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Calibration (BAHHSCQ/Sanctioned)

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Centergg said:
About new roommate Monika, isn't she? Will she inspired by examples of QA and Anna stop breathing all together. And heartbeat. To improve her accuracy. Because it seems to me she also suffer from syndrome and needs hugs.
Fortunately she now have her own alicorn of crystal Doom. ... so QA is halping her already

Monika already seems to conclude what she don't need to impersonate genki girl with QA as example

P.S. Decimator has met QA, now it seems what he just sits there in the corner and emulate terrified screams with missiles
(Edited )
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I am reminded of a particular omake from the parent fic. Poor little Monica tries her best, yet people are mean to her anyway. But that's okay, because she has friends now! Her new roommate is actually really nice and so helpful. And so was Tamara. And that second-year girl! Tamara said that she shouldn't compare herself to Taylor, but she's such an inspiration and and really is jus so helpful; she likes that other girl, Anna, who's pretty amazing too too and also likes sharing incredible ideas for helping her do better. She's also not pushy and would make a great friend too.

Monica is doomed now. She's going to evolve into The Warrior character under the happy background. The awkward shy girl: B-By the end of the week, I'll have made ten friends! With "Taylor" and Anna as examples, what could possibly go wrong? After all, the empirical evidence does say that petty things like sloppy, crude respiratory functions are not only unnecessary, but actively harmful to being a good Valkyrie! Keeping up with her friends might be difficult, but she can't let that stop her, so she'd better seize every advantage she can get! That way, they can all be friends together, right? Besides, Taylor says that friends make everything better. Some of her "Friends" are pretty huggable, too, so she can't be wrong. Her friends know other people who would make good friends as well, and they can all have fun killing filthy xeno scum!

ROTH963 said:
I thought it was Friends, with inclination for biological ones, although I could be wrong.
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More specifically, it is lots, and lots, and lots of Friends. All the Friends! The best way to make everyone work together is if they're all Friends! She has barely begun. Soon, the whole world will be filled with Friends! ...or something like that, anyway. Surely a few more couldn't hurt, right?
 
Jokes about QA corrupting her aside, I'm pretty sure Monica's role in the story is just comedic counterweight; she's the normal 1st year Cadet's perspective on QA's antics. Well, as normal as waking up in the middle of the night, seeing writhing walls of bloody flesh eating half her room, and going "this is fine" is, anyway. :V

Chances are, she's not particularly talented; to balance out Shuri, Squadron 4 is mostly composed of neophytes. Monica sounds like one of them—she's nervous about how well she'll do, and there's been no mention of her possessing a Valkyrie Frame. I could maybe see her joining the MC's initial flight because QA will, but she probably won't stay. She's likely a better fit for a flight not composed entirely of workaholics and freaks of nature.

(OOC, there's also the future issue of maximum flight size. Koujirou, Setsuna, Anna, QA, Shuri, and Sandra make six, the limit for how many Valkyrie Cores small Simulator rooms can support. Monica's addition would complicate things a fair bit.)
 
Sapient_Ham said:
(OOC, there's also the future issue of maximum flight size. Koujirou, Setsuna, Anna, QA, Shuri, and Sandra make six, the limit for how many Valkyrie Cores small Simulator rooms can support. Monica's addition would complicate things a fair bit.)
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That will be before Queen upgraded it with Taylor help so she could have a bigger team.
 
Norr said:
I find it highly amusing that [MOTHER] showing disapproval would not only make people spill their drinks but also inexplicably rearrange class shedules.
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Was doing a re-read, and honestly, there's more than a little fridge horror here. I mean it's a throwaway line, but think about it. If everything were optimal? Eden would be watching problem shards constantly - nothing they could do would escape her. And she would probably have the ability to warp reality like clay on the small scale with the right powers. Remember, she was the 'smart' one.
 
Sapient_Ham said:
Jokes about QA corrupting her aside, I'm pretty sure Monica's role in the story is just comedic counterweight; she's the normal 1st year Cadet's perspective on QA's antics. Well, as normal as waking up in the middle of the night, seeing writhing walls of bloody flesh eating half her room, and going "this is fine" is, anyway. :V

Chances are, she's not particularly talented; to balance out Shuri, Squadron 4 is mostly composed of neophytes. Monica sounds like one of them—she's nervous about how well she'll do, and there's been no mention of her possessing a Valkyrie Frame. I could maybe see her joining the MC's initial flight because QA will, but she probably won't stay. She's likely a better fit for a flight not composed entirely of workaholics and freaks of nature.

(OOC, there's also the future issue of maximum flight size. Koujirou, Setsuna, Anna, QA, Shuri, and Sandra make six, the limit for how many Valkyrie Cores small Simulator rooms can support. Monica's addition would complicate things a fair bit.)
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So what you are saying is that she is…

Just Monica?
 
You know, Shards possess a form of time travel, but The Entities earmarked it as a ludicrously wasteful evolutionary dead-end due to that form of time travel being ineffective at Entity scales, as well as depreciated by Entity scale precognitive simulations.

What are the odds of QA handing out the Shard-based time travel formulae, intending it to be a red herring to hobble the advances of Valkyrie researchers?
 
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Sapient_Ham said:
Jokes about QA corrupting her aside, I'm pretty sure Monica's role in the story is just comedic counterweight; she's the normal 1st year Cadet's perspective on QA's antics. Well, as normal as waking up in the middle of the night, seeing writhing walls of bloody flesh eating half her room, and going "this is fine" is, anyway. :V

Chances are, she's not particularly talented; to balance out Shuri, Squadron 4 is mostly composed of neophytes. Monica sounds like one of them—she's nervous about how well she'll do, and there's been no mention of her possessing a Valkyrie Frame. I could maybe see her joining the MC's initial flight because QA will, but she probably won't stay. She's likely a better fit for a flight not composed entirely of workaholics and freaks of nature.

(OOC, there's also the future issue of maximum flight size. Koujirou, Setsuna, Anna, QA, Shuri, and Sandra make six, the limit for how many Valkyrie Cores small Simulator rooms can support. Monica's addition would complicate things a fair bit.)
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I dunno. I get the feeling that she might play the role of being just a little too normal to the point of being just a little bit abnormal for it as a contrast to her roommate. Monica seems like she might develop into the kind of character who becomes utterly inured to the bizarrity surrounding QA, not so much not realising it, per se, but simply accepting it and honestly just not thinking it such a big deal... and end up able to bring other characters to a jarring halt when she points out that it indeed isn't actually anything like they're making it out to be when really breaking it down.

Taylor covered the walls in crawling gore? Okay, so... So? Seriously, what is actually the issue there? It looks creepy? Well, so do lots of things, but the walls aren't going to hurt anyone by looking creepy. They'll hurt people who break in by shooting them with lasers, but the aesthetics aren't a problem. If you're not trying to break through the walls, what's the problem? I mean, actually think it through, yeah? A big girl enlisted as a Valkyrie can be trusted to take care of herself when faced with a spider or something; weird-looking walls are... whatever, really. You get used to it. And don't call Taylor a freak for doing it, that's just mean, you know? Eh, she just thinks differently, is all; Taylor-logic is like that. It makes sense when you really think about it. Most Valkyries have their quirks. You know, normal things. Cupcake while you're here? The ingredients and instructions are atypical, I guess, but hey, they're tasty; the intersecting lasers give it a really even bake, and the radiation damage heals after a few minutes anyway.

ROTH963 said:
That will be before Queen upgraded it with Taylor help so she could have a bigger team.
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Yeah, that's what I was thinking. The simulation won't let QA have all her friends with her? Well that just won't do, now will it. Gonna have to fix such dismal human limitations. Why, some of the other rooms can handle that just fine, so they obviously know how to do it properly, and yet there are shoddy simulation rooms regardless. Given the sim download already made for the abyssal/shiny alicorns of doom and QA's likely intent on having no small number of complex critters with her in the simulation exercises, she's probably going to end up overhauling the simulations anyway, and it likely wouldn't be any particularly noteworthy feat for her to do it.

AmbiguousAngle said:
Was doing a re-read, and honestly, there's more than a little fridge horror here. I mean it's a throwaway line, but think about it. If everything were optimal? Eden would be watching problem shards constantly - nothing they could do would escape her. And she would probably have the ability to warp reality like clay on the small scale with the right powers. Remember, she was the 'smart' one.
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Yeah, with the precog shards on the Thinker Entity's side, it'd be utterly trivial to arrange things such that everything "coincidentally" lined up anyway, even without more direct meddling. I do wonder, though, if QA's idea of classes happening a form of punishment might be some bleedthrough from Host. "Omens" are a pretty realistic worry, honestly, but suddenly having classes afterwards seems like an exceptionally human concern.

Centergg said:
I had a horrible thought what Monica saw her big sister Valkyrie dieing and inherited her Valkyrie frame from her.
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But that horrible thought would be horrible! The anime rules clearly state that... *checks setting* Yes, Monica's character only has a tragic backstory budget for her big sister getting severely injured and having to informally retire to undergo very protracted therapy, thus prompting Monica to take up her big sister's Frame with a simultaneously determined and shaky resolve to make her proud. This leads to Monica's big sister finally recovering enough later on to get back to very light activity once Monica herself is a proper Valkyrie in her own right, and soon after be faced with something decidedly beyond that level when Things Happen. Whether she lives or not is indeterminate past that point, but Monica can't afford a dead big sister and inherited legacy yet. Hopefully Monica will have by that point already locked in a reason to be a Valkyrie beyond just for her sister's sake, for her sister's sake.
 
Menthewarp said:
You know, Shards possess a form of time travel, but The Entities earmarked it as a ludicrously wasteful evolutionary dead-end due to that form of time travel being ineffective at Entity scales, as well as depreciated by Entity scale precognitive simulations.

What are the odds of QA handing out the Shard-based time travel formulae, intending it to be a red herring to hobble the advances of Valkyrie researchers?
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Shards responsible for localized space\time manipulation seem to be fairly specialized, so it's not unlikely that QA just straight up does not have the details for how that works, only the basics.
 
Neruz said:
Shards responsible for localized space\time manipulation seem to be fairly specialized, so it's not unlikely that QA just straight up does not have the details for how that works, only the basics.
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Taylor could conceivably make a time a machine by checking how this thing works and spending a few days/weeks/months on it, but it would both be outside of QA's speciality as a shard and her speciality as a host, so she can't use her powers or just remember it up, I do thing it is possible for a shard, in this case Taylor to make one if she tried, but it would be far from the mastery of true shards that focus on it.
 
Sapient_Ham said:
Jokes about QA corrupting her aside, I'm pretty sure Monica's role in the story is just comedic counterweight; she's the normal 1st year Cadet's perspective on QA's antics. Well, as normal as waking up in the middle of the night, seeing writhing walls of bloody flesh eating half her room, and going "this is fine" is, anyway. :V

Chances are, she's not particularly talented; to balance out Shuri, Squadron 4 is mostly composed of neophytes. Monica sounds like one of them—she's nervous about how well she'll do, and there's been no mention of her possessing a Valkyrie Frame. I could maybe see her joining the MC's initial flight because QA will, but she probably won't stay. She's likely a better fit for a flight not composed entirely of workaholics and freaks of nature.

(OOC, there's also the future issue of maximum flight size. Koujirou, Setsuna, Anna, QA, Shuri, and Sandra make six, the limit for how many Valkyrie Cores small Simulator rooms can support. Monica's addition would complicate things a fair bit.)
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Or Monica drags QA off to start/join a flight together. And then QA declares her flight rivals with Anna's flight, because what can be more beautiful than pushing each other to improve even more?
ROTH963 said:
That will be before Queen upgraded it with Taylor help so she could have a bigger team.
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TacitSoliloquy said:
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. The simulation won't let QA have all her friends with her? Well that just won't do, now will it. Gonna have to fix such dismal human limitations. Why, some of the other rooms can handle that just fine, so they obviously know how to do it properly, and yet there are shoddy simulation rooms regardless. Given the sim download already made for the abyssal/shiny alicorns of doom and QA's likely intent on having no small number of complex critters with her in the simulation exercises, she's probably going to end up overhauling the simulations anyway, and it likely wouldn't be any particularly noteworthy feat for her to do it.
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I feel like QA's idea of a simulation would be a portal to an alternate Earth filled with a self-restoring population of shapeshifting Friends with Valkyrie/Type-level capabilities. To which UN's reaction would be "throw them at the Antagonists" if they find out.
 
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curiosity said:
Or Monica drags QA off to start/join a flight together. And then QA declares her flight rivals with Anna's flight, because what can more beautiful than pushing each other to improve even more?
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QA: "Anna, I have decided."

Anna: "What have you decided."

QA: "I want to... to..."

Anna: Strange. Audio fidelity is unclear. "What?"

QA: "I want to... f-f-fight, please. I want to fight you..."

Anna: "We shouldn't fight! Fighting between... We shouldn't fight each other."

QA: "What? No, you can't give up now! I-I'll help you! I'll do it! I'll... I'll f-f— I'll fight you!"

Koujirou: "Eternal rivals?"

Setsuna: "Shut up, Koujirou! They're obviously talking about... Actually I have no idea what subtext this is."
 
curiosity said:
I feel like QA's idea of a simulation would be a portal to an alternate Earth filled with a self-restoring population of shapeshifting Friends with Valkyrie/Type-level capabilities. To which UN's reaction would be "throw them at the Antagonists" if they find out.
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Nah, Entity simulation capabilities are ridiculous, as in 'capable of accurately simulating an entire planet for several centuries while still outside the galaxy that the planet is located in' ridiculous.

QA's idea of a simulation is probably obscenely detailed, like 'accurately simulates sub-Quantum Mechanics level interactions' or even 'starts by simulating the Big Bang' level detailed.

And said simulation probably requires a continent-sized chunk of near-computronium spread out across multiple realities to run at anything remotely approaching a reasonable speed.
 
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Another thing limiting the flight size is how many roles that a single average valkyrie can be expected to fill. Another thing to consider is how the Valkyries are laid out command structure wise, because as much as they don't usually act it they are a branch of the UN military. As such, flights can be thought of as like squads or fire teams, the general smallest unit, and only specialized flights would be bigger.
 
RisenIre said:
Another thing limiting the flight size is how many roles that a single average valkyrie can be expected to fill. Another thing to consider is how the Valkyries are laid out command structure wise, because as much as they don't usually act it they are a branch of the UN military. As such, flights can be thought of as like squads or fire teams, the general smallest unit, and only specialized flights would be bigger.
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That is a significant point. It does get complicated by the people involved and the simple time, too, though. If they were shipping out to the front after graduation, flight division composition would be a pretty straightforward matter. As it is presently, though, they're not really structured at all just yet. Much of the schooling here is to sort out and develop into proper flights, and the somewhat organic growth of it is rather loosely organised to foster the more personal element of the team dynamics.

The flight in question also has the MC himself who arbitrarily has to be in some kind of flight and given due importance by fiat, yet he's far from the only person of significance when he's deliberately a cliche (or perhaps subverted) harem protagonist. Anna for her part could easily be a centerpiece to any flight and entirely desirable as such per UN strategic concerns. Any flight with her in it might be a shoe-in for a dedicated Type Zero hard counter force, but not if the rest of her flight simply isn't suitable for that. Anna's also not the only high-level Valkyrie veteran whom might be in the flight should events turn out similar to canon, though; Shuri could also be a major focus for any flight built up around her. Sandra was the leader of the eventual canon flight for a reason, however, because Koujirou just doesn't have Protagonist Charisma up to par yet; Sandra may not be a key figure in her own right compared to the likes of some of the others, but she's a potent multiplier as the catalyst enabling multiple people of significance to work well together, and she's no slouch personally in any case. Similarly, Setsuna is comparatively kind of a nobody, really, but she's sort of an arbitrary accompaniment with Koujirou regardless and certainly has the potential to become someone of very real consequence after several years of schooling... which also is a factor applicable to Koujirou himself, too. And who knows how QA will stand out beyond "a lot".

The hypothetical team as it is right now very much has some aspects that could do with addressing, but how will the team actually form in the days to come? For one thing, we might easily have Anna get separated from the others later on when called away by emergency to completely upend the present scenario, but that may just as well not happen at all. The interaction between Anna's initial group and Shuri's initial flight also could be a major inflection point for future developments as well, depending on how it plays out.
 
4.2k words into the next update (or 4k-ish if you exclude a few mostly-canon paragraphs) and I'm not even remotely close to finishing

I have stared into the Abyss( Canon update size) and it stared back( so much bread)
 
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Non-Canon Mini-Bloopers: Darkest Dungeon II
  • Sidestory
    • "Does that corner look a little weird to you? My sensor readings–"

    "The abyss returns even the boldest gaze."

    "Annnnd it's about to try and kill — yup, there we go!"

    ~

    "It is a travesty. A blundering mountain of hatred and rage."

    "Was that some self-awareness I heohshit."

    "Kill the bus-sized juggernaut, then snark!"

    ~

    "Twisted and maniacal; a slathering testament to the powers of corruption."

    "...I honestly can't tell if that was a self-aware political joke or not. Does UNOMI still not know who funded this place?"

    "Not yet, no."

    ~

    "How many rats will it take to gnaw through a ton of putrid flesh?"

    "Oh, eww. I know it's already dead, but can I–"

    "No, you cannot halt our search just so you can burn the body."

    "For the record, I blame you if we face giant rats later."

    ~

    "The smell of rotting fish is almost unbearable."

    "Hah! And that's why we have helmets!"

    "I'm blaming you if something targets our heads later."

    "…Oops?"

    ~

    "They must learn more than brutal bloodletting. They must learn to survive."

    "So you toss them into a maze requiring tons of brutal bloodletting. Seems legit!"

    ~

    "Some may fall—but their knowledge lives on."

    "Oooookay, we are hereby keeping an eye out for hidden cameras because how else does that work?"

    ~

    "Recover these lost shipments of rarities and we may prevent them from falling into even less scrupulous hands."

    "I, uh—that's—is this a joke?"

    "The Core is real enough either way."

    "Should we, uh…"

    "No, we aren't just leaving it down here out of paranoia. If all the resources of the pre-Antagonist world couldn't damage them, a random maniac certainly couldn't manage it no matter their skill with bioengineering."

    "I mean, maybe? But on the off chance that it is corrupted, is it actually ethical to make someone synch with it?"

    "You're letting this place get to you."

    "It is a very freaky place, okay!?"
     
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  • Sidestory
    • So uh, rereading the first one let me catch a mistake: "Emily" is supposed to be named Elise. This has been fixed, and I'll have a relevant author's note in the next full chapter.
     
    TacitSoliloquy said:
    Generally speaking, lasers are pretty useful weapons on account of being so comparatively easy to make achieve relativistic speed;
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    Lasers, being EM weapons, are relativistic by definition.

    LostArchivist said:
    More likely:
    "Yoink."
    "And FYI, String Theory's was better. Byeeeeeeeeee."
    *comes back two days later with an even better cannon that makes even less sense. And may actually contradict several physical laws.*
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    QA: "As this is actually outside my own area of expertise, I brought my [sister] along to help out. Say 'hello', [Sting]."
    Flechette: "Uh, hello?"

    TacitSoliloquy said:
    Yeah, I'm kinda wondering if the PCC might get formed into some kind of wacky high-level R&D team at some point.
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    PCC is a wacky high-level R&D team. They were given Anna's 5th particle cannon to reverse engineer before she even got to Perth Academy. That was why they were so excited to meet her.

    Menthewarp said:
    At the bottom of the Cult Bunker, will there be the Heart of an Old One?
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    [Azathoth] dreams.
     
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