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inkribbon796 · 4 years

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Shutdown Ch. 3

Chapter 3: Damage Control

Summary: Logan finally finds Nate and things continue to escalate.

Chapter: 1, 2, 3

Nate was talking with a couple of Legionnaire hunters in some bar when he got a text from both Bing and Marvin that Logan was heading his way, and that he was acting weird.

Problem number one: he preferred not to be seen with the other hunters around the Coalition. Especially since the hunters didn’t like how “permissive” Nate was about them keeping demons under their roof. The singer took great joy in telling them to take their heads out of their asses and not to attack people. And that he was not going to help them until they stopped.

Problem number two: he very possibly more than a little bit drunk.

“Hey Nate, you might want to watch out. Logan’s upset.” It was from Bing.

“In fine,” Nate struggled to text.

That was when Marvin rushed in, he took one look at the hunters and said, “Get outta here, Google’s coming an’ he’ll kill yah guys if he sees yeh, come on Nate.”[1]

“Come on, let’s wait for Lo,” Nate told him, before the singer called over to the bartender. “Hey Greg, can I get a gin and tonic for my friend, he’s coming in.”

“Nope, nope,” Marvin said and after a couple minutes was able to pull Nate out of the bar. The hunters didn’t leave but they hung around the area.

“Come on Nate, help me out a little” Marvin muttered. Silver flying overhead with Henrik, Patton, and a couple of bags.

“I haven’t had drinks with Logan in ages, I’ve been out of town doing fuck all,” Nate complained.

“Yeah, whose fault is that?” Marvin retorted as he dragged him out.

“It’s freezing out here,” Nate complained. Mare was getting antsy, clearly better able to read the room — so to speak — than his inebriated host.

“Sharp!” Logan called as he walked over, still in his uniform, Roman hot on his heels. Google kept his distance as Bing and Jackie were braced for trouble.

“Ahhh, hey Lo,” Nate smiled, even after Logan walked over and ripped the singer out of Marvin’s hands and slammed him against the brick wall of the bar.

“What the fook[2]!” Marvin spat in surprise. Logan wasn’t violent. Logan at least tried to communicate.

“Where is it?” Logan demanded.

“Hmm, what?” Nate slurred. He was tired, and maybe he was a little more drunk than he thought he was.

Logan’s hands got a little close to Nate’s throat. “My camera, what did you do with it?”

“You said it was fine,” Nate reminded.

“You stole from me!” Logan spat in a rage. “Give it back.”

“Logic,” Silver warned, putting a hand on the Side’s shoulder. “Let’s go back to the base and talk this over.”

“So he can steal from me again?” Logan spat and shoved into Silver with much more force than the other hero expected. He could have easily withstood the shove and not moved but he wasn’t expecting it.

Mare was finally fed up with the situation and easily pushed himself into control of the body, surging out of the necklace and grabbing onto Logan’s wrist with a false light grip. “Hey hero, let’s not make a scene in front of people.”

The Side looked back at Mare and Nate, dark lines coming down from Mare’s eyes. The arm of the suit briefly vibrated for a second before Mare felt electricity coursing through the body. He quickly kicked Logan away before he could do damage the demon couldn’t block.

“All this for a fucking splitter?” Mare shouted. “Thought you were the smart one.”

“I don’t care what you two want it for,” Logan proclaimed, “he stole it from me and everyone is insisting I keep waiting until he gives it back.”

“Come on Nate,” Mare decided, “time to sober up. I think it’s time you got a nightcap, buddy.”

“I just don’t understand why I am forced to sit idly by while things are taken from me,” Logan spat.

“Yeah well Nate’s drunk, so you’ll have to wait until he’s sober again,” Mare told him.

Logan went quiet for a second before something that looked like brass knuckles shot out of his suit and Mare didn’t like the look of them. He knew Logic wasn’t a brawler, so there was no way he was just planning on beating the shit out of Nate and taking the camera off his broken body.

“Okay, alright,” Mare began sliding along the wall, trying to put distance between Nate and Logan, “I’m still using this body, just don’t hit the face. I need it.”

“You demons and your face fixation is a little unnerving,” Roman commented.

“You’d be surprised what you can get away with if you have a nice face,” Mare defended. “If I wanted absolute power I could get that just about anywhere.”

Logan went to hit Nate’s chest, clearly just trying to get into contact with him rather than go for a quick knockout.

“Hey!” Mare yelled.

“Bing, get the can opener,” Silver ordered.

Bing was quick to move it and between Silver holding him down and Bing working with the nanites they got the suit fully turned off.

Logan stopped talking and fighting, just quietly laying there, Mare released Nate who looked a bit more sober and hungover than before and he rubbed at his eyes as Henrik began trying to find what was wrong.

“He said he was fine with me holding onto it,” Nate grumbled, keeping his eyes on the bar. None of the other Legionnaires had come out of help or confront him about Mare.

“I guess he wasn’t,” Roman commented.

“You okay?” Patton asked Nate.

“My head feels like sandpaper and my mouth feels like ass,” Nate grumbled. “I’ll be fine.”

Henrik directed Silver to take Logan to the hospital since he: A— wasn’t breathing; B— didn’t have a heartbeat; and C— was cold to the touch.

Mare quickly took back control of Nate’s body and just ran off into the night before anyone could stop him, and Google stayed following from a distance. He didn’t go into the hospital but he was very clearly watching from a distance for a while before leaving to take his notes and test back to his workshop.

Virgil raced into the hospital, since he’d been called by Patton about what was going on. He proceeded to freak out and have a mental breakdown.

At this moment several things were missed. A swath of freckles covered by a mask. The fact that Virgil’s eyeshadow was always dark and did weird things sometimes. And since people tend not to look down when directed, there was a black stain on the hem of Roman’s normally perfectly white coat.

Logan was admitted to a room for treatment where the doctors stated that he was still pumping blood and his heartbeat had returned, but he wasn’t breathing so he was going to be kept for tests.

After everyone had called asleep, Janus slipped in, disguised as a nurse. He’d been watching for a couple hours, waiting for his moment to move in.

Janus sighed as he walked in, looking at all the Sides. More importantly he looked at the new additions on the Sides. The freckles, the deep black eyeshadow, the black tinge on a coat, and most damning of all Logan laying there in the middle, not breathing.

A deeper sigh came from his chest. “Oh Logan, what have you done?”

From his caplet he pulled a spell book, and flipped it open to a page before he started chanting a spell. He made sure to do so quietly so that none of the Light Sides would wake up. His aura lit up into a magical circle around the Light Sides.

Once Janus stopped speaking, Logan drew in a breath and everything finally went back to normal. Patton’s face had his normal late winter pallor. Roman’s coat was its normal color. Virgil’s eyeshadow looked slightly lighter.

Janus let out a sigh of relief, using his nurse illusion again but promising, “Don’t worry, I won’t let this happen again.”

Carefully the deceitful protective Side left the room and the hospital was left none the wiser.

After the warehouse the silent sniper had followed Google outside the bar until the other heroes had swarmed around Logic. The accidental victim had seemed fine, a little more aggressive than he was usually reported as being. But then there was all this talk about a lack of a heartbeat, and Nate had clearly been possessed and slipped off into the night without waiting to talk to anyone.

Or more likely the demon suspected it would be forcibly placed back into containment.

It wasn’t until the coast was clear that the hunter got into a car and drove just outside of Gainesville city limits while they could still reach the location. It looked like a simple storefront if not for the plain clothes agents inside.

The hunter flashed a quick ID badge and the guards let the hunter in, barely offering a comment as they headed down the stairs to a room where there were four people talking. Three men in suits, and a woman wearing a cloak with rune tattoos going up and down her arms.

The hunter threw the crossbow down in front of the woman, “You gave me the wrong spell.”

“Excuse me,” one of the men in suits barked angrily. “We are having a discussion, if you could wait until we’re done.”

“No, they were sent to get Google, I want to hear how it went,” one of the other men in suits commented, he was in front of a laptop working on something.

“Fine,” the first spat. “I can already see it didn’t work.”

“Calm down,” the woman told him. “What happened?”

“I had the robot in my sights but the arrow hit the hero instead,” Taylor told her. “He saw me, I was told he was a null. I shouldn’t have even been able to hit him by accident.”

“You’re positive that it was one of the null heroes?” She asked.

“Director,” one of the agents walked in with a new folder and handed it to the more frustrated suited man before he handed it to the man who was in front of the computer.

“This thing should be decommissioned and ripped apart,” he commented, Wezel remembering how Google had almost killed him in his own office. “At least the other one doesn’t try to rip your nuts off.”

“I’m not losing all the resources we dumped into it, I want this thing back,” the Director reminded. “If I have to get them back as scrap, I’ll take it.”

“Fine,” Wezel snapped. “Would help if you all used the stuff I made.”

“We did,” Taylor snapped. “It targeted someone else.”

“That’s impossible,” Wezel insisted. “It wasn’t designed to work on people.”

“Well that obviously doesn’t seem like the case,” the third man in a suit commented. His suit was an off beige and his tie was a blood red color. His smile was as sharp as broken glass.

The Actor’s placement was off but he fit like a puzzle piece, forced into place and his aura dampened to look human.

“I don’t care what it seems like, you can’t give someone a computer virus,” Wezel snapped.

“I think maybe you can,” the Actor smiled confidently.

“No, you can’t,” Wezel pulled a file out of the stack and slid it over to the Actor. “Here, take it and just go already.”

The Actor stood up, flipping through it, “Screw this robot hunt, Dames is mayor again.”

“We have more important things to worry about than a corrupt politician,” the Director reminded firmly. “But if you want to deal with it, be my guest.”

“Nice, ah-score,” the Actor smiled and kept flipping through the folder until he found a set of pictures stapled onto the folder to keep them from falling out.

They were different pictures of Dark’s Lost Ones, the Actor ignored all the others to the side and ripped Illinois’s picture out.

“You sure this kid is Wil’s?” The Actor chuckled. “Looks a bit too good looking to come from that sleaze ball.”

“Who cares at this point?” Taylor commented. “They’re all spawnlings by now.”

“Well I lost something a couple years back, looks like Dames found him for me,” Marc smiled, taking the picture as he stood up. “You need me for anything else, Director?”

“No,” the Director scoffed. “As far as I’m concerned, you and these other magic freaks can all get lost.”

“Alright, see you all around then,” the Actor just walked out, whistling to himself as he left, a slight skip in his step.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Accessibility Translations

1. Get out of here, Google’s coming and he’ll kill you guys if he sees you, come on Nate.

2. fuck

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un-enfant-immature · 5 years

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Up close with Google’s budget Chromebook, the Pixelbook Go

The Chromebook has been a marked hit for Google — well, for Google’s hardware partners, at least. Low cost devices have flooded the market, with a stranglehold on the educational category in particular. Google’s own first party offerings, on the other hand, have been a bit more curious.

Devices like the Pixelbook and Pixel Slate have pushed the $1,000 price point in an attempt to demonstrate Chrome OS’s viability in a more premium tier. With the Pixelbook Go, on the other however, Google’s playing much more to the cloud-based operating system’s strengths, with a far more accessible price point.

Google launches the $649 Pixelbook Go Chromebook

Starting at $649 (albeit configurable all the way up to ~$1,400), the Go is an attempt to play to Chrome OS’s base: users looking for a more affordable entry point. After all, hasn’t that always kind of been the point of Chromebooks?

Of course, affordability comes with compromises. From a design perspective, that means losing some of the things that made the original Pixelbook so interesting. Top of the list are the convertible lid, which helps it double as a laptop and a tablet. Turns out 360-degree hinges are pretty cost prohibitive (though admittedly we’ve seen them on some fair cheap systems). And since the the hinge is gone, Google also opted to drop pen input, while retaining the touchscreen.

As with the original Pixelbook, there are still only two USB-C ports on-board (one one either side). That limits flexibility quite a bit. Of course, the company opted not to add more due, ion part, to pricing constraints. The company also tells me that most core Chromebook users should find two sufficient. Perhaps that’s the case with a majority of users.

Otherwise, the design is pretty nice, down to the colorful, ribbed bottom, which is designed to make the device easier to hold in one hand. Ditto for the lighter weight. It’s an easier laptop to port around or toss in a bag on the go.

The keyboard has been improved, as well. It’s quiet, as advertised (though admittedly I was using it in a fairly loud environment), and while the keys are on the soft side (especially compared to the MacBook, which is a bit like typing on chiclets), it has a pretty good feel to it. I could certainly see using this as my primary computer on that front, at least.

While Chrome OS has been vastly improved since its earliest days (thanks to, among other things, Android app compatibility), it’s still limited for those looking to get more serious work done. The lower cost Go makes that gulf even more pronounced. On a personal note, I’ve run into issues try to do things like, say, audio editing on the product.

The lower price point also means that device starts from a lower power processor, with the m3 and 8GB of RAM You can bump it to 16GB and a Core i5 or i7, but that, naturally, will cost you. At a certain point you’re starting to get into original Pixelbook territory.

The original model is sticking around, by the way. No spec changes to speak of, however, in spite of the fact that it’s a two-year-old product. That one seems overdue for a bump, especially with another new model in the line.

It seems safe to assume that Google’s going to move significantly more Gos than original Pixelbooks, based on price alone. It’s an interesting slice of the market, targeted primarily at consumers looking for a cheaper entry point. The company isn’t really targeting the education market here, in spite of the Chromebook’s success in the space. Google tells me that the product is simply priced too high for K-8 students.

[gallery ids="1897535,1897534,1897533,1897532,1897528,1897529,1897530,1897531"]

#TechCrunch

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theinvinciblenoob · 6 years

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MacBook Air fans aren’t hard to find. Although I admit to being a bit skeptical at its introduction, the laptop grew from an underpowered runt to an underappreciated workhorse over the years. But the design has hardly changed in the decade (!) since it came out — at least until today’s Apple event, when the company took the wraps off a totally redesigned Air with a retina display and Touch ID — and a new $1,199 price.

“When Steve pulled that MacBook Air out of that envelope, it was clear things would never be the same,” recalled CEO Tim Cook in his introduction. “MacBook Air truly embraced the notion that less indeed could be more. And it redefined the modern notebook in the process. MacBook Air has become the most beloved notebook ever. it’s time for a new MacBook Air, one that takes the MacBook Air experience even further in the areas that are most important to our customers.” (Yes, he said the product name five times in a row like that.)

The new Air is clearly meant for budget buyers who have been put off by the 12″ MacBook, which although popular, isn’t without its flaws, and it ain’t cheap, either. For anyone looking to spend less than a grand on a new Mac notebook, the Air is their best (and practically only) bet.

Although the old Air was updated as late as last year with new specs, the display has always been an obvious deficiency. 1440×900 was nothing to crow about even in 2008, let alone nearly a decade later. That’s been fixed with a new high-resolution 13.30-inch screen: inches and 2560×1600. (And “48 percent more color,” whatever that means.)

Of course the guts to support that display, and the tasks you’ll be doing on it, needed a serious bump too. So the new Air has an 8th-generation Intel processor, presumably with integrated graphics. It’s probably enough to play Fortnite, which is all that matters.

As for the design, it really is hard to improve on the original; its knifelike profile was nothing short of astonishing at its debut, and it’s stayed more or less the same since, with a solid keyboard and (regrettably) a rather prominent bezel. The bezel is gone, at least, replaced with a thinner black one. There goes the signature Air look, but you won’t see anyone crying about that.

At least it’s still aluminum, and all recycled aluminum now too, Apple explained with pride. Helps make it more sustainable.

The trackpad is the new force touch version, meaning no actual movement when you click, which is a mixed blessing. It’s quite a bit larger, at least, while the laptop itself is a bit smaller and lighter.

The addition of Touch ID and the secure enclave that runs it is welcome, of course, and it’s doubtful many will miss the Touch Bar, which so far hasn’t demonstrated any serious utility outside a few specialty apps and workflows. You have the F-keys instead, which is a good choice.

Unfortunately, Apple has also decided to change the keyboard. While the old Air used a tried and true scissor switch, and my 2012 model still types like a dream, the new model uses the much-criticized “butterfly switch” mechanism. This keyboard has proven to be one of Apple’s worst engineering mistakes in years, with many complaining of noise, key failures, and discomfort. Air lovers may find this extremely disappointing.

The MBA’s variety of ports, including USB-A and an SD card reader, are of course gone, replaced by Thunderbolt 3. It’s still a little sad to lose those legacy ports, which are still incredibly useful.

I’ll be holding onto my late-model MacBook Air, myself, but I understand the draw of this new one. It starts at $1,199 — apparently they couldn’t quite hit that $999 sweet spot — and should be available next week.

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

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un-enfant-immature · 6 years

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Long-awaited brand-new MacBook Air finally gets retina display and Touch ID

At least it’s still aluminum, and all recycled aluminum now too, Apple explained with pride. Helps make it more sustainable.

The MBA’s variety of ports, including USB-A and an SD card reader, are of course gone, replaced by the now-standard USB-C. While I realize this is the future, it’s still a little sad to lose those legacy ports, which are still incredibly useful.

#TechCrunch

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