#operation team leader

[egginfroggin]

Yeeting both Ingo and Emmet into Hisui and having them get taken in by the Pearl Clan and Diamond Clan, respectively, is fun, but what if they were both taken by the Pearl Clan.

And then became Lady Sneasler's Wardens (coughadoptedkidscough).

And proceeded to tell absolutely nobody that there were two of them.

As far as anybody who isn't from the Pearl Clan or who hasn't been introduced to the twins by Irida -- the Responsible One -- knows, Lady Sneasler has a really weird Warden named Emmet who just abruptly swaps coats and demeanors seemingly arbitrarily.

And is terrifyingly good at getting around the Highlands quickly.

Honestly.

It's almost like he's in two places at once, sometimes.

Yeah, they went off to the Highlands and one of them (probably Emmet) was like, "Hey what if we just didn't tell anyone that there's two of us," and the other (probably Ingo) was like, "That's a horrible idea. I love it. Let's do it."

The player character knows that there's two of them because Irida herself introduced Ingo or Emmet as one of Lady Sneasler's Wardens, so the player character was basically directly informed of the fact that there's two of them.

Nobody else is aware of this.

Warden Emmet is just a mysterious cryptid lurking around the Coronet Highlands, and everyone is very confused by him. And maybe a little afraid.

Except for Melli, Melli is just exasperated with him. As usual.

And due to the distance between the Highlands, the Pearl Settlement (full of people who know) and the rest of Hisui (the people who don't know), it never really gets properly stated that there are two identical Wardens running around the Highlands. Irida just thinks that people talk about Emmet a lot and chalks it up to him maybe being the weirder of the two. Or maybe Ingo's shy, or something. Who knows.

Either way, they get away with it for years.

[magebutts]

they shoulda let us see rook's reunion with their companions right when they rescued them from the fade prison. cowards.

[bisexualcherdegre]

D:BH AU | Josh and Simon break into the CyberLife Store

[akkivee]

since the stage has a 2nd gen in cast it made me revisit who i think could be leaders of a 2nd gen hypmic cast based on connections to current leaders lol

[awkward-teabag]

I'm so tried of the response to the new Dragon Age game. You can't criticise decisions or the writing without being lumped in with bigots unless you caveat a hell of a lot, which fewer and fewer online spaces allow for. I'd say this is by design but I don't know if the people fanning the flames and pushing this bigotry are that smart.

It's been in development hell for a decade, cancelled and revived, stopped and started over from scratch multiple times, was infamous for staff turnover, and had senior staff quit the first time it was cancelled then EA fired 50 more people which included senior developers who had worked on previous Dragon Age games. The reason given was EA wanted to be able to "pivot faster" but it's pretty obvious they wanted to get rid of people who had the experience and seniority to push back against decisions.

Because the game very much looks like what happens when execs want to chase trends rather than let developers do what they have experience doing or what customers expect from a franchise name.

But once again the focus isn't on major issues with the AAA publishing industry or MBAs calling shots, it's about a non-issue that's a symptom of that at most and it prevents actual criticism from getting through.

[rimouskis]

so what the hell does one do when they do not have capacity to take on more work when it seems like the powers that be are going to insist upon it

[stormvanari]

tired as shit operative who tried to rip a virus sample off from the mutated hands of a cuckoo crazy scientist

[ssunvulcan1981]

Team Neo Retro Girls

Arena Tycoon Greta is the Leader from Pokemon Emerald

Gym Leader Flannery from Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire

Gym Leader Gardenia from Pokemon Diamond & Pearl

Gym Leader Elesa from Pokemon Black & White

Gym Leader Nessa from Pokemon Sword & Shield

Retro Rangers

Adam Park/Black Ranger is the Leader from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

Tori Hanson/Blue Wind Ranger from Power Rangers Ninja Storm

Kira Ford/Yellow Dino Ranger from Power Rangers Dino Thunder

Bridge Carson/S.P.D. Red Ranger from Power Rangers S.P.D.

Xander Bly/Green Mystic Ranger from Power Rangers Mystic Force

Team Neo Retro Girls VS Retro Rangers

Greta VS Adam (Black)

Nessa VS Tori (Blue)

Elesa VS Kira (Yellow)

Flannery VS Bridge (Red)

Gardenia VS Xander (Green)

[allmuddy]

@myrlin: you’re a natural leader. you’re smart, loyal … violent.

“ aw shoot sugah – you flirtin’ with me?” She wrangles a strand of wily hair around her finger with a grin, a dramatic performance of flirtatious embarrassment. There is an inch of space between the two figures for a moment, a hazardous crossing of boundaries as she leans in coyly, before she pulls back and lets out a wicked snort. “Far from the truth though honey. Leader is the last word on anyone’s lips when describin’ me. Or it should be.” 

[uncreativebean]

I need me someone who's as ride or die for me as much as tfp soundwave was for the decepticon cause

[dxrknessembr8ced]

Sometime later....

Mei-Ling leaning against the wall outside of the facility just by the helicopter holding an suppressed MP5 SMG waiting for the rest of her squad mates that she assigned to in her journey to find her sister. The door from the facility opened revealing her squad now arriving outside to greet themselves toward the older sister of the jiangshi as she tilt her head.

" So you're whom I'm assigned with.. "

These new shadow law operatives revealed themselves to be the former highly trained umbrella security service task force under the squad name wolfpack. Like wolfpack almost all of the recruits of new shadow law are former soldiers of the defunct umbrella corporation be it from the USS or UBCS as the two no longer are in separate groups as both sides are now unified by Seth as one together which is unsurprising to some but very surprising to Mei-Ling who lacked the knowledge of umbrella corporation despite her findings at the ship long time ago. First of wolfpack is Lupo, Karena LesProux the team leader with the dark past introduced herself towards the girl now dressed in NSL attire.

" Lupo, team squad leader.. "

The second Beltway stand fourth beside Lupo chuckling under the mask fascinated with working with the sister of patient zero. The man is a demolitionist, loves his job of blowing things to kingdom come.

" Names beltway nice to meet ya' sister... "

The third codenamed four eyes, real name's Christine Yamata a renowned scientists and team Virologist whose express an unusual interest in B.O.W.s of any kind especially the ones formerly made by umbrella.

" Call me four eyes, the pleasure is mine. "

The fourth one the recon who trained under the USS long ago before the raccoon city incident given the technology that allow him to turn invisible in a limit amounted of time and shapeshift into any person's appearance at will.

" Vector Here, good to see you ma'am.. "

The fifth one is bertha a psychopath who serves as the team's medical support in the battlefield. Fierce, vicious and shows zero remorse towards anyone.

" Names Bertha ready to play... "

And Lastly the surveillance Spectre whose known for being a intelligence technician in the soviet union where his lack of any stand out physical or social characteristics helped him to remained virtually invisible in any and all situations.

" Spectre here, all set... "

With the squad now ready to move out with Mei-Ling in charge of the rest of the squad she placed the gas mask and helmet back onto her face, calling in seth through her COMs letting them know they'll be moving out into the chopper.

" Seth, just rendezvous with them... "

{ " Understood, your mission is to go into metro city finding the data on the whereabouts of patient zero, after the cataclysm the mist have spread globally across large portions of the world. If you find any BSAA agents and evidence that is against patient zero, eliminate and destroy any evidence you find especially blue umbrella failure is not an option.... " }

" Yeah... "

{ " I know this is hard for you, I am sorry this happen Mei-Ling. " }

" I know, let's move...... "

Mei-Ling along with the rest of wolfpack walked into the chopper closing the door as the pilot Nighthawk started up his vehicle and begun flying off into the night sky to metro city, now overrun with the undead, bio organic weapons slaughtering and killing the civilians and worse yet military personal who the US government have initiated and resist against the family and Seth's wishes wreaking havoc making the situation of the outbreak far worse. Mei-Ling in her heart wanted to save the civilians, just like how she wanted to save her sister but that is not what wolfpack works even under Seth as they're cold hearted soldiers whose goal is completing their task.

[thedevilsrain]

tangled web in my mind trying to think about how team eroica operates

[cyanocoraxx]

don't you LOVE getting into Trouble at work because the new operations managers go running and crying to your manager instead of talking to you like a professional...... girl sit down I'm a team leader now too 😑 learn it and speak 2 me w respect

[thegreatcrowdragon]

Streamer girl made me so pissy I made a new gym leader

Yew, the poison type gym leader!

She’s around 20, I’d say. Maybe nearing 21?

Yes, the name IS a reference to the poisonous berry of the same name.

Her mom is a (former) professor (yew berries grow on trees, also this is not plot relevant at all)

She streams, mostly gaming stuff. She’s really skilled, and widely known for her ability to somehow eat and game at the exact same time. Sometimes she does cooking streams that usually end in disaster.

She loves all her pokemon dearly and keeps them in luxury balls.

Adores food. Her backpack is actually a cooler type bag full of yummy snacks! She loves new foods.

She has a sister, but never actually talks about her “cause it isn’t really a thing that comes up a whole lot”

Speaks a little slowly. If this ever becomes an actual game, she’d have a special setting where her text is slightly slower, even when you've set text speed to slowest.

Pansexual.

Might be autistic? I’m still working on that one.

Got bullied because her eyes and mouth are weird (purple with a small yellow ring around the pupil, the inside of the mouth is BRIGHT PURPLE for some unknown reason). She’s also just really weird in general, but hey, she doesn’t care!

Likes big sweaters and tends to wear a lot of black with pink.

Somehow not fat???? (This is projection because no matter how much I eat I'm still a twig) 

Dating the leader of Team Spirit (it started off as a love letter for his gf, but now it’s been overtaken by really toxic fans who he can’t control)

Pokemon: Clodsire, Gengar, Seviper, Dustox, and an Appletun (who’s tera type is poison, obviously)

She has a Venusaur, but he doesn’t like fighting and she’s not going to make her pokemon do something it doesn't want to do. (It doesn't really matter much anyway, she has other pokemon who can fight)

Found an abandoned egg in the forest. Plot twist, it was Muuna, and now it thinks she’s its mom :) 

She gives trainers antidotes, even if they lose. Gotta heal those status conditions!

[inbabylontheywept]

The Motherfucking Lizard King

No one at work trusts my boss. 

He's smart. He works hard. He's not trustworthy. He hasn't actually fucked anyone at work over, but he's ruined his last two marriages with affairs, and got dumped by his third fiance when he wouldn't sign a prenup. The fact that we all know this is just a hazard of working in a small town. 

Anyway: The thought process of the people in the lab is that if he screwed over his first wife, and his second wife, and was probably planning on screwing over his third wife, it would be insane for him not to screw us over. After all, what kind of idiot treats their employees better than their spouse? 

I dunno. His kind, I guess? He's had a few chances to fuck us over, and he hasn't taken them. Opposite really. When our parent company was doing furloughs, he stayed in the office almost a hundred hours, talking and talking and talking his way up the corporate ladder. And in the end, no one at our site got furloughed. 

He's pulled strings like that before. And it baffles me, right? Because it really does make zero sense. He'll move the heavens and the earth for us, but his wife and kids are afterthoughts. It feels like any moment, he's going to look into the mirror and realize how stupid that is. It feels like I'm betting on him making the same stupid mistake again, and again, and again - like it would be less cynical to believe he was, eventually, going to stab me in the back. But he hasn't yet, and as far as I can tell he's been making that mistake for close to fifteen years, and it's already cost him everything it can. If he was going to learn, he would have by now. 

So my position on him is that if he wanted to date someone I cared about, I'd warn them off. I don't trust him there. But I tentatively trust him to be my boss. Maybe one day he'll stick the knife in and twist, and everyone will say Ah, Babs, we warned you, but for now, I accept that he's doing a very predictable, very irrational thing, and I've made my peace with it. 

---

My job has glue traps. 

No one likes the glue traps, but we don't have a lot of options. Poison's banned by state law, spring traps are banned by company safety, and several non-lethal options tried in the past failed to work. The mouse problem can get pretty bad if it's ignored, and there's some real health hazards in that. Our site has never had a positive hantavirus test, thank God, but the big base about a half hour away has. That guy's gonna be on oxygen the rest of his life. 

If a mouse gets caught, we just euthanize it. But more than mice get stuck. Lizards can wander into those traps too, and the people working there have different feelings about the lizards. They don't pose nearly the same kind of risk mice do. They're chill little guys, and they keep the moths away, and they're just 

You know. They're friendly. There's something to be said about walking into a room, and hitting the light switch, and seeing two little guys on the wall start to do pushups as soon as they see you. 

People used to just euthanize the lizards too, but I had pet leopard geckos as a kid and I couldn't take that so I wound up googling how to free animals from glue traps. Now, when a lizard gets stuck in a trap - which happens once or twice a week - I get some vegetable oil from the breakroom, and a little plastic fork, and I'll spend fifteen to twenty minutes just kind of gently prying the little guys out. 

I have a team of technicians that help me operate one of the larger machines. They're real blue collar guys, ex-airforce, and they make me look like a little kid. Being an engineer means they'll look to me as a leader sometimes, which is a wild experience. And I started helping the lizards for my own conscience, but one of the crazier consequences of it has been that it seriously boosted my leadership cred. Because those guys see me, and they go: Hey. If he's willing to fight for a lizard, he's gotta be willing to fight for me. 

I cannot overstate how nice that is. Most engineers that want to make a change to a maintenance practice, or try an upgrade, they have to work their asses off to get the techs to buy in. But I can just ask. They already trust me to do good. They know I'm new, and they know I'm not the smartest engineer in the building, but they also know I'm the one who gets lizards out of the glue traps. 

And just because of that, they're willing to follow me. 

---

My boss has a meeting every month or two. It's typically basic house cleaning stuff - reminders about routines we've gotten lazy on, and updates on future projects. Maybe some warnings about problems coming from higher up in the company.

People are, in my opinion, a bit too cynical about the meetings. It stems from people not trusting our boss, which again, I understand, because it would make so much more sense if he wasn't trustworthy. It's a testament to the man's incredibly unhealthy priorities that he is. But as we made it to the end of the meeting, one of bullet points was: 

Do NOT mess with animals in the building. 

So I looked at my techs, and they looked at me, and when he got to the point, he was so scathing I actually just wanted to crawl under a rock and die. He said basically that he'd heard some reports about someone in the building handling animals that found their way in and got stuck, and that he just wanted to emphasize how insanely inappropriate that was, not to mention dangerous, and that if he needed to speak to anyone about it again, there would be severe consequences. 

I was willing to just take the shame and move on. I was. But one of my techs is old. Old enough he could've retired two years ago. And his actual literal goal is to one day get angry, yell at someone, and storm out. That's how he wants to retire. So instead of biting his tongue like everyone else, he stood up and said: I hate the glue traps. You hate the glue traps. We all hate glue traps. But we've all sat here for years, ignoring the little things that get stuck in them, watching them die, and then Bab's comes in, and he is the first person in decades to give enough of a shit to start pulling the lizards out. And I don't want him to stop. 

Get humane traps or shut up but we are not going back to the old way of just letting things starve. 

And my boss actually froze up. He got all wide eyed and stared at Marc, and then the other techs jumped in, and there was a very small but intense rebellion in the meeting and my boss kept trying to interrupt while getting absolutely bowled over by this gang of angry middle aged air force vets, and eventually he just went 

I will speak with Babylon about this afterwards! After! And then he will speak with everyone else, but I have more points to cover. 

So they went silent, and my boss rushed through the last five minutes, and we all adjounred. The techs really didn't like that I was going in alone - they thought our boss was going to try and shout me into compliance. Marc in particular was like, Look, if he tries bullying you, stand your ground, and if he threatens anything, just come get us, and we'll give him hell. 

So armed with that, I went to my boss's office. I sat in the chair across from him, and he kept his composure for maybe five seconds before just flopping back into his chair. 

I had no idea you were saving lizards, he said, but I'm glad you are. I always hated seeing them die in the glue.  

I wasn't expecting that. I was about to ask him what the comment from the meeting was about then, but he answered that before I even got the chance.

A snake got into the building last week, and - someone picked it up and chased a coworker around. Turns out that coworker was severely afraid of snakes, and now it's a shitshow. We're a small site, and now I can't ask those two to work together anymore, to say nothing about how the snake fared after all that. Being upset about that is a reasonable thing, right? 

And he gave me a look like he actually wanted an answer, so I said Yeah, totally, chasing a coworker around with a snake is a dick move. Especially if that coworker is already afraid of snakes. 

And he said Exactly! and then we sat there a few moments longer. He looked so incredibly tired that I did, actually, feel kind of bad for him. And then he somehow managed to sink even further into his chair, and said

Look, I know I'm not a good guy. But I'm not evil. I'm not some sort of crazy asshole that's going to demand that everyone watch lizards starve to death. When you go back downstairs, could you try to pass that on? That I'm not evil? 

I said Sure because it wasn't a hard request, and he looked relieved. I actually made it halfway out before I realized I had a question. 

Who grabbed the snake? I asked. 

Not supposed to talk about it, he said. But whoever comes to mind first is probably right. 

ThatGuy? I asked. And he looked me in the face, nodded his head yes, and said No. 

---

The techs seemed a little disappointed that they didn't get to storm the boss's office, but were otherwise in good spirits. They were actually a little bit embarrassed to hear about the snake story - apparently, it wasn't much of a secret. It'd just slipped their minds because it happened three weeks ago. 

We did maintenance after that, the same basic repairs we did every week. The meeting had been stressful and it was a relief to work with my hands. When the parts were reinstalled, everything cleaned and smooth and ready to go, Marc found me again. 

You know what the lesson of today is? he asked. And there were quite a few answers to that that I could have taken - from don't assume the worst of people to be careful with how you spend your trust - we all need it more than we think. 

But instead I said what? because I wanted to hear what his answer was going to be. 

That I got your back, he said. Then he clapped one very, very large hand on my shoulder, gave it a good squeeze, and walked back to dosimetry lab.

---

The next day, Marc gave me a package and told me to open it in my office. I was suspicious, but I followed the request.

Cardboard gave way to a small baggie, obviously full of fabric, which opened to reveal a t-shirt that read

"I Am the Motherfucking Lizard King."

I looked at it, I loved it, and then I got an idea. I went to my boss's office and knocked on the door. When he opened it, I asked him if he would be willing to allow something very unprofessional to happen for morale building purposes.

How unprofessional? he asked. I held the shirt up in answer. He gave the shirt a short look over and snorted.

You can wear it on weeks without customers, he said. Which just so happened to include that week.

I'll pass on that it came with your blessing, I replied, and he looked oddly relieved.

Thanks, he said. And then I went downstairs.

---

The techs were very, very happy to see the shirt. And while my boss's reputation remains in tatters, and probably will be until he moves (or dies), the next time there was a meeting, there was quite a bit less complaining about how mere presence. Which is, I guess, a start.

We'll see if he squanders it.