[Freeform] TCGM Quest

Welcome, potential adventurer conglomerate hivemind participant, to the first TCGM Quest!



A few things before we get started.



First, my muse is an atemporal squirrel, so for me an update schedule question will be met with “What's an update schedule?"



If you're okay with that, you've got a EULA to read.



There are some things you should know about my style of GMing and writing.



I run my GMed campaigns and RPs in some non standard ways. Here are the significant differences for ease of reading:

• In the inverse of most roleplaying, instead of the Players rolling for success against the World, the World has to roll for success against the Players. This turns out making the Players feel better and makes it much less of a struggle to survive, to succeed, and more of an adventure with random events.
  
• I will give warnings when Players are about to make decisions that will end badly. It is entirely within your agency to continue with your course of action, but after a GM Warning I no longer care about protecting you or your character and the gloves come off.
  
• I make use of gratuitous Deus Ex Machina. Do not be surprised if this occurs. DEM will not save you if you ignore a GM Warning!
  
• I am a massive, absolutely colossal troll, and giving me the power of an all powerful (in scope) god only makes this worse.
  
• Prepare for memes. Lots of memes. And references.
  
• I write Pseudo-Crack, exclusively. This means that while my worlds may be played out totally seriously and follow physical laws (sometimes), the scenarios and reactions and whatnot are pure, unadulterated Crack. Anybody who's read my stories will know this quite well.
  
• Tropes and cliches are tropes and cliches for a reason, and I use them. If this offends your vastly superior sense of writing talent you've gained by producing multi thousand word creations, why are you here?

Now that you've accepted the Quest EULA you totally read the entirety of before checking I Accept and continuing, you need to become familiar with my formatting style, if you aren't already.



Put simply;

“Talking"

“Emphasized Talking/Whispering"

“Powerful Talking"

“YELLING"

Thinking/Telepathy

Powerful Thinking/Telepathy

[Meta/Shardspeak (Worm)]

{SuperMeta/ROB Speak}



Got it? Good. Proceed to the next post for the beginning of the Quest. And welcome to my version of funny insanity!

 

TCGM Quest 1



Another day dawns on your world. The local star is shining, animals are making their various calls, and your place is still around. You open your eyes and look around, stretching in order to get those morning back pains out.



Yup, home sweet home. Everything is as it was when you went to sleep. That's good, it means nothing weird happened while you slept.



You blink a couple of times as the sand boogers your eyes produce in sleep have managed to complete their irritating tactical insertion into your eyeballs. Damn those sting, you think, bringing a hand up to your eyes so you can assist your eyelids in their insurgency removal process.



Blinking away the slight tears caused by you rubbing your eyes, you open your eyes wide and find yourself subconsciously stretching your mouth open too, on accident.



You freeze for a moment, then snap your jaw shut.



Man, you looked stupid right then. Good thing nobody is looking at you right now, observing your momentary lapse of grace.



You turn your thoughts to yourself before getting up for the day. Just a normal self check kind of thing. Make sure you didn't suffer any amnesia in your sleep or something.

---

This is the first vote. My voting system has a number box and name for each option. Only copy name, for the option you wish to vote for,adding a number box. I use RCV, Ranked Choice Voting, so if you want to vote for all the options you can, but you must put a number in the number box that indicates the priority. 1 is highest.



Options Example:

[Vote][<Question>]



[Boo Humbug]

Boo Humbug is Ebenezer Scrooge's younger cousin. He turns into a ghost at XMas and scares people.



[Crikey Savage]

Vandal Savage's idiot Terrier. This dog, despite being an idiot, has managed to inspire terror and adorables across space and time due to that one time he thought the Waverider looked like a grass lawn.



Vote Example:

[Vote][<Question>]

[1][Crikey Savage]

[2][Boo Humbug]



RCV allows simultaneous runoff results. If your first choice loses, your vote goes to your second, then third, and so on.



With the rules out of the way, here's your vote!



[Vote][Who Are You?]



[Ashley Lewis]

You're a woman and xenobiologist. Your degree used to be almost worthless (tardigrades are cool, okay!) but a couple of months ago something hit the New Mexico desert and changed that. Your cousin Darcy was down there with her physics nerd friends and claims a lightning storm dropped a god on her. The super spooky type of people she's working for now sure sound anal about any details, so you're pretty sure she's on to something… or at least on it. But you're not complaining! You finally have real work, even if you're not entirely sure what the hell they're having you look at via Darcy.



[Lisa Carter]

You're Lisa Carter, a young woman still growing up. School is boring, but your alarm is just doing its job, so you shouldn't take it apart and rewire it to play radio music instead of the annoying beeping it makes. Oh well, at least Aunt Sam said she'd come over! She doesn't come around much, too busy saving the world of deep space telemetry from the jocks who want to hit the delicate technology with the butt of their guns. She told you so!



[Ronan Marchbanks]

Ugh. You just want to sleep. It's the weekend. You don't have to go to work today, but you do have to pick up your daughter from her train ride. Her trunks are so heavy! What, they couldn't create charms for actual car trunks or something? Grumble grumble. Can't your wife get her? …No, she's not even close to your strength level. And you know little Verona isn't allowed to use her abilities outside of her school. Sigh...

 

TCGM Quest 1.1

Spoiler

[Vote][Who Are You?]

Toskin

[1][Lisa Carter]

[2][Ashley Lewis]

[3][Ronan Marchbanks]

Aoinfinity

[1][Ashley Lewis]

[2][Lisa Carter]

Ahuizotl

[1][Ronan Marchbanks]

[2][Lisa Carter]

[3][Ashley Lewis]

05eolsale

[1][Lisa Carter]

[2][Ashley Lewis]

[3][Ronan Marchbanks]

Phoenix14

[1][Ashley Lewis]

[2][Lisa Carter]

Aerrow

[1][Lisa Carter]

[2][Ashley Lewis]

[3][Ronan Marchbanks]

moonberserker

[1][Lisa Carter]

[2][Ronan Marchbanks]

[3][Ashley Lewis]

Ranked Choice Vote: Who Are You?

Round 1

Option Ashley Lewis has 2 (2/7) votes (28.57143%)

Option Lisa Carter has 3 (3/7) votes (42.85714%)

Option Ronan Marchbanks has 2 (2/7) votes (28.57143%)

No winner found.

Proceed to next round.



Round 2

Option Ashley Lewis has 4 (4/7) votes (57.14286%)

Option Lisa Carter has 3 (3/7) votes (42.85714%)

Option Ronan Marchbanks has 0 (0/7) votes (0%)

Winner: Ashley Lewis

Vote Winner: Ashley Lewis

The character vote resulted in Ashley Lewis winning. Welcome to the MCU!

Worry not if you liked one of the other characters, though. Ashley is your starting character; you can still find the others in the Quest.

[Ashley Lewis]

You're a woman and xenobiologist. Your degree used to be almost worthless (tardigrades are cool, okay!) but a couple of months ago something hit the New Mexico desert and changed that. Your cousin Darcy was down there with her physics nerd friends and claims a lightning storm dropped a god on her. The super spooky type of people she's working for now sure sound anal about any details, so you're pretty sure she's on to something… or at least on it. But you're not complaining! You finally have real work, even if you're not entirely sure what the hell they're having you look at via Darcy.

---

You should up in bed and grown, tilting your head to the side. A large yawn escapes your mouth, completely out of your control.

You immediately check up on your closest friend. “Hi Charles," you say, glancing at the monitor next to your bed. Like usual, Charles doesn't reply. He just keeps swimming in the vat of nutritious liquid situated behind the monitor. He's so small that you can't normally see him, but you rigged up this monitor to a microscope pointed directly into the vat.

What better way to study your favorite animal than to live with one?

Given Charles is being his usually talkative self, you get up off of the bed and stretch once more. Your loose NASA PJs hang off your body, reminding you that you're still not ready for the day.

Away to the bathroom you go!

---

Showered, teeth brushed, underwear on, and with your normal complete lack of makeup, check, check, check and check. You absolutely dry your hair with your StarkTech thermal induction hair dryer as you step into your small kitchenette.

“Anything good in the fridge?” You ask yourself, out loud of course, pulling open your at least foot taller fridge.

It's leftovers from the pizza you had last night. Or water. People can survive on water alone for a couple days right?

Man, you've gotta go to the store soon.

“Pizza it is,” you sigh. You pulled the box out of the fridge if you're free hands, turn towards the microwave, and close the fridge with your foot. Your long hair is still not dry. The one and only downside to your favorite hair length.

Box on the counter, grab a plate from your small cupboard, drop it on the counter, and plop a couple of pizza slices onto it. Into the microwave it goes, and in two minutes your stomach will stop beating the crap out of you.

Allright… time to see if Darcy finally sent you that new Gene sequence she wants you to take a look at. Hopefully this one will make more sense than the last one she sent you. You have no idea why she expects you to be able to get anything out of a partial sequence. Not that the sequence you've been constructing from the she says she's been sending you makes any more sense than the pieces themselves. You mean, triple helix DNA? Come on. It's almost like she's mocking you. Aliens don't exist, as much as you'd love to meet a few.

you log into your computer and open up the secure application with which he is allowed to communicate with you. Long gone are the days of simple text messages for anything important. The new government types she's hanging out with saw to that.

And... Yep, there's a message. With a pretty big attachment. The only complaint you don't have about this application is the fact that you can use it to send absolutely colossal amounts of data. No 25 megabyte limit on messages for you, no siree!

You open it up. Just as you expected, it's another incomplete piece. You send back yet another message on top of all the other ones you sent her already telling her that you need more than just bits and pieces to give her anything useful, but you'll still look at this one anyways.

She takes the data she has sent you and pull up your genetics viewing program. Before Tony Stark released this to the world you and your colleagues jobs was a whole lot harder, but apparently the genius had just taken one day, one, and written the highly intuitive genetics visualization software.

Then, in his infinite wisdom, he decided to just toss it on the internet.

That man continues to make no sense. Guess that's the mark of a genius, though. You're not complaining, of course. The program is amazing. But nobody can really predict how science is going to advance anymore so she keeps upsetting the boat. Worldwide.

And that's only when he's not getting in his suit and actually upsetting the world stage.

The new data imports with no problem. Like you suspected, it's indeed another piece of the triple helix sequence. Only this one… huh.

Well that's weird.

By importing this piece, you have apparently given the program enough information to be able to complete the entire genome, even still missing the rest of the pieces. It’s prompting you to upload it to the… Stark Industries servers?! for additional cloud computation in order to reveal more of the genome than the local program can accomplish. Free of charge, provided you provide permission for SI to have access to it as well.

---

[Vote][What Do You Do?]

[Upload]

Allow the program to upload the incomplete genome to the Stark Industries servers, giving them permission to use them.

...Are you even allowed to do that?!

[Don’t Upload]

Don’t take the chance. Just use the program locally. Who knows what Stark might do if you gave him… whatever this is.

[Ask Darcy For Advice]

Close the program and hastily message Darcy to ask her what the hell is going on, and what you should do.

 

TCGM Quest 1.2

It's back! Hope everyone is staying safe from the end of the world, I'm here to help distract you with words!

Also, with the Infinity Saga finished, I now know more about how this quest might go. Note that I am by no means an MCU expert. I've seen every movie and Agents of Shield, but the other torrent of shows I'm only tangentially aware of. If I include elements from them, they'll be mild. So, you can reasonably suspect that anything I've seen is running in the background of this quest, but not necessarily anything else, though it may be.

Spoiler

[Vote][What Do You Do?]

FeartheKnown
[1][Ask Darcy For Advice]
[2][Don’t Upload]
[3][Upload]

Amacita
[1][Upload]
[2]Ask Charles For Advice][Invalid]
[3][Don’t Upload]

Ahuizotl [Manual]
[1][Don’t Upload]
[2][Ask Darcy For Advice]

Phoenix14
[1][Upload]
[2][Ask Darcy For Advice]

Prester Fred [Manual]
[1][Ask Darcy For Advice]
[2][Don’t Upload]

AllSeeingEye
[1][Don't Upload]
[2][Ask Darcy For Advice]

Toskin
[1][Upload]
[2]Ask Darcy For Advice]
[3][Don’t Upload]

It’s more work than I want to do to put the actual vote calculation in here, so I’m only going to declare the winner from now on. Vote records will still be included.

Vote Winner: Ask Darcy For Advice

---

Of course. It… why were you even thinking of uploading this? Stark is a genius, but he isn't stable! That much you know for a fact. The guy used to make weapons for Odin's sake! And he thinks flying around the world in a technological suit is going to solve not only the problems he created, but the world's problems at large!

That's not what being Iron Man does. Tony Stark may solve symptoms and make people's lives better, or save them, temporarily… but everyone with medical training knows you treat diseases, not symptoms.

Or at least anyone without their head up their own ass.

However, you also can't just let this sit on your computer forever. Who knows what secrets of genetics you might uncover? Sure you can try to let your admittedly pretty powerful computer assemble the genome, but say what you want about Stark's programs, they aren't dumb. It likely detected that your computer can't handle the computation very well, thus the offer of uploading in the first place.

That leaves your cousin. Or walking away, but the potential…

No. You sigh and rub your eyebrows, trying to ward away your threatening headache.

No, you'll have to get involved. More involved, rather, since you're already pretty involved. Whoever Darcy works for is holding you at arm's length right now, but to get the kind of answers you need you're going to have to dig.

Government agencies generally dislike those who dig into their businesses.

Government agencies of the suit and tie, black van, and hush-hush operations with an acronym type dislike it even more.

Even if the acronym was still being worked on, as that Coulson guy told you. You got the impression he got asked that a lot, given the resigned sigh and patient smile he wore while telling you.

Why they haven't figured out the acronym they chanced upon is beyond you, but it'll be amusing once they do figure it out and you get to be smug about seeing it first.

Anyways… login time.

You pull up the admittedly pretty program that you have to use to talk to Darcy. It loads, your computer's fan momentarily spinning up to a higher whine than even the genetics program causes. It always does this. Must be some pretty ridiculous encryption.

No logo or name greets you at the top, but there is a Welcome, Auxiliary waiting for you. Contacts, with an empty list other than Darcy's name, waits below it.

You double click on her entry and the messaging tab opens to the side, showing your previous conversation.

> AgentDarlicious: This isn't a sperm sample I swear
> Attachment: SkinnyGenes.dna

Below that is the message you sent her complaining about the partial segments, to which she just replied with a stuck out tongue emoji.

Darcy must think she's funny.

You put your hands on the keyboard and start typing. Just a simple hello to begin with.

> Genetic Awesome: You there cuz?

Now to wait. It's not like she's going to contact you back soon, she's most likely aslee-

> AgentDarlicious: Ash! what's up

Okay then, nevermind. Huh. She really should be sleeping.

> Genetic Awesome: Why r u still awake

> AgentDarlicious: I'm in timeout

...What?

You relay your understandable confusion to her.

> Genetic Awesome: What?

> AgentDarlicious: Yeah, they're mad at me for sending you that thing I totally didn't send you.

You freeze up. She can't be that stupid, can she? And she's in timeout? Does that mean she's arrested? Oh gods, what if she's being interrogated-

Wait, no, she still has at least a phone. And she's acting normal. Well, as close to something resembling normal as she can manage. Plus she probably, probably wouldn't call that kind of thing a timeout…

Maybe.

This is your cousin, after all.

Well, time to do your cousinly duties and rub it in.

> Genetic Awesome: Darcy you know this system has a chat log, right

It's several seconds later, during which you can easily imagine Darcy looking like an idiot in whatever holding cell or interrogation room 'they' have her in, that she replies.

> AgentDarlicious: Shut up.

You can't help snickering. She's so… her.

> Genetic Awesome: How hard are you blushing right now

Her reply is immediate.

> AgentDarlicious: SHUT UP shut up shut up I know okay, you're not the first one to mention it today

Of course not. An organization as secretive as the one they're both involved with should know how something as simple as a chat program works.

You ignore her utter mortification beyond continuing to chuckle at the mental image you have of her stricken face. She always had the best embarrassed expressions.

> Genetic Awesome: so anyways, I found something interesting out with the gene file.

> AgentDarlicious: What gene file?

You can almost hear her curiosity.

> Genetic Awesome: the one I built from all the pieces you gave me.

> AgentDarlicious: ...You did WHAT?!

You lean back from your computer in surprise. That was not the reaction you were expecting.

Even less expected is the follow up you get a second later.

> YOU DIDN'T UPLOAD IT ANYWHERE, DID YOU?!?!

Well, you were thinking about it, but after this… now you're glad you didn't.

> Genetic Awesome: ...No, Darcy, I didn't. My genetics program did ask me if I wanted to process it in Stark's cloud but I thought I should ask you first.

> AgentDarlicious: oh thank Thor

You blink in surprise. Since when does Darcy thank the Norse deities like you? She thinks that's stupid!

Then you remember what she said about a lightning god landing on her in New Mexico and it all clicks.

You collapse backwards, only your chair keeping you from falling over, as your mind races and the pieces slot into place.

The triple helix DNA. The cover-up. The lightning storm. Those fake videos of a fire breathing metal golem. The organization. Eric Foster being taken seriously by said organization. Darcy's sudden change of heart.

You swallow, abruptly rather worried. Odin is supposed to be all seeing. You really hope you haven't pissed him off by invoking his name for most of your life.

> AgentDarlicious: Ash, what did you find out

You slowly bring your hands to your keyboard and start pressing keys, only barely believing what you're asking.

> AgentDarlicious: ASH

Is this Thor's DNA?

You move your finger to the enter key, but hesitate.

Should you even ask this? Darcy is clearly freaking out. And if this is true… this is a secret that could unravel everything.

It could change the world. What the DNA is capable of… if it really is Asgardian, it might be the reason why they're considered gods. You have a sequencer… you might finally be able to be the hero your younger self dreamed of being.

But if you press enter, you send this question, you'll be telling the spooky organization that you know. They're probably not going to like that.

Then again, after what you've already sent to Darcy, only an idiot would miss the implications.

---

[Vote][Send the question?]
[Send It]

Hit enter. Send the question. Change your life, probably.

[Delete This!]

Delete your words as fast as you can. Make something else up to tell Darcy, and her watchers. They won't know any better; you're the expert here.

[Leave It and Eat It]

Don't hit enter or delete it. You don't know how much time you have left unsupervised. Instead, you should immediately take the DNA to your sequencer and see if you can make a stable, physical version. You probably don't have much time before they realize something is up, and, you might be able to get actual, real superpowers! God-level, even!

 

TCGM Quest 1.3​

{META

Aight, I broke my RCV parser. I give up. I’m just gonna go with a simple pool system where the number you give the option is the pool the vote enters. Biggest pool wins. Tiebreaker vote if necessary. Let's KISS.

Also, fuck 2020. And 2021. And it looks like 2022, too.

Edit from 2023: yep this year too }

Spoiler

[Vote][Send the question?]
Vote winner: [1][Leave It and Eat It]

Phoenix14
[1][Leave It and Eat It]
[2][Delete This!]
Amacita
[1][Leave It and Eat It]

---

You’re out of time.

...Probably.

If the spy agency who’re still working on their name have any brains in any of their heads, they track what’s typed into their chat program even before it’s officially ‘sent’. Plus if Darcy isn’t throwing a panic on her side of the connection about your lack of response, given the constant messages she’s spamming you with, you’ll eat a hat.

You don't know how much time you have left unsupervised.

Instead of trying to reassure Darcy or waste more time with what you’ve just uncovered, maybe you can do something with it. You don’t know, modify it or spread it to the world or somethi-

Your eyes drift over the poster of Tony Stark on your wall, posing in front of his suit of armor.

No.

You suddenly get it, a little.

The world doesn’t get better systemically. Not with the current systems. They’re all designed to favor those who built them, those in power, and only someone with abilities outside the context of that system can hold them accountable for their actions.

Like Stark is.

And the spy agency is nominally part of those very same systems. Worse, you wouldn’t be surprised if they were complicit in ensuring they continued to stagnate. Others had been. They'd be the first agency to not be involved, honestly.

They’ll take this from you. You know they will. Whether because they’re buddies of The Man, or because you’re not cleared for the knowledge or whatever other reason they come up with, they will not be okay with a civilian like you having access to it. You just have to look at what they did to Darcy’s seniors to know! Despite her reassurances, there were obviously elements of the organization that you and she nominally worked for who couldn’t be trusted to welcome in the future.

You tab out of the chat program and back to the DNA system, twirling the strands around as you think. Long and hard.

There really is only one way to ensure this is used responsibly, not hidden from the world. If it truly is the code of life of a being powerful enough to be considered gods by humanity…

You have to take it into your own hands.

Like Tony Stark did.

You… you should immediately take the DNA to your sequencer and see if you can make a stable, physical version. You probably don't have much time before they realize something is up, and… you might be able to get actual, real superpowers! God-level, even! Take that, Stark!

Or you could just get, like, all the cancers. But who dares wins, right?

Okay, you have to do this fast. You take one of your spare flash drives and shove it into the port on the front of your computer, then copy the data you’ll need to build this in the Stark Assembler.

DNA printing, yet another thing Stark randomly gifted the world.

The machine accepts the data and after a few hair raising moments, says printing of the strands are possible.

Just injecting it into yourself probably won't work. It wouldn't work for Terran DNA, and triple helix or no it's still fundamentally DNA.

So you're going to need a retrovirus.

Coincidentally there are a few blank ones that the machine suggests after a few moments of you wondering aloud where you're going to get a retrovirus.

You're not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially not when dealing with super sketchy things like this, so you very pointedly thank the machine and ignore the totally coincidental, happy chime it lets off in return.

The machine reports ready, and that it requires a suspension cartridge for depositing the resultant solution in. That cartridge will then go into the hydro injector helpfully provided with the machine. Which you'll then press against your thigh and pull the trigger on.

Yep, totally normal stuff here.

Freaking Stark. If you do wind up with god powers you're going to slap him for being such a damned inspiration.

You open the drawer with the cartridges and fish one out, placing it into the dispensing chamber and locking it with the hiss of hermetic sealing.

The machine spins up with a hum, and you nervously settle in to wait.

...Might as well start some contingencies if this all goes wrong, so you go and grab your laptop, come back, and wait while activating some rather unfortunate things and knowledge releases that will occur if you don't stop them in 24 hours.

Just in case.

---

You're about to pull the trigger into your thigh when you think about this yet again and find your nerve fleeing you.

You have no idea what this will do to you. You're going to add an alien sequence to your DNA which has an entire additional helix! Well, two, since the machine had to compensate for human genetic dual helixes, but that only makes it more insane!

Just as you sigh and move the injector away from your body so you can carefully place it on the counter, something makes a loud thump-

And then your living room explodes.

"...Shit."

You can see human figures in head to toe riot gear with extremely gunny guns rapidly scanning about in your living room through the one still functioning security camera left.

Yeah, those guys aren't friendly. You squeak, and several of the figures immediately sweep their guns towards your lab and start running for you.

That's a hit squad. You've seen enough movies to know that. They're here for you, but not to take you in.

They wouldn't need assault rifles for that.

Nothing left to do but try, you guess.

You rapidly pick the injector back up and press it into your thigh again, then take a deep breath.

The door to your lab bursts open, and a loud, aggressive male voice is yelling at you to put your hands on the ground.

You scrunch your eyes shut and pull the trigger.

Forgive me, Allfather, you silently pray, for the first time genuinely.

Nothing happens for a few seconds other than the hiss of the injector firing into your bare leg.

"What was that? What did you just do?!" the man, now backed up by his buddies and all of whom are aiming weapons at you, demands.

You blink at him owlishly. "Huh," you say, stumped. You felt it break your skin, you know the solution went in. And the retrovirus is supposed to be stupidly fast in its modifications. It always was whenever you used it on a test subject. "Nothing, apparently?"

Maybe it's because you're a little bigger than a Tardigrade?

"Put your hands on your head!" another demands.

They're still pointing guns at you, so you slowly do as they ask. "So uh, hey guys, you know I work for, uh… what the hell was it? Strategic Homeland Intervention and Enforcement Division? Man that's a mouthful. Hey, can you guys call Phil, Phil Coulson? He can vouch for m-"

You find yourself cut off as something, a pulse of energy, or tingling from hell, whatever, runs through you.

And then everything is LIGHTNING.

---

[World Rolls 1d100+30(divine xform): result 63, success against 50]
[Event Triggered: Notice Me, Senpai]

[Vote for Notice Me, Senpai]
You have ascended to a higher form. While the mortals in front of you are unable to take notice due to their incapacitation, not all in existence are mortal. Choose the first upon this world to witness your arrival.
[#][The Dorkness]
[#][The Fool]
[#][The Paragon]
[#][The Brother]
[#][The Wife]

---

When you're next aware of yourself and reality, it feels like days later. You spent so long immersed in the LIGHTNING that you can barely remember your name for a few moments.

But then the pain hits. And you sit straight up with a blood curdling scream.

"-AAAAAH, FUCK, WHY? GODS DAMN IT! " You curse at the top of your lungs. The pain you didn't even know was there is receding rapidly, but your body still feels like it got run over by the Energizer bunny riding a zamboni.

Wait, weren't there other people in your lab?

You force your eyes open and try to resolve the room, but all that's around you is a bunch of blurry black and white. For a few moments, anyways, then a tingling feeling not unlike the LIGHTNING races towards your eyes and they clear in an instant.

And you witness… destruction.

Your lab looks like it got hit with the hand of an angry god.

The genetics machine is tossed aside, blown back from you. Your lab computer is a fried mess that more resembles a head of cabbage than a computer. The door itself, reinforced against pretty much anything that could happen to it due to the suspiciously high funding from the agency, is a glowing puddle. The only intact thing is the floor, and even that has a few gigantic scorch marks, like a cluster bomb went off, directly underneath you. Your chair is just gone, probably atomized by whatever the fuck happened.

...Did Odin smite you or something? What the hell?

A flicker off to the side tracks your attention and you turn your head towards it, that sense in your head that just lets you know something is there.

There's… the best description you can provide yourself is that one of the hit squad agents is still twitching as what looks like tiny lightning bolts leap out of his body and then back in on arcs which don't look too dissimilar to solar flares.

"Shit," you say, but then halt in your tracks.

Your voice doesn't sound normal.

"H… Hello?" You ask out loud, trying it on for size again.

Yep, definitely not normal. You still sound like you, only… powerful, somehow. It's your voice coming out of your mouth but delivered with what you can only call godly emphasis.

You're not stupid, despite what your cousin says sometimes. "Well," you breathe out, the ramifications definitely being pushed to the back of your mind for later, "I guess it worked."

With your lab ruined, you slowly stand up and effectively waltz out of the remains. You need to see what else happened, what happened to your house.

As you leave, you notice a few holes burned through the metal ceiling of the lab. They were directly above you, but you weren't looking previously. That ever present LIGHTNING makes it hard to focus.

The rest of your house looks okay, shockingly enough. Other than the broken down front door that you can see across your living room, it's almost like nothing happened. It is surprisingly mundane considering the feeling you know, almost in your soul, that you are more now.

You stick your head out the destroyed front door and notice a large, curved, winged aircraft of some kind just parked on your driveway. Right next to your car. It's completely surreal.

The thing has two gray wings sticking out to its sides, and doesn't look airworthy except for the giant and obvious vetole engines mounted on swivel joints inside the wings themselves.

You pop your head back inside, and return to your lab. The guys on the ground are no longer twitching, but they're definitely out for the count. Every piece of equipment including your servers inside your lab is toast. There's no recovering any of it. They clearly got hit, well, by LIGHTNING.

Charles is okay. Your bedroom is fine, so your personal computer is also acceptable. It doesn't have the messaging program that Darcy gave you, it simply wasn't powerful enough to run it, but your phone is next to it on your desk. You could just call or text your cousin. It would definitely be intercepted by the agency they work for, but you were already in that position with the chat program.

Plus, you don't find yourself that worried about them anymore for some reason. They just… don't register as threats. That's a very strange feeling, considering you were very concerned about them before, But you bookmark those thoughts for later examination because there's way too much going on right now already.

Now that you think of it, you don't remember putting your phone on your desk in your room, but there it remains. As far as you know, I should have been in your lab and thus LIGHTNING toast.

Maybe you just forgot it. It happens a lot. Or, if your new instincts and what feel like slightly out there thoughts… you're just going to call them god senses, are to be believed, happened. For you are certain, despite your own knowledge of yourself, that you will never forget another thing ever again unless you wish it.

That surety of self surprises you. You're not used to it. You don't even know where it comes from, just like you don't know where the lightning comes from. They feel like you and yet not. Is this what being an Asgardian is like? Or are you something else? Hell, you don't even know for sure what the DNA you constructed was! You could be an alien for all you know!

---

[Vote for What do you do?]
[#][Inspect Yourself]
It's better to check yourself before you wreck yourself. You've just undergone something that to your knowledge no one else has, potentially turning you into a being of a type called gods. You should figure out what's going on with your body and your mind.
[#][Check out the aircraft]
That aircraft looks way too high tech for the current time. It's no doubt what those assault thugs arrived in. The agency spoke to previously were nothing like those creeps, so either the previous agents were lying to you, or there's something else going on. That aircraft could hold more information.
[#][Contact Darcy, Unsecured]
You're not ashamed to admit that you're panicking a little, and you could use the cousin who's had more experience with this kind of stuff and her advice. It doesn't matter if it's unsecured, because the agency already has your communications. Just call her. Or text her. Whatever will get her to pick up.