#Engin Dervish

[kyreniacommentator]

BRT Vox Pop meet the All Star Lambousa Archers

By Chris Elliott…. How time flies when you are having fun they say and for me it has been running CyprusScene.com and publishing its website articles, online e-newspaper, podcasts and weekly video reviews and not forgetting being with the Lambousa Archers and striving to learn and perfect the art of shooting a recurve bow and hit the target.. (more…) “”

[en8y]

scavenebulaslimic + nebulaslimineer

[IMAGE ID: two horizontal flags with nine stripes; each flag has a nebula dervish slime in the center. the nebula dervish slime is a dark green-blue blob, with a ring around it. it has light yellow accents and light yellow stars sparkling in its body. it has small eyes and an open, happy smile. the middle stripe is twice as large as the rest of them, which are equally sized. the left flag has these top three colors: dark forest green, dark warm brown, desaturated medium green. the right flag has these top three colors: dark cool grey, dark dull teal, and light cool grey. each flag has these bottom six stripes: dark dull teal, off-white, dark dull teal, pastel yellow, medium teal, and dark teal. END ID.]

scavenebulaslimic: a gender connected to being a nebula slime scavenger; this gender is connected to nebula slimes, nebula slime aesthetics, scavenger aesthetics, apocalyptic aesthetics, and calhood/misanhood!

nebulaslimineer: a gender connected to being a nebula slime engineer; this gender is connected to nebula slimes, nebula slime aesthetics, engineer aesthetics, mechanical aesthetics, and metanhood/metixhood!

[tkingfisher]

Will the Paladins have guest spots in the Swordheart sequels?

The other sword books—and really, they do exist, I just wrote another 2k on the Dervish’s book last week, they’re just moving slower than snail snot for some reason!—take place in the gap between the Wonder Engine and Paladin’s Grace.

(I think. I could be wrong.)

So the current paladins probably won’t, but Zale definitely will, and an older and hopefully wiser Learned Edmund seems to have wandered in. And while I do not know if this will end up happening, I have a vague thought in my brain that perhaps they will at least go and visit a now-silver-fox paladin and his partner who is still a really excellent forger, for plot-related reasons.

But then I feel sort of weird and self-indulgent writing my previous characters in, although I don’t know why. I have a kind of guilty reflexive twitch that I’m doing the writing equivalent of George Lucas shoehorning C-3PO into Phantom Menace where it makes absolutely no goddamn sense. Will it feel like cheap fan-service? Surely there are other characters in this world?

So then I fret and end up working on a totally different book instead.

Sequels are hard for all the wrong reasons.

[highlander-732b]

Battle Report + Status Update: Succession Wars junk vehicles are very fun

For a little context, I've been waiting impatiently for the BattleTech Mercenaries Kickstarter stuff to actually ship to general customers, as it's been taking Catalyst a while to actually get all of the stuff in order.

Unfortunately for me, I ordered some stuff through our local TTRPG supplier, and I hadn't actually supported the Mercenaries Kickstarter because I wasn't fully committed to actually buying BattleTech stuff until I had gotten a starter box as a birthday gift about a year ago.

Fast forward to now, and my friend had gotten his BattleTech Mercenaries Kickstarter stuff fulfilled recently. We discovered that there were campaign rules included in the small primer booklet, and I decided to fully hammer out the beginnings of a 3151+ campaign then and there. Notably, pilots can't be better than 3/5 (Gunnery/Piloting) to begin with, but we decided to force people to make 3/5 pilots to increase game speed.

We decided on 4000 BV per player to allow for more fun Dark Age mech and vehicle choices. My friend decided to kinda go crazy with his picks, and selected an Ontos Heavy Tank and a Dervish DV-11DK.

For those who are educated in the art of tank warfare in the age of the battlemech, you would know that the Ontos kinda sucks historically. It's a tank with eight medium lasers as a primary armanent, but no fusion engine. That means three heatsinks have to be mounted alongside every medium laser to sink the heat, making the Ontos horribly inefficient as a 95 ton tank. (A Demolisher can do similar close range damage, but can equip Gyrojet Ammo for a -2 to hit using the AC/20s)

HOWEVER, some madman decided to upgrade the thing in Dark Age by adding eight large chemical lasers as a replacement to the medium lasers & heatsinks. Chemical lasers do not generate heat on vehicles, because they use ammunition. You have EIGHT large lasers.

The following fight was very brief.

To set the stage, a pirate raiding party had struck the area my friend was defending, and had landed with:

Hunchback HBK-4N Wolverine WVR-6K Vedette Tank x2 Default Condor Hovercraft Default

With all of these units at 4/5 (Gunnery/Piloting), they roughly were equivalent to the Dervish & Ontos combo BV-wise.

This was not the case in combat, and it turns out defending with a tank that will likely hit more than half its shots against opponents that must close to close combat distances (>10 hexes) kinda just wins. That Ontos was killing a Vedette when it could see a Vedette, and when it ran out of Vedettes, the Ontos killed the Wolverine with little assistance.

The Wolverine barely lasted two turns of direct combat, and gracefully exploded after having every single pip of armor on nearly every armor section completely gone, before it was crit in the SRM-6 ammo bin located in the right torso. No CASE meant instant death.

The Hunchback actually did a minimum of damage before quickly retreating, while both Vedettes exploded instantly from merely attempting to scratch the paint of the Ontos.

The standout was the Condor, being lucky enough to avoid getting hit at all while successfully closing to optimum weapons range, but it was quickly squashed by the Dervish after a lucky boxcars roll on motive system damage after getting a little too close.

In summary, the pirates were reduced to burning slag in a matter of seconds, and playing as them was hilariously fun. Bad units are great as story enemies, because you can aggressively run them into danger without really caring. My friend got a hella large payout according to the campaign rules, so that was a pretty nice way to begin a tale of a new mercenary company.

[justforbooks]

Stephen Salter, who has died aged 85, was the inventor of the Salter’s Duck, a wave-power device that was the first of its kind and promised to provide a new source of renewable energy for the world – until it was effectively killed off by the nuclear industry.

In 1982, after eight years of development under Salter’s direction at Edinburgh University, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) was asked by the government to see if the duck might be a cost-effective way of making large quantities of electricity. To the great surprise of Salter, and others, the UKAEA came to the conclusion that it was uneconomic, and that no further government funding should be given to the project.

A decade later it emerged that thanks to a misplaced decimal point, the review had made Salter’s duck look 10 times more expensive than the experiments showed it was likely to be. The UKAEA claimed this was just a mistake, but Salter, who had never been allowed to see the results of the secret evaluation, put it another way: asking the nuclear industry to evaluate an alternative source of energy was like putting King Herod in charge of a children’s home, he suggested.

By then, however, Salter had become interested in other projects, and as a result his duck has never been tested at sea – although wave-power devices using some of his technology are now in development in the Orkneys and off the coast of Portugal.

The prototype ducks, developed in a multidirectional wave tank of Salter’s invention, are now in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where there are a number of other exhibits with links to him, including the only remaining Black Knight rocket, a UK ballistic missile from the 1950s, and Freddy the Robot, from the 60s, the first machine to have artificial intelligence that could “see” and had a sense of touch. He also invented the Dervish, a low-cost method of clearing landmines, by using a revolving three-wheeled mechanism with a constantly changing path.

Perhaps the range of those projects sums up Salter’s mind better than anything else. Colleagues who worked with him said that while other scientists concentrated for years on one subject to the exclusion of all others, Salter was fascinated by new problems.

Although it was the oil shock of 1973 that first stimulated his interest in renewable energy, he later became one of the first scientists to realise the dangers of climate change. Doubting that the slow pace of cutting fossil-fuel use would be enough to save the planet from dangerous overheating, at the turn of the 21st century he set up a scheme to develop marine cloud brightening – an idea to produce more and brighter clouds in the middle of the oceans in order to reflect sunlight back into space, thereby keeping the oceans cooler and reducing sea-level rise.

He designed a project to build a large number of automated ships spraying aerosols from sea water into the atmosphere to create and brighten clouds in the middle of the world’s oceans and – having made a considerable fortune by selling some of his inventions – was able to set up the Lothian School of Technology just outside Edinburgh for £2.4m. The centre provides premises for up to 60 of his students to work on inventions and develop them commercially beyond their time at university.

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Stephen was the son of British parents who had emigrated there, Rachel (nee Floyd) and Willoughby de Carle Salter. His father joined the Royal Navy as a meteorologist during the second world war and afterwards the family moved to Britain, where Willoughby became head of a prep school in which Rachel also taught. Stephen attended two boarding schools and then Framlingham college in Suffolk.

By that time he was designing, building and flying model aeroplanes, and his ambition was to take an engineering degree at Cambridge University. But he failed to get good enough grades, instead becoming an apprentice at Saunders-Roe, an Isle of Wight aero- and marine-engineering company, where he was involved in the Black Knight rocket project. After studying at night classes he was finally accepted at Cambridge to study natural sciences including metallurgy.

He moved to Edinburgh University in 1967, aged 29, to become a research fellow working on artificial intelligence in robots. Within six years he was also a lecturer and had begun his work on wave energy. In 1984 he became professor of engineering design.

Perhaps Salter’s left-leaning politics and his willingness to take on the London establishment prevented him from being showered with the honours he deserved, but he was elected to a fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1991, made MBE in 2004, and inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame in 2021. He never stopped working, becoming an emeritus professor at retirement age and continuing to research, advise companies and refine his inventions until the end.

He married Margaret Donaldson, a professor of development psychology at Edinburgh University, in 1973. She died in 2020. He is survived by his younger brother, Edmund.

🔔 Stephen Hugh Salter, inventor, born 7 December 1938; died 23 February 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[caustic-splines]

I am not a scientist I am not an artist I am not an engineer

I am a dervish I stared directly at the accumulation of the totality of shards of splintered reality micrometers from my pupils and I danced. I pulled words from existence in an unspoken unknown silent language I danced with the caustic splines of existence and I spoke a new tale with my every move and thought One day the light show for the blind will be elucidated but I would have already moved on to decay on my own terms.

My language of the matter, energy, and stars will die with me but there will be new dancers

[haellen-o]

Welcome to my brain rot facility

Character tags #haellen #ophelia #Ophelia De Fortemps #Halcyon

This is a personal account where i browse the waves of tumblr, enjoying various media i follow and spewing my blorbo and ship brainrot when it gets aggrevated enough. This blog is mainly FFXIV centric but will occasionally dip into other things that i like, should that ever change and my attention drifts further from being XIV focused i'll probably make a side blog which will become my main account thingy, that'll probably go HERE and this will become dedicated exclusively to XIV... if there's no link then that's not happened yet. onto the OC introductions

(May contain spoilers for ARR, HW, SB, SHB's, and EW)

Haellen Orestes! Magitek engineer. Published author in applied and theoretical aetherology. Practitioner of (most) forms of magic. Allagan history expert. And proud wife of the great Nero Scaeva

(Also the warrior of light and darkness but that's not important and she wouldn't introduce herself with that)

Age: 40 (As of patch 6.3)

Height: 6’1 (187.45cm according to the race height wiki)

Haeling from gridania originally, she spent most of her life in the city of limsa lominsa honing her trade as a scholar of all things aether related at the arcanists guild. Her life before the fall of dalamud was fairly uneventful, aside from the occasional excitement of being dragged on a field research job by her two close friends A'rhaz Y'vikti a scholar and summoner respectively that worked with the arcanist guild to provide the lore and history of various subjects of interest

Following the fall of dalamud however her life was swept up in a whirling dervish of activity. From the inheretence of the scholar and summoner jobstones after the deaths of her friends at the battle of cartenou, becoming an adventurer to honour their memory. And learning that she was the fabled warrior of light, and being inducted into the scions of the seventh dawn and becoming the protector of eorzea... many more titles would be earned along her path, but none were earned without sacrifice

Her dream is to eventually find someone to replace her. The likelihood of someone doing that is slim to none, but it was never her intent to become the warrior of light. Her goal was to explore eorzea, uncover secrets, and settle the affairs of her fallen friends before returning to her normal ordinary life at the guild

Her duty as the warrior of light of course does not allow for that. Should she fall or give up, (Or simply refuse to act) there are none who could replace her. It is her duty to bear this burden and she will bear it for as long as she must (At least that's her belief)

GENERAL INFO

Canon Jobs: Warrior, Paladin, Dark Knight, Gunbreaker, Machinist, Dragoon, Monk, Ninja (LvL 80), Red Mage, Black Mage, Arcanist Conjurer (LvL 30), Sage, And formerly Summoner and Scholar. But as of 6.1+ she is no longer a summoner or scholar

Stoic in public settings

Emotively reserved. Doesn't really change expression much, and when she does its sublte and reserved (unless angered)

Confident and bold in conversation

Ignorant to social taboo's and fopaux's, will say what she thinks. When she wants to, so long as it wouldn't be insensitive to say at that time

Prefers clothes that cover up a lot of her body

Husband is Nero Scaeva (in case that wasn't obvious. Did she mention that yet?) Daughter is Aurelia H. Orestes

Hates coffee and the smell of it with a passion

Loves the smell of freshly brewed tea, Lime scented incense sticks, and the smell of rain

Enjoys maintaining her own gear and weapons

Enjoys tinkering with her MCH contraptions and prototype projects

Good cook (However only cooks her custom recipe for archon loaf)

Ophelia De Fortemps. Twin sister to haurchefant greystone. Battle hardened warrior of light and darkness. Fight sexual. Will(Probably)not kill you unless she has to

Name: Ophelia De Fortemps (Formerly Ophelia Sharduex, and Ophelia Greystone)

Age: 30 (as of patch 6.3)

Height: 6’6 (200.15 according to the race height wiki)

Growing up as an orphan on the streets of ishgard wasn't easy. And ophelia learned from a very early age how harsh the world is, and more importantly. How important it is to have people you can rely on and who will watch your back, the streets hardened her but she never lost her smile. Or sense of humour

When she turned 18 she hauled ass as fast as she could out of ishgard to become an adventurer. Plying her trade with sword and shield. Self taught by observing the various ishgard knights training, as well as other people who used such weapons. And then applying what she watched into practice, it made her style unorthadox and very unique. Combining reverse engineered ishgardian sword techniques and the typical sword swinging of gladiators and paladins. It caught her a lot of attention pretty quickly and this style was honed in battle fast. Eventually becoming a paladin through... Unorthodox and certainly unapproved methods. She vowed to always protect those she cared about, no matter what the cost

After becoming the warrior of light and returning to ishgard after the events of the sultana's banquet she discovers that she is the bastard daughter of edmont de fortemps and the twin sister to haurchefant. This is discovered the night before the events of the vault take place. Learning that she had the one thing she had always wanted, family. And having it taken away from her faster than she could even attempt to realise sent her down a dark path. And in her darkest moment she met her mentor, the dark knight known as fray

Once again adopting her own fighting style rather than a standard trained one. She combined aspects of her sword knowledge that would allow her to seek her revenge, and fulfil it as quickly as possible. All dark knights walk a dark path, but her's was one far darker than most. A violent and hateful path, of which she would later come to refer to as her becoming a "Wraith" as her style of combat drastically differed from a typical dark knights. Her raw hatred and vengence combined with her lack of self-restraint allowed her to far outweight the power of anything at that time, easily dismantling the white whale known as bismark singlehandedly without breaking a sweat. And even withstanding the power of the ascian Igeyorhm even without the full power of the blessing of light. Allowing her to retain the key to azys la and averting ysayles fate

After the events of the dragonsong war. Ophelia's power had calmed more, regaining the power of the blessing of light and her desire for revenge satisfied, still far stronger than anything that could face her. But that would change after the grand companies of eorzea had decided to liberate ala mhigo. Her meeting with the crown prince of garlemald, zenos. He was a light in her life of boredom and emptiness. Someone who was as powerful as her and fought as murderously. This light was brief but their shared feelings of emptiness sparked a unique kinship the two felt. Resulting in a unique friendship in which the two desired to kill each other. This light was brief, but it would influence events that had yet to even be set in motion

During her trip to the first she had a revelation, brought on by her weakened state and emet-selchs "Elucidation" on his goals. The realisation that her dark path was adjacent to emet-selchs. And that if given the opportunity she would sacrifice anyone to bring her brother back. Even those close to her... This caused her great emotional pain, all of the atrocities she had commited for revenge in the name of haurchefant, and how if he were alive. He certainly wouldn't have been happy with her actions. From that moment she swore to change and promised herself, and her brother. That she would let go of that pain and finally start to heal, no longer would she fight without any care for mercy or the state of her opponent. Her dark power finally being able to fulfil its purpose of protecting those who who cannot protect themselves. instead of being a tool for revenge

Now after the events of endwalker and the final days. With the help of her friends, the scions, and the woman she loves. She has finally started to heal, it's a slow journey and one she could have walked sooner were it not for her bloodlust and want for violence, but its a journey she can finally begin. And a new adventure awaited the healing soul of ophelia greystone, the warrior of light. And proud member of the ishgardian house fortemps

GENERAL INFO

Canon jobs: Wraith (Custom job) Paladin (Level 58)

Occasionally zones out while in civil situtions

Intense love of warm drinks (Coffee, tea, and especially hot cocoa)

Calm and light hearted. But serious when it needs to be

Prides herself on her self taught martial prowess and swordsmanship

Girlfriend is Ysayle Dangoulain

Was officially recognised as a member of house fortemps after the events of endwalker

is very supportive and protective of emmanellain, despite his age he feels like a kid brother to her

The smell the ishgardian tree's give off when burnt fill her with nostalgia

Uses a modified ishgardian longsword style for combat (akin to the Schlüssel longsword stance)

Preference of wielding longswords over greatswords (However she used greatswords up until endwalker)

Enjoys sowing

Good cook

Envoy to the sundered star. The last seat of the convocation. Azem

Name: Halcyon (or azem)

Age: Very old

Height: Varies (Currently 5'8)

A survivor of the sundering, halcyon has walked the source and its reflections in so many different lives. Never forgetting their job as azem once. Walking paralell to emet-selchs path through history. Halcyon has spent their time breaking bread and living with the people of the source and the reflections. Their most recent iteration has been the most true to their real self, adopting their own name and title instead of the name given to them by their parents and filling the mantle of Warrior of Light to defend the people of the sundered world against her kin and their shattered and forgetful minds

GENERAL INFO

Canon jobs: Warrior, Foebreaker, Mystic

Prefers they/them

Enjoys confusing people with their androgyny

Strongest (Physically) out of all their kin

Amongst the weaker mages of their kin

Enjoys garlean opera and poetry

Completely oblivious towards romantic advances

Hot-headed

Enjoys introspection

Nicknames creatures and people they enjoy (rarely uses those nicknames in public)

Possibly the cause of the "Inner beast" warriors use

Cuddles a solus plushie when going to sleep

i won't ever post NSFW/Lewd stuff here (tho i may occasionally reblog other's work out of appreciation for their effort) but i may post stuff that's of a more sensitive/mature nature. so consider this blog 18+

(Also yes i have a lot more written for ophelia because her story strays the furthest from canon lol. Despite being my main character, haellen stays very true to how the story is presented as she herself is playing the "Character" or "Role" of the warrior of light. Ophelia however doesn't care what people think the warrior of light should or shouldn't be, and plays to the sound of her own orchestra... And also kind of goes a little crazy from HW-SHB)

PFP by pewterbee

Bnuuy hael by @hdawg1995

Message dividers originally by saradika but have been edited by me with permission. The banner masterlist is here in the event you like what you see and want to use them

[rag-gw2]

Should prob make a pinned post how huh

Anyways, hello! I am Grif (though Red also works fine :3), I use She/They pronouns, I am over 18, and I really like making Sylvari lmaooooo

Anyways, characters below sorted by race (also under a readmore lol):

Asura: Fortiissia (Engineer, Scrapper) Genobiologist Trozz (Thief, eventual Daredevil) Virologist Praxx (Engineer, dunno what I’ll do with him) Unnamed Asura 1 (Guardian, Dragonhunter) Unnamed Asura 2 (Mesmer, Chronomancer)

Human: Gordana Freeman (Ranger, bounces between specs when needed) Polaris Pinewood (Elementalist, Weaver) Khada Jhin (Thief, Deadeye/Daredevil) Shiro Revived (Revenant, Vindicator) Laria Marshalli (Necromancer, eventual Harbinger) Sukaina Shafi (Revenant, eventual Herald) Lunafreya Nox Fleuret (Guardian, Firebrand) Ulrich Durheim (Ranger, eventual Soulbeast) Eventual Margonite (It’s A Mystery) Kiyomi Yasuda (Elementalist, Catalyst) Taaj (Revenant, eventual Renegade) Turi Waveheart (It’s a Mystery)

Norn: Lillianja Witboon (Revenant, Renegade) Lisbet Ravenwing (Mesmer, Mirage) Tryggvi Frostshout (Ranger, Untamed)

Charr: Nia Steelveins (Necromancer, Scourge) Veebus Scorchblade (Engineer, eventual Holosmith)

Sylvari: Morriganiais (Warrior, Berserker) Cinnéididh (Thief, eventual Specter) Ceinwenrhian (Necromancer, Reaper) Firstborn Treehorn (Necromancer, Reaper) Rónait (Warrior, eventual Bladesworn) Meurigian (Mesmer, bounces between specs when needed) Fínneachta (Guardian, eventual Willbender) Babby Canach (Warrior, really just a cosplay toon lmao) Cúachnait (Elementalist, eventual Tempest) Ravus Nox Fleuret (Elementalist, eventual Weaver) Muadhán (Engineer, eventual Mechanist) Unnamed Sylvari 1 (Warrior, Spellbreaker) Unnamed Sylvari 2 (???) aaand GW1 peeps incase anyone sees this lol: Laria Marshalli (Necro/Mesmer) Noritada Nakajima (Assassin/Ranger) Sukaina Shafi (Dervish/Warrior) Saafiyya Saladin (Monk/Paragon) Kiyomi Yasuda (Ele/Ritualist) Ayda Nazmi (Paragon/Warrior) Leandra Markos (Mesmer/Necro) Analiese Durheim (Ritualist/Necro) Unnamed Warrior (/Mesmer?) Unnamed Ranger (/Dervish?)

[yorkshireword]

In 1963, Terry Riley went to Paris, where he moonlighted as a nightclub pianist and composed music for The Gift, an experimental theater piece by American performance artist Ken Dewey. Working with Chet Baker and his band, Riley recorded each player separately in order to manipulate their parts, in an early form of remixing; he asked a studio engineer if it would be possible to create a looping delay, imagining a sound that might build up “magically.”

The engineer’s solution was to run the tape through a pair of reel-to-reel recorders—one set to record and the other to play, with the second machine feeding back into the first. The results were revelatory. Years later, speaking to jazz guitarist Henry Kaiser, Riley described the effect as a hypnotic synthesis of intention and surprise. “It has a geometric order and a periodicity, but it becomes this gently moving landscape, so things come into it and fade out of it…You get this caravan of ideas that go on and on, and constantly change.” Riley came up with an appropriately science-fiction-sounding name for it: the time-lag accumulator.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Riley applied his time-lag accumulator in different contexts. On electric organ, he experimented with long delays of several seconds or more that allowed him to create intricate counterpoints, as though he were duetting with himself; he also explored millisecond-long slap-back delays, which created an illusion of space—as though he were performing on the rim of a canyon, each note bouncing back from the far side. On his early classic A Rainbow in Curved Air, recorded in 1968 and released in 1969, he used eight-track recording to create densely filigreed polyphonic fugues, but he also applied the technique in live performance. Newly reissued, Descending Moonshine Dervishes is a landmark in his catalog of keyboard works. The album is an early iteration of a style that would become known by various names—kosmische, new age, ambient, trance—yet was, for the moment, unknown territory, a groundbreaking blend of Indian raga, minimalist drone, and technological wizardry. In the music’s crystalline churn, conventional timekeeping melts away, as fluid as one of Salvador Dalí’s clocks.

[jcmarchi]

Electronic pathways may enhance collective atomic vibrations’ magnetism - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/electronic-pathways-may-enhance-collective-atomic-vibrations-magnetism-technology-org/

Electronic pathways may enhance collective atomic vibrations’ magnetism - Technology Org

Materials with enhanced thermal conductivity are critical for developing advanced devices to support communications, clean energy and aerospace applications. But to engineer materials with this property, scientists need to understand how phonons, or quantum units of the vibration of atoms, behave in a particular substance.

A graphic illustrates the setup and functions for the Rice Advanced Magnet with Broadband Optics, or RAMBO. This unique instrument lets researchers use pulsed-laser spectroscopy to examine the behavior of materials that are simultaneously cooled near absolute zero and subjected to a massive pulse of magnetic energy. Image credit: Junichiro Kono Laboratory

“Phonons are quite important for studying new materials because they govern several material properties such as thermal conductivity and carrier properties,” said Fuyang Tay, a graduate student in applied physics working with the Rice Advanced Magnet with Broadband Optics (RAMBO), a tabletop spectrometer in Junichiro Kono’s laboratory at Rice University. “For example, it is widely accepted that superconductivity arises from electron–phonon interactions.

“Recently, there has been growing interest in the magnetic moment carried by phonon modes that show circular motion, also known as chiral phonons. But the mechanisms that can lead to a large phonon magnetic moment are not well understood.”

Now an international team of researchers led by Felix Hernandez from Brazil’s Universidade de São Paulo and Rice assistant research professor Andrey Baydin has published a study detailing the intricate connections between the magnetic properties of these quantum whirling dervishes and a material’s underlying topology of the electronic band structure, which determines the range of energy levels that electrons have within it.

This finding adds to the growing body of knowledge on phonons, opening the door not only for more effective phonon manipulation via magnetic fields, but also for the development of advanced materials.

In a previous study, Baydin and colleagues applied a magnetic field to lead telluride, a simple semiconductor material. When they did so, they saw that the phonons stopped vibrating in a linear fashion and became chiral, moving in a circular motion.

“Chiral phonons interact with one another differently than phonons that move linearly,” Baydin said. “If we understood the properties of these interactions, we could make use of them. Different properties could realize different potential applications in materials.”

After noting that chiral phonons’ magnetic moment was quite small in the material they first focused on, the group wondered if changing the material’s topology ⎯ or electronic band structure ⎯ would impact magnetic properties. To answer this question, the researchers tested a new material called a crystalline topological insulator.

“We took the lead telluride and added tin to it,” Baydin said. “If you add enough, something called band inversion happens, creating topologically protected surface states. These materials are fascinating, because they are insulating in bulk but have conducting electronic surface states ⎯ a very promising feature that could be exploited in novel electronic devices.”

Additional experiments revealed that the chiral phonons’magnetic moment was two orders of magnitude larger in the topological material than in the material without such electronic topology.

“Our findings reveal compelling new insights into the magnetic properties of phonons in this material and emphasize the intricate connection between the magnetic properties of chiral phonons and the material’s underlying electronic band structure topology,” Baydin said. He added that the group plans to conduct further experiments to better understand other aspects of phonon behavior in the future.

Tay added that these results, which demonstrate that the magnetic moment of phonons is significantly enhanced in topological materials, can help materials scientists search and design materials with larger phonon magnetic moments as needed for different device applications.

“This observation provides new insights into how to control and manipulate phonon properties to change thermal conductivity,” Tay said. “Furthermore, the interplay between chiral phonons and electronic structure topology raises the possibility that the topological phase could be influenced by controlling the phonons.”

Source: Rice University

You can offer your link to a page which is relevant to the topic of this post.

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

AirLock Anon:

ok.

Space Mark x Dervish Slime y/n.

meeting mack.

Mack: WAAAAAA!

Y/n standing there innocently:

Mark: why is Mack in the tornado?

Y/n: he didn’t give me prickly pears.

Not to hijack this ask but I love this idea so I’m making it a fic <3

..............

"Why the hell are we back here again?"

"To restore the oases, duh!!"

"Really? Is that what we're doing here?" Mack scoffed as he turned to his fellow engineer lead, raising an eyebrow. "Tell me, Mark..what do you need for an oasis?"

"Uh, water-?"

"Right. Now tell me...DO YOU SEE ANY WATER HERE?!" He spread his arms far and wide, gesturing to the entirety of the Glass Desert, fuming red.

Yet Mark wasn't deterred from uncovering the mysteries of this place as he picked up his vacpack. "It’s not just any plain ol’ water. Legends say there’s fountains here with “magical” water that can revive the oases. We just gotta find them and give those buds some life.” He gestured to a nearby dried-up plant.

"..oh okay. Suuure. Let's get heat stroke while we're at it! Great!" Although clearly irritated at the idea of getting sand in his boots, Mack begrudgingly followed him. The teleporter broke so they had no choice but to stay for now.

As the pair wandered about, he noticed a few Slimes native to this region and their unique features: plants who can control vines, glass prisms with explosive sparkles, and purple ones with tornadolike bodies. Some of them appeared agitated, fighting over food.

‘Is it really that scarce here?’

Distracted, he failed to realized Mark stopped short and bumped into him. “Hey! The hell is your prob---huh?"

Looking over his shoulder, Mack blinked in shock at the presence of a Slime..human?

Sure enough, standing before them was a humanoid Slime with arms, a face, and a gooey smile. The lower half of their body was shaped like the rest of the Dervishes. As they moved around to examine the pair, the gelatinous ring spun around their hips.

“I thought the rumors of humans being here was too good to be true, but welcome!” You grinned, clapping your hands together. Though your cheeriness didn’t last as you felt your stomach rumbling, and you held it in annoyance, huffing. “Ugh..sorry about that. I’ve been hungry all day.”

The two men jumped as you conjured a dust tornado, sweeping it through a patch of sand. It only succeeded in tossing a poor painted hen in the air.

“It’s fine.” Mark smiled in reassurance. “Thanks for the welcome.” He then noticed a purple pear-shaped fruit hidden near a rock. But Mack beat him to the punch and picked it up, at first wincing as the thorns pricked his gloves.

“Huh, this is new.” He looked at you. “What’s this?”

“Oh! Prickle pears!” Your mouth was already watering as you gravitated towards him. “The Dervishes’ favorite! Fresh ones are rare to come by now ever since the oases dried out."

“..the oases are real?” His eyebrows furrowed. “I thought those were just a myth.”

“No, this place used to flourish with them. It looks so miserable now because nobody’s brought them back to life. Every rancher we’ve seen is scared of getting scorched by the storms..so they’ve stopped coming. But....” Again, your stomach rumbled, and you reached out to take the pear. “Sorry, I’m just so hungry!”

However he took a step back, causing you to frown as he tucked it under his arm. “Hey, what gives?”

“Where are these so-called “magic fountains”?”

“...Mack, are you serious?” Mark looked on in disbelief. “You’re really gonna starve them for information?! This is exactly what the captain told us not to do!”

The second engineer just rolled his eyes. “What they don’t know won’t kill them. So uh..Dervish, you better tell us where the--AH!!” 

Out of nowhere a larger tornado picked him up and tossed him ten feet away from the two of you, getting a face full of hot sand as he crash-landed.

The pear fell in front of Mark, and he picked it up and immediately gave it to you. “Here you go. Sorry about him.”

You just nodded, being too hungry to care about anything else right now as you munched on the fruit, biting through the leathery skin. It tasted so fresh and absolutely sweet on the inside--savoring the flavor. Within seconds it was gone, satisfying your appetite for the time being.

“Still tastes amazing!” After swallowing the last bite, you smiled the human. “I can lend you some more to grow if we get at least one oasis up and running again. I can show you where the reservoirs are. I’m [y/n], by the way.”

“Okay, [y/n]!” With a giddy grin, Mark hoisted his vacpack, though he heard yelling and looked over his shoulder to see Mack trying to get his yellow beret from a Tangle Slime’s vine, who was waving it in the air.

He glanced at you again, sighing. “He’ll catch up. Lead the way.”

[kyreniacommentator]

BRTK Vox Pop meets the Lambousa Archers

BRTK Vox Pop meets the Lambousa Archers

[en8y]

scavedervishslimic + dervishslimineer

[IMAGE ID: two horizontal flags with nine stripes; each flag has a dervish slime in the center. the dervish slime is a dull purple blob with a ring around it. it has wiggly stripes around its body. it has small eyes and an open, happy smile. it resembles the planet jupiter; if jupiter was purple and a slime. the middle stripe is twice as large as the rest of them, which are equally sized. the left flag has these top three colors: dark forest green, dark warm brown, desaturated medium green. the right flag has these top three colors: dark cool grey, dark dull teal, and light cool grey. each flag has these bottom six stripes: dark dull purple, off-white, dark dull purple, light dull purple, medium dull purple, dull indigo. END ID.]

scavedervishslimic: a gender connected to being a dervish slime scavenger; this gender is connected to dervish slimes, dervish slime aesthetics, scavenger aesthetics, apocalyptic aesthetics, and calhood/misanhood!

dervishslimineer: a gender connected to being a dervish slime engineer; this gender is connected to dervish slimes, dervish slime aesthetics, engineer aesthetics, mechanical aesthetics, and metanhood/metixhood!

[joezworld]

Traintober Day 11

Today's prompt is: Stand Back In Amazement

Percy thinks that he can prank Tornado.

Percy is wrong.

-

The Truck Whisperer

"Isn't this a touch cruel?" Esso the tanker asked.

"Shut it." Percy snapped. "If we take her down a peg maybe we can get some sleep!"

The new engine - her name was Tornado, and Percy was sure that he'd heard of it before, even if he couldn't place it - was very cheery seemingly all the time. Since her arrival several days before, her endless supply of excited energy had started to wear at the engines on the branch. ("It’s like dealing with the stationmaster's dog!" Daisy had griped yesterday. "She doesn't quit!")

Percy, who already had to deal with passengers, coaches, and Gordon, was virtually at the end of his rope, and had devised a scheme to pay Tornado out a bit:

The various industries and businesses in Ffarquhar and Elsbridge kept a steady supply of goods traffic that went to the junction with the Main Line, as well as the harbor in Knapford. Percy usually took one or two short goods trains down the line each day, however, with Percy covering for Thomas and Bloomer out of action, the goods wagons had been piling up in the yards. Additionally, the quarry at the top of the line had been on a tear recently, with Mavis bringing more and more stone trucks each day. After just a few days, the yard at Ffarquhar was jam-packed.

The stationmaster had planned for Tornado to run as many as four or five goods trains per day in order to clear the backlog, however Percy had remarked that, with Tornado being as big as she was, it should be easy for her to take the entire load in one go.

Toby, Esso, and the stationmaster had all been suspicious, but Tornado ignored them and agreed readily.

Percy, eager to see the inevitable result of this, had even offered to shunt the train together.

The Fat Controller had long since fitted all of the railway's rolling stock with air brakes, meaning that Esso was the last wagon on the long train, with no brake van. "Ye seem sure she can't do this." The tanker looked at Percy. "She's a bigg'un."

"Oh please!" Percy scoffed. "She won't make it to the river before something goes wrong - and it'll take her so long to clear it up that I'll be asleep when she gets back!"

Esso rolled his eyes as Percy was uncoupled from the train. This is going to come back and bump him, I just know it.

--

Percy had barely departed with Annie and Clarabel when Tornado's tender was finally filled. ("Nine tons? Will there be any left for the rest of us?" "Don’t be rude, Percy." "Oh! Big talk from the engine who measures his coal on a postal scale! You'd have enough if the bin was empty!") Esso watched with some interesting as she set off.

Ordinarily, the big engine (And what was Fatt Hatt thinking, sending someone of Gordon’s size up the branch?) was a whirling dervish from the moment she set off - steam blowing everywhere, eyes bouncing around like she was trying to look two places at once, it was enough that some of Esso's fellows had started making plans to be troublesome from the moment she showed up.

But now she was different. Easing alongside the line of trucks with hardly a single whoosh of wasted steam, she rolled to a stop at the end of the train.

"Hi there." She addressed Esso and several of his associates. "You're Esso, and that would make the two of you… Boxer and Daedalus?"

Grunts of surprise came from the old van and the grumpy flatbed behind him.

Pleased at getting it right, the big engine smiled. "Pleasure to meet you finally. I'm Tornado."

Esso blinked slowly as she spoke. Was she introducing herself?

She continued: "Today this train is going all the way to Knapford Harbour. There I'm going to shunt out some of you, including you Daedalus, to be loaded and unloaded at the docks before I add on trucks bound for the junction with the main line at Knapford, as well as the stations at this end of the line. Then I'm going to take the whole train back up to the junction and shunt those of you who are going to the main line into the sidings. Does that sound acceptable? Is there anything else that I should know?”

All three trucks stared at her, speechless, which she took as acceptance, and so she moved on down the train, stopping every few trucks to speak to them in groups of three or four.

After several minutes of speechlessness, Esso finally found his voice. “Wha was that?”

“Oi t’ink” Daedalus spoke up. “T’at’s sommeit t’ey do on t’e mainland - when kettles run on tour trains and whatnot - ‘cause all t’e coaches now need everyt’ing to be told to ‘em so they don’ freak.”

“We’s ain’t coaches.” Boxer retorted. “She’s got eyes, don’t she?”

“She looks prissier t’an Red, oot on t’e Main. An’ Oi never seen her before, so Oi betcha t’at she hasn’ pulled the loikes o’ us in donkey’s years and plain forgot t’at we’s isn’ prissy coaches.”

Esso rolled his eyes severely. Passenger engines pulling freight, Percy pulling coaches, whatever else could go sideways this week?

Then he had a thought.

The backed up state of the yard had meant that a lot of trucks from the main line had been stuck up here for several days. Unlike older branch line trucks like Esso, Daedelus, and Boxer, these vans, hoppers, and tankers were still stupid, young and ornery, always intent on making trouble for engines. If they thought that Tornado was patronizing them instead of acting without thinking, they’d be all over her like flies on a rubbish bin. And with this train being as long and heavy as it was, if something started… it probably wouldn’t end in anything less than disaster.

“Wha’s the mood from everyone else?” He called back to Daedelus, who was closest to the rest of the train.

“Why’re you always askin’ me?” The flatbed called back. “S’not like Oi can read their moinds.”

Boxer, who was facing forwards and could see over Daedelus, was watching as the big engine finally backed down onto the train. “Theys seem quiet. Dunno if anyone’s spoke t’ them like that before.”

“They seem upset?”

“I said I dunno! What’s gotten yer brake lines in a knot?”

“If they start something, we’re gonna have to stoppit, savvy?”

A pause fell over the other two trucks. They were by far the oldest trucks in the train - they’d long stopped enjoying being nuisances - being in linside smashups hurt - and... builder damn it all, they liked this branch line, and wanted to stay on it; which meant that if they wanted to save their own buffers, they’d have to help an engine.

“I don’t see anyone lookin’ upset much.” Boxer strained his eyes to look up towards the front.

“Oi!” Daedalus biffed the hopper in front of him. “Whaddya t’ink o’ the girlie pullin’ us?”

The hopper was new, probably going back to the mainland somewhere, and didn’t object to being bumped. “I like her! She’s nice!”

“Ye gonna cause any trouble?”

“Nope!”

The truck in front of that one spoke up as well. “Nobody’s ever spoken to me like that. I like that.”

This went on for some time, until the entire rear half of the train was practically singing Tornado’s praises!

--

An hour later

Percy had made good time to the junction, and was fairly surprised to see the branch’s signal set against him. “I didn’t think she’d make it this far.” He remarked to his driver.

“Maybe she’s better than she seemed.” His driver supplied helpfully. “Or at least stronger than they are.”

“Eh. She’s about Gordon’s size, and that lot would stall him out for certain.”

Percy’s fireman quirked an ear towards the line. “Does anyone else hear music?”

“Is the Mister Whippy van about?” The driver laughed. “Because if not, then it must be her.”

The music grew loud enough to become a recognizable tune, and the volume of the driver’s laughter grew along with it. “Goodness me! I remember being annoyed by that song when it came out - she’s a young one, all right!”

Hey ya! Hey ya!

Hey ya! Hey ya!

You think you've got it

Oh, you think you've got it

But got it just don't get it when there's nothin' at all

The music grew louder and more discordant as Tornado got nearer. Percy frowned - not only had his plan failed, but Tornado’s taste in music was about on par with Toby’s - bloody awful!

The train rounded the last curve before the junction and Percy’s jaw dropped. There was a slight rise in the tracks coming out of Dryaw, and heavy trains usually struggled here. Tornado, on the other wheel, was steaming freely, and singing along to her music like there wasn’t even a train behind her.

She passed Percy with a carefree whistle and continued on like nothing was wrong - although Percy didn’t pay much attention to her after that, because the trucks were singing as well!

If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he’d never have believed it - and he was going to have trouble explaining this to Toby, he just knew it - but yet, there it was! The trucks were rolling along smoothly and without issue, each one singing just as loud as Tornado had been.

The end of the train came into view, with Esso still at the tail. The old tanker and Boxer were distinctly not singing, (although Daedelus was, horrifyingly enough) and exchanged a panicked look with Percy as he went by. “The world’s gone mad!” He yelled. ‘Gemme outta here!”

Percy said nothing. He had no idea of what to say!

And then, just as soon as it had arrived, the train was gone, clattering away towards the docks.

Nobody said anything for a long while afterwards, and the silence was only broken by the crackle of the driver’s walkie-talkie.

“Did anybody else just see that?” Came the voice of the guard through the radio.

[razieltwelve]

Quirks Bearers of Ragnarok Develop (Final Rose)

Ragnarok is one of the most powerful Semblances in existence. However, due to the abilities it grants, its bearers tend to develop certain... eccentricities:

They tend to have basically no sense of body horror. Most people would freak out if they grew a tail or extra arms. Bearers of Ragnarok are typically more concerned with optimising the new limbs. Bearers of Ragnarok have even been known to transform themselves into what are basically whirling dervishes of mouths and teeth when extremely hungry.

They can ignore seemingly deadly injuries. It is not unusual for a bearer to simply ignore things like impalement or dismemberment and continue doing whatever it was they were doing without letting it bother them. The damage registers, but their psychology and physiology is such that their concept of ‘pain’ is vastly different from a normal person’s.

They can and will eat just about anything. This includes not only organic material but also inorganic material, like jet engines, slabs of concrete, and even random rocks they find. 

They tend to have more relaxed attitudes to nudity due to young, inexperienced bearers of Ragnarok typically destroying their clothes when they transform. This has led to no shortage of hilarity.

Bearers of Ragnarok are almost always short and scruffy until their Semblance stabilises a bit more. At that point, they’ll fill out and shoot up like weeds. Consider Diana, who was the shortest person in Beacon Senior Academy by a considerable margin before eventually ending up basically identical to Fang.

[mercurryblack]

Chapter 11: Cait (Part 1)

You speak of the Grimm that scour the land outside the cities?

The real monsters are already here.

❃❃❃

“Can you please *hah* tell me why *heh* we’re running to *huh* Yuen’s office?” Cait wheezed.

After Hattie had so gleefully hinted at what they were going to do, she had wasted no time in dragging Cait out of the door and ordering them to run as fast as they could to the precinct, giving them only enough time to grab their weapon; a pair of chain flails they had christened as Entwined Catenary.

“I called her up, and she said that Sardion and her were going to go investigate a potential lead!” replied Hattie, her weapon Whirling Dervish strapped over her back in its gun form and her left hand firmly around Cait’s right wrist. Her jubilant attitude appeared to be doing wonders for her stamina—despite the fact that they had been running for a good half mile, she hadn’t even broken a sweat.

“Wait, seriously? Where?” Cait asked, completely forgetting about their still-incomplete essay. Despite their past week of getting nowhere, a small feeling of excited anticipation sparked within them.

“I don’t know the details yet! We have to hurry, though, she said they’re waiting for us!” Hattie said as she finally let go of Cait’s wrist, keeping pace ahead of her teammate.

***

After a few more minutes’ worth of running, the duo stopped in front of the precinct to find Sardion already waiting outside. The streets were vacant except for the trio, with the building’s windows darkened and Yuen nowhere to be seen.

“Okay, so… where’re we going?” Hattie chirped, bouncing on her heels as Cait took a minute to catch their breath.

“Out to the Manju-Shage District.” Yuen answered. “It’s a long shot, but we might pick up a trail out there, if nothing else.”

“Manju-Shage?” Cait asked. “That’s a pretty long way from here.” Their legs weren’t suitable for a mile-long run and such a walk, with only a five-minute breather.

“Don’t worry,” Sardion said. “We’re taking a ride.”

A sound of a whirring propeller overhead caught the two students’ ears. They glanced up to see a compact Sailship descending from above them, lowering itself beside the trio to hover just above the pavement. It was noticeably smaller than the transport Sailships that the city police usually flew, but it looked to be big enough for the lot of them.

“Might as well get there in a bit of style, eh?” Sardion said, hopping into the cabin. “Climb aboard, you two.”

“Where’s Detective Yuen?” Cait asked as they hoisted themselves in. “Wasn’t she the one who called up Hattie?”

Sardion jabbed a thumb at the cockpit, and Cait turned to see Yuen sitting in the pilot’s seat.

“You two got your weapons and everything?” Yuen asked, turning to speak to them. “I don’t want to waste any time.”

Hattie nodded, her grin brimming with excitement. “Locked and loaded, captain!”

“Detective Captain,” Yuen replied, feigning amusement. “Well, at least you’re enthusiastic about this. I’ve never seen anyone this eager to check out Manju-Shage.”

“Hey, where’s Rudyard?” Hattie asked, realizing the man in question was nowhere to be seen. “Wouldn’t he want to come along for this?”

“No idea where he is,” Sardion said, shaking his head. “We tried to get through to him before calling you, but he left his Scroll in my office. I left behind a note for him, just in case he comes back to look for it.”

Yuen cleared her throat, turning back to the sailship’s controls. “Alright, guys, hang on to something— I’m gonna take us up.”

With a rush of wind and a roar from the engines as the propellers sped up, the sailship slowly rose into the air, sailfins gently undulating up and down as the vehicle ascended.

“Whoa…” Hattie uttered in breathless awe, never having experienced a ride so high before. “I can see the whole city from up here. If it were lighter, I could probably see Lake Matsu from here… this is so cool.”

“Mmm.” Cait hummed in apparent agreement, looking less interested than the former.

Sardion cocked an eyebrow at Cait’s uncharacteristically morose behavior, but chose to say nothing of it. He brushed his hand against the handle of his weapon, holstered in its pistol form inside of his jacket. While his gut feeling more or less indicated this excursion would be as inconsequential as the past seven days, he couldn’t help but entertain the uneasy thought that something would end up going wrong.

At least nobody said ‘what’s the worst that could happen’, he thought to himself. ‘...Wait, damn, does that still apply if you think about—’

“Don’t get too comfy,” Yuen called out over the noise of the engine, interrupting his paranoid inner monologue. “We’ll be there in ten minutes tops.”

***

To the two of them, the simple act of killing was an easy task, and a depravedly enjoyable one at that.

The art of assassination was not, nor was it particularly fun— especially when it involved multiple targets. The job called for sleepless nights, long boring stakeouts, the painstaking task of ensuring any kills had no trace of evidence, and comparably squalid living conditions in hideouts.

While they weren’t exactly the neatest duo for such a profession, they had tried their best. The two had always preferred making their kills nice and personal, one of them in particular relishing the opportunity to savor every dying breath.

Suffice to say, neither had much regard for the mess they tended to leave behind. This time around, however, they had been given specific instructions to leave no trace.

“I gotta admit, the plan you had to clean up those two loose ends wasn’t half bad. Still doesn’t look like anyone’s caught wind of us yet.” Nest observed.

She stood atop a stump of concrete on the edge of a dilapidated apartment block’s roof, her partner sitting on the ledge beside her.

“If we’d kicked down both doors like you suggested, the whole Mistral City police force would be breathing down our necks right now.” her partner said. “You see, Nest, you should think sometimes about focusing on your brain rather than your brawn. Then again, since you don’t even have a Semblance, that’s not saying a lot.”

“…You calling me dumb, Moira?” Nest asked, bristling slightly.

“No, I’m calling you unreasonable and impulsive, because you always want to fight without thinking about your next move.” Moira retorted. “But if you want to call yourself dumb, I won’t argue with it. Just remember that you said it, not me.”

“Yeah, well, you’re just jealous ‘cause that tongue of yours isn’t all that useful. At least I can fly, froggy!” Nest hissed.

“Whatever you say.” Moira said. “Dumbass.”

“RRRRRRR—!” Nest growled, the metal wings fused to her back scratching together as she rounded on Moira, razor-tipped feathers glinting dangerously in the moonlight. “Say that again, I dare you! I double-dare you!”

“Calm down.” Moira said, rolling her eyes. “Seriously, your whole thing about ‘leaving them alive just to toy with them a while’ nearly cost us big. What are you, a housecat with anger issues? You remember as well as I do what Faine said about these two.”

“Tch.” Nest glared at her, folding her wings in reluctant acquiescence. “Fine, whatever. Any update on where we’re supposed to go with the kitty cat yet?”

Moira shook her head. “You know, if I’m being honest, I still can’t believe that we found them.” She leaned back, letting out a long sigh of disbelief. “It’s been so long, and just when we least expect it…”

“Mmmh..” Nest mumbled. “Boss’s still being too soft on them, if you ask me.”

“What, the whole thing he said about not hurting them?” Moira asked. “You make it sound like you didn’t expect it, but you know as well as I do how much they mean to him.”

Nest threw her hands up, growing more exasperated the more she thought about it. “Goddamnit, Moira, he hasn't shown me a tenth of the kindness he has to them for the last eighteen years, and here I am, ready to die for him! Cait… that little bastard’s got an ungrateful streak half a mile wide. That's why I never cared much for them, you know?”

She shook her head in disgust. “I just can’t stand anyone who won’t stand by their own.”

***

Cait hunched over in the cabin, their elbows on their knees and their hands holding their head as they stared at the metal floor. Their chest felt painfully tight, and butterflies were practically swarming in their stomach.

“Are you okay? Even without my Semblance, I can tell you’re not feeling well.” Hattie asked Cait, the latter sitting alone in the center of the sailship. “You’ve got ‘anxiety’ written all over you.”

Cait looked up, a bit surprised that Hattie had noticed. “Uh, yeah, I’m fine. It’s just a bit stuffy in here, that’s all,” they said. 

Hattie pouted. “I’m not dumb, Cait— it’s a chilly night, and we’re in an open-door sailship.

“If you want some air, maybe it’s best for you to come closer over here.” Sardion added, pointing at a seat next to the edge of the cabin where the windstream was stronger.

“I said I’m fine.” Cait said, a bit more emphatically. “Seriously, don’t worry about me. It’s just… jitters or something.”

Hattie and Sardion looked at each other. “Okay, just... don’t freak out, okay? We’ve got this.”

Cait nodded, looking down again.

While it eased up slightly with the pair’s reassurances, the knot in their chest remained as the sailship drew above Manju-Shage. It was a feeling of dread they had felt before, and it had been a long enough time since they did that the sensation felt almost foreign— but still, they knew it all too well.

It can’t be him. Not here, of all places… there’s no way he could have found me so soon…

***

“You see that?” Moira said, pointing up at the sky.

“Of course I see it.” Nest snapped. “What’s a sailship doing out here at this time of—” She froze in the middle of her sentence.

“What?” Moira asked, turning to her partner. “What’s the matter?”

“Hold up.” Nest motioned to the open cabin, squinting. “Are my eyes playing tricks on me, or is that… Sardion Sarikaya? And… the kitty?”

“That— oh. Oh, that’s just wonderful.” Moira said, displeasure clear in her tone. “If he’s here, then that means he and the baldy already narrowed it down to here. I knew that we didn’t cover all of our tracks.”

“Stop whining, Moira, don’t you see how good this just turned out for us?” Nest said. “We’ll be killing two birds with one stone. Kill Sarikaya and whatever sidekicks he brought along, sedate the kitty, fly ourselves back home in grand style like we were never here in the first place. I’m telling you, it’s the perfect opportunity.”

Moira raised an eyebrow, opening her mouth to rebuff her partner before pausing. “I could dismantle any tracking device that’d be on that ship… and we could scrap it once we touch down.” After a moment, she nodded. “Okay, Nest. Let’s play it your way.”

***

“Whoa… this place is super gloomy.”

Under the sailship’s floodlights, the bright blue accents of Hattie’s dress stood out from the dilapidated grays of the decrepit Manju-Shage District. Yuen had opted to land the sailship dead center in the ruins of the abandoned city expansion, in a small area where a park likely would have stood. The grass around the perimeter was clumped and overgrown, neglected yet still alive.

“It’s a shame this wasn’t even finished.” Sardion said. “Would’ve been a nice place if they’d gone through with it, but now it’s just a big waste.”

“Speaking of, pay attention to your surroundings.” Yuen said, a shotgun slung over her shoulder. “Sometimes a Grimm or two make it in here, but never anything the police can’t handle. What I’m worried about is the squatters.”

“Squatters?” Sardion said.

“Yeah. We’ve had a few times where some thugs from the Hana Guild or the Spiders decide to drop in and lay low if they’ve made trouble in the city.”

“They ever killed anyone before?” Sardion asked a bit warily. “Given who it is we’re looking for…”

“No,” Agave replied. “There’s a first time for everything, though, so stay alert.”

***

“They’re coming closer, froggy.” Nest called down to Moira, beating her metal wings to keep herself level as she hovered a few meters above her partner.

“How many?”

“Four in all. The leader, the detective… the kitty… and their teammate.” Nest replied. “So what do you say? Who gets who?”

“I’ll deal with the grown-ups, you take the children. Look, just try not to hurt them too much— he won’t be happy at all if you do, and I’m not taking the blame on your behalf if you screw up.”

“Fair enough.” Nest said, landing beside her, a tense note of excitement in her voice as she furrowed her wings. “When do we start?”

“Patience, Nest. Let them play around a little bit more.” Moira said, flicking out her serpentine tongue. A single fleck of spittle dripped from a polymer barb on the end, and landed on the concrete below. It hissed for a second, then melted right into the stone, leaving a penny-sized crater behind.

Her lips, pocked and distorted by scars and welts, curled into a predatory grin. Several stories below, the quartet from the sailship entered the apartment block.

“Oh, this is going to be ever so fun.”