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I’m not good at being alone. I found that out a while ago, and what’s happened these past few weeks, they only made it clearer. I need company, and your company is what I want the most. I can’t say it’ll be forever, but for now

—Flechette to Parian, Interlude 21.y

Lily, also known as Flechette, was a member of the New York Wards. Following Leviathan's attack on Brockton Bay, she was transferred to the Brockton Bay Wards. She eventually left the Brockton Bay Wards and joined the Undersiders under the codename Foil.

Personality[]

She initially hoped she could become friends with Shadow Stalker, the only other female Ward her age in Brockton Bay. She noted that her work would "drain the life out of her if she had no friends to do it with". However, she was shocked by how comfortable with violence Shadow Stalker was. Later, she professed that she was never good with the ick-factor of the job.[11]

She kept to an exercise regimen, and spent four nights a week in the gym.

Lily is a lesbian, and was immediately attracted to Parian when they met. She was willing to risk getting into trouble with the Wards in order to befriend her.[12]

Relationships[]

Parian[]

Lily and Sabah have a very strong romantic relationship.

March[]

Foil and March are a part of the same cluster. March has attacked Foil several times, at one point even attempting to kidnap Parian.

Family[]

Lily has a complicated relationship with her family, with a lot of drama getting in the way of her ever settling down.[13] Her sister was involved in her trigger event in fact.[14]

Appearance[]

Lily is described as a Japanese-American girl,[15] of above-average height.

As Flechette, she wore a skintight,[16] deep purple[17] costume with a tinted one-way visor,[18][16] quiver, and narrow platinum-white armor panels that flared out at the upper edges and tapered at the bottom - mimicking the vague shape of an arrow or darts.[17] Her costume included metal cleats on her shoes, that could dig into the environment under the influence of her power, or help her grasp the chains her arbalest launched.[19]

When she first debuted, her costume was blue-and-white rather than purple-and white, and described as "PRT quality" and "polished but ... boring" by March.[18] She originally carried a sword alongside her other gear, but abandoned it for being too dangerous.[20]

She carried a Tinker-made arbalest to launch needles three feet long – needles that carry the effects of her power, ignore gravity, and benefited from her secondary power of enhanced sense of angles and timing. The arbalest produced an unlimited supply of sturdy chain, and her needles remained fused in place where they hit, allowing her to use it as a grappling hook as well as a weapon. She also carried nine-inch throwing darts, her primary weapon before she acquired the arbalest.[20]

After Lily became Foil, she donned a black costume with asymmetrical belts, boots, armor and gloves. She also wore a black opaque mask with silver trim at the edges. As a weapon, she used thrown blades augmented with a rapier[21], the same tools she originally used when she first discovered her powers.[22][23]

Abilities and Powers[]

Main article: The Subway Cluster

Primary Ability[]

Lily has the ability to temporarily imbue nonliving material[24] with the power to ignore select laws of physics. Most notably, they could punch through virtually anything.[17][25] It is able to go through any defence and materialise inside of a target, fusing to it, and can ignore various forms of conventional superhuman durability as if the opposition was like "warm-butter".[26] She is not restricted to her hand when she uses this power. When imbuing an object with her power, Lily could tune the effect; for example, she could alter the time limit so that her charged ammunition would glue itself to a place (at the molecular level) if she timed the effect to wear off at the right time.[3] She could use her ability on her costume to reduce the effects of friction or make her shoes bite into surfaces.[27] Another trick she could do was to make her costume frictionless and allow her to slide around.[19]

Scion described her power as "charging objects with energy [...] the small pieces of alloyed metal unfolded, taking shape in not just this world, but all realities, at the same space and time, bristling with an effect that would sever their attachment to most physical laws."[28] Said power can unerringly reach into every dimension, including the one the target is in.[26] Although this is widely interpreted to mean that they extend into every Alternate Earth and hit things that are present in one Earth but not in another, this may not be the case.[29]

Using her power on Chevalier's sword would have broken it.[30]

Lily's charged shots can pierce right through an Endbringer,[17] as demonstrated against Leviathan[31][32] and Behemoth.[33][34] She can kill one with a direct hit to their core.[35] After discovering the full ramifications of her power during the Battle against Behemoth, the Endbringers changed their methodology to better avoid situations where Lily could set up a killing blow.[30]

Other Abilities[]

Lily has an intuitive understanding of angles, trajectories and an enhanced sense of timing that she uses for aiming and applying her power.[3] It also gave her a defensive advantage being able to dodge blows easily and even catch arrows out of the air.[36]

Vulnerabilities[]

Although her All-or-Nothing attacks can pierce through any non-perfect defense,[5][4] objects charged by her power are not inviolable. On separate occasions, both Tecton[34][37] and Ballistic[38][39] launched objects charged by Lily. Scion touched the flat side of a razor blade charged by her with a tuned Stilling attack to disintegrate it.[40] Powers such as those from Trickster[41] and Gray Boy[42] can obliquely act on objects charged by Lily and redirect them before they make contact. Vista's power can also obliquely warp objects charged by Lily's primary shard.[43][44]

If a charged object contacts an All-or-Nothing effect, they will nullify each other, causing the object to lose its charge:

  • Lily's power versus the Siberian is the classic scenario where an unstoppable force strikes an immovable object.[45] As this scenario results in a mutual nullification,[46] her charged objects can thus pop the Siberian.[47][48]
  • In her final fight against March, Lily's charged weapon conflicted with March's version, where each nullified the other's charge.[49]
  • Lily's charged bolt lost its charge when it contacted the All-or-Nothing crystal of an underling of Lord of Loss; the crystal lost its special properties as well causing both the bolt and crystal to shatter.[50]

She is unable to escape a Gray Boy time loop.[51] However, as March broke an entire time loop from the outside at Killington,[52][53] Lily can presumably do the same with the help of specialized tinkertech.[54]

Lily believed that trying to use her power to intuitively understand angles on Vista's space warping might give her a seizure.[55] The Number Man can counter her enhanced accuracy via his Thinker power to dodge her shots.[56]

Shards[]

The three shards in her cluster call themselves the three faces.[57] The Entities refer to Lily's primary shard as "Sting". It was originally used for fighting other Entities.[58]

Sting does not have much need to evolve: the Entities have not discovered a way to really improve or vary it. However, handing this power out to hosts can give the Entities the opportunity to figure things out at the end of the cycle by seeing how other powers interact with it.[59][60][61] Giving away this power is standard procedure for Scion and Eden as they have contingencies in place to automatically dodge charged projectiles.[62][63][64]

History[]

Background[]

Lily was put into the foster system at a young age, and had older siblings who weren't.

She triggered 3 years prior to the start of Worm, as part of a group trigger in New York.[1] This trigger event occurred when she was standing at a subway platform. She was attacked from behind by one of her estranged sisters, who was homeless. Her sister tried to push her onto the tracks and in the process, other people fell onto them. Lily triggered as her sister pushed her head down, putting it in the way of oncoming trains, and seeing her sister get hit.[14] One of her old nemeses, March, was another part of that group trigger.[1][65]

At some point she joined the Wards, debuting with a video that doubled as an ad for Flechette merchandise.[66] She had to stop using a sword with her power after it proved unacceptably dangerous. A year after joining the team she was given an advanced arbalest, rendering the signature darts she had named herself after somewhat obsolete.[20]

Story Start[]

Deployed to Brockton Bay, Flechette pulled Parian away from Bambina at the cape gathering before the fight with Leviathan started.[67]

She was able to reliably damage the Endbringer.[31]

Post-Leviathan[]

Was brought onto the Brockton Bay Wards team.

Post-Slaughterhouse Nine[]

Almost succeeded in capturing Skitter, however, Taylor talked her way out of it and shook Lily's belief in her own righteousness.

She eventually talked about the incident with Ms. Yamada.

Post-Echidna[]

Defected from the Wards and started a relationship with Sabah.

Participated in the fight at New Delhi, being outfitted with her flechettes by her old teammate Jouster.[68]

Timeskip[]

Lily was 'visited' twice by March while she lived in Brockton Bay. On this second 'visit' Parian was kidnapped, presumably to lure in Foil.[69]

Post-Timeskip[]

Has settled into a routine as Parian's lieutenant. while preparing to deal with a hostage situation she caught up with some of her old Ward teammates. She had taken to imbuing a dagger with her effect and letting Parian incorporate it into her creations, like a fluffy scorpion.

Killed several of The Slaughterhouse Nine-Thousand and the Gray Boy clone.

Gold Morning[]

During her battle against Scion, Khepri noticed that he was dodging shots from Foil. When he gave up hope, Foil was able to wound him, opening a hole to his true body through which he was destroyed.[39]

Early Ward[]

Stuck with the Tattletale and remaining Undersiders despite tension.

Was present during Mathers Compound Assault.

Post-Goddess' Takeover[]

She gets targeted by her longtime nemesis again, which forces Undersiders to mobilize and get on the run.

When Undersiders and Breakthrough joined forces, she was in a group that went after Love Lost.[70] Later in the night she joined the combined group that captured Cradle. At the dawn of the next day Lily got leads from Narwhal, and decided to end March and her megacluster once and for all.[71]

The Ice Breaks[]

Foil was alongside The Undersiders and Breakthrough during the oversight duty of Titan Oberon and Eve. During the battle of titans she stayed with the rear group, initially taking potshots at Oberon, and then enchanted chain-hook, that was delivered by Rachel and was able to seriously gouge titans' back.[72]

Foil saved Chastity from near-lethal fall, when they were forced to retreat.

Later, she was provided with a weapon by Antares and delivered to Eve, where Foil carved out a nice chunk of titan out, and then was evacuated by Antares alongside Damsel of Distress[73] Later in the fight she continued gouging titans, until she was recovered with Parian's glider. Afterwards she was intentionally kept away from Parian by Tattletale and was deeply shocked by the reveal of intended application of Parian's power.[74] She moves out from Undersiders to another settlement with her old NY teammates.[75]

Flechette participated in the initial engagement with The Simurgh alongside Rachel Lindt, unlike the majority of Undersiders, who remained in the Wardens' HQ.[76]

Chapter Appearances[]

Worm Chapter Appearances
Extermination
1. Extermination 8.1 Debut
2. Extermination 8.2 Appears
y. Interlude 8.y Absent
3. Extermination 8.3 Appears
4. Extermination 8.4 Appears
5. Extermination 8.5 Appears
6. Extermination 8.6 Absent
7. Extermination 8.7 Absent
8. Extermination 8.8 Absent
z. Interlude 8.z Absent
Sentinel
1. Sentinel 9.1 Mentioned
2. Sentinel 9.2 Point of View
3. Sentinel 9.3 Appears
4. Sentinel 9.4 Appears
5. Sentinel 9.5 Appears
6. Sentinel 9.6 Absent
Parasite
1. Parasite 10.1 Absent
2. Parasite 10.2 Appears
3. Parasite 10.3 Appears
4. Parasite 10.4 Appears
5. Parasite 10.5 Absent
6. Parasite 10.6 Absent
x. Interlude 10 Mentioned
x. Interlude 10.5 Absent
Snare
1. Snare 13.1 Absent
2. Snare 13.2 Absent
x. Interlude 13.5 (Donation Bonus) Absent
3. Snare 13.3 Appears
4. Snare 13.4 Absent
5. Snare 13.5 Absent
6. Snare 13.6 Absent
7. Snare 13.7 Absent
8. Snare 13.8 Absent
9. Snare 13.9 Absent
10. Snare 13.10 Absent
y. Interlude 13 Absent
Prey
1. Prey 14.1 Absent
2. Prey 14.2 Absent
3. Prey 14.3 Absent
4. Prey 14.4 Appears
5. Prey 14.5 Appears
6. Prey 14.6 Appears
7. Prey 14.7 Absent
8. Prey 14.8 Absent
9. Prey 14.9 Absent
10. Prey 14.10 Absent
11. Prey 14.11 Absent
x. Interlude 14.x Absent
y. Interlude 14.y Absent
Colony
1. Colony 15.1 Absent
x. Interlude 15.x Absent
2. Colony 15.2 Absent
3. Colony 15.3 Absent
y. Interlude 15.y Absent
4. Colony 15.4 Absent
5. Colony 15.5 Appears
6. Colony 15.6 Appears
7. Colony 15.7 Mentioned
z. Interlude 15.z Absent
8. Colony 15.8 Mentioned
9. Colony 15.9 Absent
10. Colony 15.10 Mentioned
i. Interlude 15 Appears
Monarch
1. Monarch 16.1 Absent
2. Monarch 16.2 Appears
x. Interlude 16.x Absent
3. Monarch 16.3 Absent
4. Monarch 16.4 Absent
5. Monarch 16.5 Absent
6. Monarch 16.6 Absent
y. Interlude 16.y Absent
7. Monarch 16.7 Absent
8. Monarch 16.8 Absent
9. Monarch 16.9 Absent
10. Monarch 16.10 Absent
z. Interlude 16.z Absent
11. Monarch 16.11 Absent
12. Monarch 16.12 Absent
13. Monarch 16.13 Absent
Queen
1. Queen 18.1 Absent
2. Queen 18.2 Appears
x. Interlude 18.x Absent
3. Queen 18.3 Appears
4. Queen 18.4 Mentioned
y. Interlude 18.y Absent
5. Queen 18.5 Mentioned
6. Queen 18.6 Absent
z. Interlude 18.z Appears
7. Queen 18.7 Absent
8. Queen 18.8 Absent
f. Interlude 18.f Absent
i. Interlude 18 Absent
Imago
1. Imago 21.1 Mentioned
2. Imago 21.2 Absent
3. Imago 21.3 Absent
4. Imago 21.4 Absent
5. Imago 21.5 Appears
6. Imago 21.6 Absent
7. Imago 21.7 Appears
x. Interlude 21.x Absent
y. Interlude 21.y Appears
Cell
1. Cell 22.1 Appears
2. Cell 22.2 Absent
3. Cell 22.3 Mentioned
4. Cell 22.4 Mentioned
5. Cell 22.5 Absent
6. Cell 22.6 Absent
x. Interlude 22.x Appears
y. Interlude 22.y Absent
Drone
1. Drone 23.1 Mentioned
2. Drone 23.2 Absent
3. Drone 23.3 Mentioned
4. Drone 23.4 Absent
5. Drone 23.5 Appears
x. Interlude 23 Appears
Crushed
1. Crushed 24.1 Mentioned
2. Crushed 24.2 Appears
3. Crushed 24.3 Absent
4. Crushed 24.4 Appears
5. Crushed 24.5 Appears
x. Interlude 24.x Appears
y. Interlude 24.y Absent
Scarab
1. Scarab 25.1 Mentioned
2. Scarab 25.2 Absent
3. Scarab 25.3 Absent
4. Scarab 25.4 Absent
5. Scarab 25.5 Absent
6. Scarab 25.6 Appears
x. Interlude 25 Absent
Sting
1. Sting 26.1 Appears
2. Sting 26.2 Appears
3. Sting 26.3 Appears
x. Interlude 26.x Absent
4. Sting 26.4 Mentioned
5. Sting 26.5 Appears
6. Sting 26.6 Appears
a. Interlude 26a Appears
b. Interlude 26b Appears
y. Interlude 26 Absent
Extinction
1. Extinction 27.1 Appears
2. Extinction 27.2 Appears
3. Extinction 27.3 Absent
4. Extinction 27.4 Appears
5. Extinction 27.5 Absent
x. Interlude 27.x Absent
y. Interlude 27.y Absent
Cockroaches
1. Cockroaches 28.1 Mentioned
2. Cockroaches 28.2 Absent
3. Cockroaches 28.3 Absent
4. Cockroaches 28.4 Appears
5. Cockroaches 28.5 Mentioned
6. Cockroaches 28.6 Appears
x. Interlude 28 Absent
Venom
1. Venom 29.1 Appears
2. Venom 29.2 Appears
3. Venom 29.3 Appears
4. Venom 29.4 Absent
5. Venom 29.5 Absent
6. Venom 29.6 Absent
7. Venom 29.7 Absent
8. Venom 29.8 Absent
9. Venom 29.9 Absent
x. Interlude 29 Absent
Speck
1. Speck 30.1 Absent
2. Speck 30.2 Absent
3. Speck 30.3 Appears
4. Speck 30.4 Absent
5. Speck 30.5 Appears
6. Speck 30.6 Appears
7. Speck 30.7 Absent
Teneral
1. Teneral e.1 Absent
2. Teneral e.2 Absent
3. Teneral e.3 Absent
4. Teneral e.4 Absent
5. Teneral e.5 Absent
x. Interlude: End Appears

Trivia[]

  • Her name being Lily might be a reference to Yuri, which can mean both lily and lesbian fiction in Japanese.[77]

Fanart Gallery[]

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Foil is 17 and a senior. She triggered 3 years prior to her appearance, as part of a group trigger in New York. One of her old nemeses, March, was another part of that group trigger. - Wildbow, archived on Spacebattles
  2. She bounced between her mother, her father and the surrogate mother who had attempted to renege on the deal they’d made and keep her. - Excerpt from Cell 22.3
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 Flechette wasn’t a breaker, though her power came close. Technically, she was a striker, a cape with the ability to apply some effect by touch or at point-blank range. The striker classification could include certain breaker effects as they were applied to things other than the cape themselves, but not always. Other strikers included those who used energy weapons, those who had certain kinds of superstrength that weren’t accompanied by durability and those with pyrokinesis or such that didn’t extend more than a foot around them. The way she used her ability, coupled with the intuitive understanding of angles, trajectories and timing she got from her secondary powers, gave her a low rating as a ‘blaster’. A cape with a ranged attack.

    She infused the three-foot length of sharpened metal that was mounted in her arbalest with her power. The more power there was in it, the less it was affected by the natural laws of the universe. Focusing more power into an object meant gravity, air resistance and general physics held less and less sway over it. She could tune it, make the effect longer lived, shorter lived or bias the effects to allow for more of one element or less of another.

    She could do other things, but the primary benefit, the easiest thing to do, was making her ammunition punch through anything. It would glue itself in place on impact, if she had the effect wear off at the right time, and she was very good at timing things.
    [...]
    She fired the needle through the corner of the roof just in front of her, and it passed through without resistance. It continued on to strike the rooftop below and in front of her, nestling in deep as the effect wore off, bonding on a molecular level to the material around it. The chain stretched down at a fifty degree angle, taut. - Excerpt from Sentinel 9.2
  4. 4.0 4.1 Can't cite anything, but there's a line that sorta appears in the story, where you run into the perfects (perfect defense, perfect offense) and stuff gets fucky - and the rule of thumb is that 'unless your ability beats -everything-, it doesn't beat this'. For processing power Contessa's ability would be on this level (as with Flechette's Sting, Clockblocker's inviolability, Siberian's invulnerability). - Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles
  5. 5.0 5.1 Siberian, Damsel, Scrub, Flechette, and Grey Boy are Worm capes at the 'if anything can penetrate that defense, these guys penetrate that defense' level of attack. - Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles
  6. “You’re really going?” Cassie asked.

    “Yes,” Sabah said. She smiled. “For too long, I’ve pulled Lily after me. To dark places even I hated going to. I think that’s what scared her, more than anything. I… I was making compromises to stay connected to the Undersiders and help support New Brockton, and I think it’s time Lily do what she needs to do. I’ll support her. Roman’s coming too. So are several of the other locals without powers.” - Last 20.e2
  7. “I can’t. I’m a villain,” Chastity said.

    “If you went with Lily, you could be like Roman, and rebrand as a hero.” - Last 20.e2
  8. “A new costume is something I can do,” Sabah answered. “And yes.”

    “Yes?”

    “Yes,” Sabah said. “You’ll be my lieutenant. And you’re okay with that?”

    “That’s… what I’m offering. The last thing I want is to make you uncomfortable.”

    “That’s good enough,” Sabah said. She stood, approaching Lily. - Interlude 21.y
  9. “I’m not a villain,” Lily said. She reached out for Sabah’s hand. “It’s already been established with the Wardens. My partner and I are leaving tomorrow. We’ll be bringing others with us, to establish ourselves in the city itself.”

    “As heroes.”

    “As heroes, with oversight. If it keeps Rain out of jail and keeps him in a place where he’s healthy, productive, and still working off his sentence by contributing to the community… jail won’t make him a better person.” - Last 20.e2
  10. “New bodies? Beyond our individual teams? My Heartbroken, The Sons of Bitch, the Needlepoints?”

    “Needlepoints?” Tattletale asked, arching an eyebrow.

    “If they’re not naming themselves, I’m gonna name them. Or do you want Parian’s group to wind up with a bullshit name like ‘Faultline’s Crew’?” - Interlude: End
  11. “I”m not good with the ick,” Foil said. “The Dolltown victims were almost too much for me. Parian knows. I’d always prefer riding Parian’s dolls instead of Bitch’s dogs.” - Excerpt from Blinding 11.6
  12. Flechette paused, then removed her visor. “Lily.”

    I need people I can trust, she tried to convince herself, even as she knew she had other reasons. Stuff like this could get her in serious trouble with the Wards. - Excerpt from Sentinel 9.2
  13. “She came from a broken home,” Miss Militia supplied the information instead. “She bounced between her mother, her father and the surrogate mother who had attempted to renege on the deal they’d made and keep her. With the number of times she changed between them and moved, I can’t imagine she has strong ties to the idea of ‘home’. Even within the Wards… New York has five small teams, and she moved between them as she changed residences.” - Cell 22.2
  14. 14.0 14.1 “I was fostered, entered into the system.  I had older siblings who weren’t.  Subway platform in New York, I get attacked from behind, and it was one of my sisters, homeless, and so- so angry.  It was like she lived in a completely different, warped reality, where I was to blame for everything, I’d sold her out, I’d taken something she was owed.  She tried to push me but I caught myself, and when she tried again, she pushed other people down onto the tracks while pushing me down to the ground, put my head in the way of any incoming trains.”

    “March was one of those people on the tracks?” I asked.  “Her timing power… and an imminent train?”

    Foil shrugged.  “All I know is I triggered as the train hit my sister, convinced she’d killed me.  March says our third was a friend of my sister, but I barely met the woman, and I didn’t realize why she was important or what she meant when I did.”

    “And March?”

    “There were people on the tracks.  Never got off, just… backed off enough that they could hug the wall while the train passed.  Or she got under a ledge, or she was pulled up and something else led to the trigger” - Excerpt from Blinding 11.10
  15. Cast (In Depth)
  16. 16.0 16.1 Parian was rescued by one of the out-of-town Wards, a girl in a skintight costume with a visor covering her eyes, nose and ears, with a quiver of what looked like giant needles and a massive crossbow.

    [...]

    "Flechette! I'm getting closer!" Shadow Stalker called out, looking back at her new partner. "Careful!" the crossbow-girl – Flechette, I took it – replied, loading another shot.
  17. 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 A Japanese-American girl, she wears a deep purple costume with a visor, quiver, and narrow, platinum-white armor panels that flare out at the upper edges and taper at the bottom – mimicking the vague shape of an arrow or darts. Her power allows her to imbue nonliving material with the ability to ignore select laws of physics, to the point that they can pass through virtually anything, including Endbringers and forcefields, among other defensive powers. - Cast (In Depth)
  18. 18.0 18.1 May looked, watched the video play, an introduction with some poses and close-ups of costume parts. White and blue, a tinted one-way visor. PRT quality, PRT production. Polished but… boring. - Excerpt from Interlude 12.z II
  19. 19.0 19.1 She could charge the metal of her cleats so they bit into any surface, and though it was too slow to be used defensively unless her foe telegraphed their attacks, she could make her costume frictionless.
    [...]
    Flechette stepped forward, onto the chain. The space between the spikes of her cleats made for a groove the chain could run through. She slid down, one foot behind the other, arbalest held behind her with the chain reeling out, a safety measure in the event she slipped or was pushed off, with the added advantage that it allowed her to control the speed of her descent.

    When she was close to the rooftop below, she cut the chain, let herself drop down. She was running the second her feet met the surface, using the momentum from her slide. - Excerpt from Sentinel 9.2
  20. 20.0 20.1 20.2 She’d been with the Wards a year before she had been given the arbalest and the chain reel. Her darts had been her weapon of choice for a long time, alongside a rapier she’d eventually retired after too many fights using it had turned out badly. She hadn’t had the heart to change her codename, even if it didn’t quite apply anymore. - Excerpt from Sentinel 9.2
  21. Interlude 26b
  22. Flechette, now Foil, stood off to one side. She’d donned a black costume, which I was pretty sure was made of one of my failed attempts at a Tattletale costume, using asymmetrical belts, boots, armor and gloves to cover the areas where I’d tried to embellish. Her mask was an opaque pane, like Clockblocker’s, but black, with silver trim at the edges. - Excerpt from Drone 23.5
  23. I would have locked my eyes to hers to read her expression, but she wore a fencer-style opaque pane that covered her face. Her costume was form-fitting, sleek and stylish because of course it had to be when she was partnered with a fashion designer, but that costume was normally adorned with a fanned-out array of spikes where the javelin-like bolts were in her quiver, darts mounted at her forearms, hips and thighs where she could grab them. Most were empty now. - Excerpt from Blinding 11.8
  24. Thirty might be too generous. Look at Brockton Bay’s Protectorate/Wards, living or dead. Who is explicitly affected by the (conventional interpretation of the) Manton effect?
    [...]
    Flechette? Yes. - Comment by Wildbow in Plague 12.6
  25. Her power wasn’t Shadow Stalker’s, from back in Brockton Bay. It went through everything, yes. Shadow Stalker could do something similar. But it left a hole, where Shadow Stalker’s hadn’t. One shot, then two- it created an aperture with the same diameter as the bullet. - Excerpt from Heavens 12.8
  26. 26.0 26.1 Sting unerringly reaches every dimension, including the one you're in. So against Superman, The Hulk, Thor, etc, it goes right through any defenses. When it rematerializes, it can rematerialize inside them, and functionally it does very much the same thing it would if you shot them and they had the durability of warm butter- pushes everything out of the way, and settles in place. Fuses to bone, etc, so bleeding is limited, but can still do a horrendous amount of damage. - Comment by Wildbow on Reddit
  27. The defending capes moved in. Foil slid down, her cleats digging into the surface of the building to afford her some drag, then leaped off to stab a Crimson through the skull. - Interlude 26b
  28. A female, standing just outside another time distortion, walked around the effect, charging objects with energy. The entity could see as the small pieces of alloyed metal unfolded, taking shape in not just this world, but all realities, at the same space and time, bristling with an effect that would sever their attachment to most physical laws. - Interlude 26
  29. Is Foil accidentally killing people on other earths when she uses her power?

    Wildbow: Nope - Discussion on Reddit featuring Wildbow
  30. 30.0 30.1 natsugo: Hell, she [Foil] could have used her power on the blade of Chevaliers sword, then he could go 1v1 against an Endbringer.

    Wildbow: Using her power on Chevalier's sword would have broken it, like the space warping around the Endbringer core did.

    The issue was that after they discovered the full ramifications of her powers, the Endbringers changed their methodology. Leviathan made hit and run attacks that meant he was gone and attacking another city before Scion/Foil/anyone else reached a location, Simurgh attacked abstract targets, Khonsu teleported, and Tohu/Bohu were difficult to pin down or find easy answers to. - Comment by Wildbow on Reddit
  31. 31.0 31.1 One of crossbow-girl's shots, like a needle several feet in length, speared under the side of Leviathan's neck, out the top. Shadow Stalker's shots, at the same time, failed to penetrate Leviathan's hard exterior.

    “Flechette! I’m getting closer!” Shadow Stalker called out, looking back at her new partner.

    “Careful!” the crossbow-girl – Flechette, I took it – replied, loading another shot. - Extermination 8.5
  32. Flechette fired a needle through Leviathan’s knee, and the Endbringer’s leg buckled. He collapsed into a kneeling position, the knee striking the ground. - Extermination 8.5
  33. He clapped, and a shockwave tore through the area. Rachel was already directing the dogs; they moved so there was cover, buildings between them and Behemoth. The chain, imbued by Foil’s ability to shear through anything, cut through the buildings as though there was nothing there.

    And just like that, they made it. The dogs passed Behemoth, a hundred and twenty feet of chain maintained between them, and the chain cut through him as easily as Foil’s arbalest bolts had. - Crushed 24.4
  34. 34.0 34.1 Something flew past him, shearing straight through Behemoth’s chest. A wheel of metal, thin, with two bars sticking out of the center. It cut through the Endbringer like he wasn’t even there. - Interlude 24.x
  35. Nekron-akaMrSkeletal: I guess that works. I was actually wondering about sting. If Foil had been at the behemoth fight could she have finished behemoth when his core was exposed?

    Wildbow: Yep. - Reply by Wildbow on Reddit
  36. She has a minor defensive ability in her enhanced sense of timing. Dodging blows, to a minor extent. She caught Shadow Stalker’s crossbow bolt, for example. - Comment by Wildbow on Interlude 21.y
  37. RazorSmile: Skitter’s idea, Annex to merge the metal bits together, Foil to grant it penetrative powers and Alexandria to throw?

    wildbow: Tecton piledrivers set into the bars at the side, to launch. - Conversation with Wildbow on Interlude 24.x
  38. I took control of her, had her bend down to grip a rock. I channeled it with her power.

    A moment later, I brought Ballistic through.

    He used his power on the rock. - Speck 30.5
  39. 39.0 39.1 In the moment that hope died, the girl with the injured hand [Foil] used her power on the iron rods. Infused them with the energy he was afraid of.

    Those rods became projectiles, in another’s hands [Ballistic].
    [...]
    I discovered why he was concerned about the power.

    It kept things from being contained. I got a glimpse, a flash of a look into the world beyond him, a world he’d shut off, to which his body was the only conduit. - Excerpts from Speck 30.6
  40. They stepped out of portals, one to my left, one to my right.

    Cuff to shape a sheet of metal into a giant razor blade, Foil to rig it with her power, setting it in Scion’s way.
    [...]
    I banished Foil as well, sending Cuff and Canary after her. They’d keep Tattletale and the others company. I disconnected them from my control network, giving them free will once again.
    [...]
    It didn’t matter. His hand glowed as he struck the flat side of the razor, and it dissolved into a ruin of glowing fragments. - Speck 30.5
  41. Flechette moved to shoot, then reconsidered, threw a handful of darts at Trickster instead. The darts disappeared in midair, and splinters of wood and small stones dropped straight out of the air where they had been. - Sentinel 9.3
  42. Foil threw darts. Gray Boy froze them in mid-air. - Interlude 26b
  43. March doesn’t stop as the rapier points at the heart, continuing forward and using both hands to overcome the resistance of the hard breastplate. She presses forward until the hilt sits flush against Vista’s armor plate.

    The face that focuses on the explosive fuse was what allowed the sword to slide into and through the material. Now it charges it, let the charge grow with every passing half second. - Heavens 12.all
  44. “The batshit bunny stabbed me, right? I telescope her sword, so it barely punches past my breastplate, she doesn’t realize. But it does punch through. I concentrate the point that’s supposed to explode into a smaller area and pull it away from me- screws up my breastplate. But that part that did stab me… can’t do anything about that.” - Black 13.1
  45. Belial666: Harm is harm. Since there doesn’t seem to be a limit to what powers can actually do, think of an effect that could trump other effects. For example, a sword that cuts ANYthing is something that has occasionally appears in fantasy. Not the “absurdly sharp edge” version but the “name the object of objection and it’s cut” version.
    Swing it at someone and you could cut off a limb. Or, you could cut off their will to fight. Or their strength. Or their ability to interact with the world. Or anything else of them you could name at all.

    Wildbow: But if you’re talking in that respect, you might as well be asking what happens when the unstoppable force strikes the immovable object. You might be talking about exactly this if you’re referring to flechette’s arrows vs. Siberian. - Comment by Wildbow on Prey 14.2
  46. Clockblocker fired his threads from his gauntlet. They surrounded the cube-carrier, and he froze them.

    Unstoppable force against an immovable object.

    Which won?

    The Siberian made contact with the thread and flickered out of existence, and the thread went limp. The cube fell with a crash. - Sting 26.5
  47. Up until the moment Foil, still screaming, using her augmented sense of timing to measure the length of each scream, stepped around the monochrome field he’d cast just in front of her. She threw a handful of darts through the Siberian and Gray Boy’s head as his back was turned.

    The Siberian flickered out of existence as Gray Boy collapsed.

    Neither reappeared, healthy or otherwise. - Interlude 26b
  48. They were thrown, and they disrupted connections to two shards at once. The projection disappeared, only to reappear a distance away. The boy who had created the time distortions fell as well. - Interlude 26
  49. March was the first to move. A dash forward, weapon thrusting. Foil’s weapon shimmered before it met March’s. A small, localized explosion marked the conflict between the two powers, each nullifying the other. - Heavens 12.x
  50. Foil, quiet up until this point, started shooting the crossbow, launching her augmented bolts. I’d known her as Flechette, back in the days when I’d thought my boyfriend, Eric, and Uncle Neil dying at the hands of an unstoppable giant lizard was the worst life was going to get. Back then, she’d had something elegant. Now she had something big.

    The skewers were about as long my arm was from elbow to fingertip, tapered at both sides. They punched through Lord of Loss’ digits, where a hand or clawed foot had just touched ground to give him leverage.
    [...]
    Foil turned the spider-mounted crossbow around to fire, and the blaster threw something to their feet- crystal encased them, freezing them immobile within for less than a second. It was less than a second because Foil’s shot hit the crystal and both the bolt and the crystal shattered. The cape was free to fire off some more artillery-like lobs. - Blinding 11.7
  51. She had close calls, though. Can you imagine if the grey boy encounter had gone differently? 'Fight endbringer, stick around, meet cute girl, switch sides to hook up with cute girl, get grey boyed, watch as girlfriend flips out and uses her true power, watch girlfriend die anyway, spend 10k years in torment' - Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles
  52. I’d already seen, in a sense. I’d figured out what was behind the tarp back in Killington. Gray Boy’s victim. The only one, as far as I was aware, who was still alive. - Sting 26.6
  53. I beat her to the punch. “March got to one of the time effects. It was the Killington Mayor, in an area that was folded into Brockton Bay.” - Heavens 12.2
  54. March reaches into a pocket. The second of her devices. Courtesy of Cradle and Cradle’s back and forth with the Khonsu Fallen, who are led by time manipulators.

    “Stand back.”

    The device makes the bubble fragile, and March’s blade cuts into the skin of it. It distorts, and it breaks. - Heavens 12.all
  55. Vista stepped out into the middle of the road at the edge of the fissure, then concentrated. She felt her power extend to every solid object in front of her, formed a map in her head. There was nobody out there, which made it easier. Slowly, carefully, she began adjusting. She truncated the length of Lord street, then did it again, repeating the process to make the four lane road shorter and shorter. The fissure down the center of the road squeezed against itself like a compressed spring.

    “This is disorienting,” Flechette spoke, as she gazed at the scene. “My power gives me a grasp of angles… and I’m worried I might have a seizure if I try to use it to get a sense of what’s happening here.” - Sentinel 9.5
  56. Foil opened fire with her crossbow, aiming so it was on a path to hit two of the enemies, and the Harbingers dodged the shot.

    She’s not supposed to miss. - Interlude 26a
  57. But their Foil, who belongs to the three faces just as much as March does, is quiet, watching, stalking. She watches, because her eyes are good. Because the three faces needed her eyes to be good. - Heavens 12.all
  58. Sting, the entity thought. Once it had been a weapon for his kind, against his kind, back in the beginning, when they had dwelt in oceans of gray sludge. - Interlude 26
  59. Sting, for the record, is akin to the shark. Sharks haven't evolved for aeons, because you can't get much better than a motherfucking shark. What you can do is put the shark in a tank with other fish/animals and see the way things might play out. - Wildbow on Spacebattles
  60. And sending out the shard to improve it is desirable, in case they ever run into anything like themselves that turns out to be hostile and need to be able to kill it.
    There is no real improvement of Sting, exactly. It's a 'shark' of shards. There's not much need for it to evolve. But having it out there and giving it to new species to play with gives them the opportunity to figure stuff out. And that figuring ends up in the download before the cycle moves on (detonation of the Earth multiverse, offshoot entities are distributed). - Wildbow on Reddit
  61. S/he [March] did get Sting lite. Remember, Sting is a 'shark' of a shard. Can't really do much to improve or vary it. - Wildbow on Spacebattles
  62. I doubt it's standard procedure
    It is standard procedure, at least for Scion/Eden's line of entities. We see them as avatars in the theoretical universe.
    So typically, it's not a problem because whoever would be attached to that shard wouldn't have any way of getting to them to attack in the first place.
    This basically answers OP's question. And it doesn't quite kill him. It just leaves him more vulnerable to more devastating follow-up. - Wildbow on Reddit
  63. I was already moving the group to safety when Scion evaded the incoming projectile.

    His future sight power wasn’t like Contessa’s. Narrower, lacking imagination, but he’d set up contingencies. If X happened, then the power would automatically kick in.

    Apparently the cost of being hit by Foil’s power was worse than whatever it cost him to use that power.

    Not a magic bullet, but it was a good fucking thing to know. Could I break it? Abuse it? - Speck 30.5
  64. Why had this barrage worked when the others didn’t?

    Had to buy time, make space. I opened doorways, siccing capes on Scion, driving him out of the building.

    What was different? I hadn’t added anything to the group.

    I had taken something away.

    I looked at Foil. - Speck 30.5
  65. Sentinel 9.3
  66. “You’ll see me patrolling the streets of New York, starting February first,” Flechette said. She picked up a new bottle with blue liquid inside, took a drink, then flipped the bottlecap back. Without turning around, she threw a dart behind her. It caught the cap, and embedded the cap to the lip of the camera, just in front of the lens. A Flechette in miniature on the cap. The scene, of course, was ruined by the squawk as the ad shifted to cramming in as much merchandising as possible in the last one point eight seven seconds. T-shirt, poster, limited time energy drink collectors item. - Interlude 12.z II
  67. “I’m staying back,” Flechette assured the girl. “Remember me?”

    “Yes. You talked to me before the fight, pulled me away from that horrible little girl.” - Excerpt from Sentinel 9.2
  68. My eyes followed Foil as she walked over to talk to Jouster. He handed her an arbalest, and a quiver of needle-like bolts.

    When she took the quiver, he gripped her wrist, speaking something in a low volume. She nodded as she replied, saying something I couldn’t make out, and he let her go.

    Wordless, they parted, him rejoining his team, Foil moving to Parian’s side. - Excerpt from Drone 23.5
  69. Interlude 5y II
  70. Blinding 11.5
  71. Heavens 12.x
  72. Radiation 18.4
  73. Radiation 18.5
  74. Radiation 18.6
  75. “Gone as in-”

    “Another settlement. With old New York Ward teammates.” - Excerpt from Radiation 18.7
  76. Last 20.2
  77. Yuri? Yeah, maybe just a bit. - Comment by Wildbow on Interlude 21.y

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