Finale: Author's Notes

If you've followed me up to here... well, we have a completed Worm fic. Thank you very much for following me in this (newbie) author's first completed fanfic...

This entire "chapter" will be the after-fic author's notes, as promised (in the SB/SV threads). But first, here's the original sketch of the entire story, almost unchanged since the first time the general outline of the fic is planned out:

Start()
- Intro arc - introduces the basic Transistor mechanics to the Worm audience (and vice versa)
- this is the spot where I realized I have something I want to complete, and planned everything below -
- Accord interlude.

Fate()
- Coil arc
o Wandering…
o More wandering. Ends with spotting Coil's mercs and being spotted, Hounded.
o Captured. Singing. Crying (?)
o Coil 'interview'.
o INTERRUPT! Process!
o Paige escapes Coil's base, fights the Travellers and owns them with Turn().
- The court case, Accord shows up with Transistor.
- Accord interlude #2: out of control. Learns processes are overrunning Boston. A process kills Coil.

Order()
- Accord arc.
o Oh hai there, Gregor. Turns out he's a fan of Bad Canary. Interview in Palaquin's (Who's Accord. What's happening)
o Arrival in Boston. Mess of processes. Paige goes in, Faultline's crew doesn't.
o Accord's tower. Running fight. Defeating biggest Process, the Spine (large monster boss).
o Accord's contact and parley, but turns out he's dead on arrival. Reading written notes. A Doorway portal opens. Contessa.
- Dr Mother interlude: (alternate) history of Cauldron.

Victory()
- Cauldron arc
o Entry into Cauldron. Friendly chat. Learning about Scion. Contessa's plans. Power of the Transistor.
o Activating the Cradle. Scion killed. Memories.
o Contessa dual-transistor fight.
o Finale. Led to safe place where it all started: Paige's penthouse. Quinn Calle's body. Suicide. Dr Mother leaves Transistor alone.
- (short) Epilogue: Paige and Quinn Calle

(As you can see, there are some changes)

Wildbow said: ↑

Prompts:
Quinn Calle dealing with one of the 'I've dealt with worse' situations.
…

This is what started it all. Wildbow's prompt (over in SB, a long loooong time ago)

Which I actually wanted to double-subvert: Originally, I actually want Quinn to experience a really, really bad situation which he would normally say 'I've NOT dealt with worse'… then he thinks for a bit. And then say something similar to 'I've dealt with worse. Because this? This is actually not so bad.'

To do that… well, I have the feeling that with Quinn Calle's background and history, his specialty as a VILLAIN lawyer, the PRT's hardboiled rules-breaking directors, and the general crapsackiness of parahumans in general, he has to had a lot of interesting interactions by the time we see him in canon.

Thus, it would take a BIG event for him to actually say a situation is really bad.

Like, say, him dying.

But if he's dead, he's not around to comment about how things are not so bad now, is he?

This reason, and the fact that I've just completed a Transistor marathon. And its major plot point of "the person stuck in the keystone device". And the Process()'s curious parallel as "inter-dimensional beings invading the world in the background".

The rest is just loads of planning… which went surprisingly smoothly all in all **

** it went smoothly simply because I cheated: I cribbed the entire Transistor timeline/story and copy and pasted it into the Worm universe. I made no secret of this. I said in the summary: "A Worm-world Transistor-storyline short story fusion."

The only real 'work' I've to do for plot is the background work I did to fuse the Transistor story properly into the Worm universe in such a way that it makes sense.

Also, so happens at that point in time, I ALSO wanted to do a "Ryuugi" aka "Here be Dragons". For those not in the know: Write something in the Worm universe that will actually, finally be a complete standalone story, for once.

Even if you have to cut a story into ribbons in order to make that happen.

(Because the original work Worm is a very, very lengthy affair, there are too many unfinished Worm fanfic stories out there with most of them stuck at the "Setup Taylor's future life" part of things…)

To this end, the story's format (aka narration stylistic choices) AND becomes very appealing, as well as the choice of the arcs: 4 arcs with 4~5 snips each with first person limited PoV should be sufficiently short to cover the entire fic in no time flat (relatively), while the nature of the narrator's brevity (aka, the narrator does not immediately dive into 10 paragraphs of which coffee he's going to take this morning) means each snip in itself will be quite easy to push out.

And of course, we all know what'll happen if we go about taunting Murphy: This fic stalled in the middle of it all for a few months.

Says something about myself that I almost didn't manage to complete the fic that is planned to be easy to complete

But, so happens a chain of events occurred one fine day sometime a month back… and here we are, at the end of it all.

Fusion Background notes

The one Butterfly:
Eden did not manage to fully restrict the PtV, leaving behind a crack in the restrictions of the shard: somehow, Eden forgot to restrict PtV unlocking PtV itself, allowing Contessa to bring out its full potential.

And Contessa knows, even if she can't do anything about it by herself at the start. But by knowing, Contessa knows approximately how to go about remove the lock… but it'll take time and a few powers not yet available to her…

The storm from flapping wings:
(I hope I alluded to these events enough such that you can construct large parts of it from some imagination and clues gathering)

Cauldron still went on as it did, but halfheartedly, and only as a fallback plan. Dr Mother allowed Contessa to try to attempt to open the lock at every opportunity. It took decades to crack the lock. Years of nearly unchanging canon (except a few capes being visited here, a few others disappearing there. Nothing really major canon-wise)

The first big deviance from Earth Bet's canon history is Cauldron's discovery of Accord and his trigger. Contessa met with Accord, right after he got fired. Accord still eventually became a warlord, but under the Cauldron umbrella.

His problem solving skills allows Cauldron to arrange [-not going to be mentioned -], and through Accord and Citrine's help planning, some cape-napping and 'enforced' recruitment, Triumvirate assistance, and what not, Cauldron broke open the seal to Contessa's powers against the complexity of the inter-dimensional, multi-temporal lock surrounding PtV, changing it subtlety, but completely.

(Bonesaw and Manton may be involved, Jack Slash got himself PtV'ed into a ditch. Readers may never know what exactly happened…)

And so, now we have a Contessa capable of pathing herself to killing Zion.

But what Cauldron don't know (but Doctor Mother suspects, as per the epilogue) is that PtV is "imperfectly" fixed: PtV has becomes Path to Absolute Victory.

It doesn't seem like much, but that little distinction makes a world of difference.

Not only does PtAV solve the victory condition stated, but it also every other axillary Path and Objectives, as well as any and all unconscious victory conditions in the mindset of the PtAV shard's owner.

Thus, the "Victory" isn't exactly so ironclad anymore, as in *gruff batman voice* "not the victory they want, but the victory they need". And because of that, it can now harm its owner if the "victory" is against its owner's unconscious wants.

With the unlocking of the PtV, Contessa immediately calls on PtV to kill Scion.

The Path gives a somewhat long winded set of steps.

The crux of the steps are: crack open the locked shard dimensions, distill and encapsulate the core of the Sting Shard into a container (the Transistor). Sting as you know, is a multi-dimensional attack shard so effective that the Entities did not change it in between cycles.

With Accord's help again (unlocking the same locks that restricted PtV), they do just that.

The Shard is weakened by becoming physical, as well as the fact it's an "imbue" shard: it changes the state of something else to attack. Thus, Cauldron begins a process to absorb the "souls" of strong, matured parahumans as a power source (read: shards) as well as adding their distinctive attacks to Sting's attack ability.

The Processes are leftovers of the distillation process: Still technically parts of the shard that is Sting, they followed through the rift in dimensions to the physical shard. They're all, to the last, mini-Endbringers in terms of toughness: thou not having Endbringer's ultimate dimensional bruteness, they have enough of that to cause problems for anyone who's not Triumvirate-level.

And they obey the holder of the Transistor. Little miniature attack bots on call. What's not to love?

The storyline diverges into parallel tracks here:
Accord:
Accord came to the total domination of Boston much earlier than canon, thanks to a suspiciously competent well dressed woman in a suit

His Boston operations expand exponentially due to having Contessa on speed dial (one of the boons he got from Cauldron), as well as mysterious white Tinker Tech obliterating enemies, and also the curious occurrences of the Duo-virate* messing around in Boston at the "worst" times for Accord's opponents.

*There's a hint that that Eidolon got himself a bad end. Readers may never know what exactly happened…

Thus, with that much firepower at his beck and call, Accord only really need to keep (and does so) Citrine in his organization (who loves Accord, but that isn't reciprocated).
(Doylist: I can't write large group interactions for nutts.)

Cauldron allows him to hold onto the Transistor. Why?
For Accord, it's a show of power over Cauldron.
For Cauldron: it doesn't hurt, so why not?

Simply put, Accord is able to form complex plans to use the Transistor efficiently on his enemies (which powers it up), and on the other hand to form complex plans to use the controlled Processes. Cauldron simply arranges "field trips" for the Villain to go abroad if they find suitable targets not in Boston.

And then PtAV sets up Canary's situation…

Cauldron:
Loads of om nom noms occurs in the following years after the Transistor was complete, the target shard's strengths and abilities either recommended by the PtAV, or so powerful that PtAV doesn't need to.

Various parahumans are absorbed, in ways and locations out of sight.

There's a lot of handwaves going on for this part. For example, Dragon is one big plothole that I waved off. She got "bought off"? Got a giftwrapped Saint to look the other way? Removed select restrictions? Bringing her into the fold and/or knows Cauldron, but refuses to join?

Sidenote, Fridge logic will give you this:
Due to large groups of suddenly missing capes, China and Russia status quo collapsing is part of the back history. Africa stabilizes. Major villain groups worldwide collapses left and right, and some heroic groups too.

But this is background stuff that's not really mentioned until the end…

Then along comes a Canary.
Canary's court case is just as staged as in canon: to get Canary out of the limelight, before absorption inside the "sealed" Birdcage (aka a one way trip into the Transistor).

BUT Due to Accord's difference in rise to power and status as Cauldron member and other minor stuff in the courts of law (notably, a LARGE decrease of villains to represent)… Quinn Calle is free to take Canary's side.

And willing too, after their first meeting.

Sappy Love stuff occurs too.

What this means is that the perversion of justice that is Canary's trial is quashed hard by Quinn Calle's associate aceing the jury.

A bought judge CAN overrule the jury, but the resulting hoo haa will (a) expose the corruption, and (b) is not worth it.

But Accord/Cauldron will not be denied, so they went "Stealth mode": Accord took Citrine and some unpowered minions together with Contessa and interrupted a private get-together.

This is the first hint readers get: PtAV finally and visibly glitches against owner for the first time. Quinn Calle, non-parahuman, was able to get in the way of the Transistor as "planned by PtAV behind Contessa's back".

Built and purposed to absorb shards, the Transistor overloads from being targeted on a regular, unsharded person for the first time.

Things go downhill for Accord really, really fast:
- Its teleportation activated, the Transistor and Paige Mcabee is lost from Accord's hands.
- Cauldron (falsely) accuses Accord of shenanigans, abandons him to the wolves.
- The Processes Accord once controls glitch, run amock.

Accord tries to fix things, but can't: PtAV is now working against him. Contessa holds back and watch the fireworks, and even sometimes fans the flame in stealth (getting law and order to be gruff, if not hostile against Canary).

And then we reach the start of Sword and Song 1.0.

There are other PtAV glitches. Can you spot them all?

And that's all, the complete set.

Once again, its been an interesting journey to get here, and a nice exercise in writing.

I hope you've all enjoyed this series. I sure did. It's been an interesting journey here myself.