May 2017 Archive, part b

And let me provide more cake. Namely a black-hole chocolate one (with red berries, of course).

In the words of The Who:
YEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

(Attempted to make it as long as it is in the song. Somehow. Hope you enjoyed my really long "yeah". Happy Boardaversary.)

-Twistey

Secret Boardversary message!

Have a celebratory mongoose!

Elcalion, festive

HAPPY BOARDIVERSARY

I AM USING ALL CAPS

YOU CAN THUS TELL THAT I AM VERY HAPPY ABOUT THIS SITUATION AS A GENERAL WHOLE

HUZZAH!

HAPPY THINGY!

Happy 20th, Ix! I hope you enjoyed it! And since I haven't given one of these in a while...Have a Delibird! Since you're a fellow Trainer, I don't think I need to warn you about its Presents.

Wow. I would have sworn I sent well-wishes on the day itself, but apparently not. Very sorry about that. Anyway, happy birthday! Hope the cake was tasty.

Or at least, if it isn't, let me compliment the members of the PPC for their skill at inventing new and exciting stuff to be used in forums and role-plays.

-Twistey

And here comes a black-hole chocolate cake.

GRAB THE CHAIR, BOYS! WE'VE GOT ANOTHER BUCKET-KICKER!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ_ZQkV58Cc


Happy Birthday, dude! Always a pleasure to be your friend!

No, I'm not performing that song again. I said "once" :-)

HG

Have a cake.

Ix birfday?!

Ix birfday!

Ix.
Birfday.

Happy birfdaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
My gift upon you is: four skateboards! One for each limb! You'll be the most radical kid on the street!

HAPPY BIRFDAY ENJOY YOUR CAKE

We're gonna talk about taking a whole planetary system and setting the orbital interactions to music and we're not gonna talk about this?

"Everything has to be fandom related these days" indeed. :P

The election here... was a nightmare.

The left had the problem of Hollande's bilan, Macron's candidature, and pretty obvious dissension. When Hamon won the primaries elections, it didn't really netted him the support from the left, his irect opponent (the bad looser) Valls deciding to trow hs lot with Macron from a distance, while the far-left Mélenchon tabled on this to get the fourth place for the first turn (and was an incredibly bad loser too). I thought about voting for Hamon, but after seeing polls only giving him 10%, I switched for Macron.

At the right, Fillion won the first primaries elections from the right ever, clean and fair and square and all (I'd have preferred Juppé), but right after that, revelations about the way he paid his wife for doing pretty much nothing with public moneys and other skeletons just jumped from the closet (real problems, but convenient timing). He was still third, but lost, and now the right isn't looking good either.

So, with the two traditional parties not looking good, the far right cow had this big opportunity, against a 'new' candidate who managed to place himself at the center. After that, between a bad campaign, a bad TV debate with Macron, her own legal matters and chosing another candidate as Prime Minister to steal more votes, she lost without getting her minimal objective of 40%, and her party isn't lookin good either, good news.

The bad news is, she lost, Macron didn't exactly win. He still has the legislatives to win, with a rather rookie formation, and he will announce who his Prime Ministerr would be Sunay or Monay, and this guy will officially be the one leading this battle, an I can tell you that will be a vicious one.

As for Trump news... I rejoin the idea this guy had a fairly conspicuous timing during the election. A pityAnd of course Trump is ungrateful and never heard about the Watergate and Nixon. You cannot listen the radio without hearing about boomakers telling his odds to finish his term are dropping.

To the Fandom News:
That would never be allowed today! Everything has to be extremely political, and of course you aren't allowed to speak at a normal voice level because that's unacceptable! No! You must use the CAPS LOCK OF RAGE AND EXCLAMATION POINTS TO SHOW THE WORLD HOW WRONG THEY ARE!!11!!!!42!(/sarcasm. Typed yelling: not just for fanfic anymore. Argh.)

Anyway, about the movie... Holy crud! Riding a T-rex?! Sorry guys, but honestly, if I were to see that, I would do an immediate face-heel turn out of awe. Farpin' yes! (Ahh, why'd they have to ruin it by making another politician the villain?)

Well, that just about made my day, especially since it reminds me of Wolfenstein 3D, which involves Hitler in a flipping mechsuit. Good old Wolfenstein, those developers at iD Software were such goofballs.

-------
To the Silly News:

That is cool! My science class has us do "current event" reports every Friday, so I need to do something about that system. The music, as well... I need to watch that sometime soon.

-------
To the Serious News:

No comment, as usual.

-------
To the Not News:

This is just like so many name generators... Have all y'all ever been to Seventh Sanctum? The generators combined with the commenting feature is just great, since you get to see what silly stuff other people have received and how they've interpreted them. Great site, great site. As for the names, I'm guessing that the "first last" formatting of the first and last names are "Ivy Muriel Savage" and "Peter King"? That makes it seem less crazy, as Savage and King are both normal last names, and in fact last names of famous people (Adam Savage of Mythbusters and Stephen King.)

Yes, somebody needs to write that story! It'd be a weird crossover, but I guess the reasons for writing it here, as well as the fact that most of us are likely to do it decently, are forgivable.

-Twistey

-------
Afterword:
...It's kind of funny that I said "Farpin' yes!" at the T-rex thing, considering that my friend sent me this article a while ago... I'm just gonna leave this here...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/04/how-a-fart-killed-10-000-people

... And everyone else should:



The Tenth Wars have got underway! At least, the filming has; given the turnaround for the Ninth Wars, I think we can expect it sometime this autumn. Can the green-striped monster of the West Midlands defend its crown? Will the disc of doom from Reading shred more of its opposition? Might the rocket-powered house robot launcher from Birmingham Abergele have a new target this series? Will Foxic do anything?

All will be revealed, along with the new-look arena and a full cast of fighting machines from all over the country and beyond, because this. Is. ROBOT WARS!

I'm a little excited. Can you tell? =]

Gotta make everything fandom related these days. :P

I also bring an offering of local news from my corner of the world. My boss and I actually went and shot some video for a church in this tiny little town of approximately 3000 people, and not long after, well... this happened.

The TL;DR is that the (openly gay) organist admitted to spray-painting a swaistika, "Heil Trump" and "fag church" on the walls of the church back in November.

"I suppose I wanted to give local people a reason to fight for good, even if it was a false flag . . . I of course realize now, this was NOT the way to go about inspiring activism."

Yeah, maybe not.

Shockingly, a white police officer shot and killed another young black guy last Saturday, in this case a fifteen-year-old kid in the passenger seat of a car leaving a party. Only, in this case, the officer has actually been fired from his job and has been charged with murder. We'll have to see if it sticks, but in the meantime, kudos to the police chief in Balch Springs and to the Dallas County judge who signed the warrant. We can't keep letting people get away with this crap.


The TRAPPIST-1 video is awesome. ^_^ It seems like the notes aren't quite tuned to each other, at least not to my ear, but I guess they picked up the frequencies they used from the planets themselves?

~Neshomeh

It's geeky and sort of adorable, which basically sums up the human race as a whole. :D

I guess it's feeling pretty wound-down now, but if you've got something to say, you might want to do it before the discussion is officially closed, assuming that is a thing that's going to happen.

~Neshomeh

Over here in the good old United Kingdom we celebrated Mothers Day 7 weeks ago. Although I know what you mean and why you've posted.

Yeah, I'm going to try to get back into reading and reviewing missions again. >_>

Your writing style does a good job of being very succinct, and getting straight to the point without a lot of extra words cluttering up the sentences. This is especially useful in missions for getting across info from the badfic without copy-pasting huge blocks of text, and you make good use of that here. There were a couple of potentially interesting spots that I feel you could have gone into more detail on—namely, the canons initially arriving in the present, and Holmes making deductions about the profession of a woman in the restaurant, which I feel could have been good moments for the agents to look at with a critical eye, as they would especially be indicators of how out-of-character Holmes was. Then again, I don't know if the original fic presented those scenes with enough material for you to really do anything with.

I'm not sure the canons themselves were quite out-of-character enough to be treated as replacements, although I know that's a subjective thing for each PPC author. In particular, the sentence, "Without being told, Holmes easily lied and said that his last name was Jones," seems to indicate that you felt Holmes would need guidance in having to mislead someone, but (at least in the novel canon; I haven't seen the movies) Holmes is a master of disguising his clothing, voice and demeanor to hide his identity. He would certainly have no trouble coming up with a fake name, especially since the plan to fool the mothers had been thought of in advance.

I'm also a bit confused by the final charging scene. I understand Holmes and Watson being killed, since you're treating them as replacements, and I'm glad your agents neuralyze the mothers and return them to their regular lives, but where did the two daughters go? It seems to me that, if the mothers are being treated as "canons" and returned to their lives, their daughters should be, too. And I rather had the impression that the flat the daughters was living in was their actual home, before the fic started, so wouldn't they just get neuralyzed and stay there?

I do like the last line, "'Come on, we have paperwork to fill out.'" I usually think of agents writing up mission reports that resemble our missions when they report said mission, but I like the idea that these agents are just going to file ordinary paperwork when they get home, and that they both need to participate. A tiny little detail, that makes a lot of sense.

—doctorlit, hoping to have a bit more time at home from now on

As far as stories go, it's not a bad one. On the one hand, I did not detect any technical errors, but on the other, the story seemed kinda flat to me. Granted, not every mission needs to be an epic adventure, but IMHO, this one seemed pretty cookie-cutter: quote badfic, cite charge, repeat. There did not seem to be any conflict between the Agents and the Sues.

Speaking of the Sues, what did the Agents do to them? If they weren't killed, were they recruited? Why?

I'm currently sick and too tired to do a proper review, but I'm going to link this on the wiki – and maybe also review – as soon as I feel better.

HG

I'd like to make you aware of the follow-up to your apology down-Board, if you haven't already seen it. This post is the acceptance of your apology, and the conditions for that acceptance. The community decided to make it a bit more clear and we added this amendment.

I'd encourage you to acknowledge that you understand all of this and, of course, feel free to ask any questions you have.

Now, I apologize for derailing your Mission thread, but this is important and I wanted to make sure you see it.

-Phobos

After a second knock at RC 777's door remained unanswered, Agent Therwin shrugged. "I was hoping you could meet our founding members, but they must not be in right now. Sorry."

"Oh, that's all right," said the newest recruit to Misplaced Flora and Fauna. "I'm sure I'll see them around at lunch soon enough." She was so frustratingly average-looking—average build, average height, and with pale skin, straight blond hair and an open, wide-eyed face—that Therwin would have assumed she was a rescued Generic if he didn't already know she had come in through a World One recruitment program. She—Gwenda—also tended to wear a friendly, but clearly artificial, smile whenever Therwin was looking. He suspected it was forced for the sake of social expectation, rather than any intention to deceive, but that didn't make it any less off-putting.

"Uh, well, time is a bit unreliable in that regard . . ." Therwin himself was a tall, muscular man with short, curly hair and very dark skin, thanks to the hours of sunlight his two jobs exposed him to. His muscular physique came naturally, with not real exercise on his part, and he was always a bit self-conscious of it. Prejudice against Suvian traits aside, a muscular, powerful man who worked with wild animals was a bit of a stereotype, and one that he knew wasn't really true to life. "Anyway, our department is split into divisions, the Floral and Faunal. While you've been assigned to the Faunal Division, you should expect some overlap in your missions, since we're all specialists in specialized fields. You'll be assigned a temporary partner with knowledge of plants if you're ever given a mission that's outside your experience."

"Oh, that's just fine." That same forced smile. "I'd leave to meet more of my team!"

Therwin kept his face neutral, but on the inside, he was starting to worry. Gwenda was putting off too much of a "sheltered house wife" vibe for his tastes. "So, Gwenda, what interested you in the DMFF in the first place?" He steeled himself for the usual First Four Words.

"I just love animals! My kids got me interested in fanfiction back home, and I couldn't believe some of the ways animals are used in the stories, reduced to nothing but plot points, or mindless slaves to the Mary Sue. When I discovered my daughter worked at this place, and there was actually something I could do to help all those sweet, innocent creatures, I just had to!" Throughout her explanation, Gwenda's forced smile had slowly slipped away, leaving a much more serious and determined look in its place.

Therwin nodded, pleased. At the very least, she had more technical knowledge of the fanfiction side of the job than he had expected. "Glad to hear it, Gwenda, and glad to have you on the team."

Gwenda beamed, a much more natural smile this time.

Therwin smiled to himself as they passed the partly open door of a certain RC, though it wasn't such a nice smile. "Say, looks like another member of the team is in. Let's say hello, shall we? Hey, Ashe!" He knocked lightly and pushed it open further.

"What?" demanded a female voice from inside.

Greta brought forth her token forced smile. though it faltered a bit when she saw that the speaker was a somewhat frumpy woman wearing flannel and sitting on a bed, her arms elbow deep in a bucket, in which she appeared to be mixing mud by hand. The woman had all the hair on one side of her head shaved down to fuzz, and the fuzzy part and the longer part were both in shades of blue normally associated with cotton candy.

"Watch for Big Red," said Ashe. "She's on the floor somewhere."

"Gwenda, this is Agent Ashe, who's also Faunal Division."

"That's Awesome Ashe, damn it!"

"That's not an official title," Therwin explained quietly.

"YES IT IS."

"Ashe, this is our division's newest recruit, Gwenda."

"Oh, hey!"

Gwenda, however, was distracted by the four foot lizard that had just emerged from under the bed. It's cales were mostly brick red with some black marbling across its back in no particular pattern. It tasted the air with its tongue, saw (or smelled) the newcomers, and made a beeline for the door.

Gwenda shrank back behind Therwin, who held one foot out between himself and the approaching lizard. Big Red reached them, leaped up, and sank its teeth harmlessly into the leather boot.

"Agh! Motherf-cker," swore Ashe, pronouncing it weirdly, like she was self-censoring the letter "u." The woman jumped up from the bed and hurried over to her lizard, whose jaws seemed absolutely cavernous to Gwenda. They were stretched way open to wrap around the man's shoe.

Ashe picked up Big Red under its arms and gently shook the lizard, growling, "No-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o" until the lizard let go. "Jesus," Ashe said, "stop trying to bite people, you're not hungry, you just got fed yester—OH MY GOD." Big red had tried whip its head around and latch on to her arm. Ashe, illogically, turned Big red around until it was nose-to-nose with her. "Don't try to bite me you asshole! I f-cking love you." Big Red licked her nose.

Therwin smiled, while Gwenda continued to look a bit shell-shocked.

Ashe turned and marched her lizard over to a large hole torn in the wall, floor to ceiling, which contained an entire, rough-walled room with a stone pool and branches. The floor inside was still a bit damp with soapy water. "I'm sorry," Ashe said as she walked, "she's just grumpy 'cause I'm cleaning her home and replacing her substrate, so she has to act like a little bitch about it."

"It's fine," Therwin said calmly.

Gwenda began taking in the rest of Ashe's RC. Huge holes had been torn into the walls all around the room, and each one housed some large and bizarre animals. A huge metal rack along one wall was filled with little glass and plastic and wire tanks, decorated with plants and stones and cork-board. Other, larger tanks sat throughout the room, with larger creatures inside. A pink, fox-like animal sat sleeping on the pillow of the bed, where it had been obscured by Ashe when Gwenda had first entered the room. Even the ceiling had somehow been torn into, raising up in a rough cone shape to end in a skylight—Gwenda hadn't been in Headquarters long enough to realize how odd that part was. The cone was filled with tree branches, which served as perches for a collection of modern reptiles,ancient wined reptiles, web-sitting spiders, and one huge bird of paradise that sat way up in the top.

As Ashe rejoined the other agents, Gwenda remarked, "You . . . certainly keep a lot of pets here!"

"Pets?" said Ashe. "Oh, no, I just take care of them. Makes me feel good. Also, they're all just f-cking awesome."

The bird of paradise let out a shrill keen, and Ashe turned her head to reply with a poor imitation. "Daaaaaaaaaaaaw!" She turned back and grinned. "F-cking awesome."

Gwenda stared for several seconds before forcing out an, "I'm sure!"

"Well, we'd better get going," said Therwin.

"Oh, sure thing." Ashe smiled brightly at Gwenda and waved, despite being still next to her. "See you around! Maybe we'll get a mission together someday!"

Gwenda forced her strongest smile yet. "Oh, yes! That would be wonderful!" She backed out of the RC, turned on one heel and started walking swiftly away, leaving Therwin to follow after.

Before he could get too far, however, he heard a quiet, "You f-cking bastard asshole."

He turned back to Ashe. "What?" he asked, his eyebrows raised in mock innocence.

Ashe narrowed her eyes and shook her head, still smiling. "You always bring the newbies by my room."

Therwin shrugged. "They deserve to know what they're getting into."

Ashe chuckled, a low, "Huhuhuhuhuhuh. F-cking bastard."

A/N: Obviously, the question of whether the DMFF needs separate divisions for plant and animal focus doesn't have a place in this thread. Once I'm ready to get this spin-off properly off the ground, I'll bring it up again for the Board to discuss before moving forward.

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So ages ago I wrote a piece from an original fic, and I remember some of you guys really liking it. The universe it is set in has gone through a couple of iterations since then and this is from the latest of those, so you'll possibly recognize a few names at least. Without further ado I give you... Part 1:

----

This is an Excerpt from a no-holds-barred interview with the famous Ward of The Protectors, the most well known, and some even say first, hero group in the world to date:

“Origin stories? Wow you do want to set us up like superheroes don’t you.

But no, we’re not superheroes darling, we’re very much not. Perhaps Anti-hero would be a better way of describing us. We defend humanity, those with powers and those without, but when we do so, we don’t hold back, we do what we need to do when we need to do it to get the job done and to harm as few people as possible. But that doesn’t always mean we don’t kill anyone, especially when you think in the long term. How many times must someone break out of prison and threaten others lives before you realise that you should put them down for good? With us, that’s once if we’re being nice.

So yes, origin stories. Well I mean we weren’t bitten by radioactive animals when we were younger if that’s what you’re wondering. Each of us is a human naturally born with powers, and whilst we think we know where that’s from it is something I cannot actually reveal.

Some of us were friends long before we realised we had powers, hell James, or Tempest as you know him, and I went to the same pre-school together and worked our way up to Uni together. But university is where it all began, when our powers really began to come into their own, with the mysterious eighteenth birthday thing that couldn’t get more cliche if you’d tried, and a lot of student drinking.

Don’t ask why it helped but it did.

Now like I said, it was at university when it all started happening. We were all freshers and so were experiencing freedom for the first time. Hell some of us barely knew more than one person at first, and in Nick’s case that was because I’d somehow ended up in his bed one night after partying during freshers week.

I was studying Engineering at Imperial College, I can’t remember what everyone else was studying, but we all eventually started to mingle in similar sorts of societies and friendship groups that existed cross-universities, learning about our powers and how we could use them, in secret of course because when the government weren’t ignoring us like we didn’t exist, they were, like the rest of the world, trying to get us executed or whatever for being ‘unnatural abominations’ and the like.

So yeah, that may be where some of our hate and extreme tendencies come from, but it was necessary, or at least so we thought.

Our first real adventure together came about halfway through the second semester of our first year. We’d started actual discussion about whether to become heroes over christmas, using our social media stuff to message each other, bouncing ideas for everything from codenames to costumes between each other. But our first real chance to shine came around the end of February.

So I’m not sure if you remember, but right when this was all happening there were quite a few groups worldwide who were ‘discreetly’ getting rid of those humans with powers whilst paying, or sometimes even getting paid, as the government's looked the other way. Well we’d found one that had operated in London and decided to shut them down.

They weren’t the hardest prey looking back at it now. Probably about a dozen of them, they spent quite a lot of time spying on and researching their latest target before they struck and got out of there to a warehouse they were using as a base near Dover.

So we get a train and then a couple of taxi’s down into Dover itself, claiming to the taxi drivers when they asked that we were going to get drunk with some old friends who lived that way. And, once the drivers were gone, walked back out of town to get to our real destination.

Anyway, we find the rough area that the warehouse was in and Lucy and Nick, sorry Ghost and Spectre move forward, Spectre slipping from shadow to shadow and Ghost casually walking through the other warehouses, completely invisible and intangible checking each one as she went. The rest of us followed, Telath keeping us all linked up so we could ‘hear’ one another and talk telepathically if we needed to.

So we get to the warehouse to find it almost completely empty as it seems the group have gone to get another target. There’s a couple of guys left inside who’re meant to be watching the base but between an open skylight, Falcon’s flying skills, Clone’s transformations and Ghost and Spectre we were able to get three people inside without them realising and from there it was easy for the three of them to take down the two guards (and steal some of their pizza whilst they were at it). I never learnt the full detail, I didn’t want to know then and I’ve never asked since. All I know is that it wasn’t lethal.

But yeah, we have to sit down and wait for the rest of the group to arrive, not knowing where they’ve gone or when they’ll be back with just a single pizza to keep us entertained. Thankfully the nearest supermarket hadn’t closed and so a couple of the guys went off and bought a large amount of energy drinks which we used to try and keep ourselves awake.

Now it was about 4am when the rest of the group came back, they had a girl I remember who had the ability to control water. But they drag her inside expecting to be greeted by their buddies and instead find the nine of us half asleep instead. Both sides take like a minute to realise what’s happened and then we get into what had to be the most tired fight in history. We managed to win when Telath thought about sleep so much she broadcast it out at everybody and the group and half of us just collapsed and fell asleep.

So the group had cells on sight and so those of us who were still awake stuffed them in there before giving everyone who’d fallen asleep kind of comfortable places to stay before going to sleep ourselves.

We woke up about 1pm the next day, utterly confused, then elated at what we’d done… And then half of us realised it was a Monday and we’d missed at least one lecture, which caused a little bit of panic as we tried to work out what we’d say to our lecturers. Because “Sorry I missed the lecture because I was asleep after a hard night of fighting crime,” wasn’t going to cut it we figured.

Our second problem arose when we realised that we had no idea what to do with the group that we’d just beaten. We were still fairly idealistic at that point and the thought of simply killing them never crossed our minds. So we realised we couldn’t turn them into the police because they’d just be let out again almost immediately and our words would sooner get us all into trouble than get anything done, or get justice for all the problems the group had caused.

It was Cassie, the girl we’d rescued, who came up with an answer and so skipping the rest of Monday and spending it relaxing we headed out Monday night with the unconscious members of the group and managed to set it up so that they were all arrested for public indecency the next morning. The police didn’t believe their story about us, and so we managed to get away scott free. Not that we knew it until Cassie (who turned out to be a local) let us know because we hadn’t heard anything about it up in London where we had returned post haste.

So yeah, that was our first adventure together, our ‘origin story’ if you could call it that. Cassie is still a good friend and has helped a couple of times, most recently in the Normandy Incident, which I’m sure you’ll want me to tell you all about later.”

To read the first part of this exclusive interview turn to page 23 and make sure to get your newspapers for the rest of the week as Ward talks his way through the entire history of The Protectors.

---

Daniel loved wandering the hallways. While most people saw only a maze of nondescript gray corridors, he could pick out subtle details and memorize interesting routes.

Most of his navigational superpower was the ability to not think of a rhinoceros with a teacup after being told not to think about it. Since he only didn't want to go back to his quarters, he kept part of his attention on wanting to go back there.

He noticed a wet patch on the floor and raindrops falling from the ceiling. He squinted upwards and could barely make out a lighter shade of grey. Daniel had never seen a ventilation plothole opening directly into the sky before, and wondered if it was unstable. He made a mental note to check on it again later.

After a half hour of wandering, and seeing nothing more interesting than a trail of sue-blood, Daniel made a left turn into one of his favorite hallways. Though there was nothing to erode the walls, the concrit had begun to crumble. He stared closely, trying to pick phrases out of the fossilized words.

When he was tired of staring at walls, Daniel began walking again. He trailed his hand lightly along the wall, knowing that he could feel the invisible intersections. That's when he had the feeling that he was being followed. He made a quick left turn and then spun around. A woman almost ran into him.

“Sorry.” She stepped to the side and walked down the corridor.

Daniel jogged to catch up with her. “Why were you following me?”

“You seemed to know where you were going.”

He'd heard of this. “Oh, you're using the Dirk Gently method. Follow me.”

Daniel began walking at a brisk pace. He turned left when he smelled fudge and right at the desire to sing showtunes. Soon, they came upon a stairwell and Daniel stopped to point. “That couch got wedged so that no one can move it.”

The woman blinked dispassionately. “I see.”

“I thought you would find it interesting. Now I remember what happens when you assume.” He began walking again and the woman followed.

After exiting the stairwell, they made a two-hundred-and-seventy-degree turn to follow a warm breeze. Then they then walked though the desire to take bleep products, though Daniel couldn't identify it. Most agents would either reach into their pockets or grit their teeth at that point, but he was a simple cafeteria worker and didn't have any missions to block out. The woman was impassive.

After five more left turns, he asked, “By the way, where are you going?”

“I am here.” The woman pointed to the door to RC 51724. “Thank you.”

“Good luck.” Daniel began walking again.

Fanfic from a very small fandom, in fact- an excellent little series called Ruby Redfort, which is a great read if you like really cool codes and spy organisations. This is from a longer character/friendship study, but the basic gist of the situation is that Ruby and Hitch (spy butler dude) are at a rather boring party because of her parents. Ruby's been playing a game for a while involving a travelling lemon (I may have been inspired by Cabin Pressure, haha), and- well. i'll stop rambling and post the fic, shall I?

----

“Hey buster, you look bored,” said Ruby, who had appeared at his elbow. He glanced down at her, and offered a half-shrug.
“It’s not too bad,” he said. “I can deal.” Internally, he was hoping desperately that she’d find some way to shake things up without actually causing any sort of damage. God was this party dull.
“Sure you can,” she scoffed. “Just a house full of people who’d rather talk about their social life than anything interesting.” She grinned, and held up a lemon that she had produced from seemingly nowhere. “What say we stir this party up a bit?”
He eyed it for a moment, trying not to smile. “You’re aware of the presence of the President of Yugoslavia at this party, I’m sure.”
“And the Prime Minister of Nepal,” Ruby nodded, and tossed the lemon up into the air before snatching it easily. “That’s why we’re playing airplane rules tonight.”
He leaned on the nearest table, the smile creeping across his face despite himself. “Dare I ask what ‘airplane rules’ entail?” What a kid.
Ruby’s smile mirrored his. She looked obviously thrilled that he had decided to play along. Apparently she had been just as bored as he was. “Well, the usual rules apply, of course.”
“Of course,” Hitch agreed blandly.
“Apart from that- well, I hide the lemon in plain sight, you have to locate and retrieve it without anybody noticing, and then hide it again for me. If anybody spots either of us with the lemon, the game’s forfeit.”
“How long does this usually go on for?”
Ruby offered up a sheepish shrug. “Hours, sometimes. The longest I’ve ever played was a rally of about 32.”
“You and Clancy, I assume,” Hitch guessed, smiling faintly.
“Ambassador Crew’s Christmas party, year of ’69,” Ruby said fondly. “And what a night that was.” She frowned. “We would have gone on for longer if the cook hadn’t found the thirty-third hiding spot before I did. She decided that lemon would be a neat addition to the salmon dinner and, well, that was the end of that.”
Hitch laughed, and then glanced down at the lemon again, smile falling abruptly off his face. “I can’t believe I’m considering this. If LB finds out-”
“But she won’t,” Ruby interrupted, “because we’re both excellent at this game. And it’s not as if we’re breaking into a secret Spectrum vault, we’re just-” She pointedly tossed the lemon from hand to hand a couple of times. “-throwing a lemon around.”
Hitch rolled his eyes, sighing in defeat. “Fine. You start, then.”
Ruby grinned, triumphant. “You’re the best butler, you know that?”
“House manager,” Hitch corrected half-heartedly as Ruby squeezed between two people and disappeared into the chaos and bustle of the party.
-
“The Lemon is in play,” Ruby hissed at him a short while later as they brushed by each other. Hitch bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing out loud at how very serious she sounded, and instead focused his attention on surveying the party for any signs of an errant, cleverly-hidden lemon.
It took him nearly ten minutes and a momentary false alarm with somebody’s brightly-colored yellow handbag to track down the lemon, which was almost smugly resting on a drinks tray carried by a tuxedo-clad waiter.
“I’ll take this for you,” he suggested to the surprised member of the catering staff, pulling the tray smoothly from the other man’s grasp and moving off into the crowd, sliding the lemon off the tray and into his loose grasp as he did so.
As various members of the group reached over to Hitch for the last of the drinks, he dropped the lemon in the jacket pocket of the man closest to him- tall, with a severe looking moustache- and deposited the now-empty drinks tray on a nearby table. He then retreated back into the anonymity of the crowd, mission successfully completed.
A flash of scarlet in the corner of his vision made him turn, and he raised an eyebrow as Ruby darted over to another tray of drinks to snatch a glass of wine. She held it in one hand, and sauntered over to the group that he had just visited with the air of somebody not looking or caring where they’re going. What followed next was an almost artful collision as she managed to spill every last drop of the red wine on the man with the moustache without actually getting any on herself. Both of them ended up sprawled on the ground.
Ruby sprung up instantly, offering her hand to the man and babbling apologies. “My gosh, sir, I’m so sorry- I didn’t see where I was going! Are you all right? Do you need help?”
“That’s quite alright, miss,” the moustached man began, but Ruby was having none of it.
“I simply must take your coat,” she said, doing just that- tugging it straight off his shoulders before he could even protest. Scooping the lemon out of the pocket, she tucked it behind her back with one hand. She gave the jacket a perfunctory examination, then handed it straight back to him. “Actually, I don’t need it, thanks anyway! Once again, I’m very sorry, and my mother can recommend a very good drycleaner if you need it. Have a wonderful night!”
And she was gone, before anybody could even question what a teenage girl was doing wandering around with a glass of wine in the first place.
Hitch made a noise of slight incredulity at this, and turned, trying to figure out where Ruby was going next.
-
An hour later, and the lemon was still firmly in play. Hitch was not ashamed to admit that he was having a lot more fun than he should really be having at this sort of party. Usually the high point of the evening was when one of the dignitaries had a few too many shots of whiskey and had to be escorted outside by security.
Tonight, however-
He spotted Ruby’s latest hiding spot as he passed by where Ruby’s parents were talking with somebody who looked as if he were a ruler of some small country somewhere, and paused for a moment as he took a moment to appreciate Ruby’s creativity at hiding it in her mother’s handbag, of all places.
This appreciation was quickly followed by slight trepidation as he wondered how he would get it out without being sucked into a two hour-long conversation.
 

‘Oh, bloody hell.’

‘Oh, no, Finch, it wasn’t bloody at all,’ Bingle carefully explained, stopping in the corridor, gesturing. ‘It was snowy, more than anything else. And it wasn’t in hell, either, Finch. Eastern bit of the Sahara, in fact.’

Finch dragged his ocular in Bingle’s direction. ‘Not bloody that! I-ve had a-’ but he was cut off by the wooo wooo wooo of his damage alarm. ‘That.’

‘Oh, dear.’ Bingle quirked his head and leant in, frowning. ‘Are you quite okay, Finch?’

‘I-m seeing everything backwards.’ Finch grumbled. His ocular was twisting and spinning.

‘Everything backwards?’ Bingle asked.

‘Everything backwards!’

Bingle held up two fingers. ‘How many fingers do you see, Finch?’

‘I see a balled up fist.’

Bingle held up three fingers. ‘How about now?’

‘A balled up fist.’

Bingle held up his other hand, raising seven fingers. ‘Now, Finch?’

‘I just see two balled up fists, Bingle!’ Finch howled. ‘And the one on the right is losing wrinkles!’

‘Oh, dear,’ Bingle commented, taking his hands down. He watched and frowned as Finch fluttered awkwardly through the air, spurted hissing wind from his vents, tapped against a wall and rebounded like it had kicked him.

‘Oh bloody dear, Bingle. I need DoSAT!’ Finch was rapidly turning into a mess of woop woop woop, whirs, hums, clicks and clacks and the occasional clunk, as he bounced off another wall.

‘You know how to fix yourself, don’t you, Finch?’ Bingle asked, gently holding Finch with two hands to prevent him from bouncing down away through the corridors like a slow, complaining pinball.

‘I-m seeing things backwards, Bingle,’ Finch hissed. His ocular was flicking everywhere. ‘I-d probably install an extra panel over my central computer access rather than opening it!’

‘It would be more durable, Finch, you know.’

‘Oh, shut up, Bingle.’

Bingle released Finch, pointing at nothing, as an idea came to him. ‘I know, Finch!’ A cheery grin spread over his face. He began moving towards Finch’s central computer access. ‘I can fix you!’ Finch slapped away his hands. ‘I’m very well-versed in-’ Finch slapped away his hands. ‘I once took an entire course in robo-’ Finch slapped away his hands. ‘You know-’ Finch slapped away his hands, once more. Bingle straightened his back and folded his arms. ‘Finch, I somehow feel that you don’t trust me.’

‘I won-t bloody let you, Bingle. Not after last time.’

‘Last time’ resounded through Bingle’s mind like a shout in a cavern. Last time. Last time? Bingle hardly recognised the words. ‘What happened last time, Finch?’

‘You don-t bloody remember last time, Bingle,’ Finch said, dinging off a wall and slowly hovering to the other side of the corridor. ‘Because when you pressed the wrong series of buttons and jettisoned my ocular out its socket, it hit you on the bloody head so hard it erased your memory of the entire day.’

‘Oh, I think I would remember that, Finch.’

‘I. Need. Bloody. DoSAT.’ Finch hissed.

Bingle sighed and shook his head. ‘Oh, of course, Finch.’ And within just a second, his disappointment had already rushed away, disappearing to that same dark, crowded place where most of his other thoughts and memories went. ‘We’ll get there, don’t worry!’ And Bingle took hold of Finch and pushed him ahead. He started whistling. Phwoo-wo-woo, he went.

The general noise of a malfunctioning Finch and his not-technically-malfunctioning friend, Bingle, as they stepped through the corridors went like this: woop woop woop, whirrr, phwoo-wo-wooo, bugger buggering bloody, click clack, woop woop woop, whirrr, phwoo-wo-woo, bugger buggering bloody, click clack and so on. Bingle saw, grinned at, and waved at a great variety of people Finch did not recognise. One or two of the people didn’t recognise Bingle, either, and they creased their brows and tilted their heads, before shrugging and continuing on their ways.

‘Why does this always happen to me, Bingle?’ Finch moaned.

‘Well, Finch,’ Bingle said, pushing Finch around a very large pothole in the floor. ‘It would be terribly odd for, say, agent Alleb, the knight, to have a software malfunction.’

‘But why?’ Finch asked. ‘Why is that odd? Who bloody decided that?’

Bingle shrugged. ‘Charles Darwin, perhaps. He was quite smart, you know.’

‘Why can-t knights go around having software malfunctions, and why can-t I go around wearing bloody plate armour and bowing down to posh ladies with cones on their heads?’

‘Because that’s not how it is, Finch.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, don’t ask why, Finch,’ Bingle said, piloting Finch around a prone agent, lying on the floor. ‘There is no why, Finch. There is is, but there is no why.’

‘It-s like you hate intellectual consideration and discourse, Bingle,’ Finch muttered.

‘I feel its a waste of energy, Finch,’ Bingle said, turning them around a corner. ‘Questions without answers, Finch, I’ve found are far less useful, in the long term, than, say, having lunch. Reading a book. Not malfunctioning.’

‘There has to be an answer!’ Finch exclaimed. His ocular almost looked rabid, in its wild spins and sudden flicks.

‘Ironic Overpower,’ Bingle said.

‘That just extends the question.’

Bingle shook his head. ‘We are going to stop your malfunctions, Finch. Then we shall have lunch, and I think I’ll read a book.’

‘You-re an immortal wizard-man with secrets from behind the universe,’ Finch said. Something unfriendly inside him made a loud clicking noise. ‘I would have figured, Bingle, you-d know more. Or care more.’

Bingle smiled cheerily. ‘I know plenty, Finch. I do think that’s why I don’t care.’ A pair of heavy-looking blast doors had appeared in front of them. ‘We’re here, Finch.’

‘Thank God. You-re starting to get your hair back, Bingle.’

‘Good heavens.’

Chapter 1

Fire. The world was ablaze and one woman was trapped in the middle of it. Something had pinned her legs and left her at the mercy of the flames. She tried to call for help, but the blaze sucked the air from her lungs and replaced it with smoke. I'm going to die, was the last thing she thought before her skin caught fire and she began to burn.

Kim "KC" Hayes sat up in her bed, batting at the flames that had been so vivid in her mind. It took a moment for her senses to tell her that the flames were just a memory; that they hadn't come back to finish what they had started. The crash had been months ago, and the burns she had sustained were healing well. Why should she continue to dream of the fire so often?

She looked around her room as she tried to catch her breath. The blanket was on the floor and her sheets were soaked with sweat. That wasn't unusual on the nights when flames haunted her dreams. Everything else seemed to be in order. The clock on her dresser told her that it was 5:12 AM; just over an hour before she had to be up for work.

KC didn't feel like going back to sleep. The prospect of further nightmares was not one that she particularly wanted to face, at the moment. She decided to get an early start, instead. Swinging her feet over the edge of the bed, she started toward the bathroom to shower.

After she started the water for her shower, she peeled off her sweaty tank top and shorts. She took a moment to examine herself in the mirror. Her burn scars stood out first, pink and shiny against the backdrop of her white skin. They covered a portion of her chest, shoulder and neck where her blouse had caught fire. It would have been worse, but some bystanders has pulled her from her car and put out the flames.

She ran her fingers through her auburn hair. It had been shoulder length before the accident. The flames from her shirt had singed a fair portion of hair on the right side. She had cut it short to restore some semblance of symmetry to her head, as well as to erase a reminder of the crash.

The mirror began to fog over, obscuring her image. She stepped into the shower and let the hot water wash the sticky residue of sweat from her body. She adjusted to temperature of the water to make it cooler, because her burns were still sensitive to heat. She carefully cleaned the pink skin of the scars.

When she was finished in the shower, she dried herself off and applied ointment to her wounds. She then covered them, as best she could, with gauze, which she held in place with medical tape. The gauze would keep her clothes from rubbing against the burns and irritating them. That done, she returned to her bedroom to get dressed.

Ten minutes later, KC was in the kitchen of her one bedroom apartment. She had a small pot of coffee brewing and a couple of frozen waffles in the toaster. While she waited for her breakfast, she turned on the television that she kept on her counter

“...President will be giving a speech for their graduation ceremony,” said the Anchor from behind her desk. “Now for some local news.”

The waffles popped up and KC went to get them from the toaster, barely listening to the report. She only heard brief snatches from the television while getting her food and coffee.

“..uelson has been missing since...”

She returned to the table and, when she looked up, saw that they had moved on to sports. She wasn’t interested in that, so she turned the television off and ate her breakfast.

~*~

Waiting for the train was KC’s least favorite part of getting to work now. She was used to driving her car into the city, but she no longer had one. It was her fault, though, and she considered the train to be her penance. She stood on the platform in the dawn light, with a dozen other commuters, in her skirt, blouse and tennis shoes. Her work appropriate shoes were in her bag. It was just like any other morning.

KC leaned forward to look up the track for her train. It was just coming around the bend and would reach the station in about a minute. When she turned back, to wait for the train, she felt like someone was watching her. She couldn’t shake the feeling. Looking across the tracks to the other platform she could only see two people. The one closest to her was reading a newspaper, the other was too far down the platform for KC to tell where he were looking. There was no reason him to be watching her, in particular, and there were at least a half dozen people closer to the man. Still...

She didn’t have much time to wonder as her train pulled up, blocking her view of the other side of the tracks. When she had boarded the train and found a seat, she tried to locate the man on the other platform, again. She couldn’t see him until the train started moving. She caught a glimpse of him as her car passed. It almost seemed like his head turned to follow her car, but it was hard to tell with the speed of the train. She hadn’t even been able to make out any detail of his face.

KC endeavored to put it out of her mind. She was almost thirty-five, which was far too old to be jumping at shadows. It was probably just the nightmares working on her nerves, anyway.

Chapter 2

As she sat at her desk, KC’s mind wandered. It was getting to be the middle of the afternoon and she had finished the bulk of her work. She was thinking of calling it an early day going home. The loss of over an hour of sleep was beginning to wear on her. She zoned out for another couple of minutes before finally deciding to pack it in.

She walked to her boss’s office down the hall and stuck her head in. “Hey, Bill,” she said to the balding man behind the desk. “Mind if I take off a little early today?”

She didn’t hear his reply. Something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye.

“Are you listening to me?” asked Bill, snapping her out of her trance.

“I’m sorry, what?” There had been someone outside the window. She was sure of it.

“I said you can go home, and it looks like you really need to. Are you feeling all right?”

“Fine,” she said, trying to play it off. “I’m fine. Just a little tired. Thought I saw someone out the window. But we’re on the twelfth floor, so that’s unlikely, right? Just need to get some sleep.”

Bill stood up and came around his desk. He looked concerned. “Listen, Kim,” he said, “I’m worried about you. Don’t get me wrong, we were in the weeds while you were out after the accident, but if you need some more time off, just tell me.”

“Thanks, Bill. But honestly, I’m fine.” Her assurance didn’t seem to ease his concern.

“Well,” he finally said, “go home and get some rest, at least.” There wasn’t much more he could say.

KC went back to her office to collect her things. She looked out her own window and thought about what she had seen. There had been someone outside that window. She knew it. Even out of the corner of her eye, they’d been oddly clear and focused. She sighed. It occurred to her that she might be getting worked up over a window washer. She needed some sleep before she became completely paranoid.

She grabbed her bag, locked her office, and headed for the elevators. A short ride later and she was waving to the security guard at the front desk as she strode out of the lobby and out into the bright, afternoon sun. She turned toward the train but was delayed at the corner when the traffic signal turned.

While she waited for the light to change, she decided to put her mind at ease. Bill’s office was on this side of the building. KC looked up, expecting to see a platform or, at the very least, the ropes that were always there right before and after the platform was in place. She saw neither. There was nothing on the building to suggest that window washers were working. It had happened less than fifteen minutes ago, there should be something.

KC realized that the light had changed when she was jostled by the crowd moving into the cross walk. She continued her walk to the train, periodically looking over her shoulder at her building. She had to have missed something. People didn’t just appear at twelfth floor windows.

She hurried on to the train station. She was obviously imagining things and the only way to fix that was to get some sleep. She considered stopping by a pharmacy for some sleeping pills, to ensure a full night’s rest.

When she made it to the train platform the electronic board said her train was due in a few minutes. She sat down on a bench to wait and looked around at the people on the other platfrom. Her eyes were drawn to movement as a man walked onto the platform from the stairs. He seemed familiar to KC, though she couldn’t see his face. He had his back to her, and all she could see, in any detail, were his jeans and tee-shirt.

She continued to watch as the man crossed the platform, walking further away from her. It was odd, people stopped talking as he approached and moved out of his way, but no one ever seemed to look at him. He just went where he wanted and the crowd shifted uncomfortably around him. When he reached the very end of the platform he turned and looked toward KC, and the feeling of being watched washed over her again.

It was the same man from that morning. It had to be. He shouldn’t have been far enough away for her to not be able to make out any detail of his face but, strain all she liked, KC made no progress in trying to find any identifiable detail. However, she had the unsettling feeling that he was smiling at her.

KC surged to her feet just as a train flashed between them on his side of the tracks. When it had pulled well past the place he had been standing the man was nowhere to be seen.

He’s either on that train or on his way over here, she thought to herself. Her own train was pulling into the station. When the doors opened, she hurried inside and kept watch on the stairway up to the platform. She wasn’t going to let him sneak up on her.

She breathed a sigh of relief when the doors closed and she hadn’t seen any sign that the creepy man was trying to get to this train. She realized that she was slouched low in her seat and sat up. She needed a plan.

I can’t go to the police, can I? she thought. Well, I could, if I'm fine with being locked in a loony bin for claiming to see people outside of twelfth floor windows. Do I have to tell them that? Maybe not. I should go to the police.

As she was making her decision, the train was pulling into the next stop. She got off the train and headed for the nearest police station.

"I know that face!"

Joyce's reverie was interrupted by her daughter's voice. She turned her head, unable to keep the smile off it. "Hello, Mom. How was your day, Mom? I'm just off to clean my room, Mom-"

"Don't think you can get out of it that easily," Buffy said with a wink and a knowing tone to her voice. "I know that face. That right there is a grade-A, accept-no-substitutes, 100% new guy face. So c'mon, spill!"

"New guy face, huh?" Joyce tried to humour her daughter for a moment, and then gave up, peals of laughter echoing through the room.

"Mom, what's so funny-"

"Nothing, sweetie, nothing. You're right, though, there's someone new in my life."

Buffy squeaked with glee and hugged her mother. "Yay! So, who is he? Tell me all about him."

"Well, they're about my height, dark hair, strong eyes - they really are lovely eyes - my age or thereabouts. Divorced because the ex's idea of a dream home was a shotgun shack in a desert in Australia, oh, and their voice, that accent-"

Buffy pounced. "Accent? Mom, did you get with the hot pool boy?"

Joyce kept giggling; Buffy didn't mind. She couldn't. The last time her Mom had been this happy, well... she couldn't really remember. "Honey, if we wanted a pool boy, we'd have to get a pool first."

"Hey, I can dream. So, keep going, what's the accent?"

"British. Veeeeeery British."

Buffy went pale. "Giles? Mom, he's, like, made of tweed!"

"It's not Rupert, although he's a lovely man who I'm sure will make some lucky woman a lovely filing cabinet someday. Come on, they're in the kitchen right now."

Intrigued to the point of barely suppressed oooohs, Buffy walked into the kitchen after her Mom, in which sat-

"Oh, hello. You must be Buffy! Joyce has told me so much about you..."

Buffy looked at the mid-sized, dark-haired British woman. They were really nice eyes, now that she looked, but there was something else there -

"Your old mom's got a few surprises in her yet, you know."

"I... yeah. You, uh, you sure do, Mom! Uh... hey."

"Hello! Yes. Sorry. Um." Ah, thought Buffy, the Giles is strong with this one. Wait, why does this feel so, um, normal? "Sorry. It's just... she'd be about your age now."

Oh. That was it.

"Sorry, where are my manners!" The woman stood up, proffering a hand to shake. "Monica. Monica Wilkins."

---

AN:-
'"Their names are Wendell and Monica Wilkins, and it's been their lifelong ambition to move to Australia," said Hermione. "And... they don't have any children."'
(Paraphrased from memory)

I don't think I can eat any more virtual cake! Mmph!

-Twistey

...but didn't because apparently I can't HTML.

Huh, I didn't know that—that the WHO ever officially considered it a disease, or that they stopped. I'm glad I do now.

Now, if we could just get people to stop seeking "cures"... {= P

~Neshomeh

*throws rainbow confetti in the air*

There is nothing in here that makes me care about the characters. In the first sample, they both wander into HQ, but they don't come across as upset, interested, surprised, confused... anything. There's no emotion there at all. Just he said/she said dialogue.

I can see you're aware of that being a problem and have tried to work on it. You've managed to avoid them being literal talking heads - there's a fair amount of movement in both stories. But none of that is translating into emotion. Take a look at these examples:

“What? Normally, humans just catch us in a Pokéball.” Shadow glared at Canopus. “If you try, I will make you stop.”
Canopus picked Shadow up, causing him to struggle.
“Put me down!”
“Fine.” Canopus placed him on the floor.

Why did Canopus pick Shadow up? Because he was annoying? Because she wanted to show her strength? Because she found it funny? Absolutely no idea. And why did she put him down? Again, there's no emotion there - it feels like "Verbal input 'put me down' received; executing command."

“... Shadow, the food’s worse than what I had in Tokyo and that’s saying something.” Canopus slapped the hand away. “Trust me on that one.”
Shadow frowned before focusing. A pile of toxic waste appeared in front of the door.
“Are you trying to dissuade me with that?” Canopus raised an eyebrow. “Some demons are worse than that.”
“Like what?” asked Shadow. Canopus pulled out her phone.
“Well, there’s Foul Slime, for one. Look.” She showed Shadow the picture.
“Okay. that could be worse. Anyway…” Shadow blinked and both the door and the console disappeared. “I’m not letting you go.”

This one goes even more into the no emotion. Shadow has no reason for creating the pile (I assume that was an attack? Or just an illusion?). Canopus doesn't find it amusing, or mildly disgusting, or contemptuous. Shadow has no reaction to being flatly rebuffed, nor does he find the picture she shows him disgusting, informative, horrifying... anything. "Visual input received; executing next dialogue."

Then there's the dialogue itself. It looks like you're suffering from what I usually call Cowrite Disease, where both characters try and cram as much information as possible into their dialogue, and reply to everything. Only... people don't work like that. If I walked up to you and said "Hi, my name's Huinesoron, how are you doing? Also would you like a cookie? And by the way, I've got this new story you might like to check out, what's your email address?", you'd a) think I was crazy, and b) say something like "Uh, I'd love a cookie, thanks... what's this about a story?"

What you wouldn't say is: "Hi, I'm CodeCom, I'm doing fine. A cookie sounds nice! Anyway, wow, I'd really like to read it, here's my email address. By the way, what's your favourite colour? And have you ever played any Pokemon games?"

Now look at this:

“What?!” the grey demon spun on its four legs. “I’m a Pokémon, not a demon. Whatever that is.”
“Trying to lie, huh? I’m pretty sure you’re a demon, though I’ve never seen one like you.” Canopus pulled out her smartphone and flicked to the Demon Summoning App. “What happened to all my demons?! What the hell?!”
“I’m not a demon! I’m a Zorua!” the demon took a few steps back. “And there’s no need to threaten me. Everyone knows what a Pokemon is, at least.”
“Well, I don’t. And it doesn't matter what your species is, that still makes you a demon.” Canopus glared down at her smartphone. “Great, I’m also stuck with all the weak skills. Why am I telling you this anyway?”

It's not quite so blatant as my examples, but you've definitely got multi-threaded conversation there. It's a very easy trap to fall into, because that is how people talk online. A lot of my early missions do the same thing (and co-writes are particularly prone to it). But it also feels nothing like actual conversation.

Okay, so at this point I think it's clear I'm going to say Permission denied, but don't let that dissuade you! You're doing an awful lot of things right. Your spelling etc is good; you've avoided Talking Heads Disorder (well done!); you clearly know a bit about PPC HQ; you've managed to keep your characters consistent across two stories. A bit of work on getting them to talk like people and react like non-robots and you'll be set. (For the former, try reading the dialogue out, and work out what you'd say in response; if you'd like, I'll scribble down some 'faux-Shadow replies' to Canopus' dialogue in the first story, to show you what I mean.)

Moving on to some other points I noticed:

-It's standard in online writing to leave an empty line between paragraphs. If you don't want to do that (for some reason?), at least indent the first line; it makes reading much easier.

-When you fixed that line Bramandin pointed out, you left it as 'I only work with people only for a mission.' That's two 'only's in a row, which sounds super weird (read it out!); I think you were originally aiming for 'I only work with people on a mission'.

-'Shadow stalked over and punched Shadow in the face.' Shadow, I know you can make illusory copies of yourself, but don't get carried away. ;)

-Looking now at your bios (I tend to avoid them until I need to read them; I prefer to get character information from the stories):

--Both your characters are presented as being interesting primarily for their emotions, and the interplay between them - reserved Canopus (who has a hidden fun side) and playful Shadow (who can be irritating when he doesn't shut up). But... well, see previous comments about emotions in your writing. The only reason I know from your stories that Canopus is reserved is that she flat-out says it. Ditto for Shadow being a prankster. It's a really interesting dynamic you have planned, but right now it isn't coming across in your writing.

--I have no problems with the powers and backgrounds; two things, though:

a) Canopus is a trained, jaded, scarred and emotionally-battered professional at 17? Is that... common in her 'verse?

b) Do Zorua normally have names? Most Pokemon don't unless they're captured. I remember having this same conversation about Skarm's agent Falchion.

--Be aware that we have another (mute) Zorua in HQ.

--RC numbers are normally... well... numbers. Check the list. '4SMT4A' strays quite a bit further from that than normal.

-I have no issues with the badfic you've chosen.

If anyone can offer better advice than me on the emotional issue, I'd appreciate it; I'm aware that I haven't been very clear.

hS

First Meeting
First off, this is not my style. Probably because I've never had a lick of interest in demon hunting 'verses and rarely enjoy magic smartphone apps and other enchanted computers. I am unlikely to become a regular reader of your spinoff. That said, I read the story, and it had a a lot of high and low points which stuck out to me.

Canopus picking Shadow up. . . feels a little abrupt (I hadn't imagined them standing close enough together that this would be easy), but it's also pretty funny -- Shadow's just been strutting around, talking about how he's powerful enough to fight Canopus off, and when he gets picked up, all he can do is struggle and beg to be put down. It might be a a little too subtle, though: I missed the joke the first time I read through the story.

“You do realise that you seem even more like a demon to me, right?” I like this line :)

Canopus is oddly upfront and casual about her issues, immediately admitting -- no, declaring -- that the reason she avoids people is too stop herself from getting hurt. I actually kind of like the idea of a character who treats typical angst-topics as no big deal -- there's a lot of potential for humor there.

The ending is a little abrupt, but I think it works. They've met, their relationship has been established, and I don't really need to know how they spent the rest of their search -- although I would like a story about how they realized where they were and changed their attitude from "trying to escape" to "hey, let's work here." But that can wait, I suppose!

SPaG:“What?!” the grey demon spun on its four legs. You want a capital-T The here.

Lawsuit
Is Shadow in human or Pokemon form during this story?

Did. . . did Shadow make a pile of toxic waste appear? Why? From Canopus' reaction, it seems like the pile of toxic waste was supposed to make her reconsider the idea of a lawsuit, somehow. I don't understand.

Ooooooooh, Canopus sees Shadow as a friend! Cute.

Shadow's clone spell seems out of the blue. They weren't in a fight, really. . . well, they seemed to mostly be verbally sparring. I wasn't expecting Canopus to physically lash out -- why did Shadow take precautions?

Oh, Shadow. Do not tempt the Ironic Overpower :)

The ending for this one was definitely too abrupt. Canopus' confession that she was kidding came very quickly, and then you cut the story off in the middle of Shadow's reaction -- I would like to see more of what Shadow thinks of being lied to beyond a simple, vague, "What?!" and a shocked stare. Has he lost trust in her? Does he think it's hilarious? This story doesn't feel over to me.

Verdict
Your writing is not my thing at all, but quite nice in its way. It's enjoyable, but there are spots which need quite a bit of work: my prediction is that you'll be denied Permission, but you'll get your own spinoff on your second try.

--Key

Hmmm, another intelligent Pokemon. I don't think we've got too many yet.

It's interesting that both agents are pranksters.

Hmmm, the grammar on your first meeting seems pretty good. I noticed a few mistakes. "I only work with people only a mission. "



Lawsuit feels like a better story. "food’s worse that what I had in Tokyo" I thought that agents didn't get paid at all.

I would like to hear a bit about your agents' abilities and how you plan to use them. We get a good demonstration of Shadow. It seems like more than "lol, I don't need a disguise generator." Does Canopus' cell-phone give her any special abilities? I am concerned that her training will just allow her to wail on Sues without being in danger.

Who is ready for a trip back to the planet Thra? Netflix announced Thursday that it is producing a 10-episode TV series prequel to Jim Henson’s 1982 fantasy film, The Dark Crystal.

The series is called The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and takes place many years before the events of the much-beloved movie. According to the official synopsis, the show concerns three Gelfling who discover the horrifying secret behind the Skeksis’ power, and set out on an epic journey to ignite the fires of rebellion and save their world.

The series will be shot in the U.K. and will star an ensemble of fantastical creatures created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop and Brian Froud, the original feature’s conceptual designer. Filmmaker Louis Leterrier (Now You See Me, The Incredible Hulk) will executive-produce the series and direct.

(This seemed like the best place to say so.)

I was busy hanging out with my in-laws and having an important choir performance, so I haven't been online all weekend. Just in case anyone was wondering. I'll try to get back on track this week. I know there's more work to do.

~Neshomeh

After a week of pain, suffering, and studying, I've finally finished my finals. On a side note, I feel as if I've been hit by a truck. Huinesoron, you just reminded me that I should be watching more Star Trek. Thank you, I truly do need more fandom stuff in my life. Have a good weekend!

Reaction to the Fandom News:
Oh, that's awesome! I don't know too much about Star Trek stuff past TNG (haven't done much research), but if Star Trek has been a thing for this long, it's probably still good, right? The lens flares are kinda humorous for me, considering my school band had a concert yesterday evening and someone said about the bright auditorium lights: "Oh god! Lens flares! It's like Star Trek all over again!"

Reaction to the Silly News:
I don't know much about Japan's current systems (wow, do I seriously know more about the world before I was born than I do about what it is now?) but I definitely can say I'm not surprised that that's a law. The country is very tradition-oriented and tends to keep to itself, which I guess sort of gives anime an excuse for not being the most politically correct. (One more point to consider in the debate.) As for the King of the Netherlands... Well, there's gotta be some way for heads of state to have fun and get away from the responsibilities and the publicity for a while! :P

Reaction to the Serious News:
Yeah, that would've caused a bit of controversy.

Reaction to the Not News:
...Care to elaborate? Otherwise I'm probably going to look up "grand canyon haunted" on Google to see if there's anyone who believes that there literally are ghosts there. :P

And my own addition:
Anyone who reads this, here's a writing exercise idea for you. Go onto the Superpower Wiki (link below my signature) and hit "Random Page." Then come up with a character with the specific power you get. (It's okay if you click it again because you get something a bit Sueish, but if you get something really unique and obscure, please do it!)

-Twistey

Superpower Wiki: http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Superpower_Wiki

Also, that's an awesome picture of the Grand Canyon.

Also also, the article on Princess Mako says Emperor Akihito is considering abdication? I wonder why? And for that matter, why isn't the Japanese Emperor allowed to abdicate? I guess it's a holdover from back when the Emperor had way more political power. Any Japanese political history experts, feel free to weigh in.

I'm not sure if any of you watch this excellent little show, but it looks like there's going to be a sixth season! Personally, I'm delighted that I'll get to see more of Joan's wonderful fashion sense (and by extension, Lucy Liu's lovely face). Yeah I'm shallow.

Also the King of Netherlands news make me laugh incredulously, so there's definitely that

Definitely keeping an eye out for Blank Sprite, in any case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLzpXciijjA

~Neshomeh

Just know that we'll save that spot in the bin if you ever feel like stopping by.

-Phobos

I hope we'll see you again one day but for now, goodbye.

Sorry it's taken me forever to respond to this. Real Life, that rat bastard, got in the way.

Anyway, as for your request for betas, as you might recall, I am very familiar with MLP and it's fandom. However, as last stated, I am going through some Real Life things right now that make it difficult for me to do so. I'd be happy to try, but don't be surprised if it takes a while for me to get back to you.

You can reach me at tds3ak with Google's email service.

I used to watch the original MLP and collect the toys. I've watched FiM, though I might slip and think a Friendship is Witchcraft episode is canon.

I'm willing to research. I've got plenty of time on my hands.

For betaing, you might have to ask me to clarify some things.

I read part of the story with Feratu, not sure if I finished it in the past. How many agents are on that mission? Plus with mentioning other members of Skarmory's army, there were too many characters to keep track of.

bramandintook@gmail.com

What a way to open a Board post! What a way to come back!

I'm Twistey (although I won't be called that for long, as I'll explain later), and I joined the PPC some time this year (shoot, couldn't grab the date before the post disappeared). I came here out of curiosity, then got hooked on the original idea of this place. I'm into a crud ton of fandoms (MLP being one of them, as you can see), and my interests include game design/coding, writing, drawing, crafting, and pretty much anything creative. My main thing used to be Scratch, but I'm working on getting to Newgrounds and other places (hence why the Twistey alias will soon be dropped.) It's very nice to meet you, and great to hear about both the return and the recovery. Now that you mention it, I should go read some of your missions.

Nice to meet you!

-Twistey