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kilannad · 1 year ago

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As the Stars Burn On Chapter 28

Masterlist. Ao3. Discord.

Bridge of Hesitation

Gajeel's bones creaked as he moved, the air so cold his limbs were trying to lock up. He'd fought a lot of strong opponents over the years, one of which was standing at his shoulder as an ally. Yet nothing and no one had ever prepared him for the sheer presence an Admiral held. It wasn't like someone with immense magic, where it was a physical thing demanding he submit. Simply, it was that Admiral Aokiji was a powerhouse that didn't need to project his strength. Standing there, fiddling with the sleep mask over his curly black hair, the easy strength coiled into a long, lanky frame and confidence that there was nothing present that could touch him, Aokiji managed to accomplish what men like Jose spent years trying to.

Gajeel knew, in that dark, dragon part of him where the beast under his skin made its home, that he could never win. Careful not to move his head, he slid his eyes over to Laxus--and saw the same realization in the tight clench of his jaw. It meant nothing though; Robin, Lucy, and Chopper were behind them, the rest of their crew likely on their way while their captain dealt with Rob Lucci. For Gajeel and Laxus to step back--if they gave him even a single inch--it'd mean the deaths of their nakama. It wasn't an option. Laxus loosened his shoulders, lightning sparking as Gajeel shifted his feet in the same moment. He would've preferred to have a snack before this, but luck wasn't on his side.

"You know," Aokiji sighed, blinking slowly at their shifted stances. "I'm honestly shocked. I didn't follow you after Navarone because I assumed Robin would lead you to your deaths. She has, of course, but I didn't expect you to willingly come sailing into it."

"If you think something like a buster call will scare us away," Gajeel snarled. "You're dead wrong."

"A pity," Aokiji murmured. "I honestly thought you all were smarter than that."

Mist crystalized in front of his face, the only warning any of them had. He moved faster than any CP9 agent, the rapidly dropping temperature the only warning to his appearance. Suddenly in front of Gajeel's face, his leg came lashing out; Gajeel brought his arms to block, the cold sinking into the iron as he was sent flying back. Laxus closed in, lightning sparking across his fist. Aokiji bent out of the way, backhanding him to the ground.

"Can you really hold out against me?" Aokiji considered. "Especially when I'm not alone."

Behind him, where the gargantuan doors of metal had been taunting them this whole time, the Gates of Justice opened. And ten battle ships sailed through.

☉

The buster call had arrived. Robin collapsed to the ground as the opening salvo slammed into the main island, shaking as she went wide eyed. Franky stood next to her, his hand falling across her shoulders. "C'mon, sister, don't let them get to you."

"It--it's just like twenty years ago."

"It's not," Franky countered. "Look around you. Did you have these idiots twenty years ago?" It must have been more comforting than it sounded, because Robin shook herself, standing on wobbling legs. Lucy breathed a sigh of relief, but was far more concerned for what was coming.

"We need to get a ship ready," she said, looking around. There was one ship on the other end of the bridge, likely for Robin's transport. They were on the second pillar, the first having turned into a warzone between Lucci and Luffy and the third where Spandam was cowering near the ship. She considered her options, just in time for a cannon to come sailing across and blowing the ship up. Spandam screamed, skittering away from the burning remains of his escape vessel. "So much for that." How many marines had been on that ship? Lucy wondered. How many more would die under their own allies' attacks?

Stars and seas, the World Government was fucked up.

A huge fist came storming out of the first pillar, a body going flying through the air. Following, Luffy with a truly engorged stomach came rocketing out; the air in his body moved up to his foot, turning it into the size of a giant's. Lucci landed on one of the enclosing marine ships. Luffy's foot came crashing down, turning the ship into splinters and sending the crew jumping into the ocean.

From the water, a figure came leaping out, carrying the unconscious members of the rest of the crew. Kokoro, with shells over her breasts and a tail where her legs once were, landed easily on her two fins. "Gha ga ga, got your friends!"

"You're a mermaid?" Lucy asked, a little terrified. She was glad Aquarius wasn't out right now; she'd likely be screaming profanities.

"No," Sanji groaned. "No, it can't be."

"Yeah," Kokoro said. "I'm an ice fish mermaid."

Sanji sobbed. Nami, doing everyone a favor, slammed her Climatact into his head as punishment for being a misogynist.

"I love the bit guys, really," Lucy cooed. "But if we could focus on the ten battleships?!"

Indeed, in the last few minutes, the buster call had already decimated Enies Lobby, leaving the island a burning ruin as the various buildings collapsed, explosions still occasionally detonating. She had no idea if their allies had gotten out, or if even the families and soldiers present had been evacuated. In the end, it was absolute destruction and the only space still standing was the Bridge of Hesitation.

"Do you hear that?" Usopp asked.

"Attention Marines!" The crew turned as the ten ships, outfitted with some of the Navy's best, encircled the bridge. "Captains and Lieutenants will advance. We are to capture Nico Robin alive; use lethal force with the rest. Do not interfere in Admiral Aokiji's battle."

"There can't be that many captains present?" Nami tried to guess.

A wave of white uniforms stepped up to jump on the bridge, an entire army worth of marines drawing weapons and activating Devil Fruits in preparation.

"Or not," she squeaked.

Lucy wasn't paying attention though. Her eyes had been caught on the other battle going on. Laxus and Gajeel were already littered with bruises and wounds, blood staining their clothes, ice climbing their limbs; Aokiji didn't have a single scratch. The dragon slayers were panting, struggling to keep up with an admiral's strength and speed, to say nothing of the fact that iron was naturally weak to ice. She couldn't believe how strong Aokiji was, to have two of their strongest members utterly outclassed. If Gajeel and Laxus couldn't win, or at least buy them enough time to find a way out, then they were all as good as dead. It didn't help that they hadn't rested properly in days and had been fighting for hours already.

They needed to eat.

Magic, Lucy was dumb sometimes.

She had to conserve magic, which meant she couldn't keep Hóu out for long, but she could do this at least. "Nami! Largest lightning storm you can, on top of Laxus."

"Wha-?"

"Now!"

Lucy flipped the Monkey Key to her hand, gritting her teeth as he pulled on her magic. He didn't hesitate, reading her intentions in the bond between them. A bar of iron landed in front of Gajeel just as he dodged across the bridge. He laughed, loud and confident as he began chowing down. Hóu's Gate closed; a mass of black clouds appeared above Laxus where he was engaged with Aokiji. They disappeared in a flash of lightning that was quickly sucked away; the admiral dodged back.

"Thanks for the meal, ladies," Laxus called, tossing his jacket and ripped shirt away.

"Gihi, now this can get interesting," Gajeel said, removing his own ruined shirt. On his arm, the bandages fell away to reveal the Straw Hat jolly roger.

"Do they always strip before they fight?" Nami demanded.

"Pretty much all the guys in Fairy Tail do. I blame Gray."

The air, which had been chilled by Aokiji's very presence, never mind the various attacks he'd been sending, heated up rapidly. The air pressure dropped, getting heavy with the taste of magic in the air; Lucy's hair stood on end. She hadn't been present for their battle during Fantasia, but she could already tell this was Laxus letting go of his restraints. Dragon Force, Gajeel had once explained while they were at sea, was the act of a dragon slayer letting go of all their humanity. They gave themselves over fully to the part of them that was dragon, and in doing so increased their magic, strength, and stamina. It was their ultimate technique.

Against an admiral of the Navy, Gajeel and Laxus had no choice but to both activate it.

Their canines lengthed, their nails sharpened into points. Gajeel's skin darkened, then rapidly hardened, steel scales covering him head to toe. Laxus seemed to bloat up on lightning, not an inch of his skin untouched as scales broke out along his arms, his chest. There was always something a little inhuman about them, but now, the beast part of them pulled to the front, Lucy couldn't believe anyone would ever think them simple Devil Fruit users. Not even Zoans had the aura of sheer, animalistic rage that a dragon slayer could produce.

"Now," Laxus growled. "Let's try this again."

"What is that?" Usopp asked, staring out to sea.

"Dragon Force," Lucy breathed. "The ultimate showing of a dragon's power."

"Then we'll have to trust them to handle themselves," Zoro said. "We're about to have our own hands full."

The marines had finished transferring their soldiers to the bridge, blowing up all but the center support where they all stood. They closed in, and suddenly it was all Lucy could do to stay alive.

Starry River lit up in her hands, the bright light of it blinding her enemies before she crushed it into their chests, their legs, anything and everything to buy them breathing space. Chopper, still unable to move, was left in the center of their circle, the rest of them pushing back as much as they could. Usopp stood over him, taking shots at anyone on the ships to slow down the reinforcements while the crew managed the close combatants. Most of them were exhausted though, and it became clear immediately they couldn't keep this up forever.

This wasn't the untrained militia of Alabasta or even the unranked marines from earlier. They weren't as strong as CP9, true, but the enemies were all strong in their own right and there were so many of them. One would go down, only for two more to appear and they wouldn't stop coming. The only blessing the Straw Hats had was the wave Aokiji had frozen; it gave them one area where the battleships couldn't take position.

Lucy only caught flashes of the fight against Aokiji. Gajeel, stabbing an iron blade through his gut. Laxus, summoning a four layered circle of lightning magic. Aokiji slamming his hand against the ground and jagged ice spikes erupted underneath the dragons. They were alive, which is what Lucy cared about, but they weren't winning.

☉

Luffy panted, standing on shaking feet.

"Why won't you stay down?" Lucci snarled. "There is nothing you can do. Your crewmates will die and Nico Robin will be taken to Marine HQ."

"No!" He shook himself, bending down as he prepared to use Second Gear. He was tired, so, so tired, but he couldn't stop. He could see Laxus's lightning, and hear the battle cries of his nakama. Robin was free and fighting, they just had to get away. To do that, he had to take down Lucci. It was as simple as that. "I'm not letting you hurt a single one of them."

☉

"Seriously, what is saying that?" Usopp growled.

"Will you focus!" Sanji snapped.

"Where have you been?" Nami demanded.

"I'm so sorry Nami sweet, I had some minor business."

Lucy fell back, a killing blow turning into a slight graze down her chest. They needed to get out and they needed it an hour ago. But they had no way-

Into the sea.

"What is that?" Lucy asked.

"Do you hear it?" Usopp called. "It's like someone is calling for us."

"Don't be an idiot," Sanji snapped. "The whole crew is here."

He was right. Franky had reverted to pure brawling, his cola having run out--she could not believe the cyborg ran on cola, what had her life come to--and even then he was slowing down. One of Zoro's swords had been destroyed by some asshole with a rust Devil Fruit and Usopp was down to his most basic ammunition. Robin had collapsed from exhaustion next to Chopper and Nami's swings were coming slower and slower. Lily was stuck in his small form, mostly attacking people's ankles at this point, too exhausted to even use aera. Gajeel and Laxus, perfectly intune and at their most powerful, were barely keeping Aokiji at bay and away from killing all of them. Lucy could just make out Luffy fighting Lucci, the both of them bloodied and sluggish but still going at it. All eleven of them accounted for.

Let's go back.

Except, no. That wasn't right. There weren't eleven Straw Hats, there were twelve.

"Oh stars," Lucy breathed. She dodged one blow, ducking under another, and slid to the ground next to Chopper and the others.

"Lucy!" Sanji cried, knocking aside a sword that nearly came for her head. "What-?"

"Buy me time and space!" she ordered. She had so little magic left, but she had enough for this. Hopefully.

The crew didn't hesitate, a new energy flowing into them as they rushed to buy her room. Usopp stood guard over her, Robin pulling Chopper out of the way.

Across the way, in what had once been the first pillar of the Bridge of Hesitation, Luffy dealt a final blow to Lucci. The leader of CP9 went flying, crashing into a marine ship which announced his defeat to the whole world. The Straw Hats cheered, but Luffy went down, unable to move in the aftermath of his fight.

Lucy didn't register any of it. From her Key ring, she drew a last one. In a shower of golden light, Gemini appeared. They took one form, just like they'd discussed earlier, and then another. Suddenly, there was a second Lucy, this one at full strength and health.

"Miss Lucy," Gemini greeted in her own voice. "This could hurt you."

"It's our only shot," she countered. With no arguments, Gemini kneeled down, clasping their hands together. A unison raid was rare and near impossible to do successfully. Your magic had to be compatible, your goals perfectly aligned, and your trust unshakable in each other.

There was nothing in the world Lucy trusted more than her Spirits.

She drew every inch of her magic up, boosted by Gemini-Lucy's. The air got warm as the stars and cold as the void between them. For the first time in history, the eternal day island experienced night.

The sky went black, hundreds of stars floating in the air around them. Marines stumbled to a halt and Straw Hats, knowing instinctively that this was not meant for them, stepped closer towards the two kneeling Lucys. She closed her eyes and let the magic take her strength. She didn't know which of them said the incantation, or maybe it was both as one. It didn't matter. For the second time in her life, Lucy stood under the stars and called them down to her.

"Survey the Heavens,

Open the Heavens...

All the stars, far and wide...

Show me thy appearance...

With such shine.

Oh Tetrabiblos...

I am the ruler of the stars...

Aspect become complete...

Open thy malevolent gate.

Oh 88 Stars of the heaven...

Shine!

Urano Metria!"

Like scattering petals on the water, the stars of the sky fell, slamming into the surrounding area with the force of a meteor shower. Ships crumpled to pieces under the force, marines falling to the ground or straight off the bridge. The frozen wave shattered, ice melting back into the waves in the sudden heat and pressure. Aokiji dodged back and away, forced to freeze the ocean where he landed, trapping what ships escaped the onslaught but allowing the fallen marines a platform to scramble on to. In one, sudden move, the area was as clear as it was going to get.

Gemini's Gate closed; Lucy crumbled to the ground. Zoro caught her, sweeping her up. She heard it, then. That same sweet, accented voice.

Come on, everyone.

"I hear it now," Zoro whispered.

"She came back," Usopp cried. "Everyone, jump into the sea!"

"What?" Franky demanded. "Are you nuts?"

"We're not alone," Lucy rasped. "We have one more member."

"Lily!" Gajeel called, running up as his Dragon Force faded. "D'you have enough to get Luffy?"

"Leave it to me." With some struggle, he pushed himself up into the air, gliding to Luffy's position and, in a burst of magic, pushing him off into the ocean below.

The marines began regaining their senses, those who'd avoided the attack struggling up.

"Jump, everyone!"

They flung themselves into the sea, a familiar face ready to greet them. Keel broken and sworn never to sail again, the Going Merry appeared, her sails lowered and her figurehead bobbing in the waves as she sailed herself to their rescue.Let's go back, everyone, she called. Let's go back to the sea of adventure!

#as the stars burn on #one piece fanfic #fairy tail fanfic #laxus dreyar #lucy heartfilia #gajeel redfox #laxus x lucy x gajeel

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maswartz · 2 years ago

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For kicks and giggles I made Frontier style spirits for the different Digimon fields

Nature Spirits H- Vinemon- A warrior with vine whips B- JungleToramon- A tiger with wooden armor and a vine like tail

Deep Savers H- Tsunamimon- A watery warrior with fluid movement B- Tundramon- A walrus with frozen tusks and frost like fur

Nightmare Soldiers H- Noxmon- A shadowy warrior with a cloak of darkness B- LunarWolfmon- A wolf who can vanish into the shadows

Wind Guardians H- Nimbusmon- A cloudy warrior quick as the wind B- Alicornmon- A winged unicorn who can fly without end

Metal Empire H- Alloymon- A robotic warrior in metallic armor B- Aegismon- A ram with golden fleece and steel horns

Dark Area H- Horromon- A masked warrior who spreads fear B- Serpentmon- A snake with damning toxins.

Virus Busters H- ArchAngelmon- A warrior of shining light B- ShiningLeomon- A lion whose mane shines like the sun

Dragon's Roar H- Igknightmon- A knight in draconic armor with a burning sword and arm mounted shield B- Drakemon- A blazing dragon

Jungle Troopers H- Hivemon- An insect warrior who wields the power of various bugs. B- Swarmmon- A bug with parts of various insects such as mantis blades and a bee stinger

Unknown H- Errormon- A glitchy warrior with unstable power B- Mutatemon- A monstrous beast with unknown power

#digimon

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ygo-monster-type-tournament · 2 years ago

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i have images for every archetype on the list now, but i lost track of time and ended up staying up way too late. oops.

Don't worry about having missed the submission window or something like that! No matter how many submissions I get, i'll figure out some way to make it work. and once i decide when to stop taking submissions, i'll be sure to make it clear to everyone when that will be ahead of time.

here's the current list, by the way! key: bold: someone has specifically submitted it and it will not be deleted except in special cases italic: i put it in myself and there is the chance it will be deleted to make the number of entrants more convienent Since i copypasted it the formatting may be messed up a bit. sorry.

there's also a document where i keep this info and more up-to-date so check that out

/Assault Mode @Ignister A.I. Abyss Actor Aesir Alien Ally of Justice Altergeist Amazement Amazoness Amorphage Anti Ancient Gear Ancient Warriors Appliancer Arcana Force Armed Dragon Aroma Artifact Arts Angel Atlantean Attraction Batteryman Battleguard Battlin’ Boxer Battlewasp Beast Gear Beetrooper Black Luster Soldier Blackwing Blaze Fiend Blue-Eyes Borrel Branded Bujin Burning Abyss Buster Blader Butterspy Bystial CAN:D Cat (Rush Duel) Charmer Chemicritter Chronomaly Chrysalis Cipher Clear Cloudian Code Talker Codebreaker Constellar Constructor Crusadia Crystal Beast Crystron Cubic Cyber Angel Cyber Dragon Cynet D/D Danger! Dark Contract Dark Magician Dark Scorpion Darklord Deskbot Despia Destiny HERO Destruction Sword Digital Bug Dinomist Dinomorphia Dinowrestler Djinn Dododo Dogmatika Dracoslayer Dracoverlord Dragon Ruler Dragonmaid Dragunity Dream Mirror Drytron Duston Earthbound Edge Imp Eldlitch Elemental HERO Elemental Lord Elementsaber Endymion Entity Evil★Twin Evil Eye Evil HERO Evilswarm Evolsaur Evoltile Evolzar Ewekai Excutie Exodia Exosister F.A. Fabled Fairy Tail Fire Fist Fire Formation Fire King Flamvell Floowandereeze Flower Cardian Fluffal Fortune Fairy Fortune Lady Fossil Frightfur Frog Fur Hire G Golem Gadget Gagaga Gaia Galactica Galaxy Gandora Geargia Gem-Knight Generaider Genex Ghostrick Ghoti Gimmick Puppet Gizmek Gishki Gladiator Beast Gogogo Gold Pride Gorgonic Gouki Goyo Graydle Gravekeeper’s Guardian Gunkan Gusto Harpie Hazy Flame Helixx Heraldic Beast Heroic Hieratic High Tech Dragon Hole Ice Barrier Icejade Igknight Impcantation Infernity Infernoid Infinitrack Invoked Inzektor Iron Chain Jinzo Jointech Junk Jurrac Kaiju Karakuri Kashtira Knightmare Koa’ki Meiru Kozmo Krawler Kuriboh Labyrinth Laval Libromancer Lightsworn Live☆Twin Lunalight Lyrilusc Machina Madolche Magical Musket Magician Girl Magikey Magistus Magnum Overlord Majespecter Majestic Malefic Malicevorous Mannadium Masked HERO Marincess Materiactor Mathmech Mayakashi Megalith Mekk-Knight Meklord Melffy Melodious Mermail Metalfoes Metaphys Mikanko Mist Valley Monarch Morphtronic Music Princess Mythical Beast Myutant Naturia Nekroz Nemeses Nemleria Neo-Spacian Nephthys New Order Ninja Nimble Noble Knight Nordic Number Numeron Odd-Eyes Ogdoadic Ojama Orcust P.U.N.K. Paleozoic Pendulum Magician Penguin Performage Performapal Phantasm Spiral Phantom Beast Phantom Knights Photon Plunder Patroll Poker Knight Prank-Kids Predaplant Prediction Princess Prophecy PSY-Frame Purrely Qliphort Raidraptor Red-Eyes Reptilianne Rescue-ACE Resonator Rikka Ritual Beast Rokket Rose Dragon Royal Rebel’s Runick S-Force Salamangreat Scareclaw Scrap Sevens Road Shaddoll Shadow Flower Shinobird Shiranui Simorgh Six Samurai Sky Striker Skysavior Solfachord Speedroid Spellbook Sportsdragon Spright Springans SPYRAL Star Seraph Stardust Starry Knight Steelswarm Strike Dragon Subterror Sunavalon Super Quant Superheavy Samurai Supreme King Sushi Fairy Swordsoul Sylvan Synchron T.G. Tachyon Talismanic Tearlaments Tellarknight Tenyi Thorn Prisoner The☆ The Agent The Weather Therion Thunder Dragon Time Thief Timelord Tindangle Toon Topologic Traptrix Transamu Tri-Brigade Triamid Trickstar Tron True King True Draco U.A. Ultimate Flag Umbral Horror Unchained Ursarctic Utopia Valkyrie Vampire Vanquish Soul Vaylantz Vehicroid Vendread Vernusylph Virtual World Vision HERO Void Voidvelgr Volcanic Vylon War Rock Warrior Watt Wind-Up Windwitch Witchcrafter World Legacy X-Saber Yang Zing Yosenju Yubel Zefra Zoodiac Zubaba ZW -

#yugioh #yugioh archetype tournament

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fnlrndcllctv · 4 years ago

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Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1 Available Now On Nintendo Switch, Includes 10 Games

SNK has announced that the Neo Geo Pocket Colour Selection Vol.1 is available to purchase now on the Nintendo eShop.

Check out the trailer below…

The collection brings together 10 titles that originally saw a release on the handheld console, which can be seen below…

Big Tournament Golf

Dark Arms: Beast Buster

Fatal Fury: First Contact*

King of Fighters R-2*

The Last Blade: Beyond the Destiny*

Metal Slug: 1st Mission

Metal Slug: 2nd Mission

Samurai Shodown! 2*

SNK Gals’ Fighters*

SNK vs. Capcom: The Match of the Millennium*

Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1 is available now on the Nintendo Switch eShop for £35.99 / €39.99.

*These titles are also available to purchase separately for £7.19 each.

Read our review of SNK vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium here!

Have you played any of these Neo Geo Pocket Color titles?

Let us know in the comments below!

#Neo Geo Pocket Colour #SNK #Dark Arms: Beast Buster #Fatal Fury: First Contact #The King of Fighters R-2 #The Last Blade: Beyond the Destiny #Metal Slug: 1st Mission #Metal Slug: 2nd Mission #Samurai Shodown! 2 #SNK Gals’ Fighters #SNK Vs. Capcom: The Match Of The Millennium #Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Vol.1 #2021

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ummms0rry · 4 years ago

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#ngpc #neo geo pcket color #snk #dark arms beast buster 1999

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bleedchan · 2 years ago

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imo neo geo pocket color is the best handheld system of all times. games from it just don’t have the same magic in an emulator, you gotta use that lil cilcky thumbstick... i like puzzle bobble and dark arms: beast buster 1999 a lot. and the aesthetics of the console itself are like my favorite thing ever

i think its one main flaw was only having two buttons and not just using the neo geo ABCD thing but the game design is so good you never really notice that it only has two buttons..!! and it has the only fighting games i’ve ever gotten into because they only use two buttons!!!!!!! (╥‿‿╥)

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busterkeatonfanfic · 3 years ago

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Chapter 30

The idea came about as they were sitting in the semi-dark watching the previous day’s rushes of Snap Shots on the retractable projector. It was the rough stuff before the cuts, several takes of him being jostled by the crowd thronging to see the ticker-tape parade and being thrown against Marceline, falling more in love over her shoulder as he scented her perfume. Nelly laughed more than he expected her to. There were even a couple belly laughs.

When he turned to her for an explanation, she ran her hand over the top of his head and to the base. “Oh Buster, your face,” she said, combing her fingers through his hair and caressing him. “I don’t know how you make it do that, but it always tells everything.”

Hearing that cheered him up. With the premiere of Steamboat nearing, he’d started to feel nervous about the critics again, which in turn made him nervous about Snap Shots. What if it was another turkey and the writers were right all along with their dictionary-sized script? Encouraged, he told her a little about where he thought the film was heading and she nodded, agreeing with his plot.

“I ought to go wash my hair or I’ll lose the will,” she said, when there was a lull in the conversation.

“Aw, forget your hair,” he said. He was having the time of his life showing her the pleasures of the Villa and was reluctant to call it night.

“Absolutely not. Now it smells like chlorine, anyway.”

He’d been able to persuade her into the pool before night had fallen. She wouldn’t hear of wearing one of Nate’s bathing suits, and was probably right that they wouldn’t have fit her bosom. Instead, she wore one of his one-piece suits and they splashed for an hour, challenging each other to races and engaging in a little idle necking. They hadn’t redressed afterwards, just donned cotton robes from the bathhouse and walked around the house in bare feet. Caruthers cooked ribs for dinner with asparagus and French-cooked new potatoes on the side, and they’d eaten in the breakfast room.

“Chlorine-schmorine,” he said.

“I’m serious,” she said, withdrawing her hand. She gave him a playful but firm prod. “C’mon, Mr. Cameraman.”

“Oh, thinking about becoming a Ziegfried Girl?”

It was a joke, but as he took her upstairs to his bedroom it occurred to him that he did have a camera. He’d bought it over the winter, only to realize he had nothing to shoot. Natalie didn’t like the daredevil poses he put the boys in, calling them ‘dangerous,’ and he wasn’t about to aim the camera at her dour face after she lectured him. So he put it in a corner of one of his closets and forgot about it. A hitch of excitement went through his stomach as he entered the bathroom with Nelly. She would get into the water and she would be naked.

“May I?” said Nelly, gesturing to the clawfoot tub.

He nodded, throat going a little dry.

She sat on the edge and turned on the taps, keeping her fingers under the stream of water until it was to her liking, then plugging the drain.

“I’m not going to get a lick of privacy, am I?” she said, lifting an eyebrow.

He shook his head. “Wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

She rolled her eyes and half-smiled at him. While the tub filled, she stood at the porcelain sink and went through the familiar motions of letting down her hair. He sat on the toilet seat looking up at her and smoking a cigarette, pretending not to be as interested as he really was. She brushed her hair with his silver hairbrush after unpinning it. It was halfway down her back, and so thick she had to hold sections up to brush the under layers. Once she’d finished with her hair, she turned off the bathtub taps and gave him an exasperated look, although he could see she was teasing. The cotton robe came off. He didn’t have much of a chance to admire the way his bathing suit looked on her much curvier frame before she shucked it down. He whistled.

“Hush,” she said, dipping a leg into the tub. She put the other leg in, sat down, and examined his selection of shampoos and soaps. He could have offered her Natalie’s more expensive shampoos, all scented like flowers, but knew she wouldn’t have it. So cocoa nut oil shampoo it was. She drew up her knees and disappeared into the tub, dunking her head, and sat up with her hair drenched. He looked at her bubs, the rich brownness of her hair, and knew he wanted to fix the sight forever. He ignored her questions as he stepped out of the room, went into the hall, and turned on the lights in his closet. The camera and tripod were where he’d left them. He grabbed them and stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray on his way back to the bathroom.

Buster liked Nelly for so many reasons, and to them he added the fact that she didn’t bat an eye when he returned to the room with the camera. “I hope you’re not thinking of using those photos for Snap Shots,” she said coolly, as he set the tripod up a yard from the bathtub. He opened up the camera, withdrew the bellows, and fixed it in place.

Nelly hummed, scrubbing her head with shampoo. “We’re all alone, no chaperone, can’t get our number. The world’s in slumber—let’s misbehave!” she sang.

He laughed. “I’m trying, but it takes an age to set this damned thing up.” He screwed it on the tripod and inched it forward to adjust the focus.

“They say the spring means just one thing to little lovebirds …”

“We’re not above birds,” he countered.

“Let’s misbehave!” they finished together, and laughed.

“Okay, think I’ve got it just about right,” he said. He felt for the cable of the shutter release and clicked it.

“Say, where are you going to have these developed?” she said, pausing in her lathering. “I don’t want anyone else to see them.”

He clicked the shutter again, capturing her quizzical expression and the way her raised arms lifted her bubs. “Got a darkroom of my own, honey.” There was one in the detached shed on the Villa grounds where he cut film, though he’d never used it.

“Oh.” She resumed lathering. “That’s fine.”

He noticed that she couldn’t pile her hair atop her head when she washed it, but rather started at the top and worked her way down to the long coil lying against her shoulder. For a minute, he didn’t click the shutter, but simply watched her add shampoo and lather, humming “Let’s Misbehave.” A feeling swam in him that had nothing to do with lust. He shook it off and said, “Look at me. Chin up.”

Nelly pursed her lips and thrust her chin at him, giving him a saucy look. He clicked the shutter. She laughed at herself in the aftermath and he clicked the shutter. She crossed her arms across the edge of the bathtub, her bubs settled across them, and his lust returned lightning-fast.

“You’ve got great tits,” he said, wanting to see if he could get her to blush on camera. He knew she half-hated, half-loved when he used language like that with her.

“Bus,” she admonished. As predicted, there was the blush.

He clicked. “What about touching one of ‘em?”

She clucked her tongue, but cupped one breast and stared at him like she couldn’t wait to be fucked. His pulse was starting to thud in his ears. He straightened from his crouch and moved the tripod closer. Nelly gathered her hair in a bunch at the crown of her head and thrust her chest at him, smiling. It was a beautiful pose. “Now I’ve got to do the part that takes forever, rinsing.”

Buster peeked out from behind the camera. “You could rinse out in the shower.”

“If I do, will I have company?” She leaned forward on the tub again, her bubs so full and inviting he could practically feel them in his mouth.

He nodded, his throat dry again, and stood so he could start the shower. When he announced the temperature was right, Nelly scurried, dripping, across the floor and into the metal cage. She flung her head back and the white shampoo foam sluiced down her hair and into the drain. Buster shed his robe and bathing suit and stepped into the shower, and she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him, slipping her tongue into his mouth. She was soft, warm, and slippery and he wanted nothing more than to make love to her again, but he intended to keep his promise about the prophylactics.

When her hair was rinsed and the water ran clear, he lowered himself to his knees. He always treasured the look that came into her eyes when she realized what he was about to do. She was slick and he pressed a finger into her as he swirled and flicked his tongue. It no longer took him very much time at all to make her come. On cue, she quickly began to writhe. If he could snap a photo of them doing this, he would.

She almost drowned him when she came, clutching his head against her and making the water flood into his face at an uncomfortable angle, but he didn’t care. He licked her until she pushed him away.

“I want you,” she said with a whimper, when he rose again.

The beast in him agreed, wanted to take her right then and there. He growled against her neck and rubbed himself on her. “Not without a thin,” he said, trying to be sensible. He also didn’t know if he could manage the angle. “You could kiss me,” he suggested, feeling breathless.

Her eyes were heavy. She tugged at his prick. “Here?”

“Mmm-hmm,” he said, his heartbeat drubbing in his ears.

She sank to her knees. He watched her hollow her mouth over him, the fringe of her eyelashes downcast, hair fanned down her back and over her shoulders. His hand went to her hair and his eyes closed without him even knowing it. He endured the sweet torture of the silk heat of her mouth for all of two minutes before his climax roared up on him and he was a goner. Nelly kept him in her mouth and by the time he opened his eyes again, he wasn’t sure whether she had spat or swallowed.

“That enough misbehaving for you?” she said, standing with a groan.

He nodded, feeling weak and leaning back into the spray of the shower.

They shared the soap and washed up. He found towels for them in the linen cabinet. Nelly twined her hair up in one and knotted the other between her breasts. She aimed the tripod at him as he toweled his hair. “Oh no,” he said. “Not in my birthday suit.”

She ignored him and fiddled with the focus. “You’ve got some of me in my birthday suit.”

“ ‘Cause it’s your birthday next week,” he said, tying the towel around his waist in haste.

She gaped at him. “How on earth did you remember that?”

He’d filed it away during their weekend at the cabin, although he wasn’t about to ‘fess up. She wasn’t aware yet, but he’d planned a surprise for her at next Friday’s party that she didn’t know she was attending. “They say the spring means just one thing to little lovebirds …” he said, pulling his toothbrush out of the porcelain holder in the wall.

Nelly clicked the shutter. “Fine, don’t answer. I do want a picture though. It’s only fair. Are you going to misbehave for me or not?”

He laughed at her persistence, and turned around and loosened his towel, but draped it in front of his prick instead of losing it altogether; he wasn’t interested in looking small in the picture. He gave her the deadpan that came so natural whenever a lens was aimed at him.

She laughed. “You’re so damn somber.”

He stared at her, deadpan.

“Okay, just one more and I’ll leave you alone.”

As soon as she’d taken the picture and stood up, he offered her a full smile. He laughed as she swatted his rear end, and handed her a spare toothbrush. Nelly sat on the end of his bed and braided her hair a few minutes later, dressed in the cotton robe again. He busied himself carrying a down bedspread onto the bed on the sleeping porch and turning down the sheets.

“Aren’t we sleeping in here?” Nelly said with an expression of concern when he took her hand. She was probably worrying he’d take her back to Natalie’s bedroom.

“Uh-uh.” Once they were on the porch, she relaxed. There was a nip to the night air that was going to make the down comforter just the thing. He patted the bed. “Take off your robe.” She bared herself to him again and he was reminded afresh what a good idea it had been to take a mistress. He took his off and pulled the bedspread up to their shoulders. Nelly snuggled close, smelling like coconuts. Though he’d sneaked girls into his room several times before, he’d never dared bring one onto the porch.

The state of his marriage was always nagging him, like a cut he kept bumping and reopening, but snug under the covers with Nelly with the cold breeze playing against his face, he forgot it for the time being.

Notes: I’m early this week! It may be a longer wait for Chapter 31, though--that will be a long one and a pivotal one. Please exercise patience. Soundtrack: Irving Aaroson’s “Let’s Misbehave”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JctNtRfHRLU Pretty risque for a song from 1928!

#Buster Keaton #Fan fiction #RPF #Actor RPF #Golden Age Hollywood #silent film

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satoshi-mochida · 4 years ago

Link

SNK has released Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1 for Switch via the Nintendo eShop for $39.99.

The collection includes the six already released “Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection” titles, as well as four additional titles. Here is the full list:

Big Tournament Golf (New)

Dark Arms: Beast Buster (New)

Fatal Fury: First Contact

King of Fighters R-2

The Last Blade: Beyond the Destiny

Metal Slug: 1st Mission (New)

Metal Slug: 2nd Mission (New)

Samurai Shodown! 2

SNK Gals’ Fighters

SNK vs. Capcom: The Match of the Millennium

And here is the official description, via the Nintendo eShop:

The dream collection is finally here! Relive the 10 classic games that defined the Neo Geo Pocket Color!

Four stellar games have been added to the six already on sale for a total of 10 amazing classics for you to enjoy!

View 3D models of the games and their cartridges. Zoom in and take a look around!

Of course, titles compatible with the NEOGEO POCKET can be displayed in monochrome mode!

Take on a friend in either Tabletop or Handheld Modes! (Not available for some titles)

Notes

The manual included with the game is from the Neo Geo Pocket Color game, and as such may contain instructions different to that on Nintendo Switch.

Modes other than VS that require DC/KOF LINK are not enabled.

#Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1 #Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection #Metal Slug #Fatal Fury #King of Fighters #SNK #Gematsu

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sundove88 · 4 years ago

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1-A And The Beast (MHA Beauty And The Beast AU Fanfic) Chapter Four: The Past is Revealed

Inspired by the Gravity Falls Beauty And The Beast AU made by @artsycrapfromsai

The next day, everyone ran outside to play in the freshly fallen snow, with Hakagure hopping into the snow, creating an invisible snow angel for her friends to see. “Come on, everybody!” She said, leaving behind tracks.

As the kids ran outside to play in the snow, Buster trudged through the snow to the friends. “Hi, Buster!” Melissa said as she let the footstool leap into her arms, allowing him to nuzzle her face and woof happily. “You’re such a good boy, Buster.” Izuku replied as he guided Majesty towards the stables.

I’ve never felt this way about anyone before in my life! Thought All Might as he watched the kids play in the snow outside. “I wanna do something for them- but what?” All Might said, turning his gaze towards Mr. Aizawa, who was thinking about what All Might could do for the kids he had saved.

“Well, there’s the usual things: toys, souvenirs, promises you don’t intend to keep...” Mr. Aizawa said, thinking of more options. “Nah. These aren’t ordinary kids- it’s gotta be something super duper special- something that sparks their interest!” Present Mic said, giving All Might options of what he would give the kids.

A few moments after, All Might led the kids to a pair of huge doors, both of which were made of oak. “Can we look now?” Iida asked. “Not yet. It’s a surprise!” All Might said gently as he opened the doors. “Okay- you can look now!” All Might said, opening the doors to reveal a massive library, with books on every single shelf.

“Wooooow!” Izuku cried in happiness, his eyes sparkling like stars. “Read and borrow what you want. My library is yours.” All Might said, showing the library to everyone in the room with him. At that moment, everyone gathered all their favorite books and ran across the room sorting them by number, color, and in alphabetical order.

“These babies need to be organized, so we can keep track of them!” Momo said, with her putting miscellaneous books onto Gran Torino, who wheeled them away to their designated shelves. Meanwhile, outside the library, the servants were beaming with happiness that the plan had worked.

“Can’t you believe it?” Midnight said. “I just knew it would work!” Present Mic grinned. “That’s for sure!” Eri said as she licked a lollipop. “Isn’t it exciting?” Mr. Aizawa said, hopping along the hallways.

But inside the large room, once everything had been sorted, the kids turned to All Might, who willingly handed Nana Shimura to them. “You’re that guidebook we saw under the glass case last night!” Uraraka said as she gazed at the cover, opening Nana Shimura.

Hello. The guidebook wrote down, as if it were speaking like the other enchanted objects. “And you can talk!” Aoyama cried as he stared at the writing that magically appeared.

Technically, I’m a human like you, or should I say, I was. Nana wrote down, grabbing everyone else’s attention. “Wait. You were human once?!” Izuku said in wonder.

That’s right! You see, we used to be villagers just like you. My student, Toshinori, and I lived in a humble home like you once did. But then, we were just walking around in the woodland for a bit when we stumbled upon the castle you’re in now.

“No way!” Mina said, staring at the writing. “Tell us more, please.” Bakugo politely requested. We then decided that it wouldn’t be a good decision to just leave the castle there, so we decided to rally our fellow villagers and refurbish it!

“So this castle is actually an ancient site that you found?” Tsuyu asked, requesting more of the story be told. You hit it on the nose! Soon, with the help of everyone we recruited, the castle became looking like new. We named it U. A. Castle, which made sense. But everything changed one cold winter night.

“What happened that night?” Ojiro asked, questioning the events from a decade ago. Well, we were just relaxing and enjoying our break, albeit admiring the effort we put into the castle. But then an old beggar man rudely knocked on the door, and when that didn’t work, he trudged in and interrupted us, demanding shelter from the winter storm. “So what does the old man have to do with all this?” Denki stared, eyes big and wide.

Thing is, he offered to give us a guidebook in exchange for the shelter he wanted. But I recognized his mean tone and cold heart, but my student, naive as he was, welcomed the man in, treating to him a glass of warm milk and a nice slice of cake.

“Your student must’ve been pretty welcoming, it seems.” Kirishima added. Yes, he was, until the man revealed his true form: All For One, the evil sorcerer who had a heart of pure darkness! “He sounds pretty scary.” Koda said, while Sato huddled next to him.

He sure was! He disguised himself as an old beggar man so he could trick us all into being transformed! “Oh no!” Shoji said, covering up his face. Oh no, indeed. Using the book he was holding, he changed the staff into enchanted objects and me into the guidebook you’re holding.

“That explains everything!” Jiro said, with Sero and Tokoyami expressing their shock. Lastly, he changed my student into the beast you’re standing in front of, with the warning that my pages will fall out every week for ten years. If he finds someone to love him, and if they love him in return, the spell will be broken. If not, the curse is permanent.

“Wow...” Mineta said, his eyes big as dinner plates. That’s why we knew you kids were the ones to break the spell, so we don’t have to live our lives as inanimate objects forever! “That explains everything...” Todoroki said, brushing a stray piece of his hair off his face. But there’s no time to waste. You’ve gotta warm up to All Might before it’s too late! Nana Shimura said, finishing the story.

“If we wanna break this curse, we’ve gotta work together- and warm All Might’s stone cold heart!” Izuku cried. “Yeah!” Agreed everyone. They were more determined than ever to lift the curse on the castle...

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thebladeblaster · 3 years ago

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Heart of the Vanguard Concept Chapter part 2

(Concept chapters are basically just to test to see if people will like a fic idea I have. This fic crosses over Yugioh Duel Monsters and Cardfight Vanguard.)

“Hello Aichi. It’s been awhile.”, Yami replied.

“Remember Aichi normal people can’t see Yugi’s little ghost friend.”, Misaki whispered.

“Oh! Yeah that’s right!”, Aichi replied, remembering.

“It’s fine I’m simply a observer.”, Yami replied, and Aichi nodded.

“Ghost? What?”, Emi questioned.

“It’s nothing, Emi.”, Aichi replied.

The two of them started a rock paper scissors. Aichi threw scissors and Yugi threw rock.

“Looks like you're going first.”, Aichi said and Yugi nodded.

As the duel started Yugi could feel an intensity from him. He could easily tell just how passionate he was just from his eyes alone.

Yugi

Hand: 6

“First, I summon Beformet allowing me to add Gazelle the King of Mythical Beasts to my hand. I’ll activate Polymerization fusing together Berformet and Gazelle to summon Chimera the Flying Mythical Beast!”, Yugi started.

Chimera the Flying Mythical beast

ATK 2100/DEF 1800

Yugi

Hand: 3

“Woah, a fusion monster already! That’s not good.”, Emi commented, looking at her brother worriedly.

“That’s our Yugi!”, Honda said.

“I set one card facedown and end my turn.”, Yugi finished.

Yugi

Hand: 2

“A strong start as always.”, Aichi complimented.

“Let’s see if you can get through this.”, Yugi replied.

“We’ll see. I draw. I summon Noble Knight’s Companion Wingal.”, Aichi started.

Aichi

Hand: 5

Noble Knights’ Companion Wingal

( BEAST-WARRIOR / LIGHT / EFFECT/ ATK : 1400 / DEF : 1200 / LV 4

This monster is always treated as a warrior monster. You can tribute this monster to special summon a monster with “Blaster Blade” in its name from your deck or hand, this card becomes equipped to it and the equipped monster gains 400 attack. When this monster is in the graveyard you can equip this monster to one light warrior monster you control. When this monster is equipped to a “Noble Knight” monster it counts as a “Noble Arms” equip spell.

“That’s not good.”, Yugi commented.

“You remember Wingal’s effect don’t you. With his effect I tribute him to special summon Noble Knight Blaster Blade! Stand up my avatar!”, Aichi replied, searching his deck for Blaster Blade and placing it down.

Noble Knight Blaster Blade

( WARRIOR / LIGHT / EFFECT/ ATK : 2100 / DEF : 1500 / LV 5

Effect: When this monster is summoned or special summoned you can select one Noble Arms equip spell from your graveyard to equip to it. Once per turn, when this card is summoned or special summoned you can tribute one equip spell card you control to destroy one card your opponent controls.)

Yugi imagined the form of the silver knight clad in futuristic armor. He had piercing emerald green eyes and blue glowing lines on his armor. This was Aichi’s ace monster for a reason.

“And with his effect he equips himself to Blaster Blade from the graveyard and Blaster Blade gains 400 attack.”, Aichi continued.

Noble Knight Blaster Blade

ATK 2100->2500

“I equip Blaster Blade with Noble Arms Caliburn raising his attack by 500 and with its effect I gain 500 life points.”, Aichi continued.

Aichi

Hand: 4

Noble Knight Blaster Blade

ATK 2500->3000

Aichi LP 4000->4500

“Oh no! Now Blaster Blade is as strong as Blue Eyes!”, Anzu commented.

“Stronger it has a effect after all.”, Misaki replied, causing Anzu to turn to her.

Somewhere Kaiba felt more grumpy than usual, gripping the phone he was on a call with across the room. The phone shattered on impact, scaring his poor employees.

“Fire whoever designed that weak phone!”, Kaiba ordered.

“But they don’t work for you?”, an employee questioned.

“Then I’ll hire them so I can fire them!”, Kaiba replied angrily.

Back at Card Capital…

“I activate Blaster Blade’s effect tributing Caliburn to destroy your facedown card. Burst Buster!”, Aichi continued.

Blaster Blade ATK 3000 ->2500

Yugi sent the card to the graveyard revealing it to be Magic Cylinder.

“Why did he get rid of the bigger boost though?”, Honda questioned.

“Have you not learned anything about his deck from all his duels you’ve seen?”, Misaki questioned.

“I activate the effect of Caliburn. Once per turn when it’s destroyed I can re-equip it to a Noble Knight monster I control.”, Aichi continued.

“So, Blaster Blade?”, Honda questioned.

“Obviously. Not only that but he can reactivate its effect to gain more life points”, Misaki replied.

“You sure know a lot about Aichi’s deck.”, Anzu commented, sweat dropping.

“Well, he does duel here everyday and I have a perfect memory.”, Misaki pointed out.

“That’s true.”, Anzu replied.

“Yeah...that’s why Misaki always beats me when we duel. She knows everything I’m about to do like she’s reading my mind.”, Aichi said.

“I’m not reading your mind, you're just really straightforward.”, Misaki replied, causing Aichi to chuckle.

“Don’t take it too personally, Bro you're simply a man of culture. The strategy is attack, attack and attack again! Offense is where it’s at. ”, Kamui said to Aichi.

Aichi LP 4500->5000

“I set two cards face down and I attack Chimera with Blaster Blade!”, Aichi continued.

Aichi

Hand: 2

Yugi LP 4000->3100

“I activate Chimera’s effect allowing me to special summon Gazelle from the graveyard.”, Yugi said.

Gazelle the King of Mythical Beasts

ATK 1500/DEF 1200

“I end my turn.”, Aichi replied.

“I draw, I activate Pot of Greed.”, Yugi started.

Yugi

Hand: 4

“I activate Ancient Rules to special summon Dark Magician from my hand.”, Yugi continued.

Dark Magician

ATK 2500/ DEF 2100

Yugi

Hand: 2

“I activate Thousand Knives, allowing me to destroy one monster on your field if I control a face up Dark Magician.”, Yugi continued.

Yugi

Hand: 1

“I don’t think so! I activate the effect of Morgan, the Enchantress of Avalon from my hand! With her effect if I control a Noble Knight monster and a Noble Arms spell I can tribute one to negate that effect.”, Aichi countered.

Aichi

Hand: 1

“That’s what I wanted you to do I activate One Shot Wand! Dark Magician gains 800 attack and I attack Blaster Blade! Dark Magic Attack!”, Yugi replied.

Yugi

Hand:0

Dark Magician

ATK 2500->3300

“That’s going to go through however before that I activate my trap! Until Noble Arms Are Needed Once Again which allows me to evacuate cards on the top of my deck equal to the number of Noble Arms equip spells I have on the field and add one then place the other in any order.”, Aichi replied.

Aichi

Hand: 2

He looked at the two cards on the top of his deck choosing one and placing the other on top of his deck.

Aichi LP 5000->4700

“Due to One Shot Wand’s effect it is destroyed and I draw one card. Then I attack you with Gazelle!”, Yugi declared.

Yugi

Hand: 1

“Alright.”, Aichi nodded.

Aichi LP 4700->3200

Yami narrowed his eyes.

“He’s planning something he could have activated the graveyard effect of his trap to avoid damage but he didn’t.”, Yami whispered.

“Yeah, I think you're right. I think he’s planning to summon ‘that card’.”, Yugi whispered.

“I end my turn.”, Yugi said.

“Alright, I draw. You know I never thought we would get to duel like this outside a big tournament.”, Aichi said.

Aichi

Hand: 3

“Well, you're a good guy to spend time with outside them.”, Yugi replied.

“Gah! D-don’t say that! I’m not really great. I’m honored that you actually accepted my invitation.”, Aichi replied, blushing nervously.

“Don’t sell yourself too short. You really are a great friend besides honesty I was nervous to meet you at first too. I saw the last nationals Q4 was really impressive for newcomers.”, Yugi replied.

“Well...we lost though?”, Misaki questioned.

“Even still you got to make up for it in Battle City and I’m sure next time you’ll beat Team Asteroid at nationals!”, Yugi replied.

“You really have a lot of confidence in us. I understand Kai, Misaki, and Kamui but why me?”, Aichi questioned.

“Cause from what I saw your a great duelist who has a strong bond with your cards.”, Yugi replied.

Aichi looked very embarrassed with steam coming out of his ears and Emi tried to cool him down a bit.

“Aichi doesn’t take praise too well.”, Emi said.

“The poor guy looks like he’s about to explode.”, a kid with green hair and glasses said.

“Atb yo.”, a kid with brown hair and green eyes added.

“He’s just modest. Honestly, I prefer that to Jonouchi’s overconfidence.”, Anzu replied.

“I-I don’t deserve y-your praise. Your y-you know you.”, Aichi stuttered.

Yugi couldn’t help but feel a warm feeling at how much Aichi really seemed to admire him.

“Don’t tease him too much, Yugi. He might actually explode.”, Honda joked.

“No, I mean it. I think you're a really reliable guy and a good rival.”, Yugi replied.

“R-rival!? T-to y-“, Aichi stuttered as more steam came out of his ears.

“There he goes, I think you broke him, Yugi.”, Miwa joked.

“I-I summon N-noble Knight Drystan. I a-activate Wingal’s effect f-from the graveyard to e-equip him to one light warrior monster I control.”, Aichi continued stuttering nervously.

Noble Knight Drystan

ATK 1800/DEF 800

Aichi

Hand: 2

“D-Drystan’s effect activates w-when a Noble Arms spell is equipped to h-him I can t-target one face up card a-and destroy it. I chose Dark Magician.” Aichi continued still stuttering.

“I can’t stop that.”, Yugi replied, sending Dark Magician to the graveyard.

Aichi took some deep breaths trying to calm down.

“It can be rather cute how nervous he gets.”, Anzu teased, immediately causing Aichi to become a blushing mess again.

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sunkentreasurecove · 7 years ago

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#Dark Arms - Beast Buster 1999 #Neo Geo Pocket Color #videogame #pixel #scenery

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p-artsypants · 5 years ago

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Longest Night (35) Burning

I had the flu last week! It was super not fun! Make sure to wash your hands and stay home as much as you can! Besides the big bad the flu is also afoot and it sucks!

As I stated in an earlier chapter, I’m a Christian. Because of the nature of this story, I wanted to incorporate some elements of my faith into it. I find it weird to impress my faith on fictional characters, so I usually don’t, but my God is a healer. It makes sense that He’d be mentioned. I’ll probably keep it kind of subtle.

Not this chapter though. THIS ONE GOES HARD. STRAP IN BOYS!!

It’s also REALLY GROSS at parts. Sorry in advance.

(Also, this is creative writing, I’m not really up to theology debates. Please and thank you in advance.)

Ao3 | FF.net

—

“End of the road.” Lady Lacrima said, her face blank and emotionless.

Salo pulled her hand, or rather her wrist, to her chest. “How the hell did he find you?”

Lady Lacrima shrugged. “You must have gotten sloppy.”

“Or you gave him clues! I should have killed you weeks ago!”

“You should have,” Lady Lacrima agreed. “You should have let me die with compassion in my heart. But you didn’t. You created a monster. Two of them.”

Salo spat at her. “You’re a product of Hawkmoth! I only avenged my Eddy!”

“After all this, you’re still justifying your heinous actions. You’re so lost in your depravity, that you can’t even see how low you’ve sunk.”

“So what now?” She sneered. “Now that the roles are reversed, what are you going to do?”

Lady Lacrima reach out and caressed the woman’s face, leaving a smear of blood on her cheek. “The roles are far from reversed, Salo.” She stated, holding out her arms. A buster sword, one bigger than any human could wield, materialized in her hands. “I’m more powerful than you could ever hope to be. And you…there’s no punishment on Earth that befits you.”

“Will you kill me then?”

“That depends…do you believe in God?”

Salo scoffed. “What are you, my Nonna? Go ahead, kill me. Let your God punish me.”

Lady Lacrima adjusted the sword in her hand. “He’ll get his turn.”

Salo’s lip trembled as she attempted to scoot away.

“It’s funny. Without those glasses, you look almost human. And all this time, I thought you were a soulless machine. But if you have a soul…you can burn in hell.” And she slammed the blade down, down through flesh and bone and into the cement, separating her legs from her torso.

The woman screamed in agony, clawing at the ground to escape.

Claws ripped into her stomach, pulling her intestines out and spilling them on the floor.

“What do you think Salo? Should we leave you like this?”

Salo didn’t answer, only squealed and cried out as she writhed on the floor like a worm. Her vision was blurred, but she could see the lights above her head.

Then there was a silhouette, holding out long claws. Claws that pulsed and churned with dark energy. They came closer and closer to her face.

It burned. Hotter than any fire she’d felt before. She heard her skin sizzling and cracking.

Then there was nothing.

No sound, no light, nor breath in her lungs. No emotion fleeting through her head.

And yet—

She was awake. More awake than she’d ever been before. It was like she had been dreaming all this time, and she was finally aware of all that was happening around her.

“Where am I?” She asked, noting the white space around her. Not the billowing clouds she’d seen in Sunday school illustrations as a child. Just a vast infinite of nothingness.

“It has many names, ones in each dialect. We like to call it Hades, or Sheol. Though to you, it would be Death.”

“I’m in...I’m in death?”

“Correct. For death is not a natural state, it is only a temporary condition of the fall.”

“The fall?”

The voice hummed, patiently answering her question. “The fall of mankind. In the Garden of Eden. You know the story, Bianca.”

“I—I do.” She admitted. “I just didn’t think—“

“That it was real?”

“Yeah…”

“What did you think would happen when it was all over?”

She shrugged. “That’s just it. That it would be over. There was nothing else.”

“You are a product of your time. Your eyes were closed to the truth. You had plenty of chances to open them, but they remained firmly shut.”

Bianca raised her hands, finally looking at what had become of her body. No scars, no wrinkles, no calluses, just sooth skin, like a newborn baby.

“Who are you? Can I see you?” She finally asked.

“We’ve never talked, but I’m a good friend of yours. I’ve been with you a long time.”

“Are you my guardian angel?”

The voice laughed. “No. I’m not an angel at all. I’m an antagonist to the angels.”

“A demon?”

“No no, but you’re getting warmer,” it sang, “I will show myself soon, but my name is Death.”

Bianca blinked. “Wait, I thought I was…in Death. I’m in you?”

“I am the state, place, and Lord of Death. I am here, walking with you, all around you, and I am you. But it is beyond mortal understanding.”

Bianca just took a shaky breath, resolved that this was bigger than her, for once.

“You are receiving a wonderful gift, Bianca. A look at the future. Those who perish permanently are not provided with this opportunity.”

“…have I not perished permanently then?”

“Mostly likely not. In the world of free will, there is still a chance that you, and several others will return to Earth for a few more pitiful years.”

“Because…of Ladybug and Chat Noir? Their reset button?”

“That is correct. But until then, you are separated from your body. And I will show you what happens in the end.”

Bianca swallowed as wispy white rolled away. The sky was rolled back like a scroll, displaying the mighty heavens in all their glory. The ground quaked and cracked, falling away to show a growing hoard of lethargic souls, shuffling on with no destination. Bianca stood above on a pillar, just observing them.

“These are the others in Death, they are just like you. But they won’t be returning to Earth. Their lives are over, and ahead of them is judgement.”

“And then?”

“Two options. Up…”

Within the vastness of the sky, a city floated. Walls made of jasper, gates of pearl, and twelve foundations stacked on top of each other, each made of a solid precious metal. There were no lights, as darkness couldn’t penetrate the walls. It was blindingly bright and hurt to look at.

“Or down.”

The pillar grew, twisting to peer over the edge of the world. Below, she saw a pit of fire and smoke, covered with an ancient seal. Inside the pit sat a beast with ten horns and seven heads, with crowns on each head. It looked up to her, licking her lips in patience.

“What is that?”

“The beast which devours all and demands worship. One day, when the seal is broken, the beast will go to earth. He will be exalted as a king above all, and everyone will love and adore him. He is a deceiver.”

“People will worship that?” She asked, incredulous. “Out of fear?”

“Out of blindness. The beast will not appear on Earth like this. May he appear as a man, or as a temptation? That is not for you to know.”

The Beast paced in the pit, its fourteen eyes never leaving her.

“Once it’s reign begins, it cannot be stopped. A prophesy will come to pass, and the wrath of God will pour out on the Earth. After a thousand years of peace, this Beast, the Devil himself, and I will be cast into the Lake of Fire. Those in my arms will be judged, and if their names are not found in the Book of Life, they too will be cast down.”

The pillar grew again, the ground tilting and shifting to move the pit out of the way. And beneath that was a horrible chasm, stretched out for miles and miles, though she could still see the divide clearly. On the other side, a lake, vast and sprawling, but instead of water, it churned with fire. Flames rolling and burning, on and on, hot, and unbearably agonizing.

“And then what?” She breathed. “We burn up, and then are no more?”

“No.” Said Death. “There is no end to the burning. It will go on, forever and ever. You will beg for relief, but you’ll never get it. Every second, you will want to die, but this is the second death. It lasts forever.”

“But that’s thousands of years from now!” She cried, trying to dissuade her panic. “What about now? Do I wander like the rest of them?” She gestured down to the wandering souls below her.

Death smiled. “I suppose you’ll just have to find out for yourself.”

The pillar crumbled, pulling her down to the crowd, though no one seemed to pay any mind. Though as her feet touched to cool ground, things started to slip from her mind.

She bumped into a soul. A man who she recognized. “Harken! Oh it’s nice to see someone I know! We have to stick together, the Miraculous Cure is going to take us back soon.”

But Harken didn’t respond, only pushed passed her and continued listlessly onward.

“Death? Why didn’t he recognize me? He died only a minute before me!”

But Death did not respond, so she was on her own.

So she wandered among the spirits. Not really knowing where she was going, or what would happen. Was this it? Milling about for hours until her return to Earth?

That didn’t seem so terrible.

She wasn’t calm, but not panicked either. Nor scared nor bored, just…there. Like a blank slate of her emotions. Even the last few moments of her life on Earth began to slip her mind. She passed faces she swore she knew, names that where common to her.

But none of that seemed important now. Nothing did.

Then with a step, she was in front of a podium, one so tall it loomed over her. Standing at it, was a living creature with the face of a human, with seven wings and seven eyes. It wore pure white linen and a gold sash. On the podium rested a huge book, thicker than she was tall, and four times as wide.

“Name?”

She blinked, the clarity returning to her mind. “Uh it’s Bianca. Bianca Furtoli.”

The being flipped through the pages. Then opened another book, and another. A scroll unrolled from the surface and came cascading down to her, unraveling next to her and continuing off into the distance.

“Your name is not written in the Book of Life.” The creature said simply.

“And?”

“And so The Way is closed to you, for you are unrepentant, and your eyes are closed. Your lips only hold blasphemy, and your throat is like an open grave.”

“Are you Death?” She asked.

“No,” it said, “But it will be coming for you soon. I am an Angel of the Lord.”

“Funny, I thought Angels were supposed to be beautiful.”

“What would there be to fear in beauty?”

“Why do you think people fear me?” She asked, hand on her hip.

“Humans fear you, Bianca, because your reputation proceeds you. You speak with a silver tongue, convincing crowds, manipulating multitudes, and preying on vulnerabilities, like a lion stalks his prey.”

“You’re all so poetic up here.”

“And you don’t fear what’s to become of you?”

“I was killed by an akuma. Once Ladybug does her little magic spell, I’ll pop right back on Earth. It’ll only be a few minutes now. Death told me so.”

“Death must be fond of you. It rarely talks to mortals. It does not discriminate. But take heed child, it is not a friend, for it works for the Lord, but it should not exist.”

Bianca frowned. “It gave me more answers than you’re giving me.”

“What makes you think you’re worthy of answers?”

“Because my Nonna said I was made in the image of God. That’s why.”

“A good answer.” The angel mused.

“Then tell me how I get my name written in the Book.”

“Ask your Nonna.”

She frowned. “I prayed that silly little prayer as a girl. I did exactly what I had to do.”

“You were a child, and had the faith of a child. The repentance of a child. But you have grown, and you haven’t lived up to your vow. You prayed to accept the sacrifice that Jesus the Messiah made for you, and yet you trampled upon all he asked of you to do.”

“What did he ask me?”

“To follow him, and be like him.”

“Well, no one’s perfect.”

“He’s not asking for perfection. He’s asking for you to be forgiving, kind, patient, loving, gentle. To have self-control. To be a light to others in the fallen world.” The book slammed shut. “Not to torture children.”

“Says a lot coming from a god that allows wars to be waged. Cancer to run rampant. Hunger and disease to plague half the world. If he’s so powerful, how has he allowed all this to happen, huh? How come he didn’t stop me sooner, if I’m so bad, huh?”

The angel shook his head, “O Childish Blasphemer, who are you to know the infinite ways of God? How are you, a mere infant in the eyes of the world, supposed to understand these concepts beyond your vapid existence? For now, these horrors persist, but one day, they will cease forever. But the likes of you are unlikely to ever believe that. In the last days, you will be gnashing your teeth, and cursing God, even when he gives you plenty of opportunities to repent.”

“What will happen to me now then? Will you continue to berate me until I go back to Earth? Doesn’t seem very loving to me.”

“I have nothing more to say to you, Bianca. Death will fetch you now.”

The Angel moved one of its wings, and from behind it came a pale horse with a rider. The horse was sickly, with a tail made of serpents, and with a mouth of a lion that spewed smoke and fire.

The rider wore fiery red armor, with accents of yellow sulfur. He had a sickle in one hand, and a whip in the other.

The horse whinnied, thunder roaring from its jaws, instilling Bianca with fear.

“Can I run?” She asked the Angel.

“You can try.”

And so she did. Though there was no where to run in this vast expanse where Death could not find her.

Bianca was halted by the whip cracking around her throat, though the rider never stopped his gallop, and dragged her away. She flailed around, choking as the sky turned black as sack cloth and the moon turned red as blood. She cried as the flesh ripped from her body and blood streaked behind her, carving her path. The many eyes of the wandering souls around her watched as she was stripped naked in all her shame. She was swallowed by the darkness, not even the light of fire illuminating the writhing floor beneath her.

The smell of rot and decay was strong, as vomit crawled up her throat and out. Maggots crawled over her, making a home in her wounds, her ears, her mouth, her eyes. Anywhere they could crawl, they did. Every bite, every pinch, she felt. There was no blurring from one to the other, she felt it all. And all she could do was scream.

She was left to rot, tormented for hours, perhaps days. Flames burst up from below, doing nothing to the worms, but roasting her alive. Burning, agonizing, blistering pain. She rolled around, trying to get relief, but there was just none to be had.

The fire was intense, and she laid there, cooking like a piece of meat on a grill. It was so hot she couldn’t move. So hot she couldn’t think. She gnashed her teeth and screamed and cried on and on.

“Death!” She begged. “Please! Please show me mercy!”

But Death did not answer, and did not show her mercy.

“Water! Please…just a little water…”

Finally, Death appeared on the horse, trampling over her. “Water? You murderer, you rapist, you liar, you thief! Water is what you want?”

“Please! Please I can’t do this!”

“Where were you when they begged for water? When they begged for peace? Where were you when they begged for time and patience? You had no mercy in life, so why should you receive it in death?”

“Please God! God make it stop!”

—

One moment, she was shrieking in agony, the next, her consciousness melted and she laid on cold metal. Her breath bounced off the surface in front of her. She reached her hand out, touching the sides of the metal box she rested in. A coffin?

Did that mean she was going to suffocate and die again?

She was going to—

Burn.

The tears streaked across her cheeks as the memories of that torture returned to her. She had been eaten alive by maggots, and burned. Burned. Burned. It did happen. Indisputably. The wounds were gone, and she was wearing the leather clothes she had been wearing in the catacombs, when she was killed.

Miraculous Cure must have brought her back.

But how long did she have?

She cried out in horror.

A light shone down by her feet, before the surface she was laying on rolled out, and she found herself in a room.

“Bianca Furtoli?” A police officer asked.

She just stared at him for a moment before weeping. “Please! Please help me! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to go back there!”

He turned on the radio on his lapel. “Havoc here, I’ve got Furtoli. She’s just like the others.”

Bianca reached out and grabbed his arm. “I am back now, aren’t I? This is Earth? Paris?”

He pried her hands off. “Ms. Furtoli, I’m going to need you to calm down. Yes, you were dead, and now you’re alive again. I’m sure this must be hard for you—“

“Where’s Marinette? Where’s Adrien? Please, I need to see them!”

“You don’t get to know that information.” He said sternly.

“I need to ask forgiveness! Please, I beg you!”

“Sit down.” He demanded.

“What’s going to happen to me?! Where am I?!”

“Likely, you’ll be going to prison. If not a mental hospital.”

“Will there be a priest there? I must talk to a priest! Please! I went to hell! I was burning in hell!”

“You know what?” He asked shortly. “I think you completely deserve that after what you did to those kids.”

Bianca fell to her knees and sobbed, not even trying to hide her shame or guilt. She just wept and wept.

She wept when the handcuffs went on her wrists. She wept when she was read her rights, and as she was loaded into the car. She cried herself to sleep that night, and every night for the next few weeks. She spoke to none of Edward Savauge’s men. She had no contact with family.

Fear is a terrible state to live in. And for Bianca Furtoli, it meant every day, every hour, she was preparing to return to that awful fire. She would not rest until she found a way to repent.

And for a woman who believed she was a god, that was a long way off.

—

Marinette awoke to a cool hand on her forehead. She shivered under her blankets, but her face felt so warm.

“Hi there, Ladybug.” Said John, setting a cup of water on her table. “You’ve got a little bit of a fever. That’s expected, and it’s not too high.”

“Cold…” She breathed in her half awakened state.

“Of course. I’ll get you a blanket in a second. How is everything else feeling? How’s your pain?”

“I can handle it. It’s mild.”

“Okay, I’m glad to hear that.” He stepped out of the room briefly, only to return with a soft blanket. “Here we go, nice and warm.” He unfurled it, and brought it up to her chin. It was fresh from the dryer, and nice and toasty. “Better?”

“Much.”

“I’ve got some water here for you. Try to drink a little more before going back to sleep, okay?”

“Okay.”

“That’s a good girl. I’ll be back to check on you periodically.”

“John?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you. For everything.”

He smiled at her and squeezed her hand. “Anything for my hero.”

#miraculous ladybug #fanfiction #longest night

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toku-explained · 5 years ago

Text

I'd like to talk a little about the concept of inter-rider compatibility of the items used by the riders in a series. For this, unless I state otherwise, it is assumed most more powerful items/main forms are only usable by the riders who use them due to personal compatibility.

While my discussion on this topic is motivated by recent events in Zero-One, I won't be talking about that here.

First up Ryuki. We actually know exactly what happens with trying to use Advent Cards beside your own. The effect is triggered, but for the person whose card it is. Cards like Copy Vent and Freeze Vent might be an exception. Each Rider is compatible with at least one Survive Card. Odin is the exception to this, but he doesn't need a Survive Form, and he can use all three together to be invincible anyway. The Alternative cards wouldn't be compatible with the other Visors, and vice versa.

Faiz, I don't know if we have confirmation either way of if the other Mission Memories can be used on another Rider weapon.

Blade we got a pretty good answer for. While for the 3 BOARD Riders they would only be able to use their particular Ace with their Belt, and their particular Royals with the Rouze Absorber, we know from a period when Leangle had most of Chalice's cards that they can use cards out of their suit, even if the Rouzer doesn't announce the name of the attack. And King Form has an attack using all 4 Category 6. As for Chalice, at least for transformation, he should be able to use every single Undead. Attacks probably the same.

Kiva is where I want to talk about a slight deviation to my theme, the concept of using other Rider's gears (mostly weapons) as a mechanism of their powers in at least one form. Despite the obvious fact that toy wise all Fuestles are compatible with all belts, in theory, in the canon there is no evidence for this. The Arms Monsters, the Garulu Saber, Bassha Magnum and Dogga Hammer are usable by Kiva, Ixa and Dark Kiva. The three are directly tied to Kiva's powers due to their loyalty to Wataru/promise to Otoya, able to grant him various forms. Ixa has Fuestles that enable him to steal the Arms Monsters from Kiva after he summons them, though only did so once, with Garulu. Finally, the 1986 Dark Kiva is responsible for them being Arms Monsters in the first place, having used his Fuestles to transform them.

Decade has two things to consider in this regard. The first is that all of Decade's personal cards are exclusive to him, and all of Diend's are the same. The exception to this is the occasion where Decade Complete used the Diend Kamen Ride Card to trigger a double Dimension Shoot. As for cards of other Riders, Decade is able to transform into any of the 9 Heisei Riders and use their initial forms and abilities via cards, as well as Final Form Ride them. A few cards can effect other Riders (seen with Amazon) but that's limited. Diend on the other hand can summon any rider using their Kamen Ride card, but only in their main form. He also has Final Form Ride cards for all 10 Heisei Riders.

In Zi-O, where their repertoires have been altered somewhat, things are different. While no Final Form Rides are used I wouldn't rule them still having them out. Decade now only has cards to transform into the 19 other Heisei Riders, lacking Form Ride and Attack Ride cards, however, he has now demonstrated the ability to use those forms weapons of abilities in the Rider's main form. Diend's cards have been more significantly altered, as he now only has Rider Cards for the 19 secondary Riders.

Gaia Memories in W have a bit of an unclear status with their use between Riders. It's clear that any T1 Memory or T2 Memory can be used in any Maximum Slot to trigger a Maximum Drive, and most of these memories would seem to be usable in a Lost Driver. Accel's seem to be specifically designed for his equipment, and while CycloneAccel Xtreme theoretically exists, I don't think Accel could be used with the W Driver.

OOO we know exactly how it works. OOO can use any Core Medal to transform as long as it's in the correct slot, with the exception of the Black Medals, which still have a variant in different colours which are compatible. He only uses Cell Medals for the Ride Vendors and Medjalibur, which are add-ons to his power, and the Taja Spinner and Medagaburyu. The Birth system meanwhile only uses Cell Medals. Poseidon uses Core Medals, but is probably designed only for those specific ones.

With Fourze's Astro Switches, only Circle switches are usable by anyone other than Fourze. Nadeshiko has only been seen using the Rocket Switch. Meteor is able to use the Elek, Fire and N Magnet Switches to trigger finishers, and Fourze in Cosmic States is able to use the Meteor and Meteor Storm Switches in the Barizium Sword, but can only use the Meteor Switch in the Fourze Driver thanks to Fusion.

Wizard we know how it works, the Beast Driver can only use Beast's Rings, while the Wizardriver can use Beast's Mantle rings to trigger a spell affect of their own.

Gaim, we know that any Rider using a Sengoku Driver can use any standard Lockseed, and via a Genesis Core any Energy Lockseed for a Jimber form, not withstanding the individuals ability to withstand the effects of some of the stronger Lockseeds. The few weapons that do use Lockseeds seem able to use any of them. The Genesis Driver can only use Energy Lockseeds, but the Sonic Arrow can use the normal kind.

For Drive, Drive itself is unable to use anything not designed for it to use without some reworking of the systems. It can read Roidmude Viral Cores, but the Tridoron and Heartron Cars both had to be altered to allow for a transformation. The Chaser system can use any non-transformation Shift Cars to channel their abilities, except the Pit Crew, as well as read data from the Shift Speed Prototype. The Mach Driver system is demonstrated to be able to use the same range of Shift Cars to channel abilities, and Chaser can use Shift Speed Prototype the same way. It's also able to read the Tridoron Key or Shift Viral Core to allow the transformation into Chou DeadHeat, which isn't designed to be used. On my occasional weapon use topic, Type Special is able to use Mach and Chaser's weapons.

Ghost, any Eyecon for a historical figure is usable by any rider, as long as either the spirit is willing or the rider is able to control the spirit. The Necrom Eyecons don't seem to have any restrictions who uses them, and Necrom is in fact compatible with with the Ghost Driver. Almost every other Rider's main Eyecon is either connected to their own soul (Takeru, Daigo, Ryu) or the soul of someone related to them (Makoto, Ayumu), what soul is responsible for Dark Ghost I don't know, but for these reasons they're only usable by those specific people. Toucon Boost is only usable by Takeru for the same reason, and the same with Mugen, Sin Spectre and Yujou Burst. Deep Spectre might be usable by Takeru, at least originally.

Gashat rules actually seem to be fairly clear cut. In fact, given the examples we see with Dangerous Zombie, Girigiri Chambara and Kamen Rider Chronicle, it seems that either Driver can be used to transform into Rider form, as long as you're physically capable of using the Driver, or resisting the effects of the Gashat. It might be that the Bugle Driver variants are only capable of transforming into Level X Riders or Cronus, but we only see one example of a trying to Henshin using a Gashat that doesn't fit those criteria, not including Girigiri Chambara, which was especially modified to give it a Level X form. Higher level Gashats are only usable by the characters who use them in canon, either due to their unique circumstances (Ex-aid and God Maximum Mighty X) or an acquired resistance to the specific strain of the Buster Virus those Gashats inflict on the wearer (Snipe and Brave), with Para-dx's ability to use Level 50 and later Level 99 effortlessly being down to the fact he's a Bugster. Whether the Level X Gashats could be used for a Level X form by anyone besides the ones who use them is hard to say. The Level 3 and 4 Gashats should be usable by anybody who has a Gamer Driver. As for the Level 2 Gashats, each regardless of who is actually using it, would only transform you into the Rider who normally uses it, since the suit data is part of the Gashat, not the Driver. The last things to note are that every Gashat can be used in any Kimewaza it as long as it's large enough, but Proto Gashats do not have Critical Finishes, just Critical Strikes. We also have 3 Gashats designed just for Finishes, specifically Doctor Mighty XX, Bang Bang Tank and Mighty Novel X, though the last was reprogrammed for a transformation.

Fullbottles are the basis around which all Henshin devices in Build are based around, and even if a system doesn't use any of the 60 Fullbottles for transformation, they can still use them for attacks. The TranSteam Gun relies on Lost Bottles (probably only the specific two) for transformation, and the Nebula Steam Gun has its transformation initiated via Gears, but both have other attacks using Full Bottles, and in the case of the latter, Lost Bottles. The Sclash Driver works much the same way in attacks, but can only have transformations using either Sclashjelly or the specially created Crocodile Crack Bottle. The Evol Driver can use Evolbottles for Evolt to transform, or based on the existence of Mad Rogue, any Best Match pair to transform. Any Fullbottle with an associated weapon, used with the Rider Evolbottle, will summon that weapon. The Build Driver is most versatile of the systems, but can only use proper Fullbottles in Biotic Abiotic pairs (RabbitDragon is a unique situation stemming from both bottles' evolution), all other forms require a special device to be created, in some cases channeling a single bottle.

Ridewatches would have a simple answer if not for one thing. But before I get to that, it's pretty clear that only Ridewatches can be used with the Ziku Driver, and only Miridewatches with the Beyondriver. Also, all transformation Ridewatches and upgrades can only be used by the specific Rider. That leaves us with the Legend Watches. It's known that producing a single Ridewatch cuts you off from all powers associated with that Rider, and that it is possible to produce Ridewatches representing super forms of another blank watch is used. It would be easy to assume that every Ridewatch is usable for a weapon finisher, powering up Time Mazine, or, for those with enough power, using their abilities just by activating them, and only the Heisei Riders would produce a Ride Armour. Unfortunately, GenmArmour confirms other Riders can have armours, although I would still argue watches for other forms do nothing

I wasn't originally planning to cover Zero-One when I started this post, back when His debuted, but now I think I will. The months have given me more to talk about.

First of all, in the world of Zero-One we have two types of key, ZetsumeRise Keys and ProgRise Keys. Both now have an associated type of monster that can be created using an appropriate device on a singularity achieving Humagear or ZAIA Spec using human respectively. I had initially presumed that the ZetsumeRise keys were derivative technology, now it seems likely they were developed in tandem, although it's hard to say why. There is, at present, only two known ways for the keys to produce Keys. The Ark satellite is able to produce both types, but for the past 12 years, between Daybreak and it's restoration via Ikazuchi, it has been unable to produce Progrise Keys. I am uncertain about ZetsumeRise Keys. The other method is Satellite Zea via the 3D printer in the President's office at Hiden Intelligence. As far as has been shown, it can only produce Progrise Keys. While the origins of a number of Progrise Keys are known or deductable, the origins of those keys initially seen in the possession of AIMS or ZAIA are unclear. Of the 4 driver types so far, in theory all should be able to use any Progrise Key to initiate a transformation. This is confirmed for the Zero-One Driver, which requires a link to satellite Zea to produce the animal data, as official images of Zero-One using every current Progrise Key except Assault Wolf have been revealed. The Shotriser doesn't produce a Data Animal, and all the confirmed forms have a sort of incomplete look to them, and despite a number of the Progrise Keys so far used only for attack being with AIMS, no official images exist of them being used in the Shotriser. The ForceRiser, when used with Progrise Keys, forcibly opens the key and extracts the data animal, and then converts that into the armour. One ZetsumeRise Key has been used successfully in the ForceRiser to transform into a Rider, but it should be noted that said Key, Dodo, had already been shown to evolve throughout its use by a Magia, this also involved no Data Animal. A variant of the ForceRiser, the CycloneRiser, when used with the Rocking Hopper ZetsumeRise Key, also allowed transformation into Kamen Rider Ichigata. The newest driver, the ThousanDriver, is intended to work using both the Awaking Arsino ZetsumeRise Key and Amazing Caucasus Progrise Key for a PerfectRise. While this is the only depiction we have seen as of yet, the toy, when Awaking Arsino isn't used, or a different Progrise Key, or both, will only initiate a ProgRise.

#toku explained #kamen rider

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thewadapan · 5 years ago

Photo

in the grim darkness of the far future there is only cred

(This is a complete archive of the @Ask_Triton Twitter account created for April Fools’ Day 2020, based on my previous comics “PASS” and “The Beast Within (My Pants)”. A behind-the-scenes commentary is included at the end of the post.)

triton ebooks

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

autobot code sparknotes

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

wikihow cred acquisition

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

toyhax insignia stickerfixer

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

wait *hit i thought this was google

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

hi. my names triton. and the great war was the best thing to ever happen to me

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

rodimus finally convinced springer to let me join the rockers. rock and roll

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

springer is giving each of us a special nickname. were supposed to call him springax 219.31 alpha. apparently im now tritus 717.25 beta. wonder what he meant by that

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

shut the *uck up road buster

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

roadbuster be quiet challenge

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

triton can have little a cred. as a treat

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

hey whirl do you wanna play im a spy? wait *hit

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

if anyone ever finds out im a decepticon im gonna get *ucking shot. thats cancel culture baby

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

no cred? no thanks

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

boy am i glad impactor ate *hit and died. that guy was not *ucking around

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

YEAH uh huh YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS green and yellow green and yellow green and yellow green and yellow

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

no whirl this is not a poncho you *ucking cyclops

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

starting to think the special rockers assignment springer gave me and whirl was just a clever ruse to get rid of us. like theres no way all of the empties we just shot were decepticon moles

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

when you triton your best but you don't succeed

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

whirl no offense but theres absolutely no way im hitching a ride with you back to autobase. no its not because my arms are too weak to hang onto your landing skids for that long. no see this is your problem youre just *ucking annoying end of story

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

got that sinking feeling again lads. wait no i just forgot to transform before jumping into the sea

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

sky of blue im a green / and a yellow submarine

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

10,000 hics under the sea

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

sometimes underwater. always undercover

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

yeah springer can drive and he can fly but he sure can't bob around the sewers like a piece of *hit can he

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

felt cred might delete later picture cred: @ikkadkarf pic.twitter.com/cQKer3asaW

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 2, 2020

ultra magnus just held a door open for me. his magnusnimity knows no bounds

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

if you think you know where im going with this tweet your wrong but what you were thinking of is probably more good

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

3000 kilograms? yeah thats me. triton

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

you wear a mouthplate just to hide your face and you wear it because you think your cooler than me

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

met scattorshot in the hallway. he was like "i never heard of an autobot who was a submarine" and i said "im not" and he said "what" and i said "a submarine". clutch save

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

springer just got back from patrol and says hes finally killed all the decepticons. good thing he doesnt remember that time we got absolutely spannered at maccadams and i got up on a table and start shouting im a decepticon

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

yeah weve all heard of the last autobot but what about the last decepticon. just something to think about

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

actually this reminds me of a funny story about how the word spannered came about. it all started when straxus decided he wanted to cross this body of water. i said id carry him but he just gave me this weird look and said he had a better idea

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

thinking of getting a massive flame painted on my chest. just kidding who do you think i am clodimus prime

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

not MY prime

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

stop talking about me behind my back. im not talking to anyone in particular. dreadwind

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

yeah im going through a bit of a phase right now. phase six

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

its hard being a double agent. its hard and nobody understands

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

sometimes i wish i was a car robot

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

just got tackled by sandstorm. had to scream at him to get him to move his rotor away from my throat. thought it was a funny hat not a deadly weapon. most terrifying experience of my life aside from when computron stepped on me

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

im horny

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

bots with no rights: horny people and decepticons. lucky for me two no rights makes a right

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

i have discovered the secret of combiner technology. step one. stand up straight with your shoulders back

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

why wont afterburner combine with me

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

springer is *ucking ugly. who even paints themselves green and yellow. piss off

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

im like dropping hints that im a double agent

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

TR-8N

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

inside you there are two faction symbols. one is an autobot the other is a decepticon. you are triton

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

not faction-swapper! dont like that term. freelance double agent. for certain social remuneration of course

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

hnng megatron im trying to sneak around but the clank of my *ss cheeks keeps alerting springer

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

you think cred is your ally? i was born in cred. molded by it

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

springer put me in the inhibitor harness again

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

sick of being a loser nobody. wish my life could have an issue 0 where i was actually the man of iron all along

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

it isnt easy being green

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

this planet isnt relevant to my interests anymore

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

better dead than no cred

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

just called roadbuster an idiot. back on top

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

im springers oldest enemy but he hates roadbuster more

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

Yo waspinator, is everything allrignt??

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

its like people dont even remember my name

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

sometimes its hard to reconcile the continuity error of my life with the established canon of me being a huge *ucking ledge

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

im the first in a new generation of transformers. introducing the credacons

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

tritons in disguise

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

more ton meets the tri

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

if i hit broadside on the back of the neck hard enough either hell turn back into a boat or just *ucking die. either way i win

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

join the TCC today. Triton's Cred Club

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

got cred?

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

just found out about the beast. damn that *hit sucks

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

if i was there with the beast i wouldve stopped it. rip to megatron but im different

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

lol i remember telling megatron i wouldnt go native but look at me now not a single capital letter in sight

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

pictured: me and the other great decepticon leaders beat the *hit out of rodimus prime pic.twitter.com/6ShZrPgV8l

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

for *ucks sake lightspeed stop trying to correct my grammar you mechanical throwback. i know how to use *ucking apostrophe's

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

mucho cred

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

mucho mucho man

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

nosecone keeps asking me to follow his account. at drill or something. what a plonker

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

desperately trying to think of a funny joke to make ultra magnus and the rest of the gang laugh

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

Leader Class Triton With Triton Master Triton

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

excuse me roadbuster who said youre allowed to laugh at my jokes

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

hate how i always have to be triton. sometimes i want to be tritoff

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

topspin and twin twist should legally change their names to blue and white. wait *hit theyre both blue and white *uck *hit i didnt think this through

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

richard starkings stop sending me to voicemail

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

i am triton. the last living decepticon and incognito espionage specialist amongst the autobots. ask me anything

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 8, 2020

Anything?

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 8, 2020

pass

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 8, 2020

hey nosecone ive got a favour to ask. so ive been thinking of getting an upgrade lately. basically what i want is to be able to fly away from this place by means of large quantities of gas expelled at high velocity from my rear. now allow me to explain how you fit into all this https://t.co/Mt9ELmLNLU

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 8, 2020

we get it. you strafe

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 8, 2020

had the nightmare again. the one where springer figures out im a decepticon. i try to use the waterways as an escape route but when i get there broadsides fat *ss is blocking the estuary pic.twitter.com/XMZbkZsYs0

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 9, 2020

squad goals pic.twitter.com/PkI92HCHCn

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 9, 2020

in my dreams im always fighting my new friends. everyones super ripped. oh and impactor is there for no reason pic.twitter.com/Uzl9asiZCY

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 9, 2020

when im staring down the barrel of the gun im *hitting myself and i always thought that was stupid because if you die in the dream then you dont die in real life you just wake up. but now im wondering if thats what im afraid of. having to go back to pretending pic.twitter.com/fEZbfu81nf

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 9, 2020

primus forgive me but its time to go back to the old me pic.twitter.com/hh1vXZO5WS

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 9, 2020

Triton: A Transformers Story

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

few can remember how the war started. fewer still can now make the distinction between good and evil. but everyone will remember this particular day. because this is the day the war ended

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

are you tired of being nice. dont you just want to go *hit

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

all I wanna do is BANG BANG BANG BANG and a *transformation noises* and BRAAAAP

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

first you fard. then you *hid. then

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

cybertronian vandal

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

uh oh! stinky!

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

just saw blurr speedwalking to rodimus primes office at mach 2

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

you are about to enter the courtroom of judge rodimus prime. the bots are real. the cases are real. the rulings are final. this is judge roddy

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

Autobot Leader Gives Road Buster 11,453 Stern Looks

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

first one to talk gets to stay on my planet

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

getting flashbacks to that time unicron attacked. he picked me up between his fingers and vored me. i barely escaped with my cred

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

not on your life. its a fake. total fiction. it didnt happen. not fact. im innocent

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

it could be you. it could be me. it could eVEN BE

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

GHAA!

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

my Rash Action has led to a Fatal Consequence

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

i used to think that my life was a tragic. but now i realise. its a comic

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

now i understand. he who smelt it dealt it. i have been a smelting fool

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

ultra magnus i dont feel so good

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

dont reveal the shield. i said dont

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

the decepticon high command on cybertron have judged this account to be anti-decepticon and the firecons have been despatched to Earth to incinerate all copies. in order to thwart the firecons make sure you fill out your credit card details below

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

Notes

The Ask Triton tagline, “in the grim darkness of the far future there is only cred”, is the tagline of Warhammer 40,000 except it replaces the word “war” with “cred”.

I’ve got no idea when I started working on this project, except that it was many months ago. I opened a note on my phone and wrote the words “triton ebooks”, and thereafter whenever I thought of a Funny Joke™ I’d crack that bad boy open and slap it in there. I wasn’t entirely sure when or how I’d ever release the material; I could copy my direct inspiration for the account, @prowl_ebooks (and its own ancestor, @Horse_ebooks), by making a bot that’d periodically post a random tweet, but felt like there was some degree of serialisation in what I was writing. Despite the content of its tweets frequently being utterly absurd, and completely at odds with its source material, the genius of prowl_ebooks is that it manages to paint a picture that somehow feels like an accurate reflection of IDW Prowl’s canon self. Seriously, I’ve seen many of the tweets this bot pumps out countless times, and they still crack me up. I knew I wouldn’t be able to live up to that, but I had other tricks up my sleeves.

The Autobot Code originated in Simon Furman’s comics for Marvel UK and featured more prominently in James Roberts’ stories for IDW Publishing, where it was presented as a laborious tome of rules. SparkNotes, meanwhile, is a well-known site hosting CliffsNotes-like study guides used by students primarily to avoid having to read assigned literature in full.

wikiHow is an infamous encyclopedia devoted to tutorials, which often feature illustrations using a distinct style and deliver questionable advice.

Toyhax is the company that produces “Reprolabels”, effectively stickers for Transformers figures designed to replace vintage labels or to enhance newer figures (though I personally find the results to be pretty questionable). At one point they sold a product called a “Stickerfixer”, which I think was basically just a pen of glue? Anyway, Triton presumably wants one to (re)apply his fake Autobot insignia.

Google is a popular search engine for the world wide web. Its inclusion on the account was last-minute, and I was uncertain that Triton would actually have any understanding of what Google was, but figured if he was already using Twitter I could stand to show exactly how far I was planning to stretch disbelief from the outset, and that it’d work to explicitly tie together the intent behind the opening salvo of tweets.

Though I couldn’t be bothered tracking down an exact quote, “hi. my names triton. and the great war was the best thing to ever happen to me” was a reference to narration from Netflix’s Daybreak zombie-apocalypse series. I wrote a single paragraph about that series, specifically focused on that line, in an article which probably requires far more context than I’m able to give here. Of course, the general phrasing there is a common enough trope that this probably serves as a reference to any number of things. The halting style of dialogue used in Ask Triton, where full stops are the only form of punctuation, was a product of necessity, but it’s significantly at odds with the run-on-sentences used in the original comic. By my count, this is the fourth piece of media set in the “PASS” universe, but there’s no singular consistent presentation of that canon; every time I’ve revisited it, I’ve extrapolated and reinterpreted aspects of what has come before in ways which simply don’t match the original intent of the work. It’s kinda like the Star Wars expanded universe, where throwaway beats of the source material spin out into entire stories, ones that obviously don’t match the intent of what those beats were implying in the first place.

The Wreckers’ catchphrase is “wreck and rule”. I can’t find the exact tweet, but somebody recently realised that it’s supposed to be a play on “rock and roll”, which blew the minds of me and a whole bunch of other people. Hence, “the rockers”.

Ask Vector Prime explored the concept of “universal streams”, categorised by the multiverse-observing TransTechs using arcane identifiers. Springer’s nicknames are plays on these, substituting “Primax” for “Springax” and “Malgus”/”Iocus” for “Tritus” and encoding the dates 25/07/2017 (the original release date for “PASS” on Summer Meme Sundae) and 31/02/2019 (the date of its rerelease here) as 717.25 and 219.31. Springer uses the last part of the identifier, a Greek letter, to label himself as an “alpha” and Triton as a “beta”.

I’m not sure where it originated, but “x be quiet challenge” is a phrase which people sometimes use on Twitter when they effectively want someone to stop posting for once. I think I was probably introduced to the phrase when someone addressed it to Makin, then-owner of the Homestuck Discord server? Suffice to say, that probably informed its usage against Roadbuster.

“Cats Can Have Little a Salami [...] as a treat” was a Google preview of the article “Can My Cat Eat Salami?”, which became a snowclone on Discord and Twitter.

“I spy” is a famous guessing game where someone picks an object they can see and answers yes/no questions about it until another person is able to identify it. I have not played this game in a very long time.

“Cancel Culture” is a phrase used unironically mostly by assholes, in reference to the practice of “cancelling” problematic individuals in the court of public opinion on social media. I wish somebody had cancelled Triton.

For the life of me I cannot discern what “no cred? no thanks” is a specific reference to - there are probably many words you can substitute “cred” for in order to obtain an existing joke.

The phrase “eat shit and die” is one I enjoy using way too much, mostly in contexts where it’s absolutely unwarranted. What’s that? Someone said hi to me in the street and I didn’t say hi back in time? Well, guess I’ll eat shit and die then.

“YEAH uh huh YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS green and yellow green and yellow green and yellow green and yellow” is just Wiz Khalifa’s “Black And Yellow” only with green instead of black. Somehow I mostly associate this song with its usage in The Lego Batman Movie.

A poncho is a loose bit of fabric worn over the torso. Speaking of Lego, I was probably thinking of the poncho worn by this Mariachi minifigure, which resembles the triangular shape of Triton’s armour more closely than an actual real-world poncho. A cyclops is a one-eyed giant from Greek myth. Look, I know I don’t need to tell you all these things, but I wanted to really drive home just how pointless this venture is.

The “special rockers assignment” was a last-minute addition to the account; the tweets were posted in a completely different order to the one I’d written them in, with many thematically-related tweets collected into threads, and I needed a way to tie together several of the early ones into a clear narrative throughline. The Empties are fuel-starved unaligned Cybertronians from the Marvel comics. I considered having Springer’s ruse claim that they were all Robosmashed, but figured the cartoon reference was kind of at odds with the canon’s source material, and that it’s somehow funnier if Triton legitimately believes all of these robots are incognito like he is for just long enough to murder them all.

I think the goof of Triton substituting his name for vaguely-similar-sounding words references a habit developed by Chang in Community. “When you try your best but you don’t succeed” is the much-memed opening line to Coldplay’s “Fix You”. When I went to get that link, I realised that I do actually quite unironically like that song. Could it be wooorse...

Again, I wanted to make explicit that Triton was returning to Autobase, where the rest of the story would unfold, so Triton refuses Whirl’s help and uses his submarine mode to return home.

Triton’s alt-mode was suggested to be a submarine by Dreadwind in the letters’ pages of the Marvel UK comic. Triton reacts to this piece of Word of God in a later tweet.

“sky of blue im a green / and a yellow submarine” is a rewrite of the lyric “sky of blue sea of green / in our yellow submarine”, from The Beatles’ famous song “Yellow Submarine”.

I substituted the Cybertronian unit of length “hics” (roughly kilometers) into the title of Jules Vernes’ story 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which I only now realise took place 20,000 leagues under the sea, and not 10,000. Perhaps if it wasn’t for my crippling fear of sea monsters, I would be better acquainted with this story. Wait, shit, I told myself I was going to break my crippling tendency to mention my crippling fear of sea monsters!

A common simile used in Homestuck is “like a piece of shit”, hence its inclusion.

The profile picture of the account was cropped from a piece of artwork drawn by my friend Ikkad, who also created the artwork that inspired/was-inspired-by my short story Dendrochronology. He posted it in the TFWiki Discord server on 07/03/2020, and it immediately galvanised me to prepare to launch Ask Triton, but the subsequent mass outbreak of Coronavirus led me to decide to delay the launch until April Fools’ Day. I coloured Ikkad’s lineart using colours taken directly from the scans of the comic, which didn’t result in a perfect match to how it looks in print but is close enough. At Ikkad’s suggestion, I replaced my first attempt using flat shading with a softer paint-like style that better matched the tone of the original comic. For the profile picture, I flipped the image so Triton faces the text of the tweets; I used a version with a blue background (flipped again to accommodate a status indicator) on Discord as a way of promoting the account. I’ve yet to decide whether I want to keep it on a more permanent basis. “felt cute might delete later” (the exact wording varies but I like this one best) is a snowclone usually posted alongside terrible selfies, or alongside bad pictures of fictional characters. Naturally, the tweet including the full artwork wasn’t planned in advance.

Substituting Ultra Magnus’ name into “magnanimity” is another terrible Chang-esque name pun. Ultra Magnus’ old AtoZ profile describes him using the phrase “top-notch geezer”, which was prominently used in a sketch show made by a friend of mine.

The line “if you think you know where im going with this tweet your wrong but what you were thinking of is probably more good” is a rewrite of the final narration box from “PASS”, which reads “believe me if you think you know where im going with this your wrong but what you were thinking of is probably better”. The joke is that you expect the tweet to end with “better”, and not “more good”, except I’m sure literally nobody who saw it remembered the narration box, because why would they? See, the thing about Ask Triton - arguably the crux of the whole thing - is that it exists in a fictional world where "PASS” and its related materials form the whole basis of an entire fandom, one which presumably documents its deep lore in the same exacting detail as we do, and for which the account’s jokes are actually funny.

A “ton” is a unit of weight which varies somewhat but can be basically used as a shorthand for 1,000 kilograms. Hence a “triton” is 3,000 kg. I am very smort.

“you wear a mouthplate just to hide your face and you wear it because you think your cooler than me“ is a minor rewrite of the lines “You got designer shades / Just to hide your face / And you wear them around like you're cooler than me” from Mike Posner’s “Cooler Than Me”. As you can tell, I mixed up the words slightly, moving “wear” forward and using bits of the line “And it's probably 'cause you think you're cooler than me.” from later in the verse. On the one hand, this goes to show that I should’ve done more research (indeed, there were a fair few other misquote flubs like this which I did correct in time for publication), but at the same time for crying out loud why is this paragraph not over yet.

Triton’s implied to be afraid of Scattorshot, whose AtoZ profile described him as the kind of person that says hi by sneaking up behind you and putting you in a headlock - if you’re thinking that’s a little specific, yes, I have had not one, but two friends like this. The word “clutch” is used by Gamers when they pull off something precise; a “clutch save” is usually a difficult last-second move made to win a game.

Maccadam’s Old Oil House, or just Maccadam’s, is the name of a bar on Cybertron which first appeared in Furman’s “Target: 2006″ Marvel UK comic storyline, which introduced the Wreckers. It’s risen to prominence in the 2000s, appearing in multiple stories, with Maccadam himself recently being explicitly revealed to be one of the legendary “thirteen original Transformers”. The tweet which mentions it was sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing I wrote to better set up the one which follows it in the thread.

“The Last Autobot” is another some-time member of the Thirteen, introduced by Furman towards the back end of his Marvel run. The phrase “the last Decepticon” crops up multiple times in the original text of “Peace”. The phrase “just something to think about” comes from SCP-2293, which I know entirely due to the fact that my friend jenny in the TFWiki Discord quotes it incessantly. She was the one who asked me to make this commentary, which absolves me of responsibility entirely, because I totally wasn’t already planning on writing it. The form of this very commentary is inspired by her annotations for Ask Vector Prime and TFWiki’s notes sections, which I think plays nicely into the idea of an alternate universe where “PASS” is an official piece of source material and Ask Triton is funny. I also like being able to mix these kinds of thematic tangents into banal observations about bad memes with wild abandon.

Again on a whim, I chose to make explicit the inspiration behind my use of the word “spannered”, an oblique reference to the US comic “The Bridge to Nowhere!”, which revealed that Decepticon Lord High Governor Straxus’ new space bridge was in fact constructed using the still-living body of the unaligned scientist Spanner. This was probably the closest the account ever got to genuine stream-of-consciousness.

Rodimus Prime expresses some level of indecision over his paint job in PASS, which Triton mocks by pretending he’s considering getting a flame painted on his chest. There’s a line in Rodimus Prime’s AtoZ profile which is interesting in light of what we learn in “The Beast Within (My Pants)”, where he’s described as “the oldest AUTOBOT”. I guess he’s the oldest in terms of age, but Optimus Prime’s the real leader? Weird.

#NotMyPresident was a hashtag that got circulated on social media following the 2016 election of Donald Trump. Wow, I regret this sentence. Wow, I regret this project.

Speaking of problematic jokes, the line “yeah im going through a bit of a phase right now” refers to “It’s not a phase mom”, a phrase used to mock kids making life choices perceived as questionable. It’s combined with a reference to Furman’s six-phase “infiltration protocol” from his IDW comics; Phase Six sees the complete annihilation of whatever planet the Decepticons are sneaking around on.

“its hard / being a kid and growwing up / its hard and nobody understands” is a line from Homestuck spoken by Eridan to Kanaya, which gets called back to multiple times later in the comic. This is another case of me misremembering a quote, as I forgot the “and growing up” part. I previously namedropped Eridan in the commentary for “The Beast Within (My Pants)” as the inspiration for my version of Skids, but I think it’s safe to say that he informed my versions of Triton and Grimlock to some subconscious extent.

Car Robots was the Japanese name for the 2001 series Robots in Disguise. The phrase “car robots” itself was used in the opening narration for “PASS”, hence its inclusion.

Triton describes Sandstorm’s propeller as a “funny hat”, in reference to propeller hats. Sandstorm’s characterisation in his AtoZ bio was a play on his The Punisher-like murder spree in IDW’s comics. The incident Triton recalls about getting stepped on by Computron is phrased in reference to this I-guess-meme (the lines between sincerity and insincerity increasingly blurrr) where people say they want their crush to “step on” them. The crude mapping between combiners and relationships began in “The Beast Within (My Pants)”, which slotted surprisingly well into the “restraining order” gag from Computeron’s AtoZ bio (written to make up the numbers for a neat grid of sixteen), and I flipflop between thinking it’s the funniest shit or just thinking it’s legitimately fucking awful, but canon is canon.

Sadly, this theme doesn’t stop there. “im horny” is a terrible innuendo referring to Triton’s horned helmet.

Triton tortures the “two wrongs make a right” fallacy by mixing it with the common refrain “horny people have no rights” (which perhaps originated in this tweet but for fuck’s sake I’m not wasting any more time looking this up).

This continues when Triton claims to have “discovered the secret of combiner technology”, which is a phrase that seems to crop up in various places in 21st-century Transformers comics. It turns out that Triton’s solution is the first of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, “Stand up straight with your shoulders back” (ugh, thanks, Spotify Discover Weekly). Jordan Peterson’s this asshole with a rabid following of straight white guys; my impression is that he uses a lot of overwrought pseudoscience to justify his ideology, but I personally think his twelve rules are actually pretty solid, which seems to be a perfect example of wrong-working-right-answer.

Afterburner’s AtoZ profile written as backmatter to “PASS” described him as “Cybertron’s bicycle”; Triton wonders why he refuses to combine with him and god this is fucking stupid.

“I’m like dropping hints that I’m single / I’m single” is a pair of screenshots from one of Kim Kardashian’s shows, which frequently see the word “single” substituted for various other things.

“TR-8R” was a nickname given to a Stormtrooper that appeared in Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, famous for his funny weapon and his loud accusation that one of the protagonists, Finn, is a “traitor!”

“Inside You There Are Two Wolves / One Is Gay / The Other Is Gay / You Are Gay” (the exact wording and concepts used vary) is a snowclone most commonly associated with various images of a black wolf and a white wolf.

“Not bounty-hunter, yes? Don’t like that term, understand? Freelance peacekeeping agent, yes? For certain financial remuneration, of course” is dialogue spoken by Simon Furman’s character Death’s Head in his sort-of-debut appearance in issue #113 of the Marvel UK comics.

“Hrrrrnnggh Colonel, I’m trying to sneak around but I’m dummy thicc and the clap from my ass cheeks keeps alerting the guards” was a tweet written from the perspective of Metal Gear character Solid Snake which turned into a snowclone and got so big that the actual voice actor for the character did a dramatic reading of it.

“Oh, you think darkness is your ally. You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, moulded by it” is famous dialogue from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises.

The “inhibitor harness” is a piece of technology namedropped in Nick Roche’s Last Stand of the Wreckers, used to restrain Triton and the rest of Squadron X. It was itself a reference to the inhibitor claw and inhibitor band from Furman’s Marvel UK comics; I chose “harness” both because of its explicit connection to Triton and because it’s a funnier word.

In Simon Furman’s Transformers ‘84 issue #0, a prequel to the Marvel comics, he made a number of retcons, one of which revealed the identity of iconic Marvel UK character “the man of iron” to really have been the character Fastlane, who wasn’t conceptualised until 1987.

“It’s not easy being green” is a famous song sung by Kermit the Frog.

“This chat isn't relevant to my interests any more.” is the rare quote used in Ask Triton which comes from a completely arcane source, being the punchline to an anecdote someone told in the Worth the Candle Discord server. The channel where it was told is currently archived and inaccessible, but it centered around somebody leaving a group chat of friends in spectacular fashion, something I thought was apt considering the events of “PASS”. Anyway, I guess this is my excuse to tell you to go read Worth the Candle, as is obligatory of me.

“Back on top” is the punchline to a series of Limmy’s Show sketches.

One of the handful of replies received by Ask Triton over the course of its run simply read “Yo waspinator, is everything allrignt??” Suffice to say I was pretty baffled by this, as I’ve legitimately got no idea at what point my own profile picture got presented to that person, or whether they just genuinely mistook Triton for him.

The Maximals and Predacons of Beast Wars have occasionally been described as a “new generation” of Transformers, though I didn’t track down any kind of exact quote.

Robots in Disguise and More than Meets the Eye were the two famous ongoings launched by IDW Publishing in 2012, written by John Barber and James Roberts respectively.

One minor plot beat in More than Meets the Eye revolved around the notion that if you hit a Cybertronian in a certain spot, they’ll transform involuntarily. Broadside was noted in his “PASS” AtoZ profile to have transformed very rarely, causing great inconvenience in the process.

“TCC” is an acronym for “Transformers Collectors’ Club”, a fan club run by Fun Publications from 2005-2016, the logo for which was frequently placed on Transformers packaging.

“Just found out about racism...damn that shit sucks...” was a Tweet that turned into a snowclone.

The same goes for “if i was at chernobyl i wouldv stopped it / rip to ur gradma but im different”.

The Decepticons (and Roadbuster (hmm)) all speak with proper punctuation and capital letters; a minor retcon implies that Triton used to speak this way but lost his “accent” over time.

The image of the Decepticons surrounding Highbrow and Rodimus Prime is Dan Reed and John Burns’ inside cover artwork for the 1989 Annual which included Peace; the characters in the image are drawn from that book’s comic strips. I like the way Triton implies that frikkin’ Apeface, Snapdragon and Mindwipe are “great Decepticon leaders”.

Lightspeed's AtoZ bio (like Nosecone’s) is based around an inversion of the Technobots’ typical characterisation as being generally intelligent, claiming “A broken clock is right twice a day. LIGHTSPEED wishes he could be that clock.” This implies that he’s wrong about everything, but I thought it’d be funny if the one time we hear about him doing anything he’s actually right, i.e. he’s right once a day.

As mentioned in the commentary for “PASS”, “mucho cred” is a meme phrase amongst readers of the superhero web serial Worm, which I strongly recommend but not as much as Worth the Candle.

“Macho macho man” is a phrase from “Macho Man” by Village People, which I only now realise actually already included the phrase “mucho” a bunch. I only wrote the tweet referencing it off-the-cuff, thinking the phrase “mucho cred” wasn’t quite funny enough in a vacuum.

At a certain point, I decided I wanted to namedrop every single character that appeared in “PASS”, so in a Man-of-Iron-like twist, noted idiot Nosecone is implied to be behind the famous twitter account @dril.

The line “desperately trying to think of a funny joke to make ultra magnus and the rest of the gang laugh” came to me at some point while I was sitting staring at the note on my phone. In a way, it’s a mission statement for Ask Triton. I don’t think “PASS” was ever written with the metaphor of social media in mind - it was instead a story about pointless tragedy, and of giving up too much in pursuit of some fantasy ideal of social standing. In retrospect, I most strongly see it as a story about... falling out with people, of the disconnect between the things people say and the things people think, and the breaking points where people start saying “actually, I’ve always hated you.” At the same time, however, it’s kinda just a funny joke comic, one that didn’t have a complete clarity of purpose at the point of its creation, so sometimes I wonder if by talking about it in these terms I’m acting against the spirit of the thing. Regardless, Triton is the perfect character for telling a story on social media, as he’s all about facades and the hit of dopamine that comes when someone smashes the mfing cred button.

“Leader Class Triton With Triton Master Triton” is written like the kinds of online solicits we got for Titans Return, where each figure included a “Titan Master”.

I’m not sure this entirely needs explaining, as it’s not really a reference, but the idea of a person being “always on” usually implies that they’re putting on a persona of some kind, most often by trying too hard to make everything they say funny.

The interchangeability of Topspin and Twin Twist formed the basis of their shared AtoZ profile. Seriously, the name “Topspin” is so dumb, he’s not a frikkin’ helicopter!

Richard Starkings wrote “Peace” under the pseudonym “Richard Alan”. He’s most famous for founding Comicraft, the first major computer-lettering company. I have not attempted to contact Richard Starkings in any capacity. Please do not tell him I exist.

I knew going into Ask Triton that it needed something else going for it, as it was both derivative of prowl_ebooks and less funny than it, and so drew inspiration from the one bit of official Transformers fiction to significantly use social media: namely, Ask Vector Prime. I predicted that I wouldn’t get much in the way of interaction, because I never do, but figured I could pitch Ask Triton directly down the middle and lean more towards “roleplay ask blog” or “shitpost bot”, depending on which way the wind blew. My friend gearshift observed towards the end of its run that “if it was meant to involve external engagement like AVP like the name suggests rather than just being something fun to look at, the format of him rattling off to himself 99% of the time makes it a little difficult to know where to step in and interact”, which I think was spot on. As one last-ditch attempt to solicit interaction before heading into the story’s finale, Triton reintroduces himself by saying “ask me anything” in a way that’s probably most famous nowadays via the r/IAmA subreddit. I took quiet pleasure in drawing a comparison between those threads and Ask Vector Prime.

Sure enough, only one question came in, simply asking “Anything?”. This was brushed off with the reply “pass”, in reference to the title of the comic, a goof that became even funnier to me as it became clear that no more questions were incoming.

To my surprise, gearshift sent me something that completely blew me away - a digibash of Earthrise Blast Master as Triton. To hear her tell it, she’d just picked out a recent figure that was “adjacent” to a submarine, but I immediately drew more connections that formed the basis of the eventual tweet. She sent me four different variations on the colour scheme: one “perfect” deco to match Triton’s colours in the comics, two different decos that’d require about the level of paint complexity of Siege Rung (above average for a retail toy), and finally one deco that seemed realistic for what could be achieved on a retail budget. We agreed that the last one was the best, but I bumped the saturation waaay up on it to better match the inks used in the comic (the digital scans don’t do it justice, the printing in the annual is stupidly saturated).

“We get it, you vape” (perhaps more commonly “We get it, you smoke weed”) is a snowclone posted alongside images containing smoke of any kind. It mostly serves to mock people who are perceived to have no character traits beyond vaping (for an astonishing examination of this archetype, check out the ongoing serial masterpiece Chili and the Chocolate Factory: Fudge Revelation). Strafe’s AtoZ profile states that his only character trait is loudly broadcasting the fact that he can fly.

Again in reference to his AtoZ profile, Broadside ends up blocking a route. (In response to the tweet in question, one of my friends who goes by the name Broadside remarked “i do indeed have a”, which made me laugh.) The thread continuing from that tweet was written when I realised I had an opportunity to drill down a little deeper into Triton’s character, and to incorporate the handful of pieces of official art depicting him; the first is Andrew Griffith’s cover to Sins of the Wreckers #2, while the rest are Nick Roche illustrations inked by Griffith. All of these pieces are coloured by Josh Burcham, lending them a nice consistent tone for the dream sequence.

“Squad goals” is a phrase posted alongside images of people that the poster’s group aspires towards. By posting it alongside an image of Squadron X, Triton expresses that he wishes his current friends were more like his old ones.

“You die in the dream/game, you die in real life” is a conceit used across countless stories by this point. The word “pretending” was chosen as an oblique reference to Pretender technology; Triton isn’t a Pretender, but hey ho, I just thought it fit.

“Lord Forgive Me But It’s Time To Go Back To Tha Old Me” is a snowclone mostly posted alongside edgy pictures of cartoon characters. Triton’s referring to his time as a Decepticon, but the accompanying image shows him as a corpse, bluntly foreshadowing his death. Evidently, this thread landed; a friend of mine remarked “Jesus wads that bit about dreams was grim / Poor Triton :(”

I could’ve sworn that Bumblebee was referred to as Bumblebee: A Transformers Story at some point, but I’m probably just mixing it up with the likes of Solo: A Star Wars Story. EDIT: Locoman informs me that the movie was at one point called Transformers Universe: Bumblebee, which is definitely what I was thinking of.

Narration from “Peace” was added last-minute practically verbatim purely as a way of making up the numbers: “few can remember how the war started. fewer still can now make the distinction between good and evil. but everyone will remember this particular day. because this is the day the war ended“. I could probably have changed this into a joke but I figured the melodrama that comes with taking it into this context was enough of a joke as it was. Sue me. (Richard Starkings, please don’t sue me.)

“Are you tired of being Nice? Don’t you just want to go ape shitt” is a famous Yahoo! Answers post. Naturally, Triton’s most interested in the very last part of that sentence. This was another last-minute addition.

“All I wanna do is-*BANG BANG BANG BANG*-and a-*cash register noises*-and take your money” is the chorus line from M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes”. “Brap” is onomatopoeia for a fart, used in shitposts.

I refuse to explain what shidding and farding is. Fuck you. God, this was in such poor fucking taste. What the hell was I thinking.

The second season of American Vandal centered around somebody putting a powerful laxative in a school cafeteria’s lemonade. I actually genuinely recommend this show, it’s got a lot going on.

As proof that I was legitimately getting tired of the poop jokes, the phrase “uh oh! stinky!” was used, referring to this one gross-ass video making fun of the style of humour.

Blurr’s AtoZ profile was the hardest to write, because he’s got a couple of lines in “PASS” (hence I couldn’t invent characterisation whole-cloth) but doesn’t have anything in the way of personality beyond his use of the word “ayy”. In retrospect, I guess his characterisation ended up being based on Gamzee from Homestuck, this creepy stoner. History repeated itself when it came to writing Ask Triton, as I realised I’d namedropped every character except Strafe and him. I was barely able to sneak him in under the wire; I considered having some Shattered Glass-style joke about him being really slow, but ended up deciding that the phrase “speedwalking [...] at mach 2″ (twice the speed of sound) was funny enough to carry a tweet.

The introduction to reality TV show Judge Judy goes “You are about to enter the courtroom of Judge Judith Sheindlin. The people are real. The cases are real. The rulings are final. This is Judge Judy.” Its inclusion was an oblique nod to another time I’ve used it, in a Transformers non-fiction work which might see release soonish, but this is definitely one of the weakest jokes on the account, written for the sake of numbersNUMBERS.

The video which introduced me to YouTube comedian Gus Johnson was titled “Man Gives His Cat 11,453 Stern Looks”. Another late reference which I found by going into my playlist of random videos to use in community streams.

Having forgotten I’d already referenced the movie, “First one to talk gets to stay on my aircraft” is a line from the infamous opening scene to The Dark Knight Rises. I made a comic adaptation of that scene using Marvel’s terrible Create Your Own editor, which is kind of an inversion of “PASS” in that it keeps the text of a story but substitutes the visuals. I’d previously used that editor to create the original Spider-Man comic Everything Is Red Now.

I just saw the word “vored” in here, so it looks like I’m going to have to plead the fifth again. Let’s talk about Unicron instead. Unicron is an Orson-Welles voiced character from The Transformers: The Movie, who appears in Worth the Can- WON’T SOMEBODY MAKE ME STOP?

“Not on your life. It’s a fake. Total fiction. It didn’t happen. Not fact. I’m innocent.” is from the Kevin James/Neil Cicierega video “Beyond Believability: FACT or False”, which parodies the Johnathan Frakes reality show Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction.

“It could be you. It could be me. It could EVEN BE-” is an iconic line (but then again, which of these lines aren’t iconic?) from the Team Fortress 2 short “Meet the Spy”. This foreshadows Triton’s imminent death.

“GHAA!” is Triton’s parting word in both “Peace” and “PASS”, a rare bit of text to go completely unchanged in my version.

In the supplementary material for Nick Roche’s Last Stand of the Wreckers, the Rash Action and Fatal Consequence were two different ships aboard which Triton was second-in-command.

“I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realise it’s a comedy” is a line from the infamous movie JOKER, featured prominently in its teaser trailer.

“He who smelt it dealt it” is a textbook response to somebody calling attention to a fart. “The Smelting Pool!” was the Marvel issue, featuring a torture device of the same name, that led into the aforementioned story “The Bridge to Nowhere!” Like “Peace”, it’s a Marvel story prominently known for introducing and killing a comic-only character.

“Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good” is an iconic line spoken by Peter Parker at the end of Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War.

Reveal the Shield was a subtitle used for a Transformers toyline back in 2010, which referred to the heat-activated rubsign insignias of the toys (the gimmick being that you supposedly wouldn’t know which side the toy was on until you took it out of the package and got your grubby fingers on it).

The first page of the 1989 Annual begins “The Decepticon high command on Cybertron have judged this Annual to be anti-Decepticon, and the Firecons - Sparkstalker, Cindersaur and Flamefeather - have been despatched to Earth to incinerate all copies. In order to thwart the Firecons and protect your Annual, make sure you fill out the special Autobot citizenship card, below, with your name and address. The Firecons will only dare to attack Annuals if they are sure the owner is not under Autobot protection. This card could save your annual...” This page left quite the impression on me as a child, and (to what I can’t decide is my shame or my pride) I did in fact take a pen and fill out the card in my copy.

Towards the end of this project, I realised that there’s a certain symmetry between Ask Triton and the very origins of “PASS”, in an old meme page I once ran. Effectively nobody followed that page, and it was mostly me shouting into the void; like Ask Triton, many of the posts consisted of things which resembled jokes, where all the individual pieces fit together in some logical (if impenetrable) fashion, but when taken in aggregate none of them were really funny. Like Ask Triton, it turned into an attempt to tell a story using a medium utterly unsuited to storytelling. This time around, I think I succeeded, even if the story being told is one that already existed. Ask Triton consisted of 111 tweets. If I ever finish and release the epilogue for my old meme page, it’ll consist of 111 posts.

“PASS” has made the rounds on Twitter twice now, and each time the response has astonished me. On a pure numbers level, it’s nothing, but the people who share it around seem to derive so much joy from it. I made a handful of print versions for the comic to give out at TFNation 2019, and everyone there seemed to love it, so if TFNation 2020 goes ahead (god, I hope it does) I’ll make sure to print off some more. It’s something that’s torn me in two directions, where I want more people to see it, so they can get something out of it, but I also don’t want to run it into the dirt. As such, this ended up being one of the rare projects of mine nowadays not to receive any prereading (aside from a couple of the conventionally-funniest jokes being sent off to close IRL friends, to their amusement/bemusement), in the hopes that the whole thing would be a pleasant surprise rather than an uncertain slog, and I think that decision paid off.

In the TFWiki server, phrases like “shot on the spot for being a don” crop up frequently, with a handful of emoji cropped from the comic seeing a lot of use. It’s weird to be confronted with your own work so often, especially when that work was something that you threw together in an afternoon back in 2017, before you’d even started interacting properly with online Transformers fandom. At the same time, it’s nice to feel like one of the things I made genuinely mattered to people, at least ones who don’t know me.

If you’ve made it to the end of this notes section, then I’m sorry, but someone with as much cred as you simply cannot be allowed to live. Report to the TFWiki Discord server for your immediate execution.

#Transformers #Marvel #Ask Triton #PASS #Triton #The Wadapan #10/04/2020

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