When I got onto the streets and running, I got back to the loft in a matter of minutes. And that just doesn't seem right. You see I wasted about a third of that time obfuscating my destination, and it's still just totally nutter butters. I mean, you would think there would be a sonic boom at some point, right? Whatever. I used a main street to go past downtown, and I expect somebody on PHO will pick up on it the next couple of days. It will be interesting to see what the cameras caught.
*Checks average run-speed vs the speed of sound* *Checks Perks*...Well I'll be damned it's at least close. Especially if Taylor gets some bouncy materials into her feet for just a touch more speed.
"So how much are we hurting them?" Asks Alec.
Supportive Boyfriend Alec~
"Alec, we live in a functioning society." He raises his eyebrows at me.
"I'll debate you on that functioning part. No seriously, I'll go get my notebook, corkboard, and red eyes, and we can make a whole ass conspiracy board." I look over to Bitch. She looks bored. I look back over to Alec.
I think that Alec learned that Taylor has super-organizational powers and wants to goad her into writing a thesis on societal dysfunction.
"Jackpot people! Those rich assholes who tried screwing Taylor over suddenly have three million missing from their accounts. One million being the minimum Faultline will charge for a job in town." She power walks up to us with her laptop. "But I know her rates, and that's either too much for a civilian kidnapping, or too little for what you can do. Even before taking in how fast you actually are, or that you're part of a team."
"Could it be from laundering the money?" Asks Alec.
Lisa shakes her head. "The numbers are still wrong for that. Hmmm..." She stays like that, looking at the computer screen for a few minutes thinking. Then the front door opens.
First thought: they hired several different groups to do the job.
Second thought: they got the Asshole Tax personally and/or as a extension of The Elite's Asshole Tax.
"I beat you here Brian." I respond. He walks up out of the entryway and stares at us. I'm reminded that I'm still taking the form of a humanoid slime. "They didn't give me the luxury of keeping my clothes on. Would you please stop staring?"
I mean what she said could
technically have meant that she had to ditch her clothes in the course of escaping but she makes it sound like they stripped her.
"The McCormicks probably paid Faultline to kidnap Taylor here. Also she's apparently ridiculously fast."
"Have we tried asking Faultline what the fuck is up with that? She's usually willing to at least talk, right?"
"Well first of all, it hasn't even been twenty minutes since Taylor here trashed the place and set it on fire."
"Hey! I told you that wasn't my fault!"
"Second of all-" She cuts off and turns to me. "Actually, Taylor, who specifically did you fight?"
"Okay, well first of all there was the orange dude with a tail and some dude in a gas mask thing spitting fire at me. They were both out on the ground when I left. Then there was this real big ugly dude who was resistant to my acid. So I uh..." I look around to everybody's eagerly awaiting faces. "Well, he was also out of the fight by the time I called you."
"Was that it? Nobody else?"
"Well there was some chick in a wheelchair I left alone. She was just sitting there. Then there was some chick who was my lookout. She fell out of a window all on her own right after she sounded the alarm."
"An older woman?"
"No. They were both teenagers. Then when the phone call cut out, the building started transforming like I was in a goddamn Silent Hill movie. I jumped out of the window and started running at my top speed over here."
"You didn't kill anybody, did you?" Asks Brian.
"No I didn't! Or at least I don't think I did. I knocked out the fire dude, Newter got taken down by a fireball, and the last dude is definitely alive." He was hollering too loudly to be dead.
"Taylor. What did you do to him? We need to know in case Faultline starts demanding things in compensation."
"Well, I, uh, may havegougedhiseyesout." Lisa and Brian lean away from me ever so slightly. Alec smirks.
"We can work with that Taylor, don't worry about it." Lisa assures. "For now, you should go scout out their mansion here. Circle the perimeter fence, note down camera locations, guards, dogs, how high everything is, how many entrances there are, that sort of thing."
"What are you gonna do?"
"I'm going to look up the schematics for their mansion they filed with the city. Then, in an hour or two I'm going to call Faultline. See what the situation is with her, and confirm our target."
Ohoho
ho?~ They finally Fucked Around enough that their Finding Out is worth even the retaliation of their superiors? Or perhaps they Fucked Around in a way that will negate their superiors from retaliating on their behalf? Lovely~
"Get going Taylor. Don't let them see your face, and for fuck's sake, don't let anybody touch you this time." I nod and set off for Captain's Hill. I get there in less than a minute. Goddamn that's still nuts.
There's ten cameras all around the wall, not counting whatever is at the entrances. One main and two service. The wall is ten feet high and coated with stucco. The gates are metal and the bars are too thin for even a toddler to squeeze through. No problem for me. I've engulfed a few and climbed up to the top of the wall before anybody had time to blink. Made another lap around the wall to find out the location of what looks like a security room with a dude manning it, and maybe some utility sheds. I note it all down in a tiny notebook with a rough sketch and leave. All in a matter of seconds. I am thoroughly ridiculous.
Now see here? This is something that Taylor's Times-Ten multiplier can apply to; map-drawing/Blueprinting.
"Well we're not doing nothing!" Lisa exclaims. "That jeopardizes our teammate, and lets them know they can continue doing it. Look, she's back already. We can vote on it now."
"Kill them." From Bitch.
"Kill them." From Alec.
"Hold on, hold on, hold on. What are we voting for, and why are we jumping straight to murder?"
"What we're going to do with the McCormicks." Says Brian. "It doesn't do us any good not to have a game plan in place once we break into their place. And if one of them falls down the stairs without that being the agreed upon plan, that's kind of a massive issue." As he looks pointedly towards our teammates. "We basically have three options. Do nothing, remove their ability to strike back at us, or kill them. And as Tattletale has so unhelpfully pointed out, we can't effectively remove their ability to harm us. Even if we took away all of their money and leverage, they still have super powered family to call on."
"Guys I think we're missing something here. Why don't we just call the cops on them? Or whatever alphabet agency would matter here. All we need to do is steal the evidence and turn it over." They look at me.
"I appreciate your optimism Taylor, but that won't work here." From Lisa. "That might've worked for your run of the mill asshole or crimelord, but these people are rich. Like fuck you rich. Like fuck you, your whole family, and the couch they rode in on rich. And we're dealing with a whole family that thinks they're above the law. The court system works differently for people with money and connections like this." Connections like Emma had with her lawyer Dad.
"I vote kill them."
Wasn't Brian the member of the team most focused on cultivating a protective reputation? Setting precedence conductive to being unfucked-with? I would have expected him to have voted yay on this one.
Of course that expectation aside he might or might not have and I wouldn't be able to tell with how Optimal seems to write nigh-exclusively from third-person perspectives and/or about P-Zombie automata that act out scenes without internal narrative.
AN: So, Taylor's land speed. 20 times more from the slime power, 5 times from the preparation perk outside of combat, and 10 times from the other perk. 20 times 10 times 5 is 1,000. 8,000 mph running speed out of combat with 50 times speed being fiat enforced. Even in combat being 1,600 mph. She is a peer to Velocity without any of his drawbacks. This all assumes a 8mph running speed with her long legs. And I am assuming this. Sorry if this is overly crunchy for people.
She gets a times-twenty multiplier from her Slime physiology and a times-five multiplier from her project-speed multiplier but her times-ten multiplier only kicks in for crafting.
If she shapeshifted up some wings, either fixed-wing or
onithopter style, she'd probably be able to break the sound-barrier easily.
Second of all is Taylor's motivations. She wants personal safety. Once she's done with Coil and these guys she's going to go to the PRT for probational hero status. After all they let that psychopath Sophia get away with, they won't bat an eye at her antics will they?
Checks out; she might need to sign up with a different department but there's precedence to the effect of letting non-Heros sign up. Not the precedence that Taylor thinks but it's there.
Powers this chapter
Starting HUB | Satisfactorio Builder (Satisfactory-factorio Gauntlet) (100CP)
Starting HUB (100CP)
Instead of starting with a box containing only the most critical components of the HUB, you start with a prefab base in a box. Set it up anywhere, and as long as you empty it out you can move it around. This base has a craft bench, equipment workshop, a molecular analysis machine, an RTG that produces a small amount of power perpetually, and a spot for the research dropship to land. In addition, it has a rack with a few standard storage boxes and a bunk room big enough for all of you. You start with all recipes that you get from completing the HUB in-game unlocked. Respawns monthly. In addition, you can keep this and drop it at your starting location in future Jumps, if you want.
Oh cool she's got some Blueprints to use to make things with. If she wants to I mean. She probably doesn't though. Kind of a shame really; that Molecular Analysis Machine would probably have a hell of a time scanning Taylor's Slime slime. Should also have a fun time chewing on that Taydenite; hardest material in that universe has got to inspire some sort of material or other.
What's a "RTG" though? *Googles* That's a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator. Fuck me ain't that a surprise.
Why would they need to compensate Faultline??? They are criminals that attack her first, if you don't want to kill them at least beat the crap out of them otherwise the Undersiders look weak.
But they did beat the crap out of her crew. Or at least Taylor did. And that's more for not being blindsided if the eventuality pops up.
You can't kill and maim everyone you encounter. Faultline, for all her faults, is nominally a neutral force in the city. Compensating them is a way of placating them instead of letting them stew and become enemies. The Undersiders are in no way big enough to court the kind of heat that gangs like the ABB and E88 take by being hostile with everyone not them.
Because Taylor basically blinded one of their people. They just proved that Faultline is weak because Taylor just went through them like a knife through butter. Huh Faultline not doing any Intel research is weird to be honest. Welp say goodbye to rich assholes.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. They're merc's if they wanted safe they should have opened a burger shop.
Kidnap an unknown parahuman? Ya gets what ya get.
Unknowns are dangerous, you don't know their power or their attitude.
Its not like the Undersiders were the ones that started the conflict and Taylor was just defending herself. Faultline is the one creating enemies here and not punching back when you are being attacked just look weak and invites other groups to attack you because there are no consequences for it.
They both have reputations to manage so if they don't want to be in conflict they have to come to some accord or another.
I feel the need to point out that the assembly line perk is explicitly for crafting/making things so no 10, but 20x is still 1/10 the speed of sound without running
She's got a Times-Twenty from Slime physiology and a Times-Five from that other Perk.
I feel the need to point out that the assembly line perk is explicitly for crafting/making things so no 10, but 20x is still 1/10 the speed of sound without running
Taylor still doesn't have any of the skills to use any of the schizotech she's getting. This is getting more hilarious as it goes. And yes, that 10x boost is only for crafting. Being barely subsonic is fast but isn't ridiculous at this stage of the power progression.
That ten times perk, One Man Industry specifically says it applies to things other than crafting. And if you aren't moving faster, how can you possibly craft any faster?
...Hm. I
suppose that it does say that it "Bleeds into other aspects of your life" but it feels slightly unrealistic for it to apply fully to other aspects of ones life. Especially aspects of ones life as dissimilar from crafting as running is. You can get a decent amount of efficiency out of finessing things compared to just being inefficient faster after all.
Basically what I'm saying is that you should watch some of those Fast Workers videos.
As an aside, Mach 1 at sea level is a bit over 750mph, which would be a mile every 5 seconds, or 12 miles per minute. If it took her long enough to be considered "a matter of minutes" to get home, she was going hella fast for a person but nowhere near the sound barrier.
Not that she'd know the difference, but I felt it worth pointing out.
THIS is a good example of what 500mph looks like to an observer, for reference.
Also, as others have said, you're applying a perk in your math that shouldn't be applied... but, drama-wise, you're actually narrating events at the correct speed anyway, so it all works out.
She's not going full speed here. Her 'normal' slime given speed is still beholden to the laws of physics, she's not going in a straight line, and she is actively dodging civilians... Unlike that asshole A-Train.
Between the wording of the Slime Perk, Taylor's notability for running to get in shape, and One-Man Industry, I think that we can both assume that Taylor is at least two orders of magnitude faster then a good runner, let's say nine or ten kilometers per hour, and so almost at the twelve-ish-hundred kilometers needed to break the Sound-Barrier.
This is for sustained running-speeds though and sprinters easily get to double that, good sprinters tripling it, with the record being more then quadruple that.
Speaking of what twenty-times average physical abilities looks like though
it only takes about sixteen people to lift a car so Taylor, at twenty-five percent more strength and way better leverage then that, should be able to just walk off with cars worth of whatever she feels like.
Remember to loot, then burn! The local family is rich? They don't need to be rich anymore. They've made themselves a valid target. Taylor alone should steal all their stuff—well, anything physical at their home. Lisa should loot their various bank accounts.
Taylor can probably loot their entire building down to the bedrock, steal everything in the house before disassembling the house and stealing the parts; she's got a Build Gun after all.
Killing the family should take Taylor all of 3 minutes at the most from what we've just seen.
Hopefully just whichever ones are responsible; they are presumably not also going after any kids involved.
I like her fumbling around, but it is getting annoying with her not having a clue about a few of those perks. She's also avoiding her warehouse out of the rather valid fear of antimatter.
I do not like it; she's got a the best tool-box in several universes and she's cave-womaning around like a jackass.
Haha, no. Taylor can literally run rings around Velocity with that level of Mover. Running at Mach 10 through city streets would be leaving plasma carved trenches behind her if not for power BS. (Breaker/Shaker bullshit)
A quick Google-search gives me some estimates that he has a times-ten acceleration from his Breaker-State based on how much weaker he gets; that being that the rough estimates on how hard he can punch, based on the reference to him punching as hard as "a strong breeze", compared to how hard amateur boxers can punch, and then reducing that by a lot based on a assumption that he has a runners build, and assuming that he gets sped up proportionally gets him a times-ten rate-acceleration.
We can assume that his Shard might fudge the numbers and get him up to a times-fifteen acceleration-rate in a pinch though.
This is easily solved with several weapon systems and a few nights surveillance. You'll be gone before the cops are alerted.
With a bit of Nitroglycerin, or way less Nitroglycerin Plentimaw-combined with the slightest amount of Anti-Matter, she could probably level the entire building.
