The intern responsible for translating the previous post has been fired, thrown into the darkness and eaten by a Norwegian grue. We here at Krixwell Liveblogs Inc. apologize for the inconvenience.

I realized where we were going well before we got there.  Even hearing the music and knowing who the Merchants were, I was still shocked to see it.

That bad, huh?

Music… The mall? A church?

A concert venue?

Weymouth shopping center, the mall I’d gone to all my life, was now a rallying point for Merchants.  

Eyy, got it in one!

Hundreds of them, it looked like, all gathered together for one grand, debauched festival.

I’d joke about the Dark Carnival, but juggalos get enough shit already without me associating them with these fuckers.

Half of the Merchants I could see wore a fresh band around their wrists, or hanging from their clothing, like badges of honor.

Probably got them at the entrance, I’m guessing.

Lisa had noticed it too.  “Yellow bands were for a test of courage, black for near death experience.  The red ones they’re handing out at the door?”

“Blood?” I guessed.

“Bloodshed, yeah.  Something ugly’s going to happen tonight.”

Welp.

That’s… kind of expected, to be honest, but still. Welp.

“You said you saw evidence of it in your own powers?  Can I ask?”

Lisa looked back over her shoulder, as if checking nobody was following us.  She sighed.

“I don’t want to press,” I hurried to tell her.

“Another time?” she asked.  “I don’t want to get into a bad headspace just before we do this thing, tonight.”

So close to getting more hints about her trigger event…

“That’s fine,” I answered her.  “Really, you don’t have to say.”

“I said no more secrets, didn’t I?  Just give me time to figure out how to explain.”

Yeah, that’s fair.

“Of course.”

She gave me a one-armed hug.

Aw 🙂

I wasn’t sure I liked the implications of that.  “Then what’s the good news?”

“It’s kind of like a defense mechanism.  The worse a situation gets, the stronger you’ll get.  It’s probably happened before, to small degrees, but you haven’t noticed it.”

Yeah, sounds about right.

Good to know there was a sort of logic to this. I mean, I always assumed there was, but it’s good to know it’s not random and just conveniently happened to take effect during Leviathan’s attack. Instead, it was the sheer hopelessness of the situation that made Taylor stronger.

I wonder what the upper limits on this are. What would Taylor’s range be in a moment of utter crushing despair?

“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.

“Okay,” I spoke, jamming my hands into my pockets.

“Tell me about your territory grab?”

I did, going into detail about the play I’d made, dealing with the Merchant who had tried to cut me, encountering Battery, then returning to my lair to fend off my enemies from a safe vantage point.

Neat story, huh?

“…Problem is my range only extends eight hundred feet or so around me.  My territory’s larger than that, which means I can only cover part of my territory at a time.  It bugs me, because I know I can reach further, I’ve had times where I could.”

Ooooh

This reads like it’s leading up to Tattletale’s take on what’s going on with the overdrive!

Also, nice to have a value on the range not given in blocks. American blocks are a unit I can’t really relate to.

“Right.  I remember you asking about that, but I was distracted.”

“Any ideas?”

“One theory, and there’s a good bit and a bad bit to it.”

Does the bad bit have to do with it being uncontrollable? Or is it something worse?

“Yeah?”

“Just going by how my own power fluctuates, hearing what you’re saying about yours?  You got a range boost that day of the hearing, right?  When you went to your school to talk about the bullies, and everything fell apart?”

…shit.

That, and on the day of the Endbringer, immediately after the Undersiders had a falling out.

Yeeah, that’s a bit of a steep price to pay for extended range.

So does this have to do with the power starting to crave being used when she gets enraged?