Chapter 6
Wednesday 19 May
Lauren was not in a happy mood during the bus ride from school to the mall. First, unlike most girls in her class, she did not like clothes shopping. However, testing out her new permanent power on Monday resulted in her clothes being punctured by small icicles growing from her ice statue form. As she was already running low on clothes, due to her mentioned aversion of clothes shopping, Lauren could no longer put off the dreaded task.
Power type: Breaker/Striker
Threat level: 1
Duration: (6 min) - PERMANENT
Synchronization: 100%
Wiki article: Yle Teema
Power: Host can, at will, transform into an ice-scupture like state. In this state, anything she touches freezes over (although rather slowly). At full synchronization, host can form icicles on her body and fire them off. Those icicles are colder than normal ice and do not melt. Power Synergy: When using the tropical power on herself in this form, host no longer freezes anything on touch. She also does not feel uncomfortably warm. Additionally, the tropical power is able to melt her icicles. (And we have another 100% synchronization power).
Secondly, and more disturbingly, she had found out an uncomfortable truth during her Eidolon investigation yesterday evening. Eidolon seemed to be growing weaker as the years went by. There were some old threads on PHO where a few cape fanatics were mentioning this, but nobody had seemed to pay them any mind. However, as Lauren continued her file on Eidolon's powers, she noticed that he didn't use some of his best powers anymore. His matter destruction power, which he used during practically every Endbringer fight in the first few years, wasn't used during the last few years. The same could be said about most other powers from the first few Endbringer fights. Instead of them, he is using other powers which, although ridiculously strong, are weaker than those early powers.
Given that Eidolon was still the strongest cape in every Endbringer fight, discounting Scion, that didn't bode well for humanity's future against these monsters. Maybe in the future, another cape might arise with powers comparable to or greater than Eidolon in the old days, or Scion might stop sandbagging and actually try his hardest to kill the monsters. But until then, Endbringer fights would only get worse.
The last few days, aside from her new icy permanent power and loss of faith in Eidolon's strength, also resulted in a few tinker fugues. One of which resulted in Lauren upgrading a few of Williams electronic toys, like his remote controlled car which now drove way faster, had an internal energy supply, and worked even when far removed from the remote. Another resulted in a voice modulator, which was definitely going to be part of her hero costume. Even though she no longer had a tinker power, she could still remember the blueprint for said voice modulator and could even make new ones.
Power type: Tinker
Threat level: 0
Duration: 10 min
Synchronization: 65%
Wiki article: Minister of Family Affairs and Social Services (Finland)
Power: Tinker Speciality: household appliances & childcare: Host is able to make state of the art household appliances and electronic child toys.
Power type: Breaker/Tinker
Threat level: 0
Duration: 48 min
Synchronization: 32%
Wiki article: Johan Rabaeus
Power: Tinker Speciality: Acting. Host can make devices that allow people to pretend to be people they are not
Once Lauren arrived at the local mall, she went straight to her usual clothing shop, as there was no reason to make this trip any longer than necessary. She went here specifically because most of the clothes sold here were cheap, durable and practical, exactly what she wanted.
Within an hour, Lauren had found some shirts and jeans that fit and went to the cashier to pay for them. One moment, she was in front of the register, and the next she was in the parking lot outside strapped to some sort of chair. Panicked voices around her revealed that she was not the only one trapped in here. Due to her brief moment of panic, Lauren suddenly gained a temporary power.
Power type: Trump/Brute
Threat level: 1
Duration: 12 min
Synchronization: 93%
Wiki article: Henri-Joseph Dulaurens
Power: Host gains resistance to powers that affect her mentally or in esoteric, physically impossible, ways. Examples include the Simurgh's scream or Shadow Stalker's breaker projectiles. Host does not get completely immune to those powers, and has no resistance at all against normal things like guns.
Which wouldn't help her at all in this situation. However, Lauren and the other captives were soon interrupted by a voice seemingly generated from a loudspeaker:
"Ladies and Gentleman. Thank you for volunteering to ride the fantastic rollercoaster from Über and Leet enterprises, financed by the Lords street shopping mall! Please keep your hand within the carts during the ride and do not forget to smile for the camera which is mounted halfway during the ride! The pictures can be bought online in our webshop. Please have an enjoyable ride"
Damn it, she was stuck in one of Über and Leet's online shows! Luckily for her, this seems to be based on one of the Roller Coaster Tycoon games and not a zombie apocalypse game like left 4 dead. Even though Lauren could think of multiple ways to escape and possibly save the other captives, all of them would reveal her as a parahuman to the other captives and the watchers of the show.
Before Lauren could think anymore, the cart started to move. Although it felt like the cart was riding on tracks, and somehow even the appropriate sounds were coming from somewhere, in reality it was travelling on empty air.
Like any roller coaster ride, it started with a slow climb up an artificial hill, or in this case empty air. Some people who were afraid of heights started screaming, but Lauren was not one of them. In contrary, Lauren was actually excited for the ride. She has only been to theme parks a few times in her life, due to Brockton Bay not having any, and always enjoyed the roller coasters she was allowed to ride. Additionally, she had played many hours of Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, making her appreciate the theme Über and Leet went with. When the cart finally started descending at high speed, Lauren joined the screaming, but in her case it was more one of joy than one of fear.
As the ride progressed, Lauren saw Assault and Velocity arrive in the parking lot. As neither of them could fly, they couldn't do anything to the carts riding on the virtual roller coaster track. During a looping, Lauren saw velocity enter the mall, likely trying to find Über and Leet as they were robbing the mall.
After a corkscrew and another descent, Lauren saw a camera snap pictures of the captives in the cart. Unfortunately, it had already snapped a picture of her, which knowing her luck with pictures was probably very unflattering.
Just before the car reached its starting position, Lauren saw Über and Leet breaking through the doors in another Roller Coaster cart, followed by Velocity. Assault seemed to be tempted to join Velocity in the chase, but decided that keeping the civilians in the roller coasters save was more important.
In the end, Assault's assistance was not necessary. The carts came to a stop on their own, and once they arrived at their starting positions, the passengers were automatically released from their seats. Lauren was surprised by someone of the protectorate actually acting like a hero and looking after the people in need of help instead of mindlessly chasing villains without results. Maybe they weren't so bad after all.
Due to the large amount of people involved in this show, Lauren did not need to give a statement to the newly arrived PRT troopers. However, one of the troopers still came forward to her.
"Lauren, are you allright? Are you hurt anywhere?"
"Dad?"
Lauren really started to hate the faceless masks the PRT troopers were required to wear during missions. She didn't even recognize her dad until he spoke to her!
"I'm fine dad, Über and Leet did nothing except put me in a roller coaster cart. The ride was even surprisingly fun!"
Lauren's father looked at her somewhat disbelievingly for her nonchalant attitude.
"Okay honey, that's good. But please be more careful in the future! Leet's tech is unreliable and the carts could very well have exploded!"
Before Lauren could retort by saying she couldn't even have seen the kidnapping coming, her father spoke softly in her ear:
"If something like this happens again, please use your powers to escape. Even if you get outed that way, you will at least be alive. And when you get outed we can sign you up with the wards for protection."
After quickly thinking about it and realizing he had a point, Lauren whispered: "Okay dad, I'll do that."
After that, Lauren's father returned to the other troopers, who were standing around the roller coaster carts next to a few people who had reacted as well as Lauren to the impromptu roller coaster ride.
As Lauren started to make her way back home, She realized something important.
"Damn it!"
She had not paid yet for the clothes, which were still in the now closed off mall. So not only had Lauren wasted an hour on clothes shopping, but she had to and do it again in a few days.
AN: So here we have Lauren's first encounter with other parahumans. However, Lauren was lucky, and everything went well (except for her not being able to buy clothes).
As always, thanks for everyone who favourited and followed my story.
To answer a few questions on the tropical power: If Lauren targets herself, her body temperature will become a lot higher, which makes her more resistant (but not immune) to ice powers and cold weather in general (and results in surprisingly good synergy with the ice statue power), resistance to fire is less pronounced than the resistance to cold (as fire is much hotter than her new body temperature). Lauren's power is actually much more effective at killing germs in her body than a normal fever, and using it cures her from basically any human disease (seeing as they are made for human body temperatures). When Lauren targets an area, only the air will warm, so ice will not instantly transform into water. Lauren's power will actually temporary remove fires, because the fire's temperature will be decreased to tropical level. However, the burning objects will remain burning, so the flames will instantly come back when the area moves away.
The possibility of gaining a permanent nasty power will always be there during this story, and is part of what makes writing it (and hopefully reading it) so fun. Power synergy can either remove some of the nastiness of the -1 powers, or make it worse if there is synergy between those powers. I personally do not have much hope for Lauren retaining a secret identity for more than a few months (Even actually good powers can make it impossible for Lauren to retain a secret identity). Luckily for Lauren, some of her powers (especially clone power and healing transform power) have potential to keep her life somehwhat afloat, even if something resembling body-horror happens.
Next chapter will see some follow up on a weird roll I made in chapter one, which will have significant long term consequences.