[quote=@Tatterdemalion]POTENTIAL 1

“A team of wannabes, huh?” She reflexively ignored the Aresteia suggestion; she’d always thought of that as a Dumb Sports Game. She did not know the rules, and she wasn’t about to start learning them now. “A plucky bunch of do-gooders as part of the @SARAHPHIM brand... that’s got potential. Of course, I’d have to set them up with med care, some therapy, but it could be a pretty good outlet for some kids I know.”

She grins impishly. “How does the thought of me yelling at you motivate you to get out of bed, huh? You could be... Lockerphim! Nah, that’s maybe stretching brand too far. @SARAHPHIM Presents: Locker! Locker: a SaraTeam Associate!”[/quote]

"Ah yeah, that's clearly what I was missing," said Locker, little glint of laughter in his eyes. "A drill sergeant. It's half a good idea, though - Angel-IKA would love the support and guidance and she's already named herself to be a knockoff of your brand." He's deflecting, doesn't think you're serious. "Not as much chemistry with her team, robot and girl piloting a robot remotely, but she ships with a supervillain so there's at least a little to work with there."

[quote=@Phoe]I'm... sure they told you already that those belonged to me? Those are the Mk 0.5s, the prototype trainee limbs I got fitted with after a couple of years of outgrowing child civilian designs. It's important that you understand this, ok? Those are [i]not[/i] designed to give you your normal life back. And they're not a superhero's cybernetics, either. They were designed specifically to train a potential AEGIS candidate, that is, uh... me, to adapt to life with better-than-human cyberware and to gather data on the pilot's physical and neurological responses to combat and superhuman stimuli."

Blank stare. A deep sigh. Keep going, Errant. Don't give up on the mission halfway through. 

"To... to ensure that the full range of response data could be gathered over the trial period, the 0.5s have a special, unalterable subroutine that randomly fluctuates their output in response to commands from... you, you get it, right? For as long as you're wearing those, there will be moments where it's going to feel like you're climbing a mountain or running through water just to get out of bed or walk down the block, and others where you'll try to skip and wind up fifteen feet in the air. On my worst days I had to have somebody else feed me because I would destroy everything I tried to touch, or else I couldn't lift a fork. The only upside is that the custom-fitted limbs they can make with the data these provide can be..."

She does her best to smile now. And to her credit, she probably at least gets close.

"Well, my recorded best at that stage of my training was 27.6 feet for the high jump. 57.9 horizontal, 745 pound bench press. 1,000 pound force on my hardest punch. But... that's enough of that for now. Stand up, if you can, and tell me how everything feels. We can talk more after that."[/quote]

Cinders closes her eyes. You can feel the energy running through her mind, the associations being drawn. This is the start of a training montage. This is going to be hard, but it's going to be like Rocky, where I struggle dramatically for a while before I become a superhero and Fight Crime. It's going to be hard but I can make it. And then I'll get to design my costume and it'll have...

She nods to herself. She's got this.

Her limbs activate, lines of red energy coiling up through the synth muscles, fingers and toes reflexively and sequentially twitching. She raises one hand and clenches and unclenches the fist, works on bending each joint in turn. She looks fascinated and amazed - you remember that feeling too. Civilian model limbs work by scanning neural impulses from the spine with programming to help autocorrect certain gestures, making them feel sedate and floaty, like an automatic transmission car. These ones are linked directly to the severed nerve endings which makes them have a weight and heft and physicality to them.

It's the kind of thing that makes forget that they're not ordinary limbs. She swings her legs over the side of the bed and hops to her feet with the kind of smooth grace an ordinary person would use on that gesture, and in the process she crushes the hand-rail into tinfoil without even noticing. "Woah," she said, swaying a little unsteadily. "These are not what I expected. They're heavy!"

[quote=@Balmas]Victor gawps at Bode. "He was able to plan circles around me! Predict actions and counter them! Like friggin' magic! His eventual plan may have been shit, but he was still, still--"

He groans again. "I'm doing that thing again where I conflate intelligence with worth, aren't I. The point is, even if his plan was shit--not saying it was--but the thing that matters is no matter what the eventual outcome of his plan would have been, he saw and will continue to see it as smart. And that's all that matters, when you're a genius--he's the architect of this plan, and the only reason we mere mortals cannot agree with his genius plan is because we're not as genius as the super genius he once was. And if he can't see that he was wrong--can't respect us--then why would he ever listen to us?"[/quote]

Bode is again quiet for a moment while he interrogates the internet. "In the instance where he definitionally fails to acknowledge other entities as thinking creatures worthy of respect then you are interacting with a solipsist," said Bode. "There is no counter to solipsism as a philosophy - other than to demonstrate that while other entities might not be real they still have power so it is worth pretending that they are real."