#Edited cause the link didn't work and to include names

[paperbackribs]

And thus does the fandom heal itself or Sava a few years down the track:

Every Me and Every You by westwingwolf

https://archiveofourown.org/works/45987670#main

[swishbishbosch]

Yet Another Major Revamp: Semi-Realism Edition + make-your-own toolkit!🥳

🐸 DOWNLOAD: SFS / MIRROR

This is an edit of Phaenoh' Realistic Major to Career Linking BUT with the following BENEFITS:

🌟 NOT REALISTIC... BUT MAXIS-REALISM: this edit made the ideal careers for each major somewhat logical and coherent (consult the table below for the changes) yet respects the internal logic of the game because Maxis' humor is underrated, slacker and criminal are treated as serious career pathways in this game so why not 🤩

🌟 ALL MAJORS BALANCED ⚖️: frustrated with the lack of benefits that some majors offer compared to others? want an easier time being a job-hopper?? what do you mean my skills aren't transferable in this market??? WELL:

All majors are now supporting at least 5 or more careers

Art [6]: Adventurer, Architecture, Artist, Culinary, Gamer, Slacker

Bio [5]: Athletic, Medicine, Natural Sci, Ocean, Science

Drama [6]: Athletic, Dance, Entertainment, Law, Politics, ShowBiz

Econ [5]: Business, Criminal, Music, Politics, Show Biz

History [5]: Adventurer, Artist, Law, Military, Politics

Lit [6]: Artist, Edu, Entertainment, Journalism, Law Enf, Music

Math [6]: Business, Culinary, Edu, Gamer, Natural Sci, Science

Philo [5]: Culinary, Law Enf, Music, Paranormal, Slacker

Physics [5]: Athletic, Dance, Medicine, Ocean, Science

PolSci [5]: Intelligence, Journalism, Law, Military, Politics

Psych [6]: Architecture, Business, Criminal, Edu, Intelligence, Paranormal

All careers are now supported by 2 or more majors, only the Politics career is supported by 4 (cause Maxis' choice was so good I didn't want to touch it!)

8 careers that require degree (only available for graduate): Architecture, Education, Intelligence, Law, Medicine, Nat Sci, Oceanography, Science.

🌟 OTHER INFOS:

🎓 You'll need UNI EP 🎓

Credits: Phaenoh (for the base mod I edited and the tutorial!), SimPE

Conflicts:

mods that lock/unlock degree requirement like Lamare's getUniCareerWithoutEducation

any mods do the same thing (Belladovah's, Phaenoh's & Cyjon's) which you might want to consider shopping around first before picking mine so look below 🛍️🛒👀

also conflicts with lauratje86's but their mod works with default replacement majors so it can't be covered here, check it out though!

note: Cyjon altered some majors' names and skill requirements (he also hates Philosophy methinks), Phaenoh offers a different version that changes which career requires degree (just like mine but ADDED Business), Belladovah offers Education version in which every major benefits the Education career.

📁 MOD RESOURCE: Linking Maxis Majors & Degrees to Maxis Career Toolkit 🥳

🎯 Difficulty: EASY (no modding experience needed)

It's easier to customize own or track which majors your career is linked to with a bunch pre-made templates right???

Download my edited mod as a base & start making edits 📝 Have these templates to easily cross-reference 0x2(2) values you need to change in SimPE following PHAENOH'S TUTORIAL.

The templates will look like the 2 tables you see above, they are available in:

odt (highly recommended, easy to use word doc file with Phaenoh's tutorial included)

md (markdown file)

csv (for both of the tables you see above)

Comparison Table - use to compare your edits to MAXIS original Career By Major Table - work out which major supports your career and calculate 0x2(2) values

4. zip (for SiYuan users to import, highly rec because I used that program to make the tables, it's Notion but ✨uglier and offline✨)

🐸 DOWNLOAD (browse what you need): SFS / MIRROR

[bonefall]

how much of Stormpaw’s demon are Maple’s curse vs just things that happen (cause in canon it’s really vague about whether Maple causes all those tragedies or has the ability to see his future for some reason)

EVERYTHING that happens in Stormpaw's Demon involves her. It's not being so dramatically renamed for nothing, she's a major driver and cause of the plot! Crookedstar's young name is in the title; but really, his demon is driving the misfortune.

That said... It's been a while and I'm heavily considering retooling the narrative.

Since I last REALLY worked on it, BB has changed in the sense that I'm a lot more willing to alter canon than I used to be. While my driving mindset used to be "telling a better version of the original story," and that IS a value I still hold... I've lost patience with the misogyny within the original work.

I've spoken at length about the way Crookedstar's Promise grinds my gears (PLEASE follow this link for a full breakdown of why), but in summary; it desperately tries to keep every male character likeable when they shouldn't be, saying nothing about the fact they are complicit in or even enabling abuse, while giving Crookedstar TWO flatly evil maternal figures. Even Brambleberry, who's heavily praised for being "like a mom instead," has a weird moment where she starts giving Crookedjaw the cold shoulder because she finds out he's chatting with a demon.

So like... I'm not sure if I want to make the "better version" of that story. That was the one that I already had, which had Mapleshade be acting entirely out of just the malice of wanting to hurt a child, while Hailstar and Shellheart are the excellent people canon wanted to see them as.

(not that it's even a BAD super edition, it's actually a really good one, but if it's my kitchen that's not what we cook here. Man I really do always massively overhaul my favorite SEs LMAO)

I think, specifically, I want to make Mapleshade slightly more morally gray and Hailstar more of an enabler. Shellheart is getting significantly retooled to make him more of the heartwarming parental figure I think he should be; someone loving to help balance out a very heavy rework.

And of course Brambleberry, I'm going to tweak her some. Try to make her flaws more consistent, get rid of that odd cold shoulder moment.

Old regulars will remember an old AU which is also still a massive favorite of mine; it was called Better Call Mapleshade, and it was kind of a commentary on how an environment can shape a person. Mapleshade, as a demon in heaven, was essentially their best prosecutor and defense attorney.

You can actually see how a lot of ideas from that AU ended up in Better Bones with the expanded trial system! I'm thinking of taking another page out of it, by making Mapleshade more aware of "the game" of Clan culture's structural unfairness, while also using it like a weapon against people she wants to hurt. A powerful demon of revenge.

Under the cut, what won't be changing, the way it was, and Draft 2 of Stormpaw's Demon.

(MASSIVE CONTENT WARNING FOR MENTAL AND PHYSICAL CHILD ABUSE including ableism. BB!Rainflower is WORSE than canon.)

WHAT WON'T BE CHANGING;

These are major details of Stormpaw's Demon that are different from canon. I'm working with these as givens and won't be changing between drafts.

Mapleshade does have a bone to pick with Appledusk's lineage specifically. One option might make her more discerning when it comes to her targets, but no matter what, she is going to have her eyes on this bloodline. She Haunts Applekin.

Rainflower is Hailstar's deputy. And I will make her downfall spectacular. If you were worried I was going to make her more sympathetic then you have no idea who I am LMAO

Shellheart is not Crookedstar's biofather While I want Hailstar to maybe be worse; I do want to fix Shellheart by making him a good parent. I've decided a good way to do this is to make it that Shellheart adopts Storm AFTER he's been abused by Rainflower. He didn't have authority over him before then. In general, I do want him to have a bigger positive role in this narrative. DEPENDING ON WHICH VERSION: Oakheart might also not be his bio-brother.

Crookedjaw is not a cruel name; it's an Honor Title. I've ALWAYS been frustrated by how canon treats scars and injuries as bad things. It's a BATTLE culture. Surviving brushes with death is their WHOLE THING. There is no "crookedkit" or "crookedpaw," he was Stormpaw until he earned his warrior name, with "Crookedjaw" commending the massive lengths he's gone to in order to survive, adapt, and honor StarClan.

Mentor change: Goodbye Cedarpelt, hello Magpiesky! I decided to repurpose one of the Barn Cats! Magpie from the books is a daughter of Perchshine-- the cat who killed Mapleshade. She joined RiverClan long ago. She's actually the one who points him in the way of the barn, and has to train him "as a punishment for teaching him disobedience" when he comes back. I actually have a couple of minor reasons for making this change but I'll spare them for now. He might start with Cedarpelt, but then run to the barn when Cedarpelt is basically refusing to train him properly.

Some family tree shuffles I need to update this tree to show Crookedstar's new situation with Shellheart (and also reflect some other changes I made like confirming Hallowflight fully being Lizardtail's honor title and Robinpaw being the apprentice who gets eaten by Ripwater), BUT, overall this tree is solid.

The ableism Storm faces is going to have a different flavor I have built BB in a way where him surviving his injury would be very respected, but he'd get badly coddled and pushed into early retirement. Him running to the barn is because he suspects he wouldn't have gotten training otherwise.

He kills a fox there because it's Cool. I might give him the tail to wear as a trophy of the kill because that's also Cool. The fox was very old and feeble at that point, which was why it was attacking chickens, but shhh

The Way It Was (Very Evil Mapleshade)

Darkstar's Commandment creating the Queen's Rights, that no queen would ever have to reveal the other parent of their kittens, wasn't enough to appease Mapleshade.

Nor was the damning of everyone that Mapleshade killed. In a fit of irrational fury at all the death, StarClan sent all her victims into the Dark Forest.

But she can't chase them. In the Dark Forest, you don't see someone unless you WANT to see them, not unless you're hanging out in a "land mar" (a sort of personal hell that all demons get).

on the off-chance she does see them, Frecklewish usually rips her to shreds...

Which is the next problem.

You can't DIE in the Dark Forest if you're a demon. You poof back into existence the next day, no injuries, no scars, nothing.

she's bored.

And vengeful. In spite of the wrong being righted, she still thinks she deserves MORE revenge, because what she wanted was really Appledusk.

She finds it unfair that HER legacy is snuffed out, that it's Darkstar's Commandment and not hers, that her babies were destined for greatness and by extension SHE should have been great.

So she takes up a hobby in tormenting Appledusk's descendants. She wants to eradicate them completely, but is spiteful enough that she'll just settle with hurting them.

The first one she managed to kill was Applefrost, Reedshine's son. Just by accident. She didn't know she had such power over the mortal plane.

After that, she managed to drown Duskwater. The daughter.

But she couldn't wipe out HER daughter in that storm... and she brought two more Applekin children into the world.

Stormkit and Oakkit.

So, naturally, Mapleshade turned her sight on the little fuzzball.

He would be an easy kill, in theory. She smashed Stormkit's jaw on the rock, but Oakkit pulled him out.

From there, it's similar to canon for a bit. His recovery is long and painful.

Rainflower is disgusted, and wants absolutely no part of helping him through this process.

That wasn't an injury gained in battle-- it's because he's careless and didn't listen to her. He's going through all this suffering, and for what?

To never become a warrior?

She's cruel to him, begins to neglect and distance herself from him. Discourages him from suckling.

Mapleshade LOVES this. It's worse than she could have imagined. Rainflower is horrible.

Gleefully, she realizes that Stormkit dying now is what Rainflower wants.

So, she kills two other kits in the nursery.

Fallowtail's only survivor is Willowkit, so she has plenty of milk. She starts suckling Stormkit.

(Graypool is now an older sibling! She's actually an apprentice at this time! Later, she encourages Willowkit to visit their father, who decides to just kidnap them completely)

Eventually, being the deputy, Rainflower had some kind of conversation with Hailstar.

During that conversation, she asked him to do something very cruel to Crookedkit.

And Hailstar LOST IT

He's the successor of Volestar, who was appointed by Darkstar herself to uphold the Queen's Rights and protect children.

How DARE you try to turn RiverClan into a place of disrespect?? To use my power this way?!

So, her power was stripped, and Oakkit and Stormkit were taken from her.

From there, Storm eventually goes to the barn as discussed, and Mapleshade continues to do things to hurt him.

This was my first draft, and now having thought about it a lot, I feel like it's not super cohesive. A demonic Mapleshade who's entirely malicious is neat, but I feel like this makes her flat. Shellheart's not tied in super well either, and Hailstar's stand feels kind of hollow because Rainflower hasn't actually used or leveraged the new authority I've given her.

But most egregiously? Rainflower's abuse being so close to canon tastes kind of bland. I feel like I can make it sooo much more intense, complicated, and painful.

Draft 2 of Stormpaw's Demon (Demon of Revenge Update) Essentially an outline for the first few chapters establishing Mapleshade by dealing with Rainflower and then fragments for the rest.

Mapleshade's still malicious, but this time, there's more to it.

Darkstar's Commandment, and the damning of her victims, DID appease this Mapleshade.

But is she satisfied? No.

She doesn't feel like she was wrong at all, actually. Without her killing those three in revenge for her kittens, StarClan's anger probably would have subsided.

She can't hunt her victims down again though, because, they don't want to see her. She fights Frecklewish every now and then but what's the point?

She WON already. She already GOT the euphoria of dragging them all down with her.

Punishing everyone who had ever wronged her was the highlight of her existence... but now it's done.

She's in Hell and she's bored. Her punishment is never seeing her kits again, but more importantly, her punishment is eternal shuffling through the leaf litter when she's SO GOOD at getting revenge.

Problem with revenge is, when you get it, it's gone.

She probably messed with Duskwater and Applefrost a bit, but if she killed one of them, it was accidental. It made her realize that revenge without a motive is just boring.

The prologue would probably open up with establishing her as a character. Who she is, what she wants.

Because the first chapter would dive RIGHT IN to Stormkit. The only child of Rainflower, the deputy.

Right along with Stormkit, you only learn in hindsight that he was born in a storm that killed his grandmother. It's clear that Rainflower reminds him of this often.

And that she's nasty to him. Giving him unclear instruction and finding things to critique, telling him to jump and then barking at him that he didn't ask how high.

She has great expectations for him, and reminds him of their family lineage often. Of who killed his great-grandfather, of what a fantastic pair of warriors Applefrost and Duskwater were

"I lost everything the night you were born. You'd better be able to make up for it."

Unfortunately, Stormkit is not the sort of child who's good at listening to those sorts of orders. He's stubborn and defiant; angry and oppositional.

When he doesn't understand why you do something, he doesn't want to do it

He "embarrasses" her a lot, and gets hurt for it.

In public, these are swats and whacks. The things you're "allowed" to do to discipline your child. In private these are a lot more severe.

So when Stormkit is given an order or a command, he obeys completely out of fear rather than respect. And sometimes he forgets his fear.

The other cats in RiverClan? Well... Stormkit is a problem child, and Rainflower is a fantastic, organized, respected deputy.

Hailstar especially, unfortunately. He feels bad... for Rainflower.

"It must be so hard for her to have such a little brat as a son. He never seems to learn his lesson. When will he stop wandering off? What's wrong with him? He certainly didn't get that from her."

His best friend, Oakkit, gets in the SAME trouble he does.

He's mischievous, fearless, and outgoing, and... never gets punished for it.

There's times where Oakkit does something and Stormkit physically recoils, just imagining what Rainflower would do if HE did something like that. Especially in how Oakkit talks to his dad, Shellheart.

For example, Shellheart will come to get his son for suckling time and Oakkit will tell him to his face things like, "I don't want to! I'm HAVING FUN!"

and shellheart doesn't flip out. He just. explains why it's important to eat on time.

"I know. But Fallowtail wants to go have fun too! She's waiting for you to come and suckle so she can go play."

"Well why can't she just play now and I suckle later?"

"When a suckler is full of milk, it makes their belly very itchy. She's uncomfortable when you don't come and eat on time."

"nnnh"

"Tough sell? How about I sweeten the pile with a badger ride back?"

"Hm. You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Dad."

Stormkit doesn't know why he hates it. He's all angry inside when he sees them acting friendly. He's polite because Oakkit's his best friend and Mr. Shellheart is really nice, but he just...

He's too young at the time to know he's envious. He wants what Oakkit has so badly it hurts.

Sometime after an exchange like that, Stormkit is visited by Mapleshade for the first time.

And they talk about Stormkit's anger and resentment. Stormkit lets it slip that he HATES his Mi.

Waits for Mapleshade to stop him and tell him, like everyone else does, that "she's still your mother."

...but she doesn't.

Besides Oakkit and Shellheart, she's the first person who doesn't tell him that.

She just lets him talk. Lets him go on. Starts making nasty jabs, which make him laugh.

"She says she lost everything the day I was born!!"

"What?! That's crazy! She got you that day!"

"Right?! It's like she's saying I'm nothing! Maybe she SHOULD lose everything, then she'd know what she's got!"

And then she asks, "Do you want her to die?"

Suddenly, there's a chill in the air. He's really shocked by the suggestion of that. He didn't... he didn't mean it to go THAT far. That's not what he meant... is it?

But she's fading back into the shadows, just her eyes visible in the dark. Tells him that she can see he's unsure. That's ok.

Holds up a budding sprig of sycamore, the maple she's named for. Its buds grow in a "deer hoof," with one large bud in the middle and two "toes" sprouting on its sides.

Teaches him that if he needs someone in his corner, all he has to do is call.

(to summon her, a bud is plucked off the sprig and thrown in the river.)

He wakes up with the sprig in his paw, panics, and shoves it under the nest he shares with his mother.

The experience shakes him. He probably ran to Brambleberry for the first time, who explains very seriously that he was contacted by a demon.

From the description... Mapleshade. The cat who killed his great-grandfather.

He BEGS her not to tell Rainflower. PLEADS with her. He can barely hear her already saying yes under the throbbing sound of his heart in his ears.

When he calms down, he hears her saying yes. On the condition she will need to smoke the nursery with sage and cedar, and that he will be needing a bath as well.

When he's still concerned that Rainflower will question him, she makes a plan to distract her for a day, long enough for him to do his cleanse and the smell to fade.

And, of course, that he will not follow any instructions that Mapleshade left him. He agrees. But does not tell Brambleberry about the sprig.

For a while he's very "well behaved." But it's not about him, never has been.

It really doesn't take long at all for Rainflower to get worse. Kids who are defiant like that are usually exercising a defense mechanism-- if they're not aggressive about their boundaries, their limits are pushed to a breaking point.

And after a big blowout like this, which was probably a public spectacle, Stormkit runs back to his nest and digs out the sprig, runs to the river, and throws a bud in the river.

Having calmed down from his shuddering fury, the dread begins to set in as a dead-smelling wind ruffles his fur. He can't help but feel like he just did something very stupid out of anger.

Looking at his reflection, he sees no cuts or swelling. The blows weren't "bad enough." He doesn't have the kind of injuries that anyone would do anything about. Equal parts guilt and frustration swell in him like a tide at full moon. How could he be sitting here wishing she hurt him worse?

So he tries to soften it, "I don't want her to die, I just, I... I just want her to lose everything like she says. Please..."

The wind whispers in his ear, "it will get worse before it gets better."

"I can handle that," he sobs, "I can do anything. Please. Make it stop."

After that, Oakkit probably runs to come find him. Stormkit doesn't want to be found. He makes up a childish plan, on the spot, to run away and join ThunderClan.

Oak says that's mousebrained, but Storm has DEVOTED himself to this plan he made just now.

And is crossing the stones.

Oak sighs, but if Storm's going to ThunderClan, he should really go with him because then they could totally fight off a small fox (Childish hubris)

Unfortunately, Rainflower found them. asks Exactly What He's Doing.

The kids freeze. Stormkit in particular has that horrible, twisting anxiety that you get when you hear The Tone that means you're in for an absolute wallop when you get home.

He's about to start running, but then the voice tickles his ear-fur again. Mapleshade tells him to go back. It'll be ok. She's on his side. She'll make her pay.

Oakkit is still frozen in place when, as if possessed, Storm's body stiffly returns to his mother.

There's a silence. The river trickling through the stepping stones. Storm looking with fear and anger up at her.

She's waiting for an apology, groveling. He doesn't give her one.

So she raises her paw and gives him an awful, hard blow.

His little body twists, flung off balance, trying to correct himself, and he can swear he felt paws pushing him a second time, whipping him downwards.

The feeling of falling fills his stomach, the water sloshes into his ears before there's a ring of a sound like CLUNK-CRUNCH, and then the river floods his nose and mouth.

It all goes dark.

When he wakes up, it's with a throbbing pain in the side of his jaw so intense that he can feel it all the way down in the tip of his tail. He learns from Brambleberry that Oakkit rescued him-- jumped right into the water to pull him out. And then Rainflower pulled him out. That was when Shellheart came and found them.

There's a LOT of arguing outside, but Storm can't ask what it is because it hurts to move his mouth at all. Brambleberry hushes and soothes him, telling him it's nothing he needs to know about.

(MEDICAL INFODUMPING: i do actually have a medical reason I want his injury to come from someone hitting him which causes him to fall. The injury he'd get in canon would actually be a really simple and common split in the front of the mandible, which wouldn't cause his mouth to have a dramatic twist and would heal very easily. He needs to come down on the rock at an angle to shatter the joint like that.)

From here, the tune about Stormkit starts to change.

Oakkit was distraught when they got back, telling everyone that Rainflower smashed him against a rock.

Rainflower's story is that he was running, and she chased after him. EVERYONE knows that he has a habit of doing this.

Then HE slipped and fell and hit his face on the rocks. His fault.

Oakkit was running away with him, he's lying.

Shellheart is FEROCIOUSLY taking the side of his son, furious that she would imply he raised a liar.

Hailstar is taking the side of Rainflower. It's two troublemaking kits against his deputy.

Yes, Rainflower's disciplined him before, but that's no indication she'd do something like this on purpose.

Brambleberry weighs in that the injury that Stormkit has isn't the sort of injury a kitten gets from hitting his jaw. The bone is shattered.

probably does some kind of visual to go along with it, using a stick and a stone

"The bones of a kitten are like the young shoots of a tree. When they fracture," she takes a young twig and snaps it in her paws. The fibers in the center are bent but unbroken, with the bark splintered around them, "they flay but don't snap."

She places the stick on the ground, "So for the injury that Stormkit has," and violently smashes the rock down onto it. It's shattered and pulped, the fibers flattened, "there would need to be a great force."

Shellheart hisses, saying that THIS is the evidence. Oakkit's story is consistent but Rainflower HAS to have lied.

Several cats are now on his side.

...But more are on Rainflower's.

"She's his mother. She loves him. Oakkit has to be mistaken."

"Why would she chase down her own son just to smash his face on a stone?"

"She wouldn't pull them out of the river if she really wanted to hurt him!"

Hailstar prompts if there's ANYTHING else that could explain this?

It comes up that Brambleberry cleansed the dens the other day.

She says that it's possible there is a demon's influence at work. She can't know for sure which one it is-- but it may have a grudge against Rainflower.

She allows them to reach the conclusion that it's probably Mapleshade on their own. She will be talking to Crookedkit when he's able, but she's not about to tell anyone about his dream yet.

She doesn't want him to have the extra scrutiny when he needs to rest and heal, but if she'd shared that an unnamed cat had a demonic dream, it would set off panic as cats accused each other of dark magic.

Rainflower manages to escape consequences by pointing out that it was likely Mapleshade that injured her son.

Oakkit is still trying to tell everyone SHE did it, he SAW it, Stormkit walked back and she hit him and smashed his jaw on the rock

But he's hushed. It's decided there's not enough evidence. And not enough reason to doubt the noble deputy.

She's never done something like this before, after all. It's more likely it was an accident.

There is a group of cats that are dissatisfied about this, though, and it only grows when Brambleberry explains that Stormkit's prognosis is not good.

There is a very high chance he will die. Even adult warriors can wither slowly from this sort of injury.

Recovery will be slow and it will be painful.

...but after that incident? Rainflower gets bolder. She got away with it in public. She got a taste of the leverage she has, how much they trust her.

Stormkit spends a lot of time floating in between his dreams and his living-world pain. There's at least one interaction where he speaks to Mapleshade, screaming at her that he TRUSTED her, he KNOWS she's the one who hurt him! How could she?!

She can't say much, kept at bay by a hazy smokescreen of sage. "You must live! You must survive!"

Her old words echo in his head; It Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better.

Throughout the recovery, Rainflower grows more cruel and more distant.

In public she likes to talk about how difficult this is for her, but he's strong, he will survive.

In private, she'll do things that hurt him, like repositioning his head in a way that "his jaw will heal better in." When he cries, she's unsympathetic.

"You brought this on yourself. This is for your own good."

Her definition of "private" is also changing. She's getting more comfortable with snapping at him in front of limited groups of people.

Since she's deputy, the other two parents in the nursery, Shellheart and Fallowtail, do their best to care for Stormkit while she's away. He's pulled away from them when she gets back, any ideas or suggestions they have vetoed.

When they try to go to Brambleberry about this, she shakes her head with frustration and tries to make them understand she knows... and she's just as unhappy with it as they are.

She tells them she keeps going to Hailstar, but he's still hesitant. Even though she's trying to tell him that Stormkit's recovery is being undermined.

"Rainflower's son has always needed tough love. She's his Mi and knows him best... she's still taking care of him. Give her a warning before suggesting anything drastic."

In the other draft, I had Mapleshade kill two of Fallowtail's kits to free up milk for Stormkit. I'm not sure I need that anymore honestly, plus, this rework's heavy enough! She can just have Willowkit without any deaths, while Graypaw remains an older sibling.

When Brambleberry informs Rainflower and Stormkit that the jaw isn't healing straight and it will probably be at an angle forever, Rainflower reacts with disdain.

"His first scar and it's nothing he earned?!"

She's reminded he might not even survive. He's lost weight. He's eating less. Stormkit curls up quietly. He hates how they talk about him like he can't hear them.

"Surviving is the bare minimum," she scoffs reflexively. There's a silence so thick you can cut it with a claw. After an uncomfortable heartbeat, she continues, "What kind of a life will he live if he-"

"a life," Brambleberry cuts in, "he'd live a life. And it can be a good one"

Rainflower growls, spitting that the twisted jaw is a disfigurement. He'll never be able to open his mouth all the way. He can't chew and he can't suckle forever. Stormkit will never become a warrior if he can't even dispatch a fish with a killing bite.

"Scars are the sign that StarClan has mended our bodies after fighting a good fight, making any Clanborn cat worthy of being an elder" Brambleberry preaches, "Names are what mark us, calling upon our ancestors to look down at us and witness our actions, Rainflower. Don't say anything you wouldn't want them to see."

Rainflower flicks her ear, seething, a rumble in her throat, "was that some kind of threat? As if I've said something wrong?"

"If you feel threatened, look within."

Stormkit resents all of this talk. He can feel his mother tensing up next to him, hears the low rumble progressing into a growl. When adults play stupid games with his mom, he's always the one who ends up dealing it. Why don't they get that?

It's only Shellheart who seems to have it click, "Hey, this is the nursery. Can you take it outside, please?"

As Brambleberry and Rainflower leave, Stormkit lays curled up in his nest, cold and alone. Oakkit leaves Shellheart's paws to curl up around his best friend.

Shellheart stares at them, shifting, but ultimately stays where he is.

There's a lot of words I could write there, between Storm and Oak. Ones where Storm speaks about how he just wants the pain to be done with. Others where Oak comforts him, tells him how much he means to him. More where they end up running into the wall that they're just two little kids and they've both learned the truth that they have no control over what happens when Rainflower comes back into that den.

But I think it would be good to end there, at the lowest point. Because it gets better.

Pissed off by being gently confronted, after her warning from Brambleberry, this is the moment where Rainflower goes too far.

Hailstar is gradually losing his patience. Every time this issue comes up, he's making some kind of new excuse for her.

She's still a competent deputy who holds the Clan together, but this has taken a toll on her reputation.

Her biggest mistake was becoming more open with her abuse after being emboldened. And I think Hailstar is beginning to feel like he's got "egg on his face."

After standing up for Rainflower several times, getting heat from Brambleberry, and now the Clan also starting to murmur...

It's getting very difficult to justify why he's sticking his neck out.

and maybe, part of him is starting to feel a little self-conscious about the way that his deputy is acting about her injured child.

When she comes storming up on this fateful day, interrupting whatever he was doing to make a proposition, it's the breaking point.

Her suggestion: "I've realized that there's only one way to ensure my son survives his injury. He's being haunted by our demon, which only started threatening him when he disobeyed me for the last time. WE need to teach him a lesson, and make sure StarClan gazes down upon him to acknowledge his mistakes."

"...how do you intend to do that?"

"Stormkit must be given a Dishonor Title."

A Dishonor Title, one of the greatest shames that a leader can put onto one of their warriors. A punishment that ranks just below exile in terms of severity.

"you want to put a dishonor title... on your child? one with a life-threatening injury?"

"One that acknowledges his carelessness. To protect him from the demon."

Protect him from the demon. "I see now what must be done."

Previously, I'd thought of Hailstar as someone who would be loud and merciless when he does this. Now I'm thinking it was something he put a lot of thought into. He stands up, brushes past her, and goes to talk to some of his most trusted cats. Brambleberry, his mate Echomist, an experienced warrior such as Piketooth or Ottersplash, and lastly, Shellheart.

So it's not a surprise to anyone but Rainflower herself. He doesn't want this to be dramatic. He doesn't want it to be another big scene. Stormkit has gone through enough.

When he eventually has this Clan meeting, he calls it quietly. In his address to the gathered cats, a crowd that Shellheart and his family are missing from at his request, he says that his greatest regret is that he didn't do this sooner. He even doubts that Mapleshade is haunting her at all-- now having seen her behavior, he says it's more likely that Rainflower bashed her own child against a rock and simply lied.

First, he announces that Stormkit will be removed from her care. He will no longer be of the Applekin bloodline.

She is banned from the nursery at the request of Fallowtail, and will only see Stormkit when supervised by his new Mi, Shellheart.

Brambleberry has already agreed to this necessity, and is performing a ritual so that StarClan may approve of this choice.

He also strips her of her deputyship, and appoints Ottersplash instead. (I might change this to a different deputy eventually)

Not everyone agrees with Hailstar. There's an uproar from Rainflower's supporters.

She was a VERY popular deputy.

More that are just uneasy, feeling that this was a BRUTAL punishment that she didn't deserve.

Lots are happy and optimistic, though. But the mixed reception is exactly why Hailstar asked Shellheart not to be here.

This isn't something Stormkit has to deal with right now.

When Darkstar herself, who created the Queen's Rights, was on her last life, she appointed Volestar to uphold the law as her legacy knowing that Oakstar might try to break it again.

Volestar appointed Hailstar, in the hopes that he would uphold her legacy in turn, to protect kittens and those who can't protect themselves.

He was late, and can only hope he was not too late. He hopes that Volestar can forgive him for that.

Meanwhile in the nursery, Shellheart, Oakkit, and Stormkit are alone, far in the back, where the padded moss keeps out arguing voices.

Oakkit, bless his little heart, is babbling with excitement because his best friend is his BROTHER now. And it's gonna be THE BEST.

He's talking about how it's fine he can't chew because now they can have soup, and they're going to make the nest bigger, and they can stay up later because they can whisper quieter if they're this close together

But Storm doesn't really hear him. His head's swimming, thinking about the dull ache in his jaw, how MAD his mom's going to be because he can't imagine her not finding a way to hurt him, how this is all his fault because he called Mapleshade.

He can't stop it anymore and starts sniffling, which turns into weeping. Still, he's TRYING not to bawl, knowing, knowing he looks stupid when he does that

Shellheart just pulls him in close, so he can bury his face in his fluffy chest. Tells him it's going to be ok. He's safe now. No one can hurt him there.

Not on his watch.

Unfortunately, it's not the last he sees of Mapleshade. After this...

Mapleshade shows him everything she did for him. Yes, she did smash his jaw-- but it was to get him away from his mother.

And she planted an idea here and there, just little whispers into Rainflower's ear. Nothing she wouldn't do all on her own.

And now... Mapleshade believes she's earned some respect.

Stormkit can't disagree... she did exactly what she told him she'd do.

And now that he's not Applekin anymore, they can be Real Friends. They could even strike up a partnership, of sorts. After all, what did StarClan do to help him?

It wasn't StarClan that answered his prayers.

I'm still figuring out what, exactly, she's going to want from him. I have a scintilla that she wants to give him a life, maybe as some kind of bridge to StarClan to see her kits?

Some strange "attempt" at redemption, perhaps? Which she ultimately doesn't get.

Not that she didn't enjoy doing all that for love of the game, mind you. She's very good at getting revenge and it's fun and exciting to pull it off.

But hey, if you're good at something, never do it for free.

What causes Mapleshade to ultimately turn, and begin haunting the bloodline again + Oakheart, is Crookedstar rejecting her in some way.

She comes to collect on her end of the bargain and he refuses, breaking their partnership. He chooses StarClan.

And then from there, it's ON again. Now she has another EXCUSE to do what she wanted to do, and take out her boredom and malice on his family.

This time, it includes Oakheart as well-- because he was Crookedstar's brother.

It was also her curse that harmed Willowbreeze and eventually Silverstream. She's on the warpath.

Maybe she actually helped make him leader on purpose. Like he explicitly asked so she helped him by making the squirrel omen, instead of just doing it for him unprompted. Still figuring it out.

Shortly after the scene where Stormkit cries, he needs to have a confrontation with Brambleberry about Mapleshade I think. She needs to explain why Dark Forest demons are seen as bad.

She's biased, of course, but it's not like she's TOTALLY wrong either. Cats like Mapleshade ARE vengeful, in ways many other spirits are not.

If you're curious, Crookedstar's dishonor title from Rainflower would have been something comparing him to a parasite and referencing his ""accident"" like Fleaskip or Midgefall.

The point she's trying to make with the Dishonor Title is that her son is an annoying bug who didn't listen, as well as subtly erase she fact she knocked him off that rock.

She wanted his name to say "everything that happened was my fault and my mom did nothing wrong"

Not that Hailstar got as far as even asking lmao

[blkkizzat]

Tutorial: Manga Banners

Basic Manga Text Change/Coloring/GIF creation in PS

Hey, so as promised making a very basic tutorial for making banner gifs in photoshop for fics/drabbles/layouts, etc.

I'm going to keep things super simple here for beginners.

END RESULTS↴ 

(NOTE: This gif I made will be used for an unreleased story of mine so please don't use this exact gif/images but you are free to follow the tutorial to create your own).

All I ask is if you find this helpful to REBLOG! :) No need to credit me.

For this tutorial you will need ↴ 

Photoshop

At least 2 manga panel images (non-transparent*)

Optional: Manga fonts. I mostly use CC Wild words (speech bubbles) & Manga Temple (narrator boxes)

Basic knowledge of photoshop layout/where tools are.

*this tutorial is essentially the same if working with transparency but if you do work with transparency you will need to have knowledge of clipping masks which i do not cover here.

Tutorial ↴ 

(optional) Prepwork: so i didn't think to include this do this but you are going to need to crop and resize your image. make sure the width is either 540 or 1080px. This is the recommended width for pictures in tumblr. Height can be what you want it to be. This is done image > image size (make sure the link-chain is pressed for aspect ratio)

Step 1

This is what you want your setup to look similar to. Delete locked background layer.

Steps 2 & 3

Make a new layer. It might be helpful for beginners to re-name all their layers so instead of "Layer 2" you might name this ⇢ "White fill layer or Text cover up". (doubletap layer name to change it).

Use rectangular marquee to select text you want to change. If you are just replacing a word or two you dont need to white out everything. But you could choose to cover up all if you wish. I just wanted to remove "senpai".

Steps 4 & 5

Use Paint Bucket Tool to fill in selection area with white (make sure the new layer you made is selected when you do this).

Select Text Tool. There is no need to make a new layer as once you are done typing it will become a text layer. I used CC Wild Words bold font for this for emphasis. If you do multiple lines of text use a new text layer for each line.

Step 6 - Optional Step - Highly recommended if you did multiple lines of text.

Rasterize Type by right clicking the layer. This is an optional step. I tend to do it out of habit and rasterizing lets you use the move tool to give you exact px distances between other rasterized elements but nothing we are doing requires this tbh and if you do decide to do it you can't go back and edit text.

If you did multiple text layers you cause space them out evenly using the move tool (zoom into 200%-400% if necessary to get exact pixel distances). Tip: Manga text is centered in the bubble and leaves a good distance away from the edge.

When you are done ctrl/cmd to select all text layers then right click and merge the layers. This is so incase you have to move the text layer for whatever reason they are all on one layer now, evenly spaced and you won't accidentally mess that up.

Step 7

Create an exposure layer (half filled in circle in layer bar for menu). This is important as it can lighten/darken image to make the colors we will add later pop by playing with the sliders for each setting.

Step 8

Apply exposure settings. On the right-hand side there will be 3 slider bars. The screenshot shows my settings but your settings will vary depending on the image. The one that gives the biggest benefit for manga is Gamma Correction which affects the midtones to make them lighter/darker and adds better contrast to the image so it doesn't look as muddy, often in black and white images it is easy for midtones to look muddy. Offset affects mid to dark tones of an image. Exposure affects midtones to highlights to make brighter or darker, overall use this the least. TIP: If you want to make an image brighter or darker you usually want this to apply equally to the overall image so then you would create a brightness/contrast layer instead. most manga images skew muddy and need a midtone and dark adjustment rather than highlights. the better the manga scan images the less adjustments you will need.

Step 9 - Optional

Apply a gradient map (half filled in circle in layer bar for menu). This is optional. a Gradient map adds gradient but preserves the shading in the image so essentially adds a gradient to the shading. I do this in black and white. But if you are happy with how it came out in the exposure phase you don't need to.

Step 10 & 11 -

Apply a gradient (half filled in circle in layer bar for menu). So when you add a gradient there are a ton of preset color combos you can use or you can create your own. I think this one is a preset but can't remember. I like a diagonal gradient from light to dark depending on where the light source on the image is but it is completely up to you. I tend to set the gradient angles near these 4 settings: -145, -45, 45, 145 depending on what corner I want the lighter part in.

One thing to note is brighter colors work better with a darker background. Lighter backgrounds can get washed out. One you add this as you can see it will be solid color.

*note* once this layer is applied any edits such as moving text, etc. around you want to do to the lower layers beneath it click the "eye" button to hide the gradient (same for the map) or there's a good chance it will move the gradient layers around and not the layer you want.

Change layer blending mode. By default it's set to "normal". You can play around with these. Depending on the effect you want and whether the image has darker or lighter colors will decide the blending mode. My typical blending modes are screen, overlay, hard light, vivid light or pin light. You can duplicate this gradient layer and play around with multiple settings and opacities to create something you like.

Step 12 - Optional

Add a Brightness/Contrast layer (half filled in circle in layer bar for menu). Brightness/Contrast on this step will look wildly different than if you added it right after the exposure step. It's not necessary but if you want more overall contrast or brightness then you can add it.

You can see my settings below on the sliders on the right-hand side.

Step 13

Create new layer for highlights. (also good check point to see how your layers are organized).

Step 14

Select the brush tool and ensure brush settings are a soft round brush with a hardness of 0% for the highlight effect. (if you click the brush image you can see my settings better)

Step 15

Select the dropper tool and pick a color from the gradient image. I usually pick the darkest colors available as it will have the best dodge effect for highlights. Since this is pink/redish I only have one highlight color but if you were doing a green/blue gradient you would pick the darkest from both. (ignore the purple here its not being used)

Step 16

Create highlights with brush tool. Do a few tests placements randomly around the image for positioning and then swap the blend mode to either color dodge or linear dodge. I usually do color dodge. You will get awesome highlights like below. You can play with the sizing of the brushes and opacity to decrease the effect.

Step 17 & 18

Export as PNG. Do this even if you want to make a gif as I always recommend a clean canvas for gif making. If you want to be done here and don't want a gif thats fine too. File > Export > Quick Export as PNG (do not save as jpeg/gif you will lose image quality).

Repeat for second image. You don't need to open a new file unless it helps you to not get confused. You can just make a new layer and paste your new image into that layer (if you just right click copy the file in the window/finder folder you can directly paste it into a layer in PS) and use the transform tool to resize. However you can totally just open the image in PS. The benefit of same canvas is you save yourself some time as you can just duplicate gradient layers/adjustment layers and move them. But this is kinda more advanced so if you aren't comfortable with photoshop just make a new image.

Step 18-19

Create new file/open one of the PNG in PS (more advanced can just create new layer, select image, then copy > copy merged and paste on new file for each. Otherwise open one file, create a new layer then copy the other file. The bottom later will be the first image in the gif.

Create Frame Animation on the timeline window. (if the timeline window does not appear then window > timeline) *note* if this is your first time working with the window it may be set to "create video timeline", if that's the case create it then from the frame menu (in step 23 theres an example of where this is) select "convert to frame animation".

If done correctly your setup should look like the below with two images. One for each layer and one for each frame.

MAKE SURE PROPAGATE FRAME ONE BOX IS CHECKED IN THE LAYERS WINDOW.

lmao, not to be dramatic but this ensures most effects you would add to frame 1 (which corresponds to layer 1) is applied to all frames. I'm not too sure its super vital for this super basic gif I'm showing you but its better to get in the habit of always having it checked. otherwise it will fuck you over later down the line in my next tutorial where I show how to add frames to gifs.

Step 20

Select both layers, then select both frames (ctrl/cmd) and finally select tween from the timeline window. It is the multi-faded dot option on the bar below.

Step 21

Add Frames to Tween. Tween is the fading effect adding more frames is the longer the fading effect is. I added 20 for this step, you can play around and add more or less.

Once you do that you can see 20 new frames being added onto the timeline. This will not automatically add new layers, this is fine. Frames and layers don't need to be a 1-to-1. (Another reason why propagate frame 1 needs to be checked as you can still adjust those layerless frames by adjusting frame 1's layer)

Step 22

Adding delays. Automatically the delay on every frame is at zero. But especially if you have text you want people to be able to read that so you need to add in a delay. Your delays can be in increments of 1/10th of a second. I add a 1 second delay to the first frame only.

Step 23

Select and Copy the first frame and then select the last frame and Paste. A paste window will appear in this case we want to paste after selection. I circled where the menu for frames are. (sorry used a different gif as an example so ignore everything but the circled menu)

Step 24

Adding additional delays. I add a 1 second delay to the last two frames.

Step 25

Add more Tween I added 5 frames this time as we want the transition to be much quicker to reset the image. You can see frame 23 in the previous step are now frame 28.

You can add more images in than 2 and follow these steps to add tweening.

DONE! Now to save.

Step 26

Export your gif. File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy) and the screen below should pop up. Here are the settings I use for gifs. You can play around with it but I really wouldn't lol. (again ignore image size, this is from a different gif) it will also tell you how big in file weight your gif is. This isn't something you have to worry about for something simple but the bigger the image size and the more transitions/images you use the more frames you will have. Reducing image size (make sure chain link is on like in the below) will take off more sizing then removing frames will and I would recommend that. But tumblr allows 10MB MAX per gif so just something to keep in mind.

Let me know how this was! If you have questions just drop me an ask. ❤

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Sphinxmumps Linkdump

On THURSDAY (June 20) I'm live onstage in LOS ANGELES for a recording of the GO FACT YOURSELF podcast. On FRIDAY (June 21) I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On SATURDAY (June 22) I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

Welcome to my 20th Linkdump, in which I declare link bankruptcy and discharge my link-debts by telling you about all the open tabs I didn't get a chance to cover in this week's newsletters. Here's the previous 19 installments:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Starting off this week with a gorgeous book that is also one of my favorite books: Beehive's special slipcased edition of Dante's Inferno, as translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with new illustrations by UK linocut artist Sophy Hollington:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beehivebooks/the-inferno

I've loved Inferno since middle-school, when I read the John Ciardi translation, principally because I'd just read Niven and Pournelle's weird (and politically odious) (but cracking) sf novel of the same name:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Niven_and_Pournelle_novel)

But also because Ciardi wrote "About Crows," one of my all-time favorite bits of doggerel, a poem that pierced my soul when I was 12 and continues to do so now that I'm 52, for completely opposite reasons (now there's a poem with staying power!):

https://spirituallythinking.blogspot.com/2011/10/about-crows-by-john-ciardi.html

Beehive has a well-deserved rep for making absolutely beautiful new editions of great public domain books, each with new illustrations and intros, all in matching livery to make a bookshelf look classy af. I have several of them and I've just ordered my copy of Inferno. How could I not? So looking forward to this, along with its intro by Ukrainian poet Ilya Kaminsky and essay by Dante scholar Kristina Olson.

The Beehive editions show us how a rich public domain can be the soil from which new and inspiring creative works sprout. Any honest assessment of a creator's work must include the fact that creativity is a collective act, both inspired by and inspiring to other creators, past, present and future.

One of the distressing aspects of the debate over the exploitative grift of AI is that it's provoked a wave of copyright maximalism among otherwise thoughtful artists, despite the fact that a new copyright that lets you control model training will do nothing to prevent your boss from forcing you to sign over that right in your contracts, training an AI on your work, and then using the model as a pretext to erode your wages or fire your ass:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

Same goes for some privacy advocates, whose imaginations were cramped by the fact that the only regulation we enforce on the internet is copyright, causing them to forget that privacy rights can exist separate from the nonsensical prospect of "owning" facts about your life:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/the-internets-original-sin/

We should address AI's labor questions with labor rights, and we should address AI's privacy questions with privacy rights. You can tell that these are the approaches that would actually work for the public because our bosses hate these approaches and instead insist that the answer is just giving us more virtual property that we can sell to them, because they know they'll have a buyer's market that will let them scoop up all these rights at bargain prices and use the resulting hoards to torment, immiserate and pauperize us.

Take Clearview AI, a facial recognition tool created by eugenicists and white nationalists in order to help giant corporations and militarized, unaccountable cops hunt us by our faces:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/20/steal-your-face/#hoan-ton-that

Clearview scraped billions of images of our faces and shoveled them into their model. This led to a class action suit in Illinois, which boasts America's best biometric privacy law, under which Clearview owes tens of billions of dollars in statutory damages. Now, Clearview has offered a settlement that illustrates neatly the problem with making privacy into property that you can sell instead of a right that can't be violated: they're going to offer Illinoisians a small share of the company's stock:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/14/clearview_ai_reaches_creative_settlement/

To call this perverse is to go a grave injustice to good, hardworking perverts. The sums involved will be infinitesimal, and the only way to make those sums really count is for everyone in Illinois to root for Clearview to commit more grotesque privacy invasions of the rest of us to make its creepy, terrible product more valuable.

Worse still: by crafting a bespoke, one-off, forgiveness-oriented regulation specifically for Clearview, we ensure that it will continue, but that it will also never be disciplined by competitors. That is, rather than banning this kind of facial recognition tech, we grant them a monopoly over it, allowing them to charge all the traffic will bear.

We're in an extraordinary moment for both labor and privacy rights. Two of Biden's most powerful agency heads, Lina Khan and Rohit Chopra have made unprecedented use of their powers to create new national privacy regulations:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

In so doing, they're bypassing Congressional deadlock. Congress has not passed a new consumer privacy law since 1988, when they banned video-store clerks from leaking your VHS rental history to newspaper reporters:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

Congress hasn't given us a single law protecting American consumers from the digital era's all-out assault on our privacy. But between the agencies, state legislatures, and a growing coalition of groups demanding action on privacy, a new federal privacy law seems all but assured:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

When that happens, we're going to have to decide what to do about products created through mass-scale privacy violations, like Clearview AI – but also all of OpenAI's products, Google's AI, Facebook's AI, Microsoft's AI, and so on. Do we offer them a deal like the one Clearview's angling for in Illinois, fining them an affordable sum and grandfathering in the products they built by violating our rights?

Doing so would give these companies a permanent advantage, and the ongoing use of their products would continue to violate billions of peoples' privacy, billions of times per day. It would ensure that there was no market for privacy-preserving competitors thus enshrining privacy invasion as a permanent aspect of our technology and lives.

There's an alternative: "model disgorgement." "Disgorgement" is the legal term for forcing someone to cough up something they've stolen (for example, forcing an embezzler to give back the money). "Model disgorgement" can be a legal requirement to destroy models created illegally:

https://iapp.org/news/a/explaining-model-disgorgement

It's grounded in the idea that there's no known way to unscramble the AI eggs: once you train a model on data that shouldn't be in it, you can't untrain the model to get the private data out of it again. Model disgorgement doesn't insist that offending models be destroyed, but it shifts the burden of figuring out how to unscramble the AI omelet to the AI companies. If they can't figure out how to get the ill-gotten data out of the model, then they have to start over.

This framework aligns everyone's incentives. Unlike the Clearview approach – move fast, break things, attain an unassailable, permanent monopoly thanks to a grandfather exception – model disgorgement makes AI companies act with extreme care, because getting it wrong means going back to square one.

This is the kind of hard-nosed, public-interest-oriented rulemaking we're seeing from Biden's best anti-corporate enforcers. After decades kid-glove treatment that allowed companies like Microsoft, Equifax, Wells Fargo and Exxon commit ghastly crimes and then crime again another day, Biden's corporate cops are no longer treating the survival of massive, structurally important corporate criminals as a necessity.

It's been so long since anyone in the US government treated the corporate death penalty as a serious proposition that it can be hard to believe it's even happening, but boy is it happening. The DOJ Antitrust Division is seeking to break up Google, the largest tech company in the history of the world, and they are tipped to win:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

And that's one of the major suits against Google that Big G is losing. Another suit, jointly brought by the feds and dozens of state AGs, is just about to start, despite Google's failed attempt to get the suit dismissed:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-loses-bid-end-us-antitrust-case-over-digital-advertising-2024-06-14/

I'm a huge fan of the Biden antitrust enforcers, but that doesn't make me a huge fan of Biden. Even before Biden's disgraceful collaboration in genocide, I had plenty of reasons – old and new – to distrust him and deplore his politics. I'm not the only leftist who's struggling with the dilemma posed by the worst part of Biden's record in light of the coming election.

You've doubtless read the arguments (or rather, "arguments," since they all generate a lot more heat than light and I doubt whether any of them will convince anyone). But this week, Anand Giridharadas republished his 2020 interview with Noam Chomsky about Biden and electoral politics, and I haven't been able to get it out of my mind:

https://the.ink/p/free-noam-chomsky-life-voting-biden-the-left

Chomsky contrasts the left position on politics with the liberal position. For leftists, Chomsky says, "real politics" are a matter of "constant activism." It's not a "laser-like focus on the quadrennial extravaganza" of national elections, after which you "go home and let your superiors take over."

For leftists, politics means working all the time, "and every once in a while there's an event called an election." This should command "10 or 15 minutes" of your attention before you get back to the real work.

This makes the voting decision more obvious and less fraught for Chomsky. There's "never been a greater difference" between the candidates, so leftists should go take 15 minutes, "push the lever, and go back to work."

Chomsky attributed the good parts of Biden's 2020 platform to being "hammered on by activists coming out of the Sanders movement and other." That's the real work, that hammering. That's "real politics."

For Chomsky, voting for Biden isn't support for Biden. It's "support for the activists who have been at work constantly, creating the background within the party in which the shifts took place, and who have followed Sanders in actually entering the campaign and influencing it. Support for them. Support for real politics."

Chomsky tells us that the self-described "masters of the universe" understand that something has changed: "the peasants are coming with their pitchforks." They have all kinds of euphemisms for this ("reputational risks") but the core here is a winner-take-all battle for the future of the planet and the species. That's why the even the "sensible" ultra-rich threw in for Trump in 2016 and 2020, and why they're backing him even harder in 2024:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckvvlv3lewxo

Chomsky tells us not to bother trying to figure out Biden's personality. Instead, we should focus on "how things get done." Biden won't do what's necessary to end genocide and preserve our habitable planet out of conviction, but he may do so out of necessity. Indeed, it doesn't matter how he feels about anything – what matters is what we can make him do.

Chomksy himself is in his 90s and his health is reportedly in terminal decline, so this is probably the only word we'll get from him on this issue:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/1aj56hj/updates_on_noams_health_from_his_longtime_mit/

The link between concentrated wealth, concentrated power, and the existential risks to our species and civilization is obvious – to me, at least. Any time a tiny minority holds unaccountable power, they will end up using it to harm everyone except themselves. I'm not the first one to take note of this – it used to be a commonplace in American politics.

Back in 1936, FDR gave a speech at the DNC, accepting their nomination for president. Unlike FDR's election night speech ("I welcome their hatred"), this speech has been largely forgotten, but it's a banger:

https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/acceptance-speech-at-the-democratic-national-convention-1936/

In that speech, Roosevelt brought a new term into our political parlance: "economic royalists." He described the American plutocracy as the spiritual descendants of the hereditary nobility that Americans had overthrown in 1776. The English aristocracy "governed without the consent of the governed" and “put the average man’s property and the average man’s life in pawn to the mercenaries of dynastic power":

Roosevelt said that these new royalists conquered the nation's economy and then set out to seize its politics, backing candidates that would create "a new despotism wrapped in the robes of legal sanction…an industrial dictatorship."

As David Dayen writes in The American Prospect, this has strong parallels to today's world, where "Silicon Valley, Big Oil, and Wall Street come together to back a transactional presidential candidate who promises them specific favors, after reducing their corporate taxes by 40 percent the last time he was president":

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-06-14-speech-fdr-would-give/

Roosevelt, of course, went on to win by a landslide, wiping out the Republicans despite the endless financial support of the ruling class.

The thing is, FDR's policies didn't originate with him. He came from the uppermost of the American upper crust, after all, and famously refused to define the "New Deal" even as he campaigned on it. The "New Deal" became whatever activists in the Democratic Party's left could force him to do, and while it was bold and transformative, it wasn't nearly enough.

The compromise FDR brokered within the Democratic Party froze out Black Americans to a terrible degree. Writing for the Institute for Local Self Reliance, Ron Knox and Susan Holmberg reveal the long shadow cast by that unforgivable compromise:

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/045dcde7333243df9b7f4ed8147979cd

They describe how redlining – the formalization of anti-Black racism in New Deal housing policy – led to the ruin of Toledo's once-thriving Dorr Street neighborhood, a "Black Wall Street" where a Black middle class lived and thrived. New Deal policies starved the neighborhood of funds, then ripped it in two with a freeway, sacrificing it and the people who lived in it.

But the story of Dorr Street isn't over. As Knox and Holmberg write, the people of Dorr Street never gave up on their community, and today, there's an awful lot of Chomsky's "constant activism" that is painstakingly bringing the community back, inch by aching inch. The community is locked in a guerrilla war against the same forces that the Biden antitrust enforcers are fighting on the open field of battle. The work that activists do to drag Democratic Party policies to the left is critical to making reparations for the sins of the New Deal – and for realizing its promise for everybody.

In my lifetime, there's never been a Democratic Party that represented my values. The first Democratic President of my life, Carter, kicked off Reaganomics by beginning the dismantling of America's antitrust enforcement, in the mistaken belief that acting like a Republican would get Democrats to vote for him again. He failed and delivered Reagan, whose Reaganomics were the official policy of every Democrat since, from Clinton ("end welfare as we know it") to Obama ("foam the runways for the banks").

In other words, I don't give a damn about Biden, but I am entirely consumed with what we can force his administration to do, and there are lots of areas where I like our chances.

For example: getting Biden's IRS to go after the super-rich, ending the impunity for elite tax evasion that Spencer Woodman pitilessly dissects in this week's superb investigation for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists:

https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2024/06/how-the-irs-went-soft-on-billionaires-and-corporate-tax-cheats/

Ending elite tax cheating will make them poorer, and that will make them weaker, because their power comes from money alone (they don't wield power because their want to make us all better off!).

Or getting Biden's enforcers to continue their fight against the monopolists who've spiked the prices of our groceries even as they transformed shopping into a panopticon, so that their business is increasingly about selling our data to other giant corporations, with selling food to us as an afterthought:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-12-war-in-the-aisles/

For forty years, since the Carter administration, we've been told that our only power comes from our role as "consumers." That's a word that always conjures up one of my favorite William Gibson quotes, from 2003's Idoru:

Something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.

The normie, corporate wing of the Democratic Party sees us that way. They decry any action against concentrated corporate power as "anti-consumer" and insist that using the law to fight against corporate power is a waste of our time:

https://www.thesling.org/sorry-matt-yglesias-hipster-antitrust-does-not-mean-the-abandonment-of-consumers-but-it-does-mean-new-ways-to-protect-workers-2/

But after giving it some careful thought, I'm with Chomsky on this, not Yglesias. The election is something we have to pay some attention to as activists, but only "10 or 15 minutes." Yeah, "push the lever," but then "go back to work." I don't care what Biden wants to do. I care what we can make him do.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/15/disarrangement/#credo-in-un-dio-crudel

Image: Jim's Photo World (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/jimsphotoworld/5360343644/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[sassylegshayne]

marry me, idiot.

AH ITS HERE!!!! I will say, like I've been saying, I'm still in the really early stages of this fic. like this has been edited twice where as every chapter of sylcd is done three times over so. I really have no clue when the next chapter will be out as I haven't finished it yet; might be during sylcd's final chapters or it might be after. 3.2k words let me know what you guys think!! enjoy mwah xx

series masterlist

"Okay, we have a slight issue." You heard the voice beside you clear as day despite the headphones that sat over your ears.

"Is the issue something you caused for us?" You turned to your best friend with a brow quirked.

"That's extremely rude but very true, yes." Spencer nodded as he took a sip from his cup, spinning his chair to face you. Spence and you had been close for a while, you joining the crew only a few months after Spence had, the two of you spending countless hours editing beside each other. The two of you grew close after a couple of longer projects. The two of you leaning on each other for advice and well needed breaks from time to time.

It has become a joke around the office about Spencer being your work husband; he had a knack for picking you up an drink on his way in, or grabbing lunch for the both of you, or Spencer's ability to pause anything he was working on at the snap of a finger for you. He was pretty much head over heels for you, and you were the only one blind enough to not see it. It's funny to think that you felt the same exact way, and everyone but Spencer could tell.

"So, remember when we started here and we became friends and we made that joke about when we turned thirty."

You stared blankly back at your best friend, the joke about marrying if you're both still single by thirty a distant memory in your mind by this point. It crossed your mind once recently. Last year, you spent your entire 'Dirty Thirty' party that the office threw for you clinging to Spencer.

You made a habit of keeping him alongside you for every big moment of your life since you'd met. You wanted to look back on these moments, that were destined to be great already, to include Spencer.

"Okay, so you do remember, that's great." Spencer clapped his hands together as he grinned at you.

"I saw a TikTok about the wedding gifts you get from inviting companies and rich people, even if you don't know them and I want in!" Spence argued, wiping his sweaty palms off on his pants as he worked his way towards the problem with this rambling explanation.

"I think it's unfair that just because two people are getting married they get to have all that stuff. With all my info had, I made some quick wedding invitations and sent some out, fully expecting PR packages to come back." He trailed off as

"Charles Spencer," You quietly chastised, wanting to not believe a word he was saying, but knowing deep down that Spencer was being truthful. "You are insane, I can't believe you did that!"

"T'm sorry, okay. Listen, Y/N, I thought it was gonna be a funny joke to give you a bunch of fake wedding gifts for our fake wedding on your real birthday! I didn't expect people to accept, but I know that is my fault for inviting some people that actually agreed."

"Charles," You started, using his legal name yet again. He wasn't usually worried about you using it, it wasn't some secret he was keeping it anything, but the tone in your voice told him that you weren't happy at all. "Who all accepted?"

"I'm sorry, I know I'm never gonna say that enough, but it was only a few people!" Spencer knew his voice was just getting higher and higher the more you two spoke, his anxiety spiking.

"Yes, okay, Rhett and Link accepted," A gasp left you as Spencer cringed, knowing his mistake. "Kathy Bates politely declined but sent an autographed headshot!" He removed the framed photo from his backpack before setting it beside your monitor.

He grinned worriedly, gesturing towards it as you let your forehead meet the desk, groaning.

"Besides the people that own the company we work for, who else said yes?" You asked through gritted teeth as Spencer looked to his phone, finding the note that held his list.

"Rapid fire, Tana Mongeau, Carrot Top, and Rob Schneider. It's not that many people, Y/N, we can just call it off." Spencer placed his hand on your back, rubbing softly as you groaned again, completely shocked by just how royally fucked this whole thing was gonna turn out to be no matter what you did.

"I'm so, so sorry, Y/N but. will you marry me?"

"emergency meeting at my desk in ten please need advice bc Spencer's an idiot"

"That's was very rude and I am plenty offended." Spencer quipped, setting his phone down on his desk after reading the group chat message you'd sent out. You shot him a glare, all argued out for the day after spending the last hour trying to convince Spence to let you tell your friends, hoping they'd help you figure out the story you'd make up in place of a wedding.

He finally caved, feeling terrible about the mess he had drug you into, allowing you to explore different ways out of this mess. In no time, Courtney, Damien and Shayne accompanied the two of you at your desks, various stolen chairs offering comfort to your friends.

"What did Spencer do now?" Damien asked, causing Spence to scoff and shake his head.

"I'm starting to get upset that everyone just assumes that I really fucked something up this bad." He defended himself as he leaned back in his chair, practically able to hear your eyes rolling.

"You did, though. You lied to people and now we're getting married." You stayed simply, eyes wide as you began to argue with your future better half yet again.

"You're already my work wife, we're pretty much married." You rolled your eyes once as Spencer countered you, reaching his hand towards your mug of coffee, being stopped as you lightly slapped at him.

"l'm sorry, I don't know if l'm missing something and everyone else is up to speed but, uh, when did y'all get together long enough to lead to getting married?" Shayne questioned, pulling your attention from Spencer as you took in the looks from those around you.

Damien's face held a mix of confusion and excitement, Courtney was rendered speechless and it seems like Shayne was using every last braincell he had to piece together this puzzle.

"Okay, phew, wow, that is what this meeting is about, honey." Spencer cooed as he grinned goofily at you, wrapping your left hand in his as he held your palm to his chest.

You tried your best to hid the smile that so desperately wanted to grace your lips, taking a deep breath as you closed your eyes, the feeling of a migraine quickly approaching.

You took your time explaining through the story, Spencer chiming in when needed but mostly stuck to nodding along as you spoke.

"Spencer," Damien pointed his index finger at the shorter man, both with brows raised at each other. "You're an idiot, my guy. Why did Rhett and Link seem like a good idea? Why did any of this seem like a good idea, but especially our bosses."

You sighed, resting your head in the palm of your hand as you awoke your monitor. You sat up as an email sat at the top of your inbox labeled important.

"Congratulations to Y/N and Spencer!"

You couldn't tell how long you spent staring at the desktop, the company wide email from the Mythical Management staring directly back. The noise of your friends chatter drown out as the words in the letter repeated over and over in your mind.

You had to go through with this, or you had to hide behind the arrangement and a shitty excuse of a prank. No other options popped into your head.

"Y/N? You okay?" A warm, familiar hand rested on your shoulder, giving you a gentle squeeze.

Spencer's eyes worriedly searched your face as his brow furrowed at your slumped frame. His gaze followed you, his heart sinking as he Scanned over the email.

"I'm so fucking sorry, Y/N..." He trailed off, running a hand through his hair as he leaned back once more.

The other three moved, all looking over your shoulders to read the message. Gasps and murmurs broke out between them as they say back down.

Your small group sat in silence for a moment. You thought you'd have more time to find a solution, a couple of days at least, but now you couldn't leave this room without some semblance of a plan.

"Let's get married." You still sat with a blank stare at the computer, your mind running a million miles a minute. You slowy explained your thoughts as thoroughly as you could.

Spencer and you were known as each other work spouses, even fans making memes about it. The two of you have talked about the agreement in the podcast, on an episode of Board AF, and in an upcoming reddit video with Shayne.

The fans always reacted well when the two of you were together, engaging with the content. There's countless edits of the two of you, even with the small amounts of videos you've been in together.

You can blame it on the arrangement you'd made, pull lan and a few of the other higher ups aside, presenting the idea.

Spencer and you would get married; you could make the content last up until next April, as planning a fake wedding would take some time anyways. That would mean an announcement video, probably a celebratory video with others in cast, even the process of picking out different parts of the wedding for Pit videos if they really wanted to milk it. Maybe even a TNTL gauntlet with your bridesmaids and groomsmen.

The one thing you wanted to thank Spencer for was the convenience of sharing one braincell. You could release the wedding video, the big finale in which the joke is revealed to the audience, playing it up as a fake relationship until April 1st. Spencer had thought it was funny to put the wedding date on the invitations as April Fool's Day, but it worked perfectly.

You took a deep breath, nodding your head as your eyes darted around your friends, anxious for their thoughts.

Spencer quickly wrapped his arms around your shoulders, kissing your forehead before he grinned at you.

"You are a fucking genius, lan's gonna love this idea. We can say we were prepping for the video, getting our invitation letters together accidentally sent it out. We can use whatever stuff we get as presents for the bogus invites for another video, too." Spencer added, looking to his friends as he chewed on his lip.

"I hate how quickly the two of you worked this out. We weren't needed." Shayne laughed softly, shrugging his shoulders.

"So it's not a stupid plan?" You asked, quickly distracted as the office door opens, lan's head peaking inside.

You lock eyes, offering him an awkward smile. He entered, coughing softly as he stuffed his hands in his pockets.

"Hey, uhm, can I talk to you guys in a little bit? Probably like twenty minutes, in the conference room." lan spoke, a tight lipped smile on his face as he looked between you and the man seated beside you.

You felt a pit in your stomach growing rapidly as you swallowed, nodding your head. This was horrific, it felt like you had disappointed your dad but he wouldn't admit it yet.

And the conferernce room? There was no doubt in your mind that if this wasn't happening in lan's office then it would be bigger than you expected. Lisa would have to be there, maybe Daniel, if they were that concerned; Rachel would probably be forced into it, no matter how much she wouldn't want to be involved. n nodded before promptly exiting, barely acknowledging the cast members.

You groaned loudly as the door shut, Spencer copying you.

"This sucks and I hate you." You shoved at his shoulder, huffing.

He rubbed his arm, pouting a bit.

"It does and I hate me too." He chuckled as a smile appeared on your soft lips.

Spencer felt like the boundaries between the two of you were figured out very early on, never set prematurely, always discovered naturally. Kissing your cheek was okay, forehead was okay, drunkenly kissing your neck was okay sometimes. Hand holding was very normal and platonic and something you two did constantly. Cuddling and spending the night together was normal, but you two wouldn't sleep in the same bed.

He knew that, so far, this system had worked If that didn't happen soon, things might get nuddy, feelings getting involved. Spencer knew his feelings on you, he had since about two years into your friendship.

For six years now, he's known just how much he cares about you with every fiber of his being. He knows he really would do anything for you, anything to be with you. He respected every boundary you set.

Spencer had a thing for constantly taking advantage of the things he could have. You were always greeted with some sort of kiss, never once on the lips. Your fingers laced well with his, especially when you were on his left side. He constantly sat close beside you, tossing an arm around your shoulders, resting a hand on your knee, giving your thigh a gentle joy in excitement.

Spencer yearned for you for so long that he'd learned to accept it. He didn't want to cut you out of his life to get over his feelings, he cared too much about you, so his only option was to accept his feelings and keep close to you. You two were best friends, where one was, the other wasn't far behind. You loved him, so fucking much you loved him. He knew this, but he also knew that you didn't love him in the way he wanted you to.

Your group is quick to disband, giving the two of you some space before your meeting. Spencer let the two of you sit in silence before he decided to pack his bag for the day, despite it barely even starting. He could feel your eyes on him, his back to you.

"Packing because figure they're gonna send us home today, no matter what they decide. Give them time to think it all over." You smiled, enjoying just how well he knew you. His words settled in, prompting you to follow suit.

As you zipped your bag shut, it hit you that in just a few minutes before you were supposed to face the consequences of your best friends well intended actions. It was a toss up over which of you was more nervous, the both of you with pounding hearts.

"I love you, dude." You mumbled as you wrapped your arms around Spencer's waist, sighing softly.

"I love you, too, dude." He chuckled, rubbing your back as he kissed your forehead.

"C'mon, champ, let's go knock 'em dead." Spencer winked as he held the door open for you. You took a deep breath before leaving you little editing room bubble.

The room was much, much more packed than either of you had expected it to be. The people you expected to be there were indeed, but alongside them sat Kiana, Selina, and Lizzy.

Spencer thanked his lucky stars when neither Rhett nor Link joined the lot of you. He found himself sitting back a bit, allowing you to take the reigns of explaining your bullshit reasoning for the situation you'd found yourselves in.

Three hours, three scarily long hours later and you finally stood from your chair, your feet tingling and your head pounding. Spencer and you said your polite goodbyes to everyone before heading back toward your office.

"I think that was fine." You stated, arms crossed as you stare down the hall ahead.

He chuckled, nudging his shoulder into yours.

"That went really well, you heard Daniel. It's gotta go through if he liked it that much. It's gonna work out."

You nodded your head, a smile tugging on your lips as you both grabbed your bags.

"Wanna hangout or, uh, give me a ride home? Shayne drove me this morning." Spencer smiled heepishly as he followed you into the parking lot.

"If I'm your fiancee now, I think you should tell me if there's something going on between the two of you." You poked as you both got into your car.

You scooted your chair away from your desktop as you rubbed your eyes, now realizing just how long you'd been sat starting at your screen playing Minecraft with Spencer.

You smiled softly, feeling a tug at your heart at the sight before you. He sat slumped into your couch, eyes focused and brow furrowed as you cat napped on top of the cushion behind him.

Craig and Spencer had a love hate relationship, both of them usually eager for your attention at the same time, causing them to butt heads. Your cat and your best friend were both horribly stubborn.

But then there'd be moments like this, or when Craig curls up with Spencer on your couch, or when he follows Spence through your own house, even if you're still right where your kitty left you.

You stretch, taking off your headphones as you rise and stretch, catching Spence glancing over at you, smiling softly.

"Oh shit, you're still here?" You questioned as you walked past the couch, heading into your kitchen, yawning softly. You check your watch, catching it at just past five in the afternoon.

Spencer chuckled, watching as his eyes followed your every move as you danced around your small kitchen, seemingly opening every cabinet to find what you needed.

"Check your email, Charmander." You mindlessly called out to him, the nickname leaving him to roll his eyes as he dug into his pocket.

"You are the absolute worst with nicknames, need you to know that. Just call me Charles at this point." He laughed as you flipped him off as you turn, spoon in your mouth.

You join him on your couch with two peanut butter and banana sandwiches on one plate, sitting it on the space between you. Spencer nods a thanks to you as he grabbed his, taping your sandwiches together as a toast.

He loads into his email, refreshing it as you take your first bite. His wide eyes cause you a bit of stress, making you sit up straight.

"Good or bad?"

"Uh, good, I think. My schedule got changed." Spencer quickly switched over to his calendar, it had to be good; they don't just switch the schedule halfway through the month.

His eyes scanned over the new or changed parts, reading the first one he saw.

'Engagement Shoot' scheduled for tomorrow at 10AM.

"We did it, Joe." Spencer turns to you with a grin, quickly pulling you into a tight hug. You groaned and rolled your eyes, before quickly squealing as you wrapped your arms around him, bouncing in your seat.

They got what they wanted, right?

[thatincorrectquotegeneratorguy]

IT HAS ARRIVED.

The big generator update is HERE!

This isn't just a huge visual makeover, it also comes with:

Copy buttons that will auto-format your quote for your desired medium (Discord, HTML, or the raw text of the quote itself)

An inbuilt darkmode

Input saving (it keeps your inputs including quote preferences, names, and visual settings)

And more stuff beneath the read more line cause I'd feel bad listing the more boring stuff without it!

Less exciting updates include:

Edited preference selection to remove any chances of accidentally disabling all possible quotes with your settings

Added a clear data button to fix any odd input-saving errors (which is included primarily for if the visual settings toggles somehow get out of sync with what the actual visual settings are)

Added buttons linking to the help page of this blog to help make the option to submit quotes and report bugs more obvious to new users

Edited site for better mobile compatability (though I've only had the chance to test it on one mobile device, so there is a possibility that it didn't work out as well as I suspected it would)

Changes swear censor characters to discord-compatible characters

Implemented some behind-the-scenes streamlining to help make quote selection easier on the device (to help compensate for some of the additional processing added in the rest of this update)

Defaulted the number of people to "any"

[the-24-7-lawlu-library]

Hello!

I have a trip in a few days and I need some longfics to help me survive, do you have any recs?

Hello there! I hope we are not too late with answering. Of course we can't leave you alone in this! Here are some recs:

I’d Forgotten How Nice Romance Was, Then You Reminded Me by Living4LifesSake (M)

At forty-four years old, Luffy was content with the way things were. Sure his life hadn't exactly gone like he had originally thought it would, but it was fine. He had a good job, a cute dog, a whole gang of awesome friends, a supportive family; things were great. He was fine with being single. Then, one fateful night, he got sat by a handsome man at a bar. And suddenly, everything changed. A story where Law and Luffy learn that you’re never too old to have a whirlwind romance.

Lead Me Back to Suffering by Purplehairedwonder (M) [non-con, includes Doflamingo/Law]

In the wake of Kaido's fall, Law is kidnapped from the shores of Wano.

Inhuman Potential by Sydneyxface (E) [Blood and Gore]

Dr. Trafalgar Law has seen many wild and surprising things come across his table as a pathologist, but nothing compares to one of his decedents waking from the dead - and thirsty for his blood. And so Law befriends (and beds) a vampire named Luffy and is pulled into the chaos that surrounds him - which involves cracking a case of missing people supposedly being used as slave labor for the elites of the world... the Celestial Dragons. Alternate Universe - Modern day, 2023.

Not a Ball or a Chain by HollowIsTheWorld (T) [AU-Modern]

Trafalgar Law grew up hoping he would be one of the handful of people to never develop a soulmate mark. Now that that hasn't panned out, however, he's willing to settle for just never meeting them. Unfortunately for him, Monkey D. Luffy is a hard person to avoid.

At the End of the Day by Artificial_Starlight (M) [Edit: we corrected the link]

It was such a simple thing to get worked up about, he knew, and maybe it was because he's so removed from normal social interaction that the idea of new friends coming into his life only bothered him. He only needed the three - they gave him enough trouble! They already bugged him enough to hang out, already caused drama that he was dragged into, already teased him about his idiosyncrasies... They already knew about his issues; spent years around his ever changing moods as he tried to be less angry, less scared, less obsessive. They already tried with mixed results to help him sleep, heal, and trust. He didn't need anyone else getting that close. However, as he began to walk away, he couldn't help but believe that not taking Straw-hat's words seriously would be a mistake.

the thing that remains by tciddaemina (M)

He'd had a plan. Destroy the SAD manufacture plant, destroy the SMILE factory... A kidnapping here, a bit of extortion there. Simple, at least by Law's standards. The Straw Hats had been a surprise, but a manageable one. Doflamingo would submit to their demands, sealing his own fate, or they'd destroy the factory and Kaidou would finish the job for them. He'd had a plan. Now Law doesn't know what's going on, but its definitely not the plan.

Boyfriend's Duties by martilla (E)

“Good evening,” Law said calmly. “I am looking for…” he looked down at the medical chart in his hands. “Monkey D. Luffy.” The boy on the bed smiled immediately when he heard his name, a curious and excited look in his eyes. “That’s me!” He shouted out. “Are you the doctor? They said that they were sending a doctor before dinner and I am really hungry, so if you are the doctor this means that I am gonna eat soon!” The two men in the room groaned at that sentence and Law felt taken aback by the enthusiasm of the guy. He was either stupid or not aware of the gravity of his injury, if his only thought was dinner. “Yes, I am the surgeon that will operate on you,” he answered. “My name is Trafalgar Law.” * Law is a surgeon who needs some light in his life. Then Luffy happens.

-Mod Raiya

[yours-the-author]

Super Danganronpa: Goodbye Despair Extended Zodiac: My Thoughts

Hey gamers, I'm back on my weird fixation again. Time to buckle up, 'cause we're doing more zodiac shenanigans for the dangan-boys and dangan-girls! I've explained the concept several times now, so you probably don't need me to do it again.

In fact, I think I'll include links to the previous posts I made on this topic, as well as the V3 edition whenever that gets done in the future. I'm going to put it above the Keep Reading line, in case you want to avoid scrolling through spoilers. Here they are:

Trigger Happy Havoc

Masterminds

Goodbye Despair (You are here!)

Killing Harmony

Enough of that now; let's get started! Danganronpa spoilers inbound!

Hajime Hinata - January 1

Capries - Sign of the Bold (Capricorn, Derse, Time)

Born on the first day of the year, Hajime is a Capricorn! Capricorns do everything they can to achieve their goal, no matter how hard they have to work. They can also be selective about who they share their goals with, especially if, logically, they know it's not the best plan.

This is Hajime to a T, especially in the Despair Arc of the anime. He's worked hard to become a student of Hope's Peak Academy, even if he can only attend as a Reserve Course student, but that's not enough: he wants to be talented, to be a true and accepted Ultimate at the academy, and he's willing to make tough decisions in order to reach that dream... namely, a lot of terrible decisions. He throws away who he is as a person to become a talent lab rat, which in turn leads to the events that causes the Biggest Most Awful Most Tragic Event in Human History. The one person he shared his goals with was Chiaki, and and though he likely knew her advice was sound, he wouldn't give up. Or maybe he couldn't?

Next is Lunar Sway, and I chose Derse for Hajime. Skeptical, introverted, and an inherent need to rebel against the system of Talented vs Untalented by becoming talented through artificial means; Hajime's pretty cut and dry. It can also be hard for him to appreciate the present moment, as seen in the prologue of Goodbye Despair where he refuses to join the others in enjoying the beach. And, of course, by the time he feels ready to participate, the Killing Game begins. His Derse traits fit here quite nicely, too.

Next comes his aspect, which was a bit of a difficult decision, but I eventually ended up with Time (other choices were blood, doom, and heart, surprisingly). Time players feel a constant struggle in their lives, literal or metaphorical, and if that isn't Hajime Hinata's life story right there, I don't know what is. His lack of talent, and the self-esteem issues that stem from that, make life quite difficult for Hajime. Despite working hard and paying a lot of money, he's "only" a Reserve Course student (which has always felt weird to me? Like, there's a huge tuition fee and massive tests and exams in order to get in; they may not be Ultimates, but they're definitely talented). Not only does this wear away at his emotional stability, but there's that one scene in the anime where a teacher beats him up when he tries to enter the main campus! Who knows how many times that happened offscreen! Also like a Time player, Hajime is a relentless problem solver (makes sense, since he's a protagonist) AND impulsive. Seriously, none of the adults in his personal life (parents or guardians) nixed the thought of Hajime doing the Hope Cultivation Project? Not one? He's either a good liar or he has even more struggles than I realized.

Lastly, his word: the Bold. I wasn't sure about this one at first; Hajime can certainly be courageous when he needs to be, but confident? Only if the class trial demands it. The key that made me chose this word, though, was the fact that he's very willing to take risks. I don't know the full extent of how he became a lab rat, but there must have been some discussion of risks, even if they were downplayed considerably. It didn't matter to Hajime, though. No matter what price he'd have to pay, fiscally or physically, he would do anything to become an Ultimate student. And he did.

---

Chiaki Nanami - March 14

Pimino - Sign of the Empathetic (Pisces, Prospit, Doom)

Interesting fact, apparently Chiaki shares the same birthday as Chihiro Fujisaki from THH, which makes them both Pisces! We're only going to talk about Chiaki today, though.

Pisces people often have an enigmatic and otherworldly quality about them, though a lot of that is because they like to daydream and get lost in their own thoughts. Chiaki's quiet but rational nature is often hidden by her tendency to sleep standing up and focus on her videogames, and, as it turns out in Goodbye Despair, there IS something otherworldly about her: she isn't human! Even when she was still alive, her kindness to and friendship with Hajime stuck around even after he became Izuru, and though he didn't remember who she was, she managed to do something quite enigmatic: she made him cry at her death. Alive or not, Chiaki has something special about her that suits a Pisces perfectly.

For Lunar Sway, I gave Chiaki Prospit, which may seem a bit odd, but hear me out. While it's true she's more introverted and less likely to make huge reactions, like a Derse dreamer would be, that's just because that's her honest personality. Prospit dreamers don't always have control over how they present themselves to the world; they exist as they are, even if they're naturally quiet people. Prospit dreamers also have difficulty with deception. Though Chiaki physically couldn't reveal her role as the "traitor" in Goodbye Despair, she didn't do much to keep it a secret, either. She willingly put her student handbook on Nagito's bomb, which he claimed could only be done by the traitor, and once the purpose of Nagito's death was revealed, Chiaki desperately did her best to reveal what she was so that the others could survive. Very Prospit-like, in her own way.

Doom players "are fate's chosen sufferers." Given all the horrible things Chiaki goes through in both the anime and Goodbye Despair, this one's pretty straightforward. And while she might not be able to directly help someone in trouble, she's a very willing sounding board for anyone who needs to vent (namely Hajime). She puts the company in "misery loves company", with the wisdom, kindness, and non-judgmental attitude to go with it.

Finally, Chiaki's word: the Empathetic. This plays off of a lot of what I already said, but it's further proven with her death in the anime: despite actively dying in a super painful way, she cries because she's worried about her classmates and Hajime. She wants nothing more to live so they can all be friends and play videogames together. She knows the impact she has on her classmates and the respect and care they have for her, so she knows her death will leave a terrible impact and she worries what the aftermath will look like for them. Sadly, it was probably worse than she thought it would be.

---

Nagito Komaeda - April 28

Taurius - Sign of the Unmapped (Taurus, Derse, Hope)

Born on either the rainiest day of April or the driest April in years (depending on his luck), Nagito is a Taurus!

This... probably seems like an odd choice for Nagito. It certainly felt that way to me at first, since Taurus' are typically openhearted and withdrawn. Much like Byakuya from THH, though, it all comes down to stubbornness. Nagito is one of the most stubborn characters in the series, tying himself to the powers of Hope and Talent even when no one else sees things his way. Despite how close he acted with Hajime before the fourth class trial, the second he found out Hajime didn't have a talent, Hajime became dirt beneath his shoe. I wonder to myself how much of that was Nagito's honest feelings or just his strict adherence to his code of Hope; especially considering his special episode in the anime, where he wakes up from the NEO World Program with Hajime/Izuru's help. His deepest desire seems to be a world without talent (and by extension, a world without separation of talented and talentless), but he's quick to deny such a concept when he awakens. Is he stubbornly against talentless people for real, or is it simply a way of thinking he can't let go of? Who knows?

Next, the Lunar Sway: Nagito's fairly clearly a Derse dreamer. Nagito is acts very humble- often to an annoying degree- but his statements don't always feel so honest; some false humility, perhaps? He also has an odd sense of humor, and can be incredibly shrewd and calculating. While he claims that his talent "sucks", he still knows how to put it to good use, constructing a convoluted death trap for himself that will identify the traitor. And it works... to a point. Just his luck that Chiaki had faith in her friends and wanted them to survive, huh?

I really, REALLY didn't want to do this; I know he'd be freaking out right now if he were real, but unfortunately it seems to be one of the better fits, especially with his word. Nagito is... a Hope player (collective groan). The Hope bound are driven by their convictions, their idea of what is "right" and "wrong", even if it's not the conventional definitions. As mentioned in the Taurus paragraph, Nagito is tied down to his ideal of Hope and Talent being the ruling forces of the world. He's also not adverse to destruction in order to enforce that ideal; he brings a bomb to school to try and cancel exams because stressing out the other Ultimates will make them feel hopeless, or something along those lines. He very much knows that it's not appropriate to do that, but he's gotta do what he's gotta do to bring forth all of that hope. Though these ideals can make him narrow-minded and selfish, there are instances where he can be positive, warm, and even caring! Misguided and wrong as his methods were, Nagito did really want to help his classmates when they were feeling stressed. Well, at least he can have some hope in the form of being a Hope player in some rando's (me) Extended Zodiac discussion.

Finally, his word, which is what won me over to making him Hope: the Unmapped. While this world usually refers to geographical or even genetic uncertainty, it can be used here to describe Nagito's thought process. During the Funhouse arc in Goodbye Despair, the players gets to control Nagito for a bit, and we get a look at how he thinks vs what he says: a whole lot of thinking, not a whole lot of explaining his reasoning aloud. He's a complete mystery to everyone around him, like an uncharted map.

---

Lastly, I'm going to do my favorite character in Goodbye Despair (and then I'm going to go to BED! I keep forgetting how much work these posts are until after I start them. Anyway, put your hands together for:

Peko Pekoyama - June 30

Canittarius - Sign of the Striking (Cancer, Derse, Void)

A quiet swordswoman with an intense loyalty to her special one? Yeah, sounds like my kind of character. Anyway, Peko Pekoyama is a Cancer!

Resolute but surprisingly emotional, Cancers tend to create a hard outer shell to protect their soft and sweet insides. In Peko's case, she cares highly for Fuyuhiko, but thinks that such feelings are wrong for her to have since she's merely a tool to him (from her perspective). Thus, she creates a solemn and loyal personality befitting a piece of equipment like her, though she likely longs for something more from her young master.

In a similar way, Derse makes a lot of sense for her Lunar Sway. Cerebral and less inclined to vulnerability, a swordswoman like her needs to be able to calculate the best path to victory. Those skills are probably also useful for her social "life" as a pseudo member of a Yakuza family. Careful thinking and choosing your words carefully probably goes a long way.

Then the Aspect, which was rather difficult to decide on, but I finally chose Void. Void players are wise and intuitive people, but can also seem dismissive and apathetic. Peko decides to become Fuyuhiko's "murder weapon" in a clever attempt to help him survive, but in doing so, she's completely dismissive of what he wants until it's too late. And during her execution, she acts on instinct: the second Fuyuhiko is in danger- especially at her own hand- she stops fighting and uses the last of her strength to keep him alive. A very intuitive choice, indeed.

Finally her word: the Striking. Yes, this is a pun on how she strikes people with her bamboo sword, but her attempts to swindle the other characters into voting for the "wrong murderer" involve extreme, attention-grabbing methods: putting on a show as Sparkling Justice, the serial killer, and convincing people to make the "wrong choice". Of course, that's not the way it played out, but her attempts were certainly striking in their own way.

---

...And, those are my opinions! I'd definitely love to hear your thoughts and/or own opinions about which combinations fit better, so feel free to say something if you feel so inclined. I'm going to bed, it's late where I am and I've got a busy morning ahead of me. See you around!

[notfreetoday]

China's censorship of Justice in the Dark - some FAQ

photo cr @ 白夜飛行家 on weibo

Also known as The Abyss/Mo Du/Silent Reading (link goes to a great carrd made by a Mo Du fan) by Priest, the same author who brought us Guardian. The show was dropped on Youku China on the 18th of February and is now on Youku International (VIP needed from ep 3 onwards). 8 episodes have been released. There is no official release schedule yet, though the rumour is 5 episodes every Saturday at 10am China time. Total of 30 episodes, ending on the 11th of March (Yes rumours are this specific).

The English subs are AI generated, and they are not great. I hope they improve the subs as the show gains traction. (I watch on the China ver of the app, but I'll post any egregarious subbing errors if I come across them)

Changes made from the novel

The title, character names and premise has been changed. The ages of the some of the side characters/victims have also been changed. It's clear that scenes have been re-edited and re-dubbed, because some dialogue doesn't match the lip movements (WOH flashbacks anyone?) This is all to get pass censorship. A lot of the story, including the dialogue, has been preserved, and the changes aren't jarring.

Seems like there was a lot of uproar regarding the changes?

The show has been trending on weibo every day since it dropped, for good and bad reasons. Many book fans were upset with the changes on Day 1 and didn't bother watching pass the introduction of the premise, and there were complaints about the suitability of the actors' looks. By Day 2 the comments turned to "hey this isn't so bad??" And now everyone is just badgering youku for the next few episodes, cause they've literally released nothing else about the show since they dropped the episodes.

Has the story been sacrificed to pass censorship?

After watching 8 ep, I don't believe so. The novel covers sociopathy and the darkness of humanity - the show uses a "nuclear accident" as a reason for "genetic changes" in 1.3% of the population - causing these people to lose the ability to empathise with others. This is actually a very smart move because by blaming everything on a fictional, genetic mutation, the show can actually get away with showing the darker, more questionable parts of humanity, without having to censor it too much. The first case of the show mentions drugs and even has a short clip that heavily implies someone seizing from an overdose (you'll miss it if you aren't paying attention). There are underaged victims, and if they continue in this vein there will be more trigger warning worthy scenes from the book included. These things just don't get shown or talked about in c dramas - even if we don't talk about the BL, it's pretty crazy they managed to get this stuff out after the recent censorship changes.

Is the BL still.... there?

There are 8 episodes out so far and to me, it's working. We're not talking WOH level of chemistry here, but ep 3 onwards is when our CP starts paying more attention to each other. There is more than enough "candy" to find if you know what you're looking for. That said, it is not and will never be BL, just an adaptation.

Ok what am I looking for?

Glad you asked! Take for example the show's name change - from 深渊 (shen yuan) to 光•渊 (guang • yuan).

深 - deep 渊 - deep (often referring to a pool, so a deep dark pool, like in a cave) Shen Yuan comes from the novel and is translated as The Abyss, and represents Fei Du (Pei Su in the show)

光 - bright light Guang•Yuan is not a proper term by itself - it's a mash up of the words for bright light and deep pool. The light represents Luo Wenzhou (Luo Weizhao in the show), the one beam of light that penetrates Fei Du's darkness. Hence the English name "Justice in the Dark" is a pretty good translation.

The new names of the characters are Pei Su 裴溯 and Luo Weizhao 骆为昭. See the last character of each name? Su has the radical 月, for Moon in it, and Zhao has the radical 日, for Sun in it. The moon is considered Yin, and the sun is Yang. Together, they are Yin and Yang.

Hey maybe you think that's pushing it, but welcome to the life of a BL adaptation fan 🤣🤣

[princesscolumbia]

Oh, man, today's writing was AWESOME! I'm absolutely going to have to take a few editing passes on this, 'cause it was flowing just so well and so fast I didn't want to stop, even for bed!

So, yes, another day has passed, which means we're yet another day closer to the new chapter being released AND you get another chapter up here on Tumblr. Of course, to read the whole thing, click the link on this post.

The Antarese class cruiser settled into parking orbit over the world Terra. The captain mused at the odd state of the Moon Kingdom, concerned that repeated hails had gone completely unanswered; no border guard to meet them; even the Regent of Pluto was mysteriously absent. Of course, if rumors held true about the ruler of Pluto, this was nothing unusual in itself, it was just another item that concerned the captain about this particular trip. Their passenger would brook no delays, however, so the expedition continued in it's final legs until they were now parked over the world in what the inhabitants would call the "L5 position," the point where an equilateral triangle could be made if you used the planet, the moon, and the ship as the tips of the triangle.

"Sir," said his communications officer, "Still no contact from Luna." The comm officer had no way of knowing that there was an advisor to the royal family that also had the name of Luna, she was referring to the capital satellite that the Terra's inhabitants called simply, "The Moon."

"Still no contact with the outlying colonies?"

"No sir, no patrols, no hails, it's dead space so far as communications are concerned."

The captain sighed again. When they had crossed the heliopause and hadn't heard from the security patrols of the system, he had wanted to stop the ship and send out an exploratory scout vessel to investigate. Their main passenger, however, had ignored the captain's concerns and so here they were, over the only planet that seemed to have any signals of any kind coming from it whatsoever. The problem was that their most recent information, 1,000 Terran years old at this point, said that Terra was completely off limits to all craft, including The Moon Kingdom's own craft. The only ships that were allowed on Terran soil were the single Terran Royal Craft that was only powerful enough to shuttle a small contingent to and from Luna.

Rubbing his thumb along his mustache, the captain turned away from the screen and faced his communications officer for the first time. "Alright, send someone to get our passenger. He's got to be briefed on the situation."

As the communications officer went about her task, the lieutenant at the helm spoke up. "Sir, I've got a signal. Actually, several!"

"A transmission?" said the captain in surprise. Normally his comm officer would have let him know first...

"No sir, this is one of our magic sensors. I've got confirmation on...nine members of The Moon Kingdom's royal houses. One for every house except Pluto."

"Why weren't we able to sense them before now?"

"Because they're all on Terra, sir."

The captain didn't reply for a moment, running his gloved hand over his salt-and-pepper beard. Finally, he voiced what every member of the crew was thinking since they passed the Pluto/Neptune orbit boundary, "What is going on in this system?"

Usagi idly nibbled on her fried squid. Absently, she sighed as the seafood turned to mash in her mouth and she swallowed it down.

"Usagi!" came Mamoru's insistent voice.

"Yah!" Usagi jumped slightly, startled by the interruption to her thoughts. She clamored after and eventually caught her squid-on-a-stick.

Mamoru simply looked on with a loving smirk. "Clumsy meatball-head."

"Hey!" snapped Usagi. She was not in the mood for snarky comments.

The grin dropped from Mamoru's face. "Usa-chan, what's going on? You've been moody all day, and I've been calling your name for five minutes. Your lunch is only a half-hour long, after all."

"Sorry, Mamo-chan," she replied somewhat sulkily, "It's just that Mega-Girl has been bugging me again."

"She showed up again after your meeting yesterday?"

"Yeah, she obviously didn't recognize me while I was Sailor Moon, but she had the nerve to say I was horning in on her territory." Usagi finished with a pout.

Mamoru, ever wise in the ways of this particular blond with ridiculously long pigtails, grinned, "And you have a territory?"

"No," Usagi whined, "It's just...she's so... You'll understand if you ever meet her."

To that, Mamoru could only nod reassuringly.

Great, thought Ranma, Just great. Now on top of everything else, I've got to come up with a "secret project."

Ranma sat in his room on his futon, studiously investigating a rather fetching red pump that he was sure would look stunning on his girl half...were he into that kind of thing...which he wasn't, 'cause he was a manly man.

A manly man who had turned tail and run at the first sign of danger from his mother, leaving her the previous night with a pathetic excuse that a bunch of shoes from a woman's-only boutique would fit, somehow, into a "secret project," and that he had, naturally, been plenty manly in getting them.

The problem was that he really couldn't go to anyone to figure out some reason, ex post facto, to be carrying around a bunch of shoes.

The author would like to point out that, as had been made mention numerous times in the series and barring the obvious discrepancies, such as height and, ahem, frontal area, Akane and Ranma (in girl form) are pretty interchangeable, clothing-wise, and he could simply have given Akane the shoes and shown his mother how "manly" he was to bring such a bounty to his fiance.

The author would also like to point out that Ranma, when it comes to Akane, has a mental block that is only rivaled in size to the Great Wall. Not the Great Wall of China, the Geller-Huchra Great Wall of Galaxies, a structure that is so immense that even the currently measured 500 million by 300 million by 15 million lightyears figure is just what we can see with our most powerful telescopes.

Can't go to Nabs, thought Ranma, She'd just blackmail me into giving her more "pictures" to sell. Kasumi...is Kasumi. Not a conniving bone in her body. Mom's clean out, so's Pops. Mr. Tendo's never been a big help, can't talk to Shampoo, she'd just try to get in my pants again...same with Ukyo. Konatsu might help, but his plans are never all that great. Kuno... Ranma shuddered, Definitely out! Can't go to the old ghoul, she wants me to get into Shampoo's pants, that leaves...crap!

Ranma stood, dropped the shoe back into it's box, and headed out to try and track down the bane of the Anything-Goes School of martial arts.

Ranma just hoped he wouldn't have to go panty-raiding to get help. This time.

"RAAAAGH!" came the rather fierce bellow from the normally up-beat and chipper Usagi.

Rei watched in amusement as the rabbit-haired girl stabbed her dumplings with a chopstick. "Let me guess...Mia again?"

"YES!!!" snarled Usagi, proceeding to use the other chopstick to do nasty and possibly illegal things to the remains of the dumpling, "She chased me around the school FOUR TIMES today! Thank heavens it was after school so I didn't have to be...inflicted with her...person doing bucket duty in the hall!"

This last got Ami's attention, who looked up from her computer. Usagi didn't normally use words like 'inflicted' in normal conversation. "Well...at least you're getting a work...out..." Ami trailed off under the death-glare their nominal leader gave the quiet girl.

"Why don't you just turn into Sailor Moon and kick her butt?" said Makoto.

At this, Usagi deflated. "Oh, man, I soooo want to do just that! But if I do, people might figure out I'm Sailor Moon."

Mina lifted her head from the manga she was reading, "How are you getting away from her, anyway?"

Usagi sighed, "Her suit's battery packs run out after about an hour."

Luna nodded sagely. "Yes, but she lasted longer today than usual. I was watching from outside school grounds and she went for a good hour and fifteen minutes after you left the building. You're doing much better on your endurance runs, by the way." Luna held up under the same glare that Ami received earlier, but it was only Luna's many years of being a court advisor to Queen Serenity that kept her from buckling.

Ranma stood leaning against a wall. Traffic was light today, which meant, of course, that Happosai would direct his "hoarde" along this street. Ranma really didn't understand why the old freak actually enjoyed a bunch of angry women chasing after him. Sure enough, the sounds of a dozen or so angry women came from down the street, with the undercurrent of a decrepit old man crying in joy, "Watahaul!"

Ranma rolled his eyes and waited for the inevitable, "Ranma, m'boy, come to help yer old master out?" followed by the dumping of a large amount of lingerie on his person. Right on cue, Happosai unloaded a good portion of "silkie darlings" on him. Ranma sighed and waited for the pain to come.

Happosai tsked as he looked down at his young protégé amidst the pile of women's undergarments. Really, the boy is slipping. How was the part-time girl supposed to get any better if he just let women beat on him like that? Shaking his head, Happi leapt down from the tree he was perched in and poked Ranma in a pressure point to stimulate consciousness.

The boy's eyes popped open, and a muffled groan escaped his lips, followed by a "yech!" and pulling a pair of obviously used panties out of his mouth. Happosai waited as they boy went through the motions of attempting to clean out his mouth without water. "Well," said Happi as Ranma wound down, "I must say, Ranma, that performance was miserable." Happosai could tell that Ranma wanted to spout one of his usual disrespectful comebacks, but held his tongue. Hmmm...thought the old pervert, This means he wants something.

Ranma swallowed his pride and turned to face the old man. "Listen, I...I need your help."

Happosai's eyebrows shot up his ancient, wrinkled forehead. "I see, I see...and what can this old man do for you?"

"I have, in my room, a bunch of girls shoes. I don't want 'em, but my mom caught me with 'em and now I need to come up with some excuse that sounds 'manly.'"

"Hmmm, yes, or face the displeasure of that sword of hers. Wouldn't do to have my finest student and heir cut down 'cause your mother's worried about your 'gift,' now." Happosai trailed off in thought.

Ranma was practically bug-eyed, "You mean you'll help me? No questions asked?"

"'Course not, m'boy!" said Happosai happily, "I prefer silky darlings, but to each man his own perversion."

Ranma was showing visible signs of anger, "Cool off, boy, I need to think." Happosai pulled one of his ever-handy buckets from nowhere and dumped it on Ranma. He turned to his thoughtful pose again, and so didn't see Ranma suddenly stiffen in obvious discomfort.

"Er, master?" Happosai was suitably surprised at the honorific that he turned to face the boy-turned-girl. "I, uhm, now that you know the...problem, I think I'll leave you to think about it. I've...got something to do!" With that, Ranma ran off, leaving a slightly bewildered Happosai in her wake.

About 15 minutes later, Ranma stumbled into the furo of the Tendo household visibly restraining herself from grabbing at areas that anybody, forget "good girls," didn't grab in public. Putting up the privacy sign and slamming the outer and inner doors shut, she stumbled into the tiled room in front of the mirror and began pulling at her clothing. Her pants dropped to her ankles, as well as her boxers, and her shirt hung open as she looked in shock at the mirror. On her breasts was what had to be the downright prettiest bra she thought she'd ever seen, and she'd seen far more bras than she ever wanted to thanks to Happosai and her curse. It was frilly, it was white, it was kind of sparkly, and it fit her perfectly. Around her hips and hugging her groin was a matching pair of frilly, girly panties that also hugged her curves in absolutely the most comfortable way and perfectly matched the bra. After staring at her reflection for a few moments, she began struggling with the bra, "Where's the danged catch?" she hissed. Checking the front and back revealed nothing. Frustrated, she grabbed at the panties, but they seemed to be sewn on, and didn't stretch enough to allow her to remove them. "Oh, no!" Desperately, she tried tearing them, but they seemed to be made of some super-strong fabric, she couldn't even get them to give even a little, and given that she was one of four people that could bend rebar with her bare hands, that was saying something. Visions of being permanently trapped in some sort of otherworldly lingerie flashed through her head. Forget changing back to a guy, the bra would strangle her and she didn't even want to imagine what the panties would do to her...special parts.

In the midst of some rather rapid-fire self-pity, Ranma's danger sense pinged like mad. Not in the usual "get out of harms way NOW!" kind of danger, it was more like the other night, when she knew someone else was in danger.

Suddenly ignoring her new and mysterious garment acquisition, she hastily re-clothed and charged out the door.

Ami was once again deep in the midst of her Trig homework...actually, she had long since left her trig homework behind and was busy compiling a program she had been inspired to write while working on her Trig homework. This particular program was intended to track all the "planet killer" asteroids in the system to give the Senshi "advanced warning" should one have a collision course with Earth, and also give them a baseline with which to compare any incoming stellar bodies to determine if it were an in-system, known threat, or something that was a significantly larger concern. She had just put the finishing touches on the 403rd line of code when a dialog came up with a warning light. Glancing about to make sure her mother wasn't in the room, then remembering her mother was working late at the hospital again, Ami pulled out her communicator and keyed in the "all call."

"Luna here," the moon cat was the first to respond. Ami allowed herself a moment of amusement as she heard Usagi whining in the background about Youma interrupting her videogames.

"I've got another Youma signal. This one is in the..." Ami checked the dialog's status, which had brought up a map of Tokyo with two dots, one representing her position, the other representing the Youma signal, "Nerima district?!"

"I thought I sensed something," said Luna, "It seemed rather week, so I had dismissed it as being a random surge."

"What was a random surge?" said Rei as her face appeared on the communicator's screen.

"The youma..." started Ami.

"...alright! But if it's just a meeting reminder you are sooo getting dry food for a week!" Minako's visage interrupted Ami, "Oh, hey, guys!"

Rei rolled her eyes. "We've got another youma?"

Ami nodded as Makoto's face appeared on the screen. She didn't bother waiting for Makoto to speak, as she knew Makoto would likely keep quiet while Ami was talking, "This one is quite a distance away from where they usually show up. It's out in Nerima."

Makoto narrowed her eyes, "That's where the mystery sighting was the other night."

Mina's eyebrows scrunched together, "What mystery sighting?"

"Very close to it, in fact, only a couple blocks away from that location." Ami said in reply to Makoto.

Luna spoke up, "You were able to check on it the other night, can you do so again?"

"No can do," replied Makoto, "I'm on the other side of town. It would take me twice as long as Ami to check on it even at my fastest. How about Mina?"

"No can do," Artemis' white furry face interjected in front of Mina's face on the screen. "We're at the park close to the school."

Artemis' face was suddenly yanked back from the camera as Mina had him by the scruff of the neck. She held him up to look him in the eye, "What mystery sighting?" Artemis proved once again that Moon cats only looked like their earth-born cousins as he shrugged in a way that no feline would ever be able to pull off.

"Who is closest?" interrupted Usagi, now in leadership mode thanks to the introduction of an actual potential crisis.

"Let me check the map," said Ami. Turning to her computer, she brought up the youma-tracking program, by this point heavily modified from what had come on the computer by Ami to be more efficient and reflect the needs of modern day Senshi work, as opposed to the 1,000-years dead Moon Kingdom's idea of an ideal interface. She had just issued the command to show the present locations of all the Senshi, inner and outer, when the blip for the youma disappeared from the screen.

Ami's brow scrunched as she considered what she just saw. A tiny, "WHAT 'mystery sighting'?" came from the communicator, Mina's voice reminding Ami that she had people waiting on her reply. Blinking to clear her thoughts, Ami turned back to the communicator, "Luna, did you notice that?"

"Yes," the mooncat replied, "Very odd, just like the other night."

"Do you think it could be Mega Girl?" opined Makoto, obviously disgusted with the thought that their newest rival might have beaten them to the punch.

"Oh, god, I hope not!" snapped Usagi.

"I'm not sure, but it looks like...I'm closest to the disturbance." said Ami.

Usagi was all business again, "Alright, go check it out. See if you can get any more information for us. If it is Mega Girl, we might have to..." Usagi made gagging motions, "Work together with her if she can respond that quickly."

"You need backup, Ami?" said Makoto.

"I shouldn't, as I'm getting no threat indicators, but I'll open a channel once I get there. You monitor it until I'm finished with my investigation of the scene in case something does happen."

"Great!" said Usagi in a bouncy voice, "Call us back when you've got something! I'm gonna get ice cream!"

Rei rolled her eyes and muttered as she closed the connection. "...meatball-head..." was the last thing they heard from her.

"Hey! Don't call me that!" squealed Usagi as Luna hit the disconnect button, causing their faces to disappear.

"You call me the instant you get there." said Makoto, who waited for Ami's nod before signing off.

"Would someone please tell me WHAT 'mystery sight~" Mina's irate voice was cut off as Ami hit the disconnect button on her comm.

Ami pulled her henshin stick out of her subspace pocket, gripped it firmly, and uttered her activation phrase.

Ranma pulled a pint of ice cream from the freezer. Mournfully, she looked at the remaining stock. In spite of its large size due to three-and-a-half girls in residence, two (one-and-a-half?) of which were martial artists that plowed through calories like freight trains, it was already seriously depleted for the week. Notably absent was the large stock of the "Once-a-month Special" the local ice cream store kept in stock for Tendo/Saotome females of adolescent age or higher that consisted of triple-fudge chocolate with chocolate chips, milk-chocolate drizzle, white-chocolate marbling, dark-chocolate chunks, and a dash of chocolate sprinkles. While this explained the dearth of ice cream, it meant that Ranma wouldn't have a pint to herself today unless she wanted to incur the wrath of the other women in the house. Sighing, she dug a pair of spoons out of a drawer and pulled out a couple of bowls. She dished out the ice cream as evenly as possible, tossed the empty pint container into the trash, and took the bowls out to the dining area.

Sitting at the table was Kimi, Furinkan's newest student and presently victim of two random monster attacks. Ranma had once again rescued the girl, who was apparently just carrying some groceries home when the monster attacked. The half-time girl martial artist was not on the scene quickly enough to keep the monster from stealing some of Kimi's qi, an action that enraged Ranma to the point she didn't even banter or play with the monster, she just wiped it out. The attack left Kimi in a low state; showing every symptom of having her qi sucked out against her will, up to and including severe depression. Ranma, knowing girls far more intimately than most guys, knew the only way to restore Kimi's spirits was to get her sweets, preferably of the ice cream variety. She unfortunately didn't usually carry cash and Kimi's money was scattered about the pavement near the attack site in the form of now totally ruined groceries. This resulted in Ranma taking the girl to the only source of readily available ice cream that Ranma didn't have to pay for, the Tendo Dojo.

Expressing rather more care than usual for her, she gently placed one bowl in front of Kimi, still a nervous wreck, and sat down on the opposite side of the table, casually taking several bites from her bowl in the process. "Well, I gotta say, you got as bad luck as the tomboy."

Kimi looked up from the wood-grain of the table at Ranma in abject confusion. "Huh?"

"Oh, Akane is always getting herself kidnapped, or abducted, or whatever, and I'm always having to save her." Ranma, focusing more on the conversation and her guest than her food and thus not savoring it as she had two nights ago, finished off her ice cream and tossed the spoon into the bowl. "'Course, she always mallets me for my efforts...stupid macho chick..." she finished in a muttered undertone.

Kimi was staring at the redhead's bowl in shock, "How...you just ate a whole bowl of ice cream in seconds!"

It was Ranma's turn to be confused, "Yeah? What about it?"

The pair of girls blinked at each other in confusion for a moment. Deciding she probably wasn't going to get an answer about that particular question, Kimi sighed, picked up her spoon, and dug out a bite of ice cream, "So does this kind of thing happen often in Nerima?"

"What, monsters?" at Kimi's nod, Ranma continued, "Oh, yeah! Although it's been getting bad lately..." Ranma trailed off in thought. Looks like I'm gonna have to light a fire under Pop's ass to do a cleanup of the area again. "Don't worry 'bout it, though. There's too many martial artists around for monsters to cause too much of a problem. 'Course, I'm here, an' I'm the best!" Ranma thrust her chest out and put her left hand in a fist on her hip, her right index finger pointing at herself, a cocky grin plastered on her face.

Spoon still in her mouth, Kimi stared for a moment before breaking out in giggles.

"That's better!" said Ranma, "I told you ice cream would help. Those qi-suckers really take the spirit outta ya. Hey, that's funny!" Ranma laughed at her own unintentional joke.

Swallowing her second bite of ice cream, Kimi said, "I don't get it...what's qi?"

Ranma stopped laughing but didn't drop her smile, "Oh, yeah, you wouldn't really know, would you?" Kimi shook her head, "Qi is like...life force. It's what powers your body. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the world together...what's so funny?"

Kimi was now laughing out loud, "You sound like Obi-wan Kenobi!"

Ranma blinked and tilted her head to the side, "Uh...who?"

Kimi gasped, "You don't know who Obi-wan Kenobi is? Haven't you ever seen Star Wars?"

Now Ranma was really confused, "Star what?"

"Omigosh, where've you been? Star Wars is, like, the biggest movie franchise ever!"

"Oh! A movie! Yeah, I never got to see many of those. I was too busy trainin' in martial arts."

Kimi dug out another bite of ice cream, "Is that how you got so good?"

Ranma smiled again, "Yep! Pops always said movies were a waste of a good martial artist's time."

"Well, I don't know about martial arts, but you have to come over to my place sometime to watch it! We just got Episode 3 on DVD, and it's got the most awesome-est special effects! I love the lava fight scene, and Padme's death is just so sad..." Kimi interrupted herself to take another bite of ice cream. Being a much better mannered girl than Ranma, she didn't talk while she was eating.

"Wait, you want me to come over to your place?" Ranma's shock was obvious as her face drained of color, "Yer not afraid of me?"

Kimi paused in her eating, "Why, should I be?"

"Uh, I...well...I'm cursed..." Ranma said limply.

Kimi's eyes lit up in understanding, "Oh, right...I nearly forgot about that. You...turn into a boy?"

"Er, well, actually, I turn into a girl, but only when I'm splashed with cold water. I turn back when I'm splashed with warm water." Ranma sighed. I was actually enjoying the conversation, damnit! Why'd I have to go and remind her of the curse? It looked like another girl was going to think he was just a pervert and start beating on her.

Kimi gazed at her bowl of ice cream contemplatively, still only having consumed about a quarter of it. "Is it..." she started hesitantly, "Is it contagious?"

Ranma was once again shocked, "Say what?"

"Your, ah, curse. Can other people get it from you?"

Ranma's confusion index hit an all time high. She had no idea where the conversation was going, but it wasn't where she had expected it to go. "Oh, no. You could get a curse like mine, but you'd have to go to Jusenkyo."

"Where's that?" asked Kimi.

"In China. It's a magical training ground. Nobody really uses it anymore, 'cept the locals, and idiots like my pop."

"He gave you your curse?!" Kimi cried out in alarm.

"Huh? No, well...kinda. He knocked me into the pool that cursed me, but that was only after I'd kicked him into the Spring of Drowned Panda. That's how you get cursed there, by falling into one of the springs."

"Oh..." Kimi continued to eat her ice cream.

"You know," said Ranma, "You're pretty calm 'bout all this."

Kimi giggled, "You saved me from monsters twice in one week, after that, someone with a curse like you have isn't so scary."

Ranma blinked in surprise. "You know, I never thought of it like that."

"So, do you...um, like girls or boys?"

Ranma processed the question for a moment. "Hey, I aint no hentai!"

"Sorry! Sorry! I didn't mean to upset you!" Kimi dropped her spoon on the floor in distress.

Ranma cried out, "Sorrysorrysorry! I didn't mean to scare you!" Ranma waved her hands in a warding action.

They stopped almost at the same time and looked at each other for a moment before Kimi started giggling. Ranma joined her after a moment, and soon they were both laughing out loud.

"Let me get you a new spoon," said Ranma after a couple of moments.

Handing her spoon over with a "Thanks," Kimi continued to smile at the other girl, once again making Ranma nervous. I hope the tomboy doesn't come in right now, she thought. Banishing the thought, Ranma quickly retrieved another spoon.

Sailor Mercury landed with a graceful "tap, tap" of her low heeled shoes touching on the sidewalk. She didn't often get an opportunity to roof-hop during the day, and her analytical mind used the opportunity to observe the difference in traffic patterns from when she did nighttime patrols with the other senshi.

While Mercury, like Sailor Moon, rarely visited Nerima, she could admire the casual atmosphere that the scene held even in the aftermath of a youma attack. In fact, the people around her barely registered her presence; beyond the casual nod or smile you'd give another stranger on the street.

"Mommy, mommy, look! It's one of the Sailor Senshi!" a young girl, perhaps eight, tugged on her mother's jacket and pointed to Sailor Mercury.

As Mercury smiled at the girl, her mother turned briefly from the business she was conducting with a vendor, glanced at Mercury with an apologetic smile as if to say, 'Children, what can you do?' and said, "That's nice, dear, it's not polite to point." With that, the woman turned back to the vendor and continued to haggle over whatever she was purchasing.

Mercury kept her smile in place as the child gave a quiet, "Gomen," and politely bowed. Mercury bowed back, hiding her surprise at the casual acceptance of her presence in the area.

Once the little girl had moved on to other things, Mercury remembered she had to open a channel to Makoto. She pulled out her communicator and tapped the call button for her friend and teammate.

"Jupiter here. Did you have any problems?" Makoto said as her image came up on the screen.

"No. None at all."

"OK, keep the line open, I'll keep an ear to it."

Mercury nodded and activated her visor, which took over for her communicator as it slid across her eyes. She returned the communicator to it's subspace pocket and glanced around the area. "I don't see the location of the attack...hang on." She approached another vendor. "Excuse me," she said.

The man looked up. "Oh, yes? What can I do for you?" Again, there was that calm acceptance. It was beginning to unnerve the girl who had ironically sought this kind of casual acceptance all her life. As Ami, she would have been shocked if she were even acknowledged. As Sailor Mercury, she was floored by the fact that even though she was a living, breathing superhero, the people of Nerima were treating her like she was just another girl on the street.

"Yes, I was wondering if you had seen an attack from a monster of some sort..."

"Oh, right! Yeah, happened not twenty minutes ago, right over there." The man pointed to a wall that was showing some signs of damage. "Poor girl didn't stand a chance." Ami gasped, and the vendor smiled and waved his hands in a reassuring manner, "Oh, don't worry. She's fine. Looked bad at first, though. The thing had her pinned down and started glowing, then this other girl came along and just cleaned the monster's clock but good."

Sailor Mercury surreptitiously activated the recording function of her visor. "Can you describe this girl? The one who defeated the monster."

"Oh, yeah. Short, I'd say a couple inches shorter than you, red hair...cutest little thing you ever laid eyes on. I'd guess maybe 15 years old, but then when you're my age all you youngsters look like kids." he said with a smile.

Mercury smiled back, "Thank you for your help." she said with a respectful bow.

As she walked over to the site of the attack, Mercury heard Makoto say over the comm link, "Well that was weird. The way he was chatting you'd think he was being questioned by the cops, not the Senshi."

Mercury chose not to reply, instead tapping the controls on her visor to change viewing modes. "Well," she said quietly enough to not be heard by passer-bys, "There's definitely evidence of an attack." she used the rarely accessed function of taking still shots with her visor, rather like a camera, to snap pictures of some cracking of the pavement and a scorch mark. "And a rescue. Hang on, I'm switching to the magical spectrum." Flipping through several different modes on her visor, she stopped when the scene in front of her was coated with a blue fog representing magic detected by her visor. She glanced around, noticing that a few of the residents were showing a low level glow themselves. It was most noticeable amongst the older generation, but wasn't consistent. Running several scanning programs at once, the figures that came up on Mercury's visor confused the girl.

While she had seen similar magic before, and it was almost always benign, she had never observed this quantity of it. Usually, this type of magic, classified by the old Silver Millennium computers as "wild" magic, was in low quantities in random locations, but sometimes congregated around a specific place or thing. Usagi's friend Naru practically reeked of the stuff, which went a long way towards explaining why the poor girl always wound up in the middle of monster attacks.

Nerima and it's citizens, however, were swimming in wild magic. The as Mercury watched, some of the people with higher amounts of wild magic radiating from their bodies left trails behind them. That explains why there's so much of it just hanging in the air, thought Mercury, Someone radiates wild magic, leaves a trail of it, which is crossed by others and is absorbed bit by bit until they start leaving trails of it...incredible!

"What exactly are we seeing here, Mercury?" came Makoto's voice over the link.

"It appears the area is saturated with magic. This explains the feelings you were having the other night," the blue-haired Senshi continued talking while she fished out her computer, "You couldn't not get magic 'vibes' from Nerima."

"Is it something we need to be worried about?"

Mercury tied her computer in with her visor and began making adjustments to the sensors, "No, I don't think so. This magic is classified as 'benign.' It just can't be properly controlled or used by any party, let alone one of our enemies."

"So this particular magic is harmless?"

"Not necessarily. In certain quantities it can cause events and increase random chaos by a factor proportional to its quantity." As she fiddled with the settings on her visor augmented by the sensors built into the Mercury computer, the fog began to split into different colors, rather like a prism split a beam of light into a rainbow.

"Hey, too many big words. Pretend I'm stupid." Makoto said in exasperation.

Mercury sighed, "The more wild magic there is, the more likely strange stuff will happen."

"Bad strange or good strange?"

"Neither, really." replied Mercury as she noticed a predominant 'frequency' of magic around the attack site, "It'd be like tripping and landing in the mud while wearing your best dress, but finding enough cash buried in the mud to pay for the dry cleaning and a soft drink that you wouldn't have found if you hadn't tripped."

There was a pause as Makoto parsed Mercury's sentence, "You're right, that is strange. What is that?"

This last question was obviously in reference to a patch of magic that intersected with both positively- and negatively-infused qi traces. "I'm not sure, but I can get a good reading on it." Mercury proceeded to record the unique magical signature for later scanning purposes. "This isn't like what you'd find in a youma," explained the senshi to her friend, "I have a feeling this signature belongs to the girl who defeated the youma."

"And the life-energy readings?" Makoto had obviously been paying attention to the readouts on the Mercury visor that were being transmitted with the video feed.

"Well, the negatively-infused qi is obvious, that's what the youma was feeding on. The positive qi...that is most likely our mystery girl's attack. It's too bad we don't have video of this fight, I'd like to see what weapon she uses."

"Well," came Makoto's voice as Mercury folded up her computer and put it away, "If it's anything like what Rei does, I'd start looking at the temples in the area."

Mercury visually scanned the area one last time then leapt to the nearest rooftop. "That is a good idea, but we need to discuss this with the others first."

"Right," said Makoto, "I'll put out the meeting all call. Did you remember to eat anything for lunch, or did you do homework straight through?" Unseen by the visor's cameras, Mercury's face turned a bright shade of red as she began roof hopping. "I'll take your silence as a yes." continued Makoto, "Take a break and get some food, I'll make sure the meeting doesn't start without you. Jupiter out."

Mercury's reply was cut off as the connection went dead. She sighed and began thinking about what she could throw together quickly from her rather sparse fridge. Usually she and her mother just ordered out.

"...And so there he is, screaming his head off," Ranma pantomimed gripping her head and a overdone panicky look on her face and imitated Soun Tendo's voice, "'Yaaargh, I can feel it inside me!' And all this time Kasumi's just looking at him with that look that says she thinks he's loopy, horns poking out from her head!"

Kimi's laughter joined Ranma's at that. Her questions about Ranma's curse naturally lead to details of life with the Tendos and everything that had happened since the martial artist had arrived in Nerima. Their jovial banter had finally landed on the incident where the rather pathetic demon that couldn't handle pain had possessed Kasumi, the one person nobody had the heart to inflict any pain on, resulting in dear, sweet Kasumi doing all sorts of generally harmless but very annoying things to the household members while nobody was willing to retaliate because that would hurt Kasumi as well.

"Tadaima." came a light voice from the genkan.

"Hey, speak of the demon." quipped Ranma, "Kasumi, c'mon in here, there's someone you gotta meet!" he called to the front door.

"Be right in." called back the eldest Tendo daughter.

The pair sat in companionable silence while they waited for Kasumi, who came in shortly. "Oh, hello, are you a friend of Ranma's?" queried the young woman.

"Kasumi, this is Kimi, the girl I saved the other night."

"How wonderful! I just met your mother today."

Kimi blinked in surprise, "You...you did?"

"Yes," said Kasumi cheerfully, "Ranma's mother and I went to welcome her to the neighborhood." her face developed a slight frown, "Although I do wish Mr. Saotome had come along. He would have been very helpful in explaining Jusenkyo. I don't believe the poor woman understood what we were saying."

Ranma leaned toward Kimi and said, soto-voce, "Which is Kasumi-speak for, 'She didn't believe a word we said about magic.'"

Kasumi would have frowned further, but Kimi giggled in reply. "It's so good to see Ranma make new friends." said Kasumi with a smile. "Are you a martial artist?"

Kimi's reply was interrupted by Akane calling out, "Tadaima" from the foyer. A moment later, the youngest Tendo came into the dining room. "Oh, hello. Kimi, isn't it?" At Kimi's nod, Akane continued, "What brings you here?"

Ranma responded. "Monster attack again. I kicked its butt."

Akane rolled her eyes, "You and your ego..."

The redhead puffed herself up again, "Hey, I am the best, after all."

Adding a headshake and a sigh to her eye roll, Akane said, "Well, I've got some homework to get started on. Let me know when dinner's ready." With that, she headed up the stairs to her room.

"Red hair? You're sure?" Usagi was being rather insistent.

"Yes," said Ami as calmly as she could, "The vendor said the girl had red hair. Nothing at all about armor of any type."

Usagi, Rei, and Mina all breathed a sigh of relief. Mega Girl had black hair, which ruled out this new 'champion' being the one person none of the senshi could stand.

"OK, so she's got red hair, she's shorter than Ami, and may be a priestess." Rei summed up the previous half-hour of debriefing.

"Yep." said Makoto. "And I gotta tell you, that Nerima is one strange place."

"You weren't there when I was," said Usagi. "They actually sell magical items. Powerful ones, too."

This brought several concerned glances. "Anything dangerous?" said Makoto.

"Well, there were these love charm fishing rods that worried me, but what could I do, go to the police?"

"Well," came a voice that the untrained ear wouldn't have been able to determine the gender of, "If it's not causing people to become homicidal or fueling some youma, it's low priority, I think."

The group turned to see the Outers at the shrine entrance. Haruka was in the lead, followed closely by Michiru and Hotaru, who was still in her school uniform. Haruka was casually pocketing her sunglasses as she continued. "Is that the reason we were called out here? Some magical charms?"

Rei bristled, but kept quiet as Ami spoke up, "No, and I do agree with your assessment of that particular issue, at least at the present time. As it is the whole area is magic saturated. A love charm might even be considered low-level by the area's residents."

"So what did bring us here?" asked Michiru as she took a seat.

"It sounds like we might have another magical girl hanging around." said Mina.

Rei bopped Mina on the head, "We don't know she's a magical girl!"

"Ow~!" groaned Mina.

Hotaru giggled at the display as Ami began the briefing over again.

Ranma sat in the furo, stripped down to the strange lingerie she had found on her body earlier. She had scrubbed down, running water under the super-strong garments to rinse the suds out so she wouldn't get rashes in incredibly awkward places, and had sat contemplating the heated water in the tub for so long she had drip dried.

She wanted to change back to a guy so very bad it was almost a physical presence. The catch was the undergarments she now wore which she could not remove. Ranma had long since given up on trying to tear, cut, pry, or even burn the garments off. They were incredibly strong and very, very resilient. The qi she had projected at the panties at point blank range hadn't even left a burn mark.

For the first time ever she found herself envying Ryoga's curse that turned the lost boy into a pig. If she was cursed to turn into a pig, she could just splash herself with cool water, crawl away from the offensive garments, jump into the furo, and change back into a human. Of course, if she turned into a pig with cold water, she wouldn't even be sitting there in bra and panties.

The problem was that her chest, not counting her rather substantial bust, was positively reed-thin compared to her male form, which was reaching a very manly proportion as she approached the last leg of puberty. This wasn't like the time Picolette Chardin forced her to wear a metal corset. Not only had she been younger, and therefore her male form not as fully developed in the torso, the corset itself wasn't even sized for a Japanese girl, especially one as small as she was. The bra she now found herself wearing was perfectly fitted to her chest, and would likely crush her to death if it remained after she changed back to her birth form.

Her legs instinctively twitched together as she promptly mentally shot the suspicions of what could happen to her male anatomy with her present panties.

Of course, since the strange clothing had appeared when she changed into a girl, it might just disappear when she changed back into a guy, but that was one heck of a gamble.

Incredibly enough, her thought process was once again interrupted by the same type of danger sense that had interrupted her earlier that day.

Kasumi was just finishing the dishes when Ranma tore through the dining room on her way to the back door.

"GottagoKasumiSomeonesintroubledontwaitupbye!"

Kasumi paused, replayed the sentence in her head, and smiled. "Such a nice young man, it's no wonder his mother is so proud of him."

Ranma's feet pounded across the rooftops of Nerima in the direction she sensed what she strongly suspected at this point to be another monster. Within moments, her fears were confirmed as she stopped at the edge of a roof and looked down to see another abomination attacking an all-night coffee stand.

"Damnit!" she yelled, "Where the hell are you things coming from!?" The monster turned to the direction of her scream, giving Ranma a good view of it in the light cast through the windows of the coffee shop.

Of all the monsters Ranma had fought, up to and including Pantyhose Taro, this one was the most hideous. It looked to stand about seven feet tall, had six arms, and had only a passing resemblance to a humanoid female. It's eyes were red with reptilian slits for pupils, and it's jaws held angry sharp teeth. Fighting back a gag reflex, Ranma leapt down from the building and faced the creature. "All right, you horror flick reject, you're going down right now!"

Ranma charged the creature, bringing up a leg for a flying kick that would have knocked Ryoga for a loop. Instead of recoiling, the monster grabbed Ranma's ankle. Surprised but not caught off guard, she redirected her momentum to her opposing fist, which the monster also caught.

Now she was caught off guard. Now just attempting to get free, Ranma snapped her free leg forward in effort to stun the creature, but that leg, too, was caught. In short order, the monster had a grip on her other arm, completely incapacitating the martial artist.

Staring eye to eye with the creature, Ranma growled feraly. She almost wished she could bring out the Nekoken, but she was concerned that even that wouldn't defeat this creature. She wasn't overly worried, though. Dying in battle, while not necessarily desirable, was the best death a warrior like her could hope for. It was honorable like that.

Seeing the monster pull it's arm back to strike, she was surprised when, instead of punching, slashing, or piercing with it's claws, it slapped it's open palm against her chest. Instantly, she felt the familiar pull of qi being forcibly sucked from her body. "Oh, no you don't!" she spat, "I got a teacher that tries this on a daily basis!" Instantly, Ranma pulled in all her qi, causing the monster to bellow in rage.

"Ha!" barked the martial artist, "Not so cocky, are...you?" Ranma's hesitation came from the monster slashing at her pants at the crotch. The strange panties held up just fine, naturally, but her pants were totaled. "What are you doing?" she said, apprehension creeping into her voice.

The author would like to take a moment of the reader's time for a brief education on Youma anatomy.

Garden-variety youma are magical constructs that are generally designed to appear female to the human eye. The source of this design idea comes down to the age-old practice of creating things in one's own image. Most youma are created by female aliens/sorceresses/etc., therefore most youma look female.

This is not to say that all creatures made in the manner of youma are female in appearance. There are notable exceptions known in Japan (and thanks to truly disturbing exported porn, the world) as the tentacle-rape demon. These are generally created by male aliens/sorcerers/etc., in case you hadn't guessed.

The major reason for the difference in design is aesthetics, not of design but of taste in qi. The qi drained by the female-type youma tends to have only one type of emotion tied to it, such as fear, anger, envy, etc. The tentacle-type youma tend to draw out a multitude of emotions charging the same quantity of qi. While the multi-charged qi is more versatile, it takes more of it to produce the same effects as the single-charged qi, thus creating problems with storage, use, etc. Female aliens, et al, generally dislike the inefficiency of the multi-charged qi and so usually avoid the tentacle-type youma, where male aliens, et al, generally don't care, especially given the ease with which a tentacle-type youma can gather it's charged qi, creating an economy of scale that allows them to not worry about the downsides.

Also, tentacle-type youma tend to target a human's "deep" energy centers, as well as force stimulation of the necessary points to coerce the victims body to generate even more energy than just what is produced by the presence of the youma itself. This, naturally, has it's downside, as a victim that isn't forcibly stimulated can be kept as a sort of living battery for years, provided proper nourishment.

That, and most females find the mechanics of the tentacle-type youma to be rather repugnant.

While different in appearance, methods, and observable mechanics, both types of youma operate on the same basic principle: Generate fear, hate, depression, etc. in a victim, then suck the negatively charged qi from the victim.

Like most designed creations that make it out of the testing stage, the large majority of youma have redundancies built in should their primary operating methods fail. In the case of youma, they have backup energy collection methods. The tentacle-type youma have limited ability to absorb qi from contact and even short range remote, and the female-type youma...

Let's just say they're not really female.

Ranma's eyes widened as a pair of tentacles sprang from somewhere on the monster's back. "...no..." she gasped. She had heard of this. Every Japanese teen had heard of this. Any female, even part-time females rightly feared the very thing that was threatening Ranma at this very moment.

Closing her eyes and clenching her teeth (no way was she allowing one of those in her mouth!), Ranma braced for the impact that would completely shatter whatever notions her subconscious had about her manhood.

...~Thump~...

Huh? Thump? Not only was that not the sound she expected, all she felt...down there...was a pressure. No penetration, no real discomfort other than something touching that area that really shouldn't. With some trepidation, she cracked open her eyes and glanced down.

To her surprise and immense relief, the tips of the tentacles (she didn't even want to think of what they looked like) were ineffectually stabbing at the panties, which were stubbornly not yielding in the slightest.

"That's no panty...that's body armor!!!" she cried out in triumph. "HA~UMPH!" her bark of laughter cut itself off as she clamped her mouth shut just in time before one of the tentacles could push it's way down her throat.

Just then, the creature seemed to remember it had two more arms. It reached forward, claws extended to attempt to tear off the garment, even if it's prey was damaged in the attempt. Before the claws could make contact, however, the arms fell off at the elbow.

Shrieking in pain, the abomination dropped Ranma and backpedaled. Ranma hit the ground with a thud and glanced around. Embedded in the sidewalk was a pair of shuriken, shaped, oddly enough, like hearts. Looking up in the only direction they could have come from, Ranma saw a female figure highlighted in a single ray of moonlight amidst some air ducts coming from the top of a nearby building. She was wearing what looked like a sleeveless leotard showing off a pair of highly toned legs, tobi boots, bracers, headband, and cloth face mask covering everything from the bridge of her nose down, all in a slate gray color that blended perfectly with the moonlight. On her back was what looked like a strait-bladed sword, though it was sheathed. Her dark hair was cut short, and her eyes were piercing even from the rooftop she was perched on.

"Who...?" uttered Ranma.

"I am the Moonlight Shinobi. Enemies such as this would be better fought from a distance, I think." she pointed at the monster, which had just finished regenerating it's arms and was beginning to regroup. Ranma glanced back up to the rooftops, but the Moonlight Shinobi was gone.

Mamoru's viewing of the evening news was interrupted, not, for once, by a sense that Usagi, a.k.a. Sailor Moon was in danger, but by him sneezing. Irritably, he grabbed a tissue from the tissue box on his end table.

"Huh, well, she could'a at least lent me her sword." Ranma groused as she backed away from the monster.

The youma had managed to return to it's feet and reoriented itself to once again face the martial artist, claws and tentacles poised and ready.

Ramna's lip curled in anger, "You, monster, are an offense against nature. Young women live in fear of creatures like you, and that is about as evil as I can even come close to imagining. In the name of women everywhere, I will punish you!"

Usagi, preparing for bed and very thankful that her night wasn't being interrupted by another youma sighting all-call, sneezed.

"Good heavens, Usagi, cover your nose and mouth when you do that!" chided Luna.

Ranma kicked the remnants of her pants off her ankles. It wasn't like she hadn't worn less in public, after all. About 10 yards away, well outside the range of it's tentacles, the monster proceeded to disintegrate into whatever youma were made of. Ranma was winded, something that only happened these days when she expended too much qi in too short a time. Of course, a multi-armed creature with faster reflexes than herself wasn't an every day occurrence, even in Nerima. It had taken no less than two moko takabishas and seven vacuum blades to defeat the creature, and all this after it had already tried to suck out her qi earlier.

She paused to catch her breath, not to mention steady herself from the earlier close call, and headed for home, only hopping the lower, single story rooftops.

Akane's footsteps interrupted Ranma's focus on the teakettle in front of her on the table. The taller girl looked at the redhead quizzically, "What are you doing up?"

Ranma blushed and began stammering, "I, that is...I couldn't...I wanna change back..."

Akane merely gave Ranma a half-lidded stare. "Never mind, Ranma," she said with a sigh, "It's not important."

Ranma held back a sigh of relief. She really didn't want to be called a pervert just because some mystery lingerie-cum-body armor had appeared on her body the last time she changed into a girl. "So," she said to divert attention from herself, "What'r'you doing up?"

"Oh, I just woke up. I had fallen asleep while studying. I just came down for a glass of water before I went back to bed."

"Ah." grunted Ranma. She went back to contemplating the teakettle. Tiny wisps of steam curled up from the spout as the aquatransexual pondered her next move. Ranma's inability to see what was coming could be contributed entirely to the fact that her day had been unusually busy, even for a Saotome.

That, and the previously mentioned mental block in regards to Akane, of course.

Akane finished her water and put the glass in the sink. Stepping out of the kitchen, she paused as she saw Ranma still sitting and looking mournfully at the teakettle. "Honestly..." she said under her breath. Casually, she grabbed the teakettle's handle and poured it out on Ranma. "Go to bed, Ranma, and stop sulking about your curse." Setting the kettle down, she ignored her fiancé's reaction and headed up the stairs.

Ranma nearly faint...er, passed out again. Realizing he wasn't feeling any ribs splinter or lungs compress, he patted his chest tentatively, then with more vigor. A wave of relief swept over him as he realized the bra and panties had indeed disappeared when he was hit with the hot water. I wish this curse had come with an instruction manual, or something! he thought, I coulda saved myself a whole lotta grief.

With a satisfied sigh, Ranma stood and headed to the room he shared with his parents.

Sometime later, a couple rooms away, Nabiki slept the sleep of the not-just-and-certainly-not-innocent-but-highly-profitable. Being a rather hard sleeper, she didn't notice the window open, she didn't hear soft footfalls pad across the carpet, she didn't feel a thing when a weight settled briefly on her bed, and she didn't stir when a quiet, "Mrow." broke the silence that filled the room.

And when a brass colored object roughly six inches long in the shape of an antique key bearing the Greek symbol for the planet Venus thumped onto the bed right over her breasts, she didn't flutter an eyelid.

Moments later, the window closed, and a slumbering Nabiki was once again a

The Antarese class cruiser settled into parking orbit over the world Terra. The captain mused at the odd state of the Moon Kingdom, concerned that repeated hails had gone completely unanswered; no border guard to meet them; even the Regent of Pluto was mysteriously absent. Of course, if rumors held true about the ruler of Pluto, this was nothing unusual in itself, it was just another item that concerned the captain about this particular trip. Their passenger would brook no delays, however, so the expedition continued in it's final legs until they were now parked over the world in what the inhabitants would call the "L5 position," the point where an equilateral triangle could be made if you used the planet, the moon, and the ship as the tips of the triangle.

"Sir," said his communications officer, "Still no contact from Luna." The comm officer had no way of knowing that there was an advisor to the royal family that also had the name of Luna, she was referring to the capital satellite that the Terra's inhabitants called simply, "The Moon."

"Still no contact with the outlying colonies?"

"No sir, no patrols, no hails, it's dead space so far as communications are concerned."

The captain sighed again. When they had crossed the heliopause and hadn't heard from the security patrols of the system, he had wanted to stop the ship and send out an exploratory scout vessel to investigate. Their main passenger, however, had ignored the captain's concerns and so here they were, over the only planet that seemed to have any signals of any kind coming from it whatsoever. The problem was that their most recent information, 1,000 Terran years old at this point, said that Terra was completely off limits to all craft, including The Moon Kingdom's own craft. The only ships that were allowed on Terran soil were the single Terran Royal Craft that was only powerful enough to shuttle a small contingent to and from Luna.

Rubbing his thumb along his mustache, the captain turned away from the screen and faced his communications officer for the first time. "Alright, send someone to get our passenger. He's got to be briefed on the situation."

As the communications officer went about her task, the lieutenant at the helm spoke up. "Sir, I've got a signal. Actually, several!"

"A transmission?" said the captain in surprise. Normally his comm officer would have let him know first...

"No sir, this is one of our magic sensors. I've got confirmation on...nine members of The Moon Kingdom's royal houses. One for every house except Pluto."

"Why weren't we able to sense them before now?"

"Because they're all on Terra, sir."

The captain didn't reply for a moment, running his gloved hand over his salt-and-pepper beard. Finally, he voiced what every member of the crew was thinking since they passed the Pluto/Neptune orbit boundary, "What is going on in this system?"

Usagi idly nibbled on her fried squid. Absently, she sighed as the seafood turned to mash in her mouth and she swallowed it down.

"Usagi!" came Mamoru's insistent voice.

"Yah!" Usagi jumped slightly, startled by the interruption to her thoughts. She clamored after and eventually caught her squid-on-a-stick.

Mamoru simply looked on with a loving smirk. "Clumsy meatball-head."

"Hey!" snapped Usagi. She was not in the mood for snarky comments.

The grin dropped from Mamoru's face. "Usa-chan, what's going on? You've been moody all day, and I've been calling your name for five minutes. Your lunch is only a half-hour long, after all."

"Sorry, Mamo-chan," she replied somewhat sulkily, "It's just that Mega-Girl has been bugging me again."

"She showed up again after your meeting yesterday?"

"Yeah, she obviously didn't recognize me while I was Sailor Moon, but she had the nerve to say I was horning in on her territory." Usagi finished with a pout.

Mamoru, ever wise in the ways of this particular blond with ridiculously long pigtails, grinned, "And you have a territory?"

"No," Usagi whined, "It's just...she's so... You'll understand if you ever meet her."

To that, Mamoru could only nod reassuringly.

Great, thought Ranma, Just great. Now on top of everything else, I've got to come up with a "secret project."

Ranma sat in his room on his futon, studiously investigating a rather fetching red pump that he was sure would look stunning on his girl half...were he into that kind of thing...which he wasn't, 'cause he was a manly man.

A manly man who had turned tail and run at the first sign of danger from his mother, leaving her the previous night with a pathetic excuse that a bunch of shoes from a woman's-only boutique would fit, somehow, into a "secret project," and that he had, naturally, been plenty manly in getting them.

The problem was that he really couldn't go to anyone to figure out some reason, ex post facto, to be carrying around a bunch of shoes.

The author would like to point out that, as had been made mention numerous times in the series and barring the obvious discrepancies, such as height and, ahem, frontal area, Akane and Ranma (in girl form) are pretty interchangeable, clothing-wise, and he could simply have given Akane the shoes and shown his mother how "manly" he was to bring such a bounty to his fiance.

The author would also like to point out that Ranma, when it comes to Akane, has a mental block that is only rivaled in size to the Great Wall. Not the Great Wall of China, the Geller-Huchra Great Wall of Galaxies, a structure that is so immense that even the currently measured 500 million by 300 million by 15 million lightyears figure is just what we can see with our most powerful telescopes.

Can't go to Nabs, thought Ranma, She'd just blackmail me into giving her more "pictures" to sell. Kasumi...is Kasumi. Not a conniving bone in her body. Mom's clean out, so's Pops. Mr. Tendo's never been a big help, can't talk to Shampoo, she'd just try to get in my pants again...same with Ukyo. Konatsu might help, but his plans are never all that great. Kuno... Ranma shuddered, Definitely out! Can't go to the old ghoul, she wants me to get into Shampoo's pants, that leaves...crap!

Ranma stood, dropped the shoe back into it's box, and headed out to try and track down the bane of the Anything-Goes School of martial arts.

Ranma just hoped he wouldn't have to go panty-raiding to get help. This time.

"RAAAAGH!" came the rather fierce bellow from the normally up-beat and chipper Usagi.

Rei watched in amusement as the rabbit-haired girl stabbed her dumplings with a chopstick. "Let me guess...Mia again?"

"YES!!!" snarled Usagi, proceeding to use the other chopstick to do nasty and possibly illegal things to the remains of the dumpling, "She chased me around the school FOUR TIMES today! Thank heavens it was after school so I didn't have to be...inflicted with her...person doing bucket duty in the hall!"

This last got Ami's attention, who looked up from her computer. Usagi didn't normally use words like 'inflicted' in normal conversation. "Well...at least you're getting a work...out..." Ami trailed off under the death-glare their nominal leader gave the quiet girl.

"Why don't you just turn into Sailor Moon and kick her butt?" said Makoto.

At this, Usagi deflated. "Oh, man, I soooo want to do just that! But if I do, people might figure out I'm Sailor Moon."

Mina lifted her head from the manga she was reading, "How are you getting away from her, anyway?"

Usagi sighed, "Her suit's battery packs run out after about an hour."

Luna nodded sagely. "Yes, but she lasted longer today than usual. I was watching from outside school grounds and she went for a good hour and fifteen minutes after you left the building. You're doing much better on your endurance runs, by the way." Luna held up under the same glare that Ami received earlier, but it was only Luna's many years of being a court advisor to Queen Serenity that kept her from buckling.

Ranma stood leaning against a wall. Traffic was light today, which meant, of course, that Happosai would direct his "hoarde" along this street. Ranma really didn't understand why the old freak actually enjoyed a bunch of angry women chasing after him. Sure enough, the sounds of a dozen or so angry women came from down the street, with the undercurrent of a decrepit old man crying in joy, "Watahaul!"

Ranma rolled his eyes and waited for the inevitable, "Ranma, m'boy, come to help yer old master out?" followed by the dumping of a large amount of lingerie on his person. Right on cue, Happosai unloaded a good portion of "silkie darlings" on him. Ranma sighed and waited for the pain to come.

Happosai tsked as he looked down at his young protégé amidst the pile of women's undergarments. Really, the boy is slipping. How was the part-time girl supposed to get any better if he just let women beat on him like that? Shaking his head, Happi leapt down from the tree he was perched in and poked Ranma in a pressure point to stimulate consciousness.

The boy's eyes popped open, and a muffled groan escaped his lips, followed by a "yech!" and pulling a pair of obviously used panties out of his mouth. Happosai waited as they boy went through the motions of attempting to clean out his mouth without water. "Well," said Happi as Ranma wound down, "I must say, Ranma, that performance was miserable." Happosai could tell that Ranma wanted to spout one of his usual disrespectful comebacks, but held his tongue. Hmmm...thought the old pervert, This means he wants something.

Ranma swallowed his pride and turned to face the old man. "Listen, I...I need your help."

Happosai's eyebrows shot up his ancient, wrinkled forehead. "I see, I see...and what can this old man do for you?"

"I have, in my room, a bunch of girls shoes. I don't want 'em, but my mom caught me with 'em and now I need to come up with some excuse that sounds 'manly.'"

"Hmmm, yes, or face the displeasure of that sword of hers. Wouldn't do to have my finest student and heir cut down 'cause your mother's worried about your 'gift,' now." Happosai trailed off in thought.

Ranma was practically bug-eyed, "You mean you'll help me? No questions asked?"

"'Course not, m'boy!" said Happosai happily, "I prefer silky darlings, but to each man his own perversion."

Ranma was showing visible signs of anger, "Cool off, boy, I need to think." Happosai pulled one of his ever-handy buckets from nowhere and dumped it on Ranma. He turned to his thoughtful pose again, and so didn't see Ranma suddenly stiffen in obvious discomfort.

"Er, master?" Happosai was suitably surprised at the honorific that he turned to face the boy-turned-girl. "I, uhm, now that you know the...problem, I think I'll leave you to think about it. I've...got something to do!" With that, Ranma ran off, leaving a slightly bewildered Happosai in her wake.

About 15 minutes later, Ranma stumbled into the furo of the Tendo household visibly restraining herself from grabbing at areas that anybody, forget "good girls," didn't grab in public. Putting up the privacy sign and slamming the outer and inner doors shut, she stumbled into the tiled room in front of the mirror and began pulling at her clothing. Her pants dropped to her ankles, as well as her boxers, and her shirt hung open as she looked in shock at the mirror. On her breasts was what had to be the downright prettiest bra she thought she'd ever seen, and she'd seen far more bras than she ever wanted to thanks to Happosai and her curse. It was frilly, it was white, it was kind of sparkly, and it fit her perfectly. Around her hips and hugging her groin was a matching pair of frilly, girly panties that also hugged her curves in absolutely the most comfortable way and perfectly matched the bra. After staring at her reflection for a few moments, she began struggling with the bra, "Where's the danged catch?" she hissed. Checking the front and back revealed nothing. Frustrated, she grabbed at the panties, but they seemed to be sewn on, and didn't stretch enough to allow her to remove them. "Oh, no!" Desperately, she tried tearing them, but they seemed to be made of some super-strong fabric, she couldn't even get them to give even a little, and given that she was one of four people that could bend rebar with her bare hands, that was saying something. Visions of being permanently trapped in some sort of otherworldly lingerie flashed through her head. Forget changing back to a guy, the bra would strangle her and she didn't even want to imagine what the panties would do to her...special parts.

In the midst of some rather rapid-fire self-pity, Ranma's danger sense pinged like mad. Not in the usual "get out of harms way NOW!" kind of danger, it was more like the other night, when she knew someone else was in danger.

Suddenly ignoring her new and mysterious garment acquisition, she hastily re-clothed and charged out the door.

Ami was once again deep in the midst of her Trig homework...actually, she had long since left her trig homework behind and was busy compiling a program she had been inspired to write while working on her Trig homework. This particular program was intended to track all the "planet killer" asteroids in the system to give the Senshi "advanced warning" should one have a collision course with Earth, and also give them a baseline with which to compare any incoming stellar bodies to determine if it were an in-system, known threat, or something that was a significantly larger concern. She had just put the finishing touches on the 403rd line of code when a dialog came up with a warning light. Glancing about to make sure her mother wasn't in the room, then remembering her mother was working late at the hospital again, Ami pulled out her communicator and keyed in the "all call."

"Luna here," the moon cat was the first to respond. Ami allowed herself a moment of amusement as she heard Usagi whining in the background about Youma interrupting her videogames.

"I've got another Youma signal. This one is in the..." Ami checked the dialog's status, which had brought up a map of Tokyo with two dots, one representing her position, the other representing the Youma signal, "Nerima district?!"

"I thought I sensed something," said Luna, "It seemed rather week, so I had dismissed it as being a random surge."

"What was a random surge?" said Rei as her face appeared on the communicator's screen.

"The youma..." started Ami.

"...alright! But if it's just a meeting reminder you are sooo getting dry food for a week!" Minako's visage interrupted Ami, "Oh, hey, guys!"

Rei rolled her eyes. "We've got another youma?"

Ami nodded as Makoto's face appeared on the screen. She didn't bother waiting for Makoto to speak, as she knew Makoto would likely keep quiet while Ami was talking, "This one is quite a distance away from where they usually show up. It's out in Nerima."

Makoto narrowed her eyes, "That's where the mystery sighting was the other night."

Mina's eyebrows scrunched together, "What mystery sighting?"

"Very close to it, in fact, only a couple blocks away from that location." Ami said in reply to Makoto.

Luna spoke up, "You were able to check on it the other night, can you do so again?"

"No can do," replied Makoto, "I'm on the other side of town. It would take me twice as long as Ami to check on it even at my fastest. How about Mina?"

"No can do," Artemis' white furry face interjected in front of Mina's face on the screen. "We're at the park close to the school."

Artemis' face was suddenly yanked back from the camera as Mina had him by the scruff of the neck. She held him up to look him in the eye, "What mystery sighting?" Artemis proved once again that Moon cats only looked like their earth-born cousins as he shrugged in a way that no feline would ever be able to pull off.

"Who is closest?" interrupted Usagi, now in leadership mode thanks to the introduction of an actual potential crisis.

"Let me check the map," said Ami. Turning to her computer, she brought up the youma-tracking program, by this point heavily modified from what had come on the computer by Ami to be more efficient and reflect the needs of modern day Senshi work, as opposed to the 1,000-years dead Moon Kingdom's idea of an ideal interface. She had just issued the command to show the present locations of all the Senshi, inner and outer, when the blip for the youma disappeared from the screen.

Ami's brow scrunched as she considered what she just saw. A tiny, "WHAT 'mystery sighting'?" came from the communicator, Mina's voice reminding Ami that she had people waiting on her reply. Blinking to clear her thoughts, Ami turned back to the communicator, "Luna, did you notice that?"

"Yes," the mooncat replied, "Very odd, just like the other night."

"Do you think it could be Mega Girl?" opined Makoto, obviously disgusted with the thought that their newest rival might have beaten them to the punch.

"Oh, god, I hope not!" snapped Usagi.

"I'm not sure, but it looks like...I'm closest to the disturbance." said Ami.

Usagi was all business again, "Alright, go check it out. See if you can get any more information for us. If it is Mega Girl, we might have to..." Usagi made gagging motions, "Work together with her if she can respond that quickly."

"You need backup, Ami?" said Makoto.

"I shouldn't, as I'm getting no threat indicators, but I'll open a channel once I get there. You monitor it until I'm finished with my investigation of the scene in case something does happen."

"Great!" said Usagi in a bouncy voice, "Call us back when you've got something! I'm gonna get ice cream!"

Rei rolled her eyes and muttered as she closed the connection. "...meatball-head..." was the last thing they heard from her.

"Hey! Don't call me that!" squealed Usagi as Luna hit the disconnect button, causing their faces to disappear.

"You call me the instant you get there." said Makoto, who waited for Ami's nod before signing off.

"Would someone please tell me WHAT 'mystery sight~" Mina's irate voice was cut off as Ami hit the disconnect button on her comm.

Ami pulled her henshin stick out of her subspace pocket, gripped it firmly, and uttered her activation phrase.

Ranma pulled a pint of ice cream from the freezer. Mournfully, she looked at the remaining stock. In spite of its large size due to three-and-a-half girls in residence, two (one-and-a-half?) of which were martial artists that plowed through calories like freight trains, it was already seriously depleted for the week. Notably absent was the large stock of the "Once-a-month Special" the local ice cream store kept in stock for Tendo/Saotome females of adolescent age or higher that consisted of triple-fudge chocolate with chocolate chips, milk-chocolate drizzle, white-chocolate marbling, dark-chocolate chunks, and a dash of chocolate sprinkles. While this explained the dearth of ice cream, it meant that Ranma wouldn't have a pint to herself today unless she wanted to incur the wrath of the other women in the house. Sighing, she dug a pair of spoons out of a drawer and pulled out a couple of bowls. She dished out the ice cream as evenly as possible, tossed the empty pint container into the trash, and took the bowls out to the dining area.

Sitting at the table was Kimi, Furinkan's newest student and presently victim of two random monster attacks. Ranma had once again rescued the girl, who was apparently just carrying some groceries home when the monster attacked. The half-time girl martial artist was not on the scene quickly enough to keep the monster from stealing some of Kimi's qi, an action that enraged Ranma to the point she didn't even banter or play with the monster, she just wiped it out. The attack left Kimi in a low state; showing every symptom of having her qi sucked out against her will, up to and including severe depression. Ranma, knowing girls far more intimately than most guys, knew the only way to restore Kimi's spirits was to get her sweets, preferably of the ice cream variety. She unfortunately didn't usually carry cash and Kimi's money was scattered about the pavement near the attack site in the form of now totally ruined groceries. This resulted in Ranma taking the girl to the only source of readily available ice cream that Ranma didn't have to pay for, the Tendo Dojo.

Expressing rather more care than usual for her, she gently placed one bowl in front of Kimi, still a nervous wreck, and sat down on the opposite side of the table, casually taking several bites from her bowl in the process. "Well, I gotta say, you got as bad luck as the tomboy."

Kimi looked up from the wood-grain of the table at Ranma in abject confusion. "Huh?"

"Oh, Akane is always getting herself kidnapped, or abducted, or whatever, and I'm always having to save her." Ranma, focusing more on the conversation and her guest than her food and thus not savoring it as she had two nights ago, finished off her ice cream and tossed the spoon into the bowl. "'Course, she always mallets me for my efforts...stupid macho chick..." she finished in a muttered undertone.

Kimi was staring at the redhead's bowl in shock, "How...you just ate a whole bowl of ice cream in seconds!"

It was Ranma's turn to be confused, "Yeah? What about it?"

The pair of girls blinked at each other in confusion for a moment. Deciding she probably wasn't going to get an answer about that particular question, Kimi sighed, picked up her spoon, and dug out a bite of ice cream, "So does this kind of thing happen often in Nerima?"

"What, monsters?" at Kimi's nod, Ranma continued, "Oh, yeah! Although it's been getting bad lately..." Ranma trailed off in thought. Looks like I'm gonna have to light a fire under Pop's ass to do a cleanup of the area again. "Don't worry 'bout it, though. There's too many martial artists around for monsters to cause too much of a problem. 'Course, I'm here, an' I'm the best!" Ranma thrust her chest out and put her left hand in a fist on her hip, her right index finger pointing at herself, a cocky grin plastered on her face.

Spoon still in her mouth, Kimi stared for a moment before breaking out in giggles.

"That's better!" said Ranma, "I told you ice cream would help. Those qi-suckers really take the spirit outta ya. Hey, that's funny!" Ranma laughed at her own unintentional joke.

Swallowing her second bite of ice cream, Kimi said, "I don't get it...what's qi?"

Ranma stopped laughing but didn't drop her smile, "Oh, yeah, you wouldn't really know, would you?" Kimi shook her head, "Qi is like...life force. It's what powers your body. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the world together...what's so funny?"

Kimi was now laughing out loud, "You sound like Obi-wan Kenobi!"

Ranma blinked and tilted her head to the side, "Uh...who?"

Kimi gasped, "You don't know who Obi-wan Kenobi is? Haven't you ever seen Star Wars?"

Now Ranma was really confused, "Star what?"

"Omigosh, where've you been? Star Wars is, like, the biggest movie franchise ever!"

"Oh! A movie! Yeah, I never got to see many of those. I was too busy trainin' in martial arts."

Kimi dug out another bite of ice cream, "Is that how you got so good?"

Ranma smiled again, "Yep! Pops always said movies were a waste of a good martial artist's time."

"Well, I don't know about martial arts, but you have to come over to my place sometime to watch it! We just got Episode 3 on DVD, and it's got the most awesome-est special effects! I love the lava fight scene, and Padme's death is just so sad..." Kimi interrupted herself to take another bite of ice cream. Being a much better mannered girl than Ranma, she didn't talk while she was eating.

"Wait, you want me to come over to your place?" Ranma's shock was obvious as her face drained of color, "Yer not afraid of me?"

Kimi paused in her eating, "Why, should I be?"

"Uh, I...well...I'm cursed..." Ranma said limply.

Kimi's eyes lit up in understanding, "Oh, right...I nearly forgot about that. You...turn into a boy?"

"Er, well, actually, I turn into a girl, but only when I'm splashed with cold water. I turn back when I'm splashed with warm water." Ranma sighed. I was actually enjoying the conversation, damnit! Why'd I have to go and remind her of the curse? It looked like another girl was going to think he was just a pervert and start beating on her.

Kimi gazed at her bowl of ice cream contemplatively, still only having consumed about a quarter of it. "Is it..." she started hesitantly, "Is it contagious?"

Ranma was once again shocked, "Say what?"

"Your, ah, curse. Can other people get it from you?"

Ranma's confusion index hit an all time high. She had no idea where the conversation was going, but it wasn't where she had expected it to go. "Oh, no. You could get a curse like mine, but you'd have to go to Jusenkyo."

"Where's that?" asked Kimi.

"In China. It's a magical training ground. Nobody really uses it anymore, 'cept the locals, and idiots like my pop."

"He gave you your curse?!" Kimi cried out in alarm.

"Huh? No, well...kinda. He knocked me into the pool that cursed me, but that was only after I'd kicked him into the Spring of Drowned Panda. That's how you get cursed there, by falling into one of the springs."

"Oh..." Kimi continued to eat her ice cream.

"You know," said Ranma, "You're pretty calm 'bout all this."

Kimi giggled, "You saved me from monsters twice in one week, after that, someone with a curse like you have isn't so scary."

Ranma blinked in surprise. "You know, I never thought of it like that."

"So, do you...um, like girls or boys?"

Ranma processed the question for a moment. "Hey, I aint no hentai!"

"Sorry! Sorry! I didn't mean to upset you!" Kimi dropped her spoon on the floor in distress.

Ranma cried out, "Sorrysorrysorry! I didn't mean to scare you!" Ranma waved her hands in a warding action.

They stopped almost at the same time and looked at each other for a moment before Kimi started giggling. Ranma joined her after a moment, and soon they were both laughing out loud.

"Let me get you a new spoon," said Ranma after a couple of moments.

Handing her spoon over with a "Thanks," Kimi continued to smile at the other girl, once again making Ranma nervous. I hope the tomboy doesn't come in right now, she thought. Banishing the thought, Ranma quickly retrieved another spoon.

Sailor Mercury landed with a graceful "tap, tap" of her low heeled shoes touching on the sidewalk. She didn't often get an opportunity to roof-hop during the day, and her analytical mind used the opportunity to observe the difference in traffic patterns from when she did nighttime patrols with the other senshi.

While Mercury, like Sailor Moon, rarely visited Nerima, she could admire the casual atmosphere that the scene held even in the aftermath of a youma attack. In fact, the people around her barely registered her presence; beyond the casual nod or smile you'd give another stranger on the street.

"Mommy, mommy, look! It's one of the Sailor Senshi!" a young girl, perhaps eight, tugged on her mother's jacket and pointed to Sailor Mercury.

As Mercury smiled at the girl, her mother turned briefly from the business she was conducting with a vendor, glanced at Mercury with an apologetic smile as if to say, 'Children, what can you do?' and said, "That's nice, dear, it's not polite to point." With that, the woman turned back to the vendor and continued to haggle over whatever she was purchasing.

Mercury kept her smile in place as the child gave a quiet, "Gomen," and politely bowed. Mercury bowed back, hiding her surprise at the casual acceptance of her presence in the area.

Once the little girl had moved on to other things, Mercury remembered she had to open a channel to Makoto. She pulled out her communicator and tapped the call button for her friend and teammate.

"Jupiter here. Did you have any problems?" Makoto said as her image came up on the screen.

"No. None at all."

"OK, keep the line open, I'll keep an ear to it."

Mercury nodded and activated her visor, which took over for her communicator as it slid across her eyes. She returned the communicator to it's subspace pocket and glanced around the area. "I don't see the location of the attack...hang on." She approached another vendor. "Excuse me," she said.

The man looked up. "Oh, yes? What can I do for you?" Again, there was that calm acceptance. It was beginning to unnerve the girl who had ironically sought this kind of casual acceptance all her life. As Ami, she would have been shocked if she were even acknowledged. As Sailor Mercury, she was floored by the fact that even though she was a living, breathing superhero, the people of Nerima were treating her like she was just another girl on the street.

"Yes, I was wondering if you had seen an attack from a monster of some sort..."

"Oh, right! Yeah, happened not twenty minutes ago, right over there." The man pointed to a wall that was showing some signs of damage. "Poor girl didn't stand a chance." Ami gasped, and the vendor smiled and waved his hands in a reassuring manner, "Oh, don't worry. She's fine. Looked bad at first, though. The thing had her pinned down and started glowing, then this other girl came along and just cleaned the monster's clock but good."

Sailor Mercury surreptitiously activated the recording function of her visor. "Can you describe this girl? The one who defeated the monster."

"Oh, yeah. Short, I'd say a couple inches shorter than you, red hair...cutest little thing you ever laid eyes on. I'd guess maybe 15 years old, but then when you're my age all you youngsters look like kids." he said with a smile.

Mercury smiled back, "Thank you for your help." she said with a respectful bow.

As she walked over to the site of the attack, Mercury heard Makoto say over the comm link, "Well that was weird. The way he was chatting you'd think he was being questioned by the cops, not the Senshi."

Mercury chose not to reply, instead tapping the controls on her visor to change viewing modes. "Well," she said quietly enough to not be heard by passer-bys, "There's definitely evidence of an attack." she used the rarely accessed function of taking still shots with her visor, rather like a camera, to snap pictures of some cracking of the pavement and a scorch mark. "And a rescue. Hang on, I'm switching to the magical spectrum." Flipping through several different modes on her visor, she stopped when the scene in front of her was coated with a blue fog representing magic detected by her visor. She glanced around, noticing that a few of the residents were showing a low level glow themselves. It was most noticeable amongst the older generation, but wasn't consistent. Running several scanning programs at once, the figures that came up on Mercury's visor confused the girl.

While she had seen similar magic before, and it was almost always benign, she had never observed this quantity of it. Usually, this type of magic, classified by the old Silver Millennium computers as "wild" magic, was in low quantities in random locations, but sometimes congregated around a specific place or thing. Usagi's friend Naru practically reeked of the stuff, which went a long way towards explaining why the poor girl always wound up in the middle of monster attacks.

Nerima and it's citizens, however, were swimming in wild magic. The as Mercury watched, some of the people with higher amounts of wild magic radiating from their bodies left trails behind them. That explains why there's so much of it just hanging in the air, thought Mercury, Someone radiates wild magic, leaves a trail of it, which is crossed by others and is absorbed bit by bit until they start leaving trails of it...incredible!

"What exactly are we seeing here, Mercury?" came Makoto's voice over the link.

"It appears the area is saturated with magic. This explains the feelings you were having the other night," the blue-haired Senshi continued talking while she fished out her computer, "You couldn't not get magic 'vibes' from Nerima."

"Is it something we need to be worried about?"

Mercury tied her computer in with her visor and began making adjustments to the sensors, "No, I don't think so. This magic is classified as 'benign.' It just can't be properly controlled or used by any party, let alone one of our enemies."

"So this particular magic is harmless?"

"Not necessarily. In certain quantities it can cause events and increase random chaos by a factor proportional to its quantity." As she fiddled with the settings on her visor augmented by the sensors built into the Mercury computer, the fog began to split into different colors, rather like a prism split a beam of light into a rainbow.

"Hey, too many big words. Pretend I'm stupid." Makoto said in exasperation.

Mercury sighed, "The more wild magic there is, the more likely strange stuff will happen."

"Bad strange or good strange?"

"Neither, really." replied Mercury as she noticed a predominant 'frequency' of magic around the attack site, "It'd be like tripping and landing in the mud while wearing your best dress, but finding enough cash buried in the mud to pay for the dry cleaning and a soft drink that you wouldn't have found if you hadn't tripped."

There was a pause as Makoto parsed Mercury's sentence, "You're right, that is strange. What is that?"

This last question was obviously in reference to a patch of magic that intersected with both positively- and negatively-infused qi traces. "I'm not sure, but I can get a good reading on it." Mercury proceeded to record the unique magical signature for later scanning purposes. "This isn't like what you'd find in a youma," explained the senshi to her friend, "I have a feeling this signature belongs to the girl who defeated the youma."

"And the life-energy readings?" Makoto had obviously been paying attention to the readouts on the Mercury visor that were being transmitted with the video feed.

"Well, the negatively-infused qi is obvious, that's what the youma was feeding on. The positive qi...that is most likely our mystery girl's attack. It's too bad we don't have video of this fight, I'd like to see what weapon she uses."

"Well," came Makoto's voice as Mercury folded up her computer and put it away, "If it's anything like what Rei does, I'd start looking at the temples in the area."

Mercury visually scanned the area one last time then leapt to the nearest rooftop. "That is a good idea, but we need to discuss this with the others first."

"Right," said Makoto, "I'll put out the meeting all call. Did you remember to eat anything for lunch, or did you do homework straight through?" Unseen by the visor's cameras, Mercury's face turned a bright shade of red as she began roof hopping. "I'll take your silence as a yes." continued Makoto, "Take a break and get some food, I'll make sure the meeting doesn't start without you. Jupiter out."

Mercury's reply was cut off as the connection went dead. She sighed and began thinking about what she could throw together quickly from her rather sparse fridge. Usually she and her mother just ordered out.

"...And so there he is, screaming his head off," Ranma pantomimed gripping her head and a overdone panicky look on her face and imitated Soun Tendo's voice, "'Yaaargh, I can feel it inside me!' And all this time Kasumi's just looking at him with that look that says she thinks he's loopy, horns poking out from her head!"

Kimi's laughter joined Ranma's at that. Her questions about Ranma's curse naturally lead to details of life with the Tendos and everything that had happened since the martial artist had arrived in Nerima. Their jovial banter had finally landed on the incident where the rather pathetic demon that couldn't handle pain had possessed Kasumi, the one person nobody had the heart to inflict any pain on, resulting in dear, sweet Kasumi doing all sorts of generally harmless but very annoying things to the household members while nobody was willing to retaliate because that would hurt Kasumi as well.

"Tadaima." came a light voice from the genkan.

"Hey, speak of the demon." quipped Ranma, "Kasumi, c'mon in here, there's someone you gotta meet!" he called to the front door.

"Be right in." called back the eldest Tendo daughter.

The pair sat in companionable silence while they waited for Kasumi, who came in shortly. "Oh, hello, are you a friend of Ranma's?" queried the young woman.

"Kasumi, this is Kimi, the girl I saved the other night."

"How wonderful! I just met your mother today."

Kimi blinked in surprise, "You...you did?"

"Yes," said Kasumi cheerfully, "Ranma's mother and I went to welcome her to the neighborhood." her face developed a slight frown, "Although I do wish Mr. Saotome had come along. He would have been very helpful in explaining Jusenkyo. I don't believe the poor woman understood what we were saying."

Ranma leaned toward Kimi and said, soto-voce, "Which is Kasumi-speak for, 'She didn't believe a word we said about magic.'"

Kasumi would have frowned further, but Kimi giggled in reply. "It's so good to see Ranma make new friends." said Kasumi with a smile. "Are you a martial artist?"

Kimi's reply was interrupted by Akane calling out, "Tadaima" from the foyer. A moment later, the youngest Tendo came into the dining room. "Oh, hello. Kimi, isn't it?" At Kimi's nod, Akane continued, "What brings you here?"

Ranma responded. "Monster attack again. I kicked its butt."

Akane rolled her eyes, "You and your ego..."

The redhead puffed herself up again, "Hey, I am the best, after all."

Adding a headshake and a sigh to her eye roll, Akane said, "Well, I've got some homework to get started on. Let me know when dinner's ready." With that, she headed up the stairs to her room.

"Red hair? You're sure?" Usagi was being rather insistent.

"Yes," said Ami as calmly as she could, "The vendor said the girl had red hair. Nothing at all about armor of any type."

Usagi, Rei, and Mina all breathed a sigh of relief. Mega Girl had black hair, which ruled out this new 'champion' being the one person none of the senshi could stand.

"OK, so she's got red hair, she's shorter than Ami, and may be a priestess." Rei summed up the previous half-hour of debriefing.

"Yep." said Makoto. "And I gotta tell you, that Nerima is one strange place."

"You weren't there when I was," said Usagi. "They actually sell magical items. Powerful ones, too."

This brought several concerned glances. "Anything dangerous?" said Makoto.

"Well, there were these love charm fishing rods that worried me, but what could I do, go to the police?"

"Well," came a voice that the untrained ear wouldn't have been able to determine the gender of, "If it's not causing people to become homicidal or fueling some youma, it's low priority, I think."

The group turned to see the Outers at the shrine entrance. Haruka was in the lead, followed closely by Michiru and Hotaru, who was still in her school uniform. Haruka was casually pocketing her sunglasses as she continued. "Is that the reason we were called out here? Some magical charms?"

Rei bristled, but kept quiet as Ami spoke up, "No, and I do agree with your assessment of that particular issue, at least at the present time. As it is the whole area is magic saturated. A love charm might even be considered low-level by the area's residents."

"So what did bring us here?" asked Michiru as she took a seat.

"It sounds like we might have another magical girl hanging around." said Mina.

Rei bopped Mina on the head, "We don't know she's a magical girl!"

"Ow~!" groaned Mina.

Hotaru giggled at the display as Ami began the briefing over again.

Ranma sat in the furo, stripped down to the strange lingerie she had found on her body earlier. She had scrubbed down, running water under the super-strong garments to rinse the suds out so she wouldn't get rashes in incredibly awkward places, and had sat contemplating the heated water in the tub for so long she had drip dried.

She wanted to change back to a guy so very bad it was almost a physical presence. The catch was the undergarments she now wore which she could not remove. Ranma had long since given up on trying to tear, cut, pry, or even burn the garments off. They were incredibly strong and very, very resilient. The qi she had projected at the panties at point blank range hadn't even left a burn mark.

For the first time ever she found herself envying Ryoga's curse that turned the lost boy into a pig. If she was cursed to turn into a pig, she could just splash herself with cool water, crawl away from the offensive garments, jump into the furo, and change back into a human. Of course, if she turned into a pig with cold water, she wouldn't even be sitting there in bra and panties.

The problem was that her chest, not counting her rather substantial bust, was positively reed-thin compared to her male form, which was reaching a very manly proportion as she approached the last leg of puberty. This wasn't like the time Picolette Chardin forced her to wear a metal corset. Not only had she been younger, and therefore her male form not as fully developed in the torso, the corset itself wasn't even sized for a Japanese girl, especially one as small as she was. The bra she now found herself wearing was perfectly fitted to her chest, and would likely crush her to death if it remained after she changed back to her birth form.

Her legs instinctively twitched together as she promptly mentally shot the suspicions of what could happen to her male anatomy with her present panties.

Of course, since the strange clothing had appeared when she changed into a girl, it might just disappear when she changed back into a guy, but that was one heck of a gamble.

Incredibly enough, her thought process was once again interrupted by the same type of danger sense that had interrupted her earlier that day.

Kasumi was just finishing the dishes when Ranma tore through the dining room on her way to the back door.

"GottagoKasumiSomeonesintroubledontwaitupbye!"

Kasumi paused, replayed the sentence in her head, and smiled. "Such a nice young man, it's no wonder his mother is so proud of him."

Ranma's feet pounded across the rooftops of Nerima in the direction she sensed what she strongly suspected at this point to be another monster. Within moments, her fears were confirmed as she stopped at the edge of a roof and looked down to see another abomination attacking an all-night coffee stand.

"Damnit!" she yelled, "Where the hell are you things coming from!?" The monster turned to the direction of her scream, giving Ranma a good view of it in the light cast through the windows of the coffee shop.

Of all the monsters Ranma had fought, up to and including Pantyhose Taro, this one was the most hideous. It looked to stand about seven feet tall, had six arms, and had only a passing resemblance to a humanoid female. It's eyes were red with reptilian slits for pupils, and it's jaws held angry sharp teeth. Fighting back a gag reflex, Ranma leapt down from the building and faced the creature. "All right, you horror flick reject, you're going down right now!"

Ranma charged the creature, bringing up a leg for a flying kick that would have knocked Ryoga for a loop. Instead of recoiling, the monster grabbed Ranma's ankle. Surprised but not caught off guard, she redirected her momentum to her opposing fist, which the monster also caught.

Now she was caught off guard. Now just attempting to get free, Ranma snapped her free leg forward in effort to stun the creature, but that leg, too, was caught. In short order, the monster had a grip on her other arm, completely incapacitating the martial artist.

Staring eye to eye with the creature, Ranma growled feraly. She almost wished she could bring out the Nekoken, but she was concerned that even that wouldn't defeat this creature. She wasn't overly worried, though. Dying in battle, while not necessarily desirable, was the best death a warrior like her could hope for. It was honorable like that.

Seeing the monster pull it's arm back to strike, she was surprised when, instead of punching, slashing, or piercing with it's claws, it slapped it's open palm against her chest. Instantly, she felt the familiar pull of qi being forcibly sucked from her body. "Oh, no you don't!" she spat, "I got a teacher that tries this on a daily basis!" Instantly, Ranma pulled in all her qi, causing the monster to bellow in rage.

"Ha!" barked the martial artist, "Not so cocky, are...you?" Ranma's hesitation came from the monster slashing at her pants at the crotch. The strange panties held up just fine, naturally, but her pants were totaled. "What are you doing?" she said, apprehension creeping into her voice.

The author would like to take a moment of the reader's time for a brief education on Youma anatomy.

Garden-variety youma are magical constructs that are generally designed to appear female to the human eye. The source of this design idea comes down to the age-old practice of creating things in one's own image. Most youma are created by female aliens/sorceresses/etc., therefore most youma look female.

This is not to say that all creatures made in the manner of youma are female in appearance. There are notable exceptions known in Japan (and thanks to truly disturbing exported porn, the world) as the tentacle-rape demon. These are generally created by male aliens/sorcerers/etc., in case you hadn't guessed.

The major reason for the difference in design is aesthetics, not of design but of taste in qi. The qi drained by the female-type youma tends to have only one type of emotion tied to it, such as fear, anger, envy, etc. The tentacle-type youma tend to draw out a multitude of emotions charging the same quantity of qi. While the multi-charged qi is more versatile, it takes more of it to produce the same effects as the single-charged qi, thus creating problems with storage, use, etc. Female aliens, et al, generally dislike the inefficiency of the multi-charged qi and so usually avoid the tentacle-type youma, where male aliens, et al, generally don't care, especially given the ease with which a tentacle-type youma can gather it's charged qi, creating an economy of scale that allows them to not worry about the downsides.

Also, tentacle-type youma tend to target a human's "deep" energy centers, as well as force stimulation of the necessary points to coerce the victims body to generate even more energy than just what is produced by the presence of the youma itself. This, naturally, has it's downside, as a victim that isn't forcibly stimulated can be kept as a sort of living battery for years, provided proper nourishment.

That, and most females find the mechanics of the tentacle-type youma to be rather repugnant.

While different in appearance, methods, and observable mechanics, both types of youma operate on the same basic principle: Generate fear, hate, depression, etc. in a victim, then suck the negatively charged qi from the victim.

Like most designed creations that make it out of the testing stage, the large majority of youma have redundancies built in should their primary operating methods fail. In the case of youma, they have backup energy collection methods. The tentacle-type youma have limited ability to absorb qi from contact and even short range remote, and the female-type youma...

Let's just say they're not really female.

Ranma's eyes widened as a pair of tentacles sprang from somewhere on the monster's back. "...no..." she gasped. She had heard of this. Every Japanese teen had heard of this. Any female, even part-time females rightly feared the very thing that was threatening Ranma at this very moment.

Closing her eyes and clenching her teeth (no way was she allowing one of those in her mouth!), Ranma braced for the impact that would completely shatter whatever notions her subconscious had about her manhood.

...~Thump~...

Huh? Thump? Not only was that not the sound she expected, all she felt...down there...was a pressure. No penetration, no real discomfort other than something touching that area that really shouldn't. With some trepidation, she cracked open her eyes and glanced down.

To her surprise and immense relief, the tips of the tentacles (she didn't even want to think of what they looked like) were ineffectually stabbing at the panties, which were stubbornly not yielding in the slightest.

"That's no panty...that's body armor!!!" she cried out in triumph. "HA~UMPH!" her bark of laughter cut itself off as she clamped her mouth shut just in time before one of the tentacles could push it's way down her throat.

Just then, the creature seemed to remember it had two more arms. It reached forward, claws extended to attempt to tear off the garment, even if it's prey was damaged in the attempt. Before the claws could make contact, however, the arms fell off at the elbow.

Shrieking in pain, the abomination dropped Ranma and backpedaled. Ranma hit the ground with a thud and glanced around. Embedded in the sidewalk was a pair of shuriken, shaped, oddly enough, like hearts. Looking up in the only direction they could have come from, Ranma saw a female figure highlighted in a single ray of moonlight amidst some air ducts coming from the top of a nearby building. She was wearing what looked like a sleeveless leotard showing off a pair of highly toned legs, tobi boots, bracers, headband, and cloth face mask covering everything from the bridge of her nose down, all in a slate gray color that blended perfectly with the moonlight. On her back was what looked like a strait-bladed sword, though it was sheathed. Her dark hair was cut short, and her eyes were piercing even from the rooftop she was perched on.

"Who...?" uttered Ranma.

"I am the Moonlight Shinobi. Enemies such as this would be better fought from a distance, I think." she pointed at the monster, which had just finished regenerating it's arms and was beginning to regroup. Ranma glanced back up to the rooftops, but the Moonlight Shinobi was gone.

Mamoru's viewing of the evening news was interrupted, not, for once, by a sense that Usagi, a.k.a. Sailor Moon was in danger, but by him sneezing. Irritably, he grabbed a tissue from the tissue box on his end table.

"Huh, well, she could'a at least lent me her sword." Ranma groused as she backed away from the monster.

The youma had managed to return to it's feet and reoriented itself to once again face the martial artist, claws and tentacles poised and ready.

Ramna's lip curled in anger, "You, monster, are an offense against nature. Young women live in fear of creatures like you, and that is about as evil as I can even come close to imagining. In the name of women everywhere, I will punish you!"

Usagi, preparing for bed and very thankful that her night wasn't being interrupted by another youma sighting all-call, sneezed.

"Good heavens, Usagi, cover your nose and mouth when you do that!" chided Luna.

Ranma kicked the remnants of her pants off her ankles. It wasn't like she hadn't worn less in public, after all. About 10 yards away, well outside the range of it's tentacles, the monster proceeded to disintegrate into whatever youma were made of. Ranma was winded, something that only happened these days when she expended too much qi in too short a time. Of course, a multi-armed creature with faster reflexes than herself wasn't an every day occurrence, even in Nerima. It had taken no less than two moko takabishas and seven vacuum blades to defeat the creature, and all this after it had already tried to suck out her qi earlier.

She paused to catch her breath, not to mention steady herself from the earlier close call, and headed for home, only hopping the lower, single story rooftops.

Akane's footsteps interrupted Ranma's focus on the teakettle in front of her on the table. The taller girl looked at the redhead quizzically, "What are you doing up?"

Ranma blushed and began stammering, "I, that is...I couldn't...I wanna change back..."

Akane merely gave Ranma a half-lidded stare. "Never mind, Ranma," she said with a sigh, "It's not important."

Ranma held back a sigh of relief. She really didn't want to be called a pervert just because some mystery lingerie-cum-body armor had appeared on her body the last time she changed into a girl. "So," she said to divert attention from herself, "What'r'you doing up?"

"Oh, I just woke up. I had fallen asleep while studying. I just came down for a glass of water before I went back to bed."

"Ah." grunted Ranma. She went back to contemplating the teakettle. Tiny wisps of steam curled up from the spout as the aquatransexual pondered her next move. Ranma's inability to see what was coming could be contributed entirely to the fact that her day had been unusually busy, even for a Saotome.

That, and the previously mentioned mental block in regards to Akane, of course.

Akane finished her water and put the glass in the sink. Stepping out of the kitchen, she paused as she saw Ranma still sitting and looking mournfully at the teakettle. "Honestly..." she said under her breath. Casually, she grabbed the teakettle's handle and poured it out on Ranma. "Go to bed, Ranma, and stop sulking about your curse." Setting the kettle down, she ignored her fiancé's reaction and headed up the stairs.

Ranma nearly faint...er, passed out again. Realizing he wasn't feeling any ribs splinter or lungs compress, he patted his chest tentatively, then with more vigor. A wave of relief swept over him as he realized the bra and panties had indeed disappeared when he was hit with the hot water. I wish this curse had come with an instruction manual, or something! he thought, I coulda saved myself a whole lotta grief.

With a satisfied sigh, Ranma stood and headed to the room he shared with his parents.

Sometime later, a couple rooms away, Nabiki slept the sleep of the not-just-and-certainly-not-innocent-but-highly-profitable. Being a rather hard sleeper, she didn't notice the window open, she didn't hear soft footfalls pad across the carpet, she didn't feel a thing when a weight settled briefly on her bed, and she didn't stir when a quiet, "Mrow." broke the silence that filled the room.

And when a brass colored object roughly six inches long in the shape of an antique key bearing the Greek symbol for the planet Venus thumped onto the bed right over her breasts, she didn't flutter an eyelid.

Moments later, the window closed, and a slumbering Nabiki was once again alone in her bedroom.

lone in her bedroom.

[crossovershipstournament]

TOREAGAN Propoganda-

Reagan wasn't really for cheesy jokes, even finding brett's endeavors a bit annoying at times. ...Toriel eventually changed that view, though, making reagan smile when she slipped a pun into casual conversation.

Neither of them expected it, though, when reagan accidentally slipped out a pun herself one time. Toriel completely LOST it, clutching her stomach, bent over guffawing.

Reagan laughed a bit herself, her face heating up in embarrassment... She didn't think she was THAT funny, but here Toriel was, laughing so hard, tears were falling and wetting her fur.

...Gosh, she's adorable.

(btw this was thought up by @hoodie-prince-kid cause we were talking ab toreagan a while ago <3)

~~~

Reagan and Toriel never really planned to get married, but when they DID, it was perfect.

They put it off until a good while into the relationship... about half a decade.

Reagan could barely wait. She had the ring ready when they went out to dinner one night, but she kept dropping the box, and each time Toriel giggled and picked it up before she could herself.

It was no surprise that she said yes.

...

Brett and Papyrus both cried at the wedding. And of course Frisk was the flower kid that all the guests awww'd at when they sprinkled petals on the aisle way.

~~~

As Reagan is a robotics scientist, she could hypothetically take her skills outside of work.

If she's not working on a project, attempting to procrastinate, or the like, she's known to try and find things around the house that need fixing.

Lucky for her, Toriel's coffee machine breaks quite often.

So anytime it breaks down, she's already grabbed her toolbox and is on the job.

Toriel appreciates the help, but...

...shouldn't Reagan be taking a break from her big company project right now?

~~~

ok its almost 11:30 PM where i live and while this isn't much its what i can crank out right now 💥💥💥 i would have also included shenanigans with Tori's kids, but I don't want to ♥️

How adorable!! 😊 Might just go ahead and link this entire ask rather than copy+paste it into the poll.

Also fun fact; I'm currently editing the art for this ship right now because I ALMOST SPELLED TORIEL'S LAST NAME WRONG. 😭😭 Sorry, goat mother, I almost failed you!!

[birdhcuse]

Gonna link back to Teagan's old AF bio for reference, but I'm going to expand upon/edit/whatever some of the things included.

Teagan is not only afraid of storms, they're also aquaphobic. Any large body of water causes them to panic and they absolutely hate getting wet. Don't even think of trying to convince them to take a cruise...

Teagan is a name they chose for themselves. They assumed a new identity after being presumed dead in a shipwreck.

"Christopher" is a part of Teagan's pre-shipwreck name. Their chosen middle name is...Cee. They wanted to keep their middle initial, but couldn't think of a different name that started with C, so they just went with Cee.

Teagan never chose a last name when they first assumed a new identity—it felt wrong to replace their family name so soon after the tragedy. When they're forced to come up with one, they yoink one from their favorite caretaker. :3c

They're staunchly anti-capitalist. Even the "nice" ones aren't trustworthy to them. Their parents worked on a cruise ship—the company knew the weather was too bad for a voyage, but approved of one anyway because they didn't want it to affect their bottom line. The company's greed cost Teagan's parents their lives.

Teagan prefers dull/desaturated clothing because it suits their feathers better, allows them to blend in, and makes them look more poor. It'd be hard to play the sympathetic orphan if they were wearing bright clothes that look brand new. Anything given to them that doesn't fit their aesthetic is sold or donated unless it becomes sentimental to them, which is rare.

Having lived on a cruise ship on and off, Teagan developed people skills and was exposed to a ton of different cultures. They were rarely (if ever) permitted to leave the ship, but they managed to be exposed to a diverse cuisine through the rest of the ship's staff.

Speaking of food—Teagan ate whatever they could ring out of people when they were living on the streets, but they decided to go vegan once they had enough financial stability to choose what they ate.

Teagan primarily earns money from odd jobs (under the table stuff) and freelance work. They don't buy into the traditional 9-5 lifestyle.

Anything Teagan buys is thrifted—the camcorder they record with, the clothes they wear, the utensils they cook with, etc. This often means their stuff is...pretty old. Very dated furniture and technology fills their tiny apartment. Even their phone is outdated. It still has a physical keyboard. With buttons.

Teagan prefers open source software and runs their ancient computer on Linux. They don't get how someone would give up control of their technology to greedy corporations. Apple is their sworn enemy. You will never convince them to use an Apple product.

They're skilled enough with technology to exploit security systems. Teagan doesn't really like to do that so much in adulthood, where they're trying to "keep themselves on the straight and narrow", but would be willing to make an exception if, say...their crush/boyfriend needed help.

[themainspoon]

Ok, time for answers.

Firstly, the lie:

“The Egyptian God Wepawet became a Werewolf so he could lead a Werewolf tribe” is FALSE!

So, Egyptian Gods do show up in WoD lore, but Wepawet is not one of them, (I have since been informed that apparently he actually does show up in the lore, he was never actually a god in the WoD though, he was a Werewolf who became a mummy [yes those also exist in the WoD]. So, the above is still false, but nowhere near as false as I initially believed, I was legitimately worried that this could happen.) and the two main examples I’m aware of don’t have anything to do with Werewolves. Set is an ancient Vampire who is the founder of a clan of vampires called either the Church of Set or The Ministry (depends on edition), and Anubis is a Wraith (ghost) who rules over the Egyptian portion of the “Shadowlands” (basically the underworld).

The World of Darkness plays very loosely with Mythology and religion, you get used to it.

Now time for context on all the shit that DID happen:

“A vampire once ripped their cock off and threw it at another vampire in protest” is TRUE!

The name of the vampire in question is Sascha Vykos, who threw their cock and balls at a vampire named Hardestadt the Younger on the 19th of October 1493. They did this to protest something called “The Convention of Thorns”, I’m not going to go into what the Convention of Thorns was, because it’s probably not all that interesting to people unfamiliar with Vampire: the Masquerade.

“The Biblical Lucifer has been working in the USA’s film industry since the 1930s” is TRUE!

Lucifer is much like he is in Abrahamic Mythology, except for the fact that he escaped hell and found himself wandering around the world in a weakened state. He did everything that led to his exile in an attempt to help humans, and continued to do so from then on. Unfortunately, some of his "Archdukes" and other powerful demons also escaped, but weren't powerful enough to exist without possessing a physical form. They became the "Earthbound" which are basically evil deities that Lucifer spent a lot of his time fighting against to protect humanity. He was able to seal them all away by the 1600's, and was left with basically nothing to do. He essentially just wandered earth until the 1930's, when he ended up in Los Angeles and somehow wound up working in early Hollywood. Apparently these days though he's washed up and hasn't made a popular movie in a long time.

"100's of Mages living in the internet died after an attack caused it to crash" is TRUE! (But it's more complicated than that)

Ok, this is the first of 3 entries coming from Mage: The Ascension, and Mage gets weird. So, firstly "Living in the Internet" is partially true, although more specifically what they existed within was the "Digital Web". It's basically a spiritual/virtual reality space that reflects information and technology, and has come to reflect the internet more broadly. So, to say "they live in the internet" is only partially true, they live in the Spiritual reflection of the internet, which is deeply linked to the internet, and that arguably exists in kind of the same way, but is not technically the same thing.

The event in question here is called the 'White Out" or "White Wednesday". It occurred either on the 10th of November 1997, or it was Y2K. Many sectors of the Digital Web were either erased or corrupted, and the vast majority of the Mages in it at the time died, with some escaping with permanent injuries.

"A Spirit created Were-Moths, and then un-created them due to their disobedience" is TRUE!

The Were-moths were originally one of six species of Were-Insects that also included Bees, Hornets, Ants, Termites, and Locusts. These Were-Insects were created by "The Weaver", one of three powerful spirits called the Triad. The purpose of these beings was to bring order to the Chaos created by another one of these spirits called "The Wyld". However, the Were-Moths apparently didn't want to do that, and the Weaver simply unmade them because of it. None of these Were-Insects exist in the modern day (in the lore). We only know about them because they are mentioned in a book about the playable Were-Spiders called the Ananasi. They are mentioned in the context of the "Insect Wars", which the Were-Insects lost, hence why they no longer exist.

"Satyr's exist because Dionysus got kicked out of Olympus for causing trouble" is TRUE!

This is the sole entry from Changeling: The Dreaming on this list. In the setting Fae represent and are born from human dreams. Dionysus and the other Olympians were part of a group of Fae called the Sidhe, who are basically Fae royalty. After being kicked out, Dionysus decided to party with humans instead of being miserable, and for some reason did so while wearing a goat head. He brought them good food, wine, music, orgies, and partying. As he did this, stories of his exploits began to spread among the humans, who started to dream more hedonistic dreams, hoping for his arrival. As previously mentioned, the Fae are closely tied to human dreaming, and so one night Pan, the first of the Satyr's born from the dreams that Dionysus had introduced to humanity, arrived at one of his parties, and then many more followed after.

"A character was killed off by having his soul turned into an ashtray" is TRUE!

Samuel Haight was a character who was originally created as a joke, he was intended to be the ultimate cross game badass. If it was not for the fact that everybody in universe hated him because he constantly wanted to fight with them all for his own reasons, he very much would have been a Mary Sue. At first he was well received, but jokes stop being funny eventually.

In Wraith: The Oblivion, there is a process sometimes used as a punishment for those who break the rules of the Shadowlands called "Soul Forging". Only one material really exists in the Shadowlands, and that is Plasm, which is the same thing that souls, and therefore also Wraiths (who are the souls of the dead) are made out of. If you fuck up in the Shadowlands you get turned into some random object that somebody higher up in the bureaucracy of the Shadowlands than you wants. Samual Haight got turned into an ashtray after he died. Although arguably his story did not end there, as there was a story from a Mage: The Ascension book in which the characters are pelted by random garbage from the Shadowlands, one of the items they get hit by is an ashtray...

"One ancient vampire got turned into a worm after eating a more powerful vampire" is TRUE!

Tremere was the one who became a worm. Tremere was an ancient and powerful vampire, but he was not turned into a vampire by any other vampire. Tremere was a Mage who turned himself into a vampire. He founded his own clan, but he wanted more power and legitimacy, in order to do this he came up with the idea of usurping one of the pre-existing vampire clans by eating its founder. His original target was Set, but he eventually chose to go after a different vampire named Saulot. The act of a Vampire eating another vampire is called "Diablerie", and it is supposed to consume the victims soul as well, but it does not always work. Basically, the souls of Tremere and Saulot became trapped in conflict over control of Tremere's body, and as a part of that Tremere's body warped and mutated into many different forms, one of which was a giant worm. Tremere is perhaps the only person who has ever had good reason to ask "would you still love me if I was a worm?"

"Mages in space once used giant mirrors and "Spirit Nukes" to kill a vampire" is TRUE! (but calling them "Space Mages" is a terrible description of what they are)

Ok, this was the work of a faction from Mage: The Ascension called "The Technocracy", to describe what they are and what they do would be opening a whole can of worms and I've already been writing this for a really long time. All you need to know about them though is that they really don't want humans to know that supernatural forces exist, and they also want to eradicate all supernaturals for the good of humanity (they also want complete ideological control over humanity, so they aren't good), you also need to know that a lot of their bases are on space stations or the moon, hence the "Space" bit. This was during an event called "The Week of Nightmares" and it involves ANOTHER ancient vampire named Zapathasura, who woke up and began rampaging through India in the year 1999.

This was really fucking bad for just about everything in the World of Darkness. Not only did Zapathasura's clan get decimated (because Zapathasura began devouring them). Having an ancient vampire walking around the streets of Bangladesh, visibly burning in the sunlight but being sustained by all the younger vampires being consumed, was something that the Technocracy could not tolerate. Luckily for them they had been building orbital mirrors that could be used to focus intense sunlight onto specific parts of earth just for an occasion like this. But Zapathasura had followers who had summoned a storm to block the beams of light. In order to weaken Zapathasura and destroy those responsible for the storm, the Technocracy utilized "Spirit Nukes", which work like regular nukes on supernaturals, but apparently not on humans or the physical environment. After weakening Zapathasura using "Spirit Nukes", they were able to use the orbital mirrors to finish the job.

"An evil corporation created Were-Roaches who keep escaping their laboratories" is TRUE!

The Were-Roaches are called the Samsa (named after Gregor Samsa from Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis). They were created by Pentex, who are the main antagonists of Werewolf: The Apocalypse. They were the result of "Project: Metamorphasis", and were intended to be an espionage tool. The plan was to create shapeshifters who could turn from a human into a swarm of cockroaches to spread out and surveil many places at once, but they fucked it up and made people who can transform into 8ft tall cockroach monsters instead. They decided to keep all the Samsa locked up in their labs until they all died off. But Samsa keep escaping, because of course they would, they're literal fucking cockroach people. The Samsa are very hard to kill, because they actually can turn into a swarm of cockroaches, but only when they "die". After a while all those cockroaches, except for one, die. That one renaming cockroach has to eat twice its weigh each day, as it continually doubles in size until it can transform back into a human, who wakes up with no memories of their time as a cockroach, but a whole lot of new trauma.

That's actually one of the Samsa's traits, they're all deeply traumatized from the process by which they were created, and as a result literally all of them could benefit from therapy. Luckily for them though, a spirit called the Cockroach, who governs a Werewolf tribe called the Glass Walkers (in older editions at least, in the most recent edition they are governed by "The Spider") really likes them and looks out for them.

"There is a realm inside Earth called the "Hollow Earth" that still contains Dinosaurs" is TRUE!

But it's so much more than that. Like the "Digital Web" mentioned earlier it is a spiritual realm from Mage: The Ascension. If you drill down into the earth you won't find it. But you can enter it through other means. There is even a group of Nazi's who stumbled into it during WW2 and got stuck there. So, because of this, in Mage: The Ascension you can go to a place in which you can ride around on dinosaurs and hunt Nazi's for fun. There is also a whole bunch of other stuff going on inside the "Hollow Earth", honestly too much to write about here, but it's a wild place. Mage is by far the weirdest game in the World of Darkness, and it is that way because of shit like the Hollow Earth, honestly this entire list could have been Mage.

I keep seeing polls made for people unfamiliar with a piece of media to ask them to try and identify the thing that does not happen in said media, and I always thought those looked like a lot of fun! So, I decided to make one, and I already knew the perfect franchise for one: The World of Darkness (WoD) TTRPG franchise. The WoD is a franchise containing several different TTRPG’s about playing as monsters, and it has some of the most unhinged lore I have ever come across.

Almost everything above is heavily simplified for the sake of fitting into the poll boxes btw. Also, I promise that this is not a trick. Ten of the Eleven options presented above actually are a part of this franchises seemingly infinite Metaplot. I’ll schedule a reblog containing the answer and some much needed context for everything above.

[gerudospiriit]

[Okay we all knew it was coming. I've got to go on a ramble about the Gerudo (edit: it ended up being about TotK in general oops). I'll go ahead and put it under a read more because there will be some spoiler-y things BUT--]

If I didn't have a million and six questions about the Gerudo in BotW, TotK did nothing to answer them and added another billion.

For starters, I was so glad to see that Ganondorf and the Gerudo together. Working together. The Gerudo loyal to him. I, of course, wish we got MORE because again, more questions and no answers, but I've always been fascinated by the position the Gerudo are in, ESPECIALLY Nabooru, and how their attitude toward Ganondorf evolved from pretty much OoT to BotW (I know they're in like four swords but). I loved seeing it even if it brings in a ton more inconsistencies and anxiety for me as an OoT/Nabooru fan.

So what am I on about. From seeing the scenes from the geoglyphs, seeing the Lightning Sage and how she reacts to news of Ganondorf I guess attacking the desert settlements, which may include Gerudo Town or whatever it might have been back then (which brings up more questions of course), I was immediately like "wait what happened then?" Did Ganondorf turn on the Gerudo? Did they turn on him? Was the sage a single actor, similar to Nabooru? IS she supposed to BE Nabooru, introducing a whole other can of worms for me specifically? Why would Ganondorf attack his own region when the Gerudo were obviously loyal to him? What changed their minds or what changed his? There's just soooo much there and they just....never explain a thing. And I get they MIGHT address a little more with the old sages in DLC but DAMN IT. I just want to KNOW.

All of that said, it also makes OoT more complicated because, unless this is like...the beginning of New Hyrule like the concept introduced in Phantom Hourglass after the flood, it doesn't fit. The obvious thing is looking at Ganondorf. If this is the BEGINNING, and Ganondorf is sealed away in the imprisoning war until Zelda and Link find him again in TotK, we couldn't have OoT, TP, WW, or any other game that features him. Like...my doom and gloom reptile brain can't help but wonder if this is meant to REPLACE OoT and therefore make all the other stuff irrelevant but that can't be because, again, Nabooru is mentioned by name and in a historical context. She existed in other words. So akdkjrbr.

But then bring in the Gerudo too. So they're loyal to Ganondorf here. Then they're...maybe not? But then they are again in OoT. And then, if we go by Urbosa's scorn, his memory is a despised one. The inconsistency is the same brand as a friend pointed out to me: with the scene looking so similar to the one from OoT where Ganondorf surrenders and pledges loyalty to Hyrule, why tf did the Gerudo and Hyrule fall for this AGAIN? Which makes my reptile brain again fire up and wonder if this imprisoning war stuff is meant to replace OoT. Like I get it's dramatic, but making the same mistake with the same man on both their parts is just...silly. And i guess you could argue that the Zonai history has been a lost one but like was it really? Rhoam and rulers before knew not to go down beneath the castle and apparently that was respected until the second Calamity messed things up and the gloom started causing problems. So the royal family, especially closer to the events of the imprisoning war, should know SOMETHING about it all. And yet they still APPARENTLY made the same mistake. Same goes for the Gerudo...and that's just being generous and saying it's a possibility they would even SEE Ganondorf again considering...you know....he's supposed to have been sealed up under the castle by the time OoT comes around, meaning the Gerudo would have never seen him after that and therefore their idea of him wouldn't have changed to what we see in OoT.

And you know, as I'm writing this (welcome to my stream of consciousness I guess lmao), I thought of an easy way they could have avoided all of this: don't involve Ganondorf and just use Demise. Don't get me wrong. I love Ganondorf and was very very happy to see him back. However, his return AS GANONDORF makes things so janky and complicated and I known it's just fanservice. I know why they dont, and the short answer is they've overly connected Demise and Ganondorf to the point they're just one person, but hear me out. They almost STRICTLY call him the Demon King anyway, suggesting the tie to Demise. The look after he transforms is Demise. Sealing Demise away again and him having no connection to Ganondorf at this point would keep everything following intact still, and they could just do what they have been doing with the curse and working in Demise's curse and influence like choosing Ganondorf as the vessel when he's born (as much as I still kinda hate that). Basically, Ganondorf should have just been Demise HIMSELF returning. And if you really wanted to bring Ganondorf back, fine. Tying them so tightly together as basically one in the same in this context is just a mess, so it would have been better if it was back to the sort of vessel idea. So I think it would have been better if

1. It was DEMISE they showed in the flashbacks to the beginning of Hyrule and the Imprisoning War (also isn't that what they called the events from SS? Does this stuff predate even THAT?). No Ganondorf for, as it stands, he couldn't exist yet. This solves the inconsistency of Ganondorf being in other eras when he should be sealed away. It makes how Demise and Ganondorf get involved a little squickier to work with, but that whole thing was already weird and hard to explain anyway.

2. Demise, then, is who gets resurrected beneath the castle. If you want Ganondorf back, to be like a physical body for him or whatever, make that another plot point. Make it to where someone finds a way to resurrect Ganondorf SPECIFICALLY, whether that's Demise himself or another actor like the Yiga Clan (ugh don't get me started on the damn Yiga Clan and the little sense they make god). Sprinkle in hints that this is going on, along with the historical context of who Ganondorf was. That maybe even part of the main story is TRYING (and failing) to stop Demise from getting Ganondorf resurrected because then he would be at actual full power or something like that.

Basically, just...separate Demise and Ganondorf more. Like I get there's the curse and I guess Ganondorf becomes some kind of vessel for Demise, but this game has basically just made them the same person and it makes everything all fucky and confusing with how they've presented this new founding of Hyrule and the imprisoning war. We would have a little bit better cohesion and sense at least.

And yeah I know people are going to bring up time traveling Zelda and that maybe this is just an entirely new timeline altogether from even BotW, and the past she ends up in is a completely different past than that of OoT's or something, but....idk. I also heard this was supposed to tie up all the timelines so????? And that she just fixed everything in the past is another theory??? It's all just really bizarre and adds nothing to the established story and lore. Too much fanservice and too little thought and consideration for plot.

Anyway. Maybe I'll figure some explanation out for at least the Gerudo. Or I'll eventually just stop trying to make it work. Maybe something will come out that helps in the DLC. and don't get me wrong: for all my criticisms on these points, the game was super fun and was a huge leap forward from botw, which always felt sparse and unfinished to me. This game did so so soooo much good and I still think it's an amazing game. But I love the story of the Zelda series. I love the lore. And I don't even hate what they did with all this, necessarily. I just wish they either cut these two games off from the previous games entirely without making all the historical references (and I'm not referring to place names, the outfits, or easter eggs necessarily) or did a better job of showing how these events related to the past games and lore instead of just tossing something out there with zero explanation of why it matters.

[lesbiandatekaname]

The "Rusty Quill Article" from the perspective of a journalism student.

So there has been a lot of stuff going around about an article made by someone that lays out some possible/probable/whatever misconduct. And there are some ways that people have been discussing it that I want to weigh in.

My Credentials: I'm in my senior year as a Journalism and Media Production major (I won't say which university because this is the internet). I've taken a lot of courses about journalism, including its ethics and writing conventions.

The Writer

"Who's Afraid of Alex J. Newall?" was written by Newt Schottelkotte on Medium and edited by Tal Minear and Wil Williams. The article extensively details possible misconduct

Possible bias: Upon publishing the article, Schottelkotte made no note of being the Director of Marketing at the podcast network Fables & Folly. When this was pointed out online, Schottelkotte added an editor's note to the bottom of the article that reads

Newt Schottelkotte is currently the Marketing Director for Fable & Folly Network, but has worked as an independent creator and journalist for longer. This information was not disclosed; a disclosure has been added.

So what gives? That's pretty biased, right? Surely F&F stands to gain a lot if Rusty Quill were to shut down or lose public favor, and the author hid that fact. I, however, would take that with a heavy grain of salt. As noted Schottelkotte has worked independently in podcasting since 2016 and got their position at F&F this year. Furthermore, they've actually worked for a lot of podcast networks, also available in that link, and the emphasis on F&F made by some people may be a bit overzealous. Yes, F&F could stand to gain from RQ experiencing troubles (though more of the nebulous way that a lot of podcast networks would), but Schottelkotte overall is an independent contractor and that's probably the reason they didn't mention it in the article originally. Minear and Williams are unaffiliated with F&F.

Something else about journalistic bias: No article is ever truly unbiased. There is no way for it to be. There are some cases where bias is so blatant that the person shouldn't be put on the story, but most of the time the best people are able to do is manage their bias.

The Purpose

Some people have disparaged the article for trying to "cancel" RQ. To this I would merely like to point out that the article is not addressed to podcast consumers, but to podcast creators.

They do address the possible consumers later towards the end, where they attempt to dissuade people from harassing former/current employees and projects

In the final section, they do ask readers to think about supporting The Magnus Protocol Kickstarter with the clear bent of "Supporting the Kickstarter could mean that you're supporting abusive industry practices." There is clearly some biased language here, and a call to action such as this could definitely be considered "iffy" journalism, so take that as you will.

The Sources

Oooooooooh the sources. Schottelkotte's article uses a few external sources, and then a number of anonymous sources that are ex-employees of RQ or people who were offered a position there. All interviewees are anonymous, and people have raised some eyebrows at this.

In journalism you are generally supposed to avoid confidential sources. They cause an obvious verification issue. If people don't know who your sources are, how do they know that you're not just making everything up?

That being said. The audio drama podcast industry is rather small. RQ itself is somewhat of a household name, and is even more of a juggernaut in a place like Britain. I can absolutely understand why these people would feel nervous about speaking publicly for fear of being blacklisted due to being considered "hard to work with" or "disloyal" or fear of backlash from RQ themselves. Take these sources with a grain of salt, but also understand that there are reasonable grounds for these sources being confidential.

Conclusion

I encourage people to go read the article, hence why I linked it at the beginning. Something that I would ask for people who point out the issues with sources is to demand accountability from RQ. Demand that they respond (As Schottelkotte asked them to do at least once, possibly several times. It's a bit unclear in the article). Look at the facts that we do know and ask yourself that even if they don't directly verify claims do they at least line up with them? Journalism is meant to inform, but there can also be more beyond a dichotomy "this article is can be trusted" vs. "this article cannot be trusted." Use this as an opportunity to ask questions.