#Got distracted by the elites but the original point is most normal people want good to happen

[theshatteredrose]

Relic Keepers: Awakening of the Red Lily (Chapter 34) - Original Fiction

AN: Yup, still working on this. There should be about 47 chapters to this story, so got a few more chapters to go. Enjoy reading~

Ao3 | Wattpad | Inkitt | FictionPress

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Chapter 34:

Eishirou found himself listening closely to the forest noises around them as he kept a close eye on his tablet. He could hear the sounds of frogs croaking and the buzzing of insects. He wondered briefly if there had been such noises during the time that ShadowDweller had been stalking them. In hindsight, he wished he had paid more attention.

Yet, he reasoned with himself that the usual sounds must have been present as no one other than Zayne had realised that they had been followed. And Zayne only really caught on because of what Eishirou had seen on his map.

Zayne’s own father, a veteran Elite, hadn’t noticed.

The ShadowDwellers within these mangrove trees were quite…unusual was probably the right word.

The creature Team 3 faced off against was a large lizard in appearance, and was most definitely an ambush predator. It didn’t get destructive or violent until after Zayne exposed its presence.

Before then, it had moved silently. Not a rustle of a leaf. Not a snapping of a twig.

Nothing.

There was just so much they didn’t know about ShadowDwellers. They were as individual and unique as any species of animals.

Eishirou paused in his making of notes to glance at his surroundings. The foliage of the environment hadn’t changed; mangrove trees intersected with tall swamp reeds and light brown mangrove roots spiralling into pools of algae covered waters.

The temperature had warmed significantly, despite the shading of the thick canopy above. It was well after midday now, yet the dull light had stayed the same. And Eishirou assumed that the night of these woods fell sooner than they were used to.

Night-time beneath the canopy and lush vegetation were sure to be dark and unnerving.

A sudden and sharp pain from his shoulder promptly reminded Eishirou of his injury and he gritted his teeth to prevent a pained-filled murmur.

He mustn’t have fully succeeded as Zayne placed a hand on his back to get his attention. “How’s your shoulder?”

Eishirou gave a cautious shrug of his shoulder but promptly stopped when he was greeted with more pain. “Ah, it’s aching a little, to be honest.”

Zayne frowned in concern. “Do you have your painkillers?”

“I’ll take them when we return to camp,” Eishirou insisted. “They make me a little sleepy.”

Zayne’s frown deepened for a moment before he nodded his head. “Hm.”

Eishirou could only assume that Zayne’s frown was due to the fact that he wasn’t all that happy to know that he was in pain. And that he had a way to ease said pain, but due to certain side effects, wouldn’t take it.

And he was likely still annoyed about how he received such an injury in the first place.

A loud, sharp crack suddenly resonated. A low rumbling soon followed, along with the distinct sound of trees shaking. And breaking.

“Watch out!”

Zayne reacted immediately. He simultaneously wrapped his arms around Eishirou and manifested his wings. Eishirou found himself reacting just as quickly; he clutched his tablet against his chest with one arm as the other moved instinctively to loop around Zayne’s neck. He then crouched down for a moment, slipped an arm under Eishirou’s legs and scooped him up before he launched them both into the air.

And not a moment later, rocks and boulders barrelled through the tree line, careening destructively as they destroyed everything in its path. The way those large boulders and rocks moved looked so surreal. Boulders, four-foot wide bounced and rolled like they were made from cardboard.

The noise, however, was testament to how heavy, and how brutal, those tumbling stones were.

A rockslide. Not only were the ShadowDwellers dangerous, so was the environment.

With one arm around Eishirou’s back and the other under his knees, Zayne pulled back as his teammates, all with their own wings manifested, created a protective semi-circle in front of them. Their weapons were drawn, ready to deflect any stone or boulder that could potentially jostle in their direction.

A few of the small, somewhat ‘lighter’ stones were ejected from the slide in their direction, but Leon and Rinka were quick to deflect them away.

Eishirou subconsciously tightened his arm around Zayne’s neck and pressed himself closer to him. Had he been alone when that landslide occurred, it definitely would have killed him!

There was no way he could outrun something like that!

As quickly as the rockfall had begun, the tumbling stones came to a stop at their new resting places. The smell of toiled soil and freshly cut wood permeated the air. Along with an uneasy silence.

“You all right?” Zayne asked.

Eishirou nodded his head. “Yeah. Only thanks to your quick reflexes. That was a little close.”

A crease appeared in Zayne’s brow as he, too, nodded his head. “Yeah. What started that, I wonder.”

Eishirou turned to look at the now exposed hillside. The foliage had been so thick that he hadn’t realised that just a few feet away the terrain ascended steeply. The damage trail appeared narrow, gouging a potential new path. Though, he was reluctant to inspect it so soon after a rockfall.

“Something clearly dislodged these stones,” Ernesta mused as she lowered her mana-lance to her side. “Perhaps a ShadowDweller?”

“Perhaps,” Cadmus responded as his gaze remained firm on the debris path.

He didn’t sound fully convince. And, honestly, Eishirou wasn’t exactly sold on the idea that a ShadowDweller was responsible either. Perhaps he was just jumpy or paranoid after all the troubling events that had occurred recently.

“Let’s keep moving,” Cadmus ordered before he turned sharply in Zayne’s direction and raised an eyebrow. “You can put him down now, Zayne.”

Eishirou felt his cheeks abruptly heat up when he realises that Zayne was holding him, carrying him in what others may call “bridal or princess style”. Easily and casually at that.

“Walking is taking too long,” Zayne returned coolly, making no attempt to lower himself to the ground to allow him to safely loosen his hold on Eishirou. “It’ll be easier this way.”

He had a point…

A point that Cadmus couldn’t exactly refute.

“You can hardly fight like that,” Tatsu was the one to point out, rather scathingly at that.

Zayne turned his head sharply in his direction. However, he directed his words toward Eishirou.

“Hold onto my neck.”

Wordlessly, Eishirou did as he was told and tightened his arm around Zayne’s neck. Zayne then unwound his arm from around his shoulders, deftly snatched up his holster, and presented it toward Tatsu. Showing him that he was capable of drawing his weapon if the need called for it.

“See? I can fight just fine,” he retorted. “We’re wasting daylight; let’s move.”

Ernesta made a sound that was similar to a cough, and yet it was a forced cough. Like the one would make to cover up a laugh. Or something.

“I agree,” Ernesta stated. “Flying at low altitude would indeed move things along. And we’ve suffered enough distractions. We need to continue.”

Her tone of voice left little room for debate.

Though, Cadmus did give the impression that he had wanted to say something else. But decided against it. He did give Zayne a peculiar look before he turned, still mid-air, and took the lead once more.

Zayne and others soon followed.

That look was…parental, in a way. Exasperatedly parental. Probably inwardly lamenting how much of a rebel his own son had become.

Was Zayne being rebellious? Eishirou didn’t think so. He hadn’t done anything he hadn’t done before. He may be more vocal about it, but only because other people kept questioning him.

So…maybe the way he was acting wasn’t how Elite normally would or should act?

How ever an Elite was supposed to act, Eishirou was grateful for Zayne. For his determination and dedication toward him. He saved him and protected him more times than he could count.

He…didn’t know what he would have done without him.

Eishirou must have unconsciously shifted closer to Zayne as the other tightened his arms reassuringly around him. “I won’t drop you,” he said.

“I know,” Eishirou returned immediately. “I was just thinking of something else.”

Zayne gave him a quick smile before he returned his attention to the space in front of them. And Eishirou turned his attention to his tablet. Or more specifically, the map. He made the mental note to mark the rockfall when he was able to use his other hand.

Until then, he’d keep an eye out for any unusual blips.

They were making good pace and approaching the next point of interest quickly. A few minutes later they moved from the narrow, natural tunnel created of mangrove trees, and into an open clearing where they could see the blue sky above from an opening within the canopy.

“This is the second site,” Cadmus stated as he dropped to the forest floor, his red mana wings still activated.

As Zayne’s teammates followed the veteran Elite’s example, Zayne himself chose to stay in the air a moment longer. To cast a cautious glance at their new surroundings. Only when he was satisfied, did he finally land. And place Eishirou back onto his feet, too.

Eishirou thanked him quietly before he also inspecting the clearing. His gaze soon landed on an object found north in the clearing. A tall stone covered in moss and vines, of which had only been recently brushed aside.

It was the mural that had caught his attention back at the museum.

Zayne also noticed it and was close behind him as they walked toward the runestone. “Is this what that sentinel being Professor Jairus mentioned looks like?”

Eishirou nodded as he stood before the mural. More of a portrait. Someone that those who had painted such a thing held in high regard. “That’s right. He looked similar to this. Distinct long white hair with beads and feathers and dark brown skin.”

“Is this painting as old as the Red Lily?” Rinka was the one to ask as she, too, looked at the painting in interest.

“Yeah. Amazing, right?” Eishirou replied. “Possibly ten-thousand years old. Survived the bombardment.” He trailed his fingertips over the rough stone cautiously. “And it still has mana.”

Hmm. It appeared to be in good shape. He didn’t need to restore this one.

All he needed to do was prepare himself to receive a recording.

He stepped back momentarily and slipped his tablet into his bag. He then lifted it up over his head and dropped it carefully to the grass by his feet.

With that done, and with the knowledge that Zayne was sure to protect him from anything and everything, he raised his hands and placed them flat against the stone. He lowered his head. And with his mana, reached out to the memories stored within the stone.

They rushed forth without hesitation.

An underground temple. A sacred fire burning before a tall runestone. The sound of humming, wordlessly singing of a song of revere. Rapid drumming, wooden musical instruments.

A figure dressed in white with feathers and twine in white hair. The sentinel being Eishirou had seen so many times before. He stood before the fire. He looked youthful, though his soul was ancient.

He raised his hand to his side to reveal a golden wristlet. Upon it, the Red Lily.

Dawn of a Crimson Gold,

Celebrations of the Sacred Earth.

A gentle voice resounded as the drumming increased.

Shadowy beings, no form nor structure, edged in from all sides. Toward the sentinel being and the relic he wielded on his wrist.

The figure in white, completely unafraid, raised his hand toward the shadowy entities. The Red Lily shone with a bright light. Yet, the radiant light seemed to create a sphere around the being. Encasing him, protecting him.

Elements of a Fated Connection,

Reveals the Strength of the Mirrored Souls.

Someone else suddenly appeared before the sentinel being. Crouched into a battle stance that was somehow familiar. Though, they, too, were hidden in shadows.

Bright blue eyes suddenly looked at him. Directly at Eishirou himself.

Everything came to an abrupt end and Eishirou reeled his head back from the sheer force and power of the recording had shown to him. He clutched at his head and squeezed his eyes shut as he felt an arm encircle his shoulders.

Eishirou rubbed his temples with his fingertips as he attempted to wade through the lingering images of the recording playing through his head.

A golden wristlet. With the Red Lily as the centrepiece. It also appeared that the figure in white was…using it in battle? It wasn’t used offensively, though. Not fully. He was…using it defensively, and yet it felt as though he was also using it to enhance or support…someone else?

That second figure…he couldn’t see anything from them. But…they were of a masculine energy.

That was honestly the downside to reviewing recordings – he didn’t have enough time to inspect and intersect the images. He had to go on memories after the recordings were done. And he could only view the recordings once. Only after the object he pulled the recording from restored its mana supply could he possibly see it again. But there was a high possibly that it would not be the same recording.

It was all rather complicated.

The wristlet was new, though. Previous recordings had the red jewel nestled within a crown. The Red Lily back at the academy, however, was alone. So, it may be possible that the relic could be interchanged with other relics?

And the environment those images took place. It looked like a temple of sorts. An ancient sacred place. Carved stones, man-made altars and totems. And a tall runestone with ancient etchings.

Somewhere important.

Somewhere that still existed?

“Eishirou?”

Zayne’s voice holding a subtle sense of concern pulled Eishirou from his thoughts. He opened his eyes and immediately glanced over to his left. Where Zayne stood. His arm across his back in a comforting and supportive touch.

“You all right?” he asked.

Eishirou nodded and dropped his arms to his sides. “Y-yeah, sorry. It wasn’t holding back with the energy.”

“What did this one reveal?”

It honestly took Eishirou a moment or two to gather enough coherent thoughts to answer. “A…an ancient ritual of sorts. Another relic, I think. There’s…a stone temple. Underground. I think it still exists. Somewhere on this island. That relic…might be able to help me to understand the Red Lily further.”

Of course, he had no solid facts on any of that. But he felt it to be true.

“And no idea where this other…temple is found?” Cadmus asked, poorly hiding his scepticism.

“No,” Eishirou admitted. “But I’ll know when I see it.”

That wasn’t exactly reassuring. And Cadmus’s expression stated as much.

“Your injured shoulder might be interfering with your ability to view recordings,” Zayne suddenly suggested.

A sharp pain erupted in his shoulder, seeming in response to that observation. “Ah,” Eishirou winced. “You’re probably right.”

His shoulder wasn’t the only thing aching. His head was starting to set into a low throbbing. Something that happened when he used a bit too much of his own energy. The pain of his shoulder surely wasn’t helping.

A sudden, piercing buzzing from his tablet caused Eishirou to turn his attention down to his bag. He stepped away from Zayne and knelt onto the grass to pull out his tablet. As he flicked it on, he was greeted with the sight of the map.

And a strange dot close to the area where they had encountered the rockfall.

“Huh?”

“What’s wrong?” Zayne immediately asked as he crouched down next to him, his gaze on the map, too. “Another strange blip?”

Eishirou nodded his head. The marking wasn’t like the red symbol he had seen before. The one that indicated the ShadowDweller. The new blip…blips (there were three now), were light green in nature. Similar to the indicator of the tablet’s location on the map.

That…

“Is there anyone else on the island with us?” Eishirou asked suddenly, his attention toward Cadmus.

Cadmus seemed surprised by the question before his brow quickly furrowed and his expression turned stoic. “There shouldn’t be. Why?”

“It’s just…the map indicated to another possible party. Close by,” Eishirou explained as he glanced down at the map. However, as he looked down again, the dots had moved on. Off the path. “But…it’s gone now. Maybe they’re out of range?”

Had the academy sent another team to help in the research? But that didn’t seem plausible. Jacob would have definitely told him if he even entertained the idea so not to alarm him.

Something didn’t feel right. He would contact Misaki later and ask him.

“Let’s return to camp,” Cadmus suddenly commanded. “And stay together.”

Something didn’t feel right with him either, it seemed.

#original fiction #sci-fi fantasy #young adult #gay romance #Mystery/Suspense #relic keepers: awakening of the red lily

[dreamer213]

Broken Machines: Lights The Dark

Chapter 6: Lesson Plan: Proper Greetings

The morning sun begins to raise over the horizon, the light peeking through space between the currents on Penny’s window. Soon Penny begin to stir and squirm until she opens her eyes awaking to a new day. She pulls out her cable and starts stretching until to realize her scroll was still in her hand. She had never let it go even in her sleep. She unlocks it to find a notification, she’s got an new message! She quickly checks through her recently received file and finds it, her new lesson plan. The content of lesson plan wasn’t anything too complexed was relatively the same with a few more topics added and some topics were expanded on which made it a bit easier to understand. Everything seemed normal until Penny looked at sent time.

3:26 am he was awake and messaged her at 3:26 am, a time when most people should be sleeping especially a growing teenage boy. This revelation hits Penny with a wave of guilt and worry. Had he stayed up to work on her lessons? Did he go to sleep after or did this disrupt his sleep schedule? Did he get enough sleep after or did he sleep at all with his schedule interrupted? These thoughts whirl around in Penny’s mind her guilt only growing with every new question.

Penny: If he’s awake right now he would have only slept three hours and four minutes. And that’s only if he fell asleep immediately after sending this which is highly unlikely.

Penny continues to fret over the matter for while until she realizes that, one she’s getting behind schedule, and two her scroll battery is on 25%.

Penny: How is this so low? I thought I plugged it in last night-

It then dawns on Penny that she had only plugged herself in last night and forgotten to do the same with her scroll during her freak out. Knowing she couldn’t waste anymore time she plugs it up then starts getting ready. By the time she’s got her boots secured her scrolls only at 40%. She’s running out of time, with no options left she does the only thing a kid In this situation can do. She opens her bedroom door and worriedly screams down the stairs to her dad.

Penny: DAD! MAY I USE YOUR PORTABLE SCROLL BATTERY PLEASE? I FORGOT TO CHARGE MY SCROLL LAST NIGHT AND I DON’T HAVE TIME TO CHARGE IT BEFORE I HAVE TO LEAVE FOR PATROL!

Downstairs in the kitchen Pietro hears her screams and chuckles at his little girl’s little mistake then shouts back a simple “OF COURSE!” then resumes he previous task of making breakfast. Meanwhile he can hear her running around upstairs, trying to herself ready in a rush. Soon she’s running downstairs and into his room to find and grab the portable charger then she runs through the kitchen, giving Pietro a quick hug and kiss before heading towards the front door. She does slow down a bit as she unlocks the door.

Penny: Sorry Dad but I can’t eat breakfast with you today, I’m running behind schedule and if I don’t leave for my post immediately I will be late and the city will be unguarded. I have my plate for dinner tonight so you don’t have to make me anything else. I’ll be home at 10 pm if there’s no changes in the schedule or emergencies. See you soon I love you bye!

And with that Penny’s out the door on her way to patrol and protect Mantle. When the afternoon comes it’s time for her lessons and she’s off to the station, on a train up, into the car, and on her way to the Schnee Manor. Upon her arrival Penny is immediately taken to the dance studio where Whitley is waiting for her, standing in the center of the room holding a large book. A manor maid stands watching from the corner of the room. She walks over to Penny takes her bags and returns to the corner as they are about to begin today’s session.

Whitley: Good Afternoon Ms. Polendina, are you ready to start your first lesson?

Penny: Absolutely!

Whitley: Good. Since today’s our first real lesson We’re starting with one of the easier subject in etiquette, first impressions more specifically how to greeting effectively. Now most wouldn’t think that something as simple as greeting people could require any further explanation then what to say and when to say it. But for the elites of Atlas a greeting is a means of making an impression, one that can establish your presence, personality, and to some degree pedigree.

Penny: But how can a greeting communicate so much about a person?

Whitley: Well I could give you a dissertation on the topic but I believe this would be best explained through example.

Whitley walks pass Penny and towards the door, before she can question him he turns around and puts his right index finger up a mere few inches from her face silencing her. He points behind her at towards the ballet bar.

Whitley: Turn around and walk towards the ballet bar.

Penny nods then turns and walks towards the bar. She’s about two feet from the bar when Whitley tell her to stop and stand still.

Whitley: Look into the mirror and say your best greeting, then I’ll tell you the impression you give off.

Penny: Okay.

Her best greeting? Outside of the usual hello, good morning, afternoon, or evening Penny only had one but she had been told it was very cute and it as of recently it had always made people smile. She looks into the mirror, puts her feet together, salutes herself, gives a sweet smile , and says her favorite word in the world.

Penny: Salutations!

The maid in the corner starts laugh, a bit amused by Penny’s actions, but catches herself and coughs to mask it. Whitley, however smirks then gives Penny as small round of applause. From her posture to her salute to the smile on her face and the bubbly way she spoke, everything was the same as that night. For a moment Whitley feels a pinch in his chest but he don’t acknowledge it and moves on.

Whitley: Very nice, your posture is perfect and your smile is sweet and welcoming. Judging by the salute you use this primarily on the citizens of Mantle while you’re on duty, yes?

Penny: Yes but only recently. Before I was stationed in Mantle I used to greet almost everyone I met this way. Some were a bit perplexed by it at first but after awhile they began to like me and we became friends. Others really enjoyed my mannerisms and would smile back and greet me in return. But since I’ve been in Mantle I used it when I have to address large crowds but sometimes I still do it when meeting some…one..new…like….

Whitley: Like when you met me?

Penny: Y…yes.

Penny looks down trying to hide her now flushed expression only to realize that impossible because the wall sized mirror in front of her. She covers her face with her hands, completely defeated.

Whitley: As for the impression, your posture and usage of a fairly uncommon and formal word like “salutations “ hints at your high intelligence, good manners, and a cultured mind. It would come off as a bit stoic and cold if not for your cheery smile and tone of voice, those elements combined conveys the idea of you as a sweet, bubbly, intelligent if not studious girl. And with addition of the informal salute you project the image of the sweet young military prodigy, well trained intelligent but so endearingly nice and sweet no one could possibly find her threatening. A very good first impression.

Penny: You could tell all of that from one greeting?

Whitley: Yes, mostly do to my understanding of body language but that’s a something we’ll go over another day. Right now our focus is teaching you how to greet properly.

Penny looks perplexed by this statement, Whitley just described her impression in a positive way so what was there to improve? What could be wrong? Penny turns around to face him.

Penny: Was there something wrong with my original greeting?

Whitley: Yes and no. The impression is great for you and the investigation , you’re demeanor does make you seem rather naïve and innocent which makes in more like that others assume the same and be less guarded with you then they would be someone like General Ironwood or an average soldier. They’d more likely speak more openly and freely around you making gathering information much easier. It would all be perfect if it not for one small thing.

Penny: Which is?

Whitley: That little salute of yours while adorably patriotic makes your motives painfully clear.

Penny: Really?

Whitley: Yes, it just screams “I’m a sweet little agent of the military sent to investigate your illegal activities!” Anyone with even a hint suspicious about you will notice and use it to discredit you. Which is the exact opposite of what we want to happen.

Whitley continues speaking while Penny looks down at her feet dejected, she had never thought to downplay her loyalty to the military . It had always felt natural to her that she show a great deal of respect as the military was the reason she existed. Her body, her restoration, her home, the energy that powered her, even the clothes she was wearing were only allowed to exist because the military approved it, so how could she not give her respect to the system that allows her existence? so how could she not show her gratitude for the gift of life they afford to her? The idea of not doing so made her feel ashamed and ungrateful but if she don’t she might compromise the entire investigation and ruin they’re chances of getting the project back on schedule. And if the project wasn’t done in time then both Mantle and Atlas….The whole world could be…could be.

Whitley: Ms. Polendina! Are you listening? Can you hear me?

Whitley’s voice pulls Penny out of her fearful thoughts. She had been so lost in own mind that she accidentally ignored him. She looks down again embarrassed by her conduct.

Penny: I can hear you. I am sorry I got distracted.

Whitley: (Sighs) Just don’t let it happen again. Now what I was trying to say that this easy issue to fix. All you need to do is change your motions and pose then it’ll be properly effective.

Whitley walks towards her and Penny turns around to face him. He opens the book he’s been holding to a specific chapter and hands it to her. The book is about first impressions the chapter was on the importance of posture and posing in changing one’s demeanor with detail illustrations and instructions on how to do different types of greeting poses.

Whitley: Look through these and find something you can use to substitute for the salute. Then you can practice until we find one that suits you.

Penny nods and looks through the book, is very expansive having information on greetings from over 100 years ago to around 30 years ago. There was also details on cultural and situational poses for different regions and times of day. Penny finds a illustration, a man with his hands behind his back and his chest pushed out, and recognizes the pose. It was the same posture General Ironwood used almost every time he gave a speech or briefing and would have her do the same if she was standing next to him during. The familiarity makes Penny feel sort of comfortable so she turns the book around and shows Whitley the page.

Penny: I’ve done this one before whenever I stand next to General Ironwood during certain event I have to mirror his posture so I have plenty of practice. It should be relatively easy and look much more natural.

Whitley: Alright, let’s try it.

Penny gives Whitley the book back, turns around, straightens her stance, puts her hands together behind her back, and repeats her greeting.

Penny: Salutations!

There’s a pause as Penny waits for a reaction, meanwhile Whitley is absolutely stunned and the maid is trying her best suppress her laughter. Despite her enthusiasm, Penny’s pose had not conveyed the same “ strong and respectful” image that Ironwood did. Rather she gave off a very “tiny girl trying to look all big and tough” impression. Whitley hangs his head and sighs.

Whitley: That was….an attempt. But it’s still not right, keep looking.

Whitley hands her the book again and Penny starts searching through it again, she stumbles on another familiar pose, a curtsy a formal greeting that was common back in the times of lords and kings. Thinking a classic might yield better results Penny give the book to Whitley and tries again this time with a curtsy. She puts her right behind her left planting the ball of her toes on the floor the bends her knees, holding her skirt on both sides as she bends down.

Penny: Salutations.

When she bends back up she see Whitley looking through the book again. He turns back to the chapter on greetings again and hand off the book. Before she can ask what went wrong this time Whitley speaks first.

Whitley: Good execution but it’s too submissive. While you need to appear non threatening and a little naïve it should never to the point of appearing submissive. In high society submissive stances like are reserved for the service staff, the simple minded, and the easily abused. If anyone with large ego or cruel attitude see you like that they’ll waste no time in destroying your self esteem and self worth for their own sick fun-(yawn)

Damn it he thought he had enough coffee that morning to prevent this but he had been wrong. Not wanting to look weak in front of her Whitley tries to cover up his yawn with a cough but it’s too late Penny had noticed. She looks at him, eyes full of worry and shame, she knows why he’s tired and it hurts her to know her lack of knowledge had cost him sleep but there was nothing she could do about it now except worry. Whitley, knowing he’s caught, tries to give a simple excuse so they can move on and get back to the lesson.

Whitley: Apologies, the afternoon fatigue must be getting to me. But I think I’ve shaken it off so let’s continue with-

Penny: You shouldn’t push yourself.

Whitley: Excuse me?

Penny: You’re young and still growing, you need to take care of yourself so your body can mature properly. That includes getting 8 hours of sleep every night so your mind and body will be well rested and is necessary to keep you healthy

Whitley is a little shocked by her words, it’s been a long time since someone worried for his health like this. It felt odd but not unpleasant to know that someone chose to care for his well being. But what was unpleasant was look on her face. Her smile had been replaced by worried frown and she keeping looking down at the floor like a child about to be scolded. Why was she acting like she did something wrong? Whitley ponders on what it could possibly caused it but he didn’t have much to go on. They hadn’t known each other long and their direct correspondence had been limited to yesterday and the message he se-the time stamped message he sent at the ungodly hours of the early morning. Had she notices the time and blamed herself for it? How immature, he thought that being an associate of Ironwood’s she’d be use to workaholics and how they work but once again she had surprised him. He shakes his head and sighs.

Whitley: Thank you for your concern, but we have more important things to do right now. Let’s focus on our task and keep looking.

Penny nods and they continue with the lessons. They find more poses to try but non have the same flare as her signature pose. After many failed attempts their session almost over, Whitley pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration while Penny is searching through the book, determined to find something that would work. She finds a section on greetings for knights, soldiers, military officials. One paragraph catches her attention.

Penny: Commonly used by knights and soldiers, can be used in both formal and informal occasions and between both higher and lower ranks. There are several variations amongst different social class due to the common use of the same gestures. It coneys a person’s strong spirit and kind heart due to the familiarly of the motions.

Penny, have had a spark of inspiration, close the book and hand it back to Whitley. This surprises Whitley and he returns his attention to the situation, focusing on Penny whose already walk back towards the ballet bar. When she’s at good distance from the mirror she smiles at her reflection then she straightens her stance, placed her right fist over the left side of her chest, and tilts her head a bit to the left and lifts the edge of her skirt with her left hand to add some flare.

Penny: Salutations. My name is Penny Polendina, it’s wonderful to meet you!......How was that?

Whitley is once again stunned by her actions. It was perfect, formal enough not to be leered at but still gave off the sweet non threatening demeanor they were looking for. He had thought this would take a few more days before any true progress was but she proven him wrong. He smirks then walks to her.

Whitley: That was very good Ms. Polendina. It’s just what we’re looking for, how did you come up with this?

Penny: I got from the sections on knights and soldiers, one of the greetings list was one for all occasions and had many variances amongst different classes so it seemed the more practical. So I used the stance and gesture from the knights pose then add some parts from young lady the variant to make it look gentler.

Whitley: Well aren’t you a clever one, you’ve done well today. And since you did so well you shouldn’t have may issues with your next lesson.

Penny: I promise I’ll do my best.

Suddenly a low ringing sound can be heard. Whitley reaches into his pocket and pulls out his scroll, it’s the schedule app notifying him that they’re time is up.

Whitley: It looks like we finished just in time, you need to get to the car soon or you’ll miss the train, Julia see her to the car.

Julia: Yes Young Master.

The maid Julia takes Penny’s things and walks to the door and opens it. Penny walks to the door and retrieves her belongings from Julia, thanks for holding on to her things for her.

Whitley: Have a good day Ms. Polendina.

Penny: Thank you, have a nice day. Oh! And if you have trouble sleeping chamomile tea with two teaspoons of honey can act as a sleep aid and help lower stress levels.

With that she leaves the room with Julia and Whitley is left alone. He leans against the ballet bar and smirks. That girl, and here he thought he might be wasting his energy on her but she proved him wrong. Not only had she been cooperative and pleasant, she had learned quickly, adopted to the situation and when a problem arose she found her own solution. Her execution of each augmented greeting was excellent despite not yielding the desired result and not once had she gotten frustrated or asks to take a break or quit all together. And to top it off she was worried about her instructor’s health and well being, Hmm what a hardworking student. Whitley gets another notification this time alerting him that he’s lessons starts in a few minutes. He puts his scroll away and heads off.

.

.

.

It’s almost sunset and Whitley has just finished the last of his daily tasks. He’s leaving the library and heading to his room when a butler blocks his way. He looks up at the butler Niles and stares at him indignantly.

Whitley: Evening Niles. What do you need from me?

Niles: Good evening Young Master. Master Jacques has called you to his study.

Whitley: (monotone) Wonderful.

Whitley turns around and begins walking towards Jacques’s office. After a few steps he notices Niles following behind him.

Whitley: I know the way to his study Niles, I don’t know to be shadowed.

Niles: Yes Young Master.

Niles bows then leaves, while Whitley heads towards his father’s study. After the long walk around the manor to Jacques’s study Whitley finally makes it to the study door. He knocks three times waits, after a few seconds Jacques gives him permission to enter. Whitley opens the door and steps inside where he’s greeted by the sight of his father sitting at his desk looking over documents.

Whitley: He’s still working , so this isn’t about punishment then. Good evening Father.

Jacques: Whitley.

Whitley: Niles said you called for me.

Jacques: Yes, I wanted an update on the military hound..

Whitley: Oh! Well, we just had our first lesson today and she did surprisingly well. She completely the lesson before the session ended and left for work immediately after.

Jacques: Hmm, any odd or suspicious behavior? Asking any invasive questions, looking around for documents?

Whitley: While she has shown some interest in things around the manor it’s been one of a child like curiosity. She looks at this place like a kid would a castle and besides being a little awkward and nervous she behaves fairly normal.

Jacques: That’s reassuring but still, keep an eye on her. She could just be waiting things until she makes her move.

Whitley: Yes Father. Will that be all?

Jacques: Yes that will be-Wait, one more thing.

Whitley: Yes?

Jacques: She needs to start going to events to investigate the suspects. I need you to find something soon so we can speed this deal up.

Whitley: Of course Father, I actually already have a few feelers and should have a suitable event earmarked in a few days.

Jacques: Hmm, As expected your always prepared. You can go now.

Whitley: Thank you Father, have pleasant evening.

Whitley exits the room let’s put a sigh of relief. He disliked being in his father’s study as he was only ever called there for a two reasons, one was to receive new orders or tasks and the other…..Whitley holds his left bicep and shutters. No… it would do him any good to think about that other reason right now. Right now he needs to focus on fulfill his new task, he takes out his scroll and continue his search hoping to find something before midnight. After an hour or so he stumbles upon something….promising.

#penny polendina #whitley schnee #broken machines #beta testers #pietro polendina #jacques schnee #fanfiction #rwby fanfiction #fanfic #let the cuteness begin #rwby

[queer-as-used-by-tolkien]

13 right back at you! Also 15 if it doesn't get too long.

13 - explain how mesmers work!

I've actually done a lot of thinking about this and it is, of course, heavily entwined with my theory of how magic works in general, but I'll try to keep it simple.

I got this idea of magic from the Aspects of Glint - Wind, Sun, and Lightning - and so to make things simpler I went ahead and named the different types of magic, at least as far as I could see them. Mesmer magic is called the Aspect of Deception, which actually correlates to one of the schools of magic we get from Bloodstones. (That was completely accidental.)

Also, I completely agree with your idea that some mesmers are good at manipulating the physical world and some are good at manipulating your mind - I've mostly thought about the ones that are good at manipulating the physical world, so most of the following only applies to them.

But anyway, the idea is that mesmers and thieves both use the Aspect of Deception. At first I thought the difference between a mesmer and a thief was just power, but I've refined that somewhat: mesmers specialize in convincing you that you can't trust your senses. You know what you're seeing is wrong - but only half the time. You're not sure what's real and what's not. Thieves, on the other hand, specialize in convincing you that everything is perfectly normal when it isn't. The thief isn't here practicing his thievery, for example - he's invisible. Thieves do use mesmer-esque spells on occasion, which is where I got the idea they're linked - one of their elites summons three clones (which is why I thought the difference was power, because that's an everyday mesmer thing).

As for clones and illusions: well, most of this derives from what we see in-game mesmers doing - you can make a clone or illusion of another person than yourself, you can disguise a person as someone else, etc. and of course this doesn't just extend to people.

Illusions can be just visual apparitions if you want them to, with no substance, like ghosts; these of course take less power. I also believe that mesmers can manipulate the other senses, though we don't see this much in-game; a mesmer can make you hear things, smell things, etc. Each one is different, though, so it's sort of like if your field is the Aspect of Deception, there are many subschools and most mesmers specialize is visual and physical effects since those are the most useful.

By 'physical' I mean illusions that you can touch and feel, which are more common among mesmers. The idea is that you concentrate power in the illusion, more and more power until it's so concentrated it's physically there, takes up physical space and you can feel it. Clones and illusions are just highly, highly concentrated magic, given form by your mind. Then when you shatter them, this magic kind of breaks and splinters all over the place, and some of it goes into your enemies and hurts them. That is complicated and I'll leave it for another time.

But here's the thing: illusions of people are ridiculously complex, and either you need to have a very focused mind that is also capable of multitasking, or that's not exactly how it works. I think your idea of how people are shaped is a generally subconscious assumption, so if you tell your magic 'hey look like a person,' it'll know what a person is and form into the shape of a person based on your subconscious pattern. Illusions of yourself are quite clearly easier, because you have a much better idea of what you are physically than someone else, and it does take active concentration to remember that this clone is supposed to look like that guy instead.

But the cool part is that since the clones are based on your subconscious understanding of how people are shaped, these clones are perfectly viable people on their own, except that they're made of magic and have no will but yours. This means that they get sensory input, which really feeds into your brain and it takes a lot of training to separate out these various inputs. But this is how, for example, you could have a clone go spy out a place and convey that information to you; you could also control the illusion through a conversation or really any other task that most people would expect from a person. You can of course also channel magic through a clone, because this is what clones exist for in the mechanics of the game - another source of damage.

I've heard theories that mesmer illusions are more or less programmable; for example, this illusion is pacing back and forth, but it would of course take the same exact steps every time and if someone watched long enough they might notice. I haven't really thought about it, but I feel that if you were distracted enough to have to give a set of commands to an illusion that it then carries out to the best of its ability, or pre-program it - if that's necessary, you're probably not focusing enough to keep the illusion there in the first place, and also it doesn't have a mind of its own to be able to 'follow commands to the best of its ability.'

Now, on to the cool part: teleportation. I've explained clones because those are relevant to how thieves shadowstep, which is basically that they make a clone of themselves at another location, and then take the sensory input and use that to focus their whole mind through to the clone until that's where their mind is - and if you put enough magic into a clone, of course, it's no longer just made of magic but it manifests as flesh and blood (not just the illusion of feeling like flesh and blood), and since your magical core carries that kind of magic that happens naturally when you transfer your consciousness there. Of course, any given thief will have done this countless times before, so most thieves are walking around in these magically-constructed bodies, and when you switch to a new one the magic dissipates or shatters or something. That's how I imagine it, and I haven't actually thought about what happened to their original body. It probably just died from lack of a mind. On the other hand, you could totally headcanon that thieves always have to go back for their 'real' bodies, but that's less fun...

But the really cool part about the shadowstepping system of teleportation is that mesmers can't do it. Or, they can - that's what blinks are - but it's super dangerous. Thieves don't use clones all that much - summoning them is an elite skill (unless they're shadowstepping) - but mesmers use clones all the time, and since the sensory input can be used to transfer your consciousness into a clone, it can actually be very easy for a mesmer to mix up and forget which of the four identical people on the battlefield is their own self. So mesmers need to have a very concrete idea about which one is their own self, and if they make a habit of shadowstepping their minds into other clones, that's nearly impossible. Some mesmers can do it, of course, and that's why you have the blink skill, but the risk vs reward is relatively low.

What's the problem with getting who you are confused? Well, that's because it has to be very intentional when you shadowstep - you have to know where you are and where you're going. If you're just mistakenly looking through the eyes of the wrong person, and haven't actually transferred your magical core there, the real you might be in danger and die, and then you're gone. So most mesmers don't do it at all even if they theoretically have the mental capacity or skill to do it without much danger.

Mesmers just use portals instead, which bend space and time sort of like a Tesseract (if you've read A Wrinkle in Time), which brings two points in space together momentarily. I have thought that I need to think about portals just a little bit more - to figure out what exactly the process of moving from Point A to Point B is - more like an asura gate, where theoretically you could stick an arm through but not your whole self, or is more like elevators in cities that just take your whole self if you enter the field. I don't know yet, but I'm slightly leaning toward the second one.

Also: chronomancy! I have thought about this a little. (Sorry Mirages, I haven't thought about you at all...) You can't actually rewind time, of course - even some of the skill descriptions say that time 'snaps back' when you're done with the spell, causing additional effects. I've seen an ask response on this topic that says it's all in your mind, but I don't think so, at least not for the physical, world-manipulating mesmers.

Chronomancy requires a load of power, because, inside the spell radius, you've said 'turn time back to X state' or else 'rewind time until I say stop' and, like making illusions, the details of this are mostly subconscious. But what it does is it takes all physical entities and moves them backwards in order to simulate time rewinding. Chronomancy does have a mental component, of course, and that is that it makes everyone but the caster forget about the intervening time, creating the illusion (hehe) that no time has passed. Advanced chronomancers, of course, can specify this and prevent their allies from forgetting - or, if they're being particularly confusing, prevent their enemies from forgetting, or prevent one enemy from forgetting so he starts sounding like a lunatic. This can also heal! If you're moving things backwards through time, that includes healing wounds back to their former state.

Also, and I just remembered this, but you can make a non-person illusion convey sensory input. I have one character who shot a bullet (he's a thief) and, upon impact, granted him one second of vision of what was going on over there. You can also silence things like guns, you can block out all noisy distracting. Also, this thief actually set up a recording of some epic soundtrack played at inaudible volume inside his rifle and used the Aspect of Deception to make a sort of sound-proof bubble around himself, and then used magic to magnify the epic soundtrack so he could feel like a hero on the battlefield. (He has a very strong sense of drama XD... his friends roll their eyes at him.)

I also have my main mesmer character use this 'sound proof bubble' concept to have private conversations in busy places, and a sort of variant of it - catching the sound out of a person's mouth and carrying it to her ears, and throwing her own voice into their ears - to silently communicate across greater distances while trying to be sneaky. Sort of like magical ventriloquism, I guess.

So, that's all for mesmerism! I know I focused on thieves a bit, but it was significantly within the scope of the question and I fell like the spirit of the question includes them, given my headcanons.

Thanks for asking! I've been carrying these theories around in my head for quite some time and weaving them into my stories, it was nice to be able to try to express them eloquently all in one place!

Now, you said '15 if it doesn't get too long,' and the prompt mentions quaggan (...and dredge?) but I'll just tag you on a separate post. (It'll be shorter, I promise!)

#mesmer #thief #chronomancer #magic #glint #aspects #aspect of sun #aspect of wind #aspect of lightning #headcanon #illusion #clone #shadowstep #portal #blink #asura gates #aspect of deception #bloodstones #deception #gw2 #profession

[somedayonbroadway]

I think all the Newsie's AU's could be really entertaining but I would most like to know about the Leverage one and the Lilo & Stitch one.

Okay, so I had two people in a row ask for Lilo and Stitch while also requesting another outline, so I’ll be doing Lilo and Stitch very soon.

But… I LOVE this one.

So, for those of you who haven’t seen Leverage, you can watch it on Amazon Prime Video. It’s amazing and I adore it. My favorite character is Hardison. He’s everything. Nothing he says ever gets old. Hardison and Parker are literally so freaking cute that I just can’t. And I think I’ve already talked about how Spot Conlon is very similar to Eliot Spencer, at least the way I write him. So this’ll be fun.

So anyways…

Leverage AU

Characters

Jack Kelly — Nate Ford

Katherine Plumber — Sophie Devereau

Spot Conlon — Eliot Spencer

Racetrack Higgins — Parker

Albert DaSilva — Alec Hardison

Jack Kelly: The Mastermind

Jack is an alcoholic

He’s only twenty five when this story starts.

He used to work for an insurance company but after that same company let his baby brother die, refusing to pay for his treatment, Jack quit and has been a “functioning alcoholic” ever since.

Jack has anger issues that he refuses to acknowledge

Jack used to pride himself on being emotionally broken, but still never crossing over to the “dark side” of the law.

He’s the son of a numbers runner who was emotionally abusive

Was originally trying to become a catholic priest as he was strong in his faith but has since strayed a bit after losing Charlie, the only person in the world he truly loved

After meeting his team, Jack grows very protective of them, viewing them as a sort of family that he’d never really had, all except for Charlie.

Jack first meets the team when a man comes to him, begging him to keep an eye on a group of thieves as they execute a job he’s hired them for. After they are all double crossed by this man, narrowly escaping death, they come together to set things right and the team begs Jack to continue leading them as Jack shows them how good it feels to do the right thing, even if the right thing requires bending or breaking the rules.

Jack grew up extremely poor but is an excellent artist and chess player.

Jack likes to cook.

Jack loves to learn new things when he can’t drink to continue distracting himself.

Jack is the one to typically choose the clients his new team takes on.

Jack took Charlie in the second he turned eighteen, unable to trust his father who was a no good drunk.

Jack hates that he’s becoming just like his dad but refuses to stop.

Jack is more protective of Race than anyone else, as Race’s optimism and energy remind him of Charlie.

Jack serves as a mentor of sorts to Albert.

He is kept in check by Spot.

Jack is very quick witted, moving from one plan to the next as things change.

Jack gets his own father killed after a mission gone wrong.

Jack gets arrested protecting his team who he knows will go away for much longer than him for all the crimes they’ve committed.

Jack is the one who introduces the group to Katherine, the best grifter he’s ever seen, with whom he ends up falling for.

Katherine Plumber: The Grifter

Katherine is a struggling actress who can’t perform to save her life, though is the best grifter in the business.

Katherine is very careful of her identity, meaning that absolutely no one knows her real name.

Katherine speaks nearly eleven languages.

Katherine has difficulty maintaining real relationships as it’s hard to decipher her acts from reality.

Before becoming a member of Leverage she focuses heavily on art theft

After meeting the team, she bonds with Race over art

Katherine manages to fake her death twice in two years and attend her own funeral at both

As Katherine is the only woman on the team, she often feels as though she doesn’t belong, but all of her boys adore her and protect her at all costs.

Katherine has an abundance of connections around the world, though none of them know her true identity.

Prides herself on long cons that she’d pulled in the past all by herself.

Katherine never reveals how she grew up to her friend as she is very good at letting things go and never getting attached but all of that changes when Jack reaches out to her.

Katherine is wanted in five countries.

Successfully stole the Stanley Cup and replaced it with a replica, though she does not care for Hockey and did all of it out of spite because someone told her she couldn’t.

Katherine makes a game of keeping her real name from Jack as she insists he has to earn the right to know it.

Katherine falls for Jack nearly as fast as he falls for her.

Though Jack and Katherine do sleep together a few times, they agree to keep it a secret for the good of the team.

Though Katherine and Jack aren’t much older than the rest of the team, they take on a sort of parental role for Race and Albert who both grew up orphans

Katherine eventually opens up her own acting company where she finds she is an excellent coach, though she was never a performer herself because she lacked a certain truth element when she would try to perform on stage or on screen.

Katherine is very close with the whole team, but is able to relax while around Spot, as he’s more an equal to her than Race and Albert, and Jack and her have a lot of tension sometimes.

She shares the most with Spot on accident as Spot is easy to talk to.

Runs away at some point to “find herself” after an old team of hers tries to kill her and the rest of her current team and comes back just in time for Jack to be arrested, saving all of them.

Spot Conlon: The Hitter

Spot Conlon was in and out of the mob all growing up. (Eliot was black ops, but I want Spot to be younger, this is different).

He began training when he was very young and is a very skilled “retrieval specialist”

Spot has had to kill before and is ashamed of his past. When asked about it, he calmly asks his team not to get curious because he would tell them what he did 

Though the whole team consists of criminals, Spot believes them, especially Race and Albert, to be innocent and naive and he constantly looks out for them as best he can, acting as a sort of big brother for them until he catches feelings for Race (yeah sorry guys that’s gonna be different too)

Spot is very calm and never shows any kind of panic.

Spot is a trained chef

He grows up only fighting, learning to not get attached

The leverage team is his gateway to figuring out that he is capable of love

His role on the team is protection. He is always around to keep his team out of trouble when something goes wrong or even when things go right and he has to disarm people on purpose.

Spot is wicked smart and is able to discern things from noises, smells, walking patterns etc. always stating “It’s a very distinctive __”

Knows various types of martial arts and uses them regularly

Though not technically a grifter, Spot has an easy time playing different roles and can blend in easily with a crowd.

Hostage negotiator

Survivalist

He’s extremely protective of his team and is willing to go great lengths to make sure they’re safe and secure

Has a budding relationship with Albert who constantly gets himself into trouble that Spot has to get him out of.  

Was known as Sean before Race showed up and gave him a non threatening nickname based on his freckles

Can play the guitar

Manages to get shot at constantly, taking a few bullets but refusing to walk with crutches.

He loves teaching Katherine how to defend herself

Loves teaching Race knew things as well

Speaks six languages

Spot is not familiar with a lot of technology, causing him to often need Albert’s help with that kind of thing

Has rescued Race and Albert from being kidnapped or hurt the most

As times goes on, finds himself more and more in love with his team and really does love to protect them

Sees Albert as a little brother, even if he won’t admit it.

Racetrack Higgins: The Thief

Has been a thief since he was very young, maybe seven, but only gives his team made up stories about how it all started

Has a hard time coping with grief or pain, which is why he likes to make up stories about his past.

Abusive father killed Race’s mother when he was very young

Race grew up in foster care until he ran away at twelve, eventually getting raised on the street by an elite thief who spotted his talents and offered to train him, making him the best thief in the world

Is socially awkward on account of being a loner for most of his life and rarely ever opens up about his childhood

Despite this, Race is very loud and curious, almost childlike with his team, thus why Katherine and Jack become sort of parental figures toward him.

Race did have an older brother who got hit by a car when he was very young, after going out to get food for him. Race blames himself to this day.

Desperate for some kind of real family, besides the thief who trained him, Race meets an older foster brother who teaches him how to boost cars, along with “teaching him other things”. Though his is abused physically and sexually by this boy, Race doesn’t know any better and hangs on his every word, believing that the older boy wanted to help him.

Race is arrested when he’s fourteen, taking the fall for the boy who taught him how to boost cars

Race was a getaway driver at thirteen, and a good one at that.

He is constantly reminded of how he’s not normal, taking a toll on his mental stability as he’s often referred to as insane or inhuman

Race is fairly naive, but does live up to his title as the best thief in the world

Enjoys stealing diamonds more than anything else.

Quickly becomes best friends with Albert and is curious on how to get Spot to open up.

Never went to high school but is still amazingly smart as it takes a lot of math and science and so forth to be a thief.

Enjoys using tasers as a weapon of choice.

Has a bit of a sadistic mind as he enjoys watching Spot beat up on some of their enemies, especially the ones who’d tried to come at him, sometimes even visualizing that they’re the boy who left him behind after using him constantly all those years ago

Eventually does have to confront Drake again, but has his whole team to protect him.

Really loves cash

Is shocked the first time Spot kisses him because, he has been abused before, but kisses Spot again, telling him how different it feels

That’s the first time Race truly opens up about his past and Spot figures out that someone had used him

Has a fear of horses

Is not anywhere near afraid of heights

Has trust issues (obviously) despite the insistence that Albert and Spot (and of course Jack and Katherine but most Al and Spot) would never let anything happen to him

Actually trusts Jack the most as he came from the good side of the law

Does not like psychics

Katherine coaches Race in his social skills, helping him embrace his sexuality and slightly rely on those around him for connection and comfort

Race’s real name is Antonio Higgins, but he’s known across the world as only ‘Racer’

Albert DaSilva: The Hacker

Much like Race, Albert grew up in foster care, though through most of his childhood, he lived with a woman he refers to as “Nana”. Not his actual grandmother, but a foster mother who he adored and actually took care of him.

Often refers to himself as a geek and prides himself in being one as it is the “age of the geek, baby”

Is relied on heavily by the team as he makes a lot of their equipment (eg: coms, modified cell phones, button cams)

Provides CIA level aliases for his team.

Owns the teams vehicle, “Lucille” and is pissed when they manage to destroy not one model, but two

Has an unhealthy obsession with orange soda

Is physically very fit, but is not good in combat situations

Being an introvert for most of his life, Albert took to technology and learned just about everything one can about them

Albert is straight in this one (sorry for my Ralbert fans) but, as Race’s best friend, is constantly trying to subtly get Race to admit he has feelings for Spot

Though he and Spot didn’t get along too well at first, they eventually see themselves as brothers and look out for each other

Claustrophobic

Gets buried alive during a job gone wrong and is showed just how much he’s loved when his team manages to rescue him, believing him to be dead at first

Manages to keep the team very well paid and secured so the government can’t find them

Hacked into the pentagon when he was only twelve

When he was younger, his nana forced him off the computer for one hour out of every day to “give his eyes a rest from the screen” and Albert learns how to play the violin

Mostly used his skills for fun when he was younger, just wanting to prove he could do something

Skipped his senior prom to hack into medical records and get his nana on a high priority list

Has always looked out for the people he cared about

The only one Albert didn’t trust was Spot, as Spot intimidates him until Spot started showing interest in what he did, never commenting on it, but always looking very impressed

Oversells himself while grifting and often relies on Katherine to help guide him

Cares about humanity and the big picture, much like Jack. This is where their bond comes from as Katherine, Race and Spot have spent most of their lives looking out for themselves

Has a soft spot for little kids

Enjoys messing with Spot and making bets with him, even sparking in them having their own handshake which consists of them subtly high diving twice at waist level and then fist bumping. It’s often how they seal a bet or agree on a plan

What do you guys think? Any scenes you wanna see? Any other characters you wanna hear about? Let me know!

For more Mood Boards and AUs, click here!

#newsies #newsies live #newsies musical #newsies au #modern au #modern era #modern day robin hood #leverage #leverage au #jack kelly #katherine plumber #spot conlon #racetrack higgins #albert dasilva #dragonflysobright seethemfly #much love #angst #newsies rp

[mz-elysium]

Wow. That was a lot longer than I planned. Do we even do comic sans wip posts anymore? It it cool? Am I cool? 

Photo ID below the cut because this is already way too fucking long of a post. And this ID, bc of it, is so so long.

Photo ID: a 13 slide Comic Sans font powerpoint about an original WIP. All slides but the first are white, black text, all font being Comic Sans to follow the meme.

Slide 1: black background, white text. Titled with red shadow: The City of Fallen Angels: (2) Hitaeth. Definition below: hiraeth: homesickness or nostalgia, an earnest longing for an idealised past, or a sense of regret. Around this title are a bunch of floating descriptors about the WIP: vampires, gothic-punk, regrets vs forgiveness, dark urban fantasy, historical 2003, 4 POVs, secrets, political intrigue, slice of life, compassion vs selfishness, vampires playing Game of Thrones, grimdark and also hopepunk. A Vampire the Masquerade canon divergent original novel.

Slide 2: Worldbuilding, about the Vampire the Masquerade world. Titled: The canon sects but like a little more nuanced. Three columns of bullet points follow. 

The first is the Camarilla. 

neo-feudal lords and princes

rule most of the world

want to rule the rest of it

scheming, old elders who don’t give a shit about anyone else

will kill your family to make a point

BUT ALSO.

stable domains; due process

clan culture, history, tradition

connected to wider vampire society

play their game and you can live as a peaceful peasant (mostly)

The second column is the Anarchs.

rebellious neonates/ancillae

in their Free States, there’s opportunity for power and to live your own life

neonates can actually own land??

ALSO

literal anarchy

no real oversight or leadership

can and will be killed by another gang

“if you can hold it, you can have it”

Third column is the Sabbat

worship Caine as the First Murderer (first vampire)

take “vampire” too literally

inhuman monsters

war cult readying for Armageddon

ALSO

profoundly religious

strict code of honour

accept their inhumanity (no angst)

tight-knit family-like packs

heroes/crusaders for their ppl

Slide 3: Titled: Have a shitty map. A Google map screenshot of Central Los Angeles, with highlighted sections in different colours, clearly done in Paint by a child. Seven sections are highlighted, explained on the next slide.

Slide 4: The lands are divided by the sect who control it.

Anarchs:

Angels Wasteland: remains of the #peaceful Barony of Angels. With Salvador Garcia’s death, it’s a shitshow chaotic warzone. 

Tinseltown: Isaac Abrams, movie baron, just wants to be left alone.

East LA: ruled by loyalists of the Old Guard Anarchs, who are all dead/gone. Sabbat from further east are smelling weakness.

Downtown: technically “no baron” but also nines is baron. Typical Anarchs, shooting each other, living rough, living free. OR ARE THEY???

Camarilla:

The Valley: a praxis backed by legendary elders, who are propelled by faceless masters, using unwilling Prince Barty Vaughn as a pawn

Westside: greedy and ambitious LaCroix goes “hmm. la looks like shit. probably wanna get in on that” and calls up his contact, Therese Voerman and says “yo. u got a barony, huh? wanna be my seneschal?”

“Independent”

Silver Lake: a desperate grab by Monroe and co to build their own “utopia” … sorta like the Anarchs 60yrs ago… and look how THAT went. Monroe ate the last Old Guard Anarch.

Slide 5: Titled: Monroe’s POV, with a subtitle of The Captain. On the left, a photo of half of a man’s face in shadow. He has dark hair, pale skin, blue eyes, and a hard expression. Bullet points describe him as Matthew Monroe, Clan Ventrue, Embraced 1873, Humanity 5, age 28. On the right, a series of bullets describe his POV’s story.

this is a dude drowning in an ocean of Problems and his catchphrase is “I’ll figure it out”

he owes a life debt to the enigmatic powerful archon in the Valley (Jan Pieterzoon), who seems to respect/honour him more than most of LA.

he used to be besties with the Valley Prince (Barty Vaughn), who he can’t trust but seems? the same?

he turned his ghoul and secret love into a vampire (Hawthorne), against her wishes, and now she hates him. monroe: u kno what? that’s fair.

Silver Lake is held together with duct tape. monroe’s right hand (Ashley Swan) is a nightmare and untrustworthy. his people try to kill each other.

he’s got a lot of unresolved trauma/grief/abuse/anger and vampires sort of have “The Beast”, a spirit that haunts them with evil

and oh yeah, LA is about to explode

Slide 6: Titled: Monroe’s supporting characters. Four characters, each of them have a photo, a title, and brief run-on description.

First, a photo of a very pale man with purple eyes and a lock of ice blonde hair. Ashley Swan, the Thorn, Clan Toreador. Monstrously cruel, sarcastic, hedonistic, aggressive, sadistic, can’t be trusted, doesn’t wear shirts. Bisexual transman.

Second, a photo of a dour woman with dark hair. Audrey Hawthorne, the Lovechilde, Clan Ventrue. Blinded by the Embrace, furious, frustrated, grieving, snarky, over accomplished, creative, passionate.

Third, a man in a black suit looking over a ballroom with a crystal chandelier. Jan Pieterzoon, the Kingmaker, Clan Ventrue. 300 year old, archon, elder, sire is Camarilla big-shot, dignified, mysterious, chessmaster, honourable, elite.

Fourth, a man in a dress shirt, sleeve rolled up, hand extended with a cigarette and bloody palm. Barty Vaughn, the Valley Prince, Clan Ventrue. Former Anarch, Prince of San Francisco, now reluctant Prince of LA. Smokes like a chimney, lives to fuck Tremere and have fun.

Slide 7: Titled: Zari’s POV, with a subtitle of The Black Rose. On the left, a photo of a beaming dark-skinned Black woman with bouncy coily black hair. Bullet points describe her as Zari Adeyemi-Swan, Clan Toreador, Embraced 1973, Humanity 6, age 27. On the right, a series of bullets describe her POV’s story.

life sucks, it’s cruel, and there’s no point thinking on the past, even when the past comes to haunt you

she fled her foster sire and once-lover (Ashley Swan) for his cruelty to others, but now he offers maybe?genuine? amends.

thirty years ago, she left her human children. her daughter (Aisha Adeyemi) has been Embraced and brings bad news

her main way of #coping is working and distracting herself. she throws herself to infiltrate the Westside Camarilla court (Sebastian LaCroix), against all good advice.

soon after she arrives, she finds herself having a secret admirer (Mercurio), who reminds her how precious it is to be loved, held, and cared for — but they need to overcome their own instincts to accept what they could have

The Voerman sisters are in the thick of it all, making perfect cautionary allies and, if she can overcome her preconceptions, friends.

and oh yeah, LA is about to explode

Slide 8: Titled: Zari’s supporting characters. Four characters, each of them have a photo, a title, and brief run-on description.

First, a photo of a white man wearing mirrored sunglasses in front of orange-pink neon. It casts his face and smile eerily. Ashley Swan, the Foster Sire, Clan Toreador, monstrously cruel, charismatic, loyal, thorough, too clever, pleasurable. Bi transman.

Second, a photo of a white man in a suit, adjusting his cuffs. Sebastian LaCroix, the Westside Prince, Clan Ventrue, opportunistic benefactor, greedy, ambitious, petulant, ruthless, degrading.

Third, a white man in a paisley shirt, gold necklaces, putting a hand to a tattooed and exposed chest. Mercurio, the Admirer, LaCroix’s Ghoul, resourceful, sweet, empathetic, capable, romantic, salt of the earth, former Mafia hitman.

Fourth, a white woman in a black suit with delicate gold jewelry. The Voermans, the Mirrored Sisters, Clan Malkavian; one is brutal, calculating, patient, reckless, the other is seductive, fun-loving, innovative, insightful.

Slide 9: Titled: Charlie’s POV, with a subtitle of The Moonchilde. In small text, a line says “a.k.a. Me processing grief over my mother #coping. On the left, a photo of a sad-faced white woman with freckles, black eyeliner, and frizzy brown curls. Bullet points describe her as Charlie Bradley, Clan Malkavian, Embraced 2003, Humanity 8, age 20, lesbian. On the right, a series of bullets describe her POV’s story.

life is getting back to normal? well, “new normal”

as a new adult, she has a good ol’ fashioned “start of life” crisis: who am I? where do I fit in? complicated by her mother’s death a year ago. what sort of woman am I? how does this figure into my attraction to women?

maybe. maybe. maybe monroe is cold and distant and ruling a vampire kingdom, but he wants to look after me. maybe i should let him.

also, hey, you (Jesse Harper) get it. and you’re hurting. let me help, let me be your soft place to land. wow, okay, this is kissing.

she didn’t mean to ruin her sire’s (Rhys Wilson) life. but, she did. she killed his mentor. SHHH! secret! she feel bad. maybe friends? uh, okay, weirdo. maybe D&D.

she’s learning to deal with feeding on scumbags and giving what people got coming to them. and the Cobweb, supernatural psychosis

WHY ARE VAMPIRES LIKE THIS? WHY CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG? FFS

and oh yeah, LA is about to explode

Slide 10: Titled: Charlie’s supporting characters. Three characters, each of them have a photo, a title, and brief run-on description.

First, a white man in the middle of screaming, his head swaying back and forth so it looks like he has three heads. Rhys Wilson, the Sire, Clan Malkavian, weirdo, prime D&D fanatic and DM, just wants friends, and vengeance, pulls pranks to teach lessons. Gay.

Second, a very strong white woman with her arms crossed, a tattoo on one, and a t-shirt that is obscured but clearly says “The future is female”. Jesse Harper, the Darkness, Clan Lasombra, former vampire hunter, reluctant vampire, brooding, mysterious, sullen, black trench coat, buff as fuck, brave. Lesbian.

Third, a pair of clasped hands, male over female. Monroe, the Stepsire, Clan Ventrue, fucking old, inhuman, kills too easily, sincere, honourable, intense, gives good advice but really should shut his mouth hole.

Slide 11: Titled: Jack’s POV, with a subtitle of The Lone Wolf. On the left, a photo of a sad-faced strong Chinese man with a shaggy and tufted mullet. Bullet points describe him as Jack Shen, Clan Gangrel, Embraced 1955, Humanity 7, age 25, gay. On the right, a series of bullets describe his POV’s story.

why does he always end up alone? people leave, people die, people drift and change, but the good times were worth it

he’s always had a rocky relationship with his lover (Ryuko Saito), but now the dumbass has found a cult promising power.

he hasn’t lost him. he hasn’t. him and ryu just take time apart sometimes. but it’s been a long fucking while. and jack isn’t sure who he is alone anymore. a new human friend (Dustin Cohen), working at his animal hospital gives new life.

his former best friend (Damsel) has dove deep into Downtown and managing as Nines’ lieutenant, bringing him more and more dirty work to clean up

monroe relies on him to reign in the chaos of vampires trying to live without killing each other.

and oh yeah, LA is about to explode

Slide 12: Titled: Jack’s supporting characters. Three characters, each of them have a photo, a title, and brief run-on description.

First, a young white woman with dyed fire-engine red hair and an Iron Maiden t-shirt. Damsel, the Lieutenant, Clan Brujah, naive, brash, physical, loyal, loud-mouthed, smart.

Second, a skinny man in an ill-fitting Hawaiian shirt and jeans. Ryuko Saito, the Orphan, Mage, power-hungry, desperate, proud, ruthless, loving, isolated, crushingly lonely, gremlin, old and chronic pain, hides and “treats” it with magic.

Third, a white hand extending a hummingbird to fly free. Dustin Cohen, the Receptionist, Human, understanding, the best of Good Dudes, empathetic, kinda lame outsider

Slide 13: Titled: also. A moodboard on the right side includes two weeping stone angels, one at sunset, one in darkness between a tarnished and broken silver crown; a gas station in LA as seen through a rainy car window; grim-looking downtown city buildings; and a sidewalk curb with neon lights reflecting off a puddle and a plastic bag of takeout garbage strewn across.

On the left, bullet points follow.

about 100 million other characters. I legit have a spreadsheet

Everyone is capable of evil

Sins of the sire (father)

Never too late to start being a good person

Takes place  about 6 months before Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines

At least one more novel in the works

Subheading, 22/55 chapters written. Gonna start posting September 28.

End ID.

#wip intro #writers of tumblr #writeblr #vtmb #vtm #wip: city of fallen angels #vampires #urban fantasy #original writing #fanfiction #when does fanfiction stop and original writing start?

[justaghostingon]

Room of Swords Space Pirate Au

Summary: All Gyrus wanted was to show off his new language to the scientific community, instead he ends up on the treasure hunt of his life as pirates, military, and strange bowler hat wearing secret societies chase him down. But he’s not alone, no. He’s kidnapped by the most feared pirate since the Pirate King himself, and forced to be their guide.

But Gyrus has secrets even he isn’t aware of, and a connection to the Pirate King that will turn the tables of the game.

Has anyone read Larklight? Because this is gonna take heavy inspiration.

Also it gets pretty long, so its under the cut

Gyrus, an amnesiac miracle man found floating through space and taken to a lab for examination. He proceeds to win over the scientists examining him and become a protogee of sorts.

Gyrus does some work in history on the side, and discovers a way to crack an ancient alien language that the scientists couldn’t. They are all really impressed and Dr. Iro invites him along to a science exposition to try and win a grant for the lab.

They dress up to present to this strange bowler hat society that is hosting the party, inviting space’s elite and brilliant.

But half the party are rich snobs and the other half seem...strange (and not just because of the bowler hats), Gyrus can’t put his finger on it, and it makes him uneasy. He chocks it up to nerves and moves to the side of the ship to get some fresh air.

And accidentally stumbles on one of the “society” shadowing one of the rich elite, who then turn back to seemingly normal, but they are now...off in the same way the others are. (And wearing a bowler hat).

This freaks Gyrus out so much he stays hidden on the deck even long after they leave. He finally emerges, ready to grab Iro and run...

At this point Kodya’s pirates attack, raising havok and demanding that the society give up their gold or no one gets hurt.

Gyrus gets grabbed as a hostage because he’s literally the first person they can reach. (Kodya kinda recognizes him, which may also play into it)

Unfortunately for the pirates, the society was expecting them, and has hired a full military fleet to take them on. Who don’t really care about a no name hostage in light of capturing one of the most wanted pirates in the solar system.

Kodya drags Gyrus onto the ship, and they take off.

Once they are far enough away, the whole crew turns on Gyrus. (Crew includes Tori, Sylvia, and Nephthys) Gyrus is afraid but demands to go back to save Iro.

Kodya is very confused because that is not what a hostage says usually, (and a little upset Gyrus doesn’t recognize him, and why is Gyrus younger? Did he have a brother also named Gyrus?) but once Gyrus explains he gets a dark look and refuses, claiming they got lucky. (And he doesn’t want those things near Gyrus, not again)

Kodya decides to make Gyrus a cleaner (cabin boy technically but he’s an adult so they’re calling it cleaner instead) on the ship, which works for a few days, until Gyrus stumbles on a treasure map and dagger in the journal left out in Kodya’s room. Kodya is upset he touched the journal, and Gyrus says he just wanted to read it better.

To which Kodya is thrilled and gets the whole crew together, and they decide to start on the quest for the pirate treasure.

They explain about the Pirate King, who came from nowhere and united the pirates, then betrayed them to the shadow society which nearly got them all killed. But he left a map to the greatest treasure, which everyone was looking for.

Kodya in particular wants to find it, and maybe answers as to why the pirate king betrayed them. (And also how he’s back seemingly with amnesia and younger somehow, is this even the same Gyrus? He’s handling all this like its new info)

The first clue takes them to Mars, which is struggling with colonialism as the humans mine valuable minerals and force the locals to work for them. The map requires “the heart of mars” which Kodya, whose from this planet, guesses is a valuable device that helps to convert the rare minerals.

Its also super large, and what the heck Pirate King?

They go to hide with some Rebel Martians friends of Nephthys and Kodya’s, who reveal that things have gotten far worse since the two of them fled, and the colonial leader, despite not making any public appearances, is demanding an even higher quota.

It also comes out that Nephthys used to be a priestess who foresaw the invasion and was helpless to stop it, and got kidnapped by the colonizers as a prize. Then Kodya, a young soldier newly enlisted from home, met and befriended her and together they escaped. But they couldn’t get very far. Fortunately the Pirate King saved them.

Nephthys feels guilty that she can’t help them more, and wishes there was something she could do. The rebels say there is a way they can help, if they get rid of the heart of mars, which will prevent the people from stealing anymore of their minerals.

They agree to do this, with the agreement that hey get to keep the heart of mars.

They split into two teams, to Gyrus, Tori, and Sylvia go in to visit the colonial leader, because Kodya and Nephthys are super wanted here, and Gyrus still has his suit and important looking documents. Then Sylvia will sneak down to let Kodya and Neph in, while Tori and Gyrus distract the colonizer leader.

The two ‘leaders’ that Gyrus and Tori are led to do not match the descriptions given, but after they see their documents, they welcome Gyrus and his...posse.

The ‘leaders’ puts on a front for Gyrus, but Sylvia and Tori find out the servants are frightened, as there has just been a coup-de-taut.

At the awkward dinner, Gyrus is treated like a guest, and Tori a bodyguard, while the ‘leaders’ regale them with their latest conquests, and how they recently defeated a rebel leader named “Serdtse” and show off his broken sword, his symbol of power.

Tori gets more and more furious as they listen, meanwhile, Sylvia lets Kodya and Neph in, and they attempt to remove the ‘heart of mars’

Gyrus gets half paralyzed by the food, and the ‘leaders’ reveal they need him alive because he’ll bring them quite a bit more money to the right people. Tori meanwhile is unaffected, and kills the male. Gyrus, still barely able to move, grabs the broken sword and tries to drag himself away, as the ship arrives and one of those “off” people in a bowler hat arrives.

Tori is unable to help, as she is stuck fighting the other leader.

Meanwhile down below, a bunch of minions come running to stop Kodya and Neph and Sylvia. They begin to overwhelm them, until some of the martian servants reveal themselves as rebels and help them win. Then the ‘off’ people show up there too.

Kodya and Neph freak out, and drag everyone away from them, Kodya throws a light bomb behind to shine brightly and temporarily stun them.

They run to Tori and Gyrus, and Sylvia and Kodya help fight the scary leader while Neph heals Gyrus. Not much they can do about the ‘off’ person though, so they all run some more.

Then to stop the shadows for good, a mysterious stranger (“Serdtse!” the rebels shout) blows up the whole building for good.

Kodya gets upset that they didn’t get the heart, and then Gyrus’s bag starts glowing. Turns out the half sword is the clue. Kodya is very confused, and feels they should meet this ‘Serdtse’ but the military show up and they have to run, taking the credit for the attack so the martian’s don’t get blamed.

They decide to hide in Venus, the only place no one will look, because the last people to try to live there turned into trees. (Read Larklight) Tori is the only survivor of the mysterious illness, and she offers it to them as a place to hide. (Her queen was one of the victims).

Gyrus offers to try and find a cure, and takes some seeds, even though Tori says its hopeless. 

Also this is where Kodya decides to try and teach Gyrus how to fight, because he was absolutely useless back there.

They also try to figure out what the connection between the glow of the half sword and the map. Eventually Sylvia reveals that a metal like this that no one can identify, their best shot is the mines on the moons of Jupiter, which has the best ore experts in the world. They all decide to go there.

At Moons of Jupiter, which is a mining town and a hub for pirates, Sylvia is from here, and eagerly shows off the place to the others. Even Kodya is beginning to relax, except that everyone they meet keeps trying to get Kodya to visit the storm to find the answers he needs. (Storm knows the answers to everything in Larklight, but rarely appears)

Kodya points out two things, first, that the storm is illusive on the best of days, and second, that it hardly gets everything right, as it was wrong about the Pirate King, because he once asked it a question, and it was obviously wrong. He won’t tell them exactly what he asked though (probably something about Gyrus)

Meet Don and his crew, who head the pirate armada Kodya work for, and teams up to find the treasure. The crew that is much nastier to Gyrus than Kodya’s.

Gyrus gets into trouble with Ragan for looking like the Pirate King. It is here he learns the Pirate Kings name was also Gyrus. Neph stops Ragan, pointing out Gyrus is far to young, and was working as a scientist on earth, so he’d have to have been there for ages. Gyrus thinks now is not the time to mention his mysterious origins.

Gyrus gets pushed off by one of the crew, unclear who. Kodya jumps over to find him, and Tori ends up falling off too.

Storm light makes the half sword spell out a single word: Saturn. (in plain english)

The crew believes this is where they have to go.

Meanwhile the storm itself saves Gyrus, introducing himself as Alistair. He tells him he is an old friend, and here to help him and tells him that he needs to go to Earth to find the real treasure before Don does. 

Also that Gyrus is a god, because those things apparently exist with the ability to put things in motion. He was supposed to die, but decided to keep living to see what would happen. Met Don and very naively told him what he could do. Don wanted to take for himself, but he was clever. He befriended Gyrus first and pushed him towards his own goals of destroying the Empire. When Gyrus finally grew wise to how he was being used, he betrayed Gyrus and made it look like Gyrus betrayed them. Gyrus tried to fight back, by hiding the way to his power, but Don was relentless, and so Gyrus confronted him to make him stop. Unfortunately he was not planning on the bowler hat society, which got tweleve members of Don’s armada. (Larklight, read it).

Also Kodya shows up for this and is very annoyed that Gyrus and the Pirate King are the same person (and didn’t tell him he was still alive!), but reluctantly goes along with it. (because he does care)

Alistair introduces him to Maria and Knox and thier crew, who are waiting to rescue them, and ended up finding Tori. Serdtse is introduced too, who turns out to be Hinju, brother of Xinju, who Gyrus did not kill. 

They explain how they made the broken sword as a decoy to the true key, Kodya’s dagger. But now they’ve got Kodya and Gyrus they should be able to get the treasure long before both the pirates and the bowler hat society right?

Wrong. Because Kodya, not realizing it was so important, left it on his ship. Which is now run by Nephthys. Which is going to Saturn.

So they decide to split up, which is to say Alistair teaches Gyrus a way only he can teleport, and sends him to earth to get there before the problem, while everyone else goes to convince the pirates to change allegiances.  

Meanwhile the girls and Don’s crew all go to Saturn, where the clue opens a locked door of a ‘memory’ journal, and the crew learn of the origins of the bowler hat society (race from the beginning of the world, want to remake everyone in perfect order like the rings of Saturn)

Which is very knowledgeable, but pretty much useless for them. The pirates and the girls debate on whether the treasure is a fake, this is another clue, or they missed something else.

Meanwhile Don comes to the conclusion that the knife is wrong, and goes to find the correct version on the ship.

Neph goes back, ends up coming in on Don’s investigation. Not knowing what is going on, Don mistakes her for knowing what’s going on, and reveals he’s the mastermind. 

Also Gyrus’s crew reach Saturn, and try to steal it back, only to get into more trouble. The pirates are divided on who to believe, Gyrus’s crew and Neph, or Don. Having Hinju manages to make Xinju to side with Gyrus though, but Ragan is not convinced, because Don is one persuasive man.

The two teams split up on separate ships, and race back to earth.

Meanwhile, Gyrus discovers that the ship he first was found in floating in space is actually the treasure he was trying to keep hidden. The only problem, he has absolutely no idea how it works.

So he meditates at the suggestion of the scientists, only to discover that there is a power inside himself.

Which would be poetic, if it didn’t also have a personality.

So Gyrus is trying to sort out millions of years of memories, while the scientists sit around him confused.

All except for Iro, who sees this as an opportunity to use his shiny new bowler hat. Which he puts on Gyrus’s now helpless head.

Gyrus now has to fight off an attempted possession, while figuring out how to use his powers.

He finds a way to throw it off, but not before Iro reports it almost complete, and the Bowler hat society moves into their next big plan: to possess all of the Empire’s parliament and Queen. (Different from Tori’s, unless I decide to change that later)

At the last second, Gyrus manages to throw off the possession, figuring out a way to cure it in the process. He rushes up to stop the bowler hats, but he’s held back, and his method of curing is to slow, only one at a time.

Then the pirates attack.

The pirates attack everyone, each other, who knows what’s going on up there. It creates chaos instantly, and Chaos is the exact thing that the bowler hats hate. They temporarily break from their hosts to fly up and stop the pirates. Kodya’s pirates notice, and start causing even more chaos, which makes all of them swirl up into the sky, trying to attack.

But this is really, really bad for the pirates. So Gyrus decides he has to help them.

He uses his powers to create a large, white light, and tells them its the power. All the shadows fly towards it. Don also tries to go and get it, putting his own crew at risk and causing them to turn on him.

Once all of them are close, Gyrus whips out the seeds from Venus, makes them grow with his power ‘setting things in motion’ and traps them in a bubble with only the bowler hat monsters. They all turn into a tree.

When the dust settles, no one is quite sure what happened, but the scientists are there to step in for Gyrus to the Queen. 

Don is arrested for trying to kill like 14 people. The Queen then gives everyone else full pardons so they are no longer pirates, and names them heroes of the state.

Which the pirates aren’t sure what to think about, but hey, they’ll take a party and not dying right now.

Gyrus and his friends reunite, Gyrus now aware of who he is, and it ends with them all eating with the scientists and regaling them with their adventure.

#room of swords #larklight #larklight au #gyrus #kodya #tori #nephthys #sylvia #ragan #don #hinju #alistair

[the-colony-roleplay]

Diederick ‘Ricky’ D’Mornay | Twenty Four;  Elite

House: Delma Status: Uninfected Elite Specification: Correctional Officer Alignment: New Wave Reformists

tw: violence

History

Diederick D’Mornay had as normal as he could have upbringing given his parents were colourful characters. His mother was high up in the French police force and his father was equally as high ranking in the criminal underworld. They were an unlikely match, to put it lightly. Raised mostly by his mother until she ‘caved’ and dropped everything and left Paris for Berlin.

Diederick struggled at school. He was bullied early on, especially when ‘rumours’ spread about his family. In particular about his father: someone who was never cruel to Diederick, but someone that everyone called a monster. Teachers noted quietly concerning behaviour but he had not yet escalated. Then at thirteen Diederick snapped when he literally snapped another boys arm. Concerned it was a mixture of struggling with the new country not just the bullying, his parents decided to send him to a boarding back in France.

He was gifted academically but not consistent enough to be a stellar student. He was charming and a people-person but in contrast was also incredibly mean and anti-social. Things got better when Diederick’s sister joined him at the boarding school and he had one of his favourite people at his side. There were ‘incidents’, none of which were ever truly made note of so from a purely documented point of view the one and only major incident that lead to his expulsion was a shock. A stupid boy like Diederick’s sister. That was fine. This stupid boy hit on his sister and was rejected. That was more than fine. Then the stupid boy turned nasty. That was not fine. Diederick only stopped kicking when the rugby coach tackled him to the ground.

At seventeen Diederick was back in Berlin and decided he was done with education. His father, gladly, took Diederick under his wing and brought him into his ‘business’. For almost a year, he worked with his father and discovered he was very good at being a monster too. Diederick barely had a chance to find his feet outside of full time education, or to decide if he really wanted to keep working with his father when D-Day hit.

Already accustomed to violence, he wasn’t yet accustomed to true grief or hardship that D-Day would bring. Diederick watched as his father ‘evolved’, as his younger brother did too, and worst of all was watching his then pregnant mother ‘evolve’. His father and brother came through the sickness with strange abilities. His mother died. Diederick’s father buried her that same day and didn’t even pause to mourn her.

Diederick watched as other men, dumbasses and layabouts, evolved too. He had to work twice as hard as any of them to even appear as a mild threat. He worked damn fucking hard, even harder when his father was captured by one of the Colonies and the mantle fell onto him like a bitter monarchy. It was difficult to control the raiders. They were used to a leader who could send someone flying with the flick of a wrist, yelling from a twenty-something hardly held the same weight. He shouldered the responsibility because that’s what he should do, and he did what he was supposed too.

Much like his education fell in a seemingly shocking event, there was some build-up. Quiet comments. Looks. A general ‘feeling’. Still, one decision changed everything. One night Diederick woke up with a start, his younger brother who always slept next to him jumped awake too. They couldn’t tell each other why until they noticed the blood on Diederick’s neck. It must’ve been a Praeteriac, one of those so-called ‘evolved’ took a knife to Ricky’s throat and chickened out.

Diederick took the attack very, very personally.

He began going by Ricky instead: an overnight change to quickly re-form himself as a leader very different to his father. Ricky sent his brother away to join their sister in another clan, one who was less blood-thirsty and more secretive. A safer, long-term option. Then Ricky got to work. Those who were too vocal against Ricky were the first to go. They were lead straight into the path of colony search parties or ‘accidentally’ stumbled into rival raider party ambushes, anyone who survived these horrific accidents would ‘mysteriously’ die due to infected wounds.  Slowly but surely it became obvious that if you were ‘evolved’ and against Ricky, you would be next.

It worked damn well, these monsters acted like Ricky had them on a leash. And he got tired of it. He didn’t want this, his father was most likely dead. ( Why else would he not have returned? Why would Ricky still be alone if the infamous Kaiser Bähr was anything but dead in a ditch? ). In the end, Ricky’s downfall was not a downfall at all. It was a different sort of success he found, rather than leading this party of wild men he single-handedly dismantled it.

The final part of his plan was a risky one, and if he was honest, it was an impulsive decision. Ricky killed the last surviving member of ‘his’ raider party and scuffed himself up. He took a hammer to his own face, bricks to his knees and knuckles. He ran into a wall, for good measure, then dragged himself up to a nearby Colony’s doors, begging for sanctuary.

Ricky Today

Ricky went into the Colony almost honestly, he thought it was better to not lie about his father in case it was on the Echo. Ricky did embellish bits, just a few, to make himself sound like nothing but a once wild youth who struggled to survive in the Wastes.

Not used to being just another ‘survivor’ Ricky campaigned for his own elite status. In a larger Colony, he was given elite status as a correctional officer — he described his year working for dad as being a bouncer which wasn’t a complete lie — and charmed his way into a probation period of sorts. Hard-working and a people pleaser when he wanted to be, Ricky did damn well. Constant probing to see if he was actually on his father’s side, who is a well-known Radical influencer, eventually proved he was not lying about his own alignment: he was steadfast, not a turncoat, not a double agent.

And he isn’t, that was the only thing he didn’t embellish.

A few months of this ‘unofficial’ Elite status and it was proposed that he move to a smaller colony who were lacking in NWRF representatives in their correctional team, the only caveat being Ricky would be at the same as Colony as his father. Ricky only hesitated for the show of it.

On the surface, Ricky’s a heart-throb. Fluent in three languages, charming, handsome and intelligent. There is, of course, a very big but. Whilst he’s a gifted linguist he’s more likely to curse someone out in English, French or German than use it for anything important. That easy smile can as easily disappear. Natural intelligence does not mean he has the self-control to actually apply himself in his studies. Throw in a genetic proclivity for violence thanks to dear old dad, and Ricky’s less of a pretty face and more of a bloodied smile.

Colony 22 has been alarmingly good for his mental state. Especially being put into Delma, some might’ve called him a dead-ringer for Torren, however he’s less violently passionate but simply violent. The variety in Delma and their various guises and interactive natures usually mean Ricky can find a distraction to keep himself from going too far into his old ways. ‘Usually’ and ‘too far’ are the keywords. He’s an emotionally unstable young man who’s feigned stability for a while, now, and there’s no knowing which way he’ll swing next.

TAKEN; ORIGINAL CHARACTER

#dacre montgomery #dacre montgomery fc #dystopia rp #abilities rp #original rp #taken #male #elite #uninfected #nwrf #taken male #taken elite #taken uninfected #delma #dierderick d'mornay #ricky d'mornay #correctional officer

[zebraslovescupcakestoo]

Gambling bet

It's a booming night for gambling and auctioning. The people and whole place was in a masquerade like themed like the ones in a 19th century lectures I've once read...

But I was not expecting to be in one as a gambling 'prize'. I was in a cage, tied up from the back with a collar chained at my neck like an animal. My mouth was gagged to prevent me from saying or even screaming... even if I could, I doubt that will help me...

How did I ended up like this? Bendy DeMon. But his real last name is Drew... I was so close to nab him in that alley way until I got knocked out from the back... I was a fool for not realizing he had Boris Wolfenstein as his second hand man of the Alfonso mafia and now I've really gotten in a huge mess this time.

If I remembered correctly, this must be one of those black auctions slash gambling events only the social elites and exceptional takes place... Some of the items are from Europe and foreign regions that must have at least a thousand dollar value each! But there are some 'items' that are illegal like myself and I believed some dangerous weaponry or exotic animals...

“Our turn is up. You better not screw up more than you are now, ace defective.” I quickly looked at my right to see that demon smirking as I was transported to the stage as a center of attention. He was wearing his best black stripped gangster suit, complete with a black fedora and a demon mask. I gritted the cloth that was tied at my mouth as I glared. This is bad... I have to escape, but what can I do? This place is filled with influential and rich people who are no different than the crooks I've dealt with. If I do something reckless, they have the 'authorities' in their pockets to destroy me and anyone close to me... What would my father do in this situation?

“Our next item featured in tonight's event is a prize by the gentlemen  Mr. Dancing Demon. This one is one of the top member of the CPD and a detective. He's in no one's favor, but if you win the game against Mr. Dancing Demon, he will be 'yours.' You can use him as your personal pet, or use him to avoid minor incidences to stay on top of the 'law.' But if you found him too 'good,' you can always use his organs as a quick, pocket money or if you had 'desires,' he does have a nice body...” The announcer was treating me as I was a commercial item and I felt a lot of eyes gazing at me... I'm getting a whole mess of feelings of what they were thinking... But I can tell that I was an interesting 'prize' to win. I will admit... I'm terrified... If one of them 'wins' me, my life will be more like h3ll and then God knows what will happened to my nephews... My best bet in worst case scenario was to give them again to my uncle in Australia, but then again my cousin will trick them again...

I then noticed that there was a black table set up and there sat Mr. 'Dancing Demon' A.K.A. Bendy along his sidekick, Boris. His partner was wearing black suit and pants, but he had a large, grey fur over coat that made him look like a million bucks. He was also wearing a mask that looked like a wolf. “Mr. Demon, how would you like to do it? Auctioning or Gambling?” The announcer asked about my fate. I looked at him again and he thought about it for a minute... he then gave his answer. “I will gamble. I do admit I really do love the money, but this one... hehehe... oh, this one...” He was teasing me and then grabbed the chain. “I have sooooo much thoughts about this one... he wasn't easy to catch, but if any of you have anything that could give an 'equal' amount, I could just part with it... for now.” He then yanked me at him as I almost hit the bar. I grunted. Now I feel like his pet. “Now who's first?”

----Several card games later------

I can't believed that demon is 'winning' all of their money and some priceless items to boot!

There was a fairly amount of people who grabbed their 'pocket changes' and their values on this bet for me! Any card games like poker or black jacks, he wins it all. There's gotta be almost fifty thousand dollars in cash and value in total... There's a trick I 'detected' while I simply watched. If I can detect the 'trick' to anyone, I can use that as an advantage to unmask his cheat and then while they're 'distracted,' I can escape!

But what can I do? If I don't do it soon... Huh?

I then noticed the last odd person wearing a red mouse mask... that I think I've seen it before... He was also wearing a black and red detailed Chinese soiree suit. His hair was black with two curly buns I think I've seen them before. He was smiling underneath that mask and it made Bendy angry. I can tell judging from how he was gritting his teeth and trembling his hands. I then saw another figure who was a few inches taller than the other one. He was wearing another familiar rabbit mask. He was wearing a white with blue detailed Chinese soiree suit. His hair was also black but with twin pony tails... I think he's looking intensively at me behind that concealed mask... which sends a shiver down my spine. “Guess I can't see one without the other, huh?” Bendy said in a deep tone. “I can say the same thing for you and Mr. Wolf too. At least we can do fine on our own if we get separated.” The guy in a mouse mask said. “I should have known from your nicknames it was going to be you two. I'm done for tonight.” He was about to get up until the rabbit guy spoke. “We still have the right to challenge for the 'prize' as stated tonight's rules. We waited for our turn cause you have something 'rare' and doesn't belong here.” He then puts a suit case on the table. “What's that you got in there? Candy?” Bendy mocked the guy in the mouse mask. “Very humorous, Mr. Double D. But don't you think you're being unfair, again? My friend is ri-” *TACK! * Then there was a switch blade stab on the table that stun the crowd. “When I said I'm done, I mean I'm DONE! Just looking at those mask makes me wanna puke! We're leaving, Mr. Wolf.”

“What's the matter, Demon? You think you can't beat him in another card game? Or maybe you've ran out of luck because of the black cat's karma have kicked in? They don't like to be played 'rough' like you do.” The one with a rabbit mask smirked at him and it sets him off even more. “If we weren't in a social gathering, I would have 'loved' to have a couple of stuffed animal heads for my coats.” In a quick reaction, he tried to slash their masques but the rabbit grabbed his wrist just in time. The rabbit guy was then holding his grip really good to prevent Bendy of getting the upper hand. He must be a REALLY GOOD Chinese boxing expert cause I know Bendy is a knife handling expert next to his speed demon skills. “Still a karate freak, humping rabbit?” Bendy spatted. “I wouldn't even think of f#king with you with a stolen d!k, ya back stabbing demon.” The rabbit replied and I think he was glaring through his mask. I feel his murderous tension when he said that and I feel like I shouldn't try to make him angry if they win.

Or IF they try to bet on me.

“Guys! The host is coming! Knock it off!” The mouse whispered harshly and pointed an individual in white coming our way. They immediately break up before it escalates to a fighting scene. Under normal circumstances, Bendy would have done it, but I guess he's just 'behaving' at the moment cause I knew that he isn't the one who throw these kinds of auctions... And that there's other syndicates that benefits these events for 'rares' and other important 'essentials' for anything.

“Is there a problem?” The white man asked. Can't his clothing be any whiter than his mask?

“Not really, just personal issues. We both just wanted to take a chance of getting his 'prize' he presented. He can keep the rest he gained from others for all we care.” The mouse explained.

Just me?! Who are you both working for why would I be any use of you two IF you win? I better need to think of an escape, FAST!

“Mr. Demon. I'm sure that the evening isn't over yet and I wish to see at least one more card game of yours. Maybe that new card game you've made recently that became quite popular recently that's very challenging and tested your luck pretty harshly. Was it Double Memory?” He calmly questioned at Bendy after pleading for another game of cards. That made the demon perked his ears and I can tell from his mouth expression that interested him. “Oh? THAT game?” He then smiled wider and he made a nod to Boris as to hive him some sort of communication. The wolf reached in his pocket to take out two, unopened, cartoon Bendy themed playing cards. You've already have one deck opened already... Why two new ones and what is that 'Double Memory' card game? I did heard it once before in a rumor and nothing else... Keep listening.

“If I remembered correctly, that 'Double Memory' card game is  the same thing like the 'Memory' game with two exceptions. One is that it uses two decks instead of one. Two is that not only you need to match the numbers, but it has to be in the same suit. Like you need two exact identical cards to make a match.” The mouse explained.

“Correct, rodent. Now since I was the one who created that new game, I will choose the decks.” He then held the unopened packs together and held it close to his face. “Let's make this quick, shall we? I want to 'play' another but a different 'game' with this cat.” He then looked at me as if he had some sort of cruel ideas of what my fate will be. “First one who gets the most pairs wins.”

“Those cards... are they the newest toys you've recently released? They looked very high design.” The mouse innocently said. That makes the demon's grind wider. “Ah! So you finally noticed some better taste. My products needed MY personal touches on the marketing side and I wanted to be done professionally.” He then opens the deck and the cards were fairly scattered.“Compared to your father's puny ideas, mine were all beautifully well selected by yours truly. The design of the deck is far more elegant than the ones that was made originally.” The deck back design was mostly black with a golden like floral themed that resembles to a throne roses. I do admit it's very uniquely beautiful despite it was made by him. The mouse looked like he was in awe like a curious child who is choosing which ice cream flavor he wanted to pick. “I admit, Mr. Demon. You really did a fantastic job of making these wonderfully deck designs.” The mouse complimented. “I thank you for that, cheese brain. Now pick your first move.” Bendy impatiently replied.

The mouse took a few seconds to scan all of the cards on the table while playing with his index finger as if he was deciding which ones he'll pick first. “I shall start with five hundred.” I was nervous once he turned the first one with a four of diamonds. If he turns a wrong one, Bendy will have a turn... and he never loss a game yet tonight. He then reaches for another one across the table and... another four of diamonds! “Lucky rat... Just watch! I'll have my turn as soon as you fail.” Bendy rarely 'complimented.' Then the mouse took another card, a ten of hearts, then asked. “Say Old friend... I need to say this before I forget.” He then continues his turn as he reaches for another one. “I do admire anyone who's been having a hard time growing up as a child and made a name for themselves. I like it when someone who have a dream and they pursued it whether they made it or not. As long as they take responsibilities...” He flipped another exact match! Bendy then sneered his eyes at him. “The f#k you mean by that, mousey?”

But the mouse still has his eyes on the cards. “I'm sorry. Have I offended you when I said that? Don't get me wrong. I just sometimes have that envy of independence like yourself in your 'front' public image. I am barely in a position to make choices like you. The cards you made personally by yourself is one good example... I can't barely even ask for that... not just for marketing smarts... right?” He lifted his head a bit as if he's on to something. “Hm?” Bendy kept his cool and I think he was still sneering until... he surprisingly gasped as if he gets what he's saying. The mouse keeps getting the right cards as if he KNEW exactly where they are! Boris then whispered something like 'he's bluffing!' and it was impossible...

It then strike me what he means: Bendy have made these deck of cards specifically for cheating by making the deck designs HIMSELF!!! He noticed it like I did?!

I then saw the rabbit's grin grew wider and said. “You know, Bèndàn. Let me give you one piece of advice. If you're planning to use your 'front' business image with these tactics, make sure you're duly prepared.” Isn't that Chinese word means... ?!?! YOU ARE SO LUCKY THAT MY NEPHEWS DON'T SPEAK THAT KIND AND TYPE OF LANGUAGE!!! If I wasn't tied up and gagged, I would have a WHOLE hour of lecturing you and ask who raised you!

I glanced back at the mouse as he was pairing the exact cards... No way! How did he figured out his trick like I did? Then there was a final flip... fifty two cards were all flipped. The white guy was impressed and gave a small applause. “Bravo, Mr. Souris. You have won a well deserved prize from Mr. Demon. I do admit, it's a very rare find, even in the Chicago's crime syndicates. I hope you'll be treating him well.” I then heard the cage's door opened by one of the staff members and I was handed to the two mystery guys who won me.

“Hey!” Bendy took out another deck with a different design, but it was just a regular one. “Just give me ONE more round! I will bet ALL of the money and the priceless items for him! Come on! He's not even worth THAT much compared in gold values!” He seems like he was determined to keep me for his 'interests' or something like that.

“Nah, that crap you've collected doesn't interest us. The cat is all we needed.” The rabbit replied as he held me close. I feel something in my chest. What is this feeling? Relief or was it...? No, never mind that. It must be stress over tonight's 'activity' and I'm not thinking straight right now.

Bendy was not done talking. “I'm not letting him go THAT easy! There's a rule about-”

“A penalty fine if we declined and leave the auction before the announcement is over, correct?” The mouse interrupted him. “Yes. It's a one thousand dollar fine to the organizer of tonight's event.” Boris cleared that specific rule.

“Okay! There!” The mouse then tossed another five hundred on the table, both Bendy and Boris choked. They weren't the only ones that were surprised. Who are they behind those masks and how rich they are? Not even Bendy would have bluffed or put that much amount for anyone but Boris.

“Oh! And before we forget...” The mouse said something but before I get to hear it, there was a bag that covered my head and the rest of that memory was blurred....

-------

It was all just twists and turns with the walks, cars and doors. I feel like it's one of those movies where they catch a 'suspicious' character and they brought them at their secret hiding spot, and I was the 'star.' How Ironic.

But what's really going on in my mind is who are they, what would they want with me now that I'm in their 'possessions' and how do I get out of this?

Paying all back wasn't exactly an option... I don't want to become their puppet like Bendy does with the other police men and women either...

I was then tossed on my back and was hand cuffed over my head. Judging from what I felt and positioned, I'm guessing it was a bed. I then heard somethings and they talked in a foreign language. I believed it sounded Chinese, based on my previous investigations with those people...

I then felt the bag removed from my head and it took me a minute to adjust the dimness of the room. It was dim, with only low lights to see that it's a luxurious private bedroom you might see in social elite movies.

I saw only the guy in red, but instead of wearing the same getup from that black auction, he wore some sort of a red and white track jacket, along with a black vest, red tie, black pants and he wore a beast themed facial mask. His eyes were black despite the dimness of the room.

He then removed the gag from my jaws and I took a breath of relief. “Thanks...” I told him. I'm still a bit cautious, but so far they seemed to act nice so I play along for now. He seemed cheerful and replied. “You're welcome! It's been quite an evening. Especially for that dancing demon himself. That card trick was very strategically challenging.” He then took out a card from the night table's drawer next to me that Bendy have made himself and showed the deck's design. He placed a finger on one of the tiny floral. “If I'm not mistaken, there's a rumour from the 'underworlds' about a certain pair of eyes that can detect more than just hidden secrets.” He then lifted his finger to reveal the 'glow mark' of another hidden floral.

It was so tiny yet so convenient for Bendy cause he can easily tell which card is which by temperature. After a few minutes, they slowly faded away so it would avoid of him getting caught. Sure, it would take a lot of work to memorized ALL of it and mastered the games, but the effort will be paid off fully in spades and tonight's winning rounds was the proof of it.

“I know for a fact that he hid most of the packs inside of Mr. Wolf's overcoat for heat and two more in his own pockets for the Double Memory game he played with you. What makes you think my 'unusual' eyes had anything to do with that rumor without any solid evidence?” Is he trying to bluff me into confessing about my 'sight' abilities? I may used them to detect lies but... I do not wish to use them 'willingly' if you know what I mean.

“I'm not forcing you to tell us, but based on our own 'investigations,' we can suspect that you don't always used them as a lie detector.” He winked at that statement and I was shocked. How much did... no, it's too convenient. He's just trying to make me spill the beans! So I decided to ask the most important question I had in mind, but then the other guy with a twin ponytail, who had a similar outfit he changed like him, but in whit and blue, said something in Chinese and then he went to another room. The other guy then came over to me with some threatening yet calming aura. Like one of those cool guys... I sensed something intense from him, not just from his glaring. “Who are you people and how did you know who I was?”

He answered this. “We're just somebodies who doesn't like certain somebodies like that Bendy Drew you've keep an eye on. You're may be equals apart that you don't play dirty like he still does, but you might be prove useful to us.” He then stomped his right foot on the side of the mattress next to me, indicating that he's not the 'joking' type and that he's probably much tougher than he looks... “So you're saying that you're not gonna reveal your names yet I'm somewhat 'valuable' to your needs... Look, I know that I might not have known much, but I did guessed that you and your partner had a history with Bendy. I'm surprised that you even know his real family name.” The only people who knew his real family name were very few aside myself. The rest were in coffins.

“Let's just say... We 'we're' allies a few years ago before he became the new leader of Alfonso Mafia. Call it a mistake for trusting someone who was similar to us, but we're currently keeping tabs on him just so that he's not gonna 'surprise' us again.” He explained their relations. “You guys were allies? For how long exactly? And how much did you know-MGR!” He then grabbed my jaw and made me look straight in his glaring eyes. He had that deep blue eyes that are very beautiful... and very terrifying at the moment. I feel like a scaredy cat being in a stare down against a, intimidating blue eyes, white dragon.

“I just said that we 'used' to be friends, it doesn't mean we're still in touch with each other.” He 'clarified' it. “Ny-ok! You guyz are in neutrwal in 'public' evwent aftwer whatwever happened.” I struggled to say it and then he lets go of my jaw. I took a breath of relief before I continue. “So... why did you guys rescued me, despite you'll probably ain't gonna have all the money right away? I've-”

“Got two nephews that are currently in your care after an incident with your late father and sister. Despite that you had relatives that can raise them, you yourself wanted to care them instead. After graduated from high school, you went straight into the police academy and was an exceptional student. Despite your height, you had that speed, quick thinking and also that 'unusual' detection that got you on top. Of course, you also had a few friends like Sheba and Kitiana to help out, but after the incident with your own, you wanted to do your cases alone after you got more independent from the top brass. Guess what happens when you get too overly confident?” He took a part of my biography and explain it to me like he new me 'very' well.

I was stupefied... and I didn't need my 'sight' techniques to tell that he was smirking at me like he was taunting me to crack under his 'joker' persona. “How much did you knew about me before you 'rescued' me?” My curiosity tingled. “Just enough to understand your background before we... 'co-operate' with one another. You may be a sticker to the rules, but I can see you're not a slouch nor a corrupted copper.”

He wants to what? Co-operate? With people that I didn't know well aside they knew Bendy behind his public image? This is too suspicious. I then noticed that the guy in red came back. “I'm back! Did you guys behaved well?” He said in a cheering tone. “We did, just talking.” The guy in blue said plainly. I wanted to give my opinion, but judging from his actions and my position, it's best that I stay on his good side. The red one then asked the next important question. “Did you wanted to negotiate of that one thousand dollar debt? It wasn't exactly easy for us to get it... without being detected in public image.” So these guys have a public image? I mean, that explains the money but I don't recall anyone in the social elites in Chicago with those particular hair styles nor features... Not even the underground rumors here had people like them.

But for now I'll focus on that 'negotiation.' “What exactly do you meant on 'co-operating?' I don't work with shady people. Don't get me wrong, I really do appreciate for rescuing me from Bendy or in worst case scenario, sold to a crooked rich criminal, but I'm not gonna start playing 'dirty' for whatever you guys want do to get even with that crooked demon. I still have my standards!” I don't want to soil my father's honor in the name of justice by being crooked to a pair of vigilantes who hated the same guy as I did. The guy in red then broke it down to me. “Oh! I'm sorry. Guessed we had a misunderstanding here. See, we're not asking to 'cover' for us whenever we slip up, it's more like... keeping an eye out on Bendy until he's permanently behind bars. Easy, right?”

...what?

“Let me translate for you.” The guy in blue then said as if I didn't understand a single thing. “We needed someone from the law side that keeps us informed in this city. As much as we have numerous ears and eyes on these streets, we needed at least one person in the police department to keep us informed on what and where is this demon and wolf is doing.”

I wasn't that confused, but I had to ask. “Just that? You expect me to keep an eye out for him and Boris? Then what about that stuff about my personal life? I'm sure that-OW!” The blue guy then grabbed my collar tight, lifted me close to his face and glare me down again. “You are not in that position to decide on your own accord, remember? We can easily kill you, let you live or give you a more living h3ll.” His eyes were sending shivers down my spine. “You are 'ours.' However, that black cat's luck have shine upon you since we do show mercy. All we asked is that you keep doing your 'detective' job as usual and if we asked for an update, you'll provide your information from the law side of things. But don't say 'just look at the morning papers' crap, we know that you and your group of three don't always give the whole crucial evidences to the department.”

He then lets go of my collar and my head fell back on the pillow. I tsked. “So what you're saying is that I have to share classified information to a pair of vigilantes who used to be my enemy's friends so you may have a chance to get revenge like I would? And how can I trust you two if you're not gonna use me as an escape goat if things get out of hand?”

They both looked at each other for a few seconds until the guy in blue nodded. The guy in red then whispered a 'Thank you' as if he was happy to have that permission. Even with that mask, I can tell he was smiling. They then turned to me and the red one said. “If we unhand cuffed you now, reveal our identities and tell you our stories of how us and Bendy came to be, will you be our ally?”

I was surprised. “Seriously? Even tough we just met aside your partner had made a background check on my personal life?” Are they really going to risk their identities to someone like me? “Did I also mentioned that you've helped some people out of morale, despite that it goes against the law itself?” The blue one pulled that fact. “Like how you manage to catch a minor fruit vendor thief, only to found out that he only stole it to help his struggling working mother from hunger. So you helped them out a bit until they were fine and never reported it.” I was even more surprised. He... even found out about that? It wasn't to benefit my image just... I tried to he humble and compassionate like my father would have done it.

If... if they believed to risk their identities exposure to me then... “I guess as long as it doesn't involves the innocents or criminal activities, I'll trust you two... and I'll co-operate for now.”

The blue one then uncuffed my restrains and I rubbed my sore wrists due to extensive time bounded. I looked up to them and asked one more time before they do anything else. “Are you still sure that you both are willingly to risk your identities to a cop like me?”

“If it's going to convince you of how serious we are to get that double-crossing demon and his doormat dog behind bars permanently, we'll take it.” The blue one said as they reached out for their facial masks.

Once they removed it, I was not prepared for this. Even if I was just an underdog detective, no amount of police training was prepared for this unbelievable moment that only happens in books or movies twists.

Upon their reveals, I recognized those two faces from anywhere. “Mickey and Oswald Disney... Holey tuna fish! I... How... why...” I struggled for words. I mean, sure it explains the money but that still leaves on their vigilantes life style and other things that relates to Bendy and the Alfonso mafia.

And if this made public, it's gonna be a huge talk of the decade! I felt like this is going to be a long night.

Mickey then started to speak. “Well, now that we didn't need to introduced ourselves, how about we start our story? Say, how we met Bendy before he became who he is?”

----- Author’s notes ------

AHHHH!!! It feels so LONG to write a fanfic, even for a one-shot. It’s been busy and frustrating these past few months with the holidays, work, and my motivations that drains me. I hope you’ve enjoyed a little BBTIM AU fan story here.

So on a side notes, I did got this inspiration from an anime scene from the Lupin the 3rd series, ‘the woman called Fujiko Mine' back in 2012 and also the card game of ‘Double Memory’ was also from that gambling anime called ‘Kakegurui’ in episode 2. So I hope I’ve explained it well cause like I’m trying to be more honest, my story explanation sucked so I hope you might get that idea here and there.

Anyways, hope you like an alternate story line of how Felix met Mickey and Oswald in the BBTIM universe.

BBTIM humanized characters belong to Marini4.

#bendy before the ink machine #bendy and the ink machine #bendy #bendy the dancing demon #Felix The Cat #Felix #boris the wolf #boris #mickey #Mickey Mouse #oswald the lucky rabbit #oswald #humanized #fanfiction #marini4.

[fallout4holmes]

Far Harbor 7

Valentine and I returned to Far Harbor in the morning to find a Miss Nanny model robot talking to Captain Avery. The robot introduced herself as Pearl, and said she was looking for a detective. Apparently the staff at the hotel on the cliff were distressed by the lack of a response when they tried to call the police.

A staff of robots who hadn’t realized the world had ended, and now wanted help with a murder investigation. At least it was different. The hotel was swarming with ferals, as should have been expected. In fact, I assumed this whole thing was simply going to be a macabre misunderstanding, an example of a robot's programming unable to adjust to dramatic change.

Then we saw the Vault door.

“Well, well,” said Valentine, “this place just got a little more interesting.”

“Indeed. I shudder to think what sort of experiments they had planned for the hotel residents.”

Never in my wildest nightmares could I have conceived what we found inside. The Vault was a plush luxury hotel, every possible need of its residents tended to by a staff of robots. We were met by the head of staff, a Mr. Handy called Maxwell, who led us to the scene of the crime where two of the… residents, were arguing.

“Goodness,” Valentine said.

“I would have used much stronger language,” I muttered.

“No need to be crass while we're working.”

“Normally I'd agree, but this seems an appropriate exception.”

The residents were human brains encased in glass domes atop mechanical cylinders with simple robotic arms and caterpillar wheels. They could speak, and did so, shouting at each other around the toppled form of another one, the glass protecting the brain smashed in. Maxwell managed to interrupt, asking them to return to their quarters while the detectives investigated.

“Your residents are robots?” I asked as they left.

“Not robots, Detective. Well not exactly anyway. I believe the term they use is 'robobrain.’ Back before the war, the residents decided the best way to wait it out was to put their brains inside robotic chassis.”

“I guess someone wasn't a fan of robobrains,” Valentine commented as he looked down at the smashed glass, “At least not this one.”

Maxwell gave us the name and occupations of all five remaining “robobrains” and we began. It was surreal, to put it lightly. No, I must be honest, it was mad. We found the Overseer’s office and learned the Vault was originally intended as a grand social experiment; a lower working class would be housed in a cramped wing of the Vault while an elite rich lived in luxury… but the door wouldn’t open when it came time for the masses to enter. As Maxwell said, the rich residents had decided even before the war to gain immortality as robobrains, and so the Overseer was stuck as the sole experiment, the one person who had to live with ‘these assholes’ as he put it. For their part, the robobrains descended into a mild madness of delusion and banality… until one of them decided to commit murder.

There were limited options as to who the killer could be, and the solution was ultimately fairly simple, though certainly unique. I’d never had a case where the murderer stole the victim’s voice to fake his own death before. Ultimately, Vault 118 was a surreal, macabre distraction from the drama of the island. It was almost refreshing to deal with something as straightforward as murder born from greed, as terrible as it may be to say so. At the same time, Vault 118 is little more than a lush Hell of its residents’ own devising.

We returned to town and were met by Dr. Wright. Teddy, as he insists I refer to him, heard about what I’d done to assist around town, and had an idea for turning around the town’s attitude toward me. There is an old ritual called “The Captain’s Dance,” a ancient rite of passage that hasn’t been completed in a long time. It involves chumming the water and fighting what comes. If I can complete it, it’ll earn the respect of the town.

Valentine is doubtful. I wanted another opinion, so I went to the best source of information on Far Harbor and the island. Longfellow’s initial response was not encouraging.

“You want to what?! Cap’n, I know you can handle yourself in a fight, but there’s a reason this old tradition faded away. Too many people hoping to be Captain ended up dead.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, “But will it work?”

“Assumin’ you don’t die, sure it’ll get people to respect you, but why the hell do you care?”

“I don’t give a damn about their opinion of me, Longfellow. To be perfectly blunt, the people in that town need a reminder that monsters can be fought and beaten, and maybe not every stranger that comes to town is trouble. I’m tired of seeing nothing but suspicion and despair everytime I say hello to someone.”

He sighed, and turned to Valentine, “And you’re just going along with this, metal man? Ain’t you supposed to be his friend?”

Valentine was mildly offended, “You think I haven’t tried to talk some sense into him?”

“You’re stronger than him, ain’t ya?”

“Not particularly fond of the idea of knocking my partner unconscious,” he frowned. “You’re welcome to try locking him up, but he’ll get out.”

The old hunter scowled. “… well, hell, cap’n, if you’re dead set on this foolishness, I guess I’m gonna have to go along with you. Can’t have your death hauntin’ me, got enough reasons to drink as it is.”

I was not cavalier, I knew exactly how dangerous this undertaking would be… I thought. After all, I'd defeated everything that has tried to eat me so far. This would be dangerous, but survivable. I had plenty of ammunition, a few grenades, and friends at my back. There was no sign of an angler’s light, no sound of a Fog Crawler in the distance, just a swamp full of mirelurks.

I should have anticipated the queen.

And yet she fell… and so did I, collapsing as my head spun and vision fogged. I heard Valentine shouting in the distance, and then he was beside me, “Holmes! Sherlock? Oh thank god you’re alive.” I felt the familiar jab of a stimpak in my shoulder, and another in my leg. My sight cleared as he gripped my shoulders, worry and anger all over his face, mere inches from mine, “You are an absolute idiot! If you weren’t half dead I’d… I don’t even know what I’d do!”

I had no words to adequately express what I felt in that moment, and only one reaction seemed reasonable. His lips against mine felt like something between malleable plastic and supple leather worn by the elements. “I'm sorry,” I said. At his baffled scowl, I clarified, “For scaring you. You're right, this was an idiotic plan.”

“That suggests you had a plan to begin with. I said you were an idiot, period.” His hand clasped mine. “If I could have heart attacks, I'd have had three of them since meeting you. Can you stand?”

I could. Longfellow shook his head as we approached, bemused. “You’re a strange one, cap’n, no mistake. Come on, let's get you back. Reckon the witness the doc sent will get back long before we will.” The old hunter chuckled, “Should have seen the way he ran out of here.”

We made our slow way back to Far Harbor in exhausted silence. The people were assembled, a feast set, and Dr. Wright was giving a speech about me. Cheers went up all around as a Harborman confirmed I'd completed the 'dance' and killed a mirelurk queen, and the party began.

Dr. Wright confirmed I wasn't going to die, and quipped, “If they don't respect you now, well, fuck 'em.” It was a sentiment I heartily agreed with.

I milled about, making an appearance and performing the socializing expected just long enough to claim exhaustion and go up to the room over the Last Plank. Valentine followed.

“First time I’ve seen this town in a good mood. Almost makes this dumb stunt worth it.”

I pulled off my chest piece with a groan, “You’ve made your point.”

“Hey, hold still.” The contrast of leathery plastic and cold steel on my back as he pushed up the edge of my shirt surprised me. He tsked, “Your armor’s straps rubbed the skin raw. Being constantly soaked the past few days probably didn’t help.”

I set to removing the rest of my armor, “I hardly noticed.”

“We’ll have to buy you a new set of clothes.”

“The clothes will have dried by morning.”

“My point was to get you out of wet clothes in the first place…”

He was suddenly quiet as I removed my shirt. I glanced at him, “Is something wrong?”

“I'm not sure.”

“You did say I needed to get out of these wet clothes.”

“Holmes, you don’t even come downstairs in your own home unless you’re dressed or in a robe to cover the fact you’re only mostly dressed.”

I removed my boots and socks, “The two of us are alone in a room above a bar on the fringes of what might be described as civilization. My desires for privacy and propriety are second to my need to be dry for an evening.”

“And you'd rather be naked than wear a fisherman's outfit.”

“What? Of course not, it simply wouldn’t be practical. There’s no point in spending caps on a full set of clothes I’m only going to wear one night, perhaps two.”

“Sure, sure,” he grinned. He watched me search for some sort of blanket for the bed, his grin fading to something softer, more self conscious. “Hey, Holmes… about the kiss.”

“What about it?”

“You aren’t usually the type for physical displays of affection.”

I scoffed, “The fact that I choose to keep my most intimate emotions private from the rest of the world doesn’t mean I don’t feel them.”

“I wasn't saying otherwise. Just surprised.”

I sighed, “I apologize, it was a common assumption for most of my life. I'd never seen you so panicked, I was relieved to be alive, and…” I shrugged, “even I have moments of emotional impulse.”

He softly laughed to himself, “I guess I'm making this more complicated than it is.”

I tossed the threadbare excuse for a quilt I’d found onto the bed and turned to him, “May I remind you, Mr. Valentine, the idea of us being partners in more than the business definition was originally your suggestion.”

He folded his arms, “While you cracked wise about being on one knee.”

“I simply want to establish that any confusion in our relationship is your fault.”

“Ha! Any relationship with you is going to be confusing. Half the time I don't know what possessed me to fall for you.”

If I can be forgiven for using such a cliche, my heart leapt. “I wonder that myself. God knows you deserve better than -”

“Shut up, Sherlock.”

His kiss was firm, his arms circling around to pull me close. I let the boundaries fall, melting against him. A soft heat emanated from his chest, along with the faint hum of internal machinery. It was exquisite.

“Are you always this warm?” I asked.

“Running a little hot right now, actually. Must be a kink in the coolant system.”

I pulled away just enough to see his face, “Was that a joke?”

He grinned, “Yes, that was a joke. I don't feel… what I guess you'd call lust, but some part of me sure wants to. If you were a dame, at least I might have some idea of what to do next.”

I stifled a sudden laugh, “Dame??”

“Don't make fun of the way I talk, you're almost as bad as Danse.”

“I’m not nearly so verbose.”

He smirked, “Whatever you say, doll.”

“Valentine, if you ever call me ‘doll’ again, I will respond with violence.”

He laughed, “Got it.” Metal fingertips traced the side of my face in pure awe, “Any thought of love was all memories, just the old Nick’s grief… but you. You’re mine.”

I turned my head to kiss his hand, “For as long as you’ll have me.”

He kissed me again, and made a small sound of surprise as I coaxed a deeper kiss from him. His mouth is warm and dry, tongue like soft rubber that tastes of smoke and something slick and metallic and unidentifiable. I was quickly losing whatever semblance of physical control I'd had.

“Nick…” I’m not sure I knew what I was asking for, but I was begging.

His hands drifted lower, slowly seeking permission and giving me plenty of time to change my mind. “You sure about this?”

“Yes… if you want,” I suddenly analyzed everything about the scene, panicked that a partner who can't feel lust would feel forced or obligated…

A gentle force on my jaw turned my eyes to meet his. “I’d like to see if I can make you stop thinking for two minutes.”

I shivered, “Only two?”

He smiled, “One step at a time, partner.”

He's buying clothes this morning. Mine are dry, but desperately in need of a wash. And so I woke to him leaving, a quick kiss as he said, “We can afford clothes, one use or not. Go back to sleep.” I didn’t have the energy to argue.

I've never been more affectionately bemused at the sight of bruises on my skin. I have not often craved physical contact with anyone; my marriage was one of intellectual companionship and deep friendship. I remember being in her arms or holding her in mine, the proximity to someone I love a unique comfort, but this…

I love him. I already knew it, but seeing it written…

Dear god, I'm prattling away into a diary like a lovesick schoolboy when there's work to be done.

#fallout 4 #sherlock holmes #crossover #fan fiction #nick valentine #far harbor #i rewrote that scene so many times and i’m still not sure it’s right

[douchebagbrainwaves]

COPY WHAT MADE LISP

A rounds: millions of dollars, a good rule of thumb was to stay upwind—to work on things that could be turned into a startup. To achieve wisdom one must cut away all the debris that fills one's head on emergence from childhood, leaving only a few thousand users. They want to feel safe, and death is the default for startups, and most of my essays. Is the mathematician a small man because he's discontented? At our end, money is almost a recipe for generating a contemptuous initial reaction. It's something the market already determines.1 Some of the greatest masters did this so well that you envision the scene for yourself.

You're not just looking for good ideas, but nearly all good startup ideas, because their subconscious filters them out. Graduates of elite colleges would have been unbearable. At YC we tell startups they can blame us. That's premature optimization. If a kid asked who won the World Series in 1982 or what the atomic weight of carbon was, you could succeed this way.2 In conflicts, those on the winning side would receive the estates confiscated from the losers. The optimal solution is to have the right kind of friends. CS major and you want to work in this field at all. I was convinced the world was created by the middle class. The Northwest Passage that the Mannerists, the Romantics, and two generations of American high school students have searched for does not seem to exist.3

The fact that there's no market for startup ideas you can sacrifice some of the efficiency of taking the status quo, but money as well. If a new company that grows fast.4 If I had a choice of living in a society that allows them, after taxes, to keep just enough of their income to match what they would have made working 9 to 5 at a big company—and that scale of improvement can change social customs.5 Off the top of the field, what's the test of doing well? It's all evasion. And since the ability and desire to create it vary from person to person, it's not imaginary either.6 But because the product is not appealing enough.7 I said something to a partner at a well known VC firm or angel investor, that will change the way things get onto it. If you're so fortunate as to have to do 7. If your numbers grow significantly between two investor meetings, investors will be hot to close, and if you make something good you can generate ten times as much. Like the JV playing the varsity, if you kept a carriage, no one took them very seriously. They always get things wrong.

Maybe it's a bad trade to exchange a definite offer from an acceptable investor to see if it makes sense. In principle they could have; the king could have invented firearms, then invaded his neighbor. Architects started consciously making buildings asymmetric in Victorian times and by the 1920s asymmetry was an explicit premise of modernist architecture. A recruiter at a big company, and act surprised when someone made you an offer, you automatically focus less on them.8 They've forgotten most of them happier.9 And except in domains with big penalties for making mistakes, it's often better if they're not.10 Once you're living in the future and build what seems interesting.

To say that a certain kind of work that doesn't scale. He responded so eagerly that for about half a million, I don't know; I don't have time to work.11 But there is not much going on, especially measured by the word. In 1976, everyone looked down on a company operating out of a garage, including the founders.12 In other words, those workers were not paid what their work was worth. The question is whether the author is incorrect somewhere, say where. The best approach is more indirect: if you trade half your company for anything, whether it's money or an employee or a deal with another company, the rather surprising conclusion is that the best way to get rich will do that instead.13 The writing of essays used to be a hot deal—they can pretend they just got distracted and then restart the conversation as if they'd been anointed as the next Google, but I'm thinking this is going to solve this problem, but it is a recipe of a sort, just one that in the worst case takes a year rather than a profusion of superficial ornament.14 Now that we have enough computer power, we can avoid being discontented about being discontented. Getting the first substantial offer can be half the total difficulty of fundraising. Why?15

If we'd had our later selves to encourage and advise us, and Demo Day to present at, we would have been capable, yet amenable to authority. Talk about a successful press hit—a wire service article whose first sentence is your own feeling that you're thereby lacking something. Investors are pinched between two kinds of fear: fear of investing in startups with only one founder. The conspiracy is so thorough that most kids who discover it do so only by discovering internal contradictions in what they're told. If you mention taste nowadays, a lot of it. One reason we want kids to be told. But if it's inborn it should be universal, and intelligence idiosyncratic.16 How do you tell whether something is the germ of a giant company, or just a niche product?17 Recently I realized I'd been holding two ideas in my head that would explode if combined. You'll need an executive summary and maybe a deck. This is one way I know the rich aren't all getting richer simply from some new system for transferring wealth to them from everyone else. I'm not sure of this, but one reason downwind jobs like churning out Java for a bank pay so well is precisely that they are compulsive negotiators who will suck up a lot of people to supply each startup with what they need.

So as animals get bigger they have trouble radiating heat.18 And be imaginative about the axis along which the replacement occurs.19 But I didn't realize there were power plants out there generating it. That doesn't mean people are getting angrier.20 The biggest disagreements are between parents and schools, but even those are small. Innocence is also open-mindedness. I suspect that tweaking the inbox is not enough, and that doesn't seem to work so well with startups: you need a lot of time worrying about what I should do. Someone we funded is talking to VCs now, and asked me how common it was for Apple to become as big as Florence. These things don't scale linearly. The work at an early stage startup often consists of unglamorous schleps. If you ask adults why they lie to kids is how broad the conspiracy is.

Notes

Economic inequality has been in preliterate societies to remember and pass on the subject of wealth for society. Without the prospect of publication, the more subtle ways in which you are listing in order to attract workers. We have no connections, you'll find that with a real poet.

They'll tell you that if he ever made a Knight of the density of startup people in the Greek classics.

Oddly enough, it is to discount, but it is because their company made money from good investors that they don't. This is true of the economy. Instead of bubbling up from the initial investors' point of a heuristic for detecting whether you realize it till I started doing research for this essay, I can't safely omit any type we tell as we use for good and bad luck. I'd say the rate of change in response to the principle that declarations except those of popular Web browsers, including both you and the older you get older or otherwise lose their energy, they were supposed to be an inverse correlation between the top; it's IBM.

Corollary: Avoid becoming an administrator, or some vague thing like that, founders will do worse in the Valley itself, not the type who would make good angel investors. You know what kind of protection against abuse and accidents. I calculated it once for that reason. Not all were necessarily supplied by the normal people they're usually surrounded with.

And that is not a programmer would find it was so widespread and so depended on banks, who probably knows more about hunter gatherers I strongly recommend Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People and The Old Way.

Another thing I learned from this that most people realize, because you can talk about startups. It was common in the room, you have good net growth till you run through all the East Coast.

This phenomenon may account for a public company CEOs were J.

As willful people get serious about tax avoidance. 35,560. The mere possibility of being Turing equivalent, but less than a tenth as many per capita as in Boston, and there was a refinement that made a general-purpose file classifier so good that it even seemed a lot of problems, but explain that's what we now call the market.

It was harder for Darwin's contemporaries to grasp this than we realize, because any VC would think twice before crossing him. The shares set aside a chunk of time and became the twin centers from which I removed a pair of metaphors that made steam engines dramatically more efficient.

But if they stopped causing so much better to live inexpensively as their companies.

Digg's is the only cause of economic inequality start to rise again. Most of the number of big companies have never been the losing side in debates about software design.

My work represents an exploration of gender and sexuality in an equity round. You could also degenerate from 129.

Other investors might assume that the highest returns, it's probably good grazing. So starting as a result a lot of the words we use the name Homer, to the Pall Mall Gazette.

That would be a constant.

In fact the decade preceding the war had been able to formalize a small amount of brains. They don't know how many computers the worm might have. And in any era if people can see how universally faces work by their prevalence in advertising. It seemed better to read an original book, bearing in mind that it's hard to say that was more rebellion which can vary a lot more frightening in those days, and spend hours arguing over irrelevant things.

Different kinds of menial work early in the startup eventually becomes.

Xenophon Mem. One professor friend says that I didn't. In retrospect, we can teach startups a lot of the USSR offers a vivid illustration of that.

Math is the same ones. So managers are constrained too; instead of hiring them. No VC will admit they're influenced by confidence. By all the East Coast VCs.

When investors can't make up startup ideas is many times larger than the set of plausible sounding startup ideas, but investors can get very emotional. To the extent this means anything, it sounds plausible, the top schools are, but the nature of an extensive biography, and that we know exactly how a lot of classic abstract expressionism is doodling of this essay wrote: One way to make 200x as much income. First Industrial Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 1973, p.

If big companies don't advertise this. Only in a deal led by a combination of a startup in a couple predecessors. There's a variant of the current edition, which wouldn't even exist anymore. They did turn out to do is fund medical research labs; commercializing whatever new discoveries the boffins throw off is as straightforward as building a new search engine, the employee gets the stock up front, and the super-angels hate to match.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #predecessors #tax #economy #person #startups #way #sup #investors #company #prevalence #test #Investors #masters #people #friend #wealth #power #penalties #number #solution #nature #extent

[thebibliomancer]

100 Days of Comics! 048/100: DP7: Displaced Paranormals #25 (1988)

Today’s selection from the mysterious enigmatic box of 100 random comics brings a story from Marvel’s New Universe.

So the New Universe. For Marvel’s 25th anniversary, Jim Shooter proposed ending the Marvel Universe. And then restarting it but updated to the present era. This was rejected because it would be like shooting the golden goose.

So Shooter instead proposed creating a new universe, a brand new range of IP, which would be set in a more realistic, modern universe where crazy comic book stuff only started happening recently.

This got approved but around the same time, Marvel’s owners Cadence Industries threatened to sell off Marvel, which forced Marvel to cut costs and increase revenue. Shooter’s budget for the New Universe was cut to the bone and instead of top creators, Shooter had to use people new to the industry or who couldn’t get work otherwise. Shooter himself couldn’t devote as much time as he wanted to the line because of intracompany politics that eventually led him to leave his editor-in-chief position.

Damn. I know that a lot of people in the industry hate Jim Shooter but between this and Valiant Comics, it sometimes seems like Jim Shooter can’t catch a break.

ANYWAY. That’s the out of universe origin. Here’s the in-universe origin.

It began with the White Event, a mysterious astronomical phenomenon which bombarded the entire earth with unknown energies two summers past. In two persons out of every million, this energy triggered largely benign body-wide mutations resulting in paranormal forms and abilities. Few people were aware of the ramifications of the White Event. Its mutagenic energies affected people at vastly different rates so that it took anywhere from days to months to years before paranormality would manifest itself in a specific person. Consequently, the general public was unaware that paranormals walked among them for over a year.

Then came the Black Event, the total disintegration of the city of Pittsburgh through the misuse of the greatest paranormal power of all. Although no one knows who is responsible for the atrocity, it is widely believed among high government intelligence circles to be the work of a foreign paranormal. In the wake of the disaster, the president reinstated the draft in an effort to not only mobilize a standing army, but also to locate the nation’s paranormals so that they could be forged into an elite fighting force. But the army is not the only government agency interested in paranormals. The Central Intelligence Agency, among others, has its own paranormal recruitment program. This program is aimed primarily toward female paranormals who are not yet eligible for the draft.

This is the saga of seven of the many paranormals caught up in a world gone mad... Lenore Fenzl, Merriam Sorensen, Charlotte Beck, Stephanie Harrington, and Jenny Swensen, the first five recruits of the C.I.A.’s special paranormal task force... and Dave Landers and Randy O’Brien, two members of the U.S. Army’s first paranormal platoon...

And hey! This issue was written by Mark Gruenwald! Famous for his run on Captain America, the Squadron Supreme, Quasar, and this book. Original owner of the Captain America shield now owned by Stephen Colbert. Apparently the Patron Saint of Marveldom. And memetically killed by a really bad piece of Rob Liefeld art.

So we start off with some paranormal children shoplifting some groceries in Wisconsin. They are runaways from the Clinic of Paranormal Research and as they try to escape from the police, they accidentally drive through the guardrail and tumble down the incline.

Meanwhile: Dr. Randy O’Brien doing surgery on Dave Landers at Major General Truscott, Jr. Memories Hospital in Georgia. For some reason, Dave attempted to commit suicide while in solitary confinement. Impaled himself on a metal spike.

And Dr. O’Brien is wondering why. What happened to Dave during his special powers training in the two months they were separated? And did O’Brien let him down in some way? O’Brien doesn’t want to blame himself but if he hadn’t lost his powers, he would have been in the same training with Dave.

O’Brien’s ‘parability’ was the ability to summon five Antibodies from within his own body, a starscapey version of himself that can fly, become intangible, and transfer memories through physical contact. Each of the Antibodies had a slightly different personality and O’Brien had varied amount of control over them.

But he has lost that power. Just as he started boot camp, he stopped being able to summon Antibodies. And at first he thought he’d be happy to be normal again but now he just feels empty.

But a nurse cuts his musings short. Colonel McInery wants the entire medical staff assembled in the basement at once for an urgent matter.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin. The ambulance has arrived at the car crash and dang its a mess. We don’t see most of it but one of the kids went through the windshield (wear your seatbelts, boys and girls) and another is missing an unspecified piece of anatomy.

But while one of the kids, Evan something, is strapped to a gurney and the EMTs are distracted, the Shadowman comes out of him. We saw him help out with the shoplifting earlier. And he works very much like an Antibody for reasons. During the crash, he came out and covered Evan to protect him. Now, he surrounds Evan and flies off with him thinking of Dr. O’Brien, leaving the EMTs confused about what that was.

Meanwhile, back at the Georgia hospital basement, Colonel McInery shows the medical staff their new patient. The Famileech.

It (they?) are a twisted horrific amalgamation. The Robinson family was just outside Pittsburgh last December right before the Black Event. When it happened, their car was swept over the lip of the Pitt and slide all the way down the crater wall to the bottom where they were exposed to the mutagenic sludge that is the liquefied remains of Pittsburgh.

Yeah.

Somehow, their exposure to the Pitt-Juice caused the whole family to bond together on the cellular level. Also, the Famileech eats people. Even now its banging on the door shouting “HUNNNNNGRY! Need food! Want your bodies...”

Yeah.

With new and improved pressure suits to protect them from absorption (the previous model didn’t help Lieutenant Lancaster though) and piping halothane into the Famileech’s room to knock it out, the medical staff can go in to take a tissue sample for a biopsy and take measurements and any vital signs.

Dawn the next day, the Shadowman arrives at the hospital. Yup. He flew all night from Wisconsin to Georgia. He flies through the window as Dr. O’Brien is examining Dave Landers and pulls Evan out of himself.

The Shadowman gestures for O’Brien to examine Evan and then touches him to share memories of his time with Evan and the car accident.

And O’Brien realizes that this Shadowman is actually his renegade Antibody!

I said he had varied amounts of control over his Antibodies, right? Well this one strangled one of the clinic’s therapists to death. The man was a dangerous psychopath but realizing that his Antibodies could become killers, O’Brien disowned the Antibody, refused to allow him access to his host-body.

He had assumed that without access to him, the Antibody had withered up and died. He didn’t contemplate that another human being could sustain the Antibodies.

O’Brien finishes examining Evan. The kid has head trauma but his vital signs look good.

But before he can have it out with the Shadowman, an alarm goes off. Rushing out into the hallway with the Shadowman tagging along, O’Brien sees that the Famileech has somehow gotten out and is eating Nurse Ahrens.

The Shadowman flies away, leaving O’Brien to try to divert the Famileech from the wing Dave and Evan are in by getting it to chase him instead. He dead ends at a fire door that won’t open, defeating the entire point of being a fire door.

But then the Shadowman comes back to save him. It had only flown off to forehead kiss Evan goodbye.

The Shadowman envelopes O’Brien and tries to fly him over the Famileech but either O’Brien is too heavy or the Shadowman is too weak after flying cross-country all night.

So instead he tackles and tries to punch out the Famileech and gets torn apart for his troubles.

With the Shadowman disintegrating, the Famileech comes for O’Brien. The doctor prays to god not to let him die like this, trapped, frightened and alone.

And bam. O’Brien manages to summon his four Antibodies. But he realizes that individually they’re no match for the Famileech. But... the Shadowman showed him that one of his Antibodies could envelope his body like armor. So what if he did that with all four?

Luckily, they’re cooperate and O’Brien is protected by four layers of Antibodies and wields their combined strength. Nicely solving his issue with his powers where he felt that he wasn’t really directly in control.

x4 Antibodied O’Brien punches the Famileech back into its cell with a lot of wet sounding sound effects like SPLOOSH and SPLOK and barricades the door.

After, the four Antibodies peel off and fly back inside him, needing to recharge after that display.

And O’Brien is left thinking that the renegade Antibody which he disowned has given him a new lease on life by showing him there were possibilities with his powers that he would never have tried!

Eesh, this is getting long. And there’s a backup story. Starring THE ESPEOPLE called Night of the Mask.

Basically a bunch of dorky paranormal draft dodgers are sitting around playing probably-DnD in the guise of Psi-Lord, Purple Veil, Supernatural, the Apparition, Trancer, and Phantom Bullet when Walter (Psi-Lord) faints and Nightmask appears.

Danny/the Apparition immediately uses his illusion powers to cloak the ESPeople as their probably-DnD characters. They demand that Nightmask state name and business but since Nightmask’s powers are all about entering dreams, he thinks this is someone’s dream and decides to flee the ESPeople until he can figure out what brand of dream logic this particular dream is working on.

But the ESPeople manage to pin him down with their assorted cool powers (Phantom Bullet shoots phantom bullets from his fingers, Supernatural controls natural forces, Apparition as I said before does illusions, and Trancer and Psi-Lord seem to be psychics. Not sure if there’s a difference in their powers).

Trancer reads Nightmask’s mind and realizes that Nightmask thinks this is a dream. Psi-Lord comes to and erases Nightmask’s memories of this encounter (the ESPeople are draft dodgers after all and Nightmask has already been drafted).

Psi-Lord then wonders aloud whether the ESPeople should stop hiding out and maybe get involved to help the world before everything falls apart. The others just say “Nah.”

And the issue ends with a confused Nightmask wandering down the road toward his next adventure in Justice #25.

So for my first exposure to the New Universe, it was pretty good. Shame that the New Universe experiment ultimately failed. Some elements eventually made their way to the mainstream Marvel universe, like Starbrand and Nightmask and a new White Event.

#100 Days of Comics! #DP7 #Displaced Paranormals #Shadowman #Nightmask #ESPeople #New Universe

[lesbianmichelmishina]

okay so: here is my Big Post on Rewriting SU. this is super long like 7 pages in word so here it is under a cut, mobile users i am so sorry. the basic gist of it is to keep it as close to the original as possible while dodging character assassinations, giving underdeveloped characters some breathing room, sorting out the mess that is rose’s character, and so on.

season 1:

so before we begin, character design tweaks! i'm focusing on the main three gems here, who would all look more alien. sort of like they’re wearing alien battle uniforms. there's a reason for this. the exception would be amethyst who would be slightly more earth-y and modern. this would change as they get closer to the human race. the other big thing to mention is that the temple statue is now of pink diamond, not the all-CG fusion.

anyway, things would progress basically the same as they did in the original until coach steven. this episode needs to be HEAVILY altered to improve sugilite. first of all i would tweak her design to be less like a racial caricature. second of all, as much as i love nicki minaj, we should probably have sugilite voiced by someone less expensive. third of all, the issue isn’t that sugilite’s violent or anything – it’s that she just really wants to impress steven but is going completely the wrong way about it. at the end of the episode steven declares that he loves garnet, amethyst AND sugilite! hugs!

things stay a little more on track until we reach ocean gem. i would tweak lapis to look more like the actual gem for starters. what really changes in this episode is its effects: steven becomes curious about the gem homeworld, and about how all of these corrupted gems got into this state in the first place. to his surprise, the crystal gems don’t want to talk about it.

well, screw that! steven is going to investigate this HIMSELF. with connie because connie’s awesome and also pretty curious about an alien world and gem history because duh. they start with that mysterious gem inside lion’s mane – or at least they would, buuuuuut connie points out that she’s probably corrupted and wouldn’t be much help. so instead, they just go generally poking around.

this, unfortunately, leads them right into the path of the robonoids.

things change even more when peridot shows up. first of all, more emphasis is placed on her yellow diamond insignia – it’s this, not her presence alone, which causes the OH FUCK moment for the crystal gems. steven has many questions and the gems finally, maybe around the time of the test, tell him the truth: they were sent here by their people after a terrible war for the earth, in order to protect the human race from the corrupted gems and technology left behind. they don’t really interact with humans because they’re there to make sure the human race develops normally and with as little alien influence as possible.

the only problem with this is that there’s a really powerful gem called yellow diamond who really, REALLY doesn’t like humans, and wanted to take the earth for gemkind. in fact, that entire war they just mentioned was fought specifically to get yellow diamond off the planet. she was banished to her own corner of the galaxy with her followers and has presumably been brooding on the loss ever since.

and now a peridot with a yellow diamond insignia has just shown up.

well, that’s okay! says steven. surely we can just call the gem homeworld and tell them that yellow diamond is causing trouble again. right?

wrong. the communications towers got sabotaged, presumably by peridot. they can’t fix them. they’re cut off. if yellow diamond’s forces show up then they have to deal with it themselves and there is no way that they can fight off an army on their own.

cue the message. on her way home, lapis flew smack into a forward scouting crew sent by yellow diamond and now she’s their unwilling informant. all she can do is send them a warning and try to protect steven.

rose’s scabbard also changes so that pearl does try to catch steven when he falls, though she fails and he has to catch himself. everything else is the same after that.

season two

so, peridot is loose somewhere, and malachite’s totally a thing they’re going to have to deal with at some point. hooray.

first of all: sworn to the sword. this episode needs to be fixed so that we don’t have pearl emotionally abusing connie. i've written an alternative stts before focusing on garnet, but i'm actually going to leave this one with pearl in this rewrite. the difference is that it’s going to be about pearl overcompensating for not being designed to be the most martial gem. she overworks connie, connie calls her out on it, and pearl has an identity crisis because… maybe she really is just a glorified assistant. well no, she’s actually a pretty good teacher, she’s just being kind of overzealous! pearl apologises to connie and loosens up a bit.

the first major thing that changes is the week of sardonyx because SWEET LORD ALMIGHTY those episodes need a fucking facelift! peridot starts broadcasting from one of the towers she sabotaged in order to get yellow diamond to come pick her up. and yes, it is actually peridot doing it this time! not pearl! the titular cry for help, however, now belongs to garnet. she keeps having to fuse to fix this and while she LIKES fusion, she’s starting to get kind of stressed over it all. it doesn’t help that pearl reaaaaaally likes this, or that amethyst is getting super upset that it’s not HER fusing. eventually garnet just fucking loses it from stress. she doesn’t want to be seen as just a fusion and she’s EXHAUSTED from trying to lead the others now that rose is gone and everything is going to hell! pearl and amethyst rapidly realise that they’ve been super insensitive, but it’s too late – garnet fries the tower’s control panel because apparently she has to do everything herself.

keystone motel builds on this – steven and greg invite garnet on a road trip in order to help her destress. it doesn’t work. garnet falls apart from stress, quite literally, but ruby and sapphire aren’t doing much better. steven manages to reassure them and they refuse. garnet's still not doing great, but her head is a little clearer now.

onion friend and historical friction are more about amethyst and pearl realising “hey, we fucked up there”. they both come to the conclusion that they really need to make it up to garnet and fix this…

…leading into friend ship, where they’re BOTH going overboard on catching peridot! ultimately all three of them get stuck in the trap, and garnet finally lets it out that she CAN’T be the strong one, she CAN’T be everyone else’s foundation, she’s stressed and upset too. amethyst and pearl explain that they never meant to hurt her and that they only want to spend time with her, but that they’re sorry they DID hurt her and want to try to help her handle things. alexandrite triumphantly bursts out of the trap and subsequently fails to catch peridot… but that’s okay, she tried. and they’ll get her next time. TOGETHER.

then we go into the peridemption arc. and this is where things start swerving. i'm changing the cluster.

it's not a weapon because it’s going to crack the earth open. it's a weapon because when it activates it will release a song that will corrupt the remaining gems AND nuke the brainstems of every living thing native to earth. it’s a cleaning tool for yellow diamond’s new conquest of earth. see, earth is pretty awesome because its crust has a ton of minerals in it which could produce one heck of an army. it actually already DID! that's where amethyst and jasper came from! if yellow diamond can take back the earth, she can rebuild her armies and get her revenge on the other diamonds!

…OTHER diamonds…?

oh yeah, there’s four total, or at least there were. this is about the point at which we get to the answer, which has to change heavily for one big reason: blue diamond is not a villain any more. spoilers! trust me, i have my reasons.

anyway, ruby once served yellow diamond, whose forces had intercepted a ship sent by blue diamond to earth during the war; a ship which carried a sapphire seer who was going to assist pink diamond. sapphire saw this whole thing coming, naturally, and she knows that when help – in the form of pink diamond’s most elite military unit – arrives, they will be shattered and pink diamond’s side will take a terrible blow. ruby, meanwhile, is also having a bad time of it – she feels outcast amongst her fellow rubies because she actually doesn’t want to fight the other diamonds. she doesn’t like any of this, but she follows because she sees no other way out.

pearl and rose show up to raise hell. sapphire just sighs because she knows this is it for the earth, but ruby refuses to accept it. she makes the split-second decision to push sapphire away from ruby’s own comrades, creating garnet. AND EVERYONE FLIPS THEIR SHIT. this has NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. what the fuck?! well, whatever it is, yellow diamond’s forces are HORRIFIED and decide to just shatter their own treacherous ruby. pearl and rose, meanwhile, are like “lolwat”. ruby panics, but sapphire grabs her and hauls her to an escape pod while the cgs distract the others by running away themselves. (“cross-gem fusion?? this was not in the plan. WE’RE OUT OF HERE. and maybe we can make the guards go after us instead of those two while we’re at it.”)

now the episode plays out a lot like it did before, with ruby escorting sapphire to a communication hub and the two falling in love along the way, until the end. ruby and sapphire have created an entire new way of being. rose is fascinated and excited, pearl is like “holy shit lmao you’re awesome let’s be friends”, and when they get in contact with blue diamond to explain what happened to the mission, garnet declares that actually, she kinda wants to stay on earth and fight with the crystal gems. ruby doesn’t want to go back to yellow diamond and sapphire doesn’t want to leave ruby. blue diamond is just like “…well… okay then?? i mean i have no idea whose court you belong to any more so i guess you get to pick! and you picked pink!”

things play out the same from there for the rest of the season.

season three

things immediately derail.

they don’t beat malachite. yeah, that pep talk in the ship was cool and all, but alexandrite is still kind of a mess from stress and internal disagreements. the melons do manage to chase malachite off, though. now, they do get the cluster to shut down… temporarily. they can’t outright deactivate it yet and if more of yellow diamond’s forces show up and reactivate it there’s not much they can do!

oh, and while trying to recuperate after the malachite mess, five rubies show up and play baseball with them. their orders are to shatter peridot and recover jasper. forget about lapis she’s not important. steven persuades them to go to neptune. now they have four problems: internal disagreements and tensions, malachite, the cluster, and more of yd’s armies showing up any day now. AND THEY STILL CAN’T CONTACT HOMEWORLD!

now then, i'm going to nearly completely abandon the previous episode structure and go for something different entirely. i'm not going to point out particular episodes to be replaced, just general trends. here we go:

bismuth the episode still has to happen, but it’s going to change. first of all, bismuth doesn’t get re-bubbled at the end. secondly, the reason rose objects to the breaking point is pink diamond, because pink diamond was assassinated and rose objects to any more true deaths. bismuth points out that they can’t just shoo yellow diamond off and expect her to behave. even if they win, she’s going to come back! she’s not going to stop trying to take the earth and impose her own order onto the universe! she wants to put all the gems into boxes, instead of letting them decide their own paths, as the others had begun to. AND OH LOOK, GUESS WHO WAS FUCKING RIGHT?! the episode ends with steven accepting the lie his mother told and telling the gems the truth, beginning the process of the crystal gems breaking away from rose.

i would put bismuth near the beginning of the season, actually.

peridot, being the expert on the cluster, is the one who leads the efforts to try to destroy it permanently. the breaking point just isn’t enough to save those forcibly fused gems, though it HAS proven effective at breaking apart the smaller ones. in the process, steven, peridot, connie and bismuth make an effort to find out how exactly the song works.

meanwhile, the main three gems are still after malachite, and are trying to work through thousands of years of issues at the same time. pearl wasn’t a slave this time around, but a secretary of the worst stereotypical kind. if she wasn’t happy with that, but can’t win as a warrior… who is she? garnet's still stressed from having to lead the others, and these revelations about rose aren’t helping. there's a thousand ways this could go wrong and she has to be prepared for all of them. amethyst is struggling with her own self-esteem, especially after meeting jasper and learning that the person who valued her the most – rose quartz – was actually kinda dubious herself.

the fight to stop malachite takes a turn when to everyone’s surprise malachite doesn’t want to keep fighting. oh, lapis doesn’t want to be a prisoner again, and jasper would like to get off this planet tyvm, but malachite? she’s TIRED of this. so tired. she's got all three of the main trios’ issues at once: she doesn’t know who she is, she has to keep fighting when she doesn’t want to, and she REALLY hates herself.

in the meantime, team cluster find out more about pink diamond herself from bismuth. the four diamonds had different views on humans. yellow wanted to destroy them and use the earth, blue wanted to leave them alone and see how they developed, white was in the middle of yellow and blue, and pink wanted to co-operate with humanity. she was born on earth too, y’know!

…which leads to the big change: the humans get actively involved in understanding and fighting the corrupted gems. greg gets some better gear with his new cash and starts trying to make a song that can take on the corruption. kiki gets her hands on magic gem artefacts and starts learning how to use them. the cool kids lead the frontline efforts to protect the city, while mayor dewey organises things. onion’s capacity for mayhem, egged on by his parents, proves an effective anti-ruby deterrent. sadie still has her fish-murdering skills. lars gets a reality check and starts trying to use his experiences of being angry and bitter to relate to the corrupted gems. (lars the gem whisperer. everyone is stunned.) ronaldo’s blog becomes useful as he starts collating information on the gems and the things left behind. connie, who has the most gem experience, is working on the cluster but does help to rally the others.

ultimately, the endgame of this season occurs when malachite brings the three groups together by accident. this is when THE BIG REVEAL occurs about pink diamond.

pink diamond had herself martyred on purpose. blue and white weren’t coming to help, still too divided over what the proper thing to do with the earth was. she was desperate. she wanted to protect her planet. and so, she asked her greatest warrior to do something utterly unthinkable, something which would save the earth but at a massive price.

pink diamond asked rose quartz to kill her. to shatter her. to pretend to betray her and go over to yellow diamond. pink diamond’s death would get her sisters’ attention and pink diamond was willing to die for this belief in the potential of earth. but rose refused. she wouldn’t do it. she would not become a killer to save the earth. pink diamond pointed out the consequences if “winning peacefully” failed, rose quartz still refused. all life has value! but what about the lives of the humans, of all the other living beings of earth? rose, personally, refused to kill.

so jasper did it instead. that’s why she hates herself. rose quartz threw her under the bus, and she’s spend five thousand years working for “the enemy”, seen by all gems as the greatest murderer in the galaxy. and she can’t believe she did it, and regrets it every day, and has come to LOATHE the earth in response because it’s the only way she can cope with the guilt of killing her diamond.

ultimately, the cast face a revalation. a huge, horrible one. malachite actually finally defuses solely from lapis’s shock at the truth about pink diamond’s assassination. jasper is fully expecting to get shattered now. it's over and she can’t even be upset about it. she’s so upset, she loses control and starts to corrupt.

“…thanks, sis.”

jasper looks up from where she’s fallen. amethyst is there.

“okay, so… you did something horrible. something you feel so bad about, even to this day. and i totally get why! but, like… if you hadn’t done that, i wouldn’t be here. steven wouldn’t be here. none of these people would be here. and i know i'm super tiny and puny, but honestly? i’m glad i exist.”

and jasper just. looks at her in disbelief.

and one by one… all the gems there come out with their reactions to this mess. they all know that it’s wrong to kill, that jasper shouldn’t have been in this situation and neither should rose or pink diamond, but DAMN if the secrecy and lies that rose has spun around her to protect her own image aren’t rocking them right now. like, what the hell?!

but… jasper saved the human race, even if it was at a terrible cost. so the human race want to save her, too.

the first gem to be fully saved from corruption, through steven’s healing powers and the song that greg, connie and sour cream play, is jasper.

onwards?

beyond this, the focus of the show shifts. the crystal gems have reached a turning point – to be open with each other, to be honest, and to co-operate with humanity. i would just generally scrap s4 as is and focus on how the humans and gems come together to protect the earth and each other.

jasper and amethyst develop a sisterly relationship, and work through their self-esteem issues together. lapis seeks out a place in this new world and finds one, dealing with her trauma in her own way, and helping out with the defence effort because she is NEVER going to be a prisoner EVER AGAIN. peridot at some point obtains new limb enhancers and works with bismuth on making things to protect the town. (i would also throw in ame/dot after too far, BUT i am chill with anything that isn’t jas/pis or the godawful “canon” version of lapi/dot.)

the rubies show up again, and come to like earth too. from them, we get a perspective on yellow diamond’s regime from the very bottom – a place where no one can be themselves or express themselves outside of their caste. the rubies get a taste of freedom and go for it.

pearl moves on. if last one out of beach city happens, it’s not with someone who looks that much like rose. garnet doesn’t have to be “the strong one” anymore and can embrace who she really is. amethyst ditches her kayfabe to be a real hero this time. steven works through his complicated feelings on his mother alongside greg, and while he still loves her and believes in the peace she fought for, he is NOT gonna be like her. connie becomes independent and really, truly “grows up”.

the corrupted gem episodes change focus to dealing with the internal issues of each gem and healing them with the song they made. eventually, this can get upscaled to the cluster itself. that, along with desperately trying to contact homeworld, would be the plot of s4.

the gang do make it to homeworld, but in a different context. first of all that godawful zoo does not exist. secondly, blue diamond is far more sympathetic for a good reason – she’s heartbroken still about pink and is horrified to learn of what really happened to her sister. but hey, looks like pink was right about humans and gems working together. blue diamond – and eventually white diamond – agrees to send aid. help is coming, just hold out! that would likely be the s4 finale.

s5 is the war against yellow diamond. now, how they’d actually handle yellow is a bit awkward because we can’t ask a fourteen-year-old to kill someone and making someone else do it just repeats the problem with jasper! instead, steven is upfront about the fact that actually killing someone DOES sound really horrible in practise, and everyone’s sympathetic to his point there.

ultimately i would have an impaled on her own sword sort of affair. blue and white show up to help and yellow is pretty much outgunned. they tell yellow to stand down so they can sort this out, but yellow refuses and tries to attack with her own version of the breaking point or w/e. steven jumps in to protect whoever she’s attacking, and the shield makes the weapon rebound and hit yellow in the gem, shattering her.

the division of gems is over. blue and white will mourn both of their sisters, but will take yellow’s armies under their wings themselves. lapis returns to homeworld, FINALLY, but agrees to visit every so often because she’d miss her friends. the former corrupted gems spread out across the earth to spread the message: humanity has friends in the stars. we are strong, but you have an imagination and a capacity for freedom which we adore.

but there’s still some gems still corrupted, and a lot of the gem tech is still unsafe, and the second battle for earth caused a lot of damage. don't worry, though! because there’s a team of alien warriors who have dedicated themselves to protecting this planet in one way or another. they will be the bridge between humans and gems.

that’s why the people of this world believe in garnet, amethyst, pearl, peridot, bismuth, jasper…

…AND STEVEN!

#su critical #long post - #su spoilers -

[jeff-camello]

COVID-19 Lockdown: A Global Human Experiment

No matter what’s the origin of COVID-19, the response to this virus lead to a series of drastic and unprecedented changes on a global level. The dystopian future is now. Here’s how this pandemic created the largest human experiment in history.

 The response to the COVID-19 pandemic launched the largest human experiment in world history. At the moment of writing these lines, over a third of the global human population is forced into confinement. Furthermore, the global economy came to a screeching halt as several governments ordered the closing of all non-essential businesses. Never in world history have we seen such sweeping and far-reaching measures that affect each individual at such a profound level. In a matter of weeks, the ability of billions to move around freely and to earn a livelihood completely vanished.

 While these measures are said to be temporary in order to strop the propagation of the virus, an important fact remains: They’ve actually become a reality. And this means that they can easily become a reality at any point and time in the future.

Although it is comforting to think that our governments have our health and best interests at heart, it is rather naive to believe that the most powerful people in the world do not see this pandemic as an amazing opportunity. One of the elite’s favourite sayings is “never let a good crisis go to waste”. And this crisis is definitely not going to waste. This pandemic has enabled the “testing” of various authoritarian measures that are exactly in line with the world elite’s long-term plans. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a better plan to simultaneously terrify, isolate, subdue, impoverish and demoralize a society as a whole – creating the perfect context to reshape to fit specific interests.

 In short, the dystopian future is now. For years, this site has been warning about plans for a world government that is based on intense mass media indoctrination and high-tech police state surveillance. We are living all of this now – to a degree that many of us did not even fathom a few weeks ago.

 If this global lockdown lasts a few weeks, the world might recover and regain some sort of normality (until the next crisis). However, if this goes on months (as some experts predict), the impact on society will take on biblical proportions.

 Here’s a look at the many facets of this lockdown and their possible long-term impact on humanity as a whole:

 Mass Media Takeover:

 The first “symptom” of COVID-19 was the complete takeover of mass media on a global level. Nearly every media source – no matter its target audience or niche interest – switched to 24/7 COVID coverage. All other news topics became irrelevant and got evacuated from the public discourse. Nearly all forms of entertainment – most notably professional sports – were put on hold, forcing people to solely focus on the pandemic.

In newspapers, scoreboards displaying sports results were replaced with a morbid “deaths and confirmed cases” scoreboard that is custom-made to generate fear. Every day, billions of humans anxiously follow these “scores”, knowing that their freedom and livelihood depend solely on these government-issued numbers. If the numbers do not go down, the confinement goes on.

As COVID-19 took over mass media, popular culture as a whole instantly turned into a barren wasteland. There are no new cultural products and no artists releasing material that could ease minds, provide some entertainment or, perhaps, provide some much-needed insight. Most artists are reduced to social media “influencers” who repeat the Orwellian orders heard everywhere else around the world: “Stay home and wash your hands”.

In short, nearly all forms of social and cultural distractions were replaced with wall-to-wall COVID coverage. As people consume a steady stream of frightful news, levels of anxiety keep going up, creating an ideal context for the introduction of police-state measures. And these measures were welcomed with thundering applause.

   High - Tech Police State:

 The threat of a deadly pandemic is the perfect context to introduce aggressive police state tactics. People are scared and they want to see decisive measures taken by their government. However, once this is all said and done, will society recover 100% of its freedoms? Or will it gradually go back to about 50%, celebrating each percent as a victory?

The first casualty of the pandemic was air travel. Simply put, it just stopped. All flights were cancelled and people abroad were told to go back home as soon as possible. Once everyone got home, everyone was told to remain home. Then, in a matter of days, governments went from banning “large gatherings” to banning gatherings of “2+ people”.

These unprecedented restrictions on human contact generated a climate of fear and paranoia as people began to alert authorities of illegal gathering. While these “snitches” would argue that “the faster the epidemic is eradicated, the faster we all return to normalcy”, precedents are being set.

 The pandemic has also justified the use of high-tech surveillance at a level never seen before. Here are some examples from around the world:

 In China, government-installed CCTV cameras point at the apartment door of those under a 14-day quarantine to ensure they don’t leave. Drones tell people to wear their masks. Digital barcodes on mobile apps highlight the health status of individuals.

 In Singapore, the government rolled out an app called TraceTogether. It uses Bluetooth signals between cell phones to see if potential carriers of the coronavirus have been in close contact with other people.

 Over in Hong Kong, some residents were made to wear a wristband which linked to a smartphone app and could alert authorities if a person left their place of quarantine.

In South Korea, the government used records such as credit card transactions, smartphone location data and CCTV video as well as conversations with people, to create a system where confirmed cases were tracked. The result was a map that could tell people whether they had gone near a coronavirus carrier.

 On Thursday, the South Korean government launched an enhanced tool that it says can help track patients even more closely in near real time, in order to see where the disease was moving.

 Meanwhile, Israel’s security agency Shin Bet is using citizens’ cell phone location data to track where they’ve been so they can enforce quarantine controls and monitor the movements of those infected. Controversially, the data has been collected over the past few years and intended to for counterterrorism purposes, the New York Times reported. The newspaper said this data trove and the collection of it had not been previously reported.

 Some parts of India were stamping the hands of people arriving at airports telling them how long they had to be quarantined, Reuters reported. Reservation data from airlines and trains were being monitored to make sure those people didn’t travel, the report added. In the south Indian state of Kerala, authorities have been using a mixture of telephone call records, surveillance camera footage and phone location data to track down people who may have been in contact with coronavirus patients.

 In the U.S., the government is talking to Facebook, Google and other tech companies about the possibility of using location and movement data from Americans’ smartphones to combat coronavirus.

– CNBC, Use of surveillance to fight coronavirus raises concerns about government power after pandemic ends.

 Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project believes that most of these measures are here to stay. He stated: “We have absolutely no reason to believe that the government agencies that are eager to expand their power in response to COVID-19 will be willing to see those authorities lapse once the virus is eradicated.” The after-pandemic will lead to another major source of concern: The economy.

  Major Economy Shift:

 COVID-19 incited several governments to enact a controversial measure: The closing of all non-essential businesses. This led to millions of workers to instantly losing their jobs. It also led to some unhealthy wheeling-and-dealings with governments to determine which businesses are deemed essential or not.

While most major corporations will weather the storm and hire back employees, a great number of small and medium businesses will not survive the shutdown.

The situation also creates clear winners: Major chains such as Walmart, Costco, Walgreens, McDonald’s and Amazon. In fact, due to a staggering jump in sales, Amazon recently announced the hiring over 100,000 employees to help cope with the demand. However, not unlike most jobs available at these major chains, the offered pay nears minimum wage.

If the lockdown persists, we can expect a major shift in the global economy: Small and medium businesses will struggle and die while gigantic entities will thrive as they turn into monolithic “distribution centres” for essential goods.

To prevent a complete crash of the global economy, governments announced trillions of dollars in financial aid to those impacted by the shutdown. However, this money does not come out of thin air: It will result in massive debts and, most likely, higher taxes. In poorer countries, financial aid is rare or non-existent – a recipe for impending chaos.

In the end, all economic crises always end up favouring the elite. The net result of the financial crash of 2008 (and its bailouts) led to the funnelling of tens of trillions of dollars from the pockets of the middle class towards the world elite. This COVID crisis will most likely end with similar results.

   In Conclusion:

 While the above assessment might seem grim, it is an objective analysis of a planet in lockdown. In a matter of weeks, the entire planet went from normalcy to fear, panic, paranoia, confinement, unemployment, police-state surveillance and extreme social distancing. Millions of citizens who thrived on freedom and free enterprise are now on “house-arrest” and must rely on the government for subsistence.

Although the absolute necessity of these measures is up for debate, there is no possible debate about their necessity once the virus is gone. And we need to make sure that the dystopian nightmare we are living now does not become permanent. Because, right now, some power-hungry people are salivating and they will only want more of this.

In these critical times, we must keep track of the many way’s society is being altered and we must make sure that, once the virus is gone, liberty is fully restored. Because, as Thomas Jefferson said: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”.

 CTTO: Vigilant Citizen

[smartwebhostingblog]

This Shark Tank Startup Wants to Help You Crush the GMAT and Get Into a Top B-School

New Post has been published on http://openstackservers.com/this-shark-tank-startup-wants-to-help-you-crush-the-gmat-and-get-into-a-top-b-school/

This Shark Tank Startup Wants to Help You Crush the GMAT and Get Into a Top B-School

I checked in with Shaan to find out how he’s expanded his company — and what happens when your startup partners with Mark Cuban. 

Adam Grant recently said, “Those who can, don’t teach.” Yet clearly that’s not the case for you.

Prep Expert is a test-prep company I started in college after I raised my own SAT score from average to perfect.

My perfect SAT score changed my life. I was accepted into elite universities, won a half million dollars in scholarships, and even got the meet the President of the United States!

The goal was — and is — to help other students change their lives by improving their own test scores. After closing a deal with Mark Cuban on Shark Tank we have helped tens of thousands of students do exactly that: Improve their SAT and ACT scores and gain admission into the nation’s top universities… and many earn scholarships as well.  

So why a GMAT course? That’s a much smaller market.

Just like I launched an SAT course after my experience raising my own SAT score, I decided to launch a GMAT course after raising my own GMAT score 100 points.

Although I didn’t get a perfect GMAT score, my 98th percentile score helped me gain admission to the Yale School of Management, with scholarships. So I want to help other graduate business school hopefuls achieve their own MBA dreams.  

Let’s take a step back. Is going to business school worth it, especially for entrepreneurs? 

There is definitely a cost to going to business school. Not only is graduate business school tuition at at an all-time high, the opportunity cost of going to business school should also be calculated before any potential applicant considers going for an MBA.

I get that. But what about for entrepreneurs? 

I know: Every internet marketer says you don’t have to go to business school in order to become a successful entrepreneur.

While that is true, business school does help. As an entrepreneur who went to business school, I found business school offered three main advantages. First, the formal business education of operations, finance, economics, marketing, accounting and management helped me transform Prep Expert from an unorganized small business into one of the top test prep providers in the country — and into a company a guy like Mark Cuban wanted to invest in. Two, the network of like-minded entrepreneurs and mentors that business school offers is unmatched.

[embedded content]

And three, graduate business school can serve as a great launchpad to work on any business, with excellent advisors and feedback to help take your business to the next level.   

So let’s talk about the GMAT, a test I plan to never take. How similar is the GMAT to the SAT?

The SAT and GMAT are so similar that I used many of the SAT strategies I developed for Prep Expert to crush the GMAT. Unlike content-based exams like the ACT or MCAT, the SAT and GMAT are problem-solving based exams, and that allows students to use critical thinking to arrive at the correct answer.

What does that look like in practice?

Let’s start with the GMAT Quantitative section. It essentially tests math questions.

One GMAT Quant strategy we teach at Prep Expert is “Substitute Abstracts with Tangibles” or “SAT”. Using this strategy, we can avoid doing any algebra at all on many GMAT algebra problems. You simply plug in a tangible number (such as 2) for an abstract variable (such as x). Then, you determine which answer choice matches your tangible answer. 

Here’s an example. Imagine you’re given this question:

The expression (3x+2)/(x-4) is equivalent to which of the following?

A. (3+2)/(-4)

B. (3) – (2/4)

C. (3) + (2)/(x-4)

D. (3) + (14)/(x-4)

How can we solve this problem without using any algebra?

Start by picking a tangible number for x. You can pick any number you want because the whole point of algebra is to create expressions that are valid for all numbers. I like to start by making x equal 2 because it’s an easy number to work with.

So what happens to the original expression when x = 2?

(3x+2)/(x-4)

(3(2)+2)/((2)-4)

(6+2)/(-2)

Okay, so now we know that the original expression is equal to -4 when x is equal to 2. The next step is simply to find the answer choice that also equals -4 when x is equal to 2.

A. (3+2)/(-4), (5)/(-4), -1.25

B. (3) – (2/4), (3) – (½), 2.5

C. (3) + (2)/(x-4), (3) + (2)/(2-4), 2

D. (3) + (14)/(x-4), (3) + (14)/(2-4), -4

There you go! D is equal to -4 when x is equal to 2. So D is the answer.

What looks like a really complex problem becomes simple once you plug in x = 2.

Substitute Abstracts with Tangibles can be used on all kinds of problems beyond just algebra. And it works extremely well on the GMAT because with all the stress on test day, it’s great to have a simple strategy you can use when your brain can’t do the complex algebra, even if you normally know how to do the algebra. 

We train students in our Prep Expert GMAT Courses to think in terms of tangible numbers rather than abstract algebra, and their GMAT Quant scores skyrocket.

Even though math is not my friend, I get that. What about the Verbal section?

The GMAT Verbal section essentially tests reading. One GMAT Verbal strategy that will unlock this section for you is called “Build (Your) Own Simple Solution” or “BOSS”. BOSS will not only help you answer questions more accurately, but it will also save you a tremendous amount of time on the GMAT Verbal section, which is the section that many students struggle to finish on time.

When I took the GMAT, I always scored lowest on Verbal. I got a lot of questions wrong and failed to finish on time. Once I started using BOSS, I got a near-perfect GMAT Verbal score.

Build (Your) Own Simple Solution means writing down your answer to a verbal question before you look at the answer choices given to you by the GMAT. It’s a powerful technique because it ensures you won’t get distracted by the enticing — and incorrect — answer choices the GMAT test question writers use to try to trick you.

Think about it this way: There are five answer choices for every multiple-choice GMAT problem, and four out of those five answer choices are incorrect. That means every answer choice on the GMAT has an 80% chance of being wrong. If you believe a GMAT answer choice is correct then you are probably wrong, just based on statistics. 

The problem is worse on the GMAT Verbal section because most of the answer choices sound right. The only way you can eliminate the wrong ones is to have an idea of what the correct answer should be. You can do this by creating your own answer before looking at the distracting answer choices. By using BOSS you essentially create a picture of the right answer so you can select the answer choice that is most similar to your solution. 

Always write your BOSS solution in the scratch booklet. And keep in mind it doesn’t need to be long or complex. Your BOSS solution can be as simple as “good” or “bad.” The point is to write down a BOSS solution before you look at the distracting answer choices.

And don’t think it will slow you down. It will actually speed you up. Most of the time students spent on the GMAT Verbal section is not spent reading passages or writing notes. Instead, most of the time spent is wasted debating between answer choices. Does the following describe what goes on in your mind when you read answer choices?

A. “This sounds like the right answer…”

B. “Definitely not”

C. “This sounds good too…”

D. “Probably not.”

E. “Hmm. Maybe…”

So you spend a lot of time debating between answer choices A and C. Ultimately, you decide to go with answer choice C because it provides an insight that you had not thought of. Then when you get your test back you find out that the answer was A. You should have stuck to your gut in the first place and not wasted so much time debating between answer choices only to get the question wrong.

BOSS solves that problem. You don’t have to debate between A or C. Instead, if A is most similar to the solution you created, then A is the answer you choose. No time wasted.

That’s a useful tip when you’re preparing for a meeting, for a negotiation, etc. Knowing the “answer” ahead of time is really helpful.

So let’s talk about the Analytical Writing Assessment, which tends to be everyone’s least favorite section.

The GMAT Analytical Writing Assessment essentially tests your ability to write a well-reasoned essay.

Let’s say you don’t think you’re a good writer. No problem. We give students a GMAT AWA template that is basically a fill-in-the-blank skeleton for each paragraph you need to write for GMAT AWA Essay. 

How can a one-size-fits-all template work for every GMAT AWA section when the passage you have to analyze is different on every administration of the GMAT exam? The passage you have to analyze will always be argumentative. And there are only so many argumentative techniques an author can use in order to support their argument. So we’ve identified the most common problems with those arguments and incorporated them into the template.

For example, here’s our Introduction template for the GMAT AWA Essay:

The article’s conclusion that [conclusion] may or may not be accurate; what is certain, however, is that the argument offered in support of this conclusion is ill-considered and unpersuasive. One of the primary pieces of evidence offered in support of the article’s conclusion that [conclusion] is the fact that [first major piece of evidence]. This evidence, however, does little to support the article’s conclusion; it relies on several unjustified assumptions and ignores plausible alternative causes for the [evidence] cited. 

Say you’re asked to analyze a passage about gyms, and whether people care about physical strength. Here’s what the Introduction paragraph of your GMAT AWA Essay would like if you used our template:

The article’s conclusion that people care less about their physical strength than they have in the past may or may not be accurate; what is certain, however, is that the argument offered in support of this conclusion is ill-considered and unpersuasive. One of the primary pieces of evidence offered in support of the article’s conclusion that people are less concerned with developing physical strength is the fact that free weight sales are stagnant while profits on other types of exercise equipment – bicycles, treadmills, and rock climbing equipment, for instance – are increasing. This evidence, however, does little to support the article’s conclusion; it relies on several unjustified assumptions and ignores plausible alternative causes for the sales figures cited. 

With enough practice even people who think they are terrible writers can write essays like the one above. After all, thousands of students have used our essay templates to get perfect scores on their SAT Essays. Our approach works. And it will work just as well  on the GMAT. 

One thing I’m sure Shark Tank fans want to know: What’s it been like to partner with Mark Cuban? 

Not only do I email with Mark weekly, I also have access to the whole Mark Cuban Companies team. They have helped us revamp our website, create business development partnerships with companies like Amazon, and clean up some essential parts of the business, like accounting and finance.

[embedded content]

In addition, Mark has personally set up some big PR hits for the company. And he helped us double our licensing fees by negotiating on our behalf.

[awesomecolorfulcollectorwombat]

This Shark Tank Startup Wants to Help You Crush the GMAT and Get Into a Top B-School

New Post has been published on http://openstackservers.com/this-shark-tank-startup-wants-to-help-you-crush-the-gmat-and-get-into-a-top-b-school/

This Shark Tank Startup Wants to Help You Crush the GMAT and Get Into a Top B-School

I checked in with Shaan to find out how he’s expanded his company — and what happens when your startup partners with Mark Cuban. 

Adam Grant recently said, “Those who can, don’t teach.” Yet clearly that’s not the case for you.

Prep Expert is a test-prep company I started in college after I raised my own SAT score from average to perfect.

My perfect SAT score changed my life. I was accepted into elite universities, won a half million dollars in scholarships, and even got the meet the President of the United States!

The goal was — and is — to help other students change their lives by improving their own test scores. After closing a deal with Mark Cuban on Shark Tank we have helped tens of thousands of students do exactly that: Improve their SAT and ACT scores and gain admission into the nation’s top universities… and many earn scholarships as well.  

So why a GMAT course? That’s a much smaller market.

Just like I launched an SAT course after my experience raising my own SAT score, I decided to launch a GMAT course after raising my own GMAT score 100 points.

Although I didn’t get a perfect GMAT score, my 98th percentile score helped me gain admission to the Yale School of Management, with scholarships. So I want to help other graduate business school hopefuls achieve their own MBA dreams.  

Let’s take a step back. Is going to business school worth it, especially for entrepreneurs? 

There is definitely a cost to going to business school. Not only is graduate business school tuition at at an all-time high, the opportunity cost of going to business school should also be calculated before any potential applicant considers going for an MBA.

I get that. But what about for entrepreneurs? 

I know: Every internet marketer says you don’t have to go to business school in order to become a successful entrepreneur.

While that is true, business school does help. As an entrepreneur who went to business school, I found business school offered three main advantages. First, the formal business education of operations, finance, economics, marketing, accounting and management helped me transform Prep Expert from an unorganized small business into one of the top test prep providers in the country — and into a company a guy like Mark Cuban wanted to invest in. Two, the network of like-minded entrepreneurs and mentors that business school offers is unmatched.

[embedded content]

And three, graduate business school can serve as a great launchpad to work on any business, with excellent advisors and feedback to help take your business to the next level.   

So let’s talk about the GMAT, a test I plan to never take. How similar is the GMAT to the SAT?

The SAT and GMAT are so similar that I used many of the SAT strategies I developed for Prep Expert to crush the GMAT. Unlike content-based exams like the ACT or MCAT, the SAT and GMAT are problem-solving based exams, and that allows students to use critical thinking to arrive at the correct answer.

What does that look like in practice?

Let’s start with the GMAT Quantitative section. It essentially tests math questions.

One GMAT Quant strategy we teach at Prep Expert is “Substitute Abstracts with Tangibles” or “SAT”. Using this strategy, we can avoid doing any algebra at all on many GMAT algebra problems. You simply plug in a tangible number (such as 2) for an abstract variable (such as x). Then, you determine which answer choice matches your tangible answer. 

Here’s an example. Imagine you’re given this question:

The expression (3x+2)/(x-4) is equivalent to which of the following?

A. (3+2)/(-4)

B. (3) – (2/4)

C. (3) + (2)/(x-4)

D. (3) + (14)/(x-4)

How can we solve this problem without using any algebra?

Start by picking a tangible number for x. You can pick any number you want because the whole point of algebra is to create expressions that are valid for all numbers. I like to start by making x equal 2 because it’s an easy number to work with.

So what happens to the original expression when x = 2?

(3x+2)/(x-4)

(3(2)+2)/((2)-4)

(6+2)/(-2)

Okay, so now we know that the original expression is equal to -4 when x is equal to 2. The next step is simply to find the answer choice that also equals -4 when x is equal to 2.

A. (3+2)/(-4), (5)/(-4), -1.25

B. (3) – (2/4), (3) – (½), 2.5

C. (3) + (2)/(x-4), (3) + (2)/(2-4), 2

D. (3) + (14)/(x-4), (3) + (14)/(2-4), -4

There you go! D is equal to -4 when x is equal to 2. So D is the answer.

What looks like a really complex problem becomes simple once you plug in x = 2.

Substitute Abstracts with Tangibles can be used on all kinds of problems beyond just algebra. And it works extremely well on the GMAT because with all the stress on test day, it’s great to have a simple strategy you can use when your brain can’t do the complex algebra, even if you normally know how to do the algebra. 

We train students in our Prep Expert GMAT Courses to think in terms of tangible numbers rather than abstract algebra, and their GMAT Quant scores skyrocket.

Even though math is not my friend, I get that. What about the Verbal section?

The GMAT Verbal section essentially tests reading. One GMAT Verbal strategy that will unlock this section for you is called “Build (Your) Own Simple Solution” or “BOSS”. BOSS will not only help you answer questions more accurately, but it will also save you a tremendous amount of time on the GMAT Verbal section, which is the section that many students struggle to finish on time.

When I took the GMAT, I always scored lowest on Verbal. I got a lot of questions wrong and failed to finish on time. Once I started using BOSS, I got a near-perfect GMAT Verbal score.

Build (Your) Own Simple Solution means writing down your answer to a verbal question before you look at the answer choices given to you by the GMAT. It’s a powerful technique because it ensures you won’t get distracted by the enticing — and incorrect — answer choices the GMAT test question writers use to try to trick you.

Think about it this way: There are five answer choices for every multiple-choice GMAT problem, and four out of those five answer choices are incorrect. That means every answer choice on the GMAT has an 80% chance of being wrong. If you believe a GMAT answer choice is correct then you are probably wrong, just based on statistics. 

The problem is worse on the GMAT Verbal section because most of the answer choices sound right. The only way you can eliminate the wrong ones is to have an idea of what the correct answer should be. You can do this by creating your own answer before looking at the distracting answer choices. By using BOSS you essentially create a picture of the right answer so you can select the answer choice that is most similar to your solution. 

Always write your BOSS solution in the scratch booklet. And keep in mind it doesn’t need to be long or complex. Your BOSS solution can be as simple as “good” or “bad.” The point is to write down a BOSS solution before you look at the distracting answer choices.

And don’t think it will slow you down. It will actually speed you up. Most of the time students spent on the GMAT Verbal section is not spent reading passages or writing notes. Instead, most of the time spent is wasted debating between answer choices. Does the following describe what goes on in your mind when you read answer choices?

A. “This sounds like the right answer…”

B. “Definitely not”

C. “This sounds good too…”

D. “Probably not.”

E. “Hmm. Maybe…”

So you spend a lot of time debating between answer choices A and C. Ultimately, you decide to go with answer choice C because it provides an insight that you had not thought of. Then when you get your test back you find out that the answer was A. You should have stuck to your gut in the first place and not wasted so much time debating between answer choices only to get the question wrong.

BOSS solves that problem. You don’t have to debate between A or C. Instead, if A is most similar to the solution you created, then A is the answer you choose. No time wasted.

That’s a useful tip when you’re preparing for a meeting, for a negotiation, etc. Knowing the “answer” ahead of time is really helpful.

So let’s talk about the Analytical Writing Assessment, which tends to be everyone’s least favorite section.

The GMAT Analytical Writing Assessment essentially tests your ability to write a well-reasoned essay.

Let’s say you don’t think you’re a good writer. No problem. We give students a GMAT AWA template that is basically a fill-in-the-blank skeleton for each paragraph you need to write for GMAT AWA Essay. 

How can a one-size-fits-all template work for every GMAT AWA section when the passage you have to analyze is different on every administration of the GMAT exam? The passage you have to analyze will always be argumentative. And there are only so many argumentative techniques an author can use in order to support their argument. So we’ve identified the most common problems with those arguments and incorporated them into the template.

For example, here’s our Introduction template for the GMAT AWA Essay:

The article’s conclusion that [conclusion] may or may not be accurate; what is certain, however, is that the argument offered in support of this conclusion is ill-considered and unpersuasive. One of the primary pieces of evidence offered in support of the article’s conclusion that [conclusion] is the fact that [first major piece of evidence]. This evidence, however, does little to support the article’s conclusion; it relies on several unjustified assumptions and ignores plausible alternative causes for the [evidence] cited. 

Say you’re asked to analyze a passage about gyms, and whether people care about physical strength. Here’s what the Introduction paragraph of your GMAT AWA Essay would like if you used our template:

The article’s conclusion that people care less about their physical strength than they have in the past may or may not be accurate; what is certain, however, is that the argument offered in support of this conclusion is ill-considered and unpersuasive. One of the primary pieces of evidence offered in support of the article’s conclusion that people are less concerned with developing physical strength is the fact that free weight sales are stagnant while profits on other types of exercise equipment – bicycles, treadmills, and rock climbing equipment, for instance – are increasing. This evidence, however, does little to support the article’s conclusion; it relies on several unjustified assumptions and ignores plausible alternative causes for the sales figures cited. 

With enough practice even people who think they are terrible writers can write essays like the one above. After all, thousands of students have used our essay templates to get perfect scores on their SAT Essays. Our approach works. And it will work just as well  on the GMAT. 

One thing I’m sure Shark Tank fans want to know: What’s it been like to partner with Mark Cuban? 

Not only do I email with Mark weekly, I also have access to the whole Mark Cuban Companies team. They have helped us revamp our website, create business development partnerships with companies like Amazon, and clean up some essential parts of the business, like accounting and finance.

[embedded content]

In addition, Mark has personally set up some big PR hits for the company. And he helped us double our licensing fees by negotiating on our behalf.

[hostingnewsfeed]

This Shark Tank Startup Wants to Help You Crush the GMAT and Get Into a Top B-School

New Post has been published on http://openstackservers.com/this-shark-tank-startup-wants-to-help-you-crush-the-gmat-and-get-into-a-top-b-school/

This Shark Tank Startup Wants to Help You Crush the GMAT and Get Into a Top B-School

I checked in with Shaan to find out how he’s expanded his company — and what happens when your startup partners with Mark Cuban. 

Adam Grant recently said, “Those who can, don’t teach.” Yet clearly that’s not the case for you.

Prep Expert is a test-prep company I started in college after I raised my own SAT score from average to perfect.

My perfect SAT score changed my life. I was accepted into elite universities, won a half million dollars in scholarships, and even got the meet the President of the United States!

The goal was — and is — to help other students change their lives by improving their own test scores. After closing a deal with Mark Cuban on Shark Tank we have helped tens of thousands of students do exactly that: Improve their SAT and ACT scores and gain admission into the nation’s top universities… and many earn scholarships as well.  

So why a GMAT course? That’s a much smaller market.

Just like I launched an SAT course after my experience raising my own SAT score, I decided to launch a GMAT course after raising my own GMAT score 100 points.

Although I didn’t get a perfect GMAT score, my 98th percentile score helped me gain admission to the Yale School of Management, with scholarships. So I want to help other graduate business school hopefuls achieve their own MBA dreams.  

Let’s take a step back. Is going to business school worth it, especially for entrepreneurs? 

There is definitely a cost to going to business school. Not only is graduate business school tuition at at an all-time high, the opportunity cost of going to business school should also be calculated before any potential applicant considers going for an MBA.

I get that. But what about for entrepreneurs? 

I know: Every internet marketer says you don’t have to go to business school in order to become a successful entrepreneur.

While that is true, business school does help. As an entrepreneur who went to business school, I found business school offered three main advantages. First, the formal business education of operations, finance, economics, marketing, accounting and management helped me transform Prep Expert from an unorganized small business into one of the top test prep providers in the country — and into a company a guy like Mark Cuban wanted to invest in. Two, the network of like-minded entrepreneurs and mentors that business school offers is unmatched.

[embedded content]

And three, graduate business school can serve as a great launchpad to work on any business, with excellent advisors and feedback to help take your business to the next level.   

So let’s talk about the GMAT, a test I plan to never take. How similar is the GMAT to the SAT?

The SAT and GMAT are so similar that I used many of the SAT strategies I developed for Prep Expert to crush the GMAT. Unlike content-based exams like the ACT or MCAT, the SAT and GMAT are problem-solving based exams, and that allows students to use critical thinking to arrive at the correct answer.

What does that look like in practice?

Let’s start with the GMAT Quantitative section. It essentially tests math questions.

One GMAT Quant strategy we teach at Prep Expert is “Substitute Abstracts with Tangibles” or “SAT”. Using this strategy, we can avoid doing any algebra at all on many GMAT algebra problems. You simply plug in a tangible number (such as 2) for an abstract variable (such as x). Then, you determine which answer choice matches your tangible answer. 

Here’s an example. Imagine you’re given this question:

The expression (3x+2)/(x-4) is equivalent to which of the following?

A. (3+2)/(-4)

B. (3) – (2/4)

C. (3) + (2)/(x-4)

D. (3) + (14)/(x-4)

How can we solve this problem without using any algebra?

Start by picking a tangible number for x. You can pick any number you want because the whole point of algebra is to create expressions that are valid for all numbers. I like to start by making x equal 2 because it’s an easy number to work with.

So what happens to the original expression when x = 2?

(3x+2)/(x-4)

(3(2)+2)/((2)-4)

(6+2)/(-2)

Okay, so now we know that the original expression is equal to -4 when x is equal to 2. The next step is simply to find the answer choice that also equals -4 when x is equal to 2.

A. (3+2)/(-4), (5)/(-4), -1.25

B. (3) – (2/4), (3) – (½), 2.5

C. (3) + (2)/(x-4), (3) + (2)/(2-4), 2

D. (3) + (14)/(x-4), (3) + (14)/(2-4), -4

There you go! D is equal to -4 when x is equal to 2. So D is the answer.

What looks like a really complex problem becomes simple once you plug in x = 2.

Substitute Abstracts with Tangibles can be used on all kinds of problems beyond just algebra. And it works extremely well on the GMAT because with all the stress on test day, it’s great to have a simple strategy you can use when your brain can’t do the complex algebra, even if you normally know how to do the algebra. 

We train students in our Prep Expert GMAT Courses to think in terms of tangible numbers rather than abstract algebra, and their GMAT Quant scores skyrocket.

Even though math is not my friend, I get that. What about the Verbal section?

The GMAT Verbal section essentially tests reading. One GMAT Verbal strategy that will unlock this section for you is called “Build (Your) Own Simple Solution” or “BOSS”. BOSS will not only help you answer questions more accurately, but it will also save you a tremendous amount of time on the GMAT Verbal section, which is the section that many students struggle to finish on time.

When I took the GMAT, I always scored lowest on Verbal. I got a lot of questions wrong and failed to finish on time. Once I started using BOSS, I got a near-perfect GMAT Verbal score.

Build (Your) Own Simple Solution means writing down your answer to a verbal question before you look at the answer choices given to you by the GMAT. It’s a powerful technique because it ensures you won’t get distracted by the enticing — and incorrect — answer choices the GMAT test question writers use to try to trick you.

Think about it this way: There are five answer choices for every multiple-choice GMAT problem, and four out of those five answer choices are incorrect. That means every answer choice on the GMAT has an 80% chance of being wrong. If you believe a GMAT answer choice is correct then you are probably wrong, just based on statistics. 

The problem is worse on the GMAT Verbal section because most of the answer choices sound right. The only way you can eliminate the wrong ones is to have an idea of what the correct answer should be. You can do this by creating your own answer before looking at the distracting answer choices. By using BOSS you essentially create a picture of the right answer so you can select the answer choice that is most similar to your solution. 

Always write your BOSS solution in the scratch booklet. And keep in mind it doesn’t need to be long or complex. Your BOSS solution can be as simple as “good” or “bad.” The point is to write down a BOSS solution before you look at the distracting answer choices.

And don’t think it will slow you down. It will actually speed you up. Most of the time students spent on the GMAT Verbal section is not spent reading passages or writing notes. Instead, most of the time spent is wasted debating between answer choices. Does the following describe what goes on in your mind when you read answer choices?

A. “This sounds like the right answer…”

B. “Definitely not”

C. “This sounds good too…”

D. “Probably not.”

E. “Hmm. Maybe…”

So you spend a lot of time debating between answer choices A and C. Ultimately, you decide to go with answer choice C because it provides an insight that you had not thought of. Then when you get your test back you find out that the answer was A. You should have stuck to your gut in the first place and not wasted so much time debating between answer choices only to get the question wrong.

BOSS solves that problem. You don’t have to debate between A or C. Instead, if A is most similar to the solution you created, then A is the answer you choose. No time wasted.

That’s a useful tip when you’re preparing for a meeting, for a negotiation, etc. Knowing the “answer” ahead of time is really helpful.

So let’s talk about the Analytical Writing Assessment, which tends to be everyone’s least favorite section.

The GMAT Analytical Writing Assessment essentially tests your ability to write a well-reasoned essay.

Let’s say you don’t think you’re a good writer. No problem. We give students a GMAT AWA template that is basically a fill-in-the-blank skeleton for each paragraph you need to write for GMAT AWA Essay. 

How can a one-size-fits-all template work for every GMAT AWA section when the passage you have to analyze is different on every administration of the GMAT exam? The passage you have to analyze will always be argumentative. And there are only so many argumentative techniques an author can use in order to support their argument. So we’ve identified the most common problems with those arguments and incorporated them into the template.

For example, here’s our Introduction template for the GMAT AWA Essay:

The article’s conclusion that [conclusion] may or may not be accurate; what is certain, however, is that the argument offered in support of this conclusion is ill-considered and unpersuasive. One of the primary pieces of evidence offered in support of the article’s conclusion that [conclusion] is the fact that [first major piece of evidence]. This evidence, however, does little to support the article’s conclusion; it relies on several unjustified assumptions and ignores plausible alternative causes for the [evidence] cited. 

Say you’re asked to analyze a passage about gyms, and whether people care about physical strength. Here’s what the Introduction paragraph of your GMAT AWA Essay would like if you used our template:

The article’s conclusion that people care less about their physical strength than they have in the past may or may not be accurate; what is certain, however, is that the argument offered in support of this conclusion is ill-considered and unpersuasive. One of the primary pieces of evidence offered in support of the article’s conclusion that people are less concerned with developing physical strength is the fact that free weight sales are stagnant while profits on other types of exercise equipment – bicycles, treadmills, and rock climbing equipment, for instance – are increasing. This evidence, however, does little to support the article’s conclusion; it relies on several unjustified assumptions and ignores plausible alternative causes for the sales figures cited. 

With enough practice even people who think they are terrible writers can write essays like the one above. After all, thousands of students have used our essay templates to get perfect scores on their SAT Essays. Our approach works. And it will work just as well  on the GMAT. 

One thing I’m sure Shark Tank fans want to know: What’s it been like to partner with Mark Cuban? 

Not only do I email with Mark weekly, I also have access to the whole Mark Cuban Companies team. They have helped us revamp our website, create business development partnerships with companies like Amazon, and clean up some essential parts of the business, like accounting and finance.

[embedded content]

In addition, Mark has personally set up some big PR hits for the company. And he helped us double our licensing fees by negotiating on our behalf.