“Scion.” A student on the TV spoke.  The camera shifted to him late, and by the time he’d responded, the professor was pointing to another.

Ah yeah, I guess he deviates from the norm pretty damn heavily.

“Endbringers.”

“Nilbog.”

“I wouldn’t suggest Nilbog, but we can debate the point later,” the professor spoke,

Hm, interesting. Nilbog was (were?) introduced in the same chapter as the Endbringers and the Slaughterhouse Nine, though Nilbog was more in line with the latter, among the really dangerous fuckers. Apparently they are debatably out of the ordinary somehow?

“Perhaps a subject for a course paper.

Very debatably, apparently.

Scion, yes.  Endbringers?  Yes.  We have no reason or evidence to suspect they gained powers by normal means.  Another group you may or may not be familiar with are what the PRT terms Case Fifty-Threes.  Often the ‘monstrous’ parahumans, we’ll get into more depth on the subject.”

Upsilon.

Oh yeah, wasn’t Weld described as a case 53 in Interlude 7, before we knew what that meant and that he had a background fitting the usual narrative of Upsilon’s victims?

“Could someone nearby have gotten their powers, without you knowing?  Way things played out?  Did any capes show up around the same time as you?”

Considering the whole secrecy thing, this is definitely possible.

Flechette frowned, “Yeah.  A rather persistent villain.”

“Worth thinking about.”

Neat.

Weld turned around, “Critical thinking and applying this stuff is good, but let’s not forget the lecture.  Or the other people in the classroom.”

He has a point.

Is he trying to get people to dislike him?  Clockblocker wondered.

But yeah, he could’ve put that a bit more nicely.

I stand by my understanding of Weld as a well-meaning kid who struggles with understanding other people’s emotions and social cues. Possibly autistic or something similar.

The professor on the screen was answering a student’s question, “…I think Eidolon expresses a single power.  But thank you.  Good question, and good lead-in to the next section of the course we’ll be discussing.

I like whoever asked that. Thank you.

I still wonder what sort of trigger event causes someone to develop such a fluid power.

After we wrap up on trigger events, we’re going to be moving on to what we call ‘outliers’.  Parahumans or parahuman-related elements that deviate from the norm.  Any guesses?”

Endbringers, except it seems like people didn’t know that they fell under “parahuman-related elements” rather than “parahumans” when this video was recorded.

Evidently, though, there must be more phenomena along these lines for the category to be a thing.

“Hey, Flechette,” Kid Win called across the room, “You’ve got a bunch of powers, right?”

She turned in her seat, “Sure.”

…that’s not really the impression I got last chapter, but I guess each of the ways she can make things defy physics might count separately?

“Anyone else get powers at the same time you did?”

“Not that I know of.”

Oh, okay, it seems I misunderstood.

So if several people get their powers together, each of them will likely have more powers. Which means that Endbringer attack is likely to create especially powerful parahumans.

Also, it’s not like that hypothetical organization trying to trigger more parahumans needed any more incentive to target lots of people at a time.

(Incidentally, while looking for that post, I also came across Tattle telling us about third-world countries having more parahumans, so I guess that’s not news.)

He shifted restlessly, annoyed, angry.

“Trigger events are a crucial element for study, because the timing, nature and spread of these emerging powers may provide a clue as to where these parahuman abilities come from.  More women than men have powers, for example, and there are more powers in undeveloped countries than there are in industrialized ones

That last tidbit may be a result of more people experiencing trigger events in undeveloped countries.

– Some of you may remember me mentioning this fact in the 101 class, when I was talking about the witch burnings in The People’s Republic of Uganda.

…yikes. This is what happens when you don’t have an official PR organization, I suppose.

“Another pattern we will be exploring is the apparent effect of multiple trigger events occurring in the same time and place.  There is a very strong correlation between coinciding trigger events and individuals displaying three or more powers rather than one or two predominant ones.”

Huh.

So in other words, people with lots of powers probably had lots of bad things happening on top of each other. Sheesh.

…what the hell happened to Eidolon?

Clockblocker glanced at Glory Girl, to see if the mention of her family had stirred her interest.  She hadn’t budged an inch.  Was she asleep?

She’s probably used to it.

Not that I’m saying she isn’t asleep or despondent.

He couldn’t help but sympathize.  This is a monumental waste of time.  I could be out there, helping people.  Or spending time with my family.

“There’s people going fucking crazy out there, and you’re talking trigger events.”

The Protectorate was coordinating shifts so the Wards could collectively get at least some education in the meantime, on Piggot’s orders.  Except this wasn’t useful, this wasn’t applicable to the ongoing crisis right here, right now, in this city.  Cooped up in a PRT conference room, learning stuff that didn’t apply to actual field work.

Yeah, I see where you’re coming from.

Hell, it was on videotape, a recording of last year’s lectures.  Why couldn’t they watch it in their off hours?  It was just a fucked up set of priorities enforced on them from the people in charge.

Yeah, that’s probably true.

On the other hand, it’s probably not healthy to be out patrolling all the time like it seems you want to. I totally get why you want to, but to save other people you also need to take care of yourself.

We’ll talk about the theories on why.  For those of you wanting to read ahead, take a look at Garth’s notes on the Dallon and Pelham families in chapter nine.

It seems this class is going to be built primarily of Garth and Rogers.

Also, Pelham, huh? I have a feeling we’ll find out more about them at some point. Or is that the other half of New Wave?

*blog search*

Ah, yeah, Shielder’s civilian name was Eric Pelham.

Moving on, then.

We can surmise that the different scenarios leading to trigger events may be directly related to the differences in powers, even among closely related members of a cape family.

We did see differences between the members in spite of significant similarities.

Similar trigger events and related individuals, similar powers.

Similar trigger events too, huh. That clouds it a tad, I suppose.

The more distant the relation and the more varied the trigger events, the more drastically different the powers they possess in the end.”

This is interesting stuff.

It’s entirely possible that people like Heartbreaker tailor their abuse of the potential parahumans in order to try to control what sort of power the latter might get to fit with what the former needs.

Relatedly, though, how does this all interact with the supposed tendency of second-generation parahumans to have easier trigger events? How does playing basketball fit into Garth and Rogers’ hypotheses?

“For this class, I want you to think.  Parahumans.  People with powers.  They’ve been around for nearly thirty years.  Where did they come from?  Why are they here?

Big questions that I’m curious about the answers to myself.

I feel like I should note that it’s entirely possible to write a story like this and not address this question at all. Basically saying, “powers started showing up one day, that’s all we know”, and leaving it at that. But here’s the thing: Worm hasn’t left it at that. It’s been made enough of a deal out of by the story itself that even if I weren’t spoiled on something called “shards” playing a role in this, I’d feel entirely justified in expecting some form of explanation, implicit or explicit, coming up over the course of the story.

It’s common knowledge that parahumans are ordinary individuals who gained abilities.  It is too easy, however, to assume that this is the sum total of our knowledge.  I want you to think further on the subject.  For example, why does virtually every parahuman ability have some application in confrontation and combat?

That’s a good point. Pretty much everything, including powers, can be used as a weapon somehow, but it’s true that a lot of powers we’ve seen are pretty clearly weapons first and foremost. Miss Militia’s in particular is quite clear about that.

Is this the nature of humans, to turn any progress to violent ends, be it science or superpower?  Or is it by design, an individual’s hand at work?

Speaking of Miss Militia, I feel like she might have a thing or two to say about this topic and Karahindiba.