Here’s a thing I’ve been forgetting to mention:

Imp’s power reminds me of the Gray Men (also known as the Soulless) from the Wheel of Time series. They’re servants of the Dark One who are nearly unnoticeable, and are consequently used as assassins. They’re not invisible, but the gaze of most onlookers, even ones who are actively on guard, will just slide right over them. In many cases, witnesses will report seeing the victim fall but not seeing the murderer, even though it happened right in front of them, in plain sight.

Imp’s power is stronger, though, since even if she does get noticed, her power can then cause people to forget about that shortly after. Gray Men are hard to notice, but they don’t mess with your memories once you do.

“It just delays the issue, allowing another 15 or so years for humanity to prepare.” What would preparation look like?

For some examples:

  • Allowing more powered people to emerge.
  • Developing more tinkertech and regular tech that might come in handy.
  • Informing select parahumans about the upcoming apocalypse to prepare them for whatever efforts might be done to reduce damage and possibly even ending the event. They’d need to pick trustworthy ones, though, because it leaking to the public might cause panic, rage, riots, dejection… on another hand, maybe the negative reactions to the US government publicly predicting the upcoming apocalypse would be worth it for the people who would take it seriously and become apocalypse preppers. Maybe some of them would be able to survive because of it.
  • With more time, Dinah and other parahuman sources of information may be able to provide more knowledge of the exact threat

    and its timing

    (especially if Dinah’s power gets easier to use with age/training), helping to make plans for how to best deal with it. Plans that are probably largely going to fall out the window when the threat actually comes, but still plans that might help. Knowledge is power in this setting, let’s not forget that.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this preparation would solve the problem, or make a huge dent in it, but every little thing that might help is desirable in this scenario, and each extra year before it happens might provide several such little things.

It wouldn’t really make much sense for real paramedics to be at the house so soon after the attack. Even if they had time to prepare early because of Taylor’s warning, it’s not like they can send ambulances to every house in the city. It would be a pretty big coincidence if Danny’s house happened to be one of the very few houses that they were able to send paramedics to.

That is fair point.

Dude when do you even sleep? Aren’t you Norwegian?

The only thing that is regular about my sleep schedule these days is it getting fucked up. I do usually manage to fall asleep somewhere in between 2 and 9 AM, at least.

I can’t be sure of what my feelings on Rachel were at that point in the story but I think that back then even though she didn’t tell about being a candidate I still felt sympathy for her because from her interlude it’s obvious she wants to get closer to people but she’s been hurt too much in the past so she’s keeping her distance to avoid being hurt again. Yeah, she never met Taylor halfway, but given her history I can’t blame her.

That’s fair. I don’t blame her for that either, really, but it’s still kind of hard to take “I have no real positive connections” as a sympathetic motivation for shitty behavior when there’s seemingly been no attempt from her side to create some (and said behavior actively harms any such efforts), even when it was initiated by someone who actually wanted to look past her shitty behavior and get to know her.

She’s ended up kind of neutral on the sympathy scale, I guess. I don’t sympathize with her much, but I don’t hate her either. It’s understandable that she acts this way, just not sympathetic after all the shit she’s pulled.

“This is insane.” And some real Shatterbird bait, too.

Hell yeah. A 240-room hotel with roof-to-floor glass windows on every one of them and their little bathrooms too? That’s a massacre waiting to happen if Shatterbird shows up here.

Holy crap your hometown looks gorgeous.

Thank you! 🙂

It’s not exactly a big place or a tourist destination (though it does see a fair amount of tourists on their way to other places, which is part of why they’re planning the hotel), but I think it’s a nice little town we’ve got.

The L shape of the clock is the side view.

Oh! So:

The thing on the right is how I imagined it. Bit of a fancy modern design, y’know.

But yeah, I suppose the left design does make a lot more sense with Hebert sensibilities and economy.