#shit ass low res pixel art

[natinkart]

the sillies in ms paint

soldier and heavy are missing bc i don't know how to draw them ;-; maybe later i'll try

[minimanic]

JUNE MOVIE ROUNDUP!

Made it 33% of the way through my aspirational pride month list which is a little less than I'd hoped for but not the worst I've ever done. Viewing overwhelming skewed 90s with some notable exceptions.

Handful of unrelated and late additions that I also feel some type of way about.

Opinions and links under the read more

✨In which 90s queer cinema makes me nostalgic for a period of time that I was technically alive during✨

But I'm A Cheerleader (1999) Directed by Jamie Babbit: An absolutely adorable romcom about conversion therapy that handles its premise with more grace than anyone could have possibly expected. None the less, it stressed me out so bad i nearly ground my teeth to dust.

💚 But I'm a Cheerleader available on Internet Archive here, Tubi here

Nowhere (1997) Directed by Gregg Araki: I like to joke about how insufferable i would have been if I'd found Araki's films as a teenager but i think this is the one I would send back to myself if I could. The man takes teenage angst both seriously and honestly and that's a talent and a level of compassion that sets him apart. Also this one has aliens in it.

The Watermelon Woman (1996) Directed by Cheryl Dunye: The drive to find people who were like you within the history of art and culture, especially as a marginalized person, can be a consuming force and it's portrayed beautifully here. Also it absolutely rules to see a classic 90s indie slice of life film about black lesbians.

💚 The Watermelon Woman available on Internet Archive here

Bound (1996) Directed by Lilly and Lana Wachowski: It Just feels Good man. This one was a re-watch but it's a re-watch at nearly 20 years and it hits just as good today as it did when i was 15. If the Wachowski's excel at anything it's a commitment to catharsis.

✨More Pride month flics✨

You and the Night (2013) Directed by Yann Gonzalez: Admittedly, I don't have a ton of experience with low budget french films about supernatural events happening at an orgie but even so I'm confident this is the best of the genre or at the very least the sweetest. An absolute comfort film.

Apocalypse After (2018) Directed by Bertrand Mandico: It resonates. It's also full of goo and fun outfits and practical effects!

Pink Narcissus (1971) Directed by James Bidgood/Blank Narcissus (Passion of the Swamp) (2022) Directed by Peter Strickland: Pink Narcissus is a homoerotic fever dream that appreciates the erotic power of ass more than anything i have literally ever seen. It works completely. Blank Narcissus is equal parts cheap parody and fairly compelling rumination on lost love. It doesn't quite work but i get it.

💚 Pink Narcissus available on Internet Archive Here

El Pico (1983) Directed by Eloy de la Iglesia: I mean... its absolutely the prototype of the don't do drugs kids type dramas of the 90s but its noteworthy that it came out a solid decade before Trainspotting and co.

Lucifer Rising (1972) Directed by Kenneth Anger: Finally found a screener for this movie with more than 4 pixels! I'm gonna level with you. A couple weeks later I have forgotten literally everything about it despite my best efforts. I was certainly enthralled while watching it though. I'll give it that much.

💚Lucifer Rising available on YouTube here

💚 Most if not all of these can be watched through Solidarity Cinema. They're doing really excellent work over there. I use their streaming option through Plex and its been an absolute dream so far.

✨Movie I did not know was queer but oh my god holy shit✨

Anchoress (1993) Directed by Chris Newby: Threw this on for summer solstice and... its a revelation honestly. Part of the Folk Horror box set that came out a few years ago and definitely one of the best. The cinematography is beautiful. The ethos is immaculate. And who among us wouldn't have risked it all for a janky statue of Mary at some point in our life.

✨The Best of the Rest✨

Twister (1996) Directed by Jan de Bont: I am saying, truly and genuinely, with my whole chest: this is the best disaster movie ever made. Every single character is a delight, the effects inspire a mixture of fear and awe, it essentially watches like a road movie, Helen Hunt is trying to get revenge on a tornado. Its the rare perfect film.

Witch's Cradle (1944) Directed by Maya Deren: The best experimental films carry a sense of genuine magic with them and this has that in spades. Absolutely hypnotic.

💚 Watch Witch's Cradle on YouTube here

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) Directed by George Miller: I fully forgot how good this movie is. You can really see a lot of the themes and sensibilities that would eventually come to fruition in Fury Road start to form here.

Moby Dick (1956) Directed by John Huston: Appropriately epic and perfectly cast, who doesn't want to watch Gregory Peck fight a whale?

💚 Moby Dick available on tubi here

Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) Directed by Stanley Kubrick: First time watching this one all the way through and in a packed theater no less! Tragically, the jokes still land just as hard as they did when it first came out. The whole theater lost it during Ripper's fluoride in the water bit. Kubrick's signature style is wildly successful when employed for comedic effect.

💚 Dr. Strangelove available on Internet Archive here

Galaxina (1980) Directed by Wilim Sachs: Is it a good movie? No absolutely not. Does it inspire a powerful fondness within me? It sure does! Imagine if Space Balls had no budget and periodic delusions of also being a real science fiction movie. That's what you're working with here and it is a delight.

💚 Galaxina available on YouTube here

[hikarimitsuko]

Middle of the night thoughts

What I realized was...it’s not my nickname that made me feel this bad... Actually it does make me feel bad...BUT not as much as getting rid of it...So perhaps my name will change some day...or maybe not. I’m indeed sad and affected by the fact that I deleted my instagram after 4 years of working hard on building an audience...but said audience of 12k people were ghosts and mainly inactive towards anything I post. Not to whine...nothing like that, the world doesn’t owe me anything...but I do not like wasting my time or speaking in the void. I do feel bad about the fact that some of my followers were following me and encouraging me since the very start and I will definitely be nostalgic for that part and for those amazing people. Hopefully they’ll find me elsewhere.

I’ve been realizing since about a year ago that whatever I tried, to change my style, to cosplay new things, to post some art, to join new networks that would touch more people who could be interested in what I do, I realized that in the end...it’s internet people. They are not friends, never will be. I’m realistic, people follow/followed me for Levi. And anytime I’d try to do something else as well, the difference in interaction was beyond bearable. Now I never wanted to stop cosplaying Levi, but this sort of situation sort of pushed me away from him. The last few times I’ve been him, I had absolutely no fun doing him. 

I think also the cosplay community has changed alot in 4 years. Not only that but there is alot of SJWs now and it’s making the community toxic... Cosplay used to be fun. I will still be doing it on my own but low profile. I will post my pics as posts but if anyone wants to see all my pics they will have to go to my fb page as this is more of a closed space where I can easily deal with toxic people and don’t really care as much if it produces absolutely no reaction.

Some will say...oh she’s still in depression. Well no, actually I’ve been off antidepressants for two weeks... and withdrawal is very bad, like VERY VERY BAD, but I know I can make it. I know I can feel good and happy once I work on things that don’t make me happy anymore.  I always said: when cosplay will stop making me happy, I will stop.

It’s not really the case. I love cosplaying...but I just don’t like to do it for an audience anymore. Especially an audience that is 80% ghosts. Sometimes I wonder what steps I took that were wrong or what I could’ve done differently. Of course you compare yourself as a cosplayer and sometimes seeing people who would put about the same effort as you and started waaaay after you did or even some people who didn’t put any effort at all get so much feedback on their stuff while I was sitting there wondering if what I did was worth sharing or not. Guess insecurity, anxiety and need for validation do that, but I won’t excuse myself for being how I am.

I stopped being excited about sharing photos (photography is one of my main passions so that’s very bad)... And I started feeling like conventions didn’t give me that feeling they used to. It started feeling fake and forced and...it started feeling like a competition all the time. Without even noticing I started comparing myself and finding flaws after flaws in my things...so much that I began to hate most of my cosplays.

As you know, all of this is expensive, it’s expensive to maintain and I tried really hard to keep it going because god knows I love to cosplay...I tried ko-fi, I tried patreon, I tried commissions, I tried tutorials, I tried plenty of things...but it simply didn’t work. I know some people go ebegging all the time but frankly it gets on my nerves so I never intended on making people access my stuff for a price. I always loved seeing people smile and appreciate what I do. A simple thumbs up would make my day, but all these were gone after a while... While my wallet was getting emptier as I kept on going.

I’ll always love cosplay...but I’ll keep it for me. I’ll do it for me. I’ve been cleaning up the 40k pics I have of cosplays. And you know what? I know I did a good job. That’s all that matters. I don’t need anyone’s input on that because most of them are just pixels on a screen looking for easy and free entertainment (which is fine), but I expected too much. I didn’t want people to lurk, I wanted people to interact.  In the past few days I needed help, still do but I’m done asking for any so don’t bother... And out of the approximate 18k persons following me around all social networks i’m in...do you know who helped me? 3 people.

@kozumesenpaii My closest friend. 

@angelica200555 One of my most faithful followers since a long long LONG time ago and an angel

And another person who just started following me.

I know...I know that the world owes me nothing. But you’d think after 4 years of doing this...someone would care enough to offer a 3$ ko-fi. But no.

It’s fine, it’s totally fine I’m not mad (anymore cause i have to admit I was mad when I was panicking about not getting a fucking paycheck this week)... But it did make me realize that....like Max says...it’s only internet people, they don’t care.

It makes way more sense now. And I’ve accepted that. I’m in peace with it. Yesterday was a revelation. I guess I needed something to kick my ass to actually finally make a move. Deleting my instagram made me sad...and once I saw ‘’permanently deleted’’ appear... I immediately cried for 15 minutes.... It took me so long to build this. I’ve loved this so much. But I’ve loved a dream, I’ve loved a bubble and it’s been burst for a while.

Now I will love it differently. I will love cosplay/anime/art and whatever else only for me. I will post but only if I want to.

I will maybe write more fanfics or one shots if I feel like it... I do feel confident about my writing in fanfics but I don’t want to go around parading and promoting the shit out of it. They’re little hidden AO3 treasures that ereri and klance fans might stumble upon and fall in love with.

I will not censure myself either for the sake of having ‘’followers’’ that might not like what I do... I’m done living for people. I’m still not sure about name changing my stuff because my youtube and facebook pages are still under hikarimitsuko and I am keeping these so don’t you worry about that. I re-changed my tumblr and twitter back to hikari but if it makes me feel bad, i’ll just find something else later on. I changed my twitch username without noticing u have to wait 60 days to change it again so if you are looking for hikarimitsuko on twitch...it’s actually ephemere87...for the next 60 days...lol...I’ll probably change it back to hika.

SO hum I guess I wanna say thank you to those who followed me so long and kept believing in me even when I was deep in depression. I know it wasn’t always easy to read my posts because I have very negative phases towards myself...but I try to stay away as much as possible when it happens. Thanks to those who cared no matter what. Thanks to those who get genuinely worried about me. My final request would be : IF YOU ARE A GHOST FOLLOWER, PLEASE, unfollow me.

PS: For future references, I will be posting videos of ALL my cosplays on youtube eventually as compilations. Pretty sure Levi’s will last half an hour or longer lol...But anyways... I keep my youtube too for CMVs and such if the inspiration strikes.

Plan - without timeline:

-Deadpool and spidey skit (with max) - youtube

-Costest of Viktor Nikiforov (gotta style the wig) - on here and facebook

-Cosplay Keith Kogane (when I feel like it) - on here and facebook.

Thank you for these 4 years! It’s not over.

[cortex-reaver]

Chapter 63: Jailbreak Prep

Warnings: language, cyberspace surreality

Masterpost

Been a while. I’ve had this with a 15-plus chapter buffer sitting on my hard-drive for a while. Just now starting to get back into things again.

Chapter 63: Jailbreak Prep

Warnings: drugs, language, cyberpunk horror-ish mention

Hacker stared morosely at the Cortieball in his lap, gently running one hand along its surface. Cortie's gaze darted around uneasily as she contemplated the psychological clusterfuck that would be his rescue mission.

He sighed.

A clatter interrupted his reverie. He glanced up to see the Stooges shuffling in to watch the goings-on. He waved half-heartedly.

“You think you guys could give me a quick Reaver c-space tutorial?” he asked tiredly. “I took a look in local c-space already and it's nuts. Also there might be some monitors out there. I noticed a couple floating skulls like the old-time Reavers”--

Moe: Dude that was us. Didn't you see the glitch art?

Larry: DUDE I had the whole Pirate Pixels hack going. BOOYAH.

Moe: C-space here is WICKED SICK!  You're gonna love it. Well once you're over the whole neon overload shitfest. It uh, takes some adjusting.

The Stooges grinned in perfect unison, letting out little burbling moans. Hacker blinked. Then blinked again. Cortie giggled from his lap.

“No wonder you didn't freak out when we showed up at the door, huh? Okay then. Anything I need to know?”

Larry: Bottomless 1-ups. Seriously. Infinite c-space reloads. Get zapped, come back pronto.

Moe: You're still gonna feel those hits, but they're just not gonna wear you down. You've got a big-ass machine, CPU and all, sprouting outta your brain. So you can take 'em better.

Curly: You also got a deeper health pool. Like, triple cuz of the cyberware. AKA: More hitpoints. I mean, from the gamer perspective....

“Nice. Now I just gotta brace for the incoming Berserker trip dipped in acid and Stam-Up then,” Hacker muttered, then fished in his armor's pockets. “Pretty sure I got a patch in here somewhere.”

Larry moved forward, waving their hands to catch Hacker's attention. He glanced up in surprise at the Reaver's wicked grin.

Larry: Nawww you're not gonna need that. Our rigs feed us the pharma shit. Yours probably does too. Just look for a Stam-Up option in the menus.

Moe: DUDE do you reaaaaally wanna enable him?

Curly: Do you seriously NOT want to enable him? We're in SHITFUCK CENTRAL here. Better he know where to get his Stam-Up NOW before he needs it. Cause we just TOLD him about the health rundown, 'member? Not as fast, but it's still gonna happen. Specially with SHODAN-flavored c-space shit.

Moe: Good point, bro. Good point.

Dazed, Hacker checked his menus.

Sure enough, there was a pharmaceutical menu with such a long list of assorted drugs to replicate for his body. He knew only half of them. Fortunately he recognized the Stam-Up option, and cackled softly.

Moe: Don't forget the Genius stuff. We get those by default whenever we go into c-space. Probably why you got back out as fast as you did. Helps with the fast reloads. Annnd you're gonna want a double-dose to start.

Hacker: Oh yeah right. Lemme just turn both of those on...

“Permanent life-time supply of Stam-Up,” he said in wonderment as his new Reaver frame promptly began feeding his body a moderate dose of both drugs. The world felt brighter, crisper, even more saturated now. He grinned.

“If I'd known a Reaver rig could do this”--

“WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU TELL HIM THAT?!” Goggles yelled in exasperation.

All three Reavers backed up. Slightly. They shot her offended looks, folding ther arms.

Larry: He's gonna need it! Specially Genius. Dude's not used to the c-space here.

Curly: C'mon, you don't know how SHODAN is in c-space. We heard plenty from the Cerberus guys here. He's going up against all her crazy-ass shit.

Moe: HE'S TOTALLY GONNA NEED IT OKAY? This IS SHODAN we’re talking about here--

“I'm gonna stop you right there,” Goggles let out a low growl as she clapped a hand to her face, then dragged it down to stretch out her skin. “I've fought SHODAN in an FTL warp that turned c-space into fucking reality. I think I have a pretty good idea.”

“SHe d-dOesSS,” SHObeta hissed.

“AnNd he WiLL neED aLl the Help he Can gET,” Cortie spoke up.

Goggles sighed, then held up her hands as she backed away.

“Okay. Fine. Ignore the sensible voice in the room.”

“All right, anything else before I go in there to break Cortie out?” Hacker asked the Stooges.

“MiND yoUR RanGE,” Cortie interrupted softly. “YoU Will KNow whaAT I meaAN. I am UNabLE to SPeaK theEEr-r-E, so I wiLl w-waRn yoU nOOW. I suSPect The SUper-ReaAVer-r-rRs kneW how To bYpasS it. It wAs the ONly DeFEnSE I haD RuNNinG TheEEe-RE.”

Hacker froze, his entire Reaver rig raising abruptly.

“You kept...that system?”

“HOw DO yOU thiNK I PuLled mY ForRK out of RebeCCA's boDY?” she asked so pointedly that SHObeta flinched.

Goggles and Hacker could only stare.

The soldier dug into one pocket, and pried out a large black bandanna, and passed it to Hacker. Only then did he realize he'd broken into a sweat his new Reaver technology couldn't counter. He gratefully took it and dabbed at his face.

Cortie drooped inside the ball, her eyes wide and sad.

“I wouLd Not be ABle to StoP thE neuRaL RoOTKit if tHe ProtoCols actiVAte it,” she whispered, her eyes welling with glittering digital tears. “P-p-p-pLeASe...s-t-t-taAY saAFe.”

“Y-yeah. Okay. N-no problem,” Hacker squeaked out. “But it's being run by an ethics program, right? That limits the kinda commands it's gonna try running on my brain...r-right?”

Cortie blinked.

“What's the worst a neural rootkit run by an ethics program gonna do, paralyze him?” Goggles asked, surprised.

“I...w-w-wOUld raTher-r-r NOt KNoOW,” she whispered. “JuusSt StaY s-s-saFE.”

“R-right.”

He closed his eyes, blocking out all his various inputs as he settled himself back on the regenerator room's floor. He settled into a nice comfy cross-legged position, and put Cortieball securely in his lap.

He tried to replicate the search for the Visible Spectrum View. Two tries flavored by constant mental cussing later, he finally found the C-SPACE ENTRY button he'd missed in his earlier fumbling.

Cyberspace bloomed in his mind, all neon outlines and utter blackness beyond. As he squinted in the new landscape, he spotted distant shapes in the darkness past the glowing walls of his immediate area.

Three large pixilated skulls hovered in front of him. One sported an equally pixilated eyepatch, while the other had animated red-and-blue flames playing across its face. The third gleamed a brilliant silver which rippled lazily from gunmetal gray to dazzling platinum.

Hacker recognized them as the ones he'd seen earlier. Then he wondered how he'd assumed they were hostiles when they looked like flying retro-ware hacker icons instead of Citadel programs. He mentally shook his head. His brain's been through a lot right now. Best to forgive and move on.

Moe: Yo.

Curly: DUUUDE that is a sick-ass avatar.

Larry: DAAAAAAMN man that makes me look like a sad troll.

Hacker: Oh? What do I look like?

The pirate-decorated skull spat out a gleaming metallic mirror which unfolded, then floated to hang between it and Hacker. He stared at it, then reeled backwards while screaming in horror.

He looked like a hyper-realistic neon green skull, complete with glittering fractal-covered orbs for eyes, and crackling lines of energy for teeth.

“WHAUGH!”

He blinked as the regen room swam into view in front of him. He glanced about wildly as Goggles eyed him quizzically.

“Dude, you okay?”

All three Reavers burbled mischievously. Hacker quickly rearranged his disarrayed Super-Reaver limbs back around him, and forced himself to settle down. Cortie stared up at him with confusion.

“Eh, not a big deal. I just...”

Larry: Little avatar shock heh heh heh.

Moe: I guess skulls aren't your thing huh?

Hacker shot the Stooge an irritated glare as he straightened. Goggles snickered as she realized what the Stooges meant, shaking her head with a lopsided grin.

“Big bad Super-Reaver scared of his own face,” he heard her mutter.

He flipped her the bird. She folded her arms while still chuckling. He rolled his eyes, then turned to the Stooges.

“I can change that, right? Is there a menu for those kinda things?”

Moe: Oh yeah sure it's probably the same on your stuff as ours. Look for Avatar Customization. You could prolly set it back to your old c-space avatar. Go to the menus before coming back, ok?

Hacker: Okay, will do.

Moments later, he found the menu he'd been looking for, and plowed into the customization options. Another few moments got him a decent replica of his old c-space avatar – a copy of his younger self's appearance with simplified polygons making up its shape. It was very in with the pixel-rave style at the time of Citadel, something he remained fond of even when it was forty years out of date.

Once he was sure he had his appearance the way he wanted it, Hacker returned to cyberspace.

The skulls looked him up and down, then nodded in unison.

Moe: Totally you, dude.

Larry: Yo Hacker, welcome back. Smart move going with your old Citadel look.

Curly: Oooh likin' the whole pixel-retro getup there. Sweet.

Hacker: Thanks. Suprised you guys even remember that interview I showed it in. Some things...eh...back to business. So where are we? Local regen-room c-space or a junction?

Hacker peered about the room. The walls here glowed from deep blue-green grid, rippling with lines of energy and code. One set of green lines pulsed horizontally from the left to the right, while a set of blue lines pulsed vertically from top to bottom. Code streamed along the lines here and there, sparking blue and purple pixels where they intersected. Beyond them lay a rippling black nothingness, which was a real feat of virtual rendering - he registered it as both a squirming solid surface and a complete utter void.

A quick scan with his software told him the walls were made of a super-dense, multi-layered ICE that would require considerable time and processing power to crack. It was the cyberspace equivalent of bending a black hole into the shape of a room. No signals got out past it, and no signals got inside.

Moe: Actually, both. It's the Med room but Cortie stuck a junction in for us. Asked us to monitor it for her. Keep out any skeeveware or whatever else her bitchzilla fork stuck in the station. As for the room? It's rigged as a Max-Sec Area surrounded by sickass ICE walls. Cortie's stuff.

Curly: It's wicked strong. She also put in in this network of high-end EMF blockers, so no signals get in or out of the area. You basically walk inside and you don't exist, as far as the station cares. Might as well be a Faraday Cage. Cept a Faraday Cage is like, Stone Age shit compared to this.

Larry: The defense perimeter is ten meters in all directions past the doorway. She took out all the cameras between the elevator and here to help with that. So the station and by extension, Crazyfork, doesn't know what you've been doing with a dead Super-Reaver. Heh heh heh.

Curly: OK back to the present, kids. Look to your left, Hacker. That's all the regenerator systems. You'll see the other operations systems as little diamonds around the room. They'll shoot data around here and there. Don't interrupt 'em. They'll bork up systems in the room if they don't get their bits and bytes.

Larry: You got into the junction when you popped in the first time cause you were just outside the doorway and inside the perimeter. So long as you're in the perimeter or in the room, you'll pop up in here whenever you reload. Got all that?

Hacker: With you so far.

Larry: If you go outside of all this, you ain't popping up here, and well, I'm not gonna speculate on that. Cause FUBARDAN.

Hacker: Oh. Thanks.

He turned to face four large glowing green wireframe boxes lined in a row. Within them moved dozens of shapes resembling bones or organs made up of very tiny flickering pixels. They floated in groups, resembling stacks of Tetris blocks coming together in lines as the regenerators went through their restorative work. Once the icon of an organ or other biological system turned from red, through yellow, and finally green, it dropped from the top of the box into orderly rows of green items at its bottom.

One box had more green icons piled at its bottom than the other, with a timer indicating sufficient cycles to equal roughly fifteen minutes. Judging from the patient picture plastered across one of the box's walls in bright black-and-yellow, Hacker guessed he was looking at Rebecca's regenerator. The other three boxes indicated bodies in worse shape – particularly the one for Suzi.

Not too different from the other regenerator icons I've seen...hmm...basically just higher-resolution, and higher complexity to match. Hokay. Making more sense here now.

Nodding to himself, Hacker did a slow 180-degree turn. Now that he had a better sense of how this higher-resolution c-space worked, he could figure out what everything was.

He quickly recognized the assorted software and data-input icons for the replicator hovering in an orderly multi-colored sphere to one corner. Then he spotted the flat blue-gray diamond shapes of the local systems icons – life-support, lighting, temperature control, gravity, and the doorway. Indicators glittered and flashed from their surfaces in shades of red, yellow, and green. Data, arranged in lines of bright geometric icons, flicked between them in orderly rows of pixels zipping across the room's c-space.

The systems' indicators were mostly green, except for a haphazard flicker between red and orange glowing from the doorway's diamond. Data sputtered erratically from it to the other systems. An error icon blinked above it, indicating some sort of software conflict with the outer doorway mainframe in the station. He was too far away to read its message to be sure.

Then came a familiar sight hovering in the empty space between the regenerators' systems and the replicator's.

A familiar cone, twice the size of his c-space avatar, drifted lazily near him. Its smooth  surface shone a dark gray covered in tidy blue and gray lines. A staticky face stared at him from its flat circular top, its eyes wide with horror. Unlike SHODAN's avatar from Citadel's cyberspace, this cone didn't have the curving tentacles along its top at quarter-intervals. Nor did it emit SHODAN's characteristic green glow.

Hacker: Damn, Cortie. You're definitely locked down. Oh. Right, you can't talk. S-sorry.

He watched as the cone continued its slow floating trajectory, nearly bouncing off a flitting data icon racing between a regenerator and the replicator. Its face flicked through several expressions – horror, anger, sadness, hopefulness, and then sadness again.

He glanced to his cyberspace weapons menu, noting that a Super-Reaver had a lot more options than he ever did on Citadel. Pulsers. Megapulsers. Rapid-fire virus projectiles. Energy beams for weakening ICE shields. ICE picks, even.

Between his loadout and his Super-Reaver capabilities, Hacker would likely survive whatever battering Cortie's ethics systems put him through long enough to get her free. The problem was more how close he'd have to get to Cortie to send that code to her.

Hacker: Okay guys. If I get close to her, the ethics params are gonna pick me up as an intruder and start shooting. My range on the filesend is about the same as her brain-rootkit system, so I'm gonna have to chance it on the range to get null.ethic to her.

Moe: Right.

Hacker: Fan out and try to keep any projectiles or shit from hitting regenerator systems. It's gonna get ugly real quick in here.

Larry: Gotcha.

Moe: Good idea, that.

Curly: We'll back you up if you need it.

Well, here goes nothing.

Hacker headed towards the tumbling cone, pulsers at the ready.

Intruder detected. No Tri-Optimum authorizations activated. Security systems online, spoke a familiar voice – SHODAN's flat pre-hack voice – as the ethics systems' ICE suddenly activated.  A glowing blue bubble popped into existence, encapsulating Cortie's cone.

Hacker: Figures. Let's see if I can punch a hole in that...

Hacker opened fire with both the pulser in one hand while holding an ICE pick in the other.