Disco Rice - [Worm OC Insert/Chaos Gacha]

[dasstan]

Great story so far! But I'm confused about why everyone is making a big deal about him being "uncontrolled" and a "wildcard." Independents are a thing in Worm, especially when it hasn't even been a week since they entered the scene, and it is pretty much the standard for Parahumans to fuck shit up. Though I guess his inexplicable knowledge is enough to keep everyone's eyes on him.

Click to shrink...

As far as Piggot is concerned, any parahuman not under her control is a potential parahuman problem. As far as Coil goes: ... Pretty much the same motivation, actually. A thinker, even a high level one can still be threatened and controlled (see Tattletale). A high level brute and a thinker? That's more concerning because the obvious stick isn't nearly as effective.

 

[ClockBlocker]

Why? In canon once Lung took control of the ABB again they continued with the attack all the gangs course of action. Escalation and chaos are what worked to get Lung out. Keeping the city at a constant simmer also allows Lung to ramp up a lot faster, essentially keeping primed to transform on the constant threat of violence.

There's also the loss of face. Lung can't stop going after the other gangs without looking weak.

Click to shrink...

Great answer, thank you.

The front page did show him taken out without half the city burning down. So now he is burning it down.

 

[AbenSur]

I'm looking how things are going so far, the MC is a little melancholic for my taste rn but it's to be expected with his circumstances.

Are you allowing familiars as well in the rolls? Cause either through one of them or a specific ability he might be able to fix his eating problem.

Also hoping he can get someone to talk to on the super side at least a bit, this whole lone sentinel thing can get isolating very quickly.

 

[Kolarthecool]

This confuses me.

Lung is out of custody. Bakuda is in custody.

They have an unlimited supply of whatever they have left of her bombs as long as only Oni Lee uses them.

But, why are they? Trying to break her out and get control of her seems like the only new goal that Lung should have. Causing chaos to do it? Weird plan.

This is just confusing to me. I hope it gets explained.

Click to shrink...

Cause his crotch got rotted off by that bug bitch and he's going to make it everyone's problem.

 

[Zeldomnyo]

Maybe I missed the reason but is there a reason he can't eat food other than coffee because according to what the role says he can still eat food unlike a normal ghoul.

Race(Tokyo Ghoul) - You are a One-Eyed Ghoul, which despite how it sounds is more powerful than the average ghoul. As a One-Eyed Ghoul you have superhuman stats and a flexible super organ called a kagune of your choosing. You get stronger by consuming human flesh but unlike a normal ghoul, you don't need to and can simply eat human food.

 

[Neondagger]

Maybe I missed the reason but is there a reason he can't eat food other than coffee because according to what the role says he can still eat food unlike a normal ghoul.

Race(Tokyo Ghoul) - You are a One-Eyed Ghoul, which despite how it sounds is more powerful than the average ghoul. As a One-Eyed Ghoul you have superhuman stats and a flexible super organ called a kagune of your choosing. You get stronger by consuming human flesh but unlike a normal ghoul, you don't need to and can simply eat human food.

Click to shrink...

Just because you can eat it doesn't mean it tastes good or even tastes like food

 

[dasstan]

Maybe I missed the reason but is there a reason he can't eat food other than coffee because according to what the role says he can still eat food unlike a normal ghoul.

Race(Tokyo Ghoul) - You are a One-Eyed Ghoul, which despite how it sounds is more powerful than the average ghoul. As a One-Eyed Ghoul you have superhuman stats and a flexible super organ called a kagune of your choosing. You get stronger by consuming human flesh but unlike a normal ghoul, you don't need to and can simply eat human food.

Click to shrink...

@Neondagger has the right of it. The human food is fuel, but it's basically bland and tasteless. There's no satisfaction in it. As to the why? I like the drama.

 

[dasstan]

The truce was a fragile, ugly thing, born of desperation and greed. The moment Kaiser's terse nod sealed the deal, the shared sense of purpose evaporated from the dining room of Somer's Rock. It left a sour, curdled atmosphere in its place, thick with the promise of future betrayals. The air, which had hummed with a singular, focused tension, now felt heavy and stagnant, smelling of stale beer, old dust, and the faint, sharp tang of ozone that clung to a room full of capes. The low murmur of conversation started up again, but it was different. It was the sound of predators sizing each other up, alliances shifting, sub-deals being whispered into the shadows of the room.

I had seen enough. My job here was done. I pushed my chair back, the scrape of wood on the grimy concrete floor cutting through the noise with the sharp finality of a guillotine. Every eye in the room tracked me as I stood. I was the wild card, the piece that had forced the game, and my sudden movement was a disruption they all had to account for. Kaiser's gaze was a physical weight, cold and assessing. Faultline watched me with a mercenary's professional curiosity, her head tilted slightly as if calculating my worth. I ignored them all, my attention fixed on a single target.

The Undersiders were already moving toward the exit, a tight, wary knot of teenage costumed villainy trying to slip out before the backstabbing really got underway. Grue was a pillar of coiled tension at their head, his body a living wall of darkness. Tattletale's eyes darted everywhere, constantly analyzing, a smug little smirk plastered on her face as she drank in the paranoid chaos she lived for. My gaze drifted past them, past the boy in the ridiculous renaissance getup, his venetian mask doing a poor job of hiding his contrived boredom, past the girl with the dog whistle who seemed ready to bolt at any second. My eyes settled on the third figure in the group.

Taylor Hebert. Skitter. The linchpin of the whole damned story.

She was unnervingly still, possessing the eerie, motionless poise of a predator waiting in the center of its web. Her costume was a practical, ugly thing of grey and black panels, a functional uniform with no personality, designed for a war, not for a statement. The story I remembered had painted a monster, a relentless, pragmatic force of nature. And here, in the absolute, unnerving stillness of a teenage girl, I could see the artist's signature. A cold, pragmatic part of my brain, the part that was all ruthless calculation, felt a flicker of something. The sensation settled into a single, cold thought: There you are. It was the grim feeling of meeting a reflection in a warped mirror.

I moved to intercept them, my armored form a silent, grey wall in their path. The other two, the boy and the girl, flinched back with small, startled movements. Grue stopped, his posture going rigid, a low rumble almost audible from the depths of his darkness. He was a guard dog, and I had just stepped in front of his charges.

Tattletale just smiled, a sharp, knowing thing that didn't touch her eyes. "Well, well. Decided to start mingling? I have to say, your silent-and-scary routine was very effective. Ten out of ten. No notes."

I ignored her, my blank faceplate aimed squarely at Grue. "You're the leader." It wasn't a question.

The darkness of his helmet shifted, a subtle inclination. "I am." His voice was a low, gravelly thing, filtered and distorted by his power.

"My intelligence on the ABB is precise," I said, my own voice flat and even, each word a carefully placed stone. "But it's time-sensitive. The window of opportunity for each piece of intel is small. I'll need a direct line to a team that can act on it without getting bogged down in committee meetings and ego-stroking."

My gaze shifted deliberately to Tattletale, then back to Grue. The implication was clear. I was bypassing the Kaisers and the Coils of the world. I was bypassing the entire villainous bureaucracy we had just created. I was choosing them.

Tattletale's smirk widened into a genuine, predatory grin. Her power was churning behind her eyes, I could almost feel the heat coming off her as she processed the move. It was a compliment. It was a test. It was a power play. She was a connoisseur of this sort of thing. She loved it.

"He's not wrong," she said to Grue, her eyes still locked on me, a new, brighter spark of interest in them. "We are the most efficient ones here. And the most charming."

Grue was silent for a long moment, the featureless void of his helmet unreadable. He was the leader, the stoic center of their little storm, but I knew she was the one who made the real decisions. He gave a single, curt nod. "A direct line is acceptable."

I pulled out the Omni Phone.

The room was dimly lit, but the phone didn't reflect the light from the cheap sconces on the wall. It seemed to drink it, a perfect, seamless slab of matte black material that felt alien and dense in my hand. It was just a phone, but in this room full of scavenged tech and cobbled-together costumes, it looked like a relic from a future no one here was ever going to see.

Tattletale's breath hitched. It was a tiny sound, almost perceptible, but in the quiet of the moment, it was as loud as a gunshot. Her smirk vanished, replaced by a look of intense, raw focus. Her eyes, wide behind her domino mask, were locked on the device in my hand. Her power wasn't just looking at a phone. It was screaming at her, a fire alarm she was the only one to hear.

I held it out, displaying the contact screen. The number was a string of perfect zeroes. 000-000-0000. An impossible, non-functional string of digits that shouldn't be able to connect to anything.

Grue produced a cheap-looking burner phone, its plastic case scuffed and worn, and carefully began to type in the number.

Tattletale wasn't looking at Grue. She wasn't looking at the number. She was staring at the top of my screen. At the impossible symbols that sat where the signal and battery icons should be. The ∀ and the smug, stylized infinity symbol. They were tiny details, meaningless to anyone else. To her, they were a declaration of war against everything she thought she knew.

A cold knot of dread formed in my gut. That cold bastard in my head, the one who had insisted this was the only logical play, was suddenly very quiet. In its place was a new thought, a greasy, sinking certainty that I had just handed a master locksmith the key to a door I didn't even know I had. That was a mistake. Nice going, Johnny-Boy.

"What kind of phone is that?" she asked, her voice a low murmur. The casual snark was completely gone, replaced by a raw, intellectual hunger that was far more unnerving. "That's not local tech. That's not any tech I've ever seen. Who's your Tinker, Cipher?"

"You wouldn't know her," I said. The statement was perfectly true. GLaDOS wasn't any more native to this world than I was, and the phone hadn't been her doing, anyway.

Her power slammed into the absolute, literal truth of that statement, and I could see the aftershock in the subtle tightening of her jaw. It was a confirmation that sent her down a completely wrong, yet utterly tantalizing, path. It told her there was a rabbit to chase, but that the rabbit hole was one she would never be clever enough to find on her own. For a girl whose entire identity was built on being the smartest person in the room, it was the perfect, infuriating insult.

"Right," she said, her voice tight. She forced the smirk back onto her face, but it was a brittle, fragile thing now, a mask for the frantic calculations happening behind it. "Of course. A secret girlfriend. Canadian? Top secret. Got it."

Grue finished inputting the number and pocketed his phone. "We'll be in touch."

I gave a single nod, then turned and walked away without another word, leaving them standing by the door. I could feel Tattletale's eyes on my back, her mind racing, a predator that had just scented blood.

The walk back to the brownstone through the dark, damp tunnels was a quiet one. The air was cool and smelled of wet earth and old secrets. The mistake with the phone gnawed at me, a raw spot my paranoia kept poking. I wasn't a spy. I wasn't some black-ops ghost who knew the thousand little ways you could give yourself away. I was a kid who woke up in an alley with a slot machine in his skull, trying to figure out the rules of the shark tank while already bleeding. Of course I was going to make mistakes. The cold logic of it was a bitter pill, but I swallowed it down. I couldn't undo the error. I just had to factor it into the equation, another variable in the math problem of my continued survival.

I emerged into the dusty silence of my basement, the heavy stone door swinging shut behind me with a soft, final thud. I let the armor dissolve back into my skin, the cool, tingling sensation a familiar comfort now. I was still wearing the same cheap hoodie and sweatpants. A flimsy shield of normalcy against the monstrous reality of my own body.

Upstairs, in the derelict kitchen, I found a bag of coffee grounds and a kettle in one of the boxes of supplies I'd bought. Basic survival gear. My hands worked on their own, filling the kettle from a jug of bottled water, measuring out the dark, fragrant grounds into a cheap drip cone. The small, domestic ritual was grounding. The rich, bitter smell of the coffee brewing was the only truly good scent I knew anymore, a single, beautiful anchor in a world of sensory ash. As I stood there, waiting for the water to drip through, the familiar, clean chime of a notification bloomed in my awareness.

Achievement Unlocked: The Left-Hand Path
You've decided the best way to fight monsters is to get on their payroll. A bold strategic choice. Or maybe just a really, really stupid one.
Reward: 1x Silver Ticket

Click to shrink...

A bitter, silent laugh hitched in my chest. Even the universe thought I was an idiot. With a familiar sense of grim duty, I reached into my mind and tore the new ticket.

Energy Regeneration
| Rare Ability |
You regenerate your energy/mana but in exchange, your stamina is being consumed instead.

Click to shrink...

The rich aroma of the coffee filled the air, a grounding scent in a world that had just tilted on its axis again. My attention was lost somewhere in the dark, fragrant steam rising from the kettle as the information settled into my brain. My first thought was a cynical dismissal. Great. A power source for a type of power I don't even have.

But as the thought crossed my mind, something else happened. A new sensation bloomed within me, a fundamental shift in my internal landscape. Before, all I had was the quiet, ever-present hum of my stamina. It was a constant river of warm, kinetic vitality flowing through me, the feeling of a furnace always burning, so ubiquitous I barely noticed it.

Now, there was a new continent in my soul. A cool, still reservoir had settled in my chest, a pocket of placid, absolute potential that was entirely separate from the warm, active current.

I focused on the new ability, on the conceptual bridge between them. With a conscious act of will, I tried to flex this new, unseen muscle.

I expected a trickle. A gentle sip.

My intent was to open a tap, to draw a single, measured sample. The system, in its infinite wisdom, responded by taking a sledgehammer to the main water line.

The new ability was a black hole that had just opened in my gut, and my stamina was the little spaceship that got too close. A bone-deep fatigue I hadn't felt since my first moments in that alley slammed into me. A wave of dizziness washed over me, the floor tilting sickeningly. My knees buckled, and I would have gone down if one of my tentacles hadn't shot out on instinct, slamming against the floorboards to hold me up.

The dizzy spell passed a moment later, the river of my stamina surging to refill what had been stolen, but the memory of that vulnerability was sharp and cold. In that instant, I came to a simple, brutal conclusion about myself: I needed to read the fine fucking print. I had latched onto the word "boundless" and, like an idiot, had taken it at face value. The cosmic lawyer had gotten me on the semantics. The real rule, the one that mattered, was right there in the details: Your stamina recovers incredibly... It recovers. It isn't infinite. The ocean was vast, yes. But an ocean still had a floor, and this new power was a drain hole capable of showing me the bottom if I wasn't careful.

The torrent raged for a moment and then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped. The whirlpool vanished. A profound and absolute stillness settled in my chest.

The reservoir was full.

I stood there, my breathing a little unsteady, my hand tight around the warm coffee mug. The disappointment evaporated like steam from the kettle. This was something else entirely. It was the kind of power that made the hair on your arms stand up, a feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff with a live wire in your hand. It was terrifying. And it was magnificent.

But the cost was control. I thought I'd gotten a patient fuel-maker, but today the system was reminding me what happens when you make assumptions. I hadn't opened a valve; I had pulled the pin on a grenade. It was a new, incredible source of power, but it was also a new way to bleed out. I would have to learn to manage it, to throttle the connection, to master the floodgates.

A cold, feral grin, a little more strained this time, spread across my face.

Okay. I can work with this.

---

Spoiler: AN

had a bit of free time on vacation, so here you go.

 

[Shelman]

Thx fr chptr dde

 

[Neondagger]

Mc pov for most of the chapter:

Thx for the chapter

 

[F4u5t]

Thanks for the chapter!!
And now I will spend the rest of my day thinking about his new power... Will it work as a backup battery for the powers he already has? Will he learn to harness it to do blast of energy, propulse himself through the air, or perhaps invest some neat magic spell if it is mana? Oh, the wonders of being a broken character!

 

[dasstan]

Chapter 9: The Grind

---

The alliance's first victory didn't end with a cheer; it ended with the quiet, methodical sounds of professionals inventorying their loot. Faultline's crew moved with a practiced efficiency that had nothing to do with alliances and everything to do with billable hours. On the perimeter, a handful of Empire thugs in their stark red and black stood guard, their posture a lazy kind of arrogant, a stark contrast to the quiet competence of the mercenaries. It was a perfect snapshot of the truce: a temporary intersection of professional greed and ideological thuggery.

I stood apart from all of it, a seamless grey statue watching the jackals divide their kill. My part was done. GLaDOS's intel painted the target; my body was the guided missile that followed the laser. As the Undersiders filed out, Tattletale caught my eye from across the concrete floor. She gave a single, sharp nod, a gesture of pure, professional acknowledgment. Your intel was good. That was all it needed to say. It was a confirmation that I had earned my seat at the table.

The next few days settled into a grim, repetitive rhythm. A new target from GLaDOS in the morning, a briefing with a fresh set of temporary, untrustworthy allies in the afternoon, and a fresh wave of violence before bed. The Unholy Alliance, for all its internal rot, was a terrifyingly efficient machine when pointed at a common enemy.

The first major blow was struck by the Empire. GLaDOS had pinpointed the location of a fortified ABB barracks, a concrete bunker of a building that served as their primary staging ground in the Docks. Kaiser orchestrated the assault with the cold precision of a surgeon planning an amputation. The streets for three blocks around were sealed by the flashing red and blue lights of a dozen PRT vehicles. They weren't there to stop us; they were there to hold the coats of the men in the ring. I walked past the first cruiser. The officer inside, a man with a graying mustache and tired eyes, met my gaze through the thick, emotionless lenses of my faceplate. There was a long second where we were the only two people in the world. Then he gave a slow, deliberate turn of his head, looking back down the street he was guarding, a silent, mutual acknowledgment of the dirty work being done tonight, and whose hands were being allowed to do it.

While the Empire's capes and soldiers formed a merciless cordon, I walked calmly toward the main entrance. The ABB lookouts opened fire, a storm of automatic weapons fire that would have shredded an armored van. The bullets sparked and ricocheted off my Carapace, a shower of angry hornets that couldn't find a place to sting. I raised my hands, a picture of nonchalance, drawing every eye and every bullet. That's right, folks, I thought, a grim, internal smirk on my face. Look at the freak with the tentacles. Pay no attention to the jackboots setting up a kill box.

In the chaos, Krieg and the twin giants, Fenja and Menja, were able to bulldoze through a wall behind their lines, acting like a pincer to Kaiser's forces. It was brutal. It was quick. And when it was over, the first thing I did when I was alone was retract my armor, an urgent, crawling sensation under my skin like I needed to scrub the filth of the victory off me.

The Unholy Alliance was a strange machine. Some days, I was the anvil for the Empire's hammers, a blunt instrument used for loud, messy work that reeked of fanaticism. The objectives were simple, the methods brutal, and the company was tedious. Other days, the work required a lighter touch. That was when Tattletale called. Her plans were a different animal entirely: clean, quiet, and humming with a professional intelligence that was a welcome relief from the Empire's ideological chest-thumping.

The laundromat job was one of hers. It was an exercise in precision.

We started in the basement of a derelict bakery next door, a dusty, forgotten space that smelled of century-old flour and dead rats.

"Right here," Tattletale said, tapping a spot on the damp concrete floor. She had a smug, predatory grin on her face. "Their counting house is a reinforced concrete box. Six-foot foundation. But the old city plans show a utility sub-level a foot below that. They built their fortress on hollow ground."

Skitter's bugs had already mapped it. My job was the dirty part. I knelt, my armored hands pressing against the floor. I focused my Ghoul strength into a steady, grinding pressure, my fingers sinking into the concrete as if it were wet clay. A neat section of flooring lifted out with a faint grating sound.

Below was the dark, damp earth. Regent, his posture radiating a profound sense of boredom, tossed me a small headlamp. I caught it and slipped it on before dropping into the hole. I began to dig, my Kagune erupting from my back. The four crimson tentacles became precision tools, boring through the packed soil and rock with quiet efficiency. It was claustrophobic work, the tunnel just wide enough for my shoulders, the smell of wet dirt and worms filling my senses.

After twenty minutes of silent digging, my fingers brushed against rough-cast concrete. A moment later, Skitter's voice, small and tinny, came through my comms. "You're there."

This was the final, delicate part. Grue dropped into the tunnel behind me, his darkness flowing forward to fill the space at the end of the tunnel, a perfect, sound-dampening blanket.

Working in the sensory void, my hands tracing the rough surface of the bunker's floor, my Kagune shifted. The tips hardened and sharpened into diamond-hard drill bits. I pressed them against the concrete, and with a low, grinding hum that was completely absorbed by Grue's darkness, they began to work. The tentacles severed the rebar with a brief, high-pitched whine that died a foot from its source.

A heavy slab of the bunker's floor came free. I lowered it carefully into the tunnel below.

Through the opening, I could see it: stacks of cash on wooden pallets and rows of metal deposit boxes. Skitter's bugs were already at work, a silent, black tide that began ferrying the money out of the vault room and down into the tunnel.

We emptied the entire thing from below and backfilled our tunnel, leaving the gaping hole in their foundation as a parting gift. To the ABB, their vault room was still sealed from the outside, secure and untouched. They wouldn't know they'd been robbed until the next time they went to make a deposit and found their fortress built on a hole in the ground. The ABB's financial spine had been broken without a single alarm tripped.

The final piece was their main stronghold, a massive, multi-story warehouse complex that bristled with guns. A direct assault would be costly. The plan was simpler. Elegant, even.

The Undersiders and a handful of Merchants launched a loud, chaotic diversion on the north side of the complex. As the bulk of the ABB's forces rushed to meet the perceived threat, I stood in the shadows of an alley a half-mile away, a silent bodyguard to a nervous-looking woman in a suit of black body armor emblazoned with red suns.

"The structural weak point is the primary pillar on the southeast corner," GLaDOS's voice confirmed in my ear. "A sustained, high-energy impact there will initiate a... cascading structural failure."

I turned to the woman in the black and red armor. "That one," I said, my voice flat, pointing to the southeast corner of the massive building. "The main support pillar. Hit it with everything you have and don't let up."

She gave a short, stiff nod. Her full-face mask hid her expression completely, but my senses painted a clearer picture. The air around her was thick with the sharp, sour tang of adrenaline, the chemical stench of pure terror. Beneath the soft fabric of her costume, I could hear the frantic, rabbit-quick flutter of her heart. She took a shaky, deep breath, raised her hands, and a star was born in the night sky over Brockton Bay. It was a silent, terrible thing, a sphere of pure, white-hot plasma that pulsed with a light so bright it hurt to look at. It drifted slowly, inexorably, until it touched the corner of the building. The warehouse didn't explode. It sagged, like plastic held too close to a flame. Steel glowed cherry-red, then white, then liquefied. The entire corner of the building simply ceased to exist, and the rest followed with the slow, majestic groan of a dying beast.

And just like that, the war was effectively over. We had systematically vivisected the ABB, cutting them apart piece by piece until all that was left was the twitching head and its shadow. Their soldiers were dead or scattered, their money was gone, their weapons seized, their strongholds turned to rubble. All that remained was the dragon and his ghost.

I was back in the brownstone, the rich, bitter smell of coffee a welcome anchor. My Omni Phone buzzed. It was the Undersiders' number. I answered. Tattletale's voice came through, tight and sharp with excitement.

"We've got them," she said, without preamble. "Coil just dropped the golden ticket in our lap. Lung and Oni Lee. They're holed up in a warehouse on the docks. He's lost his bombs, his money, and his soldiers. He's desperate."

The phone buzzed again as a data packet arrived. I hung up the call and opened the file. It was a complete tactical layout. Entry points, guard rotations, structural weak points. A perfect, gift-wrapped kill box.

The aperture icon on my screen narrowed. GLaDOS's voice was a dry, synthesized rasp in my ear.

"The intelligence is surprisingly competent," she stated. "For a human."

"It's a test," I said, my eyes tracing the kill lanes on the map.

"Obviously," she retorted. "He is testing you. An excellent opportunity, really. We should do our own tests."

I felt a cold flicker of agreement. She was right. This was a perfect chance to gather data, not just on Lung, but on Coil's methods and the Empire's response. "What did you have in mind?"

"I have compiled a list of seventy-three potential high-stress experiments," she said, her voice humming with a sterile, scientific enthusiasm. "We can begin with 'Forced Environmental Toxin Inhalation' on the Empire's Brutes and proceed from there."

I filed that away under "things to never, ever do." Still, her core point was valid. This was an opportunity. Coil thought he was the only one in the lab coat.
I called Tattletale back.

"I'm in."

---

Spoiler: A/N:

Back from vacation. Chapter 10 is not cooperating, but should be ready by tomorrow.

 

[To-be-hero-X]

"I have compiled a list of seventy-three potential high-stress experiments,"

Click to shrink...

I love this ai seriously anyone who does this too scum deserve a medal of honor

 

[CantFocusOneThing]

Does the Kagune also work with his caparace ability or would it be not worth it to use on the Kagune?

 

[F4u5t]

"I have compiled a list of seventy-three potential high-stress experiments,"

Click to shrink...

WOW! A helpful GLaDOS?

THE CAKE IS A LIE!!!!!! ...Sorry, I don't know where that came from

 

[jojeo]

Does the Kagune also work with his caparace ability or would it be not worth it to use on the Kagune?

Click to shrink...

Honestly I want him to keep gaining organic abilities, with items such as glados helping him in the technological sense

I wonder how glados and dragon will interact

 

[Huraider]

Thanks for the chapter!

Interesting to see the MC dealing with Bakuda with the gangs support, seen a couple fics like this but most the MC end up doing 99% thus making no sense for the team-up, but nice seeing that here everyone is pulling their weight, even if the MC is, well, the MC.

...can't wait for him to eat up a parahuman though, wonder if he gets the Shard.

"I have compiled a list of seventy-three potential high-stress experiments," she said, her voice humming with a sterile, scientific enthusiasm. "We can begin with 'Forced Environmental Toxin Inhalation' on the Empire's Brutes and proceed from there."

I filed that away under "things to never, ever do." Still, her core point was valid.

Click to shrink...

Never say never my guy. As soon as the ABB and thus the alliance is done let the sadistic A.I. have its technically-for-science fun.

 

[dasstan]

Does the Kagune also work with his caparace ability or would it be not worth it to use on the Kagune?

Click to shrink...

Yeah. The receptive body trait does a lot to tie the abilities together. At baseline, Carapace is just organic armor that scales with the characters abilities. Nothing in the flavor text implies any degree of control over it. Receptive body tweaks it a bit and makes it both play well with his other abilities: Kagune sheathes and what not, and also gives the carapace itself some degree of shapeshifting. Nothing crazy, but he can selectively cover/uncover parts and he shifted the design away from "Bug Man" to the seamless grey design I've been referencing in the text.

... Waaait a minute. Do you mean coating the kagune with the carapace? Huh. I hadn't considered that.

WOW! A helpful GLaDOS?

Click to shrink...

The Gacha enforced Familiars being loyal to the MC is doing a lot.

 

[CantFocusOneThing]

Yeah. The receptive body trait does a lot to tie the abilities together. At baseline, Carapace is just organic armor that scales with the characters abilities. Nothing in the flavor text implies any degree of control over it. Receptive body tweaks it a bit and makes it both play well with his other abilities: Kagune sheathes and what not, and also gives the carapace itself some degree of shapeshifting. Nothing crazy, but he can selectively cover/uncover parts and he shifted the design away from "Bug Man" to the seamless grey design I've been referencing in the text.

... Waaait a minute. Do you mean coating the kagune with the carapace? Huh. I hadn't considered that.


The Gacha enforced Familiars being loyal to the MC is doing a lot.

Click to shrink...

Yeah i did mean it and if it would be worth to use it on the Kagune cause it could take it's flexibility to gain a slightly better protection on the Kagune it's not worth it when it's already strong and has regeneration but then maybe receptive body could fix that.

 

[F4u5t]

The Gacha enforced Familiars being loyal to the MC is doing a lot.

Click to shrink...

It's evident that the Gacha is a force much greater that I thought possible.

 

[Araurlis]

The Gacha enforced Familiars being loyal to the MC is doing a lot.

Click to shrink...

So much so that a saner AI would have been the easier choice. Actually, do we have to worry about the gacha being overwhelmed and GladOS going rampant?

 

[Neondagger]

Fantastic chapter also you are solely responsible for the number of chaos gacha snippets I've started recently

 

[Neondagger]

Do you mean coating the kagune with the carapace? Huh. I hadn't considered that.

Click to shrink...

That would probably render them heavier and stiffer but it might be worth it to try selective applications so you can have like a hammer at the end of the tentacles

 

[dasstan]

So much so that a saner AI would have been the easier choice. Actually, do we have to worry about the gacha being overwhelmed and GladOS going rampant?

Click to shrink...

No, I'm not about to pull a Diabolus ex Machina. The gacha operates on a higher level than the entities. I'm treating it as basically ROB. Or Random Omnipotent System.

While there may be shard based powers that can trump certain gacha given powers, the gacha itself is untouchable.

 

[Zerak]

The basic premise is... A Worm fan gets isekai'd. In the process he losses just about every last bit of personal knowledge he once had. All he was allowed to keep was his knowledge of Worm as he remembers it.

Click to shrink...

Does he get his memories back?

 

[dasstan]

Chapter 10: Dragonfall

---

The morning light, thin and grey, filtered through the kitchen window. The building had been filthy when the Deed to Land gave it to me, but the labor of cleaning it had been a welcome distraction in the days since the truce. The rest of the brownstone had been tended to: Rooms dusted, debris removed, but this part of the brownstone was my territory. Now, I had scrubbed the countertops and linoleum until they gleamed, a small, clean, warm island in a house of solitude. The quiet here was different. It was a solid, foundational quiet, the kind that soaked into brick and old wood. I could feel the silence, a heavy, comforting presence after the paper-thin walls of the apartment where a neighbor's cough could travel through the drywall.

Fill the kettle. Measure the grounds. The hiss of the gas burner was the only sound. I poured the boiling water over the dark, fragrant grounds, and the rich, bitter aroma rose with the steam, the only truly good smell I knew. In my hand, the heavy ceramic mug was a warm, solid anchor. This small ritual was a piece of a life I couldn't remember, a life where things like this mattered. I leaned against the counter, the warmth seeping into my fingers, and took a moment. In my mind, six bronze tickets were a shimmering, unanswered question. It was time to check the rifle before going over the top.

I took a final, appreciative sip, set the mug down on the clean counter, and tore the first ticket.

Novice Blade Weapon Mastery
|Common Skill|
You are reasonably talented in handling bladed weapons such as swords and knives. You know how to hold the sword and keep the sharp pointed toward the enemy as well as being able to align the edge of your cuts and poke the stabby end into people.

Click to shrink...

A cold click sounded behind my eyes, a neurological switch being flipped. My right hand twitched on its own, my fingers curling into a perfect, economical grip around a phantom hilt. My stance shifted, a subtle adjustment in my feet that I hadn't ordered. The knowledge settled into my muscles, a hard-coded instinct for violence with a blade. It felt utterly unearned, a software patch installed directly into my brain without a license agreement. A useful file for a different fight, on a different day. I filed it away and tore the next ticket.

Glide
|Common Ability|
Allows you to glide 1cm above the ground and move like you are not affected by friction, allowing you to move around as if you are skating.

Click to shrink...

A strange, buoyant sensation lifted me. I looked down. My feet, clad in worn socks, were floating a perfect centimeter above the clean linoleum floor. I pushed off, and the world became a sheet of ice. I slid across the kitchen with a silent, frictionless grace. The sensation was a key turning a lock I didn't know I had. A phantom echo, not a real memory. The feeling of a cheap towel tucked into my collar, flapping like a cape. The dizzying, joyful terror of being swung around by strong, safe hands. A man's deep, rumbling laughter. The details were smoke, a memory of a memory, gone before I could grasp them. A genuine, unforced smile spread across my face before I even realized it. It was gone a moment later, but the warmth of it remained.

I let the effect fade and tore the third ticket.

Intermediate Item Construction
|Rare Skill|
You know how to make decent magical and enchanted items, if you know fire magic, you can turn a regular sword into a sword that can light itself on fire on command. If you have the ability Invisibility, you can probably make a cloak that suppresses your presence.

Click to shrink...

A sharp, splitting pressure built behind my temples, a half-second of vertigo that made the floor seem to tilt. Then it was gone, replaced by a stunning, brilliant clarity. A flood of esoteric theory and alien blueprints filled my awareness. I looked at the simple stainless steel kettle on the stove, and my mind supplied three different ways to enchant it for instantaneous boiling using rendered fat and a pinch of powdered bone. The connections snapped into place with an unnerving precision. This was the key to building an arsenal. A project for the long, cold peace that was coming. It was a promise of real, custom-built power.

My hand was steady as I tore the fourth ticket.

Bountiful Harvest
|Common Ability|
You are able to create ripe and tasty fruits and vegetables by expending your own energy.

Click to shrink...

A perfect, ruby-red apple materialized in my palm. It was cool to the touch, its skin flawless. I raised it to my face, and the smell was a ghost from another life: sweet, crisp, and utterly real. For a stupid, hopeful second, my breath caught in my throat. I took a bite.

Ashes. A dry, tasteless mouthful of pure disappointment. I spat the grey mush into the sink, a dry, self-mocking chuckle hitching in my throat. The universe had a cruel sense of humor, and I kept falling for the setup. It was a stark, physical reminder of the humanity that had been carved out of me.

I tore the fifth ticket, my jaw tight.

Wraith
|Uncommon Familiar|
A lesser spirit, while a wraith has little in the form of combat ability they are very hard to detect, so they are able to serve as effective surveillance and scouting as they will reform even if killed.

Click to shrink...

A patch of air in the corner of the kitchen shimmered, coalescing into a form that was hard to look at directly. It was a translucent, spectral shape, a pillar of shimmering heat and quiet sorrow. A new, phantom sense bloomed in my mind alongside it, a silken string connecting me to the creature, a channel of awareness just waiting to be opened. I understood it on a gut level. It was a scout. A spy. A perfect, unseen set of eyes. An immediate, high-value tactical asset. This, I could use.

The final ticket. I tore it.

Remy
|Common Familiar|
Ratatouille - Remy is an unusually smart rat who is a very proficient chef.

Click to shrink...

With a soft pop, a small, brown rat appeared on the floor. It blinked, sniffed the air, then began grooming a whisker with a fastidious delicacy that seemed out of place in the silent house. I felt the spark of its intelligence, a keen, analytical mind hiding behind the twitching nose and beady eyes. On my phone, GLaDOS's aperture icon narrowed to a contemptuous slit.

"Congratulations," the synthesized voice was dry enough to strip paint. "You have acquired... a vermin sous-chef. I will alert the Michelin guide."

I let out a long, weary sigh and dismissed the rat to Familiar Space. The armory was checked. I finished my coffee, the last moment of peace I was going to get today. Then I walked to the basement and let the armor flow over my skin, the cool, grey shell a familiar comfort. It was time to go to war.

The warehouse district was a maze of brick and shadows. I met Skitter at the rally point, a silent nod passing between us. We synced comms, the plan already set. I was the anvil. She was the hammer. And the Wraith was our eye in the sky, a silent, unseen ghost drifting high above the street, its alien sense a third, disquieting feed in the back of my mind.

There was no preamble. Oni Lee appeared in the middle of the street, and the world became a kaleidoscope of ash and steel. He went for a kill shot, a teleport directly behind me, his blades aimed at the back of my neck. They screeched against my Carapace, the impact a jarring vibration that went all the way to my teeth, the sound of knives trying to murder a gravestone. He was gone an instant later.

We weren't fighting. We were just making noise. The shriek of his blades on my armor, the useless thud of my fists on empty air. He couldn't hurt me, and I couldn't touch him.

I executed the plan, deliberately turning my back in a feigned, clumsy pivot. It was obvious bait. The professional in him couldn't resist the opening. As he materialized, I was already sprinting, my armored feet pounding against the asphalt as I dove through the open loading bay of the target warehouse. He followed, pressing his advantage.

The moment he was inside, Skitter's voice crackled in my ear, a small, tinny sound. "Now."

A black tide surged over the building. A thick, living carpet of insects swarmed over every window, every skylight, every crack of light. The world plunged into a deep, claustrophobic gloom, the roar of a million tiny wings a deafening, skin-crawling chorus. The box was closed.

Oni Lee knew he was trapped. He escalated. He teleported directly in front of me, his hand raised. I saw a small, familiar cylinder. Bakuda's work. There was a silent flash of brilliant, white light.

Then, agony. A thousand white-hot needles driving through my eyes, lancing deep into the soft, wet meat of my brain. My optic nerves were on fire, a searing, chemical burn that felt like it was melting my skull from the inside out. The world vanished, swallowed by a churning, featureless, and absolute grey. Eigengrau, the small, academic part of my brain that wasn't screaming supplied, a useless piece of trivia in the sensory hellscape.

The world rushed in to fill the void. The concrete floor beneath my hands was a universe of grit and cold. The air was thick, a suffocating chemical stew of cordite and ozone that was a physical taste on the back of my tongue. The roar of Skitter's million-winged swarm was a physical pressure against my skin, a deafening, skin-crawling chorus that vibrated in my bones.

The first explosion hit me. The deafening roar threw me bodily into a concrete support pillar. I felt my Carapace crack along my ribs, a sharp, terrifying sensation like my own bones breaking. Shrapnel, hot and jagged, tore through the breach, and a fresh, searing pain bloomed in my side. I could feel the slick, hot wetness of my own blood under my armor.

Skitter's voice was a thin, frantic lifeline in the storm. "Left, move left!"

I scrambled on the floor, a clumsy, blind animal, my only view of the world the alien, top-down perspective of the Wraith in my mind's eye. It was a nightmare, trying to command my body from a distance. The Wraith saw him appear. I swung a fist, but the timing was off, my brain unable to process the detached, third-person information fast enough. I hit nothing but air.

He capitalized on the opening. A teleport, and a vicious, two-footed kick sent me sprawling. Before I could recover, he was there, blades stabbing down into the cracked armor on my ribs, trying to pry the wound open. The pain was a clean, sharp, and hideous thing. I roared, lashing out with a tentacle that he dodged with contemptuous ease.

"He's moving to your right!" Skitter yelled. "Get up!"

I lurched to my feet, my regeneration working overtime, a frantic, cellular panic to patch the holes as fast as he could make them. Another explosion went off, closer this time, and I felt the heat wash over me, the concussion rattling my teeth. I was a puppet, and I was tangled in my own strings.

"Behind you!"

This time, I didn't try to attack. I brought all four of my tentacles up, a desperate, defensive cage of writhing muscle around my head and torso. A grenade went off against the makeshift shield, and the force of it drove me to my knees. The professional was taking the monster apart, piece by piece, and I was losing.

Then, a flicker. A pinprick of light in the grey static, like a dying star. A shape. My healing was finally winning the war in my own skull. The world began to resolve itself into fuzzy, heat-shimmering silhouettes. Skitter's voice in my ear. The Wraith's view in my mind. The first, fuzzy shapes returning to my eyes. The three streams of information suddenly snapped into a single, cohesive picture, a desperate and imperfect triangulation.

He teleported again, a dark shape aiming for my flank. I didn't have a plan. I didn't have a strategy. All I had was a last, ragged breath and a desperate gamble. I didn't wait. I unleashed everything, a full, sweeping smash with all four tentacles.

It connected. A solid, meaty impact that felt like hitting a side of beef with a sledgehammer. I felt the wet crunch of his ribs, saw the bandolier of explosives on his chest shred and spark. His eyes, visible behind his mask, went wide with a very human, very final expression of a man who had just made a fatal miscalculation.

My Kagune wrapped around his stunned body, the slick, warm muscle coiling tight. With a roar of pain and fury, I spun, a human slingshot, and launched him. He flew through the insect-covered window, a dark projectile against the night sky.

The world went silent. The deafening, omnipresent roar of the swarm cut off as the window shattered. The silence that rushed into the void was so total it made my ears ache. A high, keening whine that had been background noise was now the only thing in the universe, a thin needle of sound drilling into my skull. My own breath sawed in and out of my lungs, loud and ragged, a blacksmith's bellows in the dead air. I could feel the frantic, hammering thud of my heart against my cracked ribs. A few seconds passed, stretching into an eternity.

Then, a second sunrise bloomed over Brockton Bay, a brilliant, silent flower of fire. It was the first clear, perfect thing I saw with my newly healed eyes. My regeneration had scrubbed the agony from my skull, but the memory of the pain remained, a cold, hard stone in my gut. By the time that feeling settled, the fight with Lung was already over.

I had expected a warzone. I found an anti-climax. He was trapped, still partially scaled but no longer escalating, within a cage of hastily constructed iron girders. Kaiser stood nearby, his arms crossed, a silent, imposing figure. Newter was sitting on a crate, looking smug.

"Told you it would work," Tattletale said, her voice buzzing with satisfaction. My meta-knowledge, the little fact about Lung's aversion to Newter's specific brand of poison, had been the key.

The war was over. I watched from the shadows as the victors gathered. This was the part in a movie where the heroes would shake hands, a moment of grim, mutual respect. Instead, Kaiser and Grue just looked at each other, the predators they were, each one recalculating the odds now that the bigger monster was dealt with. Newter stood apart from their silent power struggle, his posture loose and disinterested. For him, this wasn't about empires or territory. It was a job. A very messy, very dangerous job that was now, finally, over. He just wanted to get paid.

A new sound cut through the silence, the distant, rising wail of approaching PRT sirens. That was our cue. There were no grand pronouncements. Kaiser turned and walked away, his soldiers falling in behind him. Grue melted back into the shadows with his team. Newter just stretched, a casual gesture like a man punching a clock, and ambled off.

I made my way through the tunnels. My armor was gone, dissolved back into the hidden space beneath my skin. The air in the tunnel tasted of damp earth and century-old secrets, a welcome change from the stench of cordite and cooked meat. My footsteps were the only sound, flat and dead against the packed dirt floor. Each one was a step away from the fire.

The war was over. The loud part, anyway.

Oni Lee was gone. Lung was caged. The calculations had been correct. The ABB was a decapitated corpse, and the truce had served its purpose. I had paid a price for the victory, of course. The map of the future I'd arrived with, the story that had been my only real advantage, was now a smoldering ruin. A necessary casualty.

The old advantage was gone. But I wasn't flying blind. My knowledge was no longer a map to follow, but a bestiary of monsters I knew were still circling in the dark. Coil, the snake who thought this city was his already. The Empire, a political firestorm waiting for a spark. A monster that could drown it all. And somewhere out there, in a future I had shattered, a traveling circus of psychos who made Bakuda look like a hobbyist.

The thought settled with the cold, hard finality of a blueprint clicking into place. Project GLaDOS. The real war, the one for survival, would not be won with a baseball bat and a set of monster tentacles. It would be won in a workshop, with tools of my own making.

My hand found the familiar rough texture of the brick wall ahead. I pressed on the sequence of stones, and a faint outline appeared in the gloom. With a low groan of hidden hinges, the secret door swung inward. The air that washed over me was different. It smelled of my basement: dust and concrete and clean, dry air. It was the smell of security.

I stepped through, moving from the damp, uncertain dark of the tunnel into the solid, quiet stillness of my own territory. As my foot crossed the threshold, a notification bloomed in my mind, its light a brilliant, cutting thing. A system message acknowledging the end of an operation.

Major Achievement Unlocked: Unholy Alliance

Click to shrink...

The name echoed in my skull. The reward appeared in my mind's eye. It was not a trophy for a battle won. It was the first piece of raw material for the war to come.

A single, brilliant, multifaceted diamond.

 

[To-be-hero-X]

A single, brilliant, multifaceted diamond

Click to shrink...

Diamond roll all that took was putting down a dragon and teleporting suicide bomber and have alliance with scum

 

[dasstan]

Diamond roll all that took was putting down a dragon and teleporting suicide bomber and have alliance with scum

Click to shrink...

Sort of, but not quite. The Diamond reward is the culmination of abandoning the firm guidance of metaknowledge. He still has a pretty firm understanding of the immediate future, like what Coil is going to do with the Empire's identities, and probably Leviathan, but every step after that is going to be a maybe. The butterfly has flapped its wings. There's little chance that things will play out the way they did in canon, now. For better or worse.

 

[Despacitoleo]

Diamond roll all that took was putting down a dragon and teleporting suicide bomber and have alliance with scum

Click to shrink...

I say we kill them all, fucking nazis

 

[AbenSur]

I hope he takes advantage of the bag of meat eventually, honestly aren't is kind of a perfect summon since as a rat he wouldn't care about cooking human flesh.