Comic 1142 - Stand your ground
Posted on 9th Dec 2018, 9:32 PM
in Like a Bullet from Behind
Average Rating: 4.67 (3 votes) /
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Author Notes:
You pull a cage of meat, metal, and bone out of the red.
The soul that it wants to consume is gone. The worm isn't getting to it. There is nothing, no source of power, that could make the worm strong enough to survive in the flesh of a god. If the worm helps you, it can survive. If it tries to take power by force, it's not going to get anywhere.
You admit--maybe the worm's not wrong. Maybe this is, in its way, a method of consolidating power... but you don't want power for its own sake. You want everyone, on this planet, to survive. Everyone that CAN without causing a problem for everyone else. That means Thale has to go. If the worm insists on Thale succeeding, and insists on continuing to eat ghosts... then the worm has to go, too. It doesn't NEED to be this way--if they can just agree to a peaceful resolution, this doesn't need to get violent. You're offering a way for you to get what you want, and the worm to get what they want.
You respect everyone's autonomy. Plenty of people work WITH you, not for you, and you've already started looking into ways to unblood individuals for a time when that's no longer needed.
A tense silence sweeps the room. The worm throbs, and the air crackles.
"YOU HAVE POWER."
"A USEFUL AMOUNT OF POWER."
"BUT I THINK YOU'RE BLUFFING."
"I DON'T THINK YOU HAVE ENOUGH POWER."
"I THINK YOU'RE AFRAID OF ME."
"AFRAID OF THE PROPHECY."
"AFRAID OF THE FUTURE."
"I THINK YOU'RE LYING."
"I THINK THE ONE I SEEK TO CONSUME STILL EXISTS."
"I THINK IT MIGHT EVEN BE YOU."
Michelle snaps out of her ritual daze. "Blondie!," she yells at the air. "It don't trust humans!"
"I THINK YOU'LL SAY ANYTHING--"
"DO ANYTHING--"
"TO SAVE YOURSELF."
"THAT THING PROTECTED YOU."
"BEFORE."
"ONCE."
"IS IT ALL YOU HAVE?"
"It's eaten a lot o' liars an' assholes!," Michelle continues, hurriedly. "An' people that got screwed by those guys! It learned from those! It don't trust what folks have to say, it only believes what it learns from eatin' imprints!"
"BECAUSE WHAT IT PROTECTED YOU FROM--"
"ISN'T ALL I HAVE."
The lights flicker, once.
In an instant, you're surrounded--ghosts, partially consumed, four in total. They rush the cage, hands outstretched.
We promised our friends we would be safe. Staying here is not safe. The worm has already started its attack. Standing and fighting is only reckless. We can win from a distance. What do we really think we're proving to it? That we're stronger? That won't earn its trust. This is neither the time nor the place to assert our dominance. We've said what we came to say, now it's time to take our leave.
We can come back (potentially through the same blood portal) with the ghost gun. We can come back after figuring out how to make a nonsentient "echo on loop" imprint of Mine to feed it, so that it can see her intentions are genuine. But to do anything about this, we need to get away right now-- if Mine is pinned down either by the ghosts or restricted to the area within the cage around her, the silkworm can just reach its face over and swallow her.
and if that doesn't work, just do the portal thing, there's tons of blood and other material on the floor, just make a red portal from that and slip on out, escape is a favourable option to showing force in case showing force doesn't work out
but yeah, worm's getting real annoying BUT, we can still resolve this super peacefully by just making an imprint of our SELECT memories and letting it eat that (after we deal with the ghosts). I emphasize 'select,' since we don't want the worm to eat the imprint and gain knowledge into our abilities just in case it's still uncooperative after that time
EDIT: regardless of how we deal with our current situation, I think it'd do us some good to work on a sort of 'eldritch form' that can speak to the worm properly. I don't mean the stretch thin form, just like a construct that looks eldritch enough, so something like a floating polyhedron made of bone and flesh and dripping blood everywhere, and then speaking through it with like a mouth.
make it float to the worm and then start talking. It distrusts humans, but maybe it wouldn't distrust what looks like something eldritch
It would be a bad idea to leave *right away* because that would be showing that we DO fear the wyrm, and thus weakening our negotiating position. It is unlikely to understand our leaving as being a choice that we make so we don't have to hurt it.
but yeah we should just go right now
Spine the ghosts with bone or whatever the hell comes out when we think "stab."
General plans include answering a worm-rush with an open portal, and getting some blood on the lower floor.
I've got this feeling blooding it won't do much good.
I'm so on board with this.
We should work on getting a decoy imprint for this thing to consume, because we know it's set on eating a powerful imprint. If we can imagine up one using our own power and buff it using the strengthening spell, perhaps, it would see our memories once it's eaten and would likely be much more amenable.
Blood waterfall from the meatcage seems like a good idea. Then, will ourselves into the red from the blood at our feet as fast as possible.
Make a mouth from the blood - tell the worm that we are not just a human - we are something more. Perhaps it has heard of the fragments of the first womb. Tell it we will prove our intentions.
In the red, focus on the stress of our situation, the emotion of our genuine desire for a peaceful outcome and amicable relationship and... try to make an imprint. It might take a lot of effort, but... it seems like a thing we can do.
If we manage that, send the imprint up and out of the red, into the worm's domain and... well, let Silky eat it.
Once their start converting Electricity into Signals and use them to try and form a Impromptu Imprint apply a powerful emotion to the imprint to convey our intention to the Worm and help give the Imprint form then return from the Red and offer the Imprint to the worm as proof of what we say if it doesn't believe us it will believe what it learns from the imprint.
Not being willing to call it is going to be a liability for us later. Michelle seems like she'd know a thing or two about how to think about it. Maybe ask for her advice later.
Give it one last chance to back down.
If it doesn't?
Bloodportal out of the dangerzone, and get ready to put on a show of force.
Well, a show of force and a test.
Let's try to boil some blood in the red, and release the resulting blood-mist into the area.
Our electrical powers may be helpful in this endeavor.
Combine blood-waterfall walls to stop the ghosts with an EMP to disable them, if possible. If we *absolutely* have to, we can retreat into the red and then just immediately pop up in another position that has also been blooded. By looking like we're *evading with ease* instead of retreating, we might convince the wyrm that we're as powerful as we say-- but it'd be better to be able to no-sell the attacks entirely.
And then... as we're withstanding this eldritch creature's assault... we need to go into Nurse Mode. Mine has no doubt had to deal with traumatized people before. Unless the laws of the future-US have changed significantly, a nurse is probably still legally required to identify and report abuse, and work to prevent it. Even if not, she still has experience working with people who are hurt and lashing out, people who are feeling betrayed or scared, people who can't trust. It's the same process we've been working through with Edison. But since the wyrm acquired its mistrust via the experiences of others rather than from personal experience, hopefully it will be faster to accept our sympathy and support.
Not just sympathy, but empathy. We, too, have been betrayed. Humans killed our father. Humans trapped us in a hospital and tried to kill us, and watched us from afar while we struggled. Humans have been *trying* to kill us for some time now. Heck, humans *did* successfully kill us, once. But we will not give up on them. (Holy shit, we kind of are Jesus, aren't we?)
We continue to work with humans because we know that there are others who WILL be good, loyal friends. Our friends would die for us not because we would make them, but because they would *choose* to-- heck, a couple of them have made decisions INTENDING to die for us (Caius taking a radioactive gut shot, Fuse disposing of dead bodies in the lower tiers knowing he may not come back), and they have all marched into danger knowing there was a very good chance of them never returning from it.
Imprints can be created from moments of strong emotion. Surely Zone 50 produced almost entirely negative ones, and we should apologize that the Silkwyrm has had to see such an ugly side of humanity. But on the flip side, we should also hopefully be able to invest an imprint with *positive* emotion. Is it possible to just... create a bundle of happy electricity, full of hope and trusting in your friends and the feeling that you get when you read cat magazines? I don't want to create any kind of sapient imprint because then, of course, it would be *incredibly* unethical to feed it to the Wyrm. But perhaps we might be able to distill how we feel and what we hope for into an imprint-like thing somehow. Or maybe if we just feel hard enough in the wyrm's general direction, it'll be able to pick up on it XD
Now's time for all that work we've been doing on meditation to come into play. Feel hope and love and friendship with laser focus and brilliant intensity! And maybe turn it into electricity somehow!
Popping up in other locations is fine a couple times - but if things get hairy and it starts, say, filling the room with electricity and/or ghosts indiscriminately... I'd rather let it think, briefly, that we're scared and fled then to take it on the chin to look tough.
In general, I am for most of this though! We just wanna make sure the imprint thing has some of the memories/thoughts about our desire for a peaceful solution too - just not enough to be a person.
Also, if this thing doesn't trust anything but imprints it's eaten... make a new imprint of Mine to feed to it. That way it'll find out the truth. We can try by attempting to copy Mine's electrical pattern, but we may have to ask the Tradesmen how remotely.
>scroll down to comment section
>noticesomething.jpeg
>League of legends ad
>caption says "IT'S ON"
>mfw
top fucking kek
But what if we indeed thought like a god?
What can this worm truly offer the team? It's dangerous, but it's not necessarily powering Ilworth. How quickly could we make bone spears in the red and shoot them out of our blood puddles? Could we have absorbed the worm into the red like Knox? Could we indeed make mouths in the red and emit a bloody, meaty silkworm to counter/fight the big one?