Fading Memory

The Wild Beyond Witchlight

Yes, but a promotion from pond scum to pond slime is still a promotion. Zavakri would never dare presume she wields enough PURE LAW to be a tridrone.

The Wild Beyond Witchlight

…A Duodrone?!?!

The Wild Beyond Witchlight

If Rory is an Archfey, then Zavakri is a Modron. Tis only fair.

Planescape: Search for Tir na Og (DnD 5e)

Godspeed, Fellsing, you’ve attracted players

Shadowrun: Lost Heir

"Never been." CAPTCHA replied easily, her voice ringing aloud. "Been to Berlin, been to London, been to Hong Kong, but never been to Lisbon."

She rises out of her chair and stretches in a languid manner, yawning as her eyes flutter awake fully. CAPTCHA's next steps took her over to that trid screen before Bomoh and Tenno, which she rapped her knuckles upon lightly. Her Matrix Persona mimicked the action and danced to the 'front' of the screen to meet CAPTCHA's fist with the digital equivalent of a fist bump. CAPTCHA winked at herself on the screen, and the corpse-bride half of her brain blushed before racing off-screen.

"I'll see what I can dig up on the quick." CAPTCHA ran a hand through her hair in an almost lazy way as she leaned against the screen and shut her eyes. "We're closer now, noise isn't so bad..."

And before their eyes she digitally grasped the trid screen with her mind, claiming it for her matrix display. Within a few moments a map of the city projected from the trid screen, growing increasingly more detailed and complex as CAPTCHA rested against it. A strange limpness overcame her body and she seemed to sag against the device, her voice coming from the screen itself rather than her body as she next spoke;

"I hope you all like a rowdy place." her voice sounded playful and amused. "Corporate parliament, standard fare after the Eurowars, but there's a lot of SK bankrolling going on in the high level investments. Not gonna dig into that, just means there's eyes on the place. Wuxing is bound to be active in the port, I can't imagine them not having their golden fingers in the pie somehow. Conjecture, no time to verify, just spitballing how I see it. Lusiada is the ruling corp, and there's been a couple recent declarations about trying to combat the piracy and smuggling in the port. That tells me we'll have some shadows to work with, this sprawl isn't the shiniest. So long as we have good intel from Mr. Johnson over there, I think we'll be able to squeak through the cracks of this place."

The map focuses in on the port for a moment, detailing the unholy expanse of man-made islands and shipping lanes, and how the district appeared almost like an inflamed cancerous growth on the rest of the city that was bleeding into the ocean. The map shifted, momentary blips of traffic data flaring up as CAPTCHA raced her mind across the city-

But she hissed between her teeth, her eyes fluttering open. She wetted her lips and pulled away from the monitor, turning to back away from it as she studied her handiwork.

"And that's all GOD wants me to have today, I won't be able to jump onto a local grid until we land so unless we need more data in a pinch I'm taking it easy on the deck-work for now. I saw a few other headlines, but I don't think a mystery about a string of serial murders is going to be relevant to us. Once we're on the ground I'll get eyes in the air, but I'll be most comfortable if we can secure some wheels- particularly a van, otherwise I'll be trying to sneak Excalibur up alleyways."

By now she's backed to the rear of the cabin to flit her gaze down towards the ongoing series of poker games. She shifts her hips, sliding back easily onto the table to lean over the pot of 'gambled goods' and lean really really close to Wildfire and Frost. She raised an eyebrow as she studied them, then smirked for no discernible reason at all.

"Yep, I've got a good vibe about this crew. You all might be younglings, but that's no issue for me at all."

Shadowrun: Lost Heir

CAPTCHA reclined in a chair, one hand lazily resting atop the seat controls whilst the other rested over her eyes. By all appearances the woman had drifted off to sleep shortly after the flight had left the ground, and while in a sense that may be true it was not totally so. Her body lay still, but her mind wandered afar. It ranged across the matrix, hopping from grid to grid with only the slightest speed bumps of data trail intersections slowing her down. The Global Grid was always a mess, and being so high in the air meant that general distance noise and altitude chatter was interfering with her Persona-- even so, leaping across the globe via the Matrix was a simple affair and CAPTCHA knew where she was going.

Shifting onto the Seattle Metroplex Grid was effortless, her persona's subscription key being recognized opening the proverbial gates to the city for her as soon as she reached for it. From there, locating her downtown apartment was child's play. She ranged through the security cameras, pulling up data feeds from her hasty exit a few days prior. With the speed granted by raw data contact with her mind, she fast forwarded through and overlayed multiple days of visual feeds at once as she hastened through the week of time since she left. Four days after her exit, three days before the present, the door to her apartment suddenly exploded inwards as smoke filled the room. She waved her hand over the virtual stream of the data, switching the feeds to thermal imaging-- only to find that the smoke was heat-laden, smothering even the thermal imaging feeds. CAPTCHA digitally chuckled and shifted into a separate device in the living room.

The motion sensors installed in the floor paneling of the high end apartment's walls combined their datum feeds with the cameras, granting outlines of forms within the smokey visuals. Heavy footsteps, a stooped figure, lumbering gait- a heavily armored troll. It had put the boot to her door and come in first. At the troll's back came a diminutive figure, some dwarf variant if the gap in footsteps was anything to note, and finally footfalls that barely registered. She brought up the MAD analyser in the doorframe and noted that the dwarf and troll were carrying heavy cyberware, but not the third figure who came into the room.

Next came the audio feeds. Three omnidirectional microphones- the doorhandle, which was giving fuzzy feeds after slamming into the wall, an obvious game station setup on the home entertainment station below the trid, and the final one a concealed skimmer drone above the chandelier concealed in a light fixture. The trio of data feeds provided a complex overlay of accurate positional data and completed the previously obscured image for CAPTCHA.

"Slitch is gone." The troll barked, sweeping into her bedroom. "Recent, too, soykaf's still on the nightstand."

"Quiet." The dwarf- a woman- hissed in a shrill voice. "Any sign of her, Slant?"

Slant. She knew that name, that explained the third figure. Slant was bad for business. The thick southern drawl of an ork spoke, finally concreting the position of that lightly-stepping third figure;

"She's long gone, two steps ahead."

"What now?" the dwarf sounded exasperated.

"If the hen's not at roost, then she's on the range." Slant clicked his tongue. Already the smoke was beginning to clear, and she could make out the infuriating stetson hat of the tall ork through the clearing feeds. "'Sides, you really think this was gonna be this easy--"

The sound of a shotgun erupted from her bedroom, and CAPTCHA chuckled to herself as she watched the scene of chaos unfolded. A troll, wrestling with a Doberman drone toting a double-barrel shotgun. Said troll lifting the drone and hurling it out of a window, causing an alarm to trip. The dwarf drawing two machine pistols and hitting the dirt as a multi-armed serving drone in the kitchen whirled to life and began to throw a series of knives into the living room. Slant narrowly avoiding a cake knife by casually leaning to the side. The blazing sight of a fire spirit as it appeared before him, its flaming hands grabbing the serving drone and melting its limbs to slag even as it continued to flail its appendages. The dwarf firing two streams of bullets through the glass of her coffee table, a series of micro-explosions ripping into the sentry turrets that had just deployed from their housings in the roof. The troll barreling into the living room with an Ares Duelist on its back, a sword-arm thrust deeply into its lower body while the other tried to coil around the troll's neck. The troll twisting in its sprint and leaping, slamming its back- drone, blade, and all- into the concrete support beam in the corner of the living room. His howl as he ripped the blades from his body and slammed the barely-functioning Duelist into the floor, then crushed its pilot-housing underfoot.

"Mm. Torch the place." Slant drawled, turning to stride from the room. On the way out the door he kicked a hairbrush deftly off the ground and into his hand. He paused at the threshold, lifted the brush to the nearest camera, and lifted his head to let his red eyes pierce into the camera feeds. "...Be seein' you around, CAPTCHA, can't run forever."

And the last thing in the data stream was Slant and his crew making their exit as that fire spirit spread its arms, flames growing as if bidden from the floor itself, and engulfed the entirety of the apartment in.

CAPTCHA yawned, sitting up in her chair as she thumbed the seat controls and sat up. She rubbed her eyes and stretched her arms, her legs trembling as they mimicked the motion. At last she smacked her lips and rolled her neck, sitting up straight in the chair. Without even opening her lips, she spoke to the others on the plane in a private manner;

Hoi there chummers, having a nice flight? CAPTCHA introducing herself properly at last.

The message would seamlessly, and simultaneously, flow into each member of the team's commlink-AR field. It would be visible as a benign scrolling message in cybereyes or as a simple text message on the physical device itself, but as an addition to her message the trid screen before Tenno and Bomoh would distort its news broadcast as CAPTCHA projected her Living Persona onto its screen, lounging on the news table and counting the flowers in her bridal bouquet. The equally attractive, though distintly corpse-ish, figure on the screen winked at the two in front of the trid display in a coquettish manner.

I don't know this J well, but international work is always messy. Just glad that I could fit the Excalibur on the plane. I run recon and matrix support primarily, but in a pinch my babies can act as fire support too. Don't be a stranger, I don't bite.

The Wild Beyond Witchlight

I’m also cackling at the split screen situations of ‘The king is weak, we plot his murder!’ Contrasted by the other half of the team fleeing their imminent dooms at the hands of the king’s knights.

Very D&D.

Zavakri has nothing else to contribute yet on the convo, but at all this talk of daggers and murder plots she’s feeling very At Home and is experiencing Baldur’s Gate political season flashbacks so she’ll be eyeballing the room and counting weapons.

The Wild Beyond Witchlight

We’re like 200 feet away apparently plotting a revolution. If the commotion gets too great that’s less than a football field, so enough screaming will hasten this revolution substantially. Probably.

Geonet 2.0 - Battle for the Megacity

Apologies for getting long with it, I hit a bit of a flow and had some fun with that post.

As an update for everyone here, next month I am getting married and honeymooning in Japan. Therefor for ~2-3 weeks I'll be substantially less present and in a different time zone. I'll still check in but I might be slow to respond, understandably.

Geonet 2.0 - Battle for the Megacity

Sister

The Rooftop Workshop was abuzz with a pleasant atmosphere of activity. A few Afterburn members were lounging on the rooftop segment, rousing slowly after a late night of scouting, scavenging, and running. As dawn crept over the horizon the smog of the city was rising and beginning to crawl up onto the rooftops in this neighborhood; the pollutant runoff of an industrial sector flowed thickly across the streets of this particular slum. A few of the 'burners coughed when the smog rose; some reached for masks, whilst others settled into an adjusted level of comfort as the acidic tang of the air settled over the roof. One man in particular rose to his feet and retched briefly, before seeming to calm as he leaned against the edge of the building to spit the foul taste from his mouth.

Following the smog as it pressed against the building, as if a sentient amoeba testing for chinks in armor, tufts of the foul air rolled into Sister's Workshop. The young girl burst into the room, already wearing a respirator as she emerged from the lower floor of her haunt. In her arms was a large box filled with the scraps of electronic equipment and a few choice pieces of metallic hardware that she could manage to carry on her own. Her hair, sensibly tied back in a working ponytail, was out of her face and a dazzling sense of joy for the day radiated from her even as she worked alone within the place she called home. She took a deep, filtered, breath and paused. She breathed out, hearing the grainy sound of her exhalation as it reverberated against the filtration system of the mask.

Then she giggled and did it again. And again. And once more, finding the sensation of the mask vibrating against her face to be a delightful one that only made her laugh harder, which in turn then caused the sensations to escalate until she was swaying and dizzy from lack of breath. She had to sway over to a workbench and set the box down a little too heavily, a soldering iron bouncing off the table in the process. She jerked back with a small yelp, dizzily swaying from the table as this particular tool fell, and she eyed it suspiciously as it sat on the ground laden with an ominous threat of heat. Tentatively she knelt down and reached for its handle, cautiously lifting it away from the ground and double-checking its power switch.

"--Whew, close one. Saturnine would blow a gasket if I burnt my own lab down." She murmured to herself for, perhaps, the one millionth time in her life since escaping the Spire. She placed the tool back into its slot on her workbench with the gusto of an orphanage matron who has caught a naughty child out after dark, and dusted her hands off on her overalls. Her breathing evened out as she appraised her haul of loot for the morning, and the first rays of sunlight began to filter through her windows along with the smog as she began to organize her salvage neatly upon the long workbench that filled half the floor. It contrasted the facsmile of privacy that the hanging tarps provided her 'personal bedroom' on the floor, or the half-crumbled wall that housed the kitchen, in that the workshop half of this floor was an almost entirely open floorplan with the workbench lining one entire wall of the building and a set of monitors connected to a digital terminal dominated the adjoining corner, with toolboxes and electronics equipment filling the space in the middle of the room to act as a divider between her 'private' life and her 'work' life.

Right as she set the final transistor set on the workbench and tossed the box aside, a commotion arose on the floor above. Her smile, hidden beneath the respirator, faded. Those footsteps sounded frantic. The voices sounded hot. Her hands curled on the workbench in a slow and deliberate grip that dug her nails into her palms. She lifted her head just as a man's face appeared upside down in the window before her.

"Word just came in, Rotor's given up the ghost. 'Parently the news is kicking up a buzz on it. Hotshot's calling in the troops."

His words struck Sister and she let out a small sigh, appearing as if to swoon slightly from the weight of the conversation. The man's eyes widened briefly, revealing the mirrorchrome extent of the cybernetic appendages in full. Sister steadied herself even as he reached through the window for her, and she hastily pushed his hand away.

"Roger, I shall send out a Skynet update to the Cell. Go on then, Dumpster, get out of here. I'll be fine." She shooed at him with her hands even as she turned towards the complex array of computer terminals. Dumpster flashed her a thumbs up, which strangely enough meant he was pointing downwards due to his reversed orientation with gravity, then disappeared back up to the roof in a swift lurch of movement. Sister strode swiftly, shrugging the straps of her coveralls off her arms and pushing the top down to hang around her waist to reveal a crisp white shirt that, as of now, was yet unburdened by the filth of her workplace.

She thrust herself down into her chair and swivelled to face the terminals. She pressed both hands together before her and bent the fingers on each hand deliberately until each knuckle of each finger cracked in a dizzying array of sounds, groaned within her respirator in a pleased manner, then pulled a heavy visor-helmet down onto her head. As the visual feeds of the Afterburn Skynet network filled her gaze her hands began to fly on the keyboard.

"Alright...Boss wants everyone?... Then I'll scatter everyone... Spark, meet Gasoline..."

---

Saturnine

Mentions: Hotshot (@TheNoCoKid)

Saturnine was braiding his hair. His fingers moved deftly in a practiced pattern, the lustrous sheen of his white hair flowing into a deliberately manufactured 'messy' fishtail braid. The alternating movements of his hands brought him an aura of introspection and planning as he eyed his prize for the morning. His eyes were drawn to her hands, moreso than anything else. She had rough hands, but as he watched her twist the lid of her thermos open he could note the elegant way her muscles twisted and contracted. The way it brought her forearms into a taut definition. The way they relaxed and brought the thermos to her lips. The way her eyes met his--

The metro crashed past overhead, flickering their eye contact into a broken slideshow of bemused expressions on both sides of the street as the bulk of the machine shattered the first sign of sunlight into the binary of shadow and sun. Every time the light passed over Saturnine it sent the woman into shadow, and this game of glimpsing the other seemed to shatter the ice wondrously. Saturnine's arms fell from behind his head, the braid complete, and with languid movements and careful timing he crossed the street in an athletic burst, leaping recklessly- though quite comfortably- into a dive to avoid the passing bulk of a freight truck. He rolled to his feet just as the light reached the woman that he was, now quite suddenly, standing mere feet from.

Her eyebrow arched. He liked how that framed her tough face. It was early in the morning, but it was clear that for the two of them that their mutual days had started long before this moment. She drank from the thermos again even as Saturnine fell into step beside her.

"You do that a lot?"

Her words were exotic, laden with an accent he couldn't place.

"Only when there's a good reason." He replied swiftly, flashing a dazzling smile. Her laughter was clearly in derision at his charmed words, but it wasn't a bitter or disinterested laugh. "I think the honor of learning your name was plenty good enough to warrant such a small risk."

"Small risk, hm?" She mused. Saturnine watched her hands as they lowered the thermos down, returned the cap to its top, and twisted hard to seal the bottle shut. He watched as they hooked the bottle onto a karabiner on her hip, and the way her right hand rested atop it to stop its sway as she walked. His eyes only rose again when she continued, "You know, most guys stare at...well, basically anything besides my hands."

He smiled at her amusement, a more sincere one than the one prior.

"You have nice hands." He said simply, noting the way her olive cheeks darkened with the compliment. "But if you'd like, I could come up with a few poems about your eyes, and maybe even one about your ears?" He offered, relaxing into the comforts of this conversation.

"You think you're so smooth, huh?" She suddenly shoved him by his shoulder lightly, disjointing their steps. "You seem like the kind of guy who thinks he can get whatever he wants."

"And you seem like the kind of woman who knows what she wants." He countered evenly, twisting to walk backwards at her side. His steps rejoined hers in an even pattern even as he had to react swiftly to match her turn at the end of the block. "And, I think you and I aren't so different."

"Is that so, smooth stranger? Just how is that right?"

"We both desperately need breakfast, a shower, and sleep. I'm thinking that particular order of events sounds quite lovely, don't you?"

He watched as her eyes lightened with her laugh, the way she brought her left hand up to cover her mouth as she laughed. The way her fingers touched her lips.

"Alright, I can do breakfast and we'll see how things go from there."

But he couldn't see her hand anymore. His goggles lit up with an incoming notification, and his gait slowed enough that she managed to pass him by. She halted at the same time he did, turning back to gaze at him quizzically.

"What's up?"

"I'm afraid that we'll have to settle for exchanging names for now, madam." He said with deep regret. "Duty calls."

"Work?" She said wistfully.

"Always." He agreed with a chuckle as he turned to face her again.

"They call me Eesha." She said, now deliberately moving her hand to tuck thick purple hair over her ear. He licked his lips.

"Saturnine. Mind if I ask who 'they' are?" He asked the question even as he pulled his heavy headphones onto his ears. He watched as her lips curled into a smirk. He watched as she tapped at her lower lip with her index finger.

"The ones I like. I walk this path five days a week. Watch out for trucks, Saturnine."

He grinned like an idiot as he turned away and broke into a sprint away from her. His gloved fingers twitched, interfacing with the augmented reality view of his goggles.

"Did you really need to take the call that early?" Sister's voice rose from his messenger satchel. "I could have gone one thousand years without hearing you flirt like that directly into my ears."

He chuckles again, quieter this time, as he undid the strap of the satchel and let Sparky rise from within. His mirth was fading fast, replaced by a strong sense of obligation. His smile did not waver, however, and as the diminutive drone hovered by his head he nodded once.

"Your message said it was critical." He teased.

"Critical, not 'make your sister vomit' critical. I don't think there's anything that could ever happen that would make me want you to answer a call that fast."

"I'll always answer for you, you know that."

"Yeah, well, hurry up. Hotshot's calling in everyone."

Saturnine leapt at the same moment as his hoverboard roared to life from a nearby alleyway and thrust into motion. He deftly landed upon it and kicked its thrusters into gear, surging into the air as a streak of neon orange light cleft by the tail of his white braid. The wind whipped past his face, flinging his hair into a thankfully controlled chord behind him. He shifted his weight and spiralled around the metro rail to corkscrew above the train, now racing down its length from the facsimile of privacy offered by being above the machine. He knelt onto the board and swept his hand through the display of datafeeds that flooded his HUD.

"...Rotor, I liked him. I knit him those mittens a few weeks ago because he said that he kept getting blisters on his palms when he used that grapple line. I wish he'd have said something, I could have been there."

"You can't save everyone, don't do that to yourself."

"Patch me through to Hotshot, sis."

He cleared the news feeds and stomped hard on the back of the hoverboard, launching himself higher into the air and narrowly climbing over the arch of a roadway tunnel that the metro intersected. He twisted into a spiral, hugging himself to the board, and 'bounced' the thrusters off the top of a taxi that was caught in a deadlock of traffic. He surged upwards and rose as a blur along the face of the buildings until his board was sailing over the rooftops, unimpeded by any further obstacles for the time being. When he saw the notification of his communications reaching out for Hotshot, he set his expression into a relaxed smile.

"Alright Hotshot, how are we doing this?"