Why did he even tell her he had powers in the first chapter that's extremely stupid you don't even know them .Well I'm out off here then I hate things that are too illogical
Starfinder (Worm/Starfinder RPG)
- Thread starter Bowlerhat Guy
- Start date
1. He needs her help to steal funds for his tinkertech.
2. He can trust her because they're family. Sophia may be fucked up in the head but she's loyal.
3. She also can watch his back against the gangs. He has back up that he can rely on.
4. She may be disrespectful and bratty attitude but in the end she still defers to his plans. He's kinda replaced Emma as Sophia's pack leader.
5. He's not such a bastard that he won't try to save a child like Sophia as much as he can. Just by being her family, friend, partner in vigilante, he's chipping away at her solo predator mental block.
I'm not saying he shouldn't tell her . He literally just met her he should have waited for a while to build trust before or Confirm if she had her powers first before he told her not when they see each other for the first time
I think she being twelve and her psychological state which the MC had a pretty good idea was what made him open up. Plus him being a tinker he needs help starting up, also Sophia has more experience being a cape than him and as a native brocktonite it would make sense to have her help.
That's not a fake Thinker ability, that's an actual Thinker ability. "Thinker" doesn't just cover "I pull the answer to this question from nowhere".
Is this actually true? In canon there's evidence that Sophia's aggression was affected by her shard (far more than many capes). At the age of 13, she hasn't had her powers for that long and if her hobby is fighting, she hasn't had that hobby for very long.
I thought it was brilliant move to tell her since at that time he was injured by the family abuser. Had he stayed silent she would have thought him weak and maybe not respect him. Remember first impressions last and Sophia is stubborn and hard to change her mind. By confessing he changed his status in her eyes from victim to cape/partner at their first meeting. Sophia probably got the impression that he is honest with her and she can trust him. So she's now inclined to listen to him.
- Location
- Not here. Maybe on SB.
And Vista joins before Clock. Because she mentioned, post-Levi, that she's most experienced member. That's unclear if she joined before or after Gallant, tho.
Ok i re read all because i forgot all the Millitia don't like MC thing it rube me as extrange, now i think Militia actualy think Starfinder is the bad influence and enabler to Shadow Stalker, and/or is using her for a revange or something. I'm pretty sure the PRT don't know they are cousings and Stalker has always been a time bomb but she don't like to talk enoght to have a very good profile, but Starfinder? First encounter he have "torture technology", and don't give a damn about giving it to his new parthner, he is the more talkative of the two even is Stalker have been out solo for more time, and have said before he don't even considere Nazies as human beings.
Plus his "Thinker rating" it seams he is taking adventage of a violent girl for his own agenda. Then he said Vista need a weapon...
Militia must think he is basicaly making child soldiers (giving them weapons more likely but that can be to close for Hanna)
Plus his "Thinker rating" it seams he is taking adventage of a violent girl for his own agenda. Then he said Vista need a weapon...
Militia must think he is basicaly making child soldiers (giving them weapons more likely but that can be to close for Hanna)
Last edited:
JackFinder by deadlyham
I need to dust off my tablet and make an angry ink blot Shadow Stalker. Anyhow... OMAKE! I've been wanting to write something for this story for a while. So here it is.
"AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" wailed a couple who were regretting taking a weekend at their country vacation home.
Jack rolled his eyes. "Oh stop being so melodramatic. I have barely begun cutting you. We haven't even gotten to any of the games yet." Mannequin bursts into the cabin waving his limbs in a completely inhuman way like a panicking jellyfish. "Yes, Alan, what has you so excited?" Mannequin wiggles one of his arms towards the sky. Jack's eyes open in shock and he runs towards his invincible tigress and tiny surgeon, "Siberian, protect us NOW!"
Moments later several kilotons of rocket propelled explosives bombarded the Slaughter House Nine's location, obliterating the cabin, their RV, trailer, all of their supplies, and any of the non-brute members of the Nine that were too close to the explosions.
*** SEVERAL DAYS LATER ***
"Come on Uncle Jack, we need to pack everything away safely or it will get all blown away." Riley pleaded in the cutest manner possible, which was ruined because she look just as disheveled and worn down as everyone else. Jack gazed pitifully at the hastily made makeshift bunker dug by Crawler. The first missile strike caught them completely by surprise, and most of them would have died if Mannequin's many sensors hadn't noticed the salvo of missiles falling on them. Still, they lost all of their belongings along with Shatterbird and Chuckles. On the second evening, another missile salvo killed Hatchet Face and Winter, who didn't make it to the Siberian in time.
It wasn't the first time someone tried to launch missiles at the Nine, but Jack had never suffered that scale of attack by surprise before. Mannequin discovered the military drones observing them and Jack used his infinitely long blades to down them all, which should have solved the issue, but missile strikes kept coming. The daily bombardment came at any time of the day and were becoming more accurate.
The remaining Slaughterhouse Nine elected to be more cautions, never straying far from the Siberian's invulnerability and Mannequins early warning radar. The missile strikes were becoming far more accurate. Crawler initially enjoyed the surprise, but soon became bored of regular explosions.
Jack knew the situation was untenable. They were being watched, and Jack had no idea how to shake their watcher. He initially thought it was the drones that Mannequin discovered, but after destroying all of the drones, they were still being bombarded daily. The pressure was building, they couldn't find anymore victims for relief, since any direction they went was deserted.
Riley tried to get cozy in their little bunker. It wasn't small. It was cozy. And it needed to be like those so that the Siberian could make it invincible for all of them (minus Crawler). She'd need to figure out a way to make some sort of portable bunker so that Siberian could easily make them and all their stuff invulnerable at a moments notice. Maybe some sort of big marsupial pouch but made out of something horrifying like human wombs. She opened her laptop and rejoiced that she had an internet connection. She decided to distract herself with some mindless internet browsing when she came across a top thread on PHO. "Uncle Jack, I think you should look at this."
Welcome to the Parahumans Online message boards.
You are currently logged in, CutyDoc
You are viewing:
• Threads you have replied to
• AND Threads that have new replies
• OR private message conversations with new replies
• Thread OP is displayed.
• Ten posts per page
• Last ten messages in private message history.
• Threads and private messages are ordered chronologically.
♦ Topic: The Exact Location of Jack Slash, (Updated Once a Day)
In: Boards ► News ► Events ►America
JackFinder (Original Poster)
Posted On Mar 19th 2010:
This is real and is what the title says.
36.1481215,-95.4604932
(Showing page 1 of 16)
►Antigone
Replied On Mar 19th 2010:
1st post. Also fake.
►Chrome
Replied On Mar 19th 2010:
If this is a joke post, it's not funny. It's honestly more boring than anything.
►JackFinder (Original Poster)
Replied On Mar 20th 2010:
36.1502307,-98.7546118
►Iblis
Replied On Mar 20th 2010:
Someone ban this trash. Just ignore this.
►TRJ
Replied On Mar 20th 2010:
Yeah, but what if it's the real deal? LOL nah, it would be too easy otherwise. Good things can't happen.
►NeeNeeNee
Replied On Mar 21st 2010:
That is like the middle of nowhere. If there is no way to confirm this. Post pics or GTFO.
►JackFinder (Original Poster)
Replied On Mar 21st 2010:
May 21: 36.4340112,-95.0409768
►JackFinder (Original Poster)
Replied On Mar 22nd 2010:
36.4292057,-95.0361503
►JackFinder (Original Poster)
Replied On Mar 23rd 2010:
36.4316599,-95.0503298
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 17, 18, 19
(Showing page 2 of 19)
►JackFinder (Original Poster)
Replied On Apr 3rd 2010:
36.4346499,-95.0416324
►JackFinder (Original Poster)
Replied On Apr 4th 2010:
38.3213268,-92.581415
►Dwayne Johnson
Replied On Apr 4th 2010:
Just got word that will shock the world - Land of the free...home of the brave DAMN PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!
►Mac's Dual Rocket Propelled Grenades
Replied On Apr 4th 2010:
What the hell are you talking about?
►Lolitup
Replied On Apr 5th 2010:
Holy shit check the news! This is for real.
►Xyloloup
Replied On Apr 5th 2010:
JackFinder, why are you just blasting this on PHO? You should be taking this to the protectorate.
►Groupies
Replied On Apr 5th 2010:
The guy only posts coordinates and hasn't responded to anyone else. I'm sure he has his reasons. Most people would be too afraid to step forward with this kind of information.
►Antigone
Replied On Apr 5th 2010:
The OP is clearly a Thinker, and if they Think that posting on PHO is the best way to get this information to the people who need it, then that says a lot about what they Think about the PRT. This way people can try and protect themselves and get the hell out of the Nine's path instead of being ignorant happy sheeple that the government wants.
►BigDaddyD
Replied On Apr 5th 2010:
How the heck does "The Rock" know this is real a full day before anyone else? Mods needs to give him an Guy In The Know tag.
►Coyote-C
Replied On Apr 5th 2010:
PHO proves once again it is a more reliable and speedy source of unaltered news. There are probably other crazy things being posted that are actually true.
End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4 ... 14, 15, 16
Jack floundered between seething and fury. Some dork posting in their mom's basement was trying to kill the Slaughter House Nine! "When I find this degenerate, I will tear them down in a way beyond anything anyone has ever witnessed."
Riley tugged at her hair and worried. "They posted just another update." Jack turned to stare at Mannequin, whose nod answers Jack's unasked question 'yes it's accurate'. Jack steps out and scans the horizon, noticing a small dot growing larger in the distance. "GOD FUCKING DAMN IT."
*********************************************
Omake Notes:
Winter was probable already dead by now, but many of the other members of the SH9 were probably around at this time. Jack Slash, Bonesaw, Siberian, Crawler, Mannequin, and Shatterbird were all members at this point. That's 6 of the 9. Hatchet Face and Chuckles could have been members then (so 8 of 9). I'm not sure about the last member, so I assume it was Winter, who lived longer than Crimson (both dead members before the Nine come to Brockton Bay in 2011). It could have been a random cape though.
The Protectorate would probably send a team of parahumans to intercept the SH9, but Star Finder is blasting Jack Slash's coordinates on a public forum, so anyone could take advantage of that knowledge. The military has plenty of rockets that has a range of hundreds of miles. If you know the general area the SH9 is in, then they can move rockets in place to strike as soon as a post is made. The missile launches are growing more accurate because once people confirmed that the information was accurate and reliable, strikes eventually are launched the moment PHO updates. The first strikes were independently confirmed, so Jack was found in the area near the coordinates but already moved from the exact location. I could go into a bunch of details of how the military would do this (evacuating the area, tinker cameras tough enough to resist Jack's long range slashes, smart missiles, more missiles in area, panic in area, etc), but that's too much for me.
The Dwayne Johnson (aka "The Rock") post is a reference to real life. The Rock learned that Osama Bin Laden was killed a day before most of the U.S. government (probably from a friend in the Navy Seals) and made a Twitter post about it that said the exact same thing. I just think it is funny that PHO posters are the first people to know about Jack Slash being tracked. It would be like "The Rock" tweeting 'woah! someone just tweeted Osama's location in Afghanistan!'.
"AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" wailed a couple who were regretting taking a weekend at their country vacation home.
Jack rolled his eyes. "Oh stop being so melodramatic. I have barely begun cutting you. We haven't even gotten to any of the games yet." Mannequin bursts into the cabin waving his limbs in a completely inhuman way like a panicking jellyfish. "Yes, Alan, what has you so excited?" Mannequin wiggles one of his arms towards the sky. Jack's eyes open in shock and he runs towards his invincible tigress and tiny surgeon, "Siberian, protect us NOW!"
Moments later several kilotons of rocket propelled explosives bombarded the Slaughter House Nine's location, obliterating the cabin, their RV, trailer, all of their supplies, and any of the non-brute members of the Nine that were too close to the explosions.
*** SEVERAL DAYS LATER ***
"Come on Uncle Jack, we need to pack everything away safely or it will get all blown away." Riley pleaded in the cutest manner possible, which was ruined because she look just as disheveled and worn down as everyone else. Jack gazed pitifully at the hastily made makeshift bunker dug by Crawler. The first missile strike caught them completely by surprise, and most of them would have died if Mannequin's many sensors hadn't noticed the salvo of missiles falling on them. Still, they lost all of their belongings along with Shatterbird and Chuckles. On the second evening, another missile salvo killed Hatchet Face and Winter, who didn't make it to the Siberian in time.
It wasn't the first time someone tried to launch missiles at the Nine, but Jack had never suffered that scale of attack by surprise before. Mannequin discovered the military drones observing them and Jack used his infinitely long blades to down them all, which should have solved the issue, but missile strikes kept coming. The daily bombardment came at any time of the day and were becoming more accurate.
The remaining Slaughterhouse Nine elected to be more cautions, never straying far from the Siberian's invulnerability and Mannequins early warning radar. The missile strikes were becoming far more accurate. Crawler initially enjoyed the surprise, but soon became bored of regular explosions.
Jack knew the situation was untenable. They were being watched, and Jack had no idea how to shake their watcher. He initially thought it was the drones that Mannequin discovered, but after destroying all of the drones, they were still being bombarded daily. The pressure was building, they couldn't find anymore victims for relief, since any direction they went was deserted.
Riley tried to get cozy in their little bunker. It wasn't small. It was cozy. And it needed to be like those so that the Siberian could make it invincible for all of them (minus Crawler). She'd need to figure out a way to make some sort of portable bunker so that Siberian could easily make them and all their stuff invulnerable at a moments notice. Maybe some sort of big marsupial pouch but made out of something horrifying like human wombs. She opened her laptop and rejoiced that she had an internet connection. She decided to distract herself with some mindless internet browsing when she came across a top thread on PHO. "Uncle Jack, I think you should look at this."
■
Welcome to the Parahumans Online message boards.
You are currently logged in, CutyDoc
You are viewing:
• Threads you have replied to
• AND Threads that have new replies
• OR private message conversations with new replies
• Thread OP is displayed.
• Ten posts per page
• Last ten messages in private message history.
• Threads and private messages are ordered chronologically.
■
♦ Topic: The Exact Location of Jack Slash, (Updated Once a Day)
In: Boards ► News ► Events ►America
JackFinder (Original Poster)
Posted On Mar 19th 2010:
This is real and is what the title says.
36.1481215,-95.4604932
(Showing page 1 of 16)
►Antigone
Replied On Mar 19th 2010:
1st post. Also fake.
►Chrome
Replied On Mar 19th 2010:
If this is a joke post, it's not funny. It's honestly more boring than anything.
►JackFinder (Original Poster)
Replied On Mar 20th 2010:
36.1502307,-98.7546118
►Iblis
Replied On Mar 20th 2010:
Someone ban this trash. Just ignore this.
►TRJ
Replied On Mar 20th 2010:
Yeah, but what if it's the real deal? LOL nah, it would be too easy otherwise. Good things can't happen.
►NeeNeeNee
Replied On Mar 21st 2010:
That is like the middle of nowhere. If there is no way to confirm this. Post pics or GTFO.
►JackFinder (Original Poster)
Replied On Mar 21st 2010:
May 21: 36.4340112,-95.0409768
►JackFinder (Original Poster)
Replied On Mar 22nd 2010:
36.4292057,-95.0361503
►JackFinder (Original Poster)
Replied On Mar 23rd 2010:
36.4316599,-95.0503298
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 17, 18, 19
(Showing page 2 of 19)
►JackFinder (Original Poster)
Replied On Apr 3rd 2010:
36.4346499,-95.0416324
►JackFinder (Original Poster)
Replied On Apr 4th 2010:
38.3213268,-92.581415
►Dwayne Johnson
Replied On Apr 4th 2010:
Just got word that will shock the world - Land of the free...home of the brave DAMN PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!
►Mac's Dual Rocket Propelled Grenades
Replied On Apr 4th 2010:
What the hell are you talking about?
►Lolitup
Replied On Apr 5th 2010:
Holy shit check the news! This is for real.
►Xyloloup
Replied On Apr 5th 2010:
JackFinder, why are you just blasting this on PHO? You should be taking this to the protectorate.
►Groupies
Replied On Apr 5th 2010:
The guy only posts coordinates and hasn't responded to anyone else. I'm sure he has his reasons. Most people would be too afraid to step forward with this kind of information.
►Antigone
Replied On Apr 5th 2010:
The OP is clearly a Thinker, and if they Think that posting on PHO is the best way to get this information to the people who need it, then that says a lot about what they Think about the PRT. This way people can try and protect themselves and get the hell out of the Nine's path instead of being ignorant happy sheeple that the government wants.
►BigDaddyD
Replied On Apr 5th 2010:
How the heck does "The Rock" know this is real a full day before anyone else? Mods needs to give him an Guy In The Know tag.
►Coyote-C
Replied On Apr 5th 2010:
PHO proves once again it is a more reliable and speedy source of unaltered news. There are probably other crazy things being posted that are actually true.
End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4 ... 14, 15, 16
■
Jack floundered between seething and fury. Some dork posting in their mom's basement was trying to kill the Slaughter House Nine! "When I find this degenerate, I will tear them down in a way beyond anything anyone has ever witnessed."
Riley tugged at her hair and worried. "They posted just another update." Jack turned to stare at Mannequin, whose nod answers Jack's unasked question 'yes it's accurate'. Jack steps out and scans the horizon, noticing a small dot growing larger in the distance. "GOD FUCKING DAMN IT."
*********************************************
Omake Notes:
Winter was probable already dead by now, but many of the other members of the SH9 were probably around at this time. Jack Slash, Bonesaw, Siberian, Crawler, Mannequin, and Shatterbird were all members at this point. That's 6 of the 9. Hatchet Face and Chuckles could have been members then (so 8 of 9). I'm not sure about the last member, so I assume it was Winter, who lived longer than Crimson (both dead members before the Nine come to Brockton Bay in 2011). It could have been a random cape though.
The Protectorate would probably send a team of parahumans to intercept the SH9, but Star Finder is blasting Jack Slash's coordinates on a public forum, so anyone could take advantage of that knowledge. The military has plenty of rockets that has a range of hundreds of miles. If you know the general area the SH9 is in, then they can move rockets in place to strike as soon as a post is made. The missile launches are growing more accurate because once people confirmed that the information was accurate and reliable, strikes eventually are launched the moment PHO updates. The first strikes were independently confirmed, so Jack was found in the area near the coordinates but already moved from the exact location. I could go into a bunch of details of how the military would do this (evacuating the area, tinker cameras tough enough to resist Jack's long range slashes, smart missiles, more missiles in area, panic in area, etc), but that's too much for me.
The Dwayne Johnson (aka "The Rock") post is a reference to real life. The Rock learned that Osama Bin Laden was killed a day before most of the U.S. government (probably from a friend in the Navy Seals) and made a Twitter post about it that said the exact same thing. I just think it is funny that PHO posters are the first people to know about Jack Slash being tracked. It would be like "The Rock" tweeting 'woah! someone just tweeted Osama's location in Afghanistan!'.
Last edited:
LOL This is what I will call the US from now on.
So I looked up a few coordinates, and they are in a reasonable distance of each other. Nice work on that.
Though the last one I quoted is on top of a baptist church, so it was random selections on the map that is funny.
- Location
- Norway
So on one hand the daily updates on the position of Jack is brilliant in a "fuck that murderhobo in particular" kind of way, though on the other I figure there is probably a bunch of villains and heroes now freaking out that this random thinker is going to start blasting the coordinates of their homes next.
- Location
- Brazil
Well, if the kind of tracking needed to find him was easy, what he is doing to Jack wouldn't be noteworthy.
- Location
- Elsewhere
Well you used to remember them, then you started learning boxing.
He's teaching you what you'll most likely encounter.
People beating you up.
Beating people up in a fistfight will have to wait a few years and about a hundred pounds.
"I have activated your self-destruct."
"You're bluffing. That will kill you too."
"It would, but I know your power. Once you drop the timeline where you kidnap me, I'll be safe."
"I've been using both timelines to make this interrogation go well."
"..."
"..."
"I wish you had mentioned that 5 minutes ago."
New brain damage.
You've been learning boxing.
"Yes, and we don't want anybody making comparisons between Shadow Stalker and Gavel, do we?"
Well his power allows him to adapt to and function with damage... maybe it also applies to psychological trauma?
One person acknowledged!
Now you just need to do it for all the other people around you.
Last edited:
Best Laid Plans
- Pronouns
- He
It's amazing what you can do with a sufficient technological advantage over your opponents. I mean, yeah I understood in the abstract why people - Taylor in particular - didn't like dealing with Tinkers. We were a crafty lot and from moment to moment what we were technically capable of could change in its entirety.
"Ready?" I asked Merlin, panning my helmet from left to right like a bird - which was way harder than you'd expect given how bulky my suit is.
"Wireless communications disabled." He confirmed for me and targets began to light up in my vision, the red outlines of human beings easily visible through the walls of the building I was looking at.
"Ready?" I repeated, this time across the Mindlink Circlet to Sophia, who was a barely visible blot of shadow on the roof of the building in question.
"Yeah. Let's screw these guys." Was her predictably bloodthirsty response. As you might expect from an isolated teenage girl, Sophia was slowly - very, very, slowly - transitioning from a one word wonder of a conversationalist to someone who, you know, actually spoke to me. Granted, whenever we were making 'casual' conversation it was almost universally about things like fighting, caping, or exercising - but those were her hobbies, so I guess that's what she talked about. I certainly wasn't interested in hearing her talk about what boys she may or may not be interested in.
Not that I was even sure Sophia liked boys. And I don't mean 'I think my cousin might be a lesbian' because that wouldn't bother me in the slightest. What I mean is, I'm not sure Sophia even has a sex drive at this point. I know later down the line she comments on Grue, but it's hard to tell if she was doing that just to fuck with Taylor or not.
"Alright, let's see if this is going to be as easy as I hope it will be." I sent back, quickly going over all the available targets in the building.
You would think that the Empire, being the best funded, most 'professional' gang in the city, would be better at building, hiding, and staffing their stash houses, but apparently you would be incorrect in that assumption. Presently, I was on a rooftop across the street from what looked like it should have been a grocery store.
Key word, should have been.
Brockton Bay had a lot of abandoned buildings, and I think I can be forgiven for assuming ninety percent of them were empty warehouses - even though the truth was that it was actually a fairly varied selection. It wasn't like every building that could loosely qualify as a 'warehouse' in the city got abandoned all at once. Industries that relied on shipping to function died, then businesses reliant on those industries became unprofitable, so people lost their homes, which made owning a business in an abandoned neighborhood unprofitable which- well, you get the point.
Still, when I thought of an Empire stash house, I thought of like… the basement of an abandoned garage or… uh… an empty warehouse.
Not a bloody supermarket. Although I suppose that was partially the point. This was just one of a handful of Empire operations Merlin had been able to pick out based on all the data he stole from the goon cellphones I'd been rifling recently. It wasn't like they were super obvious either. The Nazis didn't just blatantly texted each other this stuff. This was something the AI had figured out based on GPS data in the phones after cross referencing a bunch of them together.
The plan here was really, really simple. I was going to stand on one side of the building, and Sophia was going to stand on the other. Using the Enhanced Scanner, Merlin would keep track of everyone inside, route that information to Sophia's mask, and then she would use her power and the Mercy Pistol to shoot the goons inside through the walls. I'd have preferred a building with more interior walls, if only so that we could slowly pick the guys inside off without their friends noticing, but after days of research and staking places out, this was the first building I had come across that actually had anything valuable in it.
Now, it's entirely plausible to believe that - given the Empires recent vendetta against us - we should slow down a bit, or possibly target a different gang. After all, the only thing keeping the Nazis out of our neighborhood was our tenuous relationship with the PRT.
There were a few problems with that though. First, with the PRT in our neighborhood, Sophia and I suddenly had very little to actually do when we went out on patrol. There were no goons to fight, and no one was dumb enough to pick a huge fight now that reinforcements were always around for the good guys. This meant that over the last few days Sophia had become nearly inconsolable, because she no longer had any available acceptable targets. It was to the point where she was starting to take her frustration out on kids at school, forcing me to follow her around in all my free time to stop her from picking too many fights.
Second, there weren't actually any better targets. Sure we could attack the ABB, but while that gang had drastically fewer capes, the two capes they did have would murder me in a heartbeat, no ifs ands or buts about it. The Merchants were technically viable targets, but they didn't really hold territory in the traditional sense and their capes were actually really hard to find.
Which brought me to my third problem.
I had to fight other Capes if I wanted my power to get stronger. The faceless mooks just weren't doing it for me anymore, and I was desperately afraid of stagnating forever at level three. I had tried cheesing the system - spars with Sophia and sometimes Brian when he was at the gym, which was rare - but it just wasn't working. It seemed that my power could definitely tell the difference.
So here I was, at an Empire stash house, waiting for the guys inside - who were already in the process of dropping like flies - to start trying to run away. Credit where it was due, the Empire guys quickly determined that Stalker was on the roof firing at them, and started trying to take cover, firing blindly up at her to largely no effect.
Honestly, as interesting as it was to watch them try to hold their ground until reinforcements arrived, I kind of needed some of them to run away. Since I was hunting for Capes, I could have technically just let them phone for help - but that was a dangerous prospect. I already knew the Empire had it out for us, which meant that any response to us was probably going to be overwhelming in nature. I had a good idea of how I would fight most of the Empire's capes, but not all at once - not even two or three at once. Which meant I had to control who and how I engaged.
"They aren't running. Can you pull back and get ready to follow anyone who does?" I asked Soph, lowering myself and getting ready to activate my jump jets.
"Still think letting them get away is stupid." She groused at me.
"We aren't 'letting them get away', we're following them to see if they can lead us somewhere more important." I corrected her.
Because that was my plan really. I just wanted to see if I could follow anyone to a new location. If there was only a single cape - two at the high end - at that location, we would engage. If not, we would pull back.
Was it the greatest plan ever? No, not really. In a sane world it would never work. But I had Merlin, which meant that I had information superiority. It meant I could guarantee that no call went out to swarm me with Capes.
Orienting myself so that I wouldn't accidentally slam into and kill anyone inside, I activated my jump jets. There was a sudden jolt of forward motion, a shudder as my armor absorbed the impact from the subtly reinforced door, and then I was in among the action.
I hadn't been able to see the interior of the building very well, but I was unsurprised to find most of the racks that would have once held food now held weapons, ammunition, and drugs, albeit in smaller amounts. I felt an impact on my shoulder and quickly whirled around to fire my own weapon into the face of the man who had shot me. He immediately went to the floor screaming in agony, so I shot him one more time, which knocked him out.
Then I turned and proceeded through the building, using my jets and Merlin in concert to leap straight from one thug to the next in the maze of aisles. I was very careful about it too, making sure to start with the guys closest to me so that anyone near the rear exit would have a shot at getting away.
I couldn't help but wonder at how… standard this all felt. A few months ago, the idea of fighting even one guy with a gun would have terrified me. Now I was idly handling a whole building of guys, and it was mostly just boring. Tedious, even.
At length, one of the fucking morons finally decided to run away, and I was forced to decide between letting Sophia follow him alone while I looted the place, or going with her to make sure nothing surprising happened. In an ideal world, I could reasonably expect her to follow the guy, let me know where he went, and wait. Unfortunately, I didn't live in an ideal world. I lived in one that seemed like it was doing its hardest to prove that Murphys Law was a real rule of reality.
Which is not to say that I didn't loot anything - I just didn't get the chance to go searching for any money. Instead I ended up quickly grabbing some nine millimeters off a nearby shelf, stuffing them into my storage compartment, and then bounding out into the street to follow Sophia as she tailed the guy.
By necessity, I had to keep my distance. As much as Soph could screw physics over enough to be able
To silently glide from rooftop to rooftop, my method of locomotion wasn't called a Jump Jet because it was particularly quiet.
We followed the skinhead for maybe three minutes before something curious happened.
I was well out of sight of the man we were chasing, when something white whipped past me overhead, and a minute later Soph spoke to me over our psychic link.
"Some white chick just killed the guy." Was her - entirely unbothered - update on the situation.
I paused to stare blankly in her direction for a moment, before frantically gunning my jets to catch up to her.
"Don't fight her!" I hurriedly begged. I would have described it as an order but frankly I couldn't order Sophia to do anything.
"Why? She doesn't look that tough."
"Because she's a freaking Hero. New Waves kid." I explained, cresting a building and landing next to Sophia on its roof, where she was looking down at pretty much exactly what I expected to see.
Victoria Dallon, or Glory Girl, was a sporty looking blond girl with perhaps one of the most impractical costumes I had ever encountered. It was pretty much just a white dress with some golden extras added onto it, with a skirt that was cut entirely too high for someone expected to fly overhead in the thing. Her hair was long enough that it came past her shoulders in a way that instantly made me wonder why noone had ever tried pulling on it in a fight, and she had a golden tiara on her head that was no doubt held there purely by luck.
She was also, worriedly hovering around our target, who was laying on the ground with all of his limbs pointing in the wrong direction, and looking straight up at me and Shadow Stalker with wide distressed eyes.
"...we're sure she's a hero?" Sophia asked me again.
"Yes. She's just really stupid. Cover me?" I sent back, preparing to jump down to meet the heroine and probably save her victim.
"Powers?" My cousin asked, acknowledging my request by vanishing subtly into the shadows of the rooftop.
"Flight, Superstrength, Forcefield that pops when you hit it but resets every couple seconds. Also an aura that makes you either like or fear her." I responded, landing on the road below.
"I didn't realize how fast I was going!" Victoria blurted out at me as I approached, already pulling vials of Mystic Cure out of my storage compartment. I had to wonder why she just automatically assumed I was a hero when I had very obviously been hunting a man in the streets - then remembered she was dating Dean, who had probably told her all about me already.
"Should work on that." I grunted out, doing my best not to look directly at her on the off chance I got caught in her aura, which she almost certainly had no control over at the moment.
"I thought he had powers and that's why you were chasing him!" Victoria continued to explain herself as I bent down to examine the downed Nazi. The guy was clearly having trouble breathing, and probably had more than a few broken ribs, so before anything else I shifted myself around to hide what I was doing with my hands, and stuck my first hypo full of healing magic into him.
"He didn't. I was hoping to follow him to another stash house - we weren't actually trying to catch him." I explained as the guys breathing evened out.
He still looked like a bug that had been stepped on though.
"Another stash house? You already hit one?" Victoria asked, apparently glad to latch on to the change of subject.
It was then that I did something really stupid, purely out of reflex. See, in polite company, you look at people you are talking to. Victoria wasn't my enemy, and probably didn't deserve half the shit life had in store for her, so naturally I turned to look at her before speaking.
In retrospect, that was probably her aura doing that, given I had just determined not to look at her seconds before this.
Regardless, I looked at her, and it was instantly as though I was an actual teenage boy. My brain stuttered to a stop, my heart started beating faster, and I became instantly anxious to prove myself to the girl before me.
"I… um, yeah." I gulped, half dead Nazi entirely forgotten at my feet. I started fiddling with my remaining vial of Mystic Cure in one hand absently, and focusing on anything but her next words became really, really, difficult.
"Damn. I was hoping to get some practice in tonight. Do you think this guy will be okay? My- um, Gallant told me you can heal yourself a little bit?" She asked me hopefully, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
I tried to immediately open my mouth to explain, but found suddenly that I couldn't.
"Sir, you are clearly being affected by her presence. Please focus." Merlin warned me, reminding me of what I should really be doing right now.
"Uh- your- I mean could you- your aura…?" I asked awkwardly.
The blond blinked at me for a second before understanding dawned, and all at once I was myself again.
And annoyed, but I wasn't stupid enough to take that out on her. Glory Girl could hold a grudge.
"Sorry!" She blurted again.
"S'fine. Just don't do it again." I grumbled, not able to completely hide my aggravation, if the way she flinched slightly was any indication.
I glanced at the downed Nazi, then judging that his life wasn't in danger, I opted to put my second vial away.
"He'll live. Nights shot though. You can help me secure the guys back where we came from if you want. I guess you'll be calling your sister?" I asked, already familiar with this pattern.
I'd be lying if I said brutally maiming Nazis bothered me on a moral level, so I didn't really hold it against her. Even if it did make her a huge hypocrite.
"Ames? Why would I call her?" Victoria asked, shooting me a suspicious look.
"To-" I started, gesturing at the Nazi then cut myself off.
"Nevermind. It's a Thinker thing. Sometimes my power misfires. I'll call an ambulance." I said, before remembering Sophia.
"This is a bust. Let's go make sure those other guys get arrested properly." I told her. Originally we should have been moving too fast to secure anyone, which I didn't mind since arresting them wasn't the goal. Now it was looking like that was all I was going to achieve tonight.
"I'll get moving as soon as barbie leaves." She sent back, and I knew implicitly that she didn't trust her to be alone with me for whatever reason.
Wait what the fuck am I talking about 'for whatever reason', I just told her Victoria had a master power for christ sake.
"Right. An ambulance. But if he's going to be fine, the Empire will probably get Othala to heal him later so-" Said blond started to haphazardly convince me, reminding me of my predicament.
"This isn't the first time this has happened," I realized aloud. Honestly, that made a lot of sense. Before Amy, the Empire probably made for pretty good targets for Victoria - they already had a healer so she could just pretend nothing happened and get away with it.
"No! Look I just- my Mom has this whole thing about the media and-" she blurted out at me, and I found my mouth moving against my will at about the same time I became preeminently distracted by trying to trace her collarbone with my eyes.
"Aura, please." Merlin said with my mouth, which was something I was not aware he could do, but that I wasn't exactly bothered by.
Victoria winced, cutting her rambling explanation short, but didn't comment.
"Look, I- fuck it. I'll handle it, but you have to promise not to fucking tell anyone or I when I get kidnapped and murdered it will be your fault." I growled, jabbing a finger in her direction.
"Come on, it's not that big a-"
"Vicky if people find out I can make healing tech my life will be over. Villains will want to keep me in their basement as their pet tinker and the PRT won't ever leave me alone. You can't tell anyone. Not your boyfriend, not Gallant, not your Mom. No one." I growled again. The way she was flip flopping between worried about the guy under me and seemingly not caring at all was bothering the shit out of me, even if I knew it was probably just a coping mechanism. She was fourteen after all.
"I don't see the big deal. Gallant already guessed you could do it so-"
"Guessing is way different than knowing. Do you want my help or not? And stop turning your aura on everytime you disagree with me!" I repeated, which earned a scowl and a sullen nod from her.
"Fine. I promise." She said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes.
I ignored that to begin yanking dipshits arms and legs back into proper alignment. Then I rapidly slammed three of my four remaining hypos into him.
The effects were both obvious and kind of grotesque to watch, as the sound of his bones and muscles fixing themselves rang out in the empty street.
"I'm Starfinder, by the way." I stated, offering her my hand to shake, which she did so with gusto.
"Glory Girl. Thanks for this, and uh, sorry about screwing up your thing. Is Shadow Stalker going to stay up there or..?"
"Probably, she's not really a people person."
"Cool. So…" Vicky trailed off leadingly.
"You're just going to follow us around until we go home, aren't you." I asked her flatly.
"You seem like you know what you're doing. I usually just fly around till I see something going on anyway." She answered me with a shrug.
"You are weirdly unbothered by maiming that guy." I pointed out as I started awkwardly trying to pick our victim up to bring him back with us.
"I got it. And I mean, they're Nazis." She said, taking the guy from me with no apparent difficulty and slinging him over one shoulder.
"Fucking right!?" I exclaimed, glad that someone else got it. My sudden outburst must have surprised her because she nearly dropped her baggage, jerking away from me and moving two feet into the air.
I couldn't help it, I snickered at her - quite audibly.
"Sorry, sorry. People tend to look at me funny whenever I say that exact same thing." I explained.
Vickt snorted, then floated after me as I used my jets to get back onto the roof with Sophia on it.
"You're okay Star." She said as she lazily floated along behind us.
"I try." Was my dry response, though I'm not sure if it was audible over the wind as we moved.
"Stop fucking flirting, it's creepy." Sophia said coldly over the mindlink, making me cringe. I wasn't flirting, I was just being nice. Yeah I guess you could conflate the two if you were young, dumb, and horny, but I wasn't any if those things, and I couldn't have been less attracted to another human being if I tried.
But that was really hard to explain without delving into my backstory, so instead I - rather lamely - just replied with; "She's got a boyfriend."
Sophia didn't seem to particularly care about that, because she spent the rest of the trip back and all the time we spent zip tying thugs together entirely silent, while Victoria and I talked about how dumb Nazis were.
I might have spent more time hanging around than was strictly necessary, but really that was just because I wasn't looking forward to the coming weeks. Summer was coming, and since I had no idea when Emma got traumatized besides 'summer vacation' I was left with the unenviable task of figuring out where she lived and… well basically stalking her all summer.
I could probably work out a technological solution that would free me up to continue working on my leveling problem, or if not that, then my continued tinkering - but I didn't have one currently.
Even that was just a distraction from what was really bothering me. Namely, that this September I would have to do something I absolutely fucking hated the idea of.
I was going to have to go to highschool again.
——
A/N: There are some continuity errors born from the fact that I didnt bother to check a timeline until uh... today. Ill be going back to fix some of them, most specifically, mention of Panacea allllll the way back in Chapter one - because she hasn't triggered yet, and Glory Girl would have only triggered within about a month of this.
"Ready?" I asked Merlin, panning my helmet from left to right like a bird - which was way harder than you'd expect given how bulky my suit is.
"Wireless communications disabled." He confirmed for me and targets began to light up in my vision, the red outlines of human beings easily visible through the walls of the building I was looking at.
"Ready?" I repeated, this time across the Mindlink Circlet to Sophia, who was a barely visible blot of shadow on the roof of the building in question.
"Yeah. Let's screw these guys." Was her predictably bloodthirsty response. As you might expect from an isolated teenage girl, Sophia was slowly - very, very, slowly - transitioning from a one word wonder of a conversationalist to someone who, you know, actually spoke to me. Granted, whenever we were making 'casual' conversation it was almost universally about things like fighting, caping, or exercising - but those were her hobbies, so I guess that's what she talked about. I certainly wasn't interested in hearing her talk about what boys she may or may not be interested in.
Not that I was even sure Sophia liked boys. And I don't mean 'I think my cousin might be a lesbian' because that wouldn't bother me in the slightest. What I mean is, I'm not sure Sophia even has a sex drive at this point. I know later down the line she comments on Grue, but it's hard to tell if she was doing that just to fuck with Taylor or not.
"Alright, let's see if this is going to be as easy as I hope it will be." I sent back, quickly going over all the available targets in the building.
You would think that the Empire, being the best funded, most 'professional' gang in the city, would be better at building, hiding, and staffing their stash houses, but apparently you would be incorrect in that assumption. Presently, I was on a rooftop across the street from what looked like it should have been a grocery store.
Key word, should have been.
Brockton Bay had a lot of abandoned buildings, and I think I can be forgiven for assuming ninety percent of them were empty warehouses - even though the truth was that it was actually a fairly varied selection. It wasn't like every building that could loosely qualify as a 'warehouse' in the city got abandoned all at once. Industries that relied on shipping to function died, then businesses reliant on those industries became unprofitable, so people lost their homes, which made owning a business in an abandoned neighborhood unprofitable which- well, you get the point.
Still, when I thought of an Empire stash house, I thought of like… the basement of an abandoned garage or… uh… an empty warehouse.
Not a bloody supermarket. Although I suppose that was partially the point. This was just one of a handful of Empire operations Merlin had been able to pick out based on all the data he stole from the goon cellphones I'd been rifling recently. It wasn't like they were super obvious either. The Nazis didn't just blatantly texted each other this stuff. This was something the AI had figured out based on GPS data in the phones after cross referencing a bunch of them together.
The plan here was really, really simple. I was going to stand on one side of the building, and Sophia was going to stand on the other. Using the Enhanced Scanner, Merlin would keep track of everyone inside, route that information to Sophia's mask, and then she would use her power and the Mercy Pistol to shoot the goons inside through the walls. I'd have preferred a building with more interior walls, if only so that we could slowly pick the guys inside off without their friends noticing, but after days of research and staking places out, this was the first building I had come across that actually had anything valuable in it.
Now, it's entirely plausible to believe that - given the Empires recent vendetta against us - we should slow down a bit, or possibly target a different gang. After all, the only thing keeping the Nazis out of our neighborhood was our tenuous relationship with the PRT.
There were a few problems with that though. First, with the PRT in our neighborhood, Sophia and I suddenly had very little to actually do when we went out on patrol. There were no goons to fight, and no one was dumb enough to pick a huge fight now that reinforcements were always around for the good guys. This meant that over the last few days Sophia had become nearly inconsolable, because she no longer had any available acceptable targets. It was to the point where she was starting to take her frustration out on kids at school, forcing me to follow her around in all my free time to stop her from picking too many fights.
Second, there weren't actually any better targets. Sure we could attack the ABB, but while that gang had drastically fewer capes, the two capes they did have would murder me in a heartbeat, no ifs ands or buts about it. The Merchants were technically viable targets, but they didn't really hold territory in the traditional sense and their capes were actually really hard to find.
Which brought me to my third problem.
I had to fight other Capes if I wanted my power to get stronger. The faceless mooks just weren't doing it for me anymore, and I was desperately afraid of stagnating forever at level three. I had tried cheesing the system - spars with Sophia and sometimes Brian when he was at the gym, which was rare - but it just wasn't working. It seemed that my power could definitely tell the difference.
So here I was, at an Empire stash house, waiting for the guys inside - who were already in the process of dropping like flies - to start trying to run away. Credit where it was due, the Empire guys quickly determined that Stalker was on the roof firing at them, and started trying to take cover, firing blindly up at her to largely no effect.
Honestly, as interesting as it was to watch them try to hold their ground until reinforcements arrived, I kind of needed some of them to run away. Since I was hunting for Capes, I could have technically just let them phone for help - but that was a dangerous prospect. I already knew the Empire had it out for us, which meant that any response to us was probably going to be overwhelming in nature. I had a good idea of how I would fight most of the Empire's capes, but not all at once - not even two or three at once. Which meant I had to control who and how I engaged.
"They aren't running. Can you pull back and get ready to follow anyone who does?" I asked Soph, lowering myself and getting ready to activate my jump jets.
"Still think letting them get away is stupid." She groused at me.
"We aren't 'letting them get away', we're following them to see if they can lead us somewhere more important." I corrected her.
Because that was my plan really. I just wanted to see if I could follow anyone to a new location. If there was only a single cape - two at the high end - at that location, we would engage. If not, we would pull back.
Was it the greatest plan ever? No, not really. In a sane world it would never work. But I had Merlin, which meant that I had information superiority. It meant I could guarantee that no call went out to swarm me with Capes.
Orienting myself so that I wouldn't accidentally slam into and kill anyone inside, I activated my jump jets. There was a sudden jolt of forward motion, a shudder as my armor absorbed the impact from the subtly reinforced door, and then I was in among the action.
I hadn't been able to see the interior of the building very well, but I was unsurprised to find most of the racks that would have once held food now held weapons, ammunition, and drugs, albeit in smaller amounts. I felt an impact on my shoulder and quickly whirled around to fire my own weapon into the face of the man who had shot me. He immediately went to the floor screaming in agony, so I shot him one more time, which knocked him out.
Then I turned and proceeded through the building, using my jets and Merlin in concert to leap straight from one thug to the next in the maze of aisles. I was very careful about it too, making sure to start with the guys closest to me so that anyone near the rear exit would have a shot at getting away.
I couldn't help but wonder at how… standard this all felt. A few months ago, the idea of fighting even one guy with a gun would have terrified me. Now I was idly handling a whole building of guys, and it was mostly just boring. Tedious, even.
At length, one of the fucking morons finally decided to run away, and I was forced to decide between letting Sophia follow him alone while I looted the place, or going with her to make sure nothing surprising happened. In an ideal world, I could reasonably expect her to follow the guy, let me know where he went, and wait. Unfortunately, I didn't live in an ideal world. I lived in one that seemed like it was doing its hardest to prove that Murphys Law was a real rule of reality.
Which is not to say that I didn't loot anything - I just didn't get the chance to go searching for any money. Instead I ended up quickly grabbing some nine millimeters off a nearby shelf, stuffing them into my storage compartment, and then bounding out into the street to follow Sophia as she tailed the guy.
By necessity, I had to keep my distance. As much as Soph could screw physics over enough to be able
To silently glide from rooftop to rooftop, my method of locomotion wasn't called a Jump Jet because it was particularly quiet.
We followed the skinhead for maybe three minutes before something curious happened.
I was well out of sight of the man we were chasing, when something white whipped past me overhead, and a minute later Soph spoke to me over our psychic link.
"Some white chick just killed the guy." Was her - entirely unbothered - update on the situation.
I paused to stare blankly in her direction for a moment, before frantically gunning my jets to catch up to her.
"Don't fight her!" I hurriedly begged. I would have described it as an order but frankly I couldn't order Sophia to do anything.
"Why? She doesn't look that tough."
"Because she's a freaking Hero. New Waves kid." I explained, cresting a building and landing next to Sophia on its roof, where she was looking down at pretty much exactly what I expected to see.
Victoria Dallon, or Glory Girl, was a sporty looking blond girl with perhaps one of the most impractical costumes I had ever encountered. It was pretty much just a white dress with some golden extras added onto it, with a skirt that was cut entirely too high for someone expected to fly overhead in the thing. Her hair was long enough that it came past her shoulders in a way that instantly made me wonder why noone had ever tried pulling on it in a fight, and she had a golden tiara on her head that was no doubt held there purely by luck.
She was also, worriedly hovering around our target, who was laying on the ground with all of his limbs pointing in the wrong direction, and looking straight up at me and Shadow Stalker with wide distressed eyes.
"...we're sure she's a hero?" Sophia asked me again.
"Yes. She's just really stupid. Cover me?" I sent back, preparing to jump down to meet the heroine and probably save her victim.
"Powers?" My cousin asked, acknowledging my request by vanishing subtly into the shadows of the rooftop.
"Flight, Superstrength, Forcefield that pops when you hit it but resets every couple seconds. Also an aura that makes you either like or fear her." I responded, landing on the road below.
"I didn't realize how fast I was going!" Victoria blurted out at me as I approached, already pulling vials of Mystic Cure out of my storage compartment. I had to wonder why she just automatically assumed I was a hero when I had very obviously been hunting a man in the streets - then remembered she was dating Dean, who had probably told her all about me already.
"Should work on that." I grunted out, doing my best not to look directly at her on the off chance I got caught in her aura, which she almost certainly had no control over at the moment.
"I thought he had powers and that's why you were chasing him!" Victoria continued to explain herself as I bent down to examine the downed Nazi. The guy was clearly having trouble breathing, and probably had more than a few broken ribs, so before anything else I shifted myself around to hide what I was doing with my hands, and stuck my first hypo full of healing magic into him.
"He didn't. I was hoping to follow him to another stash house - we weren't actually trying to catch him." I explained as the guys breathing evened out.
He still looked like a bug that had been stepped on though.
"Another stash house? You already hit one?" Victoria asked, apparently glad to latch on to the change of subject.
It was then that I did something really stupid, purely out of reflex. See, in polite company, you look at people you are talking to. Victoria wasn't my enemy, and probably didn't deserve half the shit life had in store for her, so naturally I turned to look at her before speaking.
In retrospect, that was probably her aura doing that, given I had just determined not to look at her seconds before this.
Regardless, I looked at her, and it was instantly as though I was an actual teenage boy. My brain stuttered to a stop, my heart started beating faster, and I became instantly anxious to prove myself to the girl before me.
"I… um, yeah." I gulped, half dead Nazi entirely forgotten at my feet. I started fiddling with my remaining vial of Mystic Cure in one hand absently, and focusing on anything but her next words became really, really, difficult.
"Damn. I was hoping to get some practice in tonight. Do you think this guy will be okay? My- um, Gallant told me you can heal yourself a little bit?" She asked me hopefully, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
I tried to immediately open my mouth to explain, but found suddenly that I couldn't.
"Sir, you are clearly being affected by her presence. Please focus." Merlin warned me, reminding me of what I should really be doing right now.
"Uh- your- I mean could you- your aura…?" I asked awkwardly.
The blond blinked at me for a second before understanding dawned, and all at once I was myself again.
And annoyed, but I wasn't stupid enough to take that out on her. Glory Girl could hold a grudge.
"Sorry!" She blurted again.
"S'fine. Just don't do it again." I grumbled, not able to completely hide my aggravation, if the way she flinched slightly was any indication.
I glanced at the downed Nazi, then judging that his life wasn't in danger, I opted to put my second vial away.
"He'll live. Nights shot though. You can help me secure the guys back where we came from if you want. I guess you'll be calling your sister?" I asked, already familiar with this pattern.
I'd be lying if I said brutally maiming Nazis bothered me on a moral level, so I didn't really hold it against her. Even if it did make her a huge hypocrite.
"Ames? Why would I call her?" Victoria asked, shooting me a suspicious look.
"To-" I started, gesturing at the Nazi then cut myself off.
"Nevermind. It's a Thinker thing. Sometimes my power misfires. I'll call an ambulance." I said, before remembering Sophia.
"This is a bust. Let's go make sure those other guys get arrested properly." I told her. Originally we should have been moving too fast to secure anyone, which I didn't mind since arresting them wasn't the goal. Now it was looking like that was all I was going to achieve tonight.
"I'll get moving as soon as barbie leaves." She sent back, and I knew implicitly that she didn't trust her to be alone with me for whatever reason.
Wait what the fuck am I talking about 'for whatever reason', I just told her Victoria had a master power for christ sake.
"Right. An ambulance. But if he's going to be fine, the Empire will probably get Othala to heal him later so-" Said blond started to haphazardly convince me, reminding me of my predicament.
"This isn't the first time this has happened," I realized aloud. Honestly, that made a lot of sense. Before Amy, the Empire probably made for pretty good targets for Victoria - they already had a healer so she could just pretend nothing happened and get away with it.
"No! Look I just- my Mom has this whole thing about the media and-" she blurted out at me, and I found my mouth moving against my will at about the same time I became preeminently distracted by trying to trace her collarbone with my eyes.
"Aura, please." Merlin said with my mouth, which was something I was not aware he could do, but that I wasn't exactly bothered by.
Victoria winced, cutting her rambling explanation short, but didn't comment.
"Look, I- fuck it. I'll handle it, but you have to promise not to fucking tell anyone or I when I get kidnapped and murdered it will be your fault." I growled, jabbing a finger in her direction.
"Come on, it's not that big a-"
"Vicky if people find out I can make healing tech my life will be over. Villains will want to keep me in their basement as their pet tinker and the PRT won't ever leave me alone. You can't tell anyone. Not your boyfriend, not Gallant, not your Mom. No one." I growled again. The way she was flip flopping between worried about the guy under me and seemingly not caring at all was bothering the shit out of me, even if I knew it was probably just a coping mechanism. She was fourteen after all.
"I don't see the big deal. Gallant already guessed you could do it so-"
"Guessing is way different than knowing. Do you want my help or not? And stop turning your aura on everytime you disagree with me!" I repeated, which earned a scowl and a sullen nod from her.
"Fine. I promise." She said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes.
I ignored that to begin yanking dipshits arms and legs back into proper alignment. Then I rapidly slammed three of my four remaining hypos into him.
The effects were both obvious and kind of grotesque to watch, as the sound of his bones and muscles fixing themselves rang out in the empty street.
"I'm Starfinder, by the way." I stated, offering her my hand to shake, which she did so with gusto.
"Glory Girl. Thanks for this, and uh, sorry about screwing up your thing. Is Shadow Stalker going to stay up there or..?"
"Probably, she's not really a people person."
"Cool. So…" Vicky trailed off leadingly.
"You're just going to follow us around until we go home, aren't you." I asked her flatly.
"You seem like you know what you're doing. I usually just fly around till I see something going on anyway." She answered me with a shrug.
"You are weirdly unbothered by maiming that guy." I pointed out as I started awkwardly trying to pick our victim up to bring him back with us.
"I got it. And I mean, they're Nazis." She said, taking the guy from me with no apparent difficulty and slinging him over one shoulder.
"Fucking right!?" I exclaimed, glad that someone else got it. My sudden outburst must have surprised her because she nearly dropped her baggage, jerking away from me and moving two feet into the air.
I couldn't help it, I snickered at her - quite audibly.
"Sorry, sorry. People tend to look at me funny whenever I say that exact same thing." I explained.
Vickt snorted, then floated after me as I used my jets to get back onto the roof with Sophia on it.
"You're okay Star." She said as she lazily floated along behind us.
"I try." Was my dry response, though I'm not sure if it was audible over the wind as we moved.
"Stop fucking flirting, it's creepy." Sophia said coldly over the mindlink, making me cringe. I wasn't flirting, I was just being nice. Yeah I guess you could conflate the two if you were young, dumb, and horny, but I wasn't any if those things, and I couldn't have been less attracted to another human being if I tried.
But that was really hard to explain without delving into my backstory, so instead I - rather lamely - just replied with; "She's got a boyfriend."
Sophia didn't seem to particularly care about that, because she spent the rest of the trip back and all the time we spent zip tying thugs together entirely silent, while Victoria and I talked about how dumb Nazis were.
I might have spent more time hanging around than was strictly necessary, but really that was just because I wasn't looking forward to the coming weeks. Summer was coming, and since I had no idea when Emma got traumatized besides 'summer vacation' I was left with the unenviable task of figuring out where she lived and… well basically stalking her all summer.
I could probably work out a technological solution that would free me up to continue working on my leveling problem, or if not that, then my continued tinkering - but I didn't have one currently.
Even that was just a distraction from what was really bothering me. Namely, that this September I would have to do something I absolutely fucking hated the idea of.
I was going to have to go to highschool again.
——
A/N: There are some continuity errors born from the fact that I didnt bother to check a timeline until uh... today. Ill be going back to fix some of them, most specifically, mention of Panacea allllll the way back in Chapter one - because she hasn't triggered yet, and Glory Girl would have only triggered within about a month of this.
- Location
- Classified
If/when Amy does trigger with the same power, I wonder if GG will remember this conversation.
Massgamer
Advance toward the Future
- Location
- The Future
Its funny how I think the Mercy Weapons will be pretty effective against most capes in general since unless they lack a nervous system or something they will all feel normal amounts of pain. Sure some might be able to tough it out if used to it, like seasoned fighters like Hookwolf, but no one is totally made of stone and there is no good defense against it unless someone can make shields.
- Location
- Canada
Honestly, I think it is pretty likely. Victoria at this point can be immature, for sure, but she is intelligent. Though on reflection, it probably actually depends on how significant this memory is. Considering she learned a huge secret, and was sworn to secrecy, I'd think it is a conversation she will remember.
Luckily a lot of the important events are not exact dates but a specific month or between 2 points in time.
Twisted
Science, because it's basically magic.
- Location
- The Land Down Under.
- Pronouns
- Sir, He, Him
Pretty sure if you promised to shoot Crawler with it alot he would do anything you tell him to.
At least until his body adapts to be unable to feel pain at all and he goes even crazier.
Capes like Aegis and Alabaster don't feel pain or are not debilitated by it, so some brutes may have this secondary power or effect going on for them.
Glad to see more of this. I like how Star can't cheese the XP requirements by sparring. Oh, he probably COULD learn various weapon skills and earn a piddling amount of XP that way, but I'm pretty sure he's past the point that would a difference.
I was going to ask if you could make a Necklace of Adaptation for Sophia to fix her problem with only being able to go 'Ethereal' as long as she can hold her breath, but the Wiki says she only finds it hard to breathe in Grue's smoke when in her ghost form, not all the time. Maybe Resistance to Electrical Attacks would be better.
I was going to ask if you could make a Necklace of Adaptation for Sophia to fix her problem with only being able to go 'Ethereal' as long as she can hold her breath, but the Wiki says she only finds it hard to breathe in Grue's smoke when in her ghost form, not all the time. Maybe Resistance to Electrical Attacks would be better.
- Location
- England
That just makes it more creepy.
How's that saying go? ... better to have them inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. Maybe if this becomes a regular thing the constant reminders of "Aura, please." will actually have an effect. Doubtful, though.
Starfinder should carry around a bag of mini-doughnuts and hand Glory Girl one every time she turns her aura down without being prompted (much). Operant conditioning FTW. I suppose to cover all bases, every time Glory Girl maims someone or causes property damage over $500 Starfinder should hand her a piece of broccoli and force her to eat it.
*****
Night's