“Right,” I said. “And the day Leviathan came. It wasn’t just range. The bugs were responding just a bit faster. Maybe a tenth of a second faster, but yeah.”
Interesting.
“Ok. Here’s my theory then. I think your power’s strongest when you’re closest to the situation where you had your trigger event.”
…I see. That does make some sense.
If the powers are indeed “granted” to those who seem to need them in a moment, then it makes sense that whatever is behind this all might grant more power when the parahumans are in similar situations again. It’s what the powers were meant to help with.
“What?”
“Honestly, I’m highly suspicious that it’s true for any cape out there. Whenever you’re in the same kind of mindset or same sort of physical situation you were in when you got your powers, your powers get stronger. The bad news is that you probably can’t leverage that to your advantage. Your powers would operate off of hopelessness and frustration, because that’s what drove you to get your powers in the first place.”
Meanwhile, someone whose state of mind during their trigger event can be easily recreated in a combat situation would potentially be able to use it to their advantage. This might be the case with some of the stronger parahumans, like Eidolon, Scion or even Regent. Maybe Regent was already a broken kid by the time his trigger event happened, and has trouble not being in the same state of mind as then?
Fuck. It fit, more or less.
Yeah, I’m afraid I have to agree.
“The really scary part is that it might be doing us a disservice, because it works like a Pavlovian trigger. Like how the dog who hears the bell ringing every time he gets food starts to drool when he hears the bell, this might be subtly urging us back into ugly, violent or dangerous situations with the benefits of having our powers temporarily boosted.”
Between what we’ve seen with Taylor, Kid Win and Chariot, there does seem to be a sort of craving to use one’s powers, or a craving by the powers to be used.
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