Energy: 9
Current Training: None
Tuesday, January 18th, 2011
PRT Headquarters, Brockton Bay
Your Master spends a few precious moments staring at the map of the city that is being projected on the far wall. It's obvious she wants to help. Obvious that she wants to be a Hero, to ride out into the streets and defend people. But the truth is-
'I don't know what to do.' She says plainly, a hint of self-recrimination evident in her tone.
It's true. Your Master, as much as she is a truly terrifying foe in single combat, has nearly no experience in a wider battlefield situation. Where she should go. Who she should fight. If she should even fight at all. Nothing you've taught her, nothing she's experienced has prepared her for any of that. When faced with this number of enemies, with uncertain allies, and no good ways to win a decisive battle, there's nothing she can really do. You're no different. Your current emulation may have the capability to stand toe to toe with an army, but that's only provided the army is standing in front of him. So instead of advising her on that front, you tell her, from the bottom of your fake heart, what you think your current emulation would do.
'You have someone you need to save right? We did tell her.' You explain serenely, even as all around you the argument rages on. Who should do what. Who should be included. Who has command. None of these things really matter to you, but even Danny has gotten involved, surprisingly on the side of the PRT of all people. Even Piggot seems surprised.
'We did offer to come help if she called didn't we?' Taylor answers you, clearly feeling complicated about the entire thing. She was rejected back then after all.
'I think it's okay to leave this tactical stuff to everyone else. Right now, we're only good for one thing.' You say.
'I'd like to change that in the future. But for now...' Taylor answers, standing up suddenly and motioning for Aspirant to follow her as she moves to leave the room. You're proud of her. You're pretty sure that if this were Taylor before she had acquired Inner Peace from you, she would have been panicking right now. And to a certain degree, she is. You can feel it. An undertone to everything else that might as well be one ongoing scream for help, hidden behind everything else your Master is currently feeling. But the fact that you can have this kind of conversation with her at a time that must seem like the world is ending is definitely a result of that power. Even if it doesn't dampen emotions, it does give a certain degree of control over how much you let them affect you.
"Taylor, where are you going?" Danny asks hesitantly, apparently confused by his daughter's sudden choice to leave. He doesn't seem very worried though. Probably because his assumption is that his daughter is merely going elsewhere in the building to avoid all the yelling. But well...
"To do something." She answers bluntly, frowning slightly at all the arguing adults currently taking up the room.
"Without a plan of action, it is highly inadvisable-" Armsmaster begins to say but you speak over him, appearing suddenly at your Master's back with your arms crossed.
"Then let the Undersiders deal with Victor. Tattletale knows better than to abuse our trust right?" You say, letting, perhaps, just a bit more of Zaraki Kenpachi shine through in your statement than you had probably intended. You would be lying if you said you didn't have ulterior motives for the allocation though. At the end of the day, the Undersiders were the group your Master had the least investment in. It might be cold to say, but if a group of people you mostly don't care about could handle a very real threat to your Master, you'd be happy. The only exception to that statement is Greg but well... you aren't sure there's anything you can do about that at this point.
"Scary, scary, a Panda is still a Bear huh?" Tattletale answers you sardonically through the speaker system.
"Sure, go with that." You say easily, shrugging and vanishing again. Taylor quickly takes the opportunity in the silence your disappearance causes, to leave.
'Thanks.' She says as she begins to tread up the now familiar path to the exit of the building, Aspirant in tow.
'Gotta show my chops now and then right?' You brag, pounding your hand against your chest for emphasis. The sense of comfort you get from your Master at that is probably one of the more gratifying sensations you could have experienced.
"Hey! Taylor, wait up!" someone calls from behind the three of you, as Vicky quickly floats through you and up to your Master. Taylor does her best not to respond to the perceived disrespect, but she does twitch slightly as it happens, even if Victoria couldn't possibly have known where you were standing.
"Hey, Vicky. Shouldn't you have stayed back there?" Taylor asks cautiously.
"Eh, you were right, they probably weren't going to get anything done right away. I hear most of the Protectorate is pinned down on the Rig. The Empire timed their attack just right to get most of them stuck there. Dauntless could fly back but he'd be a sitting duck for Purity." Vicky answers.
"What about Vista? Couldn't she simply fold space and get everyone into an alley nearby?" Aspirant chimes in, curiously. Vicky sends him an odd look, as though only just now really taking in his outlandish appearance, then blinks once before answering.
"Vista needs to be able to see where she's going, and at that distance, it wouldn't be instant. There's a chance it could work, but there's also a chance someone would spot the distortions her power causes and Purity would nuke the landing zone." Vicky answers in a somewhat strained tone as the topic of the Wards comes up.
"I see." Aspirant answers, heedless of the change in the blond girls tone. "So, where are we going?" He asks instead, tilting his head towards Taylor.
"Hookwolf probably has Parian. I'm worried about her." Taylor answers immediately. It isn't the most tactically safe decision but, you don't think your Master would qualify as a 'Hero' if she were the type of person to be able to accept leaving anyone behind.
"Not... Purity?" Vicky asks hesitantly, obviously wanting to say more but not finding the will to ask. A surge of her mood altering aura flows out of her as she pauses but is quickly reined in.
"I have to save Parian first. If after that I can do something about her I will but..." Taylor trails off. Left unsaid is the fact that, without being able to reach the powerful Blaster, there isn't much point in trying to oppose her. If just that was enough it would be fine but, Purity's blast are indiscriminate in nature. Approaching her from the air would make you an easy target, but approaching from the ground, even if you can survive the blasts, doesn't mean that all the things standing behind you can. Until that problem is solved, you're reasonably certain that you're Master's decision is correct. Not just for her, but for her teammates who she is being considerate of, who most certainly could not survive a direct hit from Purity.
Still, Victoria definitely looks like she might do something desperate and stupid if she isn't distracted, so...
"Help us with this and we'll do something about it." You declare, appearing once more at your Master's side.
'I don't think we can though...' Your Master chides you, probably assuming you're lying to her friend.
'You know Master, I don't have a lot of time left as this guy. If it's the 'Me' that comes after, I feel like maybe he can handle it.' You answer confidently.
After all, if a solution exists, Multiverse Theory suggests that you'll eventually have to find it. You're kind of amazing that way.
"I hate when you call me that." Taylor mutters.
"Huh?" Victoria questions at that.
"Nothing. So? You coming?" Taylor says quickly, then asks tiredly, suddenly looking as though she hasn't slept in days.
"...Sure." Victoria eventually agrees, shooting nervous glances over her shoulder and towards the room full of probably still arguing adults.
Hopefully, this doesn't bite you in the ass.
Tuesday, January 18th, 2011
South East Brockton Bay
It is disturbingly easy to find Hookwolf. You thought it would be harder because, to all accounts, the man has historically been able to hide several fighting pits throughout the city that the PRT failed to deal with, but you suppose that 'conquering a city' might have him thinking subtlety is a thing of the past.
He's literally taken over an empty warehouse and had a giant Nazi symbol spray-painted on the side of it after all. Which, in and of itself, isn't uncommon in the bay but... the dozens of guys bearing similar paraphernalia and streaming into it while excitedly talking to each other kind of aren't.
The inside of the building isn't any better. It's pretty much just a wide-open space with a cage in the middle that appears to have been recently bolted to the concrete floor. A majority of the space around the cage is taken up by people. People who are drinking, yelling, and generally appear to be having a good time, while two dogs tear each other apart in the center ring. A corner of the single large warehouse floor is taken up mostly by smaller cages, most of them of poor make, and more importantly, most of them full of angry, scared, yowling dogs.
All except one, which appears to contain an unconscious, visibly wounded woman with dusky brown skin. You have to force yourself not to immediately appear and begin punching people when you make that find. It's difficult. Your current Emulation's inherent empathy for basically everyone, couple with your previous emulations lingering lack of respect for human life are leaving you with a number of unpleasant feelings that you would prefer not to have to experience. You wouldn't have thought you would feel guilty about anything your species facilitates but right now, you very much do. Mostly because standing to one side and MCing the event is what is very obviously a parahuman. It's not a deduction you make because of any innate ability to detect other Parahumans - that was never a specialty of yours in the first place. No, it's a deduction predicated simply on the fact that the fool is wearing no shirt and has a huge metal wolf mask on his face. You spot a few other possible problems mixed into the crowd while you're at it. Cricket is obviously present, mostly just looming in the shadows at the edge of things. Stormtiger - who you only know about because of Greg - is sitting up in the rafters doing god knows what.
"Seriously?" Victoria asks as you return to your Master's side and give a verbal report. The group had mostly travelled through side streets, using you as an advanced guard to invisibly avoid any obvious E88 sympathizers. You aren't sure how far Victor's reach stretches, but until you hear about him being dealt with, you don't want to risk your Master by letting her spend too much time in the air. Vicky didn't like the plan, of course, contending that Victor couldn't hurt her anyway, but the fact that half the team couldn't fly in the first place won her over eventually, even if only begrudgingly.
"What did you expect? They're fucking Nazi's." Trainwreck points out.
"But this-" Victoria - you refuse to call her Glory Girl - says, before stopping. "I'm going." She says instead, floating up and orienting herself in the direction of the impromptu fight pit. Which, because your Master had chosen to hole up in a building that would put your destinate just on the edge of her range for you to scout, was a wall, followed by several more walls. You don't know if you're more worried about Victoria braving possible fire from Victor, or the very real possibility that she's just going to kill every wall between her and her destination. What did Greg call her again? Collateral Damage Barbie?
"Vicky stop! We don't even know where Parian is yet!" Taylor hisses at the other girl, rubbing her temples in frustration.
"So?! The only one of them I can't just punch in the head till they stop moving is Hookwolf!" Vicky retorts.
"Vicky we need a plan." Taylor counters, gesturing towards Aspirant and Trainwreck who are mostly watching the argument play out. If you had to describe it, Trainwreck seems like he mostly finds it entertaining, and Aspirant just doesn't want to get involved in anything too troublesome. They'd take Taylor's side if asked, but in terms of team cohesion, they're sorely lacking.
"Isn't that why you came out here in the first place?! I don't have time to waste talking while Dean's still out there! There's five of us and three of them!" She shouts at your Master. Your Master - who is probably about as confused as you feel - opens her mouth to ask where that particular non-sequitur came from, but Victory doesn't give her the chance, instead deciding to blast through the nearest wall and then up over the rooftops, vanishing from sight.
"Kinda fucking dumb ain't she?" Trainwreck finally decides to add. Taylor shoots him a withering stare, then steps through the hole in the wall Vicky just made and drops out of sight.
"Do you ever consider anything you say or is your mind as simple as your Tinkering?" Aspirant asks conversationally as he moves to follow her.
"Eh." Trainwreck says with a shrug, dropping down to the street below and charging up the street, his suit beginning to pour steam and his steps cracking the concrete beneath him.
767
Bowler Hat Guy
Jul 7, 2020
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Jul 8, 2020
#6,435
Energy: 6
Current Training: None
As much as your team would have probably liked to choose which entrance to enter through, Victoria has largely made the element of surprise a moot point. While Taylor slows down enough that she arrives with the team instead of alone, Victoria held no such reservation, and by the time you reach the building the aluminum roll up door at the front of the building has a distinctly Victoria shaped hole in its upper section.
You can hear the momentary confusion from the people inside as your own team arrives, with Trainwreck taking the lead and slamming through the door with his bulky frame, leaving a gap for Aspirant and your Master to slip through.
Only they don't because all of them are brutes, and consequently, each make their own person shaped hole in the blockage. You would find that deeply hilarious if you were already busy orienting yourself towards the animal kennel in the corner of the warehouse. You can see Stormtiger drop out of his hiding spot and strafe past Vicky, waving his hands at her in a way you gather is supposed to have some kind of effect but, for the few seconds before Vicky notices him, appears to do nothing. Then the younger hero begins to juke left and right, evading something you can't quite see. She doesn't seem very good at it though, and it shows in the way she can't quite reach the enemy combatant in the midst of her evasions.
You can hear the screech of tearing metal as the man in the metal mask who had been yelling from the top of the stairs to the upper office begins to bound downwards, swelling with each step, but your attention is quickly taken up by other concerns.
Namely, the two rather large groups of people to either side of the large central cage, many of whom have drawn firearms and begun to use them. Your Master responds first, charging the group to the left of the door and driving them to their knees with her aura, Trainwreck goes right, and unlike your Master's elegant handling of the problem, merely starts punching people hard enough to send them flying backwards into their allies.
"Not so superior now are yah fuckers!?" The hulking tinker begins to laugh, steam pouring off him in jets that occasionally blind his attackers.
You take the opportunity to slip past him as he rampages, using your intangible form to cut through the cage in the center of the room, and luckily avoid the falling brickwork that Vicky creates when she shoots past overhead and plows into the wall above an emergency exit, narrowly missing Stormtiger who takes the opportunity to switch places with her, all the while peppering her with blast of something, further shredding that wall.
You ignore that for the moment, appearing in front of the dog cage that the woman you saw earlier has been forcibly crammed into. You can tell right away that she's going to need healing. Aside from the fact that she's naked - which you don't really want to think about - her entire body is covered in lacerations and bruises, as though someone had dropped an entire tool department on her and forced her to crawl her way out of the resulting pile of metal and sharp edges.
More than merely, enraged, you are sickened by this. But you don't really have the time to ruminate on the topic. You quickly set to healing the poor girl, trying not to be fascinated by how much of her is merely put back together as though time is reversing as the golden energy of your Chi washes over her.
Energy: -1
Unfortunately, you don't get the time to bask in the glow of helping someone, or the calming influence of Chi usage. Instead, almost at the same time, you hear Trainwreck and your Master cry out, and you whirl around to find Trainwreck clutching the side of his head with one hand while warding off his attackers with the other. Your Master, who is on the opposite side of the room from you, has temporarily stopped using her power to suppress the nearby gangsters, and the reason for her yell quickly becomes apparent as she reaches up to grasp the lithe woman wielding two kamas who had apparently sprung onto her back and attempted to slit her throat, and hurls her in a high arc into the cage that even now still has two dogs angrily barking and scrabbling at each other.
You frown and consider running towards your Master to support her, but you already know that she wouldn't want you to abandon an unconscious girl in the middle of a melee like this.
'I'm fine!' She yells at you hurriedly over your link, apparently having sensed your linger doubt and anger.
Begrudgingly, you begin to turn away, only to be shocked out of your acceptance as a giant roiling mass of hooks and blades crashes into your Master, who has already withdrawn her sword and braced herself against is best as she can as it carries her backward off her feet and into the far wall.
'Still fine!' She shoots you as you get ready to go punch the stupid out of the thing. You note, with some grim satisfaction, that the group of people Taylor had been suppressing was largely scattered, if not destroyed by the hulking creature as it passed through them.
Above you, an explosion rocks out, and you look up to find Aspirant using one hand to shield his face from the invisible detonation while Vicky shakily drops to a stop next to him, grasping him to maintain there balance and nearly taking both of them to the ground. You're momentarily proud of the kid. Even without being told you can see that he's already begun to take advantage of his terrain, just like Monkey would.
The momentary peace caused by the explosion doesn't last, unfortunately, as Vicky shakes her head and flies fist first at Stormtiger, who happens to be directly above you at the moment. He dodges out of the way with the same preternatural agility as the first time, only to be struck from above as Aspirant leapfrogs over him, using a too long limb to strike him in the temple and send him falling to the ground a few feet away from you.
You want, so badly to jog over and put him out of his misery, but are forced to instead use yet more of your precious energy to flow through the falling sections of wall that Victoria's charge caused, your fists glowing with power as you wave them about with enough force to disperse the debris before it can slam into your unconscious charge.
Energy: -1
Because you are looking up, you notice, just in the corner of your eye, a man with sterling white skin stumble out of the upper office of the building, take in the ongoing melee, and then withdraw a pistol larger than you think is really practical, leveling it to your left and firing. The thunderous roar of the literal hand cannon temporarily deafens you, but doesn't stop you from noticing Trainwreck hiss in pain and then begin venting a cloud of steam around himself so hot and dense that what few attackers of his remain begin to scream in agony.
This isn't going how you would have expected it too. Not at all. However, when you think about it, with the exception of Vicky, no one in your group is really experienced in Cape fights. Your Master and Aspirant have mostly fought one on one battles or simple thugs respectively, Trainwreck might not have fought much at all since waking up as a Case 53, and even Vicky is slowly demonstrating that she isn't the most tactically inclined. More so than that, none of them are really working together, which is quickly showing itself to be a fatal mistake when this many enemies are around.
"Shit!" Vicky yelps suddenly, drawing your gaze upward once more, even as you refocus yourself, picking up the girl and beginning to move towards the exit. To where Cricket, while yelling inarticulately has climbed to the lip of the Cage, and used it as a springboard to reach Aspirant up in the rafters. You can almost immediately tell why Vicky is cursing. As much as the rest of the guy is fairly heavily armored, and his telekinetic field reduces the damage he takes even further, your pretty sure having his eyes pierced by the psychotic woman's weapons is the limit of what a teenage boy could tolerate. She doesn't get to follow up though, because as soon as Aspirants pained screams draw Vicky's attention, she flies through the woman, blurring forward and into her in such a viciously strong and fast clothesline that your almost positive the woman is dead or going to die without immediate medical attention.
"Boss this ain't working!" Trainwreck calls in a slight panic, stumbling backward out of his own steam cloud amidst a steady rush of heavy gunfire from the unidentified Cape near the office. He needn't have bothered. From the second she heard her teammate call out, your Master's drive to be as 'heroic' as possible fled her, and she quickly turned the tables on the slippery foe grappling her.
Namely, by slamming her sword through it's middle and into the concrete beneath it until only a small section of it remained unburied.
'Emmy get Aspirant!' Taylor orders you in a panic, sprinting away from the writhing - and now screaming - ball of metal as it flails against the floor, a single tendril of hooks lashing across your Masters back as she escapes it, causing her to grit her teeth against the pain.
"Vicky! We're going!" She yells up at the blond who looks intent on charging the cape with the hand cannon that has now turned his attention towards you.
"But-"
"Vicky!" Taylor screams as her long legs eat up the distance between the two of you, swiftly taking the girl off your hands and freeing you to rush to a flailing Aspirant.
You make sure to kick Stormtiger in the head on your way there.
"I got you, buddy." You say as you reach down to him, energy flowing through you and too him in a well-practiced pattern, pulling to his feet.
Energy: -1
"Thanks." He says through gritted teeth, and all his hair immediately falls from his head to be replaced by a bone-like helmet of the same pearlescent material the rest of him is covered in.
"You gonna be okay?" You as him as you slide past him, kicking a brick into the air and using it to deflect the heavy caliber shot that was clearly aimed at his head.
"Yeah." He answers, sprinting away to follow your Master and Trainwreck, who are in the process of making an exit.
Unwilling to make this a complete waste of time, you make sure to yank Stormtiger up and over one shoulder as you pass him.
You're pretty sure you can justify breaking his arms and legs on the way back to the PRT Headquarters. It isn't like you know how his powers work.
When your team arrives back to the PRT Headquarters - you had to nerve pinch Stormtiger at some point to knock him out, and then showed Taylor how to nerve pinch him when he somehow kept waking back up - you are surprised to find that nearly no one is present. Battery is the only cape that was left behind to defend, ostensibly because she has a significant vulnerability to small arms fire when not working with her partner, Assault.
Along the way, you found that Trainwreck's injuries were nasty but not life-threatening, and your Master - possibly recalling your comment about nearly being done with the current 'You' willfully refuses your offer of immediate healing, regardless of how badly she is actually injured.
The girl you rescued never woke up, and is now resting in the infirmary of the building.
That was the sum total of the good news. The bad news was much more prevalent. Apparently, in the absence of any significant force of Capes besides New Wave, the family team had decided that staying in the PRT Headquarters and keeping the environs immediately around it safe was the best course of action. Never mind the fact that this meant no action was really being taken against the actual Empire, they also chose to split into two groups, in order to make sure Amy could continue to heal at the hospital, which the Empire had largely left unmolested.
Possibly because hurting Panacea was a fantastic way to call down holy hell on themselves from every cape she had every healed.
The Undersiders, whom Piggot had eventually begrudgingly allowed to leave their cells, had dealt with Victor, who was now in a cell beneath the building along with Stormtiger. However, they also had opted to escape before being readmitted to those cells themselves. You don't find that surprising. Overall, for a villain group to help at all, you should think that freedom would be the obvious reward they would choose.
Not that this has stopped your Master from being so angry about it that she nearly gave Vicky a heart attack when her aura splashed against her.
Which takes you to now. Having generously accepted the PRT's offer to keep the team housed for the duration of the crisis (left unsaid was 'and protect your father'), your Master is now silently stewing in her feelings of failure, while liberally taking out her distress on an innocent punching bag that is supposedly rated for Brute ratings significantly above your Masters. Despite her fervent wish to go back out and prove she can do better in her next encounter with the Empire, Danny managed to convince her to wait until Panacea could come to the base and heal Trainwreck. Taylor too was in need of some healing for the scouring blow against her back, but it doesn't appear to be slowing her down. In fact, she barely acknowledges its presence.
Which is not to say that she isn't bleeding through her stitches and onto the back of her shirt as she furiously moves about but...
"Taylor I think you should- we should go to sleep." You offer helplessly from the side, beckoning your Master into your arms.
She ignores you, continuing to steadily punch her target with a single-minded fury.
"Master?" You try again, slowly approaching her.
"Don't call me that!" She shouts, landing a blow against the bag that sends it flying across the room and into the wall, leaving your Master breathing heavily.
"Sorry. Look let's go to sleep okay? We can go back out tomorrow." You offer again.
"Can we train instead?" She asks desperately, taking you aback slightly.
"You need sleep." You say slowly. The events of the day were trying, and between debriefing with Piggot, getting the rest of the team checked in for healing and sleeping, and decompressing from everything else, you wouldn't have expected there would be time to train during this crisis.
"I need to be better! I thought I was strong enough that the rest didn't matter but I'm not! I thought because you beat Lung that I was a Hero but I'm not! I had no idea what was going on Emmy! I just focused on what was in front of me, struggling with someone who wasn't having any effect on the fight besides stopping me! Aspirant was- and Trainwreck..." She trails off, hiccuping slightly and beginning to sniffle as she fought off tears.
What can you really do in this situation?
[ ] ...If she wants to train then fine. You just hope she'll feel better afterward. (Choose a Training)
[ ] You could make her go to sleep. She probably wouldn't like it, but it would be for the best.
The situation in the Bay is still pretty bad. What's the plan?
[ ] You need to handle Purity. Until you can get the Protectorate members off the rig you are severely undermanned.
[ ] You still have no idea where Kaiser is.
[ ] Stormtiger might know where Parian is. If he won't tell you, you'll just have to hunt Hookwolf down again.
[ ] The bloody Undersiders better look out because you've got a bone to pick.
A/N: You know by Dungeons and Dragons standards, the total elapsed time of that entire fight was about 3 minutes and 2 seconds? Unlike Anime, where there's a lot of talking, a real knockdown drag out fight is typically going to last a very short period of time, and be exceptionally phrenetic.
I'll say now that a lot of the reason for failure here was the 'just run at them' approach Vicky forced you to take. When I was charting things out even I was mildly surprised by how fucked things ended up being for the good guys. You also, as a side effect of not decisively winning, missed some extra stuff that was in that Warehouse, because as some posters noted, leaving Hookwolf to guard bumfuck nowhere seems like an odd choice for the Empire to make.
Obviously Taylor doesn't have a whole bunch of battlefield awareness right now. As strong as she is, as long as she's not trying to outright murder you, she can be sort of pinned down / distracted by a sufficiently tough Brute, which means she's not going to have as much of an effect on a group battle as she otherwise could, since she'll just be focusing on the fight in front of her instead of the entire situation. Retreating here was probably the only thing stopping Trainwreck from (probably) dying, and since we're on the topic, Vicky got incredibly lucky with her shield re-upping at just the right time in this fight, since Alabaster was carrying around what amounts to an elephant gun.
Anyway, here you go, have fun with it.
Last edited: Jul 8, 2020
732
Bowler Hat Guy
Jul 8, 2020
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Jul 8, 2020
#6,636
[X] ...If she wants to train then fine. You just hope she'll feel better afterward. (Internal alchemy)
-[X] Then finish it with 5 energy
Current Training: Internal Alchemy (Complete!) You can all thank deadlyhamsandwich for the Omake bonus that helped complete this!
Fully realizing that your Master can be somewhat implacable when she wants something hard enough, and also being deeply uncomfortable with her unhappiness, you step forward and sweep her up into a hug.
She trembles in silent anguish as you hold her, firming your decision yet further.
"Okay. Sit." You tell her once you release her from the hug, gently prodding her to step back and then taking up a position on the floor with your stubby legs as close to 'crossed' as they can manage.
Taylor complies hesitantly, sitting down across from you and shakily reaching for Inner Peace, her face, tight with worry slowly going slack and the tension in her shoulders falling away. The anguish is still there of course. Inner Peace doesn't mean you turn your emotions off like some kind of psychopath. It just means that you accept them for what they are, and are focused on the now more than on the past or future. And in this moment, your Master is training, so she is calm.
"Okay. What I'm about to teach you, is the final component required for awesomeness. You ready?" You ask, crinkling your eyes at the girl who, like it or not, is the center of your entire world. Rather than answering, or even commenting on your somewhat excitable delivery of the statement, your Master merely nods firmly once, the motion precise and quick.
"Awesome! Okay, close your eyes, and sort of let your mind wander." You explain, settling in to watch your Master struggle with yet another power that the portion of you that is, in fact, an alien computer, cannot even begin to understand. You have a feeling the Data you'll be bringing back to the collective will be fairly revolutionary for the rest of your species - at least, once you can actually explain any of it.
You patiently wait for your Master to ask you what to do next while ruminating on all of this.
And wait.
Aaaaaand wait. Hm. It's entirely possible that your Master has grown so accustomed to just doing whatever ridiculous thing you say will give her new powers that she no longer questions your commands in this respect. That is simultaneously very admirable, and hilariously dangerous considering the kind of people that exist in the Multiverse.
Most of which is human.
Seriously, you're beginning to think that Humans might have some kind of innate potential that separates them from every other species you've encountered before this.
"S-so once your mind has settled, you need to search for your Chi. Your life energy. It doesn't exist in a naturally useable state. You have to grasp it, mould it, and then will it into a form that you can use. Chi is just a building block. How you use it, why you use it, when you use it. It's different for everyone. You need-" You start explaining, perhaps rushing a bit in your slightly agog state, only to be immediately flattened to the floor by Taylor's Spiritual Power flaring.
"N-not that! That definitely isn't it!" You yelp, only barely managing to push yourself to your knees without the assistance of your very limited energy pool. The pressure quickly stops.
"I thought that was my soul though?" Taylor asks you hesitantly, opening her eyes.
"Your life and your soul are different things. I think." You say with a shrug.
"You... think." Taylor asks you incredulously.
"Hey! You're basically an exotic car that I'm trying to attach six extra engines, to using the wrong tools and no workshop! Throw me a bone!" You complain. And it's true. The fact of the matter is, the laws of physics as they apply to your Master have already been heavily warped by her acquisition of powers from universes where the physical laws are slightly, or potentially vastly different. You know you can work through it - that's kind of your entire shtick after all - but that doesn't mean it's easy, especially when you're trying to distill the relevant information down to a level a human can understand.
"Sorry..." Taylor mutters, slightly taken aback by your outburst.
"No, sorry, my bad. A-anyway! Chi is like... potential energy!" You try again, when your Master shoots you a quizzical look at the outburst.
"So, imagine a stack of wood right? If you set that wood on fire it'll burn for a while. How long the fire could burn before you actually set the wood on fire is 'Potential Energy'. That's what Chi is. Not just life, but the pure potential of life! The infinite number of possibilities possessed by the person named 'Taylor Hebert'!" You say excitedly, and not just because your Master is nodding along like she actually understands what your saying.
You actually understood that. You the shard, the alien entity, were actually able to parse that information. With just that alone you could pioneer entire fields of research into energy harvesting and... and...
Harvesting people for potential energy definitely sounds evil... and your current Emulation is feeling horrified by the mere notion of it but...
Maybe you can just... not report that part? Sighing, you pause to consider everything you've learned about humanity in the process of pretending to be a part of it, and then make the heavy decision to erase that part of your own memory. You still know that you learned... something... but you couldn't quite explain what if you tried anymore.
You spend the rest of the night, into the very early hours of the morning, watching Taylor meditate while you consider the subject. Your distraction is such that you almost don't notice when your Master shifts from 'meditating on the energies of life' to 'sleeping in an awkward sitting position'. You smile at her as she begins to slump over, and gently lean forward to steady her. Then you rise to your feet and pick her up, content to carry her to her bedside.
The halls of the PRT are oddly silent for a crisis situation as you carefully trundle your way to the accommodations you were provided. The only noise you can hear as you move about is the soft shuffling of your own feet.
When you finally lay your Master down in her tiny PRT issue foldout cot, you are immediately treated to the sight of a blade trying to pierce through your eye and out the back of your head.
Having vaguely expected this, you lean out of the way of the strike, and then step away from the bed, where Mini-Taylor is crouching over your Master with her tiny sword in hand.
"Don't." She tells you gravely.
"I'll be right back okay? Just this once." You say gently.
"Don't please." The Mini-Taylor says, slightly forlornly.
"I've done what I can. There's just a bit more left." You explain, stepping towards the door and turning around when Mini-Taylor fails to follow you or attack.
"She won't want you to go you know." She says petulantly.
"But she needs me to." You answer before stepping out the door.
You end up spending the next fifteen minutes simply trying to locate a sufficient amount of paper for your needs, then eventually give up and simply steal a notepad and a pen from one of the office desks upstairs. Task finished, you return to the room you left your Master in, and find Mini-Taylor angrily snuggled under the blanket next to her, glaring fiercely at you.
You put your finger to your lips in the universal sign for silence, and then take a seat with your back to the cot. Then you begin to right, using the too small writing utensil on the too small notepad to begin writing... everything really. You write about the life of Master Po Ping, from beginning to end, keeping things mostly abbreviated, but expanding into great technical detail wherever you recall Chi being used. Your ability to heal, the Golden Lotus Clap, the Wuxi Finger Hold, the Mongolian Fireball, you list them all, explain their origins, their uses.
And then you write about the time you spent with your Master. The continuation of a story you never lived. You write about how proud you are of her. Of how much you loved seeing her grow in confidence and strength. Of how much you value her force of will and refusal to compromise on her ideals.
At some point during the tale, you reach the end of the notebook, and realize that your Master has tilted herself in her sleep, hanging half off the bed with her head on your shoulders and one arm slung over you in a loose grip.
You smile, and lean into the familial touch. Then close your eyes, and allow the last of your energy to drain from you, completing what your Master started that night. In 'Your' last moments, you feel your eyes flutter shut, and blessed sleep take hold of your destabilizing form.
A new day dawns! A new Emulation cometh!
[ ] Write-In
IMPORTANT NOTE! This one is going to be active for several hours since I'm writing it before work instead of after. Take the time to talk about it. Figure out your wants and needs. This is the INITIAL VOTE. The top THREE settings from this vote will go to a second vote, so people can decide which of the three they're most interested in.
As I've been advised that the Omake rerolls could be sort of excessive this go-round, I'm limiting it to THREE total rolls. Two from used Omake!
Now I'm off to work, but try to play nice with each other and not start any Fandom wars or anything while I'm gone! Toodles~
(Just noticed this will put the quest at the 100k wordmark. Yay. Now all I need is my own Tvtropes page and I can die happy)
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Bowler Hat Guy
Jul 8, 2020
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Jul 10, 2020
#7,982
Spoiler: Choices:
Spoiler: Current Emulation Status
Current Energy: 18
Current Training: None
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011
PRT Headquarters, Brockton Bay
You have a headache.
No, not just 'a' headache. You have the headache. You are fairly certain there is a portion of your actual body in another dimension wantonly flailing parts of its anatomy at this moment.
There are a number of reasons for this distress. For one, you are fairly certain that whatever you just started Emulating noticed you, and briefly decided between letting it go and ending you.
You assume, purely based on the fact that you are now a fully grown blond woman, that it chose to let it go. Hopefully.
Second of all, you are fairly certain part of your current power set is... well you don't want to say 'missing' but, you suspect you might not understand enough about the fundamentals of reality to actually use it. This fact both distresses and terrifies you. The fact that you might as well have just given another Entity a wet willy and run away screaming. The fact that such a being not only exists but, evidently, doesn't give a shit about you, is probably the kind of cosmic terror that most of your host species probably fall to as you exit their atmosphere.
Truthfully you would have spent much longer ruminating on the horrors of the entire scenario if a strangled yelp didn't call out from behind you, followed by a dull thump as someone - presumably your Master - falls to the ground on the opposite side of the little cot.
"Emmy!?" Taylor yelps at you from the opposite side of the cot as you turn your head slowly to regard her. For reasons you can't immediately define her lack of a ribbon or hat or something just... irks you.
You resolve to fix it at a later date.
"Good morning Taylor. Did you sleep well?" You ask kindly, lifting yourself up and smoothing out the creases in your dress that no doubt formed over the course of your nap.
"I- yes but- why are you a woman?" Your Master blurts out in obvious confusion.
You blink at her once. Just once.
"I recall being a sentient Panda bear some hours ago..." You point out, eyeing the bed your Master just fell out of. It's a cot so it's obviously of terrible make, too small, and in the middle of a location you aren't presently very fond of - but it is a bed. Something you realize you haven't slept in since... ever in your entire ongoing existence. Hm.
You add a mental note to procure a bed for yourself that will have enough space for you, your master, and your master's irritating but cute sword. It goes right under 'procure your Master a hat'.
"Yeah but-" Your Master tries to counter then stops, squinting at you tiredly.
"Vending Machine~" You add to her momentary pause, reminding her that the Multiverse is, in fact, really really weird, and that, for the most part, humans are to blame for that.
"So... what's this one do?" She asks you tentatively obviously deciding to change tracks and climbing back onto the bed. You - very temporarily - consider getting on it with her, but it is both exceptionally small you're already awake, so you might as well get some things done for the unhappy duration.
"Mm, mostly magic. Also, this." You say whimsically, opening a gap behind yourself. The multitudinous eyes that peer out of it and into the room instantly begin to provide you with information about everything happening at either end of the portal, which you had originally placed in your Master's bedroom at her home so that she could procure a change of clothes.
Your master instantly flings herself from the bed and tries to kill your portal with her sword, which is both adorable and somewhat worrying, as far as reflexes go. Not that that is your primary concern presently.
"It's a portal dear. A portal. See?" You say, stepping through it and then subtly manipulating the thing so that anyone passing through it will be held for a moment before coming out the other side.
Mostly because you need to have a brief conversation with the three armed men in the bedroom.
"Ahem." You politely cough at them, clasping your hands in front of you. Once they turn towards you, you continue speaking - though you are forced to shift your open gap forward to envelop the top half of the single man wielding a gun.
"I assure you that I mean you no harm. Currently. Please exit the home." You request, smiling the entire time.
"Listen, you look like a... nice... woman. You don't wanna get involved in this. We're just doing what we gotta to stay on top." One of the men says warily, lifting both his hands in surrender. You're actually fairly surprised he had the wherewithal to do so. Your past experience with random thugs has led you to believe that they all bear some kind of deathwish, and will throw themselves at a cape the second they recognize one.
This sudden sense of self-preservation from one of them is certainly pleasing, even if it makes his existence no less objectionable to you. A point you feel the need to get across more firmly you think. Considering your options for a moment, you are briefly thankful that this Emulation's Earth has roughly the same geography as your own. Because it allows you to do things like this from memory;
"Fine sirs," You say pleasantly, opening another gap behind them and stepping forward - causing the two remaining men to step away from you in fright, falling through the gap. You step through after them, bringing the gap you are current using to stay in range of your Master with you - along with the struggling man half stuck inside of it.
Energy: -1
"This, is a fall from the stratosphere that - barring extreme wind conditions, will proceed to deposit you in the center of a volcano." You explain placidly as the men to either side of you scream bloody murder. You roll your eyes at the theatrics, then rearrange the second gap to deposit all three of you on the front lawn of the Hebert household - which is covered in gasoline and Nazi symbols.
You don't comment on it, but you do allow the man who is dangling from one portal to fall into the other one before closing it. You're not sure if his companions actually noticed it in their scrambling panic to rise to their feet.
"Now, do understand that the only value any of you have to me presently are as sufficient villains for my Master to temper herself against, all right? Please do tell your leadership that if any of you exceed that limit then... well." You say with a shrug.
Aggravatingly, both men begin shrieking and running away rather than cleaning up after themselves. Sighing, you resign yourself to figuring out how to clean the house up before your Master or her father notices the damage, then walk inside and sit down on your Masters bed, finally allowing the open Gap to disgorge her into your lap.
"You see? Useful no?" You say placidly as your Master rolls off you and onto the floor in confusion.
"That's horrifying! I absolutely want to learn that!" She half screams at you.
You're smile changes from it's typical fixed position, to one you feel indicates actual happiness.
"Well you see, first you will need something to tie back your hair. The Gap's can occasionally be quite windy."
Owing to your Master's (frankly disturbing) ability to exist on minimal sleep, you've found yourself with some free time before your teammates are healed and you can begin your operation to have Taylor deal with Purity. What do you do?
[ ] Begin Training (Choose a Skill or Power)
[ ] Craft Something
[ ] Suggest your Master might like a Shikigami to clean things for her. A secretary of sorts. (Select an object or creature to become the Shikigami)
[ ] You also kind of want to go back to sleep, and well the beds right there... (Begin Crafting Taylor's Shikai)
A/N: First off, If Touhou could just have clearly defined limits, abilities, and lore, that would be great. Second, my answer to this overpowered bullshit is what I call 'Eidolons Shard is a Moron'. Wherein the only thing you care about is your Master's happiness, which includes her dreams of being a Hero.
Fun fact, to be a Hero, there usually has to be a Villain. Most people don't see it that way, but from a philosophical standpoint, it's true.
I want you all to know that literally every 'go to sleep' option since Mini-Taylors advent has been the build a bear option for Taylors shikai, but that I apparently wasn't obvious enough about it. So here. Have at it.
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Bowler Hat Guy
Jul 10, 2020
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Jul 11, 2020
#8,420
[X] You also kind of want to go back to sleep, and well the beds right there... (Begin Crafting Taylor's Shikai)
Energy: 13
Current Training: None
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011
Hebert Household, Brockton Bay
You spend the next fifteen minutes explaining the dubious mechanics behind Gaps. It's gibberish. You know it's gibberish. Your Master knows it's gibberish.
And yet she's still sitting there innocently, listening to you explain why a hat is a must for the power.
So, now, fifteen minutes later, you decide you've had quite enough of teasing your Master.
"Taylor?" You say, breaking off in the middle of one bit of trivia or another.
"Yeah?" Your Master responds, looking up from her notebook. Counter to what you would have expected, she's not actually writing notes on anything you're saying. A casual glance at the page she is working on shows you the tip of an in-depth analysis of her previous fight with Hookwolf, and how she could have done better. You had nearly forgotten in all of the ruckus that typically accompanies a new emulation, but your Master was exceptionally disappointed in herself when that encounter was finished.
"Come here." You say, patting the bed beside you. While your Master was content to use her (frankly freakish) ability to forgo a good sleep in order to perform her little post battle analysis, you had no such interest, and as such, have been on her bed for the majority of the time you were in her room, while she has been at the little writing desk across the room.
It's quite telling about your relationship with this confusing teenager that she barely questions the suggestion, merely standing up and distractedly walking over to you with her notepad still in hand.
Speaking of which. While your Master is walking over, your discretely reach a hand through the Gap you still have open in the PRT building, shifting it around until you can grab hold of the notepad 'You' made in 'Your' last moments. Then you drop it on the side table next to Taylors alarm clock - which you also discretely turn off.
"Do you need line of sight for that?" Taylor asks suddenly, causing you to blink and glance at her as she sits down next to you.
"...Not always no." You answer vaguely. Mostly out of habit.
"Could you use it to get to the Rig and save everyone without having to fight Purity?" She asks you hopefully. You could, actually, with just a bit of work, but 'not fighting Purity' somewhat runs counter to your current plans, so instead you say;
"I've never been there, unfortunately." This is technically not a lie. Despite the context of the conversation, you haven't actually said anything that would imply that statement is actually the answer to your Master's question. It just seems that way.
"Dammit. The boys can't fly so it'd be up to me to handle her." Taylor grumbles, flipping her page over and quickly jotting down everything she knows about the other cape and then beginning to brainstorm ways to defeat her quickly without murdering her.
You pointedly don't think too hard about how that's the entire reason you want her to fight. After all, Purity is quite visible, and you're sure a number of people are pointing cameras at the bay right now in the hopes of seeing something interesting. The citizens of Brockton Bay have a distinct lack of self-preservation instinct in that respect.
You suppose that cellphones would have made gathering fear for the Youkai of Gensokyo either frustratingly difficult. More than anything else, people fear the unknown. An all mighty being that people are aware of is nothing next to one that people know nothing about. That's why mankind always overthrows it's gods - familiarity breeds contempt.
Thankfully your Master doesn't want to be a God or feared by the city. She wants to be a Hero.
And you happen to be an excellent publicist. When you feel like it, anyway.
"Taylor dear." You say, leaning against your Master companionably and forcing her to pause her mad scribbling.
"...This one's kind of creepy when she smiles huh." Your Master mutters to you. You'd be offended but well... she's not wrong.
"Do you trust me?" You croon to her, gently taking her paper and pencil and discarding them.
"...I let you stab me." She answers flatly. You don't even miss a beat, wrapping your arms around your Master and dragging her into the bed with you lazily.
"True. When you wake up, go fight Purity. I'll handle the rest. Your team will be safe - I promise." You say gently to her, leaning back into her pillow and gently stroking her hair.
"Mmm." Your Master grunts in response, the sudden comfort bringing her immediately back to drowsiness after the long night she had. You wait for her to fall asleep, then gently pause your stroking, reaching for her notebook and tearing a page from it that you quickly scrawl across in arcane script.
When you are finished, you wiggle the page in the air slightly, allowing the words to settle on both sides of the page, and then roll it up, tucking it into your dress.
Energy: -5
"Honestly..." You muse drowsily. Allowing yourself to fall back into bed with one arm wrapped protectively around your Master. You do so enjoy being someone capable of solving problems without detonating them first. You were beginning to worry every Emulation you were going to get was going to be some kind of fist-fighter. Not bad per say, but certainly not very useful for building a Mythos.
It takes you very little time to fall asleep. You are, after all, quite good at it.
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011
?????????, ??????????
Your eyes spring open very suddenly, and very involuntarily, leaving you more confused than anything else. You are... falling. As is your Master, who's eyes are closed as she freefalls, a fluorescent blue glow emanating from an area where her heart would otherwise be.
You are immediately on guard. You don't know where you are. You don't know how you got here. But you do know that there are a limited number of reasons to drop someone from the stratosphere. Most of them, quite malicious.
You would know. Your emulation has done it quite a bit.
Quickly deciding to handle the problem in front of you before going on a witch hunt, you will yourself to float, bending your arcane energies towards the singular goal of telling gravity to piss off for both you and your Master.
Nothing happens.
You try to open a Gap leading from wherever this is back to the PRT building, so you can regroup with your still sleeping Master.
Nothing happens.
Panicking now, you gaze downward at your inevitable landing zone and feel your eyes widen in shock at the impossibility of what you are seeing.
You see;
[ ] A three-dimensional maze of ever-shifting stone, it's pathways morphing and twisting even as you watch.
[ ] At first, you think it's a Shard but... no. It's a mountain made of glass. Resplendent with trees of mosaic and stained glass grass. It all looks incredibly sharp.
[ ] A sea of blood, upon which, only a single decrepit barge flows along the crimson waves.
[ ] Nothing. There is literally nothing there. You are falling into infinity.
[ ] Hundreds of standing rows of Terracotta soldiers, each one with head tilted to watch you fall with apathetic faces.
[ ] The caldera of what looks to be an active volcano - it's magmatic flows ebbing and shifting like rivers, with small fish-like creatures leaping about within them.
[ ] It's... it's the sky. You are falling up, surrounded by the glassy exterior of countless skyscrapers.
[ ] A pool of viscous green fluid, welling up from the ground like a geyser of paint.
[ ] A graveyard that stretches from one end of the horizon to the other. All the tombstones are defaced and damaged save one.
[ ] A wave of energy projectiles that blots out all other scenery. Why is it a wave of Danmaku?!
[ ] An inverted castle, somehow balanced atop a single block of stone, and expanding outward like a reverse pyramid.
[ ] A dense forest of blasted trees, their arms branches obliterated by a great force, the trunks still smoking and scorched by the impact.
[ ] A swarm of ravenous beasts, obscuring the land below, each climbing one upon the other in a foolhardy attempt to reach you sooner.
[ ] An immense statue with it's face sanded away by time, it's single stone hand reaching out as if to catch you.
[ ] A huge maw of fanged teeth, fresh blood dripping down the pulsating gullet.
[ ] A single building, illuminated by the dim light of a forge, it's surroundings obscured by the dense smoke wafting from within.
"Master!" You shout, ripping your eyes away from the sight, and attempting to reach forward and grab your Master in your grip. It won't be pretty but you are fairly certain you can use your body to break her fall.
Only, by the time you look towards her, she is already gone, having somehow fallen faster than you, against all reasonable logic.
You barely have time to turn your head and observe her the sudden end of your most beloved Master when you-
Blink and bolt upright in the bed of the Hebert home, accidentally jarring your Master from the bed and sending her sprawling to the ground. Your heart is hammering in your chest in a way you are unfamiliar with. Not just because you don't have nightmares, but because your current is usually what other people have nightmares of.
"E-Emmy?" Your Master asks in fright, likewise looking around as if ascertaining her location. "What... what was that?" She asks.
You are about to answer with the most 'I have no fucking idea' you can manage, when a new voice enters your ears.
"Your inner world! It's basically what the inside of your soul looks like!" Mini Taylor cheers, landing in your Master's lap like an annoying puppy.
You have several things you'd like to say to that. Not the least of which being 'how does one view the inside of a soul?', which is something the Shard portion of you is basically chomping at the bit to figure out, but instead of any of those things you mirror your Master when the both of you turn to stare at the child like facsimile of Taylor and speak at once.
""What.""
Neither of you sounds particularly amused.
Spoiler: Author's Note
730
Bowler Hat Guy
Jul 11, 2020
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Jul 13, 2020
#8,776
[X] An immense statue with its face sanded away by time, it's single stone hand reaching out as if to catch you.
Current Energy: 12
Current Training: None
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011
Hebert Household, Brockton Bay
Mini Taylor shoots you a smug, superior look.
"Everyone has a soul, but a Soul Reaper's is special. It's strong enough to support a world all it's own!" She says, bouncing up and down slightly in your Master's lap. You silently note this information down. It seems consistent with what your current Emulation knows, but you can never be too sure. You're fairly certain that dozens of buds are waiting to sprout from you the second you turn your attention away, each one focused on a new area of study into the esoteric.
Which is good, because you feel like a lot of this stuff is going to take specialized research to make any headway with. It's all just nonsense to you. Nothing in any scan your kind has ever made of the human race has ever indicated the presence of a soul. And yet, it seems to not only be a prevalent theme throughout the multiverse, but a prominent resource too.
It... damn. This is going to be another one of those things you were going to have to erase from long term memory, weren't you? You don't know why but you feel a spark of annoyance from your Emulation when the idea of harvesting souls to stave off entropy occurs to you.
"But.. why." Your Master asks hesitantly, obviously unsure of what to do with her hands where Mini Taylor is involved, and so simply keeping them on the ground to either side of her until the boisterous spirit reaches out to wrap them around herself.
"Obviously so you can meet the real me!" Mini Taylor chirps.
"...If this isn't the real you then why do you like this?" Taylor asks.
""Because its cute."" You say in unison with the spirit. Then lock your face down with another blank smile when Mini Taylor shoots you another smug look.
"Be that as it may, I believe we have an appointment to keep dear." You say, to distract from your momentary slip up.
"Right. Purity..." Your Master muses, stretched a hand out for her notebook and instead, finding 'Your' list of Chi techniques, and the Contract Card you made shortly before going to sleep that morning. She takes both in hand, and begins flicking through the pages of the notepad fondly, with a hint of sadness to her.
"Hang on to that. It might be useful. Now this," You say with a short clap to draw attention back to yourself and pointing at your Contract Card, "will guarantee that you can beat Purity without any problems."
"I doubt that. I was thinking about it last night, and the only way this is going to work is if I distract her by fighting from above. Otherwise she'll just blast Wreck and Aspirant away. Even if she misses the city..." Taylor explains.
"Just tear the paper before you start fighting alright? It will make it so you won't have to hold back." You prod.
"...How exactly." Your Master asks you suspiciously.
"It makes it so you can't kill her." You say with a dainty shrug.
"Boring~" Mini Taylor says, but is quickly ejected from Taylor's lap when she stands up to better examine the card.
"Also, not an actual explanation." Your Master continues on, teaming up with Mini Taylor to stare at you expectantly.
This is one of those times where having a complicated Emulation is unexpectedly working against you. True, you could use this Emulations powers to subjugate the city inside of a week, leaving it gift wrapped for your Master, and if you were still Zaraki Kenpachi, you probably would do so. True, you would typically answer your Master with the entire truth, and nothing but the truth, for so long as you existed - if you were still Po Ping, that would absolutely be the case.
But you aren't either of those Emulations anymore. You are, currently, someone who is accustomed to a great deal of lying, cheating, stealing, and manipulating in order to achieve her goals. Someone whom, even to those closest to her, whom she values the most, she is often viewed as an antagonist.
Telling the truth, here and now, in this moment, isn't a problem for you. The problem, is that your Master doesn't seem content to be led along by half-hearted explanations. Which is something of a problem for you in the near term.
"...You recall I told you that I was capable of Magic?" You start, eyeing Mini Taylor as she rolls her eyes at you.
"Yes. Which you also have not explained." Taylor continues on. You can tell she isn't suspicious, as much as she is frustrated. The capabilities of her Emulations are usually fairly straight forward after all. The first was a Brute with a sword. The second was a much gentler Brute, with some secondary trickery at play.
Your skillset is much more vast.
"...Yes. Well. Last night, I thought on your various losses and realized something. You, are holding back. Quite a bit actually." You explain, then continue on before your Masters dour and depressed expression can continue on for much longer.
"Taylor, dear. You were trained to kill. Not subdue. Not capture. Kill. That, is the core of your fighting style. You are doing what you can with it, but the conflicting instincts aren't doing you any favors. So, I propose a solution. With just a little magic, your target becomes impossible to kill or maim. You need only subdue them with all your strength." You explain. What you don't explain is that both she and her target will still be fully capable of experiencing the pain of those injuries the magic avoids. Where this Emulation is from, that's just how things are after all. You don't forfeit because you fear for your life. You concede defeat when your opponent shows you there all, and you are forced to accept that you had no chance of defeating such overwhelming power in the first place.
Or, when the pain becomes too much. You haven't actually seen that before, but you suppose if anyone would show such an unsightly appearance to you, it would be a human who ascribes to such trifling ideologies as Nazism.
Also, you just learned that your Emulation is aware of Nazism. Interesting.
"So if she rips this thing up before a fight we can go crazy!?" Mini Taylor yells excitedly, bouncing up and down in your Master's lap some more.
"That is correct." You answer, although you keep your eyes on Taylor herself. She looks worried mostly. As though she doesn't quite believe you. She is looking the flimsy piece of paper over, turning it this way and that as though trying to determine the exact nature of its make.
"...You're sure I won't k-kill anyone?" She asks hesitantly.
"For the duration of a single hour, I assure you, your ability to perpetuate collateral damage on your surroundings will be greatly diminished." You assure her. Her expression firms up, and she stands. Rather than the expected effect of Mini Taylor falling from her lap and to the ground, the smaller girl is merely gone, replaced by a katana and it's sheathe, grasped firmly in your Master's free hand. Your Master doesn't seem to notice but the guard on the blade has changed slightly, going from a mostly standard guard to one shaped much more like an hourglass.
"Let's go then." She says, and you obligingly widen the portal to the PRT building for her, and step through after her.
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011
PRT Headquarters, Brockton Bay
Your return to the PRT building is not unnoticed.
More like, everyone noticed it, and it caused the entire building to go into something of a lockdown early that morning when it became obvious that an unknown portal had appeared in the room Taylor had been sleeping in, and that said girl was now missing.
The annoyed looks your Master shot you while she was being berated by the - quite brazen - squad leader who had been stationed to watch the entrance to the room would have made you feel quite bad if you had even an iota of interest in this organization as a whole. You had briefly toyed with taking it over. There were a number of ways that you could have done it. But, unfortunately, they were at least nominally heros, which meant your Master would probably frown on most of your methods for achieving such.
So you would settle for being an annoyance and leave it at that.
"Nexus, if possible, please do try, to inform us when you change projections, and what the approximate capabilities of that projection are." Director Emily Piggot says bluntly and rudely as your Master tramps into the meeting room from the day before, albeit with a much reduced number of people inside. The woman you have since learned is named Lady Photon is the only member of New Wave present, and the Director is accompanied by only Battery. By contrast, you, your Master, your Master's Father, and Aspirant are all present in the room. Nearly your entire team save Trainwreck, who cannot fit through the door.
"...Sorry. I don't have that much control over it." Your Master answers through grit teeth. You note, with some amusement, that she didn't actually agree to the request either, which is heartening. You were somewhat worried she had taken to much after your first Emulation with regards to problem solving.
The Director takes the statement for what it is and doesn't pursue the topic, though it looks like she is considering it until her tired mind recalls the number of people present in the room who are decidedly not under her power. Instead she merely sighs and clicks a button, reactivating the map from the other day.
"The Empire still hasn't moved towards the Hospital," She says with a mild scowl towards Lady Photon, "But we've noticed a disturbing increase in the number of firearms that low-level Empire members seem to be carrying, with several of them being noted as carrying something that looks distinctly like Tinkertech. Protectorate support from outside the city still won't be available for another few days, and I'm told the politicians are already trying to figure out whether the city is even worth it. Lady Photon, if you could direct your team to handle Purity our numbers would nearly double and-"
"Half the fliers on my team are children. I'm not sending them at Purity when she's entrenched like this." Lady Photon scowls, although she seems just as frustrated by the situation as Piggot does. You get the impression that if more of the adults on her team had an actual chance at reaching her, she would take just them to fight the Blaster who is single handedly depriving the city of many of its heroes.
"I can do it," Taylor says, clenching one fist under the table.
"Taylor I don't think-" Danny tries to stop her but pauses when he looks at her face. As with most of his reactions to things, he's exceptionally simple to read when you know him well enough. The only thing that ever really makes him change his mind is his wife. Or in this case, the expression on your Master's face, which you surmise is reminiscent of the woman's own.
"I can do it," She repeats. Danny looks helplessly to Aspirant, who merely shrugs. The boy looks different than he did the other day. Obviously having learned his lesson from the day before, his head is enshrouded in a pearlescent helmet several times as thick as the armour he wore to battle the other day, with only small slits allowing him to see out of it. His entire body has bulked up in fact, his form taking on somewhat more bulky form than the day before, reminiscent of a gorilla walking upright, while wearing thick plate armour.
Assuming of course, that said gorilla was also seven feet tall.
Honestly, the boy is starting to look more like an Ogre or Oni than a person.
"We can do it." He reaffirms after a quick glance down at your Master and a much more loud and noticeable clenching of his own gauntleted fist as the material it is made of grinds against itself. His voice echoes loudly from inside his helm, giving the impression of a much older, more battle weary man than he actually is.
"You don't even know where Purity is, and most of your team can't fly. They'll have to contend with Night and Fog." Lady Photon cautions, biting her lip in thought.
"Ah, that's easily handled. The empire should be aware that I can make portals by now. They'll show themselves if we only make ourselves visible near the water." You chime in, having been floating in a lazy sideways position behind and just above your Master since the beginning of the conversation.
Probably a factor in why everyone has been ignoring you honestly.
There is a bit more back and forth than that. Danny doesn't openly contest his daughter, but he does agree with basically any counter point anyone else brings up, which is annoying. The fact that he was agreeing more and more with Director Piggot over the course of the conversation was - in your opinion - quite frankly disturbing.
Still, eventually, they were all forced to agree. It's time now, you feel, for your Master and the world around her to learn the true definition of what the saying 'Walk softly, and carry a big stick' means.
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011
Ferry Station North, Brockton Bay
"You know, I aint ever been shot before." Trainwreck muses as the four of you rush up the road. It's deserted of course. Most Brocktonites know better than to be out and about during such an obvious gang war.
The plan was quite simple. There was no way you could realistically hide your approach to the Boardwalk. Not without expending more energy on Gaps than you were strictly willing to spend. As it was, you were hiding your first gap on your Master's back, just beneath her clothes, and it's counterpart under your hat, in order to maintain your distance from her and help her team during the coming battle. You expect you'll be forced to make at least one more before the day is done, but that is - quite frankly - the limit of what you're willing to give up. You have too much to teach your Master to waste it all on frivolities.
So, since stealth was obviously not an option, it was decided by your Master that - ironically given her choice of enemy - a blitz would be the best tactic. The team as whole would rush the Northern pier, which ostensibly allowed access to the rig, and would hold the position while your Master fought off Purity. If all went well, you would be able to establish a beachhead to which young Vista could bring everyone in the base, and the Oathbound could stave off attack until they had all evacuated.
Well, that is everyone elses hope. You rather planned for a bit more of a spectacular showing than that.
"Really? How strange." Aspirant answers easily, his increased bulk putting him on par with Trainwreck for size, but not slowing him down in the slightest.
"Right? You'd think most fuckers would look at the goods and not even try!" Trainwreck laughs, brazenly shouldering a car out of his way with a crunch and causing your Master to wince as she jogs between the two.
"No. I just find it strange that no one has ever tried to shoot you before. You're very shootable." Aspirant answers calmly, leaping cleanly over a car that's in his way without damaging it, much to your Master's relief.
"I can't tell if you guys get along or not." Your Master says honestly, her voice easy and calm even if you can feel the anxiety rolling off of her.
"Listen, when you find yourself a guy you'll get it." Trainwreck yells back to her boisterously.
"I doubt it." Aspirant concurs, continuing on with him.
'Was I just insulted? I feel like I was just insulted. You'll keep them safe right?' Your Master asks you for the twelfth time since leaving the PRT building.
'Yes Master, I promise I won't let a hair on their ugly little heads come to harm.' You answer drolly.
'See, when you say it like that I feel like I need to make it an order.' Your Master grumbles.
'I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about. It isn't as though Trainwreck is a suicidal grab-ass or anything.' You respond with faux happiness.
The fact that you are now a rather shapely woman, and do not, legally count as a person, was apparently more than enough for the mechanical oaf to try his hand at... well. He had extra hands, so it was of no concern. This time.
'Uhuh...' Taylor says, although she doesn't bother attempting to negate anything you just said. It wasn't like she was any happier with it than you. You're pretty sure your Emulation's first instinct was to send him into orbit for a moment, but you managed to resist the urge.
All discourse aside, the ferry station quickly comes into view in the distance, just on the edge of the Boardwalk, which is about as deserted as you would have expected. Your Master posited that there should be some significant number of gangsters nearby, but you highly doubted that would be the case. It isn't as though they would send anything less than a team of capes to handle Purity, and regular thugs have rather proven a waste of resources against a threat like that. The Empire is stupid, but not that stupid.
"Ready?" Your Master asks everyone as she begins to glow, motes of blue energy hanging in the air behind her as she draws her sword.
Trainwreck slams his fists together, and begins to emit steam from his suit. Aspirants gauntlets grow talons at their ends that lengthen as he opens his fists. You take a moment to open the only gap you intend to use for this fight, allowing the two ends of the thing to hover behind you like immaterial tears in the fabric of reality.
Or wings you suppose, if one is being pedantic.
Energy: -1
"Let's rock!" Trainwreck yells, powering ahead of the group and ripping through the steel fence blocking unwanted access to the station. The response is basically instant, as a helix beam of pure white energy streaks across the sky from a nearby residential building and into the center of your cluster of teammates.
"None of that now~" You chide the overeager blaster, moving one of your gaps to catch the blast and having the other release the attack into the sky, where it pierces the clouds and lights up the otherwise overcast city.
You really couldn't have asked for a better starting signal.
The second your Master was able to orient on the origin of the blast - a woman glowing so brightly she looked like more of a cutout in the world than a living being - she reached into her pocket and shredded the slip of paper you gave her. You could feel the magic take hold at once, and evidently, so could your Master, because she crouches down in preparation, turning an expression you would politely describe as 'homicidal maniac' on the enemy.
Then she vanishes, the speed of her upward leap so great that a wave of pressure washes against you and the rest of the team as she careens into the other woman, grabbing her with a free hand and then vanishing from sight.
Hm. She might have picked up a bit more from that psychopath than you thought.
"Hey uh, she aint gonna kill that bitch right?" Trainwreck asks, more curiously than worried.
"Probably not no. Look alive gentlemen." You say, indicating the three figures that have come charging out of the building towards you as you all retreat to the docks.
"Night, Fog, and... Krieg?" Aspirant muses, taking a stance you would have once recognized but now no longer do.
"You take the broad I'll take the heir fuckass?" Trainwreck asks, and the two briefly bump grotesquely oversized fists, before turning to you.
"You're just leaving Fog to me because you can't do anything about him aren't you?" You ask in amusement.
"Eh." Trainwreck says, before charging forward.
"Apologies." Aspirant says to you with a quick nod before taking off after him.
You sigh at their antics, one so polite that it borders on the aggravating and the other so rude you struggle to see how he survived to adulthood. You suppose you did promise you would protect them...
Sighing again, you glide forward, shifting your two portals to your front and rushing towards the man in the unobtrusive grey costume.
You are just about to send him tumbling through a portal and into stasis when he explodes into a cloud of mist. You smile cruelly at this, and take the time to send Trainwreck out of the obscuring cloud this creates by sending him through a portal that lets out directly behind the man in old military regalia Aspirant denoted as 'Krieg'.
You are punished for this by being momentarily batted across the pier by something that you don't quite manage to see, although by the time you regain your bearings and turn to see what it is, you find Aspirant punching down at a woman in a skintight black bodysuit, her colors a perfect contrast for the boys own glistening white armour.
You frown. You don't usually get hit. All this holding back nonsense is such a pain.
You hope your Master appreciates the gift you've given her.
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011
Skies Over The Bay
She could feel her heart pumping her in chest. It had hardly been a handful of seconds, but she had already used much more of her strength than she was accustomed to. It wasn't that it was hard. No, it was the opposite. From the day she had gotten her first power, everything else had become harder. Moving around. Eating. Opening doors. She felt like she lived perpetually with one thumb covering the lid of a shaken can of soda. One wrong move, even a slight mistake, and her hand would come free, and the contents of the can would come spilling out.
Only in this case, that can was full of exploded buildings and dead civilians.
So, even though Emmy had told her that she could go all out. Promised her even. She hesitated. She took Purity high into the sky of the Bay, using as much strength as speed as she thought another Parahuman could survive, and flung her into the air, trusting in the other woman fly instead of merely falling to the ground. And she tried to talk to her.
"I wanted to recruit you, you know?" She said sadly, eyeing the woman of purest light shakily getting it's bearing as it halted several meters away from her.
"You still could." The woman answered promptly, drifting slightly away from her.
"You would just give up the Empire? Just like that?" Taylor asked hesitantly. She didn't want to get her hopes up, but she hadn't actually won a fight since her first night against Lung and Oni Lee. A time that felt like ages ago. She could tell which part of her was more anxious - the one that wanted Purity to surrender so she could go help her teammates or the one that wanted Purity to force her to fight.
"No! But- I'll lead the Empire someday. If you joined us we could make this city great again! Between us we could destroy the ship graveyard, get rid of the addicts and the criminals!" Purity answered her.
Taylors face, and her hopes, fell.
"All of whom are minorities right?" She asked rhetorically, lifting her sword in front of her.
"Of course not! We'll just be getting rid of the bad ones! The rest can stay!" Purity tried again, although her hands began to glow and fluctuate with energy.
"...Yeah. Can't do that." She answered tiredly. It sucked. It really sucked that negotiations had fallen through.
And yet... she just couldn't stop smiling.
The second she finished speaking, Purity acted, firing a blinding white beam of pure energy at her that was almost as wide across as the one that had shredded the Protectorates forcefield.
A normal flying Brute would have chosen to dodge.
A sane combatant would have dodged.
But Taylor Annette Hebert was neither a normal flying Brute, nor was she trained by anyone who had ever been considered 'sane' in their lifetime.
So instead, her aura flared, larger and stronger than ever before. She pushed it for all she was worth. She could feel it flaring out above her, like a banner to war that any reasonable modern person would be deeply disturbed by.
And then she flicked her sword at the light speed attack, infusing within it a perfectly measured amount of her power. It didn't matter that physically deflecting light was 'impossible'. It didn't matter that she could very well die if this attack hit her.
She wanted to do it, so she did, splitting the attack sent at her with her sword and grasping the hilt in both hands, pointing it at Purity's head.
The Blaster didn't miss a beat, showing her experience, and immediately began to dart away from Taylor, using what she probably assumed was her superior speed to evade backwards while peppering Taylor with smaller harrying blasts that - at the height of her power - she was easily able to avoid.
It was at this point that she decided, that, as much as Emmy's current form was something of an odd personage, she always had and always would trust her friend.
Which was why the sonic boom of her take off didn't surprise her. Just as her sword teacher before her had once done, she kicked downward as she appeared in front of Purity, sending the woman spiralling towards the ship graveyard with such force that a normal non Brute would almost certainly have died upon touching the waters surface.
She didn't care, because she felt so... free. She knew the woman wasn't dead, just as she knew that she no longer had to hold back. Once more she clad her blade in energy, pointing it downward. She wasn't like Kenpachi - all power an no control. Her entire existence was dedicated to control. And so, when she fired her power downward and the spot she estimated Purity to be, it wasn't in a colossal wave thrown from a slash.
It was in a single piercing strike, like threading a needle. All the power she could muster dedicated to a single point. Once, twice, thrice, she struck, lances of purest blue impacting the surface of the bay and causing waves to rise and push towards the shore where they jostled the titanic ships that had once been scuttled there.
Then she waited.
She needn't have waited long, because the woman, - Purity - quickly surfaced, sluggishly exiting the Bay while spluttering and coughing, patting at her body in confusion.
"I was promised you wouldn't die so..." Taylor said to her, exploding forward to land next to the woman and nearly displacing her with the rush of air that accompanied her arrival.
"You should surrender." She said happily, while somehow not meaning a single word in the sentence.
"I-" Purity attempted to say, before Taylor lunged towards her, dragging her blade across the woman's body in a strike that would have otherwise cleaved her in two and then headbutting her back into the water, where she launched another barrage of attacks at her.
This was the feeling. The sensation Emmy had tried to teach her so long ago when she had first met him. A lust for battle that could only be sated by a worthy opponent. She could admit, in this moment of purest excitement for herself, that she didn't want Purity to surrender. She just wanted to keep fighting.
So she couldn't help it. When another helix blast rushed up out of the water to meet her, she didn't even bother to dodge it, she just let it slam into her, pushing her into the sky in what was probably the unbelievably painful attack she had ever suffered. She just caught herself on a platform of spiritual power and started to chuckle. And then laugh uproariously.
"You are absolutely insane aren't you?!" Screamed at her as she flew upward, launching another barrage of blasts.
"Said the Nazi!" Taylor fired back, smiling wildly at the incoming barrage of energy blasts. Truthfully, she had no right to be able to react to anything at that speed, let alone consider a response. She didn't honestly have anything she could call a speed enhancing power. But somehow, even before they were fired at her, she just knew they were coming.
Now, Taylor wasn't one for showy attacks. The swordsmanship she had learned was all but simple, brutal, efficiency. In this way, many of the abilities left to her by Po were somewhat diametrically opposed to her own, typical fighting style. They require lots of flashy, easy to counter movements, that a competent fighter could capitalize on.
Still, she was finding that adaptation was probably her greatest ally, and so she began to rotate her sword in one hand, twisting it around in a cyclone like motion that her wrist could barely maintain, until the Chi she was converting from her core began to mix with the power along the blades edge, bathing it in a mixture of blues and greens.
In Po's notes, he had called this attack 'The Thundering Wind Hammer'. It was (Supposedly), one of twelve impossible moves.
Taylor had no idea why that would be the case. It seemed fairly simple to her.
In a single, blazingly fast move, she halted the rotation of her blade and swung in horizontally across her front. The attack, a combination of her spiritual power and the Thundering Wind Hammer, spread across the sky widely enough and brightly enough that it temporarily blotted out the sun, consuming the many blasts that Purity had been firing at her and crashing down upon the woman herself with such force that she, along with a sizeable portion of the water in the bay, was sent careening onto the shore, where she twitched slightly, and then stopped moving.
She sighed. It was a bit disappointing but well. At least it was done. Time to go help her teammates she supposed.
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011
Ferry Station North, Brockton Bay
You hadn't realized it before, but breathing was apparently a significant weakness of yours. The fight - to this point had largely been something of a stalemate. Aspirant was resilient enough that Night couldn't merely overpower him and move on, but her momentary shifts to her monstrous form whenever a flashbang or some other form of obscurement went off always healed her, which mean that eventually she would win that fight. Krieg was durable enough that his fight with Trainwreck - when you aren't actively assisting him - was quickly going nowhere.
And your own confrontation with Fog was... not going well.
Whenever you got distracted the aggravating man would turn to mist and begin attempting to tear apart your insides. Your only saving grace was that he usually had to keep the cloud that constituted 'him' close together, or he would change back. As such, you have taken to chasing the bulk of his 'body' about with portals in an attempt to force him to stop killing you and to distract him from attempting to do so with anyone less resilient to death, like any of your teammates.
Thankfully, you aren't worried about the ongoing confrontation. You haven't been blind to your Master's ongoing light show in the sky. In fact, you don't think anyone in the bay could have possibly missed it. You are fairly certain some of those attacks of hers would have shredded large portions of the city had they not been aimed at the bay and, more importantly, heavily limited by the Contract.
This is why you aren't very surprised when, after her last attack - something you assume she learned from your last Emulation and that looks distinctly like something your current Emulation would appreciate in her own world - your Master lands in the middle of the fight looking almost refreshed despite the somewhat less than ideal state of her clothing. Her dignity is still preserved but... just barely.
You make a note to address the subject later. Right after getting her a hat and a new bed.
'A little help?' You ask your Master plaintively when you once more find yourself choking on Fog.
She blinks at you owlishly and then allows that freakish spider emanation to unravel behind her, pinning most of the combatants to the ground. Most except Night, who takes the momentary distraction for what it is, and shifts into her monstrous form, which is - apparently - immune to your Master's power.
You learned early on in the fight that for whatever reason, you don't actually count against her inability to change forms when being observed. It would have been nice to know prior to this fight.
Taylor however, apparently being in a very good mood all of a sudden, takes the sudden attack of the monster in stride, dodging slightly out of the way of it's attack and grasping one of it's oily limbs in one hand while examining her teammates for injury.
'They're fine. You know if you don't look at her she's going to keep flailing like that.' You point out, indicating Night to your Master. It occurs to you that she's behaving somewhat punch drunk. Just a bit slow, like she's not all there at the moment.
This is a theorem that you find born out when she blinks once, lifts a pinky finger into the air on the hand grasping Nights monstrous limb, and then lowers it suddenly, in an explosion of golden energy.
"Skadoosh." Your Master intones, like it's a spell, which it absolutely is not. When the light clears, Night is nowhere to be found, and your Master has carefully restricted her Spiritual Pressure to her enemies.
'Can you grab Purity? She's... over there somewhere I think.' Your Master asks you, gesturing further up the Boardwalk, which has suffered significant water damage over the course of her fight. You move to do so immediately, smiling pleasantly at having achieved your goal for the day.
Also worried that your Master can send people to another dimension using the movements of her pinky finger, but well. Things to address another day.
Once you've rounded up all the survivors from the Rig, you'll have some time to socialize. Who do you encourage your Master to talk to?
[ ] Check on the girl you rescued from Hookwolf. She should be awake by now.
[ ] Debrief with your Team. They did much better this time than the last, but there's always room for improvement.
[ ] Danny isn't going to be happy about this. There's no doubt he saw the fireworks from the PRT Headquarters.
[ ] Vicky should be on patrol near the hospital this evening. She's basically Taylor's only friend so...
That night, your Master - still excited from her success - decides she wants to keep training. How do you respond?
[ ] Begin Training (Choose a Skill or Power)
[ ] Craft an Object (Choose a PRT Rating and Power Type)
[ ] Encourage Her to Sleep (Continue Crafting Taylor's Shikai)
Well, there's no hiding how strong your Master is now.
[ ] You wonder how the humans who live here are reacting (PHO Interlude)
[ ] The PRT aren't going to be happy. (Chief Director Rebecca Costa Brown Interlude)
[ ] Maybe now the Empire will calm the hell down. (Kaiser Interlude)
A/N: Well... this I guess. I was going to do a blitz tonight but I realized I just really wanted to get this Purity thing over with. I just didn't realize how bloody long this update would be. And so, here. I might do another single update tonight, I might not, but I feel like the fact that this is roughly the length of three of my normal updates combined makes up for that.
Enjoy.
Last edited: Jul 13, 2020
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Bowler Hat Guy
Jul 13, 2020
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Jul 13, 2020
#8,934
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Topic: Disturbance at Winslow
In: Boards Brockton Bay New Cape Discussion
Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Posted On Jan 5th 2011:
Alright folks, I'm seeing a lot about this floating around but not a consolidated thread for it, so here we are.
Here's what I've got;
On January 3rd, there was a disturbance at Winslow High. We all know that the place isn't well known for being especially peaceful, but this is in a different dimension. Most of one side of a main hallway was torn out by seemingly hurricane force winds, leaving lockers and their contents strewn across the floor.
Less than fifteen minutes later, the Protectorate responds to a Parahuman causing a disturbance in roughly the same area.
Shortly afterwards the Protectorate are seen escorting said Parahuman to the Hospital.
Edit: Here's some footage of Assault surrendering to the guy. The PRT are calling him Line Drive.
Edit: Some sightings of Line Drive entering the PRT Building with the teenager he was seen with in his first appearance Here.
Edit: Some footage of Line Drive fighting Lung apparently.
Edit: Okay so it looks like the big guy is actually a projection and the girl he's always with is the Cape. I'll start a thread for her when we know more.
(Showing page 1 of 4)
XxVoid_CowboyxX (Banned)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Hey, I know her! Holy shit is she okay?
Antigone
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
XxVoid_CowboyxX who fucking cares? looks like the ABB is getting a new cape. One more reason to move out of the city.
AverageAlexandros (Cape Husband)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
Looks like a Shaker or something. There's some video floating around of him beating up Glory Girl for a bit before the Protectorate arrive. He uh... glows.
XxVoid_CowboyxX (Banned)
Replied On Jan 5th 2011:
@Antigone I fucking care! If you hate it in the Bay so much go somewhere else asshole!
Nondeceptive
Replied On Jan 7th 2011:
I can confirm he glows when using his powers. He just barely missed taking out the front doorstep of my apartment on his way past - there was a big ass laser skull behind him. I don't even think he was doing it on purpose. Just the way his power looks.
SenorEel
Replied On Jan 7th 2011:
@Nondeceptive Well that's not threatening or anything. Hey does anyone know what rent is like up in Boston? I hear the villains up their are pretty soft compared to the Bay.
White Fairy (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 7th 2011:
'Soft'.
You mean like the freaking Butcher? Sit down Senor, you're drunk.
End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4
Topic: New Hero(?): Nexus
In: Boards Brockton Bay New Cape Discussion
Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Posted On Jan 8th 2011:
Okay so, for anyone who hasn't seen the Line Drive thread yet, some background info can be found Here.
Now then. Nexus is apparently a high level Master who's projection both looks and acts like a real person.
She can be seen entering the PRT Building Here (The image is blurred because she isn't wearing a mask).
She apparently assisted in the defeat and capture of Lung, which many of us will recall from the other night as being both exceptionally loud and bright for the middle of the night.
Edit: So, she went dark for a while but presumably Nexus is back because the sky is apparently exploding out over the bay again with those characteristic laughing skulls of hers.
Edit: She apparently also assisted in the capture of Skidmark and Mush, though the details are thin on the ground with that one. Armsmaster brought them in a little while ago.
Edit: Counter to many theories that she's an Empire plant among the heroes, owing to her capture history being not dissimilar to Purity's recent exploits, Nexus has apparently taken to the field with two other capes and is fighting the Empire on the Boardwalk.
Here are some images of them while there. There are also some images of the captured gang members but some of their victims got a little overzealous in punishing them once Nexus and her crew left, so I won't post those here.
Edit: Nexus and Co are apparently getting into it with Purity out over the Bay and I am frankly amazed that there hasn't been any collateral damage yet. Video Here.
(Showing page 11 of 17)
XxVoid_CowboyxX (Banned)
Replied On Jan 18th 2011:
[This post has been deleted]
Even if she's nominally unmasked, until she announces it the rules still apply. - Tin Mother
BadSamurai
Replied On Jan 18th 2011:
Ah Void. Never change.
I've got those pictures Bagrat didn't want to post if anyone's curious.
Here.
Mock Moniker
Replied On Jan 18th 2011:
@BadSamurai Those guys look like they've been lynched. Also what's with the spray paint? Doesn't seem like it matches any of the other gangs. The blue I guess is at least Merchant adjacent but still.
Procto the Unfortunate Tinker (Not a tinker)
Replied On Jan 18th 2011:
If I had to guess, the hourglass is a reference to the aura Nexus puts out when using her powers. It's kind of hard to make out when she's jumping around, but if you slow down some of the footage of her on the Boardwalk you can tell that that hourglass symbol is pretty consistantly present.
the 'Times Up' part seems sort of self evident.
Thatdude
Replied On Jan 18th 2011:
At least it's not a fucking skull. You know I still see that thing when I close my eyes at night?
GstringGirl
Replied On Jan 18th 2011:
Hey is there anything on her teammates? The really tall guy looks like he might be a 53 right? I haven't heard anything about him yet.
Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On Jan 18th 2011:
@GstringGirl Against my better judgement, you can find a thread about him Here. Video has Nexus and Trainwreck referring to him as 'Aspirant' a couple times. We still don't really know what his powers are besides being kind of big and strong.
Edit: Okay yeah he's a changer or something. He looks completely different today. Just saw him running up the street with the rest of the Nexus' team.
Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 18th 2011:
Hey so, it's cool that she's beating up the Nazi's now and all but is anyone else mildly worried about what happens when there's no one else for her to fight? Either she's going to turn into Marquis 2.0 or were going to have another Boston Games to deal with - and I don't really like either.
XxVoid_CowboyxX (Banned)
Replied On Jan 18th 2011:
She's not like that! She'd totally be a benevolent ruler!
Ekul
Replied On Jan 18th 2011:
What are her powers anyway? I thought she was a Master. This clip is looking alot like Brute or Shaker.
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 ... 15, 16, 17
(Showing page 12 of 17)
Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On Jan 18th 2011:
The PRT rates her as a Master/Trump. She picks up weaker versions of her Projections powers and the Projection will randomly change powersets.
Ekul
Replied On Jan 18th 2011:
So she's baby Eidolon? What the hell is in the drinking water in this place?
Whitecollar (Cape Wife)
Replied On Jan 18th 2011:
Mostly economic depression.
Reave (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied On Jan 18th 2011:
Hey everyone, I can confirm that Nexus is in fact a Hero. She's been coordinating with the PRT since this whole thing started, so you shouldn't have to worry too much about Marquis 2.0. She also gets along pretty well with Glory Girl, for what that's worth.
Deadman
Replied On Jan 18th 2011:
@Reave You know that a colossally powerful cape being friends with Collateral Damage Barbie isn't actually good... right?
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
Topic: Times Up! (Locked)
In: Boards Brockton Bay Gangs
Posted On Jan 19th 2011:
Times up assholes! Nexus is here and she's going to body the lot of you just like she did Purity!
Video Here!
(Showing page 1 of 1)
Bagrat (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On Jan 19th 2011:
This belongs in the Nexus thread, and is probably going to get closed soon.
On topic; I don't know if Nexus has been holding back and minding her own business until now or if she just get's stronger over time the way Lung did, but this is a definite escalation from her last few appearances.
Laotsunn (Kyushu Survivor)
Replied On Jan 19th 2011:
Fuck you! Lung will be back soon and then we'll see who's the strongest!
Mac's Dual Rocket Propelled Grenades
Replied On Jan 19th 2011:
Lung is dead man - the Empire announced it and everything.
Laotsunn (Kyushu Survivor)
Replied On Jan 19th 2011:
They fucking lied! You just wait, the Dragon of Kyushu is going to show all these pretenders who's boss!
Tin Mother (Moderator)
Replied On Jan 19th 2011:
I can see where this is going already and I'm going to lock it now.
End of Page. 1
A/N: I'm actually Pants at PHO interludes, but people kept asking, so I made it an option - even though I'm horrible at faking being several people at once :p. This website *hates* this formatting by the way. Also Sleep Deprivation. The number of these updates I write while suffering sleep deprivation can be counted by checking how many updates I've done where words are seemingly missing from sentences. The answer is probably all of them. I'll probably do another Interlude after this just to make up for how shitty I was at this one, but heres this while I'm still awake.
COMPLETELY UNRELATED. But you guys should totally check out the Informational post by TirelessTraveler and the Character Sheet by Enetious these guys are doing gods work out here. I swear I wouldn't update half as fast if I had to micromanage this kind of stuff - which I'm given to understand is absolutely essential for most quests.
Last edited: Jul 13, 2020
733
Bowler Hat Guy
Jul 13, 2020
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Threadmarks Interlude: Alexandria
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Jul 15, 2020
#9,472
Sometimes, she wondered if people knew that Power, had diminishing returns.
She was probably one of the most individually powerful people on the planet. If she wanted to, she could go to almost any nation on the planet, and tirelessly eradicate its defenders, its leaders, even most of its Parahuman's, faster than anybody could react. News probably wouldn't spread outside that country what she had done until she was finished, and installed herself as leader of her petty little kingdom.
But ultimately, she was smart enough to realize that doing such a thing would be pointless. It was easy to use power to destroy. To tear things down. It was easy to ambush. Frighteningly so in fact. Even a relatively middling Parahuman had a reasonable chance of killing herself, Legend, or Eidolon if they planned things just right. But again, what was the point? Having goals that included anything less than the total subjugation of everything in your immediate vicinity, meant that Power quickly became less and less of use. Once you had enough of it, a wise woman would simply trade it for Influence, which was - unless you were being very petty or stupid - different than actual power.
Influence did things that Power never could. Power wouldn't stop people from assaulting a dictator in their sleep. Power wouldn't eradicate crime in a city. In many cases, Power barely even guaranteed personal well being for some. But Influence? Influence opened doors. Influence stopped men without them ever knowing why or how. Most people didn't make that distinction. Power did tend to come with its fair share of influence. But never quite enough. That's why it was always the smart Parahumans she had to be wary of. She feared not the man who could hurl an Endbringer into space - if she had to, she could resolve that problem in dozens of ways, very few of them using direct power. No, what Alexandria worried after the most, were people with just enough power.
Just enough power was essentially the true misery of the Parahuman condition. Agents were terrifying that way when naturally acquired. They always gave you just enough rope to hang yourself with.
Of course, this was all mostly just her waxing poetic, in the microseconds between being in one location and the next. She had been working as Alexandria for nearly two days now, non-stop, without a single break. Without pausing to even take in her surroundings, she blurred into motion, flying around the room she found herself in, in a corkscrew pattern that rapidly took her entire body at Mach speed through every area in the room in seconds, destroying the shipment of Tinkertech there, and just about everything else.
She wasn't worried about catching innocents in the crossfire here. The Gesselschaft Tinker who made most of these weapons had a Kill Order that extended to anyone working with or handling his technology. There was simply something expressly disturbing about a Nazi who produced weapons that instigated spontaneous combustion in their targets that unnerved most people.
It was a moot point regardless because as she landed in the center of the room, and quickly reported the location to the nearest PRT squad to secure, she noted that there wasn't anyone here in the first place. She wouldn't have been able to tell at the speed she was moving at. Not until she got in front of a mirror at least.
The Gesselschaft had been pushing hard, all over the country like this. She understood why of course. They had nearly no traction in America. If they could have the Empire in Brockton make them a foothold, a beachhead, then nearly any cost was worth it.
When she finished her survey of the area, she took off again, flying high into the sky above the city so she could get a better view of the area. Many people forgot that before her, the name she had taken was associated much more with intelligence than simple brute force. She allowed them too - because being regarded as an unstoppable physical force and nothing else was helpful against many villains - but it definitely underplayed what made her truly dangerous. High in the sky as she was, her prodigious mind was able to pick the patterns in the traffic below. The paths people's lives took. And given that this was her city, the place she was most familiar with, she had dozens, if not hundreds of thousands of perfectly remembered looks at the city just like this. Enough that she was confident she could track every urban development, and most of the economic fortune of the city purely by analyzing those memories.
A tac she took now, in order to locate the next cache of surprises the Elite had warned her about.
Alexandria wasn't stupid. She understood why the Elite had warned her about the Gesselschaft's sudden move into the city. It neatly struck two birds with one stone. For one, even most villains disliked Nazi's just on principle. And for another, a new Gang meant new competition, even if the circles the Elite typically ran in were a far cry from the dingy back street deals that most Parahuman gangs dealt with.
She wondered how the girl would handle things. She usually didn't take much of an interest in individuals such as her. A human shaped Master power that provided her with a strange pseudo Brute defence was definitely unnervingly similar to Manton in some respects, but she wouldn't otherwise have pegged her as worth paying attention to as anything except an unusually powerful Parahuman. It wasn't common but it happened from time to time in cesspools like the bay. She was brought to mind of Gu Poison. The ancient Chinese practice of filling a jar with poisonous insects and sealing it. When the jar was later opened, it was said that the only surviving insect would be particularly potent and dangerous, having absorbed the venom and ferocity of all its competitors.
She knew the comparison wasn't perfect but it worked. Parahumans came from misery. They also tended to make misery. Some places, like Brockton Bay, bad an almost perfectly measurable increase in them.
So no, the girl didn't interest her for her power. What drew her attention was something Contessa had noted, almost in passing, at there last meeting. Or rather, she had noted it. Contessa had merely taken in what she had noticed and adjusted her plans accordingly. She had been reading through her reports at the time, when Contessa had stepped into her office in order to advise her on all the various minor things she would have to do in order to keep everything on track. When the woman had gotten to her one line suggestion to 'allow Taylor Hebert to have her projection finish murdering the Empire Eighty-Eight she had been forced to pause.
The girl hadn't even started killing the Empire Eighty-Eight. She had barely even come into conflict with them in fact, until this most recent offensive spurred on by their parent organization. She could still remember the slightly confused look on Contessa's face when she had asked for clarification.
"Her Projection is murderous. It will soon decide to begin executing the Empire using those blast in can fire from its sword. Their reach is far greater than reports have implied." The suited woman had explained neutrally.
Which, was the crux of the problem. Because Nexus' Projection no longer held a sword. At the time it had been a fairly friendly seeming Panda of all things. Most demonstrably, it had been a Healer.
Contessa had merely blinked at that. Then tilted her head in that way she did when readjusting a path.
"Ah. It changes. Please keep me informed of any changes to the Projection as they come. I will have to form a new path for each." The world's most dangerous thinker surmised casually, before exiting the office.
She wouldn't quite call it being a blind spot. Not in the same sense that they usually used the word. Eidolon, the Endbringers, Scion. Just those five beings would cause Contessa's paths to fail. The girl's power, however, seemed to provide something of a loophole. When it changed - and as far as she had been able to gather from reports, changing was a key feature of the power - it would register to Contessa in almost the same way as a new trigger. It wouldn't distort the path, or break it - but things would need adjusting.
So she waited. And she watched. And now, she was putting out fires, and musing on what to do.
She could probably take the girl underwing. She was fairly certain there were no teenage brutes her age that would turn down the opportunity to functionally apprentice under her. But that put her just a tad too close to Brockton Bay for her liking. Especially at a time when someone seemingly benevolent had arisen to take the rains and showcase whether or not civilization could reasonably survive after the end. She supposed she would at least meet the girl at the next Endbringer battle. Thinker support had indicated she was far too idealistic not to show up with a power like hers.
She just hoped the girl would learn to leverage her Power into Influence in time to make something of herself. The ability to obliterate city blocks wasn't actually worth all that much when you wanted to save people. To be a Hero. It was much more helpful when you were a soldier. Doing what you had to, because no one else would.
Alexandria hadn't considered herself a Hero in years. She would leave that to younger capes, with lighter burdens.
Right now, she had a war to fight. And so, she flew off, having already reasoned out where the next cache of equipment would be, ready to destroy it, and everyone near it, exactly as she had the last.
A/N: I think Alexandria gets a bad rap for being the most evil bitch of the west. She obviously is the biggest bitch in the whole wide world, but I find the idea that she would just drop what she's doing and rush to a new capes side to involve herself - either positively or negatively - in their life kind of weird, especially since it happens in alot of fics. Cauldron doesn't typically step in to completely ruin someones day unless they're going to do something blatantly detrimental to the continuation of humanity in their immediate area of influence, and since Contessa can't predict Triggers, sometimes they fail to even do that in any meaningful way. If someone is going to pop up as what amounts to a benevolent Nilbog, or even just a less assholish Nilbog, I get the impression she would just keep note of them in her head for if anything happened and they were needed.
Also! IF YOU MADE AN OMAKE IN THE LAST LIKE, 75 PAGES, AND I MISSED IT, PM ME! I PROMISE I READ THEM ALL I'VE JUST BEEN BUSY!
808
Bowler Hat Guy
Jul 15, 2020
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Threadmarks Dominance 6.1
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Jul 16, 2020
#9,712
[X] Begin Training (Choose a Skill or Power)
-[X] Onmyodo
[X] Check on the girl you rescued from Hookwolf. She should be awake by now.
Energy: 12
Current Training: Onmyodo (5/10), 5 points to Complete. Everyone can thank trondason for this Omake bonus!
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011
Downtown, Brockton Bay
It doesn't take much time at all after that for your Master to scramble across the Bay and into the Rig. Using your established reason of 'I've never been there', she essentially lands on the roof and instructs you to use the portal you've hidden on her back to transport all those present off of the contraption. You wouldn't otherwise mind this, but the personnel that had remained on the Rig were exceptionally paranoid of unknown powers by the time they had been rescued, and as a direct result, had questioned your Master extensively on the nature of the portal.
They had only agreed to go through it and leave the area with you after making contact with the Director and having her speak directly Taylor to confirm who it was the PRT officer who seemed to be in charge was speaking to.
Which brought you to now, escorting a gaggle of children, and a significantly larger number of office workers and troopers, through the streets back to the PRT building. While it might have been easy to assume that the streets on the way home would be relatively quiet, just as they were on your way to the Boardwalk, quite the opposite is true. The number of civilians with seemingly nothing better to do but stand entirely too close to a large group of dangerous Parahumans with their recording devices in hand, yelling questions at the group as they passed, was frankly staggering.
You even had to 'confiscate' several of their devices when some of the... younger... ones noticed your Master's questionable state of dress. You dearly wish you could have used a gap to procure new clothes for her, but that would be a significant waste of energy you think. Especially when your Master was too keyed up from her battle to actually notice the less than honorable gazes being directed at her.
The members of the Wards and the Protectorate that had made it - Dauntless and Miss Militia had fallen in the initial blast, both being no more durable than a normal person without their equipment - were downcast. They looked tired. In some cases - like young Vista, or surprisingly Clockblocker, they were tired and angry. The young girl showing none of her characteristic drive to be viewed as an adult. Clockblocker merely seethed. Quietly, and without any aplomb. He spoke little, at least compared to the relieved thanks the other Wards had given your Master, and often seemed on the edge of doing something unwise to the many civilians hounding the group as it travelled through the streets. Others seemed almost shell shocked. As though they still couldn't fully grasp what had happened. Kid Win was like that. Drifting along at the groups rear, often only kept in the center of the protective formation of PRT officers by the gentle nudging of those in the rearguard. At one point Trainwreck had offered to carry the boy, but had been refused by Triumph, who had fallen back to watch over him instead.
All of them were pointedly choosing not, to look at or speak over much to your Master. For most of them, you think it's likely only tiredness. Fatigue. But for some, its undoubtedly the niggling question all survivors had in the back of their minds. Directed outward, so that it did not have to be directed inward.
'If you could save us, why didn't you do it sooner.'
'If you were this strong, why did this have to happen.'
You understand the tendency. Humans are fragile creatures. They assign blame to anything but themselves, in a vain attempt to salve their own psyches. You can't even be mad at them for it.
Because they're right.
You could have saved them from the minute 'You' were born into this world. There was never any need for a fight. There wasn't even a need to march the group back to the PRT building through the streets. You simply chose to imply that teleporting back to the PRT building would be difficult because seeing your Master's team escorting the battered Hero's of the city home would look good. It wasn't a part of the grand plan per se, merely a convenient benefit.
Trainwreck and Aspirant were at the lead of the group, marching forward a cars length away from the rest, like an advance guard. You and your Master held up the rear, although you did so invisibly, leaving your Master to the spotlight. She moved now with an odd grace to her. A comfort in her physicality that hadn't been entirely present before this, as though she had recently released a great deal of stress and was now free to let down her hair. But there was danger in it. She did not present as though a lazy beast of burden, resting in the fields. No, your Master had the air of the satiated dragon about her. Still fully capable of annihilating any who stood before her, but merely too satisfied with herself to bother. Still, she took her self appointed duty seriously, her head quickly darting left and right, up and down, scrutinizing everyone and everything she past with an equal level of caution.
It just wasn't caution for her.
You felt it looked good on her. Confidence, you mean. You're sure she'll go back to being a wallflower once the battle high wears off - but that's irrelevant. There wouldn't be anyone recording then. Honestly, you're fairly happy with how this phase of things has turned out.
Now if only you could get rid of the niggling sensation of annoyance whenever Victoria's boyfriend turned to look at you when he thought you wouldn't notice.
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011
PRT Headquarters, Brockton Bay
Victoria had been beyond pleased with your Master when she had brought everyone back to the Headquarters, practically tackling her off her feet in her rushed attempt to embrace the girl. She was so excited that your Master had to release some of her aura, and therefore, strength, in order to withstand the shaking motion, for all it lasted barely a second. Then the blond was practically on top of Gallant, eliciting a snort from you and a confused expression from your Master.
"Um Vicky, aren't you dating Dean?" She asks hesitantly, causing nearly everyone present, including you, to look at her incredulously.
'Dearest, that is Dean.' You explain politely.
"Oh! Uh... I mean... shit." She blurts out.
"It's fine. I don't know how no one has figured out by now. Vicky isn't very subtle." Dean says tiredly, removing his helmet and waving at Taylor while wincing at the repeated affectionate attacks from his overenthusiastic girlfriend.
Out of the corner of your eye, you notice Vista openly scowling, while Aegis comforts her. You make a note of it, but otherwise don't say anything else.
There are several other reunions, though none so overt as Victoria and Deans. Armsmaster is calmly waiting in the hall as you enter the building, glancing over each person as they pass him by and somehow seeming almost melancholy when he notes who is absent. Battery reunites with Assault, in their own understated way - Assault made a joke, Battery chose just this once not to smack him for it, and otherwise, the usual.
However, the person who seemed most distressed as your Master left the main infirmary to head to one of the smaller sleeping areas to get changed, was Director Emily Piggot, who not only seemed intensely grateful for the return of her people, but even begrudgingly polite to your Master about it.
'I wish we could have saved Dauntless and Miss Militia.' Your Master says sadly as she tromps her way towards the area the woman you previously rescued from Hookwolf is located.
'We can get them later if you like. When things settle down.' You tell her, floating along just above her head, lazily oriented as though in a bed.
'Yeah. We should... we should bury them I guess.' Taylor says bitterly, her eyes going temporarily glassy as she sees some far off memory.
'Oh, I suppose if you'd like we could do that too.' You muse, thinking on it.
'...what did you have in mind?' Taylor asks with an almost scared curiosity.
'Well, I can think of a number of very friendly ghosts where this Emulation is from. One is even a Gardener. I'm told it can take some getting used to but-' You begin to explain nonchalantly, causing your Master to blink and then bounce off a wall at a T junction in the hallway when she fails to turn properly to avoid it.
'I am not going to enslave their ghosts to do my gardening.' Your Master scowls at you after a second, rubbing her nose even though your fairly certain the wall is more hurt than she is.
'Why not? Fair is fair. They get to be mostly alive again, you get a useful ally. Don't discriminate now dear, ghosts are people too.' You chuckle, physically manifesting yourself and gently turning your Master so that she'll end up in the right room at the end of the hallway when she begins to drift to one side again as you speak.
'So... they wouldn't be, you know. Mindless? Like you know...' Your Master says, trailing off.
'Zombies? Heavens no." You chuckle, vanishing once more from sight.
'So we could just... bring them back?' She ventures, eyes brightening.
'I wouldn't describe the process as easy dear. I'd use up everything left of this 'me' if I were to try. You however...' You explain, leadingly.
'I changed my mind. The Portals can wait. I want that.' Your Master decides firmly. You find it adorable that your Master is set on learning an ancient and powerful magical art not to acquire power, nor to reach some other goal more suited to it, nor even to enforce her will on the souls of dead Parahumans.
She just wants to bring back one of her Heroes.
It's sweet, in a naive sort of way. You should probably point out that it won't be easy, and that she absolutely shouldn't tell anyone she can do it, but sweet all the same.
"Hello? Is there... is there anyone in here?" Your Master calls cautiously into the unlit room she eventually finds herself standing in front of.
"...Yes?" A vaguely familiar voice calls out to you. You feel like you should recognize it, but the slight south-eastern accent to it escapes you for the moment. The Bay isn't very diverse. You feel like you would recall speaking to someone like that at some point.
"Hi. I'm Nexus. Taylor I guess if you want. I don't... really wear a mask." Your Master says softly as she enters the room, looking around at the adhoc sleeping area until she finds the dark skinned girl from several days previous sitting up in one of the cots.
"I... I see." The girl says hesitantly, pausing as though she was going to say something else.
"I know it's a lot to ask but... can you remember anybody else being captured with you? A cape?" Taylor asks gently, slowly pulling an office chair from the pile in the corner and sitting next to the bed of the girl. She had soft features. Classically eastern, but not so distinctive that she would stand out in a crowd here in Brockton for anything other than her skin tone. Her medium cut brown hair was a mess, obviously having not been taken care of recently, and her eyes were a light red from what was obviously some time spent crying prior to this.
"I- what?" She asks, obviously severely confused by the question.
"It's... I know it isn't what you want to hear but I originally attacked Hookwolf because he captured Parian. I was trying to save her, but no one knows where she is. We didn't find her when we attacked, and you were there so I thought if you had seen her..." Taylor trails off, seeing the perplexed look on the girls face. A look that quickly turned neutral, and then somber.
Interesting thing about humans. When they were genuine, their emotions and how they were displayed were usually direct. Angry, to sad. Sad, to bored. Happy, to neutral.
It was only when one was actively mastering themself, actively hiding something, that they would change add the extra step. The neutrality. A trained liar could avoid the tell. This girl was, quite obviously, not, a trained liar.
"I... did. See her. I mean. I think she must have ah, escaped. Just before you came." The girl says, her eyes searching Taylors for something as she speaks.
"Oh. Thank god. I was so worried about her." Taylor says, breathing a sigh of relief. You turn to stare at your Master. There was... there was no way this was-
"If you don't mind me asking, why do you care?" The girl spoke up suddenly, drawing your Masters attention back to her. You merely raised your eyebrow.
"I told her I wanted to start a team, so that I could protect Parahumans from the Gangs. I don't think I was serious at the time. Just... desperate. But I told her I would come if she needed me. If she called. Protecting people doesn't just mean protecting people who are on my team, or people who owe me. It just means protecting people." Your Master explains. You get the sensation that she was voicing her thoughts for her self just as much as the other girl. As though testing out a creed or vow.
"That's-" The girl says suddenly, then stops, biting her lip.
"I'm... sure she would be thankful that you tried. Very thankful." She says instead of whatever she was about to say.
"Thanks. To be honest, I don't think she likes me very much though." Your Master admits sheepishly.
The girl stares at her, a difficult look in her eyes. Then sighs.
"I'm... I'm kind of tired so..." She says slowly, watching your Master the entire time.
"Oh! Sorry. Do you... need any healing...?" You Master asks hesitantly, though if that's because she is unsure of the offer, or unsure of her ability to follow through, you are unsure.
"No, but thank you." The girl says, before laying down, turning her body away from Taylor. Before your Master can fully rise from her chair to leave, she speaks once more.
"My name is Sabah. And I don't think Parian hates you as much as you think." She said, not bothering to fully turn around.
Your Master shrugs lightly at the statement, ever willing to assume the worst of the people she interacts with.
"I hope you feel better soon Sabah." She says quietly, as she turns the lights off and moves to leave the room.
The girl. Parian. Does not reply.
You are still trying to decide if you should explain to your Master that she was likely just speaking to Parian, when she veers off course from Director Piggot's office - ostensibly to tell her about what happened - and heads straight for the small gym you were in the other night. You follow her curiously, unsure of what she is planning, and can't help but sigh at the sheer determination your Master has developed with regards to making sure she trains as often as possible.
You've known people like this. Stamina Freaks. Muscle Brains. Battle Hungry Idiots.
People who have the energy and drive to be constantly doing things were very draining for this Emulation. And it is to your eternal chagrin that you have accidentally somehow crafted your Master into one. You suppose anyone would be, if they got such immediate results for their work.
"Teach me M-magic." Your Master says in a determined but slightly annoyed tone as she drops into a sitting position in the middle of the gym atop a foam mat probably used for sparring.
"I still don't know why you dislike the term so." You murmur as you manifest in front of her.
"Because it's crazy and people who think powers are magic are crazy." Your Master says flatly.
"Yes, you've explained that before. It just seems like something not worth concerning yourself with. I doubt anyone is going to argue what the specific force you are using is when you are applying it to their skulls, from a great distance, in overwhelming number." You point out. Power was like that. The strong had the right to be eccentric. To be strange. In many cases, they were powerful because they were strange.
This Emulation was an excellent example of such.
"For a delicate-looking woman, you sure say a lot of things I would expect to hear as Ghengis Khan quotes." Your Master says dryly, squinting at you through the glasses your not sure she actually needs anymore.
"What is best in life dear~" You say airily.
"That's not Ghengis Khan, that's Conan." She snips at you.
"And what would an impressionable young girl such as yourself have been doing reading Conan?" You ask her, genuinely curious. Your Master blushes.
"It isn't like everything I read has to be non-fiction..." She mutters at you, neatly sidestepping the point.
"Hmm. Very well. Allow me to explain to you the principles of Onmyodo. I must warn you - there is quite a lot of astrology involved." You say, returning to the original topic.
You note, with some glee, that your Master's eye twitches at that. Honestly. It's almost like she preferred the brutal physical conditioning of the first iteration of 'You'.
The Empire have been pushed back, but have not given up! Tomorrow will be busy, but with the Protectorate back, not all of it falls on your head. Choose 2.
[ ] Continue Training (Onmyodo, 5/10)
[ ] Complete Training (Onmyodo, 5/10) (5 Energy) (Choose an Extra Action)
[ ] Work on Crafting (Choose a PRT rating and type.)
[ ] Completely Craft Something (Choose a PRT rating and type.) (Will cost Energy)
[ ] Go on Patrol, Kaiser is still out there.
- [ ] Bring someone with you. (Victoria, Trainwreck, Aspirant)
[ ] Now might be a good time to go hold the Undersiders down and make them talk.
[ ] Hookwolf is still out there, and likely has a grudge against you. Best to handle that.
[ ] Sabah might have trouble getting home alone if the Empire is still about. That's probably why she's still with the PRT.
A/N: And! Were! Back! I considered leaving the Shikai option here, but I think I'll just throw that in as a free action whenever sleeping comes up. Seems stupid to waste actions on it.
759
Bowler Hat Guy
Jul 16, 2020
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Threadmarks Dominance 6.2
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Jul 17, 2020
#9,880
Spoiler: Choices:
Energy: 11
Current Training: Onmyodo (5/10) - (7/10), 3 Energy to Complete
Thursday, January 20th, 2011
PRT Headquarters, Brockton Bay
The day is hectic. With the majority of their manpower returned to them, the PRT has launched into gear with a certain degree of ruthlessness to them. Like a wounded beast, it seems the organization as a whole has decided to strike back at their attackers, in as quick and brutal a way as possible. You can see why. The Empire Eighty-Eight hasn't just made them look bad. It's taken from them. Taken lives. Taken territory. Taken reputation.
Regardless of whichever reason the PRT chooses to use as motivation, there is a noticeable lack of morale in PRT building. With rare exception, the troopers are dour when you see them moving about. Their conversation short and terse, even with each other. The heroes aren't much better. Assault, for all his usual friendliness, falls into an unnatural quiet whenever no one is around him. The Protectorate speedster, Velocity, moves about the city tirelessly, scouting out locations and bringing back the information on them, using a darker than normal suit that lacks his usual colors, and blends into the background of the city. The Wards aren't much better. All of them save Gallant seeming to be alternating between forlornly staring into space and desperately scrambling to find something to do.
It goes somewhat without saying, but the Director forbid them from involving themselves in the coming operation against the Empire.
They were not pleased by this fact.
Despite the begrudging respect the woman seems to have for your Master, the Director herself was very firm in requesting your Master cooperate with the PRT for the duration of the situation going forward. Your Master would usually take issue with this, you think, but it's hard to begrudge them their revenge - even if that's not why the Director made the request.
Simple understanding of how organizations like this work is more than enough for you to surmise her true reasons for the request. The Director needs the PRT to finish this conflict. Your Master can help, but the ultimate headline must not be 'Nexus Saves City'. Public image is too important to the Director for that. After all, if there is a Parahuman in the bay that invalidates her organization - then who would join that organization?
And so, you find yourself spending something of a peaceful morning with your Master, who is sitting in the Gym while Aspirant and Trainwreck do... whatever it is they do when no one is around. Trainwreck doesn't fit in most of the building, so you know he's been largely in the Garage with a stack of defunct parts the PRT gave him to amuse himself with. You've no doubt that they've been recording every moment of his Tinkering. Aspirant though... the last time you checked on him he was just sitting in front of a computer with one hand hanging in the air to the left of his seat, it's shape and texture fluctuating as he read.
"Emmy, are you Asian?" Your Master asks you suddenly, looking up from the horrible rendition of a single Japanese character she is inflicting on the card stock that was brought to her upon request. There are no tables in the Gym, but at a time like this, there aren't many other occupants either, which means it will serve just fine for your purposes. As such, your Master is sitting in a corner with her back against the wall, with all of her (many) failures splayed out around her on the ground.
"Not as such, no. Why?" You ask curiously, slightly taken aback by the question. You're pretty sure the closest thing your species has to the human concept of ethnicity is whether you were a Thinker or Warrior shard, and even that was somewhat nebulous given the fact that you were frequently traded between the two.
"You were a Japanese guy who taught me to use a katana. Then you were a Chinese guy who taught me martial arts. And now you've got me learning Japanese so that I can understand the magic you use. Which is, by the way, very obviously Asian." She points out, gesturing towards where you are floating lazily in the air with her pen.
You stare at her for a second, somewhat lost for words. You want to say it's purely a coincidence but she's not... wrong really...
"Where do the Godai originate?" You ask her instead, changing the topics suddenly and distracted from the point by directing your Master back towards her training.
"Miyamoto Musashi. Also, Asian." Your Master says pointedly. The fact that you can't refute her without explaining a lot more about your true nature than you are allowed to causes you to sweat slightly, as you try to think of an appropriate response.
"...Are you arguing with your Power?" An almost exasperated sounding voice calls out to you from the other end of the Gym.
"Clockblocker dear, women don't generally like it when you question them like that." You say, leaping on the topic change and turning to face the ginger boy in shorts and a t-shirt currently working his way through a pitiful workout that he obviously sorely needs. The simple domino mask he is wearing doesn't do much to obscure his identity, but you suppose appearances must be kept after all.
"I mean, women don't like an ignorant man either. No better way to learn than asking." He says with a shrug, returning to his work out on the machine, pumping his arms up and down slowly and methodically.
"Besides... none of us... really get... how you work..." He grunts slowly as he goes. You turn to your Master but she just rolls her eyes at you and returns to what she was doing, although you get the definite sense that this isn't over.
"It's very simple dear. Simpler even than you I dare say." You say dryly. "I turn into people. I can teach Taylor how to use their powers. Then I turn into someone else."
Clockblocker looks at you slightly askance as you explain, seemingly unhappy with the explanation, then replaces his weight on the rack and exhales sharply.
"Yeah but... most powers have a 'shtick'. A theme. A thing. I can kind of see yours from what she was saying, but it's kind of nebulous." Clockblocker explains, reaching for a water bottle and taking a pull from it.
"That's me. Nebulous~" You say, returning to floating half awake above your Master as she works. You notice out of the corner of your eye, the boy examining you pensively as you do so, before rising to leave the area. If you weren't positive they were recording your Master's ongoing adventures in bad calligraphy you'd almost think the boy was fishing for information. You suppose you would just have to look out for him. It did seem to be a universal constant that the whimsical ones were the most dangerous.
You would know, after all.
"You really don't have to do this," Sabah says stiffly as your Master trails along next to her, wearing a pair of grey PRT sweats. It is seriously beginning to irk you that she doesn't appear to own any actually proper clothes.
"I - no offence but the Empire are still kind of on a tear right now Sabah. I'd just feel a lot better if I could make sure you got home okay." Your Master says, looking pointedly at the dark-skinned girl, who is wearing similar clothes to herself. She bites her lip, clearly wanting to say something in response but choosing not to.
"Besides I um, wanted to ask you something..." Your Master says blushing. You raise a single eyebrow at the gesture.
Sabah has an entirely different reaction, one that is much more energetic than your own.
"You're really young! And I have family problems so it'sjustnotagoodtimeto-" She begins to say, slurring her words together as she speeds up. She seems genuinely panicked for some reason, which you find highly amusing.
"How exactly do you know Parian?" Your Master asks, embarrassed.
"I - wuh?" Sabah answers, her skin darkening in embarrassment.
"Back at the PRT you sort of made it seem like you knew Parian pretty well. A-and you were captured together with her so I thought that maybe..." You Master trails off.
"She - I mean, I go to the same school as her. You know how she rents space at the College for some of her work? I uh, met her there. A few times. She's... nice?" Sabah adds lamely.
You know, you really should get around to explaining to your Master that she is currently speaking to Parian, but the obvious disconnect and the girls clearly terrible ability to lie are just to amusing to allow to pass. It's not often you get this kind of benign amusement without having to set it up personally.
"I didn't know that. That she worked out of the College I mean." Your Master says pensively.
"Why did you want to know?" Sabah asks finally, apparently having found her equilibrium. You get the impression she would usually be much better at hiding her identity, but was slightly thrown by the fact that your Master hadn't already connected the dots and simply didn't know what to do about it.
"I wanted to see if she needed any healing. You were pretty hurt when we got to you, and when I asked Vicky she said Amy hasn't healed anyone that could be Parian." Taylor explains, concentrating for a second and allowing her hand to glow faintly in the evening light to illustrate her point.
"Huh. If she joined you, would she have to go out on patrols or anything? Maybe... fight the Empire?" Sabah asks hesitantly, her eyes darting left and right as she walks next to your Master, who's relative tallness makes them look more like two college girls walking home instead of a college girl and a high schooler.
"I thought Parian didn't fight though?" Your Master asks, somewhat perplexed.
"I - She doesn't, but isn't that why you wanted to recruit her?" Sabah asks apprehensively.
"Not really. I wanted to band together with other Parahumans so we could protect each other. My Dad was kidnapped right after I got my powers and it made me think. 'How many Parahumans were forced into the gangs, just like this?', and you know, I realized that we could stop this. All of this. If Parahumans didn't have to join a gang for protection, they probably wouldn't. Most of them, I mean. So if a bunch of us got together, and said 'If something happens to your family, we'll all be there to help' - wouldn't that go a long way to fixing things?" Your Master explains, becoming more animated as she speaks until she is flailing her arms about and pointing at nothing to punctuate her statements.
"I... see." Sabah says pensively, seemingly considering something and then blinking as she registers her surroundings.
"My Parents house is just on the corner there. I'll be fine from here." She says, stepping slightly away from your Master and gesturing.
"Oh, sure. Um. Have a good one?" Your Master states awkwardly, obviously not being accustomed to friendly separations like this.
"Good night Taylor." Sabah answers, turning and beginning to walk away.
Your Master stares after her for a few seconds, likely because she wants to avoid the 'talk' Piggot requested of her that morning, but eventually sighs and turns around to head back to PRT building at a sedate pace.
Then she stops and frowns, thinking.
"Did I ever tell her I wanted to recruit Parian?" Your Master asks suddenly.
It is at this point that you break out into cacophonous laughter, that only your Master can hear.
The PRT counterattack begins tomorrow, you'll be briefed in the morning. That should leave you with a little free time you think. Choose 1.
[ ] Continue Training (Onmyodo, 7/10)
[ ] Complete Training (Onmyodo, 7/10) (3 Energy) (Choose an Extra Action)
[ ] Work on Crafting (Choose a PRT rating and type.)
[ ] Completely Craft Something (Choose a PRT rating and type.) (Will cost Energy)
[ ] Now might be a good time to go hold the Undersiders down and make them talk.
[ ] Rally the troops! You should really work out some actual strategies with Trainwreck and Aspirant.
784
Bowler Hat Guy
Jul 17, 2020
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