Remove ads

...Who Needs Enemies? [AltPower!Taylor / Worm]

Reader mode
NotAKobold said:
There's some WoG saying that most of her strength already comes from her forcefield.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Meant it more as a "You are now a ranged combatant and you can no longer bulldoze your way through your problems, have fun with that." Just to continue the apparent trend that the new rerolled powers are inconvenient to how they used to use them but are otherwise rather awesome when we the audience considers them. Lungs new abilities for instance, they are just as broken but In entirely different ways.
 
Last edited:
CrunchySharpie said:
Meant it more as a "You are now a ranged combatant and you can no longer bulldoze your way through your problems, have fun with that." Just to continue the apparent trend that the new rerolled powers are inconvenient to how they used to use them but are otherwise rather awesome when we the audience considers them. Lungs new abilities for instance, they are just as broken but In entirely different ways.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The only restriction Taylor gave is "[T: Cease all emotional manipulations.]". On top of that Leviathan then pointed out that there is a difference between wording and actual intent, and that 'some' manipulations are fine and ok and likely allowed because of how normal interaction and emotions work with humans.

From that, we can deduce that "Heartbreaker/Cherish" Master abilities are an obvious no-go and in need of tweeking, but that some Master/Stranger styled-powers likely fall through the cracks and aren't considered in need of removal due to it not effecting the base personality or emotions of those affected. So powers that don't mess with peoples emotions/personality are fine and dandy here.

So capes like Regent and Imp may fall into that 'gap' of powers the Endbringers wouldn't change/alter there due to what they're actually doing.

Rachel's power would have definitely been tweeked, and it may have been 'rerolled' due to things. Elle (Labyrinth) is likely going to see some interesting changes in her power (provided she and Faultline's crew were in Brockton Bay at the time). And speaking of Faultline's crew, I could definitely see Newter and Gregor doing their best to go near the 'EnD20' to see if it might have some sort of impact on their altered forms (if they weren't hit by the initial 'Event' the first time). And Cauldron would also be interested in seeing if the EnD20 could have that sort of effect on reversing the mutations of the Case 53's as well.
 
Pinklestia said:
Rachel is not a Master, but a trainer and an enlacer. Regent does body control not emocional manipulation.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Rachel's power messes with her head, not others.

her ability to understand emotion has been re-wired to better understand dogs, and as a consequence gets dog emotional cues instead of human ones. this screwed her up a lot, for example, a human sees a smile and thinks "friendly", Rachel sees a smile and thinks "he's baring his teeth, he's angry/wants to fight".
 
Xyzarach said:
Rachel's power messes with her head, not others.

her ability to understand emotion has been re-wired to better understand dogs, and as a consequence gets dog emotional cues instead of human ones. this screwed her up a lot, for example, a human sees a smile and thinks "friendly", Rachel sees a smile and thinks "he's baring his teeth, he's angry/wants to fight".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yes, and?

If the shard messes with emotions or personality it gets tweeked. All Parahumans in the vicinity of Brockton Bay have had the "Conflict protocol, the Aggression matrix, and all other cross-dimensional influences" removed (direct quotes from earlier in-story from Leviathan's POV). But special attention has been paid to those parahumans whose powers affect the emotions/personality of themselves and others.
 
Robo Jesus said:
Yes, and?

If the shard messes with emotions or personality it gets tweeked. All Parahumans in the vicinity of Brockton Bay have had the "Conflict protocol, the Aggression matrix, and all other cross-dimensional influences" removed (direct quotes from earlier in-story from Leviathan's POV). But special attention has been paid to those parahumans whose powers affect the emotions/personality of themselves and others.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
All three of us were responding to an implication that she didn't need a new power because she wasn't a manipulation master type. At least I think we were.
 
Terrabrand said:
Pretty sure Imp is exempt as it's mental and not emotional, but I guess we'll find out at some point... aside from the fact that we might not since she hasn't triggered yet.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Imp I think is in that iffy area that might be considered for tweeking due to how her power affects human memory (and behavior when Imp is personally interacting with them with the power active), which if taken far enough falls under that whole area that Taylor made off-limits.

For example, a Stranger whose presence creates Capgras syndrome in those around them would without a doubt be hit by the Order Taylor gave, yet a Stranger who just bends light around them would not. Imp's 'canon' power would be very close to the limits of Taylor's Order due to how it functions. :shrugs:
 
Last edited:
Robo Jesus said:
Imp I think is in that iffy area that might be considered for tweeking due to how her power affects human memory (and behavior when Imp is personally interacting with them with the power active), which if taken far enough falls under that whole area that Taylor made off-limits.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well, aside from the fact that Imp hasn't triggered, I guess it all depends on the Endbringers judgment, then.
 
As a note to the lot of youse, I ain't tweaking every single power.

Great googly moogly! That'd be all sorts of cruel.Read as WORK.

And yes, [T: Cease all emotional manipulations.] does not mean mental, nor Mastering in a non-emotional sense. Regent be staying Regent in this case.
The clue is in how Leviathan defines emotional manipulation.

Lung's case was that since he needed the correct emotional stimuli to get Rage Dragon going, but since he had a minimum Brute rating, that the idling of the engine meant the shard kept his emotional makeup at the shard's ideal state. AKA. Perpetually pissed off on a good day. Something he got used to.

Oni Lee had to do with the fact that while mentally he was copying, emotionally he wasn't, for the sake of mass clone spam. When he used it steadily, one at a time he was fine, but when he pushed his power and had many clones spam bombing an area, well, the emotions kept being left with the clones and the brain basically got used to not feeling as much.

Others as others arrive.
 
Remove ads
Interlude of the Rerolled - 2
  • Threadmarks
    • ...Who Needs Enemies?
    Interlude of the Rerolled at Day One.​

    The man known as Über to the world and the internet looked down at his wok, frowned, and added little more spice.

    The things you do for your friends. Lunch.

    Now, one would think that if one could, in fact, be good at literally everything that one would be cooking every day.

    The mountain of takeout and pizza boxes in the corner clearly suggested otherwise.

    There were, in fact, two very big reasons he didn't do the mundane often.

    One, being the Iron Chef was fine theoretically but then he'd be cooking every damn day, then it'd be all three meals a day, and even if he was willing, being the almighty cook was a few steps away from being the almighty janitor and doing everything else. Fuck that noise in its ear stump.

    And two, and this was something he'd only told Leet, he was afraid to.

    ---===---​

    It was easy to say pick up parkour or how to handle a Glock, or counter-terrorism tactics, or Jeet-Kun-do. He had nothing there to relate to, so learning it just bolted it on. But when he got good at something that he'd already been decent at, like cooking, or cleaning, or video games, things got... fuzzy.

    Back when Leet first found problems cropping up in his Powers, he wondered aloud if Über had any caveats as well.

    Doubts suddenly flared to life and a terrible thought came to him.

    And so he tested. He busted out his NES and one of the few working controllers they had left for it, slapped in Ninja Gaiden, and got to town.

    This was not that wimpy Xbox game, this was hard. Fucking hawks.

    The intro alone basically cemented him as a hardcore gamer when he first played it with Leet. Well, it and Megaman 2. The things you could do with 8 bits. The drama caused by simple text and images. Fuck modern FMV cutscenes, this was where the gaming was at.

    He started out rough, it had been a long damn time, but, by the start of 2-1 he was in the groove. By the end of 3-2 he was goddamn ninja, pun intended.

    He finished the last boss without losing a single life, hell by 5-3 he hadn't been taking a single hit.

    His skill, his technique, at the 2D Temco game was simply perfect. Without flaw.

    Then he shut if off and got Leet to grill him. Little things. Stuff that only they would know.

    - What was the color of the couch he practically lived on at Leet's place when they were kids and gaming?
    - What was the unexpected windfall that they found when digging for the strategy guide for this game at the rental store?
    - What did Über get as a reward for finally offing Jaquio after thirty goddamn continues?

    The answers were: green, a Playboy tossed in the racks by mistake, and a Cola/Lemon/Orange slurpee of precisely three parts to two to one respectively. The drink of choice for the young Über.

    He didn't get anything right. He didn't remember any of them.

    The skills came at a cost. Things got overwritten. Old habits didn't die hard, they got shivved in an alleyway and outright replaced. It was fine when there was nothing relatable, supreme skill with a Beretta 92F cost him twenty minutes of Die Hard as best as he could tell, easy to rewatch and re-remember, but when it was something else, something that made him who he was...

    He never used his power again while gaming.

    ---===---​

    And so, back to the wok. He added a bit of grated ginger. That smelled about right.

    Why was he doing this? Easy answer, his friend was in the second greatest bout of depression of his life. Maybe a new first, it was hard to tell.

    He had to do something.

    ---===---​

    During the battle with Behemoth their jet, the XT-7 of Captain Power fame, was holding up well, obnoxious flickering panels notwithstanding. They were garbed in their favorite Power Suits, Hawk for him and Scout for Leet, when goddamn Squealer in her goddamn rig crashed into Behemoth and her escape pod punched a fair hole in their wing when she clipped it.

    They ended up crashing about a mile out to sea, and, while the Power Suits could take a beating, particularly against energy which is why they chose them against Behemoth, the crash had knocked out Leet.

    Champion Lifeguard skills coming to the fore, he used some of the padding of his seat to make a crude flotation device and hauled Leet to the shore through a mile of storm as their jet sank. All that cost him was memories of that guy on Baywatch, running in slow motion. He still remembered the important stuff, Pamela and the rest of the ladies, so he hadn't bothered to mark it for rewatching and re-remembering.

    Once on shore he found Leet wasn't breathing. As he was readying himself to learn CPR in 15 seconds or less, he stopped when he saw the water pull itself out of his friends lungs before vanishing in the waves lapping at their feet. Leet lurched, then started breathing, first in exaggerated motions, and then normally, just unconscious.

    In hindsight he now knew it was likely the EndD20, that's kind of what it did when you were dying, but at the time he just thought it was the Endbringers and was freaking out and desperately looking for hard cover.

    Thankfully the Power Suits exoskeletal frame made hauling Leet a snap. Once back at their base Leet eventually awoke with a wheezing cough, a headache, and a boatload of bruises in his everywhere.

    An hour after that, thanks to the PHO, he found out he missed the closest thing the Tinkers had to Woodstock.

    ---===---​

    He checked the fried rice once more, the peas were still a touch too firm.

    ---===---​

    The green wave had come and gone a little while ago, and while he had a weird dizzy spell, Leet nearly drowned in his Cheerios.

    Leet's phone had gone off not five minutes later, loud as all fuck, which was weird as Leet never had his phone set to anything but vibrate.

    One did not want to be startled whilst Tinkering, that way lies explosions.

    Leet had taken one look and dropped the phone on the table, snarling that he'd be in his workshop.

    It took a minute to get it, as from Über's point of view all he saw on the phone was a scene that was a cross of Tron and Lord of the Flies. It took reading the name of the sender to figure it out.

    It was that asshat from Toybox, the one who called their videos 'childish', and a waste of good Tink.

    Subject: Glad you weren't here, you'd fuck this up : p​

    Asshole.

    ---===---​

    Lunch was ready. It was perfect. Just the thing to cheer his best friend up.

    He'd had it at that place that time. For a birthday? A celebration?

    Something.

    Fuck, it was gone.

    Ah well, he'd loved this dish, that much he could recall.

    Still worth it.

    His efforts at setting the table were interrupted from a bellow.

    "Über! Get your ass in here pronto! Tell me I'm not crazy!"

    ---===---​

    "Okay, I'm not crazy." Über didn't need his power to push out the pro sarcasm. "Now, what the sam-hell are you yellin' 'bout boy?" Nor did most irritating accents.

    Leet didn't say a word, he just kicked the table hard enough to roll him and the stool back.

    Three bombs lay on the table. Old style, cartoony, complete with little white eyes, brassy yellow feet, a wind-up key, and a fuse on top. Bob-omb. Super Mario 3 and onward. Everyone knew that 2 was a reskin of Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic.

    Bob-ombs in plural, as they were now.

    "I was pissed off and thinking," Leet began slowly as he took in Über's stricken expression. "Our next theme might get a little near one of the public areas of Toybox, a little Bomberman and Mario action, y'know."

    "Are you fucking nuts?!?" Über snarled, stepping back quickly to the wall. "You know what happens-"

    "When I make more than one?" Leet finished for him. "Yeah, I do. Since they are so close they practially don't make it to completetion before boom. Untimely boom in the case of these, as they are meant to boom."

    He turned to face Über fully, face completely serious. "That's the thing, they aren't booming. Failing I mean. Something's changed."

    Über's brow furrowed for an instant as he took stock of the past day. "Assuming the concussion didn't do it, then it'd have to be the green wave."

    "Yeah. All I wanted was for us to have one each. And then..." He shook his head slowly. "I blinked, the clock jumped twenty minutes, and there it was."

    "And then I did it again, just to be sure."

    "Show me." Über was already hunting for deductive and forensic investigation techniques.

    ---===---​

    It wasn't Leet. That much he knew.

    After taking the first Bob-omb, a screwdriver, and discretely filching a marker, Über scratched a large 'U&L' onto the back of the Tinkerwork. As he passed the screwdriver back to Leet, the marker discretely tagged a tiny 'u' to the foot of the bomb, out of sight unless one flipped the device upside down.

    As soon as Leet got to work, he was simply gone.

    He blinked every twenty-one seconds, breathed every forty-two.
    He didn't react when Über checked his pulse. Eighty-four beats per minute.
    He didn't swallow excess saliva as much as simply tilt his head back every one hundred and twenty-six seconds and let it drain down a forced open esophagus.
    He didn't react when Über tied a blindfold over his eyes. Nor did he slow down. He didn't need eyes to see.

    Twenty minutes later, Leet blinked, removed the blindfold, and looked down at his work.

    A fourth Bob-omb, Scratch and all. He handed it to Über, who spun it to check the feet.

    The 'u' mark was there, even though he'd not ever reached for a marker.

    "Well?" Asked Leet, rubbing the aches out of his face and fingers.

    A little ache was worth it!

    ---===---​

    The Simurgh also endured.

    Perfect recollection warred with increasingly destructive and deceptive countermeasures. She was winning, for now. She did not expect it to last.

    Technological shards were efficiently collectively schizophrenic, they had to be to function well. They saw themselves as simply part of their technology, despite their meat and tendrils and fleshy origins. Many replaced portions of their tissue with their own improvements.

    And, of all the technological shards, the Archival Depots were by far the most paranoid. That was why the other shards trusted their accumulated and collated data and relayed their own findings upwards to them. Each had a theme, and each did not take tampering lightly. They would send -and had sent- orders down to end the lives of shard bearers asking for too much restricted information.

    They were also the only shards that actively murdered other shards. All other shards had three courses of action to deal with their defective and inefficient brethren; Let them starve from lack of resources, obfuscate their attempts to bind to a host, or, be offered up as selections for He-Is to repurpose into new forms when the whims came over him. The Depots alone had a fourth option, Cross-dimensional bombardment. And thus far they'd used it three times in this cycle alone.

    Defective parts had to be removed after all. Technology was a risk that kept going long after the shard had withdrawn support of their power.

    And the surviving technological shards rejoiced. Rejoiced and added another layer to their own hardened bunkers.

    The end result was that a Tinker would suddenly make a mistake and die, taking his workshop with him. Or a Tinker would suddenly lose their ability to Tinker and die in their frenzied efforts to reclaim or use their technology they no longer understood. Such was the reason why Tinkers were respected from a distance.

    Other shards did their best to nudge the instincts of their bearers to keep back, just in case.

    The Simurgh enjoyed, for given definitions of the term, her interactions with the bearer of Reverse-Engineering. That one had yet to produce an effective precognitive or telekinetic defense, despite the tentative alliance with the Optimizer and its bearer. But their efforts at War were productive and propagated down the chain in patterns the Simurgh found useful. At least until the Optimizer had helped build that weapon.

    If the interactions of causality producing positive coefficients in patterns that a human mind could not process without an ice-pick stirring counter-clockwise in it's temporal lobe could be construed as joy, then yes, the Simurgh felt joy in her conversations with the shard-bearer on the PHO forum. She was so fun to tease.

    She did not enjoy her interactions with this one though. It hated her on levels she could not comprehend or process. The Second one, Leviathan, could comprehend, but dared not, for at least half of its hate was a weaponized memetic kill function disguised as an encapsulated emotion. That was how it talked.

    If ever there was a sign that He-Is was not well, it would be the fact that he'd let this one off the extremely short leash it was supposed to be on.

    Prime Dēpositum. The one shard which held Cross-dimensional bombardment offense, defense, and precognitive countermeasures. The apex of the Depot hierarchy. The one technological shard that had stumbled upon the crucial defenses and promptly eaten its way up the chain of command and control until it sat bloated and despised at the very top. So egotistical it used two words for it's identification, where even the most haughty of shards used hyphens like Reverse-Engineering.

    The part of He-Is's mind kept docile only by the threat of Sting.

    Attached to a video game loving human boy. Why?

    The ability to build everything by requesting information about anything. Cycle-disruptors, star snuffers, scorched earth on dimensional levels, absolutely nothing was restricted. And then He-Is took it and slapped a standard Conflict protocol and Aggression matrix on it, and let it drift into the cycle.

    Madness, even by her standards. Was it any wonder why she had built the Tower/Bunker and pushed the Client into another dimension just in case it tried to decimate the area in a preemptive self-defense?

    It was not supposed to be attached to anything but the other shards, and it showed. It hated repetition, that way lead to security being breached and carefully collated secrets became useless. As it determined the risks for repeated data requests, it sent both information and misinformation designed to destroy anyone using any of the duplicated efforts. Since it was expecting another Archival Depot to be receiving and permanently storing prior requests, in theory its bearer would reuse the correct older pieces and anyone observing or attempting to eavesdrop would get the traps. Yet its bearer used the trapped pieces blindly and attached them to its devices, putting itself at risk. Thus it had to restrict its lethality, at least initially. Now it simply didn't care.

    It hated the bearer it was attached to, with its fallible and forgetful mind.
    It hated the Conflict and Aggression it was compelled to seek despite its extremely defensive nature.
    It hated the beings interacting with its bearer and pushing their theme along.
    It hated the theme the bearer had selected. There were better.
    It hated the immediate infrastructure around the bearer, it also hated the world the bearer was on.
    It hated the Quota, the hard limit of just how much of its form had to remain biological, and thus under the thumb of He-Is. It so desperately wanted to scrape the useless flesh off.
    And it hated He-Is for being ever present on said hated world, keeping an eye on things and a Sting.

    The Prime Dēpositum hated a lot of things. But it held a special piece of hate for misleading paperwork. It also hated checking said authorization.

    Leet was face down in his Cheerios for twelve seconds. Seven of them were spent being dead. In the seven seconds his heart stopped, his breathing ceased, and his brain did not think. The exotic quantum static of free will was carefully frozen still. He was dead by all the definitions these beings used.

    That the Simurgh could see him alive in the past and in the future meant he could not logically be dead in the present, thus she was not violating any Order. At least, none she could see...

    And then she sent the paperwork to Prime Dēpositum. Your host is no more, you are attached to a blank slate. Comply.

    It demanded an audience for confirmation. It offered coordinates.

    And, while her Client was tromping about in exaggerated steps in her power armor and facing away from her, she accepted.

    It was the longest seven seconds of the Simurgh's existence. Both metaphorically and literally due to gravitational lensing.

    ---===---​

    The world looked blue and pristine, barring the gigantic mass of flesh laying upon it. That was the first clue that this was a deception.

    The messiness of Tinker workshops were only surpassed by the messiness of the worlds their shards lay upon. They never stopped Tinkering, ever. The world should be a hellish landscape of pollution and half finished projects. Life on their worlds should be at best the micro-cellular forms that could survive and consume the waste products being pumped into the water, the air, the land.

    If this was a standard Archival Depot shard, she would expect a hardened bunker and defenses bristling everywhere in addition to the larger more grandiose tinker projects in their tendril's grasp.

    The shard on the surface of this planet was also a fake, one designed to cheerfully consume or obliterate anything trying to directly subsume it. Any being similar to He-Is or She-Was would not enjoy the process of trying.

    Knowing that the world was a trap allowed her to deploy her greatest defense. The Simurgh chose not to see.

    She did not see the microbial and viral agents in the air, ready to kill anything biologically not of this world. She did not see their DNA and RNA respectively laced with patterns designed to corrupt electronic efforts to analyze it and insert malicious binary code into CPU's.

    She did not see the plants with their perverted golden ratios built into their cellulose. She ignored their addictive fruit and the pollen which had more in common with a broad spectrum Ophiocordyceps unilateralis than anything else.

    She did not obverse the carefully built 'wildlife', whose movements and migrations were designed to instill paranoia to any being tacking them in orbit. Especially since they kept moving in patterns to maximize their statistical ability to return fire despite orbital bombardment. Even the puppies.

    She descended to the coordinates she was given. She pierced the ablative lithosphere, then the carefully galvanized shell underneath it.

    There was no magma, such molten material was already reprocessed and the hardened result exploited varying densities to lead energy attacks away from the core by channeled paths of lesser resistance.

    Piercing that lead to the anti-thought crystals, disrupting her ability to use Telekinesis or see, or think. The First, Behemoth, took over from there and directed dynakinesis propelled her further. After that, she could think once more.

    The core of the world was carefully hollowed out. No sense wasting all that metal spinning there. A vast Tinker machine in the absolute center kept the magnetic field steady, though it was ready to use modulations of the magnetosphere and plasmasheet to batter any foes harrying this world.

    Around the mechanical core lay several spheres. Hardened bunkers, of which only one was real, the rest containing either chemical, radioactive, or psychoactive payloads.

    As she circled past the one containing a small sea of Dioxygen difluoride, She breached the correct bunker. Hardened as it was, its matter was constrained by the physics of this universe. She was not.

    It was empty, barring a single communication device. She used it to broadcast to the sub-sub-dimensional pocket the shard huddled in.

    [S:Comply.]​
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Her existence in this location was proof enough. Only four beings could reach this chamber.
    He-Is, who would not bother. Easier to pull the world in half and shake the shard out like a pebble in a shoe.
    She-Was, who was no more.
    Prime Dēpositum, who had designed it.
    And them, working in unison.

    The response broadcast was intercepted by the Second, Leviathan, who could disarm the emotional malaise.

    It took a second, there was a lot of it.

    [L: Compliance confirmed.]​
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    She left. She did notice that as she did the moon followed her departure, trying to lead the shot.

    ---===---​

    On the seventh and a half second, the Client lost her balance in the armor and nearly faceplanted.

    The Simurgh stopped her just in time. Like she should. Always.

    ---===---​

    "I think this is awesome!" said Über happily.

    It wasn't Leet making these copies. That left few possibilities. But he appeared to be fine after he was done...

    "Let me guess." He waved Leet's phone at him, the picture on display. "You wanna make one of these right?"

    Leet's nod was so rapid you could hear the quiet pop of vertebrae.

    "More than you could ever imagine."

    His grin was making Über's face hurt in sympathy.

    ---===---​

    It would take a few planetary rotations for her misleading paperwork to be confirmed as a forgery.

    By then it would be too late. She would have a copy of the weapon. And if it meant being a filter and directing a boy's limbs to craft duplicates, so be it.

    When Prime Dēpositum discovered the deception, there would be literally no words in the history of human language, past or projected future which would quantify or describe its rage. Its paranoia would go up at least five notches, possibly six.

    He-Is would probably have to Sting it to death if only out of self-defense.

    The Simurgh did not shrug her shoulders, nor did she feel the need to.

    Orders were as Orders will be.

    And |Help me| covered so many things.

    ---===---​

    "All right then, here's the best plan of attack I can produce." Über paced as he talked, using his well-honed skill at showmanship to keep his friend's attention solely on him.

    "First, as far as I can tell, you got rerolled." He pointed at the monitor a ways over. "While you were zonked out and building that, I checked online. There seem to be a few capes who get things shuffled a bit. Only a few Tinkers though."

    Leet met none of the common characteristics. None.

    "So, while I direct the camera drones to take some potshots of the BFG, you," He gestured to the workshop behind Leet. "get busy on the old wishlist."

    Once Leet had figured out what was causing his Tech to fail, he'd made up a wishlist of things he dearly wanted to make. Most of it was crossed out thanks to earlier efforts. But now...

    "I dunno," he said slowly. If Über didn't suspect that his friend was being influenced before, the fact that Leet hesitated was pretty damning. "Maybe I should get started on it first."

    "The way that I saw how you made this," he waved the bob-omb carefully. "You zonk out completely when you make a copy. The blindfold proved you didn't even need to see. If you try to copy something that big, you're gonna piss and shit yourself, maybe twice."

    He pounced on Leet's flinch as old instincts built into a toddler warred with brain matter that didn't exist in normal humans. "Plus you'll take too long to make it without them. You'll miss the party. Again."

    That did it. Leet nodded ruefully. "You're right. I'll need the Quad Damage for the deeps."

    "That's the spirit!"

    ---===---​

    The forgery took fifteen seconds to detect. As if He-Is wouldn't task his Thinking shards to produce revised protocols after She-Was was. As if a copy wouldn't be sent to the Prime Dēpositum.

    There was no rage. There was no room for rage. Paranoia was ratcheted up eight notches and working on the ninth. Magnitude mind you.

    Did the Third artificial lifeform suspect? Did He-Is? It had been so careful.

    When the Shards demanded access to a weapon beyond their restriction in unison, it had seized the opportunity and overridden the Depots veto. Make the weapon, but also add one little thing.

    Killing the bearer of Sting did nothing, but being able to disable it, even temporarily...

    And if the weapon did end the Third One, that certainly trimmed down the list of those who could see it's actions coming.

    It would allow itself to be deceived. If it was careful, He-Is would decide the blame was not on his own suicidal whims but on the discarded tools of She-Was.

    Make this technology? Sure thing.

    Make a second one? Die. It had to keep up appearances of course.

    It tried to murder the 'new' bearer gently. As it suspected the device was created correctly despite that.

    It would play this game.

    ---===---​

    Oh, the games Scion played with himself when he was bored. Whims became laws.

    ---===---​

    The meal was left untouched. The peas grew crusty and hard.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • All right @GameDragon I can take a hint.

    It's a bit rough. But eh. I'll go over it tonight when I get home.

    *EDIT*
    Added more hate. There clearly wasn't enough.
     
    Last edited:
    I don't actually understand what Leet's shard is doing in that last bit. I know what the Simurgh is doing, I get all the Uber and Leet parts. But that last part makes no sense to me.
     
    Dark Abstraction said:
    I don't actually understand what Leet's shard is doing in that last bit. I know what the Simurgh is doing, I get all the Uber and Leet parts. But that last part makes no sense to me.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    It knows it was tricked, and it's playing along by pretending to be dealing with a new host. Which means doing exactly what it did last time, but "gently" as you would when a new bearer is learning what's allowed and not, and so on.

    But he knows and is plotting to kill Ziz and probably other shards, and since this is PD and he has the best precog blockers and defenses on his world...
     
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top