Stern Algorithm

Mobius Academy: The City in the Sky

”...hey…”

@BrutalBx

Nzige leaned against the wall, swallowing, and looking for all the world like she was suffering from a migraine. But as soon as Theo entered and spoke, the room lit up with acoustic intensity noticeable only to Nzige. The texture and pitch of Theo's voice filled the room, and she could swear she could 'see' the inside of his mouth and throat from where the sound emanated. Whatever the case, Theo's acoustic signature was now firmly established in Nzige's brain and she would be able to identify him by voice alone from now on.

"...peace...be upon you," Nzige greeted in a Wakandan accent. A hand subconsciously went up to tug at her hijab, the Muslim headscarf that she wore as a sign of modesty, to make sure it was secure. She lifted her keycard, which was still gripped in her hand, and noticed the name 'Theo', confirming that the dorms were co-ed. This was awkward. Her religious convictions suggested against gender mixing, but she had not had the forethought to ask the school to accommodate due to having assumed that the dorms would be gender-segregated. But if she asked to switch now, would Theo take it as a slight? Nzige decided to just roll with the punches. Besides, being able to fixate on a single source of sound helped her focus, making the ensuing conversation a bit of a necessity. Ziggy stopped leaning against the wall and introduced herself, though she did not offer to shake hands, "My name is Nzige Nyenje, but my non-Wakandan friends call me "Ziggy'. I'm from...well, Wakanda." Nzige found herself missing Amalia. She knew Lia was here, somewhere, but she had rushed to the dorm without looking for her friend due to being overwhelmed by white noise. Now she wasn't even sure if they were in the same class or not.

Overlord: Momento Mori

So, a bit of a trigger warning concerning Salem's creator. I didn't intend for it to get so dark.

Click here if you want to know what the trigger warning is for

Implied suicide

"Can you survive Five Nights at Salem's?"

Salem Vicarious, Lord of Lost Things

Name:

Salem Vicarious, Lord of Lost Things

Gender:

Nongendered

Age:

10

Appearance:

Normally, Salem is a small, ball-jointed doll in the form of a young, androgynous child with short hazel-red hair, heterochromatic red and green eyes, and porcelain white skin. They keep their joints hidden under long sleeves and stockings, while their face and hands are covered in a magical 'skin' that mimics the real thing and hides any doll-like appearances. they are normally dressed in a boyish, dark-blue, frilly outfit, complete with a black top hat. However, like a true boss fight, Salem can take on increasingly monstrous forms by combining with discarded weaponry and the scattered remains of other dolls and mannequins, becoming a gigantic, monstrous, multi-limbed beast. In truth, Salem's true form is the red glass eye in the doll's head. When defeated, the body crumbles to sawdust and the eye attempts to levitate away to find a new body somewhere in the City of Lost Things. If the eye is destroyed, Salem dies. Permanently.

Examples of monster forms

Occupation:

Boss Monster, Surveillance Scout, Infiltrator, VP of Automation (title reluctantly accepted from Graft)

Residence:

Chapter 1: The City of Lost Things

Character Focus:

Salem is a true, multi-stage Boss Monster focusing on self-preservation, control effects, area denial, and wasting the party's time with convoluted mechanics.

Personality:

To outsiders, Salem behaves like a precocious, coquettish youngster and is quite good at endearing themself to others, but this is simply a veneer to hide their condescension and general misanthropy. Salem hates humans, and by extension, sentient non-monsters, with a passion, having inherited this passion from their creator. Around the other members of Chateau Gothika, Salem is their true self, a bit bratty, and quite a bit sadistic, and plagued with thoughts of abandonment and worthlessness. On the one hand, it is in Salem's nature to please others to derive a sense of self-worth, on the other hand, Salem wrestles with the desire for independence and to be free from the shackles of needing acceptance and recognition. Salem frets constantly about appearances and putting on a good show, while tending to hide their insecurities behind a facade of sarcasm, and smugness.

Some images showing Salem's typical, bratty attitude

Creator Information:

Trigger Warning

Dr.Drd was one of the early members of Chateau Gothika, and the go-to guy for coding and otherwise fine-tuning all the original user-generated content for the guild. An automation programmer by trade, Dr.Drd raged against the inevitability that automation would replace human labor and recognized, with guilt, his own hand in creating rampant unemployment. Yet he also raged when human clerks or IT help-desk personnel proved inadequate. But mostly he just raged. A man with a lot of deep-seated frustrations, and unanswered emotional problems, it came as no surprise that he would create Salem. Salem was originally made as an experiment in ways to break or exploit the game's physics engine. Dr.Drd intended Salem to manage the automatons and mannequins that, in his mind, were to form the backbone of Chateau Gothika's workforce and defense force, but that idea was pushed aside in favor of skeletons and Brushen Penn's biomechanical monstrosities. For this slight, Dr.Drd signed off of YGGDRASIL for half a year. When he returned, he changed the as yet unfinished first chapter, the Dollhouse, into the City of Lost Things. Through his constant experiments in crafting, he made a plethora of low-level objects and weapons, and the City of Lost Things became a garbage dump for these discarded creations. Over time, it seemed that creative expression within Chateau Gothika softened Dr.Drd up somewhat, and he even developed a sense of camaraderie among his fellow guildmates. Everything seemed to be going well, until one day Dr.Drd just never logged back in. His last message ever sent in the game was, "I'm happy right now."

Notable Equipment:

• The Eye of Dread -
  Salem's true form is a small glass eye. The downside of taking advantage of so many object exploits is that Salem is technically an 'artifact' and does not follow the normal rules of healing and revival. If the eye is destroyed, no one exists anymore who can craft a replacement and imbue all the convoluted code into it. Even if recreating the eye were possible, there is no chance that Salem's 'consciousness' would revive within the new eye.
• The Toy-Box -
  The Toy-Box is an oversized coffin that Salem slings across their back when traveling. Compared to Salem's size, the coffin is ridiculously large. Only Salem can unlock the coffin with a skeleton key hidden in their right index finger, and within are stored myriad spare doll parts, filled with dangerous, spring-loaded (often bladed) mechanisms.

Notable Skills:

• Telekinesis -
  A simple low level concentration spell that allows Salem to levitate and move objects. This is Salem's main attack and the foundation of their physics engine-exploiting shenanigans.
• n-Stack Equipment Slots -
  Salem's primary exploit, any object wielded by telekinesis or fused to Salem's body is considered 'equipment', so all weapon and armor proficiencies that Salem has applies to the wielded weapons and armors, and any bonuses that that said weapons or armor confer to the wielder apply to Salem.
• Paranormal Activity -
  Telekinesis is, in and of itself, a bad combat spell because it is a concentration spell, and typically, multiple concentration spells could not be used simultaneously, and concentration spells break if the user is hurt, distracted, or otherwise breaks their concentration. Dr.Drd noticed a loophole with certain ghost types, particularly, poltergeists. Applying the loophole to Salem removes the restriction, allowing Salem to telekinetically wield innumerable thrown objects. This restriction is also removed for other concentration spells that Salem might cast, though Salem does this rarely, preferring their bread-and-butter attack spell.
• Aichmophobia -
  This translates as 'the fear of sharp objects', slashing or piercing weapons wielded by Salem get increased armor penetration.
• Possessed Item HP/Durability Paradox -
  Typically, only 'killable' entities have HP, whereas 'breakable' objects have durability. Certain monsters were possessed or animated weapons, and suddenly had HP in addition to the weapon's actual durability. Dr.Drd took advantage of this strange conundrum by tying Salem's health to the sum total of the durability of all wielded items, since item durability loss usually decreases at a much slower rate than health during combat. This does give Salem a particular weakness to item- and equipment-destroying skills but since those are typically niche skills the fight against Salem is fairly cryptic to most unprepared adventurers. This also prevents Salem from wielding items with the 'indestructible' tag, whether by touch or with telekinesis, as it causes a 'divide-by-zero' error in health calculations leading to cascading code failure. In the New World, this translates to a complete and total mental breakdown for Salem, whose philosophy is that all things break, all things become obsolete, and all things lose usefulness. Any attempt to wield an unbreakable item causes Salem to lose all their abilities, dropping all wielded items, and be reduced to having control only over the Eye of Dread, requiring Salem to retreat to the City of Lost Things to recuperate.
• Antique Affinity -
  Deal bonus unholy magic damage based on missing weapon durability, gain bonus armor and magic resistance based on missing armor durability. This ability helps to mitigate Salem's main weakness as well as making fights with Salem take longer than they should. The more time it takes the party to fight Salem and attempt to figure out their weaknesses and attack patterns, the more dangerous and harder to kill Salem becomes.
• Parts Cannabilization -
  The City of Lost Things provides a limited stream of doll and mannequin parts to Salem's boss room be incorporated into their body during the course of a fight, allowing health regeneration and to the ability to grow into a multi-limbed monstrosity as the fight progresses.
• Thrown object/Collision detection exploit -
  Thrown objects, attacks made with melee weapons, and attacks made with thrown or projectile weapons followed different damage calculation mechanics. Dr.Drd found a way to combine these mechanics for stacking bonus damage from collisions while not losing out on passive benefits for ranged attacks from Salem's various ranged classes, and passive benefits for melee attacks from Salem's various dueling classes.
• Creepy Doll Heads -
  Salem can see, hear, and speak through any mannequin or doll head that they wield as an item, allowing them to perform surveillance and communication throughout Chateau Gothika.

Total Level:

55

Class Levels: 40

(B) Archer 5
(B) Fencer 5
(B) Wizard 5
(H) Ranger 5
(H) Duelist 5
(H) Shaman 5
(R) Sniper 5
(R) Weapons Master 5

Race Levels: 15

(B) Ghost 5
(H) Mannequin 5
(R) Poltergeist 5

Alignment:

Chaotic Evil

Stats:

HP: 100
MP: 25 (but only uses low-level spells)
PHY. ATK: 100
PHY. DEF: 85
AGI: 75 (decreases over combat duration)
MAG. ATK: 20 (increases over combat duration)
MAG. DEF: 20 (increases over combat duration)
RESIST: 45 (As a construct, Salem is immune to most biological status ailments, but shares undead weaknesses and is susceptible to durability-harming effects)
SPECIAL: 85

Total: 555

Combat Summary:

Salem is a 'bullet hell' boss and fights primarily by overwhelming opponents with a cloud of thrown objects, mostly discarded weapons and weaponized doll parts, though they are not above wielding weapons themself, or attaching grotesque bladed limbs to their own body and engaging in melee. Salem primarily uses sharp objects, such as over-sized gardening shears or kitchen knives, though sometimes Salem brings in chains, coffins, iron maidens, and other torture equipment to immobilize foes. The esoteric mechanics that went into Salem's creation make it difficult to take Salem down. Salem prefers to fight in claustrophobic rooms and hallways, where their thrown objects are more difficult to avoid. Salem is most at home in the City of Lost Things, where they have access to all their items. Outside the Chateau, Salem must rely on whatever is inside the Toy-Box as ammunition and is much weaker, needing to rely on passing off as a normal human child and the element of surprise.

Some videos showing how Salem typically fights

Dominion: The City of Lost Things

The City of Lost Things is a physical mindscape representing Dr.Drd's vision of the concept of innocence lost. Originally the dumpsite of discarded crafted goods, The City of Lost Things takes the discarded and abandoned and pretties it up, giving it a second, grotesque life, like undeath but for already inanimate objects. The City appears like a Toyland, filled with childish decadence, like toys and sweets, juxtaposed with images of gratuitous violence, body horror, and lewd innuendo, such as mannequins forever locked in grotesque poses. The City is a mix of Victorian, Baroque, and Gothic art and architecture, demonstrating artistic intricacy and meticulous attention to detail, while completely lacking comprehensive high-level artistic sense as the various styles clash with each other, like the inhabitants, the style is borrowed and hacked together. The City is like a pre-modern metropolis with soot-covered cobblestone alleyways filled with junk and newspapers that make no sense. Tall, narrow, sharp buildings crowd togehter, and you never know if there was an animatronic jump-scare around the corner. The main danger of the City are its inhabitants: randomly generated dolls, animatronics, automatons, and gigantic stuffed animals wielding dangerous equipment. Their danger lies in the fact that no two creatures are the same, follow the same rules or patterns, have the same strengths and weaknesses, etc., making preparation a veritable nightmare. In the middle of it all sits a mansion, The House That Salem Built, where Salem plays very dangerous versions of 'House' and 'Tea' with the currently highest ranking subjects.

In away, the City is like the Factory, but significantly less organized, and in fact, Dr.Drd had commissioned the factory to provide automaton bodies as the workforce for Chateau Gothika. When the idea was scrapped, Dr.Drd never stopped the order, so a stream of mannequins continues to funnel into the City, a testament to the abandoned project and the resentment that Dr.Drd continued to harbor. As someone who dabbled in AI, Dr.Drd played with the idea of 'evolutionary machine learning', and experimented with the idea of programs that could change their own code while self-optimizing to compete for computational resources. This embodies the controlled chaos of the City as the discarded automatons tear each other apart to survive, like humans after the Rapture fighting each other for the forgiveness of a god that has long abandoned them. Salem rules over all this, like an abusive parent who outwardly shows love and caring beautifying the automatons, but then demands that the inhabitants of the City vie for Salem's favor. In the end, nothing is above being broken down for parts, and the refuse of this chaos is collected and returned to the Factory as raw materials, where the futile cycle begins again.

Themes:

Themes

Mobius Academy: The City in the Sky

@BrutalBx

I needed to get my collab post out, but I'll get a response to Theo with Nzige out soonish.

Mobius Academy: The City in the Sky

and

Collab between @Fiber and @Stern Algorithm

During the presentation Ayla took extensive notes, handwritten with impeccable clarity in a newly acquired pastel pink notebook. She even tried to make her writing look cuter with handful of flourishes and curls on the letters, before abandoning it halfway through out of an inability to stomach much more of that forced quirkiness. After the speech she looked around for someone to talk to, judging everyone around her. When she saw Taihou struggling to grip his keycard she found it comical, almost laughing to mock him, but then she remembered one of her Mother’s pieces of advice for life on earth. Humans respect the weak and the vulnerable, and even more than that they respect those who help the weak, it’s good if they see you doing that.

After getting her keycard she walked over to Taihou with a smile on her face, and gripped the card with one of her hands so that he could get a more solid grasp on it. She said “Hi, my name’s Ayla. It’s so overwhelming to be here, it’s waaay different from my home dimension, but it’s so amazing to get to meet new people here!” Her tone was peppy and high-pitched, an excellent job at feigning positivity. She got a look at the room keycard and saw that it had the same number as hers. “Ohmygosh! We’re going to be roommates! How totally awesome!” is what she said, which was far, far different from her actual opinion on the matter.

Taihou looked up at Ayla and graciously took the keycard. "Th-thanks!" he said, sliding the card into a slot in his rubber claw sleeve meant for holding such articles. "I'm Ebisugawa Taihou," he replied, introducing himself formally, the way his parents had taught him. Growing up in the much more casual America, he knew such propriety stood out, but he had the conviction to honor his parent's traditions. Besides, at Mobius, you really didn't know if you were going to run into royalty or not, so it was better to be safe than sorry. But after his introduction, he dropped the formality, "...but you can call me Tai." He looked at his card, just to confirm that they were roommates. "Awesome!" he replied. Fortunately, Taihou was rather gender-blind and rooming with a girl wasn't something to get him all flustered. What did interest him, though, was something Ayla had mentioned earlier. "Did you say you were from another dimension? That's amazing! Where are you from? What are your powers? As you can see, I'm just an Inhuman, with shrimp traits," he said, adding some humbling, self-deprecation to get that out of the way, clicking his pincers in a rudimentary demonstration.

Ayla was happy to see how enthusiastic Taihou was. She thought about giving him a high-five, but stopped as she puzzled over how exactly that would work. She said "Wow, what a cool name you have. So, I came from a dimension full of magic and wonder, my mother is one of the rulers over there. I can manipulate magic just like her, and there's almost no limit to what you can do with a little magic." She snapped her fingers and conjured forth a shower of pinkish sparks, and a few rose petals out of thin air. Some of the sparks started catching the petals on fire, and then she looked flustered and waved her hand to quickly dismiss it and ignore it. "Anyway, although I was born there, my father is from Earth. I've never met him, but my mom says he's a big hero over here, so I came here to be just like him, I really want to see him someday!" She peered down the hallway and started walking, but still looking back at Taihou. "Let's go check out our room! Also, I heard you say you were an Inhuman, what's that? I'm afraid I'm still learning about what things are like in this dimension."

"A ruler?! Y-your highness," Taihou bowed stiffly, taken by surprise at having met a royal already. He straightened back up quickly though, his mind full of questions. "A magical dimension? So you must know Dr. Strange." Tai looked on in awe at Ayla's display. Nothing he could do could come close to manipulating reality like that, though he wasn't particularly envious, just amazed. "And your father is an Earth hero? Do you know which one? I'm a bit of a hero nerd so I can probably tell you whatever you want to know."

He followed along after her, eager to see their room. Her question brought a slight grimace to his youthful face. "Uhh, Inhumans. Yeah, I think we're like, a separate evolution of humans...? Some aliens were fighting a war and wanted to use our ancestors as soldiers and accelerated our evolution or something. We got powers and developed a prehistoric advanced civilization. But a bunch of Inhumans also crossbred with the later developed humans, so a bunch of humans have Inhuman genes or something. I was born and raised thinking I was a normal human, but there's this mist thing that causes changes to Inhumans exposed to it. It happened to me, and I became like this." He waved his claws, wiggled his antennae and flapped his tail in demonstration. "I guess I'm not like, sad about it or anything, and I'm more or less used to it, but some people used to make fun of me, so I want to be a hero to show that despite my appearance, I can be a hero too." Tai suddenly caught himself, "S-sorry, I get carried away easily and talk a lot...umm, what do you think of the fact that the frickin' Wolverine is our teacher? He's so awesome!" Not only did Tai find Wolverine awesome, he knew the ancient mutant had a lot of wisdom from his long life of suffering and hardship, and was an incredible role model when it came to dealing with stigma and unresolved pain.

Ayla chuckled a little when he bowed, though she did appreciate the gesture. She frowned a little when he mentioned Doctor Strange, and made a hasty explanation "Oh, Strange, yes, um I've never met him but I know he's been to my home dimension. I don't know much about him, I hear he travels a lot. Probably been to a lot of places. As for my father, my mother hasn't told any details other than what I've shared, but I think if I become a hero here, maybe he'll hear about me and I can meet him for real. It might be silly, but I came here to make my father proud." Now she had gotten to the door of their dorm room, and opened it. She held it open for Taihou, and gestured for him to come in. "I can't say much about Wolverine, because I never heard about him back home. Is he nice? Anyway, let's check out our room and you can tell me all about him."

Tai noticed that Ayla seemed more perturbed by his mentioning Dr. Strange than she was when she mentioned that she didn't know who her father was. Normally not knowing one's parents was a source of angst, but maybe things were different in magical dimensions. He followed her into the room and noticed how nice it was. "Wow! I can't believe we get to stay somewhere so amazing! Though to be fair, we are on a giant floating city. I hope you don't mind the top bunk, if possible, I'd prefer not to have to climb into bed every night." He demonstrated by grasping the rungs of the bunk bed ladder with his claws and making quite the cacophony as the notches and lumps in his claws rubbed against the metal frame. He noticed that his luggage had already arrived so he began to unpack. "Well, I don't know that Wolverine is nice. I hear he's kind of gruff and grizzled, but what's amazing about him is his power prevents him from dying, so he's been around for over a century. He lived in a time before mutants were widely accepted and was supposedly used in experiments against his will. Despite all this, he chooses to push past the pain and help others. He has more of something than the other teachers, and that's experience. But I guess coming from a magical dimension, people living for centuries maybe isn't such a big deal, is it?" Taihou wondered aloud, though he wasn't about to attempt to guess Ayla's age or anything rude like that, besides, who knew if time even mattered in other dimensions. Imagine using the very concept of time to piss off an otherworldly entity.

Ayla noticed her luggage had also arrived, including the massive lump of rocks in the corner. She nodded along politely while Taihou talked, making a note that she'd have to get more info about that whole mutant acceptance thing at a later time. She slowly closed the door while he was talking. When he finished, she started talking. "Oh, I don't mind taking the top bunk, it doesn't really matter that much, it's all a dump compared to home. Speaking of that, I hope you don't mind me having Grgggg around, he's not fully sentient but has plenty of brute strength, works pretty well as an assistant when I don't want to get my hands dirty." The big pile of rocks started to move, and one glowing eye lit up at the center of it, it struck quite an imposing figure. Ayla spoke again, but with the door closed her tone had changed, no longer high pitched, now bitter and tinged with venom. "Now I get that you're some kind of hero nerd. I usually have better things to do with my time, but I think you can be useful to me. Don't worry, I'll help you too, find something worthwhile for your alien science experiment genes and toxic waste exposure, and I promise it won't be TV commercials for some restaurant. Really, I'm glad you're my roommate." She went to one of her bags and fished around for a moment before pulling out a binder full of disks. She laid it out open on the ground and said. "My mother got these blu-ray things when someone offered her his soul and all he had to her. Collection date came earlier than expected thanks to a truck accident. Anyway, she wants me to study them, to act like the heroines in them, she says that's the way I need to act when I'm here. She also said to start with this one." She pointed to a disk that said Sailor Moon on it, and all of the rest were of similar magical girl anime. "I think this is a task you can help me with, and it is something I would like to start immediately."

Taihou watched with amazement as the magical pile of rocks named 'Greg' took form, but Ayla's personality suddenly transitioning into a more threatening presence put Taihou on edge in a slightly confused way. He wanted to tell her that he didn't actually need or want help with who he was and how he appeared, but his voice stuck in his throat for the moment. Yet all that fear washed away when he realized what she was asking for help with; hyper-focusing on the DVDs and Blu-rays distracted him from the sense of dread he had felt. Any suspicions that might have formed in his mind as to Ayla's origin were replaced with the idea that she was just someone from a magical dimension who wanted to be a magical girl. "Oh my God!" Tai exclaimed as he rifled through the plastic cases. "Sailor Moon's a classic, and great if your focus is on elemental or celestial magic. Oh! Cardcaptor Sakura is also good for elemental magic, or if you use cards, and it's great inspiration if you don't have a costume idea in mind yet. Precure's good if you want to incorporate martial arts. In Madoka Magica, they use melee weapons and it's also a bit eldritch if that's your thing." Tai had wanted to go out into the common room and meet the other students, but the fact that an extra-dimensional girl was consulting him on how to be a magical girl was much more than his otaku heart could resist. Sure, he mainly consumed shounen media, but he had eclectic tastes. Holding out a claw, he tried his best to make a sinister, hare-lipped smile while speaking in a high-pitched voice, "Make a contract with me and become a magical girl!"

Overlord: Momento Mori

@Lugubrious

Question, how wasteful is Graft and his chapter? I ask because materialism, commercialism, and consumerism are often defined by a sense of wastefulness, ie. discarding a perfectly good iPhone 9 for the new iPhone 10, or even worse, the very concept of engineered obsolescence. I want to make my character's chapter a prettified garbage dump, a Toyland that collects unloved and unwanted things and pretties them up, giving the illusion that they are loved and wanted. A crapsaccharine land of abandonment and resentment, mostly for inorganic and non-living materials that get turned into dolls and things. Or is Graft and his chapter highly efficient and resourceful, finding a use for anything and everything, and always finding ways to recycle broken or unused components?

Overlord: Momento Mori

Question, my character relies less on unique items, and more on unique skills or passives. Can I just swap out the Notable Equipment section for a Notable Skills section?

Overlord: Momento Mori

I've decided to go with a Chapter Keeper who is an animated ball-jointed doll and whose Chapter is called the Toy Factory; a paradise for creepy toys. My character has the title Lord Poltergeist and essentially fights by levitating weaponized doll parts as well as modifying their own body in grotesque ways by adding dangerous limbs, like Sid's toys from Toy Story.

Cosmic Tales (Robot Girl/Mecha Musume RP) [ENDED]

I see, so max drones (of the independent remote controlled gun type) is actually 6 (6 for the drones themselves and 6 for the ammo)?

Cosmic Tales (Robot Girl/Mecha Musume RP) [ENDED]

@Stern Algorithm

Yeah, four small drones count as one piece of equipment and needs another slot for ammo if they are ranged. Drones bigger than, say, a basketball will require two slots a piece.

@PaulHaynek

So is it technically possible for a heavy robot to max out at 24 drones (6 slots for ammo, 6 slots for the drones, with the drone slots providing 4 drones each, for a total of 12 slots)?

Looking to maybe make this monstrosity, which has what looks like 20 drones.

Mobius Academy: The City in the Sky

"WHOOHOO! Principal Prism!" clack clack clack "Let's go, Mobius!" clack clack clack the sound of enthusiastic cheering cut through the uncomfortable silence, punctuated by the sharp rap of Taihou 'clapping' his claws together in applause. He was happy to see the academy employ an AI as their principal and administrator, going against the stigma and stereotype of highly intelligent and advanced AI attempting to destroy all organics or take over the world. It showed the school was forward thinking, and a great place for someone like him who was trying to push the boundaries of what people are willing to accept as a hero. The next announcement got him both excited and nervous at the same time. Their teachers would be real, grade-A heroes! But the fact that he had to pick up a keycard filled him with agitation.

Looking under his seat, he saw it laying there, flat on the ground. Getting his massive claw under himself and between the legs of the seat was already difficult enough, but he was able to slide the card out from under the chair and between his feet. Over the course of the next few minutes, Taihou fumbled clumsily with both claws in an attempt to pick up the keycard. Though his father had fabricated special rubber claw-sleeves full of useful widgets for manipulating everyday objects, his father had not accounted for this particular scenario. Soon Taihou was fidgeting with his two claws, just trying to find some way to flip the card up so he could grip it properly.

---

At the conclusion of Principal Prism's speech, Nzige crossed her forearms in front of her, giving the Wakandan salute as a sign of respect to the faculty. As a highly advanced yet traditional culture, Wakanda venerated teachers as vital to individual growth and civilizational prosperity. However, she soon noticed that very few, if any seemed to be paying their respects, and although enthusiastic, the shouting and clapping coming from some other part of the auditorium seemed almost irreverent and disrespectful, after all, this wasn't a show meant to entertain. She reached under her chair and pulled up the card, reading 1A. "Ms. Pride," Nzige thought to herself passively, a hero who no doubt had to learn how to deal with the ethereal nature of her powers. Certainly a wonderful source of guidance.

Yet as the speech ended and students began to move and shuffle, Nzige felt the tension in the room rise as white noise slowly increased in volume; the sound of shuffling feet, the squeak of chairs sliding, students mumbling to each other. She closed her eyes, but the auditory image of the room created by echolocation lingered in her mind, preventing her from shutting out the rising intensity of stimulus. With her eyes closed, she managed to navigate her way out of the auditorium by sound, and headed straight to her dorm room, looking for a quiet place. Unlocking the door with her card, she slipped inside and leaned against a wall to catch her breath. She wanted to lay down, but she didn't want to inadvertently claim a bed before consulting her eventual roommate.