against her attacks, no matter how aggressive they're. So, Skitter have 50% chances to win but also Mannequin have 50% chances to win. Ok, I WISH YOU ALL THE SUCCESS IN THE WORLD, SKITTER, YOU'RE THE SECOND BEST GIRL. I have my icecream ready, a couple of cookies that I made myself and....let's go. And hope for the best.

Maybe you're wondering why I didn't used the usual green color for Worm- quoted text. Well, in order to have more than 50% chances o defeat Mannequin, Skitter should be VERY creative. And...everyone knows that So, I have to replace green with red for this Chapter. Alright, if I give Skitter 50% (+50% if she's getting creative) aren't you curious to see how many chances I give her if she fights every single one of the S9 member? Let's see: 70-80% against Jack (if he can also make his knives sharp enough to cut through anything, besides having an infinite cutting edge then he'll cut through her invincible costume and her chances will drop at 50-60%). 0% against Siberian (everyone would have the same chances as long as they don't know her weak point), 0-1% chances against Crawler (1% with indulgence), 60-70% chances against Shatterbird, 80% chances against Burnscar (she took down Lung, who's stronger and more dangerous that Burnscar), 0% against Cherish (Cherish can make Skitter kill herself), 90% against Bonesaw (if Bonesaw is helped by her creations, the chances drop at 60%; if Bonesaw have also special safeguard making her invincible at bugs and knives and fireguns, chances drop to 0%). So, Skitter have the best chances against the most vulnerable members of the team. Cherish is also vulnerable, but her power will simply fuck Skitter up.

Forgot something. RIP doctors killed by Mannequin . Hope your deaths will be avenged. And its pretty good thinking for Skitter to pretends that she's dead so she can start thinking about strategies to defeat Mannequin. Glad that Skitter confirms my theory that a Tinker should be naturally a GENIUS so he/she can use their power properly. I consider myself being an average intelligent person and I suck at technology and I'll be unable to do something if I'd get Tinker powers. I will have a lot of ideas to do crazy things but I won't know how to apply them. Bonesaw and Mannequin were geniuses even before they got their powers. They could have become scientists pretty easy, their powers only turned them into a version of scientists on steroids. I won't be surprised if Bonesaw's IQ is close to 200 or even more. And not because of her powers. Ok, now Skitter is putting herself in Mannequin's shell shoes. What she'd do if she was in his place?

Ok, ok, I still don't get how Mannequin became like this. I mean, I know his "reasons", but I don't know HOW exactly, the procedures he used to turn every part of his body into self-sustaining ecosystems. I'm imagining him like: wants to get rid of skin- he quickly took his skin off and start replacing it with hard shell; wants to get rid of eyes -he pulls them out; wants to get rid of limbs- he pulls them out; wants to get rid of heard- no more heart as he crushes it and replaces it with whatever keeps him alive. But, I think he went through a lot of pain this these medical procedures. Did he took powerful painkillers? Did he previously created a surgeon robot then put himself into a deep sleep and let the robot operate on him? Did he asked another crazy Tinker to hep him? How did he removed his limbs without any external help? I know that this is Tinker bullshit and I should not think too much about it because there's no explanation anyway, but even Bonesaw's creations make more sense and they're partial explained, even some of Colin and Chris' super-weapons seem possible to be created in real life, but what Mannequin did, is a HUGE NON-SENSE. Maybe I'll get a backstory of him when he'll start operating himself to get rid completely of his human life. Even if it will be a Mannequin Interlude, I'd actually be glad for this kind of Interlude.

You can try to make your bugs attack Mannequin with fire, in the same manner you did during Merchants' invasion of your territory. Try to fry his hard shell until it will start melting. Then force as many bugs as you can inside his torso, all of them attacking his brains. And don't stop until his brains will be completely DESTROYED. Yes, you'll take a life, but you'll take a life that HAVE NO RIGHTS to exist. I'm a peaceful person but I'll kill Mannequin with a constant smile on my lips and without any remorse. I'll pull his brains out of his torso and smash it against all walls and have fun while doing it. This is how much I hate this ASS. This is how much I want him DEATH (the only time when I wanted to personally torture for days and kill a fictional character while feeling good about myself was during Games of Thrones-

the suckiest and most horrible character of all suckiest and horrible characters: Joffrey Baratheon. I kind of hated his death on- screen because it was way too easy.

Skitter, don't let him hurt children. DON'T LET THIS ABSOLUTE MONSTER HURT CHILDREN. I DON'T CARE HOW MUCH YOU'LL BE HURT, STOP HIM FROM KILLING CHILDREN.

I'll smack you everytime when you'll put yourself down, Skitter. You're the BEST, you're doing better things than many heroes (I still don't know why the heroes from other Protectorates don't come all in the City to attack simultaneous S9. Exactly how they're doing with Endbringers. Because S9 are basically mini- Endbringers. Or evacuate all the people from the City and attack it with nuclear bombs. Yes, the people will lose their homes but S9 will be wiped off the face of the earth. They're more dangerous than any other villain groups. Siberian and Crawler might survive even to a nuclear blast -they're basically "human" versions of cockroaches, but all others would be kaput. But this is Worm where heroes doesn't think too logical. Villains are the ones who are doing all the logical thinking ). All in all, Skitter almost sacrificed her life to save a mother and her child. Skitter, if Marquis will ever escape from Birdcage (a thing that I WANT to happen) you and him can rule this fucking City together (I'd so like this idea). You have a strong moral code, he have a strong moral code, you're protecting mothers and children, he doesn't kill women and children, you both are very smart and good leaders. And I won't say no if Amy will join you two. Just keep Tattletale away from her, kay?

I don't think he have any human feelings or regrets left, Skitter. I don't think he cares anymore about Alan's family. He's a completely emotionless monster now. Well, not completely emotionless, because he still feels HATE for humanity. But I think that if Alan's family will magically appear behind his holes that serves as his "eyes" he'll kill them himself without any hesitation. This is how he feels about Alan's wife and children. Hate them, not miss them. Mannequin is build from hate and every part of him is a symbol of hate for everything that moves. "sighs" Your bugs can't do jack shit even if they'd pass through his shell. He made his body in a way that it will instantly kill any small intruder. So, this strategy is down. "sighs"

I can see 2 people fighting with 100% chances to defeat Mannequin. Armsmaster armed with his super-nano-weapons, a super-suit and enough determination to make Mannequin run like a headless chicken away from him even before they'll start the fight (Armsmaster's nano- Halberd was very close to kill a fucking Endbringer, Mannequin wouldn't stand any chance against it. Its nothing like a small nano-knife ). Faultline will be the other person- wait the right moment, touch his torso, completely destroy it and voila. Sundancer will also be a strong adversary, how much is he going to resist if she'll use her most powerful sun? But still Skitter is doing her best even if she kind of have her ass kicked. She can win, I still believe in her success .

I like that even Skitter is asking herself how in the Hell of Mannequins this monster managed to replace every part of his body with shell and weapons. She echoed my own questions. She and I are pretty much alike (as my friend told me) except that I have more self- confidence than her, I couldn't resist not even half of a second against Mannequin (I'd have died from heart-attack even before starting the fight) and I don't have cold blood like her but I have a very ugly sadistic side that I'm afraid even myself of it. Also, I don't have her brilliant mind, but I'm enough inventive and strategic to coordinate a fight from distance. So, Skitter gets VERY creative (look, red helped you getting creative ) as she's starting to effectively dismember Mannequin with spider webs. AWESOME. I KNEW YOU CAN DO IT, GIRL.

SHE SAVED CIVILIANS AGAIN! YES, AND NOW SHE PROCEEDS TO DECAPITATE HIM RIGHT AFTER SHE JUST PAINTED HIM LIKE ONE OF HER NON-FRENCH MANNEQUINS FOR COSTUMES. ALSO, THE BADASS BYSTANDER WHO IS HELPING HER...DON'T TELL ME HE'S THAT R.J.'S ASSHOLE OF A FATHER CAUSE THAT WOULD BE THE BIGGEST TWIST IN THIS ARC.

Ok, he's just a totally random bystander, but a VERY BADASS one indeed. If more people would have jumped in Skitter and his help, I think they'd have put Mannequin down till now. But I can understand why they don't do anything. They don't have super-powers and they're too afraid of this monster. They also have kids to protect. Anyway, Mannequin now is headless AND without a hand. But he's still fighting with Coil's nano-knife who can cut Skitter's costume. Great, he never gives up "sighs". Come on, dude, admit your defeat and give up already. I finished my icecream and cookies and now I'm starting to be terrified again (THE TRUTH IS: I was this entire time TERRIFIED OUT OF MY MIND and I lost precious time taking breaks from reading even if it might doesn't appear like this. Even with cookies, I'm still feel very uncomfortable)

YOU WON! YOU FUCKING WON! EVEN IF YOU DIDN'T KILLED HIM, YOU TAUGHT HIM A LESSON TO NEVER MESS WITH YOU AGAIN. YES, HE WILL GO FOR A SECOND ROUND WHEN HE'LL FIX HIMSELF BUT HE'LL NEVER FORGET THIS DEFEAT. HE LEFT LIKE A COWARD BECAUSE HE COULDN'T DO ANYTHING ANYMORE AGAINST YOU OR YOUR PEOPLE. I'M SO PROUD OF YOU, MY GIRL.

Good night and sleep well, my friends. Cause I'm going to have one hell of a good sleep with such a good and positive ending of this Chapter .

Ahhh, it's good to be back ...
Really? A nuclear bomb just to kill the nine? It's not worth it, be it for collateral damage, political repercussions or ethical problems.
Besides, it was a bittersweet victory.

blackarrow · Jun 21, 2018

rafuki22 said:
Ahhh, it's good to be back ...
Really? A nuclear bomb just to kill the nine? It's not worth it, be it for collateral damage, political repercussions or ethical problems.
Besides, it was a bittersweet victory.

Yes, its necessary to attack them even with nuclear bombs, if there's no other way around. There won't be collateral damages as long as all people will be evacuated, no political repercussions as long as politicians send someone like Paige to Birdcage for her entire life only because an accident (so politicians will not give a fuck if an entire city will be bombed as long as a world thread organisation will be destroyed in the process.) As for ethical problems, people will be extremely happy if these criminals will be eradicated. No ethics when someone like Jack, who wants to start an Apocalypse (something that not even Endbringers did), will be killed. Heroes know about Jack's intentions so they have to stop him before its too late. And as long as they can't arrest him, then how else they can stop him?
It was still a victory. Only the doctors died, no other innocent people. This is all that matter to me.

ExNihilo · Jun 21, 2018

blackarrow said:
Yes, its necessary to attack them even with nuclear bombs, if there's no other way around. There won't be collateral damages as long as all people will be evacuated, no political repercussions as long as politicians send someone like Paige to Birdcage for her entire life only because an accident (so politicians will not give a fuck if an entire city will be bombed as long as a world thread organisation will be destroyed in the process.) As for ethical problems, people will be extremely happy if these criminals will be eradicated. No ethics when someone like Jack, who wants to start an Apocalypse (something that not even Endbringers did), will be killed. Heroes know about Jack's intentions so they have to stop him before its too late. And as long as they can't arrest him, then how else they can stop him?
It was still a victory. Only the doctors died, no other innocent people. This is all that matter to me.

The thing is, the bomb might not kill the 9. The Siberian and her invincibility means she could walk it off, Crawler wouldn't mind it, Burnscar can teleport, and who knows what Bonesaw has cooked up. And nobody knows about Dinah's prophesy yet other than she and Coil (probably) so it's not as if they can justify it like that.

Leila Hann · Jun 21, 2018

I think nuking them might be worth it if there was any assurance that it would work.

KnownParadox · Jun 21, 2018

Ms, Blackarrow you are delightful.

Watched, this gon be gud.

blackarrow · Jun 21, 2018

ExNihilo said:
The thing is, the bomb might not kill the 9. The Siberian and her invincibility means she could walk it off, Crawler wouldn't mind it, Burnscar can teleport, and who knows what Bonesaw has cooked up. And nobody knows about Dinah's prophesy yet other than she and Coil (probably) so it's not as if they can justify it like that.

Miss Militia, Weld, Clockblocker and Battery know about this, Coil told them about Jack's future plans during the meeting bombed by Hookwolf.

"I'll be more specific. Should Jack Slash not die before he leaves Brockton Bay, it is very likely the world will end in a matter of years," Coil spoke.
"Bullshit," Skidmark answered. The others were showing varying reactions. I doubt many bought it.
"You contacted us to say something very similar a couple of days ago." Miss Militia said, "But I have the same questions now that I did then. Do you have sources? Can you verify this? Or provide more information?"
Behind her, Weld reached into his pocket and withdrew his smartphone.
"More information? Yes. I have sought further details and pieced together a general picture of things. Jack Slash is the catalyst for this event, not the cause. At some point in the coming years, Jack Slash kills, talks to, meets or influences someone. This causes a chain of events to occur, leading to the deaths of anywhere from thirty-three to ninety-six percent of the world's population."

Even if Coil is a HUGE ASSHOLE, they should trust him especially since he have a precog by his side. Or they can device a time stopping machine to freeze S9 in time, like it happened with Dauntless when he was frozen in time by Bakuda's bombs. That would be an even better method, to keep them frozen/trapped in time forever. But I have a feeling that Siberian- if she's indeed a robot, will be unaffected. But nobody will be able to control her anymore, if her team will be frozen. Anyway, I will agree with whoever hero or villain who'll go to extreme methods to defeat S9 (as long as innocents will not be killed). I find S9 very interesting and even funny in an extremely twisted and macabre way but I agree that they should be stopped.

blackarrow · Jun 21, 2018

Hellooooooooooo, Mannequin's survivors....and the ones who weren't lucky enough

, here we go with another Chapter, the aftermath of Skitter's VICTORY over one of the most powerful S9 members Plague 12.8 Since the creative fight is over, I can use the usual color- green- for the text, because its my favorite color (even if is not CREATIVE) and I don't care if you don't like it. I'll use it anyway. Alright. I should expect at a Victory Party in Skitter's Lair, BUT KNOWING SKITTER, there will be no such thing as a Victory Party. Because her intense self hating (which is exceeded only by Amy's even more intense self hating) will not let her enjoy the victory, on the contrary. She'll start blaming herself because: she couldn't save the doctors even if she knows that Mannequin can get pass her bugs without her feeling his movements and presence, she couldn't kill Mannequin, even if she barely defeated him and she knows that her bugs can't do jack shit against him in terms of killing, and so on. Wait for the Show of Skitter Blaming Herself for everything to start as soon as possible. Gosh, I'm going to slap the hell out of her- with my imagination alone- everytime when she'll say: -Its my fault, I could've done X thing better-. This is one of the only two things I DISLIKE WITH A BURNING PASSION AT TAYLOR: self- hating/extremely low esteem and abandoning her father all the fucking time. But nobody is perfect, not even Taylor, so I have to accept her even with all these IMMENSE flaws. You probably noticed that while I don't like people with low esteem I also don't like the opposite extreme- people with too much ego. Self -hating and arrogant people bugs me to not end in equal measure. Maybe this is the reason why I love Lisa so much, especially her personality. She have enough confidence in herself, she NEVER put herself down, she's strong emotionally and mentally but she also isn't so arrogant as she admits her mistakes and she never said/or tried to prove that she's better than anyone else. THIS ONE is one of the many reasons I love Lisa's character. She's the confident non-arrogant kind of person I admire.

Ok, let's start this Chapter already.

I hadn't actually slept in for a long, long time. It was not the start I wanted for my day.

I'd been too tired to sleep, I hadn't been able to get my thoughts to slow down, and I hadn't been able to resist just one more check of my territory to ensure people were safe and sound. Compounding it all were my injuries, which did an excellent job of jolting me from the twilight of almost-sleep any time I moved the wrong way or shifted position. When daylight had started to stream in through the slits in the metal shutters, I'd pulled a pillow over my head and tried to get just a few hours more.
If I wound up having to face down Mannequin or any other members of the Nine, I'd need to be well rested. Running on two or three hours of sleep would get me killed.
It sure didn't feel like the added sleep I got made any difference.
My injuries and the general aches from running barefoot and fighting Mannequin had all melded together into one giant, stiff bruise. It would be easier to name the parts of me that didn't hurt. My chest was the worst, each of my breaths drawing a stab of pain from the lowermost ribs of the right side of my body. It took me two tries to get up from my bed and stand.

A quick investigation showed that bruises had spread across my abdomen, yellow and blue. Some careful prodding showed that the tissues beneath the bruises weren't rigid or particularly tender. That meant there was no serious internal bleeding, if I was remembering right.
If this kept up, I was going to need another go at the first aid courses, to refresh my memory on the particulars and brush up on my skills. February felt so very long ago. So much had happened in the last few months.
Shuffling over to my bathroom, I groaned quietly at the sight of the shards of mirror and shower door that were carpeting the floor. I made my way back to my room and put on some slippers, grabbed a shirt I didn't care much about and dropped it on the bathroom floor. I kicked it around enough to get the worst of the shards out of the way, brushed the glass out of the shower and onto the tiled floor, and then cranked the shower on. The water pressure wasn't even half of what it should be, and it was cold. It didn't warm up over the thirty seconds I stood there holding my hand under the flow.
I jumped in anyways, in the hopes of waking myself up and getting my hair wet enough that I could make myself look somewhat presentable. I knew from experience that not washing my hair had a way of making it frizz out hardcore. Not that I'd be able to tell, with every mirror within a thousand miles in pieces.
I dried off, put on my contacts, combed my dripping-wet hair into place, and stepped back into my slippers to navigate through the sea of glass shards and head back to my bedroom to dress.
My TV, laptop and phone were all useless. There was no way to get information on recent events. I couldn't call the others, couldn't check the news for details on the events of the past night, couldn't even know if I'd managed to save anyone when I'd been waking them and leaving messages. I was left to expect the worst, and it soured my already iffy mood.

Ok, Taylor as usual: licking her battle wounds and inspecting her lair, damaged by this pretty lady

(thank you, Monica, for confirming me that I'm not the only one who saw in Shatterbird's Musical Glass Show a failed attempt to remarke The Sound of Music. She send me this amazing motivational picture. I'm a pretty good observant.

) She can't even use her phone, TV or her laptop, everything was ruined by the silicon kinetic ShatterBitch. But there's still a good thing at the start of this chapter: Taylor didn't started her Apocalypse of Complains over Complains over Complains. Yet. The day just started.

I made my way downstairs, unlocking the door that led between the second and third floors. The second floor was relatively unscathed – the metal shutter had kept the floor-to-ceiling windows from sending their contents indoors, and the terrariums were hard plastic rather than glass. Knowing Shatterbird was in town, I'd been reluctant to spend much time in a room with sixty or seventy sturdy glass cases, and I was glad to have one less room to clean. Still, there was no shortage of mess.

Sierra and Charlotte were downstairs, talking at the kitchen counter. They fell silent as I appeared.
They didn't speak as I walked over to the cupboard. Tea. Tea, maybe some toasted breakfast pitas, some bacon, an egg…
Opening the cupboard, my hopes of having a solid breakfast to start my day were dashed. Bottles of spices that had been on the same shelf as the teabags had exploded, sending their contents and countless glass shards throughout the cupboard. The cupboard reeked of cinnamon and cumin and various peppers. They weren't the only casualties there. Bottles of cooking supplies had exploded on the upper shelves, and their contents had settled overnight, most of it pooling on the shelves in layers of congealed liquid that were thick with the needle-thin particles of shattered glass.
I looked at the pair of them. Neither spoke, and Charlotte even looked away.
I hated this. Hated feeling flawed, knowing they saw me that way. Being bruised, sore and stiff, I was visibly mortal to them. I hadn't been able to stop Mannequin from hurting bystanders, or protect and warn my people about Shatterbird. How were they supposed to respect me as someone in charge? Sierra was even older than I was.

Well, I'd have to make use of them anyways. My focus on the cupboards and the damage inside, I asked, "Charlotte, you up for a job?"
"Yeah," she said, behind me. When I glanced back at her, she looked away again. I knew I'd taken some hits, but did I look that bad?
"It's a bit of a walk, but I need to get up to date on events. You'll be going to the territory of a guy named Regent. He's a friend, and it's close. Tell him about the Mannequin incident, tell him I'm alive, and get details on what happened to Tattletale and the father."
"The father?"
"He should know what I mean."

Oh, no, exactly what I was afraid the most. Taylor complaining about things that she's not even 1% guilty for them "pulls out an Imp and gives her a good kick between her ribs" Next time you'll get a punch in your face, miss Everything Is My Fault. I don't care about your injuries, you'll still get your punch with the first occasion. Sierra is countless times more sure on herself and emotionally stronger than you. Glad to see, however, that she wants to know what Lisa and her father are doing.

"Okay." She met my eyes as she responded. Better. I wrote the address down for her, then watched as she headed off to pull on her shoes and make her way off to the cellar exit.

"And me?" Sierra asked.
"Go to the basement, get a box of supplies, and bring it up. There should be a propane stove in there. Cook up some rice, and then start cleaning out the cupboards. Wear gloves, and focus on picking out the stuff we can keep from the stuff that needs to be thrown out. Use the box from the supplies to hold some of the extra trash if you need to."
"Okay."
I walked over to the corner to find a broom and dustpan.
"You're cleaning up too?"
"Yeah. You were at the hospital last night, right? How did things go?"
"Nobody listened to me at first when I tried to warn them. It was only when Battery showed up at the hospital and confirmed that the Slaughterhouse Nine were around that people started trying to prepare, but there wasn't a lot we could do in those ten minutes. There were a lot of people in the hospital, and a lot of equipment, monitors and displays, lots of windows. Everyone who could got under their beds, and people put mattresses against the windows in rooms where there were people who couldn't move."
"But they were okay?"
"Most?" Sierra frowned. "I couldn't really tell. It was chaotic, lots of people running around, equipment failing. Battery tried to grab me to ask me how I knew what was happening, and I used the chaos to slip away, spent the rest of the night in my parent's room, hoping she wouldn't spot me."

"And they're okay? Your parents?"
"They're okay."
I smiled a little. "Well, that's good."
She smiled back. "You know, you're not what I expected."
"I'm not what I expected, frankly," I said. I turned my attention back to the cabinet, found the dustpan and stood up.
"That reminds me-" She paused. "Nevermind."
"Say it."
"It wasn't last night, but I overheard something at the hospital. Something involving you and Armsmaster?"
I sighed, suddenly reminded of how weary I felt. I saw her expression fall. She said, "I didn't mean to upset you."
"No. It's fine. What did you hear?"
"That you betrayed your team, and that you'd wanted to be a hero but, um," she paused, "Couldn't?"
She'd changed her mind about how she was going to finish speaking. What had she left out, and had she stopped herself from saying it for my sake or for her own self-preservation, not wanting to piss off the villain? I wanted to be a hero and I failed?

"pulls out another Imp- I have no idea who this Imp is but I know that she's a girl, her name always come up in my mind and I feel like I have to mention her everytime when I virtually kick Taylor- and punches Taylor right in her face" You failed to be a hero but you're a very successful heroic villain. This counts more than being a hero. You're quietly trying to do good things under your villainous cover, not shouting to the whole world how heroic you're and how everyone should respect you. Honestly, I like heroic villains and vigilantes (but NOT "vigilantes" like Sophia) even more than heroes, AND I usually have a very soft spot for heroes.

Given recent events, I wasn't sure I could blame her for thinking along those lines.

"No, that's not exactly right," I responded. "Long story short, once upon a time, I wanted to be one of the good guys."
"What happened?"
"Took me a while, but I decided I'd rather have the likes of Tattletale and Grue at my back instead of siding with the sort of people who follow Armsmaster."
"Really, Armsmaster? Is he that bad?"
"Bad enough that Mannequin wants him to be the ninth member of their group."
Sierra's eyes widened.
I figured I wouldn't mention that two of my teammates, including the one I'd sent Charlotte to meet, had also been nominated.
Regent had only been nominated out of spite, and Bitch… I wasn't sure what the story was there. "I'm going to be upstairs, cleaning up the balcony and the other rooms. Give me a shout when the rice is done, or if you find anything breakfast-ish that's edible."

"Okay."
I headed up to my bathroom and began to sweep up. I deployed bugs to help me find the shards that the broom wasn't catching.
I occupied myself with my other bugs as well. I went out of my way to avoid using the spiders I'd employed to fight Mannequin, drawing from bugs in the streets and surrounding area instead. I sent the weakest, smallest and most useless of the bugs to my spiders for a morning meal, then fed the non-spiders who were a little less reliant on protein. With the other nearby bugs, I started collecting the smallest pieces of glass throughout the house.
The uncertainties of the day, the worries about Lisa and Dad, having my routine disrupted and the spoiling of my breakfast and morning shower had put me in a bad mood. It would have been nice to say that it made me feel better, getting things in order again, and it did, but it wasn't a cure-all nor was it a perfect distraction. There was no way I could relax with the things I had hanging over my head.
Doing this felt like I wasn't doing something to help Dinah.

I like Sierra's expression when Taylor mentioned that Colin is not the best of the heroes. Its funny. Well, he was pretty bad in the past, more like someone who was doing bad things (by sacrificing people for his fame) under his heroic cover (kind of opposite to Taylor) but he became a better person with time, ESPECIALLY after the whole Mannequin's failed recruitment attempt. And its possible for Colin to become one of the greatest and most honorable heroes that humanity is bless to have, until the end of the story. Btw, do you know what I really WANT to happen? Taylor and Colin fighting shoulder to shoulder against their foes, being helped by Dragon from the distance. That would be an excellent TEAMWORK. The best one. Maybe they'll meet again in some dire conditions and forgive each other and help each other, there's still hope.

Once I finished the bathroom, I tidied my room and opened the shutters on the windows. Glass that had fallen against the shutter sloughed off to the second floor balcony, with stray shards falling onto the hardwood. My bugs obligingly fetched them up for me.

Reams of glass shards fell as I opened the heavy shutters that stood just behind the pedestals with the mannequins I was using to design the costumes. I stepped out onto the balcony and set about sweeping up the glass and dumping it into the trash can, using my bugs to collect what the dustpan wasn't catching. I wasn't in costume, and I was in plain sight on the balcony, but I doubted the concentration of bugs was enough to draw attention.

Ten minutes passed before I heard from Sierra. I assumed it would be about the food, but it wasn't.
"Skitter! You've got company!"
Every bug I had in the cabinets and corners of the room streamed forth to check the intruder, my thoughts immediately shifting into a combat mode. What escape routes did I have? Could I help Sierra if there was trouble? What tools and weapons did I have on hand?
The second my bugs settled on the intruder and felt that familiar emanation of outward pressure, like a faint breeze, I calmed down. I felt a mite embarrassed as I made my way downstairs to greet Grue.
"Christ, T- Skitter!" he exclaimed, the second he saw me.
"What?"
"Your, um-" he gestured at Sierra shaking his hand, agitated.
"Employee?" I suggested.
"Your employee just informed me that you fought Mannequin last night?"
"Yeah."
"Are you suicidal!?"
"He's not that strong," I said, defensively. "I mean, scary as fuck, he's strong, but he was beatable."
"Do you not recall the very specific numbers we got on our chances against these guys? Fifty-five percent chance we die if we fight
them!"
"There were people in danger. My people. I thought a forty-five percent chance of survival was worth the risk."
He tapped his finger against the forehead of his helmet. I could almost make out the noise through the thin emanation of his power.
"Could you ask your employee to give us some privacy?"
"I can go for a walk," Sierra said.
"Thank you," I told her, "I'll signal you with my power when we're done."
My heart was speeding up just a bit as we waited for her to leave. I distracted myself by limping over to the propane stove that was positioned on the countertop and checking the rice. There were containers and boxes of food arranged on the counter that Sierra had apparently checked and deemed edible. Nothing especially good for breakfast.

Well, I can understand why Grue is freaking out because Taylor decided to stop Mannequin from killing lots of people instead of running away and saving her ass. He really, really cares for her and he's afraid out of his mind that something bad might happen to her, and when I say BAD I'm talking about more than battle wounds and bruises. He's like a big brother to her, not just a teammate or a friend, and he feels morally compelled to take care of her/protect her against anything he feels like its too dangerous for her. Like any big brother would do for his sister.

So, I'm not going to judge Grue not even a bit no matter how harsh he's going to be with Taylor. As long as he doesn't tell her something like this: you failed to kill Mannequin, I'm disappointed in you. But Grue is the last person who'll tell this to Taylor.

As the door closed behind Sierra, I hugged my arms against my body and said, "Please don't tell me you asked her to leave because you have bad news about Lisa or my dad."

Grue pulled off his helmet and the darkness dissipated around his head. It was Brian's frowning face I saw, now. "Your dad is fine. He was already fully checked out and sent home. Lisa is… less fine."
"Don't say that."
"It's not life threatening. I just don't know if it's hit her yet. Coil's doctor stitched her up, but he told her to expect a scar. I don't know if it's shock, the blood loss, or if it's that she hasn't seen herself in a mirror, but she doesn't seem to care. Cracking jokes, even. Isn't- is it sexist of me to wonder why a girl doesn't care more about her looks being spoiled?"

"It's easily possible she does care," I said. I was thinking back to her interactions with our enemies in fights. In particular, our run-ins with Glory Girl and Panacea during the bank robbery and Jack Slash last night seemed to stand out. "I think maybe she handles stress and problems by throwing herself headlong against them. It's how she operates in costume, against serious threats and unexpected situations. There's a word I'm trying to pin down, it's not reckless, but-"
"I think reckless may be a very good word to choose," Brian replied.
"No. It's…" I reached for the word and couldn't find it. I was too tired, and my brain wasn't really in that gear.
"I'm surprised, sometimes, at how much attention you pay to us. You seemed to have Rachel down cold, and your description of Lisa seems pretty apt. Makes me wonder how you've analyzed me."
"I'm not all that. Really. There are exceptions, but dealing with people isn't my thing," I said. Feeling awkward, I distracted myself with the rice, taking it off the propane stove and scooping some out into a bowl. Holding the pot, I pulled at the wrong muscle and felt my rib protest. I winced, and I wasn't able to hide it.
Noting my pain, Brian commented, "I can't help but worry you're self destructing, Taylor. You can't go up against the Nine to protect people you don't even know."
"I can. I'll manage."
"How much sleep did you get last night?"
"Dunno. Two or three hours, but I slept in. What time is it?"
"Nine."
"Maybe four hours?"
"You're going to run yourself into the ground at this rate. Or get yourself killed. Take your time. Go on the defensive, tell your people to stay out of trouble and avoid drawing the Nine's attention, rest. You can work on this territory thing over the next few weeks,
instead of days."
I shook my head, "I can't."

I can understand both of them. Brian wants to protect Taylor, to know that she's out of danger, he noticed her self- destructive tendencies (not only emotionally, but also physically) by challenging her enemies to a direct fight instead of running away from them and attacking them strategically, without having to go toe to toe with them. She's like a human version of an flying insect who get itself killed by flying too close to bulbs and burning itself. Taylor confronts her enemies too close and might get burned herself to death one day (especially since some of her enemies have fire powers). She always put herself in danger to protect her teammates, to protect her father, to protect her people, her heroic side combined with her self- destructive side will always push her to her limits, even when she doesn't want. On the other side, Taylor cares for her people, she can't sleep if she doesn't know that they're safe and even if she knows they're safe she still can't find her peace because she feels like she could have done even more for them. She also wants to save Dinah, the second most innocent and defenseless character after Aster in this story. And she'd do whatever it takes to "convince" Coil to give Dinah to her. Even if deep down she knows that he'll never accept and the only solution to get Dinah back to her family is to kill this asshole.

"Right. Just like you rejected Hookwolf's suggestion that our groups take a break. I won't say that hearing you muttering to yourself was the entire reason I refused his offer, or even half the reason, but it was a factor, and I think I deserve answers for going up to bat for you. What's going on?"

"I made a deal with Coil."
Brian folded his arms, much as I was doing. "What deal?"
"He said that if I can prove my services are worth it, he'll release Dinah."
Brian shook his head. "No. There's got to be more to it. You've been distant, driven, and you've done some very un-Taylor-like things in the past few weeks."
I ate some of the plain brown rice. Could I tell him?
"There is more to it. Lisa and I talked it over after the Endbringer thing. She doesn't like the Dinah situation either, even if she's more willing to roll with it."
"Right. Just for the record, I'm not in love with the kidnapping and confinement of some kid, either."
I nodded. "So Lisa suggested the deal. But knowing Coil, and from what Lisa says, and from the way Coil framed it when I posed the deal to him and just my gut, I- we don't think he's going to let her go."

"No, I don't think he would. Her talents are too valuable for him. But that doesn't explain your attitude lately."
I shook my head. "I-"
I stopped and raised one hand. Sierra was outside, not too far away, and there was a small group of people around her. What had gotten my attention was the fact that she was tapping her finger against the origami cube. She'd wanted to signal me without doing anything overt, maybe. Or without my calling a swarm down to her location.
"-Something's going on outside. Come with?"
Brian nodded.
I headed upstairs and got my costume on in record time. I couldn't help but note how dusty it was from last night's encounter, and how the one arm was still crusty with old containment foam. It was torture to actually get my limbs into the legs and sleeves and zip up, and to contort myself to attach my armor. Especially doing it quickly. I ended up enlisting Brian's help with the armor at my shoulders and back.
I could feel Sierra's steady but insistent tapping on the cube all the while.
They were a short distance down the beach, but they started walking towards us a little bit after we entered the storm drain, and met us halfway.
Sierra was in the company of a pair of Japanese boys and a petite Chinese girl with a pierced nose and a thousand-yard stare. There was a degree of attitude coming from them that was all too familiar. Gang members. Of course. Just because Lung and Bakuda were no longer around didn't mean there wouldn't be scraps of the ABB in the area. They wouldn't be liked, but they were there, they were equipped for trouble and criminal activity was all they knew.
"Sorry to interrupt your business meeting," Sierra said, looking from me to Grue.
"It's fine. What's going on here?" I controlled the tone of my voice. They didn't seem too fazed by this encounter with two supervillains. Were they veterans of Lung's rule? Or Bakuda's?
A Japanese guy with a mop of hair covering his eyes and a bad slouch looked from Sierra to me and spoke in a very American accent, "You still looking for muscle?"
He didn't look like he had much muscle, but I wasn't about to comment on that. If nothing else, I was a little too stunned at what he was offering to say anything witty. "Pretty much."
"We heard you took on Mannequin," the girl said. "That's ballsy."

I'm glad that everyone agree that Coil will never return Dinah back to her family, even if she'll become a literal zombie in his hands. All he cares is for himself and himself alone, he's not very different from Jack when it comes to entirely selfish motivations and no limits in evilness. Actually Jack seems more interesting than Coil, plus I don't know yet if he really loves Bonesaw like a "daughter", he's only proud of her loyalty or he's just controlled by her somehow. But still, its way more fun to read about Jack than Coil. I think Lisa tries harder than Skitter to help Dinah, but she have her own plans that not even Skitter knows about. This is how Lisa is doing her things.

Also, it looks like the pile of Skitter's henchpersons never cease growing. She's going to have former ABB members as her new recruits? Gosh, Lung will bypass Manton Effect and incinerate himself in rage until death if he'll ever find out that his people are willing to work for his nemesis. I'm not sure if I should trust former ABB members but then I remember that most of them were forced by Lung in his gang, they didn't have any other choice so they might be ok to be recruited in Skitter's personal army. At least they're not former nazis or former Merchants, who are much more worse.

"Thanks," I said, in my driest tone. Stupid as it was, that statement meant something to me. Nobody had really congratulated me since my fight with Mannequin. I hadn't congratulated myself. It was hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that they respected me for what had happened with Mannequin. A victory was a victory, but people had gotten hurt, I'd gotten hurt.

The second Japanese guy spoke up. He was in his early twenties and his accent was thick enough that I didn't realize he was speaking
English at first. He pronounced 'girl' more like 'gurru'. "Other day, girl was knocking on neighbor's door, talking about you. Said you was good boss. Nice, generous, fair. But we think that means you weak, before, not so much of that now."
I shook my head slowly. "No. I'm not weak."
"We know you has trouble with Lung and ABB before. Not friendly. But they gone, we still here."
"You should know this isn't about preying on the people in my territory. Just the opposite. If you're looking for an excuse to bully the people around here, you're in the wrong place. The only people we fuck with are our enemies."
There were nods from all three.
"No starting violence, no drug dealing, no prostitution, no threatening people, and no drug use or drinking unless it's a hundred percent limited to your own time."

A look passed between the two boys. Which of my points had given them that momentary hesitation? Still, they nodded again.
"Do you guys have a place?"
"Nah," said shaggy-hair.
"Come on," I said.
I led them to the nearest spot to get from the beach to the old Boardwalk, and into the Docks.
I had our destination in mind. During my stay in the area, nobody had occupied it. A thorough check of the structure found no splintering supports or framework, and there was no crumbling masonry.
I opened the doors and strode inside, followed by the new members and Sierra. Grue followed at the tail end of our group.
The square building had been a garage for the biggest sorts of trucks or for boats, and sported three sliding metal garage doors, only one of which still opened. A cargo container sat in the back corner. I had my suspicions that boxes of recyclables had been piled up along the walls when Leviathan's wave hit. Now, scraps of metal, paper and other trash littered the floor inside until the floor was barely visible. "If you're really interested in joining, you can start by cleaning this place up."
"Why?" the girl asked.
"If my say-so isn't good enough-"
"No," she raised her hands to stop me. "Just… can't I know what the point is?"
"I want you somewhere accessible. This is close to my command center, it's dry, it took a hit from a tidal wave and it's still in remarkably good shape, and it's spacious enough to serve our purposes. At least to start off."
"Can I ask what they are?"
I looked around, and it was Grue I looked at while I spoke. "Having everyone in the Docks spread out like this, over this wide an area?
It's a problem. We've got single families living in warehouses and factories that could comfortably house three to five families, and they're dealing with problems that we could handle far more easily as a group. And there's the logistics of it, getting supplies to everyone when there's only three to six groups of people on a given city block. I want to bring people from the fringes in, so we're not so spread out. Get everyone working for the collective good. Build a community and tie everything to a smaller area."
"There's going to be resistance," Grue spoke. "People aren't going to want to move, and they're too spooked about run-ins with Chosen and Merchants to trust one another."
"If-" Sierra started, but she stopped when Grue snapped his head around to face her, intimidated. She tried again, "If she's going to try it, now would be a good time. Word's getting out."
"About what, specifically?" I asked.
"You fought Mannequin, you said you'd make him pay, and then you did. And you did it to save people, people from the docks. I think people are realizing you're for real."

So, Skitter's plans are very simple: she wants to attract people from everywhere in the Docks in her territory, give them jobs and goods, making them loyal to her and turning them from kind of selfish people who forgot how to help each other (I don't actually blame them; living in the City Without Heart kind of turn you into a selfish, bit of a heartless person) into a strongly connected community. This is very idealistic of her and I definitely support her, being an idealistic person myself. I'm also willing to give the former ABB members a chance to redeem themselves and become better persons under Skitter's benevolent rule.

I like the very positive feeling this Chapter have.

I couldn't think of a response to that, and nobody volunteered anything further. Instead, I said, "Come on, let's get to work."
It wasn't the nicest of jobs, but my new employees worked without complaint. Or, to be more specific, the girl and shaggy-hair complained often but they didn't direct those complaints at me or the job, specifically.
Since the usual means of communication were out, and it might be some time before cell phone towers were out, I'd have to use messengers to pass word on to Coil. I began explaining what I planned to do with the space to Sierra, outlining the need for bunk beds, a cafeteria or kitchen and an area for people to sit. The area wasn't a quarter of the size of Lisa's shelter, but it was a refuge, maybe. A place where people could congregate and get some peace. And, ideally, it could be a barracks for my soldiers.

I instructed my new employees to stack the crates of trash outside the door. I stayed outside with Sierra and Grue when they went back in to get more.
"You're going to have to watch those ones," Grue said.
"I know. Listen, I want to send Sierra down to meet the boss, pass on word about stuff I need. Can you escort her part of the way?"
"Sure," he said.
"If you're willing, Sierra? I know it's somewhat dangerous to cross the city, and our groups don't control all of the territory between here and there. I could send one of those guys with you. Bit of a walk, though. Maybe forty-five minutes both ways."
"No, I can go alone, if it's not too bad."
"Good," I said. I turned my head to see a trio of young men who were approaching us.
It took the one in the lead a bit of courage before he could approach me.
"Yes?" I asked, when he didn't speak.
"We were remembering how some girl was saying you were recruiting, the other day."
"I was and I am." My heart was pounding. Why was this happening now, when it had met with only resistance earlier?
"Don't want to do anything illegal."
"Not asking you to. You okay with starting with some clean-up?"
He looked at his buddies -or were they brothers?- and nodded.
"Sierra here will tell you what needs to be done. Put in a good effort and I'll pay you at the end of the day." My thoughts were on the
small safe that I was using as a bedside table.
His eyes widened slightly at that. "Mind if I go and get my cousin? He'll be interested too."

"Go." I ordered, and Sierra led two of them inside while the leader of the newest group ran off at a half-jog.
"Seems like you started something," Grue said, when the last of them were out of earshot.
I shook my head. "I don't even understand how."
"Still think you're moving too fast. Like I said earlier, there's no good reason for it."
"Dinah's a good enough reason for me."
"Maybe. But you've got to find time to relax, get some sleep, maybe have some fun. Or you're going to make mistakes, and you'll set yourself
back days or weeks in your plan. Slow and steady wins this race."
"Can't afford slow and steady," I said.
"Why? You were telling me earlier, but we got interrupted."
I'd been glad for the interruption, and I was profoundly disappointed the subject had come up again. I folded my arms and looked away, down the road to where it gradually sloped to the shattered Boardwalk and the ocean beyond.
Here was the leap of faith. The test of my trust in him. "Because if I don't amaze Coil, if I don't force his hand and give him absolutely no reason to say I failed… he's going to keep Dinah. If he does, the only way to free her is going to be if Tattletale and I take Coil down. And I don't think we'd succeed."

Even if you'll amaze Coil enough he'll still refuse to give up at his pet. Don't be so naive, Skitter. The only solution to free Dinah is to fucking kill that MAN-CUNT. And kill him in a way so he can't escape in any timeline. But I still think that Tattletale have a better plan than you. You can bring the entire City in your territory, but Tattletale might be already with a step ahead you when it comes to fucking Coil up. I don't have any idea about the dirty blond vulpine girl's plans, but I'm sure about something: she will be the first who'll start the Coil destruction's domino chain reaction.

Maybe I'm too optimistic, maybe I love Lisa too much or maybe I'm just plain stupid. But I'll never stop believing that evil can be stopped, no matter how powerful it is.

Bye for now, my friends, have a great day/night.

rafuki22 · Jun 22, 2018

blackarrow said:
Hellooooooooooo, Mannequin's survivors....and the ones who weren't lucky enough , here we go with another Chapter, the aftermath of Skitter's VICTORY over one of the most powerful S9 members Plague 12.8 Since the creative fight is over, I can use the usual color- green- for the text, because its my favorite color (even if is not CREATIVE) and I don't care if you don't like it. I'll use it anyway. Alright. I should expect at a Victory Party in Skitter's Lair, BUT KNOWING SKITTER, there will be no such thing as a Victory Party. Because her intense self hating (which is exceeded only by Amy's even more intense self hating) will not let her enjoy the victory, on the contrary. She'll start blaming herself because: she couldn't save the doctors even if she knows that Mannequin can get pass her bugs without her feeling his movements and presence, she couldn't kill Mannequin, even if she barely defeated him and she knows that her bugs can't do jack shit against him in terms of killing, and so on. Wait for the Show of Skitter Blaming Herself for everything to start as soon as possible. Gosh, I'm going to slap the hell out of her- with my imagination alone- everytime when she'll say: -Its my fault, I could've done X thing better-. This is one of the only two things I DISLIKE WITH A BURNING PASSION AT TAYLOR: self- hating/extremely low esteem and abandoning her father all the fucking time. But nobody is perfect, not even Taylor, so I have to accept her even with all these IMMENSE flaws. You probably noticed that while I don't like people with low esteem I also don't like the opposite extreme- people with too much ego. Self -hating and arrogant people bugs me to not end in equal measure. Maybe this is the reason why I love Lisa so much, especially her personality. She have enough confidence in herself, she NEVER put herself down, she's strong emotionally and mentally but she also isn't so arrogant as she admits her mistakes and she never said/or tried to prove that she's better than anyone else. THIS ONE is one of the many reasons I love Lisa's character. She's the confident non-arrogant kind of person I admire. Ok, let's start this Chapter already.

Ok, Taylor as usual: licking her battle wounds and inspecting her lair, damaged by this pretty lady (thank you, Monica, for confirming me that I'm not the only one who saw in Shatterbird's Musical Glass Show a failed attempt to remarke The Sound of Music. She send me this amazing motivational picture. I'm a pretty good observant. ) She can't even use her phone, TV or her laptop, everything was ruined by the silicon kinetic ShatterBitch. But there's still a good thing at the start of this chapter: Taylor didn't started her Apocalypse of Complains over Complains over Complains. Yet. The day just started.

Oh, no, exactly what I was afraid the most. Taylor complaining about things that she's not even 1% guilty for them "pulls out an Imp and gives her a good kick between her ribs" Next time you'll get a punch in your face, miss Everything Is My Fault. I don't care about your injuries, you'll still get your punch with the first occasion. Sierra is countless times more sure on herself and emotionally stronger than you. Glad to see, however, that she wants to know what Lisa and her father are doing.

"pulls out another Imp- I have no idea who this Imp is but I know that she's a girl, her name always come up in my mind and I feel like I have to mention her everytime when I virtually kick Taylor- and punches Taylor right in her face" You failed to be a hero but you're a very successful heroic villain. This counts more than being a hero. You're quietly trying to do good things under your villainous cover, not shouting to the whole world how heroic you're and how everyone should respect you. Honestly, I like heroic villains and vigilantes (but NOT "vigilantes" like Sophia) even more than heroes, AND I usually have a very soft spot for heroes.

I like Sierra's expression when Taylor mentioned that Colin is not the best of the heroes. Its funny. Well, he was pretty bad in the past, more like someone who was doing bad things (by sacrificing people for his fame) under his heroic cover (kind of opposite to Taylor) but he became a better person with time, ESPECIALLY after the whole Mannequin's failed recruitment attempt. And its possible for Colin to become one of the greatest and most honorable heroes that humanity is bless to have, until the end of the story. Btw, do you know what I really WANT to happen? Taylor and Colin fighting shoulder to shoulder against their foes, being helped by Dragon from the distance. That would be an excellent TEAMWORK. The best one. Maybe they'll meet again in some dire conditions and forgive each other and help each other, there's still hope.

Well, I can understand why Grue is freaking out because Taylor decided to stop Mannequin from killing lots of people instead of running away and saving her ass. He really, really cares for her and he's afraid out of his mind that something bad might happen to her, and when I say BAD I'm talking about more than battle wounds and bruises. He's like a big brother to her, not just a teammate or a friend, and he feels morally compelled to take care of her/protect her against anything he feels like its too dangerous for her. Like any big brother would do for his sister. So, I'm not going to judge Grue not even a bit no matter how harsh he's going to be with Taylor. As long as he doesn't tell her something like this: you failed to kill Mannequin, I'm disappointed in you. But Grue is the last person who'll tell this to Taylor.

I can understand both of them. Brian wants to protect Taylor, to know that she's out of danger, he noticed her self- destructive tendencies (not only emotionally, but also physically) by challenging her enemies to a direct fight instead of running away from them and attacking them strategically, without having to go toe to toe with them. She's like a human version of an flying insect who get itself killed by flying too close to bulbs and burning itself. Taylor confronts her enemies too close and might get burned herself to death one day (especially since some of her enemies have fire powers). She always put herself in danger to protect her teammates, to protect her father, to protect her people, her heroic side combined with her self- destructive side will always push her to her limits, even when she doesn't want. On the other side, Taylor cares for her people, she can't sleep if she doesn't know that they're safe and even if she knows they're safe she still can't find her peace because she feels like she could have done even more for them. She also wants to save Dinah, the second most innocent and defenseless character after Aster in this story. And she'd do whatever it takes to "convince" Coil to give Dinah to her. Even if deep down she knows that he'll never accept and the only solution to get Dinah back to her family is to kill this asshole.

I'm glad that everyone agree that Coil will never return Dinah back to her family, even if she'll become a literal zombie in his hands. All he cares is for himself and himself alone, he's not very different from Jack when it comes to entirely selfish motivations and no limits in evilness. Actually Jack seems more interesting than Coil, plus I don't know yet if he really loves Bonesaw like a "daughter", he's only proud of her loyalty or he's just controlled by her somehow. But still, its way more fun to read about Jack than Coil. I think Lisa tries harder than Skitter to help Dinah, but she have her own plans that not even Skitter knows about. This is how Lisa is doing her things. Also, it looks like the pile of Skitter's henchpersons never cease growing. She's going to have former ABB members as her new recruits? Gosh, Lung will bypass Manton Effect and incinerate himself in rage until death if he'll ever find out that his people are willing to work for his nemesis. I'm not sure if I should trust former ABB members but then I remember that most of them were forced by Lung in his gang, they didn't have any other choice so they might be ok to be recruited in Skitter's personal army. At least they're not former nazis or former Merchants, who are much more worse.

So, Skitter's plans are very simple: she wants to attract people from everywhere in the Docks in her territory, give them jobs and goods, making them loyal to her and turning them from kind of selfish people who forgot how to help each other (I don't actually blame them; living in the City Without Heart kind of turn you into a selfish, bit of a heartless person) into a strongly connected community. This is very idealistic of her and I definitely support her, being an idealistic person myself. I'm also willing to give the former ABB members a chance to redeem themselves and become better persons under Skitter's benevolent rule. I like the very positive feeling this Chapter have.

Even if you'll amaze Coil enough he'll still refuse to give up at his pet. Don't be so naive, Skitter. The only solution to free Dinah is to fucking kill that MAN-CUNT. And kill him in a way so he can't escape in any timeline. But I still think that Tattletale have a better plan than you. You can bring the entire City in your territory, but Tattletale might be already with a step ahead you when it comes to fucking Coil up. I don't have any idea about the dirty blond vulpine girl's plans, but I'm sure about something: she will be the first who'll start the Coil destruction's domino chain reaction. Maybe I'm too optimistic, maybe I love Lisa too much or maybe I'm just plain stupid. But I'll never stop believing that evil can be stopped, no matter how powerful it is.

Bye for now, my friends, have a great day/night.

Lisa is very arrogant.
That is all I have to say.

blackarrow · Jun 22, 2018

Hello, dear people, welcome to....Interlude Interlude 12 I think I made a HUGE mistake. I read the first
phrase of this Interlude, a phrase that sounds like:

"Which one of you dripping rectal cysts is brave enough for this one!?"

and I think I know who talks like this and who are the main characters of this Interlude, even before trying to guess. Only Skidmark is fucked up enough to talk like this so this Interlude will be from Merchants' POV. Fuck this. I NEVER asked for Merchants (my least favorite supervillains group) Interlude, never ever and now I have to read one. Gosh, this is TORTURE. I don't want to read anything about Merchants, they're so repulsive and I loathe them so much that even reading something about them make me sick at stomach. Especially their own Interlude. The only thing that will make me like this Interlude is if all Merchants are exterminated, but this won't be possible if they're only them and nobody else. Or maybe kill each others...I won't be surprised, know how drugged and savage they're all the time. Ok, I'm gonna do something that I never did till now. I'll half close my eyes, scroll down until I'll reach the tags and see if Merchants are the only ones who'll appear here. I swear, even Hookwolf's Merry Band of Super-Nazis will make the reading a little more tolerant "sighs". Tags: This entry was posted in 12.x (Interlude) and tagged Bonesaw, Burnscar, Cherish, Crawler, Jack Slash, Mannequin, Mush, Scrub, Shatterbird, Siberian, Skidmark, Squealer, Trainwreck by wildbow. Bookmark the permalink. Alright....this is much more BETTER. So: Merchants and S9. Much more better

I mean, I hate S9 too, but they're so damn interesting compared with Merchants. They're the kind of people that you can't live with them but you also can't live without them.

Hmmm, they're going to fight? Alright, I can imagine this scene:
Skidmark, pointing to Jack: Listen up, faggot, you and your band of piss drinking sluts and ass lickers. I challenge you to a fight. You won't stand a chance against my boys and my chicks. We're gonna keep your naked bitch alive and have our way with her after we finish with your fag ass. She's gonna polish our doorknobs till her tongue will fall.
Jack, playing with his knife, while smiling charmingly, without any care: Alright. You can have your first attack, please.
.....after 5 minutes of shenanigans......25% Merchants were eaten by Siberian, 25% become experiments for Bonesaw, and the other 50% were shared fraternally between the other S9 members.
This is how the fight will ends.

I can see Scrub being the only one capable to maybe kill one or two S9 members but since he's a Merchant, not an Undersider or even a Fenrir's Chosen, he'll rather prefer to run away and save his skin, abandoning his teammates without any shame. Because this is what Merchants are doing the best.

"Which one of you dripping rectal cysts is brave enough for this one!?"

The cheer bubbled up from the crowd, until it reached a crescendo that he could hear from his aircraft/podium. The wind ripped around him as he stood at the nose of the aircraft, his cape fluttering. Squealer's vehicle was like a helicopter made by someone who had never seen a helicopter before, who'd decided to add their own improvements to the design when they were finished – more whirling blades spaced equidistant around the thing. Topping it off, it was roughly three times the typical size.
"Green armband means poison, and this is a poison half of you wastes of air have already tasted! We're gonna make it as bad as it gets! The worst of bad trips!"
He held a bowl of pills that were dusted with assorted powders and raised it over his head, "One handful, then you take a nap in one of the coffins we have up here. Moment the lid shuts, you'll find out what's in store for you. Some have rats, some have spiders, some have nothing at all and some…"
A beam of light speared down from the base of the fat bodied helicopter, sending chunks of earth where it hit ground. The moment it faded, a coffin fell into the hole that had formed, followed by a downpour of gravel.
"Get buried alive!"
The noise of the crowd was more bloodthirsty this time, unmasked and unashamed in their savagery.

"Hope you rancid pukes have friends to dig you up! Put up with that shit while you're on the trip of your life, and you get yourselves a green fucking armband! For the rest of the night, everything is as free as your mother's pussy! For as long as you hold on to that baby, anything you buy direct from one of us head honchos is ten percent off! So which-"

Gosh, I already feel sick at stomach. Skidmark is going to make his people accept to be buried alive, promising them free drugs, booze and sexual slaves, I suppose. I hope that nobody will dig them up and they'll fucking die in those coffins because people like them deserve this kind of shit to happen to them. Bryce should kneel in front of his sister and Taylor, because they saved him from becoming less than an animal. Look, boy, this is what your life could have been if your sister wouldn't have loved you, despite betraying her trust: a life of savage debauchery followed probably by death. She's your guardian angel. Gosh, I WANT to see Merchants getting slaughtered by the best butchers in the city. RIGHT NOW!

He stopped. There was a thump as the microphone hit the surface near Skidmark's feet and then a violent but all too brief noise as it struck one of the propellers at the side of the aircraft and was promptly annihilated.

Skidmark's hands went to his stomach, where blood and organs were spilling out. He turned to run, but more slices appeared in his arm, his buttock, his back and the back of his neck. No longer in sight of the majority of the crowd, he continued to try to crawl away, only for his reaching fingers to be separated from his hand, flying away from him in a spray of crimson.

DON'T FUCKING TELL ME THAT MY WISH BECAME TRUE SO FREAKING FAST (I freaking swear, I didn't read further when I said that I want Merchants to die. I just expressed my wish

). Ok, so, Skidmark, their biggest boss, is the first getting slashed by nobody else but Jack. I suppose he's staying in the middle of the crowd, like a boss, and pointed his knife to the aircraft where Skidmark stood. Then he used his power to make his knife cut into Skidmark's body from such a distance. GO, Jack! You and your team of fuckers have my support in this fight.

The aircraft lurched and began to turn, but this maneuver ended up spelling out Skidmark's doom. The surface beneath him was already slick with blood, and with only one hand's worth of fingers to grip with, he slid. He used his power to change the surface and force himself upward, but it was too little, too late.

He dropped into the blades of the spinning propeller and was puréed in a heartbeat.
Standing on a rooftop across from the aircraft, Jack flicked his wrist and snapped the blade of his straight-razor back into the handle.

Oh, so Jack was staying on a rooftop, not down, in the middle of the crowd. Alright. Skidmark is confirmed death, being officially killed by his girlfriend's invention. Good job, Squealer, you're a shame for Tinkers. Worse than even Leet. At least Leet is funny.

Smiling thinly, he looked over his shoulder at his teammates. Bonesaw sat astride Siberian's shoulders, in the midst of braiding a lock of the feral killer's hair. Shatterbird and Burnscar stood on opposite sides of the group, the former holding a book in one hand, the latter with images in flame dancing a quarter-inch off her skin, showing people and familiar objects, many of the images replaying the scene of Skidmark's demise in miniature. Bonesaw's automatons were spread out over the remainder of the roof, and one of her Frankenstein creations waited patiently at the far end of the roof. Hack Job, she'd called it? It had started to rot alive, and Bonesaw kept it out of the way so as not to offend the sensibilities of her teammates. Cherish stood in Crawler's shadow, pale, her hands clasped together. Her shoulders were drawn in, as if she was afraid she would be struck any second.

Crawler, the most monstrous member of the group, loomed over the rest. His chest was ten feet deep from front to back, his head the size of a small car. He combined the most effective features of a bear and a panther. Sinuous, flexible, bristling with quiet menace, but also brawny with muscle. He had armor plates covering him, with scales where armor wouldn't allow him optimum flexibility, and spines and coarse hair where the scales wouldn't do. Head to toe, he had the coloring of an oil slick, black by default, but scintillating with rainbow hues in just the right light. A hundred black orbs studded the length of his body, set into the plates of armor. Caustic venom virtually poured from a mouth that bristled with mismatched fangs, spattering precipitously close to Cherish and eating at the concrete rooftop. Perhaps most unnerving of all were his six legs, each forking at the knee or elbow joint, with one larger limb ending in scimitar-like claws and a smaller set of limbs for each; tentacles for the rear four legs and a long fingered human's hands for the forelimbs.

A thing is SURE. I'm going to have so much fun during this Interlude. And to think that at first I wasn't even sure if I want to read it or just skip over and ask people what happened during it. But I'm not a coward, I gave it a chance and right now I'm so very happy that I listened my mind telling me to check the tags before deciding to ignore such beauty of an Interlude. So, more new stuff about S9. Shatterbird likes to read, an explanation for the book she's holding, Burnscar can create figurines from flames, even replaying certain scenes -she reminds me of Pyro from X-men who also have the ability to mold fire into whatever form he wants, the difference is that he needs permanently a flamethrower because he can't create fire by himself while Burnscar have no problem with this. Bonesaw is such a cutie, sitting on the feral Siberian's shoulders and playing with her hair. Awww. Siberian kind of treats her like a mother tigress treats her cub, eh? As for Crawler....you look pretty good, dude. You're such a beauty. You have all the chances to become Mister Lovecraft Monsters' Universe

I wish you success. So, he can also spit caustic venom that can destroy concrete. Imagine Mister Lovecraft Monsters' Universe spitting venom in someone's face. Instead HEAD MELT. Cherish is fucked and she knows this.

Jack spoke, with no small amount of irony. "Looks like Skidmark's hosting a party. I think we deserve a night on the town, after waiting as long as we did to reveal ourselves. Be sure to thank our hosts. I'm sure our invitation was lost in the mail."

Smiles spread across more than one face.
Crawler was the first one off of the roof, throwing himself into the night air to land in the dead center of the crowd. The others followed quickly after, Shatterbird and Burnscar launching themselves to the far corners of the massed crowd, conjuring up storms of glass shards and flame to block their victim's retreat. Bonesaw's creations poured over the edges of the rooftop to herd the remainder of the crowd and keep them contained to one area.
It was just four of them left on the rooftop. Siberian, Bonesaw, Jack and Cherish.
Siberian reached out and gripped Cherish by the shirt collar. More graciously, she extended a hand toward Jack. He gripped it tight.
"Thank you," he said.
Catching a ride with Siberian was something of an art form. Cherish had yet to master it, not even biting her tongue or keeping the short shriek from escaping her lips as Siberian stepped off the edge of the roof. Jack, for his part, allowed himself to go limp the second Siberian pulled at him.
The four of them collectively dropped, Bonesaw riding atop Siberian's shoulders, gripping her hair to maintain her position.
They were spared the messy fate of being pancaked on the pavement by a quirk of Siberian's nature, transferring to each of them. Jack staggered, more because he'd let his whole body relax so he wouldn't jar something when Siberian tugged at him, but he let go of his teammate's hand and straightened. Cherish dropped to her knees.
"Much obliged, Siberian." Jack said. "Go. Have fun."

I'm already having fun, Jack, believe me.

Ok, so Siberian can transfer her immunity to anyone she touches. Fuck. Skitter took an excellent decision when she "listened" my 4th wall voice and decided to not attack Jack, Cherish and Bonesaw. Siberian already made them invincible being so close to them. Skitter would have been instantly killed and Danny would have died too. A right decision of moment saved so many lives. I'm so proud of you, Skitter.

Wow, Siberian can enter in a competition with the most OP parahumans and monsters (except for Scion) like Eidolon, Leviathan, Behemoth, Simurgh and give them a run for their money. Heh, she already did that with Eidolon.

Siberian reached up and set Bonesaw down, and then was gone, one footstep carrying her into the midst of the crowd. She didn't care if she hit anyone. Anyone unfortunate enough to be in her way was pulverized, their limbs broken, chests shattered and necks snapped by the impact. Even those in the general area were caught by the flying bodies and hurt just as grievously.

Bonesaw laughed, and it was a sound without reservations, not shaped by social constraint or culture or self-censorship. It was the laugh of a child, free and without a care. One of her mechanical spiders leaped onto her back, and wound several of its limbs around her chest. Two limbs extended to connect to her wrists, so the mechanical arms mirrored the dimensions and length of her own. The ends fanned out into an array of scalpels, needles, saws, and other instruments so one tool sat between each of her splayed fingers. The smallest gestures of her hands forced instantaneous rearrangements of the tools, so another was ready for her to grasp and use. Two more spiders lunged forward and pulled one of Siberian's screaming wounded away from the rest of the crowd, dragging it inch by inch toward the advancing Bonesaw.
The crowd might have turned to fight her, but they lacked the courage. They scattered.
Jack twirled his closed straight-razor around his fingers. "Cherish, stand up. You're missing the show."
Obediently, Cherish raised herself up. She lifted her head just in time to see a blur of white and black against the night sky, followed by a large explosion from the side of Squealer's flying aircraft. It tilted and bounced against the side of a nearby building, scraps of metal shearing off to land in the midst of the crowd. A series of small detonations that ripped forth from the interior of the aircraft cast just enough light for Jack and Cherish to see Siberian striding across the deck, one of the Merchants in her grip. In a heartbeat, she'd torn the woman's limbs from their sockets and buried her teeth in the woman's neck.
Bereft of a pilot and working internal mechanisms, the aircraft crashed heavily in the midst of the crowd. The Merchants who had gathered in the street for Skidmark's festival of poison scattered, abandoning their fallen friends, trying to find an escape route or hiding place. The screams of panic were twice the volume of any cheering they'd done earlier.
Siberian hopped up to the highest point of the wrecked aircraft, the twisted remains of a propeller that should not have borne her weight. Her hair blew in the hot air that rose from the heap of burning metal. She glanced around to see where she might do the most damage, spat out a gobbet of meat and then leaped off to one side, out of sight. The propeller didn't even move.
"Are you going to partake?" Jack asked Cherish.
"Why are you still talking like I'm a member of this team? I tried to manipulate all of you, and I failed."
"We'll deal with your punishment at a later date. Bonesaw is working on something."

Told you that Merchants are fucking cowards. They run away like crazy instead of helping the wounded. Well, I can understand them here, what kind of chances they have against someone like Siberian, who's ripping people in pieces, or Bonesaw, who uses her mechanical spiders to capture people for her experiments? Zero chances, of course. I wonder how Bonesaw controls her mechanical spiders. Does she uses a remote control or she have additional telekinetic powers? With Tinkers everything is possible so I'm gonna stop asking myself questions without answers. Wonders of science, this is the best explanation.

Cherish, you're fucked. I won't be surprised if they'll demand her to have a full face tattoo, something that will make her look like a rooting zombie so she'll have to wear a mask all the time for her entire life. And Bonesaw can create an incurable virus who'll make her permanently hungry after flesh but unable to eat someone until she'll be verbally allowed by her teammates. She'll permanently suffer of hunger. What do you say, Bonesaw? Like my suggestion?

Cherish's eyes widened. "I knew she was… I read her emotions towards me… I knew she was thinking about something. But hearing you say it out loud. Oh god."

"Rest assured, Cherie Vasil, you dropped out of reach of God a long, long time ago." Jack smiled at her.

She turned away, looking over the scene, as if it could distract her from her thoughts and fears.
Crawler threw himself into the point where the crowd was thickest. Bodies flew as he moved on his two rearmost legs and swept the other four claws and two tentacles through the ranks of the Merchants. When everyone within his broad reach was dead or suffocating from the paralytic venom, he turned toward the wrecked aircraft and began advancing with a more measured pace. Each of the hundred eyes along the length of his body blinked to clear away the blood and dust that had spattered him in his all-too-brief spree.
Jack watched as someone drew a gun and pointed it at Crawler, then reconsidered. He turned it toward Bonesaw, and found himself face to face with Hack Job. He was cut down a moment later. Hack Job exploded in a puff of white dust, already having left to dispatch more gunmen that might harm Jack or his maker.
Another figure appeared next to Jack and Cherish. Jack assumed it was Hack Job until he turned his head.
"Oh hoh," Jack assessed the man. "What happened here?"
Mannequin stood, headless, streaked in paint and dust that marred his white body with dark colors. His right arm ended at the elbow, the remainder missing.

Crawler is an unstoppable killing machine, especially when people don't appreciate how beautiful he really is. Relax, Crawler, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'm sure one day someone will see you how you really are: a handsome male specimen of Lovecraft Monsters.

Never lose your hope.

FUCK....NO! "quickly arms herself with TONS icecream" Thanks God its summer otherwise I would be so screwed. Alright, Mannequin, now I'm ready for you. You came to complain how you lost in front of a 15 years old girl, right? You're a shame for S9, I'm sure Jack will not be very tolerant with you, even going so far to punish you for your failure. Which won't be bad at all.

One by one, the other members of the Nine seemed to notice Mannequin's appearance. Shatterbird stepped back from the ruined husk of a massive suit of steaming armor and started flying their way, accompanied by a cloud of bloody glass shards.

Bonesaw turned away from her patient. She spoke to the man, pushing him away. She might have said something like 'run'.
The man stumbled five or six steps before his body began to swell. His right arm bloated up to three or four times the usual size, turning crimson, before it exploded violently, sending shards of bone and a spray of blood into the people nearest him. He screamed, only for his cries to grow shorter and more frantic, as the rest of him reached that critical mass. In another ten seconds, the remainder of his body detonated.
Bonesaw was already skipping over to the rest of their group, grinning wide, "Mannequin! Aww! Did the villain break you? Poor baby. Like a little girl with a ken doll."
A blade sprung from Mannequin's remaining hand. Bonesaw tittered.
Behind the child tinker, those in the crowd who had been struck by the blood and flying bone of her first victim were starting to scream as their bodies swelled as well.
Jack frowned. "Bonesaw. You know my rule about epidemics. You have to play fair with the rest of the group."
"No epidemic! I promise!" She said, drawing a little 'x' over her heart, "Four or five cycles. No more. Each transition is going to have only about half the catalyst of the last, and eventually they'll be able to fight it off."
Shatterbird landed in their midst. Behind her, a swell of orange light from Burnscar's flames coincided with a peak in the crowd's screams. Mush's titanic form of sand and debris had ignited, and he flailed madly. Shatterbird ignored the chaos that her teammate was causing, studied
Mannequin and then spoke in a voice that was dripping with judgement, "Mannequin failed."

Bonesaw would make Bakuda jealous with her exploding people, because she doesn't even use bombs for this shit, she's just very good with super-viruses.

Oh, I suppose that the ruined husk of a massive suit of steaming armor belongs to Trainwreck. Ok, I kind of feel sorry for this guy. Yes, he worked for Coil, but not all the Coil's people are as bad as heir boss. Plus, Trainwreck seemed a pretty ok guy, he even helped Taylor and Lisa during the Museum Mall adventure. RIP Trainwreck. Please, Jack, don't let Shatterbird talk about Mannequin's failure. She have a way of talking that will end up with me falling asleep with my head of the desk, without even finishing this AWESOME Interlude.

"It's a shame you can't see the disapproving look on Shatterbird's face, Alan," Jack commented, smiling.

Mannequin pointed the blade in his hand at Shatterbird, a threat and a warning. Jack tensed, studying Shatterbird's expression, waiting to see if this would start something.
"A loss is allowable," Jack said, when the fight didn't erupt. "Most of us are more forgiving than Siberian, and allow a failure or two from our candidates during the rounds of testing, no? It's okay to let them win from time to time. It gives them that spark of hope, so we can snatch it away and leave them all the more devastated."

He looked at Shatterbird and she inclined her head in a barely perceptible nod.
"Which raises an interesting topic," Jack said. He spotted Siberian and indicated for her to approach. Two corpses were stacked on her arm like meat on a kebab, and she cast them aside with a motion of her arm before approaching their circle.
Crawler was one of the two group members who had yet to rejoin the group. He was engaged with a young man with a glow that suffused his hair and emanated from his eyes and mouth. White flashes appeared with little accuracy and devastating effect, carving spherical chunks out of the brute. This only encouraged the monster, and Crawler eagerly paced closer, his wounds closing together with a startling rapidity. So few things could hurt Crawler these days that Jack rarely got to see the regeneration in full effect. Crawler's healing powers appeared to play out in fast-forward when compared to even the regenerators who could heal wounds in seconds. Hundreds of pounds of flesh were replaced in one or two heartbeats.
One eruption of light hit Crawler in the dead center of his chest. It made him pause, no doubt removing one of his hearts and some of his spinal cord. The boy with the glowing hair pushed his power into overdrive, calling forth a series of flashes that exploded in close succession. One caught
Crawler in the face, revealing only a cross-section of his head, complete with a bisected brain, a skull six inches thick and the interior of Crawler's mouth. Crawler collapsed.
Siberian watched as the boy ran, then turned as if she intended to give chase.
"No," Jack instructed. "Let him go. We need to leave some alive."
He had other motivations, but he would remain quiet on that particular subject.

Jack is willing to give Mannequin a second chance. UNEXPECTED. He also seems to have lost his minds completely, speaking with the DEAD Tinker Alan and wanting, probably, an answer from him. Jack, are you insane? Let me re-phrase it. Are you THAT insane? Alan is dead, he can't answer you, there are no such thing like ghosts, man. Even Mannequin AGREES with me.

Scrub never cease to amaze me with his power and with his stupidity. He erased half of Crawler's brains, knowing that Mister Universe can regenerate very fast as long as he isn't dead+ he'll become immune at Scrub's power next time. Why you didn't erased his whole brain, thus killing him? It wasn't hard with your power. Good job, Scrub, you fucked up a BIG chance to kill the second most powerful S9 member. :anger:

I think that Jack is planning to make Scrub his new candidate, replacing Oni Lee. Because Scrub would be a GREAT addition to the team.

Crawler's brain grew back to its full beach-ball size in one or two seconds, followed closely after by the healing of the skull, the reappearance of his facial muscles, then his skin, hair, spines, scale and armor plating, roughly in that order. He shook his head like a dog with water in its ears and looked around, searching for his quarry.

"After, Crawler!" Jack shouted, "You can fight him another time! Group meeting!"
Crawler hesitated, then loped over to their gathered circle. Burnscar lobbed a fireball high over their heads, and then dropped down from the airborne projectile to land in a crouch.
Somewhere in the background, there were the screams and explosions of the fourth or fifth cycle of Bonesaw's work. Of the crowd that had been gathered in the street, only stragglers remained.
"I wanted to give you all a chance to cut loose before we got down to business," Jack said. "It seems a teammate of two of our prospective members wants or wanted to strike a deal. Cherish, do you happen to know if she is still alive?"

"Tattletale lives. She's very close to the buried girl right now."
"Oh, you hear that, Crawler? Your candidate and this Tattletale might be friends."
"No," Cherish said, avoiding eye contact with anyone in the group, "They barely know each other."
"Too bad." Jack shrugged, then he went on, "This Tattletale wants to play a game, leveling the playing field between us and the others. If we cannot reduce our selection to a single candidate, we take the first to volunteer and we leave. Our loss, and a hit to our collective reputation as a penalty."
"Why? It's a bad idea," Cherish said, "She knew you'd want to do this, knew you'd set yourself up with a situation where you could fail. Where we could fail. There's no reason to do it."
Jack shook his head. "Oh, but there is. Limitations foster creativity. Tell an artist to paint anything, and he may struggle, but tell him to create something specific, in a set amount of time, for a certain audience, and these constraints might well push him to produce something he might never have come up with on his own. We grow and evolve by testing ourselves. That's my personal philosophy."
"That's not really a test," Shatterbird spoke, "There hasn't been a round of testing since I joined the group where we didn't whittle it down to one candidate."
"We could forego the final test, pitting them against one another."
Shatterbird turned to him, "Ah. But, again, the last test where we had to go that far was… mine?"
"True. Would there be any complaints if we added another restriction? Perhaps a time limit? We take turns. Three days each to carry out our tests. A failure, such as the one that Mannequin evidently suffered tonight, and you're penalized one day. A successful test might add some hours to your deadline, while the removal of one candidate buys you an extra day."
"That's not very fair to the first few of us to go," Bonesaw said. "They'll have to test more people in less time."
"They also have an easier time removing candidates from the list. More chances at a longer run. In fact, just to be fair, we may have to adjust the time awarded for a successful test, so there's less for the first few of us to have a turn. Do you all trust me to decide on something fair?"
There were nods or noises of agreement from Bonesaw, Burnscar, Siberian and Shatterbird.
"Mannequin?"
Mannequin tapped one finger on the blade that still extended from the base of his hand, drawing forth a single 'clink'.
"That's five of you in agreement. Crawler?"
The monster stretched, his musculature rippling. When he spoke, his voice was a rumble of broken sounds that only barely resembled words, "No point."
"Ah, you feel your only road to self-improvement is your power. While I would love to return to this particular debate, I can agree to disagree so you all can get back to your fun. Look at it this way. Our usual method has our quarry running scared. To even get them to fight, you have to corner them, which you are admittedly very good at doing. Like this, however, they have reason to band together, to fend us off, and protect the candidates who decide to eschew our tests and face our reprisals instead. More would fight you, and you'd have a higher chance of finding another individual who could harm you."
Crawler tilted his head one way, then the other. He rumbled, "Fine."

So, Jack decided to accept Tattletale's deal, with little changes here and there. He's sure that he'll win, making him pretty arrogant, despite his apparent modesty. Even if Mannequin lost, he's willing to accept this failure, being convinced that he'll crush everyone during the next tests. Like he said: give them a little hope then have it crushed. 3 days for each S9 member? 24 days of pure terror for their candidates. Then S9 will leave the Hopeless City if half of their candidates will survive. Good deal but I feel a lot of pity for the candidates and their teams' mental health during this HORROR MONTH. The only ones I don't care at all are Hookwolf and his Chosen. They can go straight to Hell.

"Which only leaves you, Cherish, our errant rookie. You're dejected because you know Bonesaw has a punishment in the works. But you mustn't lose heart. You'll still have a chance to redeem yourself, and maybe even escape reprisal for your juvenile stunt. I think Mannequin should start us off, and he'll be penalized one day from his time limit for his loss tonight. And you'll have to deal with the bug girl, to make up for this embarrassment. Make her suffer."

Mannequin tapped once on the blade.
"Cherish, you'll go second. Your last chance to impress us."
Cherish nodded, as mute as her headless teammate.
"Good. Two days, Mannequin, then three for our Cherish. To be fair, we should have a rule that says you cannot take out a candidate until they fail your test. So each prospective member must be informed about the test and what it requires, they must fail, and they must be eliminated or punished, until one remains. For those of you who want to show how superior they are over their teammates…" he cast a sidelong glance at Shatterbird, "There are several paths to success. Remove several candidates, conduct a full round of testing, see that your candidate succeeds above any of the others, or all of the above."
"I like it," Bonesaw said, "It sounds fun! But what about Siberian? How is she supposed to tell them the rules?"
"We'll help her out on that front. Same test as usual, Siberian?"
Siberian nodded. She reached out to Bonesaw's face and used her thumb to wipe away a spatter of blood before licking the digit clean.
"In any case, we've hashed this out enough. I'll think it over tonight and have something proper to present to you and the capes of this city who will be our… opposition. I can add some rules, to cover loopholes and keep this little event manageable. Panacea, Armsmaster, Bitch, Regent, the buried girl and Hookwolf. Burnscar didn't nominate one, and I've already dispatched mine. That's six candidates, we need to remove five. And when we're done and we've established our superiority, we can kill this Tattletale, her friends, and everyone else, just to make our point. Good?"

There were signs, nods and murmurs of agreement all around.
"Good. Go. Have fun. Mop up the stragglers. Don't worry about leaving any alive. They already know we're here. No more than five minutes before we leave. We can't have our grand battle with the locals so soon."
His monsters returned to their carnage. He watched them at their work and their play, noting all of the little things. He knew all too well that Shatterbird pretended civility, but she got as restless as Siberian when things got quiet, and she would look up from whatever book she read every thirty, fifteen or ten seconds, as if waiting for something to happen, craving it. Siberian would begin to look at her group members in a hungry way. She didn't need to eat, but she enjoyed the experience, wanted it the same way someone else might crave their morning coffee. Stimulation.
Crawler, he knew, wouldn't show any signs of boredom or restlessness. When he lost patience with things, it was an explosive affair, almost unmanageable.
Keeping this group in line was a matter of balancing carrots against sticks. A constant, delicate process. Every member sought something from the others, however solitary they might strive to appear, carrots that Jack could use to keep them as part of the group and entice them to stay, to cooperate. It was not easy: what served as a stick to one might easily be a carrot to another.

So Mannequin have two nemesis now, Taylor and Colin, and two days left to prove himself. The next one is Cherish, who'll fail in all her tests, I'm completely convinced.

Jack is a very smart leader, he knows his monsters very well, he knows Shatterbird's aggressive nature, beneath her calm attitude, he knows how much Siberian enjoys killing and eating people, despite not being hungry (she's a robot, I'm 1000% convinced about this), he's aware of Crawler's explosive attitude when he lost his patience, he knows everything about them, its like he's mentally reading them. Eat your heart out, Coil, this man is a smarter leader than you, you don't know your employers not even half like he knows his.

Shatterbird, who had deigned to observe for the moment, hovering over the scene, was an individual who craved validation. She would be insulted to hear it spoken aloud, but she needed to be powerful in the eyes of others, civilian or teammate. She could tolerate much, but an insult or a joke at her expense could push her over the edge. As carrots went, a simple word of praise could satisfy her for a week, and an opportunity to shine could sate her for a month. It was why he allowed her to 'sing' each time they arrived somewhere new, even as he found it repetitive and boring, brooking the same scenarios time after time. Her stick was easy enough: the threat of physical harm, or the embarrassment of being made to lose control. Were she to attack a member of the group, Siberian or Crawler would retaliate, and they would hurt or kill her. It would be inevitable, unequivocal. The idea of the shame she'd feel in that ignoble defeat held her back as much as anything.

Siberian watched as Bonesaw began excising and stitching together groups of muscle and collections of organs she and her mechanical spiders were harvesting from the fallen. It was taking on a vaguely human shape.
Siberian was tricky. He doubted anyone else in the group was even aware, but their most feral member harbored a fondness for Bonesaw. Siberian had little imagination, and was perfectly comfortable rehashing the same violent and visceral scenarios time and again, but she nonetheless enjoyed Bonesaw's work. She saw a kind of beauty in it. Even more than that, he sometimes wondered if Siberian didn't reciprocate
Bonesaw's desire for family. Bonesaw alternately referred to Siberian as an older sister or the family pet, but Siberian's fondness for Bonesaw bordered on the maternal, like a mother bear for her cub. Did anyone else in the group note how Siberian seemed to keep Bonesaw's company, to assume she would accompany the young girl when she went out, and carefully kept Bonesaw in sight at all times?
Siberian's stick was Bonesaw, the possibility of losing the girl's company in one way, shape, or form. Threats against the girl would be met with a fury like no other. Boredom, similarly, would see Siberian stalking off on her own to amuse herself, a scenario that grounded the group until Siberian's return hours or days later. Such usually meant a hasty retreat as the heroes who had realized that they could not defeat Siberian came after the rest of the group.
Bonesaw wanted a family. Her stick was disapproval, a revoking of any 'love' from those closest to her. She was far younger, emotionally, than her outward appearance suggested. She had bad dreams at night if she didn't sleep in the embrace of one of her older teammates, usually Siberian. When she didn't sleep, or when her mood otherwise soured, she was as intolerable as any of the others, and among the most dangerous.
Crawler wanted to be stronger, and remained with the group because it put him in constant danger. His other motivation was more subtle. He was patiently awaiting the day Siberian might honestly and brutally attempt to take him apart. The only stick Jack could wield was the possibility that the group might dissolve before that happened. On the other side of the coin, the day Crawler decided there was no longer any threat that could evolve him further would be… troubling. It was why Jack had ordered Siberian to let the boy with the glowing hair go. Finding the lad again would give Crawler something to do, and it would give Crawler a taste for what Siberian had to offer.
Burnscar was more sensitive, in many respects. She had to be managed, provoked or set up to use her power so she remained in a more dangerous mindset. Too much one way, and she became depressed and scared, vulnerable. Too much the other way, and she became reckless, potentially attacking him or one of the others and sparking disaster.
Mannequin had his mission. Few things bothered him as much as seeing someone try to help others and succeed where he had catastrophically failed. To keep Mannequin in line, Jack could remind Mannequin of who he had once been. A simple casual utterance of the name 'Alan' served as effectively as a slap in the face to someone else. He rarely needed such considerations; Mannequin was predictable, manageable.
And Cherish, who would not survive their stay in Brockton Bay… after a fashion. Hope was her carrot, but she had only sticks waiting for her. He met her eyes and knew she knew what he was thinking. She was all too aware an ugly fate awaited her, but didn't know what it was. The fear helped curb her. Still, he would have to watch his back.
Carrots and sticks. A game of constant balance. A thousand factors. Even now, he was taking notes on their candidates, deciding what would work and what wouldn't.
Armsmaster and Regent were abrasive enough that they would likely prick Shatterbird's pride. Bitch would be a risk at first, but he trusted his ability to manage her and stop any fights from erupting.
Siberian would become jealous of any growing relationship between Panacea and Bonesaw.
The buried girl was only a candidate because Crawler hoped she was strong enough to fight him. Either she would fail to hurt him and he would grow tired of her, or she would succeed and he would have no reason to stay in the group.
That left him two candidates who might work. He doubted either Hookwolf or Bitch had what it took to stay in the group long-term. They would soon be replaced, killed by an enemy or a member of the group, but they would not upset his carefully staged balance while they remained members.
He could manipulate the outcome of this little contest, see that one of the two lasted to the end. It would be hard, requiring the best he could employ in subtlety and head games.
The wind blew flame-heated air at his back, thick with the smell of smoke and the sweet tang of blood.
He smiled. These challenges, after all, served as his own carrot.

-Shatterbird is a super-arrogant bitch, who sees herself as the strongest and best out of everyone, and Jack offers her the possibility to show everyone how powerful she believes she's, but if she'll make a mistake, he'll take care to embarrass and humiliate her. I think that her biggest punishment would be if she'll become Alec's slave. I'm gonna enjoy so much to see this arrogant Shatterbitch being someone else's personal playtoy.
-Siberian's weakness is Bonesaw. I was right about Siberian seeing Bonesaw as her cub. I'm surprised that she have feelings, if she's a robot. But again, Dragon is an AI and she have feelings for Colin. Maybe Siberian was created by a grieving woman Tinker who lost her daughter and programmed Siberian to consider any little girl as her daughter. This is the best explanation for her having maternal feelings for Bonesaw. Take Bonesaw away from her, she'll fuck up the entire team. I doubt that Jack will ever do that, unless he have meanings to control Siberian.
-Awww, Bonesaw just wants, besides appreciation for her work, love and she'll suffer if she's separated by her mummy Siberian "gives Bonesaw a quick hug, then runs away like a madwoman."
-Crawler wants to be constantly injured so he'll become completely invulnerable to any possible future harm. He wants to be hurt by Siberian and even Jack seems to be afraid of him lol. So that's the reason why he let Scrub escape. To serve as playtoy for Crawler.
-Burnscar should be kept in her madness but not so much because she'll become dangerous for the team. So, there must be a balance.
-Mannequin should be reminded of a dead Tinker called Alan to kept him in line. Weird stick you have for him, Jack.
-Cherish is FUCK. Too many sticks for her poor ass.

So the only candidates that might work- in Jack's opinion- are Hookwolf and Bitch. Well, I'm gonna argue with you here because I think that only Hookwolf will be the best candidate, because he makes mistakes after mistakes, he's a huge asshole and if you'll manage to control him somehow, making him turn his back to his fellow skinheads, he'll be your man.

EXCELLENT INTERLUDE, EXCELLENT. I'm seriously impressed with it. Also, GREAT FUN all over.
Good night and sleep well, my friends.

blackarrow · Jun 22, 2018

rafuki22 said:
Lisa is very arrogant.
That is all I have to say.

Your opinion, man, your opinion. Peace.

ExNihilo · Jun 22, 2018

blackarrow said:
-Crawler wants to be constantly injured so he'll become completely invulnerable to any possible future harm.

Imagine a Crawler/Lung fight, as they both maim each other and get stronger and stronger, Crawler because of the damage, Lung because of the fight. What could stop that?

AmbarGriss · Jun 22, 2018

ExNihilo said:
Imagine a Crawler/Lung fight, as they both maim each other and get stronger and stronger, Crawler because of the damage, Lung because of the fight. What could stop that?

The nuclear option

blackarrow · Jun 23, 2018

ExNihilo said:
Imagine a Crawler/Lung fight, as they both maim each other and get stronger and stronger, Crawler because of the damage, Lung because of the fight. What could stop that?

NO SOLUTION. All the heroes (except for Triumvirate) and villains will commit hara-kiri, Triumvirate will retire, go into mountains and become monks, Endbringers will run like bitches and request political asylum in other parallel Earths, Scion will be like: "Oh, shit" then fly on his home planet, never return back on Earth and the Earth will go BOOM because of the sheer magnitude of their fight.

rafuki22 · Jun 23, 2018

blackarrow said:
NO SOLUTION. All the heroes (except for Triumvirate) and villains will commit hara-kiri, Triumvirate will retire, go into mountains and become monks, Endbringers will run like bitches and request political asylum in other parallel Earths, Scion will be like: "Oh, shit" then fly on his home planet, never return back on Earth and the Earth will go BOOM because of the sheer magnitude of their fight.

Naaaah, Scion kills them.

Luckenzio · Jun 23, 2018

rafuki22 said:
Naaaah, Scion kills them.

If he stops saving kittens for a minute, he might.

rafuki22 · Jun 23, 2018

Luckenzio said:
If he stops saving kittens for a minute, he might.

Then they would lose to eidolon or the endbringers (assuming they want to fight).

Assembler · Jun 23, 2018

ExNihilo said:
Imagine a Crawler/Lung fight, as they both maim each other and get stronger and stronger, Crawler because of the damage, Lung because of the fight. What could stop that?

A third party triggering, according to the biggest fanfic where that happens.

AmbarGriss · Jun 23, 2018

Assembler said:
A third party triggering, according to the biggest fanfic where that happens.

Tell me more about this fic.

blackarrow · Jun 23, 2018

Hello, my everyday and everynight people and welcome to the second Interlude Interlude 12½ (Donation Bonus) I clicked "Next Chapter" and it looks like this is the last Interlude until the next Arc. Ok, the last Interlude was one of the best Interludes from this story (at least for me) for 3 reasons: a bunch of para-rats and ordinary rats that I hated so much was completely and utterly slaughtered by S9 (I think this is the only good thing that S9 ever did in their lives

), second: very cool and delicious violent action scenes, third: more information about S9 members, a better look into their fucked up minds and personalities and some explanations about how Jack is keeping his monsters under his control. Which is not a very easy thing to do, not even for someone like Jack, who's somehow fearful that if Crawler will become completely invincible, without having nothing and nobody to hurt him anymore, he'll get bored and become a danger for the team. That's the reason why Jack accepted to let Scrub survive, so he'll become Crawler's personal toy. I wasn't sure if Squealer died as well, but I re-read the first scenes and I realized that she was the pilot of the aircraft where Skidmark stood. Since the aircraft crashed, she died as well. One more thing to talk about: Bonesaw. First, I'm so sorry for cussing in an Interlude with Bonesaw. I was so excited to see Merchants getting totally screwed that I forgot I should not swear when Bonesaw is present. I promise that I'll never repeat the same mistake again, Bonesaw

. Ok, there was something about Boonesaw that made me very sad. When Jack was thinking at her as wanting love and a family and she had bad dreams if Siberian- her adoptive mother figure- didn't hold her in her arms.

I think Bonesaw's parents were some assholes who never loved her. Maybe they were even abusive with her, this explains her very troubled state of mind and her power- its possible that they abused her in some ways that triggered her. Probably, after that, she killed them, and ran away from home, meeting Jack or any other S9 member, instantly trusting them (no matter how smart she's, she's still a child and children usually make bad choices+ she seems pretty immature emotionally) and accepting to enter into their family, who offered her what her real family never offered her: love and respect. This is the explanation why she sees them as a family. Gosh, if there are such thing as Bonesaw's backstory in one of these Interludes, I think that would be one of the saddest backstories. Poor child.

Damn you, Wildbow, damn you for making me feel sorry for this LITTLE MONSTER. Damn your talent for making me FEEL for your characters. Ok, let's start this second Interlude. I think will be either about another S9 attack- possible against Fenrir's Chosen (another assholes I want to see destroyed) or Pure (but I don't want Kayden to die because...because I don't want Aster to remain without a mommy.

She's a good mother, I don't care about her people, but she have to survive). Or its about Travelers' backstory (something I WANT to read about for a long time already) or possible Cauldron (I'm not so excited about Cauldron because I'm sure there will be endless boring discussion about science, especially chemistry, but at least I hope that I'll learn about their purpose- I'm sure is not good at all, and even if is good, their methods of making experiments on innocent people absolute suck and doesn't make them good people. NOT AT ALL). Let's start.

She couldn't shake the idea that it was a hoax. Three times, she almost turned around and headed back home.
Twenty eight miles west from New York City, down the 202, to where there were more trees than houses and the roads hadn't been maintained for too many years. It hadn't rained recently, but there were murky puddles in the road where the water had settled into broad depressions.
Water sprayed as she deliberately aimed for one puddle. Forty five minutes of driving, trying to convince herself this was real, not seeing anyone on the road for the last ten minutes, she'd started to feel lost. The concrete action of steering into the puddle and getting the expected result seemed to ground her.
Every action had an equal and opposite reaction. It was the way things were supposed to work. Action and consequence.
Driving to the middle of nowhere was the action. But what was the consequence? Wasting two hours of her time on one of the last weekends of freedom she had before she was due to start school? For a mere chance she might get what she needed?
She had to stop and reverse to reread a number on a mailbox. 2062. She steered into the long dirt driveway. A farm sat in the distance, with a rotted-out grain silo and a barn nearby.
What if this wasn't just meant to waste her time? What if it was more sinister? If there was a gang of men waiting for her, ready to drag her off somewhere…
She shook her head. She knew how to defend herself. Her father had taught her, and she'd taken classes. They didn't necessarily know she was a woman from her email address. She'd left a note with her roommate, sealed with instructions not to open it or read the details unless she failed to return home. Topping it off, the necklace she wore had a built-in GPS. A gift from her sixteenth birthday from her dad. If there was trouble, the note she'd left with her roommate had instructions to contact her dad and track her down using the necklace.
She stopped by the barn and sat in the car for a minute, peering around to try to see if anyone was near, the engine idling. A minute passed before she felt secure enough that she wouldn't be ambushed and shifted the car into park. She held the key like a weapon as she stepped out of the car. She didn't hold the individual keys between her fingers, like an amateur would be inclined to do, but held it like a knife instead.

The barn was the final destination of the route the email had outlined for her. Empty. It smelled of stale manure, rotting hay and mold. The exterior was covered in peeling red paint.
She checked her watch. She was eight minutes early.
There were no other cars on the property. That meant there were eight minutes for someone to come down that road with the cracks, potholes and puddles, pull down the long driveway and come meet her at the barn.
Her weight shifted from foot to foot, as her impatience manifested in restlessness. Eight minutes before she found out if she'd been played for a fool.

Hmmm.....

Its a very young lady who's pretty badass (took defense lessons from her dad; exactly how I took myself defense lessons from my dad

), can use her keys as a knife, have a necklace with as build in GPS and is very, very impatient. She was invited in the middle of nowhere to meet some persons but she got bored after a while and have a feeling that the people who invited her weren't entirely honest with her. Do I know this young lady? A new character or its the backstory of an already known one? Hmmm, let's see.

She used her shoes to kick a few loose stones from the dirt driveway, smoothed it out, and then kicked them off. Barefoot, she planted her feet a shoulder width apart, then bent her knees as though she were sitting down in a chair, her arms outstretched in front of her for balance. She bent
low, straightened, then repeated the process several more times.
Deep breaths.
Centering herself, she began on the next form, placing her feet perpendicular to one another, and transferring her weight from one foot to the other, from toe to heel to the heel of the other foot.
Her digital watch interrupted her exercises with a steady beeping. She'd set an alarm for the meeting deadline. Right this minute, she was supposed to be meeting someone.
And there was no car in sight.
Sighing, humiliated, she donned her shoes, opened her car door and prepared to leave. She wouldn't speak of this to anyone.
"Leaving? After coming all this way?" The voice was female, rich with hints of a French accent, but the English was probably better than her own.
She turned, then stepped a few feet in front of her car to look inside the barn.
A woman stood there, dark-skinned, with her hair cut into a short style that was more utilitarian than stylish. She wore a doctor's lab coat and held a white plastic clipboard with both hands.
That wasn't the startling thing.
At a point halfway inside the barn, there ceased to be any barn at all. White tiled floor and white-painted walls stretched a distance behind the woman, and the ceiling was all glass, hiding a smooth distribution of flourescent lights that made it all glow evenly.
"Who are you?"
"Some call me Mother, but that is meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Those with a more professional attitude know me as Doctor."

Oh, what an interesting new regeneration you have, Doctor: a dark-skinned woman in a lab coat. Such a pleasant surprise.

So, this Mother or Doctor or Mother Doctor or Doctor Mother is a parahuman who can teleport herself and other persons across places, I suppose. And I have the bad feeling that she's from Cauldron and she called this still nameless badass and impatient girl to....lure her into a trap and perform experiments on her. Nameless girl, you shouldn't trust this invitation in the first place, now I think its too for you to do something to protect yourself. Maybe try to give this scientist some few good kicks, but I don't think its going to work with her power. And I don't think your necklace GPS will work either.

"I'm-"
"No names. We've already investigated you, we know much of what we need to know, but I think there is a great deal of symbolic value in having you maintain some anonymity. Pick a name, and I will use it for the duration of this meeting. It doesn't need to be permanent or long-term."
"Okay. Is it supposed to be a fake regular name or a codename or…?"
"Anything."
"Jamie." It was the name her parents had been planning to give her baby sister. They'd broken up before that happened.
"Jamie it is. Come. I have an employee that is relocating this section of my offices to this spot, but it taxes him, and there'll be less wait for the return trip if we don't strain him."
Jamie looked over her shoulder at her car. The GPS wouldn't do her much good here, she suspected. It would take a leap of faith.
She hurried over and stepped close to the Doctor, crossing that border from packed dirt and moldy hay to clean tiled floor.
There was a rush of wind, and the surroundings swam violently for two or three seconds. When the image had resolved again, they stood in the middle section of a long hallway. It looked like a hospital, sterile, white, clean, but it was empty. There were no people, and there was no equipment.

"Welcome to Cauldron," the Doctor said.

Oh, so not the Doctor Mother is the parahuman with power to teleport them across places but another one of her experiments...or how she prefers to call him, EMPLOYEE. Maybe she have another power- after all, she's from an organisation ruled by Tinkers who can create powers and she can't be an ordinary human. Gosh, I feel so stupid now "slaps her forehead"...she's a scientist. She's one of those Tinkers, this is her power. Tinkering with biology and chemistry. Yeah, Jamie, welcome to the first day of the rest of your life. I pity this poor, naive girl.

"How did you find me? I just got an email."
"I'd have to check my notes. We have ways of finding interested parties. If I remember right, you were browsing websites, researching ways to acquire tinker-made armor and weapons?"
Jamie nodded. "I was. So many were fakes or scams that I wasn't willing to trust the ones that did look legit."
"We own several of those sites. All are fakes. That might have been where we first noticed your activity."
"That's a little creepy."
"Creepiness is an unfortunate reality when you're forced to operate covertly, without a steady customer base."

"Why? Why not go public?"
"Countries would go to war over what we have at our disposal. A way to grant powers to anyone who wants them. They would want armies of parahuman soldiers. Even if we did manage to establish ourselves as a neutral party without government interference, Cauldron would be infiltrated by those looking to steal our secrets. Spies, thieves."

Great, they can find anyone so freaking easy. They even have fake sites to attract people who want Tinker tech. No, Jamie, this is not just creepy. This is Mother Creepiness in all her splendor. The Doctor is right about Cauldron not wanting to have their people kidnapped, their tech and the vials with powers stolen from them. I can't disagree with her regard of this. But I might add something that she didn't wanted to mention to Jamie. She doesn't want for the world to know that they torture people, they wipe out their memories and abandon them after they destroyed their bodies, and maybe they even killed some of their experiments. She doesn't want for Cauldron to be exposed as an evil organisation and have the heroes up their ass (I seriously don't like Cauldron, no matter what this Doctor is saying- and I don't like her as well, even if she seems friendly and polite, but I know that must be just a facade- I have a feeling that Cauldron might be even worse than S9 in the future. I mean, just look how this story is going, look at the patterns: ABB was an evil gang- Empire88 was an even more evil nazi organisation- Merchants were an even more evil gang of druggies and slave traders- Slaughterhouse 9 is an even more evil team of bloodthirsty and destructive psychos -Cauldron might be an even more evil secret organisation of Tinkers with Illuminati ambitions of world domination.)

"And people who wanted to establish a rival business?"
They were reaching the end of the hallway. The Doctor smiled lightly. "And that. Please, through this door."
Jamie prided herself on her ability to identify evasions and untruths. The Doctor was humoring her when she replied to the question about rival businesses. The idea didn't seem to worry her. Why?

Jamie stepped through the open door and entered a large room. As with the hallway, the decor was predominantly white. There was a desk of white marble with a white leather chair, and two plastic chairs facing the desk. A modestly sized monitor sat at one corner of the desk, with a compact keyboard placed in front of it, and no mouse. The space was spartan.
I'd go crazy in here. There's no personality to this place.
Stranger still was the lack of dust. Since her arrival, Jamie hadn't seen anyone but the Doctor. How did the Doctor keep everything so clean?
"Have a seat."
Jamie sat in one of the plastic chairs.

This is getting anxious, guys, this is getting really anxious. I have a bad feeling about all of this. Jamie, get the hell out of there while you still have time. But...you can't get out of there because their base might be in fucking mountains in the other part of the world or on the bottom of the deepest lake for all I know. Even if only Doctor Mother is with you in the creepy room, I'm sure she have means to stop you from running away, besides you have nowhere to run anyway. I'm kind of afraid to read further because I'm starting to care for this naive girl and I don't want bad things to happen to her.

"I like to talk and establish expectations before we begin. You should know that almost every aspect of this experience can be tailored to your tastes. Cauldron's usual routine, however, is to arrange one face to face meeting. We'll discuss your budget, your situation and goals, and then we'll peruse a catalog to find something that fits your budget and will hopefully give you the results you desire. There is a two month waiting period, during which time I will assign you some testing, some regarding your physical condition, other tests for psychological reasons."
"Psychological? Is that to make sure I won't flip out and go villain when I get powers?"
"That is not a concern. Though your question seems to indicate that you hope to be a hero?" The Doctor made it a half-question, half-statement.
Jamie's brow furrowed. "Wait, so you give powers to people who want to be villains?"
"We give powers to anyone who pays. Rest assured, if you wish to end this meeting now because of a pang of conscience, we can see you returned to the barn shortly."
Jamie hesitated, then shook her head. "It's fine."
"The testing will include blood tests, stress tests, MRI, CAT scan, radiographic scans and a Torsten DNA sequencing. These scans are primarily for our purposes, and if you'd prefer, you can have your family doctor arrange or conduct these tests instead for a small fee. A larger fee will allow you to skip the tests entirely."

Fees and additional expenses. No. The testing wasn't so important that she'd spend her money on it.
"You can conduct the tests however you want," Jamie said.
"Good. You'll need to forgive me, but I must be blunt. Cauldron operates on a strict policy of secrecy. It is crass of me to do this, but know that if you pass on any knowledge of what transpired here, we have ways to find out, and we'll be forced to employ countermeasures. This is in effect even if you decide you do not wish to sign anything."

So, Jaime is a super-rich girl who wants powers and she's ready for any tests, no matter how fucked up they'll be. Wow, girl, you're so desperate to have powers that you literally put your life in the hands of devil himself. I like that Doctor is kind of fair with her by directly threatening her with DEATH in case she'll say something about their activities.

I also like that they give powers to villains too and I'm sure that 90% of people who doesn't turn into monsters become villains instead, by having to do some really nasty things that this organisation might request from them to do as part of their payment. Something like: -We gave you powers, you paid us but isn't enough. We also want some favors from you in order to show your gratitude towards us. We have bigger purposes than just give powers to people, you know. Ah, sorry, you don't know, we "forgot" to tell you about before turning you into a parahuman.

"Countermeasures?"
"Our response will reflect the gravity of the offense. We have clients who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the products and services we offer. It is our obligation to protect them."
"What kind of countermeasures? Would you kill me?"
"We try to avoid murder in the course of doing business, not just because of the moral issues, but because it draws attention. For leaks, our usual procedure is to discredit the individual in question and deploy our in-house division of parahumans to drive them into hiding, remove their powers or both."
Try to avoid murder. The phrasing implied the Doctor or Cauldron had gone that far before. She didn't like that, and she especially didn't like the fact that the Doctor was phrasing things so she'd miss that detail if she wasn't listening carefully.

"It's fine. I don't intend to break the rules."
"Few do. Still, I've done my duty and informed you. Tell me about yourself, Jamie. I know your father is in law enforcement."
"He's a detective, yeah."
"Does that have anything to do with why you're here?"
Jamie frowned and looked away. "Yeah."
"Tell me."
"A year ago… well, it all started two years ago. There were two criminals called Ramrod and Fleece. The local heroes brought them into custody, partially because of my dad's work in tracking the pair down. Three strikes act applied to Fleece, and Ramrod was in for murder with intent. They put them in special cells, got them a court date, and everything was normal. My dad worked to gather the evidence, made some deals with informants to testify anonymously, and everything. The court process takes a lot longer than it does on TV."
"Too true."
"Finally, after about a year of court appearances and one minor appeal they managed to squeeze in there, it was decided. The pair was supposed to go to the Birdcage. Except someone broke them out."
"I think I'm beginning to understand."
Jamie gnawed on her lip for a second. Just thinking about it pissed her off. "His name is Madcap, and he's a mercenary that specializes in breaking people out of jail. Sometimes even when they're in the convoy on the way to the Birdcage. And it's just… wrong. It's not the way things should work. Months or years of investigation, good police and good heroes risking their lives to finally catch someone and arrest them, a year of trial, and all it takes is one fucking asshole with powers to free them?"

They killed the Dealer who stole the vials from them, I'm convinced about it. Not the Merchants killed him but fucking Cauldron. And, NO, Doctor Mommy, you can't convince me that you're avoiding killing people. I think you kill them all the fucking time, using either unnoticeable Tinker tech or parahumans with Stranger powers so you won't attract anyone's attention. So, Jamie wants to become a hero so she can stop a parahuman who destroyed her detective dad's work by freeing the criminals captured by him. She wants to avenge her father's humiliation+ to stop an idiot of a parahuman with an equally idiot of a code-name (I mean, what kind of lunatic calls himself Madcap?

rofl

from freeing more criminals. I can visualize this Madcap shouting from the top of the lungs his battle cry: MY CAP WILL SET YOU FREE!, weaponizing dozens of caps and throwing them to the prisoners' van, making its back doors explode and release the criminals. Well, you're pretty idealistic, Jamie, but I think that it was much better to force upon yourself a trigger than to sell your good soul to polite Satan in a lab coat.

"And so you've spent the last year trying to find a way to purchase powers, with the intent of righting that wrong?"
"I want to stop him. And not just him. I want to help things make sense again, even if it means playing unfair because they're playing unfair.
Crime should have consequences."
The Doctor typed something onto the keyboard, paused, and then typed something else. "Madcap. Well, the good news is that he isn't one of ours, so there's no conflict of interest. The bad news is that the PRT rated him as a striker seven."
Jamie's face settled into a grim expression. "I know. My dad has resources. I took the time to look up Madcap's records."
"Having looked into your finances-"
"I've got a place in the city that was left to me. My dad doesn't know about it, so it'd be easy to sell it and not have anyone close to me get curious where they money went. Current housing market says I could sell it for three-quarters of a million dollars. I just have to sell it."
"We can expedite this. Cauldron is prepared to buy the property from you for seven hundred and thirty thousand dollars, renting it out to you in the meantime if you require it. We will sell it at our leisure rather than wait for you to find a buyer."

"I don't need you to rent it to me. No, that works," Jamie said. She was secretly relieved to have one of the biggest hurdles handled so easily.
"Good."
"And I have another five thousand that my relatives set aside for my school. It'd be harder to use that without people getting curious, but it's there."
"We'll see. In terms of cost, Cauldron requires that the client pay two-thirds of the total amount in advance, and pay the rest over a six year period or default."

Ok, so this Madcap ASSHOLE is a Striker 7. Pretty powerful. It was a joke about him using caps as weapons but I won't be surprised if it turns to be actually true. Maybe he can infuse caps with kinetic energy, using them to hit the prisoners' van so hard that will partially explode, without hurting the people inside. Jamie's family is not rich but she have her own source of money, which isn't negligible. Doctor Mother Teresa (ok, I'm starting to have a lot of fun with her codename

) warned her that she's going to pay the rest of money over 6 years, through different services rather than money, why you didn't finished your phrase for real, good Doctor?

"Meaning you employ those countermeasures you talked about."
"Revoking your powers in the worst case scenario, yes."
"Is that revoking of powers a part of the process of however you give people the powers, or is it something that one of your in-house capes does?"
The Doctor was typing on the computer. Without taking her eyes from the screen, she said, "The latter. You don't need to worry about someone using a loophole or flaw in the process to take away your abilities."

The Doctor frowned at the image on the computer screen.
"What?"
The Doctor turned the monitor around. It showed graphs and charts that made little sense to Jamie. Clearing her throat, the Doctor leaned forward over the desk and extended one manicured nail to point at a series of labels on a three-dimensional graph. "This is the 'P' value as related to the cost of the power, with the expected range of powers. The amount of money you have, even assuming an additional thirty-three percent in payment made at a future date, is probably not going to provide you with the power you'd need to take on a striker-seven."
Jamie's face fell. Shaking her head in confusion, she asked, "'P'? And what do you mean by probably?"
The Doctor opened a drawer and retrieved a binder. She slid it across the desk.
Every page was laminated, labeled with a serial number. Each page had a picture of a vial with a different colored metallic liquid inside, sitting beside a list of powers. The bottom half of the page or a second page, depending on the number of powers listed, had a grid with a number assigned to an arrangement of letters.
"No sample provides the exact same powers every time. The bullet points note examples of the powers gained when the sample was tried on a human subject or a client. There's typically a common thread or theme connecting powers from a given sample. One sample might have a tendency to work with the production of acids and a tendency for physical manifestation. This might allow an individual to turn into a living pool of acid, to secrete acid from his pores or to spit streams of corrosive venom."

So the powers are fucking random. Awesome news, Jamie, you might end up with the ability to change your hair color at will if you're lucky or to spit worms from your mouth everytime when you say a word if you're unlucky.

Hope you'll change your mind because not only that you'll become slave for Cauldron or more polite to say- Employee, but also you might become a parahuman with a really shitty power. Jamie, Jamie, you have such a good soul and you only want to do good but you might destroy yourself in the process. Don't make the mistake to accept Doctor Mamma Mia's offer. Please.

There are PLENTY of heroes who can catch Matcap. Its not like he's Siberian or Crawler.
Btw, I have a sick theory about Noelle: she's a Case 53 and when Coil told Travelers that he can heal her, he actually knows that parahuman who can remove powers from people. Because...because Coil also bought his power from Cauldron. But I will never trust Coil with keeping his word, even if he made this promise. He mentioned in his Interlude that he owed a favor to some people and he can't pay them back. Meaning that he's not in good relations with Cauldron. Meaning that....he's lying Travelers and will never help Noelle.

Ok, this Interlude is very long so I'll cut it into few parts.
Good night and sleep well, my awesome friends. And never trust a friendly woman in a lab coat who's calling herself Mother of Doctors. She might be a gallifreyan in disguise. Someone like Master, not Doctor.

blackarrow · Jun 24, 2018

Hello, amigos, and welcome to the second part of Interlude 12½ (Donation Bonus). So, during the first part, we learned that there's a person called Jamie- not her real name, btw- who wants to become a heroines by stopping a jerkass from using his mad caps as weapons to free criminals before they're brought to Birdcage. In order to have her dream come true, she requested Worm-verse Scientific Freemasonry's help, by giving her the necessary powers to take down the villain with explosive caps fetish. I have my theories about who this Jamie might be: she's either Genesis, before she'll become a villain, or Alexandria, before she will become part of the Triumvirate. Maybe Legend and Eidolon got their powers from Cauldron too. That would be interesting to know that the biggest heroes of the world have to work with a super-secret villain organisation as paying them for their powers. Maybe that the reason why Scion looked like Eidolon like he was a garbage. Possible that Scion can also read minds/look into people'a past and was aware that Eidolon is not exactly the hero that everyone expecting him to be, but someone who betray people's trust systematically by working for some very shady people. He probably knew this but didn't said or do anything. That would be a good and logical theory. Anyway, during the first part we also meet Doctor Mama, a medical Tinker and the Master's new regeneration (because she's too shady to be the Doctor, she's rather the Master) who- the shock of shocks- doesn't have a mustache (first time when I heard about Cauldron, my theory was that men as heaving beards and women as heaving mustaches, but this Doctor lady doesn't have one for some reasons beyond my power of understanding. I don't want my theory to be crushed like that

. I still wait and hope for at least a mustached woman). The Master isn't the only one who works for Cauldron, she also have employees, a male parahuman with the power to teleport people across possible great distances and another parahuman of unknown sex who can remove powers from people (I'm sure they can remove only the powers obtained through Cauldron, they can't do anything regarding natural powers). Ok, let's start with this clusterfuck and pray that nothing bad will happen to our idealistic young lady Jamie.

"I don't want a power like that."
"No. For one thing, the 'R' value of sample J-zero-zero-ninety is very low. Note the letters on the grid. The most important ones are the 'O', 'P' and 'R'. These, on their own, determine roughly ninety-percent of a sample's cost. O refers to a power's uniqueness. It's largely subjective, and liable to change through factors entirely out of Cauldron's control, but it is easier to stand out as a hero or villain if nobody else can do what you do."
"You've already mentioned the other two letters in passing."
"The 'P' value is the raw effect of the granted abilities. An estimation of the rating the PRT would assign to the powers. Higher 'P', more effective and versatile abilities."
Jamie nodded. "And 'R'?"
"Unfortunately, as I've mentioned, there are no guarantees. A given sample does not provide the same effects every time it is tested. There are admittedly some dangers involved in the use of our product. Sometimes there are physical changes that cannot be masked. You have seen the heroes or villains with glowing eyes or less human features."
That was sobering.
"The 'R' value refers to how predictable a given sample is. There are some that produce very simple, reliable results. In sixty-three tests of sample
T-six-zero-zero-one, it has only failed to grant a form of flight on two occasions. Contrast that with sample B-zero-zero-thirty. It has, in four tests, granted an individual the ability to make things implode, it has created a powerful vacuum in someone's mouth, that draws everything into a portal where it is promptly annihilated. Sample B-zero-zero-thirty killed the other two test subjects."
Killed. There was an outside possibility she could die, if she took the wrong one, or if she got especially unlucky.

"How do you test this? You're talking about a lot of tests, sixty for just one sample, but there's no way people wouldn't notice or that word wouldn't get out if you were doing something like that."
"As you've seen, Cauldron has resources."
"That doesn't really answer my question."
"It does. Just not as clearly as you want it to."
Something in the Doctor's tone suggested the woman wasn't going to elaborate further. Jamie shut her mouth, frowning slightly.
"As you can see here, this graph shows the relationship between cost and the rising 'P', 'O' and 'R' values."

Gosh, SCIENCE BABBLING. Exactly what I love to read in this story "her sarcasm is bleeding through all her pores" So low P means weak powers and high P means stronger powers, low O means less unique power and high O means very unique power and R means how predictable a power is. One unfortunate test subject had a freaking black hole formed inside their mouth "shudders". I think they either died, having their body pulled inside the black hole or was killed by Cauldron. This is rather a CURSE than a power, Doctor Motherhood. Jamie, Jamie, pray for a very normal power- flight, super-strength, super-speed, than something as "unique" as a black hole inside your mouth. Good ol' powers are the best.

It was a cube broken into a multitude of smaller cubes, with P as the X axis, O as the Y and R as the Z. They ranged from white to sky blue to darker blue, purple, red, and finally crimson. The key at the bottom of the graph suggested that anything beyond dark blue would cost several million dollars. By the time it hit crimson, it was ranging into the hundredsof millions.
"This… is what you can afford." The Doctor hit a key and the graph was reduced to the white and light blue cubes. "You could theoretically push
into the seven range of 'P' values, to put yourself at this Madcap's level in terms of raw power, but you would be forfeiting a great deal in the other two departments. Your powers would be relatively simple, defaulting to the sort of abilities that countless other heroes already have… and with the low 'R' score, you would be risking getting something you do not want. Physical changes, perhaps, or powers outside of the area you wanted. Super strength when you desired telekinesis, for a crude example."
"I… I'm not fixated on anything particular, powerwise. Flying would be cool, but I'll take anything that works."
The Doctor tapped a key, and the graph shifted so there were only three rows. She'd removed the samples with higher uniqueness values.
"Then the question is…" the Doctor said, "How much are you willing to gamble? A hero can beat a superior foe with strategy, tactics and forethought, and I get the impression you're focused enough to put your mind to the task. Perhaps you'd want to emphasize reliability in a sample over the power it could offer you?"
"Can you zoom in?"
The Doctor did.
"So… how unreliable is a five, if we're talking about 'R'?"
"If you decided on a sample with an 'R' score of five, I would tell you I could make no promises. There would be perhaps a three or four percent chance you would experience some unwanted physical changes. Zero-point-five percent chance that you'd experience changes of a degree that you wouldn't be able to go out in public without drawing notice, even with heavy clothing. You would, I'd venture, not be buying a particular power, but the broader category of that power. To use our earlier example, you would not be buying acid spit, specifically, but an acid power."

Jamie looked at the other lines on the graph, "And I'd be getting something like an 'O' of three and a 'P' of five."
"Something in that neighborhood, yes."
"A power rating of five to Madcap's seven," Jamie put her elbows on the edge of the desk and her head in her hands.
"There's a chance you could get lucky and achieve a power with a greater 'P' value than expected."
Again, that misdirection. Jamie shook her head. "And a roughly equal chance that I could get unlucky, since it's an average."
"Admittedly true."
"Is there anything else I could do? A way to get better results?"

Don't worry, Jamie, you can get a Master power, something like Taylor, and you can kick Mad Cap's ass by using armies of animals against him or even better, take control over his mind/body/emotions and force him to surrender even before you'll start the fight. No matter how low a Master's P is, its still a great power, just look at all Masters so far. I doubt that all of them have a very high P, yet they're incredible powerful parahumans. Or you can become a Tinker and you'll start inventing stuff that will make the prisoners' van indestructible to any attack from outside. You don't have to fight face to face with Mad Cap. Sometimes, strategy is much better than brute fight.

As for acid power, gosh, hope you'll not end with some crap power/curse like having your entire body turned into a blob of acid- without you having any control over it. And even worse: to feel constantly the pain of having a body composed entirely of acid. That would be something that would make me want you to die than live like this.

"We have options, but I don't know that they apply to your case. I mentioned the psychological testing earlier. You should know that an
individual's personality, mental state and background do seem to have a great deal of effect on the resulting power. I would even say it's one of
the primary factors, outside of the sample itself."
Jamie wondered momentarily how her own mental state would influence her powers.
The Doctor went on, "We have a package we call 'Shaping', and another we call 'Morpheus'. Both are intended to make the most of the two
month waiting period and help a client reach an ideal mental and emotional state. It's often purchased by our high-end customers, to refine the
powers they want and help ensure there are no untoward effects. For a low-end customer such as yourself, I don't know that it would suit your needs. You would be buying a lower quality sample to pay for the package… perhaps if you were someone who wanted powers for recreational purposes. If you wanted to help guarantee that you got the ability to fly, for example."
Jamie nodded.
"There's the Nemesis program, but you already have an opponent in mind, and I expect you're more interested in a fair fight than having an opponent you're guaranteed to succeed against when it counts."
"Yeah." This Nemesis program… how many prominent heroes or villains were out there that had faked or staged confrontations like that?
"Hmm. Nothing else springs to mind as our packages go. When we design an additional feature or program, we tend to aim it at our more wealthy customers."
"You guys are doing lots of testing. Could I do something like help with that? Or something outside of these packages and programs?"
"Perhaps."
"I'm serious, I'm hard-working, and I stick to my guns."
"It's our tendency to require that any client be prepared to perform one unspecified favor for us at a later date. Usually a simple task or a week of service. It serves as a way to cover our bases without revealing too much in respect to our operations."

"Very Godfather. Do these favors mean doing anything illegal?"

I wouldn't accept powers from Cauldron not even if they'll be the ones paying me for giving me powers. I mean, I want to punish criminals too, but I'd rather prefer to let others, more responsible and professional than me, to do what its necessary to catch these criminals, than to become a slave for an evil secret organisation. Or to end up with a very shitty power. Or both. Jamie is too blind by her rage against Mad Cap (I'm sure that she's doing what she's doing mostly because she wants to avenge her father' failure and less because she's really obsessed to stop criminals) to think with her mind rather than with her feelings. She'll regret later, I can see her regretting this life changing choice later. I'm not going to condemn her, she's an idealistic and kindhearted person, I can understand her point of view, how much she loves her father and how much she wants to do the right thing, but she'll be caught in a trap from where she'll never escape. Doctor StepMother already told her that she'll have to perform a favor for Cauldron when the time will come.

I feel so bad for Jamie, guys.

"Sometimes. But no, often it is a request to meet someone, to pass on a message, or help manage an information leak, a show of force to scare someone who is poking too deep."
Jamie's leg bounced nervously as she looked at the screen. "And?"
"If you agree to perform three favors at a future date, and I suspect we could extend something of a discount."
The Doctor hit several keys, and the graph extended a little in every direction. Where it had been white and light blue, it now showed cubes of
dark blue.
"What would you ask me to do?"
"I don't know yet. I prefer to leave that option open."
Everything in Jamie's gut told her there was some small lie or misdirection in there. Either the Doctor did know what she wanted to ask for, or she knew her customer wouldn't like what she heard.
Whatever these favors were, all she could do was hope she could do enough good to counterbalance any wrongs she'd have to commit.
"Alright," Jamie said. "Sounds like a deal."

Jamie's fourth visit to Cauldron was less out of her way than her first. She entered the same way as before, but this time the hallway from
Cauldron's location was transplanted into the middle of her apartment. She wasted no time in stepping through.
The Doctor was not waiting for her, but she knew where she was going. She strode down the empty, spotless hallways, past innumerable matching doors. There were no windows in this place. Nothing peeking into the outside.
Still, she knew where she was. She'd checked the GPS data on her necklace. The Ivory Coast. The west coast of Africa. It was dangerous information to have.
If I tried to open one of those doors, would it be locked? What would be inside? Or would alarms go off, my chance here spoiled?
She'd been here twice since her first meeting. Both times, she'd had her psychological testing. She'd also had a full workup done. The psychiatrist had been a young-looking white man, the doctor a heavyset Greek. They'd said little beyond what they needed to for the testing, and had volunteered nothing about Cauldron.
She made her way to the room where she'd done her stress test. Here, she'd run back and forth with steadily increasing speeds until she couldn't run anymore. She'd rested, then run again, then again, until she couldn't even stand.
The Doctor was waiting for her. A metal canister sat on a table, and there was a sturdily built, cushioned chair sitting close by.
"You're ready?" the Doctor asked.
Jamie nodded.
"If you'll change into this, we can preserve your clothes for the return trip home."

Not just one favor but 3 favors. Jamie, you're going to be pretty busy in the future. Something like 'meet someone' can be translated like: hunt them down and capture them; passing a message means threatening them with harm or death; a show of force can be interpreted as beating/torturing/killing someone. But Doctor Mum, despite her willingness to be so open with Jamie, can't tell her EVERYTHING, right?

Alright, I think the parahuman with teleportation power doesn't have exactly teleportation power. Looks like he can rather open portals from other places directly to Cauldron's building rather than straight up teleporting people to the destination. This is very cool power to have. I wonder if he can open portals to other parallel Earths, maybe Cauldron have businesses there too. Now I'm asking myself if what Coil is doing- trying to get control over the City Out of Control- is for himself or for Cauldron. I'm picturing this Cauldron having people all across the globe trying to control different cities or even countries for the organisation's leaders kind of like what Illuminati are doing in our society Maybe I'm getting paranoiac or maybe I believe too much in secret organisations with malicious purposes but I can't see anything good coming from Cauldron. Even if their final reason to do what they're doing might turn to be good, but their methods are plain evil. And honestly, I'd prefer them to be rather supervillains with world conquest ambitions than well intentioned extremists. Well intentioned extremists are huge hypocritical assholes and I'll explain later why.

Jamie took the offered clothing, a plain gray bodysuit that would cover everything from the neck down. A word in blocky black letters on the front read 'Jamie' while one on the back read 'Client'.

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There was no indicated change room, and the Doctor was focused on the canister and the stack of papers she was setting down on the table.
Jamie changed where she stood, folding her clothes and setting them on the edge of the table.
"Sit."
Jamie sat in the chair. Comfortable.
"Sample T-one-one-seven-seven, with the agreed upon addition of Sample C-zero-zero-seventy-two. This is correct?"
"Yes. It's what I paid for."
"Read and sign here. And there are stipulations on, let me see… pages twenty-six and twenty-nine that you need to sign as well."
Jamie leaned forward and read through the contract. It was every term they'd agreed upon, legalese and politely worded warnings about the hell
Cauldron would try to bring down on her head if she broke the terms of the contract. There were pages of receipts covering the financial transactions, and pages more of details about her own medical and psychological evaluations.
There were two stipulations to agree to. One for the three favors she'd agreed to perform. Another on the psychological testing.
Nine years ago, she had been kidnapped for use as leverage against her father. She had been held in their custody for three days. No food, six water bottles to drink and no bathroom. She'd gone to the washroom in the corner, had removed one sock to keep the pee from making its way across the sloped hardwood floor.
She'd assured the psychiatrist that she had gotten over any of the trauma and any fear of the dark that had stemmed from that incident. It was her father that'd had a hard time dealing with the event.
She'd been young then, and the event hadn't really stuck in her memory. But she couldn't shake the idea that the kidnapping might have left some lingering effect on her that would taint the process.
"You haven't eaten?"
"Nothing since this time yesterday."
"You don't have any colds, no aches and pains?"
"No."
"That's too bad. The sample we use to moderate and control the effects of the finished products has a short-lived regenerative effect. This is one of the selling points we offer to the clients we find in hospitals and the like. Some have even recovered or partially recovered from life-long disabilities. We've had reports from people who were mildly ill when they gained their powers, who found they never got sick again. It would be nice to verify this."

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"kidnaps the Cauldron's portals creator, forces him to open a portal and Cauldron so she can go there to hug the shit out of Jamie" Poor girl, you went through such an awful thing when you're a child, I won't be surprised if that kidnapping somehow affected your mind and possible your decisions. Gosh, to hold a child in such horrible conditions, without food, for 3 days....

. I hope her kidnappers are fucking dead. Now, I'm even more sympathetic towards Jamie than I was before. I think she genuinely wants to catch the bad guys, not just for her father, but to prevent them from doing to other children what her kidnappers did to her. She truly wants to be a heroines, to change the wrong in right, evil in good and injustice in justice. Listen, even if you'll do something bad for Cauldron as part as their favors, I won't hold you responsible, not even a bit. Its not like something you want to do, its like something they force you to do because they're evil jerks who give people's powers only to use their services later. The only thing I'm afraid that might happen is that you'll possible start to hate yourself for helping them. Exactly how Taylor hates herself for helping Coil, but she knows that she have to help him for Dinah. Jamie have to help Cauldron for herself- I'm sure they'll remove her power and KILL her (and maybe her father as well) as punishment for not doing what they expect her to do. I just can't see Cauldron forgiving people or giving them a second chance. So, Jamie's trauma made her an idealistic person, obsessed to punish bad guys, and this obsession to punish bad guys made her a Cauldron's slave/weapon/employee/victim. No matter who you're, Jamie, you deserve all my sympathy and pity and hope that you'll find a way out of this shit.

"You couldn't have told me that before?"
"It could easily be a placebo effect. Not worth a rescheduling. You're comfortable?"
"Sure."

The Doctor unscrewed the canister and withdrew a vial. It was no longer than a pen and no thicker than one of the Doctor's fingers. "The faster you drink it all, the quicker and cleaner the transition is."
"You said something about a dream quest?"
"Some experience it. Some don't. Don't be concerned if you don't. Simply relax to the best of your ability and stay focused. The higher and more pronounced the physical reactions like your heart rate, sweating, adrenals, and emotional response, the greater the chance of a physiological change. I recommend that you keep from dwelling on any stressful thoughts or memories. Just stay calm and try to relax as much as you're able."
"Isn't that like asking someone to not think of a blue elephant? They're going to think about a blue elephant."
"I stress, only a small percentage of people experience enough stress that they undergo any physical change." The Doctor removed the stopper from the top of the vial and carefully handed it over, not letting go until she was sure Jamie had a firm grip.
Jamie held the vial for several long moments. "Now?"
"When you're ready."
Jamie tossed it back like she'd seen people throw back shots of hard liquor. She coughed as it coated the inside of her throat, her saliva doing little to nothing to help it down. The Doctor reached out, and Jamie handed her the vial.
It began to burn, the intensity increasing second by second, until she was convinced it couldn't get any worse. It did.
"Hurts," she groaned, trying to push herself to a standing position.
"It'll get more severe before it gets better. Stay in the chair."
"Didn't tell me," she could barely speak with the way her chest felt like it was caving in on itself.
"I didn't want to alarm you before we began. It's normal, and it does get better. A minute, maybe two, and you'll be surprised at how fast the pain goes away."
She clutched the arms of the chair. As unfathomably bad as it had been just moments ago, it kept getting worse. She had to endure another two minutes of this? It felt like the burning inside of her was melting through the walls of her throat and stomach. She could imagine the tissue blistering and dissolving, expanding outward until it touched on her lungs and her heart.
As it seemed to consume her lungs, her breathing began to dissolve into breaths too quick and small to bring enough oxygen into her lungs.
Darkness began to creep in at the edges of her vision.
"Relax." The Doctor's voice sounded far away.
She was panicking, and the idea that she was panicking made it worse, because it could mean she'd change. She might look different. Scales, spines, metallic skin or something else.
The darkness swallowed her field of vision and she felt as though it were creeping over her skin.
What had she been thinking, doing this?
Have to calm down.
She'd taken up Tai Chi when she was thirteen, something one of her therapists had encouraged to deal with stress. She couldn't move here, and it was impossible to stand, let alone do her exercises, but she could try to reach that mental state. She attempted to take deep breaths, but she couldn't even tell if she had air in her lungs or if she was breathing in or out. She tensed the muscles in her fingers and toes, then forced herself to relax them. She did the same with the muscles of her hands and feet. She worked her way up through the entirety of her body, focusing on that simple action of tension, relaxation.
The pain didn't stop, but she felt disconnected from it, now. She was calmer, focused. She felt as though she were adrift in a vast, empty space, aware of every part of her body, the wholeness of it, and nothing else.
An incoherent image flickered across her mind. A landscape of twisted biological shapes that seemed to alter with every passing second, changing into something completely different. An archway of bony growths disconnected and became a bridge over a crevasse. Then a hill. Yet it all seemed to change with logic. It was just a logic she couldn't comprehend.
The ground split. Chasms tore into the surface, dividing it, and-
Another image. Earth. It was as though she was looking at everyone's face and every object and every living thing on the planet at once, from every angle, but then she was looking at a different everyone and everything, then another. It dawned on her that it wasn't her doing the looking. She was a bystander. Before she could realize what this other was looking for, the scene changed again.
Utter blackness and silence. It was only in this stillness and quiet that Jamie realized there was an undercurrent. An impression. She hesitated to call it an emotion.
Reaching. It was the only word she could use to place it, and it didn't quite fit. It was an action that was simultaneously frustrated and frustrating.
The pain cleared away so quickly she thought she might have imagined it.
She was on the ground, she realized. On her hands and knees. Tears ran down her cheeks. Not all were from the pain. Some were sympathetic.
"What was that? What did I just see? It wasn't a dream. It wasn't what you described."
"Roughly half of my customers ask questions similar to yours after they've transitioned. I always say the same thing. I don't know."
Even in the daze she was in, Jamie's instincts told her the Doctor was lying.
"I expect you'll retain the memory better if you don't try too hard to hold onto it."
The strange things she had seen didn't seem to matter anymore. "Did I… change? Is my body different?"
"You glowed briefly, but that passed. You look the same as you did."
Jamie nodded, too worn out to feel relieved.
"I'm going to leave, now, for my own safety. I recommend sitting and resting before anything else. When you're prepared, stand and see what you can do to exercise your new abilities."
The doctor was halfway to the door when Jamie shifted her position and prepared to climb into the chair. Relief was surging through her. She hadn't become a monster. She hadn't lost her mind. This was for real. What she had seen, it was too profound to mean anything else. Even a hit of LSD wouldn't have given her visions as clear as that. Not that she'd done LSD.
Though she didn't feel dizzy, she found she lacked the sense of balance to stand, and tipped forward. Between one heartbeat and the next, everything seemed to click. She felt as though she were floating in slow motion rather than falling, her body thrumming. She extended one arm toward the arm of the chair to catch herself, but she underestimated the speed and strength of the movement in the midst of this slow motion world. The chair was sent flying, skidding across the floor. She fell hard, the moment over, her fall no longer slow motion.
On the other side of the room, the chair hit the wall and shattered.
"Seems you have something. Congratulations," the Doctor said.

It looks like the experience given by Cauldron powers is much more painful and exhausting than the one during natural triggered powers. I mean, Taylor, Hannah, Brian, Rachel didn't described so much pain when they talked/were thinking about their own experiences. But all of them had the same visions of the Floating Space Abstract Creatures. I have a strange theory about how Cauldron were able to replicate the powers given by The Floating Space Abstract Creatures to people. Doctor Mother might have a mental connection with these aliens, she receives messages with indications from them so she knows what to do. Possible this power is a part of her Tinker abilities, her specialty: communicate with aliens and replicate exactly their powers. If this theory will turn to be true, then Doctor Motherfucker might be one of the scariest beings in the entire story. A human being with direct contact with an alien race that might or not be hostile to humans is more scary than a lot of monsters and psychos. I won't be surprised if she's the actual leader of Cauldron (even if this means that Wildbow will betray his own rules by never making a woman the supreme leader of a supervillain organisation

) and she'll be one of the ultimate supervillains, someone who can make a nice competition to Jack or even surpass him. Doctor, you just caught my attention. I dislike you a lot, but you're one damn interesting bitch.

Madcap hit one of the armored PRT vans hard enough to make it roll. The driver of the second tried to steer clear, but Madcap stepped into the path of the incoming vehicle. It struck him and the vehicle virtually bounced off of him, the hood crumpling as though it had hit a telephone pole.
He rolled his shoulders, and then kicked the vehicle. It skidded along the road and collided with the third truck, which had already pulled to a stop.
Which left only the task of freeing his clients.
"Stop!"
Madcap turned. Jamie stood in the middle of the street, opposing him. Her low-budget costume consisted of a black bodysuit and a domino mask.
"You're cute. Nice body, and the costume is a nice mix of pathetic and adorable in a three-legged-puppy kind of way. But you don't want to try to stop me. I hit pretty damn hard."
The mention of her costume embarrassed her. She hadn't had the money after buying her powers. Still, three legged puppy?
Madcap, by contrast, was wearing a customized costume that had cost no small amount of money. A faceguard covered the lower half of his face, and was imprinted with the image of a wide grin. Black facepaint surrounded his dark eyes, accentuating the whites, and a pointed black leather cap connected to the mask and his costume. His armor was more aesthetic than functional, and featured broad, spike-studded pads.

"I hit pretty hard myself," Jamie replied. A glance over her shoulder revealed that the two men who'd been driving the containment van nearest
her were running. She knew it was empty, a decoy.
She wrested the bumper free with a tug and then swung it at Madcap like an oversized bat.
He blocked it with one hand, and the scrap of metal slipped from her hand and went sailing into the nearby cornfield.
Then he slid forward and tapped the flat of one hand against her chest. She bounced off of the ground and fell in a heap. It took her one attempt at standing before she realized it was futile.
Two PRT soldiers stepped forward to try to spray him with foam, but he dispatched both with a throw of something that looked like a thick frisbee.
With nobody left to stop him, Madcap proceeded to tear doors off the containment vans until he found the prisoners.
Jamie tried to move again. Everything hurt too much.
"No," Madcap said. "Leave her be."
She opened her eyes to see two villains, a male and a female standing nearby, with Madcap standing between her and them..
"She looks like a right morsel," the man commented.
"Not saying she doesn't," Madcap said, "But hands off. You paid me to free you, and I can't do that if you're fucking around."
"Spoilsport," the woman said, teasing. "Come on."
Then they were gone, and Jamie let her head rest on the pavement.

So, this Madcap KICKED Jamie's ass pretty bad. Wow, I'm sorry for you, Jamie, but you have to train your powers before getting into a fight. Luckily, he didn't killed her, neither allowed his accomplices to kill her. Also, he's more like a mercenary than a villain. Besides, he doesn't seem that bad. But he still release bad people.

But the most interesting part was his power. His power reminds me of Ballistic and Assault's powers. Kinetic energy manipulator. A wild guess. He's either Ballistic before being recruited by Travelers or Assault before becoming a hero. I'll hold onto both assumptions.

And I still think that Jamie is Alexandria.

"My power didn't work. I was strong, and then I wasn't."
"There are going to be nuances," the Doctor said. "We could help you investigate the intricacies of your ability. But that would cost you."
"Everything costs something, here."
"I have another idea in mind."
"Another idea?"
"Consider this your first favor to us. Cauldron would be much obliged if you could join the ranks of the Wards, and then graduate to the
Protectorate as soon as possible."
"The Protectorate? Why? To sabotage it from within? Steal information? I don't want to do anything like that."
"Just join. That's all I ask. If nothing else, it would mean you had resources and training to develop your powers and achieve your own goals."
Jamie frowned, looking at her gloved hand. She had been contemplating joining anyways. It meant one favor out of the way, relatively harmless, which was good, but there was little doubt that Cauldron wanted her in place for a reason.
"Round eight, puppy?" Madcap said, "Maybe you can finally win one!"
Jamie charged him, and the rest of her team followed soon after.
Madcap leapt to one side as Legend fired a series of beams at him. The villain plunged into and through the concrete wall of the jail, and Jamie
was only steps behind him. She saw him rounding a corner and gave chase.
He wasn't in the hallway. There wasn't even debris from where he'd torn his way through yet another wall.
She activated her power. Time seemed to slow down as she sped up. She snapped her head to look up and saw him in the middle of a leap over
her head. He'd timed it perfectly, so he would be above her when she rounded the corner.
Except she was faster, and she could hit harder than he could. Given a chance.
Her elbow caught him while he was still airborne, and unable to dodge. She slammed him into a wall, and followed up with a leaping kick while the
effects of her power still coursed through her.
Madcap rebounded off of the wall as though he were made of rubber and ducked beneath her incoming kick. Twisting around as he rose back to a standing position, he got a grip on her from behind in the same moment her foot hit the wall. Heaving, he hurled her down the length of the hallway.
Calm. She had to be calm, concentrate. Even as she flew through the air, she let her power build up inside her, then released it. With the half second of effect it gave her, she contorted herself to touch the wall with one foot, then lightly kicked it to turn herself toward the ground. She landed in a crouch, sliding from the inertia, and began charging up for another go.

FUCK...FUCK...FUCK....JAMIE IS....

....FUCK, I only realized she's Battery when she begin charging her power again, after releasing it. This is how Battery uses her power: she charges up her power then release it and keeps repeating the process. Wow, my usually uber intuition didn't helped me with Jamie, except for this moment, when I had a better description of her power. Now I'm certain that Mad Cap is Assault, his power is more close to Assaults than to Ballistics. So, this is how these two meet, one by being a villain who turned into a hero and the other one becoming an agent for Cauldron, infiltrated by them inside Wards and later Protectorate in order to sabotage them, I'm CONVINCED about this, no matter what you're saying Doctor Evil Mother "glares daggers at the Doctor". You're using a good and idealistic person for your nefarious purposes, you BITCH. Gosh, I dislike the Doctor more and more with each apparition. She's like female Coil. I won't be surprised if Coil works for her. Well, he's still a HUGE jerkass, because he really likes what he's doing+ Dinah, but he's not the big boss.

Legend's lasers tore into the spot where Madcap had been a half second ago. The villain sprinted toward Jamie, moving faster with each step.
"Battery!" Legend called out, "Stop him!"
She held on, concentrating. She let a deep breath pass through her lips.
Sticking one foot out in front of him, Madcap changed directions, heading straight through the wall. Plaster exploded around him.
She released her power, and for just seconds, she was strong, she was almost invincible, and above all else, she was fast. She ran forward, plunging through two walls in her pursuit. Emerging from the second wall, she came within a few feet of Madcap.
He turned on the spot, reaching out to block her strike or grab her.
But she didn't give him the opportunity to do either. Instead, she spent the rest of her accumulated power in a single burst, pulling at the metal of a nearby chair. It fell over, sliding into Madcap's path. The metal legs caught on his own legs, one sliding just beneath his descending foot. He
stumbled. He exerted his power, causing the chair to crumple and explode before he stumbled any further and fell.
She heard a brief chuckle from the man as he turned to make his escape.
Legend had taken advantage of that momentary delay to get in position. He caught the villain with a laser blast. Madcap tumbled, got his feet
under him and darted for cover. A laser blast turned the corner to follow and smash the villain into the ground. Legend shot him again while he
was down, and the man was unconscious.
"Good job, Battery." Legend spoke with a smile. "Finally, huh?"

"Finally," she said.
"I really don't want to go to the Birdcage," Madcap said. He was covered in containment foam from shoulder to toe.
"You've committed somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred felonies," Legend answered him. "I don't think you have many options."
"Felonies, sure, but I haven't killed anyone, and that's got to be worth something. Now, this is just a suggestion, but what if I switched sides?"
"Get real," Battery replied.
"I'm serious, puppy. You guys need more bodies on the field, I don't want to go to the Birdcage, it's win-win. I'm strong."
"You've spent nearly six years perverting the course of justice for others," she replied.
"And now I can make amends!" They had removed his mask, but his real smile was almost more mocking than the one that had been styled into
the mask.
"You spent the last five and a half years getting people out of the Birdcage, claiming to be against it and everything it stood for, but now you're
willing to work to put people in there?"
"Maybe you've changed me. Your good looks, your winning personality, and your diehard persistence in the face of so many defeats at my hand."
Battery looked at Legend, "Don't suppose we can gag him?"
"Sadly, no. And he raises an interesting idea."
"He's going to run the second he gets a chance."
"There are options. Tracking devices, or perhaps Myrddin can put some countermeasure in place."
"I'm down for any of that stuff," Madcap said, casting a sidelong glance at Battery. He grinned, "But I want some concessions."
"Concessions? You asshole. You should be glad that we're even entertainingthis asinine idea."
"I think you'll find them pretty reasonable," Madcap said, more to Legend than Battery.
"Let's hear it."
"I think this would work best if I took on a new identity. New costume. My powers are versatile enough that I doubt anyone's going to draw a connection. It also means I don't have any enemies or any paranoid customers from my shady past coming after me."
"That could be arranged."
"And I want to be on her team," Madcap said, pointing at Battery. He smiled. "Puppy changes to a new city, I go with."
"Hell no," Battery said.
"Why?" Legend asked.
"It's funny," Madcap said. "It's going to irritate the piss out of her, and I've got just a little bit of a sadistic streak in me. If I don't channel it
somehow, this just isn't going to work out. Just give me this, and I'll be a boy scout."
"Boy scout? You'll be on your best behavior?" Legend asked. "This would be more than even regular probation."
"No." Battery said.
"Yes." Madcap answered the man.
"No," Battery said, stabbing a finger at Legend. "I've been a damn good hero for you guys. My record is spotless, I've put in the hours, I've put in
the overtime hours. I've done the jobs nobody else wants to do, the unpaid volunteer crap, the patrols at the dead of night when nothing happens. This is a punishment."
"You're right," Legend sighed, "It would be a heavy burden for a good heroine. So it's up to you. You decide if Madcap joins the Protectorate or not. I won't judge you if you say no."

First: YES "fist pump in the air" Mad Cap is Assault. Or he'll be Assault once Battery will agree with him and Legend to allow him become a hero, instead of going straight to Birdcage. Second: that's not fair, because poor, poor Paige only killed one person completely accidentally and nobody asked her if she wanted to be a heroine instead of a prisoner in Birdcage. She wasn't even allowed to speak. While Mad Cap committed more crimes than her by releasing dangerous criminals, yet he'll become a hero. For some there's justice when they don't deserve, for others there isn't justice when they deserve "sighs". But I like this Mad Cap bad boy turned good guy. He's funny, witty, flirty, kind of a bad boy with a kind heart. I like how he's flirting with her, nothing gross or annoying, but especially I freaking love when he calls her "puppy". Its so damn cute. I think they'll fall in love sooner or later. Gosh, finally, some cute romance in this story.

"But you think I should say yes."
"I do, if it makes us stronger in the long run."
Battery looked down at Madcap, and the villain offered her an exaggerated pout, his eyes large, his lower lip sticking out.
"Fuck me," she said. "You're going on paper as the one making the call, Legend, and you're taking the hit if this backfires."
"That's fair."
"Yes!" Madcap grinned.
"I've died and gone to hell," Battery muttered. It was everything she'd become a hero to prevent. A villain evading his rightful justice. But she knew it was for the greater good. They did need more heroes out there.
"I already have a name in mind for my goodie-two-shoes costumed self," Madcap grinned. "You're going to like this one, puppy."
"You're going to have to stop calling me that," Battery warned him, "Or your identity as Madcap is going to become public knowledge, fast."
Madcap rubbed his chin. "Maybe. I'll agree to stop if you accept my name."
She sighed. "I already know I'm going to hate this."
"You'll love it. Assault. Get it?"
It took her a second to process. "No!"
"No? But it's perfect. We'll be a pair! People will know from the second they hear it."
"The connotations are horrible! No! You're not allowed to change the intent of my name like that!"
"Fine, fine. Point taken. Puppy."
Battery looked at Legend, "Can I maybe get a raise, for putting up with this?"
The leader of the Protectorate folded his arms. "Something can be arranged."

"It can be a coffee," Assault told her. "Or a beer after a night of patrols. Nothing fancy, low stress."
"Low stress? You're forgetting the part where I'd be spending more time in your company than I have to."
"Hon, you need to unwind. Relax. You're too rigid, and I know for a fact that you haven't had a boyfriend or a girlfriend in the two years I've worked with you."
"Stop implying I'm into women, Ass."
"Well, you know, you keep turning me down, so it kind of makes a man wonder."
"I've been too busy, and even if I did want to date, rest assured, you would be my last pick for company."
"So hurtful!" He pressed one hand to his chest. "Look at me, I'm like a knight in shining armor, now."
"A wolf in sheep's clothing, more like."
"Arooo."
Miss Militia stopped in the doorway. "Need rescuing?"
"If you could put a bullet between his eyes, I'd owe you one."
"No can do." Miss Militia offered her an apologetic grimace. "You okay, though?"
"I'm okay, thanks."
Miss Militia headed on her way, and Assault smiled, "Listening to her, you'd think every second in my company was torture."
"Oh, you'd be surprised," Battery retorted. She turned and topped off her cup of coffee, finishing the pot. Assault stepped in and began preparing
the next pot. It would have been a nice gesture if it weren't for the smug look on his face.
"Come on. Give me a chance. Let me know what it takes to get one night of your company. Tell me to bring you a star in the palm of my hand, or slay a dreaded Endbringer, and I'll get it done."
"You'd just find some loophole and bring me a plastic star or kill an Endbringer in a video game, which would only give you an excuse to harass me further."
"Then think of something else. Anything."
Battery sipped on her coffee. "Anything? Armsmaster was looking for volunteers for some unpaid work at one of the primary schools. I already
said I'd do it."
"You do all of that crap," Assault rolled his eyes. "It'd be admirable if you weren't trying so ridiculously hard at it. It's like you're trying to make up
for some wrong you think you've committed."
Battery frowned a little.

rofl:

rofl: This second part makes me laugh with tears. I mean, during the first part I was like: I don't like this bitch of a Doctor, she's a fucking manipulative villain, she's using Jamie, poor innocent Jamie, hate Cauldron. But now I'm like: Awwww, Assault is so freaking cute and funny, awww, I like his flirt with Battery, they'd make a great couple, awww, he's my kind of man, if I were in her place, I'd never agree to call him Assault only for him to never stop calling me "puppy" (I'm a cat person, but I'd melt if someone will call me like this

), Battery, you lucky girl (at least when it comes of having such a guy having a crush on her). Ok, I should stop now from fangirling over Assault (sorry, guys, this is what might happen when you read reviews written by a romantic girl, some shit like this one

). Legend is a CONFIRMED gay. Great to have a good representation of a badass gay in fiction, cause I'm sick and tired of so many fictional wimpy and pussy gays, usually created by some assholes who can't understand that gay people can be as badass and awesome as straight ones. Also, I noticed something: Legend's lasers aren't straight either. They can literally turn around corners. Now, I'm asking myself: what the hell is straight at Legend?

rofl:

The grin dropped from Assault's face. "Hey, seriously?"
She shook her head. "No. No wrong committed, real or imagined."
"But the way you looked just now-"
She interrupted him. "If you come on this errand with me and do part of the speech for the kids, I'll maybe consider possibly going out with you
for lunch someday."
"Excellent!" Assault grinned.
He strode off, looking like he'd just won the lottery.
She smiled. If he only knew this was her shot at some clean, innocent payback. The squealing, screaming grade schoolers, all fighting and pulling on your costume and demanding demonstrations of powers and constantly asking questions.

And he'd have to put up with it.
She would relish this.
"…And caught out little suck-a-thumb.
Snip! Snap! Snip! The scissors go;
And Conrad cries out – Oh! Oh! Oh!…"
Assault read from the book of poems, and every one of the ninety kids that sat around him were leaning forward, eyes wide.
"He's so good with kids," the librarian murmured.
"Of course he is," Battery said. Maybe there was a hint of bitterness in her voice, because the librarian gave her a funny look.
She plastered a fake smile on her face to assuage the woman's doubts.
"…both his thumbs are off at last!" Assault finished.
The kids squealed in delighted horror.
Pain in the ass, she thought. If I were reading that one they'd all be crying.
Battery's phone vibrated. She excused herself from the librarian's company and checked the display.
Customer wants product hand delivered by known parahuman. Package waiting in your apartment. Second task. -c
Cauldron had sent it to the phone the Protectorate gave her? To a number that only the Protectorate had? Did that mean something?
She deleted the message. It would be easy enough to handle. If the recipient wound up being a villain at a future date, she'd stop them, put them away. This would just be a delivery.
Assault caught her eye and a slow smile spread across his face, as the little girl in his lap read some of the next poem. The look was smug, sly. He knew exactly how much this was irritating her.
"Jackass," she muttered.
But she couldn't stop a smile of her own from spreading across her face.

Gosh, so Assault is funny, cute, adorable, LOVES children, is a pretty good fighter, have a heroic heart, a bit of an asshole, indeed....Well, Battery...MOVE OUT OF MY WAY, BITCH, I'M GOING TO STEAL YOUR MAN! Gosh, he's so damn awesome, he quickly became one of my favorite heroes.

And my new fictional boyfriend.

Ok, Battery is starting to actively work for Cauldron. She's getting deeper and deeper into a very dark hole from where she can escape only if she finds powerful allies to help her into bringing Cauldron down. I have a feeling that the last task will be to either help a very dangerous criminal to escape OR...to kill someone.

The glass in the little window of her front door was shattered. It fell on her feet as she pushed the door open.
"Ethan!" Battery called out.
"You're okay," Ethan said, as he came down the stairs. He was still in costume. Only a single cut marked his cheek.
"I didn't know where to find you, and since the cell phones don't work anymore, and you weren't at headquarters, I thought I'd come here."
"I know. I thought much the same thing, but I came here first."
"You're okay?"
"I'm okay, puppy."
She punched him lightly in the arm. She didn't resist as he swept her up in a painfully tight hug.
"We should go on patrol," he said. "This is going to be bad. They're kicking us while we're down."
"Right. Patrol together or apart?"
"Together at first, assess the situation."
"Okay."
"A courier dropped this off for you," he pointed at a small envelope on the hall table.
She saw the undercase 'c' on the front and felt her heart sink.
"Puppy?"
She picked up the envelope and checked the contents. A slip of paper, blank on both sides.
A joke? A reminder? The last one had been two years ago.
"Let's go," she said, crumpling it in her fist. She charged up and ran, and Assault crossed a similar amount of distance with his long and powerful leaps.
She covered more distance with the start-stop motion of charging and running than she did just running, but it made for a halting progress where Assault simply continued forward. He made some headway on her. She knew he'd stop at some vantage point to wait for her.
As she stopped to charge, she felt a tingle from her hand.
The note?
She spent the energy of a charge, but she didn't run. Again, that tingle. She used her ability to manipulate electromagnetic energy and focused it on the note as she smoothed it out.
A pattern emerged: simple black lettering. A second after they'd appeared, the paper started to smoke.
She had only a few seconds to read and process the message before the paper ignited.
Siberian and Shatterbird are to escape the city, and our business with you will be done. Thank you. – c.
The burning scraps drifted to the road around her, but she only felt cold.
Every action had its consequence.

.................My brains randomly shut down..............
..................RESTART..................
On short long:
-Jamie is good but extremely unlucky human being. I like her and I'll never judge her for what she's forced to do.
-Doctor Mother Evil is an evil bitch who deserve to die.
-Assault's real name is Ethan, he's a sweetheart and I'm in love with his and Jamie's little love story, who started with human kismesissitude and ended with human matespritship.
-Doctor Villainous Mother CREATED Siberian and Shatterbird, two of the most dangerous criminals in the whole world.
-Legend is a BADASS GAY and I'll fight with you if you say otherwise.
-I was right- unfortunately- about Cauldron demanding from Battery to help a criminal to escape.
-Battery hates herself for what she have to do for Cauldron.
-Doctor Bitchy wants to use Siberian and Shatterbird for her nefarious plans. Even if she might have less nefarious plans, they're still nefarious to me because I hate her, I dislike Cauldron (maybe there are some cool people in Cauldron that I might like, not all of them are like Doctor Master, right?), I hate Shatterbird and Siberian and I pray for Battery to escape from this madness.
-FUCKING DOCTOR MA. Just fuck this plotting bitch! Thousands of people might die in the future because of her. Gosh, she's not different from Coil and Jack. But she's very interesting to read about.

LOVED, LOVED, LOVED this Interlude, but a little less than the first one.

Good night and sleep well, my friends. Don't let the evil Doctor messing with your lives. She also doesn't have a mustache. What kind of respectable Cauldron woman doesn't have a mustache?

rafuki22 · Jun 25, 2018

blackarrow said:
Hello, amigos, and welcome to the second part of Interlude 12½ (Donation Bonus). So, during the first part, we learned that there's a person called Jamie- not her real name, btw- who wants to become a heroines by stopping a jerkass from using his mad caps as weapons to free criminals before they're brought to Birdcage. In order to have her dream come true, she requested Worm-verse Scientific Freemasonry's help, by giving her the necessary powers to take down the villain with explosive caps fetish. I have my theories about who this Jamie might be: she's either Genesis, before she'll become a villain, or Alexandria, before she will become part of the Triumvirate. Maybe Legend and Eidolon got their powers from Cauldron too. That would be interesting to know that the biggest heroes of the world have to work with a super-secret villain organisation as paying them for their powers. Maybe that the reason why Scion looked like Eidolon like he was a garbage. Possible that Scion can also read minds/look into people'a past and was aware that Eidolon is not exactly the hero that everyone expecting him to be, but someone who betray people's trust systematically by working for some very shady people. He probably knew this but didn't said or do anything. That would be a good and logical theory. Anyway, during the first part we also meet Doctor Mama, a medical Tinker and the Master's new regeneration (because she's too shady to be the Doctor, she's rather the Master) who- the shock of shocks- doesn't have a mustache (first time when I heard about Cauldron, my theory was that men as heaving beards and women as heaving mustaches, but this Doctor lady doesn't have one for some reasons beyond my power of understanding. I don't want my theory to be crushed like that . I still wait and hope for at least a mustached woman). The Master isn't the only one who works for Cauldron, she also have employees, a male parahuman with the power to teleport people across possible great distances and another parahuman of unknown sex who can remove powers from people (I'm sure they can remove only the powers obtained through Cauldron, they can't do anything regarding natural powers). Ok, let's start with this clusterfuck and pray that nothing bad will happen to our idealistic young lady Jamie.

Gosh, SCIENCE BABBLING. Exactly what I love to read in this story "her sarcasm is bleeding through all her pores" So low P means weak powers and high P means stronger powers, low O means less unique power and high O means very unique power and R means how predictable a power is. One unfortunate test subject had a freaking black hole formed inside their mouth "shudders". I think they either died, having their body pulled inside the black hole or was killed by Cauldron. This is rather a CURSE than a power, Doctor Motherhood. Jamie, Jamie, pray for a very normal power- flight, super-strength, super-speed, than something as "unique" as a black hole inside your mouth. Good ol' powers are the best.

Don't worry, Jamie, you can get a Master power, something like Taylor, and you can kick Mad Cap's ass by using armies of animals against him or even better, take control over his mind/body/emotions and force him to surrender even before you'll start the fight. No matter how low a Master's P is, its still a great power, just look at all Masters so far. I doubt that all of them have a very high P, yet they're incredible powerful parahumans. Or you can become a Tinker and you'll start inventing stuff that will make the prisoners' van indestructible to any attack from outside. You don't have to fight face to face with Mad Cap. Sometimes, strategy is much better than brute fight. As for acid power, gosh, hope you'll not end with some crap power/curse like having your entire body turned into a blob of acid- without you having any control over it. And even worse: to feel constantly the pain of having a body composed entirely of acid. That would be something that would make me want you to die than live like this.

I wouldn't accept powers from Cauldron not even if they'll be the ones paying me for giving me powers. I mean, I want to punish criminals too, but I'd rather prefer to let others, more responsible and professional than me, to do what its necessary to catch these criminals, than to become a slave for an evil secret organisation. Or to end up with a very shitty power. Or both. Jamie is too blind by her rage against Mad Cap (I'm sure that she's doing what she's doing mostly because she wants to avenge her father' failure and less because she's really obsessed to stop criminals) to think with her mind rather than with her feelings. She'll regret later, I can see her regretting this life changing choice later. I'm not going to condemn her, she's an idealistic and kindhearted person, I can understand her point of view, how much she loves her father and how much she wants to do the right thing, but she'll be caught in a trap from where she'll never escape. Doctor StepMother already told her that she'll have to perform a favor for Cauldron when the time will come. I feel so bad for Jamie, guys.

Not just one favor but 3 favors. Jamie, you're going to be pretty busy in the future. Something like 'meet someone' can be translated like: hunt them down and capture them; passing a message means threatening them with harm or death; a show of force can be interpreted as beating/torturing/killing someone. But Doctor Mum, despite her willingness to be so open with Jamie, can't tell her EVERYTHING, right? Alright, I think the parahuman with teleportation power doesn't have exactly teleportation power. Looks like he can rather open portals from other places directly to Cauldron's building rather than straight up teleporting people to the destination. This is very cool power to have. I wonder if he can open portals to other parallel Earths, maybe Cauldron have businesses there too. Now I'm asking myself if what Coil is doing- trying to get control over the City Out of Control- is for himself or for Cauldron. I'm picturing this Cauldron having people all across the globe trying to control different cities or even countries for the organisation's leaders kind of like what Illuminati are doing in our society Maybe I'm getting paranoiac or maybe I believe too much in secret organisations with malicious purposes but I can't see anything good coming from Cauldron. Even if their final reason to do what they're doing might turn to be good, but their methods are plain evil. And honestly, I'd prefer them to be rather supervillains with world conquest ambitions than well intentioned extremists. Well intentioned extremists are huge hypocritical assholes and I'll explain later why.

"kidnaps the Cauldron's portals creator, forces him to open a portal and Cauldron so she can go there to hug the shit out of Jamie" Poor girl, you went through such an awful thing when you're a child, I won't be surprised if that kidnapping somehow affected your mind and possible your decisions. Gosh, to hold a child in such horrible conditions, without food, for 3 days..... I hope her kidnappers are fucking dead. Now, I'm even more sympathetic towards Jamie than I was before. I think she genuinely wants to catch the bad guys, not just for her father, but to prevent them from doing to other children what her kidnappers did to her. She truly wants to be a heroines, to change the wrong in right, evil in good and injustice in justice. Listen, even if you'll do something bad for Cauldron as part as their favors, I won't hold you responsible, not even a bit. Its not like something you want to do, its like something they force you to do because they're evil jerks who give people's powers only to use their services later. The only thing I'm afraid that might happen is that you'll possible start to hate yourself for helping them. Exactly how Taylor hates herself for helping Coil, but she knows that she have to help him for Dinah. Jamie have to help Cauldron for herself- I'm sure they'll remove her power and KILL her (and maybe her father as well) as punishment for not doing what they expect her to do. I just can't see Cauldron forgiving people or giving them a second chance. So, Jamie's trauma made her an idealistic person, obsessed to punish bad guys, and this obsession to punish bad guys made her a Cauldron's slave/weapon/employee/victim. No matter who you're, Jamie, you deserve all my sympathy and pity and hope that you'll find a way out of this shit.

It looks like the experience given by Cauldron powers is much more painful and exhausting than the one during natural triggered powers. I mean, Taylor, Hannah, Brian, Rachel didn't described so much pain when they talked/were thinking about their own experiences. But all of them had the same visions of the Floating Space Abstract Creatures. I have a strange theory about how Cauldron were able to replicate the powers given by The Floating Space Abstract Creatures to people. Doctor Mother might have a mental connection with these aliens, she receives messages with indications from them so she knows what to do. Possible this power is a part of her Tinker abilities, her specialty: communicate with aliens and replicate exactly their powers. If this theory will turn to be true, then Doctor Motherfucker might be one of the scariest beings in the entire story. A human being with direct contact with an alien race that might or not be hostile to humans is more scary than a lot of monsters and psychos. I won't be surprised if she's the actual leader of Cauldron (even if this means that Wildbow will betray his own rules by never making a woman the supreme leader of a supervillain organisation ) and she'll be one of the ultimate supervillains, someone who can make a nice competition to Jack or even surpass him. Doctor, you just caught my attention. I dislike you a lot, but you're one damn interesting bitch.

So, this Madcap KICKED Jamie's ass pretty bad. Wow, I'm sorry for you, Jamie, but you have to train your powers before getting into a fight. Luckily, he didn't killed her, neither allowed his accomplices to kill her. Also, he's more like a mercenary than a villain. Besides, he doesn't seem that bad. But he still release bad people. But the most interesting part was his power. His power reminds me of Ballistic and Assault's powers. Kinetic energy manipulator. A wild guess. He's either Ballistic before being recruited by Travelers or Assault before becoming a hero. I'll hold onto both assumptions. And I still think that Jamie is Alexandria.

FUCK...FUCK...FUCK....JAMIE IS.... ....FUCK, I only realized she's Battery when she begin charging her power again, after releasing it. This is how Battery uses her power: she charges up her power then release it and keeps repeating the process. Wow, my usually uber intuition didn't helped me with Jamie, except for this moment, when I had a better description of her power. Now I'm certain that Mad Cap is Assault, his power is more close to Assaults than to Ballistics. So, this is how these two meet, one by being a villain who turned into a hero and the other one becoming an agent for Cauldron, infiltrated by them inside Wards and later Protectorate in order to sabotage them, I'm CONVINCED about this, no matter what you're saying Doctor Evil Mother "glares daggers at the Doctor". You're using a good and idealistic person for your nefarious purposes, you BITCH. Gosh, I dislike the Doctor more and more with each apparition. She's like female Coil. I won't be surprised if Coil works for her. Well, he's still a HUGE jerkass, because he really likes what he's doing+ Dinah, but he's not the big boss.

First: YES "fist pump in the air" Mad Cap is Assault. Or he'll be Assault once Battery will agree with him and Legend to allow him become a hero, instead of going straight to Birdcage. Second: that's not fair, because poor, poor Paige only killed one person completely accidentally and nobody asked her if she wanted to be a heroine instead of a prisoner in Birdcage. She wasn't even allowed to speak. While Mad Cap committed more crimes than her by releasing dangerous criminals, yet he'll become a hero. For some there's justice when they don't deserve, for others there isn't justice when they deserve "sighs". But I like this Mad Cap bad boy turned good guy. He's funny, witty, flirty, kind of a bad boy with a kind heart. I like how he's flirting with her, nothing gross or annoying, but especially I freaking love when he calls her "puppy". Its so damn cute. I think they'll fall in love sooner or later. Gosh, finally, some cute romance in this story.

rofl:rofl:rofl: This second part makes me laugh with tears. I mean, during the first part I was like: I don't like this bitch of a Doctor, she's a fucking manipulative villain, she's using Jamie, poor innocent Jamie, hate Cauldron. But now I'm like: Awwww, Assault is so freaking cute and funny, awww, I like his flirt with Battery, they'd make a great couple, awww, he's my kind of man, if I were in her place, I'd never agree to call him Assault only for him to never stop calling me "puppy" (I'm a cat person, but I'd melt if someone will call me like this ), Battery, you lucky girl (at least when it comes of having such a guy having a crush on her). Ok, I should stop now from fangirling over Assault (sorry, guys, this is what might happen when you read reviews written by a romantic girl, some shit like this one ). Legend is a CONFIRMED gay. Great to have a good representation of a badass gay in fiction, cause I'm sick and tired of so many fictional wimpy and pussy gays, usually created by some assholes who can't understand that gay people can be as badass and awesome as straight ones. Also, I noticed something: Legend's lasers aren't straight either. They can literally turn around corners. Now, I'm asking myself: what the hell is straight at Legend? rofl:rofl:rofl:

Gosh, so Assault is funny, cute, adorable, LOVES children, is a pretty good fighter, have a heroic heart, a bit of an asshole, indeed....Well, Battery...MOVE OUT OF MY WAY, BITCH, I'M GOING TO STEAL YOUR MAN! Gosh, he's so damn awesome, he quickly became one of my favorite heroes. And my new fictional boyfriend. Ok, Battery is starting to actively work for Cauldron. She's getting deeper and deeper into a very dark hole from where she can escape only if she finds powerful allies to help her into bringing Cauldron down. I have a feeling that the last task will be to either help a very dangerous criminal to escape OR...to kill someone.

.................My brains randomly shut down..............
..................RESTART..................
On short long:
-Jamie is good but extremely unlucky human being. I like her and I'll never judge her for what she's forced to do.
-Doctor Mother Evil is an evil bitch who deserve to die.
-Assault's real name is Ethan, he's a sweetheart and I'm in love with his and Jamie's little love story, who started with human kismesissitude and ended with human matespritship.
-Doctor Villainous Mother CREATED Siberian and Shatterbird, two of the most dangerous criminals in the whole world.
-Legend is a BADASS GAY and I'll fight with you if you say otherwise.
-I was right- unfortunately- about Cauldron demanding from Battery to help a criminal to escape.
-Battery hates herself for what she have to do for Cauldron.
-Doctor Bitchy wants to use Siberian and Shatterbird for her nefarious plans. Even if she might have less nefarious plans, they're still nefarious to me because I hate her, I dislike Cauldron (maybe there are some cool people in Cauldron that I might like, not all of them are like Doctor Master, right?), I hate Shatterbird and Siberian and I pray for Battery to escape from this madness.
-FUCKING DOCTOR MA. Just fuck this plotting bitch! Thousands of people might die in the future because of her. Gosh, she's not different from Coil and Jack. But she's very interesting to read about.

LOVED, LOVED, LOVED this Interlude, but a little less than the first one.

Good night and sleep well, my friends. Don't let the evil Doctor messing with your lives. She also doesn't have a mustache. What kind of respectable Cauldron woman doesn't have a mustache?

You always judge, everyone does it, even if you do not realize it.
The fact that you think they are not well intentioned extremists ... will make them so.
Irony, you also think more with your feelings than with your head.
No offense but ... your theories can be something crazy with little logical foundation based on the little information you have.

blackarrow · Jun 25, 2018

rafuki22 said:
You always judge, everyone does it, even if you do not realize it.
The fact that you think they are not well intentioned extremists ... will make them so.
Irony, you also think more with your feelings than with your head.
No offense but ... your theories can be something crazy with little logical foundation based on the little information you have.

Well, its my opinion, first of all, and I have all the right to have my own opinion about certain events and to judge people, like everyone else I'm sure is doing, more or less. So, please, stop making me feel bad because I have my own opinions, friend, this is what you're doing almost all the time by telling me that I'm wrong if I think like this or like that. Let me see with my own eyes if I'm wrong or right about something, ok? And I didn't said that Cauldron might not be well- intentioned extremists. I said that even if they're well- intentioned extremists, I'll still DISLIKE them. Because they directly make experiments on people, use people to do nasty jobs for them and indirectly kill thousands of people by letting criminals escape. How many people Shatterbird and Siberian killed and will continue to kill because they're free to do as they please, instead of being capture/killed? Well- intentioned extremists are usually huge assholes who kill innocent people/let innocent people be killed because they have some good (or what they perceive themselves as being good) purposes in the end. But they're still criminals, even if they're fighting for saving a city, a country or a whole world. They're fucking murderers and I hate them. Alright? I don't care about Cauldron's reasons. I care about the super-nasty things are doing. Under no reasons someone is allowed to torture/kill INNOCENT people.

liberty90 · Jun 25, 2018

Cauldron reminds me somewhat of...

Project MKUltra - Wikipedia

(...) Several known deaths have been associated with Project MKUltra, most notably that of Frank Olson. Olson, a United States Army biochemist and biological weapons researcher, was given LSD without his knowledge or consent in November, 1953, as part of a CIA experiment and committed suicide by jumping out of a window a week later. (...)

Edgewood Arsenal human experiments - Wikipedia

Leila Hann · Jun 25, 2018

Oh boy, you've ended up in a fight with the Cauldron Defense Force. This could get ugly.

I'll comment more on this subject later in the story. But for now, I'll just say that your assessment of them at this point in the story is the same as mine during my first reading.

liberty90 · Jun 25, 2018

Leila Hann said:
Oh boy, you've ended up in a fight with the Cauldron Defense Force. This could get ugly.

I only suggested that I see similarities between Cauldron actions and some very questionable stuff done by real intelligence agencies in the 50' 60' and '70. Not that stuff is great or good to do for "national interests", mind you.

Let's read Worm and its sequel Ward by Wildbow (One chapter/every day)

Anti-nihilist(maybe).

SPACE!

Not a sphere

Anti-nihilist(maybe).

SPACE!

Totally not four rats in a trench coat

Anti-nihilist(maybe).

Anti-nihilist(maybe).

Rocking the life

Totally not four rats in a trench coat

Anti-nihilist(maybe).

Evil Neoliberal Cat

Evil Neoliberal Cat