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drabblesandimagines · 1 year

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Syrup

From an anon request - thanks anon! :) Pairings: Rei x reader Fluffy fluff

You’re sat up on the counter, cross-legged, staring up at the television screen suspended from the ceiling, mashing X as if that would make a difference. It’s a slow afternoon in your workplace of four years – Mr Kyoshi’s Joypad – a shop purely dedicated to video games and consoles. It’s a great place to work, combining your love of video games and recently you’d entered into repairs as a side hobby. In quieter periods, Mr Kyoshi had no issues with you passing the time by gaming yourself, as long as you still attended to the customers, of course. There were sample consoles dotted around the place with recent demos installed, but the one above the counter is where you’d mainly play to show off the most recent games.

The bell dings as you reach a critical part of the fight. If you pause, you’re going to lose momentum and you always die at this point. “Welcome to Kyoshi’s Joypad where we cater to all your gaming needs!” You say almost robotically, before adding, “I’ll be with you in just a second…”

You mash X again, hoping maybe you’ll get another attack in before the boss’ big attack but it’s not to be – your character’s HP drops down to 0 and the screen displays game over.

“Ugh!” You put down the controller and hop off the counter, before spinning round. “Sorry about that, I’ve been trying to beat him since yesterday…” You trail off at the sight of the man before you. He’s tall and lean, shaggy black hair and he looks like he didn’t sleep the night before, but you’d be lying to yourself if you didn’t admit he was attractive. He’s dressed in tight black jeans and has a blue hoodie zipped up, with a tote bag in hand.

You realise you’ve trailed off and you’re just staring at each other, so you laugh before starting over. “Er, hi! What can I do for you?” You smile, warmly. You’ve had your experience with a lot of socially awkward boys and men in your time working here – some more painful than others – so you’re aware when you might need to lead the conversation some more.

“You need to buff up your defence with iron heart when he powers up.”

“Huh?”

He points to the screen behind you.

“Oh! I’m so bad at remembering that’s a thing, you know? I just like to hit everyone with the big sword.” You scratch the back of your head – a habit when you’re nervous – and grin. “But thanks! I’ll try that next time – I’ve been stuck at this bit for ages.”

He nods and then there’s another pause.

“So, er, can I help you with anything in particular, or did you just want to browse, or…?” You could ramble enough for two.

He puts down the tote on the counter, hesitating before retrieving the contents. “I read online that you do repairs?”

“Yeah! Of course, this voids any warranty on the product, so if it’s still in that period we’d always advise going to the manufacturer first.”

“Mm. No, they’re out of warranty.” He pulls out two controllers. One looks crusted with a questionable substance and the other seems fine, albeit worn.

“Lemme guess – drift?” You point at the battered one.

“Yep.”

It’s a known problem with these controllers – just the amount of use over time wears them out and as a consequence your accuracy takes a hit as the joystick takes on a life of its own. It’s annoying for first person shooter games, as well as racing games – both genres you suspect this guy is into.

“And, er, what happened to this one?” You point, not quite daring to touch it yet until the mystery substance is identified.

“My daughter gave it a bath in syrup.”

“Ah.” You nod, and poke at it cautiously and find it to be horrendously sticky. The thought crosses your mind that this man looks a little young to have a daughter and there’s no wedding ring… You mentally smack yourself for prejudices.

“The other one has been drifting for a while, so I was mainly using this one until…” He shrugs.

“So, I can definitely fix this one for you.” You tap on the drifter. “Syrup one… Well, I can give it a go but I can’t make any guarantees on its survival.”

“That’s fine.”

You grab a repair form from under the counter and note down the make, model and status of the controllers. “I can do the both for 10,000 yen, if that sounds okay?”

The man nods. “Sure. How long will it take?”

“So, I do all the repair work from home where I have the proper set-up as there wasn’t any room in the store.” Mr Kyoshi was not an organized man – he loved retro games and consoles and the back room was overflowing with boxes. It wasn’t good to perform any repairs back there with all the dust, so you’d set up a dedicated space in your bedroom. “I can usually get the drift fixed in an evening, but I think I’ll need some extra time on the syrup, so it might end up being Friday. I’m probably going to have to use a combination of things to see what works…”

He frowns at the mention of Friday – probably the only controllers he owns.

“However, since we don’t want you to be without…” You crouch down below the counter and retrieve a controller from the box you keep back there for such occasions. “You can borrow this. It’s one I’ve refurbished for the shop and you can tell it’s seen a lot, but it still works great.” You slide it over to him. “And you can just bring it back when you come to collect yours.”

“Thanks.” He feels it in his hands. “Could tell I can’t wait that long, huh?”

“Hm, well, I know there’s a Morio Kart online championship coming up and that a lot of people are practicing… I might be way off here, though.”

A smile creeps up on the man’s face. “Hm. Maybe.”

You slide over the form with a pen and tap at the bottom. “Haven’t lost my touch! So, if you want to just write your name and phone number down there for me.” You grab a zip-lock bag to stick the sticky controller in – you don’t want to put that in your backpack.

“My phone number?” His face looks quizzical.

“Yeah…” You smile. “You know, so I can let you know when to pick it up?”

“Ah.” He scribbles down the two bits of information quickly.

“Great! Is there anything else I can help you with today?” He shakes his head as he puts the loaned controller in the tote bag. “Okay, have a good day.” You grin as he heads towards the door.

“Good luck,” he nods up towards the ‘game over’ screen.

Through extensive research (aka browsing numerous forums and checking videos), by late Thursday night you’d got the syrupy controller back to its best. It was a bit of trial and error with rubbing alcohol, a tiny toothbrush and a scraper to try and dislodge the sticky residue from every nook and cranny - the payment was probably not worth the amount of time you’d spent on the thing but you were a sucker for a cute guy. The other controller was an easy enough fix at least, one you’d done a number of times already for other clients.

You were covering the 12-8 shift in the shop on Friday – Mr Kyoshi liked to keep it open a little later ahead of the weekends, so as soon as you got in you dug out the form and rang the number the customer – one Rei Suwa – had left you.

It rang for a little too long and you were now expecting it to go to voicemail when suddenly the ringing stopped.

“Hi.” A curt greeting.

“Hi!” You answered cheerfully. “It’s Kyoshi’s Joypad here…”

A loud bang cuts you off. It sounded like a gunshot in the background. He must have one hell of a surround sound system.

“Yeah?”

“So, good news! Both the controllers are working, so if you wanna drop by…”

“What the hell, Rei?! Are you seriously on the phone right now?!” A voice screeches, before there’s another burst of gunfire. “Get to cover!”

You roll your eyes – you must’ve disturbed a Call Of Duty session with his buds.

“Thanks. I’ll be there later on today.”

“Dude!” The other voice hisses.

“Okay, bye.” But the dial tones tells you he’s already hung up. You place the phone back on the receiver, before and putting the fixed controllers underneath the desk along with the form to be collected later and get on with your shift.

It’s half three and you’ve been kept pretty busy. You’re sat behind the counter, finishing off the last of the stock audit when the bell rings again and you look up with your automatic greeting.

“Welcome to Kyoshi’s Joypad where we… Whoa.” You wished you hadn’t said that last part out loud.

The man standing the other side of the counter from you is in an incredibly well-fitted suit, waistcoat and red tie. His dark-hair is tied up on top of his head, revealing an undercut. His face seems similar but you can’t quite place it.

You manage to stop yourself gawking. “I mean, whoa-t can I help you with today?” You know as soon as it comes out of your mouth that it was not the smoothest save and the slight smile on the man’s face just seems to confirm it.

“I’m here to pick up the controllers…” He mumbles, and then you put two and two together. This is the same guy from the other day?! You found him attractive then, sure, but this look… Ooft.

“Oh, Rei! I’m so sorry, the suit threw me off.”

“You don’t like it?” He looks down at the fit with a frown.

“No, no! I just… It’s not what the average clientele wears in here, so I just didn’t put the two and two together. It looks good, really good…”

“I had a meeting.” That doesn’t really blend with what you heard on the phone earlier, but maybe that was a lunchbreak thing? You shouldn’t judge, you spend a good deal of your working day gaming and get away with it.

“Oh, cool. What do you do for work? I mean, you know I work here, so…”

“I guess you could say I clean up the city.”

“Ah…” You nod as if you get what he means, but you don’t. There’s an awkward silence and then you remember what he came in for. “Right, your controllers!” You bend down and retrieve them – they’re in a paper bag with the shop’s logo on. You slide the bag across the counter. “Should be as good as new.”

“Wow,” he peeks in the bag and retrieves one, then the other, looking closely. “I can’t even tell which one was the syrupy one.”

“Thanks!” You smiled. “I was pretty pleased with how it turned out too. I’ve tested them both out with a couple of games, but if something doesn’t seem right just bring them back and I’ll take a look, free of charge, of course. I like happy customers.”

“Thank you.” He retrieves the store’s controller from his suit pocket – you’re not sure how it fit in there. “And this is yours. I kept Miri away from it to make sure it didn’t come back in syrup.”

“Miri - is that your daughter’s name?” He nods. “That’s cute. How old is she?”

“Four.”

“She must be a handful.”

“Mm.” There’s a pause. “Did you beat the boss from the other day?”

“I did – thank you. Your tip did the trick. I promise I’ll remember about my status boosts from now on, or at least try.”

Someone stands behind Rei with a game in hand, ready to check out. You want to keep the conversation going, but Mr Kyoshi doesn’t pay you to flirt with handsome men – though he does bemoan why a nice young lady such as yourself is single…

Rei notices the person too. “How much do I owe you again?”

“Oh, yeah. 10,000 yen, please.” You enter the amount into the register as he passes over his card and you slide it through the machine. “Thank you. Here’s your receipt. Hope to see you again soon!”

“Thanks. Me too.” He picks up the paper bag and gives you a small wave as he leaves.

It’s Monday when you’re next back in the shop. The morning is very quiet and after you’ve taken the usual deliveries, you’re sat back upon the counter playing another quest when the bell rings. You immediately pause and slide off the counter, ready to greet the customer. “Welcome to… Oh, Rei. Hi!” You smile and he smiles back almost sheepishly. He’s in casual attire today and has a bag in his hand.

“Morning.”

“How can I help you today?”

“Er, I’m afraid Miri had another accident.” He places the bag on the counter and you peek inside. It’s soaked in syrup again.

“What – how?!” Your eyes widen at the sight of it.

“Blame Kazuki, he’s always giving her pancakes…”

“Kazuki, huh?” You try and ask casually.

“Yeah, my room-mate. We, er, co-parent. It’s a long story. Can you salvage it?”

“I think so. Leave it with me. It might be another two-day job, if that’s okay? I can lend you a controller again if you need two…” You grab another form and jot down the details.

“Thanks, but I wouldn’t want her to drench yours either. She can just watch me.”

“It’s sweet that you guys play together.” You smile. “Can you write your number down again for me?” You’ve already filled in his name.

“Sure.” He notes it down. “How are you getting on?” He points up to the screen.

“Mm, better! It’s my own fault – I’ll admit I like playing for the storyline more than the combos.”

“No, I can understand that.” His phone chimes with an alarm from his pocket. “Ah, sorry. I need to head. You’ll ring when it’s ready?”

“Mm-hm. Speak soon.” You watch him leave, disappointed the conversation was so short today. You let out a sigh and hop back up onto the counter, resuming your game.

You call Rei Wednesday morning after you’ve successfully eliminated all traces of syrup again – this time it’s quiet in the background on his side. He says he’ll be by in the afternoon and, true to his word, he appears with a little girl holding his hand.

“Hi, Rei!” You smile brightly as he heads over to the counter. Miri, you presume, is bouncing on her heels and looking around the shop in wonder, squealing as she recognizes different video game characters.

You bend down and retrieve Rei’s controller, placing it on the counter before leaning over it and grin down at Miri.

“So, syrup bandit, we meet at last, huh?”

Miri grins back up at you. “Oh, you’re the pretty lady that fixes them!” Rei’s face flushes red and he stutters, but you can’t help but find it adorable. Miri’s attention span drifts and lands on the Morio Kart display demo to the side. “Do you get to play all these games all day?!”

“I sure do! Sadly, I have to let the customers have a go too otherwise my boss gets kinda mad.” You wink. “Speaking of which, you can play Morio Kart if you like.”

“Oh, can I? Can I, Papa Rei?” She tugs at Rei’s arm again with a pleading look.

“Sorry, Miri. Papa Kazuki said we needed to be back by 4 today. How about we swing by another time, and we can play when we get home, okay?”

“Okay, Papa Rei.” She nods, though her eyes stare longingly at the demo machine.

“How much do I owe you today?”

“5,000, please.” He slides over cash this time and you ring it through the register.

“Now, young lady, please can you promise me not to cover this in syrup again?”

She frowns. “But Papa Rei told me to do it so he could come see you again!” Rei looks like he wants the ground to swallow him up in that moment.

“Oh, did he?” You laugh, feeling your own cheeks flush. “Well, here’s your receipt and…” You grab a pen and write along the bottom. “..my gamer tag.”

He nods his head frantically, grabs the receipt, the controller and Miri and speedwalks to the door. “Thank you! Bye.”

“Bye, pretty lady!” Miri beams and Rei yanks her out of there.

When you get home later that night, you make a quick dinner before collapsing on your bed as you boot up your games console. You logged into the network, and a notification beeped. One new request from ReiSuwa1.

You hit accept and see he’s still online, playing the game you’d struggled on the other day. Coincidence or deliberate, you muse. A few minutes later, another notification comes up. ReiSuwa1 is inviting you to voice chat.

Your stomach flips as you grab your headset and put it on, before hitting accept.

There’s a beep to show you’ve been connected.

“Don’t tell me there’s been another syrup incident.”

A chuckle fills your ears.

#ghostdogwrites #reader requests #buddy daddies x you #fluff writing #buddy daddies #buddy daddies fanfic #buddy daddies fluff #miri unasaka #rei suwa fluff #rei suwa x reader #suwa rei x you #rei x reader #suwa rei x reader

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loveandthings11 · 4 months

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How Deep My Love Goes, Chapter 13

Read on AO3 Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8 Ch 9 Ch 10 Ch 11 Ch 12

Very Tall Somethings

Fic Summary: A Kenrava-focused fix-it alongside canon 💗

Chapter Summary: Hunting and Safe Room, redone. Or, the story of Kendall and Rava's chaotic Christmas week. Kendall tries different tactics to get Logan to agree to save Vaulter while trying to stay apprised of goings-on within the company from afar. Rava is terrified when an active shooter situation hits Waystar with Kendall inside. The incident causes Kendall to struggle with his past demons and to try to reconnect with Shiv. Kendall and Rava exchange Christmas gifts and see how much they mean to each other.

On December twentieth, Kendall lies on the couch in the great room and stares up at the ceiling.

“I-I mean, he didn’t mean that, right?” he asks for the fourth time since his call with Logan yesterday. “That was nothing? He wasn’t really offering it to me when I turned it down. Was he?”

“Mind games…” Rava says absentmindedly as she turns the page of her book in a nearby chair.

“Yes, mind games! Fucking- manipulation, yeah? He’s always done shit like that. What- what do I even do with that?”

She can feel his chaotic energy.

“Have you considered calling HR?” Rava says drily.

“Uh-huh. Okay. They’re all at the fucking corporate retreat in Hungary doing God-knows-what with the company-“ he looks at her eyes running across the page. He’s more stressed by the day not to be able to attend any management meetings right now and it couldn’t be clearer that she doesn’t want to hear about it anymore. “Whatever. I need sunflower seeds.” He gets up and goes to pace in the kitchen as he pours the bag into his mouth.

She tries not to look at him while he’s doing it because she knows what that means. He walks back and forth and looks around.

“You know what? I’m gonna be in the gym,” he says as he walks down the hall toward it.

“Twice in one morning?” Rava asks.

“That was floor stuff, weights. Now it’s cardio. Why, you don’t want me too ripped?” She lets him turn the substitute addictions into a joke. Whatever works.

“No,” she laughs. “Go get ripped. That’s…. great.”

“You laugh now,” he says. “You’re not gonna be ready.”

“Oh, I’ll be ready,” she nods sarcastically. “You should go back to drawing, or music. You used to do more art.”

“Uh- yeah. I did. I should. Just- yeah, I’m going to work out right now.”

He flashes her a smile and walks away. When he comes back in the room she looks over his ever-so-slightly mussed hair. He locks eyes with her.

“Yeah?”

She raises her eyebrows and tilts her head to the side as she chuckles. It doesn’t look like he was going too crazy with the workout, but she does like what she’s seeing. She notices a grey smudge on his hand and nods at it.

"What is that?" she asks. He looks down at it.

"Oh, it's nothing. From the treadmill I guess."

“Okay... well, you are looking good.”

“Feeling good,” he says. But he sounds like he’s trying to reassure himself. “I haven’t heard from Roman in a couple days,” he says.

“Well, there’s probably not much privacy in jail- I’m sorry, the retreat. I always get those mixed up,” she returns.

“Right.” He heads to the shower and, after fifteen minutes, enters the room and starts pacing again. She looks up from her book.

“You’re making me nervous. Come sit down!” He goes to sit down next to her and she watches his foot bounce.

“I’m gonna text him again,” Kendall says with worry in his voice. He types out a message.

Rome. You gotta give me something, man.

He taps his fingers on Rava’s thigh as he looks at the screen. After a couple of minutes, Roman sends a text with a news screenshot and accompanying message.

Preview of an article Karolina sent us. Merry fucking whatever. You’d better not forget this.

Kendall looks at the screenshotted headline and gives a little smile at his screen.

Waystar Royco subsidiary Vaulter lives to fight another day; President Lawrence Yee stays in role under embattled Waystar CEO Logan Roy’s leadership.

“Roman saved Vaulter,” he says out loud in disbelief. “I’ve seen this kind of thing, though. It’s just a temporary extension for now, but it’s a start.”

Rava smiles.

“Good Christmas present,” she replies. “Speaking of which, it’s about time to do the finishing touches on the tree now that you can breathe again. Only a few days til Christmas! You know the kids are going to be ready for holiday stuff.”

“Yeah, for sure.” He pauses a second. “I feel kinda fuckin’… bad that we’re not going to my mom’s. She always wants us to go and Shiv would never do it, but Roman wanted to too. Maybe next year? Or can we- could we go see her next month or something? I just- you know, things were actually good with us at the wedding. It was kind of weird. But, yeah, good.”

“Yeah. Sure, we can go see your mom. Whenever you want.”

Kendall nods and gets up to go to the kids’ rooms to coax them out with promises of hot chocolate and ornaments as Rava looks through the boxes of decorations the staff had been taking out earlier to find the last bits of tree decor. Kendall and Rava have always done this part themselves.

Rava shows Kendall a ceramic ornament they’d bought at a Christmas market in Belgium in one of their first holiday seasons together. The little red frame says Merry Christmas in green and features a sweet picture of 24-year old Kendall and Rava with big smiles on their pink faces pressed together. Kendall’s first Christmas free of his family had been one for the books.

Kendall looks at it and wordlessly returns her look of love. He takes his phone from the glass coffee table and walks the few steps over to her, bending down to her and putting his cheek on hers before taking a quick picture of them smiling once more. Rava nods at the picture and gives him a grin.

“We’ll get a new one made to match,” he says.

“Love that,” she says.

…..

On December twenty-first, Roman calls Kendall.

“Hey, fuckface,” Roman starts. “I’m so hungover I might kill myself.”

Kendall doesn’t know if this is about to be an alcoholic joke or if Roman really just called because he would understand.

“Uh, okay. Well, I’d go throw up and pour yourself an Irish coffee, always worked for me,” he says sardonically to head him off at the pass.

“No. Jesus. I’m not drinking at least until this afternoon.”

“Solid restraint.” Kendall wonders for the millionth time why he’s the only sibling who got the addiction gene. “How was last night? Little bit of corporate trauma bonding?” he asks, stretching out on the couch and enjoying the fact that he spent last night sipping hot chocolate by the Christmas tree while the kids watched Elf.

“You missed a fantastic round of Boar on the Floor. De-licious. Got it all on film, I’m gonna watch it and jerk off later.”

Kendall massages his forehead.

“Jesus. First of all, delete that immediately- or, actually, send it to me and then delete it.”

“I don’t share my porn stash,�� Roman says.

“Bro. Seriously. That kind of abuse of power could help our case.”

“Your case. I’m not fucking over Dad. Why do you want it, are you giving it to the biographer? Because Dad will know it’s you.”

Kendall sighs.

“No. I- I mean I got a call, but I didn’t return. Didn’t you get a call?” he asks.

Roman’s quiet before he responds.

“Yyyyeah, of course I did. I’m the most important one.” He changes tone. “But seriously, Dad’s fucking paranoid right now. Someone talked. He doesn’t trust anyone. He’s being… you know. Scary.” He switches back to being cavalier. “He’s gonna find out who it is and it’s gonna be sweet punishment time.”

“Well. It’s not me. But if he wants to know who’s got motivation to talk shit about him, he should look to literally anyone else he’s talked to in the last twenty years.” Roman makes a hurt face and Kendall can practically see it through the phone. “Dude, it’s- it probably won’t even go anywhere. Don’t worry about it. But- yeah. Try to stop people from talking if you can.”

“Why would you want to stop them? You hate Dad,” Roman mumbles.

“I- I don’t- come on, bro. You know that’s not true. It’s tough with us, though.”

“Whatever. This isn’t your ridiculous therapy time where we talk all about how you want to fuck and/or kill our parents and possibly our sister, although you should know she’s mine.”

Kendall rolls his eyes.

“Did he make you play Boar on the Floor?” he asks. The protective older brother in him comes out no matter how annoying Roman is to him.

“Of course not, Dad loves me, Ken. Not something you would understand, but-“

“He never made me play either.” It’s true, but there was always a present threat to both of them at retreats. “Well- good,” Kendall finishes.

“Frank’s here,” Roman says angrily. Kendall feels a momentary pang.

“Yeah? How is he?”

“Being a corporate cock-suck like always. My fucking babysitter.”

“Frank knows what’s doing,” Kendall says. He’s glad Frank is back on at the company, but he misses his guidance. He’s a little envious that Roman is getting the advice he wants. He wonders if he could get Frank on board with his side.

“Ugh. This godfatherly love thing is annoying. Dad’s only bringing him back so he can suck up to the Pierces.”

“The Pierces?” Kendall asks in disbelief.

“Oh, fuck,” Roman laughs. “You didn’t know about that? Man, you are out of the loop.” Kendall squirms at his brother’s glee.

“What do you- Dad’s going after them again? This is his solution. Old tech again.” His mind starts running and he makes a note to text Sandy and Stewy right after this call ends.

“I didn’t tell you that!” Roman exclaims, partially regretting having the shared the information. Kendall can tell how he’s feeling.

“I would’ve found out anyway,” he informs him.

“I guess.”

Kendall decides to change the subject.

“You, uh, see Connor’s video?” he asks.

“Giving away all our secrets to never paying any taxes. Idiot. I mean- love him and his desperate ploys for attention- obviously- but, like, perhaps he shouldn’t be making a joke of our last name?”

“Yeah, thought that was your job.” Kendall sends the rare jab his way.

“Fuck you,” Roman spits back. But he has another thing to discuss. “Um… hey, what do you think of Gerri?” he asks.

“What- Gerri?” Kendall asks. “You mean, like, is she trustworthy? I mean, yeah. She’s all in for Waystar.”

Roman scrunches his face and runs his hand through his hair.

“No, I know, I mean, uh… like as a… human woman? Did she and Dad ever…”

“Fuck?” Kendall chuckles. “I dunno. Maybe. She seems like she’d tell him to go to hell though. Not exactly a warm and fuzzy, fuckin’… take you to bed type.”

“Well, you don’t know. You don’t know her.”

Kendall’s confused by Roman’s sudden defensiveness.

“Why are you asking me this?”

“I don’t- nothing. No reason, I just want to know if she’s trustworthy.”

“Okay.” Did I not just say that? Kendall thinks. “Well, yeah.” His interest is piqued by the questioning. “Why’d you think of that, her and Dad?”

“I don’t know, nothing. She’s just… you know, she was probably hot, once. I should’ve hit on her when I was, like twelve. That would’ve been saucy.” He swirls his finger in the bowl of grapes next to him and doesn’t eat any.

“Dude, what the fuck,” Kendall half-laughs.

“I don’t know. Whatever.” He sounds defensive again and Kendall is more amused by the second.

“Are you trying to fuck Gerri, bro?”

“No, gross, fuck you. She’s, like, efficient. And old. Fuck off. And text me what pills Dad’s supposed to be on.”

“Uh- okay. He- he said I would know?” Kendall’s surprise is evident in his voice. He feels a brief warmth in his chest followed by anxiety that he might never get to experience the closeness he craves with his dad in person again. But he reminds himself that this is a good sign for the future.

“Yeah, don’t get excited. He won’t trust anyone he hires. Thinks they’re all gonna send the list of meds to Michelle Pantsil for the book.”

“Wow. Sure, I’ll- I’ll send you the list.”

“Ugh, just do it, don’t make it a big deal. See you whenever.”

Roman hangs up and Kendall is left with a moment of mixed emotions before refocusing and sending a text to Sandy and Stewy.

Dad’s going after Pierce. Good news. He has no real option if his only plan to get the company even more bloated. Just wants an excuse to chase the old dream. No chance Nan Pierce lets this happen.

Rava pokes her head into the office.

“Are you working?” she asks.

“No- that was Roman, but I think he just called to catch up, actually.” Kendall surprises himself as he realizes that is exactly what just happened.

“Oh?” He’s not the only one who’s surprised.

“Yeah, I think, uh, I guess Dad wanted him to ask me about his pills.” Kendall can’t help but smile a little bit.

“Really?” Rava asks hesitantly. “And that’s- a good thing…?”

“Yeah. That’s a good thing.” He looks at her and gets up to hug her. “Let’s go sit by the tree before the kids go to bed.”

Rava already has had Christmas music playing for the kids, who are inspecting every wrapped present under the beautiful, towering tree.

Kendall notices Sophie subtly peeling back the wrapping paper on the corner of a present addressed to her.

“Uh-uh, Soph. Santa can see that,” he scolds. She looks shocked to have been caught and stares up at him.

“Tell him I didn’t do it! You know the president!”

Rava puts her hand over her face for a moment.

“Santa is more powerful than the president,” Kendall says seriously. “Up, away from the tree. You’ll unwrap it in a few days.”

Iverson looks concerned and Rava goes to smooth his hair.

“Don’t worry,” she reassures him. “Santa knows you’ve both been good this year. That’s what really matters. It’s time for bed now.” The kids groan. “Up, up, up,” Rava continues. “The faster you go to sleep the faster you get to Christmas!”

They stand up and Sophie runs ahead of Iverson, who looks over his shoulder at the festively lighted tree and the many perfectly wrapped boxes underneath it.

Kendall and Rava savor the moment of wonder and innocence and she sits next to him on the couch and leans into him. He kisses her head and they gaze at the glowing tree together.

…..

On December twenty-second, Kendall is at Waystar. He’s here to save Vaulter and he can’t do that without talking to his dad. But he won’t answer the phone and his assistants are denying Kendall at every turn. So here he is. The only way was to come in person. He sits nervously at his desk waiting for any sign that Logan is back on the floor so he can make sure his acquisition isn’t going anywhere. It’s proof he deserves to be here. He glances over to Logan’s office. In there. Heads turn at the sight of him looking out at the floor. He feels self-conscious but strangely proud. They all look away once they've been caught. They've been staring all morning. He bites a nail.

Jess walks into his office. “Hey, Ken?”

He's startled out of his nervous haze and looks up. “Yeah?”

“It’s Rava.”

They exchange the briefest of moments. She hasn’t said that in years. Even though it’s been a few months now, he still gets the rush of remembering she’s calling because she wants to talk to him, not because she’s mad or just to coordinate the kids’ schedules. For a while, it had sent shots of anxiety through him to talk to her- another opportunity to fuck up. But not anymore. He smiles.

“Oh. Yeah, of course put her through.” She turns to go. “Jess- can you just- always put her through.”

She nods with a tiny smile.

“Yeah.”

He picks up the office phone.

“Hey.”

Her voice is honey sweet.

“You didn’t text me back.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah, hang on.” He picks up his phone and reads her latest message. He thought nothing could scandalize him but he’s been proven wrong.

“Wow. Uh… are you going to act that out later, or-?”

“Maybe. How’s everything going? What are the guys saying?”

He’s still looking at the text and now he really doesn’t want to admit that he might have a colossal failure on his hands.

“I- I don’t remember, I’m a little distracted.” She laughs.

“Tell me!”

“It, uh, it- it’s not… great. But I’m figuring it out. I’ll have it by tonight. I will.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“I will.”

It’s like he doesn’t know anyone he doesn’t have to convince.

“I know, Ken. You don’t have to prove it.”

He takes a breath.

“Right, yeah. Okay. I have to go but, yeah, I’ll text you back.”

“Okay.” She knows when work’s not going well, nothing is right in his world. She sounds disappointed and he can’t let that happen either.

“Hey- it’s- it’s five hours til I’m home.”

She can hear him trying and she sighs dramatically.

“Suuuure it is. See you at midnight.”

“I’m coming home at 7:00.” Knowing he’s going home to her makes him feel like he can do this.

“You’ll at least come home before you have to go to some other thing tomorrow, right? I mean, you have to change?”

“Okay. Yeah. See you at 5:00 AM,” he deadpans.

“Ken!”

“I’ll see you at 7:00. Seriously. Maybe we’ll go out.”

“For breakfast? When you get home in the morning?”

He shakes his head.

“Yes. For breakfast. Okay. I have to go save this company now.”

“God, I love how important you are.” He rolls his eyes at the sarcasm but he can hear her smiling and he loves it.

“Bye.”

There’s a tentative knock on the glass and Kendall looks up to see Greg nervously standing at his office door. His voice is muffled as he calls through the glass.

“Uh- hey- hey Ken. Can I come in and talk to you?” He smiles awkwardly. “For a just a- a min? A sec of fam time?”

Kendall’s feeling generous.

“Sure, Greg. Come in,” he calls back. Greg swings the door open.

“H-hey, cuz! What’s up on the anti-corruption, you know, the anti-Roy train?” he attempts.

Kendall gives him a small smile.

“Just anti-corruption. And anti-dictator behavior. What’s up, Greg?”

“Uh, well, you know, just… hangin’ with the fam on the private- private planes and livin’ that high life. I mean, not, like, high. Like not drugs. Not that- uh, I didn’t mean-“

Kendall shakes his head.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

“Um, so, you know the biography of your dad? Michelle Pantsil?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Um, well, I didn’t exactly meet with her, but I did, like, a pre-meet? And-“

Kendall sighs.

“So it was you. And you said some things you can’t take back now?”

“I mean, kind of?” Greg starts. “It wasn’t anything terrible, but maybe things that shouldn’t be in a book? You know? And Tom said Ratfucker Sam is, like, doing research, and apparently he’s not the best guy?”

“Uh, yeah, I mean, Dad’s not gonna love it, man.”

Greg looks panicked.

“Well- well, isn’t there something you can do, or, like-“ he takes in a short breath, “-protect me, maybe? Because I am gonna be able to help you if you win. Or, actually, I can help you win.”

Kendall looks at him.

“Well… I’m not sure what I can do,” Kendall begins.

“I, well, I think you should give me a job if I lose this one?”

Kendall raises his eyebrows.

“No. Dude, come on. If you lose this one? Second choice?”

“I mean, I’m just saying? I have some very, potentially, extremely useful information that I think you could use.”

They look at each other. Kendall thinks about whether he should believe him. He considers the consequences of turning him down and letting the mysterious information stay hidden and the positives of letting it go and staying a small team. He already has one person who’s straddling two sides of the line. But then he considers his dad’s tendency to play as dirty as possible and wonders if he has anything planned to destroy his reputation again. It would be good to have something to stop him this time.

“Okay, Greg. You got it. I think you should leave this side sooner rather than later if you’re going to do it.”

Greg nods.

“Uh, yeah, totally. I- I’m kind of, like, moving up here, though? But also I agree so yeah, yeah.”

The most wishy-washy person alive is on his team, Kendall thinks.

“Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay, well… gotta finish this stuff,” Kendall gestures at the stack of papers on the desk in front of him.

“Right! Yeah! Gotta get to work, for sure.” Greg smiles a nervous smile and backs out of the room. “See ya!”

….

On the afternoon of the same day, a news headline flashes across the PGN screen and Rava’s heart stops for what feels like minutes.

“ACTIVE SHOOTER AT WAYSTAR ROYCO: BUILDING BARRICADED WITH SHOOTER INSIDE”

“What?” Her hands shake as she grabs instantly for her phone and there are tears in her eyes before she can even process it. The most terrifying images and future rip through her mind and she fights as hard as she can to make them stop. The one day Kendall goes back. Was it someone looking for him?? Is he hurt? Hiding? Worse?! She can’t breathe right. The phone rings and rings as she dials his number. He doesn’t answer and she starts hyperventilating as she runs for the car. She calls her driver and manages to choke out “Waystar building, right away, please.”

Her coat half on in the freezing air, she jumps into the waiting SUV and calls him again. When she hears his voice on his voicemail, she starts feeling truly terrified. Why would he not answer his phone in the middle of this?? She doubles over and tries to breathe as heavy rain starts to pound on the car.

Her driver glances back at her but she’s too scared to even try to explain. She dials again, still no answer. Just the voicemail message. She frantically pushes away the thought that that’s how she’ll hear his voice now. She waits to hear the beep.

“Kendall!” She practically yells. “Call me! Call me, please call me and tell me you’re okay. Call me. Ken. Call me. Please.”

The drive seems to take hours. The rain makes the traffic even worse than usual and she curses her lack of recollection of the subway system. She dials Jess and is relieved that she answers on the first ring.

“Hi, Rava,” Jess answers through panting and panic.

“Is Kendall okay?” Rava asks helplessly. "Are you okay?"

“Um-“ Jess sounds like she’s running. “I don’t- I don’t know, I’m being taken to a room somewhere but I don’t see him- but that doesn’t mean anything. Everyone’s running around. I’m sorry!”

“Oh, my god,” she lets out a yelp of true terror. “How is this possible- is anyone- you know?”

“I don’t know, I just heard a shot and some people said maybe more than one? But I haven’t seen anything- um, okay, they’re making everyone hang up so we can hear safety procedures? I’ll call you back as soon as I know anything or if he shows up. When he’s here, I mean.”

Rava covers her mouth. She can hear the blood pounding in her ears.

“Stay safe, Jess! Please call me! I’m coming.”

The beeps to end the call seem louder than normal. Rava panics and dials Roman.

“Oh, good, a connection to what almost passes for civilization,” he answers. She drops her head back for a second and realizes she forgot that Kendall told her he’s been out of the office at management training all week.

“Roman,” Rava starts tearfully. “You don’t know? There’s a shooter at Waystar.”

“Oh, holy fuck, what? Are you fucking with me?”

“No! Kendall’s not answering his phone, Jess is being hidden somewhere and he’s not there. I have to call Shiv.”

“What the f-“ Rava hangs up and dials Shiv. Straight to voicemail like it’s off. She begins to really cry and falls toward the seat. He said he was coming home at 7:00.

The car pulls up and she practically falls out of it trying to get out as fast as she can. Armed guards stand outside and look suspiciously at everyone in sight. Police cars line the street, scattered protesters stare up at the building, news crews are everywhere.

“Excuse me! Is Kendall Roy in there? Is he okay? Where is he?” she calls desperately to the nearest security guard.

“Please stand clear, ma’am. Police orders. This is a crime scene.”

“NO! My husband is in this building and I need to know if he is safe! Kendall Roy.” The guard appears unmoved. “As in Royco?!” She has never talked to anyone like that in her life, but she will do whatever it takes.

“We’ll update everyone when we have more information.”

She practically screams in frustration and calls Kendall again. The rings end early and his live voice sends waves of relief like she couldn’t even imagine over her.

“Hey! Fuck, sorry, I just heard your message and I was going to-“

“Oh, what the fuck,” she sobs into the phone. “Ken! Are you okay? Are you safe? Where are you?”

He sounds like Jess had, being hustled through hallways.

“I’m- yeah, I’m fine, I was making a call on the roof til it started raining and I didn’t even know about this until about a minute ago when these guys came and found me.” He covers the mic. “Excuse me! Where are we going?” he asks the security guards. Rava can hear heavy breathing and yelps and alarms and hurried footsteps in the background.

“Safe room,” Rava hears a guard’s muffled voice through the noise. “With Logan.”

“With- uh- what, no, is there a different-“

“Kendall! Go to the safe room!” Rava yells into the phone. He looks at the phone in surprise and then it really hits him what she must have thought.

“I’m going. Hey, I’m sorry, I’m fine. Really. I mean, it’s possible this was all orchestrated by Dad to get me alone and threaten me.“

Neither of them knows if he’s joking. Rava puts her hand on her face.

“Please. Are you almost to the room? Have they caught the- whoever was-“

“Uh, I don’t know. Not sure, we’re almost there, though.”

“Do not hang up on me,” Rava says sternly, but he can feel where it’s coming from through the phone.

“I won’t. It’s okay. I promise.”

He can’t promise that and she knows it, but hearing it in his voice makes her feel a little bit better. She doesn’t want to be too dramatic.

“Can they just let you out of there? I-“ her breath catches. “-it would be really good to see you right now,” she tries, knowing there’s no way they’re just letting one person out.

“I agree, but they’re not letting anyone out. These guys have the kind of guns Ravenhead loves to talk about.” The door opens in front of him.

“We’re here, head inside, please,” the guard orders.

“Okay, I’m here at the safe room,” he reports to Rava. She’s suddenly beyond exhausted and plops down onto a bench in the wide courtyard in front of the Waystar building.

Kendall steps inside, dreading what Logan’s reaction will be, whether he’ll even let him in. But Logan’s up and striding over as fast as Kendall has ever seen him.

“Kendall!” Rava hears Logan’s voice through the phone. “Are you all right, son? Where were you?”

Kendall can’t believe the embrace he’s getting. He hesitantly hugs his dad back and finds himself wishing against his will that it could last longer.

“Uh- yeah, I’m fine, Dad. I was fine.”

Logan nods and pats his arm before going to sit back down. Kendall takes half a second to remember that he’s still his father’s son, regardless of what’s going on with the company.

“You’re in? You’re okay?” Rava asks nervously.

“Yeah. I’m good.”

“Thank God. Fuck. I don’t-“ she shakes her head. “I don’t think I’ve ever been that scared in my life.” The adrenaline has kept her warm so far but now the cold is getting to her and she zips her coat, gazing up at the building and willing him to come walking out the doors. She longs to feel him against her, to squeeze him and feel his heartbeat.

“I really am sorry, I- I should’ve answered, I was on a call and thought I’d just call you right back and then they came up-“ he begins.

Gerri hangs up her phone and interrupts the moment.

“It was an ATN employee… a suicide,” she tells the room delicately. Kendall glances down and he’s suddenly pulled away from his conversation, from the present moment. He has uncomfortable flashbacks to wondering if anyone would notice. If anyone would care. Logan looks at him for a second and Kendall feels a disturbing connection to know it’s in his head too. The only other person who knew how he used to feel. It’s a wake-up call to see how worried his dad was just now. To hear Rava’s panicked crying at the mere thought. He thinks maybe he’ll never tell her what he used to think about when he was left alone for too long.

“Uh-“ he clears his throat as he and Logan break eye contact and he turns his attention back to the call. “I’m not sure if you heard that… someone- killed himself… at his desk. It’s- it’s him only. No one else.” He wonders what they would have said about him.

“Oh,” she breathes out. “That’s sad… Does that- um, are you coming outside now?” she asks, knowing that’s much too hopeful.

“No, I think we have to be in here a little while longer?” But his head is elsewhere. “Hang on a sec.” He taps one of the guards near the door a bit nervously. “Um. Do you know who it was?”

The guard shakes his head.

“Okay.” He takes a step toward Gerri. “Who was it, do we know?” he asks her.

“A- Mark Johnson?” she says, scrolling through an email from Karolina about the incident. Kendall knew there was a small chance he’d know the name, but he still feels guilty that he doesn’t.

“Oh. Okay.” He wonders if there’s anything that could have been done. The therapists told him there was always something to live for.

“Did you know him?” Rava asks.

“No,” he answers.

But it’s still more upsetting than he’d like to admit. He looks around the room and thinks he should go to talk to Shiv. It’s been a while and he wants to know what’s going on. Maybe she can distract him. Or maybe she can talk. He glances at Gerri and Logan talking to Rhea and wants to make an appearance in that conversation too. If Logan’s going after Pierce, Kendall needs to make it clear that he won’t.

“Uh, I’m going to go make sure everyone else is okay,” he says into the phone. “Yeah? I’ll call you as soon as we get the go-ahead.”

“Oh, okay. I’m right outside for you,” she says. He likes the sound of that. “I’ll see you soon.” She doesn’t like this situation but she knows it could be hours.

“Okay, thanks, Rav. I love you.”

“I love you.”

They hang up and Kendall cautiously makes his way over to the corner where Gerri and Logan and Rhea are talking. He wouldn’t have normally attempted it, but Logan’s concern prompts him to think he might be allowed in.

Gerri’s talking in a low voice about Mark Johnson.

“Apparently he emailed a close friend last week, talking of a ‘culture of bullying.’”

“It’s a newsroom, not a kindergarten,” says Logan as he rolls his eyes. Gerri hesitates.

“Tragically, he also had a history of incidences of – well, not really, mental illness, which he was medicated for through our health plan?”

“Well, let’s hope that doesn’t get out and muddy the waters,” Logan replies darkly.

Kendall feels like someone’s punched him in the stomach and changes his mind about being a part of this. He walks over to Shiv. He wants out of this room and into Rava’s arms.

“Hey,” he starts.

Shiv’s scrolling on her phone and glances up at him, pressing her lips together for a second as she decides on a tone.

“Hey,” she says carefully, with just enough attitude to make it clear that she’s on Dad’s side.

“Can we talk? Like…” he gauges her weirded out reaction. “Actually talk?”

“Um… I guess?” she says as she glances toward Logan.

They move around the corner and she looks at him expectantly.

“So you’re working here now?” he asks.

Her expression turns suspicious.

“Just observing. Why? You know, that’s company information, not for outsiders,” she smiles. He nods and raises his eyebrows.

“Right. But you’re not an outsider?” he challenges.

“Oh! No, I am,” Shiv says with a sarcastic nonchalance.

“So, Rhea,” Logan says smoothly from the other side of the wall. Kendall and Shiv both turn their heads at the sound of his voice moving back into business mode. “Let’s get into it. There’s a price. Let’s cut the bullshit.”

The siblings look at each other warily as they both lean in Logan’s direction to hear better.

“Well, I’m a mere conduit, so feel free to give some numbers, but it’s a hard no from the Pierces.”

“Twenty-one billion.” Shiv looks alarmed and her eyes dart to Kendall. She’s dismayed to see his lack of surprise.

“Why aren’t you more shocked by this?” she asks. “Oh, fuck. You’ve been in contact. This is all an act? Is this why you’re here today?”

“No, Shiv. I’m here because I need to keep up with what’s going on here and I’m not shocked because I’m taking over the company I’ve worked at for seventeen years. I know what Dad wanted to bid.”

“Fuck off, I don’t believe you,” she whispers as they both quiet down to listen to Rhea’s low-key reaction to the staggering number.

“It’s like Shiv said, the cultures just aren’t compatible,” Rhea answers. Shiv gives Kendall a smug look. “It’s an emotional matter for the Pierces. Money is not irrelevant, but how can I put it-?”

Kendall knows Rhea is really here to shut it all down. He makes a split-second decision to call her bluff. Maybe there is no number big enough. Before Shiv or Logan can stop him, he steps back out into the main part of the room.

“-Relevant?” he finishes. Logan and Rhea look up at him and he feels his heart hammering in his chest. “I mean, let’s be honest here. What is it- twenty-one five?”

Shiv runs up behind him.

“Excuse me?” she looks at Logan. His expression is complicated. “Dad! He can’t just say numbers. Can he?” Kendall holds strong and hopes his dad won’t shut him down.

They’re both glued to Logan’s face and Rhea seems reluctantly enthralled by the family drama. Logan’s anger at the move is simmering under the surface, but Kendall can see that he’s grappling. He wants Rhea’s yes more than he wants to shut Kendall down. The moment feels like it lasts a week but finally, Logan nods. Authority approved.

“Bidding against yourself,” Rhea smiles. Kendall’s emboldened.

“Twenty-two,” he says without breaking eye contact with Rhea.

“Jesus, Ken.” Shiv stares at him.

Rhea’s grin continues.

“That doesn’t sound like a real offer.”

“It’s real,” Kendall confirms more confidently. Rhea raises her eyebrows.

“I’ll really have to take this to the Pierces,” she demurs.

“Uh-huh,” Logan says. “Thank you, kids. Rhea, I’m sure I’ll be hearing from you.” His phone rings and he steps away to answer it. “Marcia. Yeah, yeah, fine. Just some ‘mental illness’ fuck…”

Shiv walks over to a couch and calls Tom, leaving Kendall standing with Rhea. He tries to read her face.

“This isn’t what the Pierces want,” he says, as both a statement and a question. Rhea smiles.

“No,” she confirms. He was right. If she’s saying no to twenty-two, there’s no way this is happening.

“Well, frankly, I think you deserve complete transparency. I don’t think my dad should start something he can’t finish. His tenure, as storied as it is, is going to come to an end when I take over. And I agree with you. It’s just not the direction we want to take the company, Sandy and Stewy and I.”

“Mmhmm. Yeah. I understand that. I have a feeling your dad won’t give up until he gets a solid answer from Nan Pierce though.”

“Right,” Kendall says. “Well. I think we can be confident what that answer will be.”

Rhea gives him an enigmatic look. She can communicate with just her eyes and he knows she sees the same future he does.

“It is going to be you, isn’t it?” she says, more as a statement than a question.

He takes a breath.

“Yes. It is.”

She nods subtly. He nods back and she goes to sit down.

Kendall takes a second to collect himself before sliding back down into the current reality of what has happened today. He looks over at Shiv hanging up the phone and thinks he’d really like to try again to connect to her. He cautiously makes his way over to the corner she’s standing in behind the side wall, hidden from the rest of the room. He can’t help himself and lowers his voice.

“Hey. Did Dad promise you… something?”

Shiv tucks her hair behind her ear.

“Nope. No… did he promise you something?” she asks, concern bleeding through her façade of calm.

Kendall decides to keep it vague. The sadness starts creeping up again and sucking away his adrenaline.

“Well. He’s promised me a lot of things.”

“Old news, Ken.”

“I mean, it’s not. Turn on the literal news and they’ve been talking about it.”

“Mmhmm.” Shiv returns to her phone before flitting her eyes back up when she feels that he’s still looking at her. “…What?” she asks.

“Did you know the guy?”

“Who- the guy who- with the gun? No. Why, did you?”

He shakes his head.

“No. Fucking… terrible, though.”

“Yeah,” Shiv shrugs. “Sad,” she adds in an obligatory tone. He’s too quiet. “What’s wrong with you?” she asks.

“I mean, no one knows him, or- cares? Dad was over there talking about publishing his mental illness, like…” She looks at him expectantly. “You know.” She gives him a blank look. “It’s what they would say, Shiv. About me.”

“Well, they’re speculating with him. But everybody knows for sure how fucked up you are,” she jokes. He doesn’t laugh and his eyes stay on the table next to him.

She gives him an uncertain look. The news is really sinking in now and making him more upset by the minute. The fact that an employee brought a gun in the office, the fact that someone in his company killed himself because of policies Kendall could have improved. The idea that more than one person thought he might have been dead today. The things Logan and Gerri would’ve said if he’d gone through with it years ago. The distance between him and his siblings now. It’s too much. He just wants it all to go away for a minute. She sees his face and doesn’t really know what to do.

“Come here. Give me a hug,” he says quietly.

“Wha-?” she starts. He pulls her in and stays there for longer than she’d expect.

“Ken. Hey. That’s not you.” She rubs his back for a second and pulls back to look at him. “Wait, you’re not, like.. thinking of-? Because, you know, Dad would be pissed. Who would he talk shit about to the lackeys?” Kendall has to restrain himself from asking if she’s kidding. She looks at him like he’s crazy. “It is just a company.” He looks at her like she should know it’s not. “It is. Not really worth…” She gestures at him. “…this, you know.” He shakes his head.

“Not the company. Not really. I just… I don’t know. Someone should have noticed something with this guy. They just- should’ve noticed.”

She gives him a long look.

“You wanna talk some more?”

He looks at her and hates that he feels like he can’t trust her to keep it all to herself. He flashes back to holding her as a baby and wants to cry at the thought that he can’t tell her anything. It’s so quiet for a second that they can hear the rain dripping down the windows outside.

“I- I really can’t.”

….

After what feels like an eternity, Kendall finally trudges out of the Waystar doors into the drizzle. Rava’s head snaps up at the sight of him and slides out of the SUV to run across the courtyard and throw her arms around him in her puffy coat.

“Oh,” she whispers. “You’re here.” He lays his head on her shoulder and just lets the news photographers snap their shots. He’s so relieved and lets his shoulders drop. He hadn’t even realized they’d been practically around his ears. She doesn’t let him go for a whole minute and she’s teary again when they separate just enough to walk over and get in the backseat. She’s a little surprised that he’s teary, too. She opens her arms again when they’re inside and the door is shut, enclosing them in the safe, heated interior with tinted windows. He leans into her and stays in her arms the whole way home. He tells her the whole story and she tries to stay even-keeled while telling him her side. When they’re home, she takes him inside, and even though he has to email Stewy to tell him about Rhea and figure out how he’s going to get Roman to tell him the whole truth about PGM as things develop, he’s just feeling emotionally exhausted. So he lets Rava lead him to their room and slowly pull on some pajamas before she guides him into bed and holds him to her. She takes the remote from the bedside table and starts the fire in the fireplace. While the flame shadows dance on the walls, she nestles into him and slowly kisses his cheek, once, twice, three times. He closes his eyes.

Her lips touch his and he needs them to feel like one. He pulls the comforter over them both and rolls her on top of him for a deep and slow connection that they both need after everything they’ve been through since this morning. He needs comfort, needs to give comfort, and she wants to be taken care of after such a dangerous day. He holds her close and they share each other’s air. They’d rather have less oxygen than be more than an inch apart.

They end the day lying still in the light of the fire, wrapped up in each other with no plan to move. They don’t need words to express themselves and he’s grateful just to have time to exist where there’s nothing to prove. She just wants him to lie there with her. Deep tiredness hits him hard after such a taxing day. Even though he has no idea what time it is and is pretty sure it’s still early evening, he lets himself slip into sleep. His even breathing and the way he cuddles up to her in his sleep make Rava feel like utter mush and she kisses his head before she follows after him and floats into sleep.

….

On December twenty-third, Rava wakes up still on her side facing Kendall as he lies on his back. She glances at his phone screen as he scrolls. An Instagram profile full of professional photos, galas, upscale restaurants and bars… she squints a little in her morning haze and sees the username clearly. MarkJohnson.

She blinks and he realizes she’s awake.

“Hey,” he says, closing the app. He looks haunted.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to close it,” she says. “I thought you didn’t know him.”

“Uh, yeah, I didn’t.” He pauses. “Probably should have. I dunno. I wish I had.”

She runs her fingers over his forearm. She’s still getting used to his newfound enlightenment and desire to be the one to help post-rehab.

“Oh, Ken, you couldn’t have done anything.”

He doesn’t love that attitude but he reminds himself it’s coming from not wanting him to feel guilty. He looks at the comforter.

“He sent an email to his friend saying it was a culture of bullying. My company. I could have done something.”

“You can’t control everyone at the company,” Rava sounds too indifferent and it makes him kind of upset. He doesn’t want to say anything. She glances at him. “I mean, you couldn’t have known, his Instagram looks like a lot of fun,” she prompts. He nods.

“Yeah.” They’re quiet for a moment. “I might start a foundation.”

“For this guy-?”

“Yeah, I mean, you know, for people who are struggling. Like… it doesn’t have to end like that.” He considers how differently he would’ve felt if he’d known that in the future he would be lying next to Rava and on his way to taking over Waystar.

Rava’s a little touched.

“Well, that would be nice,” she affirms as she sits up in bed and reaches for his sweater to pull over her tank top.

“Or- something for addicts, maybe. Maybe both. There’s kind of a lot of crossover. You know? Maybe he had a problem. He had a lot of party pictures? I- I was at some of those galas.”

Rava looks back and realizes his voice was wobbling.

“Hey,” she says, laying back down and giving him a hug. “You don’t know what caused it. It was probably complicated.” She pats his back.

Everyone’s so quick to dismiss and he tries not to spill a tear onto the sweater she’s wearing. But she notices.

“Oh, Ken, what’s-“

“Nothing. It’s just- fucking… sad.” He sniffles and sits up. “Yeah, it’s fine.”

She looks at him with concern.

“You sure?”

He shrugs.

“Uh- yeah. I’m gonna get some breakfast… yeah? You want something?”

“Yeah. I’ll be in in a minute,” she says.

He nods slowly and gets up and walks toward their bathroom. She thinks he looks like he has a hundred pounds on his shoulders. She follows him into the bathroom after a minute and finds him leaning against the wall by the sink with the water running and a silent tear on his face.

“Oh,” she pulls him close and he lets her. She turns the water off.

“Uh…” he wipes the tear from his face. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Nothing’s wrong with you. It’s sweet that you care. It is sad!” She keeps one arm around his waist and touches his face with her free hand.

“It could’ve been- anyone. You know?” He finds himself wishing she did know.

“Sure,” she says.

“Dad’s gonna publish that he was insane because he was on some prescription through the company. You- you know he’d do that to me. He basically already did.”

Logan’s shaming for being a human being never seems to stop, Rava thinks.

“Well,” she says, “that would pale in comparison to the headlines I’d get printed about his Viagra use. And of course his death by daughter-in-law.” Kendall laughs a little through the tears and she squeezes him. “He’s such a…. fuck him,” she says. He nods and tries to get it together.

“It’s okay to fall apart,” she tells him.

He shakes his head.

“Not doing that.” He takes a deep breath and she nods and takes his hand as they walk out to the breakfast table. He sits down and looks at her across the round edge of the breakfast table. “So, tell me what’s going on,” he says. “Something else. It’s- it’s not good for me to think about this anymore.” She gives him a worried look but obliges. She sighs as she forces herself to talk about her situation.

“Well, I called that firm Robert knows to take the case,” she says a little regretfully. Her face is pained. “I- couldn’t handle it on my own I guess.” She smiles a forced smile of embarrassment. “I’m still the attorney of record,” she adds, feeling like she must sound lame, “but they’re mostly handling the day to day now.” She shrugs. “It’s… disappointing. But I’m staying up on it as much as I can. They’re already making more progress with getting documentation.”

He nods and holds her hand. He knows the feeling of failure.

“Well, it’s good for those guys. Tony, yeah? And the other guy?”

“Yeah,” she says reluctantly. “Yes it is.”

“I don’t mean you weren’t good. I mean- you know. If they can solve it. If they can find the guy who disappeared. What’s the resort company called?”

“Um, Triangle Properties.” Kendall thinks for a second about whether he recognizes it. No.

“Uh-huh.”

They look at each other and it sinks in that they have nothing good to talk about at this moment. They pick at breakfast for a few minutes.

“You want to watch tv?” she asks.

“Yeah. That would be good.”

They take their coffees and head into the family room for some low-key zone-out time. She flips on the set and spreads one of the blankets over them both.

“The kids are out?” Kendall asks.

“With Malaya, at the new science museum exhibit. Iverson wanted to go.” Kendall nods. He kind of wishes they were going, too. He could use a distraction and he thinks Rava could, too.

“I’m supposed to have lunch with a couple of the girls today,” Rava says, more like it’s a question than a statement.

“Oh.” Kendall tries not to make his disappointment obvious. “Uh… yeah. Okay."

"I just promised them because it's been so long."

“Right. Sure,” he pushes a smile onto his face. She should have a distraction.

After the show has ended and Rava has gotten ready, she walks over to kiss Kendall, still in his robe in his armchair.

“Don’t go,” he says, only half-serious.

“Ohh, I’ll be home before you know it. But you could have a friend over, too.” She smiles, “or don’t you have any of those?” she teases.

“I have friends,” he insists.

“Outside of business acquaintances?”

“Well, Stewy’s not a business acquaintance.”

“Business partner,” she says as if that distinction is not the point.

He feels regretful for having given up so many of his party friends from the old days, but he’d known he had to do it.

“It was part of rehab to end those other friendships,” he says, trying not to sound annoyed that she would forget that. “You know that.”

“Ken, I’m messing with you. You’re fine.”

“Ivey will build the Lego skyline with me when he gets back.”

“Adult friends, Ken,” she smiles.

“Uh, well, you’re my adult friend,” he says as he purposely looks her up and down.

She smiles a little sadly and glances down at herself.

“Not exactly looking my best these days,” she sighs.

“What? You look good every day.”

She looks at him for half a second and looks away. He can tell her confidence is shaken by the loss of control over the case.

“Come here!” he says lightly.

She walks over and he gently pulls her down to kiss him.

“What are you going to do while I’m out?” she asks him.

“Uh, just work out, and… yeah, I have to call Sandy.”

“Okay. I should probably join you in the gym. Gonna go eat instead,” she’s says in a regretful yet amused voice.

“Hey, stop that. Seriously. I have to work out,” he says seriously. “You know. Every day it has to happen. But that’s my shit.” She nods. “You look hot.” He means it but she laughs it off.

“Okay. Thanks. I’ll see you when I’m back,” she says without a lot of feeling.

….

On December twenty-fourth, the Waystar Christmas party is in full swing. The cocktails are flowing, the festive attire is sparkling, the band is playing, and Rava is grimacing. Kendall looks over and doesn’t miss the expression.

“I know, last place you want to be right now,” he sighs. “It’s only 4:00. We’ll be out of here in no time. I just have to talk to Dad.”

She nods because she gets it and she sighs because she doesn’t want to get it.

Logan’s across the room and she hopes he’s feeling as un-grinch-like as possible. She watches Kendall eyeing him cautiously.

“This is the last chance I have to save Vaulter,” he says nervously. “Next time I see him- I don’t even know. A month? Argestes? It’ll be too late.”

“Oh yeah,” Rava says. “I forgot about that trip.” She always liked it out there, minus all the networking. “Well, go do it. You can get this taken care of and we can go home?”

“Yeah,” he confirms. “You know, it’s kind of fucked up that there’s this party when Mark Johnson…” his eyes fall to the floor for a moment. She squeezes his hand.

“I know. But you’re here to fix the Vaulter situation for all those people. They need you,” she reminds him.

He nods and takes a deep breath and summons the strength to walk to where Logan is standing with Colin not far behind.

She watches from across the room as Kendall approaches his dad. He starts off nice, and she can see his harder business persona come out as she’s sure they’re getting into the nitty-gritty. After a surprisingly brief conversation, Kendall bounds back over to Rava.

“It’s done. I convinced him. He’s keeping it.”

“Just like that?”

“This- this is a new level, I think. I’m playing him, Rav. We’re playing chess. Like equals. He fucking listened to me.”

“He’s listened to you plenty of times before!”

“Yeah- yeah, but this was another level. This was real shit, like- there was respect there. I showed him I did the work, I had the full answer for everything he asked. He said Roman agreed with me.”

Rava pats his arm.

“Honestly, that’s great, Ken.”

He’s basking in the glory of being heard as Rava glances around at the attendees. Her eyes stop when she sees a tall, thin blonde with fake cleavage spilling out of her tight dress walking by and smiling at Kendall.

“Hi, Kendall,” she says in a breathy voice as she passes them.

Rava turns her head and swings it back around to stare at him. He’s looking at his watch.

“Um, who was that?” she asks, eyes a little wider than necessary. He shrugs.

“Nobody, just, uh, some girl I went on a date with last year.” She keeps staring at him. “It was nothing.”

Rava looks down at her corporate-appropriate dress and takes in a bit of a sharp breath.

“Oh. You… went out with her?”

“One time.”

“Oh. Okay.” She raises her eyebrows and wishes for a mirror. He saw her, he asked her out.

“What?” he asks.

“Oh, nothing, you know, just that she can’t be more than twenty-five.”

He shakes his head and tries to brush it off.

“I don’t know how old she is. It doesn’t matter, it was nothing.”

She reaches behind her head to fix her hair.

“Mmhmm. Okay.”

He half-smiles at her. She can’t seriously be worried about this.

“Nothing even happened.”

She grimaces at the idea of anything happening, of him comparing her to that girl. Nothing happened. She wonders if they kissed at the end of the date. The idea makes her sick.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing, I promise.”

She tries to seem casual, like she’s making a joke.

“But you wanted it to, though.”

He looks right at her.

“Actually, I didn’t. She’s really not my type.”

“Right, yes, I’m sure you hate perfect, beautiful, young-”

He smiles.

“Stop. You are perfect, beautiful, and young.”

She rolls her eyes dramatically.

“Oh, right,” she says, walking ahead of him a step. He reaches for her hand and grabs it.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know, the dermatologist?”

He shakes his head and laughs.

“Don’t say that.”

She looks back at him.

“Stop smiling!” she insists.

“I’m smiling because this is ridiculous.”

“Oh, you were so miserable without me,” she says in a mocking tone.

He looks at her seriously.

“I was.”

She shifts uncomfortably and he slips his arms around her waist, looking into her eyes. She squirms a little and avoids looking at him.

“Yeah, it’s fine.” She starts moving away and he keeps her there.

“Hey. I mean it, I was.”

She wrinkles her nose.

“Please, I didn’t even look like that when I was twenty-two.”

“I don’t want you to look like that.”

“You asked her out.”

He doesn’t know whether the truth is better or worse.

“Actually-“ He drops his head down and looks up at her. He tells himself not to mention that Rava had a whole pseudo-relationship and tries not to smirk or gloat. “She asked me out.”

She sucks in one cheek.

“Oh, good. A slutty model,” she says semi-seriously.

“I wouldn’t know. One date, Rav.” He gazes at her and she avoids eye contact. “I-I wished she was you. I fucking wished everyone I talked to was you.”

She sighs and finally looks at him.

“Really?”

“Of course, really. Fuck, don’t get all… fake at the doctor.” He shakes his head. “You’re perfect. Come here.” He pulls her in and she leans against him. She’s briefly amused that he’s blissfully unaware of her expertly-done skin treatments.

“Does she know you’re married again now?” she asks in that fake-joking voice again as she squeezes him to her.

“If she reads Page Six.” He still can’t believe she would care about this. “Can we go home now?”

She looks up at him with a small smile and imitates the girl’s voice sarcastically.

“Yes, Kendall.”

He shakes his head again.

“Stop. Let’s go.” He puts his arm around her and they walk out.

….

On December twenty-fifth, Rava hands Kendall a wrapped present after the kids have gone to take post-unwrapping naps. He takes a look at the gift tag.

I thought about sneakers, but this seemed somehow even better. Something for the man who has everything.

The phrase used to be a dark joke to him. He'd thought he had nothing for the longest time and it had always been impossible to explain to anyone but her. He opens the wrapping paper and beholds a well-loved journal.

“It’s my diary,” she smiles. “From the first years we first started dating. I thought you’d like to read what I- well, how I saw you, versus how you saw yourself.”

“I didn’t even know you kept this!” he says with wonder. He opens it up and starts flipping through it, catching snippets on different pages.

If he could take a month away from the Roys, he’d start to see how brilliant he actually is.

I wish I knew how many colors are in Ken’s eyes. I tried to count them once but he blinked. I could honestly look into those eyes forever.

I didn’t know it was even possible to think about someone so much. All I want to do is lie in bed with him every minute. It’s like I physically need him. I don’t know how I’m going to focus on classes when I have to go back to law school next week. I can’t be away from him anymore!

He’s speechless when he looks up at her again. She’s blushing but she’s happy it’s having the intended effect. He glances back down and flips the page one more time.

If Kendall doesn’t propose to me this year I might actually die!!

He chuckles and points to that line, holding it up for her to see.

“Wow,” he laughs. “Good thing I did.”

“Yeah,” she smiles and they gaze at each other. “It is a good thing.”

“This- this is amazing,” he says. “I don’t even- wow.” He looks at her again. “Can’t believe this is real.” He looks down at the book and smiles again. “So, uh, I guess you’re kind of into me.”

“Mmm,” she says as she kisses him. “I guess so.”

He pauses.

“Did you really count the colors in my eyes?”

She smiles.

“Four,” she whispers in his ear.

“Four? No, three.”

“You’re missing the darker green,” she says.

It’s his turn to feel a little hot in his face.

“Okay. So, you’re actually obsessed with me,” he smiles.

“And look how happy you are about it!” she replies.

“You just took out all the bad stuff,” he insists.

She shrugs. “No missing pages!” He flips through the whole thing again. She’s right.

“Okay, I’m absolutely reading every word of this today. But first, I’ll get your gift.”

He pulls out a wrapped gift that’s clearly a frame.

“I don’t know if this is- yeah, this is probably not, you know, great, but- you said you missed when I did art, so…”

She pulls the paper off of a close-up sketch of her smiling in bed, sheets wrapped below her bare shoulders and slightly messy hair framing her face. Sunlight streams through the window behind her.

“How I see you,” he says. “Versus how you see yourself,” he adds.

“I can’t believe you drew this,” she whispers. “It’s so beautiful, I love it. When- when did you even have time to do this?”

He shrugs.

“You know. I made it work. Got the idea at the wedding, the way you woke up,” he smiles. “I just think you should know…” they look at each other. “You know.” She nods. “Come here,” he says quietly.

She cuddles up to him and they wrap their arms around each other. Today, they do have everything.

Chapter 14 💗

#merry christmas!#merry jeremy strong day!#it's a long one again #rewriting one of the most popular episodes fkdjngkdf #ok enjoy!#succession #kendall roy #kendall x rava #kenrava #kendall roy fic #rava roy

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deusvervemakesgames · 3 months

Text

Project RBH Devlog 0042

Admittedly, I did less this week than I would have liked. Mostly I did some minor touch-ups to the wall tileset. While I came up with a solution to the problem that’s causing a hole to appear in the floor tiles, I haven’t actually implemented it yet.

What I did attempt to implement was a fix to the screen tearing issue that I’ve been having for months now. It didn’t work, but it did have a notable impact on the screen-tearing, meaning that it’s definitely a camera problem. I’ll keep hacking away at it.

I did have a minor bugfix. When I improved my damage code to better optimize it and to better recognize whether I was shooting a wall or not, I caused an unintended issue where the bullet wouldn’t properly despawn as if it had piercing as well.

Truth be told, I’m intimidated by having to make an animated character sprite from scratch, but at the very least, as a twin-stick shooter, I don’t have to worry about attack animations for the most part. Sure, there should be wind-up animations on certain attacks, like the floor-spikes, and I want that bomb enemies to flash properly, but that’s not nearly as hard as properly lining up a melee attack animation.

Until next Devlog!

-DeusVerve

DevLogs like these are brought to you by Patron(s) like Haelerin!

Support me on Patreon to get Early Access to builds!

#devlog #indie dev #game development #indie game #game dev #video games #rbh

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incarnateirony · 1 year

Note

You were in Marketing, so tell me, do you think Jensen agreed to Atomic Heart without realizing that there would be a bit of a shit storm, or do you think he and his promo team were good with the shit storm, because bottom line, it's a worldwide game and it gave him huge publicity? I mean, even the haters blaming him for the entire war really doesn't matter, as 99% of people know that is just stupid. Also, controversy about what nationality a dev is, is not going to stop gamers from buying a game. I just can't figure if Jensen stepped into this unaware, or brilliantly chose this to widen his name appeal?

I think Jensen has far better sense of bearing on media than all the people pretending to be upset off of a well known exaggerated review that intentionally warped it.

I think Jensen is fully aware that media everywhere boils down to about one of three money sources, behind just as many proxy screens. I think Jensen is aware you guys read things funded by Russia and PIF every day, or watch shows with them, or networks funded by them every day.

It's that this is all hilarious noise of people with miscellaneous agendas, and other people reacting to them inflating their importance.

Jensen is fully aware, just like every other actor in the history of ever, he's going to work down the money pipe of one of several major influencing political forces, if not multiple or all of them at the same time, and that's just how it fucking works, and this fandom really needs to wrap their head around it.

It's xenophobia, fam. Someone saw "Russian" and went digging immediately for "dirty money." And if you dig in media enough you will always find it. This is actually more "media welfare" dogwhistling, in Russian font. breaking news, game developer uses locally available funding systems to create game, more at 11.

Jensen knew that people would react to agendas and dogwhistles and that it wouldn't matter a goddamn thing or negatively impact his career, just that narcissists would waste energy yelling about it feeling like they're doing something.

Listen, I support Ukraine, but you're a fucking goof if you think this is about Ukraine. Even if you're Ukrainian, I'm sorry. Half your fucking TV still is probably Russian funded. Stop picking and choosing things to pretend to be mad about when there's a shiny actor's face attached to fight about. If you're gonna be pissed about this shit, fix it at the root, don't attack the small developers that have the sin of Existing In A Country.

I think Jensen was happy to be a shooter bicon rebelling in silent LGBTQ undertones to lead more Russians to his content, and that everyone fucked up the developer happy to do that, and made them give away all their profits.

The game dev giving all their profits to Ukraine should have ended this. You guys aren't here for truth or social justice or even Ukraine, you guys are here to argue about shit until the horse has been beaten into glue. People WANT this studio to die for NO good reason beyond the fact that some idiot convinced them it needs to, and they will not stop beating this fucking horse until they get what they convinced themselves is right.

If you are still talking about this thinking it has any meaningful bearing, I regret to inform you, you as a person are extremely succeptible to propaganda.

#atomic heart

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y2klostandfound · 11 months

Photo

Space Channel 5 on Dreamcast Arena Vol.1 (Video game magazine) (Italy, 2000)

Translation in English

RELEASE DATE: ALREADY RELEASED

PRODUCT: SEGA

DEVELOPMENT: SEGA

GENRE:MUSIC GAME

Space Channel Five is Sega's answer to all the music games released so far. Here in Italy we know a few titles of the genre, Bust a Groove or Parappa the Rapper to give an example, but in Japan music is a genre that is quite fashionable, especially in arcades (see Guitar Freaks or the latest Drum Mania, both by Konami). In this same period, the Sonic Team also jumped into this genre with the coin-op Samba de Amigo. Behind this Space Channel Five is the mastermind of the genius who produced some of the greatest driving games of all time (including Sega Rally), Tetsuya Mizuguchi. He says in an interview: "To create this game I didn't want to think of a fixed genre". In fact, SCF is a mixture of different genres, a bit of action, a bit of shooter and a lot of healthy 007 model music. One fine day, mysterious aliens, the Moroseijin (Morolians), arrive on Earth. Apparently for no reason they start making all the earthlings dance, one after the other. At this point the producer of a television station on the verge of bankruptcy takes over who, with the hope of raising the audience of his network, sends a girl named Ulala who has been working for two years at her company as a reporter. Soon Ulala will realize that she has special powers that can break the spell that forces humans to dance. Her task will therefore be to save all the earthlings from alien control and drive those "nice guys" of the Moroseijin(Morolians) from the Earth. As for the game mechanics, just think of an aerobics class. You will first have to carefully observe the movements that the Moroseijin (Morolians) perform to the rhythm of the music. Then all you have to do is repeat them, using the buttons on your controller. If you don't make a single mistake, you'll move on to the next level. As you progress, the tempo of the music gets faster and faster and the number of keys you have to press will also increase. In short, everything will become more and more messy and difficult. On the bottom right of the screen it says "listening rating". The more you dance well, the more this index will increase in percentage. There are two game modes: Dance Battle Mode and Shooting Battle Mode. The purpose of the first will be to free the earthlings from the Moroseijin (Morolians) with the magical power of dance. As you progress through the story you will face increasingly complex levels and dance to the rhythm of ever more exaggerated music. The Earthlings you save will crowd behind you and follow you everywhere dancing with you. The longer the line of people, the higher the ratings will be. In Battle Shooting Mode, Ulala will have two weapons at her disposal: a pistol to hit the aliens and a beam to save the earthlings. In the various levels, either the Moroseijin (Morolians) or the earthlings may appear in the three directions (up, right, left). For example, if three aliens appear on the right, Ulala will have to press right and three times the A button with which you use the gun. If, on the other hand, two terrestrials appear on the left, he will have to press the button B once left and twice with which the beam is used. Everything must be done to the rhythm of the music. As you progress through the missions, the button combinations will become more and more complicated. There will also be a Watch Mode in which you can study Ulala's dance moves in depth. It will be possible to rotate and zoom the shot at will. This option is essential because SCF boasts a truly remarkable number of moves and the only way to familiarize yourself with them before executing them in the actual game is precisely this Watch Mode. Graphically speaking, this Space Channel Five is pretty awesome. Both the backdrops and the costumes of the various characters seem to have come out of a Z-series science fiction film. Very suitable for a sparkling game like this. The movements of the dancers are very fluid thanks also to the use of the motion capture technique. The music is engaging and almost all of it belongs to the rock genre. A little curiosity about SCF. To choose the voice of Ulala, a pompous audition was organized in the Sega studios in which more than 600 girls participated and from which a young housewife emerged as the winner!

#space channel 5 #sega #dreamcast #ulala

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genshin-impact-updates · 2 years

Text

"The Morn a Thousand Roses Brings" Version 3.0 Update Details

Dear Travelers,

Below are the details of the Version 3.0 update "The Morn a Thousand Roses Brings."

1. New Region: Sumeru

2. New Characters: Tighnari, Collei, Dori

3. New Domains: Domain of Forgery "Tower of Abject Pride," Domain of Mastery "Steeple of Ignorance," Domain of Blessing "Spire of Solitary Enlightenment," and others

4. New Equipment: Hunter's Path (Bow), End of the Line (Bow), and new Forgeable Weapons

5. Elemental Reactions: New Catalyze and Bloom reactions

6. New Event: Graven Innocence

7. New Main Stories: Archon Quest Chapter II: Act I and Act II, and Tighnari's Story Quest

8. New Enemies: Jadeplume Terrorshroom, Electro Regisvine, and others

More details can be found in the following text.

At the end of the article, Travelers will be introduced to the content adjustments and optimizations in Version 3.0, as well as the issues fixed.

〓Compensation〓

Maintenance Compensation: Primogems ×300 (60 Primogems for every hour the servers are down.)

Issue Fix Compensation: Primogems ×300 (Please refer to the relevant compensation mail for more details)

〓Scope of Compensation〓

Maintenance Compensation: All Travelers who have reached Adventure Rank 5 or above by 2022/08/24 06:00 (UTC+8)

Please claim before the end of Version 3.0.

Issue Fix Compensation: All Travelers who have reached Adventure Rank 5 or above by 2022/08/24 06:00 (UTC+8).

Please claim the compensation before 2022/08/27 06:00 (UTC+8).

Our developers will distribute compensation to Travelers via in-game mail within 5 hours after the update maintenance is finished. The mail will expire after 30 days, so don't forget to claim the attached compensation in time.

〓Update Duration〓

Update maintenance begins 2022/08/24 06:00 (UTC+8) and is estimated to take 5 hours.

〓How to Update Game Client〓

PC: Close the game, open the Genshin Impact Launcher, and click Update.

iOS: Open the App Store and tap Update.

Android: Open the game and follow the directions on-screen.

PS5™ and PS4™: Highlight Genshin Impact from the Home Screen, press the OPTIONS button, and select "Check for Update."

Please do not hesitate to contact Customer Service if you encounter any issues installing the new version. We will do our very best to resolve the issue.

〓Update Details〓

I. New Region

New Region - Sumeru

◇ New Areas: In Version 3.0, the areas, Avidya Forest, Lokapala Jungle, Ardravi Valley, Ashavan Realm, Vissudha Field, and Vanarana in the Sumeru region will be available.

▌New System in Sumeru

Tree of Dreams, Vanarana

A mystic plant that grows in the heart of the forest. Seems to be sentient. Nurture it with Dendro Sigils collected in adventures to obtain the treasures of the forests.

Tree of Dreams, Vanarana System Unlock Criteria:

• Complete the World Quest "Trees and Dreams"

Sumeru Reputation System

◇ Sumeru Reputation Unlock Criteria:

• Complete Archon Quest "Chapter III: Act II - The Morn a Thousand Roses Brings: Denouement"

By interacting with certain NPCs in Sumeru, you will be able to accept requests to complete and increase your Reputation. As your Reputation Level increases, you will unlock various Reputation Rewards!

Expeditions, Daily Commissions, and other new content will also be added in Sumeru.

◇ Sumeru Daily Commissions Unlock Criteria:

• Complete Archon Quest Chapter III: Act II "The Morn a Thousand Roses Brings: Denouement"

• Complete the World Quest "Adventure Takes Courage!"

After completing Archon Quest Chapter III: Act II "The Morn a Thousand Roses Brings: Denouement," the World Quest "Adventure Takes Courage!" will be available at 04:00 (Server Time).

In addition, there will be new Fishing Points and "Radiant Spincrystals" in Sumeru.

II. New Characters

5-Star Character "Verdant Strider" Tighnari (Dendro)

◇ Vision: Dendro

◇ Weapon: Bow

◇ A young researcher well-versed in botany who currently serves as a Forest Watcher in Avidya Forest. He is a straight shooter with a warm heart — and a dab hand at guiding even the dullest of pupils.

◆ Tighnari has a special Charge Level 2 Aimed Shot and can be charged to fire a Wreath Arrow, dealing Dendro DMG. It also generates 4 homing Clusterbloom Arrows after hitting, dealing further Dendro DMG.

◆ Elemental Skill: Vijnana-Phala Mine

◆ Throws a Vijnana Stormheart ahead that deals AoE Dendro DMG, creating a Vijnana-Khanda Field that creates mysterious illusions that taunt opponents and draw their fire. Additionally, Tighnari gains the Vijnana Suffusion effect, which will decrease the Wreath Arrow's charging time. This effect will dissipate once the skill duration ends or after Tighnari has fired 3 Wreath Arrows.

◆ Elemental Burst: Fashioner's Tanglevine Shaft

◆ Fires 6 Tanglevine Shafts that can track opponents and deal Dendro DMG. After they hit, the Tanglevine Shafts will create a secondary wave of Tanglevine Shafts that can also track opponents and deal Dendro DMG on hit.

◆ The 5-star character "Verdant Strider" Tighnari (Dendro) will be available in the standard wish "Wanderlust Invocation" in the next Version.

4-Star Character "Sprout of Rebirth" Collei (Dendro)

◇ Vision: Dendro

◇ Weapon: Bow

◇ A trainee ranger active in Avidya Forest. Behind her enthusiastic words and actions hides a slightly introverted personality.

◆ Elemental Skill: Floral Brush

◆ Throws out a Floral Ring that deals 1 instance of Dendro DMG to targets it comes into contact with.

◆ Elemental Burst: Trump-Card Kitty

◆ Throws the doll named Cuilein-Anbar, causing an explosion that deals AoE Dendro DMG, creating a Cuilein-Anbar Zone. Cuilein-Anbar will bounce around within this zone, dealing AoE Dendro DMG.

4-Star Character "Treasure of Dream Garden" Dori (Electro)

◇ Vision: Electro

◇ Weapon: Claymore

◇ An elusive merchant who has a fondness for glittering Mora.

◆ Elemental Skill: Spirit-Warding Lamp: Troubleshooter Cannon

◆ Directs a Spirit-Warding Lamp to fire off a Troubleshooter Shot at opponents, dealing Electro DMG. After the Troubleshooter Shot hits, it will create 2 After-Sales Service Rounds that will automatically track opponents and deal Electro DMG.

◆ Elemental Burst: Alcazarzaray's Exactitude

◆ Summons forth the Jinni within the lamp, that connects to a nearby character. The connected character will continuously restore HP based on Dori's Max HP, and will continuously regenerate Energy. When the connector between the Jinni and the character touches opponents, it will deal Electro DMG to them every 0.4s. Only one Lamp Spirit can exist at one time.

5-Star Character Traveler (Dendro)

◇ Interact with a Statue of The Seven - Dendro to resonate with the Dendro element, and use a new Elemental Skill and Elemental Burst.

◆ Elemental Skill: Razorgrass Blade

◆ Deals Dendro DMG ahead.

◆ Elemental Burst: Surgent Manifestation

◆ Calls upon the might of the flora all around you, creating a Lea Lotus Lamp. This Lamp will deal continuous Dendro DMG to opponents within its AoE. The Lea Lotus Lamp will undergo corresponding changes after it comes into contact with Hydro/Electro/Pyro.

III. New Domains

Domain of Forgery: Tower of Abject Pride

◇ It is said that the deserts were once home to three sage-kings, one of whom remained lovely and wise till the very end. They parted ways eventually for the sake of the paradise they sought in their hearts. This place is called a "tower," but in truth was the temporary residence of one of these people when they were building that earthly paradise. If one stretches the past back even further, it was once a small shrine built to avoid the wind and the sand.

◇ Unlock Criteria:

• Reach Adventure Rank 22 or above

• Or complete the Archon Quest Prologue: Act II "For a Tomorrow Without Tears"

◆ Challenge the Domain to obtain Weapon Ascension Materials.

Domain of Mastery: Steeple of Ignorance

◇ In the ancient past, man-made towers that could touch the skies were built all across the land. Though human hearts flowed downward, their souls aspired toward the high heavens. These towers would always fall, or collapse under their own weight and plummet into the depths. However, if one were to look at things at a grander scale, the heavens and earth are as one — no direction is truly different from another.

◇ Unlock Criteria:

• Reach Adventure Rank 22 or above

• Or complete the Archon Quest Chapter I: Act I "Of the Land Amidst Monoliths"

◆ Challenge the Domain to obtain Talent Level-Up Materials.

Domain of Blessing: Spire of Solitary Enlightenment

◇ In ancient times, this was a great and beautiful place, seemingly made to bless the children of humanity. But the arrow of heaven would descend, making mountains out of flat land and burying the ancient capitol beneath the hills.

◇ Unlock Criteria:

• Reach Adventure Rank 22 or above

• Or complete the Archon Quest "Prologue: Act III - Song of the Dragon and Freedom"

◆ Challenge the Domain to obtain artifacts in the "Deepwood Memories" and "Gilded Dreams" sets.

Domain: Under the Umbrella's Shade

◇ The poets have it that spores, like trees, are connected to each other, and that all fungal beings in the world share a single dream. At the end of that dream, the spores would take on the forms of all things, and that all things would return to the beginning — return to being one — and that there would never again be boundaries. But the evolution of Fungi into sentient, locomotive beings was not something that happened in such primordial times. Regardless, this place has become fertile soil for Fungi to thrive.

◇ Unlock Criteria: Reach Adventure Rank 20 or above and fulfill certain criteria.

◆ Challenge the Domain to obtain rewards such as Primogems, Dendro Sigils, and more.

Domain: Fragment of Childhood Dreams

◇ This was once a dreamland paradise of a child of the forest, constructed based on how other children would describe the woods. In their memories, the forest was incredibly vast, much like the world itself. The forest was also immensely deep, just like fate itself. Although the dimensions of the world and the true depth of destiny would ultimately disappoint, the fantasy of them endures deep within this nursery.

◇ Unlock Criteria: Reach Adventure Rank 24 or above and fulfill certain criteria.

◆ Challenge the Domain to obtain rewards such as Primogems, Dendro Sigils, and more.

Domain: The Dark Valley

◇ Legend has it that the moon once had a face. Under the fierce moon's face, like a white bow, the paths through the forest labyrinth would bring lost people to jade and amber dreams. This forest labyrinth has ceased to exist for hundreds of years — and yet even a hundred thousand winters must seem like a day in the garden of dreams.

◇ Unlock Criteria: Reach Adventure Rank 28 or above and fulfill certain criteria.

◆ Challenge the Domain to obtain rewards such as Primogems, Dendro Sigils, and more.

Domain: The Coordinates of Sun and Rain

◇ According to the legends, the goddess who had command over plants would summon forth a spirit of timely rains, whose name was Varuna, or "water and sky." These same legends say that the now-deceased forest king used hedges and streams, and the children of the pomegranate used dreams and illusions to create a labyrinth as deep and intricate as the very roots of trees themselves, to defend the secret of sun and rain.

◇ Unlock Criteria: Reach Adventure Rank 32 or above and fulfill certain criteria.

◆ Challenge the Domain to obtain rewards such as Primogems, Dendro Sigils, and more.

IV. New Equipment

1. New Weapons

Hunter's Path (5-Star Bow)

Gain 12% All Elemental DMG Bonus. Obtain the Tireless Hunt effect after hitting an opponent with a Charged Attack. This effect increases Charged Attack DMG by 160% of Elemental Mastery. This effect will be removed after 12 Charged Attacks or 10s. Only 1 instance of Tireless Hunt can be gained every 12s.

◆ During the event wish "Epitome Invocation," the event-exclusive 5-star weapon Hunter's Path (Bow) will receive a huge drop-rate boost!

End of the Line (4-Star Bow)

Triggers the Flowrider effect after using an Elemental Skill, dealing 80% ATK as AoE DMG upon hitting an opponent with an attack. Flowrider will be removed after 15s or after causing 3 instances of AoE DMG. Only 1 instance of AoE DMG can be caused every 2s in this way. Flowrider can be triggered once every 12s.

◆ You can exchange for End of the Line (Bow) and its refinement materials at the Sumeru Fishing Association.

▌Forgeable Weapons

Sapwood Blade (4-Star Sword)

After triggering Burning, Quicken, Aggravate, Spread, Bloom, Hyperbloom, or Burgeon, a Leaf of Consciousness will be created around the character for a maximum of 10s. When picked up, the Leaf will grant the character 60 Elemental Mastery for 12s. Only 1 Leaf can be generated this way every 20s. This effect can still be triggered if the character is not on the field. The Leaf of Consciousness' effect cannot stack.

Forest Regalia (4-Star Claymore)

Moonpiercer (4-Star Polearm)

After triggering Burning, Quicken, Aggravate, Spread, Bloom, Hyperbloom, or Burgeon, a Leaf of Revival will be created around the character for a maximum of 10s. When picked up, the Leaf will grant the character 16% ATK for 12s. Only 1 Leaf can be generated this way every 20s. This effect can still be triggered if the character is not on the field.

Fruit of Fulfillment (4-Star Catalyst)

Obtain the "Wax and Wane" effect after an Elemental Reaction is triggered, gaining 24 Elemental Mastery while losing 5% ATK. For every 0.3s, 1 stack of Wax and Wane can be gained. Max 5 stacks. For every 6s that go by without an Elemental Reaction being triggered, 1 stack will be lost. This effect can be triggered even when the character is off-field.

King's Squire (4-Star Bow)

Obtain the Teachings of the Forest effect when unleashing Elemental Skills and Bursts, increasing Elemental Mastery by 60 for 12s. This effect will be removed when switching characters. When the Teachings of the Forest effect ends or is removed, it will deal 100% of ATK as DMG to 1 nearby opponent. The Teachings of the Forest effect can be triggered once every 20s.

◆ Explore Sumeru and complete certain World Quests to get items that can be exchanged for Forging Blueprints with NPCs in Vanarana.

2. New Artifacts

Deepwood Memories (4-Star and 5-Star)

◇ 2-Piece Set: Increases Dendro DMG Bonus.

◇ 4-Piece Set: After Elemental Skills or Bursts hit opponents, the targets' Dendro RES will be decreased by a certain percentage for 8s. This effect can be triggered even if the equipping character is not on the field.

Gilded Dreams (4-Star and 5-Star)

◇ 2-Piece Set: Increases Elemental Mastery.

◇ 4-Piece Set: Within a few seconds of triggering an Elemental Reaction, the character equipping this will obtain buffs based on the Elemental Type of the other party members. ATK is increased by a certain percentage for each party member whose Elemental Type is the same as the equipping character, and Elemental Mastery is increased by a certain value for every party member with a different Elemental Type. Each of the aforementioned buffs will count up to 3 characters. This effect can be triggered once every few seconds. The character who equips this can still trigger its effects when not on the field.

V. Elemental Reactions

1. Catalyze

When creatures are affected by Electro and Dendro, the Quicken reaction will occur, which will render them Quickened.

When a Quickened entity is attacked by Electro or Dendro, they will trigger Aggravate and Spread respectively, which will increase DMG taken.

2. Bloom

When creatures are affected by Hydro and Dendro, the Bloom reaction will occur, generating a Dendro Core.

Only a certain number of Dendro Cores can exist at the same time. If new ones are created once this limit is reached, or if the duration of the existing Dendro Cores ends, the pre-existing Dendro Cores will explode, dealing AoE Dendro DMG.

When Dendro Cores come into contact with Pyro, they will trigger Burgeon, causing even greater AoE Dendro DMG. When Dendro Cores come into contact with Electro, they will trigger Hyperbloom, and transform into homing Sprawling Shots.

VI. New Event

"Graven Innocence" Event: Take part to invite "Sprout of Rebirth" Collei (Dendro)

During the event, complete the quest "The Unappreciated Carving" to invite the character "Sprout of Rebirth" Collei (Dendro). Help the staff in Acara Crafts find assistants and collect inspiration regarding toy-making to obtain Primogems, Crown of Insight, Character Level-Up Materials, Talent Level-Up Materials, and event-exclusive Furnishings, etc.

▌Event Duration

VII. New Quests

1. New Archon Quests

Archon Quest Chapter III: Act I "Through Mists of Smoke and Forests Dark"

◆ Quest Unlock Criteria:

• Reach Adventure Rank 35 or above

• Complete Archon Quest Chapter II: Act IV "Requiem of the Echoing Depths"

Archon Quest Chapter III: Act II "The Morn a Thousand Roses Brings"

◆ Quest Unlock Criteria:

• Reach Adventure Rank 35 or above

• Complete Archon Quest Chapter III: Act I "Through Mists of Smoke and Forests Dark"

◇ After the Version 3.0 update, Archon Quests Chapter III: Act I "Through Mists of Smoke and Forests Dark" and Chapter III: Act II "The Morn a Thousand Roses Brings" will be permanently available.

2. New Story Quest

Tighnari's Story Quest - Vulpes Zerda Chapter: Act I "The Unanswerable Problems"

Permanently available after the Version 3.0 update

◆ Quest Unlock Criteria:

• Reach Adventure Rank 40 or above

• Complete Archon Quest Chapter III: Act II "The Morn a Thousand Roses Brings: Denouement"

3. New World Quests

◆ New World Quests: "Gourmet Supremos: Within Our Duties," "The Price," "Adventure Takes Courage!," "Garcia's Paean: A Gift of Compatibility," "The Path of Papers," "While the Dream Lingers," "Cost-Effective Hook," "Even Beasts Stumble," "Treasure of Wisdom: A New Plan," "Aranyaka" Quest Chain, "Vimana Agama" Quest Chain, "Varuna Gatha" Quest Chain, "Agnihotra Sutra" Quest Chain, "An Unwavering Culinary Dream" Quest Chain, "The Foolish Fatuus," "A Short Encounter with a Rare Bird," "Where Are the Fierce Creatures?" and more.

VIII. New Enemies

Jadeplume Terrorshroom

◇ The lord of fungal beasts that lives in the heart of the woods and in the company of its kin.

When it is hit by Electro attacks and Catalyze reactions, it will accumulate Activation. When it accumulates sufficient Activation, it will enter an Activated state. An activated Jadeplume Terrorshroom will unleash more fearsome attacks until it becomes exhausted.

Located at Vissudha Field

Electro Regisvine

◇ A huge vine that has morphed into a monster through the conduction of high-voltage currents through the ley lines.

Its special Electro organ can condense into either a Waxing Stamen or a Waning Stamen. When the two types of stamens are present at the same time, they will attract one another and then unleash a powerful electrical explosion when they make contact.

Located at Lokapala Jungle

Floating Dendro Fungus, Whirling Electro Fungus, Whirling Cryo Fungus, Stretchy Pyro Fungus, Stretchy Anemo Fungus, Stretchy Geo Fungus, Grounded Hydroshroom, Winged Dendroshroom, Winged Cryoshroom

◇ Monsters with basic intelligence that evolved from spores.

When first hit by Electro or Pyro attacks, it will enter either an Activated or a Scorched state based on the elemental attack type used. Defeat this transformed fungus to obtain different types of rewards...

Eremite Axe Vanguard, Eremite Crossbow, Eremite Ravenbeak Halberdier, Eremite Linebreaker, Eremite Sword-Dancer, Eremite Desert Clearwater, Eremite Sunfrost, Eremite Daythunder

◇ A group of loosely-organized mercenary corps, with members using various kinds of weapons.

Of which, Eremite elites: Eremite Desert Clearwater, Eremite Sunfrost, and Eremite Daythunder will unleash the ominous spirit sealed in their weapons after taking a certain amount of damage to enter an Infused Form that greatly boosts their combat capabilities. Will enter a weakened state for a time once this Infused Form ends.

Ruin Drake: Earthguard and Ruin Drake: Skywatch

◇ A war machine that is said to be left behind by a now-destroyed nation. It mimics the appearance of the beings known as Vishaps.

Can periodically release a dangerous torrent of energy during combat and increase its own Elemental RES against the previous main type of Elemental DMG it suffered. Take this opportunity to attack their cores, and you may be able to immobilize this creature...

In addition, the Dendro Specter will be added in Version 3.0.

IX. Other Additions

1. New Recipes:

○ Sumeru Lambad's Tavern: Minty Bean Soup, Lambad Fish Roll, and Shawarma Wrap

○ Sumeru NPC Jahangir: Panipuri and Curry Shrimp

○ Complete the World Quest "An Unwavering Culinary Dream" to obtain: Selva Salad, Masala Cheese Balls, and Mushroom Hodgepodge

○ Complete the World Quest "Gourmet Supremos" to obtain: Fish with Cream Sauce, Potato Boat, and Tandoori Roast Chicken

○ Complete the Archon Quest "Silent Seeker of Knowledge" to obtain: Pita Pocket

○ Obtain the following from the Sumeru Reputation System: Butter Chicken, Tahchin, and Biryani

○ Obtain the following from event mail: Sunset Berry Tea, Milky Mushroom Crisp Tower, and Meat Lovers' Mushroom Pizza

○ Tighnari's specialty: Forest Watcher's Choice

○ Collei's specialty: Yearning

○ Dori's specialty: Show Me the Mora

2. New Achievement categories such as "Mortal Travails: Series III," "Meetings in Outrealm: Series III," "Sumeru: The Rainforest of Lore," and new Achievements added to the "Wonders of the World" category.

3. New Namecards:

"Tighnari: Dew-Kissed": Reward for reaching Friendship Lv. 10 with Tighnari

"Collei: Good Virtue": Reward for reaching Friendship Lv. 10 with Collei

"Dori: Jinni": Reward for reaching Friendship Lv. 10 with Dori

"Travel Notes: Woodlands": Reward obtained via the BP system

"Achievement: Roaming": Reward for completing all achievements under "Mortal Travails: Series III"

"Achievement: Fated Encounter": Reward for completing all achievements under "Meetings in Outrealm: Series III," "Sumeru: The Rainforest of Lore," and new Achievements added to the "Wonders of the World" category.

3. New Namecards:

"Tighnari: Dew-Kissed": Reward for reaching Friendship Lv. 10 with Tighnari

"Collei: Good Virtue": Reward for reaching Friendship Lv. 10 with Collei

"Dori: Jinni": Reward for reaching Friendship Lv. 10 with Dori

"Travel Notes: Woodlands": Reward obtained via the BP system

"Achievement: Roaming": Reward for completing all achievements under "Mortal Travails: Series III"

"Achievement: Fated Encounter": Reward for completing all achievements under "Meetings in Outrealm: Series III"

"Sumeru: Shimmering Woods": Reward for completing all achievements under "Sumeru: The Rainforest of Lore"

"Sumeru: Observance": Reward for reaching Reputation Lv. 4 (Sumeru)

"Sumeru: Unsullied": Reward for reaching Reputation Lv. 7 (Sumeru)

4. New Sumeru Reputation Reward Gadgets: Dendroculus Resonance Stone, Dendro Treasure Compass, The Boon of the Elder Tree, and Ultra-Hot Burner Lamp Test Model.

The Boon of the Elder Tree: A talisman that can help collect wood.

Ultra-Hot Burner Lamp Test Model: A gadget that improves the efficiency of food processing by consuming minerals.

5. Adds a search function for Achievements: type in keywords to search among all the displayed achievements for those whose titles contain the keywords.

6. In the "Adventurer Handbook > Embattle" page, ascend Dendro characters (except the "Dendro Traveler") to receive the corresponding rewards.

7. Adds some prompts for loading screens.

8. Adds Wood Conversion function for the Serenitea Pot: you can convert some Forging Ores into wood you have already obtained (The amount of conversion for each type of wood each week is limited).

9. Adds new Midlander Billets.

10. Adds Billet Conversion function in "Crafting Bench > Conversion" menu: Travelers can use Dream Solvent to convert Midlander Billets to Northlander Billets for the same Weapon type, or change Northlander Billets to Midlander Billets for the same Weapon type.

11. Adds some of the Harvestable seeds from Sumeru to the Seed Dispensary.

12. New "Shaded Clarity" Furnishing: Ornamental Fish caught via Fishing can be raised in this tank. It can be redeemed at the Sumeru Fishing Association.

13. New "Fishing Line Stabilizer" Gadget: Use this gadget to help in fishing and obtain certain buffs based on the number of fish of this species that you have caught in the past. Can be redeemed at various Fishing Associations.

14. New Animals: Spinocrocodile, Rishboland Tiger, Shaggy Sumpter Beast, Dusk Bird, Shroomboar, Red Tailed Lizard, Forest Tree Frog, and Dendro Crystalfly

15. New Fishes: True Fruit Angler, Sandstorm Angler, Sunset Cloud Angler, Peach of the Deep Waves, Lazurite Axe Marlin, and Halcyon Jade Axe Marlin

16. Spiral Abyss

Floor 9 Ley Line Disorders changed to:

• DMG dealt by the explosion of Dendro Cores produced by characters' Bloom reaction is increased by 125%. DMG dealt by Burgeon and Hyperbloom reactions triggered by characters is increased by 125%.

Floor 10 Ley Line Disorders changed to:

• When Spread or Aggravate reactions are triggered on opponents, DMG done by these reactions will be increased by 75%.

Floor 11 Ley Line Disorders changed to:

• All characters in the party gain a 75% Dendro DMG Bonus.

After the Spiral Abyss resets on September 1, the "Vermillion Hereafter" and "Echoes of an Offering" Artifact set rewards in "Domain Reliquary: Tier I," and "Domain Reliquary: Tier II" for Floors 9-12 will be replaced with "Deepwood Memories" and "Gilded Dreams."

Updated the monster lineup on Floors 9–12 of the Spiral Abyss.

Starting from the first time that the Lunar Phase refreshes after updating to Version 3.0, the two Lunar Phases will be as follows:

Phase 1:

Efflorescent Moon

After characters deal DMG to opponents with a Dendro Core (including Burgeon and Hyperbloom), their ATK will be increased by 15% for 8s. This effect can stack up to 4 times, and can be triggered once every 0.1s.

Phase 2:

Reviving Moon

When a character triggers Quicken on an opponent, that opponent's DEF is decreased by 35% for 10s after they are affected by the reaction.

〓Adjustments & Optimizations〓

● Enemies

1. Reduces DMG inflicted to players by the "Tyrant of the Skies" in Archon Quest "Prologue: Act III - Song of the Dragon and Freedom."

2. Reduces the ATK of the "Erstwhile King of the Skies" in Archon Quest "Prologue: Act III - Song of the Dragon and Freedom."

3. Reduces the number of platforms that collapse under the effects of the skill "Caelestinum Finale Termini" unleashed by "Erstwhile King of the Skies" in Archon Quest "Prologue: Act III - Song of the Dragon and Freedom," as well as the damage inflicted by these collapsing platforms.

4. Optimizes the judgment condition of Raiden Shogun to enter the "Vision Hunt Decree" battle stage in Archon Quest "Chapter II: Act II - "Stillness, the Sublimation of Shadow."

5. Optimizes the judgment condition of Raiden Shogun unleashing "divine punishment" in Archon Quest "Chapter II: Act II - "Stillness, the Sublimation of Shadow."

6. Adjusts part of the Floating Hydro Fungi's behavior logic: when first hit by Electro or Pyro attacks, it will enter either an Activated or a Scorched state based on the elemental attack type used.

7. Adjusts some of the animation effects of Dendro Slimes and Large Dendro Slimes.

● System

1. Increases the number of party compositions that can be pre-set in the "Party Setup" menu to 10. In addition, access to "Configure Team" has also been added to the "Party Setup" menu. Travelers can use various shortcuts to disband existing party setups, etc.

2. Increases the "My Friends" limit from 45 to 60.

3. Adds the function to show the source of 5-star artifacts and to redirect to the corresponding Domain.

4. "Talent Reference" will no longer be displayed for trial characters in the "Character > Talents" menu.

5. Optimizes the "Wish > Details" and "Wish > History" menu layouts.

6. You can now adjust horizontal and vertical sensitivity respectively in "Camera Sensitivity" and "Camera Sensitivity (Aimed Shot Mode)" in "Settings > Controls" on PC, mobile, PS5™, and PS4™.

7. Updates some features in the "Paimon Menu > Feedback" system.

8. Adjusts the pause logic of "Interaction in Certain Gameplay Modes" (corresponding to the T key on the keyboard): The cooldown of interaction in certain gameplay modes is now suspended when the game is paused in single player mode.

● Audio

1. Adds "Ally at Low HP" voicelines under characters' Profile > Voice-Over.

2. Adds a function to trigger corresponding voice lines when a party member's HP is low in Co-Op Mode.

3. Adds sound effects when characters defeat an enemy or inflict a CRIT Hit.

4. Optimizes the sound effects of characters when moving and in combat.

5. Adjusts some dynamic sound effects in combat.

6. Optimizes the sound effects of combat voicelines in Japanese for Diluc's "Red Dead of Night" outfit.

7. Optimizes the Japanese, Korean, and English voice-over for certain characters, quests, and NPCs.

● Elemental Resonance

1. New Dendro Elemental Resonance "Sprawling Greenery": Elemental Mastery increased by 50. After triggering Burning, Quicken, or Bloom reactions, all nearby party members gain 30 Elemental Mastery for 6s. After triggering Aggravate, Spread, Hyperbloom, or Burgeon reactions, all nearby party members gain 20 Elemental Mastery for 6s. The durations of the aforementioned effects will be counted independently.

2. Hydro Resonance "Soothing Water" is adjusted to: "Affected by Pyro for 40% less time. Increases Max HP by 25%."

3. Electro Resonance "High Voltage" is adjusted to: "Affected by Hydro for 40% less time. Superconduct, Overloaded, Electro-Charged, Quicken, Aggravate, or Hyperbloom have a 100% chance to generate an Electro Elemental Particle (CD: 5s)."

● Other

1. Nagadus Emerald Sliver is now added to "Daily Commission" rewards.

2. Dendro Character Ascension Materials are now available through Synthesis and Conversion.

3. Adds "Dendro DMG Bonus" to the primary attribute of the Goblet of Eonothem artifact (Due to the addition of this attribute to Goblet of Eonothem, the percentage of getting the primary attributes of DEF%, HP%, and ATK% will be reduced, while the percentage of getting other primary attributes will not change.)

4. "Guidance of the Land of Geo" and "Philosophies of the Land of Geo" will be replaced with "Guidance of the Land of Verdure" and "Philosophies of the Land of Verdure" in the Battle Pass.

5. Adds 10 types of Artifact sets that can be obtained from Mystic Offering: "Artifact Strongbox: Thundering Fury," "Artifact Strongbox: Thundersoother," "Artifact Strongbox: Viridescent Venerer," "Artifact Strongbox: Maiden Beloved," "Artifact Strongbox: Archaic Petra," "Artifact Strongbox: Retracing Bolide," "Artifact Strongbox: Crimson Witch of Flames," "Artifact Strongbox: Lavawalker," "Artifact Strongbox: Blizzard Strayer," and "Artifact Strongbox: Heart of Depth."

6. Optimizes the experience of moving through complex terrain with the following characters' talents:

"Frostflake Heron" Kamisato Ayaka (Cryo) - Kamisato Art: Senho

"Mujina Ninja" Sayu (Anemo) - Yoohoo Art: Fuuin Dash

"Astral Reflection" Mona (Hydro) - Illusory Torrent

"Valley Orchid" Yelan (Hydro) - Lingering Lifeline

"Prinzessin der Verurteilung!" Fischl (Electro) - Midnight Phantasmagoria

"Astute Amusement" Yae Miko (Electro) - Yakan Evocation: Sesshou Sakura

7. Reduces elemental effects on targets affected by Burning reactions.

8. Optimizes the aiming performance of some Characters in Co-Op Mode.

9. Optimizes the display of the Burning reaction effect triggered on the enemy.

10. Adjusts the pull range of the pull effect on objects in the vertical direction to twice the horizontal range. Affected pull effects include:

Elemental Skill: Kaedehara Kazuha, Jean, Sucrose, Traveler (Anemo).

Elemental Burst: Venti, Sucrose, Shikanoin Heizou, Traveler (Anemo).

Weapon Effect: The Viridescent Hunt

〓Bug Fixes〓

● Quests

1. Fixes an issue with the "Fend off the angry hilichurls" objective of the Daily Commission "Language Exchange," whose area indicated on the map could be displayed abnormally.

2. Fixes an issue with the Story Quest "The Truth Is Also a Lie" that prevented exiting stealth mode even after you have left the area of the quest objective "Go and observe the Kanjou Commission informant."

3. Fixes an issue with the Archon Quest "The Crane Returns on the Wind" whereby some characters' Japanese voice-overs could not be played properly.

● Enemies

1. Fixes an issue whereby the collision size of some enemies might be abnormally large.

2. Fixes an issue with the Oceanid boss whereby there is an invisible barrier on its platform which could prevent ranged attacks.

3. Fixes an issue whereby the Geovishap Hatchling could not be hit normally by some characters' attacks when it is rolling around.

4. Fixes an issue whereby the attack judgment position was low when the Hilichurl Berserker charged.

5. Fixes an issue whereby there is a small chance that the skills of some enemies (e.g. Geovishap Hatchling) might pick targets abnormally after the Version 2.8 update.

● Characters

1. Fixes an issue with Gorou whereby his facial expressions were displayed abnormally in the Attributes page under certain specific circumstances.

2. Fixes an issue with Gorou whereby his facial expressions were displayed abnormally while carrying out Normal Attacks.

3. Fixes an issue in Controller Mode whereby when players opened the Shortcut Wheel when using Sprint or Alternate Sprint, the Sprint Skill would be interrupted.

4. Fixes an issue whereby after Fischl uses her Elemental Skill, switching to another character causes Oz's attacks to not generate Elemental Particles.

5. Fixes an issue where when some characters were auto-deployed due to their teammate dying, their skills off-field would continue to take effect abnormally.

6. Fixes an issue whereby Shikanoin Heizou would display abnormal standing and sitting animations under certain conditions in Co-Op Mode.

7. Fixes an issue with Shikanoin Heizou whereby his facial expression would not change normally in Character > Weapons or Character > Talents interface.

8. Fixes an issue with Shikanoin Heizou whereby his hair would be displayed abnormally.

9. Fixes an issue whereby when Kamisato Ayato continuously attacked, there is a very low probability that this would abnormally and significantly extend the duration of various effects on the character (up to twice the duration).

10. Fixes an issue whereby when Tartaglia eliminated certain enemies, the special effects of Riptide would not be fully displayed.

11. Fixes an issue with Kamisato Ayato whereby he had a delay in turning after using Shunsuiken to defeat enemies at a high attack speed.

12. Fixes an issue whereby Diluc had a small chance of dealing Physical DMG when performing Normal Attacks while having Pyro Infusion after casting his Elemental Burst.

13. Fixes an issue with Albedo whereby the duration of the effects of his Lv. 6 Constellation "Dust of Purification" may be abnormal when Travelers reconnected after disconnecting from the server, after collecting the Crystal from a Crystallize reaction.

● System

1. Fixes an issue whereby the character's position would be abnormally shifted when the Paimon Menu was opened under certain circumstances.

2. Fixes an issue whereby Albedo, Rosaria, and Raiden Shogun's Stella Fortuna display lit up even though it wasn't activated in the Character > Constellation menu.

3. Fixes an issue under specific circumstances whereby the healing effect on character avatars in the party would display abnormally. (There is a small chance that this problem will persist in Co-Op Mode. We will try to repair it in a future version update.)

4. Fixes an issue whereby the chat records before Version 2.8 are not displayed for Travelers whose chat sessions existed before the Version 2.8 update.

5. Optimizes the display of Domain names in the Adventurer Handbook > Embattle page.

6. Fixes an issue with the Serenitea Pot that prevented normal tracking of companions in the Mansion after clicking "Companion Gifts" on the map.

7. Fixes an issue with some Domains whereby enemies would abnormally drop Elemental Particles or Elemental Orbs after the challenge failed.

8. Fixes an issue whereby when the Darkfire Furnace of the enemy "Abyss Lector: Fathomless Flames" is attacked, there is a probability that the display position of special effects would become abnormal and the game camera would shake abnormally.

● Equipment

1. Fixes an issue whereby the effect of the weapon "Katsuragikiri Nagamasa" could not be triggered when the character dealt damage via the Elemental Skill when off the field.

2. Fixes an issue whereby the brightness of the "Memory of Dust" weapon might be abnormal when spawning near the character.

● Audio

1. Fixes an issue whereby some characters' Chinese voice-overs and some enemies' Japanese voice-overs could not be played properly.

● Other

1. Fixes an issue whereby when Superconduct and Swirl reactions were triggered on large monsters, there was a chance that DMG and special effects could occur at abnormal locations.

2. Fixes an issue whereby DMG was calculated abnormally when Electro-Charged, Overloaded, and Superconduct reactions were triggered by lightning strikes in the open world.

3. Fixes an issue under specific circumstances whereby Kuki Shinobu's mask and Shikanoin Heizou's jitte did not display properly.

4. Fixes an issue whereby the effects of Jean's outfit "Favonian Devotion" were displayed abnormally when affected by the Hydro element.

5. Fixes an issue whereby when using an iOS or Android device to play the game, after some characters cast their Elemental Bursts, there may be a problem with their weapons' color display.

6. Fixes an issue whereby characters were displayed abnormally when approaching the Elemental Node.

7. Fixes an issue whereby character status could be abnormal when pressing other keys while using the "Wind-Blessed Harpastum gadget.

8. Fixes an issue whereby there is a probability of text truncation on the Character Level-Up page when the game language is set to Russian.

9. Fixes some textual errors in 13 languages and optimizes text. "Note: Related in-game functions have not changed." (Travelers can view the changes in different languages by going to the Paimon Menu > Settings > Language and changing the Game Language.)

Text-related fixes and optimizations in English include:

◆ Optimized some lines in the quests and World Quests.

◆ Optimized Diluc, Jean, and Mona's descriptions.

*This is a work of fiction and is not related to any actual people, events, groups, or organizations.

"PlayStation", "PS5", "PS4", "DualSense", "DUALSHOCK" are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.

#genshin impact #genshin impact updates #official #genshin impact news #genshin impact 3.0 #hoo big update

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tchtra · 3 months

Note

Best video game.

Why?

Oh that's difficult.

Gonna have to say ULTRAKILL

Massive rant about it and a few other games below

The fast-paced first person shooter has literally everything I would want for a fps. Cool mechanics (slam-storage, railcoin, chargeback), not much dialogue (the only time you're forced to listen to someone talk without being able to fight it's either skipable or at the very end of the act). The boss fights are incredibly fun, like I would gladly replay any of them just for fun. The P-Rank makes the game very replayable and the reward of getting to fight an even more difficult boss is so worth it.

Plus, despite not getting all that much screen time, the main characters/bosses in ULTRAKILL are very memorable.

Like Gabriel, who was seen as a disgrace by the angel council for losing to you, a simple machine. The council removes his holy light and will perish in 24 hours. Instead of enjoying his time left, he decides to fight us once more, enraged by what you've done to him. Half way through the fight, he starts laughing, genuinely enjoying the combat with you. When he looses, he comes to the realisation of how corrupt the angel council was and does the only reasonable thing and kills every single member. He'll still die though.

The concept itself is very interesting as well. You're a war machine that runs on blood and you're going to kill everything until there's nothing left. Humanity is dead so you travel through hell killing husks, machines and even gods. This plays into the gameplay and mechanics of the game more than you'd expect.

The mechanics in the game are so so fun. There's the basics like being able to slide and groundslam. But with your first unlockable weapon, the marksman, it opens up new opportunities for tech and all that gun does is allow you to throw a coin which if you shoot, it guarantees a bit on any nearby enemies. And that's just one weapon. Then you've got the ability to parry projectiles which. Funnily enough, the shotgun pellets count as a projectile so when you "parry" them after shooting, it causes an explosion. It's honestly my favourite way to rack up style points but I can't do complex tech like chargebacks and dead coining. The addition of a style meter makes you want to play in a way which gets you the most stylish way possible.

As well as the main story levels, there's an endless arena area called the Cybergrind where you try and survive for as long as possible while killing enemies stylishly. As with most endless modes, it gets more difficult the longer you survive with harder waves spawning and the introduction of radiant enemies (enemies with more health, speed and damage). This makes Ultrakill infinitely replayable as people try to get the highest score on it. My best is wave 23 on Violent and 25 on Standard.

I'm definitely not the best at it, I haven't P-ranked most of Layer 7 and I haven't even gotten past the many enemies to complete P-2 but this game is great and I can't wait to see what waits for us in the rest of act 3

Honourable mentions to Half Life and TF2. Both are great games by Valve which will never get a third installment.

TF2 is so much fun but the bot problem has really been ruining it. I hope VALVE actually try to fix it after this #savetf2 movement. I personally main Medic which just means I can't aim to save my bloody life- I love the characters, their personalities and playstyles. They're all so unique yet yet stereotypical at the same time. I love the meet the team shorts and how well they establish the characters. This as well as their adventures in the comics really shows the world of TF2 well. The various hats you can get are unique and allow you to make the mercs your own (I have watched death of an art style but I don't think that the cosmetics are the biggest problem for TF2 right now-). The community is completely insane and I'm glad we're all still here after everything the game has been through. I love the fan-made projects so much. The various sfm animations talented creators have made never fail to impress. Like Emesis Blue, a psychological horror movie about the TF2 mercenaries made entirely in SFM, a software that's around as old as TF2 itself! TF2 is really being carried by the community and thank you to anyone who contributes, you guys are incredible. I know I've gone off about the community more than the actual game but without the community, there would be no TF2. But yeah TF2 is amazing, I miss the PS3 version as that was how I first played TF2 when I didn't have a pc.

Half Life as a game series is absolutely incredible. Valve completely changed the opinion of FPS games and the gameplay as a whole. The slower build to the resonance cascade, the scientists chatter, the interactivity as a whole contributes so much to the world building if the first game. The combat options were unique and fun to experiment with while providing interesting enemies to use them on. Of course, the Xen chapters were a bit bland but they still set the atmosphere of what was to come. And Black Mesa's complete remake of Xen completely fixes that if you do have a major issue with it.

Half Life 2 completely blew my mind the first time I played it. I had never seen anything to do with Half Life (except the references to it in TF2) so when I played it, it was amazing. Just like TF2, I first played it on the PS3. There's not many differences except the load times (which were horrid) but I still completed the game.

I hardly remember anything from my first play through of Episode 1 but I did get really attached to Alyx. Oh and I found the kleiner broadcast funny. Episode 2 is a completely different story. I loved every single second of it (there weren't achievements on PS3 version so I didn't do the gnome challenge and it shows-). The car section was fun. I liked looking for those supply crates and doing the physics puzzles to get to them. Hunters were really fun to fight but once I discovered they get instakilled by the jalope, I just started running them over. Made the final sequence much easier. The helicopter fight was interesting. And the ending. Oh my god, the ending. I ain't gonna lie, that shit hurt. It's a shame they rewrote it for Half Life Alyx.

Speaking of Half Life Alyx, I never got to play it but it looks incredible. I hope to be able to play it some day but right now, I have to stick to watching playthroughs.

I love Half Life but at this current moment I prefer ULTRAKILL, may change.

Uh yeah, I'm normal about all these games

#ultrakill #tf2 #half life

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mcflymemes · 1 year

Text

MULHOLLAND DRIVE PROMPTS * assorted dialogue from the 2001 film

i just wanted to come here.

take care of yourself... and be careful.

you want me to make this easy for you?

he's the one who's doing it.

i'm in love with you.

i'm sorry. i'm just so excited to be here.

i can see his face.

that ain't no way to treat your wife.

are you sure you want this?

it's no longer your film.

go with me somewhere.

okay, i'm thinking.

it's been a very strange day.

i don't rush it.

you know, sometimes people end up being both.

i agree with what you said.

have you ever done this before?

you can imagine how i feel.

go ahead.

what's your name?

could be someone's missing.

i think you're going to enjoy your espresso this time.

you're broke.

you came here to see if he's really out there.

this is the girl.

a man's attitude determines, to a larger extent, how his life will be.

the rest of the cast can stay.

can you try that for me?

that's what i'm thinking.

yes? may i help you?

i've done quite a bit of research, knowing how hard you are to please.

someone is in trouble.

baby, you got a way with you.

here's a man who wants to get right down to it.

no fucking way!

shut everything down.

get out! get out before i call my dad.

there is no band!

something bad is happening!

it's kind of embarrassing.

so you had a dream about this place. tell me.

it looks just like this... except for the light.

now once you hand that over to me, it's a done deal.

should i wear my ten-gallon hat and my six-shooters?

there's a man in back of this place.

just tell me where it hurts, baby.

hey pretty girl, time to wake up.

it's all recorded.

what's on your mind?

don't show me this fucking thing here.

acting is reacting.

what are you doing? we don't stop here.

if you fix your attitude, you can ride along with me.

you will see me one more time.

it's strange calling yourself.

this one comes highly recommended.

i couldn't afford a place like this in a million years... unless, of course, i'm discovered and become a movie star.

just forget you ever saw it. it's better that way.

i hate you. i hate us both.

did you answer 'cause you thought that's what i wanted to hear, or did you think about what i said and answer 'cause you truly believe that to be right?

that's where i was going!

it'll be just like the movies. pretending to be somebody else.

you must be someone who does not care about the good life.

just stop for a little second and think about it.

i want to with you.

something bit me bad.

wanna thank you for coming all the way up here to see me from that nice little hotel downtown.

don't drink all the coke!

i guess you already know that.

we just get a little catty sometimes.

it's been so nice traveling with you.

i'll be watching for you on the big screen.

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highretrogamelord · 1 month

Video

youtube

Jet Scout for the ZX81

#youtube #Jet Scout #ZX81 #Action #Shooter #Fixed-screen #Fixed-screen Shooter #Jetpac #Jet Pac #Bukster Games

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bonicle · 1 year

Text

I WAS BORED SO I MADE A SCRUNKLY VTUBER

LOOK AT HIM....

(ignore the discord ping sound)

So YEAH basically it all started with me trying to procrastinate on the millions of tasks i have rn, i opened up a new project in unity and at first i was like

"oh dear me this is going to be awfully easy if i do say so myself yes"

.................IT WAS NOT.

apparently there isnt any info on how to make good jiggle bones in unity for some reason??? everything i saw either was only for stock human characters or was insanely complicated. so what did i do?? i googled "unity jiggle bone physics" and found this amazing and very simple to use set of scripts on github!! after that i made it so he looks where the cursor is at and BAM!!

so now.... i had floppy ears...... my plan was coming together........ hehehehehehe.......

after that i just needed to figure out how to make the window overlay on top of the screen and yeah! i just followed this cool ass tutorial by Code Monkey.

but of course it wasnt perfect... honestly i have no idea WHAT i did to fix it but i kept on messing with random camera settings until it was normal. ok anyway enjoy the weird screencaps i took of him while he was freaking out

and then... it finally happened.... the culmination of all my work...... all of the one hour i had spent of this project....

he was... in front of the screen... and also normal....... truly amazing.....

alright so yeah after that i did a few more tweaks which you can scroll up to the first video to see!! thanks for reading this far and be sure to check out Dustpocalypse, a horde shooter in the style of Vampire Survivors that i made with a friend! It features the Scrunkly and a roomba with a gun, its also free AND you can play it in your browser!

#game development #gamedev #unity #scrunkly #scrunklycore #low poly #vtuber #blender #cat #indie dev #chaos #adhd #play hifi rush btw #3d #3dartist #3dart #blender3d #unity3d

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hungerofhadarr · 2 months

Text

DEAD SPACE 2023 CHAPTERS 4 - 6 COMPLETE …

- YAAAAY THE BRUTE !!

- oh my god I hate fighting the brute

- the scene with Hammond and Isaac before sending out the escape pod with the Chen necromorph in it … AUFH

- “ that looks like Chen “ “ he can’ t be saved “ I GOTTA LIE DOWN

- They changed the ADS cannon gameplay !! Honestly like the new version more but I have always sucked at shooters like the frozen screen only moving the pointer shooters . Idk why but I have NEVER been good at them .. cool to have to go out onto the Hull itself and fix the three of them

- 4 has always been a pretty good chapter no matter what and the fact it didn’ t change all that much … yum

- I did get lost bc I did the task out of order and it stopped showing me a path around the ship and I have indeed forgotten where things are

- I need to remember to go back to the locked doors once I have all the security + the masters override .. very cool the game is more free . Like it really is a ship you are running around in

- Hammond my best friend Hammond

- THE NICOLE BROADCAST . GOOD NIGHT .

- obsessed with how they rewrote chapter 5 LIKE ACTUALLY SO GOOD

- Mercer luring people to medial using Nicole ??? Shut up right now . THE SCENE REVEALING THE HUNTER NECROMORPH ?:!:!:!:

- Isaac being put in stasis for that scene made my stomach jump like I was Waiting to get grabbed

- ALSO THE NICOLE HOLOGRAM TELLING ISAAC TO MAKE THEM WHOLE I missed you Isaac hallucinations … I get him !

- “ the marker has taken a liking to you … she’ s toying with you “ OH BOY ! * collapses *

- Kendra my best friend ever Kendra ..

- SO much flesh everywhere . Like a LOT of flesh . Very fun that it’ s showing how fast it is all spreading

- THE POISONED AIR REVEAL IS SO GOOD .. like it more than last game “ oh shit isaac get off the cannons the air quality ! “ that poor man thought

- DR MERCER’ S AUDIO LOGS . I got nauseous listening to them I am going to Be Real with you

- BIIIG fan that they changed Mercer cutting off medical life support to him flooding it with toxic gas … just so you know how bad it is

-Hammond being missing for much longer … ohh so good … Come back to Hydroponics I miss you king

- DR CROSS !!!!!! SHES ALIVE !!!!!!

- her log describing the wheezers lungs busting from their backs like flowers …. Her sobbing …. I had to pause the game for a minute it was . AUGH

- “ MY JACOB “ WAAAAAH

- Making the enzyme in hydroponics instead of medical is such a small change but it makes SO MUCH SENSE

- Leviathan .

- LEVIATHAN .

- fuck that fight ( love it so badly )

- IT PUTTING YOU ON A TIME LIMIT IN THE THIRD PHASE . SO GOOD . You have as much time as you have oxygen . AUGH

- Nasty thing it did kill me yes Isaac exploded yes it was bad enrichment for all of us

- wonderful remaster + small reimagining of the fight I loved it ( it was a nightmare . )

- THE NICOLE HALLUCINATIONS . ISAAC I NEED YOU . HELP ME . ENOUGH !!!!!!!! Oh I missed this

- “ this is a bad idea “ “ well ! I’ m out off good ideas , this is all that’ s left “ ISAAC CLARKE I LOVE YOU

cannot believe i’ m halfway . Ohhhhh I missed you dead space MINING DECK HERE I COME !!!!

#dead space #dead space 2023 #dead space 2008

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deusvervemakesgames · 8 months

Text

Project RBH Devlog 0025

Following the cataclysmic discovery that the Procedural Generation code no longer worked, I had a few options available to me.

I could’ve switched gears to a Vampire Survivors clone. While the original Vampire Survivors did not feature any dedicated attack button, instead preferring automatic attacks, at least one of the game’s many successors has been a twin-stick shooter like Project RBH, and the upgrade system would be well-suited to this style of game while staying in the idea of being a reverse bullet hell.

I could also have gone with something like Nuclear Throne, which procedurally generates a single combat arena and then throws a wave of enemies at you, which also would’ve worked out well within the framework I’ve already established.

But in the end I did neither of those things.

I don’t remember if I mentioned it before—I should have, but I don’t remember if I did—but the procedural generation code I’m using is not my own. It was publicly provided by another member of the GameMaker Studio community, Cloaked Games, who has continued to work on it for the past few years now and has recently started their own DevLog series on Youtube dedicated to their own roguelike.

I reached out to Cloaked Games about the problem and within hours they had replied and patched the code to work again. It turns out the some of the code was using depreciated functions that had been replaced as GameMaker itself updated through the years, so replacing those old functions with the new equivalents made everything work again. Problem solved!

To celebrate I started messing around with the camera; the very thing I’d been trying to do back when I discovered the problem. The new camera isn’t perfect, but I have successfully made it so that the camera will offset from the player towards their cursor. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to have worked the way I wanted, as it isn’t very reactive until you cross an invisible threshold that separates the screen into four quadrants. I’ll figure out some way to fix it, since I don’t want it to cause any motionsickness, and I’d rather err on the side of caution there.

(Note: Camera Movements resulted in a GIF way bigger than Tumblr will let me post! Check out this DevLog on my Patreon to see the full GIF!)

Following that, I finally got around to fixing some bullet behaviors that have been in the game almost since the beginning. Specifically, Piercing and Ricochet.

See, I want both of these to happen a limited number of times so that I can dynamically change them via the upgrade system, so you can get +3 Piercing or something and hit a bunch of enemies in one shot, but not every enemy in that line, or go through too many walls. Unfortunately, my code for that was based around preventing the bullet from seeing that it had a confirmed hit against a target, which triggers them to delete themselves. All I had to do was slightly adjust the code I’d previously tried to unconfirm that it had hit something and decrease a variable tracking how many things it can go through. And now it works!

Ricochet had a similar problem in that I wanted it to only happen a few times, but it was unlimited. However, this is because I was using the in-engine physics to handle their bouncing so I wouldn’t have to figure out the geometry calculations myself. As a result, they never registered that they were actually hitting the walls. This fix was a bit more involved. I had to go into the damage script that registers that the bullets hit something and add in an If statement checking if they still had ricochets left and if so, to bounce, and if not, to move onto the next step (deleting itself or piercing).

And now it works!

My final bullet behavior is one that I’ve wanted from the start but I didn’t know how easy it would be. Homing Projectiles, but ones that I could also dynamically adjust. Turns out it was easy, actually. I tried several different math formulas to adjust the bullet’s direction mid-flight, which was easy because I am again using the engine physics for their movement, so they already preserved velocity. Some of them worked better than others, but I found one that also allowed me to assign a variable to how fast it would turn towards the nearest enemy, and that means I can upgrade it!

Unfortunately this all means that I no longer have any excuse to not stare at my spreadsheet and plan more upgrades. Well, except for fixing my camera, but I doubt that will take very long. So back into the tank for dry office work, I guess.

But on the bright side, the core gameplay is coming along nicely!

Speaking of which, I almost completely forgot, but it’s the last Monday of the month! That means it’s time for this month’s release of the early build for my Tier 2 and 3 Patrons!

Until next Devlog!

-DeusVerve

Special thanks to my Tier 3 Patrons, Haelerin and Christos Kempf!

Support me on Patreon to get Early Access to builds!

#devlog #indie dev #game development #indie game #game dev #video games #rbh

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minuy600 · 5 months

Text

The Arcade Games Of 1980 #8 - King & Balloon

I was so concentrated on getting through the trials of Crazy Climber that I completely forgot to discuss the game I finished like 3 weeks ago. So here's your compensation for that.

Thissss is not a good time. It's still got some sort of standard that Namco adheres to, but it does no more than the bare minimum to achieve that. Yeah, unless you count the new voice samples.

Those voice samples are pretty impressive, you can clearly hear what is being said (help, thank you, bye-bye), maybe a bit too clear since it's louder than the game audio itself. There's a catch however, it was not the only game with digitised speech around this time. Crazy Climber, Space Cyclone (okay that one's super rare but still) and Wizard of Wor all came out in the span of a couple months, and when you compare all of those to King & Balloon, they end up on top in one way or another.

Crazy Climber? Incorporated the voices into the gameplay well so it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. Space Cyclone? Similarly limited but has higher quality samples. Wizard of Wor? Harder to understand, though extremely plentiful and varied by comparison.

What do you get when you leave out this quickly obsoleted marketing blurb, then? Nothing I wanna play ever again. It's Galaxian if it had one additional factor (babysitting an easily kidnapped king) and paused every 10 seconds as you keep dying over and over without much consequence. Eugh.

The Verdict

Graphics (5): THIS was on the Galaxian engine? I thought it was one of those games that ran on the Warp & Warp board for a while untill I looked it up. The lack of color in anything but the balloons you pop is super jarring when you put it alongside Galaxian's ability to boost the industry forward by multiple years. Those balloons are not interesting characters either, the most they can do is transform into hot air balloons and for those to have a decent level of detail. The king reminds me of one of those bandits from Nintendo's Sheriff.

There's two things the game does get right visually that prevent it from being all bad- I like that the cannon is being controlled by two little dudes and that the framerate is super high thanks to the engine not being pushed to it's limits. It's things like that that still generally keep Namco on top of the food chain.

Sound (5): As i've explained, the voice clips are a cute addition that had no excuse to completely take over everything else and were obsoloted as soon as the cabinet made it to market. The king isn't even voiced by a man in the Japanese release, this is what furries imagine a femboy sounds like if anything. It got fixed in the American release to be sure, but that's not the version I played and from the footage i've seen, it seems to be even more overpowering there. Doesn't bode well.

Wanna know the reason I haven't mentioned the other sound effects? There's nothing interesting about them. It's like Namco took a look at Galaxian, copied it's homework and then changed it up just enough to not get found out. I couldn't be less intrigued.

Fun Factor (3): The closest this thing comes to fun is when you shoot one of the hot air balloons multiple times for big points. Someone had the smart idea of giving *you* endless lives, which sounds oddly generous untill you actually play the game. These balloons are ABSURDLY accurate with their shots starting on the second stage and beyond. I like myself a challenge (despite my frustrations around various more difficult games others consider classics oops). This is not a challenge, it's an exercise in frustration.

It gets worse when you pull in the the reason why they did this. Every time the balloons reach the bottom of the screen, something that happens all the goddamn time as they swoop erratically, they can take away the king! Oh no!!! So you scramble to save him again and again. It only gets faster later on. If there's something I hate, it's hitting fast moving targets in a shooter at crucial moments. Space Invaders was at the very least clever with the way they implemented it. Even the games I had given a 4/10 in the fun department had potential to be alright, this is one of those titles I absolutely never-ever-ever wanna touch upon again.

Longevity (4): Only for the hardcore high score maniacs. The game's difficulty appears to stagnate around the 4th stage and exactly 0 mechanics get introduced in the meantime. As with Galaxian (surprising, I know), there's 48 stages in total before the game tells you you're goofy for continuing to play and stops reporting increases. I myself gave up after I got a dopamine kick out of seeing the symbol for reaching the 5th.

In Conclusion

#retro gaming #minuy600 #review #sona #arcade #1980 #namco #king & balloon

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pandorafallz · 1 year

Photo

Exile AU | Heartbeat of the Clan

tw blood

Norm watched the links and ad the scans run but he could see the vital monitors to see how weak they were. Grace’s connection was weak, and he doubted she was connected or had the mental strength to use her avatar much more than a sit-up and chat. While a glance to Jake’s monitor, while his injury was worse, he had a much better connection with his avatar.

He had his doubts Jake would come here, he hoped for Jake’s survival he’s put doing something for drama on the back burner.

“How are they?” Trudy’s voice was soft, pushing a pack of wet wipes into his hand.

“Weak.” Norm spoke, gladly pulling one out to wipe the red from his hands. God, he hated blood. It was all under his nails still. He hated that. He did wish he had taken a better medical course, but what good was CPR here? He could bandage small cuts, perhaps even a few stitches if it came down to it but this?

This was far beyond him.

He knew bullets did far more damage than it looked to be because of the science behind it; the transfer of kinetic energy would expand the flesh around it into a cavity before the flesh would naturally try to elasticate back. That wasn’t even including the damage to the bone or other body organs that were close by.

The closer it was, the worse it was.

Perhaps the distance between them and the shooter was what stopped both of them from dying so quickly. Jake must have been hit by a bullet that had rebounded off a metal side. The first impact had taken the worse of the energy before his soft squishy body was in its line of trajectory. Something perhaps similar with Grace but she was probably more directly hit.

“Grace’s external bleed is… stopped, good work by the way.” Norm complimented, “But internally, it’s an inside bleeding mess. I think sun-down was wishful thinking.” He tapped along the screen, glad for once the RDA’s paranoid about driver health that the pod contained various body scanners. Enough that he could see the damage to her body and the slowly growing mass of internal bleeding.

Trudy’s hand patted his arm lightly. “Then let’s hope the Na’vi do some magical voodoo…assuming they know their way around a human body.”

“Mo’at does.” Norm was confident that of all people, the Omatikaya Tsahìk would know…but also on the basis, he knew Neytiri was a former student of Grace’s; the human body must have been touched upon at least once. Mo’at hopefully knew a lot more about gunshot wounds as well given the…unfortunate incidents among the RDA and the Omatikaya before the felling of Hometree.

“Still, you trust her to know how to fix that?” Trudy folded her arms over her chest, eyeing the link signal with discontent. “This was never supposed to happen. Damn, Quaritch.”

“It was Quaritch?”

Trudy nodded. “The Samson has an external camera. I was…reviewing some of the footage when I was checking over the damage to the windows.”

“I…completely forgot about that. Is it okay?” God forbid they'd get stranded here in the middle of the deadliest woods in the universe. So far.

“She’s a tough thing, designed to take a beating. I can patch her up.” Trudy nodded, with some assurance “We’ll need to paint her, so the native don’t try to shoot the out screen…or me for that matter. Do they have a ‘we’re on your side’ colour scheme by any chance?”

Norm shook his head but he liked the idea of that. It’d certainly set their Samson aside. “We could stripe it, white and purple.”

Trudy’s head cocked to the side thoughtfully. “I do like purple.”

Norm smiled. “We have some powder paint to use. Black, white and the primary colours. Mix then just add water then you’re good to go.”

“Sweet.” Trudy didn’t move, though not that he expected her to just move off and start painting at a time like this.

The vitals shifted on Grace’s monitor before he saw the familiar signs of her return. He gently tapped along to turn off the link before Trudy opened up the lid.

Grace looked worse, somehow but her expression was…better than he expected.

“Did everything go well?” Norm asked, “Are they going to help?”

Grace licked her lips tiredly. “We…extended the olive branch.” Her voice was a little raspier now. “I left them coming as a choice but…I think so?”

The answer wasn’t filling Norm was confidence but he reached for the pillows to set under her again. A wince passed her face as he got her comfortable.

“How’s Jake?”

Norm spared a glance over, “He…has a surprisingly stable link. Much stronger as well but… I can’t know where he’s wandered off to. Shame you didn’t tracker his ass the first time he escaped the ambient room. His human body is…another matter. He’s lost a lot of blood and it looks like damage through his kidney and spleen.”

“I thought you could live without your spleen,” Trudy remarked, if quietly.

“Right now, it’s a bag of blood. Never good to lose a bag of blood.” Norm sighed out.

Grace’s lips twitched though her eyes flickered around the room. “Let’s… let’s wait outside.”

Norm looked back at her in surprise. Outside? Where all the danger was. He hoped that wasn’t the blood loss talking; they weren’t equipped with dealing with a wild animal attack if the wrong visitor showed up. “Outside?”

“If…if they come for us, they can’t fit in here. Too big.” Grace licked her lips again, “Trudy, I need drink. Juice box? Whiskey?”

“I don’t think you should.” Norm interjected, “I’m sorry Grace but… I’m not sure eating or drinking anything should be a good idea when your intestines are a little worse for wear.”

Norm though held her glare but she didn’t argue—thank god because he doubted he could withhold much more. Half-dead, she was still scary when she wanted to be.

“Blood loss can make you thirsty but… let’s get you outside.” Norm looked around, glad to see Jake’s wheelchair was about so he grabbed that up and set beside the link bed. If Grace wanted out… why not let her. Let her feel the Pandoraian air on her skin at the least. It was a beautiful morning.

Carefully, and between them both they lifted Grace into Jake’s wheelchair, pausing for Grace to adjust but it was clear to see she was in much deeper pain now before wheeling her to the airlock. Grace clutched the armrests too tightly, seemingly not noticing as Norm fixed her mask on before they left and the much harder part was the shack emergency steps down—there was no ramp. So it was a colourful affair, to which a hurried grab of Grace’s blanket and soon, Grace was lying on it like it was a picnic blanket on her back.

“Ikran!” Grace called weakly.

Norm flinched as a massive, blue-winged beast suddenly appeared through the treeline, falling back into the foliage and for a second he thought it was going to go for Grace…. But it stopped and the blue person attached to it seemed to look very startled… waved to them then promptly slipped off his saddle, his queue disconnecting in the motion and carried on as gravity intended. The ikran shifted its wing and allowed him to side harmlessly to the wild grassy floor but stood very close which Norm would know would end with his death if he tried to approach. He could feel its eyes but didn’t dare look at it’s face.

Ikrans didn’t like eye contact.

“Wow, that’s one big dinosaur,” Trudy whispered, wide-eyed at being so close that Norm felt puny. He had seen them before but it had been through his avatar. They were big then but now… he was a ready-meal for such a creature.

“Let’s get Jake out.” If he could calm that Ikran the better.

Jake was less lucid though mumbling something about wanting a Toruk as they lifted him from the link bed. Norm felt nausea to see how much red had leaked into the gel bedding; highlighting each and every flaw in its surface or natural diverts and pattern but also, he could feel his hands once again become saturated with the wet red as well which only spread upon the blanket as they set him into his front. The red was more prominent alone his skin and what had soaked into his clothes.

Norm washed his hands as Trudy stayed with them before he hopped into his own, clean link and woke up his avatar, finally giving the body some food—a crappy protein bar but found Trudy sitting on the edge of the blanket watching as two woodsprites seemed to float down. Grace watched it settle on the front of her mask, smiling softly at it as it patted around it’s smooth surface.

Tsu’tey was not pleased, but he knew the Tsahìk had such a wisdom that carried more weight than just his distaste. Despite her loss, she was willing to save those who had part of the destruction of their home. Death of their people. He respected her and she was more aware than what he lacked.

He should have had more time.

He was not ready for the mantle.

But, for his people he would. He would respect to Tsahìk’s wishes but, he would do no more than what she was asking of him to fulfil that. It was do little to ignore the Tsahìk’s words when the people needed to see his leadership and support with Mo’at. Mo’at’s ream was to the spirits and to interpret Eywa’s will. If Eywa wanted them to live, he couldn’t refuse the Great Mother.

He didn’t have to be happy about it.

That was not what was asked of him and which, he was grateful for Mo’at’s patience.

“Jakesully’s Ikran’s descended, half a mile ahead,” Ka’ani announced.

Tsu’tey nodded tightly, quashing the visible anger on his face and Pa’li moved ahead quickly through the dense forests.

Up ahead, the distinct smell of metal and…fuel was familiar, and the distant quiet of voices. Sky people's voices and the screech of the Ikran, a distant outline showed the metal box, as Graceaugustine had said.

Then a sharp sound of pain was unmistakable.

He clicked his tongue, his hand coming to his bow before they punctured through the last line of trees to see a odd sight of a Dreamwalker, Normspellman who had visited Hometree once, beside an unfamiliar female sky person, a prone form face down on a blanket but the Dreamwalker had a hold of a familiar sky person.

Graceaugustine.

The presence of Atokirina was not unmissed, hovering on the still form of another bloodied sky person, Jake’s human form, but also they floated around Grace as well which he took more notice off

He had been glad to have seen her when she had returned, he couldn’t deny it was unsettling to see her like this. Human. Sky person. He much preferred her Na’vi Dreamwalker. That was familiar.

The Dreamwalker grasped the mask and removed it, all time for Graceaugustine to wrench up into the grass with an echoing cry of pain, but most of what was rejected from her body was red with blood.

“Don’t shoot!” the sky woman called, her hands up but Tsu’tey paid her no heed, if they were to kill them; they could have easily done without them even knowing.

“It’s okay, Trudy. Grace said they might come.” Normspellman said, holding the mask back to Graceaugustine’s face, her breaths fast inside and barely conscious as she lay against his body; so small in comparison.

Tsu’tey slipped off the Pa’li with confidence and wasn’t the only one as his people came to examine the area, two warriors going to check the metal box to see if there was anything of concern about.

“Mo’at allows their care. We will take them to The Tree of Souls to her.” He spoke.

“Oh, okay but you must be gentle. Their bodies are too weak for anything less.”

“Tsu’tey?” the voice was soft through the mask was slipped on properly onto Graceaugustine’s. Blood still upon her lips underneath as her eyes fluttered open. “You came.” Her language switched to Na’vi but to hear her voice in such a tongue brought back the familiarity of lost times. He hated how much he had missed that; when she had been his teacher… how much of a mother she was.

Tsu’tey forced himself closer to the other Dreamwalker, but focused to her mostly.

“It was by Tsahìk’s wishes,” he replied, “You do not have long if your belly fills with blood.” He was no fool of what meaning it portrayed and not to mention, sky people were small and didn’t have as much blood in them. Too late for conventional healing so he trusted Mo’at had a method to salvage Graceaugustine from meeting the Great Mother so soon.

Graceaugustine nodded airily without much thought. Tsu’tey nodded his chin towards the Dreamwalker. “Take that ahead. Ka’ani, you will take the… jakesully.” The name was hard to speak with the weight of the man’s actions upon it. He would rather leave a traitor to die but…the Tsahìk was clear in her interpretation of Eywa. An ever-present reminder for himself he had to keep echoing.

With a nod, the young warrior approached the Ikran first but Tsu’tey made his move, “You will take him.” Nodding to the other limp body. “We will not touch him.”

“Of-of course.” Normspellman hesitated, not sure if to let Graceaugustine go or not but Tsu’tey was not patient for him to decide. Glad to some degree sky people were small, Graceaugustine was easy to pick up like she was simply a child.

The cry from her lips at the movement made him wince but she went limp in his arms. The rise and fall of her chest accompanied by the slight fog against the clear of her mask was the indicator she was alive but Tsy’tey was careful to clamber back onto the Pa’li and lead the way through back.

Neytiri helped her mother as she stripped Grace’s Dreamwalker of clothes in silence until the empty shell was bare and laid upon the roots, her queue intertwined ready for what her mother planned with Great Mother but she couldn’t help but feel the conflict that rose as she watched Tsu’tey return at the outskirts where the clan was seated ready with some trepidation. Her mother was quick to meet them, directing them off to strip away unnecessary clothes.

Her eyes followed as Ka’ani came with Jake’s…Dreamwalker and she directed him to set him down. She removed the loincloth and cummerbund from his ribs and finally, his knife holster and set that aside, but she found it hard to look at him without the sense of overwhelming guilt and pain that settled beside each heartbeat.

She loved him and yet… she almost hated the sight of him. He had tricked her, despite her hope that he was not one of the Sky people wanting to hurt them or take from them… and he had wanted to learn and be part of the people. To be with her.

He had lied.

Her people had suffered for it. Many were lost and buried now. Once her sister… now her father. But she was thankful for her mother and that she had lived. She couldn’t take the mantle of Tsahìk so soon.

The guilt of loss, and she had a part to play in the encouragement; to be swept up into his play that she had willingly mated with him. A union approved by Eywa herself. She didn’t doubt the Great Mother’s approval but only her own …but would the Great Mother allow for spiritual separation if she prayed for it? A mate of a traitor was a heavy weight to bear as well but… she would choose her people. Not after what happened. They needed her.

Her mother returned swiftly.

“Go sit by Grace. She will need your guidance.” Mo’at spoke.

Grateful, Neytiri moved though her eyes followed as Tsu’tey walked with the small, human form of Grace, a sight unfamiliar but she was glad to see he held her with reverence despite her human body.

The other Dreamwalker had returned, this time carrying a different sky form—Jake—but Neytiri couldn’t bring herself to look at him before she helped set Grace down in front of her Dreamwalker and facing inwards towards the three of the great mother.

Grace’s eyes flickered open, hardly focused though she could still see the spark of curiosity that always lay within them.

Her eyes followed her near-bare body, though she could see Grace’s wound was somewhat covered; her mother’s sticky white paste worked wonders to keep such a wound closed but it wasn’t meant for this injury. She recognised the bullet wounds like she had seen through her sister’s body, much like the healed scar along the upper side of Grace’s Dreamwalker’s hip.

There was other bruising now around it but the west in comparison, she could see the pale pink flesh of Jake’s back to see red and purple building covering most of his mid-body, thin legs that looked…odd in comparison to the rest of his body but she turned her eyes away from him to focus her attention back, kneeling beside the form, plants coming to intertwine over all four bodies laid before the Great Mother.

“It’s time,” Mo’at spoke, her eyes following the descent of Atokirina that drifted down, coming to touch upon them.

Neytiri breathed, allowing herself to connect her kuru in to aid in prayer.

Jake felt like he was out of sync as he laid upon something soft, a low…rhythmic thumping through his mind but he found himself drawn into it like a song of bass. Mo’at’s voice a distance away as well as the voices of the clan but it felt…warm.

Peaceful.

It was almost like a heartbeat. Thumping through his brain, a warm tightness of plants seemed to envelop him like a blanket would on a cold night.

Like he was being lulled to sleep but he knew if he let himself go, he would die. He wasn’t ready for that…

It wasn’t dark, but it felt like he was floating, much like how the dream hunt had started and he found himself sinking back to that experience… feeling like he was flying upon a banshee but his shadow was wrong. No… not wrong. Different. Huge wings that lay upon an ashy wasteland. Orange and black. A Toruk. He could almost feel the air against his winds… but it went beyond that as the memory faded to darkness, the shimmy of light that was all too familiar of the link to waking up that clouded out his senses until he found himself gently moving through the darkness that swiftly followed

The beat thumped soundlessly, through the darkness was a dim light that grew before he found himself standing in Hometree.

Rationally, Jake knew it wasn’t the real thing but he felt the warmth and love for it because…it had become home.

He was not alone, Jake realised as he saw Eytukan standing there by the spiral, Atan and many other fallen Omatikaya too… but he held the Olo'eyktan stare if only for a moment before there was the same glimmer of the Toruk Shadow behind him but Jake couldn’t turn in time, but Eytukan’s eyes widened and flatten back before Jake felt the sense of light change before he was pulled back into the white shimmy of light behind him.

Then darkness.

But the sounds seemed to resonate now, still a beating heart but now, it all sounded different. Louder with each beat.

“Jakesully?”

He felt his ear twitch at the closeness, and a warmth to spread to his shoulder before he realised that he was being touched. His breath came out easy and the pain he had was…gone.

Relief.

Jake found himself taking a few heavy breaths before finding the strength to open his eyes, straight into the concerned eyes of Mo’at. She seemed to relax, as he looked around, his eyes falling upon his…human body but he found himself staring as he realised Grace had not moved; neither human nor avatar.

“Grace?” He croaked, voice still rough from over a day without water. Mo’at and Neytiri also hovered beside her as the Atokirina twirled and danced away like little jellyfish. His heart sank with dread, staring at her avatar intently in some desperate hope that she could pass through.… his heart beat faster until…

Grace’s eyes snapped open.

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