I am not from around here. I mean, my body is, but my mind? That is definitely not from around here. My old name was John, and I was an electrician. Now? Now I am a dockworker named Troy. Normally, this is the point where someone might be terrified of taking over a body, consuming the life of an innocent man. I am not worried about that because Troy, the original, was already dead before I arrived. How do I know? It all comes down to how I woke up.
Troy had been taking a shortcut through an alleyway. Not the smartest choice in a city like this, but Troy had done it countless times before. This time, however, something went horribly wrong. A kid, maybe sixteen, dirty and desperate, stepped into Troy's path. That desperation was what made him dangerous. He had nothing and feared nothing. You could see it in his eyes: nothing could get worse, so why not take whatever you could to make things better? I do not know if he was high or just reckless, but one moment Troy was walking down the alley, and the next he was hit over the head with a goddamn baseball bat.
That threw him for a loop, but the real danger came next. He was dizzy and disoriented, which is reasonable after a baseball bat to the skull, when another kid appeared. Older, maybe seventeen or eighteen, it did not matter. What mattered was the switchblade in his hand and the look in his eyes. Troy tried to crawl away, but Mr Baseball Bat decided the first hit was not enough. This time it struck his back. Troy felt the world tilt as his lower body went numb. The kid had paralysed him. Then Mr Switchblade kicked him onto his back. Troy groaned in a guttural, unfiltered moan from the pain. Words were exchanged, but Troy could not reply. When that failed, his jacket was stripped away and his wallet removed.
That might have been survivable. Troy was not bleeding out yet and could have gotten help to a hospital. But the switchblade kid had a different plan. He leaned down and said, "He's seen our faces." The terror behind those words was immediate, slicing through the pain. Before Troy could react, the blade went into his heart. He died quickly and painfully. Then, everything changed.
At first, it was blackness. Then agony. My ears pounded, my head, spine, and heart throbbed as if on fire. Needles stabbed me all over, hot and merciless, with certain areas feeling as if they were being pressed against a red-hot poker. That is how I woke up. Or rather, John woke up as Troy. I was John inside Troy. Troy's memories were intact, but I was still me. The first few minutes were pure chaos, fighting off the urge to pass out entirely.
I patted myself down. Legs were intact, heart beating, lungs wheezing. I was alive. I was confused. I had to move. Troy's alley was no place to stay, and if I lay there, I could not guarantee surviving the night. Slowly, I pushed myself upright, ignoring the pool of blood that had been my deathbed. I started toward Troy's house in the docks. It was not far, and the walk gave me time to sort through the chaos in my head. Troy's memories were present but muted. That allowed me to think of the last moments without collapsing entirely from fear and pain.
I fumbled with the keys to the small single-bedroom house. Why was I so screwed? Because this was Worm. The grimdark world of Wildbow's setting, full of monsters, predators, and the kind of people who did not hesitate to kill for nothing. I was in for it now.
Inside, I moved mechanically, poured a glass of water, and sat at the table. Kitchen light cast a sickly glow on my new body. I was covered in blood. More than enough to have killed Troy, and yet I was walking, talking, thinking. I felt my chest. My heart beat normally. I wiggled my toes in my work boots. I felt that everything was fine, physically at least. I groaned. This was going to take some getting used to.
A shower was necessary, but brief. Memories of Troy reminded me that water and gas cost money, money that Troy never had. I did not have it either. Habits of survival became second nature quickly when there was so little to begin with. I adjusted. Clean enough, I dragged myself to the bedroom and fell into bed. Within seconds, the exhaustion overpowered everything else, and I passed out.
"Hey there, John."
A whisper drifted into my left ear. It startled me hard enough to make my stomach flip. I was dreaming, at least I think I was. But then again, maybe I wasn't. All I could see was darkness.
I spun around, and as I turned, the darkness peeled back just enough to reveal Troy. He stood there with a quiet stillness, a small, soft smile on his face that carried something like sadness.
"Troy?" I said.
"Yeah, it's me. Or more like an echo of me."
"An echo?" My voice sounded strange in this place. The darkness retreated further, revealing a vast starscape. We were standing on a perfectly square platform of flat grey stone. Nothing else. Just stars in every direction, cold and unmoving.
"Yes," Troy said. "An echo. This is the end of the line for me. I don't know what caused you to wake up in my body, but I suppose it could have been worse. I'm not thrilled that I died, but I know you will do great things with what I leave behind."
"Great things?" I asked. "I have your memories, but I don't see much of a future. No offence, but there isn't much here to work with."
Troy let out a low guffaw, his shoulders shaking once. "True enough. But that doesn't mean there's nothing for you in the future. Look up."
I tilted my head back and stared at the stars. They hung motionless, pinpricks of light. I was about to ask what I was supposed to be looking at when one of the stars began to swell, growing brighter and larger until it broke loose and drifted down. Before I could react, Troy reached out, caught it, and turned it over in his hands like it was nothing more than a smooth pebble.
"Here," he said, lobbing it toward me.
I caught it by reflex. It pulsed faintly against my palms.
"This should give you a head start," Troy said. "More will appear in time. I have your memories too, and now I know what's coming for Earth Bet. Whoever or whatever decided to put you into my body did it for a reason. I believe that reason is to save this place, these people. My people. You'll have the power to do that if you work at it. I'm trusting you to try."
His eyes met mine, steady and serious.
"I won't know if you do," he added. "After this, I'm going to whatever comes next. But I trust you to do what's right. Take this. Goodbye and good luck."
And just like that, Troy began to fade. The stars dimmed, and the grey platform blurred. His shape thinned out, like mist being pulled apart.
Then I woke up.
I sat up, heart hammering. In my hands, or no, within me, was a charge. That was the only word that fit. A charge, waiting to be spent. On what, I had no clue. But with Troy's last words echoing through my mind, I did the only thing that felt right. I metaphorically popped that charge within me.
Alright. So, that was an interesting feeling. It felt like a roulette wheel spinning deep within the very core of my soul, clattering and clicking with a rhythm that echoed in my chest. As it slowed, clink, clink, clink, clink, the motion gradually came to rest, and then the sensation hit me fully. Woah.
[Superhuman]
|Uncommon Ability|
You are superhuman, or whatever race you are. Even as a base human, you are able to lift cars overhead, punch through metal, survive small-calibre bullets, and run as fast as a tiger; all of these enhancements scale with your base stats.
The sheer force of it pulsed through me, a tangible weight and power I had never known. My heart thudded in my chest, my muscles felt charged in a way that was almost unbearable. Every nerve was alive, buzzing with potential. It was more than information, it was a force, a presence in my body that demanded acknowledgement.
I raised my hand to my face and squeezed it into a fist. I could feel it, the power within me, the strength. It was almost overwhelming. It was incredible, it was… Potential. It would grow, this strength. Right now, it was already powerful, but in time, it would slowly come to eclipse others' mere concept of strength.
I grinned. Maybe this wouldn't be as bad as I feared.
The rest of the day passed in a haze of quiet adjustment. I spent the hours coming to terms with my new strength, sorting through the strange jumble of memories that were mine but not mine, and giving a silent, mental farewell to the original Troy. I had made my choice: I would keep his name and his face, but I would build a new life on top of the one that ended in that alley. Not just for myself, but for him too. I would do what he asked of me. If this power was anything like what it felt like, then this was only the beginning. More would come.
Those stars Troy showed me in that strange dreamscape came back to my mind. They were not stars at all. They were powers and potential, glittering fragments of possibility waiting to be drawn down. Even now, I only had a vague understanding of what I possessed. It was like some random power dispenser. Occasionally, I would gain charges, and those charges could be spent to unlock new abilities. It was a relief that it did not happen automatically, because the sensation of spending a charge was distracting enough as it was. I could not risk that happening in the middle of a fight. But still, the reality of it left me stunned. I was superhuman.
Was I a parahuman? I did not know. Troy's death had certainly been trigger-worthy, but my instincts told me this was something else. Something different.
I shook my head and sipped my tea. I was sitting in the cramped living room, the TV playing quietly, more a backdrop of sound than anything I was truly listening to. A news segment was running about a New Wave fundraiser and how they were upstanding citizens of Brockton Bay. I sighed and shut the TV off with the remote. The silence was better.
Planning felt like the smarter move. I grabbed a battered notebook and a pen from the coffee table and began to write. First came a rough outline of the events to come, the broad strokes of the Worm timeline and the threats that would eventually rise. These were not things I could ignore. Not with what I had been given. Not after what the original Troy had gone through. I would heed his wishes. I would do my best with what had been passed to me. All I needed now was to figure out how to do it properly.
Taylor had already triggered. There was nothing I could do about that. It would still be some time before she faced Lung, which meant there was no need for me to act rashly yet. The window gave me time to prepare, to train, to figure out what exactly caused these charges to appear. I had no details, no schedule, only the certainty that they would come.
After sketching out the timeline, I began working on my own plans. What did I want? The answer was simple and heavy all at once. I wanted to make Brockton Bay better. I wanted to fight the villains, not for the thrill of it but because I could see how badly the city needed it. That had to be some leftover fragment of the old Troy, that stubborn desire to see the Bay flourish again, to see it restored to what it once was and could be once more.
It would take time, but if I stayed the course, if the powers were strong enough, then maybe, just maybe, I could do it. I knew how super strength at this level would stand against Endbringers and Scion; it wouldn't, but this was only the start. It was in the name. Uncommon Ability. That meant there were tiers above this, stronger abilities waiting somewhere in the stars. That idea filled me with a strange hope. There was more to reach for.
I smiled at the thought. And then it happened. I felt another charge manifest deep inside me, like a weight settling in my core. Should I spend it? The answer came instantly. Hell yes.
I triggered the spark. That same uncomfortable clack-clack-clack sensation spun through me again, like a cosmic roulette wheel turning just for me. My pulse raced as it slowed, as the clicking fell silent and whatever was waiting on the other side revealed itself.
[Rinkaku]
|Elite Ability|
Tokyo Ghoul - Allows you to manifest a tentacle-like biological appendage made of special RC Cells that allows it to freely go from fluid-like water to tough as steel. The Rinkaku takes the form of multiple tentacles that emerge from your lower back. They are incredibly flexible and can be used to pierce, whip and even grab opponents or help the user manoeuvre around.
Oh, so this was an Elite ability. Definitely something. The moment I realised what it was, I stood and went to close the curtains. No line of sight for the neighbours. No risks. Only then did I allow the Rinkaku, no, screw that, I was calling them tentacles, to sprout forth.
They unfurled from my back like living steel, and even without testing them, I could already tell they synergised with my super strength. They were about three inches thick, as hard as the description had promised, and a deep blood-red colour that caught the dim light like wet paint. They should have been monstrous, but to me they felt… natural. Incredibly hard, yet just as incredibly manoeuvrable.
I twisted one around experimentally, using another to reach up to the ceiling light. With a casual flick, a tentacle removed the light shade and unscrewed the bulb, plunging the room into darkness. Huh. Incredibly dexterous too. I redid the lightbulb just to test myself further, not even feeling the heat through the tentacle, then planted four of the six firmly on the floor and pushed down. Effortlessly, I was lifted off the ground, as if I had been using an extra set of legs all my life.
I marvelled at the sensation. It was as simple as moving my own limbs. Just as natural. Just as easy to concentrate on other things while my brain tracked them perfectly through proprioception. The feedback was sharp and clear. With these, I could move at a hell of a pace.
I smiled at the thought. Tonight, I wanted to experiment. Really test myself.
But not here. I shook my head. Now was not the time or the place to experiment with incredibly powerful tentacles and super strength. That would have to wait until the Trainyard. For now, planning came first.
First step: prepare myself. Get accustomed to my new powers. After that, get the lay of the Bay. I had an internet connection and a very old tower PC. It would do for now, but money would be an issue in the long run. Maybe cash taken from the gangs would help supplement my meagre savings?
I sat back down and rubbed my temples. How the hell do you uplift a place like Brockton Bay? I had a rough idea, but I wasn't sure it would work. The initial plan was to create a superhero team. Not just capes who fought crime, but capes who actively helped the locals. People who would clean up the Boat Graveyard, run charities, and fundraise for the community. Take the money from crime, reinvest it into jobs and local growth.
An independent team, built from the ground up. But who would I recruit? Heroes in Brockton Bay existed, but truly unaligned or neutral heroes were rare. Troy's memories gave me some names that never made it into the Worm story, like Spirit, a water manipulator and Master who could create little water minions to attack or defend. Not the strongest power, but interesting. It explained why they were unaligned: small-time, ignored by the gangs and the PRT alike.
But if I wanted a team with impact, I would need more powerful capes. People like Skitter and Tattletale. Grue and Bitch were less impressive individually but still worth considering. If I could persuade them to become heroes instead of villains, that would be a massive net positive.
My thoughts on a superhero team were bit overwhelming to be honest. I was having doubts about even being able to lead a team, let alone try and form one. It was a daunting prospect, something I figure would be best served put aside for now. I would focus on being a solo hero for now, but if in the future I felt like building a team, I would give it the proper thought it deserves and then plan from there.
Thinking of the Undersiders however naturally led my thoughts to Coil. That was a threat I could not let fester. Too dangerous to leave sitting in the background, planning. He would have to be dealt with, and soon, well, soon as in once I had the skills to actually deal with him.
But back to the master plan: uplift the Bay, grow stronger, and when I was ready, take on the S-class threats. Use the money and resources gained to support local businesses, improve infrastructure, and clean up the city.
After that? Slowly and carefully, remove the villains from Brockton Bay and build a name for myself. Someone on the level of the Triumvirate if I could even reach that. Someone villains would hesitate to cross. Become the definition of a deterrent.
And while I was at it, change the nature of crime in the Bay. No more kidnappings, no more forced druggings, no more major cape fights spilling into the streets. I wanted an environment where, if crime happened, it was quiet and controlled. I would rather deal with an Accord than a Lung any day. In fact, with enough money and planning, if I got rid of Coil early enough, maybe I could even get Accord to provide a plan. Say what you will about his neurosis, the man knew how to build order out of chaos. I would just have to make sure he did not see me as an enemy worth revenge for taking out Coil.
And if I could deal with Coil soon enough, maybe the Travellers would never come to the Bay. No Noelle. No thank you.
As for Scion? That was years away. Hopefully enough time to find or develop a power, or a synergy of powers, that could attack his true body. If not, maybe I could arrange for Flechette or someone else to take the shot. It would not be easy.
And Khepri? I was not going to allow that to happen. No one should have to go through what Taylor went through. She deserved better. I would do everything I could to make sure she had the chance to be better.
I sat back down on the couch, my notebook already open and filled with scattered plans. Scribbles about contingencies, half-baked schemes, and hopeful ideas stared back at me like a map drawn by a madman. My pen hovered for a moment over the blank line reserved for the one threat I hadn't dared to write down, as though even naming it might invite it into my life.
Cauldron.
Just thinking the name felt like invoking some urban legend, the sort of thing whispered about but never confirmed. Definitely not something I wanted to tangle with unprepared. Without protection, I was less than an insect to them. I could only hope whatever power I rolled next would be enough to stop them from squashing me without even noticing.
I exhaled slowly, trying to shake off the chill creeping up my spine. Then I felt it, that faint spark dropping into me, settling low, heavy and electric. My fingers tightened.
I mentally rolled the dice, crushed the spark between thought and will.
Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.
[False Data]
|Uncommon Ability|
You are able to falsify your statistics and abilities to show scrying and analysing abilities, what you want them to see instead of what you actually have.
Okay, so maybe there really was a god listening.
The moment the spark settled, a switch flipped in my head. No effort, just an instinctual toggle sliding into place. I didn't need to test it to know what it did. My mind was a fortress now, sealed off from every Thinker, every precog, every parahuman who liked to peek at the threads of the future. No cracks, no loopholes. It was infallible. I simply knew.
I let out a long, slow breath, but my heart didn't slow down. The timing was too perfect. Way too perfect.
Whatever was behind these sparks wasn't just handing out random perks. Someone, or something, was stacking the deck in my favour. That was a good thing… probably. But if they could hand out immunity to the most dangerous thinkers in the world, they weren't just strong. They were stronger than all the powers they'd give away combined.
Best not to piss off a deity like that.
Still, if they were rooting for me, I'd take it. For now, gratitude was free.
The night was quiet. Darkness had a kind of charm to it when you knew you had powers and were tough enough to shrug off most of the guns on the street. On top of that, I could move ridiculously fast. My legs were a blur on their own, but paired with my tentacles? I was built for movement. The tentacles were perfect for vertical climbs, wrapping around window sills or stabbing into brickwork to drag me up sheer walls like it was nothing. I tried to avoid the stabbing, though. Punching holes in people's buildings was not exactly good for my reputation, and I did not want to be branded reckless with collateral damage.
But once I was on the roof? Damn. That was living. I sprinted hard, then leapt into the night air. For a heartbeat, I was flying, and then I was crashing down on the next rooftop with a grin plastered across my face. My tentacles stayed tucked away in my lower back, coiled and waiting for the signal to burst out, but for now I let them rest. I whooped every so often, the sound tearing loose without me meaning it, carried by the thrill as I raced across the docks toward the trainyard. It was not far, and the distance melted away when you could move like this.
By the time I slowed, I was deep enough in the trainyard that the sound of steel snapping and bending would hopefully not bother anyone.
The place was a mess, a massive dumping ground where everything came to rot. Ships leaned on their sides like beached whales, cars lay stacked in twisted heaps, furniture lay broken and splintered, and here and there were piles of refuse that smelled like they had been fermenting since the last century. It was perfect. I had already tested my speed, my leaping, and the tentacles' climbing tricks. Now it was time to see what kind of raw strength I had.
I reached for a car door and tugged. The strength came easily, too easily. It felt like pulling a shopping cart. Then the handle snapped clean off. Not exactly the comic book moment I had pictured where the door came free. I sighed and brought the handle up to my face. A quick squeeze, and the metal folded in on itself like tinfoil. When I unclenched, my handprint was pressed deep into the warped shape.
I grinned, pulled my arm back, and hurled it toward the water. The little chunk of metal shot off into the night at a hell of a speed. Phew. That was definitely hitting the bay. I listened hard for the splash but heard nothing. Too far, most likely.
Back to the car. With a thought, my tentacles burst out and drove straight through the door. They pierced the steel like it was paper, then writhed and locked in place. A single pull, and the door shrieked as it tore free, the sound of ripping metal echoing through the yard.
I lifted the door high and tried to crush it down into a ball. Six tentacles wrestled it into a rough cube. Not quite what I had in mind. I hauled it into my hands, braced, and squeezed. My hands had that little extra power, just enough to press it into a lopsided sphere. Not perfect, but good enough.
I dropped it, then kicked as it fell. The ball of steel rocketed away and slammed into the hull of some rusted ship with a booming clang that echoed like a gunshot. My heart leapt. I froze, scanning the shadows, waiting for any sign I had just given myself away. The echoes faded, and the night stayed still.
I let out a breath and decided to push the test further. Punching. I approached the same hull, set my feet, and threw a straight punch. My fist went through the steel like it was cardboard, momentum dragging me forward in an awkward stumble. I yanked my hand back and stared at the ragged hole. The edges had torn inward. Easy. Too easy.
I grabbed the sides of the hole with both hands. One pushed, the other pulled. The metal groaned, then ripped apart in my grip. When I stepped back, I had carved myself a new entryway into the ship's underbelly.
Yeah. I was strong.