I think it was more she undid the prions' effects rather than affecting the prions themselves, but I'll admit to using imprecise language, sorry.
Wormverse ideas, recs, and fic discussion thread 1
- Thread starter Yog
- Start date
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
That...wouldn't fix anything? Without removing the prions themselves most prion diseases would relapse fairly quickly.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
I have a Rifts cross. Your genre blender is doable. (This is pretty close to a good description of the New West book.)
*shrugs*
I don't know what to tell you then.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Hmm.
Well, their dress sense is similar...but Tattletale would probably be better at the job than Troi was usually allowed to be...
Madou Sutegobana
Autocorrupt has been disabled.
- Location
- Twin Realms Mandala
Now that brings to mind; "Humanity on Trial: A Mary-Sue at farpoint" -- Where female crewmembers are intentionally held back from being awesome to appease the Star-Trek fanbase.
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Noooo, actually, he explicitly frames it in two birds with one stone type terms.
8.7 said:
Like, Kill Kaiser was a primary goal.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
What a douche.
- Location
- Earth Prime
Wait, what?
Oh. That's...actually just as bad as what I was thinking. Not really worse; it just changes his justification. (I mean, let's be honest, we all can get behind a villain who kills other villains who "deserve it," but that doesn't make them non-villainous. See I Am Skitter for a good example.)
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Honestly it's worse than I remember.
Also, "We're going to make this city great again... no, not by actually doing anything to make it better other than killing some nebulous number of 'villains' in a dubious way, but by happening to kill a Kaiju who attacked it."
Great planning, dude.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
I...don't actually find wanting Kaiser dead or killing him a particularly villainous act. I mean, he's killed people before and he will kill people again if he survives. His guilt is not really in question, nor is the fact he will pose an imminent and continuing threat to others.
The context of the event, having done so by treachery (and even carelessness), is what makes it objectionable.
He's not wrong, given the setting's obsession with symbols. Brockton would have been built into something great to match its new rep.
The context of the event, having done so by treachery (and even carelessness), is what makes it objectionable.
He's not wrong, given the setting's obsession with symbols. Brockton would have been built into something great to match its new rep.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
...I don't really personally buy that? The problem is, as always, the lack of resources to go around. Especially since, as per canon, the reaction to things getting slightly better is for the Endbringers to say, "Okay then" and make things much worse.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
That doesn't particularly mean his logic doesn't track and that an attempt, even a partially successful one, won't be made.
Also, the idea that Endbringers arrive and make things worse would be rather mitigated by the fact they can kill Endbringers if he's right.
globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
I got a question Worm scholars. It's known that powers and shards can't/won't reach into space.
If you were coming into the solar system how close to Earth is it still safe from Endbringers?
If you were coming into the solar system how close to Earth is it still safe from Endbringers?
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Arguably nowhere. The Simurgh is capable of orbital maneuvering and her total thrust is unknown.
globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
indeed an that even tinkertech would not work on the moon, ziz is in orbit though so it might be a little further for EBs or not if they don't have power saving mode like shards.
Madou Sutegobana
Autocorrupt has been disabled.
- Location
- Twin Realms Mandala
Endbringers are litterally tethered to other dimensions in which most of their actual body is stored. Whether that body is a shard, has a shard, or is merely controlled by a shard, distance should not be an issue for them.
globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
but entities are shards all the way down. they are entity weapons and are controlled by Eidolon's so they must be shard based in some form or another.
- Location
- The INTERNET!
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Just wanted to see how well this works, before pursuing writing it further.
Administrative Access
The fluorescent lights buzzed softly, on the edge of hearing, as my eyes idly watched a mote of dust float through the stuffy air. Floating, bobbing, drifting idly. Hell, that sounds nice, just being able to float in the air, no bonds, no ties, nothing holding me down. Life isn't like that. I let my eyes drift out of focus, just a bit, letting the harsh glare of the lights wash out the dirty tiled ceiling. My focus drifts to a single, solitary paper mobile, hanging limply from a pin stuck in the ceiling. Alexandria, captured mid-flight, her fists held out straight in front of her. The dust mote floats in front of the lighthouse insignia on her chest. I hear muffled voices in the background. One voice. I shift my weight, my cheek still resting on my palm. Multiple voices. Laughter. My glasses are sliding down my nose, Alexandria going out of focus, the dust fading to blurry invisibility, another power I envied. One voice, louder. If I faded to invisibility, would anyone notice? I hoped not.
Footsteps. A shadow over me. "Taylor. I hope you aren't asleep." I blink and push my glasses up my nose. Mr. Gladly, or 'Mr. G' as he preferred to be called, stood smiling awkwardly at me, the same slightly timid expression he wore whenever his job conflicted with his ambitions of being 'just one of the guys'. I never called him Mr. G.
"I wasn't asleep." I murmur. My cheeks burn, and I hate them slightly.
Mr. Gladly smiles faintly. "Then would you mind giving us your thoughts?" At seeing my expression, he continues. "We were discussing the Haywire movement."
I pause, sitting up to gather my thoughts. Well, slumping closer to upright. "The Haywire Movement was a group of Parahuman activists in the early 90s that claimed that Professor Haywire had discovered that what we think is reality wasn't actually reality, and that everything we know was an illusion. Tiamat wiped out their primary research facility in '95, and the Movement mostly died with their founder."
Mr. Gladly sighs. "Taylor, we just went over that." Titters, from the class. Madison's clear, high-pitched giggle was prominent. "Your thoughts on his movement?"
Suppressing my irritation, I respond. "I don't have the expertise, and I'm not a Thinker, so does it really matter?" I shrug. "I don't think it sounds right, though. No cape could do that to everyone in the world." Despite my words, I do wonder. Since… Well, since January, things do seem a little less…. Real. Hell, it's probably residual shock. I'm not any different. If the world is an illusion, then it's an illusion designed to crap in my lunch bag.
My teacher frowns. "I had hoped you had something to contribute." Liar. "Put a little extra thought into it." He walks up to the front of the classroom. "Okay, guys, I know that we all hate it, but there is going to be a short essay due next Wednesday on Professor Haywire and the effects that he and his movement had on 'Cape Culture'." He smiles. "It will be for a grade, but we'll get together in groups for discussion and presentation, and I'll have some snacks from the vending machine for the best group." The classroom breaks out into mutters. I suppress a groan. Another group project for the Trio to sabotage.
The bell rings, and in the mayhem of all the students trooping out into the halls to finally escape from this wretched place, I manage to avoid contact with any of the Trio. Huzzah. I let the world fade into buzzing, my feet falling against tile, then sidewalk, one after another. The sky is overcast, gray clouds, filtering out anemic February sun. Maybe it was depression, but out here seemed even less real than it did inside Winslow. Grey skies, grey light, grey buildings, the green from whatever plants struggle through the cracks in pavement washing out in the perpetual drabness of a city in decline. Maybe Professor Haywire had a point.
I felt my attention drifting, as it usually did, after a while with nothing else to occupy my thoughts, to the little reminder, the one thing I had left over from January. They had cleaned my locker, of course, bleach overpowering rotten blood and shit, although I couldn't bring myself to use it. Lifting a heavy bookbag helped make me stronger, anyway. In the hospital, Panacea had cured my infections, left me scar-free. The school had covered the hospital bills, in exchange for a vow of silence. All that was left was a tiny vertical white line, right in the lower left corner of my vision, visible even when I closed my eyes. Occasionally, it blinked.
I had thought it was something Panacea had missed, when I first noticed it. Some defect in my cornea. I brought it up to the doctors, and they had a vision screening, but there was nothing wrong with my vision. Panacea claimed she had already healed me, and the disgruntled expression she wore when I saw her, at a distance, shopping on the boardwalk with her sister kept me from approaching her. It wasn't important. Besides, it was in my head, and she famously didn't do brains.
I keep my head down and my hood up as I slumped my way home. I could jog, but what was the point? If reality is an illusion, so is time. I knew the route home by heart. Brockton Bay was a shithole, but the route from Winslow to my house is not gang territory, except for a few blocks where it borders on Empire turf, and even there, a pasty white girl isn't going to be accosted in the streets. Recruited, maybe, but the Empire prides themselves on being the moral superior to the Teeth and AZN Bad Boyz, so they take a light touch. Sad, that literal Nazis are better behaved than any of the other gangs. I make it home. Safely, for what it's worth. Dad isn't there. Likely won't be until late. The Dockworker's Association was on its last legs, propped up by odd jobs, and the efforts of my father, the leader in all but name. Hiring manager, advocate, widower, absentee father. No, I didn't resent that he put more effort into his job than his daughter, why would I?
Dodging the rotten step, I use my key to unlock the door and slip inside. Might as well eat. Bread, mustard, ham, cheese, wilted lettuce, mayonnaise, bread. I go up to my room, carrying my plate. Sure, it was Friday night, but I might as well get started on homework. Mom would have liked that, I think. Nothing better to do. I turn on the ancient computer, wait for it to boot up. For a moment, the DOS loading screen has a single cursor, blinking, in the lower left corner.
When I was younger, and Mom was alive, I was in a girls' softball team, with Emma. In my last game, I was turning to wave at Mom and Dad, when a ball hit me in the back of the helmet. I lost consciousness for a moment, woke up on the ground, but had a sore neck for a couple of days. The realization, the mad idea, hit me about as hard. I focused on the little line in my vision. Concentrating so hard, it almost hurt, I think 'Hello World.'
Hello World.
Two words. Five letters, one space, and a period, floating in the corner of my vision. I punch the air in glee. I wasn't crazy or going blind, I have a word processor in my brain! Wait. I slump, hitting my head on the desk. This was fucking useless. I have a word processor in my brain. No. I have an input line in my brain. I was good at computers, my programming class the only one the Trio couldn't sabotage. I was no savant, but then, I wouldn't expect my brain to run on C## or Java, could I?
Help.
Nothing. It didn't take much focus, now that I had the trick for it. Almost embarrassing, really. Why did it take me this long?
Display Commands.
Zip.
Options
A pair of options scrolled up from the corner of my vision, and my heart started beating faster in excitement.
Interface
Commands
'Interface.' I think, and the world went white for a moment, before clearing. Now, wherever I looked, the world was traced in an unobtrusive wireframe, objects in white, my own skin in bright, cheerful green. I focused on my hands, and I flashed solid green and lines of text scrolled up in my vision.
User: Taylor Hebert
Access: Entry-level Administrator
Status: Active
Health: 99.4%
99.4%? What was the other .6%? A tiny paper cut on the base of my right thumb flashed green. I had forgotten about it, to be honest.
User Damage: Negligible. Remove? (Yes/No)
'Yes' I think, my lips moving. The cut tingled, and faded to unblemished skin. I stared. My cut stayed gone. I brushed my fingers over the smooth skin. Nothing. My grin widened. I have POWERS!
I may or may not have danced wildly around my room, sheer gleeful abandon cutting through the haze of depression that had clouded my day. And yet, I gradually calmed down, before throwing myself onto my bed. Even with the ability to manually remove my injuries, after my initial glee wore off, my power had seemed a little… underwhelming. I let my eyes dart around the room, each object flickering with brighter white lines, describing the shape. There. A black hoodie, one of my favorites - baggy, comfortable, and anonymous, lying crumpled on the floor at the foot of my bed. The Trio had poured grape juice down the back, 'accidentally', before Madison had smeared glue on the back of my seat in the classroom. The glue dried by the end of class, and when I tried to get up, the seat had come with me, before my hoodie ripped slightly. I shake off the memories, tinged more with resignation than anger, and focus on the garment.
Object: Girl's Hoodie, Black, Size 8
Type: Garment, Torso
Status: Stained (Grape juice, Glue)
Damage: 78%
Repair, I thought, and the hoodie flashed green in my vision, before the stains on the comfortable black fabric vanished, leaving it pristine, even the fading from long months of use and repeated washing vanished. "Wow" I whisper, picking it up off the floor. Even if I couldn't go fight crime, this would be so useful, just in my everyday life. A life, I suspected, was about to get a lot better.
I didn't sleep that night. Normally, that would have bothered me, left me feeling groggy and irritable, but I had managed to locate a nifty little command that reset my fatigue, a better jolt than any cup of tea or coffee. It had only taken a little exploration to discover that my power was learning from me. My preferences, my ideas, my wishes, every action or command made it understand me a little better, and made me able to shape the world a little easier.
That scared me, in some ways. I hadn't ever heard of powers behaving this way, like the world was something to just… bend to my whim. But that's what I could do. I couldn't flat out create new objects from nothing, but I was able to copy, repair, and change anything I could see, as long as I had at least a rudimentary knowledge of how it worked. That included my computer, which probably qualified as tinkertech from how much I had modified the stats. That had taken a good chunk of the night as I hungrily devoured online tech magazines and articles, scraping enough information to boost it far beyond anything in our budget, beyond the stats I saw on ten-thousand-dollar gaming rigs online. Admittedly, the machine still looked the same, and I still wasn't quite sure how our dialup connection had the speed of a T1 line, but if my power's ability to change things was based on understanding, I was going to understand as much as I could.
I stumbled downstairs at six in the morning, watching the world through green and white wireframes, flicking my attention over everything, until I see my father sitting at the kitchen table, outlined in pale blue.
Subject: Daniel Hebert
Access: Read-Only Subject, Former Host Candidate
Status: Fatigued, Middle-aged
Health: 87%
A hint of panic fluttered through me. 87%? Was he sick? Injured? Repair.Subject= Daniel Hebert.
Error.
The fuck you mean, error? REPAIR.
ERROR. Subject Daniel Hebert is at maximum percentage health allowed by status: Middle-Aged.
I bite my tongue. Dad is staring at me now. What do I do? Do I try and remove the status, out myself, just to fix 13% damage? My gut roils. I…. I can't. Not now. Not when I have only barely dipped my toe into what I can really do.
My breakfast of toast and eggs taste like ashes in my mouth, and the mumbled, meaningless conversation with my dad hurts worse than before I knew what I could do, how much I could fix. There was a comic book written before The Walker and The Maiden appeared, about a man who got powers by being bitten by a radioactive spider. Silly, really, but when we covered it in our discussions on the rise of Cape Culture, one phrase had stuck out to me - with great power, comes great responsibility. And here I was, with power and responsibility already weighing me down like a millstone, terrified of doing anything for fear of winding up like New Wave.
The former Brockton Bay Brigade had unmasked, two related families of capes, all on national television, several years before. I still remembered watching, with Emma, before we had fallen apart. The leader of the Brigade, Brandish, had been a fairly well-known lawyer, Carol Dallon. Maybe that contributed to what happened. Within six weeks, the Merchants, of all people, had decided to take revenge after the New Wave movement crashed one of their drug-fueled parties. The chemical tinker that led the Merchants at the time, unimaginatively named Juicer, filled their home with a power suppressing gas, before dragging out the whole family, before slaughtering them brutally on camera. The Dallon's adopted daughter, Amy had triggered on camera, and ripped the tinker and a dozen non-powered Merchants apart with animated trees, but the damage was done. New Wave was no more, and although the Protectorate called in Pinnacle, Eidolon, and Inviolate to wipe the Merchants off the face of the planet in retribution, the code of conduct colloquially called the Unwritten Rules was upheld from then on. There was no way in hell I was going to risk my father's life - or mine - for the sake of a little bit of health, not right now.
Despite it being Saturday, Dad still goes to work. He's been doing that more and more, lately. Despite my medical bills from January being paid, Dad had missed a lot of work, and we need the overtime to keep our heads above water. I sit in the empty house and stare at my hands. What would I do? Could I be a hero? Some small part of me whispered that there wasn't a point, that one hero couldn't make a difference. I stamped that down. I would make a difference.
The question, of course, was how. The little cursor blinks in the corner of my vision. I could change myself in predictable, quantifiable ways.
Display User Statistics
Strength: 54%
Speed: 65%
Reflex: 69%
Endurance: 38%
Perception: 28%
Well. That was… Unhelpful. What were those percentages measured out of? Peak human capability? Peak ability for a 15-year-old girl? I fume for a moment, when no answer appeared to be forthcoming. Fuck it. Strength = 100%
I gasp as white-hot fire courses over my entire body for an instant, my muscles ripping and tearing as they grow and toughen. The pain fades, and I look at my hand and arm in wonder, before rushing off to the bathroom to peer at the mirror. I was ripped, each muscle defined, flexing and twisting with each minor movement. I wasn't grotesque, thankfully, but the new breadth of my shoulders was a little boyish, only the trim definition of my waist and the newly defined curves of my legs hinted at my feminine nature. I grin widely. Not superhuman, but I looked like I spent six hours in the gym every day and drank protein shakes for every meal. Well, that will do quite nicely.
Set All Statistics to 100%
AN:
Well, this was an expirement with a stream of conciousness style of writing. I want to try and continue this, it's not exactly a cross, but more of a conceptual homage to a particular movie series AU with some significant deviations from canon. Although it starts to seem a bit like a gamer fic in the latter portion of this segment, It's not going to be one, and I don't intend to have any kind of leveling or anything like that, I may make some changes if that is neccesary. Let me know if you can figure out the movie series that inspired this.
Anyway, let me know what you think.
Administrative Access
The fluorescent lights buzzed softly, on the edge of hearing, as my eyes idly watched a mote of dust float through the stuffy air. Floating, bobbing, drifting idly. Hell, that sounds nice, just being able to float in the air, no bonds, no ties, nothing holding me down. Life isn't like that. I let my eyes drift out of focus, just a bit, letting the harsh glare of the lights wash out the dirty tiled ceiling. My focus drifts to a single, solitary paper mobile, hanging limply from a pin stuck in the ceiling. Alexandria, captured mid-flight, her fists held out straight in front of her. The dust mote floats in front of the lighthouse insignia on her chest. I hear muffled voices in the background. One voice. I shift my weight, my cheek still resting on my palm. Multiple voices. Laughter. My glasses are sliding down my nose, Alexandria going out of focus, the dust fading to blurry invisibility, another power I envied. One voice, louder. If I faded to invisibility, would anyone notice? I hoped not.
Footsteps. A shadow over me. "Taylor. I hope you aren't asleep." I blink and push my glasses up my nose. Mr. Gladly, or 'Mr. G' as he preferred to be called, stood smiling awkwardly at me, the same slightly timid expression he wore whenever his job conflicted with his ambitions of being 'just one of the guys'. I never called him Mr. G.
"I wasn't asleep." I murmur. My cheeks burn, and I hate them slightly.
Mr. Gladly smiles faintly. "Then would you mind giving us your thoughts?" At seeing my expression, he continues. "We were discussing the Haywire movement."
I pause, sitting up to gather my thoughts. Well, slumping closer to upright. "The Haywire Movement was a group of Parahuman activists in the early 90s that claimed that Professor Haywire had discovered that what we think is reality wasn't actually reality, and that everything we know was an illusion. Tiamat wiped out their primary research facility in '95, and the Movement mostly died with their founder."
Mr. Gladly sighs. "Taylor, we just went over that." Titters, from the class. Madison's clear, high-pitched giggle was prominent. "Your thoughts on his movement?"
Suppressing my irritation, I respond. "I don't have the expertise, and I'm not a Thinker, so does it really matter?" I shrug. "I don't think it sounds right, though. No cape could do that to everyone in the world." Despite my words, I do wonder. Since… Well, since January, things do seem a little less…. Real. Hell, it's probably residual shock. I'm not any different. If the world is an illusion, then it's an illusion designed to crap in my lunch bag.
My teacher frowns. "I had hoped you had something to contribute." Liar. "Put a little extra thought into it." He walks up to the front of the classroom. "Okay, guys, I know that we all hate it, but there is going to be a short essay due next Wednesday on Professor Haywire and the effects that he and his movement had on 'Cape Culture'." He smiles. "It will be for a grade, but we'll get together in groups for discussion and presentation, and I'll have some snacks from the vending machine for the best group." The classroom breaks out into mutters. I suppress a groan. Another group project for the Trio to sabotage.
The bell rings, and in the mayhem of all the students trooping out into the halls to finally escape from this wretched place, I manage to avoid contact with any of the Trio. Huzzah. I let the world fade into buzzing, my feet falling against tile, then sidewalk, one after another. The sky is overcast, gray clouds, filtering out anemic February sun. Maybe it was depression, but out here seemed even less real than it did inside Winslow. Grey skies, grey light, grey buildings, the green from whatever plants struggle through the cracks in pavement washing out in the perpetual drabness of a city in decline. Maybe Professor Haywire had a point.
I felt my attention drifting, as it usually did, after a while with nothing else to occupy my thoughts, to the little reminder, the one thing I had left over from January. They had cleaned my locker, of course, bleach overpowering rotten blood and shit, although I couldn't bring myself to use it. Lifting a heavy bookbag helped make me stronger, anyway. In the hospital, Panacea had cured my infections, left me scar-free. The school had covered the hospital bills, in exchange for a vow of silence. All that was left was a tiny vertical white line, right in the lower left corner of my vision, visible even when I closed my eyes. Occasionally, it blinked.
I had thought it was something Panacea had missed, when I first noticed it. Some defect in my cornea. I brought it up to the doctors, and they had a vision screening, but there was nothing wrong with my vision. Panacea claimed she had already healed me, and the disgruntled expression she wore when I saw her, at a distance, shopping on the boardwalk with her sister kept me from approaching her. It wasn't important. Besides, it was in my head, and she famously didn't do brains.
I keep my head down and my hood up as I slumped my way home. I could jog, but what was the point? If reality is an illusion, so is time. I knew the route home by heart. Brockton Bay was a shithole, but the route from Winslow to my house is not gang territory, except for a few blocks where it borders on Empire turf, and even there, a pasty white girl isn't going to be accosted in the streets. Recruited, maybe, but the Empire prides themselves on being the moral superior to the Teeth and AZN Bad Boyz, so they take a light touch. Sad, that literal Nazis are better behaved than any of the other gangs. I make it home. Safely, for what it's worth. Dad isn't there. Likely won't be until late. The Dockworker's Association was on its last legs, propped up by odd jobs, and the efforts of my father, the leader in all but name. Hiring manager, advocate, widower, absentee father. No, I didn't resent that he put more effort into his job than his daughter, why would I?
Dodging the rotten step, I use my key to unlock the door and slip inside. Might as well eat. Bread, mustard, ham, cheese, wilted lettuce, mayonnaise, bread. I go up to my room, carrying my plate. Sure, it was Friday night, but I might as well get started on homework. Mom would have liked that, I think. Nothing better to do. I turn on the ancient computer, wait for it to boot up. For a moment, the DOS loading screen has a single cursor, blinking, in the lower left corner.
When I was younger, and Mom was alive, I was in a girls' softball team, with Emma. In my last game, I was turning to wave at Mom and Dad, when a ball hit me in the back of the helmet. I lost consciousness for a moment, woke up on the ground, but had a sore neck for a couple of days. The realization, the mad idea, hit me about as hard. I focused on the little line in my vision. Concentrating so hard, it almost hurt, I think 'Hello World.'
Hello World.
Two words. Five letters, one space, and a period, floating in the corner of my vision. I punch the air in glee. I wasn't crazy or going blind, I have a word processor in my brain! Wait. I slump, hitting my head on the desk. This was fucking useless. I have a word processor in my brain. No. I have an input line in my brain. I was good at computers, my programming class the only one the Trio couldn't sabotage. I was no savant, but then, I wouldn't expect my brain to run on C## or Java, could I?
Help.
Nothing. It didn't take much focus, now that I had the trick for it. Almost embarrassing, really. Why did it take me this long?
Display Commands.
Zip.
Options
A pair of options scrolled up from the corner of my vision, and my heart started beating faster in excitement.
Interface
Commands
'Interface.' I think, and the world went white for a moment, before clearing. Now, wherever I looked, the world was traced in an unobtrusive wireframe, objects in white, my own skin in bright, cheerful green. I focused on my hands, and I flashed solid green and lines of text scrolled up in my vision.
User: Taylor Hebert
Access: Entry-level Administrator
Status: Active
Health: 99.4%
99.4%? What was the other .6%? A tiny paper cut on the base of my right thumb flashed green. I had forgotten about it, to be honest.
User Damage: Negligible. Remove? (Yes/No)
'Yes' I think, my lips moving. The cut tingled, and faded to unblemished skin. I stared. My cut stayed gone. I brushed my fingers over the smooth skin. Nothing. My grin widened. I have POWERS!
I may or may not have danced wildly around my room, sheer gleeful abandon cutting through the haze of depression that had clouded my day. And yet, I gradually calmed down, before throwing myself onto my bed. Even with the ability to manually remove my injuries, after my initial glee wore off, my power had seemed a little… underwhelming. I let my eyes dart around the room, each object flickering with brighter white lines, describing the shape. There. A black hoodie, one of my favorites - baggy, comfortable, and anonymous, lying crumpled on the floor at the foot of my bed. The Trio had poured grape juice down the back, 'accidentally', before Madison had smeared glue on the back of my seat in the classroom. The glue dried by the end of class, and when I tried to get up, the seat had come with me, before my hoodie ripped slightly. I shake off the memories, tinged more with resignation than anger, and focus on the garment.
Object: Girl's Hoodie, Black, Size 8
Type: Garment, Torso
Status: Stained (Grape juice, Glue)
Damage: 78%
Repair, I thought, and the hoodie flashed green in my vision, before the stains on the comfortable black fabric vanished, leaving it pristine, even the fading from long months of use and repeated washing vanished. "Wow" I whisper, picking it up off the floor. Even if I couldn't go fight crime, this would be so useful, just in my everyday life. A life, I suspected, was about to get a lot better.
I didn't sleep that night. Normally, that would have bothered me, left me feeling groggy and irritable, but I had managed to locate a nifty little command that reset my fatigue, a better jolt than any cup of tea or coffee. It had only taken a little exploration to discover that my power was learning from me. My preferences, my ideas, my wishes, every action or command made it understand me a little better, and made me able to shape the world a little easier.
That scared me, in some ways. I hadn't ever heard of powers behaving this way, like the world was something to just… bend to my whim. But that's what I could do. I couldn't flat out create new objects from nothing, but I was able to copy, repair, and change anything I could see, as long as I had at least a rudimentary knowledge of how it worked. That included my computer, which probably qualified as tinkertech from how much I had modified the stats. That had taken a good chunk of the night as I hungrily devoured online tech magazines and articles, scraping enough information to boost it far beyond anything in our budget, beyond the stats I saw on ten-thousand-dollar gaming rigs online. Admittedly, the machine still looked the same, and I still wasn't quite sure how our dialup connection had the speed of a T1 line, but if my power's ability to change things was based on understanding, I was going to understand as much as I could.
I stumbled downstairs at six in the morning, watching the world through green and white wireframes, flicking my attention over everything, until I see my father sitting at the kitchen table, outlined in pale blue.
Subject: Daniel Hebert
Access: Read-Only Subject, Former Host Candidate
Status: Fatigued, Middle-aged
Health: 87%
A hint of panic fluttered through me. 87%? Was he sick? Injured? Repair.Subject= Daniel Hebert.
Error.
The fuck you mean, error? REPAIR.
ERROR. Subject Daniel Hebert is at maximum percentage health allowed by status: Middle-Aged.
I bite my tongue. Dad is staring at me now. What do I do? Do I try and remove the status, out myself, just to fix 13% damage? My gut roils. I…. I can't. Not now. Not when I have only barely dipped my toe into what I can really do.
My breakfast of toast and eggs taste like ashes in my mouth, and the mumbled, meaningless conversation with my dad hurts worse than before I knew what I could do, how much I could fix. There was a comic book written before The Walker and The Maiden appeared, about a man who got powers by being bitten by a radioactive spider. Silly, really, but when we covered it in our discussions on the rise of Cape Culture, one phrase had stuck out to me - with great power, comes great responsibility. And here I was, with power and responsibility already weighing me down like a millstone, terrified of doing anything for fear of winding up like New Wave.
The former Brockton Bay Brigade had unmasked, two related families of capes, all on national television, several years before. I still remembered watching, with Emma, before we had fallen apart. The leader of the Brigade, Brandish, had been a fairly well-known lawyer, Carol Dallon. Maybe that contributed to what happened. Within six weeks, the Merchants, of all people, had decided to take revenge after the New Wave movement crashed one of their drug-fueled parties. The chemical tinker that led the Merchants at the time, unimaginatively named Juicer, filled their home with a power suppressing gas, before dragging out the whole family, before slaughtering them brutally on camera. The Dallon's adopted daughter, Amy had triggered on camera, and ripped the tinker and a dozen non-powered Merchants apart with animated trees, but the damage was done. New Wave was no more, and although the Protectorate called in Pinnacle, Eidolon, and Inviolate to wipe the Merchants off the face of the planet in retribution, the code of conduct colloquially called the Unwritten Rules was upheld from then on. There was no way in hell I was going to risk my father's life - or mine - for the sake of a little bit of health, not right now.
Despite it being Saturday, Dad still goes to work. He's been doing that more and more, lately. Despite my medical bills from January being paid, Dad had missed a lot of work, and we need the overtime to keep our heads above water. I sit in the empty house and stare at my hands. What would I do? Could I be a hero? Some small part of me whispered that there wasn't a point, that one hero couldn't make a difference. I stamped that down. I would make a difference.
The question, of course, was how. The little cursor blinks in the corner of my vision. I could change myself in predictable, quantifiable ways.
Display User Statistics
Strength: 54%
Speed: 65%
Reflex: 69%
Endurance: 38%
Perception: 28%
Well. That was… Unhelpful. What were those percentages measured out of? Peak human capability? Peak ability for a 15-year-old girl? I fume for a moment, when no answer appeared to be forthcoming. Fuck it. Strength = 100%
I gasp as white-hot fire courses over my entire body for an instant, my muscles ripping and tearing as they grow and toughen. The pain fades, and I look at my hand and arm in wonder, before rushing off to the bathroom to peer at the mirror. I was ripped, each muscle defined, flexing and twisting with each minor movement. I wasn't grotesque, thankfully, but the new breadth of my shoulders was a little boyish, only the trim definition of my waist and the newly defined curves of my legs hinted at my feminine nature. I grin widely. Not superhuman, but I looked like I spent six hours in the gym every day and drank protein shakes for every meal. Well, that will do quite nicely.
Set All Statistics to 100%
AN:
Well, this was an expirement with a stream of conciousness style of writing. I want to try and continue this, it's not exactly a cross, but more of a conceptual homage to a particular movie series AU with some significant deviations from canon. Although it starts to seem a bit like a gamer fic in the latter portion of this segment, It's not going to be one, and I don't intend to have any kind of leveling or anything like that, I may make some changes if that is neccesary. Let me know if you can figure out the movie series that inspired this.
Anyway, let me know what you think.
globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
so scion did the smart thing consumed earth and is simulating humans to do product testing without spending energy in actual laser beams?
- Location
- The INTERNET!
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Scion did the precog while driving thing, so Eden is the one doing the sim, but yes, essentially.
And it's more efficient and accurate to have actual human brains on life support than trying to accurately emulate the reactions, especially for testing purposes, since a shard emulation of a human may or may not actually cognitively function in precisely the same way as a human.
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Shadeshadow227
Writer of Eldritch Knowledge
- Location
- St. George, Utah
Pretty good. Minor notes of a slightly-OP powerset, but it seems interesting.
I'm now imagining her joining Uber and Leet for some reason. Her supervillain name shall be Hax. (Damn, Intrepid and Trump Card...why'd you have to take that name?)
Edit: Not=Now. (Jesus...one letter, and the entire meaning changes.)
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- Location
- The INTERNET!
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Not sure whether Uber and Leet exist in this AU. Leaning towards no, and I am considering some various options for her cape name.
Hax isn't one of them. There are some aspects of the power that have not yet appeared.