With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

Parahuman powers... kind of do, thanks to the safeties built into the powers, the results of which are called the Manton Limit. They're sensitive enough that... CITATION!

FURTHER CITATION!

Powers tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to what they can influence, when they're particular. If they can't perceive a potential target well enough to determine whether or not it's a valid target...

 

Ok I specifically made an account to be able to post on this. In short, the greatest danger currently is that Zion will realize the ring lets LP go truly FTL and simply steal it, or otherwise figure out how it works and develop a shard that can copy it. Because, while the worms can go FTL, it is a weird and cheating version utilizing dimensional travel which is implied to be fairly slow in the grand scheme of things. With ring FTL however, Zion could easily meet up with another entity and resume the cycle. Secondly, there is actual time travel in worm, with various characters able to go back in time. Phir Sē in particular is noted as being able to create portals that go forward or backwards in time a few minutes, and also being able to "chase the minutes" to alter events which happened even decades ago.

Lastly, the information processing shards currently don't understand yellow light, but shards and the cycle in general are in place specifically to learn new information. It is a matter of time until tattletale's shard matures, buds, and splits off a new shard specifically adapted to understand and possibly manipulate yellow light.

Also, keep in mind that Worm was created as a universe where the logical inconsistencies of superhuman media make sense and are actually required. If LP simply cleans house, then it is inevitable that some heroes will go insane, become villains, and the cycle continues. The only lasting change is that the world has lost a significant chunk of cape power for stuff like enddbringer fights and golden morning.

If he tries to lobotomize capes to take away their power, that only takes away their capability to *control* their powers.

If he tries killing all the endbringers, then more will be created until Eidolon dies. If he kills Eidolon, then the existing Endbringers will still be alive and might even recreate him in the case of the Simurgh.

Any Zion vs LP fight would only be winnable if LP had almost perfect information on Zion, and even then he could easily lose.

More likely scenario is that Contessa or someone tells him just how much his mere presence is threatening to lead to the deaths of almost everyone, and he begrudgingly moves on.

 

Hey Zoat did Common Sense Paul manage to create his own Orange Lantern Corps?

We know that Mandate Paul managed to do it even if he didn't have enlightenment or New God powers, and he said that Common Sense was as powerful as he was before the whole Time Trapper thing, so he should have the power he needs to do it.

 

Thank you, corrected.

In theory he's just need to disrupt the link between the avatar and the 'true' body. It wouldn't kill Zion, but it would stop him doing anything.

Yes.

Basically the same way as the regular version, though I suspect that he went to Maltus before Vega.

 

How about a White Lantern Paul in Harry Potter?

"Well, technically I'm a "Former Muggle". I just used this Magic ring to, ah, "transfigurate" my genetics to that of a Wizard's. I've also been transfiguring plenty of other muggles into witches and wizards, and raising the number of magical flora and fauna in the world! Did I forget to mention my ring also helps me resurrect the dead?"

 

Makes sense.

He would go to Maltus to meet the Controllers, get a way to deal with Larfleeze, probably get the help of the Controllers or Darkstars to help him take down the Citadel after dealing with Larfleeze etc.

Plus the good press it would give the Darkstars or Controllers as being the liberators of Vega and destroyers of the Citadel can help them in their recruitment of potential members for both the Darkstars and LEGION.

Also Kori and Kom may get their Starbolt powers if it takes him a bit longer to free them, like it happened in the renegade side due to renegade suffering from Anti Life.

 

Just because the shard can do something, doesn't mean it has to.

Aegis' shard optimized his biology to give him a bunch of redundancies, but it clearly also has the ability to generate kinetic energy given it gave him flight that's completely unrelated to his main powerset. According to WoG-derived speculation, all shards have a large assortment of super-abilities they just don't give to the parahuman. Lung's shard could probably make a person that grows into a giant rabbit the more they fight, giving them the ability to jump higher and higher as well as to breathe exploding balls of ice.

Well, if you take Gallant's empathy, Victor's skill-stealing, Cranial's memory reading and skill replacement, and probably a couple of other powers, and combine them into a single person, you'd wind up with something that's eerily similar if not identical to telepathy.

Shards can, in all likelihood, do telepathy, because reading the activity inside of stupid little mammal brains is logically easier than simulating two snapshots of the universe like Coil does, which also includes simulating billions of stupid little mammal brains.

Shards don't do it because it's useless for the purposes of the Cycle, or maybe it's just game-breaking.

I don't remember the exact quote, but IIRC the Entities programmed special rules into shards to prevent them from fucking the host species up beyond all recognition, or doing things that'd impede data gathering in the Cycle. No self-propagating nanites, no super-nukes, no space travel, no time travel, and so on. Telepathy is probably considered "an OP build" and therefore blacklisted as well.

This is all speculation, of course, but I provide my reasoning for why it might be accurate above.

Epoch's power is more like the shard remembering where an object was ten seconds ago and moving it back, or predicting where it would be in ten seconds. It's less pure time travel, and more retro and precognition mixed with matter displacement which effectively works as time travel but isn't.

It is a pretty decent way to solve it, but it'd probably cause all Zion-derived parahumans to freak out in a bunch of minor ways. The results of the eldritch beast thrashing against its cage on the other side.

To be honest, I'm more confident that a Lantern can defeat Scion than the Endbringers. The Endbringers don't have, as odd as it is, quite as many vulnerabilities. Zion's avatar was created to emulate humanity, which opens up a plethora of weaknesses, while the Endbringers are deadly superweapons that aren't meant to be destroyed. The best take there would be if YL can do something to Eidolon - either guilt therapy or murder.

I don't doubt that he'll be able to touch Eidolon or - heh - scare away the Endbringers in combat, but killing them would be another matter entirely.

 

What are the chances that Taylor will join Lord Protector as a mole?
Then join him in his way of thinking.

 

That's pretty much what happens when Grayven takes part in the Leviathan fight. He uses a click-beeper to shut down shard connections, and... Then the screaming started.

Basically none. I thought it over, but he's pretty much going from place to place killing things. Useful as her power is, a ring is more efficient and effective.

 

Really hope we see how paragon deals with Earth Bet.

Are we going to see Sybarite, Saul and Common Sense in this episode?

 

I have no plans to include them at the moment.

 

The ring wouldn't give him a magical soul, hed basically just be a Dementor Victim who is somehow able to move around. And I am pretty sure it's not possible to grant souls to the soulless in Harry Potter.

I also doubt adding thr magic gene is enough to chamge a muggles soul into a wizard soul.

 

We don't exactly know how magic works and where it comes from all that much in the Potter verse, so if Zoat decides to have a version end up there and somehow alter his genetics to wield magic then I guess it's possible since nothing from canon would technically contradict that.

The fact that he never had a soul in the first place could mean that he could develop one over time, even if the Wizarding World has no idea how to do it, he can just build up enough magic like Peter Wynne did, while those that had their souls sucked out by Dementors are incapable of getting a new one.

 

We know souls are used for magic because Voldemort was still able to use it when he was just a wandering soul.

Also there is no reason why would be able to grow a soul overtime when Dementors victims cant, they should be physically identical.

I don't think building up magic would work as a way to get a souls, since muggles have souls and they're completely lacking magic. Grindelwald also straight up refers to magic being something only found in rare souls.

 

Argh.

Telepathy is a thing in the Wormverse; it's just that flat-out simple telepathy is uninteresting to the Entities, so it almost always comes in a very limited version or as a support aid of another power, as opposed to the broad Martian Manhunter/Professor X-style skillset.

WoG is that Martian Manhunter could detect the Simurgh's scream and undo her conditioning, but that if she gets the chance, she can "beat him in terms of telepathy", so it's pretty clear they're operating in the same arena.

The fanon bullshit claims that telepathy in the Wormverse is just manipulating your physical brain is a meaningless statement. It's Kid Flash-grade nonsense about magic not really existing, but just being an unknown form of energy that's manipulating the physical universe... which is kind of true, but it's just recasting what's going on in pseudo-scientific terms without really increasing our understanding in any way.

At the point that you have parahumans who can read and change your emotional state, screw with your memory, implant commands in your mind, possess your body, or give you disembodied voices in your mind if you kill them, it's pretty silly to say that Worm doesn't have telepaths. I mean, we literally get told later that creating a mindscape for select groups of parahumans to interact in is a standard thing that shards sometimes do.

Wildbow's description of Ziz's powers is that "The key to understanding her is her psychic 'scream' - this is basically a kind of psychic echolocation allowing her to scan her surroundings while exerting a psychic pressure to alter behavior, implant messages or create compulsions."

I find it bizarre to read that repetition of the word 'psychic', and then try to justify fanon bullshit that psychic powers aren't really a thing that exists.

 

Scion's FTL is ridiculous.

It's only later in the narration that the Warrior is described as "approaching the galaxy cluster."

Even if we take that very conservatively we're talking about a distance of millions to tens of millions of light years crossed in thirty three years.

In all likelihood, it is far more.

 

I must reiterate my link to The Fall of Doc Future. A speedster is fallible - probability/time manipulation, burnout/overwork, other sorts of SAN damage, someone being straight up intelligent enough to make you hurt yourself and others. (Not thinking faster, by definition, but able to come up with contingencies you can't in the proverbial million years). It very much can make for a compelling story.

Not to say "unconscious before they're in a fight" doesn't also happen, even without going too near light speed.

Spoiler: from the sequel (not literal spoiler)

Flicker was solving a puzzle in a hall of statues.
It wasn’t how most people would describe what she was doing, but that was how she thought of it. She was so much faster than everyone else, that when she was moving at high speed, she could treat them as statues.
People, and other living things, were the main obstacles she had to worry about. Oh, closed doors were annoying, but no material object could stop her, and she could always worry about fixing or paying for any damage she did later, if need be. But she couldn’t do that with people, who were everywhere.
And they were so very fragile. Her first rule was, ‘Never touch at speed’. At a million times the subjective speed of a human–which she was operating at now–people, cars, buildings, bank vaults, tanks, and diamonds were all far more fragile than eggshells at normal speed. Everything but her was. And the reason for it was simple physics.
Say she wanted to move something. Something reasonably sized, that she couldn’t fit inside her damping field. Like, say, a person who was standing in an inconvenient spot. The normal way to move something was push it. Say it would take her two seconds to speed the person up and two to slow them down normally, and she wanted to do all this a million times faster, in line with her current subjective speed.
Easy, just push them a million times as hard. That would get them moving a million times as fast… after two seconds. To get them moving that speed in two microseconds, a millionth of the time, she’d have to push them a trillion times as hard. Which she could do, theoretically.
But it would sting a little.

 

No, you provide a cut up incomplete quote that often doesn't say what you think it does.

Case in point, putting aside that you're conveniently forgetting to mention the energy draining properties of that darkness, all you did here was confirm my point that Behemoth died to Scion, who then no sold his final act.

And on that note, it sure was nice of you not to post any of the bits showing Behemoth instagibing people.

And that quote doesn't say what you thought it did.

Hint, "messing with space" doesn't involve protecting from multidimensional scanners.

And on that note, unless this Paul has a Type 2 Civ's energy generation backing up his scanner blocker, it would only be good for protecting against passive scans since the Shards would brute force through using active one's.

Everything on that page is just creative use of time looping, time dilation, or general entity faking it.

Not actual time travel.

Actual time travel, is traveling into the past, that's it. (Physics is fun.)

 

Is any of that actually mentioned in the story or is it simply WOG? Because unless, I missed something or Wildbow decided to retcon his story, I presumed that Ziz's scream was just really really fine telekinisis not you know actual telepathy, like you'd see Martian Manhunter using or the astral plane crap you'd see from Marvel Telepaths, then again I haven't read Worm in ages and have probbaly read more fanfiction so I'm bound to get something wrong/mixed but thanks for the correction, this shard-space stuff is interesting.

Also I doubt Ziz could beat MM's telepathy, unless we're talking about his weaker iterations because MM has some crazy telepathy feats.

 

Not really.

Paul would have never had a soul to begin with, while Dementor victims would have had one since they were born.

Whatever allowed people in the Potter verse to be able to develop souls could be permanently damaged after the Dementor sucks out their soul.

If you need a soul to do magic in the Potter verse, but muggles still have souls and are incapable of performing magic, then that could mean that the thing that allows them to perform their magic is genetic in nature.

Compared to you providing jack shit, he at least gives detailed info.

And it does say what he thinks it does.

Case in point, putting aside that you're conveniently forgetting all the interesting things power rings can do, like draining energy.

What I got from that was that Grue drained Behemoth of his powers and then Scion just blasted him into oblivion.

He didn't exactly tank Behemoths last attack.

Considering all the multidimensional things the shards do..it kinda does.

This Paul has a power ring and a database that probably include all sorts of things from the Maltusians after his meeting with Paragon and several other versions.

Things that make most type 2 civilizations seem like quaint primitives.

So traveling to the future doesn't count anymore?

 

What I don't get is that correct me if I'm wrong, but this "The broken shard is cast off, joining countless others. It will bond to a host. The entity looks forward, checking. After the target planet has revolved thirty-three times around its star, this shard will connect to a host." Is Scion looking this far ahead both in time and distance while he hasn't approached our galactic cluster yet?

If so, unless I'm getting my canon and fanon mixed up, wouldn't the energy costs for such a thing be stupid? Like insane levels of energy required for a shard to figure something like that out?

 

Was/still pretty sure that a lantern ring can go faster than 3 million x light speed.

Remembered another thing that is pretty important, Zion's main stuff works through wavelength manipulation. He could auto destroy pretty much all of LP's constructs. Without constructs, LP can't do pretty much anything.

 

You need a magic as part of your soul. Grindelwald literally said 'Magic blooms only in rare Souls' and he is one of the most brilliant wizards who have ever existed and we know a wizard who is reduced to a soul can still use magic. Just to be clear there is a magic gene, but it only seems to decide who is born with a magical soul, not make the body capable of magic by itself.

 

Keep in mind that the DC universe isn't infinite or close to, it's a set size with a source wall at the edge, unless they retconned all this out.

 

That would cause a Bad End.

Best case scenario, he just pops a new Avatar into existence and snips the planet from a dimension over.

Worst case scenario, he engages his space drive, which causes a multidimensional collapse that destroys every Earth in the local dimensional cluster.

 

Theoretically, if Paul can figure out to how to protect himself from interdimensional stuff affecting him couldn't he with some time create a device that does so to the entire planet, thus blocking Scion from enterting or doing anything near Earth?

 

Is there a citation for this? Because if it's true then Doormaker's power should have not worked, and the entire story would be over before it began. Labyrinth's power creating the gateway to Earth Gimel also shouldn't have worked, if there was actually a barrier and not just shard wetware restrictions.

 

It would pretty much be on the level of the time paragon had to deal with a guy disrupting spacetime around him, only on millions of times to scale for even a single earth. Even the with paul dealing with it, It was a massive energy hog for a temporary solution

 

He locked off the universes *that the shards were located in*.

 

Grindelwalds quote can be seen as him saying that magic can bloom in rare people, and not that it has anything to do with souls.

People can sometimes be referred to as 'souls'

The fact that Paul would be an outsider in that universe could mean that he would be able to somehow make himself magical in some way.

Sybarite and renegade managed it, so I guess all that Paul would have to do is either eat a magical creature for a recharge, and become a magical creature in the process, or add some kind of foreign energy into his system.

I'm also fairly certain that if the gene decides who is born with a magical soul then it also makes the body capable of magic. Though I could be misreading your sentence.

If you mean that without a soul the gene can't make the body do magic on its own, then you may be right, but if Paul develops a soul and uses the ring to awaken said gene then I think he may be able to use magic.