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i-do-trash-fanfictions · 3 years

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Thera’s Journal Entry #54

I heard the door slide open and I looked up. Ann was standing in the doorway and walked in, then plopped down on a chair like she owned the place, pushing the fuzzy decorative pillow (which Crow had gotten me) to the floor.

This was my off day for the week. Or, sort-of-off day. I had some scouting to do on Europa late that night, which I wasn’t happy about. I wasn’t overly fond of the cold planet to begin with, and the weather and temperature wasn’t really better at night fall.

“So what’s up?” I asked, setting aside the holopad I had been scrolling through.

“You know how you haven’t had a chance to meet my new friends yet?” Ann began.

Ann had recently found a set of Guardians to become friends with. Four of them to be exact. A warlock, a titan, and two hunters. I was happy for her, even if that meant she would spend a lot of her time now going on missions with them instead of me. That had been the case lately. I would be free to do something with her, or I’d have a mission that Ikora would tell me I could do with another Guardian, but she would be wrapped up with one or all of her new friends. But I knew how it felt, having friends like that.

I nodded to Ann. She had wanted me to meet them, but all at once, which was hard to do since at least one would be on a mission, and we could never find the time where we were all free.

“Well, they’re all free. And I’m free. And your free. If you’d like, they’re all hanging out on the EDZ. I want to surprise them and show up with you.”

“I suppose we can. I can’t see why not.” I answered.

Ann shot up from her chair, ready to go. I followed close behind.

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“So who are all of them again?” I asked over the coms. Ann was in her own jumpship nearby.

“Okay, you’ve got Alex. He’s the awoken hunter with the dark blue hair and the orange eyes. Then you’ve got Lana, she’s the other hunter. She’s human, and I’m pretty sure she’s the youngest of the four. Then there’s Jacks-4, the titan and the exo. Lana told me he’s the oldest. And finally there’s Mason, but we all call him Mace, and he’s the warlock with the fluffy dirty blonde hair.”

I nodded. I was sure that they would all introduce themselves, but I would still like to know their names before hand.

We couldn’t land our ships, too many trees, and there wasn’t a big enough area, so we simply swooped down. I saw Ann’s four friends all look up. They sat around a rather large bonfire, and some had bottles in their hands.

Our Ghosts transmatted us out. Ann first, and then me right behind her. Mace, Jacks, Lana, and Alex, all stood in surprise.

“Is that the Young Wolf?!” Lana said excitedly, as if she couldn’t believe that I was right there in front of her.

“It is. Wanted to surprise you guys, so I brought her along. Thera, meet the gang.” Ann gestured to all of them.

I wasn’t sure what to do, and I couldn’t believe it, but I actually felt nervous.

“Hello,” I said rather awkwardly.

Alex turned and grabbed up an unopened bottle of alcohol, said “Catch.”, and then threw it at me. I caught it and opened it, then took a swig.

“Don’t feel intimidated.” I stated.

“Do you mind if we ask you questions?” Jacks asked me as he sat back down near the fire.

“Not at all. Ask away.”

They all sat again, and I sat beside Ann.

“Ya’ll shoulda seen the looks on your faces when the Young Wolf pulled up.” Said Mace with a grin.

Lana looked at him. “Mace, you had on the exact same expression. You’re sitting over there as if you knew the entire time when we all know you didn’t.”

Mace shrugged picked up a book from beside him and opened to a page. He pulled the pencil out from where it had been behind his ear, and began to scribble.

“So, I suppose before we ask questions, we should tell a bit about ourselves. I’ll do the honors of giving you the run down.” Said Alex as he stood on a tree stump nearby.

He pointed to Mace, “Artistic and sarcastic.” Then to Jacks, “The titan Dad of the group who wants to make sure we all have fun but stay safe.” Then to Lana, “She’s the youngest and Jack’s favorite.”

“What about yourself, Alex?” Lana asked.

“Me? I’m the cool one.”

Ann, Jacks, Lana, and Mace all laughed as if it were the funniest joke ever told. I giggled a little at Alex who faked a pout and crossed his arms. Alex sat down.

“So Thera, tell us a little about yourself.” Lana asked.

“Well,” I tried to think about what to say. “I suppose you know everything there is about me. All that hero stuff and what not. That’s all that’s important.”

“No, no, tell us about the little things. Hobbies and what not.”

“Um, well, I like to cook and bake. Though it’s hard to find the time.” I said.

“She makes some good cookies.” Ann told them.

“You should bring some. If anybody likes cookies it’s Jacks.” Said Mace.

“I thought exos don’t eat?” Asked Alex.

“We can, but don’t have to to survive like you all do.” Jacks answered and Alex opened his mouth. “And before you ask, yes, I can still taste.” Alex closed his mouth.

Jacks turned to me. “Thera, if you don’t mind me asking, why aren’t you seen around the Tower much?”

“You make it sound as if I never go out at all.”

“Well it’s just that usually, Guardians don’t see you walking around. Sometimes they will, but not very often.”

“I like being by myself a lot of the time. It’s just an introvert being an introvert really. I’ll go out every once in a while to pick up bounties, turn in bounties, and maybe talk to Ikora or someone, but that’s about it.”

“Do you go out in the City much?” Asked Lana.

“No. Not really. Every now and then I’ll head out with Ann and Shaxx to play dodgeball with the kids.”

“Oh I love the children of the City.” Lana gushed. “I’ll try to go down there at least once every month to talk to them.”

I nodded. “They are very sweet.”

I looked over to the side, where all the Ghosts were clustered together.

“I have an idea.” Said Ann, following my gaze. “Hey Ghosts! Come back here for a minute!”

The Ghosts all returned to their Guardians. Scout lowered down to rest on my knee.

“How about,” Began Ann. “We all tell how we decided on our Ghost’s names?”

Everyone nodded, and even the Ghosts bobbed up and down.

“And you Ghosts can chime in whenever you want to add or subtract from the story. I know some people here who will definitely add in some white lies to their stories.” Ann continued.

Alex leaned over and whispered something to his Ghost.

Ann pointed at his Ghost. “And Chase you better not lie for him!”

We laughed.

We began with Jacks, who said he decided on the name Zuza after she had always stopped to look and scan flowers no matter where they were. Zuza was a name that meant lily. Lana smiled, finding it very cute.

Alex told how he called his Chase, because the Ghost (who was smaller than the rest) had ran down a fallen dreg after they had stolen his gun (which Alex explained had been given to him by Shaxx after a win streak in the Crucible quite soon after he arrived at the Tower after being rezzed). And the Ghost had managed to track down the dreg, reaching them with Alex close behind. Chase had decided to add a detail Alex had forgotten. Chase had been ten times faster than Alex, and had been quite a ways ahead of him the entire time.

Lana said that she had named her Ghost Reeva a week after her rez, because of her fascination with the stars.

Then Ann explained how she had been rezzed in the Cosmodrome in one of the many rusted cars. But, that around the cars there had somehow been poppies growing there.

Mace told his story of how he had been rezzed on a large cliff side and that it was at the break of dawn when he took in his first breath of a new life.

Then, all heads turned to me, and I began mine...

(Yes, I did decide to end it before Thera told how she found the name Scout. But I intend to write that part tomorrow.)

#destiny 2 #destiny #destiny guardians #destiny game #theras journal entries

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hermanwatts · 5 years

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The Avenger and Awaken Online: Ember

“In the roaring heart of the crucible, steel is made. In the raging flame of tragedy, men are forged into something more than human.

“Crime’s greed turned the retired adventurer, Richard Henry Benson, into—

“The Avenger.”

Some men are, like Doc Savage, raised from birth to fight crime. Others, like the Shadow, just want to watch the underworld burn. Benson, however, was made at the very moment when his wife and daughter vanished mid-flight from the seats next to his. Everyone thinks Benson is insane, with a brain flu that tells him he has family not his own. But cracks form in that gaslighting when a cabbie tells Benson that he remembers Benson together with his family. Suddenly, Benson, now a man of steel and gray, leaps into action.

During his treatment in the sanitorium, Benson’s face was paralyzed and his complexion reduced to a ghostly pallor. Clad in gray, he looks more like a gun waiting to fire than a man. And his first taste of vengeance is three toughs trying to silence his investigations. Benson subdues the men for the police, who release the criminals hours later. But the encounter was worthwhile, for it leads him to Fergus MacMurdie, who wants to help Benson.

MacMurdie has a special hate for mobsters, who killed his family in an insurance-racket bombing. MacMurdie recognizes a kindred spirit, and, even better for Benson, he knows that more people have vanished during similar routine flights on the same flight path. The two men decide to work together to investigate. There’s just one rule:

No Police.

Their first investigation reveals the plane and the trapdoor used to get Benson’s wife and daughter off the plane. But the mechanics capture Benson. Thanks to a disguise, the crooks think Benson is a detective, and not himself. Benson escapes after they attempt to murder him. He discovers another scheme by the same gang against a millionaire. The rich man is disappeared, but not before Benson picks up another ally: Smitty, an MIT engineer fallen on hard times. With that, the core for what will become Justice, Inc. is assembled.

Benson and companions finally trace the operation to an island in the Great Lakes in a bit of a running rollercoaster of action sequences. While there, they break up the gang, rescue the millionaire, and discover the motive and method for the sky disappearances. But Benson’s family is nowhere to be found. Fueled by the faintest of hopes and a burning desire to stamp out the kinds of men who robbed him of his family, Benson sets up shop with his companions in New York and becomes–

The Avenger!

The Avenger succeeds at being the third of a power trio of heroes where The Whisperer failed in that, while both are inspired by Doc and The Shadow, The Avenger is not copying either the way the Whisperer did. The personal stakes are also higher and relatable in The Avenger, and, while Benson does take a few lumps in the course of learning his new trade, he isn’t getting jobbed out to every henchman, so he stays strong in the readers’ eyes, unlike Wildcat Gordon. And, those few lumps Benson gets, he immediately gets payback for, as well.

The difference comes down to relatability, and what fosters it. The Avenger shows that common experience, that of the sorrow of losing a loved one, matters more than looking like the audience, the way The Whisperer’s Wildcat Gordon and his folksiness attempted to.

The Avenger was born out of a need to fill the demand for more Doc Savage and Shadow stories. Try as Dent and Gibson might, two stories a month was about the limit of the production pipeline. So a third hero pulp was created, with significant input from Dent and Gibson. The two-fisted action and the aversion to murder are straight from Doc Savage, while the imposing visage and penchant for misdirection and disguise are from the Shadow. But it’s pulp veteran Paul Ernst that makes Benson’s quest for his family a real page-turner.

Successful in weird fiction, detective fiction, science fiction and more, Ernst concentrates on telling a compelling story without feeling the need to copy Dent or Gibson’s word choice and style. The familiar tag waving of Dent and Gibson’s refrain of…The Shadow! aren’t here. As such, The Avenger is a solid introduction to the hero pulps, especially for those current-day readers unused to the thcker styles of the Man of Bronze or the Knight of Darkness.

Ever since his wife died in an accident, elder programmer Finn Harris has been a sullen hermit. But when his daughter browbeats him into trying the new Awaken Online game, he finds himself in a new world, with new challenges, and the favor of an elemental god. What started as a simple quest to get his online passwords back from his well-meaning but mischievous daughter turned into a quest to win a brutal mages’ tournament and a kingdom. For Finn’s connection to Awaken Online runs deeper that he knows, and the elemental god’s quest reward is something he cannot ignore—the return of his wife.

Awaken Online: Ember, by Travis Bagwell, is the first in a side series to Awaken Online, a futuristic litRPG power fantasy that delves into the reasons why people pursue power. While the main series concerns itself more with evil—true evil, not edgy heroes in black or mustache twirling villains—Ember instead examines curiosity, challenge, and obsession. This is a relief, as the main AO series is a little too good at giving agency to evil. Finn is driven by the need to tinker with and improve upon puzzles, and his puzzle is the linguistic key to Awaken Online’s magic system. And he needs to master it quickly, as he has been thrown into a meatgrinder of an Arena PvP tournament.

Finn is yet another retiree in a recent line of older, more mature, and more experienced litRPG and progression fantasy protagonists. Much of progression fantasy deals with min/maxing a set of existing rules into overwhelming advantages instead of relying on strength. While young power gamers have the drive, age and treachery have their benefits, too. A lifetime of experience offers the ability to perceive more opportunities as well as understand more ways to seize the moment than just force. However, moody widower moving heaven and earth to be reunited with his lost wife is starting to become cliché.

Bagwell manages the delicate balance between game system mechanics and story, minimizing the exposition needed to cover the myriad little progressions Finn makes as he levels up in game. This allows more focus to be spent on the action in the duels and the various challenges that chivy Finn towards victory. That Finn will win is not in doubt—especially for those who have read the main series—but the journey is where the fun is.

The Avenger and Awaken Online: Ember published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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