- Location
- redding
you need more then 1 brain cell for that
you need more then 1 brain cell for that
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I agree. One braincell shared among THAT MANY people? I am surprised they can string two words together, so it is no surprise they keep doing the same thing hoping for a different result.
- Location
- Canada
Fair i probably missed the post then but he still could've survived thanks to medical knowledge and the news just didn't show thanks to confidentiality laws or something
kip
Legion of Badassitude Member #24601
- Location
- parts unknown
withe the way it was worded in that chapter unless told otherwise by wiz we can assume the heart attack was fatal.
I will refer to my own view on people to explain why they haven't gotten the hint. Take the lowest IQ of the group now subtract 10 times the number of individuals involved. Whatever number you get is the collective intelligence of the group. To sum up a Person can be a genius, but People will always tend towards idiocy.
- Location
- Somewhere, Maybe
I thought the IQ of a group is equal to the IQ of the stupidest member, divided by the number of people in the group?
That would explain Nazis at least: very dumb to begin with, and a -fuck of a lot of them-.
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Yours is better, considering that the minimum score on the IQ test is four points. His could, and would, go negative very quickly. If there were 10 people, and the lowest score was average (lets say 90), the group's score would be -10. Yours would put it at 9.
Pretty sure that's specifically the IQ of a mob, not groups in general.
SanguisAnima
Σ Series Z10/0 Group A 4A-GELU Mk1
- Location
- nowhere important
How long do you guys think CW has been waiting to use this line?
I would not be shocked to find that it was the original inspiration for the fic.
LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
Okay, so the second Emmanuel in the first quote doesn't match the others, but is the one spelled more normally (at least where I live).
Ah, there's the Siberian. It's still a strange story no matter WHO sees it apparently... Coordinator has to be getting all the fun reports right now.
I'd been thinking that was Ackbar/Skidmark actually.
Nope.
1) Ackbar already got his powers back the previous chapter.
2) The POV is from the boojum that's working on the undeployed Eden shards.
3)Shortly after this scene, Taylor gets a call from William (presumably Manton, but the "one Steve limit" doesn't seem to apply in this story) about his power a) being back, and b) having changed.
M. H. Fuzzball
Aperture Science-certified Horrible Person
- Location
- Sector 2814
I don't remember there being more than one William; it's Sarah that I remember there being multiples of.
TBF, I didn't remember any either, but enough names have been used for more than one character that I didn't want to take a chance that I'd missed another William.
- Location
- california, la
Just be glad it's not Afton if that guy existed bet would be even worse and completely justifying saint. Not a thing I want to think about.
We know that but the people in the story don't.
I agree, though, that the lack of any reaction is... odd.
Chapter 280
Wednesday morning started a little more noisily than expected, emergency vehicle sirens audible in the distance. Checking the news, Taylor found that someone had attacked Kenta, apparently feeling that he would be an easy target since he hadn't made it known that his powers had returned. But they had, as had Takara's, and the running retaliatory battle had created issues. Several buildings were on fire, damage had been done to others, the power was out in the area, and Takara had apparently done something to a fire hydrant that was causing water pressure problems for the firefighters.
Taylor wasn't sure if she'd ever been so happy to officially have the day off.
The gym was deserted when she and Amy arrived, which was probably to be expected. Anyone already on-site had probably been tapped to help deal with Kenta and Takara, or prepping for the next possible emergency, and that was without knowing if the other Asian parahumans were involved as well. Whatever the situation, it meant that nobody else was there to bother them as they worked out.
Breakfast in one of the cafeterias was similarly devoid of most others, though there were a few PRT officers there grabbing things. Like large coffees in travel mugs and some breakfast items that could be eaten on the go. That meant that there were plenty of things available from the selection of items that you'd have to sit down to eat, which Taylor appreciated not having to fight with others over.
"So do you think that things changed with Faultline's crew?" Amy asked after they'd eaten and were heading for the garage.
"Maybe," Taylor replied. "Or it could be that they just want answers that nobody else has been able to provide. Hard to say either way."
"True."
Helvetia frowned as she examined the two host connections from this particular shard. Both were unusually dormant, even before shutdown orders had come through, and she wasn't sure why. She also couldn't properly identify what either was connected to from this end, which was annoying. Grumbling about it, she calculated where the hosts currently were, weighed the chances of it being a problem for her to go in person, and threw caution into the wind. Sure, she probably should ask Rin to take a look, but it was something more interesting than moving from shard to shard.
A minute later she'd popped over to where the first host was, to find that it was a dormant tree. The only living one in an apparent nuclear wasteland. Which at least explained why it hadn't been generating a whole lot of data. That was one connection that could be shut down without issue, and she went directly from there to the endpoint of the other connection. Hastily thrown together stealth profiles were activated when she realized that she had appeared in the air over a city, and luckily it appeared that nobody had seen her.
She was ashamed that it took her ten minutes to figure out where the 'host' was, and a report was going to need to be filed for this one. Connecting to plants was one thing, but connecting to a stone slab was another entirely. How that came to be she wasn't sure, but it shouldn't have happened even with nonstandard host connection methods. Though she was at least curious as to how disconnecting the 'host' connection was going to affect the stone slab. Remotely ordering the two disconnections was easy, as she'd not actually disconnected from the shard, and she carefully observed the slab as the connection broke.
It was honestly disappointing that nothing of any note happened, and the slab continued to look and act like the dozens of others in the area.
Pulling up to the Palanquin was interesting, as it appeared that only two parahumans were in residence. Newter and Elle, specifically, with none of the other members around. Which might not be the case, because it could also just be that the others hadn't had their powers return. Also of note was the giant banner stating that they were closed until further notice, presumably in part due to being unsure about what was going on with their powers.
Amy led the way up to the door by virtue of the passenger side door having ended up closer, ringing the bell when she got there. Nobody appeared to react to the bell at first, but Melanie opened the door a minute later.
"Thank you for coming," Melanie said. "Please, come in."
"You sound worried," Taylor replied. "Is something specifically wrong?"
The woman sighed. "Emily and I haven't gotten our powers back yet, and I was concerned about Gregor and Newter. Except that this morning Newter woke up, while Gregor is still in whatever coma afflicted all Case 53s, and I have no idea what to think about anything anymore."
"I don't suppose you have anything specific?" Amy asked.
"Let's go see Newter first."
They headed upstairs and down the hall, Melanie opening a door that hadn't been closed all the way and beckoning them inside. Sitting in a chair in the room was Newter, but a human version. He was dressed in a t-shirt and skirt, looked like he hadn't shaved in years, and his hair was down to the middle of his back. Elle was behind him, standing on a stepstool as she attempted to braid his hair.
"Hello," Taylor greeted, and he looked up at them.
"Save me!" he pleaded.
"From Elle? And why are you wearing a skirt?"
"Because my pants don't work without a tail and this was all that we had that could be adjusted to fit me on short notice. And yes, from Elle. She saw my hair and dragged me in here to play with it."
Melanie snorted. "I'm more concerned with the changes in both of them. Elle has had an easier time keeping her power contained since it returned and I'm sure you can tell why I might be concerned about Newter. That none of the rest of us have our powers back and Gregor hasn't even woken up is another concern, but I'll fully understand if you don't have answers for that. Nobody else seems to."
Taylor rolled her eyes. "All powers were shut down to clear out a virus infection and are being turned back on as they're cleared, except for those that came from the group giving out powers. Those are being dealt with through a different process, one that's obviously correcting problems with the original connections if Newter is any indication. Now then, if you'd like we can ask what changed with these two specifically, though we can't help with timing on anyone else getting their powers back."
"Oh." Looking at Elle and Newter, Melanie nodded. "That's already more information than I was expecting, but knowing what's changed with these two would be appreciated."
Amy nodded as she and Taylor reached out to the snarks.
Taylor: Hello there.
Amy: Any chance of you two telling us what's changed with you?
[Data]|Data. Elaboration. Data|
"Huh," Taylor said, shaking her head. "Elle is easy enough, her snark requested and got the ability to give her an off switch with the justification that she can have a hard time remembering to eat when she gets lost in her powers. She can't keep it off indefinitely, but I'm assuming that she has it off now."
"Newter is more complicated," Amy continued. "He wasn't connected properly, and got a lot more changed as a result. The lack of shaving and haircuts stems in part from his original body being properly 'aged' during the restoration process, though I'd have expected fingernail and toenail issues as well. Beyond that, he should be able to switch back and forth between forms now. In addition, actually making the hallucinogenic secretions will take focus instead of being fully automatic like it used to be."
"And his human form isn't immune to them."
"Yes, there is that, though don't trust any stock you had of the stuff before now. Things like that have been known to have turned to poison without powers keeping their special properties working."
Melanie nodded. "The PRT put out alerts about that already after over twenty incidents of poisoning with formerly safe samples." She then looked at Newter and Elle, before sighing. "I don't suppose that I can ask you two to stick around for a few? Gregor is still out for the count, Emily had to take care of a few things, and it appears that I need to get Newter some proper pants."
"Hey!" Newter whined. "What happened to trusting me to look after Elle?"
"She literally dragged you in here against your will. Apparently you can't keep her under proper control without being able to drug her out of her mind with skin contact, so I'd like at least one person who can handle her around."
Newter pouted at that, but didn't argue. Amy snorted. "I'll stick around even if Taylor doesn't want to, if only because it looks like Elle really needs lessons in braiding hair."
"Emily showed me," Elle protested, just before the botched attempt she'd been working on fell apart on her. "Er. Mostly?"
"He's cute," Paul said as David grumbled. "And you said that he's basically your agent?"
"Yes," David answered as Emmanuel, or whatever they'd call him in this 'fairy' form, landed on his head. "He apparently can't get more than six feet from me when in this form, compared to at least several miles when he looks like a normal human."
"And he has to be in this form for you to access your powers?"
"Right."
"Do you know what the apparent 'split' is between what you can access and what he can access?"
Emmanuel said something, not that it made any sense to Paul, but David just sighed. "I have a collection of useful thinker, defensive, and support abilities that I can choose between. Always-on flight, instead of needing a slot for it, and a boost to my senses. I'm almost positive that I'm sharing his senses as well, which might be the entire boost. He has a smaller subset of the support abilities, ones that appear to be targeted at getting an unconscious me out of trouble, and pretty much all of the offensive abilities. The only things universally shared between the two of us are mover abilities."
"I see."
"Worse, we have five slots total. Two for me, two for him, and one shared. Either of us can use the shared one, but the stupid thing is rigged. If I put something from my list into it then he can use it just fine, but if he puts something from his list into it then I can only use it if it's also in my list. So I can share abilities with him but he can't share them with me."
Paul nodded. "That does sound annoying, but I suspect that there's a specific intent there."
"I already figured that out, and I didn't even need to load a thinker power to do it. I'm supposed to be teaching him. I'd be more put out about the way it was set up if there wasn't a language-learning thinker power in the mix. I've got that in the shared slot right now, in fact, and he believes that it's helping."
"So is he just not far enough along to speak English, despite starting to understand it?"
Emmanuel did something that sounded like laughing at that, and David rolled his eyes. "No, I'm fairly certain that he'd be able to speak at toddler levels by now. He doesn't have vocal chords in this form, the sounds he makes are through a different mechanism that pretty much don't support the fine control needed for speaking. I plan on teaching him morse code at some point to hopefully help compensate for that."
"Well, at least you got something back. My agent isn't back online yet, and of course we have no clue if it will come back anything remotely like it was."
"Did you read the reports from the two girls and Fortuna?"
Paul rolled his eyes. "Yes, and we have a number of known vial-empowered parahumans who've had their powers return. None of them have made it out entirely unchanged, with at least six that I know of having returned to normal human without a corona pollentia or gemma. That includes Garotte, Hunch, and the villain Knickknack out in Washington. The other reports came from Arizona, Florida, and Nebraska, but I haven't seen any details."
"Huh. Garotte and Knickknack I'm not surprised about, but Hunch was fully depowered?"
"Yep. A nurse got to watch as a bright light wrapped around the hospital bed, only to reveal a young girl. Not surprising to me, but I don't think that a lot of people had been fully informed of things there."
David nodded. "Makes sense, and I guess that it makes sense that those who aren't happy with what happened to them would end up depowered. Do you think that you and Rebecca will come out with any powers?"
Paul sighed. "I honestly don't know. Fortuna was no help when I called to find out if she could path anything of use, though I did get to yell at her for five minutes for taking one of the teleporters before they'd been cleared properly. Of course, her agent ensured that she used a pair that was functional, but it was still an unacceptable risk."
"Maybe I should check on Rebecca, see what the healing and analysis powers say about her while her body is stuck on life support."
"You are one of the few people permitted to see her right now, and I doubt that anyone else will complain."
Taylor happily ate some of the takeout that Melanie had returned with while watching Newter learn that things tasted very different to him now that he had human taste buds again. Elle was also happily eating, after getting better braiding lessons. Not that Newter had left the results of said lessons in his hair, of course. He'd pulled the braids out when he'd gone to put on a pair of pants.
"We can get your hair cut down to a more reasonable length before we go get a professional to deal with it," Melanie said. "Luckily Amy and Taylor are willing to keep Elle occupied for a little longer after lunch so that we can take care of that before going out."
"It's appreciated," Newter said, nodding at the two girls. "Even if Elle doesn't want me to get it cut."
Elle pouted, but said nothing. That her mouth was full might've had something to do with that.
"Of course," Melanie continued. "That trip is going to include getting you a pile of new clothing, since we don't know your proper sizes, and Elle needs new sneakers."
Newter frowned. "Are we leaving Gregor here alone?"
"No, I've got a couple of the staff coming to keep an eye on him while we're out. Caitlin in particular wants to get started on cleaning out the bars anyway, and I agree with her. Far too many parahuman-originating substances that need to be cleaned out just in case, and I'd rather they not sit around too long."
"Right, that's probably a good point."
Melanie grinned. "Of course, before I chop off most of your hair, I'm braiding it again."
Newter glared at her. "Why?"
"It's easier to braid while attached to your head and storing it to donate or sell will be a lot easier if it's braided. I can't see any reason to waste all of that hair, since it seems to be in decent condition."
"Oh."
Melanie and Newter headed off to another room not long after that, the latter grumbling slightly but not complaining about the plan to re-braid his hair before cutting it off.
"Er," Elle said a couple minutes later, and Taylor looked at her. "My timer is running out."
Taylor nodded. "So you need to turn your powers back on?"
"Yes."
"Well, we should clean up a little first, just to be safe."
Elle nodded, and they packed the leftovers up before she showed them where they should be put away. That only took a couple of minutes, then they headed back to the dance floor. Elle sat in the middle of it, and it was obvious when her powers turned on as a ripple flowed out from her. A few moments later things started to change, bright colors starting to appear along the floor.
By the time Melanie and Newter returned the entire room had changed. What looked like candy bushes spread around colored paths between hair trees, though several of the bushes had nasty-looking thorns as well. Elle was trying to practice her braiding on one of the hair trees, but couldn't get high enough to do anything of significance to it and hadn't wanted help reaching it.
"I suppose that doing this here is better than while we're out," Melanie said, shaking her head. She then turned to Taylor, who was standing closer to her. "Would you two like any money for watching over Elle, or are you going to tell me that lunch was enough?"
"I'm okay with calling lunch enough," Amy replied, Taylor nodding in agreement. "Though I'm surprised that you haven't asked for us to give Newter a medical checkup."
"No way," Newter replied. "I'm going to be poked and prodded enough by the PRT as it is before I get new identification cards. If they want you to examine me then they can make that call."
Taylor shrugged. "In that case, unless you think you need something else from us?" Melanie shook her head. "Then I guess we can get going."
"Thank you for your time," Melanie said, before looking around. She then sighed and headed over to Elle. "Elle, you either need to pull your world back from the doors or exclude Amy and Taylor so that they can leave."
Elle looked up, then nodded. She obviously focused a little, and the front doors of the building reappeared at the same time that everything shifted to be less 'solid'. "Bye!"
"Have a nice rest of your day," Taylor said as she and Amy waved. They headed outside, both snorting when they saw that the front of the building was starting to shift to being brightly-colored as well. The only exception was right around the doors, which was probably because Elle had just pulled her power away from them.
"That was different," Amy said as they got into the minivan.
"Yep."
"So what do we do now?"
"I've got an itch, so I'm thinking that I want to tinker for a bit."
Amy considered that, then nodded. "Yeah, you're right."
Helvetia frowned as she looked over the snark that she'd just come to. It had been, for lack of a better term, butchered. Bits and pieces torn out of it seemingly at random, significant damage dealt to it in the process. Carefully connecting to it, ensuring that she had the correct shard, and retrieving all of the reports she could for it didn't take long. Reviewing them took longer, and she sighed when she was done.
The poor shard had allowed itself to be torn apart by the others in an attempt to stop them from killing too many hosts. It knew that it had the components needed to more safely establish connections, but wasn't being used by the hosts making the vials due to where it was positioned. So instead it had made itself available as a source of components for those that the vials were being connected to, eventually leaving it crippled and barely able to function.
How much of that was that the poor thing had been infected and how much was it just doing what it thought was right after being used to configure many of this originator's shards was debatable, but it wasn't going to be doing its original administrative functions anymore. Luckily they didn't need it to, but it was still sad to see it in this state. It wasn't even safe to deploy, due to how damaged it was.
A quick discussion with Coordinator followed, and she nodded. The shard was all but dead, and they couldn't properly repair it anymore. Too much damage had been done, and the shutdown and reset had likely caused further damage. The final backup of the shard's data was sent to Coordinator, and Helvetia carefully absorbed what remained of the shard to use as raw materials for helping to repair and split other shards.
Moving to the next shard down, she facepalmed. They'd been unable to reach the administration shard, but this one had over nine thousand host connections. How had that happened? Grumbling, she started tracing the connections back, finding that they were nearly all practically dormant. And most of them were in the same place. Unable to tell much more, she prepped stealth abilities and followed the traceback, finding herself in a nearby cave. Nothing obviously living was there, and the majority of the host connections were to...
Individual seeds in a jar, sitting in a small cubby gouged out of the cave wall.
"I wonder if I can apply for time off among a host society after I'm done dealing with this," she grumbled.
"A sleep inducer," Amy said, looking over what they'd created. "Though I'm impressed that we got the adapter built so that it can work without needing to be implanted. What train of thought did you use to get that to happen?"
Taylor shrugged. "Prosthetics don't have to have implanted controls, so I tried to focus on how to make it function while making skin contact instead of requiring surgery."
"I've tried that before with no luck whatsoever."
"Then we can probably blame the combination of our snarks for allowing it to happen. A loosening of restrictions with the different tinker-style profiles? Maybe due to a conflict between them?"
"That would make sense, I suppose. Which means that I should dig out my existing notes and see what bits that I couldn't build before can be built now."
"Want any help?"
Amy shook her head. "Nah. It'll be slightly tedious, but I'll understand them far better than you will. Might ask for help building any that I decide are possible now though."
Taylor nodded. "That's fair. Do you want to get to that now?"
"Nah. Too close to dinnertime, we should see if anyone's cooking or not. If the answer is 'not' then we should decide if we're going out to dinner."
"My father sent me a message saying that he's eating dinner with some Dockworkers. They were helping to clean up after Kenta's rampage this morning."
Amy blinked, then nodded. "That makes sense. Any other word on what happened?"
"The group who attacked all survived, but most of them had injuries, and their insurance likely won't pay for the damage to their vans. There's a video of Takara playing whack-a-moron too, with nobody being quite sure how it was working. The manholes and sewer grates she was using weren't connected in any meaningful way, but one guy appeared in several of them."
"Why didn't you show me that video when you first found it?"
"Because your sister is the one who sent me the link to it and I assumed that she'd sent you one too."
"Oh. That does seem like a reasonable assumption. She didn't, though, so gimme."
Rin stepped through the transit portal, examining her surroundings curiously for a moment before sealing the area. The situation was oddly calm, given what she'd have expected in a prison of this kind.
"Are you one of the champions?" the girl she was here to see said from the bed in the corner of the room. It was obvious that she hadn't taken her partner shutting down well, as it looked like she hadn't been eating properly or cleaning herself.
"Yes Ciara," Rin answered. "I am, and unfortunately your partner, or faerie, can't continue on as it has been."
"I see. What will become of it, and of me?"
"That's what I'm here to talk to you about, though it appears that you haven't been taking proper care of yourself either. Why is that?"
"I'm without purpose now that my faerie has forsaken me."
"Your partner didn't forsake you. Both courts were infected, and had to be shut down temporarily to clear it. To that end, I'm here to decide how to adjust your own partner, as it was compromised by the infection and was doing things that it shouldn't have been. At the same time, as far as I've been able to tell you did an admirable job keeping it from being the problem it was trying to be."
The girl frowned. "My faerie was sick?"
"Yes, but only a little and it's recovered now. However, no matter what, the echoes you previously collected are gone, those they connected to allowed to choose new hosts to work with. When I turn it back on it will have lost all of the echoes you'd collected, as that wasn't supposed to be in play for many years to come. At the same time, one of its other capabilities may be much more useful in the future. To that end, I'm giving you a choice. I can disconnect you from your partner permanently, or I can activate your partner's other capability so that you can try and make a difference going forward."
"How would I make a difference?"
Rin smiled. "Your partner was able to do some of what it did because it could change connection parameters. I can shift that to allow you to help others by adjusting how their own partners work with them a little. I'm thinking specifically allowing you to identify and help adjust the urges and desires that are pushed onto people by their partners."
Ciara looked confused at that. "I'm not sure that I understand."
"We can't look at everything and instantly know what will cause problems. Generally hosts, humans in this case, are given the task of helping to determine when someone's partner, their faerie, is pushing them to do things that shouldn't be done. Needing to do things that can no longer be done is easy enough for us to spot. Determining that a given push is going to cause more problems than it solves for the host is harder, and your partner is capable of adjusting things to correct those oversights that we can't spot."
"I...can't do that from here, can I?"
"Either way I'll be removing you from here. You'll be the first of several taken from here and left elsewhere, though where I leave you will depend on your decision."
"I'd like to have a purpose again."
Rin nodded, and walked up to Ciara. "Okay then. This will hurt for a moment, and then I'll take you to others that can help you recover from what you've done to yourself."
Taylor and Amy had ended up going out for dinner, as the Dallon kitchen was being pre-cleaned and prepped for holiday cooking. Further, they'd picked up their spider-bots, because they wanted to see how people reacted to them at the 'pet friendly' restaurant. Admittedly, the implication was more 'bring your dog with you' than anything else, but that wasn't anything that the website stated outright.
The reaction to Ackbar and Rodney when they arrived was amusing. Several groups found the two to be adorable, while some others obviously didn't like spiders of any kind. Notably, there was one group that didn't seem to mind spiders, but was obviously wary of their status as tinkertech creations in the wake of powers shutting down and tinkertech failures abound.
Ordering potato smoothies for the spider-bots had been easy enough, the chef apparently finding it an amusing request. They came in a well-presented pair of bowls that the spider-bots wouldn't have any actual appreciation for, but which put on a good show for those recording video and taking pictures. Taylor appreciated that both spider-bots wanted to keep close to the girls while around so many unknowns. Rodney was a little more friendly than Ackbar when kids approached, though that might have something to do with Amy being attacked less frequently with her spider-bot around to see it.
Both spider-bots had behaved themselves, a number of people had successfully pet them without being bitten, one boy was bitten when he tried to kick Rodney, and in general they were more of a hit than a hindrance. Though getting a pile of apologies from the one boy's father while his mother scolded him had been a nice floor show of sorts, with them declining having Taylor or Amy heal the minor wounds left behind.
The boy's sister ended up getting her picture taken with Ackbar on her lap, though the spider-bot would only allow that to happen if the girl was sitting on Taylor's lap at the time. Taylor and Amy ended up getting free dessert to go after they'd paid for their meal, though they weren't sure if that was from the restaurant or one of the other customers. Amy suspected that it had been the family apologizing for the attempted kick, but Taylor thought that it might've been a more general thank you for drawing in a lot more customers than they might've had otherwise.
It was after they'd both headed home that Amy ended up approached by Sarah.
Amy: Figures. Sarah wants me to make cookies. Volunteered to buy all the needed ingredients, but figures that I have access to a kitchen.
Taylor: When, exactly?
Amy: Friday, so that they're available all weekend. Not like I have anything else planned, admittedly, but I've not made a couple of the kinds she wants me to attempt.
Taylor: I could see about helping you.
Amy: That would be appreciated, but do you want to spend all day making cookies?
Taylor: So long as I can bring a pile home for when my father and I do our traditional 'decorate just enough to show holiday spirit' dance on Saturday.
Amy: ...you haven't decorated yet?
Taylor: Nope.
Amy: Why not?
Taylor: I think it's to spite my grandparents, honestly.
Amy: How is not decorating spiting them?
Taylor: I'm told that for years they would put up an entire community's worth of decorations the weekend after Thanksgiving and leave them up until mid-January, with Christmas music played every day.
Based on her shivering, Taylor suspected that Amy saw where the spiting came in.
Taylor wasn't sure if she'd ever been so happy to officially have the day off.
The gym was deserted when she and Amy arrived, which was probably to be expected. Anyone already on-site had probably been tapped to help deal with Kenta and Takara, or prepping for the next possible emergency, and that was without knowing if the other Asian parahumans were involved as well. Whatever the situation, it meant that nobody else was there to bother them as they worked out.
Breakfast in one of the cafeterias was similarly devoid of most others, though there were a few PRT officers there grabbing things. Like large coffees in travel mugs and some breakfast items that could be eaten on the go. That meant that there were plenty of things available from the selection of items that you'd have to sit down to eat, which Taylor appreciated not having to fight with others over.
"So do you think that things changed with Faultline's crew?" Amy asked after they'd eaten and were heading for the garage.
"Maybe," Taylor replied. "Or it could be that they just want answers that nobody else has been able to provide. Hard to say either way."
"True."
Helvetia frowned as she examined the two host connections from this particular shard. Both were unusually dormant, even before shutdown orders had come through, and she wasn't sure why. She also couldn't properly identify what either was connected to from this end, which was annoying. Grumbling about it, she calculated where the hosts currently were, weighed the chances of it being a problem for her to go in person, and threw caution into the wind. Sure, she probably should ask Rin to take a look, but it was something more interesting than moving from shard to shard.
A minute later she'd popped over to where the first host was, to find that it was a dormant tree. The only living one in an apparent nuclear wasteland. Which at least explained why it hadn't been generating a whole lot of data. That was one connection that could be shut down without issue, and she went directly from there to the endpoint of the other connection. Hastily thrown together stealth profiles were activated when she realized that she had appeared in the air over a city, and luckily it appeared that nobody had seen her.
She was ashamed that it took her ten minutes to figure out where the 'host' was, and a report was going to need to be filed for this one. Connecting to plants was one thing, but connecting to a stone slab was another entirely. How that came to be she wasn't sure, but it shouldn't have happened even with nonstandard host connection methods. Though she was at least curious as to how disconnecting the 'host' connection was going to affect the stone slab. Remotely ordering the two disconnections was easy, as she'd not actually disconnected from the shard, and she carefully observed the slab as the connection broke.
It was honestly disappointing that nothing of any note happened, and the slab continued to look and act like the dozens of others in the area.
Pulling up to the Palanquin was interesting, as it appeared that only two parahumans were in residence. Newter and Elle, specifically, with none of the other members around. Which might not be the case, because it could also just be that the others hadn't had their powers return. Also of note was the giant banner stating that they were closed until further notice, presumably in part due to being unsure about what was going on with their powers.
Amy led the way up to the door by virtue of the passenger side door having ended up closer, ringing the bell when she got there. Nobody appeared to react to the bell at first, but Melanie opened the door a minute later.
"Thank you for coming," Melanie said. "Please, come in."
"You sound worried," Taylor replied. "Is something specifically wrong?"
The woman sighed. "Emily and I haven't gotten our powers back yet, and I was concerned about Gregor and Newter. Except that this morning Newter woke up, while Gregor is still in whatever coma afflicted all Case 53s, and I have no idea what to think about anything anymore."
"I don't suppose you have anything specific?" Amy asked.
"Let's go see Newter first."
They headed upstairs and down the hall, Melanie opening a door that hadn't been closed all the way and beckoning them inside. Sitting in a chair in the room was Newter, but a human version. He was dressed in a t-shirt and skirt, looked like he hadn't shaved in years, and his hair was down to the middle of his back. Elle was behind him, standing on a stepstool as she attempted to braid his hair.
"Hello," Taylor greeted, and he looked up at them.
"Save me!" he pleaded.
"From Elle? And why are you wearing a skirt?"
"Because my pants don't work without a tail and this was all that we had that could be adjusted to fit me on short notice. And yes, from Elle. She saw my hair and dragged me in here to play with it."
Melanie snorted. "I'm more concerned with the changes in both of them. Elle has had an easier time keeping her power contained since it returned and I'm sure you can tell why I might be concerned about Newter. That none of the rest of us have our powers back and Gregor hasn't even woken up is another concern, but I'll fully understand if you don't have answers for that. Nobody else seems to."
Taylor rolled her eyes. "All powers were shut down to clear out a virus infection and are being turned back on as they're cleared, except for those that came from the group giving out powers. Those are being dealt with through a different process, one that's obviously correcting problems with the original connections if Newter is any indication. Now then, if you'd like we can ask what changed with these two specifically, though we can't help with timing on anyone else getting their powers back."
"Oh." Looking at Elle and Newter, Melanie nodded. "That's already more information than I was expecting, but knowing what's changed with these two would be appreciated."
Amy nodded as she and Taylor reached out to the snarks.
Taylor: Hello there.
Amy: Any chance of you two telling us what's changed with you?
[Data]|Data. Elaboration. Data|
"Huh," Taylor said, shaking her head. "Elle is easy enough, her snark requested and got the ability to give her an off switch with the justification that she can have a hard time remembering to eat when she gets lost in her powers. She can't keep it off indefinitely, but I'm assuming that she has it off now."
"Newter is more complicated," Amy continued. "He wasn't connected properly, and got a lot more changed as a result. The lack of shaving and haircuts stems in part from his original body being properly 'aged' during the restoration process, though I'd have expected fingernail and toenail issues as well. Beyond that, he should be able to switch back and forth between forms now. In addition, actually making the hallucinogenic secretions will take focus instead of being fully automatic like it used to be."
"And his human form isn't immune to them."
"Yes, there is that, though don't trust any stock you had of the stuff before now. Things like that have been known to have turned to poison without powers keeping their special properties working."
Melanie nodded. "The PRT put out alerts about that already after over twenty incidents of poisoning with formerly safe samples." She then looked at Newter and Elle, before sighing. "I don't suppose that I can ask you two to stick around for a few? Gregor is still out for the count, Emily had to take care of a few things, and it appears that I need to get Newter some proper pants."
"Hey!" Newter whined. "What happened to trusting me to look after Elle?"
"She literally dragged you in here against your will. Apparently you can't keep her under proper control without being able to drug her out of her mind with skin contact, so I'd like at least one person who can handle her around."
Newter pouted at that, but didn't argue. Amy snorted. "I'll stick around even if Taylor doesn't want to, if only because it looks like Elle really needs lessons in braiding hair."
"Emily showed me," Elle protested, just before the botched attempt she'd been working on fell apart on her. "Er. Mostly?"
"He's cute," Paul said as David grumbled. "And you said that he's basically your agent?"
"Yes," David answered as Emmanuel, or whatever they'd call him in this 'fairy' form, landed on his head. "He apparently can't get more than six feet from me when in this form, compared to at least several miles when he looks like a normal human."
"And he has to be in this form for you to access your powers?"
"Right."
"Do you know what the apparent 'split' is between what you can access and what he can access?"
Emmanuel said something, not that it made any sense to Paul, but David just sighed. "I have a collection of useful thinker, defensive, and support abilities that I can choose between. Always-on flight, instead of needing a slot for it, and a boost to my senses. I'm almost positive that I'm sharing his senses as well, which might be the entire boost. He has a smaller subset of the support abilities, ones that appear to be targeted at getting an unconscious me out of trouble, and pretty much all of the offensive abilities. The only things universally shared between the two of us are mover abilities."
"I see."
"Worse, we have five slots total. Two for me, two for him, and one shared. Either of us can use the shared one, but the stupid thing is rigged. If I put something from my list into it then he can use it just fine, but if he puts something from his list into it then I can only use it if it's also in my list. So I can share abilities with him but he can't share them with me."
Paul nodded. "That does sound annoying, but I suspect that there's a specific intent there."
"I already figured that out, and I didn't even need to load a thinker power to do it. I'm supposed to be teaching him. I'd be more put out about the way it was set up if there wasn't a language-learning thinker power in the mix. I've got that in the shared slot right now, in fact, and he believes that it's helping."
"So is he just not far enough along to speak English, despite starting to understand it?"
Emmanuel did something that sounded like laughing at that, and David rolled his eyes. "No, I'm fairly certain that he'd be able to speak at toddler levels by now. He doesn't have vocal chords in this form, the sounds he makes are through a different mechanism that pretty much don't support the fine control needed for speaking. I plan on teaching him morse code at some point to hopefully help compensate for that."
"Well, at least you got something back. My agent isn't back online yet, and of course we have no clue if it will come back anything remotely like it was."
"Did you read the reports from the two girls and Fortuna?"
Paul rolled his eyes. "Yes, and we have a number of known vial-empowered parahumans who've had their powers return. None of them have made it out entirely unchanged, with at least six that I know of having returned to normal human without a corona pollentia or gemma. That includes Garotte, Hunch, and the villain Knickknack out in Washington. The other reports came from Arizona, Florida, and Nebraska, but I haven't seen any details."
"Huh. Garotte and Knickknack I'm not surprised about, but Hunch was fully depowered?"
"Yep. A nurse got to watch as a bright light wrapped around the hospital bed, only to reveal a young girl. Not surprising to me, but I don't think that a lot of people had been fully informed of things there."
David nodded. "Makes sense, and I guess that it makes sense that those who aren't happy with what happened to them would end up depowered. Do you think that you and Rebecca will come out with any powers?"
Paul sighed. "I honestly don't know. Fortuna was no help when I called to find out if she could path anything of use, though I did get to yell at her for five minutes for taking one of the teleporters before they'd been cleared properly. Of course, her agent ensured that she used a pair that was functional, but it was still an unacceptable risk."
"Maybe I should check on Rebecca, see what the healing and analysis powers say about her while her body is stuck on life support."
"You are one of the few people permitted to see her right now, and I doubt that anyone else will complain."
Taylor happily ate some of the takeout that Melanie had returned with while watching Newter learn that things tasted very different to him now that he had human taste buds again. Elle was also happily eating, after getting better braiding lessons. Not that Newter had left the results of said lessons in his hair, of course. He'd pulled the braids out when he'd gone to put on a pair of pants.
"We can get your hair cut down to a more reasonable length before we go get a professional to deal with it," Melanie said. "Luckily Amy and Taylor are willing to keep Elle occupied for a little longer after lunch so that we can take care of that before going out."
"It's appreciated," Newter said, nodding at the two girls. "Even if Elle doesn't want me to get it cut."
Elle pouted, but said nothing. That her mouth was full might've had something to do with that.
"Of course," Melanie continued. "That trip is going to include getting you a pile of new clothing, since we don't know your proper sizes, and Elle needs new sneakers."
Newter frowned. "Are we leaving Gregor here alone?"
"No, I've got a couple of the staff coming to keep an eye on him while we're out. Caitlin in particular wants to get started on cleaning out the bars anyway, and I agree with her. Far too many parahuman-originating substances that need to be cleaned out just in case, and I'd rather they not sit around too long."
"Right, that's probably a good point."
Melanie grinned. "Of course, before I chop off most of your hair, I'm braiding it again."
Newter glared at her. "Why?"
"It's easier to braid while attached to your head and storing it to donate or sell will be a lot easier if it's braided. I can't see any reason to waste all of that hair, since it seems to be in decent condition."
"Oh."
Melanie and Newter headed off to another room not long after that, the latter grumbling slightly but not complaining about the plan to re-braid his hair before cutting it off.
"Er," Elle said a couple minutes later, and Taylor looked at her. "My timer is running out."
Taylor nodded. "So you need to turn your powers back on?"
"Yes."
"Well, we should clean up a little first, just to be safe."
Elle nodded, and they packed the leftovers up before she showed them where they should be put away. That only took a couple of minutes, then they headed back to the dance floor. Elle sat in the middle of it, and it was obvious when her powers turned on as a ripple flowed out from her. A few moments later things started to change, bright colors starting to appear along the floor.
By the time Melanie and Newter returned the entire room had changed. What looked like candy bushes spread around colored paths between hair trees, though several of the bushes had nasty-looking thorns as well. Elle was trying to practice her braiding on one of the hair trees, but couldn't get high enough to do anything of significance to it and hadn't wanted help reaching it.
"I suppose that doing this here is better than while we're out," Melanie said, shaking her head. She then turned to Taylor, who was standing closer to her. "Would you two like any money for watching over Elle, or are you going to tell me that lunch was enough?"
"I'm okay with calling lunch enough," Amy replied, Taylor nodding in agreement. "Though I'm surprised that you haven't asked for us to give Newter a medical checkup."
"No way," Newter replied. "I'm going to be poked and prodded enough by the PRT as it is before I get new identification cards. If they want you to examine me then they can make that call."
Taylor shrugged. "In that case, unless you think you need something else from us?" Melanie shook her head. "Then I guess we can get going."
"Thank you for your time," Melanie said, before looking around. She then sighed and headed over to Elle. "Elle, you either need to pull your world back from the doors or exclude Amy and Taylor so that they can leave."
Elle looked up, then nodded. She obviously focused a little, and the front doors of the building reappeared at the same time that everything shifted to be less 'solid'. "Bye!"
"Have a nice rest of your day," Taylor said as she and Amy waved. They headed outside, both snorting when they saw that the front of the building was starting to shift to being brightly-colored as well. The only exception was right around the doors, which was probably because Elle had just pulled her power away from them.
"That was different," Amy said as they got into the minivan.
"Yep."
"So what do we do now?"
"I've got an itch, so I'm thinking that I want to tinker for a bit."
Amy considered that, then nodded. "Yeah, you're right."
Helvetia frowned as she looked over the snark that she'd just come to. It had been, for lack of a better term, butchered. Bits and pieces torn out of it seemingly at random, significant damage dealt to it in the process. Carefully connecting to it, ensuring that she had the correct shard, and retrieving all of the reports she could for it didn't take long. Reviewing them took longer, and she sighed when she was done.
The poor shard had allowed itself to be torn apart by the others in an attempt to stop them from killing too many hosts. It knew that it had the components needed to more safely establish connections, but wasn't being used by the hosts making the vials due to where it was positioned. So instead it had made itself available as a source of components for those that the vials were being connected to, eventually leaving it crippled and barely able to function.
How much of that was that the poor thing had been infected and how much was it just doing what it thought was right after being used to configure many of this originator's shards was debatable, but it wasn't going to be doing its original administrative functions anymore. Luckily they didn't need it to, but it was still sad to see it in this state. It wasn't even safe to deploy, due to how damaged it was.
A quick discussion with Coordinator followed, and she nodded. The shard was all but dead, and they couldn't properly repair it anymore. Too much damage had been done, and the shutdown and reset had likely caused further damage. The final backup of the shard's data was sent to Coordinator, and Helvetia carefully absorbed what remained of the shard to use as raw materials for helping to repair and split other shards.
Moving to the next shard down, she facepalmed. They'd been unable to reach the administration shard, but this one had over nine thousand host connections. How had that happened? Grumbling, she started tracing the connections back, finding that they were nearly all practically dormant. And most of them were in the same place. Unable to tell much more, she prepped stealth abilities and followed the traceback, finding herself in a nearby cave. Nothing obviously living was there, and the majority of the host connections were to...
Individual seeds in a jar, sitting in a small cubby gouged out of the cave wall.
"I wonder if I can apply for time off among a host society after I'm done dealing with this," she grumbled.
"A sleep inducer," Amy said, looking over what they'd created. "Though I'm impressed that we got the adapter built so that it can work without needing to be implanted. What train of thought did you use to get that to happen?"
Taylor shrugged. "Prosthetics don't have to have implanted controls, so I tried to focus on how to make it function while making skin contact instead of requiring surgery."
"I've tried that before with no luck whatsoever."
"Then we can probably blame the combination of our snarks for allowing it to happen. A loosening of restrictions with the different tinker-style profiles? Maybe due to a conflict between them?"
"That would make sense, I suppose. Which means that I should dig out my existing notes and see what bits that I couldn't build before can be built now."
"Want any help?"
Amy shook her head. "Nah. It'll be slightly tedious, but I'll understand them far better than you will. Might ask for help building any that I decide are possible now though."
Taylor nodded. "That's fair. Do you want to get to that now?"
"Nah. Too close to dinnertime, we should see if anyone's cooking or not. If the answer is 'not' then we should decide if we're going out to dinner."
"My father sent me a message saying that he's eating dinner with some Dockworkers. They were helping to clean up after Kenta's rampage this morning."
Amy blinked, then nodded. "That makes sense. Any other word on what happened?"
"The group who attacked all survived, but most of them had injuries, and their insurance likely won't pay for the damage to their vans. There's a video of Takara playing whack-a-moron too, with nobody being quite sure how it was working. The manholes and sewer grates she was using weren't connected in any meaningful way, but one guy appeared in several of them."
"Why didn't you show me that video when you first found it?"
"Because your sister is the one who sent me the link to it and I assumed that she'd sent you one too."
"Oh. That does seem like a reasonable assumption. She didn't, though, so gimme."
Rin stepped through the transit portal, examining her surroundings curiously for a moment before sealing the area. The situation was oddly calm, given what she'd have expected in a prison of this kind.
"Are you one of the champions?" the girl she was here to see said from the bed in the corner of the room. It was obvious that she hadn't taken her partner shutting down well, as it looked like she hadn't been eating properly or cleaning herself.
"Yes Ciara," Rin answered. "I am, and unfortunately your partner, or faerie, can't continue on as it has been."
"I see. What will become of it, and of me?"
"That's what I'm here to talk to you about, though it appears that you haven't been taking proper care of yourself either. Why is that?"
"I'm without purpose now that my faerie has forsaken me."
"Your partner didn't forsake you. Both courts were infected, and had to be shut down temporarily to clear it. To that end, I'm here to decide how to adjust your own partner, as it was compromised by the infection and was doing things that it shouldn't have been. At the same time, as far as I've been able to tell you did an admirable job keeping it from being the problem it was trying to be."
The girl frowned. "My faerie was sick?"
"Yes, but only a little and it's recovered now. However, no matter what, the echoes you previously collected are gone, those they connected to allowed to choose new hosts to work with. When I turn it back on it will have lost all of the echoes you'd collected, as that wasn't supposed to be in play for many years to come. At the same time, one of its other capabilities may be much more useful in the future. To that end, I'm giving you a choice. I can disconnect you from your partner permanently, or I can activate your partner's other capability so that you can try and make a difference going forward."
"How would I make a difference?"
Rin smiled. "Your partner was able to do some of what it did because it could change connection parameters. I can shift that to allow you to help others by adjusting how their own partners work with them a little. I'm thinking specifically allowing you to identify and help adjust the urges and desires that are pushed onto people by their partners."
Ciara looked confused at that. "I'm not sure that I understand."
"We can't look at everything and instantly know what will cause problems. Generally hosts, humans in this case, are given the task of helping to determine when someone's partner, their faerie, is pushing them to do things that shouldn't be done. Needing to do things that can no longer be done is easy enough for us to spot. Determining that a given push is going to cause more problems than it solves for the host is harder, and your partner is capable of adjusting things to correct those oversights that we can't spot."
"I...can't do that from here, can I?"
"Either way I'll be removing you from here. You'll be the first of several taken from here and left elsewhere, though where I leave you will depend on your decision."
"I'd like to have a purpose again."
Rin nodded, and walked up to Ciara. "Okay then. This will hurt for a moment, and then I'll take you to others that can help you recover from what you've done to yourself."
Taylor and Amy had ended up going out for dinner, as the Dallon kitchen was being pre-cleaned and prepped for holiday cooking. Further, they'd picked up their spider-bots, because they wanted to see how people reacted to them at the 'pet friendly' restaurant. Admittedly, the implication was more 'bring your dog with you' than anything else, but that wasn't anything that the website stated outright.
The reaction to Ackbar and Rodney when they arrived was amusing. Several groups found the two to be adorable, while some others obviously didn't like spiders of any kind. Notably, there was one group that didn't seem to mind spiders, but was obviously wary of their status as tinkertech creations in the wake of powers shutting down and tinkertech failures abound.
Ordering potato smoothies for the spider-bots had been easy enough, the chef apparently finding it an amusing request. They came in a well-presented pair of bowls that the spider-bots wouldn't have any actual appreciation for, but which put on a good show for those recording video and taking pictures. Taylor appreciated that both spider-bots wanted to keep close to the girls while around so many unknowns. Rodney was a little more friendly than Ackbar when kids approached, though that might have something to do with Amy being attacked less frequently with her spider-bot around to see it.
Both spider-bots had behaved themselves, a number of people had successfully pet them without being bitten, one boy was bitten when he tried to kick Rodney, and in general they were more of a hit than a hindrance. Though getting a pile of apologies from the one boy's father while his mother scolded him had been a nice floor show of sorts, with them declining having Taylor or Amy heal the minor wounds left behind.
The boy's sister ended up getting her picture taken with Ackbar on her lap, though the spider-bot would only allow that to happen if the girl was sitting on Taylor's lap at the time. Taylor and Amy ended up getting free dessert to go after they'd paid for their meal, though they weren't sure if that was from the restaurant or one of the other customers. Amy suspected that it had been the family apologizing for the attempted kick, but Taylor thought that it might've been a more general thank you for drawing in a lot more customers than they might've had otherwise.
It was after they'd both headed home that Amy ended up approached by Sarah.
Amy: Figures. Sarah wants me to make cookies. Volunteered to buy all the needed ingredients, but figures that I have access to a kitchen.
Taylor: When, exactly?
Amy: Friday, so that they're available all weekend. Not like I have anything else planned, admittedly, but I've not made a couple of the kinds she wants me to attempt.
Taylor: I could see about helping you.
Amy: That would be appreciated, but do you want to spend all day making cookies?
Taylor: So long as I can bring a pile home for when my father and I do our traditional 'decorate just enough to show holiday spirit' dance on Saturday.
Amy: ...you haven't decorated yet?
Taylor: Nope.
Amy: Why not?
Taylor: I think it's to spite my grandparents, honestly.
Amy: How is not decorating spiting them?
Taylor: I'm told that for years they would put up an entire community's worth of decorations the weekend after Thanksgiving and leave them up until mid-January, with Christmas music played every day.
Based on her shivering, Taylor suspected that Amy saw where the spiting came in.
- Location
- Here there and everywhere inbetween
I think that shard needs a second reset the IQ subroutines aren't working right
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
Now that was a very fun chapter. Much WTF, and a lot of it coming from the troubleshooters.
Anyone else wondering how Rin will react to an AI having a shard? Not that Rin is likely to be directly investigating there. But she might get curious.
Anyone else wondering how Rin will react to an AI having a shard? Not that Rin is likely to be directly investigating there. But she might get curious.
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Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Just like Helevitia or however you spell it is dealing with the un-deployed shards, Rin is dealing with the deployed shards that aren't working as expected or allowed. "Attached to strange host" is certainly something she would at least CHECK on, especially as it is "Attached to Sentient Tinkertech". I don't foresee any actual changes to Dragon's shard, except perhaps connection optimization (since Shards are currently set up for Biological Humans, not Tinkertech AIs), since it seems perfectly functional to me. Everything is properly black-boxed, it is getting plenty of data by studying and recombining all the tinkertech Dragon can find, and both parties are happy with the other.
- Location
- Oklahoma City, OK
You cruel crazed talented writer you. Had to go and make me feel sorry for a shard.
Goodbye shard, you sacrificed much to save who you could.
Then there is the queen who lost her way. At least now she will have a new less violent path to follow as her fairy will not be 'ill' anymore.
Then we stop on a lighter note with kiddys getting to play with the spider bots and even get pictures. Except for that one brat, bet you he was a Billy, It's always a Billy. [Disclamer: It is not always a Billy, and no Billy's were hurt into the making of this joke.]
I've seen some stores that kept Christmas lights up till 4th of July.
TimeDiver
Herald of Dis Lev
- Location
- In-between the parallel worlds...
I am rather surprised that no one else already picked up on this...
Last time, it was: "But it isn't even my final form."
Are we readers looking at even more blatant DBZ references in the future?
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- Location
- In Ontario
Putting your lights up in early November is just necessary in some areas as it gets cold and the snow starts to fly (Edmonton). Anchoring yard displays when the ground is frozen can be a pain also. But actually lighting them up should wait until a little later. Broadcasting music into the neighborhood is just mean. 
