• Last Seen: 8 yrs ago
  • Old Guild Username: FinderOfPaths
  • Joined: 12 yrs ago
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    1. Penultimate_Pi 12 yrs ago

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10 yrs ago
I keep coming back here very so often, as if it would make my wanting to return any better. I don't know why that would be. I would just disappear again and regret it again, I'm sure.
1 like
10 yrs ago
i give up. why do I even bother if I can't be consistent? it's over for me.
10 yrs ago
I'm just... really in a bad time. I feel awful. I'm don't think I have the strength of will to show my face here again after letting everyone down.
1 like
10 yrs ago
just gonna bash my head on a door or something
10 yrs ago
whatever
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Making a post right know. Give me a bit.

Is the group going to have a certain loot pool In-Character? Because from what I can see so far, it could use one.
A shorter post, but one that can hopefully continue to hold Lora up for a while.
The passing months were harsh, unaided by the sudden turn of events that had occurred behind her back. Yeshua's incessant debilitating behavior and Koehler's own brand of protective impulsiveness clashes, nearing getting the latter killed. That was nothing to say about the strange actions and demoralizing behavior of Yeshua towards some of the other pilots prior, especially Elora, it seemed. Once the guilty, yet lying cadet was brought up and tried, Lorenzo tipped the scales some and instead enacted some sort of cranial experiment on Yeshua, hoping to cull his sociopathic tendencies manually.

Nevertheless the other cadets didn't take it well, least of all Koehler. After the announcement, Elora ran off and spent the rest of her day alone, crying; as much as Lora wanted to help, she wasn't sure of what she could say about Yeshua, like what happened with Ryan. Koehler was also punished for his aggression, playing 'assistant' to Sergeant Ken (whom reminder Lora of someone that she couldn't quite put her finger on). In some form of compensation, though, he got to refurbish his Frame into a new model.

Lora herself, meanwhile, was quite disconnected from most everyone else. It probably wasn't healthy or necessary, but she wanted to take advantage of the isolation for meditation and other mental strengthening. She would often sit alone in her bunk to perform her breathing exercises, played a passive but attentive role in the lectures, focused hard on the art of the Star Fist (which she became rather good at). To say she was spending her time attempting to do anything but train herself was obviously wrong. There were even times she would pace out to the hangar, trot along the catwalks to reach the Caliburn, merely to stand there at stare at it. Judge it. Determine what exactly lay within that she could conquer.

Needless to say, Lora's prowess in the simulations improved. Her already above-average Synchro Rate ensured she was the first to reach 100% hard synchronization potential, and she did everything in her power to keep it there throughout the simulations. In fact, she was in one of the trainer chambers right now, taking a virtual Caliburn out on another test run in a virtual solo mission. She had insisted, in recent times, to crank up the difficulty of the sims higher than the cadets would typically be given. Though Lora never yet managed to actually complete one of those solo missions emblazoned with additional difficulty, the experience seemed to speak volumes with her.

After failing yet again in this hard mission sim, Lora was ejected from the system where she pulled herself out of the harness. The local operator present was happy to help, but Lora declined the offer as usual. This time, she had actually to make progress in the mission, but had gotten triple-teamed again by the Cruxi mechs after being pinned down by artillery.

The ace pilot and junior officer yet continued to keep to herself, pacing down the corridors en route to the hangar again. Noboyd could say for sure why she did this, but Lora knew. Those noises, those whisperings at the edges of her consciousness - they couldn't be fragment of her own imagination. They were there, and they weren't from her. It had to be the machine, the advanced control AI built into the Framewerk to sustain and translate the pilot's actions into its own. As their synchronization grew, the Frame aligned with her more and more until their minds were fusing together.

Or so she theorized, anyway. Not that she had attempted to put this into words for anyone yet.

Less than an hour later, Lora could be found standing at the catwalk stationed around the Caliburn, leaning on the handrail to observe the Framewerk. It was inanimate as ever while Lora was outside it, but she tried to think that she could still resonate with it somehow. Belief in such spiritual mojo wasn't very tactful for a scientific operation dependent on some of humanity's most advanced technologies yet, but it was one of the blocks Lora was raised upon. It hadn't meant to survive the trip through basic training and the depths of the XJ9 program, but here it was now.

Her thoughts drifted back to her brother. After all this time, Lora hadn't even sent so much as a message to him. How was he holding up through all of this? Surely, he didn't think poorly of her for not responding for a while?
Hanzo awoke surprisingly late in the morning than he typically might, with the sun's rays of light already shining through the window of his room. Though, perhaps, he wasn't always one to sleep in a bed, especially not after fighting a horde of bandits and a hellish paladin. whatever the case, the monk awoke quite late and quite hungry, and was hoping to at least sate the latter half of his immediate predicament.

Making his way down to the main room of the inn, he was greeted by a few others and informed there was a buffet going on. Basically, when explained, a sort of 'choose your own meal' event. Hanzo couldn't exactly claim to understand it, but he went along anyways. As faithful as he tried to be, sometimes it was nice to try something different, something more than what one was used to. Thus, after gathering a muffin and some berries, Hanzo decided to act upon some unseen urge and turned it into a more high-piled breakfast, like his comrades were helping themselves to.

Taking careful strides up to the table where Fiona, Tobias, and some of the others were gathering around, Hanzo greeted them. "Good morning. I trust everyone is alright after the- well, excitements yesterday?" He spoke, seeming slightly out of character than yesterday's counterpart (something his plate could attest to).

Taking a free seat, Hanzo began to dig in to his food, mannerly as ever in that regard at least. He would certainly admit, a warm meal like this was a lot more sweet and wholesome, especially when one had been conditioned to live much on the road. For a moment, he considered the fact that not every person in the world who awakened this morning would not have the luxuries Hanzo was helping himself to... but, strangely, he found himself shaking that thought away. His thoughts turned to why - it wasn't exactly befitting of him to ignore that sort of issue. Was he becoming more like an adventurer, living more in the now and for themselves?

No, he supposed, trying to reassure himself, he wasn't. Hanzo had allowed himself to indulge in some luxuries before, whenever they were so graciously offered by the people he had helped. So, an opportunist, then? Simply accepting gifts like this was more of a courtesy than an opportunity to be seized, he imagined. Maybe so, maybe not, it was hard to tell.

The monk got so absorbed in his self-criticism that his pace of eating slowed to a stop, until he was just sitting there pondering. A moment later, he shook himself from his trance and returned to his food. It probably wasn't so healthy to be judging himself like this, anyways. Why not simply take what life gives you?

Well, Hanzo thought, maybe I just don't want to be a terrible person. But in a world like this, sometimes it's hard to know what that means.
Sorry I've been out of it lately. Real life's been catching up to me, and I've been left rather uninspired in being able to write for this. I don't want to give up yet, but...
I can't get a post out right now, so just assume Hanzo will go ahead and do that. Sorry, real life's giving me a hard-ish time right now.
Glancing past the small war between the paladin and the orc warriors, Julian's awareness suddenly registered the primary attack group from the northern gate - was their third ally gone? It seemed so, as the undead's faltering vision was just barely able to discern the larger crowd of archers taking aim at him. The hunter broke out into a run again, diving out of the way of the archer's fire as best as he could afford while tracing the arena's outer lining to get a better aim at the orcs.

One he got close enough for a fair shot (though still far enough to keep a lengthy distance), he charged another Hallow Arrow to try and take down the magician and one of the archers in one go, like before with the warrior and archer. Letting the arrow fly, he immediately strung up another arrow to prepare for a Blast Shot, but waited to see if his first attack connected fully. By the sounds of battle aside him, it sounded like the paladin was making good progress of his own, and would soon be able to assist him in taking down this final group - he had a feeling it was going to be deceptively difficult.
Through his initial shots didn't connect with the intended target, it knocked the ice-fairy's weapon loose enough for it to be sucked up by some errant cyclonic vacuum. Must've been that Kirby thing. Undeterred, Alexander revved up the Red Queen, but as he did he witnessed the Cirno-guy call upon some other magic spell and summon a large blade of ice.

Despite his attempts to interfere, Alexander found his body held in place during the meantime. Of course- this was like a fighting game, where time temporarily froze while the enemy prepared their super move. This was going to be a close call, then-! Both sides, fire and ice, charged forward for the clash... and then, all too suddenly, an explosion rocked the area and filled the world around them with thick smoke, knocking off their attacks and ruining vision.

"Augh-! Dammit!" Alexander cried out in Nero's voice, his frustration evident. It only got worse as another similar explosion pounded out, throwing Nero off-balance and filling out any gaps in the smoke. "Who in the hell is doing that...!?" Alexander cried out, mostly to himself.

And then the third blast hit, stronger than before, and Nero's body was flung back several feet as a result. His yell of anguish with only interrupted when he hit the discernible material of the void's floor, subsiding into grunts and moans of pain as he rolled and crumpled to a stop. Well, that was something else. If they were looking to stop the fight, it seemed awful like they did it. And why was Alexander fighting, anyway? He wasn't so petty as to get mad over some guys fighting against one other, right? If anything, he had learned to stay out of engaged fights between others if he could truly help it. He must've gotten caught up in Nero's personality as well...

"Ugh... alright, okay, fine," Alexander groaned out, his tone pained but more 'normal' than it was when fighting as Nero, "So maybe I deserved that. Okay, that's fine- I can deal with that. I'll admit, something came over me, but that's no excuse, right?"
Recovering from the blow Hanzo had inflicted to the anti-paladin, the monk considered himself lucky to have struck when he did - the sinister figure had been prepared for another attack, and his sudden intervention had knocked him out of it and likely protected his allies fighting him. Another battle waged behind them, between the hellhound and some of the other, but Hanzo couldn't divert his focus. This devil seemed strong, and even with a new wound in his head he would not be stopped.

However, something suddenly happened. A heartfelt singing voice from elsewhere in the village. Hanzo barely managed to spare a glance... Sana? What was happening? As if on cue for an answer, several serpentine streams of light flowed out from the gypsy woman, targeting and engulfing each of her allies. The monk felt himself surging with courage, his lesser scars and scratched healing themselves fully. Some sort of secret power, of the bardic kind, perhaps? Hanzo would ask about it later. Now, it was necessary to finish the fight, while everyone seemed to be in greater spirits.

As the martial artist faced the anti-paladin again, the damned figure decided to vent some range, selecting Hanzo to be the target of a swift execution. It would've been too close to avoid, a clean cut-off of his head, but he was saved by yet another intervention - the wild orc from long before, bringing a bone club down to break the man's arm at the elbow. A cry of pain followed the sound of cracking, and the fiending warrior dropped to a knee, growing hatefully with his sword clattered on the ground.

Once more, however, yet another interruption ensued, this time from an individual Hanzo did not recognize. Or rather, he had noted the presence of him before, but knew nothing else. The cavalier, charging with lance in hand, speared the anti-paladin hard, carrying him through the air some to send him sprawling out on the ground. And then a yell from the elvish caster to stand back, and then a beam of divine flames struck the struggling man, searing through his armor. And then, again, a thrown knife from the rogue, complete with a furious insult. Battered and broken, the fiendish knight desperately reached out...

Their foe's life was finally snuffed out by a whip from seemingly nowhere, lashing around the throat and bringing a blooded head crashing to the earth. Wylsen, the old man accompanying Agnes, revealed himself, pumping an arm in victory.

Hanzo had to blink several times and look around. It had all happened so fast - the cry for help, the charging demonic paladin, the adventurers running out to confront him, and a stream of moves that combined together to slay rider and mount with extreme prejudice. Hanzo turned back to Sana, now with a small child aside her. The anti-paladin's words... He must've come looking for that child.

With pained breathes, Sana explained everything. While the others had returned with the wagon to bring the slaves to safety, the gypsy woman was mourning the loss of her father and family, separated before but now dead at the hands of the slavers. In the meantime, she had found the child, Ariana, hidden in a hole, whom the anti-paladin was somehow looking for, for some unknown and hopefully now irrelevant reason. Now, at the end of the day, everyone who deserved to be alive was so, and it seemed at last the hard day was over and all could rest well. Even the stranger, having come long after this all began, found some sympathy to share with the young girl at Sana's feet.

Mortosh announced he would take care of the bodies again while the others got some proper sleep. As an undead himself, the animated skeleton didn't need sleep, though he did implore his fairy-like companion to accompany the group to the inn. Hanzo glanced back to the south, a faint pillar of black smoke still making itself apparent in the pale light of the moon. Hopefully, the fire and everything within it would be gone tomorrow morning, and they could bury the pit of bones remaining.

There was scattered talk about harvesting some of the hellhound, and the Lob spoke up with the insistence to use everything - bones, fur, blood, all of it. That was right, Hanzo thought; his old family has also held the tradition of using every piece of every animal they hunted, so that the sacrifice of the animal's life was never senseless or forgotten. It also reminded him that one of the ingredients they were collecting was something from a hellhound. What a happy coincidence, then, that would save them the trouble of having to scour one out elsewhere.

Hanzo simply stood, half-meditating, rather overwhelmed at today's turn of events. He had entered this group unsure of what would come of it, but ultimately it seemed like they were all proving to come together. Their decisive battle against the anti-paladin proved that much.
It just feels so jarring. You'd think there would at least be a bit more escalation to the kind of behavior that showed up (and I know realistically there wouldn't be so much of that). I mean, it's still the first day, we're not even close to our first mission with the Cruzi and we're already nigh-literally killing each other.

I understand all the circumstances behind this, am I'm not trying to point fingers, it's just... ugh. I don't even know, myself. Right now, I'm just waiting for a collab that I should probably give up on at this point, but now I don't know how to respond to all this. So much has suddenly gone down that I'm having trouble playing catch up and judging where and what Lora would be in all of this. But maybe that's my fault, more than anyone else's.
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