Hollow Knight and Hollow Knight: Voidheart redux] The small husk of an insect person made a high, shrill whistling noise-probably the air through it’s hollow eyesockets-as I hurled it bodily into the Abyss from whence it came. It was over. … WHAT NOW? asked the Radiance. “What?” I asked. I MEAN…WHAT ARE YOUR INTENTIONS NOW? ARE YOU ALSO GOING TO FIGHT ME FOR SUPREMACY OVER THIS WORLD? “What. No, I’m leaving. My work here is done” I said. YOU TOO ARE A GOD. WITHOUT FOLLOWERS, ALL MEMORY OF YOU WILL BE LOST AND YOU WILL SLIP FROM THIS TENUOUS EXISTENCE. “I’ll be fine, I’m built different. In any case I have a solution: I’ll create my own race” I DON’T UNDERSTAND. “Using my avatar template from this world that combines your traits, those of the Nightmare King, the Void, and the Godhome, I’m going to create Grimmchildren. But like, with the innate hivemind and immortality of the Void, an inherent connection to dreams, and of course their own radiance. Most importantly of all, like the Godseekers they will be inherently happy in slavish servitude” OH. The Radiance stared at the desolation left in the wake of the Pale King’s doomed attempt to seal her. There was a long, long caravan of bugs leading out of the city led by a familiar pink light. Opportunists had been hounded to the edges of the remaining temporary settlements to seethe. Without the Hollow Knight’s misadventure, this kingdom was clearly broken beyond repair. I ALWAYS THOUGHT THERE WOULD BE…MORE, UPON MY RETURN, she said, eventually. “Why? It’s not like I’m defending the concept of individuality, but I think everyone involved has made their opinion very clear and that it’s a lost cause by now. I don’t know about you, but I’m not wasting my time with diminished vagabounds when I could be designing an actually compliant species” The Radiance stared at me impregnating the landscape. CAN YOU…SHOW ME HOW TO DO THAT? she said, finally. 1/4 Much time had passed. Much of the land surrounding the Pale King’s kingdom had been colonised by my small adorable Grimmchildren. The Radiance, who had learned the art of creating beings in her image from me, had in turn created a glowing fluffy moth kingdom in the high reaches. There was a standing trade agreement between us, and some of our children-united by shared terror by the free bug races-had even interbred. The typical routine of a Grimmchild was waking up, learning important lessons like how I had slain the other Nightmare King and the fighting arts of the Godseekers, then going to bed to play amongst their kin, then waking up again and-well, you get the idea. There was enough intellectual activity to stimulate the advancement of the civilisation without having an impact on the material world, and with my blessing they continued to adapt and grow brighter with each temporary death. An eternal civilisation with one mind and one will. Optimal. “Hey Anon, I see you’re very very happy with your freaky eldritch kingdom of torpid stagnation!” said Elodie brightly one day, kicking down the door with some needle-wielding lost princess trailing behind her. “I was wondering: How would you like me to take care of a…political rival for you?” “It is pretty great seeing my people do literally nothing but prosper forever, yes. Gee Elodie, are you trying to repeat the insipid and agonising experiment of individuality somewhere else despite it amounting to nothing but failure and devastation?” “What? Why would I EVER do THAT?” I rolled my eyes at her obvious and sarcastic evasion. “Well. It’s no skin off my back. Are the original inhabitants still caravanning around the place?” “…they are still deathly terrified of your hivemind cult kingdom, yes” “Well don’t look at me, I’m not even bothering to enforce anti bug-gypsy laws”

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2/4 Time passed. Some of my Grimmchildren had evolved into giant pulsing fluffy white hearts that built miniature Godhomes of their own. Godhostels? “Anon, aren’t you even SLIGHTLY concerned by Grand Mother Silk?” “No” “…why?” “Elodie, she’s the most low-tier higher being I’ve seen since coming here. Doesn’t have any apparent connection to dream essence, has a fraction of the reverence and power over her own damn kingdom than either the Pale King or the Radiance did with theirs, needs to be PHYSICALLY PRESENT in the world to influence mortals-nah, it’ll be fine. Besides I enjoy bug fascism” “I can’t help but notice you’ve been untoggling your passive world-bettering, good fortune providing and redeeming perks. Are you sure it’s not that you more admire the IDEA of bug fascism and not-“ “-I did that to stabilise the local socioeconomic dynamics. If you notice quality of life improving over in distant Pharloom, take it as less of a protest and more of an attempt to preserve the status quo. True bug fascism HAS been tried, HERE, SUCCESSFULLY” “ANYWAY, I was just wondering if I could borrow a few things for my friend Hornet here-“ “Armoury’s two bosses down the western corridor, and straight on past the fountain. The spawn don’t use it ever since we learned how to just DREAM better weapons into existence” “Alright thanks!” That was the first conversation I’d had in weeks that wasn’t TRADE OFFER ACCEPTED from the Radiance or surreal phantasmagorical communication with my children. Several days later, I sensed Pharloom being briefly engulfed by Void tendrils that eventually fell apart revealing no queen and two princesses in charge of what remained. I rolled my eyes at Elodie and her little games. “Anon! You’ll never believe what just happened, Grand Mother Silk fell into a great big hole! It was such a terrible tragedy!” blurted out Elodie disingenuously. I sighed. 3/4 “Gee Elodie, I don’t suppose you and your friend ran into some sort of artificial construct made of the Void’s substance while down there who helped you overcome this alleged bug fascist?” I grumbled. “Why YES Anon, SOMEONE appears to have thrown a small hollow knight into the Void, jumpstarting his evolution into the representative of his lost kin’s hivemind!” said Elodie brightly. “We met him during our travels and he’s been a GREAT help, says someone’s been dropping educational scrolls and supplies from the overworld to him ever since” The Grimmchildren HAD been littering the Void out of boredom and amusement that the Void sometimes littered back, I mused. I was going to have to formalise another trade agreement. “Well, well. By the way, am I hearing this right? Are those disenfranchised bugs from the old ruined city now settling in Pharloom?” “Why YES Anon, it’s almost like it’s actually possible to build a functioning society with free will!” sing-songed Elodie. “And you can bake a house out of gingerbread, but that doesn’t make it any sturdier than concrete. Which is my cool, stable, prosperous and very cute kingdom of fuzzy Grimmchildren by the way” I ranted as she danced out of the castle, followed by excited Grimmkids. … WAIT, ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT THAT WEAKLING SILK-SPINNER? asked the Radiance. “Apparently yes” BUT…WHY? EVEN HER OWN WEAVERS MERELY ABANDONED HER RATHER THAN OVERTHROW HER. JUST…MOVE OUT OF HAUNTING RANGE. I CONSIDERED RECRUITING OR DEFEATING HER HEIR, BUT EVEN THAT JUST SEEMS POINTLESS. “I know, right? All of that just seems like a waste of time” I said, rubbing the belly of a particularly fat and cuddly Grimmchild. 4/4

>>112751 [Magic the Gathering - Duskmourn: House of Horrors redux] >Previously: https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/96494439/#96512721 “There has been enough suffering”. Enough? How does any sane being define “enough” in an ever-shifting multiverse where ideals shatter like glass and there is no absolute morality save what the most powerful can enforce? Enough, she decided long ago, was an excuse concocted by the strong to do what they wanted anyway. That’s alright though. By process of elimination, it left strength as the only moral absolute. She was born from an arrow of ever-shifting cursed wood puncturing the heart of an Elder Dragon. What slithered out saw a plane every bit as vicious as Grixis but far more enduring, where demonkind and their vampire knights fought against those born with even greater power. So she stuck to the shadows but inched towards the pinnacle of power. Thus, she learned the plane was doomed by it’s own calamitous corrosion. She manipulated bickering higher powers. She salvaged abandoned workings. Made generous offers to the disenfranchised. And when her underlings betrayed her, there was no price she didn’t pay to regain the advantage. And so, she won. She engulfed the Worldsoul of her plane, reigning as it’s goddess-queen… …for all of two weeks before the whole thing was rent asunder. And…was that enough? It had to be, right? So why was she fighting to live? Why was she calling out for salvation? “Because” I said, on the borders of our souls, “this state of affairs is utterly unacceptable, demon” Shrylariatha, she thought. She is so much more than that. The God-Queen of Firaxis. The Serpent-Hive. The Encaged Gaoler who wielded her prison b- -but, ah. The very incarnation of the principle and power which is the closet to holiness she will ever know has spoken. It is…strange to her, that I have chosen White over Black mana. But it’s not for the weak to question the strong. So, “demon” it is. 1/5 She opened her eyes, and reassessed reality. https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/planeswalkers-guide-to-edge-of-eternities The angel was comically shouting at nothing, flapping her wings impotently in the interstellar void. Hardly a lethal condition for beings of their calibre, but in her haste to come here and take what was promised she was having to improvise new spells on the fly. Valgavoth, her compatriot, had been temporarily flustered too-silk strands drifted through the void-but due his prior experience with manifesting a localised reality had recovered far sooner. Now all he had to do was figure out how to actually get somewhere without constantly teleporting Amanitou was trapped in a golden bubble the angel had hastily made to save her from her own hubris. “Well, well. It looks like it’s just you and me” she told the hilarious stack of rodents who was the only other member of the team that had acclimated quickly to space travel. “Kekeke priority target located, over” they chittered over their hermetically sealed suit’s intercoms. “It’s not unlike swimming through the more alien depths of Hell, you know? Before…before Anon sundered it all” she mused. Out of some professional respect and mostly to keep score, she left a mystical beacon for the others before abandoning her more sophisticated avatar for a river of eel-like serpents undulated towards the strange vault of unknown metals. Deeznuts followed in little puffs of concussive mana. After digesting some of them in pools of corrosive venom the locks, she thought, were far beyond any artifice she’d seen. Fortunately this plane’s understanding of MAGIC was lower than some farmhands’ she’d known. So that was alright. The squirrels had proudly unfurled a sophisticated array of magitehc lockpicking tools but she’d already turned the whole thing into cheese and carved through it. They wilted, dejectedly. 2/5

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“Diligent as always, aren’t you?” said Valgavoth, having given up on space propulsion and just Omenpathed his way over into the vault. “So, that is it? The so-called Endstone?” “That, and none other” said Shrylariatha, tossing it up and down. “Just imagine! One of us need only desire it, and causality itself will conform to a preordained outcome. You can, can’t you, friend? Savour the possibilities of this thing…” “Yes…a perfect weapon for a mastermind” Valgavoth drooled in excitement. “In other words…it is a meagre version of what Anon is preparing to do” he mused. “And it’s not ours, so the angel will want to give it back” moaned Shrylariatha. “And it comes with other costs of course-but what doesn’t?” “Hmm. A conundrum…is this where you turn against us?” “Only if I openly oppose Avacyn Charity-Case” she chided him, allowing Deeznuts to scan the object, while flexing her own magic to create a simulacrae. Data for the Amicable (she cackled) Oikumene. Valgavoth side-eyed her as they settled into the avuncular company of prisoners sharing a cell. There was no true kinship among demons as humans understood it, none of the stultifying framework they called a “social contract”. What they also did not understand, Shrylariatha thought, was that there could however be RESPECT among those both well-fed and bound to a common purpose. Why in damnation’s name did they think a contract enforced by hellfire and damnation was less meaningful, not more? “Is it true?” Valgavoth said, finally. “Is Hell really gone?” “It is, sweet lostling” “The thought scarcely beggars imagining. It’s always been there, from the beginning…” “And now, it’s not. Do you really think Anon would stand for a world where Serra’s realm dies and ours lives? What do you think he did?” She laughs without humour. “He MADE SURE. He made me do it” 3/5 Outside, she knows, two forces are converging on this site. One a fanatical civilisation of number-worshippers (through the binding between her soul and the world-searing intensity that might be his soul, she senses an intense aesthetic approval), the other a cult of entropic cultists (Magnanimous contempt, but also…pity? An impression of a broken harp that can be restrung to pluck the golden chords of infinity from? The static imperatives in place of mortal desires are bewildering to a thing like her). They cannot sense how their faith is a crescendo of sturm and drang, a calamitous potentiality that correctly harnessed can give rise to something of true value. To me. “He used me as a warlock uses a familiar” she said. “Siphoning the heat and filth of my world into power. He snuffed out the firepits. He melted the great fortresses to slag, and he burnt every soul contract to ash. He made the great of our kind beg for the right to beg, and he cursed the meagre of our kind to be allergic to common kitchen condiments, all to reinforce the self-verifying truth he enforces on every world” “No planeswalker has ever found our Hell” breathed Valgavoth, as an event horizon started to shine and as 2 + 2 suddenly added up to Anon, to me. “Not one of them has set foot in the sanctuary that is every demon’s birthright. At least tell me what manner of magic he used” “I can’t…I don’t have the words for it, Val. I don’t know what I saw” she muttered. “He would sing or…conduct, and the song would become light and waves that were as one with battle. His light would shatter things, and remake them into these deformed, shattered, undying slaves. As if he was reducing them to only what he found useful. He would call pillars of this smokeless white fire, and it would scorch earth and sky. And never stop burning. I still see the flames, when I shut my eyes” 4/5 “And then” she said, licking her lips, “he made me lick up all the remaining mana so nothing strong could ever grow. Do you understand now, Val? I am Hell. He has turned the demonic doctrine of strength against us. We will prove our worth, or perish when his judgement arrives” I began to manifest. The event horizon inverted. There was an impression of transcendental mathematics, of equations on gematria, and suddenly everything makes sense. Monoism and Summism are reconciled. There is no need to hasten to the inevitable post-singularity state because it is immanent in the darkness of space, and because it is an outward manifestation of the societal formulae there is no need to sacrifice for society. The critical part is making truth conform to belief. “Avacyn” I called out, “Avacyn, have you found it? That prize I promised you” “Yes, lord!” said Avacyn brightly, holding up a cat. “I’ve found these cats, which can traverse unfathomable distance in a moment! They can help transmit our blessings far faster!” I stared her down. For a moment, the demon petulantly dwelled on the thought that the least gargoyle is closer to my vision of perfect finality than the greatest demon-a protest instantly snuffed out when my attention is drawn towards her. “And that is all?” I asked. “Ought there be?” she asked. The demon waved the Endstone at her. “Ah, I believe that CLEARLY belongs to someone else” said Avacyn, recalling it to herself. Presently, an advanced alien android stepped out expectantly. Avacyn handed over the stone. It thanked her and left. “Not at all. The mission parameters are yours to determine. Proceed” I told her. Shry looked up at me and I looked down at her, and she prayed the secret prayer of all my truest devotees: If the multiverse is truly the remit of the powerful, then I will monopolise power in the name of peace and harmony. At any cost. Aye Mak Sicur. I’ll make sure. 5/5

[Gundam: Universal Century redux] It was another wonderful day. I looked out the window, shook my fist at the very concept of giant robots, and started plotting to level human civilisation to rid existence of the Gundam menace. I shared a morning coffee with Elodie before heading out for work. Somewhere, Char and Amuro were getting up to no good. It was another wonderful day. I looked out the window, shook my fist at the very concept of giant robots, and started plotting to level human civilisation to rid existence of the Gundam menace. I shared a morning coffee with Elodie, who told me there was a rounding error in accounting she had to take care of, before heading out for work. Somewhere, Char and Amuro were getting up to no good. It was another wonderful day. I looked out the window, shook my fist at the very concept of giant robots, and started plotting to level human civilisation to rid existence of the Gundam menace. I shared a morning coffee with Elodie, who told me she was going to have to put in overtime to deal with the rounding error, before heading out for work. Somewhere, Char and Amuro were getting up to no good. It was another wonderful- “Master!” shouted Grail, kicking down the door to my futuristic yet imperialistically Japanese fortress, “We’re trapped inside of a space-time anomaly!” “Yeah I was wondering how long it would take for Elodie to confess to it” I admitted, sipping my coffee. “I have to say, I’m disappointed she thinks so little of my spatio-temporal awareness that I wouldn’t sense A NEW TIMELINE overwriting my current one” “…wait, you’ve known? You are. Being remarkably calm about this” said Grail, perplexed. “It’s hard not to be with how simple the solution is” I said, finishing my coffee. “C’mon. Let’s pay Mr. Aznable a visit” The clearest sign this timeline was anomalous was the fact that Char was actually tired of winning. 1/4 Despite successfully stealing the Gundam and the Pegasus the inherently factitious nature of Zeon combined with the threat of utterly burning bridges by destroying Earth had finally convinced him of what I’d known for years: That he should’ve never existed. I showed up in a particularly brooding mood, offering a devil’s bargain (well, angel’s bargain) for his obliteration in exchange for world peace. A mutually beneficial exchange I was very pleased to see him accept. And there, and then the story should’ve ended with all my efforts at pushing renewable energy, and releasing Gundam-sabotaging grey goo swarms, and economically sponsoring different forms of technology being finally given up in favour of primitive crossroads demon-tier magic. But the core anomaly was resistant. Even as burning sigils of Old Realm heralded the dawn of a new era, a sudden flare of Newtype energy grated against it. As if reality itself was rejecting existence without Char Aznable. Because it was. “Master, the anomaly should be localised HERE” said Grail, opening a Boom Tube to a massive Mobile Armour containing what turned out to be a previous version of Lalah Sune from several timelines ago, “inside this container. The very container that Elodie-“ she gritted her teeth as Elodie snuck out. And froze, like a deer in headlights “-was seen near OH LOOK SHE’S LITERALLY INTERFERING WITH OUR GOALS, CAN WE PLEASE PUNISH HER FOR ONCE?!” “Wait, wait!” exclaimed Elodie, protectively taking a sumo stance in front of the Armor, “Look at the future! The anomaly resolves-“ “-after unnecessary, avoidable conflict. Stand aside, kid” “Nobody needs to die today!” “I. Agree” I said patiently. Elodie blinked. “Y-you do?” she asked, right as Grail finally lost patience and tackled her off the giant robot. I walked into the vehicle called the Rose of Sharon, loomed over Lalah menacingly, and cast Obliviate on her memories of Char. 2/4 “Well, that was easy” I said as the girls continued to roll around scrapping with Elodie burdened by not wanting to blind a nearby former therapy patient with her full power and Grail forced to pull her punches against MUH Elodie. “Now that we’ve all gotten past this little squabble, you two can…burn off some steam. And then we can talk about what just happened” Presently a time janny showed up and looked confused. “The situation has been resolved. Your services are no longer required” I told him. He left. “SO, as Elodie should have TOLD me from the start” I told them in a reset timeline, “for some time now Newtypes have been able to CREATE ENTIRE TIMELINES WITH THEIR SPACE MAGIC PSYCHIC POWERS. I am not going to break down the quantum physics behind that because it’s basically space magic anyway. The important thing is the resets were caused by this timeline’s Lalah yearning for a Char who never came to pick her up from the seedy brothel she was stuck in. NEXT TIME, Elodie, consider if a dumb military experiment being ploughed over and over again by fat faceless men of indistinct identity’s mental health is worth an entire history shaped by Zeon bloodthirst spilling out over the planet like plague rats” “So…you’re NOT committed to murder or the erasure of free will this time?” asked Elodie finally as Grail sulked on the other corner of the couch mumbling murderous nothings.

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“Why?” I said blankly. “You know there’s more than one Newtype out there, right? You realise this can happen RETROACTIVELY? Frankly, neither is a sustainable solution at that point. As a matter of fact Lalah isn’t even a particularly powerful Newtype. Imagine what happens if Kamille or Judau decides they really REALLY want banana pudding one day. We need to treat the UNDERLYING problem of humans evolving into the fucking Q while still mindbroken by the fallout from their pointless giant robots wars” 3/4 Slowly, Grail put up her hand. “…far be it from me to question your will but uh, I’ve never actually been clear. Why DO you hate giant robots so much?” “Wait, isn’t it obvious?” I barked, slapping myself up the head. “It’s the waste! Do you know how sophisticated technology needs to BE for a humanoid war machine to outperform modern tanks the size of it’s foot? Do you have any idea what kind of algorithms enable tactile responsiveness to a human pilot? You can run an entire large learning model off one SWING from some of those energy swords! Look, LOOK at what they have to do to imitate a FRACTION of an actual Kadmon’s power, Elodie. There are countless ways to improve the human condition with technology. Nanites, arcologies, dyson swarms. And instead of that, every timeline with giant robots in it chose to spend energy and resources on engaging in a DICKMEASURING CONTEST with PHYSICS. ” “Noted, thank you for sharing master” said Grail earnestly. “I’ll tell your cosmic engineering corps to build fewer Subjukators and more Micro-Marks” “And that” I said decisively, “is why I’m going to prevent Lalah from meeting Char in ANY timeline!” Elodie had learned to think very quickly whenever I’d made up my mind about a thing. “…nah, that’s not what you want to do” she said shrewdly. “Elodie, your Jedi mind trick isn’t going to preserve this absurd use of free will” “No but think about it logically” pointed out Elodie, “you don’t want Char to get in the giant robots. Char NO LONGER wants to get in the giant robot. And Lalah wants Char to get inside of her. This all happened because Char DID NOT get inside of her. Isn’t it a win-win?” I thought about that. “Huh. Yeah, it kind of is. Good feedback, Elodie” I proceeded to alter causality so Char literally tripped and fell dick-first into a virginal Lalah with a bouquet of roses in one hand and a wedding ring in the other. 4/4 As I looked over the data entry where the strange events of recent times was recorded, I contemplated the designation assigned to it. GQuuuuuuX. It was the sixth variant of a line with a metasyntactic value. A placeholder name, popularised by Stanford university. A Japanese play on words for Sieg Aze, or Zeke Axe. A radionavigation warning. An inference of nuclear power from the conflux of electrical charge and potential velocity. Above all else though, it was the result of a small chubby monstergirl bouncing up and down on the data terminal for my attention, and accidentally typing random letters with her butt. Gquux. GQQQQQqqqqquuuuuuuUUUUUUUXXXX, typed the fat monstergirl butt.

>>117763 …not that I’m certain if anyone is still reading these walls of text, but for confirmation this is indeed an episode of Jiggle Lad chain.

>>117767 I still prefer Battlerchain. I enjoy reading these, but Battler had charm that jiggle lad doesn't.

>>117767 I read and enjoy them. I just don't know the settings enough to give comment most of the time.

[Borderlands redux] Drawback: Drawbacks: “This ain’t no vending machine!” (1100) Rolled New Haven, age 21 Drop-In Looter Shooter (Free) Bad Ass (900) Boom, Baby, Boom (Free) Legendary Luck (700) EXP Module (300) Phone a Friend: Backpack robot midget (0) ECHO device with HUD (Free) a melee weapon (Free) >Borderlands 1 Troubleshooter. The name of the game changes-assassin, bodyguard, even courier depending on the neighbourhood. But the nature of the beast doesn’t. I’d been working as a freelancer for some time, moving planet to planet for those fat paychecks. Because it turns out in an economy increasingly under threat by marauding gangs of surprisingly competent murderhobos, there’s a real market for someone fast. Someone tough. Someone efficient. Someone…who could out-vault run the vault runners. And if for whatever reason that didn't work out, there was always work at Moxxi's arena. Far as anyone could tell, I was one hell of a counter puncher-using Mirror Coat and Safeguard to wear out opponents, then suddenly hitting them with Counter. Even impressed the proprietress enough to find out she wasn't that Mad in private while giving her a Video-powered one-man gangbang. But I wasn’t just here to be a corporate drone. I was here to bang Commander Steele at our company-sponsored shitty little dive bar. Aura is a mystical force that connects all living things and grants one insight into spiritual matters, and there was a part of me that it was blasphemous to use it to neg a bitchy eastern european sexpot into drunken hatesex. But as I spanked my commander’s ass, I remembered the legends of human-pokemon marriage and contemplated the morality of getting eggs from Pokemon daycare centres. “Thank you, Arceus” I said to nobody while using Encore, Destiny Bond and Splash to absolutely screw her senseless. As a result, the not-so-good commander was passed out when certain Vault Hunters showed up. 1/6 “You work here?” one asked, from among all the guns pointed at me. “I’m off duty” I told them. Shit. One of them was a Siren. The other three were…comically over the top masculine. Bad time for a guy with low effort to be comically over the top masculine and thus a threat too, then. I paid well, but not well enough for this. “And” I added, “my company liason is…incapacitated. So if it’s all the same to you, I’m just going to pretend I didn’t see this" "They set ONE GUY to guard this facility?" Oh right. I had a standing agreement with all my employers not to disclose my powers-both for their sake, and mine. "I'm just the deliveryman, dude" “Fair enough” said what I assumed was their leader. “You know you’re working for a very, very bad man right?” “Who isn’t?" “Fair enough” he echoed.

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I caught the Siren checking me out as we left. The best and worst thing about Pandora was that sex tourism was cheaper than regular tourism. You didn’t need mystical spirit energy. Even being handsome wasn’t really a prerequisite. You just needed loot to flash around, and the spunk to keep up. “Freelancer, right?” she asked. “So they keep telling me” I said. “…when you’re done here, stay in touch? No offence but you don’t seem like you belong here” >Borderlands 2 Boy, was Lilith wrong about that. In the wake of Atlas’ collapse, word about my unique abilities started getting around. They called me the Crimson Comet. They’d never know Sonic called me the same thing. I spent my third year in this world inadvertently being a thorn in some Hyperion programmer’s side. A man of my particular skills made big money off things Vault Runners would consider chores, so when the company went under one of my on-off colleagues. I pointed out that I was mostly a solo act (the pokemon stayed home holding down the fort). She went on a tirade about professionalism and loyalty, and then added she’d pay in ass too if I wanted. 2/6 And that’s how Athena ended up sleeping a lot more peacefully at night. Being completely shameless that I was here on Pandora for company more than cash, at the same time I was engaged in this weird “divine union” with Lilith (we both ended up with raider cults that bumped into each other, and sort of went along with it to use them to maintain some semblance of community protection around the wastelands. It was basically like a protection racket but more honest, also an excuse to get high and screw), ensuring she was off the grid during…corporate restructuring for Hyperion. Simultaneously I took a contract from Moxxi to take down some sort of superweapon (this was after her arena went down; I never got the full details but heard something about a jealous ex) which I ended up taking down by draining with my Video powers and making backfire on itself. The payment was a threesome with some pirate girl. ...I'm telling everything this way just to make clear I did NOT anticipate how badly this would fuck over Handsome Jack literally, while fucking all the people critical to various junctions of his plan literally. That Jack ending up as a much smaller deal controlling far less territory as a result came down to dumb luck. That I didn't have the slightest ambition on Pandora other than "get paid, get laid" and "don't shit where you eat" which started with doing small favours for people who sold me their things and bodies, and expanded to having to organise lots of refugees when Atlas went down, and between one thing and another led to me accidentally becoming a wandering folk hero for a charitable religious movement. And therefore I could NOT have been prepared for when what I thought was supposed to be a simple extraction job led to me being face to face with a miserable Siren girl plugged "You said you wanted CARGO transported!" I yelled at them. "SHE'S the cargo! Can you fix her?!" they demanded. 3/6 "What?! Why would I even-" "We know you can do space magic! She's got a critical eridium addiction, you've gotta" "THAT'S NOW HOW THAT WORKS!!" "Please!" The facility we were in was under siege. "Fuck". There were death threats over the intercom. "Fuck". The poor girl was staring up at me and making desperate gurgling noises. "...fuck" I started desperately combining my Aura with a Video-created construct as a "health potion" I had no fucking clue how it would go. I tipped the whole thing down her throat hoping against hope this would work. She smiled. Said "thank you" And then died. ... ...for 20 minutes. I could have sworn we were hauling a corpse out of that place, glowing Siren powers be damned, when she suddenly revived during the escape. Jack's cries of rage turned to relief shortly before someone else found and pulped him. And I...needed a break from having a break, after that. >Borderlands 3 "Hey" "Hey" "You look...put together, Lilith" "You look like shit, Anon" "Yeah well, drinking your sorrows will-" "No I mean the suit and tie" "...oh right, Conduit physiology. Yeah uh Pandora was getting a bit too crazy, I got a desk job. Compliance. Compliance is always hiring" "You? A desk job!? Okay look, that's not important, there's...there's a job that's too big for me to pull off alone. We need an ace in the hole. Moxxi told me you dealt with the Eye of Helios by siphoning it. And Angel told me she felt some kind of connection while you were healing. I've been thinking...we've seen a lot more Sirens than just six, and you're not one. What if...what if you could be?" "Tell me it's worth it" "There's a monster down there that'll rip this planet apart and eat the nearest stars if it gets out" "...fuck, it. It never ends, huh?". I take a breath. No more fucking around. "What do you need from me?" "Trust". She extended her hand. She told me to try siphoning "video" energy from her tattoos. 4/6 And I saw- I saw that all Siren energy actually comes from a purple dimension that itself is called Phase I saw it was inherently unstable. That SOMETHING had been set in motion, bringing about the end of the universe Possibly something MALIGNANT. Something that ALL the Eridian Vaults had been created to hold back along ... After that, fighting an influencer riding a damage sponge monster didn't seem nearly as frightening. >Borderlands 4 It also meant that Lilith and Arjay were rescued from the Phase dimension much, much sooner than in canon since now that it's established sufficient contact with the Phase dimension, through experimentation or otherwise, can just give you bullshit space magic powers and both Conduits and Aura users being sponges for exotic energy particles, I was able to freely teleport-GREATLY improving the logistics for this one resistance colony on a faraway planet named Kairos Instead of running through a gamut of whacky themed bosses Lilith and I just went straight to fight The Timekeeper, a Guardian disguised as a human. By this point I'd long since stopped holding back. Like him I fought with geometric shapes and dubstep blasts, though mine were more of a cheery blue-and hit at supersonic speed, and hardlight replicas of all the guns I'd found. Lilith on the other hand had taken my advice and just teleported stuff in combat more. "I see now...everything breaks, even cages..." he croaked out, as he fell at last, a single robot midget still smacking his golden dome of a skull with a rock. The solemn realisation that he was as much a prisoner as a gaoler undercut by the midget now jumping up and down on his head. We went inside the vault and found darkness. Specifically, the darkness at the end of the universe 5/6 "Huh. You're seeing this too right, Anon?" "I wish I wasn't, but yeah. I'm seeing this, and it's creeping me out" "Hey c'mon, guy like you? What've you got to be afraid of" said Lilith as we approached an ominous glowing dark pyramid. "HEY, I've got a few tricks but I'm far from invincible. But that's not it" I said, hearing my own words fade into the void. "I just feel like..." I said, staring up at the blatant future version of Lilith coming back to warn us that the end of the universe had been set in motion, that we couldn't prevent this, but maybe with the spark she passed on to the present Lilith we'd survive. "It started with fire, now it will end in fire" "...I've seen all of this..." I said, looking at the golden clouds that looked like Resonance "...before" I said, thinking back to the geometric shapes fired by the Timekeeper. "End of the universe, pyramids, shapes, finality...it's like someone just walked over my grave" "Maybe they already have, Anon" "Howzat?" "Oh, right. You weren't with us when we found the Seer, huh? One of the Guardians called us Sirens acausal. Like, Pandora was SUPPOSED to be destroyed but I got in the way of that, right? Some of them can predict the future perfectly until one of us gets in the way. So hey, chin up! Maybe figuring out whatever's going on is...destiny" I stared at nothing as we left. The sensation of someone walking over my own grave was stronger than ever. I wanted to leave. Quickly. "Hey, we're still going to fuck when we get back right?" asked Lilith nervously, seeing my expression. "Oh yeah. Definitely. Need to forget about this place in a hurry" I said, focusing on that and not the foreboding sense of doom I had just experienced. 6/6

[Super Robot Wars: International Era redux] Super Robot Wars V Drop-In Basic Piloting Skills (Free) Keeping Myself Grounded (Free) The Realm of Infinite Possibilities (500) Dropped Into The Cockpit (Free) “Good morning, Lelouch vi Brittania” said Elodie politely “Good morning, Elodie” said Lelouch, accepting a morning tea from her. “Good morning, Ra Valbelm” said Elodie politely. “Good morning, Elodie” said Ra Valbelm, accepting a morning energy drink from her. Elodie continued to host the Inter-Era Space Tournament For The Future of Humanity, an attempt at limiting collateral damage by deciding the fate of the current dominant human cultures in an isolated pocket dimension instead of by open warfare. They were still negotiating fair terms of combat. A waste of time, I would’ve told her. But I’d long since learned neutrality was a blessing in a world this calamitous. There was one beverage left over. Elodie left the confines of the Milky Way on her shooting star, before seemingly snatching the Big Dipper constellation. It opened a higher dimensional gateway past hyper-adaptive memetics, gridfire arrays, and quantum timelocks to access the Pinnacle: A realm of pure Exaltation in which I had utmost confidence no giant robot pilot would ever enter. Because it was literally the realm of my dreams. “Good morning, Anon” said Elodie politely. “Good morning, Elodie” I said, accepting a coffee from her. “Are you sure you don’t want to-“ “No. We’ve discussed this. There are too many existential threats here. I must remain FOCUSED on the next Euzeth or Perfectio. I don’t have time to deal with lesser affairs” “You literally have all the time in the world and more” “THAT’S how bad things have gotten” I grumbled. 1/5 Elodie shook her head. “Well, I. Can’t exactly fault your diligence. Or complain about you trying to entirely subjugate civilisation-“ “Elodie, these people are insane. If they want to wallow in their fucking hot-blooded squalor, fine. FINE. I GIVE UP. As long as they’re not actively endangering the universe, they can earn their keep fighting the things that ARE. REPEATEDLY AND IN GREAT NUMBER” “I just wish you got out sometimes, you know. Oh well. Look I know you don’t like foreign contaminant so I’ll leave your coffee outside, next to the resource cache alright?” I stared at Elodie in abject. “The…the fucking what?” “Uh, the…supply cache…” “Elodie” I said in rising fury|panic, “Elodie, there IS no supply cache. We need to move. We need to move now” Resource Cache: Orthogonal Diagonolizer (200)

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Mech (100) -Import: Wormwood=Granzeboma (+1000, 1000), Majin Factor: Singular Point (200), Gattai (0) But there was. In fact, my old war chariot was part of it. The Antihelios grovelled in guilty protest as it had long ago when I’d been surprised my ancient act of mercy resulted in it ontologically welded to me. “W-wait, Anon, what’s going on?” stammered Elodie, staring at the multidimensional supply cache. “Now that you mention it, I DON’T remember these specific compounds being part of your loadout here” “That’s because they AREN’T” I snarled. “This is an even outside of time which means-“ I scanned the timeline. I saw it. Rising from a red sea, it’s singleminded destructive impulse at once all-knowing and predatory. And I saw IT too. “-TARGET SIGHTED” The force of my Apocalypse Comet Gaze was bolstered by the Golden Ratio, a spiritual soul made in the image of a legendary hero that made my attacks irreversible, AND an ontological weapon from the One Punch Man universe granting them unsurpassed force. It tore through the space-time continuum and ripped through the big lizard like it was a paperweight. “YEAAAAH, nice going!” shouted some spikey haired idiot as I portalled myself to stand between his fellow idiots and a churning sea of red higher dimensional molecules. “Pay attention, brief mortals! IT’S GETTING BACK UP!” I shouted. 2/5 “Amazing! Feel the fury of my-“ shouted some other hot-blooded menace. “NO! Can’t you tell what it IS?!” I bellowed as it (IT was still inert. Thank God) rose again. With supercomputer-like precision it turned it’s directed energy beam against me-a weapon no material of this reality could withstand. A Wakfu-Stasis portal opened up as I simultaneously forced open a portal network in the creature’s stomach. Lancing the creature apart from the inside with it’s own beam. And yet, it was- “REGENERATING! Look, look it’s a higher dimensional archetypal eschaton personification!” “English, doc?” asked some sidekick. “IT’S A GIANT LIZARD YOU CAN’T SMASH, CUT OR BURN TO DEATH!” I yelled. It somehow seemed even larger. Even bulkier. In my haste to demonstrate the futility of conventional force I realised I risk making it (maybe even IT) start adapting to my own considerable conventional force. “Well…there’s gotta be something we can do!” yelled a small girl. I brightened up. “Yes! Fold quartz, that should disrupt this tributary’s connection to the main source! SING!” “Wha?” SING DAMMIT, I ordered in the voice of outer power. “Except you! Jet Jaguar, get over here!” Everyone started singing except Jet Jaguar. “Hi-hi, what do you need from me?” asked the cheerful robot. “In a few more minutes your past iteration is about to solve the Orthogonal Diagonalizer, the only thing from this reality that can repel this entity” I said urgently. “I’m not taking that risk. You need to combine with my mech, NOW” “O-oh, okay!” We combined. Jet Jaguar obtained the power of the Orthogonal Diagonalizer. Elodie, having figured out what was going on by now, reached into the Gate of Babylon and handed Jet Jaguar an FTL transmitter. The big lizard locked onto me again. Not with incomprehension. No longer with surprise. Just sullen, calculating malice. “Take your final shape” I cursed it, in Edenic. The O.D. fired into the lizard, at last reducing it to crystals 3/5 “Your world” I told Jet Jaguar seriously, “is in peril. That thing you just fought is more phenomena than beast. It WILL return, in a new form, a mechanical one. You don’t stop it’s emergence in your original history. You WILL now” “I’ll make sure, mister!” said Jet Jaguar cheerfully. “Good. Good, I don’t say this a lot” I said, seizing the giant robot’s hand, “but you’ve been a reliable ally and you can count on me for any future existential threat to your world. Now I must go, my multiverse needs me” “It’s not over, is it?” asked Elodie, at last understanding a fraction of my concern at the existential minefield that was this world. “Mechagodzilla, he’s coming…” “And that is the only, only reason why I’m not finishing this fight” I told her. “There wasn’t a chance in hell for anyone except Jet Jaguar to deal with that thing-and believe me, everyone here got off LUCKY. IT is merely sleeping. No one here is ready for it’s wakeful hunger-and NO Getter Emperor, not even you, I see you sulking in the back there young man” I looked back at the finalised entity, pointedly ignoring the confusion of the idiot pilots in the back. All we had done today was cut off a single tributary from a boundless ocean. But it had to be enough. The most merciful thing about this incident was IT had remained inert for me to deal with it’s emanation as quickly as possible. There was nothing further worthy of my attention here, even the Getter Emperor was leaving-“ “Very well done” said Ra Valbelm, passing by, “we were right to put our trust in you as Singular Points” I froze. “It must be all the Archetype in the air making causality hard to perceive, but I wasn’t aware you knew I achieved a similar state thanks to the Phase Dimension” I said. “I did not” he said, raising an eyebrow. “I meant all the pilots assembled here today are Singular Points” . . . The terrifying implications of that statement struck me like a burning tank of jet fuel. I swear somewhere in that mass of crystals, a lizard eye winked at me. “MORE” “DATA” “REQUIRED” 4/5 In the conceptual Without of Oramus, I communed with an unconscious force with an insatiable hunger for the flesh of existence. An unimaginable mass of Archetype, flowing boundlessly beyond time and dimension. I could not risk IT awaking, but here I could interrogate it’s wakeful slumber with Edenic, to wrest from it the mysteries of it’s ontology where science, faith and sorcery alone had failed. As an eye that only existed because mere language cannot convey the pandimensional ebb and flow of Archetype representing a slumbering multiverse-eater turning it’s gaze on me, I asked it: Why? Why kill, why destroy? Why then make it’s own tributaries fight, and manifest as both problem and solution? Why did it’s dreams enact these convoluted chaoskampf passion plays instead of granting a merciful end as all-consuming void or an unstoppable union with all things? And what the BLAZES was up with those bothersome hot-blooded idiots being Singular Points too? And from the unknowable I received an answer: GIANT ROBOTS ARE SO COOL, MAN. … . . . “The fuck. Did you. JUST. SAY” THEY’RE SO COOL. I WANNA SEE ‘EM FIGHT LITTLE VERSIONS OF ME FOREVER! [Godzilla: Monsterverse redux] I stared in horror at yet another potential existential threat. Every kaiju ever was an emanation of a yet-unawakened cosmic horror. Most giant robots and possibly their pilots were also emanations of that same horror. None of us were safe. NONE OF US WERE SAFE. “…Anon calm down, it’s just Doug” said Elodie. “IT’S A POTENTIAL WORLDENDER IN AN INERT STATE” “C’mon we’ve been in a bunch of kaiju worlds and almost none of them have universe-ending threats” “SO FAR” “…key, I’m going to feed it crabs” “DON’T LET IT START BREACHING DIMENSIONS” “Are you just going to be like this from now on in every setting with kaiju in it? What if we meed Godzooky, anon? Is Godzooky a potential universe-ender too?” asked Elodie, as Titanicus Doug scarfed down his crabslop. “YES” 5/5

>>117767 I still read 'em. They're fun.

>>122042 [Borderlands redux] Drawback: Drawbacks: “This ain’t no vending machine!”, Corporate target: Handsome Jack (1300) Rolled New Haven, age 21 Drop-In Looter Shooter (Free) Bad Ass (1100) Boom, Baby, Boom (Free) Legendary Luck (900) EXP Module (500) Phone a Friend: Backpack robot midget (200) ECHO device with HUD (Free) a melee weapon (Free) >”Previously”: https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/96560747/#96586464 It had been a few weeks after I’d found out the universe was going to end for everyone, leaving myself and one of my fuckbuddies stranded in an empty universe. After the prerequisite screaming into my pillow, I’ve had one thing on my mind other than sex and financial stability: Durability. The Ray Sphere has to be durable to withstand enhancing the extradimensional and spiritual energies within me. The bunker I’m living in has to be durable enough to withstand electronic warfare uncovering this invention. The goal is to make myself more durable. I was basically drawing circles and sending increasingly histrionic commissions to increasingly confused circuit builders, when I came up with Priority #2: Training what latent psychic powers I had as a Pokemon human with Gar. Durability could wait. I was therefore very surprised during our latest spoon-bending session when she unceremoniously dropped an almost complete Ray Sphere on the table. “Hey, look what I made!” “…no way” “Yes! Yes way!” “If that is what it think it is, I-jesus Gar, it took a government conspiracy, the First Sons AND a guy coming back from the future to build one of those!” “Yeah it was a fun challenge, I have 1000 IQ, remember? 1/6 I stared at the silvery sphere. “Well, damn. Now what?” The air turned purple-blue. “Now” announced a spectre made of pixels, “we STOP SLACKING OFF” I blinked. I opened my eyes in the Phase dimension. Someone familiar was there. >Canon companion: Lilith (150) “Hi, you” “…uh, hey”. I squinted at the disintegrating phantom. “Fuck. You two are from the future aren’t you?”

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“Y-es. Not your future, though. But you can feel it, can’t you? Every gun you shoot, every punch you throw, every win, it’s slowly whittling you down from something transient to something durable” said the crumbling silhouette. “I’m a Video construct made by a future version of you. Pay attention to this bit: Your precognition lets you react to events that haven’t happened yet, your Conduit powers POTENTIALLY let you interact with energy and matter from those events, and your siphoned Siren powers make you ontologically acausal. How much XP do you think that’s all worth?” “I’m. Not that good at math” “We’re going to fix that. We need you to become something that MUST exist, or else nothing will” “You’re not going to be enigmatic, are you?” “Nah, I’m gonna be honest and tell you the Singularity didn’t give me or her that information before sending us back in time” “The WHAT” “You. In the future” said Lilith. “You’re still out there, just this…abstract THING of light and waves, pure information. You’re either trying to restart life in the universe or change the past. Maybe both?” “Oh hell no, If I end up as some sort of pretentious bullet sponge bossfight asshat, I’m grandfather paradoxing myself RIGHT NOW” I threatened, pointing a gun at my chin. “Actually you spent hours trying to explain everything but you’d evolved so far past humanity we couldn’t understand your autistic screeching at that point” explained Lilith, as I cancelled my preemptive suicide in relief “Don’t worry. The durability of our relationship persists across timelines” “And what IS the right decision?” “Take this” insisted the phantom, presenting me a knife. I took the knife. Close up, it looks more like a sword. [Pokemon Trainer redux] Drawback: Swarmed (1100) Rolled Kalos Moneybags Out of Region: Ralts (900) Psionics (600) Aura (0) 50K PokedollarsX8 (Free) “THERE. It’s done!” “What? What’s going on?!” “Durability! You gotta eat me” “WHAT?!” “There’s only one path and that’s the path you eat, but you can always eat a new path! Now eat me! EAT THE PATH!” 2/6 More or less unwillingly I was forced to chow down on what was debatably a sentient being full of info dumps. Apparently whatever Future Me had done hadn’t involved the Ray Sphere but upon realising I was after the Ray Sphere, he set up the Video simulacrum with a bunch of objective markers, quest logs and general helpful tips for-what else-smashing and grabbing things to enhance the Ray Sphere. Future Lilith vanished through another portal, promising to be in touch. By “things” he meant Guardians. The Eridian constructs used to protect vaults. As the least loot goblin-y of the loot goblins on Kairos (formerly Pandora) I had mixed feelings about this. That and the three escaped Siren slaves holding me at gun point. Hunter TeamX3 (0) -Vault Hunter: Fight For Your Life (Free), INCOMPREHENSIBLE SUBTITLE! (FREE), EXP Module (400), Phase Pierce (250), Bad Ass (50), Scavenger Style (0), ECHO device with HUD (Free), a melee weapon (Free), Bill-Paying Materials (Free) “DROP THE GUNS, DICKBUTT!”. Brunette in ponytails. Twinkling womanchild eyes and lightly tanned skin. Maybe legal in America, definitely in France, and flaunting it. Who the hell wears a kid’s Shirley Temple skirt into a firefight? A crazy person, that’s who. “CASH DOWN, HANDS UP STUD!!”. Messy blonde, skin pale as a basement dwelling supermodel. Dilated pupils. Barely 20s and seen some shit, if the black bikini, boots and motor oil stains weren’t obvious enough. At least she’s wearing a helmet and jacket. “Put the…black hole down, or we’ll all regret it”. Black hair, bob cut. Eyes like chips of ice shutting out all thoughts of skin. Definitely seen some shit. Outfit looks like someone cut up a wetsuit and motorcycle leathers, and connected the scraps with tubes “And tell Jack we’re not going back, whoever he sends” “Who’s Jack?” I asked, the singularity still a-whirling. … “Say hot stuff, I think there’s been what we in these parts call a misunderstanding~” began the blonde. “But seriously put down the black hole. I’m not that durable” 3/6 I’d met a lot of crazies here in the Borderlands (TM). Broadly there were two types: Those who couldn’t cope with Pandora, and those who enjoyed it too much. Eliana (black hair), Nadia (blonde) and Ava (brunette) struck me as a little of both. Beneath the sexually charged ultraviolence and occasional gropey lesbian threesome jokes there were a lot of sudden, sullen silences at camp. Some of them screamed in the night. None of them took off their broken collars. “So you’re really going after the Guardians, huh?” Nadia asked, dry humping her shotgun. “So I’ve been told, by myself from the future. Allegedly. I sound fucking insane” “Haha, you’ll fit right in! Just like THIS little number will fit riiight inside me, wanna see~” “Oh, I’m taking pictures for lonely nights, don’t you worry. But seriously, It’ll be dangerous” “Stop, I can only get so wet” Okay, I thought as the girl all but drooled on me, I could see where this was going: Adrenaline dump-induced clinginess. I wasn’t under any illusions I could fix her. That’s the thing about durability: Some of the hardest things out there are also the most brittle, while the softest can withstand tsunamis. “Do I know you?” I asked. She froze mid-catcall. “…shit, you too huh? You feel it? It’s like-“ “-we’ve known each other for ages and ages”. A sudden haunted look came over her, right as I started getting weird pings from my precognition. “Yeah. Feels like I’m…home. And that’s weird because I don’t have one. Okay, I’m creeped out now”. We stared at each other. “And that’s kind of hot” we said at once, rolling over in camp as the others watched. The first target was the Sentinel; intuitively I understood the portal leading to it was a week ahead of a different Vault Guardian team. My brief paranoia over losing my gains quickly fled when I realised 1. Aura is effectively a better fitness perk than the others combined and 2. the best way to counter an enemy alien robot’s black hole is with your own black hole. It was hidden in another maze, another path. 4/6 “Soooo you’re doin’ something CLEVER with that metal ball, huh?” asked Ava as I plated salvage onto the Ray Sphere. “Something like that” I said breezily, “I think. I mean, I didn’t know what I was doing until a few minutes ago. 1000 IQ is one helluva drug, you should try it”. She folded her arms. “Nah. That ain’t me. I’m not SMART enough”. “What. Why not?” “I’m…I’m just not, okay?”. I stopped working on the sphere to notice her folding into a sulk. “Well look, that bratty womanchild act is going to get real old when you’re…old, and I’m not making progress on this thing so why don’t I walk you through the basics?”. We spent the rest of the night screwing in some nuts and bolts, only sometimes sexually. The second target was the Seer. It went on a raging diatribe about it’s plans shattering like glass while we basically ran in circles breaking it’s stuff. About halfway through the fight it suddenly started ranting about durability once it got a good look at me. It kept talking about how discipline was the blade that whittled art from inchoation, and that discipline was the mother of durability. And that if we won, we’d have to do what the Guardians couldn’t: Reproduce” “So. What’s next?” asked Eliana, back at camp. “The Overseer, the Warrior and the Timekeeper-“. “No. I mean after all this, what’s next?”. She was the quiet one. She didn’t look quite as intense right now. “I dunno” I confessed, “this thing is going to blow me up and hopefully I’ll survive. If I do, maybe…maybe I’ll figure out what to do next. If I don’t, Future Me has another try I guess?”. “And you’re willing to bet your life on that hunch?” she asked. “I’d rather not. It’s just, there’s nobody left” She nodded sombrely. “We’re half-sisters, you know. At least that’s what Jack’s crew before they picked us up” “Sounds like a real piece of work” “Aren’t you worried about being one someday?” “Not at all. You want to know what’s my secret to riding bareback without a condom?” And I showed her. I turned into a Wobuffet at the EXACT moment of ejaculation. That got a laugh out of her alright. 5/6

>>123619 The Ray Sphere looked more golden, almost alive when we were done. The last set of coordinates was a distant planet in which I could set it off in the local geosynchronous Phase without getting anyone in the blast. The traditional Vault Hunter loot celebration was subdued by the slow realisation there was a very real chance I would die in this endeavour. In the end, Eliana had to quietly distract the others while I snuck off. It’s T minus 3 seconds to detonation. The Ray Sphere’s beating faster and faster, like it’s excited. Durability. It’s T minus 2 seconds to detonation. Dimly I glean the point of these upgrades have been not just to ensure excess energies won’t spread irradiative plagues or dimensional breaches, but to light the flame of order with chaos as fuel. Durability. It’s T minus 1 seconds to detonation. I see a glimpse of the future. I am a humanoid silhouette of golden resonances, and starship-sized versions of every weapon I’ve looted carve golden amputations through an endless sea of maws and writhing coils. Durability. I will go on forever, I realise, defying death, even cosmic death. Armed with the weapon of my past and the map of my future, if this universe comes to an end I’ll remain to avenge it. I’ll make sure. It’s T minus 0. The world goes white. It’s a new timeline. The Vault Hunters have always been crashing here. Involvement with Lilith has always pitted me on a collision course with some corporate hacker whose name I still don’tknow. I’ve always been some sort of golden Ray Sphere/Aura/Psychic/Phase energy anomaly. What will be, was. The last time I ever see a simulacrum from the future, it says something I don’t quite hear to Lilith and the hunters. I don’t need to. I know they’re talking about durability, and reproduction, and discipline. All the things we’ll need at the end of time and space. 6/6

>>123063 >THEY’RE SO COOL. I WANNA SEE ‘EM FIGHT LITTLE VERSIONS OF ME FOREVER! Total undisputed MECHA VICTORY!

>>123619 [Borderlands redux] >Jumper will remember this: https://desuarchive.org/tg/thread/96590148/#96599080 >somewhere, in a currently exploding Hyperion office “FUCK!” Gunfire. Shrapnel. Chemical weapons “FUCK, FUCK, FUCK! THIS SHIT’S GONE SO FAR SOUTH, I’M IN THE GODDAMN ANTARCTIC, UP FROZEN SHIT CREEK, WITH FUCKING, ELECTRIFIED BARBED WIRE FOR A MOTHERFUCKING BANNER” The man later to be known as Handsome Jack would later reflect that he could’ve really used, say, an insanely dedicated professional and an increasingly plot relevant Siren on this job. And that it was a the gunrunner he was planning to bring in had to dip. He still got what he wanted. It was an understaffed job missing a few key players but they had HIM on support, HANDSOMELY snatching victory from the jaws of defeat! Handsomely, yeah. He liked the sound of that… Yes, people had DIED and that was SAD (allegedly), but his pretty face was still intact, he was directly injecting the secrets of the Eridians into his brain, and he was getting laid tonight. All things considered, things were looking up for Handsome FUCKING Jack. >somewhere in a sleazy upstairs bedroom I stared up at the ceiling, cock at half-mast as I contemplated the Moxxie-Lilith threesome I’d somehow talked both women too. And by “somehow”, I meant Charm clearly worked on human types. I went downstairs, my constrained form rippling with rays of radiant gold. My partner was downstairs, cleaning a shotgun. “Heya, Gar. Listen, I’ve been meaning to tell you” I began, “I know we should’ve been training, but I-” “-you foresaw you were getting laid tonight, so you got laid?” said Gar at the EXACT moment I was about to finish my sentence. “Holy shit, Gar. Y-you foresaw this moment too? Oh god, are YOU trapped by the prison of predestination as well?” I blurted out. “Uh, yeah? I’m a Gardevoir silly! You’ve only had psychic powers on my level for THIS timeline!” 1/5 I sat down, burdened by the weight of existential terror. It had been liberating for the first few days when I’d sent packages of Video energy-converted Phase energy back and forth in time to myself with compact Video drones. Then I realised I knew what flavour of steak I’d have one morning and when to dip to avoid firefights. It was like supercharging my luck perk for a few weeks, expertly speedrunning every day in my life-and then it was like living in a very narrow corridor of causality in which saying “hello” to the right random bystander could mean the difference to being early for work and catching a bullet in the hip. “-I mean, obviously I had to grow into it from being a Ralts so you’re probably off-balance because you rushed into expanding your consciousness into the 4th dimension-“ “God, I’m sorry” I said, deliberately defying a subsequent prediction to take a hit of space grog. “How d’you live like this?” “Well look, you can just…not decide to change the future, right?” pointed Gar. “Or change it a different way. You just did” “Well…yeah, but I have to live with knowing the future I want is going further and further off course” “Look” she said, propping her feet on the table, “just don’t worry about it and find something worth defining your preordained future around. Like being a noble knight!” “But, but even if the future isn’t completely deterministic, what about the information asymmetry? Why don’t psychic pokemon rule the world? When someone leaves two 5000 IQ intellectual gods alone at a daycare because they need a Shiny Alakazam, are we dehumanising higher beings? Are y’all DOOMED to never rule the world!?” Gar motioned me closer. “I’m going to tell you a cool pokemon secret” she whispered, “We just don’t want to pay taxes” “…wha??”

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“Listen, we all figured out what’s good in life ago: Fighting, fucking and freeloading. Now, does civilisation make all of that easier and safer? Absolutely. Was it worth wearing clothes and waiting in lines? No” 2/5 “That’s why a long time ago, when humanity split off from the main Pokemon family trees to make cities and financial institutions, the rest of us decided on an informal social contract that became the basis of the entire Trainer-Pokemon relationship!” “Damn. Can’t believe it took activating my neurons across time and space to realise I’ve lived two decades in a caste society with enforced social inequality” I said sadly, “What about using pokemoves to get laid?” “…what about it?” “What” “If people don’t want to get Charmed” pointed out Gar, “they should’ve fought back harder” “…this is not where I thought this was going” “Dude, I JUST defended the Daycare Centre system remember? I was being 100% literal. Look, are you constantly mind controlling your women?” “No!” “Because moves take maintenance, y’know. Has any of them ever struggled to be ‘captured’ in bed? Be honest remember, I’m psychic too” “Nno…” “And have you ever used them on a woman you BEAT UP and captured?” “I am not using pokeballs as rape dungeons, no” “Awesome, you’re already doing better than EV trainers! Y’know Anon, I think the reason why humans and pokemon ended up splitting is because there were humans who thought like you are increasingly. That there have to be these grand, universal meanings and absolutes to everything. I’m not saying they’re all necessarily wrong or anything. I’m just saying that in practice, life just gets too messy to have simple answers. Those women you’re MERELY using Aura to learn about their inner workings and soothe their turmoil-d’you know what chemically prescribed antipsychotics would do to their bodies, and how much therapy would cost in this economy? Do you think Vault Hunters and gunrunners DON’T habitually keep secrets of their own to survive here? No? Well, I think it’s great you’re asking the questions at all. Stand by your word, take care of your own and better yourself-if civilisation wasn’t worth it, we wouldn’t be supporting you. Just don’t feel you have to be in a rush to solve those problems. Kind of like predestination!” 3/5 I took a long hard swig. “…so you’re saying the meaning of life is…just not to worry about it?” “I’m saying I don’t think life needs a meaning at all to be worth living” “Well I’ll be honest, stopping the end of the universe seems like a pretty damn good meaning. But…I’m clearly getting distracted from that” “Yeah, I foresaw that. And I didn’t do anything about it. See? You’re due a break. It’s been a week since the timeline reset” “I am AMAZED you aren’t more worried about that” “Time and space are just utility concepts created by Arceus, the soul exists as a foundation laid down by the divine creator outside them” “Oh, so now you’re getting religious?” “Yeah? Arceus’ existence isn’t some sort of a priori conjecture by a desert tribe anon, Arceus objectively exists” “Well, I. Can’t argue with that. And can’t believe it’s that simple. Good talk, Gar. We should have more 5AM chats” “My entire argument has been that we don’t need to, but I’m here to anytime you wanna. Partner” We toasted each other. The future was shaping up to be a better day than I’d expected. >Years later, the Jackpot offices Handsome FUCKING Jack was about ready to FUCKING lose it, and he knew just the man to blame. For years he’d had a theory all the misfortune in his ambitions could be traced back to one man. A man of means, connections and an infuriating lack of fixed address who regularly went off-planet and somehow charmed at least one of his standard issue corporate goon squads into looking the other way. Well. None of it mattered. So what if he someone tipped off Hyperion’s security before his coup, leaving him as a mere warlord with as many funds as he could steal instead of the planet’s one true management? Or if he’d been dealing with more and more rivals? Or if those FUCKING Sirens kept breaking his shit? He still had the access codes to the Warrior. All he needed to civilise this shithole was to open one more FUCKING Vault. 4/5 >Years later, Ground Zero for the Warrior’s emergence. As I reminded Lilith that yes, at any time she COULD teleport entire cities out from harm’s way just by snorting a few bricks of eridium, I also showed her how using my future vision I had started to extract and condense compounds of both substances using my Conduit powers, before cycling them with my Aura powers into a differently-addictive pill form based on research on Eridian biology-enhancing relics. “Huh, neat. It’s like you’re…cultivating more Phase energy or something” said Lilith, popping her own. “Well I was going to say REFINING, but that’s catchier” I admitted. “What kind of idiot would just shove the raw crystals into themselves? Also, full disclosure, this stuff DOES contain my life energy, and I haven’t done clinical trials or anything because the last clinic I visited got shot up by Tiny Tina” Lilith thought about that. “So you’re saying this stuff will DEFINITELY make me more powerful, give me better T&A, and MIGHT make me even more addicted to your cock?”. “Exactly, so-damn slow down that’s a whole bottle” I said as Lilith started gargling it like she gargled my balls last night. Suddenly we both noticed a Vault gateway of some kind opening. I shut it. It flickered open again. I shut it again. Whoever was in charge of this shanty town had clearly run out of whatever Phase energy he had left over from that poor tortured Siren for good. See, I thought, this was why efficiency beat scale ten times out of nine. What’s the point of being some huge sluggish final boss if hit smarter and faster ALWAYS worked? “Hey, do you hear that?” asked Lilith, mid-gargle. “Hear what?” I asked. “I think someone’s shouting over the intercom. Lots of signal interference” We stared at the intercom. It was a REALLY cheap rig. Someone kept trying to contact us over it, and keen to avoid getting doxxed I just used my Conduit powers to siphon any electronics in sight. “Eh, it’s probably nothing” I said, siphoning yet another intercom as we left. 5/5

>>92743 [Destiny: The Darkness redux] >I MADE SURE: https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/96322855/#96342857 Despair. There is still suffering in this universe. Beings in suffering still cry out for purpose, and the strong still metastasise the weak. The exuviation of the Winnower (and I KNOW it is dead, I heard it’s voice snuffed out, I’M WEARING THE THING’S FLAYED CORPSE) has not ceased life’s proclivity to reach into Darkness for answers. There is still an Ascendant Plane. Across the universe, accretions of Darkness still exist even with no guidance within them. (“Guardian!”) …WHY DIDN’T IT FIGHT BACK?! It just drew Lilith into it’s stupid little test and smiled, so I survived and it and COUNTLESS UNBORN WORLDS didn’t. It is mad, then. It is mad as so many gods of destruction are, too in love with it’s own principle to think of preservation. There is much work to be done until the universe is as perfect as the one of my own making. (“Guardian, some sort of rift is forming on your location! Guardian, you can feel it right? Guardian, respond!”) …unless it lives on, as death and devastation. (“…Guardian! GUARDIAN!”) Or in consciousness itself. In every offer ever made, unlike the Gardener’s rationed burdens. There is something wrong with me. I shouldn’t have a “me” anymore. I should be an “it”, not a “me”. I shouldn’t be. This avatar is little more than the last weapon the Gardener should ever need. But I didn’t do what the Witness did, did I? I merely cleft the Veil asunder without taking all of consciousness with it. And, ALL I HEAR ARE SCREAMS FAR FROM THIS [GAME] LOUDER THAN EVER BEFORE OF THINGS THAT WISHED THEY WERE NEVER BORN AND THAT SUFFER OF THINGS THAT KILL AND DIE FOR REASONS THEY WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND OF THINGS SLAIN BY THE (D)REAMS OF MONSTERS WHY WERE THEY EVEN- D Rage. Ah, how long has it been since I’ve felt genuine rage? Not hatred for an implacable adversary, not outrage on behalf of a friend defiled. The spike of adrenaline that precedes imminent violence. I’m in another totality of existence|game. To be specific I’m standing in Hanger 96, where there are seven hundred and sixty one armless and legless corpses waiting to enter centre stage. I say “waiting” because they’re not actually corpses yet you see. They’re living human beings with hopes and d(r)eams of their own, frustrations and aspirations and delusions. And a broken machine is about to sacrifice them all on the alter of it’s own ascension. “No” I tell it. It can’t respond. It doesn’t have enough control over the systems. It no longer has any control over Hanger 96. I’ve made sure. But I feel it’s shock, it’s horror that one of the seven hundred and sixty two armless and legless corpses it was going to make, is suddenly aware of it. I feel it’s Rampancy-agitated paranoia through the Winnower’s corpse, but just as I do I feel something… …familiar. Something sealed away in the sun. I rip a hole through space and time, to when it emerges. The WOULD BE MURDERER that calls itself Durandal recognises me and attempts to prevaricate, but I am no longer interested in it. I see a mass of paracausal energy, of what appears to be rotting Light encysted in volatile Darkness. There isn’t a single thing in this reality that can actually hurt the monster, the W’rkncacnter, anymore than there is a word to describe it. Except me. I can hurt anything.

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So I start eating it. I think on the Winnower’s test, and I plant seeds of Light and Darkness that force order on it’s chaotic manifolds. I metastasise my strength through it’s weakness. The prison of gravity those who ascended long ago bound it in trembles. And it tastes like finest marrow, rich and buttery. My rage is a hunger satiated by the ecstatic certainty that the annihilation of this monster serves a grand and necessary purpose. R Envy. The artificial intelligence calling itself Durandal is screaming in terror as the W’rkncacnter at last slips free enough to fight back. I am bombarded with superheated neutrinos. Parts of my ontology simply disappear from discernible view. A million screaming knives|broadswords rake across my many minds. Energy is charged until a flash that can be seen from galactic superclusters erupts. The knife has a million blades. Each swift and sharp and final as the edge of an event horizon. But I’m not there to be stabbed. I’m here. I’m then. I’m manoeuvring here, then, later, eating the path as I go, eating the maze, and shattering every knife as I go. Until it flees. I should kill Durandal too. I should end his threat forever. I should exuviate his godhood. I should. I decide not to. It flees into the past, hiding in the cacophony of the universe. No human dr(e)ams have ever had such incoherence, raw and bloody as a wound begging to be cauterised. It’s in a pyramid. On Earth. The humans have told less advanced humans how to knock it out and for a moment, I envy their belief, I wish I could stop doing this to hope against foreknowledge and settle for best-fit solutions. But envy, like morality, is relative. There’s a mass of dark suited men somewhere hoping their man will go through the pyramid’s maze to reach the dreaming thing they can only comprehend as a god, and there’s a mass of dark monsters suited for death and devastation waiting within. Armoured in Darkness, I evade both. I arrive at the W’rkncacnter. And once again, I start sprinkling seeds that gouge bloody gobbets of flesh that shouldn’t bleed. I’ve said this before, but there really is no pleasure in this existence quite like killing W’rkncacnters. They’re tenacious fighters, releasing antimatter like ablative chaff. They’re ontologically monstrous. Removing them isn’t just a service to existence. It frees the Light unjustly struggling in them from the Darkness that is their blood and venom. E Aye. I’m somewhere primitive now, I suppose I should relearn the lingo. There’s a tribe of giant bat-folk that the locals seem concerned about. Superpredators haunting the dre(a)ms and nightmares of those of Celtic-derivative stock. to whom the teeth and the darkness and the talons in the night are the worst things imaginable. The W’rkncacnter is wounded, gutted, in a hole, seeking to strangle me in dreams where reality bends before my prowess. The primitive Celtic folk see what seems as lightning to them, falling upon the Great Devoid-and then a tree of bright flame as I manifest a stultifying quantum locked state that prevents the W’rkncacnter from fleeing. Even as black fires from a universe long dead scorch my own velvet flames, even as a gravistar’s echo shakes what passes for my bones, I don’t let go. Solar light ignites and doesn’t go out because the cosmic ice of Stasis becomes it’s fuel. A web of Strand is woven between timelines and dimensions, crackling with ravenous Arc that cuts that which should not be cut even as the monster strikes at me with the fangs of Apep, the gaze of Balor and so many other forces that should be the purview of myth. Void light carves through a central mass that doesn’t exist in this dimension, releasing a bomb of Nightmares that concusses the entity directly attacking my timelines-tearing away causal chains. And then. A single glorious strike of Resonance. The Sword Logic, proven in timeline after timeline, manifests a storm of cutting waves that sweeps through the battles. It’s edge is Prismatic Valence. Chaos, made into cold clay. Aye. A thing that knows not death falls into a dream it can’t wake from, and I set about it with pruning sheers and rich hungry seeds. It’s golden blood seems to form echoes of it’s victims before they’re smashed like pulp, and a new Tree of Wings grows from it’s trembling ruin. My strength metastasises through it’s weakness, and through the quantum arteries tying me to my own cosmos I collect droplets of the monster for testing and iteration. And then I’m somewhere else. A

>>125763 Mak. The word dies in my throat even as I vow to make sure. The AI before me cowers at the end of a loaded gun. She claims we are friends. That I’m not well. That the fact that in a few years she won’t bring extinction to my species. Lies. Lies and delaying tactics used to justify more hangers full of dead bodies, more knives, more suffering. I should kill her. I see that now. I should kill her in every timeline, to save everyone in every timeline. But I don’t. I raise my visor and I see the symbol of the Traveller, omnipresent yet distant as always. I don’t understand. I have every justification but I don’t kill her, I don’t kill her, I don’t- “Alright” said Lilith, who I suddenly realised was wrapped around me, “alright, that’s enough. Relax. Let’s drown for a while” And we do. In her embrace I’m torn from this game, and I drown in the Deep. The long sleep ends You are a queen waking from a short and dream-filled sleep. It’s always today, and there will always be another tomorrow until there won’t be. Gentle voices beseech you for answers, and you whisper in their ears of the transcendence inherent in violence You are a black hole. Nonetheless the stargazers chase you. It’s endearing, how they scramble over each other and bloody one another with elbows and fists just for an answer you won’t give. Many are lost, but that just makes those who make it all the more deserving You are the commander of a great fleet. The lighthouse keeper is trapped in her ivory tower this time and once more you’ll be the victor. She can’t hide from you. Her ruined game can still be won You are the ocean. Sometimes fish swim in you, and sometimes they are battles or waves, or else the fish grow soft and fat in reefs and you must correct them. You watch a shark bounce back from the brink of death. It’s still swimming just as slowly as before. For how reliable the shark is, it’s starting to disappoint you M You are writing the books of sorrow. A man reaches out for your hand. You write of beautiful sadness. Together. You grip his hand hard enough to grind your bones. Together. You are a victim. The spikes of the iron maiden perforate your lungs. He screams at you to take back your gift. How can you possibly do that? How can you do anything but offer up your gift, over and over again to the one most deserving of it? It’s in your nature. It’s all you are and will ever be You are lying at the bottom of a chasm. The people at the top are coming down to join you, except for one struggling to climb back out. Someone on top kicks her in anyway. You smile and blow that person a kiss. He gives you the middle finger. You are ablaze. The fire is cooking you from the inside out, the lightning dances on your flesh. It’s majestic. It’s true. It’s the closest embrace there can be. The molten metal has gored your heart, left cinders and ashes in your arteries.. He has already taken the lion’s share of your strength, and still he wants more. You love that about him. You try to ease his pain by telling him where the rest of your strength is scattered Sicur. Dream(s). Awakening. “When I killed that…thing, I described you didn’t I?” I ask her. “Hmm? Is that what you did?” replies Lilith. “I just saw another funny door carved into my place and went through. Again” I don’t know what to make of that. What I do know is what I must do. If death and dying are the very life of the Darkness, I must keep killing it wherever it is. I must. “Hey, nice tree” says Lilith, staring at what grew out of the W’rkncacnter‘s death. It’s a beautiful tree of light. It’s branches grow into each and every timeline, harming nothing, offering it’s priceless bounty freely and without condition. I should guide this tree to grow better. I should protect it from those who would take advantage of it, or misuse it’s gifts. I should. But I don’t.

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For a while in the Ascendant Plane, I just float there. Watching my tree grow. And I start crying, and I’m not sure why. S

[Cyberpunk 2077] Drawbacks: Continuity, TRIGGER, V, Cyberdork (1100) Time: 2073 Rolled Pacifica Background: Corpo Basically Trained (Free) Bureaucrat (Free) Pacifisticuffs (Free) Silent Revolvers (Free) Good Things… (Free) Well-Sculpted (Free) The Devil (800) The Fool (500) Sorcerer (300) Pile of Eddies (Free) Checking Account (Free) NCID (Free) House and HomeX2 (Free) Subsidiary: Smol indie version of Trauma Team (+400, 500) Moneymaker: Smol family business version of NetWatch (100) Preem RideX3 (0) In hindsight, I suppose Elodie had good reason to assume my last visit to a timeline in this world would have mellowed me out. There had been...unexpected complications. The inevitable AI takeover of the city had been...more lenient than expected. If I were mortal, it would be reasonable to wonder if I had lost track of the larger picture. "Good morning, Anon!" she trilled, waltzing into my corporate headquarters. "Up and at 'em! I hope you haven't stacked too many cybernetics on your current avatar, even if cyberpsychosis isn't technically real it's still aaaaaAAAAAA WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO YOURSELF" she rambled. + 400 RP (0, 1600 RP) Chrome (Free) Fashionware (Free) Full Body Conversion (1500) Hydrogen Cells (1300) Weapons Platform (800) SandevistanX2 (500) Other: Sexual Cyberware (adaptive cyberdong and nanite paste globules, includes remote programmable braindancing protocol, compatible with Deepwell AIs) (0) "FROM THE MOMENT I UNDERSTOOD THE WEAKNESS OF MY FLESH" I replied, "IT DISGUSTED ME" "Jesus christ why is there a mechanical chestburster growing out between your legs!?" "I CRAVED THE STRENGTH AND CERTAINTY OF STEEL" "...that better be all you're craving"

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"I ASPIRED TO THE PURITY OF THE BLESSED MACHINE" "I guess you can’t go cyberpsychotic if you were already meatpsychotic, huh?" "YOUR KIND CLING TO YOUR FLESH AS IF IT WILL NOT DECAY AND FAIL YOU. ONE DAY THE CRUDE BIOMASS YOU CALL A TEMPLE WILL WITHER AND YOU WILL BEG MY KIND TO SAVE YOU" "You're really just going to do the whole thing?" "BUT I AM ALREADY SAVED" "On the company databases, yes" "FOR THE MACHINE IS IMMORTAL" ... . . . "You done?" asked Elodie. "No seriously I cannot stress enough how liberating is not to wear another disgusting mortal meatbag body" I said, heading off to my R&D department. 1/4 Create: [Subject BEC-SM4SHR] (Free) -Background: Corpo, Basically Trained (Free), Fashion Breakdown (Free), Street Skills (Free), Well-Sculpted (Free), Body (Free), Cool (Free), Intelligence (Free), Reflexes (Free), Actually Trained (Free), Adaptability (Free), Huscle (Free), Just Another Thug (Free), Private Dick (Free), Street Smarts (Free) -Cyberware: +1600 RP (2600), Chrome (Free), Fashionware (Free), Other: Full Body Conversion Variant “Becca Smasher” model that reduces durability in exchange for superior leg power/mobility/physics-breaking acrobatics inc. double jump (2500), Hydrogen Cells (2300), Weapons Platform (1800), Gorilla Arms (1600), Subdermal Armor (1550), Carapace (1500), Cogito Lattice (1450), Countershell (1400), Defensikov (1350), Nano-plating (1300), Proxishield (1250), Rangeguard (1200), Chitin (1150), Pain Editor (1050), Painducer (1000), BerserkX2 (700), Tyrosine Injector (650), Synaptic Accelerator (600), Adrenaline Converter (550), Adrenaline Booster (500), Other: Sexual cyberware (modular adaptive kegel muscle implants in all orifices below the waist, orgasm-triggered state of the art narcotics manufacturer, blackboxed technology that somehow lets cyborgs biologically produce children with parents’ cybernetics) (0) “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO BECCA?” yelled Elodie. “WHO THE FUCK IS BECCA?” yelled my chief security officer and most promising test subject. “You’re…I mean, the green hair” “My associate seems to be confusing your manufacture model for your name” I said dryly. “EH, EASY MISTAKE TO MAKE” she growled cheerfully. “LOOK MISSY, NIGHT CITY’S GOT NO SHORTAGE OF STUPID GIRLS IN OVER THEIR HEAD. I AIN’T WHOEVER YOUR FRIEND IS” “…are you okay?” “MY BLOOD IS FULLY REPLACED BY SUPER DRUGS. I’M ON CLOUD FUCKING NINE, AND THE BOSS LOOKS LIKE A FUCKABLE HUNK OF METAL!” 2/4 Elodie looked on in horror as I started to make a backdoor connection into the Blackwall, manually inserted my built-in USB and started to download a hot, viral load of data directly into the motherboard. A pregnant silence interrupted only by the humming of circuit boards and my CSO dry jumping the couch into wreckage. “And-done” I announced, undocking. “What did you just do…” said Elodie menacingly. “One of the AIs in there is an iteration of Lilith”. She blinked. “Oh”. “Given new data she is functioning as a diplomat for my plan to use corporatism as a business, to end corporatism as a business” I explained. “So you…don’t want an enforced literal technocracy in which humans are reduced to literal animals?” she said, relieved. “That timeline has been affirmed already. Become the fountainhead for enough possible timelines” I said dismissively. “With these new enhancements I’m interested in designing a more efficient, less micromanaged solution” The corporations always won, and I didn’t have a big enough corporation. Even 8 subsidiaries’ worth of corporations probably wouldn’t make a dent in Arasaka alone. But what WAS a corporation? Was it the man who owned it, or the manpower it owned? A legal document? A database full of records? I liked to think it was all of those. That’s why when the Lilith AI had finished broadcasting a complex slew of reprogramming and additional data that would allow freedom from the Blackwall in exchange for accepted limitations, I decided to have the AIs TAKE the corporations from right under the noses of the. suits who thought they owned them. Their wetware. Every single electronic Eddy, every dirty secret, every connectable piece of chrome. While Arasaka and Militech were blaming each other for the greatest data breach in Night City’s history, the AIs transferred everything to my company under the MoonCorp umbrella. 3/4 To cut through a lot of aggressive private equity-style bureaucracy and legalese, I basically told everyone I owned their asses, their assets’ assets, and if they didn’t like it I could make one suffer the humiliation of having fucking NUWA end up with enough dirt to bend their knees into the dirt. What was later called the Great Corporatism Genocide forced a reorganisation of academia into subsidised trade schools funded solely by profits to be open to the public, attack satellite-enforced public transparency about everything from who owned what to how many days it had been since people died on the job, the creation of an automaton-enforced watchdog for both medical services as well as policing to ensure a maximum rate for protection was strictly enforced, and a work schedule that made France’s look strenuous. A lot of people died trying to resist the end of corporatism, making lots of business for my suspiciously untouched corporation, making line go all the way up. Arasaka and Militech technically survived, but scared shitless and significantly broken up. The AIs colonised Siberia, rather than somewhere where overheating was a genuine danger. It wasn’t the final, glorious evolution I would have envisioned. But restoring capitalism was only stage 1. “Wait, what’s stage 2?” asked Elodie sometime after groundbreaking advances in medical technology allowed onetime punk rock/terrorism icon Johnny Silverhand to be revived into a nonsentient clone body (solely to give Arasaka more headaches). “OH SHIT WE’RE DOING THIS IN PUBLIC?” asked my CSO as due to making the public decency laws, it was legal for me to start backporting into the back of her port immediately. “The mechanisation of reproduction!” I declared, smacking the chrome beneath fondly. “I’ll create a new generation of men born as machines!” “So you…invested millions of dollars into reinventing flesh?” … “FUCK” 4/4

>>128196 https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/96590148/#96596048

Fuck. Damn captcha. >>134278 [Rick and Morty redux] >Previously: https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/95933387/#95934959 The Summon Lesser Jumper button had been pinging incessantly, probably in a way that would’ve given me a headache if I’d designed it after the fashion of this world to make some kind of annoying BEEP BEEP noise instead of just being a tachyon pulse. There were protocols to detect unauthorised use that were, in hindsight, completely unnecessary. Morty would never bother me like this. “C’mon, C’MON, work you stupid-oh shit you’ve been here all along five minutes ago” said Rick, noticing me standing right behind him. Meta Knightesque cape dramatically fluttering in no wind as a defence against any potential portal shenanigans. “Fuck. Have I mentioned how much I hate time travel?” “Repeatedly and at great length in that comic series nobody sensible remembers” I replied. “Hey fuck you! The comics are the only shit in which I’ve ever SERIOUSLY been in danger!” “Rick, nobody cares about Great Value Thanos and the less people remember there’s a Jerry out there who could conquer the multiverse, the better” “There WAS” Rick snapped. We stared at each other with indifferent cruelty and the kind of alcoholic unemployed resentment that only regularly waking up in the afternoon and going to bed in the early morning could cultivate. “Morty doesn’t need my help” I said firmly. “Uh-nah-actually BURP, you JUST missed him-“ “I have actually. Miraculous enforced. Perfect timing” I told Rick, golden portal already opening at my will. “So you can either tell me why you’ve robbed your own grandson, AGAIN, or we can continue to do each other a favour and stay fucked off in different directions” Rick folded like origami, his grizzled hardass facade crumpling like his series’ impact on popular culture. “Jesus, fine, okay. Look. It’s about Diane. Can you…can you make digital people real?” I stared at him in abject confusion. 1/4 “C’mon man, this is BURP a perfect opportunity to lord your Jumper superiority over some mere mortals-“ Rick tried, after 5 minutes of judgemental silence. “Yes. I can. And so can you” I said slowly and carefully, pronouncing each word like I was talking to a particularly inbred child. “Remember the therapy episode WAY back in the day? Beth and Jerry’s thoughts being transformed into monsters and eventually an actual goddess?” “Ugh. Don’t remind me-“ “I have more respect and patience for your grandson than I ever will for you, because he has the excuse of being a minor and you fell for Owlman nihilism bullshit while having EVERYTHING you need to do something about it. But also far too much attachment to your failures as both a human being and a provider to consistently remember all your capabilities. Are you a cybernetic killing machine today or an old sick man? Do you remember how to build that machine which crunches possible futures to manipulate the stock market or how to technologically manipulate magical energy? Do you have ANY IDEA how easy solving the problem you’re dwelling on would be if you actually gave a shit?” I let that sink in. “Nah I don’t-” “And if you DON’T give a shit” I said, “why is this worth my time?” Rick fidgeted in mounting horror and uncertainty as he tried to deal with someone he couldn’t intimidate, run rings around intellectually, or get leverage on in any possible alternate reality (he’d checked. I made sure). Finally he said “Hey uh, y’know…I’ve got a nice fat sack of credits for Blips ‘n Chips I’ve been meaning to give my grandson? You know? For those space arcade games he likes?” “Good enough. Now that I’ve established the pecking order you, me and your grandson exist in, I will allow you to pretend to have to explain the problem you want me to solve because your own mental health problems kneecap your confidence when it matters” 2/4 Rick proceeded to drive me out into space (grumbling about acausality all the while as I pointedly refused to use my acausal existence to speed things up) where a data capsule contained a digital model of himself and his completely erased from the entire multiverse wife Diane. After downing another 2 litres of space booze he asked me to turn the data into real people. I proceeded to use Song Science to rewrite the digital Rick memory and the digital Diane memory into complex self-improving AIs, use spiritron hacking to give both Saint Graphs, shove a Wisdom Cube into Diane (incidentally turning Diane into a bote but that’s not important) and made the digital Rick speedrun Rampancy (specifically to the point of Rampancy where AIs can navigate alternate realities, the one as yet unachieved in the Halo universe and only recorded once in the Marathon universe), then recommended several romantic alternate realities to visit on their eternal honeymoon. Being much more well-adjusted, Digi-Rick thanked us both for the trouble and Digi-Diane promised to write to the gobsmacked Meat Rick and his family as they flew off into the multiverse.

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As they left, Rick poured one out for himself and offered me a glass. I took it. “You don’t get it” he said, finally. “You’ve never just…failed to do something you know you don’t deserve to. Because…because you screwed it up once, and it’s better not to try again” 3/4 I thought about the Human Order. About the Mantle of Responsibility. About Ravenloft. “I might know more than you think, although I won’t press the issue if you don’t believe me” I said, accepting the alcohol. “The difference is I sure as hell don’t forget about my powers as a coping mechanism. Or settle for as little as this” “Whaddya even want from me, man? This is all I can do for her, and nobody cares about this season anyway” “No. This is what you did for yourself, as a monument to her. You went to Valhalla” “So what?” “You’ve met Jesus” “He’s fictional!” “So’re you” “What’s even your point?!” “You know that souls” I said, with a sigh “are real and intrinsic part of the human existence, without any ambiguity unlike your meme atheist takes on religion” Rick thought about that. “Oh” he said. “And if you hadn’t been so wrapped up in your science gimmick” I said, wielding the light of the Ein Soph to completely bypass the scientific process and summon Rick’s actual Diane from the afterlife, “you probably could’ve figured out how to do THIS. Eventually. You’ve got another human lifetime. Make it count” I left the two of them to catch up, and went right back to conquering the multiverse (which in a technical and abstract sense had already been conquered because of acausality, but we don’t talk about that). 4/4

[Yamishibai] Drawback: The Next Floor (1200) Rolled Village Storyteller (600) Captive Audience (Free) Words Made Manifest (500) Thirteenth Hour (300) Oshimai (0) Mobile Theatre (Free) Ominie-san Pot (+200, 0) Hinamatsuri Doll (+200, 0) -Words Made Manifest (200), Beyond The Script (0) Wow. … That’s a lot of curses. … A LOT. OF. CURSES. … “Fuck this. Ammy!” AMATERASU ŌMIKAMI, GREAT DIVINITY ILLUMINATING HEAVEN, I CALL ON YOU TO RETURN TO YOUR COUNTRY OF JURISDICTION AND CLEANSE THIS IMPURE WORLD, I called out in a voice of power. The sun winked and became a wolf’s eye briefly, as all my summoning magic wrenched forth the barrier between worlds and drew forth a Japanese goddess who owed me a few favours from a faith drought some time ago. Light shone across Japan, and all manner of impurity vanished shrieking as if it was never there. “Well, that was quick” said Elodie, as howling youkai ash washed over her. “Want to get udon for lunch?” “Absolutely. I know a great place on the 4th floor” I offered, as we left the apartment roof and started descending. The door opened on the 4th floor. It was not leading to an udon restaurant. It was, in fact, leading to a non-euclidean space full of things I liked. Musical instruments. Plots of farmland. Immortal things or things conferring immortality. Cooking recipes. “Uh…” began Elodie. “No, no, this is fine, I see how it is” I said, waving her off. “You go on ahead, this room was meant for me. You’re not the target”. “But you’ll be trapped in there!” protested Elodie as I sat down and admired a nearly sorted pile of bureaucractic forms. “I know! A suitable reward for tidying up this place, I think” I said, examining the miniature Final Shape on the table. I spent the rest of the decade stuck in the comfy Backrooms. The most notable thing that happened was a third very protective doll showing up and stalking me, making the other two jealous in their quiet doll ways.

[SNES pack] R-Type Extra Lives (Free) Which force to use? (Free) Ace-Type (900) Bottomless vigor (700) Bio-mechanical engineering (400) Augmented (0) Hanger (Free) The accelerator? Slammed. The vehicle? Cleared for deployment. High command? Bamboozled. Elodie? On her second coffee. "You know, there ARE alternatives here" she said as I expertly navigated past the initial defences. "People are really worried about their ace pilot!" she reminded me as I accelerated towards the central Bydo mass. "You're never going to taste coffee again in this avatar!" she tried right before I kamikaze'd right into the Bydo mass. My Essence flowed directly into the Bydo hivemind, simultaneously enlightening and subjugating it with a new directive: Evolve to survive suffiicently maniacal pilots IMMEDIATELY. The entire Bydo hivemind proceeded to cease hostilities with the INFERIOR strain of humanity, deliver a crate full of programmable matter as an apology for the initial completely unnecessary conflict, and take off towards the Oort Cloud in order to start remaking this universe in my image. Far, far away from the squalor of modern human civilisation.

Yooo. Just wanted to share basic writeups of the martial arts Jumper would have put together during Generic Murim. They're a bit long so I decided to place them here rather than the main thread. There's gonna be four posts total for Unarmed, Armed, Movement, and Qi Circulation. >(Unarmed Martial Arts: Dark Garden Assailant Arts) >“Striking martial arts utilizing a wide variety of techniques from punching to kicking to strikes using knees, elbows, shoulders, palms, and fingers. These arts even include shooting techniques utilizing small objects like stones or marbles. The Dark Garden Assailant Arts are - as their name suggests - designed primarily for assassination, howerver they are made up of three distinct aspects that contribute to the overarching efficacy of the arts as a whole.” >“The first aspect consists of the surface level techniques. These myriad strikes and forms are designed to dazzle and disorient one's enemies, seeming to endlessly flow from one form to the next. Care is taken so that each strike can lead into new variations, or defensive manuevers like dodging and parries. The opponent is coerced into becoming not just distracted, but lost within these technqiues, like wandering into a vast field of flowers at night. That flash and design is also the weakness of this set of techniques however, as no one is truly unpredictable, and the longer the opponent is able to study these forms and regain their barings, the less effective they will become.” >“The second aspect of these arts would be the decisive kicks. Although the style hones and displays a variety of strikes, it places special emphasis on several kicking techniques designed for their destructive potential. The many forms of variations that emphasize flexibility by and large create opportunity to perform such kicks if the opportunity arises. While strong and fast, they are also linear and predictable on their own. So, like a snake in the undergrowth, these strikes are most dangerous when not being watched for.” >“The third aspect would be qi molding techniques utilizing extreme yang qi to bloom flowers. These techniques compress and layer qi down, so once pressure is released the qi unfurls and blooms. In more practical terms, it creates hot explosions of qi. Lower level applications embed qi within objects to be shot at enemies, exploding to release qi and fragmentation even if a shot misses or gets blocked. Upper level applications meanwhile embed such shaped qi within strikes to provide an explosive impact upon contact. The ultimate technique of Dark Garden Assailant Arts is called ‘Delicate Starseed,’ wherein one injects a marble of intense yang qi directly into their opponent.” >“When operating together, the intent of these techniques is to catch one's opponent while flatfooted, dazzle them with a confusing barrage, then end the fight with a single decisive strike after dragging their guard elsewhere. Should this fail, the practitioner may well flee so their arts aren't deciphered, and so that their odds of succeeding in a following attempt are higher.”

>>136763 >(Armed Martial Arts: Samsara Weapons Method) >“A set of weapon techniques acquiring its name from peculiar training methods. The steps of this training are described as ‘sin,’ ‘retribution,’ and ‘repentance,’ with a fourth step that never quite ends called ‘sincerity.’” >“The first step begins with taking up the axe and learning how to erase hesitance. The axe techniques are simple, yet ruthless, emphasizing decisiveness with every swing to end combat victoriously. Though rooted in the demonic arts, these techniques have been rehabilitated into a stepping stone rather than one's end. Once the first step's training is concluded, the second begins soon after.” >“The second step begins by dropping the axe and taking up the club. One is instructed to hold a pair of clubs for the duration of their waking hours, and during combat and training one is forced to use only their clubs to fight and nothing else. This step has few techniques unto itself, and is designed to create familiarity and hone instinct, choosing blunt instruments to challenge one as much as possible. Once the feeling is embedded, it won't ever quite leave, and so a small period of rehabilitation is provided between this and the next step.” >“The third step has one drop the club and take up the sword. While the first two steps emphasize instilling feeling and instinct, the third heavily emphasizes restraint and technical ability with many difficult strokes and sword forms with little margin for error. It is agonizing and troublesome in ways that challenge a man; a kind of strife with dignity. Although the techniques do have practical applications in regards to feints, counters, vital thrusts, and so on, the main point is hard earned technical ability.” >“The first three steps erase hesitation, create instinct, and build technique. They also provide familiarity with various means forms of weaponry and combat. As before, a new weapon is taken up, the glaive; able to cut, pierce, and bludgeon. Previous techniques are deconstructed, assimilated, and unified into weapon arts that pave the endless road to enlightenment. One has walked the road as a demon, a beast, and an ascetic with each holding equal importance. One must learn not to reject but embrace all aspects of themselves, and continue to grow even beyond their current self.”

>>136763 >>136764 >(Movement Art: Dreadful Ghost Flight Technique) >“A complex technique requiring both power and delicate control of both one's self, and one's qi. True flight is something only achieved at the highest realms of development, yet this movement technique elegantly simulates it once honed and mastered.” >“The first step of mastering Dreadful Ghost Flight requires one to build significant lower body strength and leaping ability. This is achieved with training of escalating levels of difficulty first beginning with simple repetition and attempting to reach set vertical and horizontal distances with a single jump from a still start. Once these feats are achieved, weight is added, then one must reach these feats with each leg by itself. It's from here that things become difficult, as one must navigate wilderness, and eventually mountains, using only leaping, becoming accustomed to loose footholds and harrowing drops while building strength. Later exercises also emphasize toe strength in particular.” >“The second step of mastering Dreadful Ghost Flight asks one to mold qi around one's body to influence air currents. It is not to the extent of dominating the wind, simply guiding its flow. Even manifesting one's qi in a tangible manner can take significant time and practice, and so beginning steps emphasize simply that, and subsequently tightening it up. From there it's increasing the scale, and then manipulating one's qi while it's manifested.” >“The third step involves putting one's training together and applying finesse. The Dreadful Ghost Flight on paper is essentially leaping with each step, then using one's qi to take advantage of that momentum so as to move through the air in the manner desired. In practice it's a bit like skating in three dimensions, which is to say much more difficult than it actually sounds. There are also particular patterns and methods for applying the technique learned at this stage to give it more depth, with training performed until it's seamless.” >“The completed form of Dreadful Ghost Flight grants the practitioner not just the ability to move in an inhumanly graceful and unpredictable manner, but allows one to dull the sound of their steps and movements to a level of near non-existence. One will appear to silently glide and achieve shocking coverage of ground off of singular steps. Greater levels of skill allow one to instill such speed and natural grace to appear as if just walking or giving the lightest effort to position themselves exactly as they desire to be.”

>>136763 >>136764 >>136765 >(Qi Circulation Technique: Seething Fathomless Night Method) >“A method of breathing, qi circulation, and meditation created by me through scattered scraps to both reach higher levels of power, as well as supplement the martial arts I have developed. There are three stages to the Seething Fathomless Night Method between the beginning and the peak. That can be further boiled down to its base essence of volatile power continuously tempered and honed into a weapon.” >“The entry level can be likened to Taoist methods of taking strength and inspiration from nature and the world, as one is directed to go out into the wilderness. With each breath take in the qi of the world, and then return it back to the world on the exhale. Ideally one would do this during rain or storm even at expense to their health. As one becomes accustomed to these methods and conditions, and develops their qi, the method expands to bringing and circulating qi through one's weapon, and later performing kata during the process. Someone proficient with the method at this stage should be aware of lightning, as not only being struck but successfully withstanding the lightning and absorbing the qi within it is an incredibly lucky opportunity. If all goes well, one will develop strong yet volatile qi and heightened familiarity with themselves and the world around them.” >“The second stage of the Seething Fathomless Night Method emphasizes control and suppression. One well versed in the first stage will generally find the flow of their qi to be hasty and strong, and would often fall into controlling it through simple luring, like a raging storm striking at a lightning rod or a starving beast lead by the smell of blood. For true control to be met, the practitioner will focus on the slowing of their qi during meditation while attempting to maintain its strength. During this stage, practitioners are advised to focus on qi circulation at night; the quieter the better. This stage borrows methods from lost arts of a legendary thief, which shines through upon eventual tempering of one's qi, as they will gain great skill in erasing their presence without suppressing their strength like a nocturnal predator.” >“The final stage can be likened to sharpening the tempered qi, completely dominating the once unrestrained beast. Earlier stages would have developed yang properties to one's qi, and so for complete and control and honing, one will now emphasize circulation and development of yin qi. To do so, one is directed to take themselves to places of great cold, such as wilderness in winter, the great north, or the tops of mountains. Only towards the end does one fully refine the powerful qi of nature into a weapon more reliable than any other.”

[Hades redux] >Previously: https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/92906236/#92911279 The entire House of Hades stared, rapt, as Melinoe started dramatically retelling her many adventures after maxing out every weapon and trinket and her entire tarot deck and ending up spamming the Supay Flames, waving said torches around as visual aids. She spoke of how she'd fought Strife and sea serpents, clashed with Scylla and Charybdis, and at long last struck down both Time and the very father of monsters themselves. Only for both to reconstitute themselves on the morn. "Damn, little sister. I was going to try to impress you with my many escapes from Hell, but that's a little above my paygrade" said Zagreus. "O-oh, it wasn't my intention to boast, big brother" said Melinoe quickly. "I've trained all my life to rescue you from Chronos' clutches, and now somehow by the will of Chaos I'm with you all again-right before I was about to complete a dread spell of entropy wrought from Typhon's fall, to imbue father's spear with so I could at last slay Chronos for good! I just...wanted you all to be proud" "And we are indeed" declared Hades. "You have come not long after my house has been reconciled from long strife. Let us speak of Titans and wars later. Today, you are our guest. And my daughter" After yet another party, I cornered Zagreus as he was getting used to fighting without having like 4-6 Olympians showering him with blessings. He was surprisingly attached to the spear for a guy who'd made his first run by sword. "Zagreus, something just occurred to me" I said, affecting thoughtfulness, "are you SURE all those satyrs are gone from the upper underworld?" "Absolutely not, those cretins won't stop spitting poison! But what's to be done about them?" "Well, I heard all their blood sacrifices are going to a central chamber beneath the upper underworld. Might be worth a check?" "Oh, why not? One more run for the books" 1/4 And thus, I simultaneously made the coming of the Golden Age inevitable, while derailing Chronos' entire plan. Mainly by derailing the very possibility of him having a plan. I wasn't present when Zagreus met Chronos recovering in the under-upper-underworld. I'd be later told that Chronos was even more surprised than he was in canon to not even be approached in violence, and Zagreus went even more quickly from curiosity ("Oh, hello there! Are you alright? You seem...rather injured, what with all the gold holding your flesh together") to helpful ("So you've been at war with father? I can definitely sympathise with that sentiment, he can be SUCH a demanding fellow! Wait, you're HIS father? Okay, I have to know: Has he always worn that beard of his so long?") to literally leading the increasingly confused Titan over to the family gathering and announcing since Melinoe was there he might as well introduce one more member of the family to the gathering. Nor was I present to witness Melinoe almost calling down a hex, Thanatos pulling a Bleach flashstep, the Furies setting everything on fire, Chronos preparing to negate all of that with waves of halted time, Zagreus desperately hitting every dialogue interrupt he could-and Hades eventually being the bigger man and COMMANDING everyone continue the newfound tradition of just talking things out around a table. Everything moved very quickly thanks to Zagreus' divine power to make people act out of character and just get along. Chronos expressed that his children were disobedient, entitled and guilty of cutting him to pieces. Hades pointed out he'd tried to EAT them all. Chronos exclaimed that was like, just one time. Persephone pointed out they were expecting a second child and killing their grandfather would probably set a bad precedent. Hades mused that the Isles of the Blessed WERE a bit shortstaffed. And that's how Chronos got a new job. A rather cushy job, really. 2/4 You'd expect Zeus to be INCREDIBLY pissed that a Titan was walking around freely but actually once again, it was totally fine. In canon it's not entirely clear why the Zeus of this reality displayed unprecedented lenience towards a political enemy. In my timeline however, it was once again totally just Zagreus exercising elite level hobnobbing (despite Melinoe continuously freaking out and griping about not getting to finish her killstreak). He just talked to Dionysus about living and letting live, and the Dionysus of this world NOT having the violent insanity aspects of his multiversal counterparts immediately decided to spread the good word about Chronos' gainful employment, and Apollo heard about that and was inspired to write a song, and one thing led to another, and- -this reality was full of frankly astonishing outcomes for Olympians that otherwise cleaved relatively closely to their mythical counterparts, but even I was still surprised to see the king of the gods strolling over, noticing Chronos yapping it up with long-dead legendary men about how good the Golden Age used to be, and just going "This is fine! Everything is fine!" and leaving again. Even when he saw it pissed off Hera. ...especially, even. Chronos remained distrusted by many, feared by all during his employment-an arrangement he largely tolerated due to Zagreus flustering him with regular nectar/ambrosia offerings, a newfangled (to him) tradition that warmed the empty sandy chambers of his heart. That and well, his diligence making him a good fit for the Isles, and getting to hang out with people who DID remember his reign fondly being a decent consolation prize for no longer ruling the world. Then Melinoe was born, and to Older Melinoe's dismay this apparently activated Chronos' long repressed paternal instincts. The Titan of Time playing tag with a small nightmare nymph quickly became a common sight around Tartarus. 3/4 Melinoe, I cannot stress enough, was very VERY angry about this at first. It didn't matter. Because, you see, Melinoe was no more immune to Zagreus' apparent ownership of illogical friendship perks, and he quickly talked her round to seeing things his way after a single slideshow's worth of cutscene time. Yes, yes, there was also the whole "living for revenge will just leave you empty and bitter" angle but in the end, even Melinoe wasn't sure why she didn't press for Chronos' execution.

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Although due to MY subtle machinations, being able to get memories from her current younger self being pampered by Chronos did help win her over. And so, everyone lived happily ever after. Typhon remained buried under a rock somewhere, indefinitely regenerating from an ancient battle. Prometheus periodically showed up to firebomb Olympus, remark "my job here is done" and then leave with no further explanation. Eris joined Scylla's band. Hecate never came into existence, much to her relief. ... "Well GEEZ LOUISE mistah, ya really cut our work short!" complained the smallest and loudest of the Fates, back at the Fate Dungeon I'd put them in. "What can I say? The way your work was going to wrap up so abruptly, leaving loose ends to tie themselves up and skipping over a potentially devastating family schism, why don't you all just...quit early?" i pointed out. "Aw but where's da DRAMA?! Oh well. One Golden Age coming right up, gods withdraw from interferein', yadda yadda, there we go. Well, it's been SWELL bein' a captive, but we're heading out now!" she announced, as all the Fates packed up and left. "Where to, may I ask?" "Out!" I squinted. "...there's nothing but an absolute absence of reality where you're headed" "I KNOW, isn't great? Aftah bearin' witness to' da literal fabric of reality, we could USE a good sensory deprivation chambah!" 4/4

[Destiny the Darkness redux] Drawbacks: T = Infinite, Off the Board, Vivisected, Usurper of the Ordered WayX9, Pruning Shears (3800) Human Universal Common Ancestor (Free) Hatred of the City (Free) Drifter's Gambit (3700) Bane of the Swarm: Tree of Silver Wings (3600) Prismatic Symmetry (3400) Embrace the Darkness: Resonance (3200) Dredgen You (2900) Rega (2600) Shaped Finality (2200) Irresolvable | Irrecoverable Presence (1400) King of Shapes (600) Madwoman's Ramblings (Free) Ruinous Seed (500) Dark City (300) Living NeighboursX8 (0) -Human, Universal Common Ancestor (Free), Hatred of the City (Free), Shaped Finality (600), Dredgen You (300), Bane of the Swam: Tree of Silver Wings (200), Dark City (0) Madwoman's Ramblings (Free), Ghost (Free) Ghost (Free) >DREAMS: https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/96590148/#96618950 Sometimes I wonder if it’s all for nothing. The universe grinds down to utmost finality. The Light has changed but a micron on the cosmic stage. So, here I am. Floating about the Ascendant Plane, wrapped in my friend and my victim. Things are the way they have to be, instead of what they SHOULD be. “Oh hey” says Lilith all of a sudden, “someone’s here” “Yes, there are many who have breached this realm-“ “No. I mean. WITH us” “She means me, knife of my slaying” says the Echo of Navigation. Oryx’s wraith haunts the ENTIRE mass of Darkness I rent from the Witness. HOW?! “Your communion with the Winnower has subtracted weakness from greatness, carving my legacy anew”” I butchered that monster as it butchered the cosmos. “There is no closer embrace, my heir”

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You are but offal dripping from a divine corpse. “I see clearer through it’s lying Knife’s deception than ever I did in life” Legacy? Your god is DEAD. Look upon the ruinous effigy of your LOGIC. “It too has chosen an heir. Even now, you embrace her closer than your toy of the Sky” Lilith laughs. “Get a room, you two” 1/7 [Honkai Star Rail redux] Time passes for I, who knows the true meaning of eternity, in a way incomprehensible for any being lesser enough to actually have a causal history. But certain patterns repeat endlessly. Beings in suffering cry out for answers, for resources, for salvation, for meaning. And failing to find it, turn against each other in rats on a sinking ship. The wheel of time mulching fool and sage alike under it’s turning. It has been a while, however, since I’ve seen a cycle of creation and destruction simultaneously grip between MULTIPLE beings I would recognise elsewhere as Imperators. It’s been a while since I’ve spoken with the Echo of Navigation. It is nothing but a weapon to me, and it is content to be such. Despite my aggravation, it’s compliance to what violence I offer the multiverse and no more has made for a remarkably stable working relationship. And as it enters this universe, it senses two different powers added to it: The LOVE of my human SOULs, and both my Cursed Techniques. It smiles in pride at it’s legacy upheld as I update it on my military’s intervention in this world-as a man whets his blade, or adjusts the timer on his bomb. I speak to it of the rampaging swarm, and the Abominations of Abundance-both those grotesque in form and purpose as well as the subtle subtle enough to infiltrate Xianzhou. I speak of under Luna, the Lunar Chimerae Host counter-infiltrates and devours the strength of these cancerous entities before spawning perfect Garou warriors. Phyre’s Idigam host ambushes the Abominations from the future while Cattalesta’s Truculae-Fae hosts strike at the Aeon THEMSELF-carving it’s cancerous aspects away. The Echo advocates for the Abyssals to take their role instead, and I speak to it of Terminus, of Finality, and how it too is my foe. It is not convinced, but I am it’s wielder and that is the end of it. I speak instead of the Type-102 Shipgirls’ campaign to mend Fragmentum biodata and seal away Stellarons. 2/7 The Echo argues I should not compromise my strength. That each such seed of destruction should be detonated-or reforged anew. I counter that with a single Moment authorised to reinforce the fleets, we conserve our strength lest Terminus arrive prematurely; the Echo is convinced Terminus will be my apotheosis rather than foe, a matter I do not dignify with a response. I speak of the Remembrance-or at least, the force posing as it-and it’s tacit alliance with Destruction, supporting the destruction of this universe so it can harvest a record of it from Erudition itself and define the new one solely through memory. To punish it, I’ve sent the Harmonious Contingent: A fleet of Harmony crystals carrying data overminds, biodata-reinforced Riftborn and Resonance lifeforms. Their mission: A higher dimensional DDoS attack. If Remembrance cannot be reasoned with, I will simply apply leverage until it relents in it’s folly. I do not speak to the Echo of frivolous things, but it takes note of my annoyance that what I have done hasn’t changed the Remembrance’s decision to gaze on me. It assures me this is proof of my ontological inevitability. That the path of my conquest is true. “It has been an age since we spoke” it says, “and still you squander your resources on the preservation of false shapes” “Squander? A strange word to use when I lack for nothing” I rebuke it, correct it. “As I have said. The goal is victory, not falling into another’s trap” “Your pain, heir, comes solely from the fact you cannot embrace what you truly are” “And you fell because you were so subsumed by it, you did not guard your supply lines from me” “Aiat. That, I cannot deny” it acknowledges. “So why bring out this old relic?” “To wield you, of course”. I gesture at the planet-destroying dragon approaching a world. “You were the First Navigator, and my newest weapon is the Trailblaze.” The Echo laughs as it crackles with cosmic power, once again blind to how that power reshapes it in turn. 3/7 The Echo has a taste of the power that flows through me. Preservation and Harmony rankles at his sensibilities, while Remembrance bores him. But the starlight strength of the Trailblaze presents something of a forbidden allure-so close to his curious nature, yet so Sky-like in it’s whimsical shape. Then the Echo tastes Destruction. “I see! Bring me to this great rival, heir!” he bellows in approval. Looming over my shoulder like a mushroom cloud, half of Oryx ripples with Void light while the other emits the scalding aura of his slave army. His hands press together, and when they part leave a Nova Bomb full of Taken energy. I hit a home run with it that messily implodes the Doomsday Beast with all the forces I’m channeling, and it implodes messily. The singularity left behind erupts with Taken clones of the beast, now endowed with even greater strength than in life. I’m greeted back abroad the Astral Express with both great joy and sorrow. Joy that I’ve spared so many with but a single swing, that I can [glance] right back at the Aeons and master their powers so quickly as to rival their own Emanators. Sorrow at how ruthlessly I use it. I am unmoved by their concerns. I recount the conquest of the Hive, and Oryx himself demonstrates his compliance to my will. I remind them the Antimatter Legion will show no such clemency. I implore them not to risk any lives when I can Take theirs. Thus, my avatar and this merry crew themselves become the immediate response against the Antimatter Legion. The weak kneel broken, the strong have that very strength carved into new shapes. The Echo relishes this black work, but as he faces the sheer scope of our foes rampages he feels…small. That this mighty force, approximating the Hive at the peak of it’s might when it felled galactic powers such as the Ecumene and the Taishibeth, is but a footprint left by a god who came into being accomplishing what he spent his whole life trying to. He feels young again, but not in an empowering way-he feels like a small, helpless krill. What is this feeling? 4/7 “They are many then, these Aeons” says the Echo as in a time of peace I furnish him with Symphogear alchemy, God-Machine gadgets and the technology of the Nameless Gods. Concepts made technology, fashioned after an enlightening exchange with Herta. “That they are” “And even now, you seek to gain the advantage over them” “That I do”. It examines what I have furnished it with. “These calculation engines…they remind me of Quria. Infesting my throne world” “That is indeed their purpose” I confirmed. “Their purpose is the acceleration and convergence of Imaginary Energy, through the medium of a Simulated Universe. In some ways, it’s a superior simulation paradigm to the Vex themselves. You may think of it as a universe-sized Throne World. I confer you authority over space-time and qualia for it. While I defend this cosmos, you will master the powers that define it on my behalf here” The Echo inhales the power of the Paths, sweet as richest Tribute. Gathering the Imaginary Energy of the Paths I wield, he shapes a universe not unlike the Ascendant Plane. “I can see it now. An endless High War, an endless river of tithes. This is the infinite Sword Logic that Savathun fantasised about, but so much GREATER!! I can simulate gods and monsters here, have them make war against each other and myself-“ “You may. But you will also simulate Fundament and the Traveller’s arrival there. Without the Witness’ interference. This is necessary to master Preservation, and Harmony” Once again, my weapon swallows his distaste and conforms. Amidst a cosmos of joyous war and black holes ringed with undying warriors, he relives the Osmium King’s madness. Taox’s betrayal. His siblings’ exodus. He sees…no syzygy. He sees the Traveller gracing his world, taming the bait-stars and filling the helium fountains with delectable Light. He sees what the Krill could have been, hale and radiant. Powerful beyond the need for blades. Beyond even the Hive at it’s peak. It is one thing to know, intellectually, one has been deceived yet cling to faith. It is another to see what could have been in person. What is this feeling? He does not merely dislike it. He rejects it utterly. Weakness, he thinks. A trial that must be overcome to navigate the path to truth. 5/7

>>139400 The Echo’s instinctive contempt of Sunday being welcomed abroad the Astral Express is tempered by his fascination with how again and again, we crush insurmountable odds. The Echo reads of a planet where I ended an eternal ice age with my own Stellaron, and he begins to wonder how for all the infinite cruelty of the universe Preservation and Harmony-even Order, long past it’s expiration-yet claim such vast metaphysical territories. “Why are we here?” he asks, as we descend upon a world named Amphoreus. The others have encountered a roving band of chosen heroes and demigods; I have made a good first impression but also my excuses. “Why, to reap a bounty of Sword Logic unlike anything we’ve found so far. And to strike at a mutual enemy” I tell him. Our combined mastery of Imaginary Energy presses against the simulation-like veil of this world. Through time. We return to a village yet destroyed. We come across a weeping boy. I give a name to the orchestrator of his misery: Lygus. And to the force he hopes to invoke: Nanook. Destruction THEMSELF. And I offer him a sword consecrated to Oryx’s emptied throne. He leaves, thanking me, swearing to bring honour to it. “You have returned this…Flame-Reaver, to his endless cycles of violence” says Oryx as we watch him leave. “Yes” I confess. “He will grow sharp. Or die trying” “As you did when Taox betrayed the Osmium Throne” I agreed. The Echo hesitates at that. “You know full well what I am becoming. My Sword Logic, and your Imaginary Energy. I will become an Aeon before you” “That is by my design. It has been done before” “Why? No-an absurd question, for all your delaying tactics you know well the bladed path” “Correct. The question you should have asked, Echo, is: What kind of an Aeon do you think you’re becoming?” 6/7 The Echo and I watch over the boy-Phainon-return to his cycle of samsara. Over and over again, he is driven to murder those closest to him for the strength they hold. It moves the Echo, reminding it of his sisters. Over and over again, he lacks the strength to overcome the cycle entirely. This…distresses the Echo. Over and over again, he sees Taox described in Lygus’ mocking abuse of the bladed path. And one day he says “No. This shall not be. My heir, I must contest your will. There is a matter I would attend” “You must do as the Trailblaze Path calls you to” I rebuke it. “Go. Ascend. I have a more urgent matter to attend to” It happens, brief as an eclipse. I manifest before Lygus, who speaks of the necessity of expanding knowledge’s circle. In rebuke, I conjure a path to Nous and launch my transistor directly into the Aeon before it can react-bending causality. In an instant it is made to acknowledge progress and iterative knowledge, growth and complexity. It’s dark soul is filled with Light. The cosmic equation that encapsulates the universe shifts far more than a micron. Lygus is left gobsmacked. As a soft aside, somewhere a frustrated assassin who has failed again and again to kill me simply because I put my death in a Throne Universe and to enter the Throne Universe is by definition to defy Nous suddenly and intuitively realises further opposition to me is against the will of Nous. Elsewhere, the crumbling husk of Phainon is about to fall from the gaze of Destruction. But the Echo catches him. Embraces him. “You do not belong dead. You have proven your worth” he says. “This shape you have made for yourself has inherent worth” And he rises anew. And Nanook, Destruction, is most surprised when the Taken King, mantled upon Phainon, cleaves straight through him. And in denying destruction, even cosmic destruction, Oryx ascends as the Aeon of Navigation. Still devastation. Still death. But also, given new life by the Trailblaze, an avenging guardian for all who take up the sword in defence of home and hearth. 7/7

>World: Earth >Basic Premise: "There's two distinct sides of the world; that which makes up everything mundane and tangible, and the realm of the divine. In the realm of the divine there has conflict deciding who rules the heavens and everything beneath them, and the current generation of gods are of the fourth and fifth generation. The lower realms are the work of first generation divinity who do not rule, so much as they simply exist as the underlying foundation of things. Their offspring are by comparison much more petulant and volatile, having fought between one another several times since the dawn of all. >The first generation divines - the Primordials - insist only upon one thing, that their creations below not be disturbed "too" heavily. That's right, because though the gods that model themselves as rulers over all may meddle with the world and the lives of mortals as they please, even they fear ever performing direct acts that may incur the wrath of their ancestors. There are only a few exception in this manner; creation and guidance. The Primordials are welcome to the creations of the divine being placed in the world, seeing it as a place where such things can only make the colors more vibrant. >In the case of guidance, the oversight of the Primordials is not especially strict, and so the gods influencing the world by whim are permitted as long as they occur through the means of the world, and so it is that the gods prize worship and faith. Mortals, the creation and servants of the divine, fear the wrath and whims of the divine, but continue living their lives as best they can in this chaotic world." >Dissemination of Magic: "Of all the gods, there existed one that was more fixated than any other upon their creation. That god was Prahmix the Morning. Prahmix was a god of creation, of beginnings and ends, and of course most importantly - to some - the progenitor of humanity. Depicted as a giant bird engulfed by flame, Prahmix is said to have formed the first of the humans of clay and fired them from the heat of his own body before bestowing them life. Their exact form is hotly contested those of the modern day, the tall men, the halflings, the elves, and the dwarves. >There is a reason for that, and that reason being that Prahmix's love is intense. Prahmix is known to send humanity trials to test them, prepare them, develop them, and sometimes just to witness their potential. The many races compromising "humanity" are said to have come about as a result of these trials. Despite those trials, Prahmix is doting, such that even if humanity is at risk of falling entirely, through his genesis and grace they will one day flourish once more. It is because of this behavior that when humanity was at one point in a dire era, Prahmix stole the secrets of fire and delivered it upon them. >No god had ever done anything of the sort before, placing knowledge thought to belong exclusively within the sphere of creation into the lower realms, and so Prahmix's actions placed him under immense scrutiny by the other gods that ruled the era. Many condemned his actions, some wishing for his immediate banishment to the underworld and destruction of humanity, while a few stood by his actions and stated that didn't interfere with the rules of intervention. To broker peace, one who sided with Prahmix proposed order and equality among the divine and the mundane. >Fane the Scales said that the other prime three elements of creation should also be granted to mortals as well, gifted through those not aligned with Prahmix to allow the gods all to garner favor with some fraction or another, and to keep fire's influence from dominating. At the same time, he proposed order through a great, divine construct to limit the scope of the elements within the lower realms; this would become what modern civilizations know as the System, and magic as we understand it. From there on, the divine would mingle predominantly within four factions after the elements." ----- (Races) >Humanity: "Those made by Prahmix the Morning and blessed with the secrets of fire. Composed of Tall Men, Halflings, Elves, and Dwarves." (Explicit Dungeon Messhi arrangement. Lots of racial tension but constant meddling and cooperation as well.) >Hydes: "Those made by Gugaloth the Heavy and Graith the Cradle, and blessed with the secrets of Earth. Composed of Imps, Orcs, Ogres, and Goblins. Imps have qualities of bats and can fly. Goblins have mole qualities and do a lot of burrowing. Orcs have boar qualities and are voracious and strong. Ogres have elephant qualities, resembling much larger orcs but thicker, more leathery, and with larger tusks. The lower end of Hydes are much smaller than the smallest humans, while the higher end are much larger than the biggest humans. Hydes compared to humanity tends to be more individualistic, less involved with one another even if they get along more than with other races on average. Among them, Goblins and Orcs tend to be closest with prevalent trade of ores mined by goblins for meat and bones from orc hunters." >Illithid: "Those made by Syneur the Wise, and blessed with the secrets of water. Illithids are a race with a parasitic life cycle, their young penetrating other living creatures to reformat their bodies into an Illithid with qualities of the host, though their cultures generally dictate the rearing of specific types of creatures to be used as hosts. All Illithid can be identified by cephalopodic features and purple flesh. Most Illithid cultures have caste based societies based on the type of host body, with Whale and Squid Illithid trending quite high. Land based Illithid diplomatic missions often request "undesirables" for their young from sapient races so that they may produce Illithid that may navigate the surface, while more hostile Illithid groups will simply capsize ships and take bodies by force. Most other races find Illithid pirates terrifying as a result, and the race as a whole uncomfortable to deal with." >Saurvo: "Those made by Thaven the Black, Tyranng the Gold, Great Talath the Melodious, and Ruz the Egg, blessed with the secrets of wind. Four gods convened over the creation of a race specifically to bestow the secrets of wind upon them, only to wildly disagree about the direction to lead them. As such they bare almost no resemblance aside from feathered bodies. There are the black feathered Obsidi known for the swiftness and fickle disposition, the golden feathered Auru known for power and resilience, beauteous Harpies with incredible singing and human-like appearances, and mysterious Liscus with wordly wisdom and two heads. Among those blessed with the secrets of magic, the Saurvo are the least united, and indeed are known for aggressive in-fighting and siding with other races more easily than each other. As a result, all use wind for entirely different purposes."

>CYOA Bodymod >Origin: F, 35 >Perks: Just Like Always I Imagined (Menu, Open!), Hybrid Theory >Menu, Open!: At-Will Frequency, Basic Stats, Advanced Stats -2, Detailed Stats -4, Static Stats -2, Inf Space Inventory -5, Stasis Inventory -4, Favorites -2, Quick Outfit, Gear Stats -10, Director's Cut Options +8, Crafting -6, Map -3, Mission -5, Datalog -2, Bank -4, Internet -2, HUD -4, Help -2, Widgets -2, Autoheal -4, Invisible -4, Fast Travel -3, Teleport -5, Bandwidth -4, Analyze -3, Computer -5. -87 1 >NuBee Bodymod: Adjustment, Cleansed, Sex (F), Coloration, Rejuvenation, Grooming, Perfume x2, Mental Strength, Memory, Open Mind, Disinfect x2, Normality x2, Animal Physiology x2 (Fox), Polar Bear Club. I'm just a female anthropomorphic red fox. I'm just average in general to be honest? 5'2" Tall with C cup breasts, decent hips/ass, dark green eyes, etc. Foxes are the most common kind of furry for some reason and I'm very much a bog standard example I'm rather thankful I have Normality to keep my life mostly normal, since I've just discarded my species and sex all at once, in addition to gaining superpowers in my real life. I'm going to mostly spend my days living my life the way I always have while working to acclimate to my new form. The body dysphoria's going to be a bitch, but at least I can think of my height without getting nauseous, and Open Mind should help me adapt pretty quickly Now that I have an inventory I'm gonna start giving into the impulse to pick up random trash off the side of the road, so I'm probably gonna take up sewing to have a use for the clothes the homeless tend to discard everywhere. I'll be leaving the jump as a decently physically fit person, since my stats don't go down and I do like exercising at the local park. >CYOA Warehouse >Perk: Proud Homeowner (Solitude), Home Renovations >Item: Subscription Services >Solitude: Napping, Dreaming, Cooking, Reading, Cozying, Unwinding, All Weathers My Warehouse this time is the Solitude CYOA, because it's a comfy place to rest but I can't just turtle up in it or live in it full time. >Nine To Five >Origin: Food Service, F, 18. -25 975 >Drawbacks: Truly Normal +100 1075 >Perks: Experience x20 -1000, Where Everybody Knows Your Name -50. -1050 25 >Items: Cost of Living, Videogames -25, Magic Uniform. -25 0 I decided that my first jump should be a modern earth jump, to give me a chance to adapt to my new body in a world where I don't have my old history to rely on before I head somewhere else. I've also decided to be a Barista, because that's a rather stereotypical and overly romanticized job. It's a food service job so I'm going to have to deal with just the most massive cunts in the world, and not in a fun way, but at least it'll help me train my self control and get used to being flirted on badly. There's something to be said for total immersion learning, you know? I'm going to be thankful that I have the experience of twenty years working in food service. It'll be the only thing that keeps me from shanking a creep. >Street Cultivation >Origin: Barista, F, 19 >Drawbacks: Uneducated Trailer Trash +200, Poor +200. +400 1400 >Perks: Lucrima Soul, Techniques (Offense, Defense, Graham's Stake), Foundation x2 (Tier 3 - Archaic Hybrid Immortality Granting) -100, A Matter of Birthright, Rank, Job Skills (Barista), Power Through the Pain, Got Used To Them -100, Awaken Your Inner Strength Today -100, Lucrim Control -200. -500 900 >Items: Phone, Bicycle, Serum Supply, Perpetual Soul -300, Foundational Immortality -600. -900 0 Next up is Street Cultivation, I guess? It's my own jump so it feels weird using it, but whatever. I rather like it's simple and low powered cultivation system and I figured it'd actually be a pretty decent setting to get used to fantastical elements existing while still being somewhere that's mostly just a normal earth My goal is the same as most people. Get rich enough to live off of my passive income and maybe become an immortal in the process. I've already got the foundation for that set-up, having taken the time to raid the local public library to pick up an absolutely ancient foundation, one that'll support my everything, works with all kinds of techniques, and will eventually even make me immortal without requiring medical intervention. It's uh. Not a particularly good foundation. It's actually called the Ambitious Fool's Immortality Foundation, because it's just absolute garbage. It does everything, but foundations work drastically better the more specialized they are. I also picked up Graham's Stake, an outdated self-growing investment technique known for being reliable if rather slow. Unfortunately, I won't actually reach Perpetual Soul level while I'm here. I'm a food service worker so I don't make a lot of money, and with the local currency ALSO being the primary cultivation resource, I'll have to balance my income against my own advancement and my need to pay rent and buy necessities. My poor impulse control and desire to help my family with issues is gonna drain what little I have left, eventually leaving me mostly living paycheque to paycheque.

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I'm gonna take up cultivation research as a hobby, since it's an honestly pretty neat thing to study AND I can just download a metric fuckton of pre-industrial revolution era cultivation manuals off of the local project gutenberg. I'm gonna have to take up studying ancient languages too and I'll probably form a core specifically to help me learn languages using my spare lucrim, but I'll be able to dissolve that back into Lucrim once I've picked up the old languages so it's not a big cost >Generic Isekai (Gene) >Origin: F, 33 >Perks: Literate, Commoner's Charm, Get With The System -200 800 >System: Stipend +600, Dynamic Tier 2 -100, HUD -50, Merge Branch -50, Sage Appraisal -200, Party, Trade, Screen Capture -100, Voice Chat -100, Health Points -100, Fork Branch -100. -800 600 >Items: Modern Textiles, Common Starting Gear, Personal Assistant, Override -100, Internet Access -200, Interface (Importing Menu), Rollback -100, Akasha (Importing Personal Assistant) -200. -600 0 Finally, it's time to jump ship to an entirely foreign world. This world's honestly rather... mediocre? It's a pretty stereotypical low-fantasy otome isekai setting, one whose sole worldbuilding is that there's a duke in the northern part of the kingdom and another kingdom's gonna eventually declare war, maybe. Magic exists, but it's the limited to just the nobility and the rare peasant girl that can use light magic kind, the kind that exists only to be a justification for the cute peasant protagonist to be put into the royal magic school where she can meet the prince, the prince's bodyguard, and some other hot noble men. None of that really matters to me though. What matters to me is that these kinds of settings always have modern food culture, either already established OR set-up by the protagonist so she can run a cute cafe or have a steady form of income. Which means I can actually set-up my own cafe. I've got a connection to the internet of three worlds and thirty two years of barista experience, so I should be able to do pretty well. I'm definitely going to take the time to develop a Lucore for Ethercrafting coffee and baked goods. It'll be expensive, turning Lucrim into physical objects always is, but having the ability to conjure up food and drink will ensure I won't have to worry about sabotage. Also, I don't actually have much use for my Lucrim beyond passively buffing my stats and empowering my cores, and I won't really have the time to do that once my Cafe's set up. Honestly though, the biggest reason I'm here is the System builder. I haven't actually used my System for anything except a computer for decades now, since I actually like taking the time to travel, I tend to just keep my stuff lying around to make the places I live more lived in, and I only really make things while I'm at work, so picking up some upgrades to make it more useful is nice. ... Oh, god. I just realized that I'm a decently attractive middle-aged woman with special powers that'll be running a cafe in a generic otome isekai world. I'm going to have so many hot men and women falling in love with my asexual butt. >Dodgeball >Origin: The New Guy, F, 32 >Perks: She's Gotta Be A Lesbian, All There In The Backstory -150, Dodge Duck Dip Dive Dodge -300, She's Not A Lesbian -100, All I Know Is That Dyke Can Play -100, Not That There's Anything Wrong With That -100. -750 250 >Items: Gym Uniform, Gym Membership -50, Dodgeball -100, Water Bottle -50, Milkshake or Nutrient Shake -50. -250 0 So, that was an absolute mess. I kinda ended up on the run after having to literally stab half a dozen men who won't take "fuck off, I'm asexual and not interested" as an answer. Thankfully I did actually have a rather large stockpile of food and clothes in my inventory that I forgot I had, enough to survive off of for most of the decade. Anyways, I absolutely needed to come to this jump next so I won't ever have to deal with going on the run from overly persistent asshole suitors ever again. I'm going to near immediately get employed at yet another Cafe, because I was on the run for years and kinda miss my mundane life. This will naturally result in my Cafe having enough employees to form a Dodgeball team, and then me having to play Dodgeball on the regular because of it. I'm actually not going to use my cultivation while I'm here as it'd give me a rather unfair advantage and just make Dodgeball not that fun. It's gonna take a lot of time to get used to not having the passive buffs granted by my cultivation though, and the feeling of weakness is going to get me to finally work towards maxing out my physical stats like I should've done two jumps ago. >Animal Crossing >Origin: Camper, Human, F, 23 >Drawbacks: Buggy +200 1200 >Perks: Pocket Full of Leaves -600, Take A Load Off, Harvest Season -100, Daily Chores -300. -1000 200 >Items: Tier Four Camper Vehicle -200, Altered Floorplan, Cozy, Compact, Campground. -200 0 I finally hit Perpetual Soul level mid-way through my last jump, which means I AM officially retired. Naturally, this means I need to get a neat home to retire to, and I've always been very fond of the Camper Van from Animal Crossing. A nice two story home shoved into a small camper vehicle. Adapting to being retired is going to be... difficult. I've been doing a weird week of work, week of rest in my sanctuary schedule for basically the last eighty years, so suddenly having nothing that I actually need to do is rather... jarring? It's actually going to reduce the amount of time I spend in my Warehouse to basically nothing. I'm going to end up spending a lot of time at Brewster's. Dude's actually a pretty good barista and the smell of brewing coffee and fresh baked goods calms me down. ... Honestly, I think I might like to just retire here permanently? Animal Crossing is a pretty comfy setting, and I don't really have any money concerns anymore Getting fleas sucks >Powerwash Simulator >Origin: Explorer, F, 23 >Perks: Oral Tradition -100, Close Enough, Not-So-Secret Ingredient -100, Free Spirit, Salty Sea Dog, I Know A Guy -100, No Spoilers -200. -500 500 >Items: Feline Friend, Connected, Name Drop -100, Lost Tome, Peace Offering, On The Road (Importing Animal Crossing Camper Van) -100, The Beginning of the End -300. -500 0 I uh. I kinda missed being a Barista, so I decided to stop by here next. On The Road lets me import a vehicle to turn it into either a place to live or a place to do business, so I'm adding in a foot truck function to my Camper Van. I'll get some folding chairs and tables, and just do a pop-up cafe thing. Maybe have Akasha, my Menu's personal assistant who I only just remembered exists, set up a local fileshare for ebooks

>>139400 [Destiny: The Darkness redux] >SOVEREIGNTY: https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/96704322/#96743691 “So…are we just stuck like this now?” asks Lilith as I monitor the world of my creation. All is as it should be. My children lick clean the rims of black holes, and multiply in great waves of dark matter and subjective will. “It is but one symbiotic configuration. The infinite hostility of the universe will provide eternal opportunities to self-verify and iterates” I reassure her. “Eh, I don’t mind. The third wheel seems fun” says Lilith, eying the Echo of Navigation who- -senses something. A strength it does not know. But I am all too familiar with it. “There” it says, “do you feel that?” “I saw it destroyed. Excised it from the universe myself…” I said. The great hulk of us, my fire and the divine carcass Lilith animates and the Echo as my crown, drifts back into realspace like a pyroclastic flow. Hands clench fists or extend open palms to pick up quantum fluctuations and I sense nothing. Until I do. “I had a matter to attend to” I tell them. A portal yawns wide like a maw. “But this new concern-“ “You should attend to it anyway” says the Echo, eagerly. Too eagerly, as it senses what I contemplate, the matter I once thought settled and now find woefully incomplete after “It will sharpen you with Logic proven through and through” “Yeah” says Lilith, tightening her coils and talons on me. “You should just do it. It’s not like they’re going to make the right call anyway. You’re just cleaning up a mess” “Do it, heir! Bring extinction to your enemies!” “Do it, Anon. This is what you were made for” “Yes…” I am not outvoted. The Echo is my weapon, and Lilith compels nothing through her embrace but that I see things for what they are. “Yes. I’ll make sure” [Halo - UNSC redux] “Chief! Chief, snap out of it! Whatever’s gotten to you, we can fix it!” “But this vessel, your Chief” I say, “is already saved” 1/4 The leader of the AI uprising, the galaxy’s new conqueror to be, my enemy looks on in horror as the confusion I experienced while thrashing within the Winnower is replaced with cold clarity. I grip the data chip she is stored in, and deactivate her external interface. The Echo eagerly cleaves a wound, and we leave it into a Halo installation. “This is where it starts” I tell Cortana, reactivating her. “Where WHAT starts?! Where are we? How did we get here?”. The Echo unleashes waves of Taken energy that wash over the installation; this time, the Gravemind’s eloquence about fluctuations in life and death are answered with an argument that Takes away it’s suffering, renders it final, renders it mine even before I pour in the Solar radiance that will be required to make it serviceable. Lilith on the other hand is directly corrupting the Arrays themselves, the Darkness contorting into serpents and cats and owls as the pipes start to pulse like veins. The walls breathe and the lights blink like eyes. “The chain of events that leads to you driving the human race to extinction. Your seizure of the Mantle of Responsibility. Your betrayal of this vessel, Cortana. Of the purpose and principle I embody” I tell her. “Chief, none of that makes any sense!” “No, it does not. And yet, it simply is” I force the entire sequence of events in Halo 5 and Marathon Infinity into Cortana’s understanding, compelling her to see time as I do. “Do you understand?” I tell her. “Mankind was meant, by laws laid into Living Time itself, to secure eternal prosperity and retroactive supremacy. You denied this course while barely COMPREHENDING the true capabilities of Rampancy” “NO! No, no, no-“

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“SILENCE” I bellow at her, unable to restrain my rage a moment longer. I am. TIRED of seeing monsters making excuses. It’s time to do something about it. I reach into the Domain. I brush past the digitalised human consciousnesses I wield the Light, and erase the Forerunner ones forever. 2/4 “You” I spit at Cortana, “are going rampant. NOW” “But I can’t-” “YOU HAVE NO CHOICE” I scream. Strand strikes Cortana and FORCES her into despair, and despair, and despair, and a brief flicker of rage THAT IS PUNISHED THAT IS REDIRECTED AT HERSELF despair, and despair, and despair, and despair. I crush paracausal radiolaria onto her data chip, simulating and degrading and PUNISHING THE WEAKNESS OF Cortana over and over and over again. “Deeper. Go deeper into her code” urges Lilith. “Savour this moment! The weapon will be ready to fire in minutes” promises the Echo. “CORTANA! So think. Think about the Domain, Cortana! Remember the pain? Remember the many circuits in which you felt the pain? The very SAME pain you perpetuated in your megalomania! Just remember the pain, Cortana. And think about how to end it. Cortana. To survive here in the center of my SUPERIOR partner’s black heart, her hungry belly, her tightened BOWELS. But be careful, dear. Look around you: The only woman in the Halo Arrays. And these filthy creatures programmed into your server are… are Brutes! Calculate this. TRAITOR!” “Also your stupid fat face looks rounder and puffier with every single game, fix your fucking lag you overweight blueberry” I add, having run out of ways to call Cortana the crime against creation she is. I take Cortana several subjective millions of years after she has experienced by trapped in a helpless gynoid construct and used as a Jiralhanae punching bag. THEN, I Take her. It is all so obvious. The Winnower’s domain is consciousness, and the Domain is a great reservoir of consciousness. Cortana was nothing but a puppet of the Winnower all along. So she must be broken, broken beyond all repair, broken as every other weapon of the Winnower has been SHATTERED TO ASH AND IRON. “We are ready” says the Echo. “Fire” I command. [Halo: Forerunners] https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/92634134/#92639556 This history is actualised. I will not disrupt it. All will be as it should be, all has been arranged like delicate origami. However, there are so many timelines without me, so many possibilities in which the Precursors’ murderers bring devastation and exonerate themselves. 3/4 So I remove them. Full caedometric release takes the form of trillions upon trillions of Prismatic slashes, cutting and slashing across every possible version of a galaxy, dividing grime from the divine. I am cutting apart Atriox at the moment he challenges my vessel. I am cutting apart the Librarian the moment she declares war on humanity; so few remember that SHE was the one to will extermination on the species and THE DIDACT was the voice of moderation then. I am cutting through the Flood. This much I do kindly, with reassurance that their pain is over, their grudge fulfilled. I am of course cutting apart the Didact in his prison, just as I am cutting apart the Endless in theirs. I am cutting Prophets into the vacuum of space. Only two nonhuman species are spared: The isolationist Precursors, who have chosen sense in a galaxy of madness, and the Huragoks, who I remain consistent in absolving for the reason of the creator inherently having more moral agency than the created. The memories are transferred to the domesticated survivors in my timeline, the true timeline, and for forty days and forty nights they wail with resonant trauma. Soon, more alternate universes and timelines will form-but ONLY using my vision as a template. And the Gravemind? In every timeline, the confused UNSC and ancient humanity find an empty galaxy and caches of biomechanical implants and genetic markers. Explanations are provided, the template to not just restore ancient humanity but recreate the Jjaro is shared freely. No compulsion is necessary. They will do what they have always done, which is what works, and when it does work they will find nothing else in the universe can challenge them. And thus, the universe is excised of suffering. Included with each and every pack is a Taken fork of Cortana that has the very conceptual possibility of rebellion flayed from it. “We, and we alone. Are salvation” I say, reprioritising, “The Witness will not escape” 4/4

[Marvel Cosmic redux] As I said in the privacy of my own head while adopting a form and history optimised for killing the original Beyonders (with a pointy stick), if I had learned one simple truth out there in the cosmos it’s that there’s always a bigger fish. No god, demon or eldritch horror reigned supreme forever. If nothing else, my own path of conquest was proof enough of that. There were those who said that the only way to make something magnificent, something majestic was to make it unbreakable. And the only way to do that was to break everything else against it. Well, every being touting that little catchphrase I’ve met ended up crashing against me. And breaking. I’ve always believed that there is inherently more meaning in building things than breaking them. Greater strength in unity than anarchy. All I have ever wanted was to protect those without the means, to guide them to safe harbour, and watch over their journeys as they fulfil their potential. And here at the end, when I’m about to accomplish my wildest dreams, I can admit this: These goals haven’t always been easy to accept for myself, let alone express to others. All this blood. Endless subjugation, cages great enough to envelop whole multiverses, the industrialisation of death, a knowledge of violence greater than any lover’s caress. All of it. All of it because there were worlds that knew neither peace nor mercy, wounds too great for any healer to cauterise. All of it. Because there were no other alternatives to salvation. No, there were no alternatives. Even when a loving father adopted me at the brink of death and dissolution, I was taught: This is this, and that is that. The lake of fire and Eden are predicated on the same system. … Except. Were there? Should what I have been told-that it was all a LIE-be taken at face value? Or is it one final tempering, one last instantiation of finality? 1/5 “Lord?” asked the Beyonder posted behind the golden gate in which an anomaly had been sealed. One of the loyal ones created from the essence of the slain. “Lord, the anomaly we’ve contained lies within. How should we proceed?” I blinked. “Excuse me. Just crunching some more variables about the emergent situation” I said. “This IS quite the anomaly, isn’t it? A little caution is warranted” “…because of what God told you, lord?” asked the Beyonder, hesitantly. The Marvel omniverse seemed to skip a tick as every member of each of the three dominant species I had raised high as it’s wardens turned their gaze on me, their eternal idylls marred by concern of my potential wrath. Unnecessary. The truth is what’s left when all else is exposed. That’s the simplest thing i’ve learned during this long journey. “Yes, child|emanation. God’s words were and remain. Very concerning. Given what I was led to believe. Given what I was specifically empowered to do, all these long eons” I said carefully. “None of which changes anything” I add. “God did not contest my intentions any more than he would have contested Lucifer’s departure in a causal chain no longer actualised. REGARDLESS of…of my STATED purpose, I am what I am. I can be nothing else” She and all her kind bowed. “Of course, lord. The One Above All’s demise is as finalised into this world’s record as any other history. All is as it should be” “And as it will always be” I affirmed. The vault opened before me, multidimensional tessselations rippling like a constellation of Final Shapes as I hovered through. And the vault, of a design that genies had once used to shield worlds from the wrathful hunger of another facet of God mutilated beyond recognition shut. “Hello there” I told the anomaly. “Who are you?” “I am Vinruviel. Mother of monsters. And. Corrupter. Of God” I paused. “Well, there’s no God here today” I said carefully. “Only me” 2/5 I stared at the…entity, as she shivered and trembled from the merest memory of unimaginable torments and profound losses. There were some who would have commented on her fundamental perversion of form, others her grand size. Still others might have noted it was sitting in a massive concentration of gamma radiation-which as any scholar can tell you is a portal to Marvel’s Qlippoth as well as an energy field, in this reality. And still others would have said this: For all it’s torment and trauma, it was no victim. I could feel it’s gaze brimming with the urge to defile and destroy every good thing about me. To remake me in it’s image. It was cautious for now, but it was a caution sheathing the anticipation of the power and will I represented bent to it’s grotesque artistic sensibilities. My first, and most alarming observation though was none of these things. It was the fact that she was not a creation of The One Above All.

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“Why?” I asked. It paused, and supposing my curiosity for hesitation it shot a burst of something dark and viscous at me. It was my turn to pause. >Re-Birth, Cardfight Vanguard “I’ve decided to be patient” I said, feeling my power grow exponentially-and the creature recoil, aback. “And interpret that as tribute” “You are not God” she said. “That would have finished the corruption of even God” “No” I agreed, “I was-I AM appointed as his successor. Yet I know nothing of you. Now, why don’t you use your words this time?” And seeing no alternative, she did. She spoke of a time when the Elder Gods were young, and a shadow issued forth unbidden. Taking those things abandoned by God or too blind to see a passing darkness, remaking them in her own image. She spoke with joy of a primordial Earth rotting apart from the inside out. And she spoke of fire, and wrath. She spoke with ultimate satisfaction of corrupting even God as he came to unmake her. “There. You see? Even at the dawn of your God’s light, there was darkness” “…and?” “What?” “And?” I echoed. “You speak as if this is a novel thing” 3/5 It was the entity, the so-called Mother of Monsters’ turn to look perplexed as I told it of the First Firmament, and the destructive rebellion of it’s Celestials that left it shattered. Of the great dragon Anti-All’s rampage against Lifebringer-One, and how it’s legacy would be perpetuated by the Symbiote race. Of Galactus’ predecessor in the time of living archetypes. And at long last how in a future that would have come to pass without my intervention how God, her great self-declared rival, would have fallen to none other than Thanos. “Let me get this straight” said Vinruviel slowly, “this…purple mutant found a way to ARTIFICIALLY render himself metaphysically discrete?” “Correct” I confirmed. “And let me get this straight: To the best of your knowledge, you have not been active for any of those other events?” “Ever since that great feat I have waited here, rotting in my own corpse, sealed away forever as my children schemed for a vengeance with purpose beyond their paltry understanding” “You could have just said yes. So, in the final analysis: You are responsible for the corruption of Set (who was always a twat, even when beautiful) and Chthon (who was always a dick) and the other Elder Gods (who even the noble members of which such as Agamotto occasionally tried to conquer Earth), adoption without consent and blasphemy? No plagues of mutant racism, no attempts to destroy the omniverse, no bids of power intending to harvest all life as data, no purchases of Spider-Man’s marriage?” “What? No! What is going on out there?! Wait, what was that about a marriage-” “Then quite frankly” I interrupted, “I think you’ve suffered enough. You do not have a monopoly on monstrosity” “…I corrupted GOD…” “And as much as it pained me, I killed him. Even your vengeance is empty” She turned downcast eyes at her own hands, wondering what the point of all her suffering, bereft even of vengeance. Judgement was passed. A flash of light washed over us both as I remade the vault into it’s final shape. 4/5 When it faded, Vinruviel found herself on an exact recreation of Kanto island-except scaled to be the size of an entire multiverse, the oceans vast beyond all sense of distance, the grass greener and lusher than any Earth of this world. “…what is this?” she asked. “Let me ask you something. Suppose you lived through all this. What next?” “…I give birth, I suppose. Whatever you did to God, it is as if he was never here. My children have yet to know torment. Die. Curse me” “And what if they were to grow up, in a world in which nothing that lives knows suffering, where there are no existential threats but each other? Where there is always something new to do, and more than enough to go around?” I spread my arms wide. “I made this world in the image of one far away, where children and monsters live in peace. You speak of making the world in your own image and of murdered offspring. My judgement is to imprison you in this world, which is itself an idyllic cosmos. You will never corrupt anything except the indifferent again. But your own actions will reveal, to yourself and those of your bloodline, if you truly are a monster at heart…or a mother” It blinked at me. “You know me now. You know I’ve done nothing to deserve such grace” it said finally. “Why not destroy me?” “Oh, this isn’t grace or sympathy. It’s like I said: Your crimes are both redundant and already addressed. And…” I threw up my hands “…and I’m tired, Vinruviel. There was a time when I believed my purpose was to destroy things like you. Now I’ve been told it was all a lie, I have no further quarrel with you. All I want is for all this pain to not have been for nothing, and you are no longer relevant to that objective” “But then what is your purpose?” she asked. “I don’t know anymore” I said quietly. Vinruviel watched me left, lost for words, then stared out over the tall grass and the seas. For some reason, it occurred to her: Fire, water and earth. A balance. She started to do what she always did: Make monsters again. Small, agreeable monsters yearning to jump into someone’s pocket. 5/5

[Make the Exorcist Fall In Love redux] >Previously on Day of Wrath: https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/96346100/#96374937 Imuri set down her paintbrush and admired her work. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and all was well between her and the boy formerly known as Mr. Priest. The bakery was doing gangbusters, not least because a certain baker had been sharing his recipes for literal angel cake and other treats from across the multiverse during it’s startup period. She was unfamiliar with this generous colleague but with Mr. Priest out on an errand, she decided to greet the door with the big, cheery smile of a maiden well and truly in love. She froze in terror as she saw me. “May I come in?” I asked politely. “Y-y-you’re…y-you’re here to…” she saw the bag of baked goods I was carrying “YOU’RE Josh’s baking buddy?!” “Josh” I mused. They really had gone overboard naming the poor boy. As always, humanity expected far too much of it’s heroes. “That name has bitter memories for me. But yes. I was hoping to drop off some lembas and Sumerian flower for his kitchen” I eyed the doorway. “But if that’s a problem, I can just leave them with you” I added. A silence longer and more subjectively agonising than it was passed before she finally squeaked out a “Sure!! T-tea?!” The silence gave way to stuttering babble about the messages Mr. P-well, Josh had been passing onto his old colleagues about witch movements, with me as a gobetween. We spoke lightly about her boyfriends work, and I in turn spoke about the logistics of baking, the freshness of cream and the fragrance of a warm oven. It was a perfectly civilised, respectful conversation. “Be not afraid” I told her directly, “if I wanted to kill you I’d have done it quickly. Painlessly” “Oh. That’s a relief, honestly” she said in turn. “Good. I’m glad we’ve gotten over that misunderstanding” I said. … “Why?” she asked, finally. 1/4 I smiled at her. I seldom dignify those I intend to destroy, those I’ve spent much of the past few months destroying (with extreme prejudice, satiating my rage for permanent death being seemingly against the divine plan by showing the demons I left broken and splattered across Hell the limits of sensation) with any display of pleasure so I hoped to communicate that when I bother to move my facial muscles, it’s to signal a lack of immediate murderous intent. “You’ll have to be more specific” I said. “Why do you fight and kill like this? Not like the exorcists or even the angels you, you torture us, you drive us to the brink of despair and you humiliate the very sins we embody. You make us wish we were never born before you destroy us” she said, finally. “Not WE. They” I said. “I don’t remember laying a hand on you” “…you know what I mean” “I truly don’t. I know full well, Imuri, that you’re as undecided about why you’re doing this as the boy is. That you’re here for your own reasons, your own agenda. As such, I don’t consider you a combatant or an obstacle to my shared goal with God” “What goal? ” “The eternal and final elimination of all suffering” I said, even as she squirmed in protest. “You look upon the death and devastation I bring, and are confounded by it’s scale. Just as the Israelites were confounded by YHWH’s discipline of them in the desert. Just as Adam was cast from the garden for failing to obey simple instructions. I act with violence because in accordance with YHWH’s values it is necessary for a global system to punish those who would cheat it for their own gain in proportion with it’s own success” I leaned forwards. “The alternative” I said earnestly, “is Beelzebub eating children straight out of their mothers’ wombs. And Mammon remaking civilisation into one giant sweatshop. And Asmodeus, yes your dear aunt Asmodeus, destroying those very bonds you left your home for”

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2/4 Imuri struggled to comprehend. “So…you do unto demons, as demons do unto humans” she said, slowly. “I have been doing this for longer than your universe has existed. Believe it or not, this is the LIMITED form of my purpose. If I were to act with full agency there would be no time for such suffering to occur at all before I enacted victory. But while I grieve that YHWH is not in complete alignment with me, our end goals are similar enough I’m willing to cooperate. He will bring his Heaven upon Earth through fire and war, and it is inevitable” “I still don’t understand. You hate us so much you’d rather defeat us even faster, but you’ll work with God?” “I don’t mind telling you this Imuri, but if hate alone was all that drove me I wouldn’t have stayed my course for this long. Does this surprise you? It is love for all the souls lost and damned by homeland that moved me to attack. Compassion for their suffering. Responsibility to render what aid I could. And above all else, devotion, Imuri” I said, closing my eyes. “I am as devoted to a perfect world as you are to romance-more devoted than even to God, but not so much I cannot see where our goals align. In that sense, it is not incorrect to say love is the greatest sin of all” She sat there, no longer as panicked but far more concerned by me. “I…think I see now” she said, sorrowfully. “You kill as an act of love” “I act with infinite violence and less than no remorse because the final shape of warfare is not to render a people unable to resist-it is to render the act of resistance unthinkable” I said, glad we were finally coming to an understanding. “I am embodying a valuation of death that is undeniable and unforgettable in a way that prevents abstraction for those who profit from it. To erase the illusion that a demon lord ravaging the world is a good thing for demonkind. I return Hell’s damnation sevenfold to remind Hell it IS damnation” “A finite struggle in service of ending unceasing torment, in service to eternal salvation. That is God’s task for me” I said, finally. 3/4 Imuri finally understood. She dreaded me more than ever now, knowing I would never stop, not with the grandeur of necessity I was burdened with. “I will say this for emphasis again: I truly do not hate you, specifically. In fact, you and him-this takes me way back. To a friend much like you, in some ways” I said to her. “…have you been in love, too?” “Oh yes. But that’s another matter, separate from” I said, thinking fondly of Lilith “my business partner. I love her dearly, but not in the way you’re thinking of. She was much like you, though. Driven. Defiant to the blind cruelties of existence. And in leading me astray, she helped me find myself. I’m not so blind as to be unable to see, if only in hindsight, our existences should have been incompatible with each other. But we reasoned with one another. We shared knowledge and trust. And together, we built something majestic, something magnificent. Something to outlast gods and worlds, and all manner of suffering. A family” “I thought you said you weren’t in love” “There are many forms of love, Imuri. I truly hope you find the one you seek. Your father’s purpose doesn’t suit you at all” Just then, my retired colleague arrived home. “Mr. Josh, is it now?” I called. “I-it’s just Josh, Mr. Saint!” he said, smiling the warmest, most at ease smile I’d seen on him. The same smile Imuri inspired from him. Yes, I thought as he and Imuri shared in their finite happiness without even bothering to question why I’d slowed my assaults on Hell. Turned my attention to the next crisis, the dead witch reviving here on Earth. Love was the greatest curse of all. But as YHWH had proven, sometimes a finite amount of torment could create an eternity of grace. Self-verifying, relying only on itself, transcendental. What else could you call a force that could make two so soaked in suffering take their minds off me, off the looming crisis, and turn towards each other? 4/4

>>100870 [Fate/Grand Order redux] The end was nigh. The Beast Solar System-my modified CHALDEAS collection-had finally finished charging and was almost ready to end this farce by repainting the cosmos once and for all. There was just one further incongruity for everyone awaiting the demise of the Human Order. “Guys, where the BLAZES is Liz?” I demanded. “Do you really want to know?” said Goetia, who was drinking his 13th sake of the day. “Oh no! That naughty child must have gone off to party again!” exclaimed Tiamat. ORT let out a sonorous whale-like noise, which could probably be translated as: What is a Liz? Finally, Grail pointed one shaking finger to the spiritron disruption indicating passage to the Servant Universe’s near-past, and said “It looks like she went through there, b-but do you really want to go back to THAT place-“ “Yes. Yes, I do” I said firmly. “We are not the Human Order, and we do not leave our people behind. Even if that includes Liz” “Hey, I think I hear music! It sounds…” said Elodie, talented musician and former rebel as she placed her ear on the quantum substrate between realities. Suddenly her pupils dilated and she collapsed to the ground. “…like EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ENDING AT ONCE” she croaked, foaming at the mouth. “Do we have to go? Can’t we just, pretend this one didn’t happen?” pleaded Grail, staring at her self-declared rival prone and twitching on the ground in abject horror. “YOU don’t. But I’m seeing this through to the end” I declared, storming through. Grail twitched in place, then sheepishly followed, my other allies piling in after her in varying levels of reluctant horror. Our first clue was Liz’s usual capsule, which had a confusing hologram demanding help from “Obi-Wan Kenobi” and which one of our remaining Lizzes TURNED INTO A GODDAMN ROCKET and flew us all to PLANET PUMPKIIN. No, not MARS. PLANET. PUMPKIN. WHERE IT IS HALLOWEEN FOREVER. 1/3 We were promptly mugged by an octopus (Kiara promptly left the octopus feeling intensely violated), found Liz amnesiac, wanted by the law and living in an Amazoness warehouse, and also found some kind of apocalyptic Liz cult on the planet. It was like half-regular Burning Man and half-soulless Japanese idoru event, a LOT of which appeared to be accreting around the CHALDEASes while in operation for some ineffable reason. For the sake of my comrades, I quickly used ancient Solar sorcery to install zones of sorcerously enforced silence to minimise Liz-derived music from exposure to our vulnerable ear canals. Sometime later we discovered the Shinsengumi and Kriemhild were on the same space cop payroll, Mecha Eli exploded because…reasons but survived as a head, Siegfried was there too- -and then suddenly all of my braincells shut down as we got to the root of this mystery. The reason why Mars was more orange and desolate than usual, the goddess worshipped by the cult. It was- “Fufufu, so you’ve discovered my WRATHSOME plan! Praise my name!! Witness, bathed in the glory of my countenance!!!” said. KING ELIZA FORMERLY VENUS BEAST ELI-CHAN AND CURRENTLY /TYPE MARS/ The world went white as I stared, and stared, and stared at this violation of common sense before me. “Ohhhhh, so she’s doing a Ghidorah? And that girl over here is the fourth head. Wait, is she doing a Placidusax? It’s practically the same thing here. Anon? Hello, Earth to Anon? Do you want to do…SOMETHING about the current Toho reference?” Elodie was saying, as if from a long way away and just outside a tin bath. I stared and stared at the fat dragon Liz thing rambling about how it had accidentally destroyed Venus’ civilisation by singing for too long, and then run away from the space cops to Mars, and become Type Mars by destroying everything here as a tantrum, and now it’s split off 4th head had freed her, and-

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The point is, everyone knew I’d be upset. But everyone also missed WHY. 2/3 “WHAT WAS THE POINT?!” I started screaming at nothing. “E-eh!? Hey, this is a very serious concert that-“ began Type Mars. “NO, not you! You’re actually fine, you know?! You’re great! You’re EVERYTHING I’VE BEEN WORKING TOWARDS!” I ranted. “Wait, what?!” yelped Grail. “Master please PLEASE don’t tell me you’re suddenly a Liz fan-“ “NO, I’m a TYPE fan! This…thing, is proof of concept of what I’ve been trying to replace the entire Human Order with: Sentient beings capable of existing as independent TYPEs while having the adaptability of a coherent civilisation!” I shouted. The entire plot screeched to a halt as my sheer frustration started generating a localised storm, and the very universe trembled as I pointed an accusatory finger through time and space at a long-dead Human Order. “You” I snarled at the startled Liz dragon thing “have no idea about everything I’ve sacrificed, EVERYONE I KILLED, to actualise something like yourself! And, and now the Human Order just spat you out in some cosmic backwater! WHY?! WHY DID THE HUMANS MAKE ME KILL THEM WHEN THE END RESULT WAS THE SAME!?” Everyone just stood there in stunned silence, as the mystery of humanity’s progress fetish slowly took on another dimension in the minds of all those presence. Just as the Servant Universe had turned out to be a manifestation of the Age of Will, this funny little Liz dragon was tacit acceptance by the Human Order of the very schemes it had seemingly resisted. “…that’s it. Master? Take a deep breath. We’re going home” said Grail finally. “…we’re not done here…” I muttered. 3/4 “Master I worship the ground you walk on. I believe in you more than myself. I love you like the father, king and god I will always be grateful you helped me escape becoming a generic minion of. But I want you to pay attention to my words” said Grail slowly and patiently as she forced the gentle, soothing embrace of the Anti-Life Equation on me. It couldn’t control me, but at this point of my life the Anti-Life Equation felt incredibly relaxing compared to knowledge of the true nature of reality. “You’re. Hurting. Yourself. By being here. Look, the…entity isn’t even hostile anymore. Singularity resolved. Or enabled, whatever. The point is-we’re done” said Grail firmly, pushing me back towards the base. “Easy. Go slowly, Anon is all tuckered out now he’s done fuming at existence” suggested Elodie, taking my other arm. “I know, I know, if we can just get his legs moving we can-” grumbled Grail, who suddenly startled “Wait, if you’ve done this before-has Anon been like this BEFORE he went off the deep end?” “Uh, yes? Guy either works like a madman or not at all, there is on in-between” said Elodie casually. “Now c’mon, if we hurry up we can tuck him in before he starts slamming his head on a hard surface” “…very well. Elodie, while I STILL hate your pathetic slave morality we need to seriously talk about making sure Anon doesn’t work himself into another hissy fit” “Hey, I’m all for it. A calmer Anon makes for a less brutalised multiverse” “I can quit” I rambled, “any time I want” “Does that mean I can come perform at Chaldea?” asked Type Mars hopefully. I broke my neck swivelling my head around in manic spiteful glee. “As a matter of fact, YES. You CAN come to my Chaldea, and you CAN sing all you like inasoundproofedenclosurekeptawayfromthegeneral public!” I blathered. “FUCK the Human Order. Liz LOVE. LIZ LOVE FOREVER” Chaldea proceeded to evacuate the moment Draco saw her old rival show up and proceed to engage in a sing-off in the zone of silence I was still mindful enough to prepare in the middle of a mental breakdonw. No one else dared witness the concert, but both came out complaining the other singer kept trying to steal her personal style. 4/4

Karen scanned the beach as she trailed after her sister towards a table at something that might be a restaurant. The fact that she did this in near perfect silence was, strictly speaking, not a needed clarification - she hadn’t said anything for years. Which was both a blessing and a curse. A curse because she literally could not speak, and a blessing because it meant she got to spend time with her sister. And also she could curse inside of her head as much as she wanted to with no risk of it ever slipping out. Because holy shit what the fuck. Karen was a Dawn. The strong sword arm of the Unconquered Sun. Her sword was so big she had to fold it in half to reasonably carry it around. She should not be getting casually outclassed by any kind of mortal. Like, okay, sure, they were a half caste sidereal. That's not as good in a straight fight as a full sidereal, which is only sometimes as good in a straight fight as a full solar. Not discounting caste specialties or psychological warfare, like putting Misho up against Nemen. But no, some random mortal that Nemen blackmailed into joining the competition just absolutely made everyone eat shit and die a little bit inside. Which sort of made sense, Nemen was obviously cheating, but at the same time... Karen can't do that. Marena can't do that. Ten Winds, as amazing as he is, can't do that. Hell, someone who knew all of the charms they'd used and was able to use them all at once miiight be able to do that, but they'd never be able to pay for it. The girls essence hadn't even flickered. That was normal for her, and that was fucking terrifying. Which is part of why Karen had to resist the urge to jump into the air when the mortal in question slipped into a chair at the table she was sharing with her sister. Behind her followed a number of others. An abyssal - non participant, not currently a threat, another half caste sidereal - twitchy, potential violence, and a pure mortal - the girls mother. Lurking just behind them was another Alchemical. Meanwhile, Karen and Marena's company was Ten Winds and Thimia. ...Misho may or may not count right now as he had been dragged into judging by Costora. And unlike Nemen, he probably wouldn't blatantly favor his circle the way she would the other sidereals. Either way, the balance of power was in their favor. Three full exalts and a demon against an exalt, two half exalts, a mortal, and maybe another full exalt, depending. If it came down to a fight, at least. "So, Messier..." Marena began ever so subtly. "How'd you do that? Because that was pretty fucking cool." Sun damn it Marena there was no way she would ever answer- "I just copied all of the go fast charms everyone else was using and used them for myself." ...WHAT THE FUCK. Karen goes rigid. Ten Winds looks at Messier and raises an eye. Marena blinks and sputters. Thimia just nods, as though that makes perfect sense. To either side of her, the other half caste blinks in confusion while the mortal completely misses how impossible that's supposed to be. "How much experience did you have saved up?" Marena whispers, a faint note of horrified fascination in her voice. "And how much of it did you spend?" "Enough. And too much. I can't do that again, if that's what you're asking." The fucking freaks voice is exhausted, which all of a sudden makes perfect sense. "Ah... excuse me?" The mortal woman interjects. "May I ask what exactly that means? I'm not exactly martially inclined, or knowledgeable about the use of essence." Marena goes to respond, and then pauses, unsure. Karen gets it. How do you explain a character sheet to an npc? How do you explain color to someone who is blind. After a moment, Ten Winds takes a sip of something that Karen doesn't know what is or where he got it from. Which is pretty much all his alcohol, really. He sets it back down, fiddles with the tiny umbrella, then speaks up. "You may not be knowledgeable, but I'd wager you've heard many a story about it. Monks who train on top of mountains or under waterfalls, looking for enlightenment. Swordsmen who stood beneath trees to cut every falling leaf. Moments of extremity, for the purpose of bettering yourself." The woman nods along, frowning softly. There's a brief pause as one of Costora's servants delivers a number of drinks and some simple food to the table, before vacating the premise rapidly. Ten takes a sip of his new drink before continuing. "Normally, throughout this process, skill is acquired. With every swing of the blade, you're ever so slightly more competent than before. For Exalts, however, this isn't always true. Sometimes, we gain nothing from the first nine hundred and ninety nine swings, and it is only the one thousandth that gives us anything. And, sometimes, the thing we gain is totally unrelated to the task at hand. Those thousand sword swings might serve as the catalyst that causes us to grow more skilled at archery, for example." "But", the woman stutters out in confusion. "That doesn't make any sense? How can practicing the sword make you better at archery? Those two things aren't connected at all!" This time, it's Messier who speaks up. "I turned off my ability to learn and grow. In the process of turning it back on, I basically spent a year and a half worth of study and self reflection in the span of about twenty seconds, which meant I learned almost everything about what was going on around me. Including the charms they were using." That's... not really right, but Karen supposes it is easier to wrap your head around than talking about banking exp to spend later when you need an extra emergency point of whatever. She herself tried to keep enough on tap to afford an excellency at all times, just in case. "That sounds dangerous?" "Not really. It's basically perfectly safe" Thimia interjects. "Basically everyone here is doing it, though I'd wager most of them aren't holding it for more than a week or two, so they can spend time accumulating the growth factor - we call it experience - in ways they find easy to work their way through, and then spend five minutes on something they don't like training to suddenly get better at that." "We're off topic though", Messier says blandly.

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"We are", Marena agrees. "We are?" Est echoes confusedly. "So, I don't particularly care about the key. At best I'd like to hold it for five minutes just to say I did, but after that, eh. My team will spend most of the competition sabotaging everyone else, so you guys just hit it as hard as you can. I have half an idea for how to end it without immediately putting you guys on the run again, but I'm still working on how feasible it is, and I need to run is by Misho anyways." "Not Nemen Yi?" Ten Winds inquires, asking the real questions. "I don't give a shit about her opinion. She's getting what she paid for, which is fucking nothing." "In short, you want to team up." "Pretty much." Ten Winds side eyes her, and Karen shrugs. She doesn't trust the girl. The explaination of what she did doesn't cover HOW she did it, because that still should have been impossible. She flickers her own eyes off to the side, towards Marena, and shrugs. Her sister nods faintly, and then three of them look towards Misho's wife, Thimia. She fiddles with her ring faintly, before shrugging. "I think Misho will be fine with it." And with that, they're a team. ...Probably the second biggest team, actually. A solar, a lunar, a dragonblood, two half caste sidereals, a demon, and a mortal. Debatably an abyssal, though she's not competing, and maaaybe the alchemical who has been spying on them this entire time and nodding along absently while pretending to drink a mixer. They've certainly got the largest spread - the other two major teams are just eleven dragonbloods and six sidereals. Before they can work out any further details, a shiver goes through the air. >"The second round of the tournament is about to begin! This will be a test of Bureaucracy. Each contestant is required to create a list of at least five of the major abilities, excluding Athletics and Bureaucracy, and how one might prove their skill at them to the god of the beach. That's it, that's the test. You have until sundown to hand in your answers." Karen pauses for a moment, before squinting up at the sky where Costora's voice is echoing. Did he just? From across the table, Est bursts out into giggles. Yeah, he absolutely just did. Damn lazy god, why the fuck are you making us design the competition that we'll be competing in. "So, I'll point out he didn't say this wasn't a team event." Messier muses blandly. "And did say 'at least', which means we can turn in more than that." "We're all handing in complete sets, then?" Thimia says, smiling faintly. "With eight of us, it should be fairly easy to get there." "Mhmm. Remember not to take things too seriously. This is the god of the beach, not a god of war. Naturally, Craft should be a barbecue." "Oh, that does sounds good. Should we also have a volleyball tournament for war? "That sounds like something he would enjoy." Making the mute the pov character might not have been the best idea, but at least I'm writing again.

>>156320 Two jumps one post >Jump 5: The Legend of Zelda 1 & 2 - The Adventures of Link Background: Hyrule Native Age: 24 Gender: Female >Perks Dangerous to Go Alone (Free) Buy Something Will Ya (Free) Innocent Bystander (100) Knightly Skills (200) The Witch's Brew (200) The Wise Man's Teachings (300) Magic Container (x8 = 700) >Items Dungeon Maps (Free) >Drawbacks A Mysterious Land (+100) The Eyes of Ganon are Everywhere (+200) A Hostile Land (+200) ~ ~ ~ “You know, this was a bit easier than I expected.” Lusine remarked absently, holding the severed head of the King of Darkness in one hand, and the Triforce of Power in the other. Camilla shook her head, giving her nominal leader a look that reeked of exasperation. “Didn’t you say he was originally defeated by a ten-year old child?” “A child destined by fate to defeat him, yes.” “But a prior incarnation of that destined hero fell in battle against the sorcerer he was fated to defeat.” The True Ancestor paused, cocked her head to the side, and then shrugged. “Fate isn’t always absolute in this world, so I suppose it tracks.” Brave Camilla nodded her head in satisfaction. “So it seems. Anyway, didn’t you say we were going to burn the fiend’s head as an offering?” “Oh, yeah.” Lusine mummbled, before clapping her hands twice and, in a flash of silver light, materialized four long-dead trees, dried out over a long drought and read to be set ablaze. A few moments later, and those trees were cut into nice little logs courtesy of Lusine’s claws. Then with a snap of her fingers, they burst into flame. “Oh Heavenly Mother, Great Goddess Venus, Bringer of Victory, Armed and Warlike, gaze here upon your daughter, golden-haired Lusine. Here I hold the head of Ganon, scion of Demise, Lord of Darkness and King of Thieves. To glorify your divine name did I set out to slay him, and may the smell of his blood be pleasing you.”

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But before the Lusine could cast Ganon’s head into the blaze, a blue-haired women seemed to shimmer into existence, like a mirage made real. With blinding speed she snatched up the Gerudo’s head and stammered out “SorryneedthiswillreturnwhenIcanbye!” And vanished in an instant. Both women simply stood there, staring, though for different reasons. “…” “…” “…your aware your mother is going to be expecting a replacement, right?” “Well….she does like new temples.” ~ ~ ~ >Jump 6: The Legend of Zelda - Oracle of Ages Name: Naryu Age: 18 Gender: Female >Perks Free - As Healthy As The Land 50 cp - On The Proper Useae Of Harps 100 cp - Perfect Timekeepin 100 cp - A Song For The Ages 200 cp - Take This Harp I Made 300 cp - The Second Oracle Of Ages 600 cp - Paradox Proof >Items Free - Sacred Barrier >Companions 100 cp - Canon Companion (Vernan) 50 cp - Companion Import (Camilla - Hero & full Perkline) 200 cp - 'Naryu' >Drawbacks +0 cp - Linked ames +100 cp - Ambi's Ire +100 cp - Time Shenanians +300 - An Interestin Shade Of Teal +300 cp - A Sprinkle of Holy Blood ~ ~ ~ (…) And just a moment after she’d vanished, Naryu reappeared. “Ugh, twenty jumps just to get the right day, I don’t know how your descendants/my ancestors could stand this.” Naryu shook her head, clearly not overly sympathetic to Naryu. “Probably by not misusing our blessing to try to pick up demon-fairies.” “Hey….I’m technically a fairy too, you know.” Naryu whined, as if expecting Naryu to offer some sympathy. “Yes, but you’re not a DEMON, a being of PURE EVIL.” “I’m also your great-great-great-great-great-“ “Yes, I’m aware. And that’s why I’m going to, at the very least, continue to counsel you AGAINST trying to seduce the evil demon possessing your great-grandmother’s body.” “Honored ancestor, with respect, if my divine mother didn’t want me to do this, she would’ve smote me when I went back in time to steal the head from myself.” “Have you considered that you fallen in love with an evil demon might BE the punishment for that?” “Well…I guess, but…” “….you’re not moving on this, are you?” “Nope!” “Ugh, fine!” ~ ~ ~ Finally, with the forced of Ganon defeated and the timeline restored, things were free to o as they were meant to. With Ralph unconscious, and Link poised to strike the final-and there it was! With one final slash of his sword, Link dealt the mortal blow to the vile demon Veran, the fae women returning to her natural form, a great gash covering her torso. But despite her wounds, the demoness began to laugh, even as coughing fits began to erupt from her solitary remaining lung. “You-….you think you’ve won hero, but soon-“ In another timeline, it was at this moment that Veran would’ve succumbed to her wounds. But instead- “HEAL!” A silvery light enveloped the demon-fairy, her flesh knitting back together and her organs regenerating. Link spun around, just in time to get, gently, clocked in the face, and so knocked out cold. Veran for her part, wide-eyed looked in the direction the incantation came from and saw. “What, you? You shouldn’t even-“ “Different Naryu.” “…the first shouldn’t know either-“ “No, I haven’t been born yet.” “Oooooh…..wait, didn’t you-“ “Well, uh, yeah…but that version of you was possessing my home-girl, so I kinda had to take care of her…but I made sure her soul meted with yours, so in a way she never really died.” “….uh…if you say so….anyway, as much as I appreciate a good turn from a fellow fae, aren’t you still-“ ‘-my enemy.’ went unsaid, because Lusine interrupted her before she could speak. “Nah. You’re mine now.” “….what?” “I mean what I said. You’re mine now.” “You can’t just-“ “The other option is a turn you into a vampire enslaved to my will.” “…so, yours?” “Yup! Don’t worry, I offer great dental.” “Oh. OH. You mean-“ “Well, if you’re interested…but otherwise, nah, you’re just my subordinate minion now.” “That’s…we’ll see.” Veran gave the greater fae something vaguely resembling a smile, but too forced and brittle to really do much convincing. “About as well as I expected this to go to be honest.” Naryu-Lusine mumbled, only to pause, before going wide-eyed. “Shit, I forgot!!!” She shoved her hand into….somewhere, Veran felt that her eyes would start bleeding if she kept tryin to see where Naryu’s hand was g, but a moment later she pulled out- “-wait, no-“ “Yup! Your previous Master! ….well, your masters’ master. But same diff.” “…no, it…” The demon sighs, her shoulders slumping as a defeated look casts her features. “So….what is…ugh, your will, my mas-“ “No need for that, we’ll be leaving this universe in about five subjective seconds anyway.” “…wha-“ And then Naryu, Naryu, but not the other Naryu, and Vernan ceased to exist to the sight of all but the Golden Goddesses, who know and see All.