473 My SI Stash #73 - The Lazy Lord by Vagabond (Worm)
-Just a lazy dude trying to speedrun Worm and it's shenanigans~
Synopsis: ???
Rated: M
Words: 11K
Posted on: https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/the-lazy-lord.13867/ (Vagabond)
PS: If you're not able to copy/paste the link, you have everything in here to find it, by simply searching the author and the story title. It sucks that you can't copy links on mobile (´ー｀)
-I'll be putting the chapter ones of all the fanfics/originals mentioned, to give you guys a sample if you wan't more please do go to the website and support the author! (And maybe even convince them to start uploading chapters in here as well!)
Chapter 1
Taylor knew something was wrong the moment it happened.
It had been three months since she got her useless power, but she's learned to use it. Being able to detect people with the senses of her bugs was one such learned use.
And there was someone right outside of her bathroom stall where she had hid to eat her lunch in peace.
Tall, abnormal skin color, and … faceless.
Oh God, it didn't have a face!
And it was looking right at her stall!
The creature, dressed in a pair of light brown canvas pants, a pair of black boots, and a dirty red jacket, opened its mouth and unleashed a steady sigh tinged heavily with pent-up emotions.
It then pulled its head up and looked around.
"Where am I?" it growled lowly and quietly, continuing to look around despite having no fucking eyes. "Right. Right. I forgot." There was a pause before it stopped looking around. "... I see. So this is where I am."
Its head turned towards the bathroom stall she was in. "Do not worry. I will be leaving now," it said with a deep voice before it truly disappeared on the spot.
So shocked she'd been that she missed Emma and her gang coming in and looking around for her in the bathroom before they left. She realized it - he? - had been a cape.
What the fuck just happened?
-VB-
"What?!" Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown hissed as she listened to "Scion-tracker," a Parahuman Response Team program solely dedicated to keeping track of Scion and his actions.
"Someone just approached him in the skies over Georgia, and they're talking. They've been talking non-stop," the director of the program, Joy Assamidia, repeated in wonder. "I'm watching a live video feed of it, and it's incredible."
Incredible as in someone actually managed to grab the golden entity's attention.
In Costa-Brown's mind, however, this was an unmitigated disaster.
"Who is the approaching party?" she asked.
"Unknown. We have been cross referencing him to all databases we have access to, but we haven't found anything yet. His faceless-ness suggests that he's a Case-53, but the way he clearly approached Scion…"
"We don't know anything yet. Keep looking!" she urged. Then she turned to her left and pulled out her "discreet" phone. She quickly typed to Doctor Mother to watch the Earth Bet feed she was sending her way and to find out if they had any Case-53 with the Scion-approacher's appearance.
"Scion is doing something!"
Her head snapped up.
The Entity did something with his hands… and then …
Shot himself in the head.
She watched, frozen, in shock.
Scion disappeared.
Scion disappeared.
"What…?"
How?! How did Scion just… disappear like that?! What about the Entity behind it? What about it-?
"It's a Master!" Director Assimidai hissed. "It has to be a Master!"
Rebecca realized that to most people watching this, horror had to be coursing through their veins right now. After all, Scion was the best Endbringer deterrent they had, the only parahuman capable of effectively ending Endbringer attacks with certainty.
"Find out who that man is-!"
"He's gone!"
"Use the Thinker Tank if you have to!"
They just found a new disaster to watch out for as well as the Warrior Entity's coming apocalypse.
-VB-
[Territory!]
I was back in Brockton Bay, but I was still connected to the Warrior network.
Taking care of the Warrior and Zion had been … surprisingly simple. Long story short, I used Eidolon to make Zion more depressed and easier to convince, and then convinced the Entity to kill itself and all of its central processing unit to truly make sure it dies and no longer suffers from its heartache and also to hand over the administrative access to me to make sure that the network didn't go through the Titan episode its shards went through in Worm's sequel, the Wards.
Eidolon, the power, allowed me to choose three strong powers or five weaker powers. Mind you, the CYOA said "weaker" not weak. By whose definition was a power "weaker" I had to think? When I came to Brockton Bay in front of Taylor due to the CYOA choices, I had decided to test the power after I left her. It was a quick and dirty test, which I used to find out the following:
Eidolon gave me powers based on what I wanted.
Due to the Shard-Human Brain interface not being perfect but only just "good enough" what I wanted wasn't necessarily properly translated, and as such, the power I got was never "quite right."
The definition of "strong" for Eidolon the Shard was on par with Legend, Alexandria, the Sleeper, and Nilbog.
The definition of a "weaker" power for Eidolon the Shard was on par with the "lesser" powers like those of Assault, Jack Slash, and so on.
From this, I had a hypothesis.
Eidolon never fully utilized his shard.
[Territory!]
I understood why he couldn't, either. He was, at his heart, a hero, so he didn't use literal planet killers because that was not conducive to being a hero nor was there anyone in his immediate target range who was an acceptable target for such a power. It probably didn't help that his power began to decline as he sapped more and more energy out of it with each use.
So I cycled through powers until I had the best combination of powers that would let me assist in suicide.
Zion's suicide, that was.
In canon Worm, they never defeated Scion/Zion/Warrior by defeating it in battle. It all came down to making sure it was too fucking depressed and mentally tired to deal with threats to itself.
I just did the same thing but instead of getting other people to do the killing blow, I told Zion to do it himself because it would be faster and end the misery in one clean hit instead of a thousand unwanted cuts.
So that beam he used to kill the Zion avatar?
Yeah, he opened up a portal - which was another shard - that connected all of the "central processing" shard and fired.
One clean blast to end his life.
The power of human psychology, especially upon an unsuspecting alien new to said psychology, was truly grand.
[Territory!]
That said, I was now left with administrative access to his Warrior network… and I had to say, it really wasn't much.
Like 90% of the shards were inactive because simply being an Entity was so energy-intensive (which explained their fixture on achieving negentropy) that they would starve themselves to death within a year if they kept everything on.
The shards they released onto Earth Bet and its multitude of parallel sisters? Not even a percent of the active 10%.
Not 1% of the total but a 0.1% of the total.
But I was here now!
I had negentropy!
There was, however, a problem. My shard had negentropy, but it wasn't built to be an energy reservoir or even a pump. Its primary focus was Collection, not distribution. The only I would be able to feed the entire network was if I set up a non-shard "pipeline" using other aspects of my power that weren't the Legion of the Fae or the Eidolon. Until then, I had limited access to the shards of the Warrior.
[Territory!]
That was fine with me. I didn't want to juggle a billion Shards and their own little wants.
Which meant I was left to my own devices until - if - I decided to build that pipeline.
Now, what can I do? I did write the CYOA as if I was actually going to enter this world, and I did enter this world. I had plenty of time now that the biggest problem was taken care of.
[Territory!]
… Ugh, I supposed that I should fulfill my Geas first. It's been badgering me like someone screaming at me from a distance, except they're getting closer.
[Territory!]
I GET IT, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!
Ugh. Just give me some time to use some Thinker powers, the internet, common sense, and whatever else I need for this...
-VB-
"'Declaration of Intent'?" Director Piggot read the title. "What is this?"
In front of her was Armsmaster and the PRT employee who had been manning the lobby reception desk.
"An unknown parahuman delivered this paper to the front reception at the headquarter lobby," Armsmaster reported succinctly. He walked in unarmed and dressed in civilian clothes. He asked the receptionist to deliver a letter, which he set down on the reception desk, to the local PRT director and walked out. He ignored requests from the PRT troopers on duty to stop."
"What happened afterwards?" she asked curtly.
"Before any Protectorate hero or PRT representative on site and in reach could be dispatched to converse with the unknown parahuman, whose feature included a lack of a face except for his mouth and brick red skin, the unknown parahuman in question teleported out."
"And this … letter?"
"All Master/Stranger, Tinker, Shaker, and Infiltration Protocols have been observed. You are currently holding a copy."
She grunted before beginning to read the letter.
Declaration of Intent
To whom it may concern,
I hope that this declaration finds you in good health.
I am the parahuman who delivered this letter to the PRT ENE Headquarters reception desk on April 7th, 2011. My name is Alan Marris, and I wish to give you a notice with this declaration of intent.
From today onward, I will consider the Trainyard, its infrastructure, and the Boat Graveyard as my territory.
I know that this is a very unorthodox method to declaring a "territory," but I wanted to give the good people of the PRT ENE a warning.
I will be enforcing some rules here.
Any Neo-Nazi, white supremacist, black supremacist, asian supremacist, or any other racist with violent hate crime history will die.
I will not enforce the Unwritten Rules nor follow them outside of my territory. When I fight, someone gets hurt. Since your department has moles, most of the bigger players should get this notice.
Do not patrol in my territory unless you want to leave it half dead.
Don't mess with my fish.
Sincerely,
Alan Marris
A Parahuman
…
"What is this garbage?"
-VB-
Floating midair thanks to ferrokinesis holding up my shoes with pads of iron sand, I worked.
I hummed happily as I used ferrokinesis to move the rusted hulls of the boats away towards a single spot on a stretch of land that connected the Boat Graveyard and the Trainyard, and then connected the multiple broken hulls and finally reshaped them. It didn't happen all at once; this particular brand of ferrokinesis wasn't powerful enough to have that level of multitasking come with it.
I made rooms where there were none before, thickened the walls, and connected the staircases and corridors into a network. All the while I shaped my new home into being, I also altered the base of this base into a strong foundation that nothing short of richter scale 10 earthquake would damage the structure.
It was a blatant insult to safe architecture and building codes, but I didn't really care!
"Hey!"
I stopped, although my Eidolon power kept on working under the instruction of a second one, a Thinker power related to architecture. I looked around and then saw the person who yelled at me.
Dressed in a white skintight spandex suit, a cape, and topped off with a tiara, I knew that this had to be Glory Girl.
And was I glad that I had chosen to take the Mental Barrier perk. It wouldn't do for me to stop mid-construction just to focus on her.
"Hey!" I greeted back cheerfully at the hovering New Wave princess. "What's up?"
"What are you doing?" she asked a little tersely.
"Cleaning up the Boat Graveyard and making myself a base!"
She looked at the nearly finished super structure of the base and raised an eyebrow. "It's ugly."
"Well, we can't all have fancy tech… for now," I grumbled with a faux pout. "Have I been loud with the construction?"
"Not really," she replied easily. "But when broken ships are flying in the air and then stack on top of each other…"
"Kinda noticeable. Gotcha. Well, I did tell the PRT that this is my territory now, so that's that."
A pause.
"You're … a villain?" she asked tensely.
I nodded rather enthusiastically. "Yup! Haven't done anything yet but I preempted myself and took territory! It's not like anyone was using the Boat Graveyard. Not even the gangs are down here to chop up the ships."
She looked conflicted about the situation at hand. "You're doing something good eith youe clean-up. Why would you call yourself a villain?"
"Doing good doesn't make me a good man."
"That's not an answer. If you are declaring yourself a villain-"
"That I intend to do bad things. Yes."
"Then I guess I'm fighting you!" she declared before she rushed me.
I scoffed.
Without even a gesture from me, iron dust that had settled into the waters and the bay floor rose up like a thousand tendrils.
A single tendril of whirling and buzzing iron sand rose up between us and then fired a staccato of compressed iron sand bullets from within its mass.
What I have done here was use the "shell" of the iron sand tendril as base for an electromagnetic field and then launch pre-compressed iron sand bullets along its length.
These bullets, all smaller than a 9 mm bullet, slammed into Glory Girl. The first popped her shield, the second ripped through her left knee, then the third chunked her shoulder, and finally the fourth punched through right elbow. Her eyes widened as the sudden loss of flight registered.
I saw exactly when pain registered for her and the shock of it all knock her out.
"Huh," I muttered as I gathered the still rising iron sands into a tight square weave and caught her before she fell more than half a dozen yards. I brought her closer to me even as the construction still continued.
She looked … bad. Blood stained her white costume and blonde hair, which made the blood stand out even more than it normally did. Her shoulder was missing a lot of meat, and the two holes at her joints certainly didn't help with the picture.
I looked around. I almost expected a Protectorate hero or New Wave adults to be around to intervene but none of them were in the area.
… I supposed that fit in with the canon description of Glory Girl.
Pausing, my so far unused third power, the Legion of the Fae came to life, hummed at the back of my mind, and then added a copy of Glory Girl's power, hereby named [Standardbearer], to its list of active yet half efficient powers I now had access to.
As interesting as that tidbit of event was and how quick it came and went at only half a second, I didn't want to keep her with me. She was going to be a pain when she woke up, and I didnt want to leave the construction site to take her to a hospital.
Did she have a phone on her?
My ferrokinesis reached toward, and I found it. It was actually visible from where I was watching her some two dozen yards away.
I pulled it towards me with a yank. It flew and spun in the air before coming to a slow stop in front of me. I turned it on and… well, I didn't know the password. Did this thing have emergency call function?
I fiddled with it and smiled as it called 911.
Nice.
"This is 911, what is your emergency?"
"So I beat up Glory Girl a little too badly. You might want to send someone to come pick her up at the Boat Graveyard."
"We are sending a request to the PRT. May I ask for your name?"
Huh. They didn't ask if it was a prank call. That's Earth Bet for ya. It's so screwed that prank call contents may as well be real.
"Alan Marris, newest parahuman cape in town! I just cleaned up the Boat Graveyard."
"... Excuse me?"
"No need to thank me. I needed the metal to build my new monstrosity of a base. Why, I think it's the tallest and biggest building now within a two mile radius!"
I could tell that the emergency call responder on the other side was downright exasperated, because I heard a soft and barely audible "only in Brockton Bay" from him.
"Anyways, have a good night, everyman hero!" I said before hanging up.. I stared at the iron sand mat that was becoming slowly redder around Glory Girl's still yet still living body.
There was something I could do.
Quickly, I cycled the last slot on Eidolon shard until I had a power suitable for my purpose.
