OYHN:Worm Edition Chapter Six

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

Fail Nobra

Disclaimer: There are a few quotes from media I don't own, but other than that I have nothing new to disclaim.

Coil smiled behind his mask. Control Freak's poking the dragon had proved so distracting the local heroes had barely noticed his distraction, much less his main operation. He dropped his 'safety/do nothing' timeline, and split again.

Timeline 1

He called for Tattletale to help with his initial interrogation of his new precog. There's nothing quite like rubbing her smug face in the realities of her situation.

Timeline 2

He called in his new precog. One of his men hauled her in like a sack of potatoes, plopped her down in a chair and pulled the bag off of her head.

She looked around, portrait of a terrified child. Then she straightened, tilted her head, and glared at him.

"You're early. I wasn't expecting you to pull this shit 'till April." she said in a voice far too grown up and way too male.

Shit. He'd dropped the safety timeline too soon.

She popped off one of her hands and slipped out of the zip ties on her wrists. Now free, she put the hand back on.

Ah, nope. He signaled his man while dodging and opening fire.

And the timeline collapsed in a blaze of white light.

He split the timeline again, one to stay and talk, and one to flee.

Timeline 1.1

The girl split open, revealing robotic innards. She unfolded into a huge tv. The lack of the Transformers sound effect told him at least this wasn't Leet. It turned on, revealing a life size image of Control Freak, in all his ridiculous glory, standing in front of a green screen.

"Greetings, Coil! You like the new toy? I've had undetectable robot duplicate tech since Christmas, but I only just got the instant fabrication and Transformers thing down." he said.

Timeline 1.2

While the android (gynoid?) unfolded herself, he entered the commands to open the secret escape tunnel in his office and set the self destruct.

He turned to flee, and the timeline collapsed in a blaze of white light.

Fuck. His only way out of this was to talk or disarm a booby trapped robot. He split the timeline again, telling one Tattletale to report to his office, the other to observe from the security room.

Timeline 1.1.1

"You've been busy. Lung, Dragon and Armsmaster, and you still have time for me." said Coil.

"And I'm still fresh as a daisy, thanks to regen formula and Freaky brand antiperspirant. So, what brings you into the kidnapping-little-girls business? That was always the ABBs thing, and don't tell me ransom. The city's entire discretionary fund would barely cover one day of your expenses, and you know that." said Control Freak.

Timeline 1.1.2

"Do you know how much money you've cost me with this stunt?" Coil snarled.

"Yeah, down to the penny. Not you, Penny." he said to someone offscreen. "International mercenaries are way overpriced for what you get. That's why I DIY my lower tier minions whenever possible. The real question, is how exactly was this supposed to be profitable for you? The Alcotts couldn't cover what you spend on Mr Clean and floorwax if they sold their house, so it can't be ransom."

Timeline 1.1.1

"You should know already."

"Her precog? Please, those guys haven't worked right since Halloween."

Coil was saved from needing to come up with a reply by Tattletale's arrival. "This is my lieutenant, -"

Control Freak held up his hand to interrupt him, while he listened to someone on his end. "Right, droid's sensors aren't cutting it." He held up his remote, and appeared in the room with them.

Timeline 1.1.2

Control Freak popped into the room. He looked around in interest, then put on a pair of glasses. "That's what you're doing! You've got a psychic connection with yourself in another timeline! Do you realize what this means?-"

Timeline 1.1.1

"-You've got proof of the Everett interpretation of the Many Worlds Theory! You've got an actual application! And you're using it to become a b-list supervillain." He reached out, like he was grasping something. In both timelines.

Coil opened fire. He watched most of the bullets knocked harmlessly aside by some kind of force field. Others slowed down and bounced off of another, inner force field. Even more infuriating, the man completely ignored the assault to poke at the unseen thing. Tattletale collapsed, going into convulsions. Control Freak glanced down at her, and a moment later, the one in the other timeline did too.

The one in the timeline where she wasn't there.

"I wonder how many alternates you have, whose power screwed up and dumped them in the wrong timeline." He paused, thinking. "You know, physics doesn't really do irreversible change. I mean, it might be impossible IRL, but the equations work both ways. I wonder-" In both timelines, he made a squishing gesture.

Coil felt weirdly overlaid over himself, in two positions at once while in only one timeline.

"Yes! Two sufficiently close timelines can recombine! You know what this means! All those times when you looked for something everywhere, and it turned up in the first place you looked, you really had looked there! You just swapped with a you that looked somewhere else first!"

Tattletale groaned, recovering from whatever had given her a seizure. Control Freak walked around the desk, bumped him out of the way, and picked up the handset for the landline. He punched in the code for the infirmary. "Medic to the bosses' office."

His internal phone codes weren't posted anywhere.

Coil made one last attempt to regain control of the situation. He pulled out a can of pepper spray and fired it off in Control Freak's apparently unprotected face. After all, a lot of capes had gaps in their defenses.

In the cloud of capsaicin, he could see that the guy was actually wearing a stupid fishbowl helmet. No wonder he'd made it invisible.

"You're still here?" Control Freak said in surprise. He slid a not-quite-a-phaser out of his sleeve and disintegrated Coil to rectify that situation.

"Should've run away when he was geeking over the physics." Because even a grand mal seizure couldn't stop Tattletale's sarcasm.

Tattletale's POV, both timelines

For a moment, when he held onto the psychic bridge, Control Freak was a man in two places, and his defense against Thinker powers was split between them. And all the universes that he'd drawn from tried to pour themselves into Lisa's brain.

A man who was and was not Control Freak spoke with someone who could have been played by Michael Rosenbaum with a shaved head and wearing some kind of power armor.

"According to the series, you had some nerd cred, you ever play Pokemon?"

The bald man smiled. "Without admitting how much time I spent dogfighting imaginary ten year olds for their lunch money, sure."

"Now imagine the monster girl porn parody."

"Alright. So 'Gotta Catch 'Em All' becomes Gotta -"

"-Tame them all. You see where this is going already."

"I'd say it's getting pretty dark, but I also remember the lore of some of the ghost types."

"Now take those sexual objects portrayed on the screen, and replace them with real people. Real thoughts, real feelings, same situation, same compulsive need for sex. And you want to know the funny part? The guys who'd find this heaven, the guys you could replace with a floating, talking penis and no one would notice? They don't have the empathy to be a Tamer."

An anguished cry to an uncaring universe. "I don't want to go!"

"An eye for an eye. And a hand for a hand."

"Our friends are in trouble. We have to put our heads together and get them out of it, and if you two aren't with me 110%, then get the hell out of my library!"

"I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover up the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But the most damning thing of all… I think I can live with it."

"I call it the Wall of Weird."

"You say we should fall back, evacuate to some place safe from the forces of the Coalition States. WHERE? POINT TO IT ON THE MAP! Let me help you. Here's their ten year expansion plan. Twenty years. Fifty years. Notice, kindly, that all our homes fall within their claimed territory."

"It's like living in a world made of cardboard."

"WHAT WILL YOU HAVE IN FIVE HUNDRED YEARS?"

A floating newspaper headline: Penguins Declare Antarctic Socialist Collective

"Don't worry Harry, you're just as sane as I am."

"Sometimes, I look up at the stars, and I think… There's gotta be something worth stealing up there."

"Now if you two don't mind, I'm going to go to bed, before you have another idea to get us killed. Or worse, expelled."

"So, he's transformed himself into a magnetic force."

"Of course I'm happy with Crescent Rose. I just really like seeing new ones. It's like meeting new people, but better."

"I hate stupid people. I especially hate the ones who aren't aware of their own stupidity."

"Peace is a lie, there is only passion."

"Some 'power', huh? That's when the boys stopped callin'"

Faster and faster, worlds slammed into her brain. Science and magic, wars, science that was magic and magic that was science, hundreds of ways to become super, and everywhere people just being people, no matter the world or species.

And then, blissfully, it was over. She suddenly understood trepanation, because her brain was way too full and could use something to release the pressure. She groaned as she opened her eyes, and then saw one of the most beautiful things ever. Coil vanishing in a classic Trek phaser on kill effect. She was barely aware of making a sarcastic comment.

She watched as he pulled a foot tall R2 unit out of a pocket far too small for it and put it on the desk. The tiny droid beeped, rolled over to Coil's desktop, popped out a circular saw and started cutting open the case. It extended a few probes through the new access points and beeped some more. The dome rotated to bring Control Freak into camera focus.

"You got it? Great. HELLO INTERNET, that's right, MatPat, I'm stealing your catchphrase, just like I stole this base. And you guys should really see it, it's, like, one shark tank away from being a Bond villain lair. I keep expecting to see Donald Pleasance and a white cat. Anyway, for anyone who recognizes this office, I just disintegrated your boss, so you have a decision to make. You can take whatever equipment and operational funds Coil sent you out with and call it a severance package, or you can come back here and see if you'll be a good fit for my organization. If you're thinking of maybe taking a little vengeance on behalf of mister burned-spot-on-the-carpet, my droid here has all his files, blackmail, who the moles are, so I'll know if someone's coming my way before Armsmaster gets on his motorcycle. Oh, and for all those spies -" he was interrupted by something that sounded like the dial up noise played on oboe and alto sax, "-and there are a lot of them, don't worry, the gravy train's still rollin', just keep it up 'til you get new orders. Aaaand cut. Send it off to the girls for review, if they have no rewrites, post it to my PHO."

One of the mercs finally arrived with a medical bag. He pulled his sidearm. "Who the fuck are you?"

"One of the two people who can get to the money to pay you with. She's the other one. She's had some kind of seizure, so can you please escort her to the infirmary."

He looked down at her for nodded, and he helped her out of the room. Once they were out of earshot, she said "Actually, help me to the security office and get me something for my head. Weird power interaction, I doubt regular medicine will do much for me."

Hearing orders from one of his only hopes for another paycheck on this job, he complied.

When she walked in the door, she heard a familiar voice say "Don't turn around."

She turned around.

And Tattletale scanned Tattletale with her power.

She knows that you know that she knows that you know…Infinite recursion error. Rebooting.

The other Tattletale said "I told you not to turn around.", right before they both passed out.

Author's Note: Oh look, more consequences to his actions.

On another note, having Coil's powers work this way is considerably simpler and makes more sense given the setting. You can have someone maintain a connection with an alternate self, or you can have a literally omniscient supercomputer run two separate models of events, taking into account every action of everyone and everything, run them both until model Coil drops a timeline, then puppets him through the timeline he would have chosen to keep until he reaches the end of the simulation. In order to pull his 'predict ten coin flips in a row' trick, his power would have to model someone else's actions down to the minutest detail, when they're doing something pretty random and not thought out. It also means that he has no agency when his simulations are running. I don't like giving villains an 'It wasn't really them.' excuse.