-trajectory. agreement.-

[from_scratch]

"Hasn't everyone heard of Kithabel? I live in Africa, not under a rock," Cam tells Tattletale. "You, on the other hand, are new to me."

Comments

[wormcan]

Trumps exist. One that copies powers and uses them like the original owner but weaker, one that splits powers and shares them among groups of capes, one that copies the general shape of the output and delivers pulverizing gravity blasts in that form, one that can kill a cape and collect their power. None of the trump powers are automatic, with the exception of the Butcher. And nobody wants to use that trump power if at all possible.

[from_scratch]

"I may have just come up with a hack to add arbitrarily chosen attenuated powers to anybody, some risk of weird side effects..."

[whole_new_can]

Tattletale peers at Cam's screen. "Attenuated. You want to try to use the Butcher's power. On purpose."

[from_scratch]

"With mindless bodies. Make a whoever and a Butcher, put the whoever so they, say, suffocate the Butcher, kill the Butcher. There'd be no mind to transfer. But I'm not sure how it'd shake out."

[whole_new_can]

"There are so many things wrong with that. We don't know if that would count as the whoever killing the Butcher, we need the whoever's power for what is probably the hardest use of it and we'd end up with a weaker one, and Cauldron described the Butcher as taking over the other cape's mind. I for one don't want to risk getting overwritten by a blank mind."

[from_scratch]

"Well, yes, I did say risk of weird side effects, you'll notice I'm not piling up blanks of all the cool powers I've ever heard of with matching Butchers to suffocate right here and now."

[whole_new_can]

"How confident are you that you're safe? I wouldn't try it either, but if you're immune there is a way to become a parahuman."

[from_scratch]

"I started out deeply uncertain my indestructibility would apply to parahuman powers at all, but so far have found no exceptions up to and including the Simurgh song and Moord Nag. But if you mean I should take a vial there might not be a way to have it affect me at all while not having the full breadth of effect, sort of like I could do a line of coke and barely notice or take the entire suite of symptoms, but not pick and choose."

[whole_new_can]

"I'm not saying you could get the power without being hooked up to the interdimensional symbiote. But if you do take the whole thing, you think that'd give the Butcher an in? Even if that comes later and you don't want it to?"

[from_scratch]

"Hooked up to the what?"

[whole_new_can]

"Interdimensional parasite. The passengers. Every parahuman has one, there's an extra organ in our brains making the connection. When I come up with some brilliant deduction, the computation's happening somewhere and it isn't in here. And when some cape sneezes plasma, that's not created out of nothing. The passenger moves things or energy or information in from parallel earths.

That's what Cauldron vials are, is a distilled connection to pieces of passengers."

[from_scratch]

"Okay! Apparently I can just attach things to other universes and not even know I'm doing it!"

[whole_new_can]

"Or it could be them connecting to the copy because it looks like the original. Passengers aren't exactly smart."

[from_scratch]

"How not smart."

[whole_new_can]

"Very. They've got what might be describable as instincts, and they've got a lot of computing power, but they don't think. Or they barely do. Hard to tell those apart."

[from_scratch]

"Because my insects behave pretty normally."

[whole_new_can]

"Oh, that's interesting. If that works at all, it might be able to make the versions of capes without the limits safer."

[from_scratch]

"I mean, homemade passengers would be necessary to remove the restrictions anyway unless they're located in the cape. Lemme see if I can make one that isn't connected, to see if I'm the one doing that, or not... do you object to testing a Hatchet Face?"

[wormcan]

For once, Tattletale and Faultline agree. "Can you try something less inconvenient? A Crawler or a Nice Guy or something?"

[from_scratch]

"Crawlers are inconvenient to test. What's a Nice Guy?"

[whole_new_can]

"A stranger power. He'd always look unremarkable and harmless, and it couldn't occur to you to kill him. One of the Nine."

"And he had to turn his power on. Try again." To Cam, Tattletale says "just use an early stage Crawler, right after his trigger. He'll be immune to maybe one thing."

[from_scratch]

"And then if he does have his power? Do we just leave it lying in the rainforest forever becoming immune to starvation and ants and so on?"

[whole_new_can]

"Or get rid of it with something he's not immune to yet. Just has to be quick enough that there's no chance to adapt."

[from_scratch]

"Fine." Here's an early Crawler, disconnected.

[wormcan]

It looks like a perfectly ordinary guy named Ned, maybe a bit distorted where he recently regenerated from a mortal wound.