Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

They way I see it Riley is only slightly responsible for her actions as Bonesaw. She was little more than Jack's hand-puppet from the day she triggered and most of what she did was under the instinct to do whatever it took to keep herself alive, which meant doing things that kept Jack amused and happy with her.

Emma consciously and knowingly chose to do what she did with the only reason being that it made her feel better. Yeah Sophia had a hand in it but far far less than the hold Jack had over Bonesaw.

They're both recovering but it's easier to forgive the abstract 'she did horrible things and once did horrible stuff to us directly' than the 'she actively tortured our best friend and leader for over a year and forced her to trigger in an act that Jack Slash would have given a B+ for creativity'. It also doesn't hurt that the entire group would be dead several times over if not for Riley's direct actions while Emma has a more background role in their success's thus far.

 

I thought Emma and Dennis had a long distance 'I'll wait for you' sort of thing going on?

 

What I got out of it was Emma telling Dennis that they should see other people, not insomuch as word-for-word, but it definitely had that 'let's just be friends' vibe to it.

Especially when he was like, 'join the Wards. I'm in the Wards. We can be in the Wards together,' and Emma was like, 'No thanks, I'd rather be on a team where everyone hates my guts than be in the Wards with you.'

Granted, not actually what she *said,* but that's probably what Dennis *heard.*

 

Wouldn't be one of my chapters if I didn't do THAT.

Also: "sorry, but going with you wasn't even my second pick".

 

It's easy to forgive Riley, she was six years old when Jack Slash got his hands on her, there is no possible way anything she did with the SH9 could be held against her, either morally or legally.

She was twisted into a monster by an evil bastard, we can't really blame her for anything, not anymore than we blame Child Soldiers who are taken from their homes and force-fed drugs and propaganda in central Africa.

We might need to kill her, just like some Child Soldiers might need to be killed, in defence of others, but we still shouldn't blame her.

We should blame the people who twisted her.

I'm with Amelia on this one, Jack's death was way too quick and clean.

 

The line, "Who's a cute little abomination of nature. Yes you are." left me laughing so long that by the time I finished I fell in love with Riley. The girl is an apocalypse waiting to happen, and she lacks the morality to stop herself from becoming just that. She's just become so lovable that I ignore it.

Emma is truly repentant. She really is trying to make up for what she did. She is truly the lesser evil, but I have a more difficult forgiving her transgressions.

I guess it's just like with guys IRL, you'll tolerate more from a pretty girl with a great rack then you will from an ugly chick. That's just human nature.

 

Yeah, Riley should get some reprieve over her following orders/child soldier circumstances. Jack's careful maneuvering of her perspective made her believe not only that he was family, but also that he was invulnerable; that nothing she could do could possibly harm him. Even mutually assured destruction was (supposedly) off the table. Add to that the fact his passenger would tell him if she was even considering harming him under the cover of a surgical operation, and she had no chance.
This, I think, is grounds enough to keep her alive and out of prison. But we've seen that she hasn't quite shaken off her habits; Amelia's rules and supervision are what's keeping her to acceptable behaviour. For as long as that is the case, at least until she has recovered enough to self-regulate, other people can't be blamed for treating her cautiously or flinching in her presence. How long will this take?
Good question.

It's interesting to note the different sources of the character development that let Bonesaw turn back into Riley, here and in canon. Canon's Contessa intervention gave Riley the ability to see Jack for the monster he was, but she still didn't have the will to fight him. She had him completely at her mercy while he was in his stasis tube; not even his shard could have saved him in that situation. But she still let him live, and further enabled him to go on his little spree with the SH9000.
Unless Jack somehow comes back, we'll never know if Amelia's method was any better. Spooky, no?

 

Contessa's Influence didn't make Riley kill jack beacause she didn't want jack to die and not set off Zion.

 

Hmmm... how to say this...

Contessa's influence still had to be filtered through Riley's brain. Contessa never once told her that Jack shouldn't die. "Breadth and Depth," "Say goodbye," and "You'll build an override into the SH9000 for me" was the gist of it. From that, Riley came to the realization that she was fundamentally broken inside, that Jack was responsible, and that she was helping him set up to do the same to thousands more.

Again.

It says something about her mental state that she let him wake up at all, Path to Victory or no. That she was willing to perform plastic surgery on herself to hide her lesser betrayals from him, but do it without anesthesia because she wanted to punish herself for continuing to help him.

Edit: She lacked the perspective to try and take him down before this, but that chat with Contessa was a straight shot of perspective. Eh. I'm having trouble articulating the difference I'm seeing here; I'll come back if I think of a better wording.

Edit 2: Lets try this: If Riley isn't responsible for her actions while under Jack's influence, and you consider Contessa to be similarly disruptive to volition, then Riley isn't responsible for her redemption either and shouldn't be credited for it. This is a huge can of worms.

 

Nice snip, I liked how all was handled from the way of making the reader know what and how Taylor knows what happenned to her previous iteration to the interactions with the families which were nice, we got to see the no longer depresed Flashbang as well as the effect of Victoria's out of her time state.

About Brian escaping it is not really that surprising given what he has through Crawler and the skills he pilfered from Victor and others, but I must say I am surprised that it does not worry people more than it does,especially given he wasn't alone in his escape which given his abilities might make him more of a problem than he already was.

About Emma: I think one of the key thing when talking about her is considering what she did, she turned against the person who was her best and only friend in the whole world without any kind of explanation and used all the things that friend told her during their friendship to torment her.

 

Its freezing outside, but all I can feel is warm and fuzzy.

These two lines caught my attention. Kind of awkwardly phrased.

Other than that the chapter looked good. I'm curious if Brian was the target of the breakout or if this really is just incredibly bad luck. Know Tana I give it 50/50 odds.

 

Also, the fact that his POV chapter was credited to Chenobog, a name that he hasn't used so far.

 

I'm not.

Khonsu is sad that everyone forgets him, though.

 

Well sorry for not reading 179 chapters of Amelia again.

 

I wonder what method does this one use to be immune/resistant to the Endslayer cannon.

If the body is just a projection like Siberian/Genesis that would do it.

 

Isn't there a letter missing here ?

Now there are are a bunch of interesting tidbits here(aside from the timeskip)first is Emma working alongside Defiant to make something for Riley, not only does this show Emma cares about Riley but it also shows defiant's willingness to work closely with the Pantheon Tinkers but also means that he might have learned a few thigs from Emma's tinkering and might have integrated said things into his gear plus there is Dragon too with whom Defiant must have shared his insights leading to her having more and this may well have ushered quite a bit of nifty tech.

It is also interesting to see that Lady Photon got her own gear which must be a variant from her daughter's given the similarity in their abilities, I wonder what the differences between the two are.

Also on tech I am curious to see what Riley cooked up in that time, speaking of Riley I wonder how she is feeling after the timeskip, same goes for Zach and Theo and did Zach get coopted by Victoria, I also hope things got a bit better for Lisa.

Now the interesting thing is that there is a new(original at that)endbringer even when good ol' Ziz is not really dead and accotrding to Lisa it is immune to the Moira canon, I wonder what it's abilities are and how it will be called.

 

Actually, I think you already have by far the most likes on QQ compared to anyone, and in about a week this thread will have the most page views.

 

*checks* Yeah. TanaNari has over twice as many likes as the second placer in terms of Like count.

 

Well, that sounds healthy.

missing "

extra "

 

I thought the same, and then went... 'actually, I know I'll be re-reading it again at some point, so I'll like them then.'
So you can expect another 150+ likes from me over the course of a couple of days sometime in the future Tananari

Oh, and you should also know - this story is what made me come over to QQ (this is my first post on the forum).

 

you'll get your likes once we get around to rereading your story(again), which is all fairness will happen because it is well written

 

I always envisioned the Endbringer prediction system as a network of sensitive sensors that picked up water currents or minor earthquakes, which combined with a prediction program based of past attack locations, gave Dragon the likely target. Do you have a different idea on how it works, or just that Pantheon is expecting a fakeout like in New Delhi?

Is this supposed to be just Mexico? Because they seem very calm about a cape civil war breaking out in American territory.

 

So a new Endbringer, what are we going to call this bugger, assuming it lives long enough to deserve a name that is

 

Isidoros, the Boar that Twists the Skies.

 

Fenris?
Typhon?
Nidhogg is another possibility.

Guess we just need to see what other abilities it might have.

 

...

They're going to recruit him, aren't they? God damn it, just...

*Lowers face into hands.*

*Softly weeps.*

Well, that's different.

So... completely black (absorbing all light somehow?) three scythe-tails... I got nothing. I'd say some kind of dynakinetic, but that's Behemoth's gig, and the scythes would be redundant. Something more specific?

I guess... I'm happy about this? It's not like it can be worse than Khonsu... right?

...It's gonna be worse than Khonsu, isn't it?

 

Ehh they could be fighting Serious Tohu. So it's not the worst case situation but yeah they're probably in deep shit.

 

No, they aren't fighting Serious Tohu. Why? Because that's instant bad end territory. Serious Tohu uses Glastig Uaine + Eidolon + Contessa.