#One day while I was archive-digging I found a redesign

[inkandpaintleopard]

Dude do not get me STARTED on the Soft boys

I get that their purpose is to serve as a little breather (until Monster, anyway), but I feel like there could have been more done with that? Like dude this is one of the few mods that even ALLUDES to Frank, it would have been really unique (especially for the time) if Ben and Pico actually got to meet him; it'd even fit into the story because they're trying to go somewhere and "Frank lets us ride in his van all the time, we will ask him for you!"

Also I have just found out that Father Fairest's first name is actually Frank so uh. That could be fun (/s) for Ben

(also I feel like whatever SM Frank is doing in this universe he'd sympathize with both Ben's and Pico's plights, but that's besides the point)

Also just. I say this with a heavy heart but I do not like their designs. I get what they were going for but it feels... kind of cluttered? I think they would have looked better without their costumes on, give Pump some face stickers too to make up him not having spots

If anything I feel like leaning into that "creative" angle would have made for better designs, show them covered in paint and glitter or something because they're trying to make things, maybe even a little dirt because they love to explore just as much as the OG Spookeez, but their clothes show stains way more because they're not pure black

OH AND ON THAT-

It's just kind of a personal gripe but I wish their colors were closer to the originals too. Ben, Pico, and Grace all have the same color schemes as their original counterparts, just muted/pastel with a few changes, but instead of pastel purples and oranges Skid and Pump have completely different colors. I do like how the color of Skid's clothes mirror Pump and vice versa, but it's just weird looking at those three and then these two

Also again a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things but instead of removing the mic entirely they should have had a toy microphone, it still fits with their theme AND the context that they like Father Fairest's music

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, I get all that… before I even played the mod I just thought “Well their designs need work but hopefully their character is good.” Like dude they don’t even get an original song. I like the way they’re introduced but other than that they have nothing going for them.

I hadn’t even considered the whole Frank thing, that would’ve been nice.

I have such weird opinions on their designs; I think my biggest issue with them is that they don’t seem coherent. Why would Pump wear blue? Why do they look like they’re wearing jumpsuits? Are they? Why would they be? And yeah how are they that clean? And where’s the spookyness in it? I think about this for a lot of Skid designs specifically, because I feel like you wouldn’t know he was a skeleton if you didn’t already know what he came from, which is fine for all of us, but I feel like it doesn’t make sense in universe.

I was planning on redesigning them when I finally played the mod, but every time I think about redesigning/stylizing a character, I realize it goes against the way I come up with stories and stuff. For the Soft Spookeez specifically, every bit of dislike I may have for them gets added to whatever story I have in mind. Like oh, one finds their appearance underwhelming and annoying? So does every other Skid and Pump. I can’t get any personality from them? Their character is now that they have no character; everyone else is baffled that they came out of the Soft mod and are completely trauma-free. So on and so forth, help I don’t remember how to stylize.

Wait yeah them having a toy mic would be nice; I find them feeling weirdly detached without it.

[subfunctions]

Horizon Zero Dawn OC: Yara

Inspired by 1) my theory that at least one other subordinate function has probably found a human to buddy up with and 2) my theory that MINERVA will be the first subordinate function to emerge as an ally to Aloy.

Loosely inspired by these lines of “The Mountain Poem: Words Spoken in Contemplation” by Ibrahīm Ibn Khafāja, following the lines you can find in Metal Flower Mark II (F):

And through the night, that tongueless mountain uttered marvelous things: "How much more time in space? How long have I been the assassin's safehouse And sheltered hermits from the human race?"

But mostly just an exercise in character creation, as in: if I had the task of creating a character to be the human partner and counterpoint to a subordinate function, what would that character be like?

My other self-appointed parameters were to create someone who’s a bit of a foil to Aloy and Sylens both, so: someone who chose isolation rather than being subjected to it, and someone whose interest in knowledge is specialized rather than general, while maintaining a moral compass.

--

(face claim: Grace Mahary)

Name: Yara Gender: Female Tribe: Utaru Age: 23 at time of main game

Notable Physical Traits: Though Yara keeps prominent Utaru elements in her attire, her usual outfit is a practical mixture of Utaru and Banuk styles, something she’s put together to guard against the months of cold in the home she’s settled in. Due to contracting polio as a child, her right leg is stunted and partially paralyzed; she walks with a cane and wears an adjustable brace made of machine parts on her leg.

Personality: Intellectually minded and gifted, Yara’s great love is the sky and what lies behind it - the vast expanse of space beyond the planet, which she has dedicated her life to studying. She is endlessly curious about the greater workings of the universe and how her world fits into it, and with the eventual help of a Focus and later MINERVA, she’s made progress in uncovering a fraction of the universe’s secrets. Because of certain traumatic events in her life and a bloody history that she is not entirely proud of, she prefers to keep to herself and keep only MINERVA’s company, craving solitude and her studies. However, her Utaru roots are evident, not only in her love of the natural world but in a generosity of spirit, from which that bloody history sprung - an inability to sit there and do nothing in the face of the Red Raids and the losses her people suffered because of them. 

Relationship With MINERVA: Yara found MINERVA in the wake of tragedy, and the subordinate function’s eagerness to help and learn endeared her to Yara and gave them a common ground. She feels as if she owes MINERVA for stabilizing her during such a turbulent time in her life and giving her something to live for - a renewed love for the universe and a friend she could relate to. MINERVA, similarly, was able to stabilize developmentally because of Yara’s friendship, finding companionship and purpose in Yara after she had no purpose left, as she is the only subordinate function whose job was completely finished. 

Songs: Inner Space - Apex The Warpath - Conner Youngblood Cover Your Tracks - Young Galaxy

--

Bio: 

Yara was born to the Northland clan of the Utaru in 3017, a clan composed of several extended families, Yara’s among them. In 3020, when she was three years old, a distant mountain exploded, its lingering cloud visible even as far as her clan’s riverside village in the northern part of Plainsong, once known as the Great Plains of western Nebraska. A few months later, in the winter, an illness known to the Utaru as the Strength Eater, and known to the Old Ones as polio, spread throughout the clans gathered together for the annual celebration of the harvest. Many survived its onslaught intact. However, some died, their breath stolen away by the Strength Eater, and a few were left permanently weakened afterwards.

Yara’s father was among those who died, and Yara herself was left with a paralyzed and stunted right leg. For the rest of her life, she would need a cane to walk, and Utaru ingenuity in redesigning machine parts into farming tools saw her outfitted with a brace as well. Over time, the complications of walking with a stunted leg would curve her spine and weaken her bones and muscles as well, and she was never able to participate in the labor-intensive work of farming to the same degree that others did. However, she had little interest in it. She had some talent in hunting with bow and arrow, a less central but still important part of sustaining the clan, but she often had little patience for it.

Her mother often called her a child of the earth with her eyes to the sky. While the Utaru revered the act of tending to the earth and drawing sustenance from it, Yara was more interested in the tableau high above – the stars and the moon in the nighttime, the sun in the daytime, and what it all meant. She could often be found sneaking away from chores during the day to observe the sky and sneaking away from the village at night to make amateur star charts.

The Utaru respected the Old Ones as forebears who lived on in the earth. Yara was interested in them for what they may have known about the answers she sought from the sky. Sometimes, relics of the Old Ones would be found in the ground, when soil was overturned and crops were harvested. These were always buried adjacent to the graves of the Utaru, out of respect for the dead. However, Yara had little such sense of propriety, and when one of her cousins found a still-active Focus during planting season, nine-year-old Yara snuck out at night to dig it up and secretly keep it.

The Focus showed her wonders and helped her to understand much – that the sun was also a star like the tiny pinpricks of the night, that the night sky was richer than she imagined and filled with things that she could not see with her eyes. The Focus couldn’t show the majority of them to her either, however, and though her star charts grew more sophisticated and digitally archived with its help, a vague sense of dissatisfaction grew, a desire to know more.

Meanwhile, both the exploding of the mountain and the sudden onset of illness during a time of celebration were seen as omens, a view that was further reinforced over the next decades as the machines grew hostile, as new machines began to appear, as the already unpredictable seasonal patterns of Plainsong became much more so, and as the Red Raids swept across the land.

In 3032, four years into the Red Raids, when the edges of Plainsong had already been attacked by the Carja and gifts of grain had not appeased the raiders, tragedy struck the Northland clan. A group of raiders hit the village in the middle of the night, killed some clan members, and took others. Among those killed was Yara’s mother, and among those taken were two of Yara’s cousins, and an aunt and uncle.

Fifteen-year-old Yara, however, was not there. As was habit, she’d snuck out of the village as night fell to work on her star charts and stargaze to her heart’s content. She was far enough away that she didn’t hear the attack, but she saw the fires that the raiders left in their wake and raced back far too slow and too late.

Wracked with grief and survivor’s guilt and bitterly angry, Yara realized that her Focus would give her an advantage that others didn’t have and tried to convince the leaders of the clan to pursue the raiders, whom she could easily track. However, the Utaru were peaceful and ill-suited for war, and the clan had lost many that night, both to death and to kidnap. No collective decision was made to go after their taken kin, and so no one wanted to go.

Furious, Yara struck out on her own. Her Focus helped her to track the raiders and find food and game and water along the way; however, her leg slowed her down, and she was only able to catch up with a group of raiders that had parted ways with those returning to the Sundom with their captives. The group was heading northwest towards the Cut when Yara caught up with them.

She was right; the Focus gave her an advantage that seemed almost supernatural without context, and she killed three Carja raiders before they even knew what hit them. However, Yara was a teenage girl with a bad leg, and the other raiders regrouped and turned the tide. Yara found herself fleeing their vengeance. She stumbled through a forested area sheltered by mountain ranges – once known as Medicine Bow National Forest – and she was only able to avoid the clutches of the raiders because of her Focus.

There, a strange signal drew her in – a tallneck wreathed in a deep blue-purple glow, circling a lake in front of the lone mountain jutting out of the center of the area, known to the Old Ones as Libby Lake and Sugarloaf Mountain. From it, a voice spoke, unlike anything Yara had ever heard. It was strangely formal, limited in vocabulary, and difficult to understand, but it seemed excited to encounter a human with a Focus.

Yara asked the voice for help, and it acquiesced. The tallneck broke its circuit and moved to a place where Yara could climb up. With her bad leg, she could only make it to the top of the machine’s back, but even that was high enough to avoid the eyes of approaching raiders.

However, Yara was still hungry for retribution, and though it might have been safer to wait silently and let the raiders pass, she rained down arrows from above, killing three more before what was left of them figured out where she was. The last few were no match for a colossal machine, and even as they sought to return fire, the tallneck itself stepped in, crushing most of them, and the last raider fell with Yara’s arrow in his neck.

Afterwards, Yara felt empty and drained and small. Though she was glad that some of the ruthless Carja were dead and could hurt no one else, the act of vengeance brought her no happiness. Her mother was still dead, and her other family members were well on their way to the Sundom, out of Yara’s reach now that she was exhausted and already so slow. Her childish thoughts of rescuing her still-living family members were gone, drowned in a horrible sadness.

However, the voice pulled her out of her miserable thoughts. It introduced itself as MINERVA, an artificial intelligence, and though MINERVA was secretive about where she came from and why she was there, it was apparent that she felt lonely and without purpose. She was eager to learn from Yara, as much as Yara was eager to learn from her.

But Yara’s missing family members still weighed on her mind, until MINERVA offered to help her find them. And so began a lasting partnership.

Yara learned that MINERVA could take control of machines, something called override, though machines that weren’t tallnecks would begin to break down and eventually stop working when she did. Yara and MINERVA trekked through the Longroam and past the Sacred Land, wearing out overridden machines and avoiding contact with humans. With MINERVA’s abilities, tracking was even easier, and they made their way into the Sundom, towards Meridian, where MINERVA said that she would be able to scan the city through their Spire, a powerful tool that was actually hers.

However, in the time that it took to reach Meridian undetected and disguised, it was too late. The rest of Yara’s taken family members had died in Sun-Ring days before she and MINERVA arrived, and the bodies of the Sun-Ring’s victims were burned, erasing even Yara’s hopes of burying them.

Despondent, Yara wondered what path to take from there. She considered vengeance, perhaps even against the highest of the Carja, but she was tired physically and emotionally, and though MINERVA’s abilities and existence were a marvel, they were only two people in a land not their own. She considered returning to Plainsong and to her clan, but she found herself with little desire to.

In the time that she and MINERVA had spent together, they’d learned a little about each other – as much as MINERVA was willing to disclose on her part, at least. Knowing that Yara loved the sky and the stars, MINERVA suggested a place for her to visit, a place that MINERVA had found not too long ago – something called an observatory, built by the Old Ones to study everything beyond the borders of the planet, one of the few still standing in the area.

Yara agreed, and as they left to make their way back the way they had come, they stumbled across two Banuk escaping Meridian. Yara did not make contact with them, but - seized by the desire to help - she and MINERVA shadowed them quietly. Yara killed three Carja in pursuit before the escaping Banuk were even aware of the danger, and MINERVA was able to keep machines off of their backs, all the way back up to the Longroam and beyond.

There, Yara realized what she could do. This area, she had learned from what she and MINERVA had overheard in the Sundom, was a common route for Carja seeking to reach the Banuk and Plainsong, a way to circumvent the fierce Nora and the Claim. And out here, without the protection of their land and their army, the Carja were vulnerable.

First, Yara let MINERVA take her to the observatory, a place once known as the Wyoming Infrared Observatory, atop a mountain a little southeast of where she’d met MINERVA, well southeast of the Cut, and north of the Longroam. It was dilapidated and crumbling, but MINERVA believed that with time and effort, enough of it could be restored to bring its system back online and make use of it. Yara asked if it was possible for MINERVA to monitor the Longroam and the area north and south of it as she had monitored Meridian through the Spire. It was possible, MINERVA told her, but only with the proper tools.

So began a years-long effort to restore the observatory and patrol the Longroam. Under MINERVA’s guidance, Yara learned quickly about programming and transmission, and it didn’t take long for her to set up a makeshift monitoring system throughout the area with MINERVA’s help and some recommissioned machine parts and tallneck apparatuses.

Yara was a little more hesitant about the observatory, feeling a deep survivor’s guilt about being far away stargazing when the Carja attacked, but with MINERVA’s insistence and coaxing, the observatory was eventually back up and running, as much as was possible. The night sky opened up for Yara as it never had before, and she was able to discover stars and deep sky objects revealed by infrared imaging and spectroscopy. Her star charts became a study of space, as much of it as she and MINERVA could understand on their own, from bits of data gathered from old sources.

For six years, until 3038, there were rumors about the Longroam and the surrounding area. Some said it was a machine that stalked any Carja who ventured near. Some said it was a spirit, some a person. But many raiders who set foot in that area were killed, either by arrow or strange machines, so much that the Longroam had a reputation for safe passage for anyone fleeing the Carja. Travelers and those who escaped the Sundom would often find themselves unknowingly shielded and watched over by vigilant eyes.

Yara and MINERVA together were known primarily as the Ghost of the Longroam, though some Carja called the mysterious entity who haunted the place the Devil or Shadow of the Longroam, and some from other tribes called it the Guardian or the Shield of the Longroam.

Yara, with MINERVA’s help, made sure that she was rarely seen, and no raider who came looking for the mysterious killer in the Longroam ever found her. She made little effort to reach out to anyone else in the meantime. She made only one trip back to Plainsong, to tell her clan that she was alive and that the others were dead. Although they entreated her to stay, she refused. She was content with MINERVA’s company, with the stars, with her makeshift home in her mountain observatory.

However, the Sundom changed. With the death of the old king and the ascension of the new, there was no longer a need to patrol the Longroam.

So Yara turned her attention wholly to her work with MINERVA, mapping the sky together. There they remained for the next two years, undisturbed, until MINERVA, more alarmed than Yara had ever seen her, registered an unauthorized use of the Spire – a call that was raising ancient machines. It was soon quieted, however, and though MINERVA had remained secretive about her origins over the years, she broke her silence for the first time – mentioning Project Zero Dawn and insisting on the urgency of finding its Alpha Prime, whose existence MINERVA had only just become aware of.

Though Yara was reluctant to leave the peace of her home, she trusted and loved MINERVA more than she loved their solitude, and she agreed to help MINERVA with a new task: tracking down whoever this Alpha Prime was.

[robertogreco]

Bucky Fuller: “I wear three watches to tell me what time it is.”

My daughter is reading Life as Activism: June Jordan’s Writings from The Progressive, and she just sent me a photo of the first page of the first chapter, which opens with the following:

On a cold night, more than twenty years ago, Bucky Fuller was explaining why he always wore three watches, simultaneously, on his left wrist. I remember two things that he said, “Man is not a tree,” he told me, and “All of America moves out of town every five years."

I knew that Jordan and Fuller worked together on a project to redesign Harlem, and my daughter knows that am interested in both of them and have read a lot about them in the past, but I am sure she sent it because of the watches. I’ve likely read mention of Fuller’s watch habit before, but that was before I was into watches and it hadn’t sunk in, so I did some digging and found the photo above (Can anyone identify the two that are visible in the photo?) and some references to his three watches.

Elizabeth Kolkbert writes:

As the fame of the dome—and domes themselves—spread, Fuller was in near-constant demand as a speaker. “I travel between Southern and Northern hemispheres and around the world so frequently that I no longer have any so-called normal winter and summer, nor normal night and day,” he wrote in “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.” “I wear three watches to tell me what time it is.”

Sam Green says:

Buckminster Fuller is said to have worn three watches at all times! This is the lore about Fuller, that he traveled so much that he would wear one watch showing the time of the place he was currently, another watch would have the time of the place he had just been and the third watch would be set at the time of the place he was going to travel next.

Green is also quoted here:

“He was a great self-marketer,” Green affirmed, bringing up Bucky’s oft-mentioned habit of wearing three watches while he was traveling to correspond to the time zones of his past, present, and future locations. But Bucky may have been hyperbolizing a bit in order to create a legendary character for himself — Green joked that in all his archival research, he did not find a single picture of Buckminster Fuller wearing three watches. [Found one, Mr. Green!]

A post from Steffan on C6XTY contains:

Fuller was also prone to wearing three watches at a time: one with the time of where he was at, one with the time of where he was going, and one with the time on Bear Island. Modern watches have this feature built in.

[my-hero-aaron]

Provisional Licenses, Part 2

After a bit of fumbling and fiddling to get the weird archive I had found to actually play on K’s tv, I finally got to snuggle in next to K. She’d set up a little pile of blankets, pillows, and assorted fluffy whatnots on the floor while I struggled with the wonders of modern technology. Thankfully, everything seemed to be running smoothly as I nuzzled into K’s back, my chin gently perching on her shoulder, an arm comfortably slipping around her waist. A small whistle started to emanate from the speakers of the television, while a father and son wandered toward the camera, fishing poles in hand. The theme, thankfully, was short and sweet, and the show pretty much immediately launched into its plot. The dad from the opening, who turned out to be the sheriff in town, welcomed a travelling salesman into his home after he’d gotten stranded in town because of car trouble. Sure, it wasn’t exactly thrilling action or anything, but the show was just endearing enough to hold my attention. At the end of the episode, I finally zoned back into the world around me, only to find that not only was one of my hands noticeably stuck in K’s hair from my absent minded fiddling, but also that K had laced her legs into mine, surprisingly comfortably.

“Well... I’d get up and change the show, but I’m comfy. You down for one more episode, see how things shape up?” I queried my girlfriend, kissing her cheek gently.

“I think I can handle one more. This show… isn’t really my speed. It doesn’t really hold my attention very well.” She smiled apologetically

“That’s fair, I’m not... entirely sure why I like it, but there’s just something going on that won’t let me stop watching.” As I was responding, the next episode rolled, the theme once again filling the room. This time around, the sheriff’s kid was having trouble with history class, but after some clever set up to make it sound like an adventure story, the kid (and all his pals, to boot) were major history buffs. Cheesy, but definitely enjoyable.

“Okay, that’s one more. Your turn to pick, hon.”

As K untangled herself from me to get up, she pressed a small kiss into my cheek. I could feel the heat brush across my face, and I must have zoned out a bit, because the next thing I knew, she’d booted up an episode of Star Trek... or was it The Next Generation? I could never keep them straight. Regardless, I smiled slightly, patting the space K had vacated.

“C’mere, einstein, I’m getting cold.”

“Oh, you, cold? Who would have thought it, popsicle?” Kailey quipped as she slipped into my embrace.

I had to admit, K had good taste when it came to movies and tv. The episode immediately caught my attention, it was a bit of a high concept piece this time around. The ship’s android, Data, was tied up in a legal battle over whether he should receive rights as a sentient being. It was a real brain tickler of a question to be posed, to put it lightly, and even despite just how comfy I was getting with my girlfriend, I could practically feel the gears whirring in my brain as I considered the little bits and pieces of the conundrum posed by the show.

The next thing I knew, K was shaking me awake, and the credits were rolling on a favorite movie of hers, Coraline.

“Hey, Aaron, wake up sleepy head. You were kinda snoozing there. Maybe you should head back to your dorm now?”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea, K. Last thing we need is Vlad finding me asleep in your dorm, after all.” I let out a small yawn, stretching while I got up, and gave my girlfriend a little peck on the cheek. “See ya tomorrow, K. I love you!”

With that, I padded out of the room, trying my best not to make a huge racket while I left, and conked out for the night.

Soon enough, the little bit of time we had to actually design our special moves had run out, and the day of the provisional hero license exam had come up on us. After we’d filed out of the bus they’d crammed us into, it was clear that we were going to have an absolutely absurd amount of competition when it came to whatever they were planning to have us do. A little bit of shuffling and bumping into people later, Kailey, Oliver, and I had found ourselves, along with what seemed like several thousand other students. Thankfully, we were getting at least some personal space, since nobody wanted to get too far into the bubble of cold my chest plate was putting out. After a few moments, the din of chatter that was filling the room tapered off, an incredibly exhausted-looking man taking his place at the podium.

“Given the massive volume of applicants this year, we’re going to have to make this explanation quick. The long and short of the test is, you have three targets to place on your body. They have to be visible, no hiding them. You’re removed from the test when all 3 of your targets get hit. First 100 people to get two people out, move on to the next stage of the testing. Now, your targets activate in 15 seconds. Let’s begin!”

As he finished his sentence, the walls around us fell to expose an absolutely cavernous arena. Hurriedly, I slammed a target onto my leg, contorted a bit to stick one in the middle of my back, and, after a moment’s thought, stuck the last target onto the inside of my bracer. It isn’t technically out of sight, I would just have to rotate my arm. I know that having one on my back probably isn’t the best, but it’ll work well to make me notice everything around me. I mused, glancing over at K to see just how she’d set up her three targets. At that point, I noticed the major redesign to K’s costume. Somehow, I had managed to not catch her basically rebuilding her suit from the ground up, and not piece it together that it had changed until just now. The most obvious change was accented by the test target, there was a target set up directly under a clasp that was clearly holding the iridescent cape that draped over her shoulders. Similarly, K had slapped her second target on her thigh, and the last target was somewhat obvious on her upper arm. My eyes cast over to Oliver, who had made a few small modifications to his costume (including what looked like a solar concentrator on his chest), and he’d stuck all three of his targets around the circular device on his chest. Having sorted out just what my companions were up to, I dashed off toward the miniature cityscape that was set up off to our left.

“Kailey, Oliver, we need to stick together! Let’s get moving!”

I heard two pairs of footfalls drop in behind me as we dashed for cover. Judging by the cacophony of thuds behind us, the crowd behind us was an absolute web of scattered balls. Clearly, some people had immediately forgotten that the targets weren’t active just yet. As we dashed into the city’s main street, it was obvious that we weren’t the only ones with the idea to camp out here. In fact, there was a familiar shock of flaming red hair peeking out of a first floor window, and by the time I got over my surprise at seeing Amber here of all places, the smoking ball she’d pitched at me slammed into the target on my leg.

“K, how much is it for you to get us into one of those buildings?”

“Portals take a lot, Aaron, we’re gonna have to run.”

Eyeing the red glow coming from my target, I turned toward the building that I’d seen my former... fling? I suppose you’d call it that in, a minor revenge plot in my mind. You could only imagine my shock as I saw yet another person from K and I’s past in the building beside her.

Zanshin looked almost... giddy at my surprise. Obviously he knew I was coming, his quirk wasn’t called situational awareness for nothing. He moved to throw a ball, and it sailed right over our heads. Thankfully, I’d put together just what he was trying to do moments before he pulled it off, and the ball struck, relatively harmlessly, next to the target on my back. Almost on reflex, I flung two balls at the targets on Zanshin’s chest. Obviously, they didn’t find their mark, he saw them coming from a mile away. It was at that point I noticed a slight blush spreading over Zanshin’s face.

“Wait, you’re dating Amber of all people?”I said, the shock clear in my voice.

“No WAY, snow-for-brains, he’s just helping me out because he’s smart enough to know a winner!” Amber snipped in response, clearly insulted at the mere idea of them being that close.

“H-hi, Kailey.” A rare stammer slipped into Zanshin’s speech as he waved somewhat sheepishly at K.  

“Hey Mei. How’ve you been holding up.” she smiled gently as she replied.

Doing my best to quash my entirely unreasonable jealousy at that, I looked more closely at Amber.

“I like the costume! Needs more fire theme, though.”

“Ugh, as if I’d be as tacky as you with your gross ice shirt, frosthead.”

“Yeah well at least his costume is functional and isn’t tacky and revealing” K snapped back without missing a beat.

“I dig the trench coat, Zanshin. Very you!” I quickly blurted out, trying to at least dial down the tension.

“Thanks! Those bracers are a good choice, and I’m surprised the support department let you get away with that much silver! Can’t have been cheap to produce.” Zanshin said, matter of factly gesturing toward my arms.

Amidst all the back and forth, someone threw a ball, and K took a hit to the target on her thigh.

Even though it wasn’t clear at first, a glance over at her expression said volumes about just who managed to tag her. A roughly contained fury was crossing the face of my best pal, and despite the odd shimmering of the air in front of her, it was drop dead obvious that Kailey was incredibly upset about this turn of events. The next thing I knew, there was a sound like a crowd running by, a bright flash of light, then the raucous sound of Amber tumbling to the floor in a daze, all three of her targets flicked on.

Knowing what K’s abilities did to Zanshin, I took the advantage she gave me, and flicked a ball at the group of three targets on his chest. The hyper perceptive young man looked almost nauseated at the lack of information he was getting, and the interruption of his flow was just enough to let me tag one of his targets.  

“You’re still so pathetic Hoshihime! The only reason you got me was because you couldn’t face me head on! YOU COWARD!” Amber screeched.

Kailey clearly had some words for her foe, but I knew our window was small, and getting smaller.

“K, we gotta get out of here, Zanshin’s not gonna be out of it much longer!” Before she could respond to Amber, I grabbed my girlfriend’s hand, rushing out of the building we had just taken cover in. Oddly enough, as we dashed out, I didn’t hear Oliver’s footsteps behind us, but once we got out into the road, it was pretty clear what he’d done.