A curious thing happened to my social life once it was confirmed to the student body at large I was a killer. Oh, sure, that was supposed to be a secret, but there were about fifteen uninvolved classmates at that party and I guarantee you they all talked. The thing that happened was that people started leaving me alone. Not everybody, and not even most people at my lunch table, but Amy Dallon was one of the ones that stopped talking to me. I'm not really mad about it, she already told me her parents were being difficult about socializing with me.
Should have accused Dean of murdering him, via negligent endangerment by leaving sharp sheets of metal laying around, to stave that off; it wouldn't have stood up to scrutiny but, exactly because of that fact, it would have
invited scrutiny that she could have benefited from.
Then there were some other people that gravitated towards me after all this happened. I wasn't sure if I was comfortable with that until a particularly mousy looking girl sat next to me at lunch on Monday and whispered to me.
"Thank you." And suddenly I was a lot more okay with letting these random people cozy up with me. Funny how that works isn't it.
Well god damn. Service to a community
and gratitude. That's got to be fulfilling.
I was able to update my dad on the rot powered dude through a letter on Monday. I didn't tell him about the robbery I did. I figured I'd tell him when I have something to report on about whoever tried to blacklist me.
Taylor having problems with making partial reports like this, before having accomplished anything with the information, is well known and all the more annoying because of it.
I can't tell if it reflects upon writing-quality neutrally or positively that it bothers me but I know
damned well that it's not negative.
"So I have good news and bad news everybody." We all wait expectantly at her word. "The good news is that I found out who the dipshits who blacklisted Taylor are. They're the McCormick family."
"..." If there were crickets in here now is the time they would be chirping.
"The bad news is they're the McCormick family. They're a billionaire family that made their fortune on the spice trade. They're a bunch of sociopaths that have something like a twenty percent trigger rate in their family tree."
Well that's statistically weird given how Shards work; even with the Parahuman-members having a lot of kids and Second Generation Parahumans being how they are I would have expected a second First Generation to have come from that same family to get numbers that high and I don't think that Shards like to distribute themselves that closely; especially if their Host's Trigger is similar enough.
I assume that they're one of those Nazi families that the Empire recruit from.
Actually it's kind of weird that they'd fuck with Taylor this way if they're integrated into the Cape scene like that; I suppose that they're only technically in the Cape scene, only technically related to the Parahumans in their family while otherwise being estranged, or something and aren't actually aware of how this shit works?
Also cool; they found the Fuck Arounds; I wonder what specifically they're going to Find Out.
"I'm sorry," Chimes in Brian. "But how exactly did little old Taylor here draw their attention?"
"She killed their newest trust fund cape on Friday." Ah, hell.
Was this not obvious or something?
"And it gets worse! They've been bribing all the local grocery store managers and fast food stores into banning her too."
Excuse me? That's a pretty weird thing for them to do. Also mildly inconvenient in that Taylor might need to either disguise herself or raid places for food.
Actually that'd be pretty fucking funny; she could raid them for food; just slip under their doors and whatnot, at least to check rooms for people, and just empty their fridge and cupboards and whatnot. Maybe steal their TV and whatnot while she's there.
Actually, and here's a fucking devious idea, what if she steals money from the places that they bribed into banning her from? But, like, only the amount that they were bribed with? Doesn't matter how rich you are if you don't have any actual buying power.
"So how are we getting back at them?" Asks Bitch
"We aren't." From Tattletale as she looks like she's eating earwax. "We don't know how far this goes up their family tree, and as far as I can tell they only have one married couple in town: the dead dipshit's parents. If we retaliate on this we'll bring down an Elite branch, a normal ass billionaire clan, what amounts to a private parahuman team, and all of the law enforcement down on our heads. Not to mention the risk to our identities it would bring. A villain team targeting the Boardwalk enforcers right after Taylor got blacklisted is happenstance. All of us targeting the rich assholes responsible would be a clear pattern."
Ah; a Elite-associated group. Yeah that'd be trouble.
I think that Taylor alone could retaliate at least though.
"I guess we'll just lie down and take it up the ass from this rich guy's parents then." From Alec. "What's next oh fearless leader? We gonna actually surrender next time the cops tell us to?"
"Hell no! I'm gonna be hacking the rubes who accept this bribe, taking the bribe money, and deleting the notifications that the managers send out. I told y'all I am a petty spiteful bitch, and I intend to live up to that. Hell, since this is a team matter I'll even be splitting the money with everybody.
I guess that it's important that she's having fun? Might have been easier to rob their houses though. Probably a better message as well; you shouldn't bring Cape shit into people's homes.
"Oh, and another thing, I finally found a buyer for those diamonds. They're getting sold for four times the worth of the drugs Taylor made them from. Happy new years everybody." She takes a duffel bag and starts piling up cash for each of us.
Really? I thought that drugs were worth more then that. I'm legitimately disappointed.
"There was a slight spatial distortion all over you during the meeting. How in the hell could you possibly- You know what? No. I'm calm. Deep breaths."
*Breathing Noises*
While she's doing that the waitress gets us some water. This is getting weird.
I previously mentioned that this first-person perspective was bordering on a third-person perspective but it's getting worse; that outright
was a third-person perspective.
I look around. Oh good, it didn't open up into the anti matter room again. To the right of me is labeled facilities, and to the left is labeled storage. That's new. The facilities branch even opens up into a T-section instead of the anti matter room too!
"So you can open doors, big d-" As she shoves her way past me. "Huh." She starts walking towards the facilities.
"This way Lisa." As I start dragging her towards the storage.
This is your regularly scheduled reminder to avoid taking your Thinker places off-leash.
"Oh hey look a door." I open it and pull us in. Looks like storage is just a long hallway with all the doors on one side of it. In here is a small plinth with some sort of gun on it. Looks like an industrial angled flashlight.
"So what do you think this is?" She squints at it.
"Not entirely sure. It doesn't fire bullets and the crystal bits at the end don't give off any more radiation than a household flashlight." I walk forward and pick it up.
"Jesus fucking Christ Taylor!! Point that thing away from me! Haven't you ever heard of trigger discipline!?" I swivel it to the wall.
Weren't they approaching it from the same direction? How did Taylor end up pointing it anywhere
near Lisa?
The next room has a massive fuck off diamond in it. The kind of thing you would see in a cartoon vault, except vaguely futuristic looking.
"Oh goody a diamond too big to sell. How useful to me specifically." I deadpan.
"Uh, Taylor, that isn't a diamond."
"It isn't? Well then what is it?"
"I don't know, but it's alive." I look to the diamond, and then to Lisa, and then to the diamond again.
"God I hate my power. Let me know if you ever find a way of disposing of this then. Next one."
Taydenite (Ben 10) (200CP)
You have found yourself in possession of a large taydenite crystal. Both the rarest and hardest gem in the galaxy, it could be sold for a small fortune. The only thing known to be able to cut taydenite is taydenite. Taydenite is also used to power spaceships, so with some work you could use it as a power source.
Cool; a super-hard material. Taylor could probably do a few interesting things with that.
Well, I mean, someone else with Taylor's powers could probably do a few interesting things with that; Taylor could probably use it as a bludgeoning-rock the same as any other rock.
Also you failed your lore-check there; Taydenite isn't what Petrosapiens are made out of.
The next room actually looks like a sane kind of warehouse storage room thing. A bunch of plastic totes are stacked to the ceiling, wall to wall, with who even
knows how far back it goes. Lisa goes up and opens one. It has like an interlocking lid holding it together. Real fancy.
About two seconds after opening it she springs to her feet, rotates around, and starts power walking away.
"Lisa? Lisa, what is it?"
"Nope." And she steps up her pace.
"Lisa! You can't just
not tell me what's wrong with these boxes. That's the entire point of you
being here." As I follow her out of the room. I look back to the closing door in a vain hope that it would hold the answers I needed. And to my surprise and horror I found it. The door was labeled.
Antimatter Storage
Goddamn motherfucker!!
Man this dumbassery is squarely on Taylor.
That said though they're really storing Anti-matter in plastic storage-tubs? Is it Fullerened or something?
Her having zero clue about any of her abilities until she stumbles across them is getting a touch old at this point. What is the point of an MC that doesn't know what they are doing? You are just rehashing canon but with an even more clueless and violent Taylor...
You need to reread Worm or something; there were a lot of things going on there that aren't here and vice-versa.
All Tattletale is going to get from this is a migraine. Couldn't even tell the big living crystal was nor what the Build Gun did and it's only gonna get worse as Taylor gets slapped with more things.
Of course she doesn't know things about them; she and Taylor took a metaphorical glace at them and fucked off.
"So what do you think this is?" Sounds like the Buildy Gun. I wonder if she'll ever figure that out if so. Without a manual, it's not exactly obvious what it does.
Looking at the actual thing itself it seems to only have a button, a finger-hold ring, and a trigger so yeah probably a bit fiddly.
Taylor gonna need some luck on rolling an analysis/research perk to understand alot of what she is getting. Wonder if she can bite off Tayden crystal using her mouths and mixing it with their costumes to make some armored clothes? Or use it on the Build gun to power it up?
Actually, funnily enough, she already
has a investigation/research, and organization/memory-recall, Perk; it seemingly is just that she has no way to proc it since she seems to not ever investigate, organize, or recall anything.
Why would safely stored anti-matter be traumatic for anyone?
To me the living crystal would have me wondering while the gun would have me trying to figure out what it is.
The antimatter? = meh.
I went into a bit of a analysis about why antimatter would be concerning to others, to the effect of milligrams of the stuff being suitable for demolishing buildings right down to the foundation, and others were kind enough to mention that not only would that happen but the pair-annihilation would convert protons and neutrons, and their pairs, into force-carrying particles, for however long it took for them to annihilate/decay, and enough photons to cause ionizing radiation.
I get that the Buildy Gun and Taydenite are more actionable things to engage with but you shouldn't try to dismiss antimatter.
I do think it's very strange how far Taylor is trying to go to stay ignorant. I have a very hard time considering her the willful ignorance type. I get the circumstances are very different for her this time around so I'm trying not to compare her to canon too much, but her core character is taking a bit of a hit.
She gets an anti-matter generator and her first thought is to completely ignore it and never think about it again? That's just not how I see her reacting. If anything she'd do everything in her power to make sure none of her other powers can endanger those around her like that by learning as much about them as she can. I mean, she didn't even try to figure out if the thing came with an off button. This is a girl that got bug powers and decided to find every possible method to exploit that. Spent near 3 months planning and researching to do that. Here she gets a bunch of mouths across her body and it takes several days or weeks and tattletale for her to actually start even trying to figure out what they can do. Granted she got a "better" power not long after so I can at least let that slide.
I guess it just feels like you're making her overly passive just to facilitate not instantly getting information from the forge and to give a reason for TT to get involved further. Which I guess isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think I'd have minded less if it were an OC, or heck even Amy since ignoring her powers is kind of her whole thing, but using Taylor specifically...
To be fair when she got bug powers Queen was probably rather insistently pressing the "Conflict" button in her brain and forcefully making her aware of what each and every one of her millions or billions of insects were capable of.
That's the other thing. Taylor "I literally will never use bugs on my bullies because that would make me like THEM" immediately kills multiple people with zero remorse despite extensive nonlethal options available to her. She's so ooc she's just a murderhobo OC. Her two greatest character traits, her methodical thinking and her aversion towards careless violence (all of her violence is very meticulously plotted and planned out tyvm) are just completely MIA.
Edit: Unfortunately I think I'm just going to have to unwatch this because the fic does not have anything going for it and clashing with the author over their designs will not be productive. I wish you well with what you make of this.
Being fair though this
is a wonderful exploration of alternate characterization since she quickly learned about Sophia and decatastrophized violence.