Comic 1176 - Have Pierce try the ritual
Posted on 13th Feb 2019, 11:09 PM
in Like a Bullet from Behind
Average Rating: 5 (5 votes) /
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Author Notes:
"Nah, I think I'm--"
She pauses.
She squints.
"Okay yeah, nah, it's comin'. Hit me with it, please."
You quickly give Michelle a strong painkiller effect.
She breathes a small sigh, shuffling over to sit down against the nearby building.
"Y'know how when ya do a lot of exercise, you end up all sore later?"
"No," Liz says bluntly.
"Well, like," Michelle continues undeterred, "they say it's 'cuz your muscles are tearin' down and then buildin' back up."
"...And you just had that occur to your entire body," Pierce points out.
"Ahyup," Michelle huffs, leaning her head back. "I only got a taste of it, and I already feel bad for anyone doin' that spell without Blondie around. Thanks, by the way."
You nod.
So... does anyone else want to try it...?
Liz looks at Pierce, who looks back at Liz.
They stare at each other for a brief, completely expressionless moment before Pierce turns his attention back to you.
"I can attempt it."
He steps back, away from the group, and begins to recite the verbal components of the ritual. As before, it takes... a little while, the spoken portion rather lengthy. While he does that, you check on the raven you sent to the address the tradesmen gave you. Edgar has arrived at...
A fairly innocuous looking used bookstore in the middle tiers.
Without stumbling over the words or hesitating as much, Pierce does complete the ritual a little quicker than Michelle. His runes glow beneath his robes... and there's a slight pause.
He takes a deep breath, having seen what happens next.
He grunts as muscle bulges and enlarges. His loose attire holds its own a little longer than Michelle's clothes did, but soon, he bursts out of it--swelling as Michelle did, with... subtle differences.
His skull stretches, snapping his visor in half--the remains of it are almost... sucked into his face, but his jaws don't quite break the skin. You can see the skin straining, though, against his multiplying teeth and mutating cranium. Bone finally does force its way to the outside... but only in select portions, coming together and growing, fusing into one another over where his face would be, almost forming an entirely new visor.
More bone pushes its way out of his hands, his chest, his knees. The... feet are different, you notice--the bone is slimmer, more pointed, less like claws--
there's almost a second stage to the transformation.
Mass that pushed out and grew to Michelle's previous levels suddenly tightens and reigns itself back in.
His posture, which had started to hunker over, is allowed to straighten. The form is sleeker, more humanoid.
...You're still thrown off by the feet, or rather, the lack thereof. The needle-like bone that protrudes from his legs isn't nearly enough to support Pierce's still incredible weight. He tips, stumbling, struggling to stay standing with his unbalanced proportions.
Liz lightly shakes her head. "They didn't seem to design this thing to--"
And, with a flash of light... streams of electricity shoot out of Pierce's back. The energy intertwines, flowing in and out of itself, funneling outward. Lines of it crackle off the air and dance across the ground. Slowly, steadily... Pierce stands upright.
Not just stands.
The needle tip points barely graze the grass. He's practically hovering.
"What!," Michelle yells. "He's got freakin' wings!"
What was it Dr. Finch was saying, back when you were speculating about what was lurking in the power plant? Something about spiders using electrical currents to fly...?
"No," Liz says flatly. "You cannot convince me that Pierce is hovering with the power of magnetism. Do you realize how much electricity it would take to lift him off the ground at this size?"
"I dunno," Michelle replies, "An infinite amount? He's tappin' into the red! He's got however much juice it takes."
While Liz and Michelle continue arguing over square cube law and electrical currents, you ask Pierce if he can understand you.
His face... contorts, but it doesn't open up the way Michelle's did. His voice is also different, somehow--the numerous vocals sound... better synced, more fluid. It's still unnerving to hear, but it reminds you more of an ominous choir than a wild animal. After realizing he can't talk, Pierce simply nods.
You ask him if he's alright. He nods again.
Looking at him more closely... you don't think the electricity is the only thing keeping him aloft. His veins writhe and bulge beneath the surface of his flesh in a way Michelle's didn't.
Levitating objects, and controlling them in the air, was one of the earliest tricks you learned.
You're pretty sure Pierce's body is being partially held up by its own blood.
"Wait--" Michelle holds her hands up, "Legit? That's a thing? Blondie, can YOU fly?!"
"The human circulatory system isn't designed for it," Liz states. "It would be ridiculously painful, even if it didn't rupture every vein in your body."
Liz is right.
"Honestly, I'm not convinced that--"
Probably.
Liz stops talking and snaps a glare at you. "Mine Ametsuchi," she says sternly. "You would literally explode. Your blood would erupt from the top of your body like a science fair volcano."
You're almost guessing, at this point, but you suspect the... er... electric wings on Pierce are mostly for balance, while the blood itself is doing all the heavy lifting.
"...That would take a great deal of blood," Liz mutters, slowly turning her gaze from you... to Pierce... back to you. She's silent, for a moment, seeming to hesitate. "At the risk of sparking some sort of identity crisis... Patton's 'main' identity is supposed to be in the version of him with the most blood, isn't it...? How are you not..."
"Not Pierce right now?," Michelle finishes. "Well, 'cuz--" Michelle stops. She squints at the ground for a second, and then looks at you, as well. "--That's a good question, though. Wasn't this s'posed to be a problem before? Don't Pierce got more o' your blood than you do right now?"
You start to think about it--
but it all clicks into place fairly quickly.
It's the same reason you can't pull from the red using Michelle's blood.
Pierce doesn't have the highest quantity of your blood right now, he has the highest quantity of his own blood. It just happens to be a gift from you, with a number of your blood's properties.
"That..." Michelle pauses, "I ain't real sure how much sense that makes, Blondie."
"It's a defense mechanism," Liz says quietly, almost sounding as though she's in disbelief. "You've accidentally coaxed yourself into enough cognitive dissonance to eliminate one of your greatest weaknesses. That's almost brilliant in how utterly dense it is."
"Could Thale do that?," Michelle asks. "I don't wanna track his old ass down just to find out we got the wrong one."
"No," Liz replies simply. "Never. I'm barely wrapping my head around it myself. It... plays entirely off of how Mine relates to and justifies everything. It's an alien drawback that she human'd her way past by virtue of... well, being Mine."
At this point, Liz seems to have a better grasp on whatever it is than you do, and you barely have a better wrangle on it than Michelle does. Whatever's going on, you're still firmly you, and Pierce is still firmly Pierce (and very large, and slightly hovering).
Different transformations for different physiologies (or maybe even for different people, though it's doubtful that Caius and Michelle's transformations are gonna be different, but it's still possible)
And this was kinda what I was thinking about designwise for the biomech (but just less weird veins, eyes, and flesh, more just bone and muscle)
Oh and yeah, we can definitely fly, remember we don't have to control only blood to float stuff, we can control/float red-material just fine as evidenced by our biomech arm. And we're us, so we're probably definitely made of red-material that will allow us to fly
For now let's have Pierce test out his capabilities, depending on how refined the ritual is, we might not even need to give him a painkiller effect after since it should be tailored to his biology/physiology
@zophah, we probably shouldn't use this ritual on ourselves. Though I am curious.
Or she just turns into Magical Girl 2.0, with the new Eleventh Hour Super Power that appears when you need it most. Extra lace and fairy wings.
1. This spell is kinda awesome. Kudos to the Tradesmen for being helpful and generous, to Team #11 for doing the legwork in putting this ritual together, and Morgenstern for both the awesome story and set up, and super cool designs for mega Michelle and Pierce.
Also, kinda thinking this a bit of a consolation that the Biomech plan fell through on account of being to complicated to put together in a timely manner, but enough thought went into it that something should come out from it. Might just be me projecting though.2. I'm kinda surprised flying Mine has never come up before now. It should be totally doable if we levitate all the redstuff that is Mine as Cyanic described. Man, the revelations and powers just keep coming today.
3. I look forward to investigating that bookstore when the time comes. I get the feeling that the Tradesmen are being generous again, with some other advantage or interesting tid-bits in store on top of the promised ritual. For the record, I'm putting odds down now at a 70% chance that it's a pretty normal bookstore with just one magic book/pamphlet but one other attention catching thing, 20% that it's loaded with mystic paraphernalia and scribbles, a 5% that it's the Library, and 5% "other." 'Cuz sometimes ya never know what to expect with this story.
4. The whole "gifted Blood belongs to the person but is still the Blood" continues to add evidence in favor of our bluddies being able to use Blood powers. If the powers work on belief and will as much as they do, and gifted Blood belongs to the individual it's in, than that individual should very easily be able to will commands to/through their allotment of Blood. I think it would be wise to give one of our teammates a Bloody bandage to hold and see if they can will it around a bit. That was the first power we gained and seems like a good, basic stepping stone.
As for our next course of action, let's have Pierce see what he can do in this form. We should take a picture or two to show the rest of the crew, too. Actually, as much as I'm enjoying this set of character interactions, why don't we have the guys out here with us? They definitely wanna and aughta know what this ritual can do. Anyways, after Peirce's spell has run it's course, either Mine should give the ritual a go for first hand experience, or we should disperse to start working on spiritual training for the day. Or maybe just lunch.
As for Mine flying, I don't think there should be any obstacles. We can move lumpy around, and he's also just meat, so I think Liz's assumptions that all we can move is "blood" is incorrect. Not just our blood, but our entire body counts as redstuff. Plus, if we were going to exsanguinate ourselves, I think we'd be able to feel that and stop.
Sure, let's give Caius a bandage. Tell him if this works, he'll be able to use the hammer way better. I guess Michelle and Pierce too, if they aren't too tired after this.
But yes, we should test out this form while we have the chance. Otherwise we're just making Pierce tired for nothing. I think we should give him a good deal of room so we can try AOE moves, test the mobility of this form, and construct some sturdy random items in the red for him to attack so we don't destroy our town for practice. We should also quickly check his aura.
Still worth a shot though.
Edit: Pun retroactively intended.
I can't help but think of HPMOR's Voldemort flying using broomstick-bones, which might actually be pretty close to the way we should try to go about levitation. I'm really worried about fiddling with anything that will screw up blood pressure dramatically, but bones seem like a pretty solid choice (pun intended).
Also, I suspect Liz might be able to quickly pick up blood-control due to Thale's past knowledge-sync. I also suspect she will have pretty uncomfortable feelings about this, although there's a chance she would find it empowering.
(If we literally blood an animal to do this, I vote against using literal ticks. The damn things transmit a whole array of diseases, some of which we probably haven't even named yet.)
I have a feeling that Pierce has some type of martial arts background, even though it is likely more casual than useful. Skills learned from childhood are remembered if the body is capable.
Also see if Liz is ok.
Just because humans define blood as just the red colored liquid stuff, doesn't mean "the Red" has to define it the same way.
Aa far as the logic is concerned leave it at: it works, it is relatively safe but exhausting so a one shot deal, and it should Not be used in confined spaces, or in Pierce's case, near anything conductive.
Don't try anywhere near important things, like people.
I wonder whether this ritual calls on our Mine, or another?
Should probably check the red when we run the next combat ritual, see if it does anything when the transformation is going on.
Offhand I think we want to limit blood-portaling as a contingency plan during the showdown. We will A) possibly be in another dimension, who knows where we would end up. And B) give Nil an opening to infect The Red.
She really needs a shot of Liz-only happiness - being immersed in Thaleness seems to have shoved her original personality into a corner and beaten it down.
+1 to the epiphany that ALL of Mine and her golems are "red stuff" no matter what form it pretends to take
+1 to the 2ND jar in a jar epiphany (the one Taenidia mentions)