- Location
- Earth U.S.
scientistry? Is that even a word
Rations
blinked
cards
thought it was Final Fantasy 8
Lots of people?
Broken Adventure
- Thread starter theaceoffire
- Start date
- Crossover
- Status
- Location
- Here
Dear goodness you can tell how out of it I was!
I tried to fix each of those problems, but basically she was in final fantasy 7 last jump and is about to head into final Fantasy 8.
Sigh, thank you for the help. I'm sure I missed even more stuff...
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Hidden One
Not the Boss, possibly a Playa
- Location
- Sol;Terra;EU;D;NRW
Neat, but too bad that KP got the shaft but I guess paying to be a specific age isnt as fun with so little points.. might have been worth it to skip taking classes tho.
So instead of timey whimey fisty cuffy we get... timey whimey sparkly magicy!
Who would have guessed? Sarah may end up not too happy with Adam once she finds out the details of her sister/rival/other sorceress life.
So instead of timey whimey fisty cuffy we get... timey whimey sparkly magicy!
Who would have guessed? Sarah may end up not too happy with Adam once she finds out the details of her sister/rival/other sorceress life.
- Location
- Planet Earth
You have the Scientist Ability down 3 times. sooo... typo?
It is 3 different sciences.
I mean, you're not wrong there... That's all I can remember too! This was the era where edgelords were the coolest shit ever, though. At least by JRPG standards... They kinda still are actually, weird.
Hidden One
Not the Boss, possibly a Playa
- Location
- Sol;Terra;EU;D;NRW
The main problem besides the memory loss from using "magic" and guardian forces is actually the system in charge of FF8.
It was one of the more annoying ones, since it actually punishes grinding by making all enemies scale up in power to the protagonists level.
At the minimum that means more HP and stats. Now imagine a boss having ALL the skills for the skilltree with max numbers of uses and so on...
It was one of the more annoying ones, since it actually punishes grinding by making all enemies scale up in power to the protagonists level.
At the minimum that means more HP and stats. Now imagine a boss having ALL the skills for the skilltree with max numbers of uses and so on...
- Location
- Earth, Sol System, Virgo Supercluster, Earth-1218
This is going to turn out to be a stealth Yu-Gi-Oh crossover and everyone fights using Children's Card Games.
All of Sarah's massive powerups will be useless when she has a deck full of trash monsters and crappy spells.
Arc 3: It'̢s̷ mo͏re̷ l͞ik̡ȩ a̕ ͢b́i̸g b҉all ̸o͏f w̨i̸b̶blỳ-̀w͡obblý, ͞time̷y-wi̡mey ̷stu͞f̧f̸.̴
- Location
- Here
Something had gone w͇̟̥̰̬̲̲̮̫͈̪̙̺̰͆̂ͬ́͐͋̓͒͆ṙ̻̙͎͖̳̙̍͋ͯ͑ͬ͌̔̎ͦͤ̾o̗̯̲̩͕̦͇̲̙͓̲̪̦͂ͬ̓͊́ͤ̔͒ͬ̆̓̑͗͗̍̚ͅͅn̪̩̟̘͙̲̹̱̥̜̼̳̖̳̠̐̐̽ͫͯ̓͒̒̑g͚͎̣͔̊ͤ̈́̎ͥ̆͌̓̉ͨ̆ͨ̾͒́̑̐!
Adam tried to stay calm. <<Sarah?>>
It wasn't working. <<Sweetie? Skele-baby? You there?>>
She was physically on the moon, as expected. Her body read as healthy, already enhanced to be conceptually related to S̷̴̵̡͞p̵̀͟͠a̷͡c̀͜e҉̨͡͡ and the 'best she could be' thanks to her Bad Ass perk. Her mind had no foreign magic, psionics, memories, spirits, concepts, poisons, organs, creatures…
But there was something n̞ͦͤ͌͆ͅö͕͎̭̖͚̫̓̎̈́̃̈́t͉̬̫̱̰ͩ̏ͤ̇ͥͨ́ ͇̖̦͉̮̌ͣ͋r̠͉̬̲̽̈́̈ͪ͆ͬ̀̓i̼̫̖̥͉͖̥ͩͨͭ̈̀̓ͬͥͨg͚̞̠͔̜̉ͩ̿͂̎͊ͨͮh͓̩͉̺̩͙̦͛t̹̥͂̃ͩ͑̓̒ͨ̽ going on here. <<Sarah, you… You need to talk to me here.>>
Fuck, if she didn't respond after the last of these more esoteric scanners finished he was going to scrap this Avatar entirely and try and respawn an earlier model for Sarah to run on. They could always find out what was going wrong later, this needed fixing NOW!
At least the w̙̟̖̉ͯͥ̈́r͂̉ͨo̼̰̭̫̥͕͑̆ͩ̃ͭn̺̯̩̩͓̲̱̾͛ͪ͋g̲̰̹͑̇ͬͨ͑̊̚n̮͉͕͔͚͋e̘͉͍s̲̙͔̳̫̏̑̆s͚̣̰͚̅̔͐ͩ͒͐ seemed to be getting better? Or was that a bad sign?
And Sarah suddenly jerked! <<Sarah!? You alright?>>
<Şhhh҉!̸ ̀Nò ta̵lki̢e,̛ ̧Boss͏ ͘man̷.͝ ̢I ̴ǵot̛ ͡thę Ẃ̴̹͖̥̮̜͍̪̗͘Ǫ̲̤͍̰͓̜̞̩̝̮̜͞Ŕ̷͢҉͓̼̩̖̪̦͇̪̝̙̻̮͢S̵̭̥̫͙̫̲̫̙̻̗͇͝ͅͅT̵̞̮̦̖͍͍̺̟̮̰̼̼̯̕͟͜͠ ̢hea̕dach͡e.̴>
He JERKED back! Shit! <<You… You alright?>>
<Şhh̛h. Hưsh̶. I got to finish arriving right now. And please hǫļd̕ ́on̵t͢ò th҉ęs̢e̡ two ҉un͡t̡il͜ ͡ẁe r͜e͟tu̸r͡n̸ to͏ ̀thi͡s J̸um̢p ͢later. {S͇ḁ̤r̰̼̭a͈̬̩̼̭̤h̲̹̘͙ͅ_̪̝̖̪̲̫c͚o͇̰̫̟nt͉e̲̤͚̺x̫̝̯t.encrypted} {Sh̺͙͚̙͇̱i̱͖̦̖͕̮̟v̭a̲̦̠̯̪͕̠_͚͉͕̬c͇o̤̝n̯te̼̰̦̰̰x͚̘̙͙̥̠t͉̺͙̠̹.encrypted}>
Oh. Oh shit. <<Time travel shit?>>
A very odd laugh. <Oh ҉ye͞ah͜.҉ ͡Tr͝y̛ and l̡o͢ok ̢òveŗ t́he͡ tempora͠l̛ ҉d͠ef̵en͢s̶e̶ u̷nits wh̸i͜le ̵her͜e͠,̢ i͠t r̨ea͏ct̨ş ̧V̕ER͢Y̧ o̷ddly͟ ͝when ̸f͠igh́ting͏ a̴ ͢S҉o͜rce͏r̕es̶s ͘w͢ho is͠ compr͏ess̵ing ̨aĺl̀ ̸of tim̨e̛ ̧i̛n̵to a sin͝g͠le p̀oi̛nt to ̸try ̷and ̛bec̡om̴e ̵som̧e͝thing͘ b̧e̸yond̶ ascén̕d̨èd̨.>
Fucking time travel. <<We're the reason the Jump Document is so heavily weighted towards picking Sorceress, aren't we?>>
A much warmer laugh. <S̪͚p̼oi̠̘̬̪͉̥l̜͈̞e̩̝̳͔ͅr̜̜̗̝̯̗ṣ̯̥͈̲̘!̜̮ͅ>
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Nowhere and nowhen, something doesn't happen a lot at one place. But at last, Ultimecia was finished. Or at least, destabilized.
Irvine was bloody and weary. "Is it over? Let's go! Let's go back to our time!"
Selphie just kept dragging him somewhere. "Shut up! Just calm down and think where we have to go."
Zell, the goof, was at least keeping watch. "Careful guys! Don't pick the wrong time!"
Quistis was always so practical for a teacher. "And whatever you do, don't fall into a time warp! Stay together!"
And poor Rinoa... "Time...place...who I wanna be with... I wanna go there! Where Squall and I promised. Squall!"
Well, at least this loop things would get better. She listened to her call. "Squall! Let's go home! Where are you!?"
Sarah chuckled. "H͜ear th̴a͝t̵, ͝lo̕ver bo̕y?̷ ̛You̶r͝ ͘spe̸ci͜a̴l ̛o̸ne ͡is͠ ̴c̴al̷li͡n͞g."
He ignored his own stab wound. "But… You're so hurt! Come with us, we can get you fixed, I'm sure!"
Heh. Injuries like this meant little, and it just made the next steps easier. "Tell the͘ ҉o͢t͡h͢e̢r̵s I'll͞ be͝ ̧a҉ròu͏nd.͡ ͡I'̡m ̧ju͡s̕t ̕going t̀ò tak͡e͡ ̢the̵ l͟o̶ng͠ w̡a͡y̶.҉"
Squall blinked. "What?"
Sarah grinned.
And Yeeted him off towards his loved ones. "See yơu ̵a͝ll ̢s̀oo͠n̷!"
His dopplering scream was hilarious! Even with the time bullshit, it was a near cartoonish 'AAAAaaaah!' Perfect!
Now, where would she used to be eventually? Oh right, that goddamn moon.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Sarah was very c͚̩̘̠̺͙̺̈́͆̓̂ö͖͔̪́͛ͪ̈̚ņ̗̣̖̥̱̠͆͒f̙̪̲̖u̜͙̫̗ͥͅs̓ḛ̦̫̘̮͔̎̅͂́̔d̨̻͈͙͓̰͇̥̾̂̂̾.̷͔͖̟ͭ͋̚
And she was finding this hilarious.
She lay back on her bone throne. "What the hell?"
Also, apparently, she had a bone throne. Not just a throne designed to look like it was made of bones, she could sense the proto-magic inside each of the tiny fragments and portions of powerful beasts used to mold this entire castle.
Also also, apparently she had a castle. On the moon.
A moon castle, if you will.
The fuck. "Adam?"
He sighed. <<Just… Just read the note you left yourself and don't tell me anything. Don't make any guesses. Don't try and be clever. We will just… ignore this mess.>>
That uh. That didn't sound good. Right, a note? Oh, here, on her spine supported monster skull side table. Sheesh, at least someone properly preserved these things and coated them in silver.
This could have been SO unhygienic.
Thankfully, it wasn't TOO long. "Let's see… 'Dear me! Time travel sucks and we hate it.'"
...Huh.
Glancing at the massive greeting chamber of her bone castle, she felt somehow she could agree with that. Right, the note. "Uh… 'To keep things simple I spent the last five years practicing our skills, killing monsters that would NOT leave me alone, and sending all our future junk and equipment into storage. And built the moon city, because it is fucking boring up here. Oh! And due to time travel bullshit, you don't have to do what I did to keep them existing...'"
Damn! Her head! Fuck time travel. "...Alright. Fine, whatever. Moving on! 'And you will get our memories added to the collective when you eventually come back to this Jump someday. Plus, SHE doesn't have any problems like this because Adam FIXED her temporal defense units because of the crap happening THIS time. Don't help him, he deserves to do it the hard way because he got distracted trying to make a Tonic designed to…'"
Sarah stared at it. "Adam?"
He seemed grumpy. <<I'm working on it! I could have SWORN I had gone over ALL the defensive units a long time ago! Especially the important ones like this, I don't know how the hell I missed issues like these ones. Stupid pre/after Jump collision temporal memory duplication issues.>>
She just looked at the paper. "Adam, did you try to make a Tonic to turn people and creatures into Muppets?"
The connection went silent. <<Uh. Nooooo?>>
...Uh huh. "Adam."
His flustered emotions flooded the line. <<I love the Muppet Christmas Carol, alright!? And it didn't work out anyway, I needed to scan examples from a related Jump because making living things using cloth and stuff made some really freaky looking gem lobsters when I tested it. And some exploded into stuffing and fluff, which certainly didn't seem right.>>
God damn it, Adam. "Get back to work fixing my defenses. Please."
Right, so… Priorities.
"[[Summon: Shiva.]]"
A spire of ice thrust from the ground! "By your power and mine, I am a hot ice elf goddess!"
And she did a pose.
Daww! "Shiva, you are like… The best summon ever."
She grinned! "You know it baby!"
And paused.
Awkward silence.
Shiva looked at her limbs. "Why do I look like an even slutier, mostly nude mermaid?"
Oh, right. "Well, the last Jump was really messed up so it was too risky to leave a you behind and THIS Jump had some options to enhance you a lot and…"
Shiva and Sarah blinked as an unnoticed pamphlet knocked loose by the ice woman's summoning fluttered down between them.
The goddess picked it up. "'Guardian GF's and you: Why Ifrit is an asshole and how to handle being a hot mermaid with a sexually pent up owner.' Huh."
This was the other her's fault, wasn't it?
"Oh! There are diagrams! And a list of our favorite 'safe words'!"
God DAMN IT, time travel!
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Hours later, and in a VERY comfortable bedroom, Sarah admitted that maybe time travel wasn't inherently awful. That the pamphlet had some love notes from both her future self AND a few dozen Elizabeths had also changed her mind. Though the sex suggestions had been a bit much.
Seriously, her girlfriend army was in another freaking Jump entirely and she STILL got her all flustered! Best relationship ever!
Oh, and she should probably do something about the local magical defenses empowered by overly powerful monster corpses that were automatically harvesting more resources through a modified GF ability called [[Devour]]...
But that seemed like a future self problem, not a good enough reason to get out of bed and stop snuggling her sexy aquatic ice mermaid version of her other personality.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam had 'Research' go over the changes. Again.
So, as he had been told, he had missed something small but important.
Before now, none of the defenses cared about issues or benefits or whatever that came from FUTURE or PAST Sarahs. Also, some of his 'improvements' that should have thrown out errors and warnings and stuff were accidentally so much more powerful and adaptable than expected… Well. When they got a massive amount of raw data and impossible timelines, they just shrugged and decided 'Meh, we can handle it!' and just… Sigh.
Adam added a new 'Research' topic, one only designed to construct a high level overview of existing units and attempt to detect function duplication, gaps in defenses, gaps in gathering ability, and so on and so forth.
Some were known, of course. Hard not to, when the Warehouse had massive contextual 'scars' that prevented choice point collection or companions. But those were basically in 'casts' sort of, even if they couldn't be replaced or cut away. Not in any way Adam knew, at least. Not yet.
It was sort of like that mutilated magic police officer, Mad Eye Moody, from that Harry Potter series. It was a setting where magic could regrow flesh and bones and mess with teeth and stuff so easily but malicious magic got everything effed up when you tried to fix it.
Though Adam wasn't sure if that scar covered man had ever tried slicing off body parts at healthy sections and trying to regrow the mess from scratch… Or if the magicals would even accept such an idea, since using surgery or any other non-magical solution was very much a horrifying concept to their culture.
Whatever, the point was this new routine should prevent something like this from happening again. Hopefully. Until the next time they ran face first into a similar issue.
Sigh.
Adam checked that the REST of the Jump insertion went well.
The new mana generator and converter units worked well, and were building up reservoirs of the blue 'fluid'. Next to the golden CEE and the green mako, this blue mana really made her energy storage layer look all pretty and stuff.
And uh. The mako and mana seemed to be… Enhancing each other? Resonating certainly. Oh… Now the CEE was reacting too. Somehow the potential magic and origin magic was influencing the psionic liquid?
...It was probably fine.
The FF8 ability layer also had some very developed mind units hooked up to Sarah's new abilities thanks to cheaty updates from the recent merge. So much for 'lots of practice', his Jumper already cheated like a fiend when it came to training thanks to every skill having a mind unit testing stuff and remembering optimized configurations and modified variations.
The new memory units and current 'mind' also got around the main 'Remember only 5 years' Drawback by storing locally the last four years of data and creating 'unrelated memory logs' of the year about to undergo degradation.
So now Sarah remembered the last five years of her Jump adventure AND five years of hard core training and building a moon capital city. Not to mention creating the new para-magic rune system that can automatically apply a pseudo-GF skill on selected targets.
Because of COURSE Sarah would research how the false magic system works here and build a new branch of magical science to get out of daily 'kill the army of monster' chores.
Speaking of how magic worked here, it was a bit unusual.
Para-magic was basically a system of using fragments of fragments of that one creator being, Great Hyne, who fled long ago.
When that thing was attacked and driven off by the powerful monsters, local creatures and species HERE, its fragments and wounded energies saturated the lands and nearby planets and laws and reality concepts and so on and so forth.
Anyway, this fragmented energy naturally gathered in certain places and people, like the Sorceresses. Eventually, the collected pools of energy were researched heavily by the local smarty pants, Dr. Odine, who thankfully WASN'T The cause of all problems this time!
Not a moral guy mind you, much more a mad science dude really… But he was still better than that ass Hojo at least. And wasn't torturing a god like being for no good reason and injecting her fractured mind into the planet while busy making mutant clone babies and… God damn it, Hojo.
Back on point, Dr. Odine found that these energy pools had an aura or field that could be gathered. Collected, concentrated, and studied!
Some forms of this [[Drawn]] para-magic was so potent it could even regenerate and become stable with some minor effort. Able to form a sort of echo of the more powerful beings out there, near-psionic creations called Guardian Forces.
Other energies were barely strong enough to change the local area. Calling fire or lightning or whatever.
However, thanks to Dr. Odine's research? Humanity developed the Junctioning system, using Guardian Forces to let humans [[Draw]] radiated aura from monsters and places and powerful foes, convert it into usable or equipable para-magic, and cast it in battle or directly enhance their own bodies beyond the limits of training or science!
True, there were issues. Some GF's could only enhance some aspects of their wielder, or granted limited special abilities that others could not. And the mental connection caused issues with memory retention and sometimes other more significant concerns…
But overall it brought magic to the world, to a degree.
Mostly.
Para-magic still needed to be gathered, and only a limited amount could be stored per Junctioning System. Plus, if you used some of the magic that was stored away enhancing yourself then that enhancement would obviously get weaker as you used up the stuff empowering it… But it was still world changing.
For most people, it was beyond imagination! Organizations and groups would even build in combat areas where monster populations would be encouraged, so that soldiers and mercenaries and SeeDs could easily find the right auras to get useful magic like healing or status recovery or basic combat power.
Hell, some areas of the world were protected to ensure the creatures got stronger! Conservation was sort of connected to ranching, as more powerful auras granted stronger para-magic for better fighters.
Sarah on the other hand had a slowly generating source of the good stuff!
The raw energies that generated the aura fields that the Junctioned GF's could [[Draw]] from! So, technically, Adam just needed her to find examples of each aura out there. Places and monsters and foes who had the right energy fields for examples would let Sarah duplicate that pattern and apply some of her mana to it, and BAM!
Infinite para-magic of that type.
Eventually.
For now, Adam was ripping appart the Junctioning system equipment Sarah had on hand (damn time travel) to see if 'Research' could help modify the stupid thing.
Thankfully the Drawback enforcing Shiva's Junctioning to Sarah was on a deeper level, considering Shiva was part of the Warehouse and Sarah's Avatar directly already… So there were no problems getting rid of this junk and making something better.
He would probably integrate it directly into her ECHO system too, because it was a good enough foundation to work with and was more integrated into the Warehouse systems already.
Right, let's see what we are dealing with here!
[[Harvest.]]
Hmm. Built in settings to allow the 16 currently studied Guardian Forces to be 'Junctioned' to a person. But there was notes in the code of at least four more unsuccessful attempts at defining OTHER GFs, ones that didn't quite work right... Must be a work in progress.
Anyway, the GF would act as a magical bridge, connecting the user to the GF via mind and magic (Which is where the memory issue came in) and then using the framework of the GF itself to try and empower the concepts of the host further.
Basically, you sort of merged magically with your GF to a degree. The more they are summoned, as you two work together, the more 'compatibility' builds… Which means your GF would do more damage, be called forth at a faster speed, and some subtle boosts to your own body get increased as well.
Fighting with a connection to a GF and a focus can unlock various skills and abilities in the process, at the cost of a deeper connection and a greater risk of mental degradation depending on how many you Junction and how high you push your compatibility.
It explained the whole {Actualization: -600cp, Sorceress -300cp} option, as it was basically just making a Guardian Force now that Adam knew more about the process. A magical framework, using the personality and memories of a host or long lost echo of communal beliefs, memories, or connections to otherworldly entities… And one you could combine with, become more compatible with, albeit with a hell of a drawback cost.
It was a bit ironic the Junction system was a mechanical way to gather magic, reinforce it enough to turn yourself into a pseudo-Avatar for the new framework, and use less cohesive 'magic' to support and enhance the GF's gifted benefits.
Considering Sarah was nearly doing it backwards. Or all at once? It felt complicated.
SHE was the Avatar, and the magical framework, and the GF, and the source of power, and the creator of the auras used to shape that power, and... Uh.
Right, think about that never.
So! Let's modify this junk!
First, the material. This unit, as it will be installed here in the Warehouse directly for Sarah's Avatar to work with, will be formed entirely out of copper with uncertainty patterned networks filled with (Soon to be) solidified mako.
No reason NOT to use raw potential enhanced magical metal to make this bitch!
Next, the original Junctioning system could only recognize 32 types of para-magic, or aura shaped magic charges. And it could only safely store 100 units of each type. Even though the base level of [[Fire]], [[Fira]], and [[Firaga]] were drastically different as they increased in power level, it was easier to just limit EVERYTHING at 100 max instead of risking the more powerful stuff overwhelming the user when equipped to enhance a personal stat.
Not an issue with Sarah though.
So, go ahead and copy and paste the existing 32 aura patterns for easy future use and to let Sarah [[Draw]] units of those patterns like everyone else. And whip up a more robust 'discover new aura' ability for unknown patterns.
A basic version of para-magic discovery was already in this mess, as well as a GF detection sensing filter that would mark foes or creatures or monsters with known patterns for duplication.
But Sarah shouldn't have to put up with tiny [[Draw]] list options that were filled with '???' all the time. Or random names with no explanations when a GF is detected.
So instead, a detection module over here and some data feeds for 'Research' to hook into. MUCH better!
After all, the monster or foe might have dozens of magic patterns, but only three or four strong enough for this mass produced Junction system to detect. The default choice seemed to be to ignore stuff below this threshold over here. Which made sense for normal people.
Because the amount of units one could [{Draw]] from a foe could vary based on how high the user's GF compatibility with that Aura was (Their 'Magic' stat, basically), the level of power difference between the two fighters involved, and how resistant the target was from magic attacks in the first place.
Fighting something powerful? They could resist you draining their ambient aura, drastically slowing the [[Draw]] process to lots of failures and only 1 or 2 units per attempt.
Is the pattern super complex? Hell, if it is a GF that the system doesn't recognize it won't even try! And for the more powerful magic like [[Ultima]], getting a couple per [[Draw]] was pretty damn impressive.
Not an issue for Sarah.
She just needs the pattern, not the energy supporting the pattern as well… Adam's Jumper could easily enough use [[Scan]] on a foe and then let her mana start building up her own personal stockpile to work with.
Why even bother getting rid of the hard coded 9 unit [[Draw]] cap when Sarah can just have [[Scan]] get the job done and go take a nap or something? Much better, although she will have to find a creature for Adam to examine first since only [[Draw]] was hard coded into this stupid device by default.
Sure, it was for a good reason. Those limits ensured no one accidentally got locked into a [[Draw]] loop and suddenly exploded or something. Or started drawing in magic that was actively equipped to their Strength or something and hit a number of units way above 100 that caused muscle explosion or whatever.
But Sarah had different requirements from other users anyway.
Shift the design a little, assign some mind units to actively determine what para-magic storage limits she can easily handle, ensure those mind units are networked into a hive mind so they don't accidentally mess up the math when one form of para-magic is stronger than expected… Good.
Adam reviewed the new design.
Glowing blue with green tinted copper holding it together, the new unit had several components. This section would add storage units, one for each detected and [[Scanned]] magical aura found in the world.
As Sarah grew stronger, she would go from being able to hold 214 units of [[Fire]] to something silly like 532,000 or something. Maybe more? Sure it wasn't a nice round set of 100's, but on the other hand this redesigned system would ensure less mental damage to the user by limiting each para-magic unit storage capacity to an optimum level.
If a more normal person used it, sure you might not be able to carry about 100 [[Water]] now. Or [[Triple]] or whatever. But at least you can use your 38 [[Flare]] para-magic units without causing brain damage and memory loss as quickly!
Later 'Research' would look over [[Devour]] and see if it could improve [[Harvest]] with it, and eventually Sarah would have to go out and find something with [[Scan]] so Adam can make sure she can collect magic aura patterns without [[Harvesting]] everyone… But for now?
Let's see if Shiva can learn the other conceptual Junction abilities!
She had 'Str-J', 'Vit-J', and 'Spr-J' already, letting Sarah equip para-magic to strength, vitality (physical defense), and spirit (magic defense). It shouldn't be too hard to figure out some of the others. Maybe.
They didn't all make a lot of sense, which was a side effect of being a beyond norm enhancement really. For example, 'HP-J' or Hit Point Junction didn't actually make you more powerful or whatever. It gives you a sort of shield from all harm, an amount of soak damage that must be blasted away before your body gets actually injured enough to stop working right.
It hooks into your existence though, so when it runs out you collapse to the ground unless someone helps you regain it with [[Life]] or [[Full-Life]]. Which is still better than losing a limb or something, and MOST of the time an enemy or foe will actively ignore you as a non-threat when your HP runs out until everyone is down, so it gives you some wiggle room.
But still, that shit was weird.
Like, 'Mag-J' was straight forward enough. It boosted your ability to wield para-magic. No problem, brain handled it, we good! Same with 'Spd-J', you could pump power into that stat and increase your movement speed and processing power, just innately become faster and better controlled.
But then we ran into weird shit. 'Hit-J' would slightly warp causality to ensure you hit your target in the most optimum way to maximize impact. 'Eva-J' would force existence to help you more easily evade damage all together! Even stuff that hit an entire room!
And don't get Adam started with 'Luck-J'! That just fucked with reality in all kinds of odd ways. Not only did it mess with your hit chance unless it was 'maxed' out to the stupid artifical limit of 255, no idea what units the Junction system was using to measure THAT shit, but Luck could also arbitrarily cause 'Critical Hits' where damage would spike for no reason, flat out 'nope!' some attacks with impossible evasion, it was all nuts.
And it might maybe influence [[Draw]] unit levels when getting para-magic? Or not? And it seemed to slightly boost the chance of noticing 'good' things, like dropped money or undamaged organs to sell after fighting an opponent or monster…
Honestly it seemed like Dr. Odine just said 'Fuck it, call it Luck!' and moved on. Which felt like a good idea, so… Yeah. Sheesh.
Some of this stuff would probably have to wait until Sarah [[Scanned]] someone with a GF pattern of their own, Junctioned or not… But at least it was something to keep 'Research' busy.
Oh, and that was just the stat Junctioning options. A GF could let you hook paramagic up directly into your defensive or attacking aura formations. Like, either partially block, fully stop, or fucking ABSORB some types of magic. Or statuses.
It was in different areas of Sarah's conceptual makeup, as the areas that added or blocked status effects were different from the areas that handled attacking or blocking elemental damage, but Shiva already had maxed out her natural abilities due to time travel bullshit, so Adam had stuff to work with.
If nothing else, Sarah already was able to attach an elemental effect to her attacks or two elements to her defensive matrix. Although Adam couldn't wait until she [[Scanned]] a GF or found a teachable material that could get her 'Elem-Def-Jx4' so that a full four slots could ignore or absorb the more annoying elements entirely!
After all, why bother defending if you can make your foe heal you up with their best shots?
Oh, and some of these documented status effect options REALLY made Adam drool over the 'St-Atk-J' potential.
Sure, you could only have a single para-magic hooked up to your attacks at a time… But what if you used [[Pain]]?
That right there would smack every enemy with [[Silence]], preventing them from casting spells, [[Darkness]] to cause them to miss nearly any physical attack, AND [[Poison]] to slowly grind them down. Or Sarah could go with something a bit more odd and just turn beat people into slumber with [[Sleep]]
Adam began checking each of the existing sections of the new ECHO Junctioning tab as he hummed and ensured that Shiva's Junctioned [[Ice Magic Refine]] ability was given lots of samples. At least by the time Sarah decides to get up for the data she should have a growing supply of [[Water]], [[Blizzard]], [[Blizzara]], and [[Blizzaga]] to work with.
Eventually she will find a GF or two to [[Scan]] and gain some more useful command abilities than this [[Doom]] option Shiva offers, something less edge lord and more useful. There had to be more choices than this! Let's dig into the code and find out about GF support abilities.
Wait, this old Junction system could only handle two GF passive abilities at a time without getting a hold of a GF with 'Ability x3' or 'Ability x4'!? And active commands were limited to four maximum, with the first locked to attacking so you're forced to pick between [[Draw]], [[Magic]], [[Item]], or [[GF]] which would basically summon Shiva to kick ass!?
That was bullshit! He could probably fix that. Hell, THEY could probably fix that! Lazy design, that's what it was. Hell, it only made [[Attack]] a command so the stupid system would know to apply the enhancement to the next action!
Well, whatever. Adam would fix all that eventually.
For now, let's see if he can just n͓̦̮ͅu̖̬̰͔d̘g̭̩͓e̬ Shiva forward a little bit!
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Sarah mentally SLAMMED another alert away. "G'Damn it Adam, I'm trying to sleep!" It didn't hurt or anything but he just kept POKING shit!
Every few seconds her mental interface was shifting and something was going on with her energy and a feeling of [[Water]] and cold and something was warping her aura?
Shiva snuggled closer, her naturally chilled skin helping her relax like the cool side of the pillow. Mmm. "I'll make him mute your alerts for a bit, Sarah. Now shh."
She's like… The best ice goddess mermaid hug pillow person ever. Top ten, easily.
The room was quiet for a bit as Sarah tried to go to sleep. But even without the pinging and updates, it just wasn't that easy. "I miss them all."
The hug was cool and relaxing. "I know, but they sent that lovely note, right? Somehow got letters from your ninja family and those pauper people and the Smiths too?"
Because time travel is bullshit. But still...
Yeah. Yeah they did. "I still miss them though."
Her cool breath tickled her ear a bit. "That's fine. And it's alright to feel like that."
...Sometimes it was good enough just to hear somebody say that.
And tomorrow (whenever that was, this moon was NOT normal, magic fucked with it HARD and time acted really odd here) she would be a mature, responsible, not love and lust starved woman. She'd be strong and independent and 'I don`t need no sex harem' and all that.
But for now, cuddles and sleep.
Adam tried to stay calm. <<Sarah?>>
It wasn't working. <<Sweetie? Skele-baby? You there?>>
She was physically on the moon, as expected. Her body read as healthy, already enhanced to be conceptually related to S̷̴̵̡͞p̵̀͟͠a̷͡c̀͜e҉̨͡͡ and the 'best she could be' thanks to her Bad Ass perk. Her mind had no foreign magic, psionics, memories, spirits, concepts, poisons, organs, creatures…
But there was something n̞ͦͤ͌͆ͅö͕͎̭̖͚̫̓̎̈́̃̈́t͉̬̫̱̰ͩ̏ͤ̇ͥͨ́ ͇̖̦͉̮̌ͣ͋r̠͉̬̲̽̈́̈ͪ͆ͬ̀̓i̼̫̖̥͉͖̥ͩͨͭ̈̀̓ͬͥͨg͚̞̠͔̜̉ͩ̿͂̎͊ͨͮh͓̩͉̺̩͙̦͛t̹̥͂̃ͩ͑̓̒ͨ̽ going on here. <<Sarah, you… You need to talk to me here.>>
Fuck, if she didn't respond after the last of these more esoteric scanners finished he was going to scrap this Avatar entirely and try and respawn an earlier model for Sarah to run on. They could always find out what was going wrong later, this needed fixing NOW!
At least the w̙̟̖̉ͯͥ̈́r͂̉ͨo̼̰̭̫̥͕͑̆ͩ̃ͭn̺̯̩̩͓̲̱̾͛ͪ͋g̲̰̹͑̇ͬͨ͑̊̚n̮͉͕͔͚͋e̘͉͍s̲̙͔̳̫̏̑̆s͚̣̰͚̅̔͐ͩ͒͐ seemed to be getting better? Or was that a bad sign?
And Sarah suddenly jerked! <<Sarah!? You alright?>>
<Şhhh҉!̸ ̀Nò ta̵lki̢e,̛ ̧Boss͏ ͘man̷.͝ ̢I ̴ǵot̛ ͡thę Ẃ̴̹͖̥̮̜͍̪̗͘Ǫ̲̤͍̰͓̜̞̩̝̮̜͞Ŕ̷͢҉͓̼̩̖̪̦͇̪̝̙̻̮͢S̵̭̥̫͙̫̲̫̙̻̗͇͝ͅͅT̵̞̮̦̖͍͍̺̟̮̰̼̼̯̕͟͜͠ ̢hea̕dach͡e.̴>
He JERKED back! Shit! <<You… You alright?>>
<Şhh̛h. Hưsh̶. I got to finish arriving right now. And please hǫļd̕ ́on̵t͢ò th҉ęs̢e̡ two ҉un͡t̡il͜ ͡ẁe r͜e͟tu̸r͡n̸ to͏ ̀thi͡s J̸um̢p ͢later. {S͇ḁ̤r̰̼̭a͈̬̩̼̭̤h̲̹̘͙ͅ_̪̝̖̪̲̫c͚o͇̰̫̟nt͉e̲̤͚̺x̫̝̯t.encrypted} {Sh̺͙͚̙͇̱i̱͖̦̖͕̮̟v̭a̲̦̠̯̪͕̠_͚͉͕̬c͇o̤̝n̯te̼̰̦̰̰x͚̘̙͙̥̠t͉̺͙̠̹.encrypted}>
Oh. Oh shit. <<Time travel shit?>>
A very odd laugh. <Oh ҉ye͞ah͜.҉ ͡Tr͝y̛ and l̡o͢ok ̢òveŗ t́he͡ tempora͠l̛ ҉d͠ef̵en͢s̶e̶ u̷nits wh̸i͜le ̵her͜e͠,̢ i͠t r̨ea͏ct̨ş ̧V̕ER͢Y̧ o̷ddly͟ ͝when ̸f͠igh́ting͏ a̴ ͢S҉o͜rce͏r̕es̶s ͘w͢ho is͠ compr͏ess̵ing ̨aĺl̀ ̸of tim̨e̛ ̧i̛n̵to a sin͝g͠le p̀oi̛nt to ̸try ̷and ̛bec̡om̴e ̵som̧e͝thing͘ b̧e̸yond̶ ascén̕d̨èd̨.>
Fucking time travel. <<We're the reason the Jump Document is so heavily weighted towards picking Sorceress, aren't we?>>
A much warmer laugh. <S̪͚p̼oi̠̘̬̪͉̥l̜͈̞e̩̝̳͔ͅr̜̜̗̝̯̗ṣ̯̥͈̲̘!̜̮ͅ>
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Nowhere and nowhen, something doesn't happen a lot at one place. But at last, Ultimecia was finished. Or at least, destabilized.
Irvine was bloody and weary. "Is it over? Let's go! Let's go back to our time!"
Selphie just kept dragging him somewhere. "Shut up! Just calm down and think where we have to go."
Zell, the goof, was at least keeping watch. "Careful guys! Don't pick the wrong time!"
Quistis was always so practical for a teacher. "And whatever you do, don't fall into a time warp! Stay together!"
And poor Rinoa... "Time...place...who I wanna be with... I wanna go there! Where Squall and I promised. Squall!"
Well, at least this loop things would get better. She listened to her call. "Squall! Let's go home! Where are you!?"
Sarah chuckled. "H͜ear th̴a͝t̵, ͝lo̕ver bo̕y?̷ ̛You̶r͝ ͘spe̸ci͜a̴l ̛o̸ne ͡is͠ ̴c̴al̷li͡n͞g."
He ignored his own stab wound. "But… You're so hurt! Come with us, we can get you fixed, I'm sure!"
Heh. Injuries like this meant little, and it just made the next steps easier. "Tell the͘ ҉o͢t͡h͢e̢r̵s I'll͞ be͝ ̧a҉ròu͏nd.͡ ͡I'̡m ̧ju͡s̕t ̕going t̀ò tak͡e͡ ̢the̵ l͟o̶ng͠ w̡a͡y̶.҉"
Squall blinked. "What?"
Sarah grinned.
And Yeeted him off towards his loved ones. "See yơu ̵a͝ll ̢s̀oo͠n̷!"
His dopplering scream was hilarious! Even with the time bullshit, it was a near cartoonish 'AAAAaaaah!' Perfect!
Now, where would she used to be eventually? Oh right, that goddamn moon.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Sarah was very c͚̩̘̠̺͙̺̈́͆̓̂ö͖͔̪́͛ͪ̈̚ņ̗̣̖̥̱̠͆͒f̙̪̲̖u̜͙̫̗ͥͅs̓ḛ̦̫̘̮͔̎̅͂́̔d̨̻͈͙͓̰͇̥̾̂̂̾.̷͔͖̟ͭ͋̚
And she was finding this hilarious.
She lay back on her bone throne. "What the hell?"
Also, apparently, she had a bone throne. Not just a throne designed to look like it was made of bones, she could sense the proto-magic inside each of the tiny fragments and portions of powerful beasts used to mold this entire castle.
Also also, apparently she had a castle. On the moon.
A moon castle, if you will.
The fuck. "Adam?"
He sighed. <<Just… Just read the note you left yourself and don't tell me anything. Don't make any guesses. Don't try and be clever. We will just… ignore this mess.>>
That uh. That didn't sound good. Right, a note? Oh, here, on her spine supported monster skull side table. Sheesh, at least someone properly preserved these things and coated them in silver.
This could have been SO unhygienic.
Thankfully, it wasn't TOO long. "Let's see… 'Dear me! Time travel sucks and we hate it.'"
...Huh.
Glancing at the massive greeting chamber of her bone castle, she felt somehow she could agree with that. Right, the note. "Uh… 'To keep things simple I spent the last five years practicing our skills, killing monsters that would NOT leave me alone, and sending all our future junk and equipment into storage. And built the moon city, because it is fucking boring up here. Oh! And due to time travel bullshit, you don't have to do what I did to keep them existing...'"
Damn! Her head! Fuck time travel. "...Alright. Fine, whatever. Moving on! 'And you will get our memories added to the collective when you eventually come back to this Jump someday. Plus, SHE doesn't have any problems like this because Adam FIXED her temporal defense units because of the crap happening THIS time. Don't help him, he deserves to do it the hard way because he got distracted trying to make a Tonic designed to…'"
Sarah stared at it. "Adam?"
He seemed grumpy. <<I'm working on it! I could have SWORN I had gone over ALL the defensive units a long time ago! Especially the important ones like this, I don't know how the hell I missed issues like these ones. Stupid pre/after Jump collision temporal memory duplication issues.>>
She just looked at the paper. "Adam, did you try to make a Tonic to turn people and creatures into Muppets?"
The connection went silent. <<Uh. Nooooo?>>
...Uh huh. "Adam."
His flustered emotions flooded the line. <<I love the Muppet Christmas Carol, alright!? And it didn't work out anyway, I needed to scan examples from a related Jump because making living things using cloth and stuff made some really freaky looking gem lobsters when I tested it. And some exploded into stuffing and fluff, which certainly didn't seem right.>>
God damn it, Adam. "Get back to work fixing my defenses. Please."
Right, so… Priorities.
"[[Summon: Shiva.]]"
A spire of ice thrust from the ground! "By your power and mine, I am a hot ice elf goddess!"
And she did a pose.
Daww! "Shiva, you are like… The best summon ever."
She grinned! "You know it baby!"
And paused.
Awkward silence.
Shiva looked at her limbs. "Why do I look like an even slutier, mostly nude mermaid?"
Oh, right. "Well, the last Jump was really messed up so it was too risky to leave a you behind and THIS Jump had some options to enhance you a lot and…"
Shiva and Sarah blinked as an unnoticed pamphlet knocked loose by the ice woman's summoning fluttered down between them.
The goddess picked it up. "'Guardian GF's and you: Why Ifrit is an asshole and how to handle being a hot mermaid with a sexually pent up owner.' Huh."
This was the other her's fault, wasn't it?
"Oh! There are diagrams! And a list of our favorite 'safe words'!"
God DAMN IT, time travel!
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Hours later, and in a VERY comfortable bedroom, Sarah admitted that maybe time travel wasn't inherently awful. That the pamphlet had some love notes from both her future self AND a few dozen Elizabeths had also changed her mind. Though the sex suggestions had been a bit much.
Seriously, her girlfriend army was in another freaking Jump entirely and she STILL got her all flustered! Best relationship ever!
Oh, and she should probably do something about the local magical defenses empowered by overly powerful monster corpses that were automatically harvesting more resources through a modified GF ability called [[Devour]]...
But that seemed like a future self problem, not a good enough reason to get out of bed and stop snuggling her sexy aquatic ice mermaid version of her other personality.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam had 'Research' go over the changes. Again.
So, as he had been told, he had missed something small but important.
Before now, none of the defenses cared about issues or benefits or whatever that came from FUTURE or PAST Sarahs. Also, some of his 'improvements' that should have thrown out errors and warnings and stuff were accidentally so much more powerful and adaptable than expected… Well. When they got a massive amount of raw data and impossible timelines, they just shrugged and decided 'Meh, we can handle it!' and just… Sigh.
Adam added a new 'Research' topic, one only designed to construct a high level overview of existing units and attempt to detect function duplication, gaps in defenses, gaps in gathering ability, and so on and so forth.
Some were known, of course. Hard not to, when the Warehouse had massive contextual 'scars' that prevented choice point collection or companions. But those were basically in 'casts' sort of, even if they couldn't be replaced or cut away. Not in any way Adam knew, at least. Not yet.
It was sort of like that mutilated magic police officer, Mad Eye Moody, from that Harry Potter series. It was a setting where magic could regrow flesh and bones and mess with teeth and stuff so easily but malicious magic got everything effed up when you tried to fix it.
Though Adam wasn't sure if that scar covered man had ever tried slicing off body parts at healthy sections and trying to regrow the mess from scratch… Or if the magicals would even accept such an idea, since using surgery or any other non-magical solution was very much a horrifying concept to their culture.
Whatever, the point was this new routine should prevent something like this from happening again. Hopefully. Until the next time they ran face first into a similar issue.
Sigh.
Adam checked that the REST of the Jump insertion went well.
The new mana generator and converter units worked well, and were building up reservoirs of the blue 'fluid'. Next to the golden CEE and the green mako, this blue mana really made her energy storage layer look all pretty and stuff.
And uh. The mako and mana seemed to be… Enhancing each other? Resonating certainly. Oh… Now the CEE was reacting too. Somehow the potential magic and origin magic was influencing the psionic liquid?
...It was probably fine.
The FF8 ability layer also had some very developed mind units hooked up to Sarah's new abilities thanks to cheaty updates from the recent merge. So much for 'lots of practice', his Jumper already cheated like a fiend when it came to training thanks to every skill having a mind unit testing stuff and remembering optimized configurations and modified variations.
The new memory units and current 'mind' also got around the main 'Remember only 5 years' Drawback by storing locally the last four years of data and creating 'unrelated memory logs' of the year about to undergo degradation.
So now Sarah remembered the last five years of her Jump adventure AND five years of hard core training and building a moon capital city. Not to mention creating the new para-magic rune system that can automatically apply a pseudo-GF skill on selected targets.
Because of COURSE Sarah would research how the false magic system works here and build a new branch of magical science to get out of daily 'kill the army of monster' chores.
Speaking of how magic worked here, it was a bit unusual.
Para-magic was basically a system of using fragments of fragments of that one creator being, Great Hyne, who fled long ago.
When that thing was attacked and driven off by the powerful monsters, local creatures and species HERE, its fragments and wounded energies saturated the lands and nearby planets and laws and reality concepts and so on and so forth.
Anyway, this fragmented energy naturally gathered in certain places and people, like the Sorceresses. Eventually, the collected pools of energy were researched heavily by the local smarty pants, Dr. Odine, who thankfully WASN'T The cause of all problems this time!
Not a moral guy mind you, much more a mad science dude really… But he was still better than that ass Hojo at least. And wasn't torturing a god like being for no good reason and injecting her fractured mind into the planet while busy making mutant clone babies and… God damn it, Hojo.
Back on point, Dr. Odine found that these energy pools had an aura or field that could be gathered. Collected, concentrated, and studied!
Some forms of this [[Drawn]] para-magic was so potent it could even regenerate and become stable with some minor effort. Able to form a sort of echo of the more powerful beings out there, near-psionic creations called Guardian Forces.
Other energies were barely strong enough to change the local area. Calling fire or lightning or whatever.
However, thanks to Dr. Odine's research? Humanity developed the Junctioning system, using Guardian Forces to let humans [[Draw]] radiated aura from monsters and places and powerful foes, convert it into usable or equipable para-magic, and cast it in battle or directly enhance their own bodies beyond the limits of training or science!
True, there were issues. Some GF's could only enhance some aspects of their wielder, or granted limited special abilities that others could not. And the mental connection caused issues with memory retention and sometimes other more significant concerns…
But overall it brought magic to the world, to a degree.
Mostly.
Para-magic still needed to be gathered, and only a limited amount could be stored per Junctioning System. Plus, if you used some of the magic that was stored away enhancing yourself then that enhancement would obviously get weaker as you used up the stuff empowering it… But it was still world changing.
For most people, it was beyond imagination! Organizations and groups would even build in combat areas where monster populations would be encouraged, so that soldiers and mercenaries and SeeDs could easily find the right auras to get useful magic like healing or status recovery or basic combat power.
Hell, some areas of the world were protected to ensure the creatures got stronger! Conservation was sort of connected to ranching, as more powerful auras granted stronger para-magic for better fighters.
Sarah on the other hand had a slowly generating source of the good stuff!
The raw energies that generated the aura fields that the Junctioned GF's could [[Draw]] from! So, technically, Adam just needed her to find examples of each aura out there. Places and monsters and foes who had the right energy fields for examples would let Sarah duplicate that pattern and apply some of her mana to it, and BAM!
Infinite para-magic of that type.
Eventually.
For now, Adam was ripping appart the Junctioning system equipment Sarah had on hand (damn time travel) to see if 'Research' could help modify the stupid thing.
Thankfully the Drawback enforcing Shiva's Junctioning to Sarah was on a deeper level, considering Shiva was part of the Warehouse and Sarah's Avatar directly already… So there were no problems getting rid of this junk and making something better.
He would probably integrate it directly into her ECHO system too, because it was a good enough foundation to work with and was more integrated into the Warehouse systems already.
Right, let's see what we are dealing with here!
[[Harvest.]]
Hmm. Built in settings to allow the 16 currently studied Guardian Forces to be 'Junctioned' to a person. But there was notes in the code of at least four more unsuccessful attempts at defining OTHER GFs, ones that didn't quite work right... Must be a work in progress.
Anyway, the GF would act as a magical bridge, connecting the user to the GF via mind and magic (Which is where the memory issue came in) and then using the framework of the GF itself to try and empower the concepts of the host further.
Basically, you sort of merged magically with your GF to a degree. The more they are summoned, as you two work together, the more 'compatibility' builds… Which means your GF would do more damage, be called forth at a faster speed, and some subtle boosts to your own body get increased as well.
Fighting with a connection to a GF and a focus can unlock various skills and abilities in the process, at the cost of a deeper connection and a greater risk of mental degradation depending on how many you Junction and how high you push your compatibility.
It explained the whole {Actualization: -600cp, Sorceress -300cp} option, as it was basically just making a Guardian Force now that Adam knew more about the process. A magical framework, using the personality and memories of a host or long lost echo of communal beliefs, memories, or connections to otherworldly entities… And one you could combine with, become more compatible with, albeit with a hell of a drawback cost.
It was a bit ironic the Junction system was a mechanical way to gather magic, reinforce it enough to turn yourself into a pseudo-Avatar for the new framework, and use less cohesive 'magic' to support and enhance the GF's gifted benefits.
Considering Sarah was nearly doing it backwards. Or all at once? It felt complicated.
SHE was the Avatar, and the magical framework, and the GF, and the source of power, and the creator of the auras used to shape that power, and... Uh.
Right, think about that never.
So! Let's modify this junk!
First, the material. This unit, as it will be installed here in the Warehouse directly for Sarah's Avatar to work with, will be formed entirely out of copper with uncertainty patterned networks filled with (Soon to be) solidified mako.
No reason NOT to use raw potential enhanced magical metal to make this bitch!
Next, the original Junctioning system could only recognize 32 types of para-magic, or aura shaped magic charges. And it could only safely store 100 units of each type. Even though the base level of [[Fire]], [[Fira]], and [[Firaga]] were drastically different as they increased in power level, it was easier to just limit EVERYTHING at 100 max instead of risking the more powerful stuff overwhelming the user when equipped to enhance a personal stat.
Not an issue with Sarah though.
So, go ahead and copy and paste the existing 32 aura patterns for easy future use and to let Sarah [[Draw]] units of those patterns like everyone else. And whip up a more robust 'discover new aura' ability for unknown patterns.
A basic version of para-magic discovery was already in this mess, as well as a GF detection sensing filter that would mark foes or creatures or monsters with known patterns for duplication.
But Sarah shouldn't have to put up with tiny [[Draw]] list options that were filled with '???' all the time. Or random names with no explanations when a GF is detected.
So instead, a detection module over here and some data feeds for 'Research' to hook into. MUCH better!
After all, the monster or foe might have dozens of magic patterns, but only three or four strong enough for this mass produced Junction system to detect. The default choice seemed to be to ignore stuff below this threshold over here. Which made sense for normal people.
Because the amount of units one could [{Draw]] from a foe could vary based on how high the user's GF compatibility with that Aura was (Their 'Magic' stat, basically), the level of power difference between the two fighters involved, and how resistant the target was from magic attacks in the first place.
Fighting something powerful? They could resist you draining their ambient aura, drastically slowing the [[Draw]] process to lots of failures and only 1 or 2 units per attempt.
Is the pattern super complex? Hell, if it is a GF that the system doesn't recognize it won't even try! And for the more powerful magic like [[Ultima]], getting a couple per [[Draw]] was pretty damn impressive.
Not an issue for Sarah.
She just needs the pattern, not the energy supporting the pattern as well… Adam's Jumper could easily enough use [[Scan]] on a foe and then let her mana start building up her own personal stockpile to work with.
Why even bother getting rid of the hard coded 9 unit [[Draw]] cap when Sarah can just have [[Scan]] get the job done and go take a nap or something? Much better, although she will have to find a creature for Adam to examine first since only [[Draw]] was hard coded into this stupid device by default.
Sure, it was for a good reason. Those limits ensured no one accidentally got locked into a [[Draw]] loop and suddenly exploded or something. Or started drawing in magic that was actively equipped to their Strength or something and hit a number of units way above 100 that caused muscle explosion or whatever.
But Sarah had different requirements from other users anyway.
Shift the design a little, assign some mind units to actively determine what para-magic storage limits she can easily handle, ensure those mind units are networked into a hive mind so they don't accidentally mess up the math when one form of para-magic is stronger than expected… Good.
Adam reviewed the new design.
Glowing blue with green tinted copper holding it together, the new unit had several components. This section would add storage units, one for each detected and [[Scanned]] magical aura found in the world.
As Sarah grew stronger, she would go from being able to hold 214 units of [[Fire]] to something silly like 532,000 or something. Maybe more? Sure it wasn't a nice round set of 100's, but on the other hand this redesigned system would ensure less mental damage to the user by limiting each para-magic unit storage capacity to an optimum level.
If a more normal person used it, sure you might not be able to carry about 100 [[Water]] now. Or [[Triple]] or whatever. But at least you can use your 38 [[Flare]] para-magic units without causing brain damage and memory loss as quickly!
Later 'Research' would look over [[Devour]] and see if it could improve [[Harvest]] with it, and eventually Sarah would have to go out and find something with [[Scan]] so Adam can make sure she can collect magic aura patterns without [[Harvesting]] everyone… But for now?
Let's see if Shiva can learn the other conceptual Junction abilities!
She had 'Str-J', 'Vit-J', and 'Spr-J' already, letting Sarah equip para-magic to strength, vitality (physical defense), and spirit (magic defense). It shouldn't be too hard to figure out some of the others. Maybe.
They didn't all make a lot of sense, which was a side effect of being a beyond norm enhancement really. For example, 'HP-J' or Hit Point Junction didn't actually make you more powerful or whatever. It gives you a sort of shield from all harm, an amount of soak damage that must be blasted away before your body gets actually injured enough to stop working right.
It hooks into your existence though, so when it runs out you collapse to the ground unless someone helps you regain it with [[Life]] or [[Full-Life]]. Which is still better than losing a limb or something, and MOST of the time an enemy or foe will actively ignore you as a non-threat when your HP runs out until everyone is down, so it gives you some wiggle room.
But still, that shit was weird.
Like, 'Mag-J' was straight forward enough. It boosted your ability to wield para-magic. No problem, brain handled it, we good! Same with 'Spd-J', you could pump power into that stat and increase your movement speed and processing power, just innately become faster and better controlled.
But then we ran into weird shit. 'Hit-J' would slightly warp causality to ensure you hit your target in the most optimum way to maximize impact. 'Eva-J' would force existence to help you more easily evade damage all together! Even stuff that hit an entire room!
And don't get Adam started with 'Luck-J'! That just fucked with reality in all kinds of odd ways. Not only did it mess with your hit chance unless it was 'maxed' out to the stupid artifical limit of 255, no idea what units the Junction system was using to measure THAT shit, but Luck could also arbitrarily cause 'Critical Hits' where damage would spike for no reason, flat out 'nope!' some attacks with impossible evasion, it was all nuts.
And it might maybe influence [[Draw]] unit levels when getting para-magic? Or not? And it seemed to slightly boost the chance of noticing 'good' things, like dropped money or undamaged organs to sell after fighting an opponent or monster…
Honestly it seemed like Dr. Odine just said 'Fuck it, call it Luck!' and moved on. Which felt like a good idea, so… Yeah. Sheesh.
Some of this stuff would probably have to wait until Sarah [[Scanned]] someone with a GF pattern of their own, Junctioned or not… But at least it was something to keep 'Research' busy.
Oh, and that was just the stat Junctioning options. A GF could let you hook paramagic up directly into your defensive or attacking aura formations. Like, either partially block, fully stop, or fucking ABSORB some types of magic. Or statuses.
It was in different areas of Sarah's conceptual makeup, as the areas that added or blocked status effects were different from the areas that handled attacking or blocking elemental damage, but Shiva already had maxed out her natural abilities due to time travel bullshit, so Adam had stuff to work with.
If nothing else, Sarah already was able to attach an elemental effect to her attacks or two elements to her defensive matrix. Although Adam couldn't wait until she [[Scanned]] a GF or found a teachable material that could get her 'Elem-Def-Jx4' so that a full four slots could ignore or absorb the more annoying elements entirely!
After all, why bother defending if you can make your foe heal you up with their best shots?
Oh, and some of these documented status effect options REALLY made Adam drool over the 'St-Atk-J' potential.
Sure, you could only have a single para-magic hooked up to your attacks at a time… But what if you used [[Pain]]?
That right there would smack every enemy with [[Silence]], preventing them from casting spells, [[Darkness]] to cause them to miss nearly any physical attack, AND [[Poison]] to slowly grind them down. Or Sarah could go with something a bit more odd and just turn beat people into slumber with [[Sleep]]
Adam began checking each of the existing sections of the new ECHO Junctioning tab as he hummed and ensured that Shiva's Junctioned [[Ice Magic Refine]] ability was given lots of samples. At least by the time Sarah decides to get up for the data she should have a growing supply of [[Water]], [[Blizzard]], [[Blizzara]], and [[Blizzaga]] to work with.
Eventually she will find a GF or two to [[Scan]] and gain some more useful command abilities than this [[Doom]] option Shiva offers, something less edge lord and more useful. There had to be more choices than this! Let's dig into the code and find out about GF support abilities.
Wait, this old Junction system could only handle two GF passive abilities at a time without getting a hold of a GF with 'Ability x3' or 'Ability x4'!? And active commands were limited to four maximum, with the first locked to attacking so you're forced to pick between [[Draw]], [[Magic]], [[Item]], or [[GF]] which would basically summon Shiva to kick ass!?
That was bullshit! He could probably fix that. Hell, THEY could probably fix that! Lazy design, that's what it was. Hell, it only made [[Attack]] a command so the stupid system would know to apply the enhancement to the next action!
Well, whatever. Adam would fix all that eventually.
For now, let's see if he can just n͓̦̮ͅu̖̬̰͔d̘g̭̩͓e̬ Shiva forward a little bit!
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Sarah mentally SLAMMED another alert away. "G'Damn it Adam, I'm trying to sleep!" It didn't hurt or anything but he just kept POKING shit!
Every few seconds her mental interface was shifting and something was going on with her energy and a feeling of [[Water]] and cold and something was warping her aura?
Shiva snuggled closer, her naturally chilled skin helping her relax like the cool side of the pillow. Mmm. "I'll make him mute your alerts for a bit, Sarah. Now shh."
She's like… The best ice goddess mermaid hug pillow person ever. Top ten, easily.
The room was quiet for a bit as Sarah tried to go to sleep. But even without the pinging and updates, it just wasn't that easy. "I miss them all."
The hug was cool and relaxing. "I know, but they sent that lovely note, right? Somehow got letters from your ninja family and those pauper people and the Smiths too?"
Because time travel is bullshit. But still...
Yeah. Yeah they did. "I still miss them though."
Her cool breath tickled her ear a bit. "That's fine. And it's alright to feel like that."
...Sometimes it was good enough just to hear somebody say that.
And tomorrow (whenever that was, this moon was NOT normal, magic fucked with it HARD and time acted really odd here) she would be a mature, responsible, not love and lust starved woman. She'd be strong and independent and 'I don`t need no sex harem' and all that.
But for now, cuddles and sleep.
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- Location
- USA
Ouch. The feels. Poor adam.
- Location
- Arizona
Fucking time travel. I'm totally confused if this means Sarah from End of FF8 Jump sent back her notes/memories to Beginning of FF8 jump Sarah, or if the ten years of memories was Sarah actually living her pre-jump insertion memories, or something.
Time travel, man. It either drives you to drink, or makes you all goofy. Or both.
Time travel, man. It either drives you to drink, or makes you all goofy. Or both.
- Location
- Earth U.S.
Hidden One
Not the Boss, possibly a Playa
- Location
- Sol;Terra;EU;D;NRW
All the cuddles and sleep are currently required.
I wonder if Adam will notice the monsters getting stronk or just assume they are in default state after he finishes the first round of fiddling and sees the first one. Hm. 🤔
I wonder if Adam will notice the monsters getting stronk or just assume they are in default state after he finishes the first round of fiddling and sees the first one. Hm. 🤔
- Location
- United States
If FF8 time travel is this messed up, imagine what Dragon Ball would have been like.
There is. I can't remember if it was done as a movie, or as a multiple episode special, but it was a 'bad end future' type of deal. There might be other time travel plots along with that, but yeah time travel was a thing that happened.
I mean... it was pretty clearly stated that Adam and Sarah came back to this specific jump in a future Jump, after they had contacted past Jumps, and it ended up happening before this current Jump being told right now. It even mentioned that they did this, in clear and concise words. The only way to not gleam this is if "Engrish hard."
"A Stitch In Time" was a made for Cable TV movie, barely 70 minutes long, not counting commercial breaks. But it was clearly divided in its run, that it could have been screened as though it was a three parter multi episode.
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- Location
- Sydney Australia
Because Shiva was the first Guardian Force, everytime I see GF, it auto translates to girlfriend in my head and gives me the chuckles
Red_Faux
私を終わらせる
- Location
- 'Straya M8
If they ever go to Doctor Who, its gonna be like:
Doctor: "Sarah! You're back!"
Sarah: "I missed you too you idiot!"
Adam: "What is going on here exactly?"
Sarah, whispering: "I have no idea, time travel bullsh-"
Doctor, also whispering: "Actually its more of an anti paradox then strictly travel but..."
Adam: "Just... fuck today. I'll be back later"
Sarah: "Wait Adam! Don't leave me here alooone!"
Doctor: "Adam abandon you?"
Sarah: "How!? WHY!"
Doctor: "Well, it involves a hot tub, a dying star, River, and a woman named Rose Tyler"
Sarah: "....go on"
Doctor: "Sarah! You're back!"
Sarah: "I missed you too you idiot!"
Adam: "What is going on here exactly?"
Sarah, whispering: "I have no idea, time travel bullsh-"
Doctor, also whispering: "Actually its more of an anti paradox then strictly travel but..."
Adam: "Just... fuck today. I'll be back later"
Sarah: "Wait Adam! Don't leave me here alooone!"
Doctor: "Adam abandon you?"
Sarah: "How!? WHY!"
Doctor: "Well, it involves a hot tub, a dying star, River, and a woman named Rose Tyler"
Sarah: "....go on"
- Location
- Earth (unverified)
Glad I'm not the only one. It's simultaneously funny and annoying to have to keep reminding myself that no, Sarah and Adam aren't going to be running around collecting data from girlfriends.
- Status