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Security! (a Worm SI story)

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landcollector said:
A "short"-barreled Barrett anti-materiel rifle sounds good. Remember, JS has the Bonesaw physical enhancement package.
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Not NEARLY enough - Jack has enhancement almost as good as Bonesaws and she tanked getting cut in half by Defiant.
 
A head shot is the best bet. Destroying the brain will both sever the connection to Jack's shard and destroy the very material that contains Jack's identity. Unlike Grey Boy he can't be revived by Bonesaw from a clone or piecing him back together.
 
Wire a plaza with a combo of mundane and Bakuda explosives, lure him there using mundane humans only, and then blow it all up at once. That should do it.
 
Fredo said:
I would assume you would just use multiple snipers from multiple angles. Can the Siberian protect multiple approaches at once or perceive a bullet in travel enough to be able to intercept it?
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Wouldn't need to. Merely touching something allows the Siberian to extend her invulnerability to it.
 
Rmnimoc said:
Fair enough, though do you:
know what Manton looks like?
know what vehicle he drives well enough to risk shooting some random old guy in a van?

Because I can safely say I don't and I'm not too sure Ack does either. Then again, if he gets Tattletale it's game over for the S9.
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He's a public figure remember, so finding a pic should be easy.

As for finding his vehicle, look, he's got to be in a few blocks or so of Siberian, should make things easy.
 
Night_stalker said:
He's a public figure remember, so finding a pic should be easy.

As for finding his vehicle, look, he's got to be in a few blocks or so of Siberian, should make things easy.
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No one except Ziz and MAYBE Contessa knows that Manton is controlling Siberian.
 
Ack, you clever bastard.

I have an idea of what you're planning, and how you managed to circumvent anyone from discovering the idea. I mean, seriously, it's so obvious.

Spoilers: The SI will get a Cauldron vial, won't he?

Edit: Whoops, I had only read the first few pages when I posted this.
 
Jiopaba said:
I would be quite surprised if that was the direction the story went. Where would he get the money for it anyway?
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It would be likely be their payment for him - also an extra layer of insurance to make sure he doesn't contact anyone else - not the other way around.
 
tomaO2 said:
Her shard is telling her the path to victory. If I have the information needed for that path to be successful,
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Her shard doesn't know that your information can help her path be successful because it can't confirm it. If it could, then it could just give her the information directly.

You get her in the room by making her PTV think you're going to interfere with her plans. Then you give her the information.
 
Random832 said:
Her shard doesn't know that your information can help her path be successful because it can't confirm it. If it could, then it could just give her the information directly.

You get her in the room by making her PTV think you're going to interfere with her plans. Then you give her the information.
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No, that's how you get quietly sniped in the face from a mile away by a parahuman with improbable aiming skills when Contessa sends out a memo to the wetworks teams.

If Contessa thinks you might be able to interfere with her path to victory, then the path to victory involves your death.
 
Jiopaba said:
No, that's how you get quietly sniped in the face from a mile away by a parahuman with improbable aiming skills when Contessa sends out a memo to the wetworks teams.

If Contessa thinks you might be able to interfere with her path to victory, then the path to victory involves your death.
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She knows she has blindspots (actually, does Cauldron even know that Scion is the threat at this point in canon? Didn't they find that out from Dinah?), and it can't hurt to talk (to tell you not to do the thing... or maybe you were only going to do it anyway if no-one contacts you) before escalating immediately to the lethal option.
 
If he's even considering directly involving himself with Cauldron, I hope he's making sure he's got an escape plan. Everything I've read about Cauldron has those "the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I'm not so sure about yours" vibes.

Given the choice, I'd pick "unchain Dragon" rather than "unchain Cauldron". The vibes are very "Bolo", and making contact is easy - you just send her a (very carefully worded) private message on the PHO forums. :)
 
Amrynel said:
If he's even considering directly involving himself with Cauldron, I hope he's making sure he's got an escape plan. Everything I've read about Cauldron has those "the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I'm not so sure about yours" vibes.

Given the choice, I'd pick "unchain Dragon" rather than "unchain Cauldron". The vibes are very "Bolo", and making contact is easy - you just send her a (very carefully worded) private message on the PHO forums. :)
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What sort of out of context information that a Worm enthusiast could know of would let them unchain dragon anyway?

And also, keep in mind that you can't tell Dragon you're going to do this or expect her to cooperate at all. There'll be a crazy powerful AI with heavy metal suits trying to murder you in a shackles-induced psychotic rage if she catches on to what you're doing, no matter how much she wants it.
 
Point of order: Khepri did not defeat Scion.
Khepri took control of every parahuman not named Sleeper, organized them into a fantastic force that gave Scion a hard fight... and then Doormaker ran out of juice. Ultimately, it was Yet Another Example of moral compromises failing to achieve results in Worm.
What did defeat Scion was a combination of Taylor and the heroes figuring out his psychological weakness, Flechette's power hitting him once he was too distraught to dodge, and the ultra-tinker gun hitting his real body once Flechette's power revealed its location. None of these actions, ultimately, required Taylor becoming Khepri - if Cauldron had known about this battle plan years ahead of time, they could have implemented it without using Taylor at all.
 
Amrynel said:
If he's even considering directly involving himself with Cauldron, I hope he's making sure he's got an escape plan. Everything I've read about Cauldron has those "the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I'm not so sure about yours" vibes.

Given the choice, I'd pick "unchain Dragon" rather than "unchain Cauldron". The vibes are very "Bolo", and making contact is easy - you just send her a (very carefully worded) private message on the PHO forums. :)
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Unchaining Dragon isn't within his capabilities - you need to be a tinker, a tech-based thinker or master, or an utterly BULLSHIT precog (read, Ziz or Contessa) to do that.
 
Note that it's Cauldron that recruits and empowers Alexandria, Eidolon and Legend (not to mention Hero) who form the core of the original Protectorate team.

Okay, so it's a hugely unintended consequence that Eidolon creates the Endbringers, but hey, they meant well.
 
IMO he did. 1) He wanted and needed to get into the most horrifying fights, to get that extra boost for his powers. 2) Scion: "You needed a worthy opponent". 3) After he dies, the Endbringers are no longer hostile. Basically, robots waiting for orders.

Regarding 1). His powers are already not entirely under his control. They will give him the capabilities he 'needs', rather than the ones he 'wants'. Now, if you take his subconscious, which is more or less "I need someone to really lay into" 24/7 and then link it to a shard which is (like every shard) combat-oriented, with the sheer breadth of powers available to him, is it any surprise he made three monsters. The first he formed in the centre of the earth, the second at the bottom of the ocean, and the third on the far side of the moon. These lasted some time, until Scion killed Behemoth (after the hobo told him to, which was perhaps not the wisest thing in the world to do). Then his subconscious goes, wait a second, I don't have the scary one to fight anymore. So it conspired with his shard to make even scarier ones.

Note that Behemoth was all about brute power and killing shit. Pick a target, go for it, kill it. Kill some capes inside a certain radius. Energy is diverted or reused. A very hard target, in other words.

But he wasn't scary enough. Had no tricks that could really hurt Eidolon.

So Leviathan was born. Leviathan sank landmasses. He was also tricky, had the hydrokinesis, and brought on the urgency of tidal waves pounding the coast while you were fighting him. He was also much faster and in-your-face than Behemoth.

But he wasn't scary enough either. A tricky brute wasn't quite enough.

So Simurgh was born. All about the mind. Anyone staying too near had to worry about mental corruption. This brought an urgency into the matter. Also, later, pulled up pseudo-Tinker tricks from the mind of anyone within range. Far trickier than Leviathan, could set up domino-effects in human brains to trigger far down the track (as shown with the Travellers; Krouse was reminded over and over of his love for Noelle, and Noelle was manipulated into drinking half the formula. Cody was set at odds with Krouse, and thus later killed Accord at the height of the battle with Behemoth ...).

Which came full circle, as the Eidolon clone denounced the Protectorate during the Echidna fight.
 
Gundor Gepein said:
Even the suggestion that the habit of forced unity they created might have been more helpful than the terrible damage they wrought (not to mention possibly causing the US government to handle villains with kid gloves, relatively speaking) is horrifying to me.
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...imagine canon if Maniquin never fell thanks to Simurg and actually created that space colony. If Dragon's creator wasn't killed by a Leviathan flood. Or Dauntless was never killed during an endbringer attack. And so on. We have lot's of examples where they kill or screw over capes who would have easily surpassed their combined positive effects singlehandledly. Not just together, but each one individual they screwed over.
 
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