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Vespa

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mp3.1415player said:
"Huh. An epipen," she mused out loud, sitting on the edge of the desk and watching the man on the floor who Taylor realized, somewhat guiltily, was going into anaphylactic shock. Apparently he was allergic to wasp venom.
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Well, it wasn't hitting his head on a counter and bleeding out; but that was an entirely mundane death (OK, only mostly). Called that.
Andorxor said:
QA: She does all that with a handful of insects?Maybe giving her all of them was a bit too much.
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More like: only a handful of insects?!?!? Where has [BEST HOST!!!!] been all my life?!?!?
Loki Thorson said:
There and Back Again, A Vespa's Tale
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Nice! That gave me a good laugh.
 
Ahh, yes. An ignoble end to Coil, and Taylor got to put up her PHO post. Truly a serendipitous day. We even got a hilarious reference!

They thought they were free of the crimes they committed. That all had forgotten. They believed the masses too flighty to recall ancient crimes long passed. But the truth, the terrible awful past that Microso...

It looks like you're attempting to regale an audience with a overblown dramatized reference to a not so old and sadly forgotten cheerfully helpful tool. Do you need help? 📎😄
 
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Extra satisfying because his last action, bar the gurgling and twitching, was to slap himself in the nuts. Exactly the sort of ignominious fate one wishes on the sort of guy who thinks it would be a swell idea to try and recruit the supersized version of something that can kill him via anaphylaxis. Forcibly. (That she ends up doing it by accident because she's got morals is pretty great too.)
 
Creation Engine said:
You know I like how ambiguous it is if coil couldn't simulate Taylor or if he dropped them before she got to him in all the torture and kill throw away timelines
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I don't think Coil had enough information in order to plot out any timelines that'd involve Taylor/Vespa. Without being able to locate her, set up a situation to draw her out, or go after weaknesses (family, businesses, ect) Coil was effectively blind to whatever Taylor was doing. His power is great when he has the information he needs to get things going, but like Tattletale it requires inputs to get outputs.

Also, GIGO (Garbage-In, Garbage-Out) is a thing that even Coil's shard cannot do anything about. I bet it was scratching its head before it decided that a nap would be nice after Coil finally died. Lol. Poor thing may need a memory wipe and a reboot once it wakes up though. Could you imagine being stuck in Coil's head? Ugh!
 
Arsur3215Loki said:
Not only that, I think she is also scanning her system for any virus as to why she, an AI, suddenly sneezed.
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I wonder if this would lead to Dragon finding some of the coded hooks that Saint put into her systems. Just having something to point her in the right direction would no doubt scare Saint into doing something stupid, cocking it up, then either ending up Birdcage-bound, written off as insane and totally off his rocker, or D E D dead.
 
And for Vespa's next trick she'll accidentally kill the Butcher via allergy to wasp stin-wait wrong story. Maybe introduce some poor unfortunate soul to the wonders of QA's jailbroken abominations against nature like the doom-spider.
Or donate doom-spider silk to Parian for a costume.
 
It's hillarious that Taylor did in fact update the wiki entry on Coil, then posted a link to the update on PHO. Did she post it as Vespa, or did Lisa do so? I wonder what PHO will think of a gigantic murder hornet updating Coil's wiki entry?
 
So, to summarize, Taylor defeated coil as the unexpected side effect of a sting operation, and helped Lisa rob him blind - that's one way to deal with the dickhead.

Especially when she literally stung the dick in the head - twice.
 
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3. Guest Omake - There and Back Again, A Vespa's Tale
  • Apocrypha
    • There and Back Again, A Vespa's Tale

    Chapter 1: An Unexpected PRT Raid

    In a hole in the side of a warehouse lived a Vespa. Not a dilapidated structure, ready to fall down at the slightest breeze, to spread mold and smelly oozy things across the neighborhood, nor was it very well furnished, with tea cozies or flower pots: it was a Vespa hole, and that means the laws of physics must be defiled.
    It had a perfectly useful square door, that was sealed tightly against intruders. Painted with rust and sea salt, and a shiny new padlock. What this door no longer opened to, was a large empty gray concrete floor, distorted, discolored and pitted from the Vespa's experiments. To one side was another lovely hole which led deep below the ground to a vast cavern system that the Vespa rather liked. No kitchen was to be found, nor living or bedroom. Not even a nice window to give a view of the shore and sea.
    This Vespa was not a very well-to-do Vespa, and her name was Hebert. Now the Hebertses have lived in the ghetto of The Bay since they were kicked out of Sicily, and people considered them to be some what acceptable, not because they were in any way rich, but because, well they never saw what they did in the shadows. Now this is a tale of how a Hebert went on adventure, whether it wanted her to or not.
    The mother of our singular Vespa - - wait, what is a Vespa you ask? When asked of of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, it has only one entry written by a very plucky Gallifernarian. "RUN!"

    - - -

    Now this is the tale of the adventure of Taylor Hebert and day Vista the Grey Wizardess and 12 Dwarf Longshoremen showed up to her warehouse just before a PRT raid happened and set fire to her place.

    - - -
     
  • Apocrypha
    • Creation Engine said:
    You know I like how ambiguous it is if coil couldn't simulate Taylor or if he dropped them before she got to him in all the torture and kill throw away timelines
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    The only timeline splits that Taylor was directly observing him for during this chapter were his 'stress relief' timelines, and Coil typically splits and the drops those timelines within seconds.

    Calls a guard in, shoots them, ends the timeline. Threatens and then shoots Tattletale, ends the timeline. I think it isn't that he can't simulate Taylor, it's that she wouldn't have time to make an impact he'd be aware of before the aborted timeline closed down.

    It'd take her a full ten seconds, at her own estimate, to even get to the door to his base. One can presume that he was closing the simulated timelines before she started rip/tear/burn/melting her way through the door.
     
    If this gets tied to Taylor it won't look good. Think about the only times the PRT know about her appearing are her stopping the 2 E88 members and killing Hookwolf. With this they would see 2 out of 3 times she is involved as ending in her killing the criminal. While we know she has stopped plenty of crimes with a well placed bug or so it is possible all of those have fallen under the radar. Her saving grace so far is Hookwolf had a kill orders along with being a Nazi and Coil died of an allergic reaction and not a lethal dose of venom.

    While writing this I also realized she has killed the only 2 parahuman capes she has dealt with. That type of rep can be dangerous. As in the criminals deciding she doesn't follow the unwritten rules and going after her identity dangerous.
     
    White_Haven said:
    If this gets tied to Taylor it won't look good. Think about the only times the PRT know about her appearing are her stopping the 2 E88 members and killing Hookwolf. With this they would see 2 out of 3 times she is involved as ending in her killing the criminal. While we know she has stopped plenty of crimes with a well placed bug or so it is possible all of those have fallen under the radar. Her saving grace so far is Hookwolf had a kill orders along with being a Nazi and Coil died of an allergic reaction and not a lethal dose of venom.

    While writing this I also realized she has killed the only 2 parahuman capes she has dealt with. That type of rep can be dangerous. As in the criminals deciding she doesn't follow the unwritten rules and going after her identity dangerous.
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    I think you mean she's killed two of the five parahuman capes she's dealt with. Amy Dallon, Missy Biron, and Lisa are all still alive, thank you very much.
     
    M. H. Fuzzball said:
    Given that Taylor wasn't ever in the base, and Lisa escaped before the police went in, there's nothing to tie it to Taylor.
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    Coil died to a couple wasp stings. But that was a bog standard normal wasp, and he didn't melt into a puddle of goo from the venom. Nor was he burned to a crisp during the melting process.

    White_Haven said:
    That's my fault. I meant parahuman criminals and didn't count Lisa because she was the victim here.
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    But the was you phrased it implies Vespa kills all parahumans she encounters. And that's patently not true. Sort of like how it's common for people to say there were no survivors of Custer's Last Stand. When in truth there were a lot of survivors, they were just the men and women General Custer had planned to slaughter as part of furthering his political goals.

    Ironically, eyewitness accounts from the survivors would suggest that General Custer was likely the first casualty of the battle, rather then him having a "heroic last stand" with a small group of remaining soldiers. There was nothing heroic on the part of General Custer in regards to the battle of Little Bighorn. His plan had been to ride through the settlement there while the warriors were, slaughter all the women and children, and ride away. A tactic he'd used previously. Only this time there were far more people then he expected (Custer didn't listen to his scouts), and it was a rather large force of warriors rather then defenseless women, children, and elderly people.

    Coil didn't even get the "honor" of dying in battle that General Custer received. There was no battle. Similarly, Hookwolf didn't get the "honor" of dying in battle either. His encounter with Vespa wasn't a battle, it was putting down a mad dog.
     
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