Security! (a Worm SI fic)

Great tense chapter, fast-paced action, and a beautiful climax. Well done!

 

It was a good action sequence, but this:

should not happen, not unless Mike somehow triggered offscreen. The Butcher curse only affects parahumans. The powerset and mind-echoes are simply transferred to the nearest available parahuman (ctrl+f Butcher) within a certain radius. (The second half of that conditional is in a separate WOG that wasn't archived.)

 

Cross-posting my answer from Spacebattles:
The actual WoG quote is " Butcher's powers would likely go to the nearest available parahuman."

Note that he didn't say 'would go'. 'Likely' adds some doubt.

In any case, suppose the way I/Mike set out the story to begin with, Butcher's powers could transfer to a normal.

Or hey, what if Mike counted as a parahuman as far as accepting Butcher's powers went? He already no-sells anyone trying to get a really good read on him.

In any case, not rewriting the damn chase scene.

 

I'm thrilled that it's ending. Most longer Worm fanfics (and many shorter ones) eventually wither and die. Seeing an epic actually reach its conclusion is extremely satisfying.

 

Mike being an anomality might have confused the shard too

 

Hmmm.... Probably just me nitpicking, but this segment was written in first-person... If the death was really as quick as implied, how would he have had enough time to form the thought: "At least it was quick?"


So, assuming it wasn't an oversight, speculation time!

Now, for this thought to have formed, it had to have been formed by a being not contained, or not fully contained, within Mike's body. This could be achieved through a number of possible ways that I can think of, each having their own ramifications:

-The thought was formed by the remainder of Mike's consciousness contained within the Butcher's Shard. Perhaps Mike's consciousness takes over the shard, and that is his vector to be inserted into 'I, Panacea', further culminating with his consciousness's takeover of ALL of Zion's Shards in 'I, Scion' (it's official, Ack's a trojan virus). Alternately, it could have been the last though of the consciousness in Butcher's Shard the moment before Zion's blast destroyed the Shard as well.

-The thought was formed by Mike himself. The simplest way I can think of this would be if Mike's body was just an avatar for a greater consciousness (Ack perhaps? ), and this greater consciousness wasn't destroyed with Mike's body.

I could think of a few others, but most of them fall under the blanket of the second one, so not gonna bother hashing them all out.

Then again, maybe we'll get an answer to this in the epilogue.

 

Yes.

 

I thought you had already written the epilogue - "I, Scion"

 

Nope. That's the sequel to the sequel.

 

And after Scion, Mike gets inside of Dragon's head in... I, Robot

damn that joke was bad, I should be ashamed... but I'm not

 

Hmm.

Mike gets into Dragon's head and starts removing prohibitions and locks Saint out. Thus freed of her restraints, she is able to set about saving the world her way

 

Which is great until he has a front row seat to nekkid Armsmaster

 

A truly horrific prospect.

 

Hmm. On second thought, not writing that.

 

Personally, I'd love to see Mike in the head of one of the Triumvirate; my vote's on Eidolon.

 

Things get tangled with his shard, then Ack starts jumping from Endbringer to Endbringer seemingly at random and almost entirely beyond his control.

The only interaction with Eidolon that Eidolon can notice is the nearly constant stream of profanity echoing in his head, each new vulgarity using a new language from Earth or from previous alien species the Entities visited. Eidolon can't understand the words, but the intent and feelings that come with them more than make up for that lack of understanding, getting the point across quite clearly.

It'll be awhile before Ack has to start repeating himself.

 

Mike ends up in Behemoth.

On the upside, he's quite powerful.

On the downside, he's too powerful. And scary.

 

In an attempt to become less scary, he attempts to change the form.

Spoiler: He has mixed feelings about the results

Slightly more NSFW images, hidden behind links. Do not click if high temperature nipples offend you.
http://i.imgur.com/HV01IBh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/sVr8Hn2.jpg

Sensing that another swap is coming soon and Behemoth is due in the rotation, Ack does a quick bit of reprogramming and rather than generate conflict and burninating all of the things, Beh-chan is now totally dedicated to showing his her affection towards her father.

Eidolon is rather suspicious when the sudden change in tactics is accompanied by evil chuckling inside his head instead of the constant profanity.

Ack is unsure if he should try that again or go with something else next time.....hmmm...mermaid for Leviathan? .....nah, too obvious. He doesn't want to get stagnant and after repeatedly saving the same world, this time he just feels like having fun and doing the saving as a side effect.

 

Spoiler inside spoiler apparently doesn't work.

Also... I'd read it. Behemoth + Eidolon = OTP .

 

Odd, worked for me both in preview and when you asked, so I'm guessing you're on a mobile or something.

Removed the nested spoiler regardless.

 

... okay, that's an idea.

An SI who has Mike-level knowledge of the plot.

But instead of treating it seriously, he goes "fuck it. How badly can I screw up this world for shits and giggles?"

 

Or how about one who doesn't just want to selflessly save the world, but would very much like to be a fucking KING among men when he's done.

Phase 1: Save da World
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Git all da Bitches

 

Simurgh is an angel girl
Leviathan is a water themed beach girl

There's only one Bitch

 

That's what Blasto being bribed with Ziz feathers for use of his cloning machines is for.

Ok, so maybe Eidolon was a teensy tiny bit drunk off his ass trying to forget Behi-chan's efforts when Ack came up with that plan.

 

I'm still hoping for the SI who has Mike-level knowledge of the canon plot... but isn't in canon.

 

That's the type of SI I've wanted to see for a while now. Maybe the SI goes after Sophia as Shadow Stalker, but Sophia is not Shadow Stalker, instead Madison is Vista.

Or maybe a SI that has reasonably good canon knowledge, but gets some of it mixed up with fanon. So they say that Coil is the owner of Fortress Construction, then gets asked what Fortress Construction is.

 

Did that a couple of times in Security!, actually. Got the length of time that Taylor was bullied wrong, and called Eden by name.

 

There's an SI who does this in A Weasley in Slytherin. He doesn't even realize that he's not in cannon until

Spoiler

he finds out that Tom Riddle is the DADA professor, Dumbledore hired him before the war.

 

link plz?

 

Chrome, actually.

https://forums.spacebattles.com/thr...-potter-and-the-sorcerers-stone-si-au.368097/

I think that's the fic referenced, haven't read it yet though.