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bioticgoddess · 3 years

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Destiny One-Shot: Schrodinger’s Warlock

I read the lore about Praedyth and the first VOG Fire Team. I had a brain wave. I’m not sorry.

Generic Warning: Didn’t proof read. No beta reader. I’m sorry if there’s typos and stuff. I wrote this mostly in one go late at night.

Shroedinger’s Warlock

He knew time in the Vault didn’t follow the rules as time in hundreds of timelines simulated by the Vex. Here, it all happened at once, in simultaneous play. Out there, while that remained true, they were discrete and different and he had kept track of them for Traveler only knew how long. Why or how the Vex had kept him alive without his Ghost and kept him from a similar fate to Kabr...well he didn’t want to try and contemplate that. Not now. Not when his salvation and escape from this hell was so close.

Something about this Fireteam, these six guardians who stole into the Vault and had fought their way to one of his thousand skeletons, was different. They’d taken refuge in the small room while the Gorgon Harpies patrolled the maze. Quietly studying the records and maps of the countless other excursions who’d come to slay Atheon. They passed cantees between them, water and food carefully rationed to ensure they could make it through.

He could have killed for a bit of one of those terrible hardtacks but dared not approach.

Parallelling his thoughts, one of the Warlocks - an Awoken Woman - sighed, “I’d kill for caffeine.”

The shorter of the two Titans elbowed her, “When we get out of here, more than coffee is on me.”

“We made it this far,” yawned a hunter, he stretched until his spine popped.

The others murmured in agreement - another warlock, titan, and hunter respectively. He could just hear the hum of their Ghosts as they unfolded from Transmat to heal their wounds. He missed his ghost, her questions about his research and motherly nagging about his health and safety. One of the little Traveler born drones announced, “The temporal markers are all still synced up. Everything is in the green.”

“Good,” the taller Titan nodded. “Five minutes everyone, then we move out.”

Another round of agreeing murmurs. The female Hunter put her hand over what had been his in another timeline. She whispered, pulling her helmet on, “Eyes up Praedyth.”

They knew! He didn’t know what but he knew! None of the other Fireteams over the uncountable years here had ever said his name over any of his bones. Not one! He was an unacknowledged ghost wandering this purgatory.

Something had changed, it was different and the Vex hadn’t been able to predict it! He could have laughed, sang even if he hadn’t been so terrified that doing more than watch would result in this Fireteam’s deaths. That it wouldn’t result in someone else being trapped here with him - a fate he wished on no one. Perhaps more so than he wished none of them to face Kabr’s fate. At least Pahanin had gotten out. He was free.

So long down here, he knew the route. Stay close to the right hand wall. Spiral down. Don't look at the Gorgons and keep as much distance as possible from them. Careful to go down into the dark, the deep, across the cavern and to the central chamber where the Gatekeeper and then Atheon lay in wait. Stay outside the door til after the Six Guardians enter. Then up the right hand side of the wall along what looked like little more than pock marks in the way. Grips he’d carved as he’d tried desperately to sneak past the vex and out to freedom.

Up along the door, just shy of where the ceiling dropped down, there was a crack in the stone that he’d be able to squeeze through, to hide where he’d be out of sight. Time’s Conflux wouldn’t send him to what he’d heard others call Mars or Venus; though which Mars and Venus was up for intense debate.

For a moment, as grenades flew and ammo bricks were passed between teammates, he could see the others, his old team. The shorter Titan leapt up on what was the Martian control Plate and threw his barricade up. A rift went down a few seconds later and the warlock, back to back with him, dropped an arc grenade into the sea of grounded Harpies. The thunder cracked and each of the little pseudo-robots shattered and broke across the stone.

Then he saw it. The moment when a half dozen Guardians launched their most powerful attacks - Lightborne and weapon based - at Atheon. The giant Minotaur roared. It’s body groaned and crashed to his knees. The frame shuddered and the chamber holding its radiolarian fluid pooled around the metal. It crackled with the ghost of electricity. He hadn seen the giant beaten before but never like this.

The Vex had not predicted these Guardians.

Carefully, the six collected what weapons and gear they could find in the room as the gateway out of the Vault opened and the warm air of Venus filled the chamber. The grin on the shorter Titan’s face carried to his voice, “And, we are synced!”

“Wolf, we have a full count,” the second warlock, also a woman, was surprised. It was that giddy surprise that he recognized, like she hadn’t expected it to happen.

“Full count. Seven by seven!”

The warlock whooped. Both hunters began searching the cavernous room more intently, careful to avoid the remaining pools of radiolarian fluid.

Seven? He’d only seen these six enter the Vault. Only seen their six Ghosts flit in and out of sight and safety. It couldn’t be Pahanin, no matter how badly he wanted to see his old friend again. He’d seen him fall to Dredgen Yor just like he’d seen Toland and Eris and all the others fall on the Moon. The Vex used their deaths as yet another way to torment him. Another way to study and learn from his reactions so they could better combat the Guardians.

“He’s up here,” the tiny voice of a Ghost chirped.

Swallowing, Praedyth pointed to himself.

“Yes you, we came here to bring you home,” The little drone’s voice was filled with smiles. He bobbed and his shell spun with excitement. “Oh! You made it too! Excellent!”

Praedyth looked to the left, following the Ghost’s shifting gaze.

Just shy of where his hand would be if he expected his Ghost to appear. He could feel the familiar buzz of transmat. Reaching out, hand tingling, and he felt the weight of a Ghost on his shoulders. It was a snap, the pop where she materialized in his full. A steel and amber painted shell and her bright blue iris, blinking as only a Ghost could.

“I found you,” she cried, elated and overwhelmed and it sounded like she’d cry if she could.

Hand wrapping around her shell gently, he pulled his Ghost to his chest. Not now. They could cry together later. They’d been lost together and now, not anymore. Of all the things he’d hoped for, finding her hadn’t been something he’d dared dream about any more than getting out of this hellscape. His lost little Spectre, she’d come back.

“Well, come on,” the other Ghost bobbed, nodding back down to the others. “It’s time to go.”

Afraid a Harpy would come for him, the Vault’s longest non-Vex resident pushed off from his perch, slowing his fall with a late jump. Once his feet hit the floor, he scrambled across the stone and metal floor. Stopping only when he was surrounded by the Fire Team, Spectre still clutched in his hand, pressed to his war torn breastplate. She hummed and he knew this was real. He knew this was real because it smelled real; the gun oil, the burned ozone, the charred metal, even the sweat. Then, like a pre-Golden Age freight train, the strange mix of smells that were the desert, jungle, and beach that wafted through the open door and hit him.

He whispered, “This is real.”

Three hundred more steps and the sun warmed his bare face. Helmet long ago cannibalized for parts. Another fifty and the drop ship grabbed them up in transmat, all seven of them. His ghost hummed against his chest, she didn’t believe it either. Likely wouldn’t really believe it until they stood beneath the Traveler again.

---

The apartment the Warlock Vanguard, Ikora, had ushered him to was quiet. It looked out over the city and the gardens that were several levels below and for the first time, he didn’t feel trapped.

There were half a dozen people he’d need to speak with in the coming days, most of them current and former Vanguard. That would be a problem for tomorrow, today he was going to rest and catch up with his Ghost. Tomorrow, Praedyth the Timelost, would decide what his future held.

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Notes: I named his Ghost Spectre since YW is technically on this Fireteam and I can only keep Ghost’s named Ghost straight when I’m dealing with Drifter and YW.

#destiny fanfiction #praedyth #vault of glass #vog fanfic #destiny 2

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dying-suffering-french-stalkers · 4 years

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wendy’s great big pirates of the caribbean fic rec list

Hello, friends! I’ve been meaning to make a Pirates fic rec list for years and the day has finally come. This list is obviously in no way exhaustive and is very much indicative of my personal biases (*cough* lots of Norrington *cough*), but I can heartily recommend every fic that made this list and I hope you all enjoy it. Making this was a labor of love and I would be thrilled to hear your thoughts on any you choose to read (though you should leave a kind comment for the author first)!

Other notes: I collected the bulk of these years ago, so there are a lot on FFnet and I have tried my best to screen them for various content warnings. I believe only two fics on this list are explicit and are marked as such. There is precious little slash on this list since that’s just not what I tended to read at the height of my Pirates phase; my apologies.

Under a cut to spare your dashes from this monster of a post.

“Mutiny on the Dauntless” by Marnie - Governor Swann and Lieutenant Norrington narrowly skirt disaster at the hands of a ruthless captain and dangerous crew on the crossing from England. [19k words. No ships. Warnings: seasickness, battle violence, minor character death, semi-graphic naval discipline.]

THE HONORAT COLLECTION in (hopefully) chronological order. This author is my uncontested favorite Pirates of the Caribbean fic writer and I’m forever grateful to them. Here’s to you, @honorat!

“Here’s Luck To You” - A collection of drabbles about Jack and Bootstrap Bill’s friendship, written in late 2005. [6k. Mind any posted warnings.]

“Homecoming” - Author’s summary: The young Captain Norrington has a rare moment alone with his beloved ship. [1k. No ships but the sailing kind. No warnings.]

“Daring Rescue, Daring Escape” - A narration of Elizabeth's rescue following her tumble off the battlement and of Jack's attempted escape afterward. [7k. Can be read as Sparrabeth. No warnings.]

“Worthy of His Steel” - Picks up where DR,DE left off, then flashes back to Will’s apprenticeship with Mr. Brown. [44k. Light Willabeth. Mind any warnings: I remember minor character death, alcoholism, and general angst.]

“A Bargain At Any Price” - Elizabeth reflects on James’ interrupted marriage proposal. [968 words. Unrequited Norribeth. No warnings.]

“Marooned” - A movie novelization of the time Jack and Elizabeth spent on Rumrunner’s Isle. (If you haven’t seen the deleted scenes from CotBP, they’re now required viewing: Part 1, Part 2.) [28k. Can be read as Sparrabeth. Warnings: alcohol; discussion of past injuries including burns, a brand, and a gunshot; discussion of death, murder, and suicide (latter related only to marooning and not seriously entertained or acted upon); mind any others.]

“Aboard the Dauntless” - Takes place directly after Marooned. More movie/deleted scene novelization. [20k. Can be read as Sparrabeth and/or (unrequited) Norribeth. Mind any warnings.]

“No Mercy” - Set aboard the Dauntless just after the battle at Isla de Muerta. Have you ever been unreasonably hecked up by the sailor who rang the bell when he spotted zombie pirates? I have because I’m Like That but now you can be too! [1k. No ships. Warnings: blood, minor character death, funeral, survivor’s guilt, mention of execution by hanging.]

“For Remembrance” - Elizabeth visits Jack in prison the day before his pending execution. [2k. Can be read as Sparrabeth. Warnings: brief mention of unsanitary prison conditions; death tokens; discussion of death, murder, and execution by hanging.]

“Balance of Justice” - The same night, Norrington struggles with the idea of Jack’s pending execution. [990 words. No ships. Warnings: mentioned minor character death, survivor’s guilt, discussion of execution by hanging.]

“Crossing the Bar” - My all-time favorite PotC fanfic. After the events of CotBP, Norrington thinks he has Jack cornered, but the pirate has other ideas. A story of truly literary proportions ensues. [156k. Canon divergent: written pre-DMC. Light Jack/Anamaria. Warnings: battle injuries, period-accurate first aid, minor character death. Other warnings posted in fic.]

“Just Between Us Dying Gods” - Jack’s POV, takes place on the island of the Pelegostos just prior to Will's arrival. [1k. No ships. Warnings: cannibalism, canon-typical ethnocentrism.]

“Bits of Shine” - A collection of drabbles (in the classic 100-word sense) spanning Pirates 1-3. [14k. Assorted canon ships. Mind any posted warnings.]

“Christmas Reunion” - Author’s description: A Christmas reunion of several beloved characters set post-AWE. Jack's POV. Entirely fluffy. [2k. Willabeth. No warnings.]

SCRUFFINGTON ANGST - Me, aged 15: but sir that’s my emotional support Good-ish Man Brought Low By Hubris (who am I kidding, that hasn’t changed a bit). As you would expect, general warnings for this section might include minor character death, survivor’s guilt, self-hatred, alcohol abuse, unsanitary conditions, etc. If you love Tortuga-related angst, this section is for you! If you don’t go for whump and other unpleasant things, scroll on.

“Seven Deadly Sins: James Norrington” by Edoraslass - Classic drabble format, exactly what it says on the bottle. Follows James’ DMC arc beginning in Tortuga. [711 words. No ships. See tags on AO3.]

“Three Days” by geekmama - Several scene narrations following James from the pig sty to Isla Cruces. Smelly bastard man. [1k. Several unrequited ships. Warnings: unsanitary, alcohol abuse.]

“Interregnum: Icarus” by ConcertiGrossi - Follows James all the way from the hurricane to Tortuga, with an epilogue just after delivering the Heart to Beckett. I dislike headcanons about Norrington ever employing sex workers - it seems very out-of-character to me - but other than that I stand by this fic. Angst alert. [16k. Canon-divergent only if you read Sins of the Father. Referenced unrequited Norribeth. Warnings: near-drowning, vomit, mass minor character death, implied (but ultimately untrue) medium character death, funerals, survivor’s guilt, self-hatred, unsanitary, coughing, nightmares, pregnancy mention, parental death, under-eating, alcohol abuse, referenced suicide, suicidal ideation.]

“Birthday Wishes” by YouCantGetThereFromHere - A one-shot AU in which James has a twin brother and they celebrate their thirtieth birthdays, one in England, the other in Tortuga. [4k. Referenced OCxOC ship in the first half. Warnings: alcohol abuse, self-hatred.]

“Eye of the Storm” by Edoraslass - Tortuga barmaid Kate is intrigued by the island’s newest barfly and strikes up a sort of friendship with Norrington until he moves on. [4k. No ships. See tags on AO3.]

“Oil and Wine” by Argyle - Norrington’s descent during his time on Tortuga. Everything comes with a price and a familiar face dogs his steps. [500 words. Norribeth. See tags on AO3.]

“Absence and Memory” by Meddow - Post-CotBP, Elizabeth reflects on her relationship with Norrington over the years. [3.7k. Norribeth. No warnings.]

“Penance More Will Do” by Meddow - Set directly after the hurricane. While a wounded James is adrift at sea, he is visited by Hector Barbossa, who gives him a choice on behalf of Calypso. [5.7k. No ships. Warnings: blood, vomit.]

“A Song for the Wretched and the Wrecked” by jadeddiva - Post-CotBP AU in which Will runs off to sea and Elizabeth consents to marry James after all. They have a lot of growing to do, but it ends well. [6.5k. Norribeth. No warnings.]

“Jack Sparrow’s Black Pearl” by Zath_Chauvert - A filk song in which Elizabeth and Will discuss Jack to the tune of “Tango: Maureen”. [468 words. Willabeth, J/W/E if you’re not a coward. No warnings.]

“Of How a Lieutenant died at Sea” by YouCantGetThereFromHere - Foregoing the ending he's given in OST, Lt. Theodore Groves instead dies in the wreckage of the Endeavour in AWE and briefly greets Will in the afterlife. [703 words. No ships. Warnings: implied major character death.]

THE ERINYA COLLECTION (I forgot that I saved a ton from this author as well! Not arranged in any particular order.)

“Curiosity” - Elizabeth reflects on her growing feelings for Jack during DMC. [828 words. Sparrabeth. Warnings: alcohol.]

“Sacrifice” - More Sparrabeth UST, Elizabeth’s POV. [527 words. Sparrabeth. No warnings.]

“One Shot” - A collection of PotC drabbles, all written pre-AWE. [6k. Various pairings. Warnings posted in fic.]

“The Game” - Jack and Tia Dalma play cards. [600 words. Can be read as Jack/Tia Dalma. No warnings.]

“Frayed” - Will and Elizabeth, post-DMC, semi-compliant with AWE, but angstier. I’m afraid this one isn’t very kind to Will but it sets up this author’s character dynamics/reasons for Sparrabeth. [1k. Willabeth, implied Sparrabeth. Warnings: very poor communication.]

“Something Rich and Strange” - A Will/Tia Dalma one-shot, of all things. A touch of destiny, indeed. Written pre-AWE based on fan speculation. [2k. Canon-divergent. Will/Tia Dalma, background Sparrabeth. PG-13.]

“Ocean Heart” - Post-AWE, Elizabeth is visited by Calypso on that lonely beach. [1k. Implied Willabeth. No warnings.]

“The Pirate’s Progress” - Post-DMC, Jack takes a jaunt through the afterlife, featuring all sorts of fun mythology/folklore. [10k. I’m gonna be real with y’all, I don’t remember if there’s anything shippy or triggery but I don’t think so? Implied major character death I guess but he got better]

“Worlds Enough, And Time” - Futuristic AU in which Jack and Elizabeth both partook of the Fountain of Youth. Our beloved pirates...IN SPAAAAACE. Angst with a happier ending. [3k. Sparrabeth, implied Willabeth. Canon-divergent in multiple ways. Warnings: alcohol, discussions of death, suicidal ideation, referenced minor character death.]

“Janus and the Prodigal” - A conversation between Jack and Teague, a few years post-AWE. [1k. Can be read as Sparrabeth. No warnings.]

“At Peace” by Rising Waters - Author’s summary: Elizabeth has been faithful for the allotted ten years, so Will is free of the Dutchman—but he is still plagued by thoughts of a man whose death he feels responsible for: James Norrington. [1k. Willabeth, unrequited Norribeth. Warnings: referenced character death.]

“Second Chances” by geekmama - AU in which James was only wounded by Bootstrap, not killed, and Will drops him off at Shipwreck Cove to be with Jack and Elizabeth for the next ten years. Fluff all around. [1k. Willabeth, can be read as Sparrington if you’re not a coward. No warnings.]

“For Honour A Heart’s Demise” by Meddow - Another AU in which James is only wounded aboard the Flying Dutchman, only this time he gets to partake in the rest of AWE and becomes captain of the Dutchman instead of Will. A goddess is defied and everything makes sense. [10k. Willabeth, unrequited Norribeth. Warnings: brief suicidal ideation, survivor’s guilt, grievous bodily harm, major character death (but he gets better).]

“Between Wind and Water” by rexluscus - Author’s description: “England and Spain are at war, and Norrington needs a quick solution to the Jack Sparrow problem. Meanwhile, Jack discovers that the Caribbean he once knew is gone. The deal they make could solve both their troubles, or it might be the worst mistake of their lives. This story is AU after the first film (sequels never happened). It's an experiment in dropping POTC characters into an actual historical event: the Battle of Cartagena de Indias in 1741.” [90.3k. Sparrington. See tags on AO3.]

“betwixt the devil and the deep sea” by notbecauseofvictories - A character study of Jack Sparrow in an AU with angels and demons. [2k. No ships. See tags on AO3.]

“coda” by notbecauseofvictories - Elizabeth during her time as the Pirate King. [1k. Willabeth, Sparrabeth. See tags on AO3.]

FICS I HAVE NOT YET FINISHED but would nevertheless like to recommend:

The “Rash Actions” series by @blanketed-in-stars - I’ve been meaning to finish this for 7000 years but I thoroughly enjoyed the early chapters! Nicole is a wonderful writer and is doing the Lord’s work in writing quality Turrington content. [147k. James/Will. See tags on AO3.]

“In Service to the King” by sleepylotus/@apirateslifeforme123 - An AU in which Elizabeth finds James in Tortuga after she becomes the Pirate King. I loved the first few chapters! [31.7k. Norribeth, Sparrabeth. Explicit. WIP. See tags on AO3.]

OTHER LINKS SINCE I HAVE YOU HERE

Curse of the Black Pearl early screenplay (first draft)

Dead Man’s Chest screenplay (final production draft)

At World’s End early screenplay (leaked draft)

Deleted scenes: (CotBP above in Marooned) DMC, AWE

#pirates of the caribbean #potc #fanfiction #fic #fic recs #willabeth #sparrabeth #norribeth #jack/anamaria #sparrington #turrington #tortuga #holy god this is long #i hope this posts #masterpost #long post

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strange-destinations · 3 years

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Hey Kitty, due to your stories I've started to seek out Benny & Brax stories. So far, I've simply picked a few boxsets (Legion and New Frontiers) where I spotted the fabulous Miles Richardson on the cover. I was wondering, is there a better way to go about this? Do you have any recommendations and/or a listening order you would suggest? Thanks in advance and I hope your wrist is getting better :)

Legion is... a bit of a tricky place to start in, all things considered. It’s kind of like throwing yourself in at the deep end, because it somewhat relies on knowledge of the previous few box sets (Epoch and Road Trip) and the characters that were introduced in those. Those, in turn, follow off the end of the Collection stories, but to be honest if you just want to jump in at the box sets that’s perfectly fine - Epoch’s made to kind of be the ‘jumping-on’ point. All you have to know is that at the beginning of Epoch, the universe has been sort of ‘reset’ and Benny’s looking for her son, Peter, who was lost in the resulting chaos. The rest kind of explains itself.

Brax isn’t in Epoch or Road Trip, but Ruth is and Ruth’s a darling, and there’s some pretty good stories in both of them all things considered, so!

EDIT: OH OH GOSH PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THIS BIT IT’S SO IMPORTANT all of the Benny stories from Epoch to Missing Persons are available for free on Spotify!!! like, completely free, no strings attached and in fact there’s a lot of Big Finish stories legally free to stream via Spotify, here’s a full list

Two alternate points to jump into the Benny stories, since you’re looking for benny-brax dynamics:

1) The Virgin books. There’s plenty of places to find these online (since the original publishers don’t get revenue from it, it’s generally considered Okay to download them, although I’m sure you can find physical copies if you searched for a while).

Benny and Brax first meet in Theatre of War, which is part of the VNA Doctor Who books (Benny’s still Seven’s companion, Ace is also there) and also is honestly a really really great book. There’s also a Big Finish adaptation of this story if you prefer that!! it’s a bit different to the book but still a really good spin on it. This one’s pretty much standalone.

Brax’s next cameo is in Happy Endings, and it’s very very brief although rather sweet. Happy Endings is the Benny Gets Married To Jason book and it’s honestly genuinely just a lot of pointless fluff.

...and then he comes back in the Benny solo books! These are a mixed bag but Dellah!Era Benny is a lot of fun and a particular favorite of mine. All you need to know (if you skipped the rest of the VNAs) is that Benny has retired as the Doctor’s companion, got a depressing divorce with Jason (f in the chat) and is now working as a Professor of Archaeology at St Oscar’s University.

Dragon’s Wrath is where they meet for the first time - good good book! Their dynamic is peak here.

Brax does show up in a few other books but I can’t for the life of me recall a lot of them. I’ve still got to sit down and read through all of them in order some day, there’s a coherent overarching plot and everything. Where Angels Fear is definitely one where Brax shows up, uh. someone else help. it’s so late

anyway anyway Tears of the Oracle - best book. i first read it way WAY out of context and i still loved it. they’re best friends and it makes me sob every time. ‘she’s like family’

anyway yeah, Bernice Summerfield New Adventures - find a zip file of them somewhere and read them, they’re p good! and this is the era that Sepelio is set in, in case you didn’t realize this (i know at least one person didn’t)

2) The Collection-era audios (and tie-in books). Okay, I’ll be honest, I haven’t listened to this particular era in... nearly five years. And it’s a headache to get your head around, because some of the audios are closely interlinked with the books, and the books are hell to find, and there’s some Very Iffy Content for some of the stories and. I know y’all come to me for Benny Advice a lot but my memory’s so dreadful. half the time when writing i just operate on gut instinct for canon events and rely on the fact that this fandom’s so small nobody’s going to call me out on being ridiculous. Or I can also blame it on timeline shenanigans.

can... can someone jump in and give a guide to the collection-era stories and which ones to listen to/read for Plot Purposes? I know someone with knowledge is out there. it’s honestly an amazing story arc, I just wish I had the time to lay everything out properly.

The following, however, are pretty standalone and feature Brax heavily.

The Extinction Event - first audio ft. Brax. nothing especially special but it does establish some of the basework for some of his later Questionable Stuff.

The Mirror Effect - delightfully creepy, beautifully effective characterization, benny & brax & adrien & jason trapped in a creepy haunted mirror location and trying to get out.

The Crystal of Cantus - maybe not entirely standalone BUT how can i not put this one down. very funny and very horrifying. benny and jason and brax go on a fun field trip and find out the True Meaning Of Cybermen. benny gains a fuckton of trauma.

...and then after Crystal everything gets plotty and complicated. not that it wasn’t before, but... oh well.

There’s also some books/short story anthologies in this era that are standalone/don’t require much context. Their names all escape me. Once again, help?

BONUS: Many Happy Returns - the Benny anniversary story which is more like a framing device for a fuckton of other stories set within pretty much every era. Cameos from everyone. Delightful and heartwrenching. Really really good, but maybe get some basis in various parts of canon before you check it out. Or maybe check it out and then start jumping around to find bits that interest you? I don’t know. I went through everything in painstaking chronological order from the tender age of 14 and now here I am, writing gory cannibal fanfiction about an emotionally repressed theatre professor and his disaster archaeology best friend.

...anyway, hopefully this helps at least somewhat! It’s past midnight and i’m wracking my brains as I try to remember what bits of an extremely extensive canon I enjoyed the most. let me know if there’s anything you need clarification on, I’m aware this is a bit of a disaster post.

#bernice summerfield #kitty rambles #long post #jeanniebird

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Dark Knight: Why Heath Ledger’s Joker is Still Scary Today

https://ift.tt/2MFoX6l

It’s one of the great villain introductions in cinema history. Standing with a slight hunch at the center of a massive 70mm image, Heath Ledger’s interpretation of the Joker not so much dominates the frame as he commandeers it. He seduces the IMAX camera, which is still capturing vast amounts of Chicago’s cityscape around him, and draws it closer to his sphere of influence, and by extension us. Before this moment in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the director’s Gotham City functioned with clocklike precision. Even its greatest villains were slaves to the need of rationalizing everything in cold, utilitarian logic.

Not the Joker.

Within our first breath next to Ledger’s clown, one senses a malevolent spirit has been summoned, and he’s chosen to manifest out of thin air at this exact moment, on this exact street corner. He’s come to claim Gotham’s collective soul, but he’ll settle for any individual with delusions of virtue who crosses his path—including you.

This is of course just a fleeting moment in The Dark Knight; a brisk tease before Ledger’s shown his makeup-encrusted face or uttered even a word. In fact, Nolan and the actor dole out the character with impressive restraint: first as a masked Mephistopheles who is primarily a sing-song-y voice until he unmasks at the end of a bravura bank robbery. Later he becomes an actual narrative presence when he shows up again more than 20 minutes into the film, demonstrating for Gotham’s criminal underworld how to perform a magic trick.

As an isolated performance, there’s an argument to be made that none has ever been finer in the realm of superhero movies. Sure, there’ve been showy turns before and since in comic book blockbusters; there have even been great interpretations of the Joker before and after Ledger. Yet what the actor was able to do in 2008 transfixed audiences because he, like the character, had the freedom to bend the film to his will—even as Nolan prevented the movie from simply becoming merely a showcase for the performance.

With the grungy strung out hair of an addict who hasn’t showered in three months, greasy self-applied pancake makeup, and a grisly Glasgow smile that’s as unnerving as it is uneven (suggesting perhaps half of it was self-inflicted to make a matching set of scars), Ledger’s anarchist supervillain was a long way from Jack Nicholson’s hammy version of the same character in 1989. For audiences, and even comic book fans baying for something darker than Nicholson, it was abrasive in its time—and electrifying, like a punk rocker leaping into the mosh pit. Indeed, Ledger reportedly based the character’s appearance in part on the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten, and there is more than a hint of Tom Waits’ gravel in Ledger’s cadence whenever the clown growls.

But more than aesthetic culture shock, the enduring horror (and not-so-secret appeal) of Ledger’s Joker lies in the effect he has on the film, both in terms of its narrative storytelling and its enduring pop culture standing. Speaking strictly about this Joker as a character, the villain is off screen for far more of The Dark Knight’s running time than he’s on it. Appearing in only 33 minutes of The Dark Knight’s epic 152-minute running time, the average length of a Hollywood spectacle passes without the Joker on screen. Yet he’s omnipresent in the film, a shadow that hangs over each of Nolan’s three relatively equal protagonists: vigilante Batman (Christian Bale), police lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman), and district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart).

Nolan and his brother and co-screenwriter, Jonathan Nolan, have admitted the setup is somewhat inspired by another quintessential blockbuster, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. In both films, three disparate, combative male authority figures band together for a mythic battle against a presence so malignant and evil, it transcends being simply a shark or a madman in makeup—or even a comic book supervillain. Like that beast, Joker has no arc, no psychological growth, he’s a force of primal evil unbounded. And as the heroes’ battle against him creeps on, it seems like the sanity of their entire community is being dragged into the abyss.

This framing allows Ledger’s Joker to functionally be a catch-all stand-in for many of the social anxieties that kept American audiences up at night during the Bush years. Some of them still do today. There are of course obvious implications to the Joker being the terrorist, the non-state actor who cannot be negotiated with, and who doesn’t play by preconceived rules or notions of fairness. There is also shading of the lone wolf, the usually male gunman who inexplicably pulls the trigger. Most of all though, the Joker represents the hole in which much of humanity’s irrational predilections toward violence is collectively stored and ignored by our cultural memory… until it can’t be.

As Michael Caine’s Alfred Pennyworth famously reasons, “Some men aren’t looking for anything logical like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” That summation of staring into irrational, needless cruelty is what gives The Dark Knight bite. And what a sharp bite it is in moments like when Ledger’s Joker laughs manically at the Batman, our ostensible hero who’s resorted to pummeling (or torturing) the villain in an interrogation room. The clown gloats, “You have nothing to threaten me with, nothing to do with all your strength.”

This is why the Joker is such an effective villain for The Dark Knight’s parable about how best to use moral power in immoral (i.e. irrational) times—and perhaps why the thrill of Ledger’s performance was so strong on first glance that it powered him all the way to a posthumous Oscar in the Best Supporting Actor category seven months after the film’s release.

Still, Ledger’s Joker, more than any other movie villain in recent memory, continues to haunt well after that Oscar night. The mental image of the character slipping his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, like a cobra, and licking his scars—a tic Ledger invented to keep his prosthetics in place while upping the creep factor—has stayed with us like a subconscious boogeyman. Thirteen years on from The Dark Knight’s release, Ledger’s depiction of the Clown Prince of Crime has gone down in the annals of cinema alongside Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs or, well, that shark in Jaws again. He’s an enigmatic and mysterious persona who is barely seen in his film, yet unmistakably casts a pall of evil over the whole proceeding.

We don’t know why Ledger’s Joker actually became the way he is, or what made him so obsessed with the Batman—to the point where he was inspired to put on “war paint” and declare his love for the Caped Crusader by saying, “You complete me!” The Joker gives multiple versions of his origin story in The Dark Knight, telling one mobster played by Michael Jai White that he’s a victim of an abusive father while later recounting to Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) that he scarred his own face to cheer up his similarly disfigured wife. Both tales are of course lies, transparent manipulations intended to prey upon perceived vulnerabilities in his victims. This touch was inspired by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s The Killing Joke where the comic book Joker provides the reader with a sob story flashback, and then confesses he probably made it up.

“If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice,” he says on the page.

Movies

Joker: 6 Actors Who Have Played the Clown Prince of Crime

By David Crow

Movies

The Dark Knight, The Joker, and Game Theory

By Ryan Lambie

The Nolan brothers understand the horror of this, and they keep the Joker a manipulative and inscrutable evil. Beyond obvious sociopathic tendencies, we know nothing about his inner-psychology and barely can ferret out his real motives beyond an odd devotion to maintaining Batman’s attention. He claims to be an agent of chaos who wants to “just do things,” yet his meticulously planned attacks belie this claim. In the end, he sees himself in a battle for “Gotham’s soul.” Like Amity Island’s Great White Leviathan, or the original incomprehensible nature of Thomas Harris’ cannibal serial killer in the earliest books, we never know the truth about why he is, and how he’s able to do what he does.

That mystery makes him live on in our own heads for years after the story ends and the credits roll.

It’s interesting to consider that effect now, after years of pop culture storytelling going in the completely opposite direction, particularly in comic book movies and other fanboy-driven media. Rather than find satisfaction in the inexplicability of evil, or standalone visions, we like to rationalize it and sympathize with it, even while glorifying it. Most of all, however, we insatiably seem to simply want more.

The need for endless content being generated by intellectual property has led to prequels, sequels, and even spinoffs that explore and too often redeem villains. Even the Joker himself is not wholly immune to this.

Since 2008, there have been two big screen versions of the Joker. Jared Leto and Joaquin Phoenix both had the unenviable task of stepping into Ledger’s shadow, with at least one of them being dwarfed by it. Leto’s attempts at “method acting” stunts on the set of Suicide Squad shows what can go wrong when scenery-chewing is mistaken with Strasberg.

Phoenix obviously fared better in his own Joker movie two years ago, making the actor the second performer to win an Oscar for playing the comic book villain. However, his film’s interpretation is diametrically opposed to Ledger’s enigma. Instead Phoenix’s film attempts to rationalize everything about the character, depicting the Joker as a mentally ill sad sack whose motivations are borrowed from other iconic movie screen villains and anti-heroes like the mother-obsessed Norman Bates (Psycho) and ticking time bomb Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver).

It still makes for a fascinating (if unoriginal) portrait, but one divorced from the terror of the unknown. We understand who Phoenix’s Joker is and why he is. Society, man. Phoenix’s Joker even outright states it before murdering not-Johnny Carson (Robert De Niro). “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? I’ll tell you what you get, you get what you fucking deserve!”

Technically, Phoenix’s Joker appears closer to our reality and our daily horrors. With clown makeup inspired by real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy and preening self-pity parties resembling the manifestos of so many mass murderers, Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck is modeled as much off nightly news nightmares as comic book panels. Writer-director Todd Phillips is inelegantly blatant about it.

Nevertheless, whatever ugly truth there may be in that approach, it’s not as haunting, or exhilarating, to witness as what Ledger did in his own rock star interpretation of evil. Save for a blink-and-you-miss-it insert shot, we never see Ledger with the makeup off. And while he might indulge in mocking “society,” he is a character who says more by basking in the chaos of a city in terror, literally sticking his head out of a stolen police car like a dog with the wind in his hair and our horror on his face. It’s a more enduring image than a didactic conversation about insecurities with a father figure. Thirteen years later, Ledger’s version of the character continues to confound, horrify, and ultimately thrill. He still has the last laugh.

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mobius-prime · 4 years

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147. Sonic the Hedgehog #82

Night of Chaos!

Writer: Bollers Pencils: Ribeiro Colors: Gagliardo

Those of you who've played the first Sonic Adventure will know exactly what's coming up and how it plays out. Sonic is hopping from rooftop to rooftop at night in Station Square when he spots police cars zooming around a corner and decides to follow them to see what's up. Of course, it's Chaos, against whom the cops' weapons are useless, as they so helpfully shout at us. The dialogue here is almost word for word taken from the English translation of the game, with the occasional thought bubble to expand Sonic's mental take on things. Luckily, the extraordinarily cheesy dialogue from the game fits in perfectly with Archie Sonic's already incredibly-cheesy-to-begin-with personality.

The fight plays out much like how the boss fight in the game does, with Chaos hopping from light pole to light pole and eventually melting back into a puddle of water and going down the drain, with Robotnik laughing at Sonic's efforts from above to defeat "Chaos, the god of destruction." Good thing the Freedom Fighters were here in the city to defend it from this thing, huh? Since it's so isolated, if they'd had no help, Station Square would have kind of been screwed against Chaos from the start.

Door to the Past

Writer: Bollers Pencils: Ribeiro Colors: Gagliardo

This story is where the adaption takes a sharp departure from the game. Knuckles, still wandering the ruins, suddenly finds a ball of light approaching him, and as it touches his forehead, he is swept into a vision by an echidna who introduces herself as Tikal, but definitely does not look like the Tikal we know (for some reason, throughout the arc, her appearance and even the spelling of her name is wildly inconsistent). Unlike in the game, where it takes the entire cast multiple days to coordinate with one another and decipher the strange visions they've all been receiving, Tikal just lays it all out on the table to Knuckles immediately.

Of course, the Mysterious Cat Country was named as such because, well, there were cats already living there, cats who weren't inclined to share their space. The Knuckles clan, the warrior caste for whom Knuckles is named (it has nothing to do with his pointy mutant knuckles, no, not at all) chose to stay and fight, while the scientists departed back for Albion. Tikal, the young daughter of their warchief "Pachamac" (a misspelling, they corrected it to Pachacamac in future issues), chanced upon the Mystic Ruins , meeting the peaceful chao who protected the "seven emeralds" (it's not elaborated on what kind of emeralds these were, since in this universe, the Master Emerald didn't exist yet, and there are more than seven Chaos Emeralds in the world), along with the mutated chao made of water called… Chao. Yeah, I guess he started being called Chaos later or something? Tikal quickly befriended the chao, understanding that they were peaceful and didn’t want to be disturbed by conflict, but in the midst of their war with the native cats, the members of her clan tried to invade the chao's land to seize the power of the seven emeralds for themselves, despite Tikal's pleas.

While Knuckles chases after the ball of light, we move over to Eggman, whose robots have all returned with various frogs for inspection. At first, like in the game, he's pissed that none of them have the right frog, but then gets to Gamma and becomes pleased as he sees the correct frog (though, again, how he knew that the piece of Chaos got into that one specific frog completely eludes me). After extracting the missing piece from Froggy…

…Chaos is whole once more, which means that this story took place before the first one. Man, why do all these issues have the various stories out of order like this? I mean, I guess they wanted to keep the general order of Sonic story first, then Knuckles, then the backup at the end, but still. While Eggman sends Chaos off to wreak some havoc, we head back to the Mysterious Cat Country, where the cat queen continues to try to interrogate her captives, certain they're planning an attack on her people. Instead of reassuring her that they are not, in fact, trying to invade her land, Vector decides to just start mouthing off for no reason.

First of all, "crap" is not a swear word. Second of all, that's cannibalism. And third of all, Locke has arrived to demand the release of the Chaotix and Julie-Su, or else he's willing to restart the war that he claims the cats started all those years ago! Wait, Locke, what the hell? The cats hardly started the war - if anything, it was the echidnas arriving and trying to colonize an already-inhabited land that started the war. But then again, we already knew the echidnas were pompous colonialists who only care about themselves.

Double-Crossed Circuits

Writer: Bollers Pencils: Ribeiro Colors: Gagliardo

In keeping with the theme of not putting these stories in any logical order, this story takes place both before, during, and after the previous one. It's also narrated very bizarrely, with most dialogue avoided and replaced instead with textboxes that simply inform us, in second person no less, what's going on at any given time. This isn't the first time Karl has opted for this style of storytelling, but I maintain that it just doesn't work as well as simply showing what's happening, and clashes especially hard with comics as a form of media, given that they're all about showing instead of telling.

Anyway, it's time to properly meet E-102 Gamma! It was built by Eggman along with several other similar robots also named after Greek letters, and trained for battle against robotic copies of Eggman's various enemies, including, of course, Sonic. Gamma completes the obstacle course with ease, and is then sent out with its fellows on the quest to get! that! frog!

Of course, we know it returned with the correct one, and Eggman, angry at the rest of the robots for failing, disintegrates them all before Gamma's eyes. He then orders Gamma, who is feeling the beginnings of emotion at witnessing its fellow robots' "deaths," to go to the prison block and get the bird from Amy, who's been imprisoned there since her capture last issue.

You see what I mean about this weird style of narration? I mean, I guess you could say Karl is trying to avoid just lifting all the dialogue wholesale from the game, but this is objectively worse, as well as being weirdly confusing to anyone who isn't already familiar with the original scene. Anyway, Gamma straight up rips the door off its hinges to allow Amy and the bird to escape, and then walks away, with the narration informing us that Gamma is now sentient due to this decision. Uh… okay then, I guess? Next up we have a Super Special, which contains the bulk of the adaption, so strap in for that.

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #sth 82 #writer: karl bollers #pencils: nelson ribeiro #colors: frank gagliardo

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des-shinta · 5 years

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I been wondering, since I don't honestly know much about what happened to Hibiki. I know of the writer changes, but not much else. How deep does this rabbit hole go? Since the only thing I know was that a lot of character assassin happened and the plot changing massively. And I was looking forward to your review, but I understand the issues of Toei and other problems.

thanks for understanding on that. Hell, I’m still failing to get the *Old* episodes back up without Toei’s abuse of Copyright claims rearing its head. It’s…well…yeah… The rewrites aren’t just obvious in the infamously-scrapped-and-rewritten final episode. I covered a lot of it in the originally intended review, but…it’s basically everything and every scene. It’s so heavily NOT Hibiki, that the Hibiki AR world in Decade has more in common with first-half hibiki than post-staff-change Hibiki does. To many fans, Post-staff change Hibki IS the AR-world, and the series ends at the ‘seven senki’ movie as it Actually DOES tie into hibiki’s canon and the continuity problems in that movie are explained by it being Asumu’s acted-out imaginary fantasy depiction of recorded historical events he spends the film reading about.

Basically every two-part arc had that feeling of the second half being forcibly changed and thus screwing over the potential of the first half…and usually by it being Kiriya’s inclusion in things fucking it all over. Asumu suddenly has a complex about his absentee father, is a completely spineless loser and is all his own fault for being so (as opposed to being comparable to My Hero Academia’s Izuku Midoriya in intended storyarc (I am not kidding)), and any progress on improving himself is lost–thus further delaying him actually BEGINNING his oni training until it’s the final 8 episodes because the show failed to start that When they Should have (I.E: episode 16-24). Akira abandons everything she’s done and trained for over the course of years and ignored Ibuki in the name of quick powerups and a desire for power now because of Kiriya and a woman Oni that comes out of nowhere only to be killed in a moment of complete idiocy as she loved Zanki’s dead mentor. Hibiki outs himself as a Coward and that being why he trains so hard, instead of a desire for self-improvement and a clear-minded sense of self to selflessly help people which an Oni was shown to need…all so it can make how Kiriya was portrayed more reflect the ‘truth’ of Hibiki. A Truth which, incidentally, is that of A Hypocrite, as why he drops Asumu as a disciple in the first place BEFORE the finale’s timeskip was because Asumu decided to help a friend out–KEEPING with Hibiki’s previous teachings about there being a need for ‘balance in all things’ and to not abandon your normal life to be an Oni as those connections are what support you in tough times– and Hibiki condemns him and considers him worthless for it while they’re in the midst of a situation where the barely-trained apprentices being involved would result in them straight-out being killed. So Asumu staying out of it would’ve been a GOOD THING as then he wouldn’t be pointlessly throwing his life away in a battle he could do nothing to affect.(I Honestly think it’s this scene in specific that led to Shigeki Hosokawa exposing how badly the show and it’s cast had been treated.)And Todoroki and Ibuki…become complete oblivious Idiots. With no explanation.Hell, the ‘training’ the Oni do becomes far more half-assed. instead of the thorough, intense workouts and regiments the Oni previously needed to stay in shape and grow in power…their workouts consist of basic fitness training you’d do in Gym Class, while their improvements take the form of sudden powerups.And to make that last one Worse? KIRIYA COULDN’T EVEN DO THOSE BASIC EXERCISES! By the time He and Asumu were finally accepted to train for the job he’d shown himself as completely incapable at any physical activity, and we were supposed to then feel bad when he had to cheat at them to keep up with Asumu who was giving his all, and got caught doing so. Then, again to show how badly Asumu was screwed over, after the timeskip in the final episode? Kiriya’s still slacking at his training but can now transform without a problem a year after training (IIRC the normal time range is in the span of about 5 years. Akira before she suddenly out of nowhere decided to just Fucking give up at it did it in about 3 or 4), while suddenly Asumu can’t even climb a slightly inclined hill that *I* could walk up the side of with no problem, even while helping out a injured kid as Asumu was showcased in said scene…and he had to call kiriya to help him do that. All the more galling, as in a previous episode, in the EARLIEST days of their Oni training before they did any of the strenuous stuff, Asumu had climbed a steep graveled incline in a quarry without fail, which had far less of a foothold or ability to climb than a moderately wet grassy hill. That one was ALSO made worse, as an even earlier episode had Asumu assisting Hibki in a task, only to slip down a sleek, slippery muddy hill and need to be rescued from injury, so him climbing up the rocky incline also worked as contrast to how Asumu had supposedly grown on his own as a person from his own experiences without explicit need for supervision…and then by the series end he’s worse off than when he started. And we’re supposed to believe it’s a good thing.No-one that was actually paying attention bought it.Hell, that’s in turn why people then got so mad when the details got out about the show’s last episode being rewritten, and simultaneously why The recent news of the Hibiki tribute arc of Zi-O got people pissed off again. Turns out, first draft? Asumu became an Oni and Hibiki’s successor, Kiriya was to drop out due to him not having the character to succeed at this. Later rewrites? Asumu’s still the successor, but Kiriya now becomes an Oni as well. It was ONLY the version that Producer Shirakura rewrote himself that excluded Asumu from what the entire series had been building towards, all so they could cannibalize the suit made for Asumu to make *Kiriya*’s better. yes, the one they made special order because it wasn’t originally mean to exist had to be improved, by destroying the one which was always meant to be there at the end. Kiriya, literally and figuratively, stole Asumu’s story, relationship with Hibiki and earned reward.It’s just…It really is that nearly every damn episode after the staff change that nor only makes the show more repulsive and unappealing,but retroactively makes all the GOOD things about the first half turn bad by proximity or how they’re ‘recontextualized’ in the newer content. Nothing and no-One escapes. Hell, not even the villains. Turns out, we weren’t even actually following the major antagonists at any point in the series, but clones. What was their big deal? No Idea, they literally didn’t care at that point. Which personally was a big tip off that the post-staff-change writers weren’t to blame on this, as both HAVE Written a litany of good antagonists even in their less well-received works.Cumulatively, It’s why, while I have criticised them a lot in the past for their bad content, I don’t really blame Toshiki Inoue or Shoji Yonemura for how bad it is (and in the latter’s case try to remind yugioh fans that ‘hey, a few really bad writers are on Vrains, that’s a big part of why it sucks so don’t go attacking Shin Yoshida for it ‘cause he’s repeatedly been shown to not be the cause when he was accused of such in the past’), for they clearly were not in control nor had the leeway that’s usually afforded to Writers on series like this to develop their stories how they like within reason. I forget where, but I remember reading something about them apologizing for their part in this and stating they had no control, Decade’s Tribute episodes being reflective of that apology, and that arc being more in line with what they would have done had they had…well, any other producer.I really, really cannot understate how bad it is. I feel this brief is once more only scratching the surface on how bad it goes.

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kriatyrr · 6 years

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The many ways in which Fallout 4 could have been better.

I’ve had so many ideas run across my mind that I have no hope of getting them all in writing, but some of the big ones..

During the opening, when your spouse goes into the cryopod in Vault 111, instead of merely waving to you, they could signal “I love you” in ASL. Your character mirrors the gesture and whispers “I love you too, hon.” Even if sign language never comes up in the game again. Just that little thing could mean so much to some players.

The intimidate perk could be used to resolve some situations peacefully. In Diamond city when that guy pulls a gun on his brother, thinking him a synth, you can pacify him if you have the perk - and nothing happens. The security goons don’t arrest him, they just stand around doing nothing and the encounter does not resolve until you put your gun away or walk away, where it resumes as scripted and security shoots him.

Not to mention in the Railroad ending... Haylen surrendered to me, and then Tinker Tom comes along and fucking murders her anyway. How awesome would it be if you could talk her into joining you, in order to reduce collateral damage. While you’re planting bombs on the Prydwen, Haylen rounds up the squires (+Emmet) and take them down to the ground and away from the blast radius. Or you could even tell Desdemona that no, we’re not blowing up the Prydwen, there are children on that ship. Your plan sucks and I will not do it until you come up with a better one. At least in the Institute ending they had some time to evacuate - the last thing I saw before being forcibly relayed away was Elder Maxson in power armor, running away.

Everyone has already mentioned actually fixing Danse’s dialogue post-Blind Betrayal. A redemption arc would be nice too. He doesn’t strike me as the type of hypocrite who would accept himself being a synth while still hating every other synth in the game.

You learn Danse’s synth designation, but you can’t do a damn thing about it. You can’t ask the Railroad about what happened (granted, they’d have a lot of personnel changes since 97 originally escaped, but Deacon at least was probably still around back then, or they might have records. Or maybe those were destroyed at the Switchboard)

You can’t ask anyone in the Institute. Not even Liam. Obviously he’s too young to have been involved back then, but he’s pretty good with computers, surely he could dig up information about old synth escapes.

you never actually get to see the intel that Quinlan decrypted. All you get to know is he was on the list of “missing or escaped” which Arthur Maxson can’t tell apart from “infiltrator unit” and they announce his synth designation to the entire division as if there is no risk of actual institute infiltrators who can then contact their superiors to get the recall code. So I get at this point that bringing Danse back isn’t an option, but surely there is no danger in Danse existing after the institute is destroyed. When Maxson tells you that we will never speak of this again, I wanted to tell him that I’ll obey that order until the institute is destroyed, but after the dust settles, we need to talk.

Or how about some delightfully awkward situations where BoS members see you with Danse and you run away instead of killing them. Have Maxson exposed as a liar. Undermine his authority. (They sure gave us a lot of fanfic fuel...)

How about being able to assign settlers to corpse disposal or general clean-up and slowly over time get rid of those trash piles that are everywhere and those infernal skeletons that you can’t even drag around. But no, we had to get a mod for that.

How about after getting rid of the raiders at Nuka World, they actually start wearing normal clothing and take off the damn shock collars and get someone to work in the radio station - it’s still on air, Red Eye just left the studio without turning anything off. I bet they meant for that guy in Cappy’s Cafe to take over and then just never finished it.

Also wouldn’t it be cool if you ran into Red Eye in a random encounter that could go many ways depending on what you say to him. I wanted to say I loved his station and it was the only thing I missed from before I killed everybody. Offer him a ton of caps to come back and work for me again.

If you let the raiders take over Commonwealth settlements before turning on them, they’ll randomly show up and try to kill you - again and again, long after you exterminated them at Nuka World. How do they keep getting new recruits when all their leaders are dead? How does the Brotherhood keep getting new vertibirds when they crash all the time? There are always more raiders. Where was this massive population when I was just thawing out? Encounters should get less frequent to reflect the dwindling population.

There is no sense of scarcity beyond the first few levels. Things respawn at a ridiculous rate. Just the other day I was picking up some scavenge, wandered into a different area, backtracked and went through the same area later the same day and everything had respawned. This is so upsetting to me. I want my efforts to mean something. I am cleaning up the commonwealth, one discarded beer bottle at a time, but all the clutter just keeps coming back! I hate it. I have yet to play a character who is a cannibal because I really can’t imagine needing to do that when the world is just full of food. I plant some crops and tell a settler to tend to them, and when I return a day or two later it’s ready for harvest.

Speaking of harvest, there are no seasons. The daylight hours don’t get longer in summer or shorter in winter, there is no sense of the passage of time, the date is just a string of numbers in your pip-boy with no meaning whatsoever, you get a quest and everything just waits on you, for months or years, Father doesn’t start to question your dedication to the Institute when you STILL haven’t relayed to Mass Fusion six months later, nor will he be a good boy and just die already from his rapidly progressing terminal illness, no he’s going to force you to kill nearly all of your friends before he’ll let you actually take over. Not that you get to do ANYTHING at all as Director. All you get is the institute power armor paint job and the ability to buy synth relay grenades. You don’t get to say “Oh by the way I’m abolishing slavery, have fun doing your own menial work from now on” (I keep thinking I’d be able to do more good for the synths as the leader for the institute than I ever could with the railroad) and why can’t I tell Desdemona to go deeper underground and I can just tell Father they had already left when he sent me there to kill them. Why can’t I tell Elder Maxson to go back to the Capital Wasteland because literally no one in the commonwealth wants him there. We have the Minutemen to defend the settlements and the Railroad to fight the institute and all he’s doing is making things worse.

And let MacCready stop being such a deadbeat dad and bring his son to live with us in the Commonwealth.

I loved the Far Harbor DLC, but it was so disappointing that none of the companions other than Nick had any new voice lines.

Why can’t I bring my romanced companion to the Memory Den for a date in a simulation of the pre-war era? Danse would love that, I’m sure..

why can’t I pet cats? Why didn’t Bethesda spend a quarter of the effort they did on dog animations on making cats look more realistic. They should be napping on beds and chairs, rubbing up against settlers’ legs and tripping them and interacting with their environment too. Have you seen the animation that passes for a cat’s yawn? The first time I saw it, I thought Ashes was about to throw up a giant hair ball.

If you are caught pickpocketing, that’s it, game over. Diamond City Security doesn’t try to arrest you, it’s shoot to kill. Same in the institute. I’m sorry to say it, but that was something Skyrim did better.

why can’t you romance non-companions like in Skyrim? I want to marry Arturo Rodriguez and be Nina’s step parent.

Synth relay grenades should not work after blowing up the Institute.

The AI should not fall off things quite so often. I should not go through an entire Research Patrol assignment for the Brotherhood only to have the Scribe I’m escorting fall to their death when I take the vertibird up to the Prydwen.

When an enemy panics and decides to run away, they should keep running and not turn around and go right back to trying to kill me seven seconds later.

my companion should not be quite so bloodthirsty. They should not attack a fleeing enemy, particularly a civilian like the institute scientists.

Every companion shouldn’t have all the same animations. Preston should not inhale Jet if you linger around on the top floor of Drug Den. Curie should not smoke.

The companions should have preferences as to what food they prefer to eat, which chems they take or under which circumstances. I gave Danse a whole bunch of different stuff to see what he’d use, and the first time I got in a fight he had taken med-x and berry mentats (fun fact: your companion takes berry mentats and you see the pink haze). You’d think Yao Guai ribs were his favorite things to eat, but no, it’s just that the AI will favor taking anything with damage reduction. Other companions do the same. Synths will not favor Fancy Lads Snack Cakes. Little things like that would have made the game so much more fun to me.

Damn it there should have been a terminal with journal entries in Danse’s quarters on the Prydwen. Or he should have continued to update his terminal at the Cambridge Police Station. Maybe wash his face once in a while after the Prydwen arrives.

You should be able to give people caps. I hate how caps only flow one way in the game. You can take your settlers’ measly pocket change, but you can’t pay them for working for you. You buy property in Diamond City but you never pay taxes or utilities. (that might help with the sense of passage of time).

You build a peaceful utopia at your settlements, but your settlers never form relationships or start having kids now that it’s finally safe to do so. The world could feel a lot more real. (I mean I love how absurd it is, but absurdity and realism can coexist, I promise)

“Crop’s been growing pretty good lately” - there’s never any crop failure, or natural disasters making food a scarcity. Rad storms don’t affect anyone but you, and people will not seek shelter.

Nick and Ada remind you that they don’t need to eat or sleep or anything, but neither does any other companion. I mean I guess they’re adults who can take care of their own basic needs, but they don’t have any money of their own unless you specifically tell them to pick up caps you find.

You never find out where Danse got that lovely suit of X-01 power armor from.

Hate me for this long post yet? I’m not even done but this’ll do for now. Uh, how do I do a Read More thing again?

#fallout 4 rant #paladin danse #damned respawn

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chudsuckerproxy · 7 years

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So @sleeplessbutdreaming tagged me in this neat survey thing, thanks friend!

1. How would you rank all seven seasons of BtVS from favourite to least favourite? No ties allowed, of course :)

5, 3, 2, 6, 4, 1, 7

2. How would you rank all five seasons of AtS from favourite to least favourite?

3, 5, 2, 1, 4

3. What are your 12-15 very favourite episodes of BtVS?

Aw jeez that’s a lot. Alright so Hush, OMWF, The Body, Tabula Rasa and the Gift generally tend to be favourites, so let’s start there. Then I think Storyteller, Grave, School Hard, Restless, Selfless, Halloween, Conversations with Dead People. I also have a soft spot for The Puppet Show, mainly for the last five or so minutes.

4. What are your 12-15 very favourite episodes of AtS?

Again, Waiting in the Wings, Spin the Bottle, Smile Time, Orpheus and the Pylea episodes are all pretty standard favourites. Then maybe Not Fade Away, Harm’s Way, the one with flashbacks to when Angel got to the Hyperion in the 50’s, and then that whole arc in S2 with Dru and Darla

5. Name your 10-12 favourite female Buffyverse (BtVS and AtS) characters.

Fred, Illyria, Willow, Anya, Faith, Buffy, Tara, Cordelia, Harmony, Dawn

6. Name your 10-12 favourite male Buffyverse characters.

Spike, Gunn, Wesley, Angel, Giles, Andrew, Oz, Robin, Clem, Lorne

7. Name your 5-7 favourite Buffyverse OTPs, canon or otherwise.

Faith/Buffy, Willow/Tara, Willow/Fred, Faith/Fred, Fred/Gunn, Angel/Spike, Buffy/Spike

8. Name your 3-5 Buffyverse NOTPs.

Fred/Wesley, Willow/Xander, Buffy/Giles (like why would you even), Spike/Harmony, Connor/Cordelia ew

9. Name your 5-7 favourite Buffyverse BROTPs.

Buffy/Willow, Gunn/Wesley, The Whirlwind, Giles/Anya, Spike/Illyria, Angel/Faith, Andrew/Anya

10. Name a few popular characters and/or ships that you’re not too enthused about

honestly why do so many people like Spike/Xander? I can see them as, like, odd couple roommates who disagree hilariously, but romantically?

11. Name a few unpopular/generally overlooked characters and/or ships that you adore

i completely get why Andrew tends to go overlooked but i really enjoy every moment he’s onscreen. Robin Wood, on the other hand, deserves way more recognition.

12. Name 5-7 underrated or unpopular Buffyverse episodes that you absolutely love

so i already said the Puppet Show, but really most of S1 tbh. Gingerbread, Go Fish and… dang it what’s the one where Angel Investigations go to Vegas to save Lorne was great.

13. Name 5-7 Buffyverse acclaimed, popular episodes that you find kind of overrated

Rm W/ a Vu gets a lot of love. i don’t dislike it, it’s just kind of meh. Can’t really think of many others.

14. If you could bring just three Buffyverse characters back to life, who would they be?

Anya Jenkins, Tara Maclay, Winifred Burkle

15. If you had to be stranded on an island with 10 Buffyverse characters, which 10 would you choose?! (This is different from asking about favourite characters since, as we all know, the fictional characters you find most compelling and are drawn to are NOT necessarily the ones you’d most want to deal with in real life!)

yet again i’m gonna say Fred not because she’s my favourite, but because she survived five years in Pylea and those skills are sure as heck gonna come in handy. uuuuh Connor’s kind of annoying but he spent eighteen years in i’m-not-even-gonna-try-land so he’d be good. Xander could build us some shelter, Willow because you know magic will help, and Caleb so that if we have to turn to cannibalism we ‘ll have someone to eat. Ben because we need a doctor, Groosalug to hunt food, Wentworth Miller to help us fish, then Giles can be there for miscellaneous wisdom, and Buffy just because we’re always gonna need a Slayer.

That was fun you guys; everybody jump in on this.

#wow i answered a thing #btvs #ats

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nezzfiction · 4 years

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Team WISE Ch. 2 - Ember

Series Synopsis: Ten years have passed since Team RWBY disbanded. Remnant is in the midst of its Second Great War. And while the Kingdoms wage battle and destruction against one other, a darker, more ancient threat grows in its shadow. Only a select few are willing to set aside past differences to see the greater danger Remnant faces. Only those who possess the wisdom to seek out the truth in the dark—those who are truly wise. To that end, Weiss Schnee assembles her private group of covert operatives.

This is the story of Team WISE.

Links to read the series: Ao3 or FF.net

Or hit the jump below:

Ember

They are the remains of a dying fire.

Or the lights of a new flame.

Both, hand in hand, one and the same.

Like new and old feathers of a phoenix.

The air whistled as a curved blade almost took her head off. Fortunately, she read it ahead of time, and ducked just below.

“Tsk!” Yang gave an annoyed click of her teeth.

Her opponent didn’t stop his motion. Instead, they rode the momentum, and repeated the strike lower. It wasn’t as much as a weapon, as it was a scorpion tail that almost cut a poisonous gash through Yang’s abdomen.

“Damn it!”

The boxer was forced to break her stance, and back away.

“Come on~” Tyrian Callows taunted. “Where did all the usual bravado go? Don’t tell me your afraid♪?”

“That’s rich, coming from the guy who’s been ducking me for weeks.”

In the gladiatorial arena, the audience around them cheered with depraved cries. Each and every one of them, wearing black and white striped clothes. A cheap fence was all that separated the ring from its spectators, who watched from multiple levels. A prison within a prison, where people were little more than caged animals tearing each other apart.

Yang was on the verge of bum rushing forward, when cooler voices counseled the move.

Come on, don’t rush it.

She watched Tyrian’s scorpion tail whip back and forth in readiness.

He wants you to make the first move. You’ve seen how he fights.

He likes to talk smack, but he’s crap at taking it.

Yang hocked a spit to the side, and braced her fists under her chin.

Easy does it. Bait him in, like the sap he is.

It felt like she exercised more patience in the last few months than she had in her entire lifetime.

The time’ll come. You already learned this. Just ball up the hate for now.

Yang remembered that fateful day, her harsh reminder that curbed her attitude.

Don’t want to lose another arm. Don’t play his game. Play yours.

Her feet began to shuffle back and forth. Slow at first, then faster in succession. She backed around the perimeter of the ring, as if provoking her opponent with her nimbleness. A daredevil’s smile trailing her façade.

“You know, for a joint that brags about keeping Mistral’s hardest criminals, you guys are actually a bunch of softies!” Yang smirked. “And you’re supposed to be the sharpest shiv in this clink? What a joke.”

“You won’t be smiling for long,” Tyrian hissed. “When I’m done with you, I’ll rip out your tongue, so you’ll never breathe another word again! And then, I’ll—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something about intestines, and whatever other cannibal fetish fantasy. Heard worse from people who actually matter? Let’s dance, scrub!”

Tyrian’s anger reached its boiling point, as he pounced with an inhuman-like agileness. At the same time, Yang banked her body down into a forward dash.

Just as Tyrian’s tail stabbed from above like a curved dagger, the boxer swerved right. The stinger cut through a few locks of her hair, arousing her rage and her Semblance.

Don’t lose yourself, Yang reminded.

Channel it, control it, own it.

Don’t let it own you.

Her hair set ablaze and her irises dyed a bloody red, but she maintained her temper. Like sinking her emotions below the ocean’s surface, she focused her attention elsewhere.

Fake the entry.

Yang feigned a resumed dash into Tyrian’s guard.

It’s what he wants. You know what’s going to happen next.

Tyrian’s lips pulled into a wide grin. His tail flicked up instantly, like he expected the miss. A second, more deadly strike, came down. Its point drove right atop Yang’s skull.

Too easy.

The attack was deeper than the first. It struck the ground, as Yang dodged left. She finally let her rage go. Her boot stomped the tail at an angle, preventing Tyrian from pulling it back.

Yang watched the shock on her opponent’s face with grim satisfaction. Her elbow drew a wide arc, right before letting loose a sweeping downward punch.

“GRRAAAAAHHHHH!!!” Tyrian shrieked, as his tail was blown off in the middle. “YOU BITCH!”

While her opponent cursed, Yang didn’t pause for a second. She went immediately into Tyrian’s body. Short pummeled bursts crunched out from the boxer, repeatedly jamming her fists into the man’s ribs.

Should be careful, Yang reminded herself with reluctance.

As much as I’d love to induce organ failure…

…Still need him alive.

The moment Yang stopped her assault, Tyrian bent forward from the pain of having his ribs pound to dust. Right then, the knuckles of Yang’s gauntlet cracked the side of his head. His ear went completely deaf on that side.

“Man, that was really exciting. You had me worried there for a bit,” Yang breathed a long yawn down at him. And then, grasped the back of his ponytail.

Seeing the match finished, she turned her gaze to the crowd. Her fellow inmates were cheering uproariously. Unintelligible chanting and slurs cascaded the rounded walls. When they coalesced, she heard the singular word like the voice of continuous thunder.

“Death.”

As per the fighting arena’s tradition, the audience liked to chant the desired fate of the defeated. And it was rare, if ever, they chose mercy.

Yang glared condescendingly at Tyrian still keeled over on the ground.

“You hear them, right? With your other ear, I mean.”

“…Do it!”

“I could,” she paused. “Or maybe, you can give me something to convince me otherwise.”

“…? He..hehe…hehehehahaha! So that’s what you’re after!”

“Not so loud, dumbass, or I might just change my mind.”

“I wondered why you were down here.”

“Adam Taurus, Qrow Branwen, Raven Branwen. I want intel.”

“Hahaha! Sure! I’ll tell you whatever you want!”

In the face of Tyrian’s demented smile, Yang could only snarl in disgust.

“Great.”

X X X X X

Hovering about one kilometer above Mistral’s underground max security prison, was a stealth flight airship. The swordfish-like vessel tread the night sky. Its reflective coating made it blend in with its surrounds. And just aboard, its two passengers made preparations to deploy.

“Alright.”

Weiss entered a few keys into her scroll, before holding it out. Holographic layers of the prison luminated for her and her partner to see.

“Our target is located at the deepest level of the structure. Here.” A red beacon flashed at the bottom of the cylindrical facility. “According to our source, breaking into the prison won’t be difficult. It’s breaking out, which will provide the most challenge.”

“It’s a prison. Of course, they made it harder to break out.”

Ignoring her partner’s remark, Weiss proceeded. “The moment the target is brought above the floor they are assigned, her location tracker will trigger the prison’s alarms. And considering the deepest levels are reserved for their most dangerous criminals, a full lock down of the entire facility will commence.”

“Did she have to be at the bottom level?”

“…Apparently, she thought it was a necessity, but that’s beside the point. That is where the target is, and that is where we have to retrieve her from.”

“Just like any bungee jump through twenty-seven levels of high security. What goes down, must come up. Shouldn’t be all that hard,” she said sarcastically.

“The two of us are more than capable of accomplishing this feat. Are you ready, Scarlet?”

“I really wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

“Are you ready?”

Ruby sighed.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

The two made their final weapons check and preparations to drop. Weiss tucked her hair into the collar of her cloak and donned a White Fang mask. Ruby threw her a sideways look, while hesitating with the mask in her own hands.

“It’s only smoke screen,” Weiss added. “There’s no reason to think too deeply about it.”

When they finished, Weiss turned to the ship’s cockpit, which had no pilot in it. There, the control console was operated by the woman’s personal AI.

“Penny. Circle the area until I signal for pick up.”

[Yes, Ma’am.]

The side-doors of the aircraft slid open, and the two Huntresses dropped into freefall. The night breeze blew them back and forth in their descent. Course corrections were made along the way by shifting their drag.

Once they neared the gate doors, they timed their entry with the arrival of a descending transport ship. With the prison practically a vertical drop pit, an aircraft was what the workers used to travel up and down the levels.

By the time Weiss and Ruby were reaching groundside, the ship was already through, with the gate shutting just behind it.

“Scarlet,” Weiss called.

No response from the girl falling beside her.

“Scarlet!” she called again.

Still, nothing.

“RUBY!”

The red Huntress’s cloak expanded to the size of a parachute, before engulfing them both. Then, like a crimson specter, the fluttering cloth spilled into the thin slit of the gate just as it closed. The width of which, could not be wider than a few inches.

In Ruby’s cloaked form, her and Weiss dropped past the prison transport ship, and into the lower levels. A bed of vine and roses spawned to cushion their fall, when they made contact with the bottom floor.

The sound of the impact surprised prisoners wandering the near vicinity. But upon looking to what caused the noise, they saw nothing—save for a thin red blur at the very corner of their eyes.

Within the shadow of her partner’s cowl, Weiss tracked their positions on her scroll. The distance from her and the target was closing.

“Right at this corridor. Left, and then, another left,” she instructed along the way.

While they traversed the labyrinth with ease, Weiss couldn’t help but be impressed with Ruby’s abilities. She had studied them, of course. Trained through multiple sessions and simulations in order to familiarize. But experiencing it in a live situation, with the sensation of being spirited away, was something else entirely.

She could only wonder what else her partner was capable of…

And also, whether their fight at Beacon was actually Ruby’s version of “serious” or not.

But that was a thought for another time.

“We’re here. Past the door on your right.”

On Weiss’s instruction, Ruby’s cloak swept through the bottom slit of a locked door. The red cloth exploded in size for a brief moment. And then, like drawing a curtain, their two figures revealed on landing. A reappearance similar to the end of a magic trick.

Before them, was their target. A woman facing a bloodied-up man, tied in chains and hanging from the ceiling. Her gold gauntlets dyed in crimson from the obvious use of physical torture.

“…Yang?” Ruby muttered with a hush. “What… are you—?”

“—Ember,” Weiss called to the target and stepped forward. “The timetable for your exfil has been moved up.”

“…I know,” Yang answered, without turning around. “I got the message.”

“Then, why didn’t you respond or meet us at any of the contact points?”

“Needed more time. I wasn’t done getting our info. That IS why you sent me down here in the first place, remember?”

“I told you, we have more urgent matters for pulling you out,” Weiss huffed. “…Did you get the relevant information?”

Yang lightly shoved the near-corpse of Tyrian, like a beaten-up punching bag. Him swinging helplessly, and dripping blood all over the floor brought her a small sense of joy.

“Part of the intel,” she answered. “He lost conscious midway through. Freakin’ pillowcase.”

“We need to go, now. It won’t be long until the prison systems detect an anomaly.”

“There’s still more I can get out of him. Can Scarlet take him with us?”

Ruby stared at her sister, who she barely recognized. A Yang so cold and callous, it made her question if this was really the same person she shared her childhood with.

“—Scarlet,” Weiss prompted beside her.

“No,” Ruby shook her head. “No, we can’t take him. I can only carry two other people in my cloak.”

“Hmph, well, that’s a bummer,” Yang scoffed.

With that, she buried one more fist into the Tyrian punching bag, before turning to leave. As she passed Weiss, the woman grabbed her arm.

“Was this really warranted?”

Yang shook the woman’s hand off her prosthetic.

“He pissed me off. So, yeah. He had it coming. Now, are we going, or what?”

She then, shouldered past Ruby, and out of the room.

…

“Focus on the task at hand,” Weiss answered the blank look Ruby was throwing her way. “The issue with Ember we can wait until later. Right now, the priority is to leave this place before—”

Just then, alarms began to sound. All lights in the prison shut off, except for the flashing of red strobes.

“—That. Happens.”

“Huh. I heard they added new motions sensors,” Yang commented.

“And you only thought to mention this NOW?”

“I said, ‘I heard’. Didn’t know if they were true. Maybe, I should’ve mentioned it if it meant stalling you from coming.”

The three maneuvered through the maze, and arrived at the center yard. They looked up to where Weiss and Ruby made entry, and saw a number of gates closing overhead.

“So much for going out the way we came,” Ruby squinted.

“When the prison shuts down, it gates off a section every seven floors,” Yang told them. “So, we’re looking at four in total.”

Weiss projected the prison’s holographic map on her scroll.

“Scarlet’s Semblance doesn’t allow us to ascend at that steep an angle, especially with those shields in the way. Which means, this is our only route.”

She indicated on the projection, an arrow that circled the circumference of the cylinder like an upward spiral.

“Uphill fight. WAY uphill…” Yang grimaced. “It’s always the hard way with you.”

“As if you aren’t used to it, by now,” Weiss replied. “How many HEIT charges do you have?”

“Five. Didn’t have to use a single one while I was down here. Good thing I saved them.”

“Yes. Considering, I can’t rely on my Semblance openly. No one is to know I was down here.”

“Right,” Yang chuckled, and tapped Weiss’s White Fang mask. “Cause your Glyphs basically broadcast who you are every time you use them…”

“I’ll provide us backup support. Scarlet will move us to each gate. Ember will breach. Are the assignments clear?”

“Crystal clear, Winter.”

The two then, turned to Ruby for a response.

“…Yeah. Alright.”

At that moment, smoke canisters were being fired all around them. The prisoners along the walls began choking and vomiting profusely.

“Oh, yeah,” Yang smirked. “Did I not mention in the intel I sent you, that in the case of a full lockdown, the prisoners in the other sections get beaten to shit by the prison guards…”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’,” Weiss rested a hand on her hip.

“BUT the prisoners on the lowest levels get teargassed THEN, get beaten to shit by prison guards.”

“Hmph. How barbaric…”

As another wave of canisters launched into their closer vicinity, Weiss drew a circle around them with her Myrtenaster. Extremely cold mist concentrated to snuff the fuse triggers within each, effectively disarming them. She then, conjured a thin layer of armor to protect her group’s skin and face.

“That should do until we escape this section.” Weiss nodded to her partner. “Scarlet.”

I wish she’d stop calling me that…

Ruby expanded her cloak once more to envelope Yang and Weiss. Following her leader’s direction, she whisked them through the labyrinthian circumference of the prison. Her wraith form weaved between the chaos of other prisoners and guards, under the cover of tear gas. She slipped through tight spaces that would stop any normal-sized person.

After flying through several floors and up some staircases, the team met their first real obstacle. They reached one of the four airtight section gates. But, as if presenting the exact solution to their problems, Yang launched from the cover of the crimson cape.

A large caliber round clicked into the firing chamber of her prosthetic. The trigger was pulled, and the afterburners lining her forearm and elbow, thrust with a piercing roar. Yang’s right punch rocketed her towards the gate.

The five guards lined up to guard the stairway hatch opened fire. Unbeknownst to them, each shot Yang absorbed fed into her Semblance, making her more powerful. Her hair ignited like a blazing sun, growing brighter and brighter with every ounce of damage converted into energy.

As soon as her fist made contact with the ceiling, a plume of hellfire erupted. The steel layer, which was several feet thick, warped through the point of impact like melted foil. And Yang’s burning gauntlet carried her through to the other side.

Where she landed, she ejected the spent shell of a bullet with a satisfying clink.

One gate down, three more to go. Plenty of HEIT to spare.

After a moment, Yang looked down the hole she created, curious to where her allies were. The fluttering of Ruby’s cloak revealed the severely singed guards caught in her wanton destruction. Her little sister glared up accusingly at her.

Yang only shrugged coolly, as if to say it couldn’t be helped.

“YAN—!”

“Scarlet!” Weiss stopped her partner, and applied a simple cold treatment to the guards’ burn wounds. “This isn’t the time nor the place. We need to keep moving.”

“Grr…!”

Again, the group proceeded to the next section gate the same way as before. There were more guards and prisoners this time. Parts in their ascension could not be slipped through without interference.

To make enough room, the three dashed out of Ruby’s cape to make quick work of those standing in their way. Yang peppered a number of vitals to crumple bodies to the ground. Weiss performed a quick succession of thrusts to disable a few limbs. And Ruby summoned a nest of thorned vines to bind and cut any who remained.

As they came to the next stairway hatch, Ruby rushed ahead of Yang to disable the guards. By the time the elder sibling was throwing her punch, the younger had drew the guards out of the blast radius. Another begrudging glare from Ruby towards her older sister followed.

“—Do you think you could use your Semblance without causing unwanted casualties?” Ruby confronted.

“—I could, but I won’t,” Yang narrowed her eyes back. “Sorry, teach.”

“—Rein it in! The both of you!” Weiss ordered. “If you have the energy to argue, save it for the rest of the climb up!”

“…”

Her two teammates gave her the silent stare for a moment, but nodded their acceptance eventually. Just as they were proceeding to the next floor, Weiss grasped Yang’s shoulder and spoke in her ear.

“Minimize the blast radius of your HEIT charges. I don’t want Scarlet wasting her Aura saving people we don’t need to.”

Yang seemed to sigh dismissively, but consented to the order all the same.

Weiss continued to navigate her team, issuing instructions as the situation changed floor by floor. Even without her Semblance, she was a force to be reckon with. In some cases, her swift movement dispatched marks before her other two teammates could react.

She kept a close eye on Ruby and Yang’s statuses. Managing their stamina and Aura reserves was vital. There were moments, when she had to take the task of clearing almost an entire floor on her own. But it was thanks to that efficiency and control, her team reached the last section gate.

The steel reinforced barrier burst like a miniature volcano, sending pieces of shrapnel everywhere.

As Yang shot through the shaft she made, she took a moment to deeply inhale the fresh night air. Her eyes scanned the open skies with a sense of wonderment. It was her first taste of freedom in a while, and she wanted to enjoy it.

Weiss and Ruby joined her shortly. Weiss immediately speaking into her scroll.

“Penny. We are ready for pickup. LZ is hot. I repeat…”

All around the three, a small army of prisoner workers painted them with laser sights from their guns.

“LZ is hot.”

X X X X X

In the darkness of her government office, a woman viewed the footage of one of Mistral’s prisons recent break outs. Her eyes scrutinized the video feed, replaying key frames on her terminal.

The assailants’ faces were hidden by White Fang masks. Hoods obscured their appearances, and the skills they displayed matched nothing in the Kingdom’s data banks. Also, the prisoner who escaped was catalogued under what was obviously a cover name.

“Ember Branwen…”

The woman played with how the name sounded on her lips.

“Hm. Things might be starting to move very quickly going forward.”

She brought up enhanced screenshots of the other two, and laid the three side by side. Even if the software couldn’t identify a match, and the perpetrators did well in hiding their true fighting styles, the woman could tell.

After all, she and her team studied them very closely once upon a time.

They could mismatch their movements as much as they liked, but the core of their techniques was still there. Their abilities much more developed than she had last seen, but there was no mistake.

The woman pressed a button on her desk to summon her team to the office.

Not a minute later, two figures entered.

“Did you need something, Cinder?” Emerald asked.

“Prepare to mobilize the Third Armada,” she ordered. “Mercury, I have a special job for you.”

“Who’s getting AMFed this time, boss?”

“Strictly force reconnaissance—for now. I need you and a squadron of the best of your family to infiltrate Vacuo.”

“So, we’re keeping this hush from Adam?”

“Better he remains unaware.”

“Anything I’m looking for specifically?”

“If my intuition serves me right, you’ll know when you see it.”

Emerald and Mercury stared at each other for a moment, before turning back to their leader.

“It’s happening, isn’t it?” Emerald questioned. “The End of Remnant…”

“Hm.” Cinder knitted her hands thoughtfully. “I’m not quite sure what to make of any of this yet. But there is one thing I am sure of…”

“The White Queen is making her moves.”

X X X X X

It was late at night, when Team WISE returned to their covert base of operations on the island of Vytal.

Weiss was in her room, going over her notes and making future preparations for their next op, when a knock came at her door.

For a second, she thought of ignoring them.

“Don’t ignore me! I can hear you thinking about it!”

A long sigh escaped her, as she reluctantly operated the electronic panel. The entryway slid open on unlocking.

“Something I can help you with?”

“Just wanted to chat,” Yang grinned. “Can I come in?”

Weiss didn’t move, only continuing to glare up at the girl.

“You have an opinion you would like to share?”

“Hah…yeah.” Yang scratched the back of her head. “To be honest, I didn’t expect you to be the one to come get me, much less her.”

“Scarlet.”

“Sure. But seriously, I expected MY team to be the ones to break me out.”

“We are your team.”

“If you say so, Winter.”

The use of her code name, outside of operations, made her twitch. Weiss was going to yell at the woman, but knew that was exactly what Yang wanted. Instead, she controlled her temper, and decided to let her teammate say her piece.

“So, why’d you have to pull me out so quick?” Yang asked.

“There have been new developments.”

“Oh, yeah? Like, what?”

“…One of the Relics has been discovered.”

Yang’s eyes grew wide at that.

“Crap.”

“Yes. My thoughts exactly. Its location and who is in possession of it are unknown. But it is in transit.”

“Isn’t that a all-hands-on-deck kind of deal? Don’t tell me we’re going in this small?”

“We cannot stand to divert more personnel or make larger movements at this juncture. The quieter, the darker, the better. At least, for the time being.”

“…Still, did it have to be—Scarlet?”

“She is an invaluable asset to this team’s operations. We need her.”

“Are you sure, you just don’t mean you?”

Weiss locked Yang in a steely gaze.

“You only told her the bare minimum, right?” the other continued. “She doesn’t know anything about what you and I have done.”

“…No. Of course, not.”

“Hmph,” Yang scoffed. “And if she’s on the team, don’t tell me…”

“The next operation will be taking place in Vacuo.”

“…To get Adam, right?”

“No.”

“Arrrggghhh!!! Come ON, WEISS! Are we really going to recuit—”

“Yes. As you so accurately surmised, we will be proceeding to Vacuo to collect the last vital member of our team.”

Yang exhaled a long, groaning sigh of exaggerated lament. After a moment, she composed herself. The girl’s irises taking on a deathly kind of glint.

“—And, Adam? You read the info I got out of Tyrian, before you and your partner so rudely interrupted my interrogation.”

“…”

“You promised me this, Weiss.” Yang leaned her hands against the edges of the door frame. “Don’t tell me I don’t get to make that prick pay for what he did to me.”

“……What do you need?”

“I need MY team—the team that puts bodies in coffins.”

Weiss closed her eyes in thought, weighing the best choice actions versus potential fallouts.

“Team CFEN will be sorted for deployment,” she answered. “But only after Iris has been acquired. Just so you have your priorities in order.”

“Fine!” Yang banged her fist on the doorway. “We get Iris first. Then, I get Adam.”

“Agreed.”

The two teammates shared a tense silence. Yang still felt some blood rushing to her head, but was able to quiet the rage threatening to boil. Instead, she was struck with the urge to let out her pent-up stress.

“You know…I was in prison for a while. And a girl has needs.”

“…”

Seeing her leader stay silent, Yang could only grin in resignation. Just as she was about to make her way back to her room, Weiss stepped back from the door.

“Well? Are you coming in?”

Yang let a chuckle escape her.

“You sure? Ruby is here, after all. Bet you haven’t told her anything about our little arrangement.”

“…”

“…Get inside.”

#rwby #weiss schnee #yang xiao long #ruby rose #freezerburn #rwby fanfiction #rwby au #Team WISE

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