[Art/Writing] Jairus: Merry Christmas

[Lysander]

Lovely, and yet, almost sad at the same time... I've actually thought about that before, love being the final explanation here.   

[Jairus]

Lovely, and yet, almost sad at the same time... I've actually thought about that before, love being the final explanation here.   

Glad you liked it.

First, a simile exercise for my creative writing class.

A book is like a boot.
A book is like a stream of bat's piss.
A book is like a cockroach.
A book is like a house.
A book is like a dog.
A book is like a student.
A book is like a blank page.
A book is like a giant robot.
A book is like an iPod.
A book is like a dead bird.
A book is like an episode of Mythbusters.
A book is like toilet paper.
A book is like a broken leg.
A book is like an anthropomorphic hyena.
A book is like a Canadian.

And then the thing I did for the CCC.

And now it's time for Bum Reviews, with Chester A. Bum. Tonight's review... Teh_Hobo.

   "Oh my god, this is the greatest bum I've ever met in my life!
   There's this guy, called Teh_Hobo–
   – what kind of guy calls himself "Teh?" Couldn't he get a spellcheck program or a dictionary? "Teh" isn't a word! It is however the name of my cat! –
   - and he has a long beard! I used to have a long beard! But then I shaved it off! Well, my rats ate it. And then they all ran away. I miss them so much! Darryl!!!
   And he has this funny hat, that has his name written on it-
   -Why does his hat need to say his name? Can't he remember his own name without it? I don't need to write my name on my clothes to tell me who I am! Well, okay, maybe I do. But only so I know where I live: In a can of tuna! That's how I know that I'm a prince! Prince Chester! Hooray!
   And his hair is all messy, just like mine! That's because we both use Le Bum, the only shampoo for bums! Well, okay, we just don't wash our hair. But the point still stands!
   And his clothes are all messed up, just like my clothes! Wait a minute, did he steal my clothes! Clothes-stealer! You left me standing naked in front of the camera... oh wait, never mind, I still have my clothes. We just shop at the same place.
   And he likes to go drawing! I like to go drawing! Except I'm not very good. And I ate my art supplies. The red paint was the tastiest! And my brushes are my friends now! I named them all Neil! They're all going to the moon! Whoosh! Maybe Teh_Hobo will go to the moon with us. "That's one small step for bums, one giant leap for bumkind!" Hooray!
   And he drew a pirate blimp! Pirates are awesome! They should make a movie about pirates! And it should star that psycho razor guy from Sweeney Todd! And there should be a bum lying in the mud with a bumch of pigs! I could play that bum! And blimps are cool too. I dreamed about a castle on a blimp once. How freaking weird is that? Really weird! Oh, and he drew a mountain of amps. Rock on, my brother. Rock on.
   Oh, and apparently he's a little bit nuts. Crazy. Loopy. Bonkers. Deranged even. But I don't see it! He's not deranged! I know deranged! My rats all ran away because I was deranged! And so did my girlfriend! She was deranged too! Maybe she ran off this this guy. Teh_Hobo! You stole my girlfriend! Eh, that's alright, you can keep her.
   So, anyway, I like Teh_Hobo, even though he stole my girlfriend! In fact, I really like him. He's like the brother I never had! Well, except I had a brother. His name was Sally. Actually, my brother was my sister. Maybe Teh_Hobo is my sister?
   This is Chester A. Bum saying... change! Ya got change? Aw come on, help a guy out, will ya? Come on, change! I've got to finance our expedition to the moon!"

(PS: Seriously, Teh_Hobo is way cool)

[Gabi]

Umm... How is a book like all those things?

[Cogidubnus]

First, a simile exercise for my creative writing class.

A book is like a boot.
A book is like a stream of bat's piss.
A book is like a cockroach.
A book is like a house.
A book is like a dog.
A book is like a student.
A book is like a blank page.
A book is like a giant robot.
A book is like an iPod.
A book is like a dead bird.
A book is like an episode of Mythbusters.
A book is like toilet paper.
A book is like a broken leg.
A book is like an anthropomorphic hyena.
A book is like a Canadian.

Reminds me of "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens. However creatively I attempt to extend my imagination, however, I fail to grasp the simile that you present.

[techmaster-glitch]

Near as I can tell, he's referring to the fact that books can represent pretty much anything, being the written memories of people.

[Jairus]

Near as I can tell, he's referring to the fact that books can represent pretty much anything, being the written memories of people.

Actually, the exercise was just to come up with fifteen similes and avoid all cliches and reach as far as we can for a simile. But, yes, in my mind, all of those things have some element that - in some way - reminds me of books. So we'll go with your meaning.

[Pagan]

There are connections between books and the things listed. Some of them are weaker than others though. And two of them are obscure references.

Though I wonder if that hyena is anyone specific. <looks at own avatar> Huh. Eh, probably just an odd coincidence. And is Amber the Canadian?

[Jairus]

Well, for confusing people and generally being weird, my punishment it to explain my logic, strange as it is.

A book is like a boot. Both are misspellings of the other, highlighting the importance of good grammar and spellchecking. Also, if you don't have one, you're not gonna go far.

A book is like a stream of bat's piss. It is a shaft of golden light in the darkness. This is also a Monty Python reference. I may end up changing this for the assignment.

A book is like a cockroach. If you lose one, it's annoying to try and find it again.

A book is like a house. It's something to come home to and relax.

A book is like a dog. A good friend. And a reference to the famous quote, "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

A book is like a student. New opportunities.

A book is like a blank page. Each book starts out as a blank page, and each one is colored by your expectations and desires.

A book is like a giant robot. Awesome. That is all.

A book is like an iPod. A good source of entertainment and delight.

A book is like a dead bird. A ruined book is like a dead bird: you never realize how beautiful and precious it is until it's too late.

A book is like an episode of Mythbusters. Fun and good times, and a learning experience.

A book is like toilet paper. If you can't read, that's all it is: worthless. Also a reference to Cohen the Barbarian of the Discworld.

A book is like a broken leg. It makes you slow down and think things through differently.

A book is like an anthropomorphic hyena. My friend and little bro Pagan.  They both mean a lot to me.

A book is like a Canadian. No one really has a problem with them in general.

Originally, the last was Amber Williams: they both amuse me and entertain me and make me sad and make me laugh.


And all together, my life would be a lot emptier without all of them.

[Jairus]

Just a short story for my class. For this project, we had to use at least three of the similes from our previous exercise. And somehow, this ended up being about 1350 words. The story only had to be 500 to 750 words long. *cries* It's too long... gods above and below, it's too long...


"Susan Foreman"

   Susan Foreman hated her name. Her parents had been science-fiction buffs, and had named her after a character in an old British Sci-fi show. They'd told her that with a name like that she would travel to other worlds and meet the strangest people. She'd even thought about becoming an astronaut when she was a little girl, and traveling into space like her namesake. So why, she sometimes wondered, was she a librarian in the New York Public Library?
   It wasn't a bad job. Far from it. She loved it, in fact. It kept her in her apartment, and it gave her a hobby of sorts. Her parents had encouraged her reading habits from a young age, and after their deaths a few years ago she'd surrounded herself with them. An inquiry at the front desk had led to a job that had kept her occupied for five months now. But still... sometimes the thought entered unbidden into her head that she wanted something more.
   The day was unusually slow for some reason, especially in these back rooms. They were practically the "miscellaneous" section, books that had been entered into the system but had not yet found their way to their proper space on the shelves, hiding like cockroaches in the back of the libary. On occasion, some researcher or student would need a book back here, which was how Susan had wandered in in the first place. These rooms were her favorite: sometimes she'd pick up a book at random and spend her break reading it. There were certainly some interesting books in here, old journals and diaries and...
   ... a book lying like a dead bird on the tiled floor. She stopped short, and then very quickly walked up to it and gingerly picked it up, checking the heavy brown-leather bound book over for obvious signs of damage. Nothing noticeable, but she decided to bring it to the repairs section just in case. There was no title on the front, but the filing number indicated it was a reference book of sorts. She briefly wondered who had dropped it as she opened it to a random page and realized that she couldn't read it. All thoughts of taking it to be checked over for need of repairs seemed to fade away in the face of what seemed to be her newest pet project. A few minutes later, she was at an empty table in the main reading room, pouring over the book like she was an artist staring at a blank page.
   Greek? she asked herself. No, the letters look wrong. Cyrillic? No, it's not that either.
Susan was not a linguist, but she gradually came to the realization that she had never actually seen the language the book was written in before. But there were little notes in the margins, written in a different hand than the original writer's: this script was small and wavery like a student's scribbled notes compared to the slow steady hand of the original writer. And it was in Latin. She'd only done a year of Latin at the university before giving it up, but she could recognize it, and read it. Somewhat. She started reading as best she could, translating what she remembered and making a mental note to pick up a latin dictionary later.
   After a dozen or so pages, she found a drawing. It was a circle with a number of geometric shapes arranged inside it, and a handful of abstract-looking symbols similar to the ones she'd been seeing every so often in empty spaces on the pages. The added notes weren't much help, but the note-writer compared it to something called a "magic circle." Looks more like a circuit board, Susan thought as she traced the intricate pathways with her finger. She kept on reading.
   The next several pages were made up entirely of more of those abstract symbols, much more mathematical-looking than the letter-like ones...
   Wait a second. Maybe they're equations? She remembered being a student and having a flash of insight that revealed some previously hidden element of a book or author's style, and felt the same thing here. But this wasn't going to be easy. Hell, I don't even know what I should treat it as. A math book? Some theorem we've never heard of before? A proof? The margin notes called it "alchemy." And some of these equations reminded Susan of her high-school chemistry, and diagramming reactions as equations. But it still felt strangely off. There was another "magic circle" on the next page, and this one even more greatly resembled a circuit board: there were conduits and capacitors and paths for energy to flow down. And the book was strange: it was handwritten and handbound and clearly old, but it lacked the flourishes and touches that a really old handwritten book would have. Maybe it had never been meant for anyone but the writer to read? But in that case, why did this person bother writing it? Were they trying to remind themselves of something, or leave a record of something they'd discovered... huh?
   More hand-drawn pictures. Twelve painstakingly drawn pictures on that page, with what looked like numbers and names beside each one, and it went on for pages. The first drawing was a single dot inside of a ring with a dot on the ring. The second drawing was a dot inside a ring with two dots on opposite side of the ring. And the twelfth drawing was a dot inside three rings, with two dots on the inner and outer rings, and eight on the middle ring.
   And in that moment, Susan knew what she was looking at. Her memories of chemistry class came flooding back to her. Hydrogren and helium. The first two elements of the periodic table of elements. Which would make the twelfth drawing... magnesium. And the next few pages held more drawings, and she was willing to bet that each one of them was an element. Eventually, the pages of diagrams became just letters and numbers, but now she could at least understand the numbers: more elements, probaly listing their electrons and other information. The notes-writer was able to at least get the numbers, but aside from that he was completely out of his league. This was a complete periodic table of elements, present in a book at least a century older than the earliest tables. And there was at least one hundred and fifteen entries here, more than the real table had if she recalled correctly.
   And now, even the circle diagrams were getting more complicated, showing only pieces of a total whole and having levels of detail beyond any of the others. The notes-taker seemed to give up at this point, only making a few comments here and there. Susan had no idea what the original author was saying, but for right then it didn't matter.
   Finally, she sat back. Susan knew that she had something truly amazing, like one of those so-called batteries they'd found in Baghdad or the Antikythera mechanism: something demonstrating knowledge of science far ahead of its time. But that was just a battery: Susan had a book that was apparently a reconstruction of scientific knowledge parallel to the modern world's. She had to know how old it was. She had to find out, somehow. Something like this could potentially change so much. But something still felt off, like the book didn't fit right somehow.
   What did that note-taker call this book? Susan wondered with a smile. She turned to the very front of the book, to the same script written on the front. She couldn't read everything, but from what she gathered, he had found it in a collection and decided to try and translate it. Not much different than me, then. And there was his title, written larger than the rest of his notes "Carta Magicus." Book of Magic.
   Magic?
   She felt her skin tingling at the thought, her hair standing on end. Magic? It was completely crazy. Totally insane. Magic wasn't real. And yet... and yet...
   She remembered her parents telling her that she would travel to other worlds with her name. And for the first time in her life, Susan Foreman believed it.

[Jairus]

And now for the much shorter 1000 word version, which is incidentally cleaner and less crappy. Enjoy the second draft.


"Susan Foreman"

   Susan Foreman hated her name. Her parents had been science-fiction buffs, and had named her after a character in an old British sci-fi show. They'd told her that she would travel to other worlds and meet the strangest people and have incredible adventures with a name like that. As a little girl, she'd even thought of becoming an astronaut, just so that she could travel into space like her namesake. So why, she sometimes wondered, was she a librarian in the University of California San Diego's Geisel Library?
   It wasn't a bad job: it kept her in her apartment during her studies, and after her parents' deaths a few years ago books had become a hobby for her. They'd always encouraged her reading habit. And on days like this, in the middle of summer when the library was quieter than normal and the southern California heat kept her inside the cool library, she enjoyed the solace. When she had nothing to do, she'd just walk through a section of the library and pick up a book at random to read: she'd learned knitting and how nuclear reactors worked that way. The books in this section seemed piled almost at random, like cockroaches clustering in the cool shadows from scrying eyes. Her hand reached out to run a finger across the row of spines and contemplating which of the leather-bound journals to read when she almost tripped over a book lying like a dead bird on the floor.
   Susan stopped short, and then very quickly and gingerly picked it up, checking the heavy brown leather-bound book over for obvious signs of damage. Nothing noticeable, but she decided to bring it to the repairs section just in case anyway when she noticed that there was no bar code or reference number on the book: it didn't belong to the library. Someone must have dropped it, and not too long ago: she flipped the book open to see if there was a name or something written on the inside. Instead, she found a neatly written paragraph. Written in Latin, so this book was at least a few centuries old. Again, she wondered who had dropped something like this. She'd dropped out of Latin classes at the end of the last school year, and she'd only spent a year taking the language anyway. But she could understand it...
   In this book is secret knowledge. I know that there is. Whoever finds this, please continue my quest to understand it. I have failed, but you may succeed. There was no name, only a title, written in the same hand: "Codex Arcanum." The book of secrets or the book of mysteries. Susan snorted. What a hokey name, she thought as she flipped to the next page...
   ... and realized that she couldn't read it. The page was covered in pictograms and glyphs that she'd never seen before, arranged in paragraphs or maybe like mathematical equations. The letters looked like a fusion of Greek and Cyrillic with a handful of extra shapes thrown in for good measure. Might as well be toilet paper or a blank page for how much of it I can understand, she thought as she felt her way to one of the tables against the wall and sat down to read. The author who had come through later (Susan was starting to think of him as the Scholar) had added little notes into the margins, written like a student's scribbled notes compared to the original writer's slow steady hand. The Scholar called some of the equations "alchemy." He would have: alchemy was the science of the time. She continued flipping pages, finding more and more equation-like sentence structures.
   After a dozen or so pages, she found a diagram of a circle with several geometic shapes arranged inside it and a handful of symbols arranged around it. The Scholar's notes called it a "magic circle" probably designed to summon a demon, but it looked more like a circular circuit board to Susan's untrained eyes. Connecting pathways, capacitors, pools of energy, conduits... her finger gingerly traced the intricate pathways as she reflected on the design. Magical circles and alchemic equations. So, she had a translation of an old magic grimoire on her hands. Interesting, yet not exactly valuable in the long run. She turned the page again and saw a diagram of a hydrogren atom.
   "What?" she said, shocked. One circle inside a ring with a dot on the ring. Diagrams from high-school chemistry classes came back to her: that was exactly how hydrogen's valence shell was drawn. And next to it was helium: two dots on the ring instead of one. And the rest of the drawings on the next few pages... she couldn't remember much of the periodic table, but she was willing to bet that these drawings were all the next several elements. The Periodic Table in a book on magic? These should be the four classical elements, or maybe the handful they knew at the time. There were thirty drawings total in this batch, complete with notes and more equations. If she could read it, she was willing to bet that the information would be on par with the modern table.
   Susan was skeptical by nature. The periodic table of elements side-by-side with summoning circles and alchemy in a centuries old-book. It might be a fake, made by some student as a project or something like that. She had to find out how old this book actually was. Billy can help with that, and he won't spread this around, she thought to herself. If this book actually was several centuries old like she was beginning to fear it was...
   She felt her skin tingling at the thought, her hair standing on end. Magic? It was completely crazy. Totally insane. Magic wasn't real. And yet... and yet...
   She remembered her parents telling her that she would travel to other worlds with her name. And for the first time in her life, Susan Foreman believed it.

[Jairus]

As a part of my homework for my creative writing class, I have been editing "Target Eliminated," now retitled "Subject Mz-37." Enjoy...

"Subject Mz-37"

   The observation room had been dark since morning, lit only by red battery-powered emergency lighting. The surgery room visible through the large window was lit the same way, medical equipment gleaming in the red lighting. The air wasn't moving. The doors were all in quarantine lockdown. Power hadn't been affected: the doors would unlock if all power was cut. But the facility's central computers weren't responding, and the backups weren't answering either. Intercoms were down. Radios were jammed. They were completely cut off from the rest of the base, and most likely everyone else was cut off in exactly the same way. And Subject Mz-37 was loose.
   There were five in the room, three scientists and two guards, trying to figure out how to defeat the Subject. The observation room was one of the few rooms with a weapons locker: they'd opened it and stripped it of its two automatic rifles and the spare ammunition. The guards now wielded these, one covering the door and one covering the ceiling vent. The scientists had taken up the pistols, but they carried them as if they were afraid they would go off in their hands. They'd taken to holding the heavy rifles in shifts, trying to keep fatigue from building up. The Subject's enhancments meant that he could operate longer than them without fatiguing, and they needed to stay sharp.
   The silence was the worst. Aside from their voices and the sounds they made when they moved, they could hear nothing else. The quarantine had even sealed off the air vents. One of the scientists suggested that the Subject had been using the air vents to move around, using the warren of metal shafts to go where no one else could. The Subject had the grace and speed to do it silently. He'd even voiced the possibility that that's how the Subject had made his way to the main computer core in the first place. The prospect that the Subject taken over the entire complex was frightening. If he had, he could hunt them all down and kill them, or even escape the installation. If the Subject had left, then they were trapped in here until the air ran out. Rescue wouldn't come, unless someone in the base had escaped the lockdown.
   Suddenly, from the vent came the sound of something metal rolling very quickly down the duct. They heard it smack into a turn in the duct, and then a not-too-distant clang from the duct, like a door slamming shut. Two quiet beeps came from somewhere inside the duct, and then  smoke gushed out of the vent.
   "Gas!" one of them shouted. They all tried to cover their mouths, but it was too late. One by one, they succumbed to the nerve gas and collapsed paralyzed and unconscious. The thick clouds remained, the room now filled with the oppressive smoke and lit by the red emergency lights.
   A minute or two passed. Somewhere in the wall, pistons relaxed their lock and the doors opened. Subject Mz-37 stepped into the room, dressed in black clothes with a gas mask strapped to his head. The smoke started to clear, but the Subject was already at work. He grabbed one of the pistols still held tight in a scientist's hands, and fired one shot into her head before finishing off the rest of the room's occupants. Quick and efficient. Just like they had taught him.
   Mz-37 stepped out into the hall after helping himself to their ammunition and guns. The red emergency lights provided the hall's only illumination. His free hand came up and unsnapped the gas mask, dropping it to the ground. His head turned to look down the long corridor. Three rooms left. Eight doors on this corridor, three down. After the fourth door down, only one left. Then four other similar corridors. And then he would leave. He could not leave until they were all dead. That's what they'd taught him. They'd called it a game. And he was winning. He walked to the next door, hefted his pistol, and reached up to the override panel to input his code. The well-maintained door snapped open.

[to be continued]

[Ren Gaulen]

Nice work, bro.

[Jairus]

"Target Eliminated" has now been fully cleaned up and edited. So, now I present to you "Subject Mz-37" in its complete form. And yes, I'm reposting even the bit I posted last night: I made a few changes to it. So, here we go...


"Subject Mz-37"

   The observation room had been dark since morning, lit only by red battery-powered emergency lighting. The surgery visible through the large window was lit the same way, medical equipment gleaming in the red lighting. The air wasn't moving. The doors were all in quarantine lockdown. Power hadn't been affected: the doors would unlock if power was cut. But the facility's central computers weren't responding, and the backups weren't answering either. Intercoms were down. Radios were jammed. They were completely cut off from the rest of the base, and most likely everyone else was cut off in exactly the same way. And Subject Mz-37 was loose.
   There were five in the room, three scientists and two guards, trying to figure out how to defeat the Subject. The observation room was one of the few rooms with a weapons locker: they'd opened it and stripped it of its two automatic rifles and the spare ammunition. The guards now wielded these, one covering the door and one covering the ceiling vent. The scientists had taken up the pistols, but they carried them as if they were afraid they would go off in their hands. They'd taken to holding the heavy rifles in shifts, trying to keep fatigue from building up. The Subject's enhancements meant that he could operate longer than them without fatiguing, and they needed to stay sharp.
   The silence was the worst. Aside from their voices and the sounds they made when they moved, they could hear nothing else. The quarantine had even sealed off the air vents. One of the scientists suggested that the Subject had been using the air vents to move around, using the warren of metal shafts to go where no one else could. The Subject had the grace and speed to do it silently. He'd even voiced the possibility that that's how the Subject had made his way to the main computer core in the first place. The prospect that the Subject had taken over the entire complex was frightening. If he had, he could hunt them all down and kill them, or even escape the installation. If the Subject had left, then they were trapped in here until the air ran out. Rescue wouldn't come, unless someone in the base had escaped the lockdown.
   Suddenly, from the vent came the sound of something metal rolling very quickly down the duct. They heard it smack into a turn in the duct, and then a not-too-distant clang from the duct, like a door slamming shut. Two quiet beeps came from somewhere inside the duct, and then smoke gushed out of the vent.
   "Gas!" one of them shouted. They all tried to cover their mouths, but it was too late. One by one, they succumbed to the nerve gas and collapsed paralyzed and unconscious. The thick clouds remained, the room now filled with the oppressive smoke and lit by the red emergency lights.
   A minute or two passed. Somewhere in the wall, pistons relaxed their lock and the doors opened. Subject Mz-37 stepped into the room, dressed in black clothes with a gas mask strapped to his head. The smoke started to clear, but the Subject was already at work. He grabbed one of the pistols still held tight in a scientist's hands, and fired one shot into her head before finishing off the rest of the room's occupants. Quick and efficient. Just like they had taught him. Five down, room cleared.
   Subject Mz-37 stepped out into the hall after helping himself to their ammunition and guns, sticking a sheathed knife and pistol into his belt. Only red emergency lights lit the hall. The gas had dispelled enough now. He unsnapped the gas mask and dropped it to the ground. His head turned to look down Level 2's curved corridor, and then pulled out a small reader and linked into the computer for a breakdown of the installation's remaining population. Level 3 was cleared. Eight rooms on Level 2, two rooms empty, one room cleared, five rooms occupied. Thirteen people left on this level. No one in the two maintenance access ways. Three people in the next room, one of the two training rooms. He'd clean out this level, and then Level 1. And then he would leave. He could not leave until they were all dead. That's what they'd taught him. They'd called it a game. And he was winning. The Subject walked to the next door, hefted one of the two heavy machine guns, and reached up to the override panel to input his code. The well-maintained door snapped open, and he sprayed the inside with machine gun fire.
   The gun's weight and recoil and unfamiliar feel meant that he only hit one person. The room's occupants dove in different directions. He dropped the unfamiliar machine gun and grabbed his pistol and knife before running into the room. One guard was near. Guards only wore lightweight bullet resistant material. The Subject slashed at the guard's torso, and the knife cut through the armor. He brought the knife around in time to cut the guard's unshielded throat. He dropped. A scientist aimed at him. The Subject tossed his knife at him. The guard dodged and recovered fast enough to get shot in the face. He dropped. Three down, room cleared.
   The next room was the shooting range. Three people, and a full arsenal of weapons. Most likely guards: the scientists only went in when they were with him. He didn't bother with the shooting range. First, he walked over to a black duffel bag he'd brought up from Level 3 and picked up one of his remaining grenades. Then he picked up his gas mask and readjusted it on his head. A short scramble up a maintenance ladder and into the ventilation ducts, and a little fiddling with the jury-rigged controls linked to the reader, and one of the sealed ducts over the shooting range opened. He triggered the grenade, and rolled it down toward the vent before closing the hatch inside the duct and making his way back to the corridor. He waited two minutes, and then opened the door, walked in, and killed the three guards. Three down, room cleared.
   The second training room was empty. The Subject walked past it and maintenance access space and came up to the medical bay. One person in the medical bay: according to the reader, one of the maintenance crew had broken his leg yesterday. He reached for the door control. The door sprang open. The red lightning made every sterile surface gleam like blood. He fired twice at the guard on the bed. One down, room cleared.
   The next room was the injection room. There were five in that room: they'd been waiting for him this morning when he locked the base down. The Subject reloaded his pistol and then tapped the door control. The door sprang open. He stepped through, locating each one of them. He turned and shot the closest scientist, to his left. One near the open weapons locker. One shot, down. One by the table. One shot, down. One by the racks of hyposprays and injection vials. One shot, down. The fifth had time to raise his pistol: Mz-37 could see it wavering in the dim light. Adrenaline, fear, or terror: he couldn't tell the cause. The scientist fired, and missed. Mz-37 did not. Five down, room cleared. One room left on Level 2.
   The recreation room. It doubled as a classroom. There was one person in there. Subject Mz-37 reached up to the door control... and stopped. Then he lowered his arm. He took a step backwards. There were still eight people left on Level 1. He could eliminate them first. The recreation room could wait. He turned around, walked over to the duffel bag and gas mask, and dragged them into the elevator. He stared at the recreation room's door as the elevator closed. In the elevator's solitude, he seemed to sag slightly, laying one hand on the railing for support. He stood there for a minute, and then lifted his reader and disengaged the elevator's locks, and then keyed it in for Level 1. Before the doors opened, he locked the elevator down again.
   According to his information, one person had escaped the lockdown by virtue of being in a corridor at the time: caution would be wise in this situation. Mz-37 disengaged the quarantine lock on the elevator's maintenance hatch, and then popped up into the shaft. He turned on a small flashlight, and found a hatch into the ventilation duct over the ring-shaped corridor. Very carefully and quietly, he moved into the duct and carefully peeked through each vent as he came across them, looking for his target. It didn't take him long.
   He found her hiding in the common area in front of the elevator door, crouching behind a couch and holding a pistol. She would have had a clear shot on him had he left the elevator through the door. She did not have a clear shot on the rest of the corridor, however. He crept through the ducts until he reached the opposite side of the central shaft, and then quietly popped a vent open and carefully climbed down without making a sound. He removed his shoes, and silently crept around the corridor, staying to one wall and out of sight. Finally, he came up to the edge of the corridor that opened into the common area. He hefted the pistol, took a deep breath, and ran around the corner. The unexpected angle of his attack through her off long enough for him to shoot her before she could respond. She dropped. One down, common area and corridor cleared.
   Mz-37 was breathing harder now. He was starting to feel the effects of a long day and nine separate battles. Fatigue was setting in. He retrieved his shoes, and then unlocked the elevator and pulled the duffel bag through. He lifted the reader. Seven personnel left on this level. Most of the installation's thirty personnel had been on Level 2 in preparation for the day's activities: Level 3 had only had one guard and three maintenance officers. He moved clockwise down the corridor. Six rooms on Level 1, not counting the common area and the two maintenance areas. The first room was his: designed for up to five subjects, he was the only one in the base with a room of his own. The first set of quarters was empty, as was the maintenance access area and the second set of quarters.
   One person in the lounge. The lounge had numerous areas for cover: tables, easy chairs, a couch, and other random pieces of furniture. This would be tricky. He didn't want to risk climbing through the ducts at this point: he could feel fatigue setting in. Instead, he lifted the reader up, and carefully set up the power system to trigger the main lights in the corridor without triggering the other rooms' lighting. He closed his eyes, and then turned the lights on. It took him a few minutes to fully readjust to the lights after hours seeing everything in the emergency lighting. Finally, he lifted the gun, stood to one side of the door, and triggered the open key.
   The scientist inside yelped, blinded by the bright light surging into the dark room. Mz-37 ducked down and rolled around the edge of the doorway, staying to the corners and the shadows. The scientist was behind a barricade of a couch and an overturned table. Mz-37 only had a few seconds. He dashed across the room, and slid behind the barricade. Three shots into the scientist's back, and he collapsed. One down, room cleared.
   Only one more room on this level. The cafeteria, the next door down. Six people. By his count, that meant three guards, two scientists, and one maintenance person. And then he had to clear the recreation room... he shook his head. No, not now. Concentrate on the cafeteria. No distractions. Not yet. He was almost done. He was almost free.
   Six targets in the room. Lots of cover, lots of places to hide. He couldn't charge in. This was the room he'd been saving his last gas grenade for. He dimmed the main lights back to emergency red: the blinding trick wouldn't work again. A few minutes later, he was back in the duct, doing his trick for the third time that day, except this time he jury-rigged a timer to give him ten minutes of preparation time. Given the room's large size and number of occupants, he could not ensure that everyone would be knocked out. And they would most likely be armed, and still able to use room's available cover. He'd planned ahead for this: he tugged his shirt off, and pulled a bulletproof vest from the bag. Even after adjusting the vest it still didn't fit him right, but it would have to do. He pulled his shirt back on: hopefully, they wouldn't notice it and aim for an unprotected part of his body. He reloaded his pistol, and then pulled a second one out of the bag. He adjusted his gas mask, and then looked at a wristwatch he'd stashed in the bag, and waited for the countdown to reach zero...
   As it was, he had a minute to go. Five minutes after the timer reached zero, he checked the seal on his mask, dropped the watch into the duffel bag, and hefted a gun. He reached up to the door control, and the door opened into the smoky redness.
   It was hard to pick people out in the red light and shifting smoke, but he could make out two people still moving and two or three lumpy objects on the floor. The ones still moving seemed to be holding rags or makeshift masks over their mouths. A maintenance crewman holding a frying pan was actually running towards him. He went down easily. The second standing person dropped from one shot.
   A massive impact slammed into his back. He cried out and fell to the floor. His brain raced. He'd been shot and lost his balance. He wasn't dead. The vest had held up. Move. He allowed himself a groan. Nothing seemed too badly damaged. It hurt. He pushed himself through the pain, and dragged himself towards a table for cover. The cover wasn't much. He could see the guard's legs behind the table. The guard must have ducked down when the door opened. Mz-37 had a relatively clear shot across the empty space beneath the tables. Adrenaline and pain messed up his aim. The end of the gun's barrel jerked around in the red light. It took three shots, but he finally hit the guard's leg, sending him toppling to the ground and screaming. Another two shots to the head, and the guard was dead.
   Mz-37 pulled himself up to his feet, leaning on the table and wincing in pain. He stumbled his way around the room through the dissipating smoke, and finished off the last three. Six down, room cleared.
   He sank to the floor, groaning in pain as he pulled the gas mask off worked his shirt and vest off. He gently reached around to his back to probe where he'd been shot. He'd have a massive bruise, and pain lanced through his side, but it wasn't too bad and he wasn't bleeding. He winced as he pulled his shirt back on. He'd have to check himself out in the medical lab to make sure nothing was cracked or broken. Concentrate, he thought. Concentrate on your objectives. Level 1 was cleared of all hostiles. All that was left was the recreation room on Level 2...
   ... no, there were still some things he had to do. The duffel bag was filled with supplies, but he should go over the base one more time for anything he'd need once he escaped. And he shouldn't put off checking his injury. He was sure that he had cracked a rib. It would slow him down for as long as he had to worry about it and feel the pain every time he moved.
   But he knew he couldn't put it off forever. He had to go to the recreation room and face the consequences eventually. But not right now. Not now.
   Subject Mz-37 winced as he made his way down the curving corridor and back to the elevator...
...
   The recreation room had a handful of battery-powered lights, giving off a few patches of white light among the red emergency lights. Dead terminal screens and readers glared red from strange angles. A few toys and games were scattered around, never put back quite right. A man sat on a stool at a table in the middle of the room, where most of the lights had been gather. He was middle-aged, his face lined with worry and premature aging, his brown eyes sunken from exhaustion, his brown hair slowly turning gray with age. He was playing a game of one-card Klondike solitaire when he heard the sound of the door opening behind him.
   Subject Mz-37. He knew it without looking. He kept flipping and stacking cards in the silence.
   "Doctor."
   "Zed."
   "You are still calling me that?"
   "Subject Mz-37 is so... impersonal. Everyone deserves a name, Zed. They're all dead." It wasn't a question.
   "Yes, Doctor Morvarian."
   Morvarian set his last card down and turned around on the stool to face Zed.
   Subject Mz-37 was no older than eight. He was thing and wiry, black hair cut short and mismatched blue and green eyes that were barely distinguishable from each other in the light. He had a cut over his left eye, oil smudges on his face and hands, and his simple black clothes were torn and damaged from fighting and covered in a layer of dust from the deeper parts of the ducts. He looked tired and stressed out, but his eyes betrayed no exhaustion or emotion: it was like looking into a pair of glass eyes. His left hand firmly gripped a pistol.
   "You're here to kill me too, I suppose?" Morvarian asked.
   "Yes."
   The old man smiled. It was a tired world-weary smile, and with the lines on his face it only made him look older. Memories of games and playtime and Zed's occasional bouts of curiosity flowed through his mind. So did the experiments and the training and everything else that they had done to Subject Mz-37. And he had helped to turn Zed into a weapon.
   Morvarian shook his head slowly. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry, Zed. We trained you too well."
   The gun came up, Zed's right hand wrapping around his left to give it stability. Morvarian saw the tears building up in Zed's eyes.
   "Close your eyes," Zed said. He waited a moment, and pulled the trigger.
   A brief flash of light and sound filled the room.
   Morvarian slumped forward and fell off his stool. He hit the floor with a dull thud.
   Mz-37 stood there. All hostiles eliminated. All Levels cleared. He had won. He could leave. He was free. He... he...
   The gun's barrel jittered, shaking from his adrenaline rush. It fell from his numb hands, and clattered on the floor. It glared up at him in the red light, but a gun was a weapon, a tool, nothing more: it could do nothing to him. It could do nothing without him. His fatigue and exhaustion came at him in a rush. Zed slumped forward and dropped to his knees in front of the old man. Morvarian's blood flowed around Zed's fingers as his shoulders began to shake.
   Quietly, in the lonely red and darkness of the dead base, the little boy cried.

[Ren Gaulen]

Once again, great work, bro. I like the new version even more than the first one.

[Jairus]

Character survey meme

Yeah, I know it's been a while since I posted here. But I had fun doing this character survey meme, so I wanted to share it. The meme was originally done by drake_tigerclaw. I heard about it through Ren Gaulen's version of it, and now you get to read it. Lucky you!

Instructions
1. Choose a few of your own characters. Five at the most.
2. Make them answer the following questions.
3. Then tag three people or more.
4. Feel free to go ahead and add some questions yourself.

My Characters:
Elian Cidney
Jinx
Tava
Hannibal von Blitzberg
Captain Awesome


Who/What are you?
Elian: Elian Cidney, elf. I'm also a mechanic.
Jinx: Assassin Series SN-101, alphanumeric designation JN-X, called Jinx. I'm an assassin.
Elian: They mean your race/species, Jinx.
Jinx: Ah, in that case, robotic construct.
Tava: I'm Tava! I'm human!
Hannibal: Hannibal von Blitzberg, first child and son of Adolf von Blitzberg the Second and Victoria Romanis von Blitzberg. I am a human technomancer, specializing in cloning and cybernetics.
Awesome: And I am CAPTAIN AWESOME!, superhero! And I am AWESOME!
Elian: Also a first-class moron and loony.
Jinx: And first-class pain in the servos.
Elian: Cervical or gluteal?
Jinx: Both, of course.
Awesome: Hey! Stop using big words!

How old are you?
Elian: 14
Jinx: I do not know, but I estimate my age at around 175, give or take 25 years.
Tava: I'm almost seven!
Hannibal: 37.
Awesome: 29!
Elian: *aside to Jinx* With a mental age of about four.
Awesome: Hey!

Where are you from?
Elian: A town called New Tremaine, but it was destroyed during a battle between some technomancers and demons. I'm the only known survivor. My adoptive parents Paul and Anna raised me in Crater Lake Town, though, so that's my home.
Jinx: I do not know where I am originally from.
Tava: Hannibal stole me from my mommy and daddy and won't tell me where I'm from.
Hannibal: I am from the von Blitzberg ancestral home of Blitzburg.
Jinx: Oh, that's original.
Hannibal: Oh, shut up.
Awesome: I do not know where I am from!
Elian: Can you please stop being so dramatic?
Awesome: No!

Do you like yaoi or yuri?
Elian: Um... huh?
Jinx: Yaoi is a niponjin term referring to media dealing with homoerotic male relationships, and yuri is the term for homoerotic female relationships.
Elian: Oh, um, in that case, I guess I'll say yuri.
Jinx: I have no interest in either.
Tava: What's "homoerotic?"
Jinx: Where both members of a relationship are the same gender in order to cause arousal in the viewers.
Tava: Um... huh?
Elian: Don't worry about it Tava.
Tava: You mean like if someone has two daddies?
Elian: Something like that, yeah.
Tava: Oh, okay.
Hannibal: I'm too busy rebuilding the Blitzberg dynasty to concern myself with those matters.
Jinx: You probably have a large collection of erotic materials of all sorts.
Hannibal: That is none of your concern, construct.
Awesome: Hey, if the ladies want to kiss each other, why should I stop them? Wrowl!

Are you a boy or a girl?
Elian: Boy.
Jinx: Masculine programming, but my camoflage programming allows me to mimic most gender identities.
Tava: Girl.
Hannibal: Boy.
Awesome: I am a man!

Do you have any brothers or sisters?
Elian: None that I know of or survived.
Jinx: I do not know if I have any sibling units. However, I have yet to encounter any of them.
Tava: Does Elian count?
Hannibal: Not really. As for me, I am the oldest of seven siblings: the rest of them are dead.
Awesome: I do not know who my parents are, so I do not know if I have any brothers or sisters. Oh, the humanity!
Elian: *groans*

Who's your mate/spouse?
Elian: I don't have one.
Jinx: I'm a robot. What do you expect?
Tava: No.
Hannibal: Wilhemina. She is also dead.
Awesome: As a hero, my career takes first precedence over matters of the heart!
Elian: Translation: no one wants him.
Awesome: Not true!

Do you have any kids?
Elian: Nope.
Jinx: No.
Tava: Nuh-uh.
Hannibal: My wife was pregnant with our first child when she died. So no.
Awesome: I also have no children.

What's your favourite food?
Elian: Pizza. Preferably with pepperoni, but really anything without anchovies.
Jinx: Deuterium.
Tava: I like cherries!
Hannibal: Kirschtorte.
Awesome: Justice! And hamburgers.
Elian: *facepalm*
Jinx: May I please kill him, Master?
Elian: No, Jinx.

Have you ever killed anyone?
Elian: Yes. I'm not really proud of it.
Jinx: Oh, but I am, Master. As for me, I'm an assassin. What do you think?
Tava: Nope. *shakes head*
Hannibal: I will do whatever it takes to rebuild my family's dynasty. Even killing.
Awesome: Sometimes, in the line of duty, it is necessary to take a life!

What kind of music do you like?
Elian: Um... piano, I guess, but I like that techno music that Jinx has come up with.
Jinx: As the Master has hinted at, I enjoy techno music.
Tava: Um... I kinda like violin music.
Hannibal: Symphonic music that includes organs. I like organs. I have four of them.
Elian: And one on the ship. So five.
Awesome: Awesome music!

What do you do to relax?
Elian: I work on broken machines. That's how I got Jinx up and running.
Jinx: For which I am most grateful, Master. I write music.
Elian: And kill people.
Jinx: Does that count?
Elian: Well, you really enjoy doing that, but it's kind of what you do on a daily basis, so I don't know.
Hannibal: If he enjoys it, then you could consider that he does it to relax.
Jinx: Okay, killing and writing music.
Tava: I like to draw!
Hannibal: I tinker with my creations. I hope to launch a new clone soldier line soon!
Elian: And I'll kill them all too.
Hannibal: Oh, shut up Cidney!
Awesome: I fight crime! And go to the beach!

Do you constantly get hurt?
Elian: Well, a little pain is to be expected as a mechanic, but now that I guess I'm an Adventurer it's become a bit of an occupational hazard.
Jinx: Yes. But most of them are easy to repair.
Tava: Not really. But I get scared easily.
Hannibal: No. That's what an army of disposable soldiers is for.
Awesome: I feel no pain!
Elian: Yes he does.
Awesome: No, I don't.
Jinx: Yes he does.
Awesome: No I don't!
Tava: Uh-huh!
Awesome: Nuh-uh!
Hannibal: I'm fairly certain you do.
Awesome: Stop it!

Do you like your creator?
Elian: Oh, yeah, but I wish he'd come up with someone else to stick this story with.
Jinx: He allows me to kill with impunity and have fun with it. I love him!
Tava: He seems nice.
Hannibal: I don't like him.
Jinx: Because he killed off your family offscreen and destroyed your home and family line and made it so that your chief enemy is an adolescent elven mechanic and his pet assassin?
Hannibal: *glowers* Yes.
Awesome: I love my creator! He made me the greastest superhero in the world, and the only hope for stopping the evils of the world! What's not to like about him?
Elian: The fact that he considers you a joke and made me and Jinx the heroes because you're too incompetent to do anything?
Awesome: ... wait, what?

Whats your favourite season?
Elian: Spring and summer. I can open up the shop doors and let some air in.
Jinx: Autumn. The colors of the leaves remind me of blood.
Tava: I like spring! All the pretty flowers!
Hannibal: Winter. I always loved making snowmen as a child, and I enjoy the austere beauty of a snow-covered town and castle. I could do without the cold, though.
Awesome: Summer! That's when all the babes come out to the beaches!

Have you ever had sex?
Elian: Oh, gee, I'm a gawky fourteen year-old mechanic with grease-stained clothes and I smell like engine oil and welding. What do you think?
Jinx: I do not desire sex.
Elian: And you lack the parts for it too.
Jinx: No. If I desired sex, I would be able to give myself the necessary parts.
Elian: ... okay, that was disturbing.
Tava: I kinda know what sex is, but I don't think I'd like it.
Awesome: And you're too young, little girl!
Hannibal: I have indeed had sex.
Awesome: And I as well!
Elian: Really? You found a woman who could stand you for long enough to get the deed done?
Awesome: I'll have you know that I've got beautiful women throwing themselves at me, young man!
Elian: Were any of them sane?
Jinx: How much did you pay them?
Tava: Ewww.
Hannibal: Haven't you heard, don't stick it in the crazy?
Awesome: No, they really meant it! Can we move on please?

Have you been violated/molested/raped before?
Elian: Um... no. Ewww.
Jinx: I have been extensively damaged and left for dead. I consider that rape.
Tava: Um... I don't think so.
Everyone: *looks at Hannibal*
Hannibal: No, I have not raped her. I want her because she's is key to my plans, not because I want to violate her! And no, I have not been raped.
Awesome: No!

Whos your best friend?
Elian: Um... I guess I'll say Jinx.
Jinx: Why thank you Master. I'll have to say either Master Elian or my blaster rifle.
Tava: I like Elian! *hugs him*
Hannibal: I have no need for friends. And I'm surrounded by idiots.
Awesome: That is your own fault, evil-doer!

Got a crush?
Elian: Well, Cindy in town. She's one of my oldest friends.
Jinx: No.
Tava: Nuh-uh!
Hannibal: No.
Awesome: No! But ladies, I am available! *grins and teeth go *ting!**
Elian: ... how do you do that? Oh, never mind.

Do you like hugs/kisses/cuddles/etc.?
Elian: Heh, I like hugs.
Jinx: I am not good at giving or recieving any of the above.
Tava: Yup!
Hannibal: No.
Awesome: Oh yes!

Are you gay?
Elian: I don't think so.
Jinx: I have no real gender, so no.
Tava: Um... gay is where you like other girls? I like girls!
Elian: Not quite that way, Tava. Don't worry about it.
Hannibal: No.
Awesome: I am a manly man! I only like women! Not that there's anything wrong with being gay!
Jinx Denial.
Awesome: Oh, shut up!

Play any sports or...anything?
Elian: Hm... I used to play a bit of football, but I'm good at running too. I mostly do mechanical stuff, I'm not really into sports though. And Adventuring isn't a sport.
Jinx: Does Kill The Enemies count?
Elian: No. And none of your other games count.
Jinx: Then not really.
Tava: Um... no.
Hannibal: No. I have my work to keep me entertained and busy.
Awesome: I am too busy to play sports!

If you had a chance to kill your creator would you do it?
Elian: Nah, but I'd like to talk to him about my past and my future, I guess.
Jinx: I have a plan to kill everyone! But no, I don't think that I would. I would cease to exist without him!
Tava: Why would I do that?
Hannibal: I wouldn't kill him. I'd make him wish he was dead.
Awesome: Never!


EDIT: Added that bit that Boxy came up with. It was so perfectly in character that I had to use it. Thanks Boxy!

[Ren Gaulen]

Well, I have already commented on it on FA, but I'll say iy again: Captain Awesome is awesome hilarious. And so is Jinx, but in a different way.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Awesome: I'll have you know that I've got beautiful women throwing themselves at me, young man!

Elian: Were any of them sane?
Hannibal: Haven't you heard, don't stick it in the crazy?
Jinx: How much did you pay them?
Tava: I don't count.

*cough* Sorry, it just leaped into mind...

[Jairus]

Awesome: I'll have you know that I've got beautiful women throwing themselves at me, young man!

Elian: Were any of them sane?
Hannibal: Haven't you heard, don't stick it in the crazy?
Jinx: How much did you pay them?
Tava: I don't count.

*cough* Sorry, it just leaped into mind...

Actually, I think Jinx would say "Perhaps they were thrown by explosions?", but aside from that I think that's pretty good. May I add that to the meme?

Speaking of which, he actually is pretty lucky with the ladies, and no, he doesn't have to pay them. He's one of the few "heroes" in this world, even if he is a coward and an idiot and a braggart and a kill-stealer and a bit of a jerk. It's just that most people only hear about the "super" part and not the "dickery" part. Still, I wouldn't call him bad per se. Just an idiot.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Add away, my friend.

[Jairus]

Add away, my friend.

Thanks. Oh, what the heck. Here's some random stuff I've kinda come up in my spare time.

First, just a little bit of dialogue I've come up with for two of my characters. It's a little bit silly. There are no names, because A) one of them doesn't have one yet, and B) I don't know if I should use this scene when it comes time to write it.

"Why aren't you weirded out?"
"Eh, you get used to it after a while."
"Oh, come on. You cannot have seen so many weird things that you've just become immune to weirdness."
"I was once cursed and transformed into an anthropomorphic octopus."
"..."
"That wasn't the weird part. To break the curse, I had to find an eight-armed woolen sweater with the name "Bob" on the front."
"..."
"The weird part was that at the time I was cursed, I was standing in a store having a sale on novelty eight-armed woolen sweaters with the name "Bob" on the front."

~later~

"... why Bob?"
"Oh, it didn't have to be Bob. It actually just needed to be a palindromic name, and Bob was the only thing we could think of at the time."


...
In this scene, Elian has just discovered that Jinx has a Hyperspatial Mass Reclaimer system mounted in his body that allows him to store weapons and other miscellaneous objects in a pocket universe, and he's been using it to store the stuff they've found along their journey...

"What else have you got stored in there, Jinx?"
"Well, let's see... a machine gun, a rubber ducky, a machete, three handkerchiefs, seven fragmentation grenades, a yo-yo, eight throwing knives, a broken yo-yo, chemical grenades, a box of tissues, three flash-bang grenades, a cheesy romance novel, three wooden stakes, a freeze-dried steak, a grenade launcher, a water pistol, a water pistol filled with acid, a handheld video game system, a human skull, a rubber skull, a dwarven skull, a transforming toy robot, a multi-phase laser cannon..."
"Okay, you can stop now."
"But I'm not finished yet!"


And this one is after they come across the scene of a lynching (the justice system in these territories tends to be somewhat swift)...

"Jinx, what are you doing?"
"Making the corpses spin in the air."
"Why?"
"Because they look so boring just hanging there."
"No puns, Jinx."
"Aww, not even a 'hanging out' one?"
"Not even that."
"How about "They just dropped in for a drink"?"
"No."
"Can we rope them into our latest endeavor?"
"Stop."
"I've got some bad noose for them."
"Shut up!"
"But all tree of them look so boring right now."
"Godsdammit, Jinx!"

There, done for the day.

[Jairus]

*looks around* Wow, it's been a long time since I posted anything. Okay, how about some art, since I desperately want to get better?


Zedd, with butterfly

This was drawn today, and is actually the eighth version of this pic. Right off the bat, I know that there are a few things off about it. For one thing, I can't draw hands. For another thing, his shoulders look weird. I also don't know how to do musculature of any kind. There are a few things that can be corrected with coloring, which is a big hassle since Photoshop eludes me and I'm stuck coloring with colored pencils and I'm not much good with 'em.

But aside from that... well, in a way, I am actually satisfied with this pic. It's certainly not perfect, but on the other hand I am learning, and already applying a few new tricks. For one thing, a drawing can change a lot between what you first drew and what you consider the "finished" product ([urlhttp://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e143/J-RasZ/avatars/zeddsketch1.jpg?t=1249614659]for those who are curious, here is a scan of the original pose[/url]). So, while I am still intending to work on this, for the time being, this pic makes me feel... well, okay.

Anyway, comments and critiques and advice are certainly appreciated.

[Jairus]

Well, as not many people know, I am currently in Seattle, attending PAX, the Penny Arcade Expo. On a recommendation from Tapewolf, I'm gonna give a bit of a rundown of the day's events. Well... try to. Never done this before.

...
While the doors of the event open up at ten, I was smart enough to know to get there early, considering that there are between 40 and 50 thousand people attending. I woke up at six, and was out of the hotel shortly before seven for the walk over to the convention center, where I got in line around 7:20 or so. This was particularly good, because I was pretty damn close to the front of the line.

Between about eight and ten, a large projector screen was used to play a number of cell-phone based games (word scramblers, trivia, stuff like that), interspaced with commentary from a snarky character talking about the whole thing. There were also numerous mentions of a Julie, who I fear may become a memetic character.

So, ten comes around and we head into the game hall. WOW. So many games and demos and such, it was just absolutely amazing. Being an undying Ratchet and Clank fan, I headed over to the demo booths where I got a chance to play both Clank and Ratchet in some demo missions, which was AWESOME. The new hover boots for Ratchet are a great addition to the game: it's like a more controllable version of the Charge Boots combined with the R&C jet pack (which could hover, a feature removed from the future games). Argh. Two months before I get the real deal! So frustrating!

I also got to play the God of War III demo, which was suitably gory and bloody and horribly violent. The game looks awesome.

After that, I just decided to walk around and look at stuff, see if anything caught my interest. I looked at the Brütal Legend demo section (and will try that out tomorrow, methinks), and also admired the new PSP Go and the PS3 Slim that they had on display. I dropped by the Bioshock 2 viral marketing area, which looked exactly like the room viral marketing site Something in the sea. I got a chance to work with some guys at solving a three-dimensional sliding puzzle safe to get a chance to win a booklet that's a part of the marketing scheme: story-wise, I believe it's supposed to be someone's journal that they shot up to the surface from Rapture.

Hm... let me see. More walking and stuff... ah! I stopped by the Pax merchandise booth and picked up both a PAX '09 shirt and the first two collections of Penny Arcade comics. After that, I snagged a bite to eat, and then got in line to see a presentation by Brian Allgeier about weapons design in the Ratchet & Clank video games. For the record, he's the Game Director and also helped develop the weapons in the earlier games.

This, arguably, was the best part of the whole day, for a number of reasons. First, I got to see him go into some in-depth detail about the design of the weapons in this game series (of which I am a huge fan), as well as some of their mistakes and dead-end designs. Second, I got to see them announce three new weapons: the Chimp-O-Matic, the Rift Inducer 5000 (an upgrade to one of my favorite weapons in the R&C series), and the new RYNO V (which I can best describe as a dual-layered gatling cannon (that is, one gatling cannon inside another barrel)) with a few missile launchers added for good measure. Third, I got to see an awesome video that someone at Insomniac Games put together showcasing Ratchet's weapons set to the 1812 overture. And finally, afterwards I got to walk up to Allgeier and shake his hand and tell him that I was a huge fan of the Ratchet and Clank series and thank him and Insomniac for giving me so many great games to play and enjoy. All in all, it was a great hour-long event.

At around this point, I was starting to get a little tired, mainly from a late bedtime last night and an early morning. I walked around the display room for a bit, picked up a God of War III poster, took some pictures of a cockpit mockup, picked up a little brochure thingy for Assassin's Creed II... actually, let me spend a sentence or two on this, because it was sheer brilliance. It's a folded piece of paper, printed to look old-fashioned. On the front is a sentence that reads "The first one is always the hardest," followed by "Open it." When you do, you tear a cutout of a Venetian nobleman glued into the middle in such a way that when you open it you separate his head from his body, revealing the caption "Congratulations on your first kill." Seriously, whoever came up with this deserves a promotion, because it is awesome.

Um... let's see. What else is there? I picked up Season 1 and 2 of The Guild on DVD because it was cheap, and then lugged my acquired swag back to my hotel, emptied my pockets and bag of stuff I've picked up (including a month of Lord of the Rings Online), talked to Ren for a bit, collapsed and took a nap, and then got dinner. Oh, and invented something for my story. Which I will reveal later.

All in all, an awesome day. I believe that tomorrow I'll try and catch a Wil Wheaton autograph, and also catch Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik at their Q and A session just to see them talk for a bit. *yawns* One day down, two to go.

[techmaster-glitch]

Heya, jairus! Haven't seen you around this thread for awhile .

Penny arcade expo...as in the comic? o_0

[Jairus]

Heya, jairus! Haven't seen you around this thread for awhile .

Penny arcade expo...as in the comic? o_0

Yup. Have you heard of PAX? It's a big gaming convention/party that they do once a year. I'll be uploading my report on the second day soon.

[techmaster-glitch]

Heya, jairus! Haven't seen you around this thread for awhile .

Penny arcade expo...as in the comic? o_0

Yup. Have you heard of PAX? It's a big gaming convention/party that they do once a year. I'll be uploading my report on the second day soon.

Wait, wha- it IS the comic?!? I was just joking!
Holy crap, I knew they got themselves a game, but an entire convention about themselves???

[Jairus]

Heya, jairus! Haven't seen you around this thread for awhile .

Penny arcade expo...as in the comic? o_0

Yup. Have you heard of PAX? It's a big gaming convention/party that they do once a year. I'll be uploading my report on the second day soon.

Wait, wha- it IS the comic?!? I was just joking!
Holy crap, I knew they got themselves a game, but an entire convention about themselves???

Yeah, it is the comic. PAX has been going on since 2004. They had about 3,300 people attend that first year, and this year they completely sold out all 50,000 of their convention passes. That includes three day and single day passes. It's quite impressive.

And really, it's just about video games. Think of it as E3, except it encompasses all types of games and platforms and even some webcomics and machinima series.

[Jairus]

Okay, journal entry two. Quoting from a Fur Affinity post last night...

...
Another early start, except this time I got there really early. Fortunately, I had the first two collections of Penny Arcade to amuse me throughout the morning. More cell phone games, and the word scramblers were exactly the same as yesterday, so I knew 'em already, but the poll questions asked us to figure out who would win, Chuck Norris or Batman and Zorro and Robin Hood: it turned out to be Batman and Robin. As if Chuck Norris could defeat Batman.

I got another chance to play the Ratchet and Clank Future demo (both Ratchet and Clank) and am even more impressed than before. Seriously, the jet boots are very Iron Man-ish. I'm gonna clear out whole levels just so that I have a play ground for them. They are that fucking fun. If I got the chance to have any one gadget from the R&Cverse, these would be it. Also, speaking with someone who worked at Insomniac led to me learning that they're only a week or two from actually finishing the game. To say that I am "excited" is an understatement. And then I learned that they were trying to get the Constructo Weapons into the game's demo so that people could play with them... weeeee!!!!!!!!!!!! *composes self* In addition to that, they have three unrevealed weapons (I did know this from the video presentation yesterday), but apparently one of these weapons is a third Constructo weapon. I see two possible alternatives for what it will be: a missile launcher, or a melee weapon. I'm leaning towards the second, because 1) they have not yet revealed a melee weapon for A Crack in Time and 2) because they already have the Negotiator as the missile launcher. The guy did say that they might not reveal those three weapons, but they are planning to reveal one more world between now and the release. Also, apparently Angela Cross is more of an offscreen character in this game. After her roles in the previous two Future games, I'm a little bummed to see her go, but I can see the logic considering the already massive amounts of characters both old and new that they have to use, and someone has to stick behind to watch and protect the Polaris galaxy. I'll live. I am very excited. Just fifty two days left until release! Um... notably, this info comes from two conversations today, one in the morning, one afterwards after a quick trip back to my hotel room.

Um... really, what else can I say? Oh!

I also tried out Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier. It looks okay, but I kept dying, far more than I ever do in Jak 3 (yes, I still play Jak 3). This is most likely a combination of unfamiliarity with the altered controls of a Jak game to fit a PSP from a PS2 and being relatively unfamiliar with a PSP's control schemes (I've only got four games for it so far). I'll try the demo out when it's downloaded, to give it a little bit more of a chance. Also, I don't know if I like Jak's new eco powers, but I'll give them a chance too to see if they can make it work. Jak using jets of eco power fired from his hands like Iron Man is a little weird, as is him using eco powers to make crystal spikes or lift rocks from inside magma, but okay, I'll give it a chance.

I also looked (just looked, mind you) at Starcraft II. Some games, you just don't need to play as a demo before buying them.

I purchased the three remaining books in the Penny Arcade collection of books, mainly because they were all too hilarious to pass up.

At this point I walked back over to the Sony area to get my Ratchet and Clank inflatable wrench (stupid as all hell, but I don't care: I'm actually wondering how hard it would be to make a pneumatically driven Omniwrench Millennium 12), and also got my picture taken with Ratchet (well, a guy in a Ratchet suit).

I walked around a bit, ran into a group of about ten to fifteen people cosplaying as Team RED from TF2, and got some awesome pictures (including two Heavies yelling at each other). One of the heavies had an awesome recreation of Sasha (aka the Heavy's gatling gun), which was one of the coolest toys I've ever seen.

Eventually I made my way down to the line to meet Wil Wheaton (aka Welsey Crusher of Star Trek: The Next Generation)(this was after I got the wrench: getting the inflatable wrench was more important than meeting an icon of geekdom). I got a picture with him, a short collection of his short stories, and two autographs, one on the previously mentioned collection. It was very cool, and he seems like a neat guy. In the same line, I also met a lovely lady dressed up as GLaDOS with her Curiosity and Anger cores clued to a headband. It was very cute, and what was even better was when she started singing Still Alive. Nerd moment there.

After meeting Wil Wheaton, I walked around a bit more. I eventually came across the Red vs. Blue booth, where I not only purchased the DVD boxset of the first five seasons, but I also got an autograph on the DVD case by Burnie Burns, the VA for Church, which was awesome.

After that, I went back to the hotel room to unload some swag, where I found that hyokenseisou had responded to a post I left on one of her pics of her Chimera costume, so I ended up heading back over to the Sony booth to try and catch her. I didn't, unfortunately, but I did get to play the demo again and talk with one of the testers, where we also talked about the Razor Claw glitch (long story short: there's a weapon in Tools of Destruction that - if used correctly - can allow you to climb unclimable walls) and some other RnC stuff. After that, I made my way over to the RvB booth a second time to try and nab a few more autographs (and I got Sarge's and Grif's (I think) VAs), and bumped into hyokenseisou. Seriously, her costume is awesome. I also played around with a Wacom tablet, only after seeing some guy do in thirty minutes with a Wacom and photoshop what I could never do ever. Seriously, it's a little crushing to see a guy draw and color a head and neck in thirty minutes when you can't even make a decent human body.

*sighs*

After grabbing some dinner, I got in line for the Rooster Teeth panel, which was all kinds of awesome and funny. Seriously, it was hilarious. And at this point, I went back to the apartment, and that's kind of how the day went.

Another good day, but there's only one day left. Oh well, I've had fun so far.

Also, as a side note, my headphones decided to die this evening: only one ear is working. I'm not too worried about it (they were only like fifteen-twenty bucks and they've lasted me five or six months now), except that I don't think that radio shack carries it anymore. I may have to break down and get a set of ear buds, because so far Apple's ear buds are the only other headphones I've found with a built-in volume controller that isn't a headphone set that goes over the top of your head (I like the behind the ears setup, and I don't really like earbuds either). Oh well. At this point, though, I really don't want to spend much more money on this trip, so we'll just have to see. where this goes.

Anyway, I'll do my report tomorrow, and then come Monday morning I'm heading back home.

[Jairus]

Alright, it's story time! While it's been a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooongcat time since I posted anything of value here, I figure it's time to get started with a band by posting the first chapter of Jay's Revenge, A Shades of Grey Story. As a side note, I have written quite a bit over the past few days, it's just... well... um... none of it can really be posted. *averts gaze* Anyway!

First, a little background. Jay's Revenge is a sequel to a short comic arc that Ren Gaulen did over on Fur Affinity called "Accidental Inflation," set in his Shades of Grey universe. You can follow along and view this story by following these links.
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2707687/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2711461/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2716578/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2722007/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2724473/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2724503/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2729056/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2729086/
Long story short: brilliant if somewhat insane inventor Jairus Page is turned into a rather fuzzy balloon by "accident."

Yeah right.

Jay's Revenge is the story of Jairus Page's revenge on Siegfried "Zig" Nox, in such a way as only a mad scientist can do, and in the only way that Zig will not find some form of pleasure in...

Jay's Revenge

Chapter 1: Test Subject

   A brown-and-cream colored anthropomorphic feline stepped through a powered door into a cavernous laboratory.
   "Hello? Hello? Jay, are you in here?"
   His nervous voice echoed through the room. It was massive, two stories tall and filled with racks and gantries and spare parts and miscellaneous inventions. The room had once upon a time been a testing chamber for weapons, and the thick floors and massive doors and incredibly built-up room still attested to that, but over the past three or four years a new master had taken it over and turned it into his own personal playground.
   The feline was no ordinary Enkidu. His name was Siegfried Faradeus Nox, a twenty-six year old demon altling, 1.86 meters (6'1" to those who do not use metric) tall, muscular, good looking, and in his own words "well hung." He was actually from another universe, but through a long and exciting story worthy of a multi-part holodrama he had found himself under the employment of the Holy Order of Asheron as an enforcer to keep the peace between non-magical beings and the magical Altlings. He was currently stationed on Mars, fourth planet in the Helios star system, location of Terra, capital world of the United Terran Stars Federation. He was also bored out of his mind.
   This was not good, since Zig (as he preferred to be called) was a bit fickle, and enjoyed playing pranks and tricks on the people around him. He also liked sex, but that tended to alleviate his boredom rather than cause it. Well, perhaps liked wasn't the right word. "Loved" or "Addicted to" would be more accurate. It certainly didn't help that a list of his kinks would cover a sheet of paper longer than most people's arms, at size nine font and arranged in neat little columns.
   His boredom was part of the reason he was nervous, actually. Partially because of who owned this laboratory, and the events of a week ago at a weekend picnic...
   "Ah, there you are, Zig! I was worried about where you had gotten to!"
   Zig looked around, trying to find the source of the familiar slightly high-pitched voice, before he realized it was coming from above him. There he was...
   The voice's owner scrambled down from atop of a large humpbacked humanoid mech that he was working on, most of its armor stripped off to reveal the guts and mechanics driving the machine. He lightly dropped to his feet in front of Zig, and stood up straight to his full height of 1.34 meters in shoes (4'4"), and peered at Zig through his glasses after pushing aside his somewhat messy black hair.
   "Hey Jay," Zig waved, feeling a little nervous in the mad scientist's presence.
   Jairus Page was a twenty-one year old Enkidu kangaroo rat, a relatively uncommon sub-race rarely seen off certain planets. He was also one of the Federation's most brilliant inventors, and quite possibly insane, though he wasn't dangerous for it. Many of his inventions had nearly magical powers: not very special in a world where magic was a recognized and well studied field, but it did make him extremely valuable to the Federation. His parents were certainly well-respected as well: both of them had been instrumental in the creation of the artificial world of Arzamas.
   He was also the reason that Zig was nervous.
   "So, um, what's up?" he asked.
   "Oh, not much. I just need your help with something."
   "Wait, my help? Wouldn't Ren or Pagan be more appropriate as an assistant?" Zig asked curiously, referring to both his "caretaker" and Jay's little brother.
   "Pagan is out with Jayce currently, and Ren is teaching a sword-fighting class down at the gym. Besides which, Pagan is a familiar in an android body. I need an Altling for this test." Jay motioned for Zig to follow him, and they walked off down the rows of tables and racks.
   "Oh, really? Why?" Zig asked.
   "It's a new suit of powered armor that draws on an Altling's excess magical energy in order to refine and reinforce it. The suit's power and strength is directly proportional to the amount of magical energy flowing through it, though it does have the somewhat negative effect of making it harder to cast magic. I'm hoping to correct that somewhat."
   "Oh, wow. That, um, that sounds impressive. Um, hey, listen, you're not still angry at me, are you?"
   "Angry at you for what?" Jay asked sweetly.
   "For sabotaging your inflation blaster at last week's picnic?" Zig felt even more nervous now: there's no way Jay could have forgotten being inflated to hot air balloon-scaled proportions for several hours.
   "Oh, that!" Jay guffawed as he waved a hand as if brushing the issue aside. "Nah, I'm over that now."
   "Oh, really?" the altling asked hopefully.
   "Yep. Hey, you live and you learn," Jay said with a shrug as he came to a stop beside a table in an open area near one corner of the shop. "Besides, it taught me that I need to improve the security systems on my gadgets and stuff: a simple DNA lockout chip would have meant that it had no effect on me. So, really, I should be thanking you for helping me find that glitch!" Jay began to fiddle with some gadgets and stuff at one of the tables covered high in seemingly random stuff.
   "Oh, um, gee, you're welcome, Jay!" Zig smiled with relief. "So, where is this special suit?" he asked as he looked around, his hands in his pockets. "Is this some kind of automated thing where I stand somewhere and the suit is assembled around me? Those are awesome!"
   "Awesome, but somewhat impractical," Jay said as he played with something on the table.
   "Really? Yeah, I guess so. I mean, you practically need a factory just to suit up. So, um, where is this thing you need me to test?"
   "Right here!" Jay said as he made a sound like pulling something out from under a pile of stuff.
   "Right where~" Zig asked as he turned to face Jay and found that Jay was aiming a large ray gun of some kind at him.
   Zig's jaw dropped.
   Jay pulled the trigger before he could move. A stream of red and blue light bathed him, surrounding him in a corona of light that completely blinded him as he thrashed around. He felt weird: not just his skin, but his entire body seemed to tickle in a way that wasn't quite ticklish. He suddenly felt off balance, and fell to his knees and then backwards onto his butt, his legs folded beneath him.
   After what seemed like forever but was probably only a dozen seconds, the light stopped.
   And now he could think clearly. Oh, Jay was in for such a thrashing for this! What the hell did he think he was doing, shooting him with some kind of stun beam like that? If this was his idea of humor, he had another thing coming for him...
   It was at this point that Zig realized that he wasn't wearing any pants.
   And that his shirt didn't fit him right.
   And that his body still felt weird.
   And that his fingers felt slow and somewhat unresponsive.
   And that Jairus Page, 1.34 meters tall kangaroo rat, was towering over him from a few feet away.
   Zig was too shocked to say anything. It was Jay who broke the silence and his stunned revelry by setting the ray gun down on the edge of the table and kneeling in front of Zig.
   "Zig, can you understand me?"
   Zig nodded.
   "Can you still speak?"
   It took Zig a moment to find his tongue. "Yeth. I mean," he tried again, "yes."
   "Good. You seem to be alright."
   Zig's protests started to come back to the front.
   "Wuh... what did you do ta me?" he asked, voice trembling. He had started to look around, and quickly realized that he was extremely small in a very large and open space, and that he was lying in a puddle of his own clothes with only his shirt still on, and that he had no idea what had happened to him, and that Jay was responsible for it.
   "I told you. I needed a test subject for my latest invention," Jay said, still crouching in front of Zig but now also giving him a quick physical checkup. Zig quickly realized that he'd even lost his underwear on his way down, and pulled his shirt down to make sure that he was still covered.
   "What did you do to me?" he asked angrily. Zig was good at anger.
   Jay looked him up and down before nodding and standing up, and then grabbing Zig beneath the arm pits and picking him up to stand him on his feet, still wearing only a too-large shirt.
   Zig was stunned again. Jay had actually picked him up. Zig could carry Jay perched on his hip, and yet the scrawny mad scientist had just picked him up. Moreover, it was now all too clear how short Zig was: he wasn't even a meter tall, he barely came up to Jay's chest. He took a step backward, only to quickly learn that his balance was still screwed up: he almost fell again.
   And now he got a look at his hands: they were pudgy, with short digits, not the long fine fingers he was used to. And then he saw his feet: short pudgy things with five little toes attached to legs that were nowhere near as defined as he remembered. Jay hadn't just shrunk him, he'd done something else to him. A horrible thought was tickling at the back of his mind, but he couldn't really concentrate on it.
   "Congratulations, Zig: you are the first live test subject of my AR/P Gun," Jay said, his voice revealing his pride at his accomplishment.
   "A R P?" Zig asked, a little frightened. And then he saw a polished metal cupboard door at his level, and got a good look at himself.
   He was a kitten.
   He blinked.
   Still the same horrible image.
   His body was small, with shorter and rounder proportions all around, with the pudginess of baby fat betraying his youth. His face was rounded, almost cherubic, soft and pudgy, barely like the face he remember. His hands, a kitten's hands, ran through his face and fur: it was the soft fur that children had.
   He was younger. He was a kitten. Jay had turned him into a kitten.
   "Age Regression/Progression Gun," Jay explained to the stunned kitten. "A technological fountain of youth, in layman's terms. I'd estimate that you're approximately three years old, Zig. Um, just out of curiosity, how old were you when you where toilet trained?"
   Zig stumbled backwards, lost his balance, and fell on his butt. Or would have, if Jay hadn't leaped forward and caught him under the armpits. "Woah, woah there, Ziggy," Jay said as he helped the stunned and very confused cat straighten up, "I don't want you to hurt yourself."
   Zig's brain latched onto something, anything to help him make sense of the situation.
   "What do you mean, toilet trained?" he asked as he turned to Jay.
   "Well, while I am almost completely positive that the gun has no affect on the subject's mind, I am not so certain about how it affects their motor control and physical capabilities, not to mention their emotional status and how they react to certain things. So, I'm just wondering how old you were when you were toilet-trained, because if you were older than three or so when you were, you might end up having an accident."
   "Acci... dent? Wuh... you... you... YOU!!"
   Zig started pounding on Jay as hard as he could: in his regular adult body, this could have killed Jay.
   "Turn me back right now! Right now, do you hear me!"
   Jay backed away slightly, coming to a rest against the table, his arms splayed, one of them resting on the AR/P Gun.
   "Turn me back, right now, you fuzzy bastard~" he screamed as he hit Jay, and then slipped and started to fall.
   Jay's arms swung forward to catch Zig. "Zig, calm down! I was only going to do this to you for a minute at most, and there are no long-term physiological effects: you're going to be fine!"
   Zig was about to start up another round of yelling at Jay, when suddenly...
   crash!
   Both of their heads turned towards the source of the sound. It was the AR/P Gun, except now it was lying on the ground, its body out of alignment and sparking and the emitter at the end broken. The gun was broken.
   With growing horror, Zig remembered that Jay's hand had been perched on it when he'd been hitting him. Jay had accidentally knocked the gun off balance when he'd swung his arms forward to catch Zig, and now the gun was broken, and it was Zig's fault.
   "Oh... Zig. I am so sorry," Jay said, horror tingeing his voice as he stared at the broken gun
   "Can... can you fix it?" Zig asked, his voice trembling. The prospect of being stuck as a toddler, having to grow up again... no, no, he wanted to be back to normal now.
   "Of course I can fix it, Zig!" Jay assured him. "It just, it might take me a few hours, okay?"
   It was the straw that broke the camel's back.
   Zig sniffled, and then started to cry.
   He threw himself into Jay's arms, sobbing into the scientist's shoulder as Jay tried to comfort him, whispering that it would be alright and he'd get Zig back to normal.
   Finally, Zig stopped crying long enough to whisper something into Jay's large ear.
   "T... two."
   "Two?"
   "I..." he sniffled and wiped at his runny nose. Jay grabbed a clean cloth off of the table and held it up to Zig's nose for him to blow. "I was trained around two and a half or so. But, but I still had accidents and stuff for a year or so, so... you might wanna..." He blushed and stopped talking. Jay seemed to understand.
   "Okay. Okay. Don't worry, Zig," Jay said with a smile, and then his eyes lit up as if he'd remembered something. "Look, I've got something here I was building for the base's daycare center, we can get you into some training pants, and then I'll get you back to normal, okay?" He nodded earnestly at Zig.
   Zig looked at him, still sniffling. It might have been Jay's fault that he was like this, but... but Jay could fix anything. He'd have him back to normal in no time. So, so... yeah. He'd be okay.
   He nodded.
   Jay smiled, and then offered Zig his hand, which Zig took.
   "Alright, come on Zig, let's find that changing station. And then, let's see what I can do about fixing that gun..."

to be continued...

PS: As this story is set in Ren Gaulen's "Shades of Grey" universe, if anyone needs clarifying questions answered, just ask, and either Ren or myself will gladly provide them. Anyway, on with the show...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

On FA, "gantries" in the first little section is mis-spelled. Here, it is not. Curious..

[Sprocketsdance]

XD That was awesome! Can't wait to see what else happens!