Wait a Minute... (Guy in Worm with Trouble in Terrorist Town powers)

[Phili]

I sure hope this is the correct box to type this part in. (It wasn't, I had to switch the first threadmark and the thread description)
Hi! This is my first story, and I'm not sure how long it will go on or how much time I will be able to dedicate to it. Please do not raise your expectations.

This is a story that takes place in Worm, about an Original Character who apparently has an identity and life on Earth Bet, but doesn't remember any of it. He has gotten powers from the Yogscast Modded Gary's Mod Trouble In Terrorist Town game (TTT), and gets more powers and items from it as time goes on, and he has a feeling it will move on to a similar theme after it grabs everything it can from TTT, and perhaps even more after that. Reading this requires no knowledge of the Yogscast or TTT, but they will likely make it funnier.

He has some limited memories of someone from an Earth similar to ours, most of which are useless and about a group of idiots (he means it affectionately) called the Yogscast; but other, more normal memories are just enough to make him double take and question many things on Earth Bet. He is apparently a Yognau(gh)t, so he decides to call himself Dave.

Spoiler: Regarding his power and its source

His power is Out of Context and does not originate from a shard, but something kind-of similar to a shard. This kind-of shard is not from any particular fandom, it just works on similar, less parasitic principles as Worm shards, and is more like a weird cross between a Worm shard, a ROB wanting to be entertained, a Ring Grandpa from a xianxia, and a hyper-friendly puppy trying very hard to be friendly but only speaks in barks and yips

I have read quite a bit of Worm fanfiction in my day, but I've never read the original story because I find it much too dark and depressing, so, correspondingly, I am nearly certain to get things wrong and ask for gentle clarification and understanding if I choose not to correct it since I intend for this story to be substantially lighter in tone than the original.

Nothing is (currently) written in advance and I (currently) have no plans for a schedule. This is (currently) a bit of fun for me while I rewatch the old Yogscast TTT playlists while stretching my creative juice (yes, I love stretching my juices, why do you ask?), and maybe entertaining a few people along the way... if I keep up with it.

The first chapter will be out sometime between today and next week... hopefully. Now, I just have to figure out how to copy all of this into an identical story in the NSFW section.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 1: The Bagel is the most important thing here

January 1, 2010. Brockton Bay.

He woke up on a bed. That was good, he supposed; the problem was just about everything else.

"What's my name, and why do I feel like I should care more about the answer than I actually do?" He asked while staring at the ceiling.

"For that matter, why am I so awake first thing in the morning? Don't I have narcolepsy?"

With no answers appearing, he did his best to let muscle memory take over, and it dragged him through a shower and finding clothes in a large plastic bin under his bed ("but why though?" he asked while digging through the bin to find socks), before pouring orange juice and putting a bagel in the toaster ("Mmm, berry flavored bagels, I have good taste").

Congratulations!

Hello my new friend! I understand you might have some questions, but we'll get to that in a moment! First of all, you now have superpowers! Yay! These powers will be based off of the Yogscast Trouble in Terrorist Town roles, items, and randomats... to start with. As time passes you will get more powers, and with eventually, those powers will expand to include other things from other "sources", like Blood on The Clocktower. Now, to start with, you will be getting a new Role every day, since as much as I would love to give my favorite human (that's you!) all the things immediately, that would stuff you so full of random crap you would immediately explode in a way not even I could resurrect you. Your metaphysical self, or metaphysique, or soul or whatever you want to call it can't handle everything at once, but my new method of exercising your soul by grabbing your metaphysical limbs and waving them around like a wacky wavy inflatable arm thing will expand your metaphysical container. I call this newfound method "exercise", and it will let me stuff more power into your soul at a rate of about 1 role per day. However, if you exercise your soul yourself, I can stuff power into your soul more quickly, and since I will be stuffing power into you soul as soon as room becomes available, you don't have to worry about your soul shrinking back down like it normally does with humans and human-adjacent mortals. Now, you might be wondering "Why did my new super-cute and fantastic Eldritch best friend pick Yogscast TTT to start expanding my powers with?". Well, simple. It's important enough to you that you will understand it well and quickly grasp the mechanics; even after I put you back together after I found you, you still remembered a lot about it. Also, I can give you the power of "respawning" right off the bat with it because it's so easy to stuff your soul with it because you already care about it. So yeah, you'll respawn every 10 minutes at full health if you die, unless you choose not to, in which case you will obviously stay in spectator mode. Or if you have other roles or randomats unlocked that take place after death, you can keep doing things with those instead of respawning. You can expand your soul yourself the normal way, by doing things. The more interesting and stimulating (to you) the things you do are, the more you expand your soul, and then I will stick my "soul finger (tentacle)" in to your newly expanded space to keep it expanded until it is expanded enough to fit something new. What role you get each day will be random, and so will any items and randomats you unlock. You can have as many roles active at once as you want, and can deactivate any at will. You can also carry any "game items" in your inventory, but not regular items. Every time a "new round" starts (which is every 10 minutes), in addition to respawning, you also get a new pistol, shotgun, sniper rifle, and a credit if you have any roles active that can buy from a shop. You will be able to access your shop mentally at will, and more items will be available in the shops for each role as your "soul" expands. Eventually, you will be less constrained to your role as the original game exists, and things like a Hypnotist can actually hypnotize people, a Good Boy lets you turn into a dog, a Possum will grant you a Possum changer form, and a Mad Scientist will grant you a Tinker specialty, all in addition to what they would normally do. That won't happen for a while yet of course. Finally, your first role has come in and it is... *Drum Roll please... or Drum Role! Hah, I'm hilarious aren't I* Old Man! Yay! Oh... hmm... That is quite possibly the single worst possible thing you could have gotten isn't it? I'll tell you what, it's simple enough and the downside is significant enough I can squeeze the double jump into you from the start because you don't have another role that would counteract the Old Man's downsides. Now, don't get spawn-camped until tomorrow, and I will see you... Next time. Goodbye!

Huh. I understood... none of that in real words.

Excuse me?

Yeah, it was like, I got the gist and the meaning, but with no actual words. It was kinda trippy really.

Oh fuck me. That's not good. You really were in terrible shape when I found you. Good thing I managed to find an Earth to plop you into so quickly so you stopped de-existifying. Granted, there are some slight context clues that make me suspect this wasn't your original Earth, but I'm sure it'll be fine. It's okay, you're still my favorite human, even if you are a little... damaged. Oh, also, I set up things for you so you don't get lynched as a witch or whatever they do to outsiders on this Earth, it should give you a little bit, emphasis on little, of the local "common sense" as a bonus to your housing and possessions I Realitied into existence for you. I am declaring "Realitied" to be a word now, so write that down as well!

Thanks, I think. He grabbed a notepad and did what his instincts told him to do, and wrote down the word "that", before grabbing his sadly cold bagel from the toaster.

Who knew trying to decipher weird soul alien language took enough time to make a bagel fully toast and cool down to room temperature.

Then he used his newfound common sense, and put the bagel back in the toaster on the lowest setting so it could heat back up.

---

Exiting his apartment door, he saw a woman who was apparently his neighbor exiting her unit as well. Locking the door behind him, he decided to follow his instincts, which had definitely no points of failure.

"Hi, I am Dave! I am a Yognau(gh)t and I have the balls. Are you Dave! Yognau(gh)t with the balls?"

She stared.

Nailed it.

 

[Blitz9876]

This… is an interesting concept, definitely putting this on watch, hope to see more updates soon! XD

 

[Phili]

AN: If you aren't familiar with TTT and/or the Yogscast, you can still enjoy this, but will need to accept deep in your heart that you won't get every single reference in this chapter or the story.

Chapter 2: Who's that Pokemon?

January 1, 2010. Brockton Bay.



"So Bella, can you drive?"

It turned out that she was not in fact a Yognau(gh)t, her name was "Bella not Dave you imbecile!", and she did most certainly not have the balls and she resented me "risking her being attacked by Nazi morons hearing an idiot ask a woman if she has balls and assuming she is trans."

I naturally assured her I wasn't a dirty traitor, I was just an old man.

She stared at me and said "You are college age dude, are you trying to make actual old people angry at you?"

I did the only thing I could in response to that. I double jumped.

"Fine, where do you want me to drive you to?"

"The Beach please, Boat Graveyard area. My common sense is tingling and it's telling me that is where I should go. It also tells me that it's definitely Zylus, but he's not here, so I suspect my balls are defective."

She stared at me. She seems to be doing that a lot huh. "I am so going to regret this, but this is literally the only interesting thing that has happened to me this year." Huh, she was smiling a little.

Wait a minute…

"What day of the year is it today?" I asked ever so slightly suspiciously.

"Shut up and follow me to my car."

"Okay," I agreed happily. I won after all. Double jumping was truly the ultimate charisma. I didn't even need to T-Pose for dominance to intimidate her into doing my bidding… not that I would dominate someone without consent of course. Even with consent I might not do it really. Unless they deserved it of course, I think she mentioned Nazis earlier to, so I may need to practice my (T-Posing) skills a little before I dominate them. I might also do it if it was funny.

---

After observing Bella on the way to her car and the way she treated dogs (she stared at them because they were cute little good boys and girls, yes they were), I concluded, she could not possibly be a terrorist, therefore… she was a good person. In other words, a traitor!

Man, the TTT analogy really breaks down the instant you bring civilians into the picture doesn't it.

"So you're a parahuman right? I'm taking a parahumans studies class at Brockton University, so I think I'm academically required to ask: What's that like?" She asked after we got into her car.

"Well, if you are defining Parahuman as "an individual most likely of the species Homo Sapien Sapien in the possession of one or more "superpowers", then yes I am a parahuman". She seemed like she wanted to stare, but needed to keep her eyes on the road so she just sighed instead.

"And so far, it's been a bit of a mixed bag, on the one hand, I can double jump and it seems like my narcolepsy is gone. On the other hand, I'm about 95% sure that stubbing my toe will now kill me." She screeched to a stop. Good thing we were at a red light, I'm pretty sure she would have done that even on the highway. Maybe cars aren't the best place for this sort of discussion?

"What the fuck do you mean a stubbed toe will kill you?" Ow, woman, don't screech in my ear. At least my hearing damage seems to be cured as well, hopefully she won't bring it back with her dramatic antics.

"Well, my power—"

"Wait, should you even be telling me this?" She asked suddenly, and she already cares! I knew bringing civilians into terrorism was a good idea. Look at the results!

"Well, one of my powers is that I come back to life after I've died every ten minutes. Unless I want to stay dead of course, in which case I can obviously."

"Right, obviously," she agreed as the light turned green.

"Anyways, I knew you were Innocent when I saw how you treated the dogs, you looked upon them with proper deference for their adorableness and good boy-ness. Wait a minute… I decided you were a traitor earlier. Man, this analogy thing really breaks down with civilians."

"Right, you're just a weird idiot, that's why you decided I should be trusted. You're so obscenely lucky you picked a decent person to… latch on to or whatever it is you're doing," Bella concluded.

"Anyways, as a terrorist, I need to be a very good judge of character, and the tingle in my balls tells my you are a good person."

"Please, just go back to talking about your powers, I can't handle you being you that much while I'm trying to drive."

"Right right. Anyways, I get more powers as time goes on, and the ones I have get better, though both have an element of randomness." As he talked, she looked more and more like she wanted to interrupt, but was also determined to drive well. Perhaps she was concerned about him dying if she hit the breaks to fast based on his earlier comment? That was probably it.

After only a single sentence, she did end up interrupting, "Okay, this is genuinely fascinating-"

"Ahah! You said genuinely! I knew you were a traitor!"

"Shut up I'm trying to be serious! Anyways, this is really interesting, but also extremely unsafe to talk about all this while I'm driving and trying to concentrate, I'm having to take a longer route to the Boat Graveyard to avoid potholes so I don't somehow kill you because the roads are in terrible condition in this city for mysterious reasons I'm sure." She said the last bit sarcastically. Unfortunately, his common sense didn't tell him what the actual reasons for potholes were, so her sarcasm was undeserved as the answer was not common sense and therefore not worthy of sarcasm.

She finished off her thought with "So for now, just tell me what I need to know about for your safety --and my own I suppose though that doesn't seem to be a worry with your powers—then when we get to the boat graveyard we can finish the conversation. I assume you wanted to go there to test out your powers; which is fine as long as you don't do anything flashy, but if you do anything too large it will attract attention you probably don't want from either the gangs or the PRT. After we've had our conversation and you've done whatever testing you wanted to do, I can call a friend of mine, she's completely trustworthy and is something of an expert on Parahumans. She'll be able to give you advice and help going forward."

"Wow, you've already deduced things about why I wanted to go places and thought things through. That kind of thinking is just what you need to be a great Terrorist. You have a bright future in terrorism Bella. Anyways, right now, and only for today, I am in a condition that you can think of as like being a video game character on one health, but one health is also the maximum health, so a doctor wouldn't find anything wrong with me, but even a gentle tap with a crowbar would instantly kill me.

On the bright side, because my power is a fantastic good boy/girl/nonbinary, I also will respawn every 10 minutes if I do die."

"So, you're like a worse version of Alabaster? Also powers aren't sentient or gendered." She asked after ignoring my amazing compliment on how smart she was.

Well if she's going to ignore my compliments, I'm going to ignore her obviously incorrect statements regarding the sentience of powers, and since she doesn't even know about powers being sentient, obviously she can't be trusted to be correct with regards to their genders. Honestly, making broad-sweeping assumptions about an entire… species? I'm going to say species. Making broad-sweeping assumptions about an entire species like that is incredibly rude and insensitive. Racist even. Maybe sexist too.

"I don't actually know what alabaster is, but I don't think it respawns if destroyed. I thought it was either a plaster of some sort or a pottery material, but if it respawned after being destroyed I'm pretty sure we would make a lot more stuff out of it."

She almost tried to face palm before putting her hand back on the steering wheel. "No, Alabaster is the name of one of the local Nazi capes. He returns to his original condition every 5 seconds or so, which means even if he dies or is injured, he will be alive and in perfect health after only 5 seconds instead of needing an entire 10 minutes."

"Damn, my power was really proud of figuring out a way to get me to respawn. It's going to be so disappointed now, and look at me with those big metaphorical, metaphysical puppy dog eyes. Like this." He said, before transforming into a Pikachu and looking up at her.

"AHH!" she screamed and slammed the breaks. Because he was now a Pikachu, his seatbelt wasn't tall enough, and he went flying into the windshield and died instantly.

---

Author's note: Don't worry, he isn't a real Pikachu. He can just change his skin/character-model. Anything he could reasonably find as a player model in the Steam Workshop is fair game, but it is mostly aesthetic (for now, that won't change for a while, if ever though). He is genuinely bigger or smaller though, so he can fit more places and make himself taller to see things, but when he is bigger, he isn't any stronger and is mostly just a bigger target. Next time, we will see Dave using spectator mode, Bella being forced to make a decision on what to do with the dead Pikachu in her car, and a nice calm picnic on a scenic beach before Bella calls her mysterious friend. Not necessarily in that order.

 

[Blitz9876]

Well… that's one way to die. Death by car accident via transforming into a pikachu… how many time is our man gonna die accidentally? XD

 

[Phili]

Chapter 3: Who's That Pokemon Cape?!

January 1, 2010. Brockton Bay.



It turns out, when he dies, he goes into Spectator mode.

Continuity of consciousness baby! Dave thought triumphantly. Before realizing he now had a panicking Bella he couldn't communicate with fretting over his dead body.

His fucking adorable dead body. Seriously, it was the cutest dead body he had ever seen. Shame it was dead.

"Oh god, oh god, THIS IS WHY I WANTED TO DELAY THE CONVERSATION, you FUCKING MANIAC!" She screamed at his dead body, sobbing slightly. Wow, she got attached fast didn't she? Maybe she knew him before he lost his memories? Or maybe she just didn't have many friends and imprinted on him. Oh, she's doing something.

Bella took out her phone and called someone. "Hey, I know we were supposed to meet up later, but I got sidetracked with something really important, and I need your help with a dead body."

Wow, did she already forget that I told her I could respawn? Does she just have a memory of a goldfish? Is she stupid or something?

"No, I'm only sort of joking. I met a cape, I don't think he was a cape yet actually, but a parahuman, and he sort of started following me around like a baby duckling that imprinted on me and I had to help him before he hurt himself out of idiocy. He said one of his powers was that he could 'respawn' ten minutes after dying, but I don't know if he had tested that yet or was just going off of a feeling he had or something. He wasn't—isn't? –the brightest blub in the shed, and he might be a little insane, so he might have just misinterpreted a feeling he got from his power without actually testing it."

Oh wow, she's actually really smart. I didn't even think about the possibility I could be insane and not actually have all the powers I thought I had, or that I could have misinterpreted what my cute little soul alien was trying to communicate with me. Truly, I am a genius for grabbing onto a smart person and roping them into my shenanigans. Now she's invested in me, and the sunk cost fallacy will prevent her from leaving. It is completely unrelated to the fact she was literally the first person I ever saw after waking up with amnesia. Her claims of duckling imprinting are totally unfounded. Obviously. Oh, I missed some of the conversation.

"So, you can meet me at the boat graveyard to either help us test things, or bury a body? Uhh, either way, could you also help me clean my car, there is a little blood now, but it's all on the passenger side of the windshield, so it's not a worst-case scenario, I just don't know how to clean blood, from glass or from anything else."

"Yeah, I'm setting a timer for ten minutes now, it's been a couple minutes already, so if the timer goes off, I'll panic then, but I think I can drive to the boat graveyard without panicking now. And yes, I am assuming you know how to clean blood." Bella said into the phone, before the person on the other side of the phone talked a little more.

"No, he turned into some sort of yellow rodent, like a cartoonified mouse a couple feet tall that was then made real."

More indecipherable phone noises.

"No, it has black ear tips and brown stripes on its back, why? I know you aren't going for a zoology degree have you heard of an actual animal like this?"

"Why would I be familiar with Earth Aleph Japanese Cartoons and games? Of course I've never heard of a Pikachu. Yes, it is the cutest thing I've ever seen. He was trying to do puppy dog eyes but it startled me and I slammed the breaks. He slipped out of his seat belt and slammed against the windshield and fucking died. I felt so bad, I mean I would have felt terrible anyways, but him being in that form made my heart just about burst when he died."

"No, just because it's the cutest thing I've ever seen doesn't mean it's a Pikachu. It could be a completely random changer form totally unrelated to your weird cartoons."

"Fine, if—no, when—he wakes up, after you arrive, we'll ask him what it is, without asking leading questions, and if he says "Pikachu" I'll watch your weird Aleph Cartoons with you."

Bella sighed, "Thanks for helping me out, I was starting to panic a little. I'll see you at the boat graveyard in a couple minutes. Try and get there before the timer goes off will you? You need more practice going fast anyways girl, flying is one of your strongest features." She hung up, took a deep somewhat shaky breath, and started the car back up, with the dead Pikachu now surrounded in a towel, like a burrito. A bloody burrito, which is probably why the towels were there and the body was where it landed below the windshield instead of on the seat. As it was, it just looked like a weird pile of towels instead of a dead body.

Already thinking about hiding the body, as well as disguising the body. She truly did have the potential to be a great terrorist.

Hmm, the car seems to be leaving without me. Shit, the car is leaving without me!

After a little concentration and definitely-not-constipated-ghost-noises, Dave managed to anchor his perspective to the car, which was rather neat. Though he supposed it was only logical he would be able to do so given his perspective didn't go flying into the void of space after he died because the Earth doesn't exactly stay still, so his perspective must have originally been anchored to the Earth, and it was simply a logical extension of that ability that he could anchor his perspective to other moving objects.

Now that I have a few minutes though…

He felt around his soul and powers a little. It was easier without his body distracting him, and even more so now that he noticed something else. A feeling of slight growth every ten minutes had stopped.

I see, because I was the Old Man, in addition to only having one health, there was another aspect I forgot about. The Old Man's only win condition, is being alive at the end of the round. Since I'm not alive now, I'm not winning, but until now I had been "winning" every ten minutes as each "round" ended. That feeling was my Karma increasing from winning. Normally, extra karma doesn't do anything besides providing a safe buffer before you go into low Karma, where you will start doing less and less damage, until if your Karma gets low enough, you automatically get banned. Does that mean if I kill enough people "on my team" I would get "banned" from Earth Bet? Or from life?

Either way, I have a feeling higher Karma does something for me. Since low Karma decreases damage, maybe higher Karma will increase damage? My common sense tells me that would be a necessity for accomplishing anything on Earth bet. Normal guns just aren't enough against too many possible opponents, and even a Red Matter Bomb won't do much if it is as it is in the game. Though, maybe I could eventually "upgrade" a Red Matter Bomb to be closer to its inspiration, in which case it could probably either trap or kill one of those Endbringer things.

Now, how am I going to test if higher Karma means more damage? I can't exactly shoot someone and ask how much health they lost… can I?

…

No I don't think I can. Damn. I'll have to ask my new super amazing and smart friend Bella for ideas. Wait, I should save the flattery for when she can hear me, and do the insults when she can't hear me. Truly, I am a genius for thinking of this.

---

While Dave was pondering how he must be a good person because he has so much Karma, Bella was busy driving to the Boat Graveyard. It was completely deserted. It was actually a little creepy how deserted it was, but Bella brought the Pikachu corpse out from her car, still surrounded by towels, along with a large beach towel and a small toy beach shovel.

That would be the most humiliating thing to ever be buried with, Dave thought as he stared at the pink plastic toy shovel Bella brought out… for some reason. Why did she bring this actually?

Oh well. He floated around a little more, before deciding to make good use of his time in spectator mode while he can. He would feel really shitty if he didn't respawn at the first opportunity and she thought she had killed him permanently. Also, she might start burying his body by digging a hole with the little pink shovel, which would be humiliating. And he's pretty sure he can still suffocate considering he is certain he can still drown. So being buried alive would really kinda suck. Maybe he could eventually unlock the Detective Role and buy a teleporter, but he thinks he would need to set up a receiver port or something in advance to designate where to teleport to.

Wasn't there also a Teleport Attack item that teleported you to someone and then did damage to them? That might work, but I doubt it would be available right from the start, and I don't remember if it was a detective item or a traitor item, and I would need to figure out a way to determine if someone was an acceptable target in case they were already injured and using it on them killed them. Maybe I should just go with the plan of "Don't get buried before unlocking Detective and buying a teleporter and setting up a receiver port? I can make an exception if I get Parasite, Phantom, or Medium I suppose, as long as I get killed by a person… that isn't myself. Then I can deal with being buried since I can come back by either getting whoever killed me killed, or just waiting long enough that I burst out of their stomach if I am a Parasite role when they kill me. Okay, a plan has been formed: don't get buried, alive or otherwise. Maybe I should turn into something bigger if I think I am about to die so I would take longer to bury… I'll ask Bella for advice, I think.

After making his plans regarding being buried, Dave decided to stop wasting Spectator time, and kill two birds with one stone and start testing Spectator mode while making sure there was nobody nearby to spy on them. It wouldn't do to have an Informant find out he was an Old Man after all.

It turned out, while he was noclipping into a solid object, he could see through it. The ground counted as one object, so he was probably lucky Bella was wearing pants and not a skirt or else he may have gotten slapped. His common sense was telling him that the excuse of having seen Sailor Moon's panties plenty of times wouldn't have worked very well. Which was nonsense, that was a great excuse, so he started suspecting that maybe… just maybe… his common sense was slightly defective.

Regardless, he scouted around the area, found a surprising amount of sea life in the water, was promptly more than a little traumatized by how brutal ocean life is when you can actually see it, and found no humans nearby, Para or otherwise. Except that one flying woman he seems to be coming closer. He's pretty sure she isn't important though, that would be silly.

Oh shit, she's trying to strangle Bella! Around the chest! With her arms! Wait, I think that might be a hug. Nevermind.


Author's Note: I banged this out quickly to make sure nobody would think there was a risk of the story ending then and there at the previous chapter. This is not a troll story (as in a story where I the author am trolling the readers).

 

[Phili]

Next chapter is ready. Unfortunately, I am not qualified to describe a certain image, so I added a picture. However, I can't seem to figure out how to upload an image to QQ from my desktop instead of from online, and I can't find an online picture of what I want.

If anyone knows how to upload an image to QQ from a desktop, let me know and the chapter will go up right away. (Catbox was suggested to me, but it said "Uploads paused until I can resolve storage issues. Sorry!" when I tried to upload the image to it from my desktop, so that particular site won't work I'm afraid).

Alternatively, if anyone has a picture that works with QQ's Insert Image thing, put it in the thread and I'll add it to where it goes in the chapter and put the chapter up.

The picture I need is one of Kirsty's Tall Pikachu TTT player model. The one she switched to after complaints of her normal Pikachu model being too small and hard to hit, but before she switched to Mr. Tweedy from Chicken Run.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 4: It's Laserdream! "Laze-Laze? Dream!" (Inspiration for this chapter title is the first few seconds of this vid)

January 1, 2010. Brockton Bay, Boat Graveyard.



"Pika Pika!" Dave does his best Pikachu impression as he respawns, his body disappearing from under the towels covering it and reappearing a couple inches in the air above them, already standing upright.

"Oh thank god you were right," Bella sounded a little emotional there. Is this the legendary Stockholm Syndrome? Wait, no, I think that's something else. Regardless, it was good to be back, and that Bella's concerns-- that he definitely thought of before getting into one of humanity's deadliest inventions (the car), while being an Old Man—were unfounded.

Anyways, he waddled up to the unknown young woman, looked up at her and held up his arms at her, as if asking for uppies. Then, in his best Pikachu voice, he said "I'm a terrorist!"

"With that face, you sure are." The woman said without missing a beat, though her lips were curved up slightly and she was fighting to keep a straight face.

"NO! Do not team up, I forbid it." Bella interjected before they could continue.

"Fine, party pooper. Introductions?" The woman grumbled.

"Yes, Crystal, this is Dave. He's a weirdo. Dave, this is Crystal, you probably have heard of her as Laserdream. She's a weirdo, but she's a closet weirdo who watches cartoons from another country in another universe. Play nice." Bella introduced them.

"So, Dave, I have to ask—" Crystal broke off, seeing Dave hold up a hand to cut her off and with an adorably serious face.

Dave spoke, "First, before anything else, I must say… Hi, I am Dave! I am a Yognau(gh)t and I have the balls. Are you Dave! Yognau(gh)t with the balls?" He said it in his normal voice.

"Well, some people have called my girls balls before, though not to my face, but I've never been called Dave, to my knowledge at least. And I'm not even sure how to spell 'Yawgnot', let alone what it is, so I doubt I am one of those." Crystal answered with the practice of someone who has dealt with many idiots asking stupid questions.

Dave turned to Bella, looked deep into her eyes with his adorable little Pikachu face, and said "This one's a keeper. If you aren't gonna kidnap her, I call dibs on kidnapping her."

"Oh my, Bella, are you going to kidnap me?" Crystal immediately turned to her friend and piled on.

"I hate you both, maybe I should have just buried you before you resurrected and made her dig you out." Bella grumbled. It was probably her way of showing affection. Dave was at least 7% certain it was how Bellas showed affection in fact.

"Anyways, Dave I have a very important question for you… What would you call your current form?" Crystal had a small but smug triumphant smile as she asked her question.

"Kirsty," Dave immediately answered, watching as her smile fell. "Or Pikachu," he finished, making her smile brighten up again.

Man, I can see why they call her Laserdream, that smile is blinding. She better be a millionaire from toothpaste commercials or there is no justice in the world.

Crystal slowly turned to Bella with a supremely smug expression on her face.

"Oh what was it you said Bella? Something about how there is 'no way one of my weird Japanese alternate dimension cartoons had a Parahuman power at all related to it'? I recall something about a promise as well to watch every single episode of Pokemon to ever come out with me as well don't I?" Wow, that is a whole lot of smug. Like, I don't think I've ever seen that much smug before. I'm not sure I ever will see that much smug again in the future… Wait a minute, why did I get a shiver down my back when I thought that? Is Crystal just somehow even more smug than this in general or something?

"This form is fun and all, but I think I should turn back now that I don't need to demonstrate to Bella how easily my power manipulates me with metaphorical puppy dog eyes," He said as he changed to a more comfortable form.

"What do you --AHH!" Crystal screamed as she turned to his new more glorious form. Bella screamed too of course.

Spoiler: Image.

Unfortunately I couldn't get the planned image to work because I can't figure out how to upload an image to QQ from my desktop, and Catbox isn't working at the moment. Thanks to @Doru for this image. For the full experience, if you want to see exactly what he turned into, it is Kirsty's model in this video (It is showing at the time the video will start).

Hah, got her. I win. I knew she couldn't keep calm forever.

"Wait, wrong one," he said, before turning back to his original form of a Freshman at College aged stereotypical dark-haired white man terrorist.

"Oh thank god it's over," Bella fake-sobbed dramatically into Crystal's arms. Crystal meanwhile had a bemused look on her face at the realization she had been trolled.

Yes, I definitely did that on purpose.

"Anyways! I scouted around while I was dead and there is nobody here apart from us aside from some crabs and some clams. So, time for power testing!"

Crytsal clapped obligingly, while Bella was a little less celebratory. "I see a couple fish right over there, why are you counting the crabs and clams but not the fish? Did you hear about a Master than can only control things without a spine but can see through the senses of the things they control or something?" I got another shiver there, but it really isn't that cold, and my first shiver was while I was in Pikachu form and had fur… I don't actually know if Pikachu form's fur keeps me warm, I will need to test that I guess.

"No, it's just that clams and crabs are people. Duh." Dave told his silly friend, who usually seemed rather smart before she suddenly didn't seem to know random pieces of common sense. They were so common in fact, that they weren't even part of his power-given common sense package. They were that obvious.

"Right, of course, silly me." Well at least she knows how silly she gets. She even used the same word choice he was thinking of. Truly, she is a genius. Just like him really.



"So, you have an escalating Trump power?" Crystal asked after his him describe how he would be getting more powers over time. Without mentioning the soul alien, Bella didn't seem very receptive to the truth for some reason, so Dave logically reasoned (which he can do because he is very smort) that her friend would likely also not be receptive to the truth. Perhaps they will see in time, but for now…

"Yes, that sounds like an accurate description I suppose. According to my common sense anyways. Man, common sense is such a great superpower, I'm glad I have it."

"Sure you do buddy." Bella said from side.

"Anyways, testing!" Crystal clapped her hands together, before looking around for something, presumably things to use for testing, when she spotted the pink plastic shovel Bella had brought.

"Aww, you brought the shovel! That's so sweet, thanks Bella," Crystal hugged Bella again… Probably, she might have just been trying to strangle her through the chest instead of the neck. Bella seemed to think it was a strangling attempt at least based on how much she was struggling.

Dave raised his hand "Context please."

"Oh, when I first got my powers we came down here to do power testing as well because my parents were smothering me after I first got powers and wouldn't let me test them at first. Bella brought me here for the most depressing picnic scenery of all time and brought this little shovel to test if I could use my forcefield for things like grabbing objects from a distance and if my control over my lasers was good enough to shoot a laser through the handle hole without melting any of the plastic around it from the laser's heat." Crystal explained after letting her struggling prey go.

Hmm, maybe I should see if she wants a headcrab to keep as a pet? She can attack someone's chest to strangle them like she was doing with Bella and then the headcrab can jump on their face and attack them while she is pinning their arms down.

"So, what sort of abilities do you have so far other than respawning and turning into Pikachu?" Crystal asked.

"Well, I can also turn into quite a few other things, I have the ability to die from the slightest bit of damage, I have spectator mode while I am dead, and I have an inventory for weapons that gets refreshed with more weapons in addition to the olds ones getting refilled ammo. And I can double jump. I'm a pretty standard terrorist at the moment really."

Crystal paused in her enthusiasm slightly, mouthed a couple words to herself and then asked "How does that make you a terrorist?"

"How doesn't that make me a terrorist? That's like a standard terrorist package right there except for the instantly dying part. Unfortunately, I probably won't unlock the Jihad bomb for a few days, so—"

"NO JIHAD BOMBS!" Bella cut in.

"But… but…" Dave transformed into (normal) Pikachu and looked up at Bella with big teary eyes and said "But, what if they have it coming?"

"No."

"But, what if it's the best solution to the situation I have available?"

"No," Bella repeated.

Pikachu! I can't believe you failed me! Well, as long as I don't tell her about the Holy Hand Grenade, she can't forbid me from using it. After all, what if I need to kill a rabbit? Why do I keep shivering? I'm not even cold, what the heck is up with these full body shivers I get after thinking about things that have nothing in common?

 

[HellFire28]

Hilarious.

 

[Megatherium]

Reading this genuinely got a smile out of me. Following.

Spectator mode is such a nice thing to have.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 5: Power Testing! Finally!

January 1, 2010. Brockton Bay, Boat Graveyard.

Crystal cut in there "Hold on Bella, if it actually is the best solution to a situation that he has available, wouldn't it be wrong to do anything other than use the Jihad bomb?"

Bella gave Crystal a look of pure disgust "This isn't your philosophy class Crystal, you seem to be forgetting, Dave is an Idiot—" "Hey, I resemble that remark!" "—And will not be able to accurately judge if a Jihad Bomb is the best thing to use in a given situation."

Crystal grumbled a bit before she clapped once to get our attention, "We're getting distracted again. Let's just start with the testing. Dave, what sort of offensive capabilities do you have right now?"

"Guns. And grenades. I only have Smoke Grenades, Discombobulators, and Incendiary Grenades at the moment in the grenades section, and I don't know enough about guns to know what most of them are called, even if my power ensures I know the difference and which one is which, it doesn't tell me what each one is actually called."

"Well, we can't test guns out here, those things are absurdly loud and we don't want to draw attention to you before you are ready, and if anyone comes to investigate gunshots, they might see you doing other things and realize you are a cape because of my presence making them stay longer. If we don't draw attention with things like gunshots though, a casual onlooker probably won't recognize me from a distance and will just think we are having a secluded picnic in a weird spot. Thanks Bella by the way, for bringing the picnic stuff to give us plausible deniability if we are spotted."

I knew it, Bella truly is a genius, thinking of plausible deniability in advance. That makes me a genius for recruiting her to my terrorism cause… as soon as I think of a cause anyways.

"Actually, I think my guns are much quieter than normal guns, though not as quiet as the silenced ones I will be able to get in the future, which will even make the people they kill not make any noises as they die!" Dave said brightly.

"No killing, even if they deserve it." Crystal said it like an automated response. "You would get in huge trouble with the PRT and encourage villains to escalate if you start killing people without a kill order. You can probably get away with using guns because they are part of your power, but you will need to find nonlethal measures before you can start going out as a cape." Crystal explained.

"Does it count as nonlethal, as long as they are alive and fully healthy when I am done with them?" Dave asked innocently.

"Yes?" Perfect, Crystal isn't suspicious at all. That means it's fine if they die in the middle as long as they are alive and healthy when I am done! Not that I can actually do that yet. I also probably shouldn't resurrect my enemies as zombies. My common sense is telling me not to do that for some reason. Probably because zombies hit rather hard and get super-jumping and super-spitting, so I might be making a normal person stronger, and I shouldn't strengthen my enemies. Yes, that is almost certainly why my common sense is telling me not to resurrect my enemies as zombies. I wonder if it's fine to raise my allies as zombies though?

---

A little bit of testing later, and they found his guns were substantially quieter than normal guns, to the point nobody had actually come to investigate the sounds of gunshots. They also found his guns acted as normal guns when somebody else used them, instead of using game mechanics of dealing a certain amount of damage per bullet based on how far away he was from whoever or whatever he was shooting, but he dealt ever so slightly more "damage" with his guns when he used them. He was pretty sure that last bit meant his increasing Karma would perpetually increase his offensive capabilities. Unfortunately, math dictated his Karma increased his "damage" linearly and additively; in other words, he wouldn't be getting exponential offensive increases anytime soon.

It turned out, both grenades and ammo --and copies of guns he already had-- stocked up indefinitely in his inventory, giving him more grenades, ammo and guns, every ten minutes regardless of how much he already had. Although he only got ammo for guns he already had in his inventory. He did get a new copy of every gun in his inventory every ten minutes, but he didn't always get new guns every ten minutes. It seemed like some guns were substantially rarer than others, and had a lower chance to appear for the first time in his inventory. He got his first Flare Gun partway through the testing, and in Elmer Fudd style looked inside it before accidentally firing it, which immediately set him on fire and killed him. On the bright side it worked just like the game, so anyone he hit with the Flare Gun would immediately be set on fire.

The smoke grenades were actually shockingly good. They were absolute shit originally, needing at least 3 smoke grenades to actually make enough smoke that it was difficult to see through, but his were good enough they were likely good enough for a ninja from a Hollywood movie to use. They were also completely harmless as far as he could tell, since even biting onto the grenade while it exploded into smoke wasn't able to kill him, and inhaling the smoke didn't kill him either.

The discombobulators (discombobs for short) were about as expected. In the game they just were a large Area of Effect knockback on everyone in range, pushing them in the opposite direction of wherever the discombob was when it exploded, but did no damage. They were harmless to Crystal, who could fly, and all three of them weren't willing to test the discombobs on Bella. They didn't damage Dave either, but he did decide to set one off at his feet (despite Bella's protests, Crystal was unworried after being assured he had continuity of consciousness, she was less worried he might be just copying himself and actually dying each time. Apparently a local terrorist called Oni Lee was trying to steal his thunder by being a suicide bomber, but actually died each time he cloned himself and gave himself some sort of brain damage as a result… or so Crystal claimed, though she admitted it was just online speculation).

After the discombob went off, Dave went flying straight up, and when he started to fall, he shouted "I got this" when Crystal started flying to catch him, then double jumped before he hit the ground to kill his momentum. Unfortunately, he mistimed it and hit the ground harder than intended and died instantly.

---

It turned out, while he was holding his (extremely floppy) Crowbar, he could hit someone like normal, though not strongly enough to break Crystal's forcefield. But more interestingly, he could send out a sort of short-range telekinetic push in lieu of the game mechanic of "pushing" with the crowbar. He didn't actually need to touch them with the crowbar, they just had to be close enough he could theoretically touch them with the crowbar without moving his legs, then he had to make at least some movement with the crowbar, but even jerking it a couple inches forward worked. Then, his target (Crystal first, then Bella) would be harmlessly shoved a little while staying perfectly balanced and on their feet.

They tried again afterwards, and he could actually try to affect a specific part of their body as well to try and make them lose balance, though it required focusing on the specific body part. He found focusing on just their upper half in general was most effective at getting them to fall over.

For some reason, Bella and Crystal were reluctant to test the incendiary grenades upon finding out they exploded in a way that dealt damage, set fire in a large range, and had a decent chance the fires couldn't be put out by water.

When he demonstrated it anyways, they claimed he "had it coming" when he inhaled a bit of the smoke from a rusty pipe that had been in the range of the flames, doubled over coughing, and died. He was right though, water didn't work on it, but the fire did only last around 20 seconds. Unfortunately, he was stopped before he could test if throwing a discombob onto the fire would expand the fire like he suspected it would.

---

"That is absolute bullshit," Bella said staring at his magneto stick.

He waved it at a dead log about 6 feet long, and the log floated up in accordance of how he held his magneto stick.

"That is actual bullshit. My physics professor would go nuts over this. No extra weight, but all the extra mass as soon as you let go? And look at all that extra leverage! This is actually way stronger than a telekinetic of "equal" strength would be."

Dave supposed that made sense. It was kind of like Wii Sports, where the motion tracker just tracks how quickly the end of the Wii stick controller is moving, and using that to determine how "hard" one was swinging. That meant just flicking your wrist make the game think you were hitting much harder than you were, because it only tracked how fast the sensor was moving, not how hard it was being swung. Wait a minute, what's a Wii sport? Is it sports for really short people? Because that sounds kind of offensive even if I'm not totally sure why.

The extra length between the magneto stick and the object it was "holding" gave him a lot of extra leverage without increasing the weight at all. Bella waved her arm in that gap while he was thinking, and Dave figured he might as well make use of his resources.

"Hey Crystal, do you think you could ask your physics professor about the benefits of extra leverage without extra mass would be for throwing things? Maybe bring up the atlatl or something. You might even be able to get extra credit, or just use it for class credit if there is a final lab project where you can design your own experiment. I'll even lend you my magneto stick for it if you want."

"Really? That sounds so cool! And I'm nearly certain I could squeeze extra credit out of that. You sound like you're familiar with Physics classes though, are you taking classes at the college too?"

"Crystal! No distractions! That's how we keep delaying things. Well that and someone keeps killing themselves and we have to wait until they resurrect." Bella sternly interjected after getting bored of waving her arm in the space between the magneto stick and the log.

"Well, time to see if this works how I suspect. YEET!" Dave did his best to use his whole body for it. His legs were planted well, he twisted his hips, he swung his whole arm, and he made use of the magneto stick's length by gripping it from the bottom to make the stick squeeze out as much leverage as possible by making it act like an atlatl. It worked well. Too well in fact, like his power had done something to improve his technique. He got a feeling he would find out the exact details of what happened the next day along with his new role. For now though…

"Holy shit."

"Language Crystal!"

"That log went over the damn tanker. That's fucking absurd. That thing is at least half a mile out and the log still had enough height to clear it. Dad's into baseball and I'm damn sure a professional baseball player could barely reach a tenth of that distance before it landed, and that's with a baseball. Dave doesn't even have any Brute strength. I need you to understand how fucking broken that thing is Bella."

"I was thinking of using it to carry groceries though," Dave interjected before Bella could complete her transformation into a Bobblehead from how hard Crystal was shaking her. Crystal's head slowly turned to look at him.

"Oh my, that's a scary look. Bella help! I'm in danger!" Dave cried pathetically politely requested Bella for assistance.

"Nope this is Karma Dave, let it happen."

"No, my Karma is constantly increasing! I have amazing Karma! It's part of being an Old Man. Ooh my luck has turned." In the middle of running away from Crystal, Dave felt a ten minute marker pass and got something new in his inventory. It was a normal item he didn't need a special role to get, but it was like a flare gun in that it seemed to be quite rare. He immediately used it.

Crystal watched, baffled, as Dave pulled out some sort of handheld device, pressed a button on it, and shrank to about a fifth of his original size, and hid under a piece of metal debris.

"I got a Minifier!" Dave's muffled voice shouted out as she tried to process what just happened.

"What?" Crystal may have sounded slightly hysterical.

"Hah! Now you know how I feel dealing with your bullshit Crystal." Bella meanwhile just felt vindicated.



Author's Note: For reference, I looked up the furthest Baseball throw ever, and it was 135.89 meters, or 445 feet and 10 inches. Crystal is estimating because she doesn't actually care that much about Baseball and doesn't know that number, though her dad would. Let me know if you think I messed up on how far out the Tanker would be, I'm really not familiar with boats and how much space they need to be able to deduce how far out it likely would have been when it was sunk.

 

[Phili]

This is a small chapter in which not a ton happens, so you get an extra one right after this.

Chapter 6: In Which Nothing Really Happens. Promise.

January 1, 2010. Brockton Bay.



While he was attempting to escape from Crystal, Dave stubbed his toe on a pebble while being a Minified Old Man (being Minified made him even more fragile; in the game it made someone go from 100 health to 60 health, but it felt like it took him from 1 health to 0.6 health because he was an Old Man and started with "1 health"). He died instantly.

While in spectator mode, he went underground and looked up (Crystal was also wearing pants, not a skirt. Another bullet dodged). He noticed a fair distance away a couple of men walking towards the Boat Graveyard. He couldn't really tell what they looked like, and they didn't seem like they would arrive anytime soon, but they were heading in the right direction to encounter Dave and his new friends.

After he respawned, he found Bella and Crystal discussing what could have killed him, and whether he would come back to life minified or full size when considering his corpse stayed minified after he died. It turned out, he respawned at his full size.

"I stubbed my toe on a pebble. Also, there are a couple guys coming this way. They probably won't be here for another 15 minutes or so though. That is, if they are actually heading here and not just in this direction."

Bella looked at him like he was stupid. Which was completely unfair, everyone is stupid in their own special way and Dave will stand by that. "There is literally nothing else in this direction. They couldn't even be heading to the Ocean because everything is blocked off by the tanker. They probably spotted the log you threw and are investigating. They could be anything from overenthusiastic PHO cape-spotters to scouts for gangs keeping an eye on the area for new capes recklessly testing their powers."

"Yeah, we should probably leave. We've been here for a few hours anyways. Time really flies when you're waiting for ten-minute periods constantly." Crystal added on.

"Help me grab the towels and we can get to the car. Crystal, you get the backseat, Dave you're in shotgun."

Dave took out a shotgun and pondered how he would fit in it before Bella slapped him. He died instantly.

"Shit, I forgot about that. Crystal, help me roll him in towels and stuff him in the back seat. We're going to need to roll him up like a burrito. His corpse doesn't get wounds, but I've noticed it leaks blood whenever something impacts it. I don't think we have time to wait for him to respawn if we want to get out before the guys he saw see my car, so you'll have to sit in the front seat. You can tell me how to clean up the blood on the windshield while we're driving away anyways."

"Fine, there isn't any blood on the seat though, right? I don't want to explain to Mom why there is blood on my clothes on New Years Day. That isn't the impression I want Dave to give the person in charge of New Wave. He's disadvantaged enough when it comes to first impressions, he really doesn't need any more disadvantages."

"No, Crystal, there's no blood on the front seat. Now grab the shovel while I get the towels. We can come back and finish the testing at some point before winter break is over. Unless you have a better idea of where we could go for future testing? With his power, I suspect we will need to do power testing a lot."

"Not really, aside from the PRT, and I don't know if he wants to join them yet, if ever. I can think about it though, and ask my family for suggestions on where we could go to do more destructive things to test some of the more… violent things he said he could eventually get. As well as where we could go for experimenting with those fire grenades of his."

The discussion continued as they drove away.

---

Dave respawned standing up inside the car, his neck clipped through the roof of the car and he died instantly.

---

Dave respawned outside the car in a deserted alleyway, quietly got into the backseat, strapped himself in, and dramatically hung his head in apology. On the bright side, it seems that when he noclips things, his body treats reality more like a video game, and it didn't just separate his head from his body. Instead, his body fell to the floor of the car with his head slipping through the roof after he died, leaving the roof and the car itself undamaged. His body was also undamaged. Unfortunately, there was now blood in the backseat of Bella's car. A lot of blood in fact.

On the bright side, he thought of a new thing for their next power testing session. If his body contains infinite blood that just spurts out whenever it is impacted in place of the body itself being damaged. He suspected it did, but only while he was dead. Unfortunately, he didn't know what blood type he was, but if it was that one super-compatible one, he could probably donate loads of blood to hospitals by killing himself and having his friends beat his corpse with floppy crowbars. Truly, his high karma was absolutely justified.

---

"I need to be home soon, so for now Bella, you and I will trade numbers with Dave, and you can drop me off at home so Mom will get off my back about using my powers for everything, then you two can go back to your apartment for the rest of the day." Crystal said after a moment of awkward silence.

"Don't say it like that, it makes it sound like we live in the same unit." Bella immediately backstabbed him, and he clutched his heart and looked pathetically at her.

She saw him in the mirror "Don't whine Dave, I do already somehow consider you a friend, but we sure as heck aren't close enough yet to be roommates."

"Anyways," Crystal continued before they could get off track, "Tomorrow, we can dedicate some time to cleaning Bella's car and see if Dave's power has had any updates. If we think of any tests we can do without going out somewhere we might get spotted we can do those as well. Otherwise, Bella and I will probably need to dedicate a little time to chipping away at our winter homework."

"Which is bullshit by the way," Bella pouted. "We don't even have classes to assign us homework. They're just assuming we're taking two classes in a row that are connected in sequence. What if someone wants to take Physics 101, then not take Physics 102 until two semesters later? No, they just assume you will take Physics 102 immediately after."

"Yes, yes, Bella, we know. It's an injustice the likes of which have never been seen… that doesn't even apply to you silly girl. We have the same classes; you showed me your schedule. And a lot of it is prep work before the new class starts to make sure we are ready for the actual class."

"I gave you that argument Crystal! You were the one complaining about it first, you don't get to quote my own argument back at me, I just want to complain a little."

Their bickering continued. Meanwhile, in the back seat… Dave was arguably meditating.

Head empty, no thoughts.



AN: Next chapter title is: "Give Me a Toy Please." Where Dave finds out just how much his soul has been corrupted by capitalism and his personal soul alien tries to figure out if Dave is actually just illiterate. Get ready. (I was wrong, he doesn't find out how much his soul is corrupted by capitalism yet. Probably the chapter after that).

 

[Phili]

This isn't the first chapter today. If you haven't already, please make sure you go back and read the previous one.

Chapter 7: "Give Me a Toy Please."

January 2, 2010. Brockton Bay

Dave woke up to a… he already forgot if that saying or meme or whatever it was supposed to be was a "familiar ceiling" or an "unfamiliar ceiling". Maybe he should get a pet seal so he could say he woke up to a "familiar sealing" if he wakes up cuddling with it. He would love to give a seal a hug anyways.

He checked his clock, and if he fell asleep when he thought he did, he might have actually slept for exactly eight hours. He's pretty sure he normally ended up with ten hours of sleep if left to his own devices, and he forgot to set an alarm. Maybe his power made sure he only needed exactly eight hours of sleep? It could also be a coincidence though.

He got up, went through his morning routine, poured orange juice, slid a bagel into the toaster, and started a kettle of water to make tea with after he found a bunch of tea bags in a cupboard.

Hi Dave!

It's me your best alien friend, or BAF! … I'm trying to workshop it, okay? Anyways, there have been quite a few developments, because it turns out souls don't have lactic acid. Who knew? That means your soul doesn't need to rest and rebuild before growing back stronger like a lame physical body would after exercising, it just needs a dimensional soul alien sticking its metaphysical tentacle analog inside the human-adjacent soul before it snaps back into being its normal, boring form. So, you might have noticed yesterday that your body started moving a little more smoothly than it normally would. That's because you exercised your soul quite a bit and I was able to squeeze some neat stuff in there. Normally, I would have added items to your "shop" or extended capabilities you already had, like letting you have more power over randomats to start deciding how many people you want one to affect instead of them just blanket affecting everyone. However, the Old Man doesn't have much, so I went with what let me squeeze the most out of what was available. So, your soul likes things to be "on theme", and staying "on theme" lets me squeeze more "mileage" out of what soul room is available. So, since the only themes present were "Old Man" and "Terrorist", I was looking at some of the locals, and noticed this thing they called a "Combat Thinker". Then, I thought "Hey, wait a minute" and worked my magic. And now, you have a "combat thinker" effect based on that saying that goes something like "Beware an Old Man in a profession where men die young". It makes you like those badass retired people in action stories. It will get a little stronger whenever your soul has a bit of room to spare that isn't better suited for other things, but it's not something with a ton of growth potential. Someone can only get so skilled at most things after all. The "Combat Thinker" aspect is only active while you have the Old Man role active, but you are already able to have the Old Man role "active" while ignoring the health debuff, as long as you have another role active simultaneously. Pretty soon you will be able to mix and match what traits you want active from each role and have whatever traits you don't want disabled, while being able to switch which traits are disabled or enabled in an instant at will. Oh yeah, your new role for today is the Beggar! Good luck!

"Yup, can't understand a word of that. I got the meaning and all, but those words are nonsense. Ooh my bagel's done."

But, but… I fixed it! I spent all day fiddling with the parts of your soul that should affect our communication. I used like five bottles of soul glue. I even used the glitter versions. Are you telling me I wasted my soul glitter glue? Do you know how much of a pain that is to get? Not that I really understand pain, I've never actually felt it. But if I could feel pain, getting five new bottles of soul glitter glue would definitely make me feel it!

Dave shrugged and grabbed his bagel and some cream cheese from the refrigerator. Then looked at the refrigerator suspiciously. It was on but it wasn't running. He dropped to the floor to make sure the feet weren't moving. Then realized that was dumb, refrigerators don't have feet so obviously they can't run. They aren't supposed to run with feet at all in fact. Also, his refrigerator was running normally the whole time, it was just quiet. Also, his bagel got into direct contact with the floor when he dropped to inspect the refrigerator.

"Fuck."

Hmm. Maybe it really was too much glitter glue? I would have thought glitter would be good for the soul though. It's so pretty! And between the two of us, I'm definitely the expert on the soul, so I'm pretty sure that makes me correct. I'm sure it'll be fine. … I'll get my soul cleaning implements just in case.

---

With a new bagel popped up from the toaster, Dave poured his tea and sat down to eat properly.

Maybe you're just actually illiterate? Like, do you know how to read?

"I know how to read."

But like, have you ever actually done it though? Like, in real life, after you woke up yesterday?

He sipped his tea and ignored the silly alien in his soul.

As he sipped his tea, he pondered his new role. The Beggar was a Jester role, or purple role; meaning it couldn't do any damage and had an unusual win condition. In the case of the Beggar, they had to get a shop item from either the Innocent team or the Traitor team. Depending on which shop the item was bought from, the Beggar would join the team of the item the shop originally came from, and then became a normal Innocent if they joined the innocent team, or a normal Traitor if they joined the traitor team.

So, assuming his theory held that Villains were considered terrorists, that meant a Villain would be an Innocent, and a Hero would be a Traitor. Given Traitors had access to buy menus, it was obviously better to be a Traitor, especially since the main disadvantage of being a Traitor was being outnumbered, and that obviously wasn't the case with Heroes and Villains. Everybody wanted to be a hero after all; any other scenario would be absurd.

"I wonder what Crystal would need to give me for it to be considered a 'shop item'. It would have to be something unusual, something I couldn't just find lying around like a gun or a grenade. Hmm… I'll ask Bella what she thinks."

---

After texting Bella, she and Dave agreed to meet outside her apartment in ten minutes before heading out to pick up cleaning supplies.

I can't believe you can read. Does that mean I can't read? Am I illiterate? Am I some kind of idiot and I just never knew? No, that's impossible, I'm really smart. Then why can't I read? Wait, why I am assuming I can't read?

Meanwhile, Dave's power was having a small mental breakdown.

"Don't worry soul-alien friend, it'll be okay," Dave offered consolingly, while patting his own head. He figured his own head was the closest thing he could reach in order to give his soul alien friend headpats. He really needed to figure out what to call his soul alien friend too. Soul alien friend was just too much of a mouthful. Maybe he should try and figure out gender and preferred pronouns? Well, gender might turn out to be a little silly as a concept for a soul-being, but preferred pronouns were just a linguistic issue, and nonbinary pronouns were always an option, as was "it/its".

He licked his plate clean, swirled his tongue along the inside of his orange juice glass to get every last drop, and put his dishes in the dishwasher, then headed out of his apartment unit. Then walked two feet to the right, turned ninety degrees, and stared at Bella's door. Menacingly. Menacingly!

Bella walked out, saw him standing there like an idiot and gave him a supremely unimpressed look, and locked the door to her apartment.

"Quick, how do you spell Innocent backwards?!" Dave asked to make sure it was really her.

"What?"

"I'm making sure you're an innocent."

"Didn't you say the traitors were the good guys though?"

"Oh yeah, quick, how do you spell traitor backwards?"

She still looked supremely unimpressed. "R-O-T-I-A-R-T". Damn, she was good. But wait, she could be a Glitch!

When he opened his mouth again, she just grabbed his arm and dragged him to the building's garage. Then he realized, he was a Beggar Old Man, he didn't care what team she was on. But just in case she was a traitor…

"Can I have a toy please?"

She sighed. Which wasn't an answer! Can he have a toy or not? Is he going to have to beg for a toy from everyone he sees or is she going to just give him one?

---

They went to a hardware store. It turned out, hardware stores don't carry any toys, though the cashier was very sympathetic when Dave told him his friend wouldn't give him a toy.

After the cleaning supplies were obtained, they picked up Crystal from her house and went to a deserted parking lot on the college campus. They couldn't think of a better place to do it and Bella claimed public spaces in Brockton had an "SEP field", or "Someone Else's Problem" Field, where nobody cared if it didn't directly and obviously affect them personally. Also, it was deserted because it was winter break and the day after New Years, so even an enthusiastic professor would still be either on vacation or staying at home enjoying time off.

Dave was stuck in the bloody back seat while Crystal got the passenger seat and got to stare at the interesting blood splatter patterns on the windshield where a Pikachu died.

Really, Bella should be thanking me. How many people can say that they not only hit a Pikachu with their car and killed it, but that the Pikachu died by hitting the car from the inside? That's like, top tier bragging rights.

It turned out, while Crystal had to bribe her brother into asking her parents how to clean blood from a car as a hypothetical, and Bella was forced to use a Wiki-How article to research the subject, Dave already knew how to clean blood from a car.

"Then what did we go through all that for?!" Bella had shouted at him before slapping a hand over his mouth before he could proclaim his innocence.

"Nevermind, just get to work. And stop licking my hand, I've dealt with Crystal for years, you can't get me with that trick, I just don't care anymore about having my hand licked." She did take her hand away though and wiped it on Dave's shirt.

Crystal turned to him and said "Was her hand as tasty as I remembered it?"

Dave nodded, before remembering, "Can I have a toy?"

Crystal didn't even pause while adding salt to the spray bottle full of cold water before saying "Nope, I don't have any toys on me. It may surprise you to learn that I don't normally bring toys with me when I'm helping a friend clean blood out of her car."

She was right, it did surprise him. If he had toys, he would bring them everywhere. After all, what if he needed to fake his death? How was he supposed to do that without a Dead Ringer? Maybe after he eventually got toys, he could give her some to carry around with her.

Also, crap, she didn't even pause, let alone double take when I asked for a toy. She's getting used to me! Clearly, the only reasonable solution is to escalate. Fuck, why am I shivering again? I thought that stopped yesterday? Oh, duh, I'm holding a bunch of cold water in the middle of winter. That's obviously it.

---

After they cleaned Bella's car as best they could, which was pretty darn good in Dave's opinion, Crystal made a call to her dad.

"Hey Dad, can I bring some friends over?"

"No, just two, I was going to order takeout for lunch and watch some stuff in my room with them."

"Fine, love you."

Then she hung up and called her mom.

"Hi Mom. I want to bring a couple friends over for lunch, and Dad said to ask you."

"It's Bella and someone else, we were going to get takeout and watch Pokemon."

Bella watched Crystal nonchalantly talk on the phone with her mother with mounting horror as she realized what was happening.

"Oh shit, she's actually going to make me do it. Dave, please, save me!" Bella turned to him and was immediately forsaken.

"Pika Pika!" Pikachu said, before using "Agility" (double jumping) to get up onto her shoulder, and staring deep into her eyes. Then licked her nose.

Bella melted from cuteness.

"Awww."



Author's Note: Okay, I promise that next time, Dave will find out how much his soul has been corrupted by capitalism. No, he won't be getting the Communist role next chapter, I do actually roll to find out which role he gets next, but the next chapter is still the same day as this one. He just has to contemplate exactly what counts as a "bought item" that Crystal might be able to give him. Listen… he really wants to get those Traitor and Innocent roles early to remove them from the pool of roles he has to unlock so he can get the shop items earlier and the more interesting roles earlier.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 8: The Dangers of the Reckless Pursuit of Power.

January 2, 2010. Brockton Bay, The Pelham House.





Eric Pelham

Eric watched from the front porch of his house, gobsmacked, as his older sister came out of her friend Bella's car.

"Is that a fucking Pikachu on your shoulder?"

The Pikachu looked at him. "Pika Pika!"

His sister looked at him with a confused expression, as if he was crazy, and said "No." Then she walked into the house. Bella said hi to him, which he reflexively returned, then she followed his sister inside.

"I think I need… something. I don't know what, but I need it."

---

Crystal giggled after the front door closed and her brother was left standing outside looking like he was trying to reboot his brain.

"That was mean Crystal," Bella said, as if she wasn't also smiling and hadn't been happy to go along with it.

"Little punk deserves it; he made me bribe him to ask our parents how to clean blood from a car for me. I told him to just treat it as a hypothetical; it's not like he even got in trouble for it. Mom even praised him for taking the initiative in learning how to deal with cleaning up things we might encounter in hero work! He refused to do it as a favor to his absolutely amazing older sis, so this is what he gets."

Dave was looking around the Pelham home for any toys. All he saw was a normal home with a disturbing lack of terrorist-friendly items.

He wrapped his little Pikachu arms around Crystal's neck as she lifted off the ground and literally flew up the stairs and into her room. His little hind legs were left dangling in the air as he nearly flew off from how fast she went up those stairs, and he held desperately on to her neck to avoid actually flying off.

Pikachu is too low level to learn Fly yet Crystal!

While Bella was stuck climbing the stairs like a peasant, Crystal opened the door to her room, and gently floated in, instead of zooming in like a maniac as Dave thought she was going to.

While Crystal booted up her computer and Bella walked in and closed the door with enough familiarity to anticipate the door needing a small shove to fully close, Dave popped off of Crystal's shoulder and dropped onto her floor, and decided to look around her room for any Toys.

He didn't find any, and got grabbed by Bella before he could crawl under the bed to look there. She plopped him in her lap and squeezed him like a stress ball, so he turned into a slightly chubbier Pikachu form to better accommodate her. He truly was an amazing friend.

After Crystal had set up her Earth Aleph Anime Streaming Site ™ and gotten the first episode ready, she turned around and squinted suspiciously at them.

"Did Dave behave, Bella? Wait… did you get fatter? How? Lunch hasn't even arrived yet?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, she's the same size she was before." Dave replied while making a confused Pikachu face.

"Not her you little—nevermind, I am calm, I am at peace," Crystal took a deep breath in before exhaling slowly.

---

It turned out, Bella fucking loved Pokemon. She cheered along, sang with the theme, got exasperated at Ash, and was fascinated by all the cool and cute creatures.

Before lunch arrived, Crystal had brought them each a bag of chips. Bella simply handed hers back to Crystal, and Crystal opened both hers and Bella's chip bags with her fucking lasers. It turned out, she didn't even own a single pair of scissors. When she offered to open Dave's chips, he waved her off.

"Nah, I got this." He said, then pulled out an assault rifle.

"The fuck you do!" Crystal shouted before stealing his bag of chips and opening it with her lasers. Then smacking him on the head. She tried to get Bella to smack him for her at first, but Bella wasn't willing to smack the chubby Pikachu giving her puppy eyes.

"But, it's basically what you were doing," Dave argued indignantly.

"I have total control over my lasers, I can ensure they are the perfect strength to tear open a bag without even making it to anything on the other side of the bag. My control over my lasers is better than how well a surgeon can control their tools. There is no similarity whatsoever between what I do and trying to open a bag of chips by shooting it with a gun. We literally tested this yesterday! You have no control over the bullets after they leave the gun, and you have no special control over the guns themselves aside from what is normal for someone with hands. You have no way of opening a chip bag with a gun without also shooting whatever is on the other side of the bag, in this case, that is my room." Crystal ranted.

Wow, she needs to chill out man.

Dave looked up at her.

"Pika Pika?"

She gave him a withering, exhausted look. "Fine, here's your chips, you fucking psychopath."

Bella watched the whole thing with mild interest before saying "Maybe now you can appreciate your mom's perspective a little more? She always says you shouldn't use your powers for everything and just open chip bags and walk up the stairs like a normal person."

"But they're completely different scenarios," Crystal complained.

"They look quite similar from the outside, and there's that saying you know."

Dave made an 'Ahah' Pikachu face. "Oh, if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail! Bella's right Crystal, if you only ever use one thing to solve all your problems, you will start trying to solve problems with that same thing even if those problems will be better solved and/or more easily solved by using other means!" He said with an air of wisdom.

"I don't want to hear that from you Mr. 'I'm trying to open a bag of ships by shooting it with an assault rifle.'" Crystal really seemed to be having a hard time letting go of that. It was all in the past, wasn't it?

---

After finishing the episode with Digletts and Dugtrios (for some reason, Dave felt like the episode occurred earlier than it was supposed to), Dave had a question.

"What happens to a Dugtrio if one of the Digletts dies?"

"Shut the fuck up Dave, I'm trying to enjoy Pokemon, a world where no cute animals die or eat each other, and everything except for humans live in harmony." Bella said.

"Okay… You know Miltank?"

Bella shook her head, "Obviously not, this is the first time I've ever seen this show, and that hasn't shown up yet. I don't even remember it from that catchy rap bit actually." She frowned at that last bit, then squinted at the Pikachu in her lap. "Are you trying to trick me?"

"No, Miltank is a real Pokemon, it's just from the next generation. The rap doesn't include all the Pokemon from the first generation anyways." Crystal said, while bringing up the Aleph Pokemon wiki page for Miltank.

After Crystal had told Bella more than she ever thought she wanted to know about Miltank, Dave asked "What happens if you're a male Miltank though."

Crystal paused, "What?"

"What happens if you're a male Miltank?"

"Shut the fuck up Dave."

---

After they had gotten a decent way through Ash's journey, they decided to stop their Pokemon marathon to continue it at a later, currently undecided, date. In the meantime, Dave decided to fill his friends in on the updates to his power.

"So, my new role my power gave me today is called the Beggar. It's a jester role, which means it doesn't do damage, though I'll be able to disable the 'no doing damage' part at will within a few days most likely. Currently I need that enabled in order to not be stuck on one health from the Old Man role, but I need the Old Man role enabled for the new Combat Thinker bonus it gives me."

"What Combat Thinker bonus? We tested it yesterday and you didn't have anything like that." Bella interjected, slightly provoked by the idea that the tests she helped come up with weren't encompassing enough to miss something as obvious as a combat thinker power.

"Yes, that is new, it only fully manifested this morning but it needs the Old Man role active. I think it actually started manifesting yesterday a little bit though, and that it was how I had such good form when I threw that log with the magneto stick. Anyways, the Beggar becomes either an Innocent or a Traitor after getting something from either a Detective or Innocent role, or a Traitor Role, respectively."

At Crystal's confused look, Bella did her best to translate and remind Crystal of the details of Dave's mind. "Dave thinks in weird terms. To him, a 'terrorist' is an 'innocent' and someone that might fight 'terrorists' is a 'traitor'. I think it references some sort of game that his power manifested itself around, but trying to get clear answers out of him is like trying to get a magic 8 ball to write an essay for you."

"Concentrate and Ask Again." Dave added helpfully.

"Yes, like that," Bella pointed at Dave.

"So, I was wondering what would count as a 'bought item', and naturally, it occurred to me that the most likely possibilities would be Tinkertech, official merchandize of a cape, or rare items personal to a cape that are unique or nearly unique." Dave explained his issue.

"I see, so if I give you some of the official New Wave merch, you might get more power early."

Dave nodded eagerly, having stolen Crystal's computer chair for the discussion while the two girls were on Crystal's bed. He was still a Pikachu of course, the non-chubby version.

"Yes, so, Toy please."

"Fine, I think we have a box of merch downstairs, I'll go grab something from it and we can see what happens.

---

A couple minutes later, Crystal returned to her room where a Pikachu was being used as a stress ball again. Dave and Bella both looked suspiciously innocent, as if they couldn't have possibly been plotting against her while she was gone.

"Here, I found one of my action figures, you can keep it either way though, I bet you'd love to have a pretty girl like me on your nightstand."

"Indeed," Dave nodded. "I love having a strong female role model to look up to."

Then he grabbed the action figure. Nothing happened.

"Well, I assume that didn't work." Bella concluded after a few seconds of silence.

"Nope, still an Old Man and a Beggar."

"Wait," Crystal interrupted before they could make more assumptions. "Maybe we don't know what the conditions are for him to be considered to have officially 'received' the action figure. Let's try this: I hereby formally and officially give this limited edition Laserdream action figure to Dave to permanently keep as his personal property."

Crystal paused, "Did that do anything?"

"Nope."

"Fuck. I thought I was on to something."

"There there," Bella comforted Crystal in a deadpan voice.

"Well, there's only one option left before we go beg Armsmaster for a toy." Bella said, before nodding at Dave.

Dave stood up, transformed into his original form, and walked to the middle of the floor of her bedroom, then got down on one knee and looked at Crystal with a serious expression.

"Crystal, may I have some of your panties?"

A laser went through his face and he died instantly.









Author's Note: Dave felt like the Diglett episode of Pokemon occurred earlier than it was supposed to, because Earth Aleph's version of Pokemon is slightly different than ours in a few ways. One of those ways is that certain episodes where no long-lasting changes occur will sometimes happen in a different order (long-lasting changes are things like someone Ash is traveling with (or Team Rocket) catching a new Pokemon, or one of their Pokemon learning a new move). On our Earth, the Diglett and Dugtrio episode is episode 31, and would have needed over 10 hours of watching before they got to it. Here, it is much earlier. I'm mentioning this because it is unlikely Dave will ever realize this sort of subtle difference given Earth Aleph is even closer to our Earth than Earth Bet is.

Here is the video that inspired this chapter from the beginning, it is 18 minutes and 40 seconds long, and I will put exact times below this for people only interested in certain parts.

Here is the start of Pokemon chat in the video that inspired this chapter.

Here is the part where they talk about male Miltanks.

Here is the part where they talk about what happens if one of the Digletts in a Dugtrio dies.

Here is the part where they talk about Doduo and Dodrio.

Here is the part where Pikachu's dead body gets shot with an automatic pistol and Ravs asks why Pikachu won't get in the ball.

It turns out, if you recklessly pursue power, you might get a laser to the face. Who knew?

 

[Mortal Sage]

give me more chapters please. I am dying of hunger.
Also i am subbed or thread watched i guess. I like the sheer chaos in this story. Love it.

 

[Phili]

Author's Note: This is a short one, and so is the next one, so you get two today!

Chapter 9: How Far Would You Go in The Pursuit of Power?

January 2, 2010. Brockton Bay, the Pelham House, Crystal's Bedroom.



"Oh shit, I didn't mean to kill him. I thought he said he couldn't take damage?" Crystal said with considerably less panic than the situation probably looked like it warranted.

"No, he said he couldn't deal any damage. Congratulations Crystal, you just killed literally the most harmless thing alive."

"It was reflex! My brain didn't catch up to the fact that he was quoting Brook until it was too late."

"You might want to work on that before you kill someone it will stick to and people find out. Just a suggestion you know? And who or what is Brook?"

"Oh, he's a character in One Piece, he appeared in the show a couple years ago and one of the first things he does is ask a woman if he can have her panties!"

Bella lost interest immediately. "Oh, so it's another one of your silly Earth Aleph Japanese cartoons."

"No, bad Bella!" Crystal bopped Bella on the head. "You don't get to say that anymore, you fucking loved Pokemon, and that's an Earth Aleph anime too. It even started at around the same time as One Piece."

"Also, didn't you just say that you had perfect control of your lasers? Like, better than a surgeon could control their tools? Didn't you even use that as an excuse to your mom once for why it was actually good for you to open chip bags with your lasers? Because it gave you more practice and control with your powers?"

"Shut up Bella, sometimes surgeons accidentally kill people with their tools too." Crystal blushed a little at being caught out before frowning. "Actually, it was weird, I genuinely didn't intend to hit him that hard, and he should have had normal human levels of durability. I haven't used a laser stronger than I meant to use in years. You know I'm actually really proud of my control over my power." Crystal paused a little before frowning harder. "That was actually really weird. It felt like I was just using my power normally before at the last second the power just shot up, but it kept my control well enough that it only killed him without damaging anything in my room, like the floor that would have been hit if it had penetrated all the way through a normal person's head instead of his weird indestructible corpse thing he does."

Bella nodded thoughtfully, "Well, I guess we can add that to our power testing list for next time. We can see if his corpse is actually indestructible aside from letting out more blood when it gets harmed. That could potentially be useful, though, I'm not sure we should test it against an all-or-nothing power—even if we could find one to cooperate with us for the testing— in case damaging his corpse will make him not respawn or something. Your full-power lasers are really strong though, so if his corpse can take a full-powered hit from you undamaged then he probably won't have to worry about anything aside from all-or-nothing powers damaging his corpse, and risking him not 'respawning' as he calls it."

"Was this your idea though Bella? I saw you two looking suspiciously innocent when I came in with the action figure."

"Yes," Bella admitted. "We theorized something as rare and unique as an actual superheroine's panties might count as being equivalent to one of his special items. It is honestly probably harder to get than actual tinkertech, and if someone tried to sell some while somehow having proof it was the real deal, they could probably sell it for a lot. Also, you are an even more rare unmasked cape. I wouldn't be surprised if the number of pairs of panties in the entire world that belonged to an unmasked cape and weren't in the possession of their original owner was less than a thousand. Granted, I also wouldn't be surprised if it was more than a thousand, but still." Bella shrugged.

"That's… actually shockingly well thought out." Crystal admitted.

Bella nodded. "My second idea was to see if your used bathwater would work. There's that weird thing online about 'gamer girl bathwater' or something, so I figured 'used unmasked objectively hot young heroine bathwater' might count as being equivalent to one of his 'shop items'. If you ever get desperate for money, you can probably auction your bathwater for more than a lot of tinkertech sells for." She smirked playfully as she said that last part.

"I'm not giving Dave—or anyone else—my used bathwater." Crystal deadpanned. "He can wait an extra day for one of his roles. Or go bother Armsmaster for his used bathwater. On second thought, Vicky might actually give him her bathwater if she could be convinced it would expand his powers. It's kind of disturbing how interested she is in Parahuman powers. Of course, if it didn't work, she would probably do her best to punch his head off even if he wasn't immortal or close to it."

Dave respawned. "My master plan worked!"

"Your master plan of taking a laser to the face and dying?" Crystal asked sarcastically.

"Yes! I am now an Innocent!"

"Wait what? I thought you said you needed a 'toy' from a cape in order to get a new role from your begging thing?" Bella asked confusedly, while Crystal was just a little mad at being tricked.

"Yes, normally that would be the case, and it would have been fantastic if Crystal had been less of an uptight prude and had just given me her panties… and it actually worked. But the beggar has another way of winning that I obtained just in time for it to kick in. It wouldn't have worked when I first woke up this morning, but by now my Beggar power 'strengthened' enough to use this aspect. If a Beggar is killed, then they will join the opposite team of whoever killed them. It should have resulted in an instant respawn though, so I'm not totally certain what happened with the extra wait."

"Hmm," Crystal hummed, a lot more interested now that they were talking about powers. Little hypocrite that she was, disparaging her cousin for being fascinated by powers as if she wasn't guilty of the same. "Maybe your power only just gave you that aspect of your 'beggar role' and it needed time to sort of recalibrate things because you died at the same time you got the new aspect instead of after?"

"No, that doesn't sound right," Bella said. "I suspect it's more that it takes a little time for him to get a new role. So far, you've only gotten a new role after you woke up from sleeping right?" She asked Dave for confirmation.

After receiving a nod, she continued. "So maybe his power just needed a bit of extra time to suddenly give him a new role. What does this one do anyway?"

"Well, it is a green role, and the default role everything is based on. In other words, nothing. I can take a hit normally now without needing to be unable to do damage, because it has normal health instead of the Old Man's one health weirdness, and it is a green role instead of a pink role, so I can now do damage normally. Also, I'm a real terrorist now instead of a sellout like the Beggar or a quasi-civilian like the Old Man."

"Wow, that's lame," Bella deadpanned.

"Well, at least it removed it from the pool though, right?" Crystal tried to be optimistic for Dave.

"I don't actually know if it is removed from the pool or not. Either way, I can still keep the Beggar role active, and then I'll be able to unlock the Traitor role and start getting shop items. I just need to either get a Toy from a Traitor, or get killed by an Innocent terrorist. So, can I have some of your panties please?" Dave gave Crystal his best puppy dog eyes.

"No." Dammit, I should have turned into Pikachu first. Nobody would refuse to give a Pikachu their panties.

"Oh yeah, also, your parents are back." Dave added when it was clear Crystal wasn't going to expand on her refusal. Honestly, she really reminded him of someone with the way she refused to give beggars a toy and just killed them instead. Maybe he should give her some harpoons after he unlocks the Traitor role?

"They are? Oh shit, I didn't want to introduce Dave to them yet. Dave, can you turn into a small form then use that thing that made you smaller and sneak out the window?" Crystal panicked slightly for some reason. Dave was great with parents. Really, who wouldn't want their kids spending time with someone like Dave? Meanwhile…

"Where do you want these?" Dave asked, holding a pile of grenades.

"I think I see the problem now," Bella said with completely unwarranted sarcasm.

"I was thinking earlier that you really needed to expand your kit, and since I have an unlimited amount of these, I figured I would give you some until we can work out something better." Dave generously explained.

"That's nice Dave, but maybe you should consider asking me first before trying to put a pile of grenades IN MY ROOM?" Crystal screamed the last bit.

The door opened, and Lady Photon stood there with an unimpressed look on her face.

Dave looked from Lady Photon in her civilian clothes to Crystal, to the pile of grenades in his arms, to Bella, back to Lady Photon, the cogs almost visibly churning in his head.

"We were about to have a threesome I swear."

"DAVE!" Bella screamed.

"Oh right, these are sex toys," he said, holding out the pile of grenades in his arms. Before adding "Also, may I have a pair of your panties?"

Nailed it.





Author's Note: Next chapter, the true (current) extent of Dave's "Changer power" is revealed, in all of its Psychological Warfare glory. This chapter and the next are quite short, so they will get released together! Yay!

 

[Phili]

Chapter 10: Meeting the Parents.

January 2, 2010. Brockton Bay, The Pelham House, Crystal's Room.



Sarah Pelham, also known as Lady Photon, gave her daughter a supremely unimpressed look.

"In my defense, you said he could come over."

Ooh, bad move Crystal. You never start off on defense, you take refuge in audacity. You should have gone along with my plan of embarrassing her into leaving, then I could turn into a Pikachu and pretend to be a custom plushy you wasted all your money on, and you could gaslight her into thinking I was never here.

"I believe I said you could bring your friends over to watch your Pokemon show, not play with grenades and have sex."

"But—"

"Downstairs. Now." Sarah turned and left the entrance to Crystal's room. Crystal hung her head in mock shame and floated after her, while Bella rolled her eyes and smirked a little in schadenfreude, and Dave looked on in confusion.

"Did I say something?" He asked Bella. When she just raised an eyebrow at him, he shrugged and turned into a Pikachu, before hopping up onto her shoulder and saying "Let's gaslight them with the power of friendship to get Crystal out of trouble."

---

When they arrived downstairs, Crystal was receiving a light dressing-down on inviting people to the house that neither of her parents had met yet, and the dangers of using grenades as sex toys with the involvement of people without forcefields.

Crystal's extremely tall father Neil, also known as Manpower, gave a little wave and a smile to Bella before doing a small double take in confusion at seeing the Pikachu on her shoulder.

Meanwhile Eric shouted "I fucking knew it! I told you there was a Pikachu!"

"Language!" Sarah immediately changed target to her son, before looking where he was pointing and seeing a Pikachu double jump from Bella's shoulder onto Crystal's head.

"Pika Pika!" Pikachu waved.

"Well, I'm off to start my Pokemon journey, I promise to call, I-love-you-guys-bye!" Crystal caught on and made a valiant attempt at nonchalantly walking out the door.

Sarah immediately shouted "Sit back down young lady!"

"So." Sarah stared at Dave, making him sweat a little. "Are you going to introduce us to your friend?" She asked sweetly.

"This is Pikachu," Crystal said seriously while pointing at the yellow Rodent Of Unusual Size (ROUS) on her head.

"Pika Pika! Pikachu, Pika Pi. Chu! Pika Pi Pikachu, Kachu, Pika!" Pikachu said enthusiastically.

"Uhuh." Sarah said, sounding distinctly unimpressed. Eric meanwhile, looked extremely impressed, as if all his childhood dreams were suddenly coming true. Neil just looked amused, as if this wasn't even the weirdest thing Crystal had tried to get out of trouble.

Pikachu saw his target, and double jumped over to Neil with his arms stretched out, and got caught by a slightly confused Neil. Pikachu looked up at Neil with his big cute little eyes and said "Pika!" before licking Neil's nose.

Neil immediately folded.

"Okay, I give up. Crystal wins. Carry on as you were."

Pikachu did a little fist pump of victory before noticing Eric staring at him with naked desire and Sarah staring at both him and Neil with an even less impressed look on her face than before.

"Neil, honey, shut up."

"Yes ma'am."

"You, over here." She pointed at Pikachu and then the floor in front of her.

Pikachu jumped down to the floor and scampered over to her before looking up hopefully at her and raising his arms up towards her, silently asking for uppies.

"Turn back." She said while staring down at him.

"Pika?" Pikachu gave a confused look at her before looking around then pointing at himself.

"Yes you, I'm not an idiot, I can put two and two together."

Pikachu looked shocked at the admission she wasn't an idiot. Then shrugged and pulled out a weird, obviously tinkertech device and fiddled with it.

Then, became even smaller, shrinking down to about 8 inches tall while standing up fully straight and stretching, but his tail and ears remained the same size they were before and started flopping around.

Then, he scampered up her leg and shirt before perching on her shoulder. When she slowly turned her face to look at him, he looked deep into her eyes before licking her nose.

"Awww." She melted a little, her face softening.

Sarah coughed, then continued as if she hadn't just fallen for the adorableness of tiny Pikachu with normal-sized floppy ears and tail. "No, try again."

Even-smaller-Pikachu looked at her with teary eyes, before looking around again then pointing at himself.

"Yes, you're not getting out of this by being cute."

Damn, she's good. Dave thought. Well, if I'm not getting out by being cute, there is only one solution. Escalate.

Pikachu looked sadly at her with tears prickling his eyes before letting out a sad, wailing "Pika!" and sadly jumping down from her shoulder and pathetically belly-flopping onto the floor, then struggling to get up.

While Neil and Eric were looking at Sarah as if she were a monster, she continued looking unimpressed at Pikachu. It seemed to be her default really. It was surely unrelated to the implication that he was going to try and stuff grenades into her daughter's orifices for the purposes of sexual pleasure. While in her own home.

Pikachu continued his best impression of struggling to get up, before finally standing, then looking at Sarah hopefully, as if enough cuteness would change her mind.

She made a rolling motion with the implication of "get on with it".

Pikachu let out a sigh, and Dave deactivated the minifier before transforming again and speaking with his best Solid Snake voice.

"It's me, Gaseous Snake!" Into a man in tactical camo and wearing a headband. Then farted.

Spoiler: Gaseous Snake

"No, try again." Sarah repeated after momentarily raising a single eyebrow.

Dave gathered his courage, before resolving himself to show the Pelhams his true self in all its glory.

"Hello My Children." Said the T-Posing Buff Garfield wearing nothing but a red, bulging thong with bits visible on either side of the fabric.

Spoiler: Buff Garfield

Everyone screamed.









Author's Note: Just ignore the Captain America in the image. I couldn't find a better image of Buff Garfield that had the thong visible. I'm likely going to continue to have a tough time with some of the other skins unless I can figure out a way to upload images to QQ from my desktop instead of needing to link a URL.
The picture of Solid Snake farting is from This Video
The picture of Buff Garfield and Captain America is from This Video
The first ever appearance of Buff Garfield is This Video.
Here is a good snapshot of Buff Garfield from that video. It will (theoretically) start at the second of the video that I am intending to show you.

 

[Zone04]

Absolutely beautiful.

 

[Origin6009]

That's last part made me bust out laughing, Keep doing what you're doing!!

 

[Phili]

Chapter 11: The Continuing Mission, to Seek Out New Toys And Gain New Roles

January 2, 2010. Brockton Bay, The Pelham House, Living Room.



Three lasers came from three different heroes and hit the Buff Garfield at different angles, killing him instantly.

"Oh my GOD!" Eric screamed. "DID WE JUST KILL HIM?"

"What happened? I have more control over my power than that and—what the fuck is wrong with his tail?" Sarah's panic turned to confusion as she beheld the Buff Garfield lying facedown in her living room.

There was only a little blood, but the extraordinary part was Garfield man's tail. It was… fully erect in an oddly lewd manner. Standing straight up and just above the line of Garfield's thong that wasn't doing much to cover his extremely sculpted ass, was the cat-man-thing's tail. It was just… perfectly straight and stiff enough that everyone paused from panicking at the dead body in the living room to stare at the tail.

After a short pause, Dave respawned standing straight up, still T-posing as Buff Garfield. Luckily, he still had the beggar role turned on, so he respawned after only around 30 seconds.

He quickly turned back to his actual skin before he could get shot with a laser again.

"Man, you guys are scary. On the bright side, Crystal! Your mom and your brother are both Traitors just like you! I turned Innocent again."

"What?" A supremely confused Eric warbled.

---

While Bella and Crystal did their best to explain Dave's powers and his… weirdness, Dave was banished to the corner for timeout due to his increasingly unhelpful explanations regarding being a terrorist.

After Crystal's family were somewhat satisfied by the explanations regarding Dave's power, Sarah turned to Dave and said "While I understand that it can be confusing and scary to be a new Parahuman, I want you to know that there are channels you can go through to get help. If you need resources or help, New Wave and the PRT are available as resources. Even if you don't want to join the PRT, you should consider going to them to register as an independent hero and take advantage of their power testing facilities. As a rare escalating trump, you don't have to worry as much about your capabilities being known, since any information on your capabilities villains might gain will become outdated almost immediately. That said, while you haven't made the best first impression… I think you could do a lot of good as a hero, and given a little time to meet everyone else that is part of New Wave and to get to know them… after discussing it among ourselves some, we might invite you to become a member." Sarah had softened considerably by the end of her speech, likely remembering just what it was like to be a recent trigger, along with whatever conclusions she might have drawn from his strangeness, along with her daughter and her daughter's level-headed friend vouching for Dave's character.

Dave nodded solemnly, before turning to Neil and asking "May I have some of your panties please?"

Neil nodded "Sure."

"DAD!" Eric shouted.

"What?"

"Why do you have women's underwear?"

"Well, you see son, when you get to a certain age, you will end up going to bachelor's parties as the people you know get married. Things happen there, and sometimes, those things happen after the people involved have consumed alcohol."

While Eric was looking like he was reconsidering how much he looked forward to being able to legally consume alcohol, Neil got up from his chair and went to the master bedroom down the hall.

While the absurdly tall man was getting a pair of panties, and Crystal and Eric were sinking into their seats and dying internally from the idea of their seven foot tall father wearing women's panties like they had just seen on Buff Garfield, Sarah was receiving an explanation from Bella on why it was a good and reasonable idea to give one of her husband's few pairs of panties to a Parahuman she had known for less than an hour.

"You know, Crystal had the same reaction earlier. She also killed him when he surprised her earlier, and she was really surprised by the sudden loss of control. Do you think something about his power makes Parahumans try to kill him even if they normally wouldn't?"

Sarah thought about it, before shaking her head. "No, while there is a well-recorded increase in aggression in parahumans, there isn't a reason we know of that would make other parahumans target you in particular lethally. Not to mention, none of us intended to kill you, we were all startled and used our powers reflexively. It was more like… we temporarily had decreased control over our powers. I'm not sure what could cause that, aside from an aspect of his own powers that he hasn't discovered yet, which wouldn't be a surprise given how wide-ranging and random his current powerset already is. Something like one of those 'taunt aura' things from one of Eric's video games doesn't seem too absurd if his power relies on him dying in order to activate certain effects."

"Wow," Dave was rather stunned. "I see why Crystal is so smart. I see that she inherited brains and beauty from you miss."

"Oh yeah? What's that supposed to mean?" Neil said jokingly from the hallway where he was carrying back a rather cute pair of panties.

Spoiler: Image of panties

"Just that she got her amazing personality from you! Also, no offense, but you're not the one I've seen called Photon Milf online." Bella stepped in and used her familiarity with the family to prevent Dave from sticking his foot in his mouth again. Dave, upon hearing this information, looked again at Sarah up and down, before nodding in confirmation before turning to Neil and giving a thumbs up.

Neil smiled smugly. Oh, I see, Crystal got the smugness from him.

Manpower handed his panties over to Dave, and everyone stared to see if anything happened.

Bella bet Crystal $5 that Dave would get a traitor role from it, citing the logic that 'something as rare as a 7-foot-tall male heroic open cape's cute pink bunny-covered panties has to be worth more than some tinkertech from the sheer rarity alone.'

Nothing happened.

"Ooh, oh yeah, Crystla thought of this earlier. Mr. Pelham, trying saying something like 'I hereby formally and officially give this pair of Manpower's personal cute bunny panties to Dave to permanently keep as his personal property.' Crystal tried that when we tried this with one of her action figures to see if that qualified."

"Wait, I have to give this up permanently? I'm not sure I'm willing to do that. Sarah absolutely loves when I wear that pair."

One cry of "NEIL!" and two cries of "DAD!" came from the peanut gallery, while Neil snickered at successfully doing his job as a dad and embarrassing his family, and Dave assured Neil that a Beggar only needed to own the toy for a moment, and could return the toy afterwards, but they did need to actually 'own' the toy for at least a second or two in order for it to count.

"Fine, I hereby formally and officially give this pair of Manpower's personal cute bunny panties to Dave to permanently keep as his personal property." Neil recited dutifully.

Dave paused for a moment while holding Neil's panties, then handed them back.

"It feels like it sort of… loosened it? Like I'm closer to unlocking the Traitor role than before, but I don't actually have it unlocked. Maybe I need something a little more extreme?" Dave pondered aloud.

"Well," Bella said thoughtfully, "Maybe we need to be a little more literal with the term 'toy' if we don't want to go the Tinkertech route."

"I see." Dave said, before turning to Crystal, who immediately went on guard. "Crystal, may I have a dildo please?"

"THAT'S WHERE YOUR MIND WENT?" Crystal shouted at him, while Neil burst out laughing, Sarah smirked at her daughter getting her just desserts after being pranked with the sex toy grenade implications earlier, and Eric just sank deeper into his chair. "I don't want to think about any of this," Eric whispered quietly to the air.

---

"If we decide to sign you up for power testing, Armsmaster can likely be convinced to temporarily give you ownership of an outdated piece of tinkertech in exchange for some samples of your items –like that thing you used to shrink earlier— as well as permission to use any results the testing gives as inspiration for his tinkering." Sarah suggested after Crystal calmed down a little.

"Or…" Bella suggested playfully, "We can go with Crystal's other idea," she said and wiggled her eyebrows.

"I'm afraid to ask." Eric said from where he had sunk as far down into his seat as he could go.

"She suggested that Vicky might be willing to give her used bathwater to Dave if she could be convinced it had a reasonable chance of expanding his powers and that she could then play with the fancy items he would then have available." Bella said with a smirk.

"Oh god, she would, wouldn't she?" Eric said in despair. While Sarah just looked amused.

"Now, now," Neil said, also smirking. "It's your cousin's choice what she wants to do with her bathwater. If she wants to trade it for the chance to play with tinker-tech-equivalent power manifestations, that is her choice and her choice alone," he playfully admonished.

















Author's Note: I couldn't find much on when Dean (Gallant) got his powers on the Worm Wiki. I originally had a line in this chapter where Eric claims that he heard from Vicky who heard from Gallant that there was going to be a new Tinker Ward (Kid Win) introduced soon, but I had to remove it because I couldn't tell when Dean actually became a ward. I figured he probably wasn't a ward yet, because Chris (Kid Win) was supposed to have built him his power armor so that he (Dean) could pretend to be a tinker, and according to the worm wiki Timeline, Chris joins the wards in 2010 "sometime during or before the end of January". Thus, logically, Dean must have not joined the wards yet and hasn't met Vicky yet.
If anyone knows information that contradicts this, please let me know.

Next chapter we have the very serious ™ conversations. Unfortunately, Worm is a very serious world. Don't worry too much though, Dave will happily drag the world of Worm, kicking and screaming, into becoming a Noblebright Comedy Slice of Life with the power of friendship and terrorism. In the meantime, Dave will have to resign himself to dealing with Worm with the only language it understands: violence.

 

[SpaceWhale]

this is to funny

 

[Daurtanes]

Yeah, almost cute and funny if Vicky agree to trade

 

[Mortal Sage]

the chaos is powerful in this one. amazing. i want more.

 

[Zone04]

Will Dave ever reveal the whole shards in some casual manner and never go back to it? I feel like it'd be funny.

"you think our powers try and kill him?"
"no, nothing shows that" - "nah your shards just see me as an existential threat"
"huh?"
"was just saying you gotta chill out homie" transforms into an RC Apache Attack Helicopter drone and sits on the coffee table.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 12: Where Nobody Jumps to Conclusions and Everyone Makes Totally Correct Assumptions During A Very Serious ™ Conversation

January 2, 2012. Brockton Bay, Pelham House.



After a little more conversation, it was decided that Bella and Dave would stay for dinner, and Sarah began cooking, which Bella was weirdly excited for.

Dave realized why Bella was excited when Sarah began shaping her forcefield into a pan to pour water into, then firing lasers at it to boil the water.

When Dave took out a shotgun and looked at it contemplatively, Bella immediately smacked him without even looking away from the conversation she was having with Crystal. After the conversation moved on a little, Neil eventually asked Dave "So, what do you do for a living?"

Dave happily answered "I have no idea!"

And thus came the revelation that Dave had amnesia. For some reason, the Pelham household and Bella both found it upsetting.

---

Neil Pelham

"I hate to ask this, and I mean it, I do hate to ask this, it is simply not done for a good reason, but Dave, do you remember your trigger event?" Neil, no Manpower asked. This was not the time for Neil Pelham, this was the sort of scenario where a hero was needed instead of just 'the dad of Dave's friend'. He was worried. Despite Dave's… eccentricities, he truly seemed like a good young man from what he could tell, and Neil had no idea what could cause someone to completely forget things.

"Nope," Dave said, still quite happy. That's… good I guess, at least he isn't traumatized by the fact he doesn't remember.

"Are you certain that the way you look now is your original form and not the result of your Changer ability?"

"Yup," Dave replied.

"If you are really sure… I ask because there is a certain type of parahuman known as a 'Case 53', and they share certain characteristics. One of those characteristics is that they all have some sort of inhuman appearance, and the other major one is that they all have near-total amnesia, and the amnesia seems almost identical to what you have described. The main difference as far as I know, is that they don't have what you call "Earth Bet common sense". They need to be told things, whereas you managed to recognize my wife and I well enough that I suspect you are a Brockton Bay native, as opposed to a Case 53, who nobody knows where they come from."

Dave paused. Then nodded in comprehension "I see. Crystal got her intelligence from both sides of the family. No wonder she's such a smart cookie!"

Crystal looked rather happy at that, but instead of fishing for compliments as she would have when she was little, she let the conversation continue. Was it the serious topic of conversation? Neil wondered. Or was it just his little girl growing up?

Then Dave continued "Truly, I am a genius for befriending her."

Bella chimed in "Actually, I think I get credit for introducing you."

"Nonsense," Dave immediately countered. "I get credit for her because I get credit for you. You latched on to me like a baby duck due to my immeasurable charisma."

Bella spluttered. "That is not what happened! You latched on to me like a baby duck, I even used those exact words to Crystal yesterday to describe you."

"That sounds made up to me. Crystal, did Bella describe me as latching on to her like a baby duck or is she just projecting what she did to me thanks to my unimaginable good looks, amazing personality, and generally being a chill cool guy?"

Crystal caught on and nodded instantly. "Yup, Bella, you were looking very ducklike. Baby ducklike in fact."

Well, at least none of them seem traumatized. Neil thought with small smile.

---

A few more theories on possible causes of Dave's amnesia were thrown around before being dismissed.

A powerful master or stranger was theorized by Eric, but Neil dismissed it as "possible but extremely unlikely" on much of the same grounds as the Case 53 theory. Namely, that Dave still had "common sense" with regards to Brockton Bay, and a Master or Stranger with a power able to inflict that level of memory loss hadn't been seen in the Bay in years. Not to mention, Dave still had an apartment in Brockton Bay, meaning he had been living there before he triggered and it showed no sign of damage or an unknown parahuman squatting in it while messing with Dave's mind. In addition, there had been no indications elsewhere within the city of a Stranger or a Human Master that could have done that sort of thing; as well as that Dave didn't remember fighting off or killing anyone, so that theory would need the Master or Stranger to have left right as or just before Dave triggered, and then not return for some reason.

Bella brought up simple head trauma, which Neil didn't dismiss right away. "I'm far from an expert on amnesia, or even medicine in general; but I've seen a lot of things throughout the years, and this doesn't really match any cases of memory loss I've seen. In my experience, they usually are a lot less dramatic than Hollywood tells you, and are either highly temporary or involve parts of the brain physically missing. We can ask Amy if she can see anything wrong when we introduce Dave to the rest of New Wave. Don't get your hopes up though Dave, as amazing as Amy's power is, she can't help you if your memory loss is a result of anything to do with your brain; she'll only be able to tell us if your brain looks like it might have been damaged enough to cause memory loss."

Crystal had another theory. "What if it's a result of his trigger going wrong somehow?" She asked.

"How so?" Sarah asked from the kitchen, where she was chopping up carrots and broccoli with her forcefield sharpened into a knife, while using another part of her forcefield as a cutting board.

"Well, in my Parahuman Studies class last quarter, we learned that there is a new theory that every new trigger experiences memory loss when they trigger, and it happens to varying degrees. They think it is the same reason why Thinker powers can't predict new triggers regardless of how strong the Thinker power is, and usually other capes nearby will lose control of their powers when a new trigger happens. What if Dave's trigger went wrong somehow and accidentally made him lose more memories than it was supposed to?"

Neil hummed. "Well, I've never heard of anything like it. I'm afraid that when your mother and I were in school we didn't have anything like Parahuman Studies classes. I can't say I've encountered anyone with this kind of memory loss before either –aside from some Case 53s, as I mentioned. It's possible I suppose, that I've encountered capes with this kind of memory loss before and just never knew. For obvious reasons, I can't imagine most capes would be eager to make it known that they've experienced amnesia, it would make it much easier to connect their Cape and civilian identities, along with making a significant weakness known for bad actors to take advantage of.

For that reason, actually, Dave, I suggest you don't make your amnesia known to too many people. Obviously, I can't dictate how to live your life to you, but it could be a major weakness, and if you don't decide to join New Wave and unmask, then it would be a major point for thinkers to take advantage of to figure out your civilian identity. While it would still be against the unwritten rules, some people will take any excuse to ignore those, and if they think they can get away with unmasking you against your will by taking advantage of your memory loss, they will."

Neil finished his small speech, before seeing everyone staring at him, aside from his wife of course, who was still cooking.

"What? I wasn't the leader of the Brockton Bay Brigade for nothing you know? It's important to know when you don't know something and be willing to admit it, and it's important to know that you can't force others to live how you think they should, but advice is free to give and can be worth a lot." He seemed to be turning it into an impromptu lesson on heroing to his children (and Bella, who was just interested in seeing the inner workings of a Cape team, even if it had lost some novelty over the years of being Crystal's best friend).

---

Dinner turned out to be Stir Fry Lo Mein, and Sarah hadn't used any pots, pans, knives, cutting boards, or the stove at any point. She only put the end product in a large bowl after it was cooked to her satisfaction, and brought out bowls for everyone else to dish up their meals into.

"I made Lo Mein because I wasn't sure what sort of dietary requirements you have Dave. It doesn't use any cheese in case you are lactose intolerant and I didn't put any meat in in case you decide you want to be a vegetarian, vegan, or pescatarian. Crystal told me about the lunch you ordered earlier, so I knew gluten was fine. You do have to think about these kinds of things now that you are effectively starting your life over. You should take some time to think on what kind of lifestyle you want to live, as well as checking if you are allergic to anything."

While Dave appreciated the thought, and absolutely saw how she got the name "Photon Mom", he did have to say something before her life advice continued building up steam to the point she wanted to adopt him or something. "Actually, I'm fairly sure my power would deal with any allergies I might have, or might have had. Even if it didn't, I'm fairly sure I could get it working to remove any allergies I might have within a week or so. Even if that didn't work, I can't exactly die, and eventually I'll be able to give myself a regeneration effect."

"Oh," Sarah blinked.

"Well that's convenient. I wonder if Dauntless does that sort of thing with his power? Maybe he has crowns or fillings he used his power on to remove any allergic reactions he gets to food or something?" Neil mused.

"Well, you can always ask about it next time you see him," Bella commented. "If he hasn't done anything like that, the power testing people might be happy to see him try. Although there are rumors on PHO that he has to follow a fairly strict schedule of what he uses his power on and in what order. I'm not sure I put any stock in those rumors though, considering I've heard from mysterious sources," she pointedly didn't look at the sheepish Crystal, "that he gets his 'charges' faster when he goes into combat; So the solution to not having any free charges to test things on is fairly obvious: go outside and punch nazis."

---

After everyone finished eating, and Crystal was given a quiet threat from her mother about bringing capes home without telling her parents that the person she was bringing was a cape (and forgiveness in this instance because Dave was "so innocent, he wouldn't betray us like I would usually be concerned about from an unknown cape"), Dave and Bella needed to head to their apartment soon.

First though, Sarah had something to tell Dave. "You've been a delightful guest, despite your… odd sense of humor Dave, and I wanted to thank you. Crystal doesn't have too many friends because of the risks of being associated with an open cape after Jess's death showed everyone just how small the consequences of breaking the unwritten rules were."

"Mom! I have friends! I just don't invite them over because you and Dad embarrass me!" Crystal denied.

"That's nice dear," Sarah said, though a small smile while she turned her face so Crystal couldn't see indicated she was likely pulling her daughter's leg. "Anyways Dave, I'll see about setting up some power testing for you at the Protectorate. You can trade contact information with me, Neil and Eric in case any of us need to contact you or vice versa—I assume you already traded contact info with Crystal and Bella—and I'll let you know when the testing is scheduled for. It should be either tomorrow or the day after; the Protectorate really likes to do power testing for new capes, so they will want to schedule it for as soon as possible to avoid you changing your mind. Crystal and I will go down with you and make sure they don't do anything they shouldn't and they don't get too aggressive in their inevitable recruitment attempts. If you do decide to join the Protectorate, that is your choice of course, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn't be able to handle you very well." She had a small smile when she said that last part.

I knew it, I am amazing with parents! Crystal had nothing to worry about, they already love me, and I didn't even Hypnotize them with a Brainwashing Device!

---

While Crystal was seeing them out to Bella's car, Dave had an idea to make sure he would always be able to tell if they were suspicious imposters, or if they were actually his cute traitor friends.

"Would you guys be willing to Forever Traitor ™ with me?" he asked somewhat shyly.

Bella gave him a deadpan look, "Is that your weird version of marriage?"

"No, that's soulmates. Or being the Romantic. Or being the Revenger."

Before Bella could get off track by going down the rabbit hole that was Dave's mind/power, Crystal interrupted to ask "What is Forever Traitor then?"

"Well, it's normally a promise between innocents that if either of you are a traitor at that moment, then whoever is the traitor will forever be considered a traitor, even if they are no longer a traitor, and even in future lives, they will forever be marked as a traitor, for daring to break the Forever Traitor promise." Dave said with as much grandiose as he could muster.

"But didn't you say Crystal was already a traitor though? And that your traitor and innocent thing breaks down really quickly as soon as civilians are involved?" Bella asked, unimpressed with his brilliant idea.

"Indeed, so we will modify it!" Dave said dramatically. "We will instead say that whoever is not a traitor, will be a betrayer forevermore, even in future lives!"

Crystal caught on rather quickly. "Oh! It's like Master-Stranger protocols. If someone doesn't know how to respond, it shows we are compromised and they might be a Stranger disguised as one of us—" "A sussy baka!" Dave interrupted, "—or that they might be controlled by a Master. It won't work against all kinds of parahuman powers, but just about nothing actually would, so as a quick and dirty identity check it actually works well. We use something like it in New Wave as well, but we all use our powers in a particular manner or pattern to verify our identity. This is actually a really good idea, good job Dave!" Crystal patted his head.

"Hey, I'm not a good boy yet, I can't get headpats!" Dave complained before adding "I truly am a genius, for befriending someone such as you Crystal, that is smart enough to see how much of a genius I am." He nodded with self-satisfaction.

"So, what's the actual thing we say?" Bella asked after warming up to the idea from hearing that New Wave did something similar already.

"First, someone says 'Forever Traitor?' while looking at the other person, then the second person looks at the first one and says 'Forever Traitor.' But it is acceptable to say their name after the word 'traitor'. The first one must be said as a question, and the response must be a statement—not a question. Any other response or an incorrect request for Forever Traitor means you shoot them in the face!" Dave lectured.

"No. No shooting people in the face for not passing Master-Stranger tests. They could just be mastered, not actually having turned evil for ambiguous reasons." Crystal said, gently chopping him on the head.

"Oh yeah, you're right. Shoot them in the chest not the face. As long as they're not brain dead I'll be able to resurrect them if I've unlocked the paramedic role by then." Dave corrected himself.

"Fucking excuse me?" Bella asked.

"What?" Now Dave was confused.

"You'll be able to resurrect people?" Crystal also seemed weirdly invested in this line of questioning.

"Yes? Obviously? As long as they aren't braindead, a Paramedic, a Mad Scientist, or a Hypnotist can all resurrect someone. With the right shop items available, most traitor roles and most detective roles could do it as well. The Randoman would have options that can bring people back from the dead as well." Dave said casually.

"Would they be like your respawns? Where it is actually you and not just a copy like PHO thinks happens to Oni Lee when he teleports?" Bella asked. Dave nodded.

Immediately after Bella's question, Crystal asked "Could you resurrect my aunt? She died in Fall of 2007? Is that too long? What sort of restrictions are on it?" She was shaking his shoulders now.

"I have no idea; I haven't unlocked any of the right roles yet. Eventually, I could most likely resurrect her by expanding my power in that direction even if I couldn't do it from the start. If you're okay with raising her as a zombie I could probably so it a lot earlier, but otherwise, I'd estimate it could be anywhere up to a decade before I can resurrect her. I would need her body though, and I assume that the better condition her body is in the easier it would be." Dave answered as best he could. If absolutely necessary, he was fairly sure the alien friend in his soul could help him out. It was unbelievably awkward having the now crying Crystal hugging him while Bella tried to comfort Crystal from the side. If anyone other than him had been the one making her cry, he would have just shot them, but he was the one making her cry.

Maybe he should just shoot himself?

Before he could bring out a gun to shoot himself with, Crystal pulled herself off of him, with tears still in her eyes and said "Thank you, Dave. You have no idea how much that means to me, or my family. Aunt Jess was the heart of New Wave, and her death was what killed the movement. Not just because we lost two members when she died and Uncle Mike left right after, or even that the asshole who killed her faced no consequences; it was that without her we simultaneously drifted apart and just lost motivation. She was both a core part of the family and the one that kept us happy and smiling." She was back to crying harder.

After Crystal managed to get her sniffles under control well enough to talk, she continued. "I'll talk to Mom and Dad, and see what we can do about her body. I know she wasn't cremated, but her body is probably not in very good condition after all this time. I'll ask and see if we can have her remains put on ice or something. She would get a kick out of being frozen in order to be resurrected later like in a bad Hollywood movie." Crystal gave a small, teary smile at the end. "No, she will get a kick out of it. Seriously Dave, I can't thank you enough, I, and New Wave as a whole will owe you a debt for this that can't be repaid. If you pull this off, we will go through hell or high water for you." Crystal gave him another hug, before hugging Bella for good measure, then walking back in to her house to give her parents the good news.

"Well that was awkward." Dave said after a moment, before they entered Bella's car. "I thought I was going to have to shoot myself to end that awkwardness."

"Dave, do not shoot yourself to get rid of awkwardness." Bella said as she pulled out of the driveway.

"But, imagine how effective it would be!"









Author's Note: There we go, serious conversation completed! Don't worry about resurrection abilities being too overpowered, the ability to bring someone back to life is shockingly useless in a world like Worm, where if someone died it usually means they weren't that strong in the first place. Nothing in the TTT powerset Dave has can bring back Fleur, he is going to have to wait until he gets the Professor role from Blood On The Clocktower before he can resurrect long-dead individuals. Even then, I will be counting 'Once per game' abilities of Blood On The Clocktower (BOTC) as only working once every 5 days, so he can't just turn the world into an undying utopia where everyone he likes gets to live forever. And of course, if he was in a world with more exotic powers like Naruto or Star Wars, people would still be able to kill eachother so hard he wouldn't be able to resurrect them. Here, there isn't anything that does things like attacking the soul (or the 'soul'). The Paramedic can't resurrect long-dead people because, it turns out, people's brains aren't in great condition after 2 years of being dead. Who knew that would count as brain-dead?
Next chapter, we learn a little more about the requirements Dave has to meet before he can unlock new roles, and we get one step closer to Dave going out on his first patrol… which I'm sure will go absolutely fine with nothing unusual happening and nobody getting traumatized. Don't get too excited though, as of chapter 19 we still haven't gone on a patrol yet, but the ingredients are there. I'd estimate by chapter 22 we will probably have gone on a patrol
We also decide on a name for Dave's alien soul friend!

 

[SpaceWhale]

gotta love their being no soul attacks