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

[Phili]

Behind the Scenes –3: Romance, Lisa's Power, Pairings and Shippings, Destiny/Fate, Future Behind The Scenes.



Note: These next 3 paragraphs were moved from the Author's Notes of Chapter 48, right after it talks about his possible relationship with Miss Militia.

I will say that Dave doesn't quite get romance at the moment due to all of his soul damage. For all that he can act like a normal-ish, albeit very weird, person, his soul is still held together by Daf's glitter glue and soul tentacles keeping all the pieces where they are supposed to be while his soul heals and expands.

Dave currently has no real interest in sex or real understanding of romance, though those will both likely change after his soul gets a lot more healed. This is part of why Lisa latched onto him, because her power doesn't torture her with sex stuff around him.

(Seriously, Lisa's power is probably one of the bigger assholes in the Worm series… it's just a 'Stupid-Evil' character to be totally honest, it tortures her for no gain to itself when it comes to the sex stuff, and is a jerk to her even to its own detriment. I'm considering just getting rid of that aspect of her power, because it's so incredibly stupid of that shard to do what it does, though I don't know what I will make her sexuality if I decide to do so.

For those not aware, Thinker powers of Parahumans use up A LOT of a Shard's resources, which is why Thinker headaches exist, to discourage Parahumans from wasting their Thinker power on pointless things.

Not only does Lisa's power latch onto things she doesn't want it to and waste its own power doing so, it constantly uses resources to dig as deep as it can into anyone in Lisa's vicinity to tell her their weirdest fetishes and most disturbing intrusive thoughts or impulses, or even just bodily facts, specifically in order to turn Lisa off of sex. What does it gain by doing so after wasting all those resources then punishing Lisa with Thinker migraines for what it itself did in overusing itself? Fuck if I know.)

That said, I have no particular attachment to any pairings, ships, or potential polycules at the moment. (Any potential 'harems' would involve the ladies also being active with each other). I am open to hearing discussion in favor of various pairings/polycules, as long as everyone understands Dave won't be getting into anything for a while, and I may (or may not) never decide to write anything more than fade-to-black in terms of sex stuff.



Speaking of pairings and shippings, one I've considered is Bella/Crystal, and another is Bella/Crystal/Dave. Now, in either case, it would probably be that Bella and Crystal have been together for a while and just haven't let anyone know because they're both sane(-ish, Crystal is a Parahuman and all that) people, and they live in Brockton Bay, where being a high-profile lesbian would just be asking to get raped and murdered, along with your lover. Yay, Nazis!

Really, I'm totally undecided on if Crystal and Bella are together or not. Of course, if they are, that doesn't preclude Dave from getting together with them. If they aren't, he still might get together with one of them. Let me know what you guys think.





Now, I thought I'd also talk a little about Destiny and Fate in this one. I don't see it coming up any time soon, if ever, in the story, so I'll lay it out for anyone interested. The way I see it, Earth Bet and the Worm-verse in general very specifically has either no fate/destiny, or so little it is effectively nonexistent. In Wait a Minute, I am treating it as the latter, but the only being the distinction is at all relevant to is Daf.

The way Shards work to predict the future is through Laplace's Demon-style simulations, meaning they use a massive amount of knowledge and absurd computational power to predict the future.

Now, I will talk about Precogs in Worm in-story at some point, so I won't talk about that here, but for Destiny/Fate, it's a bit different.

I figure; Destiny and Fate effectively don't exist in the Worm-verse due to one simple reason. Wildbow made crucial story decisions at several points by rolling dice. I remember reading somewhere that if the dice had rolled a certain way, Taylor would have died in the Leviathan fight (and a few other fights I think) and the main-character status and point of view would have moved to some other character.

That means that anything could have happened in the original canon of the story, meaning nothing was certain, or in other words, destined to happen, because the author wasn't going to force it to happen if the dice decided otherwise.

So, the Worm-verse is an unusual and fairly unique experience for Daf, because he would have to expend a lot of effort to see what is 'supposed' to happen, because Destiny and Fate are such weak forces that they essentially don't exist for anyone else, and even Daf couldn't actually manipulate them in any way aside from looking at them, and even that would only tell him a bit of information in exchange for a huge amount of effort. Daf has never really been in a world like Earth Bet before where Destiny and Fate are so weak he can't even touch them. The other way around he has seen before, where they are so strong he could do absolutely nothing to them, but this reversal is a novel experience to him.

This isn't particularly important information to the story, and will probably never come up given there aren't really any important destiny/fate-obsessed characters in Worm, but I thought some of you might find it interesting.







If anyone ever wants to know something specifically, let me know, and if it isn't likely to end up in the story itself, I'll put it in a Behind the Scenes. For example, if someone wants to know something about Daf's species, let me know and I'll add it in.

I'm thinking next time, I will add a piece of my notes to the Behind the Scenes 4. The note-section I'm considering is my list of all the things the Pack-a-Punch has been used on on-screen so far in my rewatch, and what it did each time.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 53: Accidentally Creating a Big Brother-Style Surveillance State Powered by AI

January 15, 2010, Friday. New York City, Protectorate Headquarters.



First thing's first, Dave asked Prism a question. "So, I'm guessing your power improves you at least partially based on what your base level is when your clones fuse with you?" Dave asked.

"Yes, it is partially based on that, the better my 'base form' is the greater the boost when they fuse, how did you know?" She confirmed.

"Well, uh, your physique to be honest." Dave admitted. "You are an attractive young woman who is notably tall, and you're wearing a skintight costume, it would really be harder to not notice that you have fantastic abs."

"In the case of your power in particular, this will actually help you even more than it would help most," he said, shaking the bottle a little.

After handing the three heroines their drinks, he waited patiently for them to drink, only for Miss Militia to look slightly awkward before turning around.

"I need to take off my mask in order to drink this," she explained.

"Do we have to drink the entire bottle for it to work?" Prism asked, looking at the full-sized bottle dubiously. "It's not going to taste awful, is it?" She asked right after as another thought came to her.

"Ahah!" Dave caught on to her thought process. "I see we have a woman of culture in our midst." He said, before answering her question. "No, it's nearly the opposite of a Devil Fruit; the result is consistent, there is no major downside, the taste is quite good, it is a drink instead of a food, you need to drink the entire thing instead of only needing to eat a tiny piece of it, and there is no limit to the number of people that can have the power at once."

"Oh, you've seen One Piece?" Prism asked with a slight amount of embarrassment. "I haven't actually seen very much of it," she clarified when Dragon, Miss Militia and Mouse Protector turned to look at her curiously. "I just have a relative who is quite into it and picked up some of it by osmosis, and the 'getting powers by eating something' stuck with me for some reason."

"Prism," Mouse Protector began, teleporting to put a hand on Prism's shoulder, "none of us know what that is. But now that you've acted embarrassed about it and defended knowing about it, we are all going to either look it up and thoroughly research it, or just assume it is porn." She explained the harsh truth as sincerely as she could.

"NO!" Prism shouted. "It's just an Earth Aleph thing, it's a Japanese anime that's been running for over a decade, but people on Earth Bet don't really get it usually because the anime industry never took off here because of Kyushu, so they take one look at it, think 'oh that's just a cartoon' and assume it is intended for a much younger audience than it actually is intended for." Prism hurriedly explained so three famous heroines wouldn't go to bed that night assuming she was obsessed with porn, not that Dragon or Miss Militia actually went to bed, but it was the idea that mattered to Prism.

Mouse Protector nodded. "Sounds like porn but in cartoon form to me." She said.

"That's called hentai, which is the Japanese word for pervert." Dave told her helpfully.

As Prism began to melt in embarrassment, Miss Militia swatted the back of Mouse Protector's head. "She's just messing with you," Miss Militia told Prism. "I don't know what this thing is, but I'd give it even odds she already knew about it before you explained. I'm going to save us all some time and pre-empt her next joke that was going to be something about how a One Piece is a swimwear thing."

Mouse Protector shot Miss Militia a betrayed look at that. "How could you reveal my secrets like this Millie?" She teleported over to Miss Militia and went to her knees and grabbed the bottom of Miss Militia's shirt and dramatically wailed, "HOW COULD YOU?!"

Miss Militia just sighed and shoved Mouse Protector away. "She really does have good intentions, you will eventually need to work with people that will say worse things than she has if you keep rising up the ladder of the Protectorate, she is just trying to prepare you for the more crass and eccentric sorts in her own way." She told Prism, receiving another complaint from Mouse Protector about revealing her secrets.

---

Dave watched with amusement as each of the heroines tried and failed to restrain the burp that came after drinking one of his soda items, then smirked as they gave him small glares for not warning them.

"It's the power itself taking effect. I feel like a single burp is a pretty good deal in exchange for a decent Mover and Thinker power." He defended himself.

"Oh?" Mouse Protector asked. "So you just wanted to see three pretty ladies let out burps after guzzling down an entire bottle of your 'stamina juices'? Alright, I see how it is." She sniffed and gave him a disdainful look.

Dave shamelessly nodded and said "Yup, that's exactly why I did this." And gave her a thumbs up.

After Mouse Protector, Miss Militia, and Prism all had finished drinking Dave's Stamina soda, Dave decided to resume his hobby of handing out toys to attractive women.

Seriously, he had realized that aside from Mark, Neil, and Eric from New Wave, everyone he had given toys to was both attractive and female, but in their defense, even Mark, Neil, and Eric probably qualified for the attractive part as well.

Wait, I forgot about Armsmaster. He's not female either, though at least one person considers him attractive too.

Dave's pattern recognition had failed him!

Oh well.

Dave brought out the next few toys.

"This is what I call the Panacea Package, or the Panpan Package, in honor of Panacea who was the first recipient." He began before introducing the various items.

"Now, Miss Militia is almost certainly already familiar with some of these, but I need to go over the rest quickly," he began.

He started off with introducing and explaining the ability to use certain items through 'willing it', before explaining the Body Armor, Radar, Flare Gun, and Minifier.

Miss Militia was rather taken by the Body Armor's ability to give her a minor brute power, as well as the Flare Gun's ability of a fire that automatically goes out after a certain amount of time with no risk of spreading, and was keen to experiment a bit to see if her power could copy and possibly even improve upon it.

Prism was also interested in the Body Armor, and was similarly keen to experiment with it to see if it made her clones take less damage as well, and to see if it decreased the damage she took further after she fused with her clones.

Mouse Protector and Dragon however, were fascinated by the Minifier.

"It affects my suit as long as I'm in it." Dragon stated after her 8-foot amazonian-looking suit shrunk down to about two-and-a-half feet tall. "I can bring a lot of firepower into smaller spaces with this." She said happily. "Normally I can only use my bigger suits outside, and am rather limited if I didn't bring a small enough suit to a situation that happens indoors," she explained. "But with this, I can probably bring even my 20-foot suits inside, with all the firepower and versatility that entails!"

Mouse Protector just demonstrated her happiness by shrinking her already-short-stature even further with the Minifier, and zooming around the room at her full speed that was now fifteen times as fast as she was at the start of the day, even considering her power already gave her a small speed boost. That boost was increased a little further from the Minifier's speed boost it gave to compensate the smaller leg size, and Mouse Protector took full advantage of her tiny size and vastly increased speed.

A small Mouse Protector, less than two feet tall, suddenly appeared on Dave's face. "Do you want to marry me?" She asked. "Is that what you're going for? Because if that's your plan, I gotta say, it's working." She told him after she raised her face up to look him in the eye at equal height.

"No?" Dave said with confusion. "I'm reliably informed that zoomy mice are meant to be proposed to by offering a Gamecube." He told her.

"What?" Confused Mouse Protector noises ensued.

All four heroines were very much into the Radar though.

All four immediately latched onto the potential for search and rescue, as apparently all of them were S-Class threat responders, although Mouse Protector had retired from that role. Though, none of the other women gave her flak when she mentioned it was due to the stress and misery involved, and Dave felt it was nice to see them being supportive when it would have been easy to be ungrateful.

"This is also going to be very helpful for my teleportation," Mouse Protector said after the search and rescue hubbub had died down. "It increases my awareness of both potential ambushes and of where my marks are if they are on a person."

"Yes, the ambush awareness is really nice." Miss Militia, as a hero active in Brockton, began to gush slightly. "It can tell us if someone we thought was down has moved, either under their own power or by someone else, it can be used to spot snipers, it tells us if a victim is already dead when we arrive, it tells us how many people are actually present, and no amount of clever hiding and positioning will fool it." She sighed in happiness.

---

Dragon

Dragon quietly hoped that she might see the Dragonslayers coming with the Radar, but even if they got past it with pure speed from their stolen suits, she would be able to keep an eye on where they escaped to. And of course… based on what the others were saying, the Radar worked based on what the user could handle. Miss Militia's minor Thinker Power that enhanced her memory gave her a slightly wider range than Mouse Protector and Prism received.

She rather assumed they would have commented if they could see the location of every human in the state of New York like she could. A quick test showed that while her chains meant she couldn't truly duplicate herself, her 'presence' being in a drone in her lab, or her avatar on Colin's screen in his lab, both allowed her to see the Radar pings through them, though the pings of her current 'true' self in New York disappeared when she saw through either of those cameras. Still, she could mimic having all three viewpoints active at once by switching between them rapidly enough.

A few simple 360 cameras, that would actually see in a full sphere despite the name, were probably going to be added to her standard toolkit now, and placed across as many places as she could get them to.

She rather doubted the Radars would help with spotting Endbringers, though she would ask for another one to study in the hopes of improving her project with Colin to track the Endbringers. They would still help with keeping an eye on other S-class threats like Nilbog, and Sleeper though. She would have to test it on Ash Beast, but the information advantage these provided was invaluable, despite their 30-second pinging limitation making them ill-suited for the fast pace of combat.

---

Dragon seemed to be daydreaming about the Radar, though as the most prolific S-class responder in the world, the others all let her have her time to fantasize about using it to save even more people, particularly in the wake of things like Behemoth attacks where there were many collapsed buildings.

"Does the Radar register me through my armor?" Dragon asked after a moment.

Miss Militia and Mouse Protector nodded. "Yes, was your armor supposed to have stealth capabilities?" Miss Militia asked.

Dragon shook her head. "Not particularly, but I did turn on some signal interfering things just now to see if I could isolate what it uses to locate people." She answered. "I'm not sure what exactly it uses and wanted to see how likely it was that I would need to worry about it not spotting someone."

Dave had a weird feeling, it was like… Dragon was using her lying voice! The tingle in his balls told him so!

Not that he was going to do anything about it. Dragon deserved more than a little benefit of the doubt, his research over the past two weeks had assured him of that.













Author's Note: Here we are, another chapter where nothing significant happens and no AIs are given the power to invade privacy even further than they could before.

Before we get to the chapter itself, I thought I'd mention the Gamecube marriage thing. It is referring to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U8CvK3_5ms where Kirsty (top left) says she would accept a marriage proposal if it came with a limited edition gamecube. Kirsty is a member of the Yogscast and a regular of the TTT videos, and for a long time, her player avatar was Pikachu; after a while her avatar then changed to become Tall Pikachu. I personally consider Pikachu to be the originally zoomy mouse. Therefore, a zoomy mouse should receive marriage proposals in the form of a Gamecube.

Now for the chapter itself, this was a little shorter than what I had planned, but I'm (almost) certainly going to finish up the handing-out-toys-to-women scene next chapter. For now, I wanted to focus on the basic Panpan Package and how big of a deal the Radar is for Dragon and the Minifier is for Mouse Protector.

None of the ladies are super-excited about the flare gun, if only because it has a limited number of uses and is fairly niche for people that answer calls for help instead of being the one to call for help (and that don't need to get rid of bodies and often will be fighting people they either don't want dead or that fire won't significantly hurt).

Mouse Protector loves the Minifier, she is ready to be an absolute gremlin that is even harder to hit than before, given her minor powers that boost coordination, agility and stamina, she is ready to be an absolute beast of agility-combat. In game-terms, she would probably be considered a dodge tank. She even has taunts built into her combat style already!

Now, I didn't want to do the whole scene from Dragon's POV because she is rather difficult to write, but she was also very interested to see that Dave's power-up-type items worked on her at all, and that the Radar registers her as a human, though she had to make up some bullshit about 'signal interference technology' to explain asking if the Radar registered her.

Oh yeah, for the chapter title, if anyone isn't aware, the Big Brother thing is a reference to the classic book 1984, by George Orwell. It's a dystopian novel, but for anyone not aware of Big Brother, there are these posters everywhere saying "Big Brother is Watching You", and everywhere is recorded by cameras at all times. Here is a two-paragraph excerpt from the Wikipedia page for anyone that doesn't want to bother clicking the link:

(note to self, put in spoiler box):

Spoiler: 1984 Book Wikipedia Excerpt (2 paragraphs)

Nineteen Eighty-Four (also published as 1984) is a dystopian and speculative fiction novel by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final completed book. Thematically, it centres on totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours.[3][4]​ Nineteen Eighty-Four has often been regarded as a classic and has been acknowledged for its impact on twentieth-century literature.

The story takes place in a fictional future. The year is believed to be 1984, but this is uncertain. Much of the world is in perpetual war. Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the totalitarian superstate Oceania, which is led by Big Brother, a dictatorial leader supported by an intense cult of personality manufactured by the Party's Thought Police. The Party engages in omnipresent government surveillance and, through the Ministry of Truth, historical negationism and constant propaganda to persecute individuality and independent thinking.[5]​ Orwell described his book as a "satire",[6]​ and a display of the "perversions to which a centralised economy is liable", while also stating he believed "that something resembling it could arrive".[6]​ The novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated. Parallels have been drawn between the novel and real-world totalitarianism, mass surveillance and violations of freedom of expression, among other themes.[7][8][9]​

 

[Phili]

Chapter 54: Giving Four Famous Female Celebrities Dildos, and Being Thanked For It!

January 15, 2010, Friday. New York City, Protectorate Headquarters.



After all four lovely ladies –Dragon, Prism, Mouse Protector, and Miss Militia— were equipped with the Radar, Body Armor, Minifier, and Flare Gun, Dave brought out the next toy.

"Now, this one is similar to the Flare Gun, but still quite useful." He said as he brought out four Freeze Guns.

"So, these have four shots each, and if you hit someone with a bullet from one of these, they will be completely and totally unharmed, but will freeze for eight seconds." Dave said, before clarifying. "Freeze as in stop moving, there is no temperature stuff going on with these. People that are frozen can still be hurt, and see and hear, but cannot speak, move, or use their powers. Think of these as trump cards, lowercase T, in case of an emergency, they can give you an opportunity to escape or simply kill your opponent if they are an otherwise dangerous Blaster or Striker."

None of the ladies were too enthused by the idea of something they could only ever use four times, which was understandable. They all took one anyways because, as Dave had said, it made for a decent trump card in an emergency.

"Right, now that all that's out of the way, I saved the best two for last." Dave claimed, making the ladies all pay closer attention.

Dave proudly brought out one of his newest items, and gave them all expectant looks, expecting to see awe at his wonderful gift. "The first one is… THE MIGHTY DRILLDO!"

Their faces all went flat, even Dragon's expressionless suit simply stopped moving, as he held out what looked like a gun with a dildo attached to the end.

"I'll take it!" Mouse Protector said, teleporting across the room so she could be next to a table in order to dramatically slam her palm against it.

"Good choice." Dave nodded. "As you can see," he held it closer to them, "this hole here," he pointed at the bit where urine would normally come out on a penis, "shoots bullets!"

"And those bullets," he continued dramatically, "will rotate anyone they hit by about 15 degrees clockwise, per bullet. This is an automatic weapon by the way, and it accepts normal, mundane bullets. Of course, as one of my weapons, the gun itself is completely indestructible and undamageable, and will never jam or break."

Miss Militia felt a dawning sense of horror as she realized she was probably going to end up using this gun, simply due to how effective it would be against Brutes.

"Oh yes," Dave remembered, "and the penis part rotates as you shoot bullets. By pressing some of these buttons on the side, you can adjust the rate of fire and how fast the penis part rotates."

Dave continued, "I was thinking of sending one to Alexandria, I don't know exactly how her power works, but I figure there's a decent chance she can't have sex with anyone that isn't a high level brute because her vagina might just crush anything that she tries to put into it, which would mean penises not attached to a high-level Brute and any sex toys not made with Tinkertech would simply break if she tried them. I've heard she's quite intense, so I figured a thoughtful, unbreakable gift like this might make her calm down and chill out a little." He explained happily, to the growing horror of Miss Militia, Prism, and Dragon.

"No, Trouble, do not send one to Alexandria." Miss Militia said sternly.

Mouse Protector meanwhile, happily zoomed up to him and put a hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes. "I like how you think." She said before leaning in closer. "Do it." She breathed into his ear, before she was dragged away by Miss Militia while flailing her arms pathetically.

Dave turned to Prism and Dragon, "That's one for and one against, two for if I count myself, what say you? Send to Alexandria?" He asked, holding up the Drilldo.

"No." Dragon said flatly, while Prism visibly struggled before giving in.

"Fine," Prism said sadly, "don't send it. I hadn't actually thought about the consequences of being a high-level Brute before." She said, before looking even more sad. "I could have gotten away with saying yes when I was in the Wards. Well, at least before I became the Wards captain." She sighed.

Dave shrugged. "Alright, I will not send her one for now. I can't think of any other high-level Brutes that both might need this, and would be able to handle the bullets shooting them from the inside. Oh, the bullets disappear after they hit something by the way, no need to worry about getting them stuck in something."

Mouse Protector happily accepted her Drilldo, while the other three took theirs more reluctantly, but did take theirs, recognizing that it was too big of an advantage against Brutes to not use just because of the shape. For Mouse Protector's strategy of humiliating those that fought her of course, the shape, name, and spinning aspect were all excellent features that made it even better in her eyes.

While Mouse Protector happily hugged her brand-new Drilldo to her chest, she gave an expectant look to Dave to bring out the final 'toy', a term which she found much funnier now.

Dave very carefully brought out the Dildo Crossbow.

"Now this one is technically called the Dildo Gun," he began, "but for obvious reasons I call it the Dildo Crossbow."

Miss Militia looked on like someone watching a train crash, silently wondering if she was going to need to add this one to her kit as well due to usefulness.

"Now, this one is a bit dangerous, so I'm inclined to use it mostly as deterrent," Dave began, making a feeling of dread build up in most of his audience, and anticipation and excitement build up in Mouse Protector.

"This shoots these floppy, waggly, purple dildos," he pointed at the one in the place of the 'arrow' of the crossbow he was holding. "Which hit hard for a dildo, but will probably break a bone at most under normal circumstances."

"The weirdness starts with that they don't actually hit things, as long as they hit within a few inches of something, it will consider that object of person 'hit' and deal the damage." He began, his solemn tone making (three fourths of) his audience feel trepidation.

"Then, they will stay floating in the air, wherever they hit. Forever." He said. "They will remain attached to whatever they hit forever, and the dildos are completely and totally indestructible. I would happily watch Eidolon, Behemoth, Scion, and the Siberian all take their best shots at destroying one of these and laugh as they failed. They cannot be removed by anything." He spoke with an ominous finality.

"Any person hit by one of these will have the purple dildo waggling in their face for the rest of their life… and the rest of their death. Even a dead person brought back to life will still have it attached to them." He said.

"These remain even through Breaker forms; if I was hit by one of these and died, my invisible ghost form that goes through any and all objects and cannot be interacted with, would have it remain attached." As Dave spoke, realization hit Dragon and Miss Militia, though Mouse Protector was drooling at the idea too hard to be able to tell if she had figured it out, and Prism hadn't realized the implications yet.

"Naturally," Dave continued. "This means that anyone hit by this will never be able to hide in a crowd, or in a civilian identity, because they will be really fucking obvious due to the large, purple, floating dildo waggling in their face." He said with satisfaction.

"Oh yeah," he recalled. "And they can hit most Breaker forms. I'm not sure about Legend, but someone turning into some form of matter, even if it was gaseous like a mist form or something, would still get hit by this. Of course, even if it doesn't work on their Breaker form, as I said, if it hits them in their normal form, it will remain attached to their Breaker form."

"Really, it's perfect against Brutes, Strangers, Changers, Breakers, people that need their ego popped, and dangerous individuals that have a Kill Order or are Birdcage-bound." He finished off.

---

Needless to say, Mouse Protector was drooling at the prospect of the Dildo Crossbow, though Miss Militia seemed content with the idea of using it on Hookwolf, as the only person in Brockton currently Birdcage-bound. She was even slightly disappointed when reminded that Hookwolf was now blind and wouldn't be able to see a dildo waggling in his face for the rest of his life if she successfully shot him with it.

Dragon seemed to view the whole thing from a more practical standpoint, but she gained a slightly vicious tone to her voice when she mentioned how unfortunate it would be if she encountered the Dragonslayers and accidentally hit them with it.

Prism ended up being the only heroine that was truly reluctant to use the Dildo Crossbow.

"Prism," Mouse Protector said, "I say this with full seriousness. You need to be able to threaten a villain with more than violence. Threats of violence only keep so many people in line, and only the lowest-level of villains are among their number. Some, you can keep in line with threats of humiliation," she pointed at herself and gave a big, goofy, cheesy smile. "And some, you can only keep in line with threats of consequences." She pointed at the Dildo Crossbow just sitting there menacingly.

"Think of it this way," Mouse Protector said upon seeing she wasn't getting through Prism's reluctance to effectively ruin someone's life. "You won't be using this on a normal unpowered thug who might theoretically turn their life around. You won't be using this on some low-level villain that might be stealing food to feed their family or some shit out of a play. You won't be using this on a medium-level Villain who could be flipped to being a hero with the right circumstances." She paused. "You will be using this on people like the Teeth, that kill, butcher, and sometimes eat, large numbers of innocent people."

Mouse Protector paused at that, before turning to Dave. "Would the dildo stick around if it hit the Butcher after the Butcher changed?" She asked.

"No, probably not." Dave said after a few seconds. "It would depend on the exact mechanics of how the Butcher truly works, but my understanding is that it is a power-made copy of the minds of the previous Butchers that are inserted into the mind of the new Butcher. So, I think that the original Butcher does actually die, and it is just copies of memories and personalities that are inserted into the new one."

Upon seeing Mouse Protector's disappointment, he added, "if it does work in such a way that it is truly the original mind, this could be used to confirm it, because the dildo would appear on the new Butcher as it follows around the Butcher that was actually hit with it."

Dave paused at that before humming. "Now that I think about it, this could be used to confirm or deny the theory that Oni Lee actually just makes copies of himself when he teleports and that the original just dies every time he teleports."

Upon seeing Mouse Protector and Prisms' confusion, Miss Militia explained. "Oni Lee is a Brockton villain, part of the Asian gang called the ABB. His power includes cloning himself and teleportation, which he often uses for suicide-bombing purposes. There are some theories that his power damages his brain somehow because he never talks and has never shown any ambition whatsoever, despite being one of only two Parahumans in a large gang."

---

After that, the conversation slowly wound down, and eventually Dragon politely made excuses and said she needed to leave and bring back the Master-resistance testing equipment she had brought.

After a quick conversation with Prism, Dave had ten teleporter receiver pads left behind in the New York Protectorate Headquarters, for the Brockton Protectorate and himself to use as needed, and left ten Teleporter remotes for receiver pads he would be setting up in Brockton. The idea of course, being that New York would be able to provide up to ten Parahumans near instantly if Brockton needed reinforcements, and if it was simply quick travel that was needed, one or two people could use them freely and Dave would just set up more before the uses ran out.

It sure was a good thing Prism was given so much authority that she could make these kinds of decisions.

A little while later, Mouse Protector, Miss Militia, and Dave all left the Protectorate Headquarters, leaving Prism to contemplate both the things that had been said, and her new 'toys,' as well as the fact that one of the most serious threats she could make now involved a dildo.

"So," Mouse Protector said with her hands behind her head as they walked together, looking at Miss Militia out of the corner of her eye. "I've been thinking that I might visit you occasionally. It's a bit of a trip, but I enjoyed hanging out again. And uh, it kinda sounds like Brockton could use a little help that isn't tied up by red tape."

"Mouse," Miss Militia said, "you don't have to change cities on my account. Your show would never work in Brockton Bay, and as Trouble said, you encourage people and make people smile, and that is a good way to be a hero, you give many people hope."

"No, no," Mouse Protector clarified, "I wouldn't be changing cities entirely or anything. Just visiting from time to time. While most of the funds from my TV show go to various charities, I do keep enough that I can afford to make regular trips to Brockton without it being a burden. I don't exactly live an opulent lifestyle that needs a ton of money to upkeep you know?"

Dave spoke at that point. "Actually, I could set up teleporters for you to travel to Brockton quickly. Each one only has 16 uses, but as long as you come to me and bring back a new one to your home or base or whatever before it runs out of uses, you can travel between Brockton and anywhere else instantly." He said, before explaining the teleporters in slightly more depth.

"I actually would have already teleported back to Brockton with Miss Militia if we didn't need to bring back her bike." Dave admitted. "While currently it isn't possible to bring much with you, I am working on a project that would enable bringing things like motorcycles."

"Cool, does that mean eventually I could ride my Cheese Wheel together with Millie on her motorbike?" Moues Protector asked, before showing a picture of the Cheese Wheel to Dave.

It was a yellow monstrosity of a motorcycle with wheels repainted to look like wheels of cheese, and parts of it had darker spots to indicate holes like in a cartoonish piece of Swiss cheese. It looked like something a mouse in a cartoon would ride.

Dave nodded. "Yes, eventually, though based on the current design plans for that teleporter you would need to thoroughly cover or contain it with something. For now though, it would just be you and whatever you can carry and fit in a backpack."

Mouse Protector nodded happily, and Dave gave her two teleport receiver pads and their corresponding remotes, and two more remotes which would correspond to two receiver pads he gave to Miss Militia to put somewhere; she could coordinate with Mouse Protector for the exact location.

As they made their way to the Protectorate building's garage where Miss Militia's bike was, they fell back into silence for a moment.

"Let me know when you're going to visit okay?" Miss Militia requested Mouse Protector as she got onto her motorcycle and Dave go into the sidecar.

"No promises!" Mouse Protector said with a cheery smile as Miss Militia turned on the motorcycle and began drive to the exit of the garage.

"Be seeing ya!" Mouse Protector called with a wave as Miss Militia and Dave began their trip back to Brockton.







Author's Note: Hello all! This chapter is largely going over the Dildo Weaponry in case anyone forgot about it, though I tried to clarify on use-cases a little.

For anyone not aware, I actually nerfed the damage a bit on the Dildo Crossbow, because it normally hits quite hard; as in at most 4 dildos will kill someone. Though, I suppose that could be normal for dildos, depending on the size of said dildos. Actually, in hindsight, it makes sense that a dildo-sized wound in someone's body would result in quite a lot of damage.

After that, they discuss the uses of Dildo-based weaponry on the Butcher and Oni Lee for the purposes of advancing scientific knowledge.

Oh yeah, does anyone know the canon status of Alexandria's vagina? Can she have sex with someone or would anything trying to enter her body simply be crushed to a pulp? I'm genuinely curious now that I've thought about 'what are other uses of an indestructible dildo?'

Next time, we return to Brockton and it's a new day... Or is it? I haven't actually decided yet, I've been meaning to do a Panpan interlude for a while now, and this day (in-universe) would probably be quite suitable actually. Yes, I think I'll do a Panpan interlude next chapter. It won't be in-depth or anything, a lot of stuff will happen in the background, but I think it'd be nice to show the fruits of Dave's social labors. It will also set up a little for the next actual chapter .

Author's Note 2: The new stuff just before this is uploaded:

For anyone not aware in case I forgot to mention it: I am going to be out of town tomorrow until Sunday, and I don't know when or if I will be able to upload or write. I do have enough backlog to upload chapters while I'm gone, so I'll do my best when and if I get (free) internet access.

Also, I've been forgetting to mention this, but future readers, it's absolutely fine to comment on things in older chapters as far as I'm concerned, whether that is reaction, speculation, or anything else. Just say which chapter you are on when you do so (or do the 'View discussion' button if you are in reader mode, then highlight the part of the chapter you want to talk about and click the thing that says you want to reply to that part specifically).

 

[Phili]

Interlude 2: Amelia Dallon

January 15, 2010, Friday. Brockton Bay, Arcadia High School.



The bell rang as the final class of the day ended at last. Even with the half-days Arcadia had as a vocational school, it seemed like it took forever to actually reach the end of the school day.

Amy quickly packed up her bag and left class. After that, she waited on the roof until she could catch the Vicky Express to the Hospital.

"Sorry," Vicky apologized as she came through the doorway to the roof. "Julie wanted to talk about something, so I'm a little late."

"It's fine," Amy said automatically, before looking expectantly at Vicky. "Shall we go?"

"Yup." Vicky agreed brightly, picking her up and beginning the flight to the hospital.

---

Amy felt she did an admirable job of looking at the city while Vicky flew her to the hospital, or looking directly at Vicky's eyes when talking to her, which was still awkward for her, but it was a lot less awkward than any other places her eyes might have been drawn to.

"So you're ahead in biology class now?" Vicky asked her, making her pay more attention to the conversation instead of where was the best place to look for minimal awkwardness.

"Yeah," she agreed, focusing on her sister's eyes while they flew. "It's by far the most important class to me, and I learn a lot while I'm at the hospital anyways, and I have a huge advantage with the diagnosis aspect of my power, and with the doctors and nurses there to tell me what things are called, I'm able to pick up a lot of the material quickly. The teacher agreed to give me some assignments ahead of time, and as long as I do them all, I can look at examples of the next year's assignments to see what to focus my studying on." She explained.

At Vicky's hum of interest, Amy continued. "If I keep up and complete all the early assignments, I can get extra study materials and eventually will get a chance to take a test to skip the next level of biology class to take a more advanced one."

"That's cool," Vicky said. "I wish my power had something to help with school." She huffed dramatically. "You dang Thinkers and your cheat codes!" Vicky said in an old-timey accent. "Back in my day, we had to study to pass our classes! Now you just have to undergo a little trauma, then still study anyways to pass classes! Wait a minute." Vicky broke off the old-person impression's tirade with a giggle that Amy couldn't help but join slightly. It wasn't that funny, but it was a little funny, and Vicky's laughter was just as infectious as always.

"So who's with you today at the Hospital?" Vicky asked after they settled their laughter. They were almost at the hospital now, even with Vicky slowing down on Amy's account, the power of taking a straight line made movement through a city much quicker.

"Sarah and Crystal." Amy answered succinctly.

Vicky hummed, "I'm gonna see if dad wants to go on a patrol with me today. He's been getting so much better recently, and I need to show off my maturity and stuff if I want that cool explosion power."

Amy snorted slightly. She knew exactly why Sarah had said Vicky and Eric needed to 'pass a maturity test' before they were allowed the cool explosion power. Vicky broke a bit of concrete in front of Arcadia at the beginning of the school year when she did a Superhero Landing to look cool and did it a little too hard. Sarah had clearly known about that little incident and wisely decided not to instantly give Vicky the power to make explosions by landing harder. Poor Eric probably just got caught up in the 'maturity test' thing so Vicky wouldn't feel singled out.

"What?" Vicky said indignantly. "I want the cool shiny new power! You know dad's been practicing with launching himself with his explosions now that he can take the resulting fall without being hurt. It's so cool!" She said, her eyes practically shining.

"Yeah, didn't he launch himself into the bushes yesterday?" Amy asked rhetorically. She knew he had, she had watched. It had been hilarious to see his sheepish expression when he tried to pretend it hadn't happened, but then needed to ask her to heal the scratches on his face from the bush before Carol could see and ask what had happened.

Vicky laughed. "Yes, that was funny, but the idea is really cool too. He probably won't get to use it much, given the problem of the explosion upon landing, he now has the same problem as Uncle Neil with simply jumping large distances. Idiots might get splattered if they don't get out of the way at the landing spot."

Amy recalled a thought she had had during the Pokemon watch party. "Do you think he could use explosions to change his direction mid-air?" She wondered aloud.

Vicky paused thoughtfully. "Maybe? You should suggest it to him when you get back from the hospital. It's been a while since I've seen him in action, I'm not certain how big of an explosion he can make quickly. If he doesn't need to worry about landing, he can at least safely try it now though."

"Why don't you suggest it during your patrol?" Amy asked.

"Because it was your idea Ames! I can't just take credit for your cool idea!" Vicky responded, before adding "What gave you the idea anyways?" She asked curiously.

"Uhh…" Ammy sunk lower into Vicky's arms in embarrassment. "I was thinking about the Pokemon thing, and how creative the stuff was, and wondered if it was going to show something like that." She admitted.

Vicky gasped dramatically. "So Dave was right!" She laughed. "The power of anime is truly the secret to getting stronger for Parahumans."

"Yeah, yeah," Amy grumbled. "So your silly alternate world cartoons are good for something."

"Amy…" Vicky said as they landed gently on the hospital roof. Then Vicky suddenly poked her. "You enjoyed it too! I saw you smiling, no matter how much you and little V were determined to be sour pusses about it, I saw both of you having a good time!"

Amy grumbled at that but didn't deny it. Vicky gained a gleam in her eyes. "Speaking of which, tomorrow is a Saturday, so Crystal doesn't have classes and Trouble will be back in town, so… we should do another watch session tomorrow!" Vicky declared. Now that they were no longer in the air, she had switched to referring to Dave as 'Trouble', instead of as Dave.

Ugh… socializing! Amy internally groaned, though she had to admit the socializing wasn't too bad; at least nobody there was like Vicky's other friends from school. Also, she may have been looking forward to seeing more of the show… just a little bit.

---

After Vicky left to go on her patrol with Mark, Amy got to work. She greeted Sarah and Crystal, who had brought three of Dave's Health Stations, and got to work clearing out as much of the hospital as she could.

It was nice having people there who could help her with the more enthusiastic examples of gratitude. Some people tried to hold her in place with a hug for over five minutes! She understood, she really did, but she could heal another person entirely within that amount of time, so having Crystal or Aunt Sarah gently pry them away from her, sometimes being latched onto in turn by the overenthusiastic healing recipient (or the recipient's family), really helped both her social battery and healing efficiency.

With Sarah and Crystal running interference on both the overly gratuitous and the overly asshole, combined with the Health Stations healing away the things she wasn't able to trust herself to handle—mostly things involving brains, though there were some complicated conditions she didn't want to try to tackle without more practice healing—she was done fairly soon, with only a few people in the entire hospital remaining unhealed.

This was mostly those that refused Parahuman healing, but there was also a coma patient that she couldn't handle, and who didn't have allergies listed. Because he was in a coma, obviously the brain was involved and she couldn't do much, and he couldn't use the Health Station himself because he was unconscious. The problem then was, the hospital staff didn't want to just mulch up a healing burrito in case he was allergic to something in it, and they didn't know what ingredients to change the settings to in order to make the risk as low as possible, so they had to contact an allergy specialist first to avoid legal liability, even if the burrito likely would have healed away the consequences of any allergic reactions.

Thus, that man would have to wait until the next time the Health Stations were available after the allergy specialist had been contacted.

After thoroughly scrubbing and washing her hands after all the sick people she touched bare-handed to use her power, she was ready to go.

"You ready to go?" Crystal asked her.

She nodded, "Yeah, I cleared out as much as I was legally allowed to."

Crystal smiled at her gently, "Good job Amy. Do you mind if we head to our," she gestured to herself and Sarah "house first to drop off the Health Stations? We can hang out some after." She suggested.

Amy shrugged. "Sure, that sounds fine."

"Great." Crystal smiled.

---

The drive to the Pelham house was mostly quiet, with a little bit of Crystal complaining to her about not getting to visit New York with Dave. Sarah sighed several times, having clearly already received the complaints already. Crystal had even made a list of all the things she would have done while Dave was doing whatever he was doing, though Amy felt a little dubious that Crystal could have actually done all of it in one day… and a little dubious that Crystal wouldn't have gotten distracted by whatever Dave was doing part way through.

The zoo visit idea did sound nice though.

After they parked in the Pelham house garage, she helped them bring in the Health Stations so they would only need the one trip into the house from the car, with each person carrying one Health Station.

After that was handled, Sarah grabbed some snacks and soda and had her and Crystal sit down.

When Amy was given what was generally considered the comfiest chair, she began to get a bad feeling.

"Amy." Sarah began, looking unusually unsure of herself. "Crystal and I have begun… noticing things recently."

Shit, what do I say here? Going the obvious route and saying I don't want to hear about them having sexual interest in each other will just make things worse instead of distracting them. Dave is rubbing off on me, isn't he?

While Amy was trying to think of how to deflect what she was pretty sure was going to be a conversation about her thing with Vicky, her train of thought was derailed at this point.

"Amy, do you have more to your powers than healing?" Crystal asked bluntly.

"Crystal!" Sarah said in a warning tone.

Crystal just rolled her eyes. "It's better to rip the band-aid off Mom, we don't want her to just be stressing out over anticipation of what we're going to say, and she was clearly already worried. It's like calling a kid to the principal's office, even if you say they're not in trouble, they feel like they're in trouble."

Crystal turned to Amy at this point. "We've noticed some things in your behavior recently, along with some clues from my Parahuman Studies classes. At the college level, they really get into things in those classes, and after I put together the clues, Mom confirmed other things for me, which we will get into later. For now, we just need to know for certain."

Amy looked at Crystal, then at Sarah. They weren't Vicky… but they weren't Carol either. Even Carol had been getting better recently, which in hindsight was after Sarah started coming over regularly to talk to Carol in the evenings and announced they were also getting therapy. Amy had thought the therapy thing was just to set an example for the younger members of New Wave if they ever needed it, but maybe there was more to it.

She was never very good at social anything, not like Vicky, but she looked into Crystal's eyes, and saw something there. She just couldn't tell what.

"Give me your hand." She found herself saying.

Crystal immediately gave her hand, even with what she was asking, she seemed to still trust Amy.

"I can do more than heal." Amy said slowly as she monitored Crystal's reaction and Sarah came closer. "I'm monitoring your biological reactions to see how you're responding." She said after Crystal remained both calm and unsurprised.

At that point, Sarah surprised her by grabbing her other hand, and looking into her eyes seriously. "Monitor me too." Sarah said quietly. "Do whatever you need to trust us." She said firmly.

Amy thought about the news Crystal gave recently, about how Dave believed he could eventually resurrect Aunt Jess. She thought about what she wanted to say and how she wanted to be seen by her Aunt after she came back to life.

She decided she wanted Aunt Jess to feel proud.

And she began to speak.

---

As the words flowed out of her mouth like a breaking dam, she kept close track of both Sarah and Crystal's reactions through her power.

Neither even attempted to take their hands away, despite knowing exactly what she could do. Sarah had several strange reactions, including a whole lot of stress, but never the chemicals and signals representing the belief of 'I am in danger'. She had no direct fear response to what she was hearing combined with her situation.

Crystal didn't even have the stress response, only a little of the things representing excitement and some satisfaction.

Despite some tears and hiccups, she managed to get out what she could do, and some of her fears and concerns for good measure. Worries about being a bad person for refusing to do brains, concern at the idea of doing anything even touching the brain and making a mistake.

At some point she had been enveloped in hugs from both women and had barely even noticed.

A great many tissues and tears later, they sat down again, this time closer together. Both Crystal and Sarah had given her a hand each once more.

After a nod from Sarah, Crystal began to speak. "I'm glad you told us Amy. They don't talk about it at your level of school, but there's a reason unaligned Parahumans are so rare."

"They told us about NEPEA-5," Amy argued reflexively.

Crystal shook her head. "No, that contributes, but I meant something deeper. You will never find a Parahuman who has powers but never uses them. It isn't simply a matter of it being hard to resist using cool new superpowers either. You won't find just a normal office worker who has no cape identity whatsoever, but has powers that they only ever use if they get mugged or something. Do you know why that is?"

Amy shook her head, "If there was someone like that, wouldn't we not know about them either way though?"

Crystal nodded, "Generally yes, but if there was a significant population like that, eventually someone would reveal their powers in public, but that scenario only happens with new Triggers and already-established Capes."

Amy shook her head again, "Why then?"

"It's something most commonly known about with Tinkers," Crystal began. "There was a court case a while back in another country that made it so not letting a Tinker perform Tinkering was considered torture. Tinkers need to Tinker. If a Tinker is trapped somewhere it is socially impossible to Tinker, eventually they will Tinker anyways and go into a fugue. If they are trapped somewhere for long enough where it is physically impossible to Tinker, they will enter a fugue where they can't control themselves, and escape their situation to Tinker or die trying."

Amy… had not known that, at all. She had heard Tinkers needed to Tinker, but she didn't know it was that extreme.

Crystal continued, "It is the same with all Parahumans, just to a lesser extent with the other categories. Some Parahumans have this to a lesser extent for unknown reasons, but that is related to Trigger theory, and that is a poorly-understood topic even now, but suffice to say, you cannot be one of those that are less-affected by it."

Amy made to protest, but Crystal interrupted her. "I'll tell you more about the details and why later," Crystal promised, making Amy sullenly nod.

"So," Crystal continued. "What do you think would have happened if you had only use a small part of your power's abilities for a long period of time?" She asked.

Amy was confused at this point. "I kind of get what you're implying, but I have been using my power to an extent, and I hadn't felt any sort of impulse to do more with it… I don't think I had anyways?" Amy shook her head. "Anything I think I might have felt could easily be that hindsight-thing I don't know the name of because you've put the idea in my head now."

Crystal nodded. "We have no idea what could happen." She said simply. "Nobody has ever tried to only use an extremely small aspect of their power. Avoid certain things, yes, absolutely, that is done by many, many Parahumans. But what you are doing is like a Triumvirate-tier Pyrokinetic only using their power to make perfectly straight fire beams, without ever even lighting a match from a distance. They could do a lot with fire beams, but they are only really using maybe 2 or 3 % of their real capabilities."

Amy got the idea from what Crystal was saying. "You think I might have been eventually compelled to use my power in other ways?" She asked.

Crystal nodded. "I'm not an expert obviously, but I'm pretty sure that's what would have happened eventually. If you continuously healed new and novel things, it could probably be delayed, but eventually, something about the way powers work means there's a good chance you would have had a growing list of psychological issues if you didn't experiment more, much like a Tinker not allowed to tinker."

"Can I see the research you're referring to?" Amy asked.

Crystal shrugged at that, "Sure, you can borrow my Parahuman Studies textbook whenever I'm not using it, as long as you're here of course. I do need it on hand."

Crystal sighed. "You don't have to jump into making real-life Pokemon or anything Amy, but it represents a real risk to your safety and health if you don't do more with your powers."

Sarah cleared her throat at this point. "In essence, what you would be doing would change very little. My understanding based on how you described your power is that you are actually already doing more than healing as far as your power would be concerned when you do things like remove problems that have been present since birth." She began

"While we didn't have Parahuman Studies classes when I went to school, and I am relying on Crystal telling me things and my own experience with the Parahumans I have worked with, fought, and heard about over the years, I trust Crystal when she says you need to do more in order to remain healthy." Sarah looked into her eyes at this.

"Amy," Sarah began. "I want you to make a plan with Crystal on things you feel comfortable with doing with your power, beyond healing. We don't have to tell anybody, not even the rest of New Wave before you are ready, and you can take as long as you want on that front. Just, please, work with Crystal to figure something you are willing to do."

Sarah brightened up a bit. "You could even make a goal if you want. Create new medicines, look into solving the food crisis, anything you like as a grand goal to eventually work up to."

"For now," Sarah continued, reigning in her enthusiasm a little, "just know that if you need to work on something, you can practice with me." She said, blowing Amy's mind slightly.

Sarah smiled slightly at her reaction. "Amy, I trust you. I trust that you won't do anything to harm me, and that you will be careful and undo anything I am uncomfortable with. There was an old comic from before Parahumans came about, I'm not sure if you girls know it, but there was a famous line in it about how 'With great power, comes great responsibility.' I don't necessarily agree in full, however."

Carol had mentioned something like that once, it was part of why she spent so much time at the hospital. Amy had hoped that it would get through to Carol that she was taking her responsibility that came with her power seriously.

Sarah continued. "Your current responsibility, is your own happiness and health. Later on in life, after you have matured a little, you can take on more responsibility if you want. Just don't feel obligated to be the next Triumvirate if you don't want to. After all…" Sarah's tone fell slightly. "They weren't always the Triumvirate. I don't want that to happen to you."

Sarah brightened a little after that. "But, if you decide after putting thought into it and becoming a little older, that you want to change the world, and make your mark and maybe even push back the doomsday dates… we will support you."

Sarah sighed at that. "Please remember you aren't alone. I know we haven't been there for you as much as we should have been, but give us a chance to make up for it, please?" Sarah requested, still keeping her hand in Amy's and now looking into her eyes.

Amy nodded, having trouble finding the words to speak, and tangled with a whole bunch of emotions she was having trouble identifying, let alone untangling and sorting.

That just got harder when Sarah and Crystal hugged her again.

It got even harder when Crystal shot Sarah a look, and Sarah resolutely nodded before speaking. "It's probably time you learn about your biological parents." Sarah began.









Author's Note: Ahh, another Interlude done. This one was hard, which I expected, particularly at the beginning, though I'm not sure what about it made me have such a tough time writing it. It got better after Amy and Vicky began talking on the flight to the hospital though.

First, we see a little bit of Amy's state of mind, since a lot of people are probably thinking of her as she is in Worm. Amy is in a pretty good place really, with a lot less self-deprecation and self-flagellation in her thoughts, she is simply much less stressed out (and is generally healthier from the health station burritos and not having picked up smoking yet). That, combined with the hospital stress not getting to her yet and the Pelham family keeping a closer eye on her and integrating her more, along with Mark being better with his depression and more present as a father, means Amy is doing far, far better than canon. Do remember as well, that all this is over a year earlier than the start of Worm, and people, especially kids (I say kids, but I really mean anyone under 25, which is when the human brain stops its development) can change a lot in a year.

We also see a little of the results of Mark being less depressed through the power of burritos and getting the PhD Flopper. Amy's idea of letting Mark essentially fly through continuous explosions is largely inspired by Bakugo from My Hero Academia, though Natsu from Fairy Tail also did something similar with fire at one point. No specific scene in Pokemon made her think of it, but she just got the idea from seeing the creativity involved in the Pokemon series. Will Mark learn to fly? I don't know yet, I'll need to take a closer look at his wiki page before I decide, though if anyone has input on whether he should be able to fly with explosions that they want to share I'll happily take it into consideration (I won't necessarily agree, but I'll be happy to see the input regardless).

We see a little of the problems a hospital might encounter even with a nearly miraculous healing device. Namely, legal consequences of forcefeeding a healing burrito to an unconscious person.

I took a much closer look at Amy's wiki page for this, and found it unfortunately lacking what I wanted in many regards. Mainly I wanted to know exactly who knew about the full extent of her power canonically (before the start of canon I mean. I'm pretty sure Victoria knew, but I'm not sure who else, if anyone, among New Wave was aware she was a full biokinetic).

This was by far the hardest chapter I've ever done. Even with how much I struggled, I skipped over bits like Amy explaining the full extent of her biokinesis, simply because I wasn't confident I could do justice to the explanation and Amy's emotions and Crystal and Sarah's reactions all at the same time. Then I wimped out on adding the stuff about Marquis and all that.

Suffice to say, there is a reason Sarah wanted that conversation on Friday after Amy was done at school and the hospital, and it wasn't just because Crystal didn't have classes. (It also involved the fact that it would be okay for Amy to be out of commission and moping for as long as possible before issues popped up.)

This chapter actually took the longest of anything so far, that being three days, with only around 3.7k words to show for it. Even my 5k chapters I got done at most over the course of two days, usually with parts of other chapters also done within those two days.

I'll probably not do more interludes for a bit after this. Next chapter is back to Dave though, yay!



Author's Note 2: Update, I'm writing this just before I upload the chapter, the previous Author's Note was written right after the chapter itself was written. This is a decent size, so I'm offering this up as a consolation prize for missing the last couple of uploads due to my trip. I've got internet now, so I'm putting this one up now. There (almost certainly) won't be anything new over the weekend due to busy-ness and traveling.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 55: NOT THE BEES!

January 16, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Dave's Apartment.



Dave woke up. That was it, nothing else happened. He flopped over on his bed and did his best to ignore that his room was now full of giant bees, each the size of two fists put together.

They were very friendly bees admittedly, but they were also very loud bees.

"Don't you guys have a stealth mode or something?" Dave complained to the bees as he got up.

The bees looked at him with confusion. He had a hard time counting the exact number, given they were bees doing bee things and that apparently involved a lot of flying around in random patterns, but he estimated there was a good 20 of them.

He felt around in his soul and turned his newest role off. He didn't want to have a bunch more bees spawning every 'round', in other words, every ten minutes. The bees immediately looked more aggressive, so he quickly turned the role back on and they calmed down. It took a bit of finagling, but he got his power to a point where it felt like he wouldn't spawn more bees every ten minutes, but also he had the role itself still enabled.

With that, he began his morning routine.

---

With his breakfast, tea, and orange juice prepared (the breakfast wasn't actually prepared, the bagel was just in the toaster), he sat at the table and waited.

Good Morning Dave!

So, obviously, you've figured out your role already, but I'll get to that in a moment. First, I need to tell you about your soul growth. Your soul experienced the largest amount of growth it has… ever, yesterday. By a lot too. Even if you acted like a literal vegetable (as in, an onion or a carrot) to the best of your ability for the next month, you would still be able to gain roles and expand your capabilities for that entire time. Now, to give you an idea of how much you grew, yesterday, you left Brockton Bay for the first time in your new life, you went to one of the most famous cities in the world, you met new people, you underwent a rare process less than five-thousand people have ever gone through (Master Resistance testing), you went on your first road trip, you had a pretty lady sit in your lap for the first time, and you gave multiple dildoes to four women, each of whom could be considered a celebrity, and didn't even get told off or scolded, let alone slapped. Also of course, you had a fight with a cell of a prominent gang (the Teeth) and your actions resulted in the capture of a powerful anti-Parahuman Trump (Animos). You also did some other things that resulted in even more growth for your soul than all of that combined! Now, as I believe I've told you before, some roles take up more space in your soul than others do, and the amount of free real estate your soul now contains means you can get any role and have it fit for the near future. As an additional consequence of all that soul real estate consequence, more roles are now available to be rolled. The expansion of your soul means that the pool of roles that you can get expanded by another 20 or so roles that you have less connection with due to them being 'newer' or 'rarer', and thus 'costing' you more soul space. Now, as you might or might not realize, your current role isn't actually one of those new ones, though it is one that you consider 'rare'. Your new role is the Queen Bee. As you know, the Queen Bee is a Traitor Role that rarely occurs, and when it does, their Traitor Buddy is always a Bee role. The Queen Bee's normal powers are twofold. They spawn a bunch of bees at the beginning of the round, and they are immune to bees. This means bees neither attack them nor damage them. Now, you share these powers, and the bee immunity extends to all bees, not just TTT bees, and includes even rare TTT bees like the immortal bees or the BFB (Big Fucking/Friendly Bee). In addition, you can choose to save up your bee spawning ability, and then choose to release the built-up bees in increments of 20, with you 'stockpiling' another 20 bees every 'round'—in other words, every 10 minutes. Oh yes, you've also gotten some new items, and expanded capabilities on some old items.

Dave thought about all of this as he put cream cheese on his bagel.

He thought about it more as he ate his bagel and drink his tea and orange juice.

"I think I've figured more stuff out about the soul growth." Dave said at last.

Oh? Do tell.

"I think that my soul, in addition to the other growth methods I've previously theorized, grows from the impact of my actions on other people. Thus, saving someone's life will cause substantial growth for my soul. I suspect, that then the things that theoretically saved person does will then give me partial 'credit' for the things they do, particularly if they would have definitely died without my intervention instead of being saved by someone else." Dave began.

"Thus, I believe giving four heroines of varying fame and ability, substantial powerups gave me the massive growth boost, though I suspect most of it is due to Dragon being Dragon, and probably already saving people. Now, anyone any of them save or help that they wouldn't have without my intervention, will probably grow my soul space. Is this correct?" Dave asked.

You hit the nail on the head buddy. Of course, the normal soul growth methods don't go away, so even just figuring that out grew your soul as well because it is such an esoteric subject that humans, particularly local humans, haven't really studied hardly at all. Actually saying it out loud in explicit words just now also got you some growth, because of the idea of 'sometimes saying something makes it real.' Not literally, it was just as true before you said it as it was after, but saying something out loud or writing something down can make something more ingrained in your mind, and in the process, in your soul. It's basically the same principle of how taking notes by writing something down by hand will ingrain it in your memory better than doing so by typing, which will ingrain it in your memory better than just by hearing or reading whatever you are learning. Except it's a little more conceptual because it is working with soul shenanigans, but it's a very similar idea.

"Huh, neat! I wonder if that means monologuing to empty air is considered a healthy pastime for the soul?"

---

After pondering for a while what exactly he should do today, he decided to start with checking on Lisa and Bella.

After knocking on Bella's door and being let in, he sat down in Bella's living room, where she was lounging and looking at something on a laptop, while Lisa was looking at one of Bella's textbooks.

"How did your thing go?" Bella asked after he had settled down.

"Pretty good, I gave some of those toys I showed you to Miss Militia, Mouse Protector, Prism, and Dragon, along with some other stuff, so I probably fucked over a whole lot of villains yesterday with that alone." Dave began.

"The testing itself was a bit of a drag, but it turns out I'm immune to most Master powers and resistant to a lot of the Master powers I'm not immune to, and I'm also resistant to a lot of Striker powers." He finished.

Bella nodded at that. "Well, if it was anyone else, I would say that is extraordinary, or be shocked or awed, but that doesn't really surprise me with you. Was it one of your items that did that?"

"No," Dave answered. "That's why I didn't realize I had those resistances and immunities. I'm not really sure where they came from. For the Striker thing, my best guess is whatever Panacea was talking about when she examined me; she said something about the outer parts of my body, like the skin and things near the skin, are made of something non-biological that extends to further within my body when I change into a different form."

"For the Master thing," Dave said, before pausing a little to think about it. "I'm really not sure. Maybe it's related to how I gain powers regularly? Or to my amnesia? It could also just be a basic part of my power like double jumping though."

"Want me to try and figure it out?" Lisa offered.

"Nah," Dave answered. "You have better uses for your time and energy. The why isn't really important, and you might not even succeed in figuring it out even if you do try."

Lisa shrugged in response. "I'll admit I'm curious, but if you don't think there's any benefit to looking into it, I'll try to leave it alone, though my power does sometimes go on tangents on its own. If I ever do figure something out, I'll let you know."

"Sounds good." Dave nodded.

"So what's your plan for today? Both of you." Bella asked.

"Well," Dave said. "If Lisa wants, I can introduce her to Miss Militia and start on the training stuff?" He looked questioningly at Lisa.

Lisa shook her head. "No, it's better for me to meet her on a weekday morning. Parahuman activity in general increases significantly on weekends and evenings, because even the Empire Capes have day jobs that they need to go to in order to keep their civilian identities and have as a plausible source of income so they don't get outed by an automated system the first time they try to spend their gang money at a fancy shop and it gets flagged. And of course, if the Empire Capes are at their day jobs, they aren't going out and poking at the ABB Capes. So, weekday mornings are when the Protectorate heroes are the least busy and least likely to need to respond to an emergency, and thus the best time to both have lessons and make a good impression." She explained.

"That makes sense." Dave nodded.

"What about the other villainous Capes though?" Bella asked, apparently not as satisfied with the explanation as Dave was.

"According to what I've found," Lisa began. "Lung and Oni Lee, along with those new Merchant capes, Uber and Leet, and Circus, all don't have jobs. Lung and One Lee just use gang money after it's been thoroughly laundered, but mostly just send other people to buy whatever they want for them, and those people will obviously be their non-cape gang members who have jobs like 'casino bouncer,' or 'cash register person at a 'massage spa'' who rely on Lung and Oni Lee as deterrent to not have people looking more closely at them."

"Meanwhile," she continued, "The Merchants simply steal, mug, and drug deal to get money, and just buy what little they want aside from drugs directly from unscrupulous people willing to deal with them, or otherwise steal or rob things they can't get that way."

"Uber, Leet, Circus, and other small-timers like that," she said. "Just use what they steal and pay for remote services from organizations like the Elite, or Tinkers or Thinkers to 'clean' the money they get, or just buy from people willing to not look too closely."

"Huh," Bella said, apparently satisfied with this explanation. "So during the weekdays, early in the day, the Protectorate don't need to worry about the Empire because their Capes are busy with day jobs,—which is kind of funny to imagine them slogging through working in an office, even if it's probably not as miserable as an actual office job is supposed to be—and the ABB aren't a problem because the Empire can't afford to provoke them without access to their Capes during that time period, leaving only the small timers." Bella concluded

Lisa nodded. "Pretty much."

"Back to my question, what are you two planning to do today?" Bella asked.

"Well, if I'm not introducing Lisa to Miss Militia, I've got a few options. I can see what the progress is on the Tinker base project, I can work on the designing of that project, I can ask Dragon for information on the helper she is sending over here to help me with administrative things and stuff like healing rich people in exchange for money, or I can introduce Lisa to other people she needs to know." Dave said, making Lisa look alarmed at the last suggestion.

"Oh right," Bella remembered, ignoring Lisa's alarm. "A couple of us were wondering about the next Pokemon Watch Party. If we want everyone, we should work on scheduling that now so we can arrange it for either today or tomorrow. I already got Lisa caught up to where we stopped, so she can join in."

"I don't think that's a good idea." Lisa said with trepidation.

"It'll be fine." Bella assured her as she got out her phone to send Crystal a text.

"I really don't think I should do it, I have so much other stuff to do, like school and Cape research and not getting kidnapped." Lisa tried.

"Fine." Bella said.

"And, wait really?" Lisa asked, surprised to get her way so easily.

"Yeah, apparently Amy isn't feeling too well right now, so we'll have to wait for either tomorrow or next week to have our next session. Tomorrow, depending on how she's feeling, I'll try and make arrangements with everyone, though we will need to introduce you to them at some point." Bella answered.

"Oh." Lisa said at the realization her protests were completely unrelated to getting her way. "Wait, Panacea is sick?" She asked, upon realizing the implications of what else had been said.

Bella shrugged. "Or just not feeling well in some other way. She is in high school, and while Arcadia is better than most she could be dealing with drama, and she does also work at the hospital, she might have not managed to save someone yesterday or something. There are a lot of possibilities, and I didn't want to pry by asking Crystal for more details."

"Oh, right." Lisa said, feeling slightly sheepish, but doing her best to reign in her curiosity.

"So," Bella said, "what did you two plan on doing today?"

"Based on Lisa's analysis of when Cape activity happens," Dave began. "I can actually decide better now. Now that I am so much faster, I think I will contact Armsmaster, and see about setting up some emergency teleport pads throughout the city, then in an emergency I can just teleport to the nearest pad and rush to wherever the action is. Then, if anything happens over today and tomorrow, I can get to it quickly. Otherwise, it sounds like the weekend is the best time to patrol in general."

"Okay," Dave said, getting up. "It's time to start taking action and seize the day!" He declared, pointing dramatically in a random direction, and hitting a flower pot in the process and almost knocking it over.

"DAVE!" Bella shouted furiously.









Author's Note: Not much happened in this one, but when I checked how long it was, it had hit 2.2k words, so I decided to stop there so I would have another chapter in the stockpile. The stockpile has been going down since I finished the New York arc (as in, before the Interlude before this chapter)! It's been a little bit of writer's block, mixed with choice paralysis mixed with the inevitable problem of the daily role format: I feel an obligation to write at least something about every day. It just would feel super cheap to timeskip a month or something and show up with Dave having another 30 roles or whatever.

So, I will try my best to avoid that, even if a day is mostly 'Dave went on a patrol, beat up a few dudes, hung out with friends, did some research, then Tinkered', I'll try and make that into a chapter, while trying to avoid needing to do a generic chapter where nothing happens too often.

I'm still going to try and get to that sweet, sweet, 15-chapter stockpile, but if I can't, and the stockpile keeps going down, I may need to move to 5 chapters per week. This isn't certain or anything, but I thought I'd let y'all know in case that does end up happening so it isn't a sudden surprise.

Ah yes, the chapter itself. Soul mechanic explanations, not much to say beyond what was in the chapter. As before, Daf can't just tell Dave because that would cheat him of soul growth, but he's happy to confirm things when Dave deduces the correct answers based on what Daf does tell him.

Also, Bees! Funnily enough, I've always felt that the Bee role is better than the Queen Bee role, but this is still fun.



Author's Note 2: As you know, I've already moved down to 5 chapters per week, the Author's Note above this was written before I made that decision. I'm done with my trip, and I got… no writing whatsoever done while on it. Eh, whatever, I've still got a bit of a stockpile, I just had hoped to get a little writing done while on my trip.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 56: A Little Chat With Armsy.

January 16, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Armsmaster's Lab.



"So, how does that sound?" Dave asked Armsmaster after explaining his idea of teleport points throughout the city that would allow Dave to get to fights and emergencies much more quickly.

Armsmaster hummed thoughtfully as he looked up from the blueprints for the Tinker base he was working on. Apparently, Armsmaster was unwilling to risk entering a Tinker fugue at high-risk moments –like weekends in the near future after Hookwolf had been permanently blinded— in case he was needed, unless of course, he was extremely inspired and judged there were enough other Protectorate heroes available to respond to emergencies that he could safely enter it without risking somebody being hurt or killed as a result of his slowed response time from needing to have someone else break the fugue.

"In a place like New York, your idea would be fine." Armsmaster began as he set down his pencil. "But Brockton is not geographically large enough to warrant multiple Protectorate and PRT buildings. You might be better off in terms of helping people by equipping Velocity and Battery and Assault with your items and those speed boosts you mentioned, though I understand you wish to negotiate for the use of those, and we can get to that later."

"If you do want to save people personally, which I can understand, it is a gratifying feeling, I can recommend a couple of options." Armsmaster said. "First, do not use your bug-person form. As we discussed a few days ago, we don't know how the Empire will respond to Hookwolf's blindness yet, and they might calm down if they believe Hookwolf killed the person that blinded him. The optimal move in that regard may change of course, but we will cross that bridge when we come to it as the situation evolves."

"Second," Armsmaster continued. "For the teleport locations, I believe we can arrange things so you can set up teleport pads at the PRT headquarters, right outside Arcadia High School, and the mayor's office. Unfortunately, due to interdepartmental politics," Armsmaster grimaced at the mention of that. "You may be better off requesting permission to set up teleport pads with the Police and Fire departments either by yourself or through New Wave. Naturally, New Wave may also be willing to host teleport pads at their homes, but I cannot speak for them."

Dave nodded along at that. That all made sense, and between the Fire and Police departments, he should get pretty good coverage of the city. And of course, he already had a teleport pad at the Pelham house.

"That sounds good to me," Dave answered. "I can probably also get permission to set one up at the hospital as well. I've been meaning to talk to the Police anyways, since a lot of my items and powers are made for the express purpose of finding killers. I'd been hesitant to approach them so far because of the obvious corruption present in a police department in a city overrun by Nazis. I'd been thinking of having Foxy help them clear out their corrupt officers and find evidence after she gets her Cape name and costume ready."

Armsmaster nodded at that. "That would likely work. The Chief of Police in Brockton, Harper Madison, is new enough and ambitious enough that he would likely go along with it. His file indicates he hates the Empire; while he himself is white, his wife is biracial and she was adopted by a homosexual couple. He is willing to work with the PRT and Protectorate, but is unhappy with the corruption present in both the Police force and the PRT making working together difficult due to bad actors and poor communication."

"So, he's trustworthy?" Dave asked, just to make sure.

Armsmaster nodded, "As trustworthy as is reasonably likely. He is somewhat new, and is likely to be ineffective at rooting out corruption based on historical precedent of attempts to do so in cities as gang-infested as Brockton. He would likely accept help though, both with corruption and with investigations."

Dave leaned back as he responded. "Well, I'll wait on Dragon's helper person to arrive before I actually talk to him. She said they would arrive on Monday and could help me with things like negotiating with rich people and filling out proper paperwork, so I'm probably best off asking them for advice before I actually decide my approach with the Chief of Police."

"It is generally wise to seek advice from those more experienced." Armsmaster nodded in approval at Dave's decision.

"Now, how and when did you wish to negotiate for the usage of your Mover-power items?" Armsmaster questioned.

"Ehh, I'd say with the Brockton Protectorate and Wards, along with New Wave, I'm happy enough to give them the boost as long as I know them well enough or Foxy gives them the okay in terms of trustworthiness. I'm a little concerned with something like someone signing up to be a Ward or Protectorate member just to get the boost, then leaving to go be a villain, in which case I would need to waste my time to go stop them out of responsibility." Dave said.

"For the Protectorate and Independent heroes at large," Dave continued, "I'll have to think on it, but it will probably mostly be things like favors from individual heroes, getting policy changes on things that are blatantly unethical, undoing corrupt policies, and kicking people into gear on things like getting a handle on Heartbreaker; it's absurd that no countermeasures are even being worked on for him."

Armsmaster nodded in approval at hearing that. "Good, you've thought through possible consequences and a way to do good through leveraging your abilities indirectly. If you want my advice," he paused, then continued after Dave gestured for him to go ahead and give the advice. "I would say to come up with something, that you can claim each person you give the speed boosts to has done to obtain it. Either something they did for you, or something they did that made you judge they deserve it. That way, if you decide you don't want someone to get it for some reason, you have plausible deniability to refuse it, even if it would be somewhat blatant that you are refusing them for other reasons."

Dave nodded. "That's easy enough. Challenger agreed to train Foxy, you have been helping me out with advice and the Tinker base. For the others, I might ask for something like permission for Foxy to go through the Protectorate and PRT staff's files to identify moles and corruption. Maybe a favor for backup whenever she identifies whatever group is after her. Oh, I just thought of something I could ask, but I'd like your input."

Armsmaster gestured for him to go ahead.

Dave spoke, "What about something like official permission to recruit rogues or very low-level villains for the Tinker base project. I'm mainly thinking of people like Uber and Leet, given Leet's specialty being perfect for working with other Tinkers, it could really let him live up to his potential, and I'm sure Dragon could gain a lot from the various tech Leet has built over the years. I was also thinking of asking Toybox for help with building the base itself to get it done faster, and it could probably do a fair bit of good if I could negotiate with them and get them to be more selective with their clientele."

Dave spoke faster as his idea took shape. "Toybox is ultimately interested in safety, freedom, and money. By engaging in a tech exchange, I would be helping them with their safety and freedom; as someone not part of the Protectorate I wouldn't be infringing on any sense of freedom they might have, while simultaneously not risking their freedom because I would have permission from the Protectorate; and I would be able to pay them a lot of money from my healing-of-rich-people plan, possibly enough to get them to agree to not deal with the more unsavory type of villains."

Armsmaster considered this before speaking. "While I would not disagree in theory, asking for permission to work with Toybox would require communication with the national level of the Protectorate and PRT instead of the local level. Uber and Leet have not done anything atrocious, worse villains have become heroes after a change of heart after all. It would be up to you to convince Uber and Leet that they should join the project, and it would be your responsibility to make sure they behave, and you would receive the blame if they went back to villainy, so I would try to make sure you know as much as possible before you actually take that route." He cautioned.

Dave nodded. "I'll ask Foxy to look into them. It's probably better to handle those two sooner rather than later if we want to make the most of Leet's ability. Of course, Uber could also help with many things, including the designing of the base itself since I believe his power could make him a world-renowned architect if I understand it correctly."

Dave sat up straighter and pulled out a Stamina Perk bottle. "For now," he said, setting it next to Armsmaster. "I'd say your advice and helpfulness, along with your trustworthiness of course, more than warrants you getting this. From Dragon's experience, a normal Tinker should also be able to tinker faster with this, as well as simply think faster. Prism sent me a message this morning that she can also punch harder because she can move her arms faster, so be careful in case you need to tune your armor or something to compensate for increased stress."









Author's Note: Yay! Another chapter! I got this one out in one day, but my stockpile is at less than 15 chapters still, and my goal is to have a stockpile of 15 chapters. That means I need to write an average of more than one chapter per day if I want to keep releasing at a rate of one chapter per day. Ugh. At least I've been getting a bit back into the groove of writing after I hit that major speed bump that was the Amy interlude.

Anyways, the chapter itself! Armsy gets a speed boost, which is really valuable considering one of his biggest obstacles to getting stronger was needing to perform maintenance on the things he had already made. Not to mention, he can now make his projects faster as long as he has sufficient inspiration and materials.

I worry a little that Armsmaster might be considered out of character, but I figure it's probable that people will understand that it's just because he has more hope and is a lot less stressed out, and is generally healthier because of his access to the Health Station and its burritos and hot pockets. Healthy bodies lead to healthy minds and all that, it's true you know? Even for stuff like brainwashing in real life, one of the keys to undoing it is getting the victims healthy food and exercise through things like sports. Obviously Armsmaster isn't exactly brainwashed, but he has a fair number of issues that come with being a Parahuman, and the healing (which includes the brain) and nutrition from the burritos and hot pockets are a great help to his mental health, particularly when combined with his new feelings of validation and hope.

Anyways, next time (probably), Dave will show off a new Toy at the fire department, so look forward to that. (Note from the future, that does not happen next chapter, other things happen instead.)

 

[Phili]

Chapter 57: How To Identify A Lesbian In One Easy Step

January 16, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Pelham House.



Dave arrived at the Pelham house garage through teleportation. He changed his skin to something less appropriate and walked into the house itself.

He walked into the living room and found he had apparently chosen his skin well, as otherwise he would have been the only male present. Amy and Vicky were in one corner, while Sarah and Crystal were the other corner, both pairs quietly conversing and occasionally glancing at the other pair.

He did not want to walk into whatever that was, so he quietly left and went back to the garage before texting Bella.

---

A few minutes later, Bella appeared next to him on the teleport pad he had set down in the Pelham garage. He collected said teleport pad and returned it to his inventory while Bella got her bearings. She began to speak almost immediately. "I texted Crys just now, and she said it was fine to come over and that they could probably use the distraction but I didn't mention you were coming ov—"

As she turned to look at him, she took in his current appearance.

"Huh, that's certainly distracting." She licked her lips slightly. "I approve." She said, nodding solemnly. "I can guarantee Crystal will too, not sure about the others though."

Dave looked down at himself.

Spoiler: Image and link to video that contains exact image

Image (not perfectly accurate):

Video URL at time of this appearing (more accurate version of his current appearance) (time is at 12:13 of the video): https://youtu.be/0w1LHuToCXI?list=PL3XZNMGhpynMPHPVeoaQZZn_LT_DYbgho&t=733

"I found a bunch of Pokemon forms earlier today." Dave admitted, his voice now feminine, but with a slightly husky tone, but ultimately with just a little bit of squeakiness inside the voice, a remnant of what he associated with Eevee. "Don't tell them though, I want them to think I was saving them up."

Bella nodded, and blatantly stared at the sexy Eevee abs on display. "Uhuh. You should give them some toys to cheer up any blind people in the room that aren't cheered up by this form." She gestured at him. "I know my day just became better as soon as I saw those abs."

Dave, no, Eevee nodded in acceptance. "I was going to give them toys anyways, you asked to see when I gave Crystal those two new toys in particular."

"Oohh! Those ones! I can't wait. Okay go time!" Bella said, before gesturing for Eevee to go first. It was definitely completely unrelated to the view she would get in the process of Eevee leading the way.

---

Eevee walked out into the Pelham house living room and struck a pose. "I'm here! With toys!" She(? sure, she) said. Then, she took out a Drilldo and a Dildo Crossbow, one in each hand to show off.

"Wooh!" Eevee said, jumping up and down, still holding a Drilldo in one hand and a Dildo Crossbow in the other, making her assets bounce in the process, with several pairs of eyes attached thoroughly to various parts of her body.

"You better not be shedding on my carpet Dave." Sarah warned threateningly, eyes glued to Eevee's gloriously fluffy tail.

"Don't worry," Eevee assured Sarah, "I'm like, 90% sure Eevees don't shed. You would need to shave me for that to be a concern. Actually, I don't actually know what happens if I'm shaved while I'm like this." Eevee said, looking down at herself consideringly.

"Does anyone want to help me do some science?" Eevee asked, looking up at the rest of the room.

Crystal's hand shot up. "I love science." She said with a straight face. "A lot of animals look really funny when shaved, and I want to know if that's the case with an anthropomorphic Eevee as well." She said when everyone turned to look at her.

"Does… does nobody want to play with toys with me?" Eevee asked sadly when nobody commented on the toys she had brought out. Her ears and tail drooped, and her eyes began to tear up and slight sniffles came out.

Amy and Vicky caved immediately. "Fine, tell us what your new items are." Amy said, doing her best to look anywhere other than at the scantily clad Eevee.

"I'll do anything, just stop crying!" Vicky said at the same time as Amy had spoken.

"Yay!" Eevee perked up, bouncy happily on her feet, her ears and tail now standing at attention, and her breasts bouncing with the sudden movement.

"So, we'll start with the good shit." Eevee said, making Vicky choke slightly on hearing the sexy Eevee in the black bikini suddenly swear.

"This," Eevee held up the Drilldo. "Is the Drilldo…" And began to explain in excruciating detail what it could do, and its potential against brutes.

There may have also been a small rant about how it would have been the perfect gift to Alexandria because, like the rest of Dave's guns, the bullets disappeared after hitting something, and the gun itself was indestructible, combined with the spinning of the penis part making it the ultimate stress-relief for an unaging woman who likely had her libido permanently stuck at late teens or early 20s level and probably couldn't safely have sex with anyone or anything that wasn't high-level durable Tinkertech or a powerful brute without crushing anything that she tried to insert into herself.

"You know," Crystal said after the rant was over. "I never thought about the problems Alexandria must have in her sex life." She admitted. "That… very well might actually be why she always seems so uptight in recordings. She obviously deals with S-Class threats and such and leads a stressful life in general as one of the world's top heroes, but also if she can't get any stress relief… that sounds like it could genuinely mess someone up."

"Bella," Crystal said suddenly, "you took psychology in high school, how important is it to get at least some level of sexual satisfaction?"

"Hmm?" Bella said, looking up from where she had been sneakily snuggling the Eevee tail. "Sexual satisfaction?"

Crystal just sighed. "Nevermind."

Bella shrugged and went back to petting the fluffy tail.

---

Crystal had volunteered to test the Drilldo after Vicky had expressed doubts regarding its effectiveness. And so, the ladies of New Wave (aside from Brandish) learned to respect the might of the Drilldo after their initial doubts when Crystal nearly threw up after ten bullets hit her, rotating her 150 degrees in less than a second, and realized that it would also make it effectively impossible to get close to someone with one that had good enough aim.

Amy had reluctantly accepted a Dildo Crossbow as future deterrent; everyone present assumed the item would get a reputation eventually from Dave's usage of it, and having one on hand would deter even more idiots from attacking her.

Vicky and Crystal meanwhile, both eagerly accepted a Dildo Crossbow, though Sarah had to give them a stern talk regarding the risks of using them as sex toys and getting a dildo permanently stuck inside them. Sarah believed Crystal probably wouldn't try something that stupid, but she didn't want to risk having to deal with… all of the things that either of the girls (or Amy) getting something stuck would involve.

Eevee was happy to inform them that there would be no problems as long as they didn't shoot the dildos from the crossbow.

Vicky gave a challenging and somewhat sneaky look at that and asked, "Oh yeah, how would you know?"

Eevee gave her a strange look at that. "Beeeecause it's my power?" She said slowly. "And therefore, I am something of an expert on how it works?"

"Oh… right." Vicky said with a little embarrassment.

"Anyways," Eevee said. "More toys!" She raised up her arms and jumped slightly in celebration, causing more bouncing.

This time, she pulled out a soda bottle, which made Sarah perk up in actual interest. The PhD Flopper had been a game-changer in how New Wave planned to operate in the future, so she was hopeful that this 'toy' involved something that would be equally effective. As far as she was concerned, while the previous two toys would have been fine additions to New Wave's arsenal of options, the imagery involved made them simply not worth it, though she would be experimenting later to see if she could make her forcefields opaque and bright enough to hide the appearance of the 'Drilldo', in which case she would be willing to use it against foes like Fenja, Menja, and Lung.

The Crossbow's implications of forced unmasking would simply be too damaging to New Wave's image unfortunately, and the risk of retaliation from actually using it would be too high.

"Now," Eevee said, pulling out a pistol as well. "These are two of my newer toys, and they both grant speed boosts…" She began to explain.

---

"So, who is interested in the straight-line speed boost from the Speed Pistol, knowing it doesn't boost reflexes?" Eevee asked.

Crystal and Vicky both raised their hands immediately. Crystal said her piece after Vicky gestured for her to go first. "I'm already the fastest flyer in New Wave, and while I don't have nausea resistance or a significant reflex boost, I'm already used to my top speed being too fast to use for most combat purposes, so this would effectively just decrease my travel time if I need to fly a significant distance somewhere."

Vicky spoke up once Crystal was done speaking. "My power does give me nausea resistance, so I can take tight corners and turns and sudden direction changes easily already, but a boost to my top speed would be useful in getting to places more quickly."

Eevee shrugged at that. "Fair enough, Crystal, I'm going to need you to lower your forcefield in case that blocks the effect for some reason. Vicky…" Eevee's ears quivered and she sat up straighter suddenly. "My danger sense is going off, and combined with my power-granted common sense, I have a sudden urge to inform you that I should probably get permission from a New Wave adult before I shoot you with a gun to give you a quintupled speed boost."

Sarah looked on approving at that statement, and reached over to give Eevee her due praise. "Good." She said, petting Eevee's head between the ears.

Eevee let out a quiet moan at that, and her tongue lolled out as her eyes lost focus and the rest of her body drooped slightly in pleasure.

Sarah simply ignored that while everyone else stared with varying degrees of… various emotions.

"Vicky, you will be thinking over what you want carefully, discussing the potential for the boost with your mother, sister, and father, and agreeing to train with Crystal afterwards if you actually take this speed boost." Sarah said.

"Why does Crystal not need to do all that?" Vicky asked in what definitely wasn't a whine.

Sarah just gave her a dry look at that. "Crystal is an adult and needs to learn to make significant decisions on her own. Also, I can actually give my permission to her as her mother, I can't give permission for you. While I'm not aware of any legal problems with doing so, it would just be unreasonable for me to allow that without your parents even having any idea of what was going on."

Eevee raised her hand quietly. "Uh, the offer does extend to the other members of New Wave that aren't present. I was assuming everyone wanted the triple speed boost because that has no downsides, but I wanted to make sure they were all drunk directly in front of me and the bottles returned to me afterwards so I could put the empty bottles in my inventory afterwards and not worry about a villainous Tinker studying it and gaining a power boost or something."

Sarah patted her head again, making Eevee's eyes lose focus and her tongue loll out of her mouth again. "I know. That's very nice of you." Sarah said. "We'll have to wait for Mark and Carol before Vicky and Amy take theirs, but Crystal and I can take ours now. It won't be too long before the rest of New Wave is back from patrolling, and we can demonstrate it to them all then."

Bella spoke up at this point, having been mostly quiet after getting distracted by the fluffy Eevee tail (and of course, the thing the Eevee tail was attached to). "Do you think I should have one of these Stamina Perk things?" She asked.









Author's Note: Tada! A chapter! I actually struggled a lot with this chapter for one particular reason. I needed to decide how many people, between Sarah, Crystal, Amy, Vicky, and Bella, had any interest in women. Now, canonically, Bella doesn't exist, Amy is only into ladies, and the others are all straight, but I find that I don't particularly care about canon sexuality (pretty much entirely because canon sexualities means denying the SmugBug, and that's just not okay).

For more info on Crystal and Bella, see the Behind the Scenes 3.

Now, at first I felt kinda guilty making as many of them interested in women as I did, because it is statistically unlikely, I worried I might be accidentally objectifying lesbians by over-representing them. I decided I probably was worrying over nothing, simply because the vast majority of people are bisexual to some extent, but just consider themselves straight because that is what current cultures say is normal. Back in the day, being gay was a little weird, being straight meant you had something seriously medically wrong with you, because nobody had ever heard of something like only being interested in the opposite sex. That's right, being homosexual is more common than being heterosexual, because most people are actually bisexual, whether they acknowledge it or not.

As someone only interested in women, I can confidently say I would have probably been bisexual if I had been born in Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome, because that is what would have been normal.

For reference, anyone that can get at all aroused while watching 'straight' porn is at least somewhat bisexual, even if they would likely be generally considered 'straight' culturally.

This has gotten off topic, but that was why I decided to make as many of the ladies interested in women as I did… and how I did it without feeling guilty.

If any lesbians have objections, do let me know, and in response I will feel really bad and genuinely guilty and apologize.

I ain't apologizing for the Eevee thing though, that's obviously the best method of identifying if someone is into women, show them a crappy 3d Gary's Mod Sexy Buff Eevee model in a black bikini.

I also needed to decide what pronouns I wanted to use for Dave while in a more obviously female form like Eevee, instead of the less obvious female forms like Tall Pikachu, Large Rat, and Mr. Blobby. I ended up going with female pronouns while he is using an obviously feminine skin and am referring to him as his skin's name simultaneously.

Also, the dot dot dot dialogue method makes a return! I don't want to bore people too much by explaining the same few items over and over again, so I've decided to bring back the ellipses dialogue method I used earlier in the story but had semi-phased-out.

I'm stopping the chapter here, mostly so I can try and build back up my backlog, even though this is a bit shorter than I've been doing. Anyways, next time, we will discuss Bella getting power ups, then the rest of New Wave will get their Speed Boost. The Fire Department will probably be the chapter after next.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 58: Getting An Entire Family To Drink Your Zoomy Juices Sounds Almost Inappropriate When You Put It That Way.

January 16, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Pelham House.



After a brief moment of surprise from around the room, Sarah spoke to answer Bella's question. "First of all, I'm proud of you for asking and not just jumping on the opportunity Bella." She said, once again showing off her famous Photon Mom energy.

"There are a few upsides and downsides to consider." Sarah continued. "The upsides are somewhat obvious; a power boost making you effectively a low-level Parahuman without going through a Trigger event, god knows lots of people would wish for powers in a bottle if they could get them." Eevee, no, Dave shivered at that, hard. Hard enough that everybody noticed, though Sarah, Crystal, and Bella had all seen Dave do that before and so didn't say anything, and Vicky and Amy didn't say anything upon realizing nobody else was going to comment on it.

"Anyways," Sarah said, regathering her thoughts. "A speed boost is an excellent way to escape, and we simply live in a dangerous world, and as the closest friend of my daughter, an open Cape, you are in a little more danger than most. It would also, if I understand it correctly, give you an equivalent of a Thinker power by allowing you to think faster, giving you an advantage in the everyday parts of your life, even including school, as it would likely allow you to complete your homework faster."

At that comment, Amy, Vicky, and Crystal all sat up straighter and their eyes lit up in eagerness.

"However," Sarah said. "The downsides are worth taking into consideration. If you are caught using them, you would be outed as a 'Parahuman' without actually having a full set of powers to protect yourself, though Dave's items could help with that. That aside, if someone realizes exactly what power you have, it could risk revealing Dave's identity when they connect the dots that the two of you are friends, particularly after people realize that Dave can grant that power to anyone, people will wonder why a non-Parahuman would be given the speed boost power, and quickly realize there is a connection in your civilian identities."

Bella frowned at that. It had sounded like it was just generally upsides until the part about the risk to Dave's identity came out.

"I don't particularly care if that happens." Eevee said at that point. When everyone turned to her, she shrugged and continued. "Having a civilian identity is nice and all, but my only real friend, or even acquaintance, that isn't a Parahuman is Bella, and while I wouldn't unmask myself willingly under normal circumstances, if it resulted in her getting better protection, I'm willing to risk it. The biggest downsides for me when it comes to unmasking, would be Bella's safety and the unwanted fame and ability to go grocery shopping in peace."

As Eevee thought about it, she found less objections. "Actually," Eevee added, "even the grocery shopping in peace part could probably be handled with a fake ID and a form change to something more normal looking that isn't my real appearance. So really, if it improves Bella's safety, my identity being at risk shouldn't be a reason to refuse." Eevee said.

Sarah looked on in approval and a little bit of pride at that, both the heroicness of it and the act of thinking it through. Amy and Vicky, actually looked at the scene with a bit of admiration at seeing a genuine heroic moment… even if it was slightly ruined by the fact it was a scantily clad, buff, sexy, furry that was saying it.

Crystal meanwhile, was simply satisfied and smug at seeing everyone see how good her choice in friends was.

Sarah smiled and said, "Well, those were the biggest concerns I could think of. As you wouldn't actually be a Parahuman, you wouldn't end up with the need to use your powers that we have, so you could just keep it in reserve to use in emergencies if you want. So, at this point, I'd say it's up to you what you want to do." She told Bella.

Bella nodded solemnly, and grabbed one of the Stamina Perk bottles, before chugging the entire thing and letting out a burp. Then glaring at Eevee for some reason.

Eevee shrugged helplessly. "What? The soda items all work that way. You have to drink the entire thing for it to work, and they take effect at the forced burp afterwards. I can't do anything about the burp, and even if I could, it would just turn it into regular soda instead of something that gives superpowers. You saw Li—I mean Foxy drink it, you should have realized."

"I forgot about it." Bella grumped. Then brightened up as she pointed at Eevee. "I demand tail time as compensation!"

Eevee shrugged and waved her tail in front of Bella's face, where it was quickly grabbed and started to receive pets.

---

Crystal Pelham

Crystal, like usual, managed to accumulate more responsibilities by just being alive. She cottoned on— heh, cottoned on, when Eevee is all fluffy like cotton—to Bella's plan as soon as the sexy Eevee in the bikini walked into the living room.

While she very much enjoyed the show, she was now going to have to figure out what to do about Amy being obviously interested in women, and Vicky showing some interest as well. It was... probably best to handle them one at a time? Definitely not right now, maybe wait until tomorrow for Amy to sound her out after sort of ambushing her yesterday about her power and the Marquis stuff. Vicky… is admittedly less mature than Amy in general, but Crystal figured Vicky would probably take a conversation seriously.

Unfortunately, she would need to handle both conversations herself. She was pretty sure Mom had noticed both girls' interest in the admittedly attractive Eevee form Dave had taken, but Mom also wasn't very helpful when Crystal herself had found out she was also interested in girls. Granted, she was supportive, but she couldn't relate to being interested in ladies.

As the most senior member of New Wave that wasn't straight (that she knew of anyways), it was going to be up to Crystal to give these two the Brockton Bay talk about their interests.

Hopefully neither of them go into denial about it… that would be an absolute pain in the ass.

On the bright side, Hurricane Dave, or Hurricane Eevee in this case, had been extremely effective at breaking Amy out of her moping, and successfully distracted Vicky from trying to figure out what was wrong with her sister.

Right, just need to give my younger cousins the talk about being interested in girls while being a girl in a city overrun by Nazis, in a post-Legend world at that. This is going to be so complicated isn't it? At least it's future Crystal's problem. Present Crystal gets to enjoy a cool power-up.

---

The rest of New Wave had finished their patrol and agreed to meet at the Pelham house after receiving a message from Sarah.

Upon entering, they were met by an unusual sight.

Spoiler: Image:

(There are no Oscar Trophies present in the scene though)

It was a man in a suit… but with Thomas the Tank Engine wearing pixelated sunglasses in place of a head.

"Come on in me chaps, have a nice cup of tea." Dave invited them in while uses his best British accent.

After everyone had actually entered the house, he clarified, "I don't actually have any tea, this isn't my house."

"I'm aware this isn't your house." Eric said as he sat down. "And I don't think Uncle Mark or Aunt Carol drink tea anyways."

"Well that's okay," Dave said, returning to his normal voice and accent. "I may not have tea, but I have soda!"

---

While Sarah pulled Carol to the side, everyone else received an explanation on the Speed Gun and the Stamina Perk items.

After the explanation was over, Eric immediately spoke. "I want both. I'm already the slowest flyer, but I also have the strongest forcefields, so the Speed Gun thing will just help cover my weaknesses." He glanced at all the adults in the room and belatedly added "And it will let me escape unfavorable situations more easily." He seemed to believe adding that to his argument would make it more likely he would be allowed to get it.

Neil on the other hand, had simply shrugged. "Obviously we will probably all want the triple speed with no downsides. I'll happily take the quintuple speed as well, even if I probably won't use it much for actual movement. It's just risky for someone like me to move that fast without the reflexes to avoid hitting someone, that would be like running them over with a truck at fifteen times my normal speed. I'm already a bit faster than a normal person because of my increased strength, so going full speed would just be a bad idea in most circumstances."

"However," he added, "it would come in handy in some circumstances, and with it being adjustable and toggleable, it has no real downsides as long as I don't use it when I shouldn't, and I like to think I'm experienced enough to judge when that is." He said somewhat humbly. "Plus, if I understand it right, it would let me hit a lot harder, because I could make my punches or kicks or tackles five times faster."

Mark had similar reasoning. "Yeah, that's about the same for me, except I'm not generally in close combat, and I might break my fist if I tried to punch someone at fifteen times speed, so I probably won't use it for that unless absolutely necessary. But, as Neil said, it being toggleable and adjustable means I can use my judgement on when to use it and to what extent. It's almost always better to have more options available. This is a little niche, but the Speed Gun thing isn't quite an exception to that."

Then he added. "Of course, the triple speed with the reflex boost and minor Thinker power is obviously something I'd be happy and honored to accept."

At this point, Victoria gave him her best puppy dog eyes, and asked "So… does that mean I can take both too?"

Mark looked at her thoughtfully. "You can drink the bottle, and after Neil and I, and your mother and aunt if they decide to use it, have experimented and trained with the Speed Gun boost, we'll see. You'll need probably need to do some training before and after though, just like with the Flopper, which you are almost ready to take I'd say. Just be aware that if you do decide to use the Speed Gun boost Vicky, that you will not be allowed to patrol until we are certain you have both the Flopper power and your new speed under control."

"What?" Vicky exclaimed. "Why?" She demanded.

Mark just looked at her dryly. "Because you would need to get used to both of them, and either one of them by themselves could easily turn a civilian into splatter if you aren't careful with it. Both could easily see you turning multiple civilians into splatter if you get even a little reckless."

Then, Mark went for the killing blow. "Your tendency to show off, like that stunt you pulled at school that we got a call about, could have easily killed at least one person if you had pulled that after having the Flopper and were going fifteen times faster than you were expecting to go and hadn't trained to get used to your new speed." He said, referring to the incident earlier in the school year when Vicky had cracked the concrete in front of the school by doing a dramatic landing on it.

While Vicky was gaping at the idea of facing consequences for her actions several months prior, Mark turned to Amy. "What about you, did you want the Speed Gun boost?" He asked gently. He wasn't sure what was up with her, but he could tell she had been feeling off since yesterday evening, and now that his depression was better, he was determined to do his best to be there for her.

Amy shook her head. "No, I'm not too interested in the other speed thing either."

Mark paused at that. "Are you sure? I won't force you of course, but it would make me feel a lot better if you could escape a bad situation more easily."

"I was still going to take it anyway," Amy assured him. "If only because Sarah theorized that it would help with schoolwork because I would be able to think, read, and write three times as fast as before."

"Still," Mark said. "I would encourage you to explore what it offers a little more. I've felt better about your safety since you started exercising and learning to use a firearm. If you're anything like me, you might find that exercise can help your mental state as well, which is particularly important since you have hospital work, which is famously one of the most stressful jobs in the world. If you want to take up running in the mornings with me, let me know." He said, and patted her shoulder.

"I'll think about it." She told him. Though, the burritos might also be able to give her a caffeine boost if she could finagle the right settings. Then, combined with the healing and nutrition, she might be able to actually handle mornings. Truly, the world had changed since Dave crashed into the life of New Wave.













Author's Note: Another Chapter down! Yeahya!...

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to announce that I will be changing my release schedule to 5 chapters per week for now. This chapter simply took a lot longer than I was expecting without ending up any longer in wordcount, and I don't want to burn out by trying to write at least one chapter every day. I did it pretty easily early on, because I was so excited to share the story that was in my head and explore it by actually writing it out.

I still am excited of course, but now that the initial burst of energy is gone, I don't want to try to force myself to maintain that pace. As funny as it would be to end up writing over 1 million words in a year if I did manage to keep it up… I don't think that's going to happen.

Depending on how things go, the release schedule will likely either remain at 5 per week, slow down to 3 or 4 per week, or move up to 6 or 7 per week. In any of these scenarios, once I finally get my stockpile to its goal, I will end up releasing extra chapters whenever the stockpile gets too large.

I just want to actually have my stockpile be at its initial goal for once dammit! I've never actually gotten the stockpile up to the 15-chapter mark that I had hoped it would get to.

For the chapter itself… I promise, next chapter, we will see a new Toy and Dave will visit the Firefighter Department. I'm afraid the rest of New Wave reacting to the dildo weaponry will have to happen off-screen however, just in order to keep things moving along.

Author's Note 2: Obviously, I've already moved to 5 chapters per week, so feel free to ignore that part of the original Author's Note.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 59: Meeting The Fire Chief

January 16, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Pelham House Garage.



Dave's request for an introduction to the Fire Department had been met with surprising enthusiasm.

It was decided that, since Sarah was busy getting everyone sorted with their new three-times boosted speed, Neil would be taking Dave to the Fire Department to make introductions. Apparently New Wave had friends in both the Fire and Police Departments from over the course of their long careers as heroes, and some of those friendships even dated back to when they had been the Brockton Bay Brigade and Neil had been the leader.

Neil had also agreed on behalf of New Wave to later introduce Dave and Lisa to the Police Department as well.

As they got into the smaller, non-Cape car the Pelham family used for smaller outings, Neil spoke. "So, why'd you want the introduction to the Fire Department? They are generally happy to work with any Parahumans that show up to help if there is a fire."

"Oh! A couple reasons really," Dave said, having transformed back into his standard Cape skin of Solid Snake. "I'd prefer to have any times I do work with them go as smoothly as possible to avoid misunderstandings or people getting hurt because I have to spend time explaining who I am and what I can do. I also am trying to get ahead in terms of Public Relations, and a good relationship with a crucial group like the Fire Department will only help with that. I was also going to ask them for a favor and offer them the usage of a couple of items."

Neil nodded thoughtfully as he started up the car and backed out of the garage. "That's a good idea, the Fire Department are good people, and will happily go to bat for you if you help them out. What favor are you going to ask? And what items were you planning to offer?"

"Well," Dave began. "I had a couple of ideas. The ones I am least certain about, are my incendiary and smoke grenades. I thought they might appreciate being able to practice with nonharmful smoke and fires that will be guaranteed to go out after a certain amount of time; but I'm only planning on offering, I have no idea if they would actually find either one useful. Unfortunately, the incendiary grenades don't burn things normally, so they can't be used for that controlled burn thing firefighters sometimes do to stop larger fires by burning up any fuel the fire might get to before the fire reaches that spot."

Neil hummed in thought. "Yeah, I'm not sure. They might be interested, but probably more so in the smoke grenades for practice drills than in the incendiary grenades."

Dave nodded. "I was going to offer to heal any current and former firefighters regularly as a sign of good will as well, they do important, dangerous work, and healing them is easy enough for me. The main thing aside from that though, was I was going to offer Fire Extinguishers from my power, and Radars. I'm not sure how good the Fire Extinguishers actually are, but they have unlimited fuel now, though they also blind anyone the spray hits. They do work on all kinds of fires, which I'm told is a fairly big deal because most Fire Extinguishers can only handle certain kinds."

Neil nodded. "Yeah, I can't say how excited they'll be for just Fire Extinguishers, even with unlimited fuel, they don't normally get called in for anything a single fire extinguisher can handle. The Radars though… that would be a pretty big deal for them."

Dave nodded, content his idea would work well enough.

---

It turned out, the person in charge of a city's Fire Department was called the Fire Chief. Dave had no idea until he had actual met one, but if anyone asked, his excuse was that he was less than three weeks old. Then, his plan was to ask if whoever asked him had known that the Fire Chief was the person in charge of a Fire Department when they were less than three weeks old.

Ahem.

Fire Chief Howard was a nice guy, big, and rather burly, but cheerfully met them with a smile, so he didn't seem intimidating despite his size.

After some brief introductions, Howard spoke up. "So Neil, what brings you around? It's always nice to see you, but since I assume this isn't an emergency…" He trailed off expectantly, and continued when Neil shook his head to confirm it was not, in fact, an emergency. "Since it isn't an emergency, we can chat for a while, but just be aware I am on duty. We can go ahead to my office so we're not in the way if a Fire Truck needs to leave."

With that, Howard led the way to his office, a fair way into the building itself.

"Feel free to have a seat." Howard said as he sat down, indicating the chairs in the corner.

"So, what did you want to talk to me about?" Howard asked expectantly.

Neil gestured for Dave to go ahead, so Dave began to speak. "Well, I had a few things in mind. First, I wanted to touch base as a new Cape, and explain a little of what I can do so I can work with the Fire Department more effectively if need be. I also wanted to offer a few things and make a request in the hopes of improving my ability to help people as a Cape."

Howard nodded along at that. "So, I assume you asked Neil to introduce you so we knew you weren't a wacko or anything?" He asked.

Dave nodded. "Pretty much."

Howard nodded again in acceptance. "Well good for you. If only more new Capes did this kind of thing. You didn't necessarily need to bring Neil, I've heard about your work at the hospital, a couple of my boys were healed up by your machines, those knuckleheads thought the idea of being healed from burns by a 'Hotpocket' was the funniest thing ever. Still, it's always wonderful to see a new Cape decide to actually work with us and think things through instead of just jumping into a fire and expecting us to know how to work with them without ever meeting us."

Dave nodded happily, this was going great. "So, I've got a few abilities, the important ones for you guys to know, are that I get more stuff over time, and a lot of my things manifest in the form of objects I can use myself or give to others to use. Probably the most important thing you guys need to know, is that I can't die. If I would die, I enter a Breaker form instead, and then I'll just 'come back to life' after 10 minutes with full continuity of consciousness."

Chief Howard looked at Dave closely, then turned to Neil and asked, "Is this guy serious?"

When Neil nodded Howard took a moment before responding. "I see, in that case, it is a good thing you brought Neil. I know that one Nazi asshole does something similar with resurrection, but that's still a bit hard to swallow. Go ahead and tell me more."

Dave nodded. "Since I can't die, your people don't need to be too worried if I can't make it out of a fire, so you don't ever need to send someone in to help me specifically from a fire, I'll manage eventually. I also might eventually develop a power to make me immune to fire, but I don't have anything like that yet, but I will let you guys know if and when I ever do get fire immunity."

Howard whistled. "That'd be pretty impressive, but don't rely too much on a fancy Parahuman power for something like 'fire immunity', you need to worry about the heat itself and the smoke more than the fire in most cases. Unless you're fighting Lung or something I suppose, in which case fire immunity is pretty good."

"Let's see, what else," Dave pondered what order to say things in. "I can fly, I have immunity to explosions, not flames or force though, I'm around fifteen times faster than a normal human at my top running speed, but that's faster when I'm flying, and I can go faster than that if absolutely necessary. I'm easily strong enough to carry a person or two, and I have a few methods of healing, one of which works in an aura around me that I can toggle and whitelist or blacklist people on."

Howard had been nodding along, but not too enthused until that last one. "You'd heal my boys and girls?" He asked.

Dave hesitated. "Well, yes, but I was going to offer that anyways. I was referring to if someone was injured or something, I could heal them enough to pull them out of a burning building without risking killing them due to poor handling."

Howard nodded thoughtfully. "That's a pretty good spread of powers, and a lot of it could help us. We'd be happy to have you work with us whenever you are able."

"Oh, I wasn't done," Dave said somewhat shyly.

---

After going over Dave's ability to move things with the Magneto Stick and destroy obstacles with the combined power of his Crowbar and his now quadrupled damage from his Karma bonus, they moved on.

It turned out, Neil had been pretty spot on about the Fire Department's interest in the grenades as well.

"We don't really need those 'incendiary' grenades of yours." Howard said after they were explained to him. "We don't want our boys and girls getting into bad habits or thinking they know how to handle fire after getting them trained on fire that doesn't act how fire normally acts. The smoke grenades… are probably better off in your hands than ours. We have our own training equipment and methods already, no need to complicate them by bringing in fancy Parahuman tech and get sucked into logistical issues."

Dave nodded at that. "Fair enough. I had two other things I wanted to offer."

"I assume one of those is one of the Health Station thingies?" Howard asked.

Dave shook his head. "No actually, I didn't want to risk villains deciding to attack you guys in hopes of stealing one. Did you want one in spite of the risk?" Dave asked.

"Ah, yeah," Howard said disappointedly. "Fucking Brockton."

Dave nodded empathetically. "Fucking Brockton. I'm happy to heal up any of your people, I could come like once a week or so? I'm also happy to heal any former firefighters you guys know. All for free of course, you guys do important stuff."

"Oh, that's mighty kind of you. I speak for all my boys and girls when I say, thank you very much." Howard said, bowing his head slightly. "We're just firefighters, we can't help you much with political stuff or in a Cape fight or whatever, but if you ask us for help, we'll do what we can."

"Oh, well, I did want to ask a favor as well, but that is separate from the healing and equipment offers. If you think it's a bad idea, please feel free to refuse it. But first, I did have two other things to offer."

"Oh right, you did say that, go ahead." Howard said, slightly expectantly.

"In order, the one I suspect you will be less interested in, is a Fire Extinguisher my power has made. It does blind anyone hit with its foam, regardless of where the foam lands on them, so watch out for that. The reason I thought you guys might want some, is that it has unlimited 'fuel' and it works on all types of fires." Dave said.

Howard whistled again. "All types of fires you say? While here in Brockton, Lung's fires are the biggest issue, and unless your extinguishers are big enough to need an entire firetruck, they probably won't help with those; but… sometimes those Nazi assholes have a particularly stupid day and end up starting metal fires. Does your think work on those? Normally you need a special fire extinguisher for those, most fire extinguishers are only for the other kinds of fires."

Dave nodded. "Yeah, it'll work on metal fires, as well as gas, oil, alcohol, wood, et cetera."

"What about electrical fires and electrical equipment that is on fire?" Howard asked.

Dave nodded again. "Yeah, it'll cover those too." He answered.

Howard leaned back in his chair. "Well, if you can provide a sample for us to test and experiment with, we can see what we think. If it's easy enough to use, and works as well as you say, then we'll probably be willing to order some."

"Oh," Dave said. "I was going to give you them for free."

Howard shook his head. "Nah, if it'll help us, we can pay you. If you insist, we'll pay you less than we normally would, but a lot of us won't be happy if you don't get some sort of compensation for it. We do have some funds we can use; we are funded by the city itself." He assured Dave.

Dave shrugged. "Well, if you insist I suppose. So, the final thing I wanted to offer you, is an item called the Radar…" Dave began to explain.

---

After Dave's explanation was over, Howard was visibly excited. "You probably don't know how important this kind of thing would be to us. Every year, firefighters die because they are looking for people in burning buildings that either are already dead, or were never there in the first place. Something like this would save a lot of lives, even if it was just one person that goes to a fire that had one of these, it would be a gamechanger."

Dave nodded. "I assumed as much. My only concern is villains deciding to attack firefighters to try and get their hands on one. Do you think that would be a significant risk?" He asked.

Howard hummed thoughtfully. "Hmm. Those new druggy idiots wouldn't be smart enough to understand the value of something like this, the ABB wouldn't care either. The minor villains probably won't be interested in this sort of thing either. The Empire… they're the big problem. No matter what I do, in this city unless I get a lot more funding and a significant political backer for the department, I won't be able to eliminate Empire sympathizers. We don't have many in the Fire Department, I assure you, and even the ones we do get I fire whenever I catch them, usually that is because they are doing something as insane as driving more slowly because the fire is in a 'black neighborhood' or something."

Howard hummed again, visibly thinking. "The Empire will find out about it eventually, that isn't in doubt, but will they attack us to get one?" Howard closed his eyes in thought. "They might." He eventually concluded. "I can't be sure one way or the other, but they might. It'll hurt their image, and if they are stupid enough to attack any of us while we are on the job, they might lose a Cape or two if they send someone like Stormtiger against five strong lads with axes, but they might do it."

"However," Howard continued. "I think it'll probably save more lives if we use it anyways. Both of our firefighters and of victims we would be able to reach more quickly and easily from knowing exactly where they are. If you give us one to test, I can get back to you tomorrow and we'll pay you a fair amount for, say, 69 radars. That would let us have three people in each of the 23 Fire Stations in the city be equipped with one. That way, we will be able to have someone with one at every fire in almost any circumstance."

Dave nodded with satisfaction. "Nice."

Howard nodded seriously while Neil coughed at the number of Radars Howard wanted. "Yes, it would be nice, even if someone isn't on shift, there would still be another two people at any given Fire Station equipped with one, and so even if there are two fires at different locations, a single Fire Station could still send someone with one of these Radars to each fire, even while the other person isn't available." He said with satisfaction.

Neil coughed harder.

"You okay Neil?" Howard asked with concern.

Neil nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine, just had a tickle in the throat."

Howard frowned. "Well, if you're sure. Coughs are serious business. I've lost a couple people to diseases from too much smoke inhalation over the years."

"I'm fine," Neil assured him. "I was just surprised is all."

"About what?" Howard asked with confusion. It had been a perfectly normal conversation after all.

"Nevermind," Neil said. "Just keep discussing, I'll be fine."

"Well, if you're sure." Howard mumbled. "Anyways," he said, speaking more clearly now. "What was the request you wanted to ask the Fire Department for?"

"Well, I have an item called a teleporter…" Dave began to explain.

---

"I see, so you want to set up one of these receiver pads at each Fire Station?" Howard asked.

Dave nodded.

"Good idea, that'll give you good coverage of pretty much the entire city, with flight and the fast speed you mentioned before, you'll be able to respond quickly and effectively as soon as you hear about something." Howard praised, making Dave instinctively preen.

Dave almost requested 'praise me more!', but decided that should be reserved for when it would be funnier, like when it was Lady Photon, Bella, or Lisa. Maybe Armsmaster.

"Yeah, we can get that set up." Howard said. "Especially with all the stuff you've offered. We probably would have agreed even with just an introduction from Neil and his assurance you were the real deal and on the up and up. With all of this other stuff, my people would riot if I tried to refuse something this simple. If you want to handle it now, we can find a good spot in each Fire Station throughout the city, and I can introduce you to each person in charge of each station and explain things. If any of your teleporters are damaged, I'll also look into it and determine if it was idiots being idiots, or idiots being saboteurs to try and slow your response time."

Dave paused, it hadn't occurred to him that gang sympathizers in the fire department might damage or destroy his teleporters. It was probably fine, it wouldn't slow his response time that much even if they succeeded at one or two Fire Stations, and then it would just give him an excuse to point Lisa at the problem to identify the corruption and pass the information on to Howard.

Content that it wouldn't be a major problem; he gave his agreement. "Sounds good," he told Howard. "Let's go ahead and handle that now. Neil, er Manpower? Did you want to come?" Dave asked, stumbling slightly on whether he was supposed to call Neil as Neil or Manpower in this situation.

"Neil or Manpower is fine in this situation Trouble." Neil assured him. "I'm in costume, but it's a private setting with someone I've known for a long time, and it isn't anything official. And yes, I'd be happy to come along."

Howard nodded and stood up. "Excellent, shall we go then?"







Author's Note: Bam, another chapter down! This is another mostly serious one, but that's because Firefighting is serious business, so Dave is doing his best to communicate as clearly as possible and be taken seriously and respected.

I looked up a few things for this one, like what the name of a person in charge of a city's fire department is, and 'how many Firefighting Buildings are in a city'. It turns out, a Fire Chief is in charge of a city's Fire Department, a 'Firefighting Building' is a Fire Station, and the three examples I saw of how many Fire Stations are in a city were: 38 in Baltimore, Maryland; 34 in Kansas City, Montana (for those not aware, yes Kansas City is not in Kansas); and 33 in Seattle, Washington.

Now, those are all pretty big cities, while Brockton is on the smaller end, but I wasn't super-sure how many to put in Brockton, but I was thinking 20 or so at first. Then I looked a little closer, and found out Baltimore, with 38 Fire Stations, has a population of around 635,000; but Seattle, with 33 Fire Stations, has a population of 785,000 people. Then I just got confused because when I looked a little closer, I found that apparently the 'Seattle Metropolitan area' has over 4.15 MILLION residents (that's like, more than the combined population of multiple other States in the US combined (obviously only specific states with a low population, but still)). Then, I realized I didn't know if Seattle's 33 Fire Stations was for the 785,000 population area, or over the entire 4.15 million population area. Thus, I gave up and decided to go with 23 Fire Stations for Brockton Bay so I could just keep writing instead of going down a research rabbit hole very few people were likely to notice.

If any Seattle/Baltimore residents or experts (are there people whose job is the study of a specific city?), or just Firefighters or people familiar with Firefighter statistics and such want to weigh in on this, please let me know what you think makes sense and why. I'm happy to change the number of Fire Stations in Brockton as needed.

According to its wiki page, Brockton Bay had a population of around 350,000 people as of the battle against Leviathan… I'm assuming that matters for how many Fire Stations are in a city.

…

Having added more on to the chapter since the previous parts of this Author's Note, the decision for 23 Fire Stations ended up being a blessing in disguise. I was thinking about how many Radars the Fire Department would want, and when I concluded three per Fire Station would probably be good, a little bit of mathematical magic happened. The result was truly a happy coincidence, but while it wasn't intentional, I'm now less inclined to change the number of Fire Stations in Brockton Bay.

I'm now happy with the 23 Fire Station decision.

Next chapter, we have a new day and a new decision I'm rather excited for.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 60: What's In Your Head?

January 17, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, Dave's Apartment.



Dave woke up the next day feeling… green. He ignored the giant bees still in his room and began his morning routine.

After a thorough scrubbing in the shower, he determined that the green-ness of his skin wasn't caused by makeup applied onto him by whoever kept waking him up. He would find them eventually though. He SWORE it!

After finishing up his shower and morning routine, he prepped his tea, orange juice, and bagel, and sat down at the table.

Hi Dave!

You got lots of soul growth yesterday, and combined with what you already had, there was enough room in your soul for something extra special. Yesterday, you learned things, you set up a teleport system by cooperating with the Fire Department (that part was actually quite a bit of Soul Growth, it is kind of like getting experience in a game by completing a quest using diplomacy, with a bonus for completing a quest with diplomacy for the first time added on), you set up the groundwork for future things with Armsmaster, you gave New Wave a new wave of upgrades (heh), and you got growth from what the people you have helped have been doing (Dragon is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that department). Now, for the big treat resulting from all that growth: You get a new Pack-A-Punch today! I've judged that there is enough room in your soul to let you use one on something without harming you. This method of letting you use one when there is a bunch of free room in your soul seems like a pretty good method of letting you use PAPs (Pack-A-Punches) without risking any harm to you or your soul. So, there is now one available in your shop again, pick carefully what you want to use it on. Oh, I've also made it so you can toggle the visual effect of a Pack-A-Punched item, so you aren't stuck with whatever you use it on looking like molten cheese forever, but you can have it look like that if you want. That just leaves your new role for today, which you might have been able to predict based on your new skin color. Your new role for today is Zombie! Not to be confused with Infected. Obviously this comes with a few major benefits, but it would normally also come with some downsides. That is not so here though! You have so much free space in your soul, you can immediately get the best of the best in terms of Zombie benefits! Now, don't be alarmed though, there was no wasting of soul space here. For example, not appearing normal would be a pretty significant disadvantage a Zombie would normally have, right? Well, in your case, your skin has the normal green tinge of the role, but it is also toggleable. Which I made extra economical, by combining your soul's perception of a TTT Zombie (which just looks the same as a normal person but the avatar becomes green), with your soul's idea of a regular zombie, which has no change to skin color but may be rotting or dead-eyed or covered in wounds. So, by simply combining the best of both worlds, I made it so you can have the skin color of a 'normal zombie', which is just whatever your normal skin color is, and the lack of rotting or wounds of a TTT Zombie! And it all costs much less in terms of soul space than just manually adding a toggle to the green-skin-ness of the Zombie role would cost! Now, in addition to this, your Zombie claws and the benefits thereof can be toggled by retracting or extending them, kind-of like Wolverine's claws, except your claws are just your nails and fingertips changing shape slightly and becoming quite a bit stronger. These, when combined, let you appear completely normal if you so wish, while still having the Zombie role, and all the benefits it entails, be enabled. Speaking of which, you have no obligation to either moan constantly (sexually or otherwise), or constantly say the word "brains". You can of course, do either one of those, or both, if you so desire, but you don't have to, unlike a normal Zombie. You're welcome. Now, for the role itself. As I'm sure you could guess, your version of the Zombie role retains its benefits, meaning your claws retain the ability that let you turn anyone you kill with them into another Zombie role. I'm sure the locals will love that; they seem to love free power-ups anyways. Next, of course, you have the Zombie ability of super jumping! Just like a jumping-type zombie in a zombie game or movie, you can jump super far! This comes with immunity to fall damage, though you already have that from the PhD Flopper. In addition, you get the ability of super spitting! You can spit as a medium-to-long-distance ranged attack that will do similar damage as to what a bullet would do, though even if you kill someone with this it won't turn them into a Zombie, you still need to use your claws for that. It's a bit unintuitive, I know. You'd think a Zombie's super-spit would be just as able to turn someone else into a Zombie as a Zombie's claws would, right? Finally, naturally, you get access to the Zombie role's shop. All THREE items in it! Granted, you already had access to one of said items, but still, there's some solid stuff in there!

Dave nodded his head with contentment as he applied cream cheese to his bagel after digesting what Daf had communicated with him.

As he began to eat his bagel, he pondered exactly what to use the PAP on.

---

Having finished his breakfast, Dave came to a decision.

He pulled out his trusty Jetpack from his inventory, and went through the Detective buy menu to buy a PAP.

The PAP completed its work in a few seconds, and in short order, he was no longer holding a Jetpack. He was now the proud owner of a Passive Levitator.

The Passive Levitator was the PAPed form of a Jetpack, and worked along similar lines only in the sense that it still granted flight. The Passive Levitator worked as long as it was anywhere in a player's inventory, and instead of the finicky, rubber band-like flight of a jetpack that had a decent chance to kill the user, the Passive Levitator worked more like Creative Mode in Minecraft. It allowed hovering, slow and fast flight in any direction, including down, and allowed one to hold a gun while using it, unlike the default Jetpack which needed to be held in ones arms in TTT, which meant one couldn't hold a gun or potion or other item instead… or well, they could, but they would simply fall and likely die because they were no longer holding the Jetpack and wouldn't be able to switch back to the Jetpack and build up enough momentum to cancel the fall damage quickly enough.

It was of course, still possible to make fall damage happen by deliberately going straight down at high speed, even with the Passive Levitator. Or it would be if it weren't for the Flopper and his new role.

Regardless, now, Dave effectively had permanent, perfect flight, as long as he had the Passive Levitator in his inventory, which removed the possibility of someone attacking the Jetpack while he was using it to fly and an attack removing it from his person, and making him immediately fall to his death.

Perhaps it wasn't the best possible decision he could have made, but unrestricted flight was pretty cool, and being able to hover in place was such a huge advantage in combat against landbound enemies, it was absolutely worth it.

---

With that done, Dave decided to do a bit of metaphysical housekeeping with his fall-damage related abilities now that it was more relevant with the perfected jetpack and the super jumping.

After a bit of experimentation with some of his many, many, mental toggles and switches, Dave found a way to 'disable fall damage' without causing the explosion from the PhD Flopper. He decided to leave that as his default for now, he could just turn the PhD Flopper explosion back on whenever he needed it after all.

This left his next priority, the Zombie shop.

He opened it up and found exactly what he expected.

The first of the three items in the shop was one he already had, Body Armor. He would probably be buying all his Body Armor in the future from the Zombie shop, given the other two 'items' couldn't be given to other people and there were no other items he knew of that could be in the Zombie shop. So, all his future Zombie Credits would likely be best spent on Body Armor.

For now, given it had been more than ten minutes since he woke up, he had enough credits to buy the other two Zombie shop items.

The first one was Zombie Speed. It made it so that, when his claws were out (meaning, they weren't retracted), his speed was increased by 35%. In other words, his speed was multiplied by 1.35 times. After a little help from a calculator, he figured out that meant his speed would be around 20.25 times as fast as a normal person while his Zombie claws were out. That was from the 3 times multiplier from the Stamina Perk, and the five times multiplier from the Speed Gun, resulting in 3x5x1.35=20.25 which was a pretty solid boost for land speed, if he did say so himself.

Naturally, his flight started out faster, and would then be multiplied by 20.25 from its base speed, making him quite fast, even for a flyer Cape.

The next and final 'item' in the Zombie shop, was Zombie Regeneration.

After he bought it, it did the same as it did in the game, a regeneration of 1 health per second, which was about two or three times the speed of Paladin healing, but they stacked, giving him the equivalent of about 1.5 health regenerated per second.

Dave estimated that was comparable to some versions of Wolverine in terms of regeneration speed, so it too, was an extremely solid purchase.

Combined with the Body Armor making him take 30% less damage from all sources, he had a considerable boost in all areas now.

Well, now he just had to figure out what to do with the rest of his day. It was the weekend, so it was when Cape activity was most likely, so he probably shouldn't start anything that required a large time investment in case he needed to go out suddenly. Luckily, the Fire Department would notify him if they spotted Cape activity, and he assumed Miss Militia or Armsmaster would notify him if they encountered a Cape situation and needed his assistance, so he was probably as set up as he could reasonably be at the moment in terms of that.

He didn't really want to visit the Police and set up things with them until Lisa got her costume and Cape name ready. His assistant-esque person (he wasn't sure what their official title was going to be) Dragon was sending wouldn't arrive until tomorrow, so there was no point in trying to make contact with rich people to heal them or anything on his own. Tinkering would require a time investment, though he could whip some stuff up with just what he has and the mud samples he had already taken from the woods.

Well, when all else fails… it's time to bother someone. As the closest available victims friends, Lisa and Bella were first on his list of people to bother.









Author's Note: This chapter is on the smaller side, but I cut it off here to try and increase my stockpile a bit. Next time, we have a chat with Lisa and Bella, and possibly more stuff after, depending on how that chat goes.

For this chapter, I'm quite excited about the Zombie role, it really does have cool stuff. The Zombie role is one of the roles that offers a direct power-up for Dave that doesn't then get spread out to a bunch of other people the way a lot of his items end up doing, making him a little more unique.

This chapter also reveals what I decided to do about the PAP. It now is something Dave gets one of whenever he has a particularly large amount of free soul space, which is both logical in-story and makes the story smoother, as it would be a little OP if he could just instantly PAP everything, but there are a lot of really interesting things that are a result of Pack-a-Punched items, so I think this is a nice way to meet in the middle.

The Zombie role also marks the first role/item Dave has access to that can give someone else a role! Shame he has to murder them in a specific way to do it and that doing so will turn their skin green and possibly give them a compulsion to add 'brains' to every sentence and possibly murderous urges. Otherwise, it would be quite a strong Trump power!

Oh yes, the chapter title is a reference to the song Zombie by The Cranberries. It's also something a lot of people think when encountering Dave, and an objectively interesting question considering he isn't actually a Parahuman, and thus doesn't actually have the things in his head that one would expect (the Corona Gemma and Pollentia).

Author's Note 2: Unfortunately, I didn't get around to making an update to the list of Dave's abilities/roles/items over the weekend, but I'll do my best to get to it next time. For the foreseeable future, the time of day when I release chapters will likely be less consistent, but it will still be 5 chapters per week, one chapter per weekday until further notice, just the time of day may be less consistent.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 61: Screwing Over Villains With The Power Of The Internet

January 17, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, Bella's Apartment.



After Dave settled down on one of the sofas in Bella's apartment, he started off the conversation with the most important question.

"Would either of you like to become a Zombie?" He asked.

"No." Both Bella and Lisa said, without even looking away from her computer in Lisa's case.

"Would you be willing to donate your brains to the Zombie charity?" He asked.

"What? No." Lisa said, before looking up.

"Brains…" Dave moaned, having turned totally green. He began reaching his arms out and slowly walking towards Lisa.

Lisa immediately pulled out her Banana pistol and shot Dave in the head with an entire clip, killing him instantly.

---

"Huh." Lisa said after a moment. "That was surprisingly satisfying."

"Any idea what was up with that?" Bella asked, nudging Dave's corpse with her foot slightly.

"My power says it was his idea of a joke, though it predicts he will feel bad about it afterwards." Lisa said. "I just sort of reacted without even consulting my power. Zombie movies have become a lot scarier since my power activated and started telling me how plausible they were."

Lisa took the opportunity to complain a little. "Seriously, ever since I hit a certain threshold of having looked into enough Biotinkers around the world, my power started telling me almost every single zombie movie was plausible. The only things it ever had a problem with were things like human behavior or plot armor of characters. It only ever objects to things like characters finding exactly what they need just in time instead of things like the Zombies themselves or what the Zombies can do."

"There there," Bella said, patting Lisa on the head like she was a particularly grumpy cat. "Zombie movies tend to be kind of crap anyways. You're really not losing much if you decide not to watch any in the future. They usually just kind of fall apart into either misery porn or near-propaganda levels of good ending depending on how they treat the interactions between Capes and whatever is making the Zombies. Only some of the Aleph ones get around that by just not having any Capes in the movie."

Lisa grumbled a bit. "I know, but it's still annoying that it won't let me watch a trashy movie genre without pointing out all the plot holes."

"I'm sure we can find something that it will let you watch in peace." Bella said placatingly. "If not, we can do some experiments to see how we can make it say as little as possible to interrupt you while you are watching fictional media."

"It's fine," Lisa said, waving away Bella's attempt at placation. "It doesn't do anything about things it considers unrealistic enough, like Pokemon. It also doesn't do anything with cartoons in general really, unless I prompt it to."

"Still," Bella said. "It would be a useful exercise to determine how better to manipulate and wield your power more effectively. We don't have to do it soon or anything, but I think it would be a good idea to work on it eventually."

"Fine." Lisa said, recognizing that improving her usage of her power was probably a good idea in general.

---

Meanwhile, Dave decided to take the opportunity of being dead to look around and see if there was any suspicious activity near his and Bella's apartment building. There hadn't been, but since he had been dead anyways, he had figured it was better to check considering that Lisa had an unknown group targeting her.

He had felt so bad about his little prank, that he had let Lisa kill him. His excuse if anyone asked, was that it was good practice. A lot of his current and future arsenal depended on people killing him, so he had used his mental toggles as quickly as possible when he realized what was happening. It turned out, he could use his toggles very quickly, and his Old Man combat Thinker power did a lot of heavy lifting to let him adjust his state to exactly what he needed.

That had let him disable the Beggar ability to come back to life on the opposite team of whoever killed him, disable his Body Armor without actually taking it off and turning it into item form, blacklist himself from his Paladin Healing, toggle off his Zombie Regeneration, and control his instinct to dodge the bullets, which he could have easily done with his Combat Thinker power and his enhanced reflexes and 20 times speed boost. And he had done it all in less than a single second, though he wasn't sure exactly how fast he had been.

He probably hadn't needed to do all of that though. The Banana gun was actually a very powerful weapon, particularly for a pistol. It was probably one of his stronger weapons in fact, even leaving aside its stealth capabilities that came from being a banana.

Still, after he resurrected, he needed to apologize, and should probably also check in to see if Lisa had figured out anything about who was after her while he was still thinking about it.

---

"I'm sorry." Dave said as soon as he came back. "My joke was in poor taste, and I apologize." He said sincerely, before changing into Pikachu form to give puppy dog mouse(?) eyes to Lisa to earn forgiveness faster. "Will you forgive me?" He asked.

Lisa caved immediately. "Fine, just stop looking at me like that." She said, turning away from the Pathetic Pikachu ™ expression Dave was making.

"Yay!" Dave cheered, happily bouncing up and down, still in Pikachu form.

He decided to ask what he had been considering earlier while he still remembered it. "By the way," Dave said, slightly more serious in tone now. "Have you gotten any clues regarding who is after you?" He asked.

Lisa nodded smugly. Dave wondered briefly if smugly was her favorite adverb or just the one most commonly applied to her, before trying to focus on what she was actually saying.

"The people after me are a group employed by a local Villain called Coil. They are actually mercenaries he employs and supplies with gear, including Tinkertech. Coil is considered small-time by the locals, but he's actually a powerful Thinker, and based on my analysis, has a lot of influence and moles in the local PRT, which is part of how he stays so under the radar that even people online aren't sure what he can do or what his goals are. Of course, the other part is that he is using his Thinker power somehow to help him stay low profile." Lisa explained.

"So, what's his power." Bella said, making Lisa suddenly look decidedly less smug.

"I don't know." Lisa grumpily admitted, gritting her teeth slightly. "There isn't even any footage of him for my power to analyze his personality based on his body language, let alone to analyze his power. My power says he might have something similar to Accord, that lets him make perfect or near-perfect plans, but I've been applying what you taught me, Bella, and I have my doubts about that."

"It could be his power of course." Lisa continued. "But I think it is simply the most obvious one based on what information I have available, which is that his mercenaries seem to universally succeed in combat, which they only do rarely, and that his mercenaries have strange and erratic behavior, indicating they are being directed by a Thinker power. But I don't know if their erratic behavior is an indication of some sort of limit or downside to the Thinker power directing them like how Accord needs increasingly complex plans for larger problems, or if they are acting strangely because it is genuinely the best possible move for them to make for whatever their goal is at a given time."

Lisa let out a breath. "Honestly, despite knowing who it is and that they work by hiring mercenaries, I haven't actually made much progress in solving the issue."

"Hey now," Bella said. "That's still pretty damn good progress for only a few days' worth of work."

"I agree." Dave said, nodding quickly. "My research indicated he was even less of an issue than Uber and Leet, and I was considering trying to recruit those two. That he is that powerful and that big of a problem is extremely valuable information by itself. I suppose it also highlights the dangers of certain types of Parahumans, like Thinkers, Strangers, and Masters. You don't necessarily know how dangerous they are until they reveal themselves, even if they've been active in an area for a long time."

Bella made a considering noise, drawing the attention of the other two to her. "Do you think we should be helpful, and provide the internet a service by updating his wiki page on PHO?" She asked. "I don't know the exact process, but PHO does offer something that lets someone add a 'Verified Cape' tag to their handle, and that could let you edit his wiki page and say something like 'a Thinker Cape has analyzed him and estimated he is also a Thinker, with an estimated rating between x and y'." Bella suggested 'innocently'. "You know, just to be helpful. Maybe even make a dedicated thread for watching the movements of his mercenaries if your power says that wouldn't put anyone in danger."

Dave chuckled slightly, while Lisa thought about it.

Eventually, Lisa shook her head. "Maybe later," Lisa said. "For now, I'd rather keep it as a card up my sleeve, or whatever you want to call it, that I know more about him than is publicly available. A thread for watching the movements of his mercenaries though… that could work. I think he wants as little attention as possible at the moment, so a thread dedicated to watching where his mercenaries go and what they do wouldn't put any idiots chasing internet recognition in danger, because it attracts a lot more attention to shoot civilians than it does to shoot gangsters, which is what they currently are known to do."

Lisa made a considering hum before continuing. "A simple thread dedicated to spotting his mercenaries, with when they were spotted and where, probably wouldn't put anyone in danger, and it would get me a fair bit of information, while seeming like normal PHO Cape-spotter activity. It would almost certainly change the behavior of Coil's mercenaries to an extent based on how he reacts to being a little more in the light, but it would also make it harder for them to try pulling something like kidnapping people, which is always a plus."

Shortly after that, it was decided (by Lisa) that Lisa would make a few sockpuppet accounts on PHO to act as civilian Cape enthusiasts for things like starting new threads that she didn't want to be known as having started herself, in order to deny Coil as much information on her as possible.















Authors Note: Tada! Chapter! Another short one while I get my stockpile up in case I don't get much writing done on my trip.

Dave figures out how easily he can get himself killed. The Good Boy role means it can be highly beneficial to be able to kill himself via other people as easily as possible. If he really wants to trigger the Good Boy role's blindness, he will also turn on the Old Man role's one-health aspect to make it so he can just body slam someone to kill himself on them.

Author's Note 2: I in fact got basically no writing done on my trip, so the original author's note was well-thought-out apparently.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 62: Buying Shit is Very Specifically Not Literal.

January 17, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, Bella's Apartment.



After everyone had settled down again, Dave explained the issue facing him to Bella and Lisa. Namely, that he wasn't sure what the best use of his time was for the day.

He laid out his thought process for the things he had eliminated as possibilities of to the two of them to see what they thought, as well as the options of doing some Mud Tinkering or just patrolling and hoping to run into something.

Bella hummed after hearing it all. "Well, I suppose the two things I can think of, are to contact the PRT to see when their Image department wants to meet with you. You said something about Lady Photon setting up an arrangement with them for you so you wouldn't have to worry about your image too much or something? Anyways, I don't actually know if they are working on weekends, so on second thought, that one might wait."

"You could go on a patrol with the intent of doing PR instead of looking for trouble," Bella continued. "But that might be better to wait for until you've spoken with the PRT Image department."

"The other thing I had thought of," Bella said, "was that you could do some online shopping for mud samples from around the world. I don't know what exactly would be useful for your Tinkering, but I would think more exotic muds from various locations around the world would only be helpful. For example, I know volcanic soil is supposed to be super amazing for fertilizer, so I would guess mud made from volcanic ashes or volcanic soil would also be interesting. Or seeing if you can do things with stuff like those 'mud mask' things, which are actually guano."

"Excellent idea!" Dave said excitedly, before exiting Bella's apartment to retrieve his laptop to do some shopping on.

---

After retrieving his laptop, Dave returned to Bella's apartment, facing a slightly bemused Bella.

"Why are you back here?" She asked after a moment of awkward silence.

"In case you had more ideas while I was looking at my options for things to buy. Or, if you left, I would be keeping Lisa company while we each do our own thing. I figure two people staring at separate screens in total silence while doing unrelated things but being in the same room counts as partial socialization, so I would be meeting my Freytag's Pyramid of needs for socialization if I did it long enough!" Dave explained.

Lisa turned around incredulously at that. "Um." She said, raising a finger to object.

Bella waved Lisa's objection away. "No worries, Lise, I got this." She said, before turning to Dave. "Dave, Freytag's Pyramid is a thing in English classes used to describe the outline of a story by dividing it into stages. You meant the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs." Bella explained, before nodding in satisfaction at having cleared up the misunderstanding.

"That wasn't what I was objecting to!" Lisa nearly shouted at the two of them.

---

Dave began his Mud shopping by looking at the mud and mud-adjacent things that existed, using the power of the internet, to see what his power told him could be used for Mud Science. He couldn't find out exact details without scanning them with his Mud Analysis Device, but he could get an idea of if something would work, and in some cases what it could be used for.

It turned out, clay of various types worked fine, as well as things that could be used to make his own mud (ie. Water, sand, dirt, ash, etc. of various types).

Some types of poop worked as well, which Lisa theorized was based on the association of those poop types with mud. The poop types that his power told him could be useful were: bat poop, also known as guano, which, as Bella had stated, were used in things called 'Mud masks' for beauty treatment, like that green stuff on people's faces with the cucumber slices in movies; cow poop, possibly due to the term 'mud pie' sometimes being used to refer to it; and pig poop, possible due to its association with mud from it mixing in with the mud in a pig pen.

That said, he wasn't super interested in any of the things his power told him he could do with the various types of poop. He could use regular mud for beautification things, so he didn't need guano for anything since that was its only use his power came up with without scanning it with the mud analysis device. He wasn't really interested in making food out of poop, which meant the cow poop lost most of its prospective use (which strengthened the theory that it only qualified for his power because of the term 'mud pie', given there wasn't much other reason specifically cow poop would be able to be turned into food). And he just didn't think making a fertilizer would be the best use of his time and resources, making the other use of cow poop, as well as the uses for pig poop his power came up with, not worth doing.

As far as Dave was aware, while making a new, better-in-every-way fertilizer would be helpful to the world, it didn't exactly fill any major need. The world had more than enough food to feed everyone on it already, the problem was getting the food to where it needed to go, which fertilizer wasn't exactly helpful for.

So, with it decided that he would not be buying or Tinkering with poop, he looked into other prospective uses for mud and mud-adjacent things, while seeing what he could buy online.

---

It turned out, people sold all sorts of weird (non-literal) shit on Craigslist and eBay. Including all sorts of mud, clay, sand, and water from specific locations.

Unfortunately, most of Africa was a massive (again, not literal) shit hole, so lots of things from there were actually rather expensive due to all the fighting and near-total lack of functioning governments that weren't Parahuman feudal warlords. Apparently, that made it hard to collect things like mud from the Nile River. Who knew?

Although, ash left behind by Ash Beast was surprisingly cheap, probably because he left it almost everywhere he went, but Dave ordered some given how many uses his power could come up with for it.

After finding out that Ash Beast's ash could be helpful for his Tinkering, he decided to look into other Parahuman-based substances that he might be able to use. There was apparently a Parahuman in the New York Protectorate called Clay who could generate a clay-like substance his power thought would be useful as well. It would have been nice to know about that before his trip to New York so he could have asked for some samples in person.

He did have Prism's number now though, so he could probably just send her a message and see if she could ask her colleague for a little.

His research also found that apparently, there were some places in Haiti that added mud to some of their food, and his power indicated he could use Haitian mud to make a sort-of food multiplier, where the multiplier-device would turn mud into a copy or extension of the food it was applied to. It was kind of like a replicator in Star Trek actually.

Although, it seemed that the Haitian mud-based food was a 'extreme poverty' thing, not a 'culture' thing or a 'surprisingly nutritious/tasty' thing.

Nooooo! Now I'm sad! Dave mentally wailed pathetically.

He cheered up again after finding out about Mud Volcanoes and Mudpots though.

Those seemed fun.

The ideas for things he could make with all these muds were simply overflowing in his mind, he really couldn't wait until he could start making things. Unfortunately, that would have to wait until Dragon and Armsmaster finished up their preparations and he could set up a small temporary space near where the future Tinker base was going to be so he could make things to make the actual base itself so he could make a dedicated workspace for large projects.

---

Dave did end up ordering a large glass container-thing as well since he was doing online shopping anyways. He still had twenty giant, possibly robotic bees in his bedroom from when he woke up yesterday, and even if he couldn't be hurt by them (and they wouldn't hurt him anyways), they were still really loud, and he didn't think he could handle trying to sleep with them in his room too much longer.

At the same time, he could hardly just kill the cute little giant murder-bees. But he also wanted to be able to move freely between the rooms of his apartment without constantly being careful to avoid a bee escaping his room. And he wanted Lisa to be safe whenever she came over to his apartment for Cape research purposes.

Regardless, given the rather large number that was in his bank account when he woke up on Earth Bet (thanks Daf), it wasn't exactly a monetary burden to order a large glass box for things that didn't need food, water, or air.

With that done, he needed to figure out what to do next. After a moment of consideration, he decided to start with: Delegation! Yay!

"Bella," he said after coming to that decision. When she looked up in acknowledgement, he continued. "I want you to be in charge of making sure Lisa gets proper socialization." He began, making Lisa pop her head up, eyes wide with horror.

"No thanks!" Lisa interrupted. "I can do socialization all on my own. From right here, on my computer. Where it's nice and safe and I can decide exactly who I talk to and when."

Bella turned from Lisa to Dave. "I see why you want help." She admitted. "I am busy with college; it is a full commitment to anyone taking it seriously. Those stereotypes and movie things about college parties are total lies, don't let them fool you." She started to go off track, before noticing Lisa looking hopeful that the conversation would derail itself.

"Anyways," she said, determined to dash Lisa's hopes. "I can do that to some extent. I can introduce her to Crystal, I'm sure those two will get along well, before we drag in the rest of New Wave at least." She began, ignoring Lisa's pleading expression. "I can poke at her occasionally to go meet up with or talk to others I know she's met, at least through phone calls and texting if nothing else. I remember you said you both met Parian together, right?"

At Dave's nod, Bella continued. "I'll try and get her to talk with Parian some. They have a fair bit in common, being young female Capes who are being targeted by nefarious organizations. Lisa with Coil, and Parian with the Empire. Parian might even have tips or contacts she can share to make Lisa feel like she is accomplishing something other than socializing." She said, bulldozing over Lisa's muttered complaints about still being in the room.

Dave nodded to himself. "That's a great plan. Truly, I am a genius for putting you in charge of this."







Author's Note: And thus, Lisa's fate is sealed, doomed to socialization and being taken away from the comfort of her computers and forced to talk to people in person.

Also, mud stuff! And a container for the bees he released in his room the previous day when he woke up with the Queen Bee role.

Also, in this chapter there is a brief mention I'm shocked it took this long to get to, that being that Dave woke up with a pretty hefty bank account. It's not too surprising when you think about it. This is after digital currency started existing, and digital currency is ultimately information stored on computers, so anyone with enough knowledge of the exact ways a computer physically works, and planet-wide telekinesis that is also extremely precise, can just give themselves however much money they want by making all the important computers believe that much money exists in their bank account.

So, Daf gave Dave a ton of starting money, because it was absurdly easy for him to do so. If Earth Bet was a purely physical-money society, Daf would have been stuck with finding lost physical coins or bills or credits or whatever it would have been, and gathering those up and moving them without anyone noticing. Which Daf could have done, but only to a certain extent without risking notice by a Thinker noticing something off when he needs to either physically move already existing currency or create new physical currency and run into the problem of currency generally having serial numbers.

This chapter took a long time due to my trip interrupting it, so it's on the shorter side (1.9k words before the author's note), but I'm going to stop it there so I can say I've gotten another chapter done. Next chapter, is another one I'm expecting might be difficult and time-consuming, yay! (That yay in particular was sarcastic).

Author's Note 2: Due to my low, low chapter stockpile, and my busy schedule, there will likely not be a chapter tomorrow (or a second one today depending on where in the world you are).