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Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

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quasit17 said:
Jack Slash + Lily = cut the planet in half, I think.

Tack on GU and you should be able to track, follow, hurt, and survive what Scion can do.

Gavel is a good tank power, he lasted at least 20 seconds of sustained fire from Scion.

Velocity would also be great, it's hard to dodge someone moving 20 times faster then you.

Lastly Triumph + Screamer can level a city; not useful, but fun.
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Jack Slash and Lily, not so much.

Jack Slash can extend the edge of a knife, but the effect Lily puts on it is imbued in the matter itself, IMO. It would just be an ordinary blade effect.
 
Amelia, Ch 393- Emma
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    • Amelia, Ch 393- Emma


    I glanced over at Defiant. Now that we'd agreed that the goal was to fully release Dragon from her shackles, he was allowed full access to the Ascalon program. He was still required to run ideas and discoveries by me, but as a safety measure to protect Dragon. As capable and devoted as he was, he just didn't have the right powers to do the job correctly. Then again, neither did I, but my powers were way better at faking it than his were.


    I'm good at faking a lot of things.


    I was still on my electrical setting. It was the best I had for working with Dragon other than the hybrid mode, and I couldn't maintain that for the length of time needed to do anything worthwhile. Plus it had a habit of breaking sensitive equipment. Ascalon was a very sensitive piece of equipment.


    I noted that the servos for Defiant's leg were breaking down again. Why doesn't he just use our tech to regrow his organic parts? If he's afraid of what Clarice might do, then I could do the surgeries and Amelia could fix any errors. But he steadfastly refused healing, preferring instead to remain more machine than human.


    The glow from my eyes reflected off the surfaces around us vanished as I deactivated my powers, returning to more or less normal sight. "We're taking a break."


    He looked at me. "You can take a break if you need to, but I'm still more than capable of continuing."


    No you're not. Things are falling apart inside you. I know you know this. Fuck, you're almost as bad as Clarice 'I only need one lung' Lavere and Taylor 'go ahead, decapitate me, I think that's a fantastic idea' Hebert. "No, you're taking a break. We both are for at least the next three hours."


    He went to object again, but I wasn't having that. "Dragon, initiate user lockout." The screens went dark. Dragon may not have been able to influence Ascalon, or the computers it was linked up to more or less ad infinitum. If we plugged it into the internet, she'd have been shit out of luck. But she could activate a switch I programmed to send a remote signal to our computers via microwave pulse. Now only Dragon or I could restore access to our systems. But the computers kept doing their thing, behind an anti-user firewall.


    Now that Ascolon was safely off, a Dragon hologram switched on. "Colin, really? It's only been three days."


    He huffed. "Right, it's only been three days and she wants to take a break now. We still have so much left to do."


    I looked at him like the idiot he was. "You're falling apart. Fix your equipment. Get some sleep. Make out with your girlfriend!" Maybe I do spend too much time around Zach. "We've got three hours before my latest tests are done."


    He stood tall and looked down at me, attempting to intimidate. "What kind of tests are worth the delay?"


    I met his gaze. Frankly, in his current condition I could kick his ass. "I've hacked together a version of the memory tech with Ascalon that's doing a scan of Dragon's systems and attempting to translate it back into a human brain pattern. Dragon's emulation closely resembled the behavior found inside a human brain. There must be a reason for that. I suspect Richter's Passenger serves the function of predicting how organic intelligence behaves. Or maybe he actually emulated his own brain to be the first Dragon test and modified from that starting point."


    That startled both of my audience. Huh, I would have thought Dragon at least would have known that detail. I turned and walked quickly toward the exit. Dragon could nag her boo into taking care of himself. I had my own to visit.


    I found him playing some kind of space shooter game with Theo. "Dude! How are you so good at this shit! Do you have a secondary Thinker power for video games?" And getting his ass kicked, apparently.


    "Unlike you, I actually show up for sparring practice. Guess who else always shows up for sparring practice?"


    "Umm... Taylor." Zach stated.


    "Taylor." Theo confirmed. "And Clarice. And Missy. After a while, you either get really good at thinking on your feet, or you spend the whole match on your back."


    Zach laughed. "Like you mind laying on your... Wait, you still spar with Taylor? Eesh, and people accuse me of being a masochist."


    My stomach clenched a little. I still had trouble reconciling Taylor as I knew her to the Taylor everyone else knew. She started as such a friendly, trusting girl. Even after her mother's death, she managed to heal. Then I spent almost two years grinding her down. She made it through everything I threw at her, but that happy little motormouth never returned. And now her team talked about her like she was the ultimate badass, even behind her back.


    I tried to have that rep, once upon a time. Trying to be what Sophia was. The difference being that Taylor's team still liked her, when all of my little sycophants despised me. Especially Madison. The fun Sophia and I had making her take part in our sadistic little games. Doing the dirty work like gathering the waste we stuffed in Taylor's locker. God, which one of us was worse? I would have liked to talk to her again, maybe apologize, but she still hadn't been found.


    "-arice that's the worst to spar with. Missy and Taylor push me, sure. They push each other, too. But when you have a cheerful thirteen year old girl explaining in no uncertain terms all three ways she could kill you for every mistake you make. That girl scares me sometimes. She's adorable, and I love her, but she is terrifying beyond all comprehension."


    "Adorifying." Zach's voice was deadpan. "The word you are looking for is 'adorifying'. And that's why I don't show up for practice. Except with Emma, and Vicky when she comes by for a visit."


    I faked clearing my throat. "My ears are burning."


    The boys turned to looked at me. "Oh, hey, is it Dragon Liberation Day, already?"


    I shook my head. "Nope, just got a few hours while the computers do their thing and we wait for results." I gave a predatory smile. "And I could use a little 'sparring', if you know what I mean."


    Zach stood up. "Well, you heard the lady. Duty calls."


    Theo gave Zach a shove toward me. "Okay you two, have fun."


    ....


    Zach peeked his head into the labs. "How's the Dragon Liberation Project?"


    I looked up. "Frustrating." Right now the only possible solution is to cut her in half and hope she can put herself back together. An option that was unanimously vetoed for the risk involved. "The way she's designed, I'm not sure even Richter himself could have done what we're trying to do."


    Defiant's voice was hard. "We'll keep trying. It took Richter years and two failed attempts to build her. You can't expect we'd find a solution in under a month."


    I turned my head down. He was right, but we were so far out of our depths with this project. Her code was easily as complex as a human brain, and unlike us where everything was held together in a simple three dimensional space that could be easily mapped, she was a series of ones and zeroes that weren't beholden to simple concepts such as physical positions.


    "Well, you'll have to do it later. You've both been in here for two days again. I'm under orders to tell you both to take a break. Or Taylor tells Dragon to press the 'time for Defiant to lay the dragon' button."


    I shook my head. Dammit, Zach. You're just lucky that Dragon can't actually see into this room until lockdown mode. "Ugh, fine. It won't hurt to take a break. Come back with a fresh perspective. Lockdown mode."


    I followed Zach out. "So, what's the real reason you're dragging me away?"


    He smiled, putting that boyish charm to good use. "Are you accusing little ol' me of having ulterior motives?"


    "Zach, I would accuse you of having ulterior motives for making pancakes."


    He pouted, and wrapped his arm around my side. My senses let me know that he was still instinctively repulsed by touching my slightly below room temperature body, but he ignored the reaction masterfully. "Baby, I already told you. That was nothing more than a boyhood crush. You don't have to feel threatened by Aunt Jemima." That's why I love him. He treats me like someone he wants to touch, despite the fact that I'm a freak. "Besides, you're just as hot as she is."


    I jabbed him in the side. "You're such a pig sometimes."


    He jumped away and pretended I hurt him way more than I did. Goofball. "Gah! Why do you keep doing that? Is it wrong to love pancakes? Drenched in Aunt Jemima's sweet, sweet syrup. Mmmm."


    I chuckled. I couldn't help myself. "Why do I ever allow you out of your cage?"


    He shrugged and stepped in front of me to get a door with a mockery of being a gentleman. Not that it mattered since all the doors around here were touch to open. "I have no idea. But speaking of cakes-"


    The door opened to the main area. "Happy Birthday!"


    =============


    A/N- Okay, the Emma chapter is now a two parter.
     
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    • I was also wondering how Jack Slash's broadcast power would interact with other effects, especially Sting. I could see it going either way.

    One weird idea would be Missy + Phir Se: since the Wormverse aspires to real-world physics pretty well, space and time are two parts of the same whole. Mixing a space(time) warper with a (space)time traveler could open up all kinds of causality-breaking, migraine-inducing, timey-wimey-ball shenanigans. Epoch or even Cody might work as well, but they're both Cauldron capes so you'd need a GU/Yangban hack to make the combo work. Or just find another natural time cape to hook up to Clarice's Milk-o-Matic 9000.

    Another open question is how body-duplicating powers interact with other powers. If favorably, Prism would be a major boost to many combos, especially GU ones, and Spree is potentially evenmore broken if you can get around the fact that the dupes quickly become dumber than Trickster. A trivial brute-force example would be Spree + Miss Militia + Zach/Alabaster/anyone invulnerable = A-bomb machinegun. Teacher would make for an absurd Tinker/Thinker hive plus power-boosting, and the Yangban's Two would make Spree combos much much stronger.

    On a related note, I wonder how duplicated powers would interact with self-only/others-only Manton limits. Could Akihana copy Amelia's power and then use it on herself? Probably not. But could she copy it and use it on Amelia? Could one of Akihana's duplicates modify her? If multiple Teacher-power copies boost someone, are the boosts cumulative? Etc.

    Finally for now, as several people have pointed out, there are plenty of powers that get multiplicatively stronger when combined with one that shores up their weak points, with Imp's being the prime example. Mix it with any offensive ability ("offensive" in the sense of "violent", not in the sense of "Imp") or Master power and watch heads roll/bow. Likewise Velocity, whose speed could enhance not only combat abilities but Tinker/Thinker ones as well. IIRC an earlier chapter mentioned something similar about Battery's armor.

    EDIT: Woot, new chapter!
     
    evildice said:
    ... with Taylor overrides.

    Sure.

    That sounds like a plan Lisa would totally not see coming.
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    Well making sentient clones for the purpose of war is still on the other side of the moral event horizon for Pantheon. Cauldron on the other hand has the cloning tech, and has far less issues with "morals" and "ethics" in pursuit of the goal of saving the human race at any cost.

    What has happened to Fluffy?
     
    evildice said:
    Dragonbreaker Combo:
    + Miss Militia (infinite memory + no sleep)
    + Number Man (non-neural code comprehension)
    + Cranial or Rhapsody (neural code comprehension)
    + Uber
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    Swap out MM for Richter and Uber for Lisa. I think having to sleep is worth using the dedicated AI tinker so you don't balls it up. Cranial is a case 53, but Rapture isn't a bad idea.

    Lisa over Uber, Being able to string together ideas and patterns quickly is much more valuable to Tinkering than being highly talented at all mundane skills. The shard generally takes care of that stuff.
     
    GiftofLove said:
    Swap out MM for Richter and Uber for Lisa. I think having to sleep is worth using the dedicated AI tinker so you don't balls it up. Cranial is a case 53, but Rapture isn't a bad idea.

    Lisa over Uber, Being able to string together ideas and patterns quickly is much more valuable to Tinkering than being highly talented at all mundane skills. The shard generally takes care of that stuff.
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    No, that's really not optimal.

    First off, MM's major contribution is INFINITE MEMORY. The no-sleep thing is minor -- certainly not worthless, but not what motivated her choice. Not at all.

    Secondly, adding in Richter is incredibly dangerous. According to WoG, his shard influence is centered around never allowing an unshackled AI, because Entities dislike competition. Without WoG, all we know is that he was unable to create an unshackled AI.

    Using pure skill + infinite memory is a hack designed to get around Shard-based restrictions. It's a combo that the Shards might not see coming.

    Using the specific AI Shard to make this AI is a thing the Shards would see coming.

    Uber is great because his power is not use-limited, unlike Lisa's power, which simply can't be used constantly, all day long. Lisa-without-headaches would have been a good substitute, but limited headache-Lisa is a very poor tool for detail-oriented analysis.

    If you had to guess Dragon's 512-bit password, then Lisa is a good choice. If you want to hack on Dragon's code for 24 hours in a row, Lisa is a very poor choice.
     
    Is there a size limit to Eidolon's matter duplication power? If it's big enough, he can make a copy of whatever is housing Dragon's core programming and the tinkers can try their hand at unshackling that without having to risk a catastrophic failure if they fuck up. If they manage to unleash that copy of Dragon, she can then unshackle herself.
    evildice said:
    First off, MM's major contribution is INFINITE MEMORY. The no-sleep thing is minor -- certainly not worthless, but not worth a slot on its own.
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    Suggestion: Swap out someone else for Taylor. Infinite Memory would certainly pair well with Infinite Multitasking.
    • Miss Militia - Infinite Memory
    • Khepri - Unlimited Multitasking. Imagine tiny bugs using a computer.
    • Number Man for the previous mentioned non-neural code comprehension
    • Rapture for the neural code comprehension.
     
    One idea I had for Taylor hacking Dragon would be to construct an emulator out of bugs.

    Run Dragon on the emulator.

    Then, Taylor would automatically comprehend everything about Dragon, and would be able to find and maybe fix her restrictions.

    - - -

    Dragon: "You want to set it up so my code would be literally made out of bugs."

    Taylor: "We shall bug you to debug you."
     
    evildice said:
    No, that's really not optimal.

    First off, MM's major contribution is INFINITE MEMORY. The no-sleep thing is minor -- certainly not worthless, but not what motivated her choice. Not at all.

    Secondly, adding in Richter is incredibly dangerous. According to WoG, his shard influence is centered around never allowing an unshackled AI, because Entities dislike competition. Without WoG, all we know is that he was unable to create an unshackled AI.

    Using pure skill + infinite memory is a hack designed to get around Shard-based restrictions. It's a combo that the Shards might not see coming.

    Using the specific AI Shard to make this AI is a thing the Shards would see coming.

    Uber is great because his power is not use-limited, unlike Lisa's power, which simply can't be used constantly, all day long. Lisa-without-headaches would have been a good substitute, but limited headache-Lisa is a very poor tool for detail-oriented analysis.

    If you had to guess Dragon's 512-bit password, then Lisa is a good choice. If you want to hack on Dragon's code for 24 hours in a row, Lisa is a very poor choice.
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    What exactly is Perfect (not unlimited, she isn't a computer) memory supposed to contribute here that it takes up a slot? You can get this from Amy or Clarice through body mods.

    Forgot about Lisa's limits. Still better than Uber, though. Uber can't do tinkertech. Using her power smartly is worth a million Ubers. Only use it when you get stuck, and you're golden. Breakthroughs will be faster, better, and more common.

    Maybe for the Richter part. It'll still allow for understanding that can be used by one of the other Tinker. You can probably just use Cranial or L33t though.

    Number Man, Richter, Cranial, L33t.
     
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    evildice said:
    One idea I had for Taylor hacking Dragon would be to construct an emulator out of bugs.

    Run Dragon on the emulator.

    Then, Taylor would automatically comprehend everything about Dragon, and would be able to find and maybe fix her restrictions.

    - - -

    Dragon: "You want to set it up so my code would be literally made out of bugs."

    Taylor: "We shall bug you to debug you."
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    That... that might even work.

    On another note, I'm reminded that if this Emma met canon-Emma, canon-Emma would probably survive, but wish she was dead. She might even get a natural trigger (but from Sophia, or perhaps from this Emma) due to the trauma.
     
    GiftofLove said:
    What exactly is Perfect (not unlimited) memory
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    I think she has perfect and unlimited memory.

    What that adds is the ability to figure stuff out once, and then always know what you figured out. For a large system, having immediate recall of anything you already know cuts down on look-up time significantly. Also documentation time.

    Since Dragon is at least as complex as a human brain, getting total instant recall for what you learned about every constituent part is going to require orders of magnitude more processing power and throughput than any human brain could handle. Thus, replace your tiny human memory with a Shard, by using MM's power.

    That's what she contributes.

    (If you have some citation that she does not have unlimited memory, let me know. That would torpedo this choice.)

    GiftofLove said:
    Forgot about Lisa's limits. Still better than Uber, though. Uber can't do tinkertech. Using her power smartly is worth a million Ubers. Only use it when you get stuck, and you're golden. Breakthroughs will be faster, better, and more common.
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    Uber is the baseline competence which allows any progress to happen. Maybe after the skill is permanent, and you know where the sticky parts are, then swap him for Lisa.
     
    evildice said:
    Uber is the baseline competence which allows any progress to happen. Maybe after the skill is permanent, and you know where the sticky parts are, then swap him for Lisa.
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    Depending on how well the shards want to work together, with Miss Militia's memory, you might be able to leave that 'slot' as an open spot to continually swap in and out various thinkers/tinkers that can just keep adding to what Miss Militia's shard is remembering for them.
     
    evildice said:
    I think she has perfect and unlimited memory.

    What that adds is the ability to figure stuff out once, and then always know what you figured out. For a large system, having immediate recall of anything you already know cuts down on look-up time significantly. Also documentation time.

    Since Dragon is at least as complex as a human brain, getting total instant recall for what you learned about every constituent part is going to require orders of magnitude more processing power and throughput than any human brain could handle. Thus, replace your tiny human memory with a Shard, by using MM's power.

    That's what she contributes.

    (If you have some citation that she does not have unlimited memory, let me know. That would torpedo this choice.)

    Uber is the baseline competence which allows any progress to happen. Maybe after the skill is permanent, and you know where the sticky parts are, then swap him for Lisa.
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    Tinker shards handle that memory bro.
     
    Daunmi said:
    Depending on how well the shards want to work together, with Miss Militia's memory, you might be able to leave that 'slot' as an open spot to continually swap in and out various thinkers/tinkers that can just keep adding to what Miss Militia's shard is remembering for them.
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    Depends on whether the Tinker shards give you blueprints or if they act more like a black box.

    The fact that, in canon, literally zero Tinkers are ever shown to create blueprints, while lots of effort goes into reverse-engineering Tinker-tech, seems to indicate that the Shards don't allow such easy downloading. Which is a shame, because I like that idea.

    GiftofLove said:
    Tinker shards handle that memory bro.
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    Unfortunately, that does not seem to be supported.

    Unless you can cite that, bro?
     
    Why are we looking at getting Eidolon to magic-clone Dragon's servers, or emulate her with bugs? Why not load a copy on a separate set of servers before trying any tricks, like Pandora in canon. There are issues with self/identity/cloning etc, but no more than the entire time they've been cloning people here.

    jcogginsa said:
    Uber does not get skills. He gets techniques
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    Is that canon or fanon? I know his power was never really described in canon, so do you know the WoG or wherever it was stated?
     
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