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electrospherevaults · 3 years

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Defiler - Chapter 4

[Click here to read the rest of the Defiler story]

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Living on a farm so close to the Barrens is considered suicide; the sun (Maker will it shining forever) destroys crops in the hydroponics even with good insulation installed, and any semblance of water evaporates before the hour has passed. Mallik’s family made it work day in and day out, but the sun always found a way to shine brighter. Not even the fancy new blinds would stop it from entering Mallik’s room, and they had to cement the window.

Mallik stepped off the bus, stepping carefully on the rocks outside that lined up the tarmac. She partially removed her mask, letting the smell of the sand fill her lungs, mentally preparing herself to take a further trek down the dirt road to home. It was early morning, the sun hanging just above the mountains to the east, its warm golden glow painting the scenery for miles on end. Mallik finished inhaling in the scenery and picked up her duffel bag, then another person stepped off the bus behind her. Nobody gets off at the last stop before the Barrens, not unless they had to meet up for one of the lack windsailing clubs, but even those now met at the city instead as per safety regulations.

Out there, basking at the glory of the sun like a shy and scared lemur stood Zysso. He rubbed his eyes, possibly trying to adjust to the brightness still, possibly to wake up from the bus nap he took earlier, and then he turned to look at the only other person he could see for miles. He timidly raised his hand halfway to his chest, his four fingers spreading and then shaking rhythmically in a sign we’d most likely interpret as a “fancy meeting you here again.” Mallik stared back at him, silenced and, frankly, stunned.

“I was wondering”, Zysso began speaking, “if I could possibly join you?”

Mallik picked up her jaw from the floor and shook her head. “I thought you were headed to Sector 15?”

Zysso looked around shiftily. “I, um, changed my mind.”

Mallik looked at the guy, all frail and skin and bones drying up from the sun already. What was he even thinking coming to this planet? He would shrivel up and become one more victim of this miserable place, forgotten and misplaced as have so many others. And he was to be her responsibility now too, from the way things were forming up.

“I could be a killer, y’know”, Mallik said nonchalantly, pulling her bag’s strap closer to her shoulder. Zysso opened his mouth in bewilderment. He had not really thought that far ahead. He put his hands by his waist and shook his head. “You sure you want to trust someone you only just met?”

Zysso stared at her, in a loss for words. Whatever was troubling him was enough to make him stop and ponder whether death by a killer in the desert was preferable to turning back. A feeling she, regrettably, had grown accustomed to as well. It could have also been that this guy simply didn’t know anything about the desert, so he didn’t know he was wasting his life away by literally standing and thinking out in the open. Either way, she couldn’t waste her time.

“The sun never sets out here”, Mallik said. “This is the coldest you will feel, so you better decide for yourself quickly. As for me, I have to go home.” Mallik turned away from the valleakan and started down her own path again.

After some consideration, Zysso started following after her.

It was not too terrible a walk, all things considered for Mallik. They walked for five hundred meters up until where the road stopped, and then they turned left to the trails. Minute details in the environment indicated where she had to turn to next. A bush here, a leftover tin bucket there, it all served to highlight the way back to the farm. Her mom had wanted to update the route with some state of the desert pylons for a while, and when the opportunity presented itself, she bought a couple used ones from the neighbouring travelling merchant. Unfortunately, those melted down to the wire. Literally unfixable junk. Mallik had never felt so much fury from a faulty product before. Unlike her mother though, Mallik just grew accustomed to the trails again and stopped hoping for technology to last them.

For young Zysso on the other hand, the ground felt treacherous. A misstep here and he would tumble down on the scorching sand. His skin could not take the burns. He had tried to make small talk throughout the way with his newfound friend, but the exhaustion soon made talking a wasteful luxury. Survival was instead the number one priority. He tried to fall into the steps Mallik produced in front of him, to keep up the pace she was setting. He thought himself good at adapting. This was an ultimate test of endurance. And after enduring an excruciating seven minutes under these conditions, they arrived at home. Zysso fell to his knees, elated at the marvel in front of him. Mallik shook her head as he helped him back to his feet.

And then just as suddenly she dragged him into a close hug, pressing her body tight against his. Zysso was even more surprised to find something sharp pressing against his neck. “Listen here, friend”, Mallik whispered to what she assumed was his ear. “Me and my mom and my sisters, we just want to live peacefully. Peaceful, quiet lives. I don’t know how you know what you know, but, I swear, if you try and harm any of us, I… I will…” Her voice broke.

“I will kill you.”

Zysso was left without a breath to respond. His heart beat faster than it had before in his short, miserable life, embracing a scary lady that held his life in the balance. All he could muster now was to simply nod in acknowledgment. He knew what he knew, as she thought she knew of what he knew, and there was that. He let go his arms off her shoulders, letting them fall to the ground. Mallik too let go of him, retracting her nails back. She stepped a bit back, panting as she did. She sniffled her nose, and tried to relax her face.

“I am sorry I scared you”, Zysso said. Mallik instead pulled down her mask, and offered a meek, friendly smile. A genuine one. Zysso was taken aback. He had guessed right last night. Or maybe an hour ago. It was a weird, confusing place to be in.

Mallik offered her hand. “No, I’m sorry”, she said back. “But Tabora ain’t kind to us.” Zysso nodded like he understood.

“Hey mom, I brought a friend”, Mallik announced as she helped Zysso down the stairwell into the underground dwelling. The entrance was narrow, and the steps just a little crooked from all the years out in the open, but now before him unravelled a room quite unlike what he had imagined. Plain painted beige walls that marvelled in their lack of decoration, besides the one carpet that hanged from the opposite wall. A modest sofa stood in front of it, along with pillows strewn about over the concrete floor, again decorated with some lighter carpets carrying simple geometric shapes. They had white and red and green and black colours, forming rectangles and rhombuses. They all seemed handmade. And as he was taking in the environment, Mallik’s mom entered the room. She stared at him through her mask, then her daughter with excess surprise, and though she had a hint of scolding in her stare, a welcomed bout of relief followed as she pulled down and removed her own mask.

“Hello there, dear”, she said warmly. Although slightly hutched, she did not hesitate to look Zysso in the eyes. “You look quite spent, have you two walked all the way here?”

“I think so”, Zysso said, embracing the coolness returning gradually to his body. Valleakans are cold blooded creatures, and thus do not sweat. “I think my skin has dried up. I think this is what death feels like.”

“You’re just dehydrated, dear. All you need is some blue milk, that’ll fix you up!”

Zysso stood there, trying to comprehend what a blue milk could feasibly be. He would welcome it regardless. He followed Mallik’s mom to the kitchen behind the draped carpet, and sat over by the stool. He watched her take a metallic carton out of the fridge and shake it a bit before she poured it out into a cup. She offered him that. It smelled like cinnamon. Not the one you get back at home, of course; each planet had its own cinnamon, that was a given. And yet, it was distinctly cinnamon.

“You like it”, Mallik’s mom asked.

Zysso put his hands by the cup. “I haven’t even-”

“Taboran herbs work like magic”, the mother explained. “Our family has had these recipes passed from daughter to daughter. Mallichka over here should know her own blue milk too!” She winked in a distinctly motherly tone, one meant to sow embarrassment amidst charm. It worked, as Mallik rolled her eyes without much bemusement.

Zysso finally took a sip. He liked it. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good. But he felt better, and that’s what was most important out here. “I will let you two to chat, I still have laundry to do”, Mallik’s mom said as she excused herself from the kitchen. Mallik took the opposite stool.

Zysso stood there in his seat. “So you too live with your mom?”

“Shit”, Mallik mumbled. “Guess I’m not the cool killer you thought I was, huh?”

“Well”, Zysso said, “killers don’t live with their moms, usually.” He took another sip; how delightfully disgusting, it needed some proper milk to even it out he thought, but he did not want to aggravate his hosts. “And nor do they usually seek employment as pilots by the victims beforehand.”

“Oh”, Mallik countered, “so you’re a detective now too?”

Zysso leaned into the table, his hand still holding his dear beverage. “Maybe I could be a detective, on a mission to catch you, Miss Serial Killer.”

Mallik laughed. “You’re a weird dude, you know that?”

Zysso let out a nasal laughter back. “You threatened me with your nails, I can’t beat you on weird!”

“Oh yeah, those things”, Mallik said and unsheathed her hidden weapons. They looked dull and blunt, and yet they could cut up a face with ease. “Yeah, they can be cool.”

Mallik shifted closer on her seat. “Listen”, she said, “I truly am sorry about earlier, I… simply don’t know you. And I’m still low-key afraid I made a huge mistake letting you here. So, I want to know why you wanted to come with me.”

Zysso sipped some more blue milk. A perfect beverage for this occasion. “I…” He looked back into his cup. He stared at it intensely. He broke his concetration when Mallik pushed his arm.

“You ran away from your dad or something?”

Zysso nodded. “Something like that.”

Mallik looked out to the top through the glass ceiling. The blue cloudless sky shined bright. “Does your dad have troops? Will he send them after you?”

Zysso rubbed the walls of his cup. “Not in this planet”, he mustered.

“I see”, Mallik responded. She tapped her fingers against the counter, observing Zysso anxiously hugging the cup for warmth the same way a lost puppy would seek shelter outside her old office building. She sighed. “You can rest here for a couple hours”, she said, “have dinner with us, feel the ratlung love.” Zysso chuckled. “I mean the familial love, Maker will it!” Mallik then spat out in her hand in embarrassment – mom disapproved of spitting in-house.

Zysso nodded, still chuckling softly. “That would be more than fine with me.”

Zysso then did a most amusing thing. He brought his hand up, and spat on it, then offered it to Mallik. It’s uncertain if he had understood the custom wrong, but Mallik smiled. She shook his hand with her own spat out bad luck. As luck would have it, she did won a friend that very night after all.

#nanowrimo 2021 #nanowrimo wip #defiler #writing #original characters

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2lim3rz · 2 years

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So. -opens up a chair and sits down in your askbox- tell me about ur OCs, if you're down for that?

Asdfjkakjfds I shall, most of it is gonna be about my deathwatch or tau lads

1. Kal'sol, the adopted son of my t'au Bap and her ex-Salamanders husband Icalos, has a hobby of rock-collecting. He may be a fire-caste, but he wants to be a geologist

2. Strongarm, my tau mercenary that works with Zezota, would never admit it, but he adores being called her adorable little guy

3. Chronah is.. weirdly immature? for a veteran of the Blood Angels and for someone who's part of the Deathwatch. Like... Weirdly immature. Hella loves playing a good joke. He still does his job though!

4. Tarchim is the most cursed Ultramarine ever. His mary-sue powers don't work How? Somehow every well-structured plan he makes just.. falls apart. Every time. Otto makes all the plans

5. Speaking of Ultramarines, I have another one named Pylon. What's his creation story? I was playing Deathwatch and one of the generated space marines was an Ultramarine named Pylon

He's tried to change his name multiple times, every time ignored

#OC #warhammer 40k #t'au #space marines #ultramarines #2lim3rz chats to kate

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leaschuller · 4 years

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About Lena Oberdorf:

Lena Oberdorf, 18 years old, became the youngest German World Cup player in history in 2019. She has now 13 international matches (2 goals), and she is also the winner of the Fritz-Walter-Medaille for the best young female player in 2020. In the Bundesliga, Oberdorf played for SGS Essen for the first time in 2018, and now she plays for VfL Wolfsburg (depending on success, Oberdorf’s transfer fee is around a six-figure sum. There is no official confirmation for this.) So far, Oberdorf mainly played in the defense, in the future she could also imagine playing as a playmaker.

Full Interview Translation:

This is where the future of German football speaks

Wolfsburg's new player Lena Oberdorf is an exceptional talent. The 18-year-old speaks about her rapid development, the Champions League restart - and misogynistic remarks on the pitch.

SPIEGEL: Ms. Oberdorf, at the age of 18 you switched to the German series champions Wolfsburg, and according to newspapers they have paid for you an "unusually high" transfer fee for women's football. Does that put you under pressure?

Oberdorf: I didn't even know that, nor do i know the amount. That is why I don't feel any pressure now.

SPIEGEL: In football, it's usually the case that the parties agree not to disclose the transfer fee. With the men the amount of transfer fees often gets out after all, but with the female football players you hardly hear anything at all about them. Your transfer could have set an example - according to the motto: female football players also cost money!

Oberdorf: But then I would feel pressure now. I'm glad it wasn't published. I also think it's nice that you aren't just talking about money in women's football. We are human beings and transfer fees are insignificant. It is clear that transfer fees are not common in women's football, but they are also part of it.

SPIEGEL: The Champions League will continue on Friday and you can play for your new club. At least in theory, the team is a well-oiled machine. With who do you want to compete for a starting spot?

Oberdorf: I'm not even thinking about something like that. In Wolfsburg it's common, that there is a lot of rotation. Four days after the Champions League final on August 30th, the Bundesliga starts again. It's not about taking someone's place. I'm just waiting for my opportunity. It is certainly good that i can play many positions: in central defense or on the six in front of the defense. I could also imagine playing a ten. The main thing is to play in the center.

SPIEGEL: All in all, that sounds cautious for a footballer who has already played 13 international matches und has played in a World Cup, who has already been described as the boss of German national team's defense.

Oberdorf: These numbers don't interest me at all. And I don't see myself as the boss of the defense either. A defense consists of four players, I am one of them. It's better if everyone takes responsibility.

SPIEGEL: The final tournament of the Champions League will take place in Bilbao and San Sebastián. The COVID-19 case numbers in the region are going up, Germany has designated Spain as a risk area. How do you deal with the development?

Oberdorf: We talk about it in the locker room. It's a shame that the numbers are now rising again, also for the tournament. But there are hygiene rules, regular tests for us, and we will live in a hotel with our own floor. We can't travel to Spain with fear.

SPIEGEL: FC Bayern will also be represented at the final tournament. The club has just signed many young international players. Why not you too?

Oberdorf: I only heard that Bayern were interested. But I found Wolfsburg more appealing. Also, the way football is played here suits me very well. Wolfsburg is very dominant, when I used to play against them with my ex-club Essen, we had about ten percent of ball possession.

SPIEGEL: What exactly is more appealing about Wolfsburg than about Munich?

Oberdorf: Everyone wants to go to Munich, at least as a tourist. Living there can be hectic though. I don't think I can make it to training in five minutes with the traffic. It's important to me to be in an environment with short journeys. Here in Wolfsburg, we almost all live close together, I'm only five minutes away from where Sara Doorsoun lives. I need this closeness to feel comfortable.

SPIEGEL: At the age of 18, you are now playing in the oldest team in the league - the average age of Wolfsburg women so far was just under 27. How is the difference noticeable?

Oberdorf: Oh, that's why they brought me in, to lower their average age! No, I'm lucky that, despite my age, I'm already far in my development. My parents did well. Honestly? Sometimes the players here are still like children in their heads.

SPIEGEL: Does it annoy you to be constantly asked about your age?

Oberdorf: I think it's good to be asked about it again and again. So it stays in the memory. Many media outlets forget that i am only 18 years old. But I am not a little chicken anymore.

SPIEGEL: There is a lot of discussion in Germany about the future of women's football. How do you rate the progress?

Oberdorf: The path is good, but the goal has not yet been reached. There could be even more. When the men have an international match, an advertising poster hangs on each advertising pylon. If we have a top game, it only hangs on one in ten. There is still a lot of work to be done.

SPIEGEL: Who do you see especially as taking that responsibility?

Oberdorf: Us players first. We need to use our reach in social media a lot more to bring this sport in the forefront. DFB and the clubs can certainly improve a lot when I think about marketing. the women's department is already well known here in Wolfsburg, even as a newcomer, I am often recognized on the streets.

SPIEGEL: Can you imagine being a strong voice in your sport going forward?

Oberdorf: At 18 you're not taken that seriously. But later i can certainly use my fame as a footballer.

SPIEGEL: You are a fan of FC Schalke. Does it annoy you that there - and also with their biggest rival Borussia Dortmund - they are not betting on professional women's football?

Oberdorf: Absolutely, even if I wouldn't switch to them right away. It's important that such clubs are betting on women's football. Also from an international point of view, it makes a huge difference, whether I receive an offer from Schalke 04 or from SGS Essen. A derby between Dortmund and Schalke would also appeal to a lot more viewers.

SPIEGEL: Schalke now established women's football in mass sports - they're starting in Kreisliga B (8th division).

Oberdorf: Always these excuses.

SPIEGEL: Is popular sport an excuse?

Oberdorf: If so, then do it right - with the aim of playing in Bundesliga. Other clubs show that it's possible.

SPIEGEL: There has been a small revolution in the Netherlands: Ellen Fokkema, a female player, will play in the future for a men's team in the 7th division. Do you find such a concept appealing?

Oberdorf: Yes, I do. I've played with guys for a very long time and benefited from them - I've become more robust, more assertive. I would have spent more time in a boys' team if that had been possible. But the question is whether a female player can help the men. Can she take it physically? At some point I came to the point where conflicts arose, it doesn't have to be of a sporting nature at all, but i can also be that you no longer find common topics of conversation. When suddenly only German rap was the topic in the locker room, at first, I couldn't even say anything.

SPIEGEL: At SPIEGEL, we repeatedly receive letters from readers that football is a men's sport and that women are simply not good enough for it. Have you ever been confronted with hatred?

Oberdorf: There is a story that I can remember. In the B-Jugend, a boy once said to me on the football field: "Why are you here? Go back to the kitchen." Then I just thought we are going to sort it out on the pitch. The guy never won a duel. That was my answer.

#Lena Oberdorf #GerWNT #VFL Wolfsburg Frauen #UWCL #She's so far beyond her years it's incredible #Dragging her Wob teammates already #I could cry #Baby's winning a Ballon D'or one day #woso #wofo #frauen bundesliga #Lena said I am mature and y'all aint

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daggerzine · 3 years

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MY FAVORITE RECORDS OF 2020......phew.

MY 20 FAVORITE RECORDS OF 2020 (in no particular order)

Close Lobsters- Post Neo Anti: Arte Povera in the Forest of Symbols (Shelflife)

Anna Burch- If You’re Dreaming (Polyvinyl)

The Reds, Pinks & Purples- You Might be Happy Someday (Tough Love)

The Stroppies- Look Alive (Tough Love)

Melenas- Dias Raros (Trouble in Mind)

Boyracer- On a Promise (Emotional Response)

European Sun- S/T (WIAIWYA)

Terrible Signal- The Window (Heart of the Rat)

Smokescreens- A Strange Dream (Slumberland)

Mosses- TV Sun (Anyway)

Gary Olson- S/T (Tapete)

The Beths- Jump Rope Gazers (Carpark)

Jetstream Pony- S/T (Shelflife)

Lewsberg- In This Room (12XU)

The Brothers Steve- #1 (Big Stir)

Boat- Tread Lightly (Magic Marker)

The Bats- Foothills (Flying Nun)

The High Water Marks- Ecstasy Rhyme (Minty Fresh)

Exploding Flowers (Stumbling Blocks (The Beautiful Music)

Tobin Sprout- Empty Horses (Fire)

Wait….20 more favorites (21-40)

The Very Most- Needs help (Kocliko/ Lost Sound Tapes)

Lisa Mychols & Super 8- S/T (The Beautiful Music)

Louis Phillippe & the Night Mail- Thunderclouds (Tapoete)

Bye Bye Blackbirds- Boxer At Rest (Double Potion)

Kiwi Jr- Football Money (Mint)

Bob Mould- Blue Hearts (Merge)

Xetas- The Cypher (12XU)

Lorna – Constellations (Words on Music)

A Girl Called Eddy- Been Around (Elefant)

Sault- Untitled (Rise) (Forever Living Originals)

RVG- Feral (Fire)

The Resonars- Disappear (self released)

Kestrels- Dream or Don’t Dream (Darla)

Black Watch- Brilliant Failures (A Turntable Friend)

Savak- Rotting Teeth in a Horse’s Mouth (Ernest Jenning)

The Innocence Mission- See You Tomorrow (Therese)

Stephen Malkmus- Traditional Techniques (Matador)

The Persian Leaps- Smiling Lessons (Land Ski Records)

The Vapour Trails- Golden Sunshine (Futureman)

Sweeping Promises- Hunger for a Way Out (Feel It)

You want more? Here’s 20 more! (41-60)

Nada Surf- Never Not Together (Barsuk)

Rolling Blackout Coastal Fever- Sideways to Italy (Sub Pop)

Girl Skin- Shade is on the Other Side (Jullian)

Perfume Genius- Set My Heart On Fire Immediately (Matador)

Brigid Mae Power- Head Above the Water (Fire)

Well Wishers- Shelf Life (self released)

Lunchbox- After School Special (Slumberland)

En Attendant Ana- Jullian (Trouble in Mind)

Helen Love- Power On! (Alsopop/ Jigsaw)

Voice Imitator- Plaza (12XU)

Cornershop- England Is a Garden (Ample Play)

The Luxemboug Signal- The Long Now (Shelflife)

Chubby and the Gang- Speed Kills (Static Shock Records)

Nah…- S/T (Shelflife)

Super 8- Head Sounds (Subjangle)

The Apartments- In and Out of the Light (Fire)

Moving Targets- Humbucker (Boss Tuneage)

Dead Famous People- Harry (Fire)

Supercrush- Sodo pOp (Don Giovanni)

Maria Mckee- La Vita Nuova (Fire)

Aaaaaand 20 more!! (61-80)

Even as We Speak- Adelphi (Shelflife)

Marshall Holland- Paper Airplane (Mystery Lawn Music)

Lithics- Tower Of Age (Trouble in Mind)

R.E. Seraphin- Tiny Shapes (Paisley Shirt Records)

Drew Citron- Free Now (Park the Van)

David Newton & Thee Mighty Angels- Gateway to a Lifetime of Disappointment (Parkfield Records)

The Dream Syndicate- The Universe Inside (Anti)

Dolph Chaney- Rebuilding Permit (Big Stir)

Metz – Atlas Vending (Sub Pop)

Donal Hinely- Diary of a Snowflake (Atom/Scuffletown)

Mythical Motors- Leviathan Messiah (self released)

Mary Lattimore- Silver Ladders (Secretly Canadian)

The Silent Boys- Tilt-a-Whirl (Walrus Records)

Fort Not- The Club is Open (Meritorio)

Thibault- …or not Thibault (Chapter Music)

The Crystal Furs- Beautiful and True (Subjangle)

Hinds- The Prettiest Curse (Mom + Pop)

Peel Dream Magazine- Agitprop Alterna (Slumberland)

The Legends- S/T (Labrador)

Coldbeat- Mother (DFA)

I ALSO LIKED RECORDS BY- My Darling YOU!, You, Me & This Fuckin Guy, Gretchen’s Wheel, Jeremy, Pocket of Lollipops, Protomartyr, Shopping, Joe Pernice, Pop Filter, All Ashore!, Half Japanese, Hazel English, Theatre Royal, Jason Isbell, Bananagun, The Cool Greenhouse, the Drive-By Truckers, The Ashensden Papers, Steam Train Hearts, The Cakekitchen, Spinning Coin, Cable Ties, Emma Kupa, Rob Moss and The Skin Tight, Jeremy, Awful Sirs, The Corner Laughers, The Cakekitchen Turnstyles, The Special Pillow, The Reflectors, , Devon Williams, The Lickerish Quartet, Modern Studies, The Bell Streets, Mike Gale, Kyle Forester, Shadow Show, Isobel Campbell, The Proper Ornaments, Personality Cults, The Safes, Flower, Dennis Davison , The Bell Streets, etc. etc.

MY FAVORITE COLLECTIONS/ REISSUES

The Chills- Submarine Bells and Soft Bomb (both on Fire)

East Village- Hotrod Hotel (Slumberland)

The Orange Peels- Square (Minty Fresh)

Heavenly- a Bout De Heavenly (Damaged Goods)

Rowland S. Howard- Teenage Snuff Film (Fat Possim/ Mute)

Pale Saints- The Comforts of Madness (4AD)

Pylon- Pylon Box (New West)

Beachwood Sparks- S/T (Curation records)

Stephen- Radar of Small Dogs (Joyful Noise)

The Mendoza Line- We’re all in this alone (Bar-None)

Van Duren- Are You Serious (Omnivore)

Love Tractor- S/T (HHBTM)

The Toms- 1979 Sessions (Futureman)

Josie Cotton- Invasion of the B Girls (Kitten Robot Records)

Game Theory- Across the Barrier of Sound (Omnivore)

Crayon Fields- All the Pleasures of the World (Chapter Music)

The Lucksmiths- A Good Kind of Nervous (Matinee/ Lost and Lonesome)

The Bachelor Pad- All Hash and Cock: The Best Of (Emotional Response)

MY FAVORITE SINGLES AND EPS-

Seablite- High-Rise Mannequins (Emotional Response)

Peter Hall- There’s Something Wrong With Everyone (The Beautiful Music)

The Legendary House Cats- A Postcard (and several more on Bandcamp)

Neutrals- Personal Computing (Slumberland)

High Cameras – 4 Songs (Hounds Tooth Cottage)

Love Burns- Gate and the Ghost 7” (Kleine Schplatten Untergrund)

Pale Lights- You and I (Slumberland)

Dusty Miller- Empathy (Small Bear Records)

Pezzati- The First EP (self released)

Strawberry Whiplash- Press 4 for Love (Matinee)

Dummy- EP 1 (self released)

R.E. Seraphin- A Room Forever (Paisley Shirt Records)

Flowers- Erik (Slumberland)

Kneeling in Piss- Music for Peasants (Anyway Records)

Northern Portrait- At Attention (Matinee)

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planetsam · 5 years

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“Maybe it could be easier for you to pretend I hadn’t made it back from war.” Absolutely love your Malex writing, wood love to read your spin on this one!

Alex doesn’t like his birthday.

He never has.

The last one he was in a coma for so that solved that. But this one is the worst. Easily. It shouldn’t be, arguably he’s never felt so loved on his birthday in his entire life. He has presents and there was a cake and everyone sang to him. Inside one of the bags is a pair of boots. They are gorgeous. All dark leather and there’s even alligator on the sides. Alex can’t wear them without a special attachment for his foot and just like that the world comes crashing back down. All because of a stupid pair of boots. He feels ridiculous even as he sits down on the bed to toe off his shoes. He thinks he passes off pretty well until there’s a gentle knock on the door.

“What went wrong?” Michael questions, tugging off his hat.

“Nothing,” Alex says, “the party was over.”

“You were good but I saw you,” Michael tells him, “what’s wrong?”

Alex looks down.

He’s not used to someone arguing his silence. His entire life he’s been taught that if he keeps quiet, things will go away. It’s hard when you spend you entire life praying someone will see to suddenly be faced with it and to feel like something’s being taken away. He’s irrationally angry. At the world, at his past. In one heart stopping moment he’s even mad at the beautiful man standing in front of him fiddling with the edge of his hat and trying to figure out what’s wrong.

“Alex?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he admits.

Michael looks confused. It’s better than how he usually looks when Alex tries to shut things like this down. He doesn’t look resigned. Like it’s how the world should be. He looks confused like he doesn’t understand. Alex tastes something like betrayal in the back of his throat at the look. Not communicating is something they’re both trying so hard at, this feels like he’s letting Michael down in some way.

“Okay,” Michael says slowly, “can I stay?”

Alex turns before he can glare. He refuses—refuses—to tell Michael no. He won’t do that but saying yes seems equally impossible. So he nods and moves into the kitchen. Michael hovers in the awkward space before he quickly follows him and Alex fights the urge to tell him to get out before any of his ugliness he’s managed to protect Michael from comes through. He braces his arms on the sink instead and tries to calm himself down. Michael, at least, knows enough to give him space. To keep quiet, which is something he hates. Alex feels his old self loathing roar up.

“Maybe it’d be easier for you to pretend I hadn’t made it back from war.”

Michael pales and Alex knows it’s a low blow. They’ve been building towards this for longer than either wants to admit. They can’t fight like normal couples. They can’t do anything like normal couples. It’s one step forward and two steps back with them. Always. None of which is helped by the fact that moving in with someone when you guard your own space with your life is, well, really hard. But instead of lashing out like he’s expecting, Michael goes chillingly calm.

“Take that back,” Michael says.

“Tell me it’s not true,” Alex says, “tell me it wouldn’t be easier if I hadn’t made it back. Tell me your life wouldn’t be better—“

“I’m an alien, Alex! I’m literally out of this world. If one of us was destined for an easier, normal life it sure as hell isn’t me,” he says, “and even if it was it’s not like I want normal,” Alex opens his mouth, “do not say what you’re about to say. We talked about this.”

Alex doesn’t like being told what to do. Especially not in a place he considers his own. He wants to crawl on that low ground. He wants to catalogue everything wrong that Michael has done in the name of nice and normal, not being with someone with one leg and a shower stool and the inability to always sleep through the night. Who can’t even be happy at a useless present. Michael might be an alien but on the surface he could pass for just another attractive guy. Perfect and nicely normal. Meanwhile Alex has more baggage than he knows what to do with. And Michael won’t even give him the courtesy of a fight. He’s got to be the more mature one. Suddenly Alex is very, very tired.

“Yeah,” he says, “we did.”

“What’s going on?” Michael asks as Alex drops into the chair, “Alex!” He scrambles over and drops down to the same level, peering at him anxiously and Alex wants to tell him to back off but can’t find the words, “what’s—““I’m fine,” Alex says, “just stop.”

Being told to stop isn’t something Michael is great with. Historically speaking. Michael is a man of action, he always has been. Alex is too, but he also likes to think things through. Which is how he gets into situations where there are so many thoughts in his head that he doesn’t know where to look first. It’s like being in a hole and having the dirt pour in and not knowing how to get out. He doesn’t have the words to explain to Michael that it’s as much a sinkhole in the quiet as it is when they’re fight. But at least he knows what to do with the fighting. He’s just frustrated and he promised Michael he’d stop running. He doesn’t want to break that promise.

He just really, really wishes he was normal.

Instead it feels like he’s ruined his own birthday for another endless year. Unable to just crouch there, Michael moves towards the presents. Still too smart for his own good. Alex wishes they were both a lot stupider as he picks up the bag. That’s the stupid, worst part of this. Alex can’t even fathom what Michael did to get him the boots. Shame wells up in him as he looks down at the gift. Michael drags a chair over to him and sits down, setting the bag on the ground and reaching in. Alex realizes that he’s going to have to explain the issue as Michael takes out the box. Carefully Michael pulls off the lid and pulls out one of the boots and holds it out to him. Alex opens his mouth to say something, but then he sees the glint of metal inside of it. Alex’s fingers tremble slightly as he reaches inside and feels the pylon.

There’s a foot in his boot.

Alex’s eyes flood. There’s a foot in his boot and It’s hard to wrap his head around it. He thought that Michael got him a gift he could never use, forgetting completely that if anyone would understand and anticipate something like this it’d be Michael. He pulls his hand away. This time Michael follows, winding up crouched back in front of him so they’re on the same level.

“I never wished you didn’t come back from war,” Michael says, “I wish you didn’t feel that way,” Alex looks down and Michael ducks, “but I don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Alex says, “I—“

“I couldn’t look at a guitar for years after what happened with my hand,” Michael cuts in gently, “I get it.”

“I didn’t want to ruin everything,” Alex says.

“You didn’t,” Michael tells him, “you didn’t,” Alex doesn’t believe him, “I figured you didn’t see. I should’ve said something.“

“I should’ve looked,” Alex says.

Michael ducks his head as they speak at the same time, both trying to take the blame. The shame and anger give way to embarrassment at a snap judgement. Michael pulls the chair closer and sits so they’re pressed together. Alex forces himself not to shy away from the touch but it’s surprisingly easy as Michael pulls him closer. And once he’s there, it’s not as bad as he’s bracing himself for it to be. But it’s Michael, that’s how things are with them. Being together is always better and easier than being apart, it just usually takes a moment for them to realize that.

“Thank you,” Alex says.

“You’re welcome. You need a pair of boots.”

Alex chuckles.

“Yes, but, not just for that. Thanks for coming after me. For being here,” he’s not sure what he’s saying, “just, thank you.”

Michael softens and pulls him closer and Alex presses his face into the warm skin of his shoulder. All of this is new, accepting comfort and love and thoughtful gifts. It’s new. For both of them. He’s not the only one who hates his birthday. But just for this moment things feel good. With Michael’s cheek pressed to his head and their arms around each other.

“Stay?” Alex asks.

Michael nods against his head.

#michael guerin #alex manes #malex #malex fic #roswell new mexico #roswell nm fanfic #malex fanfic #prompts #michael x alex

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kny-secret-santa2019 · 4 years

Text

from: @sacrasm to: @bi-hop merry crimmus! you asked for something about the nightmare before christmas, but ive never seen the full movie so i hope you like my gift to you!

fast times at fujikasane university

Tanjiro found himself standing in the entryway of an eight person dorm at Fujikasane University, arms full of bags. He could see a living room straight ahead, a few couches and a low table the only thing decorating the space. Well, if you could call the mess of boxes ‘decoration’, then he supposed those counted as well. His sister Nezuko skipped into the dorm before he could, eager to explore the new space.

“Hello?” He called out, walking further into the dorm. There was some loud, crashlike noises coming from one of the rooms off to the side, but it didn’t seem like many of Tanjirou’s dormmates had arrived yet. Nezuko looked at him quizzically, but he just shrugged.

All of a sudden, the room farthest from them burst open and two boys tumbled out. One of them was fairly standard as strangers go, but his hair was the color of fake cheese that comes in a can. The other one was wearing what looked like a brown fursuit of some king. They were both yelling at each other and seemingly unaware of Tanjirou’s presence.

“Get off! Get off of me!”

“RAAAAAAAGH!”

“AAAAH SOMEONE HELP oh you, right there, help me!” The blonde noticed him first, and stopped screaming now that there was a third person in the dorm.

The other one continued yelling and flailing around, so Tanjirou headbutted him.

“Ow! Hey, that’s fucking rude!” The other person grumbled, rubbing where Tanjirou assumed their head was.

“Thanks for getting that madman off of me! He suddenly jumped on me and started yelling, I don’t know why! Please protect me from that feral thing.”

The blonde pointed a trembling finger at the furry lump that was still growling, then shrieked in terror as it lunged at both boys. “RAAAAAAH!”

Both of the boys ducked behind the couch and let the feral thing go flying. It landed with a heavy thump, and didn’t move for a few seconds. When it did, a blanket fell to the floor and revealed another guy, except he was fully clad in what looked like a boar onesie. Tanjirou tilted his head quizzically, while the other boy stopped screaming for the first time since they met.

“HEY-”

“IT CAN SPEAK!” And then the dorm was full of screaming again. If the RA hadn’t heard by now, Tanjirou was willing to bet they had.

“IT-”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

“Stop yelling!” Tanjirou shouted, waving his arms wildly. The guy in the onesie stopped, but the blonde continued until Tanjirou bodily picked him up and set him down on the couch. “My name is Tanjirou Kamado, this is my sister Nezuko, and we’ll be your roommates for the year!”

He patiently waited for their own introductions, but all he got was a grunt of “Inosuke Hashibira,” and a very timid “I’m Zenitsu Agatsuma…”

“Nice to meet you! Now, why were you guys yelling?”

Zenitsu peered over the back of the couch to look at Inosuke, who was still glowering a few feet away. Nezuko drifted over to him and pet the soft looking fur of his onesie, and Inosuke just. Stopped glowering.

“I came in and was minding my own business, and that guy over there was just standing in one of the bedrooms! He was staring at a wall like a complete weirdo.”

“Hah?? Who’s the weirdo?? You were the one who screamed first!” Inosuke shouted.

The two boys started bickering again before Tanjirou intervened. This time he made sure to stay in between them, and kept them from yelling too loudly.

Apparently Inosuke had gotten to the dorm first and picked a room for himself. He also apparently slept sitting upright in a onesie, which scared Zenitsu. That’s when he started screaming, then Inosuke roared back, then Tanjirou walked in and the rest of the chaos ensued.

Once they were done talking, Tanjirou found that he liked his new roommates. Zenitsu seemed very kind and understanding if a bit of a ‘fraidy cat, and Inosuke was very blunt and wasn’t afraid to voice his opinions. He also learned that though they were in an eight person dorm, there were only going to be five of them. Their fifth roommate had yet to appear, but Tanjirou was hoping that he’d get along with them as well.

The rest of the afternoon was spent unpacking and organizing his dorm with Nezuko. Tanjirou hung up all his clothes in the closet, made his bed, decorated his half of the room, and helped his sister unpack in the time it took for Zenitsu and Inosuke to finishing fighting over which dorm who would be staying in. Despite there being three rooms to choose from, they decided to share one. Tanjirou could hear something about Inosuke being there first but Zenitsu liked the view and in the end neither boy was willing to leave.

The fifth roommate made a brief appearance, introduced himself as Kyogai as quickly as Tanjirou would let him, and proceed to move in six tsuzumis, one (1) ton of loose papers, and what looked like an entire library. He took the room next to Tanjirou and Nezuko’s, and didn’t come out for the rest of the night. More power to him, Tanjirou supposed.

On the first day of actual school, Tanjirou left his dorm with Zenitsu and Inosuke to go to Inter. Karate. By some stroke of luck, they had all signed up for the same 8:30 karate class. They’d even ended up in the same workout group, along with two upperclassmen. Tanjirou knew one of them; his name was Giyuu and he was a longtime friend of the Kamado family. They’d been neighbors from middle school onwards, and part of the reason why Tanjirou wanted to apply to Fujikasane. The other student was a short girl with sections of her hair dyed a vibrant purple. She looked too frail to be in a martial arts class, much less an intermediate one.

“Hey, aren’t you too weak for this class?” Inosuke bluntly asked the girl, making Tanjirou and Zenitsu drop their jaws in shock.

“Inosuke, you shouldn’t say things like that! It’s rude!” Zenitsu exclaimed.

The girl laughed in response and took a step forward. In the blink of an eye, Inosuke was laying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Giyuu snorted and gestured at him. “Is this the roommate you were texting me about?”

Tanjirou vigorously nodded. “How’d you know, Tomioka-san?”

“He’s still wearing the onesie. And don’t call me that.”

The girl who’d brutally judo flipped Inosuke howled with laughter. “Tomioka-san! Ahaha, that’s adorable. You know this kid? He’s a real hoot.”

“Do me a favor Kochou, and just stop talking. Forever.”

“Awww, that’s cruel of you Tomioka-san! Young man, don’t you think he should be nicer to a poor defenseless girl?”

“You just threw Inosuke, I don’t think that’s very defenseless of you-”

Kochou continued to laugh. Giyuu closed his eyes and let out a long suffering sigh. When Inosuke finished getting to his feet and glared at her, she only laughed harder, especially when the younger boy rushed at her. It resulted in the expected outcome: Inosuke fell to the floor in a graceless heap again when Kochou sidestepped and tripped him.

“Man, this kid is a real hoot. Do you want to try again, Inosuke-san?”

He grunted in response and tugged the boar shaped hood of his onesie over his blue-black hair.

The rest of the class went by in a similar manner; though Tanjirou and his roommates were proficient in martial arts, the two older students consistently beat them. Tanjirou eventually got tired of being thrown around by Kochou and started practicing with Giyuu, but the other two boys were determined to best her at least once. By the time class ended, neither Zenitsu nor Inosuke had succeeded. Kochou had given them several opportunities, but the two of them got in each others way or bickered about who got in whose way.

“You two numbskulls are kind of entertaining, I’ll give you that.” She laughed.

“Did she just insult us?” Zenitsu asked Inosuke.

The other boy gave him a hard look. “Do you think I know what an insult is?”

“Ah, oh man, you’re going to make me cry. Tell you what, I’ll give you two a consolation prize: a frat bid.”

“A fraternity?” Zenitsu’s eyes bugged out of his head. “Like the ones where students drink?”

Giyuu sighed for the seventh time.

—

“And that’s how we ended up here, in the middle of the woods,” Tanjirou finished. “Otherwise, my roommates and I probably wouldn’t have shown up to Rush Week!”

Kanao nodded in understanding and signed, ‘My older sister is a Pillar, so I’m going to pledge with her frat.’ To Zenitsu who relayed it back to Tanjirou.

She was a sophomore that he met in the library a week back, and now they were study buddies. He’d wanted a tutor for Biology and met Kanao, and became quick friends due to his friendly nature. She was also mute like Nezuko, and he made sure to introduce them.

“Oh, that’s so cool! My friend is a Pillar, too!” Tanjirou replied, thinking of Giyuu.

“The fuck’s a Pillar?” Inosuke grumbled. “I showed up for free beer, and because you ‘n Blondie stole my room key.”

‘Pillars are the officers for Delta Sigma Chi.’

Inosuke grunted in understanding, but Tanjirou was cut off by the music that began to come from the loudspeakers on the makeshift stage a hundred feet away. An older student with bright pink hair and unique striped tattoos was hanging from the lighting which struck him as dangerous, but the guy seemed to be just fine. The pylons were shaking so much that he should’ve fallen off, but his legs were firmly hooked around the supports.

“Welcome to Rush Week, plebs!” He shouted into a mic. Some of the girls in the crowd screamed his name, but their voices got lost in the blasting music coming from the sound system.

With his shout, the giant party kicked off and all the students went wild. A lot of the freshmen flocked to the drinks table and the dance floor, while another substantial chunk wandered towards the frat court.

“Hey, I think it’s this way!” Zenitsu shouted, barely audible over the bass boosted music blaring from the speakers. “There’s the sign for Delta Sigma Chi!”

Tanjirou nodded and linked his arms with Nezuko, Inosuke, and Kanao to keep them from getting lost in the sea of partygoers as they followed Zenitsu. His blonde hair made a surprisingly good beacon amongst the crowd of dark haired students, even more so with the neon lights.

“Who’s that group of glitter munching idiots?” Inosuke asked, looking in the direction of a platform that had been erected a little ways away. There were twelve individuals standing on top of it, looking down on the crowd. There was a banner hung up behind them, but he couldn’t make out the words on it from that far away.

“I think that’s Alpha Kappa Mu,” Tanjirou replied. He’d heard about them from some of the older students; not everyone was cut out for AKM. They were one of the only fraternities who still engaged in hazing its pledges, and were known for sometimes being the nastiest students on campus. Tanjirou wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, because he was taught not to judge based on appearances, but there was something about its officers that struck him as a little off. Alpha Kappa Mu was also Delta Sigma Chi’s long standing rival, so he made sure to steer clear.

Some girl, probably an officer, had tried to recruit Nezuko as an AKM pledge earlier in the week, but she’d refused. The officer hadn’t been happy and continued her attempts to coerce Nezuko, but Giyuu spotted her across the quad and hurried over to intervene. When he made it clear that Nezuko wasn’t interested, she reluctantly slunk off and Giyuu walked Nezuko back to the dorms in case the girl was waiting to try again.

They continued to make their way through the crowd until Kanao tugged the three of them towards a slightly quieter part of the clearing. There was a small gathering of students already there, but based on the sign that read ΔΣΧ in big, sloppy painted characters.

“HEY HEY HEY!” Someone shouted, making poor Zenitsu shriek in fear and Inosuke roar in response. “Well that’s not very cash money of you,” the person calmly said to Zenitsu, tsk’ing at his reaction.

“Uzui, don’t scare the fresh meat.” Someone called, most likely one of the frat officers.

“I’m not scaring them, I’m just looking.” Uzui huffed. “They seem kinda small this year, don’cha think?”

“Hey! Just cuz I’m short doesn’t mean I can’t bite your fucking face off!” Inosuke shouted, making the Pillars blink in surprise. “I’ll fuck your mom!”

“Inosuke, calm down-” Tanjirou said, trying to placate his friend. Inosuke just snarled and glared at Uzui.

“Shinobu was the one who gave him a bid.” Giyuu deadpanned, making his way through the crowd to Tanjirou and his friends. Kochou followed not long after, waving her hands in the air. Kanao beamed when she saw her, though Tanjirou didn’t know why.

“I thought he was interesting! It would’ve been criminal to pass up on kids like them! Don’t you think so too, Rengoku-san?” “Haha, of course! I welcome anyone who’s proven themselves to a Pillar! I’m sure Oyakata-sama would too!”

A fourth upperclassman had wandered over, well-muscled arms crossed over his chest. Tanjirou recognized him as one of Giyuu’s college friends, though he didn’t know his name. Whoever he was, Tanjirou had to admit that he was cute. He was obviously attractive, but his himbo tendencies made him 10x cuter.

Kanao waved, obviously familiar with everyone. ‘This is the Flame Pillar, Rengoku Kyoujurou, the Sound Pillar Uzui Tengen, the Water Pillar Tomioka Giyuu, and my sister! She’s Kochou Shinobu, the Insect Pillar.’

“She’s your SISTER?!” Zenitsu shouted. “A nice girl like you has an ogre like that for a sister?!”

“Watch who you call an ogre,” Shinobu said, shooting Zenitsu an ominous smile.

“Now it’s my turn to remind you not to scare the fresh meat.” Uzui shot back, smirking down at the other Pillar.

Shinobu flipped her bangs and huffed, paying no mind to his words. She opened her mouth to say something else, when a hush fell over their section of the woods. It didn’t take long for Tanjirou and his friends to notice that a new person had arrived, and that they must’ve been the president of ΔΣΧ based on the way all the Pillars silently deferred to them. As they drew closer, Tanjirou could see that it was a man not much older than the rest of them. The strangest thing about him was that his eyes were kind of glassy, almost like they couldn’t focus. He thought that the man was blind, but he looked at each of them with such ease that he didn’t think a sightless person could possess.

“Hello, Rengoku, Uzui, Giyuu, and Shinobu. And hello to you as well, though I don’t know your names.”

“I’m Tanjirou, and this is my sister Nezuko!” Tanjirou brightly said, vigorously shaking the man’s hand.

Zenitsu and Inosuke introduced themselves afterwards, but Inosuke refused to shake his hand. The man didn’t seem fazed, and began talking to the Pillars. Giyuu introduced him as Oyakata-sama, the president of the fraternity as Tanjirou originally thought. His real name was Ubuyashiki Kagaya, but it was apparently tradition to call the president Oyakata. Something about a holdover from the Taisho Era, but history was never Tanjirou’s best subject. And he was, in fact, blind, but he Ubuyashiki was so well adjusted that aside from the IV cane he held, no one could tell that he couldn’t see. “Well, I think it would only be proper to give them all bids,” Ubuyashiki said, snapping Tanjirou back into the conversation. “You’ll get a flyer about initiation in a week or so, so make sure you keep an eye out for it.”

They all thanked the fraternity president, and then he was moving on to greet another group of pledge hopefuls. Having gotten their bids, Zenitsu and Inosuke headed back to the dorm while Tanjirou, Nezuko, and Kanao stayed behind to chat with their Pillar friends.

—

Stage 1: report to the delta sigma chi frat house to begin the initiation process

—

Like Ubuyashiki said, Inosuke found a flyer slipped under their door regarding initiation. He almost threw it away thinking it was trash, but Zenitsu stopped him before he got rid of it. They also found another flyer, but it had ‘Alpha Kappa Mu’ written across the header. Tanjirou guessed that Kyogai must’ve pledged with the rival frat, since he, Nezuko, Zenitsu, and Inosuke had all gotten bids from Delta Sigma Chi.

It said to find the Delta Sigma Chi house on Frat Row to find out about the first part of initiation, so Tanjirou and his three roommates (plus Kanao) made their way over and found themselves on the porch waiting for someone to answer the door. Kanao had just knocked again when the door swung open, revealing a bright eyed Shinobu.

Instead of a standard ‘hello’, Shinobu looked at each of them and immediately asked, “You kids got any comfy blankets?”

“Uh…” Was Zenitsu’s answer.

“Why?” Tanjirou asked, ever curious.

“Eh, you’ll find out. I hope you do, at any rate. GIYUU!” She shouted into the house. “YOUR PLEDGELINGS ARE HERE!”

The sound of several doors slamming and slippers on stairs could be heard, before one (1) tired Giyuu Tomioka appeared wrapped in a weird half magenta half yellow green geometric patterned blanket slash cape. It looked a bit like a fashionable Snuggie, but also nothing like a Snuggie because there was no front. His hair was in its trademark ponytail, but some of it was falling out and into his eyes. He tucked most of the flyaways behind his ear and tried to redo his hair as he came down the stairs, but it didn’t fix much.

“Stop fucking yelling.” The Water Pillar grumbled.

“YEAH, KOCHOU!” Uzui bellowed from somewhere inside the frat house.

“SHUT. UP.” Someone else screamed, immediately followed by the slamming of another door.

“Ugh.” Giyuu scrubbed a hand over his face and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “What’s this about pledges?”

Shinobu pointed at the three boys plus Nezuko and Kanao in the doorway and Giyuu sighed. She cackled and left him with the five freshmen, who filed into the house and into one of the smaller living rooms. They settled on one couch, squishing together to fit four on a loveseat for two. Giyuu took an armchair and pointedly looked at the four other available couches, but none of them moved.

“Okay, I’ll bite. Why are you here? Tanjirou comes every other day because we’re friends, and so is Nezuko, but why are the rest of you here?”

Nezuko handed him a slip of paper that read ‘report to the delta sigma chi frat house to begin the initiation process.’

“Oh. Stage 1 is just making yourself one of these,” he gestured to his weird blanket, “and wearing it for the rest of the semester. A lot of members wear it afterwards, since it’s just a blanket. Sort of.”

“IT’S CALLED A ‘BLAPE’, TOMIOKA! GET WITH THE PROGRAM!” It sounded like Uzui, but someone else yelled at him to shut up (again) so Tanjirou couldn’t tell.

“That’s it?? Just wear one of those? Easy!” Inosuke asked.

“For the semester,” Tanjirou reminded him.

“Yeah. It’s a little weird, but bear with it.” Giyuu said, shifting his blanket cape so it wouldn’t fall off. “It’s been one of the few traditions Delta Sigma Chi’s held onto since its founding.”

“Inosuke can barely keep his shirt on, I don’t think he’ll be able to -” Zenitsu paused as he turned to see Nezuko draping a blanket that’d been on the couch around her and her brother. “Seriously?? Am I the only one against this?”

“It’s really not that bad, Zenitsu…” Tanjirou admitted. “This might make my eight A.M. lecture a little more bearable, actually!”

“Now that’s the spirit!” Rengoku boomed, appearing at the top of the stairs in his own gaudy fire patterned blanket cape. “I knew we had some good pledges this year!”

He came downstairs and congratulated them for making it to the frat house before any of the other pledges had. The Flame Pillar even showed them some sewing patterns Kanroji and Himejima had put together as the standard blanket cape for Delta Sigma Chi members. Most of the other pledges would be left to figure out how to make their own by themselves, but out of courtesy (plus Tanjirou and Kanao’s connection to the frat), he decided to lend a hand.

Another one of the Pillars wandered downstairs while the five of them were there, someone that Tanjirou didn’t recognize.

“If you guys come back at five, we’re doing a movie night for all the pledges. We’re going to vote, but honestly? We’re just going to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas.” He said, tossing said blu-ray to them.

They ended up staying and texting Inosuke and Zenitsu to come back later in the evening and had a fun movie night, meeting the other pledges and eating pizza while Jack Skellington waltzed around on the TV.

–

Stage 2: all pledges have one month to play as many funny temporary and NON-LETHAL pranks on any and all members of alpha kappa mu regardless of their membership status

—

“What do you mean you ordered a pizza for AKM’s president?!” Zenitsu furiously whispered.

They were sitting in the lecture hall listening to Professor Urokodaki give a presentation about the Sengoku Period. There were a few members of Alpha Kappa Mu scattered around them, but the president himself was sitting all the way in the back. Tanjirou had seen Kibutsuji Muzan terrorizing other freshmen and lording his seniority over them. He figured that he’d focus most of his pranks on Kibutsuji for that, and also because Kyogai came back to the dorm once with red eyes and bruises.

“I paid Murata-kun who works at the Jake’s down the street and told him to bring it here.” Tanjirou shrugged. “Who doesn’t like pizza?”

“Are you crazy?”

“Well, Professor Urokodaki is a family friend and I asked him beforehand-”

“Tanjirou, you paid Murata-kun to give Kibutsuji a pizza in the middle of a lecture and he’s the president of Alpha Kappa Mu who is our Rival Fraternity??! The guy who is infamous for being evil???”

The student sitting in front of them turned around with a quiet laugh. “Oyakata-sama said pledges have to prank AKM again this year, didn’t he?”

“Uh, yeah. You are?” Zenitsu suspiciously asked.

“Tokitou. I’m one of the Pillars.” The boy said, giving them a distant smile. “I just got back from my study abroad in Kyoto so I haven’t heard much about what’s going on.”

“Well, if you wait about fifteen minutes, you’ll see, or whatever.” Zenitsu sighed. “I can’t believe you’re seriously trying to one up Kibutsuji, of all people! He’s terrifying!”

‘Not everyone is as scared of AKM as you are, Zenitsu.’

“You’re supposed to take my side, Kanao!!”

Tokitou laughed at the pledges and went back to taking notes, when someone hesitantly knocked on the door and stepped into the hall, effectively interrupting Urokodaki’s lecture.

“I, uh, have one medium vegetarian pizza for Kibutsuji?” Murata nervously said, shaking just a little bit.

All the heads in the lecture hall turned to face the back where he sat, red eyes almost glowing with rage underneath the shadow of his fedora. The professor disinterestedly looked at Murata to his student, with the air of someone who’d seen it a million times.

“Well, Kibutsuji? Are you going to come and get the pizza you so carelessly ordered?”

Through clenched teeth, he said, “I didn’t order a pizza.”

Urokodaki rolled his eyes. “Well the delivery man said your name, didn’t he? I don’t know how he’d benefit from lying in this situation.”

“Just pay for the pizza,” one of Kibutsuji’s friends was saying. “You can deal with the prof later.”

There was some mild grumbling from the man but he paid Murata for the food and told him to leave it by the door. For the rest of the hour long lecture, Tanjirou, Zenitsu, and Kanao could feel someone’s venomous gaze on the backs of their necks. Tokitou, on the other hand, leaned back in his seat again and made a face in Kibutsuji’s direction. A few students in between the two of them gasped, but the Pillar remained unfazed.

When Zenitsu’s jaw dropped, Tokitou said “Michikatsu, the senior next to him, is my second cousin. Or something.” By way of explanation. Not that it explained much.

—

Stage 3: hang out with a Pillar or Delta Sigma Chi member of choice for one week

not to do menial labor, that’s hazing

it’s for fun and a chance to get to know your fellow frat members

—

The frat member Tanjirou decided on, obviously, was Giyuu. He was going to go meet up with Rengoku as well, just to call things even, but he and the Water Pillar went to one of the on-campus cafes for drinks one Friday. That’s how Tanjirou wound up standing at the order counter with Giyuu’s recyclable cup with the words ‘ur cute hmu?’ staring back up at him.

Tanjirou blinked, hard. Then he pivoted on his heel and marched the innocuous cup back to Giyuu.

“Um, your coffee’s ready?”

He stiffly placed the cup in front of Giyuu who briefly glanced at the message written on the coffee cup. His face remained devoid of emotion while he read the short note, and without a single reaction he took a sip of his still steaming drink. Tanjirou looked back at the (cute) barista who made a questioning gesture. When Giyuu still hadn’t reacted, he apologetically shrugged and mouthed ‘sorry’ before being yanked down into a chair.

“People are staring.” Giyuu flatly said.

“But - the nice student who made your drink thinks you’re attractive?” Tanjirou asked.

“Ignore him.”

The girl at the table over from theirs giggled and leaned towards Giyuu. “Tomioka, isn’t it rude to do that?” Tanjirou recognized her as Mitsuri, one of the Pillars. He had yet to personally meet her, but knew she was a friend of Giyuu’s and part of Delta Sigma Chi. “You should at least say hello!”

“Yeah,” Tanjirou agreed. “You should at least turn him down if you’re not interested, Giyuu-san.”

The Water Pillar tiredly sighed. Mitsuri grinned like a cat that got the cream, but Tanjirou had no idea why. Then Giyuu got up, walked over to where the barista was still waiting at the order counter, leaned over it, and kissed him with little fanfare. Tanjirou’s jaw dropped in shock and Mitsuri laughed at him. The barista fistpumped and Giyuu gave Tanjirou a look that said ‘are you satisfied?’. On the way back to the table, they both stayed silent. The Love Pillar was still laughing by herself, although there was someone sitting with her now. He’d appeared out of nowhere, and Tanjirou almost fell out of his chair.

“Obanai,” Giyuu said by way of greeting.

“Asshole,” the man said back. “I’m still mad at you about last month.”

Obanai and Giyuu started passively arguing about something petty one of them had done in response to something the other did while Tanjirou watched. He wasn’t entirely sure who was right and who was wrong, but he was leaning towards Giyuu mostly out of personal bias. Kanroji tried to step in and resolve the argument, but Obanai just kept talking.

“And you,” he said, pointing a finger at Tanjirou. “I can’t believe that you made Oyakata-sama give your sister a bid. Delta Sigma Chi is about undeclared majors and acceptance, and she’s declared a major!”

“Obanai, leave it alone,” Kanroji suggested. “Anyone is welcome in the frat, major or no. Plus, Oyakata-sama already said she could pledge. If you keep eating sour lemons, then that’s the only thing you’ll be able to taste.”

Tanjirou tilted his head in confusion. “But Obanai-san is drinking hot chocolate?”

“It’s a saying, Tanjirou.” Giyuu said. “As for what he’s saying, he’s just annoyed Oyakata-sama let in someone with a major. He’s usually stricter about it.” “Oh, I see.” He hummed.

Giyuu took another sip of his drink and Tanjirou found himself not only talking to his friend, but the other two Pillars as well. Half an hour passed like that, until a newcomer approached their tables and sat themselves square on Giyuu’s lap. It took Tanjirou a minute to realize it was the barista from earlier, mostly because he too was wearing one of Delta Sigma Chi’s blanket capes. It was the same yellow-green geometric pattern as Giyuu’s, and he couldn’t help but wonder if Giyuu had used the leftover fabric from his or if he had used it to imitate Giyuu.

“Isn’t that-”

“This is my boyfriend. He works in the cafe and likes to flirt with me, even though we’re already dating.” He explained.

“I’m Sabito,” the barista said, giving Tanjirou a smile reminiscent of a fox.

Immediately, the gears clicked. “You’re Sabito! Oh, Giyuu’s told me about you! He talks about you like you’re the sun and didn’t you go to my high school?”

“Yeah, I think so. Natagumo High?” Tanjirou nodded.

“Wow, that’s so cool! I’m looking forward to being in ΔΣΧ with you!”

Sabito gave him another one of his fox’s smiles and Giyuu let out yet another long suffering sigh.

—

Step 4: congrats, you’re now a full member of ΔΣΧ! make sure to have fun as part of delta sigma chi at fujikasane university!

and remember to antagonize alpha kappa mu as often as you humanly can!

dont forget to set your heart ablaze 🔥🔥🔥!!!

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pylonfanclub · 4 months

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Rainy night on the highway.

#pylon guy speaks #Sorry about the bad quality #Ugh I just wish I had a better camera or something. I like the composition of this one #I think it would look super cool if I could capture more details because this was so sick in person #my photos #rainy night #highways #night highway #Rain #night photography

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chubbyooo · 5 years

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Blurred Lines Chapter 24 - Shadow Town

I’m really in a writing groove right now so here we go with another Gacen chapter

Gacen and Ash try to escape Nar Shaddaa after their encounter with the Dubrillion nobles

Smoke billowed from the front of the taxi rising high into the sky as Ash and Gacen stumbled out

“god damn it are you sure this things busted” Gacen asked the Rodian who responded with a string of Rodese curse words “ok I’m sorry for falling onto your taxi I’ll pay for the damage” Gacen enjoyed having money, it certainly made these types of conversations easier. He passed over the credit chip and turned to Ash, she was surveying the area or at least trying to she was still pretty delirious from the fall

“that smokes gonna be seen for miles we gotta split and fast” Ash had a good point, this plan certainly hadn’t been the smoothest he’d ever come up with “where are we I don’t think I’ve ever been to this part of Nar Shaddaa” Gacen didn’t recognise this place either and he’d been on Nar Shaddaa an awful lot.

He tried to check his holopad but there was no data on this area “I can’t say I know I’ve never been here before and there’s no data for this place” he paused looking around “we should probably keep a low profile” Ash nodded and they made their way out to the rest of the slum. It all seemed pretty normal to Gacen, streets with gazebos and tents littering the edge of the streets, tall buildings overlooking the street and broken down speeders. Gacen had always thought Nar Shaddaa was a marvel of sentient interference, the place probably didn’t resemble the actual moon at all, he hoped his planet never ended up like that. As he looked around he noticed the people seemed off, not in a dangerous way but usually gangs would congregate in different parts of the slums and patrol, but here... well here anyone he could see seemed alone and like they were avoiding others.

“does something seem off to you Gacen” Ash seemed to have picked up on it too, how could you not it’s everywhere

“yeah it’s kinda um quiet” quiet was defiantly not synonymous with Nar Shaddaa, Gacen didn’t like this

“my thoughts exactly we should move quick” Gacen nodded in agreement and began to walk a bit faster as they tried to find the exit

“first chance I get I’m stealing a speeder” Ash surprisingly nodded in agreement. They walked in silence until they came to a crossroads

“well what now” Ash said clearly frustrated

“uhhh right I guess” Gacen thought the smaller passage could mean a way out

“ok but this better not bite me in the ass” Gacen nodded and they headed down the corridor “so what next?”

seems like a silly question “huh what do you mean we head this way” Gacen said frowning

“I mean with the whole finding Risha thing” oh that made more sense

Gacen hesitated before he spoke up “well we have a small lead so I say follow that up” he paused looking at Ash “I mean if you’re fine with that”

Ash smiled “of course I am but what lead it went south before we got any good information” Ash was right if they could’ve gotten a lot more information that would’ve been helpful, but they’d have to make do

“the Champion of the Great Hunt is an old friend of mine” Ash didn’t look surprised and Gacen didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing “we did a couple jobs together years ago hopefully she’ll help us out” Gacen thought she would she’d never been the grudge type.

Ash shrugged “I guess that’s as good a plan as any” before striding ahead. As they turned the corner they were met with an odd site; forcefields on each side of the wall like a prison in fact the whole place reminded him of a... oh oh dear

“hey um Ash I think we stumbled into a prison camp” Gacen tensed up, as the realisation hit him all the memories of his own incarceration started flooding back

“yeaah ok um let’s uh just get through here and uh you know run” that seemed like a good plan, as long as it didn't involve them dying right now it was considered a good plan in his eyes though. They slowly crept forwards trying to avoid looking into the cells each side of them, they made their way about halfway through the chamber before they heard a raspy voice

“well well well someone is out of their cell when they shouldn’t beeeee” his words were barely audible but yet conveyed a strange presence Gacen couldn’t quite place. Gacen turned to see a huge human male up against the forcefield, all his veins could be seen pulsating as the hulking form stared right at him

Gacen responded flusteredly “oh um no not us we um are just passing through we uh aren’t inmates” the man just stood their laughing to himself with a raspy croak

Ash grabbed his arm “don’t interact with them it’ll only cause trouble” she was right Gacen recollected himself and they began moving to the end of the chamber

As they did they could here the voice speak up “hahaha it doesn’t matter if they find you you’ll be in here like the rest of us” what the fuck was that guy on, probably what got him in prison. They hurriedly exited the chamber and arrived into another large slum area

“shit there’s more” Ash cursed as she looked around for another exit. Gacen began looking around for an exit too but just saw more long streets.

Before they had a chance to find out however they heard “THERE THEY ARE THE TWO FUGITIVES, GET THEM” over some form of megaphone. As Gacen turned he saw a bunch of guards ready to give chase.

https://open.spotify.com/track/6viYNPPQasixMdM8LTlbPX?si=gwhrXanwSjWyf8nT-BWiqw

“shit” Gacen grabbed Ash’s hand and immediately they ran into a nearby alley

“what’s the plan” Ash exclaimed as they ran down the alley

“well so far run and I’m working on the next part” Gacen skidded round at the end of the alley and dived into another hoping Ash would follow.

“oh perfect” Ash shouted sarcastically. Well at least she was following, Gacen could here the sounds of the guards gaining on them and knew he would have to be creative to lose them. Diversions? what’s a good diversion? he realised as he went to drop a smoke grenade but when he went to get one none were left damn it shit that was his go to. He looked around and saw a stack of large pipes on a precarious girder perfect, he drew his pistol shooting them loose and then dropping into a slide. The pipes began to fall as he slid along the ground, boy he was cutting this close as he saw the pipes falling above his head he closed his eyes expecting pain but surprisingly when he opened his eyes he was fine. He stood up quickly looking to see he had made a small barricade hopefully enough to stop their cars, suddenly he saw a flash of blue land next to him. How on earth did Ash jump over? not important, he sprinted ahead as they found their way out back into the streets. Ash moved a dumpster in front of the alley as Gacen looked for an exit. He could see across the way the taxi area, perfect he could steal a speeder, he began to run towards it but as he reached the other side of the road guards swarmed from around the corner blocking the way. Crap Fuck Shit he turned and saw guards still on his tail, the only option was the door in front of him, he bolted towards it luckily it opened as he did. As he entered he was met with the strong smell of body odour, he could see conveyer belts, casting buckets and vats all around, must be a smelting factory perfect. He quickly ran up one of the cat walks before jumping onto a conveyer belt leading up; he could escape the factory from the top. He looked back to see Ash had taken her own route choosing to swing up and over onto a catwalk, she grabbed onto a light sticking out of the wall used the momentum to jump and grab onto the nearby catwalk, then used her swinging momentum to shift herself to the top of it in one fluid motion. How on earth did she do that Gacen thought as he reached the top of the conveyer, he suddenly felt himself lose his balance as he was teetering on the edge of something. He turned around to see a giant bright burning reddish brown vat in front of him

“shit shit shit” he let out as he tried to balance himself, he felt himself lose his footing as he began to fall, but then he felt his scarf catch against his neck making him gasp for air. He felt himself hoisted up and saw Ash on the walkway next to him, did he even weigh anything?

“ok that’s why we don’t get on conveyer belts you doofus” Ash said condescendingly Gacen nodded no time to argue his point. They ran along the walkway he could see the roof exit on the ladder ahead, as they ran he could see bolts of energy fly past, looks like the guards had caught up. He reached the ladder and quickly scrambled up helping Ash up after him, he then shot out the ladder supports causing it to fall off it’s hinges. They made their way to the edge of the building where Gacen could see guards swarming the ground buuuut there was a very clear path to the taxis in the air he only needed a glider. “GACEN YOU BETTER HAVE A PLAN” Ash shouted as Gacen looked around for something to use before he saw a pylon hanging from the ceiling of the sector roof.

“yeah yeah I do I just need some rope” he scanned the roof for suitable tools YES on next to the ladder there was a fire hose. He scrambled over to it collecting a long enough section and cut it off, as he did he could hear guards at the broken ladder and it wouldn’t be long before they figured out a way up. He scurried back over to Ash with the length of hose trailing behind him

Ash looked wide eyed at the hose “you have GOT to be kidding me” fair criticism but not the time.

Gacen sighed “just trust me” he swung the hose out and threw the hose end up to the pylon, please wrap around please wrap around, the hose went flying over and then wrapped itself round the horizontal section of the pylon. YES perfect, he made sure the hose had little slack and then gestured to Ash to grab hold. She hesitated looking around for another option but as she hesitated a Guard mad his way on to the roof

Ash looked around awkwardly “ugggh fine” she grabbed hold of the hose and they ran towards the edge of the building

Gacen grinned as they jumped “wheeeeeeeee” they fell for a couple seconds before the hose caught then and they began swinging towards the taxi area. At the middle of the swing they came pretty close to the floor hearing blaster shots trying to shoot at them and some coming very close. But as they reached the apex they were out of the sectors borders and jumped off landing on the taxi pad with a bumpy roll. Gacen quickly got up and pushed the droid out of the taxi turning on the ignition

“but this is an unauthorised departure, you can’t” the droid pleaded as Gacen shoved him out

Ash stepped over it’s head and got it “yeah that’s totally the worst of our crimes today” as she got in Gacen pumped the accelerator and they sped out of the district.

“we gotta get back to the ship like right now!!” Gacen said pushing the taxi to it’s limit, hopefully they had outrun whatever all that was.

Ash slinked down in her chair and quietly said “I hate when you’re right”...

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itsbenedict · 5 years

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Kingdoms and Koopas: Ep. 9

K&K is a Fate Accelerated campaign set in the Mario universe, which I’m running for three players:

Bee @thebeeskneesocks, playing Kandace Koopa

Jovian @jovian12, playing Cozmo Naut

Malky @sleepdepravity, playing Dr. Chevy Chain

Last time | Archive | Next time

Previously on Kingdoms and Koopas, the gang infiltrated the previously-invisible Orbital Doom Casa of the alien invasion force led by Orbulon, Tatanga the Mysterious Spaceman, and the disembodied head of Sir Grodus. They did a number on Tatanga and rescued Princess Opal, but... they’ve still got to get a hold of the Music Key powering the ship, get out, and do so without causing the now-powerless giant spaceship to fall out of the sky and onto the unsuspecting city below.

Also, an unexpected interloper shows up and has a bad day.

So to kick things off, they’ve got a power core room featuring the power core (which they can’t take without causing the ship they’re on to crash), an unconscious spaceman, and a destroyed mech suit. For reasons I don’t totally understand, they decide their first priority is to hide the evidence of what they’ve done. That means disposing of a ton of huge mech parts- and their search for a mech-parts-sized garbage chute in the power core is fruitless.

So, they call in some assistance from Orbulon. Or, rather, they make use of the codephrase they received from him to command the Space Bunnies at the Bunny Ranch to do their bidding. They head over there, all three of them totally failing their spot checks as they leave.

The Bunny Ranch is incongruous with the rest of the spaceship- the walls are painted sky-blue, there’s astroturf or possibly actual grass on the ground, and all the bunnies are defying gravity and frolicking around. When Chevy speaks the codephrase “time to strike”, they follow her commands. Her commands are to find somewhere to hide the parts of the Pagosu. They don’t say anything to acknowledge this, but they line up and start following the party, so...

When they return to the power core, as they step through the door, they immediately feel the ship lurch, see the lights go out, and notice the consequences of their having failed their spot checks earlier.

What they didn’t notice was a tall figure in a black cloak- you know the tall figure in the black cloak, the one who’s been following them around and apparently trying to steal the Music Keys for Kammy Koopa- slipping into the room as they exited. And what they see on their return is that exact figure, having snatched the Music Key that was keeping the ship afloat, making a break for the elevator to flee.

Thankfully, they rescued Princess Opal earlier. As the princess of the Magic Kingdom, she has magical power to spare- that’s why Tatanga was trying to hypnotize her into serving as the ship’s new power core. She rushes over to do so voluntarily, channeling magic to restore power.

This is heavy work, though, so Kandace decides to help lighten the load- literally. Remember she has that one spell she keeps using on Chevy, the one that makes things lighter- but also softer and rounder? She, uh... attempts to cast this spell on the ship. Yes, the entire ship. No, that shouldn’t have worked. Yes, she rolled pretty well, and I had to give her something.

So the floor and walls of the ship suddenly get- not totally cushiony like the spell does to normal targets, but a little bit softer and springier. The floor is like a trampoline, now.

But meanwhile, the cloaked figure is still getting away! Chevy is in hot pursuit, and accidentally wings one of the central power pylons, but she manages to catch up. Cozmo follows, attempting to, uh...

Well, he’s attempting to ride a firework for speed.

It, uh, doesn’t work exactly as planned. Fireworks aren’t known for being able to support the weight of an entire person, so he sorta eats dirt on account of his aspect Actually Lame. But, hey, there’s a convenient logical consequence of trying to ride a firework: they explode! Even when you’re riding them! Which meant I got to channel Dale Friesen for a sec.

“So, would you like it to explode in your favor, or not in your favor?”

“Oh! Uh, in my favor, please!”

“As you command. The firework explodes in your favor.”

Which means that the force of the explosion is much greater than expected, and Cozmo takes a heavy hit as it explodes underneath him, and... launches him into the elevator, allowing him to catch up to the cloaked figure. Which was his objective, making the roll! Entirely in his favor.

So Cozmo and Chevy manage to get in the elevator with the cloaked figure, and hold the door open for Kandace, not far behind. Opal stays behind to power the ship, and Nauti Naut helps the space bunnies do... something with the Pagosu parts.

Anyway, they roll for initiative and start beating up on this dude as the elevator heads up. They try to snatch the Music Key from his hands, but he has a surprisingly strong grip, and they aren’t having much luck. Plus, he manages to steal Kandace’s broom!

They’re in the middle of this brawl, Chevy having managed to pin him down under his bulk, when the doors to the elevator open- onto the bridge of the ship. They are immediately noticed by X-Naut guards- who recognize Cozmo, and ask what the heck is going on. Entirely truthfully, he tells them that this creepo stole the power core, and they’re trying to get it back so that the ship doesn’t crash. So a couple guards come over to try and join the fight.

Chevy isn’t having any of it- that’d just make all this more complicated. She whips her chain and hits the door close button before they can get inside, and they head back down towards the power core. And they... do a pretty bad job lying about why they did that, making the guards pretty suspicious.

But that’s a problem for later! Back down they go. Chevy finally manages to get the cloaked figure to drop the Music Key by threatening to bite his hand off, and then rolls shockingly well to spit the Music Key back into place as soon as the elevator doors open again.

The cloaked figure, heedless of his assailants, runs to go try and grab it again- but Opal manages to block him, now that the Music Key is in place and she’s not tied up channeling magic. And Kandace follows this up by casting a spell against him.

The spell is a tornado made of fire.

The tornado made of fire behaves erratically, in this round room with two “downs” and no “up”, and begins spinning around the room at high speed. It hits the cloaked figure, lighting up his cloak of magical darkness and burning it to a crisp.

And the true identity of the cloaked figure is...

...some weird tall purple guy with a crooked mustache and a big nose! Sort of an... underwhelming reveal. Kandace thinks maybe she’s seen him before on TV somewhere- like, a sporting event, maybe?

Anyway, they continue trying to down this weirdo. Chevy pops over to the Bunny Ranch to call in the cavalry, while Kandace just goes totally apeshit on him and bites onto his head. Cozmo goes to slap him, and apparently doesn’t know his own strength because it’s a crit that severely wounds the dude, dealing more damage than any single attack the party has ever done. Things continue on in this vein, with Kandace continuing to aggro him, the horde of space bunnies ineffectually pulling at him and impeding his movement, and Cozmo launching him to the ceiling by shoving fireworks up his nose. The whole time, this guy- his name’s “Waluigi”, if you’re wondering- he’s single-mindedly focused on grabbing the Music Key, failing to attack the party.

Having taken him down, the space bunnies disperse and the team is left in... roughly the same situation as before, except instead of a destroyed mech there is an unconscious man with a destroyed nose. The X-Naut guards show up, but their suspicious are quickly dispelled when they see that the party did, in fact, subdue the intruder and return the Music Key to the power core.

(They do worry about Tatanga being unconscious, but the party manages to bluff past their questions- their story is that Tatanga was a traitor who was working with Waluigi to steal the power core.)

Chevy starts patching up Waluigi’s injuries, which Kandace objects to.

Kandace: “Aw, no, why would you do that?! He sucks!”

Chevy: “Hippocratic Oath.”

Kandace: “The Hippocratic Oath doesn’t say anything about having to help people!”

GM: No, it’s mostly about killing hippos.

Jovian: No, that’s the Hippopotamus Oath.

A line that I for some reason found so god damn hilarious that I started laughing uncontrollably and had to spend a couple minutes laboriously regaining my composure. I... couldn’t tell you why; I wasn’t even drunk.

So while Chevy is working on patching up their victim, Kandace works at cross-purposes- drawing a teleportation circle (you know, the kind that teleports stuff specifically to the cloud of one obnoxious Lakitu at the school across the street) underneath Waluigi. Halfway through Chevy’s patch job, she triggers it and banishes his unconscious body. Chevy’s not happy, but what’re you gonna do.

So now they need a plan to actually... take the Music Key. They can’t do it right away, or else the ship falls out of the sky, crushing a bunch of people. They need to get the ship somewhere else first, so that when it crashes it does not cause the kind of carnage typically associated with a spaceship crash.

They’ve got a couple ideas- Chevy heads down the elevator with Opal to investigate Tatanga’s Hypno-Chamber, and Cozmo and Kandace head up the elevator to see if they can convince Grodus to steer the ship somewhere else.

Convincing Grodus... doesn’t go well. He congratulates them for dealing with the intruder, but sees no reason that the ship should land for emergency repairs. They’ve always done their emergency repairs in space, the place they’re from. If they could just land places, they wouldn’t need to go about taking over planets. Duh. So... their rolls to persuade him there don’t go great.

New plan, then: distract Grodus, use the controls while he’s distracted, and land the ship themselves. This is difficult both because the bridge is packed with people who might notice, and also because Grodus is a disembodied head more or less bolted to the control console, and thus is difficult to distract from said controls.

Kandace does her best anyway, though. She puts on a juggling act- with a rotten worm-filled apple she was planning to give to a teacher, a magic crystal, and a Mini-Yux she snags from a nearby and now-unhappy Yux. And... bombs the roll. Grodus is displeased and gives her ten Juggling Demerits, prompting a round of “ooooooooooh”s from the surrounding personnel.

All in all, bad rolls mean their attempts to trick Grodus into flying away end in abject failure. How are Opal and Chevy doing downstairs?

The Hypno-Chamber is pretty sparse- just psychedelic walls, a desk full of miscellaneous hypnosis-related gadgets, and a table to strap people down to. Their investigation, supported by Opal, determines that the transmitter for the wide-cast hypnosis isn’t in the lab- and was probably stored in the Pagosu, which they destroyed and then gave to some mute space bunnies to hide the pieces of, somewhere they can’t tell them because they don’t talk. So Chevy’s Plan A- hypnotize Grodus into getting out of Dodge- is a no-go.

But one thing they do find... is a set of project notes. Including a blueprint for a device, powered by four Music Keys, which would be capable of hypnotizing everyone on the entire planet. And they also contain some diary entries that describe the failure of this project.

Evidently, Tatanga hypnotized someone- some agent, who would be tasked with going to steal the Music Keys from where they were being kept. However, he felt the connection to his hypnotized agent get stolen from him, just as that agent was in the process of stealing the Keys. The agent managed to send him one of the Keys- the blue one now powering the ship- but someone stole the hypnosis and tasked the agent with obtaining the keys for them.

Chevy has a theory- that Kammy Koopa was Tatanga’s agent, and is now working for an unseen master to collect the Music Keys and hypnotize the world.

...Even though, wait, Kammy Koopa supposedly already had the Keys, until something unspecified happened and they all flew away? Hence the mission the party is now on? What exactly is going on behind the scenes, here?

Anyway, Kandace and Cozmo meet up with Chevy and Opal, and they come up with a Plan B. It’s sort of a cross-counter, relying on the existence of two different ways to mind-control people on this ship.

Remember, the X-Production Chamber had a bank of brainwashing machines at the back. Hypnosis victims from Rainbow Road were collected there, all queued up to get more permanently brainwashed by the machines. Tatanga was temporarily hypnotizing people so they wouldn’t resist being placed in those machines and made into honorary X-Nauts.

So... well, they’ve got the unconscious body of Tatanga with them. They have access to brainwashing machines. And Tatanga is a talented hypnotist who can hypnotize people into doing his bidding. So, logically, if they brainwash Tatanga into hypnotizing Grodus, they can get him to steer the ship into, say, the ocean.

It’s a skeezy plan, but, y’know, lives are at stake, and all. Opal agrees to help.

So they lug him down there, and encounter... total chaos. Because... when they knocked out Tatanga, or possibly when they destroyed the mecha broadcasting the hypnotic control signal, all the people lined up to get brainwashed were suddenly less inclined to do that. So there’s just... this massive brawl between the native and brainwashed X-Nauts, and all the unruly prisoners who were in no way restrained except by the now absent hypnosis. It’s total anarchy in there.

They find a group of X-Naut scientists who have taken cover behind a desk, and tell them that hey, they’ve got this traitor here- and he’s the Supreme Hypnotist, so if they can brainwash him, they should be able to get this mess under control with hypnosis again. They’re amenable to this idea, so Chevy and Kandace cross the battlefield over to the brainwashing chairs, while Opal and Cozmo stay behind to watch the scientists operate the computer.

So, the thing about this is that the X-Naut scientists aren’t going to brainwash Tatanga into hypnotizing Grodus. Meaning, they’re going to need to figure out how this brainwashing computer program works, so they can do it themselves. It’s this behemoth of arcane tools, views, and menus that they don’t understand, like the first time you opened Photoshop or an audio editing program or something.

They have mixed results on their rolls to observe, and only figure out how to a) install presets (things like Obey Grodus Unconditionally, Know X-Naut-Fu, Do Space Science, etc.) and futz with the personality sliders.

As they’re trying to figure out more, a Bob-omb goes off and blows away a bunch of the scientists, giving the team an opening to sweep away the rest (literally, in Kandace’s case. Broom.) But now they’ve all got to work together to figure out how to work this crazy thing! There’s a ton of settings and sliders that they have no idea how to use, and they’re going to use them to give Tatanga a fun new personality. It’s time for an episode of Monster Factory: Brain Edition!

Mechanically, this works as follows: You take turns rolling both Clever (to see if you can accomplish what you want to do) and Careful (to see if you avoid terrible side effects). Chevy is good in both, Cozmo is okay in Clever and awful in Careful, and Kandace is high-Clever low-careful.

And then there’s Opal, who has boss-tier Clever, and negative Careful. She’s a mad scientist! Or, magician. She was banned from Mario Kart because her inventions were too unpredictable and dangerous. When it gets to her turn, there will be a problem, guaranteed.

So Chevy, unfortunately, bombs her rolls and accomplishes basically nothing. Cozmo, on his turn, doesn’t manage to accomplish much, and accidentally sets his personality to “incredibly lost and confused”. Kandace manages a little better- she manages to make him devoted to someone, but that someone is Cozmo, not herself.

And then Opal, who rolls high on Clever to make him actually obey Cozmo, and a -3 on Careful. The result- because we were running long and I wanted to hurry things up- was that the brainwashing would wear off very quickly, and they had to act fast.

So they run up to the bridge, towing an extremely-confused Tatanga behind them. When they get there, their plan mostly goes off without a hitch. Tatanga hypnotizes everyone there, they all start chanting “Sir Cozmo”, and Grodus obediently steers the ship into the Enchanted Sea. There is a small glitch in the wording of “gently and carefully” that causes the landing to be less than gentle and careful- but they manage to get it done just before Tatanga’s brainwashing starts wearing off and he starts wondering just why Cozmo is such a good friend when all he’s done is beat him up and then order him around.

So, now what?

Well, they run. They have an escape route, remember- Kandace drew a teleportation circle in the power core, the one she used to banish Waluigi! As Cozmo and the rest handle Grodus upstairs, she nabs the Music Key and shuts down the ship. It starts sinking, so Chevy rolls mondo good on Forcefully smashing through the elevator doors and falling down there and dashing for the power core. They all crowd into the teleportation circle, Kandace triggers it, and they’re outta there!

So, next time... well, next time they’ll be emerging from the cloud of Ted the Storm God again, and who knows what kind of hot water that’s gonna be landing them in?

Last time | Archive | Next time

#kingdoms and koopas #waluigi

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corsairesix · 5 years

Text

Single Player Fallout 76: Cryptids

In a single player version of Fallout 76, I would want to make the cryptids more special, which unfortunately means making them rarer. Instead of randomly encountered enemies, they would instead be associated with certain quests. At the end of these quests you can either kill them or deal with them peacefully. If you deal with all of them peacefully or kill all of them, you get an associated perk.

Mothman:

I wrote a lot about Mothman and his cult here.

Overall this would be the most involved of all the cryptid quests (because it’s Mothman, the main character of cryptozoology). You would have to complete the entire Cult of Mothman questline to summon Mothman.

Also unlike other cryptids, Mothman gives you a reason to go back to him (most cryptids disappear or just hang out peacefully if spared). If spared, you can return to Mothman and get cryptic clues about quests that you are doing, similar to Mama Murphy’s sight in Fallout 4.

The leaders of the cult of Mothman are described by other characters as having something not quite human about them, although by all appearances they are regular people. Their names are Indrid, Demo, and Karl.

Flatwoods Monster:

I covered some stuff with the Flatwoods Monster here as well.

You escort the alien abductee through Flatwoods, where you can either stay until night at their inn or take him to the clinic for his paranoia.

If you take him to the clinic, you can tell the Responder working there to either have him treated by Dassa or Nurse Scott. Both will treat his paranoia and calm him down so he doesn’t want to kill the Monster.

If Dassa treats him, he will just want to take pictures to prove he was telling the truth.

If Scott treats him, the two of them will want to capture the Monster to interrogate it. They ask you to help them set up a trap to capture it, and ask a few questions. The Monster doesn’t answer in any known language, but Scott fills up a few holotapes of data. If you take this option, you can decide to kill it or release it.

Whichever option you take, the abductee says that it wasn’t the creature that abducted him, and he’s going to keep researching until he finds it.

Grafton Monster:

I wrote about the Grafton Monster quest here.

In order to get the Grafton Monster call, you must visit Shelby O’Rourke, who a local cryptozoologist in Grafton claims was coming to visit Grafton but never showed up. She was mistakenly arrested by robot prison guards and locked up in the Eastern Regional Penitentiary. You have to spring her out to continue.

Snallygaster:

The Snallygaster should be a bit more birdlike in order to resemble descriptions of the cryptid.

The runt Snallygaster is a companion found at the Crashed Space Station. He is friendly toward you.

The Trappers in Huntersville (or other Huntersville npcs if you’ve gotten rid of the Trappers), have been hearing strange noises from the Southwest and want you to check it out.

This leads you to find...

Dwayyo:

Spruce Knob is a site populated by Dwayyos, fluffy bushtailed wolf-like humanoids.

They speak a strange language, but are intelligent, and have saved a written history on the terminals there.

They were created by West-Tec as intelligent hunters to catch and kill the Snallygasters that accidentally escaped the FEV lab.

They have found that the Snallygasters are in the Spruce Knob Lake.

They need data from West-Tec to find the Snallygasters’ weakness.

Once you find out their weakness (irrational fear of septagrams) you can return to the Dwayyo. You can either convince them to use this against they Snallygasters (which will result in the Dwayyo winning the battle), lie and tell them there is no weakness but that they should fight anyway (which will result in both groups killing each other), tell them there is no weakness but that they should try to tame them (speech check, will result in the Dwayyos’ deaths), or tell them the weakness and that they should try to tame them (lower speech check, will result in them successfully creating a Snallygaster farm).

If you do convince them to create a Snallygaster farm, they will relocate to Spruce Knob Campground with the Snallygasters. They will provide you with free acid and asbestos produced by the Snallygasters once a week. If you create a Settlement at Spruce Knob, they will transfer the scrap directly to the Workshop. The quest to reclaim Spruce Knob will not be given until this quest is completed.

Sheepsquatch:

The Sheepsquatch quest more or less follows the Lying Lowe questline that begins here. You try to solve the mystery of the missing Calvin van Lowe, whose sister is trying to find him.

Some major changes are: the quest now takes place post-war, relatively recently (enough that his sister Shelley is still looking). Calvin, Bo Peep, and Wolf are now hired by Hornwright rather than Bysshe, since it doesn’t make sense for a natural gas company to be invested in Sheepsquatch robots. Hornwright is trying to create fear of the Sheepsquatch around Lewisburg so that the town will hire more Coalition protection and the Coalition will solidify their control over them (Scooby-Doo-villain-style).

Once the Imposter Sheepsquatch kills Calvin and escapes, Hornwright disavows the project. Once you find the basement, Wolf is alerted to your activity and approaches you in Lewisburg. He asks you to go to the Garrahans to ask them for some pre-war anti-robot tech from when they were still rivals with the Hornwrights. From there he sets up the pylon trap like in the normal game.

Rather than a big multiplayer raid boss, you just have to activate all three pylons to shut the Imposter Sheepsquatch down.

A day later Wolf contacts you saying there’s been an attack on the pylons by the real Sheepsquatch. It was repelled by the electricity, but one more attack could set the Imposter Sheepsquatch free. You need to go down to Calvin’s lab to retrieve a hunting subroutine, which will reprogram the imposter Sheepsquatch to hunt down the real one and then return. If you want, you can take the Sheepsquatch mating ritual holotape and install that instead of the hunting one. If you do the second, it will run away peacefully with the real Sheepsquatch. If you choose the hunting subroutine, you must follow it and Wolf, and help them fight the Sheepsquatch.

Batsquatch:

I covered pretty much everything about the Batsquatch quest here.

Yahoo:

Yet another ‘squatch, this time not a hybrid of any sort, just a standard bigfoot.

The survivalist who runs Camp Venture believes that there’s something in the woods of the Mire, and wants to go hunt it down. He knows it’s in the area near Ella Ames’s bunker.

From there, you have to track it by the sound of its call, a “Yahoo” noise. You find his hideout in the Excelsior Model Home and have to investigate there. There is a lot of evidence that the Yahoo is intelligent. There is a hard speech check to convince the survivalist to stop the hunt.

If you don’t pass the speech check, you have to kill the survivalist to save the Yahoo, although shooting him with a disabling syringer works as well. If you follow the Yahoo’s calls, you can find him near the Gulper Lagoon. If you give him the things you took from his house, he will be peaceful.

Megalonyx:

Even though the game doesn’t list it as a cryptid, I’m including the giant sloth here because 1) there are giant sloth cryptids described in both Appalachia and Virginia and 2) unlike Radtoads or Radstags or Yao Gui, there are no native sloths in West Virginia to mutate from radiation.

You find the megalonyx as part of companion Teddy McDonald’s personal quest. To become a Nuka Scout, Teddy must do a Nuka Scout Project, which involves a significant contribution to the Pioneer Scout Troop. Teddy wants to kill a cryptid.

You go to the Ranger District Office in the cranberry bog to see if they know where to find a cryptid. The two rangers there know of a large animal that they think might be a large beaver in Creekside Sundew Cove. One of them hopes you go out and kill it, but the other wants you to tag it with a tracker for study, which can be accomplished with a syringer or a very high stealth skill.

If you don’t kill it, you will either have to convince Teddy to do something else for a project, or go to van Lowe Taxidermy to learn how to make a fake giant sloth head.

Abbagoochie:

The Sons of Dane have a problem with a beast they call the Nightstalker. On nights where they party in their compound, whenever someone leaves to take a walk they are torn apart by some unknown entity, leaving behind only a pile of bones.

There are two ways to deal with this. You can create a lot of noise to attract the Abbagoochie, something that looks like a cross between a monkey, owl, fox, and deer. Then you can kill it, but be careful! It deals a lot of damage very quickly.

You can also create a bigger monster to scare it away. This requires a lot of steel, springs, gears, leather, and cloth, as well as any type of scary mask found in the wasteland. Examples include things like Fasnacht Masks from Helvetia. If you do this option, you have to wait until the following night to see if it works. The Sons of Dane will have their party as usual, and the Abbagoochie will appear, see the constructed monster, and run away.

Wendigo:

I didn’t include the Wendigo for two reasons.

The first is cultural appropriation. Unlike other cryptids on this list, the Wendigo is a specifically Native American myth.

The second is game design philosophy when it comes to the cryptids. I want them to seem special and cool. The way that the Wendigo was implemented, it just felt like “ghoul but scarier.”

I may also put the Ogua, a two headed turtle, somewhere in the Mire. Right now I don’t have a story for it though.

#fallout 76 #fo76 #cryptid #cryptids #single player 76

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solivar · 5 years

Text

WIP: Ghost Stories On Route 66

In which the game begins closing in on its end.

“Team Tokki, report.”

“On station, sorry for the delay.” Hana replied a nerve-wracking ten minutes later. “Took us a minute to get all our cables in order but Kozy Kot Motor Inn Basecamp is now online.”

The topographic holomap hanging over the dining room table rippled gently as she proved it, pulsing their location in the scrubby desert flatlands between Mesa Prieta and the ruins of Albuquerque, turning their basecamp icon electric pink-and-green.

“In an amusing sidenote,” Hana continued on breezily, “You know those MiBs -- the TALON guys? Their base may be in Albuquerque Sunport but they’ve got mobile units all over the place in the immediate vicinity and some kind of stationary observation post up on the mesa itself. So yes this is me formally blaming my tardiness on avoiding the notice of scary goons who may or may not be employees of the federal government.”

“Mesa Prieta is an archaeological preserve -- it has been for decades, the petroglyphs there are thousands of years old.” Ana, at seated the opposite end of the table with stacks of airtight herb containers, a mortar and pestle, and a scale, observed carefully, pausing in her work. “Ownership yielded back to the Federated Southwest Tribal Government after the Crisis.”

“Meaning?” Hanzo asked, inclining a questioning brow.

“Meaning,” Ana gave the contents of her pestle another thoughtful turn, “that either the FST is acting in direct cooperation with TALON or else their actual employers kissed considerable quantities of ass to access that site for reasons other than advancing the cause of cultural preservation.”

Hanzo blinked at her. “That feels extraordinarily bad.”

“It is what it is, my young friend. Until we have better intel, we can only take matters as they come.” She spooned the contents of her pestle into a little tin container.

“I’m not so sure I like Team Tokki’s proximity to a potentially hostile unknown quantity,” Hot Vampire Jack’s tone was significantly less philosophical. “Maybe you should relocate?”

“Their base doesn’t directly overlook ours -- it’s on the far northern point of the mesa, closer to the Chamisa Wildness Area than to us.” Jesse replied, calm and even. “We can set a drone on stealth observation if you want, but hauling off and moving again might get us seen by one of their mobile units. They’re putting up those pylon things they’ve got on the UNM campus all over out here.”

“I tried getting a look at one of those the other day but campus security waved me off.” Hana added, aggrieved.

“Whatever else they are, they’ve got a pretty hefty sensor and communications package on them -- I can see their output on our own passive monitors.” Lucio added, and the map rippled as he pushed data, added clusters of red-white-black pinpricks representing the pylons’ locations, easily a few dozen spread across the desert basin between Albuquerque and the mesa, many of them concentrated just above the Red Line along old Route 40. “I can try hacking one of their transceiver modules and skimming the data to see what they’re monitoring but that might attract some attention if they’ve got any kind of intrusion detection capabilities onboard.”

“No unnecessary risks. The pylons likely aren’t going anywhere and they’re extraneous to our own mission.” Terrifying Smoke Gabe rasped, his voice on the comms a weirdly metallic echo. “We can always try that if we can’t get intelligence from other sources.”

“Speaking of which,” Zenyatta interjected smoothly, “Team Tattoo reporting perimeter secure at Four Daughters Basecamp -- we are about to begin deploying our sensor and visual observation drones and begin transmitting.”

“El Malpais Basecamp likewise secure and ready to begin deployment.” Jamie added. “Team Helicopter Parents on perimeter patrol.”

“God, I hate that name,” Jack muttered.

“Who gave the lecture about appropriate comm discipline last night?” Gabe asked sweetly.

“Oh, shut up.”

Actual comm discipline immediately dissolved in jokes and back-and-forth smacktalk, a release of tension that even Jack recognized as necessary before any real work could get done, especially since they were waiting for Team Tokki to get up to speed. Hanzo, recognizing at as well, went and fetched tea and cakes and fussy little finger sandwiches for himself and Ana and, eventually, Reinhardt when he came in off his own perimeter patrol with the members of the pack left on guard duty. She accepted the cup he poured and the plate he delivered with a gracious smile, setting aside her work for the moment, while in the background nearly everyone they loved pretended not to be afraid.

#WIP Ghost Stories On Route 66

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zrtranscripts · 5 years

Text

Season 8, Mission 4: Radio Ga Ga

Dark waters rising

SAM YAO: Uh, guys, can you see the radio tower yet? Storm's still interfering with my cams. I mean, uh, not that it's not nice that it's died down a bit.

PAULA COHEN: Yeah, sheltering in a cozy cottage eating biscuits and looking at a storm does feel less great when, on top of everything else, there's a homicidal maniac on the loose and every day lost to bad weather is a day less your friend has until nanites destroy her body.

SHONA: How long does she have now?

SAM YAO: Oh, 21 days, I guess.

PAULA COHEN: Maybe a little more if she rests.

SHONA: The chief has the whole island on alert for Jones. Wherever he's hiding, he'll have to come out sometime, and when he does, we will find him. For you and for us.

TOM DE LUCA: Visual on a pylon two clicks away.

PAULA COHEN: It's perched on a flat-topped rock jutting out of the sea. Looks like the potato mountain from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

SHONA: [laughs] Close encounters of the what?

PAULA COHEN: Oh Shona, don't make me feel old.

SAM YAO: Right. Well, we can use the radio tower to get a signal to Abel.

SHONA: We've got a guy, Gavin. Stays out here to maintain it. It's cut off from Mor Island from the sea except for twice a month when the water is low. See that land bridge? It'll only be here for an hour.

PAULA COHEN: Well, we'll be able to let Peter talk to Janine. I can't wait to speak to Maxie. To everyone, really. I said we'd be home in a week.

TOM DE LUCA: We will be home soon. Jones can't have left Mor Island. The chief took his boat. And there aren't any others on the island that would have had a chance of making it through the storm. We'll find him, and the cure for Janine.

SAM YAO: The locals have set me up in the old post office. I can see a bunch of them on the village green, organizing into search parties.

SHONA: Folk on Mor Island don't forgive and they never forget.

SAM YAO: All right, everyone. You're going to run across the land bridge, access the control hut, tune into Abel's frequency, and get back before the tide comes in. Now the last thing we want is for you to get cut off by the rising water.

TOM DE LUCA: Stay focused and run!

[waves crash]

SHONA: Watch your step. It's blowing a hooley. If you slip, the waves will bash you against the cliffs and the barnacles will rip you to shreds.

SAM YAO: Yeah, probably best not to dwell on that.

PAULA COHEN: That's the control shack up ahead, at the bottom of the cliff?

SAM YAO: Yeah. You can set up comms from there. You're halfway across the land bridge now, so just keep going.

SHONA: Gavin'll help. We tried to radio ahead to say we're coming, but the storm mucked up our signal.

PAULA COHEN: What are those metal spikes sticking out of the sea?

SHONA: Oh, there used to be an actual bridge to the island, but it disintegrated. Those are what's left of the struts. Last May, a sheep got stranded on the rock. It panicked, ran off, and well... [laughs]

TOM DE LUCA: Lamb kebabs. Okay. We can see our target? Everyone run!

[rain pours]

PAULA COHEN: Made it over the land bridge. There's the – [shouts]

TOM DE LUCA: Paula!

PAULA COHEN: I'm fine! Fine. Slipped on some seaweed. It's thick here.

SHONA: Aye. This bit's under the sea most of the time. The control hut's over there, above the high water level.

TOM DE LUCA: I hope we can establish a connection. I promised Janine I'd get a message to Peter.

PAULA COHEN: It's so funny. I've been putting this to the back of my mind all day, but now we're close, I've got butterflies. Oh, I hope Sara's okay.

SAM YAO: Maxine'll have everything under control. But I know what you mean.

TOM DE LUCA: Approaching the control hut. It's in poor condition.

SAM YAO: Can you get inside?

[chains clink]

TOM DE LUCA: Door's chained shut.

PAULA COHEN: Looking in the window. Oh, someone's deliberately smashed the equipment.

SHONA: Jones! Has to be. And there's no sign of Gavin.

TOM DE LUCA: The equipment might be salvageable. Stand back. Five, kick the door in!

[Runner Five kicks door down, zombie growls, SHONA screams]

PAULA COHEN: Zombie! Get back, everyone.

SHONA: Oh God, Gavin!

TOM DE LUCA: We have no cure! We can transmit to Abel from the pylon's primary controls. Up the path, now!

PAULA COHEN: Oh, we're at the top of the path, Sam. Oh, fantastic view from up here! You can see the whole archipelago.

SHONA: Aye. Look at that. Shining beauty of the Far Hebrides. There's Dearg Island where the scientists live, and wee [?] Isle. There's [?] Island. We don't go there anymore. It's full of zombies. Look, there's [?] with the cairn of stones. [?], [?].

SAM YAO: Okay, sorry to break up the sightseeing, but the zom's gaining. You can McShell it over.

SHONA: Oh, aye. You told me about that. Herding zombies.

TOM DE LUCA: You've got the idea. Shona, you and Five break right, Paula and I will go left. On my signal, break!

SAM YAO: Great job, guys! The zom's going, going... and it stopped, teetering on the edge of the cliff.

TOM DE LUCA: Five, kick it!

[zombie falls]

SAM YAO: Oh, wow. It's impaled on one of the rusty bridge struts. I hesitate to say nice shot, Five, but uh...

SHONA: Is Gavin still alive?

SAM YAO: Uh, well... no. That's sort of the thing about zombies, really.

SHONA: I mean, is he still moving?

PAULA COHEN: Yes, but uh, it's stuck there.

TOM DE LUCA: We've lost a lot of time. The water's rising on the causeway.

SAM YAO: Get to the radio tower on the summit. You should be able to patch in to Abel from there.

PAULA COHEN: Shona, are you all right?

SHONA: I don't know. That was Gavin. He didn't say much, but he was really kind. He used to carry me on his shoulders when I was a kid.

PAULA COHEN: I'm so sorry.

SHONA: It was just... the way he looked. Weak, rotting. Pathetic.

PAULA COHEN: We've been there, Shona. It never gets easy. The tide's going to turn soon. We have to move.

[rain pours, door creaks shut]

SHONA: We're inside the pylon, Sam.

PAULA COHEN: I've got it. The equipment's old, but workable. Just a sec.

[radio static]

SAM YAO: Hello, Abel. Come in, Abel.

MAXINE MYERS: Sam? Is that you?

PAULA COHEN: Maxie! Can you hear me?

MAXINE MYERS: Paula! Thank God! I knew you were all right, but oh, it's so good to hear your voice.

PAULA COHEN: Are you okay? How's Sara?

MAXINE MYERS: I'm fine. Sara's, uh -

SAM YAO: Sara's what, Maxie?

MAXINE MYERS: No, I'm sorry. No, she's okay. She's asking for you both. She wakes me up in the night asking for you.

TOM DE LUCA: Dr. Myers?

MAXINE MYERS: Tom! How's Janine? And are you okay?

TOM DE LUCA: I'm fine. Janine, not so good. But stable for the moment. Is Peter there? I promised Janine I'd pass him a message.

MAXINE MYERS: Peter's um... indisposed. Nothing serious! Well, not for him, anyway. Most people would need more than a nap after disemboweling themselves. Oh, and I have an urgent message to play you.

[static]

SAM YAO: Hello? Maxine? Uh, the transmission's gone.

TOM DE LUCA: The cable's come loose in the gale. It's hanging off the rock outside.

SAM YAO: Yeah, that'd do it. Five, run down there, grab the cable, and plug it in.

[rain pours, cable clicks]

SAM YAO: Great job, Five. That's the cable back in place, and... yeah, we've got a signal. And if you fasten it with clips, it won't come undone again. [clips click] Great work. Now run back around. I'll keep you patched in.

MAXINE MYERS: What happened? Is everything okay?

SAM YAO: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've secured the connection.

MAXINE MYERS: Oh, that's great. Now promise to send my love to Jody and Ellie.

SAM YAO: [sighs] Yeah. Maxie, a lot's happened since we arrived. I'll fill you in, but the others have to go.

MAXINE MYERS: Um, oh. Okay. Um, wait! I have a message from the Prime Minister. Your ears only.

SAM YAO: From, from Amelia? I mean, we're running out of time, here.

MAXINE MYERS: She said it was extremely urgent.

AMELIA SPENS: Hello, Janine and friends. I do hope you're enjoying your little island jaunt. You'll be pleased to know that the red fungus zombie problem is well under control. Some threads of fungus were found on a beach. We destroyed them. I'd love to tell you how, uh, because it was a rather brilliant idea of mine, but it's a government secret. You understand.

Anyway, I've got a highly important assignment for you. Could you send me some crates of smoked salmon? The stuff on the mainland isn't the same. Thanks!

MAXINE MYERS: Okay... well, I swear I had no idea that that was the "urgent message". I can't believe we wasted our comms time with that. Paula? I love you. Everyone else? I love you, too.

PAULA COHEN: Five? You keep going as you are. We'll see you back at the land bridge. Run.

[rain pours]

PAULA COHEN: Five, over here! Sam, Five's rejoined us. We're at the foot of the cliff by the radio shack and the tide's coming in fast.

TOM DE LUCA: Look. Foot of the cliff. Two zoms pulling themselves out of the sea.

PAULA COHEN: It's okay. We'll be gone before they get here.

TOM DE LUCA: They're not coming for us. They're going for the radio shack. Oh, of course! I should have recognized it when I saw it. Wait here!

PAULA COHEN: Tom? What are you – nope. No, he's off.

SAM YAO: What is he doing?

SHONA: He's run back over to the radio shack.

SAM YAO: Yeah, but why?

TOM DE LUCA: I found it!

SHONA: What's he waggling in the air?

TOM DE LUCA: I saw it before in the wreckage but didn't register it. It's a zombie-attracting device like the one Jones planted at Abel!

PAULA COHEN: I think you're right. Those zoms are heading towards us now. Quick, Tom, stamp on it!

[device breaks]

TOM DE LUCA: That's disabled it! I'll take the parts back to examine later.

SHONA: Are you saying Lachlan planted something here to deliberately attract zoms? He got Gavin bitten on purpose?

SAM YAO: That's what it looks like.

TOM DE LUCA: Those zoms are still heading our way and the tide's coming in. We need to head back now.

SAM YAO: I'll tell Janine to get the local leaders together for a council of war. If Jones has one zombie attractor, he could have two. Or dozens. Whatever his plan here is, it looks like it involves killing a lot of innocent people.

Note: I am currently experiencing technical difficulties and cannot access the season 8 map. As soon as I can, I will update this transcript with the missing place names. Thank you for your patience!

#zombies run #zrs8 #s8m4 #radio ga ga #zr transcript #zrs8 spoilers

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