#Head and Tails Game Source Code

[the-roadtrip-system]

OH WAIT HEY YOU'RE INTO PRESSURE. What is Pressure? Who is Sebastian Solace? All I know is that he's a fish.

its a roblox horror game inspired by doors (another roblox game), iron lung, ultrakill (apparently?) and scp: containment breach!!

from a gameplay standpoint, its got a similar premise to spooky's jumpscare mansion. you go through a certian amount of rooms while trying to survive monsters! except instead of 1000 rooms, its only about 100-something.

from a lore standpoint this is where it gets fun. you are a prisoner, sentanced to death. a company called urbanshade shows up to the prison you're at, promising a chance at a new life. but its not easy. you're not expected to return from this expedition at all. you are expendable. nothing more.

you have to go into the hadal blacksite, a facility at the depths of the ocean, and retrive the crystal that powers the whole place. the blacksite is on lockdown due to the actions of Z-13, one of the experiments. everything previously contained is now loose, and the building is practically caving in on itself. if you survive and retrieve the crystal, your criminal record is wiped clean, and you are given financial compensation to start your life anew.

oh also your prisoner diving gear has a shotgun shell pointed directly at your neck at all times and it can be remotely set off killing you instantly. attempting to leave the blacksite or remove your diving gear will result in your head getting exploded. so thats fun!

also also, you know how the deeper you go in the ocean the higher the pressure (haha) gets? well in the lore, if you go even deeper, you enter whats called the let-vand zone. where the pressure restabilizes to a level that is safe for humans to swim in! the dramatic pressure change keeps everything in the let-vand zone in, and everything else out. urbanshade has special submarines that can go through in and out without it and its passengers imploding :)

sebastian solace, voiced by gianni matragrano, is your only friend in the blacksite. when you get to roughly door 50 (its been anywhere from 47 to 53 in my experience), you find him and his shop! (its his tail. the shop is his tail.) throughout the game you can collect usb drives, classified files, and dna viles, all adding up to a point score visible in the top right of the screen, and you can use these points to buy items for yourself! light sources, medkits, code breachers (basically a keycard for the keycard doors when you cant find the keycard), and batteries for whatever you already have! just dont let your guard down too much around him. he very easily can kill you if you mess with him too much (ie: flash him with the really bright flash beacon)

(also side note: theres so many light sources in this game. theres flashlights, lanterns, flash beacons, hand crank flashlights, blacklights and gummy flashlights, and you can find multiple of the same one in the same room its ridiculous.)

OH I ALMOST FORGOT every time you die to something you get shown the classified file that urbanshade has about it! but most of the words are redacted. the more times you die to something, the more gets revealed! (i have everything unlocked for all hazards atm except for one thing ive only ever gotten once and survived so idek what that ones called)

so yeah thats pressure :) i think its fun :) i have 99 deaths and 7 wins :)

(theres more about sebastians lore i want to say but thats technically spoilers so im putting it under the cut)

the experiment Z-13 that caused the lockdown and made everything go to shit? thats sebastian! he was falsely accused of murdering 9 people back in 2012 and was sentenced to the death penalty (electric chair specifically iirc) but he got swooped up by urbanshade instead. they made a fake report that he did die so legally he is deceased. in 2015, he was the first subject for an experiment to give humans gills to allow them to breath underwater, so they gave him a shit load of aquatic animal dna to basically see what worked and what didnt. (blue whale, something redacted, great white shark, sea snake, female anglerfish (since males are basically nothing more than a parasitic ballsack), silver spinyfin, and mantis shrimp) [you're wrong when you say he's a fish. he's several fish. /silly] the glaring physical aspects of the experiment were ironed out in future versions of testing. he faked the affects of anesthetic and killed a high ranking guard, took his keycard, and let as many things loose at he possibly could. the reason he wants the data you find around the place is because he's trying to get as much information on urbanshade as he can, to give to a rival corporation in hopes of getting out of the blacksite.

oh and fun fact! this game takes place in 2025. sebastian has been a mutant fish man stuck in a facility at the bottom of the ocean for around 10 years! :D

all of this is found in his file that you can buy in his shop for 1000 points :)

[crusherthedoctor]

Hi! I just thought I’d throw my hat into the ring with the whole conversation about the whole tails being willing to use his weapons more if it wasn’t for sonics interruption because as much as admit that some people can take it to far (just like on any side of the fandom with any character or idea) I think the actual idea of it is being misinterpreted.

The idea that I’ve seen always centres around how they respect each other, tails before he met sonic is a knowledges by multiple sources that he had a rough upbringing before he met sonic, this is mainly shown through the bullying that has left such an impact on his self-esteem he’s still dealing with it in recent games and still trying to overcome it. Tails is also skilled in making weapons, things he can use to defend himself and his friends.

Now no one’s saying that sonic known about the weapons or that he’s a weapons expert because that isn’t really what the head canon is about and I’ve never really seen anyone say that to be honest? The head canon mainly comes form the idea of ‘what if something went wrong and his friends were hurt and tails saw it as a last option’ this brings us back to tails upbringing

And as much as some people like to make him act more mature this is still an eight year old child who for half of his life basically was bullied so bad that it’s still impacting him. The headcanon usually (it can vary from person to person) makes tails feel the need to defend the people or things that have defended him. Mainly sonic usually.

So since tails is smart it’s only natural that he’d be quicker to the opinion ‘if I took the threat out I’d never have to deal with it again’ because it’s the most logical conclusion. I think where the head canon is mainly misinterpreted is that I don’t think anyone’s saying that tails is using his weapons on every single opponent or every single threat that comes his way. From what I’ve seen is that if it comes down to the last few options in a split second his mind will go to that logical conclusion.

However, sonic basically raised him. Sonic wouldn’t even have to literally point out what tails is doing (most of the time) because tails stops himself, because Tails knows that what he’s doing is something against his own moral code

It’s the way sonic raised him and it’s the way tails lives his life.

I think the headcanons mostly just ‘survival instinct vs moral code’ and I think that’s why people like it so much, it’s less about tails being reliant on sonic (which is what I think it’s being misinterpreted as) and more Tails respecting the way sonic raised him and the moral code he was raised to believe in to not forget it even in the heat of a battle

I apologise if I'm blunt, but you're missing the forest for the trees with all this.

This post wasn't really about Tails' willingness to use weapons. Rather, it was about fans' penchant for infantilizing Tails to the point of exaggeration, despite him showing capabilities even before Sonic showed up in his life. Tails has been enriched by Sonic, he's even said as much, but there was never an indication in the games that he would become a psychopath without him.

It removes too much agency on Tails' part for the sake of leaning too hard on Sonic's ability to affect others around him. No amount of headcanons and "well, he is a kid"-style justifications can salvage Tails straight up being done dirty. Rationalizing it is all very well in the realm of fanfiction, but not so much when dealing with the official work proper, when everything has already came, went, and influenced fandom mentality for the worse.

[systastic]

May I rq a lvl3 Fontaine trio w/ Wrio as one member?

your request came in juuust as the patch came out nya~ great timing!! :3c -🍥

queued 4 later. playing update rn -🐝

name :: chlorinde, chlor, cory, lynn, quinn, avery, emery, rene, renee, mercy

age :: 25 to 27

pronouns :: she/her, zap/zaps

roles :: swordsperson, gunslinger, hunter-queller, jailer / warden, gatekeeper (forcibly move alters to wriothesley’s layer)

species :: human

gender identity :: cassgender

orientation :: sex-repulsed lesbian

source :: genshin impact

aesthetic :: rangercore, rococo, french girly (on her days off)

appearance description :: typically in formal wear, always carrying a weapon of some sort, analytical eyes that assess everything on first sight. scars lie under her clothes, as do rock-hard muscles from years of experience. serious purple eyes that never leave her target. if you find yourself in her sights, be wary. off the battlefield is fine… but when clamoring for a duel? that look spells certain death.

personality description :: bit stiff on a first meeting, cold and calculated when it comes to fighting, has a unique sense of justice that guides her every move. constantly weighing whether or not the kill is worth the risk. stickler for rules and despises those who try to weasel their way out of their punishment. fair and just, yes, but just as equally cold. loosens up significantly around her closer friends like navia and wriothesley, being comfortable enough to try new things and talk openly about her past. it’a weird how people think she had a hard life… that’s just how things were. learning to hold a sword at three and fighting bears at seven is a part of life.

likes :: hunting, riflery, fencing, learning new styles of fighting, hunting down criminals, batman (in the sense of him being a do-gooder) sparring with wriothesley, her role as champion duelist, honoring the fallen marechaussee hunters, tabletop roleplay games (specifically the role of the dungeon master, live action roleplay, maintaining her physical form, her visits to the fortress of meropide (all the criminals are too fearful of her to start anything)

dislikes :: criminals, villains, breaking the law, corrupt officers, malignant paranormal entities, those who tell her “you should be traumatized!” or that her childhood sounded awful, doing her second job in the daylight hours, false reports and made up rumors, going against her personal code, judgements stares, criticism on her methods or execution of her job (they can go kick rocks)

front triggers :: being in a fight, upholding rules or standards, combat (physical), live action role playing, tabletop games. being a dungeon master for a ttrpg

signoff :: ⚔️,🪻, 🪶, or 🤺

art source here!

name :: sigewinne, wynne, winnie, melo, aurora, aurelia, celeste, clementine

age :: 502

pronouns :: she/her, fae/fayr, bun/buns, mel/melu/melus/melusi/melusineself

roles :: healer, medic, soother, comforter, caretaker, catkid

species :: melusine (changed forms thanks to a magic potion gifted by her mentor)

gender identity :: demigirl, nonbinary, cutecoric, femstalic, bungender, fluffyrabbitgender, fluffycloudgender, kaeifluidcollector

orientation :: asexual and aroflux, focusing more on making friends than finding a lover

source :: genshin impact

aesthetic :: nursecore, kawaii, yume kawaii

appearance description :: soft blue hair, melusine feelers on her head, a curly Melusine tail, pink eyes with hearts in the center. often seen wearing her nurse uniform and toting around her medkit. sigewinne has a water-based body, so she jiggles and is cool to the touch. bun will often let close friends and family hold her hand or touch her head when they feel too hot or have a fever, as bun knows it helps to cool them down. mel dresses in anything mel finds “cute”, and is a bit more extravagant with mels clothing taste when mel is off work.

personality description :: sweet as a bug’s ear and twice as kind, sigewinne always has your best interests in mind. she wants to see everyone healthy and happy. bun views humans as cute creatures that need tender love and care, and bun is more than happy to provide that for them.

likes :: anything that can be classified as “cute”, humans in general (they are “cute” to her), helping others, healing others, making ‘nutritional food’, her medkit, being recognized as a doctor, new friends and old friends, fayr infirmary in the fortress of meropide, visiting fayr uncle neuvillette, seeing fayr sisters when on vacation from work, swimming, diving deep into fontaine’s waters, wriothesley & neuvillette, chlorinde

dislikes :: excessively hot days, infected wounds, children who won’t listen, those unwilling to get treatment, those who push their bodies too far, reminders of her mentor, failing to help her patients, witnessing the death of a patient, being unable to help someone, gunfire… and not much else, honestly. wynne is a melusine, who have a different concept of liking and disliking something, so melu doesn’t really ‘dislike’ things as much as she does ‘disagree’ with whatever it is.

front triggers :: seeing someone hurt, injury or pain (body or others), medical visits/trips, uncooperative children in a doctor’s office

signoff :: 🐰, 💉, ❤️‍🩹, or 🩺

art source here!

name :: wriothesley, wrio, west, darius, alistair, amadeus, dmitri, draven, griffin, hendrix

age :: 32

pronouns :: he/him + the ones Sigewinne gave him that he doesn’t use very much, cry/cryn (cryoself), fan/fang (fangself)

roles :: guard, buffer, jailer, warden, athlete, gatekeeper (force unruly alters to stay in his layer)

species :: human w/ distant beastkin ancestry

gender identity :: demimale. he doesn’t do super specific labels cus he doesn’t rly get it.

orientation :: aspec (unlabeled), focuses on platonic relationships over romantic ones as he values them more.

source :: genshin impact

aesthetic :: scrapper, steampunk, bastardcore

appearance description :: often wearing his signature coat. dresses up to an extent. his button up shirts always get rolled up above his elbows to show off his arms. battle scars (and very faint s/h scars) line his arms and body, but he isn’t ashamed of them. if anything, they make him feel stronger. he looks at them and knows he’s improved. black hair, grey eyes. usually wearing darker clothing with splashes of red. will let sigewinne cute-ify him during off hours. and yes, he will keep wearing whatever bun did to him without removing it until the end of the day. (mostly because he doesn’t care to, but also because he trusts winne with his appearance.)

personality description :: older brother figure. fiercely protective of others but knows when to lay off. has a spunky streak that he can only cool when boxing or sparring someone else (even if he doesn’t show up in the ring much anymore). tea lover who enjoys having time to chill and not worry about work. motivated to finish his work properly instead of slacking off or handing it to someone else. gets irritated easily by cowards, mainly because he knows they won’t stand up for themselves — and if they don’t, then who will?

likes :: a good brawl, fighting, boxing, the wwe and mma, beat em up games, hand to hand combat (all forms), respect, justice for abuse victims and jail for abusers, laying down the law, scaring (rude) people off, caffeinated tea (earl grey is his favorite), brief moments of peace and quiet, his favorite chair sitting in his study, reading novels, sigewinne, the occasional visit from chlorinde

dislikes :: cowards, abusive parental figures, not being informed of things, the death of people close to him, seeing sigewinne hurt/pushing herself too much, coffee, rebellious idiots, abusers, being called a dog, being asked/told to bark (he will not, thank you very much!)

front triggers :: seeing others pick fights, unruly behavior, rulebreakers, slackers, being held up for cash, being called a wolf/dog, presence of law enforcement

signoff :: 🐺, ��, ❄️, or ⚖️

art source here!

[thewapolls]

Oh boy our first dive into the demons of Wild Arms, starting with Gagison, like Blue Book, a prologue dungeon enemy for both Wild Arms 1 and 2.

GAGISON An extremely obscure demon of supposedly Hebrew lore associated with plague, although I can find no corroborating source on that. It is included in The Book of Abramelin under a list of names of spirits capable of being summoned, but as best as I could see with no additional details for Gagison in particular. Shin Megami Tensei also features Gagyson[sic] so somehow the name seems to be better circulated among weird occult fanboys of 90s Japan than in modern English circles.

FLEURETY sourced from The Grand Grimoire (aka Le Dragon Rouge: "The Red Dragon") where it is supposedly mentioned as one of 6 lesser demons along side NEBIROS who we'll get to in a bit... There's not really any meaningful details about Fleurety from what I can tell, but somehow it seems to be consistently associated with ice powers when it appears in videogames? Not sure if that's a weird coincidence or what. It's also the name of an avant-garde metal band.

UKOBACH sourced from the Dictionnaire infernal, he's depicted carrying a pan full of hot coals. Supposedly a patron of fireworks and fried food. He's another mainstay of SMT, and as you could guess, associated with fire elemental in game terms. Funny enough it shares a model with...

HABORYM, another demon associate with fire, in this case cited in the Ars Goetia as one of the 72 demons of solomon. But in Wild Arms 1 he's just a recolor of....

AMON, a demon included in the ranks of both the Dictionnaire Infernal and the Pseudomonarchia daemonum. In the former he's depicted with a serpentine tail, doglike chest and legs, and giant owl head. I don't know wtf is up with AMON GAMECH in WA3 but it's clearly just a recolor of the AMON from the same game. I cannot make heads or tails of what the addition of "Gamech" is supposed to mean. (it appears to be the name of a street in Cazavet, France?)

STOLAS is a one off monster in WA2 cleverly sharing a model with AMON. STOLAS is actually the basis of the WA2 model, with AMON as the recolor as both are classically depicted as owls. STOLAS is a demon from the Ars Goetia associated with astronomy and depicted as an owl with long legs and a crown upon his head.

NEBIROS is another pull from the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, and one with a wide array of alternate names/titles and spellings one of which is supposedly Cerberus, just straight up taken from Greek superficially in reference to his three heads. For this reason I included the WA2 monster, KERBEROS, which is itself a recolor of...

BALAM, an interesting twisted thing in and of itself. It first appeared in WA1 as "SHAZAM" a confusingly arbitrary substitution on the localization team's behalf. In WA2 he's properly labeled as BALAM and shares a model with KERBEROS as they both have 3 heads. In Alter Code F he actually isn't called SHAZAM but this time is called BALAAM. He appears again in WA5 with the same model as F but the name back to BALAM.

[trendingbulb]

SEO in 2024: The Game-Changing Tactics You Need to Know

As we head into 2024, the world of SEO is undergoing rapid changes. With advancements in AI, shifts in user behavior, and new technologies transforming how people search for information, it’s time to rethink your SEO strategy. If you want to stay ahead of the competition and dominate the search engine rankings, you’ll need to adapt to these game-changing tactics.

Here’s a breakdown of the top SEO strategies that will help you win in 2024.

1. AI-Powered Search and the Rise of Conversational Queries

With AI tools like ChatGPT and Google's BERT algorithm becoming more sophisticated, search engines are getting better at understanding the context behind search queries. Gone are the days of relying solely on exact-match keywords. Now, it’s all about optimizing for conversational queries and natural language.

What you can do:

Focus on long-tail keywords and questions your audience might ask in natural speech.

Use tools like Google’s People Also Ask feature to identify common conversational searches.

Incorporate FAQs in your content to capture voice searches and conversational traffic.

2. User Experience (UX) as a Ranking Factor

In 2024, user experience will be more critical than ever for SEO. Search engines are placing increasing emphasis on how users interact with websites. If your site is slow, difficult to navigate, or provides a poor mobile experience, your rankings will suffer.

How to optimize:

Speed up your site: Compress images, use a content delivery network (CDN), and minimize code to improve loading times.

Mobile-first design: Ensure your site is fully responsive and offers a seamless experience on all devices.

Improve navigation: Make it easy for users to find what they need with clear menus and well-structured content.

3. Core Web Vitals: Page Speed and Stability

Google's Core Web Vitals—a set of performance metrics—continue to be a crucial part of the ranking algorithm. In 2024, focusing on improving your site’s loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability can give you a competitive edge.

What to focus on:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Ensure your page’s main content loads quickly (within 2.5 seconds).

First Input Delay (FID): Optimize your site’s interactivity by reducing the time it takes for users to interact with elements.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Minimize unexpected layout shifts, which can disrupt the user experience.

4. Zero-Click Searches and Featured Snippets

Zero-click searches (where the user finds the answer directly on the search results page) are increasing. To get ahead in 2024, aim to capture more featured snippets and position your content as the top answer for user queries.

Tactics to dominate featured snippets:

Format your content with concise, clear answers to common questions.

Use structured data and schema markup to enhance your chances of appearing in rich results.

Focus on "how-to" guides, lists, and FAQ formats, which are frequently featured in snippets.

5. The Importance of E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)

Google’s focus on E-A-T continues to grow. In 2024, content that is written by credible, authoritative experts will rank higher, especially in sectors like health, finance, and legal industries.

How to build E-A-T:

Showcase author expertise: Make sure all your content is written or reviewed by professionals with relevant qualifications and experience.

Back up claims with credible sources: Use authoritative links and data in your content to establish trust.

Improve your site’s security: Ensure your website has an SSL certificate and uses HTTPS for a secure browsing experience.

6. Video SEO: Optimize for YouTube and Beyond

Video content is continuing to dominate the digital landscape. With YouTube being the second-largest search engine in the world, video SEO will be critical in 2024.

Optimize for video search:

Include targeted keywords in your video title, description, and tags.

Create transcripts and closed captions to make your video content more accessible and searchable.

Use engaging thumbnails and encourage comments and shares to increase video engagement.

7. Local SEO and the Power of “Near Me” Searches

Local search is evolving, with more users relying on their mobile devices to find services and products near them. In 2024, optimizing for local SEO will be a game-changer for businesses looking to capture local traffic.

Steps to improve local SEO:

Optimize your Google Business Profile by keeping your NAP (name, address, phone number) consistent.

Encourage customers to leave reviews on Google and other local review platforms.

Use location-based keywords in your content and metadata to attract local users.

8. Content Quality Over Quantity

The days of churning out content just for the sake of it are over. In 2024, search engines will reward high-quality, authoritative content that provides real value to users over sheer volume.

How to create quality content:

Focus on in-depth, comprehensive articles that fully cover a topic.

Update and refresh old content to keep it relevant and evergreen.

Use multimedia elements like images, videos, and infographics to enhance user engagement.

9. Sustainability and Green SEO

With environmental consciousness rising, sustainability is becoming a factor in SEO. Search engines are starting to value websites that prioritize eco-friendly practices, such as using green hosting services or minimizing carbon footprints.

What to do:

Consider using green hosting providers that rely on renewable energy.

Reduce your site’s energy consumption by optimizing your code and minimizing resource-heavy elements.

[jcmarchi]

Lin Qiao, CEO & Co-Founder of Fireworks AI – Interview Series

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/lin-qiao-ceo-co-founder-of-fireworks-ai-interview-series/

Lin Qiao, CEO & Co-Founder of Fireworks AI – Interview Series

Lin Qiao, was formerly head of Meta’s PyTorch and is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fireworks AI. Fireworks AI is a production AI platform that is built for developers, Fireworks partners with the world’s leading generative AI researchers to serve the best models, at the fastest speeds. Fireworks AI recently raised a $25M Series A.

What initially attracted you to computer science?

My dad was a very senior mechanical engineer at a shipyard, where he built cargo ships from scratch. From a young age, I learned to read the precise angles and measurements of ship blueprints, and I loved it.

I was very much into STEM from middle school onward– everything math, physics and chemistry I devoured. One of my high school assignments was to learn BASIC programming, and I coded a game about a snake eating its tail. After that, I knew computer science was in my future.

While at Meta you led 300+ world-class engineers in AI frameworks & platforms where you built and deployed Caffe2, and later PyTorch. What were some of your key takeaways from this experience?

Big Tech companies like Meta are always five or more years ahead of the curve. When I joined Meta in 2015, we were at the beginning of our AI journey– making the shift from CPUs to GPUs. We had to design AI infrastructure from the ground up. Models like Caffe2 were groundbreaking when they were created, but AI evolved so fast that they quickly grew outdated. We developed PyTorch and the entire system around it as a solution.

PyTorch is where I learned about the biggest roadblocks developers face in the race to build AI. The first challenge is finding stable and reliable model architecture that is low latency and flexible so that models can scale. The second challenge is total cost of ownership, so companies don’t go bankrupt trying to grow their models.

My time at Meta showed me how important it is to keep models and frameworks like PyTorch open-source. It encourages innovation. We would not have grown as much as we had at PyTorch without open-source opportunities for iteration. Plus, it’s impossible to stay up to date on all the latest research without collaboration.

Can you discuss what led you to launching Fireworks AI?

I’ve been in the tech industry for more than 20 years, and I’ve seen wave after wave of industry-level shifts– from the cloud to mobile apps. But this AI shift is a complete tectonic realignment.  I saw lots of companies struggling with this change. Everyone wanted to move fast and put AI first, but they lacked the infrastructure, resources and talent to make it happen. The more I talked to these companies, the more I realized I could solve this gap in the market.

I launched Fireworks AI both to solve this problem and serve as an extension of the incredible work we achieved at PyTorch. It even inspired our name! PyTorch is the torch holding the fire– but we want that fire to spread everywhere. Hence: Fireworks.

I have always been passionate about democratizing technology, and making it affordable and simple for developers to innovate regardless of their resources. That’s why we have such a user-friendly interface and strong support systems to empower builders to bring their visions to life.

Could you discuss what is developer centric AI and why this is so important?

It’s simple: “developer-centric” means prioritizing the needs of AI developers. For example: creating tools, communities and processes that make developers more efficient and autonomous.

Developer-centric AI platforms like Fireworks should integrate into existing workflows and tech stacks. They should make it simple for developers to experiment, make mistakes and improve their work. They should encourage feedback, because its developers themselves who understand what they need to be successful. Lastly, it’s about more than just being a platform. It’s about being a community – one where collaborating developers can push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI.

The GenAI Platform you’ve developed is a significant advancement for developers working with large language models (LLMs). Can you elaborate on the unique features and benefits of your platform, especially in comparison to existing solutions?

Our entire approach as an AI production platform is unique, but some of our best features are:

Efficient inference – We engineered Fireworks AI for efficiency and speed. Developers using our platform can run their LLM applications at the lowest possible latency and cost. We achieve this with the latest model and service optimization techniques including prompt caching, adaptable sharding, quantization, continuous batching, FireAttention, and more.

Affordable support for LoRA-tuned models – We offer affordable service of low-rank adaptation (LoRA) fine-tuned models via multi-tenancy on base models. This means developers can experiment with many different use cases or variations on the same model without breaking the bank.

Simple interfaces and APIs – Our interfaces and APIs are straightforward and easy for developers to integrate into their applications. Our APIs are also OpenAI compatible for ease of migration.

Off-the-shelf models and fine-tuned models – We provide more than 100 pre-trained models that developers can use out-of-the-box. We cover the best LLMs, image generation models, embedding models, etc. But developers can also choose to host and serve their own custom models. We also offer self-serve fine-tuning services to help developers tailor these custom models with their proprietary data.

Community collaboration: We believe in the open-source ethos of community collaboration. Our platform encourages (but doesn’t require) developers to share their fine-tuned models and contribute to a growing bank of AI assets and knowledge. Everyone benefits from growing our collective expertise.

Could you discuss the hybrid approach that is offered between model parallelism and data parallelism?

Parallelizing machine learning models improves the efficiency and speed of model training and helps developers handle larger models that a single GPU can’t process.

Model parallelism involves dividing a model into multiple parts and training each part on separate processors. On the other hand, data parallelism divides datasets into subsets and trains a model on each subset at the same time across separate processors. A hybrid approach combines these two methods. Models are divided into separate parts, which are each trained on different subsets of data, improving efficiency, scalability and flexibility.

Fireworks AI is used by over 20,000 developers and is currently serving over 60 billion tokens daily. What challenges have you faced in scaling your operations to this level, and how have you overcome them?

I’ll be honest, there have been many high mountains to cross since we founded Fireworks AI in 2022.

Our customers first came to us looking for very low latency support because they are building applications for either consumers, prosumers or other developers— all audiences that need speedy solutions. Then, when our customers’ applications started to scale fast, they realized they couldn’t afford the typical costs associated with that scale. They then asked us to help with lowering total cost of ownership (TCO), which we did. Then, our customers wanted to migrate from OpenAI to OSS models, and they asked us to provide on-par or even better quality than OpenAI. We made that happen too.

Each step in our product’s evolution was a challenging problem to tackle, but it meant our customers’ needs truly shaped Fireworks into what it is today: a lightning fast inference engine with low TCO. Plus, we provide both an assortment of high-quality, out-of-the-box models to choose from, or fine-tuning services for developers’ to create their own.

With the rapid advancements in AI and machine learning, ethical considerations are more important than ever. How does Fireworks AI address concerns related to bias, privacy, and ethical use of AI?

I have two teenage daughters who use genAI apps like ChatGPT often. As a mom, I worry about them finding misleading or inappropriate content, because the industry is just beginning to tackle the critical problem of content safety. Meta is doing a lot with the Purple Llama project, and Stability AI’s new SD3 modes are great. Both companies are working hard to bring safety to their new Llama3 and SD3 models with multiple layers of filters. The input-output safeguard model, Llama Guard, does get a good amount of usage on our platform, but its adoption is not on par with other LLMs yet.  The industry as a whole still has a long way to go to bring content safety and AI ethics to the forefront.

We at Fireworks care deeply about privacy and security. We are HIPAA and SOC2 compliant, and offer secure VPC and VPN connectivity. Companies trust Fireworks with their proprietary data and models to build their business moat.

What is your vision for how AI will evolve?

Just as AlphaGo demonstrated autonomy while learning to play chess by itself, I think we’ll see genAI applications get more and more autonomous. Apps will automatically route and direct requests to the right agent or API to process, and course-correct until they retrieve the right output. And instead of one function-calling model polling from others as a controller, we’ll see more self-organized, self-coordinated agents working in unison to solve problems.

Fireworks’ lightning-fast inference, function-calling models and fine-tuning service have paved the way for this reality. Now it’s up to innovative developers to make it happen.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Fireworks AI.

[rajesh1sahani]

Heroku Integration with Salesforce and Uses

Heroku Point of association improves on it for you to assemble Heroku applications that share information with your Salesforce sending. Utilizing bi-directional synchronization among Salesforce and Heroku Postgres, Heroku Accomplice joins the information in your Postgres educational assortment with the contacts, accounts and other custom articles in the Salesforce enlightening assortment. Truly arranged with a point and snap UI, it’s easy to set up the help with minutes — no coding or complex plan is required.

Produce applications that length Heroku and Salesforce

With your Salesforce information in Heroku Postgres, you can beyond a shadow of a doubt join the constraints of the Lightning Stage and Heroku. Applications made utilizing standard open source stacks, similar to Rails, Node.js and Python, accomplice locally to Postgres — and through outsider coordination administrations, straightforwardly back to Salesforce. Making applications that extend your information and cycles straightforwardly to your clients is as of now by and large around as fundamental as making SQL.

How Salesforce is Productive for an Association?

A Salesforce Expert routinely wears various covers. They could work in-house inside an affiliation or be contracted as an outside master to assist a business with benefitting by their Salesforce CRM. They would lead business assessment with a client to make heads or tails of their business objectives and cycles, comprehend trouble spots and entrances for improvement to help them, and have the specific information to configuration as well as execute manages serious results in regards to additionally foster the business cycles and execution. They are in an acknowledged, key, influential place as they are enlisted to assist with changing how a social occasion tries to furthermore encourage client care and different evened out execution.

The Force of Right Salesforce Directing Affiliations

Salesforce coordinating associations give you the right situation stimulated by information and experiences to assist your business with returning for capital contributed. From directing through the improvement cycle to settling complex issues and preparing structures for electronic change, our Salesforce specialists assist you with frivolity the future with plainly depicted techniques and values.

A Salesforce execution embellishment can give various advantages to affiliations, going past finishing a stage. An extra offers an impulse for relationship in that they are specialists in what they do, but expecting you attempted to oversee execution inside, the cycle may not go as perfectly because of various factors.

For instance, the deficiency of fundamental limits crossing a full scale plan, capriciousness and broadness of the stage, purchase (application trade) versus make, plan versus code, utilization of right contraptions and advancements. Continue to inspect to find a piece of the top ways an execution colleague can keep up with your affiliation’s Salesforce stage.

Setting Up an Inconceivable Stage

Understanding that Salesforce is quite far beyond a salesforce specialist expects that there are various choices while setting up your foundation. As Salesforce keeps on adding to its foundation, it turns out to be more confounding to set up for affiliations.

For instance, the Salesforce stage combines Game plans Cloud, Association Cloud (Control center, Information Base, Correspondence Split the difference), Propelling Cloud (B2B,B2C), Social class Cloud (Client, Embellishment, Specialist), Money Association Cloud (FSC), Thriving Cloud, MuleSoft for Programming point of communication coordination, Appraisal Stage for Business Data as well as Computerized naturally suspecting (man-made information) and that is just the beginning. A CRM structure licenses relationship to direct client and prospect relationship with information. You can store, track, and break down client and prospect data in a single focal district, including contact and record data, deals likely doorways, association cases, and showing tries. With information in one focal area, affiliations have a hard and fast image of clients and possible results that can be shared and isolated by packs across the affiliation coherently.

Why pick Salesforce for CRM improvement?

Old history are the days when CRM was only a direct educational assortment that put away client data. At this point, it’s a shrewd, proactive, man-made knowledge invigorated stage that engages workers with the data they need to seek after the best choices for each client. It’s the foundation of the world’s most client focused affiliations and assists relationship with putting the client at the mark of union of all that they do.

What is a Salesforce Prepared proficient?

A Salesforce Expert normally wears various covers. They could work in-house inside an affiliation or be contracted as an outer master to assist a business with taking advantage of their Salesforce CRM. They would lead business assessment with a client to make heads or tails of their business targets and cycles, handle trouble spots and doorways for improvement to help them, and have the particular information to configuration as well as execute manages any results in regards to additionally foster the business cycles and execution. They are in an acknowledged, vital, influential place as they are enrolled to assist with changing how a social event tries to furthermore encourage client care and different evened out execution. Salesforce Client 360 is the finished Salesforce CRM thing game-plan of market-driving applications to construct and support client relationship across each line of business by a Salesforce specialist It’s finished. With high level applications for publicizing, plans, trade, and association, all considering our confided in stage, Client 360 goes past CRM to help each best salesforce consulting.

Past experience shows that it costs more to attract one more client than to hold a consistent one. A Sales Score revolve around tells us that 41% of pay comes from go over clients who are only 8% of the total. Client upkeep has become so huge that affiliations have progressed to offer new models thinking about rehashing affiliations. Without a doubt, when 2020 Gartner conjectured that more than 80% of programming merchants will move their system from ordinary license and upkeep to enrollments. This participation model contains offering things, affiliations or content to an overall client base in a valuable way and with periodic fragments, in everyday month to month.

In that breaking point, the help game-plan changes ordinary clients into standard endorsers.

In any case, holding a client is surely not a reasonable task. To do this, you ought to focus in on making total, predictable and, clearly, fundamental experiences that increase buyer devotion. Clearly, in enrollment models, client upkeep ends up being overall more fundamental, as pay depends on it. Accomplices expect consistency, programming advancement Salesforce consulting services. Your business ought to have the choice to give it the best Salesforce coordinating associations

For this ongoing circumstance, Salesforce consultant other than has a shocking methodology that will deal with remaining mindful of your business. As such, we ought to figure out what’s actually the deal with Help The board.

What is a Salesforce Prepared proficient?

A Salesforce Expert by and large wears various covers. They could work in-house inside an affiliation or be contracted as an outer master to assist a business with acquiring by their Salesforce CRM. They would lead business assessment with a client to make sense of their business objectives and cycles, comprehend trouble spots and doorways for improvement to help them, and have the specific information to configuration as well as execute manages further foster the business cycles and execution. They are in an acknowledged, influential place as they are selected to assist with changing how a social occasion tries to furthermore cultivate client care and different evened out execution. A decent master is one who sorts out the stage yet in like manner has phenomenal business assessment, project the board and change the bosses abilities to facilitate individuals and relationship through a correspondence to manage heroku integration with salesforce.

How does Salesforce reply?

Salesforce offers a substitute supporting of programming things wanted to help bundles from various endeavors— including propelling, gives, IT, business and client support — associate with their clients. For instance, by getting to the Salesforce Client 360 application, packs across a whole connection can impart and offer a solitary perspective on client information on an arranged stage.

Salesforce heroku associate gives consistent experiences into client lead and needs through client information assessment. By moving past the openings between information storage spaces from various divisions, Salesforce gives a broad perspective on each client relationship with a brand.

[mothwings-rosethorns]

"Oh yea try to fucking deny it buddy look at her!! She's fucking dying in your arms and you have the gal to say you didn't do it??!?" Virility knew his code skills there was no way Vermin could be in such a state, not when she was hard coded into the game. She could be injured certainly and even killed but that was all temporary. She'd reset perfectly fine as if nothing had happened but this.

The alarms blaring on his screen told him this was something extreme and if he didn't fix it it was permanent. Her code itself was being outright attacked.

At the accusation Virility's entire bodied shuddered. His eyes flicking to solid black for a second before he reeled himself back in. He stood his ground shaking off the desire to switch into his true form. For he knew if he gave in Vermin would be destroyed as well. Clenching his fists tighter digging his claws into the palms of his hands til they bled he spoke through gritted teeth.

"Me? You're fucking joking right?? I didn't do ANYTHING but help her you fucking idiot!!" He shrieked back.

"I let her into my game. I listened to her. I did everything she asked. I treated her like one of us. I gave her a home!" Virility's tail swatted at the ground aggressively the marble floor cracking sending spiderweb cracks outward from the area of the blow. The anti-virus panted heavily.

"She begged me to sterilize her, so I did. She wanted me to treat her like all the other whores in our game so I did. She wanted to see you again after last time so I made that dress and I dolled her up just so she could be happy and you think I'M the one who thinks less of her?? You call her weak but she's the strongest virus I've ever fucking dealt with! Why else would you think I'd let her fucking stay??" Another ripple of black swirled through the mantid's eyes. His horns lengthening slightly a he was starting to lose control.

Vermin made a small noise at the outbursts. Turning weakly to look at the mantid. Locking eyes with her Virility felt his anger being replaced with concern. Worry filling his eyes as he saw how quickly she was fading. He didn't have time to bicker and argue. Before he could issue Alexander to set her down again the beast's boosted voice rang out.

The loudness of Alexander's voice didn't seem to phase the anti-virus but he knew now he'd have no way of hiding this incident from his boss. Another mess for him to clean up. Typical.

"My friend?" Virility spoke as he stood tall staring Alexander down as he marched up to him as he asked. Not blinking or breaking eye contact as he closed the gap between them. "No, she's not my fucking friend you idiot, she's my queen."

Vermin blinked weakly up at Virility. She seemed about to try and speak but Virility quickly raised a hand to silence her.

Carefully he took her small body into his arms holding her bridal style. Her hand weakly reaching out to Alexander as she was pulled away.

"He's not leaving." Virility stated red and gold eyes shooting the beast a challenging look daring him to try and walk away from this.

Pulling a blanket form his inventory Virility quickly laid it out with his forelegs and settled Vermin down on it. It wasn't the best but he didn't have time to drag her to a better location. Soon as she was on the ground his tail's needle slid into the exposed vein beside her remaining heart gem.

Vermin let out a sharp cry of pain. Virility pet the top of her head gently before turning to his screens and pulling up a holographic keyboard. Fingers dancing across the keys at an insanely quick rate. With a direct hook up he could more easily access Vermin's code. Now he just needed to clear out the errors and locate the source of the distress and remove it. Not an easy task with how tangled up her code was.

"Don't just stand there make yourself useful. Talk to her. Hold her hand kiss her fucking anything. It's the least you could fucking do." Virility snapped tail twitching as wave of glitch spread from Vermin into him. But he ignored the pain and continued to work not bothering to look up from his displays.

Vermin was growing weaker and weaker she didn't even react when Alexander attempted to force her heart back together. She simply lay in his arms. Her once aggressive tight grip becoming slack gently pets as she stroked him as he hugged her.

"te amo..te amo..t.̸.̸t̶e̴ ̸a̴-̵a̷m̴o̵.." she reassured him. He broke her heart but the part that was still attached belonged to him and him alone. She wouldn't stop loving, she couldn't stop loving him. He was hers for as long as he wanted to keep her around.

Her head slumped back her long hair draping over his hands she struggled to remain conscious. Her eyes dulling as she forced a smile up at him.

"to̴g̵-̵-̸t̷o̵g̵e̶t̴h̵e̵r̸ ̵f̴o̴r̶e̴v̷e̴r̴…̵i̶n̸ ̴y̶o̶u̷-̸-̷-̴̭̿y̷̥͈̟͛̓͠o̸̝̅͒͆u̶͔̭̓r̶͍̹̗̎̑̅ ̸̗͐b̶̡̟̦̔e̷̻͆̈́̂l̶̳̙̒̈l̶̨͙̑̆y̸̹̯͎̕͠-̷̫̠͇̀̕-̷͔̠̿͐͘-̸̙̗̀" Vermin's body seized as a massive glitched coursed through her. Her appearance flashing colors, showing her previous forms for a split second before settling back to her current form.

She let out a small noise, panting as she struggled to stay awake. Her complexion paling as she continued to lose blood.

"v̛.̶.v͜i͏riĺ.͡.͞" her voice distorting as she tried in vain to speak.

"What in the shit are you two fuckers doing?!?!?!" Virility's voice cut through the air like a blade, sharp and aggressive. His normal sugary tone entirely gone. His phone in his palm was pinging repetitively as alerts of Vermin's deteriorating state where sent to him.

Virility kept his entire game under close inspection and that included Vermin despite her not being originally a part of his game.

The red rose was fuming glaring absolute daggers at Alexander. Tail raised, needle brandished as he moved slowly forward body tense tight. While he wanted to simply dart in and grab Vermin he knew better and chose to keep some distance should Alexander choose to lash out at him.

He eyes went from Alexander to the bloodied mess of Vermin in his arms. A pang of annoyance as he noticed the copious amounts of blood staining the dress he worked so hard to code. Vermin's body twitched as a series of glitched phased throughout her being. Snapping his gaze back to Alexander Virility's thorns spiked out shifting and rubbing against his smooth scales to create an audible hiss.

"Put. Her. Down. NOW." He snarled the command. He didn't know what was going on but he assumed her state was Alexander's doing. Nothing could screw with code this badly other than a virus.

His phone continued to ping and in a rush of annoyance and rage he pulled up his code editing window flipping the screen and enlarging it to show Alexander a window absolutely drenched in red warning alerts. Yellow and red text in large font reading out various errors that popped up over and over completely smothering the screen.

"Look!! Look at this fucking mess! Do you know how hard it's gonna be to fix this shit??!??! What in the CPU where you two fucking idiots fucking doing??!??"

Vermin looked tiredly from Alexander to the anti-virus. "Viri̕l̸í…" her voice failed again, another ripple of glitches washing over her as her body distorted and warped. The gem Alexander had attempted to fit back on falling off again.

It skid across the ground, stopping at Virility's feet.

The mantid stared down angrily at the gem. He knew he should have patched the shit out when he had the chance but Vermin had insisted on keeping it. He hated his past self for being such a kindhearted idiot. He looked from the gem to glare at Vermin who was still trying to hold onto Alexander.

She seemed so pathetic now laying in the large monster's grasp. He watched as she tried to keep giving Alexander kisses and pets, apparently trying to soothe the beast despite the fact she was the one completely falling apart. The red glint of her precious ring caught his eye.

He let out a deep growl, tail thrashing behind him wildly as he wanted nothing more than to rip that pretty ring off her finger and use it to gouge out Alexander's eyes.

"Put. her. down." he repeated again. Hands clenched tightly as he waited for the beast to do as he demanded.

[bumpscosity]

I think furby connects rely WAY too much on the “current” fads (late 2010s shit) and burp fart humor. If I were able to reprogram these guys and make them their own app I’d go in the OPPOSITE direction.

Kids need something that ISNT like online spaces now, I’ve been playing club penguin again recently via a remake and kids need silly games and mind challenging puzzles like this now (don’t laugh at the mind challenging part Thin Ice in the Arcade is impossibly hard).

I would take this in a COMPLETELY different direction essentially making an app FULL of mini-games, if you really need those in-app purchases maybe you have to pay to unlock some of them.

I think there’s some great potential in making TONS of different games. I came up with 3 basic types off the top of my head:

Branded - basically reskins of popular games. Like maybe there’s something like the disney tsum tsum mobile game where you have to match furbies of the same color, maybe a game like those classic Sunstorm games where you have to make food but it’s all weird furby food and then you get to feed it to your furby :O

Competitive - this is an idea I got from Anki’s Vector and Cosmo. The basic concept is you’re playing these games AGAINST your furby, something like tick tack toe or connect 4, the ai gets more challenging as you go.

Cooperative - the best way I can think to explain this is something like bop it, except your FURBY is the bop it, maybe when you get to harder levels it goes from basic commands like “press tongue” to more vague ones like “feed me” and then even goes into furbish. Really can’t think of anything else for this category i just think furby bop it is fun.

I feel like there’s SO many games that would be fun if they were furby branded. Maybe there could be a card collecting game ala card-jitsu with a bunch of weird furby scenarios on them. Maybe you can make an account and play multiplayer and there’s scoreboards and stuff :O

I think minigames like this would bring in people of all ages, something relaxing to do with your little furball after a long day sounds like something anyone could enjoy.

I LOVE the idea of personality variations but 2012s and booms did it so poorly. We need more than archetypes. What if there was something similar tomodachi life where there were sliders for different parts of them, so you could have a loud obnoxious furby if you wanted, or you could have a softspoken one it’s all up to you. If no sliders than have it set via hard resets like voices in 98s (also being able to choose their voices and not have them hard coded to their personality type would be so so cool) because accidentally pulling your booms tail too much and ending up with a loud annoying furby is I’m sure a quite unpleasant experience.

Overall my direction would be to make something that isn’t so loud and flashy, we don’t need more loud yell-y toys in the world. We need to go back to the source, 98s said simple phrases, had a couple minigames, and sung and they’ve stayed popular to this day because of it.

In order for a new furby to succeed it needs to be DIFFERENT from everything else out these days, and making something in your face that says terms that will be outdated in a year and a half is what EVRRYONE else is doing, and especially was doing when connects came out.

And for the love of GOD it’s 2022 give them volume controls and an on/off switch why is it so hard for them to give furbies features every other electronic has

[jaybug-jabbers]

Pokemon Gold/Silver Beta Pokemon: The April 2020 Leak

Look, 2020 was a rough year. So maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that the April 2020 Gold/Silver source code leak flew almost entirely under my radar. If you Google about it, you’re find it’s very rare for news outlets to cover it. This is probably because many folks are hesitant to cover leaks. Also, the US was warming up to a truly awful pandemic around that point, not to mention other civil unrest, so it’s no surprise some people were a tad distracted. 

But the fact is, another leak turned up in April of last year, following a recent trend of huge Nintendo leaks. And this one was a doozy. I’ve only truly realized its full extent in the past few days. As such, I’d like to do a post that covers some of the new information. In particular, I’m focusing on beta pokemon that were cut or heavily reworked.

Now, back in 2018, the Spaceworld ‘97 Pokemon Gold/Silver Demo was leaked online. I made a post about some of my favorites. So, from this leak, we already knew of a while slew of beta pokemon. However, as it turns out, there were still more new faces to find-- and a lot of them! I list 45 new beta pokemon here, in fact!

In the April 2020 leak, several sprite sets were found as internal files, each at different phases of game production. The sprite sets were dated May 6, 1998, June 13, 1999, June 21, 1999, and September 17, 1999. The August 17, 1999 Spaceworld ‘99 Demo build was also found, so we have information on that as well.

Essentially, if you want to see this information at The Cutting Room Floor, then head to this page for the sprites discovered as internal backups/sprite banks. Head to this page for the Spaceworld ‘99 demo information page. And, if you need a refresher for the older leak, you can go to this page for the Spaceworld ‘97 demo build.

For this post, we will focus on the May 6, ‘98 set of sprites, which contain the vast majority of new faces. So, without further ado, onward to the pokemon!

(#300) Kokopelli Pokemon/Celebi

(May 6, ‘98)       (Spaceworld ‘99 Demo)

This first pair of sprites looks very much like Kokopelli, a fertility deity of some Native American cultures. This deity can be seen in ancient Native American petroglyphs, as a humpbacked flute player with feathers on the head. Surprisingly, we find that Celebi in the Spaceworld ‘99 Demo seems to be an updated version of this design, making Celebi’s design origins much different than expected. However, its fertility diety inspiration is still somewhat apparant in the modern Celebi, as a creature that causes plant life to flourish.

(#301) Eel Pokemon

While the sprite files did not reveal a name or other data, this eel’s sprites were numbered right beside the Gurotesu (Grotess) and Ikari (Anchorage) sprites, suggesting it once was the start of their evolution chain. 

(#304) Fire Fox Pokemon

This little fellow is a fox that seems to have a fiery tail. It’s possible this fire fox was inspired by kitsune (just as Vulpix/Ninetails were) and that it was later redesigned as Fennekin. 

(#305 - 308) Snow Bunny Evolution Line

These four pokemon seem to belong to the same evolutionary line. The second one seems to based on the Yuki Usagi, a ‘Snow Bunny.’ In Japan, these cute little critters are made in the snow (using leaves for the ears). They also sometimes make these Yuki Usagi as little marshmallow or mochi treats. So this pokemon line could be inspired by either of these. Considering the leaves and the snow, I would guess these would have been Grass/Ice. 

(#309) Elephant Pokemon

You might wonder if this chonky boy-- looking tough with horns on his head and back-- was an early version of Donphan, but Donphan and Phanpy were present in the Spaceworld ‘97 demo. Indeed, this elephant and Phanpy/Donphan both exist in the same set of sprites from May ‘98, so it was simply a case of two types of elephants. This pokemon also calls to mind a glimpse of a cut beta pokemon we saw from Generation 1 (from ‘Satoshi Tajiri: The Man Who Made Pokémon’):

Same fierce eyes, at any rate! Alas, these both never saw the light of day. However, it’s possible this elephant was reworked into Piloswine, which is not in the May ‘98 collection but does appear in the June 13 ‘99 collection (although Swinub is absent). While Piloswine and Swinub are more akin to wild boars, there is also some relation to mammoths (an inspiration more heavily leaned on with Mammoswine in later games). Then again, there’s another pokemon you’ll see a little further down this list that might have inspired Piloswine instead.

(#311) Natu/Xatu Mid-Evolution

What is clearly a mid-evolution (its file number sits between the two). Has a peacock-like tail. Honestly, I think this works really good as a mid-evolution, and I don’t know why it was cut. I want to name it “Watu.”

(#313) Drunk Kiwi Pokemon

This one is just hilarious to look at. It appears to probably be a kiwi-bird? A very crazy-eyed, loopy one. I can see why this one was cut. The goofy, simple design kind of looks like a knockoff cartoon character for children. 

(#314) Scorpion Pokemon

A pretty badass-looking scorpion, although a rather basic design. I dig the funky head, though. It seems like it has a single, beady eye and is rather menacing. This pokemon may have been later reworked into Gligar, a pokemon that first appears after this sprite set, in the June 13 ‘99 group:

Admittedly this is rather different from the Gligar we know, but it is an early design.

Or, who knows-- maybe this little fellah was later reworked into Skorupi. (If so, it’s a shame, as I don’t dig the weird accordian-like design of its limbs and its evolution.)

(#315) Quail Pokemon

A pudgey little quail pokemon. Doesn’t seem related to the kiwi pokemon. It’s a very cute little thing, and has lots of potential to evolve into something interesting, but it seems they scrapped it pretty quickly.

(#316) Music Note Bird Pokemon

Although these sprites are numbered right after the quail, and they are both birds, the designs are very different, so they seem unrelated. It seems the beta pokemon were simply blessed with a lot of birds. This little bird is in the shape of a clef, giving this bird a musical theme. It seems very likely it was later reworked into Chatot, a bird with a music-note shaped head and metronome tail.

(#319) Boar Pokemon

A cute, grumpy little boar with antlers. Probably what eventually led to Piloswine found in the June 13 ‘99 group. A bit of a shame, in my mind, as I kind of prefer this design.

(#325) Spikey Dog Pokemon

The curious thing is that this dog looks very similar to “Pudi,” a pokemon we saw in the Spaceworld ‘97 demo, which was intended to be a pre-evolution of Growlithe. But Pudi is also in this same collection of sprites!

Perhaps they were toying with the idea of re-designing Pudi (and had already scrapped a bunch of baby pokemon) and just hadn’t bothered to remove the old Pudi yet. It’s hard to say. Ultimately, these both were scrapped, but at least we still have Subbull/Granbull.

(#331) Yūrei Ghost Pokemon

This little ghost has two things that are common in Japanese folklore: the hitaikakushi (the white cloth headband it wears) and the two little balls of fire called hitodama. It is unknown why this ghost pokemon was scrapped, but perhaps they thought the little fellow wouldn’t translate well overseas? 

(#344) Viking Ship Pokemon

Look at this beauty! A pokemon based off some sort of Viking ship. I absolutely adore this one. It’s creative and charming. I hope to see it in the future.

(#349) Wooly Dog Pokemon

This canine-like creature is fluffy as all out. Honestly I think it’s a tad odd, with how tangled and disheveled its fur looks. I can’t help but compare it to the early desings of the three Legendary Beasts, since they also are very canine-like:

These three designs are present in this same May 6, 98′ sprite collection as the representations of Raikou, Entei, and Suicune. Were they possibly playing with a different design idea for the Legendary Beasts? Perhaps Suicune. The Wooly Dog is just such an imposing sprite, that I can’t help but wonder. All pure speculation, of course. 

(#350) Rabbit Pokemon

This rabbit has a rather intense look about him, and it makes me curious what the ideas were behind it. TCRF suggests it’s a possible pikachu clone.

(#351) Snake Pokemon

This cute little worm or snake seems to be wearing a feather headdress, suggesting its design may also be Native American inspired, like the Natu line. On the other hand, this could be inspired by Quetzalcoatl, a feathered serpent deity in Aztec culture. I would have loved to see this little guy’s evolutions.

(#352) Scarecrow Bird

A bird with a hat that kind of looks like a scarecrow. Honestly, it’s a super-cute idea.

(#353) Gargoyle Pokemon

This crouching beastie sort of looks like a gargoyle with a long, sharp tail. I can’t quite tell if those bits on the side are little wings or just a part of its legs. It would be interesting to see this creature standing in a different position-- I feel like that would give us a better understanding of what it looks like. Interestingly, there are striking similarities with Aerodactyl:

I wonder why they are so similar?

(#354 - 356) Manbō Evolution Family

The first of these three fishies was someone we already met in the Spaceworld ‘97 demo-- it was named ‘Manbō 1.′ In the demo, it evolved into  Ikari (Anchorage) and then Gurotesu (Grotess). It seems it’s now been split off from those and given a new evolution family here. While I find that neat, and I quite like the expressions on these fish, they are admittedly a little bland. 

(#360) Flying Squirrel(?) Pokemon

TCRF guesses this is a flying squirrel, and it seems to be wearing a sheathed sword. Not sure about the headgear it’s sporting. Is that a ninja star? 

(#364) Early Cyndaquil

So, this May 6, ‘98 collection is really exciting. The original Gold/Silver fire starter line we saw in Spaceworld ‘97 (Honooguma’s line) is still present in this collection (as is the water-type ‘Cruz’ line and Chikorita’s line). So, what we have here seems to be an early Cyndaquil before they decided to turn it into a fire type and make it the fire starter! In fact, those spikes might even be icicles (like Alolan Sandslash), for all we know. If so, Cyndaquil’s typing pulled a 180.

(#377) Early Furret?

Possibly an early Furret. Looks pretty awkward, not gonna lie; I’m glad it was probably refined into modern Furret, with more body definition between the head and tail.

(#378) Stork Pokemon

It’s a stork, based on the myth of where babies come from. A cute idea, although its curly ‘hair’ looks a little funny to me. 

(#380) Squid Pokemon

A squid with drills for its mantle and arms. Since that’s kinda Beedrill’s thing, I’m glad they scrapped the idea. The backsprite lacks drills so it’s probably from a different design stage. 

(#382 - 383) Early Burmy/Pineco

Burmy/Wormadam/Mothim is based off the bagworm. Bagworms are grubs that use silk and lots of bits of leaves, bark and other objects to create a camouflaged cocoon. When they turn into adults, some species of female bagworms just look like their larval stage, while the males turn into winged moths. That is why Burmy/Wormadam/Mothim have their unique evolution situation. Clearly, these two beta pokemon are playing around with the bagworm idea. They probably went on to inspire both Pineco (another pokemon based on bagworms!) and the Burmy line in gen 4.

(#386) Koala Pokemon

It’s so cool to see they were thinking about a koala pokemon this early. We would not finally get one until gen 7′s Komala.

(#387) Tanuki Pokemon

A Tanuki that is carrying campfire kindling on his back, but the kindling has caught fire. Apparently based on the Kachi-Kachi Yama folktale, which is a surprisingly violent story, but I suppose folktales often are. Who knows why it was cut, but Sentret is the closest thing we have to a tanuki pokemon for now.

(#392) Megaphone(?) Bird Pokemon

Yet another bird pokemon! There sure were a lot of beta birds. This one appears to have a megaphone-shaped beak. Or, possibly, its head is shaped like a gas mask (the strange eyes seem  to support this idea). Honestly I really dig the look of this one.

(#397) Frog Pokemon

It’s tough to tell but it has a small horn on its head. It has a long tongue and is probably shouting “ribbithhhhhh!” It’s cute, but a little plain.

(#400) Tiny Hippo Pokemon

Look at this little weirdo. I think it’s a tiny hippo? With a mohawk and a big grin and wild eyes. It doesn’t really seem to have a head, its mouth/eyes/ears are just stuck directly to a body. Looks pretty awkward, probably needed some polish. No idea what they were going for with it, but it’s interesting.

(#401) Skeleton Pokemon

A very spooky, bipedal, living skeleton beast. It has a long snout and sharp teeth, almost like a crocodile or a dinosaur-like creature. Its head and shoulders have bony spikes and the front of its snout has markings that seem to be a nasal cavity. Very detailed. It also reminds me of Missingno, as some Missingno used the fossil skeletons as their front sprites. I would have loved to have this pokemon, and it’s a real shame they didn’t use it.

(#402) Rodent Pokemon

A mouse or bunny with gigantic, spotted ears and no arms. Those are some serious ears; it almost looks like it could fly with them. 

(#403) Fly Pokemon

A bug-type!! It has a huge, creepy face, curly antenna and wings strangely really close to its head. I love it?? But it’s a bug, so of course I do.

(#404) Plant Pokemon

The Snow Bunny was likely part grass-type, but other than that, this is our first grass beta! It has one eye, a spikey head, and almost foot-like roots. I love how grumpy it looks. There’s a possibility it was a pre-evolution for Sunflora, before they had created the idea of Sunkern (which is not present in this collection).

(#405) Ant Pokemon

Another bug!! This one looks a lot like a winged ant. (Those do exist-- usually a temporary thing for mating flights) It’s possibly related to the fly pokemon above, sporting very similar wings. However, it doesn’t really seem like an evolution.

(#406) Dinosaur Pokemon

A little dinosaur-like pokemon, looking up at you. It’s unclear if that’s a tough, bony skull, or if it’s maybe a hat. The clubbed tail makes me wonder if it’s related to #415 below, but it’s probably unlikely. However, it is pretty likely that this later became Cranidos.

(#407) Early Cherrim

This clearly was a design that was picked up later, in gen 4, to create Cherubi/Cherrim’s sunshine form. I am glad the design was improved, because the lips on this one scare me.

(#412) Early Dunsparce

Dunsparce looking quite different. No wings, no drill tail, with a much more typical snake-like face. 

(#415) Dinosaur Pokemon

It looks like an aquatic version of an Ankylosaurus or something similar. It’s possible it’s related to the Viking Ship pokemon (as a pre-evo), but there’s no way to know. I quite like it, though.

(#416) Flying Fish Pokemon

This magnificent beast, this miracle of creation, is surely my favorite beta pokemon of all time. Revel in its glory. You may not like it, but this is the ideal pokemon body. What a perfect way to round off our collection of betas.

[rayfollowsfromhere]

In Pursuit of a Beeping Noise

First posted on my Patreon. You can read more of my short stories at https://www.patreon.com/RachelMarieWriting

-.-.-

…beep…beep...beep...

What in the hell?

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Hospital?

Her eyes fluttered open. There was a hazy red glow.

Not a hospital.

...beep…beep…beep…

Telestra sat up. Her hand pressed against cold metal as she shoved herself into the upright position. Her back ached from the solid surface below. Her damn butt was numb.

Definitely not a hospital.

The red glow appeared to be the only source of light because she couldn't see a damn thing either.

Where the hell was she?

Beep. Beep. Beep.

And what the hell was beeping!

She pushed down against the floor to haul herself onto her feet. Telestra considered herself many things, tall was not one of them. When she stood up straight her head immediately collided with something.

Something that made a metallic 'tink!' when it came in contact with her forehead. She immediately reeled back.

"What in the ever loving fuck!"

Because low light wasn't enough of an obstacle…

Telestra put her hands out, miming herself into some situational awareness. Her head ached. Her body ached.

…beep…beep…beep…

And there was beeping.

The day was officially on her top twenty. It hadn't beat her twelfth birthday yet though, so there was still a chance at recovery.

Her fingers ran down one wall that arched downward into a console. Her knee collided with the edge of it a moment later.

She'd take it.

Running her hand along the surface, Telestra could make out buttons. Analog. They were raised above and making cheerful 'clack-clack' noises as her hand compressed them down. One was significantly larger than the rest.

Her twelve years of primary school and six years of additional training told her that was significant.

"You either turn something on. Or you launch something." She was hoping for on.

Screens behind her came to life as soon as she pushed it.

On.

Yay!

Beep. Beep. Beep.

"Shut up! I hear you!"

…beep…beep…beep…

Telestra moved to the screens. There were more consoles, more buttons. More distressingly… there were screensavers.

Anatomically impossible screensavers.

"Fucking disgusting..." Telestra growled as she looked over the buttons - searching for familiar characters.

Lines. Just. Lines.

Not even raised lines.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

No dots. Couldn't be morse code.

"Couldn't use even a single number, had to be difficult."

Telestra did what her six years of training told her to do. She whacked the console. A couple times.

The screensaver blinked out.

An overhead light buzzed on.

Progress. Sorta.

…beep...beep…beep...

"I will kill you." Telestra narrowed her eyes. "As soon as I find you."

The light illuminated the room - what appeared to be a spherically shaped box. Made of metal. With tiny consoles around the two long walls. There was a door with a pressured lock on both ends of the room.

The red glow was coming from a bulb that jutted out of the wall above the one to her left. Upon close inspection - a quick shuffle towards the door - Telestra was able to determine the beep was not coming from that region.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

"Boy howdy, if you don't shut up…"

It was coming from a screen. It wasn't lit up like the others - no blue screen or horrible screensaver. She knelt down in front of it.

...beep...beep…beep…

"I heard you!"

The screen was horizontally inlayed into a console. Not quite flat. Spherical. She looked underneath. Panel.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Telestra yanked open the panel. It didn't require that much effort. She fell backwards as it came loose in her hands. She caught herself before she hit the floor.

…beep…beep…beep…

"...bastard."

Wires. And more wires. All of them black. Most of them taped in one section or another. It really inspired confidence in whoever had last touched it. Electrocution: Party of One!

She shoved her hands in, fiddling and twiddling until the damned screen lit up green. It was a dark green. But color was color and Telestra didn't much care.

There were markings on the glass and a bright line spinning around inside. Dots all around the center point lit up as it came around.

Well, her studies hadn't covered this, but her last binge watch did.

"Am I in a fucking ship?!”

Should have taken swim lessons!

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The beeps did not match up with the dots or the light. Great. Telestra sat down. The metal floor wasn't quite flat and she fell backwards a bit. Arms flailing as she caught herself on the minuscule slope.

Spherical box. A tube.

…beep…beep…beep...

Submarine.

Why did Grena let her watch Shark Week? She couldn't swim. She'd never even seen a pool!

Beep. Beep. Beep.

"I am calm!" Telestra snapped. She crossed her arms.

Grena would know what to do. Grena would know where the beeping was coming from. Grena would know what it meant. Grena probably even knew what the dots stood for!

…beep…beep…beep…

"Fuck Grena."

Telestra got up, kneeling back over the wires that now protruded from the opened panel. She looked down at her hand.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

She bit the tip of her smallest finger, slicing through the synthetic skin with her teeth until she got resistance. She spit the scrap of skin out and wiggled her finger. Aluminum and zinc plating.

...beep...beep…beep…

For once, buying the cheap shit for her external wasn't biting her in the ass.

She stripped off the tape from a wire at random. With a deep breath, Telestra pressed her little finger against the exposed wiring. She felt a jolt. It was live.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Nothing exploded. Telestra counted that in the win column and stripped another piece of tape from a wire. She repeated the process. Another jolt. Also live.

It was another four wires before she got anything more than electric shock as feedback. And it was a damn screensaver.

…beep…beep…beep…

"Well screw you too!"

Another wire down. Nothing. Another. Shock. And another. Screensaver.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

"I know you're doing this on purpose!"

…beep…beep…beep…

Another wire. Another…oh.

Code scrolled on for an obscene amount of time. Telestra didn't bother trying to read it. Her tertiary processor was already parsing the code for useful bits.

It was the home screen she found herself puzzling over. Primary processor, secondary processor, and her frontal lobe.

"What in the hell is a Windows?"

Beep. Beep. Beep.

"Very helpful."

Some searching - and three failed minesweeper games - revealed to Telestra that she was dealing with an operating system. Great. Might as well hand her a rotary phone!

Not that she knew what that was. It was the name of a stock photo she'd opened in paint. The analogy still stood, of course, just with the bulk of it flying over Telestra's head.

What else was new?

Operating systems predated AIs and Telestra had spent all of two weeks in sixth form pretending to listen to what those were.

"Little help?"

…beep…beep…beep…

"I thought not."

Telestra dove deeper, finding all sorts of useless applications she couldn't make heads or tails of. Eventually, her tertiary processor took pity and spat out some administrative passwords that accessed the base code.

Hooking into that at least made her search quicker.

"Global satellite positioning system?"

…

"No."

…

"Sonar diagnostic program?"

…

"No."

Beep. Beep. Beep.

"Airlock pressurization sequence start up it is!"

She activated the program. It had the most interesting file type - .exe. Telestra had never heard of it.

…beep…beep.

"Success!"

The overhead light went out.

"Too soon?" Telestra unhooked from the wire. She stood up just in time for the sub to jostle her straight into the console opposite.

Story of her life.

She double over after colliding with the blunt edge. Her spleen was none too happy with her. And her temperature modulator reported a dent.

"Fucking hell."

Telestra glared at the ceiling, for lack of a better target. The red light above the one pressure seal went off. Another light appeared on the opposite side. She turned her head just in time for the green light to flicker.

Grena had told her to invest in a night vision upgrade. Telestra had bought an extended streaming package for her memory drive. Example #3479 of why Telestra should just fucking do what Grena fucking says.

Over her dead body.

A squeak and a hiss later and her spherical hell was illuminated in light. Most of it directly into her eye.

This day…

"Identify yourself?" A voice called out - deep and rhythmic. Telestra winced.

"Telestra Zeta," her voice modulator whirred. It was harsh and rattling. The owner of the well-maintained modulator did not respond.

Great. Just what she needed. A classist.

"Who are you?" Telestra yelled out, still squinting into the light, "And could you maybe turn that down a little! It's worse than the damn beeping!"

If they thought not responding would keep her from speaking, well, they obviously hadn't spent much time outside the databanks.

The light dimmed. She blinked. There were three figures - short, stocky, and all wearing the same ugly brown jumpsuit. Telestra's cheep rubberized skin looked better than the odd material hanging loosely from their bodies.

"Thanks," Telestra took a step towards them. They still didn't speak. When she got closer she realized there were more saggy skinned figures behind the first three.

One of them. Not the one with the rhythmic modulator stuck out his right hand, "Jimmy Bairn." His speech stuttered. Telestra smiled. A fellow non maintained.

Weird name though. But the higher up the alphabet you go the weirder the names. Or so Grena had told her. Not that Telestra believed her or anything.

"Why are we on a ship?" Telestra took another step. One of the loose skins took a step back. She tilted her head, "I'm not infected."

She may not maintain her parts as well as some, but her software was regularly debugged. And she kept up on her vaccines! No tetanus!

It was Jimmy who spoke again, "We work here. The question we have is how you got here?"

That. That was. Good question.

"But...we're not actually in the ocean are we? With salt and sharks and..." Telestra shuddered, "Orcas."

A noise blared from behind Jimmy. Quick. Like a shout. But lighter.

"What was that?"

Jimmy took another step closer. She could see him clearly now. She really should upgrade her eyes. The organics just weren't doing it.

He looked like he had…fur…? On his face?

"That was a laugh. Henry’s a bit of an arse."

Telestra blinked. Who… were these people?

"What in hell is a laugh?"

[snappedsky]

Fanatics 80.3

The Battalion goes on the search for the rest of Carcas’ rebels.

*Links to previous and next chapters in reblog*

--

Return of Carcas Part 3

           Dib paces back and forth across the floor of Zim’s lab, constantly checking the time. “Pepito and Tak have been gone way too long,” he points out in concern.

           “Something must’ve happened,” Gaz says apathetically, not even looking up from her Game Slave.

           “Of course something happened!” he exclaims, frustrated.

           “Alright,” Zim snaps, “we’ll go look for them. Skoodge!”

           “Yes?” the smaller Irken questions as he slides into the room.

           “Lock Uu in one of the cells,” Zim orders, pointing to their captive alien on the floor. “We’ll be back later.”

           “Ah, okay,” Skoodge nods and picks up Uu with his spider legs, carrying her away while Zim, Dib, and Gaz go into the elevator.

           “We’ll go to the crash site of Uu’s shuttle,” Zim declares, “most likely, one of her comrades went there looking for her and ran into Pepito and Tak. So be ready for a fight.”    

           “Surely the two of them would be able to handle a fight,” Gaz argues as they exit the elevator and head for the front door. “I mean we all defeated those losers one-on-one.”

           “They could’ve been ambushed,” Dib points out, “or maybe Carcas’ crew has some new weapons and tricks. We don’t know.”

           “Exactly,” Zim agrees, “we must be ready for anything.”

           They open the front door to see Squee standing there, hand up like he was about to knock.

           “Oh,” Squee says, “hey, guys.”

           Zim, Dib, and Gaz stare at him dumbly for a second before exclaiming, “Squee!”

           Dib lashes out, excitedly squeezing Squee’s shoulders. “It’s so good to see you! You look great!”

           “Wh-uh-r-really?” Squee questions, smiling awkwardly.

           “Well, kind of,” Gaz shrugs.        

           In the three weeks since he’s been away, Squee’s appearance has changed a bit. His hair is a little scruffier and there are dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep. But he’s wearing new clothes: a black sweater with purple stripes across the sleeves and a black t-shirt displaying the scowling face of Happy Noodle Boy.

           “In any case,” Zim says, “it is good to have you back.”

           Squee smiles gratefully. “Thanks, guys.”            An obnoxious cough from behind interrupts their reunion. They look back to where the Night Terrors and Johnny are standing, looking rather impatient.

           “Hate to rush you, Boss, but uh…” Reverend Meat trails off and motions to the body bag wrapped in ropes tucked under his arm.

           “Ah, right,” Squee nods and looks back at his friends. “So uh can we come in?”

           “Yes, yes, of course,” Zim replies. After everyone has entered the living room, Reverend Meat drops the bag onto the floor. Whatever’s inside lets out an annoyed grunt.

           “What is that?” Dib asks.

           “A familiar face,” Squee replies and nods to the Doughboys. “Open it.”

           They quickly untie the ropes and pull off the bag, revealing the captive to be an alien, bound and gagged. He’s covered in black fur with dragonfly-like wings and a long scaly tail.

           “Mixxar!” Dib exclaims.

           The alien looks up at him, snarling angrily into his gag.

           “He tried to attack the house,” Squee explains.

           “Interrupted our board game,” Johnny pouts, “and I was so close to becoming Epic Lord.”

           “But he didn’t stand a chance against us,” Eff says proudly.

           “This is perfect!” Zim exclaims excitedly and starts rifling through Mixxar’s pouches. “Does he still have-yes, he does!”

           He stands up, victoriously holding out a device that looks like a handheld radio.

           “What’s that?” Squee asks.

           “A communicator,” Zim replies, “and the source of their demise. With this, we’ll be able to track the rest of them down. Skoodge!”

           “Yes?” the little Irken questions as he slides into the room.

           “Take Mixxar and lock him up with Uu,” he orders.

           “Ah, okay,” Skoodge nods and picks up the bound alien with his spider legs before scurrying away.

           “You already have Uu?” Squee asks.

           “Yes, but she didn’t have her communicator,” Zim replies, “Computer! Release hacking cord.”            A cord hangs down from the ceiling and Zim plugs it into the communicator. The television turns on, briefly showing lines of code before a map of the city and surrounding area pops up. It shows five red dots, mostly spread out outside of the city. But two are clustered together and one is at Zim’s house.

           “That one is clearly Mixxar’s communicator,” Zim says, pointing to the one at his house. Then he points to the two clustered together. “That’s at the site of Uu’s crash. Someone else must be there.”

           “With Pepito and Tak,” Dib points out.

           “Oh, yeah. I was wondering where they are,” Squee says.

           “Right,” Zim nods, “we need to deal with all of them quickly but also help Pepito and Tak. Ugh, we’re stretched thin.”

            “The Night Terrors can help,” Squee points out.

           Zim looks at them, like he completely forgot about them until just now. “Oh, yeah! Okay, we’ll split into four of groups of two. Dib and I-.”

           “I’ll go with Squee,” Dib declares.

           “But-I…ugh, fine. I’ll take Gaz,” Zim groans.

           “Don’t sound so excited,” she grunts.

           “We’ll go after that farthest dot.”

           “Why?” she questions.

           “Because I hope it’s Carcas,” he growls, “Dib, Squee, you two go for this dot here. And the Night Terrors will help Pepito and Tak. Alright, everyone, split!”

           The Night Terrors dive out the door and leap onto the buildings and Zim activates his PAK rockets and carries Gaz off while Dib and Squee watch them leave.

           “How are we gonna get there?” Squee asks.

           “We’ll take my dad’s car,” Dib replies, “just gotta stop at my house.”

           Squee nods and looks at Johnny. “And what are you gonna do?”

           “Guess I’ll go to the house and unpack,” he replies, “but if you need help, just call.”            “I will.”

           Dib and Squee hurry to Dib’s house and get his car. As they drive to their location, they chat a little about Squee’s vacation.

           “It was nice for the most part,” Squee replies, “nice to take a break. I learned some little tricks. Literally, tricks. I taught myself close-up magic.”

           “Why?” Dib asks with amusement.

           “I dunno. Fun? Check it out.” Squee reaches behind Dib’s ear and pulls his hand back holding a coin. “You got a coin behind your ear.”

           “That’s pretty impressive,” he smiles, “you should show that to Zim. It’ll blow his mind.”

           They share a laugh as they exit the city.

           Dib drives the car down the highway as close as he can get to the location before pulling over into the ditch. He and Squee get out and continue on foot.

           “We’re probably gonna be in for a fight,” Dib points out, “you up for that?”            “I might be a bit rusty,” Squee warns, “but I’ll do my best.”

           “Well, don’t worry,” he grins, “I can carry the team.”

           After going around a group of trees, they stop just short of a crater with an escape pod similar to Uu’s. Dib and Squee glance around carefully for a second before sliding down to the shuttle.

           “Doesn’t look like anyone’s here,” Squee observes.

           “They couldn’t be far,” Dib warns, “keep an eye out while I check out the shuttle.”

           Squee reaches around his back and unsheathes his two knives, looking around suspiciously, while Dib crawls into the pod. The tech inside seems simple, albeit alien, with only a couple buttons on the console next to the seat. It’s mostly empty, except for the communicator sitting on the cushion.

           While Dib’s poking around inside the shuttle, Squee hears a rustling from the top of the crater. He spins around and sees nothing, however he knows they’re not alone.

           He carefully eyes their surroundings, knives raised. He hears more movement to his right and turns just in time to see a large slug creature leaping towards him.

           “Dib!” Squee cries and leaps backwards, dodging the long swords the slug is wielding with her long arms. As she lands, she glares at him with her one big eye.

           “That’s Yrel’ian!” Dib exclaims as he gets out of the shuttle. Squee scuttles over to his side as she points at them, saying something in her alien language.

           “I-I don’t have a translator,” Squee says.

           “It’s okay, I got mine,” Dib says, “she said ‘when Uu and Mixxar disappeared, I knew you’d use their communicators to track us. So I lured you here’.”

           “Ah. Very clever.”

           “Give up, Yrel’ian!” Dib snaps, pointing at the alien. “You’re outnumbered.”

           “I don’t have to defeat you in battle,” she retorts, “to defeat you.”

           “What’d she-?” Squee starts to ask but is cut off when Yrel’ian opens her mouth and spits out a large, green loogie. It lands inches from Squee’s feet, causing him yelp and jump into Dib. They both lose their balance and crash into the pod. Before they can collect themselves, Yrel’ian closes the hatch, locking them inside.

           “Hey!” Dib barks as she slithers off. He pushes against the hatch but it doesn’t budge. “Uh oh.” He fumbles around for some kind of handle, but there is none.

           “Okay, it’s fine,” he says, “there must be a button on the console that opens it. This is no…problem…”

           He trails off as he looks at Squee, who is staring at the hatch, eyes widened in fear and panic and breathing increasing rapidly.

           Dib watches him in concern, suddenly remembering his extreme claustrophobia. “Uh oh…”

[loveafterthefact]

Love After the Fact Chapter 9: In the Vernacular, Please be my Friend?

Lance and Keith exasperate themselves and each other, but they’re still trying to find common ground to stand on.

First  Previous  Next

Keith didn’t leave their quarters hardly at all for a movement after they were married. With the exceptions of the incident with Iverson and a minor confrontation with the still-angry seamsmaster (they still hadn’t gotten over the gloves debacle), Keith sequestered himself to their rooms. It seemed the alienating dining room and relatively unfriendly, unhelpful guards and courtiers made him feel unwelcome. Who could have guessed?

Despite the pointed comments from his parents, Lance did not press the issue. Adam brought him food, or Lance, when he wasn’t busy. Keith had seemed faintly surprised that Lance had bothered to do it himself. Like the idea of Lance doing something for him just because was an alien concept.

Over time, giving in to the pressure from the kings, he began to acquaint himself with the dining hall, where the royal family immediately began to invite some gaggle of courtiers or another, the library, which stored the entire civilization’s collected knowledge, and the grounds, where he occasionally absconded with some small plant he thought no one would miss.

Lance was alerted to this habit after one of the gardeners caught Keith stealing a golden regent orchid from a greenhouse. Unfortunately for the distressed gardener, the extremely rare and delicate flower was quite happy in their little garden, and thus Lance declared it would stay.

He’d watched Keith spend several vargas lying on the moss, gazing at the shimmering golden petals. He’d fallen asleep with his tail curled around the stem. Lance had made a note about the Galra kit’s curiosity, speaking to Pidge about ways to keep him busy while he eased his way into royal responsibilities.

At any rate, Keith grew somewhat accustomed to living at the Castle of Lions. By the end of the movement, Keith was starting to venture out for more than meals and stealing from the gardens. He’d even attended court with Lance, sitting on his right, holding his hand on the joined arms of their thrones. At one point, Lord Lanval had come forward to publicly apologize for his slight against the princes at their wedding banquet. Keith had graciously accepted, despite knowing the apology was a show.

In spite of all of this, Lance knows Keith wasn’t happy, and he isn’t exactly happy either. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything he can do.

Lance throws himself into his increasing duties, burying himself in the multitude of smaller concerns that his parents don’t have the time or energy for in the current political climate. Rumors ripple through the royal court and eventually the commonwealth about Crown Prince Lancel and the new practices he’s implementing, including adjusting how taxes are set.

Now, thanks to him, taxes are decided based on income against estimated needed expense. Said expense is not being estimated by courtiers, but by newly hired tax collectors, and based on specific criteria set by Lance, Adam, and Pidge. Keith had suggested that the tax collectors be required to wear pocketless uniforms while collecting, to which Lance had agreed.

“Lancel, everyone is charged the same amount on their taxes. It’s equality.”

“Yes, and farmers scrape by poaching the wilds while Lord Lanval hands us the top off his spare change at the end of the decaphob. This is better than equality, Father. This is equity .”

The appraising look he’d received from Alfor and the collection of small gifts from the agrarian population have been worth the hours-long-winded explanation he’d owed his fathers. The detail he’d had to go into had been excruciating. Coran had done his very best to speed things up, but had hindered more than helped. Lance loves him for his efforts.

Needless to say, he’s tired when he returns to their room much later with Keith’s dinner, finding him and Shiro sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace. They’re talking softly in Galran. Lance pretends not to understand as he sets Keith’s food on the end table.

“No, he didn’t,” Keith whispers, moving a piece on the board game he’d found in his upstairs loft. Lance has taken to leaving games and puzzles in places where Keith could find them. And any pretty trinkets he thinks the Galra might like. Keith doesn’t seem sure what to make of it, and frankly Lance isn’t sure he knows where the objects are even coming from. Perhaps they're more interesting to Keith as a mystery.

“Truly? That is how Alteans consummate their unions. He should have.” Keith shakes his head, and Shiro’s eyes slide to Lance. “Interesting.”

“He is interesting. I don’t hate him, I think.” Well that’s... marginally gratifying. “You don’t hate the attendant. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you like him.”

“You- You shut up!”

“I bet you just wanna eat him up, don’t you? All little and cute like he is.” Lance smiles at Adam as he prances in with the usual sigh and a swing of his hips. Shiro blusters.

“So. Are your fathers, Ancients bless them, stupid?”

“No, they’re just old. The tax system hasn’t been changed since my great-grandfather Mahi was king and it's always been enough to fund the Crown so if it’s not visibly broken, why fix it?” Lance explains. “I think Dad was on board from the beginning. And Father just wants to give me a hard time every now and then. Payback, I guess.”

Adam sighs, datapad clutched in one hand. He pushes his glasses up his nose with the other. “No, he doesn’t. He just…”

“Thinks I’m an idiot?” Lance offers. Out of the corner of his eye, Keith keeps playing with Shiro’s visibly perked ears. They bend back with Keith’s manhandling, only to bounce right back into place. Keith seems to find it very funny, snickering each time they spring forward.

“Lance, you’ve done your best to convince them both that you’re an idiot. Where does this tablet go?”

“It was swiped from the library. Just put it on the nightstand. No, no. The other nightstand. On Keith’s side.” Lance lifts yesterday’s vest from the floor. “I find it interesting that Father buys it, and Dad does not.”

“But not surprising?” Keith asks, briefly glancing at Lance, tugging on Shiro’s ear. The adult Galra seems content with the manhandling. Lance wonders if it's normal to let kits maul you.

“Oh Ancients, no. Dad’s a terrible judge of character, but he knows me too well to be fooled.”

“So King Alfor is a terrible father who doesn’t know his own son?” Shiro asks, swatting playfully at his brother’s hand.

“No, he was just on his own for a long time. After Melinor died, he had Altea, Daibazaal, me and Allura, Coran, and, well. You can guess what happened-”

Keith laughs from where he’s still seated on the floor with his brother.

Lance frowns, turning to watch them. He notices Shiro’s still-perked ears and attentive eyes, fixed on Adam as the attendant begins picking up the trail of misplaced items Lance constantly leaves in his wake. There aren’t that many.

Shiro’s ears are so expressive, their movements as important as his smile.

But Keith... Keith’s ears are mostly stationary, no matter what. They rotate when he hears a noise and they wilt or twitch sometimes, but mostly when he is unsure of himself. Otherwise, they’re just kind of there, like he’s not entirely sure how to move them. That, combined with his generally reserved demeanor, suggests to Lance that Keith doesn’t know how to express himself.

The longer Lance spends with Keith, which admittedly isn’t much, the more he suspects that Keith spent most of his life alone.

It breaks his heart, really. Keith’s actually kind of sweet. He strikes Lance as a gentle soul, and a warm one, when he’s allowed to be. His fond teasing of Shiro regarding his apparent infatuation with Adam stands as a testament to that.

“You should just talk to him.”

“Shut up.”

“He’s stopped looking like he’ll run away if you try.”

“Wait, what? He’s scared of me?”

Keith falters, tries his best to backtrack. “Oh, no, Shiro. Of course not. I’m sure he was just stressed. He’s not scared of you.”

Adam’s absolutely intimidated by the enormous Galra soldier, but Lance isn’t. The man’s adorable.

“Hey Shiro, got any hobbies?” Lance asks. Keith leans over and whispers something that set his brother’s ears aflurry.

“Oh. Um. Well, actually, I like gardening.” Out of the corner of his eye, Lance sees Adam pause before going back to fiddling with the bed canopy.

“When he retires, he wants to open an apothecary,” Keith supplies.

“Really? Well that’s very interesting,” Lance says. “Adam here has quite the interest in botany himself, don’t you? Quite the physik, actually.”

Adam smooths over a pillowcase unnecessarily. “Yes.”

“Perhaps you can exchange comunique codes and compare notes. You leave tomorrow night, don’t you Shiro?”

“Huh? Oh! Yes I do, I’m afraid. Royal Advisor Krolia has been doing both her job and mine, so I really can’t stay longer.”

“I see.” Lance notices how Keith’s mood drops drastically with the turn of conversation. “Well please come back and visit when you can. You are family now, and always welcome. Just let us know before you arrive so I can make sure you won’t starve.”

Shiro smiles with gratitude. “Thank you, Lance.” The man rises to his towering height. “I’d best begin packing my things. Keith, you stay here and at least try to be friends with your husband.”

“Shiro-”

“No, Keith.” Shiro lays a hand on Keith’s head. “It will get easier. I promise. But you need to try, too. He is.”

Keith nods, studying the half-finished board game in front of him, now devoid of an opponent. Lance turns to Adam, addressing him in Altean. “Can you give us a minute? It’s tricky to get him to talk, and he won’t if you’re here.”

Adam abandons his fiddling. “I’d best go speak to Pidge if I’m to get that comms code set up. It’ll be valuable to have another source inside the Galra fold. Perhaps the captain will be useful.”

Lance heaves a sigh, sitting down where Shiro had been before. “Hey-”

“Did you know I can speak Altean?” Keith murmurs, studying the game board. Quiznak.

“Did you know I speak Galran?” The two stare at each other for a moment. Then sigh, shoulders drooping. “We have to stop doing this. We have to stop trying to get one over on each other,” Lance says. “We’re the only people we know we can trust-”

“I don’t know if I can trust you.”

Lance bites his lip. “I trust you. I don’t think you would hurt me. Not at all.”

“Lance, I’ve been trained specially to kill you.”

“And?” Lance shrugs. “I’ve been trained how to kill you . That’s how it is... You know, we could have met in battle. We could have fought each other. One of us could have killed the other. Been celebrated for it. Rewarded.” Keith’s ears wilt. He doesn’t seem to like that idea any more than Lance does.

“What do you want, Lance?” Lance moves one of Shiro’s pieces and hands Keith the twenty-sided die. Keith tosses the die, moves a piece, and on it goes.

“Shiro leaves tomorrow,” Lance observes. The ears droop further, tail limp against the floor. “I wanted to see how you’re doing. See if there’s anything I can do.”

Keith’s quiet for a long time, amethyst eyes dull and downcast. Lance sighs, assumes he’s not going to make any progress today.

“Okay, Keith. That’s alright-”

“My brother is leaving, and I will be alone here. I miss my mother.” Of course. Of course he does. “It- It hurts.” Of course it hurts. Keith’s still a kit. He still has that powerful kit’s bond with his mother, with his pack. “There’s not a whole lot to be done.” Keith pulls out his datapad and dims the lights to nothing. It’s just the fire, no moon to shine through the domed glass roof of the tower above. “It’ll get better, the longer we’re separated.”

“I can get you a comms code-”

“No. Thank you, but that will make it worse. In a few movements, maybe a phoeb, I’d like that, but for now, this is best.”

It’s only later, when they’re in bed, that Lance realizes exactly what’s happening to Keith. Parent-child bonds are powerful things for Galra. Keith’s have remained even as his mother served in battles during the second war. Normally, such a bond fades during a Galra’s final growth.

Now, that bond is being forced apart before its time. Again.

Lance can only imagine what all of Keith’s loss and moving around and such has done to him. He notices the Galra trying to massage his own ears, self-soothing, hears a tiny, smothered chirp. Distressed. He scoots closer, reaches out, replaces Keith’s fingers with his own.

"It's alright, Keith. I've got you."

The Galra tenses for a moment, relaxes. Lance can hear him purring as he settles. He is this kit’s primary pack-member now. He’ll take good care of him. He trusts Keith to return the favor if he gets a chance.

“Keith?” A hum of acknowledgement. “I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry that you’re still a kit and I’m sorry about your family and I’m sorry that you’re here.”

“If you’re sorry, then help me do better. Make sure it doesn’t have to happen to our children.”

“I swear it. On my life.”

[queenmuzz]

Deep Blue Sea: Chapter XII

Living on Borrowed Time

Read the full story on Ao3 Here!

Warning: Descriptions of Violence, and mild descriptions of blood. 10:56PM

He looks so peaceful, you thought to yourself as you watched him doze off that night.  He was floating gently, with only his tail moving slowly to keep him from drifting too far up to the surface, or too far down to the floor.  It fascinated a part of you, of how his people had adapted to live in such a starkly different world than yours.  Another part of you was enthralled by his culture, the way his kind lived, interacted, their stories, songs, customs.

And yet, there was yet another part of you, the part that had grown to like him, and then to love him, who knew this couldn’t last.  You needed to set him free, and in an hour, you’d finally have the way to do so.

You thanked your lucky stars that you had not, in your ignorance, attempted to free him earlier.  You would have never forgiven yourself if you had inadvertently cursed him to a fate worse than death.  Perhaps being a meek, indecisive person had finally been a source of good.

But there was no indecisiveness now, no meekness.  You had a job to do, and by the Tidemother, you’d see it to its completion, no matter if it broke your heart.

Of course, Vergil had been completely left in the dark in all of this, you’d seen to that.  You’d kept up the facade of being a happy, excited bride to be, blaming your bouts of silence and furrowed brows on ‘just being nervous’ about the upcoming nuptials.  And he’d bought it hook, line, and sinker.

You placed your hand on the glass, as you once did when you two first met, but this time there would be no reciprocating hand on the other side.  It was probably better this way.

You quickly put on your jacket, keys at your hip, and codes in your head, and you slipped out into the late spring night.

It’ll be all over soon, Vergil. 

11:17PM

You pulled up to the deserted building with some relief.  In your haste to get out, you’d forgotten to check the security feed one last time.  But it seemed okay, no one was there, and the closest person who could be alerted to the break in was your father, and he was coming home from a business meeting, and wouldn’t be back until early morning.

Still, you fumbled a bit as you picked out the correct key.  Part of you wished you had had drank something, like Sarah had once suggested, to settle your nerves, but you reminded yourself you couldn’t afford being pulled over for impaired driving tonight. 

You made your way through the darkened building, before reaching the safe door.  This is where your family kept its most priceless documents, artwork, financial statements, and heirlooms.  Placing your finger on the scanner, you waited as the computer analyzed your fingerprint, and it registered you as a family member.  Once it recognized your biometrics, it asked for a six digit passcode.

After a moment’s hesitation, you punched it in, knowing that it was logging your entry into the safe.  That’s why you had to do it tonight, and the plan had to go flawlessly, you’d never get another chance at this once your father checked the security logs.

And once he did?  What’s the worst he could do?  Call off your wedding? You laughed at the thought.  After this was done, there was nothing your father could do, if he didn’t want to endanger his precious business deals that hung off this wedding.  So doing this would cost you nothing…

Save for your happiness.

The hiss of air as hydraulics opened the seal, like some 80’s sci-fi movie, and the buzz of fluorescent lights buzzing to life as they lit up one by one.  You cautiously made your way, pausing as you approached an old painting of your great grandfather, currently being kept here until a restorer could fix the frame and touch up the varnish.  Would he be disappointed at what you were doing?  You forced yourself to walk past him, your target next to the metal filing cabinet.  

There, leaning against it was that damned briefcase, with locked clasps.  Well, you might not have the key or code to unlocking that, but you did have something more versatile: your jackknife.  Slipping the blade under the clasp, you applied pressure, and with a loud metallic CLINK that echoed throughout the space, the lock cracked.  Taking a deep breath, you opened the case…

There, surrounded in custom cut polyurethane, was the most beautiful weapon you’d ever seen.  Dante’s sword might have exuded strength and power, but this...this practically radiated precision and discipline. The saya was made of the finest blue lacquered wood...but not just any wood. It gave off the distinct smell of being at the beach...driftwood.  You’d never thought something as worn and rough as that could be carved into something so gorgeous.

Wrapped around it and the tsuba was a sageo, but instead of rope, it was some sort of seaweed, finely woven.  And despite this weapon being trapped in dry stale air, it was still as flexible as if it had just come out of the ocean.  How odd. There was so much you didn’t understand about mer culture, whether they were capable of magic, or if it could be easily explained by science.

Your hand grazed against the tsuba, inlaid with mother of pearl that gleamed even in the harsh artificial light.  You felt a spark, not unpleasant, but strong enough to know it wasn’t just in your head.  A warning?  Slowly, you placed your hand around it, and now you could swear it was humming.  Taking a deep breath, you gripped a bit tighter, and with a smooth motion that you’d not expected, you expertly unsheathed the blade, with only a whisper as it left the confines of its saya.

Transfixed by it, you raised it up, to closer marvel at the metal work.  It was unlike any smithwork you’d ever seen, with possibly only the finest Damascus Steel coming close to it.  Ripples and waves, like an oily sheen, coated the metal, and you could have sworn that the patterns slowly changed.

You marveled at how unblemished the metal was, your reflection on it’s mirror-like surface, the reflection of your great-grandfather’s portrait, the reflection of Doctor Griffon.

Wait, what?

You turned around suddenly, to come face to face with the Good Doctor himself, his arms crossed, and a very fake smile plastered onto his face.

“My dear,” he slimely said, “I suppose it was a good thing that I forgot some of my papers tonight, because imagine my surprise when I came back to pick it up, and I came across a thief, stealing not gold, nor gems, but something much more priceless; my life’s work.”

“Steal!?” you questioned, “Strange, I could have sworn that this,” your eyes motioned to the weapon, “wasn’t yours to begin with.”

The bastard dropped the facade of fake friendliness. “You, a spoiled rich girl, coming in to dictate how I use my resources.  I already gave up my access to Subject Angelo for the desperately needed financial aid your father provided, all so that his little girl” he practically spat out the insult, “could have it as a pet.  But no, that wasn’t enough for her, she wants to steal the one thing that could get me into every single prestigious scientific journal in the world, to usurp my place as the preeminent expert on Merkind.”

“What?” You were perplexed.  The man was so up his scientific ass, he had just assumed your attempt at a prison break was actually a burglary for his stupid research. 

“You’ve got the wrong idea…” you tried to explain, knowing it was fruitless, but it didn’t matter, he cut you off.

“Oh I know exactly what you’re up to, I haven’t spent four decades being mocked by my peers in the scientific community to be that naive.  I know how they backstab each other for the merest crumb of success.  Now hand me back the weapon.”  his hand  reached out, as if he was a disappointed parent who caught his child with their hand in the cookie jar.

“Never,”  you hissed, and his face turned a dark shade of red. “Of course, ‘daddy’s little girl’ has never been told no,” he practically growled, and he lunged towards you. “I won’t give my life’s work to some know-nothing rich bitch”

You dropped the saya as you barely evaded his attack, his fists missing your face by a hair.  Yamato buzzed dangerously in your hand, and you placed both hands around the tsuba, almost instinctively.  You brought it up in a pale imitation of a Samurai pose, the tip shaking noticeably.

Griffon now snarled and attacked again in almost animalistic rage, and this time you dodged more easily, as if you were being guided by an unseen hand.  

Unfortunately, the doctor still blocked the way between you and the exit, so you would have to play this bullfighting game until you had an opening, and then make a run for it.  But right now, he had you pinned, the portrait frame digging at your back.  In this cramped space, you’d have only the tiniest bit of time to avoid the attack.  He seemed to notice as well, as with a maniacal grin, he yanked an antique brass candelabra from one of the shelves, and after smacking it into his hand to test its weight, he struck. 

You had no space, no time to move, so you brought up Yamato in a futile attempt to block, but then there was the sound of rushing wind, the smell of sea salt, and the sound of ripping fabric.

For the briefest of moments, you stood confused.  You’d somehow escaped from being bludgeoned.  But what was strange was your position.  You hadn’t moved, and yet it was if you and the doctor’s places had switched.  You stood back to back, both of you stunned.

“What the-” the Doctor started to say, but you didn’t let him finish.  Your hands fluidly moved, manipulating the tsuba of yamato as if you had practiced decades with it, twirling the weapon around, and without even glancing, you thrust the blade backwards.  It hit resistance, but something in you continued pushing, before the pushback stopped, letting the blade move quickly.

Immediately, the scent of copper filled your nostrils, and warmth sprayed at your back, and as you were released from whatever mysterious force had taken control of you, you heard the sound of the candelabra clattering to the ground.  You turned around, already knowing what you had done, but forcing yourself to face it.

Doctor Griffon was still facing away from you looking down, as if he was admiring the disfigured face of your ancestor.  A long gash marred your great grandfather’s face, caused by the edge of the candlestick.  His arms now dropped slack.  And sticking out of his back, like a pearl in a pile of refuse, was Yamato’s tsuba. Blood had sprayed everywhere, including the painting.  He was making a strange gurgling sound.

Panicking, you gripped the katana, yanking it out of his torso before his legs could buckle out from underneath him. 

As you did so, he fell backwards, nearly bowling you over with his dead weight. Blood smeared your shirt, your face, everywhere, as you frantically attempted to stop the bleeding. You took off your jacket, planning to somehow stem the blood flow, but already his skin had gone unnaturally pale.   To your growing horror, you realized he wasn’t going to make it.

And then the Doctor chuckled, punctuated by wet coughs, “Ironic,” and his blue tinged lips formed into a smile, “my life’s  work...leading to my death”

And with that, his head rolled to the side, and the cruel light in his eyes faded.

So there you sat, with the body of the man you hated more than anything, the man you had just killed.  Perhaps some mysterious power of Yamato had guided your hands, but the fact remained, your hands were responsible for the taking of another person’s life.  And just the thought of what you had done caused such a flurry of emotions, and then… you vomited on the cool cement floor.

Between heaves, you sobbed. You’d just done something you’d never thought in a million years thought that you’d do, and the guilt was threatening to drive you mad. You mentally grasped the one thing that was your sole thing to ground you: rescuing Vergil.  You had to save him, and only after that, could you focus on whatever happened next.  One step at a time…

Grabbing Yamato and it’s saya, you wiped your mouth, and quickly left the safe, leaving the blood spattered body, and the desecrated portrait of your great-grandfather behind.

******

You sat in the driveway in your home, car door open, attempting to spit out the taste of bile and vomit out of your mouth.  But only for about a minute.  The clock was ticking, and that little stunt you had pulled with the deceased doctor had cost you valuable time.  You checked your clock.

11:30 PM

You had no doubt that Dante would linger as long as possible at the rendezvous point, but still, you wanted to get this done and over with as fast as possible.  Taking a deep breath, you steeled yourself and, leaving the car running, you walked into your home.

Vergil was awake, and seemed agitated.  Did he somehow know via Yamato what had happened?  His agitation turned to outright panic the moment he saw you, and it took a moment to remember you were coated in blood, now quickly drying into a rusty red into your clothes.

“Oh don’t worry,” you assured him, masking your own emotional turmoil with faux cheerfulness.  “It’s not MY blood”

It didn’t assure Vergil at all, who looked even more horrified.

You scaled the platform steps as quickly as possible, as he swam up to meet you.  “You don’t have to worry about that damn doctor anymore, he’ll never hurt you again.”

“Sifa, what did you do...”

“Added bonus too, I got you a gift,” you chirped, ignoring his question, “well, technically it’s not a gift if it originally belonged to the giftee… but let’s just say I managed to retrieve a lost item,” and you thrust the katana into his arms.

Vergil gently grabbed it, dumbfounded, before clutching it close to his chest.  It almost looked like he was communing with it, just like with the amulet.  

As touching as this reunion scene was, you both didn’t have time to enjoy it.  Without warning, you quickly gripped him around his arms, and thanks to your weeks of practice, you swung him into a bridal style hold.  He had only time to give out an undignified squawk of protest, before he swung his free arm around your neck to steady himself.  As you did so, you felt your engagement ring loosen, slip… and then fall off.  You’d retrieve it later, if you had the opportunity.

“Now,” you said, carrying him to you car “let’s get you home”

Behind you, the pink diamond studded gold ring sank to the bottom of the tank, settling into the sand.

******

Ordinarily you’d have some tunes playing out of the radio, but it was silent.

11:43 PM

You glanced at the clock as you drove down the deserted road, with only the full face of the Tidemother as witness.  Vergil, buckled in securely in the passenger seat, caressed Yamato like it was a long lost pet that recently came home.  Eventually, out of the corner of your eye, you saw a blue flash, and a brief burst of salt air, before you noticed the blade was gone.

“How did you know?” he finally said, attempting to get comfortable in what was no doubt an interesting position for him.

“If I tell you, will you promise not to hurt your brother?” you responded, your eyes never leaving the road.  Only a few more minutes, just needed to cross the bay’s suspension bridge, and then a side road to the beach.

“Of course, Dante would put you up to this” he muttered.

“He didn’t.”

“Pardon?” you didn’t have to look to see the shock on his face.

“This was my plan, he just gave me the final information to put this into motion.  Mind you, I wasn’t going into this with the intent of anyone dying, but...well…” you looked at your hand gripping the wheel, still covered in flakes of the Doctor’s dried blood.  Another wave of nausea threatened to blow up, but you managed to keep it down.  Besides it didn’t seem like there was anything left in your stomach to vomit.

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why do this?” he asked.

“Seriously Vergil, you’re asking me why I set a man free who had been imprisoned for over a year?  A guy who constantly tells me how much he misses the goddamn ocean?” your temper was beginning to get the better of you, and it took more and more effort to remain calm. “The question SHOULD be, why didn't YOU tell ME? Even in the beginning, if you had just said what you needed to go home, I would have gotten your soul-weapon for you.  I would have done ANYTHING to get you back home.  Did you not trust me?”

“In the beginning…” Vergil started out slowly, his breathing a bit erratic, “I suppose trust was an issue, with what I had already endured….”

“But afterwards, after we got to know each other, when I thought we could learn to trust each other?  Why not then…?”

“Things...had changed…” he hesitantly replied.

Just admit you had feelings for me, dammit, your mind screamed, that you didn’t want to leave me, the woman who imprisoned you, the daughter of the guy who killed your parents.  The thought of someone in that situation loving the person you were was confounding.

Ah, but you haven’t been truthful about your feelings either, another voice in your mind chided you, for all intents and purposes, he has no clue about your feelings about him, so you have only yourself to blame for the pain you are about to cause.

11:51 PM

“Sifa…”

“Stop.”

“Pardon?”

“Stop calling me that, please,” you attempted to blink the tears away.  “When we get to the ocean, your brother will be there waiting, you’re going to go with him, preferably without fighting him.  He’s going to take you somewhere far, far, away, I don’t know where, and frankly it would be better if I don’t.  I’m just going to ask you to do one thing.”

“Anything.”

“Forget this.  Forget me.  Forget us.”

There was complete silence as Vergil sat staring at you, in complete shock.  You might have well asked him to serve you a piece of the Dawnfather on a plate, judging by his reaction.  After a few moments of stunned stillness, he faced forward, and sighed.

“I...I… cannot.”

The tears fell down your cheeks, and the streetlights became nothing more than blurry halos lighting the deserted road as you finally approached the bridge.  

“You’re crying.”

“Great observation!” you gritted out sarcastically, cursing yourself for lashing out.  He hadn’t done anything to deserve your ire.

“You ask me to forget you, but I…”

“Your brother should be nearby, can you feel him with your amulet?” you cut him off.  You didn’t want to hear him admit that he loved you, because it took all of your willpower to maintain your plans.  It would be too painful to say goodbye in any other case.

Vergil paused, taken aback, before nodding in resignation.  “Yes, he is close.”

“Good, something is going right tonight at least”

“What about you?” he queried, concerned.  “You have blood on your hands, literally and figuratively speaking, and you humans do not look kindly on that,” his brow furrowed, “even if I think he deserved far worse” he muttered.

“Don’t worry about that, I’ll deal with the fallout.”

“I still care abo-”

He didn’t get the chance to finish, as a bright light from behind, temporarily blinded you.  Some idiot was driving with his hi-beams on, and was now tailgating you, as if he…

Oh no…

You recognized the car, even in the darkness.  Mercedes-Benz E-class.  The preferred car of…

The vehicle pulled up alongside you, the driver’s side window down, and to your horror, your fears were confirmed…

Your father.

The man began waving at you in the universal sign to pull over. In response, you gave him the universal sign to mind his own business.  And then you slammed down on the gas, accelerating away.  You could hear the sound of creaking leather as Vergil gripped on the seat, no doubt alarmed at the speed you were going.

Shit, as if things couldn’t get worse, you thought as you did as your father was left behind momentarily, before speeding up to match you.  He must have gotten home early and found out the security alert.  And he must have checked the video footage, and put two and two together.  Shit, shit shit….”

You were halfway across the bridge, less than two kilometres away lay freedom for Vergil, all you had to do was get there…

BUMP

You and your passenger were jostled.  You looked at your indicators, to figure out if you had blown a tire or something when 

BUMP

And then you realized your father was attempting to run you off the road.  Was he crazy?  The lights glowed in your rearview mirror.

BUMP

And this time, the hit was strong enough that you lost control, and when you attempted to correct, you inadvertently overcorrected,  causing you to fishtail in an increasingly erratic manner, eventually turning into a full blown spin out.

Eventually, you realized that you had no control over the car, and you let go of the steering wheel and gas, hoping you’d  just straighten out, but the car kept spinning…

“VERGIL! HOLD ON!” You screamed as you spun towards the concrete median.  You closed your eyes and went limp.

11:55PM

That was the time on the clock before the entire electrical system shut off.  You pushed  away the rapidly deflating airbags, wincing at the pain in your shoulder.  It wasn’t a sharp pain, but it still hurt like a bitch. 

A dribble of blood leaked from your nostril, but only a dull throbbing pain, so to your relief, it was probably just a bloody nose.

“Vergil!” you called out, fearful for the worst.  You shoved aside the fabric to see to your relief a conscious, if a bit dazed merman. He was bleeding from the mouth, and had a few cuts on his face and torso from the shattered glass, but they quickly faded away.

“I’m… I am fine” he said, as he licked the blood off his lip, “what about you?”

“Not important right now,” you quickly scanned the bridge.  There would be no way to carry Vergil to the beach now, it was much too far.  Tears began to form in your eyes, you’d been so fucking close!

And then… as you felt as if you were about to give up, you looked at the guardrail of the bridge, a mere twelve metres away from the vehicle.  Perhaps…..

Pulling out your jackknife, you began to saw through Vergil’s seatbelt, before pulling him out of the now crumpled up passenger seat.  You winced slightly at the pain in your shoulder as you carried him, but the adrenaline would be enough to deal with it. 

“Change of plans, Vergil” you said as you began to carry towards the metal guardrail.  “Prepare to dive.” Part of you was secretly thankful.  At least this way, the parting would be quick and painless.

Three metres away, a loud BANG rang out, and sparks sprayed far too close to you.  Instinctively, you spun around, to find the source of the sound, and came face to face with your father, shakily pointing a pistol at you.

“Dad….” you shouldn’t have been surprised, the man had nearly killed you by trying to stop your car.   But still, this is the man who raised you, loved you, cherished you.  How could he do something like this?  Or maybe… maybe you’d just assumed he had.  Or had he just looked at you as an investment, a stock portfolio that he needed to increase its worth? “Sweetheart, please don’t…” your father’s voice brokenly begged, “You don’t know what damage that creature will do if it’s set free.  Our family company barely broke even with all the repairs from what it has done.”

“So you’re totally okay with imprisoning him?  To experiment on him!?” You yelled back in anger.  Vergil stiffened against you.

“Look, is this about what happened to Doctor Griffon?” your father asked, totally missing the point. “Look, don’t worry, I can take care of everything!  The police won’t ever have to know!  I won’t let them arrest you!”

“Really, you think that I’m doing this because of that bastard?” you spat out.  Your rage and adrenaline could only mask the growing pain in your shoulder, and you struggled to keep Vergil steady.

“I don’t want you to get hurt, sweetheart!”

“YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I WANT!” You screamed at him, and you could see the growing fear in your father’s eyes.  “ALL THAT EVER MATTERED TO YOU WAS YOUR GODDAMN COMPANY!  YOU DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT ME, YOUR OWN FUCKING DAUGHTER, YOU JUST WANT WHAT’S BEST FOR YOUR LEGACY!  MY WHOLE ENTIRE LIFE HAS JUST BEEN A WAY FOR YOU TO GROW YOUR GODDAMN BUSINESS!”  Finally expelling the long contained rage and bile you’d held back for years, no decades, felt so good. 

You calmed down a bit, “I’ll deal with the consequences of my actions on my own… and you can deal with yours.”

And with that, you turned back around and continued your way to the guardrail, disregarding your father’s orders and threats to stop. You were confident he’d never have the balls to shoot you. He might not care about you as his daughter, but he wouldn’t risk his ‘investment’ anymore than he had already done.

Two more metres to go, when another shot rang out, and you felt a blinding white hot pain in your lower back, and you stumbled forward a bit from the agony.   Your eyesight blacked out  about momentarily, and you felt yourself hit cool metal.  

Only the soft voice of Vergil calling your name was enough to bring you back.  In all the months you had known him, he’d never called you by your name.  “What’s wrong?” he asked with fear, something you’d never heard in his voice.

Your body began to feel numb, starting at your fingertips, but there was a growing warm wetness blooming from your stomach.  And the realization hit you, you’d been shot, and you were going to die.

Leaning against the guardrail, you chuckled.  Of course, your father, who had practically dictated every thing about your life, would choose the manner of your death.  At least, you could choose one thing.  Your final action.

“Farewell, Sifa…” you managed to force out, despite the pain, and the shortness of breath.

And with his shock at what you had just said, his grip loosened, giving you the opportunity to jostle him loose, and he fell into the moonlit darkness.  You could hear him hitting the water, then after a few moments of tense silence, the sloshing of water, and to your relief, you heard Vergil, screaming your name.  He’d made it unharmed... and now you prayed that he would swim far, far away.

You clutched your stomach, instinctively trying to stop the blood flow, but even you knew it was fruitless.   You were only delaying the inevitable.

Another voice from behind you called your name as well.  Using the guardrail to prop you up, you slowly turned around to see your father running towards you, terror in his eyes.

“Sweetheart, I’m so, so, sorry...I was trying to shoot a warning shot!  I just… I just got so nervous!  Don’t worry!  I’m going to call an ambulance, you’re going to pull through this.  Please, just stay with me!” One hand on his cellphone, he reached out to steady you with the other, to slowly guide you to the ground

You were wrong.  You still had one more  choice you could make, how you would die.  It was morbidly funny.  You’d discovered the existence of merfolk over twenty years ago when you had almost drowned.  And now you could pay for living on borrowed time by returning to the ocean. With your last bit of energy, your hand carrying the jackknife swung out, slicing your father’s palm.  He pulled back in pain, out of instinct and you used the moment to lean back over the guardrail. With a contented smile on your face, you felt the rushing of wind.

You fell.

[normal-horoscopes]

UNIT DAMAGED : HOSTILE : SUMMONING SECURITY

The mech writhed and screamed as its long-dead pilot slowly burned away. It blindly swung the power spade in a desperate attempt to take its aggressor with it. Its movements only became more drunken as its control systems failed one by one, and eventually the incredible force of its own improvised weapon swung the entire mech off balance, buckling under its own weight and tumbling to the floor with a noise like a huge drum. The holotape above its head flickering anemically as it hemorrhaged the contents of its fuel cells into the earth.

The Student caught her breath. Her arm still tingled from the effort of creating a fireball that size. The veins in her hand pulsed with a lithium purple, and she watched as they slowly faded back to the dull red she was used to. 

Her eye was drawn to the faint holotape on the wreckage of the mech. She checked her HUD implants and started to cycle through the different bands of communication it could hear. If these old construction mechs were still working after all this time, maybe security was too?

Either way, this was not a place to stick around, she had to find her friends and make sure they didnt wake up any more of these things. Although on second thought they were probably not as excited to dig through ancient technology melded to corpses as she was. She set off at a brisk pace, flicking her way through communication channels as she went. 

Growing up in the glowing swamp is tough. Being a trapper in the glowing swamp is also tough. Just avoiding the vicious wildlife is dangerous enough, but competing with them for food is the sort of thing that you are either good at, or dead. Wisdom passes quickly and efficiently from generation to generation in the form of people actually coming back from trapping excursions. It requires just the right balance of patience and instinct. One has to know exactly how long to leave a trap alone enough to find prey, but also not leave them so alone that the catch is poached. All the while avoiding the sights of the almost comically dangerous wildlife. The Student liked to think she had a good sense for avoiding predators. She described it as if the hairs on her back would stand up when she was being watched. 

This was actually horseshit, as completely unbeknownst to her at that moment, a Military-grade Security EXO was tracking her every movement.

They had set up camp by the edge of a cliff. It was a beautiful view that overlooked the ancient-war-machine-infested-lake below. Her friends were sitting by the fire. They appeared to be playing some sort of game that involved stacking small rocks on top of each other, and the Sorcerer was clearly winning. The Student stumbled into the small clearing panicked and covered in sweat, which wasn’t terribly out of the ordinary, but still cause for conversation.

“You two can play rock stack later, we gotta move.“

“STATEMENT: Tell us on the way.“

The pair did not ask questions, and immediately stood to leave. The student recounted her encounter, and subsequent victory over the root-tangled security mech. The Sorcerer seemed interested in the odd triple-necromechanichal symbiosis sort of thing going on, but when she mentioned the security call, the Teachers eyes darkened. 

“Sorcerer.“

“QUERY?“

“Check for delta-band signals.“

The Sorcerer gripped their staff, there was a gentle whirring noise as they concentrated. 

“RESULT : STATEMENT: Three sources.“

“Are you sure?“

“STATEMENT: Wait... There’s a fourth. Further away. It’s masked.“

“Can you crack it?“

“STATEMENT: Yes, it is using an outdated algorithm. Just a moment.“

“Please hurry. I would rather not deal with security.“

This put the Student ill at ease. If security made the teacher nervous, it should be outright terrifying to her. The Sorcerer broke the silence.

“STATEMENT: DECRYPTION COMPLETE: I think its talking in code. I can’t make heads or tails of it.“

The Teacher was getting uncharacteristically agitated.

“Please just repeat the last message!“

The Sorcerer’s voice changed, becoming much lower.

“RELAY: Tango. Zero. Three. Dash. One. One. Null-point. Cross. Hern.“

The Teacher’s eyes went wide. She shouted something along the lines of “Move!” or “Get down!” or “Scatter!” but her voice was lost under the deafening crack of a rifle. The rock behind them exploded into rubble as the bullet punched through it with no more care than a bully’s foot through a sandcastle. 

The Student only saw it clearly for a moment. A humanoid. Only slightly taller than her. A knight. But not like the knights back in new babel. Implants and armor there were reverse-engineered from the weapons of ancient soldiers, made from reclaimed metal salvaged from the scrap fields. The brave would prove their worth by killing the spectres of old soldiers that still wandered the wastes. Even for elites, armor was a patchwork of disparate technology. It was a mark of pride, a trophy case. The more mismatched your armor was, the more diverse your conquest. 

There was nothing even remotely ornamental about the security knight. Every inch of it was covered in unmarked, nigh-indestructible plates of matte-black carbonsteel. This was a killing machine built at the height of the old world. 

It landed with almost no sound, and scythed its weapon straight at the Student’s neck, who barely managed to duck in time. The Student watched in slow motion as the gravity bayonet on the knights rifle-glaive thing distorted the swathe of spacetime that her neck had occupied only a split second earlier. 

It was just too fast. With a single elegant and practiced motion, the knight leveraged the momentum of the swing into a position that left the rifle pointing directly at the Student’s heart. 

There was a flash of light. It fired. 

While the Teachers fireball was a direct hit, carbonsteel is impossibly heat-resistant. It did little more than temporarily blind the security knight. 

The bullet missed by about six inches. It slammed into the student’s mechanical arm, shattering the articulation and twisting it backwards into useless dead weight. The sheer force of the impact sent her upper body twisting. The implants that reinforced her spine strained, only barely kept it from snapping. Big red letters flashed in the Student’s HUD about the damage sustained. 

The knight was unperturbed. There was a clang of metal-on-metal as a lightning-fast roundhouse kick connected with the Sorcerers midsection. Their metal frame seemed like a doll as it was sent backwards into the brush, tumbling limp over the ground, indicator lights flickering. 

The Teacher went for its legs, dropping to all fours and grabbing at it in an effort to immobilize it. The knight leapt backwards into the air, avoiding the sweep, and worked the bolt on its weapon. It was ready for another attack.

And suddenly, the Student had a plan.

“Miss! I can kill it! We have to get it in the air again!“

“We barely survived the first shot!”

She grinned that lipless grin.

“But I will do my best!“

The Teacher had that look in her eye again. Psycho. 

The knight turned its head to the Student. The four telescoping optics that served as its face seemed to temporarily refocus themselves on her. She shivered. It was glaring at her. She hadn’t even considered that there was a person underneath it.

It faced the Teacher. Slowly, it levied its weapon against its shoulder like a lance, shifting its weight into a position that resembled a sprinter taking their place at the starting line. The Teacher crouched down on all fours again. A standoff. They were going to settle this with a test of speed.

The Student concentrated. Her heart hammered against the plating in her chest like it wanted to get out. 

Carbon.

The Knight dashed forwards. The stabilizer jets along its armor roared to life, leaving a trail of blue flame in their wake. The air rippled as the knights gravity bayonet tore through it.

Oxygen.

The Teacher leapt forwards. She was faster than any being her size had any right to be. But it was noting compared to the knight.

Hydrogen.

There was a fountain of purple blood. At the last second, the Teacher dove to the side, catching the knights ankle with her weird prehensile feet-fingers. She had turned the knights incredible momentum against it, using her own bodyweight to literally throw the knight off balance. It spiraled through the air like a man caught in a flash flood, stabilizer jets fighting to return balance. She roared with the effort, and the pain of her wound.

“Catch!“

Lithium.

Ka-Boom. Using the ground as a brace, the student made sure that every last ounce of force was used to send the knight careening over the edge of the cliff. As it passed over the edge, there was a defiant crack as it fired its rifle into the air, sending the bullet whizzing uselessly into the distance. 

“Did we get it?“

Even turning her head to see her teacher made the world spin. She had used damn near the last of her energy to make that fireball. With dizzy elation she responded.

“Yeah. Yeah I think we did.“

“Ah. Excellent. Well done.“

“How’s your wound?“

“I need to stop the bleeding. It clipped one of my sub-hearts. I can regenerate it, as long as I don’t move for a few hours.“

“I have some bandages in my- Do you hear that?”

There was a sound like cybernetically augmented human using their stabilizer jets to leap great distances with the intent of revenge.

“Damn.“

The knight stopped at the pinnacle of its jump, hovering lazily towards the cliffside, and casually dropping a few feet from the downed companions. It made a show of working the bolt on its rifle, performing every action with decided malice. 

It didn’t get halfway through the process when, to everyone's surprise, a construction mech burst from the foliage, power spade arcing over its head and slamming down onto the knight. It connected with an anticlimactic plonk, crushing the knight into an extremely dead pile of twisted metal and gore. 

The Student and the Teacher swore in surprise, but the panic faded from their voices as they looked up to see the Sorcerer riding atop the mechs shoulders, various wires puppeting the corpse at the controls. 

After a few stunned moments, the student gave a thumbs up. The Sorcerer gave a thumbs up.

Almost as an afterthought, she said to nobody in particular:

“Teacher is bleeding, there’s gauze in my backpack.“

and then promptly blacked out.