The Eldritch One (Celestial Forge)

Chapter 20: Just A Normal Day New
So apparently Lisa doesn't usually write code from scratch. She usually just kludges something together from pre-built blocks of code that she collected previously. That is when she doesn't just divine or con the required credentials from some poor schmuck who is probably getting fired in the next month for what she does with it. The reason I was writing code with her was because she wanted to see what I could do. Like she couldn't have just asked. The bitch.

Anyways, school went by real smoothly today. Nothing went wrong at all, and I was able to get all my work done. Started reading coding books and finished off The Wonders Of Bacon from last time. Mmm, bacon. Anyways, I'm probably going to drop a grand or so on building a magnificent beast of a computer. Probably not going to be permanent, but I gotta get my coding practice in somewhere. Going home right now.

"Hey babe." From a dude in a trenchcoat and a hat over his face. Oh boy. This seems super shady. We're in front of one of the alleyways I use to shake any potential tails. One of three I use on my route currently. Oh, if a new gang is setting up shop here that's going to be so inconvenient.

I walk past him with no hesitation and my head held high. Not showing fear is the first step to not being victimized. Right after that being to never walk into strange alleyways with strange men in front of them, but nevermind that just now. I'm a big bad cape! I can handle some random asshole! If he lays a hand on me I'll just be at the crap out of him.

Speaking of, I hear him coming up behind me. What a prick. I'll only start the violence once he touches me though. Not only will that give him time to rethink his life choices, it'll also give me an excuse-wait, why's his skin orange? I spin arou-



Oh God, I'm so dizzy. Dizzy, and nauseous, and turned on- Wait, what the FUCK!! Oh, I am going to fucking murder somebody!! Or I would if I could figure out what's going on here. I can't see, I can't move, and it feels like my mind is broken, and trudging along at the speed of a wheel made of broken glass. Is this what being high feels like? Holy crap, how can people stand this shit. First I crank my speed all the way up. Wait, no. Shit, no. How would that help me? Alright, first I turn my acid all the way on.

Several things happen at once when I do that. First is that I reform back into a human shape. Naked, of course, because why wouldn't that happen. Then I sink into the sheets because of acid, flail around, and make a sound I would imagine coming out of a panicked newborn bird. I managed to turn my acid off, and sit up, only to see some chick staring at me. She's wearing a shamrock shirt and ripped jeans, and balancing precariously on a windowsill.

"Guuyyys!! She's awa-Oh shit!" As she falls out of the window. Well that took care of itself. Also, oh shit I've been kidnapped! In both timelines too, so it's not Coil! I turn translucent and start taking stock of my surroundings. Oh good, I'm still fast. A look out of the window reveals she's struggling under some debris in the alley. Good, good. Also I'm on the second floor of wherever I am. Going out into the hallway reveals a lanky dude in a gasmask looking getup, and presumably the same orange fucker who got to me in the alleyway. He has a tail. Neat.

"The empire called. They want their Gestapo fuckin' look back." I run up to orangy and activate my acid to slash him with it and avoid getting drugged again. I intended to slash him through as far as I could get, but it's taking more than three seconds to do anyth- Holy shit, did gasmask just hock a flaming loogey at me?! I give up on orangy as a bad job to throw him into the path of the next flaming booger coming out of the gasmask.

"Oh God, why!?" I then smash the gasmask guy into the wall as hard as I can. He doesn't get up. Goody. I look up to see a real ugly fucker coming out of another one of the rooms. Looks like a real fat ghoul from Fallout starting to ooze something from his skin. Yeah, fuck that noise. Not going through that song and dance again. I rush up to him with my acid on full, only to fail to tackle him into the ground. And fail to dissolve his skin given a full five seconds. Again, fuck that noise. I'm not feeling particularly merciful given my situation, so I go up to his face and rip his eyes out of his head with my acid. He tried to stop it, but not much can be done about me in a grapple.

"Holy shit you crazy bitch, my eyes!!" Barely takes a second. Looking over the hallway, everybody is incapacitated and/or screaming... And the hallway is on fire... Moving on!

I don't see any fire extinguishers, so they're shit outta luck in that department. Looking through the doors I see some catatonic chick in a wheelchair, no idea, and I find an office with a phone. Let's see, nine? Pound and nine? No, just pound. I call Tattletale for advice.

"What the fuck is it this time Faultline?"

"Tattletale it's Taylor. I've been kidnapped, and wherever this is is on fire, and that last part is definitely not my fault."

"...Oh for fuck's sake. Taylor could you start at the beginning?"

"I was kidnapped on my way back from school, and now I'm here. The dickhead who did it is bleeding and on fire in the hallway. Four assholes are down, but I don't know how many friends they have. That's it. That's everything I know about the situation."

"Who kidnapped you?"

"Some lanky orange dude with a tail. He drugged me somehow."

"That would be Newter, yep." Popping the P. "Just come back- Yes it's Taylor. No. Alec, now is not the time for that. We're in the middle of a situation in case you haven't noticed. Look, Taylor. I need you to come back right away."

"Will do. I'm just gonna call the PRT and fire department so they can clean this mess up."

"What? Taylor, no. Do not call the cops to this clusterfuck you got going on here. They couldn't find their asses with both hands, and even if they did, they would put you in a holding cell for days on end just to get you to join up or confess to something. Director Piggot is a bitch like that."

"Well I'm not letting these idiots burn to death. The PRT would pin that on me too."

"Look Taylor, just-"

*Click*

And the line goes dead. No dial tone just dead. I look up to see a barbed wire hellscape creeping up on me from the hallway and the left wall. You know what my friends, I am out. These assholes can burn to death for all I care, I am not dealing with this bullshit.

I jump out of the window and start running.



AN: Should be the last useless supply/tool power for a while guys. Though Taylor may or may not get much use out of the upcoming rolls.

Powers gained this chapter

Glove of the East (Binbougami Ga!) (300CP)

This hand of mine glows with an awesome power! It's burning gri-... oh! Sorry, wrong show. This single glove comes in any color and style, and is actually quite useful! You can channel your spiritual energies through it to help you with mundane tasks; your cooking might turn out excellent, cleaning takes less work for better results, and massages work WONDERS when you hit those points. If you channel a LOT of spiritual energy, you might even imbue items and equipment to improve them and be more receptive to your spiritual/chi powers! Heart symbol optional.
 
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Why is Taylor so stupid in this? She completely fails to think about things or try to make anything. Is this really a celestial forge story? Not just this chapter, but the whole story has been a confused mess.
 
Like reading a comic wher batman die in a normal plane crash,like yeah realisticly it could happen but it feel so weird,seeing faultline crew just randomly being burned alive by the mc and then go on it's way made me ended reading the chapter thinking wtf just happened.
It was a bit 0 to 100.

Spitfire fired twice, and Newter got used as a shield for the second shot, then Labyrinth put the fire out in the club.

That last bit wasn't all that obvious in the chapter because it wasn't all that obvious to Taylor, but it was never going to be a secret going forward.
 
I think what a lot of readers are failing to realize is that Taylor does not know that she is getting a lot of Celestial Forge rolls. She did not pick her powers from a CYOA, and she was not contacted by ROB to tell her she was given powers. Because of this she is unaware of many of the things that are happening to her and is being surprised by some new ability that she has to figure out on her own.
As to Faultline's crew, I can not guess why they took a job within Brockton Bay, but it is clear they were not given the information they would need to do the job. So, the job went FUBAR very quickly.
 
Chapter makes no sense.
- sounds like Genesis in wheelchair, but Travelers haven't been seen/introduced yet
- Taylors biology shouldn't be affected by Newter's toxic skin secretion
- Faultline never accepts jobs in her hometown

What the heck author - this sounds more like a random thought being extrapolated into a not so coherent chapter rather than something actually having been thought out.
 
I hope this is a lesson stricken DEEP into Taylor's subconscious. Striker and Stranger powers mean you cannot trust ANYONE with touching you directly. Start blasting before they can touch you or you might get hit by a doppelganger with an instant-death power. Let's turn this fifteen-year-old girl into a neurotic, paranoid wreck.

Welp I'm dropping this it's not really a Celestial Forge story. Its a gacha system with Lovecraft flavoring.

She hasn't gotten any crafting abilities yet. It's extremely funny that this is a Celestial Forge fic with how it's been going.
 
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So remind me does Gregor have the ability to regrow his eyes? Otherwise wow he is fucked, and somebody really dropped the ball on basic information gathering about her reaction to threats
 
Honestly, I took this as Faultline wanting to recruit Taylor. Faultline has a thing for case 53s and Taylor would definitely come off that way with her biology. Plus she might be extra interested in Taylor since she would be the first case 53 with a known origin. I imagine she would want to talk to her about it either way and maybe offer a spot. I feel like Newter either accidentally dosed her or she had some weird power interaction and it hit her much harder than they thought it would. Maybe he just wanted her to relax enough to hear them out without freaking out.

Faultline is definitely known for not taking work in Brockton Bay. I can't imagine this was a paid job.

Taylor may have just woken up and overreacted without even letting someone talk first. I mean it tracks for the Queen of Escalation but I can see why she would react the way she did.
 
I'll give Newter's power working on Taylor a pass because it's way beyond a simple LSD sweat. That stuff works near instantly from a touch. It's more like a nano war machine to incapacitate biological creatures, and a slime is still biological. If it works on case 53s like Gregor, then it is believable for it to work on Taylor.

fyi, girl in the wheel chair is Labyrinth.
 
Huh, that was weird. Waking up in a bed feels recruitment pitch, but drugged in a fucking alley is obviously kidnapping.

My best guess is that they were hired to get Taylor out of the way, but decided not to be dicks about it. Which, uh… whoops.

Also, nice touch that Shamrock's power decided that the luckiest thing to happen was to get out of the room immediately. Fall out the window? Sure, that'll work.
 
So apparently Lisa doesn't usually write code from scratch. She usually just kludges something together from pre-built blocks of code that she collected previously. That is when she doesn't just divine or con the required credentials from some poor schmuck who is probably getting fired in the next month for what she does with it. The reason I was writing code with her was because she wanted to see what I could do. Like she couldn't have just asked. The bitch.
To be fair it's not like Taylor even could code before she started trying so not only is it good for learning how well she can code but it's also a good baseline of how well she can learn.
Anyways, school went by real smoothly today. Nothing went wrong at all, and I was able to get all my work done. Started reading coding books and finished off The Wonders Of Bacon from last time. Mmm, bacon. Anyways, I'm probably going to drop a grand or so on building a magnificent beast of a computer. Probably not going to be permanent, but I gotta get my coding practice in somewhere. Going home right now.
You know Taylor could probably fit much larger computer components down her throat by chewing them up and then Plentimaw-combining them with something both unchewed and flexible and/or foldable enough to be rolled up to fit out of her throat.
"Hey babe." From a dude in a trenchcoat and a hat over his face. Oh boy. This seems super shady. We're in front of one of the alleyways I use to shake any potential tails. One of three I use on my route currently. Oh, if a new gang is setting up shop here that's going to be so inconvenient.

I walk past him with no hesitation and my head held high. Not showing fear is the first step to not being victimized. Right after that being to never walk into strange alleyways with strange men in front of them, but nevermind that just now. I'm a big bad cape! I can handle some random asshole! If he lays a hand on me I'll just be at the crap out of him.

Speaking of, I hear him coming up behind me. What a prick. I'll only start the violence once he touches me though. Not only will that give him time to rethink his life choices, it'll also give me an excuse-wait, why's his skin orange? I spin arou-



Oh God, I'm so dizzy. Dizzy, and nauseous, and turned on- Wait, what the FUCK!! Oh, I am going to fucking murder somebody!! Or I would if I could figure out what's going on here. I can't see, I can't move, and it feels like my mind is broken, and trudging along at the speed of a wheel made of broken glass. Is this what being high feels like? Holy crap, how can people stand this shit. First I crank my speed all the way up. Wait, no. Shit, no. How would that help me? Alright, first I turn my acid all the way on.
Why the fuck would Newter even be on the scene? He's only useful for his neurotoxin and that shit can be transported. Even if he insisted on being the one to handle it he could literally use a straw and some paper to avoid having to actually get near people.
Several things happen at once when I do that. First is that I reform back into a human shape. Naked, of course, because why wouldn't that happen. Then I sink into the sheets because of acid, flail around, and make a sound I would imagine coming out of a panicked newborn bird. I managed to turn my acid off, and sit up, only to see some chick staring at me. She's wearing a shamrock shirt and ripped jeans, and balancing precariously on a windowsill.
Which fucking sheets are these? I can't even guess what kind they are, what they're made out of, from context clues because you never write any.

Also Taylor here seems to have noticed a person, the window they were sitting in, and not the wall that that window was set into.
"Guuyyys!! She's awa-Oh shit!" As she falls out of the window. Well that took care of itself. Also, oh shit I've been kidnapped! In both timelines too, so it's not Coil! I turn translucent and start taking stock of my surroundings. Oh good, I'm still fast. A look out of the window reveals she's struggling under some debris in the alley. Good, good. Also I'm on the second floor of wherever I am. Going out into the hallway reveals a lanky dude in a gasmask looking getup, and presumably the same orange fucker who got to me in the alleyway. He has a tail. Neat.

"The empire called. They want their Gestapo fuckin' look back." I run up to orangy and activate my acid to slash him with it and avoid getting drugged again. I intended to slash him through as far as I could get, but it's taking more than three seconds to do anyth- Holy shit, did gasmask just hock a flaming loogey at me?! I give up on orangy as a bad job to throw him into the path of the next flaming booger coming out of the gasmask.
Why the fuck is Taylor taking so long to run down a hallway, why the fuck is she describing acid like it's a cutting implement, and what was Taylor seems intending to cut through apparently using Newter?
"Oh God, why!?" I then smash the gasmask guy into the wall as hard as I can.
And which person was saying these words?

I feel like this would be far less of a problem if you wrote this from a subjective view-point.
I look up to see a real ugly fucker coming out of another one of the rooms. Looks like a real fat ghoul from Fallout starting to ooze something from his skin.
Pretty sure that Fallout came out after the point of divergence in Earth Bet's timeline.
I rush up to him with my acid on full, only to fail to tackle him into the ground.
Isn't Taylor like five or ten times stronger then she should be? Because I'm pretty sure that five or ten of her could lift a person Gregor's size.
I'm not feeling particularly merciful given my situation, so I go up to his face and rip his eyes out of his head with my acid. He tried to stop it, but not much can be done about me in a grapple.

"Holy shit you crazy bitch, my eyes!!" Barely takes a second.
With her "acid"? What is that a separate substance from the rest of her? And what's up with that reaction? It's so incongruously articulate that I almost read it with a British accent.
Looking through the doors I see some catatonic chick in a wheelchair, no idea, and I find an office with a phone. Let's see, nine? Pound and nine? No, just pound. I call Tattletale for advice.
...I'm sorry is she trying to deduce someone's phone-number?
"What? Taylor, no. Do not call the cops to this clusterfuck you got going on here. They couldn't find their asses with both hands, and even if they did, they would put you in a holding cell for days on end just to get you to join up or confess to something. Director Piggot is a bitch like that."
I don't know if I would call that a deterrent when she can blow her way out of containment using anti-matter.
"Well I'm not letting these idiots burn to death. The PRT would pin that on me too."

"Look Taylor, just-"

*Click*

And the line goes dead. No dial tone just dead. I look up to see a barbed wire hellscape creeping up on me from the hallway and the left wall. You know what my friends, I am out. These assholes can burn to death for all I care, I am not dealing with this bullshit.

I jump out of the window and start running.
Fair reaction. No concern whatsoever to a Slime like Taylor but generally fair. A bit fucked of her to leave behind what she had no reason to believe was anything but a disassociated possibly wheelchair-bound fellow kidnapee though.
AN: Should be the last useless supply/tool power for a while guys. Though Taylor may or may not get much use out of the upcoming rolls.

Powers gained this chapter

Glove of the East (Binbougami Ga!) (300CP)

This hand of mine glows with an awesome power! It's burning gri-... oh! Sorry, wrong show. This single glove comes in any color and style, and is actually quite useful! You can channel your spiritual energies through it to help you with mundane tasks; your cooking might turn out excellent, cleaning takes less work for better results, and massages work WONDERS when you hit those points. If you channel a LOT of spiritual energy, you might even imbue items and equipment to improve them and be more receptive to your spiritual/chi powers! Heart symbol optional.
"All Slimes are naturally good at alchemy and can create alchemical substances and magical potions, if they possess the knowledge of their creation, directly out of their own body."; seems like this glove should help her a lot to make Alchemical stuff.

Honestly if your Taylor can't make use of stuff like this then you're kind of shit out of luck for being able to use anything; even if a way to fail to use a Perk doesn't exist I still would expect you to find one.
Well, I suppose anyone could have seen that coming. RIP faultline's crew
I believe that Gregor knows how to make fire-extinguisher foam.
Why is Taylor so stupid in this? She completely fails to think about things or try to make anything. Is this really a celestial forge story? Not just this chapter, but the whole story has been a confused mess.
Why the fuck would Faultline and newter to even do this shit. They don't do anything in BB at all. This goes against everything they handle shit.
Because they were written by Optimal Robotics; he seems to avoid writing characters. I think that they might have Aphantasia or something.
Spitfire fired twice, and Newter got used as a shield for the second shot, then Labyrinth put the fire out in the club.

That last bit wasn't all that obvious in the chapter because it wasn't all that obvious to Taylor, but it was never going to be a secret going forward.
The implications were pretty obvious; you can't burn metal like the landscape made out of barbed wire that Labyrinth was remaking/overwriting everything with.
I think what a lot of readers are failing to realize is that Taylor does not know that she is getting a lot of Celestial Forge rolls. She did not pick her powers from a CYOA, and she was not contacted by ROB to tell her she was given powers. Because of this she is unaware of many of the things that are happening to her and is being surprised by some new ability that she has to figure out on her own.
As to Faultline's crew, I can not guess why they took a job within Brockton Bay, but it is clear they were not given the information they would need to do the job. So, the job went FUBAR very quickly.
No everyone is painfully aware of the fact that there's nothing force-feeding Taylor information. She shouldn't need something doing that though.
Why'd they attack her though?
It feels completely random
Welp I'm dropping this it's not really a Celestial Forge story. Its a gacha system with Lovecraft flavoring.
Hey Optimal Robotics? Could you ban people that say this shit? As a kindness to them I mean; they would surely appreciate it.
She hasn't gotten any crafting abilities yet. It's extremely funny that this is a Celestial Forge fic with how it's been going.
Nothing's a Crafting Ability if you have a powerful enough Crafting Inability apparently.
So remind me does Gregor have the ability to regrow his eyes? Otherwise wow he is fucked, and somebody really dropped the ball on basic information gathering about her reaction to threats
I think that Case-53s and other Monstrous Capes have some level of regeneration over time? If they didn't then cosmetic surgery wouldn't be difficult.
Honestly, I took this as Faultline wanting to recruit Taylor. Faultline has a thing for case 53s and Taylor would definitely come off that way with her biology. Plus she might be extra interested in Taylor since she would be the first case 53 with a known origin. I imagine she would want to talk to her about it either way and maybe offer a spot. I feel like Newter either accidentally dosed her or she had some weird power interaction and it hit her much harder than they thought it would. Maybe he just wanted her to relax enough to hear them out without freaking out.

Faultline is definitely known for not taking work in Brockton Bay. I can't imagine this was a paid job.

Taylor may have just woken up and overreacted without even letting someone talk first. I mean it tracks for the Queen of Escalation but I can see why she would react the way she did.
Well that's definitely a interpretation.
I'll give Newter's power working on Taylor a pass because it's way beyond a simple LSD sweat. That stuff works near instantly from a touch. It's more like a nano war machine to incapacitate biological creatures, and a slime is still biological. If it works on case 53s like Gregor, then it is believable for it to work on Taylor.

fyi, girl in the wheel chair is Labyrinth.
More like a Striker Effect with a slightly odd vector.
Huh, that was weird. Waking up in a bed feels recruitment pitch, but drugged in a fucking alley is obviously kidnapping.

My best guess is that they were hired to get Taylor out of the way, but decided not to be dicks about it. Which, uh… whoops.

Also, nice touch that Shamrock's power decided that the luckiest thing to happen was to get out of the room immediately. Fall out the window? Sure, that'll work.
The luck-equivalent of Darwin developing teleportation.
 
Faultline: We don't shit where we eat!
Also faultline: ACIDBURNS AND REGULAR BURNS EVERYWHERE!
deserved though, they went and caught a cape out of costume all they're getting is earned ten times over
 
Y'know, if this is linked to the family of that money-doesn't-compensate-for-lack-of-brain-cells basdard, well.

I could see them making the 'completely understandable mistake' of failing to inform the parahuman mercenaries they are hiring to go after this one murderous teenager that said teenager is also a parahuman. Really, it's such a minor detail, it just slipped from their minds.

That would be the kind of shit where Faultline would be 1000% percent in the right to yeet them under the speeding oncoming train that is the collective anger of the entire cape community. Because this kind of shit is not tolerated.
Even if you overlook the 'target is actually a cape in civies' detail, which, uhh, Unwritten Rules and such, there's still the very minor fact that a teenage parahuman demands very different methods of containment than a teenage non-parahuman.

Would be fun to see Rich Assholes That Have Gotten Away With It For Too Long finally overreach and get badly mauled for it.
In the story, I mean.
 
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