[She's not sure why she feels like she's made a mistake here. It's not like she has any reason to keep things from Krouse at this point - well, maybe a few things but -]
Right, I forgot.
You remember when Dinah Alcott predicted the end of the world?
[She had actually figured this out at the time that Krouse came from but they weren't exactly telling Teacher, were they.]
You know how the powers are "passengers"? Everyone with powers not gained from Cauldron got their powers from Scion. His real body, I think.
I was in prison when it happened but my understanding is that Jack convinced Scion to give killing people a try. Prior to that all of his actions were decided by a british homeless man who told him to go help people and fight Endbringers.
The ramblings of a mad scientist with blonde ringlets overheard in a room reeking of terror and opened flesh. Nothing he'd had time to pause to think about before he'd stopped caring about answers. An off-handed quip from another blonde at a cafeteria table, inviting a question he didn't care to ask.
An alien virus, infecting and destroying from the inside out. It fits. It fits with everything, right down to the idea that the world's so-called greatest hero was nothing but a facade obeying the commands of some homeless guy half a world away. A miserable punchline to a tortured joke, and he's the last to know.
That's what he gave her.
Krouse takes his earpiece out for a while. It's almost an hour before he comes back to it. ]
And you killed him.
So that was the end of the world. The all-powerful golden superhero turned out to be an alien infection, got talked into going on a rampage by Jack Slash, and you made him suicidal. Am I getting that right?
[Tattletale's idea, of course - and then Khepri used a nobody unseen by everyone to deliver the finishing blow to his fragile burgeoning grief.
He wonders if Tattletale kept it from him on purpose. As an act of pity or an act of her two faced kindness. It dawns on her that she doesn't actually know where he's from. It was almost certainly redused to dust along with the rest of the world - if he has family, there's a near 90% chance they were wiped out.
She should tell him that. It would be right.
A colder, more cynical voice wonders if that might just incentivize him to stop trying. To give up on saving anything. She knows her city is gone. Redused to rubble and mounds of corpses. People she went to school with - people she fought alongside, for a given definition of fighting - they died horribly.
Does knowing they're all dead make it easier? Does she even care? Her aunt, Clockblocker, Kid Win... A few years later, Amy can admit to herself that part of her fucking hated them all.]
The Undersiders mostly.
[It always circles back around to those assholes after all. The fact that it was mostly Lisa who came up with it goes without saying. Meanwhile her own role goes unsaid.]
But not before a lot of the damage was already done.
[ Of course the fucking Undersiders were involved. He shouldn't be surprised. And by Undersiders, Amy means Tattletale, because that particularly strategy has her written all over it.
He wouldn't put it past Skitter, but Skitter's not an Undersider. Weaver got whatever it was she wanted out of them and moved up in the world.
It's hard to feel anything about that but dull, bitter resentment. He knows by now that people never get what they deserve. The Undersiders are once again the dubious saviours of so much burning wreckage. It puts some things Tattletale said into perspective, for all the good that does him.
And it's how he dies, one day, but he doesn't feel a thing about that. ]
I'm sorry.
[ Two words easy enough to type out. He thinks he is sorry for her, even if it's not the way he probably should be. Sorry that's the world she ended up with, through no fault of her own. ]
What a fucking shitshow.
So that was it. Powers, capes, everything. Just the side effects of an alien invasion. And that's what's in our heads.
She supposes, objectively, the end of the world is something to be sorry for. It still surprises her. Saying that the destruction of everything she ever knew and grew up with didn't affect her would be a lie - that the mass amounts of death didn't effect her, that'd also be a lie. Just... not as much as it should.
She thinks, to some extent, when she lost her home she felt like her city was gone already. Brockton Bay fell in her mind the day Leviathan landed. The day the Slaughterhouse showed up. The day the Undersiders robbed a bank.
The world was already so awful to begin with. She knows that better than most.]
Not puppets. It's kind of tempting to think of them in those terms, as scary as it can be. The stronger the shard is, the more prone they are to... filling in the gaps, I guess? Giving certain emotional reactions? Mine's one of the stronger ones out there. Same as Skitter and Tattletale.
But they're not in control. It just... feels good to give it what it wants. And feels mind numbingly awful to give it nothing.
Hosts is what I use. It's like a sleeper virus. You go through the worst day of your life and then it wakes up. And then you keep having that same day, again and again and again.
[ Using his power always felt easy. He knew he was lucky for that, in some twisted sense of the word. He'd never thought to wonder if there was anything more to it than that.
Is it a want when two things align along an invisible chord of humming potential? How much of it has been him, and how much of it has been this? Is it like hers and Skitter's and Tattletale's, or is it different because of how he got it?
But with all that ambiguity for himself, he still doesn't doubt her for a second about that half of it. He's seen a power that wanted. What he doubts is the extent of their control, because he's seen that, too.
The day he got his power was the worst day of his life, but they're not the same. Does she know that? Has Tattletale let it slip? Is she waiting for him to admit it? Would she have answers if he did? Would he want to know what they are? ]
What do they want?
If Scion's gone, and he was the one controlling them, what do they want now? Is there a point, or are we just carrying around whatever is left over?
The process that was... supposed to happen. It was interrupted. There were supposed to be two of them. Scion couldn't complete the assimilation of the human race all on his own because he was barely capable of object permanence.
They're viruses. They don't have wants or intentions beyond seeing conflict and intensity. They're strongest the closer you are to the breaking point that spawned them.
Think of it this way. Do you remember the times when you felt the strongest?
[ The shape of what she's talking about is starting to come together, the joke bleaker by the second. There's no greater purpose behind any of it. The universe is as pointlessly indifferent as it seems to be. ]
I do.
[ He wouldn't call it strength, exactly. The times when things were easiest, everything fluid and instinctive. ]
I guess that explains most of the rest of it.
Anything else you think I might want to know before I go try to wrap my head around having a fucking alien in it?
[Taylor Hebert ripped your buddies away from whatever world they were hiding in and used them as meatshields in a neverending onslaught against an unstoppable enemy.]
None.
Sorry. It sucks.
[She's not entirely sure what she's sorry about. What she's still keeping from him, the fact that she didn't tell him sooner?
[ It doesn't make him feel better. He doesn't think there's anything anyone could say that could make him feel better about any of this as realizations keep ticking away in the back of his mind. It's going to take him a while to get through the scope of this, let alone processing it.
But it makes him feel less like he's the only one this fucking matters to, and that's something. She could have tried to hold this over him in any of a dozen ways. She didn't. ]
I mean it. Thanks for telling me. I know I haven't exactly sounded grateful, but that's because I tend to get kind of shitty when I'm having an existential crisis. My bad.
I figured a lot of this out a while ago. Only reason why I'm not still freaking out, I guess.
[There's not much that Amy can feel smug about - and as desolate and hopeless as all this is, the fact that she figured it all out two years before Tattletale does bring her some small sense of satisfaction. Almost enough to fight off the uncanny feeling that she should feel worse about all this than she does.
She should be freaking out, right? She should relate to Krouse's reaction here.
She doesn't really. It always sucked. Heroes, villains, capes, powers. There was never anything remotely romantic about any of it. And some small part of her has wanted it all to burn to the ground for a long time now.]
It's not like there's anything we can do about it.
[ He's assuming that's the case. If Amy was able to excise their infection, he'd think she'd have mentioned it.
And as soon as he thinks that, he knows he wouldn't take her up on it even if it was a possibility. Whatever it might mean for him down the road, however much his skin crawls at knowing what he did to himself, he's not giving up his power. What else does he have? ]
No use crying over spilled milk or thwarted alien invasions.
She already knew everything. She just dressed it up as nonsense, so people dismissed her as crazy. When I touched her hand, I started to connect certain dots. She worshipped Scion.
That paired with a bunch of Bonesaw's ramblings helped me reach certain conclusions. I tried to warn Dragon a few times, but it never worked.
That was a few days after I arrived in the Birdcage, I think.
[She was in the middle of a psychotic breakdown, she doesn't super remember.]
[ Longer than he'd have guessed, if he'd been guessing. Maybe it's the combination of everything else beforehand, but he can't really work up to being upset the news hadn't gotten around earlier. He wasn't in a state to care, and clearly, it didn't make a difference to the people who should've. ]
At least you tried. Not your fault it sounds crazy. Or that your witnesses were actually crazy.
I hope the conspiracy theorists got a kick out of it in the end. First Cauldron, then Scion. The world really is controlled by a shadowy secret organization and aliens. Surprise.
[ He'd missed catching the big reveal up close and personal, but he'd heard enough in the panicking and furious secondhand wave before the Protectorate managed to shut it back down. ]
It wouldn't have helped, really. Dragon got taken out in the end by a group of non capes sponsored by Teacher.
[It does actually make her pause when he talks about Cauldron. A few dots connect in her head. Judging by what he's unaware of - and what she was aware of at the time - there's something he knows that she doesn't. It's not as if the negotiations held in Cauldron's headquarters were public knowledge but all the cell leaders knew at least... then again, they were only held after Behemoth's death, which she kind of assumed was after his time.
Hm.]
Surprised you know about Cauldron.
Fucking hate those guys.
[She's not sure she could have gotten out of the Birdcage without them - or that they would have won without Doormaker and Clairvoyant to bolster Taylor's ability.
Still. Cauldron violated something that used to be important to her - complicated, something she deeply resented - but it was important. And they tainted it. Rotted it to the core.]
That's the first thing Krouse thinks when he reads what Amy has to say about Teacher. They did it, and what gets him about it is the slippery, disorienting lurch of that they coming in the form of the collective inclusive.
Logically, he knows that it's right. In the future he hasn't lived out, he's with Teacher until he dies. He knew that, so he knows that he contributed to the overall plan, part of the conduit that kept Teacher connected to Saint. A negligible role, in the larger scheme of things.
It's not responsibility he's feeling. It's a tiny flicker of obedient satisfaction, and he recoils from it like he reached out in the dark and sank his fingers into a swollen, hot patch of rot.
It almost makes talking about Cauldron, and what he knows about Cauldron, slightly more appealing by contrast. ]
I was still in Brockton Bay when the Triumvirate got found out.
They clamped it down fast, but word travelled faster. I picked up enough of the high notes to say I couldn't agree with you more.
[ Unlike the topic of Teacher, his feelings here are uncomplicated. He fucking hates them too. There are enough obvious reasons anyone should that he doesn't have to get into the specifics of his personal ones. ]
All those noble heroes, worse than most of the Birdcage. Fucking Lab Rat did less human experimentation.
[No mention of it. So Teacher must have been planning it for a long time then.
Irritating, but she's not quite enough of a dick to hold it against Krouse. Billions of people dead and for what.]
Lab Rat also helped more than they did against Scion.
[Not quite true. But Lab Rat is a big reason why Taylor Hebert survived long enough to become Khepri - something which Cauldron had absolutely nothing to do with.]
That was their supposed end goal. Preparing humanity to fight against Scion at the end. Eidolon was vaporized, Legend did nothing, Alexandria's corpse was being puppeted around like a doll, and the rest of them hid in a bunker.
[She decides not to bring up the Endbringers. She's not sure why. Trickster and his Travellers were there when they fought against Leviathan - when Neil and Eric both died. Maybe the fact that America's most famous and iconic heroes were responsible for all of that death and devastation makes the ugly feeling in her chest intensify.
Her childhood was spent in guilt and shame over failing to live up to that very standard. That very standard that the greatest heroes humanity had to offer never even touched. Her fucking dad was locked away in a cage never to be let out - while they all got to fly free and condemning millions to die.]
[ Krouse types Good in the text entry window and lets it float there, one stark word hanging in his field of vision. He deletes it with a blink.
Amy's cynical, but there's a line somewhere. He doesn't want today to be when he discovers the limits of her newfound distaste for the world's greatest heroes. He pushes off the floor and walks into his bedroom to sit on the edge of his mattress, fingers resting on his end table next to the only picture frame in his apartment.
"Eidolon's dead," he says, to no one who's going to hear it. ]
So much for the greater good.
[ That's not surprising, except for the corpse puppeteering, but even that's just another fucked up detail. Later, when he thinks through the pieces she's giving him, he thinks he'll be able to put together a reasonable idea of how it must have happened.
He's just not doing it yet. For once, he doesn't have to. It hasn't happened yet, and it's already over. And if he thinks about it like that, he might as well get one small thing over with. While they're sharing. ]
I know I die.
I don't know if you knew that. It's not like you'd have a reason to. I doubt anyone was keeping track. But if you did, I thought I might let you know you don't have to sidestep it.
It's fine. I'm over it. Bound to happen sooner or later. Just seemed awkward leaving it up in the air.
Did she know? The death toll was so big, so full of people she'd met in passing and then never thought about again - that she thinks it might have just slipped her mind.
Prior to all this, he was someone she met in indirect association with a group of people that she resented. 'Can you grow us wings?'
Billions of people died. Most of her old classmates, her aunt. Taylor Hebert.
And somehow that's the one she's stuck on.]
I didn't.
I wasn't on the front lines. But the death toll was massive.
[ He doesn't have any proof, one way or another, except that he doesn't see a reason for her not to be honest when it comes to trying to clip off whatever remaining slivers of hope she seems to think he might dare entertaining.
The fact she got it slightly wrong clinches it. If she understood him as well as she acts like she does, she'd have told him he survived, numb and empty and enthralled.
She can't take away a future he already didn't have. ]
Everyone dies someday. I'd rather not dwell on it.
She also mentioned the two of you had prior world saving experience. That, I thought she was stretching. Guess not.
[Amy remembers the truth that Victoria didn't tell her about her own future. That everything will get worse and that she'll get worse.
Is it shitty of her to think she kind of wishes she could have just gotten the 'You die' reveal? Rather than the gut churning agony of uncertainty about whatever it is that happened?
Obviously.]
That's one way to put it.
Makes it sound like she's a lot more cooperative than she actually is.
[ There's probably something funny about how quickly he slips back into practicals in the middle of dealing with life (for whatever it's worth) altering information. Plenty of practice, he supposes.
It's easier, anyway. He spares a moment of gratitude to Amy for being willing to let his situation go, even if he can't imagine she has much else to say about it. People she actually knew and possibly even liked died. Not a lot of space to fit in some acquaintance in the ranks.
But she's still not trying to, and he still appreciates it. ]
Triangulation. It's a classic.
I did piss her off. On purpose, this time. So if anything goes off on that front, that's why.
I'm still holding up my side of the agreement. I can't say if she will, but I got the impression she knows she needs you enough to not deliberately fuck you over while she fucks me over. But who fucking knows.
[ He has his own opinions about Tattletale's sense of 'when the situation calls for it', but those are the breaks. Amy has to work with Tattletale regardless of how trustworthy she is, and it's easier if you convince yourself that the snake you're handling follows a set of rules you can learn. ]
That's my problem, anyway. Just wanted to keep you in the loop.
Now I think I'm going to go stare at the ceiling for a while.
[ Ping! Suddenly you receive a photo of.. a piece of paper with text on it? Apparently someone wanted to send you something, but didn't want to bother finding out where everyone lives..
It's a photo of a card that has text on it in perfect yet somehow also still legible calligraphy. It looks ridiculously fancy for what's written on it, which is-- ]
You are hereby cordially invited to:
ADAINE AND FABIAN'S BREATHTAKING BIRTHDAY BASH!
It will be held today, June 3rd, in the rec room of the apartment building. Presents are not necessary, but a good attitude is most definitely required! There will be drinks, dancing and general merriment, because we all deserve something good after that labyrinth!
Trust me - it will be the party of the century here, and you DO NOT want to miss it!
- Fabian Aramais Seacaster
P.S. If you do not know my good friend Adaine yet, make sure to get to know her at the party. She is an absolute delight, and I want her to have the best birthday party possible!
[ For all characters who would attend, there is a log right over here! ]
I want to know more about the ability you spoke of previously.
( no "hey, person i spoke to on the internet and worked with once" or "would you mind sharing?", that'd be a little too familiar. he's getting straight to it instead. )
You said you can heal someone even if it's something like a severed limb or a failing organ. Are there limitations to this? Does the ability work in reverse? Can you cause damage, instead of mend it?
I mean, yeah. But it takes a while, so it's not really effective in immediate combat.
My limits are 1. I can't do it on myself 2. I can't do anything with a corpse 3. Brains are a soft limit, because they're so complicated and very easy to damage on accident - and very hard to completely fix afterward.
Also for what little that it's worth here, I did take a Hippocratic Oath.
( but he hates giving specifics, especially regarding potential contigency plans. ah, well. )
There is a metahuman here who is capable of causing massive amounts of destruction and chaos, were they to decide to let loose. Which they are well-known for. I need a way to disable their abilities in order to subdue them, if they do get out of control.
Huh. I'd probably need to get a look at a metahuman (willingly) before I'd know if I could disable someone's powers directly - or rather, how I'd do that. I'm 99% sure that I could.
But depending on the power there's other ways to disable them. Easiest is probably to temporarily sever/otherwise disable the spine for any combat oriented powers, or lowering body temperature and metabolic rate so that their body becomes too low in energy to sustain their powers and they enter a form of hibernation. That works for almost every power.
[Wouldn't have worked for the Siberian. But she's a unique case.
Her passenger thrives on thinking of unique solutions to problems. Far more exciting than just healing people over and over. It would take a particularly serious case to get her to act on any of these, but she figures that there's no harm in just brainstorming.]
[She's still not sure if Robin is a hero or a villain. "No regard for human life" seems like a hero thing to worry about, but even then she could see her father or Taylor Hebert having the same concerns.
She's not sure it matters.]
Well. We can't really die.
I feel like I'd need to know more about the specifics (powers, type of villain, what kind of threat they actually represented) before I actually agreed to do anything but theoretically I'd be able to immobolize them without touching them or giving any indication that I was doing anything if I was in a room with them for a few minutes.
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timeasmymeasure
un: blackhat | text
Date: 2024-06-02 03:53 pm (UTC)Hey, Amy.
Would you mind expanding on the 'parasitic alien invasion' subject?
no subject
Date: 2024-06-02 04:24 pm (UTC)Right, I forgot.
You remember when Dinah Alcott predicted the end of the world?
no subject
Date: 2024-06-02 04:34 pm (UTC)[ He'd told Teacher about it, among other things. ]
She said it would be in a few years, and it'd be because of Jack.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-03 03:06 am (UTC)[She had actually figured this out at the time that Krouse came from but they weren't exactly telling Teacher, were they.]
You know how the powers are "passengers"? Everyone with powers not gained from Cauldron got their powers from Scion. His real body, I think.
I was in prison when it happened but my understanding is that Jack convinced Scion to give killing people a try. Prior to that all of his actions were decided by a british homeless man who told him to go help people and fight Endbringers.
cw: suicide
Date: 2024-06-03 06:09 am (UTC)The ramblings of a mad scientist with blonde ringlets overheard in a room reeking of terror and opened flesh. Nothing he'd had time to pause to think about before he'd stopped caring about answers. An off-handed quip from another blonde at a cafeteria table, inviting a question he didn't care to ask.
An alien virus, infecting and destroying from the inside out. It fits. It fits with everything, right down to the idea that the world's so-called greatest hero was nothing but a facade obeying the commands of some homeless guy half a world away. A miserable punchline to a tortured joke, and he's the last to know.
That's what he gave her.
Krouse takes his earpiece out for a while. It's almost an hour before he comes back to it. ]
And you killed him.
So that was the end of the world. The all-powerful golden superhero turned out to be an alien infection, got talked into going on a rampage by Jack Slash, and you made him suicidal. Am I getting that right?
cw for cataclismic mass extinction events
Date: 2024-06-03 08:02 am (UTC)[Tattletale's idea, of course - and then Khepri used a nobody unseen by everyone to deliver the finishing blow to his fragile burgeoning grief.
He wonders if Tattletale kept it from him on purpose. As an act of pity or an act of her two faced kindness. It dawns on her that she doesn't actually know where he's from. It was almost certainly redused to dust along with the rest of the world - if he has family, there's a near 90% chance they were wiped out.
She should tell him that. It would be right.
A colder, more cynical voice wonders if that might just incentivize him to stop trying. To give up on saving anything. She knows her city is gone. Redused to rubble and mounds of corpses. People she went to school with - people she fought alongside, for a given definition of fighting - they died horribly.
Does knowing they're all dead make it easier? Does she even care? Her aunt, Clockblocker, Kid Win... A few years later, Amy can admit to herself that part of her fucking hated them all.]
The Undersiders mostly.
[It always circles back around to those assholes after all. The fact that it was mostly Lisa who came up with it goes without saying. Meanwhile her own role goes unsaid.]
But not before a lot of the damage was already done.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-04 04:16 am (UTC)He wouldn't put it past Skitter, but Skitter's not an Undersider. Weaver got whatever it was she wanted out of them and moved up in the world.
It's hard to feel anything about that but dull, bitter resentment. He knows by now that people never get what they deserve. The Undersiders are once again the dubious saviours of so much burning wreckage. It puts some things Tattletale said into perspective, for all the good that does him.
And it's how he dies, one day, but he doesn't feel a thing about that. ]
I'm sorry.
[ Two words easy enough to type out. He thinks he is sorry for her, even if it's not the way he probably should be. Sorry that's the world she ended up with, through no fault of her own. ]
What a fucking shitshow.
So that was it. Powers, capes, everything. Just the side effects of an alien invasion. And that's what's in our heads.
So what are we? Hosts? Carriers? Puppets?
no subject
Date: 2024-06-04 10:55 am (UTC)She supposes, objectively, the end of the world is something to be sorry for. It still surprises her. Saying that the destruction of everything she ever knew and grew up with didn't affect her would be a lie - that the mass amounts of death didn't effect her, that'd also be a lie. Just... not as much as it should.
She thinks, to some extent, when she lost her home she felt like her city was gone already. Brockton Bay fell in her mind the day Leviathan landed. The day the Slaughterhouse showed up. The day the Undersiders robbed a bank.
The world was already so awful to begin with. She knows that better than most.]
Not puppets. It's kind of tempting to think of them in those terms, as scary as it can be. The stronger the shard is, the more prone they are to... filling in the gaps, I guess? Giving certain emotional reactions? Mine's one of the stronger ones out there. Same as Skitter and Tattletale.
But they're not in control. It just... feels good to give it what it wants. And feels mind numbingly awful to give it nothing.
Hosts is what I use. It's like a sleeper virus. You go through the worst day of your life and then it wakes up. And then you keep having that same day, again and again and again.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-04 08:21 pm (UTC)Is it a want when two things align along an invisible chord of humming potential? How much of it has been him, and how much of it has been this? Is it like hers and Skitter's and Tattletale's, or is it different because of how he got it?
But with all that ambiguity for himself, he still doesn't doubt her for a second about that half of it. He's seen a power that wanted. What he doubts is the extent of their control, because he's seen that, too.
The day he got his power was the worst day of his life, but they're not the same. Does she know that? Has Tattletale let it slip? Is she waiting for him to admit it? Would she have answers if he did? Would he want to know what they are? ]
What do they want?
If Scion's gone, and he was the one controlling them, what do they want now? Is there a point, or are we just carrying around whatever is left over?
no subject
Date: 2024-06-07 04:47 pm (UTC)The process that was... supposed to happen. It was interrupted. There were supposed to be two of them. Scion couldn't complete the assimilation of the human race all on his own because he was barely capable of object permanence.
They're viruses. They don't have wants or intentions beyond seeing conflict and intensity. They're strongest the closer you are to the breaking point that spawned them.
Think of it this way. Do you remember the times when you felt the strongest?
no subject
Date: 2024-06-08 05:56 am (UTC)I do.
[ He wouldn't call it strength, exactly. The times when things were easiest, everything fluid and instinctive. ]
I guess that explains most of the rest of it.
Anything else you think I might want to know before I go try to wrap my head around having a fucking alien in it?
no subject
Date: 2024-06-08 06:10 am (UTC)None.
Sorry. It sucks.
[She's not entirely sure what she's sorry about. What she's still keeping from him, the fact that she didn't tell him sooner?
It's all a bleak joke, isn't it.]
no subject
Date: 2024-06-09 05:16 pm (UTC)[ It doesn't make him feel better. He doesn't think there's anything anyone could say that could make him feel better about any of this as realizations keep ticking away in the back of his mind. It's going to take him a while to get through the scope of this, let alone processing it.
But it makes him feel less like he's the only one this fucking matters to, and that's something. She could have tried to hold this over him in any of a dozen ways. She didn't. ]
I mean it. Thanks for telling me. I know I haven't exactly sounded grateful, but that's because I tend to get kind of shitty when I'm having an existential crisis. My bad.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-10 04:44 am (UTC)I figured a lot of this out a while ago. Only reason why I'm not still freaking out, I guess.
[There's not much that Amy can feel smug about - and as desolate and hopeless as all this is, the fact that she figured it all out two years before Tattletale does bring her some small sense of satisfaction. Almost enough to fight off the uncanny feeling that she should feel worse about all this than she does.
She should be freaking out, right? She should relate to Krouse's reaction here.
She doesn't really. It always sucked. Heroes, villains, capes, powers. There was never anything remotely romantic about any of it. And some small part of her has wanted it all to burn to the ground for a long time now.]
no subject
Date: 2024-06-11 03:04 am (UTC)[ He's assuming that's the case. If Amy was able to excise their infection, he'd think she'd have mentioned it.
And as soon as he thinks that, he knows he wouldn't take her up on it even if it was a possibility. Whatever it might mean for him down the road, however much his skin crawls at knowing what he did to himself, he's not giving up his power. What else does he have? ]
No use crying over spilled milk or thwarted alien invasions.
When did you know?
no subject
Date: 2024-06-12 04:51 pm (UTC)She already knew everything. She just dressed it up as nonsense, so people dismissed her as crazy. When I touched her hand, I started to connect certain dots. She worshipped Scion.
That paired with a bunch of Bonesaw's ramblings helped me reach certain conclusions. I tried to warn Dragon a few times, but it never worked.
That was a few days after I arrived in the Birdcage, I think.
[She was in the middle of a psychotic breakdown, she doesn't super remember.]
no subject
Date: 2024-06-12 09:12 pm (UTC)At least you tried. Not your fault it sounds crazy. Or that your witnesses were actually crazy.
I hope the conspiracy theorists got a kick out of it in the end. First Cauldron, then Scion. The world really is controlled by a shadowy secret organization and aliens. Surprise.
[ He'd missed catching the big reveal up close and personal, but he'd heard enough in the panicking and furious secondhand wave before the Protectorate managed to shut it back down. ]
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Date: 2024-06-13 09:24 am (UTC)[It does actually make her pause when he talks about Cauldron. A few dots connect in her head. Judging by what he's unaware of - and what she was aware of at the time - there's something he knows that she doesn't. It's not as if the negotiations held in Cauldron's headquarters were public knowledge but all the cell leaders knew at least... then again, they were only held after Behemoth's death, which she kind of assumed was after his time.
Hm.]
Surprised you know about Cauldron.
Fucking hate those guys.
[She's not sure she could have gotten out of the Birdcage without them - or that they would have won without Doormaker and Clairvoyant to bolster Taylor's ability.
Still. Cauldron violated something that used to be important to her - complicated, something she deeply resented - but it was important. And they tainted it. Rotted it to the core.]
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Date: 2024-06-14 09:13 am (UTC)That's the first thing Krouse thinks when he reads what Amy has to say about Teacher. They did it, and what gets him about it is the slippery, disorienting lurch of that they coming in the form of the collective inclusive.
Logically, he knows that it's right. In the future he hasn't lived out, he's with Teacher until he dies. He knew that, so he knows that he contributed to the overall plan, part of the conduit that kept Teacher connected to Saint. A negligible role, in the larger scheme of things.
It's not responsibility he's feeling. It's a tiny flicker of obedient satisfaction, and he recoils from it like he reached out in the dark and sank his fingers into a swollen, hot patch of rot.
It almost makes talking about Cauldron, and what he knows about Cauldron, slightly more appealing by contrast. ]
I was still in Brockton Bay when the Triumvirate got found out.
They clamped it down fast, but word travelled faster. I picked up enough of the high notes to say I couldn't agree with you more.
[ Unlike the topic of Teacher, his feelings here are uncomplicated. He fucking hates them too. There are enough obvious reasons anyone should that he doesn't have to get into the specifics of his personal ones. ]
All those noble heroes, worse than most of the Birdcage. Fucking Lab Rat did less human experimentation.
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Date: 2024-06-14 04:14 pm (UTC)Irritating, but she's not quite enough of a dick to hold it against Krouse. Billions of people dead and for what.]
Lab Rat also helped more than they did against Scion.
[Not quite true. But Lab Rat is a big reason why Taylor Hebert survived long enough to become Khepri - something which Cauldron had absolutely nothing to do with.]
That was their supposed end goal. Preparing humanity to fight against Scion at the end. Eidolon was vaporized, Legend did nothing, Alexandria's corpse was being puppeted around like a doll, and the rest of them hid in a bunker.
[She decides not to bring up the Endbringers. She's not sure why. Trickster and his Travellers were there when they fought against Leviathan - when Neil and Eric both died. Maybe the fact that America's most famous and iconic heroes were responsible for all of that death and devastation makes the ugly feeling in her chest intensify.
Her childhood was spent in guilt and shame over failing to live up to that very standard. That very standard that the greatest heroes humanity had to offer never even touched. Her fucking dad was locked away in a cage never to be let out - while they all got to fly free and condemning millions to die.]
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Date: 2024-06-15 06:27 am (UTC)Amy's cynical, but there's a line somewhere. He doesn't want today to be when he discovers the limits of her newfound distaste for the world's greatest heroes. He pushes off the floor and walks into his bedroom to sit on the edge of his mattress, fingers resting on his end table next to the only picture frame in his apartment.
"Eidolon's dead," he says, to no one who's going to hear it. ]
So much for the greater good.
[ That's not surprising, except for the corpse puppeteering, but even that's just another fucked up detail. Later, when he thinks through the pieces she's giving him, he thinks he'll be able to put together a reasonable idea of how it must have happened.
He's just not doing it yet. For once, he doesn't have to. It hasn't happened yet, and it's already over. And if he thinks about it like that, he might as well get one small thing over with. While they're sharing. ]
I know I die.
I don't know if you knew that. It's not like you'd have a reason to. I doubt anyone was keeping track. But if you did, I thought I might let you know you don't have to sidestep it.
It's fine. I'm over it. Bound to happen sooner or later. Just seemed awkward leaving it up in the air.
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Date: 2024-06-15 12:33 pm (UTC)Did she know? The death toll was so big, so full of people she'd met in passing and then never thought about again - that she thinks it might have just slipped her mind.
Prior to all this, he was someone she met in indirect association with a group of people that she resented. 'Can you grow us wings?'
Billions of people died. Most of her old classmates, her aunt. Taylor Hebert.
And somehow that's the one she's stuck on.]
I didn't.
I wasn't on the front lines. But the death toll was massive.
I guess Tattletale told you.
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Date: 2024-06-16 12:21 am (UTC)I don't think she was lying about that one.
[ He doesn't have any proof, one way or another, except that he doesn't see a reason for her not to be honest when it comes to trying to clip off whatever remaining slivers of hope she seems to think he might dare entertaining.
The fact she got it slightly wrong clinches it. If she understood him as well as she acts like she does, she'd have told him he survived, numb and empty and enthralled.
She can't take away a future he already didn't have. ]
Everyone dies someday. I'd rather not dwell on it.
She also mentioned the two of you had prior world saving experience. That, I thought she was stretching. Guess not.
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Date: 2024-06-17 04:20 pm (UTC)Is it shitty of her to think she kind of wishes she could have just gotten the 'You die' reveal? Rather than the gut churning agony of uncertainty about whatever it is that happened?
Obviously.]
That's one way to put it.
Makes it sound like she's a lot more cooperative than she actually is.
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Date: 2024-06-18 04:06 am (UTC)It's easier, anyway. He spares a moment of gratitude to Amy for being willing to let his situation go, even if he can't imagine she has much else to say about it. People she actually knew and possibly even liked died. Not a lot of space to fit in some acquaintance in the ranks.
But she's still not trying to, and he still appreciates it. ]
Triangulation. It's a classic.
I did piss her off. On purpose, this time. So if anything goes off on that front, that's why.
I'm still holding up my side of the agreement. I can't say if she will, but I got the impression she knows she needs you enough to not deliberately fuck you over while she fucks me over. But who fucking knows.
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Date: 2024-06-18 04:10 pm (UTC)["Was never under the impression that it should be yours either."
There are a lot of heroes around. Some of them live up to every ideal the Protectorate pretended to value.
God, she sucks.]
She just wants you to think she will.
She can cooperate when the situation calls for it but she hates it when she's not in control.
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Date: 2024-06-20 02:28 am (UTC)[ He has his own opinions about Tattletale's sense of 'when the situation calls for it', but those are the breaks. Amy has to work with Tattletale regardless of how trustworthy she is, and it's easier if you convince yourself that the snake you're handling follows a set of rules you can learn. ]
That's my problem, anyway. Just wanted to keep you in the loop.
Now I think I'm going to go stare at the ceiling for a while.
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Date: 2024-06-21 03:59 pm (UTC)God. I really hope I don't.
Thanks, though.
I'll talk to you later.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-22 05:07 pm (UTC)Talk to you later.
photo;
Date: 2024-06-04 01:31 pm (UTC)It's a photo of a card that has text on it in perfect yet somehow also still legible calligraphy. It looks ridiculously fancy for what's written on it, which is-- ]
You are hereby cordially invited to:
ADAINE AND FABIAN'S BREATHTAKING BIRTHDAY BASH!
It will be held today, June 3rd, in the rec room of the apartment building. Presents are not necessary, but a good attitude is most definitely required! There will be drinks, dancing and general merriment, because we all deserve something good after that labyrinth!
Trust me - it will be the party of the century here, and you DO NOT want to miss it!
- Fabian Aramais Seacaster
P.S. If you do not know my good friend Adaine yet, make sure to get to know her at the party. She is an absolute delight, and I want her to have the best birthday party possible!
[ For all characters who would attend, there is a log right over here! ]
text ยป un: robin
Date: 2024-07-03 08:33 pm (UTC)( no "hey, person i spoke to on the internet and worked with once" or "would you mind sharing?", that'd be a little too familiar. he's getting straight to it instead. )
no subject
Date: 2024-07-04 06:33 pm (UTC)Anything specific?
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Date: 2024-07-05 04:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-07-05 06:43 am (UTC)My limits are 1. I can't do it on myself 2. I can't do anything with a corpse 3. Brains are a soft limit, because they're so complicated and very easy to damage on accident - and very hard to completely fix afterward.
Also for what little that it's worth here, I did take a Hippocratic Oath.
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Date: 2024-07-05 06:27 pm (UTC)Noted.
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Date: 2024-07-05 07:35 pm (UTC)It would probably be easier for me to give specifics if you say what you had in mind?
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Date: 2024-07-05 08:00 pm (UTC)There is a metahuman here who is capable of causing massive amounts of destruction and chaos, were they to decide to let loose. Which they are well-known for.
I need a way to disable their abilities in order to subdue them, if they do get out of control.
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Date: 2024-07-05 09:45 pm (UTC)Alright. So in my world we call people with powers "Parahumans" and their abilities originate in a specific part of the brain.
Is it the same story with metahumans?
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Date: 2024-07-06 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-07-06 10:09 pm (UTC)But depending on the power there's other ways to disable them. Easiest is probably to temporarily sever/otherwise disable the spine for any combat oriented powers, or lowering body temperature and metabolic rate so that their body becomes too low in energy to sustain their powers and they enter a form of hibernation. That works for almost every power.
[Wouldn't have worked for the Siberian. But she's a unique case.
Her passenger thrives on thinking of unique solutions to problems. Far more exciting than just healing people over and over. It would take a particularly serious case to get her to act on any of these, but she figures that there's no harm in just brainstorming.]
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Date: 2024-07-06 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-07-09 10:39 pm (UTC)Yeah. I'd have to get pretty creative to even make that work.
How dangerous are they? Is this an active threat situation or a contingency kind of thing?
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Date: 2024-07-10 09:59 pm (UTC)If they lose that distraction, they won't have any reason to play nicely with the rest of us.
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Date: 2024-07-10 10:17 pm (UTC)She's not sure it matters.]
Well. We can't really die.
I feel like I'd need to know more about the specifics (powers, type of villain, what kind of threat they actually represented) before I actually agreed to do anything but theoretically I'd be able to immobolize them without touching them or giving any indication that I was doing anything if I was in a room with them for a few minutes.
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Date: 2024-07-10 11:17 pm (UTC)( whether or not that's better or worse depends on the person, but. )
I'll find you later.