#operating function grid

[prokopetz]

Code Green

A game for 3–7 players, about being where you're not supposed to be.

Last night, you were suspended in a tube of brightly coloured goo in an underground research facility, operated by an organisation whose three-letter initialism's meaning is strictly need-to-know. This morning, someone noticed your tube was empty. Nobody has determined how that happened yet, and you're not inclined to stick around until they figure it out!

Or, in other words, it's been nearly a whole week since I got that massive revision to Space Gerbils out the door, and apparently my brain has decided that's enough of a break. This thing was written start to finish in under 12 hours, so let the circumstances of its authorship guide your expectations. Special thanks go once again to Caro Asercion, whose micro-RPG Dwindle introduced me to the design space I'm fucking around with here. Go buy their stuff.

Anyway:

What You'll Need

Code Green is a tabletop RPG for one game moderator (GM) and up to six players. Each player will need a copy of the Profile Grid, below, as well as three tokens of some sort: dice, coins, beads, etc. You'll also need at least five six-sided dice (for the whole group, not per player, though it's fine if each player has their own set). If you're using dice for tokens, it's recommended that the dice you plan to roll be visually distinguishable in case they land on someone's Profile Grid.

Rolling Dice

There are two ways you'll be asked to roll dice in this game: rolling d66, and rolling a dice pool.

To roll d66, roll a six-side die twice, reading the first roll as the "tens" place and the second roll as the "ones" place, yielding a number in the range from 11 to 66. For example, if you rolled a 3 and then a 5, your result is 35. You may also be asked to flip a d66 roll; to do this, take your result and swap the digits without re-rolling. In the preceding example, if you flipped your roll of 35, your new result would be 53.

To roll a dice pool, pick up the indicated number of six-side dice, roll them, and take the highest individual result. Duplicates have no special significance. For example, if you rolled a pool of three dice and got a 2, a 4, and a 4, your result would be 4. If you would ever roll a pool of zero or fewer dice, roll two dice and take the lowest instead.

Character Creation

Each player should create their own character. There are three things about your character which are always true:

You are newly born into the world. You may know things about the world (e.g., from your programming, having read them on a computer terminal, etc.), but you haven't experienced them.

You are implausibly good at remaining inconspicuous; unless you're deliberately drawing attention or doing something which requires a dice roll, humans will almost always fail to spot you.

You are not human. You can decide what that means.

To find out what else is true about your character, roll or choose three times from the Form table, and three times from the Function table, placing your results into the correspondingly labelled slots on the Profile Grid, below, in any order you please. Your three results from each table should be different; if you elected to roll and get the same entry multiple times, flip your result, and re-roll if it's still a duplicate.

Think about what your three Form traits and three Function traits imply about your character's physical makeup, but don't set anything in stone just yet – you'll see why not in a moment.

Finally, roll a six-sided die five times, and record the results in the order in which they're received. The resulting five-digit number is the only name your character has when play begins.

Table 1: Form (d66)

11–12. Blood 13–14. Bones 15–16. Brain 21–22. Claws 23–24. Ears 25–26. Eyes 31–32. Guts 33–34. Hands 35–36. Heart 41–42. Hair 43–44. Legs 45–46. Lungs 51–52. Nose 53–54. Skin 55–56. Tail 61–62. Teeth 63–64. Tongue 65–66. Wings

Table 2: Function (d66)

11–12. Accelerated 13–14. Autonomous 15–16. Auxiliary 21–22. Cryogenic 23–24. Cryptic 25–26. Elastic 31–32. Electric 33–34. Entropic 35–36. Invasive 41–42. Invulnerable 43–44. Kinetic 45–46. Magnetic 51–52. Phasing 53–54. Polymorphic 55–56. Projectile 61–62. Pyrogenic 63–64. Telescopic 65–66. Toxic

Playing the Game

Play proceeds in a series of scenes. In each scene, the GM will set the stage: a challenge to overcome, a peril to escape, a mystery to investigate, etc. Given the nature of your characters, most things will be mysteries to you!

Initial Token Placement

Once the stage has been set, place each of your three tokens on a different square on your Profile Grid. If you have no preference, you can roll d66 for each token and place it in the square whose marked numeric range contains the number you rolled, flipping or re-rolling your result if you get a square which already contains a token. The placement of these tokens represents your initial state when the scene opens. Depending on the nature of your character, this may be reflected by a shifting of internal focus, or by a physical transformation.

Participation

To participate in the scene, simply tell the GM what your character does; the GM will describe how the world responds, and ask what you do next. Whenever you wish – or are forced – to do something more than lurk and observe, you are obliged to make a test.

Making Tests

To make a test, first choose a pair of traits – one Form trait, and one Function trait – with which to face the challenge. For example, if your Form traits are Legs, Tail and Teeth, and your Function traits are Cryptic, Invulnerable and Phasing, you might test your Invulnerable Legs against the trouble at hand.

Next, count the number of tokens present in the rows extending from each of the chosen traits. The illustration below shows which squares would be consulted in the preceding example:

Next, roll a dice pool containing a number of dice equal to the number of tokens present on squares extending from the chosen traits. Do not count a token twice if it's on the square where the two traits intersect (e.g., the green square in the illustration above). In the event that no tokens fall on squares extending from appropriate traits, remember that you are allowed to roll a pool of zero dice by rolling two dice and taking the lowest rather than the highest.

Finally, compare your result to the following table:

1–3. Less than human. Whatever you'd intended to try still happens, but it cannot overcome human opposition (or adversity which would challenge a typical human), and any lasting effects are transitory and easily explained away. 4–5. Mostly human. Your effort can contend with human opposition (or circumstances which would challenge a competent human), and its lasting effects make it obvious that someone (or something) has been interfering with matters. 6. More than human. Your effort easily brushes aside any human opposition, and its lasting effects are impossible to rationalise as anything other than the intervention of inhuman forces.

Without Applicable Traits

In the event that you're forced to make a test and no possible pairing of your traits is applicable, you don't get to roll anything, not even with a pool of zero dice; simply resolve the outcome as though you'd rolled a result of 1–3. Other characters may attempt to preserve you from this fate by assisting you, in which case you roll one die per assisting friend; see below for more details.

Assistance

If you wish to assist another character in making a test, consult your own Profile Grid, considering only those squares which contain tokens. Only the specific pairs of traits represented by the squares on which your tokens fall are eligible for assistance; for example, if one of your tokens falls on the intersection of Cryptic and Teeth, you may assist with Cryptic Teeth, but not any other pair of traits involving Cryptic or Teeth unless those squares also have tokens on them.

If you're able to identify an eligible pair of traits that seems applicable to the test at hand, explain how you're using it to help, and hand the player making the test one extra die. Any number of characters may assist on a given test.

Providing assistance neither requires nor permits your character to adapt (see below) – it needs to be your own test for that!

Adapting

After resolving a test, your character adapts, shifting focus or form to reflect what they've learned. Take one token of your choice from your character sheet, and move it to a different square which doesn't already contain one. You can move any token you wish, but it must end up on a different square than the one it started on unless no valid destinations are available. Adapting is not optional, and must be carried out after every test.

Suffering Strain

If whatever you're making a test against is particularly strenuous or dangerous, you might suffer strain as a consequence. Strain will often be incurred on a result of 1–3, and rarely on a result of 4–5; only the most foolhardy efforts will incur strain even on a result of 6!

To incur strain, roll d66, and place a small X on the square on your Profile Grid whose indicated numeric range contains the number you rolled. If there's a token on that square, immediately move it to an empty square of your choice, unless fewer than three unmarked squares now remain; in that case, simply remove the token entirely.

For the remainder of the scene, tokens may not be moved to any marked square. In addition, if you suffer further strain, and the square indicated by your d66 roll is already marked, your character is incapacitated, and may not participate in tests at all until they recover.

All strain is cleared – and any discarded tokens restored – at the end of each scene. Incapacitated characters also recover at this time.

[bfpnola]

Updated version! ID written by @swosheep (it won't let me tag you oof)

ID 1: All images are of an Instagram post by letstalkpalestine2. The first one is titled "Lets Talk. What is Hamas? Answering the basic questions".

ID 2: the second image is titled "What Are Its Origins?". the body text reads: "Hamas is a Palestinian political party and armed resistance movement based in the besieged Gaza Strip. It emerged in 1987, at the start of the First Intifada, as a reaction to intensifying israeli violence and as a religious alternative to the secular Palestinian parties that dominated the scene at the time. Hamas was originally a branch of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood but later cut ties with it and became an independent group. In 1992, Hamas formed a military wing called the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades to resist the israeli occupation. The Brigades carried out several significant operations against Israel during the Second Intifada, which established Hamas as a leading force in the Palestinian resistance."

ID 3: the third image is titled "Who Are Its Leaders?". The body text reads: "Hamas is composed of a political wing and a military wing. They each perform different functions but operate under the same leadership structure." There is a grid with four sections. The first section is titled "Political Bureau", and reads: "- Headed by Ismail Haniyeh from exile - Sets general policy". The second section is titled: "Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades" and reads: "- Commanded by Marwan Issa and Mohammed Deif - Conducts military operations". The third section is titled: "Shura Council" and reads: "- Led by Saleh al-Arouri in the West Bank and Yahya Sinwar in Gaza - Handles affairs in Gaza, the West Bank, diaspora, and israeli prisons". The fourth section is titled: "Gaza Government" and reads: "- Headed by Prime Minister Issam al-Da'alis - Enacts policies and provides social services to people in Gaza".

ID 4: The fourth image is titled: "What Does Hamas Want?" The body text reads: "Its 2017 charter states that its current political program is to: - Implement the right of return for all Palestinian refugees; - Establish a temporary Palestinian state along the 1967 borders (the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip) and arrange a long-term truce with israel. Hamas considers the establishment of a Palestinian state on the '67 borders as a temporary step. It refuses to recognize israel's legitimacy and advocates for the 'full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.' Hamas's 2017 charter states that its struggle is against the israeli state and the Zionist movement due to their occupation of Palestine, not Jewish people, and criticizes israel for associating its actions with Jewish values. Hamas's stated goals for its current operation are to - Free the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by israel, - End the Gaza blockade, - End the status quo where Israel continues its occupation without cost".

ID 5: the fifth image is titled: "Does Hamas Control Gaza?". The body text reads: "Not really. Hamas administers local affairs, while israel controls much of Gaza from the outside through its blockade. israel forcibly controls: - Airspace, - Sea access, - Movement of all goods and people in and out, - Telecoms networks, - Electromagnetic sphere, - Tax distribution, - Population registry, - Water, - Electricity and fuel. Hamas began governing Gaza in 2007, and has since managed: - Healthcare, - Education, - Infrastructure, - Social welfare, - Law enforcement, - Public employment. Hamas is not a sovereign government. israel's blockade prevents Palestinians from independently exercising sovereignty over Gaza's population, development, and economy."

ID 6: The sixth image is titled "Does Hamas Represent Palestine?" The body text reads: "Hamas is one of many Palestinian political parties. On the one hand, Hamas was democratically elected by voters in 2006, garnering a plurality of West Bank and Gaza votes (44%) for its social services and resistance efforts. Today. Fatah and Hamas, the two largest parties, are roughly tied, each enjoying the support of a third of the public. On the other hand, many Palestinians strongly criticize Hamas's political wing due to its corruption and repressive policies, and the last elections were in 2006. 43% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza believe that no party represents Palestine. The other polled Palestinians were split between parties, with no clear winner. We have no statistics for Palestinians in the heartland ("israel") or diaspora. However, Hamas is currently the only major group that pursues armed resistance, which is widely supported. So while most Palestinians might not support Hamas as a party, the overwhelming majority support acts of resistance in general, whether by Hamas or others."

ID 7: the seventh image is titled "Is Hamas a Proxy of Iran?". The body text reads: "No. Hamas is an independent group with a political program and military strategy distinct from Iran. Hamas and Iran are strategic allies, meaning that while Iran provides Hamas with significant financial, military, and political support, Hamas does not act or operate on behalf of Iran. It makes decisions based on its own interests, and independently manages relations with countries like Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt. For example: In 2012, Hamas cut ties with Syria because it opposed the Assad regime's violent crackdown on protesters. It took this decision despite angering Iran, a close ally of Assad. Regarding Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, even israeli officials admit there is no evidence that Iran was in any way involved. Iran was actually surprised by it. Hamas independently coordinated and launched the operation to achieve its own goals."

ID 8: The eighth image is titled "Does Hamas Negotiate with Israel?". The body text reads: "Hamas views armed struggle as only one of several tools to end apartheid & occupation, such as diplomacy. In 2006, in an op-ed for The Guardian, Hamas chairman Ismail Haniyeh revealed that israel refused Hamas's proposal for a truce. In 2008, former Hamas chief Khaled Meshal offered a 10-year truce in exchange for a sovereign Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital." israel rejected the proposal. In 2016, Hamas offered a long-term truce in exchange for simply ending the Gaza Blockade. israel rejected it. In 2018, Haniyeh revived this offer by sending a handwritten letter in Hebrew to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. But israel rejected it again. israel repeatedly rejected Hamas's diplomatic initiatives because israel saw no reason to end the oppressive status quo, which it believed gave it power & privileges over Palestinians with minimal downsides. israel's benefits outweighed the costs. Hamas is trying to change that."

ID 9: the ninth image is titled "Is Hamas Risking Palestinian Lives?". The body text reads: "Westerners often accuse Hamas of risking Palestinian lives by fighting apartheid and thus inviting a deadly israeli crackdown. But the reality is that israel's blockade is slowly killing everyone in Gaza. [quote] 'We have paid a high cost in lives in this conflict. But if that's the price for long-term changes - breaking the siege and obtaining freedom - it's one many of us feel we have no choice but to swallow.' [unquote] -Haytham Besalso, civil engineer from Gaza, 2014. [quote] 'We are bleeding here, anyway [..] The Gaza Blockade crushes any opportunity for peace.' [unquote] -Ismail, anonymous journalist from Gaza, 2021. The argument that Hamas is responsible for israel's killing of Palestinians is malicious. It blames the victims for resisting apartheid and absolves the oppressors of responsibility, treating the mass killing of children as a 'normal' israeli response."

ID 10: the tenth image says: "You don't need to support Hamas as a political party to support Palestine. Most Palestinians don't support it as a party. But Hamas is an effective political player in the struggle against apartheid, oppression, and colonization. It has achieved remarkable success in preventing israeli violence in Jerusalem and freeing Palestinian hostages abducted by israel. Hamas has institutions, ministries, student movements, and women's movements, and employs thousands of doctors, teachers, judges, and aid workers. It is part of the fabric of Palestinian society. So while you don't need to support Hamas to support Palestine, you cannot oppose oppression without supporting the resistance to it. You cannot support freedom while supporting israeli efforts to wipe out those who fight for that freedom, including Hamas, to leave Palestinians defenc Pales". End ID.

the original caption states that @/LetsTalkPalestine2 does not endorse any specific party, including Hamas, and that the last word on the last slide should be *defenseless.

[givrally]

You can't say "Everything humans make is art" right after a whole tirade about how AI isn't art.

Hi op here

I CAN actually.

The machine made to make "AI" is art. Its engineering+programming. Which are crafts and a highly difficult ones.

What that machine makes however is NOT art. Its not even true artificial intelligence. Its just a bunch of stolen work cut up and pieced back together using complicated programming. What is produced is not art. What made it however is. Its a feat of accomplishment that we can get a machine to do that kind of stuff

But what it makes is not art.

Feel like @snitchanon would have a field day with all this.

So Photoshop itself is art, but works done in photoshop aren't art ? It's engineering and programming, but what it makes is not art. It's just clicking buttons and dragging the mouse until you get what you want.

As for true AI, yeah, I actually agree with you in no small part. What we call "AI" right now is nowhere close to having any kind of intelligence, we're basically making a very complicated math function with many parameters and tweaking it until it spits out the right output. There's very little explainability (it's a black box for the most part, we don't know what goes on inside or why this particular input), and every year there's a paper titled something like "We Fucked Up : How we evaluate [field of deep learning] is flawed and gives the illusion of progress".

As for the ethical issues with using stolen works, yeah, I'm completely with you, that's a dealbreaker for me, and unlearning (=getting from a model trained on a dataset to a model trained on a dataset w/o some data, without having to retrain everything, but being 100% sure the excluded data doesn't leave a single trace) is too new as a subject of research to even be usable for the next few years, so for me, AI Art generators are a big no-no.

(Also, the online ones take as much of your personal data as they can, so I'd avoid those like the plague)

HOWEVER, what "AI" image generation does isn't to cut up stolen work and put it back together, that's a myth. I don't know how this started but I've heard that said like three or four times already, it's way too specific a definition to have evolved independently so there must be a Youtuber out there to blame.

It's like saying Photoshop just takes pixels from stolen works and weaves them in the right order to make a new image. That's technically true, but it's a stupid definition that gives Photoshop way more credit than it's due. Likewise, AI image generators don't look through a database to find the right image, cut out the part they like, and add it to their final product. Otherwise, why do you think AI art would have all those problems with hands, buildings, etc... ? There can't be that many people out there drawing weird 7 fingered hands, I know some people have trouble drawing hands but not to that extent.

What they do instead (or rather what they did, because I don't know enough about the newest diffusion models to explain them in an intuitive way), is deconvolutions, basically "reversing" the operation (convolutions) that takes in a grid of numbers (image) and reduces it to a small list of numbers. With deconvolutions, you give it a small list of numbers, at random, and it slowly unravels that into an image. Without tweaking the thousands or millions of parameters, you're gonna end up with random noise as an image.

To "train" those, what you do is you pair it with another "AI", called a discriminator, that will do convolutions instead to try and guess whether the image is real or made by the generator. The generator will learn to fool the discriminator and the discriminator will try to find the flaws in the generator.

Think Youtube vs AdBlock. Adblockers are the discriminator and Youtube is the generator. Youtube puts out new ads and pop-ups that don't trigger ad blockers, and ad blockers in return fix those flaws and block the ads. After a month of fighting, it turns out ad blockers have become so good that other websites have a lot of trouble getting ads past them. You've "trained" ad blockers.

The most important thing to note is that the training data isn't kept in storage by the models, both in the adblock example and in AI image generators. It doesn't pick and choose parts to use, it's just that the millions of tiny parameters were modified thanks to the training data. You can sometimes see parts of the training data shine through, though. That's called overfitting, and it's very bad !

In the middle, the model won't remember every O and X out there. It drew a curve that roughly separates the two, and depending on where a new point falls compared to that curve, it can guess if it's an O or an X without having access to the original data. However, in the example on the right, even if you remove all the O and X marks, you can still make out the individual points and guess that those holes mean an X was in there. The model cannot generalize past what it's seen, and if there's ten thousand variables instead of just two, that means you could change a single one slightly and get nonsense results. The model simply hasn't learned correctly. For image generation, that means parts of the training data can sometimes shine through, which is probably how the "cut up and piece back stolen images" myth came to be.

The reason I don't like to use AI image generators is twofold : 1. Right now, all the models out there have or are likely to have seen stolen data in their training dataset. In the state of AI right now, I really don't believe any model out there is free of overfitting, so parts of that will shine through. 2. Even if there's no overfitting, I don't think it's very ethical at all. (And 3. the quality just isn't there and I'd rather commission an artist)

HOWEVER, that doesn't mean I agree with you guys' new luddite movement. "Everything humans make is art except when they use AI" is not a good argument, just like "It's not art because you didn't move the pixels yourself" or "AI cuts up and pieces back stolen images". The first two give "I piss in Duchamp's fountain uncritically" vibes, and the last one gives "Don Quixote fighting windmills" vibes.

[cipheramnesia]

Real world things have been in such a state of unparalleled fuckery, I have been forced to gradually take my systems for social engagement increasingly offline. Each one shutting down my communication with people outside my immediate household one at a time. First relatively new people, then various group chats, and then barely anything other than people I physically see every day.

All of those systems take a specific workload in my brain that's so resource intensive they had to be pulled out of circulation. Only now I have no sense of how long they have been offline. Some of them may be tentatively supportable again, but the problem with pulling these systems is that they dump the cache, and restarting them feels as if I'm having to engage in and build social functionality from the ground up. Even though my central storage for memories and main processor can all account in a clinical way the previous functionality, the format of memories of my secondary systems is not compatible with the actual operating program file type, meaning for the most part I'm aware that social connections don't collapse purely because I've been unable to actively participate for a little while, but that doesn't help me feel less like a complete stranger all over again.

Consequently I'm in the position of wanting to put maybe one of these systems back on the grid, but I can't because before I do that I have to go back in and rebuild from scratch the interface part that I use to manufacture a likable personality for strangers. And they're not strangers per se, but it really doesn't matter, because I don't have any of the data about being a likable person for my friends so I need to fall back on my original general specs. So I'm rebuilding my personality from scratch again like I have to do every few years.

[naomi-the-red]

Earth is a Shardworld and TRON proves it.

<<Spoilers for all published Cosmere works and the TRON Films>>

Good evening fellow Radiants, Mistborn, and other Comerenauts. There has been plenty of discussion surrounding many long standing questions in the Comere. What is the intent of the 16th shard? Is Earth in the Cosmere? Why hasn’t Scadrial developed computers yet?

Well the answers to all of those questions are revealed to us in Disney’s TRON (1982), which I believe was ghostwritten by Brandon Sanderson (1975)

In TRON, Kevin Flynn, after provoking the MCP, becomes trapped in the Cognitive Realm of Earth, called 'The Grid', and has to partner with cognitive shadows, called Programs, to defeat the main villain, called the Master Control Program (basically if the Stormfather decided to go Lord Ruler on the Spren after the Recreance).

Kevin, alongside programs Tron and Yori, use their differing knowledge of the magic system to stop the MCP from taking control of the Grid, a land of Programs that represent various functions within the physical world. Ring a Kharbranthian bell? Here’s a hint, replace the Grid with Shadesmar, MCP with Odium, and Kevin, Tron, and Yori with Kaladin, Adolin, and Shallan.

What’s interesting though is this world’s magic system, called Programming, creates these Programs in a much more direct and intentional way than how a Seon or Spren is created. It's sort of a cross between AonDor and Awakening, where you use an interface to write Command words that directly shape Investiture, which they call "Power", into a being called a Program.

Programs are keyed to the Identity of the User that created them and take on their appearance, as well as develop an Identity Disc, a device that contains the Intent of the Program and Identity of the User. I think these Identity Discs are the real reason that TRON will be revealed as part of the Cosmere as they open up so many issues we have when it comes to Identity. If one can key their identity onto a spren or fabrial, it's likely to have profound effects on future investiture technology.

Additionally, years later, in the events of TRON: Legacy, it's revealed that a group of people have mysteriously emerged in the cognitive realm. I believe these 'ISOs' are actually the Iriali and potentially IRE combined into one faction. If it's not a simple error of poor adaptation of the source material, this could be why the ISOs are not blonde and have a more personal connection with Investiture.

Now that Disney has started filming TRON: Ares and Sanderson has mysteriously stopped talking about that 'Mistborn' screenplay, I think it'll be revealed soon that Sanderson not only wrote TRON: Ares, but that TRON: Ares will actually be the first Mistborn Era 3 entry and will follow the plot of the Scadrains discovering Earth and trying to weaponize the Grid against Roshar.

Some Points:

Many might think that this sounds like Invention, but I think the shardic intent here is 'History' or 'Memory'. Most of the magic system at it's core, very subtly works to continously preserve data, like the Identity Discs and typical operations of the various Prorams, such as the MCP going rogue after aquiring significant amounts of data. If we consider shardic intents to be aspects of god divorced from divinity (or absolute divinity. There's a WoB on this.), then it stands to reason there's one shard dedicated to rememberence, and we know the last shard is trying very hard to survive but doesn't have 'survival' as an intention. A Historian Shard could definitely fit the bill.

MCP is corrupted Investiture, that's why it's red, but Clu is an avatar of Autonomy, which is why his faction is orange-red. Clu's entire idea is basically the same as Telsin, except probably lacking in nuclear armaments. Probably.

The device that takes the Flynns on and off the Grid is not a shardpool but a very sophisticated fabrial hooked to a shardpool. I think there's one major difference; the fabrial kills you and turns you into a cognitive shadow (Hence why Kevin could live on the Grid for ages without sustenance beyond investiture)

Daft Punk is canonically Hoid.

I have no idea why I wrote this.

[melonthesprigatito]

My idea on who I think would make the PERFECT villain for The Incredibles 3 (not that they're ever going to make one***, this could also just be a fanfic idea)

***EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS WAS WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER 2023, NEARLY A YEAR BEFORE THEY ANNOUNCED INCREDIBLES 3, I WAS A FOOL FOR DOUBTING IT WOULD GET MADE

NaNoWriMo somehow dragged me kicking and screaming back into my The Incredibles hyperfixation that I haven't thought about since 2021. Drafting up a long Tumblr post in my Notes app for a few days totally counts, right? (Probably not but whatever, I am fukcing passionate about The Incredibles lore, I need to ramble)

So, the villains of The Incredibles and Incredibles 2 are both genius inventors with no superpowers who use their technology to fight the heroes. What if, for the third villain, they ditched that idea and had a villain who was a Super?

Who'd be able to fill that role? Would they invent an entirely new character who is a Super? It wouldn't be too farfetched of an idea, they did invent two new Super supervillains in Lego Incredibles, The Anchor Man and Brainfreezer, one with hydrokinesis and the other with.... functionally cryokinesis like Frozone except she controls ice cream. 

But what if... the villain was an already existing Super? That already poses a problem, a majority of the Supers in the present day of The Incredibles are either dead from Syndrome's Omnidroid or an unfortunate cape snag. The only surviving Supers from the pre-Super Ban Glory days are Mr Incredible, Elastigirl and Frozone and possibly Fironic and Plasmabolt (and only because they never showed up in Syndrome's Operation KRONOS database.)

Fironic is pretty ambiguous if he's still alive or not, but Plasmabolt for its practically a 100% chance of survival for a few reasons:

1. Her profile says she keeps her hero and civilian lives strictly separate, so she might have had no desire to go moonlighting as a hero like Mr Incredible did

2. She's a forest park ranger. She probably lives off-grid in a shack in the woods or something. 

3. The way Psycwave, Everseer and Macroburst are killed one after the other, but Plasmabolt isn't counted with them. All four of these Supers were part of a superhero team called The Phantasmics. Mirage probably used their connection to find all of them, maybe Plasmabolt fell out of contact with her old friends.

Plasmabolt herself might have been a good villain candidate, having lost faith in humanity after learning how the National Supers Agency failed to keep track of her old friends, of all the Supers, and didn't notice that Syndrome was picking them all off. 

Buuuuuut she's not the one this post is about. There's another that would probably be an even better villain, mostly because she has a personal tie to one of the main characters.

This is one of the features on the bonus disk of The Incredibles: a full set of character files and audio interviews of most of the Supers (except for Tradewind, Vectress, Blitzerman and Fironic. They didn't get profiles.) 

It's listed in alphabetical order, featuring Apogee, Blazestone, Downburst, Dyna Guy, Elastigirl, Everseer, Frozone, Gamma Jack, Gazerbeam, Hypershock, Macroburst, Meta Man, Mr Incredible, Phylange, Plasmabolt, Psycwave, Stratogale, Splashdown, Stormicide, Thunderhead and Universal Man. 

The one I want to draw attention to is this one. 

(Side note, it’s kinda frustrating that the only way to find images of most of these guys in colour is to look for random comic strips and the freaking Lego game of all things. I’m just gonna link this fan art too because I think it rocks and is probably the best image of her https://www.tumblr.com/pazam/183219465026/no-gadgets-no-gimmicks?source=share)

THIS, is Blazestone, the blorbo- I MEAN, the Super I think would make a great villain in a hypothetical third Incredibles movie. Or a Frozone spinoff movie. Either works. 

I think she'd make a good villain for a number of reasons.

1. SHE'S ALREADY BEEN THE MAIN VILLAIN OF ANOTHER OFFICIAL THE INCREDIBLES STORY. 

Let me highlight something important from her profile. "ARRESTED AND JAILED. RECRUITED BY NSA. WATCH CLOSELY TO ENSURE SHE OPERATES WITHIN NSA GUIDELINES" 

That's right, Blazestone is actually a reformed criminal. This one little detail from her profile is a major plot point in the novel Elastigirl: A Real Stretch.

She was paired with Universal Man as part of her rehabilitation. In the novel, they're constantly arguing, they constantly insult each other. Universal Man is an incredibly strict rule follower and tries to keep her in line. He thinks she'll never make it as a true Super if she doesn't follow the guidelines and acts recklessly ("THESE TWO WOULD BE GREAT IF THEY DON'T KILL EACH OTHER FIRST")

She hates being constantly monitored and forced into teams with other Supers and wishes they'd give her the freedom to do what she wants, as opposed to being constantly badgered into being a better person and following the guidelines

Eventually, Blazestone gets so sick of the National Supers Agency that snaps and decides that the only way she'll be able to do what she wants is to KILL ALL THE OTHER SUPERS SO THERE'S NO ONE TO STOP HER FROM TAKING OVER. 

In fact, her plan involves 

1. Steal a shipment of the ZAP chemical (the novel's McGuffin, a radioactive chemical used as a superpower enhancer that has various effects depending on which Super it's used on. For most of them, it disables their powers entirely, for some it makes their powers malfunction and Apogee is the only Super who's powers are actually enhanced by it.) 

2. Secretly recruiting all the criminals she jailed as her henchmen and breaks them out of jail on the day of the Super Appreciation Day celebrations. These henchmen are disguised as other Supers and blend in with all the other cosplayers entering the Costume Contest. 

3. Attack the Supers Appreciation Day celebration at the pier. Trap EVERY SINGLE SUPER inside a band shell covered by a net that's coated ZAP which basically fucks up all of their powers. She then lifts the band shell off the ground and was heading towards the ocean to drop it in and drown them all.

 (a few pages later)

.... I'm serious, that's what actually happens in the climax. 

Never mind the fact that she's touching the net covered in the chemical that needed to be handled with heavy gloves WITH HER BARE HANDS BECAUSE HER SUPERSUIT HAS SHORT SLEEVES in order to lift the band shell. ...And the fact that she has no super strength so shouldn't have been able to carry the weight of a structure and 20+ Supers.

Blazestone actually mentioned earlier in the novel that ZAP had no effect on her, and while the novel never mentions it, my theory is that Blazestone is the only other Super who's powers are enhanced by ZAP. Apogee was also powered up by ZAP... in small doses but being that close to the netting enhanced her powers too much so she couldn't assist in the climax without incinerating everyone with the power of the sun. Blazestone must have lied about ZAP not having an effect on her to eliminate her as a suspect for the theft of the ZAP. 

ANYWAY, Blazestone went full supervillain and that's the last we heard of her until she showed up dead in Syndrome's Project KRONOS database. Between Supers Appreciation Day and the beginning of the Super Ban, she might have resumed her criminal activities and became part of Municiberg's Rogues Gallery. 

As the Super Ban went into effect she might have been kept in a maximum security facility for a few years until she managed to break out into a world where Supers are in hiding. She might have used her powers to commit smaller robberies to survive, which might have been how Mirage tracked her down..

But wait, she's dead isn't she? So how could she possibly be the main villain of Incredibles 3 if she's dead?

2. SHE'S ONE OF THE FEW SUPERS WHO COULD HAVE PLAUSIBLY SURVIVED THE OMNIDROID BY FAKING HER DEATH.

She's the 6th Super to have been killed by Syndrome, and is probably the Super Syndrome tested the Omnidroid's fireproofing on, hence when it's immune to lava. 

Except.... Blazestone could have been marked as "Terminated" when she really wasn't.

But how, exactly? The model of Omnidroid that killed her was v.X2 (the highest being v.10) so it was a VERY early model. Too early to have all the little issues ironed out. Perhaps there was a flaw that Blazestone exploited that kept her alive. 

There's also Blazestone's powerset.  She has a threat rating of 5.5, which sounds low until you realise that the highest is Gamma Jack with 7.9 Her powers are listed as pyrokinetic discharge, heat control, heat resistance, high agility and flight (by riding on heated air) which is pretty OP by itself but there's one power not listed on the file that Blazestone mentions having.

From the Bonus Disk Audio Interviews: (sped up because she was talking through the entire interview on 2x speed) "Wait what, do you want me to say the whole thing again? I thought I was completely clear, are you- Do you want me to go back again? The whole thing? I don't understand... (back to normal speed because she realised she wasn't in the dimension where people talk really fast, I guess?) "...OH, okay. *laughs* I am so sorry, I know what the problem is! I can't *laughs again* I keep on forgetting which dimension that I'm in! Wait, which... Which dimension am I in?"

From Lego Incredibles: "Wait, which dimension is this? Never mind, I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough.”

That's right, apparently Blazestone has the ability to warp herself to other dimensions. And this isn't an out of the blue thing that probably isn't canon either, Incredibles 2 shows off exactly how that power would function.

(Transcript from Incredibles 2)

Escaping by warping to another dimension is a VEEEERY good method of hiding your own body.

Picture this: Blazestone is contacted by Mirage. She's told a lie about the Omnidroid, it's the government's secret project and how it's went rogue. She gets told they looked for her because she's the only Super who defected from the NSA, they need her specifically. If they approached any other Super they might contact the NSA and expose the secret project. So they need her because she won't tattle. 

Blazestone goes to Nomanisan Island and is told to go to Room A113 to wait for instructions. She gets bored and hates being told what to do so goes to explore. She finds the lava waterfall and flies through, only to find Syndrome on his computer looking over his Operation KRONOS files. She realises that they lured her to die, that she's not the first one they called to destroy the robot, they lied to her and now she's trapped. She goes back to Room A113, and while they're unaware that she found out, she starts asking too many questions. 

The Omnidroid x.V2 is sent after her. She's not fighting to disable it for a sum of money, she's fighting for her life. Blazestone is agile, she flies out of reach of the Omnidroid, and hurls fireballs at it as it has no methods of hitting her back. Until it learns to throw its own projectiles at her. It uproots trees, throws rocks etcetera. It gets an unlucky hit in and knocks her to the ground. Suddenly Blazestone realises that it's getting more accurate, it's predicting where she'll fly next. There's no winning against it. They're near the volcano at this point so Blazestone makes a beeline towards it, if she could just reach the lava.... 

She's inside the lava caves, she flies directly over the lava. She's heat resistant. She baits the Omnidroid into throwing one more boulder and allows herself to get knocked into the lava. She's entirely submerged. Syndrome is watching the fight through hidden cameras, waiting for her to emerge, but she doesn't. Syndrome makes a quip about how the lava must have been too hot for even Blazestone to handle and marks her down as terminated. In reality, Blazestone warped to the other dimension the second she went under, tricking them into thinking her body melted away in the lava. 

As for how Syndrome didn't know about her dimensional warping power, the fact that it's not listed on her National Supers Agency file kinda feels like the NSA didn't believe she had that power. She's a former criminal who probably figured that she she'd defect from being a Superhero at some point. If she ended up in a jail cell, she could teleport out of it. If they knew she could teleport they might have found some way to neutralise that power before sending her to jail. So Blazestone kept it a secret in the even that she'd need to escape from some where. 

So Blazestone lives and freaks out about her near death experience. Except... She draws the wrong conclusion about Syndrome. She doesn't know that the government is actually oblivious to the fact that Syndrome is developing a robot strong enough to fight Mr Incredible using Supers as test subjects. She thinks the government is hunting down Supers and killing them with the Omnidroid. 

She goes cold turkey on crime in case the government finds her again, but after all that, a deep resentment and rage bubbles up inside of her. 

Flashforward to after Incredibles 2, when the Super Ban is lifted and the National Supers Agency is re-established and is recruiting Supers again. The details of Project KRONOS are released to the public. Blazestone's rage boils over. 

She hates that the National Supers Agency is up and running to control Supers again like how they suffocated her with their rules and trapped her in a dysfunctional partnership with Universal Man, she hates that ordinary people tried to wipe out Supers when THEY should be in charge. 

Remember in Incredibles 2 when Evelyn mind controlled Mr Incredible, Elastigirl and Frozone and made them forced them to say something into the camera during the public broadcast before they hijacked the hydrofoil to make them look bad?

Yeah, Blazestone ACTUALLY believes that. 

As far as anyone is aware, Blazestone is dead. She might hide her face to make sure nobody figures out it's her. She could target the DevTech/Wannabe Supers (Voyd, Screech, He-Lectrix, Brick, Krushauer and Reflux) and shake their confidence in the Supers Agency or the public's faith in Supers, after all, the Supers Agency let all the old Supers die, they public turned on you years ago, who's to say they won't turn on you again? Look, there's already politicians who disagree with the Super Ban being lifted and want to put heavy restrictions on Super activity. I think she'd be after Voyd specifically because she's an anxiety ridden easily manipulated mess who is also potentially a threat. After all, Voyd's power is portals, and she can follow Blazestone when she dimensional warps...

She rallies a bunch of other young Supers who felt betrayed by the government banning Supers, perhaps she even manipulates a grieving Plasmabolt who's still mourning her teammates' deaths into acting as a mole in the National Supers Agency. She wants Supers to be on top while all the puny normals get subjugated like they deserve.

Baaasically she becomes Pixar Magneto? ... I'm not 100% certain, I'm not all that familiar with X-Men? I just kinda know who he is from watching one movie years ago. I don't know, I suck at writing allegories, I just have the vague idea in my head and I dunno how to put it to paper properly. If I've said something bad or made a bad comparison, I'm sorry. I'm writing this section at 3am.

3. SHE HAS AN EMOTIONAL CONNECTION TO ONE OF THE MAIN CAST.

If The Incredibles was about Mr Incredible and Incredibles 2 was about Elastigirl, who's the third member of their trio who hasn't got a chance to be a protagonist yet? Let's bring up the profiles again, shall we?

Notice anything?

"ONCE PARTNERS WITH FROZONE. BUT RELATIONSHIP RAN HOT AND COLD."

"FORMER PARTNERS WITH BLAZESTONE (ROMANTICALLY?)"

OH SNAP THAT'S RIGHT, FROZONE AND BLAZESTONE USED TO BE PARTNERS. POSSIBLY ROMANTICALLY.

Blazestone was partnered with Frozone first before the NSA shoved her into the Beta Force with Universal Man. This is purely headcanon, but I like to imagine the Frozone/Blazestone team was known as the Alpha Force because Beta comes after Alpha. The sentence "relationship ran hot and cold" aside from being a bad pun, kinda implies that at some point the fluctuation led to them having a huge falling out and splitting their team apart so the NSA could try again with Universal Man.

I found this on Reddit's Tumblr sub and honestly, my thoughts exactly.

Imagine the DRAMA of Frozone finding out that his former "Enemies to lovers to enemies" partner who tried to drown him on Supers Appreciation Day that one time who he thought was dead is suddenly alive again and is currently leading a gang of Supers to attacking people. There could be a deep dive into what their partnership was like, how he reacted to her fall from grace and all the mixed feelings of seeing her alive again in the present day.

Maybe this could finally be the opportunity to show Honey on screen. I mean, she HAS a design now and an entire deleted scene that they cut out because it caused pacing issues

Imagine Frozone lying battered and bruised on the ground from Blazestone fighting him, and Honey runs to his defence. Blazestone mocks her like "What could you possibly do to me? You're powerless!" and then Honey takes her completely by surprise by pulling out a metal baseball bat or some other mundane household weapon and beats the ever loving shit out of her.

Another idea I had that doesn't really fit into any section is the idea of bringing the Deavor siblings back. Winston and Evelyn having a fractured relationship after the events of Incredibles 2. Winston visiting her in jail trying to understand why she'd risk their father's legacy and endangering DevTech by connecting it with the attempted mass murder with a boat. Evelyn snapping back that he never noticed how she was feeling as they grieved for their parent's deaths because he was too focused on thinking that they died because there was no Supers around anymore to save them.

Blazestone kidnapping both of them and forcing Evelyn, the one who hates Supers with her entire being to remake the Screenslaver technology by threatening to burn Winston to death if she doesnt comply. Why does Blazestone need the hypnosis tech? Because she's aware that some of the Supers she recruited might not be 100% loyal and wants to control their minds to keep them in line if she has to. Because she doesn't care at all about any of the other Supers, she just wants to use them for her own gain so that SHE can control the city. Plasmabolt is definitely going to be the one to betray Blazestone in the end. She realises that Everseer, Macroburst and Psycwave wouldn't have wanted her to harm innocent people to avenge their deaths, so she'd fight alongside The Incredibles family, the Wannabe Supers, and Frozone.

Aaaand that's all I have to say, it somehow took me three hours to move all this text from Google Docs to Tumblr and find accompanying images.

Hope you liked my probably badly written sequel idea

[hermannsthumb]

Power outage and popsicles for the summer prompts...."dude, why not? They're gonna melt otherwise."

27. Power Outage + 30. Popsicles

from summer prompts meme here

i finished this & checked ao3 and realized that i techhhhnically filled a prompt like this a little while ago, but they're different enough it's ok. giving this a light M rating for some Suggestive Content because i tweeted about this concept and couldn't stop thinking about writing it

------------------------------------------

Look, Newt’s no stranger to a hot, humid summer, least of all a hot, humid summer that he’s left to tough out with nothing but the jankiest old window A/C unit in the world and t-shirts he’s badly modified with a pair of scissors to be a little more breathable. He got used to it back in Cambridge, where his apartment was the top floor of a creaky historic house built back before anybody really thought about things like central air or air circulation or living comfortably in general. But this is just ridiculous, man. Even if his broom closet of a bunk did have a window it wouldn’t be helping him much.

Yesterday’s kaiju attack took out the city power grid and most of the electricity to the Shatterdome with it. They’re not totally fucked, because relying on somewhere prone to frequent assaults from ten gazillion pound monsters to power local PPDC operations would be kind of an insane—if not, like, admirably ballsy—move, but the on-base generators they have as back-up are reserved for critical functions only: LOCCENT, the jaeger bay, and—well, yeah, basically that. Newt would estimate roughly twenty percent of base operations outside that are deemed critical, so whatever electricity is left is diverted directly to the mess hall refrigeration systems (so they can eat) and overhead lights in most of the common spaces (so they can walk down the hallway without falling down an elevator shaft or knocking over something expensive).

Basically, their little k-science team of two ranks comically low on that critical function list no matter how many complaints Hermann lodges with facilities about his precious little computers, or Newt does about the extremely necessary and much more important preservation of his kaiju samples. Under duress Newt will very begrudgingly admit this is not without some reason. It’s still annoying.

Hermann spends the first hour of the Black-Out trying to, essentially, pirate some of that diverted power (admittedly very cool of him) to get his computers back in business and cursing very loudly when it fails. Newt, meanwhile, thanks his goddamn lucky stars that it’s been a lackluster few weeks for kaiju harvesting and every viable sample he has is small enough to fit in some coolers with ice packs he keeps around for emergencies. Problem solved. They’ll want to hose them down before their next picnic so they’re not packing sandwiches in with kaiju guts—Newt’s kidding, mostly, Hermann wouldn’t be caught dead on a picnic with him—but it’ll work for now.

The main problem arises around hour two. On the average day it’s genuinely freezing down here, thanks to the lethal combination of the lab’s somewhat subterranean nature (stickin’ the geeks in the damp basement) and Hermann’s weird habit of keeping the A/C blasting so he can comfortably dress like he's strolling across Antarctica without breaking a sweat. With the A/C casualty to the outage, it doesn’t take long for the muggy humidity of the Hong Kong summer to creep up on them, and by the light of the comically large flashlight he’s very nicely holding for Hermann Newt watches it hit his colleague in waves: the exponential increase in handkerchief-swipes-across-forehead, the unbuttoning of his collar, the blazer shrugged off and tossed at a chair, then (egads!) the sweatervest following.

“Hold that still,” Hermann snaps when Newt lets the beam of the flashlight wander from the functionally useless computer he’s poking cables into to the scandalous display of button-down and wristbones he’s putting on right now instead. Talk about a strip tease. Newt ignores him and wolf-whistles instead.

“I’ve never seen you so naked,” he says. “This is definitely a new record. How many layers of pants do you have on? I’m guessing eight, nine.” He trails the light down one alluringly baggy slacks leg—because what is he hiding under there, man—and then back up to Hermann’s face. Hermann shields his eyes and recoils with a small affronted noise. His choppy bangs are sticking to his forehead.

“One,” Hermann says from behind his hand, “that is a completely inappropriate question to ask, and you are very lucky I’m used to that sort of thing enough by now to not file a complaint with Human Resources straightaway. Perhaps I will anyway. Two, that is categorically false. Please get that out of my face.”

“You’re right, I was being way too conservative. Ten pants?”

Hermann grinds his teeth together. “You saw me with significantly less clothing than this when you accidentally—allegedly—spilled a large amount of neutralized kaiju blood on me last year.”

The decontamination shower incident. Of course. How could Newt forget? Hermann looked like an angry wet cat in there, and Newt made a beeline for the exit the second he confirmed there weren’t any imminent biohazards and/or threats to Hermann’s health and/or threats to Newt's health before Hermann could get out and make one for him. Newt hid on the roof all afternoon.

A cold decon shower sounds pretty nice right now, actually. He wonders if the water in here is still running. A bead of sweat rolls down the back of his neck. “Which you’ve yet to apologize for,” Hermann continues, because Newt guesses they're still talking about this. “Get that out of my face.”

He tightens his fingers around Newt's wrist and yanks Newt’s hand back to shine the flashlight where he needs it, and, conspicuously, doesn’t address the whole pants question, which Newt assumes has to mean there’s at least three different things going on down there. Hermann strikes him as an old-timey long underwear kind of guy. The kind you'd see flapping on clotheslines in old cartoons.

A minute later he throws down the cables and hits the side of his computer with his cane. “Bugger,” he snarls, pushing himself to his feet. “I have work to do, and now I'll be behind by a whole day. This is completely unacceptable. I have submitted no less than four notices about the importance of—”

“Aw, no luck,” Newt says. He wipes his own forehead on his rolled-up shirt cuff. Would Hermann notice if he took his shirt off? It’s gettin’ hot in here, he thinks. Hermann’s temper is gettin’ hot, too, and he thinks if he doesn’t shut his mouth his foot might find out firsthand how that walloping Hermann’s computer just got felt. “Soooo, can I go now?”

He wants to take his shirt off very badly. And more importantly he has a hot—he means that very literally—date with a battery-operated fan and a minifridge of melting popsicles in his bedroom ASAP, and he’d like to get to the popsicles (and take off his shirt) sooner than later. “Fine,” Hermann says. He takes the flashlight and waves Newt off. "Get out of my sight, you wretch."

Newt’s bunk is darker and stuffier than the lab, if possible. His first order of business is to strip down to his bare chest stat before fumbling with the switches to his fan and the shitty little rechargeable nightlight he keeps on his desk. His legs are so sweaty that the denim of his skinny jeans is clinging to him for dear life, and it takes him twice as long to wriggle out of them. He succeeds, finally, flopping flat on his ass on the mattress in his boxers. After a few more uncomfortable minutes of wriggling he kicks those off too. Definitely a dick out kind of afternoon.

Tiny as it is, the fan feels fucking great. If Hermann wasn’t such a dick Newt would’ve considered inviting him over to bask in how great it feels with him. The popsicles are great, too, and mostly still intact, but—given the distressingly liquidy state of his little minifridge freezer—they won’t be for long. Newt unwraps two of them at once and eats them in alternating bites as quickly as he can without giving himself brain freeze. He’s just unwrapped a third when there’s a brusque knock at his door.

“Uggggh,” he says. “What?”

He rolls over on his side and squints at the door, wishing vaguely for some variation of x-ray vision to see who’s there or (better yet) telekinesis that could just open the door for him. He’s hot. And lazy. Basically, getting up and opening the door is at the very bottom of the list of potential activities he could engage in right now.

“It’s me,” Hermann says.

Pretty presumptuous of him, seeing as there’s a whole Shatterdome of me’s who aren’t Hermann that could’ve been at Newt’s door and who would totally love to enjoy Newt’s company, and frozen desserts, but Newt will let it slide, given ninety percent of the time the me in question actually is Hermann. He peels himself up from his sheets and shuffles over to the door to open it. “Yeah?” he says around his popsicle.

“Did you take my,” Hermann says, and then his mouth abruptly stops moving, and he goes a shade of red that’s impressively visible in the low lighting. “Oh,” he says.

Newt takes a bite out of the popsicle and swallows with a wince. Too cold, overly ambitious of him. “Probably,” he says. “I mean, whatever you’re missing, I probably took it. The sandwich you packed today, yes, your sticky notes, yes. I was hungry. For the sandwich I mean. Not the sticky notes. Didn’t you see my note?” By my he guess he technically means Hermann’s, because he wanted to do the polite thing and leave an IOU for the sandwich like a good little colleague but ran out of his own sticky note pads three months ago and keeps forgetting to order more.

“Do you want a popsicle?” he says. “I’m trying to finish off the box. I’ve already had two so far,” he sticks out his blue tongue as proof, “and I think I might get sick if I eat anymore after this. I guess I could just, you know, stop, but I spent a ridiculous amount of money on these, Hermann, you wouldn’t believe how much, and it would physically pain me to toss them out.” The snack food black market—hyperbolically speaking, it’s not actually a black market, just a handful of convenience stores who have managed to wiggle their way around rationing—doesn’t run cheap, and he paid for roundtrip bus fare on top of that.

“Er,” Hermann says.

He sounds confusingly confused over the offer. Historically, they eat each other’s food all the time, or at least Newt eats Hermann’s, but Newt has never been stingy when it comes to sharing his black market snacks with Hermann. It’s nothing new here. “They’re gonna melt, dude, why not?” Newt says.

Hermann is breathing hard and looking even more like the Gottliebian equivalent of a pin-up calendar right now: button-down undone to the collarbones, sleeves rolled up, slack cuffs rolled up, belt MIA, flush high on his cheekbones. And with his dumb little glasses to top it off, too. It’s working for Hermann. It’s working for Newt. He wonders, if he was to sabotage the lab A/C again in the near future, if it would be worth Hermann’s fury to see him like this again.

Newt sucks on the popsicle. Hermann suddenly thrusts an arm out, catching himself on the doorframe like he’s about to topple right over, and Newt realizes now that he’s looking a little sick in the face. The poor guy must be overheating. A wave of guilt instantly washes over him—Hermann might be a dick, but Newt really should’ve mentioned the fan thing, which makes him equally a dick for not doing so. Basically their dickishness is cancelling each other out here, which he thinks makes them both pretty stand-up guys.

“Okay, fine, you wanna come in?” Newt says. “I have a fan. It’s not, like, good, but it’s better than nothing. Also, obviously, popsicles.” A droplet of melted popsicle rolls down the stick and onto his fingers, and Newt licks it up. He gives Hermann’s sleeve a little tug. “Gotta say though dude, you’re looking preeeeetty indecent right now. I mean, forearms? My God, this is a military base, not a gentlemen’s club. Don’t flash me any sock garters, I won’t be able to take it.”

“I’m indecent?” Hermann chokes out. "Do you not—?!"

His eyes fall to Newt’s lips as Newt sucks the rest of the popsicle off the stick, and as Hermann digs his teeth into his own bottom lip, Newt thinks oh, man. He thought Hermann would be above the whole tragically juvenile popsicle=phallic thing. Very low-hanging erotic fruit. He’s almost disappointed in the guy. Newt can name ten different ways he could seduce Hermann right now, hypothetical success rate aside, that would be way more interesting. Newt chews on the wooden popsicle stick just to shake things up a bit.

“Okay, so are you coming in?” he says.

Hermann’s throat bobs as he swallows thickly. “Newton,” he finally says, and the next bits out of his mouth are a confusing semi-coherent jumble, “I am extremely—what I mean is, I’m not sure—the repercussions of it all, in terms of our working relationship—and loathe as I am to admit it, I do consider you my closest—though of course I find you exceedingly attractive, and I want to, only…”

“Um,” Newt says.

Hermann hovers in the doorway for another ten seconds, weirdly and uncomfortably silent, before shaking Newt’s hand off his sleeve. “I have to do paperwork,” he says.

He books it out of there.

Hermann’s a weirdo, no use trying to figure it out.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Zoë Schlanger at The Atlantic:

In the United States, as in most other countries, weather forecasts are a freely accessible government amenity. The National Weather Service issues alerts and predictions, warning of hurricanes and excessive heat and rainfall, all at the total cost to American taxpayers of roughly $4 per person per year. Anyone with a TV, smartphone, radio, or newspaper can know what tomorrow’s weather will look like, whether a hurricane is heading toward their town, or if a drought has been forecast for the next season. Even if they get that news from a privately owned app or TV station, much of the underlying weather data are courtesy of meteorologists working for the federal government.

Charging for popular services that were previously free isn’t generally a winning political strategy. But hard-right policy makers appear poised to try to do just that should Republicans gain power in the next term. Project 2025—a nearly 900-page book of policy proposals published by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation—states that an incoming administration should all but dissolve the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, under which the National Weather Service operates. Donald Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, but given that it was largely written by veterans of his first administration, the document is widely seen as a blueprint for a second Trump term.

NOAA “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” Project 2025 reads. The proposals roughly amount to two main avenues of attack. First, it suggests that the NWS should eliminate its public-facing forecasts, focus on data gathering, and otherwise “fully commercialize its forecasting operations,” which the authors of the plan imply will improve, not limit, forecasts for all Americans. Then, NOAA’s scientific-research arm, which studies things such as Arctic-ice dynamics and how greenhouse gases behave (and which the document calls “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism”), should be aggressively shrunk. “The preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded,” the document says. It further notes that scientific agencies such as NOAA are “vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims,” so appointees should be screened to ensure that their views are “wholly in sync” with the president’s. The U.S. is, without question, experiencing a summer of brutal weather. In just the past week, a record-breaking hurricane brought major flooding and power outages to Texas amid an extreme-heat advisory. More than a dozen tornadoes ripped through multiple states. Catastrophic flash flooding barreled through wildfire burn scars in New Mexico. Large parts of the West roasted in life-threatening temperatures. Facing any of this without the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would be mayhem. And future years are likely to be worse.

The NWS serves as a crucial point of contact in a weather crisis, alerting the public when forecasts turn dangerous and advising emergency managers on the best plan of action. So far in 2024, the NWS has issued some 13,000 severe-thunderstorm warnings, 2,000 tornado warnings, and 1,800 flash-flood warnings, plus almost 3,000 river-flood warnings, according to JoAnn Becker, a meteorologist and the president of the union that represents NWS employees. NOAA is also home to the National Hurricane Center, which tracks storms, and the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, whose pilots fly “hurricane hunter” planes directly into cyclones to measure their wind speed and hone the agency’s predictions. NOAA even predicts space weather. Just this past May, it forecast a severe geomagnetic storm with the potential to threaten power grids and satellites. (The most consequential outages never came to pass, but the solar storm did throw off farmers’ GPS-guided tractors for a while.) Privatizing the weather is not a new conservative aim. Nearly two decades ago, when the National Weather Service updated its website to be more user-friendly, Barry Myers, then executive vice president of AccuWeather, complained to the press that “we work very hard every day competing with other companies, and we also have to compete with the government.” In 2005, after meeting with a representative from AccuWeather, then-Senator Rick Santorum introduced a bill calling for the NWS to cease competition with the private sector, and reserve its forecasts for commercial providers. The bill never made it out of committee. But in 2017, Trump picked Myers to lead NOAA. (Myers withdrew his nomination after waiting two years for Senate confirmation.)

Funding for many of NOAA’s programs could plummet in 2025, and the agency already suffers from occasional telecommunications breakdowns, including a recent alert-system outage amid flooding in the Midwest. It is also subject to political pressures: In 2019, the agency backed then-President Trump’s false claim (accompanied by a seemingly Sharpie-altered map) that Hurricane Dorian was headed for Alabama. Private companies might be better funded and, theoretically, less subject to political whims. They can also use supercomputing power to hone NOAA’s data into hyperlocal predictions, perhaps for an area as small as a football stadium. Some, including AccuWeather, use their own proprietary algorithms to interpret NWS data and produce forecasts that they claim have superior accuracy. (Remember, though: Without NWS data, none of this would happen.)

[...] The NWS also has perks that a private system would be hard-pressed to replicate, including a partnership with the World Meteorological Organization, which allows the U.S. access to a suite of other countries’ weather models. International collaboration proved crucial in 2012, when Hurricane Sandy was still churning in the Atlantic Ocean. Initially, the American model predicted, incorrectly, that the storm would turn away from the East Coast. But the European model accurately forecast a collision course, which bought emergency managers in the U.S. crucial time to prepare before Sandy made ferocious landfall in New Jersey.

Project 2025 could have an impact on how accurate and precise weather forecasts are delivered, since NOAA and NWS could be significantly altered.

This is one of many reasons why we must vote Blue up and down the line.

See Also:

Daily Kos: Project 2025 will affect every part of life. Even weather updates

[anguishedlurker]

Sorry, our hands are tied about this!

Prompt "Nocturne fucked up BIG TIME and now needs help from the ghost kid." from kadziduo on ao3/ @duchi-nesten on tumblr! Get phic phought :) Edit: Functioning Ao3 link now that I have a working brain tonight

~

“Fix it. Before I do” Was all Clockwork said before vanishing.

Fix what? Nocturne didn’t know, but nonetheless knew that Clockwork was presently threatening its non-life into vanishment.

Many types of accidents could be arranged.

Fix it before Clockwork does, and left to do its own research to boot. How droll.

Creeping, trawling through random dreams for a hint. Its purpose, if not its goal in its non-life. Delightful nonsense and soft desires clashing against horrid possibilities and terrible unrealities.

Fix it, before Clockwork does. How unhelpful.

Fix it, fix it, fix it… What a dreadful chant to have been produced by the English language.

Finally, Nocturne conceded that it would have to either be very lucky, or open its eyes to the waking realm to find anything out.

If pressed for honesty, it would not call this a dreadful task. The waking realm is, afterall, the source of the realm of sleep. It pays to understand what one is reflecting.

But ah, so many dull details to mull over...

Fix it. Fix what? It wasn’t obvious until it was all that could be seen.

Magical items with magical properties are objects largely outside of Nocturne's purview.

Unless it has to do with sleep.

And unless it’s the one that made the cursed things, which were now its problem to solve.

In more ways than one, even.

Clockwork has simply sped the timeline up on this being its problem.

The objects were older than English, but could be generously translated to ‘Ribbons of Night’. Each of the six operated slightly differently from the other five when active.

Which makes it sound as if one ribbon could be depended on to be the same ribbon when activated.

Absolutely not. Even with a ribbon permanently attached to oneself between activations, there was no predicting which one you had at any given moment. They were the unholy fusion of dream logic and schrodingers box principals.

It was more complicated than that, granted. There were in fact signs that could point you towards which you had at any given moment, and thus could be leveraged to accomplish whatever ones goal was reliably if you were willing to wait.

No matter what, they were usually weak enough to not be a bother to much more than the fool who thought they could control the mind, and whatever half dozen idiots they saw fit to terrorize.

Usually.

It greatly depended on the energy willfully put into them, see...

More energy, more chaos and for even longer. What’s not to love?

Adorable little things, so long as a weird cult of both ghosts and humans don’t get all six and strategically place them around both realms and dump a small nations worth of power into each of them.

You know, because who would ever do that? Truly, such a thing would take a ridiculous series of logical leaps (to think it was a good idea) and logistical nightmares (to make real) that it would be immediately branded a fever dream and disregarded.

Nocturne would typically be inclined to not be involved with the whole debacle, its not as if it could reabsorbed the partitioned fragments itself, but there’s a small problem with the ribbons and how they operate.

The issue is slightly two-fold, and also just the same problem twice over. What can Nocturne say, its things like to be complicated like that.

The ribbons are small fragments of Nocturne, modified for usage by the average ghost. Living need not apply, but if they can work around it then power too them. Nocturne's power is a scary thing to have loose in any realm, particularly at small-nation’s-electrical-grid scale.

And also, the dreams are fragments of Nocturne, that turning off requires either patience for their power to run dry or for a test of power and will to succeed.

Backlash from such a test is usually not of Nocturne's concern- if a fool decided to power a ribbon beyond their control and had to pay to turn it off, Nocturne's side would sting for ten seconds and then stop. Whether the fool was dead or not didn’t matter to Nocturne.

But if the ribbons were powered to the point they’d take years to stop, and also all six of them were going strong at once, meaning that everyone would be forced to contest them, win or lose, in the name of everyone’s continued existence…

Nocturne has finite durability, and that’s a lot of damage.

Even if the inflictors will die with Nocturne, it will be done because nothing has a choice right now..

The whole mess did clarify to Nocturne why Clockwork would care to harass it, though. It gave two reasons, even.

World balance… not Nocturne's domain, though certainly one of Clockworks. Accidents could be arranged, but these ribbons were older than most living nations.

Accidents could be arranged, but Clockworks chain was rather short. A plan like this would’ve been decades in the making, if not centuries, and the observants would be none too pleased if Clockwork were to do real work outside their supervision. Meaning for real work and not silly lessons with effects quickly undone, Clockwork’s self initiative had chain of about six weeks in either direction, with one arranged accident per inconvenience before they were pressed about activity.

An accident could be arranged, but unless that accident extended across two dimensions and obliterated somewhere around four hundred to two thousand beings in one go Clockwork was stuck explaining themself to the council. And to papercut a decades long plan to death? That work would be noticed too.

Accidents plural could be arranged, but no accidents Clockwork could justify to a council of the most belligerent asshats Nocturne had ever had the displeasure of meeting would also arrange a solution without sending everyone years back, something the council would not do.

The decorative bow atop the rest of Clockworks restraints was that accidents could be arranged, but even if Nocturne's spot were to be taken the successor would simply have the same problem because the process would make them into the ‘same’ being and they would inherit the ribbons, and killing Nocturne (or otherwise) in such a violent manner would have massive world shaking blowout. Potentially worse than the ribbons were doing and would do over the years.

The final answer was to destroy decades worth of timeline to fix this, and no ghost in the world would agree on how or why to do that. Could the council stop debating themselves to obliteration before their time to solve this was up?

Clockwork didn’t seem to think so.

Getting to Long Now was such a nuisance on average, but Nocturne (correctly) presumed that one it’d gotten to the bottom of its new task then Clockwork would humor it with a more thorough conversation.

This time, it didn’t even have to break the front doors. How unusual!

Clockwork refused to turn from the mirrors before them, and Nocturne had to force down the indignation as it took its place high above.

Dreams are much weaker than the irrevocable force of Time, and killing Nocturne here would be messy and bad, but make the new problems straight forward.

“I will elect not to lecture if you turn to speak on equal terms. I will call this fair, given you’ve decided you’re in a corner. Enough to reach out.”

Ahhh to not lose touch with scathing statements, drenched in politics. Nocturne never misses them much, but such words have use.

Passively, Clockwork flickered and reappeared facing Nocturne.

“Better.” Nocturne hummed, electing to drip onto the floor from the ceiling. “Now-”

“Do not pretend you’ve power over this mess any more than I.”

“Never claimed anything of the sort! But you could do to acknowledge your partner in crime before you bark commands down the chain.”

Clockwork’s hand twitched, tightening around their staff, and Nocturne was sure they were mentally calculating if it was worth trying the conversation again.

“Now, I know the goal is peace, but pray tell if you’ve got a spare thought for how that is going to happen?”

Nocturne would genuinely like to know; Its continued existence was on the line the moment an idiot got martyr-y about it.

“Handling the ribbons is a monumental task at this scale, with few qualified to stop the ribbons and fewer still capable of surviving the job.”

“Yes, very much so. But if you’ll kindly direct some concern to the rest of the issue…”

Clockwork sighed, and turned to mirrors.

With a grand gesture designed to piss it off, the ribbon of… translation pending, appeared before them on the mirrors.

In the realm of volcanoes and fire was a crack, and in this crack was madness, and in this madness was a shard of Nocturne's body.

It was difficult to articulate the appearance of ‘void, but with sharp edges and hatred’, but thankfully Nocturne didn’t need to speak aloud about such a thing. Just stare at it as Clockwork warmed up to their point.

And then they didn’t progress the conversation in an action likely designed to piss Nocturne off even more.

Good thing Nocturne did not have teeth to grind.

“Yes, yes, the ribbon of… pleasure?”

“Close enough.”

Nocturne was sure Clockwork was smiling underneath that hood over its noise of disgust.

“The ribbon of pleasure, in the infinite zone of volcanoes and fire, and at the center my fragment ripe for the challenge. I am waiting to die from these miserable little mistakes, and await your suggestion to the contrary.”

“Now, who said anything about challenges?”

“Me.” Nocturne huffed, shuffling forward to examine the fragment.

“Why?”

Oh Nocturne could just...

“Because the fools who started this will have no further options. Because anyone fit to rise to solve this will not get further options.”

“Wrong.”

Nocturne refused to squirm in the following silence, immediately deciding it would out wait Clockwork of it was the last thing it ever did.

Clockwork seemed to catch on immediately at least, though it was difficult to tell if such a catch on was in fact after two hours of Nocturne commuting to suicide by any other name.

“Petulance will not serve you well in this instance. Regardless, if an appropriately powered being can approach with an appropriately malleable skillset, most fragments of this nature can be absorbed as opposed to destroyed.”

Ah. They’d gone mad, it sees this now.

“A fascinating theory. But see, there’s a lot of ifs you’re not articulating.” Nocturne hissed, jerking back from the mirrors to refocus on Clockwork.

“You first.” Clockwork hummed.

Of modest annoyances, this one failed to land. The predictability was more annoying, really.

“If we can find an appropriate candidate then they’d have to have the theoretical potential of at least me, and if we can find that someone they would have to be a child- still moldable in all ways including accepting my power-, and if we could find that child then even beyond its capacity to change it must have the separate capacity to walk two worlds, and if we find that child then we must hide it for long enough to get to keep it from the observants’ machinations and purify it of my influence. Provided we even can purify it.”

The final two were the truest sticking points of all; Nocturne, just as Clockwork, would never be permitted to keep a child. Nocturne wouldn’t even be allowed to keep a willing adult, but that was beyond the point.

“Not easy enough to hide, but I have my ways in keeping the observants eyes off me to get real work done.” Clockwork allowed.

Nocturne didn’t get chills easily, but it finally clicked to it that maybe, just maybe...

Nocturne was already in some deeply illegal shit just by being here, this time.

“You didn’t. Not already.”

“Oh, but I have. Did you think you’d get to say no to me? The moment the observants understand they have a blank spot in time, you will be found and interrogated as the missing piece.”

Nocturne was forced to pause.

It really, truly had to physically wrench itself back. The wild temperament of Dreams would lead to disaster.

“Fascinating. Would you like to know your odds of sense, in this instance?”

“No. I’d like to know who you have in mind, since you’re so smart as to kill us both.”

Clockwork hummed, pleased with themself as they waved at the mirrors again.

No chills, but…

“You’re joking, right?”

The young boy that had foiled its romp in Amity, desperately trying not to wilt into the wallpaper as his parents ranted and raved.

“Why would I?”

“To lure me into false hope. Your pet child is non negotiable to you, and you’ve missed the part where we’ll need to strip it of everything it gains. You wouldn’t.”

Clockworks hand tightened again, and Nocturne could hear the staff creak ever so slightly as the pressure became far greater than any mortal material could dream of handling.

“My child… I am pleased to know you regard it as such, but no. Young Danny is not mine to keep.”

“In formalities alone, no. But he’s yours, and you’re rather fond of the boy. Unless I’ve been seeing some other ghostling visit you every Sunday.”

Clockwork wasn’t looking directly at Nocturne, which was not technically a good sign.

“Not to keep.” Clockwork growled. Cracks spread along a mirror or possibly three, Nocturne was suddenly much too fixated on every errant twitch to care about the mirrors.

Nocturne did its best to not flinch away- despite the obviously in-equal status, Nocturne was a GOD in its own right. It couldn’t afford to flinch.

“That doesn’t matter, Clockwork. And if you would deign to clarify how we’re going to purify it...”

Clockwork didn’t relax as they shook their head no.

“The fuck you mean no, I’m helping dig your ass out this mess too. You wouldn’t be knocking on my door if you had other choices.”

“Two fold issue, a long story hardly of relevance.” Clockwork huffed, turning back towards their mirrors. With a wave and a suspiciously loud tick noise, the mirrors in question returned to an undamaged state. Phantom’s family resumed arguing on them, the boy left to awkwardly shuffle towards the stairs.

“Kroonoooooossss.” Nocturne elected to drawl after a pause.

Don’t get it wrong, it knew its risks. But it had a very bad hand before it, and would like to know if the pot cards made a difference.

The noise of total contempt Clockwork gave in response made it all worth it.

“There’s no world where you don’t know my problems with this. It’s lunacy at its finest. You’re sending me in blind to lead the meek and blind, the observants would rather I die and they play cleanup than let us do this anyhow, and somehow I think I and the observants have the fewest issues with these events. Forgive the acquisition of slang, there’s too many plot holes with this plan!”

“No, there isn’t. But you don’t have room for negotiation, do you?”

No, but that’s not stopping it.

“You have me verbally hostage, if not physically. I think me demanding a real answer as to why you care is the least amount of detail you can give me.”

“Wrong. Conversation over, go home and decide if you’d like to live.”

Nocturne wouldn’t have been able to take the belligerence anymore, lurching itself forward to assault Clockwork.

But it was already awake in one of its caves, three days before Nocturne figured out its task, one day before Clockwork had even informed it that it had a task, and a full sixteen hours after the cultists had completed the rituals.

Nocturne had fucked up in many ways, big and small.

For one, it had risen to Clockworks bait at all. Talk about taking one step forward and having your shins shattered for the effort…

Impossible to say if the mess could’ve gone differently, though. Clockwork clearly had a plan that Nocturne was but a vehicle for.

For two, Nocturne had no doubt Clockwork had already spent their one cosmic accident budget to make Nocturne look even worse out of this- all the better to force it to their whims. It had an educated guess about where that accident went, but what did it matter? Clockwork didn’t do anything by halves, Nocturne was fucked. Which went back to point one.

There were more fuck ups of course, some of them older than the swears it was muttering. A specific six of them, in fact.

One in the land of Volcanoes, one in the land of Atlanta Georgia, one in the land of The jungle, one in the land of Dallas Texas, one in the largest functioning cyber-network in the zone (now if Nocturne could get a clear answer about what that was, this would be nice), and one in the land of Shenghai China.

And apparently at the center of it all, a not-dead child to save them all! Joy!

Lunacy, lunacy, lunacy… What would the point be, in the end? Making the boy suffer like that for the world, once again?

Provided Clockworks pet could live, anyhow…

Maybe that was the point. A dramatic exit for what the observants already had their laser sights on, anyhow. A heroes death at it’s finest.

Whatever. It had its path and task, and despite everything Clockwork wasn’t self destructive. The situation would be solved if Nocturne obeyed.

Nocturne refused to trust any other detail of the situation, not that it changed its new goal.

It had to move fast. Find the portal, enter the house, spot the boy. Shuffling to the stairs as his parents bellowed away over something stupid.

Punctuated by everyone but him collapsing to the ground like all pathetic mortals in The Final Rest’s presence.

Form of stars, voice of satin, dripping like slime from cracks at the edge of the child’s vision.

Nocturne was sure it had made its entrance clear.

The white rings traveled up the child's body, revealing his powered form even as he dropped into an aggressive stance.

“Halt. Despite my entrance, this is more an offer of peace. Nice and quiet now, wouldn’t you agree?”

The boy couldn’t hide the shaky breath he took.

“Knocking people out isn’t peaceful.” He hissed, turning to glare at one of Nocturne’s larger blobs.

“I thought I kicked you out already. Back for another round?” He attempted to taunt, false confidence rising by the second.

“Please, child. Booting me out of one of my more vicious play fights is not a point of pride.”

The boy flushed a deeper green in barely concealed rage, backing away from the bulk of Nocturne’s form as it pooled in the center of the room.

“You have to have seen the news already. Three human locations under mysterious effects. It hasn’t been long, but it’s been profound, no?” It asked bluntly, rising as an owl this time. Rams were so last week, afterall.

The boys eyes flicked to the middle distance, contemplating.

“Maybe. Or maybe I don’t follow politics. Who knows, really?” He huffed.

“Stupidity gets you nowhere. Cultists have stolen artifacts of mine and used them for terrorism in its truest definition, in both the human realm and the infinite realm. It will spread if unmanaged.” Nocturne sighed, glooping its way towards the boy and stretching to far taller.

That certainly elicited a reaction, but who could say what was going on in the boy’s skull?

“And you’re sooo altruistic you wanna solve this yourself, I take it?” He prodded, backing away to the wall. If it occurred to him that he could phase through the wall and simply leave, it didn’t show.

Perhaps the child could’ve been a politician with that tonal bite. Alas...

“I have plenty to lose of they’re dealt with by traditional means. And you have much to lose if this spreads too far. The amount of people who die regardless if traditionally dealt with is uncountable. You, and the world with it, are in just as dire of straits as I with this mess.”

The boy paused, looking Nocturne up and down.

“And why should I take your word for it?”

Hmm… maybe if..

Nocturne made a sound like a shuddering breath and sank its form to only slightly taller than the boy.

“Because it’s not my word, it’s Clockworks.”

Another strong reaction. Nocturne was getting somewhere.

“And if you’re lying?”

Nocturne bowed forward slightly to imply consideration.

The child wasn’t wrong to distrust it, dreams were tricky things afterall. And personal experience gave a firm indication as to Nocturne’s temperament, be that true or false.

But the awake were always so predictable…

“We can visit them to ask, if you like. But permanence will take within days. It needs to be you, and we need to go. Now.”

The boy closed his eyes, considering.

“Clockwork, first. No confirmation, no help.” He ordered, eyes snapping open ans he crossed his arms.

“Of course.” Nocturne muttered, carefully eyeing how the child prepped to fly along with it.

He didn’t get the chance to fly on his own, already plucked away by Nocturne as it swooped down to the portal.

No time to waste, its non-life was on the line. And if the screaming was funny, then that was a bonus.

[murderbees]

Programs that are in the real/user world all have sensory issues for sure

I will elaborate gladly

So on grid? Everything is data or functions, or other computer stuff. It slots into their processors like nothing because it's how they're meant to function.

There's not a lot of extraneous information being sent, it would make The Grid inefficient. There's not really air or wind, or at least, not in the same way. Things can generate force, like fans pushing out, or the insect-like wings slowing programs descent.

Surfaces are generally smooth, there's not a lot of data input from them. The gridsuits and armor are like second skins, not much sensory input there.

The programs are also connected to the operating system and Grid on a deeper level. Pings race across personal displays and queries are sent with barely a thought. There's a level of interconnectedness with everything, even the ground. ISOs felt this even more. As children of the Grid, they have even stronger links. Like a 6th sense.

In the Real/User world? oh man,

There's so much information everywhere all the time.

Everything has a texture, especially clothes. Most programs go for skin tight clothing, it's the closest to their suit as they can get. Most can't decide between running their fingers over everything or trying not to touch anything at all.

There are sounds and smells everywhere. Yeah, they're on the Grid too, but not like this. It's almost an assault. Every single thing has a smell, and they can't filter out the inputs anymore.

Taste is somewhat new. The only thing there really was to taste was energy, and while it had flavor, it generally was more conceptual in nature than physical. Energy consumption connected directly to a programs circuits, cycling through and being processed within seconds. Food feels like the opposite. Adjusting to physical food is an ordeal for every program.

The absense of Grid connections makes them all uneasy. They can't send a message with a few flicks of their fingers, no, they have to talk. They can't feel the other programs like they used to and not having a personal display makes most of them feel inefficient.

It's basically a whole new set of senses to get used to, with the loss of half your previous ones. Yeah they all have their sensory issues for sure.

[kivaember]

some soft viv621... post-LoR ending where Rusty lives bc I'm wilfully delusional about his survival ok

-

The outpost was more like a makeshift camp congregated within the walls of an old industrial complex. The electric grid was functional here, still chugging along after a planetary disaster and decades of neglect (say what you will about the Institute, but they built things to last), identifying it as a suitable base of operation for this sector's clean-up.

'Clean-up' being hunting down the last dregs of corporate interlopers and ejecting them from Rubicon - usually by shoving them off the mortal coil. There'd been reports of a few Arquebus loyalists holed up in an old water refinery plant, and they had two HCs in their possession, making them an intolerable threat...

Also, the Liberation Front also wanted that water refinery plant. While it wasn't fully functional, a bit of elbow grease would have its fresh water production rise from 1% to at least 20%, and from there they could start rebuilding the city's ruined infrastructure from the ground up - the first step in Rubicon's revival.

But Rusty was getting ahead of himself.

Reconstruction, independence... that was outside of his current cares or duties right now. The only thing he needed to focus on was rooting out the last of the corporate ticks still stubbornly clinging onto their world, and while it was a tedious slog sometimes, dispersed as they were and hunkered down amongst valuable infrastructure, he could admit to some malicious vindication at finally getting to bare his fangs and tear them to shreds.

He was disappointed Snail hadn't survived the Xylem, really. He would've loved to have him witness the slow fall of Arquebus on Rubicon by being hunted down like a rat. Ah well. You couldn't have everything in life, he supposed.

Rusty sighed as he leaned back on his rickety fold-out cot, fighting the urge to rub his eyes to clear the slight blurriness from them. He was sitting in his 'tent', a small one that could just about squeeze two cots in with enough room to walk between them, the plans for the water refinery plant sprawled out on his lap. Someone had managed to find the hardcopy of them, miraculously, but it meant Rusty was forced to use his Mark One Eyeball to study the layout, rather than having a digital version his implants could reference on demand.

It was important they got this water refinery plant without causing any further damage to it... but damn, Rusty felt like he was going cross-eyed, staring at the tiny print and thin lines...

A rustle drew his attention, and he looked up to see Raven skulking into their tent with a displeased air about him, a gust of snowy wind chasing his ice-crusted boots.

Rusty smiled.

"Cold, buddy?" he asked teasingly, looking his friend up and down. Raven was bundled up in what looked like two thick coats, a scarf concealing half of his face and a beanie crammed over his head, dark curls peeking out from underneath its hem. Snow stuck to his legs in thick, icy clumps, and Raven stood unhappily at the tent's entranceway, trying - and failing - to stomp the frozen snow off of him.

"Ah, hold on. Let me..."

Rusty folded up the plans and tossed them carelessly onto his cot, before standing up and moving to assist Raven. Carefully, he prised off the icy snow with his bare hands, the bite of cold against his fingers not really bothering him. Raven made a vague, appreciative noise when Rusty was done, and they moved to sit on their respective cots facing each other.

The heater positioned between their cots was promptly cranked up a few degrees. Raven still didn't shed any of his warm kit.

"How're you finding the rough living?" Rusty asked, already knowing the answer. Raven had been exuding an aura of pure misery for over a week now. "Not too hard on you, is it?"

Raven gave him a dead-eyed stare.

"Well, give it a few weeks, and we might get an actual building we can set up base in," Rusty said, trying not to smirk at Raven's - admittedly adorable - sulking. "Won't have to go outside to take a piss and risk getting a frostbitten dick, then."

Raven outright grimaced, and he fumbled with his pocket to withdraw his communication device. After very reluctantly removing his thick mittens, his fingers pale and stiff, he typed: «I don't know how you stand it.»

Rusty's smile turned sympathetic. "Experience."

Raven grunted at that dissatisfactory answer.

"You'll get used to it eventually." Or, maybe not, as Raven had been on Rubicon for months and still wasn't used to it. Maybe it was a Gen Four thing, the lack of cold resilience? Or, more likely, a Raven thing. "But for now..."

Rusty leaned back fractionally and held his arms open. "How about I help you thaw out, hm?"

Raven didn't hesitate. He rose from his cot and did a 180 turn to primly sit down on Rusty's lap. The bottom of his coat(s) had chunks of frozen snow sticking to it, so Rusty got a delightful shock of cold on certain, erm, areas that had his toes curling in his boots from the sharpness of it before the chill faded. He ruefully resigned himself to having a distinctive wet patch on his crotch for a bit.

"There we go." Rusty wrapped his arms around Raven's midriff, and gently caught his hands in his own. Raven's hands were tiny compared to his, easily engulfed in his own, his fingers like ice and almost stark white, they were so bloodless. It made the pink scars along the joints stand out vividly.

He rested his cheek against Raven's beanie, the wool a little scratchy. It smelled of exhaust. Probably spent time in the makeshift garage they had set up. He could feel Raven shiver, the double-coat layer not hiding how skinny he was beneath the fabric's bulk.

"No wonder you're always cold... you're basically skin and bones," Rusty murmured. "I'll ask if you can have your rations increased, get some bulk on you."

Raven made a vague, humming noise of acknowledgement.

They sat like that for a while. Raven stopped shivering, and Rusty admittedly began to drowse off, even if he started to lose blood circulation to his legs. Outside of the tent, the noise of a bustling camp filtered through: the growl of heavy-duty trucks, the thrum of heli-transporters arriving and departing, and shouts and chatter and laughter. Morale was high amongst the Liberation Front, for obvious reasons.

The PCA had been chased off the planet, its precious 'System' nothing but mangled metal deep in the Depths. The corporations had been humiliated and left with a broken nose, with only pockets of loyalists that had been abandoned by their corporate masters to die was 'rogue elements' on a planet actively hostile to them. Slowly but surely, the Liberation Front was reclaiming their home, mile by painful mile.

It was hard, gruelling work. The infrastructure was intact in only a few, certain locations, and most of them military complexes. Attempting to rebuild domestic and civilian infrastructure from that was slow going, but possible, and now that they weren't actively fighting for survival from the PCA or the corporations... they were finally making progress.

They were going to rebuild a city here, with running water and electricity and homes, and establish a sustainable hydrophonics and mealworm farm, and bring online the long-neglected fabrication foundry nearby. It'll take time, a lot of time, but it was a goal every single one of them were fixated on achieving - while they had the time.

Everyone knew the corporations were going to come back. In larger numbers, and with UEG backing, more likely. In that time, Rubicon needed to shore up its defences, finishing seizing and integrating PCA's weaponry and tech into their militia, and see if they could regain control over the Institute's rogue C-Weapons that were aimlessly milling across the countryside, freed from the frozen, subterranean tomb.

Rusty still couldn't believe it was happening, really. He'd dreamed of it, of course, had aimed to achieve this exact thing... yet still, he couldn't believe it. It had such a low chance of success, and it only worked because of...

He tightened his arms around Raven's waist, giving him a squeeze. Raven made a quiet, prompting noise.

"...not sure if I ever said 'thank you'," Rusty murmured, his voice muffled by Raven's beanie. "All of this... we couldn't've done it without you, buddy."

Raven was still for a moment, before he fumbled for something. His communication device.

«You did all the hard work. I just helped at the end.»

"Still..." Rusty butted his head gently against Raven's. "Thanks."

Raven made a shrugging motion, still awkward and uncomfortable in the face of honest gratitude. It was slow going, deprogramming him from his days as a hound lacking in any agency, teaching him to say 'no' or to express his opinions. But much like Rubicon's reconstruction, Raven was rebuilding himself too, day by day, inch by inch.

Slowly but surely.

[sangyeonsmuse]

BREAK THE WALLS | Kim Hongjoong

Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Full Chapter List

🀥 Government agent Hongjoong x Rebel Oc

🀥 genre | dystopian society, halazia x geurilla concept , enemies to lovers

🀥 word count | 1.1k

🀥 Summary | An organization by the name of Sector 1 was well known for their work in the underground, theyve been well known for the recruiting of teens and using them to form an army since the year 2034. Collecting strays for their rebellion against those in higher power. Now the year is 2064 and the organization still runs strong they run like a family, with the new technology theyve found ways of keeping alive those that have been scorned in any past battles theyve had against the government.

When the government sends in 7 of their best men to infiltrate the organization. What will they do when their cover is blown and their true intentions are revealed? Will they join the rebellion or will they continue to let the government pull their strings like the little puppets they once were?

Bjvjb

Skylar district September 20th 2064

"This is what all of you have trained for, their recruitment day is getting nearer and you need to make sure that every single one of you makes it in. We didnt take them all out the first time but i'll make damn sure we take out every single person in that organization this time." A government official spoke authoritatively as he stood on the end of a long office table.

"Yes sir." Seven men all respond in sync at the mans words

When the meeting was over they all found themselves in a large practice room, a place where the seven of them all seemed to spend most of their time since they first started their work for the government.

"Oo what do you think it'll be like down there? You think they serve good food?" One of the seven rambles on curiously.

"Wooyoung this isn't a vacation or tropical getaway, that should be the last thing you worry about."

"Seonghwa is right, we need to take this seriously. If we pull through and succeed with this mission we become officials."

"I have also kinda wondered what things are like down there as well though Joong. I mean I know that Eden has told us a lot but he's never been down there right? What if it's a lot tougher than we thought?" Another chimes in

"Tough or not we need to go into this with our heads straight and our minds set on the right things san, he gave us 8 months to figure out their plans, that means we got no time to waste." Hongjoong responds making them all go silent.

Skylar district October 14th 2064

"You know just because your body doesn't operate like a humans now doesn't mean you should spend all your time in the airlock, Tahani." Eris nagged at the girl as she made sure that everything in the girl's new body was functioning properly. "And i don't wanna hear you whining about your name again, i refuse to call you anything but Tahani."

Knowing that the girl really would continue to call her by her birth name she simply just sighs in defeat as she sat compliantly on the cyber scanner.

"I want to be ready this time, I'm more than sure that Loren knows we'll be coming for him which means he'll prepare diligently. You know hes always been a fucking coward so in more than sure he wont be alone when we aim for the alaura tower." Tahani had it all planned out, every calculation, every possible outcome, she had thought of them all. This time even if they once again saw them coming she would make it her mission to make sure Loren suffered.

"Tahani Loren has been off the grid since that day, hasn't been spotted once, we don't even know if he's still in the city." Eris responds as she disconnects the many wires and tubes that had been locked tight against Tahanis body moments prior.

"Even if he isnt I owe him the most merciless death, he got my family killed and wiped out half of the Sector without a second thought. Our friends are dead because of him. Even if I have to search this entire god forsaken damn planet when the mission is done i'll do it. Life won't satisfy me until they're all dead."

With those final words she pushes herself up from the scanner and leaves the OASIS. As she pushes past the doors her body slams into someone on the other side.

"Sorry didnt see- you. What are you doing down here? This area isn't within your jurisdiction." Tahani found herself glaring at one of the seven that she had seen walking around with Jongho moments prior.

"I kinda uhh...got lost, there were like 8 different hallways to take and I couldn't remember where the Jongho guy said shared living quarters were." The tall silver haired male rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. For some reason he found himself shrinking down at the girl's presence.

Tahani simply rolled her eyes before pushing past the boy. Thinking she meant for him to follow her he found himself running after the girl before stopping at her side.

"None of us got to introduce ourselves earlier by the way, I'm Mingi. Uh, your name was Hira right?" Even though Tahani hadn't shown the least bit of interest in the boy he continued to ramble on

"Jongho said you've been here for four years? You must be one of their most skilled by now then." It was then that an annoyed sigh spilled from Tahanis lips.

"Listen, Mingi? It is Mingi right ? I'd rather walk in silence if you don't mind. Weren't you supposed to be looking for your living quarters or something anyways?"

"Wait- so you weren't taking me there? I thought you wanted me to follow your lead or something." Mingi stood there dumbfounded at the fact that he followed her even further into the hallway all for nothing. It was then that he looked up and his eyes caught sight of a large G on the wall behind the girl.

"Oh I get it you were just messing with me cause im a new recruit right? You really did walk me here." He responds cheerfully with a laugh before pushing past the girl and into the door behind her.

"I'm sorry what- wait you cant go in there." And as she followed the silver head boy inside she was forced to stop dead in her tracks as her eyes landed on Jongho, Leedo and the other six men all chatting as if it was a daily occurence.

"Why are they here?" Her loud voice caused all attention to fall on her.

"They're training for the G unit.." Leedo responds in a tone that implies it was something she should have already known.

"I'm sorry but come again? What the hell do you mean they're training for the G unit?"

"Hira..its been two years you have to let go." Jonghos response only angered the girl more.

"Let go? You want me to let go? Mingyu promised he fucking promised we wouldnt replace any of them. Now these guys show up, seven men who Im not sure i even want to fucking trust and you tell me to just let go? You look at me Jongho, all of me and tell me. If you ended up how i did would you be able to let go?" And with that she storms out of the room leaving the nine boys to simply just look around at one another.

[evecolourshock]

((Oooh, I enjoyed reading your thoughts on program bonding! I have some questions I'd like to see your take on, if you don't mind! ^_^ Would programs who have damaged code and/or have been rectified have difficulties with bonding, or do they work around it by sharing the non-damaged/non-Occupation code? Does bonding differ between Basics and ISOs? Can programs and Users bond? Also, what would happen if one half of a bonded pair died/got rectified/became a virus? Thanks! <3 ))

Good questions!!

Programs who have damage (and rectification counts as a type of damage, since it's corruption/forced alteration) have a little more difficulty than their intact contemporaries with bonding - though this depends on how deep the damage runs. You can split this into two main categories :

Core damage : what it says, their core is damaged. They'd have to share an undamaged part, and finding or isolating those could be incredibly difficult. Most Programs with core damage would use a method more like tagging their energy field with a label than actually exchanging code.

Non-core damage : finding undamaged core code? No problem. Making sure your core is compatible with the introduced bits from the partner... much more problematic. They could end up having a nasty reaction, as their internal defences read the introduced code as an attempted hack.

ISOs and Programs bond the same way, but cross-bonding between the groups is rare due to compatibility issues.

Programs and Users can tag each other's energy fields, but core-deep bonding is impossible. The Program in such a couple may willingly modify their core code to be unable to function without their User, but as a User doesn't have core code the same way (DNA is too complex to mess with) the User can't exchange it with their partner. An ISO and a User are more compatible this way, but are more likely to follow User customs than Program ones.

For a bond to break in those ways...

Death : the remaining Program would drift through almost Stray-like, barely functioning, until someone put them out of their misery or they followed their partner. It's cruel and upsetting for everyone involved, and most bonded Programs go permanently offline within a few minutes of each other.

Rectification : this is one of the few scenarios where it does not end in the Occupation's favour. If one Program is still unrectified, they can pull their other half back from it - rectification can't alter core code, though it can affect everything else, so they recognize each other and a skilled enough medic-hacker can perform the necessary operations to undo what was done to them.

Virus/corruption : ends one of two ways. Either the same as rectification, or now you have two Viruses happily bonded and gleefully corrupting everything they can get their hands on together. Toss of a coin for which result happens, although Monitors and other Security builds are more likely to join their partners in Virus-dom than the standard Program on the street.

Derezolution : while on the Legacy Grid this is effectively the same as death because Programs tend not to get re-rezzed (since the sole User is in hiding and this would be the quickest way for someone to find out where he is), on the Encom Grid Programs reactivate from backup pretty often. As long as the backup includes the bonded code/tag, it's like nothing happened. At most, there will be a shiver down the spine of the one who remains that doesn't go away until their other half reactivates. If the backup does not include the bonded code, the remaining Program is drawn to their partner's backup and they re-bond.

[unichrome]

Evil Malware

Welcome back to another episode of An Actual Post. As usual, no prior computer science education needed. Today I'm going to talk about the worst of the worst malware. A lot of things has happened since what the general population consider to be viruses; annoying and maybe steals some money or logins. Unfortunately it's nowadays way way way worse than that so prepare for some uncomfortable reading!

Since the dawn of Stuxnet (which I wrote about here), malware has gotten increasingly more real-life, with real-life complications. It could be the Pegasus spyware, that targets political activists in authoritarian regimes, or disruptive infections that put a stop to Copenhagens metro trains for a few hours. But we're merely in the beginning, because in the last few years, some nasty shit has been going down. I'm going to write about two (technically three but I'll group the first two together for obvious reasons) of the worst incidents we've seen today.

BlackEnergy and CrashOverride

This piece of malware has been around since early 2000's, for the intention of creating DDoS attacks (which I wrote about here) from infected computers. It has since then branched out in its usage, particularly into targeting infrastructure environments. Most notable is the 2015 Ukrainian powergrid incident, which occured when the Russian hacking group known as "Sandworm", infected three Ukrainian energy companies, wiping out systems and causing a power outage for over 250 000 households during winter. The attack began with just one infected document being opened in the affected companies. When BlackEnergy infected their systems, it opened up a remote connection to the attackers, making them able to control the entire powergrid opreation from inside Russia, and thereby switching it off.

That was not enough though, as the attackers also implanted another piece of malicious software known as KillDisk, which wiped out many of the ciritical operation systems, as well as cutting off the connection to the UPS units, which are backup generators in case of system outage. To add a cherry on top, BlackEnergy did what it was originally intended to do - DDoS attacks - towards the energy companies call-centers, so that customers were not able to call and ask what was happening.

The Ukrainian powergrid is quite outdated, which made the attack easier, but it was also the saving grace, as they still had manual power-switches (as opposed to purely digital, which were under the attackers control), so power was eventually restored before they had to rebuild all of their digital systems. This is more concerning for countries with modern powergrids, as manual switches have all been replaced by only digital, meaning power restoration could take weeks or months in case of a similar attack.

Besides the energy companies, three other critical Ukrainian infrastructure organisations were hit by BlackEnergy, but did not result in any operational outages.

But it didn't stop there. Just one year later, in December 2016, a similar attack struck Kiev, successfully taking down one-fifth of the countrys electrical power. Like with the BlackEnergy incident, it was quite quickly restored, but there was a far more horrifying infection this time. Named CrashOverride, the malware was much more sophisticated than BlackEnergy, did more things automatically without the need of input from a remote attacker. It was also modular, meaning that functionalities could just be added to it like lego-pieces, adapting it to whatever kind of electrical grid it was entering. This meant that it wouldn't just be able to infect only Ukranian electrical grids, but just about any country's. Furthermore, evidence points to the 2016 CrashOverride infection only being a test-run.

Triton

Last but definitely not least - Triton, the first (known) malware designed to kill.

But before we talk about it, we need to look at what happened in Bhopal, India in 1984 when what has since been considered the worst industrial disaster of all time occured. At the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in December 2nd, one of the gas tanks had a fatal malfunction, creating a massive gas leak of methyl isocyanate, which is extremely toxic. The leak spread to the surrounding city of Bhopal, resulting in almost 600 000 injured people, 40 000 temporary injuries, 4 000 permanent or severe injuries and over 8 000 people died within the first two weeks, with an estimated additional 8 000 deaths following due to injuries in the time after.

This was of course not caused by Triton, but it became the inspiration for the creation of the malware In 2017, a new piece of malware was discovered in Schneider Electrics industrial control system (called Triconex) at a Saudi Arabian petrochemical facility, which unravelled a horrible and complex secret. The infection chain for Triton contains many steps, so let's start with a brief overview of what the Triconex ICS and SIS is. ICS (Industrial Control System) are computers that handles all the industrial processes, computers that are programmed to do one thing and one specific thing only, unlike our regular PCs which you can play games or surf the internet and whatever. ICS will be computers who control valves, releases chemicals into vats, spins stuff around, or whatever automated processes may happen at an industrial facility.

SIS (Safety Instrumented System) are a kind of ICS that are responsible to check that everything is going alright and, if needed, will take over the process in case some ICS is failing and may result in damage, fire, injury or other disasters. So a SIS are monitoring failsafes, meant to prevent what happened in Bhopal.

Unless, of course, you program a malware intended to make the SIS malfunction.

What happened in the Saudi Arabian petrochemical facility started as follows:

The attackers successfully implanted a remote access trojan, which just like in the BlackEnergy case, makes the attackers able to control infected machines remotely. However, you can't infect a ICS or SIS this way, you need to enter a regular computer with internet access first, which is what they did. The initial machine was an engineering station, on which ICS and SIS computers are controlled. From there, the attackers wanted to plant their own software on the ICS and SIS machines, but there was a problem; the software can't be installed without someone turning a physical key on the Triconex devices, as a security measure. A second problem is that every time new software changes are made to a Triconex device, the old software will be deleted and replaced entirely by the new, which meant that the malware was at risk of being deleted if any engineer made any software changes.

So a second piece of Triton malware was made to overcome those hurdles. Instead of being save where the software should be saved in the Triconex devices, it saved itself where the firmware was installed (the piece of software that's made to have the Triconex work as opposed to where the software that tells the Triconex what to do), this not only gave Triton persistence even if new software was loaded, but also overrides the physical key as firmware always has administrator privileges. With all this in place, the attacker could execute any commands at the comfort of their home to both the ICS and SIS systems in the facility.

As luck would have it, before the attackers were able to cause any harm, the facility experienced a safety incident, prompting shutdown of the whole operation, and an investigation later uncovered the malware in the systems. Had Triton not been discovered in time, it would have been able to cause catastrophic failures similar to what happened in Bhopal. But just because it was thwarted this time, doesn't mean it's gone for good. There will always be some actor who is willing to try again.

Thank you for reading and sorry if I scared you, but honestly I think people need to be aware of the situation, as for some bisarre reason, events like these are not reported in the news. If you have any questions, feel free to send an ask!

[randomly--accessed--memories]

Thinking about the changes Val and Vel would make to the tower over the years to keep Vox safe:

Completely clear the floor Vox lives on, along with the two adjacent floors. The tower is already sound-proofed, but it’s good to be safe. No one can access those floors without a key card.

All the windows in the tower were already shatter-proof and capable of being frosted, so that’s taken care of.

For the first couple years, completely shut off/take away all the electronics connected to the grid in Vox’s living space so he can’t zap through them and end up somewhere else. Eventually, they develop an insulation method and it becomes safe to let him around functional, non-battery operated tech again; he can go inside them, but he can’t pop out on another floor.

Figure out what type of furniture/items they can give him that will entertain him/make the room less bare, but that they won’t mind replacing constantly.

Put Vox’s important, irreplaceable personal belongings on one of the neighboring floors so they can easily get them on a good day, but he can’t accidentally destroy them on a bad one.

Teach Vark to guard the elevator whenever Vox doesn’t need him. Also, make sure that his and his siblings’ augmentations that make them resistant to electrocution are always up-to-date.

Try to figure out a way to help Vox tell that time is/days are passing. They might get too dejected to keep pursuing this one though.

Fireproof everything. Thank God the sharks are hellbeasts and can only be hurt by hellfire.

[ftmshepard]

Bumbleby Week #7-AU Day (Cyberpunk)

(another unfinished idea that I'm actually pretty fond of; if anyone feels like drawing cyborg/robot detective Yang, PLEASE show me!!!)

The night is never dark in Vale. Instead it burns in bright neons, a thousand thousand little suns bursting in the corners of my vision. 

This doesn’t mean there aren’t dark alleys. Sometimes, there are gaps in the grid, and the buildings swallow any light in their shadows. It’s in this dark alley that I found myself in a predicament. 

My name is Yang Xiao-Long, and I’m a cyborg detective. Usually this means I’m working cases all throughout Vale, before going home to my tiny apartment above my friend’s pancake restaurant. But today, I’m lying in a dark alley, watching myself bleed out. 

Being able to access security cameras is all well and good, but right now all that means is I get to watch my own death from multiple angles, my own private one-woman television show. I’ve faced death before, but this feels final. 

Suddenly, I’m rescued. A woman all in black enters the alley. Even with my cameras, it’s hard for me to see her face; my human eyes are running out of energy, and she’s wearing some kind of disruptor screen that hurts my cameras. 

I expect her to leave me to die. The disruptor tells me she’s someone who doesn’t like the tech that infuses Vale like a body’s life blood, and while those sorts of groups have points I agree with, some of them aren’t too thrilled about cyborgs like me, even if not all my body modifications are purely cosmetic. So I’m surprised when she bends over my body.

“I can get you somewhere safe,” she says. “Can you hear me?” 

It takes all my strength to nod, but I nod anyway. Now that I can see her face, I can see that she’s beautiful. “Who are you?” I ask. 

“A friend,” she answers.

I lose consciousness not shortly after.

-

I awaken to the familiar smell of a hospital room. Or not a hospital, I realize, as I grudgingly open my eyes. Some sort of back alley clinic, with walls painted in colors that are meant to be soothing but mostly just make me want to drown myself in the nearest bathtub. 

“Yang, you’re awake!” I sit bolt upright at the voice. My sister Ruby is yelling, and that overrides all my instincts to full alertness. It takes me a few more seconds to realize that she’s excited, not afraid or in danger.

“Ruby, how–” 

“Weiss’s weird criminal friend rescued you! What happened?” 

Weiss Schnee, heir to the company that functionally owned half the planet, had criminal friends? That is not information I can process right now, so I file it away for later. 

“I got… got,” I say, not wanting to get into the details of my current case. It’s the usual sort of thing–desperate people being preyed on for their organs–and this is probably just a sign that I’m either close to finding my culprit, or I’ve stumbled onto one of the other five hundred criminal conspiracies operating in this city. 

“Shit, Yang, you need to be more careful.” 

Before I can say anything, my rescuer walks in. She’s not wearing any kind of disruptor clothes this time, but even in a slightly more coherent state than ‘actively dying,’ I can still tell she’s gorgeous. 

“Hi,” I say. “You rescued me.” 

“I need your help,” she answers. “You’re on the trail of my old… associates.” She frowns as she says the last word. “I think we have the same goal.” 

“Oh,” I say. “Wait, you were White Fang?” 

She nods. “We… they… used to not–”

“Be total assholes?” Ruby interrupts. 

Another pained expression. “Yes, that,” the woman says. “I’m Blake. This is my clinic. I can’t pay you.” 

“It’s not like I can refuse anyway,” I say. “You saved my life.” 

She smiles. 

This, I realize, as I answer that smile, is going to be a problem. I can’t afford to fall in love. Not in the middle of a case.