Current Energy: 0?
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Time Bubble, Brockton Bay
POV: Nexus
It had started out as such a nice day too.
Taylor liked to consider herself fairly egalitarian. Could she abuse her reputation and considerable, incredibly well known at this point, ability to get everything she wanted at all times?
Probably, yes.
Would she?
Most certainly not.
It wasn't just that she had no particular need to do so either. It was the principle of the thing. If she threw her weight around, then the only difference between her and the bullies who had tormented her was scale.
Sure, she wasn't above using her influence to grease the wheels here or there - she was certain that nearly no one in the city could just walk into city hall and expect to see the mayor immediately, unlike herself - but where possible she always paid her dues. She tried to make sure she didn't let power go to her head. She lived in a world where examples of people doing just that littered the landscape.
So she paid her bills, she helped the government and the PRT where possible, and she generally tried very hard to tamp down on the sensation of boredom she got from a fight she could easily win.
At first, she had been frankly elated by Uber and Lee's little countermeasure. After all, half the reason no one could really fight her was the presence of her Spiritual Pressure, an all powerful form of crowd control which - now that she could have it ignore her allies - largely ended any fight before it even started.
There were exceptions of course. Brutes of significant strength could bull through it. The Simurgh hadn't seemed overly concerned with it - possibly because the thing didn't have a soul in the first place.
So, for the first little bit there, she had been more than happy to indulge her fight brain by getting into the thick of it with tweedle dee and tweedle dumb.
Really, she had figured that since at any point she could just blow the city up she was in no danger of anything truly bad happening to her, and since the dynamic dumbasses had gone to the trouble of setting up an empty city for her she didn't even need to worry about collateral damage.
This was, she had originally reflected, the perfect no consequences situation. She could definitely have fun with something like that.
Then there was the Tank.
She assumed it was a tank anyway. She wasn't much for vehicle terminology, but the building sized offering to all the gods of firepower that ever existed didn't feel like it could be adequately described as anything else.
That thing gave her the creeps, like somehow the idiot pair had helped create something almost Endbringer-esque in function into the world. Only instead of wielding water, or fire, or telekinesis like the others - this thing existed as the purest form of the concept of heavy weaponry.
It wasn't just how big it was. It wasn't the way that the Crystallized Wisdom told her it somehow weighed more than anything reasonably could without damaging the continent it was resting on. It was the slick, greasy wrongness that it emanated the minute she had laid eyes on it. It was like someone had taken the purifying rituals of Onmyoudou, and flipped them on their heads. Like every evil spirit, angry ghost, or other similar horror she could easily think of had been bound up in the thing. Every iron plate, every tortured piece of machinery, every weapon on the thing, practically howled with the malicious presence housed in the thing.
That was about the point at which she had decided that this encounter definitively could have consequences, and that she wasn't having fun anymore. The problem was, try as she might, she had never actually had to deal with this many individual foes capable of matching her physical strength. Oh, she was still stronger than them individually, but the addition of the device that removed her greatest crowd control tool also removed her ability to clear space so she could prepare a more powerful attack. Emmy and Jess had been pressed just getting her a couple seconds to fire upon the empowered Spree clones, let alone work out a way to breach that hell tank thing.
She hated to admit it, but while she didn't feel out matched, she did feel outnumbered. And since literally everyone present was suddenly brute enough to seriously injure her, she had to make a tactical decision.
And that decision had been to call in the cavalry.
It had been harder than normal. Like trying to cut through solid concrete with a spoon. So, she had needed to visualize it differently. She was in a time bubble. She wasn't bridging the Gap between two points - Gaps never did that in the first place.
Instead, she was removing everything that separated 'here' from her allies.
She couldn't really fully control the resulting rip in space time, because frankly she only barely understood what she had actually done in the first place - but it was enough to her that she had put out the call - and whoever came, came.
"What the fuck is this now?" Trainwreck asked her within ten seconds of breaching the Gap into the grey world around her, gesturing down into the city with a thumb at the clearly visible vehicle obscuring much of the landscape.
"Don't laugh." She quickly stated, surreptitiously shooting a look at Jess that said 'don't say anything'.
"What are we laughing at?" Aspirant asked curiously as he bounded into sight, then paused when he found there to be no enemies immediately in reach.
"Nothing!" She shouted perhaps a tad too quickly.
"Boss, I hate to be a fuck ass about this and shit, but when I said 'What the fuck is this now' I really want you to know I put a pretty heavy emphasis on the word 'now' - on account of whatever the fuck that is turning its fucktillion turrets towards us and shit." Trainwreck insisted before she could continue to formulate a reasonable way to say 'I had a hard time with Uber and Leet'.
Unfortunately, she now apparently had a secretary for that.
"Uber and Leet trapped us in this big Grey Boy thing and then they blew her leg off and now we need help." She answered, frowning with a tired look on her face as her sword returned to its base form - the transformation evidently too difficult for her to maintain for long periods of time yet.
Taylor shot Jess a scathing look at this admission.
"Okay look, I wasn't taking them seriously before-" She started.
"Fair." Trainwreck intoned easily.
"-but I am now, because they kinda sorta figured out how to Trump one of my better powers-" she continued.
"Alarming." Aspirant noted .
"-and they've got a magic demon tank fueled by damned souls or something- yes, Huntsman?" She paused to respond as Oliver lifted a hand in the air.
"So… other people are doing weird magic shit now?" He asked curiously.
"...Yes." She responded tersely.
She had no idea how that was possible given everything she understood about her power, but it was definitely one of the first things she was going to investigate when this nightmare was over.
"So then, we should consider that… thing… roughly comparable to you in destructive firepower?" Parian asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest. In answer, Taylor merely gestured at the stretch of city the tank had previously ripped apart for emphasis. Trainwreck whistled.
"Yeah, okay. It's gonna be that kinda day." He said after a moment before adding, "still gonna laugh at you later though".
"Taylor? What- what exactly is happening?" Danny asked as he, the kids, and Mouse Protector appeared.
Taylor groaned, but quickly repeated her quick explanation of events for her father and co.
At which point, Mun started laughing at her.
"O-oh my god you got your ass beat by Uber and Leet! Oh my god! Oh my god!" She screeched, cackling loudly.
"...I apologize." Mem stated for her sister.
Taylor chose to summarily ignore the rest of the group, instead turning to pull open the biggest Gap she could to obscure them from the Tanks weaponry. So far the thing had held back on firing on her, though she couldn't fathom why.
'Emmy?' She asked, checking in with her friend by way of switching to his perspective.
Only to find him darting in and out of melee with everyone on the ground around him, making liberal use of his ability to become intangible to evade summary execution by the overwhelming numbers around him.
She had wondered why he never did this before, but never thought to ask.
'Distracting them. Leet is down. Don't know if that time thing they do can fix him or not. They haven't used it yet so I assume there are limitations.' Her partner bit out quickly.
'Can you get inside the Tank? It's the major obstacle here - and I'm pretty sure that's where they're keeping whatever is letting them control time in here.' She asked quickly, even as she took sudden notice of the swarms of somewhat oversized pigeons wearing small helmets flying in formation overhead.
"Weird but I'll take it." She decided instantly, making use of her most treasured ability.
The ability to pretend weird bullshit was normal.
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Time Bubble, Brockton Bay
POV: Multiversal Emulator
You glance at the tank while making use of your intangibility to vanish from sight in order to direct Uber and one of the Teeth to nearly accidentally Maim each other.
This has been your strategy. You are too low on power to safely handle everyone here nonlethally. Or even lethally really. Under normal circumstances you would have been ripped apart by the sheer numbers of your opposition at this point. So instead, you are mostly distracting them by popping in and out of existence at opportune moments - though they are much too on alert for you to do much with the surprise.
Doing so causes you near physical pain however. This is a fundamentally incorrect use of this ability. Using it in combat in any capacity - even once - is fundamentally the same as if Clockblockers power decided one day to let him use it up to fifty yards away without touching something.
It is shockingly, stupidly, fundamentally wrong. You may have done it once or twice in the past - when absolutely pressed - but using it consecutively the way you are is something only possible because of your sapience, and your fundamental commitment to doing what you can for your Master regardless of the rules you are supposed to operate under. It isn't even a matter of your Shard self allowing or disallowing it. Rules are rules, and the fact that you aren't following them is fundamentally supposed to be impossible. It'd be like a human deciding to have twelve fingers one day, and then simply doing it.
And yet, here you are, feeling the twinge of wrongness and pain on an almost spiritual level as you push yourself in and out of melee in order to prevent your Masters foes from properly regrouping.
'I will sneak inside.' You respond, silently ghosting towards the tremendous metal monstrosity only to find yourself repelled as you attempt to ghost through its outer shell.
You frown, then look about the thing, searching for a way in until you spot a hatch atop it. You look back at your surroundings and your frown deepens.
You probably won't be able to get the thing open without being noticed.
'Can you distract them?' You ask cautiously as your absence finally gets noticed by your foes.
'Oh, I think we'll manage.' Taylor responds in a sing song voice just in time for a flight of pigeons to flash past overhead.
That in and of itself wouldn't be so weird if you were in a place that had pigeons. Several things about this particular fly by are distressing however.
For one, the birds are… disturbingly fast. Almost moving at a speed you'd expect from a fighter jet.
Second, as the pigeons - which have gone largely unnoticed by your enemies - wheel back around, a childlike voice begins to call out joyously, drawing your attention to the crowlike half humanoid form of Mun as she leads the group.
"Dun dudda da da, dun dudda da da~" She half screeches and half sings.
"...Ride of the Valkyries?" Uber mutters, before paling and immediately diving towards Spree.
"CLONES! CLONES NOW!" He screams as the Pigeons pass by again on wings of white hot fury.
And you really do mean that literally, as the birds swiftly begin to glow as they pass by overhead, dropping glowing orbs of multicolored energy that promptly explode across the sudden expanse of Spree clones that pop up just a bit too late to fully block the explosive fury of the feathered creatures.
The results are extremely destructive and somewhat disturbingly visceral - something Uber can attest to as he shakily pushes a duplicate of Spree - missing its arms and legs and screaming - off of him to stand up.
"Oh man she's totally trying to kill us. Holy shit." He babbles, slapping at his waist until he evidently finds the correct object, which instantly resets the area of the battlefield you are standing in and - consequently - bring Leet back to consciousness, fully armored and blatantly confused.
"Wha-" He blurts out.
"How long do we need to fucking do this?" Uber asks urgently.
"Not- not much longer?" Leet returns in a daze.
"Okay… okay we can do this. Activate the thing." Uber insists, as a Gap opens not too far away and Trainwreck barrels out of it.
"INCOMING FUCKERS!" He yowls, steam flowing off of his armor and leaving a streamer behind him as the rest of the Oathbound begin to arrive, and the Pigeons fly by overhead, just waiting for a lone target to hit.
Leet glances from the oncoming combatants to Uber and back again nervously.
"I don't think that's a good-" He says slowly.
"Dude. I am working my ass off here. I need you to work with me okay?" Uber hisses even more urgently.
Leet looks genuinely conflicted for a moment - almost seeming more willing to let Trainwreck and co smear him across the pavement than whatever Uber is suggesting - but eventually nods hesitantly.
"If you say so man…" He acquiesces before pulling out two vials of some kind of liquid.
You are many things, but stupid is not among them - so before Trainwreck can even reach the battle line that the Teeth have drawn in front of the tank, you burst into motion, attempting to slap both vials to the ground before either can be injected, but only managed to remove the one Leet is holding - as Uber is somehow still alert enough to evade your sudden approach.
"Shit!" Leet curses, jerking away from you and making a strange gesture at the inhuman figures manning several of the tanks turrets, causing dozens of them to screech in a metallic sounding voice before bounding down to rush you and assist in the fighting.
"Remember, reverse this shit later okay?!" Uber yells, as he injects whatever the hell that was into himself, before turning and sprinting into the melee, already significantly faster than he had been previously.
Annoyed, you vanish again, then return to your task, climbing the Tank, becoming tangible just long enough to pull the hatch open - and disappearing inside.
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Time Bubble, Brockton Bay
POV: Nexus
"Oppose, Nemesis" She chanted casually, flicking her blade to the side and descending from her position over the battlefield towards Uber, who was suddenly moving much faster than he should be.
"Has it ever occurred to you guys that you could probably take out an Endbringer with that kind of weapon?" She asked in mild annoyance as she drew even with the man who - counter to his earlier jovial demeanour - seemed somewhat frantic as he immediately pivoted to stare at her.
"Thought about it. Didn't care." He responded tersely, his eyes - now an eerie right glow to them - flicking across her form so fast she genuinely had to wonder if he was even actually seeing anything.
She felt an instantaneous sense of revulsion just looking at him as he spoke, and was struck by how jarring it was. It wasn't just his casual dismissal of the Endbringers as his problem. There was something else there. Something she didn't get enough time to think about as the strung out looking Uber darted away from her to punch Aspirant.
She wasn't worried. Atop his own natural durability, and his aura, she had further enhanced nearly everyone present with runes before they had descended to fight.
So she was more than somewhat disturbed when Uber's hand became suddenly clawed, swiping across Aspirant's side with enough force to spin him away from his current foe - Vex, she thought the capes name was - and allowing said foe to envelop Aspirant in his sharpened forcefield.
She barely even considered her next action, sweeping her blade horizontally in Uber's direction and experimentally solidifying the air around him with her power before he could follow up.
Only… he kept moving. Not so fast that she was unable to now intervene, but much faster than someone trapped in solid air should be.
She felt her sword straining in her grip as Uber moved, and was so irked by the resistance, that leapt forward and just kicked the guy as hard as she could, sending him bouncing away from her friends.
She was briefly concerned about how hard she had kicked him - until he all but teleported in front of her again, with his mouth open and slavering as he lurched towards her throat.
"Did… did you turn yourself into a fucking vampire?" She asked incredulously as she jerked away from him, finding herself forced to put considerably more strength than she would like into deflecting his clawed hands than she'd like.
She attempted to resolve that by tagging him twice to reduce both his strength and speed by thirty percent, and was more annoyed than surprised when the device on his belt merely lit up again.
"Pretty cool right?" Uber said with an almost manic glee as the broken jaw she had given him when she kicked him away healed over, clicking directly back into place as though nothing had happened.
"I mean, I'm a bit hangry right now, but besides that - no idea why anyone would dodge this. I feel great."
Taylor looked up then down again at him in annoyance.
"Sun doesn't burn or anything?" She asked.
Uber for his part, literally hissed at her in response.
Taylor glanced back at her friends fighting one more time, catching Mouse Protector, Danny, and Jess fighting in a circle together with a surprising amount of skill, and Mem liberally blasting large groups away with Rune Magic between throwing up sporadic shields to deny the light fire coming from the tank they were all trying to reach.
"Fuck it." She cursed. Fine, Uber was a vampire now. It was stupid and she hated it, but there was no use complaining about it.
She couldn't use alot of her powers on him - which was annoying. And she wasn't entirely sure anyone else could easily handle his enhanced speed and strength.
So she defaulted back to the first thing she had ever been taught.
She rushed forward, exchanging blows with him for a bit before allowing her Thinker power to fully take over. Like a switch being flipped, she went from an acrobatic form of combat she would call 'cool looking', to standing like an almost literal animal as all of her attacks became instantly more lethal and vicious.
As she fought, she honed all her instincts on seeking an opening to capitalize on - something that was infuriatingly difficult against Uber - and finally she found it, between a decapitating blow from her sword that he blocked on the forearms of his armor, and a burst of magical energy from her open palm that would have probably eviscerated him if it had landed, but that he hurriedly dodged away from.
Seizing upon it with all her might, Taylor reinforced her body to the maximum, converting all the power her various abilities generated into as much Aura as she could physically muster - and mule kicked Uber across the horizon and through several buildings.
Then, because she doubted that would do it, she started charging a larger attack using Onmyoudo, sparing the important time it took to convert everything in her Aura back into magical energy.
Honestly, she could probably end the fight faster by concentrating on more easily taken down enemies - but as long as Uber and Leet could just reverse time to before the damage happened, there really wasn't much point.
Glancing over her shoulder at the tank even as she could see Uber sprinting back towards her, she grunted, and began laying down artillery fire while the pigeons strafed the idiot.
Honestly, what idiot turns themself into a vampire?
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Time Bubble, Brockton Bay
POV: Multiversal Emulator
The inside of the tank is full of narrow, unnaturally hot corridors that hiss with an unpleasant sulfurous smell at random intervals. It is drastically less pleasant to observe than the things outer shell - which is saying something given how hellish the entire device appears from the outside.
The stench of blood and misery fills the corridors as you carefully scoot along them, and much to your personal annoyance you find yourself incapable of becoming intangible to traverse the space.
Yet another annoyingly specific technology clearly designed just to mess with you in particular.
Carefully, you edge your way forward, doing your best to avoid touching anything. You have no idea what half of this stuff does, but many of the mechanisms inside the tank have formations on them not entirely dissimilar to alchemy circles - although that clearly isn't what they are, or were, used for.
As you meander through the cramped tunnels, a sudden jet of acrid smelling steam blast you partially, nearly blinding you in one eye save for your quick reflexes allowing you to shield your face with your jacket.
The entire inside of this hulking monstrosity feels distinctly familiar to your Emulation for some reason. Like he'd been in a similar, horrible tunnel before. But… not one exactly like this.
The sensation bothers you all the way down the branching corridors as you search the innards of the machine for any sign of either it's driver, or it's core. But for the most part you just find more pipes and channels directing power through the thing - channels you are afraid to touch for fear of a rupture vaporizing you. The entire journey is disturbingly quiet, strangely insulated from the sounds of combat that must be coming from outside. But all you can hear in here is the subtle sound of your own breathing - and the piercing wail of steam randomly firing through the behemoth.
Eventually and at length, you find yourself in front what you can only describe as an enormous sealed blast door. The metal of the door is glowing orange with the heat of whatever is on the other side, and scrawled across it almost childishly, in letters scratched into the surface, are the words 'Here Be Dragons'.
You consider using Alchemy to the door, but knowing your current limitations, you decide against it. It's nearly time now. Nearly the moment of change.
And you can't afford that right now.
So, steeling yourself against the coming pain, you pull off your jacket, wrap your hands in it as best you can, and begin to heave greatly on the large hatch at the center of the door. An angry hiss to match that of the steam billowing around you escapes your lips as the heat nearly burns away your clothing instantly, and rapidly begins to sear your hands as you continuously clasp and unclasp them around the wheel.
Finally, you manage to draw the door open - and are immediately blasted by a gust of burning hot air that you're fairly certain burns your eyebrows off practically instantaneously.
Then your eyes adjust to the sudden brightness inside, and you grin, as you spot a number of high tech looking devices lining the walls of the circular chamber beyond.
Stepping through, you find yourself on a suspended walkway above a massive white hot glowing orb of pure power. From the orb below, hundreds of pipes and cables stretch, leading through the machine, and in particular, to several of the devices lining the walls of the room you are in.
Sure the room is hotter than hell, but you only need to be in here for a minute longer. You just… need…
You pause as you step toward a device on the wall with the intent to rip it apart, feeling the walkway beneath you tremble, and seeing the orb of power beneath you begin to vibrate violently.
Then it starts to uncoil, like a massive flaming serpent, and you feeling a sudden sinking sensation in the pit of your stomach.
"I… know you…" The serpentine flame says as it stretches up to fill the chamber, and the bulkhead door seals behind you.
It's eyes, such as they are really just spots where an absence of flame creates the faint outline of eyes, narrow as they stare down at you.
You, quite unfortunately, remember this voice.
You remember having a raucous old time fighting it. You remember dying with it.
You remember drowning it.
"I 'ill you!" The spirit howls at you, sending gouts of spinning flame rushing throughout the room towards you.
You consider your course of action very carefully in that split second.
And then you decide that as long as you wreck every device in this room, nothing else matters.
So you rapidly spin around, continuing your headlong rush towards the nearest expensive looking device, allowing the flames to lick across your back, blasting you forward and scorching the flesh from you as you slam into the wall and use your burnt hands to hold fast to it.
Frantically, you begin slamming your fists into the machine, which is surprisingly sturdy for something so complex looking, until you find something familiar looking and slam your open palm down on it - instantly transmuting as much of the iron as you can into javelin like spikes targeted at everything else in the room.
-1 Energy
Your plan… almost works, as you find yourself slumping to the ground amidst your handy work. Your body - at this point practically collapsing in on itself amidst the sheer amount of you that is scorched down to the nerves and blackened like charcoal - hurts in ways you weren't certain were possible before this point. You find yourself wondering how humans deal with this kind of thing, knowing they will never recover from it.
Then you spot the single remaining - unbroken - device behind the spirit, the spike you had aimed at it having been melted before it could ever reach the device.
And you groan as the damage you have wrought is all instantly reset.
Irately, and with a supreme force of will, you lever yourself to your feet.
You have one more chance.
One.
You don't intend to waste it by dying.
With a growl that pushes itself up out of desiccated lungs, you lurch forward, mustering all your strength in a mad dash around the circular walkway towards the one device that has to be destroyed.
The spirit obviously doesn't care to allow that, and it begins flood the room with enough heat and flame to instantly cook you from the inside out, if you weren't previously empowered by your Master.
In a desperate bid to make just a bit more distance, you reflexively slap the walkway beneath you, converting the entire thing to a much larger amount of frozen water that takes the initial brunt of the flames.
-1 Energy
Your current form instantly begins to fizzle as the last of your power drains out of you at this, and you begin to struggle violently against your instinctual urge to essentially 'turn off' until your swap process completes. You hastily slam one leg down in front of you, the nature of the tank preventing you from just ceasing to exist as you properly should. The patchwork bit of quasi real flesh that makes up your 'true' form instantly begins to melt beneath you, and at once a scream of genuine anguish escapes your mouth in a distressing mixture of all the emulations that have gone before you.
You suddenly no longer have Scars infinite wealth of drive and concentration to fight the pain. The agony of having your entire being melt beneath the titanic flame of the spirit that was once Lung is almost enough to bring you to curl up into a ball and cry. You find yourself revisiting your previous thoughts on how any human could withstand such torture, and find yourself coming to a surprising realization on the topic.
Human's were surprisingly capable of some frankly impossible, illogical, stupid things when sufficiently motivated. By friends, fears, loves and hatreds.
And you… have all that don't you? You have more of a connection to the people in your bizarre family than you ever could have with the rest of your actual species. You've seen them struggle, and fight, and bleed for what they want.
And that realization sees you take another fleeting step through pain and hysteria flooding your unshielded mind.
And then another.
And another.
Until finally, between one moment and the next, you stretch your hand out towards the last machine. The one that - even through the fog of personal misery and suffering you are operating under, you dimly understand must be destroyed.
But you can't… quite… breach it with your current strength.
As you are, you aren't much more than a thinly veiled bundle of skin and nerve endings, roughly approximating a humanoid. Enough to feel pain. Enough to be killed even.
But not enough to lever open a solid steel, likely enchanted, piece of tinkertech with your fists.
So you do something else that you never thought was a viable option for any of your kind.
You observe and acknowledge your limits. The time between one emulation and the next. The absolute impossibility of bypassing those limits under the watchful eye of the network. The chances of even the strongest of prayers reaching your shard self, begging to route extra power to your current form, wasting years of its accumulated lifespan to achieve this one single, largely irrelevant goal.
And then you do it anyway.
IMPORTANT NOTE - PLEASE READ -
Like all other new Emulation choices - this first vote is entirely a write-in. Write in as many settings as you want. The top three will go on to be voted on a second time, to decide which setting we'll be using.
Some simple rules. I'm gonna try a one hour Moratorium on this one. I'll set the board to automatically open voting about an hour after this post. From that point, you can vote for as many settings as you want. At approximately 2pm my time - so, about Eight hours from when this is posted - I'll close the preliminaries and pick out the top three to get voted on.
Be nice. Don't insult anyone. Debate as civilly as you can. Don't be Salty. All that usual stuff. We're all here to have fun - so try to remember that if you start to get heated.
Deep in the bowels of shard space, something profoundly strange stirs.
[ ] Write-In
A/N: Well, here we are again. God help us all. I'm very tired and running on fumes so - I'm gonna vanish pretty much as soon as I post this. Feel free to debate or argue about anything you like - I'd like to note that I don't hold anything against even people who dislike my story or writing choices - but I can already tell this one will be a bit… contentious, if only based on the last one.
Have fun, be nice, godspeed drawing the battle lines.
I'm going to sleep.
Scheduled vote count started by Bowler Hat Guy on Aug 5, 2021 at 8:24 PM, finished with 1810 posts and 246 votes.
65 people have voted
[X] Annatar/No
Sleeping Moon EVA-Saiyajin PrinceofDoom Markedpariah CrimsonFate lazypanda Vilegrave Argent-Thyme Mountain_Elements Energy ChaosTheVoid BlackCoat13 casinodoug YCG Darkcore41 Mordiggian DragonBard tenchifew Linecier Rockinalice spiritualatheist Nulthazor Inverted Fallecy bms111 Sanner36 I Am T.E.W! Mecharic Tsotate Wentley Arksurek BobtheNORMALguy Scotchtape27 drizztgeass Kristoffer0406 Marshall817 Gorgoth Epro987654 Sword_of_Rupture Copacetic_Cloud DarkWolf324 Robo Jesus vaar Teine Sidhe SaxDrumsViolins AzuraNyx Shovah Preventer Squall Zipf Daredevil_Dave Portec Kraftykidd Lord Sia Rogowaz SilverEagle21 Alyuna Daxus1120 Silent59 raidislamy Thozmp NightxAngel Nice Oneautumnleaf Tackyseven Mljac2000 Lentomo
62 people have voted
[X]Annatar/Yes
Aeon arcana tempus Fan Atlasofremembrance VortexRunner279 creativity's_darkside Redikai MadMaud Orion Ultor justquestin2004 JustGazzer Parzival95 Walk Away From Light NathanMedium DiceArt Axel Fones tri2 Kirbstomp Quelthias Alias Fakename sonicyoash Ghost084 Red Bovine Demensional Wonderer FictionPack soumilplays03 geogio13 serbobiv TirelessTraveler Citino Na'vi bLuewErewOlf25 VexMasterTyrant Aedrik Doubletree RLDX omni001 RefugeInAbsrdity Flightstrike ArcanePariah FrazerZero Radrahil guest-nobody-important Tired Titaness LordOfFigaro Phyrexia Unbound Captain Hunt Anacromacia DbRevned Kiera donnyschellekens Tyrant_Of_The_Void The Richmaster Xryuran The Stormbringer hildabun951 simon s. andersen Kabutokun100 Annatar Mad_Sage Karkinos Kingell26 Naty VampirelordX
23 people have voted
[X] Simple Energy Barrier (A physical barrier, preventing attacks from reaching the walls of the building)
Red Mage Alonne DeclanDSI werdZerg13 Commando2341 Khanar Yuki no Yue Saint_SoftStar AzaggThoth henkalv Cosmic Grass_Knot_Hammock Motorata Spector47 shmone else's problem zagan Athain drake_azathoth Zephyriphoenix Fireknight assana73 Hi-Cierra Sulesse CJL
19 people have voted
[X] It's preeeeety Clear that a Master did this. See if you can use Runes or Onmyoudou to make Mastering impossible. If not, at least make it significantly harder.
Red Mage Alonne DeclanDSI werdZerg13 Commando2341 Khanar Yuki no Yue Saint_SoftStar AzaggThoth henkalv Cosmic Grass_Knot_Hammock Motorata drake_azathoth Zephyriphoenix Fireknight assana73 Hi-Cierra Orchard BlueBezerk
15 people have voted
[X] Who actually owns the Trainyard? Could you buy it? For… reasons.
Dreth ShanceAlot Dalxein TheWoo Some_guy_161 Fenix987654321 StrugglingMind Ttran2323 jef13123 D.Rockstar Hellarion EternlDusk Skeleton Man Hunter1933 Red123
11 people have voted
[X] Dome Shield (The Energy Barrier gains improved durability, and preemptively activates and surrounds the property in response to attack - blocking physical entry or exit)
kratos1990 Aadarm DXDragon Rivain Pete RandomDwarf LollipoPReapeR Seidr Jjjfg TruckerMan edthere
11 people have voted
[X] The City owns the run down Ferry right? Could you buy it?
Dreth ShanceAlot Dalxein TheWoo Some_guy_161 Fenix987654321 StrugglingMind jef13123 Hellarion Hunter1933 Red123
10 people have voted
[X] Complete Training (Warrior Monk) Costs 1 Energy. Choose Two More Actions.
Great Oak Seed kratos1990 Mor_Drakka DXDragon Pete RandomDwarf Damian45 Time's Edge LollipoPReapeR TruckerMan
10 people have voted
[X] Looks like it's safe to let loose for a bit. Let Taylor get it out of her system.
High Roi Code Djiin Doccer Phearo Jonasquinn Acolyte TheATS TruckOnEmptyRoad Bowler Hat Guy Aergia
10 people have voted
-[X] Break their gadget with alchemy if it gets too far.
High Roi Code Djiin Doccer Phearo Jonasquinn Acolyte TheATS TruckOnEmptyRoad Bowler Hat Guy Aergia
9 people have voted
-[X]Aspirant
Great Oak Seed kratos1990 Pete RandomDwarf Damian45 Time's Edge TruckerMan DXDragon edthere
9 people have voted
-[X]Trainwreck
Great Oak Seed kratos1990 Pete RandomDwarf Damian45 Time's Edge TruckerMan DXDragon edthere
8 people have voted
[X] Have Taylor take some time out to fortify the Heap with Onmyoudo.
IronyIsGood Gooey lebaker Iridesce The_Moment Aadarm Hellarion Magister74
8 people have voted
[X] Christen the Bratpack with Aisha's new weapon.
Wukong Mystearica LostAncilla DragonGrimoire MinionNumberQ xXxBlueViperxXx Iridesce Kalibruis
7 people have voted
[X] Madison
TheUltimateBalanceChaos DemiRapscallion Powergoat 2quik4u Kymecho Architect Ironturtle Phearo
8 people have voted
[X] Miss Kim
High Roi Code Djiin Yoav the badass FeepingCreature beingme Sylent-M Absque Zer0 Chaotic_Homepath
8 people have voted
[X] Theo Anders
omnimercurial Trainerorigin Borderline Valley CollectionHL Confuzzled Twisted_Truth Dperson3569 Death Doggz
6 people have voted
[X] Complete Training (Warrior Monk) Costs 5 Energy
drake_azathoth Zephyriphoenix Fireknight assana73 Hi-Cierra BlueBezerk
6 people have voted
[X] Overhaul, your's and the team's costumes and equipment needs some tune ups, brainstorm with each other on what we all need and want. Give Emmy equipment also so they won't resort much to their emulated powers too much.
lebaker Hellarion EternlDusk Red123 Magister74 Skeleton Man
6 people have voted
[X] Take Time Off (Oliver)
kratos1990 DXDragon Pete RandomDwarf Time's Edge Seidr
6 people have voted
[X] Jess (1)
TheWoo Fenix987654321 StrugglingMind Ttran2323 Hellarion Skeleton Man
6 people have voted
[X]Tyrant_Of_The_Void/Yes
Fenix987654321 StrugglingMind BMW Hellarion Beto Skeleton Man
6 people have voted
[X] Write-In For Showdown
Confuzzled Twisted_Truth Dperson3569 Architect Ironturtle SirNagsALot darkstar99
6 people have voted
-[X] The biggest issue is property damage and civilian injuries. Tell Uber and Leet you want to have a good fight, but not here.
Confuzzled Twisted_Truth Dperson3569 Architect Ironturtle SirNagsALot darkstar99
6 people have voted
--[X] The Trainyard works well though. Gaps are such wonderful things. Try and get the camera's too when you move the fight elsewhere.
Confuzzled Twisted_Truth Dperson3569 Architect Ironturtle SirNagsALot darkstar99
6 people have voted
[X] Plan: Lets do a live experiment!
Ironbread 2quik4u ImBuda 10moorem Absque Zer0 Kymecho
6 people have voted
-[X] Priority is avoid civilian casualties and massive infrastructure damage.
Ironbread 2quik4u ImBuda 10moorem Absque Zer0 Kymecho
6 people have voted
-[X] Seeing they have counters with your Shinigami powers, how about lets experiment on the two idiots with all of our magical abilities from Chi, Onmyoudo, Vytal and Magecraft.
Ironbread 2quik4u ImBuda 10moorem Absque Zer0 Kymecho
6 people have voted
-[X] Quickly finish them off priority while analyzing the effects of your powers on them with all your Thinker abilities and Ozma in tandem.
Ironbread 2quik4u ImBuda 10moorem Absque Zer0 Kymecho
5 people have voted
-[X] Know that your team would need constant updates on your equipment and tools, chime in if scheduling it as a team activity would be good.
lebaker Hellarion EternlDusk Red123 Magister74
5 people have voted
-[X] Exotic Materials, Rare Materials anything that you have available or your friends found. The Ziz bodyparts also? Did it arrived already?
lebaker Hellarion EternlDusk Red123 Magister74
5 people have voted
[X] Patrol The City (Choose a target area: The Docks)
Great Oak Seed kratos1990 Pete RandomDwarf Damian45
4 people have voted
[X] It's preeeeetty clear that a Master did this. See if you can use Runes or Onmyoudou to make Mastering impossible. If not, at least make it significantly harder.
shmone else's problem zagan Athain CJL
3 people have voted
[X] Hypothetically, your Master doesn't mind Vicky's offer of a blind date with some girl she's never met before…
Spector47 Fouredged Sword Mor_Drakka
3 people have voted
[X] Sorcerous Amplifier (A between the Wardstone and the Tower that allows your Master to temporarily boost her magical strength, enough to allow a normal Wizard to qualify as a siege weapon. Your Master is not a normal Wizard. Weakens the Heap temporarily with each use.)
Ralyx Great Oak Seed Time's Edge
3 people have voted
[X] Hypothetically, your Master doesn't mind Vicky's offer of a blind date with some boy she's never met before...
Fouredged Sword D.Rockstar AramilOniasha
3 people have voted
--[X] Guardian Angel - The Ever Vigilant Steel
xXxBlueViperxXx Iridesce DragonGrimoire
3 people have voted
--[X] Guardian Angel is a multi-tiered Noble Phantasm in the form of a bastard sword, designed to "grow" alongside its user's mastery, through seals that allows use of more and more capabilities once unlocked. But at the core of this lies a hidden seal- one that holds this Noble Phantasm's true form- capable of being accessed only when special conditions are met.
xXxBlueViperxXx Iridesce DragonGrimoire
3 people have voted
[X] You can't completely focus on personal defense and training while also sweeping the city for signs of this new Master. Teach your avian helpers how to communicate so that they can alert you to threats.
Mor_Drakka Pete RandomDwarf
3 people have voted
[X] Danny (3)
Red123 Some_guy_161 Ttran2323
3 people have voted
[X] Tyrant_Of_The_Void/No
JustDusty D.Rockstar Hunter1933
3 people have voted
[X] Nexus and Emmy's Battle Plan
Doccer Chaotic_Homepath Tok
3 people have voted
-[X] Emmy keeps an eye out for traps and civilians while searching for the limitations of this monochrome world. But largely stays out if the fight for Taylor's sanity and enjoyment. Expend energy only if explicitly necessary. Top energy expended: 3.
Doccer Chaotic_Homepath Tok
3 people have voted
-[X] Jess does the same mostly. Plays goalie for anything damaging that goes out of bounds. Only steps in if Taylor needs help.
Doccer Chaotic_Homepath Tok
3 people have voted
-[X] Taylor Enjoys herself!
Doccer Chaotic_Homepath Tok
2 people have voted
[X] What is it called? (Short Memory)
Wukong Mystearica
2 people have voted
[X] What does it do? (Prevents others from noticing or paying attention to the sword while unsheathed, in a similar vein to Aisha's canon stranger power)
Wukong Mystearica
2 people have voted
--[X] What does it do? (It summons a giant kaiju Stand with its own giant sword)
Wukong DragonGrimoire
2 people have voted
[X] Patrol The City (The Docks)
Time's Edge TruckerMan
2 people have voted
[X] Take Time Off
Great Oak Seed Rivain
See more…
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488
Bowler Hat Guy
Sep 24, 2021
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Sep 28, 2021
#41,136
Current Energy: 20
Current Emulation Status: (Post located Here - way too long to include at the beginning of each update.)
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Time Bubble, Brockton Bay
POV: Multiversal Emulator
"Damn. I am on fire lately. Seriously, you have no idea how normal this is for me. Well, you know. New me." You drawl, driving your fist - which is still firmly pressed against the metal panel of the hunk of junk you're here to break - straight through the machine and into the wall up to your elbow.
Where it promptly gets stuck.
"Hm." You muse to yourself, eyeing the new hole critically.
"Kill!" The giant burning ghost guy behind you screams, blasting a gout of flame at you, that you dodge by flexing those brand new core muscles and jumping upward - holding yourself in the air by the arm still lodged in the wall.
You use your free hand to mime holding an invisible skateboard, which you happily perform a trick with. An… invisible trick.
"You like that? Been a while but I'm pretty sure if I had to-" You start blithely, allowing yourself to fall to the ground to dodge yet more flames as they rush towards you, then jumping again rotating so your arms outstretch to either side of you and your body is held at a right angle to the walkway beneath you, which is - quite frankly - starting to melt.
"Superman! Kick Flip! Dunno what they call this one!" You cheer until eventually you get bored of the joke and - presumably - so does Lungs ghost, because it rears back and blasts flame in all directions, an attack that is literally undodgeable by sheer dint of it hitting everything in the room at once.
"I! Kill you! Become Ruler! Become GOD!" Lung screams as he thrashes wildly about.
"Yeah I dunno about god exactly." You muse, yanking your arm free of the wall, grabbing your sword from where it hangs on your back, and swinging downward with it - flinging apart the encroaching wave of burning death before it can reach you.
Then you pop it over your shoulder casually and scratch your chin.
"Toaster's been on the fritz since the last time I had fur though. Hey, do you do home visits?" You ask.
The ghost merely roars in response to your disrespect.
Which is a pity because you were being entirely sincere.You're pretty sure there's still panda fur jamming up the toaster. You try to remember that last time you had toast with your breakfast and draw up a curious blank on the topic.
Speaking of which, you're actually kind of hungry. Right about now is when you'd be getting home for dinner you're pretty sure. You guess with Dan and his weird menagerie of middle aged women all here fighting no one is gonna be cooking so…
"Hey can we have Pizza for dinner?" You ask curiously, juking to the side of a burst of flame.
"Emmy? You sound… different." Taylor asks you, though not without some strain - which gets your eyebrows raising fractionally as you continue to shift and jump around the room to avoid more attacks from Lung the Undead Toaster.
Experimentally you dart forward and swing your blade through the burning outline of a chinese dragon and are unsurprised to find you haven't hurt the creature at all. After all, it's just fire.
More urgently, while you would typically spend more time dicking around, Taylor seems to be having some kind of issue outside - so playtime is over.
"Yeah old me burned alive. Kinda sucked. Don't worry - I'm good now." You appease her absently, while your eyes track the dragon downward. It's hard to tell because of the way it winds in on itself and well… all the fire, but you're pretty sure the molten core of the machine you're in is still burning away down there, and that what you're fighting is - for all intents and purposes - a projection.
"Bur- I'm coming in there." Taylor returns to you, and you feel a spike of panic zip across your mental connection.
"Hey I'm good I swear! Look I'll come see you right now okay?" You say casually while sprinting forward and jumping into the center of the flaming beast in front of you, allowing your regeneration to handle the brunt of the 'burning alive' that causes, and landing on top of the circular power core with both feet and kicking sending the entire thing spiraling free of all the wires, hooks, pipes, and chains holding it in place.
At which point it slams into the ground , splits in half, and explodes.
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Time Bubble, Brockton Bay
POV: Taylor Hebert
"Hey I'm good I swear! Look I'll come see you right now okay?" Emmy sent to her before her connection to him devolved into a falling burning sensation that transferred just enough pain to the periphery of her senses for him to know she was still probably alive.
And also, exactly enough pain for her to become even more distressed than she already was about the idiot blithely talking about burning alive like that.
Unfortunately she was just a bit busy with her Uber problem to immediately shift priorities towards retrieving her friend.
"You know? I actually think this might not be so bad! Maybe I'll ask about keeping it after this. Kinda nice being able to match up to the mighty Nexus!" Uber crooned in a mocking tone of voice as he said her name, darting away from her into batch of Spree clones which he began to rip into with violent abandon, sinking his fangs into each one without a care for the obvious confusion and fear on the Teeth affiliated capes face as he continually fled away from his erstwhile ally.
She didn't expect this to last long. Uber had sort of flitted between harassing her to stop her from getting involved with his allies - and trying to eat Spree alive, though if he really wanted to catch the original she had no doubt he could and would. She would have wondered why the moron was attacking his own allies if he wasn't noticeably faster and stronger with every clone he consumed.
She was starting to hate this whole 'vampire' thing.
"Doing a lot of running away for a guy who's 'keeping up with me'!" She yelled after him, creating a layered barrier of solid air between him and his target in order to slow him down and chase after him.
She clicked her tongue in annoyance when he somehow detected the invisible barrier and darted around it, but was undeterred in her pursuit, stitching a line of small magical blasts in his path to stall him enough for her to catch up to him, then cleave his legs out from beneath him.
Literally.
His legs from the knee down were severed by her swift sword blow, sending Uber toppling to the ground.
"Oh no! What will I do! Man down! Man down!" He laughed carelessly, catching himself with his hands and scuttling away on them while his legs rapidly regrew.
At just that moment, she heard loud 'thunk' noise, and turned just in time to notice the hell tank bursting at the seems, with metal rivets, screaming demonic figures, and welded steel plates exploding in every direction from the thing as a titanic blaze rippled out from it, creating a pillar of flame and smoke where the tank had once been.
Taylor quickly pivoted, minding Ubers location but otherwise concentrating on raising a magical barrier over the battlefield to shield her allies from the massive wave of shrapnel being flung towards them.
To do this, as with many of her feats, she had to redistribute all of her power - out of aura, and the reinforcing power pumped throughout her body by her heart, and into the power that fueled Ozma's magic.
'Can you hold this for a minute?' She asked her passenger, already knowing Uber would see and capitalize on this brief moment of weakness.
'Gladly.' Ozma agreed calmly, taking hold of the part of her mind maintaining the barrier and separating all that power from her conscious control - all of it to be swiftly replaced by her heart as it thundered power and fury in her chest.
Power she was forced to use every ounce of in order to lift her sword and get its handle between Ubers teeth, preventing him from ripping her throat out with them.
They struggled for a bit - a stalemate she was happy to let continue while she recharged briefly - but the struggle turned out to be brief.
"Caaaan he stick the landing folks?!" A belligerent sounding voice called from the side, where Emmy - who had come in under the edge of her barrier as it went up somehow - was flying towards her atop a hunk of the debris from the exploded tank.
A hunk of debris he was… surfing.
A hunk of debris that - just as he was about to reach her - he kicked up like he was on a snowboard, slamming bodily into Uber who he carried away with him into the street.
He spun across the asphalt for a few more seconds with Uber twitching under him, then hopped off the makeshift surf board.
The first thing she noticed about Emmy's new form was the giant sword on his back. She could literally feel Nemesis vibrating in her hands as she took that piece of information in, and had to resist the urge to roll her eyes.
The second thing she noticed was…
"Why do you look like a hobo having a mid-life crisis?" She asked, gesturing loosely at his scraggly almost a beard, long unkempt hair, and ridiculously out of place looking red long coat.
Emmy immediately glanced down at himself then back up again.
"What? I look cool! This is real demon leather. You know how much it costs to skin a demon?" He responded, grabbing the edge of the red coat and lifting it to wave at her with a lackadaisical smile.
She would have responded but the sight of the slab of metal Uber was under shifting drew her up short, causing her to bend her knees in preparation of intercepting what was obviously about to be an attack on Emmy from behind.
Only… she needn't have bothered, because Emmy drew a black gun from beneath his coat and fired it wildly behind himself, pushing back the vampire enough force that he Uber ended up pinned to a wall across the street while Emmy continued to fire at him.
"No seriously though, we should look into skinning like - what's the big ones name? Behemoth! That guy would make some amazing boots. I think that's what I want to leave you when I'm gone. Endbringer Boots." Emmy mused, dropping the edge of his coat and looking over his shoulder at Uber - who was now largely ignoring the rapidly healing gunshot wounds pinning him down to stare at Emmy with a distressed expression on his face.
"Hey what's the matter, you look like you've seen a ghost!" Emmy called to him, holstering the gun and glancing at her.
"I got this if you wanna clean up over there." He said lazily to her at the same time as Uber screeched at him.
"You aren't real! It's not possible that you're real!" He screamed, darting forward to rush Emmy.
"Yeah, the ladies say that a lot." Her partner said proudly. It was so immensely lame that Taylor almost winced as if struck.
"Gross." She muttered, deciding to set the weirdness of this new version of her friend aside in order to focus on what really needed to be done.
Because without the tank, she was pretty sure the effect holding this time bubble together was going to fade soon.
And it was probably for the best that someone clean all of this up before that happened.
A/N: Just a quick chapter to introduce the new guy.
750
Bowler Hat Guy
Sep 28, 2021
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Oct 8, 2021
#41,653
Current Energy: 20
Current Emulation Status: (Post located Here - way too long to include at the beginning of each update.)
Friday, March 11th, 2011
Time Bubble, Brockton Bay
"So... vampire?" You ask curiously, not bothering to turn around to actually look at the guy you're talking to, absent the need to reload and already knowing your shots are on target from the gurgling whining noise coming from behind you.
The beauty of demon powers.
Did you technically still need a gun to shoot your demonic power at people now? No, not at all. Your emulation had just about worked out how to project demonic power as a projectile a while ago - but he, and now by extension you, just think guns are cool.
Mostly because they are.
You wait for an answer as you observe your Master sweeping across the current battlefield with a quickness now that she is no longer hindered by the tinker duo's time manipulation tech. The horizon is slowly growing dark and for lack of a better word fractal as time goes on - so if you had to hazard a guess this little pocket dimension is about to pop.
Or explode.
An explosion is honestly a lot more likely in your experience, but you aren't honestly that concerned by the prospect. Taylor will figure it out.
Sighing lazily you finally turn around to eyeball the Uber, finally ceasing your barrage of gunfire, twirling your gun, and popping it back into its holster.
"Sorry I'm used to more chatty bad guys. You... probably need your larynx to talk still." You muse, observing curiously as the creature in front of you rapidly heals itself. You notice out of the corner of your eye that it isn't just 'healing' but actually somehow reversing its injuries, with blood that had spattered across the concrete nearby floating up and back to the afflicted Uber as the many holes you left in him seal shut, and his mouth finally opens to speak.
"How the fuck are you real?" He asks you incredulously, bloodshot eyes widening to disturbing inhuman proportions as he stares at you hungrily.
"Well see, when a mommy space whale and a daddy space whale wanna hook up-" You start sticking the pointer fingers on both of your hands up and then bringing them together for emphasis.
"Jesus christ this is nowhere near as funny when- shut the fuck up! You're a fucking video game character!" Uber screams at you, pointing one clawed finger at you.
"I mean I do have game." You drawl.
Secretly, however, you are deeply curious about this development. You suppose he could be mistaking you for someone else, or possibly, that by pure happenstance a video game closely modelling the reality this emulation came from might exist... infinite monkeys and a typewriter and all that.
Assuming this idiot even has the right guy.
"You're fucking Dante! I refuse to believe that that bitch had a power that could make video game characters real this whole fucking time and-" He is interrupted in his angry diatribe as you blow a hole in his throat and prevent him from talking using a quickly drawn firearm.
"Ah, ah, ah. Language." You say in a tranquil if chastising tone of voice that is characteristic of this emulation when he is taunting someone.
The inner fury you feel at the insult towards your Master is distinctly not in character for the emulation.
Well, that's confirmation that he's probably got the right guy at least.
In a manner you find most fitting for your current form, you decide to release some of this pent up frustration on Uber in a manner only possible using the inhumanly durable beings Dante has spent his entire life fighting. Before he can get a word in edgewise - his throat still in the midst of regenerating - you blow out his knee's with two more quick blasts from your weapon, then jump forward and kick in the chest just right so that instead of flying through the wall of the building opposite you, he hits it and bounces off of it, angling upwards into the air towards you.
Which is about when his throat finishes healing and he screams out in frustration again.
"Are you seriously about to air juggle me?!" He screams, arms flailing in the air as his body instinctively reaches towards you - probably so he can drink your blood or something.
Vampires were kind of new for you really.
Of course, his commentary is just off-colour enough that you decide not to do... exactly what he thought you were going to do, instead stepping to the left and allowing him to hit the ground. Then you grab him by the neck and shake him a bit.
"You're making this weird. Stop making this weird." You grumble at him, tilting your head left then right as your sudden physical proximity causes Uber's eyes to dilate and all sense to leave him. Rather than continue to complain at you, he instead begins to spit and hiss, scrabbling with this clawed hands at your arm in an attempt to get enough leverage to bite you - like a rapid animal.
"See that's more-" You cheer up, then are cut off as he manages to stretch just enough to jam his clawed hand into your chest and through your heart.
You blink, glance down at the offending hole in yourself, then hurl the vampire into the air, where you proceed to play a game of hacky sack with him.
...using your guns.
It's actually interesting how long you can keep a human body in the air like this. Implausible, if not impossible under physics as you understand them.
'How we doing over there?' You send to your Master idly.
'Fine. Please don't kill or torture our enemies. Is that a thing with this guy?' She sends back to you, and you glance over your shoulder to see your allies largely finishing up with the fighting, dragging the unconscious bodies of their foes into a loose pile between them so Taylor can Gap everyone out before the entire pocket dimension or frozen time bubble or whatever you are in collapses.
'What? No! I'm not a bad guy!' You defend yourself instantly, making eye contact with your Master who shoots you an unimpressed look as the sound of gunfire stops and Uber slams into the ground next to you.
"I'm not!" You yell across the battlefield, just as Uber's... kind of corpse really... begins to glow, then disperse into the atmosphere - leaving a mean looking Bo staff made of a swirling red material with sharpened ends like elongated stakes in his place.
You glance at it, glance back to your Master, glance back at the staff.
Then you use your foot to kick the weapon into your waiting hands.
"...okay so, technically this is like, the demon equivalent of uh... so you know eternal slavery is a really harsh way of..." You pause, realizing how flagrantly unethical what you do with things like this is when the soul in question doesn't belong to a literal hellspawn.
"...please tell me you can change him back." Taylor says in a strangled tone, like she isn't quite sure exactly how mad she should be - only that she is somewhat mad.
You lift a finger into the air, then lower it in thought.
"Hard maybe." You respond with a nod, allowing Vla- no wait. You shouldn't name it. You don't get to keep it. Like a stray dog your mom hates.
Damn.
"You look like a hobo." Trainwreck points out, saving you from this awkward moment in time by ambling up to behind your Master to eyeball you.
"Hey, I'll have you know this guy is a successful self-employed businessman with not one, but two fine ladies fighting for his time." You say, waggling your eyebrows at him.
"Gross." Taylor interjects.
"You sleep with either of them?" Trainwreck asks pointedly.
"Guys, gross." Taylor repeats.
"...I mean, no but-" you stop to look down at your Master who's expression says 'do not'.
"Another time." You say, waving off the smirk Trainwreck shoots you at that.
It doesn't take much longer than that for your Master to finish rounding everyone up - and for the entire team, and all their prisoners to get gapped to PRT headquarters.
Friday, March 11th, 2011
PRT Headquarters, Brockton Bay
Your presence on the PRT's proverbial doorstep does not go unnoticed.
Mostly because your Master adheres to Piggot's 'don't gap into the building' rule and therefore, the entire team, a small army of pigeons, the brats, and Danny's entire contingent of suitors all appear in the parking garage beneath the building, next to the open hole into the sewers below.
"Hey Noelle!" Taylor calls down a casual greeting to the ghost that continues to linger in that pit.
"...hello?" said ghost responds hesitantly.
Fifteen seconds later, a small army of PRT troopers headed by no fewer than four Protectorate members begin to pour into the room, with Armsmaster, in particular, seeming both incredibly stressed and focused.
"Nexus." He nods to her, head panning over the gaggle of captured villains, then the rest of your team, before finally turning to you for slightly longer than the others.
"You changed forms recently?" He asks pointedly, though you can't fathom why he seems so serious about it.
"Few minutes ago. Is it just me or is it like, really dark outside?" You ask, gesturing towards the exit to the parking garage where there is a distinct lack of daylight - which was definitely present when you first started fighting not too long ago.
"It's nearly midnight. Nexus, I'm sorry to have to ask - but we need your entire team-" He pauses to glance at the swarm of pigeons roosting nearby before seeming to make the conscious decision to ignore it. "- to stay the night for Master/Stranger screening. We've had an incident."
Your Master seems taken slightly aback by this, but before she can say anything Danny speaks.
"You can't legally force us to do so though." He notes aloud. Armsmaster glances at him before responding - to Taylor.
"That is the case, but in light of our most recent breach, the Director is heavily considering locking down the city. If marshall law is declared we can make you do so." He responds, though there is no heat or threat in the voice. It's just a statement of fact, and likely one he only feels comfortable making because he already knows your Master is a Hero.
God knows if she wasn't those would be fighting words.
"What happened?" Taylor asks, cutting directly to the heart of the matter as the troopers tromp forward to start collecting your prisoners.
"Predator, Night, and the Butcher are missing." He says grimly.
The members of the Teeth currently being taken away - start to laugh.
Well, these cells aren't exactly comfortable. Choose Two (2). You will keep up with the current situation automatically.
[ ] Begin Training (Choose a Skill or Power)
[ ] Patrol The City (Choose a target area: The Docks, Downtown, Uptown) (Choose two people to come with you: Victoria, Gallant, Triumph, Aspirant, Trainwreck, Jess, Danny, Mem, Oliver)
[ ] Have Taylor take some time out to fortify the Heap with Onmyoudo.
[ ] Hypothetically, your Master doesn't mind Vicky's offer of a blind date with some boy she's never met before...
[ ] Hypothetically, your Master doesn't mind Vicky's offer of a blind date with some girl she's never met before…
[ ] So... you own the Ferry now. That might be worth looking at.
[ ] Planeswalking (Setting). There are some very obvious portals to another Dimension in Gap Space. Your Master wants to investigate. (Options: Bleach, Kung Fu Panda, Touhou, RWBY, Nasuverse, Full Metal Alchemist)
[ ] It's not ideal, but your Master could probably eke out the power for another Shikigami soon.
[ ] Something about the metamaterial Uber and Leet claim to have found is nagging you. You should... probably investigate that.
[ ] Aisha and Co definitely shouldn't be allowed to run about unsupervised. So obviously you'll go with them. 'Secretly'. You're technically less than a year old right?
[ ] Take Time Off (Pick an Extra Social)
Tomorrow is Friday - Choose One (1) Social.
[ ] Victoria (2)
[ ] Amy (3)
[ ] Aspirant (2)
[ ] Trainwreck (2)
[ ] Clockblocker (1)
[ ] Parian (2)
[ ] Danny (3)
[ ] Oliver (2)
[ ] Jess (2)
[ ] Mem (2)
[ ] Mouse Protector (2)
[ ] Dinah (2)
[ ] Write-In
This marks the end of Invasive Species. Please choose One (1) Interlude
[ ] Valefor
[ ] Leet
[ ] Theo Anders
[ ] Madison Clements
Current Omake Points: 32
Sleeping Moon would like to activate [Phagemaker] for 5 Omake Points.
[Phagemaker: Emmy buds. Choose someone you know or have encountered that hasn't already triggered - they are now connected to [Phagemaker] regardless of their previous shard connection.
[ ] Sleeping Moon/Yes
[ ] Sleeping Moon/No
Gooey would like to activate [Age of Heroes III] for 10 Omake Points.
Side Story - Fou of a Kind: Unlock a Story about Rachel Lindt. Bitch has three dogs. She isn't sure what this fourth thing is but it's a canine - so she'll take it.
Age of Heroes III: The Counterforce Awakens. Capes participating in Endbringer battles experience sudden surges in luck and strength, natural disasters strike out across the land, and beasts of myth and legend openly reign over the land and the skies.
[ ] Gooey/Yes
[ ] Goeey/No
Remember - only one omake shop vote can win.
Last edited: Oct 8, 2021
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Bowler Hat Guy
Oct 8, 2021
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Threadmarks Interlude: Madison Clements
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Oct 19, 2021
#42,400
[Phagemaker] allocated to Madison Clements
She had never been with a boy. Like, in a general sense. Never had a boyfriend, really.
It was an unfortunate side effect of several disparate things coming together to preclude the possibility of such.
First, of her original posse, she was generally considered the 'cute' one. She wasn't particularly curvy, wasn't especially fit. Sophia and Emma had a certain extraordinariness to them. An aspect to their physical appearances that was subtly more 'special' than the average teen.
In Emma it was obvious. Her red hair wasn't common, but wasn't weird either. It made her exotic. Her figure was several stages more mature than most other girls her age, and her modelling career left her feeling like the lead on a television show more than a normal highschool girl.
For Sophia it was different. Less obvious under casual observation. She was mean, and overly physical compared to her peers - but she also had a dangerous air to her that left her feeling more like a femme fatale then just a grouchy highschooler.
Madison didn't have any of that. She was pretty but only in a normal way. There wasn't any stand out feature that she could capitalize on to improve her looks.
She was just a slightly shorter than normal girl. That was it.
She made up for that by being more forward than the other two. More flirty. More willing to engage. Her proximity to her two more attractive, more unapproachable friends made her more attractive and popular by proxy, and she milked that fact for all it was worth.
Therein lay the problem however. In order to convince boys to do things she had to hint to them, tease them, with the possibility of her attention.
But she could never actually give it to any of them. She worked very hard not to be categorized as a slut or a whore.
It honestly made it a lot easier to project those things onto Taylor.
Which hadn't worked out well for her in the long run.
But that was a different point entirely.
Basically, she just wasn't accustomed to the idea of having a boyfriend. She actually still wasn't sure if she had a boyfriend. She and Oliver had never actually said they were dating, but given that she spent more time texting or talking to him than she did anything else, she was pretty sure he was interested. Probably. Her memories of how she got to where she was now were foggy, but she was reasonably certain that she had kissed him recently, and he had wrapped his arms around her and it had been just perfect so-
People didn't do that kind if thing if they weren't dating right?
This brought her to where she was currently. She should really wake up.
She should… really wake up. But… she couldn't. Which was strange because she wasn't even really sure she was actually asleep. She existed in a strange state of being where she was passively aware that she was conscious - but that was about it.
There was no vast empty space. There was no mental representation of where she was, or the state of her own mind. She couldn't feel her body, couldn't sense anything really. She was just a mind tethered to nothingness.
Absolutely no stimuli.
Well, there was… some stimuli. But it came from within. She could vaguely sense it in the background if her thoughts, a command to apologize, a command to hurt herself.
A command to die.
She couldn't quite remember where exactly the command had come from. She had a murky memory of approaching a girl who was being harassed by someone at a bus stop - she was trying to do what Olly would do, if less violently - and then… nothing.
If there was one thing she was thankful for, it was the fact that her present lack or any ability to follow through with those commands had largely shorted them out. The compulsion was still there, but as she couldn't do anything to satisfy it, it mostly faded into the background - allowing her to think properly.
She wondered if she was in a coma. There was a certain quality of delirium to her current state of being. A mania, that was simultaneously stopping her from blind panic, and pushing her further and further up the wall. Normally, a person in her situation would have something to strain against.
If she had fingers, she long since would have used then to claw at whatever was restraining her.
If she couldn't find a restraint, she might have simply clawed at herself - a reminder that she was alive, and real.
But she didn't have either of those things.
She only had the staggering nothingness to contemplate. The nothingness, and her own thoughts.
It was unfair. It was wrong. She was an unperson, trapped in the slight space between whatever robbed her of her body, and whatever was even now demanding control of her mind. She never asked for this. Sure, she had done some shitty things, but never anything she would consider truly heinous - nothing that might liken her to the monster her classmates treated her as. She hadn't even been informed of the locker thing until after it had happened. Sure, she stuck with her friends on that front - to start - but why was she the one being ostracized?
It had taken at most a day after the news broadcast that outed her involvement in Taylor's school life for her newly built social life to fall apart. She didn't tell Olly, because she was afraid he would view it as pathetic, or desperate, but she didn't really have friends anymore. She liked to think Emma and Sophia would have stuck by her, but both if them had mysteriously vanished from her life at almost the exact same time.
In a way, maybe it was ironic that her eventual apology to the girl who had technically ruined her life had come as an incidental side effect of a spat between her and someone else. Her apology, for all she had been ordered to give it, had felt superfluous next to the detailed instructions for how to end herself that accompanied it.
It was particularly ironic because she had decided she needed to apologize anyway. She certainly couldn't imagine dating the big blond doof while his boss actively hated her.
Well. She supposed that now couldn't imagine her dating Olly at all. Not like this, likely a vegetable in a hospital somewhere, if not outright a ghost if some kind.
She vastly preferred the former to the latter. At least if she was a vegetable, then eventually this abominable state of consciousness would end - when she died.
If she was a ghost… if she was a ghost, then this was pretty much it. It was just going to be this.
Forever.
She wanted to cry just thinking about it.
But she couldn't even do that. Couldn't feel the build up of pain in her throat as the tears came on. Couldn't feel the tension in her temples as sorrow took over.
She couldn't feel anything at all.
And it was this - the denial of even the simple emotional release of just crying - that proved her ultimate breaking point.
Suddenly, her perception of her surroundings twisted, and she found her perspective had suddenly shifted.
Above her two beings of fantastic size twined together in eternal union, spiralling towards a point that was always just slightly too far away for them to reach. There was something sad about. Pathetic even.
With a jolt, she realized that the feelings weren't coming from her, but from something else. A tiny fragment of one of the beings overhead, regarding its progenitors with equal parts dismay and pity.
In the refractory light of that errant fragment, she could see entire worlds where things were different. Where the fantastical was mundane. Where the insane was the norm.
Where fear was fuel.
But also love, and courage, and about a million other feelings humans didn't properly have words for. Each sensation, each emotion, each feeling had an uncanny flavour to it.
And the only one she found she truly couldn't stomach, was despair.
All of which, was coming from her.
Madison blinked awake at an extremely inopportune moment.
For one thing, it took her several seconds to realize that she had, in fact, blinked. It took her several more to grasp that she was starving. Not just physically but… mentally.
She wasn't sure if there was really a better way to describe it than that. She had a sort of… mental stomach now. Along with her returned senses, she had seemingly acquired a new one. She mentally visualized it like a snakes tongue, darting out to taste the air around her. Less a constant sense, and more a radar ping.
A ping that returned to her a few moments later telling her that in the air around her was a goodly amount of sickly bitter tasting despair - her own mostly - a great deal of anger, and an absolutely staggering sensation of greed.
She quickly and almost thoughtlessly tuned herself to that one, as it was the mostly likely to fill her second stomach. As she did so, she got her first solid look at her surroundings.
She couldn't tell if she was in a prison cell or a hospital room. There was a hospital bed, as well as an IV drip and a host of other machines hooked up to her that she preferred not to think about. But the room itself was made of bleak grey concrete, and had a heavy steal door as its only exit.
"H-hello?" She croaked quietly, her throat dry and scratchy from going who knows how long without water. She didn't care. She could feel her second stomach filling appreciably with the unrelenting greed in the air around her. She wouldn't say that she was actually removing or burning up the emotional energy in order to fuel herself. It felt more like… skimming? A chemical reaction? Something she was doing was reacting with the greed. And the result was greed energy.
She… thought.
It was a lot of sensory information to parse at once, not helped by the taste of the energy turning her thoughts immediately to the things she wanted.
Which was mostly to have all these tubes and needles out if her, to have some food and water, and to see Olly.
She was surprised to find that as she finished that thought, her stomach finally filled - and there was a sharp popping sensation as she felt her 'stomach' drain.
Instantly, she felt a boiling sense of need - as well as the jarring sensation of her body suddenly being five feet to the left of where she had originally been laying. All the needles and things that had once been inside her thudded to the ground as she pressed her body up against the door in order to out herself closer to what she wanted.
No, what she needed.
And really, she was realizing she needed a lot more things now than she had originally realized. She needed to be out of this room. She needed her Olly, and she needed a change of clothes - mostly because for all she was glowing fluorescent orange, she was also naked.
She felt pretty good, all things considered. A little floaty, maybe? She imagined this was what being high felt like. Only, she hadn't used a drug to get this way.
"I don't need to worry about it though." She consoled herself absently, preparing to do… something… to the door that was between her and the glowing emanation of pure greed she could feel beyond it.
Then she heard the thing speak.
"You, kill him, then yourself." An oddly lilting voice called gleefully, androgynous in that she honestly couldn't tell the gender of the speaker.
Or she wouldn't, if she didn't have the mental image of a woman at a bus stop to associate with the voice. A voice that mirrored the one she had spent long hours ignoring as it ordered her to kill herself in as gruesome a way as possible.
Madison - even through the haze of greed and want filling her head - recognized that voice, and was terrified of it. So terrified that she found herself suddenly pressed as far away from the door as was physically possible for her, once more with no intervening movement to the action.
She instinctively felt that she could teleport at will across her rather small area of influence, at least, so long as she felt she needed to - which wasn't hard since she was basically nothing but needs and wants right now.
Even her fear expressed itself as a need to be away from that voice.
There were two quick pops, as gunfire rang out in the hallway beyond her door, then silence for a bit, and then the voice spoke again.
"Get her eyes open." It said impatiently.
"She's in a medical coma - I don't think-" a new voice responded hesitantly.
"Get her eyes open." The voice repeated. There was a shuffling sound as whoever was being spoken to complied.
"You will not attack me or anyone else unless ordered to do so. You will follow my orders. You will not leave my side under any circumstances." It stated.
There was a soft chuckle. Almost girlish and feminine, but subtly wrong somehow. Twisted. Madison wondered how she could hear any of this through what must be several feet of concrete, but then reasoned that she could hear it because she needed to.
It seemed as good an explanation as anything else.
"Now let's see… get those two doors open. Make it quick - I'm sure the lovely people upstairs will have noticed something wrong by now."
There was a brutal wrenching sound, the scream of tortured metal being flung away from something, and then a soft clapping.
"Yup. I like you. You're perfect. Repeat after me, until you believe it - which I order you to do. 'I am Terminus, and I will do as I am told'." The voice said pleasantly.
"I am Terminus and I will do as I am told." A somewhat frustrated and angry sounding womans voice stated.
Then she said it again. And again.
She didn't stop saying it, actually. She only really paused to breath. She supposed the caveat that she had to keep saying it until she believed it was why.
"Hm. Bit longer than I'd like. Guess I'll have to take these two after all - I suppose I can multitask. You and you, come here and hold still while I free you. Then repeat after me." The voice crooned, and then suddenly three female voices were repeating the same phrase out in the hallway.
"I am Terminus, and I will do as I am told."
After a very short period of time, the voices synched up, until they were speaking in one eerie chorus.
Madison felt a shudder of revulsion run through her, even though she couldn't honestly understand the purpose of the chant, beyond being dehumanizing in the extreme.
She also noticed that she could feel her empty 'stomach' again, and glanced down to realize that she had subconsciously turned her newly acquired power off in an attempt to dim the glow of her body, and prevent attention from being drawn to her.
"I suppose this would be where they're keeping my love letter?" The voice outside mused, sending a thrill of fear through her.
Fear that had risen across the area, mixing with the still predominant flavor of greed in the air.
Fear that she would be forced to go back to the dark place, where there was nothing and no one to preoccupy her.
Fear that the voice would speak and she would listen.
Fear that just as she finally escaped one situation, she would immediately find herself in another, more dangerous one.
It was a feeling she was unfortunately used to at this point. The sensation of a precipice from which there was no return. Madison was sure that if she could look back at her life, there would be many such cliffs behind her.
So she did the only thing she could do. She listened to the part if her that urged her to use her powers, and catalyzed the ambient fear. A soft yellow glow emanates from her, and she instinctively wrapped the power she was using around the room she was in.
She knew that she would only be able to keep the power active so long as there was fear to fuel it, but she found herself more and more terrified of doing anything else the longer she maintained it. It was like a self reinforcing loop. She was afraid, so her power worked. She was afraid her power work - so it worked.
Outside the door, she could hear the voice make a confused sound, then grunt in annoyance - the most masculine sound she had ever heard it make.
"What was I..? Hm. Come on, let's go my pretties." The voice said.
It didn't get a verbal response, at least, not unless one counted the continued chanting from the women outside.
The chanting receded into the distance as she waited, huddled in the corner of the room - but try as she might she couldn't bring herself to lower the effect that had protected her from the voice. Somehow, she felt certain that if she did so, she would be out in that hallway in short order, chanting along with all the rest.
'I am Terminus, and I will do as I am told.' She thought to herself, the words already burned into her mind by the trauma of her situation.
So she sat, and she waited.
And she feared for her future.
A/N: I mentioned checking all the omake before posting this but as it turns out I have to be awake in… two hours for an appointment so I'm going to defer that to tomorrow where possible. Here's he interlude. It's not perfect - I wish I could have spent longer on it - but I think it gets the job done in a rambling sort of way.
Forgive any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors - writing on my phone is a pain. Enjoy.
Scheduled vote count started by Bowler Hat Guy on Oct 8, 2021 at 10:49 AM, finished with 746 posts and 181 votes.
Posts
248
101 people have voted
[X] Begin Training (Race Change: Hybrid)
Sleeping Moon Oneautumnleaf FeartheKnown Kiera sonicyoash LordOfFigaro Red123 CharlieKing MidnighAce The-Chained-One Dezron BMW Robo Jesus Sonic645 Kkutlord Code Djiin Copacetic_Cloud Captain Hunt Vilegrave Fan Architect Ironturtle SirNagsALot assana73 TricMagic SilverEagle21 BobtheNORMALguy Dragon of chaos RSR2000 shangrila NathanMedium Marshall817 FictionPack Powergoat Xolsis ArcanePariah Karkinos Zipf Sylent-M catgc Mgunh1 Parzival95 Mor_Drakka The Sparking Brain The Fool Red Bovine Doccer Cosmic Designated Minion Athain Kabutokun100 Linecier DedJosh EVA-Saiyajin AzuraNyx Argent-Thyme Garrison TheWoo Phearo VexMasterTyrant Nulthazor Jonasquinn omni001 Citino Ghost084 Daxus1120 TirelessTraveler lazypanda Annatar Dragna Wukong Jomasten Glen/Courtyard Kristoffer0406 JoeHalo Dragonfang1917 Demensional Wonderer CrimsonFate Gooey Ttran2323 Walk Away From Light Chaotic_Homepath CollectionHL airdrag geogio13 Ker91 Derdere Dere D.Rockstar D.D. Spectator katamed Fenix987654321 RefugeInAbsrdity DragonBard Quelthias He_Who_Writes Yoav the badass edthere Arksurek Anacromacia JustDusty Red Mage Alonne ... and 1 more.
84 people have voted
[X] Madison Clements
creativity's_darkside justquestin2004 Argent-Thyme bLuewErewOlf25 Kkutlord Kymecho VexMasterTyrant omni001 Citino Daxus1120 SilverEagle21 Red Mage Alonne TirelessTraveler NathanMedium donnyschellekens Marshall817 FictionPack Chaotic_Homepath CollectionHL airdrag Karkinos Zipf Sylent-M Kabutokun100 catgc Mgunh1 Linecier Parzival95 Mor_Drakka DedJosh Fenix987654321 The Fool thegodofsky Atlasofremembrance LoLzM Aeon arcana tempus Oneautumnleaf Quelthias Axel Fones Destination_September Gooey Redikai PrinceofDoom Gorgoth Annatar Nulthazor MidnighAce Designated Minion CharlieKing Demensional Wonderer JustDusty Powergoat Architect Ironturtle Dragna AzuraNyx Robo Jesus BobtheNORMALguy SortaCats The-Chained-One FallenPears Mr. Idiot Inverted Fallecy sonicyoash Demonlorddraco91 DeclanDSI Bigking321 thunderdan11 Arksurek FantasyConnect geogio13 Tired Titaness Cyber Wolf Cosmic Captain Hunt Phearo soumilplays03 Yoav the badass katamed KobewStrauss Kristoffer0406 Clotho DiceArt TheWoo Anacromacia
71 people have voted
-[X] You have some suspicions on your affect on the world during the Ziz, Gram incidents and now this, share your thoughts to Taylor in Gap Space
Sleeping Moon Oneautumnleaf FeartheKnown Kiera sonicyoash LordOfFigaro Red123 CharlieKing MidnighAce The-Chained-One Dezron BMW Robo Jesus Sonic645 Kkutlord Code Djiin Copacetic_Cloud Captain Hunt Vilegrave Fan Architect Ironturtle SirNagsALot assana73 TricMagic SilverEagle21 BobtheNORMALguy Dragon of chaos RSR2000 shangrila NathanMedium Marshall817 FictionPack Powergoat Xolsis ArcanePariah Karkinos Zipf Sylent-M catgc Mgunh1 Parzival95 Mor_Drakka The Sparking Brain The Fool Red Bovine creativity's_darkside justquestin2004 KobewStrauss Aeon arcana tempus Flightstrike Silver_Mage7 Cyber Wolf Doccer Cosmic Designated Minion Athain Kabutokun100 Linecier DedJosh Shade-Wing Tackyseven RefugeInAbsrdity DragonBard Quelthias He_Who_Writes Yoav the badass edthere Arksurek Anacromacia JustDusty airdrag
68 people have voted
[X] Sleeping Moon/Yes
Sleeping Moon Doccer Oneautumnleaf FeartheKnown drake_azathoth AzuraNyx LordOfFigaro Red123 MidnighAce katamed Cosmic RefugeInAbsrdity The-Chained-One Argent-Thyme Robo Jesus Kkutlord Kymecho Kamico Quelthias Captain Hunt Vilegrave Nulthazor Fan Wukong Mr. Idiot Aeon arcana tempus Yoav the badass Ghost084 Daxus1120 Red Mage Alonne TirelessTraveler RSR2000 lazypanda Annatar NathanMedium Alucard Bellsing JustDusty Silent59 KokuenDG Designated Minion Marshall817 Athain Gorgoth FictionPack Powergoat Mordiggian Gooey Xolsis Ttran2323 Walk Away From Light Chaotic_Homepath airdrag Karkinos Zipf geogio13 Sylent-M Kabutokun100 Linecier Parzival95 He_Who_Writes Mor_Drakka DedJosh Derdere Dere Silver_Mage7 D.Rockstar Cyber Wolf Fenix987654321 The Fool
56 people have voted
[X] Gooey/Yes
creativity's_darkside justquestin2004 Oneautumnleaf FeartheKnown EVA-Saiyajin Kiera sonicyoash Burny McPyro bLuewErewOlf25 Garrison TheWoo VexMasterTyrant Kamico KobewStrauss DbRevned Aeon arcana tempus Flightstrike BlackCoat13 omni001 Citino Demensional Wonderer TricMagic SilverEagle21 BobtheNORMALguy Dragon of chaos Spellflame Atlasofremembrance uytgft Stroth LoLzM rdgr11897 BookMouse cringyusername hildabun951 LollipoPReapeR Fireknight Lancealot soumilplays03 Dragna MinionNumberQ The Richmaster donnyschellekens CrimsonFate Anacromacia Athain FictionPack Chaotic_Homepath ArcanePariah Ink-Universe catgc Mgunh1 Parzival95 Ker91 D.Rockstar D.D. Spectator Hunter1933
49 people have voted
[X] Something about the metamaterial Uber and Leet claim to have found is nagging you. You should... probably investigate that.
Doccer Dexter_Sinister AzuraNyx CharlieKing Cosmic Burny McPyro bLuewErewOlf25 Garrison TheWoo ZxZx24 Quelthias Fan Wukong DbRevned Architect Ironturtle BlackCoat13 Ghost084 Daxus1120 TricMagic Red Mage Alonne Spellflame TirelessTraveler RSR2000 MinionNumberQ shangrila The Richmaster Annatar Dragna CrimsonFate JustDusty Powergoat Gooey Ttran2323 Ink-Universe Karkinos Zipf catgc Mgunh1 Parzival95 He_Who_Writes Mor_Drakka Ker91 DedJosh The Sparking Brain Derdere Dere Golden Darkness Yoav the badass Designated Minion airdrag
43 people have voted
[X] Aisha and Co definitely shouldn't be allowed to run about unsupervised. So obviously you'll go with them. 'Secretly'. You're technically less than a year old right?
Sleeping Moon Doccer Oneautumnleaf FeartheKnown EVA-Saiyajin sonicyoash LordOfFigaro Red123 MidnighAce katamed Cosmic bLuewErewOlf25 Kymecho Code Djiin VexMasterTyrant ZxZx24 Quelthias Copacetic_Cloud Vilegrave Nulthazor Fan Jonasquinn omni001 Ghost084 Daxus1120 TricMagic BobtheNORMALguy Dragon of chaos NathanMedium JustDusty Marshall817 Athain FictionPack Xolsis CollectionHL ArcanePariah Kabutokun100 Linecier DedJosh Cyber Wolf Fenix987654321 Kkutlord Red Bovine
34 people have voted
[X] Valefor
Sleeping Moon Doccer Dexter_Sinister Oneautumnleaf FeartheKnown AzuraNyx sonicyoash LordOfFigaro Red123 CharlieKing MidnighAce katamed Cosmic The-Chained-One Idovelicus Goricnac Quelthias Copacetic_Cloud Kkutlord Captain Hunt Vilegrave Nulthazor Wukong Jonasquinn Architect Ironturtle RSR2000 lazypanda Annatar Athain Gooey Sylent-M He_Who_Writes DedJosh Derdere Dere
27 people have voted
[X] Goeey/No
Sleeping Moon Dexter_Sinister AzuraNyx katamed Cosmic The-Chained-One Robo Jesus Quelthias Vilegrave Nulthazor Fan FantasyConnect TruckerMan Ghost084 NathanMedium Gorgoth Mordiggian Ttran2323 airdrag Kkutlord Kabutokun100 Thozmp Linecier He_Who_Writes DedJosh Silver_Mage7 The Fool
26 people have voted
[X] Sleeping Moon/No
Dexter_Sinister EVA-Saiyajin sonicyoash CharlieKing Garrison TheWoo Code Djiin VexMasterTyrant dj003 Rockinalice Copacetic_Cloud Jonasquinn DbRevned BlackCoat13 TricMagic SilverEagle21 BobtheNORMALguy Dragon of chaos shangrila CollectionHL ArcanePariah Thozmp catgc Mgunh1 Hunter1933 Red Bovine
21 people have voted
[X] Gooey/No
Doccer MidnighAce RefugeInAbsrdity Kymecho Copacetic_Cloud Mr. Idiot Jonasquinn Yoav the badass Daxus1120 RSR2000 shangrila lazypanda Annatar JustDusty Designated Minion Marshall817 Powergoat CollectionHL Karkinos Zipf Mor_Drakka
17 people have voted
[X]Race Change: Hybrid
Sleeping Moon creativity's_darkside justquestin2004 KobewStrauss Aeon arcana tempus Flightstrike SirNagsALot assana73 Silver_Mage7 Cyber Wolf Doccer Shade-Wing Tackyseven Idovelicus MinionNumberQ The Richmaster Mr. Idiot
17 people have voted
-[X] Before the race change, we'll need to warn Taylor what that involves and to get her opinion on the matter.
Doccer Cosmic Designated Minion Athain Kabutokun100 Linecier DedJosh Shade-Wing Tackyseven Quelthias He_Who_Writes Yoav the badass edthere Arksurek Anacromacia JustDusty Red Mage Alonne
15 people have voted
[X] Clockblocker (1)
drake_azathoth AzuraNyx katamed bLuewErewOlf25 Quelthias Fan omni001 Ghost084 Daxus1120 lazypanda Annatar Chaotic_Homepath geogio13 He_Who_Writes Red Bovine
15 people have voted
[X] Leet
drake_azathoth Robo Jesus Phearo Code Djiin Wukong Aeon arcana tempus Ghost084 Demensional Wonderer CrimsonFate Designated Minion ArcanePariah geogio13 Ker91 Silver_Mage7 Red Bovine
14 people have voted
-[X] Before the race change, we'll need to warn Taylor what that involves such as the hair color change and to get her opinion on the matter.
Doccer Cosmic Designated Minion Athain Kabutokun100 Linecier DedJosh Shade-Wing Tackyseven katamed Fenix987654321 RefugeInAbsrdity DragonBard Mr. Idiot
13 people have voted
[X] Amy
creativity's_darkside justquestin2004 The-Chained-One Jonasquinn Architect Ironturtle RSR2000 Powergoat Ttran2323 CollectionHL Mor_Drakka Ker91 Derdere Dere EVA-Saiyajin
13 people have voted
-[X] But make sure to actually do the Racial Change after the talk!
Doccer Cosmic Designated Minion Athain Kabutokun100 Linecier DedJosh Shade-Wing Tackyseven katamed Fenix987654321 Quelthias He_Who_Writes
13 people have voted
[X] Theo Anders
EVA-Saiyajin Burny McPyro Fan BlackCoat13 TricMagic BobtheNORMALguy Dragon of chaos shangrila The Richmaster Mordiggian Ttran2323 Dperson3569 omnimercurial
11 people have voted
-[X] Tell her about Dante's life, The Sparda Bloodline, and what you actually did to Uber and how Demon Society works with this that makes Subjugations into Devil Arm weapons ok. Also tell her what Uber said about you and a "video game" to investigate later.
Doccer Cosmic Designated Minion Athain Kabutokun100 Linecier DedJosh Shade-Wing Tackyseven Quelthias He_Who_Writes
10 people have voted
[X] This strange kidnappings is definitely in this emulation's alley. Start on investigating baby!
Sleeping Moon creativity's_darkside justquestin2004 Doccer Kkutlord KobewStrauss Captain Hunt Aeon arcana tempus JustDusty Mr. Idiot
10 people have voted
-[X] Taylor could do her wizard thing up in her castle to help in her own way.
Sleeping Moon creativity's_darkside justquestin2004 Doccer Kkutlord KobewStrauss Captain Hunt Aeon arcana tempus JustDusty Yoav the badass
7 people have voted
[X] It's not ideal, but your Master could probably eke out the power for another Shikigami soon.
Dexter_Sinister Argent-Thyme Phearo TirelessTraveler Chaotic_Homepath Silver_Mage7 Sylent-M
7 people have voted
[X] Amy (3)
Cosmic Wukong NathanMedium FictionPack Gooey ArcanePariah Fenix987654321
7 people have voted
[X] Goeey/Yes
Kkutlord Code Djiin dj003 Captain Hunt Walk Away From Light Golden Darkness Red Bovine
7 people have voted
[X] Parian
Phearo Nulthazor BlackCoat13 TirelessTraveler Xolsis CollectionHL Silver_Mage7
7 people have voted
[X] Danny Hebert
VanishingRaptor Mor_Drakka The Stormbringer drake_azathoth Thozmp Mordiggian omnimercurial
5 people have voted
[X] Overhaul, your's and the team's costumes and equipment needs some tune ups, brainstorm with each other on what we all need and want. Give Emmy equipment also so they won't resort much to their emulated powers too much.
Sleeping Moon Doccer Yoav the badass TricMagic Kabutokun100
5 people have voted
-[X] Know that your team would need constant updates on your equipment and tools, chime in if scheduling it as a team activity would be good.
Sleeping Moon Doccer Yoav the badass TricMagic Kabutokun100
5 people have voted
-[X] Exotic Materials, Rare Materials anything that you have available or your friends found. The Ziz bodyparts also? Did it arrived already?
Sleeping Moon Doccer Yoav the badass TricMagic Kabutokun100
4 people have voted
[X] Danny (3)
Sleeping Moon Doccer JustDusty CharlieKing
4 people have voted
[X] Ozma (0)
Sleeping Moon Doccer Kkutlord Captain Hunt
4 people have voted
-[X] Privately ask quickly from Oz in what positions for the group needed, delegation of human resources and being a better leader.
Sleeping Moon Doccer Kkutlord Captain Hunt
4 people have voted
[X] Victoria (2)
MidnighAce ApologeticCanadian CrimsonFate Walk Away From Light
4 people have voted
[X] It's not ideal, but your Master could probably eke out the power for another Shikigami soon. (Noelle)
The-Chained-One Sonic645 Spellflame DragonBard
4 people have voted
[X] Hypothetically, your Master doesn't mind Vicky's offer of a blind date with some girl she's never met before…
Argent-Thyme Fouredged Sword Quelthias SilverEagle21
4 people have voted
[X] Mouse Protector (2)
Kymecho Wukong Red Mage Alonne NathanMedium
4 people have voted
[X] So... you own the Ferry now. That might be worth looking at.
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443
Bowler Hat Guy
Oct 19, 2021
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Threadmarks Interlude: Armsmaster
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Oct 27, 2021
#42,642
"What do you think?" He asked, his eyes flicking from one monitor to the next, where the entirety of the Oathbound and several nebulously affiliated children were being held.
It had come as a surprise to Collin to find not just Fleur present - something he half expected given the way she had largely attached herself to the new team after her resurrection - but to find Daniel Hebert there as well.
Wielding a three hundred pound combination sledgehammer and musket with casual ease. He might have assumed it was just Tinkertech - again, a reasonable precaution for a public cape like Taylor Hebert to take for her own father - but upon further inspection, it had become obvious that there was no Tinkertech at play to allow the device to be lifted by a normal man.
Somehow, Daniel Hebert - a man in his mid fourties with no previous history of any kind to explain it - was casually bouncing the a three hundred pound weapon on one shoulder like a stick of balsa wood.
It hadn't taken Colin long to make the obvious intuitive leap from that, to the recent attack on Lightstar - Fleur's ex-boyfriend - during a period of time when Daniel had been suspiciously absent from the Brockton Bay.
"None of them set off any obvious alarms, and preliminary questioning shows nearly no loss of memory or periods of time that could be fabricated." Dragons voice replied from inside the confines of his helmet.
Finding out that Dragon wasn't a physical person had been… odd. Not bad. Just odd. In many ways, the revelation had allowed for better communication and collaboration between them. Not needing to keep up the pretence of having limited attention to work with meant that the remarkable Tinker could - and often would - stay patched in to a near permanent line of communication with him. He had spoken more over the last few weeks than the previous few months as a result.
Something about what Dragon had said however, bothered him slightly - so he asked about it.
"Nearly?" He queried, his eyes pausing on a screen that showed Nexus and her Projection, with the Projection talking animatedly about something he couldn't hear as a result of protections put in place to prevent Mastering via audible stimuli.
He understood that it was functionally impossible to separate the two. In fact, he understood more than anyone except for possibly the Director herself, that they were only really holding the Oathbound because they were cooperating as allies of the PRT.
But it still bugged him immensely to see such an obvious flaunting of normal Master/Stranger procedure, even if it was in the form of Nexus functionally talking to herself.
"The surviving clone of Dinah Alcott professed to have spent much of her day, both at home and in school, sleeping." Dragon explained with some amusement, causing his frown to deepen.
It wasn't much, but the discrepancy was such that he would have to send at least one group of Agents to the school to canvas it - just to see if he could find any issues. If the majority if the girls classmates and teachers could remember her sleeping, or - if she was being discreet about it - simply not moving much, then he could check that one off as cleared.
If not, then he would have to brave explaining to Nexus why they needed to keep her charge in custody longer than the simple one night screening they were doing currently.
He had serious doubts that anyone on this team was compromised. But the point of the exercise wasn't to find Mastered victims so much as it was to remove potential victims from the short list of likely targets.
"Three of our men were injured and two more were killed during this break in. We don't know how long the Master has been planning this, but it's obvious he can implant commands that don't have to be followed until triggered later. I had suspicions with the Clements girl but the way our own agents waited until they could disable some of our defences without setting off a Master/Stranger alert cinches it." He stated, fingers drumming against his leg as he thought aloud.
"Very few known Masters have that kind of flexibility or control. He?" Dragon asked, her tone of voice businesslike but playful sounding. It was the tone if voice she used when she had come to the natural conclusion before he could manage to, which was increasingly common as they worked more closely together.
Collin might have found it annoying if he didn't also cherish those moments, moments where the ever unflappable Dragon demonstrated how very, very human she could be.
"Reports from our injured guards say the voice they heard before their fellows turned on them was decidedly male." He elaborated.
"As far as known male Master's go, it should either have been Heartbreaker or-"
"-Valefor." He finished for her, allowing the words to hang in the air for a moment before he moved on.
He disliked that the Fallen had decided to visit the city, but he wasn't surprised by it. It was easy to forget with all the strange happenings in Brockton recently - but the Simurgh had been defeated and the one who did it lived here. It made perfect sense for a Simurgh Cult to pay Nexus a visit.
At least now, armed with knowledge of who they were dealing with, they could better take precautions. Valefor was known to need eye contact for his power to work. It was an obvious weakness that made ambushes and subterfuge a preferred tactic for the Fallen cape, and it was one he was hoping to capitalize on. He and Dragon were already hard at work outfitting a small group of PRT officers with sealed helmets and small head mounted cameras that would play back their surroundings on a screen inside the helmet with just enough of a delay that it should fail to constitute actual eye contact with the Master.
What's more, for all Valefor seemed to be attempting stealth, invading the PRT headquarters and going unseen was basically impossible. A number of street side cameras had recorded his entrance and exit. If the officer watching said cameras hadn't been Mastered then they might have had him there and then.
Unfortunately, the Director felt - and Colin agreed - that the likelihood of Valefor targeting the exact people required for such a daring move was unlikely given the PRT's own stringent policies. It was much more likely that he had been watching the building, discreetly following people home, and then Mastering them until enough officers were converted for his plan to line up properly.
Which meant that the Oathbound aside, a fairly sizeable number of the PRT's people were currently in Master/Stranger containment. Even Colin himself wasn't immune - once enough personnel were cleared to run operations again, he would be
He allowed his gaze to pass over almost all the visible displays showing active containment rooms - something about that 'almost' bothered him but only mildly so he ignored it - and then turned back to his current project.
Close to an hour late, Colin found himself traversing to narrow hallways of the PRT building en route to the Wards headquarters. The downtown headquarters - while as secure as it could feasibly be made - was nowhere near as physically secure as the Rig had been. The downtown headquarters had actually been more of an administrative building than anything else, with the Wards program located there purely for the convenience of the Wards themselves. Colin still to this day found himself petitioning for funds to repair the original Protectorate Headquarters out over the bay at nearly every major meeting the department had - even though he knew how impractical such a task would be.
It wasn't just that it would be expensive - it was more than that. The Rig itself had been in large part, Tinkertech - the source of the force field sold to the city by Uppercrust in order to defend it from any potential freak storms, tsunamis, or the most likely option - Leviathan. So until they could get said Tinker to visit the city - a service the department simply couldn't afford while paying Nexus - the Rig would be left to languish in the waves.
He was more than prepared to restart his workshop from backed up files, but the loss of physical assets, tools, and materials had been almost crippling for a short period of time after the damage was done. If Dragon hadn't generously donated a fairly sizeable amount of his current tech to him, he wasn't sure what he would have done.
Absently, he nodded towards one of Miss Militia's projections guarding a door as he passed it, the strangely lifelike entities having taken over many of the security duties in the building while most of the normal personnel were on leave or in containment pending being cleared of Master influence. It didn't really nod back to him, but that was fine.
No one who worked in this city would ever dare to dismiss the potential sapience of a Projection after all.
At length, he arrived in front of the Wards common area, waiting the requisite ten seconds for the warning bell inside the room to go off, and then entering. Inside he found about what he expected. The most recent transfer - Flechette - and Emma Barnes, who still had yet to be rebranded, sitting down and watching television. That one was an odd friendship if ever he had seen one. As much as Lily had been made aware of Emma's troubling history with arguably the most destructive Cape in the country, she also shared a sense of 'otherness' with her. Neither Ward was particularly well known to their current team, and so seemed to take a sort of comfort in each other's company - even if they rarely seemed to actually agree with each other on anything.
Both Wards were turned to face him as he entered the room, so he didn't bother with pleasantries.
"Where's Kid?" He asked, glancing around for signs of the other Tinkers presence in the immediate vicinity. Kid Win had become increasingly withdrawn and secretive after the mishap that had landed him in his current position. He would have - in all likelihood - been moved to another department already, but strong opposition from his parents has slowly forced the PRT to walk back from that position. Colin supposed that the original reason for moving him - possible retaliation from the group of villains he had technically killed a member of - had largely passed, but one could never be too sure.
There was also the… other reason he had become a fixture in the Bay. He wouldn't say Kid got special treatment but well…
He got special treatment.
Treatment that was part of the reason Colin was here to speak to him in the first place. He had demonstrated a facility with the rapidly changing situation in Brockton Bay that Armsmaster himself had largely lacked.
"I think-" Lily began but was spoken over by Emma, who pushed herself up on the back of the couch she was sitting on to be eye level with him.
"When am I going to be allowed on patrol." She asked in a deceptively calm tone of voice.
"When you have a costume, a name, and the requisite training." He replied automatically, having long since grown tired of this particular argument.
"That's bullshit! I can't get an appointment to even talk to the god damn PR people! Let me help! I can find the guy you're looking for!" She growled at him, earning an uncertain look from Lily who quickly shut her mouth and leaned away to watch how this would play out.
"Believe it or not, I would dearly love to. But your past conduct and lack of discipline preclude that possibility. Make no mistake - you are on probation. You are here and not in a prison cell because your situation is - in part - my fault. I'll speak to the Director - but the fact of the matter is, you are as likely to get yourself spontaneously killed by Nexus as you are to be helpful - and that would be a waste." He explained, aiming for earnest and mostly just coming across as brusque.
Emma recoiled as though she had been slapped in the face, and for the first time he could remember, her expression took on a decidedly vulnerable cast, then became enraged.
"Your mystery villain will be after my family too! It's obvious he's got a hard on for that dork - you have to let me-" She tried again, more forcefully.
"No. I do not. As of an hour ago we have already found and relocated your family to Boston via Dragoncraft. You will be staying here for the duration of the crisis - I expect you to keep me or the officer on duty updated on the number of Parahuman's you can currently detect within the building." He stated firmly. The girls lips pressed together into a thin line as she regarded him.
There was a short but awkward silence, and then Lily interjected - clearly attempting to change the subject.
"Chris is in his lab." She said, pointing past the fuming red head with one slim finger.
"Thank you." Armsmaster responded, quickly turning to walk past them but finding himself once more unsurprised as they followed him.
A minute later he was punching in the access code to the lab while ignoring the two silent Wards behind him. What he emerged into was both unexpected and… not.
"Chris. I need your opinion on a piece of tech we recently acquired from Leet." He stated without preamble, eyeing the other tinker as he fidgeted with several objects at once. Without his hands. From the center of the room - where he was hovering like he was possessed.
Which, to hear him tell it, he sort of was.
Chris had - in his own words - professed to have 'found' his specialty. Armsmaster sincerely doubted it, but recent experience told him he probably shouldn't dismiss the possibility out of hand.
After all, for all that Chris seemed to think he was specialized in 'ghost tech', The Protectorate had been called away to deal with multiple outbreaks of what he could only describe as malicious animal sized strangers. He probably would have stuck to that classification and started looking for either a Master or a Bio Tinker somewhere in the city as little as a month ago. Nexus casual relationship with what she insisted were in fact ghosts, combined with Chris' recent side gig as the cities ghost expert had changed his position on the matter. It helped that so far, only Dauntless and Miss Militia had proven effective at dealing with such disturbances.
He tried not to think too hard about what connections that made, happy at least that the weekly resurrections Nexus was performing should provide similar resources to other departments should the need arise.
Chris blinked at his sudden entrance, his eyes going from a fluorescent glow to his normal countenance - then abruptly fell to the ground with a grunt.
"Thanks Luke. Really." He grumbled, shaking his head as though coming out of a trance before turning to look at Colin.
"Sorry, I didn't catch that? I've got the ghost protocol stuff you wanted on the desk over there. Luke says some of those reports aren't ghosts though so I didn't reference or include them. You might have to go directly to Nexus about the talking cats and stuff." He explained. Colin nodded along with the update, glancing over to find a fairly thick stack of papers sitting on a nearby work bench before turning back to his Ward and opening his mouth to speak.
"Who's Luke?" Lily asked, earning a tired sigh from Emma. Colin considered ignoring the question but knew it would have to be addressed eventually anyway - and so chose to take a moment to educate the girl.
"Are the updated visors ready?" He asked Chris without directly answering her.
The frazzled looking boy pointed gingerly to the wall behind him, where several seemingly simple visors to match each Wards costume were hanging. Impatient, Colin gestured for Lily to take the one marked 'Flechette' and mimed holding it up to her face.
He personally had no need of the things - he had made the modifications necessary to his own helmet within days of determining it was required, which was why he hadn't bothered reacting to or commenting on the human shaped cold spot standing directly behind Chris, visibly only because of said modification.
There was a short gasp from Lily, and then a barked 'Stranger' following which the visor went from her face, to her hand, to flying across the room and straight through the cold spot at waist height.
Where it promptly shattered against the far wall.
"Those aren't especially costly to make, but please refrain from damaging another one." He commented mildly.
"What the hell is that?" The confused girl asked, backing slowly towards the door, her head darting back and forth as she tried to see something that was neither visible in the normal light spectrum - or physically tangible at all.
"Chris' ghost pal. Sad right?" Emma said absently, as accustomed to this as anyone else who had spent more than a few weeks in the ENE department.
"O-oh. So… it's a projection?" She asked, calming down slightly.
Emma shot her a put upon look but managed to keep her response civil.
"Nah. Ghosts." She said bluntly.
"But-" Lily tried to reply.
"We've got one in the tunnels under the building too. I try to keep her company when I can. You'd probably like her." Chris added absently.
"Why are you all so calm about this?" Lily blurted out forcefully.
Armsmaster sighed, walking over to deposit the belt Nexus had presented to him before going into Master/Stranger containment on a nearby bench and nodding at Chris to explain.
"Uh…" He said, seemingly temporarily blindsided by being forced to talk to both girls. Emma's eyebrow shot up in a mocking manner Colin thought was eerily reminiscent of Taylor Hebert when she was in a bad mood, and Chris cleared his throat.
"So uh… the city has ghosts? I dunno. Ghost stuff has just been happening a lot recently. We keep getting people who definitely aren't Parahumans that can do minor stuff like levitate a pencil an inch in the air trying to sign up for the Protectorate, and I think six out of every ten calls we get now are about ghost stuff. Usually its just stuff like someone's dead aunt doing their dishes or even nothing at all - but once in a while there are these tiny malicious fu- ones that break stuff and hurt people. I call them Type One and Type Two spirits. Luke is a Type One - I don't really know where Type Two's come from, but they all have these white masks and look like animals." Chris hurriedly explained.
Lily looked from Chris, to Colin, then finally - to Emma.
"Don't look at me. I only do Parahumans." She responded flatly and with obvious annoyance, cocking one hip and eyeing the Visor on the wall labeled 'That Bitch'. Armsmaster chose to ignore the way Lily's eyes flicked down then back up again while the red head was distracted, then spoke.
"Chris. That's unprofessional. She's your teammate. Act like it." He barked quickly with a nod towards said visor.
He also chose to ignore the look of surprise Emma shot him at the statement.
He hadn't been lying when he said he was personally responsible for where she had ended up. His Ward started it, and as much as he was no longer willing to give the problem children under him as much leeway as Shadow Stalker had once had, he refused to abdicate responsibility for their safety or well being.
Besides, he had more important things to do. He needed Chris' opinion on the meta material in Leet's belt. He needed to incorporate greater anti ghost capabilities into his equipment - as those were overwhelmingly what the PRT was responsible for in this particular city - and he needed to update the Director on the current situation before going into containment himself.
It was a pity - he knew Dragon had long since decided to ask Nexus for assistance with acquiring a body, but presently her lack of eyes to interact with Valefor was too much of a boon to give up.
"Yes sir." Chris responded to him dutifully, shooting an unhappy look at Emma before standing to remove the offending tag from the wall.
Truly, the work of a leader was never done.
A/N: I honestly wasn't going to update today but it is - or was - Gooey 's birthday so. Here you go. Happy Birthday.
622
Bowler Hat Guy
Oct 27, 2021
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Threadmarks Casus Belli 16.1
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Nov 23, 2021
#42,813
[X] Begin Training (Race Change: Hybrid)
[X] Something about the metamaterial Uber and Leet claim to have found is nagging you. You should... probably investigate that.
[X] Amy (3)
Current Energy: 19
Current Emulation Status: (Post located Here - way too long to include at the beginning of each update.)
Saturday, March 12th, 2011
PRT Headquarters, Brockton Bay
"Alien?" Taylor puts forth curiously, from where she is lying lazily on the single hospital bed in the room you are in.
You gather that it really isn't intended for two 'people' to be in one room, but you aren't really a 'person' at all - so you don't really care.
"No. What? Why Alien?" You ask back in amused bewilderment from where you are amusing yourself by doing one handed free standing push ups.
With one finger.
"Your hair is white." She points out, gesturing loosely at you with one hand. "And you turned a guy into a- sharp stick?" she adds after a moment's thought.
"What about that says- no this guy isn't an alien. Are you even trying?" You ask, snorting and doing a quick hop with a shove of your right hand so that you can switch to using your left index finger to continue your hand stand.
"I don't know! Two guys ago you were telling me that Zeus was an alien spaceship! Anything could be aliens! Scion could be an alien!" She complains, throwing her hands in the air in exasperation.
"Honestly, how am I supposed to win this game when you might be the spirit of a sapient washing machine or something?" She adds grumpily.
"Okay first off. My sword has a skull on it. A skull Master. There is so much low hanging fruit there." You point out.
"Zombie."
"What, no! Gross! Why-"
"Lich."
"That's just a magic zombie-"
"Werewolf. Vampire. Lizard Person. Soul Reaper. Demigod. Actual Reaper-" Taylor balefully rattles off in a blithe but annoyed tone of voice, as though she doesn't actually expect any of those answers to be correct.
They aren't, but still.
"I'm a half demon! God damn, why is it that demon wasn't on that list?" You finally blurt out, flipping around to land on your butt with your back leaned against the wall.
"I dunno, you're not ugly, and the only demons I know are asian so-" Taylor explained before pausing.
"That didn't sound as dumb in my head as it did when I said it out loud. Nemesis is sulking by the way." She adds - clearly by way of changing the subject.
"What? Why! I'm awesome!" You complain. Seriously, why does it feel like, for all this Emulation spends all its time helping people, no one is ever happy to see him? He couldn't even win in an alternate reality where no one knew about all the collateral damage!
Your Master points archly at your own sword, slung across your back. Devil Sword Dante is more of a cleaver than a sword at this point - obscenely large, sharp, and unwieldy looking. Still, it's your sword, and even to a lesser extent an extension of you.
Maybe you can do something with that? When you were Sigurd, you barely registered the sword spirit's displeasure. Now that you are Dante, you are exceptionally keen not to irk yet more women.
"That doesn't count! This guy is basically fused with that thing! It's less a weapon and more like a detachable body part! I'm like, fifty percent sword at least. This guy is like, his own Nemesis, even!" You point out - literally pointing at yourself.
"I have gazed into the multiverse, and it is - for whatever reason - some sixty percent swords. Swords all the way down. Why is that exactly?" Taylor muses aloud.
""Cus swords are awesome, duh."" You state nonchalantly with a smirk.
A smirk that falters as you realize someone else said the same thing as you.
Nemesis - in all her pink haired manic glory - turns to squint at you from where she has appeared standing over Taylor, with her feet to either side of your unphased Master on the bed. She seems to appraise you for a few seconds, before making a so-so gesture with one hand.
"I'll allow it! But only because you have good taste." She says imperiously, still taking the time to glower at your sword over your shoulder.
"Allo- I'm older than you! As far as living weapons with people bodies go, you should have to ask me stuff!" You shout back at her without thinking, a sudden spike of defiant annoyance at her attitude breaking through your otherwise tacit acceptance of well, pretty much anything Nemesis wants or does.
Nemesis stares at you like you just personally attacked her, and a growl escapes her throat as her eyes narrow at you.
You level a singled gloved finger at her, crouching slightly in preparation.
"Don't." You say cautiously, in much the same way you might to a dog. When this only earns a more baleful growl from the child sized sword spirit, you turn towards your Master - making sure to keep Nemesis in your line of sight the entire time.
"Come on, stop her!" You call out.
Taylor shoots you a funny look, before taking on a thoughtful expression.
"Hey do you remember the other day when *I* was fighting her and you just sort of ghosted through the floor to avoid us?" She asks innocently.
"I refuse to take responsibility for the actions of past me!" You fire back instantly. Taylor merely raises an eyebrow at you and leans her head back against the bed she is on.
"Knoooow your plaaaaaaace!" Nemesis roars at you as she bounds off the bed to land on you, little hands and feet kicking and punching wildly at you the entire time.
"Ow, damn get off me you little-" You hiss at her, twisting and turning rapidly in an attempt to throw her off.
It is at about this point, that the foam sprayers in the corners of the room go off.
Because atop all else, it should be obvious that a third person magically appearing inside a Master/Stranger Containment cell was a bad idea.
"Your sword. Is a person." Director Emily Piggot states flatly, managing to make the simple statement of fact sound more accusatory than anything else. You haven't seen the Director recently, but she's lost weight. A lot of weight. The once bullish woman has ended up almost miniscule in comparison to her previous girth, and with her her tied in a bun as it is you feel like you could be forgiven for believing she is much younger than she actually is.
"Yes. On page thirty or so of my usual report you'll find-" Taylor starts to explain hopefully.
"I believe you. Danny, I was unaware you were a Parahuman." The blond woman says, dismissing your Master and turning to peer at her Father, who is awkwardly leaning on the haft of his oversized weapon. There is a hint of betrayal in her tone that you aren't sure even she notices is present.
Taylor's mouth opens and closes her mouth for a second, looking confused as Danny continues the conversation.
"Ah. I'm not. Not really. I don't have the brain thing. Taylor was just very keen on making sure I didn't get hurt so…" He explains hesitantly - as though poor phrasing might set the woman off. Behind him, Jess and Mouse Protector suddenly turn from arguing with each other, to shooting wary looks at the Director.
"Is that so? I didn't realize-" Emily begins, her posturing relaxing ever so slightly before you Master jumps in again.
"I fully detailed the process on-" Taylor blurts out excitedly.
"I believe you." The Director repeats, using the same tone, volume, and cadence as before. The dismissal is obvious, and your Master - who was obviously looking forward to messing with the woman somewhat - deflates as she finally realizes her chosen tactic won't work anymore.
"…so can we go home or what?" Trainwreck finally decides to ask, obviously annoyed to be crammed into the tiny - for him - meeting room with literally everybody even somewhat associated with your team present.
"You've cleared the absolute minimum requires time in the tank to be trusted without showing any odd behaviours, so yes." Emily says dryly then adds; "Odd for you people anyway."
"Hey! I resemble that!" Trainwreck barks.
The Director takes a deep calming breath instead of commenting, and your Master - who is still visibly disappointed by her stymied attempts to mess with the director - perks up.
"This is everything we know about Valefor - the Master we suspect is currently in the city." She says bluntly, dropping a thick manilla folder on the table in front of her.
"Never heard of him." Taylor chirps, earning another deep sigh.
"He belongs to a cult known as the Fallen. They worship the Endbringers and are exactly as distasteful as that makes them sound, if not worse. Our best guess as to why he's here, is that the Simurgh's death caused something of a crisis of faith. The cult needs a win here, specifically against you." Emily explains, pushing the folder across the desk to Danny, who picks it up and starts paging through it.
"I don't know if that's the case. So far a lot of I've gotten feels like a psychopath writing love letters. Leaving me weird gifts and stuff." Taylor opines, shifting over to being serious for a moment.
"By your own admission, you were just trapped in a time displaced area with a small army of enhanced capes and nearly died. It's hard to judge, but I'm confident in assuming that was Valefor's doing somehow." The Director says archly.
"Like I said. Weird gifts." Taylor responds with a shrug.
The Director's frown deepens at this before she eventually sighs again.
"It's too early in the morning for this. Get out of my building, Heberts." She grumbles.
"I need a sign." You say aloud as the entire very tired group tramps through a Gap and into Trainwrecks garage - the official unofficial disembarkation point for all teleportation in the Heap.
Mun responds to your comment before anyone else.
"Yeah well I need a shower, she needs a nap-" she snaps, gesturing at Mem.
"I do not." Mem responds somewhat petulantly, sneaking glances at you the entire time.
"-and you need to shave. You look like a hobo." She finishes, ignoring her sister's commentary.
"You do smell." You muse mockingly, bringing one hand to your chin in thought, and chuckling when Mun seems unable to decide between trying to kill you with her mind and surreptitiously sniffing herself.
"Emmy stop bullying the kids. How old is this guy anyway? You're acting like you're five." Taylor interjects, more curiously than anything else.
"I dunno. Fourty three?" You offer hesitantly.
"Hey, you're my age for once!" Danny cheers unexpectedly.
You point at the man himself.
"Ignore that." You say strongly.
Two minutes later, having withstood the laughter of your Master and Mun while grudgingly ignoring Danny's requests for clarification, you speak up.
"Look it counts as training alright! We're gonna need a neon sign and an office or a van - your choice." You insist.
Mun keeps laughing, but for Taylor 'training' is the magic word, and she immediately stops to narrow her eyes at you.
"How is a neon sign going to help me train… I wanna say something to do with the sword?" She asks pointedly.
"It's not! You wanna be like me, you gotta do what I do though." You brag.
At the end of the day, your 'training' is really just a brief primer in what a power does while your Shard side hardware modifies and acclimates it for your Masters use. You could have her eat her body weight in pizza and it would probably count.
That thought, you realize, strikes you as particularly odd. Not just because it runs counter to your purpose and the rules of your current form - but because the idea of 'cheating' the training process had never occurred to you before. You literally couldn't have had the thought.
Not that you'll do so now. You like training your Master.
"I can rig up a shitty van in a day or two." Trainwreck puts forth curiously.
"I don't know if-" Taylor tries to backtrack. She clearly doesn't fully trust your current emulation to be reasonable, which is fair.
The last time you were feeling this independent you spent all your free time bullying her into buying a new wardrobe and cajoled the director into getting healed.
"Sweet! Now we just have to get my- I mean our new sign and we'll be in business!" You crow.
Taylor groans at you but doesn't bother to argue as you lead the way back outside.
"So why am I here?" Amy asks plaintively. Despite, or possible because it is Saturday, she was less than pleased to be awake so early in the morning. This is most evident in her choice of attire - a dark grey hoodie with BCU stenciled across the front, a pair of jeans, and some worn running shoes.
Date attire, this was not.
…not that your emulation would know. In his experience, the hotter a woman was, the more likely she was to try and kill him at some point in the near future.
…or was just Trish in disguise.
Actually, thinking about it, this emulation really only interacted with beautiful women, and they almost universally tried to kill him.
Hm.
"I usually block this time for training, but since Emmy insists shopping counts I thought I'd see if you were free. You could have just said no, you know." Taylor points out casually, having managed to triumph over her dresser today, and thus, being dressed very similarly to Amy herself - albeit with loose fitting sweatpants instead of jeans,
Truthfully, your Master wasn't really expecting the brunette to wake up at all. It was more of a hail mary attempt to eke some entertainment out of what she seemed to think was going to be a harrowing experience. Victoria hadn't even answered her phone when she had called, leaving just Amy available for hanging out.
Honestly, you don't like shopping either but for someone who's been stabbed nearly to death for training in the past, you find it a bit hurtful that this is the most harrowing thing your Master can think of.
"We haven't hung out recently. I heard about the grey boy death match thing from Carol and was worried a out you." Amy huffs, lifting a hand to rub at her eyes for the umpteenth time.
"I'm fine. It was mostly just tiring. Fun at first - but then Uber and Leet had to go and being the psycho cannibal squad into things and just- blegh." Taylor complains as the two continue their leisurely walk through the city.
Owing possibly to the fact that they aren't exactly dressed in the most notable of garb, the small crowd in the surroundings largely seems content to move around the girls, if not ignore them outright as fellow pedestrians.
You, of course, are entirely invisible and therefore not a factor in things.
"Aunt Jess said your leg got snapped." Amy says flatly, her tone somewhere between aggrieved and disbelieving.
"Well yeah but-"
"You understand that normal people don't just gloss over stuff like that as unimportant right?" Amy continues.
"I bet tons of Brutes shrug off stuff like that!" Taylor counters.
"Name one." Amy challenges.
"Lung-"
"Dead, bad example. Next?"
"…Legend heals himself when he enters his breaker state right?" Taylor attempts after a moment to ponder.
"Not a Brute and his power does it automatically. Taylor come on, you're crazy. Just admit it." Amy says smugly.
"I'm not! I'm a totally reasonable person!" Taylor decries defiantly.
"You're hobbies include fighting to the death, and getting ready to fight to the death. You can pull that 'totally normal girl' thing with people who don't know you but with me it won't fly. Now if only we could channel your insanity for good…" Amy pondere mockingly.
The expression on your Masters face, you notice, is eerily similar to the one Nemesis displayed shortly before she started fighting with you last night.
Something Amy obviously notices because her smug look becomes a frown.
"What crazy bullshit are you plotting right now?" She asks warily.
"Nothing. Just wondering if Vicky could be coaxed out of bed with an unlimited budget to get her beloved sister some new clothes. She should be up soon at least right?" Taylor says sweetly.
"You wouldn't. You'd have to try stuff on too. I know you wouldn't." Amy asserts instantly.
"Mutually assured destruction Ames. Besides, what's more normal than going shopping with your friends?" She says teasingly, while using your field of view to operate her phone behind her back.
"Don't you dare. I will get you back if you do." Amy hisses, quickly reaching out to prod Taylor in the kidney - less of a strike and more of a tickle really.
Taylor takes that moment to smile like a loon, lifting her phone up from behind herself with a text already sent on it.
"Do what you must. I have already won." She croons ominously.
Then the two girls devolve into fits of giggles, as Amy makes to chase Taylor up the road.
You snort but stick to following quietly behind them.
As long as they remember to get your sign commissioned, you're content to watch your Master have some fun.
"What the hell does 'Devil May Cry' mean?" Your Master asks as the two of you slowly creep down a rocky tunnel in the late evening.
Unsurprisingly, Taylor spent much of her day off with Amy and Vicky, being shoved back and forth between a variety of clothing stores by her blond friend. By the time the store you wanted to go to was open she had already acquired several new outfits - and learned to her horror that her ability to store their purchases in a Gap only further emboldened Vicky to truly 'go wild'.
She had been all too happy to finish up, paying for your brand new neon sign and fleeing back to the Heap, leaving a glowering Amy behind her.
Of course, because your Master is incapable of sitting still for ten seconds, and neither it seems is your current emulation, you promptly both got to asking yourselves a very pertinent question.
What the hell was that stuff Leet used to counter Taylor's powers?
For Taylor this is largely a curiosity. Something to look in to in order to ensure she is prepared for the situation in the future.
For you, it is more of a worry. Nothing on this earth should have the capability to interact with the soul in any capacity. No Shard but you could do it. No technology could achieve it. Now power could do much more than fake it.
So what the hell exactly was this stuff?
Having not given the device up to the PRT, it had taken no more than a few minutes of using her Crystallized Wisdom on the dull crystal for your Master to determine that it was a naturally occurring mineral. It had taken her only slightly longer for the voice in her head - Ozma - to recognize it as Dust that had been processed in some way he was unfamiliar with.
Dust - which shouldn't under any circumstances exist on this Earth.
Which brings up the worrying question; how had Leet gotten any?
It was a concern that the two of you immediately set to assuaging, with the going assumption being that Leet had somehow managed to open a stable portal to Remnant. This was, of course, very bad given the profusion of genocidal monsters roaming that planet. The very idea that Grimm could be wandering into earth from a portal that Uber and Leet had opened gave you goosebumps.
Thus, your Master had conjured a tracking spell using the crystal as a focus, hoping to follow it back to the portal.
Hence, the spelunking.
"Means I beat devils up and they cry about it." You grunt, not really interested in delving into the philosophical meaning behind your business' name.
"I thought you were a devil?" Taylor asks suspiciously, pausing to examine some obvious mining equipment that now lay discarded on the ground in the tunnel.
"Half. I'm a half devil. It's a whole thing. I got this sexy white hair out of the deal though." You say with a grin.
"I'd love it if you could never describe something as 'sexy' ever again. It's almost like my Dad is talking when you do it. Yuck." Taylor says with a grimace, bemoaning your vocabulary.
"Just because you can't appreciate my smoking sexy style doesn't mean-" you pause as the two of you enter a large chamber that has obviously been widened enough to fit a small tinker workshop, and allow for the continued mining of the hundreds of glowing multicoloured crystals sticking out of the cave walls.
Several of the crystals are decidedly larger than you remember they are supposed to be - large enough that you are certain you could make a killing selling them on Remnant - and at least one nearby wheelbarrow is full of smaller examples of the same.
The workbench nearby still bears the signs of recent use, and was obviously abandoned in a rush, leaving much of the equipment on it behind.
"Good news; there's no portal. Bad news-" you say pleasantly, while pointedly grabbing your Master and dragging her a foot away from the nearest crystal - earning yourself an unimpressed look in response.
"-isn't this stuff really explosive?"
Tomorrow is Sunday. Choose Two (2). You will keep up with the current situation automatically.
[ ] Patrol The City (Choose a target area: The Docks, Downtown, Uptown) (Choose two people to come with you: Victoria, Gallant, Triumph, Aspirant, Trainwreck, Jess, Danny, Mem, Oliver)
[ ] Have Taylor take some time out to fortify the Heap with Onmyoudo.
[ ] Hypothetically, your Master doesn't mind Vicky's offer of a blind date with some boy she's never met before...
[ ] Hypothetically, your Master doesn't mind Vicky's offer of a blind date with some girl she's never met before…
[ ] So... you own the Ferry now. That might be worth looking at.
[ ] Planeswalking (Setting). There are some very obvious portals to another Dimension in Gap Space. Your Master wants to investigate. (Options: Bleach, Kung Fu Panda, Touhou, RWBY, Nasuverse, Full Metal Alchemist)
[ ] It's not ideal, but your Master could probably eke out the power for another Shikigami soon.
[ ] Aisha and Co definitely shouldn't be allowed to run about unsupervised. So obviously you'll go with them. 'Secretly'. You're technically less than a year old right?
[ ] Take Time Off (Pick an Extra Social)
Tomorrow is Sunday - Choose One (1) Social.
[ ] Victoria (2)
[ ] Amy (4)
[ ] Aspirant (2)
[ ] Trainwreck (2)
[ ] Clockblocker (1)
[ ] Parian (2)
[ ] Danny (3)
[ ] Oliver (2)
[ ] Jess (2)
[ ] Mem (2)
[ ] Mouse Protector (2)
[ ] Dinah (2)
[ ] Write-In
creativity's_darkside wants to purchase A World of Bloody Evolution 3 for 20 points.
[ ] creativity's_darkside/yes
[ ] creativity's_darkside/no
Sleeping Moon wants to purchase An Incident on Bet for 15 points.
[ ] Sleeping Moon/yes
[ ] Sleeping Moon/no
Citino wants to purchase Side Story - Fou of a Kind for 5 points.
[ ] Citino/yes
[ ] Citino/no
Ttran2323 would like to purchase Side Story - The Darkest Timeline for 10 points
[ ] Ttran2323/yes
[ ] Ttran2323/no
A/N: A reminder that only one of the above can win. I know I usually do a blurb describing what all your buying - but you can check the shop under informational for that, I cant be bothered to do it on my phone. I'll maybe update with that when I'm home.
Happy voting, and thanks for reading!
563
Bowler Hat Guy
Nov 23, 2021
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Dec 8, 2021
#43,025
[X] Sleeping Moon/yes - Touhou Bleed Has Been Fully Unlocked
Spoiler: Choices:
Current Training: Half Devil Race Change (5/20) - (7/20)
Current Emulation Status: Here
Sunday, March 13th, 2011
Hebert Household, Brockton Bay
It's morning time.
You assume. You really don't care what time it is because Past You made sure to make your Masters bed both huge, and much more comfortable than anything else you've ever slept on top of.
"Why isn't he getting up?"
"Cus he's stupid!"
"You're just angry because he has a sword and makes fun of you. Seriously, why isn't he getting up? We always get up to train together."
You can dimly hear people talking nearby, but you barely register the words before they are filed off into the part of your mind designated for things that aren't attacking you and are therefore - not your problem.
"Just order him to wake up. He's ours so he has to!"
"He's not y- ours. He's not a thing. I'm just worried that maybe he's sick? Can Emmy get sick?"
"He's not sick! He's just broken! I bet there's just something wrong with this guy or something. Quick, make him be someone else!"
"I can't just- I mean I could but- I'm not doing that!"
"Fiiiiine. I'll do it. Hey! Wake up!"
You feel a soft nudge on your back, which annoys you, so you roll over to get away from it.
"Hey! Don't ignore me! I own you!"
The nudge is more of a stinging pain this time - like a small person just kidney punched you - but sensing no actual danger it serves mostly to annoy you.
You also don't want it to keep happening however, so you lazily reach out and grab whatever just punched you, then roll over on top of it.
"Get- hey! Get off! You're heavy and you smell like your whore sword! Emmy!"
"...mmm. No."
"Did- are you awake right now? Let go of me! You- you adulterous sword user!" Nemesis screeches, squirming in your grip.
You fake a snore, and the small sword spirit inarticulately yells in frustration.
"Emmy can we please train now?" Taylor finally interjects, giving you pause. You can feel the mild anxiety pulsing from her via your link. The issue obviously isn't a matter of wanting more powers, or even that she takes issue with you disobeying her.
The issue is that she has a routine and greatly dislikes breaking it. There isn't much about your Master you could conceivably describe as normal - but the way she hews towards a set routine wherever possible is definitely the most 'normal' thing about her.
You have, for months now, gotten up at this hour to teach her whatever esoteric skill or tidbit of information interested your then emulations the most. The problem is, you don't have anything to teach her at the moment.
So, you do what this emulation always does.
You act like an unruly child.
"...No." You say lazily, rolling over, grabbing her about the waist, then dragging her back into bed you ignore the squawking sound she makes as she hits the bed - but you open your eyes just enough to wink at Nemesis when you hear her giggling at seeing someone else receiving the same treatment as her.
The sword spirits expression instantly becomes pouty at your look though she returns to giggling when you close your eyes again in faux sleep.
"Is… is this the training? It's- it's like a Karate Kid thing right? I have to get you out of bed? Right?!" Taylor asks aloud, her tone of voice somewhere between panicked and insistent. You can tell she's not gonna let this training thing go - so you just apply slightly more pressure to the arm preventing her from shoving you bodily out of bed and smile.
Unfortunately, this means that - instead of just sleeping like you wanted - you spend the next two hours functionally wrestling with Taylor and Nemesis as the pair do their best to try and force you out of bed.
They have to limit their strength of course, as neither of them wants to obliterate their bedroom, but it's still not nearly as relaxing as you intended.
It was fun though.
Sunday, March 13th, 2011
Alcott Household, Brockton Bay
"It doesn't count."
"Look, just because you wont get any cool powers from it doesn't mean it's not training." You reply lazily, arms behind your head as you make the slow meandering walk to Dinah Alcott's home.
"That's exactly what that means!" Taylor fires back at you - although there is little to no heat in the declaration.
The morning had gone about how you had expected it to. Mem and Mun had observed your new form with mild interest at the breakfast table, asking questions about his world, his abilities, and his habits. But neither of them had been especially surprised or focused on you. At this point your frequent changes in form and personality are barely worth commenting on by those who spend significant time around your Master.
You would be lying if you said you were pleased by that. You've found over time that freaking people out with the sheer absurdity of your existence is a guilty pleasure of yours. Come to think of it, you didn't even get to make the sentient vending machine joke this time around.
Hm.
"Okay so it wasn't training. But I can't teach you to be like me until we've got wheels. Just trust me on this one alright?" You say with a grin.
"Emmy, I can't drive. I'm fifteen." Taylor returns to you with a sigh.
"I can." You respond confidently.
"You don't have a driver's license." She fires back.
"Don't need one." You mutter as you reach the Alcott's house.
"What was that?"
"Oh look, we're here!" You say loudly, knocking on the door before Taylor can really respond to you.
The door is answered not too much later by Dinah's Mother who your current emulation notes is looking pretty good for a woman her age. Unfortunately for you, some small amount of that opinion must have slipped down your link to Taylor, because she is watching you through lidded eyes.
Deciding not to say anything stupid for once, you plaster a friendly smile on your face and greet her.
"Hello- oh. Hello Taylor and…" the woman greets carefully, clearly not recognizing you.
"Emmy. Don't feel bad about not recognizing me, I've never been this sexy before." You snap off automatically, earning a raised eyebrow from Mrs. Alcott and a stomp on your foot from your Master.
"I… see. Well, what can I do for you?" She asks, not stepping out of the doorway or giving any indication she intends to let you in even though there's only one person you would come to visit here in the first place.
"They came to hang out." Dinah offers.
From behind you.
You and your Master spin around to find the the brunette girl wearing a casual looking dress that goes down to her mid calf, wearing a bulky backpack, and bouncing a rubber ball on the sidewalk.
"Why-" her clearly beleaguered Mother asks in a tired but resigned tone.
"Knew they'd come and was hiding in the tree." Dinah says.
"How long were you hiding in the tree." Her mother asks suspiciously, glancing at the single large oak tree dominating the front lawn of the home.
Dinah has the good grace to blush at this.
"Well I didn't know when they were coming!" She argues.
"Sweetheart, I love you, but you spent hours hiding in a tree so you could surprise your idol for two seconds. You're going to get sick." Her Mother says in response.
"Mooooom! She's not my idol!" Dinah cries out hurriedly, glancing at Taylor then away quickly.
"You spend all of your allowance on posters of her and you made me get you a replica of her sword for-"
"Moooom!" Dinah barks out rushing past you to start lightly pushing her mother back into her house.
"I'll- I'm just gonna be a minute! I'll be right there I promise!" She rushes out, before slamming the door behind her.
You and your Master stare blankly at the door for a moment before a thought occurs to you.
"…do we actually have a guy making posters of you or should we call your Dad to get a Lawyer?" You ask curiously.
Taylor blinks, clearly unsure of how she feels about this.
"I guess? I don't really mind though. Maybe I can ask Jess to figure it out? That's a thing secretaries do right?" She asks.
You are about to answer when Dinah finally steps out of the house - closing the door quickly behind her to stop her Mother from getting a word in edgewise.
"Okaygreatweshouldgonow!" She blurts, quickly grabbing you and Taylor by the hand and dragging you up the street.
Sunday, March 13th, 2011
The Heap, Brockton Bay
You end up spending part of your morning with Taylor and Dinah humouring the younger girl's questions.
For all she insists that Taylor is not her Hero, she very clearly idolizes her in the way many other young women - your Master included - probably idolized Alexandria.
The fact that this makes Taylor supremely uncomfortable seems to sail right over Dinah's head. It makes her so uncomfortable in fact, that after getting ice cream and taking a leisurely walk through the Boardwalk, your Master promptly opts to deposit Dinah with Mem, Mun, and Aisha the second she reaches the Heap.
Without even bothering to question why Aisha would possibly be in Mun's workshop in the first place.
"It's not that bad." You send to her as she flees into the castle, leaving you with the kids.
"Yes it is! I shouldn't be anyone's hero! I've barely had my powers for a few months! It feels like it's all I can do to keep things normal for a few weeks before some new stupid crisis comes along!"
"That's the life. There's always some new bullshit. That's why you gotta learn to have fun with it. Crack a joke now and then. Have a superpowered pillow fight or something." You respond with a mental shrug.
"Thank's. I hate it. I'm gonna try and relax for a bit." She responds in a terse tone.
"Is that why you're headed to the super magical resurrection room in the basement? Complex magic is… relaxing?" You respond with a snort.
"Yes." Is your Master's blunt reply.
No more communication seems to be forthcoming, so you turn your attention to the other occupants of the room.
"Sooooo…." You say, stretching out the word.
"Is this one a narc bird brain?" Aisha asks suddenly, having been mostly just watching you the entire time.
"N- wait, I told you I don't want my Cape name to be Bird Brain!" Munin cries out, changing into a bird and flying at Aisha, flapping about her head and smacking her with her wings in a playful manner.
"Hey! I just got these braids done you stupid- Mem!" She cries out half laughing half complaining as she lifts her hands to fend off the aggravated bird girl.
"While I can compel obedience, I do not believe it is morally appropriate to do so." Mem states blandly, side stepping around the squabbling pair to stand next to you and shyly grabbing your hand.
"I also do not believe my b-brother-" she adds, stumbling over the last word and shooting a questioning glance at you.
You nod encouragingly and she continues.
"I do not believe my brother will tell on us." She repeats, tone firming up.
"82.4% chance he does, but only after we've gotten away with it." Dinah puts forth, hopping from foot to foot with nervous energy from her morning with Taylor.
The rest if the girls pause to regard her for a second.
"I keep forgetting you can do that." Aisha finally admits, grabbing Mun and holding her at arms length to protect her freshly braided hair.
"She's lying, she totally just doesn't want to take advantage of you." Mun squawks loudly.
"Bitch!" Aisha yells, blushing slightly and hurling the bird girl half way across the room before she rights herself in the air and returns to a human form, landing squarely on her feet.
"No you!" Munin returns triumphantly.
"Guys you're embarrassing us!" Dinah hisses.
"These are my friends." Mem says blandly. You can't tell if she is making a sarcastic joke or just a statement of fact.
Possibly both.
"Alright, alright calm down. Tell you what. I'm gonna check with 'Wreck about my wheels and if they're ready, not only will I not 'narc' on you - I'll even drive you to the crime." You say with a smile.
"What's the catch?" Aisha asks pointedly.
"You gotta let me come with you." You say immediately - not bothering to hide your ulterior motive.
"Pass."she responds instantly.
"Oh come on! You guys are like, our version of the Wards! But with hookers and black jack! I'm technically only like three months old so I should totally-" You begin to blurt out.
Truthfully, you also just want to be around to keep an eye on the munchkins. It helped that your current emulation was - for all intents and purposes - a fully grown child in the first place, but that didn't take away from the fact that you had all the knowledge and experience of a fourty year old man.
Age just didn't map the same way to you as it did to most people.
Not that you were going to tell the kids that.
"Alright! Geese, you're like the lame kid brother I never asked for." Aisha grumbles, then pauses when the other three girls look at her weirdly.
"What?" She growls at them suspiciously as the stare lengthens.
"You said 'geese'. Usually you would just curse." Dinah explains as though this should be obvious.
"I don't always- I mean not every- superheroes shouldn't swear okay?!" She eventually spits out acidically.
"Well that's fucking adorable." You say - and you mean it. Aisha introduced herself to you by essentially sexually harrasing you. The idea that she possessed even the slightest iota of shame was actually extremely relieving.
"Besides, Number Girl over there-" she retorts.
"I'm not calling myself that." Dinah says flatly.
"- has taught me anything, it's that wholesome ass bitches sell the most merch." She explains.
Ah. She was so close.
"Until we turn eighteen anyway." Mun jokes.
"Aaaaand I'm gonna stop the conversation right there. Talk about something that won't force your Mom into a berserk rage alright?" You jump in, frantically waving your hands at them.
"But-" the bird girl starts to argue, her grin widening.
"Nope! Gonna go check on my car!" You yell, phasing through the nearest wall.
Sunday, March 13th, 2011
The Docks, Brockton Bay
You quickly come to find that what Trainwreck thought you were asking for, and what you actually asked for, were very different things.
When you described a van to Trainwreck you meant 'a normal van, but with the neon words 'Devil May Cry' hanging off the side'. What you got was effectively an Armored Personnel Carrier. The new Devil May Cry looking like someone had sawed a city bus in half, slapped wheels on the rear, and then covered the entire thing in salvaged warship armor.
…and then welded your neon sign to its side.
The result was both extremely obvious looking and vaguely reminiscent of a Mad Max vehicle.
Naturally, you absolutely love it. The only way it could be cooler would be if there were guns sticking out of it at all angles. Unfortunately that would make your new ride both extremely obvious and extremely criminal so you are forced to forgo the request.
For now.
"This sucks." Aisha - now dressed in mismatched motorcycle leathers that looked old and too big for her, her face covered only with a generic domino mask from the PRT headquarters, and her very large sword resting on her lap - complains as you take a slow turn past the same corner store that you've taken nearly dozens of times now.
It isn't that you are deliberately avoiding crime or crime fighting. It's that your vehicle is so obvious that nobody sane would dare initiate a conflict with an obvious cape around.
"Okay, just- I was enjoying breaking the new ride in okay? Give me a second I'll find something." You quickly apologize, glancing over your shoulder into the rear of the vehicle where Aisha and her team were sitting, two to each side of the bench seats in the back.
Mem has opted for a dress that comes to just past her knees, and contains more volume to it than you would consider reasonably possible. When you had asked her about it she had said it was a 'combat skirt' and that she was copying it from someone else. The dress itself was a muted gray with green highlights in a pattern reminiscent of a suit and tie.
Dinah, who is sitting next to Mem on the right, is wearing a black bodysuit with a subtle silver pattern made up of numbers and other math symbols glimmering across its surface - almost too dark to notice until the light flashed off them. Atop that, she is wearing a somewhat puffy white jacket. Thin enough that it won't make her too warm, but still looking slightly stuffed - easily mistaken for a winter jacket if one ignored the temperature. The suit obviously doesn't have the same built in soles that your Masters does though, because she is also wearing black running shoes on her feet. She even has a hat, albeit a smaller white bowler hat that matches her slightly off white shade jacket.
Actually, thinking about it, Dinah's costume looks very reminiscent of your Master's. Almost comically so.
Dinah seems to both notice your attention and know what you are thinking about because she squints at you in that special way only an irate teenage girl can to express displeasure wordlessly.
And Mun is wearing - bizarrely - a suit and tie. A midnight black suit, white undershirt, and blood red tie. The only thing that really make it obvious she is in costume is the fact that - fitted suit on a child aside - she is partially transformed, causing her hair to appear as a main of black feathers.
All four girls are wearing the same generic domino mask.
"I wanted to go roof hopping." Aisha grumbles at your response.
"Here, look, I'm parking the tank. Unbuckle and I'll be back with some bad guys in five minutes tops alright?" You quickly say, putting words to action and parking the vehicle before phasing out of it to look around.
The docks at this hour are very quiet. It being mid evening on a sunday and all. More so than that… the Docks are very adjacent to 'territory' that is widely considered to belong to your Master.
The streets, still dinghy but in many ways not nearly so dangerous, are entirely empty. What few buildings are populated in the area are silent and dark.
Basically, you got nothing.
"Heyyyyy… I need a favor." You send to your Master.
"R-right now!?" Taylor barks at you in annoyance, clearly in the midst of something important.
"...yes?" You say. There is a pause, and then;
"Well!?"
"Right. Could you maybe shoot me a tracking spell to that Trollo guy? He's a dickhead criminal right?" You ask quickly.
You vaguely sense your Master absently casting to spell while mostly directing her focus elsewhere - which is good because she'd typically be opposed to casting a spell that might accidentally out someone - and then your link shuts down.
You wait a full minute for something to happen, and are just about to turn back, when the blue glow of a tracking spell flickers into existence in front of you.
"Perfect." You say with a grin.
Sunday, March 13th, 2011
The Ruby Dreams Casino, Brockton Bay
"Are you… sure crime happens here?" Aisha asks you for the fifth time since you and the girls had found your way to this dingy little casino at the edge of town.
Presently, you are standing on a nearby rooftop, watching as business in the building begins to ramp up in direct contrast to the waning light. It looks - for all intents and purposes - like a normal building from the outside. Only the faint sound of slots being played wafting out the open front door are any indication that the building is a casino.
Well, that and the giant neon sign calling it a casino.
"Yes. Look, see the back there?" You say, gesturing to the rear of the building - not visible from street level - where several shady men are exchanging money for a suitcase of something you didn't get to see the inside of.
"Oh! I got this! Ninety-Eight point Seven percent chance that's drugs!" Dinah says quickly.
"Yes, yes, yes!" Aisha cheers, taking several steps back from the edge of the rooftop you are on.
You obligingly salute her, turning intangible so you can watch over things without getting in the way.
And then Aisha sprints forward and leaps, quickly followed by Mem, Mun, and Dinah, each one either strong enough to survive the landing naturally, capable of flying, or empowered by Aura.
Amused, you jump gently after them, casually whistling as you invisibly stroll through a wall and into the building itself - where all Pandemonium has broken out. With only a few seconds of lead time the girls have completely opted out of stealth, instead choosing to take out the handful of men by the door before exploded inside.
Two dozen men in suits withdraw firearms from there jackets all across the area, and the second the first shot goes off the patrons start to panic.
Yelling and panicked calls for other people begin to ring out, as the girls charge into the fray.
"Mind the civilians!" You become tangible for a second to yell before vanishing again.
"Bird Brain-" Aisha yells, whipping her sword around to cleave a pistol in two and then twisting her sword to slap a different man unconscious with the side of the blade.
"A- Bitch, do not call me that!" Mun complains loudly.
"-get the normal people out please! Wizard, Number Girl- who the fuck is that?" Aisha continues, ignoring her friend's complaint and then turning to find the large form of Trollo looming up out of a corner of the room.
You silently dock her points for swearing.
"What's this? Trollo was missed?" The rocky giant chortles, taking a step towards the girls and freezing in place, his gaze locked on Mem as she loosely gestures towards a group of men with her staff form, causing them to rapidly slam into the ceiling before drifting back towards the ground light as a feather - and also very unconscious.
That one isn't bad, but it was over a bit fast for your tastes. You know no one here will die because they all have your Masters tags with them, but if it were you, you would have juggled the guys a bit before letting them hit the ground. Bounced them off some more stuff maybe.
"Please don't call us that!" Dinah yells angrily, seemingly bouncing around the room, off the walls, and even off people as though her entire body was made of rubber. You distinctly don't recall that being one of her powers - but it looks funny as hell, so you'll ask her about it later.
"Then what do you want me to call you?" Aisha asks, and you dock her more points for ignoring Trollo - who could have approached to attack her if he wasn't busy staring in dawning terror at the lot of them.
"I- I dunno! We didn't talk about names! We just agreed we'd be Team DAMM!" she yelled angrily.
"Okay so, Trollo think there's been a mistake I'm actually just here for pleasure so-" Trollo begins to say slowly, backing away from them.
"Wha- we pay you for protection!" One of the men in suits yells at him.
"And who's gonna protect Trollo huh? You wan't Trollo to punch Nexus' daughter? That what you wan't? Trollo chooses life!" The rocky man screams, before whirling around.
"What? No! That's bullshit!" Aisha yells after him, but is unable to give chase while avoiding the hail of gun fire whittling away at her aura.
You sigh.
Then you follow after him, leaving the girls safely behind in a room full of men trying to kill them.
"Trollo buddy, you're breaking my balls here." You say, appearing in front of the man as he races up a narrow hallway that can barely accommodate his bulk.
You guess he doesn't recognize your current form, because unlike his mortal terror at facing Mem in combat, he does best to just bulldoze over you.
Can't have that now can you?
Faster than you think the man can even perceive, you dart forward and plant one foot on his chest, pushing him off balance and then levering him to the ground so you can have a nice civil conversation with him.
To emphasize how civil you're being, you make sure he can smell Ebony's barrel pressed against his upper lip before you say anything.
"Who the fu-" He grunts at you.
"Wow you dropped the rhyming saying your own name thing really fast huh?" You muse before smiling and speaking loudly and dramatically.
"I am know by many names! But you my friend, may call me Emmy." You say.
He freezes beneath you again.
Then the stench of urine wafts up to your nose.
"Ew. Dude why?" You complain.
"P-please don't kill me." He whispers.
You withdraw your gun and stare at him.
"Okay first off, I'm a good guy. I don't kill people." You say, channeling your own personality for a second much more than Dante's. Trollo just whimpers at you.
"Look just… go fight my god damn kids you coward. They need the experience and I want this to be fun for them. I promise you won't get murdered or anything serious okay?" You sigh exasperatedly to him.
He nods quickly at you, and you smile again, stepping slowly off him.
"Cool. Now go fist fight a teenage girl." You say with a snap of your fingers and a gesture back the way he came.
"Hah. The things we do for the people we love." You sigh.
"Oh man that was so awesome! Did you see the guy with the-"
"-and I kicked him so hard in the balls that he-"
"Oh my god I beat people up! I beat people up!"
"..."
The girls all practically scream over each other in their efforts to get some of their excitement out. Even Mem - typically taciturn and blank faced - has a small noticeable smile on.
The fight had been sort of enjoyable to watch honestly. None of the girls was inclined towards the level of damage that Trollo couldn't shrug off, and the villain himself seemed to have some kind of healing power so long as he was touching stone, so they had fought for a good handful of minutes before finally managing to subdue the man. You made sure none of the civilians got hurt, but for all the fun they had fighting, none of the kids were so reckless as to deliberately put any of them in danger in the first place.
A quick hand off to the police and now you were all back in the tank, driving loudly back to the castle.
"Ladies! A toast!" Aisha cheers, rushing to pull a backpack she had left in the car out from under her seat and quickly withdrawing four novelty goblets that honestly look like they came from a party store, in addition to a bottle of soda.
You decide not to make fun of her for trying to copy Sigurds typical post battle celebrations with his men.
But you do remember it to do later.
"To Team DAMM! And the Devil May Cry!" She cheers again, and Dinah, Mun, and even Mem cheer with her.
You frown.
"What?" You ask, glancing into the back seat through the rear view mirror.
"The- you put the name on the side of the van bro." Mun points out slowly, as though speaking to a slow witted child.
"That's like an advertising thing! Devil May Cry is the name of my firm! The tank is named-" You retort.
"To the Devil May Cry!" The girls all cheer again, drowning out your complaints.
And then you are forced to slam your foot down on the brakes as a child stumbles into the middle of the road ahead of you.
Tomorrow is Monday. Choose One (1). You will keep up with the current situation automatically.
[ ] Patrol The City (Choose a target area: The Docks, Downtown, Uptown) (Choose two people to come with you: Victoria, Gallant, Triumph, Aspirant, Trainwreck, Jess, Danny, Mem, Oliver)
[ ] Have Taylor take some time out to fortify the Heap with Onmyoudo.
[ ] Hypothetically, your Master doesn't mind Vicky's offer of a blind date with some boy she's never met before...
[ ] Hypothetically, your Master doesn't mind Vicky's offer of a blind date with some girl she's never met before…
[ ] So... you own the Ferry now. That might be worth looking at.
[ ] Planeswalking (Setting). There are some very obvious portals to another Dimension in Gap Space. Your Master wants to investigate. (Options: Bleach, Kung Fu Panda, Touhou, RWBY, Nasuverse, Full Metal Alchemist)
[ ] It's time to follow up on the bait your Master set out for Valefor by trying to purchase the railways.
[ ] Take Time Off (Pick an Extra Social)
Would you like to put an already existing soul in your Shikigami?
[ ] Noelle
[ ] Dragon
[ ] Pass (Shikigami is an Original Character)
Choose the BASE for your Shikigami. Any Object or Non-Human creature will suffice. This will determine what the returned Shikigami is capable of.
[ ] Write-In
Taylor has enough control to consciously choose one of these now.
[ ] Low Powered Shikigami. (Shikigami is effectively Human baseline, or an Animal with human intelligence.)
[ ] Medium Powered Shikigami. (Shikigami is roughly analogous to a Parahuman in power, perhaps with more variety)
[ ] High Powered Shikigami. (???)
You think if you apply just the right level of power, you can infuse one of your past emulations disparate physics into the resultant being. (This presents as a sort of 'specialty' in the magic or abilities of that setting in the Shikigami.)
[ ] Bleach
[ ] Kung Fu Panda
[ ] Touhou
[ ] RWBY
[ ] Fate
[ ] Full Metal Alchemist
[ ] Devil May Cry
[ ] Leave It.
Current Omake Points: 83 (Oh god why)
Remember that you can locate and read about what each vote does under the Omake Shop in the Informational Tab at the top of the page.
Kkutlord wants to activate Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting III for 10 Points.
[ ] Kkutlord/Yes
[ ] Kkutlord/No
Phearo wants to activate Death Is Not The End for 20 Points
[ ] Phearo/Yes
[ ] Phearo/No
Gooey wants to activate Upon The Throne for 10 Points
[ ] Gooey/Yes
[ ] Gooey/No
Ttran2323 wants to activate Side Story - The Darkest Timeline for 10 Points
[ ] Ttran2323/Yes
[ ] Ttran2323/No
katamed wants to activate Side Story - Apple of His Eye for 10 Points
[ ] katamed/Yes
[ ] katamed/No
Remember! Only one of the above can win!
A/N: Alright. I'm very sleep deprived. I won't be editing this. I'll see if it comes across as insane and poorly structured in the morning. Have fun reading!
530
Bowler Hat Guy
Dec 8, 2021
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Threadmarks With Style & Poise, A Projection Quest Sidestory
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Dec 13, 2021
#43,234
"Look you've seen my samples and- no I don't think using tinkered material in dresses runs into Nepea-5 because I'm not crowding you out of the market. No, because you couldn't do this without me, and Nepea-5 only applies to things a normal business could achieve but that a Parahuman can achieve better and-" Sabah explained, probably for the fifth time in the last week, why the organizer of the fashion show she was arranging to attend should shut the hell up about Nepea-5.
She had been planning for this for weeks now. Ever since her team had nominally slain the Simurgh she had felt like this was the perfect time to make her big debut. She would have, of course, preferred to shoot for an event closer to the peak of their notoriety, but it wasn't as though she could pull an entire line of clothes, models, and approved attendance out of nowhere.
Sabah, or Parian, as many people in Brockton Bay knew her, had never given up on what she had originally wanted out of being a Cape. She never wanted to fight - even though she found herself doing it with alarming regularity - she had wanted to subvert expectations. She had wanted to present herself, with her doll like exterior, in one way - and then whip off her mask on stage to show why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. She wanted to challenge the assumptions people made about capes all the time.
The fact that she was a middle eastern woman in the Nazi capital of America at the time made this exceptionally difficult, but in the end, it had… mostly… worked out for her.
"Because my boss can buy your boss and also- no that wasn't a threat! I did not, at any point, insinuate that Nexus would do anything violent if you reject me." She spit out through gritted teeth.
Honestly, this entire argument was just stupid. She had already been accepted to this event. She had already provided her list of models, samples of her work, photographs of the clothes, and even began working with the lighting crew about how she wanted things presented.
Unfortunately, someone higher up than whoever had approved her had taken a sudden interest in her attendance.
Thus the argument.
"Wha- no I don't want to calm down and talk about this after you've deliberated! I've already been accepted! Just let me-" She paused, pulling her cell phone away from her ear to stare blankly at her cell phone screen - which now read 'Call Ended' - and had to resist the urge to scream in impotent fury.
Tiredly, she tamped down her rage to stare at the room around her. Trainwreck had made it for her, and while it wasn't the most advanced piece of tinkertech ever - she still loved it dearly.
The entire room, every wall and most of the ceiling, was made up of row upon row of mechanized spindle. Each one contained a different type of thread, or a different kind of fabric. Special machinery that she could manipulate with her power allowed her to measure and cut things without looking at it - so long as she knew what she was doing.
Here, ensconced in her work room, she felt like a spider sitting at the center of its web. Capable of pulling all the materials required to craft a new piece towards her on a whim. The entire set up worked specifically with her power to allow her to prototype and craft things at multiple times the speed she normally would be able to, and dozens of times faster than a normal seamstress might.
Carefully, she had the machinery rearrange part of one wall so that her prized possessions were visible. Five bolts of cloth that were the product of dozens of hours of effort. Each one enchanted down to the individual fiber making it up. The sheer amount of transmutation, micro control, and otherwise pseudo magical bullshit that had gone into making them was enough that she almost regretted the effort Taylor had put forth to make them for her.
Almost.
The results were five bolts of cloth that perfectly mimicked the properties and appearance of the elements when 'activated'. Clothing made with the stuff had a 'normal' appearance, and an 'active' appearance, which it switched between based on the wearer's intent. And from each of these she had crafted some of the most beautiful clothing imaginable. Not just a dress that took inspiration from the colors and patterns of flame, but a dress that was pure flame, lapping harmlessly at its wearer and its surroundings.
And it was durable. Almost enough so as to qualify as its own Brute rating for anyone wearing it. It was the kind of Cape fashion that was normally impossible to reproduce. Something that would usually be specific to a person's power - like Purity's ability to wreathe herself in light.
And for all that, she was essentially stymied by the whims of an executive somewhere who had probably seen her photos and was stone walling her for fear of upsetting someone else at the show with her clearly superior designs.
She contemplated the cloth for a moment, itching to just play with it, to experiment with what she could do - but unwilling to waste her limited stock of the product. She had just about reached the point where her interest out weighed her caution - when a brief knock on the door drew her attention.
"…yes?" She called out.
The door opened to reveal one of the women from Aspirants dojo. Contrary to popular belief, they weren't all Asian. In fact, only about a third of them were. The ABB had known better than to forcibly recruit too many from their own ranks. Sabah had sought to hire people to help her man the store when she was busy - which was most of the time really - but rather than actually go through the hiring process she had simply found several of the women taking turns at it within about a day of bringing it up.
She wasn't sure if someone had arranged it for her, if Taylor or Aspirant had politely suggested it to them, or if Danny had somehow arranged the hiring - but she was assured that they were paid, and they were if nothing else, excellent at preventing shoplifting.
You would think that no one would bother given that the store was itself situated in the middle of a massive Parahuman base of operations, but apparently, you would be wrong.
"There's a line outside. I already called some of the others to help manage things but we were wondering if there was some kind of special deal today or something..?" The woman - Sabah couldn't remember her name at the moment - said.
Sabah wracked her brain for anything even vaguely like a promotion she might have planned and then forgot about, and drew a blank. She tried to think of what outrageous thing Taylor might have done recently to draw attention - and likewise came up blank.
True, the recent fight in Uber and Leets… pocket… dimension… thing was quite the spectacle.
But the recording had never been sent out from the time locked space, and no one save the Protectorate knew about it.
"I hadn't planned anything special…" She said slowly, shooting one last furtive look at her special fabric and then waving to have it recede back into the wall with a sigh.
"Oh. So should I tell them to go away or..?" Her employee asked, perhaps a bit too eagerly.
"No, it's fine. I'll go see what they want." Sabah said, picking her way to the front of the store.
"And you are here… for a hat?" She asked, several hours later, for perhaps the hundredth time in sheer disbelief.
On the one hand, business was quite good today. Booming even. She had received more easily managed commissions for custom pieces today than she had in her entire career to date.
The problem was, they were all for hats.
It was such a distracting prospect that she found herself staring blankly at this new customer when he said;
"Yup! It's Brockton Bay - you gotta have a hat!" He said happily.
Usually she wouldn't be speaking directly to the customers this often. That was the entire point of having employees. But she did have to speak to anyone asking for a custom piece. She couldn't very well work her craft based on a disjointed description from a cashier.
"And… from where did this notion come? I'm just asking because you aren't nearly the first person to make this request today…" She put forth hesitantly.
It burned her that she somehow didn't know where this trend had come from or why it was so popular at the moment - but she supposed that between patrolling, designing, and otherwise just being very busy the usual attention she put towards keeping up with the fads and styles of the day had fallen behind somewhat.
The man - who was wearing a tan jacket, a black shirt that read 'I 3 New York' and floppy looking Stetson that obviously wasn't part of his normal attire - looked confused for a moment before answering.
"Oh! Sorry, I guess you locals are already loaded up on the things huh? My tour bus just pulled in and all of us were able to find The Heap so we figured we just had to try the local style." The man said with a wide smile. "You're prices are great by the way. This old thing was off the shelf and was nearly twice the cost of your custom work."
Her gaze panned upwards to his Stetson, then back down again as tired realization kicked in.
They were tourists.
They were all tourists. She just hadn't considered the option because to her, coming to Brockton Bay for tourism or entertainment was like putting your head in a lion's mouth to get a better look at its throat.
Suicidally stupid.
But then, that was the old Brockton Bay. The Brockton Bay ruled by violence, and gangs. And while the city still had the highest number of capes per capita, it distinctly lacked much of its previous danger. In fact, with rare exception for the most insane villains - like Valefor - even the local villains were prone more to showboating than actually hurting anyone.
"I… see. Well, what did you have in mind then?" She asked, struggling mightily to maintain her professionalism when all she really wanted to do was grab the man and shake him.
When she was finished with him, she paused to glance around the shop and - finding it to be both extremely close to closing time, and for there to no longer be customers in the store - she opted to close up.
Almost automatically, she made towards the door so she could lock it and flip the sign on it to closed - but before she could complete the movement, one last customer stepped through it.
The first thing she noticed about the woman, was how familiar her method of dress was. The long white gown with the blue tabard like strip down the center of it was very reminiscent of a past version of Emmy. The second thing she noticed, were the nine large tails whipping around behind her.
Truthfully, she halfway just assumed Emmy had changed forms already, and was about to query her about the circumstances of the swap in a relaxed manner - when the blonde woman spoke.
"Good evening. Are you the proprietor of this business?" She asked in a polite tone with an obvious Asian accent to it.
"I- yes?" She offered, taking a quick step backward and immediately grabbing every fiber and thread in the building with her power when it became obvious that this was almost certainly a cape with whom she had no prior connection.
She had assumed that eventually the Elite would show up on her doorstep if not necessarily Taylors. The setup her team had was simply too beneficial to Parahuman commerce for them not to eventually take notice and get involved.
But she didn't attack, or show any outward signs of distress save for the sudden stillness in the surrounding area.
…and the sound of at least two swords being drawn behind her. She wanted to ask what the hell Aspirant was teaching these women, but opted not to do so at this particular moment in time.
"Good. My Master wishes to place a bulk order." The woman said serenely.
Sabah paused, squinting at her again. It… sounded like Emmy…
"…Emmy?" She asked carefully.
The blond woman tilted her head to one side, which was, again, a very memorable pose of confusion to Sabah. It also had the effect of causing her eyes to be drawn to the two triangular protrusions in the woman's cap, clearly designed to be shaped like exaggerated fox ears.
…or made to accommodate exaggerated fox ears.
"Ah. The copycat. My Master finds that one endlessly amusing. My condolences."
"Okay… and the order would be..?" Sabah asked very slowly. She had a baaaad feeling about this entire interaction. A creeping chill that tickled the base of her spine and left her remembering who Emmy had been when she had first joined the team.
"Fifty replicas of your Masters sun hat, to be completed by tomorrow morning in exchange for this." She said lightly, withdrawing a cloth bundle from… somewhere… and unwrapping it to show several spindles of crystalline white thread within.
Her power reached out to them immediately of course, and she was floored but how much of it could go into the stuff. Usually only so much of her power could 'saturate' a substance. Even Taylor's enchanted stuff could only improve the base materials so far.
But this… this felt like it was made for her.
And then the blonde woman covered it back up again and her ability to detect the items with using her power was abruptly cut off. She didn't bother asking how that was possible.
That was a habit people who lived near Taylor grew out of pretty quickly.
Instead she moved to ask what it was but was preempted by the blonds next statement.
"Thread from a Jorogumo. To be provided upon timely completion in-" she paused for a second. "- approximately twelve hours, eighteen minutes and sixteen seconds."
Sabah stared at her. The old her would have rejected the commission on the basis that all her other commissions for the day were equally time restricted. She already had a number of hats to complete for those tourists by tomorrow as they would be leaving not too long afterward and wished to actually wear the things in the city.
The current her had gotten into a tug of war with an Endbringer, and was firmly in the 'A' tier of Parahumans currently on the planet.
"Deal." She said simply.
They shook hands. Then the blond left via the front door.
It was two in the morning. She was tired. She was so, so tired. Continually use of her power required immense mental focus, and the amount of microscopic control required to achieve the levels of perfection she demanded of herself was staggering. Not just that, but with every moment that passed, it got harder and harder to maintain.
She glared balefully down at the slowly weaving itself together in front of her. She had thought that this would be easy. Under normal circumstances she could put together something like this in under ten minutes easy. Doing over a hundred of them should be trivial.
She had not considered the scaling difficulty of making so many of them back to back.
This… this was hell. There was no other way to describe it. It was pure hell. Her head hurt. Her eyes burned. And if she drank any more coffee she was pretty sure her bladder would literally explode.
Of course, then one of Taylor's hellish looking portals to nightmare land opened up and her younger friend stepped through.
"Hey I heard you were still here so I thought-" The younger girl paused when Sabah turned a blood shot stare on her and pointed at the neatly stacked pile of hats in the corner.
"Can you use your ridiculous magical bullshit to help me make some of these? Either help or go away - I'm too tired to rationalize your shit right now." She said flatly. Taylor was understandably taken aback by this, since Sabah was typically very soft spoken. In fact, besides occasional disbelief or mild annoyance, this was probably the first time she had ever snapped at Taylor.
But familiarity breeds contempt, and after spending months with the girl and in particular, hours making magical super fabric together, she was now comfortable being occasionally snappish with her if for no other reason than she was positive Taylor wouldn't get offended and obliterate her from existence.
Which isn't to say that she couldn't. Just that she wouldn't.
She would never say it out loud but she was pretty sure that if Taylor was any more active than she already was she would leave most of the world a catastrophe zone. Not intentionally - but her particular brand of problem solving did lean a bit towards ultra violence.
"O…k. I was going to ask if we could get some simple clothes for a new-" Taylor tried to say, but Sabah just shushed her and pointed sternly at the hat pile again.
"Work and Talk or don't Talk at all." She said seriously, finishing her current hat and moving on to another one.
"Fine…" Taylor said with a sigh, picking one of the completed hats up to examine and then carefully picking out the materials required to make one. A look of intense concentration crossed her face for a moment, then her tattoos started to glow - and a few moments later there was an identical hat in her other hand.
"There, so like I was saying-" She tried again.
"I need forty three more." Sabah spat out irately.
"...oh. Oh it's like training!" Taylor said, with an expression like a lightbulb had just gone off in her head.
"...what?" Sabah asked frankly, stopping mid task to turn to stare at her boss.
"Training! Sorry I didn't realize you were doing something so important. I'll leave you to it, I'll just see if Emmy left anything that will fit in my dresser for now." She said airily.
"No wai-" She tried to counter, rushing to get her whimsical ditz of a boss to comprehend that she was both wrong and stupid before she could flee and leave all the work to her.
But she was too late. Taylor had already opened up another nightmare portal and stepped brusquely through it - gone as quickly and disruptively as she had arrived.
Sabah couldn't help it. She yelled out in frustration for a moment.
Then she got back to work.
She woke up the next morning with ten minutes to opening time with her face stuck to her work table by a puddle of her own drool.
She had evidently, at some point in the night, fallen asleep.
Worse, she couldn't really remember the back half of her night. Had… had she finished in time?
At this point it wasn't about the reward for success. It was about her professional pride. If you can't complete a commission, then don't take it.
Hurriedly, she pushed herself to her feet and looked around only to find a vast majority of the hats she had made the day before were… gone. Simply… gone.
In a panic she rushed out to see if one of her employees had taken one only to find… nothing. The shop wasn't even open yet, and none of her usual employees were present to do so.
Confused and concerned, she rushed back to her workroom and after a moment of searching, found a small letter taped to the wall where she had been keeping the hats.
Picking it up slowly, she unfolded the slip of paper and began reading.
'Dear esteemed Hat Maker. My Master was pleased with the quality of your work and extends her gratitude for the speedy delivery. She wishes to inform you that she could have waited a few days for the work if you were busy, but that she appreciates your hard work regardless.' it read, and Sabah could feel her entire body stiffen with aggravation at the statement.
"If you didn't mind then why set a deadline in the first place!?" She raged internally, but kept reading.
'As compensation for your suffering, we have taken the liberty of delivering your other completed works to your customers for you, and we believe that your own Master has seen fit to temporarily close your store for the day so that you may rest.
Best wishes, Ran Yakumo'
Sabah stared at the letter for a moment. Then slowly sat back down as relief edged out anger as the dominant emotion in her body.
Of course, this was when her phone rang, sending her blood pressure skyrocketing.
"H-hello?" She asked weakly. She paused to listen for a moment then frowned.
"No, I… did not ask Nexus to speak with you. No, I don't think it likely that she would fill your bedroom with eyes until- no I assure you that wasn't- I mean it might have been but she didn't even- I would never… accepted? Why thank you, I look forward to working with you in a safe environment absent any multidimensional staring eyes!" She finally said brightly.
"I really can't forget how secretly considerate that girl can be." She thought to herself once the phone call was over, all ire at her boss for the previous nights abandonment forgotten.
When she remembered to thank Taylor for the - somewhat aggressive - assistance, she failed to notice the distinct lack of recognition in Taylor's eyes when she explained things.
Which was, for all involved, probably for the best.
615
Bowler Hat Guy
Dec 13, 2021
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Threadmarks Casus Belli 16.3
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Bowler Hat Guy
Bowler Hat Guy
A Hat & Its Man
Dec 23, 2021
#43,488
[X] Gooey/Yes - Fate: Grand Order Bleed has been fully unlocked!
[X] It's time to follow up on the bait your Master set out for Valefor by trying to purchase the railways.
[X] Plan: Shiki Simmie
-[X] Pass (Shikigami is an Original Character)
-[X] ...We do still have the Simurgh's hand, right?
-[X] High Powered Shikigami. (???)
-[X] Bleach
Current Training: Half Devil Race Change (7/20) - (9/20)
Current Energy: 17
Current Emulation Status: Here
Sunday, March 13th, 2011
The Heap, Brockton Bay
Taylor Hebert
Was she being a brat?
Taylor glanced around herself. She eyed the extremely complicated array of magical sigils, paper talismans, focusing devices, runic script, and other such thaumaturgical nonsense that was layered in and around the basement room where she resurrected people.
She turned her attention to the large ivory hand situated at the center of the extremely complicated arrangement of objects and magical foci around her. She eyed the wrist, where she could see inside the thing. It had come as… well not a surprise given how inhuman the Endbringers were, but still… it had been unsettling to realize that - upon close inspection - that the entire limb was just an entangled mesh of small feathered wings, perfectly placed to create the optical illusion of a hand.
A very large, immaculate hand.
Taylor tried very hard not to think too much about how an inhuman monster's idea of perfection was very easily mirrored in her own hand if looked at closely.
Of course, diverting her thoughts away from that admittedly dysphoria inducing aspect of her power reminded her of her original thought.
Was she being a brat?
Yes she had a routine… and well… yes she had a certain preference for maintaining that routine. She understood - intellectually - that what she considered 'training' was a pretty vague concept. She had 'trained' while meditating, while getting ad hoc therapy from a panda bear, and yes, while doing a fair amount of actual physical training.
But she had never not trained at all. Not since getting her power. Not since her life had gotten so much better.
And really, that was probably the reason it bothered her so much. Training was… it was representative of a better life for her. She wouldn't describe herself as 'obsessed' with it but well…
She just liked it okay? She thought Emmy got that. Emmy was the one who'd harangued and harassed her day after day to do the training!
In fact, in retrospect, this was totally Emmys fault! She couldn't be held accountable for this!
Which was the exact logic that had gotten her thinking.
Obviously the best way to ensure she had time to keep up with her habit- hobby- necessary personal maintenance, was to deal with Valefor. They had shown her pictures of the guy in his PRT dossier and he was… well the best way she could describe him in light of everything else going on was as a creepy little stalker boy.
She had tried to use a tracking spell to find him and ended up drawing a blank. Well. Not a 'blank' but rather, an empty warehouse. She suspected that wherever Valefor was, he had been at least partially involved in Uber and Leets shift towards ultra violence - because the only place she could conceive of to hide from her was a pocket dimension somewhere.
Valefor himself, she didn't really know well enough to find, nor did she have a focus item to follow him with. But Sophia Hess? Taylor could have magically locked on to Sophia Hess while blindfolded.
And yet… she couldn't.
She couldn't even slash her way into the place because she had no context for it. If she tried again she'd probably just end up back where she'd found Uber and Leet the first time.
So she had done something that she was reasonably certain everyone in the area would tell her was a bad idea.
She was going to make the Simurgh into a Shikigami.
Then she was going to send Valefor to his god directly - because she didn't have the time or energy for the mind games.
Taylor didn't consider herself a brutish or overly violent person. She didn't believe that 'dumb muscle' was really a thing.
But she had definitely spent many, many hours on the phone with Vicky complaining about how much she preferred a fist fight to a battle of wits.
'This is fine. I'll have complete control over it if it goes all 'kill all humans' on me. I can just.. order it to sit still so I can kill it. This is fine. Totally.' She convinced herself as she took her position at the northernmost point of the ritual circle and began to pump power into the runes, scriptures, and other objects of power linked to the spot she was standing in.
She had stopped doing resurrections for the PRT in their dingy metal room in the basement. It wasn't that she had a problem with dingy metal rooms. It was that the setup over at the PRT was innately not hers. It was an inefficient combination of whatever Armsmaster thought would be helpful and whatever she could scrounge up with a days preparation.
This room - which was, she would admit freely, also a dingy metal room in a basement - had as many optimizations, upgrades, fixes, and changes as she could feasibly cram into the space. She had better control here. She could put more power into her workings.
And she was protected when she decided to do something stupid.
Like, convert all of her various power sources into more magic to slam into the formation.
Valefor thought the Simurgh was a god? Fine. She'd show him a god.
"What is best in life?" She muttered to herself, even as her considerable stamina began to drain under the tremendous weight of what she was trying to accomplish. She always thought that quote from the old movie her Dad loved was a bit… well misogynistic, but as she accrued stupid enemies who wouldn't leave her alone, she was starting to warm up to it.
…in a totally heroic sense, of course.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the hand in the center of the working began to glow and lift into the air. The pull on her resources increased, faster and faster, until she was leaning heavily on her sword and panting for breath.
Just a bit more and-
"Heyyyyy… I need a favor." Emmy's new, lackadaisical tone pierced her focus.
"R-right now!?" She barked out as the glowing limb began to twist and warp into the shape of a well proportioned woman.
"...yes?" He responded. She concentrated balefully on the brand new feminine figure that had spawned before her as she waited for him to elaborate - too focused on the sudden realization that she had to be very careful with the next few seconds lest she end up fighting a Simurgh that she herself had empowered.
Which would totally be Emmy's fault, and definitely wouldn't be kind of fun.
Definitely.
At length, the woman who had appeared across from her - fully clothed for once, which was rare for her in a Shikigami - examined her for a second, then placed one unnaturally pale hand on an exposed hip and made an 'I'll wait' gesture with her other hand.
Spoiler: Simone
Taylor squinted at the weird cutouts in the woman's pants that made this possible - seemingly designed to highlight said hips - then slowly drew her eyes up the rest of her. Pale skin that was only just this side of human, and hair that was just a slightly darker shade of white swished about as the Shikigami tilted its head at her and smirked, shifting its 'I'll wait' motion to a 'hurry up' one.
"Well?!" She quickly shot to Emmy as her eyes lit on the single sword at the woman's side.
"Right. Could you maybe shoot me a tracking spell to that Trollo guy? He's a dickhead criminal right?" Emmy sent to her.
She barely even thought about it before her hand quickly flitted through the gesture for the spell, sending it off to her partner.
Then she closed down the link and stared at what she had wrought.
Was she certain the Simurgh's scream could travel through her link to Emmy? No. Would she take that risk? Also no.
"Look at you, taking a perfectly good genocidal monster and giving it an endocrine system." The woman finally said, when it was obvious her communication with Emmy had ceased.
Not that Taylor knew how she knew that…
"I guessed. It's really obvious when you do your little psychic conversation thing. I also guessed that you were wondering how I knew that. It's called cold reading." The woman supplied, doing a slow turn to examine the room around her as she spoke in an absent minded tone.
Taylor opened her mouth to respond to that but had to take an abrupt step backwards instead when the chatty Shikigami abruptly disappeared from where she was standing, only to reappear when she bounced violently off the barrier surrounding the ritual area. A cascade of blue light rippled across the invisible dome, and the pale woman ended up blinking dazedly on the floor where she had ended up.
"So you could guess what I was thinking but not that I was smart enough to have precautions for if you got aggressive?" Taylor asked, perhaps a touch smugly.
She could still remember fighting the Simurgh and she was unashamed to say that she held perhaps a touch more animosity to this new being than was appropriate. Even though she knew that the completely new mode of existence for her had probably drastically changed the Simurgh's personality.
The creature pouted - pouted! - at her.
"Look, I have memories of omniscience but now have to function using only these two stupid eyes. Besides, I wasn't going to attack you. I just thought appearing behind you would make this funnier." She grumbled.
"You thought aggressively teleporting at me would make things… 'funnier'?" Taylor asked.
"Yeah, and you thought turning an Endbringer's toenail into a person was a great way to blow off steam. Get off your high horse, Mom." She spat, quickly rising to her feet.
Taylor couldn't help but flinch slightly at the title. She grasped that in many ways she was a Mother to what few Shikigami she made that remained with her - and weren't just an ad hoc way to resurrect someone.
She was also fifteen, and therefore, found the idea of being a mother at all deeply uncomfortable. Not just because of the connotations behind being a teenage mother, which she could easily ignore by remembering that she was technically one of the bourgeoisie now. No, it was the fact that she felt woefully unprepared for it, and in truth, was very happy to foist that particular responsibility on Jess.
Which got her thinking about Jess and her not really relationship with her Dad, which she also didn't want to think about which-
Well.
Unfortunately, the Shikigami seemed to detect the obvious chain reaction of thoughts the single word had caused, because a wide leering smile spread across her face as she watched Taylor briefly work through the train of thought.
"Oh, I can tell we're going to get along great." She said slowly and malefically.
"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that, because I'm already getting a headache from talking to you. Let's get down to business here. I forbid you from knowingly causing direct or indirect harm, be it physical or psychological, through any action or influence of your own without my express permission." Taylor began, quickly rattling off the first chunk of the legalese she planned on inflicting on her new Shikigami.
"Hey wai- I'm not a demon Crowley, you can't just hit me with a finely worded- " She blurted out rushing forward and bouncing off the dome again.
"You will, whenever possible, act in the defense of the innocent as defined by me, and confirm with me the details of such a designation should it ever come into question or be anything less than blatantly obvious." Taylor continued.
"You know I'm not like, innately evil right? You don't need to-"
"In my absence, you will defer to Emmy, then the rest of the Oathbound, then my Father, then any member of the Dockworkers Association in descending order of seniority. In the absence of anyone to confirm your actions, due to our deaths or other unforeseen circumstances, you will approach the nearest Protectorate Headquarters and work with them to determine your course of action." Taylor finished.
"...I feel like you're being unfairly strict with me here…" The Shikigami pointed out sourly.
"I feel like your first sentence included the word 'genocide'. Don't be a baby. Literally none of those restrictions stop you from getting married or doing anything else you want. You just can't hurt people." Taylor said with a roll of her eyes.
"Yes, well, you haven't even asked me my name yet." The pale woman pouted.
Taylor mentally ran back over the conversation and determined that, no, no she hadn't.
"Sorry. What-"
"Simone. I like Simone. Also, you should probably know, I'm really not the Simurgh. I'm literally the equivalent of its toenail. It's not actually dead." Simone stated with a mix of amusement and concern on her face.
"She's not? But the body-" Taylor blurted out in dismay.
"It's not, and pretty much it's entire body is vestigial. Its 'brain' or 'soul' or whatever you want to call it, is in one of the smaller wings. The rest is a very sexy decoy." She purred, drawing a hand down over her own body for emphasis.
"Gross. Don't do that. Also, it?" Taylor asked, her brows drawing down in thought.
"That thing was not, nor has it ever been, a human of any kind. It's closer to a… what would your Father call it… a terminator than anything else. A very complex machine." She explained with a matter of factness to her tone.
"So… should I be worried about it wanting revenge or..? Actually where the hell do Endbringers come from since we're talking about it." Taylor pressed.
"How should I know? I'm just the right hand of a decoy. I have vague memories of things my statuesque progenitor did, enough to be able to fake being a well socialized person, but I am, at the end of the day, the right hand of a decoy." She responded easily.
"Very helpful…" Taylor murmured. She shuffled the information around in her head for a minute before making a note to contact Piggot about it, then got back down to business.
Simone seemed to grasp what she was thinking about, because for once she opted not to make a clever remark.
Eventually Taylor decided that she had done her due diligence, and could safely drop the barrier containing the woman - and did so.
Only to be met with another teleporting leap from Simone, who appeared in front of her to sweep her up into a spinning hug that - for just the briefest of seconds - Taylor thought was the opening to a grappling maneuver.
She was almost kind of disappointed that it wasn't.
"Wonderful! Since we're all friendly now, I feel like you should be made aware of your obligations, Mother. Obviously, I will require a room, a wardrobe, a civilian identity - I would obviously prefer the Hebert family name like my sisters -" The Shikigami began to rattle off loudly.
Taylor sighed. She was already beginning to regret this course of action. Still, she reminded herself that she had done this in order to get at that creepy little stalker, and-
Actually, if this wasn't the Simurgh then she hadn't even achieved that.
"Damnit." She muttered, as the pale woman began to drag her through the Heap to Parian's Boutique.
Sunday, March 13th, 2011
The Heap, Brockton Bay
Multiversal Emulator
"Okay but, you get that I'm way cooler than Trainwreck right?" You ask the small child you nearly ran over as you guide him through the Heap towards a free room that you are pretty sure didn't exist until exactly when you needed it.
"Nuh-uh. You have a- um, my Aunty says you have a 'branding problem'. She says you should go back to being the hot guy with the big sword." The child explained to him with a look of concentration on his face as he tried to remember the exact words used.
You stare at him wordlessly for a moment. Silently hefting your own very large sword and posing with your hand on your chin - and he shoots you a mystified look in response.
"You- I- you know what? I'm not arguing with a child. You aren't old enough to drink, your opinion doesn't matter." You grouse at him.
"Didn't you tell us like, a few hours ago that you're a few months old tops?" Aisha points out with barely suppressed mirth from behind you.
"Yeah but I'm emulating a grown man. Totally just lied to you to get what I wanted." You say in response, blowing a raspberry at the unimpressed teen.
"You're kinda cool I guess. Like my Uncle." The kid - who's name you still hadn't gotten - says slowly, shifting awkwardly around as he walks.
"See? I-" You start to say triumphantly.
"This one time, he fought another one of the guys who lives under the docks with a rock so I could have this cool t-shirt that washed up on the beach. That was kinda cool." He says.
"Hey, look at that. On a scale from one to ten you merit a solid 'bum fight' out of ten as this guy." Aisha chortles right back at you.
"This guy literally killed god where he's from!" You yell in annoyance.
"Okay Nietzsche." Someone says sarcastically in response, and it takes you a solid fifteen seconds to realize it was Mem who said it.
"My own sister." You whisper in horror, which the taciturn girl merely blushes at without actually changing expressions.
"Actually, I still don't get how all of you are related. Like, you're Taylors power, and she made you, and you made her and-" Dinah asks curiously, pointing at you, Mem, and Mun in turn.
"What are the chances you figure it out if we don't explain it?" Mun asks smugly.
"...16.8%" Dinah says slowly, squinting at the bird girl.
"You know the rules. It's not life threatening, so I get to keep that to mess with you." Mun responds archly.
"You just made that up just now!" Dinah complains.
"All in favor of messing with Number Girl-"
"I'm not calling myself that!"
"-say 'Aye'" Mun calls out.
Three hands instantly go up, much to Dinah's chagrin.
"Et tu Mem?" She asks dejectedly.
The cane Shikigami shrugs and lowers her hand with the others.
"I owe her several favors. I just wanted to discharge one." She explains.
"That's Mem-speak for 'I'm a goddamn pudding fiend and I keep stealing hers at lunch'" Mun chimes in.
Mem blushes again.
"So uh… I take it you're like… homeless? I'm no good with kids, but Trainwreck-" You start to ask slowly.
"I'm not! My Mom and Dad are just busy! Miss Nimue told me I should just wait with her but I got tired of waiting and wanted to see if I could find my house, but there was this really big dog that chased me and then I ran into these guys with guns who wanted to know who I was and then-" The child slumps slightly.
Everyone present stares at him now as they process his disjointed story.
"Jesus Christ kid." You opine for everyone there, eyeing the odd purple streak in his hair.
"It's okay! I just asked myself what Trainwreck would do." He responds, perking back up again.
"Oh god damnit." You hear Aisha mutter.
"Uh-huh… and uh… what would Trainwreck do?" You ask slowly in response.
"I punched the dog in the nose real hard, and I punched the guys with guns in the knees real hard so they couldn't chase me! Miss Nimue says people with guns don't die if you hurt them so I shouldn't worry about it if they start screaming!" He says proudly.
"He can never meet Trainwreck." You hear the girls whispering behind you. It's very quiet. Enough so that you would assume only someone with enhanced hearing should be able to catch it.
And yet…
"You promised!" The child yells, whirling around instantly.
Well, at least you won't be the only one suffering.
"Well hello there. You new here? I know the grounds pretty well if you wanna go on a private walk around the-" You say the second you step into the kitchen to find a tall, leggy, blonde woman standing around in short-shorts and a pink t-shirt.
Spoiler: Simone
"I'm technically your sister, but if you really want to go for a… private… trip…" She responds with a certain malicious glee.
You immediately pivot on one foot to examine your Master, who is sitting at the kitchen table with a large mug of… something… nearby, rubbing her temples in exasperation.
"What's for dinner?" You ask, pretending the last ten seconds never happened. Taylor lazily lifts the mug next to her into the air in answer, then downs the entire thing in a single gulp.
"Is that… beer?" You ask incredulously.
"It's root beer. I just wanted a way to demonstrate my misery." She explains, leaning forward until her forehead bangs against the table.
"Oh Mother dearest, don't be so grumpy. You'll get gray hairs." The woman pipes up with a smirk.
"Hey, how come you never make boy Shikigami?" You ask idly, turning towards her to examine without any of your Emulation's built in lust filtering through.
"Because she has no actual control over it." The woman instantly rattles off.
"I totally do!" Taylor snaps, bolting upright.
"Then why am I like this if it bothers you so much?" The woman counters, making a pose before returning to a lazy slouch.
"Hey, hi. Elder projection here. Who the hell are you?" You add in when it becomes obvious you are being ignored. The unknown woman blinks once then turns towards you, shooting a curious glance at your Master as though wondering why you don't already know.
Which… is a fair point given you can communicate mentally from any distance.
"Emmy, Simone. Simone, Emmy. She's the Simurgh's thumb or whatever." Taylor said tiredly.
"Right hand." Simone sniped back.
"Oh hey. I actually follow the logic on this one. We doing a 'where is your god now' thing with this or what?" You ask.
Simone points at you and smiles.
"He gets it." She says with genuine warmth in her tone.
"Why doesn't it concern you that she's part of the Simurgh." Taylor grinds out through her teeth. She's not actually that annoyed right now, you can tell. She's only mildly annoyed, and is overexaggerating that annoyance in order to play along with Simone.
She is still sort of annoyed though.
So you shrug.
"This guy killed God or… whatever existed before God. Or… reality? I dunno, I try not to think too hard about it. Endbringers rate pretty low on the power scale for the hell hole he's from." You explain lazily.
"Note to self. Never visit this emulation. Ever." Taylor mutters.
"Yeah but hear me out. Tons of cool fights and zero accountability for them." You point out.
"...okay, maybe visit this emulation." She concedes.
"I feel as though I should be insulted, Brother dearest." Simone offers, pulling a chair from the table to sit nearby to watch you.
You point a finger at her.
"Don't do that. It's creepy." You say quickly.
"I tried that. She won't listen." Taylor says from off to your side. You think about it for a second. Then you shrug again.
"Eh. Probably won't bother the next guy. I'm over it. We ready to head home?" You ask, earning a pout and a relieved sigh from your Master, who very quickly opens a Gap and steps through it.
"Later sis." You say lackadaisically, as you step through the Gap after your Master.
You try not to be worried by the catlike look of interest and annoyance you get from the once Endbringer at your complete lack of concern for how dangerous she probably is.
You don't really succeed though.
Monday, March 14th, 2011
Hebert Household, Brockton Bay
"Up and at em! Let's go let's go let's go!" You bellow, banging a pair of pots together as loudly as you can over your Master's head where she is presently sleeping.
She, of course, can see what you are doing while she sleeps - so this doesn't surprise her. But it does annoy her, which is becoming a fairly standard reaction to this emulation at this point.
"You know, since you can survive being eviscerated, I'm starting to think maybe I should do it more often in retaliation for stuff like this." Taylor says tiredly, not bothering to actually get up or move from her position beyond the effort it takes to swing her arm around and point Nemesis at you.
"Okay but, hear me out, training." You croon at her. The sword arm currently trained on you droops slightly but then firms back up.
"You're not just screwing with me like yesterday right?" Taylor asks, finally rolling over to look you in the face.
"Nope. We got all the fixins. A truck, a mission, aaaaaand I told Danny he had to call you in sick today for national security reasons." You say with a crooked grin.
Your Master blinks at you owlishly.
"...what national security reasons?" She asks suspiciously.
"Oh there isn't one. I just wanted to see if he'd believe it." You answer with a shrug.
Beautiful gesture, the shrug. The one stop shop for 'I don't care, I don't know, and you can't prove I did it'.
"Why did you lie to my dad?" She asks with a frown.
"Well, it's gonna take a while to drive to Boston so-" You explain slowly.
"Why do we need to drive to Boston?" Your Master cuts you off, her tone going dangerous.
"...because driving is part of the training?" You put forth. She squints at you some more, but ultimately relents, rolling back over to go back to sleep.
"Also Simone is here, and she's making breakfast." You inform her, causing her to bolt upright in bed to glare at you.
"Why didn't you open with that? Do you screw with me as this guy for fun?" She laments, rapidly scrambling over to get dressed.
"I don't see the problem. She just said she wanted to meet her sisters." You say in confusion.
"That's the whole problem! I bet she'll have them paying bums to fight each other for fun within a week!" Taylor hisses at you.
"I feel like you might be exaggerating how malicious she is…" You sigh as your Master sprints past you with a dress misaligned across her torso, rapidly tugging her arms into the sleeves as she goes.
You roll your eyes and phase straight down through the floor and into the kitchen instead of chasing after her, and arrive at the amusing sight of your Master frozen on the stairs down, staring in confusion at the scene before her.
"So you just brush it? Have you considered braids? I feel like this would look good in a braid." Simone hums pleasantly, sitting on the couch in your living room behind Mem, whose hair she is playing with while fiddling with a host of hair care supplies she shouldn't have access to.
"Braids require continuous maintenance. Mun can brush my hair every morning in as little as ten minutes." Mem explains, leaning into the physical contact.
"If you brush it too much it damages the hair - you'll get split ends." Simone explains casually, tilting her head towards Mun who was sitting nearby and watching the entire process curiously.
"Now you… I think your hair is closer to a bird's feathers than anything else… we'll have to look up a way to handle that. It's much too lustrous to just ignore."
"How do you know that?" Mun asks suspiciously.
"Hmm?" Simone hums as she continues to fiddle with Mem's hair.
"The feather thing. I didn't know that," the raven haired girl elaborates.
"Ah. Can you keep a secret?" Simone asks with a twinkle in her eyes.
"Definitely not." Mem states at the same time as Mun says "Totally."
"I know lots of useless information. The Simurgh didn't just mind control people. She planned around them. The amount of useless trivia I hold in this head of mine is quite vast. Also not very useful. I usually only remember things as they become relevant. Show me a Cape and I'll probably know their real name - but I wouldn't even think of it until I saw them." Simone explains with a shrug.
"For instance!" She says loudly, causing your Master to jolt where she is - badly - spying on them.
"I wanted to make sure I was here for this." She explains, reaching over to the remote to turn the television on just in time for a news report to begin playing.
"In other news, several young Parahumans known to frequent the Heap have made their debut. Though their team name is unknown, they are assumed to be Nexus' answer to the Wards program." The anchor was saying, just as the screen shifted to show a slideshow of images for each of the girls from the previous night.
Along with 'Cape Names' stenciled in at the bottom of the image.
"Oh fuck off." Mun complains, as the news anchor goes on to talk about the abilities of 'Number Girl', 'Bird Brain', 'Wizard Girl', and 'Sword Gal' - or at least, the ones you could easily figure out from the blurry cellphone footage that had caught them yelling at each other while fighting.
"I wanted to be called Long Memory." Mem complains blandly.
"I wanted to be called Benevolent Murdering Princess!" Mun complains. Simone raises an eyebrow at that but snickers nonetheless.
"No way Mother dearest would have let that one fly, little Sister." She says, leaning her head back on the couch to look straight at your Master where she is situated on the stairs behind her.
"There are waffles in the kitchen. The homemade kind, not that frozen garbage you eat for some reason." She says with a smirk.
"Do you just, only have two facial expressions?" Taylor grumbles, caught in the act.
"I have a few more, but those are for when you're older."
"""Gross.""" All three girls say at once.
Choose Three (3) to accompany you on your road trip to Ambush Valefor - hopefully.
Simone comes automatically.
] Aspirant
] Trainwreck
] Parian
] Huntsman
] Danny
] Jess
] Mouse Protector
] Mem & Mun
] Current PRT Liaison Team (Dauntless & Clockblocker)
] Vicky
] Amy
] Jeeves
] Miss Kim & Ligeia
Be aware that bringing Dauntless & Clockblocker involves informing the PRT of what you are doing.
Current Omake Points: 83
IF YOU ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH THESE, YOU CAN FIND THE OMAKE SHOP UNDER THE VOTING TAB AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE.
REMEMBER, ONLY ONE OF THE BELOW CAN WIN!
creativity's_darkside wants to activate Pull the Trigger for 30 Omake Points.
] creativity's_darkside/Yes
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] Chaotic_Homepath/Yes
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] Citino/Yes
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] The-Chained-One/Yes
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A/N: Happy Holidays everyone! The Omake Shop has been updated with a series of *non bleed DLC* to spend your points on, for those of you who don't want to summon dragons out of mountains for lulz or whatever the kids call it these days.
The Omake Shop itself has been moved to the much less cluttered Voting tab in order to be more easily accessible.
You can find a link to it Here
Last edited: Dec 23, 2021
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Threadmarks Time of Our Lives by bLuewErewOlf25 (Canon)
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bLuewErewOlf25
bLuewErewOlf25
Decided to return to monke
He/Him
Dec 30, 2021
#43,852
A.N: Fine, I'll do it myself.
Time of Our Lives
A Free Clockblocker Social
Monday, March 14th, 2011.
The Heap, Brockton Bay
Approximately two hours before Casus Belli 16.4…
The past week had been alright for Dennis, also known as Clockblocker of the Wards. Being picked along with Dauntless as the newest guests at Nexus' castle had been both awesome and just a little bit terrifying. After all, the Oathbound were only the most powerful faction in Brockton Bay right now, and their jobs as PRT liaisons meant they both had to coordinate and monitor the group belonging to the most powerful fifteen year old girl in existence.
So, you know, no pressure or anything.
Even discounting Nexus, the Oathbound were made up of some incredibly top-tier parahumans, that by all means shouldn't be anywhere near their demonstrated level of competence. Parian just controlled thread and was supposedly a pacifist, Trainwreck was a tinker for literal scrap metal, hell, he even heard through the grapevine that Huntsman's parahuman ability was supposed to be looking pretty.
But nope, after some training under Nexus and a bunch of magical boons or something, they became a group of parahumans who could take on every gang in the Bay and come out on top.
A team who could take on the fucking Simurgh - and win.
Which is why it was so surprising that the Oathbound lacked any sort of bureaucracy to govern their actions… or proper organization for that matter. Sure Nexus was the leader and Trainwreck was their second in command, but the former never enforced active leadership on her team's daily activities outside of combat. And the latter may have a bunch of loose patrol routes drawn out, but the rest of the team (and the kung-fu girls and pigeons; couldn't forget those) picked whichever route they wanted, whenever they wanted, a-and… okay, that's enough of that train of thought for today.
It was definitely a good thing Nexus almost never patrolled though. As funny as it was for every criminal in the city to start cowering in terror, it also made it more difficult for the other heroes to sniff them out.
The Oathbound themselves were pretty alright people though. Trainwreck had a crude sense of humor that Dennis could appreciate. Parian was very polite - even as she kicked him out of her shop for loitering. He had chatted with Huntsman about video games, although that ended when Valefor turned that Madison girl into a bloody show of affection.
And then… there was Taylor Hebert herself. A bit too much into training, and definitely a source to inspire some appropriate fear in him, but man did she radiate power and beauty. She was also funny, clever, and willing to banter with him unlike most of the other Wards. She was a source of hope to a lot of people in Brockton… and honestly, for himself as well. She was the one who got his father finally healed after all. Some people would argue that it was Panacea who actually healed his dad, but Dennis would argue that it was Nexus who convinced the usually sullen and bitchy healer to treat him in the first place.
Was Clock willing to risk his life around Nexus after that? Yes, absolutely. Did he also have a bit of a crush on her? Also yes. He could be honest to himself, unlike a certain Dallon girl he wouldn't name out loud. Bless Taylor's oblivious little heart.
Currently though, the aforementioned badass teenager was smiling sweetly as she kicked his ass in chess for the twelth time. He had thought it would have been easy for him from the very first game they played when she started putting random restrictions on her own pieces' movements… but apparently not. Supposedly, the Pretty Lady With Scary Eyes that her projection had emulated (Yukari was her name, according to Nexus) had done the same thing against Hebert as a form of training. Tactics? Being chaos incarnate? Whatever the case, it seemed to have worked pretty well for the leader of the Oathbound.
At least she wasn't annoyed like she had been an hour ago. It was why he offered her a game in the first place.
"Dammit. I'm not gonna be beating you anytime soon, are I?" Clockblocker said rhetorically, staring mournfully as his king was cornered by the married couple of queen and knight.
"I'm afraid not. Don't feel too bad though. I went through a lot of games with Emmy myself." Nexus answered, with a tiny bit of satisfaction in her voice. Dennis, having removed his helmet since Nexus knew what he looked like anyways, stuck his tongue out before moving to reset the board.
"... Hey, Dennis? Mind if I ask a question?"
"Sure Taylor. What do you need from the greatest Ward in the Bay~?"
"Vista would probably hit you if she heard that." Taylor snorted in amusement, before becoming serious. "Why are you willing to be around me this much?"
Dennis' mischievous expression didn't change. "What, can't I appreciate a beautiful girl like yourself?"
Taylor raised an eyebrow, causing him to wilt. "Seriously Taylor, I already get this kind of thing from Amy. Please stop."
"Heh." She shook her head. "I'm asking because… well, the other Wards don't really… go out of their way to approach me like you do."
Dennis visibly sobered. "Ah. That kind of question. Well if I had to guess, it would be because they're just a teensy bit scared of you, while also noticing the huge pedestal you're on. So it makes it feel awkward for them to approach you more casually."
Taylor slumped in her seat. "I'm not that bad, am I?"
The redhead snorted. "You're kind of the baddest bitch in Brockton Bay right now, Tay."
She rolled her eyes, but doesn't refute the statement. "Still… I kinda feel a bit bad? I don't want to–"
"And I'm gonna stop you right there Taylor. It's not your fault that they feel that way." Clock said firmly. "You've proven yourself to be a good person many times now. They'll come to terms with their own feelings eventually. Or you could waltz into their personal space like you did with Panacea, which to be fair did work on her."
"...Yeah, alright." Nexus nodded. "Except for Emma."
"Except for the Red-Headed Bitch." Clockblocker agreed, making them both giggle. A comfortable silence passed between the two of them.
"...So, why did you start approaching me on your own?"
Dennis clasped his hands together, staring directly into Taylor's eyes. "Considering you got my dad healed, and kicked out all the gangs? I wouldn't be able to live up to my reputation of being a reckless clown if I didn't try to hang out with you. But hey, I don't think it's been officially declared yet, so…"
The young man stuck his hand out towards Taylor Hebert. "Friends?"
She froze for a moment, then two. Then she smiled, a warm and brilliant smile that made his heart skip a beat. "Friends." She said, grasping his hand with her own and giving it a firm shake.
Yes, all in all, this has been a good week for Clockblocker. And the rest of the day should be smooth sailing too, barring any unforeseen missions involving dangerous supervillains.
Somewhere else in Brockton Bay, Amy Dallon felt like punching a certain wisecracking Ward in the face.
Last edited: Feb 17, 2022
338
bLuewErewOlf25
Dec 30, 2021
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