#rubber prison miner

[flame-shadow]

Ant Mines Bug Fables NPC Collab [5/23]

Background - @motheatencrow Editor - @flame-shadow

Character Credits Diana - @kuoddo Vivi - chibiscuit Mine Overseer - enrique2205 Miner - enrique2205 Nessa/Sleepy Ant - @coozycoolz Mystery Ant - @flame-shadow Golden Settlement Miner - jabbernabber Far Grasslands Miner - @sts-puelle Rubber Prison Miner - lamverykarpy Forsaken Lands Miner - @milatheartsy Metal Island Miner - jabbernabber

[click here to see the entire collection]

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"VICTORIA MAN GUILTY OF TRYING TO BRIBE SAANICH COUNCILLOR," Vancouver Sun. November 1, 1913. Page 1. --- Represented Canadian Mineral Rubber Company and Offered Mr. Quick Five Thousand Dollars. ---- WANTED HIM TO VOTE FOR PAVING CONTRACT ---- Appeal Will Be Heard at Vancouver Court on Tuesday - Sentence Is Postponed. ---- VICTORIA, Oct. 31. - This afternoon Herbert P. Winsby was found guilty by a jury of having attempted to bribe Councillor F. G. Quick, of the Saanich municipal council, în connection with a paving contract.

The $400,000 paving project which the council undertook early this year occasioned a great deal of feeling in the community and on the other hand rival paving concerns made a great fight for the contract.

Flood of Rumors Winsby is a real estate man, who is a native of Victoria, and his services were enlisted by the Canadian Mineral Rubber Company, which had a large contract in the city. In the state of public feeling at the time, there was a flood of rumors of bribery, but in this one case, at any rate, there was given ground for the popular belief.

Winsby approached Quick with the suggestion that if he would vote for a certain change in specifications there would be $5,000 in it for him, and he added that "they had all got their little bit," and Quick might as well have his. Quick repelled him indignantly, but Winsby persisted, and fol- lowing up the first conversation, called on Quick at his house.

Trap Is Then Set. It was then that the councillor decided that he would lead Winsby on to commit himself, and in this he succeeded. Two days after the first visit Winsby kept an appointment in the same place, not knowing that the chief of police was in an adjoining room. He wrote out a ninety-day note for $5,000 and before he signed it, wrote out an undertaking setting out what Quick was to do in consideration for the money.

These papers were then signed and they were in the act of exchanging them when Quick gave a signal and the chief of police entered and arrested Winsby with the undertaking in his hand.

To Court of Appeal. With such a clear case as the documents established, there was no defense possible, but Mr. H. A. MacLean, K. C., did what he could for his client. He was granted a reserved case on the point as to whether the indictment disclosed an offense, and this will be argued before the court of appeal when it opens in Vancouver next Tuesday.

Mr. Justice Gregory charged strongly against the prisoner and called upon the jury to vindicate the honor of the city and province by a conviction. The jury was out only nine minutes.

Sentence was postponed until the court of appeals decides the point.

[fillerboy]

Manganese Supplier in Rajasthan, India | Industrial Minerals supplier: Fillerboy Pvt. Ltd.

Manganese is a chemical element. It is a hard, brittle, silvery metal that is frequently found alongside iron in minerals. The fifth most common metal in the crust of the Earth is manganese. The most prevalent minerals are rhodochrosite (manganese carbonate) and pyrolusite (manganese dioxide), which are both widely dispersed. Manganese is required by all known living creatures. Manganese is found in several enzymes. For example, the enzyme that converts water molecules to oxygen during photosynthesis contains four manganese atoms. In addition to being an essential dietary component for humans, manganese aids in bone development, free radical defense mechanisms, and the metabolism of macronutrients. It is a necessary part of numerous proteins and enzymes. In addition to the liver, kidneys, and brain, it is primarily found in the bones. Manganese is bonded to manganese metalloproteins in the human brain, most notably glutamine synthetase in astrocytes. Silvery-gray manganese is a metal that resembles iron. It is extremely brittle and hard, hard to fuse, but simple to oxidize. The common ions of manganese metal are paramagnetic. Manganese oxidizes ("rusts") like iron in water with dissolved oxygen and tarnishes gradually in the air.

Manganese is far too brittle to be used as a pure metal. It is typically utilized in alloys like steel. Steel contains roughly 1% manganese, which increases strength while also improving workability and wear resistance. Manganese steel has a manganese content of about 13%. This is a very strong material that is utilized in railway tracks, safes, gun barrels, and prison bars. To boost corrosion resistance, drink cans are composed of an aluminum alloy containing 1.5% manganese. It makes highly magnetic alloys with aluminum, antimony, and copper.

Stainless steel, in particular, uses manganese, a transition metal with a wide range of industrial alloy applications. Strength, workability, and wear resistance all improve. In addition to being a rubber additive and an oxidizing agent, manganese oxide is also used to make ceramics, glass, fertilizers, and ceramics. Fungicides can be created using manganese sulfate.

Fillerboy Pvt ltd provides Manganese minerals at the most competitive prices in India and throughout the world. Fillerboy is a well-known manganese supplier. We provide Manganese at our clients' doorsteps while purifying and boosting its richness by employing our services.

[denimbex1986]

'...Last month’s debut of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer was not only a box office blockbuster, it also provided a jumping off point for fact checkers and researchers to delve deeper into the building of the atomic bomb. Even a movie that intends to be historically accurate can omit significant details. While there might not be eight million stories in this Naked City, Ngofeen Mputubwele of wired.com uncovers one of the most fascinating; the story of the Congolese workers that worked under horrific conditions to mine the material used to build the bomb.

Mputubwele’s story is titled “The Dark History Oppenheimer Didn’t Show.” He attended a pre-release screening and described the memorable scenes in the film that show an empty glass bowl slowly being filled with marbles—“first one at a time, then in handfuls. The marbles represent the amount of uranium that has been successfully mined and refined to power the nuclear reaction.” As the bomb comes closer to fruition, more marbles are added to the bowl.

Where did the uranium come from?

“As the marbles steadily filled the bowl onscreen, I kept seeing what was missing: Black miners [in the Congo] hauling earth and stone to sort piles of radioactive ore by hand”, Mputubwele writes.

The history of Belgium’s colonization in Africa is rife with state-sponsored terrorism, violence, no education opportunities, famine and dangerous slave-like labor conditions. “The colonial system built workers—or borderline enslaved people—not scholars,” Mputubwele adds..

The largest company in the Belgian Congo was the mining company Union-Minière du Haut-Katanga [whose directorwas the Belgian Edgar Sengier]. The colonial government had granted it the rights to an area spanning nearly 8,000 square miles, over half the size of Belgium. One of the mines there, Shinkolobwe, was rich with uranium. In fact, it was filled with uranium that the Congolese had already excavated and placed aboveground. Initially, uranium was just a waste byproduct of digging for the more valuable radium, which Nobel-prize winner Marie Curie had helped discover could treat cancer. In 1938, using uranium, the physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch worked out the calculations that defined nuclear fission. If enough nuclei were split, scientists realized, massive amounts of energy could be emitted. Uranium was now coveted.

While the U.S. apparently had a few uranium mines, Mputubwele cites a 1939 letter, drafted by Leo Szilard, a Hungarian physicist and Alexander Sachs, and signed by Albert Einstein, was sent to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which warned that the U.S. mines “has only very poor ores of uranium in moderate quantities.” The letter noted that Congo was “the most important source of uranium.”

The mining company typically built fenced-in compounds that resembled prison camps for the workers and their families; the company initially gave each family about 43 square feet—the size of a small garage—and weekly food rations. At work, miners sorted uranium ore by hand. One person described a piece of Shinkolobwe uranium as a block ‘as big as a pig’ It was ‘black and gold and looked as if it were covered with a green scum or moss.’ He called them ‘flamboyant stones.’

After Belgium was invaded by the Nazis, the governor-general of the Belgian Congo declared that the colony would support the Allies. Men were drafted, laborers were “offered up” and the governor general “created production quotas to supply the Allies with necessary war materials. And so, during the war, many Congolese returned to the very forests where their parents and grandparents had had their hands amputated, ordered to cull rubber again, this time for hundreds of thousands of military tires,” Mputubwele writes. “As the war ramped up, Congolese miners also dug for minerals like copper in around-the-clock shifts.”

Enter General Leslie Groves, assigned by President Roosevelt to head up the Manhattan Project, and his deputy Colonel Kenneth Nichols. Nichols soon met with Sengier and a deal was struck to start sending uranium to the U.S. Thus began a period of great intrigue, involving labor disputes, worker fatalities, American spies, Nazi spies. According to Mputubwele, “The Army Corps of Engineers was sent to the Congo to start up mining operations anew. The mine’s location was scrubbed from maps. Spies were told to eliminate the word ‘uranium’ from their conversations; rather, advisers added, use words like ‘diamonds.’”

As Jean Bele reported in a January/February 2021 story in the MIT Facility Newsletter titled “The Legacy of the Involvement of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” another story that has been largely ignored “is the disastrous health effect on Congolese miners, who handled the uranium, working virtually as slaves of the Belgian mining giant Union-Minière du Haut-Katanga...”

According to Bele, Article 3 of the Belgium Colonial Charter stated that ‘Nobody can be forced to work on behalf of and for the profit of companies or private,’ [yet] the Belgian government closed their eyes on the forced labor imposed on Congolese miners.”

Here’s the kicker and possible fuel for another film: “In 1946, Sengier became the first non-American to receive the president’s Medal for Merit—‘for the performance of an exceptionally meritorious or courageous act’ that sealed the Allies’ victory. In a photo from the ceremony, you might see something else: a man with something to hide. Intelligence during the war revealed that Sengier’s company also sold about 1.5 million pounds of Congolese uranium to the Nazis. In 1948, a radioactive mineral was named in Sengier’s honor: sengierite.”'

[houseboatisland]

Sodor During the Second World War

//

Sodor was never bombed during the Second World War, though naturally it still had blackouts, civil defense, etc. This puzzled military and civilian historians for decades, considering Sodor’s value as a target and how reachable it was for the Luftwaffe. We’ll learn why further within this post.

In the earliest months of hostilities, Sodor was a popular destination for evacuated British children either staying there or en route to Canada.

Sodor of course formed a Home Guard, and a handful of abandoned concrete pillbox posts are still to be found moldering away on the Island, especially on its eastern and southern coasts.

Nearly all standard gauge locomotives on the Island were painted flat black, with the initials “N. W.” This has NEVER been reused for historic weekends or reenactments because engines universally find it saddening and uncomfortable to wear. The main exemptions to this change were Toby, on the Arle Valley Tramway, and a few private locomotives running factory sidings. (A/N: The Arle Valley Tramway is my name for Toby’s Old Tramway, which I’ve broken from Awdry to place on Sodor. Toby’s never worked in East Anglia.)

The Island’s narrow gauge railways didn’t receive this change either. They were however, unlike the NWR, banned from night running, something they didn’t do much of anyhow.

The Skarloey Railway THRIVED during this period, after twenty-odd years of living hand to mouth. Its slate, which had stacked up unwanted on the wharf for years, was suddenly in high demand to repair bombed houses on The Mainland. Petrol rationing, rubber tire shortages and heavily cut bus services meant that those people beyond its small, loyal clientele flocked to use it in droves. Receipts for goods and mail carried, and tickets sold, visibly spike during these years on paper. Routinely, every coach and several swept-out slate wagons were pressed into service to handle the scores of passengers, and there was even hope of repairing Skarloey, who had been out of action for a few years. This sadly didn’t happen, and Rheneas, already running the line alone for all this time, handled this tremendous strain as best he could.

The Mid Sodor Railway, which unlike the Skarloey was considered essential to the war by the Government, thrived also. Its lead mines were expanded, and additional miners, including prisoners of war, were brought from The Mainland to get it done. Their passenger services and goods tonnages, like those on the Skarloey Railway, more than recovered as a result of the motoring situation.

I’m gonna break with Awdry and say no engines were ever loaned to help any of the narrow gauge railways at this time. It just seems so… off.

The STANDARD GAUGE railways, however, (again excluding Toby’s tramway, the AVT,) were awash with engines sourced from other regions as needed, and in the war’s closing years, War Department engines themselves. S160s, Austerity 2-8-0s and 2-10-0s, Austerity Saddletanks and Yankee Tanks were all to be found on the Island at some point or another. A few stayed on in peacetime among the many “unseen but there” engines within the system, some lasting only until the Fifties, and others right up to the present day. (This excludes one engine who would be an obvious example: Rosie, a Yankee tank and easily the most famous War Department engine on Sodor, only arrived in the Nineties.)

As can well be imagined, Sodor’s steelworks and similar industries also went into overdrive, and many of its factories, as elsewhere, were retooled for the war effort to make armaments, aircraft and so on. The Mid Sodor Railway’s own Works, famously, came under Government control again, as it had during the First World War, making shells. Crovan’s Gate, which also built several War Department locomotives, similarly was refitted to make tanks, Jeeps, artillery, aircraft etc. Tidmouth’s shipyards were also churning out battleships and freighters for immediate launch.

Sodor in my universe DOES have coal mines, another break from Awdry’s canon, and these were also in high gear for the war effort. Again, like the MSR’s lead mines, Mainlanders and prisoners of war both were shipped in to accomplish this.

Now, as to the question of why Sodor was never bombed. Historians had for years been baffled by this question. Apart from a few bombs lost at sea, in all likelihood meant for Barrow, why had Sodor been practically off limits? It was well within range of the Luftwaffe, and had scores of industrial sites and military installations to target. In the Seventies, it was unearthed and eventually confirmed that Hitler had spared Sodor deliberately. Like his own psychotic plan for Blackpool in England, he planned to tour Sodor and the many beauties it offered after he had won the war. Thankfully, this didn’t come to pass. Hitler lost the war, and did the one good thing a Nazi can do: die.

Several stations took to growing victory gardens. This included Maron, which continued the tradition after the war ended, and now uses the resulting tomatoes, lettuce, and carrots in its refreshment room salads.

As I’ve said on Twitter, a LOT happened on the Island of Sodor during the Second World War, but it was such a frightening and miserable time that the engines of the time have an unwritten law amongst themselves not to talk about it. Only Edward breaks this rule, and that’s to speak with human historians separate from other engines. As such, he’s been credited in numerous papers, books, and even official Sudrian Parliament history for his priceless testimony.

The Thin Clergyman had been planning a book, as child-friendly as could be managed, about the NWR during the Second World War. It was meant to be released in 1965, twenty years after the war’s end, but engines up and down the Island refused to allow their likenesses in the book. This was a unique situation of this kind. The Thin Clergyman of course couldn’t magic up a fake Sodor as a substitute, for it would be both obvious and insulting to the engines who had just declared their discomfort. The scrapped volume, which only had so much as the foreword written, was shelved indefinitely, and it was only at his death in 1997 that the book’s status as an idea for a book at all was revealed. The Thin Clergyman instead opted for a different, but still very important anniversary to write about in 1965: Skarloey’s and Rheneas’ hundredth birthdays.

I won’t go into details, but Sudrians did serve heroically in the war, a famous and canon example being the “Duke of Sodor,” who was killed in North Africa. The total number of Sudrians dead in action was a few thousand, which may seem small but on an Island as sparsely populated as Sodor was significant and all-encompassing. Their sacrifices can never be forgotten, nor can be the evils of those they fought. To do so would only enable it all again, and Sudrians, anti-fascist to the core, will never, ever let that happen.

[ilikefandom]

A Scientific Inquisition (The Science of Magic pt2)

Requested: Can you pls do pt@ of Science of magic? I LOVE FLUFF and Hello dear. Can you write part two of Science of Magic? It’s wonderful to read fluff for once, as I’m obsessed with angst. Have a good day!

Requests by: Two Anons

Synopsis: Arthur meets a muggle scientist named (Y/n).

Pairings: Severus Snape x Fem Reader and Molly x Arthur

Warnings: None

“Disaperation is easy to explain Severus!” (Y/n) said, holding onto her husband’s hand.

“How so?” Severus asked tilting his head to rest it against (Y/n)’s.

“It’s a vacuum.” (Y/n) smiled, “Basically, you collapse your energy in on yourself and then you reverse the process allowing you to travel kilometers at a time in milliseconds. That’s how black holes work. Just apply the same physics.”

“And here I was thinking you only had your degree in Muggle Biochemistry.”

“Just because I have my degree in one thing doesn’t mean I’m not knowledgeable or competent in another.”

“When we get to that house, Arthur is going to start asking questions about the most basic things to you, if you can explain away teleportation.”

The Burrow was busy and bustling with life as the couple approached it. The frame stood tall and the tent outside was well lit. This was (Y/n)’s first time meeting other magical people and she was excited and nervous. 

She had been unable to come to the Triwizard Tournament, but had escaped the anti-muggle demonstrations and killings of the past four years, instead dedicating the time into achieving her doctorate in Biochemistry. Severus now had a large scar on his neck, from a snake that had tried to kill him.

 The Order of the Phoenix had decided to meet up once again at the Burrow. (Y/n) had met several of the members, none of them knew she was a muggle as they had only spoken in passing. Sirius Black, not a serial killer, but an innocent man sent to prison, Remus Lupin, a werewolf who taught at Hogwarts with Severus and Kingsly Shackleolt, the minister for magic.

The groups of people milling about soon became real people, up close and personal with the new doctor of Biochem. Severus drew a crowd of three, an older red haired woman who looked motherly, a tall boy with jet black hair, and an older gentleman, who’s hair was just as red as the woman’s.

“(Y/n), this is Molly and Arthur Weasly, between them is one of my graduated students, Harry Potter. Molly, Arthur, Potter, this is my wife (Y/n).” Severus made the introductions and (Y/n) smiled at all of them.

“Pleasure to meet you all. Especially you Arthur.” Molly looked at (Y/n) in surprise.

“Nice to meet you as well.” Arthur laughed, taking his wife’s hand and squeezing it gently.

Severus rolled his eyes. “She’s not interested in you Weasly.” He then caught himself and took a breath. “(Y/n) is a muggle.”

“A muggle huh?” Arthur asked smiling at (Y/n), “So what do you do for a living? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I really don’t,” (Y/n) laughed glancing at her husband affectionately, “I just received my first tenured position teaching Biochemistry at Oxford University. I minored in Physics for my undergrad, so ask me anything you’d like.”

Harry had slipped away to spill the news to Ron and Hermione who had been sitting nearby. Hermione went from confusion to fangirl mode. She sprinted past Ron and Harry and right up to the two couples, disrupting the polite conversation between Severus and Molly.

“Are you Dr. (Y/n) (Y/l/n)?” Hermione asked, out of breath.

“Yes. I am! I take it you’ve read my papers?” (Y/n) smiled at Hermione.

“Your study on the mechanics of the toxicity of the Scottish lochs is unparalleled! Why that loch in particular?” Hermione asked, squeezing her hands together.

“Somebody, I couldn’t imagine who, told me that a kelpie happens to live in that lake. My study focused on the toxicity of the lake and the minerals and vitamins in it. I need to know what makes these magical creatures tick don’t I.” (Y/n) winked at Hermione who grinned walking back over to her friends and then smiled at Arthur. “Now do you have any questions for me, about my work or how I could get an in at the ministry?”

“What is the exact function of a rubber duck?” Arthur asked excitedly, “I asked young Harry Potter and he couldn’t really tell me how one worked. And I don’t think that the ministry of magic hires muggles, no offence.”

“None taken. Well the use of a rubber duck as a children’s or adult’s bath toy. It is no longer made of rubber, but plastic. They are full of air, so not only do they make a little squeaking noise when you squeeze them, but it also makes them buoyant, which means that they float.”

“So they are used for entertainment purposes?” Arthur scratched the back of his head. “Interesting. Could I possibly get one from you?”

(Y/n) reached into her purse and pulled out a small object. Snape’s eyebrows lifted. “You just carry around rubber ducks in your purse?”

“Little rubber ducks that have lab coats and safety glasses.” (Y/n) corrected handing the toy over to Arthur, who looked as if he might explode from happiness. “And they can also be used after trauma happens to the body, especially the hands, to fine tune one’s fine motor skills.

“Would you mind explaining how stitches work.” Molly asked as she gave a sideways glance at Arthur.

“Absolutely. Stitches or sutures, as we call them in the medical community, are stitches made into the flesh with a specialized needle. The stitches themselves are dissolvable, which means that they either fall out or, quite literally, dissolve into nothing. Other kinds of stitches need to be taken out and,” (Y/n) looked at Arthur with a sideways glance, “nobody, and I mean nobody should apply sutures to themselves or others if they have not been trained.”

Molly looked smugly at her husband then looked over her shoulder to where two identical red-headed boys were laughing together. “Where are my manners? Please come in and meet our family.”

(Y/n) looked up at Severus who smiled back at her. “I love your nerdiness.”

She punched him in the arm lightly. “I love you too.”

As the night continued on, and the questions kept flowing, (Y/n) held onto her husband’s arm and answered all of them. Thinking to herself about this beautiful, wonderful, new and magical world she now belonged to.

Author’s Note: I hope you all enjoyed this! Yes, in this universe no dead Snape. No dead Sirius, No dead Lupin, or Tonks although she wasn’t mentioned. And no dead Fred Weasly. If I got any of the science wrong please tell me!

[isolaradiale]

The dark hues of the evening blended to lighter, softer blues of dawn. With every minute, the creatures of the museum began to slow until they stopped altogether, all at once. Whatever they were doing, they dropped it, and began to move their way to the places they had been before the museum took a turn for the lethal.

The artwork climbed back into their frames, stepped onto their pedestals, and walked back into their display cases. A light rain outside washed all the street paint away, color emptying into the drains in the city. Landscapes let their prisoners out, shutting the windows to their world.

Those unlucky enough to earn a spot on the Wall of Shame reappeared in the lobby, their wounds appearing as colorful splashes of paint, and nothing more.

As the oranges and golds of the sun trickled in through the ornate windows of the museum, a blaring voice interrupted the stillness as the intercom museum sparked to life.

"Goooood moooorning, my lovely little visitors! The door to the museum will be opening shortly. Please make your way back to the lobby in an orderly fashion, and be sure to grab all your belongings!"

As Capella promised, the large wooden doors opened once again, releasing all the prisoners of the museum.

"Thanks for visiting the Tempus Museum! Janus, did you want to say any parting words?" "I'm mortified enough as it is, thank you." Came a muffled voice from behind, sounding much less enthused.

"Aww, somebody's cranky... Well, suit yourself!"

As if to add *Extra Enthusiasm*, as everyone exit the doors, they passed by Capella's invulnerable form as she personally waved everyone goodbye, stickers glittering in the morning sunrise. Janus was still sitting at the reception booth, head in his hands and rubbing his temples.

"Bye bye! Goodbye now! Goodbye! Buh-bye! Bye now!" was the chorus that trailed off as she spoke, bidding farewell to the museum's visitors...

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Thank you, everyone, for participating in our recent event: Canvas! As a reminder, you will receive event participation IF:

You've written a starter, thread, mini, or interacted with someone else using the event setting for parts 1, 2, or both.

You've written a 500 word drabble using the setting of the event for parts 1, 2, or both.

You did not have to participate in both parts to receive event credit (so if you only wanted to participate in part 1, it still counts!)

Remember that for participating in the event, you can give yourself 100 stars to use in the marketplace!

A few things have changed as a result of this event, also:

The Tempus Museum has decided to make its home in the Archimedes ward, for now, not far from the Theater of Calliope. Its structure and function is largely the same, but the Optimized Tools won't be there. The artwork won't come to life and attack you, either... during the daytime, that is. You can check out its full description on Archimedes' page!

Janus still takes his place as the museum's curator, and does his best to accommodate guests of the museum. It's not uncommon to see him taking and teaching courses and workshops in the museum, either! He's still polite and eager to help with anything involving the museum and its activities, but if asked questions about the Stars or Spirale, he'll politely explain that he doesn't want to get anyone into trouble. As in the event, on the odd chance that someone is hostile and violent toward him, they'll instantly be killed, and will respawn back in their room.

Thanks again for participating in Canvas! We hope you had a great time!

Frequently Asked Questions:

"Do the things we made turn back to normal?"

Yup! If you didn't destroy it in Part 2 of the event, whatever you made will turn back to normal.

"Will our artwork try to kill us at night?"

Nope! If you took it with you, it's of no danger to you. If you kept it on display at the museum, it's also no danger to you (or anyone else for that matter.) Only the original stock monsters of the museum come to life at night. But unless your muse breaks into the museum, you have nothing to worry about.

The monsters still have their damage invulnerabilities, so unless your muse has a death wish, maybe don't break into the museum without some serious planning. Shady art theft rings will buy your stolen artwork for a hefty price, though, so whether it's worth the risk or not is up to you.

The more often your muse breaks into the museum, the more the monsters will recognize their patterns. Breaking into the museum more than two times is almost impossible, and should be reserved only for the most cunning of thieves.

"What if we made weapons or jewelry? Can we take those back home too?"

Sure! Just know that the weapons will go back to being fragile, and will shatter if used in combat. Any jewelry will look very convincing, but if you try to sell them to anyone, they'll identify it as a fake. Not that they won't buy what you have anyway, but it certainly won't be worth the price of actual precious stones and minerals.

"Can we go back to the museum?"

Yes! It's open to the public from sunrise to sundown, unless there's a nighttime gathering at the museum (which you're free to come up with on your own if you'd like to use it in a setting for a thread.) You could also theoretically break in or sneak in, or hide until the place closes, but you run the risk of running into the guard patrols... or worse.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ (Epilogue)

As the visitors left the building, Capella skipped over to the front desk. Caelum emerged from the darkened corner of the lobby to join her, with the rubber stopper on his cane making soft thumps on the elaborate stone tile.

"Well, that was fun! Thanks for letting us use your museum, Janus." "You're... welcome, I suppose." "Good good! I'll come back here when I make more pieces to show off to the lovely people of our Spirale."

Punctuating this, her hands went up to playfully pat his cheeks.

"Ooookay! Well, until next time! And as for you, Dr. Caelum, I'll see you at this afternoon's meeting or whatever, right?" "Aha, yes I'll be there."

Saluting the both of them, her form vanished into a series of pixels, leaving the other two at the desk. Now that she was gone, the AI turned to give a pointed look at his father.

"...Mmm. Still angry, eh?" Came a chuckle, but the other didn't look so amused.

"You know, at one point, I would have congratulated you for feeling slighted. And I would have celebrated you experiencing such a thing. But you've been around for so long that these things come naturally to you now, don't they? Feelings like being angry... Now I just feel bad when you're upset like any other human."

Another more cheery laugh, and he walked himself over to the doors, motioning the other to follow. With the crowd gone, he could finally step outside and stand on the steps.

"...I am sorry for causing you trouble." "I know." "Good, I'm glad that came across." "I'm still irritated, don't get me wrong." "Yes, yes. I don't doubt it." "And I'm not sure if anyone will come back after such a thing. I wouldn't blame them. I just wanted a place to contribute to this whole thing, and now it's all..."

Sighing, he sat on the first step, watching the rest of the street illuminate in the warm glow of the sunrise. He only realized the old man beside him was trying to sit down when he gave a little huff of effort, and immediately helped his father down beside him.

"Ahh. Much better, thank you." "I could have gotten you a chair..." "Haha, that's alright. If you can sit on the steps, so can I."

For a while, the two sat in silence, watching the streets of Archimedes begin to wake up. Cars stirring, cafes opening, people walking their dogs.

"...Are you doing alright over there?" Janus asked, not turning his head.

"About as well as I can, mmhm." "You still have your migraine medicines down there, right?" "Mmhm. Dr. Lyra has been taking good care of my health, don't worry." "She's the nice one, isn't she? That's a welcome change from the other facility..."

A hand went to the Ai's shoulder, patting it reassuringly.

"Instead of worrying about my health, you should direct that concern inward, Mortimer. You have a place where you can walk around, do all sorts of things humans do. Talk to people, make friends. Play games, read books, paint your lovely canvases. You're not confined to the life we lived three years ago."

Silence followed for a little until the young man leaned against the older one. He must be pushing 70 at this point, right?

"...Are you in a place where you can refer to me by my name? And not that Star code that they made?" "Well, no. Not really. But I don't think anyone's listening. So I don't care~" "Ha! Rebellion got you into this mess, didn't it?" The AI replied with a laugh, earning another from his father.

"Well. Messes that they were, I can still sit with you without you being stuck behind a screen. So even after all the hells we've been through, I'd call that a success. Wouldn't you?"

A smile cracked on his face. They have gone through a lot.

"A success... it's nice to finally call something a success again, father. It's very nice."

[whoknowsbud]

Stand Mutation AU

Warning, this is FILLED with body horror! And somewhat loose but present connections to the recent epidemic! Mainly in part 4...

These are mostly just lists of the designs, and this post will only contain parts 3 & 5. There’s a lot more bulk to what was written to part 4, and there’s a lot more angst written, so that’s going to be a separate post.

(Which is now here!)

The idea here is essentially taking the ‘stand sickness’ Holy and Josuke had and twisting it into overdrive. Rather than gaining stands, the infected mutate (often horrifically, but there are some who look almost unaffected) based on their in-canon stands. The uninfected don’t see the full image; the shapes and colors come through, but not completely. The common headlight-style eyes are a big giveaway (until they’re not).

The mutations here will also commonly hinder most functions, especially rational thought. It’s most often temporary as the infected adjusts to the changes of their body. This can take a number of forms, but what happened to the Nijimura brothers is the worst it gets. The term for this for now is going to be ‘fried’.

The infection is only transferred by the arrow, and genetic relation.

Part 3

Holy has flowers growing on her body. Has a way better handle on it than Jotaro; fully present and coherent, the flowers just need to sap a little of her energy to grow big and bright. So, yeah, she's completely fine.

Jotaro ends up this ethereal star man with so much luscious hair, but also partly fried at the start; ends up being essentially like a big dog for a while (acts on base instinct and can’t articulate).

Joseph’s arms become vines. That’s it, that’s all. Vines for arms.

Avdol is pretty much just fused with Magician’s Red. I say ‘just’, but he’s pretty damn rad.

Kakyoin is basically a bunch of wires, wrapped to make a more human shape. Rather than shooting solid energy bursts, he can send energy through the wires.

Polnareff, like Avdol, is also just fused with his Silver Chariot. The armor and sword are still removable.

Iggy is made of sand. Can shapeshift, often takes the form of a wolf, because he can and he wants to.

Hol Horse has a gun for a hand. Yes, that's all.

Gray Fly... tiny man. Beetle sized old man with beetle wings and dagger tongue. Nasty nasty.

Imposter Captain Tenille is a fish-man, simple as that. Basically take Dark Blue Moon and put it in the mans clothes. This makes it obvious that he’s the enemy the moment he comes out, but Anne is still under some suspicion at first.

Forever is just Strength. Green ship with orangutang face.

Devo basically is Ebony Devil. Imagine making a (somewhat crappy) almost life size doll of Devo, and there you go. Rather than needing a grudge to act, he forms his grudge as he fights, making him stronger.

Rubber Soul is just Yellow Temperance; when he went through stand puberty he just pretty much melted.

J. Geil is just Hanged Man; only seen through reflections. Tied a knife to his hand.

Nena is almost the same as canon; she assimilates a beautiful woman to host her real body (which has no skin covering, so here she needs a host, the looks are just preference), and still leaves parasites on victims through her blood.

ZZ's stand mutation is actually his arm. His arm is the car.

Enya… ghost? Still uses fog for the illusions, still does puppet stuff? But then Jotaro would still have to suck her down so NO, THANKS

Steely Dan, the crab man. Can duplicate himself but at NOWHERE near the same rate. Not as effective either. He's about the size of your average 14 year old.

Arabia Fats is just. On fire. Fire man. Human torch. But more fire. Just fire.

Mannish boy appears with a flat, jester-like face, so the group knows to refuse.

Cameo... genie?

Midler is basically herself with High Priestess's power to become any mineral. Still can shapeshift, but its limited.

N’Doul… could be a water man. Sends his hand out so he can stay safely out of most people’s range.

Anubis... is just the same Anubis as canon. It's a sword, what were you expecting?

Mariah is the magnetizer. It happens through contact, and feels like a small static shock. It does not work on normal people, although they do feel the shock.

Alessi has just become a shadow, his own silhouette, that de-ages those it touches like in canon, with the same eyes and manifesting ability, too. Cannot talk.

The D’arby brothers are a terrible amalgamation of the souls they’ve taken.

Pet Shop is... just its stand I think.

Vanilla Ice is another stand/user mix. As uncomfortable as the v o r e is, it seems like the only sensible thing...

Dio is similar to Jotaro. But green & yellow, with more disturbing growths (those... bullet chain suspenders looking things, and the apparent oxygen tanks on the back). He's a bit distorted, rippling in time with the seconds.

Part 5

Haruno becomes a plant creature (Oh you want limbs? Limbs to hold things? Too bad, you get tendrils!), changes his name to Giorno. The human body is still inside, controlling everything. When he’s truly happy, he blooms.

Bruno's body is just zippers. They can all be opened or closed (although if they're all opened he's kind of a mess, and its an awful noise), and what's under them is just a void. He seems to have glowing orbs as eyes, revealed by a single open zipper over where his eyes would be. To resemble a more human form, he has zippers on his head to look like hair. There are a few zippers that hang off his arms and legs almost like fins, and he will whip you with them.

Abbachio is a glitchy creature that looks like someone constantly flipping channels, with a sort of goo coating his body in almost the exact way it does Moody Blues.

Narancia is a ‘cyborg’, fighting logic output to stay ‘human’

Mista basically goes through mitosis, becoming 7 of himself; but it takes time for them to truly separate.

Fugo appears to be normal, but he has this ‘oxygen’ tank & connected mask. The Purple Haze virus is more of a gas here, produced in his lungs, so he has to have a way to contain it when he's around others. Once he starts getting emotional, he sort of melts into a zombie-like form; starts looking like a typical victim of Purple Haze.

(Giorno's able to take in an absurd amount of toxins and pollution and spit out a shit ton of oxygen, so there's much less concern.)

WE RETAIN THE DINOSAUR SPICE GIRL HERE, TRISH IS A STRETCHY & SQUISHY LIZARDWOMAN.

Mr President is a cube, still with the room. He's like a box. A box turtle, you might say.

Polpo is still in prison. His shadow does pretty much everything Black Sabbath does. Permanent poggers face.

Zucchero is a slug. Has spikes on his body that perform Soft Machine’s ability, and they’re barbed to grab the deflated forms.

Sale... maybe he's already dead. Infection stopped his own heart or something. Or hes like.. a landmark. Like Angelo in canon; fully immobile, but sort of immortal. /till you destroy the body I guess...

Formaggio’s size is constantly fluctuating, not always proportionately consistent.

Illuso... doesn't exist outside of mirrors. He can still communicate to those on the other side, and pull them in, but can't leave, himself. He works similarly to Yoshihiro Kira; ig seal the mirror, you seal him.

Prosciutto has so many eyes. Just all over, so so many. Somewhat shriveled up from the waist down.

Pesci has a fishing pole arm I guess...

Melone is some sort of... digital-ish cyborg thing. The Babyface kids are the same though

Ghiaccio is essentially fused with his suit, with the weak spot in the back of his neck frozen over. It’s actually like the mane of a lion, but ice; he can’t turn his head at all, speaking is near impossible, and eating is a struggle as well. The white album fight reveals a lot:

Due to literally being plants, Giorno has to revert back to Haruno or risk serious danger. This is the first time he’s come out; they knew he existed (he was mentioned in passing) but they weren't sure if he was alive or dead. When he can take his plants form again, it’s... kind of horrifying. Roots and vines coming out of his body, wrapping around him...

Risotto is basically a living Metallica colony. Take risotto, make every 5x5 pixels a metallica bean, there you go that’s him.

Squalo... Sharkboy

Tiziano looks fine, but his mouth is all wrong. Tongues like a starfish.

Secco... mud? Mudman?

Cioccolata looks like a zombie, moldy and decomposed an shit.

Diavolo and Doppio are... basically, literally, just King Crimson and Epitaph. They can apparently switch places? Maybe

[nicklloydnow]

"But there is something rather curious in being Whitman in the nineteen-thirties. It is not certain that if Whitman himself were alive at the moment he would write anything in the least degree resembling Leaves of Grass. For what he is saying, after all, is ‘I accept’, and there is a radical difference between acceptance now and acceptance then. Whitman was writing in a time of unexampled prosperity, but more than that, he was writing in a country where freedom was something more than a word. The democracy, equality, and comradeship that he is always talking about are not remote ideals, but something that existed in front of his eyes. In mid-nineteenth-century America men felt themselves free and equal, were free and equal, so far as that is possible outside a society of pure communism. There was poverty and there were even class-distinctions, but except for the Negroes there was no permanently submerged class. Everyone had inside him, like a kind of core, the, knowledge that he could earn a decent living, and earn it without bootlicking. When you read about Mark Twain’s Mississippi raftsmen and pilots, or Bret Harte’s Western gold-miners, they seem more remote than the cannibals of the Stone Age. The reason is simply that they are free human beings. But it is the same even with the peaceful domesticated America of the Eastern states, the America of Little Women, Helen’s Babies, and Riding Down from Bangor. Life has a buoyant, carefree quality that you can feel as you read, like a physical sensation in your belly. It is this that Whitman is celebrating, though actually he does it very badly, because he is one of those writers who tell you what you ought to feel instead of making you feel it. Luckily for his beliefs, perhaps, he died too early to see the deterioration in American life that came with the rise of large-scale industry and the exploiting of cheap immigrant labour.

Miller’s outlook is deeply akin to that of Whitman, and neaarly everyone who has read him has remarked on this. Tropic of Cancer ends with an especially Whitmanesque passage, in which, after the lecheries, the swindles, the fights, the drinking bouts, and the imbecilities, he simply sits down and watches the Seine flowing past, in a sort of mystical acceptance of the thing-as-it-is. Only, what is he accepting? In the first place, not America, but the ancient boneheap of Europe, where every grain of soil has passed through innumerable human bodies. Secondly, not an epoch of expansion and liberty, but an epoch of fear, tyranny, and regimentation. To say ‘I accept’ in an age like our own is to say that you accept concentration camps, rubber truncheons, Hitler, Stalin, bombs, aeroplanes, tinned food, machine guns, putsches, purges, slogans, Bedaux belts, gas masks, submarines, spies, provocateurs, press-censorship, secret prisons, aspirins, Hollywood films, and political murders. Not only those things, of course, but, those things among others. And on the whole this is Henry Miller’s attitude. Not quite always, because at moments he shows signs of a fairly ordinary kind of literary nostalgia. There is a long passage in the earlier part of Black Spring, in praise of the Middle Ages, which as prose must be one of the most remarkable pieces of writing in recent years, but which displays an attitude not very different from that of Chesterton. In Max and the White Phagocytes there is an attack on modern American civilization (breakfast cereals, cellophane, etc.) from the usual angle of the literary man who hates industrialism. But in general the attitude is ‘Let’s swallow it whole’. And hence the seeming preocupation with indecency and with the dirty-handkerchief side of life. It is only seeming, for the truth is that ordinary everyday life consists far more largely of horrors than writers of fiction usually care to admit. Whitman himself ‘accepted’ a great deal that his contemporaries found unmentionable. For he is not only writing of the prairie, he also wanders through the city and notes the shattered skull of the suicide, the ‘grey sick faces of onanists’, etc, etc. But unquestionably our own age, at any rate in Western Europe, is less healthy and less hopeful than the age in which Whitman was writing. Unlike Whitman, we live in a shrinking world. The ‘democratic vistas’ have ended in barbed wire. There is less feeling of creation and growth, less and less emphasis on the cradle, endlessly rocking, more and more emphasis on the teapot, endlessly stewing. To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay. It has ceased to be a strenuous attitude and become a passive attitude — even ‘decadent’, if that word means anything.

But precisely because, in one sense, he is passive to experience, Miller is able to get nearer to the ordinary man than is possible to more purposive writers. For the ordinary man is also passive. Within a narrow circle (home life, and perhaps the trade union or local politics) he feels himself master of his fate, but against major events he is as helpless as against the elements. So far from endeavouring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him. During the past ten years literature has involved itself more and more deeply in politics, with the result that there is now less room in it for the ordinary man than at any time during the past two centuries. One can see the change in the prevailing literary attitude by comparing the books written about the Spanish Civil War with those written about the war of 1914-18. The immediately striking thing about the Spanish war books, at any rate those written in English, is their shocking dullness and badness. But what is more significant is that almost all of them, right-wing or left-wing, are written from a political angle, by cocksure partisans telling you what to think, whereas the books about the Great War were written by common soldiers or junior officers who did not even pretend to understand what the whole thing was about. Books like All Quiet on the Western Front, Le Feu, A FArewell to Arms, Death of  a Hero, Good-bye to All That, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and A Subaltern on the Somme were written not by propagandists but by victims. They are saying in effect, ‘What the hell is all this about? God knows. All we can do is to endure.’ And though he is not writing about war, nor, on the whole, about unhappiness, this is nearer to Miller’s attitude than the omniscience which is now fashionable. The Booster, a short-lived periodical of which he was part-editor, used to describe itself in its advertisements as ‘non-political, non-educational, non-progressive, non-cooperative, non-ethical, non-literary, non-consistent, non-contemporary’, and Miller’s own work could be described in nearly the same terms. It is a voice from the crowd, from the underling, from the third-class carriage, from the ordinary, non-political, non-moral, passive man."

[snarksandsarcasm]

World Trees and Akenash

It’s a big tree and a very fascinating one, too. It doesn’t have green leaves and it’s crown is small compared to the space its roots can inhabit. And it’s heart sits right there on the top, exposed to all sorts of elements, potentially, moving towards the sky as the tree grows. 

Through its tree veins flows Amber, a golden sticky sap with many qualities. It comes in raw liquid amber, a distilled form fit for human consumption and a dried form. 

Raw amber is acid and burns away human flesh (see young Aaron) and only elves and Styx/goblins can deal with that substance without any harm. 

Distilled Amber seems to be used as a stimulant. It isn’t quite described what it does but it creates substance addiction. We know that guards yearn for it their boredom and possible loneliness in the tower and that Styx complains about the shared minds/thoughts. So consumption of Amber allows all users to share their thoughts. Like a magical Twitter. To the user this is all but a fantasy, so they just think anything (and we know how strange, exciting and disturbing thoughts can be) without constraint and find it enjoyable that others can join in their thoughts. If they substance users would talk to their peers, they would probably find out that they have in all reality shared the same thoughts, but I am sure that is beyond their understanding. 

Dried Amber seems to be found widespread even after the Fall of Akenash. Another sign how big of a role the World Trees played in the environment of nature of this world in general. I imagine it to be a mix of a rubber and oil chalks. Brittle but also bendy. It’s like oil or rock minerals. Handling dried Amber doesn’t seem to cause any issues to humans. It can be brewed back into raw Amber and from that potentially into distilled Amber. Maybe it can be grated and further worked with to create explosives and to provide light and warmth.

The Tree seems to be a structure of twisted roots, stems and branches, intertwining and growing into a shape resembling a common tree. It is not quite as big as the Home Tree on Avatar, where it’s Navi people live in its giant structure, but certainly seems to have the same potential. Akenash’s tree is big enough for several such small levels, one of which is location for the final boss fight.

The roots are much larger than the rest of the tree. This may be the case for this particular World Tree as they ‘need’ to grow that long and large to find a place to take nutrients from. On the other hand, they don’t get anything from stone walls so what would those nutrients be in the first place? Certainly not water. Similarly the leaves don’t get any much light either, but how can we know the World Tree’s real potential if it’s looked up in a dark and dry place like this? Look at the initial cage structure to hold the tree in the picture. When we get to see the tree it has grown beyond and its roots reach into the lowest and darkest corners of the tower. In the roughly 40 years of Akenash’s lifetime. A big feat. Let this tree stand alone for 200 years and it will have outgrown the tower. Either way, it seems to live just fine without any much access to light or water. It does in fact deliver more to the outsides that it does consume in resources. It gives, it doesn’t take. The name ‘World Tree’ is a fair one. And if it’s not in such confinement it may just be a true and essential provider of life to all living beings.

The cocoons are marvelous. They are like large grapes growing from the roots here and there. Their cocoon wall is a see-through brittle substance but reusable. The human scientists refer to them as ‘embryos’ but I am not sure how accurate their understanding is. This would suggest elves grow from the Tree itself. But we also know elves where human once and we know how they reproduce (and SoD features both female and male elves). And looking how Styx was able to merely ‘rest’ in a cocoon and be ‘reborn’ … I see the cocoons more as rejuvenation and health pods. At any point any elve can rest in them to regain their health and retain their eternal life.

There are several World Trees but this particular one is the only one in human hands. One Akenash guard tells us as much. We know from OOAM that the humans occupy the centre part of the Iserian continent. In the North and West are the elves and dwarfs, the South is occupied by orcs, separated by a nice big wall. The East hasn’t been specified but I seem to imagine ocean for some reason. Styx left for an unspecified World Tree far away from where his Tribe lived. Upon finding himself changed he started his quest to undo the damage. Why not use the Heart of the Tree he studied? Why must he spend 200 years to ‘find’ the World Tree in Akenash? For some reason or other that previous World Tree wasn’t available to him anymore and he needed to locate another one with a functioning Heart. Musings for another time. Suffice to say, there ARE other trees, even more on the same continent, but they are not accessible to humans at this point.

It is not very easy to place all the races and determine their political positions. That would be musings for a different time. But we know that the humans don’t have access to any other World Tree, at least not unless they have good trade deals. So they protect their Tree and try to milk it as much as possible. Hence they built Akenash. It serves as a laboratory for Amber research and a factory for Amber resources.

Akenash was designed by Querberus, a human inventor. He refers to the tower as his masterpiece. It probably existed in his head for a long time before being used as a World Tree container and Amber factory. From my timeline attempts (I share them later) I figured that Akenash existed for about 40 years before falling. Orcs will build another tower in OOAM so I have little doubt they were also the main workforce for this one, too. Along with force-like magic in this world I can imagine such a massive structure was built in less time than we would think. Maybe a decade? Especially if Querberus is overseeing everything, knowing exactly what goes where, with the full support and resources provided by the human government for this project. Querberus went so far as even to design custom made, flying transport ships. Although, for that too, I am sure the inventor had some earlier prototypes at hand to finalize and perfect. From the final scene in MoS we can see the falling tower still sitting on a triangular patch of land, as if, some time prior, the whole tower lifted itself up from the ground. This may have been a desired result or an unexpected side-effect due to the powerful Tree housed inside the tower, we don’t know. That screenshot also suggest that the towers location was somewhere in a mountain range region.

We don’t know what else Querberus did before the tower of Akenash. But it seems his reputation is that of a Da Vinci even early on. He may have done many useful and practical inventions even before that at a younger age. He was a genius and it is a shame that after Akenash, he didn’t have the freedom to create many more projects. Shame on Aaron. (Side Note on the airships: They are designed with fire heating the air inside the balloon. I don’t think that is so effective, otherwise our Zeppelins would have functioned the same way …. but regardless of that, very little burning material is kept on the ship, unlike a whole coal wagon for early railway trains. I thus conclude that Amber might very well be used to keep the fire up one way or the other. I see it as a very essential, very powerful element full of energy in this world.)

We don’t get to see any females in the MoS game, for neither humans nor elves (whether the latter need them as such is also a question for another time). There are no family units or domestic areas. Therefore, the tower itself is a pure workplace, like an Off-Shore Oil rig. Shifts last for several months before one may return home. This applies to the humans and to the elves, although I can imagine the elves have less desire for intimacy with a partner than the humans do, when nothing really is private for the elves to begin with. But they may miss their original tribes and do their duty to this poor mistreated World Tree with honour and pride. 

The infrastructure of the tower is massive. They have a library, a giant incinerator (does this keep the tower afloat?) and a huge prison complex. I think the humans had prisoners work on the tower construction itself and then in the tower to deal with the dangerous substance Amber and needed that area to house them all. Like a big prison/concentration camp. Only guards and high-end officials have the choice to go and work in Akenash.

Being vulnerable humans they can’t completely do their work without the help of elves. Styx referred to the last time humans died trying to extract the Amber from the roots of the Tree and reminds Barimen how the World Tree belongs to the elves, as a race. They have agreed to tend to the Tree on behalf of the humans. Hence the need for the elf ambassador to ensure good working conditions and to make sure the deal made is being adhered to. This also explains the human hatred towards the elves, who are here out of necessity, not nice company. And the elves don’t like the humans abusing a World Tree. Room for tensions!

We don’t know what exact Amber products are being made in Akenash. We see many containers full of raw Amber everywhere but that’s it. Considering the size of Akenash, there might be space to create huge items such as military weapons, vital airship engine parts or just silly little things such as light matches using an application of ground Amber on their tip. I guess this is another good topic for another time. Amber products!

Considering how much presence I give Amber in this world, the Fall of Akenash must have been devastating for the humans. Their primary source of Amber gone. Trading will continue and dried Amber is still largely available, but it’s not as convenient as having your own World Tree. But it’s consequences on politics and economics is something for another time. Especially as Styx suggested in the Intro that the World Tree is a big secret of the humans, hence all the locks and guards. But such a thing cannot entirely be kept secret. I can see how the government will not disclose it’s exact size/production capabilities etc to their citizens or trade partners but I am certain enough people know what Akenash is for. Why it took Styx so long to find this place? Good question. But we may equally ask why Styx went through such a pointless game anyway, considering he is strong enough to just go ahead to the Heart grabbing it. Hm.

Some questions I haven’t got an answer to:

Tree Reproduction

Is the Heart of the Tree a seedling? Do the new seeds sit in the glowing leaves in the crown? Does the tree bloom? Bear fruits? If it’s a tree this big, who does the pollination? Giant bees? Would it not be possible, that after the Fall of Akenash from the remains of the Tree a new one will grow? I would say that generally new trees are rare. There are many spread throughout the world, but I’d wager you can count them on two hands. If they’d grow like apple trees there would hardly be the need for the humans to put so much effort into guarding the one Tree they have.

Other Mutations

Humans mutated into elves many eons before. An Orc can mutate himself into a goblin within 2 decades. Roabies are mutated giant critters. So what else can and will mutate? Fruit flies? Little lizards? We haven’t seen anything else. Direct contact with raw Amber causes deformation and deterioration of tissue so that might be Cause Number 1. Digestion of distilled Amber seems to affect and open up the mind only. So really anything that has direct contact with raw Amber might change, which in actuality is less than what we think. Who would choose to do that? Death of the creature seems more like than the deformation. 

[etjwrites]

The Technology of Thorunn

Thanks to @whatsanwritepocalae for reminding me that for a sci-fi story, I haven't really mentioned the science of it all yet! 😅

There are two main groups of people in "Thorunn," the Klia'an natives of the planet - who are feloid shapeshifters - and humans who have relocated from Earth. Each group has a different set of technological knowledge, and the humans' desire to get ahold of Klia'an resources drives the overarching yet underlying conflict of "Thorunn."

Klia'an Tech:

Chishish Wood - A very sturdy, almost steel like wood that is nearly invulnerable to fire and is used for an innumerable amount of items, ranging all the way from spoons to building struts. Rope woven from Chishish vines almost never wears thin.

Clothes Harness - All Klia'ans wear elastic-like harnesses that store lightweight clothing. When in Klia'an form, the harnesses form belts, bracelets, and necklaces from which loose, flowly clothing hangs. When Klia'ans shift to S'hinoian form, the clothes retract into the harnesses which automatically reflow to fit their feline forms.

Hinnom Sap - A frix proof substance that can be tapped from the Hinnom Trees in the Hinnom Forest. "More resistant than rubber, as flexible as spandex, and harder than steel when dried," the secrets to sourcing and properly processing Hinnom Sap are known only to the Klia'an people. They coat everything with it: their lofts, clothes, weapons, anything that might have occasion to be outside during frix season. (Humans desperately want the secrets to Hinnom sap so they can travel freely during Frix season, as well as deeper into the planet where the storms are almost constant and more unyielding.)

Onite - Gold doesn't exist on Thorunn, but humans have "discovered" that Onite - a dark, fragile stone plentiful within Mount Lalethusl - is a workable replacement, and so substitute this mineral wherever gold would normally be found inside of machinery and computer components. They have taken over the onite mines that used to belong to Tribe Anshi.

Quirn - This is a weapon that looks like a bo-staff, and comes in rigid and collapsable forms. Solar powered, it stores and discharges frix, and can be adjusted from mild to lethal in terms of output. Often made of Chishish wood.

Regen-rig - A machine that heals pretty much anything, especially when coupled with liphiz blossoms. The knowledge for it is sourced from the Klia'ans across the sea, and built using different types of precious minerals including onite.

Slyr - A type of shield that protects the forearms and body. Very specialised and allowed only to Klia'ans who have passed Igis and gained adult status in their tribe.

Human Tech:

Clip - Think Bluetooth on steroids. Clips are devices primarily worn on people's ears. They have a small digital display, but their true power lies in the ability to project a hanging holographic display which can then be navigated through like any other computer. Clips can connect to the internet, make and receive calls, take pictures and record video, and basically anything else you'd expect an advanced phone to do. There are also prisoner clips, which cannot be removed by the wearer or else they'll explode, and can be used to send painful shocks to errant detainees.

Holoscreen - These are transparent tablets which are blank until activated, and are an alternative to clips. They come in every size from handheld to wall sized.

Hovercar - Exactly what it sounds like! No wheels anywhere though - they also come in truck and ambulance models.

Nano-diffuser - A special machine used in the medical field to assist in healing almost any kind of injury. As the name suggests, it is based on nanotechnology. It is very powerful, and must be used sparingly and under strict guidelines, or else the rapid-fire healing can do more harm than good.

Sol - A solar powered laser gun. These come in all shapes and sizes, with the largest being called "sol-cannons." They can blast through pretty much anything, although the tough, solfire resistant hides of Thorunn's megafauna (due to the frix storms) make protecting one's self in the wild a bit of a challenge.

Vercycle - A flying motorcycle. These solar powered vehicles are the primary mode of transportation on Thorunn, and are often custom painted. Bounty hunter and military vehicles are often outfitted with 1-3 sol-cannons.

I think about covers it - there maaaay be a few more things that pop up, but I can't give away all of "Thorunn's" secrets. 😉

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@elaynab-writing @musicofglassandwords @sheabutterskyes @igotablankpage @alcego-writes @valdifarniente

[wine-porn]

As I expected, the 2007 Crozes is pretty much gone. Not its fault--it should have been dranken 5 years ago. All burnt rubber and toasted spice and extreme vegetal and fruit gone pruny and vapid with tannins completely overpowering. So... Syrah Number 2! Fairly impenetrable ruby, ridiculous massive floral in the nose--lilac and lily alongside a fat slab of American oak and deep rich hot black cherry. Creamy funk roils up the heat in the nose a bit--there's no doubt this is a BRUISER--but there's also a nice steely edge of mineral pushing through. So much perfume and fruit though. In the mouth, black bitter sharpness pummels the fruit from the get-go, the whole thing monstrous but with ample acid. I'm gonna guess this 15-2. If you're into big Ballard Canyon or Paso Robles Rhones, or some of the fatties from Napa like Krupp or Agartha, this is your gig. Meaty and blustery and not taking prisoners. 2013 @ARILWINES #syrah #atlaspeak #napavalley 13-9 #sophienwaldglass (at Avila Beach, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/BvkxmXAgOXW/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=4edrliq9ddfa

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Yet the essence of a nation is that all individuals have many things in common, and also that they have forgotten many things...Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation." - Renan. From my 2018-19 research files, a tiny slice of Canada - the Canada that isn't generally celebrated on 'Canada Day' or acknowledged, and indeed must be forgotten or submerged or left safely in the past - in the two months before July 1, 1919. Warning - it's pretty grim history: On June 2, twelve alleged Bolsheviks were rounded up by the Toronto police - 'four Americans, one Scotchman, two Austrians, one Polander, three Russians and one Italian' - for having 'objectionable literature.' They were all sent to prison on June 19, 1919. Again on June 2, a socialist gathering in Montreal at LaFontaine park was rushed by mounted police. On trial the next week, Miss. M. Mendelsohn convinced the judge that 'free assembly' was still allowed in Canada, and she and other detained socialists were released. Once again on June 2, a young man and 'trusty' prisoner escaped the Québec City jail on the Plains of Abraham, running from a 'war garden' he worked to feed his fellows. He was supposed to have been imitating the notorious jailbreaker and 'slayer' Frank McCullough. For shooting a police detective, McCullough was hanged at the Toronto jail on June 13 - a crowd of 5,000, including many returned soldiers, shouted 'reprieve!' and tried to rush the jail, only to be beaten back by mounted police. On June 11 in Winnipeg, special constables (hired to replace the Winnipeg police, dismissed on June 9 for not resisting the general strike) provoked a riot through their heavy-handed brutality. On June 18, some of the members of the Winnipeg Strike Committee were pulled from their bed before dawn and arrested, and driven to Stony Mountain Penitentiary, where their legal counsel had tremendous difficulty getting to them due to bad roads. Earlier that month, a manhunt around Stonewall, Manitoba began to find an 'Indian boy' suspected of killing his employer - a farmer, early settler and veteran of 1885 - and burning down his barn. Naval rum, destined for Esquimault, was stored at government yards in Cochrane due to the Winnipeg strike, where two section-men were caught tapping the kegs - one fled into the bush on June 11.  Across Canada, in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Toronto, Amherst, Trois-Riviéres, Fort William, strikes began - sometimes even joyously or ebulliently, but just as often grimly or desperately - as barbers, carpenters, shipbuilders, express messengers, rubber workers, miners, haberdashers and hat makers, cotton mill spinners, pulp and paper workers, railway workers, even police and firemen went out: for better pay and shorter hours (8 hour day! 44 hour week!), for union recognition, in sympathy with the Winnipeg strikers, for socialism, for their families, for the future. In Renfrew, unionized workers in the town won official recognition on the same day the Cobalt miners went out. In Guelph, the street cleaners were all fired on June 8 after they struck in protest of the pay raise their new foreman received. A parliamentary commission toured the country, hearing the complaints of workers and their leaders, listening to the whining of employers - and ultimately doing a great deal of nothing. Even the Great War Veterans Association - otherwise eager to support strikebreaking and deportation - bemoaned the 'war profiteers' and 'greedy capitalists' behind the high cost of living and the 'unrest' across the country. In Grand-Mere, according to a June 13 dispatch, a 'red priest' was advocating for the workers at the pulp mill. In Windsor, late May, street railway workers occupying their workshops sent strikebreakers running and precipitated the calling out of the militia. On June 26, strikebreakers turned water hoses on children throwing stones at 'scabs' during the Toronto Street Railway (early TTC) strike.    The week before, a young Armenian man jumped to his death in the Detroit river, as Canadian and American police collaborated to deport the 'enemy alien' back to Turkey, where his whole family had been murdered during the war. A purported relative of Louis Riel was sent to jail in Fort Saskatchewan in mid-May for illegal trapping. On June 18, the Labour candidate for the Sherbrooke seat in the Québec provincial election dropped out of the race, citing collusion between the Liberal candidate and the police. On June 21, the Mounted Police opened fire on a demonstration of strikers in Winnipeg, killing two and wounding dozens more, functionally killing the general strike as well. By the end of June, Winnipeg had been receiving its water from Shoal Lake for three months - a 'development' project that turned the Shoal Lake First Nation into an isolated island and disinterred their burial ground. The jails were bursting, full of returned soldiers who turned to theft and conscientious objectors and defaulters, only some of whom were being pardoned out by June 1919. In Québec City, three men were sent to penitentiary on June 3 for providing fake conscription exemption forms, and a military paymaster was sent to prison on June 20 from London, Ontario, for stealing from his regiment. A fraudulent veteran - wearing the stolen medals of another man with his name - tried to escape the Milton jail with the aid of a wanted American jailbreaker and two teenage horse thieves from Tottenham. Six women were sent to Kingston penitentiary, from across Canada, between May and July: one for forgery, one for 'placing poison,' one for armed robbery, one for 'procuring' and one for 'abortion'. A Canadian Press piece - it claimed a link between the One Big Union, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Bolsheveki and 'blood red anarchism' and blamed this conspiracy for the strikes accross the country - circulated in Canadian papers. Veterans associations across the country demanded the deportation of 'undesirable citizens.' A women's institute in Trois-Riviéres on May 26 advocated for the introduction of parole for young delinquents and better 'treatment' for 'mental defectives.' A returned officer, fresh from the anti-Bolshevik Canadian deployment to Siberia, found in mid-June his Vernon, B.C., home ransacked and vandalized - he claimed a local 'German alien,' recently released from internment, must have been responsible. A meeting in Montreal of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire on June 1 recommended being polite and smiling at 'Italian or other workmen' in order to cultivate the sympathy of the working class. Gillette launched a national campaign with the tagline - 'Strikes may come and strikes may go, but your Gillette razor will never desert you!'

[thinkveganworld]

This is an article I wrote a while back, “Brave New McWorld.”  It ran widely in various Internet publications.

BRAVE NEW MCWORLD By Carla Binion Rutgers political science professor Benjamin Barber says in "Jihad vs. McWorld" that today's corporate culture spins a shimmering scenario of "corporate forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize people everywhere with fast music, fast computers, and fast food -- with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald's, pressing nations into one commercially homogenous theme park: a veritable McWorld tied together by communications, information, entertainment and commerce." In this fast-paced, mesmerized McWorld the public attention flits rapidly from one important news story to the next. Now we see Impeachment; now we don't!  Now we see Seattle; now we're off to something else!  The public has no time to digest and assimilate news events and their lessons. The corporate spin on globalization is eerily cheerful, despite the fact that the gap between rich and poor is widening.  Barber says government leaders are intimidated by today's market ideology.  No one dares question the conventional wisdom about free trade.  The conventional wisdom says that globalization is inevitable, and that our democratic traditions are obsolete. Barber quotes Felix Rohatyn:  "There is a brutal Darwinian logic to these markets.  They are nervous and greedy.  They look for stability...but what they reward is not always our preferred form of democracy."  Capitalism wants to tame democracy, says Barber, and capitalism does not mind tyranny as long as it secures "stability." In the same interview where George W. Bush failed to name the leaders of four different countries, Bush also said he thought the coup in Pakistan was a good thing because it would help bring "stability" to the region.  If Bush recommends tyrant's coups to "bring stability" to other nations, would he also favour tyrannical oppression for "stability's" sake in this country? The message of globalization is that democracies are old-fashioned and that "tyranny to secure stability" is bright and shiny new.  No matter how much confectioner's sugar the globalization flacks sprinkle on the message, this is not good news for the ever-shrinking American middle-class.  It is especially bad news considering the very rich have used violence and deception to control and divide the working class throughout this nation's history. In McWorld, can we still learn from history? Important lessons from history as recent as the Seattle demonstrations have been obliterated by the McNews networks. Network news did not cover the fact that a Seattle physician reported that the rubber bullets police used on peaceful demonstrators tore off part of a person's jaw and smashed the teeth of many nonviolent protesters.  Peaceful demonstrators had tear gas injuries, including damage to eyes and skin.  One Seattle reporter was thrown to the pavement, handcuffed, and thrown into a van, even though the correspondent showed credentials.  Corporate owned news networks did not interview the nonviolent protesters who were injured by "stability" enforcing police. Like terrorist death squads in third world countries, U. S. vigilante police sometimes ignore legal formalities and practice unlawful torture on nonviolent strikers or peaceful protesters.  Folksinger Woodie Guthrie once sang, "Well, what is a vigilante man?  Tell me, what is a vigilante man?....Would he shoot his brother and sister down?"(1) Apparently for Seattle police, the answer was yes. In McWorld, not only is democracy out of date, but labour concerns are also antiquated.  However, for those of us not living entirely in a McWorld-induced trance, it is useful to reflect on the way U. S. corporations and certain government agencies have tried to divide and oppress the working class at previous moments in history.  A close look at corporations' long-term oppression of the middle class indicates where unbridled capitalism will take McWorld's cheerful tyrants in the future. Corporate and government leaders have long used police and National Guardsmen and even federal troops to break strikes and crush progressive movements. The copper miners' strike of 1892 in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho was broken when the governor brought in the National Guard, reinforced by federal troops. Union leaders were fired, scabs were reinstated and six hundred miners were imprisoned.  (That is about the same number of people arrested in Seattle. Senator-activist Tom Hayden said that of the 587 arrested in Seattle, virtually all were nonviolent.) For a Carnegie Steel workers' strike in 1892, the governor of Pennsylvania brought in state troops to protect strikebreakers and crush strike leaders, arresting the entire Strike Committee.(2)  If anyone doubts corporate/government leaders would use such force to bring "stability" today, we only have to once again remember Seattle -- if McWorld will stop spinning long enough to allow the memory to resurface intact, that is. In 1885, a labour meeting was held in Chicago's Haymarket Square.  A bomb exploded, wounding sixty-six policemen and killing seven.  Historian Howard Zinn writes, "Some evidence came out that a man named Rudolph Schnaubelt, supposedly an anarchist, was actually an agent of the police, an agent provocateur, hired to throw the bomb and thus enable the arrest of hundreds, causing the destruction of the revolutionary leadership in Chicago.  But to this day it has not been discovered who threw the bomb."(3)  Seattle's violent disruptions might also have been instigated by provocateurs, but even contemplating such a question is taboo in today's McCulture. Lack of evidence in the Haymarket incident did not matter. Police arrested eight "anarchist" leaders.  A jury sentenced them all to death.  George Bernard Shaw and other prominent Americans were outraged because they considered the trials a railroading.  There was a march of 25,000 in Chicago, and 60,000 people signed petitions to Illinois Governor Altgeld, who later pardoned the three prisoners who had not already died.  Will future McWorld leaders even allow a George Bernard Shaw to speak or 25,000 to march without shattering their jaws with rubber bullets? In more recent history, during the 1960s, the FBI used surveillance and agents provocateurs to foster division within protest organizations.(4) Senate hearings in the 1970s (the Church committee hearings) showed that the FBI worked to discredit and destroy certain civil rights and women's liberation groups.  The Senate report showed that FBI informants infiltrated leftwing groups, disrupted their plans, and even encouraged members to kill one another or tried to destroy their personal lives.(5) The Church committee report states that the FBI wiretapped Martin Luther King, Jr., and made a systematic effort to knock him "off his pedestal and to reduce him completely in influence."(6)  The FBI smeared King, lying about him to congressmen and university officials.  Thirty-four days before King was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, he received an anonymous tape in the mail -- a tape that recorded King's extramarital affairs.  The Senate report showed that Assistant FBI director William Sullivan wrote King a letter saying:  "King, there is only one thing left for you to do.  You know what it is.  You have just 34 days in which to do it."(7)  King understood this to mean Sullivan was urging him to commit suicide.  This is what tyrants do in order to "stabilize" the disenfranchised. Corporate/governmental brutality toward nonviolent protesters is nothing new in this country's history.  The mainstream media's neglect is not unusual either. Journalist Michael Parenti reveals how the mainstream press often shows an anti-labour, anti-protester bias.  For example, major newspapers have no "labour" section to go along with their business section.  Strikes and protests are usually covered from the management or corporate viewpoint. One study of ABCs "Nightline" found that over a forty-month period covering 865 programs, guests were overwhelmingly conservative, white, male, government officials, or corporate executives.  "Only 5 percent represented public interest groups.  Less than 2 percent were labour leaders or representatives of ethnic minorities."(8)  The news blackout on Seattle was just more of the same from corporate McNews media. Benjamin Barber says that the old masters were visible tyrants.  Today's masters are invisible and "sing a siren song of markets in which the name of liberty is invoked in every chorus."  The new masters tell us that oppression is liberty, and war is peace, and tyranny is stability.  The "liberty" of McWorld may be good for consumption, says Barber, but it may not be of much use to civic liberty. Robber baron Jay Gould once said in reference to a Knights of Labour Strike, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."  Gould meant that he was willing to stir up conflict among workers and encourage violence in order to oppress average Americans who dared to stand up for their rights.(9)  Gould's mentality might seem outdated, but the *fruits* of his thinking are not substantially different from what occurred in Seattle. Day after day we see cheery, breezy fluff on the McNews channels.  We are fed shimmering portraits of smiling corporate leaders who assure us globalization is good for the country.  Just beneath the glowing skin, gleaming teeth and glib snake oil spin of your friendly McWorld salesman lurks the soul of Jay Gould.  Let us watch and see where trading tyranny for "stability" will take us over the next few years.  Let us not be McMesmerized into forgetfulness. (1)  Bertram Gross, FRIENDLY FASCISM, 1980. (2)  Howard Zinn, A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, 1980. (3)  Zinn, A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, 1980 (4)  Cathy Perkus, ed., COINTELPRO, The FBI's Secret War on Political     Freedom, 1975. (5)  Kathryn S. Olmstead, CHALLENGING THE SECRET GOVERNMENT, 1996.;   (Olmstead's source is:  U. S. Senate Select Committee, Intelligence    Activities, vol. 6, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 18 November 1975,    26.) (6)  U. S. Senate Select Committee Report., vol. 6, 31. (7)  U. S. Senate Select Committee Report, vol 6, 33 (8)  Study by William Hoynes and David Croteau, prepared for Fairness and     Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), February 1989. (9)  Gross, FRIENDLY FASCISM, 1980.

[toonpunk-game]

Fluff Updates: Part 1

So the long and short of it is that having my own website for toonpunk documentation was a little more trouble than it’s worth. But, since I wrote all this fluff and have nowhere else to put it, I’m going to begin steadily dropping a bunch of it onto Tumblr over the next few days in case anyone wants to read it. Let’s begin with the most important sci-fan conceit of the setting: Ink.

The Ink

WARNING: this section has a lot of technical terms and is probably not strictly necessary for the average toonpunk. We have included this article in this manual primarily for the benefit of new arrivals to the world who may have some lingering questions about the basic physics of ink. TLDR, it does weird stuff and if you draw something with it then the drawing comes to life. The rest of you can just keep on movin by.

If you want to talk about the state of the world, you have to start with the Ink.  The most incredible discovery in human history, it has aggressively challenged human understanding of nearly all scientific and philosophical fields: physics, biology, theology, economy, architecture, art, and war—these, and many more, were all redefined from the most basic level, by elemental ink. Elemental Ink appeared in the world, spontaneously and inexplicably, on February 22nd, 2042. This event is now memorialized as “I-day”, and it was more important than can be succinctly described.

Prior to I-day, “ink” referred to a wide variety of fluids which were used for writing, drawing, or otherwise discoloring paper. However, on I-day, every single instance of every form of ink in the known universe spontaneously collapsed into a new elemental molecule: and immediately, the ramifications were immense.  Despite large-scale atomic fusion spontaneously occurring across hundreds of billions of instances, no energy was at any point released from this action, and no cause was ever determined. Perhaps even more remarkably, attempts to create more ink using the previous methods resulted, instead, in the creation of this elemental liquid. With this, the fundamental rules of physics were abruptly abolished.  

Today, ink is the most dangerous and valuable liquid on the planet, though it does not outwardly seem so. At a glance, ink is a room-temperature liquid, which can come in a variety of different colors; and there is nothing particular about it which reveals itself when frozen or boiled.  However, in specific conditions it manifests incredible properties which are unprecedented in all other forms of matter. When describing these, it is easiest to depart from the prosaic and instead enumerate these as a simple list.

-Ink can be created from any mixture of water and certain pigments. Mixing these pigments with other liquids, or naturally colored liquids together, will not yield result. Upon reaching a viscosity comparable to that of human blood, the mixture will spontaneously and instantly collapse into an elemental liquid in which no other component molecule can be identified. This fusion does not create any form of energy—light, sound, force, heat, or otherwise.

-The complete list of ink-yielding materials is long and complex, but the Interplanetary Ink Ministry takes pains to make sure it is as widely-disseminated as possible. These include the skin of some animals, the flowers of some plants, and certain minerals—all of which have been culled to near-extinction in the last 200 years. Production of these materials is strictly regulated, and the knowledge of the relevant processes is jealously guarded. Any unlicensed attempt to manufacture these materials is greeted harshly: in the UCAS it carries a minimum federal penalty of 50 years in prison; and in Russia and China, it almost always warrants death.

-If a stagnant body of ink is left in contact with a body of any other inorganic substance equal to or greater than its own size, the ink will begin to “dry up”: at a rate of approximately 1 milliliter per 3.6 seconds, the ink will spontaneously transform into the surrounding material. Ink does not have this effect on highly-hydrophobic surfaces, or while it is moving—which means that it has to be carried in chemically-treated containers to avoid going solid while inside.

 -The most remarkable thing about ink is its conduciveness to life: ink can, on its own, reproduce most of the functions and behaviors of living organisms. Whenever ink is pressed against sufficiently thick paper by organic human hands (or an instrument being wielded by such) and used to draw something which the artist has imagined as a living being, then the ink will (again at a rate of 1ml/3.5s) begin to rise off the page—and will materialize into a full-scaled wholly-living version of whatever was drawn, which can operate indistinguishably from other life.

Ink is able to form limbic, vascular, and neural structures of incredible complexity. Bodies made of ink can be so large that ordinary biological structures of a similar scale would collapse underneath their own weight; and they can repair themselves so rapidly that they are, for all intents and purposes, impervious to aging. It does all of this despite individual molecules of ink being indistinguishable from one another on all levels except coloration. “Inkmen” such as these now account for approximately 70% of all sapient life in the solar system.

-Whenever the ink begins rising, it does this by spontaneously manifesting new elemental ink particles, which were not at any point particles of a different nature. This phenomenon explicitly defies the conservation of energy—which, until I-day, was an immutable principle of the universe.

-Perhaps the most mind-boggling, and certainly the most controversial, of the ink’s properties is its omnipresence: elemental Ink can be found in almost every single molecule of matter in the observable universe.  In human blood, this is highly concentrated, at roughly one part per hundred; and in most other materials it accounts for between .04% and .6% of their total composition. In sand, correctional fluid, and rubber, Ink cannot be found at all. There is no rational reason for them to be entirely ink-free; most particularly since Ink is readily available in the materials from which these examples are derived.  How the Ink determines “sand” from “earth” or “rubber” from “latex”, scientists have not yet determined.

It is unknown if its omnipresence was immediate upon the arrival of the Ink into the world, or the product of some form of rapid propagation after I-day; but since then, innumerable theological and philosophical arguments have sprung up around it.  Ink has been the subject of numerous theses on determinism, and the existence of a Supreme Entity, and the interconnectedness of things within the universe.  Numerous faiths, movements, and other schools of thought have arisen around the facts as they are presently understood.  To some, Ink is proof of, or perhaps the body of, a God or godlike entity; others speculate that it is the product of another dimension, which experienced singularity with our own; others still believe that it is the living body, or a remnant of, some far-off alien species.  The past 200 years of scientific analysis have brought us no closer to understanding the true nature of Ink, or its place in our world.

 INK AS A LIFE FORM

The many remarkable properties of elemental ink can be observed in its status as a vector for organic life. In the anatomy of certain inkmen, you can witness its ability to replicate biological structures; its ability to produce those on a scale previously thought impossible; and the arbitrary, vexatious nature which has lead so many to attribute it some divine character.

First, the basics: whenever Elemental Ink is used to draw something, the thing being drawn will, upon completion, come to life—ripping itself off the paper and asserting itself into three-dimensional space.  The length of this process goes at a rate of about 1 milliliter every 3.65       seconds, so it increases with the size of the being in question—with sea monkeys taking just over 3 seconds, and a human (or roughly human) sized creature taking about 8 hours. That’s the simple things out of the way.  

There are many other rules which govern the lives of inkmen—which drawings will and will not take on their own lives, and how they live afterwards. Most of these rules seem to be completely arbitrary, with no discernable causality; so we shall simply list them here.

-Only human beings can create inkmen. While inkmen can manipulate Ink into various short-lived inanimate forms, it is uniquely resonant with human beings; and any time an inkman attempts to create life, the result will either drop dead within seconds, or be nothing at all.

-An inkman must be “complete” in the eyes of the illustrator before they come to life. No matter how long it takes for an inkman to be completed, a drawing will not manifest any signs of life until the artist definitively and truthfully considers it “done”. It will ignore the professed opinions of other humans if they disagree with the artist’s; and it will ignore the artist’s statements as well if they are untrue.  If an artist dies before completing their work, then their drawing will never come to life. The fact that the Ink can tell one artist from another, and correctly gauge an artist’s feelings on their own work, indicates that Ink has some form of enormously complex psychosensitive property. Many attribute this to the very will of God.

-Only a single instance of any given inky being may exist in the universe at any given time. No matter how often or broadly they were depicted, or how many copies exist of said depictions, there may be only one. The depiction that comes to life will always be the one which has been seen by the largest number of people.  If multiple identical instances of a depiction exist—IE through photocopying, or mass printing—then all of these will “share” a view count; and whichever one is located at the point with the highest concentration of elemental Ink surrounding it will be the one that yields an inkman. An inkman’s most popular depiction is generally called a “homepage”.

-If an inkman is killed, they will—at the very instant of their death—immediately be reborn from their homepage, exactly as they were the first time. No inkman has ever been medically resuscitated after death—though if this is because of insufficient medical technology, or the “only-one” rule, nobody has yet been able to conclusively demonstrate.  Their new incarnation will have no memories of their time in the real world—effectively “resetting” them to exactly how they were when first incarnated. The existential implications of this are best not discussed anywhere at any time.

-The personality, cognitive capacity, and behavior of an Ink-based life form is defined by how much “thought” their original creator put into them. Characters with detailed stories and psychological profiles will express these after entering the real world; and will generally perform to the standards of intelligence assigned to them by their creator. However, their memories and experiences will always be those they had at the time of their homepage: any changes or knowledge received afterwards will not appear in the real world. A character with very little thought put into it will emerge completely uneducated, like a newborn baby, and will require extensive early-life care mirroring that of an organic human child.

-Inkmen will only come to life if their homepage is 90gsm thick or greater.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  

  -A drawing will only come to life if it is “original” in the mind of its creator—that is to say, it is not a representation of a real living being, or of an existing character: political cartoons, nature sketches, and portraits may be drawn at leisure, and will never animate. Strangely, and infuriatingly, the ink’s ability to sense artist intention comes into play here: in numerous clinical trials where artists attempted to draw real people, it has been conclusively determined that no amount of physical deformation or difference in the subject’s depiction can trick the Ink into animating it: everything from “George Washington with a laser eye” to “Sylvester Stallone except he’s a giant amorphous blob of sludge” all yielded no result: an Inkman will only come to life if it is, in the mind of the artist, an entirely separate entity from any extant real or imagined creature.

-It is worth noting that, in one trial, two artists who were commissioned to draw an obscure deep-sea life form (which they believed to be wholly fictional) were able to create animated versions of it which existed simultaneously. Curiously, entities which are physically identical but distinct in the minds of the creators—such as clones, body-snatchers, or shape-changers—can also manifest simultaneously. This discovery directly spawned a cottage industry of “Idiot artists”—people who are kept isolated from birth and permitted no knowledge of the outside world except how to draw. These idiot artists would then be commissioned to reproduce real animals or people, for whatever reason. Despite being a violation of many human rights, this is still a thriving business in certain uncivilized parts of the solar system.

The so-called “originality mandate” has also frustrated many attempts to mass-produce inkmen as soldiers: in the aftermath of I-day, several governments commissioned artists to draw entire armies, but then the discovered that it was virtually impossible to have them adhere to a single physical and mental template: drawing many people with limited variation between them, and thought spent on them, meant that the finished inkmen were uniformly too simple-minded to form coherent thoughts—much less effectively act on a battlefield.

-Inkmen do theoretically exist as they were the mind of the artist, and can theoretically grow to be any size; but in practice, this is often confounded upon their introduction to meatspace. The largest inkman on record—the Sūpāgyarakushī no Kyodaina Josei o Taberu from the popular shonen anime Ginga ga taberu Porineshia no Josei—is a mere 600 meters tall, despite having a canonical height of 1.4 billion light-years; while the average height of kaiju, mecha, and similar monsters is between 300 and 500 meters.It is believed that this is because despite understanding the numerical immensity of their creations, the human mind is incapable of truly visualizing things on that scale—this phenomenon, known as “Cheese’s Principle of Cognitive Limitations”, is responsible for the lack of cosmic-scale inkmen.

The Cheese Limitation Principle also makes itself felt in several other ways. In 2048, the Chinese government commissioned the illustration of a hive-being—that is to say, a being with a single mind spread over many bodies—to begin replacing its police force.  While such a being was drawn, and successfully incarnated, they discovered to their chagrin that it was only capable of occupying about 30 bodies simultaneously—again, because the artist had failed to properly grasp the scale of their creation.  The largest hive-being on record is a cluster of about 200 fist-sized ants who communicate entirely through shrieks.

-Inkmen, after being born, do not need to eat, sleep, or drink to remain alive. However, many of them still do so because it is psychologically beneficial to maintain the semblance of normalcy. Inkmen do, however, require a steady influx of elemental ink: it is possible for Inkmen to “dry out” if they go too long without ingesting ink—if they do so, their bodies literally crumble to dust; and over the course of approximately 8 hours, they suffer the most horrifying and protracted form of naturally occurring death known to exist. While they do not technically need to breathe, clinical trials have shown that inkmen which were breathing creatures in their homepage are incapable of taking advantage of this fact: they will continue breathing due to their psychological urge to, even though It is unnecessary.

-All inkmen, even those specifically designed to give birth, are entirely incapable of organic reproduction. The only way one can be born is if they are drawn.

INK AS A MATERIAL

Even if Ink were not conducive to life, it would be an incredible material: for it, by itself, enabled the industrial revolution that brought mankind where it is today: ink, unlike any other form of matter, has a naturally replicative property: in a vacuum, a body of elemental ink will grow over time. That is to say, its component molecules will reproduce themselves indefinitely, without requiring energy or matter to continue the process. This by itself is remarkable; but what truly made ink indispensable was its elimination of “scarcity”.

Up until I-day, human ambition was in many industries limited by scarcity—the idea that certain materials existed in fixed quantities, and could not be renewed into a usable state without compromising existing infrastructure. These included natural resources like coal, petroleum, and iron—all of which were at one point easily available to commercial buyers, but became increasingly expensive over time as the total amount was depleted. Shortly after I-day, however, the concept of scarcity was rendered obsolete by the discovery of Ink’s other amazing property.

Before Bloody March had even ended, several independent laboratories hit upon the same remarkable discovery: ink not only replicated, it assimilated: if an amount of elemental ink is kept in physical contact with a larger quantity of any other material, the ink will undergo spontaneous molecular metamorphosis at a rate of roughly 50 milliliters every hour—and it will do so until it reaches equilibrium with the material. Spectacularly, it does this without any observable exertion of energy—while replicating a similar process through conventional means would require a truly enormous amount of power. This, combined with Ink’s ability to replicate itself, meant that any material in the universe could be reproduced into perpetuity, given sufficient time and space.

Soon afterwards, the first Ink Additive Manufacturing machine was developed, with several similar technologies following suit. While the precise method varied, the idea was the same: quantities of precious materials—oils, minerals, chemicals, and so on—would be placed in a mechanical assembly, and immersed in Ink until the material was duplicated; and then the process was repeated.  The ability to quickly and effectively produce large quantities of materials with nearly no labor cost absolutely revolutionized industry and economy all across the Earth—material scarcity was replaced with time scarcity.  The modern supply chain is shaped more by production and transit time than by material acquisition: while readily-available metals made the modern megabuilding possible, many arcologies—such as Saskatoon’s Overside, or the Chinese Ring—have been under construction for decades or longer, and will be for several more.

Strikingly, ink’s assimilative effect exerts itself over human beings. While most animals are not often exposed to it for long enough, humans have a very high Blood-Ink Concentration, at 1%; and over the course of their lives, this will affect their physiology in many ways. First and foremost, ink replicates human cells almost as quickly as they decay, preventing cellular breakdown for almost a century. Since I-day, the average human lifespan has increased to about 200 years—a sharp increase from the 80 year lifespans common before then.

More than that, though, ink often emulates the most prevalent exterior tissues in any given body—usually fat or muscle.  Upon reaching adulthood, many humans will find that the ink inside them emulates their most prominent features—often leading to unusual concentrations of bone, muscle, or fat. While these are usually benign, they can be quite unsightly, and such features were entirely unheard of prior to the advent of Biomodding. Over time, humans invariably end up looking rather “cartoonish”, to use a somewhat sensitive word. As such, cosmetic surgeries and ink-reducing liver implants are fairly common among many strata of society.  In 2054, inkish philosopher Blot Thought remarked that “the presence of ink in human bodies has blurred the line between creator and created…so that now we might all be one tremendous comic book and never know.”

Colors and the Common Person

The human eye can see roughly 7 million different colors, and computers can recognize over twice that many. At one point, you could see almost all of them in stores; but today, commercial products are limited to an extremely narrow band of colors. In 2061, the IIM issued the Safety and Liability in Commercial Colors bill to combat the danger of bootleg ink. The SLICC proposed guidelines for the classification and control of commercially-available pigments. Within 3 weeks of its creation it was ratified by 136 countries, including all 4 superduperpowers. Underneath the SLICC, color was removed from almost everything except for plastics and certain metals. The entire labyrinthine text can be viewed online from numerous sources; so WHEE will instead use this space to highlight several of the resultant adjustments to everyday life. WHEE hope that this will ease your transition into the grey cutthroat hell-world of today.

      Dyes

In SLICC nations, the vast majority of clothing dyes are Type-2 controlled substances. In most countries, that means their ownership is regulated—requiring both an in-depth background check and additional federal approval to be distributed on a per-case basis. This means that for most people, dyed clothing is squarely out of their tax bracket. Instead, modern apparel relies chiefly on natural tints—on the subtle differences between fibers’ natural colors. More than this, clothes rely on expressive and impractical cuts to distinguish themselves. The majority of leisure garments for both men and women consist of two parts: a thin layer of under-cloth to protect the skin, and then a thicker layer to express the sensibilities of the wearer. Common over-clothes include lattices, wicker-weaves, cords, or knots.

Dyed clothes are more common among the upper and middle-upper classes of most SLICC countries. However, in many cases it’s not worth the trouble: in the UCAS, for example, you have to undergo a background check, a psych eval, and provide proof of your residence in an area with an annual crime rate of less than 2%. Even after all that, law officers may stop you and demand to see your license to wear dyed clothing—and detain you if your papers are not up to snuff.

      Paint

Paint, like dye, was made a controlled substance under the SLICC. The biggest victims in the commercial sector were building and vehicle decoration. Home and vehicle cosmetics had to be rebuilt from the ground up: wallpaper, solid paint, and many kinds of upholstery were controlled and curtailed over the next century. For a long time, many people were simply unable to get those things; and the ‘beige rooms’ of the mid-2000s are fondly recalled by contemporary decorators.

By the 2080s, most people had adopted alternative solutions. In wealthy homes, interior decoration was dominated by a focus on earthen tones and natural materials—something which was made much easier by IAM flooding the market with gold, furs, and precious stones. Elsewhere, interior coloration relied on polarized film which only reflected specific light bands: this film could be drawn taut over flat surfaces to create the same effect as paint. In poor areas, the same function was filled by simple colored lights.

Today, the epitome of wealth in fashion is the tie-dye: a distinctive color pattern where many bands of color circle and mingle with each other. While this effect can be replicated with film, genuine tie-dye is extremely expensive and tightly-controlled. In almost all cases, it is exclusively reserved for wealthy friends of the government.

[averyscarlet-blog]

Noise’s Story

Prisoned

Warning: Slightly R-18

Theme(s): Tragedy, Revenge, Injustice

Type: Original Story

Featured Original Character(s): Noise, Sound, Ayane, Rei, Percy, Xavier, Ulric

Other Character(s): Zephyr

Inspiration: N/A 

Summary: The backstory of the boy who has chosen to lazily live his days in Avarus. One day, while taking one of his annual naps, he began to recall his past. Something he rarely does or allows himself to do. But after much thought, he allowed himself to relive his past by lulling himself back to sleep. It was about time he learns how to accept his past; how else is he gonna sleep in peace?

When I was a kid, the only sky I've ever known was the giant cage thar surrounded the city. We're all told that it's supposedly meant to protect us from the outside world, to make sure we're not exposed to the toxic air outside, but I knew better, and so did my best friend, Zephyr. We were the only ones that saw past the lies and felt the urge to venture the world beyond our prison. Surprisingly, my dad encouraged me to pursue my dream, and I think I understand why he was so eager to help whenever he can. He was a man trapped in a world of his own, filled with nothing but pleasure, a prison that he can never leave.

After gaining access to the library and learned the origins of my real name, it somehow suits me. I'm the son of a sinner, it makes sense I'd be named after someone like that. He wants me to do something he's too late in doing, breaking free from my prison. That's what I aimed to do, and after much talking, so did Zephyr. We listed various methods on our escape; the first being an underground tunnel. Only miners were allowed so one of us thought of working there then secretly steal one. We failed miserably after trying to pass off as teens. Our second idea was to climb over the wall, which was easy since no one ever guards it. But when we got to the top, we had completely forgotten about the cage and ended up wasting our time by trying to bash out way out.

We ended up getting arrested after making too much noise. After my second trip to the library, I learned of the existence of boats. No one could reach us if we sail away! Then I realized we couldn't build one because; 1) wood no longer exists and 2) the irrigation dam's opening is so small that I'm sure we'd get stuck. Then I found it, the solution that'd get us out. An airplane. We decided to worry about how we'd get through the cage later, this was the best plan we could ever come up with. So the next four years, we spent most of our days building, working tirelessly to gather the necessary materials and use whatever blueprints we could steal for assembling the necessary parts.

The only thing we did during our rest days was either talk about the outside world or sit in silence and relax. To my surprise, Zephyr told me that there were people out there waiting for him. I didn't believe him because that was impossible, we've known each other our whole lives. How could he know if there's any living thing outside if he's been stuck here like me? He would have told me if he knew a way out. Right?

I caugjt him writing several times, but I never asked who they were for. I just figured he was practicing how to write since his family wasn't given the same privaledges as mine. Learning is a blessing, hence why I taught him when I could. That was how our days went, then it happened. My dad got in too deep and ended up sleeping in a tub filled with his own blood. I ended up becoming trapped like him, trapped in my feelings of revenge. Zephyr tried to stop me but it was too late. I joined the Secret Police and used up another four years of my life, but instead of using them to free myself of this city, I wasted it on making sure I remain trapped. Zephyr never spoke to me again, and by the time I did arrest the people that killed my dad, I was too far deep to leave.

Like father, like son.

Then one day, word got out that someone was attempting to flee the city. My co-workers brushed it off as nothing as they knew it was impossible to get out. Even if they did, who knows what awaits outside the walls. All that talk about radiation from the old war and the toxic air still sounded like nonsense to me, but anyone would believe anything they hear as long as they remain living in fear. If that person does attempt to make his escape, I know he'll fail, and his failure will cement the already see rooted fear in everyone's hearts. And I was going to ignore it as well, till I heard the name of who was the fool that publicly declared his departure. He was always an idiot, but I didn't think he was stupid enough to let the whole city know he was making his grand escape.

I don't know what drove me to meet him after so long. I was ust aimlessly patrolling around the farther regions if the city and found myself at our old hang out. It was an abandoned construction site, a passion project dedicated to our beloved dictator's 66th wife till she died of unknown circumstances. When I was about to push aside the oldy moldy door curtain, I heard the familiar sound of a roaring engine from the upper floor. I ran in only to find myself tackled and pinned to the ground by Zephyr.

"Heh... About time you got here!" he cackled.

Struggling, I demanded, "Get off me!"

"Sorry! No can do!"

"Then tell me, why are you leaving the city now!?"

For the first time, the brilliant light I've seen in his pale blue eyes disappeared. He stared down at me with an unfamiliar cold gaze.

"I told you... I have people waiting for me outside," he spoke in a monotone voice. "I thought about it for a long time. I was supposed to join them 8 years ago, but then I met you."

He briefly gets off my back, grabs my shoulders then proceeds to flip me over. I hitch a breath when we finally made direct eye contact. When I first met him, he was a scrawny kid that didn't know when to stop smiling. Before we went out seperate ways, he had grown but still wore that stupid grin. Now, four years later, his smile remained but gave off a different vibe. It felt like he was trying to control his emotions, forcing himself to smile. He sits back on my abdomen before I could sit up, then pins my arms above my head when I tried to reach him. His sudden strength surprised me.

When I tried to fight back, he tightens his grip hard enough to potentially crack my wrist bones.

"All I've ever thought about was taking you to the outside world, but I couldn't because you're not like me." Zephyr bowed his head so his long bangs concealed his eyes. He tried to sound like his usual cheerful self, but it came off as forced as he spoke. "Zephyr's not even my real name... I only picked it because it's cool. That's all I wanted to be for you, but you always beat me to the punch. Even after you dropped our plans, abandoned me so you can join those stiffs..."

A tear drop falls on my cheek. I felt helpless as I watched my best friend began to cry. To my further surprised, he reaches for something on his eyes and removes... A contact lense. The blue that I was so familiar with was replaced with a spine chilling yellow color. It almost appeared as it they were glowing. He lightly punches my chest before I could think of a response.

His voice cracks as he yelled, "I still waited! I thought that once you got your revenge over with, you'd come back so I can take you out of here!"

I gasp when he lets go of my wrists and roughly grabs the jacket of my uniform, lifting me to bring out faces closer.

"But I'm done. I've waited long enough. I'm getting out of here," he said coldly. "You were my only reason for staying in this shit hole. Sound was right, I shouldn't have waited for someone that second guesses themselves."

'Sound...?' I thought.

Before I could as what he meant, Zephyr stands up and movea several steps back. Using the sleeve of his soot covered shirt, he wipes his tears away then stares back at me once more. This time his eyes blazed with determination.

"I'm glad you dropped by though." He bitterly smiles. Zephyr croaks, "Least I know you still thought of me to the end. I just needed to see your face to make sure I'm doing the right thing."

"Wait, Zephyr-"

Desperate for answers and fearing the meaning behind his words, I shot up on my feet and ran towards him. My heart was beating against my ears as the gap between up quickly began to disappear. But just as the tip of my finger was close to touching him, my entire went numb the second he vanished from my line of sight. I could hardly comprehend what just happened. He was there, standing and talking to me. There was no way that was a hallucination, the bruises on my wrists are proof enough that he was real. I don't know what brought me to do it, but my eyes automatically fall to the ground.

For a split second, I thought I saw some sort of ripple effect on the cement floor. I thought of reaching just to check if I was seeing things, but before I could, a small pebble was thrown at the side of my head. I automatically turn in the direction it came from and saw Zephyr, leaning against the doorway to the stairwell with his arms crossed like nothing happened. He turns his head and smirks, a familiar playful glint appearing in his eyes.

"So, what are you gonna do now, Mr. Policeman?"

Anger began to boil. Without an ounce of hesitation, I drew my gun and charged. A cunning smiling crosses his lips as he gravitated away from entryway , practically gliding into the stairwell as he disappeared from my line of sight. Ticked at his continual resistance, I replaced the rounds with one filled with rubber bullets and dashed after him. Punching the door to open it wider, my head snaps up and saw his hand sliding over the hand rail on the third floor. Tightening my grip around the shaft of the handle, I held my pistol up and ran after him. The building was about 15 floors up, so there's a slim chance I'd be able to reach him.

When I checked to see how far he's gotten, I saw that his pace had remained unchanged. Mine, however, was starting to decrease as the previous momentum I had earlier was being weighed down by Earth's gravity. His footsteps began to echo farther the higher we go. My chest was beginning to feel heavy, it felt like I was suffocating as my lungs began to greedily take in as much as air possible. Stopping, I attempted to shoot him while a part of him was within my line of sight. The problem was, when I attempted to aim, sweat was dripping passed my brow and entering my eyes, blurring my already hazy vision. I tried to control my breathing, but after climbing up 10 flights of stairs while wearing thick layers of clothing, I couldn't gain at least a few seconds to recover.

Realizing Zephyr was going to escape at the rate I was going, I discarded some articles of police uniform as I resume running. First I peeled off my white gloves by bitting them off that's prevented me from properly making any physical contact, then I shed off the black trench coat which felt heavy on my shoulders since I put it on. And lastly, yanked off my black tie and threw my hat off. With the weight lifted, I found myself moving at a faster pace, almost reaching the same floor as Zephyr before he abruptly turns and bashes he way through the door of the top floor. I follow after a minute later.

The top floor was just an unfinished area with no walls on all four corners, leaving only a poorly made ceiling and sever unfinished cement columns and beams. On the other side of the room was Zephyr, whose back was turned as he stared at aircraft in front of him. An aerobatic plane.

Stunned to see an actual one in person, I was going to step forward in awe only to do the opposite when Zephyr partially moves to face me.

"Beautiful, isn't it? I made it after the exact sketches you made when we were kids."

"Don't fuck with me! You know the moment you declared your escape attempt to the city you'd became the government's no. 1 on their most wanted list!"

When I raised my gun at him, for a split second, I saw a flicker of surprise in his eyes, which was briefly replaced with sadness then anger.

"So... We really are at the point of no return..." He mumbled, frowning as he closes his eyes and turns away.

Clicking my teeth, I recite the same words since I became an SP, "Zephyr Andrealphus! You are under arrest for conspiracy against the government and the moral it has instilled in the people! I want you to come with me and receive judgement from the aeolipyle gods!" I adjusted my grip and held my pistol with both hands. "If you're lucky, you'll have a chance to receive penance for your crimes."

"And what crimes am I paying for exactly? I just said I was leaving."

"I just told you." I glare at him. "You're under arrest for conspiracy. You know that leaving means death. They reason these rules exist is to prevent any idiot for inspiring others to make the same suicide attempt."

"Aren't you hearing yourself? You know that if these people remain trapped in this giant bird cage, they're as good as dead! You know that supplies are running out, the population is at the point of overflowing. I don't give a damn about these people, but if you think my departure becomes a catalyst of rebellion, then so be it! At least something good will come out of it."

My mouth forms a tight line as I steady my aim. "Back away from the aircraft Zephyr, I'm not repeating myself."

"You mentioned about the people's moral yet you don't realize just how brainwashed you people are," he scoffs, completely ignoring my warnings. "At least I was able to give someone like you a head start."

When he spun around, I barely caught sight of it as the blade of his dagger glistened in the afternoon sun's light. Unable to dodge, all I could do is jerk my head away as it flew past me. In the process, it painfully sliced through a portion of my outer ear. We stare at one another with mirrored shcoked looks before I drop my arm and clutch my ear. Shutting my eyes, I howl in pain as a sharp throbbing sensation radiates on around my ear. I felt some blood slip between my fingers, but I refuse to pull it away to check how much blood I'm losing. I've been inflicted with several forms of pain, but it's not a sensation you can every get used to.

"Shit! I didn't mean- You weren't supposed to-"

I no longer wanted to listen to his excuses. Filled with rage, I threw my arm up and began to fire. I'm not going to act like a civil police anymore, Zephyr lost the chance to end things peacefully when he took the initiative in attack. I fired several without an ounce of hesitation. Most of them ricocheted off the metal surface of the plane, but Zephyr remained unnerved even after one hits him on the shoulder. Seeing him reach for something from behind, I dove behind the closest column and waited for his next move.

I stuck my gun out and blindly shot several times. Pulling back, I waited until I heard the sound of clanging metal. Confused, I was about to take a peak until a dagger comes flying across my field of vision. It both knocked out the pistol from my hand and cut off some locks of my black hair. When I attempted to reach for it, another dagger curves and knocks it away.

"Sorry!" I could barely hear his voice as it was masked by the aircraft's roar engine. "But this is the last time you're gonna see Zephyr!" I got up to my feet and move around before a blast of wind strikes my body, forcing me to lift my arm to shield my face. From what I could make out, his wild red-orange hair danced with the wind as, behind his oversized goggles, his eyes purely focused on the sky ahead. "If by some miracle I do return, you'll have to call me Noise!"

Recalling my spare pistol, I took it out from my back pocket and aimed. At the last second, I realized that live rounds were still inside, but it was too late, my finger had already pulled the trigger. To my relief, his plane jolted back, causing it to miss. But it did hit something else, the engine. I didn't even have the chance to even call out his name as it was already running across the room. I helplessly reach out my arm as it began to lift off, moving completely out of my reach. Running towards the edge, I watch as it drops downwards then, by some miracle, began to raise itself above the city.

For a moment, I had almost forgotten about the bullet hole I made on the engine. I was in a daze. I wasn't upset anymore, I only felt a surge of pride as I watch the plane fly above the city. It was only when I saw a trail of smoke I began to panic.

"ZEPHYR!"

The plane slams against the walls of the cage and successfully bursts its way out. However, combined with the sudden brute trauma to the body and the possible damage I inflicted internally, I could only pray it for another miracle for him to make it.

But he didn't.

To my horror, and for whoever was watching from below, it exploded a minute after leaving a hole in the cage. I drop to my knees and watched as various parts of it began to fall. When I caught sight of his goggles, I dropped my gun, went on all fours and wailed in agony. I don't recall how long I had been there. The world simply disappeared, and so did my body. All I felt was remorse and shame. If it were raining today, I'm certain my tears would blend in.

From what I could recall, I was found by my subordinates, who escorted me out of the building and back to HQ. Everything was a blur, and by the time I could comprehend my surroundings, I was told by my superior I was given a temporary discharge from my duties for a week. Instead of receiving condolences, I was praised for my heroic actions, I had proven to the public why they should never attempt the same mistake as Zephyr. I wanted to shout, scream at them to take back the things they were saying about him. Then I realized something. Around a few hours ago, I viewed him the same way, a thoughtless idiot that was willing to risk his life to achieve his false form of freedom. I'm no better than them. I didn't approach him as his friend; I approached him as a cold hearted officer.

For the next few days, I drowned myself in sex, drugs, and any concocted alcoholic beverage I could get my hands on.

I wasted away just like my dad. At that point in my life, I don't even know if my dad would be proud or disappointed in me. Even after I was free to return to work, it was obvious even to them that I wasn't ready. I don't think I'll ever be. On the day I was sober, I climbed up the wall and visited the portion of the cage that still had a hole in it. No one has bothered fixing it up. The engineers feared that they lack the 'resources' and re-breathers to fix it up. I think that was just their excuse to remain as far from the cage as possible.

We were told radiation is still present on the outside, and the air is toxic because of that. The cage simply filters the air so we can breath. But standing in front of it, staring at the outside world for the first time, I knew that it was false. The only reason I'm even allowed out here is because of my badge, and that told me many things. The people I work with knew, if not, why else would an officer such as myself be given a pass at getting a closer look at the cage. Especially one, such as myself, without a re-breather.

"This world... The people that resides in it... Is just filled with lies..."

In contrast to the dull greyness which covers the city; the world outside was colorful and vibrant. I've heard of green grass, but I never knew they could come in a different color. Orange. Just starting at it reminded me of him, the one that deserved to see this. I'm not even sure how much of the outside world he saw before he died.

"You sure you should be wasting you life away life this?" A hallucination of my kid self appeared next to me. He gazes up at me curiously. "He risked everything to get to this point. He wanted you to live a free life."

"I doubt it..." I scoffed. "You heard the way he was talking. He hates us. He waited for someone willing to trapped themselves in their own feelings of revenge. He should have left. If he was more than capable before he met me, he should have done so. He'd be alive and outside, not dead and in ashes."

"Zephyr didn't want to leave without you," my younger self argued. "He said so himself! The only reason he decided to leave was because of what you said!"

Ticked off, I growled, "I only said that because it was true. I needed to do get my revenge, he was just going to get hurt if he hanged around me. He was free to do whatever the hell he wanted."

"You never told him he was a nuisance," my kid self pointed out with a sly grin.

"Yeah, I... Never did," I slowly said as the realization dawned on me.

"He always knew, that Zephyr, that you never meant to hurt him. He's used to your blunt honesty, but it's the way you said it that inflicted some pain. Though, he never hated you. He knew, just like your time with building the plane, you'll put all your effort in arresting and killing Dad's killers. You always dedicated your time and effort on one thing at a time."

"But... That was two years ago,. Why didn't he-"

Then it hit me.

"He wanted me to focus on something else," I said as the realization dawned on me. "He wanted me to put an effort into living. He just had to give me a head start."

I look to my side and found the hallucination had disappeared.

Rather, in its place were his goggles. Hesitant at first, I crouch and slowly reached for them. Tentatively picking it up, I lift it and stared straight at my reflection, or more specifically, my eyes. It's the first I've bother looking at myself on any reflective surface in a long time. Dark bags were under my eyes, my face deathly pale due to the lack of proper sunlight. My cheeks bones were even starting to show from not eating anything properly. My once saturated orange-red eyes now appeared red, almost void of emotion. For a split second, I thought I saw a reflection of Zephyr in my place, staring back at me with the same sad eyes.

"I'll live my life... That's the only effort I'll ever put into," I declare as I stood up, tightly clutching onto the goggles. "I'm never going to try too hard in doing anything ever again. Every time I do, someone suffers for it." I turn to completely face the opening.

"First my dad, who I could have protected if I hadn't put all my time and effort in making that plane. Then you, Zephyr, who I should have left with rather than putting an effort in finding my dad's killers as a policeman. Never again. The only thing I'll do is live, even if that means I have to be a lazy ass. I'll do whatever it takes to live on."

My life in this city no longer matters. If I want to live, I have to get out of here. That's what Zephyr wanted, and I'll do it. Taking several steps back, I glance over at the city one last time before shifting my attention to the world outside. With a deep breath through my nostrils, I huffed a breath as I made a dash for it. If I'm to die, then so be it. He died on the outside, so why not me?

I nearly tripped at the start due to my lack of leg training in a while, but I was able to gain and maintain the momentum. Once the ledge was near, I lift myself off the ground and made my leap of faith out of the cage. I was immediately blinded by the sun's light, so when my eyes readjusted, I found the grass quickly approaching me. Panicking, I raise my arms to protect my face and curled my legs to curl myself into a ball. The collision was painful upon impact, but the grassed see enough to act as a cushion. Gravity continued to pull my body as I found myself rolling away from my initial landing point. When I finally stopped rolling, I was on my back, my limbs sprawled on the ground and aching.

"Ow...." was all I could utter.

That was a definite leap of faith. A painful one, but luckily I survived that. Just as I was about to sit up, I heard some crunching sounds. Footsteps?

I recalled Zephyr's words, "I told you..." I tilt my head and found myself staring at a small group of people, teens not much older than I. "I have people waiting for me on the outside."

In the back was a girl with medium tanned skin and dark drown hair tied in a hight pony tail, wearing only a short t-shirt, Jean pants and leather boots. Beside her was a boy much taller than me, with pale skin and pale blue hair (also tied in a ponytail). He wore some sort of uniform, much lighter than my former police attire. Around his hips was a broadsword belt with a sword hanging from his hips.

Not too far in front of them was little boy. His hair, just as surprising as sword boy, was white but with some purple streaks. Most of his attire consists of purple and appeared a bit outlandish and, slightly, gothic. A little inappropriate for someone his age. On his arm was an arm warmer, covering most it. Wrapped around his arm was a long, silver chain. The next was some sort of dog. A really big dog, one that needs a hair cut. Standing next to it was a girl with... Animal ears and a tail?

I had to shake my head several times to comprehend what I was seeing. Concerned, she leans forwards with one hand on her knees and the other holding back her long dark brown hair. I could only confirm it was real when one tilt to the side, further expressing her emotions. They all, aside from the dog, had one thing in common. Yellow eyes.

'Are these the people Zephyr was talking about...?' I wondered as I stare at them.

I only tore my eyes away from them when a figure approaches and stands in front of me, providing me some shade from the sun. It was another boy, but unlike the others, I was unable to see his face as he wore a strange looking fox mask. Although I couldn't see his eyes, I could tell he was staring down at me. He wore a black short sleeved hoodie, a grey shirt with a weird red print on the chest, cargo pants, and combat boots. He just stares at me. This causes me to uncomfortably shift. As if realizing I sensed his eyes, he steps forward and extends a hand.

I refuse to take it and continued to apprehensively glare at him.

"Are you the new Noise?" the fox girl spoke up.

"If by some miracle I do return, you'll have to call me Noise!"

"We were told to meet him here. He didn't tell us what he looks like, but he said look for a part of him that almost blends well with the field."

I let out a small gasp. His hair. That's what he was referring to. So he was telling the truth, he isn't like me. That explains that thing he did when I ran towards him.

"So... Are you?" The fox girl tilts her head.

The only part of me that has a similar color to the grass are my eyes. I hesitated, but before I could answer, the boy with the fox mask mask something out from his bag and takes out a notebook and a pen. After writing a bit, he croached a free feet my head and held his notebook over my face.

'Do you want to see the world he wanted to show you?'

I held my breath. Did he know? Did he know that he's dead and that I'm not him? I never answered the his question, but a part of me wanted to say 'yes'. Noting my stunned silence, he turns the notebook back to him, turns the page and writes something else. When finished, he holds it up again

'Forget your old life and join me. I'll show you the things he wanted you to see.'

For second, I felt a strange feeling burning in my chest. It wasn't painful. It felt pleasant. Without thinking, I reached out to him. Somehow, I knew he was smiling behind his mask as he gently takes my hand and helps pull me to my feet. Because I used so much energy early, my legs gave out after taking my first step. The masked boy catches me in a heartbeat.

"Hehehe! Geez Sound, you're acting oddly charming today," the fox girl giggles.

My eyes widen at the familiar name.

"Sound...?" I weakly utter.

The little boy cocks a brow and questions, "Your pen pal, remember? He's been keeping an eye on you for years. Don't tell me this fox freak forgot to mention how he looks."

"No, I..." I trail off, unable to think of a proper excuse.

The boy with the blue hair interjects, "Xavier, enough. I'm certain he's tired after working tirelessly in making his escape. He's certainly not worse for wear."

The boy, Xavier, frowns and glares to the side, muttering what I can assume was an apology. Sound, while making sure I kept leaning against his body for support, writes in his notebook then holds it to the others. I can only guess he's mute since he hasn't said a word since we met. But why the mask? Rather than looking into it too much, I just gave up trying to understand him altogether. It already feels like I'm in a circus just being with them.

The others nod and enter what I think is a portal. I've only read them in fantasy stories, but I never thought I'd see one in reality. Especially one that appears like a door despite its crystal-like appearance. Slipping his arm down so his hand held mine, he backs away to provide me some space. I almost fell over, but the firm grip of his hand was enough to act as my support. I suddenly felt conscious of my appearance and turn my heard away, feeling a slight warmth in my cheeks. Tugging my hand, I felt myself being escorted by him as the others wait for us.

"So, what are your names?" I ask as we began to make our leave.

"My name's Ayane!" the fox girl chirps. "The kid is Xavier, the overly tanned girl is Rei, the girly boy is Perseus, the wolf here is Ulric, and the boy holding your hand is my twin, Sound!"

"I'm not overly tanned!"

"Ayane, if you address me in such a manner again, I will not hesitate but to deliver you a Knight's dishonorable form of execution." He looks my way and promptly adds, "You may call me 'Percy'. My real name tends to tie people's tongues if mentioned in conversation too often."

"You know that's not necessarily calming him down..." I jumped back when I heard the dog talk. How and WHY can it talk?

Sound secretly hands a note to me. I take it and it read:

'When we get to Avarus, you're allowed to change your appearance as much as you please. We can't exactly change your face without deforming it. It's just a suggestion you but... what would you like?'

I thought about it for a moment then touched my hair.

"It's nothing major but..."

(A/N: if anyone knows the name of the original artist for this, please tell me so I can credit them! Or at least remove in case I learn they do not want their art republished!)