Chapter 23: Hangin' Out With The Crew in The School Yard Bar?
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Phili
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Chapter 23: Hangin' Out With The Crew in The School Yard Bar?
January 6, 2010, Wednesday. Brockton Bay, Dave's Apartment.
Dave woke up… again. He had forgotten yesterday to try and figure out exactly who was waking him up after he concluded it was enemy action, but he'll figure it out today for sure!
Why do I keep waking up? Who is doing this to me? I bet my soul mate Miss Militia doesn't have to deal with waking up every single day.
Bagel in toaster, orange juice poured, water for tea in the kettle on the stove with the stove turned on; Dave was ready for the start of the day.
Huh. "You've gotten good at explaining things without writing them in English." Dave offered a compliment to Daf.
"Have you considered adding them?" Dave wondered.
"There there," Dave patted his own head as he started eating his breakfast.
"I'm going to classes Dave; the college starts up again today after Winter break." Bella told him when he went to bother her—in his normal form this time.
"I'll go bother Crystal then!" He decided as Bella walked to her car.
"She has classes too." Bella told him bluntly.
"Uhh…"
Bella sighed. "High schools probably have the rest of the week off if you want to bother the rest of New Wave, and the older generation are full time heroes aside from Brandish, so they might be willing to take you on a patrol or something." She caved and gave him the information he needed.
"Thank you Bella! I love you!" Dave said gleefully.
"I heard that you said that to Miss Militia too, does she know you have feelings for another woman?" Bella asked with a strange expression on her face.
"Miss Militia is my soul mate." Dave confirmed.
"Just… whatever. Sorry Dave, I really need to leave now in order to not be late to class. I'm sure you can manage to entertain yourself without me and Crystal somehow. If you give strong enough puppy dog eyes, and we manage to finish our homework early enough, the three of us might be able to hang out later today." Bella said, before she left to go to her classes.
Dave was in his Scyther form, walking along on his way to the Pelham house. It was a nice sunny day, and he waved to a couple of people he saw along the way. One of them even waved back.
"Hey, can we talk for a second?" Someone said to him from the side.
Dave turned and found… a person. He never would have expected that. He was a rather tall man with visible muscles and wearing sunglasses.
"My employer would like to speak with you as soon as you are able, and she said that –"
"Alright let's go!" Dave interrupted. How convenient, something to do!
"Oh, uh, alright. Follow me please." The mean said, before walking in a different direction, occasionally glancing back to see if Dave was following him.
They quickly arrived to a parked car, and the man said "Come in please, I'll drive you to meet my boss."
"Sure thing." Dave agreed.
After the man started driving, Dave quickly grew bored and asked, "So, are you kidnapping me?"
"What? No, of course not, we don't do that kind of thing." The man said in an offended tone.
"What kind of terrorist refuses to kidnap people?" Dave asked, puzzled.
"What? I'm not a terrorist? What would give you that idea?" Now the man was just confused.
"Well, who else would see a green bug monster with swords for arms, and decide to try and bring them back to their boss? Oh wait, I see now. You're a poacher!" Dave happily concluded.
"No! Ew, I got shivers from hearing that. Do you have any idea how incredibly evil a poacher is? The shit they pull makes the Nazi dog-fighting rings look like top-notch humanitarian animal welfare clubs…" The man started going on about how evil poachers were.
Great, he's just like Sarah. Another speech-happy maniac. Although, now that I think about it, none of the other terrorists I've met so far have given me a kidnapping vibe either. Both New Wave and the Protectorate actually give me the impression they would object to kidnapping. Wait a Minute… I object to kidnapping! Am… Am I a bad terrorist?... Nah.
The car pulled up to a fairly fancy bar called 'Palanquin,' and the driver said, "well, here we are."
The driver, Jeff, turned out to be a really nice guy. Apparently, he was a bouncer at this place, but the boss wanted to talk to Dave for some reason, and he volunteered so he could drive his new car around the city.
They walked in, and Jeff led the way upstairs and knocked on a door. "I brought him boss, should I open the door?"
"Yes, please, come in." A female voice answered from the other side of the door.
Jeff opened the door and stepped in, waving for Dave to go in with him as he did so.
"Here he is boss."
"Thanks Jeff, I hope you had a nice ride. You can leave now, please close the door on your way out." A woman in a moderately armored costume and a welder's mask said.
Jeff left, saying "hey, hit me up on your way out," as he did so.
"What a nice man." Dave commented in his best Florida accent, before turning to the rest of the room.
"Allow me to introduce us, I am Faultline, this is Gregor, he is Newter, and that is Labyrinth." She said, pointing at each other person in the room in turn, Dave recognized them anyways of course. Gregor being the large man with translucent skin and internals, to the point one could see his skeleton; and Newter being an orange-skinned man with a rather cool tail. Labyrinth was probably in her late teens, and wore a green dress with a maze on the front and a simple mask.
"Okay." Dave said. Everyone looked at him expectantly. "Oh right, I'm supposed to introduce myself back, I go by Trouble!"
"It's good to meet you Trouble. You see, we wanted to reach out to you as soon as we got word of a new, local, Case 53. I imagine you have been very confused. May I ask when you woke up without any memories?" Faultline politely asked.
Dave wondered why they wanted to reach out to him after hearing of a Case 53. Maybe they heard about how he was a chill cool guy from the same source that informed them of a new, local, Case 53?
"I woke up on January 1, 2010 with amnesia, why do you ask?"
"You see," Faultline began, "we have been investigating the origins of Case 53s, and we are, as you might guess," she gestured to Newter and Gregor, "rather sympathetic to their plights. So, we wanted to offer you a few things, none of them being contingent on each other. The first, which you may of course think about, is a spot on our team. We are like family, so there would be growing pains as we all get accustomed to each other, but I thought I should mention that offer first. Aside from that, even if you should refuse that, we wanted to offer to get you set up with an identity; and Gregor and Newter wanted to share their experiences with picking their names so you could give your own proper consideration."
"Oh, I already picked my name, and I apparently still had my ID on me when I woke up… or I woke up in someone else's apartment wearing their clothes I suppose. Nobody has claimed I was stealing their identity though. It was a great coincidence really, the name I picked out turned out to be the name on my ID, which I thought really was astoundingly unlikely." Dave explained.
"Hmm, those are quite unusual circumstances for a Case 53, regarding your ID, perhaps you subconsciously remembered your name?" Gregor mused.
"Guys, this could be a clue! These are really unusual circumstances for a Case 53, right? They never have any sort of identification on them when they wake up with no memories!" Newter said excitedly.
"I thought it was more likely that reality was rewritten so my ID matched the name I picked than me subconsciously remembering my name." Dave replied to Gregor's musing.
"You did?" Labyrinth seemed to perk up at that. It was actually quite cute. "Does your power rewrite reality in some way?" She asked.
"I… have no idea!" Dave said proudly.
"Um… what?" Labyrinth was confused for some reason.
"My power does lots of things, I never actually asked it if it did the ID thing though. I'll grant you; I haven't actually tried to rewrite reality myself. When I woke up, my powers were mainly guns, double jumping, being really easy to kill, and transforming." They all nodded along until that last bit.
"Wait, transforming?" Faultine asked.
"Yeah, like this." Dave said, then transformed.
Everyone screamed, three guns shot at him and reality spontaneously broke, specifically to cut him in half. He died instantly.
red shirt instead of blue of course.
Author's Note: I'm starting to get sick, so the quality may be a little lower than usual… I won't really be able to tell if it dips, because again, I'm starting to get sick. It shouldn't affect the schedule too much, I've written stuff in advance specifically for this type of issue, so by the time you see this chapter I might already be better… hopefully. All I usually do the day a chapter goes up is proofread it one last time and check the word count and decide if I need to put up another chapter if the first one is too short.
And today, we unlock the Good Boy role! Also, I started putting the days of the week in the date and location thingy at the start of each chapter. I looked up what day of the week January 1, 2010 was and went from there, but Dave didn't actually think about what day of the week it was until this chapter, so the previous chapters won't get that added through the magic of editing. I sure hope Wildbow matched the days of the week with the real-life dates, otherwise that could get awkward upon reaching canon time periods.
Anyways, the Good Boy role, now Dave can accept headpats! Also, some people might draw comparisons between the Good Boy powers and certain other parahuman powersets, one in particular really, and draw strange conclusions, but I'm sure it'll be fine. If anyone correctly guesses what I'm referring to there, I will award the first person to do so a Burrito Point (as long as they do so before that comparison is first made 'on-screen' of course).
And uh… nothing else really happens this chapter… Yup, nothing at all.
Regarding his ID, I've been planning that in the background for a while now, and I'm looking forward to the reveal of what exactly is on his ID. That probably won't happen for a bit though, Dave is much too smort to be tricked into revealing his real name to these terrorists! He will be trying to get an extra ID out of them though. There is a name he wants to use, and I want him to use it as well. If anyone correctly guesses it, I will award them One (1), dingus Point. A rare and powerful currency, only bestowed upon those blessed by the dingus. A hint for what he wants his ID to be is: It was the name of an episode of TTT.
As of just before I upload this chapter, it looks like nobody successfully guessed that he would be meeting Faultline's Crew next, even after he was walking around as a Scyther. Did… did people believe me when I said who he was meeting was unrelated to the walking around as a Scyther thing? If so, I guess that's just one of the limitations of text instead of speech. Maybe I should have said 'definitely unrelated' instead of 'totally unrelated' or something.
January 6, 2010, Wednesday. Brockton Bay, Dave's Apartment.
Dave woke up… again. He had forgotten yesterday to try and figure out exactly who was waking him up after he concluded it was enemy action, but he'll figure it out today for sure!
Why do I keep waking up? Who is doing this to me? I bet my soul mate Miss Militia doesn't have to deal with waking up every single day.
Bagel in toaster, orange juice poured, water for tea in the kettle on the stove with the stove turned on; Dave was ready for the start of the day.
| Good Morning Dave! |
| So, you haven't unlocked your 'False False Swipe' yet, but progress has been made. I thought about things a bit, and decided to disable any roles you might get with shops in them for today. You see, shop items naturally take up soul room, and you need soul room to get your false swipe thing, so having more shops unlocked means your soul will need more room for shop items that it then can't use for other things. Don't worry though, math dictates that each thing you unlock that doesn't have a shop will make you more likely to unlock something with a shop later. Also, it won't exactly take long to get your False False Swipe thing going, probably a couple more days at most of going out as a Scyther. Anyways, today, your new role is the Good Boy! This one works a little differently than you might expect. Instead of blinding whoever kills you for fifteen seconds or whatever, you can decide in advance how long you want whoever kills you to be blinded for. And of course, you can unblind whoever kills you at will at any point. Because of this, the default blinding length I have set it for is 'forever'. |
Huh. "You've gotten good at explaining things without writing them in English." Dave offered a compliment to Daf.
| There are no walls in soul space Dave, you can't make me bash my head against one! |
"Have you considered adding them?" Dave wondered.
| *Sigh* Just… whatever. I give up. Maybe you'll be able to read my perfectly normal English letters after your soul grows more or something. Like, I had heard humans got weird, but every bit of knowledge I have says that you should be able to read these, and that if you somehow couldn't you wouldn't be able to understand it at all. |
"There there," Dave patted his own head as he started eating his breakfast.
"I'm going to classes Dave; the college starts up again today after Winter break." Bella told him when he went to bother her—in his normal form this time.
"I'll go bother Crystal then!" He decided as Bella walked to her car.
"She has classes too." Bella told him bluntly.
"Uhh…"
Bella sighed. "High schools probably have the rest of the week off if you want to bother the rest of New Wave, and the older generation are full time heroes aside from Brandish, so they might be willing to take you on a patrol or something." She caved and gave him the information he needed.
"Thank you Bella! I love you!" Dave said gleefully.
"I heard that you said that to Miss Militia too, does she know you have feelings for another woman?" Bella asked with a strange expression on her face.
"Miss Militia is my soul mate." Dave confirmed.
"Just… whatever. Sorry Dave, I really need to leave now in order to not be late to class. I'm sure you can manage to entertain yourself without me and Crystal somehow. If you give strong enough puppy dog eyes, and we manage to finish our homework early enough, the three of us might be able to hang out later today." Bella said, before she left to go to her classes.
Dave was in his Scyther form, walking along on his way to the Pelham house. It was a nice sunny day, and he waved to a couple of people he saw along the way. One of them even waved back.
"Hey, can we talk for a second?" Someone said to him from the side.
Dave turned and found… a person. He never would have expected that. He was a rather tall man with visible muscles and wearing sunglasses.
"My employer would like to speak with you as soon as you are able, and she said that –"
"Alright let's go!" Dave interrupted. How convenient, something to do!
"Oh, uh, alright. Follow me please." The mean said, before walking in a different direction, occasionally glancing back to see if Dave was following him.
They quickly arrived to a parked car, and the man said "Come in please, I'll drive you to meet my boss."
"Sure thing." Dave agreed.
After the man started driving, Dave quickly grew bored and asked, "So, are you kidnapping me?"
"What? No, of course not, we don't do that kind of thing." The man said in an offended tone.
"What kind of terrorist refuses to kidnap people?" Dave asked, puzzled.
"What? I'm not a terrorist? What would give you that idea?" Now the man was just confused.
"Well, who else would see a green bug monster with swords for arms, and decide to try and bring them back to their boss? Oh wait, I see now. You're a poacher!" Dave happily concluded.
"No! Ew, I got shivers from hearing that. Do you have any idea how incredibly evil a poacher is? The shit they pull makes the Nazi dog-fighting rings look like top-notch humanitarian animal welfare clubs…" The man started going on about how evil poachers were.
Great, he's just like Sarah. Another speech-happy maniac. Although, now that I think about it, none of the other terrorists I've met so far have given me a kidnapping vibe either. Both New Wave and the Protectorate actually give me the impression they would object to kidnapping. Wait a Minute… I object to kidnapping! Am… Am I a bad terrorist?... Nah.
The car pulled up to a fairly fancy bar called 'Palanquin,' and the driver said, "well, here we are."
The driver, Jeff, turned out to be a really nice guy. Apparently, he was a bouncer at this place, but the boss wanted to talk to Dave for some reason, and he volunteered so he could drive his new car around the city.
They walked in, and Jeff led the way upstairs and knocked on a door. "I brought him boss, should I open the door?"
"Yes, please, come in." A female voice answered from the other side of the door.
Jeff opened the door and stepped in, waving for Dave to go in with him as he did so.
"Here he is boss."
"Thanks Jeff, I hope you had a nice ride. You can leave now, please close the door on your way out." A woman in a moderately armored costume and a welder's mask said.
Jeff left, saying "hey, hit me up on your way out," as he did so.
"What a nice man." Dave commented in his best Florida accent, before turning to the rest of the room.
"Allow me to introduce us, I am Faultline, this is Gregor, he is Newter, and that is Labyrinth." She said, pointing at each other person in the room in turn, Dave recognized them anyways of course. Gregor being the large man with translucent skin and internals, to the point one could see his skeleton; and Newter being an orange-skinned man with a rather cool tail. Labyrinth was probably in her late teens, and wore a green dress with a maze on the front and a simple mask.
"Okay." Dave said. Everyone looked at him expectantly. "Oh right, I'm supposed to introduce myself back, I go by Trouble!"
"It's good to meet you Trouble. You see, we wanted to reach out to you as soon as we got word of a new, local, Case 53. I imagine you have been very confused. May I ask when you woke up without any memories?" Faultline politely asked.
Dave wondered why they wanted to reach out to him after hearing of a Case 53. Maybe they heard about how he was a chill cool guy from the same source that informed them of a new, local, Case 53?
"I woke up on January 1, 2010 with amnesia, why do you ask?"
"You see," Faultline began, "we have been investigating the origins of Case 53s, and we are, as you might guess," she gestured to Newter and Gregor, "rather sympathetic to their plights. So, we wanted to offer you a few things, none of them being contingent on each other. The first, which you may of course think about, is a spot on our team. We are like family, so there would be growing pains as we all get accustomed to each other, but I thought I should mention that offer first. Aside from that, even if you should refuse that, we wanted to offer to get you set up with an identity; and Gregor and Newter wanted to share their experiences with picking their names so you could give your own proper consideration."
"Oh, I already picked my name, and I apparently still had my ID on me when I woke up… or I woke up in someone else's apartment wearing their clothes I suppose. Nobody has claimed I was stealing their identity though. It was a great coincidence really, the name I picked out turned out to be the name on my ID, which I thought really was astoundingly unlikely." Dave explained.
"Hmm, those are quite unusual circumstances for a Case 53, regarding your ID, perhaps you subconsciously remembered your name?" Gregor mused.
"Guys, this could be a clue! These are really unusual circumstances for a Case 53, right? They never have any sort of identification on them when they wake up with no memories!" Newter said excitedly.
"I thought it was more likely that reality was rewritten so my ID matched the name I picked than me subconsciously remembering my name." Dave replied to Gregor's musing.
"You did?" Labyrinth seemed to perk up at that. It was actually quite cute. "Does your power rewrite reality in some way?" She asked.
"I… have no idea!" Dave said proudly.
"Um… what?" Labyrinth was confused for some reason.
"My power does lots of things, I never actually asked it if it did the ID thing though. I'll grant you; I haven't actually tried to rewrite reality myself. When I woke up, my powers were mainly guns, double jumping, being really easy to kill, and transforming." They all nodded along until that last bit.
"Wait, transforming?" Faultine asked.
"Yeah, like this." Dave said, then transformed.
Everyone screamed, three guns shot at him and reality spontaneously broke, specifically to cut him in half. He died instantly.
Author's Note: I'm starting to get sick, so the quality may be a little lower than usual… I won't really be able to tell if it dips, because again, I'm starting to get sick. It shouldn't affect the schedule too much, I've written stuff in advance specifically for this type of issue, so by the time you see this chapter I might already be better… hopefully. All I usually do the day a chapter goes up is proofread it one last time and check the word count and decide if I need to put up another chapter if the first one is too short.
And today, we unlock the Good Boy role! Also, I started putting the days of the week in the date and location thingy at the start of each chapter. I looked up what day of the week January 1, 2010 was and went from there, but Dave didn't actually think about what day of the week it was until this chapter, so the previous chapters won't get that added through the magic of editing. I sure hope Wildbow matched the days of the week with the real-life dates, otherwise that could get awkward upon reaching canon time periods.
Anyways, the Good Boy role, now Dave can accept headpats! Also, some people might draw comparisons between the Good Boy powers and certain other parahuman powersets, one in particular really, and draw strange conclusions, but I'm sure it'll be fine. If anyone correctly guesses what I'm referring to there, I will award the first person to do so a Burrito Point (as long as they do so before that comparison is first made 'on-screen' of course).
And uh… nothing else really happens this chapter… Yup, nothing at all.
Regarding his ID, I've been planning that in the background for a while now, and I'm looking forward to the reveal of what exactly is on his ID. That probably won't happen for a bit though, Dave is much too smort to be tricked into revealing his real name to these terrorists! He will be trying to get an extra ID out of them though. There is a name he wants to use, and I want him to use it as well. If anyone correctly guesses it, I will award them One (1), dingus Point. A rare and powerful currency, only bestowed upon those blessed by the dingus. A hint for what he wants his ID to be is: It was the name of an episode of TTT.
As of just before I upload this chapter, it looks like nobody successfully guessed that he would be meeting Faultline's Crew next, even after he was walking around as a Scyther. Did… did people believe me when I said who he was meeting was unrelated to the walking around as a Scyther thing? If so, I guess that's just one of the limitations of text instead of speech. Maybe I should have said 'definitely unrelated' instead of 'totally unrelated' or something.
