Voracity (Worm Case 53 Quest)
- Thread starter Lyova
- Start date
- Location
- Leeds
The eatings continued until there were none of us left.
Interlude: Tattletale
- Location
- Net Slum Tartarga
[X] Interlude: Tattletale
Once, during a particularly bad migraine, Tattletale had considered buying a sensory deprivation tank. Never mind that it wasn't even halfway practical considering her current accommodations, never mind that she seriously doubted it would help, the pain had been bad enough to make it seem a fantastic idea. Between Bitch, the dogs, and Regent's games, the loft was always noisier than she'd prefer. Noisier than it should be, secret base and all that.
In that sense, and sadly only that sense, there were worse prisons than the extra-dimensional stomach of the local monster hero. Time, darkness, and silence were the only things that helped after overusing her power, and this pocket dimension offered all of those things.
Light? There wasn't any. Not one bit. Difficult to tell if her eyes were open or closed.
Sound? Again, none. Her own body wasn't perfectly quiet, but that was background, easy enough to filter out.
Yes, this place was quite possibly one of the most calming environments she'd ever been in. Except for one detail. One tiny, intrusive, almost cruel detail that her senses couldn't help but fixate on.
She smelled like fish.
Weakfish, local to east coast. Size; two to three years old. Health; stress–
She slammed the doors to her power, as vicious as any mental effort could be, and swore under her breath. Maybe that senseless squid would hear it and get distracted during the fight.
Cirrata maintains awareness of pocket dimension; extra sense, audio not transmitted.
She swore louder.
It was liberating to indulge in a brief tantrum. It wasn't just that she'd gotten unwillingly perfumed with l'eau de poisson, though yes, she was going to get back at that pointless creature, somehow. But as far as frustrations went, it was near the bottom of the list. Even regret sat higher – if only she'd been the one to reel in the squid instead of the Protectorate. Cirrata was the kind of versatile muscle the Undersiders wanted, and it'd be payback for Spitfire, in a weird way. Even if her power wasn't the greatest against the local heavy hitters, she would've been a phenomenal thief. The wasted potential physically hurt.
Unsurprisingly, her current capture sat at the top of the frustration list. Being captured wasn't the problem. Well, it was, in a dozen different ways, but on a personal level, she could cope. What was really frustrating was that she was captured when she shouldn't have been. It shouldn't have been a realistic risk. It shouldn't.
But considering what had happened, she'd been wrong. Somewhere, somehow, she'd fucked up. And she didn't fucking understand.
The casino job had gone off without a hitch, no problem. In with monster dogs, out with the money. She wasn't entirely sure why Coil wanted the casino robbed, didn't feel like something he was all that invested in, but she could guess. The first objective was obvious – a distraction. There would be a few targets his mercenaries were hitting right now, or scouting out, while the eyes of the heroes were pointed at the Ruby Dreams.
The second objective… it was pretty obvious he was cultivating the Undersiders. They'd tangled with the ABB for almost a year, and they could only harass them so much before it stopped adding to their rep. Robbing a downtown casino though? That was a firm step toward the big leagues.
And if Coil needed another loud distraction in the future… the Undersiders hitting something flashy would just seem like a continuing pattern rather than a curious exception. A good decoy couldn't be too suspicious.
After they'd left the casino, Bitch and Grue had taken the dogs to stash the money at a storage locker near the docks, while she and Regent circled back to base. Logically, considering the timing, that was when the heroes followed and found them.
But Tattletale hadn't been followed. The dogs – the dogs might've been tracked. Negligible chance. But she and Regent definitely weren't. She'd double-checked, triple-checked even. And that meant the heroes had known about the base even before tonight, they'd just chosen to act on the information because her group did something uncharacteristically big.
Tattletale wanted to believe it, that she hadn't been wrong about not being followed. But it didn't feel right. If they weren't followed from the casino, that meant the heroes cared enough about the Undersiders to puzzle out their location, and that also meant she'd fucked up somewhere.
She knew her group hadn't been the stealthiest, hadn't been impossible to track. Difficult, yeah, but not impossible. Armsmaster could've collated sightings, he could've requested a PRT thinktank to track them down. Heck, some of the locals had a good idea of just who lived in Redmond Welding, and while she'd taken measures, something could have changed.
But we shouldn't have been on the Protectorate's radar. Wasn't that the entire point of Coil keeping the Empire busy downtown, very publicly, with very flashy laser rifles? To give the Undersiders time to gather strength and reputation, while the heroes focused on downtown? Had her read been wrong there too?
Fuck. No. It fucking hadn't.
There was something personal going on here – little to nothing to do with the PRT or the Protectorate. Her power would've caught that. People were more complicated.
Going from the top down made most sense in these situations. The local Director and Armsmaster, likely Armsmaster, because it'd been the Protectorate who ambushed them, not the PRT. Was he desperate enough to focus on the Undersiders just to put something in the win column?
… it was possible. There was his relationship with Dauntless, and the last months hadn't been kind to the heroes. The PRT tried its best to call Canberra a victory, and it wouldn't be an outright lie, but what the hell kind of victory required Australia to seal its capital beneath a giant dome? What had the Simurgh done?
The familiar question was an itching scab. She could scratch, send her power at it. She didn't. She might face an Endbringer one day, but as far as her involvement with flying horrors went, Cirrata was plenty.
Tattletale sighed. The situation just didn't click, and the actual battle hadn't given her anything either. Cirrata had arrived, listened to her and Regent's bluffs, proceeded to call or ignore or fail to understand them, and had eaten her. Fantastic. It wasn't enough that Regent's power had been useless–
Regent's power maps to own body; effects on non-standard nervous system negligible. Time required for meaningful effect six hours. Time required for complete effect forty hours–
–but he'd also shaken her off at the end, leaving her trapped in Cirrata's pocket dimension. She'd gambled on the small chance he wouldn't, but it'd been a stupid bet. Grue might've powered through the problem, but Regent wasn't ever going to escape while supporting a cripple.
And that was the last she'd sensed of the fight. Too fucking little. How many people were outside? Who? Had Coil sent aid? How was the fight going? Cirrata had seemed confident, but her naivety and childlike faith in her senior teammates made her a poor source.
Could she just call her team and ask? She had a phone on her. Phone signals… shouldn't reach into Cirrata's dimension, but her portals might let them through. Was she close enough to a portal outside?
She teased a smartphone out of a thin pocket. It had reception. She was close to an exit then. Could she use that? She should really be reserving her power for dealing with the PRT, but she pushed anyway.
Pocket dimension; Cirrata governs placement. Caution, ignorance of powers, combat behavior; Cirrata stored me far from any exit. Reception; signal passes through portal on severed leg, severed leg is close to an exit. Cirrata considered asking PRT assistance.
Okay. Sneaking out of this place wasn't in the cards, but at least she could make phone calls.
Coil? No. She'd called him earlier, on a different phone, but she couldn't make any calls she couldn't explain to the PRT later. It was likely the reason he hadn't contacted her either.
Who then? Cirrata? Could she blackmail the hero and demand her release? It shouldn't be impossible to call the Protectorate office and burn her power on finding Cirrata's personal number… but what then?
Threats didn't work earlier because there was very little Cirrata could be threatened with. There was so little history to dig into, and the only thing she considered precious were her friendships, like she was some kind of Disney animal. And threatening those friendships was nearly useless because those friends weren't anywhere near. Physical harm? That's where her naive faith in the PRT and Protectorate would come into play – she'd trust in her protectors.
As for her personality… considering what it was, combined with a truly spectacular ability to deliberately let impulsiveness eclipse the rest of her character, there wasn't much to work with. The cheer could be pierced, and Tattletale had done it earlier, but that just left her in a room with an angrier, unhappier Cirrata. Didn't help one bit.
It wasn't that Cirrata was well-adjusted. There was damage there, of course there was, amnesiac and dumped into a world that wasn't her own, but it wasn't hidden. She'd acknowledged it, accepted it as something she couldn't do anything about. She was cracked and shattered, and she'd resolved to fill in the cracks with the mortar of time, build herself up with sturdy stones of happy memories.
And she might succeed, some years down the road. Fuck, she might succeed. It was on some level weird and unfair that the amnesiac monster had found her answer, when so many ordinary people struggled to find theirs every day.
Tattletale shook her head. She could be sentimental later. Did she have any new information that she didn't have before?
A whiff of fishy fragrance. Her method of attack, ugh. It did show an awfully callous disregard for the animals she kept in here, didn't it? The fact she kept animals here at all was a pretty big hint. More naivety, or did she simply not care?
Cares. Abnormal attachment, as possessions. Possessions; things that are acceptable to use.
Considering the obvious kleptomania, that was uncomfortably close to some subsets of sociopaths. Not the overall vibe Cirrata gave her.
Cultural difference. Mental issue.
Either? Both? It wasn't sociopathy, but some things she should care about, she just didn't, or at least wouldn't until someone filled in some missing pieces. Was it something about the world she came from, her upbringing, her culture? Something her powers had done to her head?
Seriously, fuck. Cirrata was a keyboard that had a quarter of its keys broken, half of the remainder swapped around, with an overly affectionate tentacle growing out the side. How the hell were you supposed to push the right buttons?
This was the cannibalism thing all over again. An effect of her powers, possibly combined with some kind of cultural or personal absence of disgust for it. Too many pieces were missing to get anything more than a flimsy suspicion, and Cirrata's reaction to it hadn't narrowed it down much.
Not ashamed; hides because consequences of not hiding are unknown; preoccupation with retaining options. Mild fear of commitment.
That was something. Could she build on this, get something she could use?
Thinks I look tasty.
She did not fucking need that kind of approval.
No, Cirrata was a dead end, and she wasn't going to antagonize her to the point of making it a literal one. All she'd have to do was tell her bosses 'Tattletale escaped my pocket dimension somehow'. The PRT would assume the unidentified villain was some variety of teleporter, and meanwhile she'd be stuck right here, at the mercy of a pissed-off cryptid who, in large part, made her decisions based on what she could get away with. The other Undersiders might object, but when it was a hero's word against that of villains who had every reason to lie about their teleporter teammate… the PRT might well believe Cirrata and prepare against teleporters.
Hard to say it wouldn't happen. It seemed far-fetched, but from the footage she'd seen of Cirrata's fight against the Teeth, she lapsed into a simplistic worldview of acceptable targets sometimes. Let someone else be the fatal mistake that corrected Cirrata's crazy. Tattletale would take her chances with the PRT.
Speaking of, she hadn't really planned out that approach yet. It had felt like giving up, admitting her loss, and wasn't very productive without an accurate read of the situation either. What were her options?
Throwing Coil under the bus and joining the Wards for a few years… it was a funny thought, and not even remotely an option. Her parents, the tens of thousands she stole before Coil, the fact the Protectorate would never let a Thinker of her caliber just leave… there was no way she'd get a tolerable arrangement. Every reason she ran away instead of running to the Wards still applied, and she'd picked up a few new ones besides. No, she'd sit tight, look for whatever Coil planned to do. He would spring her at some point – ninety-five percent sure he would, higher if her teammates got away.
Did her team get away? She lowered the walls around her power, loosed it on the general situation. It didn't work so hot when working with nothing to observe, off memories, but she got a vaguely negative impression. Cirrata had been too confident, her fight not urgent enough. If Armsmaster was the one outside, he'd be prepared for Bitch and Grue. And while Regent might be a problem, he was very much not one for Cirrata.
Tattletale fiddled with her phone, rolling down her contact list to Regent. In all likelihood, they were still fighting, or stuck in Grue's smoke, but it was worth a try. Regent didn't pick up. She tried calling the others. No one responded.
Okay. That didn't have to mean anything. It didn't have to, but the chance they'd all gotten captured did rise by enough to call it likely. Damn. What did that mean for her teammates?
The PRT should try recruitment before jailing them. Bitch would tell them to suck shit. There was a chance the PRT would find the right words… the right approach to make her flip… but that was a one out of ten shot, tops.
Regent... considering his priorities in life, there was no chance he'd go for a Wards career. He'd bide his time and try to escape. In the first place, the PRT would probably want him least. Compared to Bitch, who had notoriety and even fans, or Grue, whose power was non-lethal and marketable in a backwards kind of way, Regent wasn't exactly a prize. His power was either weak or unusable, and all he had to offer besides that was outdated intel on Heartbreaker. Not enough to offset his past as Hijack. The PRT didn't know about that yet, but they would soon enough.
Pity they hadn't been able to approach Avalon about changing Regent's power yet.
Grue… was the most likely to become a problem, even if it that chance was still comfortably small. The PRT would inform his family, and that shattered his plan to become his sister's guardian. The PRT wouldn't help a former villain get anything resembling custody of his sister. They might offer some help, but it wouldn't sound like much to Grue.
It would've been nice if she could just look at those two and see a beautiful sibling relationship. It wasn't, not wholly. Grue's central motivation was supporting his sister, but so much of it was about him. Making up for the fact he hadn't been there when she really needed it, remedying his past failures. Guilt and obligation, overlapping with a subconscious fixation on his precious self-image.
As a probationary Ward, he wouldn't have time for Aisha, wouldn't be able to pay her bail whenever she got caught stealing. The PRT might even enroll him back into school for a year. Frankly, he'd be able to mean more to her as a villain, even if he had to live off the grid.
Perhaps the biggest factor was that after this capture, Grue would be desperate. And when Grue was desperate, he moved very carefully, very slowly, relying on what worked for him before: villainy, and his resourceful boss that hadn't let him down yet. He wouldn't throw himself on the PRT's dubious mercy. Still… there was a chance, a chance the PRT could give the right assurance, strike the right note. A small one. One in… eight, maybe?
No, the Undersiders would get through this. That made it sound like there was more camaraderie than there was – they were just four people for whom the system didn't work, or wasn't enough. But whether their reputation would survive… it was a setback, to be captured right after they tried doing something big. But they'd still have their loot stashed in that locker, and escaping PRT custody afterward was a form of rep in itself. They could recover. Yeah. It wasn't all bad.
She just hoped the PRT would let her shower off the fucking glitter before the mugshots.
===
Just me being terrible at juggling multiple projects. As for the vote, Interlude: Tattletale clearly won, and there'll be a (smaller) Armsmaster interlude after this. That one's half-done already, shouldn't take two weeks. Sorry!
(And my apologies this update is mostly Tattletale thinking at herself. The next major event for Lisa is the PRT bringing in her parents, and that miserable situation is just not something that can get any kind of resolution in one Interlude. You may see more of her during Armsy's POV, or Skye's, depending on the next vote.)
Oh, I wanna plug something! @helnae, of Starry Eyes fame (the fic that inspired Skye's last name), started a case 53 quest inspired by Voracity! Stheno Quest, on SV and SB. It's funny how things in this community circle around like that.
Give it a try if you feel like it!Oh, and Sky and Pita helped look over this chapter. Thanks! Mucho cred. ^^
Last edited:
- Location
- Leeds
The irony being that we have more senses than her.
Good one Power.
Outrageous, childlike?
We're the adultest adult.
Finally a compliment, I think TattleTale has a very negative image of us.
We should get the PRT to do what it does best and get a villainous focus group so we can figure out how to be more interesting to alt moral markets.
Unfair? Eh, ask those people if they'd trade their arms for tentacles in exchange for the answer.
The real danger is if we re apply it.
- Location
- US
The moral of the day is that monsters don't deserve to be happy.
- Location
- Ural, Russia, Earth
Need to do something about that.
Hey, you're not arrested, you're eaten! You don't have a right to a phone call!
Yup. You can threat her with "I'll make sure Blasto will never make pet dumbos for you!" but it's just too cruel.
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
1. Don't worry, that's an easy fix.
2. Oh hey, two capes who like being stuck in our pocket dimension!
You know, you could always just give her the middle finger. That may come across.
But if you stick around... you will.
Sorry Lisa, you gotta get on our wavelength.
1. Oh shit. That's a problem.
2. On the other hand, if we wanted to ever set up the pocket dimension as our own little base with a bunch of support capes, there's a way for the base to contact us.
A very huggy disney animal.
1. We're SV. We may be crazy, but of course we're going to make our cape mentally stable.
2. That's because lots of other people are Capes. Normies don't always have that big a difficulty.
By letting the tentacle push them for you!
We've got Hannah and Weld for that. You can just sit in the pocket dimension and play mobile games.
AHAHAHAHAAHA! You think we're going to let you get out of our reach? Oh no-no-no-no my brainy little morsel, you are going to stay right there.
Yes. We'll still take photos of you before that happens though, for posterity's sake.
... well shit. That'll make or break any chance of Lisa working with the PRT, and likley not help. We need to find a way to get her on board.
Frescopino
(Verified Air Freshener)
- Location
- The Pit of Hate
A quest by the guy who inspired this story that is inspired by this quest.It's funny how things in this community circle around like that.
Brb, finding a way to crossover Voracity, Starry Eyes and that quest.
MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE ENGAGED!
Last edited:
Bailey Matutine
(Verified Pooka)
- Location
- Pelican Town
- Pronouns
- They/Them
If by "something" you mean remember this despite it happening in an omake we have no awareness of and use it to prank Clockblocker somehow, I agree.
RyubosJ
Person that hates Mega Evolutions.
- Location
- UK
This is an interlude, 100% canon, not an omake
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
We have full OOC. This is totes something we know.
I suspect her parents are going to be a lot more accomodating than she thinks. They lost both their children in rapid succession and her shard will happily build towers on assumptions.
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
> Implying anything resembling mundane-backstory-people-who-aren't-evil-caricatures exists in Worm.
- Location
- Philippines
for some reason Cirrata's insides can be quite therapeutic make me wonder what happens if we put other capes inside her
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
No, it's just sometimes we get people in there who like the total sensory deprivation. Most people go mad.
A fair chunk are merely normally abusive. TT's parents specifically were overachiever parents who kept adding pressure, nothing too unusual in asian families. Grue and Imp had run of the mill bottom class problems.
In TT's case, that type of parent generally DO want the best for their children. To have one die and the other run away would shake their worldview...well if they didn't wind up blaming each other for it.
- Location
- Netherlands
Hunches Bailey, Hunches.
And not in the parahuman variety. Or rather, in the parahuman variety, but not hunches by the parahuman Hunch.
- Location
- Leeds
I'm trying to think.
Have we ever seen Taylor control a bug?
Frescopino
(Verified Air Freshener)
- Location
- The Pit of Hate
... Here in Voracity...? She has canon powers here, had them since before Skye's arrival.
- Location
- Leeds
I knows shes had powers since before quest start I'm just trying to think if we've seen evidence of them being canon powers.
- Location
- Hell
...Cirrata was there when Taylor showed the Protectorate her power. It is in her Interlude.
- Location
- Washington DC, United States
She demonstrated control over a ladybug during her registration interview/her interlude.