Two questions: What was going on in the first interlude, and whatever happened to that package that came for Rukio?
Good Company [Raildex AU]
75% Certain
25% horse thief
The Amakusa are currently something like an affiliate of Necessarius, but they've been pushing for full membership. Necessarius, for their part, have felt it convenient to keep the status quo in place. Consider Turkey's relationship with the EU as a sort of example there. Now, Necessarius has committed a pair of embarrassing gaffes, most recently what appears to be a high-level magician gone rogue. The Amakusa plan on cleaning up Necessarius' mess, and using that as leverage to prevent anyone from blocking their petition for membership.
As for the package, keep in mind that it hasn't even been two days. Akemi just hasn't managed to connect with Ruiko, since they've both been busy.
- Pronouns
- she/her
[X] Hell yes.
What could possibly go wrong!
What could possibly go wrong!
XkaliburRage
Perpetual Procrastinator
I kinda skipped ahead, but I'd like to know now... Who the hell is Kojiro?
blindvi1
The one who shall purge the heresy of the wicked
- Location
- USA, and Academy City in another life
{x} Hell yes!
oh ya know, she could end up just being her clumsy self. Imagine if Uiharu were around. Skirt flipping bitch!
lol:lol just kidding
Or if she did that to one of the Misaka Imoutos. I can see Saten getting the shit beat out her by Misakas "sister" who would then nonchalantly make an excuse or just plain laugh at her then insult her.
oh ya know, she could end up just being her clumsy self. Imagine if Uiharu were around. Skirt flipping bitch!
lol:lol just kidding Or if she did that to one of the Misaka Imoutos. I can see Saten getting the shit beat out her by Misakas "sister" who would then nonchalantly make an excuse or just plain laugh at her then insult her.
Last edited:
75% Certain
25% horse thief
A fellow Sakugawa student. Nobody from canon, mostly because canon has almost nothing to say about her past.
Episode 3 Part 2
75% Certain
25% horse thief
You arch your brow. "Sure, let's go for it. Do I just, uh, lay down on the table?"
Dr. Naidoo -- Tim -- laughs gently. "Not quite. First, we'll need to do a quick system scan to establish a firm baseline. Unless, of course, you've had one very recently."
"You have the equipment for that here?" you ask in legitimate surprise. It's expensive stuff, and often a chore to get your turn with. Students are guaranteed a free system scan once every six months, courtesy of their school, but many of them pay for additional testing at their Power Development Center of choice. After all, going up a level only pays off when you're certified.
Gideon nods. "We haven't gotten much use from it, but we actually got it on the cheap from another lab that was being shut down. It's only the core component, but we won't be needing any of the fancy stuff."
"I should be happy about a free scan," you muse, "but there's not much suspense when you already know the result."
The two men lead you down a couple hallways to an unmarked door. Tim points to another next to it. "I'll be in the next room, running it remotely. I'm going to assume that you know the drill: just give me the signal when you're ready. Take all the time you need. Everything you'll need will be in the cabinet, including towels and a hairdryer."
Inside, the room is relatively spacious. The tile floor and spartan bench make it look almost like a high-class locker room, with the lockers replaced by a row of homely-looking wooden cabinets. On the opposite side is the main attraction: the scanner itself. It resembles a jacuzzi or a large bathtub in shape, though without a hint of porcelain that you'd expect from those. Instead, it's a cool ash gray. The exterior isn't very telling, as the only things to gave away the advanced nature of the machine are the control display on the front and a single button inside of it.
The first thing you do is hit a button on the controls to start filling the basin with water. You spare a quick look to check the temperature, but it doesn't need to be adjusted. While that's in process, you begin to disrobe, making sure to carefully fold your dress before setting it down on the bench. Once you've stripped completely, you put on a breathing mask with an attached earpiece -- waterproof, it's safe to assume -- and softly fall back into the pleasantly warm pool, allowing yourself to slowly sink as you spread out your limbs around you. Without looking, you feel the ridges of the submerged button with your right hand and allow your fingertips to rest above it.
You inhale deeply, enjoying the increased oxygen content of the mix you're breathing through your mask. All the while, you meditate and retreat into yourself the way you've been trained to do, focusing on that part of your awareness that seems to only exist thanks to the power development program. It's something like a void or an emptiness for Level Zeroes like yourself, but it's no less real and no harder to discover. There's nothing you can do you with it, so you just travel back and forth along its extent, like an echo sounding in a cave. When you feel that you've truly centered yourself on it, you press the button.
The machine buzzes and whirs for a moment -- the sound distorted by the water -- and a tingle races along your spine as you shiver involuntarily. You continue to trace the boundaries of your own absent power until Tim's voice comes through the earpiece letting you know that the process has been completed. From there, all that's left to do is to dry off and slip your clothes back on. That hairdryer comes in handy (even if it's a chintzy piece of trash that whines like a banshee) and for the first time, you notice that there's no mirror. Glad I don't care about cosmetics.
It's a good five minutes before you're out, hair still damp-ish and clingy. The other two are waiting outside, passing the time in conversation. Tim's saying something about cellular regeneration that you missed the context for, but they happily break it off.
Gideon waves a stapled document he's holding good-naturedly. "Did you enjoy the first part of your spa treatment? We're moving on to the pedicure next."
A joke, plain as day, but the siren song of getting paid lofts blissfully through your thoughts, conscious and not. A pedicure may very well be in your future. "I'm all smiles," you say without actually bothering to smile. You're pretty content, though. Usually, system scans involve being rushed in and out of the machine as well as having to change in a separate locker room. "I've been meaning to ask, but where's Shiloh?"
Her husband shrugs. "Beats me. I presume something came up. As long as one of us is here, it doesn't matter much. Well, no sense lingering here. Why don't we--"
The receptionist from earlier -- you never did get her name -- interrupts with something you don't really catch, but it's important enough to draw Gideon away from the moment. He indicates that you two should go ahead without him, so you do. Tim ushers you back to the... um, the lab? The experiment room? What do they even call that place?
You ask as much.
Tim seems unusually thoughtful. "To be honest, we've just been calling it 'the room,' but that does feel all dim and ominous." It seems like he's open to suggestions, but you don't have anything better.
Hopping up on the bed, you're surprised at how comfortable it actually is. From looking at it, you would have guessed that the cushion on it was stiffer and with less give. You let yourself collapse into its contours, adjusting your neck a little to find a slightly better angle for your head. Soon enough, Tim's ready to give you that headpiece and he instructs you on how to put it on, which is as simple as it sounds. You settle in and close your eyes, doing your best to mimic what you saw Gideon do earlier. It's almost the same thing you did minutes earlier for the system scan, and it's easy enough to fall back into that meditative calm.
With that, you're ready to start. He kicks you off with a countdown, right about when Gideon arrives. "This session will begin in ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. The session begins."
There's a sort of flicker of discontinuity, similar to the moment of transposition you experience upon waking up after falling unconscious, but much less disorienting than the sensation that greeted you when you opened your eyes after Level Upper. The surroundings are much more agreeable, as well. Instead of a hospital ceiling, you're looking out across a beach that stretches out as far as you can see. Your bare feet press into the sand as the rhythm of the ocean caresses your ears.
You look to your left and see Tim in a similar getup but with shorter hair. "Aren't you amazed by the sensory fidelity?"
Hold on, something important is missing here. Ashen-faced, you fall down into your best modesty-guarding position. "It would have been nice if you'd warned me, or gave me some clothes!" you yell.
Gideon's disembodied voice sounds from nowhere, sounding unimpressed. "You didn't warn her? Really?"
Tim speaks again, and it's pretty unsettling because he sounds like he's talking from two different locations at once. The other half, you assume, is where the real Tim is in relation to your physical body. "It slipped my mind, I'm embarrassed to say. It's been so long since we've had to deal with this particular, ah, jarring transition."
Looking closer, there's something remarkably wooden about the digital Tim. He doesn't seem to adopt any mannerisms at all when he talks, and his eyes have stayed glued to your own with all the vigor of the staring contest World Champion.
"Sorry about that, Ruiko," Gideon says. "Rest assured that we aren't seeing anything at this point aside from your brain activity. We're not recording anything visual, either."
The tension bleeds out of your shoulders and you let your arms sag down. As you plant your knee into the sand to stand back up, you realize that Tim isn't wrong at all. The 'sensory fidelity,' as he put it, is pretty damn impressive. "I have so many questions, but I should probably start by asking why I'm not wearing clothes when the two of you don't seem to have that problem?"
"I can answer that," Tim says to your slight annoyance. Oh well, I might as well get used to that weird sound thing sooner instead of later. "We'd discovered that if you leave the mind to its own devices, it will introduce a very distorted and inaccurate vision of the body, and this can carry negative consequences. To get around this, we impose a digital model so that you get to wake up in a body that's actually yours. The downside, as you've experienced, is that these models aren't pre-clothed."
Wait a minute. You poke your body experimentally. "You're saying that there's a naked digital model of me in some database?"
"Not just of you," Tim explains. "Academy City has one stored away for every student. In fact, composing that model is one of the built-in functions of the system scanner itself and has been for the last eight years or so. It's all rather unsettling, but I'm not aware of any abuses. The body you're in now is the very same as your real body was twenty minutes ago during your last system scan. The human body can undergo radical changes over six months at our age, and we don't want to put you in a body that' no longer yours."
That explained some things, but you still have questions. "Why all the concern for physical form in the first place?"
This time, it's Gideon who answers. "It's a variable to control. Past research has shown that your physical body has some impact on power development, but it's been pretty bad at quantifying exactly what that impact is. There's a lot of groping in the dark going on here, but that's AIM research for you. Academy City loves to talk about how its study of esper abilities has been grounded in solid scientific principle, but the truth is that we have a decent understanding of _how_ things work, but very little about _why_ they do."
"Next question. Gideon, you were in a library." And in clothes, but one thing at a time. "Why am I on a beach?"
"Not on a beach," Tim corrects, "on the Beach. For reasons that confound us, this Beach seems to be some universal constant shared by every person that we've tested Graywire with. We haven't been able to determine whether it's a product of our process, a consequence of the power development program, or some bizarre expression of the essential human psyche. Suffice to say, it's a question that's beyond our scope at the moment."
You frown. "Was the library a program that you ran?"
Tim laughs. "More like a program that Gideon wrote. But before I explain, let's use that exact principle to get you some cover. Are you a lucid dreamer, by any chance, Ruiko?"
"No, I, uh, don't think so? I'm not too clear on what that means, though."
"A lucid dream is a phenomenon where the dreamer maintains awareness throughout the course of a dream and is able to assume control of what happens but interposing his or her own will on it," Tim explains. "Think of it like the vividness of a regular dream mated to the responsiveness of a daytime fantasy. This probably isn't something you've experienced, or you'd immediately know what I mean. No matter, though, because it's simple enough to grasp in execution."
You're pretty sure you know what he's getting at. "You're saying that this operates like a lucid dream?"
"It's a close approximation," he agrees. "Events will unfold realistically, unless you focus yourself and alter the premise. Right now, the premise of the simulation is that you're not wearing clothes. Try to change that."
"Okay then," you say to nobody in particular, work cut out for you. I wish I were wearing clothes.
Nothing happens.
Of course it's not that simple, you think with a mental sigh. Let's try that again. Right about now, you really wish you were an esper; they must have a more intuitive grasp on how to make weird things happen using the power of their minds. Naturally, the next thing you do is to try and use your own stillborn ability.
"Oh my," Gideon says.
"That's really quite impressive," Tim adds.
You're still not wearing clothes. "What? What happened?"
"Do you remember what I told you yesterday about the imprint left by Level Upper?" Gideon asks.
"Uh-huh."
You hear what sounds like a deep breath. "I've never seen the relevant synaptic paths lit up so clearly before as they were when you tried to use your ability just now. Never once. This truly is incredible. As your power blossoms with practice, we'll be able to track precise changes as they manifest. This is the kind of data that researches have dreamed about for the last 40 years, but there's been no way of obtaining it. Short of jamming electrodes directly into the brain, I suppose." A pause. "I don't think anybody's done that."
"That's nice," you say, quite distracted. I think... I think I might have it. You're focusing on a particularly expensive outfit that you remember from the last time you were window shopping at Myrdal. The proximity of the beach might have been what brought it to mind to begin with, but it is a very beach-suited ensemble: a light yellow shirt in Espace's trademark style and a fetching pair of white capris with a tropical pattern woven into the fibers down towards the almost-ankles. As you dwell on it more, the details seem to fill out and it gets closer to reality. Suddenly, it pops into existence like it'd been there from the beginning, still on a featureless white mannequin. You rush over to balance it before it can fall over into the sand.
That was surprisingly straightforward. I guess I should have tried to picture the clothes on me instead of recreating the memory exactly, though. "Okay, I think I'm getting the hang of this. What should I do next?"
"That's entirely up to you," Tim says, "the possibilities are very nearly endless. Perhaps you should try creating people?"
"Wait, what?" That catches you off-guard. "You can do that? I can do that?!"
"Sure, it's fully within the capability of this system. You could also practice detail work, if you want."
[ ] Play baseball
[ ] Try to recreate your room
[ ] Make a functioning copy of yourself
[ ] Make a jet and fly it
[ ] Start recreating scenes from your favorite shows
[ ] Write-in
Saten Ruiko
Current Mood: Curious
QM's Corner
I never thought I'd reach the point where 2500 words would be a "short update," but here we are! I could have gone further easily, but this felt like a very natural juncture to pause things for a vote. (Plus, it lets me update tonight.) I'm fairly happy with this one, which is another definite plus.
Dr. Naidoo -- Tim -- laughs gently. "Not quite. First, we'll need to do a quick system scan to establish a firm baseline. Unless, of course, you've had one very recently."
"You have the equipment for that here?" you ask in legitimate surprise. It's expensive stuff, and often a chore to get your turn with. Students are guaranteed a free system scan once every six months, courtesy of their school, but many of them pay for additional testing at their Power Development Center of choice. After all, going up a level only pays off when you're certified.
Gideon nods. "We haven't gotten much use from it, but we actually got it on the cheap from another lab that was being shut down. It's only the core component, but we won't be needing any of the fancy stuff."
"I should be happy about a free scan," you muse, "but there's not much suspense when you already know the result."
The two men lead you down a couple hallways to an unmarked door. Tim points to another next to it. "I'll be in the next room, running it remotely. I'm going to assume that you know the drill: just give me the signal when you're ready. Take all the time you need. Everything you'll need will be in the cabinet, including towels and a hairdryer."
Inside, the room is relatively spacious. The tile floor and spartan bench make it look almost like a high-class locker room, with the lockers replaced by a row of homely-looking wooden cabinets. On the opposite side is the main attraction: the scanner itself. It resembles a jacuzzi or a large bathtub in shape, though without a hint of porcelain that you'd expect from those. Instead, it's a cool ash gray. The exterior isn't very telling, as the only things to gave away the advanced nature of the machine are the control display on the front and a single button inside of it.
The first thing you do is hit a button on the controls to start filling the basin with water. You spare a quick look to check the temperature, but it doesn't need to be adjusted. While that's in process, you begin to disrobe, making sure to carefully fold your dress before setting it down on the bench. Once you've stripped completely, you put on a breathing mask with an attached earpiece -- waterproof, it's safe to assume -- and softly fall back into the pleasantly warm pool, allowing yourself to slowly sink as you spread out your limbs around you. Without looking, you feel the ridges of the submerged button with your right hand and allow your fingertips to rest above it.
You inhale deeply, enjoying the increased oxygen content of the mix you're breathing through your mask. All the while, you meditate and retreat into yourself the way you've been trained to do, focusing on that part of your awareness that seems to only exist thanks to the power development program. It's something like a void or an emptiness for Level Zeroes like yourself, but it's no less real and no harder to discover. There's nothing you can do you with it, so you just travel back and forth along its extent, like an echo sounding in a cave. When you feel that you've truly centered yourself on it, you press the button.
The machine buzzes and whirs for a moment -- the sound distorted by the water -- and a tingle races along your spine as you shiver involuntarily. You continue to trace the boundaries of your own absent power until Tim's voice comes through the earpiece letting you know that the process has been completed. From there, all that's left to do is to dry off and slip your clothes back on. That hairdryer comes in handy (even if it's a chintzy piece of trash that whines like a banshee) and for the first time, you notice that there's no mirror. Glad I don't care about cosmetics.
It's a good five minutes before you're out, hair still damp-ish and clingy. The other two are waiting outside, passing the time in conversation. Tim's saying something about cellular regeneration that you missed the context for, but they happily break it off.
Gideon waves a stapled document he's holding good-naturedly. "Did you enjoy the first part of your spa treatment? We're moving on to the pedicure next."
A joke, plain as day, but the siren song of getting paid lofts blissfully through your thoughts, conscious and not. A pedicure may very well be in your future. "I'm all smiles," you say without actually bothering to smile. You're pretty content, though. Usually, system scans involve being rushed in and out of the machine as well as having to change in a separate locker room. "I've been meaning to ask, but where's Shiloh?"
Her husband shrugs. "Beats me. I presume something came up. As long as one of us is here, it doesn't matter much. Well, no sense lingering here. Why don't we--"
The receptionist from earlier -- you never did get her name -- interrupts with something you don't really catch, but it's important enough to draw Gideon away from the moment. He indicates that you two should go ahead without him, so you do. Tim ushers you back to the... um, the lab? The experiment room? What do they even call that place?
You ask as much.
Tim seems unusually thoughtful. "To be honest, we've just been calling it 'the room,' but that does feel all dim and ominous." It seems like he's open to suggestions, but you don't have anything better.
Hopping up on the bed, you're surprised at how comfortable it actually is. From looking at it, you would have guessed that the cushion on it was stiffer and with less give. You let yourself collapse into its contours, adjusting your neck a little to find a slightly better angle for your head. Soon enough, Tim's ready to give you that headpiece and he instructs you on how to put it on, which is as simple as it sounds. You settle in and close your eyes, doing your best to mimic what you saw Gideon do earlier. It's almost the same thing you did minutes earlier for the system scan, and it's easy enough to fall back into that meditative calm.
With that, you're ready to start. He kicks you off with a countdown, right about when Gideon arrives. "This session will begin in ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. The session begins."
There's a sort of flicker of discontinuity, similar to the moment of transposition you experience upon waking up after falling unconscious, but much less disorienting than the sensation that greeted you when you opened your eyes after Level Upper. The surroundings are much more agreeable, as well. Instead of a hospital ceiling, you're looking out across a beach that stretches out as far as you can see. Your bare feet press into the sand as the rhythm of the ocean caresses your ears.
You look to your left and see Tim in a similar getup but with shorter hair. "Aren't you amazed by the sensory fidelity?"
Hold on, something important is missing here. Ashen-faced, you fall down into your best modesty-guarding position. "It would have been nice if you'd warned me, or gave me some clothes!" you yell.
Gideon's disembodied voice sounds from nowhere, sounding unimpressed. "You didn't warn her? Really?"
Tim speaks again, and it's pretty unsettling because he sounds like he's talking from two different locations at once. The other half, you assume, is where the real Tim is in relation to your physical body. "It slipped my mind, I'm embarrassed to say. It's been so long since we've had to deal with this particular, ah, jarring transition."
Looking closer, there's something remarkably wooden about the digital Tim. He doesn't seem to adopt any mannerisms at all when he talks, and his eyes have stayed glued to your own with all the vigor of the staring contest World Champion.
"Sorry about that, Ruiko," Gideon says. "Rest assured that we aren't seeing anything at this point aside from your brain activity. We're not recording anything visual, either."
The tension bleeds out of your shoulders and you let your arms sag down. As you plant your knee into the sand to stand back up, you realize that Tim isn't wrong at all. The 'sensory fidelity,' as he put it, is pretty damn impressive. "I have so many questions, but I should probably start by asking why I'm not wearing clothes when the two of you don't seem to have that problem?"
"I can answer that," Tim says to your slight annoyance. Oh well, I might as well get used to that weird sound thing sooner instead of later. "We'd discovered that if you leave the mind to its own devices, it will introduce a very distorted and inaccurate vision of the body, and this can carry negative consequences. To get around this, we impose a digital model so that you get to wake up in a body that's actually yours. The downside, as you've experienced, is that these models aren't pre-clothed."
Wait a minute. You poke your body experimentally. "You're saying that there's a naked digital model of me in some database?"
"Not just of you," Tim explains. "Academy City has one stored away for every student. In fact, composing that model is one of the built-in functions of the system scanner itself and has been for the last eight years or so. It's all rather unsettling, but I'm not aware of any abuses. The body you're in now is the very same as your real body was twenty minutes ago during your last system scan. The human body can undergo radical changes over six months at our age, and we don't want to put you in a body that' no longer yours."
That explained some things, but you still have questions. "Why all the concern for physical form in the first place?"
This time, it's Gideon who answers. "It's a variable to control. Past research has shown that your physical body has some impact on power development, but it's been pretty bad at quantifying exactly what that impact is. There's a lot of groping in the dark going on here, but that's AIM research for you. Academy City loves to talk about how its study of esper abilities has been grounded in solid scientific principle, but the truth is that we have a decent understanding of _how_ things work, but very little about _why_ they do."
"Next question. Gideon, you were in a library." And in clothes, but one thing at a time. "Why am I on a beach?"
"Not on a beach," Tim corrects, "on the Beach. For reasons that confound us, this Beach seems to be some universal constant shared by every person that we've tested Graywire with. We haven't been able to determine whether it's a product of our process, a consequence of the power development program, or some bizarre expression of the essential human psyche. Suffice to say, it's a question that's beyond our scope at the moment."
You frown. "Was the library a program that you ran?"
Tim laughs. "More like a program that Gideon wrote. But before I explain, let's use that exact principle to get you some cover. Are you a lucid dreamer, by any chance, Ruiko?"
"No, I, uh, don't think so? I'm not too clear on what that means, though."
"A lucid dream is a phenomenon where the dreamer maintains awareness throughout the course of a dream and is able to assume control of what happens but interposing his or her own will on it," Tim explains. "Think of it like the vividness of a regular dream mated to the responsiveness of a daytime fantasy. This probably isn't something you've experienced, or you'd immediately know what I mean. No matter, though, because it's simple enough to grasp in execution."
You're pretty sure you know what he's getting at. "You're saying that this operates like a lucid dream?"
"It's a close approximation," he agrees. "Events will unfold realistically, unless you focus yourself and alter the premise. Right now, the premise of the simulation is that you're not wearing clothes. Try to change that."
"Okay then," you say to nobody in particular, work cut out for you. I wish I were wearing clothes.
Nothing happens.
Of course it's not that simple, you think with a mental sigh. Let's try that again. Right about now, you really wish you were an esper; they must have a more intuitive grasp on how to make weird things happen using the power of their minds. Naturally, the next thing you do is to try and use your own stillborn ability.
"Oh my," Gideon says.
"That's really quite impressive," Tim adds.
You're still not wearing clothes. "What? What happened?"
"Do you remember what I told you yesterday about the imprint left by Level Upper?" Gideon asks.
"Uh-huh."
You hear what sounds like a deep breath. "I've never seen the relevant synaptic paths lit up so clearly before as they were when you tried to use your ability just now. Never once. This truly is incredible. As your power blossoms with practice, we'll be able to track precise changes as they manifest. This is the kind of data that researches have dreamed about for the last 40 years, but there's been no way of obtaining it. Short of jamming electrodes directly into the brain, I suppose." A pause. "I don't think anybody's done that."
"That's nice," you say, quite distracted. I think... I think I might have it. You're focusing on a particularly expensive outfit that you remember from the last time you were window shopping at Myrdal. The proximity of the beach might have been what brought it to mind to begin with, but it is a very beach-suited ensemble: a light yellow shirt in Espace's trademark style and a fetching pair of white capris with a tropical pattern woven into the fibers down towards the almost-ankles. As you dwell on it more, the details seem to fill out and it gets closer to reality. Suddenly, it pops into existence like it'd been there from the beginning, still on a featureless white mannequin. You rush over to balance it before it can fall over into the sand.
That was surprisingly straightforward. I guess I should have tried to picture the clothes on me instead of recreating the memory exactly, though. "Okay, I think I'm getting the hang of this. What should I do next?"
"That's entirely up to you," Tim says, "the possibilities are very nearly endless. Perhaps you should try creating people?"
"Wait, what?" That catches you off-guard. "You can do that? I can do that?!"
"Sure, it's fully within the capability of this system. You could also practice detail work, if you want."
[ ] Play baseball
[ ] Try to recreate your room
[ ] Make a functioning copy of yourself
[ ] Make a jet and fly it
[ ] Start recreating scenes from your favorite shows
[ ] Write-in
Saten Ruiko
Current Mood: Curious
QM's Corner
I never thought I'd reach the point where 2500 words would be a "short update," but here we are! I could have gone further easily, but this felt like a very natural juncture to pause things for a vote. (Plus, it lets me update tonight.) I'm fairly happy with this one, which is another definite plus.
Last edited:
[X] Make a fuctioning copy of yourself
Hmm... Baseballs a little slow for a team of Ruiko's to play... Beach Volley Ball, Football/Soccer, or Basketball sound good. What does everyone else think?
Also need to keep in mind she's working with other versions of herself. The prediction/nigh-precog shenanigans compel me to get her to try it.
Hmm... Baseballs a little slow for a team of Ruiko's to play... Beach Volley Ball, Football/Soccer, or Basketball sound good. What does everyone else think?
Also need to keep in mind she's working with other versions of herself. The prediction/nigh-precog shenanigans compel me to get her to try it.
Typo/missing word.
blindvi1
The one who shall purge the heresy of the wicked
- Location
- USA, and Academy City in another life
hmmmm les see.
{x} Write in.
Manifest that Misaka clone you ran into earlier and try to better understand her from your last encounter. Or create your friends and see what your psyche really can do.
{x} Write in.
Manifest that Misaka clone you ran into earlier and try to better understand her from your last encounter. Or create your friends and see what your psyche really can do.
[X] Make a fuctioning copy of yourself
I wanna see how Ruiko's Psyche handles herself. Is there a difference in how she really is to how she sees herself. Will the copy look just like her or rather how she pictures herself? Is the personality created from how she thinks she acts or how she actually acts, or from her subconscious? After that we can try creating artificial representations of our friends or the people we know.
I wanna see how Ruiko's Psyche handles herself. Is there a difference in how she really is to how she sees herself. Will the copy look just like her or rather how she pictures herself? Is the personality created from how she thinks she acts or how she actually acts, or from her subconscious? After that we can try creating artificial representations of our friends or the people we know.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
[x] Start recreating scenes from your favorite shows
Let's not start off with existentially terrifying things.
Let's not start off with existentially terrifying things.
- Pronouns
- she/her
[X] Make a fuctioning copy of yourself
75% Certain
25% horse thief
mfw I realize that the idiotic typo in your votes was my own
Bonus Interlude
75% Certain
25% horse thief
Bonus Interlude
District 14, Academy City, 08/05/1988
Just when all hope seemed lost, the old man finally decided that he had better things to do than waste all of Aomi's valuable time. "It's been a pleasure, Yanagisaki-san. Perhaps you can entertain me again with your stories the next time!" He tilted his glass in admiration, the staying of his balding head betraying his mild inebriation.
"Annoying bastard," Yanagasaki Aomi muttered. She disliked hobnobbing in general, but spending time with foreign ambassadors at one of their obnoxious galas was the worst by far. Pulling uncomfortably at the strap of her dress, she forged a trail back to the table where her companions were waiting.
Adam Everett III greeted her with an ironic repeat of the man's parting gesture. "For a moment there, I thought you were going to tell the Japanese ambassador that he could fuck off."
She took a seat, brushing her long brown hair out from between her back and the chair. "It's a tempting thought, but I do kind of feel sorry for him. Those empty suits on the A-Row spend so much time being ignored by important people that they're practically weeping with joy that anyone would deign speak with them at all. Just by virtue of being with Judgment, I'm probably the closest thing to a civic authority that he's dealt with in a week."
"Yeah, I've always wondered about these guys," Adam said tepidly. "What's the point in sending an Ambassador to the city in the first place when all the important deals are handled through AGORA or through corporations? Are they just a bunch of useless bureaucrats being put out to pasture?"
Aomi tilted her head and offered a bittersweet smile of consolation. "Aww, little Adam's finally come around to the cynical side."
"I'm already 14," Adam scoffed. "And how old were the students who started Justice again, hmmm?"
Probably not the best argument he could have made, but Aomi wasn't very inclined to pursue the subject. "Look," she said, pointing at a face in the crowd.
This was enough to pull Sogiita Gunha out of his dessert-buffet-induced trance to figure out who Aomi was indicating. Adam's own "Who?" was much less convincing. He clearly tried to be nonspecific, but it was still straightforward enough to trigger her bullshit-detection power.
"Come on," she said with a gently delivered nudge. "It's Cairo. You should get up, go talk to her."
"I don't know what you're implying," Adam deadpanned in a way that meant he knew exactly what she was implying, "but I hardly see the point. Look at her: she's precisely where she belongs, doing the very thing that we made her to do. I think that we should make the call to draw a line between pleasure and professionalism, no?"
Gunha nodded sagely between bites of cake. "It takes guts to deny oneself in the face of duty."
Adam gave him a sour look. "I'm not 'denying' anything."
"Hmm, I wonder," Aomi sing-songed. "She's pretty cute." It wasn't a lie. The image of an attractive girl sobbing in a wheelchair had done wonders when it came to making her into a symbol, and it was thanks to her looks that her iconic status hadn't been left behind with the now-unneeded hardware. Even now, the redhead was being more-or-less mobbed by attendees hopping to share words with her. Amazingly enough, the girl didn't seem to mind. Unlike Aomi herself, Cairo looked to genuinely enjoy every single conversation, no matter how brief of superfluous. It was probably thanks to her magnetism that Aomi hadn't been hounded down more herself.
For a moment, Aomi wondered if Yotsuba had taken any of this into account before making her into her first cause celebré. Surely, with that power of hers, she would have known. What a morbid line of thought, she chided herself. Even in the most bleak take she could manage, there wasn't a universe where Yotsuba didn't take up Cairo's cause after the girl was injured in the line of work with the Student Emergency Response Organization. It was the perfect storm of injustice and self-interest: simply too much and too good to even consider passing on.
Adam put on a front of indifference. "She's cute, but there are plenty of cute girls. I don't think I need to be worried about my odds. Besides, even I've heard about the cold war she's caused over in SERO. I'm sure you have too, since Rev hasn't exactly been tight-lipped about the stories he's been told. I think the verdict on Cairo Esolen is that she's 100% more trouble than she's worth."
"Oh, come now," Aomi gracefully chided, "you know there's more to her than just a pretty face. She's probably the only girl in this city without even a hint of guile. That makes her quite a catch" -- she had certainly been a 'catch' for Justice -- "and I think that'd go double for you. Just imagine, a girlfriend that you'd never have to worry about her saying one thing while thinking another, even accidentally. I know your control has improved," Aomi added, "but leaks happen accidentally even to the best."
"It's really annoying how you're not wrong," Adam grumped. "I suppose you'd know a thing or two about the romantic hurdles that telapaths face, since you're close to two of the best. And yes, I see that smirk, I'm totally confident when i put myself up there with the best. Even ACES agrees, and you know just as well as I do that they have me under at least two others who I can easily outdo. Anyway, where was I?"
"You were telling me how I was right," Aomi helpfully supplied.
He spared a dismissive wave. "Not wrong and right are two very different things. It's nice to have a girlfriend who I wouldn't need to worry about, but I'd much rather have one who I couldn't read at all. People deserve to have their secrets, and if you're going our with someone, you should be able to trust them with at least that much."
Aomi smirked. "Should I tell Yotsuba you're in the market?"
Adam rolled his eyes. "And interfere with whatever that thing/not-thing she has going on with Rena? I wouldn't dream of it. It wouldn't surprise me if it turns out that she keeps that circus going just to scare off any suitors. And, I suppose, suitettes. She's pretty good at the strategic use of mixed messages. After all, what could be more of a mixed message than Juctice?"
"I think it's pretty straightforward," Gunha said.
"You would," Adam shot back.
Considering what Gunha knew about Justice and what he didn't, it was actually a pretty fair mistake for him to make. He wasn't exactly kept in in the loop. "You do realize that Yotsuba didn't create Juctice, right? Do we need to round up an emergency remedial history course for you? I can do it!" Aomi offered magnanimously.
"Yes, I'm aware of the bleedingly obvious, thank you. The point is that we're only what we are today because of her."
Aomi laughed. "Just checking~. Speaking of checking, I can go and ask Cairo if she's in to younger guys for you!"
Adam's expression sunk. "You don't need to do that. Or rather, please don't do that."
That was about when Aomi's phone rang inside of her bag. "Hello?"
"Aomi," came the feminine voice on the other end, "it's Lee. We've gotten a tip that I think you'll want to hear about. It involves Kakine Teitoku."
Her eyes narrowed at the name. "Please tell me it involves his funeral arrangements."
That picked up the attention of both of her companions, each of whom knew that there were very few who would warrant a remark like that. She could feel Adam's ability touch at her defenses, a polite knock that she knew was an unspoken request to let him listen in on the call. Aomi looked around quickly for anyone else capable of taking advantage of an opening before obliging.
"I only wish," Lee replied. "Word is that he's involved in a major fight with someone else in a D10 laboratory."
"Didn't the SAI effectively create him, and isn't that supposed to be in 10?" Aomi wondered aloud, before dismissing it. "No matter. What's more concerning is the previous part. You're sure that they said 'someone else,' singular?"
"Absolutely, though they could have been wrong. The report could also have been deliberately misleading, or outright false. It's happened before. However, the call came into Serious Business line, so I'm inclined to view it as fundamentally credible."
Aomi swore. "There are only a handful of people in this city capable of giving that man a real fight at all. It could be Awaki, but I would think that she'd just kill him immediately rather than let the battle play out. Obviously Accelerator is a possibility, but when was the last time you remember hearing about him in any sense other than 'vague potential threat'? The kid doesn't do anything -- thankfully -- and why would he break his silence now, like this? No, it's more likely someone like Railgun or the Meltdowner. I kind of hope it's--"
"Aomi," Lee interrupted, "this thing isn't past-tense. They're going at it right now. You're out with Gunha, and you know what needs to happen."
"Well, fuck. Send the location to my phone."
"Already have," Lee said. "I'll leave everything to else to you."
Aomi sprang to action. "Gunha, we're going now. Top-level threat and all that."
"Wait, wait, wait," Adam interjected, "you're going with him?!"
"You sure as hell aren't," Aomi countered, "unless you've learned to reliably slip through the defenses of a Level Five without telling me."
"You're just as squishy as I am!"
"Keep it down," Aomi insisted, "we don't want to make a scene. Squishy or not, my ability isn't influenced by mental defenses, and I'll have Gunha to protect me."
"Your ability is useless in combat, and the last time Gunha fought Kakine Teitoku, he lost."
"That was a fluke," Gunha said with confidence but with an air of seriosuness in place of his typical braggadocio. "He caught me off-guard with some things, and now I know what tricks he likes to use. More importantly, I'm absolutely positive that he doesn't understand my ability enough."
Adam still wasn't convinced. "You don't understand your ability enough!"
Aomi, for her part, was done with his objections. "Shut up, Adam. This is happening, and Gunha can only carry one passenger comfortably at high speed. Stay here, show the flag, and be ready to act if this sparks off anything big. Understood?"
"Yes m'am," he said through ground teeth, before visibly resigning himself. "Good luck, and please, be careful. I don't want to explain to Yotsuba how we had to reassemble your body from thousands of tiny cubes."
For her part, Aomi wasn't about to take Kakine Teitoku lightly. She hadn't been there for what had happened to ITEM when that group had clashed with Teitoku on that awful day -- like most of Justice, she'd been trapped underground and unable to help -- but she'd heard about how he cut through them like a reaper's scythe, leaving a sole survivor between his efforts and those of Skill-Out's too-heavily-armed thugs.
Frankly, she couldn't fault Mugino Shizuri for believing that Justice had betrayed ITEM by luring them into such a vicious trap. If Justice had been the half of their joint operation to be massacred, she'd doubtlessly hate ITEM to this day. Which would be worse, an avenging rampage courtesy of the Metldowner herself, or having to deal with whatever headache a Misaka Mikoto reemergence would surely bring?
One way to find out.
QM's Corner
A wild bonus interlude appeared! I'm not going to make a habit of these, but here we are. Looking back over it, this one's shockingly heavy in rather important implications. You can probably start putting together your own conspiricy theories and they'd have a respectable chance of being accurate.
If the name 'Yanagasaki Aomi' is familiar, that means you were paying attention to minor characters in Railgun. She's nominally assigned to the 177th Branch Office, but is only ever seen doing anything Judgment-related when she leads the charge during the phenomenally-stupid second-season finale. Given that my own interpretation of her was set in stone well before that aired, it's bitterly ironic that it's still 100% consistent with what we saw there.
The next update is still on track; this hasn't delayed me at all.
District 14, Academy City, 08/05/1988
Just when all hope seemed lost, the old man finally decided that he had better things to do than waste all of Aomi's valuable time. "It's been a pleasure, Yanagisaki-san. Perhaps you can entertain me again with your stories the next time!" He tilted his glass in admiration, the staying of his balding head betraying his mild inebriation.
"Annoying bastard," Yanagasaki Aomi muttered. She disliked hobnobbing in general, but spending time with foreign ambassadors at one of their obnoxious galas was the worst by far. Pulling uncomfortably at the strap of her dress, she forged a trail back to the table where her companions were waiting.
Adam Everett III greeted her with an ironic repeat of the man's parting gesture. "For a moment there, I thought you were going to tell the Japanese ambassador that he could fuck off."
She took a seat, brushing her long brown hair out from between her back and the chair. "It's a tempting thought, but I do kind of feel sorry for him. Those empty suits on the A-Row spend so much time being ignored by important people that they're practically weeping with joy that anyone would deign speak with them at all. Just by virtue of being with Judgment, I'm probably the closest thing to a civic authority that he's dealt with in a week."
"Yeah, I've always wondered about these guys," Adam said tepidly. "What's the point in sending an Ambassador to the city in the first place when all the important deals are handled through AGORA or through corporations? Are they just a bunch of useless bureaucrats being put out to pasture?"
Aomi tilted her head and offered a bittersweet smile of consolation. "Aww, little Adam's finally come around to the cynical side."
"I'm already 14," Adam scoffed. "And how old were the students who started Justice again, hmmm?"
Probably not the best argument he could have made, but Aomi wasn't very inclined to pursue the subject. "Look," she said, pointing at a face in the crowd.
This was enough to pull Sogiita Gunha out of his dessert-buffet-induced trance to figure out who Aomi was indicating. Adam's own "Who?" was much less convincing. He clearly tried to be nonspecific, but it was still straightforward enough to trigger her bullshit-detection power.
"Come on," she said with a gently delivered nudge. "It's Cairo. You should get up, go talk to her."
"I don't know what you're implying," Adam deadpanned in a way that meant he knew exactly what she was implying, "but I hardly see the point. Look at her: she's precisely where she belongs, doing the very thing that we made her to do. I think that we should make the call to draw a line between pleasure and professionalism, no?"
Gunha nodded sagely between bites of cake. "It takes guts to deny oneself in the face of duty."
Adam gave him a sour look. "I'm not 'denying' anything."
"Hmm, I wonder," Aomi sing-songed. "She's pretty cute." It wasn't a lie. The image of an attractive girl sobbing in a wheelchair had done wonders when it came to making her into a symbol, and it was thanks to her looks that her iconic status hadn't been left behind with the now-unneeded hardware. Even now, the redhead was being more-or-less mobbed by attendees hopping to share words with her. Amazingly enough, the girl didn't seem to mind. Unlike Aomi herself, Cairo looked to genuinely enjoy every single conversation, no matter how brief of superfluous. It was probably thanks to her magnetism that Aomi hadn't been hounded down more herself.
For a moment, Aomi wondered if Yotsuba had taken any of this into account before making her into her first cause celebré. Surely, with that power of hers, she would have known. What a morbid line of thought, she chided herself. Even in the most bleak take she could manage, there wasn't a universe where Yotsuba didn't take up Cairo's cause after the girl was injured in the line of work with the Student Emergency Response Organization. It was the perfect storm of injustice and self-interest: simply too much and too good to even consider passing on.
Adam put on a front of indifference. "She's cute, but there are plenty of cute girls. I don't think I need to be worried about my odds. Besides, even I've heard about the cold war she's caused over in SERO. I'm sure you have too, since Rev hasn't exactly been tight-lipped about the stories he's been told. I think the verdict on Cairo Esolen is that she's 100% more trouble than she's worth."
"Oh, come now," Aomi gracefully chided, "you know there's more to her than just a pretty face. She's probably the only girl in this city without even a hint of guile. That makes her quite a catch" -- she had certainly been a 'catch' for Justice -- "and I think that'd go double for you. Just imagine, a girlfriend that you'd never have to worry about her saying one thing while thinking another, even accidentally. I know your control has improved," Aomi added, "but leaks happen accidentally even to the best."
"It's really annoying how you're not wrong," Adam grumped. "I suppose you'd know a thing or two about the romantic hurdles that telapaths face, since you're close to two of the best. And yes, I see that smirk, I'm totally confident when i put myself up there with the best. Even ACES agrees, and you know just as well as I do that they have me under at least two others who I can easily outdo. Anyway, where was I?"
"You were telling me how I was right," Aomi helpfully supplied.
He spared a dismissive wave. "Not wrong and right are two very different things. It's nice to have a girlfriend who I wouldn't need to worry about, but I'd much rather have one who I couldn't read at all. People deserve to have their secrets, and if you're going our with someone, you should be able to trust them with at least that much."
Aomi smirked. "Should I tell Yotsuba you're in the market?"
Adam rolled his eyes. "And interfere with whatever that thing/not-thing she has going on with Rena? I wouldn't dream of it. It wouldn't surprise me if it turns out that she keeps that circus going just to scare off any suitors. And, I suppose, suitettes. She's pretty good at the strategic use of mixed messages. After all, what could be more of a mixed message than Juctice?"
"I think it's pretty straightforward," Gunha said.
"You would," Adam shot back.
Considering what Gunha knew about Justice and what he didn't, it was actually a pretty fair mistake for him to make. He wasn't exactly kept in in the loop. "You do realize that Yotsuba didn't create Juctice, right? Do we need to round up an emergency remedial history course for you? I can do it!" Aomi offered magnanimously.
"Yes, I'm aware of the bleedingly obvious, thank you. The point is that we're only what we are today because of her."
Aomi laughed. "Just checking~. Speaking of checking, I can go and ask Cairo if she's in to younger guys for you!"
Adam's expression sunk. "You don't need to do that. Or rather, please don't do that."
That was about when Aomi's phone rang inside of her bag. "Hello?"
"Aomi," came the feminine voice on the other end, "it's Lee. We've gotten a tip that I think you'll want to hear about. It involves Kakine Teitoku."
Her eyes narrowed at the name. "Please tell me it involves his funeral arrangements."
That picked up the attention of both of her companions, each of whom knew that there were very few who would warrant a remark like that. She could feel Adam's ability touch at her defenses, a polite knock that she knew was an unspoken request to let him listen in on the call. Aomi looked around quickly for anyone else capable of taking advantage of an opening before obliging.
"I only wish," Lee replied. "Word is that he's involved in a major fight with someone else in a D10 laboratory."
"Didn't the SAI effectively create him, and isn't that supposed to be in 10?" Aomi wondered aloud, before dismissing it. "No matter. What's more concerning is the previous part. You're sure that they said 'someone else,' singular?"
"Absolutely, though they could have been wrong. The report could also have been deliberately misleading, or outright false. It's happened before. However, the call came into Serious Business line, so I'm inclined to view it as fundamentally credible."
Aomi swore. "There are only a handful of people in this city capable of giving that man a real fight at all. It could be Awaki, but I would think that she'd just kill him immediately rather than let the battle play out. Obviously Accelerator is a possibility, but when was the last time you remember hearing about him in any sense other than 'vague potential threat'? The kid doesn't do anything -- thankfully -- and why would he break his silence now, like this? No, it's more likely someone like Railgun or the Meltdowner. I kind of hope it's--"
"Aomi," Lee interrupted, "this thing isn't past-tense. They're going at it right now. You're out with Gunha, and you know what needs to happen."
"Well, fuck. Send the location to my phone."
"Already have," Lee said. "I'll leave everything to else to you."
Aomi sprang to action. "Gunha, we're going now. Top-level threat and all that."
"Wait, wait, wait," Adam interjected, "you're going with him?!"
"You sure as hell aren't," Aomi countered, "unless you've learned to reliably slip through the defenses of a Level Five without telling me."
"You're just as squishy as I am!"
"Keep it down," Aomi insisted, "we don't want to make a scene. Squishy or not, my ability isn't influenced by mental defenses, and I'll have Gunha to protect me."
"Your ability is useless in combat, and the last time Gunha fought Kakine Teitoku, he lost."
"That was a fluke," Gunha said with confidence but with an air of seriosuness in place of his typical braggadocio. "He caught me off-guard with some things, and now I know what tricks he likes to use. More importantly, I'm absolutely positive that he doesn't understand my ability enough."
Adam still wasn't convinced. "You don't understand your ability enough!"
Aomi, for her part, was done with his objections. "Shut up, Adam. This is happening, and Gunha can only carry one passenger comfortably at high speed. Stay here, show the flag, and be ready to act if this sparks off anything big. Understood?"
"Yes m'am," he said through ground teeth, before visibly resigning himself. "Good luck, and please, be careful. I don't want to explain to Yotsuba how we had to reassemble your body from thousands of tiny cubes."
For her part, Aomi wasn't about to take Kakine Teitoku lightly. She hadn't been there for what had happened to ITEM when that group had clashed with Teitoku on that awful day -- like most of Justice, she'd been trapped underground and unable to help -- but she'd heard about how he cut through them like a reaper's scythe, leaving a sole survivor between his efforts and those of Skill-Out's too-heavily-armed thugs.
Frankly, she couldn't fault Mugino Shizuri for believing that Justice had betrayed ITEM by luring them into such a vicious trap. If Justice had been the half of their joint operation to be massacred, she'd doubtlessly hate ITEM to this day. Which would be worse, an avenging rampage courtesy of the Metldowner herself, or having to deal with whatever headache a Misaka Mikoto reemergence would surely bring?
One way to find out.
QM's Corner
A wild bonus interlude appeared! I'm not going to make a habit of these, but here we are. Looking back over it, this one's shockingly heavy in rather important implications. You can probably start putting together your own conspiricy theories and they'd have a respectable chance of being accurate.
If the name 'Yanagasaki Aomi' is familiar, that means you were paying attention to minor characters in Railgun. She's nominally assigned to the 177th Branch Office, but is only ever seen doing anything Judgment-related when she leads the charge during the phenomenally-stupid second-season finale. Given that my own interpretation of her was set in stone well before that aired, it's bitterly ironic that it's still 100% consistent with what we saw there.
The next update is still on track; this hasn't delayed me at all.
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