Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain

I dont mean they are the same person, meant they are hitched. Not that either seems likely to recognize monogamy if it bit them on the ankle.

It is on much thinner ice than the "Penny's parents darn well know" but it does have some textual support, and well, it isn't like Luthra senior can have a meaningful relationship with anyone subject to her power - Lucy being immune to it twice over is one of the points in favor.

It doesn't actually matter much if Penny's mothers ability is a power. Well, it matters some, if it just native raw intelligence, it never turns off, but either way Penny's mother is basically a super intelligence. The fact that Penny thinks she is in the dark about *anything* about which she has any data to work with implies that a: She's been letting Penny get away with things for years. Probably because infallibly busting her over everything would constitute a highly inadvisable experiment in child psychology. and b: Penny isn't nearly as clever as she thinks she is.

x6 Sorry I wasn't very clear I meant I was curious if Penny herself would be able to build something with planetary object destroying capability's or if they would do it by the use of technology that someone else made.

In regards to the idea that Penny's parents have known all along I think the battle at the other middle school disproves that hypothesis. I really think if her parents doing such a thing they would have made sure right from the start (or at least as soon as they were up against non superheroes) that they had some kind of defense against conventional weaponry.

Although I suppose you could argue Brian could have had some undetectable form of technology at play to stop bullets.

One other thing I found quite interesting is the implications of Beatrice being long time friends with The Minx. Does this hint at maybe a not entirely white past for The Audit? I mean her ability's while terrifying aren't really distinctive enough that she can't pretend to be someone else while doing some more dubious work.

Edit: Realistically this scene would never happen. But I think it would be hilarious if The Inscrutable Machine went to fence something at Chinatown and ending up selling to Penny's mother in disguise. Then they both realize who the others are and it just gets really awkward with no one exactly sure who should be more guilty.

edited 12th Jul '14 5:41:00 AM by 32ndfreeze

The first job they pull deliberately, they run into a mind-control immune guard with a gun, and when things go sideways, the most formidable hero on her parents speeddial shows up in seconds. That was a setup, or at least, the bits until the extradimensional horror showed up was. He presumably had orders to make them fear guns without putting any bullets actually in them. Look, the audit used superior reasoning skills as her sole defense and primary weapon in combat with supervillains. For years. And she is still alive. If she could be lied to, at all, she would be dead.

Re: planetary destruction. Yes. There are at least 3 ways to end life on earth which should be easily within Penny's abilities. Took me 4 seconds to think of them. There are sure to be more. Huh. Uhm. Wait, it is explicit that trying to end the world is something supervillains do. How is the earth still there? Is there a hero with time travel abilities that fixes things whenever the world ends or what?

edited 12th Jul '14 9:32:20 AM by izeintime

Supervillains (and heroes) treat the whole thing like a game most of the time. Most villains are smart enough not to destroy the world they're standing on, and those who aren't will either be talked down by the other villains, and failing that find themselves fighting Mourning Dove.

I mean destruction of the moon, not wiping out human life.

Also those are some pretty good points, I suppose it could all be secret training for Penny, but honestly I really don't think Penny's parents would do that. I mean the whole thing with The Audit, if you or I had that degree of perception I don't think the average person would use it to such a degree on their family.

Edit: I get the feeling that as well as a lot of the Heroes and Villains treating it like a game everyone else (governments, etc) kind of just goes with it due to both the power of the individuals and the whole dealing with threats like alien invasions eldritch horrors.

edited 13th Jul '14 12:35:20 AM by 32ndfreeze

Well, that, and there is that really hilarious excerpt from the next book about what their history is like.

Wrecking a moon - sure, there is no real upper limit to how big an fusion device can get, and she already built a portable fusion generator with a failure mode of "Boom". A deliberate bomb.. or she could simply mine it into oblivion with the machine. It's a replicator - if she is, say stranded on phobos and ask's for the materials to build a starship, there might not be a lot of moon left afterwards.

Uhm. It just occurs to me that Penny lost her bullet shield. Oops. That may well be what she needs the cloning tanks for - "and now we start taking backups, eve online style". Tough that would be a bit more of a mindfuck/dark than is really quite appropriate.

Another low confidence theory: The reason Penny's power refuses to make more cheerleader serum is that she was exposed while making it, and the only effect dosage has is how long it takes to rebuild your body to maximal specs. So all three of them will end up with physical power in the same league as the boyfriend. Not *as* strong, as it is a mod to physical structure, not magic, and he still has a lot more musclemass to work with, but up there. Basing this on the absurd rate of improvement the girls are both showing. Could also be an effect of the teleport armbands in penny's case.

edited 13th Jul '14 6:03:10 AM by izeintime

I found This a couple of days ago on the author deviantart page.

It looks quite interesting, I wonder if the spacesuit is new technology or just an extension of Penny's worksuit.

Edit: Eh, I don't think it really makes sense from a narrative standpoint for that to be the case. I mean it would kind of invalidate Ray's role in the team.

edited 14th Jul '14 2:04:01 AM by 32ndfreeze

Is Penny likely to take up martial arts to any serious extent? No? Then it doesn't invalidate anything. And there is something going on - she is seeing visible improvement at an utterly absurd pace. Could be something else. The armbands, her parents feeding her special vitamins, but the most likely of the options I can think of is "Not the worlds most careful chemist".

edited 14th Jul '14 11:40:05 AM by izeintime

I suppose it could work I guess. Actually it would be pretty hilarious if Penny finally gets her hands on something that gives super powers like the dragon blood they sold and it turns out the serum prevents it from working forcing her to wait a long time for them to kick in.

You mean her power flashing a helpful warning like with the booze and boom juice? "Don't apply further mods to corpus until current upgrade is complete, lest you grow tentacles. Try in 18 months"?

Something like that. I just feel it would be amusing if Penny is constantly unable to gain any other super powered augmentations despite her best efforts.

Also after fully re-reading the book I am feeling a lot more suspicious of Beatrice Akk. Not only has she been friends with the Minx, but after the climax she is also the one to contact The Expert to confirm that Spider has the Conqueror Orb. I think that there is a lot more to The Audit than Penny knows at this point.

I was going to say maybe she's more of a Batman expy than she first appears, but Batman is actually pretty black and white on morality. He'll do dark things, but he rarely consorts with even minor villains.

It is an interesting idea. Of course, the Minx and the Expert aren't exactly the darkest villains either; if she was talking to Spider directly, that would make me sit up and take notice.

Yes, Spider certainly is the most out and out villainous villain that we have met yet. Although I do think in the (hopefully) sequels we should get to meet some of the villains that have been named dropped and sound like very bad news.

This is a tangent, but anyway. I was thinking about the whole Chinatown set up with the villainous community and got to wondering if the heroes in LA have some sort of equivalent. I wouldn't think they would need the same level of an operation. I mean they aren't quite as illegal as the villains but I do think that they have some sort of regular meeting place.

At the very least I would think a place would be needed for all of the heroic inventors / mad scientists to gather and sell wares. I know we have already seen the co-operation between Brian Akk and Mech, but it stands to reason that not all heroes have friends to build them shiny new toys.

Really I hope a place like this exists, just so we can have a chapter in which Brian decides to take Penny to see some of the wider world of superheroes due to her emerging superpowers. I think it would be really neat to have this sort of scene happening with the trouble coming from the fact that several of the more merchant types frequent both the villain and heroic worlds.

I'm not sure. Chinatown works well as a Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy sort of thing (there's a more specific trope somewhere, but I'm too lazy to find it). There's not always a good-guy equivalent. The Justice League has their base, but they don't host marketplaces. I do agree we need to see more heroes, though, especially their side of the community.

Yeah, I do see why you think it mightn't work. But I really do want to see more of the nuts and bolts of how the heroes operate.

I do however think that it makes sense for the scientist types to have some sort of community. At least if the heroes are anything like the mad scientists that we have already seen.

Or I suppose we could find out that most mad science types tend to end up in team ups with other heroes. That is one of my most wanted things to come out from the sequel, more exposition on the "place" of the mad scientists / inventors in the super community.

Actually what I want to see is if there's any interactions between the hero and villain mad scientists/gadgeteers. On the villain side they've already admitted that they form their own community within the community to the point where there's at least some conduit with their heroic counterparts.

Heck Cybermancer mentioned sending his work for Brian to scrutinize which does suggest information does flow to some extent.

You're right that does sound particularly interesting. I wonder if Penny will get around to any selling of inventions. I suppose its less likely considering the payment from Spider but it still would be interesting.

A Mad Scientist convention sounds like a whole lot of fun though. I can just imagine the headache on anyone trying to follow the conversations.

edited 20th Jul '14 6:52:48 PM by 32ndfreeze

I'd argue that Chinatown works as an upsized Bad Guy Bar, an open place where villains gather to socialize.

I've been thinking about Miss A /[[spoiler:Marcia] lately and I've been having a little trouble decided where exactly she stands in relation to The Inscrutable Machine.

In most series she would be a constantly reoccurring threat. But really after the events of book Penny, Ray and Claire seem to be out of her league. But at the same time after begin humiliated twice I don't think Miss A will drop her feud that simply.

From this I figure three basic options exist:

Firstly: she just kind of fades away into the background.

Secondly: she remains a threat after getting some training, new equipment or she could join a team or superheroes.[[spoiler:considering her father

Thirdly: she becomes a sort of running gag, easily defeat in increasingly more embarrassing ways.

I suppose with any of these the risk of her discovering their secret identitys is another way in which she could become a greater threat. The Original is also a unknown factor. We still don't know the specifics of their relationship and whether or not they are related.

edited 29th Jul '14 8:04:44 PM by 32ndfreeze

Yeah, Miss A dropped off the radar pretty quickly. Even Ifrit came up later, during the warehouse raid. Hell, even Sharky came up later, with his uncle wanting revenge for his humiliation. It could be because she's just an annoying starter villain, or because she's a Chekhov's Gunman who will become more relevant in later books. She did have access to a Conqueror Orb, after all.

The book meanders a lot, with the climax just being the biggest story of the book rather than a real culmination of plot points. I have no problem with that, that's how I write too, but I'm just saying that it's different than a lot of tightly plotted stories that are popular these days.

Miss A knows who the Inscrutable Machine are. She just doesn't want to admit that because sod letting folks know that you have been curb stomped, repeatedly, by the school geek posse.

Or she knows, but can't tell anyone because The Original is her father and realizes how idiotic it would be to effectively put at risk both of their secret identity's to the mercy of supervillains they have just outed.

Does it go anywhere with the premise instead of just ramping up the threat level constantly?

Hmm, not sure what you mean. It does elevate the threat level but it also elevates the competencies of our kid heroes, er, I mean, kid villains to go along with that. It's a bloody good book. All the characters work and it's tightly plotted too.

Reading this for the...fourth time? Fifth? It's still amazingly good. Still a few minor quibbles an editor would have caught, though.

As for the comparison to Worm, I still haven't read that, but I hear it's extremely dark, which this book simply isn't. There are hints at dark elements here and there (such as the implication that the reason fights stay friendly is that Mourning Dove tends to "accidentally" kill villains who cross the line), but it's definitely a kid's book.