Charm Learning Shard (Worm/Exalted) (COMPLETED)

[Rerororororororororo]

Taylor is fitting in pretty well, too well one might think.

 

[eeda]

She is goin to let out a racial slur in Arcadia by accident, i can smell it from here

 

[Daniel Snuts]

I have been wondering though: what's this got to do with Exalted? Apart from the names of her sub-powers, it looks like Worm with a novel power to me.

Click to shrink...

Not just names, mechanics. Taylor is an eclipse caste solar exalt. That's what it has to do with Exalted. It is also Worm with a novel power, because I integrated the crossover elements into the Worm setting instead of having them show up out of nowhere. Thus there is none of the "wait, why don't you have a corona gemma? This has never happened before" that so often happens with crossovers.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Not just names, mechanics. Taylor is an eclipse caste solar exalt. That's what it has to do with Exalted. It is also Worm with a novel power, because I integrated the crossover elements into the Worm setting instead of having them show up out of nowhere. Thus there is none of the "wait, why don't you have a corona gemma? This has never happened before" that so often happens with crossovers.

Click to shrink...

No free charms after exalting, no anima banner or caste mark, the eclipse ability to copy non-exalt charms gives that charm and not a similar solar charm, and while I'm working off a first edition rulebook here I don't think that Know The Soul's Price or Spirit-Tied Pet work like that. Not a criticism of the story as the versions you're using here work fine for the story, but if you changed the names of the sub-powers, would anyone reading it realise that it was meant to be Exalted?

 

[Logos01]

Taylor's going to hell, and so am I apparently.

I have been wondering though: what's this got to do with Exalted? Apart from the names of her sub-powers, it looks like Worm with a novel power to me.

Click to shrink...

Nothing, but the power is her shard attempting to emulate the phenomenon of being an Exaltation with her as the Exalt.

At least, that's been my reading of it.

 

[wigg55]

As a kinda maby Solar Exalt any choice she makes is perfect by virtue of her being, thus all her choices are Excellent Life Choices™.

Exalting is great for solving all your current problems. Also for providing you with new bigger problems.

 

[war piglet]

She is goin to let out a racial slur in Arcadia by accident, i can smell it from here

Click to shrink...

She'll make a racist joke and it will predictably fall flat. Something I don't see often enough in fics is canon Taylor's amazing sense of humor. In that she has none. She doesn't get jokes, makes incredibly inappropriate jokes with dry delivery, and barely laughs.

 

[eeda]

She'll make a racist joke and it will predictably fall flat. Something I don't see often enough in fics is canon Taylor's amazing sense of humor. In that she has none. She doesn't get jokes, makes incredibly inappropriate jokes with dry delivery, and barely laughs.

Click to shrink...

Taylor "So i have the red head Irish on his death bed, he the fuker, and i can save his life with a medular transfusion but then i thinked do i want to save the equivalent of a white nigger? I mean red head he don't have a soul... Or money to pay me back for the transfusion. Mhe is christmas so i goin to pray he get well"

Dennis "..............."

 

[Daniel Snuts]

No free charms after exalting, no anima banner or caste mark, the eclipse ability to copy non-exalt charms gives that charm and not a similar solar charm, and while I'm working off a first edition rulebook here I don't think that Know The Soul's Price or Spirit-Tied Pet work like that. Not a criticism of the story as the versions you're using here work fine for the story, but if you changed the names of the sub-powers, would anyone reading it realise that it was meant to be Exalted?

Click to shrink...

Short answer: There will be more Exalted bullshit in the future.

If nothing else, Taylor's charm list will keep growing. And while I've house-ruled Spirit-Tied Pet, I'm running Know the Soul's Price by the (2e) book. Spirit-Tied Pet will be the exception rather than the rule. And it's been solar charms so far, but two is hardly a robust sample size. There's a reason I made her an eclipse caste.

Note also that a starting character exalt is assumed to have a couple of adventures under his belt, with the accompanying loot and XP already taken into account. As far as I'm aware there is no canonical answer to how many charms the moment of exaltation itself grants. Could be one, is all I'm saying.

Though it admittedly couldn't be All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight, because charm trees are a thing. My method of doing things here is funny in that it sounds like a buff, but is actually a stealth nerf:

"I get to learn whatever charm is available and completely ignore prerequisites? Yay!"
...
"...I don't get to load up on simple excellencies and be casually superhuman? I have to rely entirely on leveraging weird esoteric effects?"

Yes. Like a parahuman.

 

[Mr Zoat]

And while I've house-ruled Spirit-Tied Pet

Click to shrink...

Why not just make a new charm? It's an open charm set.

 

[Daniel Snuts]

The conversation the next morning is as tedious as it is predictable. Yes, dad. No, dad. I thought you had already gone to bed like a sensible person, dad. I'll be sure to keep you better informed in the future, dad.

He comes away mollified, but quietly concerned that your new friend 'June' may be a bad influence. He's... not exactly wrong. Though privately you think your new friend 'Bookwolf' might be worse.

As soon as you can extricate yourself you head for the forge. You're so excited you run right past the bus stop and keep going. The gold should have finished cooking by now. You can't wait to see how it turned out! Also you have money and a bunch of powers lined up for study and tomorrow you start at Arcadia which is also full of powers!

And you have Fenrir, the best wolf in the whole wide world. Sure he threw you off a building the other day, but you forgive him. That's how unconditional love works, you know. You smile fondly at the invisible doofus running in the road by your side. He has no trouble keeping up with you, of course, and amuses himself by dodging every oncoming car instead of letting them pass through him.

Yes, against all odds life is actually pretty great right now. You can' help but laugh out loud as you run. Everything's coming up Taylor.

---

About halfway to your destination you slow down to a walk, huffing and puffing. Note to self: Brute 0 is not enough to let you run all the way across town on its own. Actual exercise may still be useful.

---

You carefully lift the crucible out of the magma and give it a once-over with sorcerer's sight. Verdict: It's shit. The process should theoretically be able to transmute 100% of the material in a week, but that assumes a real volcano and a lot more sunlight and proper mirrors that focus it better and don't break halfway through and, you know, not leaving it in the hands of a random bum overnight and hoping for the best. As it is, your sample consists of roughly 90% impurities (where 'impurities' is understood to mean '24-carat gold').

This 'pig orichalcum' is completely useless, your power helpfully informs you, having none of the properties that makes the pure stuff valuable. You don't have time to let it cook any longer, tough. You'll have to figure out some way to extract the good stuff. Uh, Tinker power? Hello? Anything?

---

Your solution ends up involving a dematerialized Fenrir, clutching in his mouth a dematerialized monkey wrench. The wrench grasps a single dematerialized wolf hair, which he slowly and carefully whisks through the molten gold, over and over again.

For reasons that are as obvious to you as they are impossible to articulate in English, the perfectly solid, material orichalcum reacts to the immaterial hair in ways that the mundane gold doesn't. The orichalcum gradually separates out and clings to the hair, forming a cylinder less than an inch long and thin enough that it could fit in a mechanical pencil.

Meanwhile the hair (and wolf) remain entirely unaffected by the heat from both the gold itself and the welding torch you rigged up to keep it liquid, because consistent physics are for people without superpowers.

While Fenrir handles that, you carefully clean the magma out of the glass oven. You're just borrowing it after all, and it wouldn't do to leave it in worse shape than you found it. You're in fact leaving it in considerably better shape, since you had to fix it up before you could use it at all. That's pretty fair rent for a week's use, you think. You have nothing to feel guilty about.

The sun is still up when you're done and the next step will have to wait until Jim arrives, so you head downtown for a while. As you promised yourself, you buy a proper smartphone with internet access. Then you head to the library again anyway, because there are some preparations you need to do online that you don't want traced back to your personal phone.

When you finally meet up with Jim, you give him a letter to transcribe. You don't know that the intended recipient has tinkertech handwriting analysis tools, but better safe than sorry.

Spoiler: Letter

Dear Sir
Allow me to introduce myself: I am a Tinker, in which capacity I have chosen the name Smith. I recently discovered a process for creating a hitherto unknown metal, which I have elected to call orichalcum. It has several remarkable properties, foremost among which is that it can be rendered indestructible.
I have no doubt that you can see the great opportunities this presents, both in your line of business and others. Unfortunately I personally lack the funds for both the equipment and the raw materials required to produce this substance in useful quantities. Nor do I wish, at this point in time, to join the Protectorate, as I lack both the inclination and the training to take the type of active role in its operations that you and other Tinkers in the organization do.
Instead I would like to propose an arrangement wherein the Protectorate would provide me with a workshop and and raw materials, and in return receive the bulk of the finished product (exact details to be negotiated). Please find enclosed schematics for the type of equipment and materials that would be required.
Also enclosed, attached to this letter, is a small sample of orichalcum produced using less efficient methods. I urge you to test this sample to verify my claims as to its properties.
You may contact me by leaving a message for Gold_Smith at PHO. Eagerly looking forward to your response, I remain
faithfully yours,
Smith

You glue the scrap of orichalcum to the letter, as was the plan all along. Even if you had managed to transmute the full amount it wouldn't have been enough to craft anything useful with. If anything the thin piece you ended up with is even more impressive than a bigger sample would have been, since the point is to show off its indestructibility.

Along with the letter you include the promised blueprints, drafted by you and annotated by Jim at your direction. The first set details what is essentially your current setup, except done properly and scaled up to produce meaningful weekly yields. The second is more fanciful, depicting a factory-cathedral built into an active volcano. You don't expect they'll go for that, but you included it anyway to make the first option seem reasonable in comparison.

Every little bit helps, you figure, when you write someone out of the blue and ask if they can spare a literal ton of gold.

At your direction Jim writes 'Attn: Armsmaster, Re: Tinkering' on the back of the envelope. You briefly debate adding 'NB: Not a tinker-bomb', but ultimately decide against it. It would ensure that no one else would open the letter until Armsmaster could examine it, but it would also make a rather unfavorable impression on the people you're trying to do business with.

You then send Jim off on his final mission for you: Put on this domino mask, walk into the PRT building and hand the letter to the receptionist at the front desk, then leave without answering any questions.

Fenrir, who you sent to shadow him the whole way, reports that he pulled it off perfectly. You shake his hand, give him a hundred bucks and regretfully inform him that Hotel Glass Oven is closed and he'll have to find somewhere else to sleep from now on. Your sorcerer's sight shows his Loyalty crumbling away to nothing over the course of a few seconds.

You send Fenrir on one last mission, and go to bed early. Break's over, school tomorrow.

(You buried the leftover gold in a park on your way home. It still contains trace amounts of orichalcum, and you don't want to leave it lying around where it can be connected to you.)

---

Dad wakes you up extra early for your first day at Arcadia. He frowns at you as you shuffle your way towards breakfast, even more zombielike than the early hour should account for.

"Trouble sleeping?" he asks. "Nervous about the new school?"

"A bit," you say. Not really. It's just that it took Fenrir all night to return the stuff you stole borrowed from the building site, and it's amazing how quickly you became dependent on wolf cuddles for a proper night's sleep. "Mostly excited." Capes! Powers!

You nap during the drive there, and arrive a full hour before the first class starts. The two of you wander through empty corridors looking for the office of the person you're supposed to meet.

"Looks nice," your dad comments. It does, doesn't it? It's uncanny. It's clearly a school, so where is the graffiti, the peeling paint and general air of decay? You walk past an entire row of lockers, and none of them has been broken into and left hanging open. They're not even dented. What sorcery is this?

Similarly eerie, the woman who handles your paperwork doesn't look like she hates her life, or even teenagers. There must have been an error in your paperwork - you were meant to go to Arcadia, not Stepford High.

You're presented with your schedule, a locker number and combination, as well as several papers to sign. You skim through the school rules. No drugs, no weapons, no gang-affiliated clothing or accessories. No running, no shouting, no public displays of affection. No vandalism, no bullying, no truancy. Whatever, it's all pointless. Not because you're intending to break the rules, it's just... Winslow had almost exactly the same set of rules. It's clearly not the rules that make a difference.

Your dad leaves for work, and you're given a quick tour of the buildings to let you make sense of the letters and numbers on your schedule. It wraps up just as the other students start to arrive, and you ensconce yourself near the main entrance to spot any arriving capes.

A red-haired boy, a bit older than you. Probably Clockblocker or Kid Win going by his general build. Or some non-Ward keeping a low enough profile to stay off the PHO wiki, you guess.

A hispanic boy, long-haired and well muscled. You almost jump out of your skin when his power activates as he steps inside, but he doesn't even glance in your direction. The light surges through his body, but does not reach outside. You'd say Changer, except he doesn't, you know, change. Still, it's clearly doing something to his body, just not anything visible to the naked eye. So... Brute? That would make him Aegis.

Yet another boy (caucasian, short dark hair), whose power is already active when you spot him. It's also the wrong color? Every single cape you've seen so far has had the same color glow, except this guy. Not that there are words in English for either color, but still, weird. You wonder what it means.

Who the hell is this guy, then? The activity is concentrated around the eyes... You keep squinting at him as he walks past. It looks a lot like sorcerer's sight, actually, except it's not sensing powers, it's- Shit! Shit, fuck, shit. Emotions. Gallant shoots emotion blasts. Apparently he also senses emotions, but doesn't tell people about that part.

You are incredibly glad he wasn't looking your way when you figured that out. This is going to be a real problem. If he senses your peculiar interest in a few specific people and puts two and two together, you are so fucked. No, never mind, you're fucked anyway. Just the fact that you know about him and the threat he poses to your cover means that you're going to broadcast a spike of anxiety every time your paths cross. There's no way he won't start wondering what's up with that.

Can you cultivate your Zen enough to honestly not be worried about this? Or maybe you can pretend that you're still in Winslow, method acting well enough that you're a nervous wreck full time and startle at every sound and movement? Ugh. People with sensory powers are the worst.

Your attempt at humor isn't cheering you up much either.

You're knocked out of your funk by another cape walking by. Another dark-haired boy, but closer to your own age. His power isn't active, but there's a secondary glow coming from inside his backpack. Sorcerer's sight can spot tinkertech then, you'd been wondering about that. This must be Kid Win, you can tell that the two glows have the same... texture? Polarization? They match, anyway. Which means that it's his own tech.

Waaaiiit a minute. You focus on the glowing backpack, trying to make out the shape inside...

Oh for fuck's sake. This is Arcadia, famously the good school in Brockton Bay. And the very first thing you see, on your first day, is a kid bringing a gun to school. Heroes ruin everything they touch, don't they?

You shadow Kid Win to his locker, where he stashes his gun. You memorize the number and send Lisa a text.

> Can you figure out a locker combination?

Not that you expect a reply right away, she's probably still asleep.

Despite these distractions, you manage to find your way to your first class in time, if barely. A quick glance shows no capes. A thought occurs to you and you take another look. Huh. You're not sure which is whiter, this classroom or the E88 bar/ready room. As in, genuinely not sure, you'd have to go back and count the Italians. No wonder they don't have any problems with ethnic gangs here: No demand for them.

You settle down and consider strategy. There's nothing you can do about the gun until Lisa gets back to you. Clockblocker is hardly about to use his power in public. You're going to stay the hell away from Gallant. By process of elimination, that leaves Aegis. Hopefully his power activating on its own like that wasn't a fluke. Some careful stalking will clear that up in short order.

Unfortunately you didn't follow Aegis to his locker, and the size of the school and your unfamiliarity with it works against you. You still haven't caught sight of him by the time Lisa responds.

< dials b4 & aftr, pics or vid of opening

At lunch you finally catch sight of Aegis again, and are happy to discover that his power use wasn't a fluke. His Brute rating appears to come from constant biological adaptation, and you do mean constant. As he starts eating his guts remodel themselves for maximum efficiency. When he gets up, his butt shifts from its previous optimal sitting form to a mode better suited for walking.

You're not even worried about Gallant catching you as you follow Aegis out of the cafeteria. In this particular instance, you've got an alibi. Aegis is not a bad-looking dude, staring at his butt is entertaining for multiple reasons.

As you follow him around, you note that it only takes a few minutes for his turbo-charged intestines to finish their job and fold themselves back up into a compact low-energy configuration. Unfortunately you can't stick around to watch him much longer, you have heroics to do. Or possibly prevent? The word 'hero' doesn't carry the same meaning for you that it used to.

When Kid Win returns to his locker you're ready and waiting. Just a girl leaning against the wall fiddling with her cellphone. Nothing suspicious here, no sir. Definitely not recording anything.

Apparently he took the gun out of the locker at some point, because he's putting it back now. That's not worrying or anything.

Once he's gone you make note of the new position of the dial and send everything to Lisa. She texts you back before you even make it to class.

< 5834 wanna brag abt it l8r?

Hm, do you? You'll take that one under consideration. You're pretty sure she's already figured out what's going on, meaning that this is just another thinly veiled attempt to check up on you.

Halfway through your next class you ask to be excused to go to the bathroom. It's granted, of course. No teacher would deny that request from a teenage girl, should she look mortified enough. Which you make sure you do. You hurry to Kid Win's locker, open it up - you didn't doubt for a second that Lisa could do it - and grab the gun. You take an extra few seconds to make sure you reset the dial to the same numbers as before.

Well, that was part one. But now you're the kid with a gun. You hide it under your sweater and make your way to a bathroom. You scoped this place out earlier, making sure that there were no cameras, and that the space between the cubicles and the sinks was wide enough for a wolf.

"Come forth," you whisper, and Fenrir appears. He has, of course, been following you around all day, as always. It not worth mentioning at this point. He's been dozing during classes and excitedly sniffing about every new place you've gone, though you can't imagine what he could possibly have been smelling. His nose can't interact with solid matter! Or maybe- his feet can, sort of, since he's neither flying nor sinking through the ground. Maybe his nose also... never mind.

"Hold this," you tell him, handing him the gun to grip in his mouth. "Begone." Fenrir dematerializes again, taking the gun with him.

"Put it next to my bed, but don't materialize it." You're going to check it very carefully for tracking devices before you let it back into the material world anywhere near your house. "Then go to the bar and wait for me there." Fenrir nods and leaps through the wall. His feet don't interact with the material world that much. Again, better not to think about it too hard.

The rest of the day passes without incident. You get introduced to a whole bunch of unpowered people, classmates and such. They seem nice enough, you guess? You didn't really pay much attention. There's a base level of interest-in-novel-thing ("Where are you from?" "Winslow." "My condolences.") but they don't really have a reason to care whether you live or die. Which is an improvement! None of them spit on you or hit you or even insulted you, what more can you ask?

You catch Aegis leaving, and once again see his entire body update itself as he passes through the doors. Optimizing for the ambient temperature, you realize. You're tempted to follow him home, but you want to get to the bar early today. You've got promises to keep.

===

Spoiler: A/N

You saved the day, yay!
Of course a hero would twist your actions into stomping all over the unwritten rules and stealing government-owned tinkertech. But fuck heroes, amirite?

 

[eeda]

First day in new school and alredy stealing Taylor? It seams you can take Taylor out of Winslow but never take Winslow out of Taylor.

Pretty shity thing to just severe your bound with you minion, not even Emma got that tratment and eventualy Taylor will have a way to empower others so Bad long term planing girl.

 

[R.A.G.]

I do love and hate how you're turning Taylor into more of a terrible person here, what with callously denying the homeless man a warm place to sleep for another couple days. You'd think she'd just insulate the warehouse at least, smh.

 

[Waterfly]

Being fairly ignorant on the Exalted setting. Solar Exalted are supposed to be capital C Cursed right? And parahumans got a shard bugging them to use their powers. So how does those two things workout in this crossover?

 

[R.A.G.]

IIRC their curse manifests in Virtue Flaws and Limit Break. The first has you take a virtue and have it manifest in unhealthy ways; the second has you go on a self-destructive meltdown once you've built up enough stress.

 

[war piglet]

You shake his hand, give him a hundred bucks and regretfully inform him that Hotel Glass Oven is closed and he'll have to find somewhere else to sleep from now on. Your sorcerer's sight shows his Loyalty crumbling away to nothing over the course of a few seconds.

Click to shrink...

Jim! No!

 

[Vealie]

Powers like Aegis' should probably just give her stats. Can't remember the last time I've read a protag being led around by the nose by their power to such an extent, she does next to nothing not related to acquiring more power(s).
Simultaneously making awful decisions and executing them competently, this is just like my munchkin terrible RP tabletop characters.

 

[Akuma-Heika]

Not just names, mechanics. Taylor is an eclipse caste solar exalt. That's what it has to do with Exalted. It is also Worm with a novel power, because I integrated the crossover elements into the Worm setting instead of having them show up out of nowhere. Thus there is none of the "wait, why don't you have a corona gemma? This has never happened before" that so often happens with crossovers.

Click to shrink...

so I see you decided the route you are taking for Charms. Will Native Charms be accessible? Will Native permanent Charms like Ox-Body be accessible (aka will Taylor be able to stack 7-8 Ox-Body Charms/equivalents for a truly obscene health track, [willpower and natural soak also possible ])?

 

[Daniel Snuts]

so I see you decided the route you are taking for Charms. Will Native Charms be accessible? Will Native permanent Charms like Ox-Body be accessible (aka will Taylor be able to stack 7-8 Ox-Body Charms/equivalents for a truly obscene health track, [willpower and natural soak also possible ])?

Click to shrink...

Pretty sure there are more published 2e charms than there are canonical parahumans total, even counting those whose entire contribution to the story was a "deceased" coming from an endbringer armband. The idea of 7-8 identical charms is firmly in the realm of 'thought exercise I never bothered with'.

Why not just make a new charm? It's an open charm set.

Click to shrink...

Autism.

(because it feels more satisfying in my mind to do it this way)

 

[Mr Zoat]

Autism.

(because it feels more satisfying in my mind to do it this way)

Click to shrink...

Really? For me it's the other way around. 'This is what the thing does so THIS IS WHAT THE THING DOES'.

 

[IdleWeiss]

Maybe I missed this while reading, but couldn't Dog (with capital D) just yoink the tinkertech through the locker? Not trying to be pedantic, but it would be interesting to know if Dog can just materialize in and out of opponents for pseudo-telefrags...

 

[Daniel Snuts]

Spoiler: Kid-Win-o-vision

Crap. Crap. Crap. I'm screwed. I'm so screwed it's not even funny. I finish searching through my entire locker for the second time. Where is it? Did I leave it somewhere? I didn't have it with me to math class. Did I? I could have sworn I only took it out at lunch. But then again I could have sworn that I put it back, too. Oh god, Piggy is going to kill me if I left it lying around where anyone could find it.

I try to retrace my steps. Did I go to the library, or was that last week? I can't remember. I was tinkering, I don't notice things when I'm tinkering. Did I drop it somewhere? Which way did I go?

As my search refuses to bear fruit, I begin to resign myself to not finding it. The question then becomes what to do about it. Can I cover up that I lost it? Of course I can. My workshop is a mess. No one will notice. If someone asks me 'hey Kid Win, what happened to that gun you were working on?', I can just tell them that I had another idea and took it apart for spare parts. They'll believe me, because I do that all the time.

And if they ask to see the new project, I'll tell them it didn't end up working out. They'll believe that too, for the same reason.

Empty-handed, I return to search through my locker a third time, already knowing that it won't help.

Several people greet you cheerfully when you enter the bar. It's weird, now that you think about it, that the only other parahuman you've seen here is Rune, and then only to meet you. Apparently the way these people divide themselves into the 'brass' and the 'rank and file' is not just a clever turn of phrase, and you're somewhat unique in your level of... fraternization? Well, no matter. It would be nice if Krieg and Stormtiger wandered by to say hello and give you their soul prices, but you've got other things on your mind right now.

"Does anyone know where I can buy a sheep, no questions asked?" you inquire of the room.

"I didn't know you were Welsh!" some asshole - wait, you recognize him, that's Fake Swede from the other day - calls out.

"A dead sheep," you clarify, before the room can devolve into another European ancestry dick measuring competition. "Dog food," you clarify further, as you see his lips shaping the 'k' in 'kinky'.

"My cousin is a butcher," one guy offers.

"See, now that's a good, helpful answer. Take note, Fake Swede." Oops. You didn't mean to let slip your personal name for the guy, but it seems to meet with general approval.

("My name is Jonas," Fake Swede complains. "Not anymore it isn't," the guy next to him says)

"Does he deliver?" you ask. "I'm not sure he'd appreciate me coming over in work clothes."

"You kiddin' me? The crazy bitch who took down Mush in a single blow? He'd be stoked to meet'cha. C'mon."

Well. You'll try to take that comment in the spirit it was given. You think. You're not crazy, though. You just... jumped off a three-story building to get at your enemy. Ahem.

The guy ('Eric', you file his name in the circular cabinet) leads you outside to his pickup. Yeah, yeah, you know what they say about getting into cars with strange men. That advice is for people who can't sic a giant wolf on perverts. Fenrir rides in the back, intangible yet somehow deciding that his position is static relative to the truck now.

Alone with you in these less festive circumstances, Eric seems to become aware of the fact that you're not actually 'one of the lads' - there's an awkward age and gender gap that conversation will have to lunge across.

"So, uh, how's school treating you?" he asks as the silence threatens to become uncomfortable.

"Pretty fucking awesome, actually," you answer, silently marveling at how you're not lying about that.

"Not making you write essays on the horrors of the holocaust, then?" He uses a high-pitched, whiny voice for that word in particular, just in case there was any doubt about his opinion on its realness attribute.

You shake your head. "That was last year." You pause, thinking back. "And three years ago. Also, uh, five years ago, I think? But we had to make a collage then, not an essay."

He grunts the satisfied grunt of a man having his biases confirmed by facts and logic. "It's a bit funny, isn't it?"

"How so?" you ask, bracing for more Endlösung-based humor.

"When they teach you about the romans, they tell you that you can never trust contemporary historians, because the winners write the history books. Then when they get to the most recent big war, that they won, they tell you that the enemy just so happened to be the most cartoonishly evil villains in all of history."

"That is a bit funny," you agree politely.

The butcher is, as promised, stoked to meet you. "It's great to see more youngsters standing up and fighting for their people," he says as he vigorously shakes your hand. "If there were more people like you we wouldn't be in nearly the same mess."

It almost makes you feel guilty about being an infiltrator. Especially when he gives you a discount. You could almost afford to feed Fenrir twice a week at this rate (that sounds sort of bad, doesn't it?), even without taking cape fight bounties into account. Except... living hand-to-mouth is not a very good idea. And you need to save up money to hire Faultline at some point, that's still on the table. So it's purely up to your conscience how well you treat your wolf. Yay. What are the odds that you'll settle on an equilibrium that doesn't involve a certain set point of guilt?

You have whatsisname - Eric, right - load up the carcass 'to go'. His cousin was a fan, sure, but having a giant carnivore feast right outside his shop is a bit much. You have Fenrir materialize in the alley behind the bar and feed him there. Some of the patrons come out to have a look at their new mascot(s?), but only briefly. Watching him tear flesh and crunch bones is not all that pleasant. You stay, though, happy to see him happy.

When the sheep is all gone, he shows his appreciation by licking your face. Well, trying to. Your face is shielded, so he just leaves sheep juices smeared all over your mask. At which point Rune shows up.

"Wow," she says. "That's sure, uh, gonna strike fear into the hearts of your enemies, but..."

"Yeah, yeah." You've heard it all before. Blood-spattered capes are bad optics.

You get both of you cleaned up and board the rock. Rune stops and hovers at roof level, but you make no move to get off and ride.

"I told you I didn't mind elevator duty, right?" Rune asks.

"Yeah, but it took jumping off a roof to make you stop being a bitch about it. I'm not going to spend that goodwill all at once."

She snorts, equally amused and annoyed, and takes off without further argument.

Absolutely nothing happens for the next four hours.

You're not complaining - you're here for the powers, not the fighting - but it's not what you expected, given what happened last time.

"Is this normal?" you ask.

"Huh? Yeah. The Merchants won't act up again so soon after getting smacked down, and the japs keep to themselves, mostly."

"What about... mundane problems?" The people you're supposed to perform hate crimes on, you mean.

"It's winter," she says, her tone clearly indicating that it's an explanation. You nod, frowning beneath your mask. Is she implying that... people of African descent prefer to stay indoors when it's cold out? Yeah, okay. That makes sense, and it's far from the most racist thing you've heard since you joined.

---

Kid Win's gun is lying dematerialized next to your bed. You study it where it lies. From what you can tell it shoots the typical colorful, slow-moving concussive blasts everyone calls 'lasers'. Slow-moving, that is, as compared to regular bullets or actual laser beams, you wouldn't want to try dodging them. Still, it's nothing interesting. Concussive blasts with accompanying light-show is literally the most common superpower, not just in tinkertech but also among actual Blasters.

Considerably more interesting is the unfinished secondary system set into the grip. It looks like the gun is supposed to be able to vanish and reappear. Not dematerialize - immaterial objects still occupy a position in space - but really vanish. Go 'elsewhere', enter a state without a physical position, and as such become simultaneously adjacent to every location.

Your sorcerer's sight lets you figure all that out, and you're pretty sure you could replicate the effect with orichalcum, but you can't grasp it in a way that would let you turn it into a power.

A shame. When you realized you could see tinkertech you had entertained the idea that you would be able to drop all the stalking and infiltration and what-not and just find a Tinker to team up with to learn All The Powers. Not seriously, of course, since that would involve the universe wanting to make your life simple, but still. A shame.

---

The next morning you have a nasty fright as you almost run into Gallant again. Immediately followed by a much worse fright, as you suddenly realize that you're an idiot: Fenrir has emotions holy shit you should have thought of that earlier! Luckily he doesn't look your way this time either, but you cannot keep relying on luck here.

He may or may not be able to make out the shape of a wolf and out you as Low Key... but if all he sees is a shapeless cloud of love and obedience floating around next to you and occasionally overlapping your classmates, well... the conclusions he'd draw from that are arguably worse.

"See that guy?" you whisper to Fenrir. "You must never, ever let him see you, even when you're immaterial. Especially when you're immaterial. You can't-" You were about to say 'come to school with me any more', but Fenrir interrupts you by nodding and walking right up behind Gallant. "Jesus Christ what are you doing?" you hiss.

Fenrir sniffs Gallant carefully, starting at the back of his neck and slowly working all the way down to his feet. If he were to turn around at any point during this... but he doesn't. Fenrir looks back at you and nods again before leaping through the wall, out of sight. Okay, so he's... got the scent now, you guess, enough to smell him coming in time to make himself scarce?

"Good dog," you whisper as you sag against the wall. Is this what a heart attack feels like?

In less terrifying news, you find out that you share English class with your favorite aspiring school shooter. The class is otherwise terribly boring. Which suits you just fine, because it means Kid Win is bored enough to stop listening and start sketching plans for some sort of tinkertech. Not that you can see his notebook from where you're sitting, but the way his power lights up is a definite clue. Score!

When you go looking for Aegis at lunch, you instead happen across Glory Girl and Panacea. Right, they go to Arcadia too. You were so focused on discovering the secret identities of the Wards that you completely forgot about the public identities of New Wave.

This is the first time you've seen Panacea for real, as the last time you met you deliberately kept sorcerer's sight turned off. And what you see leaves you staring in awe. Regular capes have a steady glow suffusing them, that pulses and twists when they use their powers. Panacea sparkles.

Healer, you realize. She's killing or denaturing every single bacterium that touches her skin, causing millions of microscopic flashes of power every second.

It's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.

It's also completely useless. As far as studying her power goes, it's like staring into a screen full of static. Pretty, pretty static.

You really should stop staring and go do something useful.

...Just a little bit longer, yeah?

Spoiler: Victoria-o-vision

"Don't look now, but there's a girl behind you who's totally checking you out."

I'm already reaching out to her as I speak, and gently catch her head between my hands to keep her from twisting it around.

"I literally said 'don't look,'" I chide her, causing her to blush slightly. "At least try to make it look natural. Turn your head just a little bit. There, in the corner of your eye. Curly hair, glasses, beanpole figure?"

"Oh, her. She's not checking me out, Vicky. I healed her a while back. She appreciated it."

She adds that last part almost as an afterthought, causing me to snort in amusement. "Of course she appreciated it! Who doesn't appreciate being healed?"

"No, it's like... People are happy, sure, but they are happy that they got their turn at the healing dispenser. Sometimes they're so happy they break down crying..." She stops briefly and swallows before continuing on. "Quite often actually. But they never... they never wonder, 'what if the healing dispenser had something else she wanted to do today?'"

I- I don't know what to say. I had no idea she felt like that. She's been looking a bit worn out lately, but- Oh. Oh no.

"I do that, don't I?" I whisper. "I take you for granted."

"Little bit, yeah," she says, but the way she can't quite maintain a smile as she says it screams 'more like a whole freaking lot, you big dummy!'

"Oh Ames." I gather her up in a hug. "You know I love you right? I'm going to be a better sister from now on."

And the very first thing I'm going to do for her is set her head straight about this girl who's obviously checking her out, holy shit.

"So, this girl who appreciates you," I say with a smile as I let go of her, "tell me about her."

"I was on my way home when she was hit by a car, practically in front of me. I healed her, of course, and she apologized for creating work for me." She smiles. "She even apologized to the driver for traumatizing him."

"Bull. Shit. Nobody is that nice."

"Vicky, you know that I can pretty much read people's emotions while I'm healing them."

I nod. She's explained it before. Heart rate, hormones, galvanic skin wossname... Stuff like that, she sees it all.

"Well, I'm telling you the girl was mortified at being a bother. She offered to buy me dinner to make up for it, too."

"She offered-" My palm hits my face with enough force that nearby people startle at the sound. "She was asking you out, you dolt! On a date!"

She opens her mouth to retort, but I keep going. "When you turned her down, what did she do?"

"Well, she wanted to buy me coffee instead-" Her eyes widen as she hears what she's saying and sees my growing grin. "No! You're imagining things, Vicky. I swear I caught her checking Carlos out yesterday."

Oh my god is it really that difficult for her to believe that someone might like her? "I'm not saying she doesn't swing both ways, I- look, I've got this, okay."

I pull out my phone and call my boyfriend.

"Hey Dean. Guess what? There's this girl who's totally hot for my sister, but Amy refuses to believe me when I tell her. I need you to come over and read her emotions and prove that I'm right." My left arm easily suffices to fend Amy off as she sputters and tries to grab the phone.

That put-upon sigh is not how you should react to your girlfriend calling you. Dick. "We've talked about respecting people's privacy, Victoria," he says tiredly.

I roll my eyes. "Sorry, I meant to say 'New Wave would like to formally request the assistance of the Wards in evaluating the threat presented by a potential stalker.'"

He sighs again, but I recognize this one as his 'I'm just going to do what you want instead of arguing' sigh.

"Great! We're in the usual spot, come quickly before she runs off."

"Why are you doing this to me?" Amy asks.

"It's for your own good. All part of being a better sister!"

"I see her," Dean says through the phone. "The lanky brunette with the glasses, right?"

"Yeah. What's the word?"

"I'd call it 'awestruck by beauty.' With an undertone of-"

"Hah! Dean says I'm totally right."

"What? Give me that!" I relinquish my phone with a smirk. "Tell me exactly what you are seeing." Amy demands.

...

"...oh." Amy slumps in defeat, and I reclaim my phone from her nerveless fingers.

"Thanks Dean, you're the best," I chirp before I hang up. Then I turn my attention to my sister. She seems unreasonably sad for someone who has just been told she's beautiful. "Are you alright?"

"I feel terrible," she says. "She feels that way about me, but I- I don't find her attractive at all."

"Hey. No. That's not something you get to feel bad about. We can't help who we like. I'll just tell her you're not interested."

"Wait, don't-"

I zip past my sister and fly across the room to hover in front of her admirer.

"Hey."

Her eyes, which had been glued to Amy the whole time, snap to me. They quickly travel all the way down my body and back up. Real subtle there, girl.

"What?" Her tone is hostile, but her eyes keep flicking down to points of interest on my body.

"I'm afraid my sister doesn't return your feelings."

"What?" This time around she's confused, perhaps alarmed. I hold up my hands.

"There's nothing wrong with it. She's just not the one for you. I'm sure that someday you'll find a girl who-"

"I'm not gay!"

"Bitch, please. You're checking me out as we speak." Admittedly she's looking at me like I'm a piece of meat where she was looking at Amy like she's a work of art, but still. This much denial comes with complimentary pyramids. It can't possibly be healthy. I flare my aura, just a little. It's not that I want her slobbering over me, but if I can just get her to admit-

Instead she hisses. She gets right up in my personal space, but her eyes are narrowed in anger instead of wide with awe.

"If you don't turn your aura off right now, I'll break my fist on your perfect fucking face so hard you'll never get my blood out of your shirt."

I can't help it, I flinch and float backwards a few feet. She follows in lockstep, raising her fist. The crazy bitch isn't bluffing! I quickly clamp down on my aura again. Dammit, I screwed that up. Now she's going to blame the aura for the whole thing. I consider arguing further, but I can tell it's pointless. I showed weakness, and she knows it. She won, even though I'm right. I fly off without another word.

When I rejoin Amy, Dean is sitting next to her. He's giving me a very disapproving look.

"Well, that could have gone better," I say. I try for a nonchalant shrug, but he isn't having it.

"Victoria, that girl hates you. What did you do?"

"Nothing?" He definitely isn't having it. I sigh. "That girl is so deep in the closet she's eating out the White Witch. I just tried to get her to come out. She didn't take it very well."

"Not very well? She- Look, just leave her alone, okay? We don't know what she's going through, but you're clearly not helping."

"Yeah, yeah." I wave him off, but then something occurs to me, something incredibly important that I can't believe I missed.

"Amy!" I spin to face my sister. "You said you 'didn't find her attractive'. Not that you weren't attracted to girls. Are you-"

Amy turns red and buries her face in her hands. She is. I hear Dean sighing again behind me, but I ignore him. This calls for all the hugs.

"It's fine," I tell her as I gather her in my arms. "You should have told me. You know I'd never judge you, right?" Another thought occurs to me, and I laugh. "Oh god, those dates I tried to set you up with, that never worked out? I'll do better this time around, I promise. What's your type? Do you-"

"Please stop trying to help."

What is it with parahumans and wacky misunderstandings about your sexuality? Ugh. So annoying. The most annoying part is how well it worked out for you. Glory Girl is no doubt telling her boyfriend (whose arrival you completely missed - at least Fenrir made himself scarce as instructed) all about what happened just now. And just like that, you have an alibi. Your fascination with Panacea, your intense dislike of Glory Girl (luckiest bloody second-gen cape in the world that she is), that juicy fear-of-discovery every time you catch sight of Gallant? It all has a perfectly innocent explanation now.

All you have to do is spend the rest of high school pretending to be a lesbian pretending to be straight.

It's funny, you were so focused on Gallant's power that you never got a proper look at his face. It wasn't until you saw them together that you realized that he was actually whatshisname, Glory Girl's rich boy-toy from the cover of that gossip rag. If you had, you'd have tried to avoid Glory Girl and Panacea too, and ironically been worse off right now.

You even got a soul price out of it.

Glory Girl wants her boyfriend to stop being such a dick all the time.

Makes sense. You recall hearing that they break up all the time, but invariably get back together again after a week or two. Once you get past your reflexive 'celebrities gonna celeb' response, that indicates a fundamentally unhealthy relationship.

The hero calling himself Gallant is treating his girlfriend badly. You remember when you would have found that revelation startling.

===

Spoiler: A/N

That almost turned into a regular old interlude. I can't help it, Victoria is just so much fun to write. Being Glory Girl means never having to worry about being in the wrong!

"Why does everyone think I'm gay?" Taylor complained plaintively, not realizing she's the female protagonist of a fanfic written by a man. Of course everyone assumes she's going to be gay, canon be damned.

 

[Prognostic Hannya]

Vicky's soul price is for Dean to be nicer? That seems a little shallow...

Also is Taylor seriously gonna be straight

 

[R.A.G.]

lmao, bruh, you're fishing for a ban on SB by diving this deep into seemingly reasonable white supremacy POV/arguments--

Oh god, that's what Taylor's going to end up limit breaking over isn't it. She's going to snap into the middle of lunch or something and start shouting 'DESPITE-'

Also is Taylor seriously gonna be straight

Click to shrink...

"The accumulated filth of all their horny and thirst will foam up about their waists and all the stans and yurifans will look up and shout, ' gay pls'...and I'll look down, and whisper, 'no. '"
- Taylor, here, probably

 

[Rerororororororororo]

Taylor is about to bust out the cookiemonster story.

 

[Alucard 109]

lmao, bruh, you're fishing for a ban on SB by diving this deep into seemingly reasonable white supremacy POV/arguments--

Click to shrink...

Yeah... that's kinda the issue with stories like this. By portraying horrible groups with horrible ideologies as actual people, you sort of have to play devil's advocate to a certain degree.

And from a mod perspective, there's a fine line between "everyone seems reasonable vrom their own point of view" and "is actually advocating for previously mentioned horrible group".

This is the only Empire fic I've ever seen that's (so far) managed to stay on the right side of the line...

 

[Daniel Snuts]

Maybe I missed this while reading, but couldn't Dog (with capital D) just yoink the tinkertech through the locker? Not trying to be pedantic, but it would be interesting to know if Dog can just materialize in and out of opponents for pseudo-telefrags...

Click to shrink...

No telefrags, and he can only bring things along for the transition, not yank them across from the other side. They have to start out in the same material state as him.

Vicky's soul price is for Dean to be nicer? That seems a little shallow...

Click to shrink...

Vicky, shallow? Never!

Also is Taylor seriously gonna be straight

Click to shrink...

Taylor is powersexual, don't kinkshame.

 

[w34v3r]

Taylor is powersexual, don't kinkshame.

Click to shrink...

... Given the history of solar exalts the only question now is whether she'll be paired with Warrior, Wanderer, Devourer, or end up helping carve a new entity out of the various shards.

 

[Akuma-Heika]

Pretty sure there are more published 2e charms than there are canonical parahumans total, even counting those whose entire contribution to the story was a "deceased" coming from an endbringer armband. The idea of 7-8 identical charms is firmly in the realm of 'thought exercise I never bothered with'.



Autism.

(because it feels more satisfying in my mind to do it this way)

Click to shrink...

While they have the same name, the Charm effects are different.
Edit: although I feel like Reserve of Will only has a Spirit Charm version

While most are unnamed I am pretty sure it is stated that the parahuman population of the world is in the thousands. Not including the statistics for vigilantes that die early in their careers

 

[Daniel Snuts]

While they have the same name, the Charm effects are different.
Edit: although I feel like Reserve of Will only has a Spirit Charm version

Click to shrink...

If you really want a ruling I'm going to say that normal ox-body limits apply, but you can freely mix and match solar, lunar, etc versions up to that limit. Not that there would be any noticeable difference between them, since it's not a Gamer fic. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 'Taylor has 5 -1 Health Levels and 6 -2 Health Levels' and 'Taylor has 4 -1 HLs and 8 -2 HLs'.

You could also learn multiple version of the first excellency and pick which one to use (the solar one, duh), but see my earlier post - I'm deliberately limiting excellency access here.

While most are unnamed I am pretty sure it is stated that the parahuman population of the world is in the thousands. Not including the statistics for vigilantes that die early in their careers

Click to shrink...

Yes, but if I put them in the story they would be OCs, and I don't want to use OCs. I want to explore the 'canonical' charm-space.