How do you get a copy of Yugi and Atem?
By recording everything!
I wonder if there will be a duck version of this...
Pocket System
- Thread starter theaceoffire
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
By recording everything!
I wonder if there will be a duck version of this...
For some reason I thought there was going to be a sudden crossover with Taylor Varga here
16 characters
Sick and tired of being Sick and Tired
- Location
- Alta California
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I know it might be odd for this story, but I do recall it being a thing in Broken Adventure...is there any chance John or at least other portions of the main cast might go back to a prior realm at some point?
I feel like Jessica missing everything in the Minecraft realm, as well as it's enchanting and potion brewing(to my memory) being skipped would be a big downer if that was a permanent state of affairs.
I feel like Jessica missing everything in the Minecraft realm, as well as it's enchanting and potion brewing(to my memory) being skipped would be a big downer if that was a permanent state of affairs.
I think even if they could go back, they wouldn't return to Minecraft, regardless of whether the one they find has the same Horror or not...
16 characters
Sick and tired of being Sick and Tired
- Location
- Alta California
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I mean they have better safety measures now though as well?
Maybe it would help if we actually saw the letters back from these places occasionally.
Maybe it would help if we actually saw the letters back from these places occasionally.
Delayed update.
- Location
- Here
Don't forget to set your watches right for daylight savings time...
As for the story, it looks like John has gotten some good data from the tournament so far... Although I'm a little concerned about the fact that he's been handing out the holographic emitters, customized and enhanced versions, to the contestants.
I feel like this may lead to Future consequences.
Also for a off topic rant: If you're trying to prove that the pathetic ability you inherit is not that bad, pretending to have said ability while actually gaining something far more powerful does not accomplish that goal. Over 100 chapters into this stupid thing, and he keeps saying bullshit about proving that people shouldn't underestimate his ability or call it pathetic when it is pathetic and he stopped using it from day one! GAH!
...Sorry, it's just getting frustrating.
As for the story, it looks like John has gotten some good data from the tournament so far... Although I'm a little concerned about the fact that he's been handing out the holographic emitters, customized and enhanced versions, to the contestants.
I feel like this may lead to Future consequences.
Also for a off topic rant: If you're trying to prove that the pathetic ability you inherit is not that bad, pretending to have said ability while actually gaining something far more powerful does not accomplish that goal. Over 100 chapters into this stupid thing, and he keeps saying bullshit about proving that people shouldn't underestimate his ability or call it pathetic when it is pathetic and he stopped using it from day one! GAH!
...Sorry, it's just getting frustrating.
. . . . There's something that John doesn't use, that is pathetic, and he apparently keeps saying it's not?
I don't remember anything of that nature? Granted it's been a few months, so~ that's not surprising.
I don't remember anything of that nature? Granted it's been a few months, so~ that's not surprising.
{edit} Oh, wait... it mentioned it was an off topic rant, and I missed that part. Question replaced with... and what idiotic story is this that we should be avoiding now?
Last edited:
Stick the pre-edit bit inside of a spoiler block
- Location
- Here
It was a really badly translated foreign story, where everyone could unlock a class to fight monsters from another reality. You could either unlock the knight class by default or spend a whole bunch of money to get yourself a class change scroll when first Awakening.
The knight class is very basic, with increased physical abilities and slow growth, but very methodical and stable.
The other classes might grow faster, or specialize in certain areas, or have esoteric abilities, but everyone really looked down on the knight class as other options became available.
So throughout the whole damn story he keeps talking about how good the knight class could be, how people shouldn't underestimate him, yada yada yada...
But the whole fucking time he's unlocked a special system ability that not only tells you exactly how to upgrade your class into something more powerful but keeps track of all the sub milestones you need to hit along the way! He's like a half angel demonic summoner thing now or something, but keeps talking about how knights are better than what people think.
Well eff you asshole! A bunch of kids without superpower cheats are going to end up choosing the knight class after seeing your quote unquote example of becoming an all-powerful God, and they will literally become near slaves to the other people in society when they fail to make the same impossible changes you did!
Sheesh.
Hidden One
Not the Boss, possibly a Playa
- Location
- Sol;Terra;EU;D;NRW
@theaceoffire I feel your pain.
It is almost as bad as finding a new builder fic but then noticing that it hasnt updated in over a year, has a second book and that also stopped updating at the exact same time.
On the upside your muse is much much more kind to you then mine is to me, I get handed ideas like candy but I can't go past some notes since then I get showered with more new candy while the old candy tries to go staler then fossilised bread.
I would link some but most of them end up on QQ in the NSFW threads despite mostly being SFW simply due to activity levels. 'Only' tossed three into the buffy thread over there today.
It is almost as bad as finding a new builder fic but then noticing that it hasnt updated in over a year, has a second book and that also stopped updating at the exact same time.
On the upside your muse is much much more kind to you then mine is to me, I get handed ideas like candy but I can't go past some notes since then I get showered with more new candy while the old candy tries to go staler then fossilised bread.
I would link some but most of them end up on QQ in the NSFW threads despite mostly being SFW simply due to activity levels. 'Only' tossed three into the buffy thread over there today.
Friday again.
- Location
- Here
I was able to get going again today! WOO! Update will be on Friday, even if John is pouting a bit about things we should be good to go!
Hidden One
Not the Boss, possibly a Playa
- Location
- Sol;Terra;EU;D;NRW
So, what you are saying is that John is going to go down on friday.
Probably someone playing with the Self-Destruct Button.
I'm in the data… I'm in the data…
- Location
- Here
John happily hummed as he figuratively rolled in all of the new data. Turns out, letting the locals duel each other before (and during) the Tournament gave some WONDERFUL baselines for comparison to the actual competition itself!
So, long story short?
Dueling was similar to rock tumbling.
You get a bunch of Duelists, or 'rocks' in this scenario, and shove 'em together.
They then bounce and injure each other on a spiritual level, causing minute and minor amounts of Soul damage that causes them to recover STRONGER than they were before this process.
All the bits of spirituality that flakes off DURING the process is then absorbed and enhances both the Duel Monsters involved and the abilities of the players themselves.
How fascinating!
This was ALSO why the more powerful players both figuratively and in some cases LITERALLY crushed their opponents: When their rock smashed into others, they might crack or fracture the weaker foe without the usual grinding and sanding and smoothing process.
Fear of this danger was ALSO why some Duelists were avoided on a subconscious level.
All this was useful data in the end, and gave him some GREAT ideas for enjoying the benefits… WITHOUT the annoyances of constant game cheating and bullshit reality shenanigans.
In short: John was making a series of modules for his Pocket designed to be Soul Polishers.
The amount of benefit to individuals would be minor, MUCH less than an active Duel with your Soul on the line, but the enhancements would be both constant and painless. Something that could slowly boost his Sister and the girls without low level nightmares, subconscious trauma, or long term memory degeneration or corruption…
After all, not EVERYONE handled Soul modification well, and both Dueling and Shadow Realm Contests were NOT exact sciences… This could and DID go wrong with those occasionally.
Better to have stable and deliberate improvement in John's opinion, rather than the anime protagonist huge leaps of last minute moxie coming in to save the day.
Plus, NOW he could try playing this card game using fake proxies ENTIRELY, with actual rules in place to prevent cheating or 'unexpected consequences', and STILL benefit on some level like normal Duelists.
Just, you know, while getting to actually play the game fairly.
In theory.
Sadly, experiments so far have been frustrating.
At least SOME of the incredible joy of playing this game was due to the surges of pure happiness that came from advancing your Soul during the match… Without that, everything got MUCH more frustrating and technical.
Oh well, at least he got to have his fun… And the Amphibian Castle of the Frog Emperor was becoming something of a local tourist attraction too, which was neat.
Holo-John, after losing pretty badly to that Yugi kid, had declared as a 'reward' that the ongoing 'Froggy Castle Duel Monster Festival' event would become an ongoing weekend occurrence.
And that, aside from the many prizes already given out, much smaller badges, titles, trophies and other such things could be won over time until eventually NEXT year's Tournament would roll around, where Yugi would have to defend his newest title:
The 'Frog Prince of Games'.
Jessica had even crowned the new 'prince' with his own fluffy plush crown froggy hat, and his group of fangirl spellcasting Duel Monsters had declared him 'officially adorable' wearing the thing.
From what John could tell, a bunch of local kids seemed eager to challenge the new prince in next year's competition… Although whether or not they wanted to Duel or just win the admiration from all those Dark Magician Girls was up for debate.
Anyway, the castle would be bustling, renting out access to the holographic Dueling arenas for local competitors, acting as a weekend gathering spot and tourist attraction, and all sorts of things to keep the world distracted away from SPYRAL agent teams going out to kick bad guy butts.
But that was all HOLO-John's issue now… John himself was free from all that responsibility entirely! Nothing but science and research and… And…
…Damn this was boring. "How does sis do stuff like this ALL the time?"
His friend shrugged. "Croak."
Hmm. "Hey Pocket, could you take over this module building stuff?"
[[Efficiency would drop by over 97.3324% without oversight of the following projects…]]
John blinked. "That sounds… Bad."
[[The System suggests assigning said projects to the other USERS designated by HOST, to ensure efficient handling of said advancements.]]
Oh! Yeah, good point. "Pass the Soul Polishing module stuff to Grace, she likes handling anything involving defensive stuff or enhancement. The other projects, the ones covering Soul Cracking and Soul Collapse and all that, I'm pretty sure Temptation will want to be handing them."
[[Confirmed.]]
And as long as he was on the subject… "Set up some sort of project volunteer list too. I'm pretty sure either my sister, her agents, or my Soul citizens might want to get involved in some of my ongoing experiments… An updated list of all my personal taskings with short descriptive blurbs will let them know what they might want to get involved with in the future."
[[Generating 'Ongoing Project' list… Completed. Awaiting approval for publishing.]]
Huh? "Why not just put it out now?" John began looking over the… Oh! "REMOVE that! And those two! ANYTHING involving my relationships and dating plans and stuff!"
Like, HOLY SHIT man! You can't just… John hadn't intended THOSE things to be considered 'projects', and CERTAINLY didn't want them published to the freaking world! What the HECK!?
[[Revising the 'Ongoing Project' list…]]
His heart was still pounding. "Wipe the logs of that stuff too, Temptation would NEVER let me hear the end of this otherwise."
[[Confirmed.]]
Whoo.. Breathe in… Breathe out… "Thanks for checking for my approval first though. GREAT job on that, please do so in the future."
[[Confirmed.]]
That… That had been close to being VERY embarrassing. "I'm going to uh…" Anything, just as long as it would distract John. "...Check into what potential Realms we could travel to next."
That should be helpful, right? Most likely.
~~~Pocket System~~~
Temptation blinked. "Our master is done."
Grace paused. "I'm sorry?"
Her sister pulled up data. "He learned what he wanted to learn, tried a few more times to balance this stupid card game, made some prototypes for artificially enhancing the Soul… And then put up a bounty board for us and others to take over a bunch of projects and is ready to wipe his hands of this place."
Oh dear. "Did my changes to the Soul Defense module at least help a little?"
She wiggled a hand. "Sort of? It allowed Master to benefit to some degree occasionally rather than having 'unlucky events' happening each turn, but in the end the rules of the game turned out to be more of a loose framework than anything sturdy and reliable."
Darn, she'd hope her most recent changes to the defensive protocols would have had better results than that. "I'll give them another look over later… Now, let's see this 'Bounty Board'..."
Hmm. Messy. "Give me a moment, I'll reorganize this a little."
Sortable lists, the ability to filter tasks on said list to best fit the abilities of those looking at it, the ability to assign critical ratings for new tasks, an automated and calculated estimate of the REAL criticalness of the task, another list showing which tasks were about to reach 'dead ends' due to upcoming events or some other task conflicting with each other… "
There we go! "Oh this was a lovely idea! Now we can share tasks out with the whole family so we can all help when we get some spare time!"
Temptation snorted. "Mistress will NOT be putting any SPYRAL missions on there I hope, talk about terrible operational security."
Oh well, not THAT stuff. John's sister was VERY competent with her new job. "I mean unclassified taskings, like if we need someone to design new merchandise for one of your online stores or what have you. I'm sure the Lady already has her own internal mission board equivalent within her facilities."
…Though, just to be sure, she'd send her a note about this most recent change.
Her sister at least seemed intrigued by the new feature. "Why does our Master have five tasks dedicated to designing tastier Christmas stockings?"
Grace blinked. "One moment… System?"
[[In a prior Realm, HOST enjoyed a large supply of confiscated oversized holiday cloth footwear, known locally as 'Christmas Stockings'. The undocumented heavy metals within the materials were found to be 'quite yummy' by HOST.]]
…Huh. "May I try one?"
After all, they were originally Iron Golems and now beyond human Borg inspired beings. A bit of toxic holiday memorabilia wouldn't be that dangerous to consume, right?
[[HOST favorited one of the following samples of Christmas Sock, organized from most devoured to least consumed.]]
Oh those were a LOT of options…
Temptation was already sucking on a holiday stocking. "Mmm! Mmph mumphle mmmph mmm."
Sigh. "Please don't talk with your mouth full." Honestly girl, show some class!
~~~Pocket System~~~
Jessica blinked as her holographic twin started to giggle. "Wait, why DON'T we have a mission board!? That would cut my workload down by 13% easily!"
Her other self was already getting started. "At least for the low level missions. And we can restrict volunteering for various taskings by Agent proficiency levels… That way an infiltration specialist won't be able to sign up for an assault mission without being prepared with the proper skills."
She nodded. "A good chunk of the busy work would be out of our to-do pile this way… Get Agent P33 and P41 to over see that if you could."
A hum confirmed her acknowledgement as they both got busy.
After a moment, one of them glanced over at the other. "Did you see the footage of our little bro practicing his big 'Dueling' lines? The ones that Holo-John was using during the tournament?"
She blinked. "Hmm? No, send me the link."
…Oh my. "He is ADORABLE!"
They grinned at each other. "I know, right? 'By the power of fish scale, I HAVE THE POWER!' I wish he had been able to use that at some point, even if it is a little silly."
Jessica nodded at herself. "Meh, Thundercats was an awesome show." She glanced at he video server… "Are ALL these clips of him?"
She snorted. "Well, THIS playlist is… I'm afraid we have our OWN collection of snips though, thanks to our Agents being gossiping busybodies. As do John's girls and anyone who has been wandering about this castle."
Oh dear. "This is a LOT of content."
She shrugged at herself. "Turns out, our [[Home]] enjoys recording 'family videos' and uploading them herself… It will likely only get worse over time."
…Damn it. "That means there could be classified stuff mixed into this mess."
Her other self paused… Then frowned and nodded. "I'll assign an Agent to classify all new videos before being published, and a few teams to begin reviewing older material."
Jessica grumbled as she got on it as well. "I'll get a group to verify that any already exposed information hasn't been fully compromised, or at least a list or two of those who may have discovered the leaks already."
This was going to be a hassle, she just felt it in her bones.
~~~Pocket System~~~
John frowned at the potential options for the next Realm to visit. "This seems MUCH more complicated than the way we did it before."
[[The System has recovered by 8% towards full operational status, and Realm Traversal is no longer restricted to emergency functionality levels.]]
Wait. "So it was ALWAYS supposed to be like this in the first place?"
[[No. This is still the simplified user interface for untrained HOSTS. Until HOST has reached a certain level of competence and maturity, advanced features of the System remain in secured lockdown for HOST's own safety.]]
Lame! "I can TOTALLY act mature, you know!"
[[...Additional features shall remain secured at this time.]]
Fine, whatever. "So let's see here… This is us." He poked the glowing dot. "And this is where we've been…"
The other dots were connected by a line, except the line seemed to split and bleed and twist inside itself and all sorts of stuff. "We want to eventually make our way back to Jessica's Realm, which is all the way over HERE."
The start of the mapped Realms, which was both behind and WAY in front of John's current location. Because physics really didn't apply to this map. "Too bad we can't just skip all the middle bits and just head over directly."
[[Until the relative positioning of the Realm nodes is defined by HOST's pathway, the existence, positioning, movement, growth, and decay of other locations will remain in flux.]]
Yeah, yeah. "I know that, I'm just saying that it's annoying to be both too close AND too far away from our actual eventual destination."
Seriously, this was all much easier when he just needed to blindly fling his way whichever direction FELT most correct. This 'unlocked' method just felt like more work for the same results. "What are the red nodes? What do they represent?"
[[Red nodes are Realms that are as flexible if not more so than the recently visited 'Flintstone' Realm.]]
…Oh.
John shivered. "So… So avoid those. Got it. And the black ones?"
[[Do ǹ̷͜͡o̶͜t͞͏ ask about the black nodes, HOST.]]
He stared at nothing… Well, alright then. "Then I should aim for the other colors? What do they represent?"
[[Shades of Green: Realms of stability, with low levels of variability from their originating Prime Realm. Shades of Yellow: Realms that have merged from others at some point, and require some amount of caution. Shades of Pink: Avoid until HOST has accepted and reached biological and mental maturity in their sexuality. Shades of Blue: Realms that are fundamentally undefined until visited. Once visited, a subsection of these will be more properly assessed and correctly colored for future transits, or new colors may be defined entirely.]]
Well that seemed handy to know. "I'm feeling we need to go, uh… THIS way."
His thoughts marked a very twisted 'line' that brushed up against a LOT of nodes… And he subconsciously shifted it to better avoid the pink, red, and black dots. Still left a LONG path to getting back to his sister's place… Or a short path? It wasn't well defined honestly.
Meh, for now it was good enough. "How do I know which one of these I should go with?"
[[The System can only provide options. Attempting to coerce, influence, or direct the HOST directly can fabricate disastrous consequences. The HOST must select the next Realm for transit.]]
…Uh huh. "You just don't want to get blamed by my sister if our next stop turns out to be a hellhole."
[[...]]
Hmph. "Wuss."
[[Shall the System share the logs of this conversation with…?]]
EEP! "NO!" Cough. "No, no, we're good. Now let me get a look at our new options, shall I?"
Uh… Eenie, meeny, miny… This one? This one. "Does the shade of the yellow matter?"
[[Darker shades of color signify more intense adherence to their assigned category.]]
Oh.
And uh… that was a DARK yellow. "This place might be a bit much, do you think?"
[[The System can only provide options. Any and all directional decisions made by the HOST are beyond the System's perview.]]
Right, right, his Pocket wasn't going to give an opinion on any of this to avoid blame.
Meh. "This one next then, after sis gets all her stuff wrapped up here and we pass everything off to our holographic siblings."
After all, it was just a few Realms that had blurred together to become a tiny bit more yellow than normal.
How bad could it be?
So, long story short?
Dueling was similar to rock tumbling.
You get a bunch of Duelists, or 'rocks' in this scenario, and shove 'em together.
They then bounce and injure each other on a spiritual level, causing minute and minor amounts of Soul damage that causes them to recover STRONGER than they were before this process.
All the bits of spirituality that flakes off DURING the process is then absorbed and enhances both the Duel Monsters involved and the abilities of the players themselves.
How fascinating!
This was ALSO why the more powerful players both figuratively and in some cases LITERALLY crushed their opponents: When their rock smashed into others, they might crack or fracture the weaker foe without the usual grinding and sanding and smoothing process.
Fear of this danger was ALSO why some Duelists were avoided on a subconscious level.
All this was useful data in the end, and gave him some GREAT ideas for enjoying the benefits… WITHOUT the annoyances of constant game cheating and bullshit reality shenanigans.
In short: John was making a series of modules for his Pocket designed to be Soul Polishers.
The amount of benefit to individuals would be minor, MUCH less than an active Duel with your Soul on the line, but the enhancements would be both constant and painless. Something that could slowly boost his Sister and the girls without low level nightmares, subconscious trauma, or long term memory degeneration or corruption…
After all, not EVERYONE handled Soul modification well, and both Dueling and Shadow Realm Contests were NOT exact sciences… This could and DID go wrong with those occasionally.
Better to have stable and deliberate improvement in John's opinion, rather than the anime protagonist huge leaps of last minute moxie coming in to save the day.
Plus, NOW he could try playing this card game using fake proxies ENTIRELY, with actual rules in place to prevent cheating or 'unexpected consequences', and STILL benefit on some level like normal Duelists.
Just, you know, while getting to actually play the game fairly.
In theory.
Sadly, experiments so far have been frustrating.
At least SOME of the incredible joy of playing this game was due to the surges of pure happiness that came from advancing your Soul during the match… Without that, everything got MUCH more frustrating and technical.
Oh well, at least he got to have his fun… And the Amphibian Castle of the Frog Emperor was becoming something of a local tourist attraction too, which was neat.
Holo-John, after losing pretty badly to that Yugi kid, had declared as a 'reward' that the ongoing 'Froggy Castle Duel Monster Festival' event would become an ongoing weekend occurrence.
And that, aside from the many prizes already given out, much smaller badges, titles, trophies and other such things could be won over time until eventually NEXT year's Tournament would roll around, where Yugi would have to defend his newest title:
The 'Frog Prince of Games'.
Jessica had even crowned the new 'prince' with his own fluffy plush crown froggy hat, and his group of fangirl spellcasting Duel Monsters had declared him 'officially adorable' wearing the thing.
From what John could tell, a bunch of local kids seemed eager to challenge the new prince in next year's competition… Although whether or not they wanted to Duel or just win the admiration from all those Dark Magician Girls was up for debate.
Anyway, the castle would be bustling, renting out access to the holographic Dueling arenas for local competitors, acting as a weekend gathering spot and tourist attraction, and all sorts of things to keep the world distracted away from SPYRAL agent teams going out to kick bad guy butts.
But that was all HOLO-John's issue now… John himself was free from all that responsibility entirely! Nothing but science and research and… And…
…Damn this was boring. "How does sis do stuff like this ALL the time?"
His friend shrugged. "Croak."
Hmm. "Hey Pocket, could you take over this module building stuff?"
[[Efficiency would drop by over 97.3324% without oversight of the following projects…]]
John blinked. "That sounds… Bad."
[[The System suggests assigning said projects to the other USERS designated by HOST, to ensure efficient handling of said advancements.]]
Oh! Yeah, good point. "Pass the Soul Polishing module stuff to Grace, she likes handling anything involving defensive stuff or enhancement. The other projects, the ones covering Soul Cracking and Soul Collapse and all that, I'm pretty sure Temptation will want to be handing them."
[[Confirmed.]]
And as long as he was on the subject… "Set up some sort of project volunteer list too. I'm pretty sure either my sister, her agents, or my Soul citizens might want to get involved in some of my ongoing experiments… An updated list of all my personal taskings with short descriptive blurbs will let them know what they might want to get involved with in the future."
[[Generating 'Ongoing Project' list… Completed. Awaiting approval for publishing.]]
Huh? "Why not just put it out now?" John began looking over the… Oh! "REMOVE that! And those two! ANYTHING involving my relationships and dating plans and stuff!"
Like, HOLY SHIT man! You can't just… John hadn't intended THOSE things to be considered 'projects', and CERTAINLY didn't want them published to the freaking world! What the HECK!?
[[Revising the 'Ongoing Project' list…]]
His heart was still pounding. "Wipe the logs of that stuff too, Temptation would NEVER let me hear the end of this otherwise."
[[Confirmed.]]
Whoo.. Breathe in… Breathe out… "Thanks for checking for my approval first though. GREAT job on that, please do so in the future."
[[Confirmed.]]
That… That had been close to being VERY embarrassing. "I'm going to uh…" Anything, just as long as it would distract John. "...Check into what potential Realms we could travel to next."
That should be helpful, right? Most likely.
~~~Pocket System~~~
Temptation blinked. "Our master is done."
Grace paused. "I'm sorry?"
Her sister pulled up data. "He learned what he wanted to learn, tried a few more times to balance this stupid card game, made some prototypes for artificially enhancing the Soul… And then put up a bounty board for us and others to take over a bunch of projects and is ready to wipe his hands of this place."
Oh dear. "Did my changes to the Soul Defense module at least help a little?"
She wiggled a hand. "Sort of? It allowed Master to benefit to some degree occasionally rather than having 'unlucky events' happening each turn, but in the end the rules of the game turned out to be more of a loose framework than anything sturdy and reliable."
Darn, she'd hope her most recent changes to the defensive protocols would have had better results than that. "I'll give them another look over later… Now, let's see this 'Bounty Board'..."
Hmm. Messy. "Give me a moment, I'll reorganize this a little."
Sortable lists, the ability to filter tasks on said list to best fit the abilities of those looking at it, the ability to assign critical ratings for new tasks, an automated and calculated estimate of the REAL criticalness of the task, another list showing which tasks were about to reach 'dead ends' due to upcoming events or some other task conflicting with each other… "
There we go! "Oh this was a lovely idea! Now we can share tasks out with the whole family so we can all help when we get some spare time!"
Temptation snorted. "Mistress will NOT be putting any SPYRAL missions on there I hope, talk about terrible operational security."
Oh well, not THAT stuff. John's sister was VERY competent with her new job. "I mean unclassified taskings, like if we need someone to design new merchandise for one of your online stores or what have you. I'm sure the Lady already has her own internal mission board equivalent within her facilities."
…Though, just to be sure, she'd send her a note about this most recent change.
Her sister at least seemed intrigued by the new feature. "Why does our Master have five tasks dedicated to designing tastier Christmas stockings?"
Grace blinked. "One moment… System?"
[[In a prior Realm, HOST enjoyed a large supply of confiscated oversized holiday cloth footwear, known locally as 'Christmas Stockings'. The undocumented heavy metals within the materials were found to be 'quite yummy' by HOST.]]
…Huh. "May I try one?"
After all, they were originally Iron Golems and now beyond human Borg inspired beings. A bit of toxic holiday memorabilia wouldn't be that dangerous to consume, right?
[[HOST favorited one of the following samples of Christmas Sock, organized from most devoured to least consumed.]]
Oh those were a LOT of options…
Temptation was already sucking on a holiday stocking. "Mmm! Mmph mumphle mmmph mmm."
Sigh. "Please don't talk with your mouth full." Honestly girl, show some class!
~~~Pocket System~~~
Jessica blinked as her holographic twin started to giggle. "Wait, why DON'T we have a mission board!? That would cut my workload down by 13% easily!"
Her other self was already getting started. "At least for the low level missions. And we can restrict volunteering for various taskings by Agent proficiency levels… That way an infiltration specialist won't be able to sign up for an assault mission without being prepared with the proper skills."
She nodded. "A good chunk of the busy work would be out of our to-do pile this way… Get Agent P33 and P41 to over see that if you could."
A hum confirmed her acknowledgement as they both got busy.
After a moment, one of them glanced over at the other. "Did you see the footage of our little bro practicing his big 'Dueling' lines? The ones that Holo-John was using during the tournament?"
She blinked. "Hmm? No, send me the link."
…Oh my. "He is ADORABLE!"
They grinned at each other. "I know, right? 'By the power of fish scale, I HAVE THE POWER!' I wish he had been able to use that at some point, even if it is a little silly."
Jessica nodded at herself. "Meh, Thundercats was an awesome show." She glanced at he video server… "Are ALL these clips of him?"
She snorted. "Well, THIS playlist is… I'm afraid we have our OWN collection of snips though, thanks to our Agents being gossiping busybodies. As do John's girls and anyone who has been wandering about this castle."
Oh dear. "This is a LOT of content."
She shrugged at herself. "Turns out, our [[Home]] enjoys recording 'family videos' and uploading them herself… It will likely only get worse over time."
…Damn it. "That means there could be classified stuff mixed into this mess."
Her other self paused… Then frowned and nodded. "I'll assign an Agent to classify all new videos before being published, and a few teams to begin reviewing older material."
Jessica grumbled as she got on it as well. "I'll get a group to verify that any already exposed information hasn't been fully compromised, or at least a list or two of those who may have discovered the leaks already."
This was going to be a hassle, she just felt it in her bones.
~~~Pocket System~~~
John frowned at the potential options for the next Realm to visit. "This seems MUCH more complicated than the way we did it before."
[[The System has recovered by 8% towards full operational status, and Realm Traversal is no longer restricted to emergency functionality levels.]]
Wait. "So it was ALWAYS supposed to be like this in the first place?"
[[No. This is still the simplified user interface for untrained HOSTS. Until HOST has reached a certain level of competence and maturity, advanced features of the System remain in secured lockdown for HOST's own safety.]]
Lame! "I can TOTALLY act mature, you know!"
[[...Additional features shall remain secured at this time.]]
Fine, whatever. "So let's see here… This is us." He poked the glowing dot. "And this is where we've been…"
The other dots were connected by a line, except the line seemed to split and bleed and twist inside itself and all sorts of stuff. "We want to eventually make our way back to Jessica's Realm, which is all the way over HERE."
The start of the mapped Realms, which was both behind and WAY in front of John's current location. Because physics really didn't apply to this map. "Too bad we can't just skip all the middle bits and just head over directly."
[[Until the relative positioning of the Realm nodes is defined by HOST's pathway, the existence, positioning, movement, growth, and decay of other locations will remain in flux.]]
Yeah, yeah. "I know that, I'm just saying that it's annoying to be both too close AND too far away from our actual eventual destination."
Seriously, this was all much easier when he just needed to blindly fling his way whichever direction FELT most correct. This 'unlocked' method just felt like more work for the same results. "What are the red nodes? What do they represent?"
[[Red nodes are Realms that are as flexible if not more so than the recently visited 'Flintstone' Realm.]]
…Oh.
John shivered. "So… So avoid those. Got it. And the black ones?"
[[Do ǹ̷͜͡o̶͜t͞͏ ask about the black nodes, HOST.]]
He stared at nothing… Well, alright then. "Then I should aim for the other colors? What do they represent?"
[[Shades of Green: Realms of stability, with low levels of variability from their originating Prime Realm. Shades of Yellow: Realms that have merged from others at some point, and require some amount of caution. Shades of Pink: Avoid until HOST has accepted and reached biological and mental maturity in their sexuality. Shades of Blue: Realms that are fundamentally undefined until visited. Once visited, a subsection of these will be more properly assessed and correctly colored for future transits, or new colors may be defined entirely.]]
Well that seemed handy to know. "I'm feeling we need to go, uh… THIS way."
His thoughts marked a very twisted 'line' that brushed up against a LOT of nodes… And he subconsciously shifted it to better avoid the pink, red, and black dots. Still left a LONG path to getting back to his sister's place… Or a short path? It wasn't well defined honestly.
Meh, for now it was good enough. "How do I know which one of these I should go with?"
[[The System can only provide options. Attempting to coerce, influence, or direct the HOST directly can fabricate disastrous consequences. The HOST must select the next Realm for transit.]]
…Uh huh. "You just don't want to get blamed by my sister if our next stop turns out to be a hellhole."
[[...]]
Hmph. "Wuss."
[[Shall the System share the logs of this conversation with…?]]
EEP! "NO!" Cough. "No, no, we're good. Now let me get a look at our new options, shall I?"
Uh… Eenie, meeny, miny… This one? This one. "Does the shade of the yellow matter?"
[[Darker shades of color signify more intense adherence to their assigned category.]]
Oh.
And uh… that was a DARK yellow. "This place might be a bit much, do you think?"
[[The System can only provide options. Any and all directional decisions made by the HOST are beyond the System's perview.]]
Right, right, his Pocket wasn't going to give an opinion on any of this to avoid blame.
Meh. "This one next then, after sis gets all her stuff wrapped up here and we pass everything off to our holographic siblings."
After all, it was just a few Realms that had blurred together to become a tiny bit more yellow than normal.
How bad could it be?
Transfer node colors and you: A guide!
- Location
- United States
Fanfics from canon-compliant to crack AU.
Crossovers to full on merge fics.
Ecchi to full hentai.
Original stories or insufficient information.
Or stories so old that they have faded from the mind
Or possibly universes that have diverged beyond easy identification? INO or "high school" stories for example.
Hidden One
Not the Boss, possibly a Playa
- Location
- Sol;Terra;EU;D;NRW
So, deep yellow. As in dark or as in neon?
I could see that making a difference.
Like.. dark yellow might be a crossover of DC Antimatter Universe and Ward.
Neon on the other hand may end up Carebears meet Herbie.
I could see that making a difference.
Like.. dark yellow might be a crossover of DC Antimatter Universe and Ward.
Neon on the other hand may end up Carebears meet Herbie.
I'm thinking that the darker the yellow, the more crossovers there are.
- Location
- Australia
I wonder if they'll visit FullMetal Alchemist? The meeting between John, his System and Truth would be interesting!
Mr. Cloak
Orchestrator of Paradoxical Apocalypse
- Pronouns
- I
Considering the 'Truth' acts more like a toll system combined with a trap and dissuasion mechanic, I'm going to suggest you add 'blast radius warning' to that statement.