"Bullshit," Glory Girl said. "The brainpower you'd need to interpret and decode someone's unique neural patterns would need a head five times the usual size to contain it all. True psychics can't exist."
Tattletale laughed.
"...what?" Glory Girl asked. "What's funny?"
"Oh, man," Tattletale said, shaking her head. "Just… what you said about that, it's really funny. You're standing there, six inches off the fucking ground as you levitate by the sheer power of your awesomeness, and you're telling me that psychics can't exist because you'd need a big head?"
"It's established scientific fact," Glory Girl said.
"Yeah, it's what they think at the university, not the same thing," Tattletale replied. "I mean, wow."
Taylor blinked, wondering if this was in any way the plan.
"I mean, sure," Tattletale went on. "I guess you can define 'psychic powers' so narrowly that nobody has them, but we can play this game with everything! I could define that your sis over there isn't actually a healer because she isn't healing anything, she's modifying the body so that the body is healed. But it's still fucking healed, dipshit – if you don't understand the exact mechanism right through then what you do is categorize by outcomes and the stuff I can do with my mind meets so many of the descriptors of psychic powers I could win a prize for it if they still did those. And guess why they don't? Because too many people won them."
Panacea didn't look like she'd taken the first bit of the comment about healing well, but by the time Tattletale had finished her run-on sentence the New Wave cape seemed more confused than anything.
"And that's before getting into the capes in this city," Tattletale said, pointing at Victoria. "Your boyfriend shoots emotion blasts and he can feel emotions, and you can make people feel scared or really impressed with you!"
"It's apparently not working," Glory Girl said, somewhat resentfully.
"Sorry, but my armour is sarcasm," Tattletale replied, sarcastically.
"...is this how cape fights normally go?" Taylor asked Panacea quietly. "I'm new to all this."
"…I don't know how to answer that question," Panacea replied. "I'm not usually in cape fights."
"You realize that like fifteen percent of all powers are in sub-categories that affect the mind either directly or indirectly?" Tattletale asked. "Master powers. Thinker powers. Stranger powers. All of those have subsets that affect the mind – if you think psychic powers aren't real, go ask Heartbreaker. Actually don't."
"Heartbreaker isn't psychic, he's a Master," Glory Girl replied. "His power doesn't involve reading your mind."
"It sure as hell involves putting new thoughts in it," Tattletale countered. "I hear this stupid argument about psychics a lot, and I've never heard anyone make an actual case for it beyond definition."
She shrugged. "But, sure. I'm not a psychic, in the same way Myrddin isn't a wizard – because nothing says rational explanation like arguing that he's wrong, powers aren't magic, they come from the same highly scientific source that lets someone turn into a fire-breathing dragon or summon swords out of thin air."
"You can't just assume magic because you don't understand something," Glory Girl insisted.
Tattletale giggled.
"I'm not assuming magic, I think Myrddin's a fruit loop," she said. "I'm wondering why you think he's crazy, when you can't actually disprove anything he's said – but if you can't, then maybe he is magic! Isn't it science that if you can't disprove a hypothesis and it's consistent with observations then it starts to become more of a theory?"
She waved her hand. "But because I can only read about eighty percent of people's thoughts on average, I guess that doesn't make me a real psychic… just like you wouldn't call an Olympic bronze medallist a real athlete, you know?"
"You think you're an Olympian now?" Panacea asked.
"As if," Tattletale replied. "But if your definition of a psychic is one that would exclude Mother Shipton, Nostradamus, the Delphic Oracle… then maybe you need a new definition."
She winked. "Any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic, but I'm sure that our science will catch up to it any day now, so let's not get ahead of ourselves on the nomenclature."
Glory Girl shook her head. "The power-of-the-gaps argument isn't a valid approach."
"Then what else are you going to do?" Tattletale asked. "Any Alexandria package in your average tabletop game would be suspected of psionics, miss super-strength floats-with-her-mind defensive-shield emotion-aura. And, oh wait, Legend can fire laser beams with his mind."
"Legend doesn't fire laser beams with his mind," Taylor objected.
"Doesn't he?" Tattletale replied. "The corona pollentia and gemma are established to be directly associated with powers, that's in the brain. I could argue that all powers are psychic… but that would be silly. I mean, strictly speaking you picking up a soda can with your hand is a power that originated in your brain, and getting into the whole meatsuit debate would just get things bogged down. I'm just objecting to the way that the physical requirements of the brain's processing power suddenly get brought into play when the issue is psychic powers but we don't bring up conservation of energy when someone waves their hand and makes a building collapse. Conservation of energy is far less flexible than, like, the idea of me just happening to be smarter than you."
She folded her arms. "We have an entire classification for powers that can induce targeted, barely noticeable pinpoint effects on people's minds. But, what, they're all dyslexic?"
"I'm pretty sure that's not psychic powers," Glory Girl argued. "Unless you want to say that wearing a gorilla suit during a basketball game is psychic powers."
"What, you saw that video too?" Tattletale replied. "Your university course is hitting all the cliches, isn't it?"
Then she made a dismissive gesture. "If you think all Stranger powers are like that, you're high in a way that isn't just floating. They're much more varied than that. Rule of thumb, if you want to argue whether something is or isn't physically possible for Parahumans, don't bother with, like, physics. Just ask Leet if he can build it."
"Leet?" Panacea asked, making a face.
"Yeah," Tattletale replied. "What else is he – holy shit, that's what he's good for!"
"I don't buy it," Glory Girl said. "His stuff sucks."
"Mostly," Armsmaster said.
Taylor tried very hard not to jump out of her skin.
"When did you get here?" Panacea asked.
"Two minutes ago," Armsmaster replied. "Miniature stealth generator. The lack of heroes present in the city permitted me to get out of a social obligation."
"Hey there," Tattletale said. "I guess I'm in trouble now, huh? You must know that with your psychic powers."
"I do not have psychic powers," Armsmaster told her. "I appreciate the general point you were making about whether psychic powers exist and I have to concede that there is insufficient information at this point, but I am not someone whose powers include anything that would be considered psychic under the normal definition."
"You've got a lie detector in that suit," Tattletale said, brightly. "It can tell if someone is telling the truth, or lying, and you built it. You can build psychic powers, and install them, so now you have them."
"That is stretching the definition," Armsmaster countered. "By that logic you could argue that anyone who wears glasses is a cyborg-"
"Tattletale?" Taylor interrupted, thinking about lie detector. "Are you actually okay working for our boss?"
Tattletale laughed. "You cheeky bugger!" she said. "Trying to manipulate me into-"
She paused.
"Shit," she added. "That's right."
"What's right?" Glory Girl asked.
Tattletale took a deep breath.
"Our boss is Coil, AKA Thomas Calvert," she said. "His power is about using multiple timelines. Don't mention any of this for like three days until we're locked into the timeline where this conversation happened. Also, uh."
She reached out and took Taylor's hand.
"Thanks for the discussion," she said, dragging Taylor towards the room where Bitch and the others were. "Now let's make this good – GUYS! CHANGE OF PLAN, RUN FOR IT!"
An hour or so later, Coil dropped the timeline where he hadn't launched the kidnapping.
Everything had gone very well. The whole city was moving according to his desires… and once a little trivial conditioning was done, he would have a pet psychic all of his own.
At that point, nothing could stop him.
AN:
The first line of this fic is directly from canon Worm.
The rest sort of isn't, obviously.