BlueCladOne
Actually here for plot, somehow.
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I was a little worried I'd get too used to him. I'm happy to say that is not the case :]
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Wait a Minute... (Guy in Worm with Trouble in Terrorist Town powers)
- Thread starter Phili
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Chapter 32: In Which Crystal Cleans Up Dave's Mess and Concludes Being an Adult Sucks
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Phili
Not too sore, are you?
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Chapter 32: In Which Crystal Cleans Up Dave's Mess and Concludes Being an Adult Sucks
January 9, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Protectorate Headquarters 'The Rig'.
"It jiggles." Clockblocker whispered to Aegis as they took repeated glances at the glorious Pikabooty while Dave talked with Vista.
"I know, it's… kind of unnatural." Aegis commented.
"It's like it's flapping in the wind, but there isn't any wind." Clockblocker agreed.
Dave bounced in enthusiasm mid-conversation with Vista and everyone paused to watch the Pikachass jiggle and bounce for the next five seconds.
"So," Dave said to Vista, "I was thinking, and I realized, I didn't give you enough toys, so…" Dave pulled out some toys.
"This, is a Pocket Sniper Rifle. It's not actually small enough to put in your pocket, but it is the smallest sniper rifle I have, and your power might be able to let you fit it into a pocket. This is a defuser, it defuses bombs, I'm sure Miss Militia will be happy to teach you how it works. This is a Lift Grenade. It's a grenade, and when it goes off, everyone caught in its radius will go up, and up, and up, for about 50 feet, at which point they will fall. You will know it is armed because the top will glow bright neon green." Dave began explaining each toy as he handed it to her.
He had just unlocked the Lift Grenade yesterday. It was a normal item not from any of the buy menus, but it was rare like the minifier, so he didn't have very many yet.
"And this, is a crowbar, just like mine." Dave said as he handed it to her.
She waggled it. "Yes, as you can see, it is floppy. Waggle it at your enemies as needed. It is stronger than a normal crowbar when you hit someone with it though, so if you encounter a ganger of some sort, aim for the limbs, not the head unless you want to kill them, in which case aim for the head, then for the other head so they die in pain." Dave explained helpfully.
"Also, you can do this," he demonstrated with his own crowbar, "to shove someone with it without needing to touch them. I haven't tested it yet, but I suspect it will even work on Fenja and Menja, though it would only shove them by about the same amount I just shoved you. It's great for pushing people off of bridges and cliffs though, no fingerprints." He winked at her.
"Oh yes! On that topic," He recalled. "The flare gun I gave you, in addition to shooting up flares and setting people on fire, I forgot to mention. Its original purpose was actually to destroy bodies to erase evidence. So, if you ever need to hide a body, just shoot the body with the flare gun and it will set the body on fire, then completely erase the body from existence after around… ten or fifteen seconds." Dave said then patted Vista on the head.
"If you are nice and responsible with these toys, I will give you better ones later. And if you can demonstrate that you can survive falling from a great height consistently without harm, I will give you special toys, including a jetpack." He promised.
"Oh yes, one last toy." He recalled and pulled out two identical pistols. "I'm sure you remember this one." Dave said. Then handed one to Vista, and pointed the other one at Clockblocker and shot him with it.
Clockblocker froze in place, still conscious and seeing, but completely unable to move.
"It's not quite as good as Clockblocker's power as I just experienced, but it works from a range. You've only got three bullets in that, so use them wisely in case you run into Nazis again." Dave said, patting her on the head again.
Vista rolled her eyes and grumbled about being treated like a child, but put up with it in exchange for the guns and toys and promises of more.
Clockblocker unfroze, and promptly decided to hide behind Aegis for now until the scary sexy Pikachu left.
Triumph put a hand up to his helmet's earpiece and nodded after a moment. "Trouble, it seems like Armsmaster is ready for you, and he wants Kid Win down there too."
"Huh, I wonder why… unless… are you a Tinker Kid Win?" Dave asked Kid Win as they walked out of the doors of the Wards lounge.
Crystal Pelham
Crystal watched as Dave left in his 'Tall Pikachu' form as he called it, to go talk to Armsmaster with Kid Win. He can handle being without my supervision for a few minutes. I'm sure it'll be fine; I just need to clear up the mess he left behind with the Wards.
"So, Clockblocker, have we learned anything today?" Crystal asked sweetly.
"Uh… changers can awaken strange things in teenage boys?" Clockblocker tried to be cheeky. Heh, cheeky, just like that Pikachu, no wait, straight face Crystal.
"No, we already knew that. Try again." Crystal did her best to channel her mother's tone when her mother was dealing with her shenanigans.
"Uh… I think the intended lesson might have been to not use my power without warning on friendly Parahumans in case there is a poor power interaction that harms someone." Clockblocker said, showing he could in fact use his brain, even while a pretty older girl was glaring at him.
"Very good," she said in her best patronizing tone of voice. "Now, as he was trying to teach you in his own weird way," pfft, as if the thought of teaching went anywhere near Dave's mind. That was all pure impulse. "You shouldn't make assumptions in general when it comes to parahumans. As he is very proficient at showing, parahumans can be hard to predict."
"Yes Laserdream!" Clockblocker saluted. Well, as long as he buys that it was intended to be a teaching moment, I'll be able to mitigate any harm people might try to cause Dave with what he pulled here. I'm so glad he told me about the Possum role this morning, knowing about that makes this so much easier.
"Now, Vista… as I'm sure you are aware, I'm going to have to tell Miss Militia about your new toys." Crystal gave Vista the bad news, and Vista's eyes turned wide and she protectively hugged her grenades and guns.
"No! They will take them away!" Vista said defensively, then noticed the entire room looking at her, and coughed. "I mean, that seems unnecessary. I can just tell her myself, and she will surely understand the necessity of having them remain with me." Vista said, obviously—to Crystal at least, who was experienced in pulling this kind of thing—planning to not tell Miss Militia about all of the things she received so that she could guarantee being able to keep some of them.
"Panacea was planning to learn to use firearms soon as well, so if you can't get lessons from Miss Militia or Challenger, just send me or Glory Girl a text and New Wave will get you set up to take lessons with her. I'm sure the Protectorate will leave the freeze gun and the flare gun with you, so improving your aim will only help you regardless, even if your power will let you hit otherwise impossible shots even if you don't train; and if you show good enough firearm discipline, you might be able to wrangle permission to use other guns as well." Crystal placated Vista. She didn't actually know how likely it was that Vista would be able to use regular guns, but she could probably get permission to use one of the PRT foam ones given the extreme synergy they had with her power over space. At the moment, Crystal's biggest concern was taking away the Pocket Sniper Rifle from the preteen with power of space.
Man, being an adult sucks. Crystal groused in her head as she turned to Gallant to socialize a little with the new parahuman. I feel like a politician, I have to meet people because it is important that I know them, not because I want to get to know them. Ugh.
After talking with the suspicious 'Tinker' who somehow already found out his specialty, Crystal turned to Triumph to handle the last part of Dave's mess.
Seriously, maybe it's because I've just been dealing with Dave and we discussed earlier the possibility of disguising him as a Tinker, but I'm pretty sure this Gallant guy isn't actually a Tinker. I don't even think he's a new trigger. Maybe he triggered a while ago and is only just now enrolling in the wards? His powers kind of remind me of Vicky's aura too, maybe the Protectorate and PRT just want to disguise him as a Tinker to not have to deal with a human Master label? I know that was why aunt Carol fought so hard to get Vicky rated as a shaker instead of a Master, the stigma there is just absurd; but it feels like it's just asking for trouble to fake having an extra Tinker available, someone is bound to notice eventually that not as much tinkering happens as three Tinkers would imply, or that the guy never goes into Tinker fugues.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe this guy is a real Tinker. If so, they've already given him a significant diss by not inviting him with the other new guy, Kid Win to talk about Tinker stuff with Dave's meeting with Armsmaster and Dragon. Nah, taking that into account, there's no way this guy's a Tinker, he absolutely would have been in that meeting if he was.
I'll think about this later… actually, no I won't, I'll dump all this on Mom and Aunt Carol, and stop thinking about it at all. For now, I just need to handle Triumph and the 'exhibitionism furry porn' comments and the kiss on the costume's nose. I'm so glad Triumph is such a boy, he absolutely could have raised a fuss about that, but I guess guys don't care about it as much? Wait… I'm pretty sure he mentioned he was on a sports team, don't guy's sports teams famously slap each other on the ass and stuff? The kiss on the lion costume's nose might have not even registered as possible sexual harassment to him then if that's what he's used to.
Author's Note: Here we go, another chapter, still shorter than I've been doing while I build my backlog back up after being sick. In this one, Dave arms a small child with firearms and explosives, and we get a Crystal POV, yay! If you couldn't tell from my signature, I like reading alternate POVs to see what other characters think about the main character, but I've found actually writing that is rather hard with this story, because it barely makes sense as it is, without Dave's point of view to see some of his thought process it would probably read as pure gibberish a decent chunk of the time.
In Crystal's POV we get to see a real-time example of some of what New Wave has been doing for Dave in the background, and some of the lessons Sarah has been instilling in Crystal now that she is an adult superhero who is being trusted with more responsibilities. Crystal managed to get out of even more responsibilities being piled onto her by her mother by being in college though… perhaps that was Crystal's plan all along?
Crystal finds Gallant very suspicious after spending time in the past week thinking about how she might disguise Dave's powers as being a Tinker if needed.
Crystal tries to figure out how to handle Triumph getting his costume kissed on the nose without Dave getting in trouble for sexually harassing a minor. She concludes male sports are probably borderline homo-erotic enough that it might not have even registered on Triumph's radar as being sexual harassment, since the slapping on the ass thing doesn't seem to get any attention that she's noticed. I don't know why it happens either, I stopped playing sports before I got to the butt-slapping stage, but I guarantee anyone who isn't aware that it does happen… a lot, look it up if you don't believe me, the internet is just as confused as me on why it happens.
I've started exploring an idea in the past few chapters, and that idea is keeping a few of Dave's more recent items hidden from the readers for the sake of building… suspense? I hesitate to call it suspense because I don't think of suspense when I think of "well, is he going to pull out a remote-controlled super sheep or is he going to pull out a can of magic beans that make you have deadly farts when you move your arms a certain way?". I kind of like this, because then I don't have to keep spending time explaining each new thing as he gets it before he gets an opportunity to use it and the story can move on a little more quickly. We'll probably see him using an item once or twice without context, then get an explanation for what exactly he did and how shortly after. I'm sure there's a name for that particular writing technique, but I don't know what it is, so until I find out said name, I get to pretend it's an original writing technique that's never been used before by any of the tens of millions of people that have tried writing throughout human history.
January 9, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Protectorate Headquarters 'The Rig'.
"It jiggles." Clockblocker whispered to Aegis as they took repeated glances at the glorious Pikabooty while Dave talked with Vista.
"I know, it's… kind of unnatural." Aegis commented.
"It's like it's flapping in the wind, but there isn't any wind." Clockblocker agreed.
Dave bounced in enthusiasm mid-conversation with Vista and everyone paused to watch the Pikachass jiggle and bounce for the next five seconds.
"So," Dave said to Vista, "I was thinking, and I realized, I didn't give you enough toys, so…" Dave pulled out some toys.
"This, is a Pocket Sniper Rifle. It's not actually small enough to put in your pocket, but it is the smallest sniper rifle I have, and your power might be able to let you fit it into a pocket. This is a defuser, it defuses bombs, I'm sure Miss Militia will be happy to teach you how it works. This is a Lift Grenade. It's a grenade, and when it goes off, everyone caught in its radius will go up, and up, and up, for about 50 feet, at which point they will fall. You will know it is armed because the top will glow bright neon green." Dave began explaining each toy as he handed it to her.
He had just unlocked the Lift Grenade yesterday. It was a normal item not from any of the buy menus, but it was rare like the minifier, so he didn't have very many yet.
"And this, is a crowbar, just like mine." Dave said as he handed it to her.
She waggled it. "Yes, as you can see, it is floppy. Waggle it at your enemies as needed. It is stronger than a normal crowbar when you hit someone with it though, so if you encounter a ganger of some sort, aim for the limbs, not the head unless you want to kill them, in which case aim for the head, then for the other head so they die in pain." Dave explained helpfully.
"Also, you can do this," he demonstrated with his own crowbar, "to shove someone with it without needing to touch them. I haven't tested it yet, but I suspect it will even work on Fenja and Menja, though it would only shove them by about the same amount I just shoved you. It's great for pushing people off of bridges and cliffs though, no fingerprints." He winked at her.
"Oh yes! On that topic," He recalled. "The flare gun I gave you, in addition to shooting up flares and setting people on fire, I forgot to mention. Its original purpose was actually to destroy bodies to erase evidence. So, if you ever need to hide a body, just shoot the body with the flare gun and it will set the body on fire, then completely erase the body from existence after around… ten or fifteen seconds." Dave said then patted Vista on the head.
"If you are nice and responsible with these toys, I will give you better ones later. And if you can demonstrate that you can survive falling from a great height consistently without harm, I will give you special toys, including a jetpack." He promised.
"Oh yes, one last toy." He recalled and pulled out two identical pistols. "I'm sure you remember this one." Dave said. Then handed one to Vista, and pointed the other one at Clockblocker and shot him with it.
Clockblocker froze in place, still conscious and seeing, but completely unable to move.
"It's not quite as good as Clockblocker's power as I just experienced, but it works from a range. You've only got three bullets in that, so use them wisely in case you run into Nazis again." Dave said, patting her on the head again.
Vista rolled her eyes and grumbled about being treated like a child, but put up with it in exchange for the guns and toys and promises of more.
Clockblocker unfroze, and promptly decided to hide behind Aegis for now until the scary sexy Pikachu left.
Triumph put a hand up to his helmet's earpiece and nodded after a moment. "Trouble, it seems like Armsmaster is ready for you, and he wants Kid Win down there too."
"Huh, I wonder why… unless… are you a Tinker Kid Win?" Dave asked Kid Win as they walked out of the doors of the Wards lounge.
Crystal Pelham
Crystal watched as Dave left in his 'Tall Pikachu' form as he called it, to go talk to Armsmaster with Kid Win. He can handle being without my supervision for a few minutes. I'm sure it'll be fine; I just need to clear up the mess he left behind with the Wards.
"So, Clockblocker, have we learned anything today?" Crystal asked sweetly.
"Uh… changers can awaken strange things in teenage boys?" Clockblocker tried to be cheeky. Heh, cheeky, just like that Pikachu, no wait, straight face Crystal.
"No, we already knew that. Try again." Crystal did her best to channel her mother's tone when her mother was dealing with her shenanigans.
"Uh… I think the intended lesson might have been to not use my power without warning on friendly Parahumans in case there is a poor power interaction that harms someone." Clockblocker said, showing he could in fact use his brain, even while a pretty older girl was glaring at him.
"Very good," she said in her best patronizing tone of voice. "Now, as he was trying to teach you in his own weird way," pfft, as if the thought of teaching went anywhere near Dave's mind. That was all pure impulse. "You shouldn't make assumptions in general when it comes to parahumans. As he is very proficient at showing, parahumans can be hard to predict."
"Yes Laserdream!" Clockblocker saluted. Well, as long as he buys that it was intended to be a teaching moment, I'll be able to mitigate any harm people might try to cause Dave with what he pulled here. I'm so glad he told me about the Possum role this morning, knowing about that makes this so much easier.
"Now, Vista… as I'm sure you are aware, I'm going to have to tell Miss Militia about your new toys." Crystal gave Vista the bad news, and Vista's eyes turned wide and she protectively hugged her grenades and guns.
"No! They will take them away!" Vista said defensively, then noticed the entire room looking at her, and coughed. "I mean, that seems unnecessary. I can just tell her myself, and she will surely understand the necessity of having them remain with me." Vista said, obviously—to Crystal at least, who was experienced in pulling this kind of thing—planning to not tell Miss Militia about all of the things she received so that she could guarantee being able to keep some of them.
"Panacea was planning to learn to use firearms soon as well, so if you can't get lessons from Miss Militia or Challenger, just send me or Glory Girl a text and New Wave will get you set up to take lessons with her. I'm sure the Protectorate will leave the freeze gun and the flare gun with you, so improving your aim will only help you regardless, even if your power will let you hit otherwise impossible shots even if you don't train; and if you show good enough firearm discipline, you might be able to wrangle permission to use other guns as well." Crystal placated Vista. She didn't actually know how likely it was that Vista would be able to use regular guns, but she could probably get permission to use one of the PRT foam ones given the extreme synergy they had with her power over space. At the moment, Crystal's biggest concern was taking away the Pocket Sniper Rifle from the preteen with power of space.
Man, being an adult sucks. Crystal groused in her head as she turned to Gallant to socialize a little with the new parahuman. I feel like a politician, I have to meet people because it is important that I know them, not because I want to get to know them. Ugh.
After talking with the suspicious 'Tinker' who somehow already found out his specialty, Crystal turned to Triumph to handle the last part of Dave's mess.
Seriously, maybe it's because I've just been dealing with Dave and we discussed earlier the possibility of disguising him as a Tinker, but I'm pretty sure this Gallant guy isn't actually a Tinker. I don't even think he's a new trigger. Maybe he triggered a while ago and is only just now enrolling in the wards? His powers kind of remind me of Vicky's aura too, maybe the Protectorate and PRT just want to disguise him as a Tinker to not have to deal with a human Master label? I know that was why aunt Carol fought so hard to get Vicky rated as a shaker instead of a Master, the stigma there is just absurd; but it feels like it's just asking for trouble to fake having an extra Tinker available, someone is bound to notice eventually that not as much tinkering happens as three Tinkers would imply, or that the guy never goes into Tinker fugues.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe this guy is a real Tinker. If so, they've already given him a significant diss by not inviting him with the other new guy, Kid Win to talk about Tinker stuff with Dave's meeting with Armsmaster and Dragon. Nah, taking that into account, there's no way this guy's a Tinker, he absolutely would have been in that meeting if he was.
I'll think about this later… actually, no I won't, I'll dump all this on Mom and Aunt Carol, and stop thinking about it at all. For now, I just need to handle Triumph and the 'exhibitionism furry porn' comments and the kiss on the costume's nose. I'm so glad Triumph is such a boy, he absolutely could have raised a fuss about that, but I guess guys don't care about it as much? Wait… I'm pretty sure he mentioned he was on a sports team, don't guy's sports teams famously slap each other on the ass and stuff? The kiss on the lion costume's nose might have not even registered as possible sexual harassment to him then if that's what he's used to.
Author's Note: Here we go, another chapter, still shorter than I've been doing while I build my backlog back up after being sick. In this one, Dave arms a small child with firearms and explosives, and we get a Crystal POV, yay! If you couldn't tell from my signature, I like reading alternate POVs to see what other characters think about the main character, but I've found actually writing that is rather hard with this story, because it barely makes sense as it is, without Dave's point of view to see some of his thought process it would probably read as pure gibberish a decent chunk of the time.
In Crystal's POV we get to see a real-time example of some of what New Wave has been doing for Dave in the background, and some of the lessons Sarah has been instilling in Crystal now that she is an adult superhero who is being trusted with more responsibilities. Crystal managed to get out of even more responsibilities being piled onto her by her mother by being in college though… perhaps that was Crystal's plan all along?
Crystal finds Gallant very suspicious after spending time in the past week thinking about how she might disguise Dave's powers as being a Tinker if needed.
Crystal tries to figure out how to handle Triumph getting his costume kissed on the nose without Dave getting in trouble for sexually harassing a minor. She concludes male sports are probably borderline homo-erotic enough that it might not have even registered on Triumph's radar as being sexual harassment, since the slapping on the ass thing doesn't seem to get any attention that she's noticed. I don't know why it happens either, I stopped playing sports before I got to the butt-slapping stage, but I guarantee anyone who isn't aware that it does happen… a lot, look it up if you don't believe me, the internet is just as confused as me on why it happens.
I've started exploring an idea in the past few chapters, and that idea is keeping a few of Dave's more recent items hidden from the readers for the sake of building… suspense? I hesitate to call it suspense because I don't think of suspense when I think of "well, is he going to pull out a remote-controlled super sheep or is he going to pull out a can of magic beans that make you have deadly farts when you move your arms a certain way?". I kind of like this, because then I don't have to keep spending time explaining each new thing as he gets it before he gets an opportunity to use it and the story can move on a little more quickly. We'll probably see him using an item once or twice without context, then get an explanation for what exactly he did and how shortly after. I'm sure there's a name for that particular writing technique, but I don't know what it is, so until I find out said name, I get to pretend it's an original writing technique that's never been used before by any of the tens of millions of people that have tried writing throughout human history.
SpaceWhale
Know what you're doing yet?
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Poor crystal is halfway to being a politician. What a horrible time
Chapter 33: Dave's Got a HUUUUUUUUUUUGGE Proposal!
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Phili
Not too sore, are you?
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Chapter 33: Dave's Got a HUUUUUUUUUUUGGE Proposal!
January 9, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Protectorate Headquarters 'The Rig'.
Dave and Kid Win met with Armsmaster in his lab on a lower level of the Rig. Dave… hadn't actually paid any attention at all to where he was going on the way there, he was too distracted trying to stare at his own Pikachooty to see it jiggle as he walked, and failing because it just didn't jiggle properly while he was twisting himself around that much.
"Ah, Trouble, Kid Win, come in." Armsmaster said upon seeing them. He didn't even blink at seeing Dave's Tall Pikachu form, resulting in a little pouting from Dave.
"Dragon and I were just discussing the proposal you mentioned Trouble regarding the teleporters with a hub located in Brockton Bay." Armsmaster said.
"Yeah, I just had a Eureka moment yesterday, and thought of that with my teleporters. If it isn't a good idea, do let me know though, because that would be a pretty massive investment on my part, and I haven't actually worked out the logistics needed to make it work." Dave admitted. "I did get something else that might work instead, and I had a proposal for both you and Dragon, and Kid Win now that I know he is here, and a Tinker."
"Go ahead." Dragon's voice came from a speaker.
"So, I got access to a pretty cool item recently that would let me build large structures extremely quickly, but would do little in terms of small-scale precision or things like plumbing or electricity. Then, I got a Tinker power yesterday." Dave began.
"A Tinker power? Truly?" Armsmaster asked. "That's quite interesting, even Eidolon has never been shown to be able to get a Tinker power, it is extremely rare for a Trump to be able to grant themselves one."
"Yes, it feels like it is going to be very unusual to get that type of thing from my power, at least for the foreseeable future, my power becomes less clear on what it can give me when it comes to things further in the future." Dave said. "Anyways, perhaps because of the unusual method I got it, it seems a little different from what I know of normal Tinker powers. I knew my specialization right off the bat, and I started off with an item to help me get started. I've had lots of ideas for it, some of which are quite powerful, but I'm having trouble getting started because I can't get through the 'build the tools to build the tools to build the tools' phase, because my specialty is so far removed from the tools I need to use to make a lot of the bigger projects I could make."
"Hmm." Armsmaster hummed. "What was your specialty?"
"Mud. I've had ideas for things I could make that include synergies with my other powers, more healing items, beautification treatments, a variety of mud bombs to cause things like hydroplaning, as well as improvements to my normal teleportation items, among other things." Dave explained.
"That sounds quite useful." Dragon's cheerful voice came through the speaker again. "I'm glad you weren't discouraged by a specialty like Mud. I'm of the firm belief that any Tinker specialty can be powerful and useful, and I like to consider myself something of an expert."
"Indeed, though I'm not sure why mud would be considered weak. It is a significant part of the natural world, and can be devastating in many circumstances, and has been a tool used in civilizations across the globe for thousands of years." Dave said. "Anyways, to jump ahead a bit, I was thinking of making a place in the woods near Brockton that could serve as a large-scale Tinker lab. From what little research I've had time to do, there hasn't been anything like this in Brockton before, but Protectorate areas with enough Tinkers will sometimes have things along these lines, if not as ambitious." Dave began to outline his plan.
"I could build the outline of it within a single day, and I'd be happy to contribute to defenses as I get more and more items and abilities. It would provide a way to lure ambitious, cooperative, Tinkers to the Bay, as my research tells me Tinkers grow substantially by working together. The main thing I would gain, would be access to tools I can use to start things off along with permission to actually build the place. I don't have any way to do things like build my own centrifuge, and any more exotic 'tools to build the tools to build the tools' that only a Tinker could make would be out of my reach entirely if I couldn't buy them, and that would lock me out of many things I could potentially make, as well as any hopes of larger-scale production."
"That…" Armsmaster hesitated. "This would require a lot of funding that I simply cannot provide. I have a limited Tinkering budget that is provided by the PRT, and I cannot risk lowering my effectiveness by being unable to perform the needed maintenance on my projects while such a base is being built. Though I am interested in the concept." He admitted.
Armsmaster continued. "I can tell you from experience that your research was correct, working with other Tinkers is an excellent way to progress and gain inspiration, and when I worked under Hero with the other foremost Tinkers in the country, the shared Tinkering space and the many tools we had access to saved a lot of time and money. For example, something one Tinker only uses once a month might not be worth getting at all for them normally, thus lowering their effectiveness because they can't use it if they don't have it, but they will be able to use it freely if another Tinker that uses that same device every day already has one on hand and is willing to lend its use for an hour or two."
"Well…" Dave paused, "perhaps I should put it like this. I am willing to use my Health Stations and other healing technologies and items and abilities to get funding from rich individuals for whatever I need or want. I'm sure you've read Lady Photon's report on the Health Station at least, but unlike New Wave and Panacea, I'm perfectly happy to let a billionaire that isn't complete scum of the Earth throw money at me to heal them with the power of burritos. That was actually something I was hoping to ask Dragon for help with, a list of decent-ish people I could heal and get funding for projects from, since I assume the Guild has a list of charitable donors or something from around the world that they can vouch for in terms of character and want to have continue living so they can keep funding the Guild."
"Anyways, I don't really see any way that plan wouldn't work out, given how rich I've heard of Scapegoat being, and even if someone tries to throw NEPEA-5 at me, leaving aside that I don't think it applies here, I guarantee it wouldn't apply anymore after billionaires found out it kept them from being healed." Dave outlined his reasoning for how he was confident in gaining wealth.
"Thus, after I get that settled… which will be another thing I was going to ask Dragon for, someone the guild vouches for that can handle things like paperwork and contacting said billionaires for me.
Anyways, after I get that settled, I will be able to contribute:
"Why am I here?" Kid Win asked for a moment.
"You're a Tinker, aren't you?" Dave asked. "You would be one of the Tinkers using this if it actually happens, of course you get input."
"Indeed," Armsmaster confirmed. "I asked for you to be here because you are also a Tinker, even if you haven't found your specialty yet. You will eventually need to be able to deal with these kinds of things on your own after you graduate from the Wards, but for now, I just wanted to let you have a little experience with seeing proposals related to Tinkering, though I admit I wasn't expecting anything this large-scale."
"Oh?" Crystal asked sweetly as she walked in. "So, could you tell me then… why is Kid Win here but Gallant, his fellow Tinker is not?" She asked sweetly.
Armsmaster displayed an impressive poker face, while Dragon remained conspicuously silent and Kid Win displayed an impressive 'oh shit' face, visible even through his mask.
Dave displayed an impressive Surprised Pikachu face.
Author's Note: Here we go, another chapter, still shorter ones while I build my backlog back up, before we go back to the length of 'however long I feel like but trying to average above 2k words per chapter'.
To let you in on a little secret… I hate cliffhangers. I fucking despise them. My version of a Chuuni middle school phase was when I came up with all sorts of elaborate torture methods I wished upon the person who invented cliffhangers… and the person who invented suspense (I didn't mind Alfred Hitchcock style suspense, because that was done well, he had a whole thing he talked about occasionally about how if you spend time in a story showing a bomb about to go off that the characters don't know about, you should never, ever have that bomb go off; he had that bomb go off once in a story and he said it was one of his biggest ever mistakes as a writer. I didn't mind it when that metaphorical bomb didn't go off in a story, but cliffhangers? Oh boy I wished all sorts of forms of creative things on the people that propagated those. I've chilled out a little by now, but cliffhangers are the main reason I mostly binge stories now, I rarely read one chapter at a time and I do my best to look at things like what the latest chapter title is to try my best to avoid cliffhangers. If needed I will even glance at the last few lines of the latest chapter to judge if it is a cliffhanger because I would much rather be spoiled than get a cliffhanger).
Ahem… I went on a tangent; my point was that I try to avoid major cliffhangers in writing… Though I probably don't succeed by all standards, I do try quite hard to make sure there are no major cliffhangers; so something like an Endbringer fight will likely end up as one massive chapter rather than a bunch of little ones as a result. Anyways… We see Dave's big proposal in this chapter. Armsmaster is interested, Dragon is interested, Kid Win doesn't know why he's there!
Suspicious Crystal walks in! Crystal uses Sarcastic Implication! It's super effective! Armsmaster uses Poker Face! It would have been super effective, except Kid Win used 'Oh Shit' Face, and changed the effectiveness to be not very effective.
Detective Crystal is on the case! But not for very long because she hates the case and wants to shove it off onto her mom! Will she succeed? Find out next time! Not really, it probably won't actually be answered next time.
The chapter title is based off of a scene in Moulin Rouge where the main character's friends are spying on him when he is reading poetry to a prostitute, and the one that can actually see what's happening tells the others 'He's got a HUUUUUUGE talent!" I was originally going to make that joke about my author's notes, but decided I liked it better in the chapter titles instead.
January 9, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Protectorate Headquarters 'The Rig'.
Dave and Kid Win met with Armsmaster in his lab on a lower level of the Rig. Dave… hadn't actually paid any attention at all to where he was going on the way there, he was too distracted trying to stare at his own Pikachooty to see it jiggle as he walked, and failing because it just didn't jiggle properly while he was twisting himself around that much.
"Ah, Trouble, Kid Win, come in." Armsmaster said upon seeing them. He didn't even blink at seeing Dave's Tall Pikachu form, resulting in a little pouting from Dave.
"Dragon and I were just discussing the proposal you mentioned Trouble regarding the teleporters with a hub located in Brockton Bay." Armsmaster said.
"Yeah, I just had a Eureka moment yesterday, and thought of that with my teleporters. If it isn't a good idea, do let me know though, because that would be a pretty massive investment on my part, and I haven't actually worked out the logistics needed to make it work." Dave admitted. "I did get something else that might work instead, and I had a proposal for both you and Dragon, and Kid Win now that I know he is here, and a Tinker."
"Go ahead." Dragon's voice came from a speaker.
"So, I got access to a pretty cool item recently that would let me build large structures extremely quickly, but would do little in terms of small-scale precision or things like plumbing or electricity. Then, I got a Tinker power yesterday." Dave began.
"A Tinker power? Truly?" Armsmaster asked. "That's quite interesting, even Eidolon has never been shown to be able to get a Tinker power, it is extremely rare for a Trump to be able to grant themselves one."
"Yes, it feels like it is going to be very unusual to get that type of thing from my power, at least for the foreseeable future, my power becomes less clear on what it can give me when it comes to things further in the future." Dave said. "Anyways, perhaps because of the unusual method I got it, it seems a little different from what I know of normal Tinker powers. I knew my specialization right off the bat, and I started off with an item to help me get started. I've had lots of ideas for it, some of which are quite powerful, but I'm having trouble getting started because I can't get through the 'build the tools to build the tools to build the tools' phase, because my specialty is so far removed from the tools I need to use to make a lot of the bigger projects I could make."
"Hmm." Armsmaster hummed. "What was your specialty?"
"Mud. I've had ideas for things I could make that include synergies with my other powers, more healing items, beautification treatments, a variety of mud bombs to cause things like hydroplaning, as well as improvements to my normal teleportation items, among other things." Dave explained.
"That sounds quite useful." Dragon's cheerful voice came through the speaker again. "I'm glad you weren't discouraged by a specialty like Mud. I'm of the firm belief that any Tinker specialty can be powerful and useful, and I like to consider myself something of an expert."
"Indeed, though I'm not sure why mud would be considered weak. It is a significant part of the natural world, and can be devastating in many circumstances, and has been a tool used in civilizations across the globe for thousands of years." Dave said. "Anyways, to jump ahead a bit, I was thinking of making a place in the woods near Brockton that could serve as a large-scale Tinker lab. From what little research I've had time to do, there hasn't been anything like this in Brockton before, but Protectorate areas with enough Tinkers will sometimes have things along these lines, if not as ambitious." Dave began to outline his plan.
"I could build the outline of it within a single day, and I'd be happy to contribute to defenses as I get more and more items and abilities. It would provide a way to lure ambitious, cooperative, Tinkers to the Bay, as my research tells me Tinkers grow substantially by working together. The main thing I would gain, would be access to tools I can use to start things off along with permission to actually build the place. I don't have any way to do things like build my own centrifuge, and any more exotic 'tools to build the tools to build the tools' that only a Tinker could make would be out of my reach entirely if I couldn't buy them, and that would lock me out of many things I could potentially make, as well as any hopes of larger-scale production."
"That…" Armsmaster hesitated. "This would require a lot of funding that I simply cannot provide. I have a limited Tinkering budget that is provided by the PRT, and I cannot risk lowering my effectiveness by being unable to perform the needed maintenance on my projects while such a base is being built. Though I am interested in the concept." He admitted.
Armsmaster continued. "I can tell you from experience that your research was correct, working with other Tinkers is an excellent way to progress and gain inspiration, and when I worked under Hero with the other foremost Tinkers in the country, the shared Tinkering space and the many tools we had access to saved a lot of time and money. For example, something one Tinker only uses once a month might not be worth getting at all for them normally, thus lowering their effectiveness because they can't use it if they don't have it, but they will be able to use it freely if another Tinker that uses that same device every day already has one on hand and is willing to lend its use for an hour or two."
"Well…" Dave paused, "perhaps I should put it like this. I am willing to use my Health Stations and other healing technologies and items and abilities to get funding from rich individuals for whatever I need or want. I'm sure you've read Lady Photon's report on the Health Station at least, but unlike New Wave and Panacea, I'm perfectly happy to let a billionaire that isn't complete scum of the Earth throw money at me to heal them with the power of burritos. That was actually something I was hoping to ask Dragon for help with, a list of decent-ish people I could heal and get funding for projects from, since I assume the Guild has a list of charitable donors or something from around the world that they can vouch for in terms of character and want to have continue living so they can keep funding the Guild."
"Anyways, I don't really see any way that plan wouldn't work out, given how rich I've heard of Scapegoat being, and even if someone tries to throw NEPEA-5 at me, leaving aside that I don't think it applies here, I guarantee it wouldn't apply anymore after billionaires found out it kept them from being healed." Dave outlined his reasoning for how he was confident in gaining wealth.
"Thus, after I get that settled… which will be another thing I was going to ask Dragon for, someone the guild vouches for that can handle things like paperwork and contacting said billionaires for me.
Anyways, after I get that settled, I will be able to contribute:
- The bulk of the building itself, as well as materials for the building itself,
- Funds,
- Defenses for the building,
- A continuous supply of exotic items to be studied and used by Tinkers that are willing to help with the project,
- And eventually, a mud-based teleport network that would have a central hub within the Protectorate Headquarters and a secondary backup hub within the base itself.
- Legal permission to build the base,
- Utilities such as electricity, plumbing, doors, and someone competent to help actually design the building itself,
- Tools to let me actually do my Tinkering,
- Permission to look at other Tinker's projects for inspiration,
- Someone else to fill out the paperwork.
"Why am I here?" Kid Win asked for a moment.
"You're a Tinker, aren't you?" Dave asked. "You would be one of the Tinkers using this if it actually happens, of course you get input."
"Indeed," Armsmaster confirmed. "I asked for you to be here because you are also a Tinker, even if you haven't found your specialty yet. You will eventually need to be able to deal with these kinds of things on your own after you graduate from the Wards, but for now, I just wanted to let you have a little experience with seeing proposals related to Tinkering, though I admit I wasn't expecting anything this large-scale."
"Oh?" Crystal asked sweetly as she walked in. "So, could you tell me then… why is Kid Win here but Gallant, his fellow Tinker is not?" She asked sweetly.
Armsmaster displayed an impressive poker face, while Dragon remained conspicuously silent and Kid Win displayed an impressive 'oh shit' face, visible even through his mask.
Dave displayed an impressive Surprised Pikachu face.
Author's Note: Here we go, another chapter, still shorter ones while I build my backlog back up, before we go back to the length of 'however long I feel like but trying to average above 2k words per chapter'.
To let you in on a little secret… I hate cliffhangers. I fucking despise them. My version of a Chuuni middle school phase was when I came up with all sorts of elaborate torture methods I wished upon the person who invented cliffhangers… and the person who invented suspense (I didn't mind Alfred Hitchcock style suspense, because that was done well, he had a whole thing he talked about occasionally about how if you spend time in a story showing a bomb about to go off that the characters don't know about, you should never, ever have that bomb go off; he had that bomb go off once in a story and he said it was one of his biggest ever mistakes as a writer. I didn't mind it when that metaphorical bomb didn't go off in a story, but cliffhangers? Oh boy I wished all sorts of forms of creative things on the people that propagated those. I've chilled out a little by now, but cliffhangers are the main reason I mostly binge stories now, I rarely read one chapter at a time and I do my best to look at things like what the latest chapter title is to try my best to avoid cliffhangers. If needed I will even glance at the last few lines of the latest chapter to judge if it is a cliffhanger because I would much rather be spoiled than get a cliffhanger).
Ahem… I went on a tangent; my point was that I try to avoid major cliffhangers in writing… Though I probably don't succeed by all standards, I do try quite hard to make sure there are no major cliffhangers; so something like an Endbringer fight will likely end up as one massive chapter rather than a bunch of little ones as a result. Anyways… We see Dave's big proposal in this chapter. Armsmaster is interested, Dragon is interested, Kid Win doesn't know why he's there!
Suspicious Crystal walks in! Crystal uses Sarcastic Implication! It's super effective! Armsmaster uses Poker Face! It would have been super effective, except Kid Win used 'Oh Shit' Face, and changed the effectiveness to be not very effective.
Detective Crystal is on the case! But not for very long because she hates the case and wants to shove it off onto her mom! Will she succeed? Find out next time! Not really, it probably won't actually be answered next time.
The chapter title is based off of a scene in Moulin Rouge where the main character's friends are spying on him when he is reading poetry to a prostitute, and the one that can actually see what's happening tells the others 'He's got a HUUUUUUGE talent!" I was originally going to make that joke about my author's notes, but decided I liked it better in the chapter titles instead.
DracHoward
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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Ngl, Crystal why you ruin beautiful Tinker talk? It was nice seeing Dave, Armsmaster and Kid Win talking about Tinker stuff and the potential of Dave's project being successful
SpaceWhale
Know what you're doing yet?
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Crystal your supposed to be the smart one. If Dave can figure it out you can to
Chapter 34: Committing Superpowered Vandalism That Can't Be Removed.
New
Phili
Not too sore, are you?
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Chapter 34: Committing Superpowered Vandalism That Can't Be Removed.
January 9, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Protectorate Headquarters 'The Rig'.
"Ahem." Armsmaster coughed and apparently decided to pretend he hadn't heard Crystal say anything.
"As I was saying," Armsmaster began, "I would be happy to contribute to such a project and share my experiences with similar scenarios from when I was working with a group of Tinkers under Hero."
Crystal simply raised an eyebrow at him.
"And I would be willing to contribute general Tinkering tools and perform a portion of the maintenance needed on any such communal Tinkering tools." Armsmaster said after a moment.
Crystal stared harder.
"Ahem." Dragon seemed to take pity on Armsmaster. "I would be happy to find someone that the Guild has vetted Trouble, to help you with legal, financial, and general administrative things you might encounter. Goodness knows wasting time is the easiest way to make an enemy of a Tinker for a good reason, so helping you find someone trustworthy you can employ to help you save so much time will surely help you increase your effectiveness." Dragon said cheerfully through the speakers.
Crystal seemed to relent from whatever she was doing, and nodded once.
"So, you haven't discovered your specialty yet?" Dave asked Kid Win as they walked away from Armsmaster's lab. Crystal had remained behind for a couple minutes to talk with Armsmaster and Dragon about something, probably something boring.
"No, I've been working on a few things, and some of them area easier than others, but I've had trouble with a lot of things, and nothing really seems to click, you know?" Kid Win replied.
"Not really." Dave shrugged. "But, I was thinking, Laserdream showed me this Earth Aleph show from a few years ago, and in it, there's a bit where a group of monks have to identify a super special person as a child, when not even the child is aware of being said super special person. So, they bring out a bunch of special toys and see which toys each child is drawn to, and they identify the super special child because he is drawn to four specific toys that represent his future powers." Dave explained.
"So, I was thinking," Dave continued, "that a Tinker could probably do something similar to identify their specialty. Grab a whole bunch of toys and set them out, and see which ones their power draws them to the most. Ideally it would be things that can be assembled in some way or that have moving parts, but a large enough variety of toys would probably work regardless. Some nerf guns, little toy catapults, paint sets, action figures, legos, Playdough, toy boats, remote controlled cars, boats, planes, and helicopters, toy walkie talkies, et cetera. See which ones your power draws you to and which ones give you inspiration, and figure out what they have in common. Remote controlled things could indicate a signal specialty or a vehicle specialty, catapults and nerf guns could be a projectile specialty, boats and rubber ducks could be an aquatic specialty, paint sets could be a visual specialty, or a camouflage or chemical specialty, et cetera. If needed, you could consult other people and see what they think whatever you are drawn to has in common with each other, I'm sure Armsmaster will have some insight, and the Protectorate members with more experience will probably have also worked with a few Tinkers over the years and will be able to help you figure it out based on what you are drawn to." Dave explained his idea.
"Huh… Yeah, that sounds like a really good idea." Kid Win mused. "It's a pretty cheap way to figure things out without wasting a large chunk of my Tinkering budget."
"There we go, that's the spirit!" Dave patted Kid Win on the back. "And if you still have trouble figuring it out, you can ask the PRT to set up like a 5-minute meeting with a Thinker to help you figure it out in exchange for a couple hundred dollars or something. I don't actually know how much that kind of thing would cost, but I'm sure there are Thinkers out there who would be willing to use their powers to get a couple hundred dollars for five minutes' worth of work. Assuming they can correctly deduce your specialty anyways, though if they are the right kind of Thinker and are given the data from what you were drawn to and what you built with the toy thing, they should be able to figure it out." Dave shrugged. "You might want to leave that as a last resort though; it seems unlikely that would actually be necessary."
"Huh, yeah, that could work too." Kid Win said. "Thanks, I was kind of worried I wouldn't be able to figure out my specialty any time soon, so having a plan to work on figuring it out is actually really nice."
"No problem, assuming the big Tinker base project goes through, I hope I'll get to see you there and we can work on some stuff together." Dave replied.
"Yeah, yeah, I think that would be nice." Kid Win smiled.
After a moment of silence as they walked down the hallway, Crystal caught up to them.
"Hey boys," she greeted. "Talk about anything interesting?"
"Yes actually," Kid Win nodded. "Trouble was giving me advice on how to find my Tinker specialty. Apparently, he had an idea from some sort of Aleph show you introduced to him."
"Oh, which one?" Crystal asked.
"Avatar," Dave answered. "The way the monks discovered Aang was the Avatar by showing a bunch of toys to all the kids and he picked the ones that symbolized the Avatar elements or something. It made me think of just putting a ton of toys of a large variety in front of a Tinker, and seeing what they are drawn to by their power to determine what their specialty is." Dave outlined his thoughts on the matter.
"Huh, I've never heard of anyone trying that." Crystal commented. "If it works, you can probably use that to get a lot of good will from the PRT by having a method to help them identify Tinker specialties. Make sure you tell my mom about this; you can get a lot from the PRT and Protectorate if this method works. If it does work, the PRT will absolutely use it as a way to try to get more Tinkers to join by saying that they can help Tinkers find their specialties."
"That seems a little cynical." Kid Win frowned. "I'm sure they would ask for permission first." He added.
Dave and Crystal stared at him.
"I'm… not gonna touch that." Crystal decided after a moment. "You can explain to the other Wards what the plan is and what we said and listen to their opinions on the subject. I'm sure at least some of them will be happy to explain things to you."
Kid Win looked doubtful that there was anything to explain, but he would learn. He had only been part of the government for a short time at this point after all; he hadn't even had his Wards debut yet, so it was understandable to Crystal and Dave that he didn't quite understand how shameless the world of adults was.
"Oh, here looks like a good spot." Dave said as they passed through another hallway, this one just outside the Wards lounge.
"A good spot for what?" Kid Win asked.
Dave answered by using a power he had discovered recently, though he was pretty sure he had had since he woke up on January first.
An image appeared where he was looking at, right next to the door to the Ward's lounge, along with a fake-sounding spray can sound effect. The image was of a Slugma, with the caption: Slugma Balls.
Image:
It doesn't have the word 'Slugma' at the top of the image though, only the 'Slugma Balls' at the bottom. This link is to a video at the second it is showing the actual image that is Dave's Spray: https://youtu.be/acn57YA4-C8?t=573 that is at the 9:33 mark if the time thing doesn't work for some reason.
Dave looked at it, giggled, and walked away.
"They're never going to be able to remove that." He told Crystal as they kept walking.
Crystal Pelham
"Ugh, that was exhausting." Crystal said to her mother and aunt as they flew back to the Pellham house from the Rig. Dave had simply teleported back to his house, saying he was going to buy a few things like cheap jars and some paintbrushes to make some proof-of-concept items for his Tinkering.
"It surely wasn't that bad." Carol replied. "You weren't the one dealing with Vista's… problems and trying to relabel a Nazi's power ratings to get Victor labeled as a human Master without mentioning any unfortunate comparisons. Just about the only pleasant part was getting an agreement to have a Ward occasionally help Amy out at the hospital to be an extra person to guard her and the Health Stations, and even that was a little annoying."
"No, that does sound terrible," Crystal admitted. "But speaking of Masters, there's two new Wards I just met."
"Oh dear," came the voice of Crystal's mother.
"Yup, one of them was a Tinker who hasn't found his specialty, though Dave thought of a way that might solve that. The other one was also a 'Tinker' and was the most suspicious guy I've ever seen." She rolled her eyes and started describing the situation of the new 'Tinker' as they flew home, including that she rather easily got concessions from Armsmaster for Dave's project by bringing the subject up until he had to get rescued by Dragon. She also mentioned that his 'Tinker specialty' sounded incredibly similar to Vicky's 'Shaker' powers. She didn't actually say the quotations for Shaker out loud though, she wasn't nearly brave enough to say that to her aunt's face.
Crap, am I going to have to dance around that too now every time this new Ward comes up? Ugh. Wait… am I going to have to keep an eye on Vicky too now? I have no idea how their powers will interact, and this is a textbook case of two powers that could have a strange power interaction. Fuck, now I have to keep an eye on two emotion-based power wielders. Do I try to introduce them to each other in a controlled setting? Or do I just get the heck out and let them interact naturally? Do I warn Vicky that her power might act weird around this Gallant guy?
Ughhh, being an adult SUCKS. I'll just tell mom about all this and my worries over a poor power interaction between Gallant and Vicky after we get home. Then telling aunt Carol about it can be HER problem, and I can recruit Eric to keep an eye on Vicky at school. I can't trust Amy to keep an eye on Vicky, because Vicky has the poor girl wrapped around her finger like a piece of string. Fine, I have a plan, now I just need to carry it out.
Author's Note: Another short chapter done. Crystal socially mugs (blackmails) Armsmaster, Dragon has to socially rescue her meat husbando, and Kid Win gets some advice from Dave based on a cartoon he saw a few days ago. Truly, cartoons and anime are the key to saving Earth Bet. Also, can I just say… Dragon is such a cinnamon roll. I just fucking love her.
Crystal realizes she is going to have to dance around how similar Vicky and Gallant's emotional powers are, but for now is resigned to needing to keep an eye on Gallant. She also realizes her Parahuman studies classes are coming in handy, but resulting in more responsibility as she spots more things that could carry risks because of it.
This story won't focus too much on the Vicky/Dean stuff, which will be happening in the background so I thought I'd mention a bit of what's going on here. I decided to have Dean get his powers a little bit later than he did in canon to explain why he took so long to join the Wards, given his armor was made by Kid Win to sell the 'totally a Tinker' story. So now, he was still present when Vicky triggered, and his power still refused to turn off when she triggered, resulting in her getting her emotional aura stuff, but they haven't actually met yet. Dean took so long to join the Wards because his family was reluctant to actually let him join, even though Dean—being a genuinely good guy—wanted to do the right thing and sign up and be a hero from the get-go.
I don't have a particular problem with the Vicky/Dean ship itself, but it clearly doesn't actually work in canon, and my take on things is that Dean's power not turning off when Vicky triggered caused a sort-of almost-cluster trigger, resulting in a very minor version of the kiss/kill dynamic thing that Cluster Triggers have, thus their immunities to each-others power, and their constant getting together and breaking up thing. I just consider their relationship deeply unhealthy because of how power-based it is; even if my understanding is that part of the reason they keep getting back together is because they both like that they can't manipulate the other person with their emotional powers (either directly or through seeing their emotions), which to me indicates they aren't actually that compatible.
Either way, detective Crystal is on the case! Against her will! To protect her little cousin from any dastardly deeds!
Oh yes, and we also see one of Dave's powers he has had since the very beginning! The Steam spray! I searched and searched and searched, but I genuinely couldn't find an exact copy of Kirsty's spray on the internet. It should not be that hard to find a simple picture of Slugma with just the caption 'Slugma balls', but here we are. I had to settle for the lesser version I ended up putting in the chapter itself, which is just sad. Maybe Kirsty made her spray herself? But it's a simple enough picture that I still find it hard to believe nobody ever made an image that was effectively identical.
Next chapter, it's a new day, and we get to see someone I'm sure many of you are looking forward to, and I'm quite excited to see as well. In addition, when we meet them, Dave will be feeling particularly like a… white knight in shining armor, shall we say.
January 9, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Protectorate Headquarters 'The Rig'.
"Ahem." Armsmaster coughed and apparently decided to pretend he hadn't heard Crystal say anything.
"As I was saying," Armsmaster began, "I would be happy to contribute to such a project and share my experiences with similar scenarios from when I was working with a group of Tinkers under Hero."
Crystal simply raised an eyebrow at him.
"And I would be willing to contribute general Tinkering tools and perform a portion of the maintenance needed on any such communal Tinkering tools." Armsmaster said after a moment.
Crystal stared harder.
"Ahem." Dragon seemed to take pity on Armsmaster. "I would be happy to find someone that the Guild has vetted Trouble, to help you with legal, financial, and general administrative things you might encounter. Goodness knows wasting time is the easiest way to make an enemy of a Tinker for a good reason, so helping you find someone trustworthy you can employ to help you save so much time will surely help you increase your effectiveness." Dragon said cheerfully through the speakers.
Crystal seemed to relent from whatever she was doing, and nodded once.
"So, you haven't discovered your specialty yet?" Dave asked Kid Win as they walked away from Armsmaster's lab. Crystal had remained behind for a couple minutes to talk with Armsmaster and Dragon about something, probably something boring.
"No, I've been working on a few things, and some of them area easier than others, but I've had trouble with a lot of things, and nothing really seems to click, you know?" Kid Win replied.
"Not really." Dave shrugged. "But, I was thinking, Laserdream showed me this Earth Aleph show from a few years ago, and in it, there's a bit where a group of monks have to identify a super special person as a child, when not even the child is aware of being said super special person. So, they bring out a bunch of special toys and see which toys each child is drawn to, and they identify the super special child because he is drawn to four specific toys that represent his future powers." Dave explained.
"So, I was thinking," Dave continued, "that a Tinker could probably do something similar to identify their specialty. Grab a whole bunch of toys and set them out, and see which ones their power draws them to the most. Ideally it would be things that can be assembled in some way or that have moving parts, but a large enough variety of toys would probably work regardless. Some nerf guns, little toy catapults, paint sets, action figures, legos, Playdough, toy boats, remote controlled cars, boats, planes, and helicopters, toy walkie talkies, et cetera. See which ones your power draws you to and which ones give you inspiration, and figure out what they have in common. Remote controlled things could indicate a signal specialty or a vehicle specialty, catapults and nerf guns could be a projectile specialty, boats and rubber ducks could be an aquatic specialty, paint sets could be a visual specialty, or a camouflage or chemical specialty, et cetera. If needed, you could consult other people and see what they think whatever you are drawn to has in common with each other, I'm sure Armsmaster will have some insight, and the Protectorate members with more experience will probably have also worked with a few Tinkers over the years and will be able to help you figure it out based on what you are drawn to." Dave explained his idea.
"Huh… Yeah, that sounds like a really good idea." Kid Win mused. "It's a pretty cheap way to figure things out without wasting a large chunk of my Tinkering budget."
"There we go, that's the spirit!" Dave patted Kid Win on the back. "And if you still have trouble figuring it out, you can ask the PRT to set up like a 5-minute meeting with a Thinker to help you figure it out in exchange for a couple hundred dollars or something. I don't actually know how much that kind of thing would cost, but I'm sure there are Thinkers out there who would be willing to use their powers to get a couple hundred dollars for five minutes' worth of work. Assuming they can correctly deduce your specialty anyways, though if they are the right kind of Thinker and are given the data from what you were drawn to and what you built with the toy thing, they should be able to figure it out." Dave shrugged. "You might want to leave that as a last resort though; it seems unlikely that would actually be necessary."
"Huh, yeah, that could work too." Kid Win said. "Thanks, I was kind of worried I wouldn't be able to figure out my specialty any time soon, so having a plan to work on figuring it out is actually really nice."
"No problem, assuming the big Tinker base project goes through, I hope I'll get to see you there and we can work on some stuff together." Dave replied.
"Yeah, yeah, I think that would be nice." Kid Win smiled.
After a moment of silence as they walked down the hallway, Crystal caught up to them.
"Hey boys," she greeted. "Talk about anything interesting?"
"Yes actually," Kid Win nodded. "Trouble was giving me advice on how to find my Tinker specialty. Apparently, he had an idea from some sort of Aleph show you introduced to him."
"Oh, which one?" Crystal asked.
"Avatar," Dave answered. "The way the monks discovered Aang was the Avatar by showing a bunch of toys to all the kids and he picked the ones that symbolized the Avatar elements or something. It made me think of just putting a ton of toys of a large variety in front of a Tinker, and seeing what they are drawn to by their power to determine what their specialty is." Dave outlined his thoughts on the matter.
"Huh, I've never heard of anyone trying that." Crystal commented. "If it works, you can probably use that to get a lot of good will from the PRT by having a method to help them identify Tinker specialties. Make sure you tell my mom about this; you can get a lot from the PRT and Protectorate if this method works. If it does work, the PRT will absolutely use it as a way to try to get more Tinkers to join by saying that they can help Tinkers find their specialties."
"That seems a little cynical." Kid Win frowned. "I'm sure they would ask for permission first." He added.
Dave and Crystal stared at him.
"I'm… not gonna touch that." Crystal decided after a moment. "You can explain to the other Wards what the plan is and what we said and listen to their opinions on the subject. I'm sure at least some of them will be happy to explain things to you."
Kid Win looked doubtful that there was anything to explain, but he would learn. He had only been part of the government for a short time at this point after all; he hadn't even had his Wards debut yet, so it was understandable to Crystal and Dave that he didn't quite understand how shameless the world of adults was.
"Oh, here looks like a good spot." Dave said as they passed through another hallway, this one just outside the Wards lounge.
"A good spot for what?" Kid Win asked.
Dave answered by using a power he had discovered recently, though he was pretty sure he had had since he woke up on January first.
An image appeared where he was looking at, right next to the door to the Ward's lounge, along with a fake-sounding spray can sound effect. The image was of a Slugma, with the caption: Slugma Balls.
Image:
Dave looked at it, giggled, and walked away.
"They're never going to be able to remove that." He told Crystal as they kept walking.
Crystal Pelham
"Ugh, that was exhausting." Crystal said to her mother and aunt as they flew back to the Pellham house from the Rig. Dave had simply teleported back to his house, saying he was going to buy a few things like cheap jars and some paintbrushes to make some proof-of-concept items for his Tinkering.
"It surely wasn't that bad." Carol replied. "You weren't the one dealing with Vista's… problems and trying to relabel a Nazi's power ratings to get Victor labeled as a human Master without mentioning any unfortunate comparisons. Just about the only pleasant part was getting an agreement to have a Ward occasionally help Amy out at the hospital to be an extra person to guard her and the Health Stations, and even that was a little annoying."
"No, that does sound terrible," Crystal admitted. "But speaking of Masters, there's two new Wards I just met."
"Oh dear," came the voice of Crystal's mother.
"Yup, one of them was a Tinker who hasn't found his specialty, though Dave thought of a way that might solve that. The other one was also a 'Tinker' and was the most suspicious guy I've ever seen." She rolled her eyes and started describing the situation of the new 'Tinker' as they flew home, including that she rather easily got concessions from Armsmaster for Dave's project by bringing the subject up until he had to get rescued by Dragon. She also mentioned that his 'Tinker specialty' sounded incredibly similar to Vicky's 'Shaker' powers. She didn't actually say the quotations for Shaker out loud though, she wasn't nearly brave enough to say that to her aunt's face.
Crap, am I going to have to dance around that too now every time this new Ward comes up? Ugh. Wait… am I going to have to keep an eye on Vicky too now? I have no idea how their powers will interact, and this is a textbook case of two powers that could have a strange power interaction. Fuck, now I have to keep an eye on two emotion-based power wielders. Do I try to introduce them to each other in a controlled setting? Or do I just get the heck out and let them interact naturally? Do I warn Vicky that her power might act weird around this Gallant guy?
Ughhh, being an adult SUCKS. I'll just tell mom about all this and my worries over a poor power interaction between Gallant and Vicky after we get home. Then telling aunt Carol about it can be HER problem, and I can recruit Eric to keep an eye on Vicky at school. I can't trust Amy to keep an eye on Vicky, because Vicky has the poor girl wrapped around her finger like a piece of string. Fine, I have a plan, now I just need to carry it out.
Author's Note: Another short chapter done. Crystal socially mugs (blackmails) Armsmaster, Dragon has to socially rescue her meat husbando, and Kid Win gets some advice from Dave based on a cartoon he saw a few days ago. Truly, cartoons and anime are the key to saving Earth Bet. Also, can I just say… Dragon is such a cinnamon roll. I just fucking love her.
Crystal realizes she is going to have to dance around how similar Vicky and Gallant's emotional powers are, but for now is resigned to needing to keep an eye on Gallant. She also realizes her Parahuman studies classes are coming in handy, but resulting in more responsibility as she spots more things that could carry risks because of it.
This story won't focus too much on the Vicky/Dean stuff, which will be happening in the background so I thought I'd mention a bit of what's going on here. I decided to have Dean get his powers a little bit later than he did in canon to explain why he took so long to join the Wards, given his armor was made by Kid Win to sell the 'totally a Tinker' story. So now, he was still present when Vicky triggered, and his power still refused to turn off when she triggered, resulting in her getting her emotional aura stuff, but they haven't actually met yet. Dean took so long to join the Wards because his family was reluctant to actually let him join, even though Dean—being a genuinely good guy—wanted to do the right thing and sign up and be a hero from the get-go.
I don't have a particular problem with the Vicky/Dean ship itself, but it clearly doesn't actually work in canon, and my take on things is that Dean's power not turning off when Vicky triggered caused a sort-of almost-cluster trigger, resulting in a very minor version of the kiss/kill dynamic thing that Cluster Triggers have, thus their immunities to each-others power, and their constant getting together and breaking up thing. I just consider their relationship deeply unhealthy because of how power-based it is; even if my understanding is that part of the reason they keep getting back together is because they both like that they can't manipulate the other person with their emotional powers (either directly or through seeing their emotions), which to me indicates they aren't actually that compatible.
Either way, detective Crystal is on the case! Against her will! To protect her little cousin from any dastardly deeds!
Oh yes, and we also see one of Dave's powers he has had since the very beginning! The Steam spray! I searched and searched and searched, but I genuinely couldn't find an exact copy of Kirsty's spray on the internet. It should not be that hard to find a simple picture of Slugma with just the caption 'Slugma balls', but here we are. I had to settle for the lesser version I ended up putting in the chapter itself, which is just sad. Maybe Kirsty made her spray herself? But it's a simple enough picture that I still find it hard to believe nobody ever made an image that was effectively identical.
Next chapter, it's a new day, and we get to see someone I'm sure many of you are looking forward to, and I'm quite excited to see as well. In addition, when we meet them, Dave will be feeling particularly like a… white knight in shining armor, shall we say.
SpaceWhale
Know what you're doing yet?
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If Vicky and Dean have a weird power interaction guess that explains why they keep breaking up and getting back together.
Or their just teenagers being teenagers. You can never know
Or their just teenagers being teenagers. You can never know
DracHoward
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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Yknow, this is kinda smart idea to identify a Tinker's specialty, using toys that mesh well with the Tinker.
In regards to your writing, i do enjoy most of it, my only issue is the very long dialogue like the one you write Dave talking about toys. If youre open to suggestions, you can either split the dialogue to 2 to 3 segments, or you have the dialogue cut off with an action. Let me write an example
"So, I was thinking," Dave continued, "that a Tinker could probably do something similar to identify their specialty. Grab a whole bunch of toys and set them out, and see which ones their power draws them to the most. Ideally it would be things that can be assembled in some way or that have moving parts, but a large enough variety of toys would probably work regardless."
Dave started forming signs with his hands, indicating a type of toy he can think of at the moment "Some nerf guns, little toy catapults, paint sets, action figures, legos, Playdough, toy boats, remote controlled cars, boats, planes, and helicopters, toy walkie talkies, et cetera. See which ones your power draws you to and which ones give you inspiration, and figure out what they have in common. Remote controlled things could indicate a signal specialty or a vehicle specialty, catapults and nerf guns could be a projectile specialty, boats and rubber ducks could be an aquatic specialty, paint sets could be a visual specialty, or a camouflage or chemical specialty, et cetera."
He looked back at where they left off Armsmaster " If needed, you could consult other people and see what they think whatever you are drawn to has in common with each other, I'm sure Armsmaster will have some insight, and the Protectorate members with more experience will probably have also worked with a few Tinkers over the years and will be able to help you figure it out based on what you are drawn to." Dave explained his idea.
if you think otherwise, then thats fine by me imo. The story is enjoyable enough and i apologize if i offended you if I do
"So, I was thinking," Dave continued, "that a Tinker could probably do something similar to identify their specialty. Grab a whole bunch of toys and set them out, and see which ones their power draws them to the most. Ideally it would be things that can be assembled in some way or that have moving parts, but a large enough variety of toys would probably work regardless."
Dave started forming signs with his hands, indicating a type of toy he can think of at the moment "Some nerf guns, little toy catapults, paint sets, action figures, legos, Playdough, toy boats, remote controlled cars, boats, planes, and helicopters, toy walkie talkies, et cetera. See which ones your power draws you to and which ones give you inspiration, and figure out what they have in common. Remote controlled things could indicate a signal specialty or a vehicle specialty, catapults and nerf guns could be a projectile specialty, boats and rubber ducks could be an aquatic specialty, paint sets could be a visual specialty, or a camouflage or chemical specialty, et cetera."
He looked back at where they left off Armsmaster " If needed, you could consult other people and see what they think whatever you are drawn to has in common with each other, I'm sure Armsmaster will have some insight, and the Protectorate members with more experience will probably have also worked with a few Tinkers over the years and will be able to help you figure it out based on what you are drawn to." Dave explained his idea.
if you think otherwise, then thats fine by me imo. The story is enjoyable enough and i apologize if i offended you if I do
Phili
Not too sore, are you?
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Nah, this is fine, I'm always happy to receive advice. I do see what you mean there as well. I'll probably start doing something along the lines of what you suggested actually.
DracHoward
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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You're welcome, glad i can help
Also, at first i was sad that the latest xhapters are short, but then i was happy to see that yoh are actually building a backlog of chapters so im fine with that.
Chapter 35: White Knighting and Smug Foxing!
New
Phili
Not too sore, are you?
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Chapter 35: White Knighting and Smug Foxing!
January 10, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, Dave's Apartment.
Dave woke up, went through his morning routine, and prepared his breakfast bagel, orange juice, and tea.
Dave nodded sagely… wait, he needed to nod… paladinly? What exactly would nodding paladinly entail? Dave pondered as he ate his breakfast.
Dave had realized earlier that while he was sort of born in Brockton Bay nine days prior, he hadn't actually been in very much of it, so he now sought to rectify that by expanding his horizons.
He was going to the Boardwalk to expand his horizons and grow his connection to his native city, definitely not to pig out on pastries and chug as much iced coffee as he could.
He could ponder why he felt like there was something off about the term White Knight over a nice cup of iced coffee and a cinnamon roll. He normally associated Paladin with the term White Knight, and Paladin seemed fine to him, and the term 'white knighting' seemed fine, but he wasn't sure why the term White Knight itself seemed off to him. Something about the term just twigged at things he associated with Brockton Bay, and he wasn't sure why.
He mentally reaffirmed his decision to ponder it over pastries and coffee as he walked down the boardwalk looking for a good café.
After finding one with a sufficiently decadent menu, Dave walked in and was directed to a corner booth; and noticed that the booths all seemed rather privacy-oriented, with glass above each booth's seats dampening the sound of the booth on the other side.
A girl slid in to the seat across from him and waved down a waitress. "An iced latte and a cinnamon roll for him, a hot americano and a breakfast sandwich for me please." She told the waitress.
Dave looked at her, looked at the waitress, and gave the waitress a thumbs up.
As the waitress left, he looked at the girl, who had blonde hair, a splattering of faint freckles on the upper half of her face, and a general facial shape that reminded him of a fox for some reason. Oh, and a supremely smug expression that made him suppress a shiver.
"Do you have the goods?" Dave asked in a deep voice.
"Wha—" the girl cut herself off and looked at him. "You're fucking with me." Dave nodded slightly.
"Are you here to kidnap me?" Dave asked hopefully.
She looked at him, and simply said, "no."
"Aww."
"I am here to bring you an offer. You may refer to me as Lisa, and I've been approached by a Parahuman seeking to enter a relationship with you." The girl began.
"Already? I'm not ready for an arranged marriage though!" Dave visibly began to panic.
The girl just looked at him more. "You don't actually believe that's what's happening, you're trying to throw me off."
"Eh," Dave wiggled his hand at her. "Fifty-fifty really. I could buy that Parahumans try arranged marriage shenanigans in the hopes of getting second-generation Parahumans with stronger powers that trigger more easily. But I didn't think it was particularly likely that that was why you approached me."
Lisa seemed to decide it was time to move on from that topic. "So, my associate wanted to approach you in the hopes of obtaining protection and healing. They are a powerful Thinker, but they are being targeted by a group of some sort and need protection. As a gesture of goodwill, they wanted to give you a piece of information for free: Your 'Health Stations' you have been using at the Hospital are able to heal Thinker headaches, and Watchdog will find out about that soon if they haven't already."
"Hmm," Dave considered this new information about his Health Stations and Watchdog. Then got bored of considering it and decided to just ask about the obvious question. "Why not approach the Protectorate or New Wave?"
The girl smirked like she expected the question. "My associate believes that whoever is targeting them has some sort of connections within the Protectorate, and doesn't believe New Wave will take the threat seriously enough to actually protect them. For more details, you would need to actually ask my associate I'm afraid, but suffice to say, the Protectorate and New Wave are not options."
The conversation paused as the Waitress brought their food and drinks to the booth.
"Thank you," Lisa said to the Waitress, before digging in to her rather large breakfast sandwich like she was starving. She paused for a moment after the first bite, then resumed eating.
Dave stared at her as he ate his cinnamon roll and sipped his iced coffee. Yup, she's a weirdo. He decided after a moment.
Lisa twitched.
Yup, definitely a weirdo.
Lisa twitched again.
Dave activated his most underrated superpower, Pattern Recognition!
Weirdo, weirdo, weirdo, weirdo, weirdo, weirdo, the DOUGH OF WEIRDNESS COMPELS YOU!
Lisa remained perfectly still.
Dave smiled.
Lisa finished chewing her current bite, and calmly announced, "Fine, I was going to tell you soon anyways. I just wanted to get a better read on you. Yes, I am the 'associate,' and, as you obviously just figured out by thinking rude thoughts at me, my power is that I am psychic."
Dave nodded, "Which kind of psychic?" He asked.
"Not the kind you are thinking about, no communicating with the dead or… what part of psychic makes you think of 'coming back to life after their killer dies?'" Lisa demanded after a moment.
"Medium." Dave answered.
"Something about your power…" Lisa trailed off, "you can get something that is called a 'Medium' that lets you see the dead and come back to life if your killer dies." Lisa stated.
Dave politely golf-clapped.
"Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week." Lisa snarked. "You made that way too easy." She complained, to which Dave simply shrugged. There wasn't much he could do to make it harder to read his mind, at least that he was willing to put in the effort to do. He supposed restraining his impulses less to make his thoughts more chaotic might work, but then he would have to deal with… ugh, consequences. Eww, consequences, summed up Dave's thoughts at that idea.
"So," Lisa began, now that it was obvious that she was the Thinker Parahuman being targeted. "I am in need of help and protection, which fulfills your desire to help and protect people today in particular; you won't find anyone more in need of help and protection than me today, and tomorrow you will be less satisfied by helping and protecting people because it won't be the newest thing your power has given you anymore. I also can help you with your greatest weaknesses like—"
Dave slammed the table, "Sold! Welcome aboard, you can handle my paperwork."
Lisa facepalmed for some reason. She specifically said she would help him with it, so facepalming after getting agreement seemed a little uncalled for, in Dave's humble opinion.
Author's Note: Here we are, another day, another role. If anyone is curious, this is the episode where they drop a nuke on the map: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F9oohSh4gw&list=PL3XZNMGhpynP4rbJJGg3NIpZJHB5QRVC1&index=92
And this is the part where the nuke actually drops (at 7:33): https://youtu.be/0F9oohSh4gw?list=PL3XZNMGhpynP4rbJJGg3NIpZJHB5QRVC1&t=453
And this is the part where they drop the nuke again, but survive because they are in the Paladin aura (starting from when they press the button to drop the nuke, it takes about 40 seconds for the nuke to actually drop): https://youtu.be/0F9oohSh4gw?list=PL3XZNMGhpynP4rbJJGg3NIpZJHB5QRVC1&t=862
For anyone particularly impatient, here is the part just before the nuke drops and they survive because of the Paladin aura (about 6 seconds before the nuke drops): https://youtu.be/0F9oohSh4gw?list=PL3XZNMGhpynP4rbJJGg3NIpZJHB5QRVC1&t=901
Now, Dave has unlocked the Paladin role today, and what a role it is. It would be even more valuable if he hadn't already unlocked the PhD Flopper of course, but on the bright side, he can now make his PhD Flopper explosions purely aesthetic by keeping his aura on for everyone in range when he lands, making them immune to explosions.
The White Knight sketch is in fact just a sketch Dave saw pre-awakening-on-Earth-Bet but doesn't quite remember, but he now thinks there is something off about the term White Knight because of it.
As Dave walked down the street, he kept his Paladin aura on, which means he was healing everyone he walked past. This is absurdly illegal on Earth Bet, and constitutes something like 'assault with parahuman powers' because he was healing people without permission. Does Dave know this and choose to ignore it, or did he not know about this? Either way, he's going to claim he had no idea he assaulted several hundred people today.
Some of you might wonder why Dave bought Lisa's mind-reading schtick, and that's partially because she described it as 'psychic,' and one of his potential roles is literally 'Medium,' as in a psychic Medium who communicates with the dead. Part of it is his relative inexperience in the world of Parahumans. Unlike the New Wave kids, he's never taken a Parahuman Studies class, and there is only so much research he's been able to do in nine days, and he has had to research a variety of things, while also dealing with being fairly easily distractible and accidentally going off topic from what he intends to research. Not to mention, he doesn't exactly dedicate all of his free-time to research, he also bothers Bella and Crystal and shitposts on IKEA forums, and watches Earth Aleph media recommended to him by Crystal.
Thus, Dave has no idea that actual mind reading is considered impossible for Parahumans to accomplish.
Also, First Minion Get!
Also also, Paperwork Minion Get!
January 10, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, Dave's Apartment.
Dave woke up, went through his morning routine, and prepared his breakfast bagel, orange juice, and tea.
| Good Morning Dave! |
| You got some decent growth yesterday, nothing too exciting, but every little bit counts with this sort of thing, you know? Today's new role is rather exciting; it is the Paladin! Just like you would expect, while you have the role enabled, you are totally immune to explosions, as is everyone within your aura's radius. Your aura's radius is currently about 3 meters, though you can improve that if you want to dedicate soul space to it. Everyone in your aura, including yourself, will also constantly heal over time, at a rate of about 1% of their 'maximum health' per second. It won't replace lost limbs or anything, but it is still combat-regeneration level of healing. I've used a bit of your soul space to give you an ability to blacklist and whitelist people for your aura so you don't end up healing people you are fighting, or prevent them from taking damage from your PhD Flopper explosions. As you may recall, the explosion immunity for you and the people in your aura is rather complete, and can be used to survive a nuke undamaged, including the radiation afterwards; even if someone leaving your aura will still experience the full brunt of the explosion and/or radiation, depending on when exactly they leave. This does mean that those within your aura are also immune to harmful radiation while they remain within your aura, and again, that includes yourself. Only you can see exactly where your aura ends, it will be marked by a little blue circle around you that only you can see. |
Dave nodded sagely… wait, he needed to nod… paladinly? What exactly would nodding paladinly entail? Dave pondered as he ate his breakfast.
Dave had realized earlier that while he was sort of born in Brockton Bay nine days prior, he hadn't actually been in very much of it, so he now sought to rectify that by expanding his horizons.
He was going to the Boardwalk to expand his horizons and grow his connection to his native city, definitely not to pig out on pastries and chug as much iced coffee as he could.
He could ponder why he felt like there was something off about the term White Knight over a nice cup of iced coffee and a cinnamon roll. He normally associated Paladin with the term White Knight, and Paladin seemed fine to him, and the term 'white knighting' seemed fine, but he wasn't sure why the term White Knight itself seemed off to him. Something about the term just twigged at things he associated with Brockton Bay, and he wasn't sure why.
He mentally reaffirmed his decision to ponder it over pastries and coffee as he walked down the boardwalk looking for a good café.
After finding one with a sufficiently decadent menu, Dave walked in and was directed to a corner booth; and noticed that the booths all seemed rather privacy-oriented, with glass above each booth's seats dampening the sound of the booth on the other side.
A girl slid in to the seat across from him and waved down a waitress. "An iced latte and a cinnamon roll for him, a hot americano and a breakfast sandwich for me please." She told the waitress.
Dave looked at her, looked at the waitress, and gave the waitress a thumbs up.
As the waitress left, he looked at the girl, who had blonde hair, a splattering of faint freckles on the upper half of her face, and a general facial shape that reminded him of a fox for some reason. Oh, and a supremely smug expression that made him suppress a shiver.
"Do you have the goods?" Dave asked in a deep voice.
"Wha—" the girl cut herself off and looked at him. "You're fucking with me." Dave nodded slightly.
"Are you here to kidnap me?" Dave asked hopefully.
She looked at him, and simply said, "no."
"Aww."
"I am here to bring you an offer. You may refer to me as Lisa, and I've been approached by a Parahuman seeking to enter a relationship with you." The girl began.
"Already? I'm not ready for an arranged marriage though!" Dave visibly began to panic.
The girl just looked at him more. "You don't actually believe that's what's happening, you're trying to throw me off."
"Eh," Dave wiggled his hand at her. "Fifty-fifty really. I could buy that Parahumans try arranged marriage shenanigans in the hopes of getting second-generation Parahumans with stronger powers that trigger more easily. But I didn't think it was particularly likely that that was why you approached me."
Lisa seemed to decide it was time to move on from that topic. "So, my associate wanted to approach you in the hopes of obtaining protection and healing. They are a powerful Thinker, but they are being targeted by a group of some sort and need protection. As a gesture of goodwill, they wanted to give you a piece of information for free: Your 'Health Stations' you have been using at the Hospital are able to heal Thinker headaches, and Watchdog will find out about that soon if they haven't already."
"Hmm," Dave considered this new information about his Health Stations and Watchdog. Then got bored of considering it and decided to just ask about the obvious question. "Why not approach the Protectorate or New Wave?"
The girl smirked like she expected the question. "My associate believes that whoever is targeting them has some sort of connections within the Protectorate, and doesn't believe New Wave will take the threat seriously enough to actually protect them. For more details, you would need to actually ask my associate I'm afraid, but suffice to say, the Protectorate and New Wave are not options."
The conversation paused as the Waitress brought their food and drinks to the booth.
"Thank you," Lisa said to the Waitress, before digging in to her rather large breakfast sandwich like she was starving. She paused for a moment after the first bite, then resumed eating.
Dave stared at her as he ate his cinnamon roll and sipped his iced coffee. Yup, she's a weirdo. He decided after a moment.
Lisa twitched.
Yup, definitely a weirdo.
Lisa twitched again.
Dave activated his most underrated superpower, Pattern Recognition!
Weirdo, weirdo, weirdo, weirdo, weirdo, weirdo, the DOUGH OF WEIRDNESS COMPELS YOU!
Lisa remained perfectly still.
Dave smiled.
Lisa finished chewing her current bite, and calmly announced, "Fine, I was going to tell you soon anyways. I just wanted to get a better read on you. Yes, I am the 'associate,' and, as you obviously just figured out by thinking rude thoughts at me, my power is that I am psychic."
Dave nodded, "Which kind of psychic?" He asked.
"Not the kind you are thinking about, no communicating with the dead or… what part of psychic makes you think of 'coming back to life after their killer dies?'" Lisa demanded after a moment.
"Medium." Dave answered.
"Something about your power…" Lisa trailed off, "you can get something that is called a 'Medium' that lets you see the dead and come back to life if your killer dies." Lisa stated.
Dave politely golf-clapped.
"Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week." Lisa snarked. "You made that way too easy." She complained, to which Dave simply shrugged. There wasn't much he could do to make it harder to read his mind, at least that he was willing to put in the effort to do. He supposed restraining his impulses less to make his thoughts more chaotic might work, but then he would have to deal with… ugh, consequences. Eww, consequences, summed up Dave's thoughts at that idea.
"So," Lisa began, now that it was obvious that she was the Thinker Parahuman being targeted. "I am in need of help and protection, which fulfills your desire to help and protect people today in particular; you won't find anyone more in need of help and protection than me today, and tomorrow you will be less satisfied by helping and protecting people because it won't be the newest thing your power has given you anymore. I also can help you with your greatest weaknesses like—"
Dave slammed the table, "Sold! Welcome aboard, you can handle my paperwork."
Lisa facepalmed for some reason. She specifically said she would help him with it, so facepalming after getting agreement seemed a little uncalled for, in Dave's humble opinion.
Author's Note: Here we are, another day, another role. If anyone is curious, this is the episode where they drop a nuke on the map: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F9oohSh4gw&list=PL3XZNMGhpynP4rbJJGg3NIpZJHB5QRVC1&index=92
And this is the part where the nuke actually drops (at 7:33): https://youtu.be/0F9oohSh4gw?list=PL3XZNMGhpynP4rbJJGg3NIpZJHB5QRVC1&t=453
And this is the part where they drop the nuke again, but survive because they are in the Paladin aura (starting from when they press the button to drop the nuke, it takes about 40 seconds for the nuke to actually drop): https://youtu.be/0F9oohSh4gw?list=PL3XZNMGhpynP4rbJJGg3NIpZJHB5QRVC1&t=862
For anyone particularly impatient, here is the part just before the nuke drops and they survive because of the Paladin aura (about 6 seconds before the nuke drops): https://youtu.be/0F9oohSh4gw?list=PL3XZNMGhpynP4rbJJGg3NIpZJHB5QRVC1&t=901
Now, Dave has unlocked the Paladin role today, and what a role it is. It would be even more valuable if he hadn't already unlocked the PhD Flopper of course, but on the bright side, he can now make his PhD Flopper explosions purely aesthetic by keeping his aura on for everyone in range when he lands, making them immune to explosions.
The White Knight sketch is in fact just a sketch Dave saw pre-awakening-on-Earth-Bet but doesn't quite remember, but he now thinks there is something off about the term White Knight because of it.
As Dave walked down the street, he kept his Paladin aura on, which means he was healing everyone he walked past. This is absurdly illegal on Earth Bet, and constitutes something like 'assault with parahuman powers' because he was healing people without permission. Does Dave know this and choose to ignore it, or did he not know about this? Either way, he's going to claim he had no idea he assaulted several hundred people today.
Some of you might wonder why Dave bought Lisa's mind-reading schtick, and that's partially because she described it as 'psychic,' and one of his potential roles is literally 'Medium,' as in a psychic Medium who communicates with the dead. Part of it is his relative inexperience in the world of Parahumans. Unlike the New Wave kids, he's never taken a Parahuman Studies class, and there is only so much research he's been able to do in nine days, and he has had to research a variety of things, while also dealing with being fairly easily distractible and accidentally going off topic from what he intends to research. Not to mention, he doesn't exactly dedicate all of his free-time to research, he also bothers Bella and Crystal and shitposts on IKEA forums, and watches Earth Aleph media recommended to him by Crystal.
Thus, Dave has no idea that actual mind reading is considered impossible for Parahumans to accomplish.
Also, First Minion Get!
Also also, Paperwork Minion Get!
DracHoward
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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Stupid Coil, kidnapping teenage girls to use their Thinker power..
You should use the chad Dave's way of using teenage girls to do paperwork instead
You should use the chad Dave's way of using teenage girls to do paperwork instead
SpaceWhale
Know what you're doing yet?
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Dave has even more people he can troll around him. I can just imagine the crashout coil has trying to use his power on dave and just getting inconclusive or random shenanigans keep happening
Nemesis of suicide
Have a little Fetish.
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sooo... will he be Shiped to Ash Beast to help there?
BlueCladOne
Actually here for plot, somehow.
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I also want to point out that although reading minds is something that is generally agreed to be impossible, Shards absolutely can do so.
Also, Jack Slash kinda by proxy reads minds. His shard does it to parahumans, then he gets instincts based on what it finds. Not direct or anything, but yeah.
Not to mention the Simurgh absolutely reads minds.
It might be a Warrior limitation thing put on the Shards to not let their hosts get that data from another living host - so there's no cross-subject data contamination or something.
The Butcher "reads minds" post-mortem.
Also, Jack Slash kinda by proxy reads minds. His shard does it to parahumans, then he gets instincts based on what it finds. Not direct or anything, but yeah.
Not to mention the Simurgh absolutely reads minds.
It might be a Warrior limitation thing put on the Shards to not let their hosts get that data from another living host - so there's no cross-subject data contamination or something.
The Butcher "reads minds" post-mortem.
Chapter 36: In Which Dave Encourages Lisa to Jump Out a Window Because Bella is Scary
New
Phili
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Chapter 36: In Which Dave Encourages Lisa to Jump Out a Window Because Bella is Scary
January 10, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, The Boardwalk.
"So…" Lisa fluttered her eyes dramatically at Dave. "You will protect me in exchange for my services as a Thinker?" She clarified.
Dave nodded. "Sure, as long as you also make sure I don't have to do paperwork." He emphasized the important part.
"Great, just so you know, I'm homeless at the moment because I'm a lot harder to find that way." She smiled at him. Dave looked at her more closely; she didn't particularly look homeless.
"My power lends itself well to things like identifying acceptable targets and their credit card information." She explained. "So I have plenty of clean clothes and such, I just couldn't risk staying at a hotel or anything without making myself too much easier to find."
Dave nodded thoughtfully, and Lisa smiled upon getting confirmation of her suspicion that Dave didn't care about crimes committed against acceptable targets.
"Well, I've been working on a project with Armsmaster and Dragon to make a large-scale Tinker base," Dave began, "and after it is finished, I will have set up a fun variety of defenses that would easily stop the entire Empire at once, leaving aside any defenses any other Tinkers might add. But… It's not anywhere near actually ready yet. It's still just in the planning phase and getting permission. When it is done, you can set up there if you want, it will certainly be the best-defended place in Brockton, and probably the best-defended place on the East Coast of the US aside from 'within five feet of Legend.'"
"You'll actually be able to help with that if you want." Dave said thoughtfully. "You could help design it if you want, and you would be in charge of the designs of any part of it that you want to be 'yours,' so to speak. If you are able to help Tinkers find their specialties, you could also provide a useful service to get more Tinkers on board and thus increase the defenses the base would have."
"But for now…" Dave said, "you'll have to room with either me, New Wave if I get permission, or my neighbor, who is a close friend of mine, and female; assuming she is okay with it. If hotels won't work those are your options, though of course rooming with me will make it easiest for me to protect you."
"Don't say it like that." Lisa admonished him.
Don't say what like what? He wondered.
"Don't say things like 'by the way, rooming with me will make it easiest to protect you.' It comes across as predatory, even if I can tell it really isn't in your particular case. Do you have any idea how many times I've heard people try to pull that shit since I became homeless?" She asked him. "It's way too many!"
"Anyways," Lisa coughed, seemingly slightly embarrassed at her outburst. "I would like to meet your neighbor first before I decide, but I would like to room with either her or you, but only her if I find her agreeable of course. And I would need things to defend myself with in either case." She added the last part nonchalantly. Joke's on her, Dave loves giving out toys.
"Sure, let me just send her a message to see if she's busy. If she isn't we can go meet her right now."
Dave began texting Bella with that said.
Me: Yo Bella, I acquired a minion, wanna meet her?
Bella: Did your power give you a sentient being aside from those cats?
Me: Nah, it's a real-life fleshy person, not one of my cute furry little dinguses.
Bella: Fine.
Me: Sweet, we'll come meet you at your apartment then. Want any pastries or coffee?
Bella: Bring me one of those iced Mocha things with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles, along with a pastry of some sort.
Me: Good taste, we'll see you soon!
Dave ordered Bella's Mocha thing and a croissant to go, and upon receiving them, left the café with Lisa in tow.
"When we get there, I'll show you some of the neat toys you wanted." Dave told Lisa as they walked out, nearly making her trip.
"Don't say that!" She whisper-shouted at him.
Again, people keep telling me not to say this without clarifying what they don't want me to say. It's so rude! Dave thought to himself. "Don't say what?"
"Don't talk to a girl about showing her toys, it sounds like a sex thing," Lisa whispered to him.
Dave looked at her doubtfully. "I… really don't think that's the case. It sounds like you're just a pervert. In my entire life, I have never once heard someone refer to a toy as a sex thing; only ever as a thing relating to Superpowers or a thing relating to Terrorism."
"Oh my god, how are you telling the truth?" Lisa seemed like she was trying her best not to scream at him.
"I'm an honest lad." Dave told her sincerely.
She looked at him. "No, you're not."
"No, I'm not." Dave agreed with a smile.
Dave knocked on Bella's apartment door. Nothing happened.
He knocked again. Nothing happened.
He knocked again. The door opened, and Bella stood there.
He knocked again, this time directly on her forehead, right above her very unamused face.
He knocked ag—no, no he didn't knock again, he just got dragged inside by Bella.
"Come in," Bella politely told Lisa. "I'm sorry for whatever he's done so far that you've had to put up with. I promise you, it gets worse."
"I assumed as much," Lisa gave Bella a forlorn nod. "But it's good to have confirmation."
"So," Bella said as they sat down in Bella's living room. "I'm told you are Dave's new… subordinate—" "Minion." Dave chimed in. "—Shut up Dave. His new subordinate, and you wanted to meet me."
"Yes," Lisa nodded. "You see, I'm a rather strong Thinker, if I do say so myself, and I seem to have been targeted by a nefarious group of some sort, so I asked Dave here for protection from them in exchange for my services as a Thinker. However, I don't really have a place to live, and while I can afford to live out of a hotel, it wouldn't be able to keep me safe. So, Dave suggested I stay with either himself, you, or New Wave, and I told him I would prefer to stay with either you or him."
Dave was surprised; he hadn't expected Lisa to go the full honesty route. It went against what little he knew about Thinker tendencies from his research; though in hindsight those were almost certainly generalizations and quite possibly stereotypes, and thus not reliable enough to make decisions off of.
"Oh, so you're homeless but well off enough to pay for a hotel if you would be safe doing so?" Bella asked.
Lisa nodded. "Yes, my power makes it surprisingly profitable to do things that would otherwise be unwise, like certain forms of gambling like scratch tickets or cup games at festivals, or buying things and then selling them for a higher price at a pawn shop."
Oh, there's the lying. Stereotypes were true after all!
Lisa looked at Bella. "He just thought something mean about me." She rudely accused Dave. It's not mean if it's true after all. Wait, I need to defend myself. Dave realized.
"It's not mean if it's true." He said aloud. There, my defense is ironclad.
Bella turned to Lisa. "Fine, you can stay with me for a while if you can follow normal housemate rules. But you will need to work on finding a long-term solution on your own, I will be busy with classes for most of each week. Speaking of which…" Bella gained a scary look in her eyes that Dave recognized. "You seem a little young to be out of school, don't you Lisa?" Bella asked a scary question with a straight face.
"Don't make eye contact." Dave advised Lisa. "Jump out a window if necessary, I can bring you back to life if you die in the process." He told her, holding up a defibrillator.
"It would be unsafe for me to go to any sort of school while I am being targeted," Lisa smoothly told Bella, while ignoring Dave with equal smoothness. "Both for myself and any other students. We would all be at risk of capture, death, and who knows what from whatever organization is targeting me."
"Hmm." Bella looked Lisa straight in the eyes, seemingly looking for something, before nodding to herself.
"If you stay with me, you will be doing some sort of online schooling. I don't have the time, energy, or inclination to babysit you, but I will be making sure you aren't one of those Thinkers that is an idiot without their powers as my way of helping out Dave. You will need to maintain passing, decent grades while you are rooming with me. You don't have to tell me exactly how your power works, but I guarantee you it will work better if you have more knowledge and better critical thinking skills to use it. A Blaster still needs to learn how to aim, a Brute can still improve their melee combat skills, and a Tinker can train their critical thinking, relevant mundane skills, and their manual dexterity to use their tools. It is the same with a Thinker, and you will agree with me if you ever get to college-level Parahuman Studies classes." Bella told Lisa smugly.
Lisa seemed to take that as a challenge, and looked smug right back. "I think you'll find I can do rather amazingly in any educational setting."
"Of course you can." Bella said, seeming to know right where Lisa's mind went. "But you will end up rather pathetic if you use your power to cheat your way through school. There was a case I learned about in Parahuman Studies recently, about a Thinker whose power let him store information and brainpower in little crystals, and he could use the brainpower and information of any crystal he had in contact with his body, and he always carried a bunch around attached to his body. Well, someone eventually caught on and destroyed all his crystals, and he couldn't make any new ones because he had forgotten how to retain information. He became effectively an amnesiac and lost all of his basic thinking skills and knowledge because he had stored them in Crystals to improve his power's ability to increase his 'brainpower'. Not that he used his 'intelligence' very wisely, but he was extraordinarily strong as a Thinker, and a powerhouse in his corner of the world before people caught on and he became crippled because he could barely think without his power."
"You don't need to scare me into studying." Lisa said grouchily. "I could tell you believed what you were saying about it making my powers stronger anyways."
"Good." Bella nodded. "Then we can speak more on what our exact arrangement will be in a bit. For now," Bella reached out her hand to Dave. "Gimme my pastry and mocha."
Author's Note: Today, I found the first episode featuring Oscar the Cat. You might remember back when dingus was first introduced that I had been confused and called him Oscar originally before changing it to dingus because I encountered the first dingus episode in my rewatching of TTT. It turns out, there was also an Oscar the Cat all along, I wasn't crazy the whole time! And it made perfect sense that I thought of Oscar the Cat first because Oscar appeared most recently! If anyone is curious, this episode is the first appearance of Oscar the Cat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZU7e2bN1Wo&list=PL3XZNMGhpynNCVmuv9xANuq2ex2Rw5Wbm&index=5
Here is a good frame of Oscar the Cat in that vid along with a description of what he does: https://youtu.be/1ZU7e2bN1Wo?list=PL3XZNMGhpynNCVmuv9xANuq2ex2Rw5Wbm&t=234
Now, some of you might wonder why Lisa picked Dave when she struck it alone in canon until she ended up captured. That is largely because she can tell he is a lot more morally flexible than a 'standard hero', but is still 'heroic' enough he would help her if asked, and is strong enough to protect her, can massively increase her effectiveness with his healing tech making her able to get rid of her Thinker headaches (which she really, really wants, as anyone prone to migraines will tell you; I'm not prone to them myself, but I've heard people talk about them and they would absolutely commit crimes in exchange for a miraculous migraine cure); along with Dave being trustworthy according to her power, and really easy to find while he has his Healing Aura enabled, because Lisa's power could literally see people subconsciously doing things like walking straighter as he passed because they got healed.
That isn't mentioning she can tell he is an extremely powerful Trump with a lot of potential that can also grant others powers, and she wants to get in on the ground floor as it were, and be associated with him from as early on as possible before he strikes it big.
Really, as far as Lisa is concerned, the biggest downsides to going under Dave are that she doesn't instantly get a perfect solution to her living situation, and that she has to associate with New Wave to an extent, which… well, there's a reason she didn't even consider going to them for help, and it's only partially because they very famously couldn't even protect one of their own from a single unpowered wannabe gangster and didn't even take revenge. Lisa took one look at the Dallon household with her power, doubletaked and looked closer, and noped the fuck out. She might have even left Dave alone if she couldn't tell he was closest with Crystal out of New Wave; if he had been closest with the Dallon side instead of the Pelham side, she might have tried her luck elsewhere instead.
January 10, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, The Boardwalk.
"So…" Lisa fluttered her eyes dramatically at Dave. "You will protect me in exchange for my services as a Thinker?" She clarified.
Dave nodded. "Sure, as long as you also make sure I don't have to do paperwork." He emphasized the important part.
"Great, just so you know, I'm homeless at the moment because I'm a lot harder to find that way." She smiled at him. Dave looked at her more closely; she didn't particularly look homeless.
"My power lends itself well to things like identifying acceptable targets and their credit card information." She explained. "So I have plenty of clean clothes and such, I just couldn't risk staying at a hotel or anything without making myself too much easier to find."
Dave nodded thoughtfully, and Lisa smiled upon getting confirmation of her suspicion that Dave didn't care about crimes committed against acceptable targets.
"Well, I've been working on a project with Armsmaster and Dragon to make a large-scale Tinker base," Dave began, "and after it is finished, I will have set up a fun variety of defenses that would easily stop the entire Empire at once, leaving aside any defenses any other Tinkers might add. But… It's not anywhere near actually ready yet. It's still just in the planning phase and getting permission. When it is done, you can set up there if you want, it will certainly be the best-defended place in Brockton, and probably the best-defended place on the East Coast of the US aside from 'within five feet of Legend.'"
"You'll actually be able to help with that if you want." Dave said thoughtfully. "You could help design it if you want, and you would be in charge of the designs of any part of it that you want to be 'yours,' so to speak. If you are able to help Tinkers find their specialties, you could also provide a useful service to get more Tinkers on board and thus increase the defenses the base would have."
"But for now…" Dave said, "you'll have to room with either me, New Wave if I get permission, or my neighbor, who is a close friend of mine, and female; assuming she is okay with it. If hotels won't work those are your options, though of course rooming with me will make it easiest for me to protect you."
"Don't say it like that." Lisa admonished him.
Don't say what like what? He wondered.
"Don't say things like 'by the way, rooming with me will make it easiest to protect you.' It comes across as predatory, even if I can tell it really isn't in your particular case. Do you have any idea how many times I've heard people try to pull that shit since I became homeless?" She asked him. "It's way too many!"
"Anyways," Lisa coughed, seemingly slightly embarrassed at her outburst. "I would like to meet your neighbor first before I decide, but I would like to room with either her or you, but only her if I find her agreeable of course. And I would need things to defend myself with in either case." She added the last part nonchalantly. Joke's on her, Dave loves giving out toys.
"Sure, let me just send her a message to see if she's busy. If she isn't we can go meet her right now."
Dave began texting Bella with that said.
Me: Yo Bella, I acquired a minion, wanna meet her?
Bella: Did your power give you a sentient being aside from those cats?
Me: Nah, it's a real-life fleshy person, not one of my cute furry little dinguses.
Bella: Fine.
Me: Sweet, we'll come meet you at your apartment then. Want any pastries or coffee?
Bella: Bring me one of those iced Mocha things with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles, along with a pastry of some sort.
Me: Good taste, we'll see you soon!
Dave ordered Bella's Mocha thing and a croissant to go, and upon receiving them, left the café with Lisa in tow.
"When we get there, I'll show you some of the neat toys you wanted." Dave told Lisa as they walked out, nearly making her trip.
"Don't say that!" She whisper-shouted at him.
Again, people keep telling me not to say this without clarifying what they don't want me to say. It's so rude! Dave thought to himself. "Don't say what?"
"Don't talk to a girl about showing her toys, it sounds like a sex thing," Lisa whispered to him.
Dave looked at her doubtfully. "I… really don't think that's the case. It sounds like you're just a pervert. In my entire life, I have never once heard someone refer to a toy as a sex thing; only ever as a thing relating to Superpowers or a thing relating to Terrorism."
"Oh my god, how are you telling the truth?" Lisa seemed like she was trying her best not to scream at him.
"I'm an honest lad." Dave told her sincerely.
She looked at him. "No, you're not."
"No, I'm not." Dave agreed with a smile.
Dave knocked on Bella's apartment door. Nothing happened.
He knocked again. Nothing happened.
He knocked again. The door opened, and Bella stood there.
He knocked again, this time directly on her forehead, right above her very unamused face.
He knocked ag—no, no he didn't knock again, he just got dragged inside by Bella.
"Come in," Bella politely told Lisa. "I'm sorry for whatever he's done so far that you've had to put up with. I promise you, it gets worse."
"I assumed as much," Lisa gave Bella a forlorn nod. "But it's good to have confirmation."
"So," Bella said as they sat down in Bella's living room. "I'm told you are Dave's new… subordinate—" "Minion." Dave chimed in. "—Shut up Dave. His new subordinate, and you wanted to meet me."
"Yes," Lisa nodded. "You see, I'm a rather strong Thinker, if I do say so myself, and I seem to have been targeted by a nefarious group of some sort, so I asked Dave here for protection from them in exchange for my services as a Thinker. However, I don't really have a place to live, and while I can afford to live out of a hotel, it wouldn't be able to keep me safe. So, Dave suggested I stay with either himself, you, or New Wave, and I told him I would prefer to stay with either you or him."
Dave was surprised; he hadn't expected Lisa to go the full honesty route. It went against what little he knew about Thinker tendencies from his research; though in hindsight those were almost certainly generalizations and quite possibly stereotypes, and thus not reliable enough to make decisions off of.
"Oh, so you're homeless but well off enough to pay for a hotel if you would be safe doing so?" Bella asked.
Lisa nodded. "Yes, my power makes it surprisingly profitable to do things that would otherwise be unwise, like certain forms of gambling like scratch tickets or cup games at festivals, or buying things and then selling them for a higher price at a pawn shop."
Oh, there's the lying. Stereotypes were true after all!
Lisa looked at Bella. "He just thought something mean about me." She rudely accused Dave. It's not mean if it's true after all. Wait, I need to defend myself. Dave realized.
"It's not mean if it's true." He said aloud. There, my defense is ironclad.
Bella turned to Lisa. "Fine, you can stay with me for a while if you can follow normal housemate rules. But you will need to work on finding a long-term solution on your own, I will be busy with classes for most of each week. Speaking of which…" Bella gained a scary look in her eyes that Dave recognized. "You seem a little young to be out of school, don't you Lisa?" Bella asked a scary question with a straight face.
"Don't make eye contact." Dave advised Lisa. "Jump out a window if necessary, I can bring you back to life if you die in the process." He told her, holding up a defibrillator.
"It would be unsafe for me to go to any sort of school while I am being targeted," Lisa smoothly told Bella, while ignoring Dave with equal smoothness. "Both for myself and any other students. We would all be at risk of capture, death, and who knows what from whatever organization is targeting me."
"Hmm." Bella looked Lisa straight in the eyes, seemingly looking for something, before nodding to herself.
"If you stay with me, you will be doing some sort of online schooling. I don't have the time, energy, or inclination to babysit you, but I will be making sure you aren't one of those Thinkers that is an idiot without their powers as my way of helping out Dave. You will need to maintain passing, decent grades while you are rooming with me. You don't have to tell me exactly how your power works, but I guarantee you it will work better if you have more knowledge and better critical thinking skills to use it. A Blaster still needs to learn how to aim, a Brute can still improve their melee combat skills, and a Tinker can train their critical thinking, relevant mundane skills, and their manual dexterity to use their tools. It is the same with a Thinker, and you will agree with me if you ever get to college-level Parahuman Studies classes." Bella told Lisa smugly.
Lisa seemed to take that as a challenge, and looked smug right back. "I think you'll find I can do rather amazingly in any educational setting."
"Of course you can." Bella said, seeming to know right where Lisa's mind went. "But you will end up rather pathetic if you use your power to cheat your way through school. There was a case I learned about in Parahuman Studies recently, about a Thinker whose power let him store information and brainpower in little crystals, and he could use the brainpower and information of any crystal he had in contact with his body, and he always carried a bunch around attached to his body. Well, someone eventually caught on and destroyed all his crystals, and he couldn't make any new ones because he had forgotten how to retain information. He became effectively an amnesiac and lost all of his basic thinking skills and knowledge because he had stored them in Crystals to improve his power's ability to increase his 'brainpower'. Not that he used his 'intelligence' very wisely, but he was extraordinarily strong as a Thinker, and a powerhouse in his corner of the world before people caught on and he became crippled because he could barely think without his power."
"You don't need to scare me into studying." Lisa said grouchily. "I could tell you believed what you were saying about it making my powers stronger anyways."
"Good." Bella nodded. "Then we can speak more on what our exact arrangement will be in a bit. For now," Bella reached out her hand to Dave. "Gimme my pastry and mocha."
Author's Note: Today, I found the first episode featuring Oscar the Cat. You might remember back when dingus was first introduced that I had been confused and called him Oscar originally before changing it to dingus because I encountered the first dingus episode in my rewatching of TTT. It turns out, there was also an Oscar the Cat all along, I wasn't crazy the whole time! And it made perfect sense that I thought of Oscar the Cat first because Oscar appeared most recently! If anyone is curious, this episode is the first appearance of Oscar the Cat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZU7e2bN1Wo&list=PL3XZNMGhpynNCVmuv9xANuq2ex2Rw5Wbm&index=5
Here is a good frame of Oscar the Cat in that vid along with a description of what he does: https://youtu.be/1ZU7e2bN1Wo?list=PL3XZNMGhpynNCVmuv9xANuq2ex2Rw5Wbm&t=234
Now, some of you might wonder why Lisa picked Dave when she struck it alone in canon until she ended up captured. That is largely because she can tell he is a lot more morally flexible than a 'standard hero', but is still 'heroic' enough he would help her if asked, and is strong enough to protect her, can massively increase her effectiveness with his healing tech making her able to get rid of her Thinker headaches (which she really, really wants, as anyone prone to migraines will tell you; I'm not prone to them myself, but I've heard people talk about them and they would absolutely commit crimes in exchange for a miraculous migraine cure); along with Dave being trustworthy according to her power, and really easy to find while he has his Healing Aura enabled, because Lisa's power could literally see people subconsciously doing things like walking straighter as he passed because they got healed.
That isn't mentioning she can tell he is an extremely powerful Trump with a lot of potential that can also grant others powers, and she wants to get in on the ground floor as it were, and be associated with him from as early on as possible before he strikes it big.
Really, as far as Lisa is concerned, the biggest downsides to going under Dave are that she doesn't instantly get a perfect solution to her living situation, and that she has to associate with New Wave to an extent, which… well, there's a reason she didn't even consider going to them for help, and it's only partially because they very famously couldn't even protect one of their own from a single unpowered wannabe gangster and didn't even take revenge. Lisa took one look at the Dallon household with her power, doubletaked and looked closer, and noped the fuck out. She might have even left Dave alone if she couldn't tell he was closest with Crystal out of New Wave; if he had been closest with the Dallon side instead of the Pelham side, she might have tried her luck elsewhere instead.
SpaceWhale
Know what you're doing yet?
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Dave always coming in clutch with ironclad logic. shame these idiots can't understand genius
Chapter 37: Giving Toys *Wink Wink* to Teenage Girls
New
Phili
Not too sore, are you?
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Chapter 37: Giving Toys *Wink Wink* to Teenage Girls
January 10, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, Bella's Apartment.
Lisa Wilbourne
She had really lucked out here. Finding the new Parahuman that wasn't an independent—but was powerful and useful enough that the PRT implied online that he was signed on as an independent hero with the PRT— because he was silently healing everyone in a radius around him with no visible sign that he was healing them was great. That he didn't mind some less than legal acquisitions as long as they were acquired from scum of the Earth was better. But now she also had her living situation sorted for now, and she even got to design part of a Tinkertech fortress for her long-term living situation!
Her roommate being female made her a little more comfortable, even if her power insisted there was no danger from Dave. Having her roommate be a college student was even better; Lisa could get access to things like books from a campus library that she would normally need to be a student to get, and she had already gotten use out of Bella's higher level of education.
Seriously, that's so annoying. She thought to herself. Whose idea was it to put all the useful stuff in Parahuman studies at the end of High School and into college level of education? I know kids at my school would have paid way more attention if they learned about stuff like what she just mentioned about ways Parahumans can improve themselves, even if only so they could argue more effectively for their theoretical matchups on PHO. Fuck, I actually have to study now, and try to figure out how to learn without using me power to 'cheat'. Despite my act, I'm self-aware enough to know I'm not really any smarter than average. Damn, this is depressing, I need to cheer myself up.
"So," she clapped her hands together upon seeing her new roommate begin to eat her croissant, and turned to Dave. "Toys?" She asked. She had no idea why asking in that particular manner made him happier, but if there was a chance doing so would net her better 'toys' she was absolutely going to do it.
"Yup, yup, let me see here, I got you covered for a beginner package." Dave said, as he began pulling things out of his bullshit hammerspace.
He started off by pulling out and explaining what he called 'Body Armor' and a 'Radar' that were basically a minor Brute power and a minor Thinker power in their own right. Seriously, they could be equipped and de-equipped at will, and were invisible while in use.
Then he casually brought out a fucking teleporter. After explaining its uses, he just pressed the button on the remote thing and vanished from right before her eyes, and Bella had to get up to let him back in after he knocked. He had clearly just gone to his apartment unit next door, but he had said there were no range limitations, and seeing it in action, even over such a short distance, felt like it made things a little more real.
Not to mention it was an instant escape button for her in an emergency.
Then he brought out a pistol, and claimed it was a Flare Gun, which… wasn't what a Flare Gun looked like, but Bella didn't correct him when he explained what it did, so it was fair enough given it could also send up flares in addition to setting people on fire and destroying dead bodies.
Then, he brought out another pistol, and called it a 'Freeze Gun', because it froze whoever was shot with it. It only had four bullets in it (apparently it used to only have three but he had upgraded them), so he gave her two Freeze Guns.
Then, he brought out yet another pistol.
"This one," Dave said, "is a laser pointer."
She stared at the pistol, then at Dave. Bella helpfully kicked Dave.
"Bad Bella!" Dave said, then shot Bella in the foot with his 'laser pointer' pistol.
"For fucks sake Dave, I can't see. Stop it if you don't want to get kicked again, this is making me dizzy." Bella complained, though she was apparently completely unharmed even though Lisa saw a bullet come out of the gun and hit her in the foot.
"The laser pointer, when someone is hit by it, will blind them for a couple seconds and make them dizzy. It shoots a line of bullets along the light beam it points with, but has no recoil, so it really is more like a laser than a gun. It doesn't actually matter where you hit them with it, they will be blinded and dizzy regardless as long as they are hit by it. It is a white blindness, not a black blindness, like so." Dave said, then shot her with it.
The dizziness effect didn't quite make her nauseous, but she could see a lot of people getting nauseous from it, and she would probably get that way herself if she was exposed long enough, but her power seemed to be having a nice time analyzing the white blindness.
"Don't shoot people with things without permission, especially people you've only met recently." Bella said, and kicked Dave again.
"But what if they deserve it?" Dave asked imploringly.
"Then it's fine, obviously." Bella rolled her eyes. "Did Lisa deserve it?"
"I don't know," Dave said, before turning to her. "Lisa, did you deserve it?"
"No, of course not," Lisa lied, like a lying liar. She had gone on a little bit of a power trip after she got away from under her family's thumb and was exploring her powers properly. But if getting hit by the laser pointer was enough to make up for that, then she was happy to take that deal.
"Bella," Dave whined. "She's looking smug again. Kick her!"
Bella kicked Dave again. Lisa smiled, and made sure to make it extra smug.
"Fine, be that way." Dave grumbled. "This!" He held up a banana, "Is a banana. Be very careful with it, for obvious reasons."
She stared at him. Her power was drawing a blank. Then her power suggested it might make people that come into contact with it allergic to bananas, but that seemed a little useless.
Then Dave demonstrated to her exactly how the banana was dangerous, by picking it up, point it at his own head, and repeatedly shooting himself in the head with it until he died.
"Dammit Dave." Bella facepalmed.
Her power had insisted, repeatedly, that Dave would come back to life after a period of time, but it was nice to have Bella confirm it for her, even if she would probably remain on edge until he actually came back. In the meantime, she got to know her temporary host a little better.
And, it really had to be said. Bella was probably the nicest and most genuine person Lisa had met since she got her powers.
Not that that's saying much, given my family and all that, then being on the streets. She thought to herself, before nodding in agreement to Bella's stipulation to not touch her plants without proper instructions. The pleasant smell from a few of the flowers was a nice bonus to living here instead of with Dave though, even if she would have to put up with sleeping on a couch for a few days, and then likely either a cot, air mattress, or futon of some sort.
"So Lisa, did you have any idea who might be after you?" Bella asked after a moment.
Lisa looked to Dave's corpse and asked "Shouldn't we wait for this discussion until he can hear us?"
"Oh, don't worry about that." Bella waved her worries away as she finished off her mocha and her pastry. "He enters what he calls 'spectator mode when he dies. He can move through objects and fly at decently high speeds, as well as see and hear while dead. There's no way to detect him normally, but we can see if he's here by doing this."
"Dave!" Bella called out, and placed her to-go coffee cup her mocha had been in on the coffee table. "Possess this please so we know you are here and listening."
The coffee cup stayed still for a moment, before it started slowly moving towards Bella's hand in an oddly… pandering manner.
"And like that, we know he's here." Bella said. "Now, what were you going to say?"
"Umm." Lisa organized her thoughts. "Well, it isn't the Empire 88 or the ABB. One of the upsides to their racial recruitment is that any group including black people can let them be eliminate as possibilities. They seemed professional, and confident, possibly a Private Military Company of some sort, or former agents of a branch of the military or police. If we're going full-conspiracy, they could be part of a secret, hidden, current branch of the military or police. Some of them had hidden weapons that my power says are Tinkertech, and they all work for the same person or group."
"Huh. That… doesn't sound like anyone in the Bay." Bella mused. "Maybe someone from outside the city is moving in? How long have they been trying to capture you?"
And back and forth they went, trying to figure out who was after her and what methods they might employ in the future to try to find her.
It was decided rather swiftly that Lisa would be getting several wigs, a makeup kit, and fake glasses for whenever she needed to go outside, so as to not lure whoever was after her back to wherever Lisa frequented.
Lisa was fairly sure she could figure out exactly who was after her with a bit of time and internet access now that she had a safe space she could use to actually perform some in-depth research. Bella deferred to Lisa's judgement in terms of what her power could accomplish, which felt pretty nice, especially compared to her family's constant demands and assumptions in regards to her power.
"I'm back!" David said, right as the coffee cup stopped nudging Bella's hand.
Lisa's head immediately began to feel better, she must have been overusing her power during her conversation with Bella to figure out who was after her; she hadn't overused it by much though, she hadn't even noticed her head starting to hurt yet until it felt better from Dave's healing aura.
Oh shit, I'm going to become dependent on his healing, aren't I? Being able to just use my power as much as I want is… yes, I see what Bella was talking about earlier about becoming dependent on powers. It's not quite the same, since I would be becoming dependent on Dave's power in order to use my power as much as I want, but it's a similar principle. Crap, I hope he will let me use his Health Station things as much as I want, I'm going to need it at this rate.
Besides that though, I wonder if… okay, the answer is yes. His healing will make exercise a lot more efficient, and pleasant, so that means getting back in proper shape will be relatively easy, even after a month or so of pretty terrible nutrition and poor exercise due to homelessness.
"More toys!" Dave cheered, and handed her a tiny Hula doll with a green dress.
She looked from Dave to the Hula doll, wondering if this one was a gun too.
"This is a DNA Scanner!" Dave proclaimed. "You use it by focusing, just like the Body Armor and Radar, except you use it on a dead body instead of yourself, then a little symbol will appear in your vision, kind-of like the radar, that shows where whoever killed the dead body you used it on is, and it will update every thirty seconds so you can tell where they are even if they move. If you use it on another dead body, it will change target and start keeping track of whoever killed the newer body instead. Naturally, if whoever killed the body you use it on is dead, it won't work; the symbol will also stop appearing after whoever killed the dead body you used it on dies."
Lisa had so many questions. First of all, "What are you expecting me to do with this? Does it work through a computer screen? What if the person wasn't killed by another person? Does it count poisoning someone as killing them? What about if someone passes on a disease that kills the person I use it on, does that count? What if they purposefully passed said disease?" Well, that was a little more than 'first,' but she really wanted to know anyways.
"Well," Dave answered. "You can use it however you like, I was thinking you might want to use it to supplement your Thinker power and gain leverage and influence. You could probably become quite popular with the police by using it to help them while using your power to make sure you only helped the non-corrupt ones, for example. It needs to be used on an actual body, so it doesn't work through a computer screen, and if you don't want to work with dead bodies, you of course don't have to, stop glaring at me Bella! I'm not going to force anyone to work with dead bodies."
After Bella's glare abated, Dave coughed and continued. "Ahem. If they weren't killed by another person the symbol simply won't appear. Poisoning someone counts as killing them if they die from it, but only if the poison is actually what kills them, if it weakens them and then they fall down the stairs it won't help. I don't know about the disease thing, but it doesn't work on anything too indirect. If an oil company fracks the Earth and sets off an Earthquake, and you use it on one of the dead bodies of people killed by the Earthquake, it won't show anyone as being the killer even though the oil company is directly responsible for the death. Similarly, if someone shoves a boulder down a hill and that boulder crushes someone and you use it on the crushed person, it is probably about a 50/50 chance that it will register the person that pushed the boulder as the killer. It will absolutely register someone pushing a person off a cliff as a killer though."
That left one major question though, "Why is it called a DNA Scanner then? It clearly has nothing to do with DNA?" She asked.
Dave had the audacity to shrug and say "I don't make the rules or name the names, I'm just telling it to you like it is."
Yeah right. Lisa thought.
Author's Note: And we start off with a Lisa POV, yay! I took a closer look through her wiki page in preparation for introducing her as a character, and found some things I hadn't really known very well before, like that she doesn't consider herself smart, and suffers low self-esteem because of it. I also hadn't realized that her homeless phase was canon instead of fanon, so that was good to know too, and gave me a nice way to make her insertion into Dave's friend-group more urgent.
I really do like Lisa as a character, she is quite fun, for all that she can and will fail and flop occasionally. She also is just a really useful person to have on your side, both for Dave as a character and for me as a writer, because she is so good at finding information. With her in the picture, I don't really have to worry about it being contrived if she figures out Kid Win's Tinker specialty for example as long as she is given enough information beforehand.
Lisa will still be doing her absolute best to stay the fuck away from most of New Wave though. Being near just about any of them aside from Crystal and Eric is kind-of a nightmare for her, and even then Eric would still be a teenage boy looking at a pretty girl his age if he was ever interacting with her; which Lisa can deal with, but she would rather not if she didn't benefit at all from doing so. That said, Bella will probably end up… reverse-weaning let's call it, Lisa onto the younger generation of New Wave. Bella is too responsible for her own good, a result of growing up dealing with Crystal's shenanigans, and will make sure Lisa is properly socialized, and she knows that the safest way to do so, is to socialize her with other capes.
We also get to see some of Dave's newer toys that he hasn't gotten a chance to use yet, so we can look forward to seeing those in action.
Also, I believe that this chapter marks a very special landmark for me, that being over 90k words! That means that when I post this chapter, it will show up in the parts of QQ that I peruse! Those being this: https://forum.questionablequesting....hreadmark&direction=desc&min_word_count=90000
And this: https://forum.questionablequesting....hreadmark&direction=desc&min_word_count=90000
So that's pretty cool.
January 10, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, Bella's Apartment.
Lisa Wilbourne
She had really lucked out here. Finding the new Parahuman that wasn't an independent—but was powerful and useful enough that the PRT implied online that he was signed on as an independent hero with the PRT— because he was silently healing everyone in a radius around him with no visible sign that he was healing them was great. That he didn't mind some less than legal acquisitions as long as they were acquired from scum of the Earth was better. But now she also had her living situation sorted for now, and she even got to design part of a Tinkertech fortress for her long-term living situation!
Her roommate being female made her a little more comfortable, even if her power insisted there was no danger from Dave. Having her roommate be a college student was even better; Lisa could get access to things like books from a campus library that she would normally need to be a student to get, and she had already gotten use out of Bella's higher level of education.
Seriously, that's so annoying. She thought to herself. Whose idea was it to put all the useful stuff in Parahuman studies at the end of High School and into college level of education? I know kids at my school would have paid way more attention if they learned about stuff like what she just mentioned about ways Parahumans can improve themselves, even if only so they could argue more effectively for their theoretical matchups on PHO. Fuck, I actually have to study now, and try to figure out how to learn without using me power to 'cheat'. Despite my act, I'm self-aware enough to know I'm not really any smarter than average. Damn, this is depressing, I need to cheer myself up.
"So," she clapped her hands together upon seeing her new roommate begin to eat her croissant, and turned to Dave. "Toys?" She asked. She had no idea why asking in that particular manner made him happier, but if there was a chance doing so would net her better 'toys' she was absolutely going to do it.
"Yup, yup, let me see here, I got you covered for a beginner package." Dave said, as he began pulling things out of his bullshit hammerspace.
He started off by pulling out and explaining what he called 'Body Armor' and a 'Radar' that were basically a minor Brute power and a minor Thinker power in their own right. Seriously, they could be equipped and de-equipped at will, and were invisible while in use.
Then he casually brought out a fucking teleporter. After explaining its uses, he just pressed the button on the remote thing and vanished from right before her eyes, and Bella had to get up to let him back in after he knocked. He had clearly just gone to his apartment unit next door, but he had said there were no range limitations, and seeing it in action, even over such a short distance, felt like it made things a little more real.
Not to mention it was an instant escape button for her in an emergency.
Then he brought out a pistol, and claimed it was a Flare Gun, which… wasn't what a Flare Gun looked like, but Bella didn't correct him when he explained what it did, so it was fair enough given it could also send up flares in addition to setting people on fire and destroying dead bodies.
Then, he brought out another pistol, and called it a 'Freeze Gun', because it froze whoever was shot with it. It only had four bullets in it (apparently it used to only have three but he had upgraded them), so he gave her two Freeze Guns.
Then, he brought out yet another pistol.
"This one," Dave said, "is a laser pointer."
She stared at the pistol, then at Dave. Bella helpfully kicked Dave.
"Bad Bella!" Dave said, then shot Bella in the foot with his 'laser pointer' pistol.
"For fucks sake Dave, I can't see. Stop it if you don't want to get kicked again, this is making me dizzy." Bella complained, though she was apparently completely unharmed even though Lisa saw a bullet come out of the gun and hit her in the foot.
"The laser pointer, when someone is hit by it, will blind them for a couple seconds and make them dizzy. It shoots a line of bullets along the light beam it points with, but has no recoil, so it really is more like a laser than a gun. It doesn't actually matter where you hit them with it, they will be blinded and dizzy regardless as long as they are hit by it. It is a white blindness, not a black blindness, like so." Dave said, then shot her with it.
The dizziness effect didn't quite make her nauseous, but she could see a lot of people getting nauseous from it, and she would probably get that way herself if she was exposed long enough, but her power seemed to be having a nice time analyzing the white blindness.
"Don't shoot people with things without permission, especially people you've only met recently." Bella said, and kicked Dave again.
"But what if they deserve it?" Dave asked imploringly.
"Then it's fine, obviously." Bella rolled her eyes. "Did Lisa deserve it?"
"I don't know," Dave said, before turning to her. "Lisa, did you deserve it?"
"No, of course not," Lisa lied, like a lying liar. She had gone on a little bit of a power trip after she got away from under her family's thumb and was exploring her powers properly. But if getting hit by the laser pointer was enough to make up for that, then she was happy to take that deal.
"Bella," Dave whined. "She's looking smug again. Kick her!"
Bella kicked Dave again. Lisa smiled, and made sure to make it extra smug.
"Fine, be that way." Dave grumbled. "This!" He held up a banana, "Is a banana. Be very careful with it, for obvious reasons."
She stared at him. Her power was drawing a blank. Then her power suggested it might make people that come into contact with it allergic to bananas, but that seemed a little useless.
Then Dave demonstrated to her exactly how the banana was dangerous, by picking it up, point it at his own head, and repeatedly shooting himself in the head with it until he died.
"Dammit Dave." Bella facepalmed.
Her power had insisted, repeatedly, that Dave would come back to life after a period of time, but it was nice to have Bella confirm it for her, even if she would probably remain on edge until he actually came back. In the meantime, she got to know her temporary host a little better.
And, it really had to be said. Bella was probably the nicest and most genuine person Lisa had met since she got her powers.
Not that that's saying much, given my family and all that, then being on the streets. She thought to herself, before nodding in agreement to Bella's stipulation to not touch her plants without proper instructions. The pleasant smell from a few of the flowers was a nice bonus to living here instead of with Dave though, even if she would have to put up with sleeping on a couch for a few days, and then likely either a cot, air mattress, or futon of some sort.
"So Lisa, did you have any idea who might be after you?" Bella asked after a moment.
Lisa looked to Dave's corpse and asked "Shouldn't we wait for this discussion until he can hear us?"
"Oh, don't worry about that." Bella waved her worries away as she finished off her mocha and her pastry. "He enters what he calls 'spectator mode when he dies. He can move through objects and fly at decently high speeds, as well as see and hear while dead. There's no way to detect him normally, but we can see if he's here by doing this."
"Dave!" Bella called out, and placed her to-go coffee cup her mocha had been in on the coffee table. "Possess this please so we know you are here and listening."
The coffee cup stayed still for a moment, before it started slowly moving towards Bella's hand in an oddly… pandering manner.
"And like that, we know he's here." Bella said. "Now, what were you going to say?"
"Umm." Lisa organized her thoughts. "Well, it isn't the Empire 88 or the ABB. One of the upsides to their racial recruitment is that any group including black people can let them be eliminate as possibilities. They seemed professional, and confident, possibly a Private Military Company of some sort, or former agents of a branch of the military or police. If we're going full-conspiracy, they could be part of a secret, hidden, current branch of the military or police. Some of them had hidden weapons that my power says are Tinkertech, and they all work for the same person or group."
"Huh. That… doesn't sound like anyone in the Bay." Bella mused. "Maybe someone from outside the city is moving in? How long have they been trying to capture you?"
And back and forth they went, trying to figure out who was after her and what methods they might employ in the future to try to find her.
It was decided rather swiftly that Lisa would be getting several wigs, a makeup kit, and fake glasses for whenever she needed to go outside, so as to not lure whoever was after her back to wherever Lisa frequented.
Lisa was fairly sure she could figure out exactly who was after her with a bit of time and internet access now that she had a safe space she could use to actually perform some in-depth research. Bella deferred to Lisa's judgement in terms of what her power could accomplish, which felt pretty nice, especially compared to her family's constant demands and assumptions in regards to her power.
"I'm back!" David said, right as the coffee cup stopped nudging Bella's hand.
Lisa's head immediately began to feel better, she must have been overusing her power during her conversation with Bella to figure out who was after her; she hadn't overused it by much though, she hadn't even noticed her head starting to hurt yet until it felt better from Dave's healing aura.
Oh shit, I'm going to become dependent on his healing, aren't I? Being able to just use my power as much as I want is… yes, I see what Bella was talking about earlier about becoming dependent on powers. It's not quite the same, since I would be becoming dependent on Dave's power in order to use my power as much as I want, but it's a similar principle. Crap, I hope he will let me use his Health Station things as much as I want, I'm going to need it at this rate.
Besides that though, I wonder if… okay, the answer is yes. His healing will make exercise a lot more efficient, and pleasant, so that means getting back in proper shape will be relatively easy, even after a month or so of pretty terrible nutrition and poor exercise due to homelessness.
"More toys!" Dave cheered, and handed her a tiny Hula doll with a green dress.
She looked from Dave to the Hula doll, wondering if this one was a gun too.
"This is a DNA Scanner!" Dave proclaimed. "You use it by focusing, just like the Body Armor and Radar, except you use it on a dead body instead of yourself, then a little symbol will appear in your vision, kind-of like the radar, that shows where whoever killed the dead body you used it on is, and it will update every thirty seconds so you can tell where they are even if they move. If you use it on another dead body, it will change target and start keeping track of whoever killed the newer body instead. Naturally, if whoever killed the body you use it on is dead, it won't work; the symbol will also stop appearing after whoever killed the dead body you used it on dies."
Lisa had so many questions. First of all, "What are you expecting me to do with this? Does it work through a computer screen? What if the person wasn't killed by another person? Does it count poisoning someone as killing them? What about if someone passes on a disease that kills the person I use it on, does that count? What if they purposefully passed said disease?" Well, that was a little more than 'first,' but she really wanted to know anyways.
"Well," Dave answered. "You can use it however you like, I was thinking you might want to use it to supplement your Thinker power and gain leverage and influence. You could probably become quite popular with the police by using it to help them while using your power to make sure you only helped the non-corrupt ones, for example. It needs to be used on an actual body, so it doesn't work through a computer screen, and if you don't want to work with dead bodies, you of course don't have to, stop glaring at me Bella! I'm not going to force anyone to work with dead bodies."
After Bella's glare abated, Dave coughed and continued. "Ahem. If they weren't killed by another person the symbol simply won't appear. Poisoning someone counts as killing them if they die from it, but only if the poison is actually what kills them, if it weakens them and then they fall down the stairs it won't help. I don't know about the disease thing, but it doesn't work on anything too indirect. If an oil company fracks the Earth and sets off an Earthquake, and you use it on one of the dead bodies of people killed by the Earthquake, it won't show anyone as being the killer even though the oil company is directly responsible for the death. Similarly, if someone shoves a boulder down a hill and that boulder crushes someone and you use it on the crushed person, it is probably about a 50/50 chance that it will register the person that pushed the boulder as the killer. It will absolutely register someone pushing a person off a cliff as a killer though."
That left one major question though, "Why is it called a DNA Scanner then? It clearly has nothing to do with DNA?" She asked.
Dave had the audacity to shrug and say "I don't make the rules or name the names, I'm just telling it to you like it is."
Yeah right. Lisa thought.
Author's Note: And we start off with a Lisa POV, yay! I took a closer look through her wiki page in preparation for introducing her as a character, and found some things I hadn't really known very well before, like that she doesn't consider herself smart, and suffers low self-esteem because of it. I also hadn't realized that her homeless phase was canon instead of fanon, so that was good to know too, and gave me a nice way to make her insertion into Dave's friend-group more urgent.
I really do like Lisa as a character, she is quite fun, for all that she can and will fail and flop occasionally. She also is just a really useful person to have on your side, both for Dave as a character and for me as a writer, because she is so good at finding information. With her in the picture, I don't really have to worry about it being contrived if she figures out Kid Win's Tinker specialty for example as long as she is given enough information beforehand.
Lisa will still be doing her absolute best to stay the fuck away from most of New Wave though. Being near just about any of them aside from Crystal and Eric is kind-of a nightmare for her, and even then Eric would still be a teenage boy looking at a pretty girl his age if he was ever interacting with her; which Lisa can deal with, but she would rather not if she didn't benefit at all from doing so. That said, Bella will probably end up… reverse-weaning let's call it, Lisa onto the younger generation of New Wave. Bella is too responsible for her own good, a result of growing up dealing with Crystal's shenanigans, and will make sure Lisa is properly socialized, and she knows that the safest way to do so, is to socialize her with other capes.
We also get to see some of Dave's newer toys that he hasn't gotten a chance to use yet, so we can look forward to seeing those in action.
Also, I believe that this chapter marks a very special landmark for me, that being over 90k words! That means that when I post this chapter, it will show up in the parts of QQ that I peruse! Those being this: https://forum.questionablequesting....hreadmark&direction=desc&min_word_count=90000
And this: https://forum.questionablequesting....hreadmark&direction=desc&min_word_count=90000
So that's pretty cool.
SpaceWhale
Know what you're doing yet?
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First time seeing Lisa pre under whatever the team name is
Chapter 38: Women LOVE Toys (Men Do Too Of Course)
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Phili
Not too sore, are you?
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Chapter 38: Women LOVE Toys (Men Do Too Of Course)
January 10, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, Bella's Apartment.
Lisa was clearly wowed by Dave's wonderful explanations and toys, but there was more to come!
"This," he pulled out one of his new non-bought-items, "is the Backwards Shotgun. As you can see, it is a shotgun, that points backwards!"
Lisa and Bella both looked unimpressed with him for some reason.
"It is quite a bit more powerful than a regular shotgun, and the recoil is strong enough to actually fly with if you are able to consistently reload it quickly enough." Dave explained.
"You are not giving her a gun that shoots its user." Bella told him.
"But, it doesn't shoot the user? It shoots behind them! Obviously. Why would you think I would give her something that shoots its user?" Dave asked Bella.
"Gee, I wonder what could have made me think that was a possibility." Bella said snarkily. But really, it was a fair enough statement, Dave too wondered what could have made Bella think that was a possibility.
"Anyways, you just press this button, or focus on it like the Body Armor, Radar and DNA Scanner," Dave demonstrated by pressing the button, and being forcibly turned around. "And it will instantly turn you around exactly 180 degrees. So you just face directly at whoever you want to shoot, then use the turn-around feature to turn around, and fire! As long as you don't miss, it will kill any non-brute, and even weaker brutes will probably die. This is absolutely my strongest gun in close range." Dave explained.
"DO NOT DEMONSTRATE THAT in my home." Bella shouted at him.
"But I already did?" Dave said with confusion.
"I meant don't fire it in my home you dingus." Bella said with exasperation.
"Oh, good idea." Dave said, and brought out his dingus.
"This is dingus." He introduced Lisa to his dingus. "You can keep him if you want, he is completely immortal and invulnerable to all harm. He could chill out floating through the void of space or pick a fight with the Siberian and be totally fine. Other than that, and his ability to meow on command, he is a normal cat though. I can upgrade him if you want to heal everyone in a radius around him with his purrs though! Do you want him?" He offered his dingus to Lisa.
Lisa looked torn for some reason. She whispered something to herself under her breath about 'dignity' along with something about 'cute.' It made sense, Dave's furry little dingus was both cute and dignified. Perhaps she had a cat allergy? That would be a logical source of distress when presented with an opportunity as amazing as this.
"Ahem." Bella coughed. "Perhaps you should be asking ME first? You know, considering it is my apartment the cat would be in?"
That… seemed like an excellent point.
"Bella, would you like to have a dingus of your very own?" He offered. "I'm willing to give you one of mine." He said with a winning smile.
"I don't know, I'll have to ask my housemate first." Bella told him smugly.
"Lisa, would you like to get a cat?" Bella asked politely. "I'm familiar with these ones from Dave's powers already. These ones don't generate waste, and thus don't need litter boxes, and don't need to eat or drink, though they can. They are quite docile and easy to take care of, and are very friendly. If you want one, we can get one, especially since I know Thinkers can get headaches and migraines from using their powers too much, and I imagine a furry companion with healing powers would help with that. No pressure either way though." Bella told Lisa.
Lisa stayed silent for a bit. "Can I think on it? And could I rename him something else?" She said the last part a bit desperately.
Dave shrugged. "You can think on it as long as you want as far as I'm concerned. For renaming… I mean, you can try, but before I upgrade them, I can't even get any of my dinguses to respond to Dingus with a capital D, let alone anything else."
Lisa had a strange look on her face. "How would they know if you are referring to them with a capital D or not?"
Dave looked at her as if she was a little silly, which she was. "The same way we do of course!"
"But…" Lisa trailed off, and Bella put a hand on her shoulder.
"Don't question this sort of thing too much Lisa. That way lies madness."
"Anyways, more toys!" Dave cheered, and pulled out the next toy. "This is a minifier. You use it like this." He demonstrated. "To become mini!" He said, having shrunk to about a fifth of his original size. "You become a little less durable, though not as fragile as the size would suggest, only about 40% less durable than you would be at full size, barring things like forcefields and armor. Your speed increases a little to make you ever so slightly faster than you would have been at full size, even accounting for your smaller legs. Your strength remains the same as well, and your weight acts strange according to the testing people at the Protectorate, but that isn't likely to come up anyways."
Dave thought for a moment. "Let's see, what else?"
He pulled out a couple more things. "Super Knife, floppy Crowbar. Use the Knife on heavy-duty Brutes like Hookwolf. Just will it to begin using its highly-lethal function." Dave began explaining the wonders of the Knife and the floppy Crowbar.
"Ooh! New toy!" Dave announced after finishing his explanation of Lisa's new knife and crowbar.
"I just got this one, it's pretty cool, it's called the Dead Ringer!" He held out a pocket watch for Lisa and Bella to examine.
"Fine, what's this one do?" Bella asked after a moment.
"Well, you just activate it by pressing this button." He pressed it, and it made a little beep noise. "And now, whenever I am injured by something, or harmed in any way, a copy of my body will drop to the floor and I will turn invisible. The body will disappear after thirty seconds or so, which is also when I will become visible again, but it is a fantastic way to escape in an emergency, or ambush people after lowering their guard of course. So, you will be getting one of these, Lisa, as well. With this and the teleporter, you should be able to escape most situations relatively easily. Though, we will need to ask New Wave for a little tracker thingy that sends your location to me if you press a panic button or if the signal is jammed somehow. I have one that sends a signal to New Wave, and it is quite useful." Dave explained.
Lisa looked at the pile of things on Bella's coffee table. "I think I can work with this." She smiled, it was a smug, smug, sight.
"Let's see…" Dave pondered. "I suppose the next order of business would be getting you a costume." He said after a moment.
Bella perked up. "Oh, there's a Rogue that's set up shop down on the Boardwalk; she specializes in fabric-type things. She makes clothes and cloth accessories with her powers, and her stuff looks quite good. She might be willing to make you a costume from rather good materials if you commission her."
Dave thought about it. "Well, I have plenty of money, and I anticipate getting a lot more. I'm also happy to use my Changer power to give her inspiration if she wants, or to give her a few toys to play with."
Bella sighed for some reason. "Dave… just… stop talking about giving women toys."
Dave was confused. "But… women love toys? Look at Lisa! She's smiling like a Loot Goblin at all the toys I gave her."
Lisa looked up from where she was going through the pile of toys like a kid on Christmas morning. Then she registered what had been said, and did her best to make her face as straight as possible, but was struggling to erase the remnants of smugness.
Bella sighed again. "Just… try not to do it in public too much."
Dave saluted. "Sure thing! Not really, no promises." He said, earning a glare from Bella.
"So," Dave clapped his hands. "The rest of today will mostly be recovery and relaxation for Lisa, along with you two getting to know each other better. Tomorrow we—by which I mean Lisa and I, since Bella will have classes— will meet with Parian and ask her to make Lisa a costume. Lisa, it will be your job to make sure we aren't doing anything catastrophically wrong when we ask her for her help. I'll swing by New Wave and get a couple of those tracker thingies, one for Lisa and one for Parian if she wants me to come to her aid or something as part of the payment for the costume. Then the next day, we will spend a little time getting Lisa used to all of her new toys. The day after that is a little far in the future to make any concrete plans for. Sound good?" Dave asked his audience.
Lisa nodded, but Bella narrowed her eyes.
"Sure… but Lisa, can I trust you to find a decent online schooling option on your own? I know the high schools in Brockton Bay all start back up again tomorrow, but I don't know what online schooling options look like in terms of when you need to be enrolled by."
Lisa paused, then nodded sullenly. "Yeah, I can work something out, I can at least use my power to figure out what the best options are."
"Great," Dave said. "We have a plan. For now, Bella, you can show Lisa her first piece of required watching as a cape, and introduce her to the wonderful world of Pokemon! New watch party viewer obtained!"
Author's Note: Another smallish chapter, but I feel like that's probably okay given my upload rate so far, right? We finished off introducing Lisa in this chapter, and gave her the rest of her toys. I really am quite happy with having Lisa be part of Dave's in-group, because while Dave is happy to go with the flow and jump from idea to idea, and Crystal is in the mindset of 'maintain the status quo, we don't want things to get even worse after all,' and Bella doesn't really feel inclined to try to change things due to lack of personal power; Lisa is ambitious. And that can be great for a story, to have someone driving things along and make things happen, without necessarily needing everything to be reacting to a situation.
Ambition is really what makes a great superhero instead of a good one. A normal superhero always has to react to a villain, superheroes only become truly effective if they are ambitious enough to try to change things somehow. Of course, normal comic-book logic dictates such attempts usually just result in a new supervillain, but one of the few benefits of Worm's method of obtaining superpowers is that that really isn't a risk; at most they might draw the attention of an already established villain, but they won't make a new one by trying to improve the world.
Lisa might chill out later on, but for now, she will probably be a significant force driving Dave towards making progress. She struggled for a while through her Trigger and family and homelessness and being targeted by Coil, but now, she feels like everything is coming up Lisa… because it kind of is at the moment. She got housing, a sponsor and protector, a bunch of fun new toys, methods of escaping bad situations, and people that her power can directly tell her are in her corner.
Really, Bella is a bit of an MVP here, because Dave is rather hard for Lisa's power to read properly for a variety of reasons, but Bella is just a genuinely good person, and Lisa's power can tell her that, which is what is ensuring Lisa is becoming more cooperative and trusting. Even throughout the past couple chapters, you might notice Lisa sticking less and less to the idea that her power is actually mind-reading as she opens up more because she can see how genuine Bella is. Do note that this Lisa is also a lot less jaded than canon Lisa, because she hasn't had to deal with Coil's bullshit at any point too, so she can see being a good person as a good thing instead of as a sign of naivete.
January 10, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, Bella's Apartment.
Lisa was clearly wowed by Dave's wonderful explanations and toys, but there was more to come!
"This," he pulled out one of his new non-bought-items, "is the Backwards Shotgun. As you can see, it is a shotgun, that points backwards!"
Lisa and Bella both looked unimpressed with him for some reason.
"It is quite a bit more powerful than a regular shotgun, and the recoil is strong enough to actually fly with if you are able to consistently reload it quickly enough." Dave explained.
"You are not giving her a gun that shoots its user." Bella told him.
"But, it doesn't shoot the user? It shoots behind them! Obviously. Why would you think I would give her something that shoots its user?" Dave asked Bella.
"Gee, I wonder what could have made me think that was a possibility." Bella said snarkily. But really, it was a fair enough statement, Dave too wondered what could have made Bella think that was a possibility.
"Anyways, you just press this button, or focus on it like the Body Armor, Radar and DNA Scanner," Dave demonstrated by pressing the button, and being forcibly turned around. "And it will instantly turn you around exactly 180 degrees. So you just face directly at whoever you want to shoot, then use the turn-around feature to turn around, and fire! As long as you don't miss, it will kill any non-brute, and even weaker brutes will probably die. This is absolutely my strongest gun in close range." Dave explained.
"DO NOT DEMONSTRATE THAT in my home." Bella shouted at him.
"But I already did?" Dave said with confusion.
"I meant don't fire it in my home you dingus." Bella said with exasperation.
"Oh, good idea." Dave said, and brought out his dingus.
"This is dingus." He introduced Lisa to his dingus. "You can keep him if you want, he is completely immortal and invulnerable to all harm. He could chill out floating through the void of space or pick a fight with the Siberian and be totally fine. Other than that, and his ability to meow on command, he is a normal cat though. I can upgrade him if you want to heal everyone in a radius around him with his purrs though! Do you want him?" He offered his dingus to Lisa.
Lisa looked torn for some reason. She whispered something to herself under her breath about 'dignity' along with something about 'cute.' It made sense, Dave's furry little dingus was both cute and dignified. Perhaps she had a cat allergy? That would be a logical source of distress when presented with an opportunity as amazing as this.
"Ahem." Bella coughed. "Perhaps you should be asking ME first? You know, considering it is my apartment the cat would be in?"
That… seemed like an excellent point.
"Bella, would you like to have a dingus of your very own?" He offered. "I'm willing to give you one of mine." He said with a winning smile.
"I don't know, I'll have to ask my housemate first." Bella told him smugly.
"Lisa, would you like to get a cat?" Bella asked politely. "I'm familiar with these ones from Dave's powers already. These ones don't generate waste, and thus don't need litter boxes, and don't need to eat or drink, though they can. They are quite docile and easy to take care of, and are very friendly. If you want one, we can get one, especially since I know Thinkers can get headaches and migraines from using their powers too much, and I imagine a furry companion with healing powers would help with that. No pressure either way though." Bella told Lisa.
Lisa stayed silent for a bit. "Can I think on it? And could I rename him something else?" She said the last part a bit desperately.
Dave shrugged. "You can think on it as long as you want as far as I'm concerned. For renaming… I mean, you can try, but before I upgrade them, I can't even get any of my dinguses to respond to Dingus with a capital D, let alone anything else."
Lisa had a strange look on her face. "How would they know if you are referring to them with a capital D or not?"
Dave looked at her as if she was a little silly, which she was. "The same way we do of course!"
"But…" Lisa trailed off, and Bella put a hand on her shoulder.
"Don't question this sort of thing too much Lisa. That way lies madness."
"Anyways, more toys!" Dave cheered, and pulled out the next toy. "This is a minifier. You use it like this." He demonstrated. "To become mini!" He said, having shrunk to about a fifth of his original size. "You become a little less durable, though not as fragile as the size would suggest, only about 40% less durable than you would be at full size, barring things like forcefields and armor. Your speed increases a little to make you ever so slightly faster than you would have been at full size, even accounting for your smaller legs. Your strength remains the same as well, and your weight acts strange according to the testing people at the Protectorate, but that isn't likely to come up anyways."
Dave thought for a moment. "Let's see, what else?"
He pulled out a couple more things. "Super Knife, floppy Crowbar. Use the Knife on heavy-duty Brutes like Hookwolf. Just will it to begin using its highly-lethal function." Dave began explaining the wonders of the Knife and the floppy Crowbar.
"Ooh! New toy!" Dave announced after finishing his explanation of Lisa's new knife and crowbar.
"I just got this one, it's pretty cool, it's called the Dead Ringer!" He held out a pocket watch for Lisa and Bella to examine.
"Fine, what's this one do?" Bella asked after a moment.
"Well, you just activate it by pressing this button." He pressed it, and it made a little beep noise. "And now, whenever I am injured by something, or harmed in any way, a copy of my body will drop to the floor and I will turn invisible. The body will disappear after thirty seconds or so, which is also when I will become visible again, but it is a fantastic way to escape in an emergency, or ambush people after lowering their guard of course. So, you will be getting one of these, Lisa, as well. With this and the teleporter, you should be able to escape most situations relatively easily. Though, we will need to ask New Wave for a little tracker thingy that sends your location to me if you press a panic button or if the signal is jammed somehow. I have one that sends a signal to New Wave, and it is quite useful." Dave explained.
Lisa looked at the pile of things on Bella's coffee table. "I think I can work with this." She smiled, it was a smug, smug, sight.
"Let's see…" Dave pondered. "I suppose the next order of business would be getting you a costume." He said after a moment.
Bella perked up. "Oh, there's a Rogue that's set up shop down on the Boardwalk; she specializes in fabric-type things. She makes clothes and cloth accessories with her powers, and her stuff looks quite good. She might be willing to make you a costume from rather good materials if you commission her."
Dave thought about it. "Well, I have plenty of money, and I anticipate getting a lot more. I'm also happy to use my Changer power to give her inspiration if she wants, or to give her a few toys to play with."
Bella sighed for some reason. "Dave… just… stop talking about giving women toys."
Dave was confused. "But… women love toys? Look at Lisa! She's smiling like a Loot Goblin at all the toys I gave her."
Lisa looked up from where she was going through the pile of toys like a kid on Christmas morning. Then she registered what had been said, and did her best to make her face as straight as possible, but was struggling to erase the remnants of smugness.
Bella sighed again. "Just… try not to do it in public too much."
Dave saluted. "Sure thing! Not really, no promises." He said, earning a glare from Bella.
"So," Dave clapped his hands. "The rest of today will mostly be recovery and relaxation for Lisa, along with you two getting to know each other better. Tomorrow we—by which I mean Lisa and I, since Bella will have classes— will meet with Parian and ask her to make Lisa a costume. Lisa, it will be your job to make sure we aren't doing anything catastrophically wrong when we ask her for her help. I'll swing by New Wave and get a couple of those tracker thingies, one for Lisa and one for Parian if she wants me to come to her aid or something as part of the payment for the costume. Then the next day, we will spend a little time getting Lisa used to all of her new toys. The day after that is a little far in the future to make any concrete plans for. Sound good?" Dave asked his audience.
Lisa nodded, but Bella narrowed her eyes.
"Sure… but Lisa, can I trust you to find a decent online schooling option on your own? I know the high schools in Brockton Bay all start back up again tomorrow, but I don't know what online schooling options look like in terms of when you need to be enrolled by."
Lisa paused, then nodded sullenly. "Yeah, I can work something out, I can at least use my power to figure out what the best options are."
"Great," Dave said. "We have a plan. For now, Bella, you can show Lisa her first piece of required watching as a cape, and introduce her to the wonderful world of Pokemon! New watch party viewer obtained!"
Author's Note: Another smallish chapter, but I feel like that's probably okay given my upload rate so far, right? We finished off introducing Lisa in this chapter, and gave her the rest of her toys. I really am quite happy with having Lisa be part of Dave's in-group, because while Dave is happy to go with the flow and jump from idea to idea, and Crystal is in the mindset of 'maintain the status quo, we don't want things to get even worse after all,' and Bella doesn't really feel inclined to try to change things due to lack of personal power; Lisa is ambitious. And that can be great for a story, to have someone driving things along and make things happen, without necessarily needing everything to be reacting to a situation.
Ambition is really what makes a great superhero instead of a good one. A normal superhero always has to react to a villain, superheroes only become truly effective if they are ambitious enough to try to change things somehow. Of course, normal comic-book logic dictates such attempts usually just result in a new supervillain, but one of the few benefits of Worm's method of obtaining superpowers is that that really isn't a risk; at most they might draw the attention of an already established villain, but they won't make a new one by trying to improve the world.
Lisa might chill out later on, but for now, she will probably be a significant force driving Dave towards making progress. She struggled for a while through her Trigger and family and homelessness and being targeted by Coil, but now, she feels like everything is coming up Lisa… because it kind of is at the moment. She got housing, a sponsor and protector, a bunch of fun new toys, methods of escaping bad situations, and people that her power can directly tell her are in her corner.
Really, Bella is a bit of an MVP here, because Dave is rather hard for Lisa's power to read properly for a variety of reasons, but Bella is just a genuinely good person, and Lisa's power can tell her that, which is what is ensuring Lisa is becoming more cooperative and trusting. Even throughout the past couple chapters, you might notice Lisa sticking less and less to the idea that her power is actually mind-reading as she opens up more because she can see how genuine Bella is. Do note that this Lisa is also a lot less jaded than canon Lisa, because she hasn't had to deal with Coil's bullshit at any point too, so she can see being a good person as a good thing instead of as a sign of naivete.
SpaceWhale
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At this rate their going to need to make a bigger room to watch pokemon
Interlude 1: Vista at a PRT Meeting
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Phili
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Interlude 1: Vista at a PRT Meeting
January 10, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, PRT Headquarters.
Vista
They took away her pocket sniper rifle! The indignity!
She stewed at the injustice and leveled accusing glares at every adult that walked by as she was led towards the meeting room. Occasionally, some of the people she was glaring at would look away and whispers would break out.
As she entered the meeting room, she took note of everyone else in it. There was Director Piggot, naturally, along with deputy director Renick. The full Protectorate roster was there: Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Velocity, and the alphabet crew made up of Assault, Battery, Challenger, and Dauntless. And of course, her and Triumph, being the one most relevant to the subject and the leader of the Wards respectively.
"Good, we're all here." Director Piggot began, and Vista settled herself in for a long speech or presentation. "Let's start then. As I'm sure you are all familiar with by now, there is a new heroically inclined cape in Brockton Bay. He is a powerful Trump going by 'Trouble', and is mostly cooperative with the PRT. He is close with New Wave and has been seen patrolling with them and guarding Panacea at the hospital—about time they started taking her security seriously. Now, this seems like a good thing on the surface, but we have these meetings for a reason."
"Just like when Panacea began to cooperate with us, this changes the status quo, and changes to the status quo risks escalation from villains. With Panacea, we began having our heroes heal more quickly and lasting injuries stopped, and now villains have begun hitting harder because they feel safer doing so, and we have to be more careful because they are more likely to accidentally kill someone. Trouble also has healing capabilities, as I can see Assault has found out." Piggot said wryly, staring at Assault who had a weird burrito in his mouth. It looked like it had eggplant, chocolate, marshmallow and mango at a glance, though Vista wasn't quite certain.
Assault saw everyone staring at him and shrugged. "Well, it doesn't taste good, but those machines sure do give you exactly what you ask them for. I really didn't think it was going to be able to do marshmallow or dragon fruit, but I sure wasn't going to waste food." He explained before taking another bite and making a face at the taste. So it also had dragon fruit. Why did Assault think it was going to be able to do mango but not dragon fruit?
Battery facepalmed. "They generate infinite food, you can't 'waste' it." She said.
Assault shook his head. "No, no, no, you have to think about all the starving children in Africa whenever you consider throwing away food. If there's one thing my mom taught me, that was it."
Vista stared at Assault. That would explain so much.
"Just, go on with the meeting. Sorry about him." Battery apologized for Assault, who looked confused at what he had done wrong.
"Very well." Director Piggot said. "As you all should know, Trouble's powers are wide and varied, if not particularly strong yet, the obvious comparisons being Dauntless and Alabaster, though with what we now know, there could be an argument for comparison to the Butcher as well given how he can apparently blind whoever kills him. Many of his powers manifest in the form of objects that he can give to others to use, making him both a self-enhancing Trump and the more common kind that can empower others. He has shown a willingness to lend or give his 'items' to others, including giving them to both Armsmaster for testing purposes and Vista for self-protection."
"While I would trust Vista with a gun more than I would trust most adults," Piggot began, "I'm not inclined to trust the judgement of anyone that thinks it is a good idea to hand a preteen a so-called 'Pocket Sniper Rifle.' So we will be keeping an eye out for any weapons that might come from him in case he decides to hand them out less stringently."
Vista pouted.
Piggot sighed. "Vista, if you can convince Miss Militia and Challenger that you can be trusted with a gun, I will give the go-ahead to start rebranding your image to make you an 'apprentice-like figure' to one of them. It will let you start carrying either a PRT foam weapon or a rubber-bullet gun after your image changes a little in people's mind and you become associated with them."
Vista smiled, while Challenger and Miss Militia both gave the Director betrayed looks.
"You'll still be seen as cute though." Piggot added with a barely perceptible smile, making Vista's smile vanish.
"Back on topic, Trouble's ability to generate unlimited guns and ammunition by itself would make him able to arm a gang enough to outgun the police, but the other things at his disposal exacerbate the issue. That issue being, the gangs will see him as a threat and try to do something about him. They will then fail, because he resurrects after he dies, and he cannot be captured because he can teleport and it is unknown how many teleport locations he has set up that he could teleport to. When it becomes clear that they can't do anything about him, there are a few possibilities of what the gangs will do."
Piggot looked around at the room. "Try to drive him away, either through violence, threatening to unmask him, taking hostages, or luring him away by promising things in exchange for leaving. Trying to recruit him, which will be funny if nothing else when it goes poorly. Try to force him into inaction, likely through similar methods as they would if trying to get him to leave the Bay. Or try to disable him through increasingly exotic methods until they find something that sticks. According to our analysis, the most reliable way to actually handle him if needed, would be to shove him into a Gray Boy bubble, since he likely would not continue to get stronger, and of course he would be unable to escape."
Piggot looked harder at each of them. "We do not want the villains deciding to get creative trying to deal with him. If they start trying to recruit Annihilators or worse, do something particularly stupid like the gangs did all those years ago and try to lure in the Nine to solve their problem for them, we will be, quite simply fucked."
Piggot sat back in her seat. "For now, we have a bit more time. Based on the recording you all should have seen," Piggot glared at Assault at that point, who nodded to confirm he had seen it, "the Empire will believe he is dead, and he never actually gave out his name. As long as we can convince him to not use that bug-man form anymore, we can delay the gangs figuring out what a problem he will be for a bit longer. We will talk about the ramifications of Hookwolf being blinded later on in this meeting." She added, seeing a few people shift at that remark about Empire, which got them to settle down.
"Next up, Armsmaster is going to speak about Trouble's new proposal." Director Piggot nodded to Armsmaster, who stood up.
"Trouble recently obtained a Tinker power—relating to mud—and was inspired by one of his other 'items' that will apparently let him build large structures extremely quickly, or at least their outlines. Due to the exact constraints of his Tinker power, he came to me for assistance and to propose a joint project. He proposed a large-scale Tinker base in the woods near Brockton, as a large lab to increase the effectiveness of all Tinkers involved, as well as a way to potentially lure friendly Tinkers to the bay." Armsmaster began.
"I believe it is likely to work. There was a similar project under Hero when he was active that I was a part of, but there have been no significant attempts to recreate such a thing after his death. Dragon seemed similarly interested in his proposal, and between the three of us and Kid Win, we would be starting out with four Tinkers working together." Armsmaster looked at everyone.
"I see you do not understand. It has truly been too long since Hero was active. That many Tinkers working together can accomplish great things, and would push each Tinker involved to greater and greater heights as they share equipment and work on projects together and gain insight from each other. If we were to succeed, it will lure Tinkers that remember the project Hero ran under the same philosophy, and my name along with Dragon's and the idea of a 'shiny new state-of-the-art Tinkertech base,' and access to Trouble's healing technology, would lure new Tinkers and make them inclined to join the Brockton Protectorate as well." Armsmaster stated with confidence.
"Trouble also stated plans to use his healing technology to obtain funds from rich individuals that sponsor the Guild, both to make himself a harder target as anyone that went after him would then make an enemy of the rich people he healed, and as a way to fund this and any future projects he might have. As a result, this project would take up nothing whatsoever from the PRT's budget." Armsmaster seemed to care a lot about that. Actually, Vista noticed the rest of the adult heroes did too. She could tell Triumph didn't care quite as much, but grasped that he was supposed to care based on how the Protectorate heroes cared about the budget not being impacted.
Assault whistled. "That sounds pretty ambitious. Do you think it's a good idea big guy?" He asked Armsmaster.
Director Piggot also focused her attention on Armsmaster upon hearing the question.
"I…" Armsmaster paused. "I am biased. I very much want this project to happen. However, given what the Director said earlier about the risks of villains escalating when they find out what he can do… I believe it may be the solution, if we can set it up quickly enough, while keeping Trouble busy enough that the gangs don't realize how quickly he grows and how hard to eliminate he truly is."
Armsmaster continued, "One of the things Trouble mentioned he could accomplish with his Tinker Power, was an improved version of his teleporters, though he also gave several samples of his current teleporters for Dragon, myself, and Kid Win to look at to see if we could improve. One of his proposals, was something he was certain he could accomplish with the right equipment, which was part of why he wanted to set up such a base. He described it as a teleporter hub, which would be centered in Brockton. It would let the Protectorate and PRT teleport across the country, but use Brockton as a central hub they would need to pass through in the process, thus raising the importance and awareness of the city on a national level, and making reinforcements in an emergency only ever be an instant away. He proposed a backup hub that would be in the Tinker base in case the first one was attacked, but the primary hub would be on the Rig."
Huh. That… sounds reasonable enough to me. Vista thought to herself, before being nearly scared out of her skin.
Director Piggot was… smiling. Widely. It was… well it certainly was. Vista had never seen the Director actually smile; at most she saw the occasional tugging of the lips like earlier when the Director said she would be stuck with the cute label. She could tell the Director didn't smile much by how unpracticed it looked, but she certainly looked downright gleeful.
The Director actually let out a full-bellied laugh, and Vista looked around to see everyone else looked equally disturbed, with Deputy Director Renick edging away slightly.
"Good!" Piggot said, her smile taking on a vicious undertone. "Let's see them ignore us with something like that centered on our city."
She turned to Armsmaster, "Fine, tell him his project is approved as long as he can get the Teleport Hub working and signs a contract that says he can't make another hub anywhere outside of Brockton for the next 10 years, barring the usual circumstances, of S-Class threats and quarantine zones of course."
She turned to Renick, "Tell legal to get this base happening, make sure they only know it is a large project, not the details."
She faced the rest of the room. "Mentions of a Teleport Hub and Trouble's growth rate will not be mentioned outside of this room without good cause, aside from those that need to actually work on it. I am hereby placing a gag order on the topics, as well as on Trouble being the one to save Vista and blind Hookwolf. We know we have moles people, but we will not let them get in the way of finally kicking out the gangs from this city. Do you understand?" She glared at the rest of the room, who all straightened and nodded.
"Good." Piggot said with satisfaction. "We can't keep the base contained forever, it will be obvious, but it provides a nice juicy explanation on our sudden secrecy, the teleport hub is the key though, nobody else, even the other Wards and PRT staff are allowed to hear about it. Now, let's talk about what to do about Hookwolf's blindness. Vista, you will be talking a lot in this part."
Author's Note: Yay Interludes! As you might be able to guess from my signature, I like interludes! On the other hand, this was hard! Wahh! *Cries* Not really, I anticipated it being a lot worse than it was, though it ended up being a lot smaller than I hoped because I decided to have it not be the initial meeting where this group (minus Vista) would just be reacting to Dave's powers, because I feel like 'people reacting to Dave's powers' is probably going to be a common theme throughout the story, and I didn't need to dedicate the first ever interlude to it. I also decided to have the meeting be post-reaction-to-Trouble's-Hookwolf-fight-recording, so we don't get to see them react to the idea of the stupid contest or the Banana Bus; we do see the effects of that recording here though with Vista getting permission to rebrand.
I'm sure Vista's belief that the whispers resulting from her glaring at people were remorse over taking away her pocket sniper rifle were correct, and definitely were not them feeling bad or guilty about something else that recently happened to her.
This was a rather fun chapter for me. It was a lot less funny than usual, but we did see a little bit of the results of Assault getting told he can make any food he wants, as long as it is in burrito form.
Being honest, I thought I was going to have a much tougher time with Piggot, but, looking at her Wiki page and going through what I know of her, she just sort of took charge of her own lines, and I didn't really have to do anything for her. I currently don't see any way of her getting healed aside from a healing dingus getting into range, or Dave not turning off his Paladin aura, but in both cases I expect her to be pissed off to the point of becoming an obstacle instead of an asset as she is now.
As much as I would love to explore Challenger some, or see what Dauntless thinks about this new guy people keep comparing to him, I think I'll stop here for this interlude.
I hope I conveyed a little of how much thought the PRT have to put into even things that seem like pure positives on the surface.
Also, can I just say, I feel like I picked really well when I chose to start the story just after the Simurgh Madison attack in late December of 2009. I did that partially to give myself as much time as possible before having to write something with the Simurgh in it, but a lot of the characters are just much less traumatized and jaded at this point. Obviously, Piggot and Armsmaster and co. still have their issues, but they've been dealing with Brockton-flavored bullshit for an entire year less than canon, and that really gives me some wiggle room to let the butterfly effect do its job and change their courses a little.
January 10, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, PRT Headquarters.
Vista
They took away her pocket sniper rifle! The indignity!
She stewed at the injustice and leveled accusing glares at every adult that walked by as she was led towards the meeting room. Occasionally, some of the people she was glaring at would look away and whispers would break out.
As she entered the meeting room, she took note of everyone else in it. There was Director Piggot, naturally, along with deputy director Renick. The full Protectorate roster was there: Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Velocity, and the alphabet crew made up of Assault, Battery, Challenger, and Dauntless. And of course, her and Triumph, being the one most relevant to the subject and the leader of the Wards respectively.
"Good, we're all here." Director Piggot began, and Vista settled herself in for a long speech or presentation. "Let's start then. As I'm sure you are all familiar with by now, there is a new heroically inclined cape in Brockton Bay. He is a powerful Trump going by 'Trouble', and is mostly cooperative with the PRT. He is close with New Wave and has been seen patrolling with them and guarding Panacea at the hospital—about time they started taking her security seriously. Now, this seems like a good thing on the surface, but we have these meetings for a reason."
"Just like when Panacea began to cooperate with us, this changes the status quo, and changes to the status quo risks escalation from villains. With Panacea, we began having our heroes heal more quickly and lasting injuries stopped, and now villains have begun hitting harder because they feel safer doing so, and we have to be more careful because they are more likely to accidentally kill someone. Trouble also has healing capabilities, as I can see Assault has found out." Piggot said wryly, staring at Assault who had a weird burrito in his mouth. It looked like it had eggplant, chocolate, marshmallow and mango at a glance, though Vista wasn't quite certain.
Assault saw everyone staring at him and shrugged. "Well, it doesn't taste good, but those machines sure do give you exactly what you ask them for. I really didn't think it was going to be able to do marshmallow or dragon fruit, but I sure wasn't going to waste food." He explained before taking another bite and making a face at the taste. So it also had dragon fruit. Why did Assault think it was going to be able to do mango but not dragon fruit?
Battery facepalmed. "They generate infinite food, you can't 'waste' it." She said.
Assault shook his head. "No, no, no, you have to think about all the starving children in Africa whenever you consider throwing away food. If there's one thing my mom taught me, that was it."
Vista stared at Assault. That would explain so much.
"Just, go on with the meeting. Sorry about him." Battery apologized for Assault, who looked confused at what he had done wrong.
"Very well." Director Piggot said. "As you all should know, Trouble's powers are wide and varied, if not particularly strong yet, the obvious comparisons being Dauntless and Alabaster, though with what we now know, there could be an argument for comparison to the Butcher as well given how he can apparently blind whoever kills him. Many of his powers manifest in the form of objects that he can give to others to use, making him both a self-enhancing Trump and the more common kind that can empower others. He has shown a willingness to lend or give his 'items' to others, including giving them to both Armsmaster for testing purposes and Vista for self-protection."
"While I would trust Vista with a gun more than I would trust most adults," Piggot began, "I'm not inclined to trust the judgement of anyone that thinks it is a good idea to hand a preteen a so-called 'Pocket Sniper Rifle.' So we will be keeping an eye out for any weapons that might come from him in case he decides to hand them out less stringently."
Vista pouted.
Piggot sighed. "Vista, if you can convince Miss Militia and Challenger that you can be trusted with a gun, I will give the go-ahead to start rebranding your image to make you an 'apprentice-like figure' to one of them. It will let you start carrying either a PRT foam weapon or a rubber-bullet gun after your image changes a little in people's mind and you become associated with them."
Vista smiled, while Challenger and Miss Militia both gave the Director betrayed looks.
"You'll still be seen as cute though." Piggot added with a barely perceptible smile, making Vista's smile vanish.
"Back on topic, Trouble's ability to generate unlimited guns and ammunition by itself would make him able to arm a gang enough to outgun the police, but the other things at his disposal exacerbate the issue. That issue being, the gangs will see him as a threat and try to do something about him. They will then fail, because he resurrects after he dies, and he cannot be captured because he can teleport and it is unknown how many teleport locations he has set up that he could teleport to. When it becomes clear that they can't do anything about him, there are a few possibilities of what the gangs will do."
Piggot looked around at the room. "Try to drive him away, either through violence, threatening to unmask him, taking hostages, or luring him away by promising things in exchange for leaving. Trying to recruit him, which will be funny if nothing else when it goes poorly. Try to force him into inaction, likely through similar methods as they would if trying to get him to leave the Bay. Or try to disable him through increasingly exotic methods until they find something that sticks. According to our analysis, the most reliable way to actually handle him if needed, would be to shove him into a Gray Boy bubble, since he likely would not continue to get stronger, and of course he would be unable to escape."
Piggot looked harder at each of them. "We do not want the villains deciding to get creative trying to deal with him. If they start trying to recruit Annihilators or worse, do something particularly stupid like the gangs did all those years ago and try to lure in the Nine to solve their problem for them, we will be, quite simply fucked."
Piggot sat back in her seat. "For now, we have a bit more time. Based on the recording you all should have seen," Piggot glared at Assault at that point, who nodded to confirm he had seen it, "the Empire will believe he is dead, and he never actually gave out his name. As long as we can convince him to not use that bug-man form anymore, we can delay the gangs figuring out what a problem he will be for a bit longer. We will talk about the ramifications of Hookwolf being blinded later on in this meeting." She added, seeing a few people shift at that remark about Empire, which got them to settle down.
"Next up, Armsmaster is going to speak about Trouble's new proposal." Director Piggot nodded to Armsmaster, who stood up.
"Trouble recently obtained a Tinker power—relating to mud—and was inspired by one of his other 'items' that will apparently let him build large structures extremely quickly, or at least their outlines. Due to the exact constraints of his Tinker power, he came to me for assistance and to propose a joint project. He proposed a large-scale Tinker base in the woods near Brockton, as a large lab to increase the effectiveness of all Tinkers involved, as well as a way to potentially lure friendly Tinkers to the bay." Armsmaster began.
"I believe it is likely to work. There was a similar project under Hero when he was active that I was a part of, but there have been no significant attempts to recreate such a thing after his death. Dragon seemed similarly interested in his proposal, and between the three of us and Kid Win, we would be starting out with four Tinkers working together." Armsmaster looked at everyone.
"I see you do not understand. It has truly been too long since Hero was active. That many Tinkers working together can accomplish great things, and would push each Tinker involved to greater and greater heights as they share equipment and work on projects together and gain insight from each other. If we were to succeed, it will lure Tinkers that remember the project Hero ran under the same philosophy, and my name along with Dragon's and the idea of a 'shiny new state-of-the-art Tinkertech base,' and access to Trouble's healing technology, would lure new Tinkers and make them inclined to join the Brockton Protectorate as well." Armsmaster stated with confidence.
"Trouble also stated plans to use his healing technology to obtain funds from rich individuals that sponsor the Guild, both to make himself a harder target as anyone that went after him would then make an enemy of the rich people he healed, and as a way to fund this and any future projects he might have. As a result, this project would take up nothing whatsoever from the PRT's budget." Armsmaster seemed to care a lot about that. Actually, Vista noticed the rest of the adult heroes did too. She could tell Triumph didn't care quite as much, but grasped that he was supposed to care based on how the Protectorate heroes cared about the budget not being impacted.
Assault whistled. "That sounds pretty ambitious. Do you think it's a good idea big guy?" He asked Armsmaster.
Director Piggot also focused her attention on Armsmaster upon hearing the question.
"I…" Armsmaster paused. "I am biased. I very much want this project to happen. However, given what the Director said earlier about the risks of villains escalating when they find out what he can do… I believe it may be the solution, if we can set it up quickly enough, while keeping Trouble busy enough that the gangs don't realize how quickly he grows and how hard to eliminate he truly is."
Armsmaster continued, "One of the things Trouble mentioned he could accomplish with his Tinker Power, was an improved version of his teleporters, though he also gave several samples of his current teleporters for Dragon, myself, and Kid Win to look at to see if we could improve. One of his proposals, was something he was certain he could accomplish with the right equipment, which was part of why he wanted to set up such a base. He described it as a teleporter hub, which would be centered in Brockton. It would let the Protectorate and PRT teleport across the country, but use Brockton as a central hub they would need to pass through in the process, thus raising the importance and awareness of the city on a national level, and making reinforcements in an emergency only ever be an instant away. He proposed a backup hub that would be in the Tinker base in case the first one was attacked, but the primary hub would be on the Rig."
Huh. That… sounds reasonable enough to me. Vista thought to herself, before being nearly scared out of her skin.
Director Piggot was… smiling. Widely. It was… well it certainly was. Vista had never seen the Director actually smile; at most she saw the occasional tugging of the lips like earlier when the Director said she would be stuck with the cute label. She could tell the Director didn't smile much by how unpracticed it looked, but she certainly looked downright gleeful.
The Director actually let out a full-bellied laugh, and Vista looked around to see everyone else looked equally disturbed, with Deputy Director Renick edging away slightly.
"Good!" Piggot said, her smile taking on a vicious undertone. "Let's see them ignore us with something like that centered on our city."
She turned to Armsmaster, "Fine, tell him his project is approved as long as he can get the Teleport Hub working and signs a contract that says he can't make another hub anywhere outside of Brockton for the next 10 years, barring the usual circumstances, of S-Class threats and quarantine zones of course."
She turned to Renick, "Tell legal to get this base happening, make sure they only know it is a large project, not the details."
She faced the rest of the room. "Mentions of a Teleport Hub and Trouble's growth rate will not be mentioned outside of this room without good cause, aside from those that need to actually work on it. I am hereby placing a gag order on the topics, as well as on Trouble being the one to save Vista and blind Hookwolf. We know we have moles people, but we will not let them get in the way of finally kicking out the gangs from this city. Do you understand?" She glared at the rest of the room, who all straightened and nodded.
"Good." Piggot said with satisfaction. "We can't keep the base contained forever, it will be obvious, but it provides a nice juicy explanation on our sudden secrecy, the teleport hub is the key though, nobody else, even the other Wards and PRT staff are allowed to hear about it. Now, let's talk about what to do about Hookwolf's blindness. Vista, you will be talking a lot in this part."
Author's Note: Yay Interludes! As you might be able to guess from my signature, I like interludes! On the other hand, this was hard! Wahh! *Cries* Not really, I anticipated it being a lot worse than it was, though it ended up being a lot smaller than I hoped because I decided to have it not be the initial meeting where this group (minus Vista) would just be reacting to Dave's powers, because I feel like 'people reacting to Dave's powers' is probably going to be a common theme throughout the story, and I didn't need to dedicate the first ever interlude to it. I also decided to have the meeting be post-reaction-to-Trouble's-Hookwolf-fight-recording, so we don't get to see them react to the idea of the stupid contest or the Banana Bus; we do see the effects of that recording here though with Vista getting permission to rebrand.
I'm sure Vista's belief that the whispers resulting from her glaring at people were remorse over taking away her pocket sniper rifle were correct, and definitely were not them feeling bad or guilty about something else that recently happened to her.
This was a rather fun chapter for me. It was a lot less funny than usual, but we did see a little bit of the results of Assault getting told he can make any food he wants, as long as it is in burrito form.
Being honest, I thought I was going to have a much tougher time with Piggot, but, looking at her Wiki page and going through what I know of her, she just sort of took charge of her own lines, and I didn't really have to do anything for her. I currently don't see any way of her getting healed aside from a healing dingus getting into range, or Dave not turning off his Paladin aura, but in both cases I expect her to be pissed off to the point of becoming an obstacle instead of an asset as she is now.
As much as I would love to explore Challenger some, or see what Dauntless thinks about this new guy people keep comparing to him, I think I'll stop here for this interlude.
I hope I conveyed a little of how much thought the PRT have to put into even things that seem like pure positives on the surface.
Also, can I just say, I feel like I picked really well when I chose to start the story just after the Simurgh Madison attack in late December of 2009. I did that partially to give myself as much time as possible before having to write something with the Simurgh in it, but a lot of the characters are just much less traumatized and jaded at this point. Obviously, Piggot and Armsmaster and co. still have their issues, but they've been dealing with Brockton-flavored bullshit for an entire year less than canon, and that really gives me some wiggle room to let the butterfly effect do its job and change their courses a little.
SpaceWhale
Know what you're doing yet?
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Cauldron's master plan is falling apart at the seams with this move
DracHoward
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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Piggot smiling!? Is this the end of the world!?
Also ngl, im sorta imagining that Bakuda's arc might not happen due to Dave. Why? Cuz Dave is gonna want to nurture a fellow terrorist and guide her to a more healthy manner (which makes her more heroic inclined). Idea is that when he's near Cornell University and his 'Terrorist' senses tingled, and rushed in to stop Bakuda, cuz to him, blowing up a University is a bad way to start your terrorist career...should have blown up the mayor's office instead
Also ngl, im sorta imagining that Bakuda's arc might not happen due to Dave. Why? Cuz Dave is gonna want to nurture a fellow terrorist and guide her to a more healthy manner (which makes her more heroic inclined). Idea is that when he's near Cornell University and his 'Terrorist' senses tingled, and rushed in to stop Bakuda, cuz to him, blowing up a University is a bad way to start your terrorist career...should have blown up the mayor's office instead
Chapter 39: Super Prolapse Powers Activate!
New
Phili
Not too sore, are you?
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Chapter 39: Super Prolapse Powers Activate!
January 11, 2010, Monday. Brockton Bay, Dave's Apartment.
Dave woke up, went through his morning routine, and readied his tea, orange juice, and bagel, and sat down at his kitchen table.
Dave nodded thoughtfully to himself as he ate his bagel. I wonder what exactly defines a 'coat'. Does Quetzalcoatl count as a coat because it has coat in the name despite being an ancient winged serpent god thing? If person A is piggybacking on person B, can I turn person A inside out? Would it turn them completely inside out or just make them prolapse? Do I have super prolapse powers?
These things and other, similarly important questions raced through Dave's mind as he ate breakfast.
Dave knocked on Bella's door.
She opened after only one set of knocks, and asked "What?" rather grumpily, and waved him in.
"Can I get a piggy back ride?" He asked her.
"Why?" She asked back suspiciously.
"I want to see if I can give myself a prolapse!" Dave helpfully explained.
For some reason, Bella just sighed.
"Dave… I'm leaving, I have classes today. If you're willing to wait until 2:00 I'm sure Crystal will help you though, that's when her last class ends on Mondays." Bella told him.
"Oh, great! Wait, didn't you say you two had all the same classes?" Dave asked her.
"We do. I just also have a dentist's appointment today and can't help you. So, I'm afraid Crystal will have to do when it comes to helping you out with your prolapsing piggyback thing." Bella shamelessly lied like a lying liar.
"Anyways, I'm off! See you later!" Bella said, before power walking out the door and locking it behind her.
Dave turned to see Lisa standing there, and gave her a hopeful look.
"No." Lisa immediately said. "Don't even think about asking."
"Aww." Dave whined.
"Oh! I had a couple new toys for you! I don't actually have enough yet to hand them out, but I'll have some for you either tonight or tomorrow." Dave remembered, and told her before he forgot.
Lisa smiled at the news, though it was oddly unsmug. He looked suspiciously at her.
"I'm not always smug!" She said exasperatedly after a moment.
He looked at her, doubtfully this time.
"It is not my default!" She insisted.
Dave nodded to himself, satisfied she could read his mind properly and thus hadn't been killed and replaced by a Spy.
"So!" Dave clapped his hands. "For now, how do you want to get to Parian's shop? Do you want me to just lend you a domino mask and have you walk there next to me in my Cape identity? Or do you want to go there together as civilians? Or you go as a civilian and I go as a Cape, but not walking next to each other so as to not reveal our connection?" He asked.
Lisa answered without needing to think about it, seemingly having already anticipated this question. "I would like to go together as civilians, and after we meet Parian—who should be there today—we can go the full honesty route. The pressure of having effectively unmasked to her will make her feel a need to actually take the commission out of guilt, particularly given she is more experienced than both of us combined." Lisa said smugly.
Dave thought about it. "And you trust your read on her well enough to be sure that no danger will come to either of us, or perhaps more importantly, to Bella from unmasking to her? You are sure she has no Empire leanings and is not a member of whatever group is after you?" Dave asked for confirmation.
Lisa hesitated. "Well, she definitely has no Empire leanings, she hates the Empire in fact. I doubt that she is part of a mysterious evil group that is after me, given she is a college student."
"But?" Dave asked leadingly.
"But, I don't actually know how she would respond to pressure. She wouldn't sell our identities or give it to anyone willingly, but… If the Empire came and threatened her loved ones in exchange for our identities, I don't know what she would do. She hasn't folded yet, despite being a Rogue in a city like Brockton, and facing quite a bit of pressure from the Empire." Lisa said before continuing.
"My main concerns would be either the Empire losing patience with her and escalating if they think either of our identities was worth discarding the efforts to recruit her, or whatever group is after me trying to get information from her, given I have no idea what methods they have at their disposal, but I doubt they care about those so-called 'Unwritten Rules.'" Lisa finished, scoffing a little at the mention of the Unwritten Rules.
"It sounds like your plan is actually the best bet then." Dave said, surprising Lisa a little.
"I thought you were about to reject it." Lisa admitted.
"Nope. If we go in as civilians, nobody will know that she has ever even met us, and thus will have no reason to go after her in hopes of getting information about us. We can even tell her such when we meet her to explain why we met her as civilians instead of as capes." Dave said.
"I thought you might be against the manipulation as well." Lisa said as she began to get ready to go out. Bella had bought a wig for her the previous day, and it looked relatively believable to see Lisa with long brown hair.
"Manipulation is unavoidable in social interactions." Dave decided to bestow some wisdom upon her. "As you know, even honesty can be manipulation, and in fact often is. If you repeatedly play rock paper scissors with someone, and they are trying to win, and you tell them 'I am going to pick rock every time,' they generally won't pick paper every time, even if you are telling the truth. They will think you are trying to fake them out and that you are going to eventually pick scissors, or that you will pick paper in the hopes of catching them picking rock to counter your scissors from the idea that they would pick paper to counter your initial 'bluff' of rock."
"What?" Lisa asked.
"Exactly." Dave answered, satisfied that she had understood the wisdom imparted through the deep social intricacies of Rock Paper Scissors.
They walked into Parian's Boutique and began looking around. The clothing really was quite nice as far as Dave was concerned, but he wasn't really anything approaching an expert in terms of fashion.
After browsing for a little, they approached the girl standing near the back that was stationed to help people find what they might be looking for and recommend things to them.
"Hi!" Lisa began, putting on a bubbly personality. "We were wondering… does Parian take commissions? And if so, could we talk to her about one? I really love all her stuff, the styles are just…" She squealed before continuing, "Anyways, I love it. But I was really hoping to have something custom-made for me. We are willing to pay quite a bit for it, so… is there any way we could talk to Parian about it?" She asked, turning her face up to look at the girl hopefully.
The girl, who was really more of a young woman, probably in college based on Lisa's earlier statement that Parian was also a college student, looked fondly at Lisa's apparent enthusiasm. "Yeah, I can talk to her about that if you don't mind waiting a little. She does do custom fittings and commissions, but she will need to have some say in the design process." The woman warned. "There was some jerk a while back who kept trying to ask for something that looked just… terrible. I saw some of the idea sketches she showed Parian, and it very much looked like what we call 'Unicorn Vomit' here. It was just so tacky, I couldn't tell if she was trying to mess with us or genuinely colorblind, and fashion blind, possibly regular blind too." The woman said, before going into a hidden backroom that Dave hadn't noticed, presumably to tell Parian about the desired commission.
The woman came back a few minutes later with a smile on her face. "You're in luck, she is actually free right now. She just finished up some sewing, and is happy to talk about a commission with you."
"Great." Lisa said happily, following the woman into the backroom, while Dave ambled along behind them.
The woman knocked on the door, and opened it after a female voice said "Come in."
After showing Dave and Lisa inside the room, the woman smiled at them and left, closing the door behind her, leaving them alone with Parian.
"So, I'm told you wanted to talk about a commission?" Parian asked politely.
"Yes, I would like to order a cape costume please." Lisa said politely.
Parian stilled for a moment. "Do you mean like cosplay?" Parian said hopefully.
Dave turned into a (normal, not Tall) Pikachu.
"Pika pika!" Dave told Parian.
"Fuck." Parian said, slamming her face against the table. "Why me?"
Author's Note: Full disclosure, I know nothing about clothing and fashion. I don't even have any objections to 'clashing colors', my usual reaction to seeing what other people call clashing colors is 'neat, I don't see those colors together very often.' So, I looked up what a custom outfit costs, and am going to base it on this: https://xzapparel.com/how-expensive-are-custom-made-clothes-and-what-affects-the-price/ while adjusting it a little to take into account Parahumanity. To be honest, it was lower than I was expecting according to that site anyways.
If anyone is a fashion/clothing aficionado and happens to know that that site is bogus or something and knows a better site or method of determining prices, let me know; it quite possibly might come up again in the future.
I was honestly expecting that I would be finished with the Parian stuff this chapter, but there ended up being barely started by the end of this chapter. I could just make the chapter longer, but that's a pretty good ending point.
I'm thinking that I'll probably mostly keep to this chapter length for now, until I've got a backlog of like 15 chapters, which I will try to maintain, and then do longer chapters if they feel right, and if I ever get to a stockpile of 20 chapters, I'll upload 2 or 3 chapters per day until I'm back down to 15 in my backlog. Does that sound good to people?
January 11, 2010, Monday. Brockton Bay, Dave's Apartment.
Dave woke up, went through his morning routine, and readied his tea, orange juice, and bagel, and sat down at his kitchen table.
| Morning Dave! |
| You grew your soul quite a bit yesterday. Lots of social interactions and meeting new people and going to new places (the Boardwalk) for the first time ever, and having new experiences are great for soul growth. You tried new foods and drinks and even made a new friend/minion too. In fact, you grew so much that you have now unlocked Rocket Thrusters and Potions, and will start getting those just like grenades and guns. Rocket Thrusters work as normal; Each use shoves you quite far, letting you effectively fly if you can survive the landing, which is still possible even for a normal human if they can time using the rocket thruster right before they land to cancel out their momentum. It is of course quite a bit faster than your jetpack. Potions work as you would expect, except in addition to being able to use them on yourself or others that are close enough by willing it, you can also use them by actually drinking them! I know, it's weird, but for some reason your soul really associates potions with 'things to be drunk' so adding that feature was basically free! You also got a few new items in your shops so make sure you take a look at those. Your new role for today is Turncoat! It's an exciting new role that lets you turn into a Traitor in exchange for lowering your health to 10 out of 100. Isn't that great? …Yeah, that's part of why you had so much free room in your soul. This does basically nothing for you. On the bright side, it comes with a bonus power of letting you turn a coat inside out at will as long as you are touching it, even if someone (including yourself) is already wearing the coat! |
Dave nodded thoughtfully to himself as he ate his bagel. I wonder what exactly defines a 'coat'. Does Quetzalcoatl count as a coat because it has coat in the name despite being an ancient winged serpent god thing? If person A is piggybacking on person B, can I turn person A inside out? Would it turn them completely inside out or just make them prolapse? Do I have super prolapse powers?
These things and other, similarly important questions raced through Dave's mind as he ate breakfast.
Dave knocked on Bella's door.
She opened after only one set of knocks, and asked "What?" rather grumpily, and waved him in.
"Can I get a piggy back ride?" He asked her.
"Why?" She asked back suspiciously.
"I want to see if I can give myself a prolapse!" Dave helpfully explained.
For some reason, Bella just sighed.
"Dave… I'm leaving, I have classes today. If you're willing to wait until 2:00 I'm sure Crystal will help you though, that's when her last class ends on Mondays." Bella told him.
"Oh, great! Wait, didn't you say you two had all the same classes?" Dave asked her.
"We do. I just also have a dentist's appointment today and can't help you. So, I'm afraid Crystal will have to do when it comes to helping you out with your prolapsing piggyback thing." Bella shamelessly lied like a lying liar.
"Anyways, I'm off! See you later!" Bella said, before power walking out the door and locking it behind her.
Dave turned to see Lisa standing there, and gave her a hopeful look.
"No." Lisa immediately said. "Don't even think about asking."
"Aww." Dave whined.
"Oh! I had a couple new toys for you! I don't actually have enough yet to hand them out, but I'll have some for you either tonight or tomorrow." Dave remembered, and told her before he forgot.
Lisa smiled at the news, though it was oddly unsmug. He looked suspiciously at her.
"I'm not always smug!" She said exasperatedly after a moment.
He looked at her, doubtfully this time.
"It is not my default!" She insisted.
Dave nodded to himself, satisfied she could read his mind properly and thus hadn't been killed and replaced by a Spy.
"So!" Dave clapped his hands. "For now, how do you want to get to Parian's shop? Do you want me to just lend you a domino mask and have you walk there next to me in my Cape identity? Or do you want to go there together as civilians? Or you go as a civilian and I go as a Cape, but not walking next to each other so as to not reveal our connection?" He asked.
Lisa answered without needing to think about it, seemingly having already anticipated this question. "I would like to go together as civilians, and after we meet Parian—who should be there today—we can go the full honesty route. The pressure of having effectively unmasked to her will make her feel a need to actually take the commission out of guilt, particularly given she is more experienced than both of us combined." Lisa said smugly.
Dave thought about it. "And you trust your read on her well enough to be sure that no danger will come to either of us, or perhaps more importantly, to Bella from unmasking to her? You are sure she has no Empire leanings and is not a member of whatever group is after you?" Dave asked for confirmation.
Lisa hesitated. "Well, she definitely has no Empire leanings, she hates the Empire in fact. I doubt that she is part of a mysterious evil group that is after me, given she is a college student."
"But?" Dave asked leadingly.
"But, I don't actually know how she would respond to pressure. She wouldn't sell our identities or give it to anyone willingly, but… If the Empire came and threatened her loved ones in exchange for our identities, I don't know what she would do. She hasn't folded yet, despite being a Rogue in a city like Brockton, and facing quite a bit of pressure from the Empire." Lisa said before continuing.
"My main concerns would be either the Empire losing patience with her and escalating if they think either of our identities was worth discarding the efforts to recruit her, or whatever group is after me trying to get information from her, given I have no idea what methods they have at their disposal, but I doubt they care about those so-called 'Unwritten Rules.'" Lisa finished, scoffing a little at the mention of the Unwritten Rules.
"It sounds like your plan is actually the best bet then." Dave said, surprising Lisa a little.
"I thought you were about to reject it." Lisa admitted.
"Nope. If we go in as civilians, nobody will know that she has ever even met us, and thus will have no reason to go after her in hopes of getting information about us. We can even tell her such when we meet her to explain why we met her as civilians instead of as capes." Dave said.
"I thought you might be against the manipulation as well." Lisa said as she began to get ready to go out. Bella had bought a wig for her the previous day, and it looked relatively believable to see Lisa with long brown hair.
"Manipulation is unavoidable in social interactions." Dave decided to bestow some wisdom upon her. "As you know, even honesty can be manipulation, and in fact often is. If you repeatedly play rock paper scissors with someone, and they are trying to win, and you tell them 'I am going to pick rock every time,' they generally won't pick paper every time, even if you are telling the truth. They will think you are trying to fake them out and that you are going to eventually pick scissors, or that you will pick paper in the hopes of catching them picking rock to counter your scissors from the idea that they would pick paper to counter your initial 'bluff' of rock."
"What?" Lisa asked.
"Exactly." Dave answered, satisfied that she had understood the wisdom imparted through the deep social intricacies of Rock Paper Scissors.
They walked into Parian's Boutique and began looking around. The clothing really was quite nice as far as Dave was concerned, but he wasn't really anything approaching an expert in terms of fashion.
After browsing for a little, they approached the girl standing near the back that was stationed to help people find what they might be looking for and recommend things to them.
"Hi!" Lisa began, putting on a bubbly personality. "We were wondering… does Parian take commissions? And if so, could we talk to her about one? I really love all her stuff, the styles are just…" She squealed before continuing, "Anyways, I love it. But I was really hoping to have something custom-made for me. We are willing to pay quite a bit for it, so… is there any way we could talk to Parian about it?" She asked, turning her face up to look at the girl hopefully.
The girl, who was really more of a young woman, probably in college based on Lisa's earlier statement that Parian was also a college student, looked fondly at Lisa's apparent enthusiasm. "Yeah, I can talk to her about that if you don't mind waiting a little. She does do custom fittings and commissions, but she will need to have some say in the design process." The woman warned. "There was some jerk a while back who kept trying to ask for something that looked just… terrible. I saw some of the idea sketches she showed Parian, and it very much looked like what we call 'Unicorn Vomit' here. It was just so tacky, I couldn't tell if she was trying to mess with us or genuinely colorblind, and fashion blind, possibly regular blind too." The woman said, before going into a hidden backroom that Dave hadn't noticed, presumably to tell Parian about the desired commission.
The woman came back a few minutes later with a smile on her face. "You're in luck, she is actually free right now. She just finished up some sewing, and is happy to talk about a commission with you."
"Great." Lisa said happily, following the woman into the backroom, while Dave ambled along behind them.
The woman knocked on the door, and opened it after a female voice said "Come in."
After showing Dave and Lisa inside the room, the woman smiled at them and left, closing the door behind her, leaving them alone with Parian.
"So, I'm told you wanted to talk about a commission?" Parian asked politely.
"Yes, I would like to order a cape costume please." Lisa said politely.
Parian stilled for a moment. "Do you mean like cosplay?" Parian said hopefully.
Dave turned into a (normal, not Tall) Pikachu.
"Pika pika!" Dave told Parian.
"Fuck." Parian said, slamming her face against the table. "Why me?"
Author's Note: Full disclosure, I know nothing about clothing and fashion. I don't even have any objections to 'clashing colors', my usual reaction to seeing what other people call clashing colors is 'neat, I don't see those colors together very often.' So, I looked up what a custom outfit costs, and am going to base it on this: https://xzapparel.com/how-expensive-are-custom-made-clothes-and-what-affects-the-price/ while adjusting it a little to take into account Parahumanity. To be honest, it was lower than I was expecting according to that site anyways.
If anyone is a fashion/clothing aficionado and happens to know that that site is bogus or something and knows a better site or method of determining prices, let me know; it quite possibly might come up again in the future.
I was honestly expecting that I would be finished with the Parian stuff this chapter, but there ended up being barely started by the end of this chapter. I could just make the chapter longer, but that's a pretty good ending point.
I'm thinking that I'll probably mostly keep to this chapter length for now, until I've got a backlog of like 15 chapters, which I will try to maintain, and then do longer chapters if they feel right, and if I ever get to a stockpile of 20 chapters, I'll upload 2 or 3 chapters per day until I'm back down to 15 in my backlog. Does that sound good to people?
MythicalFanficGod
Know what you're doing yet?
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Thanks for the chapter~
Wow, I've actually really enjoyed this, much more so than the vast majority of fanfics I've read.
I'm usually not one for Gmod-inspired (or similar) powers, nor am I too familiar with it outside of a dozen or so videos (none of which are from the TTT series), this was actually really entertaining, I rarely find a fanfic that actually makes me laugh, and balances being a crack fic with actually having a decent plot and such great character interactions as successfully as this one does.
Dave makes for a great MC, I love his antics, and while like many readers, I'm usually not a lover of OCs as part of the main cast, Bella makes for a great character and I can look forward to their regular interactions and enjoy it, and unlike most stories where the OC makes the story feel less like a fanfic and more like some original novel, her presence feels natural in the story as a whole.
I love a lot of the references in this, such as Pokemon and One Piece (Brook), and reading this has honestly made me want to check out the TTT series referenced.
I'm looking forward to seeing more
Wow, I've actually really enjoyed this, much more so than the vast majority of fanfics I've read.
I'm usually not one for Gmod-inspired (or similar) powers, nor am I too familiar with it outside of a dozen or so videos (none of which are from the TTT series), this was actually really entertaining, I rarely find a fanfic that actually makes me laugh, and balances being a crack fic with actually having a decent plot and such great character interactions as successfully as this one does.
Dave makes for a great MC, I love his antics, and while like many readers, I'm usually not a lover of OCs as part of the main cast, Bella makes for a great character and I can look forward to their regular interactions and enjoy it, and unlike most stories where the OC makes the story feel less like a fanfic and more like some original novel, her presence feels natural in the story as a whole.
I love a lot of the references in this, such as Pokemon and One Piece (Brook), and reading this has honestly made me want to check out the TTT series referenced.
I'm looking forward to seeing more
Last edited:
Chapter 40: Parian Measuring and Measuring Parian
New
Phili
Not too sore, are you?
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Chapter 40: Parian Measuring and Measuring Parian
January 11, 2010, Monday. Brockton Bay, Parian's Boutique.
"Hi, I'm Trouble!" Pikachu introduced himself.
"You sure are." Parian groused. "Listen, I can't just babysit every Cape I come across, but do I really have to explain the unwritten rules to you two? Are you that new?"
"We know about the unwritten rules," Pikachu told her. "We just wanted to come to you unmasked to show our sincerity, and for a few reasons we will explain shortly."
Parian muttered and grumbled for a moment. "Fine, I'll listen, but when Uber and Leet tried to ask for something I told them to shove it, so keep that in mind!" She said, and looked weird for a moment before realizing a glare didn't come across at all through her mask.
Lisa opened her mouth, "No, shush!" Pikachu shushed her, before jumping up onto her shoulder and distracting her with cuteness. "I will speak openly and honestly and you will keep quiet for now so you don't scare her away with your smugness until she hears your story."
"That's…" Parian trailed off, obviously sympathetic. She sighed, before speaking "Fine, I'll make your costume, but it will still cost quite a bit, and if you want strong materials, you'll have to wait a bit longer and it will cost more because I'll have to order those materials. I can't get my hands on Tinkertech fabrics if that's what you were hoping for though." She warned.
Lisa nodded happily. "That's fine, I can afford it. As for the wait… it's not ideal but I will be stuck with disguises for the foreseeable future if I want to go out as a civilian anyways, so I foresee a lot of staying inside in my future anyways." She shrugged. "Having a Cape costume will be nice because I'll be able to go outside fairly openly, and won't risk leading the people after me to civilians who might get caught in the crossfire."
"Alright, then shall we start designing?" Parian asked.
Lisa nodded, "Yeah, let's start."
A while later, after Dave had mentally conked out and spent his time mindlessly using his Turncoat power to turn the coats in the room inside-out then back to the way they were before, occasionally drawing a slightly annoyed sigh from Parian each time she saw him to it, the conversation and drawing and sketching between Lisa and Parian eventually wound down.
"So you don't want your measurements taken yet?" Parian asked.
Lisa shook her head. "No, I was homeless for a while remember? While I got by fairly well thanks to my power, I was something of a gymnast before…" Lisa trailed off, and Dave could almost smell the manipulation Lisa was putting Parian through, though he suspected it was true and genuinely did bother Lisa, he doubted she simply accidentally brought it up that way in conversation; Lisa was smarter than she gave herself credit for even without her power.
"Anyways," Lisa said, "I was a gymnast enthusiast growing up, so the skintight outfit is actually quite familiar to me, but I anticipate I will put on a bit more muscle soon now that I have access to better nutrition and a good, safe environment in which I can exercise."
"Alright," Parian nodded. "Then I'll start ordering the materials and sketching out the final designs and send them to you to look at, and in… two weeks you said? You can come in and get measurements taken." She said, to which Lisa nodded.
"Are you sure that will be long enough?" Parian asked. "I'm not exactly an expert on physiology, but that seems a little quick to put on a significant amount of muscle."
"Trouble here has a variety of methods for Parahuman healing, and one of those allows for perfect nutrition and instant recovery from exercise, while also making the exercise itself less painful and miserable," Lisa revealed. "So, actually, I suspect two weeks will be more than long enough for me to be in even better shape than before. If I really wanted to, I could probably use it to take a shot at the Olympics for gymnasts, since I'm right near the perfect age for female Olympic gymnasts." Lisa boasted.
"Huh, that's…" Parian made a considering sound. "That's interesting."
"I know, isn't it?" Lisa said smugly, getting a boop on the nose from a Pikachu at the smugness.
Dave cleared his throat. "I'm perfectly happy to pay for this and any future commissions we might want with my various powers… or cash, whatever works. Or, if you want to buy anything from me, I'm happy to let you for a very cheap price; you seem nice and reasonable, and it's good for you to stay safe, so…" Dave pulled out two toys. "I would like to offer you some toys to help keep you safe."
"This one," he pointed at a little tracker, "is a tracking device I personally use. If I ever press this button, or I enter an area where the tracker's signal is jammed, New Wave will get an alert with my location, or last known location in the case of a jamming scenario. Now, you don't have to use, or even take this, but I thought I would offer. You can of course also take it and disable the tracking effect and just use it as a button that would let me know that you are in trouble, and where you are when you press the button, but that won't help in a situation where the signal gets jammed."
Parian didn't show much interest at that.
"The other one is a Teleporter. You just set down the receiver pad wherever you want your destination to be, and then when you hit the button on the remote you would be carrying with you, it will teleport you to the receiver pad over the course of about a second. However, you can only use the teleporter sixteen times total before it breaks. You can have it for free though, and my giving you this is unrelated to the commission, it is simply because you are at-risk from the various villains." Dave explained. Parian had vented a little about being targeted by the Empire for forced recruitment while she was sketching out ideas with Lisa.
"Do you want either of them? I won't give them to you if you don't want them so that they don't fall into the wrong hands, but I do think they would substantially improve your safety." Dave said, looking at her expectantly.
"I'll take the Teleporter if you don't mind, and I'll give a discount on the final price of the commission in exchange. No offense, but I don't really want anyone tracking me." Parian said, slightly on edge for some reason.
Dave shrugged. "Fair enough. For future contact between us, I heard you two arranging something, but I would also like to add you to my contacts on my Cape phone." He held up his Dragon-made phone. "I may want to request future commissions, though I don't anticipate wanting anything Cape-related for myself, if I pick up another stray," Dave nodded at Lisa to indicate she was the first stray, "I may want to ask you again."
"Fine, this is my Cape contact number," Parian rattled off a number that Dave dutifully entered into his Dragon Phone with his little Pikachu paws.
"Great, if you ever want to buy something, or just want to chat about Cape things, or need help in an emergency, feel free to call me," Dave told her after giving her his Cape number in return, along with the Teleporter.
Dave stretched, "Alright, ready to go?" He asked Lisa as he returned to his normal form from his Pikachu form, much to the girls' mutual disappointment at the cuteness going away, though Parian hid her disappointment well thanks to her full-face mask.
"Yeah, let's go." Lisa said.
As they left, they said a goodbye to the woman who had led them to the backroom where Parian was, and Dave made a quick purchase of a fashionable utility-belt-type-thing on their way out.
"That went well," Lisa told him. They had returned to his apartment to talk about what had happened with more privacy and security than the street offered. Dave slurped in response.
They had also gotten smoothies on the way back.
"My power got a lot from her, during that. She is actually a lot more powerful than she lets on, and even more so than she thinks, probably due to self-esteem issues. With a little preparation, her power could probably fight an Endbringer, though she certainly wouldn't win, she can make her puppet things pack a lot of brute force."
"Pack-A-Punch?" Dave asked.
"Not whatever you're thinking of." Lisa said with a grumble, before returning to her smug face. "She is a bit of a bleeding heart and actually on the naïve side, so she will probably end up asking for help sooner or later after the Empire keeps pushing her. Good job on the offers for help without pushing it by the way." Lisa complimented him, making Dave preen.
"Yes, praise me more!" Dave said, before returning to his smoothie.
Lisa sighed, but continued her smugness. "Anyways, I did a little subtle advertising of some of the benefits of being 'on your side', and that will stay in her mind if she ever decides to stop being independent. That and your lack of pushiness won us a lot of points with her, so now she is a lot more likely to actually ask for help if she needs it, and if she ever feels like she has to join someone, she will pick us over the Empire or the Protectorate, who have both been pushy with her in the past, and pushiness really hits her buttons." Lisa explained, her expression obviously saying 'praise me!', so Dave patted her on the head.
"Good girl." He told the disgruntled Lisa, who swatted at his hand after a couple seconds.
Lisa flopped on her back and lounged out like a cat. "So, do you like, want the dirt on her?" Lisa asked after a moment. "Because I got a fair bit of it." She said looking at him carefully.
Dave shrugged. "Up to you. If you think it's important or relevant, tell me. If not, your power does burden you to being a bit of a secret keeper… which… actually might need some looking into." Dave said. Giving her discretion over it seemed to make him pass some sort of test in her eyes, so he decided to elaborate before he got embarrassed.
"I have an impression of a story from somewhere, before I woke up I think, probably fictional, of a woman who was a 'secret keeper', a sort-of make-do therapist that everyone told their secrets to because she was mute and willing to keep said secrets. While the people that told her their secrets felt lighter afterwards, she felt heavier and heavier with each secret she was told. I think she eventually fell sick or something from the stress, but I don't really remember." Dave said. Bella had filled Lisa in the day before on Dave's amnesia in between episodes of Pokemon, so Lisa kept quiet upon hearing that part.
"Obviously, that's not your exact situation," Dave continued. "But, you should still probably put some thought into how you want to handle secrets, since you will inevitably end up with a lot. You could try talking to one of those Parahuman therapists that specialize in Parahumans, and ask how they handle secrets, since they are dealing with both normal therapy confidentiality and Cape-shenanigan confidentiality."
"That's not where I was expecting you to go when you mentioned Parahuman therapy." Lisa admitted after a second.
"Oh, do you feel like you need to see a Parahuman therapist?" Dave asked. "I'm happy to try and set you up with one if you want but…" he shrugged. "I'm not exactly a normal Parahuman, so I don't have the usual trauma that I'm told is secretly a requirement for Capes?" He said with a bit of confusion on the last part. "I have no idea why people want it to be a secret that all capes have those 'bad trigger' things and that the 'good trigger' thing is made up if I'm being honest though. Anyone willing to do a bit of actual research can pretty easily figure that out based on how fake-sounding the 'good trigger' stories are, regardless of the official stance on the matter."
"Want me to find out?" Lisa asked.
"Eh, you can if you want." Dave said. "I don't really care, it's probably something silly and pointless that does the opposite of what it is supposed to do, and I don't anticipate the 'why' of it being the official stance to significantly affect anything."
Lisa nodded in acceptance.
"Now." Dave clapped. "I need to go to the hospital to heal people and guard my Health Stations and Panacea. She goes to Arcadia so she only has half-days of school, with the other half being intended for work-study and internship type things, and her go-to thing has been healing at hospitals, though ideally we will start clearing out enough things that she can actually start learning stuff like she is supposed to instead. Do you want to put on your wig and come with me, or stay in Bella's apartment and start working on getting your own school situation and researching Cape stuff sorted?" Dave asked her.
Lisa shivered and quickly spoke. "I'll go to Bella's place and start looking for the ideal online school for my situation."
Dave shrugged. "Suit yourself, and think on the secret thing a little, I need to know if I should contact someone to give you advice."
Author's Note: Yay, Parian's bit is done! Lisa's costume is going to be similar to her initial canon outfit for anyone curious. Lavender and Black colors, etc. No Ts across the front though. Maybe a purple eye across the front instead. I have a tough time writing imagery (that is, detailed descriptions of what things look like), so I'm a little nervous for when Lisa gets her costume and I have to describe it in more detail.
Smug girl is smug.
Dave has been working very hard in the past couple chapters to be serious, and deserves lots of praise and headpats for doing so.
Also, if my calculations are correct, I believe this chapter will mark the 100k words milestone! Yay! Only if you include author's notes though, which uh… *looks at author's notes*, I have some pretty big ones (heh).
Dave is earning lots of brownie points from Parian for not being pushy and from Lisa for not asking for details on other people's traumas. This Lisa is still relatively (a month or so) fresh off her trigger, so she is a lot more sympathetic to other people's triggers and their privacy around them. Lisa was doing a sort-of final test on Dave's character, to try and make sure that her personal measure of his character agreed with her power's measure of his character, and he passed with flying colors when he gave her the power to choose what to share with him.
January 11, 2010, Monday. Brockton Bay, Parian's Boutique.
"Hi, I'm Trouble!" Pikachu introduced himself.
"You sure are." Parian groused. "Listen, I can't just babysit every Cape I come across, but do I really have to explain the unwritten rules to you two? Are you that new?"
"We know about the unwritten rules," Pikachu told her. "We just wanted to come to you unmasked to show our sincerity, and for a few reasons we will explain shortly."
Parian muttered and grumbled for a moment. "Fine, I'll listen, but when Uber and Leet tried to ask for something I told them to shove it, so keep that in mind!" She said, and looked weird for a moment before realizing a glare didn't come across at all through her mask.
Lisa opened her mouth, "No, shush!" Pikachu shushed her, before jumping up onto her shoulder and distracting her with cuteness. "I will speak openly and honestly and you will keep quiet for now so you don't scare her away with your smugness until she hears your story."
"That's…" Parian trailed off, obviously sympathetic. She sighed, before speaking "Fine, I'll make your costume, but it will still cost quite a bit, and if you want strong materials, you'll have to wait a bit longer and it will cost more because I'll have to order those materials. I can't get my hands on Tinkertech fabrics if that's what you were hoping for though." She warned.
Lisa nodded happily. "That's fine, I can afford it. As for the wait… it's not ideal but I will be stuck with disguises for the foreseeable future if I want to go out as a civilian anyways, so I foresee a lot of staying inside in my future anyways." She shrugged. "Having a Cape costume will be nice because I'll be able to go outside fairly openly, and won't risk leading the people after me to civilians who might get caught in the crossfire."
"Alright, then shall we start designing?" Parian asked.
Lisa nodded, "Yeah, let's start."
A while later, after Dave had mentally conked out and spent his time mindlessly using his Turncoat power to turn the coats in the room inside-out then back to the way they were before, occasionally drawing a slightly annoyed sigh from Parian each time she saw him to it, the conversation and drawing and sketching between Lisa and Parian eventually wound down.
"So you don't want your measurements taken yet?" Parian asked.
Lisa shook her head. "No, I was homeless for a while remember? While I got by fairly well thanks to my power, I was something of a gymnast before…" Lisa trailed off, and Dave could almost smell the manipulation Lisa was putting Parian through, though he suspected it was true and genuinely did bother Lisa, he doubted she simply accidentally brought it up that way in conversation; Lisa was smarter than she gave herself credit for even without her power.
"Anyways," Lisa said, "I was a gymnast enthusiast growing up, so the skintight outfit is actually quite familiar to me, but I anticipate I will put on a bit more muscle soon now that I have access to better nutrition and a good, safe environment in which I can exercise."
"Alright," Parian nodded. "Then I'll start ordering the materials and sketching out the final designs and send them to you to look at, and in… two weeks you said? You can come in and get measurements taken." She said, to which Lisa nodded.
"Are you sure that will be long enough?" Parian asked. "I'm not exactly an expert on physiology, but that seems a little quick to put on a significant amount of muscle."
"Trouble here has a variety of methods for Parahuman healing, and one of those allows for perfect nutrition and instant recovery from exercise, while also making the exercise itself less painful and miserable," Lisa revealed. "So, actually, I suspect two weeks will be more than long enough for me to be in even better shape than before. If I really wanted to, I could probably use it to take a shot at the Olympics for gymnasts, since I'm right near the perfect age for female Olympic gymnasts." Lisa boasted.
"Huh, that's…" Parian made a considering sound. "That's interesting."
"I know, isn't it?" Lisa said smugly, getting a boop on the nose from a Pikachu at the smugness.
Dave cleared his throat. "I'm perfectly happy to pay for this and any future commissions we might want with my various powers… or cash, whatever works. Or, if you want to buy anything from me, I'm happy to let you for a very cheap price; you seem nice and reasonable, and it's good for you to stay safe, so…" Dave pulled out two toys. "I would like to offer you some toys to help keep you safe."
"This one," he pointed at a little tracker, "is a tracking device I personally use. If I ever press this button, or I enter an area where the tracker's signal is jammed, New Wave will get an alert with my location, or last known location in the case of a jamming scenario. Now, you don't have to use, or even take this, but I thought I would offer. You can of course also take it and disable the tracking effect and just use it as a button that would let me know that you are in trouble, and where you are when you press the button, but that won't help in a situation where the signal gets jammed."
Parian didn't show much interest at that.
"The other one is a Teleporter. You just set down the receiver pad wherever you want your destination to be, and then when you hit the button on the remote you would be carrying with you, it will teleport you to the receiver pad over the course of about a second. However, you can only use the teleporter sixteen times total before it breaks. You can have it for free though, and my giving you this is unrelated to the commission, it is simply because you are at-risk from the various villains." Dave explained. Parian had vented a little about being targeted by the Empire for forced recruitment while she was sketching out ideas with Lisa.
"Do you want either of them? I won't give them to you if you don't want them so that they don't fall into the wrong hands, but I do think they would substantially improve your safety." Dave said, looking at her expectantly.
"I'll take the Teleporter if you don't mind, and I'll give a discount on the final price of the commission in exchange. No offense, but I don't really want anyone tracking me." Parian said, slightly on edge for some reason.
Dave shrugged. "Fair enough. For future contact between us, I heard you two arranging something, but I would also like to add you to my contacts on my Cape phone." He held up his Dragon-made phone. "I may want to request future commissions, though I don't anticipate wanting anything Cape-related for myself, if I pick up another stray," Dave nodded at Lisa to indicate she was the first stray, "I may want to ask you again."
"Fine, this is my Cape contact number," Parian rattled off a number that Dave dutifully entered into his Dragon Phone with his little Pikachu paws.
"Great, if you ever want to buy something, or just want to chat about Cape things, or need help in an emergency, feel free to call me," Dave told her after giving her his Cape number in return, along with the Teleporter.
Dave stretched, "Alright, ready to go?" He asked Lisa as he returned to his normal form from his Pikachu form, much to the girls' mutual disappointment at the cuteness going away, though Parian hid her disappointment well thanks to her full-face mask.
"Yeah, let's go." Lisa said.
As they left, they said a goodbye to the woman who had led them to the backroom where Parian was, and Dave made a quick purchase of a fashionable utility-belt-type-thing on their way out.
"That went well," Lisa told him. They had returned to his apartment to talk about what had happened with more privacy and security than the street offered. Dave slurped in response.
They had also gotten smoothies on the way back.
"My power got a lot from her, during that. She is actually a lot more powerful than she lets on, and even more so than she thinks, probably due to self-esteem issues. With a little preparation, her power could probably fight an Endbringer, though she certainly wouldn't win, she can make her puppet things pack a lot of brute force."
"Pack-A-Punch?" Dave asked.
"Not whatever you're thinking of." Lisa said with a grumble, before returning to her smug face. "She is a bit of a bleeding heart and actually on the naïve side, so she will probably end up asking for help sooner or later after the Empire keeps pushing her. Good job on the offers for help without pushing it by the way." Lisa complimented him, making Dave preen.
"Yes, praise me more!" Dave said, before returning to his smoothie.
Lisa sighed, but continued her smugness. "Anyways, I did a little subtle advertising of some of the benefits of being 'on your side', and that will stay in her mind if she ever decides to stop being independent. That and your lack of pushiness won us a lot of points with her, so now she is a lot more likely to actually ask for help if she needs it, and if she ever feels like she has to join someone, she will pick us over the Empire or the Protectorate, who have both been pushy with her in the past, and pushiness really hits her buttons." Lisa explained, her expression obviously saying 'praise me!', so Dave patted her on the head.
"Good girl." He told the disgruntled Lisa, who swatted at his hand after a couple seconds.
Lisa flopped on her back and lounged out like a cat. "So, do you like, want the dirt on her?" Lisa asked after a moment. "Because I got a fair bit of it." She said looking at him carefully.
Dave shrugged. "Up to you. If you think it's important or relevant, tell me. If not, your power does burden you to being a bit of a secret keeper… which… actually might need some looking into." Dave said. Giving her discretion over it seemed to make him pass some sort of test in her eyes, so he decided to elaborate before he got embarrassed.
"I have an impression of a story from somewhere, before I woke up I think, probably fictional, of a woman who was a 'secret keeper', a sort-of make-do therapist that everyone told their secrets to because she was mute and willing to keep said secrets. While the people that told her their secrets felt lighter afterwards, she felt heavier and heavier with each secret she was told. I think she eventually fell sick or something from the stress, but I don't really remember." Dave said. Bella had filled Lisa in the day before on Dave's amnesia in between episodes of Pokemon, so Lisa kept quiet upon hearing that part.
"Obviously, that's not your exact situation," Dave continued. "But, you should still probably put some thought into how you want to handle secrets, since you will inevitably end up with a lot. You could try talking to one of those Parahuman therapists that specialize in Parahumans, and ask how they handle secrets, since they are dealing with both normal therapy confidentiality and Cape-shenanigan confidentiality."
"That's not where I was expecting you to go when you mentioned Parahuman therapy." Lisa admitted after a second.
"Oh, do you feel like you need to see a Parahuman therapist?" Dave asked. "I'm happy to try and set you up with one if you want but…" he shrugged. "I'm not exactly a normal Parahuman, so I don't have the usual trauma that I'm told is secretly a requirement for Capes?" He said with a bit of confusion on the last part. "I have no idea why people want it to be a secret that all capes have those 'bad trigger' things and that the 'good trigger' thing is made up if I'm being honest though. Anyone willing to do a bit of actual research can pretty easily figure that out based on how fake-sounding the 'good trigger' stories are, regardless of the official stance on the matter."
"Want me to find out?" Lisa asked.
"Eh, you can if you want." Dave said. "I don't really care, it's probably something silly and pointless that does the opposite of what it is supposed to do, and I don't anticipate the 'why' of it being the official stance to significantly affect anything."
Lisa nodded in acceptance.
"Now." Dave clapped. "I need to go to the hospital to heal people and guard my Health Stations and Panacea. She goes to Arcadia so she only has half-days of school, with the other half being intended for work-study and internship type things, and her go-to thing has been healing at hospitals, though ideally we will start clearing out enough things that she can actually start learning stuff like she is supposed to instead. Do you want to put on your wig and come with me, or stay in Bella's apartment and start working on getting your own school situation and researching Cape stuff sorted?" Dave asked her.
Lisa shivered and quickly spoke. "I'll go to Bella's place and start looking for the ideal online school for my situation."
Dave shrugged. "Suit yourself, and think on the secret thing a little, I need to know if I should contact someone to give you advice."
Author's Note: Yay, Parian's bit is done! Lisa's costume is going to be similar to her initial canon outfit for anyone curious. Lavender and Black colors, etc. No Ts across the front though. Maybe a purple eye across the front instead. I have a tough time writing imagery (that is, detailed descriptions of what things look like), so I'm a little nervous for when Lisa gets her costume and I have to describe it in more detail.
Smug girl is smug.
Dave has been working very hard in the past couple chapters to be serious, and deserves lots of praise and headpats for doing so.
Also, if my calculations are correct, I believe this chapter will mark the 100k words milestone! Yay! Only if you include author's notes though, which uh… *looks at author's notes*, I have some pretty big ones (heh).
Dave is earning lots of brownie points from Parian for not being pushy and from Lisa for not asking for details on other people's traumas. This Lisa is still relatively (a month or so) fresh off her trigger, so she is a lot more sympathetic to other people's triggers and their privacy around them. Lisa was doing a sort-of final test on Dave's character, to try and make sure that her personal measure of his character agreed with her power's measure of his character, and he passed with flying colors when he gave her the power to choose what to share with him.