ScottotheUnwise
Verified Crack (fic) Dealer
- Location
- Mulberry, Fl
Oh well. I suppose if you were to head that way you might have to start adding "crack" to your tag list...
Come to the crack side, we have nuclear cookies.
Why Yes, I am an Evil Lair. (Worm/Dungeon Core) (No Longer A Quest)
- Thread starter Automatonation
- Start date
Oh well. I suppose if you were to head that way you might have to start adding "crack" to your tag list...
Come to the crack side, we have nuclear cookies.
- Location
- Beyond the Unknowable Veil
Fractured, of course.Come to the crack side, we have nuclear cookies.
- Location
- The INTERNET!
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Radios work, and the mercs have body cams, but the walls are thick enough and it's underground enough that conventional Transmissions won't work for video broadcasts. The body cams are the kind that record, and you can then review at a later date.
Tattletale's throat patch actually has a microphone on her thats tinker Tech, that's transmitting for coil's monitoring purposes.
Tattletale's throat patch actually has a microphone on her thats tinker Tech, that's transmitting for coil's monitoring purposes.
- Location
- Somewhere over the Rainbow
Extraneous period...
You definitely could mention that (briefly, if nothing else) in a Coil POV...
- Location
- US
Please just kill her.
ScottotheUnwise
Verified Crack (fic) Dealer
- Location
- Mulberry, Fl
You know, it would be extremely amusing if Coil's resets to the timeline involving the Dungeon did not remove any gains the protag makes in the alternative... IE, if Coil spams TT in every few minutes until she dies, and the protag finds himself with the mana/xp from multiple kills but no real reason why.
Effectively Coil would be grinding him with a true bus.
Effectively Coil would be grinding him with a true bus.
- Location
- Over the hill and far away
...I mean, Coil doesn't actually reset anything. If he picks the timeline where his troops didn't go in, then instead the dungeon has had another few hours to plan things. Time doesn't stop for coil when he chooses an alternate path.
- Location
- The INTERNET!
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Precisely. It's tempting to think of Coil as savescumming, but that's a falacy that can seriously overblow his power and make it more dangerous than it actually is.
- Location
- Philippines, Manila, Tarlac City
Well that ended well, no wonder why coil gave orders to kill her, this isn't the first time she surrendered and was "recruited"
But really, if coil plans to kill this dungeon, he'd better have capes on standby cause the more weapons he looses in this meat grinder, the more weapons the dungeon gets.
But really, if coil plans to kill this dungeon, he'd better have capes on standby cause the more weapons he looses in this meat grinder, the more weapons the dungeon gets.
- Location
- USA
That would only be a problem if they were transmitting to a surface base directly above them or several miles away. But even then there are things called relays or signal boosters that help a signal get to where it needs to go.
I sincerely doubt that coil would not have a relay/signal booster or even a receiver just outside the door they were guarding. Also I doubt he would have areas in his base that would stop transmissions, be they video or sound, from getting where they need to go. That would be a massive over site.
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Funny thing about amnesia, even a natural one, it doesn't leave a person a blank slate with unformed morals or personality. Because morals are not memories, they are a way of thinking. Case in point: Sveta.
beast_regards
[Censored]
- Location
- Valid Location
Kill her! Kill everyone! Living things need to be prevented from ... breaking the SV rules.
Coil not abusing his power at this very moment of the story would look like a plot induced stupidity though. There must be some good excuse for him keeping the timeline.
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Some activities cannot be rolled back when interacting with the dungeon. We know this
beast_regards
[Censored]
- Location
- Valid Location
It seems to keep the hostile timeline, if first interaction with Coil is any indicator, perhaps to brute force the confrontation. However, this time, Coil isn't in Dungeon area of influence, and attack is a simulation inside the Coil's head.
- Location
- Neptune
Or the as usually neglected consideration - it's WORSE in the other timeline.
beast_regards
[Censored]
- Location
- Valid Location
It usually requires character to have some ultimate dead man switch
- Location
- The INTERNET!
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
The issue with strenghtening or relaying the broadcast is that it becomes easier for bullshit Tinkertech to pick it up, and in a city with Armsmaster, who is one of the best tinkers in the world, and also has Dragon on Speeddial, that can be a major liability. The other cameras in the base are hardwired, and radio frequencies are as low power as possible to prevent detection from the surface, or done via burner phone, which is ubiquitous enough to be like finding a specific needle in a barrel of needles without knowing which one you're looking for.
Or, alternatively, I'm trying to stick close to what Coil does in Canon, and I don't remember his mercenaries having video broadcasts, only voice.
- Location
- Pale Blue Dot
Considering Coil probably uses military black-ops gear as standard when he can, it should be much easier to encrypt and hide a voice signal with that as opposed to a much higher bandwidth video signal. Less to hide = easier to hide.
- Location
- Море песка, солнце огня и множество злых сарацин
...I wasn't aware that this was on SV. And the version I recalled seemed to be a lot worse for the protagonist - but that might easily have been a completely different story entirely.
In other words: this story is excellent so far. Added to watch list.
In other words: this story is excellent so far. Added to watch list.
Mostly because video is a lot easier to interrupt I suspect. And we know canon Coil prefers to run relatively long splits. He doesn't like to take action until the splits have a day or so between the split point to minimize any risks of being noticed.
Tinkertech is also expensive and very unreliable without paying for a Tinker to keep them in service. This is fine for weapons, but probably not so fine for communications gear where the Tinker may add a listening device or the like without anyone the wiser(whereas a weapon tinker is unlikely to be producing any kind of spying device)
- Location
- Earth Prime
Ah. I was assuming, since we're reading it from not-Coil's perspective, that it's the "kept" timeline, not that it's one of two and he might drop it at any time.
Oh, I considered that, but for it to be worse, one has to ask: what's happening? How is "wait 30 minutes more" leading to something worse for Coil than "send in the mercs?"
While it's quite possible he's not actually doing that, and is doing something more productive with his other timeline, he wouldn't risk Tattletale this way without some sort of backup.
Right now, given what Automatonation has said and a few other observations, my assumption is that this is either still up in the air as to whether Coil keeps or drops it (which...sorry, Auto, but if that's the case, I think it's poorly written because we should not be getting this much detail that Coil would not), or that the alterations have gotten alarming enough that he's moving nownownow.
...but even then, keeping this timeline makes little sense over sending in a kill-squad after keeping only the timeline where he didn't expose Tattletale or lose a merc squad. Unless he's concerned that it's gotten THAT MUCH WORSE in the time the dungeon wasn't fighting mercs...but that presumes he knows the dungeon can't change while a party is inside.
beast_regards
[Censored]
- Location
- Valid Location
Scene is described in a detail Coil wouldn't see without excessive camera coverage he don't have, reports wouldn't be as accurate. I believe chapter swaps point of view in between Dungeon (omniscient within his range) and Tattletale (we "hear" her powers imputs at the beginning).
There is really no reason for Coil to keep the timeline when it is loosing unless Dungeon some anti-thinker field that messes with Coil's judgement even when Coil isn't within its range. If there is anti-thinker field, it must exceed the range of the dungeon (why?) while not interfering with Tattletale power at all (again, why?)
"alternative is worse" does apply only if Dungeon grow is so dramatic sending in a squad is better alternative to let it be. While dungeon grow is indeed fast, you need even more dramatic buildup preferably involving Coil death in a very short period of time after dungeon is left alone. Nothing less would justify the timeline when he loses Tattletale
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Chapter 6
- Location
- The INTERNET!
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Ok, that's new. What is a contract?
As always, informative, but not particularly helpful. Thank you, blue boxes. Let's set that aside for the moment. She's surrendered, so what are my gains from those Mercenaries?
Well, that was quite nice. Tattletale is shifting uncomfortably on her knees, hands still laced behind her head. She's… She's trembling, scared. I don't like that. Why don't I like that? I literally eat people and then turn them into zombies. Speaking of….
I raise the four mercenary corpses as Skeletal Soldiers, only 30 MP since they're half-off, on top of a 25% discount on Undead units from a room that I had designated as a Graveyard. The corpses shudder, lifting themselves up as tattered rags resembling their previous kevlar armor reforms around the bare bones. The weapons that they had used in life reformed in death, and at my command, my new warriors moved deeper into my halls, the slimes moving out of the way deferentially, doors opening at my command.
I refocus on the trembling girl at my feet. Well, metaphorically speaking. My zombies were still standing behind her, so that counts, right? I had already eaten seven people, so eight wasn't really a stretch, in that regards, but…. She surrendered. She wasn't trying to hurt me. She was scared.
I wish I could talk to her.
Well, that would have been nice to have earlier. I sigh, and a noise like a breeze echoes throughout my rooms. Tattletale shivers. You know, I should really make sure that the doors outside are closed… I grit my teeth, ready myself, and speak.
"Tattletale." My voice comes from right behind her left ear, at what is apparently a startlingly loud volume. The girl shrieks, claps her hand to her ear, and falls to the floor, before scrambling over to put her back to the wall. Ah, damnit, she's crying. How the hell am I supposed to decide whether to eat her if she's crying? She's sobbing now, holding her knees. Oh.
"Did I say that out loud?"
Frantic nodding.
"Shit." I really need to focus on saying what I want to say. "In my defense, I literally just figured out how to actually talk. It's not as easy as you make it look. Tattletale." My voice is a deep baritone, slightly echo-ey, although how much of that is due to the bare room and how much is due to the magical nature of my voice is unclear. Obviously, experimentation will be necessary.
A choking sob transitions into a weak giggle. "Well, maybe you should have practiced first?" she ventures.
In a small room a zombie rolls its eyes, and then scrambles to pick up the one that falls out. "What part of 'just figured out' did you not get? I've been alive for approximately 12 hours, so far as I can tell, and already had a bunch of people try to kill me." Maybe I'm a little bitter.
The girl winces. Good. "Anyway, the more of you I eat, the stronger I get, and the better I am at keeping that snake creep outside of me."
"You mean that literally. We're food… No, fuel for whatever it is you do." Tattletale is glancing between the zombies and the open door to the hallway, where a pair of slimes, pulled up into medicine ball-sized blobs, bounced off each other cheerfully. "You dig rooms and hallways and summon monsters inside them to kill people who come in, which gives you more energy to dig and create monsters?"
I grudgingly nod Brad's head. "Got it, girlie."
"What's the point?" She asks, and I pause. That's the question I've been avoiding asking myself since I woke up, that I've been making zombies sing and planning deathtraps to avoid contemplating. "I mean, what's the point of coming in? You've killed everyone fairly easily so far, so right now why would anyone want to come in? Won't you starve?" Ok, so maybe not that question. Existential crisis averted!
"I won't starve," I state flatly. "And the point is…" Deep in my dungeon, a zombie grabs a pair of drumsticks and starts a drumroll that echoes throughout my walls. Tattletale looks around frantically. "Changing the world." At my entrance, the doors slide closed, and I absorb the glowing lights, leaving it pitch black in Cell Block A. It occurs to me that the room where Tattletale is currently sitting isn't lit at all and that she's isolated in pitch black darkness, with only a trio of zombies for company. With a twist of focus, I activate the lights set into the ceiling, and they come on, illuminating the bare room with grey, flickering light. Tattletale jumps, her eyes darting from zombie to zombie, focusing on the one that still resembles the mercenary captain.
"H-How are you changing the world from here?" Tattletale asks.
"Magic," I reply simply. She's pulled information out of thin air before, let's see if she can again.
"You… You believe that." She laughs. "Magic doesn't exi… It does. Or you think it does." she studies the zombies again. "You can convert flesh to magic, and then back." She giggles. "Magic. Literal magic."
"Mana." I correct her. Her hand creeps to her throat. "I bring Mana from between worlds, and infuse it into this one, to provide a catalyst for change." I wait. Silence. "I can do that for you."
Her eyes widen. "You're a Trump?" Fingers scratch at her throat. "You can do that." It wasn't a question. "What's the catch?"
"A bond. We would be partners, tied together by strands of fate." God, melodramatic much, Dungeon-man? Cool it.
Tattletale snorted. "Yeah, so it's a Trump/Master effect." She leans her head back against the wall closing her eyes, feet sliding down until her legs are flat on the floor.
"I… I don't know what that means." It hurts a little bit, admitting ignorance.
One eye pops open. "You really don't. Amnesia?"
"If by that you mean that my first memory was Coil having one of his goons shoot me, yes." Put a little edge on that guilt trip, and yes, the wince means I nailed it.
"It's a set of power classifications used by the PRT, so they know how to approach villains with powers."
"Powers. I'm not the only one?"
"Wow, you really thought that?" Tattletale giggled. "People with powers have been appearing for nearly four decades now. Hell, I have a power." She grimaced a bit, scratching at her throat again. Was that a nervous tic, or something else. "So does Coil."
"You said that I was a Master/Trump. In what way?"
Tattletale laughs and laughs, edging closer and closer into hysteria until she's giggling and sobbing. I let her get it out of her system, letting my Mana regeneration tick over. 536 MP and counting. Not that I can really do anything with it until I decide what to do with her. The box offering a contract with her is floating in my mind's eye still. "You're making eating you more and more tempting." I finally state, and she stops laughing. That's better.
"Sorry, it's just that just with what I know about you, you have the potential to be a threat worse than fucking Nilbog, and the government wrote off an entire town rather than have to deal with him," Tattletale says. "I would say that you're probably a powerful Shaker, meaning you can affect the world around you, and a high-level Master, since you have minions that you control, but you can also control people who come from outside your territory."
"Not control. It's a contract. We both get something." I admit.
"A…. A contract?" Tattletale says, sitting up straighter. "Can I check the wording?" That's a good question. Help?
There's a pop, and an honest to Gaia scroll of parchment pops out of mid-air. Tattletale snatches up, unrolls it, and starts to read, her forehead wrinkled.
"Well." Tattletale stated weakly. "That's…" She looked over the whole scroll again. "That's something." Scratch scratch. Those damn fingers again. What is on her neck?
"You keep scratching your neck," I state.
She freezes. "Ah…"
"Why?" I'm suspicious now, and I move my point of view closer and closer. There! A seam. A patch of plastic, the same color as her skin. "What's that on your neck?"
Tattletale deflates. "Coil. He's tracking me."
My Zombie commando lunges, pinning the girl against the wall, knife to her throat.
"NO!" She screams. "I'll sign it! I want to be free!"
"Explain," I growl, and the girl begins to babble about how she had been hired at gunpoint off the street, and that Coil had her trapped against her will, using her as a tool. I let the zombie release her, and it squats in silence in the middle of the room, staring at the girl. I mean…. That's essentially what he did to me. We two trapped fools. "You'll swear to never betray me?"
"Never." Tattletale peels the patch off her throat and throws it at a slime, who snaps up a tendril to catch it. "Partners."
"I agree. Sign the contract." A quill, pitch black with a needle-like point, pops out of mid-air and hovers in front of the girl.
"A Blood Quill." She states flatly. "Your power is a nerd." Huh?
"Life is in the blood, Tattletale," I state cooly, trying to hide my confusion.
She giggles, and pulls off her mask. "Call me Lisa. Nerd." She signs the contract with a flourish and a wince, as the quill writes in her own blood. Once she finishes, the parchment disappears with a flash of non-light.
I feel a surge of mana flow through me, and then arc out, slamming into Lisa's sternum like a bolt of blue-white lightning. She screams, the mana lifting her up into the air, coating her as it seeps into every pore before starting to shine out of her open eyes and mouth. The mana surge subsides and I reabsorb the excess, leaving Lisa curled, gasping on the floor. There's a strand of connection now, between her and my core, and if I focus, I can see out of her eyes much like I can see out the eyes of my Zombies. Not that I usually do, my field of vision is far superior, but anyway.
"Are you okay?" I ask, and position a zombie with a hand out to help her to her feet. She smiles and grabs the arm, pulling, only for the arm to come unjointed at the elbow, leaving it in her grasp, and the zombie half an arm short. She looks at the arm. The zombie looks at the arm for a long moment, before grabbing at the stump and howling in mock pain and running around in a panic. Snort. Giggle. Before long, Tattletale is rolling on the ground laughing at my antics. Sourly, my Zombie Commando snatches his subordinate's arm from where it's lying on the ground and throws it at the panicking zombie, hitting it in the head so that it collapses to the floor.
Slapstick is not dead. It's risen from the grave to prey on unwitting victims.
In his office, Coil stares at the transcript from the high-yield microphone on his Tattletale's throat, all the way to the point where she decided to smash it and betray him. Magic? A cape subsuming and burrowing out from his base. HIS base. Coil grit his teeth. In the other timeline, the girl is still cooling her heels outside the cellblock. He's lost too much and gained just enough information. Time to end this. He can no longer justify throwing resources away in fits and starts, and conventional forces have little effect. After all, he's thrown away squad after squad in disposable timelines over the past few hours. Coil had been hopeful this time, typically, the squad gets no further than the initial cell block before being slaughtered by zombies and turrets, and occasionally being shot in the back by Tattletale, although she never made it out either. This time, although they made it further than he ever expected, there's no way to tell what actually killed his mercenaries, although from some of the sizzling, he suspected acid. With a thought, Coil ended the timeline.
The wrong timeline ended. What? The transcript was still on his screen, and a frantic check of the security cameras showed a pair of nervous mercenaries in front of the cell block. Coil split the timeline, closed it again, over and over, a dozen times in rapid succession. Each time, the correct timeline closes.
What happened?
How?
…..No. That cape. That FUCKING cape.
She said it was a Trump. It must be doing this, messing with his power.
His Tatt- no, the traitorous bitch, was still in the clutches of that DAMN statue that thinks it's a sparkly magical FUCKING NILBOG. Well, he survived the fucking Goblin King, and a DAMN ROCK isn't going to take what is his away from him.
In one timeline, Coil's inarticulate scream of rage echoed through the underground base. In another, he takes a few deep breaths, calming himself, before making a phone call. "Accord."
"Yes, I understand, it's ahead of schedule, but I have a situation. I need to accelerate the transfer."
"Of course. The additional balance will be in your account."
"Thank you very much. As always, it's a pleasure doing business with you."
Coil sneered as he hung up the phone. No more games. He'd show that damn statue what happens when you take what is his. In his other timeline, he's still demonstrating a command of profanity befitting an ex-soldier. Thomas Calvert gritted his teeth behind the mask, and nervously closed the timeline, then breathed out in relief as the correct one closed.
"Mr Pitter," He stated, holding the intercom button. "I'm heading out. Keel has instructions to call me if anything happens."
God, he needed a drink.
AN: Wasn't expecting the Tattletale hatred, but once she surrendered, I couldn't justify the Dungeon murdering her in cold blood. Hope this helps with some of the Coil concerns as well.
On Timeline Woes:
Ok, so first of all, the only way that I can see Coil's precognition working is with accurate models of people's minds, so that it can emulate their behavior in real time. With other thinker powers like Tattletale, his shard pings the other shard with the stimuli to pick up the result as if the Thinker in question had received those stimuli, and then integrates their reactions into the simulation.
When Coil was initially sending in his squad with Tattletale, his power was initially modelling the first room of the dungeon as it had been in the initial reports and memory of the surviving merc, as well as pings off of Tattletale's shard to model her actions, since Mana is currently an outside-context problem for it, at least until his mana saturation increases. Since he's well outside the range of the Dungeon, that's not going to happen very soon. That meant that at first, it assumed that the grinder was the same, and so reported lots of deaths. As Tattletale absorbed more ambient Mana, the pings off her shard for the information that she would have gotten grow more and more divergent, as her intuitive shard decides that more and more things would have changed as it gets more information on how Mana works. As such, after enough time passed, Coil's power decided that it could not accurately model what was actually occurring in the cellblock, and so when he split the timeline, it could either fail to split the timeline at all, or have a less than optimal result in the prime timeline. Since his goal was to gather accurate information, rather than conserve losses, the shard chose the second option, and when instructed to close the spare timeline, it does so, closing the one that gathered less information.
This may be assigning too much agency to a shard, but it's the only way I could see the circumstances going.
"Help" said:
As always, informative, but not particularly helpful. Thank you, blue boxes. Let's set that aside for the moment. She's surrendered, so what are my gains from those Mercenaries?
Well, that was quite nice. Tattletale is shifting uncomfortably on her knees, hands still laced behind her head. She's… She's trembling, scared. I don't like that. Why don't I like that? I literally eat people and then turn them into zombies. Speaking of….
I raise the four mercenary corpses as Skeletal Soldiers, only 30 MP since they're half-off, on top of a 25% discount on Undead units from a room that I had designated as a Graveyard. The corpses shudder, lifting themselves up as tattered rags resembling their previous kevlar armor reforms around the bare bones. The weapons that they had used in life reformed in death, and at my command, my new warriors moved deeper into my halls, the slimes moving out of the way deferentially, doors opening at my command.
I refocus on the trembling girl at my feet. Well, metaphorically speaking. My zombies were still standing behind her, so that counts, right? I had already eaten seven people, so eight wasn't really a stretch, in that regards, but…. She surrendered. She wasn't trying to hurt me. She was scared.
I wish I could talk to her.
Well, that would have been nice to have earlier. I sigh, and a noise like a breeze echoes throughout my rooms. Tattletale shivers. You know, I should really make sure that the doors outside are closed… I grit my teeth, ready myself, and speak.
"Tattletale." My voice comes from right behind her left ear, at what is apparently a startlingly loud volume. The girl shrieks, claps her hand to her ear, and falls to the floor, before scrambling over to put her back to the wall. Ah, damnit, she's crying. How the hell am I supposed to decide whether to eat her if she's crying? She's sobbing now, holding her knees. Oh.
"Did I say that out loud?"
Frantic nodding.
"Shit." I really need to focus on saying what I want to say. "In my defense, I literally just figured out how to actually talk. It's not as easy as you make it look. Tattletale." My voice is a deep baritone, slightly echo-ey, although how much of that is due to the bare room and how much is due to the magical nature of my voice is unclear. Obviously, experimentation will be necessary.
A choking sob transitions into a weak giggle. "Well, maybe you should have practiced first?" she ventures.
In a small room a zombie rolls its eyes, and then scrambles to pick up the one that falls out. "What part of 'just figured out' did you not get? I've been alive for approximately 12 hours, so far as I can tell, and already had a bunch of people try to kill me." Maybe I'm a little bitter.
The girl winces. Good. "Anyway, the more of you I eat, the stronger I get, and the better I am at keeping that snake creep outside of me."
"You mean that literally. We're food… No, fuel for whatever it is you do." Tattletale is glancing between the zombies and the open door to the hallway, where a pair of slimes, pulled up into medicine ball-sized blobs, bounced off each other cheerfully. "You dig rooms and hallways and summon monsters inside them to kill people who come in, which gives you more energy to dig and create monsters?"
I grudgingly nod Brad's head. "Got it, girlie."
"What's the point?" She asks, and I pause. That's the question I've been avoiding asking myself since I woke up, that I've been making zombies sing and planning deathtraps to avoid contemplating. "I mean, what's the point of coming in? You've killed everyone fairly easily so far, so right now why would anyone want to come in? Won't you starve?" Ok, so maybe not that question. Existential crisis averted!
"I won't starve," I state flatly. "And the point is…" Deep in my dungeon, a zombie grabs a pair of drumsticks and starts a drumroll that echoes throughout my walls. Tattletale looks around frantically. "Changing the world." At my entrance, the doors slide closed, and I absorb the glowing lights, leaving it pitch black in Cell Block A. It occurs to me that the room where Tattletale is currently sitting isn't lit at all and that she's isolated in pitch black darkness, with only a trio of zombies for company. With a twist of focus, I activate the lights set into the ceiling, and they come on, illuminating the bare room with grey, flickering light. Tattletale jumps, her eyes darting from zombie to zombie, focusing on the one that still resembles the mercenary captain.
"H-How are you changing the world from here?" Tattletale asks.
"Magic," I reply simply. She's pulled information out of thin air before, let's see if she can again.
"You… You believe that." She laughs. "Magic doesn't exi… It does. Or you think it does." she studies the zombies again. "You can convert flesh to magic, and then back." She giggles. "Magic. Literal magic."
"Mana." I correct her. Her hand creeps to her throat. "I bring Mana from between worlds, and infuse it into this one, to provide a catalyst for change." I wait. Silence. "I can do that for you."
Her eyes widen. "You're a Trump?" Fingers scratch at her throat. "You can do that." It wasn't a question. "What's the catch?"
"A bond. We would be partners, tied together by strands of fate." God, melodramatic much, Dungeon-man? Cool it.
Tattletale snorted. "Yeah, so it's a Trump/Master effect." She leans her head back against the wall closing her eyes, feet sliding down until her legs are flat on the floor.
"I… I don't know what that means." It hurts a little bit, admitting ignorance.
One eye pops open. "You really don't. Amnesia?"
"If by that you mean that my first memory was Coil having one of his goons shoot me, yes." Put a little edge on that guilt trip, and yes, the wince means I nailed it.
"It's a set of power classifications used by the PRT, so they know how to approach villains with powers."
"Powers. I'm not the only one?"
"Wow, you really thought that?" Tattletale giggled. "People with powers have been appearing for nearly four decades now. Hell, I have a power." She grimaced a bit, scratching at her throat again. Was that a nervous tic, or something else. "So does Coil."
"You said that I was a Master/Trump. In what way?"
Tattletale laughs and laughs, edging closer and closer into hysteria until she's giggling and sobbing. I let her get it out of her system, letting my Mana regeneration tick over. 536 MP and counting. Not that I can really do anything with it until I decide what to do with her. The box offering a contract with her is floating in my mind's eye still. "You're making eating you more and more tempting." I finally state, and she stops laughing. That's better.
"Sorry, it's just that just with what I know about you, you have the potential to be a threat worse than fucking Nilbog, and the government wrote off an entire town rather than have to deal with him," Tattletale says. "I would say that you're probably a powerful Shaker, meaning you can affect the world around you, and a high-level Master, since you have minions that you control, but you can also control people who come from outside your territory."
"Not control. It's a contract. We both get something." I admit.
"A…. A contract?" Tattletale says, sitting up straighter. "Can I check the wording?" That's a good question. Help?
There's a pop, and an honest to Gaia scroll of parchment pops out of mid-air. Tattletale snatches up, unrolls it, and starts to read, her forehead wrinkled.
"Well." Tattletale stated weakly. "That's…" She looked over the whole scroll again. "That's something." Scratch scratch. Those damn fingers again. What is on her neck?
"You keep scratching your neck," I state.
She freezes. "Ah…"
"Why?" I'm suspicious now, and I move my point of view closer and closer. There! A seam. A patch of plastic, the same color as her skin. "What's that on your neck?"
Tattletale deflates. "Coil. He's tracking me."
My Zombie commando lunges, pinning the girl against the wall, knife to her throat.
"NO!" She screams. "I'll sign it! I want to be free!"
"Explain," I growl, and the girl begins to babble about how she had been hired at gunpoint off the street, and that Coil had her trapped against her will, using her as a tool. I let the zombie release her, and it squats in silence in the middle of the room, staring at the girl. I mean…. That's essentially what he did to me. We two trapped fools. "You'll swear to never betray me?"
"Never." Tattletale peels the patch off her throat and throws it at a slime, who snaps up a tendril to catch it. "Partners."
"I agree. Sign the contract." A quill, pitch black with a needle-like point, pops out of mid-air and hovers in front of the girl.
"A Blood Quill." She states flatly. "Your power is a nerd." Huh?
"Life is in the blood, Tattletale," I state cooly, trying to hide my confusion.
She giggles, and pulls off her mask. "Call me Lisa. Nerd." She signs the contract with a flourish and a wince, as the quill writes in her own blood. Once she finishes, the parchment disappears with a flash of non-light.
I feel a surge of mana flow through me, and then arc out, slamming into Lisa's sternum like a bolt of blue-white lightning. She screams, the mana lifting her up into the air, coating her as it seeps into every pore before starting to shine out of her open eyes and mouth. The mana surge subsides and I reabsorb the excess, leaving Lisa curled, gasping on the floor. There's a strand of connection now, between her and my core, and if I focus, I can see out of her eyes much like I can see out the eyes of my Zombies. Not that I usually do, my field of vision is far superior, but anyway.
"Are you okay?" I ask, and position a zombie with a hand out to help her to her feet. She smiles and grabs the arm, pulling, only for the arm to come unjointed at the elbow, leaving it in her grasp, and the zombie half an arm short. She looks at the arm. The zombie looks at the arm for a long moment, before grabbing at the stump and howling in mock pain and running around in a panic. Snort. Giggle. Before long, Tattletale is rolling on the ground laughing at my antics. Sourly, my Zombie Commando snatches his subordinate's arm from where it's lying on the ground and throws it at the panicking zombie, hitting it in the head so that it collapses to the floor.
Slapstick is not dead. It's risen from the grave to prey on unwitting victims.
In his office, Coil stares at the transcript from the high-yield microphone on his Tattletale's throat, all the way to the point where she decided to smash it and betray him. Magic? A cape subsuming and burrowing out from his base. HIS base. Coil grit his teeth. In the other timeline, the girl is still cooling her heels outside the cellblock. He's lost too much and gained just enough information. Time to end this. He can no longer justify throwing resources away in fits and starts, and conventional forces have little effect. After all, he's thrown away squad after squad in disposable timelines over the past few hours. Coil had been hopeful this time, typically, the squad gets no further than the initial cell block before being slaughtered by zombies and turrets, and occasionally being shot in the back by Tattletale, although she never made it out either. This time, although they made it further than he ever expected, there's no way to tell what actually killed his mercenaries, although from some of the sizzling, he suspected acid. With a thought, Coil ended the timeline.
The wrong timeline ended. What? The transcript was still on his screen, and a frantic check of the security cameras showed a pair of nervous mercenaries in front of the cell block. Coil split the timeline, closed it again, over and over, a dozen times in rapid succession. Each time, the correct timeline closes.
What happened?
How?
…..No. That cape. That FUCKING cape.
She said it was a Trump. It must be doing this, messing with his power.
His Tatt- no, the traitorous bitch, was still in the clutches of that DAMN statue that thinks it's a sparkly magical FUCKING NILBOG. Well, he survived the fucking Goblin King, and a DAMN ROCK isn't going to take what is his away from him.
In one timeline, Coil's inarticulate scream of rage echoed through the underground base. In another, he takes a few deep breaths, calming himself, before making a phone call. "Accord."
"Yes, I understand, it's ahead of schedule, but I have a situation. I need to accelerate the transfer."
"Of course. The additional balance will be in your account."
"Thank you very much. As always, it's a pleasure doing business with you."
Coil sneered as he hung up the phone. No more games. He'd show that damn statue what happens when you take what is his. In his other timeline, he's still demonstrating a command of profanity befitting an ex-soldier. Thomas Calvert gritted his teeth behind the mask, and nervously closed the timeline, then breathed out in relief as the correct one closed.
"Mr Pitter," He stated, holding the intercom button. "I'm heading out. Keel has instructions to call me if anything happens."
God, he needed a drink.
AN: Wasn't expecting the Tattletale hatred, but once she surrendered, I couldn't justify the Dungeon murdering her in cold blood. Hope this helps with some of the Coil concerns as well.
On Timeline Woes:
Ok, so first of all, the only way that I can see Coil's precognition working is with accurate models of people's minds, so that it can emulate their behavior in real time. With other thinker powers like Tattletale, his shard pings the other shard with the stimuli to pick up the result as if the Thinker in question had received those stimuli, and then integrates their reactions into the simulation.
When Coil was initially sending in his squad with Tattletale, his power was initially modelling the first room of the dungeon as it had been in the initial reports and memory of the surviving merc, as well as pings off of Tattletale's shard to model her actions, since Mana is currently an outside-context problem for it, at least until his mana saturation increases. Since he's well outside the range of the Dungeon, that's not going to happen very soon. That meant that at first, it assumed that the grinder was the same, and so reported lots of deaths. As Tattletale absorbed more ambient Mana, the pings off her shard for the information that she would have gotten grow more and more divergent, as her intuitive shard decides that more and more things would have changed as it gets more information on how Mana works. As such, after enough time passed, Coil's power decided that it could not accurately model what was actually occurring in the cellblock, and so when he split the timeline, it could either fail to split the timeline at all, or have a less than optimal result in the prime timeline. Since his goal was to gather accurate information, rather than conserve losses, the shard chose the second option, and when instructed to close the spare timeline, it does so, closing the one that gathered less information.
This may be assigning too much agency to a shard, but it's the only way I could see the circumstances going.
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