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

[Phili]

Chapter 14: Earth Bet's Very First _______ ______!

January 3, 2010. Brockton Bay, Pelham House, Living Room.



Sarah stared at the dead Mr. Blobby that had just commit suicide in her living room and leaving its own dead body to fall onto a microwave, leaving the gun and half-eaten burrito to land on the carpet.

She walked upstairs, and opened Crystal's door without knocking.

"Mom! What if I had been naked?" Crystal shouted.

"It would have been nothing I hadn't seen before. Dave's here, he's in the living room. You can come down and deal with him while I make lunch in the kitchen, sound good?" Sarah asked sweetly.

"Uh, sure?" Crystal naively agreed.

"Perfect." Sarah smiled, before going back downstairs and into the kitchen, where she started to make burritos. She was inspired, okay?

"Oh, for fucks sake." Crystal said upon seeing the dead body of Mr. Blobby, microwave, strange device filled with green fluid, gun, and half-eaten burrito all on the floor of her living room.

"Language!" Her mom shouted from the kitchen.

"English!" Crystal shouted back.

"Don't steal that from your cousin Crystal! Amy doesn't get enough socialization practice as it is without you stealing one of her catchphrases! By the way, thanks for agreeing to deal with Dave. That includes cleaning up after him, just to be clear."

---

After Crystal had put the burrito in the trash and mixed salt into cold water and begun cleaning up the bloody carpet with the mixture, Dave respawned, then wandered into the kitchen and asked the still-cooking Sarah "Did I win at charades?" He still looked like Mr. Blobby.

She gave him a dry look. "No. I did not understand your intended message. Thus, you did not succeed at silently communicating information and therefore did not win charades."

He nodded. "Do you have any sunglasses? The lasers you're using to cook those burritos are really bright."

She pointed at the counter, "You can borrow Bella's pair until we get you your own. I'm sure she won't mind. Me, my children, and my sister are all highly resistant to being blinded by light, so any frequent guests—and my husband of course—get their own dedicated pair for when they are in the kitchen while I'm cooking. Speaking of guests, I've invited Vicky and Amy to join us. I invited my sister as well but she is busy, and her husband Mark is… busy as well." She paused before finishing her final sentence.

Dave digested that information as he put on the sunglasses, which were rather hard to get on as Mr. Blobby. Glory Girl and her sister, the new hero Panacea who had been active as a healer for a month or so were coming to have lunch. For some reason, he shivered. Then he shivered again, harder.

Sarah noticed and offered, "Do you want me to turn up the heat? I'm a little surprised your powers didn't give you temperature-resistance to go with your other abilities. You mentioned it changed your sleep-cycle, and it has certainly given you some brute powers, so a weak temperature-comfort power seems fairly on theme for such a wide-ranging power in my experience with grab-bags. Maybe you just haven't gotten it yet?"

"No, I have." Dave answered, somewhat surprised Sarah had managed to predict one of his powers, but he supposed that was a benefit of experience. "No need to turn up the heat, I do have that minor temperature-comfort thing you mentioned, it widens my comfortable temperature range by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit in both directions, just enough to increase my performance as a terrorist and not have a bomb slip out of my hands because of sweaty palms or something. I've just been shivering occasionally since I got my powers, but it seems unrelated to temperature."

"Anyways," Dave continued on ignoring Sarah's mutterings that his temperature resistance was 'weaker than expected,' "Do you know when your nieces are likely to arrive? I would like to greet them in style." He said, before transforming into Pikachu and striking a pose.

"It should be any minute now. You can wait for them in the backyard with Crystal if she seems like she's done cleaning up the blood."

"Okee dokee artichokee!" Dave Pikachu saluted, before scampering into the living room to see if Crystal was ready to greet her cousins.

---

After a little brainstorming, Dave Pikachu and Crystal had come up with a plan of action…

After Vicky touched down in the Pelham backyard while holding her sister in a princess carry, Crrystal proudly strode out, Pikachu on her shoulder.

Amy got down on her own from Vicky's arms while Vicky stared.

"So, you thought you could challenge me to a Pokemon battle?" Crystal asked haughtily in a deepened voice, before turning her dad's baseball hat around on her head and shouting "Fine then, let's battle! Go Pikachu!"

"Kachu!" Pikachu let out an adorable warcry as he jumped down from Crystal's shoulder and ran out to the more open part of the yard.

Vicky's eyes changed and became more competitive. "Fine, you shall face the strongest member of my team, GO PANPAN!" She shouted dramatically and pointed to the space across from Pikachu, indicating where she wanted Amy to start the battle at.

"I'm not doing this." Amy said dryly after a withering look at her sister failed. She received puppy dog eyes from Crystal, Vicky and Pikachu simultaneously. She folded instantly.

"Fine, but why am I the Pokemon?" She grudgingly agreed before walking to where Vicky had indicated.

"You were too slow sis! I called dibs on being your trainer. And everyone knows Chansey is badass anyways, I believe in you!"

Amy blushed, either at being insinuated as badass or at the thought of being trained by her sister… or at being told someone believed in her… or the humiliation of taking part in what seemed like roleplaying magical cockfighting of friendship… or the rather cold weather.

As she stood across from Pikachu, Amy still wasn't totally sure what was going to happen next, when Crystal shouted, "Go Pikachu, use Minimize, then Tackle!"

The Pikachu shrunk somehow, but its ears and tails stayed the same size and were flopping madly as it moved around. It ran surprisingly quickly, but not that quickly at Amy, before it jumped, then jumped again midair to reach her face. She reflexively grabbed it before it could headbutt her face, and she held it right in front of her face, and noticed her power didn't consider it biological, but also did at the same time.

"What are you?" She asked the tiny, shrunken Pikachu.

It wiggled its nose at her, looked deep into her eyes, then licked her nose. "Pikachu!"

Amy melted immediately. "Awww!"

---

Vicky pouted immensely, until Amy couldn't resist the puppy dog eyes anymore and reluctantly handed the Pikachu over for Vicky to play with.

Crystal gasped. "Oh no! Pikachu is being stolen by Team Rocket! Quick, Pikachu, use Pikapistol!"

"Pika Pika!" Pikachu brought out a Glock pistol and shot Vicky once with it.

While Vicky was surprised and her strength disabled form her forcefield being broken, Pikachu jumped down and scampered over to Crystal where Pikachu got picked up, given headpats, and placed back on her shoulder.

"Good job Pikachu! You escaped from Team Rocket all on your own!" Crystal praised.

"I told you; you can't give me headpats until I'm a Good Boy." Pikachu?? said to Crystal… in a normal man's voice?

"WHAT THE FUCK?" Vicky screamed.

Amy looked disappointed as well.

Crystal meanwhile was nonplussed, "What, did you think I found a stash of Professor Haywire's technology and opened a portal to the world of Pokemon and grabbed a Pikachu? Then taught it how to use guns?"

Vicky fake-sobbed dramatically "You gave me hope of completing my dream of becoming the very greatest Pokemon master, like no one ever was! Then you cruelly took it away. WHY CRYSTAL WHY?!" She floated over to Crystal and shook her so hard 'Pikachu' fell off.

'Pikachu' unminified himself and wandered over to Amy who was just looking tired at her sister's antics.

"So, I figured it was something like this, and she probably did too before she got caught up in the moment. Are you a Case 53 or something? If so, I'm afraid I can't help you."

"Nah, I'm good. Name's Dave, nice to meet you." The Pikachu(?) apparently named Dave said.

"I'm Amy, or Panacea, I guess. It's a new thing, I only became a cape at the end of November, so I'm still getting used to everything. I started helping out at the hospital a couple weeks ago with my healing power."

Dave returned to his original form, much to Amy's disappointment. "I'm Dave, just your friendly local terrorist!" He reached out his hand. She shook it with a slightly bemused look on her face.

"You know, your biology was… weird when you were a Pikachu, but like this it's almost normal, just with some of that same weirdness around the edges of your body instead of throughout the whole thing. It's actually quite interesting, do you mind if I examine you a little with my power at some point?"

"Oh baby, you can examine me whenever and wherever you want."

"Excuse me?" Vicky flew over from where she had been talking with Crystal. Then she looked Dave up and down.

"I refuse, you're too old for my sis. It's kinda creepy actually, since she's underage, and you're an adult."

While Crystal tried to explain to Vicky that that was just how Dave was, and he probably didn't have any flirtatious intentions, Dave gasped dramatically. "How dare you besmirch my honor? I challenge you… to a DUEL!"

"Fine, when I win, you won't flirt with Amy." Vicky agreed instantly.

"Fine, if I win, you will give me some of your used bathwater!"

"Um… what? I knew it! You are a pervert!" Vicky said with vindication, while Crystal facepalmed and Amy just looked amused.

Dave walked over to where he had started the Pokemon battle as Pikachu, while Vicky flew over to where Amy had started the 'battle'.

Dave pulled out a weird gun from his inventory. It was completely covered with nothing but weird bright purple squares checkered with pitch black squares. It looked… dumb as hell.

"This, is a Free Kill Gun, also known as a Railgun Sniper Rifle." Dave bragged. "Whoever uses it to kill someone is ethically free of guilt. In exchange, anyone else is free to kill whoever is holding it and be ethically free of blame!" Dave… explained? The gun he had pulled out.

"Now witness its power!" Dave shouted dramatically, before pressing a button on it. The gun made a high-pitched noise, that quickly got louder and higher pitched as time went on. After about five seconds, the gun exploded and Dave died instantly.

Vicky and Amy screamed.









Author's Note: At least Dave has made a good first impression this time… right? The blanks in the chapter title were Pokemon Battle by the way, I even used the correct number of underscores for each word.

 

[SpaceWhale]

What a classic use of the Free Kill gun. if i remember correctly it was rythian who would unalive himself with the free kill gun often

 

[Phili]

Chapter 15: The Most Overpowered Burritos You've Ever Seen

January 3, 2010. Brockton Bay, Pelham House,



Amy immediately started to rush over to Dave's body before Crystal grabbed her partway there.

"Hey, hey, it's okay. One of Dave's powers is that he comes back to life after he dies, like Alabaster, but not a Nazi. It takes a while though, usually it takes exactly ten minutes unless he has a specific part of his ability toggled on. And… It looks like it's going to take ten minutes this time though, so he must have forgotten to turn that part on." Crystal comforted her cousin.

Vicky meanwhile, stopped panicking after hearing Crystal's explanations, and got figurative stars in her eyes upon hearing about a new cape power. "Really? That's so cool! So, he has a bunch of things he can toggle? Does he have a maximum number of things he can have on at once? Is there a cooldown to turning anything on or off? Are there separate cooldowns for each ability being turned on or off? Is being a Pikachu one of the toggles?" Her mouth ran a mile a minute, asking about the cool new parahuman powers, just as Crystal suspected it would.

"He actually goes into what he calls 'spectator mode' when he dies, so he can see and hear everything we are saying and doing, and he can fly around invisibly and 'no-clip' through solid things while he is dead." Crystal pre-empted her cousin before Vicky could say anything embarrassing.

While Crystal began filling in Vicky on what she knew of Dave's powers, Amy calmed down some more before slowly going over to Dave's body. She was about to reach down to examine it with her power and see if he was actually still alive when she noticed something out of the corner of her eye.

"Crystal… is that plant pot moving?" Amy asked.

"Um… so it is. Huh. I'm not sure how, but I'm pretty sure this is Dave's fault." Crystal said as the plant pot finished slowly moving over to her before nudging her leg repeatedly. The plant pot managed to look offended.

"Just ignore him. I didn't know about this particular power but I'm nearly certain this is Dave somehow making the plant pot hump my leg." Crystal said with an impressively straight face, to which Vicky burst out laughing and Amy let out a small giggle at hearing her cousin's interpretation of what was happening.

While Vicky and Crystal continued their conversation about Dave's powers, with Amy keeping an ear out because it was actually quite interesting, Amy leaned down and touched Dave's body to look at it with her power.

It was weird. It wasn't a dead organism, but it certainly wasn't an alive organism either. Her power couldn't manipulate it at all, but she could feel it was different from both his normal, living form and his Pikachu form. It was like his body changed to be entirely made up of whatever his not-biology components were that were at the edges of his body's normal form, and that made up most of his body as a Pikachu. Her power kept poking at Dave's body like it was confused, but also confused about why it was confused.

Out of curiosity she touched the plant in the pot that was still nudging her cousin affectionately(?) and examined it with her power. It was… totally normal. Then one of the fronds of the plant slowly furled around her finger, then pulled on it.

Her face went flat. Totally normal my ass. Stupid power.

---

A couple minutes later, Eric came outside, saw the dead body in the yard, ignored it, and said "Lunch is ready ladies. Mom made burritos. I was going to ask about the microwave in the middle of the living room floor, but I think I figured out how it got there now."

Dave conveniently respawned at that moment. "Yay, burritos!" He cheered.

As they all went inside, Vicky and Amy saw the pile of towels, some of which were slightly bloody, surrounding a microwave and a weird handheld device with a red cross symbol on the side with green liquid in it.

While Amy was just done with things and didn't bother asking about them, Vicky was more curious. "What are those? Are you guys getting a new microwave? Why is there blood on those towels?"

Crystal answered the last question. "Well, there is blood on the towels because someone decided to kill himself in the living room for some reason, and I had to clean up the blood. I don't know about the microwave or the green thing, but I assume Dave is also to blame based on the proximity to where his body was when I came downstairs."

Before Dave could explain that he had become a Doctor, Sarah called them to eat. "Come on kids, lunch is ready, we can talk about powers after we've eaten."

---

After everyone had eaten Sarah's homemade laser-burritos, the conversation returned to Dave's powers now that Sarah wasn't interrupting them every time they tried to bring the topic up.

"My new role today made me a Doctor! Let me know if you find my rightful screwdriver or blue box, they are my birthright as a proud inheritor of this role." Dave said, before continuing his explanation on what new things he could do.

"So, this bad boy here," Dave slapped the microwave, "is a Healing Station. You can open it up and grab a Hot Pocket or a Burrito from inside, and eating those will heal you up, or you can just press a hand on it and focus on wanting to be healed. But only one person can be healed at a time, and it has a limited amount of charge, only enough to heal about two people from the verge of death to full health, and each Hot Pocket or Burrito will also use up charge. It automatically recharges over time though, just not as fast as it uses up charge when it is healing someone, which will take about a minute to bring someone to full health if they start on the verge of death. Every time you open the door though, a new Hot Pocket and a new Burrito will appear as long as there is charge, so it does mean I just made infinite food. You guys can keep this one. You're welcome. It's not indestructible, and if it takes enough damage, it will just cease to exist, so don't shoot it too many times with a gun or smack it too many times with a crowbar."

Dave continued after seeing their gobsmacked expressions. "Meanwhile this bad boy," he picked up the Parasite Cure, "is the Parasite Cure. It's hard to deduce what it does from the name, but it actually cures parasites! Like, all of them. If I had the Parasite role unlocked, and I was infesting someone and was about to burst out of their chest like that Alien movie, using this on the person I was infesting would cure them of me. It will also work on any other parasites, including but not limited to brain worms, tape worms, ear worms, ring worms, leeches, and ticks. You just hold it and focus on curing yourself for five seconds, or you hold it and focus on the person you want to heal—while being close enough to them, like within a couple feet or so—and then whoever it is used on will be cured of any and all parasites!"

"Like this!" He said, before starting to use it on himself. "Oh yeah, and if they don't have any parasites they die when you—" he cut off as the Parasite Cure finished. He died instantly.

---

"Well," Sarah said, ignoring her still gobsmacked nieces. "At least now we can make sure Amy cuts down her hospital hours."

"He just died, AGAIN." Amy nearly screamed at her aunt.

"Yes, he does that." Eric said, already having the benefit of experience with Dave over his cousins.

"That… what?" Vicky was still processing.

Amy meanwhile, after calming down a little, opened the Health Station, and took out a Hot Pocket, and examined it with her power. As she had suspected, it was the same not-biology that Dave himself was made of when he was dead… or at least that his body was made of since presumably his consciousness was what counted as 'him' and that was floating around elsewhere when he was dead.

"Oh, right," Crystal gently smacked her hand with her fist, "Mom, remind me to ask him about the plant pot when he comes back, I don't think he could do that before."

After she said that, the Healing Station started slowly moving a couple of centimeters at a time towards Crystal.

"I assume this is related to what you were talking about?" Sarah asked her daughter while indicating the slowly moving healing station, while Vicky leaned in to inspect the buttons on the healing station and holding it still with her super strength.

"I think this thing has options guys. Like, I think the buttons let us choose how hot we want the burrito or hot pocket, and what ingredients we want in them." Vicky said after examining the buttons for a moment.

She messed around with the buttons, before taking out a Burrito under Sarah's bemused gaze, and took a bite from it. Amy yelped and scolded her sister before grabbing her hand, "Idiot, wait until I'm able to start examining you first. Even if Dave was right about everything, we don't know what he or his power considers 'healing', and I need a baseline of you to make sure I catch everything it does."

"Aww, I knew you would save me if anything went wrong Ames. Anyways, Aunt Sarah, these burritos are pretty good, I think you might be in danger of being replaced." Vicky joked.

"Huh," Amy said after a moment.

"Well?" Vicky asked, totally confident in her sister's ability to protect her if there were adverse effects.

"It's hard to say what it is doing about 'damage' since you aren't exactly grievously wounded, but it is improving your health a little. It's removing cholesterol buildup in your arteries from all the junk food you eat that I haven't gotten rid of recently, and it's removing the lifetime of microplastics from your body."

Vicky frowned, "If I have microplastics in my body, why haven't you gotten rid of them sis?"

"Because they are in your brain," Amy said dryly, before letting go of Vicky's hand. "That was reckless Vicky. While Dave seems like he wouldn't intentionally harm us, and obviously Aunt Sarah and our cousins are vouching for him, you shouldn't recklessly try Parahuman effects on yourself, especially while I'm not already touching you and you've just seen another example of that same Parahuman's power instantly kill someone when used on them."

Vicky gave her sister puppy dog eyes. "But… but… I trusted you would save me if anything went wrong! And these burritos are so good and I was still hungry!"

Amy caved immediately. "Fine, as long as you don't do it again," she muttered.

After it was established just how wrapped around Vicky's finger Amy was, Eric took out a Hotpocket from the Health Station and offered "Mom, Crys, you two want to split this one with me? If we split it into thirds and eat our pieces one at a time we can let Amy examine its healing effects three times while also getting rid of any of those microplastic things she mentioned. That sound good Ames?" Eric directed the last part to Amy who nodded.

"Yeah, it's better to get as many samples as possible, especially when it comes to healing, though we will also need to get a non-parahuman volunteer to try the food— and the machine itself—to make sure it isn't limited to only healing parahumans or something."

Crystal immediately sold out her friend, "Bella will do it. She already knows Dave and is familiar with his powers. She also has never had a checkup from the legendary Panacea herself," Crystal smiled at Amy, who blushed a little at being called legendary after only having her powers for a little over a month, "so I'd be happy to have the assurance that would come from her having something that can remove health problems like this. Also, she might snack on them if they are healthy enough, she doesn't have enough snack options in her apartment."

"While I can't look at the burritos and Hotpockets themselves," Amy started before grabbing Vicky's hand again, "I can see them starting to break down in Vicky's system, and if I accelerate it a little," she looked at Vicky, who quickly gave permission to go ahead, "I can see… they seem to be breaking down into a wide mix of nutrients… in fact they seem to be breaking up into exactly whatever Vicky needs most of, while none of it is breaking up into the things she already has enough of."

She paused for a moment to let the accelerated operations of Vicky's stomach finish. "Huh, the last bit of the burrito just didn't turn into any calories, but the first part of the burrito did. I'm starting to think that it may just turn into whatever combination of nutrients and calories would be healthiest for whoever is consuming it, while just dissipating into nothingness if they don't need anything at all at that moment. It doesn't look like it's related to what it does for healing though, that happened as Vicky was eating it instead of while she was digesting it."

Crystal was impressed. "Wow, that's actually a lot more impressive than I was expecting. Dad will love these, I'm gonna set two of each aside for him for when he gets back. He needs to eat a lot, so something that tastes at least alright but also has all the nutrients and calories he needs will be great. We might even end up turning these into lunch boxes or something to bring with us when we are doing patrols or training and need a lot of calories. They will also probably make staying in shape a lot easier if they won't continue adding calories to our body after we have had enough already, while also providing enough nutrients like protein that we need to build muscle." She analyzed, before doing as she said and grabbing the Hot Pocket and Burrito from the Health Station, then closing the door to it and opening it again and grabbing the new Hot Pocket and Burrito, and going to the kitchen to set them in containers for her dad.

"I'm just glad that we'll have something to help Amy. Both to lighten her load at the hospital and in case she ever gets hurt. You spend too much time at the hospital Ames, and if Dave can get enough of these, then you won't have any excuse to spend so much time there!" Vicky said before pouting at Amy.

"I spend so much time there because people need healing Vicky. With a power able to healing, it is my responsibility to heal them, and if they aren't healed, that makes it my fault if they die or are permanently injured when I could have helped them."

"Bullshit," Sarah said, despite Eric's immediate "Language!" that spoke of being on the receiving end of a scolding for swearing too many times.

"Your only moral responsibility Amy, is to enjoy your childhood while you still can. You have an amazing power and can do a lot of good, yes, but it is not your duty to fix everything wrong with everyone. You should talk to Crystal about her Philosophy classes she is taking, and look into seeing if there are any you could take at Arcadia. You should never be thinking that way Amy, it risks too many things."

"Like what?" Amy asked, having never received anything but acceptance from her adopted mother at the idea of spending all her time at the hospital.

"Well for one thing, an overinflated ego. Power over people's life and death can cause god-complexes in regular doctors, let alone one of the world's most powerful healers. It's not a major risk with you of course, but you could end up that way after a few years if the cards fell the wrong way. Burnout is a near guarantee, along with overwhelming guilt for everyone you fail to save, and there will be people you fail to save, whether because you aren't quick enough at healing them, they are too stubborn to accept help, they don't get to you quickly enough, they are too damaged for you to help by the time they get to you, or they have something wrong with their brains. That's not mentioning that there is only so much time in the day, and you can't be everywhere at once, and simple logistics means you can't help two people on opposite sides of the cities if both are near death, and trying to save both could mean failing to save either." Sarah went into lecture mode, as Amy looked slightly guilty, but also thoughtful, while Vicky was just happy that someone else was telling Amy all this and seemed to be getting it into her skull successfully.

"Then there is the risk of people becoming dependent on you. If people think they can just be treated by Panacea as long as they go to the hospital, a lot of idiots will take risks and injure themselves when they otherwise wouldn't and that will get some of them killed. Some of those idiots will just be teenagers doing stupid stunts to impress their friends because they don't know any better and their brains haven't developed the right parts to properly understand how to measure risks yet."

Vicky looked guilty now, probably because she was a risk-taking teenager. Sarah continued her lecture, having built up even more steam.

"And then there are the villains. If the villains see that injuring a hero just results in them coming back a couple days later because you healed them, they will be more likely to seriously injure a hero and risk accidentally killing them, or just escalating and killing a hero on purpose because they don't want them to be back in the field as quickly as you can get them back in. Either way, healing heroes too much and too indiscriminately can result in villains escalating and heroes dying."

Sarah still had more to say. "Then there are doctors and pharmaceutical companies. They are busy people yes, but if you somehow managed to heal everyone the doctors would become dependent on you because they are used to have you bail them out if they make mistakes, in addition to you just being able to heal people much more quickly. They also might stop ordering drugs that they need to help people if those drugs start going bad because you heal people that would otherwise need them before they actually use the drugs. Then there are insurance rates. They have to decide insurance rates and you affect those in multiple ways…" Sarah continued on, starting to make Amy dizzy from how much Sarah had to say about her hospital time.

Spoiler: Big Author's Note, I Put it in Spoiler Box to Not Affect Word Count

(Big) Author's Note: Here we go, another serious-ish conversation. The Pelham house really seems to attract those doesn't it? Either way, we find out Amy has surprisingly few mental problems so far. I use the Worm Wiki Timeline page for a lot in this story, and it says that Vicky claims that Amy triggered some time in 2010, but that Amy claims she triggered in late 2009. I'm inclined to believe Amy with regards to when Amy triggered.

Anyways, that means she has only been working at the hospital for a little while, she only recently made her decision to not work on brains, and she only recently made the decision to not do anything with her power beyond healing. In other words, she isn't really burning out yet, she hasn't lost touch with reality from getting too much gratitude from people, she isn't overwhelmed by internal guilt for not saving everybody, she hasn't started smoking yet, and her power isn't furious at her for not using it for anything aside from healing. She's still a closeted lesbian that has an incest fetish and isn't aware that 'step-something' is one of the most common porn tropes of all time and has few friends in high school… and lives in Brockton Bay, so obviously she isn't exactly a picture of mental health, but it's nowhere near as bad yet as people (readers, not people on Earth Bet) normally think of her being.

It turns out, drawing the Pelhams' attention to Amy's problems before they start snowballing may be just what the doctor ordered… heh, I'm so clever… get it? Because Panacea and healing, and Dave just got the Doctor role?... Okay, I'm sorry, I'll go now.

Not really going, I've still got more to say, I'll probably put this author's note in a spoiler box actually. So, Dave had a lot of extra space in his soul because he hasn't gotten that many roles yet and only the Doctor has had shop items so far, so his power went a little ham on adding features like ingredient options for the hot pockets and burritos. (Get it, went ham on adding ingredients?... I'm sorry)

This doesn't mean he can solve world hunger. While he can generate a new source of infinite food every ten minutes, that won't actually help with world hunger that much. (I want to say Accord canonically had the goal of solving world hunger as well actually. If someone can verify that for me, that would be nice, and I'll start planning to take that into account down the road). In real life, we actually have enough food to solve world hunger, and have had enough for a while. The problem is that it is expensive to get the food to where the people that need it are, and then those people aren't necessarily able to afford it, especially after the price increases to reflect how difficult it was to transport the food there. Ultimately, in real life, the problem with world hunger is purely cost and logistics. If we had unlimited Star Trek style transporters that didn't need energy, we could solve World Hunger in however long it took to get the paper work done… and we solved poverty, because otherwise we would also need to be willing to give food to people who can't afford to pay for it, and the Star Trek thing is more likely than that happening.

On Earth Bet however, someone like Accord could –given enough time— singlehandedly make a logistics network sufficient to solve world hunger… if it weren't for the Endbringers, who would attack both the network itself and food sources like farms. Unfortunately, without at least a few years to stockpile enough Health Stations, and some method to ensure they wouldn't get destroyed by bad actors after arriving wherever they needed to go, Dave just can't make enough food to actually make a dent in world hunger.

Also, Dave remembers he can possess props while in spectator mode!

There are a couple other things that happened that are worth mentioning, like the parasite cures, but I'll leave that for you to discuss and think about as you wish.

I'm sure absolutely nothing will go wrong with using parasite cures on Earth Bet. Why would anything go wrong with using a parasite cure on Earth Bet after all?

 

[Blitz9876]

…. Does the parasite cure work on shards since they are technically parasites? If so, does that mean he can take away powers from parahuman? XD

 

[SpaceWhale]

Dave was exactly what the doctor ordered

 

[Megatherium]

…. Does the parasite cure work on shards since they are technically parasites? If so, does that mean he can take away powers from parahuman? XD

Click to shrink...

his alien friend sorta counts as a shard right? or am i misremembering? regardless, i wanna guess nooooo but Dave's whole thing is wacky enough that i could see the gun be a temp nullifier. and if it does work, it'd be funny if he accidentally used the gun on any of the triumvirate

 

[Phili]

Chapter 16: Operation Protect Pan-Pan is a Go!

January 3, 2010. Brockton Bay, Pelham House, the Dining Room.



Amy was mentally spinning while Crystal and Eric looked on with sympathy at receiving one of Sarah's lectures, this one in particular, they had both received before on how doing the right thing was actually wrong under certain circumstances. Vicky just looked happy that Amy would probably be spending less time at the hospital.

"I'm back!" Dave said as he respawned from where he had died.

"Welcome back," Eric said reflexively, before doing a small double take at the exact situation, before shrugging and deciding it was the right thing to say anyways.

"So," Dave said, turning to Amy, "I hear you have a neat power."

"Yes?" Amy said suspiciously, but still off-kilter from Sarah's lecture.

"Can you do more than healing with it? Like, could you turn someone else into a Pikachu? Then make them evolve? Then turn them back into a human? Or like—" Dave got interrupted.

"Ames can only do healing I'm afraid." Vicky said in a slightly guarded tone.

"Oh, that's a shame. While it doesn't seem like it would have a ton of synergy with my powers, that would have been a pretty strong Trump rating if you could do more. It's quite good as it is of course, but I'm sure everyone here aside from myself, along with your parents and uncle would enjoy a bit of extra protection from a bonus to their Brute ratings, along with things like enhanced reflexes and stamina to make sure they can avoid injuries and stay active in fights. Maybe you could try something like blood doping them? All-natural steroids by 'healing' them to give them extra blood, and therefore oxygen as an emergency performance boost during combat? I know there are all kinds of neat superpowers in the natural animal world, I think gorillas are like four times as strong as a human the same size and stuff, so I just wanted to know if you could do things like give Crystal the superpower of that one lizard, and let her shoot blood out of her eyes." Dave went in a different direction than Vicky and Amy expected, but about where Crystal, Sarah, and Eric thought he was going. Not the exact details, but wanting Crystal to be able to shoot blood out of her eyes seemed pretty on-brand for Dave.

"Oh. Uhh, maybe I could try the oxygen thing?" Amy said, desperately looking at Vicky for help.

"We can try it later, just us two." Vicky said.

Neither one noticed Sarah and Crystal looking at them suspiciously.

---

"So Crystal, why did you want me to bring this?" Vicky asked, holding up a water bottle with a piece of tape on it with the words 'DO NOT DRINK'.

Crystal was ecstatic, "You actually brought it? Pay up Eric, I win!"

"No you don't, I never agreed to that sucker's bet. It was obvious that Vicky was going to do it as soon as she heard it would do something interesting with powers." Eric said.

"Hey, I'm not that predictable," Vicky pouted.

"Yes you are Vicky, we love you, but you brought your used bathwater without asking questions as soon as you heard it might do something interesting with a parahuman power," Crystal said.

Crystal quickly explained the gist of Dave's Beggar role, and that he had already 'loosened up' another role with it that would let him unlock a bunch of neat things, including things he could give others like the Healing Station, and that Crystal suspected Vicky's bathwater would be enough to fully unlock it.

"So, since an open cape's panties were enough to almost unlock the role, I was thinking, someone like you Vicky, who is a 'gamer girl', and an open cape, and objectively highly attractive, would be even more significant, and the bathwater would be 'bigger' so to speak compared to panties, and thus would probably fully unlock his role." Crystal finished her explanation.

"You gave him your panties?" Amy questioned.

"No," Crystal did not elaborate.

Amy turned to stare at Sarah who just smiled with amusement and didn't clarify.

"Well, if Aunt Sarah did it… sure!" Vicky came to a decision remarkably quickly. Nobody corrected her assumption, Sarah out of mischief and Crystal and Eric out of mortification, Amy out of ignorance, and Dave out of not wanting to accidentally prevent himself from getting a Toy.

"Dave," Sarah interrupted before any reckless decisions could be made, "Be sure you want to do this now. If it does work, then that means the protectorate won't be able to analyze your power while you are gaining a new role. If you don't care then that's fine, but if you want to know more about what happens when you gain a role, you should consider waiting until they have you hooked up to things to analyze what is happening."

Dave nodded to Sarah solemnly.

"Toy please," Dave reached out his hand. Vicky handed the cheap plastic water bottle, which she just now realized was probably a source of the microplastics Amy had mentioned, over to Dave and waited to see if anything would happen.

"So… want another superpower?" Dave turned to Amy and asked.

"What… me? I don't go into combat. And did it work?" Amy questioned confusedly.

"I am now a Traitor! And even if you don't plan to go into combat, this bad boy also helps with noncombat! It's the ultimate soda!" He said, before pulling out a purple soda bottle from his inventory, implying it did in fact work. The soda bottle had the words "PhD Flopper" written on the side in large letters.

"You just do this…" he said before chugging the entire thing and letting out a loud burp.

"And Viola! I am now immune to explosions and fall damage. Also, if I would fall a far enough distance at a fast enough speed to actually harm me, I just explode instead! So now I can jump off a building onto an Innocent Terrorist and cause an explosion big enough to kill them instantly!"

"It's voila not viola, a viola is a musical instrument like a smaller violin" Crystal said at the same time as Amy said "You can't just kill people, and what do you mean 'innocent terrorist'?"

Eric had another question. "Can you turn off the making-an-explosion part though? That seems like, if she takes it, it's just asking for her to get tossed by a villain or something and accidentally kill someone when she lands."

"Nope! Can't turn off the explosions. Well, I'll be able to eventually, maybe I can extend that to other people? Maybe make a variation? But for now, no."

"I don't think I should take it then," Amy said reluctantly, unhappy about losing out on cool powers, but not really seeing the point in powers that only protect against explosions and falling when she shouldn't be seeing combat anyways, especially if they came with the downside of risking killing other people any time she fell hard enough.

"Actually, Dave, do you know how those interact with flight?" Sarah asked with interest.

"Yes actually, that was going to be my next offer… as soon as I got enough credits to buy more anyways. If you land on the ground normally, nothing happens, if you would hurt yourself when you land, you explode, but also aren't actually hurt by either the explosion or by the fall." Dave replied.

"Hmm, I think we flyers might take you up on that then. If we actually need to cause the explosion, Crystal, Eric, Vicky and I can all disable our forcefields at our feet and increase our flight speed while going down to land harder; and if we don't want to cause the explosion, we can just land gently or keep our forcefields up, or both." Sarah said thoughtfully, before turning to Vicky.

"Vicky, it's up to you if you want to use one of these, but you and Eric will both need to do some training before you're allowed to drink one of those."

"What, why?" Eric complained.

"Because you two are the youngest aside from Amy, who was mature enough to think through what she wanted and decided to refuse a flashy new power. This won't help any of us much, but it has a lot of synergy with Mark's powers and would let him use his explosions nearer to us, even right next to us, and would increase New Wave's effectiveness as a whole. While he probably won't want one of these himself since he is already immune to his own explosions, us taking them would make him a lot more effective. If you two want to take it, you would be training with me and Mark, and my sister if she decides to take it, so we can make sure you have the maturity required to actually use it properly, and not do anything stupid like damage property and hurt people by causing an unnecessary explosion when you land for dramatic effect."

"I meant why doesn't Crystal have to do it?" Eric asked.

"Because she is a fully grown adult now, she will be training with me to get a handle on it if she decides to use it, but I trust she is mature enough to not need extra training to ensure she won't do something stupid with a flashy new power. If she wasn't going to be busy with college, I would have said she would probably be helping train you and Vicky with it."

Dave nodded sagely throughout Sarah's explanation, before turning back to Amy.

"So, I was thinking, I'll get you other stuff eventually, but right now, you are my squishiest friendo aside from Bella, who will be getting her own toys from me later. If you don't want a Flopper, I'll find other toys for you to play with. In the meantime, take these!" He pulled out a bunch of goodies for the Panpan to play with.

"And just let me know if you ever need a refill on ammo or supplies, or if you lose or break any of these, and I'll give you a new one, I have an unlimited supply!" he said as he handed her a whole bunch of family friendly fun things. While he hadn't gotten any new credits yet after he bought the flopper, he would eventually equip as much of New Wave (and Bella) as he could with fun toys.

He gave her a Pocket Sniper Rifle, a Flare Gun that worked both as a regular flare gun and a device that set anyone hit by a 'bullet' from it on fire for a set amount of time (but the 'bullet' itself didn't harm them)—though it also perfectly destroyed any bodies it was used on and left no evidence behind—, a minifier, a parasite cure, a knife ("I'll teach you how to throw it," he told her), a pistol, a double barrel shotgun, and two of each kind of grenade he had available: Smoke, Discombobulator, and Incendiary.

"There we go, now if you don't like someone you can diagnose them with a bullet to the face from mysterious causes, it was too late by the time you got to them. And if some asshole tries to kidnap you to force you to heal them like one of those stupid movie cliché things, you can 'diagnose' them with the Parasite Cure –actually take two, just in case they do have parasites—so when they suddenly die of mysterious causes, nobody can be blamed for their unexpected allergic reaction to life!" Dave suggested brightly to Amy who now had her arms full of guns and grenades and had had to set the knife, minifier, and parasite cure down on the table.

"I don't know how to use any of these things," Amy said.

"Don't worry, we can fix that with a little time and unlimited ammo! I'll make you into a wonderful terrorist before you know it."

Amy turned to Vicky, "Help."

"No-can-do sis," Vicky said, "I always wanted you to have more ways of defending yourself, this works great as far as I'm concerned."

Sarah gave her input, "We'll need to make arrangements, and actually get you trained with how and when to use firearms, but I don't see a problem with you having some of those with you when you are acting as a hero. You obviously can't bring most of those to school—" "Why not?" wondered Dave – "but when healing in the hospital or working as a hero, or just walking down the street when you might get recognized, having a concealed weapon that you only use in an emergency could be a good thing. I trust you Amy, to be mature enough to only bring a weapon out if you actually need it, and a flare gun is a good way to quickly signal you need help in an emergency if you can't call one of us quickly enough for some reason. You know what happened to my sister and I, so I actually do approve of Dave's measures in case you get kidnapped, and if you need to use his parasite cure as he suggested, well…" she chuckled darkly in anger at the though of someone kidnapping her adopted niece "sometimes things happen, and I would argue Darwinism can count as natural causes. I believe that one," she pointed at the minifier, "is the thing Dave uses to shrink, and that could be a great tool for escaping in an emergency, or just being harder to find, so I'll see if I can get the school to let you bring it with you so you can always have it on you."

Amy was wide eyed at how protective her aunt was. "That's… a lot. Are you sure? I thought the idea was to make sure nobody attacked me in the first place?"

"It is," Sarah confirmed before continuing "but while we did put measures in place, and designed your costume and filled out the paperwork to have you protected under truce, it doesn't mean much if whoever attacks you is destroyed if you are hurt or killed in the process. That's a thought," Sarah paused mid-speech, she really seemed to like her speeches, didn't she?

"If you are willing, now that you will be spending less time at the hospital," she put a lot of emphasis on that, both the part about Amy being willing and the part about spending less time at the hospital "we can see about contacting permanently injured and disabled heroes, and even rogues, across the country, or even through the Guild to get some international heroes, or maybe even further abroad, and you could heal them, and they will owe you a favor. As long as we play our cards right and make it known how many formerly disabled heroes you have helped, we can make sure your reputation expands to include 'is protected and will be avenged by hundreds, or even thousands, of heroes across the entire globe.' At the same time of course, we –or rather, you— would also be bringing disabled heroes back into the scene, and doing good from the direct manner of having healed them and indirect good from all the people they will then help."

"Of course," Sarah continued, "No amount of reputation will help with certain kinds of people, either idiots, people not in their right mind, or the utterly insane and evil like the Nine or the Teeth, so I think we should still go with Dave's idea of arming you and concealing as many weapons on you as we can after teaching you how and when to use them."

She looked at Amy affectionately, "I know you don't come over as often as you used to Amy, but we do all love you and want you protected. You don't have to carry the firearms if you really don't want to, but I suggest you do, your hero robes are highly concealing anyways, and if nobody knows, then they won't anticipate them; and they would mostly be idiot insurance in the first place. Either way, I would like to strongly advise you to at least bring the shrinking thing with you everywhere you go, and the knife and flare gun when you aren't in school." Sarah finished.

Amy was gobsmacked for some reason. Honestly, she looked like she hadn't received open affection from an adult in months and had forgotten what it felt like or something.







Author's Note: And here we go. Another serious-ish conversation at the Pelham house. I've always felt that Worm's grimderpness was built on a pile of bad decisions and idiocy yes, but also on a pile of bad lack and unfortunate timing and coincidences, along with a heaping of poor communication. Seriously, how unlikely was it that Amy never realized a step-sibling fetish was one of the most common kinks of all time (according to porn statistics at least)? Not to mention, I feel like a lot of problems in Worm are caused by the same thing that causes a good 30 or more percent of problems in all of fiction: communication, or lack thereof.

Continuing that line of thought… All it takes to start chipping away at Amy's problems is a little luck making Sarah and Crystal notice something is stressing Amy out early on, and giving her the love and affection she craves but can't get from her step-mother, while also representing two sane(-ish, they are still parahumans) adults that are smart enough to suss out Amy's 'dark secrets' and pop her self-hatred balloon before it gets too big.

Meanwhile, Dave has decided that the Panpan must be protected so she can grow into a big strong terrorist, and has decided to teach her his ways, since she is, as far as he knows, the most vulnerable person he knows, as someone that is just as defenseless as Bella, but with less common sense and a much bigger target… not that he isn't going to also equip Bella.

There are some pretty neat things in the Traitor menu, and New Wave will be getting some upgrades… but only eventually, for now, he is out of credits and doesn't have many things available in his shop.

Next time, we find out the consequences to squeezing Dave's soul full of 5 roles when it is only supposed to fit 3! It's not a terrible consequence really, just a bit of an annoyance really. After that, we go to see the Protectorate, meet some other heroes, get some power testing done, and maybe corrupt a couple of wards along the way. The next day (in-universe), Dave is going to go on his first patrol! So those of you waiting for action, you only need to wait a little bit longer, I promise.

 

[SpaceWhale]

i dont know why but reading the author note just made me think of Dave getting the summoner gun(think that was the one that summoned a giant bug) and him doing something random with it