Outsourcing Your Hero Needs: Worm Edition
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and settings do not belong to me. Some you don't recognize also don't belong to me, they are just obscure.
Wednesday, February 16th, 2011
Debut
Kaiser stalked into the conference room, Menja and Fenja providing him with suitably Wagnerian bookends. He glared at his reduced forces. Krieg was sitting at the table fiddling with a manila folder. Night was buffing her nails while Fog stared blankly at the TV in the upper corner of the room, following whatever sitcom reality had been programmed into them. Alabaster, Hookwolf and Stormtiger, lounging and occasionally glaring at the alcohol-less, empty minibar. And that was it. Purity, Cricket and Crusader, dead at the hands of that psycho in the Magneto costume during the Halloween Event, and now this.
"Report." he barked.
Krieg shifted in his seat. "Victor and Othala used their 'long, romantic weekend' to disappear. Their house has been emptied and cleaned, accounts also emptied and closed, car gone. No one has seen or heard from them since Friday. And then there's this." He slid a folder over to Kaiser. "James Tagg, PRT Director Ellsberg Containment Force, was shot and killed by Victor's sniper rifle while he exited a helicopter at PRT's New York headquarters."
Kaiser sat down, took his helmet off, and dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. "Was it actually Victor or someone framing him, and by extension, me?"
"It's all in the report. Shot was fired from nearly two kilometers away, and while the roof access security camera did not show him arriving, it does show someone of his approximate height and build leaving shortly after Tagg was killed." said Krieg. "If it was a frame up, they were thorough."
"And Rune?" asked their leader.
"No sign she even made it back from the rally last week," said Hookwolf.
Kaiser growled. "Someone is fucking with us, and we are going to find them and show what happens to people who fuck with the Empire 88! And someone turn that fucking thing off!" he shouted, pointing at the TV where some guy in full color was commenting over some kind of black and white History channel bullshit.
The guy on TV waved at him.
"What the fuck?"
The TV guy pointed a remote at the camera, pressed a button, and vanished from the screen. Now he was standing on the table.
He looked ridiculous.
It was like someone had covered him in glue and rolled him around in a nerd costume shop. Han Solo's pants, the kind of shirt Jedi wore under the robes, Wookie bandolier, Klingon boots, fingerless gloves, and overcoat thing, capped off with a Samurai top knot.
"GREETINGS, NAZIS! Poland called, you can have your blitzkrieg back." With that, he backflipped to the window, landing perched on the frame, and pointed his remote at the TV.
And summoned a German Tiger 2 tank.
This presented certain problems for everyone in the room, as that model tank was noticeably larger than the room. The only safe place was the window, where the TV guy was, between the dual exhausts. For those who survived having a tank violently displace them through the walls, came the next problem.
Namely, that model tank was considerably heavier than the floor joists were rated for. When they were new they couldn't have taken the load. They weren't new. The tank crashed through the floor, pancaked the floor below that, and finally stopped in the basement.
Kaiser groaned. He'd managed to wrap himself in a metal shell before getting crushed, but it still wasn't a comfortable ride. He could hear metal on metal scraping and a lot of cursing, so he knew Hookwolf and Alabaster were alive, though the latter was trapped.
"Oooh, I get to use my Cool Magnetic Repeller!" the TV guy said, as he dropped down from the window onto one of the protruding shattered stubs of the floor joists. Something unfolded from his back, armatures wrapped around him and a targeting monocle dropped over his eye. Kaiser and Hookwolf were both shoved deeper into the rubble, crushed beneath their own powers.
As he watched frost form on the inside of his shell, the second to last thing to pass through his mind was a groan at the terrible pun. 'Cool Magnetic Repeller'.
The last thing to pass through his mind was the barrel of an 88mm gun.
Alabaster heard the metallic crunching and shattering noises, but whether through bravado, genuine fearlessness, or ignorance didn't allow it to interrupt the stream of threats, cursing and racial slurs. The TV guy jumped down the two stories separating them like he was hopping off a chair. He looked over the trapped Nazi, glanced around, and then bounced over to something in the corner out of sight.
"Oh yeah, you're totally intimidating, laying there." There was a very familiar sound effect, a flash of red light, and the sound of the worst made bell ever hitting the ground. He could hear the sound of the guy approaching over the broken bits of building, as well as an odd tapping.
"Don't worry, I'm sure if you put enough effort into it, you'll get out. What was that old saying, you know, they used to hang it over gates…"
When the guy walked back into view he was holding a three or four foot long piece of the plumbing stack, tapping the rusty iron with a tiny hammer, revealing solid iron underneath. One end of it was flared outwards, the other shiny, as if the end had been ground down.
Or sharpened, he realized, as the guy raised the pipe over Alabaster's chest. "Hard work will set you free." He slammed the pipe down, through the Nazi's chest, around his heart. He dusted his hands off, and walked away humming the tune from the commercial still playing on the TV above.
Alabaster's body tried to reset itself to what it was 4.3 seconds ago, but there was a pipe in the way. It tried again, but now there wasn't an intact 4.3 second ago version to revert to. Slowly, painfully, the damage accumulated, blood lost, lungs collapsing over and over again, until his power slowed, failed, and he finally died. It took about ten minutes.
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
Arrival
Well, at least I never need to wonder 'Am I the Asshole?'. The answer is yes, as I stare at the 'Welcome to Brockton Bay' sign. I mean, I never thought I would pull the same kind of shit I did to my players on my alternate reality self.
'Never be afraid to give your players power. Heaps of it, gobs of it. Wealth too. So much that they don't stop to ask what the price is.' Amber Diceless, you may have ruined my afterlife.
So when Godlike Alt-Me grabs my soul from the void, says he needs me to save a world so he doesn't have to, and gives me three wishes, I should have been more suspicious. Especially when he didn't tell me what world I would be going to. Especially when he said I couldn't leave 'until the main plotline is over.'
Especially when he gave me a fourth, free one. 'Immunity to exotic detects, precog, postcog, telepathy, Thinker powers .'
I can't trust myself.
At least I got some cool stuff from all this.
The sound of not-so distant gunfire reminds me that perhaps I should use some of it to keep my terribly squishy self alive. I take a second to concentrate, and cast Missile Shield.
The First Wish: Essence of the Archmage (GURPS Technomancer Magic).
All the magic of one world (or one type, for worlds with multiple), the ability to learn and use any type of magic, to teach it to anyone, all in a single potion vial.
A vial I had me drink while still a bodiless soul floating in a somehow perfectly lit infinite dark void, because he knew full well what I would have done if he gave it to me and fulfilled my other wishes first.
I cast Pathfinder, looking for a library with publicly available internet terminals. It turns out libraries are usually really far from the city limits. As I take my distressingly long walk, I scan things, people, buildings, collecting patterns.
The Third Wish: Builder Powers, complete with patterns.
The power to make anything, as long as I have a pattern for it first. Eventual godhood, in a more 'Let there be light.' than 'Bow down before my omnipotent power.' sense. And one of its perks is immunity to radiation, an important thing for my easily burned, not quite albino self.
Note to self: Make a Ring of Protection From Fire soon. Probably need Protection From Grenades Going Off In Your Face, because Worm.
When I walk by a pizza place I am reminded that this body has never eaten. I check my pockets and am reminded that this body has no wallet, legal identity, or cash. Fortunately enough, the last is easily remedied.
Going behind the restaurant, the inevitable dumpster full of cardboard, empty containers, and rotting food. Checking around as best I can, no one is watching. I manifest my hammer for the first time, idly noting that it is a reproduction of a hammer multitool I got for Christmas from my brother one year. I tap the top of the pile, breaking down the contents for raw materials to fill my stores.
I have an existential crisis as I realize I can't remember my brother's name.
Oh wait, I shouldn't feel too bad about hardly remembering my family, I can't remember my own name either.
I can remember the name of my/our Elf Necromancer character Alt-Me was appearing as, I remember the longest story of the inclusion of a single word in a game book, but I don't remember my own name.
OK, breathe. I was already in the position of building this identity like a character, now I'm just taking it a bit further. And taking a deep breath next to a half-full dumpster is a bad idea.
More basic needs intruded into my awareness. Right, bathroom, food, rest, and then identity.
I grab a scan of the cash the guy at the counter is paying with as I head to the men's room. Take care of business, (why do I have to pee? This body is new, no liquid has ever passed these lips.) and then create some cash while I'm still in the stall, just in case there's some visual or sound effects. It gives off a little sparkle as it forms, kind of like a replicator, but without the sound.
It seems so perfectly American, that, given the ability to make literally anything, the first thing I make is money.
'And now, Scott Bakula reacts to the face in the mirror.' I think, as I leave the stall and wash my hands. Yup, completely not me in the mirror. I don't know what old me looked like, but this wasn't it. Tall, broad-shouldered, and soft. Like someone who'd played football in high school, but couldn't hack it in college, or maybe someone trying to lose weight who had the exercise program down, but couldn't keep to the diet. My face was clean-shaven, friendly, and had a certain agelessness to it. I could have been a mature looking high school senior, a baby faced middle-aged dad, or anywhere in between. Topped with a head of vaguely brown hair that might look auburn in certain lights, I was a big, non-threatening teddy bear of a man.
OK, Jack Black's body double wasn't the look I was hoping for, but it was probably useful. I was generic white guy enough that descriptions or police sketches would be almost useless in identifying me.
I had a sudden half memory of a time in college when I saw a police sketch of a suspect, and realized that me, both my roommates, one of the TAs and my old high school biology teacher all matched.
Yeah, once I got past the whole, 'I want to be feared by men, and adored by women.' thing, this could be really helpful. Another memory, not personal, but topical floated up, about a comparison of Hugh Jackman's appearances on the cover of women's versus men's magazines. Yeah, adored by women might be easier this way.
Moving on, I go on the hunt for the illusive pizza. As I order and pay, I notice I'm going to have to do some video game grinding shit to get a generic $20 bill pattern, or else every bill is going to be an exact copy of that one guy's. I grab a fountain drink and sit down where I have a clear look at the make line, and grind to get a generic pizza pattern instead.
I wonder if any of my fellow patrons are capes, then metaphorically smack myself upside the head. I have two different ways of telling this.
The Second Wish: Power Manipulation, that can manipulate itself and my own powers.
I manipulate my power manipulation, giving it range, and make the detect part a sense, as in, I'm constantly aware of it. Sure, that could cause a 'I know your secret.' giveaway reaction, but I'd rather risk that than not knowing someone I was dealing with was a cape. Nothing in range, which would reassure me more if I had the slightest idea what the range actually was.
Nothing for it. Food, hydration, a short rest, and now time to continue my quest for basic world information. I don't remember who, but someone once described Worm as 'a million words long that'll make you want to kill yourself.' So I read the much less depressing fanfiction.
It's telling that the 'Taylor murders everybody' fics were less depressing than canon.
The upshot of all this is that I have no idea what canon Worm was, even if I'm in the canon universe. So, research.
I was getting up to leave when the sirens went off. It didn't take an empath to spot the massive spike of fear, as everyone took out their phones, asking each other "Is it here? Who is it?"
I groaned in realization. 'Goddamnit, Alt-Me. If you've landed me here on the day Leviathan attacks, I will track down your nigh-omnipotent ass and kill you. Given what I am, that isn't an idle threat.'
Author's Note: There are many people to blame for the inspiration for this fic. Mist of Rainbows/Shadows introduced me to Builder lore and Worm. Dogbertcarroll introduced me to Pokegirl. Between the two of them they also dragged me into Harry Potter, I had resisted the mania when the books were being published and the movies first came out, but then they had crossover stories with BtVS, HP, and others, and I had to see if the cool things/characters were in the original material. Mostly they weren't. The Dark Wolf Shiro showed us that no matter how terrible your protagonist is as a person, they'll probably make Worm a better place. I don't know if he invented Essence of the Archmage, but his work is where I saw it first.
