What price would you pay to save the world? Would you sacrifice your freedom? Your life? Your family? Your morals?
Unstoppable Force
is a Worm fanfic by Saphrae, focusing on a Original Character with the power to do just about anything by paying the appropriate price. The fic opens with her using her powers to banish Behemoth, pushing her into Earth Bet's public eye in a way she will never be able to escape.
Tropes:
- Equivalent Exchange: Fi/Contract's power in a nutshell. Chapter 26 goes into details on precisely how this works.
- Fi can sacrifice anything that is hers in order to "buy" an effect of her choice. The sacrifice can be of physical possessions or caloric energy, but it's actually more common for her to sacrifice abilities (such as temporarily becoming deaf or permanently losing dexterity in one hand) or freedoms (such as being unable to speak the truth aloud or unable to lie in writing).
- The value of the effect and the sacrifice are both measured by its emotional impact on her at the moment of the exchange (So if she were given a million dollars of tax money to pay for contracts, it wouldn't work because that money doesn't mean much to her personally). Fi can sometimes change this value by changing how she thinks of the effect or the cost, but this is difficult to do except on the spur of the moment.
- Contracts come in three primary types. The first are closed contracts, in which both the cost and effect are immediate and fixed (such as sacrificing a valued ring to heal someone's injuries). The second are open contracts, in which Fi chooses the effect she wants and then accepts an ongoing cost, which will last until the total suffering from the cost is sufficient to balance out the effect. Finally, there are "if-then" contracts, in which both cost and effect are ongoing. These require that the cost remain at least roughly sufficient to balance out the effect at all times, or the contract will fail.
- Other people can pay the price for Fi's contracts, but it requires a deep connection and a lot of trust.
- Exact Words: One of Fi's standard costs for her contracts is what she calls "truth-and-lies": she is rendered unable to say anything aloud that is completely true and unable to write down anything that is completely false. There are several loopholes in this cost that she can use.
- Sign language is neither spoken nor written, so she can communicate whatever she wishes that way.
- Things that are not statements (such as questions or instructions) are neither true nor false and so also unaffected.
- Statements are graded on the most literal meaning of the words (so for example "I'll be along in a minute" counts as a lie unless she intends to follow after exactly sixty seconds).
- It Only Works Once: In order to pay the price for banishing Behemoth from existence, Fi had to
utterly violate her morals and cut all ties with her family. Nothing else she could do or give up would be so traumatic, so she cannot repeat the feat with the other Endbringers. - Powered by a Forsaken Child: Fi's banishment of Behemoth is sustained by her own hatred for what she did to initiate the banishment. If she ever came to see that act as less than an utter betrayal of everything she believes in, the contract would swing out of balance and Behemoth would return.
