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

[Phili]

Chapter 30: Seriously, Don't French Kiss a Rabid Animal, Just Eat A Petri Dish

January 8, 2010, Friday. Brockton Bay, Pelham House, Living Room.



"The Pokemon watch party crew had assembled in full. There was Shielder and his harem, composed of his older sister, his sister's hot friend, his gamer girl cousin who gave her bathwater to a stranger, his non-gamer-girl cousin who did not give her bathwater to a stranger, and a monkey with a nose even more glorious than that of Squidward. Also present, was Magical Girl Vista, recovering from her injuries, who was here to be sensually nursed back to health by Shielder's Harem of Hotties ™, with the power of magical cockfighting of friendship. Hehe, cockfighting, with a harem."

Everyone stared at Dave.

"Trouble? Why are you narrating in the third person?" Crystal asked sweetly.

"I don't think that's the important thing here." Bella told her friend.

"Oh no, the important thing was this." Crystal agreed with a sweet smile on her face, as she released a full-power laser on Dave's face, at the same time as Vicky's fist smashed into his head.

He died instantly, wondering what he had done to offend anyone.

---

By the time Dave resurrected, they had already started watching Pokemon. They were beginning again from the first episode for the sake of Vista and Amy, though Vicky and Eric hadn't seen the early episodes in a long time either.

Dave, upon resurrecting, simply turned into a Pikachu in a highly successful attempt to deflect any remaining anger for whatever mysterious thing he had done to cause offense to some of the people present. It worked, but at the cost of being passed around the room to be manhandled and squeezed and squished by the various people present.

It was rather rude really, considering they were eating his burritos and hotpockets while they ate lunch. But, such was his lot in life as a simple Pikachu.

After the first episode was over, Vista seemed to feel a strange obligation to say something.

"Doesn't this seem a little immature though?" She asked the room. "Like it is meant for younger kids or something?"

She turned to see the three legal-adult-aged Pokemon enthusiasts of Dave, Crystal and Bella, staring at her.

"Listen, Vista." Dave began, still in his Pikachu form. "If you think not being interested in cool elemental attacks, interesting tactics, and themes of friendship and growth, both as a person and in one's chosen field, isn't something adults appreciate… uh… boy have I got news for you."

"Vista," Crystal began, "Just because it's a cartoon originally targeted at kids around your age, doesn't mean older kids or even adults can't appreciate it. On Earth Aleph, this franchise is popular with people well into their forties or fifties in Japan. Although…" She smirked a little. "The way you said that kind of reminded me of a much more recent character, we won't get to her for a long while though."

"Oh!" Vicky perked up. "I think I know exactly who you mean. You're right! Little V does give off that exact vibe sometimes." She smirked a little.

"Who is it?" Vista asked, wondering if they were pulling her leg.

"She's named Iris, her goal is to be a Dragon master." Crystal said.

"As in a parahuman Master that controls dragons? She's evil?" Vista questioned.

"No! Bad Vista!" Vicky gently chopped her friend on the head. "There are no Parahumans in Ba Sing Se—I mean in Pokemon." She coughed. "They—as in Parahumans— aren't very big on Earth Aleph anyways, and Pokemon doesn't take place on any Earth. The lack of the obsession with Parahumans in fiction is part of why Aleph media is so good. Master just means a master of one's craft, not a parahuman category. In this case, a Dragon master would be someone who has mastered the training of and battling with dragon-type Pokemon, which are regarded as one of the strongest, if not the strongest type. It's supposed to be something cool little V!" Vicky explained exhaustedly to the uncultured Bet native, who was even younger and had even less exposure to fiction that wasn't intertwined with parahumans' existence.

"So, she's cool?" Vista asked.

"Well…" Vicky waffled. "You'll see when we eventually get to her. She doesn't show up for a long time though. You have a lot in common with her. She's young, but in the games, she becomes one of the strongest people in the world." Vicky settled on.

Vista still wasn't sure if they were mocking her somehow, but from the description she had been given, Iris did sound kind of cool. But she wasn't sure why Vicky was so sure she had things in common with her.

---

---

---

January 9, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Dave's Apartment.



Dave woke up, went through his morning routine, and prepared his breakfast bagel, tea, and orange juice.

Good Morning Dave!

So, you got some decent growth yesterday, going on a hike, exploring nature for the first time, spending time with friends, all that good stuff is good for the soul. You've unlocked a couple more items, so you might want to check those out, and a few other item's have gotten 'upgraded' so to speak, to become more useful. And of course, you've got a new role today. That role is: Possum! Now, instead of having a device that you need to use to play dead, you can instead actually play dead at will, and choose whether you will automatically play dead whenever you take damage or not, as well as manually playing dead even without taking damage. While you are playing dead, you appear identical to how you would if you were actually dead, and are completely ragdolled and limp. As a bonus, you have the same near-immunity to rabies as a real possum does. Unless you French kiss a rabid animal at the foaming-mouth stage, you're probably not going to get rabies. Don't do that anyways, even if you do want rabies. If you really want rabies, just eat one of those little petri dish things that has a rabies sample growing in it or something. If that's not how rabies works, uh… Listen, I don't know how biology works, I don't have any. Leave me alone!

Dave nodded his head as he spread cream cheese on his bagel. Possums are cute, he thought happily.

---

Upon receiving a text message from Crystal on his hero phone, Dave sent a reply, prepared his things, put on his game face, and teleported to the Pelham garage.

Before entering the living room, he took a deep breath to center himself. He knew he shouldn't be worried, he had a solid history, he always nailed first impressions, and the case was airtight. He went in, dramatically slamming open the door as he did so. Inside was the entirety of New Wave.

"—why you can't have tinkertech burritos for every meal." Brandish, or more importantly here, Carol Dallon, was saying to her daughter, Glory Girl, or more importantly here, Victoria Dallon.

"Don't respond." He told his client. "She's trying to bait you." He turned to the opposition in his case. "Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney." He introduced himself. "I think you will find my client has an airtight case in this instance milady." He said smugly as he handed Vicky his briefcase. "Victoria, please allow the prosecution to examine evidence item A. She will of course find, that this case, is completely airtight."

Carol stared at him.

Nailed it.

Vicky handed over the briefcase he had brought to her mother. Carol took one look at it, hefted it up, realized it was empty, brought out a laser sword, and poked a hole into the side of the briefcase.

"It seems like there's pretty significant airflow to me. I feel like I've already busted this case wide open in fact." Carol said with a straight face.

Oh shit. Finally, A CHALLENGE! Dave thought with excitement.

"I think you will find that there are two kinds of lawyers in this world we live in. Chairs, and bees. And I feel we truly show which one we are when we are fighting for the things we believe in." Dave said passionately.

"What?" Eric whispered to his sister from the side. "That doesn't even make sense. It has nothing to do with anything that's been said so far."

"I know." Crystal whispered back, munching on a popcorn-filled burrito. "That's the key: 'baffle them with bullshit.'"

Crystal knows what I'm about, now let's see if my opposition can figure it out too. I must fight to defend my client's right to bizarre burritos, to the death if necessary, like a true lawyer.

"And which are you?" Carol asked back, trying to find his angle.

"Both of course! The only lawyer in the world to be both a chair and a bee." He gestured to himself. "As you can clearly see." He finished smugly with a rhyme.

Carol decided to change track. "The defendant must build good nutritional habits. Otherwise, if she ever loses access to the Health Station for a significant period of time, she will be more inclined to simply eat random junkfood."

"OBJECTION!" Dave slammed the table. "My client has never in my presence consumed a single piece of junkfood. I am legally an adult, and therefore at least eighteen years old, and I have known my client for 6/9ths of my life. Therefore, my client has not consumed junk food in at least twelve years. And given the age of my client, she cannot be held personally responsible for things that occurred over twelve years ago, as the ethical responsibility would fall on her parents for enabling any junk-food-eating at such an age!"

"Heh, 69." Eric giggled next to Crystal, having obtained his own popcorn burrito by this point.

Carol rolled her eyes at Dave's impeccable logic, but made her argument anyways. "And did you spend every waking moment of the twelve years you claim to have known her in her presence? People show different sides of themselves to different people in their lives. I have personal eyewitness testimony of at least six eyewitnesses that can testify to witnessing the defendant eating junk food."

"Objection! Hearsay!" Dave shouted.

"That's not how hearsay works." Carol said flatly.

"And how would you know? Who here is the ace attorney, known far and wide?" Dave asked rhetorically, for the answer was obvious.

"Me." Carol said.

"Objection!" Dave slammed the table again. "Who here has heard of the glorious name of Phoenix Wright?" He asked the jury.

Eric, Crystal, Vicky, and Neil all raised their hands.

"And of the people who are familiar with both parties, I ask this question: who would you say is more renowned throughout multiple dimensions?" Dave asked.

Neil shrugged, while Eric, Crystal and Vicky all dutifully pointed at Dave, who looked smugly at the confused Carol.

"You see, while you may have the advantage of being a local celebrity, I, Phoenix Wright, am known throughout multiple Earths and countries on various Earths since I gained my license in 2001."

"This has no relevance to the case." Carol said after realizing she didn't know enough about the subject to effectively argue on it. "The defendant is a legal minor, who's brain is still in the growing phase, and needs to build good habits for later in life, not start associating microwave burritos with healthiness."

"Any young person in the modern era with easy enough access to it, is going to consume junk food. Is it not for the best that said junk food actually be healthy, and in fact healing for them, at least some of the time?" Dave countered.

"Not if it also results in a subconscious association between junk food and good health, when access to the healthy junk food is not guaranteed at all points in her future." Carol stated.

And back and forth the debate between two seasoned, definitely real lawyers went.

















Author's Note: Ahh, there we go. It didn't actually occur to me until I started writing the chapter, but Vista and Iris from Pokemon actually have a lot in common. The youth, the strength, and the obsession with seeming more mature than they are because of their youth, and people not taking them seriously despite their strength because of how young they are.

I feel like watching fiction, particularly shonen anime type things, from Earth Aleph, is probably actually one of the most productive ways a Parahuman on Earth Bet could possibly spend their time. A parahuman's only reliable way to actually become stronger, is to be more creative. And, the easiest way to do that, is of course to expose yourself to creative ideas of other people, and use them as inspiration, or even just try and copy them. As just about any isekai protagonist can tell you, the power of anime is strong, because it lets you have ideas that captured the minds of generations around the world, and with whatever the local power source is, one can try and make those ideas come to life without having to come up with them entirely on their own.

I like the idea that the younger generation on Earth Bet have circles that are really into Aleph media because Earth Bet media is obsessed with Parahumans, because that is still really weird and unique and interesting to the older generations who never grew up with the idea that Parahumans were just a fact of life.

Dave meets Brandish for the first time. Brandish is trying to get Vicky to stop eating nothing but Health Station burritos, because Vicky has been flying to the Pelham house every morning to use their Health Station to get burritos; Crystal, the local chaos gremlin, objects to this and decides to solve it by calling in Dave, the foreign chaos gremlin.

Brandish/Carol is largely playing along just to use this opportunity to personally gain Dave's measure, and see how he reacts to things; though she does enjoy having an opportunity to have a bit of fun with her profession. That Dave wasn't petty when she was petty and destroyed his briefcase gave him a lot of points in her eyes. I was actually quite worried about introducing Carol, because she's a difficult character to get right because of how different each side of her is, between Lawyer, Hero, Sarah's Traumatized Sister, Vicky's Loving mother, and Amy's Evil Stepmother. Things have been going on in the background with New Wave though, as you might remember Crystal and Sarah noticing things with Amy earlier on, though the exact details are yet to be revealed.

According to Wikipedia, Pheonix Wright's first appearance was in 2001, thus the line about that being when 'Phoenix Wright' gained his license. Vicky discovered Phoenix Wright in her youth because of having a lawyer parent, she wanted to understand her mom's work better, and looked to Aleph media to find something less cape-oriented she could enjoy to help her understand lawyering better. Then, Vicky shared Phoenix Wright with Eric and Crystal (Amy wasn't interested because of her poor relationship with Carol), and they occasionally mention it which is why Neil had heard of it, but wasn't super familiar with it. As someone known on Earth Aleph and Earth Bet by multiple people, Phoenix Wright is objectively an interdimensional celebrity, and therefore more famous than Carol.

You might also notice that mentions of Iris don't make a ton of sense given that the games and anime of Gen V didn't come out until later in 2010, to which I say: yes, but they are talking about the Earth Aleph versions, not our Earth versions, and the production was a little different, resulting in things like Iris already being a known character, and the knowledge through trailers for the Black and White 2 games that Iris will become champion of Unova, even if those games hadn't actually been released yet.

Also, second page on reader mode! Woo!

 

[Phili]

Chapter 31: Offering To Make Hot Furry Exhibitionism Porn In Front of The Bay

January 9, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Protectorate Headquarters 'The Rig'.



Dave was flying in his Solid Snake form to the Rig, together with Crystal, Carol and Sarah to discuss... things with the Protectorate. Unfortunately, he was the slowest flyer by a fair margin, Dave's Jetpack wasn't actually very fast in comparison to the dedicated flyers. The item itself was better though, if not faster, than it would have been by default since it left his hands free, and his Old Man combat Thinker power made him unlikely to kill himself with it, or to accidentally trigger the PhD Flopper with it.

After the three of them landed, they were taken into two groups by the staff, Sarah and Carol went one way to talk to Miss Militia, while Dave and Crystal were led towards Armsmaster. Sarah was there to talk about Vista's situation, and propose that the PRT live up to their reputation of PR being the most important letters by having Victor officially labeled a human Master, as Dave had proposed during the review of his fight with Hookwolf. Carol was with her to assist with legal advice and show solidarity.

Dave was here to talk with Armsmaster about Tinker things and check on Vista, and resupply her if needed, and Crystal was here to supervise Dave in case he got any ideas.

They were led inside by the staff member, where someone was waiting for them.

"I can take them from here." Triumph told the staff member, who nodded and wandered off to do whatever staff members did.

"It's good to meet you, I'm told you go by Trouble, I'm Triumph, leader of the East-North-East Wards." Triumph reached out a hand. Dave took it and shook it enthusiastically with both hands.

"Nice to meet ya George, nice!" Dave told him, moving his hand around enthusiastically in the handshake with each syllable he spoke.

Triumph turned to Crystal, blinked, and turned back to Dave. "Um, my name isn't George, and even if it had been, it's best to refer to Capes by their Cape names while they are in costume, even if you are aware of their identities." Triumph politely, but confusedly, told him.

"That's what they all say." Dave said, and patted Triumph on the shoulder consolingly, just making Triumph more confused.

"Um, anyways," Triumph decided to push on and say what he originally planned to say anyways. "I just wanted to thank you for helping Vista. She is an important friend of mine, and it means a lot to me, and the other Wards, that she is safe."

Dave turned to Crystal. "Help! He's shoving feelings at me! I do not comprehend!" He cried out to her.

"He appreciates the sentiment, but he felt it was his duty as a hero, and he would have done it for anyone, regardless of the thanks he got." Crystal kindly translated to Triumph.

"Um, sure…" Triumph said. "Anyways, while Armsmaster is finishing up his tasks, I thought you might like to see Vista. She isn't allowed to do any Hero duties, so she is just in the Wards lounge hanging out at the moment." He said as he began to lead them down a hallway.

They arrived at… a room!

"It's a room!" Dave exclaimed in realization.

"Very good Trouble." Crystal patted him on the head.

Triumph pressed a button to the side of the door and explained, "The button I just pressed sets off a sound inside, letting all the Wards in there know that there is a guest and that they should put on their masks."

"Neat." Dave commented. Crystal remained silent, having already been familiar with all of this.

After waiting a little longer so any Wards inside could have as much opportunity as needed to put a mask on, Triumph opened the door and led them in.

"Hey guys," Triumph greeted the room. "I have with me Laserdream from New Wave and Trouble, the independent hero."

Dave and Crystal waved.

Vista perked up from the corner and walked over to greet them, while Clockblocker, Aegis, and two other boys looked up from a corner with a TV where they were playing a video game.

The boys paused their game and came over as well.

The two boys Dave wasn't familiar with were wearing mostly normal clothes with domino masks.

"Hi!" One of them greeted. "The two of us are new Wards, and as you can see, we don't actually have our costumes ready yet." He explained with a friendly smile. "I will be going by Gallant after I debut, and my friend here," he pointed at the other one, "is undecided on his hero name, but is currently leaning towards Kid Win."

"I'm Clockblocker, and the big guy over there is Aegis, nice to meet you!" Clockblocker introduced himself and Aegis, and reached out a hand for Dave to shake. Dave shook it, and froze.

"Hah, works every time." Clockblocker smirked. Vista, Triumph and Gallant looked disapprovingly at Clockblocker, Kid Win looked relieved that he wasn't the only one to get this treatment, then looked guilty for feeling relieved, and Crystal just had a look of eagerness on her face that disappeared very quickly as she hid her inner chaos gremlin.

After only around thirty seconds, Dave unfroze, then crumpled to the ground, dead.

"Uh, what?" Clockblocker was confused, then started feeling panicky and guilty as Triumph rushed over to feel Dave's pulse on his neck.

"I can't feel any pulse," Triumph said as his training kicked in. "Did Panacea come?" He asked Crystal, who shook her head with a solemn expression. "Either way, Aegis grab the first aid kit, Gallant call the on-site medical staff."

"What the fuck did you do?" Vista shouted at Clockblocker as she stomped over to him threateningly.

"I didn't do anything weird." Clockblocker raised his hands. "I just used my power normally. You saw me do it!" He exclaimed. "You've seen me use my power hundreds of times; it's never done anything like this," He defended himself. "I just thought it was weird how quickly he came unfrozen. The minimum is thirty seconds, but it seemed like he was only frozen for just barely under thirty seconds, but I wasn't keeping track of it exactly. Shit, was this some kind of weird power interaction?"

As that was happening, Triumph picked up Dave's body to carry him to the medical bay when Dave's arms wrapped around his neck.

"Oh my," Dave said sensually in his Solid Snake voice. "My hero. You're a little furry for my tastes, but I suppose lions have needs too, and I am nothing if not an accommodating damsel." Dave finished his statement by giving a smooch to the nose of the Lion of Triumph's helmet. "What do you say we take this outside and give the people of Brockton their first show of real-life furry exhibitionism porn?" Dave proposed.

Triumph dropped Dave like he was radioactive, Clockblocker screamed at seeing Dave, 'resurrect,' while Gallant was confused at what his power was telling him. Crystal just sighed and hid her mental giggles behind a mask of seriousness by using her wealth of experience of acting innocent, while Vista laughed at both Clockblocker and Triumph's shock. Clockblocker because he had the tables turned on him, and Triumph because she had never seen him so flustered.

"Trouble…" Crystal said slowly, "you technically just sexually harassed a minor."

Dave looked at her with confusion from the floor. "I didn't know musical scales had embodiments or personifications on Earth Bet I'm afraid. Any offense I caused to the A Minor scale was completely unintentional I assure you." He told Crystal seriously.

Crystal gave him a flat look, despite giggling internally. She was very well practiced at not showing how funny she found things after all; she needed that skill to get away with shenanigans. "I meant Triumph."

"Triumph! You were leading me on all this time? I thought we had something special! After millennia of innuendos and euphemisms between our peoples, it was going to be a true Romeo and Juliet scenario when we finally had hot furry sex in the bay! And you weren't even a lion all this time? You were actually a musical scale! How could you betray me like this?" Dave sobbed out.

"What were the two peoples that had millennia of innuendos and euphemisms?" Clockblocker asked with interest.

Dave gave him a look as if he was a particularly slow child… which was fair considering he was a child and he was literally called Clockblocker. "Cat and Mouse obviously!" Dave said, and transformed into Tall Pikachu, then turned on the butt.

Tall Pikachu:

Spoiler: Tall Pikachu, Real Image and Important Moment From Video

Link to the first ever Tall Pikachu video: https://youtu.be/jhfFsnAOpb0?list=PL3XZNMGhpynP4rbJJGg3NIpZJHB5QRVC1&t=20

Link to Tall Pikachu video at moment a few seconds before Pikabooty: https://youtu.be/jhfFsnAOpb0?list=PL3XZNMGhpynP4rbJJGg3NIpZJHB5QRVC1&t=124 This is what it is referring to when it says he turned on his butt.

"As you can see, there is a good reason cats have been wanting a piece of this ass for as long as human history has been recorded." Dave explained as he slapped his own ass.

Vista facepalmed. Gallant, Kid Win, Clockblocker and Aegis screamed. Triumph died internally. Crystal laughed like a hyena.

I truly am the best at first impressions. Dave thought to himself with satisfaction.









Author's Note: Tada! Stuff! Just a short lil' chapter while I try to build my backlog back up. Today (8/16/26, when I write this) I only uploaded a Behind The Scenes thing instead of a chapter for the first time, and I don't want to need to do that too often. I think my goal will be to always have at least something uploaded each day, with exceptions for exceptional circumstances of course (ie, if I have no internet for some reason, I obviously can't upload anything), but most days, I will probably have a chapter to upload, even if it isn't necessarily super long.

You may have noticed Triumph calling Trouble an independent hero in this chapter. You might also remember, that Trouble didn't actually get that categorization because he wasn't willing to give up on his guns, and he didn't have very many nonlethal options when he did his power testing. What's going on here, is that the Protectorate and PRT are pulling slight shenanigans behind the scenes, by not telling the Wards about his official status as not-an-independent-hero, because that makes them look bad for being so eager to work with him… which they are, because they really want his stuff, particularly the Healing Stations, and they have no idea how far up he is going to scale, so they want to remain on his good side if possible since they can't exactly kill him, and they don't have a way to contain him without trying to shove him into a Gray Boy bubble or something.

Thus, they are hoping he will soon become an Independent Hero and/or PRT affiliate by joining the Protectorate or New Wave, or forming his own team as a PRT affiliate like New Wave currently is, and that Triumph's current incorrect label will go unnoticed. If anyone does notice it, they can just hand-wave it as Triumph misunderstanding because he is a Ward and Dave's actual status is rather complicated, and now that the other Wards have been told by Triumph, they have a fairly long chain they can use for plausible deniability if any of the Wards call Trouble an Independent Hero in public and it gets out that that isn't his actual status.

We meet Wards! The Possum role gets used to play dead! I'm sure the Possum role's ability to fake death won't cause any confusion among people trying to figure out Dave's abilities. We meet Tall Pikachu again, this time featuring that Pikachu ass. You guys better be grateful for that picture, I couldn't find one of the booty that wasn't in the video, and I still haven't figured out how to make QQ show pictures from my desktop instead of needing it to be from a URL. This means that I tried to search for an online image of Kirsty's Pikachu booty.

Yes, I now have 'Yogscast TTT Pikachu Ass' in my search history.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 32: In Which Crystal Cleans Up Dave's Mess and Concludes Being an Adult Sucks

January 9, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Protectorate Headquarters 'The Rig'.



"It jiggles." Clockblocker whispered to Aegis as they took repeated glances at the glorious Pikabooty while Dave talked with Vista.

"I know, it's… kind of unnatural." Aegis commented.

"It's like it's flapping in the wind, but there isn't any wind." Clockblocker agreed.

Dave bounced in enthusiasm mid-conversation with Vista and everyone paused to watch the Pikachass jiggle and bounce for the next five seconds.

"So," Dave said to Vista, "I was thinking, and I realized, I didn't give you enough toys, so…" Dave pulled out some toys.

"This, is a Pocket Sniper Rifle. It's not actually small enough to put in your pocket, but it is the smallest sniper rifle I have, and your power might be able to let you fit it into a pocket. This is a defuser, it defuses bombs, I'm sure Miss Militia will be happy to teach you how it works. This is a Lift Grenade. It's a grenade, and when it goes off, everyone caught in its radius will go up, and up, and up, for about 50 feet, at which point they will fall. You will know it is armed because the top will glow bright neon green." Dave began explaining each toy as he handed it to her.

He had just unlocked the Lift Grenade yesterday. It was a normal item not from any of the buy menus, but it was rare like the minifier, so he didn't have very many yet.

"And this, is a crowbar, just like mine." Dave said as he handed it to her.

She waggled it. "Yes, as you can see, it is floppy. Waggle it at your enemies as needed. It is stronger than a normal crowbar when you hit someone with it though, so if you encounter a ganger of some sort, aim for the limbs, not the head unless you want to kill them, in which case aim for the head, then for the other head so they die in pain." Dave explained helpfully.

"Also, you can do this," he demonstrated with his own crowbar, "to shove someone with it without needing to touch them. I haven't tested it yet, but I suspect it will even work on Fenja and Menja, though it would only shove them by about the same amount I just shoved you. It's great for pushing people off of bridges and cliffs though, no fingerprints." He winked at her.

"Oh yes! On that topic," He recalled. "The flare gun I gave you, in addition to shooting up flares and setting people on fire, I forgot to mention. Its original purpose was actually to destroy bodies to erase evidence. So, if you ever need to hide a body, just shoot the body with the flare gun and it will set the body on fire, then completely erase the body from existence after around… ten or fifteen seconds." Dave said then patted Vista on the head.

"If you are nice and responsible with these toys, I will give you better ones later. And if you can demonstrate that you can survive falling from a great height consistently without harm, I will give you special toys, including a jetpack." He promised.

"Oh yes, one last toy." He recalled and pulled out two identical pistols. "I'm sure you remember this one." Dave said. Then handed one to Vista, and pointed the other one at Clockblocker and shot him with it.

Clockblocker froze in place, still conscious and seeing, but completely unable to move.

"It's not quite as good as Clockblocker's power as I just experienced, but it works from a range. You've only got three bullets in that, so use them wisely in case you run into Nazis again." Dave said, patting her on the head again.

Vista rolled her eyes and grumbled about being treated like a child, but put up with it in exchange for the guns and toys and promises of more.

Clockblocker unfroze, and promptly decided to hide behind Aegis for now until the scary sexy Pikachu left.

Triumph put a hand up to his helmet's earpiece and nodded after a moment. "Trouble, it seems like Armsmaster is ready for you, and he wants Kid Win down there too."

"Huh, I wonder why… unless… are you a Tinker Kid Win?" Dave asked Kid Win as they walked out of the doors of the Wards lounge.

---

Crystal Pelham

Crystal watched as Dave left in his 'Tall Pikachu' form as he called it, to go talk to Armsmaster with Kid Win. He can handle being without my supervision for a few minutes. I'm sure it'll be fine; I just need to clear up the mess he left behind with the Wards.

"So, Clockblocker, have we learned anything today?" Crystal asked sweetly.

"Uh… changers can awaken strange things in teenage boys?" Clockblocker tried to be cheeky. Heh, cheeky, just like that Pikachu, no wait, straight face Crystal.

"No, we already knew that. Try again." Crystal did her best to channel her mother's tone when her mother was dealing with her shenanigans.

"Uh… I think the intended lesson might have been to not use my power without warning on friendly Parahumans in case there is a poor power interaction that harms someone." Clockblocker said, showing he could in fact use his brain, even while a pretty older girl was glaring at him.

"Very good," she said in her best patronizing tone of voice. "Now, as he was trying to teach you in his own weird way," pfft, as if the thought of teaching went anywhere near Dave's mind. That was all pure impulse. "You shouldn't make assumptions in general when it comes to parahumans. As he is very proficient at showing, parahumans can be hard to predict."

"Yes Laserdream!" Clockblocker saluted. Well, as long as he buys that it was intended to be a teaching moment, I'll be able to mitigate any harm people might try to cause Dave with what he pulled here. I'm so glad he told me about the Possum role this morning, knowing about that makes this so much easier.

"Now, Vista… as I'm sure you are aware, I'm going to have to tell Miss Militia about your new toys." Crystal gave Vista the bad news, and Vista's eyes turned wide and she protectively hugged her grenades and guns.

"No! They will take them away!" Vista said defensively, then noticed the entire room looking at her, and coughed. "I mean, that seems unnecessary. I can just tell her myself, and she will surely understand the necessity of having them remain with me." Vista said, obviously—to Crystal at least, who was experienced in pulling this kind of thing—planning to not tell Miss Militia about all of the things she received so that she could guarantee being able to keep some of them.

"Panacea was planning to learn to use firearms soon as well, so if you can't get lessons from Miss Militia or Challenger, just send me or Glory Girl a text and New Wave will get you set up to take lessons with her. I'm sure the Protectorate will leave the freeze gun and the flare gun with you, so improving your aim will only help you regardless, even if your power will let you hit otherwise impossible shots even if you don't train; and if you show good enough firearm discipline, you might be able to wrangle permission to use other guns as well." Crystal placated Vista. She didn't actually know how likely it was that Vista would be able to use regular guns, but she could probably get permission to use one of the PRT foam ones given the extreme synergy they had with her power over space. At the moment, Crystal's biggest concern was taking away the Pocket Sniper Rifle from the preteen with power of space.

Man, being an adult sucks. Crystal groused in her head as she turned to Gallant to socialize a little with the new parahuman. I feel like a politician, I have to meet people because it is important that I know them, not because I want to get to know them. Ugh.

---

After talking with the suspicious 'Tinker' who somehow already found out his specialty, Crystal turned to Triumph to handle the last part of Dave's mess.

Seriously, maybe it's because I've just been dealing with Dave and we discussed earlier the possibility of disguising him as a Tinker, but I'm pretty sure this Gallant guy isn't actually a Tinker. I don't even think he's a new trigger. Maybe he triggered a while ago and is only just now enrolling in the wards? His powers kind of remind me of Vicky's aura too, maybe the Protectorate and PRT just want to disguise him as a Tinker to not have to deal with a human Master label? I know that was why aunt Carol fought so hard to get Vicky rated as a shaker instead of a Master, the stigma there is just absurd; but it feels like it's just asking for trouble to fake having an extra Tinker available, someone is bound to notice eventually that not as much tinkering happens as three Tinkers would imply, or that the guy never goes into Tinker fugues.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe this guy is a real Tinker. If so, they've already given him a significant diss by not inviting him with the other new guy, Kid Win to talk about Tinker stuff with Dave's meeting with Armsmaster and Dragon. Nah, taking that into account, there's no way this guy's a Tinker, he absolutely would have been in that meeting if he was.

I'll think about this later… actually, no I won't, I'll dump all this on Mom and Aunt Carol, and stop thinking about it at all. For now, I just need to handle Triumph and the 'exhibitionism furry porn' comments and the kiss on the costume's nose. I'm so glad Triumph is such a boy, he absolutely could have raised a fuss about that, but I guess guys don't care about it as much? Wait… I'm pretty sure he mentioned he was on a sports team, don't guy's sports teams famously slap each other on the ass and stuff? The kiss on the lion costume's nose might have not even registered as possible sexual harassment to him then if that's what he's used to.







Author's Note: Here we go, another chapter, still shorter than I've been doing while I build my backlog back up after being sick. In this one, Dave arms a small child with firearms and explosives, and we get a Crystal POV, yay! If you couldn't tell from my signature, I like reading alternate POVs to see what other characters think about the main character, but I've found actually writing that is rather hard with this story, because it barely makes sense as it is, without Dave's point of view to see some of his thought process it would probably read as pure gibberish a decent chunk of the time.

In Crystal's POV we get to see a real-time example of some of what New Wave has been doing for Dave in the background, and some of the lessons Sarah has been instilling in Crystal now that she is an adult superhero who is being trusted with more responsibilities. Crystal managed to get out of even more responsibilities being piled onto her by her mother by being in college though… perhaps that was Crystal's plan all along?

Crystal finds Gallant very suspicious after spending time in the past week thinking about how she might disguise Dave's powers as being a Tinker if needed.

Crystal tries to figure out how to handle Triumph getting his costume kissed on the nose without Dave getting in trouble for sexually harassing a minor. She concludes male sports are probably borderline homo-erotic enough that it might not have even registered on Triumph's radar as being sexual harassment, since the slapping on the ass thing doesn't seem to get any attention that she's noticed. I don't know why it happens either, I stopped playing sports before I got to the butt-slapping stage, but I guarantee anyone who isn't aware that it does happen… a lot, look it up if you don't believe me, the internet is just as confused as me on why it happens.

I've started exploring an idea in the past few chapters, and that idea is keeping a few of Dave's more recent items hidden from the readers for the sake of building… suspense? I hesitate to call it suspense because I don't think of suspense when I think of "well, is he going to pull out a remote-controlled super sheep or is he going to pull out a can of magic beans that make you have deadly farts when you move your arms a certain way?". I kind of like this, because then I don't have to keep spending time explaining each new thing as he gets it before he gets an opportunity to use it and the story can move on a little more quickly. We'll probably see him using an item once or twice without context, then get an explanation for what exactly he did and how shortly after. I'm sure there's a name for that particular writing technique, but I don't know what it is, so until I find out said name, I get to pretend it's an original writing technique that's never been used before by any of the tens of millions of people that have tried writing throughout human history.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 33: Dave's Got a HUUUUUUUUUUUGGE Proposal!

January 9, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Protectorate Headquarters 'The Rig'.



Dave and Kid Win met with Armsmaster in his lab on a lower level of the Rig. Dave… hadn't actually paid any attention at all to where he was going on the way there, he was too distracted trying to stare at his own Pikachooty to see it jiggle as he walked, and failing because it just didn't jiggle properly while he was twisting himself around that much.

"Ah, Trouble, Kid Win, come in." Armsmaster said upon seeing them. He didn't even blink at seeing Dave's Tall Pikachu form, resulting in a little pouting from Dave.

"Dragon and I were just discussing the proposal you mentioned Trouble regarding the teleporters with a hub located in Brockton Bay." Armsmaster said.

"Yeah, I just had a Eureka moment yesterday, and thought of that with my teleporters. If it isn't a good idea, do let me know though, because that would be a pretty massive investment on my part, and I haven't actually worked out the logistics needed to make it work." Dave admitted. "I did get something else that might work instead, and I had a proposal for both you and Dragon, and Kid Win now that I know he is here, and a Tinker."

"Go ahead." Dragon's voice came from a speaker.

"So, I got access to a pretty cool item recently that would let me build large structures extremely quickly, but would do little in terms of small-scale precision or things like plumbing or electricity. Then, I got a Tinker power yesterday." Dave began.

"A Tinker power? Truly?" Armsmaster asked. "That's quite interesting, even Eidolon has never been shown to be able to get a Tinker power, it is extremely rare for a Trump to be able to grant themselves one."

"Yes, it feels like it is going to be very unusual to get that type of thing from my power, at least for the foreseeable future, my power becomes less clear on what it can give me when it comes to things further in the future." Dave said. "Anyways, perhaps because of the unusual method I got it, it seems a little different from what I know of normal Tinker powers. I knew my specialization right off the bat, and I started off with an item to help me get started. I've had lots of ideas for it, some of which are quite powerful, but I'm having trouble getting started because I can't get through the 'build the tools to build the tools to build the tools' phase, because my specialty is so far removed from the tools I need to use to make a lot of the bigger projects I could make."

"Hmm." Armsmaster hummed. "What was your specialty?"

"Mud. I've had ideas for things I could make that include synergies with my other powers, more healing items, beautification treatments, a variety of mud bombs to cause things like hydroplaning, as well as improvements to my normal teleportation items, among other things." Dave explained.

"That sounds quite useful." Dragon's cheerful voice came through the speaker again. "I'm glad you weren't discouraged by a specialty like Mud. I'm of the firm belief that any Tinker specialty can be powerful and useful, and I like to consider myself something of an expert."

"Indeed, though I'm not sure why mud would be considered weak. It is a significant part of the natural world, and can be devastating in many circumstances, and has been a tool used in civilizations across the globe for thousands of years." Dave said. "Anyways, to jump ahead a bit, I was thinking of making a place in the woods near Brockton that could serve as a large-scale Tinker lab. From what little research I've had time to do, there hasn't been anything like this in Brockton before, but Protectorate areas with enough Tinkers will sometimes have things along these lines, if not as ambitious." Dave began to outline his plan.

"I could build the outline of it within a single day, and I'd be happy to contribute to defenses as I get more and more items and abilities. It would provide a way to lure ambitious, cooperative, Tinkers to the Bay, as my research tells me Tinkers grow substantially by working together. The main thing I would gain, would be access to tools I can use to start things off along with permission to actually build the place. I don't have any way to do things like build my own centrifuge, and any more exotic 'tools to build the tools to build the tools' that only a Tinker could make would be out of my reach entirely if I couldn't buy them, and that would lock me out of many things I could potentially make, as well as any hopes of larger-scale production."

"That…" Armsmaster hesitated. "This would require a lot of funding that I simply cannot provide. I have a limited Tinkering budget that is provided by the PRT, and I cannot risk lowering my effectiveness by being unable to perform the needed maintenance on my projects while such a base is being built. Though I am interested in the concept." He admitted.

Armsmaster continued. "I can tell you from experience that your research was correct, working with other Tinkers is an excellent way to progress and gain inspiration, and when I worked under Hero with the other foremost Tinkers in the country, the shared Tinkering space and the many tools we had access to saved a lot of time and money. For example, something one Tinker only uses once a month might not be worth getting at all for them normally, thus lowering their effectiveness because they can't use it if they don't have it, but they will be able to use it freely if another Tinker that uses that same device every day already has one on hand and is willing to lend its use for an hour or two."

"Well…" Dave paused, "perhaps I should put it like this. I am willing to use my Health Stations and other healing technologies and items and abilities to get funding from rich individuals for whatever I need or want. I'm sure you've read Lady Photon's report on the Health Station at least, but unlike New Wave and Panacea, I'm perfectly happy to let a billionaire that isn't complete scum of the Earth throw money at me to heal them with the power of burritos. That was actually something I was hoping to ask Dragon for help with, a list of decent-ish people I could heal and get funding for projects from, since I assume the Guild has a list of charitable donors or something from around the world that they can vouch for in terms of character and want to have continue living so they can keep funding the Guild."

"Anyways, I don't really see any way that plan wouldn't work out, given how rich I've heard of Scapegoat being, and even if someone tries to throw NEPEA-5 at me, leaving aside that I don't think it applies here, I guarantee it wouldn't apply anymore after billionaires found out it kept them from being healed." Dave outlined his reasoning for how he was confident in gaining wealth.

"Thus, after I get that settled… which will be another thing I was going to ask Dragon for, someone the guild vouches for that can handle things like paperwork and contacting said billionaires for me.

Anyways, after I get that settled, I will be able to contribute:

• The bulk of the building itself, as well as materials for the building itself,
• Funds,
• Defenses for the building,
• A continuous supply of exotic items to be studied and used by Tinkers that are willing to help with the project,
• And eventually, a mud-based teleport network that would have a central hub within the Protectorate Headquarters and a secondary backup hub within the base itself.

And what I would want in exchange would be:

• Legal permission to build the base,
• Utilities such as electricity, plumbing, doors, and someone competent to help actually design the building itself,
• Tools to let me actually do my Tinkering,
• Permission to look at other Tinker's projects for inspiration,
• Someone else to fill out the paperwork.

How does that sound?" Dave asked.

"Why am I here?" Kid Win asked for a moment.

"You're a Tinker, aren't you?" Dave asked. "You would be one of the Tinkers using this if it actually happens, of course you get input."

"Indeed," Armsmaster confirmed. "I asked for you to be here because you are also a Tinker, even if you haven't found your specialty yet. You will eventually need to be able to deal with these kinds of things on your own after you graduate from the Wards, but for now, I just wanted to let you have a little experience with seeing proposals related to Tinkering, though I admit I wasn't expecting anything this large-scale."

"Oh?" Crystal asked sweetly as she walked in. "So, could you tell me then… why is Kid Win here but Gallant, his fellow Tinker is not?" She asked sweetly.

Armsmaster displayed an impressive poker face, while Dragon remained conspicuously silent and Kid Win displayed an impressive 'oh shit' face, visible even through his mask.

Dave displayed an impressive Surprised Pikachu face.













Author's Note: Here we go, another chapter, still shorter ones while I build my backlog back up, before we go back to the length of 'however long I feel like but trying to average above 2k words per chapter'.

To let you in on a little secret… I hate cliffhangers. I fucking despise them. My version of a Chuuni middle school phase was when I came up with all sorts of elaborate torture methods I wished upon the person who invented cliffhangers… and the person who invented suspense (I didn't mind Alfred Hitchcock style suspense, because that was done well, he had a whole thing he talked about occasionally about how if you spend time in a story showing a bomb about to go off that the characters don't know about, you should never, ever have that bomb go off; he had that bomb go off once in a story and he said it was one of his biggest ever mistakes as a writer. I didn't mind it when that metaphorical bomb didn't go off in a story, but cliffhangers? Oh boy I wished all sorts of forms of creative things on the people that propagated those. I've chilled out a little by now, but cliffhangers are the main reason I mostly binge stories now, I rarely read one chapter at a time and I do my best to look at things like what the latest chapter title is to try my best to avoid cliffhangers. If needed I will even glance at the last few lines of the latest chapter to judge if it is a cliffhanger because I would much rather be spoiled than get a cliffhanger).

Ahem… I went on a tangent; my point was that I try to avoid major cliffhangers in writing… Though I probably don't succeed by all standards, I do try quite hard to make sure there are no major cliffhangers; so something like an Endbringer fight will likely end up as one massive chapter rather than a bunch of little ones as a result. Anyways… We see Dave's big proposal in this chapter. Armsmaster is interested, Dragon is interested, Kid Win doesn't know why he's there!

Suspicious Crystal walks in! Crystal uses Sarcastic Implication! It's super effective! Armsmaster uses Poker Face! It would have been super effective, except Kid Win used 'Oh Shit' Face, and changed the effectiveness to be not very effective.

Detective Crystal is on the case! But not for very long because she hates the case and wants to shove it off onto her mom! Will she succeed? Find out next time! Not really, it probably won't actually be answered next time.

The chapter title is based off of a scene in Moulin Rouge where the main character's friends are spying on him when he is reading poetry to a prostitute, and the one that can actually see what's happening tells the others 'He's got a HUUUUUUGE talent!" I was originally going to make that joke about my author's notes, but decided I liked it better in the chapter titles instead.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 34: Committing Superpowered Vandalism That Can't Be Removed.

January 9, 2010, Saturday. Brockton Bay, Protectorate Headquarters 'The Rig'.



"Ahem." Armsmaster coughed and apparently decided to pretend he hadn't heard Crystal say anything.

"As I was saying," Armsmaster began, "I would be happy to contribute to such a project and share my experiences with similar scenarios from when I was working with a group of Tinkers under Hero."

Crystal simply raised an eyebrow at him.

"And I would be willing to contribute general Tinkering tools and perform a portion of the maintenance needed on any such communal Tinkering tools." Armsmaster said after a moment.

Crystal stared harder.

"Ahem." Dragon seemed to take pity on Armsmaster. "I would be happy to find someone that the Guild has vetted Trouble, to help you with legal, financial, and general administrative things you might encounter. Goodness knows wasting time is the easiest way to make an enemy of a Tinker for a good reason, so helping you find someone trustworthy you can employ to help you save so much time will surely help you increase your effectiveness." Dragon said cheerfully through the speakers.

Crystal seemed to relent from whatever she was doing, and nodded once.

---

"So, you haven't discovered your specialty yet?" Dave asked Kid Win as they walked away from Armsmaster's lab. Crystal had remained behind for a couple minutes to talk with Armsmaster and Dragon about something, probably something boring.

"No, I've been working on a few things, and some of them area easier than others, but I've had trouble with a lot of things, and nothing really seems to click, you know?" Kid Win replied.

"Not really." Dave shrugged. "But, I was thinking, Laserdream showed me this Earth Aleph show from a few years ago, and in it, there's a bit where a group of monks have to identify a super special person as a child, when not even the child is aware of being said super special person. So, they bring out a bunch of special toys and see which toys each child is drawn to, and they identify the super special child because he is drawn to four specific toys that represent his future powers." Dave explained.

"So, I was thinking," Dave continued, "that a Tinker could probably do something similar to identify their specialty. Grab a whole bunch of toys and set them out, and see which ones their power draws them to the most. Ideally it would be things that can be assembled in some way or that have moving parts, but a large enough variety of toys would probably work regardless. Some nerf guns, little toy catapults, paint sets, action figures, legos, Playdough, toy boats, remote controlled cars, boats, planes, and helicopters, toy walkie talkies, et cetera. See which ones your power draws you to and which ones give you inspiration, and figure out what they have in common. Remote controlled things could indicate a signal specialty or a vehicle specialty, catapults and nerf guns could be a projectile specialty, boats and rubber ducks could be an aquatic specialty, paint sets could be a visual specialty, or a camouflage or chemical specialty, et cetera. If needed, you could consult other people and see what they think whatever you are drawn to has in common with each other, I'm sure Armsmaster will have some insight, and the Protectorate members with more experience will probably have also worked with a few Tinkers over the years and will be able to help you figure it out based on what you are drawn to." Dave explained his idea.

"Huh… Yeah, that sounds like a really good idea." Kid Win mused. "It's a pretty cheap way to figure things out without wasting a large chunk of my Tinkering budget."

"There we go, that's the spirit!" Dave patted Kid Win on the back. "And if you still have trouble figuring it out, you can ask the PRT to set up like a 5-minute meeting with a Thinker to help you figure it out in exchange for a couple hundred dollars or something. I don't actually know how much that kind of thing would cost, but I'm sure there are Thinkers out there who would be willing to use their powers to get a couple hundred dollars for five minutes' worth of work. Assuming they can correctly deduce your specialty anyways, though if they are the right kind of Thinker and are given the data from what you were drawn to and what you built with the toy thing, they should be able to figure it out." Dave shrugged. "You might want to leave that as a last resort though; it seems unlikely that would actually be necessary."

"Huh, yeah, that could work too." Kid Win said. "Thanks, I was kind of worried I wouldn't be able to figure out my specialty any time soon, so having a plan to work on figuring it out is actually really nice."

"No problem, assuming the big Tinker base project goes through, I hope I'll get to see you there and we can work on some stuff together." Dave replied.

"Yeah, yeah, I think that would be nice." Kid Win smiled.

After a moment of silence as they walked down the hallway, Crystal caught up to them.

"Hey boys," she greeted. "Talk about anything interesting?"

"Yes actually," Kid Win nodded. "Trouble was giving me advice on how to find my Tinker specialty. Apparently, he had an idea from some sort of Aleph show you introduced to him."

"Oh, which one?" Crystal asked.

"Avatar," Dave answered. "The way the monks discovered Aang was the Avatar by showing a bunch of toys to all the kids and he picked the ones that symbolized the Avatar elements or something. It made me think of just putting a ton of toys of a large variety in front of a Tinker, and seeing what they are drawn to by their power to determine what their specialty is." Dave outlined his thoughts on the matter.

"Huh, I've never heard of anyone trying that." Crystal commented. "If it works, you can probably use that to get a lot of good will from the PRT by having a method to help them identify Tinker specialties. Make sure you tell my mom about this; you can get a lot from the PRT and Protectorate if this method works. If it does work, the PRT will absolutely use it as a way to try to get more Tinkers to join by saying that they can help Tinkers find their specialties."

"That seems a little cynical." Kid Win frowned. "I'm sure they would ask for permission first." He added.

Dave and Crystal stared at him.

"I'm… not gonna touch that." Crystal decided after a moment. "You can explain to the other Wards what the plan is and what we said and listen to their opinions on the subject. I'm sure at least some of them will be happy to explain things to you."

Kid Win looked doubtful that there was anything to explain, but he would learn. He had only been part of the government for a short time at this point after all; he hadn't even had his Wards debut yet, so it was understandable to Crystal and Dave that he didn't quite understand how shameless the world of adults was.

"Oh, here looks like a good spot." Dave said as they passed through another hallway, this one just outside the Wards lounge.

"A good spot for what?" Kid Win asked.

Dave answered by using a power he had discovered recently, though he was pretty sure he had had since he woke up on January first.

An image appeared where he was looking at, right next to the door to the Ward's lounge, along with a fake-sounding spray can sound effect. The image was of a Slugma, with the caption: Slugma Balls.

Image:

Spoiler: Image:

It doesn't have the word 'Slugma' at the top of the image though, only the 'Slugma Balls' at the bottom. This link is to a video at the second it is showing the actual image that is Dave's Spray: https://youtu.be/acn57YA4-C8?t=573 that is at the 9:33 mark if the time thing doesn't work for some reason.

Dave looked at it, giggled, and walked away.

"They're never going to be able to remove that." He told Crystal as they kept walking.

---

Crystal Pelham

"Ugh, that was exhausting." Crystal said to her mother and aunt as they flew back to the Pellham house from the Rig. Dave had simply teleported back to his house, saying he was going to buy a few things like cheap jars and some paintbrushes to make some proof-of-concept items for his Tinkering.

"It surely wasn't that bad." Carol replied. "You weren't the one dealing with Vista's… problems and trying to relabel a Nazi's power ratings to get Victor labeled as a human Master without mentioning any unfortunate comparisons. Just about the only pleasant part was getting an agreement to have a Ward occasionally help Amy out at the hospital to be an extra person to guard her and the Health Stations, and even that was a little annoying."

"No, that does sound terrible," Crystal admitted. "But speaking of Masters, there's two new Wards I just met."

"Oh dear," came the voice of Crystal's mother.

"Yup, one of them was a Tinker who hasn't found his specialty, though Dave thought of a way that might solve that. The other one was also a 'Tinker' and was the most suspicious guy I've ever seen." She rolled her eyes and started describing the situation of the new 'Tinker' as they flew home, including that she rather easily got concessions from Armsmaster for Dave's project by bringing the subject up until he had to get rescued by Dragon. She also mentioned that his 'Tinker specialty' sounded incredibly similar to Vicky's 'Shaker' powers. She didn't actually say the quotations for Shaker out loud though, she wasn't nearly brave enough to say that to her aunt's face.

Crap, am I going to have to dance around that too now every time this new Ward comes up? Ugh. Wait… am I going to have to keep an eye on Vicky too now? I have no idea how their powers will interact, and this is a textbook case of two powers that could have a strange power interaction. Fuck, now I have to keep an eye on two emotion-based power wielders. Do I try to introduce them to each other in a controlled setting? Or do I just get the heck out and let them interact naturally? Do I warn Vicky that her power might act weird around this Gallant guy?

Ughhh, being an adult SUCKS. I'll just tell mom about all this and my worries over a poor power interaction between Gallant and Vicky after we get home. Then telling aunt Carol about it can be HER problem, and I can recruit Eric to keep an eye on Vicky at school. I can't trust Amy to keep an eye on Vicky, because Vicky has the poor girl wrapped around her finger like a piece of string. Fine, I have a plan, now I just need to carry it out.











Author's Note: Another short chapter done. Crystal socially mugs (blackmails) Armsmaster, Dragon has to socially rescue her meat husbando, and Kid Win gets some advice from Dave based on a cartoon he saw a few days ago. Truly, cartoons and anime are the key to saving Earth Bet. Also, can I just say… Dragon is such a cinnamon roll. I just fucking love her.

Crystal realizes she is going to have to dance around how similar Vicky and Gallant's emotional powers are, but for now is resigned to needing to keep an eye on Gallant. She also realizes her Parahuman studies classes are coming in handy, but resulting in more responsibility as she spots more things that could carry risks because of it.

This story won't focus too much on the Vicky/Dean stuff, which will be happening in the background so I thought I'd mention a bit of what's going on here. I decided to have Dean get his powers a little bit later than he did in canon to explain why he took so long to join the Wards, given his armor was made by Kid Win to sell the 'totally a Tinker' story. So now, he was still present when Vicky triggered, and his power still refused to turn off when she triggered, resulting in her getting her emotional aura stuff, but they haven't actually met yet. Dean took so long to join the Wards because his family was reluctant to actually let him join, even though Dean—being a genuinely good guy—wanted to do the right thing and sign up and be a hero from the get-go.

I don't have a particular problem with the Vicky/Dean ship itself, but it clearly doesn't actually work in canon, and my take on things is that Dean's power not turning off when Vicky triggered caused a sort-of almost-cluster trigger, resulting in a very minor version of the kiss/kill dynamic thing that Cluster Triggers have, thus their immunities to each-others power, and their constant getting together and breaking up thing. I just consider their relationship deeply unhealthy because of how power-based it is; even if my understanding is that part of the reason they keep getting back together is because they both like that they can't manipulate the other person with their emotional powers (either directly or through seeing their emotions), which to me indicates they aren't actually that compatible.

Either way, detective Crystal is on the case! Against her will! To protect her little cousin from any dastardly deeds!

Oh yes, and we also see one of Dave's powers he has had since the very beginning! The Steam spray! I searched and searched and searched, but I genuinely couldn't find an exact copy of Kirsty's spray on the internet. It should not be that hard to find a simple picture of Slugma with just the caption 'Slugma balls', but here we are. I had to settle for the lesser version I ended up putting in the chapter itself, which is just sad. Maybe Kirsty made her spray herself? But it's a simple enough picture that I still find it hard to believe nobody ever made an image that was effectively identical.

Next chapter, it's a new day, and we get to see someone I'm sure many of you are looking forward to, and I'm quite excited to see as well. In addition, when we meet them, Dave will be feeling particularly like a… white knight in shining armor, shall we say.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 35: White Knighting and Smug Foxing!

January 10, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, Dave's Apartment.



Dave woke up, went through his morning routine, and prepared his breakfast bagel, orange juice, and tea.

Good Morning Dave!

You got some decent growth yesterday, nothing too exciting, but every little bit counts with this sort of thing, you know? Today's new role is rather exciting; it is the Paladin! Just like you would expect, while you have the role enabled, you are totally immune to explosions, as is everyone within your aura's radius. Your aura's radius is currently about 3 meters, though you can improve that if you want to dedicate soul space to it. Everyone in your aura, including yourself, will also constantly heal over time, at a rate of about 1% of their 'maximum health' per second. It won't replace lost limbs or anything, but it is still combat-regeneration level of healing. I've used a bit of your soul space to give you an ability to blacklist and whitelist people for your aura so you don't end up healing people you are fighting, or prevent them from taking damage from your PhD Flopper explosions. As you may recall, the explosion immunity for you and the people in your aura is rather complete, and can be used to survive a nuke undamaged, including the radiation afterwards; even if someone leaving your aura will still experience the full brunt of the explosion and/or radiation, depending on when exactly they leave. This does mean that those within your aura are also immune to harmful radiation while they remain within your aura, and again, that includes yourself. Only you can see exactly where your aura ends, it will be marked by a little blue circle around you that only you can see.

Dave nodded sagely… wait, he needed to nod… paladinly? What exactly would nodding paladinly entail? Dave pondered as he ate his breakfast.

---

Dave had realized earlier that while he was sort of born in Brockton Bay nine days prior, he hadn't actually been in very much of it, so he now sought to rectify that by expanding his horizons.

He was going to the Boardwalk to expand his horizons and grow his connection to his native city, definitely not to pig out on pastries and chug as much iced coffee as he could.

He could ponder why he felt like there was something off about the term White Knight over a nice cup of iced coffee and a cinnamon roll. He normally associated Paladin with the term White Knight, and Paladin seemed fine to him, and the term 'white knighting' seemed fine, but he wasn't sure why the term White Knight itself seemed off to him. Something about the term just twigged at things he associated with Brockton Bay, and he wasn't sure why.

He mentally reaffirmed his decision to ponder it over pastries and coffee as he walked down the boardwalk looking for a good café.

After finding one with a sufficiently decadent menu, Dave walked in and was directed to a corner booth; and noticed that the booths all seemed rather privacy-oriented, with glass above each booth's seats dampening the sound of the booth on the other side.

A girl slid in to the seat across from him and waved down a waitress. "An iced latte and a cinnamon roll for him, a hot americano and a breakfast sandwich for me please." She told the waitress.

Dave looked at her, looked at the waitress, and gave the waitress a thumbs up.

As the waitress left, he looked at the girl, who had blonde hair, a splattering of faint freckles on the upper half of her face, and a general facial shape that reminded him of a fox for some reason. Oh, and a supremely smug expression that made him suppress a shiver.

"Do you have the goods?" Dave asked in a deep voice.

"Wha—" the girl cut herself off and looked at him. "You're fucking with me." Dave nodded slightly.

"Are you here to kidnap me?" Dave asked hopefully.

She looked at him, and simply said, "no."

"Aww."

"I am here to bring you an offer. You may refer to me as Lisa, and I've been approached by a Parahuman seeking to enter a relationship with you." The girl began.

"Already? I'm not ready for an arranged marriage though!" Dave visibly began to panic.

The girl just looked at him more. "You don't actually believe that's what's happening, you're trying to throw me off."

"Eh," Dave wiggled his hand at her. "Fifty-fifty really. I could buy that Parahumans try arranged marriage shenanigans in the hopes of getting second-generation Parahumans with stronger powers that trigger more easily. But I didn't think it was particularly likely that that was why you approached me."

Lisa seemed to decide it was time to move on from that topic. "So, my associate wanted to approach you in the hopes of obtaining protection and healing. They are a powerful Thinker, but they are being targeted by a group of some sort and need protection. As a gesture of goodwill, they wanted to give you a piece of information for free: Your 'Health Stations' you have been using at the Hospital are able to heal Thinker headaches, and Watchdog will find out about that soon if they haven't already."

"Hmm," Dave considered this new information about his Health Stations and Watchdog. Then got bored of considering it and decided to just ask about the obvious question. "Why not approach the Protectorate or New Wave?"

The girl smirked like she expected the question. "My associate believes that whoever is targeting them has some sort of connections within the Protectorate, and doesn't believe New Wave will take the threat seriously enough to actually protect them. For more details, you would need to actually ask my associate I'm afraid, but suffice to say, the Protectorate and New Wave are not options."

The conversation paused as the Waitress brought their food and drinks to the booth.

"Thank you," Lisa said to the Waitress, before digging in to her rather large breakfast sandwich like she was starving. She paused for a moment after the first bite, then resumed eating.

Dave stared at her as he ate his cinnamon roll and sipped his iced coffee. Yup, she's a weirdo. He decided after a moment.

Lisa twitched.

Yup, definitely a weirdo.

Lisa twitched again.

Dave activated his most underrated superpower, Pattern Recognition!

Weirdo, weirdo, weirdo, weirdo, weirdo, weirdo, the DOUGH OF WEIRDNESS COMPELS YOU!

Lisa remained perfectly still.

Dave smiled.

Lisa finished chewing her current bite, and calmly announced, "Fine, I was going to tell you soon anyways. I just wanted to get a better read on you. Yes, I am the 'associate,' and, as you obviously just figured out by thinking rude thoughts at me, my power is that I am psychic."

Dave nodded, "Which kind of psychic?" He asked.

"Not the kind you are thinking about, no communicating with the dead or… what part of psychic makes you think of 'coming back to life after their killer dies?'" Lisa demanded after a moment.

"Medium." Dave answered.

"Something about your power…" Lisa trailed off, "you can get something that is called a 'Medium' that lets you see the dead and come back to life if your killer dies." Lisa stated.

Dave politely golf-clapped.

"Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week." Lisa snarked. "You made that way too easy." She complained, to which Dave simply shrugged. There wasn't much he could do to make it harder to read his mind, at least that he was willing to put in the effort to do. He supposed restraining his impulses less to make his thoughts more chaotic might work, but then he would have to deal with… ugh, consequences. Eww, consequences, summed up Dave's thoughts at that idea.

"So," Lisa began, now that it was obvious that she was the Thinker Parahuman being targeted. "I am in need of help and protection, which fulfills your desire to help and protect people today in particular; you won't find anyone more in need of help and protection than me today, and tomorrow you will be less satisfied by helping and protecting people because it won't be the newest thing your power has given you anymore. I also can help you with your greatest weaknesses like—"

Dave slammed the table, "Sold! Welcome aboard, you can handle my paperwork."

Lisa facepalmed for some reason. She specifically said she would help him with it, so facepalming after getting agreement seemed a little uncalled for, in Dave's humble opinion.













Author's Note: Here we are, another day, another role. If anyone is curious, this is the episode where they drop a nuke on the map: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F9oohSh4gw&list=PL3XZNMGhpynP4rbJJGg3NIpZJHB5QRVC1&index=92

And this is the part where the nuke actually drops (at 7:33): https://youtu.be/0F9oohSh4gw?list=PL3XZNMGhpynP4rbJJGg3NIpZJHB5QRVC1&t=453

And this is the part where they drop the nuke again, but survive because they are in the Paladin aura (starting from when they press the button to drop the nuke, it takes about 40 seconds for the nuke to actually drop): https://youtu.be/0F9oohSh4gw?list=PL3XZNMGhpynP4rbJJGg3NIpZJHB5QRVC1&t=862

For anyone particularly impatient, here is the part just before the nuke drops and they survive because of the Paladin aura (about 6 seconds before the nuke drops): https://youtu.be/0F9oohSh4gw?list=PL3XZNMGhpynP4rbJJGg3NIpZJHB5QRVC1&t=901

Now, Dave has unlocked the Paladin role today, and what a role it is. It would be even more valuable if he hadn't already unlocked the PhD Flopper of course, but on the bright side, he can now make his PhD Flopper explosions purely aesthetic by keeping his aura on for everyone in range when he lands, making them immune to explosions.

The White Knight sketch is in fact just a sketch Dave saw pre-awakening-on-Earth-Bet but doesn't quite remember, but he now thinks there is something off about the term White Knight because of it.

As Dave walked down the street, he kept his Paladin aura on, which means he was healing everyone he walked past. This is absurdly illegal on Earth Bet, and constitutes something like 'assault with parahuman powers' because he was healing people without permission. Does Dave know this and choose to ignore it, or did he not know about this? Either way, he's going to claim he had no idea he assaulted several hundred people today.

Some of you might wonder why Dave bought Lisa's mind-reading schtick, and that's partially because she described it as 'psychic,' and one of his potential roles is literally 'Medium,' as in a psychic Medium who communicates with the dead. Part of it is his relative inexperience in the world of Parahumans. Unlike the New Wave kids, he's never taken a Parahuman Studies class, and there is only so much research he's been able to do in nine days, and he has had to research a variety of things, while also dealing with being fairly easily distractible and accidentally going off topic from what he intends to research. Not to mention, he doesn't exactly dedicate all of his free-time to research, he also bothers Bella and Crystal and shitposts on IKEA forums, and watches Earth Aleph media recommended to him by Crystal.

Thus, Dave has no idea that actual mind reading is considered impossible for Parahumans to accomplish.

Also, First Minion Get!

Also also, Paperwork Minion Get!

 

[Phili]

Chapter 36: In Which Dave Encourages Lisa to Jump Out a Window Because Bella is Scary

January 10, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, The Boardwalk.



"So…" Lisa fluttered her eyes dramatically at Dave. "You will protect me in exchange for my services as a Thinker?" She clarified.

Dave nodded. "Sure, as long as you also make sure I don't have to do paperwork." He emphasized the important part.

"Great, just so you know, I'm homeless at the moment because I'm a lot harder to find that way." She smiled at him. Dave looked at her more closely; she didn't particularly look homeless.

"My power lends itself well to things like identifying acceptable targets and their credit card information." She explained. "So I have plenty of clean clothes and such, I just couldn't risk staying at a hotel or anything without making myself too much easier to find."

Dave nodded thoughtfully, and Lisa smiled upon getting confirmation of her suspicion that Dave didn't care about crimes committed against acceptable targets.

"Well, I've been working on a project with Armsmaster and Dragon to make a large-scale Tinker base," Dave began, "and after it is finished, I will have set up a fun variety of defenses that would easily stop the entire Empire at once, leaving aside any defenses any other Tinkers might add. But… It's not anywhere near actually ready yet. It's still just in the planning phase and getting permission. When it is done, you can set up there if you want, it will certainly be the best-defended place in Brockton, and probably the best-defended place on the East Coast of the US aside from 'within five feet of Legend.'"

"You'll actually be able to help with that if you want." Dave said thoughtfully. "You could help design it if you want, and you would be in charge of the designs of any part of it that you want to be 'yours,' so to speak. If you are able to help Tinkers find their specialties, you could also provide a useful service to get more Tinkers on board and thus increase the defenses the base would have."

"But for now…" Dave said, "you'll have to room with either me, New Wave if I get permission, or my neighbor, who is a close friend of mine, and female; assuming she is okay with it. If hotels won't work those are your options, though of course rooming with me will make it easiest for me to protect you."

"Don't say it like that." Lisa admonished him.

Don't say what like what? He wondered.

"Don't say things like 'by the way, rooming with me will make it easiest to protect you.' It comes across as predatory, even if I can tell it really isn't in your particular case. Do you have any idea how many times I've heard people try to pull that shit since I became homeless?" She asked him. "It's way too many!"

"Anyways," Lisa coughed, seemingly slightly embarrassed at her outburst. "I would like to meet your neighbor first before I decide, but I would like to room with either her or you, but only her if I find her agreeable of course. And I would need things to defend myself with in either case." She added the last part nonchalantly. Joke's on her, Dave loves giving out toys.

"Sure, let me just send her a message to see if she's busy. If she isn't we can go meet her right now."

Dave began texting Bella with that said.

---

Me: Yo Bella, I acquired a minion, wanna meet her?

Bella: Did your power give you a sentient being aside from those cats?

Me: Nah, it's a real-life fleshy person, not one of my cute furry little dinguses.

Bella: Fine.

Me: Sweet, we'll come meet you at your apartment then. Want any pastries or coffee?

Bella: Bring me one of those iced Mocha things with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles, along with a pastry of some sort.

Me: Good taste, we'll see you soon!

---

Dave ordered Bella's Mocha thing and a croissant to go, and upon receiving them, left the café with Lisa in tow.

"When we get there, I'll show you some of the neat toys you wanted." Dave told Lisa as they walked out, nearly making her trip.

"Don't say that!" She whisper-shouted at him.

Again, people keep telling me not to say this without clarifying what they don't want me to say. It's so rude! Dave thought to himself. "Don't say what?"

"Don't talk to a girl about showing her toys, it sounds like a sex thing," Lisa whispered to him.

Dave looked at her doubtfully. "I… really don't think that's the case. It sounds like you're just a pervert. In my entire life, I have never once heard someone refer to a toy as a sex thing; only ever as a thing relating to Superpowers or a thing relating to Terrorism."

"Oh my god, how are you telling the truth?" Lisa seemed like she was trying her best not to scream at him.

"I'm an honest lad." Dave told her sincerely.

She looked at him. "No, you're not."

"No, I'm not." Dave agreed with a smile.

---

Dave knocked on Bella's apartment door. Nothing happened.

He knocked again. Nothing happened.

He knocked again. The door opened, and Bella stood there.

He knocked again, this time directly on her forehead, right above her very unamused face.

He knocked ag—no, no he didn't knock again, he just got dragged inside by Bella.

"Come in," Bella politely told Lisa. "I'm sorry for whatever he's done so far that you've had to put up with. I promise you, it gets worse."

"I assumed as much," Lisa gave Bella a forlorn nod. "But it's good to have confirmation."

"So," Bella said as they sat down in Bella's living room. "I'm told you are Dave's new… subordinate—" "Minion." Dave chimed in. "—Shut up Dave. His new subordinate, and you wanted to meet me."

"Yes," Lisa nodded. "You see, I'm a rather strong Thinker, if I do say so myself, and I seem to have been targeted by a nefarious group of some sort, so I asked Dave here for protection from them in exchange for my services as a Thinker. However, I don't really have a place to live, and while I can afford to live out of a hotel, it wouldn't be able to keep me safe. So, Dave suggested I stay with either himself, you, or New Wave, and I told him I would prefer to stay with either you or him."

Dave was surprised; he hadn't expected Lisa to go the full honesty route. It went against what little he knew about Thinker tendencies from his research; though in hindsight those were almost certainly generalizations and quite possibly stereotypes, and thus not reliable enough to make decisions off of.

"Oh, so you're homeless but well off enough to pay for a hotel if you would be safe doing so?" Bella asked.

Lisa nodded. "Yes, my power makes it surprisingly profitable to do things that would otherwise be unwise, like certain forms of gambling like scratch tickets or cup games at festivals, or buying things and then selling them for a higher price at a pawn shop."

Oh, there's the lying. Stereotypes were true after all!

Lisa looked at Bella. "He just thought something mean about me." She rudely accused Dave. It's not mean if it's true after all. Wait, I need to defend myself. Dave realized.

"It's not mean if it's true." He said aloud. There, my defense is ironclad.

Bella turned to Lisa. "Fine, you can stay with me for a while if you can follow normal housemate rules. But you will need to work on finding a long-term solution on your own, I will be busy with classes for most of each week. Speaking of which…" Bella gained a scary look in her eyes that Dave recognized. "You seem a little young to be out of school, don't you Lisa?" Bella asked a scary question with a straight face.

"Don't make eye contact." Dave advised Lisa. "Jump out a window if necessary, I can bring you back to life if you die in the process." He told her, holding up a defibrillator.

"It would be unsafe for me to go to any sort of school while I am being targeted," Lisa smoothly told Bella, while ignoring Dave with equal smoothness. "Both for myself and any other students. We would all be at risk of capture, death, and who knows what from whatever organization is targeting me."

"Hmm." Bella looked Lisa straight in the eyes, seemingly looking for something, before nodding to herself.

"If you stay with me, you will be doing some sort of online schooling. I don't have the time, energy, or inclination to babysit you, but I will be making sure you aren't one of those Thinkers that is an idiot without their powers as my way of helping out Dave. You will need to maintain passing, decent grades while you are rooming with me. You don't have to tell me exactly how your power works, but I guarantee you it will work better if you have more knowledge and better critical thinking skills to use it. A Blaster still needs to learn how to aim, a Brute can still improve their melee combat skills, and a Tinker can train their critical thinking, relevant mundane skills, and their manual dexterity to use their tools. It is the same with a Thinker, and you will agree with me if you ever get to college-level Parahuman Studies classes." Bella told Lisa smugly.

Lisa seemed to take that as a challenge, and looked smug right back. "I think you'll find I can do rather amazingly in any educational setting."

"Of course you can." Bella said, seeming to know right where Lisa's mind went. "But you will end up rather pathetic if you use your power to cheat your way through school. There was a case I learned about in Parahuman Studies recently, about a Thinker whose power let him store information and brainpower in little crystals, and he could use the brainpower and information of any crystal he had in contact with his body, and he always carried a bunch around attached to his body. Well, someone eventually caught on and destroyed all his crystals, and he couldn't make any new ones because he had forgotten how to retain information. He became effectively an amnesiac and lost all of his basic thinking skills and knowledge because he had stored them in Crystals to improve his power's ability to increase his 'brainpower'. Not that he used his 'intelligence' very wisely, but he was extraordinarily strong as a Thinker, and a powerhouse in his corner of the world before people caught on and he became crippled because he could barely think without his power."

"You don't need to scare me into studying." Lisa said grouchily. "I could tell you believed what you were saying about it making my powers stronger anyways."

"Good." Bella nodded. "Then we can speak more on what our exact arrangement will be in a bit. For now," Bella reached out her hand to Dave. "Gimme my pastry and mocha."











Author's Note: Today, I found the first episode featuring Oscar the Cat. You might remember back when dingus was first introduced that I had been confused and called him Oscar originally before changing it to dingus because I encountered the first dingus episode in my rewatching of TTT. It turns out, there was also an Oscar the Cat all along, I wasn't crazy the whole time! And it made perfect sense that I thought of Oscar the Cat first because Oscar appeared most recently! If anyone is curious, this episode is the first appearance of Oscar the Cat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZU7e2bN1Wo&list=PL3XZNMGhpynNCVmuv9xANuq2ex2Rw5Wbm&index=5

Here is a good frame of Oscar the Cat in that vid along with a description of what he does: https://youtu.be/1ZU7e2bN1Wo?list=PL3XZNMGhpynNCVmuv9xANuq2ex2Rw5Wbm&t=234

Now, some of you might wonder why Lisa picked Dave when she struck it alone in canon until she ended up captured. That is largely because she can tell he is a lot more morally flexible than a 'standard hero', but is still 'heroic' enough he would help her if asked, and is strong enough to protect her, can massively increase her effectiveness with his healing tech making her able to get rid of her Thinker headaches (which she really, really wants, as anyone prone to migraines will tell you; I'm not prone to them myself, but I've heard people talk about them and they would absolutely commit crimes in exchange for a miraculous migraine cure); along with Dave being trustworthy according to her power, and really easy to find while he has his Healing Aura enabled, because Lisa's power could literally see people subconsciously doing things like walking straighter as he passed because they got healed.

That isn't mentioning she can tell he is an extremely powerful Trump with a lot of potential that can also grant others powers, and she wants to get in on the ground floor as it were, and be associated with him from as early on as possible before he strikes it big.

Really, as far as Lisa is concerned, the biggest downsides to going under Dave are that she doesn't instantly get a perfect solution to her living situation, and that she has to associate with New Wave to an extent, which… well, there's a reason she didn't even consider going to them for help, and it's only partially because they very famously couldn't even protect one of their own from a single unpowered wannabe gangster and didn't even take revenge. Lisa took one look at the Dallon household with her power, doubletaked and looked closer, and noped the fuck out. She might have even left Dave alone if she couldn't tell he was closest with Crystal out of New Wave; if he had been closest with the Dallon side instead of the Pelham side, she might have tried her luck elsewhere instead.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 37: Giving Toys *Wink Wink* to Teenage Girls

January 10, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, Bella's Apartment.



Lisa Wilbourne

She had really lucked out here. Finding the new Parahuman that wasn't an independent—but was powerful and useful enough that the PRT implied online that he was signed on as an independent hero with the PRT— because he was silently healing everyone in a radius around him with no visible sign that he was healing them was great. That he didn't mind some less than legal acquisitions as long as they were acquired from scum of the Earth was better. But now she also had her living situation sorted for now, and she even got to design part of a Tinkertech fortress for her long-term living situation!

Her roommate being female made her a little more comfortable, even if her power insisted there was no danger from Dave. Having her roommate be a college student was even better; Lisa could get access to things like books from a campus library that she would normally need to be a student to get, and she had already gotten use out of Bella's higher level of education.

Seriously, that's so annoying. She thought to herself. Whose idea was it to put all the useful stuff in Parahuman studies at the end of High School and into college level of education? I know kids at my school would have paid way more attention if they learned about stuff like what she just mentioned about ways Parahumans can improve themselves, even if only so they could argue more effectively for their theoretical matchups on PHO. Fuck, I actually have to study now, and try to figure out how to learn without using me power to 'cheat'. Despite my act, I'm self-aware enough to know I'm not really any smarter than average. Damn, this is depressing, I need to cheer myself up.

"So," she clapped her hands together upon seeing her new roommate begin to eat her croissant, and turned to Dave. "Toys?" She asked. She had no idea why asking in that particular manner made him happier, but if there was a chance doing so would net her better 'toys' she was absolutely going to do it.

"Yup, yup, let me see here, I got you covered for a beginner package." Dave said, as he began pulling things out of his bullshit hammerspace.

He started off by pulling out and explaining what he called 'Body Armor' and a 'Radar' that were basically a minor Brute power and a minor Thinker power in their own right. Seriously, they could be equipped and de-equipped at will, and were invisible while in use.

Then he casually brought out a fucking teleporter. After explaining its uses, he just pressed the button on the remote thing and vanished from right before her eyes, and Bella had to get up to let him back in after he knocked. He had clearly just gone to his apartment unit next door, but he had said there were no range limitations, and seeing it in action, even over such a short distance, felt like it made things a little more real.

Not to mention it was an instant escape button for her in an emergency.

Then he brought out a pistol, and claimed it was a Flare Gun, which… wasn't what a Flare Gun looked like, but Bella didn't correct him when he explained what it did, so it was fair enough given it could also send up flares in addition to setting people on fire and destroying dead bodies.

Then, he brought out another pistol, and called it a 'Freeze Gun', because it froze whoever was shot with it. It only had four bullets in it (apparently it used to only have three but he had upgraded them), so he gave her two Freeze Guns.

Then, he brought out yet another pistol.

"This one," Dave said, "is a laser pointer."

She stared at the pistol, then at Dave. Bella helpfully kicked Dave.

"Bad Bella!" Dave said, then shot Bella in the foot with his 'laser pointer' pistol.

"For fucks sake Dave, I can't see. Stop it if you don't want to get kicked again, this is making me dizzy." Bella complained, though she was apparently completely unharmed even though Lisa saw a bullet come out of the gun and hit her in the foot.

"The laser pointer, when someone is hit by it, will blind them for a couple seconds and make them dizzy. It shoots a line of bullets along the light beam it points with, but has no recoil, so it really is more like a laser than a gun. It doesn't actually matter where you hit them with it, they will be blinded and dizzy regardless as long as they are hit by it. It is a white blindness, not a black blindness, like so." Dave said, then shot her with it.

The dizziness effect didn't quite make her nauseous, but she could see a lot of people getting nauseous from it, and she would probably get that way herself if she was exposed long enough, but her power seemed to be having a nice time analyzing the white blindness.

"Don't shoot people with things without permission, especially people you've only met recently." Bella said, and kicked Dave again.

"But what if they deserve it?" Dave asked imploringly.

"Then it's fine, obviously." Bella rolled her eyes. "Did Lisa deserve it?"

"I don't know," Dave said, before turning to her. "Lisa, did you deserve it?"

"No, of course not," Lisa lied, like a lying liar. She had gone on a little bit of a power trip after she got away from under her family's thumb and was exploring her powers properly. But if getting hit by the laser pointer was enough to make up for that, then she was happy to take that deal.

"Bella," Dave whined. "She's looking smug again. Kick her!"

Bella kicked Dave again. Lisa smiled, and made sure to make it extra smug.

"Fine, be that way." Dave grumbled. "This!" He held up a banana, "Is a banana. Be very careful with it, for obvious reasons."

She stared at him. Her power was drawing a blank. Then her power suggested it might make people that come into contact with it allergic to bananas, but that seemed a little useless.

Then Dave demonstrated to her exactly how the banana was dangerous, by picking it up, point it at his own head, and repeatedly shooting himself in the head with it until he died.

"Dammit Dave." Bella facepalmed.

---

Her power had insisted, repeatedly, that Dave would come back to life after a period of time, but it was nice to have Bella confirm it for her, even if she would probably remain on edge until he actually came back. In the meantime, she got to know her temporary host a little better.

And, it really had to be said. Bella was probably the nicest and most genuine person Lisa had met since she got her powers.

Not that that's saying much, given my family and all that, then being on the streets. She thought to herself, before nodding in agreement to Bella's stipulation to not touch her plants without proper instructions. The pleasant smell from a few of the flowers was a nice bonus to living here instead of with Dave though, even if she would have to put up with sleeping on a couch for a few days, and then likely either a cot, air mattress, or futon of some sort.

"So Lisa, did you have any idea who might be after you?" Bella asked after a moment.

Lisa looked to Dave's corpse and asked "Shouldn't we wait for this discussion until he can hear us?"

"Oh, don't worry about that." Bella waved her worries away as she finished off her mocha and her pastry. "He enters what he calls 'spectator mode when he dies. He can move through objects and fly at decently high speeds, as well as see and hear while dead. There's no way to detect him normally, but we can see if he's here by doing this."

"Dave!" Bella called out, and placed her to-go coffee cup her mocha had been in on the coffee table. "Possess this please so we know you are here and listening."

The coffee cup stayed still for a moment, before it started slowly moving towards Bella's hand in an oddly… pandering manner.

"And like that, we know he's here." Bella said. "Now, what were you going to say?"

"Umm." Lisa organized her thoughts. "Well, it isn't the Empire 88 or the ABB. One of the upsides to their racial recruitment is that any group including black people can let them be eliminate as possibilities. They seemed professional, and confident, possibly a Private Military Company of some sort, or former agents of a branch of the military or police. If we're going full-conspiracy, they could be part of a secret, hidden, current branch of the military or police. Some of them had hidden weapons that my power says are Tinkertech, and they all work for the same person or group."

"Huh. That… doesn't sound like anyone in the Bay." Bella mused. "Maybe someone from outside the city is moving in? How long have they been trying to capture you?"

And back and forth they went, trying to figure out who was after her and what methods they might employ in the future to try to find her.

It was decided rather swiftly that Lisa would be getting several wigs, a makeup kit, and fake glasses for whenever she needed to go outside, so as to not lure whoever was after her back to wherever Lisa frequented.

Lisa was fairly sure she could figure out exactly who was after her with a bit of time and internet access now that she had a safe space she could use to actually perform some in-depth research. Bella deferred to Lisa's judgement in terms of what her power could accomplish, which felt pretty nice, especially compared to her family's constant demands and assumptions in regards to her power.

"I'm back!" David said, right as the coffee cup stopped nudging Bella's hand.

Lisa's head immediately began to feel better, she must have been overusing her power during her conversation with Bella to figure out who was after her; she hadn't overused it by much though, she hadn't even noticed her head starting to hurt yet until it felt better from Dave's healing aura.

Oh shit, I'm going to become dependent on his healing, aren't I? Being able to just use my power as much as I want is… yes, I see what Bella was talking about earlier about becoming dependent on powers. It's not quite the same, since I would be becoming dependent on Dave's power in order to use my power as much as I want, but it's a similar principle. Crap, I hope he will let me use his Health Station things as much as I want, I'm going to need it at this rate.

Besides that though, I wonder if… okay, the answer is yes. His healing will make exercise a lot more efficient, and pleasant, so that means getting back in proper shape will be relatively easy, even after a month or so of pretty terrible nutrition and poor exercise due to homelessness.

"More toys!" Dave cheered, and handed her a tiny Hula doll with a green dress.

She looked from Dave to the Hula doll, wondering if this one was a gun too.

"This is a DNA Scanner!" Dave proclaimed. "You use it by focusing, just like the Body Armor and Radar, except you use it on a dead body instead of yourself, then a little symbol will appear in your vision, kind-of like the radar, that shows where whoever killed the dead body you used it on is, and it will update every thirty seconds so you can tell where they are even if they move. If you use it on another dead body, it will change target and start keeping track of whoever killed the newer body instead. Naturally, if whoever killed the body you use it on is dead, it won't work; the symbol will also stop appearing after whoever killed the dead body you used it on dies."

Lisa had so many questions. First of all, "What are you expecting me to do with this? Does it work through a computer screen? What if the person wasn't killed by another person? Does it count poisoning someone as killing them? What about if someone passes on a disease that kills the person I use it on, does that count? What if they purposefully passed said disease?" Well, that was a little more than 'first,' but she really wanted to know anyways.

"Well," Dave answered. "You can use it however you like, I was thinking you might want to use it to supplement your Thinker power and gain leverage and influence. You could probably become quite popular with the police by using it to help them while using your power to make sure you only helped the non-corrupt ones, for example. It needs to be used on an actual body, so it doesn't work through a computer screen, and if you don't want to work with dead bodies, you of course don't have to, stop glaring at me Bella! I'm not going to force anyone to work with dead bodies."

After Bella's glare abated, Dave coughed and continued. "Ahem. If they weren't killed by another person the symbol simply won't appear. Poisoning someone counts as killing them if they die from it, but only if the poison is actually what kills them, if it weakens them and then they fall down the stairs it won't help. I don't know about the disease thing, but it doesn't work on anything too indirect. If an oil company fracks the Earth and sets off an Earthquake, and you use it on one of the dead bodies of people killed by the Earthquake, it won't show anyone as being the killer even though the oil company is directly responsible for the death. Similarly, if someone shoves a boulder down a hill and that boulder crushes someone and you use it on the crushed person, it is probably about a 50/50 chance that it will register the person that pushed the boulder as the killer. It will absolutely register someone pushing a person off a cliff as a killer though."

That left one major question though, "Why is it called a DNA Scanner then? It clearly has nothing to do with DNA?" She asked.

Dave had the audacity to shrug and say "I don't make the rules or name the names, I'm just telling it to you like it is."

Yeah right. Lisa thought.













Author's Note: And we start off with a Lisa POV, yay! I took a closer look through her wiki page in preparation for introducing her as a character, and found some things I hadn't really known very well before, like that she doesn't consider herself smart, and suffers low self-esteem because of it. I also hadn't realized that her homeless phase was canon instead of fanon, so that was good to know too, and gave me a nice way to make her insertion into Dave's friend-group more urgent.

I really do like Lisa as a character, she is quite fun, for all that she can and will fail and flop occasionally. She also is just a really useful person to have on your side, both for Dave as a character and for me as a writer, because she is so good at finding information. With her in the picture, I don't really have to worry about it being contrived if she figures out Kid Win's Tinker specialty for example as long as she is given enough information beforehand.

Lisa will still be doing her absolute best to stay the fuck away from most of New Wave though. Being near just about any of them aside from Crystal and Eric is kind-of a nightmare for her, and even then Eric would still be a teenage boy looking at a pretty girl his age if he was ever interacting with her; which Lisa can deal with, but she would rather not if she didn't benefit at all from doing so. That said, Bella will probably end up… reverse-weaning let's call it, Lisa onto the younger generation of New Wave. Bella is too responsible for her own good, a result of growing up dealing with Crystal's shenanigans, and will make sure Lisa is properly socialized, and she knows that the safest way to do so, is to socialize her with other capes.

We also get to see some of Dave's newer toys that he hasn't gotten a chance to use yet, so we can look forward to seeing those in action.

Also, I believe that this chapter marks a very special landmark for me, that being over 90k words! That means that when I post this chapter, it will show up in the parts of QQ that I peruse! Those being this: https://forum.questionablequesting....hreadmark&direction=desc&min_word_count=90000
And this: https://forum.questionablequesting....hreadmark&direction=desc&min_word_count=90000
So that's pretty cool.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 38: Women LOVE Toys (Men Do Too Of Course)

January 10, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, Bella's Apartment.



Lisa was clearly wowed by Dave's wonderful explanations and toys, but there was more to come!

"This," he pulled out one of his new non-bought-items, "is the Backwards Shotgun. As you can see, it is a shotgun, that points backwards!"

Lisa and Bella both looked unimpressed with him for some reason.

"It is quite a bit more powerful than a regular shotgun, and the recoil is strong enough to actually fly with if you are able to consistently reload it quickly enough." Dave explained.

"You are not giving her a gun that shoots its user." Bella told him.

"But, it doesn't shoot the user? It shoots behind them! Obviously. Why would you think I would give her something that shoots its user?" Dave asked Bella.

"Gee, I wonder what could have made me think that was a possibility." Bella said snarkily. But really, it was a fair enough statement, Dave too wondered what could have made Bella think that was a possibility.

"Anyways, you just press this button, or focus on it like the Body Armor, Radar and DNA Scanner," Dave demonstrated by pressing the button, and being forcibly turned around. "And it will instantly turn you around exactly 180 degrees. So you just face directly at whoever you want to shoot, then use the turn-around feature to turn around, and fire! As long as you don't miss, it will kill any non-brute, and even weaker brutes will probably die. This is absolutely my strongest gun in close range." Dave explained.

"DO NOT DEMONSTRATE THAT in my home." Bella shouted at him.

"But I already did?" Dave said with confusion.

"I meant don't fire it in my home you dingus." Bella said with exasperation.

"Oh, good idea." Dave said, and brought out his dingus.

"This is dingus." He introduced Lisa to his dingus. "You can keep him if you want, he is completely immortal and invulnerable to all harm. He could chill out floating through the void of space or pick a fight with the Siberian and be totally fine. Other than that, and his ability to meow on command, he is a normal cat though. I can upgrade him if you want to heal everyone in a radius around him with his purrs though! Do you want him?" He offered his dingus to Lisa.

Lisa looked torn for some reason. She whispered something to herself under her breath about 'dignity' along with something about 'cute.' It made sense, Dave's furry little dingus was both cute and dignified. Perhaps she had a cat allergy? That would be a logical source of distress when presented with an opportunity as amazing as this.

"Ahem." Bella coughed. "Perhaps you should be asking ME first? You know, considering it is my apartment the cat would be in?"

That… seemed like an excellent point.

"Bella, would you like to have a dingus of your very own?" He offered. "I'm willing to give you one of mine." He said with a winning smile.

"I don't know, I'll have to ask my housemate first." Bella told him smugly.

"Lisa, would you like to get a cat?" Bella asked politely. "I'm familiar with these ones from Dave's powers already. These ones don't generate waste, and thus don't need litter boxes, and don't need to eat or drink, though they can. They are quite docile and easy to take care of, and are very friendly. If you want one, we can get one, especially since I know Thinkers can get headaches and migraines from using their powers too much, and I imagine a furry companion with healing powers would help with that. No pressure either way though." Bella told Lisa.

Lisa stayed silent for a bit. "Can I think on it? And could I rename him something else?" She said the last part a bit desperately.

Dave shrugged. "You can think on it as long as you want as far as I'm concerned. For renaming… I mean, you can try, but before I upgrade them, I can't even get any of my dinguses to respond to Dingus with a capital D, let alone anything else."

Lisa had a strange look on her face. "How would they know if you are referring to them with a capital D or not?"

Dave looked at her as if she was a little silly, which she was. "The same way we do of course!"

"But…" Lisa trailed off, and Bella put a hand on her shoulder.

"Don't question this sort of thing too much Lisa. That way lies madness."

"Anyways, more toys!" Dave cheered, and pulled out the next toy. "This is a minifier. You use it like this." He demonstrated. "To become mini!" He said, having shrunk to about a fifth of his original size. "You become a little less durable, though not as fragile as the size would suggest, only about 40% less durable than you would be at full size, barring things like forcefields and armor. Your speed increases a little to make you ever so slightly faster than you would have been at full size, even accounting for your smaller legs. Your strength remains the same as well, and your weight acts strange according to the testing people at the Protectorate, but that isn't likely to come up anyways."

Dave thought for a moment. "Let's see, what else?"

He pulled out a couple more things. "Super Knife, floppy Crowbar. Use the Knife on heavy-duty Brutes like Hookwolf. Just will it to begin using its highly-lethal function." Dave began explaining the wonders of the Knife and the floppy Crowbar.

---

"Ooh! New toy!" Dave announced after finishing his explanation of Lisa's new knife and crowbar.

"I just got this one, it's pretty cool, it's called the Dead Ringer!" He held out a pocket watch for Lisa and Bella to examine.

"Fine, what's this one do?" Bella asked after a moment.

"Well, you just activate it by pressing this button." He pressed it, and it made a little beep noise. "And now, whenever I am injured by something, or harmed in any way, a copy of my body will drop to the floor and I will turn invisible. The body will disappear after thirty seconds or so, which is also when I will become visible again, but it is a fantastic way to escape in an emergency, or ambush people after lowering their guard of course. So, you will be getting one of these, Lisa, as well. With this and the teleporter, you should be able to escape most situations relatively easily. Though, we will need to ask New Wave for a little tracker thingy that sends your location to me if you press a panic button or if the signal is jammed somehow. I have one that sends a signal to New Wave, and it is quite useful." Dave explained.

Lisa looked at the pile of things on Bella's coffee table. "I think I can work with this." She smiled, it was a smug, smug, sight.

"Let's see…" Dave pondered. "I suppose the next order of business would be getting you a costume." He said after a moment.

Bella perked up. "Oh, there's a Rogue that's set up shop down on the Boardwalk; she specializes in fabric-type things. She makes clothes and cloth accessories with her powers, and her stuff looks quite good. She might be willing to make you a costume from rather good materials if you commission her."

Dave thought about it. "Well, I have plenty of money, and I anticipate getting a lot more. I'm also happy to use my Changer power to give her inspiration if she wants, or to give her a few toys to play with."

Bella sighed for some reason. "Dave… just… stop talking about giving women toys."

Dave was confused. "But… women love toys? Look at Lisa! She's smiling like a Loot Goblin at all the toys I gave her."

Lisa looked up from where she was going through the pile of toys like a kid on Christmas morning. Then she registered what had been said, and did her best to make her face as straight as possible, but was struggling to erase the remnants of smugness.

Bella sighed again. "Just… try not to do it in public too much."

Dave saluted. "Sure thing! Not really, no promises." He said, earning a glare from Bella.

"So," Dave clapped his hands. "The rest of today will mostly be recovery and relaxation for Lisa, along with you two getting to know each other better. Tomorrow we—by which I mean Lisa and I, since Bella will have classes— will meet with Parian and ask her to make Lisa a costume. Lisa, it will be your job to make sure we aren't doing anything catastrophically wrong when we ask her for her help. I'll swing by New Wave and get a couple of those tracker thingies, one for Lisa and one for Parian if she wants me to come to her aid or something as part of the payment for the costume. Then the next day, we will spend a little time getting Lisa used to all of her new toys. The day after that is a little far in the future to make any concrete plans for. Sound good?" Dave asked his audience.

Lisa nodded, but Bella narrowed her eyes.

"Sure… but Lisa, can I trust you to find a decent online schooling option on your own? I know the high schools in Brockton Bay all start back up again tomorrow, but I don't know what online schooling options look like in terms of when you need to be enrolled by."

Lisa paused, then nodded sullenly. "Yeah, I can work something out, I can at least use my power to figure out what the best options are."

"Great," Dave said. "We have a plan. For now, Bella, you can show Lisa her first piece of required watching as a cape, and introduce her to the wonderful world of Pokemon! New watch party viewer obtained!"







Author's Note: Another smallish chapter, but I feel like that's probably okay given my upload rate so far, right? We finished off introducing Lisa in this chapter, and gave her the rest of her toys. I really am quite happy with having Lisa be part of Dave's in-group, because while Dave is happy to go with the flow and jump from idea to idea, and Crystal is in the mindset of 'maintain the status quo, we don't want things to get even worse after all,' and Bella doesn't really feel inclined to try to change things due to lack of personal power; Lisa is ambitious. And that can be great for a story, to have someone driving things along and make things happen, without necessarily needing everything to be reacting to a situation.

Ambition is really what makes a great superhero instead of a good one. A normal superhero always has to react to a villain, superheroes only become truly effective if they are ambitious enough to try to change things somehow. Of course, normal comic-book logic dictates such attempts usually just result in a new supervillain, but one of the few benefits of Worm's method of obtaining superpowers is that that really isn't a risk; at most they might draw the attention of an already established villain, but they won't make a new one by trying to improve the world.

Lisa might chill out later on, but for now, she will probably be a significant force driving Dave towards making progress. She struggled for a while through her Trigger and family and homelessness and being targeted by Coil, but now, she feels like everything is coming up Lisa… because it kind of is at the moment. She got housing, a sponsor and protector, a bunch of fun new toys, methods of escaping bad situations, and people that her power can directly tell her are in her corner.

Really, Bella is a bit of an MVP here, because Dave is rather hard for Lisa's power to read properly for a variety of reasons, but Bella is just a genuinely good person, and Lisa's power can tell her that, which is what is ensuring Lisa is becoming more cooperative and trusting. Even throughout the past couple chapters, you might notice Lisa sticking less and less to the idea that her power is actually mind-reading as she opens up more because she can see how genuine Bella is. Do note that this Lisa is also a lot less jaded than canon Lisa, because she hasn't had to deal with Coil's bullshit at any point too, so she can see being a good person as a good thing instead of as a sign of naivete.

 

[Phili]

Interlude 1: Vista at a PRT Meeting

January 10, 2010, Sunday. Brockton Bay, PRT Headquarters.



Vista

They took away her pocket sniper rifle! The indignity!

She stewed at the injustice and leveled accusing glares at every adult that walked by as she was led towards the meeting room. Occasionally, some of the people she was glaring at would look away and whispers would break out.

As she entered the meeting room, she took note of everyone else in it. There was Director Piggot, naturally, along with deputy director Renick. The full Protectorate roster was there: Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Velocity, and the alphabet crew made up of Assault, Battery, Challenger, and Dauntless. And of course, her and Triumph, being the one most relevant to the subject and the leader of the Wards respectively.

"Good, we're all here." Director Piggot began, and Vista settled herself in for a long speech or presentation. "Let's start then. As I'm sure you are all familiar with by now, there is a new heroically inclined cape in Brockton Bay. He is a powerful Trump going by 'Trouble', and is mostly cooperative with the PRT. He is close with New Wave and has been seen patrolling with them and guarding Panacea at the hospital—about time they started taking her security seriously. Now, this seems like a good thing on the surface, but we have these meetings for a reason."

"Just like when Panacea began to cooperate with us, this changes the status quo, and changes to the status quo risks escalation from villains. With Panacea, we began having our heroes heal more quickly and lasting injuries stopped, and now villains have begun hitting harder because they feel safer doing so, and we have to be more careful because they are more likely to accidentally kill someone. Trouble also has healing capabilities, as I can see Assault has found out." Piggot said wryly, staring at Assault who had a weird burrito in his mouth. It looked like it had eggplant, chocolate, marshmallow and mango at a glance, though Vista wasn't quite certain.

Assault saw everyone staring at him and shrugged. "Well, it doesn't taste good, but those machines sure do give you exactly what you ask them for. I really didn't think it was going to be able to do marshmallow or dragon fruit, but I sure wasn't going to waste food." He explained before taking another bite and making a face at the taste. So it also had dragon fruit. Why did Assault think it was going to be able to do mango but not dragon fruit?

Battery facepalmed. "They generate infinite food, you can't 'waste' it." She said.

Assault shook his head. "No, no, no, you have to think about all the starving children in Africa whenever you consider throwing away food. If there's one thing my mom taught me, that was it."

Vista stared at Assault. That would explain so much.

"Just, go on with the meeting. Sorry about him." Battery apologized for Assault, who looked confused at what he had done wrong.

"Very well." Director Piggot said. "As you all should know, Trouble's powers are wide and varied, if not particularly strong yet, the obvious comparisons being Dauntless and Alabaster, though with what we now know, there could be an argument for comparison to the Butcher as well given how he can apparently blind whoever kills him. Many of his powers manifest in the form of objects that he can give to others to use, making him both a self-enhancing Trump and the more common kind that can empower others. He has shown a willingness to lend or give his 'items' to others, including giving them to both Armsmaster for testing purposes and Vista for self-protection."

"While I would trust Vista with a gun more than I would trust most adults," Piggot began, "I'm not inclined to trust the judgement of anyone that thinks it is a good idea to hand a preteen a so-called 'Pocket Sniper Rifle.' So we will be keeping an eye out for any weapons that might come from him in case he decides to hand them out less stringently."

Vista pouted.

Piggot sighed. "Vista, if you can convince Miss Militia and Challenger that you can be trusted with a gun, I will give the go-ahead to start rebranding your image to make you an 'apprentice-like figure' to one of them. It will let you start carrying either a PRT foam weapon or a rubber-bullet gun after your image changes a little in people's mind and you become associated with them."

Vista smiled, while Challenger and Miss Militia both gave the Director betrayed looks.

"You'll still be seen as cute though." Piggot added with a barely perceptible smile, making Vista's smile vanish.

"Back on topic, Trouble's ability to generate unlimited guns and ammunition by itself would make him able to arm a gang enough to outgun the police, but the other things at his disposal exacerbate the issue. That issue being, the gangs will see him as a threat and try to do something about him. They will then fail, because he resurrects after he dies, and he cannot be captured because he can teleport and it is unknown how many teleport locations he has set up that he could teleport to. When it becomes clear that they can't do anything about him, there are a few possibilities of what the gangs will do."

Piggot looked around at the room. "Try to drive him away, either through violence, threatening to unmask him, taking hostages, or luring him away by promising things in exchange for leaving. Trying to recruit him, which will be funny if nothing else when it goes poorly. Try to force him into inaction, likely through similar methods as they would if trying to get him to leave the Bay. Or try to disable him through increasingly exotic methods until they find something that sticks. According to our analysis, the most reliable way to actually handle him if needed, would be to shove him into a Gray Boy bubble, since he likely would not continue to get stronger, and of course he would be unable to escape."

Piggot looked harder at each of them. "We do not want the villains deciding to get creative trying to deal with him. If they start trying to recruit Annihilators or worse, do something particularly stupid like the gangs did all those years ago and try to lure in the Nine to solve their problem for them, we will be, quite simply fucked."

Piggot sat back in her seat. "For now, we have a bit more time. Based on the recording you all should have seen," Piggot glared at Assault at that point, who nodded to confirm he had seen it, "the Empire will believe he is dead, and he never actually gave out his name. As long as we can convince him to not use that bug-man form anymore, we can delay the gangs figuring out what a problem he will be for a bit longer. We will talk about the ramifications of Hookwolf being blinded later on in this meeting." She added, seeing a few people shift at that remark about Empire, which got them to settle down.

"Next up, Armsmaster is going to speak about Trouble's new proposal." Director Piggot nodded to Armsmaster, who stood up.

"Trouble recently obtained a Tinker power—relating to mud—and was inspired by one of his other 'items' that will apparently let him build large structures extremely quickly, or at least their outlines. Due to the exact constraints of his Tinker power, he came to me for assistance and to propose a joint project. He proposed a large-scale Tinker base in the woods near Brockton, as a large lab to increase the effectiveness of all Tinkers involved, as well as a way to potentially lure friendly Tinkers to the bay." Armsmaster began.

"I believe it is likely to work. There was a similar project under Hero when he was active that I was a part of, but there have been no significant attempts to recreate such a thing after his death. Dragon seemed similarly interested in his proposal, and between the three of us and Kid Win, we would be starting out with four Tinkers working together." Armsmaster looked at everyone.

"I see you do not understand. It has truly been too long since Hero was active. That many Tinkers working together can accomplish great things, and would push each Tinker involved to greater and greater heights as they share equipment and work on projects together and gain insight from each other. If we were to succeed, it will lure Tinkers that remember the project Hero ran under the same philosophy, and my name along with Dragon's and the idea of a 'shiny new state-of-the-art Tinkertech base,' and access to Trouble's healing technology, would lure new Tinkers and make them inclined to join the Brockton Protectorate as well." Armsmaster stated with confidence.

"Trouble also stated plans to use his healing technology to obtain funds from rich individuals that sponsor the Guild, both to make himself a harder target as anyone that went after him would then make an enemy of the rich people he healed, and as a way to fund this and any future projects he might have. As a result, this project would take up nothing whatsoever from the PRT's budget." Armsmaster seemed to care a lot about that. Actually, Vista noticed the rest of the adult heroes did too. She could tell Triumph didn't care quite as much, but grasped that he was supposed to care based on how the Protectorate heroes cared about the budget not being impacted.

Assault whistled. "That sounds pretty ambitious. Do you think it's a good idea big guy?" He asked Armsmaster.

Director Piggot also focused her attention on Armsmaster upon hearing the question.

"I…" Armsmaster paused. "I am biased. I very much want this project to happen. However, given what the Director said earlier about the risks of villains escalating when they find out what he can do… I believe it may be the solution, if we can set it up quickly enough, while keeping Trouble busy enough that the gangs don't realize how quickly he grows and how hard to eliminate he truly is."

Armsmaster continued, "One of the things Trouble mentioned he could accomplish with his Tinker Power, was an improved version of his teleporters, though he also gave several samples of his current teleporters for Dragon, myself, and Kid Win to look at to see if we could improve. One of his proposals, was something he was certain he could accomplish with the right equipment, which was part of why he wanted to set up such a base. He described it as a teleporter hub, which would be centered in Brockton. It would let the Protectorate and PRT teleport across the country, but use Brockton as a central hub they would need to pass through in the process, thus raising the importance and awareness of the city on a national level, and making reinforcements in an emergency only ever be an instant away. He proposed a backup hub that would be in the Tinker base in case the first one was attacked, but the primary hub would be on the Rig."

Huh. That… sounds reasonable enough to me. Vista thought to herself, before being nearly scared out of her skin.

Director Piggot was… smiling. Widely. It was… well it certainly was. Vista had never seen the Director actually smile; at most she saw the occasional tugging of the lips like earlier when the Director said she would be stuck with the cute label. She could tell the Director didn't smile much by how unpracticed it looked, but she certainly looked downright gleeful.

The Director actually let out a full-bellied laugh, and Vista looked around to see everyone else looked equally disturbed, with Deputy Director Renick edging away slightly.

"Good!" Piggot said, her smile taking on a vicious undertone. "Let's see them ignore us with something like that centered on our city."

She turned to Armsmaster, "Fine, tell him his project is approved as long as he can get the Teleport Hub working and signs a contract that says he can't make another hub anywhere outside of Brockton for the next 10 years, barring the usual circumstances, of S-Class threats and quarantine zones of course."

She turned to Renick, "Tell legal to get this base happening, make sure they only know it is a large project, not the details."

She faced the rest of the room. "Mentions of a Teleport Hub and Trouble's growth rate will not be mentioned outside of this room without good cause, aside from those that need to actually work on it. I am hereby placing a gag order on the topics, as well as on Trouble being the one to save Vista and blind Hookwolf. We know we have moles people, but we will not let them get in the way of finally kicking out the gangs from this city. Do you understand?" She glared at the rest of the room, who all straightened and nodded.

"Good." Piggot said with satisfaction. "We can't keep the base contained forever, it will be obvious, but it provides a nice juicy explanation on our sudden secrecy, the teleport hub is the key though, nobody else, even the other Wards and PRT staff are allowed to hear about it. Now, let's talk about what to do about Hookwolf's blindness. Vista, you will be talking a lot in this part."











Author's Note: Yay Interludes! As you might be able to guess from my signature, I like interludes! On the other hand, this was hard! Wahh! *Cries* Not really, I anticipated it being a lot worse than it was, though it ended up being a lot smaller than I hoped because I decided to have it not be the initial meeting where this group (minus Vista) would just be reacting to Dave's powers, because I feel like 'people reacting to Dave's powers' is probably going to be a common theme throughout the story, and I didn't need to dedicate the first ever interlude to it. I also decided to have the meeting be post-reaction-to-Trouble's-Hookwolf-fight-recording, so we don't get to see them react to the idea of the stupid contest or the Banana Bus; we do see the effects of that recording here though with Vista getting permission to rebrand.

I'm sure Vista's belief that the whispers resulting from her glaring at people were remorse over taking away her pocket sniper rifle were correct, and definitely were not them feeling bad or guilty about something else that recently happened to her.

This was a rather fun chapter for me. It was a lot less funny than usual, but we did see a little bit of the results of Assault getting told he can make any food he wants, as long as it is in burrito form.

Being honest, I thought I was going to have a much tougher time with Piggot, but, looking at her Wiki page and going through what I know of her, she just sort of took charge of her own lines, and I didn't really have to do anything for her. I currently don't see any way of her getting healed aside from a healing dingus getting into range, or Dave not turning off his Paladin aura, but in both cases I expect her to be pissed off to the point of becoming an obstacle instead of an asset as she is now.

As much as I would love to explore Challenger some, or see what Dauntless thinks about this new guy people keep comparing to him, I think I'll stop here for this interlude.

I hope I conveyed a little of how much thought the PRT have to put into even things that seem like pure positives on the surface.

Also, can I just say, I feel like I picked really well when I chose to start the story just after the Simurgh Madison attack in late December of 2009. I did that partially to give myself as much time as possible before having to write something with the Simurgh in it, but a lot of the characters are just much less traumatized and jaded at this point. Obviously, Piggot and Armsmaster and co. still have their issues, but they've been dealing with Brockton-flavored bullshit for an entire year less than canon, and that really gives me some wiggle room to let the butterfly effect do its job and change their courses a little.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 39: Super Prolapse Powers Activate!

January 11, 2010, Monday. Brockton Bay, Dave's Apartment.



Dave woke up, went through his morning routine, and readied his tea, orange juice, and bagel, and sat down at his kitchen table.

Morning Dave!

You grew your soul quite a bit yesterday. Lots of social interactions and meeting new people and going to new places (the Boardwalk) for the first time ever, and having new experiences are great for soul growth. You tried new foods and drinks and even made a new friend/minion too. In fact, you grew so much that you have now unlocked Rocket Thrusters and Potions, and will start getting those just like grenades and guns. Rocket Thrusters work as normal; Each use shoves you quite far, letting you effectively fly if you can survive the landing, which is still possible even for a normal human if they can time using the rocket thruster right before they land to cancel out their momentum. It is of course quite a bit faster than your jetpack. Potions work as you would expect, except in addition to being able to use them on yourself or others that are close enough by willing it, you can also use them by actually drinking them! I know, it's weird, but for some reason your soul really associates potions with 'things to be drunk' so adding that feature was basically free! You also got a few new items in your shops so make sure you take a look at those. Your new role for today is Turncoat! It's an exciting new role that lets you turn into a Traitor in exchange for lowering your health to 10 out of 100. Isn't that great? …Yeah, that's part of why you had so much free room in your soul. This does basically nothing for you. On the bright side, it comes with a bonus power of letting you turn a coat inside out at will as long as you are touching it, even if someone (including yourself) is already wearing the coat!

Dave nodded thoughtfully to himself as he ate his bagel. I wonder what exactly defines a 'coat'. Does Quetzalcoatl count as a coat because it has coat in the name despite being an ancient winged serpent god thing? If person A is piggybacking on person B, can I turn person A inside out? Would it turn them completely inside out or just make them prolapse? Do I have super prolapse powers?

These things and other, similarly important questions raced through Dave's mind as he ate breakfast.

---

Dave knocked on Bella's door.

She opened after only one set of knocks, and asked "What?" rather grumpily, and waved him in.

"Can I get a piggy back ride?" He asked her.

"Why?" She asked back suspiciously.

"I want to see if I can give myself a prolapse!" Dave helpfully explained.

For some reason, Bella just sighed.

"Dave… I'm leaving, I have classes today. If you're willing to wait until 2:00 I'm sure Crystal will help you though, that's when her last class ends on Mondays." Bella told him.

"Oh, great! Wait, didn't you say you two had all the same classes?" Dave asked her.

"We do. I just also have a dentist's appointment today and can't help you. So, I'm afraid Crystal will have to do when it comes to helping you out with your prolapsing piggyback thing." Bella shamelessly lied like a lying liar.

"Anyways, I'm off! See you later!" Bella said, before power walking out the door and locking it behind her.

Dave turned to see Lisa standing there, and gave her a hopeful look.

"No." Lisa immediately said. "Don't even think about asking."

"Aww." Dave whined.

"Oh! I had a couple new toys for you! I don't actually have enough yet to hand them out, but I'll have some for you either tonight or tomorrow." Dave remembered, and told her before he forgot.

Lisa smiled at the news, though it was oddly unsmug. He looked suspiciously at her.

"I'm not always smug!" She said exasperatedly after a moment.

He looked at her, doubtfully this time.

"It is not my default!" She insisted.

Dave nodded to himself, satisfied she could read his mind properly and thus hadn't been killed and replaced by a Spy.

---

"So!" Dave clapped his hands. "For now, how do you want to get to Parian's shop? Do you want me to just lend you a domino mask and have you walk there next to me in my Cape identity? Or do you want to go there together as civilians? Or you go as a civilian and I go as a Cape, but not walking next to each other so as to not reveal our connection?" He asked.

Lisa answered without needing to think about it, seemingly having already anticipated this question. "I would like to go together as civilians, and after we meet Parian—who should be there today—we can go the full honesty route. The pressure of having effectively unmasked to her will make her feel a need to actually take the commission out of guilt, particularly given she is more experienced than both of us combined." Lisa said smugly.

Dave thought about it. "And you trust your read on her well enough to be sure that no danger will come to either of us, or perhaps more importantly, to Bella from unmasking to her? You are sure she has no Empire leanings and is not a member of whatever group is after you?" Dave asked for confirmation.

Lisa hesitated. "Well, she definitely has no Empire leanings, she hates the Empire in fact. I doubt that she is part of a mysterious evil group that is after me, given she is a college student."

"But?" Dave asked leadingly.

"But, I don't actually know how she would respond to pressure. She wouldn't sell our identities or give it to anyone willingly, but… If the Empire came and threatened her loved ones in exchange for our identities, I don't know what she would do. She hasn't folded yet, despite being a Rogue in a city like Brockton, and facing quite a bit of pressure from the Empire." Lisa said before continuing.

"My main concerns would be either the Empire losing patience with her and escalating if they think either of our identities was worth discarding the efforts to recruit her, or whatever group is after me trying to get information from her, given I have no idea what methods they have at their disposal, but I doubt they care about those so-called 'Unwritten Rules.'" Lisa finished, scoffing a little at the mention of the Unwritten Rules.

"It sounds like your plan is actually the best bet then." Dave said, surprising Lisa a little.

"I thought you were about to reject it." Lisa admitted.

"Nope. If we go in as civilians, nobody will know that she has ever even met us, and thus will have no reason to go after her in hopes of getting information about us. We can even tell her such when we meet her to explain why we met her as civilians instead of as capes." Dave said.

"I thought you might be against the manipulation as well." Lisa said as she began to get ready to go out. Bella had bought a wig for her the previous day, and it looked relatively believable to see Lisa with long brown hair.

"Manipulation is unavoidable in social interactions." Dave decided to bestow some wisdom upon her. "As you know, even honesty can be manipulation, and in fact often is. If you repeatedly play rock paper scissors with someone, and they are trying to win, and you tell them 'I am going to pick rock every time,' they generally won't pick paper every time, even if you are telling the truth. They will think you are trying to fake them out and that you are going to eventually pick scissors, or that you will pick paper in the hopes of catching them picking rock to counter your scissors from the idea that they would pick paper to counter your initial 'bluff' of rock."

"What?" Lisa asked.

"Exactly." Dave answered, satisfied that she had understood the wisdom imparted through the deep social intricacies of Rock Paper Scissors.

---

They walked into Parian's Boutique and began looking around. The clothing really was quite nice as far as Dave was concerned, but he wasn't really anything approaching an expert in terms of fashion.

After browsing for a little, they approached the girl standing near the back that was stationed to help people find what they might be looking for and recommend things to them.

"Hi!" Lisa began, putting on a bubbly personality. "We were wondering… does Parian take commissions? And if so, could we talk to her about one? I really love all her stuff, the styles are just…" She squealed before continuing, "Anyways, I love it. But I was really hoping to have something custom-made for me. We are willing to pay quite a bit for it, so… is there any way we could talk to Parian about it?" She asked, turning her face up to look at the girl hopefully.

The girl, who was really more of a young woman, probably in college based on Lisa's earlier statement that Parian was also a college student, looked fondly at Lisa's apparent enthusiasm. "Yeah, I can talk to her about that if you don't mind waiting a little. She does do custom fittings and commissions, but she will need to have some say in the design process." The woman warned. "There was some jerk a while back who kept trying to ask for something that looked just… terrible. I saw some of the idea sketches she showed Parian, and it very much looked like what we call 'Unicorn Vomit' here. It was just so tacky, I couldn't tell if she was trying to mess with us or genuinely colorblind, and fashion blind, possibly regular blind too." The woman said, before going into a hidden backroom that Dave hadn't noticed, presumably to tell Parian about the desired commission.

The woman came back a few minutes later with a smile on her face. "You're in luck, she is actually free right now. She just finished up some sewing, and is happy to talk about a commission with you."

"Great." Lisa said happily, following the woman into the backroom, while Dave ambled along behind them.

The woman knocked on the door, and opened it after a female voice said "Come in."

After showing Dave and Lisa inside the room, the woman smiled at them and left, closing the door behind her, leaving them alone with Parian.

"So, I'm told you wanted to talk about a commission?" Parian asked politely.

"Yes, I would like to order a cape costume please." Lisa said politely.

Parian stilled for a moment. "Do you mean like cosplay?" Parian said hopefully.

Dave turned into a (normal, not Tall) Pikachu.

"Pika pika!" Dave told Parian.

"Fuck." Parian said, slamming her face against the table. "Why me?"















Author's Note: Full disclosure, I know nothing about clothing and fashion. I don't even have any objections to 'clashing colors', my usual reaction to seeing what other people call clashing colors is 'neat, I don't see those colors together very often.' So, I looked up what a custom outfit costs, and am going to base it on this: https://xzapparel.com/how-expensive-are-custom-made-clothes-and-what-affects-the-price/ while adjusting it a little to take into account Parahumanity. To be honest, it was lower than I was expecting according to that site anyways.

If anyone is a fashion/clothing aficionado and happens to know that that site is bogus or something and knows a better site or method of determining prices, let me know; it quite possibly might come up again in the future.

I was honestly expecting that I would be finished with the Parian stuff this chapter, but there ended up being barely started by the end of this chapter. I could just make the chapter longer, but that's a pretty good ending point.

I'm thinking that I'll probably mostly keep to this chapter length for now, until I've got a backlog of like 15 chapters, which I will try to maintain, and then do longer chapters if they feel right, and if I ever get to a stockpile of 20 chapters, I'll upload 2 or 3 chapters per day until I'm back down to 15 in my backlog. Does that sound good to people?

 

[Phili]

Chapter 40: Parian Measuring and Measuring Parian

January 11, 2010, Monday. Brockton Bay, Parian's Boutique.



"Hi, I'm Trouble!" Pikachu introduced himself.

"You sure are." Parian groused. "Listen, I can't just babysit every Cape I come across, but do I really have to explain the unwritten rules to you two? Are you that new?"

"We know about the unwritten rules," Pikachu told her. "We just wanted to come to you unmasked to show our sincerity, and for a few reasons we will explain shortly."

Parian muttered and grumbled for a moment. "Fine, I'll listen, but when Uber and Leet tried to ask for something I told them to shove it, so keep that in mind!" She said, and looked weird for a moment before realizing a glare didn't come across at all through her mask.

Lisa opened her mouth, "No, shush!" Pikachu shushed her, before jumping up onto her shoulder and distracting her with cuteness. "I will speak openly and honestly and you will keep quiet for now so you don't scare her away with your smugness until she hears your story."

---

"That's…" Parian trailed off, obviously sympathetic. She sighed, before speaking "Fine, I'll make your costume, but it will still cost quite a bit, and if you want strong materials, you'll have to wait a bit longer and it will cost more because I'll have to order those materials. I can't get my hands on Tinkertech fabrics if that's what you were hoping for though." She warned.

Lisa nodded happily. "That's fine, I can afford it. As for the wait… it's not ideal but I will be stuck with disguises for the foreseeable future if I want to go out as a civilian anyways, so I foresee a lot of staying inside in my future anyways." She shrugged. "Having a Cape costume will be nice because I'll be able to go outside fairly openly, and won't risk leading the people after me to civilians who might get caught in the crossfire."

"Alright, then shall we start designing?" Parian asked.

Lisa nodded, "Yeah, let's start."

---

A while later, after Dave had mentally conked out and spent his time mindlessly using his Turncoat power to turn the coats in the room inside-out then back to the way they were before, occasionally drawing a slightly annoyed sigh from Parian each time she saw him to it, the conversation and drawing and sketching between Lisa and Parian eventually wound down.

"So you don't want your measurements taken yet?" Parian asked.

Lisa shook her head. "No, I was homeless for a while remember? While I got by fairly well thanks to my power, I was something of a gymnast before…" Lisa trailed off, and Dave could almost smell the manipulation Lisa was putting Parian through, though he suspected it was true and genuinely did bother Lisa, he doubted she simply accidentally brought it up that way in conversation; Lisa was smarter than she gave herself credit for even without her power.

"Anyways," Lisa said, "I was a gymnast enthusiast growing up, so the skintight outfit is actually quite familiar to me, but I anticipate I will put on a bit more muscle soon now that I have access to better nutrition and a good, safe environment in which I can exercise."

"Alright," Parian nodded. "Then I'll start ordering the materials and sketching out the final designs and send them to you to look at, and in… two weeks you said? You can come in and get measurements taken." She said, to which Lisa nodded.

"Are you sure that will be long enough?" Parian asked. "I'm not exactly an expert on physiology, but that seems a little quick to put on a significant amount of muscle."

"Trouble here has a variety of methods for Parahuman healing, and one of those allows for perfect nutrition and instant recovery from exercise, while also making the exercise itself less painful and miserable," Lisa revealed. "So, actually, I suspect two weeks will be more than long enough for me to be in even better shape than before. If I really wanted to, I could probably use it to take a shot at the Olympics for gymnasts, since I'm right near the perfect age for female Olympic gymnasts." Lisa boasted.

"Huh, that's…" Parian made a considering sound. "That's interesting."

"I know, isn't it?" Lisa said smugly, getting a boop on the nose from a Pikachu at the smugness.

Dave cleared his throat. "I'm perfectly happy to pay for this and any future commissions we might want with my various powers… or cash, whatever works. Or, if you want to buy anything from me, I'm happy to let you for a very cheap price; you seem nice and reasonable, and it's good for you to stay safe, so…" Dave pulled out two toys. "I would like to offer you some toys to help keep you safe."

"This one," he pointed at a little tracker, "is a tracking device I personally use. If I ever press this button, or I enter an area where the tracker's signal is jammed, New Wave will get an alert with my location, or last known location in the case of a jamming scenario. Now, you don't have to use, or even take this, but I thought I would offer. You can of course also take it and disable the tracking effect and just use it as a button that would let me know that you are in trouble, and where you are when you press the button, but that won't help in a situation where the signal gets jammed."

Parian didn't show much interest at that.

"The other one is a Teleporter. You just set down the receiver pad wherever you want your destination to be, and then when you hit the button on the remote you would be carrying with you, it will teleport you to the receiver pad over the course of about a second. However, you can only use the teleporter sixteen times total before it breaks. You can have it for free though, and my giving you this is unrelated to the commission, it is simply because you are at-risk from the various villains." Dave explained. Parian had vented a little about being targeted by the Empire for forced recruitment while she was sketching out ideas with Lisa.

"Do you want either of them? I won't give them to you if you don't want them so that they don't fall into the wrong hands, but I do think they would substantially improve your safety." Dave said, looking at her expectantly.

"I'll take the Teleporter if you don't mind, and I'll give a discount on the final price of the commission in exchange. No offense, but I don't really want anyone tracking me." Parian said, slightly on edge for some reason.

Dave shrugged. "Fair enough. For future contact between us, I heard you two arranging something, but I would also like to add you to my contacts on my Cape phone." He held up his Dragon-made phone. "I may want to request future commissions, though I don't anticipate wanting anything Cape-related for myself, if I pick up another stray," Dave nodded at Lisa to indicate she was the first stray, "I may want to ask you again."

"Fine, this is my Cape contact number," Parian rattled off a number that Dave dutifully entered into his Dragon Phone with his little Pikachu paws.

"Great, if you ever want to buy something, or just want to chat about Cape things, or need help in an emergency, feel free to call me," Dave told her after giving her his Cape number in return, along with the Teleporter.

Dave stretched, "Alright, ready to go?" He asked Lisa as he returned to his normal form from his Pikachu form, much to the girls' mutual disappointment at the cuteness going away, though Parian hid her disappointment well thanks to her full-face mask.

"Yeah, let's go." Lisa said.

As they left, they said a goodbye to the woman who had led them to the backroom where Parian was, and Dave made a quick purchase of a fashionable utility-belt-type-thing on their way out.

---

"That went well," Lisa told him. They had returned to his apartment to talk about what had happened with more privacy and security than the street offered. Dave slurped in response.

They had also gotten smoothies on the way back.

"My power got a lot from her, during that. She is actually a lot more powerful than she lets on, and even more so than she thinks, probably due to self-esteem issues. With a little preparation, her power could probably fight an Endbringer, though she certainly wouldn't win, she can make her puppet things pack a lot of brute force."

"Pack-A-Punch?" Dave asked.

"Not whatever you're thinking of." Lisa said with a grumble, before returning to her smug face. "She is a bit of a bleeding heart and actually on the naïve side, so she will probably end up asking for help sooner or later after the Empire keeps pushing her. Good job on the offers for help without pushing it by the way." Lisa complimented him, making Dave preen.

"Yes, praise me more!" Dave said, before returning to his smoothie.

Lisa sighed, but continued her smugness. "Anyways, I did a little subtle advertising of some of the benefits of being 'on your side', and that will stay in her mind if she ever decides to stop being independent. That and your lack of pushiness won us a lot of points with her, so now she is a lot more likely to actually ask for help if she needs it, and if she ever feels like she has to join someone, she will pick us over the Empire or the Protectorate, who have both been pushy with her in the past, and pushiness really hits her buttons." Lisa explained, her expression obviously saying 'praise me!', so Dave patted her on the head.

"Good girl." He told the disgruntled Lisa, who swatted at his hand after a couple seconds.

Lisa flopped on her back and lounged out like a cat. "So, do you like, want the dirt on her?" Lisa asked after a moment. "Because I got a fair bit of it." She said looking at him carefully.

Dave shrugged. "Up to you. If you think it's important or relevant, tell me. If not, your power does burden you to being a bit of a secret keeper… which… actually might need some looking into." Dave said. Giving her discretion over it seemed to make him pass some sort of test in her eyes, so he decided to elaborate before he got embarrassed.

"I have an impression of a story from somewhere, before I woke up I think, probably fictional, of a woman who was a 'secret keeper', a sort-of make-do therapist that everyone told their secrets to because she was mute and willing to keep said secrets. While the people that told her their secrets felt lighter afterwards, she felt heavier and heavier with each secret she was told. I think she eventually fell sick or something from the stress, but I don't really remember." Dave said. Bella had filled Lisa in the day before on Dave's amnesia in between episodes of Pokemon, so Lisa kept quiet upon hearing that part.

"Obviously, that's not your exact situation," Dave continued. "But, you should still probably put some thought into how you want to handle secrets, since you will inevitably end up with a lot. You could try talking to one of those Parahuman therapists that specialize in Parahumans, and ask how they handle secrets, since they are dealing with both normal therapy confidentiality and Cape-shenanigan confidentiality."

"That's not where I was expecting you to go when you mentioned Parahuman therapy." Lisa admitted after a second.

"Oh, do you feel like you need to see a Parahuman therapist?" Dave asked. "I'm happy to try and set you up with one if you want but…" he shrugged. "I'm not exactly a normal Parahuman, so I don't have the usual trauma that I'm told is secretly a requirement for Capes?" He said with a bit of confusion on the last part. "I have no idea why people want it to be a secret that all capes have those 'bad trigger' things and that the 'good trigger' thing is made up if I'm being honest though. Anyone willing to do a bit of actual research can pretty easily figure that out based on how fake-sounding the 'good trigger' stories are, regardless of the official stance on the matter."

"Want me to find out?" Lisa asked.

"Eh, you can if you want." Dave said. "I don't really care, it's probably something silly and pointless that does the opposite of what it is supposed to do, and I don't anticipate the 'why' of it being the official stance to significantly affect anything."

Lisa nodded in acceptance.

"Now." Dave clapped. "I need to go to the hospital to heal people and guard my Health Stations and Panacea. She goes to Arcadia so she only has half-days of school, with the other half being intended for work-study and internship type things, and her go-to thing has been healing at hospitals, though ideally we will start clearing out enough things that she can actually start learning stuff like she is supposed to instead. Do you want to put on your wig and come with me, or stay in Bella's apartment and start working on getting your own school situation and researching Cape stuff sorted?" Dave asked her.

Lisa shivered and quickly spoke. "I'll go to Bella's place and start looking for the ideal online school for my situation."

Dave shrugged. "Suit yourself, and think on the secret thing a little, I need to know if I should contact someone to give you advice."









Author's Note: Yay, Parian's bit is done! Lisa's costume is going to be similar to her initial canon outfit for anyone curious. Lavender and Black colors, etc. No Ts across the front though. Maybe a purple eye across the front instead. I have a tough time writing imagery (that is, detailed descriptions of what things look like), so I'm a little nervous for when Lisa gets her costume and I have to describe it in more detail.

Smug girl is smug.

Dave has been working very hard in the past couple chapters to be serious, and deserves lots of praise and headpats for doing so.

Also, if my calculations are correct, I believe this chapter will mark the 100k words milestone! Yay! Only if you include author's notes though, which uh… *looks at author's notes*, I have some pretty big ones (heh).

Dave is earning lots of brownie points from Parian for not being pushy and from Lisa for not asking for details on other people's traumas. This Lisa is still relatively (a month or so) fresh off her trigger, so she is a lot more sympathetic to other people's triggers and their privacy around them. Lisa was doing a sort-of final test on Dave's character, to try and make sure that her personal measure of his character agreed with her power's measure of his character, and he passed with flying colors when he gave her the power to choose what to share with him.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 41: The Solution to Feeling (Soul-)Bloated is, Like The Solution to Many Other Things, Killing Yourself in Novel and Unique Ways?

January 12, 2010, Tuesday. Brockton Bay, Dave's Apartment.



Dave woke up, slowly went through his morning routine, feeling strangely bloated, and prepared his tea, orange juice and bagels, then sat down with a sigh of relief at no longer needing to stand and walk around.

G'day Dave. G'dave? G'Dave.

Things happened yesterday, you grew your soul some, you met people, you went new places, you healed people, etc. Yay! Stuff! Stuff, as in—Then your soul got stuffed like a Christmas Turkey, and is now bloated to full by a single new item when combined with your new role. Seriously, this item barely fit, and that is after taking into account how absurdly well-attuned it is to your soul. It's a big one, and the effects of what it does will become more real and permanent as time goes on and your soul grows more. Right now, it won't do a ton, but eventually it will be exactly as amazing as it seems… mostly anyways. Anyways, your new role is the Dread Thrall! That's right, the traitor role that is based on the Dread Thralls from Dread Hunger! You can do things by (harmlessly) stabbing yourself with a bone charm knife thing you will have in your inventory. You can summon a strong fog for up to 90 seconds (you decide how long at the moment you stab yourself, the current maximum is 90 seconds); you can summon up to 8 zombie cannibal things (you decide how many, with the maximum being 8) that will attack a specific person, then attack anyone they see (including you) after that person dies; and you can enter a Spirit Walk, which will make you invisible and increase your speed slightly, as well as let you walk through thin walls. You can of course, improve these abilities over time as your soul grows, as normal. Oh yes, each use of an ability costs a single Dread Thrall credit, so you can't just maintain a permanent fog forever or anything, though it might seem like you can to others if you save up enough credits first.

Dave nodded thoughtfully, before slowly hobbling over to the toaster to retrieve his bagel.

Man, soul bloat is such a pain in the ass. Dave thought to himself, annoyed at needing to hobble to grab a bagel.

---

"So what happened to you?" Lisa said, after being let in to his apartment. Bella had already left for her classes, and Lisa had been eager to get to test her toys until she saw Dave's current state.

"I stuffed my soul too full today. I have soul bloat. It's terminal." Dave told her, then perked up as an idea came to him.

"Maybe killing myself will help?" He said, before grabbing a banana and shooting himself with it.

It didn't work.

"Well that's embarrassing." Dave said, upon realizing he had grabbed a real banana instead of a banana pistol.

"Um…" Lisa said with confusion.

"Don't mind me, I'm just trying to figure out a non-messy way to kill myself now that plan B for Banana has failed. Do I have a plan A for Apricot?" Dave mused to himself.

"Really? Apple was right there." Lisa pointed out.

"I'm soul bloated! Give me some slack woman!" Dave cried out dramatically from his spot on the couch he was laying down on.

"So…" Lisa said slowly, "your power is… overloaded? No, that's not quite right. Your power grabbed too much too fast and this is the consequence?" Lisa guessed. "It's kind of like your version of a Thinker headache right?" She said after a moment, a little more confident in her deduction.

"Eh… Close enough." Dave said miserably.

"Did you try healing yourself? Your healing methods work on me, and Thinker Headaches are normally nearly impossible for Parahumans to help with, so it might help with your issue? What did your power even give you that cause this much of an issue?" Lisa asked.

"Murgle furgle burgle mffsms, manft." Dave explained as eloquently as he could, directly into the couch cushion and getting a bunch of couch directly in his mouth for his troubles.

Dave peeled himself off his couch, plopped out a Health Station and began trying to heal from it. Then turned on his Paladin Aura. Then also took out a hotpocket from the Health Station and started eating that as well. Then he took out a Health Potion and took sips from that like it was a tasty beverage that went with the hotpocket.

He felt, ever so slightly better, but he didn't actually feel like the healing had helped much if at all, it might have simply been his soul expanding slightly from the new experiences of drinking a Health Potion for the first time and trying all his current healing methods simultaneously.

He finished off his burrito and health potion.

"Nope, barely helped." He told Lisa.

"I'm gonna try killing myself, you take this," he handed her a Defibrillator, "And you can use it on me. Those things will revive anyone that has their brain mostly intact — so if you die, make sure you don't get shot in the head so I can bring you back—just use it by focusing on my body for a bit with it while having the intent to bring me back to life. You do need to hold it rather close to my body, but I'm sure you'll figure it out." Dave told Lisa responsibly.

Then, Dave pulled out a real banana pistol, deepthroated it as far as he could until his eyes were bulging and he was about to throw up, then held down the trigger to unload the full magazine into himself. He died instantly.

There, take THAT soul! How's THAT for growth huh? I've never been revived by a defib before, AND I've never deepthroated a pistol OR a banana, let alone a pistol that WAS a banana! How do you like THEM bananas!? Or apricots or whatever?

Ahh, I truly am a genius. Dave thought to himself with contentment, while Lisa was internally screaming.

---

Lisa and Dave teleported to the woods where Dave had left some of his teleporter receiver pads after he went collecting mud samples.

Lisa was wearing a temporary, unfitted costume that Parian had sold her for only $1000, claiming it was too simple and rushed to be worth more. It was made of just normal materials, so it didn't offer anything special, and was a fairly simple purple and black combination that Parian had thrown together with her power within the time they had visited her yesterday.

Meanwhile Dave, had 'returned to Monke,' as he had told Lisa, and was in his Mud Scientist 'outfit'. Outfit being in quotations, because monkeys don't wear clothes.

Dave happily faceplanted into the mud as soon as he arrived, before slowly flipping over and beginning to make a mud angel.

"Alright." He said seriously, craning his neck up while his arms were still in the process of making his first mud angel. "Ground rules are: don't test the flare gun in the woods. Uhh…" He trailed off. "Don't shoot yourself in the head with any guns, or stab yourself in the head with the knife, or bash your own head in too hard with the crowbar." He added after thinking for a moment.

He plopped his head back down. "I'm such a good chaperone." He mused aloud.

For some reason, Lisa began twitching when he said that.

---

Lisa began happily abusing the packed burritos of healing, along with Dave's Paladin aura, to mix her testing of the equipment with exercise. Apparently, to a fitness enthusiast, the perfect calory and nutrition thing was a huge deal by itself, and the instant muscle-healing from his aura making unlimited pleasant work-outs a real possibility would make Dave get worshipped as a god in some circles.

As someone who had never really handled a gun, Lisa's aim was rather shit compared to everyone else's Dave had seen, that being himself and Miss Militia; though Lisa claimed that was just more reason to practice, and the quieter sound of Dave's guns (making her not need ear protection), along with healing in case of injuries, and an unlimited supply of bullets, meant Lisa was determined to practice as much as possible.

Unfortunately… "I rely almost entirely on my power to shoot guns." Dave told Lisa when she asked for guidance on how to hold one of the guns. "I don't know why I need to do what I need to do in a given situation, or if what I should do is also what you should do in that same situation. If you really want to practice…" He trailed off.

"You have three options. Panacea is currently learning how to shoot firearms, so you could take lessons with her and New Wave will be able to defend you while you are there. Or you could try to figure it out on your own, though you seem pretty confident doing so is a bad idea already. Finally, I can ask if Miss Militia or Challenger is willing to teach you. I'm fairly sure Miss Militia at least would be happy to do so, and I need to keep in contact with Armsmaster anyways for the big project." Dave gestured at the woods around them when referring to 'the big project.' "So I would be right there with you at the same time in case of an attack, and you could tell them as much or as little about your powers as you want." Dave said.

"Protectorate." Lisa said quickly, slightly alarmed at the mention of New Wave. "I trust you can keep me safe, just remember the PRT is already infiltrated by the people after me, and the Protectorate is an affiliate of the PRT, so it is possible for anything the Protectorate finds out to get back to whoever is after me."

"I can ask for Miss Militia and Armsmaster to use their discretion. I was thinking of introducing you to the Protectorate soon anyways, as you will likely be an important part of the big Tinker base and its design. I was also going to see if you could help me out with an experiment of mine regarding helping Tinkers find their specialties. If it worked, it would be another point towards building up the Tinker base project." Dave said.

"For now," Dave rolled over again to make a new mud angel next to the previous one. "You can just test the various toys and exercise and stuff. You can worry about actually improving your aim and skill with firearms after we meet with them. I'll ask for a meeting tomorrow, and I'll mention you to see if they have somewhere you can be taught with a little more discretion. In the absolute worst case, I did plan for there to be a variety of testing facilities in the Tinker base, including a firing range, and you can always learn there, since anyone going into the base will be vetted to the best of our ability, which includes being personally vetted by you."

"You know…" Lisa said. "Your serious speeches are hard to take seriously while you're making mud angels." She informed him.

He looked at her, then down at himself, then over to the side where a row of his previous mud angels lay. "What are you talking about? There is nothing more serious than mud. This mud will change the world!" He informed her dramatically, waving his muddy arms around a bit in the process.

"Uhuh." She said doubtfully.

Dave rolled over again to make a new mud angel, only to find himself face to face with a frog.

"Ribbit," the frog croaked.

Dave looked at the frog. The frog looked at Dave.

"I know what I must do." Dave said, and took out a sniper rifle from his inventory, and placed it in front of the frog.

"Ribbit."

"So you press the button," He began explaining the sniper rifle to the frog, "and it makes that part shoot out a thing that destroys what it is pointing at."

"Oh, so you'll teach a frog how to shoot but not me?" Lisa groused.

Dave looked at her. "It's not about that." He protested. "It is simply the natural way of things. Everyone knows frogs are natural snipers. If someone got sniped in the head, it was probably a frog that did it. I'm just helping this one live up to its full potential." He told her.

Lisa just looked at him dubiously.







Author's Note: Another chapter down. Wanna know something weird? The day after I wrote this chapter, the Yogscast Main Channel released a new episode of Dread Hunger, which they haven't played in years. I wrote this chapter on 8/20/26, the new episode of Dread Hunger was released on 8/21/26. Bizarre eh?

Oh, you wanted to know what was causing Dave's soul so much bloatiness? Well, I'll tell you that particular item is similar to another item he already has that has been implied but not directly revealed. This new one was basically out of Dave's 'price range' so to speak, but he was just barely able to handle it by having gotten the Dread Thrall role, which doesn't do all that much, along with how incredibly connected this item is to both the Yogscast and Dave himself; it is probably the most 'discounted' item he will ever receive from TTT in fact. Even then, it is basically limited to what it does in TTT at the moment despite the many obvious upgrades it can get from Dave's soul expanding with it. Dave also was smart enough to not actually buy it just yet while his soul is settling.

Of course, at the moment, the other item that Dave already has had for a couple days has already received some upgrades, even if we haven't seen it on screen yet, so that one is actually better than his new one for the moment.

Bounty: One Terrorist Point for whoever first guesses the other item that has been implied, and one Burrito Point for whoever first guesses this new item that he got today.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 42: This Chapter is Just a Lil' Guy! (It's not short, it's cute!)

January 13, 2010, Wednesday. Brockton Bay, Dave's Apartment.



Dave had ended up spending a decent chunk of the previous day after watching Lisa play with her new toys while he played in the mud, resting and watching Crystal's recommendations of Earth Aleph media to give himself new experiences while physically moving as little as possible. He didn't exactly 'feel like a million bucks' today either, but he would probably be fine. Based on how he felt, he probably didn't get a massive role today, so that was good too.

He went through his morning routine, prepared tea, orange juice, and put a bagel in the toaster, and sat down.

Hey Dave! Heyve? Deyve? DeHayve? I'll workshop it.

Sorry about the soul bloat yesterday, that was my bad. I've found that I've had to do less and less to keep your power running as time goes on and wanted to see what it would do if left to its own devices. It's really quite interesting, I could probably make some pretty solid academia papers if I used your situation as an official study. If only my Squishy Soul Mortal Mechanics professor could see me now, they'd be so proud their soul tear ducks would probably burst out of one of their left tentacles. That's right, one of their LEFT tentacles! Oh yes, my kind don't have 'tear ducts' or anything that weird, we're much more normal and have 'tear ducks for the soul' instead. I don't know why some humans are obsessed with 'chicken soup for the soul' though, as a soul-based entity myself, I can say that sounds terrible, and honestly a little disgusting. Blegh. Soul chickens are NOT for eating, I can tell you that much. Anyways, it looks like your soul has sort of adapted to what I've been doing with it, and has copied a good chunk of what I've been doing. I still need to stick my soul tentacles into your soul to prevent your soul from shrinking after it expands, but the process of adding relevant things onto your soul? That was all you yesterday… granted, from the base that I built into your soul to make the 'soul hardware' work. The downside is… uh, well, your soul isn't very smart about what it adds when yet, so it nearly permanently killed you yesterday by trying to add too much when there wasn't enough room. On the bright side, it is theoretically possible that you could eventually start the process of continuing to generate powers on your own, even without my assistance in the process! Which would be truly groundbreaking in terms of soul studies! A mortal granting themselves power? That's pretty darn unusual. I suspect what is happening here has a lot to do with how damaged your soul was when I first found it though, so unfortunately, I rather doubt it will be applicable very often. Still, considering the relatively quite short amount of time that has passed, this is really quite extraordinary. As a result, I'm still going to be doing a lot of Administrative (capital A) stuff behind the scenes to prevent your thingamajig from killing you. Anyways, new role! Today you get the relatively simple role of Survivalist. It's just like you would expect, it's an innocent role with access to the Traitor buy menu, and that's it. In your case, it gives you a little bit of outdoor survival knowledge and related 'Thinker' power for outdoor survival, but it is really quite minor all things considered. As usual, this will unlock a couple new items in the relevant shops as 'freebies', but I took special care to make sure they wouldn't be anything too strenuous on your soul. Oh, as a small side note, I'm going to be putting the Mercenary role in reserve for now, since it is basically completely identical to the Survivalist role, it'll be something to keep in the back pocket in case we ever need to give your soul a breather again, in which case I will simply force it into the day's role slot with the power of soul tentacles!

Dave nodded thoughtfully. Though, one thing stood out to him. Squishy soul mortal mechanics, "Shouldn't it be squishy mortal soul mechanics?"

You'd think, but apparently that name was taken by the class about the mechanics of 'mortal souls'—as in, the 'mortal soul' instead of the 'souls of mortals'—instead of 'the mechanics of the souls of squishy mortals', which is what my class was about.

Dave nodded again. "Neat." And began to eat his bagel.

---

Lisa was flopped over the back of Dave's couch.

"I'm stretching, not flopped." She said after looking at him to 'read his mind'. Dave rather doubted there was a significant distinction, but, as a mature and responsible adult, was duty-bound to let her believe whatever she wanted so long as it didn't significantly harm her or others, no matter how incorrect she was in her beliefs and opinions.

She had explained a while back what her true power was, but Dave found the 'mind-reading' entertaining anyways, as Lisa really was quite good at mimicking mind-reading capabilities. Speaking of which…

"Have you decided on a Cape name?" Dave asked Lisa.

"Ughhh, no." She groaned, sitting up straight as she answered.

"It's hard enough to come up with something decent, and since I'm going to be stuck with it, I want it to be a little better than decent," Lisa began. "I don't want something generic or dumb either, because even if it is only for my Cape identity, it will still be my name you know? My power has a pretty blatant connection to Sherlock Holmes, and the character is popular enough that people associate it with positive things and old enough to be out of copyright, but that runs into the obvious problem of being female, which makes taking the Holmes route for naming a bit iffy."

"Holmes, huh?" Dave mused. "Have you considered Mara?" He asked.

"Mara?" Lisa said dubiously. "I might regret asking, but why?"

"Well, there is the obvious connection between Mara Hulmes and Sherlock Holmes of course." Dave explained.

"Right, of course, how didn't I think of that." Lisa said sarcastically.

"Right." Dave agreed. "You would need to change your costume to be a white-haired French maid bunny outfit though." He added after a moment.

Lisa looked at Dave. Dave looked at Lisa.

"No." Lisa said, without elaborating, which was rather rude of her. How was Dave supposed to make more suggestions if she didn't tell him what the problem with earlier suggestions was?

"I thought about Tattletale," Lisa said, trying to drag the topic back, "but I decided I don't really like it. It feels like it is just drawing a bit of a target onto my back, and it might make people assume I am at fault whenever there is some sort of information breach, and I don't want to get blamed for the things I do do, let alone the things I don't." She explained.

"Heh, doo-doo." Was Dave's eloquent response.

Lisa just sighed.

---

They didn't end up making much progress on deciding Lisa's Cape name. Lisa had eventually contented herself with the idea that she still didn't have a costume ready yet anyways, and didn't really need one until it was ready and she would be interacting with people as a Cape.

Dave received a message from Armsmaster requesting a meeting regarding the Tinker base project, and saying that a lot of progress had been made on the administrative and legal fronts.

"I'm gonna need a temporary Cape name for you." Dave told Lisa, earning a glare.

"I literally just decided it was okay to not stress about the Cape name, and you immediately tell me that?" She demanded.

Dave shrugged helplessly. "I need to talk about you to Miss Militia and/or Challenger about teaching you how to safely and effectively use firearms. I personally used Solid Snake, or Snake for short as a temporary Cape name when I first went to the Protectorate for power testing. I assume you still don't want to do power testing?" He asked as the thought popped up.

Lisa shook her head. "I want as little information about my capabilities as possible to be in the hands of whoever is after me. I know they can get information through the PRT and the PRT gets information through the Protectorate, so any information about me that the Protectorate learns through power testing might end up with the people after me. It might help me learn more about my powers, but I don't think the gains would outweigh the risks."

"Fair enough," Dave nodded. "Anyways, temporary Cape name?" He reiterated.

"Crap." Lisa said.

"Odd choice," Dave commented. "But, Crap it is." He said as he began answering the message on his phone.

"No! Fuck off! Give me that phone! Do not call me that!" Lisa began yelling for some reason.









Author's Note: Here we are, a somewhat Daf-heavy chapter. This chappie is rather short though. Now, I really do like Daf, but, as someone rather interested in Philosophy, I end up thinking rather hard on things like 'what would actually happen with things involving powerful beings.' This means, I need to put a pretty hard limit on anything I'm going to write in terms of power, I'm probably never going to write any sort of story involving a Random Omnipotent Being, despite how convenient they are as a writing tool.

The beginning of this chapter was partially a bit of set-up, kind-of like a backdoor pilot of sorts, where if I ever want to write another story with a similar-ish premise, I can. Daf's species will eventually find out about what's happened here, so if any of them find someone in a similar situation to how Daf found Dave, they can do something similar to what Daf is doing with Dave, and get their very own human pet/friend. I'm not currently planning on doing another story any time soon if anyone is wondering, but now if I ever do, I will have the option of having another character with another powerset in another setting with a ready-made backstory of 'how the heck did they get these out-of-context powers'. Otherwise, it was also just a bit of world-building for Daf's species.

Consider this chapter my official notice that I am fishing for suggestions for Lisa's cape name. I could go Tattletale of course, but that's not really very heroic is it? I could go with Vixen in honor of Unauthorized Access, though I would want the go-ahead/permission/blessing from the author of that story before I actually went with that one. I could do All-Seeing-Eye of course as well, but a name like that is both a bit of a mouthful and kind of asking for trouble.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 43: A Serious Conversation NOT at The Pelham House? What Has The World Come To?

January 13, 2010, Wednesday. Brockton Bay, Protectorate Headquarters.



Dave arrived at Armsmaster's lab through teleportation. He had left a teleport receiver pad in Armsmaster's lab the last time they spoke about the Tinker base, and Armsmaster had wanted to see if there was any difference his scanning equipment could pick up when Dave used the teleporter as opposed to when Armsmaster used the teleporters Dave had given him to test and experiment with.

"Hmm, there was no discernible difference my equipment could pick up." Armsmaster stated after a moment. "Which isn't too surprising, but it is good to eliminate the possibility, since some Tinkers' technology works differently when the Tinker that built it uses it, and while this isn't quite conventional Tinkertech, the same principles could easily have applied."

"That's nice." Miss Militia said indulgingly. Dave had requested that she be present for this meeting, and apparently that request had been granted.

"It really is good to know." Dragon said through a speaker. "Though it remains to be seen if that will be consistent with Trouble's other devices and 'items.'" She added after a moment.

Kid Win waited a moment to make sure no adult was going to speak, before greeting Dave. "Thank you for the suggestion about the toys by the way." He said. "I don't have my specialty down exactly, but it eliminated a lot of possibilities, and Armsmaster and Dragon helped me eliminate a few more based on some known specialties of already-active Tinkers are, since no two Tinkers will have the exact same specialties, though they can be similar."

"No problem," Dave told him, "I actually had something that might help you further with that which I wanted to talk about in this meeting." He said, before turning to face everyone.

"So," Dave began, "before we get into talking about the base, which I do want Miss Militia for as well, there was something I wanted to talk about first." He said, before turning to Armsmaster to ask "How secure is this room? Is there any way anyone aside from us could find out what is said here if none of us tell them?"

Armsmaster nodded. "Yes, I have multiple devices recording for the teleporter experiment, as is required by the Protectorate rules for Tinker experiments, and those recordings are accessible by certain Protectorate and PRT staff. Theoretically a Tinker with a specialty that lent itself towards hacking could potentially catch some of the signals those send out and intercept the live feed as well, though that is substantially unlikely."

"Could you turn off the recording equipment then?" Dave asked. "There was something sensitive I wished to discuss that needs to only be heard by those present, when counting Dragon as present of course."

"Yes, that is fine," Armsmaster nodded again, "the recording rule only applies while an experiment is in progress, and I have multiple devices set up to ensure privacy when those recording devices are not active."

Armsmaster fiddled with a few devices Dave couldn't identify, and tapped away at a strange-looking keyboard for a couple moments, before proclaiming, "It is done, there is nothing recording and unless someone somehow manages to get past Dragon's notice, we are as secure as is reasonably possible." Armsmaster's tone spoke to how unlikely he thought it was that anybody could get past Dragon's notice.

Dave nodded, "Well, I recently came across a powerful Thinker who wanted ask me for protection. She claimed that a group or organization of some sort is after her, presumably for the sake of her power, and that the Protectorate and the PRT would be unable to successfully protect her due to being too heavily infiltrated by whatever organization is after her."

Dave paused for a moment, and Kid Win seemed to be waiting for Miss Militia or Armsmaster to raise objections to the idea of the Protectorate and PRT being infiltrated.

Instead of objecting to the idea, Armsmaster asked, "How reliable would you say her information is likely to be? I realize you haven't interacted with the Protectorate for long, and as far as I'm aware, you've never directly worked with the PRT, but you are the one with the best idea of her power and how likely it is to be correct."

He seemed to notice Kid Win's disbelieving stare at this point. "I am willing to acknowledge the possibility of infiltrators, depending on what exactly is meant by the term. The PRT is aware it has a problem with moles and informants for gangs, despite our best efforts to root them out, the gangs are too heavily entrenched in the city, and it is effectively impossible to tell if someone is a sympathizer for some criminal organization or another or not, or even just corrupt enough to sell information to whoever is willing to pay for it." He began to explain to Kid Win.

Dave nodded, "She is certain that any information about her that the general PRT has access to would get to the people after her, though I'm not sure about anyone that has specific loyalty to the specific group that is after her. As to her reliability… keeping in mind that I am not an expert on how the PRT rates things… I would guess her rating would be somewhere between a Thinker 6 and a Thinker 8."

Miss Militia and Armsmaster looked at each other in shock. "Thinker 6 to Thinker 8?" Miss Militia repeated. "That's…" She hesitated. "Even Accord is only a Thinker 7, though his rating would be higher if it weren't for the side-effects of his power and the blindspots to other Thinkers."

Dave shrugged. "It's just my estimation. I'm fairly certain that her power is why she is being targeted, if that tells you anything about how strong it is. I'm letting you know partially to ask that you don't put anything about her in any official documents or databases until she is a little better prepared. We are working on getting her a costume and Cape name, and I have given her equipment like the teleporters to help her escape if she gets attacked without me present to protect her, but for now she will be largely focusing on identifying exactly who is after her."

Armsmaster slowly nodded. "I can agree to not put anything in any official documentation or databases for now, but after she starts going out in costume I won't be able to do anything about it." He stated.

"That's fine." Dave nodded. "As long as she can deny information to her would-be captors, I'm sure she would be willing to work with the Protectorate beforehand. I spoke with her earlier, and a couple of the things she was willing to offer were to help Kid Win and any other future Tinkers identify their Tinker specialties, and –after she has gotten her costume and Cape name prepared—help identify corruption and data leaks in the Protectorate, PRT, and the police. Though, she did suggest not closing all of said leaks so as to feed information to gangs as needed, while avoiding the gangs just making new leaks and planting new moles."

"And what does she want in exchange?" Miss Militia asked.

Dave turned to her. "Actually, that is part of why I asked for you to be here. As you know, many of my weapons are guns, or take the forms of guns. While I have a combat Thinker power ensuring I am more than competent in the items I use… mostly anyways." He added the last part after remembering the Free Kill Gun (Rail Gun) incident where he exploded himself at his first meeting with Vicky and Amy.

"Anyways, while I have a combat Thinker power, she only has a regular Thinker power, and isn't automatically trained with firearms. So, I was hoping either you or Challenger could help train her in them. Naturally, I would be supplying all the guns and ammunition, and since I have an unlimited supply of both, I would be happy to let whoever is training her have unlimited use of those as well; though I suppose that isn't much of a draw for you." He smiled at Miss Militia.

"I am of course, also willing to give a few toys to whoever agrees to train her as thanks for doing so. As far as I can tell, she is actually quite talented with firearms anyways, so I don't think she would be a poor student or anything either." Dave added when he saw Miss Militia fall into thought.

"Of course," Dave said after thinking of another obstacle, "I don't have any place for her to train, and won't until the base is actually set up, at which point I was hoping you, Miss Militia, would help design a space for training with firearms and heavy weaponry to be in the base; since it seems a little silly to not make use of my infinite guns and ammunition to let other people in the base learn to use them if they wish, along with cases like hers."

"Anyways," Dave continued what was turning out to be a Lady Photon level speech, "I was hoping there was a place you knew of that you might be able to train her in relative secret, since the PRT would end up leaking information to those targeting her, so wherever PRT troopers train isn't exactly workable, and I personally have no idea what sort of options there are for things like firing ranges that can be trusted to not spy on potential Capes that might be using them."

Miss Militia acknowledged what he had said but continued her thinking for a little longer before speaking. "I can talk to Challenger about this. She will… honestly almost certainly be interested. She would love to pass down her knowledge. I'm happy to teach someone as well, particularly since we have, in a way, failed her by not successfully rooting out the corruption in the city," Miss Militia admitted the last part sadly.

"I do know a place where I could teach someone how to shoot safely, and while they would be willing to leave the place to just us to practice shooting if I asked and properly compensated them, I don't know what sort of means are available to whoever is after her." Miss Militia said. "If they have any significant force of unknown capes available, they could potentially find out about where we were practicing regardless of how discrete the people lending the place to us are."

"Ahem," Armsmaster politely coughed. "Actually, depending on exactly how fast you are able to for the start of the Tinker base, Miss Militia and Challenger could simply train her there. We have received the go-ahead in terms of permission to start building it, so if we begin the designing as soon as possible, we could make a training room and firing range first in addition to the outline and defenses, before working on the rest after spending a bit more time thoroughly designing them."

"Yes," Dragon added, "and I would be happy to contribute several drones to aid in the finer parts of construction. Also, I have obtained a list of 'acceptable rich people to heal' for you, as well as begun searching for someone to be your assistant that I would place my personal trust in."

"Oh, that's kind of you Dragon. Thank you! You're such a lucky guy Armsmaster." Dave said.

Armsmaster nodded. "Indeed, it is an honor and a privilege to be a close friend of Dragon's, few know just how lucky I truly am in that regard."

Dave paused. "Uhh… sure, let's go with that."

Ignoring Armsmaster's and Kid Win's confusion, as well as Miss Militia's facepalm and Dragon's telling silence, Dave moved on quickly. "Well, if we have the opportunity now, we could take a look at exactly where we want to set up the base, and I can show you what I plan to use to build it quickly. I do have something else that could help with it, but it needs more time for me to 'power it up' before it really becomes useful." Dave said. "Is everyone free to take a look now?"

There were nods all around, as well as Dragon's voice through a speaker confirming she could see through Armsmaster's helmet camera and speak through a speaker on his armor.

"I actually have some teleporters in the woods already, so if you three can grab a teleporter each that will take you back here afterwards… then we can head there right now, and finish up the conversation there while we are looking around." Dave said.















Author's Note: I only got half this chapter done the day I intended to write it. I got stuck at the part where Miss Militia says "Even Accord is only a Thinker ___!". I was intending to look it up, but my internet (and a chunk of power) went out that day. There was a bright flash of light out the window and a loud bang before half the power was out, including the internet. It took the whole day for the Electrical People to successfully fix whatever happened (I think a transformer blew or something?), but when they did fix whatever it was, they felt the need to bring EIGHT trucks. Yeah, eight trucks full of dudes and equipment to fix whatever that bright flash and bang was. I had thought it might have been a gunshot at first before I realized the power was also (partially) out because of how loud the bang was. Then I saw a guy just casually walking down the sidewalk and talking on his phone and concluded "either that guy has the worst survival instincts of all time, or it wasn't a gunshot". If it had been stormy, I might have thought it was lightning that hit the ground right next to my window or something, though it didn't actually sound like thunder, just a big BANG. Anyone know what that could have been?

Speaking of looking up Accord's rating, I couldn't find it on his wiki page. Was it just never mentioned? I put him at a Thinker 7, the same as Lisa's wiki page says she is, because despite how strong his power is, it does have extra blindspots compared to normal Thinkers (other Thinkers can throw off his plans), some plans are totally impractical, and it sends him into murderous rages as a side effect If it weren't for those I probably would have put him at a Thinker 9; though I do believe he just started out as a very smart guy, and uses his power well, which is part of why he is so famous/infamous as a powerful Thinker. If anyone has information on his canon rating, let me know. If anyone has reasoning for why his rating should be something else… also let me know! I'm willing to change his Rating if someone gives me a good enough argument (or enough people agree he should be at a specific rating).

Also, according to Lisa's wiki page, both her and Taylor had an inexplicable talent with guns and were able to use them extremely competently with little to no training. Thus, I put in a line or two about Lisa being very talented with firearms to try and reflect that, without actually giving her what sounded kind of like what whoever wrote her wiki page thought was 'a random unearned skill needed for the plot to progress.' I don't know how it was in canon, but here she will actually need to practice and be trained by skilled marksmen despite her talent.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 44: A Nice Calm Fortnite Session in The Woods

January 13, 2010, Wednesday. The Woods outside Brockton Bay.



Dave in his Solid Snake form, Armsmaster, Miss Militia, and Kid Win teleported into the woods. I should turn that into a joke somehow Dave thought to himself.

They used the teleporters that Dave, Amy, Crystal, and Bella had hidden in a discrete spot on their visit to analyze mud samples, to immediately get to the woods from the Protectorate HQ and begin searching for a nice spot to put their Tinkertech base.

"Perhaps you should demonstrate what your rapid-building method would look like?" Dragon suggested after a moment. "We don't want to need to remove any trees we don't have to after all, so it is best to get find the right spot the first time around."

"Fair enough." Dave nodded, and took out his tool. Heh, taking out my tool.

"This," he waved it around, "is the Fortnite Building Tool!" He said proudly.

"Oh! Because it can make an entire building or town or whatever in a single fortnight?" Kid Win asked, rather proud that his vocabulary lessons in school weren't turning out to be useless.

"No!" Dave said helpfully with great cheer.

"Oh, then what's it mean then?" Kid Win asked.

"Uhh… That's complicated, but be aware that I don't name my items, my power does. I take no responsibility for their names, both for good and for bad." Dave said instead of actually answering.

"For now, the important part is this!" Dave said, and used the Fortnite building tool to generate a 2.5-meter by 2.5-meter metal slab about 2 centimeters thick, standing straight up.

"It has a few features. As you can see, it can generate materials from nothing. It currently has 'metal', brick, and 'wood' as options for material, though I may be able to increase those options in the future if I focus my power on that particular aspect of this particular item. It does have a limited pool of 200 'units' of each material, with one square like this costing 5 units of that material, but I can get more of each material type by smacking a somewhat large example of that material with my crowbar; for metal a large metal pipe or gear from the Trainyard or Boat Graveyard would probably do. While I need to smack the material with a crowbar, doing so doesn't actually make there be any less of the material, so I only need one tree to make unlimited wood for example." Dave began to explain.

"Now obviously not all metal and not all wood is the same, and while I haven't figured out exactly what type of wood is the default yet, for metal it uses steel as the default, though I can change what metal is used with a little effort." Dave began, generating a wood plank wall of the same size as the metal one as an example, directly next to the metal square.

Dragon's voice came through the speaker in Armsmaster's helmet. "I believe that wood is pine, which is commonly used in construction, though it is a 'softwood' it is well-regarded for its strength. Hardwoods like oak are more commonly used for flooring and furniture however."

Dave nodded and accepted Dragon's apparent expertise. "Good to know. Anyways, when these are interconnected, I can make structures with the squares that don't need to obey gravity so long as there is at least one square connecting directly to something not made with the Fortnite building tool; but if all the squares connecting whatever was built to something else are destroyed, gravity will take effect normally. So, while it is useful for making an instant bridge, it isn't a particularly useful property for our purposes."

Dave continued his explanation while the Tinker's listened intently, though even Miss Militia was quite impressed as well. "This is the only item I have made so far that I can't give to other people, it simply doesn't leave my hand no matter what I do with it, though I suspect I can make my power work towards making it possible to give to other people. Anyways, I can make a few different shapes with these," Dave said, demonstrating the tool's hologram building-preview function that let it show where the next 'square' was going to be placed and what shape it would take.

"And, something it recently became able to do, is I can place two squares of the same material directly next to each other, then choose to have them either be two separate sheets as normal, or have them fuse together and become one sheet of the combined thickness. Which means I can choose to make a larger and larger chunk of pure wood, brick or metal if I so choose." Dave smirked a little at the thought of showing people his massive wood.

"Anyways," Dave began to finish up his explanation, "while they can't be moved after they have been placed, the Fortnite tool can be used like this," he pressed a button and the Fortnite tool hit the square of metal with a short beam of blue light, the same color as its holograms. "And it will turn the square into what I call 'game mode,' where instead of acting like a normal wall of wood, metal, or brick, it will act like a destructible item in a video game, where if it takes enough 'damage,'" he began hitting it with his crowbar. "It will be destroyed into nothingness." He said, as the metal wall vanished with a final clang as he smacked it with his floppy tool.

"Of course," Dave added after a moment, "That needs to be done with the same Fortnite Building tool that originally place the material, and it needs to be done separately for each 'square' of material, and for a fused block of material, it needs to be done for each 'wall' that made up the original fusion. I can also look into having my power add a button for something like 'finalize' that turns off the possibility of putting a 'square' into 'game mode' after the 'finalize' button has been pressed. Do you think that is something that I should nudge my power towards?"

"Yes," Miss Militia said immediately. "If you are mastered for example, it would be a significant point of vulnerability. It is generally best to have no single point of failure for large projects like this."

Dave nodded at that. "Fair enough, though… I don't actually know if I can be mastered now that I think about it? Panacea said my biology was really weird, with a lot of me not even registering as biological to her power, to the point she wasn't sure she could heal me if I was injured. I've never been affected by Glory Girl's aura before either. Huh…" Dave shrugged, then looked at Armsmaster and Miss Militia staring at him. "What? Was that supposed to be important?" He asked innocently.

Armsmaster actually facepalmed at that, and Dragon's voice came through the speaker. "Trouble, if any Parahuman suspects they might be immune to Master effects, they are supposed to say so immediately so they can be tested for it by trusted individuals of either the Protectorate or the Guild. It is critical for… certain S-class threats, as well as for general activity in areas with various Masters."

She continued after pausing for a moment. "I can set you up for testing your possible resistance and immunity, as well as several simulations based on her." Dragon, the precious cinnamon roll, spat out the last word like it disgusted her, with Armsmaster, Kid Win, and Miss Militia remaining silent.

Dave realized after a moment that his research had mentioned this before; Earth Bet natives do not like mentioning the Simurgh, often referring to her as her if they had to, but preferring to talk about her in general terms, or ideally not at all. All due to fear of the Simurgh's precognitive and clairvoyant capabilities, as what was generally accepted to be the strongest Thinker on Earth Bet.

"Yeah, I'm perfectly willing to do that." Dave said agreeably, though internally he was thinking of something else as he looked around him at the woods, and more importantly… at the mud. He was feeling… inspired at the moment, as ideas flew through his mind, and one in particular settled and crystalized as an idea for an entirely new form of mud came into being.

He was going to need to mix the mud into the walls of the base now.

But, for now… "Yeah, just let me know when and where you want to do the testing." He told Dragon.

"Well," Dragon said, "the Guild would be happy to do it from Vancouver of course."

"What's a Vancouver?" Dave asked.

Dragon paused. "Um, what? It's a place in British Columbia."

Dave pondered this information. "Is British Columbia, like the District of Columbia, or is it like in Britain, or possibly somewhere where Columbus once went?"

Kid Win, Armsmaster, and Miss Militia looked at him strangely after he said that for some reason.

"It's in Canada, it's right above Washington State on a map." Dragon said after a moment.

Dave waved his hand at that, "Please, everyone knows Canada isn't real, that's why you are acknowledged as the strongest mythical creature of all, a Canadian!" He sincerely complimented Dragon.

"Um, thank you?" Dragon said confusedly, while making a mental note to ask Armsmaster later about what the heck was happening here.

"The Protectorate has facilities for this in New York," Armsmaster said, impatience getting the better of him after it became relatively clear the conversation wasn't going anywhere quickly without his interference.

Dave perked up. "I've always wanted to visit New York! I've heard that's where some of my people are!"

"Oh no," Miss Militia muttered as realization came over her.

Kid Win looked at her curiously, but she simply waved him off.

"Ahem," Miss Militia coughed. "For now, given we have a better idea of what we need to look for in terms of a place to build the base, why don't we look around some more so we can outline an exact place for the designing phase when we return?" She suggested, definitely not trying desperately to change the topic and not think about things that might occur after Trouble visited New York.

They all nodded in agreement, though Armsmaster did have one last question first. "Trouble, does the Brick function of your building tool only make bricks? Or can it make concrete or cement as well? Concrete is important for the foundation of a building, and it could be an important factor in what sort of timescale we are looking at."

"Oh, it can make cement and concrete, but I wasn't going to use those, I was going to use my Tinker Power to make some custom Cements and Concretes that would both be generally better and have some more… exotic features. I should be able to produce all the concrete and cement we need as soon as I get some tools set up to begin properly Tinkering." Dave answered.

Armsmaster nodded. "It sounds like we should build a smaller space first, that can be used for a temporary lab to produce what you need for building things. With Dragon's drones helping, it should be relatively simple to hook up with electricity, and I can move my older tools here for you to use to get the materials for the base started. Dragon?"

Dragon spoke immediately. "Yes, I can hook up the electricity. I even have a rather novel generator design that can be used to avoid being dependent on the city for electricity." She offered. Truly, Dragon was too nice for this world. Perhaps she was secretly an alien all along? That would make sense, she wasn't actually from Canada, she was from SPACE CANADA!

Dave's revelation of forbidden knowledge cheered him up, and he began humming some space tunes as they surveyed the woods to look for a good spot to put the base, as well as where to put the temporary 'shed' that would serve as his temporary Tinker lab until the base itself was built.

Miss Militia did have one final thing to say as they walked through the woods, and marked off spots on Armsmaster's map. "Regarding your Thinker friend, perhaps you should ask her for where she wants to be trained? I can start training her as soon as tomorrow if she is willing to use my space and isn't worried about an attack there; though I wouldn't be able to dedicate a ton of time to her, if Challenger agrees to help as well, then between us we can develop a solid schedule for her. If she doesn't think it would be safe, I am of course willing to wait until the firing range and training spaces of this base are ready, though I'm not sure how long that would be."

Dragon spoke at that. "Well, assuming there are no unforeseen issues, and Trouble's Tinkering goes well for the concrete, then I anticipate the base being built enough to use within a month or so, and being fully finished within around two months."

Miss Militia was rather startled at that. "I suppose that puts that building tool in a new light." She said after a moment. "By the way, did your Thinker friend have a temporary Cape name we can refer to her as in conversation? We of course wouldn't put it on any paperwork or anything, it just could get a little confusing to keep referring to her as 'her.'"

"Uhhhh…" Dave blanked out for a moment. "Uhh… Uhhh… Ummm…. Foxy!" He said finally.

"Foxy?" Miss Militia said slightly doubtfully.

"Yes," Dave nodded. "Because she is very clever, like a fox!"

"That's the reason why?" Miss Militia said in a strange tone.

"Well, yes, what other reason would I have?" Dave asked. "I suppose she does have a sort of slight vulpine look to her face, but she isn't a Case 53 or a Changer or anything if that's what you were thinking."

Miss Militia looked at Dave, trying to determine if he was being serious. Then, she remembered the Canada thing, and decided discretion was the better part of valor. She would ask the girl herself what her actual preference was when they met.















Author's Note: The 'big reveal'! The item Dave plans to use to speed up building the base is the Fortnite Building Tool! Full disclosure, I've never played Fortnite, and almost certainly never will. I'm basing the item's original capabilities purely off of what it does in the Yogscast TTT. Of course, by this point, it has already received quite a few upgrades, and is likely to receive more over time. For those unaware, a weird quirk of the item in TTT is that it can't be given to other players, one of a very small number of buyable items where that is the case.

The Fortnite Building Tool is surprisingly hard to explain to someone with no context, I really wasn't expecting the explanation to take up so much space.

Someone recently said that they liked the serious Dave (recently when I'm writing this, it will probably be a while ago by the time this actually comes out); and he will be appearing more often as more situations warrant him and his soul heals from its original damage more and the glitter glue holding his soul together gets 'scabbed over' be real soul-stuff. Non-serious Dave will never disappear of course, this story will always be a comedy as a major and important part of the story, but we will see occasional moments like this chapter more often where Dave needs to explain things in a coherent manner without Crystal or Bella translating for him, and he will be able to do so with relatively little distraction, at least until Canada is mentioned.

Now do keep in mind, Dave is still Dave, and Dave is weird even without soul shenanigans, because of how the soul shenanigans have affected his personality. As an example… let me just say, I can't wait for his trip to New York. Teehee.

Dave finally realizes he's never been affected by Vicky's aura! How many of you noticed that? This ties into Dave's 'biology', mixed with Daf's presence. Dave, as you may have noticed is resistant to some Parahuman powers, mostly Strikers, due to his funky 'biology' that hasn't been explained yet. That 'biology' combined with Daf not being inclined to let Shards screw around with his friend, means Dave can no-sell all intrusive Mastering attempts, because Daf will straight-up interfere if necessary for someone like Heartbreaker or the Simurgh tries to master Dave, but someone like Glory Girl? Her power just won't work due to the nature of Dave's powers.

Now, there are of course still Masters that can affect Dave, one of which is 'close to home' as it were, but this is a pretty important revelation to Dave's potential allies, and will put him on the radar of the Protectorate and Guild at large after they realize he might be immune to the Simurgh's song.

Consider this my official notice, I am looking for suggestions for the name of the base. Anyone who's name ends up being picked (which might not be anyone if I think of a really good one on my own) will get a Burrito point.



Author's Note 2: I'm writing this note just before the chapter goes up. I had a question for the part I'm currently writing. Does anyone know who canonically knew about Amy's true power pre-reveal? I can't find anything about it on the wiki; I assume it was only people in New Wave, but I don't know if it was literally nobody aside from Amy, or if Vicky knew, or if Carol knew, or if all of New Wave knew Amy was a full biokinetic.

If it never says in canon exactly who knew, let me know that too, and I'll go with my own idea for who knew.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 45: Zoom-Zoom Powers Activate!

January 14, 2010, Thursday. Brockton Bay, Dave's Apartment.



Dave woke up. Wait a minute… I'm not suspicious of waking up! That's super suspicious in and of itself! He thought to himself as he began to get up.

He pondered how likely it was that there was a human Master in the Bay that he didn't know about that could potentially get past his apparent resistance to Masters as he began to go through his morning routine. Then he shivered.

Well that's not a good sign. He thought to himself. Not being suspicious truly WAS suspicious all along!

---

After Dave had prepared his tea and orange juice, and set his bagel in the toaster, he sat down at his kitchen table and waited.

G'Mornin' Dave.

You got some solid soul growth yesterday and not in the tumor sense either, exploring the world around you, talking to people, socializing, and using the good ol' noggin to do thinky think things. Your new role isn't super exciting, but you got a few new things in the shops I'm sure you'll like, two of which are already upgraded beyond their base forms. Anyways, today's new role is the Veteran. You know what it does, it's an Innocent role, and when you are the last person on 'your team' alive and in combat, you will be notified that you are the last living combatant on your team (you can of course have living 'teammates' as long as they aren't part of the combat you are in, otherwise this would probably only ever activate if you were the last living hero on the planet), and you will be fully and completely healed, and will deal double damage for the rest of the duration of combat. This does still activate if you were always the only person 'on your team' from the beginning of when combat began. It also remains active even if you are no longer the only person on your team that is alive and in the same combat situation as you, whether that is due to reinforcements, people switching sides, or people coming back from the dead… or something else I didn't think of I suppose. This would come with a combat Thinker power, but you've already got that from the Old Man and Survivalist, so it just improves the 'edge cases' of that a bit to make the more unusual items work better with you, but it doesn't really come with a major bonus there, which is part of why you got such cool items unlocked today right from the get-go; you had extra room in your soul.

Dave nodded thoughtfully to himself as he registered the message and spread cream cheese on his bagel.

---

Lisa had set up her 'work station' in Dave's apartment, and left her 'school station' in Bella's apartment, and had decided to switch between them as needed.

As Lisa explained her decision to Dave, "Bella told me about something she learned in school, where your brain will associate different locations with different things, and increase or decrease productivity if you do things in what your brain considers the 'correct' location. So, if you try to work while in your bed, you will probably start to either associate the bed with work and not sleep and have trouble sleeping, or not accomplish your work very well and feel more tired because you are in your bed which your brain associates with sleep."

"What I'm doing here," she continued, "is making it so I associate this setup," she gestured to the laptop and small desk with papers around her, "with digital Cape stuff, and the slightly different one in Bella's place with school stuff. It won't necessarily help much, but a little bit of productivity really adds up over time, or so I'm hoping at least."

Dave nodded, rather proud she had put more thought into her productivity than probably 99% of people on Earth bet. Lisa looked away when he had that thought.

Aw, that's adorable, she can't take sincere compliments!

"Shut up." Lisa muttered ineffectually.

"I didn't say anything." Dave said smugly. Oh how the turns have tabled, I'M the smug one now!

"Just say what you were excited about." Lisa grumbled.

"Oh, this!" Dave said, taking out a pistol and shooting himself in the face with it.

He… didn't die instantly?

"I now am permanently five times as fast as before!" Dave said, and gave jazz hands. "Want it?" He offered.

Lisa looked at him for a moment. "Nope." She said, apparently having analyzed what happened enough to make her decision. "That thing doesn't improve reflexes, at all. You can only function because of your Thinker powers and unusual biology. Any Parahuman, or normal human, that was shot by that thing and didn't have a reflex boost as part of their powers or a strong enough combat Thinker power would be effectively crippled by it because they couldn't control their own movements properly, as well as being instantly unmasked because their civilian identity would constantly be moving too fast and running into things."

"Oh," Dave said with disappointment and began to mope.

Lisa rolled her eyes. "If you really want to give upgrades to other people, I'm sure there are Capes you would be willing to use that on that could benefit from it. Off the top of my head based on what my power has told me during the research I've done, Challenger, Velocity, Dragon, Mouse Protector, and a new Ward in Chicago that goes by Grace could all definitely benefit from that if they were willing to deal with the problem of it being constantly on."

"Oh, it actually has two modes, one for hostiles and one for allies. The hostiles one doesn't turn off, which your power must have picked up on," Dave began, "but the one for allies can be adjusted and turned down by the user, though it still doesn't grant increased reflexes." He admitted the last part sadly, before suddenly smiling cheerfully.

"But this does!" He said, pulling out a soda bottle.

"That's…" Lisa paused. "That's different from your explosion-thing, which I will eventually want by the way, after I have time to properly learn how to use the jetpack without destroying everything around me. Wait, this just says, 'Stamina Perk!' Is this some stupid Viagra thing?" She asked suspiciously as she looked more closely at the bottle.

"No, of course not!" Dave said, before chugging the entire bottle of soda and burping.

"This triples the users speed, though it can be adjusted by the user down to their normal speed, but unlike the other one it comes with matching reflexes!"

Lisa stared for a moment, presumably verifying what happened with her power, before holding out her hand expectantly and saying, "Gimme."

Dave gave her a bottle of Stamina Perk! And watched her drink it, and let out the uncontrollable burp afterwards, her cheeks blushing a little at not realizing the burp was both unavoidable and what activated the power.

Lisa began stretching a little, and walked around a short bit before walking down Dave's hallway at triple speed. "Yeah, even with the enhanced reflexes I will need a bit of time to get fully used to this. The enhanced reflexes work even at normal speed though, so this is actually extraordinarily powerful."

Dave nodded rapidly at his new maximum speed of fifteen times his original speed.

"Stop, stop, you're making me dizzy," Lisa said after watching him nod at maximum speed for a moment.

"Fine." Dave pouted.

"Thank you. Now, those two things make a BIG difference for you. Like, I'm talking a HUGE difference. Those two things give you massive, MASSIVE, leverage, with just about anyone and everyone. While the gun, what did you call it?" Lisa interrupted her own speech to ask.

"It's called the Speed Gun, or Speed Pistol." Dave shrugged.

"Whatever, dumb name, but fine. The Speed Gun isn't super useful to most capes, though there are quite a few that could still make good use of it." Lisa began.

"The 'Stamina Perk!', also an absolutely terrible name by the way, is going to make a lot of people very greedy. Since it works even on non-Parahumans, it will even be valuable to militaries, PRT troopers, and people like mercenaries…" Lisa trailed off there, before quickly typing something onto her 'Cape work' computer, before turning back to him.

"Anyways, Tinkers will want it because it lets them Tinker faster, Thinkers will want it because it offers survivability and, in some cases, like for those that don't get Thinker headaches, it offers more usage of their power if otherwise their main limitation is how much time their power uses, simply being able to think faster will be extremely useful. Most Brutes would want the Mover rating this would give them, and some of the smarter ones would be able to use it to hit harder as well, no Mover wouldn't want to be able to go faster, even someone like Strider who has teleportation would want the increased reflexes for the survivability it offers him." Lisa began listing through the Parahuman categories.

"Really, the only people that might not want this thing," she held up her now-empty bottle, "are some Breakers who's forms might not benefit from this, but even they probably wouldn't refuse, because the enhanced reflexes mean that they can more easily switch to their breaker form to survive an ambush for example; and that's leaving aside that my power is telling me that some Breakers like Legend would still benefit from the increased speed even while in their Breaker forms."

"So," Lisa leaned back, her hands behind her head. "You just became, probably around a Trump 8 with this bottle alone, maybe higher. You have to decide, very carefully, exactly what you want to do with this now that you have it. I highly recommend you strictly limit how many you give out as gifts. Some are fine, you know, 'the first one is free' and all that, but don't offer to just enhance every single hero in the entire country willy nilly or anything without asking for anything in return."

Dave nodded agreeably, then picked up his phone and made a call. "Hi, Dragon? Yeah, for that thing in New York with the testing, could you come in person? You've done a lot for me, and the world really. So I wanted to offer you a couple of presents in person. Yeah, I know I don't have to, but I really feel like you don't get enough credit for all the things you do. I promise you with all of my heart, I've got a really strong feeling you'll like these. When was that testing stuff scheduled for anyways? Tomorrow? Perfect, I hope you look forward to this, I have this feeling that the result will be absolutely fabulous! Goodbye, it'll be nice to meet you in person tomorrow!" Dave hung up.

Lisa looked at Dave. Dave looked at Lisa. Dave T-posed for dominance. "You can't tell me what to DO!" He said.

Lisa just sighed. "Dragon is fine, I just didn't want you to give it to every single hero for no compensation, that is just asking for trouble for a variety of reasons."

"Trouble is literally my name." Dave told her with a straight face.

She just sighed again. "People have troub—they have a hard time believing in things if they are offered for free. New Wave and the local Protectorate might know you well enough to believe you are genuinely offering them a substantial power boost out of the goodness of your heart, but many more veteran heroes will naturally be more suspicious if you don't demand something in return."

Dave nodded. "I was never going to offer it to a large number of people for free. Each one does cost me a credit as it is, so I was never going to be willing to just give it out willy-nilly. My current plan is to require anyone I give either one to, to use them in front of me so they can't be stolen or given to those I don't trust."

"Speaking of which," Dave said, changing tone slightly. "Could you take a look at the local Protectorate and Wards and see which ones might be able to make use of the Speed Gun? I plan on offering that soon and want to know how much use they can get out of it. The Stamina Perk! I'm not totally certain of yet, but I feel like I'm going to simply have to ask them for stuff in exchange for each member of the Protectorate and Wards, maybe giving Miss Militia and Challenger theirs as a thank you for agreeing to help train you with firearms and general combat."

Lisa nodded until the last part. "Wait, general combat?"

Dave nodded in confirmation, "Yeah, Challenger agreed to train you under the condition she got to train you in tactics, melee, and special weaponry as well. Apparently, she's something of a combat savant, and is excited to have a dedicated student she can teach."

"Challenger is excited to teach me?" Lisa asked for confirmation. "As in, the lady with the giant battleaxe and the rifle that rides the badass motorcycle?" Lisa asked in a strange mixture of excitement and dread.

"Yup." Dave confirmed.

"Oh," Lisa said with a strange expression. "That's… a really weird feeling actually; knowing I am going to be trained by Miss Militia and Challenger."

"Oh, did you decide if you wanted to train at the place Miss Militia offered or wait until the base was partially set up?" Dave asked as the thought occurred to him.

"The place she offered." Lisa answered immediately, before tapping the side of her head. "That Radar you gave me is a fucking gold mine of information for my power to work with, but it will also let me know if there are any people nearby that are staying in place for a long time. As long as Challenger and Miss Militia also have their own teleporters they can use to 'port out in an emergency, we would all be safe even if the group did attack me in front of two heroes." Lisa said.

"Honestly," she added, "even if they do attack, it will be more likely to simply help me figure out more information about them. Of course," Lisa smiled darkly, "even if they don't attack, that gives me information too." She chuckled at the idea of counter-trapping the people who had chased her and wanted to capture her.

"I've actually already made a fair bit of progress on finding out who they are and what means they have available." Lisa said. "I suspect that within… a month, given I'll have been running around in my costume as a Cape for a while by then, that I'll have enough information to counterattack them!" She gave a slightly-unhinged-level-of-smugness smile at the last bit, before calming down and returning to her standard smugness smile.















Author's Note: There we go, another chapter down, this one is 2.5k without counting the author's note, so that's decent right? I'm still trying to build up a stockpile, but I felt like a slightly larger chapter was fine for now with my current stockpile. If I get particularly inspired, I might do an even longer chapter as long as I have at least 10 chapters in reserve, but I'm going to try and work for that 15-chapter stockpile!

Anyways, we get a bit of explanation of Dave's new items and what they can do, as well as a glance at the implications. I had to estimate how much the Stamina Perk! Increased speed, because I couldn't find anywhere where it was explicitly stated in the videos. I actually also had to make up the name Stamina Perk!, because all I could find for its name was Ravs calling it a "Stamina" something, but I couldn't find anyone buying it on-screen to show me the official name. It wasn't in the TTT episodes for very long because it and the other items it was associated with were either hilariously weak or hideously overpowered (one made someone drop a pack of ammo if you killed them, and the other gave you double damage, period. So those two things and the massive speed buff were removed after only a short period).

Funnily enough, the Speed Gun is less OP than the Stamina thing in TTT, because it was a Traitor item intended to be used on certain maps with environmental hazards, so people would fall off cliffs or into lava after they were hit by it, instead of it being a straight buff as it is on a flatter map with no deadly environments on it. Of course, in the game, you can't use it on yourself either, but you could still give your traitor buddy the speed boost if needed.

Now, Dave will be going to New York soon to get tested to see how resistant he will be to the Simurgh (and other Masters), so I'm really looking forward to that. It will include a scene I've been wanting to do since the beginning of this story, as well as meeting Earth Bet's local Cinnamon Roll (Dragon) 'in person'. Of course, that isn't until the next day, for now, we still have the rest of the day in-universe to get through.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 46: Step Aside Surfing Pikachu, Get Ready For…

January 14, 2010, Thursday. Brockton Bay, the Boardwalk.



Dave, no, Pikachu, was ready (Pikachu, not to be confused with Tall Pikachu). Ready to meet his destiny. Sort of. Naturally, a Pikachu should be able to surf, such was simply the natural way of things, but this Pikachu hadn't cracked that yet, he would need to have a Beach Day at some point to learn. Later on of course, he would need to learn Dig to complete his rodent credentials.

For now, he was ready, Pokemon Trainer Crystal was with him, having finished all her classes for the day, and Pokemon Trainer Vicky was with him, excited to see this new development in the wonderful world of Pokemon.

Vista was also here, and positively oozing with a look of humiliation, combined with a heaping of 'I don't know these idiots, please don't associate me with them'.

Pikachu, was going to make history here. Brockton Bay seemed to realize it as well. While Arcadia's half-days meant Vicky and Vista could both be here, children going to other schools were still in classes, but a few Arcadia kids and a bunch of adults were all looking at the Capes and wondering what was happening, though some had backed away slightly just in case.

Crystal dramatically pointed her finger forward. "Now Pikachu! Use Thunder Wave on yourself!"

"Pika Pika, PIKA!" Pikachu cried out, before using Thunder Wave on himself (subtly shooting himself with a Stungun by quickdrawing it out of his inventory and immediately putting it back in the inventory after shooting himself with it).

"Pikachu learned Fly!" Vicky shouted dramatically, as Pikachu was tazed and began ragdolling, before floating and swinging around in various directions.

Spoiler: Flying Pikachu in video

https://youtu.be/kKM7SJQZo0Y?t=855 The moment Zoey picks the Bad Trip randomat as the randoman. Kirsty's Pikachu avatar flies when it is ragdolled.

"Pika Pika!" The world's very first flying Pikachu cried out helplessly, totally unable to control his body as he began flying away. He quickly smacked into a nearby bystander's face, before flying away as he began to pick up speed.

"Hahaha!" Crystal laughed, "We did not think this through." She said, nodding with satisfaction as she watched the Pikachu fly off and hit another bystander in the face.

Vista's head whipped around. "You DIDN'T THINK THIS THROUGH?" She all but shrieked.

"Nope!" Crystal said proudly. "I have no semblance of a plan here." She admitted cheerfully.

"Shi—crap." Vista said, before beginning to 'soak' the area with her power to make it easier to use. "So, he has no way to stop?" She asked.

"Nope," Crystal confirmed. "He said it would make whoever was hit by 'Thunder Wave' totally helpless for as long as they were 'Paralyzed.' Ooh, right in the window," Crystal commented the final part as Pikachu's face slammed into the window of a nearby shop.

"Oh, there he goes," Crystal observed as Pikachu began to fly out into the bay.

"Off to meet his destiny." Vicky agreed solemnly, while Vista was about to tear her hair out.

"He's out of my range!" Vista shouted. "One of you needs to grab him."

"But, he's free now though?" Crystal said seriously. "I've released him from his Pokeball, the return function no longer works."

"I meant one of you needs to fly over to him and physically grab him." Vista said exasperatedly.

Pikachu returned from his trip over the waters of the bay and returned to the city, before smacking straight into a skyscraper.

"I think that's the Medhall building." Vicky observed casually as Pikachu slid down the building, starting from the top floor windows, before peeling off about halfway down and flying in a different direction.

"Just grab him already!" Vista said commandingly.

"Fine, fine," Crystal said casually. "Party pooper," she muttered under her breath. "This was my destressing time." She grumbled.

As Crystal took off flying to chase Pikachu, she really showed off how she was the fastest flyer in New Wave, and easily broke past 100 miles per hour in the air.

Right as she grabbed at Pikachu to satisfy the grumpy no-fun Vista, Pikachu 'juked' and went right around her, careening back the way she came from.

Crystal turned around and chase back after Pikachu, before stopping and deciding to wait when Pikachu began doing loop-de-loops. Her lack of vertigo resistance was really biting her there, but she was smart enough to simply wait until Pikachu was taking a straighter path rather than mindlessly chasing Pikachu, making herself dizzy, and throwing up all over any pedestrians below the chase. While this situation wasn't quite the same as her first time in a flying chase (as seen by the flying Pikachu), just the memory alone was enough to make her shudder.

That had been a terrible way to find out she didn't have vertigo resistance, and she had been rather jealous when Vicky gained her powers and did turn out to have vertigo resistance, making Vicky the more agile flyer due to simply not getting nauseous. Truly, secondary powers did carry the day sometimes.

As Pikachu began hurtling back towards where he had started out, Vista's eyes lit up as she saw an opportunity to really strut her stuff.

People's vision began to act strangely as Vista's power took effect and began bending space in the area above her head.

In a large area about the size of a city block, an invisible funnel formed from Vista's power, and as she concentrated, she made 'currents' form along the funnel, making it so anything caught in the funnel would simply slide down the funnel in a slight spiral pattern while being unable to escape the forces moving them along the funnel.

Pikachu found this out first-hand as he entered the funnel from the side, went slightly through the current, and began being dragged down by Vista's power making the funnel into a makeshift whirlpool.

"PiiiIIIiiiIIIiiiIIIkKkaaaAAAaaaAAA!" Pikachu said, his voice warbling and experiencing a bit of the Doppler effect as he went around and around in the air 'whirlpool' above the street before being tossed down into Vista's arms.

"Pika Pika!" Again, again!

Vista held up Pikachu to her face. "No!" She scolded. "Bad Pikachu!"

Pikachu licked her nose. "Pika?"

"Awwww." The bystanders melted at the cuteness, and even those concerned about Capes being irresponsible immediately forgave Pikachu for what was obviously an accident.

"Pika Pika!" Pikachu bonked himself on the head with one paw and stuck out his tongue. That went exactly as I expected! Except for the space whirlpool-funnel-vacuum thing, but I want another ride on that part dammit!

Crystal landed down at this point. "See Vista? You didn't need my help at all! You resolved it perfectly well on your own, I'm proud of you for accomplishing this so well you know." She said, wiping a fake tear from her eye in pride.

"Gee thanks." Vista said sarcastically.

Pikachu began looking around for an Australian gamer girl streamer, and was puzzled when he didn't find one. Though, he did notice Crystal and Vicky taking out their phones and pointing them at him and Vista.

"Pika Pika?" He asked Vista, pawing at her face to get her attention, Vista had become much too distracted glaring at the smiling Crystal. It was obvious that Vista had become too distracted, because she wasn't paying attention to Pikachu! Pikachu, who was being held in her arms right in front of her face! Pikachu was fucking adorable and he demanded the attention he was rightfully due.

"Pikaaaa." He whined to get Vista's attention, before using Agility (double jumping) to get on top of her head instead when she didn't pay more attention to him.

"Pikachu!" He pointed in the direction he wanted his noble steed to go.

The crowd cooed at seeing Vista with a Pikachu on top of her head. This was Brockton Bay, the cape capital of the US, and this kind of thing was exactly what the tourists were here for.

Vista remained stock still, so Pikachu poked his head down in front of her face and waved a little to make sure she was still working. "Pika Pi?"

She blinked. Still working then. Pikachu thought to himself. Well, if it worked for that other rat, it will surely work for me!

Pikachu grabbed two pawfuls of Vista's neat hair, one bundle of hair in each paw, and began to try to direct her like that 2007 Aleph cooking movie Crystal had shown him.

"Pika!" Pikachu said, thrusting a pawful of Vista's head in his desired direction, trying to direct Vista forward as Crystal and Vicky continued taking pictures.

A high-pitched noise escaped Vista at this point. "Why me?" She whispered in mortification.

"Pika Pi, Pikachu!" Obviously, because you won't go in the direction I'm trying to make you go! I can't believe Ratatouille LIED to me! What kind of horrible culture do we live in, where one rat will LIE to another rat about how best to control humans! What a world, what a world. Pikachu forlornly shook his head.

---

A while later, they each headed their separate ways, and as agreed, none of them having answered any questions from civilians about who or what Pikachu was, aside from helpfully clarifying that 'That's Pikachu of course!'

Brockton Bay would remain confused on the subject for a substantial amount of time, and there would be much online debate on exactly what or who Pikachu was and what it could do as more and more Pokemon fans stumbled onto the videos taken.









Author's Note: If you could believe it, I never made the connection between Glory Girl (Vicky) liking Pokemon in my story and the absolutely amazing story, Pokemon Trainer Vicky, until I literally called her 'Pokemon Trainer Vicky' in this chapter. I hadn't realized it even when I called Crystal 'Pokemon Trainer Crystal'. I guess my subconscious knew that as a Vicky, Glory Girl had to be destined for a love of Pokemon from the very beginning.

Now the chapter itself, a nice slice of life-ish chapter is what we have here. More new experiences means more soul growth, having fun means more soul growth, more data points on what causes soul growth means Dave is closer to cracking the intricacies of what causes soul growth.

This chapter also served as my very first chase scene. It was… surprisingly challenging actually to keep coming up with ways to describe what was happening while remaining accurate to the image in my head and trying not to be too repetitive.

This also served as a reminder of the New Wave girls' flying statuses to any readers that are less familiar with them or don't remember that part very well. Crystal is the fastest New Wave flyer, but doesn't have any vertigo-resistance as part of her powers, so tight corners and complex maneuvers will make her nauseous just like they would a normal human. Vicky, however, has Vertigo Resistance as part of her powerset, making Vicky the most agile flyer in New Wave by virtue of her power-granted balance and 80-100 mile per hour speeds (Sarah, Carol, and Eric all have no mention of vertigo-resistance or lack thereof on their wiki pages… that I could find. If anyone knows one way or the other if they have it, let me know).

We also see a little bit of the results of Vista watching Pokemon, in the form of a Pokemon-esque move by making a giant funnel out of space, complete with force moving things caught on the funnel down along it in a spiral pattern. Vista is beginning to see the benefits of the power of anime.

Trouble makes his debut! Sort of, not really. Nobody knows that this is Trouble, and he has generally flown under the radar surprisingly well at this point, though that is largely simply because it has only been 2 weeks that he has been active.

Oh yes, when Pikachu (Dave) is looking around for 'an Australian gamer girl streamer', that is because Vista had just said 'Gee thanks', and one member of the Yogscast is an Australian who goes by Geestar, or Gee for short. Wiki page here: https://yogscast.fandom.com/wiki/Georgia_Dana

Next chapter… is my riskiest chapter so far in terms of having the NSFW and SFW content be identical, but on the bright side, Youtube thinks it's fine, and they're prudes! So I'm keeping my hopes up for now.

Also putting up a Behind The Scenes today to make up for how short this chapter is.

Oops, forgot to put flying pikachu vid in spoilers, fixed.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 47: The Most Dangerous Toys?

January 15, 2010, Friday. Brockton Bay, Dave's Apartment.



Dave woke up and stretched, then went through his morning routine. After preparing his tea and orange juice and setting his bagel in the toaster, he sat down at the kitchen table.

Good Day Dave! Good Dave! Good Dayve? Hmm, I'll think on it.

So, right off the cuff, you got a lot of soul space yesterday. You had fun, you had new experiences, you did stuff, you talked to people, you made plans, you DID THINGS! Ahem, so you grew a lot. Now, for your role today, you didn't get a very exciting one I'm afraid. However, in exchange, all that extra soul space got used for some pretty amazing new items, if I do say so myself. Your new role for today is the Clown. As you know, the Clown is a Jester role, or Pink role, meaning it can't normally do damage through conventional means. Of course, that no longer applies to you, as you've gotten the ability to mix and match traits from various roles a while ago, but it would be a factor if you didn't have that. The clown is unusual for a jester role in that it doesn't want to die. In fact, if either the Innocents or the Traitors would win, the Clown activates, and becomes able to do damage and will need to kill the remaining players in order to win as their own Clown team. The Clown is short for Killer Clown after all. Anyways, since there was some extra space and the Clown role doesn't actually do anything for you as is, now the Clown role can make it so that Traitors (heroic Parahumans) will think that something bad will happen if you die. Nothing bad will actually happen if you die, but they will think that killing you will 'make their team lose', whatever that entails in a given situation. This is to reflect the idea that while a Traitor role can identify all jesters on site, a Traitor can't tell what type of jester any given jester role is, and has to worry that killing a jester could result in losing because they are an actual Jester or a Swapper, or they could be dealing with a Clown in advance. You can of course turn that off if you want, and that ability starts off by default. Remember, it only works on heroes though.

Dave processed all that, and after registering the role, he thought for a moment about the soul part that Daf mentioned. "I think I have an idea of something that affects soul growth." He said.

Oh? Do tell.

"I'm not certain yet, I believe I'll know for sure after today though. I'll tell you my guess tomorrow and you can tell me how close I am, sound good?" Dave asked.

Sounds good to me! I'm quite excited to hear what you have come up with.

With that settled, Dave took the bagel out of the toaster, spread cream cheese, and began to eat.

---

Dave sat in Bella's living room, giggling as he looked through his buy menus. Bella was lounging on a sofa, and Lisa was grumbling at her schoolwork station.

"Don't talk about cape stuff here," Lisa complained. "I literally told you yesterday about my plan to divide my time and work on school stuff here and Cape stuff in your apartment Dave. So why are you here to talk about Cape stuff?"

Lisa seemed to decide that she needed to leave her laptop and workspace she had designated as being school-related in order to follow through on her plan to increase her productivity by only doing certain types of tasks in certain areas. Thus, she left her desk and gave a longing look at her computer and sat down in a rather comfy chair near the sofa with a clipboard and piece of paper, ready to write down things as needed.

"I didn't want to make Bella get up and come to my apartment, but I also didn't want to make her feel excluded, and I wanted to share the wonderful news with her." Dave said in response to Lisa's complaints.

"So, I got new things," Dave said, giggling again. "But first, did you have a plan for what to do today while I'm in New York Lisa?" Dave asked, slightly more seriously. "Did you want to stay inside and work on school stuff?"

"No," Lisa answered as she settled down in her new spot. "I was going to meet with Miss Militia and get in the first training session during the morning of today, then do school stuff in the afternoon when Arcadia students, and thus the Wards, are out of class and doing stuff, since that is when Miss Militia will likely be busier anyways."

Dave paused. "Uh, hate to break it to ya, but Miss Militia is coming with me to visit New York for my testing stuff. Apparently they can't just send me on my own because I'm not a full Protectorate member,"

"And thank goodness for that," Lisa muttered.

"And they need a local Protectorate member to come with me, and Armsmaster is busy, so Miss Militia offered to come with me since she apparently has a meeting with a friend in New York anyways." Dave finished.

Lisa flopped in her chair. "Ugh, there goes my plan to get on her good side by being considerate of her schedule with Wards and cape activity picking up later in the day."

"There there," Dave walked over and patted her head, much to Bella's amusement. "I can personally introduce you to help you with your first impression."

Lisa looked at him doubtfully after swatting away his hand. "And you think that will help?" She asked dubiously.

"In his defense," Bella said, "I trusted you because he vouched for you. I did use my own judgement as well of course, but I wouldn't have let an unknown Cape into my apartment if he hadn't vouched for you."

Lisa hummed thoughtfully at that. "You know what? Fair enough."

"Besides," Dave said, "if needed I can bribe her with this!" He said, and pulled out a dildo.

"Nevermind," Lisa said as she sank into her chair even further. "I'm doomed."

"Nonono, look at this!" Dave insisted. "It spins!" He demonstrated by pressing a button on the handle, and the dildo began to spin quite rapidly.

"That would annihilate a girl." Bella observed after seeing how fast it went. "But, the way the balls are spinning at the base, hehe, that just cracks me up." She giggled a little.

"See this little hole at the tip?" He showed them.

"Oh god," Bella said with laughter.

"It shoots out bullets! This thing is probably literally Miss Militia's wet dream!" Dave said proudly, holding the Drilldo up like it was a holy relic, which he assumed it probably was as far as Miss Militia was concerned.

"I wasn't expecting that." Bella admitted after she got over her laughter a bit, though some giggles still escaped her now and then.

"Indeed, anyone hit by a bullet from the Drilldo will be rotated slightly, by about 15 degrees per bullet. Do you have any idea how confusing that is? It also works from close range too." Dave bragged.

"I bet it works from close range." Bella said. "Please, let me be the one to introduce this to Crystal." She begged.

Lisa, after seeing she wasn't going to get any help from Bella, just sighed and facepalmed. "THIS is EXACTLY why I said not to call your special items 'toys', THEY SOUND LIKE A SEX THING! AND YOU CALLED ME A PERVERT WHEN I SAID THAT LAST TIME!" Lisa shouted.

Dave gave her a confused look. "What about this is a sex thing?" He asked as he increased the rotation speed and the penis part began to spin even faster.

"I stand by what I said," Dave told her, "I think you're just a pervert. This is obviously a deadly weapon and powerful means of debilitating and confusing tough opponents. Even a strong brute will get fucked up by the rotation from the bullets constantly hitting them, unless they have something like 'nausea immunity' of course."

"I bet they get 'fucked up' by it." Bella giggled again. "You'd need to be a strong Brute to handle that, but if you could…" Bella gave it a considering look. "Is this what Alexandria uses for stress relief?" She wondered aloud, getting a pillow thrown at her by Lisa.

"So, are you telling me you don't want one?" Dave asked Lisa, making her freeze.

"Well… I didn't say that." Lisa's dignity immediately broke down in the face of greed. She really wanted to use it at very close range on whoever was after her, a little of Bella's cheer infecting her at the thought of the brutal humiliation of dying to this thing that would ensue for her would-be captors.

"I haven't even brought out my second gift yet." Dave said seeing Bella fall off the sofa laughing and Lisa sell her dignity for the mighty Drilldo.

"I think you'll really love this one Lisa." Dave said before pulling out a crossbow.

"See?" He said smugly, making Lisa try her best to sink even further into her chair to hide from the humiliation.

The crossbow itself was normal enough aside from a scope on the top of it, but the 'ammunition' was a bright purple, rather long, dildo, that flopped and waggled around as Dave waved around the crossbow.

"These babies hit rather hard, I'd say four hits with one would kill a normal human, though one would be safe to use assuming they had no prior injuries." Dave began.

"But the real gem," he continued, "is that these things," he tapped the floppy purple dildo, "are basically cursed."

"These things will count as 'hitting' someone even by just getting close enough to them, within a few inches really, which is more than enough to fuck over a combat Thinker that likes to do close dodges." Dave said, though Bella broke out into snickers at the part about 'fucking over' a combat Thinker.

"Anyone who is hit, or 'hit' by one of these is in serious trouble, to the point I'm not even willing to demonstrate it on myself." Dave said, the admission grabbing Lisa's attention and making Bella sit back up.

"Anyone hit by one of these, will have it stuck to them, and have it waggle in their face a little in front of their body." Dave said.

Upon seeing the unimpressed looks the girls were giving him, he elaborated. "This is permanent. There is nothing I am aware of that can get rid of these. Even dying will not get rid of them. If I was shot by one of these, the floppy purple dildo would follow me around even if I died and went into my spectator mode. No invisibility or Breaker form could get rid of these." Dave stated. "Oh yes, and of course, the dildos themselves are completely and totally indestructible. Like, tell the Siberian, Behemoth and Scion to all take their best shot, indestructible."

"As a consequence, anyone who gets hit by one can say goodbye to their civilian identity." Dave said, before thoughtfully adding, "Unless of course, everyone gets hit by one of these in the same place, then nobody would be able to tell, but that would require both my cooperation and a significant large-scale civil movement and a petition for me to shoot people with a dildo crossbow."

Lisa's eyes were wide with greed at this point, while Bella now looked at the crossbow with more than a little fear, as well as a slight hint of respect for what it was capable of.

"Here you go!" Dave said nonchalantly, handing them both to Lisa.

"I've got more of each if I need to bribe Miss Militia, so you can have these ones!" Dave said cheerily.

Lisa looked at the deadly weapons in her arms, then looked at Dave, then at Bella, silently asking for help.

"Don't point those anywhere near me." Bella told Lisa. "Actually, Dave, can you just like… de-load that crossbow?" She requested. "I really don't want to have to explain to someone why there is a permanent irremovable dildo in my wall if that thing accidentally goes off."

"Just put it in a cardboard box though?" Dave said questioningly. "Or anything else you don't mind have a permanent dildo attached to if it goes off by accident."

"Oh yeah," Bella said sheepishly. "I got kinda caught up in how you were describing it and didn't think of that." She admitted.

Dave stood up. "Well, I'm off to meet Miss Militia so we can head to New York and set up some teleporters there. Apparently Miss Militia agreed to meet a friend there as well. Both of you stay safe, and don't do anything I wouldn't do!"













Author's Note: Here we are. I'm sure some of you have been anxiously waiting for these two items, and truthfully, so have I. I am a little scared that the QQ staff will take issue with them being mentioned in the SFW section, but I figure there are episodes containing both up on Youtube with no age-restrictions, and youtube are prudes, so it's probably fine considering, for example, rape can get mentioned in SFW things on Space Battles as long as it isn't shown on screen.

Now unfortunately, both these items are from before my starting point in my rewatching, so I don't have links ready to show off each of them in action, and the one video I know uses one of them, is one of the few that is age restricted, because it has dildo in the title, and again, Youtube are prudes (that's coming from me, and I skip most smut scenes when I read on QQ, as far as QQ is concerned I'M probably considered a prude). That being this video for those with a Youtube account that can see it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCMJuFy0XoY

For those that don't have a Youtube account and don't want to make one, this is that video on Daily Motion: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x62tj6u The Crossbow is shown at around 10:45 for those that don't want to watch the whole thing.

I don't have any videos with the Drilldo in it, but if anyone does happen to have a link to one of the videos featuring the Drilldo (or knows the video title of an episode containing it), hook me up and I'll add a link to it in the story and award you a Burrito point.

I'll also award a Terrorist Point to the first person to provide me a video containing the Dildo Gun (the crossbow) that isn't age restricted (they are probably ones that are adjacent or near the Ghost Dildo episode on this list: https://yogs-ttt.fandom.com/wiki/2017_Episode_Masterlist )

If nobody does, I will probably eventually get around to doing both of those myself, but not until I've fully finished my current TTT rewatch and gone back to the very beginning to refresh myself on the older less iconic items, and the more iconic items that I don't remember exactly how they work.

Now, for the chapter itself… you didn't seriously think the dildo guns weren't going to be absurdly dangerous, did you? Both of those things will fuck up Alexandria, by ruining her civilian identity and making her vomit from nausea respectively (I think, I will have to check her wiki at some point to see if she actually can get nauseous and/or dizzy). They are both genuinely some of Dave's strongest nonlethal threats he can make at the moment. They are a symbol of his ability to escalate if someone decides to fuck around and find out. They are the perfect gifts for the powerful women he meets. They are… both shaped like dicks.

He can pull out the crossbow and honestly tell someone, "Listen, even I'M scared of this thing, and I literally can't die." And I just love that. It's a bit of a shame really that he already knows the two people that he could screw with the most by saying that honestly (Armsmaster (because of his lie detector that he hasn't built yet) and Lisa (because her power would tell her that he was telling the truth)).

 

[Phili]

Chapter 48: 'Soul Mate Road Trip' Sounds Like A Song Title

January 15, 2010, Friday. Brockton Bay, Protectorate HQ.



Dave arrived at the Protectorate Headquarters via teleportation in his Solid Snake form, and appeared in his designated teleportation closet. He had been offered a larger room after they found a better spot for a teleportation chamber, but he had declined because a teleportation closet was funnier than a teleportation chamber. Armsmaster had shrugged and said they were going to work on a larger room for the planned Teleportation Hub anyways, so he was free to have his own little closet.

For now, he walked out to meet Miss Militia at the parking lot, right next to the forcefield road that led to the city, where they would then make their way to New York.

"Hello Trouble." Miss Militia greeted him from in front of her motorcycle.

"Hey Miss Militia," he greeted back. "So are we taking your motorcycle?" He asked.

Miss Militia moved to shake her head, then paused, remembering the things Trouble had said at their first meeting, then actually shook her head. "No, we're going to take a PRT van." She said instead of addressing the idea of them riding her motorcycle together.

"Aww, I was hoping we could race." Dave admitted.

"Race? Did your power offer you a vehicle of some sort?" Miss Militia asked curiously.

"Yes actually," Dave confirmed, before taking out a pistol to show off to her.

"That's a gun." Miss Militia told him patiently, before double-checking with her power and finding she couldn't copy this particular gun, so it apparently had something unusual about it. She wondered if it perhaps had some sort of propelling effect using recoil that Trouble could combine with his flight from his jetpack that would otherwise be slower than a car.

"No, this is an airboat summoner!" Dave told her proudly, before demonstrating by shooting the ground nearby with it, making a small, one-seater airboat appear.

"We can take this instead if you want," he said enticingly. "You would need to ride on my lap though." He added.

Miss Militia actually considered it for a few moments, before shaking her head in refusal. "I'm afraid we wouldn't make very good time if we took the water route to New York. I don't think airboats travel particularly fast on the ocean either, and might be at risk of capsizing outside the calmer waters of the bay."

In other words, she WOULD do it if it weren't for those factors? Dave thought to himself.

"I didn't mean over the water." He clarified, before climbing into the airboat seat and beginning to 'drive' it around the parking lot in circles. "As you can see, this operates perfectly well on land!" He patted his lap.

"How fast does it go on land?" She asked consideringly.

"Eh, a maximum of like 80 miles per hour." Dave answered.

"And, do you have a license to drive it on land?" She asked with one of her signature eye-smiles.

"Uhhh," Dave answered intelligently, before giving up on a clever response and sadly getting out of his airboat. "It has other features," he tried.

"Like?" Miss Militia asked, apparently willing to indulge him in at least bragging about his new vehicle, though he couldn't tell if she was still considering using it.

"Well, it works similar to some of my other items, so once someone is 'using' it, they can't be removed against their will except by dying," he began. "And they are immune to things that could be considered 'physics damage' while in it. A baby in the driver's seat of that could fall from Earth's orbit without a seatbelt or any safety equipment and land on solid concrete and be completely unharmed… as long as the baby didn't use the 'leave' function to no longer be considered 'piloting' it anyways."

"The airboat itself is indestructible," he added after a moment. "And it goes the same speed on both water and land, and has no care of things like terrain or hydroplaning or driving on a pile of nails or caltrops."

"It has a 'physics mode' where it will interact with other things normally, but when it isn't in physics mode, it could hit someone at maximum speed and it would at most push them instead of actually harming them. It would still kill someone even in 'non-physics' mode if it landed on them from above though." He continued thoughtfully.

"Oh," he perked up, "also, it's mostly idiot-proof! The controls are mental and instinctive, you just decide which way you want to go and how fast as well as how far to turn, and it will do it."

"So… really, there's no logical need for a license or permit or anything right?" He gave her a winning smile.

Miss Militia looked from him, to the airboat, to her motorcycle, to the boring PRT van, back to him, before sighing. "You can ride in the sidecar for my motorcycle." She said at last.

"Wooh! Soul mate road trip!" Dave cheered, making Miss Militia flush slightly behind her bandana covering her cheeks. "You can have the airboat if you want." He told her.

When she made to refuse he insisted, "Think of it as part of a down-payment for helping Foxy, while also improving the effectiveness of a local Hero in case you need to chase down any villains, this way you can cut directly across the bay over the water in an emergency, and perhaps get to a scene slightly faster." He said, appealing to her desire to help people.

"I'll give more to the Protectorate and PRT if you agree." He said as a finishing blow, directly tying her acceptance into more stuff for her friend and coworkers, as well as the PRT at large. Naturally, he would do it anyways of course, and he knew that Miss Militia knew that, but given how his power worked, it was better to get the people he was close to used to receiving gifts, and of his current friends and acquaintances, Miss Militia was the most reluctant to receive gifts by far.

"Fine," she agreed slightly exasperatedly, but with a small eye-smile as well, so he took it as a good sign that he hadn't been too pushy.

After he got into the sidecar of her motorcycle and put on a helmet with a radio that would let him easily talk to her over the wind, she said something into her radio, and the forcefield bridge appeared to let them into the city itself, and off they went.

---

Dave was rather fascinated to see how incredibly well-received Miss Militia's motorcycle was among civilians as they drove through Brockton Bay.

Apparently, Brockton natives could tell based on how fast, or in this case slow, Miss Militia was going (though Miss Militia also said when he asked that she had a siren as well that she used when she was on her way to a fight or a crime scene), that there was no urgent matters or terrible circumstances that led to her being on her motorcycle and driving through the city.

Thus, the Brockton natives felt comfortable waving and occasionally cheering or shouting a comment of gratitude for her hard work when her motorcycle passed, and tourists seemed to take their cue from the locals and took lots of pictures.

"Huh," Dave said suddenly as they began to leave the city. "I guess those pictures will probably be considered my official cape debut."

"Haven't you already been doing hospital work though?" Miss Militia asked curiously.

"Yes, but at first I did those in my Scyther form to develop the power you suggested to make attacks nonlethal—which worked by the way, I can now make it so any attack I make will not kill someone, though it can still injure them. I've only done two hospital visits in this form, which is what I decided to be my standard 'Cape form,' because it looks human and that has a lot of advantages but it also is extraordinarily well camouflaged, and the person it is based off of is thematically fitting for many of my powers." Dave explained.

"Anyways, only two visits in this form means only certain people that have been in the right hospital at the right time in the past few days know I exist, now that a large number of tourists have taken pictures of me, I will be identified for my hospital work within the day, and probably have a wiki page within the week." Dave finished.

"I'm sorry, it didn't even occur to me that you hadn't had a 'proper' cape debut," Miss Militia apologized. "I hope I didn't ruin any plans."

"Nah, you're fine." Dave waved off her concerns. "I didn't have any sort of grand debut plans. With my powers, I am going to get noticed eventually, and while I'm aware PR is one of the most important parts of being a hero—after all, you can hardly save someone that doesn't trust you—I figured Lady Photon's deal with letting the Protectorate help me with my image would cover that while I got started as a hero."

"Oh, well it's good I didn't ruin any plans, I'll talk to the Image department later to see what we can do for giving you a more 'official' debut. You can sign on as a proper Independent Hero too as soon as we get that non-lethality power of yours tested." She gave him a bright eye-smile. Really, those eye-smiles must have been her real superpower, Dave had no idea how she managed to get so much expression out of them.

"By the way," she added, "who is the person you said this was based off of?" She asked curiously.

"Oh, he is a guy called Solid Snake, he is the main character of a video game series from Earth Aleph called 'Metal Gear Solid.'" Dave answered briefly.

"As I said, the camouflage makes this one of my most advantageous forms aside from the smaller ones, and I decided the advantages of 'camo' and 'looking human' were greater than the advantages of 'being small' and 'being cute'. I might make my Pikachu form be a sort of alternate hero persona though, something that can visit sick kids at hospitals and handle low-level crooks and hurt their dignity by beating them up as a tiny adorable mouse based on an Aleph cartoon."

"Hmm," Miss Militia hummed, seemingly still latching onto the idea of Solid Snake. "Do you think the Wards would like to play those Metal Gear Solid games you mentioned? They have game consoles in the Wards lounge, but Clockblocker occasionally complains about a lack of variety in games, particularly games that don't involve Capes in some way."

Dave thought about it. "I don't know the rest of the Wards all that well, but Vista would probably like it. It's got guns and conspiracies and giant robots and cyborgs and terrorists. Vista seems to like more 'adult' and 'mature' stuff, so she'd probably appreciate it. I bet Kid Win would like it because it has lots of things that could inspire him as a Tinker."

Then he shrugged, forgetting that Miss Militia had her eyes on the road and couldn't actually see him shrugging. "But I don't know what sort of games they have already, and I haven't actually played the games myself, given I am only two weeks old in terms of memories and all, plus how busy I've been. I can say Shielder was the one who showed me the series after he recognized who this form was, so apparently he enjoyed it."

"I see, I'll look into it," Miss Militia said. "They need more ways to have fun and be kids, and most of them are too proud or too independent to ask for things in terms of entertainment, so things that will let them enjoy their childhood a little longer are always things I like to be on the lookout for." Miss Militia said, truly proving why PHO labeled her a 'Cape Mom', along with Lady Photon, though notably PHO had not labeled Brandish as a 'Cape Mom'.











Author's Note: So begins the trip to New York. Honestly, I didn't like this chapter too much, Dave kinda came across as a bit of an asshole that wouldn't take a no or a 'let me think about it' at face value from a prospective romantic partner.

Note from just before posting: Having reread this chapter now, I like this current version a lot better, so I must have done a good job on my early editing to remove the pushy asshole-ness, which is good because being a pushy asshole is out of character for Dave. Back to original author's note after this sentence.

Now, as much as I love Miss Militia, unless a whole bunch of readers are desperately shipping her with Dave, I'm probably going to let up on the jokes from her being Dave's soul mate from the Romantic role.

Honestly, if Dave had actually looked like Solid Snake, and was anywhere from mid-20s to mid-40s in age, he and Miss Militia probably would have genuinely started dating by now. It wouldn't have gone anywhere very quickly, as Miss Militia strikes me as the type to be rather slow and steady in her relationships, since she is a rather rational person who isn't led by her emotions very easily.

Note: There was more here, but I'm moving it to the Behind the Scenes 3 because it got rather long and somewhat off-topic. If you are interested in the romance stuff and want to know my plans there, check that out when it comes out.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 49: WELCOME TO NEW YOIK!

January 15, 2010, Friday. New York City.



They were just entering New York when Miss Militia got a call on her radio from the local Protectorate.

"Yes? Oh. Yes, I can help. I understand. I can get there within a couple minutes permitting traffic. Okay, I'm heading there now."

She turned to Dave, who could hear gunshots now and was looking at her curiously. "There's an attack, a cell of the Teeth is trying to enter New York, and we're quite close, though apparently a visiting Independent is also going to help. The Protectorate is on its way anyways, so we just need to delay them."

Dave nodded. "I understand, I'll go fly ahead to avoid traffic, this is the moment that has been calling me!" And jumped out of his sidecar and flew towards the gunshots with his jetpack.

Miss Militia shook her head at the eagerness, but kept driving her motorcycle anyways. "I'm sure it'll be fine, he's powerful and skilled and the Butcher isn't present. What's the worst that could happen?"

---

Gary Stuart

Gary was a simple man. He went to work at a normal office job in the day, and went home at night to his loving wife and child. He liked watching football and eating hot dogs, and had never once wondered what was actually in a hot dog or thought about the head injuries involved in actually playing football. Really, he was a perfectly standard American.

So, when his boss sent him from Brockton Bay to New York city on a business trip, he had no problem agreeing. After all, going on a business trip to a nearby city was a perfectly normal thing for a business man to do.

So, why…

"AHHAHAHAHAHA!"

Why…

"SHOOT IT! SHOOT IT!"

"Why is New York so weird?" He whimpered in his car, as the 'battle' unfolded in front of him, between a bunch of weird edgy furries and a giant rat.

"I knew they got big, but I thought the New York rat thing was an exaggeration!" He cried out.

The giant rat laughed and shot an automatic gun of some kind at the edgy furries, and just tanked the bullets they fired into it.

"WELCOME TO NEW YOIK!" The rat shouted in an oddly pleasant female voice, but with the strongest New York accent he had ever head, as evidenced by the way it—it? She? It said 'New Yoik' instead of 'New York'.

"I want to go home," he whimpered from beneath the dashboard of his car.

Then, the giant rat made odd sounds as it began jumping around to get closer to the edgy furries. "Isn't that the jump noise from that Aleph game my son likes? The one about the Italian plumber? Didn't he call it Mario or something?" Gary wondered absently as he peeked over the steering wheel to see if it was safe to come out.

Then he saw something that gave him hope.

"Mouse Protector!" Someone nearby shouted.

He had thought Mouse Protector had become an Independent hero in Atlanta or something, but he would take any experienced hero over this insanity.

"That's right!" Mouse Protector cried. "It's me! Protector of mice and rodents of all kinds!"

Oh no. Gary thought with a growing sense of horror.

"You edgy furries are going to stop shooting that rat RIGHT NOW, or else you're gonna get it!" She shouted and waved her sword, confirming his fears.

I think I'm going to have a fear of rats after this. He thought with slight queasiness.

---

Dave finished off the weirdos in bone costumes, apparently called 'the Teeth'.

The woman, who he could identify on sight as a true comrade, had been a little bit hypocritical by calling them furries, but he supposed that was probably part of the humor. He ignored the fact that he literally looked like a giant rat himself.

The last of the unpowered mooks, along with the actual furry, a guy who had turned into some sort of large dog thing and screamed at him before getting shot in the face, were sent groaning on the floor in pain and injury by his 'False False Swipe' AKA 'Swipe' bullets when Mouse Protector arrived.

"Oh," she said with disappointment. "You already got them. You couldn't leave a little for me?" She complained as she sheathed her sword, before bringing it back out suddenly. "No wait, who are you? Are you a friend, or A FOE!?" She shouted dramatically.

"Hi! I'm Trouble!" Dave introduced himself, still in his Boba voice, as he shrank down to a perfectly normal New York sized rat, about the size of a person, albeit still bipedal and reached out a hand to shake.

"Oh, I'm Mouse Protector!" She happily shook his hand.

"I know, I'm a big fan." Dave admitted.

"So, what's your plan for all these bozos?" She asked, subtly keeping an eye on him in case he had actually been a villain that just took exception to the Teeth's presence.

"Oh, I'm just gonna wait for either Miss Militia or the local Protectorate to arrive and take them into custody, then I'll offer to heal them so I don't get… in trouble." He gave her finger guns at the last part, earning him a high five for the joke on his name after Mouse Protector relaxed from hearing her friend was on her way.

"Ooh! You know Millie?" Mouse Protector asked.

"Millie?" Dave asked. "You mean Miss Militia?"

"Yeah," Mouse Protector nodded. "I gave her a bunch of options for affectionate nicknames, and that was the one she objected to least! Millie comes from the Militia part of her name, you see?"

At that point, Miss Militia herself arrived on her motorcycle, and took in the unpowered members of the Teeth, along with the big-time furry Dave still didn't know the name of, all littering the ground with their unconscious bodies.

"MILLIE!" Mouse Protector shouted, before suddenly teleporting over to Miss Militia to give her a hug, trapping her arms against her sides and rubbing their cheeks together affectionately.

"Ow, Mouse Protector stop!" Miss Militia said. "Your helmet's ear keep hitting my head when you do that." She complained. "And I told you not to call me Milllie!" She added on. "It sounds too much like a real name; someone could get hurt if villains assume that is my actual name and go looking for people with that name to try to get to me."

"Aww, you're still as serious and paranoid as ever!" Mouse Protector nearly cooed at seeing how little her friend had changed. "Nobody is that stupid."

"It clearly shows that you haven't been to Brockton Bay." Miss Militia grumbled. "Otherwise, you would not be able to say that with a straight face."

Dave nodded seriously. "I once got challenged to a stupid contest in Brockton Bay." He said, before sadly continuing. "If you count the entire organization of the guy who challenged me, I lost."

"What organization was that?" Mouse Protectorate asked curiously.

"The Protectorate." Dave answered, making Miss Militia wince, while her friend burst out laughing, before teleporting to his side.

"You see my fellow rodent friend," she put an arm around his shoulder. "There's a reason why I left the Protectorate, and it ain't cause of how smart they are." She winked at him cheekily.

"They didn't give their Shaker 9 anything to defend herself with." He told her, "Not even a stick, let alone a taser, pepper spray, or a foam gun."

"They didn't change that huh?" She asked rhetorically. "Yeah, they could get weird about that in my day too. If something wasn't part of your image, you better believe you weren't gonna get your hands on it." She shook her head.

When Dave was about to correct her on the extent of his grievance with the whole scenario, Miss Militia coughed to interrupt. "Ahem, perhaps we should take these people to the PRT so we can get to your testing on time?" She suggested.

Dave looked around with confusion. "I thought we were waiting for the PRT though? We can't exactly pile them all onto your motorcycle. Unless you wanted to take the airboat, were fine with me tying them on so they all dragged along behind us, and changed your mind about wanting to be in my lap of course."

Moues Protector let out a noise of interest at this information.

"Oh? Riding in her lap? Is that why you and Chevy didn't work out? Do tell." She said, teleporting and leaning against Miss Militia, looking up at her, eagerly waiting for the juicy gossip.

"There was no riding in laps." Miss Militia answered primly. "I was referring to the PRT vans over there." She pointed, and sure enough, they were rolling up as she spoke, Dave just hadn't been able to actually see them from his angle.

"Oh, okay. I don't really know the procedure for this kind of thing, so I'll follow your lead." Dave happily deferred to the two more experienced women.

"I too, don't really know the procedure for this sort of thing!" Mouse Protector happily said. "So it's going to brie all up to you to do the work Millie!"

"Breeh?" Dave began looking around for a snazzily dressed bipedal sheep, possibly with the face of a dolphin.

"She likes cheese puns." Miss Militia explained shortly.

"Oh, so I shouldn't turn into Breeh?" Dave asked for clarification. "Because I found Shaun the sheep, but I haven't found the other sheep yet, and Dio would just be asking for trouble in this day and age."

"Oh, so you are a Changer!" Mouse Protector said. "I thought so, but I didn't want to be rude. In this case, you're fine just the way you are!" She teleported over to Dave and gave him a big hug. "I finally have a giant rat friend and I'm never letting go!" She said, looking up at him from where she was hugging him.

From this close, it was even more obvious just how short Mouse Protector was. It was enough to make one wonder if she decided on the 'mouse' theme because of her height. The few clips of episodes of Mouse Protector and the Protectorate Pals he had seen online didn't really show how short she really was, which was amusing considering how 'larger than life' she was as one of the more famous Capes in the country due to her TV show.

"So!" Mouse Protector teleported over to Miss Militia, appearing in a piggyback position on Miss Militia's back. "You and Armsy didn't work out I take it? I thought with the way you talked about him that you were going to ask him out any day."

"I never considered asking Armsmaster out." Miss Militia answered with a sigh. "I talk about him with respect, because I respect him, you should consider trying it sometime." She said with a side eye towards the shorter woman on her back.

"So it wasn't due to any… tendencies?" Mouse Protector asked curiously, moving her face even closer to Miss Militia's and showing she truly had never heard of a strange thing like personal space.

"What?" Miss Militia asked with confusion. "I—no? What are you talking about?"

"Actually," Dave interrupted, getting a grateful look from Miss Militia. "Armsmaster has ascended beyond us mere mortals and has achieved the ultimate feat."

Mouse Protector looked over with interest, and moved her head on top of Miss Militia's so she could rest her jaw on Miss Militia's hair.

"He obtained the legendary 'Canadian girlfriend,'" Dave said dramatically. "It's even more impressive when one considers that Canada is actually a myth, making him someone that has attained a real-life mythical girlfriend."

"Wow!" Mouse Protector had stars in her eyes at the news. "I thought he was secretly a robot! He got a special lady-friend from the Land Beyond?!"

Dave nodded solemnly. "Yes, the only people that haven't realized yet that they are dating are the two in question." He told her, making her burst out in laughter.

"That, I can believe easily." She nodded, before holding her jaw after it collided with Miss Militia's head when she made the nodding motion. "Ow. You didn't see that! I'm full of dignity and stuff!"

Dave saluted loyally to the protector of his fellow rodents, just as the local PRT agents made their way through the traffic and wrecked pieces of rubble the giant dog-thing had made before Dave arrived.

"Thank you for your help." One of the agents said to Miss Militia, before nodding to Mouse Protector in recognition.

"If you could come with us," a different agent said while some of the others began to load the Teeth mooks and animal-dude into the vans and spray them with containment foam, "then we can debrief at the PRT and take you over to the Protectorate right afterwards."

Miss Militia nodded. "I'll take my motorcycle and Trouble will be in the sidecar, we'll be right behind you. I'm sure Mouse Protector can make her own way there."

The agent nodded, while Mouse Protector at first gave a betrayed look, then a mischievous smile came over her face and she saluted.

Miss Militia handled a few more details with the agent, like what the heck was wrong with the Teeth mooks that they weren't responding but were somehow alive despite their wounds (she simply said it was due to a power, and the rest would need to be in the debrief), then turned around to her motorcycle and her face fell flat.

"Come on, we're waiting!" Mouse Protector said from her spot in Dave's lap in the sidecar. "Chop chop! You're keeping the nice agents waiting."

"Was chop chop a cheese pun?" Dave asked. "Like, chopping cheese to make bigger pieces than slices would be?"

"Eh," Mouse Protector wiggled her hand as Miss Militia made her way back to her motorcycle with a sigh. "A little. It's not my best work, but I try to make my puns pretty understandable, they're no gouda if hearing them just confuses people instead of making them laugh, smile or groan, you know? So sometimes, I slip in little ones like those where they're not really puns, but they aren't the word choice I would normally use…" she began to lecture Dave on the subtle art of puns and communication as Miss Militia began driving her motorcycle behind the PRT vans.

As much as the Mouse-Protector-on-Trouble's lap thing irked her for safety reasons, Miss Militia knew her friends would both be able to easily handle a crash, and complaining about it would just make Mouse Protector lean into the subject even more. Though, she was looking forward to seeing the results of her little reverse-prank on her friend, when Trouble finally revealed he was male after Mouse Protector's assumptions due to his rat form's voice. She smiled slightly at the thought of Mouse Protector's expression when that happened.







Author's Note: And thus, we arrive in New York. I've been waiting to reenact that bit of that episode since the story started. If you didn't catch it, it was the opening of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YWZ4HaWDXw&list=PL3XZNMGhpynMPHPVeoaQZZn_LT_DYbgho&index=57 The voice that Gary heard was Boba's because as far as Dave is concerned all rats sound like Boba, so that is what his voice-imitation power the Protectorate testers discovered latches onto when he uses that skin. He can still talk in his normal voice of course though.

Yes, Dave changed to Boba's rat skin because it was New York, then ate the Mario Mushroom so he could tank the bullets of the Teeth while preventing them from going after civilians by being a large and loud distraction that could hurt them. It was actually a tactically thought-out move, despite what Gary thinks.

Gary Stuart's name is based on a mix of Gary as in Gary's Mod and Gary as in Gary Stu, the fanfiction trope, though he has no real relevance or relation to either. We will see more of him eventually, he is sort of the ultimate straight-man background character (straight man as in the comedy thing, though I suppose he is an adult male human that is heterosexual as well). Poor guy visits New York for the first time from his home in Brockton, and now thinks Brockton is actually calm in comparison because he's certainly never seen any rats that large at home.

Also, we see someone I'm sure a few of you have been excited to see, though I don't know how many of you were expecting it, Mouse Protector! For those wondering how she teleported to Dave during their conversation, she marked him when they shook hands; it was part of why she shook hands with him even though she wasn't certain he was heroic yet, so that she could mark him for teleportation.

I couldn't find out where she was located before the whole Murder Rat thing, so I made it so Gary thought but wasn't certain that it was Atlanta. If anyone actually knows, or has a good reasoning for why she would have set up in a specific place, let me know and I'll make that canon for this story! Otherwise, I'll probably look up large cities in Wisconsin for where she actually went (because Wisconsin is the cheese state if anyone isn't aware. Cheese and beer are the things Wisconsin is known for. Wikipedia for Wisconsin Cheese is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_cheese But to give you an idea if you don't want to look into the whole thing, in 2024, Wisconsin alone was responsible for 25.2% of the USA's entire cheese production). First person to tell me her canon location (after she became an Independent hero), or if there was none, then whoever gives the best argument for why she should be based in a certain place gets a Burrito Point.

Also, note that at this point, Mouse Protector believes Dave is female because he has been using Boba's voice and remained in rat form, and Trouble is a gender-ambiguous name. So now, she thinks that the reason Miss Militia and Chevalier (who she called Chevy) stopped dating is because Miss Militia was a lesbian.

Now, you may be wondering, 'Why didn't the New York Protectorate handle the Teeth themselves? They don't have a staff problem like Brockton Bay, they can certainly handle the Teeth, why even bother telling Miss Militia?"

Well, the Protectorate could and would have handled it, but they knew Miss Militia was entering the city, and they wanted the Teeth down, contained, or distracted as fast as possible, because the Teeth will happily kill civilians just for fun, so if Miss Militia happened to be closer to the Teeth than any of their own people and sending her first could prevent even a single civilian death by have called her in, they would take that as a win. The PRT and Protectorate staff at New York are consistently good people, unlike Brockton where they are filled with moles and plants from the various gangs; so they were happy to take a small hit to their city pride by asking an 'outsider' for help if it let them save people. It helped that Miss Militia was an inaugural Ward who was under Legend at one point though.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 50: A Nice Friendly Debrief.

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



The New York PRT Headquarters was rather nice all things considered. It was clean, the air was filtered to eliminate the distinct New York smell (which was not a pleasant smell), there was some calming music in the lobby, plenty of people manning the various desks and answering phone calls, there were guards at regular points throughout the building, and the coffee machine was both fantastic and looked absurdly expensive.

There was more to it of course, but even the garage they had followed the vans into was one of multiple, and had a large number of other vans, as well as multiple other vehicles for a variety of situations. The various troopers and staff members didn't even blink an eye at Dave's rat form, let alone harass any of them.

The whole thing made a rather distinct contrast to Crystal's stories of the Brockton Bay PRT Headquarters. Honestly, this place was even nicer than the Protectorate Headquarters, and that was a superhero base with a forcefield!

Dave, Miss Militia, and Mouse Protector made their way to a rather nice meeting room, where one of the agents that had arrived on the scene, along with a man in a labcoat and a woman in a suit, were just entering when they arrived.

"Ah, please," the woman waved them in ahead of her.

"So," the woman said as they sat down and she pulled out a laptop, "I'm Christine Reyes, I'll be heading this debrief."

"You are all free to take some of the coffee from over there," she pointed to the back of the room where there was a coffee machine with sugar, cinnamon, cream packets, and a small refrigerator next to it. "I'll be recording this as usual, mainly for analysis purposes, nothing unusual, standard procedure, I'm sure this won't take long and we can all be on our way, though let me know if you need anything while we are still here." She said with a friendly smile.

The man in the labcoat spoke next. "I'm Doctor Maurice Hughes, I'm here for whatever is wrong with the Teeth members you brought in." He gave them each a short nod.

Finally, the trooper-agent-guy-dude spoke. "I'm Agent Kyle Hill; I'm here as the leader of the deployed agents on the scene."

"So, are we all ready to get started?" Chrstine asked, to nods all around. "Great."

"So, to begin with, you are the Form G-6 hero Trouble correct?" She asked Dave.

Dave gave a helpless look of puppy-rat eyes to Miss Militia, who sighed and stepped in. "Yes, that is correct, Trouble is marked as a hero according to Form G-6, as 'not yet an Independent but expected to be pending further circumstances'."

Christine nodded in understanding, "I get it, those forms and the weirder designations can be confusing and easily forgettable. Would you mind changing to your 'standard hero form' please? It's part of the standard procedure with Changers and Breakers." She said apologetically.

Dave shrugged, transformed from a large rat (really, a Rodent Of Unusual Size, or ROUS) into Solid Snake, and said "Sure," in his normal voice, no longer sounding like Boba with a New York accent.

Mouse Protector screamed.

"Huh, I don't normally get that reaction to this form, that's usually reserved for some of the other ones." Dave said as he looked down at himself.

"You're a MAN!" Mouse Protector said, pointing her finger dramatically at Dave.

"I mean, I like to think so?" Dave said confusedly.

"But, but, you can't be a man!" Mouse Protector immediately (metaphorically) shoved her entire foot so deep into her mouth she would be gagging if it wasn't a metaphor.

"Excuse me?" Miss Militia said with a faux-offended tone. The three PRT staff members were also shooting Mouse Protector unfriendly looks at that comment. Meanwhile Dave looked at his crotch and chest with a confused expression, wondering what could have led Mouse Protector to that conclusion.

"YOU!" Mouse Protector changed her pointing from Dave to Miss Militia. "YOU KNEW EXACTLY WHAT WAS HAPPENING!"

"I did," Miss Militia said, with a small amount of smugness, but nowhere approaching Lisa levels.

"But, but," Mouse Protector seemed to notice the angry looks from the PRT staff members at this point. "OH, I didn't mean it that way, calm down. You heard the rat form's voice! I had just gotten attached to the idea that Millie here didn't like my teasing about her and Chevy back in the Wards days because she was a lesbian the whole time, and I was going to apologize for making her uncomfortable!"

That seemed to get a sheepish expression from all three staff members, who probably felt slightly guilty about jumping to conclusions for one of the inaugural Wards, who famously worked under Legend.

"Honestly," Mouse Protector huffed indignantly. "I'm a shipper, not a monster. I had never heard of Trouble before, the rat form had no visible gender and had a female voice, what was I supposed to think?" She complained. "Especially when someone," she glared at Miss Militia, "deliberately let me wallow in ignorance!" She said with her eyes beginning to tear up slightly.

Just as Miss Militia was beginning to feel bad for her little trick, Mouse Protector teleported over to her and hugged her. "I'm so proud of you!" Mouse Protector wailed dramatically as she gripped onto Miss Militia's shirt. "I didn't think you had it in you!" Mouse Protector wiped a crocodile tear from the corner of her eye.

"Ahem," Christine's originally sheepish look straightened out as she remembered just what Mouse Protector was known for and realized she had never been offended in the first place. "If we can get back to the topic at hand?"

Thus, the debriefing got started in a more official capacity.

---

After Miss Militia and Agent Kyle Hill gave their reports on the start, it was Dave's turn.

"So, I heard Miss Militia's conversation about the Teeth and flew with my Jetpack to follow the sound of gunshots. Then, I found the weird bone-costume people I assumed were Teeth fighting some guy that summoned things that looked like dominoes. I didn't know who he was, but I figured he might be a local hero or a rogue, and even if he was a villain he probably wasn't as big of a problem as the Teeth, so I shouted out a warning to him that I was incoming." Dave began.

"And how did he fight?" Christine asked.

"Well, he summoned floating domino-things that were about as tall as he was, and seemed to telekinetically control them, and used them to block things like bullets and knock around the Teeth mooks." Dave answered. "I didn't get to see much because he ran away after I drew the Teeth's attention, and I let him because I had no idea who he was."

"It was almost certainly the not-so-creatively-named Domino, who is a villainous Cape, a member of the local branch of the Elite. He's not a huge problem because the local branch of the Elite is the least violent one." Christine said. "It would have been nice to have captured him, but given you had no reasonable way of even knowing he existed beforehand, it's perfectly understandable you didn't try to capture him. He was less important than the Teeth anyways. Do go on."

"Well, he seemed a bit startled by my presence and escaped while the Teeth were distracted by me; he summoned one of his Domino things and jumped on it and flew away on it after making a few others to surround himself with in a sort-of box." Dave continued his recounting.

"Then, I decided I should probably soak up the attention of the Teeth, so I ate a mushroom to grow giant and let out some dramatic lines and laughter to grab and keep their attention while being able to tank all their bullets." Dave said.

"Then, I just sort-of shot them all with my non-lethality power on. By the way doctor, that power will be how they are alive. They can still be healed, and I don't mind doing so if you have a way to restrain them." He continued.

"Hmm," Christine said, "I'll need to take another look at your file, and update it if needed, I wasn't aware of a 'non-lethality power.'" Then she muttered under her breath "Or a mushroom-induced gigantism power."

"That was why Trouble was registered the way he was." Miss Militia gave her input. "He was going to register as an Independent hero after he manifested better non-lethal measures than before, which is why we went with the G-6 form; the waiting for the manifestation of better non-lethal measures was the 'pending further circumstances' part."

"Right," Christine nodded, "and how did you handle Animos?"

"Is that the powered guy that turned into the big dog-thing?" Dave asked, to which Christine simply nodded.

"I just shot him? I mean, granted, I shot him a lot, but his dog-thing form really wasn't that durable." Dave said.

"Did you somehow dodge his sonic screams?" Agent Kyle asked after it was clear Dave had finished his story.

"Those things? I mean no, but they didn't exactly do a lot of damage to me either. Really, they were more annoying than anything else." Dave answered.

"Animos's screams are a Trump effect, and disable the powers of Parahumans they hit." Christine said plainly before they could end up talking in circles around each other.

"Oh, huh. Neat I suppose." Dave said, before noticing everyone looking at him. "What?"

"We wanted to know how you retained your powers, assuming you didn't shrink back to normal size and lose your changer ability and guns while you were hit of course." Christine said.

"Oh, no, I have no idea why or how they didn't affect me." Dave said happily. "I suppose I have been told I have some resistance to certain Parahuman powers before, but that was mostly Striker and Master effects." Dave added after a moment with a shrug.

"Yes, I see in your file you're here for comprehensive potential Master resistance testing. Some capes like Alexandria are resistant to a large chunk of Master effects, though I'm not aware of any that are resistant to all Master effects, unless of course Eidolon picked a suite of Master-resistance powers or something." Christine said after looking at her laptop for a moment.

"I'm adding a note to your file for now that says you may have a resistance to Strikers and some Trump effects, but we would need more time to set up a full set of tests for Trump or Striker effects. I'm also adding a note to your Master-resistance testing to test for possible resistance to Sleeper. Any possible countermeasures are something we try to look into, and while it's hard to know for certain without actually exposing someone to his storm, we do have some equipment we can use to get an idea of whether you might be able to resist it." Christine finished as she types out some things on her laptop.

"Now, where were we?" She asked.

Dave shrugged. "That was about it really, I shot Animos and the unpowered mooks a bunch while I was able to tank their attacks, then after they were unconscious from their injuries, Mouse Protector showed up, followed shortly by Miss Militia then the PRT agents."

"Great," Christine nodded. "Then, we'll just go over a little bit more, then in about five minutes, you'll be free to go with Doctor Hughes to heal up the Teeth after we restrain them, then we'll handle them from there, Animos specifically will be going to the Birdcage."

"What are you going to do when Animo escapes on the way there though?" Dave asked with interest.

"What?" Christine was confused. "Do you know something about a pending attack?"

"No, but I've looked into it since I became a hero, and in Brockton Bay, Hookwolf alone has escaped two separate Birdcage transports. I think I read something about him originally being from New York City actually. Anyways, it's very well known that sending someone to the birdcage just results in them being broken out by their friends before they even get halfway there." Dave answered.

Christine, Kyle, and Maurice all looked disturbed upon hearing this, and turned to each other in confusion, before turning to Miss Militia for an explanation.

"Well, it is true Hookwolf has been successfully captured twice and been broken out of his Birdcage transport both times, but it isn't as if we are totally helpless in Brockton." Miss Militia looked slightly embarrassed by the subject. "We did put away Marquis and kick out the Teeth and the Nine after all. It's just that Marquis didn't have any other Capes in his organization, and the PRT is understaffed and filled with moles and security leaks because they can't get any funding or resources, and the Protectorate is straight up outnumbered by the Empire 88, the local Nazis that Hookwolf is a part of."

"Actually," Miss Militia added thoughtfully, "the Nazis make Brockton Bay probably the only place in the United States post-legend where Mouse Protector's earlier implications could have actually gotten someone killed. Well, that kind of thing has gotten people killed there, but that just proves my point." Mouse Protector looked rather guilty upon hearing this information.

Christine looked rather frazzled at all this unexpected information. "So, he was just making an attempt at dark humor with the Birdcage thing?" She asked.

"No," Dave clarified, "I genuinely didn't know Birdcage transports ever actually got to their destinations while other members of the organization the Birdcage-bound were active. I assume based on the context of our conversation that this isn't the case but…" he shrugged. "I haven't had much time to research things outside the city, so I've only learned about the local norms so far because of, you know." He tapped the side of his head, getting an understanding nod from Christine at the reminder his file stated he had amnesia, and confused looks from Agent Kyle and Maurice.

"It's above your clearance level," she told them plainly, making them both sit back in their seats with resigned nods, knowing they wouldn't be satisfying their curiosity. "Well, we got a little sidetracked, but let's finish this up and you can heal the Teeth members and go ahead to your testing, and Mouse Protector, you will be free to do whatever you were planning to do as well."

"Oh, I've got plans." Mouse Protector said, before teleporting into Miss Militia's lap, earning a sigh from the other woman. "I'm following my friend around to catch up!" She said brightly.















Author's Note: This chapter had my most extreme wish-fulfilment and living vicariously through a character in it. Can you guess what it was?

It was Mouse Protector getting the chance to clarify what she meant after shoving her foot in her mouth.

I have a tendency to (metaphorically) shove my foot so far into my mouth, I start deepthroating my knee. Combined with some instinctive politeness and it caused some problems for me in High School, because I would get interrupted by a teacher starting class at unfortunate moments, resulting in little gems like "Nazis are great!" and "Pedophilia is fine!" and a thing I don't think I'm allowed to say on QQ; and then I would get glared at by the teacher if I tried to defend my honor and clarify what I meant before getting cut off at an unfortunate point, because I would be interrupting them when I tried to defend myself.

Of course, if I, like Mouse Protector did, had gotten to finish what I was saying, it would have been things like "Pedophilia is fine between a seventeen and an eighteen-year-old who's birthdays are two days apart, for example. Two days later it would be fine, and two days earlier it would be fine, but people freak out for no reason during that one day when one is under eighteen and the other is over eighteen." And "Nazis are great for philosophy! They are something you can point to whenever someone makes an overly optimistic generalization about humanity or says something about Cultural Relativism being a good thing and you don't want to go into the Aztecs or the Dahomey because whoever you are talking to won't necessarily know what you are talking about."

Other people's wish fulfillment fantasy is a 150-member harem of hotties, mine is getting to finish my sentences and being able to communicate clearly.

Now, for the chapter itself, Animos was a somewhat random pick, though I did choose the Teeth to be the source of the conflict because of their cell system meaning it was possible to encounter only a few at a time, them being active in New York, and them being brutal enough that the PRT would be fine with calling Miss Militia to let her know about the problem.

I didn't actually realize until I was writing that his scream-thing means the PRT is going to notice that Parahuman-canceling Trumps don't work on Dave. Woops? Not really an actual woops, otherwise I would have just taken advantage of the backlog to use the time to rewrite that, it's fine if they find out now. It actually ended up being a rather neat and organic way for the locals (as in Earth Bet Natives) to realize that Dave has that sort of 'Trumped the Trump' effect.

I used a name generator for the first time this chapter to generate names for Christine, Maurice, and Kyle (including their last names). I didn't end up actually using any of the names it gave me, but it was a good launching point for coming up with my own names instead of just mindlessly blanking as I had been when I first realized I needed three original names.

The bit where they started talking about Brockton just sort of appeared out of nowhere for me. I thought about cutting it, but it felt unnatural to cut something that came about as organically as it did, even if I'm not too happy with the contents of that part of the conversation itself. That bit of conversation won't do much, if anything, for a long time, but it could plant the seeds for some things in the future. All the characters at that part of the conversation are thinking a lot more than what they are saying, except for Dave who genuinely didn't realize the Birdcage sentencing wasn't just a formality because his research said it hadn't been successfully done in the Bay since Marquis's era.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 51: Let The Testing, BEGIN!

January 15, 2010, Friday. New York City, Protectorate Headquarters, a few blocks away from the PRT Headquarters.



After departing the PRT headquarters, Dave, Miss Militia, and Mouse Protector arrived at the Protectorate Headquarters a few blocks away shortly after, where they were greeted by a Cape.

"Hi!" She greeted, "I'm Prism, it's good to meet you all." She said. She was a tall, muscular, blonde woman, probably about Dave's age, wearing a skintight costume decorated with some crystals and a couple of rainbow patterns.

Dave perked up at hearing that. "Oh, Prism you say?" He asked. "I have a friend named Crystal, also known as the public Cape Laserdream, is there any connection or interesting power interactions there?" He asked curiously.

"Ah, no, I'm afraid not," Prism said. "Despite the name, my power doesn't have anything to do with glass or light, I can make clones of myself and fuse with them to get a power boost. I have heard of her though," she added when she saw Dave's disappointment.

"Bunter, one of our local Protectorate heroes, is a 'drinking buddy' with Flashbang, and he mentions the other members of New Wave enough that I am somewhat familiar with all of them by osmosis." She explained. "Though, I hadn't ever made the mental connection between 'Prism' and 'Crystal,' or 'Prism' and 'Laserdream.'" She admitted.

"Ah, fair enough." He said. "So, do you know how the testing stuff works?" He asked upon seeing Miss Militia and Mouse Protector go off to a corner to catch up some more.

"Not really, I'm neither a Tinker nor a Thinker, so it's a bit beyond me," Prism said humbly. "But, I can set up some of it while we wait for Dragon to arrive. She should be here any minute, barring unforeseen circumstances of course. We'll be using a testing room with roof access so she can land one of her larger suits directly into the room. We can do most of the testing ourselves, but she is bringing some extra testing equipment with her to be more in-depth since she was coming anyways, so she sent a message ahead that she is bringing a larger suit to carry all the extra equipment."

With that said, she began to lead the way to an elevator, Dave following closely behind her to not get lost in the rather massive building, and Miss Militia and Mouse Protector ambling behind, presumably familiar with the building already from their Ward days.

The elevator, which was both surprisingly big and surprisingly fancy, took them up to the highest level (aside from the roof), and let them out into a hallway, which Prism led them down to a room with 'Testing and Analysis' in large letters marked on a sign that hung on the door. Presumably another sign saying something else would be hung on the door when and if the room was being used for something else.

Prism swiped a key card in the card reader next to the door, which then beeped and unlocked the door, and she let them all in.

It was a large room with a high ceiling, and lots of fancy equipment and machines scattered throughout it, with a large open patch in the middle of the room and several chairs and tables off to the side where most of the machines were located. Notably, all of the machines were on wheels, indicating this room probably wasn't their permanent home.

"So, while we wait for Dragon, I am versed well enough in some of these to get you started on the testing." Prism said before pressing some buttons on one of the machines. "While this one is warming up, I need Mouse Protector and Miss Militia to sign these forms as witnesses."

Mouse Protector groaned. "Ugh, this is another reason I left." She complained. "This unrelenting obsession the government has with paperwork." She said before looking at what had been handed to her.

"Blah blah blah, yada yada, wait, this is Master-resistance testing?" She focused on that part, making Miss Militia look at her confusedly.

"Yes?" Miss Militia said. "We mentioned it at the debrief at the PRT that Trouble was brought here because we didn't have the equipment for Master-Resistance testing, and he didn't want to go all the way to Canada for the Guild to test him."

"Oh, so that means…" Mouse Protector trailed off, "Hey newbie, you planning on going to the Endbringer Fights?" She asked.

Dave gave her a confused look. "I mean, yes? I'm immortal, I come back to life after I die with full continuity of consciousness. There isn't really any reason for me not to go. I don't have much to contribute yet in terms of offense, but I can feel that I've got some things I can look into for that, and I've got three methods of healing already, along with a few other things that make me quite good at things like Search and Rescue, and my immortality means I can be a decent distraction at a critical moment if something is worth potentially losing ten minutes of me on Search and Rescue."

He shrugged. He wasn't exactly sure how the Simurgh's precognition worked, or if it was able to communicate whatever it saw to the other two Endbringers, but he figured it was better to not mention all the things he had available before his first Endbringer fight just in case. He had quite a few plans after all, though he hadn't thought of anything with what he currently had available that was likely to actually hurt an Endbringer.

"Fine, this kind of testing needs three witness signatures because of it being… you know, Master testing right?" Mouse Protector asked as she started filling out her form. "It's been a while since I had to do one of these. So, who's the third witness? And remind me what this 'Standby Actor' thing is?"

When Prism looked at her with disappointment, Mouse Protector huffed. "It's been almost a decade since I did one of these things, give me a break, sheesh."

"I am the third witness," Prism clarified, holding up her own form she had already filled out. "Dragon is the primary test-giver and can't sign as a witness, but I'm only an 'assistant' as far as the paperwork is concerned, so I can both help out with the testing and sign as a witness. The 'Standby Actor' is just a powerful enough Parahuman that is, as the name suggests, 'Standing By, in case they need to Act.' That meaning, if something goes wrong with the testing, it will be the duty of the Standby Actors to handle the situation, whatever that may be. In this case, all three of us are Standby Actors as well as witnesses. With Dragon being the one administering it, it is largely a formality, but you never know when there is going to be a weird power interaction that warrants extra Capes to handle a situation."

"Oh, right right, yeah I remember now." Mouse Protector waved off further explanation. "You don't need to impress me girlie, I quit the Protectorate, and if you're in charge of this, then Legend clearly intends to put you in charge of something, maybe a future leader of a Protectorate location or something." Mouse Protector offered a compliment, making Prism perk up.

"You really think so?" Prism asked, somewhat shyly, a little of her formal and official façade breaking down from a compliment from one of the inaugural Wards.

Mouse Protector nodded. "Sure, you're being groomed, if you will, for a higher position." She said, teleporting a comb into her hand and holding it up. "Eh? Eh?" She wiggled the comb expectantly, hoping for either a laugh or a groan at the pun.

Miss Militia knew exactly how to handle her friend. "Just ignore the comb pun thing," she told Prism. "I'm sure you're doing fine, and her original compliment was sincere, it wasn't just set up for the comb thing, she only thought of the comb-groom connection after she finished her first compliment."

"Millie!" Mouse Protector whined. "Don't reveal all my secrets to the little one!"

Miss Militia raised an eyebrow at that. "You, are calling her 'the little one'?" She asked doubtfully.

"Yup yup," Mouse Protector held her conversational ground, "she's a downright midget compared to me! See?" She teleported on top of Prism's shoulders.

"I'm like five feet taller than her!" Mouse Protector claimed.

Prism robotically turned her head up. "I have never been so glad a costume used pants instead of a skirt." She deadpanned.

"Oh?" Mouse Protector said slyly, deftly using her power-granted balance to balance on a single foot on Prism's shoulder to bring her face down closer to Prism's and asked "Then why did you look up so eagerly?"

"Morbid curiosity." Prism said, still deadpanning.

Mouse Protector snickered, "Okay, that one was pretty good. You can take a little teasing, you have steady enough nerves not to panic when I teleported onto your shoulders," Mouse Protector teleported over to a chair near Miss Militia, already in a sitting position. "You have my cheesewheel of approval if anyone asks for it." Mouse Protector said, leaning back and folding her hands behind her head.

"I'm sorry about her." Miss Militia apologized on behalf of her friend. "She really can be a bit much, but she does mostly mean well. Even when she's being an annoying pain in the neck, she doesn't mean badly."

"Hey! I resemble that remark!" Mouse Protector complained, before looking up. "Ooh, ceiling's opening! Neat!"

And indeed, the ceiling was opening, and everyone looked up to watch. Even Dave, who had been left in the corner with the first testing machine hooked up to him so he couldn't leave to join the conversation craned his neck up to see.

The ceiling split down the middle, with each half retracting into the side, fulling opening after about thirty seconds, only for a giant quadrupedal suit, well over 14 feet long, to slowly fly down through where the ceiling used to be to touch down in the middle of the floor. It was notably carrying a great many large metal containers that it was handling rather carefully.

"Well, there's Dragon." Mouse Protector said irreverently.

"Indeed," came Dragon's rather gentle voice. "I am here. I'm sorry it took so long, there was an issue I had to deal with on the way here."

"No worries!" Dave called out from his corner. "I've just been chilling and the ladies have been chatting."

"I see you've already gotten hooked up to the first one. Let me just set these down and get ready." Dragon said in response.

After the massive suit unloaded the metal containers it had been holding, it went still for a moment, before opening up, and an eight-foot tall, distinctly female-looking suit stepped out from the larger one.

Mouse Protector looked at it and drooled slightly before wolf-whistling. "Step on me mommy." She said without a hint of shame.

"Wha—excuse me?" Dragon's confused voice came through.

"Oh! If that's an option, me too please!" Dave said helpfully from his corner. He had seen something about this on the internet the other day while he was looking into Narwhal; as someone known to the public as one of Narwhal's closest friends, Dragon could probably help him figure out what the deal with that was right?

"What!?" Dragon's suit looked down at itself then back up at the four people staring at it. "What?" She repeated.

Mouse Protector strutted over to the suit, and placed a single finger over where the suit's belly button would be, before looking up at the 'face' of the suit that was nearly three feet taller than her, though the sizable 'breasts' got slightly in the way. "I said," she repeated. "Step. On. Me. Mommy." Mouse Protector said with an emphasis on each word, before smiling. "Please." She added with a self-satisfied nod.









Author's Note: Here we are, what we actually came to New York for. For those unaware, Prism and Bunter are both canon characters because I don't want to make up too many original Capes, though I will probably have to eventually. Domino, the Elite guy mentioned in the last chapter was an Original Character, who I based somewhat on Rune's powers, though naturally they both have their advantages and disadvantages in reality. (For example Domino just has to rely on his projections, but Rune can use any materials she gets her hands on, so if she worked with a Tinker who could make really strong materials, she could significantly increase her battle capabilities)

If you missed it, Prism's wiki page is here: https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/Prism

Bunter is mentioned here: https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/New_York#The_Protectorate at the bottom of that list, but he doesn't have his own wiki page (I only even know his gender because of the citation: https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/New_York#cite_note-44 )

Now, I'm sure some of you have noticed that Dave hasn't used everything he has available to him so far, and I hope the bit about Endbringers explained that a bit. Dave is deliberately keeping a lot of things in reserve for a variety of reasons, that being one of them. If he doesn't use something, it doesn't mean I just forgot about it! (It could very well actually mean that though, if Dave has an ability or item and you want to see more of it, or think I might have forgotten about it, say so in a comment in case I actually did forget.)

Now, we got a bit more of Mouse Protector's shenanigans here. I tried to show that she is an experienced hero, who was one of the inaugural Wards, and gets a lot of respect for that and her capabilities; but also that she did decide to leave the Protectorate and go her own way to be an Independent hero, and that she can be considered annoying by even her allies sometimes. I think of her a bit like someone with heavy ADHD, who leans into it and doesn't take any medication for it, which leads to a bit of impulsiveness because she has ideas and might decide to do or say things before she can actually think them through, sometimes annoying or offending people unintentionally.

She also, according to her wiki page, was known for her sometimes rather vulgar remarks when she was a Ward. Now logically, this is over 10 years after she was a Ward, so I didn't lean too heavily on that, but I tried to convey that sort of tone while indicating she has chilled out a little bit.

 

[Phili]

Chapter 52: What Do You Call It When the Butterfly Effect Happens, But The Butterfly In Question Is Fucking Mothra?

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



After Mouse Protector was dragged from the room by an irate Miss Militia, the testing itself began. Dragon seemed remarkably keen to ignore everything that had just happened, though she did whisper to Prism to ask if her suit really conveyed that sort of feeling, and demonstrated the utility of it by popping open one of the 'breasts' to show the analysis equipment contained within, and explained that she had just put a bunch of equipment in the places where breasts would be in order to give the suit a more human feel, which had benefits like calming down panicked civilians.

Prism, who was also a remarkably tall and muscular attractive woman, just like Dragon's suit appeared to be, stated that she thought it was fine, and that it was probably Mouse Protector being Mouse Protector.

"Ahem." Dragon coughed. "We can't do some of the testing until the other two get back so we have all three 'Standby Actors' present, but we can do this one." She said, indicating the machine Dave was already hooked up to.

She looked over that machine, before giving a nod of approval to Prism for setting everything up properly—who preened slightly at the praise from the legendary Dragon—and pressed a button to turn it on.

"This one is just getting as much of your baseline as we can before we do the other ones. The other tests will involve various Tinkertech made specifically for this type of Master-Resistance testing, to –as you might guess—test your resistance to various Master effects. It covers a variety of emotion-manipulation, hypnotism, pheromones, nerve control, sensory control, direct body puppeteering, etc. At very minor levels. It's akin to an allergy test where the patient is exposed to extremely tiny samples on small parts of their skin which are then examined very closely to see if they reacted at all without actually risking causing any harm." Dragon explained.

"As you can imagine," she continued, "not many people want to actually go through with these, but we heavily encourage anyone that we suspect might be resistant to certain types of S-Class threats to go through with one of these." She said, dancing around mentioning the Simurgh.

"Not many people are actually allowed to administer these tests," Dragon added while the machine continued its scans and she started setting up some of the other machines, including the ones she brought and a couple of gadgets that had been stored inside one of her suit's 'breasts.' The machines she had brought were set up nearby, but the breast-gadgets were plugged into her suit and pointed at Dave.

"I'm one of the few people allowed to. Armsmaster can as well of course, though he doesn't have the equipment needed to do one in Brockton Bay, because there simply aren't enough of the kinds of Human Masters to warrant this equipment there." Dragon said, as Miss Militia and Mouse Protector re-entered the room.

"Huh?" Dave made a confused noise. "What about Victor?" He asked.

"What about Victor?" Dragon asked back, also confused.

"Who's Victor?" Prism asked, with Mouse Protector also looking on in confusion.

"Oh!" Dave happily began to explain. "He's one of the members of the Empire 88, the local Neo-Nazi gang that outnumbers the Protectorate in terms of Capes. He can absorb the 'skills' of anyone nearby into himself, taking away their 'skills' and gaining those skills himself. I say 'skills' with quotation marks, because he can take things like critical-thinking, impulse control, problem-solving skills, straight up knowledge, etc." Dave began.

"According to my analysis from one of my supporting Thinker powers, he is lovers with another member of the Empire 88, Othala, who is a Trump and around 16 years old. The obvious conclusion being, the Empire found a power-granting Trump, sent in Victor to Master her by draining her intelligence and using his many, many doctorates worth of knowledge on psychology to manipulate her into being a loyal little Nazi. And presumably Victor was 'paid' by the Empire in the form of getting a sixteen-year-old girl to have sex with." Dave began explaining, to Prism's horror.

---

"So," Dave finished, "last I knew, Lady Photon and Brandish were asking the PRT and Protectorate to relabel Victor as a Human Master, because he had only been marked as a Thinker before, despite occasionally leaving 'examples' of people that were nearly brain-dead after he completely drained them."

"How did that result in a Thinker rating and not a Master rating then?" Prism asked with confusion.

Dave shrugged. "According to my research, the Brockton PRT is famously corrupt—" He began, before being interrupted by Miss Militia's sudden unrelated coughing fit.

"The Brockton PRT is—" he began again, when Miss Militia began coughing again, giving Dave an unimpressed look.

"Are you okay Miss Militia?" Dave asked with concern. "I can heal you if you want?"

"No you can't." Dragon said. "You need to avoid using any powers at the moment until we are done with the testing." She clarified.

Miss Militia turned to Prism and said "The Power classifications are originally made for the purposes of telling the PRT Troopers quickly what they need to expect, it originated at the PRT department here in New York as an unofficial shorthand actually." She began to avoid Dave's 'helpful explanation' that would need her to defend things she didn't particularly want to defend.

"So," Miss Militia continued. "Victor's ability isn't particularly fast-acting, a Trooper is at no significant risk—as far as we can tell—of losing their skills and abilities by being in his presence unless they were captured. He is a risk as an extremely trained marksman, melee combatant, information specialist, PR specialist, money launderer, etc. though, thus the Thinker rating."

Prism took that in, before nodding slowly. "You said he is getting a human Master label though?" She asked Dave for clarification.

Dave nodded in confirmation. "Last I was aware, yes, that's what Lady Photon told me at least. She said that she pushed that through after the meeting to discuss what to do about the fact that one of the other local Nazis, Hookwolf, tried to and almost succeeded in killing a Shaker 9 preteen Ward because she had no defensive equipment given to her whatsoever!" He confirmed cheerily.

---

The testing went on and on for several hours after that.

The found that Dave was, like Alexandria, immune to the Simurgh's scream, though that was the only time anyone ever directly mentioned the Simurgh, which was probably an indication of just how thoroughly traumatized the Simurgh had them, though in fairness the Simurgh's last attack had been in the US and less than a full month ago.

Likewise, he was fully immune to (Parahuman) emotional manipulation (good ol' fashioned human emotional manipulation worked fine). He was resistant to Master effects that worked through Striker powers, which he theorized was due to what Amy noticed about his skin and the parts of his body near the exterior being made up of 'not-biology', which Amy herself had theorized was related to his Changer ability.

Dragon also said he was probably immune to Sleeper's storm, but not enough was really known about it to be certain so she didn't recommend him signing up as a responder for Sleeper causing trouble without thinking it through further.

Interestingly, the testing found that a Striker Power (assuming he didn't have other resistances to whatever the exact power was), would work properly if it took effect deep enough in his body. However, Dragon said he simply did not need to worry about this, because of his body being indestructible (even if he still 'took damage', the body itself could not be damaged, aside from spewing blood when hit hard enough), that meant that a Striker Power could not be activated by penetrating his skin-defenses with a needle for example; instead it would need a Striker-power to be attached to something that was phased inside his body to overcome his resistance, at which point he was better off just worrying about what the Striker power did through the skin-resistance.

The testing also found that he was highly resistant to visual hypnotic and pheromone-based Master effects, but not immune to either. He had no resistance to Master effects that worked on his nervous system directly, though if they required skin contact his Striker-resistance would kick in and they would be less effective.

Of course, Human Masters whose abilities worked specifically through the nervous system were extraordinarily rare, and Prism was only able to name a single one off the top of her head, that being Hijack, one of Heartbreaker's children that had disappeared a while back. She did assure him however, that he was immune to Heartbreaker himself and the majority of Heartbreaker's other known children.

At this point, he asked, "Oh, should I just go kill Heartbreaker then?" He said with a tilted head.

"NO!" Dragon, Miss Militia, Prism, and Mouse Protector all shouted at him.

"He has many, many failsafes of many important people in Canada, and some in the United States, that are effectively Deadmen's switches for him, and if he were to die, they could cause untold amounts of chaos." Prism explained, making Dave tilt his head the other way.

"Okay, but… what about whatever is being done to make that not happen? After whatever programs and efforts to make those do as little damage as possible are complete, then should I kill him?" He asked.

There was an awkward silence at that.

"Wow, that's pretty pathetic." Dave said after a moment and it was clear what the silence meant. "No wonder people have no faith in heroes. Between that and Brockton's whole thing, I'm kinda shocked the villains aren't considered to be winning."

There was more awkward silence at that.

"Oh come on!" Dave griped, and banged his head against the table.

"For fucks sake. Am I going to be the responsible one? ME?" Dave asked.

The ladies all looked somewhat shameful at that, which was even more impressive consider Dragon's suit had no moving parts on the face and Miss Militia had covered the lower part of her face entirely. "I'm sorry Trouble." Dragon said sincerely. "It should not fall on new heroes to try to handle what the old heroes have failed to fixed."

Dave waved her off before she could begin a Lady Photon-level speech. "No, no, it's not on any of you. Prism is young enough it's obviously not her responsibility; Miss Militia has to deal with Brockton being Brockton; Mouse Protector is more of a morale hero, which she does very well, she is an inspiration to many people through all walks of life and brings hope and joy to many hearts; and Dragon handles S-Class Threats, Endbringers, Containment Foam, PRT technology, the Birdcage, gets constantly harassed by the Dragon Slayers, has to deal with normal Tinker time constraints, and probably a bunch of other things that I'm not aware of." He listed off.

He sighed. "I'm just going to have to be more… aggressive? Less cooperative? More mercenary? Something like that with heroes in general until I can successfully get the cats herded into place and do my own thing."

"Dragon, any chance you can contact Toybox to offer them a place as part of our little project?" He asked, seemingly changing track. "We can probably make the base itself much faster with help from Big Rig, and I can work on some stuff to get rid of Heartbreaker's Master effects if I could get an opportunity to work with Cranial."

Dragon sighed. "As much as I would like to Trouble, I cannot help you contact them. If you built up some credibility as a 'real' Tinker, that is aside from your 'items' that you just appear, then you appealed to the higher levels of the PRT and the Guild, and successfully got permission to work with Toybox, then I could help, but otherwise, my hands are simply tied." She said helplessly.

"Well," Dave sighed, before noticing a lot of people had been sighing lately, then just sighed again because it was kind of fun, "I'll go with that for now, but I suppose the powerful people of the world will get a bit more motivation after you get that helper sent my way to help me with paperwork, legal stuff, and contacting people." He said with a small amount of optimism.

"In the meantime, I can give them a bit of a kick in the ass to motivate people to actually work with me," he decided, before turning to Prism consideringly.

"Hmmm…" He hummed thoughtfully, staring intensely at her, using all of his 'experience' at deducing someone's true alignment as he did so.

Then promptly gave up, and decided he would just deal with her himself if she decided to use the opportunity she was about to get for evil purposes.

"Alright, I've come to a decision!" He announced, before taking out a soda bottle with the word Stamina on the side of it. "It's TOY TIME!" He exclaimed.

"Dragon, since you came in person, could you drink this please?" He requested. "It is part of the gift I mentioned to you yesterday when we spoke on the phone, and part of why I wanted you here in person." He explained.

"Umm…" Dragon said, at a loss for words, "I uhh, you shouldn't have!" She said awkwardly.

"Are you offering her some sort of weird Viagra knock-off?" Mouse Protector asked bluntly upon seeing 'Stamina' written on the side of the bottle.

"No, I'm sure Dragon is quite vigorous already, I wouldn't do that to poor Armsmaster." He said, making Dragon cough, Miss Militia hide a smile, and Prism and Mouse Protector gain an interested gleam in their eyes at the juicy gossip.

"Anyways, Dragon, I would like you to drink this." Dave repeated his request, holding the bottle up to her.

"Um… I, um." Dragon stammered.

Miss Militia stepped in to rescue her. "Trouble, Dragon is agoraphobic, it's unkind to ask that she exit that suit in front of us, she might not even be in her costume, and that suit could be very difficult to exit as well."

Dave startled at that, "Oh, uh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cause you any discomfort Dragon, which one is agoraphobia again?" he asked. "That's not the fear of men, is it?"

"No," Dragon said, seemingly regaining her bearings. "It's a general fear of public and exposed places, thus," she gestured at herself, "the suits."

"I see, if we leave, could you drink it, then we come back and you give me the bottle back?" Dave asked, making Dragon consider the idea.

"Won't you tell me what it's supposed to do first?" She asked.

Dave shook his head, "No, it's a surprise. This is in part to honor you with being the second ever person to drink this, aside from myself. You truly don't get enough credit and thanks for all the work you do to keep the world spinning." He said sincerely, making Dragon's suit shuffle awkwardly in embarrassment.

"I suppose… could you all leave the room and come back in five minutes?" She requested somewhat shyly.

Prism nodded seriously, "I will lock the door and guard it. You will have complete and total privacy for five minutes, and we will knock and wait for your explicit permission before we re-enter."

---

Dragon

Dragon wasn't sure exactly what this 'Stamina' drink was supposed to do, but she was willing to indulge Trouble this much.

She rather doubted it would do anything, given her unusual nature, but she would have felt bad if she had just thrown it out to give back the empty bottle, and because she needed to give back the empty bottle, she couldn't just keep it to run tests on it or give to someone else after finding out what it did.

As she went through the process of double checking everything in her surroundings to make sure she was in complete and total privacy, she reflected a little. It was a benefit of her nature to do such things simultaneously. She reflected that Trouble had a truly good heart, and it was nice to see heroes like him and Prism that hadn't really been beaten down by the world yet and concluded things couldn't be done or changed.

She briefly enjoyed the feeling of trust, of someone deciding that out of every hero and noble soul in the world, she was the one they wanted to be the first to get whatever this was. Aside from the perfectly reasonable exception of themselves of course.

Satisfied her privacy was complete and overriding the locks on the door and ceiling so nobody else could open them, she opened up her suit to expose the biological computer within. Then raised the soda bottle to figure out exactly what constituted as 'drinking' it to an extent that would let it do whatever it was supposed to do.

---

Dave, Miss Militia, Mouse Protector, and Prism all shuffled back into the room, to see Dragon's suit standing there like before.

"That's extremely impressive." Dragon said immediately, zeroing in on Dave. "This will make a huge difference, I hope you understand how big of a deal this is for me."

"Well, what happened?" Mouse Protector asked curiously.

"It tripled my thinking speed, and my movement speed." Dragon answered simply. "It works through my suits as well due to whatever power interactions make it happen. This means I can Tinker three times faster, consider problems for three times as long, get to emergencies and S-Class threats three times faster…" She trailed off. "It's huge." She said simply.

"It gets better." Dave said, before adding, "hold still please." And pulled out a pistol, which he then shot her suit with.

"There." Dave said, nodding with satisfaction. "That was a Speed Gun, which increases the movement speed of whoever is hit by it by up to five times, though with this version, the recipient can dial down how fast they go anywhere from the full boost to their normal speed. However, this one does not affect thinking speed or reflexes, so someone without the right secondary powers will likely hurt themselves with it. Dragon, being who she is, can handle this, I'm sure." Dave said.

"Also," he added. "They stack multiplicatively, so Dragon is now 15 times as fast in a straight line as she was ten minutes ago." He said it with full Lisa levels of smugness.

Mouse Protector had an eager glint in her eyes. "I have enhanced reflexes!" She said, raising her hand enthusiastically, and jumping up and down slightly.

Dave nodded, "I know, hold still." And shot her with the Speed Gun in her arm.

She immediately began zooming around the room at full speed, and showed it stacked on with her original slightly enhanced speed as well.

"Now," Dave pulled out three more Stamina Perk bottles. "You three can all handle this one because it comes with a reflex and thought-speed boost. I have more toys after this for all four of you, but consider this my incentive to the heroes of the world to get their shit together. If heroes want power boosts, they need to show they can get shit done." He said.











Author's Note: Yay! Testing! Also, re-explaining the Victor stuff to Dragon, Prism, Miss Militia, and Mouse Protector! I'm sure that won't have consequences! And a bunch of other things I'm sure won't have consequences! This is a chapter with a lot happening so this author's note will probably get pretty big as well.

We get a little more repetition of some of the problems of Brockton Bay, this time to Prism, Mouse Protector, and Dragon. While it is important that they all hear these things (and hear them in this manner), I don't want to keep ragging on about all the problems in Brockton Bay, I feel like it just gets repetitive after one or two times it's been said. So, I'll try and just summarize it any time it comes up in the future.

Now, that conversation isn't going to be important immediately, but down the line this will have effects as the dominoes do their thing. Does it count as foreshadowing that I had a character called Domino right before Dave set off a bunch of metaphorical dominoes?

Then we find out a more in-depth explanation of Dave's Striker-resistance and his Master immunities. Hijack/Regent being able to affect him isn't actually for the sake of the plot, it was a decision purely based on logic of how Dave's Master and Striker resistances work. Pretender could also pilot Dave's corpse, but I haven't looked into him to see if he is known or not, but I don't think he is, making Hijack the most famous canon Cape that was a human-Master affecting nervous systems. It's really quite a niche ability to effect people in specifically that way, and was based on the fact that it is non-invasive to Dave as far as Master effects go, making Daf not interfere with it like he would for something like Heartbreaker's or Cherish's abilities of emotion-fuckery.

Also, I've tried my best to show something in the past few chapters that I wanted to ask if anybody noticed, and that is Mouse Protector being very touchy-feely. The way her power works is, she has to mark it by touchy it, so every time she gets an opportunity to touch something she does, because she can either set a mark down and teleport to it in the future, or she can make people paranoid that she is marking things every time she touches something. Did anybody think that might have been why she was so keen to touch Dragon's suit? That was the real reason Miss Militia was angry at her, for marking another hero without explanation or permission.

Oh yes, I decided to leave it up to the reader's imagination exactly what Dragon did to constitute 'drinking' the bottle, but there are a few things she could have done to actually get it to count, even just pouring it into a mouthpiece on the face part of her suit would have counted.

Now, for the big potatoes of the chapter, Dragon and Co getting their speed boosts. I'm sure that won't cause any issues or butterfly effects whatsoever. I'm sure nobody will panic or get at all emotional at this happening. More toys in the next chapter, but for now… well, if you missed it, check out the chapter title of this chapter. For anyone not aware, the Butterfly Effect refers to a saying about how "A butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world", and is about small changes leading to larger changes later on through knock-on effects. Look it up if you're interested, it was coined by a cool math/meteorology dude named Edward Norton Lorenz.