[disclaimer - Wildbow owns Worm, I do not own Worm]
My eyes cracked open to a sore body and constant throbbing pain on the back of my head and all across my chest. Instinctively, I moved to scratch behind my skull, but a hand on my arm stopped me. A hand... from someone wearing a metal mask and looking oddly concerned down at me along with an orange dude and the guy with the snails and a blond older girl.... Faultline! Crap crap I never finished my meeting with them! I blurted out a hurried "sorry" before Newter laughed, "what? you gave me more answers about Case 53s than anyone ever has before! Not your fault the Triumvirate decided to confirm the stuff you were saying. I've had to knock you out 3 times now cus you were screaming from the pain but that portal move was fucking awesome! Someone posted a video on PHO!"
Faultline chided him "Newter...", and I moved to dismiss the complaint with a "nah it's ok" but I only got halfway through the words before my ribs made me wince from moving my arm.
"I am not sure moving too fast is a particularly good idea for you right now", Gregor said with his oddly calming voice, as I moved, this time much slower, out of my bed to at least lean up a bit. Having other people in my private area was definitely anxiety inducing but right now I was too tired for that to matter so much. Even ignoring my injured state, though, I could feel the dysphoria piling up again for a bit - at least I didn't have any goddamn facial hair to shave anymore. Labyrinth seemed to be whispering to Faultline as well - if I had to guess, I'd say going in a pocket dimension had shut off her power and she could actually interact easier - I was extremely happy for her.
Coil's tower that I was hooked into must have had good signal, because Newter was busy examining his phone."Wow, the PRT just declared you a 'threat to national security' and 'capture on sight'. We sure pissed them off with our little chat, hah! 'leak of classified information' indeed," he exclaimed.
"Now you're at least up and somewhat mobile," Faultline interrupted, "Perhaps we should discuss what to do next? We do need to leave at some point, after all, amongst other things."
I reached for my laptop, with several winces in the process, and talked back "Yep. There are so many things to do. I am ok with you guys being here but I also need my private space eventually. Though you yourself might need a pocket dimension after this because there is zero way the Thinker I told you about will let you survive if you stay in base-level Earth Bet. Fun Cauldron knowledge problems, heh? But maybe we should get some food to eat first or something, 'cus I'm starved."
On saying that I (again slowly) hauled myself over to my little pastie and miscellaneous food storage area and nabbed one of the delicious pieces of edibleness in front of me. After devouring it in about 3 minutes in front of an expectant Faultline, I continued... "So I also should tell you all about the detailed case 53 and cauldron and powers stuff as well right? I really need to tell
some people. As for leaving, I can open portals pretty easy and my precog blockers work through my own portals so that won't be an issue to be honest."
"Actually, if you have precognition blockers, I'd like to know why the Triumvirate still attacked the Palanquin?", Faultline asked.
"Well, uhh, I only turned the precognition blockers on a few minutes before we met. If I guessed, one of Contessa's - that's the Thinker - Paths was already set to intercept and the disruption my tech caused probably made her send the Triumvirate.", I replied. That was my working hypothesis because I knew that there were fundamental randomness computation limits I had far exceeded even for shards.
"So it shouldn't be a problem in future, then," Faultline half-stated, half asked. "That means we can go outside sooner rather than later."
A thought popped into my head. "On that note, I should make some more of those. I think it's only fair I give you some after all the shit you just had to deal with," and with that I set my CPU constructor to building more, and opened my laptop and went to login, before Faultline verbally poked me again from my activities with an "ahem," and I responded with an "ah shit sorry, where'd you want me to open a portal to?"
"My teammates need access to a toilet," she reminded me, as I sheepishly replied "Yeah. I kinda need that too. Um, I have some good locations in random places without security cameras? I'll put the portal outside the toilets, I usually just dump myself in the stalls but I have no way to tell when you are done," and with a thought I opened a portal to that one random building in Mexico, and Faultline's Crew all hurried out pretty fast after that. Then I hid in a stall in one of my other prime areas before coming back, cleaning my hands, and continuing onto my laptop with PHO. I should probably see what was up with that thread and the press conference. From what I heard the PRT were doing their PR bullshit, so it was time to put a little of my own thoughts and information out there. While I'd love to just expose Cauldron directly, I really couldn't do that. After all my understanding was that right now that would lead to the end of the world.
I sat back and read the thread so far. Honestly, the detective work by people on there was pretty neat, it's amazing how much you can deduce once you start looking at motivations. Watching the press conference though, gahhh, it reminded me of all the reasons I hated advertising and other kinds of manipulative bullshit. Like seriously, how the fuck did they manage to spin my shitty interactions with the PRT so hard!?. Glenn Chambers was on my damn shitlist right now.
Apparently, I'd made a grumbly noise, because Newter just went "Hah! You looked at what's going on?", to which I replied with a shrug and a "yeah, honestly I'm a bit surprised at how much reaction I've had already, I've not really done that much. And their spin on the Armsmaster thing is total bullshit! Smashing into my place was both rude of him and extremely unpleasant, it was literally the only place I had on this shitty planet". I folded my arms in a huff at being reminded of that, but winced as pain jolted through my ribs again. This sucked.
"So I guess I should tell you the other stuff, the details of everything, right? Like before we had to do an impromptu escape from Eidolon and Alexandria? And before I get distracted by PHO again in about 30 seconds," I prompted Faultline.
"I think we'd appreciate that. We've come this far already, and it's too late to turn back now, " she replied, in her exceptionally professional demeanor.
"Well, this is where I'd recommend M/S protocols, because this is where I'm not sure what's going to stick in each of your memories. If I directly
show you, I think it might be able to stick, but I'm not entirely sure and I'm going to have to make a workaround". In response to this they each muttered a few codes to each other.
"So, first things first, I should discuss the origins of parahumans. Parahuman powers are alive. Parahuman powers exist in alternate universes, like Aleph. Near uncountable numbers of them, in fact. These are called 'shards' - though Cauldron calls them agents and Bonesaw calls them passengers. They are continent-to-moon-sized and often exist in multiple universes that are continuously interacting as one organic-metallic organism
thingy. Kinda eldritch bio-computers I guess."
Good so far. No-one was looking particularly dazed, though they did look pretty shocked. "This sounds like Passenger Theory, which is a fringe theory that's mostly been dismissed," Faultline stated, to which I replied, "well, a big part of that is down to Cauldron, but also down to the fact that the vast majority of shards are subsapient. However, specialised powers with no consistent mechanism that actively respond (if poorly) to the needs of the user reeks of some form of rudimentary intelligence. But of course, I'm not going to just tell you this without proof. If one of you could grab that cable from the reactor I'd appreciate it," I said, gesturing to the fusion reactor and it's bulky cable. Gregor was nice enough to pull it over, and I promptly pulled up my trousers and plugged it into my leg, to which Faultline gave me an expression of clear discomfort. "What? How'd you think I made portals without any external tech? God this world is so prejudiced against body modification, urgh. Sorry, ranting, I know why it is, it just makes me upset."
"Apologies, trans_morphic, I'm just not used to people being so comfortable with it. Also, what did you say about
Bonesaw knowing about this? More importantly, how do you know that she knows?", Faultline asked incredulously, to which I replied, "Well, same way I know all the other stuff I do. I highly doubt you'd believe me if I told you. I'll just say I 'read it somewhere' and leave the rest to your imagination, if that's ok?", I rushed ahead, "So, Faultline, do you want to see your power? I'm going to be making a portal quite far up from the Earth in case it has automated defenses or something," she waved me with assent, and I simply pushed through the coordinates I'd scanned almost a day ago...
Before remembering that we needed to stop the air escaping. "Hey guys, I realized I forgot something, we need a vacuum chamber. So we don't all suffocate. Which would definitely be bad." It took only a couple minutes of looking, though, and I found a shop that sold thick glass balls as ornaments, which would do the trick, and a couple more minutes for an unmasked Faultline to grab one for us. "Thanks," I told her, "now we can see your power!"
With that, I pushed for a small portal - about 20cm in diameter, that fit inside the ball with the primed target location a couple hundred miles above a barren Earth. And what was on it was... It was surprisingly beautiful. Fractalline shapes of extreme complexity crawled across the planet, covering almost all of Europe and Africa. Brown with glowing regions pulsating across the vast organism, cracked mountains and tendrils sprawling, and a constant area of high activity around a nexus point somewhere near Italy that I presumed was the other end of Faultline's Corona Pollentia. Everyone's eyes were wide at this... awesome thing that granted Faultline a tiny fraction of it's power, even despite Faultline's attempts to remain composed she actually gasped. Newter's response was a more immediate "Holy. Fucking. Shit", and I was entirely inclined to agree with him. I mean, I understood the idea of this conceptually, but actually seeing it was... something else. The fact Faultline and Labyrinth weren't completely out of it from memory loss made me think something fishy was going on though. Perhaps my antiprecog/anticlairvoyant tech was interfering, or just the fact of seeing an actual shard essentially did the equivalent of making the system throw it's hands up in frustration.
We all took a moment to appreciate the magnificence of a shard, but we did need to move on, and Gregor took the initiative. "So, what is so world ending about this admittedly shocking and theory-overturning phenomenon?"
"Well, these shards want to collect data and have almost no creativity. That's why they grant powers - experimentation. But the concerning thing is less the shards and more what their hive organism is. While most parahumans have their memory wiped of it (and are essentially unable to remember it), all parahumans experience a vision when they trigger - two vast worm-like beings agreeing on a destination, then spiraling and shedding off millions of pieces, one of which eventually collides with them. The vast worm creatures across millions of dimensions are generally termed 'Entities', and they are not friendly to any world they visit. At least the ones here aren't. I mean they have this stupid thing called the Cycle where they make their host world creatures fight each other for 300 years in the most atrociously inefficient and unethical attempt to solve entropy I've ever heard of, and then explode every possible variation (10 to the 80th power or so) of the planet to move on to the next. Omnicidal hegemonizing multiversal swarms are just the worst," I laughed awkwardly as the constant dread of being on this world was brought to the forefront of my mind, "Yeah..."
"Well that is absolutely fucking horrifying," was Labyrinth's response, to gritted nods from the rest of the Crew. She hadn't said much so far but apparently Elle was far more blunt than I ever expected when her power wasn't interfering. Which was fine, just oddly amusing to me.
"So Cauldron's leader, with the help of Contessa and her Path to Victory shard from a third entity that made the 'Thinking' entity crash via distraction, shanked the Thinker entity before it could fix itself from that crash. That happened before the Thinker entity had properly configured her shards for humans and the network that provided that information was essentially destroyed in the process too. This means that the shards from that are running out of energy", I continued. Faultline interrupted me, "I am going to guess and say that Cauldron was founded to kill the other entity and lost all concept of ethics and common sense in the process?", and I gave a "yeah, basically" in response.
Newter thought a bit, then said "I think, then, I understand why we're like, well, this", as he gestured to himself and Gregor, to which I said, "Yeah, it's pretty much a configuration error with your powers (and multi attachment and other weird stuff). The memory wipe and, you know, using you as experimental subjects was all Cauldron's doing, though - they were testing power granting vials of different mixes, basically, and in fact something like 80% of their earliest subjects died in the process. There's actually a shitton of case 53s that are locked in their labs right now because they deter the 'Warrior' entity, which I'm sure you've guessed is Scion, since to him you're wearing his partner's corpse. Which, like, good because fuck him and his entire shitty omnicidal cycle, even if it's broken by the death of his partner and he's just eventually going to snap and kill everyone instead of being depressed and trying to cope with heroism."
"The other entity is Scion. That's...", Faultline chimed in, her brow furrowed, and Newter looked absolutely pissed and almost yelled, "Holy shit did you say thousands of Case 53s being locked up and used as test subjects!?"
"Yeah, it's... not good. At all. To either of those points. And it's not like if I broke them out I'd have anywhere to put them either, which is seriously unfortunate or I'd do it as soon as I had some kind of counter to Cauldron's many, many powerful capes. I'm pretty fucking furious about it as well though my attention is distracted by like a million different things because this world is an absolute hellscape, and trying to help people fix it is tough as fuck. I just want to curl up and cry if I think too hard about it, um, yeah."
"It is clear that you are at least trying, which is better than most of the PRT manages", Gregor stated, while I nervously fidgeted, "though I suggest you try and be less reckless sometimes."
"I am not reckless! At least... mostly", was my futile objection, "actually, I just remembered about the whole mutual unmasking thing and with me knowing basically all the civilian identities of capes in the bay I should do it. Not that I have much of a civilian identity anyway...", I said as I pulled off my cheapo mask, gently avoiding making my ribs hurt more, "I'm Zychi".
I was pretty happy right now even despite the horrific status of Bet and the whole of this bit of the multiverse. I actually... got to talk to people properly, which, well, I felt warm happiness fill my chest, a hole from lack of socialisation being filled. No hugs or anything but just talking was enough for me right now, even despite my injured body, and I got to do my trademark thing of oversharing way too much shit with people!
Newter was pacing, and Gregor was still looking at the portal to Faultline's power, deep in thought. Presumably about the whole multiversal apocalypse thing and horrible experimentation. "Actually I just remembered - Cauldron does some brainwashing stuff for hire, it's called Nemesis, and they do other stuff as well. Honestly going into the details of Cauldron's primary operations beyond what I've said probably isn't useful, though I can elaborate on a couple of them if you really want?" I asked, for which I got some expressions of negation while I did my awkward fidgeting.
"I think... I think we have what we came for," Newter told me. Some unspoken communication between the four of them seemed to occur, and they all nodded - and that discussion was over and done with as they talked about whether or not to ask for a pocket dimension and some of their future plans (presumably, nothing sensitive). I moved to remove the power plug from my leg and shut off the reactor, nearly cried in pain again before Gregor helped me with it.
It was so weird to have people actually helping me with things, I thought to myself, as I carefully looked back at the thread. I wanted to at least say what I had been doing and that I was alive even if somewhat injured - I asked Faultline if it was OK for me to confirm people's guesses at our topic of discussion, and she essentially stated that since people basically already knew, it was alright.
So I went on PHO to reply to both the Palanquin thread, and to totally-not-Vista's private message...
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♦ Topic: Triumvirate Attack Palanquin
In: Boards ► Locations ► USA ► Brockton Bay ► Recent Events
Col_Xy (Original Poster)
Posted On Mar 8th 2011:
So it seems someone at the Palanquin seriously pissed off the Triumvirate, I actually caught them on video despite them seeming to try and avoid attention (I live near the area). See
here for the video.
This is pretty unusual. It's fairly common knowledge in Brockton that Faultline's Crew (cape mercenaries with two case 53s) stay at the Palanquin when not on any jobs, but they don't tend to do anything which would attract the level of attention implied by the presence of the
Triumvirate.
(Showing page 35 of 35)
►Acree
Replied On Mar 9th 2011:
I'm still pissed that they didn't deal with the goddamned Nazis. Or the rage dragon. I mean the Triumvirate are pretty clearly heroes, but sometimes I just don't understand priorities.
►Miraclemic
Replied On Mar 9th 2011:
I have to admit the press conference on @ trans_morphic was a bit sketchy though. It just felt a bit... I don't know, off, with the dismissal of the Case 53 thing? I'm not sure, I mean the PRT is full of weird PR stuff anyway.
I wonder if they'll respond to this whole thing, though. If they're still around.
►trans_morphic (Verified Cape)
Replied On Mar 9th 2011:
Hello! I'm alive! Barely!
If you're curious, I can confirm that I was discussing the origins of case 53s and the nature of powers with Faultline's Crew. I needed to talk to someone about it really pretty badly, to be honest, I hate keeping things like this to myself, and I have been having severe issues with loneliness and isolation anyway.
The problem is the stuff about the nature of powers at least and some about Case 53s is the same sort of information that leads to multiversal annihilation of all Earth variations if it becomes common knowledge.
At least for now, but hopefully I'll be able to do stuff that means I can share it. Of course, right now I'm still recovering from cracked ribs and having a whole chunk of skull stripped off the back of my heads from my portals trying to avoid the triumvirate kidnapping me. Good fun times!
I'm actually still with Faultline's Crew at the moment, I don't like having people in my pocket dimension but they've been accommodating of me through this whole mess and seem pretty chill.
I can talk to other C53s about it as well, but unfortunately @ Weld I really can't trust the PRT with this information so easily. The PRT... are associated with the reason Case 53s exist, but most people in it are unaware. I'll leave it at that for now. And if you do want to discuss it, you'll want to base your actions on something that blocks precognition and other thinkers beforehand. I actually have some devices that do true precog and observation blocking. Just... be careful.
On another note, that press conference was total bullshit. Armsmaster primarily went into my home (that is also my lab because I didn't have anywhere else!) in an attempt to arrest me on suspicion of being a biotinker with a tendency towards being S-class or something like that... which actually isn't wrong but you can't arrest people based on just potential threat. Basically said "come with me or I will arrest you".
I have enough issues with personal space that I panicked and made a pocket dimension when I noticed the extra patrols around and got the fuck out just before Armsmaster could grab me. Urgh.
- nya~
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 33, 34, 35
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♦ Topic: Are you ok?
In: Boards ► Private Messages ► Miss_Warper
Miss_Warper (Original Poster)
Posted On Mar 9th 2011:
I've been reading the thread about the thing with the Triumvirate. If you were really talking about Case 53s... I'm friends with several and if you actually know the origins of Case 53s they'd really appreciate knowing.
Please try and stay safe. I really hope you're still OK, the stuff you did against the Empire was pretty badass too, but I... really don't know what you did to piss off the Triumvirate so bad if you were talking about the case 53 thing.
(Showing page 1 of 1)
►trans_morphic (Verified Cape)
Replied On Mar 9th 2011:
I'm alive, injured, but ok. And much happier emotionally speaking from talking to Faultline's Crew.
As for C53 info, I did mention stuff in the thread and I'd be happy to tell them, but it's a delicate and extremely dangerous situation and generally fraught with disgustingly high-powered thinkers. One of whom is so powerful you cannot win, and I mean mathematically a 0% chance of winning, without anti-precognition measures.
Right now it is a more dangerous endeavor to investigate yourself than any possible fight you could get into and well beyond the level at which things like the Unwritten Rules apply, though actually at the moment my anti-precognition and anti-observation technology covers most of Brockton Bay still.
I mean I tried to share my information on this and nearly got taken by the Triumvirate. Just... be careful. And I don't mean because you're young, this is horrifically dangerous for literally everyone, I just am unlucky enough to be the one with the dangerous information already. If I tell you and the anti-precog defenses get knocked out or something you will probably be killed for just knowing.
Honestly I'm glad the Empire hasn't gotten me yet (and I appreciated the reminder about Gesellschaft), and I do intend to do more stuff to them as well, I haven't so far because I am, to be frank, a dysfunctional mess.
- nya~
End of Page. 1
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Making sure people knew I was OK made me feel even better. And I suspected my reply was going to cause absolute chaos at this rate... it would not take much for the press to realise some of the implications. In a world like Bet where secrets and conspiracies and manipulation was absolutely rampant, total honesty where possible like this would be a complete shock to the system, which I was more than fine with.
God, I thought,
Accord must hate me.
While thinking on this, Faultline's Crew had come to a decision. They wanted a pocket dimension, which I could absolutely do, though they thought they should
pay for one. I mean I get that they were mercenaries, but this mess was my fault for not doing the precog blockers in time. Despite reminding them of this fact, Faultline did convince me to take $500 for it along with the $2000 she owed for this meeting about Case 53s. A couple hours and tinker specialty shifts later, and I had built four more of those pocket dimension access guns - like Dinah's - using shard blackbox bullshit and a bit of charging using my reactor. Then I adjusted the Pocket Dimension Generator to make a variable number of pocket dimension keys, did one of those trips to Canada like I did for Dinah's to actually make the pocket dimension, and demonstrated them to all of Faultline's Crew.
Their portals and dimension came out with a middling turquoise, as per their request, and Newter cracked into a wry grin once he started messing with them, after I demonstrated the various modes and size controls to all four of them. I suspected Faultline's Crew would get fantastic use out of those things.
And with minimal fanfare and a tinge of longing for further conversation, I let them get on their way as they vanished into their own pocket dimension, with one half of my existing precognition blockers donated to them, with a slow wave of my hand from my portal that I did to avoid making my chest sore. Right now, though, I had goals, ideas, and so many things I wanted to do.
I could rip holes in reality to shards directly, now, but there was still little I could do with that. However, I finally had the technology to manipulate genetic code and manufacture artificial protein structures - in the form of my enhanced manufacturing process, which could make chips that did almost anything with the right embedding of various elements and structures in electronic substrate. I had technology to prevent Cauldron interference (mostly) and to disrupt any other observational thinkers, and I had multiversal access tech that I was already thinking of using for automated resource gathering.
I was ready.
Shifting my specialty towards genetic encoding, compute-assisted protein manufacture, and biochemical slurries, I let the ideas flood into my brain. That occasional urge to cackle was feeling extremely strong right now. I had so, so many ideas, wondrous biotechnology to share, and I was finally,
finally getting to a point where I could get
real things done on that front. The PRT were not going to like what happened soon, I knew that much, but I also at this moment gave zero fucks about their opinion and so with great enthusiasm I opened my CPU blueprint software and
tinkered like I had never before.
I was ready, but Earth Bet was most certainly not, and that just made it better.
[end of chapter - nyaa~]
And so, it is the end of one arc and the beginning of a new one yet again. It's time for acceleration and escalation and beautiful trans chaos nya.
Vista is getting more cynical with the PRT and Protectorate, and she's not the only one, and far more other things are also going to happen soon. I am very excited. But we are still just getting started.
