Pandaemonium
Posts 381
Power Level 31
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Post by Aurora Disicio on May 9, 2016 16:50:15 GMT -7
Aurora was livid. She still hadn't released most of the pent up anger she had from reading that godforsaken newspaper article, and she had to save her dumbass partner's ass because he decided it would be a good idea to attack a bunch of reporters. She couldn't even begin to comprehend what the hell he was thinking. Of course, because she had to protect his identity and secrets, she couldn't finish breaking down that building, and had to retreat from the heroes. Worse than that, she had to retreat from them in front of the reporters he failed to even attack properly. Her jumps had a bit more force than usual as she made her way back to the docks, and she was holding onto Dullahan's head like she was trying to crush it under her arm.
The trip back wasn't so bad for her, other than the fact that she had to make it, but there was no way she could say the same for Dullahan. Aurora was immune to the effects of her power, but he would not be. Normally, she kept her particles spread out enough that they'd be irritating to a person's skin, but not really enough to do much damage to it. About the only thing she had to worry about was the person breathing in too much of it, and then reassembling whatever they breathed in. In order to really make sure no one could see Dullahan in pieces through the haze of her power, she really had to condense it. Rather than the usual bright, rainbow fog her power normally was, it shone brightly. Staring directly at it was like trying to stare directly into the sun. Every single one of those particles would be rubbing against Dullahan's remaining skin, and would likely be completely destroying the circuits in his artificial body. If he had any blood left in him, it'd probably be all over his face by the time they got back to the docks. Under normal circumstances, Aurora might have felt bad. Maybe. Here though, she thought he deserved every cut.
Aurora entered one of the many empty warehouses on the docks, and started blocking all the exits and windows with pieces from the news station. She doubted Dullahan would run away, in this state she doubted he could run away. This was just a measure to prevent anyone from looking in. Once all the windows were blocked, she spread out her aurora, letting it cling to the roof, and dissolved his mechanical body into particles to join it. She pulled his head out from under her coat, and raised it so it was right in front of her face, holding it by the bag-like mask he wore. She wasn't sure if it was right-side up or not, in fact she suspected it was upside down, but she didn't particularly care. When she spoke, it was clear she was trying to rival that alarm he used during the battle.
"What hell were you thinking?! First you crash through the building before I even had a chance to make sure it was clear and to get out of it myself, then you spend more time going after the people than the building itself? Were you trying to provoke the heroes into all focusing on you?"
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Pandaemonium
Posts 78
Power Level 25
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Post by Dullahan on May 9, 2016 17:27:32 GMT -7
The trip back to the docks was uncomfortable, as much as that word still had any meaning for Dullahan. Where most people might have blushed in embarassment at the failure, Dullahan didn't have a working circulatory system at the moment. Where most people might have felt a knot in the pit of their stomach, Dullahan's body didn't have one of those anymore. Where most would have feared what Aurora would do in her anger, Dullahan had isolated his amygdalae from the rest of his brain months ago. He was aware that his brain was attempting to produce an emotional response, but he was able to catalogue it as a useless neural impulse and focus on other things.
His only real feelings about how the fight went were annoyance at losing his bulldozer.
The stinging cuts of Aurora's power and the jostling of her movement were similarly rendered irrelevant by the modification Dullahan had done to his nervous system, but he was still glad to feel her movement come to a stop as she reached her destination. Traveling on foot was unbearably slow, even moreso when relying on someone else's body.
At Aurora's question, Dullahan activated the electronic speaker he had implanted underneath the skin of his head. After all, he couldn't speak in his own voice, disconnected from his lungs as he was. His words were tinny and muffled by the sack his head was in.
"Yes, that was precisely my intention. You are considerably more vulnerable to attack than I am, especially when I am using a body as heavily-armored as the bulldozer. By endangering the reporters, my intent was to force the heroes to focus their attacks on the less vulnerable target."
His words were monotone, without pausing for breath, showing neither emotion nor inflection.
"I made an error in that I underestimated the enemy's ability to respond to my tactic. I have learned from this and will now be better equipped in future battles which will have infinitely more meaningful stakes than this one did."
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Pandaemonium
Posts 381
Power Level 31
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Post by Aurora Disicio on May 14, 2016 6:09:34 GMT -7
Aurora stared at Dullahan for a moment, before making her way to the nearest wall at a casual pace. The pace was almost painfully slow, intentionally so. Once she was close enough, she slammed his head into the wall as hard as she could. She wasn't worried about hurting him too much, she was pretty sure Dullahan's head could handle being dropped off a skyscraper. How durable it was just meant that she figured she had to swing it harder to make her point. She was pretty sure he still had a brain in there somewhere, so if he wasn't seeing stars she wasn't trying hard enough.
"First, just because I don't have a body made of steel doesn't mean I'm a flimsy waif in need of protection. This is one of the worst wounds I've gotten out of a super fight," she motioned to her arm, "and it barely qualifies as inconvenient.
"Second, are you so insecure about your own abilities that you have to target people you can obviously beat with little to no effort in order to win?" she scoffed. "I'm not surprised that you considered that attack pointless. You have no sense for how people think. Hell, you're probably even worse than a machine in that regard. Taking hostages doesn't project strength, it's an underhanded tactic used by people that know they can't win otherwise, by people that know they're going up a stronger opponent and need some amount of leverage to win. It doesn't project an image of strength. It might scare people temporarily, but that's the best you can hope for. And before you roll your eyes at me, image is important. I'm sure you understand that on some level or you wouldn't have made a decoy body for yourself."
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Pandaemonium
Posts 78
Power Level 25
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Post by Dullahan on May 15, 2016 13:39:15 GMT -7
Even though Dullahan didn't feel pain, that didn't mean he was impervious to damage. He had modified his head to be more durable than most, but those modifications were intended to ward against stray bullets and excessive g forces. Being put in a sack and swung around in a warehouse full of hard surfaces was not something he had optimized for, and the resulting impacts did have a disorienting effect on him. He'd have to take his brain apart later to make sure there wasn't any bruising.
However, he was still human enough to have a sense of stubborn pride. He let Aurora finish with the beating and the explanation both before he responded.
"Image is important, yes, but only insofar as it serves a purpose. A decoy body causes enemies to expend resources on pointless efforts to destroy it. After all, it appears to be a weakness."
On top of that, Dullahan had learned his lesson about not having a body with opposable thumbs on hand after one too many incidents in which his creations broke down far away from his workshop.
"It is the image of weakness which makes it useful in the first place. I still do not comprehend your obsession with projecting strength. The unpowered already understand that we're strong enough that they can only flee and call for help, and even that much can be inconvenient. It would be better if they underestimated us. Given a course of action that results in a higher probability of victory while also projecting weakness, that course of action is the more efficient one on both counts."
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Pandaemonium
Posts 381
Power Level 31
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Post by Aurora Disicio on May 22, 2016 5:16:29 GMT -7
"Some of us have goals beyond becoming a cybernetic zombie," Aurora's expression flattened. "But more than that, you're objectively wrong. The unpowered understanding that they're useless in a direct fight is not the same thing as believing they can do nothing. You even acknowledge this, and yet have failed to make the connection between that and the image you project. If those reporters were that afraid of us, they wouldn't have stuck around to film the fight. If you were scary enough, I'd be willing to bet that you'd get a lot less people willing to call for help as well if that irritates you so much. However, such things can only be achieved with an image of strength. But I digress.
"I don't know why most supers tend to be so focused on what unpowered people think, as if they matter at all. Why should we stop at them understanding that the best they can do is flee or call for help? Why shouldn't we try to achieve the effect with supers? Can you imagine how much easier it would be to move if other supers didn't get in our way? I'm sure there will always be a subset that will try, just like there will always be a subset of unpowered people that will, but even keeping the majority from interfering would be nice wouldn't it? Hopelessness, inevitability, making it clear that even in victory they'd lose...all these things can only be achieved from an image of strength.
"I doubt you care about this aspect, but I'll mention it anyway to answer your question completely. No super should be hiding in this society, yet many are. If you look at history, the most effective way to get people to stop hiding is for there to be a strong figure for them to follow.
"So, do you get it now, or are you still incapable of thinking past this week?"
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Pandaemonium
Posts 78
Power Level 25
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Post by Dullahan on May 26, 2016 3:27:24 GMT -7
Dullahan would have frowned at the zombie comment, if his facial actuators hadn't been shut down to conserve power. The original myth of the zombie was that practitioners of voodoo used mystical chemical concoctions to render victims suggestible in order to enslave them. With the way that Dullahan had cybernetically modified his own brain to free himself from neurochemical compulsion, he considered most people to be closer to zombies than he himself was.
Instead, he decided to address the meat of her argument.
"Attempting to establish ourselves as too strong to fight against is futile. If we fall short of that mark, we only draw more hostile attention to ourselves. And we will fail, by all laws of probability. Even if we are greater than billions of people, we are still no more than equal with hundreds of others. To be the second-greatest lifeform on the planet is analogous to being the greatest integer less than one. Although you may shape your own personal world according to your will, as soon as your will conflicts with that of someone greater, your efforts will amount to zero."
Dullahan's voice was, of course, utterly emotionless. If he was at all dissatisfied with these facts, he showed no sign of it.
"Presumably, the status quo exists because it serves those who are ultimately more powerful. Attempting to change it will get you killed by those more powerful people. Worse, it will force me to search for another partner that replicates the synergy you and I have. I advise that you pick goals you can realistically attain instead of seeking to fill your emptiness with impossible fantasies."
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Pandaemonium
Posts 381
Power Level 31
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Post by Aurora Disicio on May 28, 2016 12:51:29 GMT -7
Aurora frowned and wound up for another swing against the wall, but suddenly stopped. She looked momentarily confused, as though she noticed something out of place, or a bad smell had come through the warehouse. Instead, she started casually tossing Dullahan's head up towards the ceiling as though it were a basket ball, and catching it as she paced for a moment. The sound of the metal on the soles of her boots hitting the concrete echoed throughout the warehouse as she thought. Eventually, she stopped pacing, but continued to toss Dullahan's head.
"Ah, so it was just lack of confidence in your own abilities. Even if your ability is largely useless against someone like me, it's still quite effective against most people. I doubt I could tolerate your presence otherwise."
Aurora switched from tossing his head into the air to tossing it between her hands.
"That said, with that mentality, why do anything at all? The only way to avoid trouble is to be a cog in the machine; a doormat that never does anything contrary to what anyone says. Anything less will stir up some amount of trouble. But you seem to know this, yet you continue to do things that will inevitably piss people off anyway. Not small things either. I have little doubt that people will remember that you were willing to take hostages and attack civilians. Or did you just not think that far ahead? Given supers only became common relatively recently, I doubt the status quo has even had time to settle. Or are you simply not paying attention to what's going on around you? Somehow, I doubt you even believe a word of what you just said, so I have to ask: are you afraid or just lazy?"
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Pandaemonium
Posts 78
Power Level 25
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Post by Dullahan on Jun 2, 2016 6:53:54 GMT -7
"I do not feel fear." Dullahan's tone was firm and dignified, spoiled only slightly by the Doppler shift in his pitch as he was tossed up and down. "And I am not lazy. I put the full capacity of my abilities toward my goals. Otherwise I would not have reduced my neurobiological sleep requirement down to a few minutes per night."
To be accused of laziness by Aurora, of all people, was especially grating. Time wasted on vindictive pettiness was just as wasted as time spent idle in front of a television.
"Your analysis of my methods is fundamentally flawed. It is true that, absent some other factors, the safest and most effective path to avoiding inefficient troubles would be to work more or less within existing paradigms of peaceful economics. Produce my work, sell it, buy resources in quantities small enough as to avoid governmental notice, repeat in ever-increasing scale. However, such a slow buildup of resources would take years, perhaps decades, to reach the point at which it all pays off.
"By that time, I expect that dragons will have killed us all.
"Therefore, I am instead using more violent methods that carry some risk of provoking retaliation, and I am mitigating that risk by putting on appearances of weakness. By the time it would come back to bite me, I intend to have evacuated this doomed planet. Rather than fighting pointlessly to change what is inevitable, I will start entirely anew elsewhere."
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