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♦Topic: Undersiders Heist, Brockton Bay Central Bank

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► Nishiho (Kyushu Survivor)

So, you may have already heard about this on the local news, but the Central Bank downtown was just robbed, with a fair amount of hostages held by the Undersiders. Of course, as well all are well aware, the Undersiders have a reputation of treating their hostages well, and playing by the general “rules” of cape culture, so while it was more than mildly irritating to have our day interrupted by them, it was certainly significantly better for us than, say, the E88 staging such an attack.

Fucking Nazis.

Regardless, beyond the obvious stress of being a hostage, we had to deal with several other instances of, excuse my language, fucking nonsense. While it isn’t being reported on yet; yes, I checked, the two “new” capes that were present at the bank weren’t a part of the Undersiders like some reporters are sensationalizing. They appeared there about five or so minutes before the bank robbery in a flash of light, scaring the shit out of some of us before we realized they were just as confused as we all were.

Hell, there was an adorable exchange between the Dragon, Shèn, and a mother and son duo. It went something like:

“Mama, why is the pretty dragon lady so shiny?” “Because I take really good care of my scales, little one. My name is Shèn, what’s yours?”

Of course, that was when some shouting from the back came on and the security guard made his way to the back.

Props to him for being professional about this whole thing, to be honest. I know a lot of security guards would have done something fucking stupid and gotten themselves killed.

Anyway, he comes out from the back with another woman; this one a youko, or, to use the western terms, a kitsune or foxgirl. Shèn and the fox, Miho, start speaking with each other for a while, and then step away. I started recording right after that, so everything after this point is covered in the video. I’ll give you all the cliff notes because I’m nice like that. Oh, and content warning as usual for cape fights.

• The Undersiders come in, and make their usual demands when they rob a populated location.

• Everyone complies because we’re not fucking stupid

• Shèn and Miho have an argument about which type of tail is best. It’s inconclusive, but I personally agree with Miho. Fluffy tail over Scaly tail.

• Regent runs in saying the Wards are here. If you aren’t familiar with why this worries them, there’s about a dozen threads discussing the fact that Shadow Stalker and Grue have beef that turned near deadly once already, back when Stalker wasn’t a Ward.

• As a result of the increased tension, Shèn essentially straight up tells the Undersiders she’s going to put barriers on us, the civvies. The Undersiders don’t object; probably because they stake their rep on being something akin to the “Phantom Thieves”, and Shèn does so. Miho bulldozes her way into the deal as well after Shèn summons some floating eyeballs, and summons some adorable little shiny fox-squirrel with three tails!

• Grue and Regent go outside to negotiate

• As one of the very few people with an angle to film through one of the windows, I get an almost perfect shot of Shadow Stalker trying to fucking kill Grue. I am going to be very wroth with the PRT if they don’t discipline their hopefully now Former Ward, because what the shit, did she want us to die?!

• Shèn rushes outside, and reveals herself to be a healer. Miho’s pretty quick behind her, and you can see foxy dismantle Stalker with… assistance and anti-assistance? from Vista in HD.

• While Miho and Stalker are dancing, Shèn drags Grue inside with Regent assisting

• Shèn reveals that she can affect the mind. She does a rather amusing; especially to an easterner, ramble that I’m not going to be here to soften the blow.

• Shèn continues to heal Grue, Tattletale takes a phonecall with @Vista and everything looks like it’ll finally resolve peacefully!

• Miho screams “Incoming!” and Glory Girl teaches us not to tempt Murphy, because apparently @Panacea was in the bank as well, and collateral damage barbie herself, being an emotional teenager, did something stupid.

• Of course, because she’s an emotional fucking Master- oh sorry, right, the PR friendly version of that is Shaker, we’re all blasted by her fucking aura and are unironically pissing ourselves in fear. Shèn does something and counters that effect, which has GG saying something about Masters. The only fucking Master there is her, and I swear to fucking Inari… Anyway. Continuing on.

• Vista, Miho, Shen, and Tattletale all try to talk GG down, and fail, because, again, emotional teenager.

• GG gets absolutely demolished by Tattletale and Miho, then covered in a swarm of bugs straight out of the fucking bible. Tattletale has a gun, and apparently is significantly more responsible with it than most people because, while rewatching this clip, I noticed she flicked the safety right back on after firing the only shot she did.

• Panacea goes and drags her idiot sister back to us after making sure that she won’t die to a blend of poison. Apparently the Undersider’s new member needs to learn the meaning of restraint, though honestly, it’s pretty forgivable considering the day they’ve had so far.

• After all that, Vista and Tats negotiated for a while, and though I recorded it all, I cut it out from the video since nothing exciting happened after that. The Undersiders escaped, Shèn and Miho turned down leaving with them, and got brought in by the PRT, though thankfully not in cuffs. I would hate to have to raise absolute hell towards our glorious federal overlords for abusing their authority.

Oh, and because I just remembered after rewatching the clip again. @Aegis, you have competition now. Because Shèn called one of her floating eyeballs Aegis and I think it’s significantly better suited for that name than you!

► Robby G (Excel, My Beloved)

…What the actual fuck did I just watch. No, like, seriously. Shèn and Miho are breaking the “rules” of capes so hard that I genuinely have no fucking idea what to say. They’re both grab-bags, and seem to have nearly identical powers, on top of being recognizably human but having features that would look more at home on a C53. I’m going to watch it frame by frame and dump my regular analysis in the thread later. OP, would you mind threadmarking that if I do?

► Red Riot (Verified Cape)

Aw, fuk. Poor girl stress smiles, no wonder the press went wild. Specially with those chompers.

‘S why a lot of us put on full face masks. Not everyone has Armsy’s stiff upper lip.

Oi, Shèn, if you read this I can hook ya up with my mask maker! Indies should stick together!

Also, don’t forget to check out Whitelist! Can’t find ya there but damn if a healer with barriers wouldn’t get a good deal.

► SpicSpan (Verified Janitor)

Did y’all notice how she tried to keep Grue distracted with that ramble? Sounded like a newbie dentist trying to keep a kid from freaking ‘bout the drill. 

I’d know, we just got a couple wet behind the ears rookies at the clinic.

Also, Greeks represent! Panakeia sounds better than Panacea and is less of a pain in the ass to write!

► Bagrat (Guy in the Know)

Huh. For once, I don’t have to frantically compile a large information dump about recent events, because someone else beat me to it! Now, since I can’t just post here without actually contributing to the discussion, I’d imagine based on that video that Shen and Miho are likely to get several ratings, or the PRT will throw up their hands and just call them Trumps. Then again, I don’t actually know how the PRT Threat Rating system goes, so who knows!

► Nishiho (Kyushu Survivor)

>OP, would you mind threadmarking that if I do?

Not at all, so long as it’s high quality enough to merit that.

► Robby G (Excel, My Beloved)

>or the PRT will throw up their hands and just call them Trumps

Nope. They don’t appear to tamper with other powers or their own, so they don’t merit it.

>Not at all, so long as it’s high quality enough to merit that.

Challenge accepted.

► Markstave

Post removed by Moderation.

<Tin_Mom: Do not. While this isn’t strictly against the rules, moderation is not stupid.>

► WhiteWarrior_32

Post deleted by Moderation.

<Tin_Mom: Do not. This is your third strike, enjoy the Permaban.>

► Tin_Mom (Moderator)

As evidently, users still do not understand that the moderation is capable of reading subtext and other red flags, @Markstave, consider this your final warning. At PHO, we follow the spirit of the rules, not the letter. You will not be warned again.

______________________________________________________________________________

Looking away from her personal phone with a heavy sigh, Missy Brion; better known as Vista, reflected on the absolute shitshow of a day the ENE had just had. Everything, of course, had started to go wrong weeks back. Armsmaster had accepted an invitation to a visibility event in an effort to raise his and the ENE’s ratings among the masses. Then, due to last minute events and some injuries that required rest yet didn’t even remotely justify contacting Panacea, the entirety of the ENE Protectorate had magically been absent for the entirety of the day.

This generally wasn’t an issue. However, Missy reflected, due to a recent Hookwolf rampage, most of the tools that the PRT used to solve such issues were gone. After all, while the PRT had requested assistance from the local independents, Hookwolf had gone on a rampage recently. Several indie heroes had been injured, and several more had likely died; the body count was still being tallied, given, well, Hookwolf.

This had driven the rest to keep their heads down for the rather understandable reason of not wanting to become a nugget. Though both the independents and the PRT could generally count on Panacea to fix them up, no one could blame them for not wanting to become a nugget in the first place. This translated to a fat “fuck no, not unless you add three zeroes to that figure” when asked for assistance.

Given the intermittent stream of scars going from Missy’s left shoulder to her right hip when Hook’d gotten a single swipe on her, she wasn’t about to bitch them out for it. Had she learned a lot of how to use her power to keep her insides where they belonged? Yes! Did she ever want to feel her guts trying to take a lie down on the asphalt again? No! 

Only reason she could still fight and wasn’t looking down the barrel of a FUBAR puberty was because Our Lady in White had fixed everything up, except for a tiny layer at the tippity top. She wanted to have the reminder with her… and she had stitched these up herself, she was damn well keeping the zippers and showing them off when she rocked a bikini in a few years. What she didn’t want to deal with was being ten percent scar tissue by volume, much less the horror stories Jameson had about swelling and chronic pain.

At least most gangs in Brockton didn’t use IEDs. Much.

Not after a manic Miss Militia introduced them to Saint Javelin.

Returning to the matter at hand, the Wards had been required to hold the fort for all tasks that required Capes today. Once more, this usually wasn’t an issue. Murphy decided that that ‘usually’ needed some stress testing today.

Missy still wanted to throttle Aegis and Clock for their pigshit stupid idea. Who the actual fuck thought it would be a good plan to switch costumes when dealing with the goddam Undersiders, who had a Thinker. Especially when one of you was a squishy Striker, and the other was a very much not squishy BRUTE!

Thankfully for their dignity, they’d remembered right quick who was the most experienced Ward in East North East. So they hadn’t needed to be dragged back to the changing room by the ears. One terse ‘and what do you think you’re doing?’ and they’d scrambled to fix their shit before she fixed it for them.

Not that Aegis had learned jack or shit about keeping his head on straight, because the moment Stalker decided murder would be a cool thing to do in the middle of the goddamn street with nearly a hundred people watching, he froze up. What the fuck sort of leader saw that go down and just got nice and comfortable on the fence!? Sure, that dipshit on console had tried to countermand her when she took charge, but before that? The idiot should’ve done more than sit there playing switch.

After writing her AAR, she’d be filing some very pointed Complaints of Misconduct at both of them. Console for moonwalking from criminal negligence to active sabotage and flouting of protocol, on top of the very pointed messages Supervisor Harris’d gotten from her before she was even back at HQ. Aegis for being a failure plain and simple. At least she didn’t need to lift a finger for Hess, they already chucked that psycho into a holding cell and, well.

Philip from Internal Affairs used to be Military Police and had been keeping all her formal complaints regarding Stalker roasty toasty for something like this. Although she had expected the inevitable fuckup to be more along the lines of turning a skinhead or three into fatalities in an alley after a bad day rather than stick through a clean-nosed near-merc during a hostage situation.

As for Guts ‘n Glory? Rumor mill said that PR had let Legal off the leash and she was inclined to believe it. PRot always wanted to push more parahumans to their loving arms and didn’t give a shit about cranking up the heat for everyone not them. New Wave’s babbling about Cape accountability gave the perfect angle for the spin doctors to let the sharks go for the kill.

To keep up with the good news, if in a different flavor, the two new faces were one of those vanishingly rare kinds of indies with good fucking sense. Despite Tattletale including them in the get out of jail free card she’d negotiated, they’d just… stayed there. Cleaning up the mess, then surrendering to her custody, and while that fox woman Miho had been a bit on edge about it?

“Hey, Top Kick! Thanks for the save back there. Where to now?”

It was downright bizarre to have anyone treat her with respect like that on the first meeting. Even new troopers and cops didn’t, although that was hazing from their battle buddies more than anything else. But here were these two, beelining straight for the ‘pint sized sarge’ without a second thought, following her orders without so much as a patronizing smile.

The closest she’d ever gotten before that was Hook calling her ‘little warrior’ within minutes of meeting her, then expressing his ‘respect’ by immediately going for the throat. It probably said a lot about her that she felt conflicted about it more than anything else. On one hand. it was nice to be taken seriously and she did learn a lot from fighting for her fucking life against him. On the other hand, serial killer with thirty six dead Capes and God alone knew how many normals at his feet just from his illustrious career in Brockton. Who was giving her praise and the odd bit of advice in the middle of trying to murder her. 

PR had to work overtime to scrub anything of the sort from the public eye. 

Nobody needed to know about what she’d learned to do with warped space and the knife she very definitely didn’t keep hidden in her costume, ask anyone on the precinct. Much less her experiments with Klein Bottles, especially because she knew not to bring out a fucking Doom Cannon to a hostage situation, right Kid Win?

Ugh, ever since he’d built that fucking thing she had to smack him upside the head not to start teleporting it in at the first sign of trouble. Every. Single. Time.

Was it cool? It was a goddamn Death Beam, of fucking course it was. That didn’t mean you brought it out for anything short of Hook or Lung! Boys.

She made a noise like a deflating balloon, slumping on her chair as she looked over the halfway filled after action report. Right, that’d been enough of a break. Cracking her knuckles, she finished turning the bulletpoint notes she had written on transport into a proper file, chucking it off to the bureaucratic machine.

Next up were the CoMs, but before that she wanted to see if Robby had hammered out that analysis yet. It’d be interesting to contrast and compare with the power testing reports she’d be getting anytime soon. It was Dr. Marigold’s shift, so she’d get a copy chucked to her on the sly rather than have to wait for a proper briefing in a few days. Woman was a little crazy, but she owed to her the dimensional thresher trick, not that she was cleared to use that against anything short of an S-Class threat or an immediate and unavoidable danger to her life.

Nobody wanted to see a Ward turn someone into mincemeat, who’d thunk?

______________________________________________________________________________

► Robby G (Excel, My Beloved)

Alright! I’ve lost my marbles over this, and I’ve reviewed the footage frame by frame about ten times over! No, I’m not joking, my eyes are so strained from how closely I’ve analyzed the footage, and as soon as this is done, I’m going to go get water and close my eyes for a while.

So, Shen and Miho’s power analysis by an enthusiastic normie! While I won’t be writing this out like a professional essay, I do have one key point.

I don’t actually think Shen and Miho are capes. None of what they do seems to follow the limited rules as we understand them of how Parahumans operate, and I have a few theories on how that could be!

Now, I know, I know. People are going to call me insane! They’re going to say what else could it be. But, well, unless we’re willing to accept that we now have a Wizard flavored Eidolon, two of them, with identical sets of powers with slightly different visuals and, god help me, elemental effects, they cannot be Parahumans as we define them.

My first point of evidence for this, and I did actually do the research for this, is the degree to which both of our newest pair of lady capes have features belonging to something not human. While we do have capes that manifest animal-like features or mentalities, it is universally limited in nature, at least, in the exception of Case 53s, and neither Shen nor Miho qualify, given what they say in each frame.

My second point of evidence is the straight up incantations both of them are using, along with the very recognizable (yes, I checked) geometric patterns both of them use. Additionally, both of them used a set of four gemstones each. Doing some napkin analysis on them, I came up with a list, which I will lay out at the bottom of the post, of gems they both used, as they are not relevant to my point. Regardless, as far as we are aware, powers are reflexive, and generally do not require a verbal, somatic, and material component in tandem, unless we’re talking about specifically built tinkertech. Now, I did contemplate that both are unpowered individuals who have contact with a cabal of hidden tinkers, but going off occam's razor that is significantly less likely than these two either being parahumans we don’t have the classifications for, or them not being parahumans at all.

My final point of evidence is the verbage they use. While it was extremely hard to make out, on my fifth watch of the video in a frame by frame sequence, I was lucky enough to catch what Shen and Miho were discussing right after the Undersiders entered the bank. For those who are more terminally online, right before they start a war over scales or floof. I personally think both are just as good, but that’s tangential.

They say, and I quote:

Shen: “Quartz, sapphire, topaz, emerald.”

Miho: “Quartz, ruby, diamond, amethyst. Summoner, Scholar.”

Shen: “Triangle and glasses?”

Miho: “Technically, a pointy hat and a book. It seems- Well, it seems we are two birds of a feather.”

Some stuff happens, like Shen very visibly casting a spell (yes, I’m going to call it that when all the fucking evidence points towards actual magic existing, what the fuck) and someone calling them both Wizards indirectly. 

In response, Miho says this: “Arcanist, not Wizard.” 

To which Shen says: “Shush, you’re on glare mage duties once I bust my load on these barriers.”

Miho responds with: “I’m not a White Mage, dumbass. No wonder your Carbuncles aren’t Carbuncles, you filthy uncultured heathen. Che, no appreciation for the classics.”

Shen then grandstands by saying this: “All clear! I considered having it clean up all the stress hormones you’re stewing in, but between you and me? People get really skittish about anything supernatural that messes with their brains, even if it’s just a glowing chill pill. Hell, I can see your cortisol spiking just from me talking about it.”

The bold, of course, is my own emphasis.

Additionally, while I can’t get angles to lip read what they’re saying for most of the event, they do notably use verbiage aloud that implies all the shit they’re pulling are modifiable techniques, and attached via hyperlink HERE is a gif I made of Shen modifying one of her geometric casting implements (again, calling it how I see it) on the fly. And here’s her doing it again. 

Anyway, feel free to fight in the comments over this. @Nishiho, if you don’t threadmark this, I won’t take offense, considering I’m probably about to be called insane repeatedly in the thread, and I probably just derailed it and called in the fucking Adepts of all people.

God, those bastards make my blood boil, ruining the good name of fantasy with their fucking bullshit.

Edit: I just realized I didn’t actually provide analysis on their powers. Eh, I don’t care. I can’t stare at screen any longer, I saw my eyes in my mirror and they’re fucking bloodshot.

______________________________________________________________________________

…Okay, first of all, did this man really manage to lip read off of a window reflection in a phone recorded video? Second of all, either he was right or they were dealing with some really esoteric flavor of Trump/Tinker. They could be grab bags, but she’d dealt with the messes of cluster triggers enough to know they didn’t at all behave like those headcases. As it turned out, having at least one pogrom a month had a way to make those. Then they became everyone’s problem as they spun the roulette of deranged obsessions with their clustermates. She really wished the skinheads would ease up on the firebombs, pyrokinetic Shakers sucked to deal with.

At least she’d learned how to funnel stupid amounts of seawater into the mother of all sprinklers from the time the Tetrad had blown up the Boardwalk, so silver linings. Especially because it’d opened the door to a bunch of lessons from Fire Rescue, now if only PR hadn’t been all over that… 

Either way, she was getting off track again. There was a boy made of living metal up north in Boston and a serial reviving Pasty Pete right here in good old Brockton, she sure as hell wasn’t going to discount either option. Parahuman powers got wild, and if those things were possible you couldn’t really discount out of hand other nonsense flavors, brain lump or not. As far as she’d heard from Dr. Marigold, those were just control structures for a big fat ‘something’ and even then they could be substituted in all sorts of ways for Changers and Breakers.

______________________________________________________________________________

► Dark Green, SIR (PRT Brat)

We still don’t know what the fuck parahumans tap into to fuel their nonsense, other than they use a funny brain lump to control it and that their triggers influence what they get. You see this the most with Shakers. Landslide, geokinetic. Drowning, hydrokinetic. Etec. 

Then there’s Tinkertech, which often has a lot of missing bits or shit that by the numbers shouldn’t at all work. As far as we can figure out, the power props these things up, with the breakdowns being this stopping.

So, to recount.

There is a source of power somewhere out there. A tiny extra bit of grey matter sure as shit isn’t going to generate the power for Legend’s lasers on its own, nevermind however the fuck he remains conscious when he turns into a mass of light.

These powers can be harnessed through weird structures in human brains. They can also be taken by someone with such a structure and have power pumped into tech they build or even just permanently imbued into any item. Looking at you, Dauntless.

These people are harnessing a power through what seems like crystals, incantations and whatever the funny squiggles class as. Maybe by being Thinkers able to perceive the power source and ways to make it do what they want, maybe they just rawdogged it like how people not named Dragon can still study the parts of Tinkertech that actually give two shits about physics as we understand them and figure out things like ‘hey, this chemical mix makes for amazing lenses for lasers’. 

► Third Eye (Verified Gossip)

The human mind cannot actually support psychic abilities.

My Source? All of these studies! You see! Completely and utterly irrefutable proof, right before your eyes!

Right @Void_Cowboy @Atomic_Mirror @Horde_Apologia? Back me up here 😛

► Void Cowboy (Turnip Brigade)

DID SOMEONE SUMMON THE COWBOY FROM BEYOND? I HATH BEEN SUMMONED. WOE, FELLOW INTERNET GOERS, CRINGE BE UPON YE.

FOR YOU SEE, COMRADES, THE HUMAN MIND IS EMPIRICALLY PROVEN TO BE UNABLE TO SUPPORT PSYCHIC POWERS BY THE VENERABLE TURNIP.COM, OUR GLORIOUS PROPHETS WHO HAVE BEEN CORRECT ABOUT SEVERAL CURRENT EVENTS EVEN TEN YEARS IN THE PAST!

YET WHAT IS THIS? FOR EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT PSYCHIC, THE GLORIOUS PROPHET SENT BY BENEVOLENT APOLLO HATH FORETOLD OF THIS DAY! HARK, MY FRIENDS, FOR THE TIME OF FANTASY IS UPON US ONCE MORE! THE TURNIP HAS BEEN PROVEN TRUE AGAIN, AS INEVITABLE AS THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SUN!

► Dark Green, SIR (PRT Brat)

I hate you all.

► Nishiho (Kyushu Survivor)

@Robby G, take this threadmark and my eternal respect. Because even if you might be wrong (and I’m personally inclined to agree with you, honestly), that level of dedication really deserves to be recognized.

Also, Inari fucking damnit @Third Eye, why?!

► Third Eye (Verified Gossip)

Teehee.

______________________________________________________________________________

Right, that was enough internet for a hot minute.

Oh, hey, Doc had sent her the reports already! That’d scrub her brain toot sweet.