Charm Learning Shard (Worm/Exalted) (COMPLETED)

[Johan Krakowski]

At some point I would like an explanation for why black criminals keep dong pointless, horrific crimes to white women within screaming distance of E88 patrols. Perhaps there is a reality warping nazi somewhere who has warped the universe to conform to a vision that exists only in propaganda.

Click to shrink...

My theory is that the e88 stages them to make new members more rascist

 

[Earth-Destroyer]

All gangs are constantly attacking each other all the time. If they don't that is a sign of weakness that just leads to them getting attacked and eliminated.

 

[GiantAnteater]

At some point I would like an explanation for why black criminals keep dong pointless, horrific crimes to white women within screaming distance of E88 patrols. Perhaps there is a reality warping nazi somewhere who has warped the universe to conform to a vision that exists only in propaganda.

Click to shrink...

Don't forget about the self-entitled, meddling, omniscient psychopath in a fedora (who can also teleport around the globe freely).

 

[Waterfly]

My theory is that the e88 stages them to make new members more rascist

Click to shrink...

How exactly does the empire get them to play along? Is it the women or the black youths who are in bed with the empire? It seems a bit too hardcore for the women to willingly get disfigured to bias new members while I find it hard to believe members of the local African American population would go along.

Contessa having a plan or more likely a path running towards that end, as a minor part of the whole Parahuman feudalism experiment is far more reasonable. It be dumb but possible.

 

[zapking5]

Contessa having a plan or more likely a path running towards that end, as a minor part of the whole Parahuman feudalism experiment is far more reasonable. It be dumb but possible.

Click to shrink...

Contessa not doing to interfere is basically the whole point of the experiment. Not that it makes any sense to begin with...

 

[Johan Krakowski]

How exactly does the empire get them to play along? Is it the women or the black youths who are in bed with the empire? It seems a bit too hardcore for the women to willingly get disfigured to bias new members while I find it hard to believe members of the local African American population would go along.

Contessa having a plan or more likely a path running towards that end, as a minor part of the whole Parahuman feudalism experiment is far more reasonable. It be dumb but possible.

Click to shrink...

The specifics could be anything but here is a plausible way:

New member Low Key joins the E88, To ensure her loyalty and 'make her more racist' they want her to buy into their ideology and justify to herself helping the E88 keep all minorities out. So they need her to tart thinking all minorties are crime-ridden, and that it's justifiable to forcibly keep them all out of e88 territory.

They find a relatively poor/ desperate white girl+black man that can act for money and have them stage a completely unjustifiable crime that 'just happens' to be near where Rune and Tay are patrolling. This should be fairly easy, both to hire a desperate actor and to ensure it happens near the patrol. They could even promise the women Othala healing behind the scenes, so it would be just some temporary pain for potentially a large payday.

If the E88 are smart, they'll also probably silence the actors to ensure word can never get out they do this, which should also be pretty easy.

I think my theory is a lot more plausible than random back guys making it all the way into empire territory unmolested by any E88 goons, only to happen upon the much rarer E88 capes while in the middle of accosting a random person.

 

[Earth-Destroyer]

Again gangs have to attack the other gangs nightly or they will be seen as weak and open to attack. Their are entire streets IRL where stepping foot their at night will mean you get shoot dead from both sides no questions asked.

 

[Daniel Snuts]

It's one thing to agree to work together on a problem, but another thing altogether to put it into practice. There may possibly be honor among thieves, but good luck getting the thieves to believe that. So when the Empire 88, Coil, the Undersiders, the Travelers, Faultline's Crew and Uber&Leet unite against a common foe, the immediate result is a giant organizational clusterfuck.

After much wrangling (that a grunt like you wasn't party to, but can infer) it was decided to split everyone up then mix them back together into new teams where no single affiliation would have a distinct power advantage. This way no one can shirk, no one gets unfair amounts of loot from a lucky strike, and there's this whole mutual hostage thing to keep people from settling old scores.

The lesser teams are no doubt arranging all sorts of passwords and fallback points and other contingencies anyway. Kaiser, on the other hand, probably didn't even have to say 'if you fuck with us in any way, I take Hookwolf off the leash' out loud. The atmosphere is fairly relaxed as the imperial troops are assigned to their units.

"Low Key, you're with Uber&Leet," Kaiser says.

"No she's not!" Rune objects. You look at her curiously. You thought you were the clingy one in your relationship.

"She is," Kaiser states with finality. "They requested her specifically, and stated that they would withdraw from the alliance if their demand was not met."

"I don't mind," you say, but no one hears you over Rune declaring "She gets double- no, triple pay!"

"Acceptable," Kaiser says, then turns to the next person as if nothing had happened. "Othala will be in the reserves, and not deploy unless another group needs backup or healing. Victor-"

"Thanks for standing up for me I guess," you tell Rune quietly. "Why, though?"

"They make everyone they team up with join in their stupid cosplay, and they record everything they do. You know what kind of outfits girls wear in video games, right?"

You are vaguely aware of the general trend, yes. "Oh." You do your best to sound... apprehensive? Appalled? Something like that, but on the inside you're dancing with joy. Uber&Leet came to you, and offered to make you their fake gamer girl and let you study their powers without you even having to make a new identity? Could you ask for anything better?

...Well, there's the 'Bakuda not killing dozens of innocent civilians' thing, you might have asked for that. Dem silver linings, tho.

---

"Welcome to our guest lair," Uber says as he heaves the loading bay door open. The space within is mostly empty, with a pile of computer equipment and monitors in one corner, some discarded props (whatever game they're from, you don't recognize it) in another, and a bunch of random junk and tools on shelves along the walls. Some of it is tinkertech, but most of it isn't. "It's not much, but we don't reveal our main base to outsiders. I'm sure you understand."

You hum in agreement as you enter, Fenrir padding along behind you. Uber has been doing most of the talking on the way over, Leet having come down with what you identify as 'oh my god a girl is talking to me what do I do?' syndrome. Not that Uber is entirely symptom free... But his power, which lets him instantly master any skill he wants, clearly includes 'talking to girls' in its library.

Uber wants a loving girlfriend.

Which is not to say that he's been trying to seduce you. No, his power is doing that entirely on its own. He's been nothing but professional, and hasn't even commented on the way you've been staring at him as you appraise every last twitch and fluctuation of his power with laser-like focus. Something about becoming superhumanly good at any skill speaks to you on a visceral level. The thought of acquiring such a power is like being offered a cool draught of water, when you didn't even realize you'd been lost in the desert for years.

Leet's power, on the other hand, is weird. It has the color of a Case 53, but the texture of a normal cape. You have no idea what to make of it. Nor do you really care, to be frank. Gregor might be interested, but that ship kinda sailed.

"Alright," Uber says, walking over to the computer equipment in the corner. "Going live in three, two, one..." At the touch of a button, a quartet of tinkertech drones spring into the air and take up positions around the room. One of them is larger than the others, and has a screen in addition to the camera. It's displaying text that's scrolling by too fast to read, though you manage to pick out repeated instances of 'hi', 'hello', waving hand emojis and other greetings. The stream chat, you cleverly deduce.

"Welcome, dear subscribers, to our premium backstage stream," Uber says, speaking into one of the cameras. "Tonight will be a bit different, as we briefly leave our life of crime behind to take on the brutally barbaric Brockton Bay Bomber, Bakuda!" He turns to face you with a flourish. "But first! Please give a warm welcome to our guest star: Low Key!"

You wave at the camera, and the chat experiences a renewed deluge of greetings, this time generously sprinkled with creative spellings of the word 'girl', and pictures of eggplants. That last part confuses you, until someone helpfully writes 'choke on a (eggplant) nazi bitch'. Ah. It's a compliment. The eggplant symbolizes their physiological reaction upon seeing you. How delightful.

"And Fenrir," you remind them, and chat explodes with 'doggy!'. At least what they lack in subtlety they make up for in being easily amused.

"Your costume," Uber says, retrieving a plastic bag from one of the shelves and handing it to you. A glance inside reveals a headpiece that looks like it's been carved from stone (but judging by the heft of the bag, is more likely to be made of foam) with a bright orange wig built in. "You can change in the other room."

You walk over to the indicated door and take a look inside. The room has a full-length mirror on one wall, but is otherwise almost completely bare. Almost. Thank god for sorcerer's sight, because you're having flashbacks to Casa de Dragon.

"Yeees," you say slowly. "I could do that. But first you're going to go in there and remove all the cameras."

"Haha, what cameras?" Leet exclaims, his tone strained and entirely unconvincing. "We wouldn't do something like that!"

"As an alternative, I could rip your dick off and make you eat it before you bleed to death," you suggest pleasantly. Leet freezes. "None of that was meant figuratively, by the way. Those are exactly the two options on the table right now." When Fenrir starts growling to emphasize your point he jumps away with a yelp, trips over an old costume piece on the floor and lands on his ass.

Uber chuckles as if he was in on the joke. "Sorry lads, I value the integrity of my dick higher than the stimulation of yours," he announces to the room. "Everyone who paid for the premium stream tonight will get a full refund." He then proceeds to take down the hidden cameras in the changing room.

To his credit, he does not try to leave one of them up. Rather less to his credit, he becomes a master of reading body language and checks whether you spotted them all before removing the last one. Can't imagine why he currently lacks a loving girlfriend.

"You know what to do if they try to peek," you tell Fenrir, who nods in response. You shut the door behind you and turn out the bag to see what they've saddled you with.

Well. On the one hand, it covers rather more skin than you had expected. On the other, it's a mottled black and white body stocking. It's highly debatable whether it's more or less revealing than a bikini would be. Well, such is the fate of fake gamer girls. You won't get invited back on if you disappoint the fans. You doff your padded cape outfit and start shapeshifting your curves to compensate. There's a reason you didn't want cameras in here.

When you start putting the stuff on, you discover that it clings far tighter than it has any right to. You've seen thicker body paint. Fucking Tinker materials. When you pull it up past your knee, an arcane-looking pattern lights up, glowing with a turquoise light. You pause there to make sure it's not radioactive or something, because you trust Leet's tinkering about as far as you can throw Gregor.

Thankfully it's just turning waste body heat into visible light, industry and forge wisdom informs you. You take a moment to marvel at the elegant design, you hadn't expected something like that given Leet's reputation. Then another moment to wonder how much the regular clothing industry would pay for such a material, if only the Powers That Be weren't insistent on limiting parahumans to hero and villain roles.

Then you frown as you realize that you cannot possibly wear underwear under this material without making it incredibly obvious. You'd pretend to be outraged or reluctant or something, but with the cameras gone there's no one to see your act. You're fully aware that you'd do considerably worse things to maintain access to Uber's power. Can't disappoint the fans, you repeat to yourself as you peel the offending garment off your leg and strip down completely.

At least it's just barely padded enough right at the critical points to maintain a smooth barbie doll outline, but you suspect that this was done more to remain true to the character (there's a picture included in the bag) than out of any concern for your modesty.

It ends at the neck, but the headgear has a mask built into it, displaying (what you assume to be) your character's trademark one-fanged smirk. It takes some work to bunch up your hair enough to slip it on properly, but you manage.

You take a look at yourself in the mirror. Wow, someone who couldn't shapeshift would be all kinds of insecure wearing this. You take a few extra minutes to make absolutely sure you look your best. Yes, a few. Definitely fewer than fifteen.

You return to the main room to discover Uber and Leet spray painting your wolf. You guess the character Fenrir will be playing has darker fur.

"Pretty brave, doing that without permission," you note.

Leet drops his his spray can when he sees you, and scrambles to pick it up.

"We did ask, actually," Uber says calmly. "He agreed."

You look at Fenrir, who tilts his head at you and shrugs. If you've decided that these people get to dress the two of you up, he seems to be saying, who is he to argue?

A glance at the chat shows a resurgent wave of eggplants, so you do a little twirl for the cameras, making sure your unsupported body parts sway appropriately. Leet drops his spray can again, but he might be playing it up for laughs.

"Do you have a video of my character?" you ask. "I want to get the mannerisms right."

"I'll find some!" Leet exclaims, rushing over to the computers. "Help me out, chat!"

"Not all guest stars are as enthusiastic to play along," Uber says.

You shrug in response, strategically jiggling for the cameras. "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well." If you don't get invited back, how would you steal their powers? Or, well, you're not quite sure about that plural - what if Leet's power infected your native Tinker ability with his famous shittiness? You're getting Uber's power for sure, tough.

Wait, hang on, you know the secret of men now, you could just try to date Uber instead (not that it'd get you his soul price, but as long as he doesn't notice that right away...). Old habits die hard, huh? But fucking up his show isn't how you accomplish that either.

"Actually, could you finish up here while we get changed?" Uber hands you his spray can, along with a reference picture and a stencil for a... wolf cutie mark? No, according to the picture it goes on his forehead.

"Sure."

Leet gets a video playing on the flying screen, and they both retreat to the changing room. You study your role. If you were to describe her in two words, they would be 'haughty' and 'naughty'. Trying to mimic her speech completely isn't going to work, because she speaks a made-up nonsense language with subtitles. But at least you can get the pitch and intonation right.

By the time they get back, you're lounging atop a fully painted Fenrir, inspecting your fingernails and trying to look impishly bored.

"Took you long enough," you say in the imp's singsong voice, and they stop to stare.

"You're a god damn genius, bro," Uber tells his partner.

Leet nods fervently. "This worked out even better than I had hoped."

Uber is dressed in a green tunic and hat that even you recognize, with a painted wooden mask of the famous elf boy's face covering his face from ear to ear - literally, as it's got pointy wooden ears covering his real ones.

Leet... is wearing a pale pink body stocking and a tinkertech harness of the same color, with human-sized fairy wings on the back. So they do know that their audience is laughing at them, not with them, and are milking it on purpose. You had wondered about that.

Leet fiddles with his harness, whereafter he floats into the air and starts glowing. Or not glowing exactly, it's more like a spherical area around him has turned pink. It's almost entirely opaque, even blocking sorcerer's sight somehow. All you can see is the fairy wings sticking out the back. But that's fine, you were perving on Uber anyway.

You scoot around into a more conventional riding pose and gesture towards the exit. "After you, gentlemen. And perhaps one of you could explain the plan?"

 

[Inzomniac]

Oooooh, Midna and Wolf!Link... well, can't say that they don't have good taste, I'll give them that. ...well, other than Leet in a dress, but them's the breaks.

 

[Waterfly]

I think my theory is a lot more plausible than random back guys making it all the way into empire territory unmolested by any E88 goons, only to happen upon the much rarer E88 capes while in the middle of accosting a random person.

Click to shrink...

I grant it's more plausible than a random black guy wander into to neo-nazi town to do crime but it's still less likely than Contessa, Coil or the Simurgh done did it. You assume every empire member is as two-faced as Kaiser and would go along with manufacturing crimes instead of just waiting for them to happen naturally. After all they believe they are right so why go trough the effort and more importantly added risk of faking a crime, if it gets out they risk alienating an allied cape for the low gain of hastening an indoctrinating an a cape that's already joined up?

 

[Fernando]

Leet's power, on the other hand, is weird. It has the color of a Case 53, but the texture of a normal cape.

Click to shrink...

Hoh hoh! The plot thiccens, and it's not just Taylor.

Seriously though, great addition. Leet's Shard being a native Eden and not a mish-mash of her corpse adds intrigue to whether or not there are other natural Eden capes out there with the corresponding hub...

Ooorrr, it could be an Abaddon plot since he also space whale'd into her, but in either case, fun stuff for the future of Taylor and her...

Wait, hang on, you know the secret of men now, you could just try to date Uber instead.

Click to shrink...

questionable schemes and plots for moar powah.

 

[Earth-Destroyer]

Hm Leet would you perhaps give autocrrons excellency. AKA the make brilliant stuff at the cost of being unable to go, wait is this a good idea. They guy that went giving yourself a lobotomy is a good idea for reference.

 

[Dakkah]

Hmmm, her baiting aside, revealing that she's a social chameleon might come back to bite her.

 

[PlasticSoldier]

Would Kaiser let her stay with the Gamers after this fight? That seems like a bit much.

 

[eeda]

I give Shadow Stalker 10 min to track them down and try to kill Low Key

 

[Alucard 109]

...oh God. She's gonna have a "heated gamer moment"

 

[Edifier]

I grant it's more plausible than a random black guy wander into to neo-nazi town to do crime but it's still less likely than Contessa, Coil or the Simurgh done did it. You assume every empire member is as two-faced as Kaiser and would go along with manufacturing crimes instead of just waiting for them to happen naturally. After all they believe they are right so why go trough the effort and more importantly added risk of faking a crime, if it gets out they risk alienating an allied cape for the low gain of hastening an indoctrinating an a cape that's already joined up?

Click to shrink...

Could also be that e88 assaults random blacks at their borders and inside. And then they lash out and back. Resulting in the most common people attacking people in E88 area, where Taylor gets called, is revenge for what E88 did to them or their friends earlier. so it's like a street war built on a foundation of vengence or some nonsense like that.

...Well, there's the 'Bakuda not killing dozens of innocent civilians' thing, you might have asked for that. Dem silver linings, tho.

Click to shrink...

I bet she could change your mind on that. :3 if she promised to do it only infront of you. xD

On another note. Taylor sure is acting sexy.

 

[Ruy]

But if you truly want your question answered, canonically?

Click to shrink...

I would have guessed that given it is ballistic there would be

Spoiler

Facials


Or just oral

That's probably not even everything. With Luke basically getting carte blanche from Taylor, I bet they even

Spoiler

held hands.

Click to shrink...

I don't think Taylor is that sort of degenerate. Cutting people's faces is one thing... but this... this is the sort of stuff that might be banned from qq.

Something about becoming superhumanly good at any skill speaks to you on a visceral level.

Click to shrink...

Excellencies here we go.

Would Kaiser let her stay with the Gamers after this fight? That seems like a bit much.

Click to shrink...

Probably not but she could infiltrate with another persona.

 

[ses]

Daniel Snuts so rules question, does Mind-Hand Manipulation allow Taylor to fly? With Essence 3 and Occult 5 she has more than enough effective Str+Athletics for it. If she can't pull herself up by her bootstraps does she at least have Doc Ock's movement abilities?

 

[Daniel Snuts]

Daniel Snuts so rules question, does Mind-Hand Manipulation allow Taylor to fly? With Essence 3 and Occult 5 she has more than enough effective Str+Athletics for it.

Click to shrink...

No. It was briefly mentioned before, force applied through mind-hands don't have an equal-and-opposite effect on her body. So pushing down on the ground doesn't lift her up.

 

[Mr Zoat]

No. It was briefly mentioned before, force applied through mind-hands don't have an equal-and-opposite effect on her body. So pushing down on the ground doesn't lift her up.

Click to shrink...

But would pushing up on her body?

 

[ses]

No. It was briefly mentioned before, force applied through mind-hands don't have an equal-and-opposite effect on her body. So pushing down on the ground doesn't lift her up.

Click to shrink...

Not having an equal-and-opposite effect would make her more able to fly, not less, since she wouldn't have to worry about range limitations of pushing off the ground and can just directly lift herself. That said clearly the DM rules otherwise so it's moot.

I've been trying to figure out exactly what Rune and Glory Girl's charms would end up being, and honestly I'm stumped. Ascendant Objectivity Stance seems the best fit for Rune, but the Essence 4 requirement is too low to match the training time it requires. My main guess for getting that cookie is Riding the Dragon. She explicitly said that it requires more training time than Soul's Price did, and therefore Ramparts of Obedient Earth can't be it either, since that's equal complexity and not greater. Phantom Steed fits the requirements, but I find it unlikely the author will add a charm that takes pet spotlight away from Fenrir. Sometimes Horses Fly Approach would be my top guess if it's useable on Fenrir, but I don't think the charm allows that. Would free up GG's charm for AST rather than needing a flight charm from it.

As for Glory Girl, Earth-Skimming Gale Tread? I'd be very sad if Glory Girl didn't give her access to flight, which the runner up most likely Adamant Skin Technique can't help with.

I don't think Uber will give an Excellency, since it's a stated goal of the story to avoid them. Instead I'm going to guess Mastery of Small Manners for Uber.

 

[TapTwice2]

oh! an uber and leet arc?! those are pretty rare in worm fanfic. usually just a brief fight or a one off. Hope it goes a bit further, I enjoy those two and their dynamic.

 

[Daniel Snuts]

Their plan for defeating Bakuda is to wander around the city randomly, in full view of everyone.

"Leet built an exotic particle detector," Uber explains. "With the bombs we've seen, her lab is definitely going emit a bunch of those."

"No one trusted you with a real target, huh?" You concentrate on getting the tone and cadence right, punctuating the question with a dismissive flick of your fingers. Normally you'd be more polite to capes you're trying to infiltrate, but you've got a role to play here.

"Only an idiot would hide out in a known safehouse at a time like this," Uber says - which you note is not a 'no'.

"I'm sure you know best."

One peculiar upshot of this plan is the audience participation. Their normal modus operandi is more of a quick smash and grab, since they have to worry about heroes coming to arrest them. But tonight the heroes have every incentive to leave them alone, which means they have time to sign autographs and pose for pictures.

This is how you learn that Leet is actually cool and suave - when compared to his fans!

The more bearable minority just freeze up and stop functioning completely in the presence of celebrities, girls and/or cameras. Most of them very much don't. They think they have something to contribute to the show, some witticism or bon mot, or in one particularly awful case, a little dance. You never thought you'd look back fondly at the eggplant-based communication they used online, but here you are. These are the people you need to please if you want to get invited back.

It vindicates the hell out of your decision to go fully in character, though, because it means your attitude is supposed to be one of open disdain and mild bullying. When the next loser starts to speak, you yawn. Long and loud, stretching luxuriously and thrusting your chest out for the cameras. He completely loses track of what he was doing. "That was very interesting," you singsong once you're done. "You can go now."

"Oh look, another one."

"I'm curious. How do you ever commit a robbery without getting mobbed by spastics?"

Oh, did you say you missed the eggplant-based communication? Because one fan just attempted it IRL. Uber, showing great presence of mind, quickly draws his sword and interposes himself between you before Fenrir can bite anything off.

"Such a naughty boy," you comment lightly, your true expression safely hidden behind your mask. "Can you believe he once compared that little worm to an eggplant? Tut, tut, lying on the internet."

By some unspoken agreement your hosts turn towards the rougher parts of the city after that, where muggers presumably lurk and fanboys fear to thread. It works, and you get some uninterrupted quality time with Uber's power. It's so good! And he clearly agrees with your evaluation of how amazing it is, because he's never not using it to be good at something (currently: reconnaissance, to spot any suicidal muggers early). And it's only one kW difficult! Depending on how the evening goes, you may only need to come back one more time to get it.

It's such a breath of fresh air after dealing with the likes of Rune and Ballistic and their super-complicated powers. Heh, Ballistic. If he knew about the tingles his girlfriend was feeling right now, Uber would be a smear on the wall. Oh god, did you just drool a little? You did, you totally just drooled into your mask and you can't wipe it off without exposing your face to the cameras and now you have to wait for it dry on its own.

To distract yourself at least a little, you initiate conversation.

"I'm surprised you're not dressed up as the orc." you remark to Leet.

"There was a poll," Uber explains.

"The what?" Leet aks.

"You know, the pig-man bad guy. Those are called orcs, right?"

"You mean bokoblins? Or moblins? Because-"

"She means Ganon," Uber interrupts.

"Is he the one who kidnaps the princess and steals the magic triangles?" you ask.

"Ganon isn't an orc!" Leet shouts. "He's a gerudo."

"A what?"

"In some timelines he pretty much is a pig-man," Uber says placatingly.

"Don't get me started on the timelines!" Leet exclaims, and then promptly gets started on a long and involved explanation of 'the timelines', his earlier shyness completely forgotten. You don't really follow it all that well, partly because you're concentrating on studying Uber's power but mostly because it sounds like a whole lot of nonsense.

You were kinda hoping to get Leet's soul price, but you can only do that at the end of a conversation. And he won't stop talking.

("Oni Lee is dead," Uber interrupts at one point, having gotten a situation update from the other cape teams. Your own outfit doesn't even have clothes, much less pockets, so you left your phones at their lair)

"Wait, let me get this straight," you say half an hour later. "The world flooded, and this was so terrible for the fish-people that they had to evolve into bird-people to survive?"

"I know, right? That's why, in my personal timeline-" Leet then goes on to confuse you even further by launching into a completely different interpretation of events, which contradicts most of what you already heard. Which, if you understood things correctly, was the way the people who actually made the games meant things to be.

Except that maybe they never intended to tie everything together in the first place, and only made up the connections much later? Which is why everything is such a mess? And people care passionately about this? There's clearly something about this 'geek' thing that you don't understand.

You're saved from further confusion when Uber's hat sprouts a duck face and starts quacking wildly. Except the opposite of that, because what? Duck face hat? But it interrupted Leet's rant.

"Hey, listen!" Leet says. "Those are the exotic particles we've been looking for." At a second glance, the duck is jabbing its beak in a particular direction.

Hang on, the particle detector was the hat all along? Leet's tinkertech famously explodes roughly 25% of the time, and Uber was wearing it on his head? You can't believe you were so focused on his power you didn't even notice until now.

Leet wants his Tinker power to work properly.

Finally! Unfortunately Quicksilver has a somewhat spotty record of actually helping people out with these things - you'd call it a 50% success rate, with all the complications that implies for someone who has done it 3 times. And you'd have to risk studying it first.

---

"This is it," Leet says as you arrive behind a nondescript warehouse, far from ABB territory. "There's something odd about this wall." He hovers in front of a patch of brick wall indistinguishable from any other, even with sorcerer's sight. It might be a line from the game?

In response, Uber takes out a giant skull-decorated hammer from... somewhere. The head alone is almost as big as he is, but he swings it like it's entirely weightless (it probably is). You expect a huge crash and bricks flying everywhere as it hits the wall, but instead a Fenrir-sized area around where it hits simply puffs into smoke. You were right about the crash, though - it's still very loud, and through the smoke you spot the glowing silhouette of a parahuman jumping in fright.

The smoke clears up in a second or so, and you see that it is indeed Bakuda in there. The room is exactly the rat's nest of random electronics you'd expect of a Tinker's workshop. Several pieces glow to your vision, indicating that they're already assembled and ready to explode. The brightest one is... the one on the floor that Bakuda is staring at in horror, that she dropped when she was startled by the crash. It's getting brighter.

"Fucking run!" you and Bakuda shout in unison.

Uber reacts instantly and is already booking it by the time Fenrir gets turned around, but a few seconds is enough for you to catch up and overtake him despite his power making him a world-class sprinter. Whatever tech powers Leet's wings isn't any faster, and you leave both of them in the dust.

You hunch down low over Fenrir's back to minimize air resistance and keep up a steady monolog of swearing under our breath, pausing only to warn any pedestrians you pass by: "Bakuda bomb!" You don't have to say anything more to get people running in the same direction.

You only got the barest glimpse of the device, you have no idea what it does. Bakuda seemed to think that running was an option, which is a good sign at least. It's been what, ten seconds and it hasn't gone off yet? It was clearly building up power, you can only hope it doesn't do so faster than Fenrir is running away. You don't know exactly how fast that is - wolves don't come with speedometers - but if he was a car you're pretty sure you'd be breaking traffic laws right now.

Fifteen seconds. The longer it takes the better, right? Fenrir is running at a constant speed, but the power required for whatever the hell is going to happen should increase with the cube of the radius, right? Maybe not, though, it's not like you're dealing with conventional physics here.

Twenty se-

A sound like someone tapping a wineglass, but magnified thousandfold, makes you turn around in your lack of saddle - and then promptly recoil, pain stabbing straight through your brain and into your soul as sorcerer's sight lights up the brightest you've ever experienced. It's like staring into the sun, if the sun was twenty yards away.

You frantically turn it off, and reflexively try to blink away spots that aren't there - sorcerer's sight having nothing to do with your actual retinas. Ow your soul though. You're not going to use any more powers tonight, because it feels like they might fall off.

Without sorcerer's sight the evening gloom is undisturbed. No fires, no explosions, no strange glowing phenomena. Whatever it was, it took out every street light in its radius before stopping the aforementioned twenty yards behind you. Considerably further behind you now, because Fenrir sensibly didn't stop running.

"Stop, turn back." Unfortunately you can't be so sensible, because you need to figure out what happened. As best you can without turning sorcerer's sight back on, because ow. "Don't go any closer than the last functioning streetlight," you add. That should be safe, right?

As you get closer, the light of the last streetlight is enough to reveal... is that one of the people who were running away? It is. He's frozen in mid stride, and.. glimmering? Glimmering and purple and faintly translucent. If you were to take a wild guess, you'd say he was transmuted into solid amethyst. There are other indistinct shapes behind him, that may also possess certain gem-like qualities.

Your brain skips a few tracks as you try to calculate Fenrir's running speed, times twenty-ish seconds, squared and times pi. Times population density. Did, did Bakuda just hit a four digit body count on her way out? Above you, a pigeon flies past the last streetlight and falls to the ground as it turns into amethyst. Oh god it didn't just amethyst-splode people, it created a stable amethyst-ization field. Four digits and counting, because people are going to keep blundering into the area until the news get out.

"Let's go," you say numbly, turning Fenrir around. Not a moment too soon either, you can feel your condition getting worse just from being this close to the effect, even without sorcerer's sight active. Well, either that or you got a lethal dose from the initial blast and it's getting worse because you're about to keel over from soul hemorrhage, but you hope that doesn't happen. You need to get back to the lair and recover your phones so you can report this.

===

Spoiler: Mechanics corner

Haha, did you really think I'd let Taylor have the First Adorjan Excellency so easily, when a big consideration of how I set up the crossover was to starve her of dice-adders? Also she cannot be allowed happiness, those are simply the rules laid down by Wildbow that I am powerless to change.

Oh, the bomb? Exalted fans will have recognized it as a canonical area-denial WMD from Creation. In addition to turning living things into amethyst, it also completely shreds all Essence in its area of effect. Translated into equivalent Earth weapon-functionality, it stops anything needing electricity from working, which is why the streetlights are out.

It still shreds Essence too, which is why Taylor's Essence-esque parabiology hurts from the near miss. She'll be fine, though.

Spoiler: Stream-chat-o-vision

daemonette_lickr: they'll be fine right?
ryu6969: course they'll be fine. Cockroaches don't die
goatyballz: omg omg omg omg omg omg
edible_undrpnts: stop fooling urself, their ded
bigg_gunns: ye all cams cutting out like that means tehy done got blone op
leetfan1: just arrived, did they cancel the stream?
goatyballz: omg omg omg omg omg omg
stream_viking: why is it showing the guest lair tho?
bigg_gunns: only cam that didny get expodeded
thus_spaketh: I for one enjoy watching an empty room, it's almsot as exciting as drying paint
vempires_suck: i cant belive they finlally died and we didnt even get to see it
thus_spaketh: It's Midna!
ryu6969:

bigg_gunns: heeey midna
demonchan: are tehy ok?
Leet: No they're dead.
edible_undrpnts: toldya
tap_bootay: noooooooooooo
Leet: Good news is Bakuda died too
tap_bootay: -oooooyay?
goatyballz: were safe now?
ryu6969: suck it heroes, villains get things done
Leet: I know, right?
bigg_gunns: show us your tits!
<bigg_gunns has been banned by Leet>
daemonette_lickr: if their ded, how we get refund for not seeing tits?
daemonette_lickr: show tits!
stream_viking: man's got a point
<Leet has logged out>
ryu6969: midna come back
ryu6969:

thus_spaketh: Remember when I told you I figured out the location of their guest lair?
leetfan1: yeah and we told u u were full of shit
thus_spaketh: I bet she can't cart away all their stuff before I get there. See you on ebay, suckers!
ryu6969:

ryu6969:

 

[zapking5]

Did the rest of Bakuda's bombs also go off due to a dead man's switch?

thus_spaketh: Remember when I told you I figured out the location of their guest lair?
leetfan1: yeah and we told u u were full of shit
thus_spaketh: I bet she can't cart away all their stuff before I get there. See you on ebay, suckers!

Click to shrink...

I guess Taylor gets some loot out of this at least.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

To be fair, you have to learn Yozi excellencies (Essence) times. So calling it 1kw of difficulty isn't quite right.

But yeah, 1st adorjan excellency would give Taylor so much extra power it's not funny. You made the right call in denying it to Taylor.

 

[GAMB42]

Requiem_Jeer

Since I'm not really familiar with Exalted mechanics could you explain why these powers would be so "extra" powerful given she already as a bunch of powers available ?

Also Taylor really as come a long way to the whole superior exalted mentality huh. She truly is becoming completely desensitized to the mayhem and death of cape life. RIP Leet & Uber. They didn't even got an onscreen send off. And poor taylor couldn't get their powers either.

 

[Rask]

RIP Leet & Uber. They didn't even got an onscreen send off. And poor taylor couldn't get their powers either.

Click to shrink...

That is clearly unacceptable. Time to learn Order-Affirming Blow and slap that silly Shaping effect out of them.

 

[ses]

Wait what? Uber and Leet are fucking dead?

 

[Whitesnake Pelinal]

Wait what? Uber and Leet are fucking dead?

Click to shrink...

Kinda how it looks. They could perhaps have teleported, or used a superjump or some shit, but they do not appear to have made it back to base.

Man, how is Taylor going to have an e-thot phase without someone doing all the boring tech work for her?