Miscalculation [Worm One-Shot]

Miscalculation

[A/N 1: This is a one-shot, based on the idea of 'what if Jack Slash screwed up badly in recruiting Bonesaw?']
[A/N 2: This has been beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]


Riley Grace Davis was six years old, and she was really, really scared.

She didn't know who the strangers were who had burst into her parents' house and were holding them prisoner. Their leader was a tall man with a funny beard, who talked a lot and said things that sounded nice but were really mean if you listened to what he was actually saying. He also liked playing with knives, which was stupid because people weren't supposed to play with knives because you could cut yourself that way.

"You sure about this, Jack?" asked the big mean scarred man with the axe who was holding Daddy by the arm. "She ain't but a little bit of nothing."

"Oh, trust me." The man called Jack was talking again in that voice that made Riley's spine creep. His hand clamped down on Riley's shoulder. "This little girl has a world of potential. Prepare her family. I can't wait to see what we can bring out in her."

"I hope so." The woman holding Mommy had a dead, flat way of talking that was even scarier than the others. "I hate wasting time."

"D-don't—" Riley stopped, not wanting to make the bad man get mad at her.

"Don't what, my poppet?" Riley didn't know what a 'poppet' was, but she knew she didn't like being called one. "Speak up. You can talk to us."

"Don't hurt my daddy and mommy!" Riley burst out. "They didn't do anything wrong, and you're being mean to them!"

The one that looked like a clown, who was holding Drew, let out cackling laughter, even as his head flickered from side to side. Clowns had never scared her before, but they did now.

"Can we just kill them and go, already?" That was the woman with the glass floating around her. If Riley hadn't been so frightened, she would have thought the coloured glass was very pretty. But it was sharp, and it had already been used to cut Mommy's and Daddy's faces, so Riley didn't like it at all.

Jack sighed, like a daddy whose kids all wanted to do different things. Riley had heard that sigh from Daddy when her and Drew were arguing about where they wanted to go. "No, Shatterbird. Didn't you hear me? This little girl is the answer to a problem you didn't even know we had. She has potential. We just need to unlock it."

"Thought kids didn't trigger this young, unless their parents are capes too." The big scarred mean man shook her Daddy by the arm. "Can't see it, Jack."

This time, Jack's smile was mean. "I believe the phrase is 'challenge accepted'. Take them into different rooms, and get to work. Don't kill them immediately, but make them vocal. I want my little poppet scrambling."

"Don't hurt them!" wailed Riley. "Please don't hurt them!"

Jack's smile widened and got meaner as her family was dragged away. Her daddy cried out her name and reached for her as the big scarred mean man trudged up the stairs, while the dead-voiced woman followed along with her mommy. Drew was crying as the scary clown ran out of the room with him, and the silent striped lady with no clothes on carried Muffles away as well.

"That's up to you," Jack said to her. "You care about your family, don't you? Well, my friends are going to hurt them a lot, and even kill them, unless you can figure out how to heal them. Unlock your potential, my dear, and the pain will be over soon."

Riley didn't know what he was talking about. "You're a big meanie and a bully!" she shouted. "I won't do anything for you! Leave them alone!"

Jack looked over at the strange mechanical-looking man who had stayed in the room with them, while the glass woman had gone with the scary clown. The mechanical man didn't say anything, but he shrugged and made motions with his hands.

"I just know it," Jack said, sounding a little annoyed. "I have a gut feeling, Alan. Do you still have those? Do you even have a gut to have them in?"

Then Riley heard a sound she'd never heard before. It was Daddy, screaming at the top of his lungs. Then she heard Mommy shrieking, even louder than Daddy. Drew screamed next, and Muffles started yelping in pain.

"Mommy! Daddy!" Riley tried to break free of Jack's grip, but he was too strong. "Let me go! Leave us alone!"

"Not until you show us what you're made of, poppet." Jack's grip tightened. "You know you can. Dig deep. It's right there." His teeth were really white against his beard as he gave her the meanest smile yet.

"I'm not your poppet!" Riley yelled the words as Daddy and Mommy and Drew and Muffles all screamed again, even louder than before. There was pressure in her head, and she nearly couldn't breathe, but she was so mad and so scared for her family that she pushed through anyway.

When she breathed in again, everything was quiet and the pressure in her head was gone. Jack had let go her shoulder, and was shaking his head like he was dizzy. Riley felt like her brain was fizzing, like she was a can of soda pop that someone had shaken up so it would spray everywhere when they pulled the tab. But it was a good kind of fizzing. A fizzing that talked to her.

"Well now," Jack said, his mean smile back on his face. "That's more like—"

Riley pulled the tab.

He died.

It took less than a second from beginning to end, but to Riley it took much longer. She pointed her arm toward him, and it split into five different stretchy bits, each one with a finger on the end. Jack didn't have time to react before they reached him, and by that time the little bones in her fingers had become knives and saws and other stuff that was really good at cutting. He'd wanted to see what she was like deep down, so she took him apart to see what he was like, deep down.

In the end, it seemed like he was just a bunch of muscles and bones and stuff that Riley didn't have names for. She liked to be neat, so she left the bits and pieces that used to be Jack in little separate piles on the floor. Then she turned toward the other mean person in the room.

He was a bit harder to kill, and there were mechanical blades trying to hurt her before she was finished, but her body healed as fast as they cut her, and he didn't heal at all. She made screwdrivers and spanners and drills and hammers out of the metal, and took away his outer covering, then took him apart too. The mechanical man died as quickly as Jack had, and she left his bits and pieces in neat piles. He had no bones, but he had metal, so she left some of it there for him.

She could feel where all the other mean people were, including two outside. One was too big to come in, and the other one didn't want to. They all had powers that they were using to hurt her family, so she found the cold spot inside her that didn't like powers, and pushed it outward. It went out and out and out, until she had covered everyone. Then she ran up the stairs to where Mommy and Daddy were.

When she ran into Mommy's and Daddy's bedroom, the mean people were standing over them, looking confused. "Oh, hey," said the big scarred man. "Looks like it worked."

The woman with the dead voice stared at her. "Uh, Hatchet—"

"Leave my mommy and daddy alone!" Riley was mad at them, and mad at herself for not being able to help her parents earlier. She stretched out her arms toward the mean people, and they split into the long stretchy things again. This time she had sharp metal blades and little spinning saws on them, along with wires to make the arm-snakes (she had to call them something) stronger. Her whole body was stronger with the metal she'd taken away from the mechanical man.

The woman with the dead voice tried to pull a pistol, but Riley cut her arm off, then finished cutting her into pieces. It was really easy, with the metal blades. Killing the big scarred man was harder, because his skin was tougher, but she sent wires and blades down his throat, and cut him up from the inside. Like all the others, she piled up his bones and other different parts next to his skin, after she took them out through his mouth.

Mommy and Daddy were still alive and still awake. They stared at her, and she could see how the mean people had hurt them. Her arm-snakes changed to things that could help people and not hurt them, and she fixed up Mommy and Daddy as quickly as she had killed the people who were hurting them. Then she ran out of the room, because there were still mean people hurting Drew and Muffles.

She nearly didn't recognise the glass woman and the scary clown, because the glass woman only had a helmet on, and the clown was moving with slow, dragging steps. He was talking funny too, making long, low sounds like a laughing toy when the batteries were running down. Riley used her arm-snakes and metal blades to take them apart and leave them in neat piles, then she went to Drew.

He was still alive, too, but he wasn't awake. So, she fixed what they'd done to him and went looking for the striped lady with no clothing on who had taken Muffles away. She found Muffles, and fixed him up too, but the lady wasn't anywhere around.

She knew that mean people didn't stop being mean when you turned your back, so she took Muffles and went outside to look for the last two mean people she knew about. The first one was big and stupid-looking, and had trampled Mommy's flower bed. He tried to get up and run away, but his stupid-looking body was too big for his little legs. She sent her longest arm-snake down his throat to where the thing that made him powerful was, and she cut it out and brought it back. Then she stabbed his brain a lot until he died.

The last mean person wasn't even near the house. Riley wouldn't have even known he was there, but he was one of the mean people too, sitting in a van two blocks away. Walking that far would have been too far, but Riley was a lot stronger now that she could do what she could do.

The man in the van was older and had a beard, and he looked up in surprise when Riley tapped on his window using an arm-snake. His eyes got a lot wider and he locked the door, but she bored right through the window with a metal drill, and then her arm-snakes could get to him. He screamed, but only for a second or so. After that, he was dead.

She left him in neat piles on the front seat of the van, and walked back home again. Muffles wanted to run beside her, so she let him. He was a good dog, and didn't run out on the road when she told him not to.

By the time she got home, Mommy and Daddy and Drew were downstairs, looking at the neat piles she'd made of the mean people. They stared at her as she walked in the front door.

"Riley!" Daddy said. "Thank god you're okay!"

Mommy just rushed to her and held her tightly, while Muffles licked both their faces.

Drew shook his head. "What … what happened?"

"It's alright," Riley said. "They were being mean, and I stopped them."

"You did good, honey," said Daddy. "You did really good."


[A/N: Broadcast and power nullification let her detect other capes and spread the nullification around to depower them. Her arms can transform into surgical tools and she can regenerate thanks to Crawler, and she can do 'surgery' at super-speed thanks to Chuckles (and she can slow down the reactions of people she's doing it to, or dull their pain, thanks to Winter). From Mannequin she got the ability to incorporate tech into her body and make herself a lot harder to kill. She didn't get anything from Shatterbird or Manton, because they're vial capes.]

End

 

Altpower Riley is something I've never seen before, but anything that wipes the smug of Jack's face is a good thing. And she apparently took the flesh with it!

EDIT: I would like to see a sequal the fall-out of Riley ending the Nine, but just leaving it as a Nine-stomp is fine too.

 

Is there supposed to be an implication that Jack Slash time traveled? At the start he seems very certain that he's going to get a canon-like outcome.

 

There's no really good canon reason given why he does this, so I just had him assuming he would get what he wanted. Because he usually does.

 

And that was the moment Jack realized, he fu**ed up.

 

Turns out when you make a habit of torturing people until they Trigger, someone will eventually Trigger with the power to solve their immediate problem, i.e. you.

 

He literally didn't have time.

She has super-speed when doing surgery.

It took her less than a second to entirely disassemble him down to his component organs and bones and suchlike.

His brain was already on the floor, dying of oxygen starvation, before he realised there was something wrong.

To Mannequin, he basically just fell apart into neat piles.

The average school of ravenous piranhas would back away very carefully and swim away nonchalantly so as not to get her attention.

 

... Is it bad that I want to see the neat pile that used to be the slaughter house 9?

 

God that fanon is annoying. Triggers have never been weird combination algebra like you're describing there. It's right up alongside Taylor pushing emotions into her bugs for nonsensical clearly wrong bullshit.

Don't misunderstand me here, you're the author and you can change things however you want to make whatever amusing fanfic that comes to mind. It'st just... ugh. Some things can be so clearly incorrect yet become somehow so widespread that it gets irritating, completely independent of the rest of the writing quality.

 

What? Buds and pings literally give newly triggered capes aspects of their powers, usually aspects that aren't otherwise being used.

How is what I've written incorrect?

 

Buds give similar sorts of powers to whatever cape the power budded from, that is true. Pings, meaning the data exchange that causes nearby parahumans to blank out for a bit, do not do that. As far as I know what exactly pings do isn't clear in canon but derivative powers definitely isn't it.

You can clearly see this from examples like Scrub and canon Bonesaw. Both triggered in range of other parahumans and pinged off them. Skitter, Tattletale, Skidmark and others for Scrub, various S9 capes including Jack Slash for Bonesaw. Both ended up with powers that had nothing to do with those other parahumans.

At most a first gen trigger in the presence of other capes should mean some sort of Trump aspect, but for all I know that's probably just a result of the usual Monkey Paw + Shard Specialty + Alien Logic equation.

 

I think at some point fanon conflated pings with cluster Triggers, which do have that sort of borrowing-minor-power-aspects thing.

 

Glory Girl budded off Manpower, and pinged off Lady Photon and Gallant--despite the fact that Gallant was a vial cape.

1. Pings do give access to powers held by the ping-ers.
2. No rule regarding capes in Worm is hard and fast.

 

If we disregard unsourced fanon and trace that back to where it comes from, we find Ward. Which is deeply suspect already but let's ignore the bullshit, assume the best of intentions, and give it all the credit for the moment. What do we have?

Or in other words, an occurrence that is very much not standard operating procedure meaning pings still don't do what you claim they do. Not in canon at least. Glory Girl essentially budded off both Manpower and Lady Photon and also got an aberrant bit of weirdness that shouldn't have happened from Gallant.

 

So if Glory Girl budded off Manpower and Lady Photon, why can't Riley bud off Jack, Mannequin, Hatchet Face, Winter, Chuckles and Crawler?

Also, there are other cases in canon where WB just went against his own 'standard operating procedure'. Such as when Canary's shard activated anyway and caused her ex to take a command, when dead shards should not pull that shit.

If that can happen, this can happen.

 

Because that's not how buds work. Riley would need to be running along with the S9 for at least a little while beforehand to qualify for anything like that and even then it would be wildly improbable for all the others to all be ready to bud at the same time to the same person. Refer to Aiden for more information there.

Please keep in mind that I'm very much in agreement that you can change the rules in your fanfic to whatever you like. I'm just annoyed that so many people think that changes like this have basis in canon. This is the sort of fanon that causes the setting to make even less sense than it already does. Good for short oneshots, but not for any serious consideration.

 

My point is, you can't say "This is how things work" with any real authority when it quite often doesn't work that way in canon. WB is okay at setting up rules, but terrible at sticking to his own canon about them.

(Also, I'm not overly fussed with Ward either, but discarding it to strengthen your case doesn't really help said case.)

 

What on earth are you talking about? The only occurrence in either Worm or Ward canon I know of that functions anywhere along the lines of fanon ping power combination silliness is the Glory Girl / Gallant thing, which is pretty clearly not remotely normal and in fact strengthens my case. That mess could only happen because of Gallant's shard being so screwed up by Eden's crash and whatever Cauldron did.

Actually, that could have been a canon-compliant way of a similar scenario to this fic happening, not that it matters. Siberian doesn't count since Manton is likely too far away, but Shatterbird is also a Cauldron cape. There's probably room for something plausibly weird to happen with her in the presence of a trigger event.

Riley's canon shard + Shatterbird aberrant connection = ???

 

The wiki does mention pings pick up extra information.

In any case, what happens in this one-shot is more viable than Jack Slash walking into a random house, deciding to torture all but one of the inhabitants, and having that one person trigger with a power that is not only highly useful to him, but doesn't involve the ability to murder him and all the Nine in the house.

 

A Trump 9 heroic Riley going on a world tour to stop mean people doing mean things is a really amusing image.

 

If the argument is turning to "how it would have worked in canon," then you have to include Broadcast telling Riley's shard to not let her hurt Jack, so none of this would have happened anyway.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if Broadcast could influence nearby trigger events to Jack's advantage. Which could explain how he got her powers to be useful for him.

 

It's not so much 'telling' as 'suggesting'.

And canonically, Broadcast spent more time forcing members of the Nine to act as meat-shields for him.

However, in this particular instance, Riley also had access to Broadcast, so she could ignore the suggestion, and she literally acted too fast for Mannequin to get in the way.