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2016-10-14: A Serotinal Frolic

Posted by: Bob Schroeck - 11-19-2024, 06:43 PM - Forum: Stories - Replies (2)

A Serotinal Frolic
A "KanriKyara" Story
by Brent Laabs

Chapter 1 - Planning
1.1 - An Alarming Development

Friday, October 14, 2016

It was a few minutes to eleven when I heard a knock on the door to the apartment manager's office. I took my time getting up to answer, so the knocking grew louder, more insistent.

"Hi, can I help?" I looked down to notice my visitor, a Japanese girl in blue jeans and an Godzilla-branded oversized tee, tied in a knot above the midriff. "Oh. It's you." The pest had come to visit me again.

"I'm having a problem with my computer, Brent."

"Uh huh."

"The interface is too complicated. Can I get a Chobit instead?"^[1]

"We don't have those. Not invented yet."

"Okay, how about a boomer?"

"It's 2016, not 2040."

"Well, what do you have?" Tomo pushed her way inside my apartment, and ducked into the office. She declared, "Aha, look at that, two monitors!" as if it was proof.

I sighed. "My setup is even older than yours, Tomo. You don't need to hack the Gibson, and neither do I."

"But what about this thing," she pointed to a keypad and a set of blinkenlights in the wall.

"That's the security system Washuu-chan installed last night. I guess it has some sort of space-grade security, so there are probably force fields or floating column things. But mostly it's just to let other apartments know so we can be good neighbors if something goes wrong."

"Ah, a Good Neighbor System."

"Sure, I guess you could call it that. Whatever." It was yet another weird nickname from Tomo. I picked up the security system's manual, "Actually, I was just trying to figure out how it all worked."

I had actually meant to talk to her about how it worked at the time, but even as Washuu-chan and her robots installed the system around the property, she spent the rest of her time convincing me of the benefits of being her guinea pig. I got out of the conversation with all of my body parts intact, and a with a lot more help for my residents.

We were one of the very first residences to get the security system installed, because I had pressed for it after hearing that a God-damned Predator had shown up in Canada. None of my residents stood a chance in combat among a wide variety of scaries in fiction, being completely normal human beings (and a Mars cat), so I wanted to be able to call for backup. At that point, as far as I knew, it only connected to the Masaki residence, but that was plenty. If you could call in Tenchi and Ryoko for backup, there'd be no need for panic.

Tomo asked me, "So what does this red button do?"

"That's the panic button. If we're under attack or see something big, it calls for help."

"Oh, cool."

I looked back to the book.

"So uh, how do you turn the panic button off?"

I glanced over — a red light started flashing on the device, and the panic button itself was glowing a nice warm red. "What did you do?"

"Well, the button looked so big and red, it was basically asking me to push it!"^[2]

"Tomo, you idiot!"

"Don't mind, don't mind. Just turn it off."^[3]

I flipped through the manual. I quoted, "Enter the DAC, then hold PANIC and RESET for three seconds. What the hell is a DAC?"

"Don't look at me!"

I started flipping through pages at random, trying to figure out what to do next.

Tomo declared, "I'm just gonna try the Panic and Reset button thing." Three seconds later, and a flashing blue light joined the urgent red lights. "I don't think that worked."

"What now?" I read the display, "What's 'Crisis Mode'?"

It turned out that the panic button really lived up to its name, in terms of the amount of panic we were feeling. "I don't know, but what are those things coming out of the ceiling?"

Rotating beacon lights, from the look of it. The room took on a rosy glow, which was not how I was feeling, "Tomo, I turn my back on you for ten seconds, and you cause this? What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Hey, it's not my fault you don't know how to work your security system," she countered.

I yelled back, "Even an idiot knows not to push buttons randomly. What are you, three?"

I could see Tomo say something angry in reply, but I couldn't hear it over the klaxons going off.

"What's going on?" The door to my apartment slammed open as Akira came in, with Alicia following in her wake.

"Technical difficulties," I screamed over the klaxons.

In the corner of my bedroom sat a full-length mirror. I saw the glass of the mirror begin to shimmer, then distort, as a woman in elaborate robes flew through the mirror as if it were a portal to another world.

"Can I help?" Belldandy asked.

Not even realizing who it was, I yelled, "Yeah, you can help by shutting off the alarm that this idiot set off."

"If you had read that book better we wouldn't be in this situation," Tomo said, sticking out her tongue.

"You think this is all a big joke, don't you? You really are a fucking moron!"

"Maybe we need a better manager."

"Maybe it's time I throw you out on the streets."

"You wouldn—"

"You alway—"

Belldandy simply said, "Silence", and everything, everyone was quiet, including the alarm. She picked up the book, and quickly keyed in the code for a false alarm.

By this time we had attracted a crowd of residents trying to figure out what was going on. The first to get her voice back was Osaka. "Who's she?"

By now Tomo and I had actually looked at our new guest, and realized who exactly she was, but she introduced herself to the group anyway. "Good morning, I'm Belldandy, Goddess First Class, unlimited. I've been hoping to visit you, but I've been very busy lately with the… situation."

"Oh, that's okay." Osaka replied. "Ganbare ne."

Tomo began, "Belldandy-sama, I–"

"Tomo, it's okay to be funny, but doing things that inconvenience a lot of other people isn't very polite. I'm disappointed in you."^[4]

"I'm— I'm really sorry!" Tomo bowed deeply to Belldandy, then turned towards the rest of us and bowed once again. "I'm really really sorry, okay?"

Yomi looked at everyone else in the room with a look of incredulity. "Wha? Are you seeing this?" she whispered.

Chiyo just shrugged in reply. Tomo's apologies were a rare event indeed.

"And Brent," Belldandy turned to face me. "It works best if you're calm in a crisis — and there's never an excuse to berate your tenants. I expected more from our valued apartment managers."

It was phrased really politely, but it struck me like a shot to the heart. I could feel the clear timbre of every one of her words in my brain. And I could see the truth: I had screwed up badly, enough to annoy Her Holiness.

It was like a weight crushing my heart, making the words just tumble out my mouth, "I'm sorry Miss, uh, Lady Belldandy. I didn't realize — not that it's an excuse — I behaved poorly to both you and Tomo, and I, uh, apologize to both of you. I'm really sorry, Tomo."

It took all my willpower just to keep my eyes off the ground.

Belldandy had just said I was valued, so no matter how worthless I felt right then, I knew I couldn't trust that emotion. But I knew I could do better. I don't know if what I felt then was magical or just Belldandy being herself — and her being a goddess, I'm not sure that there's a meaningful distinction.

She smiled at us, with that graceful mien, and it felt a lot better. "Well, that's settled." She turned to the crowd that had assembled in the hallway outside the manager's office, and asked, "Is there anything else that needs to be addressed here?"

Most everyone outside was still in awe of what had happened. Akari's mouth was agape in that expression she always did when something unexpected happened. As it happened, after plenty of silence, Osaka was the first to react, "Why'n'cha stay for lunch? I'm baking a soufflé right now."

Yomi turned to Osaka and murmured incredulously, "You are?"

"I'm sorry, I'd really like to stay, but I have to attend to some important matters."

"Ah well, another time!" Osaka spoke with her drawl.

"Of course. Good-bye, all!" Belldandy re-entered my bedroom, then stepped into the mirror and out of our plane of existence.

Akari said, "What the heck just happened?"

"Just stupid people being stupid," Yomi said in a fake aside: quietly, but loud enough so that everyone could hear anyway.

"No, the lady, was she... really?"

Chiyo said, "She says a goddess first class, and it sure seemed like that to me."

Akira said, "For sure. There's something in the way she moves that calls to you."

"I wish I could be so graceful," Akari said.

"Good news then, Single! It's time for more practice!"

"Hahi!"

Osaka interrupted, "Oh! My baking!" Osaka immediately exited outside to climb the building's outer stairwell.

Through all of this, Tomo and I just kind of stood there, looking shell-shocked. Yomi finally broke it up, "Oh-kay, show's over. C'mon Tomo, you've caused enough damage today."

As Yomi grabbed Tomo's hand to lead her away, she whimpered, "I'm sorry."

Only a few minutes later, I heard a knock at my door again. I checked the peephole just to be sure it wasn't her. I just wasn't ready to face Tomo yet, not after I acted that way. To my relief, it was just a lone Osaka, holding a plate, staring off into space as she waited for me. I took a breath, and opened the door.

"Hi Brent. I had some extra soufflé, and Ah thought you might be a mite peckish." She thrust the plate forward with both hands, offering it in the Japanese style. A cheesy, eggy, savory smell filled the hallway of my apartment.

"Thanks. I guess I am a little hungry, now that I've smelled that." I tried to take the plate from her, but somehow managed to pull her inside the apartment along with the food.

Osaka slipped by me and headed towards my dining table. "Aw, it fell already," she said, inspecting the slice of her soufflé, which was bit flatter than she had hoped by the time she made it downstairs.

I simply sighed and followed her.

"Now, Don't be all down in the dumps, hun." she said, in her mysteriously Southern America accent. Osaka, for all that she was offbeat and quirky, was quite the straight-shooter. "We all know what a... a bitch Tomo can be. I mean, not like a bitch in Japan, that's different, that kind's one of them, uh..."

"Sluts." I knew a little Japanese — I learned all of the worst words first, naturally.

"That's it. She's not a slut. Anyway, Tomo can be a right American bitch. From Japan."

"I know, but I'm twice her age. I shouldn't—" I trailed off.

"Everyone falls down, once in a blue moon. Just like my soufflé. Eat it anyway." She set the food down on the tabletop like a waitress serving an imaginary customer, "Here ya go."

"Alright." I took a fork from the drawer beneath the kitchen counter, sat down, and took a bite of Osaka's baking. "Mmm... Hey, this is pretty good."

"Ah used three different cheeses to broaden the flavor."

"Whatever you did is pretty good."

"Aw shucks." Osaka talked while I finished the lunch she had brought me. "Ya know, I don't think no one was acting their best this mornin'. Like take, f'r'instance, in the case of Belldandy: She seems pretty darn stressed. Ah mean, she's so pretty an' all, but she really looked like she needs a vacation."

I asked, "Do goddesses even take vacations?"

"Of course! Amaterasu did!"

"Does that count?"

"Yup. Oh, and Persephone, too."

I gave in under the weight of her "logic," before I managed to start a row over something even stupider. "Sure, why not."

"Anyway, y'all oughta make up. Tomo's a barrel o' fun, most of the time." Osaka picked up the plate she had brought, now empty.

I didn't have the appetite to see Tomo any time soon. "I don't know, I don't think it'll help."

As she walked out of my apartment, she reiterated, "You should make nice with Tomo, and that's a grain of truth!"

But I didn't go see her. I just threw myself into quiet work for a while, organizing some papers. Letting people know about the false alarm earlier. That kind of stuff. Whatever I could do to avoid people for a while.

1.2 - Arrested for Tagging

A couple men knocked on the door of Kagura's apartment, who announced themselves as: "Mattress delivery!"

"Aw sweet. I can finally get rid of that soft bed! Come on in!"

A couple signatures later, and the deliverymen were back down to carry up Kagura's new bed. This was actually one of their easier jobs, as the mattress could fit in the elevator.

While Kagura removed all of the sheets off her old bed, Osaka went to the door to let them carry in the new mattress. Pretty soon, Kagura was testing out her new bed and the deliverymen left; little did they know that the apartment door was left open.

"Ah, finally. Much better for my back!" Kagura enthused.

Osaka decided, "The new bed doesn't look so comfy. I like a bed you can really sink down inta, ya know? Like you can be all wrapped up in a fluffy world at night."

Kagura wiggled around a little, and caught a bit of a distracting rustle from the end of the bed. "Well, I like it, but it needs one thing."

She walked over to the desk, picked up a pair of scissors, and made for the end of the bed.

"Nooooo!" Osaka dramatically leapt across the floor and wrenched the scissors out of Kagura's hand. Or so she planned; what actually happened resembled nothing more than a short-range belly-flop on dry land.

A couple squeezes of the shears later, Kagura declared, "All done!" The offending mattress tag held in her hands.

A voice came from the floor, "What have you done!?"

"Um..."

Osaka slowly got herself up, and dusted off her dress. She took a long look at Kagura, then snatched the slip of fabric out of her hands. Holding it in front of Kagura's face, Osaka said, "You can't cut the tag off a mattress! It's a crime!"

Kagura read the tag, "Oh, huh. Weird."

"I can't imagine, Kagura living a life of crime. I guess you'll be on the run from the law now, livin' life on the lam. When you're out there riding the rails from town to town, hiding from the lawman, I hope you remember me fondly."

"What?"

"If you leave now, you can still escape the fuzz, but ya gotta hurry!"

"It's really not that big of a deal, Osaka."

A woman's voice called through the still-open door of the apartment, "FREEZE, POLICE!"

"Oh crap!"

"Too late now," Osaka drawled.

"Tag cutting is forbidden! Surrender now, or… or else!" the voice called out.

Another woman spoke, with a little less enthusiasm, "You're in mega trouble now."

"It was just a mattress tag!" Kagura trembled, too afraid to look into the hallway to see her accusers.

"Save it for the judge," the first voice insisted.

"I'll be visitin' you in the big house, Kagura."

Kagura crept out of her room into the hallway of her apartment, hands above her head. She turned her head, and saw Aika poised towards her, her fingers pointed in the shape of a gun.

Aika got out, "Book 'em, Alice", before cracking up completely.

"You two are really mean," Kagura accused.

"You two are mega idiots," Alice confirmed.

1.3 - Double Iniquity

Around dinner time, I slipped out to eat some fast food. I had Subway, of course, because sometimes you want a sandwich as sad as you feel.^[5] By the time I got back, the sun's light was a dim pink glow off a few clouds to the west, and Tomo was waiting outside of the door to number 1. I had to hand it to her — she was much braver than I.

Tomo walked up to me, "You know, I'm still really sorry about earlier."

I returned her apology, "Me too. More sorry than you can imagine. Well, maybe you can imagine."

"Yeah..."

"Well, you don't deserve my temper. No one does."

"She told me off too, even worse. I'm like a hundred times more sorry than you!" Tomo declared.

"Is it a competition?"

"Yeah, for worst person in the world. You'll never catch up."

"It was just a lapse in judgment."

"I do that all the time, though. And the insults, I'm like…" Tomo shivered instead of finishing her thought.

"I think that trick of hers, the way she made us feel — it wouldn't have worked if we weren't good people. Like, you compare yourself to the way you want to be. You're a good person, Tomo Takino."

"As are you, Brent Laabs." She jumped on me and gave me a hug. And for the first time that day, I felt content.

We kept the embrace for far longer than I expected, over a couple of minutes, neither of us wanting to let go of the peace we found.

I finally broke the silence, "I think I know why people in the Bible always feared the angels at first."

Tomo agreed, "I know, right? If that's what self-reflection feels like, I'm gonna stick with consumerism and pop culture."

I tapped her on the head. "Idiot", I called her, snickering.

Saturday, October 15, 2016

The next morning, there was a knock on my door. And there she was again. Quelle surprise.

Tomo said, "Hey, I need some help with my ceiling fan."

"Oh, okay. Not working?" Finally a real issue!

"Yeah, it's going too fast, and I want it to go really slow so you can see it, like in film noir."

I slapped my hand to my forehead. "Really?"

"This is L.A. right? What if I need to catch a dame for life insurance fraud?"^[6]

"Actually, how do fan speed regulators work anyway?"

Tomo offered, "Wanna find out together?"

Yomi walked into her apartment, and tried to make sense of why the ceiling fan was disassembled. "What are you two up to?"

I set down my soldering iron to tell her, "We're trying to make the fan run slower."

"Oh, I see," Yomi said. "May I ask why?"

"Because a moll like me needs to have the right mood, see?" Tomo declared.

"Oh, the film noir thing again. Up to no good, I see."

"Doll, I'm always up to no good."

"Don't complain to me when you get too hot, okay?"

I said, "Don't worry, it's almost the rainy season. It will start getting cold pretty soon."

Tomo said, "It still feels summery now."

"Not for too much longer," I said. "Around here, it starts to get cold by the end of the month, at least in the nights."

Yomi inveighed, "That's totally unfair."

"Huh?"

"We never got a summer this year, and I completely missed summer diet season. Now I'm just going to get even chubbier with the winter weight!" she grumbled.

"That is totally unfair! Missing the summer of the full flower of our youth!" Tomo despaired.

Yomi moped, "Rest in peace, my precious summer days, you left before your time."

People think of Koyomi and Tomo as opposites, but then there are these times when they're on exactly the same wavelength. "Oh, come on! You get a whole new world of the future, and like, we have smartphones, and like, remote-control ceiling fans and stuff!"

"That hardly makes up for the dwindling summer days."

"At least it's still warm now." And then Tomo got a look on her face. "Hey, I know, we need to have a summer festival while it's still summer! Let's roll Tanabata and Obon and a beach party all in one!"

"All together?" Yomi asked.

"Sure, why not, it will be mega fun!"

"Okay, 'Alice.' Well, we are at the beach, after all." Yomi looked at the weather forecast on her phone. "It's going to be a hot day tomorrow, so we better do it then. Looks like it starts to cool off after that."

"See, smartphones!" I tried to stick up for my era.

Ignoring me, Yomi pointed out, "We don't have beach gear. Or swimsuits."

"We better get crackin' then!" Tomo cheered, "Let's go!" She bounded out the door, while Yomi and I followed behind.

1.4 - Boys and Girls

Yomi knocked on the door to Apartment 11; Tomo found the door unlocked and simply charged in, calling, "Hey, gals, we're going shopping for swimsuits. C'mon! You gotta look your best for the beach party!"

"What beach party, again?" asked Osaka, who just assumed she had forgotten.

"The one we're throwing tomorrow," Yomi said.

"I already have a swimsuit," Kagura noted. In fact, she had asked me for a drive to the sporting goods store to get a proper competition suit, cap, and goggles on the third day here. She easily would have had the title of the apartment's water fairy, except for those six undines who claimed it first.

Tomo shook her head, "Not that kind of swimsuit, a cute one!"

"Can I?" Kagura pleaded, looking at me, "You've been so kind of us already."

I thought about who my boss was, and how I didn't want to make false moves. "Yeah, of course!" Kagura in a two-piece would inspire lust, which was probably on Sebastian's list of acceptable uses. "The sexier the better, probably."

Yomi looked at me with half-lidded eyes. "Brent..."

"Okay, I was just thinking about what my boss would think and —ow!" Yomi reached up and offered a quick karate chop to the head. Yeah, I had earned that. In retrospect, I think this was the first time she called me by my given name, and her first tsukkomi for me too. Neither would be the last. Oh, far from it.

They headed downstairs to informed the rest of the residents about the plan, and were lucky enough to find the six undines just returned from an excursion of their own. They quickly drafted Athena to drive Rocinante^[7] , or whatever we were going to name the van, to take them all to mall.

A few minutes later, everyone was ready, and Osaka called out "Operation Beachwear, assemble!" By this point, everyone but Kaorin had already assembled; she arrived about a minute later wearing a fresh layer of make-up.

As they made their way to the van, they began discussing all of the other things they would need for a party, like drinks, beach blankets, watermelons, and the like.
On her way out the door, Yomi called back to ask me, "Hey Brent, can you take care of that mess the two of you made in our apartment?"

"Yeah, sure." I mean, I didn't have anything better to do with everyone gone, and electronics work would probably go faster without Tomo hovering over me anyway.

And just like that, they were all gone. I wasn't invited to the swimsuit shopping expedition, sadly. They didn't even need me along to pay for things, since Alicia got the company card.

Everything I had learned about anime girls suggested that swimsuit shopping would be a fanservice-laden affair, which is probably why I got the boot, along with my dumb mouth. Damnit. At least, unlike Rob's group, there wouldn't be any boa constrictors involved in my group's swimwear shopping.

Actually, poor Rob. It was probably snowing up there in Canada, and here we were planning a beach party in California's serotinal days.

And had Snake Girl even shown up in the Frozen North? I knew there were a swarm of Index characters in Ottawa but I couldn't remember if that particular one had shown up. What was her name? Oh right, Kongou, like the warship.^[8] That anime had too damn many espers coming out of the woodwork to keep track of everyone.

I hopped on my computer to search the forums for her. If this many people were going to keep showing up, I mused, we'd probably need more than a forum, we'd need a wiki to keep track of them all.

And looking at the size of my apartment building, I might need a page just to keep track of my own residents. Sure, the remodel wasn't finished, but was Heaven going to have empty rooms in their divine plan? Would my demonic boss waste money on empty rooms? I mean, inshallah our folks could go back to their own universe before it became an issue, but if God is having trouble willing things, who knows?

I distractedly wondered who would come to live with us in the future. Maybe Anthy Himemiya? Now that was a girl you trust to only bring smaller reptiles, like garden snakes, on a shopping trip. Much more sensible, that one.

I took the time to reassemble the fan, and tested out the new speed. I pointed a floor lamp at the fan, and watched the shadow of the blades make a lumbering arc across the ceiling. It was nice and atmospheric. Finally, I took a permanent marker to the fan's remote control, labeling the buttons, "UP HIGH", "DOWN LOW", and "TOO SLOW".

With that done, the apartment building suddenly felt very quiet. With our construction crews gone for the weekend and most of the residents away, it felt a little lonely. The low afternoon sun flooded through the windows, and I realized how long they had been shopping. Well, that was fine. Anyway, if all of the girls were gone, I was going to have my very own sausage party right here with all of us guys left behind. After a quick trip to the kitchen, I came out with a tray and headed to the other end of the hall.

After knocking, I called out, "Hey Aria, you want a bite of some summer sausage?"

I heard an encouraging "Punyuu" from the other side of the door, followed by the latch unclicking. I have no idea how that white cat could open the door, but he did enjoy the sausage. "Come on, let's grab Tadakichi and head out on the town."

I wouldn't say our walk around the neighborhood was as fun as my imagination of that bathing suit shopping trip, but it was probably more fun than the reality. And Tadakichi-san definitely had more fun sniffing random trees and nibbling on sausage bites than he would had in a clothing store, that was for sure.

BL: While American fans picked up the term "persocom" from Chobits, that's just the normal Japanese word for PC, their shortening of "personal computer." The translation effect doesn't translate fandom mistakes.
BL: Pushing the big red button is something Tomo did in canon in her dreams, but how it turned out in reality looks dangerously like character development.
BL: This is Japanese English (wasei-eigo), where they use donmai as short for "I don't mind", which can sometimes be used in a "don't worry" context. Your main exposure to this word is likely through Danbooru.
BL: This section is inspired by that one chapter of the Symphony of the Sword where Corwin said that Belldandy disappointed is even worse than her being upset.
BL: I stole this joke from my ex-girlfriend, who I believe wrote it originally (and probably meant it literally).
BL: Tomo liking film noir is probably a carry-over from my last major fic, Interpol Manzai. But early Lupin III (green jacket) is rather noir, as are Jigen-focused episodes, so it's not that much of stretch from canon. The movie she's referencing about insurance is Double Indemnity, which is a true classic.
BL: Don Quixote's horse, but also the name of John Steinbeck's truck camper, the latter of which is inspiring me here.
BL: Her name just sounds like the warship. Her surname means "marriage-queen", the warship means "vajra".

if you can't pay - you don't breath.

Posted by: Dartz - 11-17-2024, 04:09 PM - Forum: General Chatter - Replies (1)

Imagine if you will, a Martian Colony. Elno station.

Founded and funded as a tech-billionaire's offworld paradise, for tech-billionaires and those hardcore enough to be willing to work there, as hard as it takes to make it work.

Imagine a walled garden with walls 85 million kilometres tall.

Imagine oxygen, water - the basic necessities of life, being a subscription service. Pay as you Breath.

Imagine what happens when our Benevolant Dictator for Life is appalled at how much water all the plants waste. Water is expensive and sooo Heavy So he rips the plants out of the O2 generator and airlocks them.

Imagine landing on the damned wreckage of Elno's dreams,

It'd be like lord of the electric flies. Rapture for techbros.

A world of air piracy, where the necessary infrastructure to keep the station afloat is crapping itself out because the one person who could maintain it - couldn't hold their breath. Where Moving the Needle, expanding the habs and making New Shit is more valuable than keeping the water flowing and keeping the air inside the old.

Water, meat and biomass are expensive. While the only thing that's cheap, is human life.

Because if you can't pay - you don't breath.

-----

It'd make a hell of an Novel/RPG/Game/Bioshock sequel.....

The Imperial Presidency

Posted by: Labster - 11-15-2024, 04:59 AM - Forum: Politics and Other Fun - Replies (5)

At risk of actually creating a thread #2 on this year's election after it's pretty much over, it's time to create a new thread about Donald J. Trump: the man, the myth, actually it's pretty much all myth.

So one of the first things Trump did was to say that he expects the new Senate leadership to bring back recess appointments. Any new majority leader would have to say that he (definitely he) will let Trump do it. And honestly, I think he's probably right?

So the background is that the Senate has the right to review all Presidential appointments above a certain level, unless the Senate is in recess, in which case the President can appoint someone on an interim basis. This makes sense, right? What has happened in practice is that the Senate would just not confirm people, hold appointees forever until some political compromise was made. And then just, like, never actually go out of session. Even when everyone is gone from DC, to have one or two members of Senate leadership on the floor to like pretend that they still had quorum (which they do until someone makes a quorum call, even if there are obviously only two guys there). No one gets voted down, they just get eventually withdrawn. This system sucks.

But what will Trump do with this power? Well, remember the spoils system of the 1800s, where bureaucrats were given offices based on their support of the candidate? Basically that. Our country survived a century on a political bureaucracy, so not so bad, right?

Except, well, let's look at the quality of people Trump wants to nominate:

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State - "Little Marco"
Robert Kennedy Jr, Secretary of Health and Human Services - thinks vaccines are bad and once left a dead bear in Central Park, as you do
Matt Gaetz, Attorney General - resigned Congress to take this job, just a few days before the Ethics Committee's report would have been released
Doug Bergum, Secretary of the Interior - some state governor I don't know, name sounds like an ingredient in Earl Grey tea
Elise Stefanik, Ambassador to the United Nations
Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence
Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, veteran and Fox News host
Sources say: Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security - this former rodeo queen and former governor is best known for securing her home by killing her family dog

This list of cabinet members has been carefully crafted to own the libs. So lets just focus on one of the people above, Tulsi Gabbard.

I think I've made it known for years here that I consider Gabbard a Russian agent, or at least a Russian asset. She was once Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, but she's always been something of a thorn in the side. She's anti-war, anti-American imperialism, and in favor of an isolationist United States. Oddly enough at about the same time as RT news switched from promoting left-wing causes to promoting right-wing causes, Tulsi Gabbard also switched and started having more right wing talking points. What a coincidence.

So basically, of anyone you want associated with intelligence, why not someone who share's Russia's values? What can go wrong? Since I've been doing WWII parallels, this is kind of like Churchill becoming PM and appointing Unity Mitford as head of MI6. The mind boggles.

Shall I add a bit more fuel to the fire? The Daily Beast here refers to The Daily Mail's report that Tulsi and her husband are tied to the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF), described as an alt-right branch of Hare Krishna, who apparently has a man-god leading them named Chris Butler. I mean, this report could be tabloid crap, but "alt-right Hare Krishna" was not a phrase I was expecting to hear, ever.

The national security establishment is unimpressed, with an off-the-record comment describing her nomination as "a left turn and off the bridge." W.'s UN Ambassador called Gabbard the "worst cabinet-level appointment in history." Well, until the next day when Matt Gaetz was nominated. If I were FVEY country, I would really consider stopping intelligence sharing with America, to avoid having their own agents compromised.

Honestly, I have no doubts in my mind that I could to a better job than Tulsi Gabbard -- in fact any of the forum regulars here would be a better choice to serve as our intelligence director. Including the Dutchman and the socialist Irishman, who at least would still have a chance of actually serving the interest of Western civilization, unlike this lady.

So that's what we have right now: a whole list of cabinet members designed to own the libs, make money, and reduce our republicanism. Oh, and without needing the Senate to approve them.

2016-10-25: Twain

Posted by: Bob Schroeck - 11-12-2024, 07:23 PM - Forum: Stories - No Replies

Twain
A "KanriKyara" Story
by Brent Laabs

Penguin Park, Tomoeda, Japan
March 29, 1998¹
9:15 PM Japan Time

Beneath the stars and under the branches of the cherry blossom trees, the people of Tomoeda Town had strung paper lanterns, illuminating the delicate blossoms above. The whole park glowed with the pale pink light of the sakura blossoms, as dozens of the town's residents soaked up the spectacle and partied with sake and sweets. This was Penguin Park's annual Flower Viewing festival — or Hanami — but it was the first time a particular group of sixth-graders got to stay up late for the yozakura.

This group had set up an elegant red and violet print curtain² behind them to block out the sound of the street, along with a bento five boxes high full of various sweets atop a blanket on the grass. The setup was the envy of all of Penguin Park, but nothing less could be expected from the rich girl of the group, Tomoyo Daidouji, who would give nothing less for her priceless friends.

Still, it was getting kind of late for kids that age to stay out, especially as the adult parties around them began to increase in volume and decrease in sobriety. Looking at her namesake flower, Sakura Kinomoto was still in reverie when Naoko and Rika excused themselves. Yamazaki was in the middle of a fascinating history of the hanami curtain until Chiharu made him walk her home right in the middle.³

And so it was that the group was down to three young people, Sakura and her Chinese boyfriend Shaoran Li, and Tomoyo. Make that four, as Sakura's backpack flipped open and a yellow stuffed-animal said, "Ah, finally! I get to see the flowers!" He was not a real stuffed animal, but Sakura's familiar and Beast of the Seal, Kerberos. Kero had managed to sneak out a cup of amazake to enjoy with his new view.

Sakura said, "I still don't know why you wanted to be inside my bag the whole time, Kero-chan."

"Oh, that's easy," Tomoyo explained, "He's another example of 'dango before flowers'."⁴

"I think he had a whole tray of dango!" Shaoran complained. "I kept seeing that toothpick poking out of the bag to fish for sweets."

"Don't worry, I budgeted for Kero-chan."

Sakura said cheerfully, "This is great being out here with you all. It's so nice just to take a break and look at the beauty of the world. And all of the flowers."

"Sakura is so beautiful." Shaoran said.

Sakura replied, "Thank you!"

"I mean, the flowers, I mean… I didn't…" Shaoran turned beet red.

Sakura laughed, and kissed him on the cheek.

Tomoyo said, "It is a nice day to relax, under the trees. Now that you've captured all of the Clow Cards, and made them your very own Sakura Cards, we don't have to go out at night so much." She paused for a moment, and watched a sakura petal tumble to the ground. "I wonder what the future holds for us now."

A light went off in Sakura's head, "Ah! Maybe I could try a divination again!"

"With all the cards, Sakura will be super-accurate now!" Kero said. "Especially on a night like tonight."

"Let's give it a try," Shaoran agreed, "and find out more about our future."

Before taking out her magical cards, Sakura did a quick look around. Most of the adults still relaxing around the park were too involved in their friends and their sake to notice much of anything, so she proceeded to withdraw an arcane deck of 53 cards from her bag.

Kneeling on the blanket, she brushed away the sakura petals in a flat section of fabric to make room for her divination. Sakura shuffled her cards three times, thought for a moment, cut the deck, and gave it one final shuffle.

She dealt a spread of seven cards, three in the middle row first, then two below, and finally two above.

She turned over the first card on the left, "This is my past, Woody."

"That means that you've grown a lot, Sakura-han!"

Tomoyo added, "I thought the same, Kero-chan, she's like a budding flower starting to bloom."

"Hoe?" Sakura uttered, but then turned to the middle card. "This is the present:" she flipped, then named, "Time, inverted."

"That feels wrong," Shaoran shuddered.

"Something in our time is broken," Sakura divined. She moved forward to the rightmost card. "Our future is: Twin."

"So, we have a choice of two different paths," Kero explained.

"I don't... somehow I don't think so." She moved to the bottom right card, and flipped two cards over. "Hooeeee?" She pushed at the remaining cards, and sure enough, each of them were now a stack of two cards. "I tried to deal it right," she apologized.

"I think the cards are revealing two different destinies, Sakura-chan," Shaoran offered.⁵

"Oh, okay. So the top card is Erase, and the bottom card is Jump. These cards are supposed to be the obstacles in my path. Maybe it would make more sense if think about the top cards all together, if they represent different paths of fate."

"The first path will clear something important to me." She moved to the top left card, and flipped it. "And I will be aided by Change, something that has a different form. What is hidden from me" — the bottom right card — "is the Shadow, someone that wished to remain cloaked. Finally, my goal will be, Create, to make new what has been taken from me."

"You're uh, getting good at fortune telling, Sakura-chan," Shaoran said.

"Thank you, Shaoran-kun!" Sakura said with a smile, which caused the heat to rise in Shaoran's cheeks, just a little. "And for the other path," she continued, "Jump, a sudden movement to a new place, will block me. I will be helped by — Watery, which maybe means I need to go with the flow. What's hidden from me is: Return, inverted."

Kero explained, "That means that if you go down that path, you can never come back. Be careful, Sakura."

"Thank you, Kero," she nodded. She flipped the final card in the top right position, "Sand. Huh."⁶

"Is that a trap?" Shaoran asked.

"Nuh-uh," she shook her head. "If it was in the the bottom row, it would be a trap, but up here, it represents the infinite. Grains of sand are like the stars in the sky."

"Water and sand remind me of the beach," Tomoyo said.

"I could use another beach trip!" Kero declared. "I need to work on my tan."

And out of nowhere, Shaoran yelled, "Sakura, the magic!"

"I feel it!" She jumped up, and went into an alert pose. Two of the cards on the blanket in front of them began to move of their own volition, Through and Time. But only one of them activated. "What's ha — "

Venice, California, USA
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
8:15AM PT

The next thing Sakura knew, it was morning. Sakura saw everyone else still sleeping on the floor of Tomoyo's limousine — Shaoran, Kero, Tomoyo, Nii-san, Papa, Yukito, Sonomi-oba-san...

"HOOEEEEEEEE!?!?!"⁷

It didn't take long for everyone to wake up.

BL: Since Touya was born on February 29 and cell phones were still rare, and Touya is age 18 in my story, mathematically it could only be 1998.
BL: Traditionally you'd get something more like a kouhaku maku — a red and white striped curtain — at a Hanami. Tomoyo has to go above and beyond in anything fabric, so her display is inspired by the red and purple curtain of the hanafuda deck, in the sakura suit of cards.
RK: But I wanted to know how they stitched the flower petals together without tearing them...
BL: Some of you may recognize the phrase Tomoyo uses here through the manga Hana yori Dango — like Rob — but I'm hardly the first to give it its literal meaning.
BL: Twain is a card that doubles the hex in a card game called Hex Hex, which IIRC sends a hex both directions around the table. One path leads to the Clear Card arc, the other leads to our story. Just be happy I didn't name it "Arc Twain".
BL: If you got lost, the spread of Sakura cards was:

Aid Goal
Past Present Future
   Obstacle Hidden

   WATERY/CHANGE SAND/CREATE
WOODY ^TIME TWIN
   JUMP/ERASE ^RETURN/SHADOW

After a little bit of research on Tarot fortune-telling and card spreads, I'm convinced that it's entirely junk. Most of the advice is to do whatever feels right at the time, and while I'm as big of a fan of thelema as the average guy, it's just weaksauce here. Learning what the cards mean to you personally totally prevents exploiting research on Jungian archetypes, I mean, like, come on!
BL: Just a reminder to those who haven't watched Cardcaptor Sakura that Sakura is not talking about the garden tool. Both the "O" and "E" are pronounced in "hoe", with no dipthong. It is one of her peculiarities, and Tomoyo thinks it makes Sakura extra-cute!

SJ Games Daily Illuminator of possible interest to Bob

Posted by: Shepherd - 11-12-2024, 09:35 AM - Forum: Bob's Game Writing - Replies (1)

November 12, 2024: Please Stay In Touch

SJ Games strives to keep good records, but during our 44 years in business, we've survived technological change (we've come a long way from WordStar, XyWrite, Ventura Publisher, and the golden age of fax), moving house, floods, and even a government raid. As a result, we've lost track of some contracts – and some creators!

If you've ever had a contract – physical or digital – to write a game supplement longer than an article for us, we invite you to write to us at hr@sjgames.com with your name, up-to-date contact info, and a list of projects with contract dates. Please help us fill holes in our records so that no credits or royalties slip between the cracks. And if we haven't been in touch recently, please tell us what you've been up to!
-- Sean Punch

Harris* Calls Election on Friday 29th...

Posted by: Dartz - 11-06-2024, 05:02 PM - Forum: Politics and Other Fun - No Replies

*Simon....

So - November 29th is the date. Simon Harris goes to the President to dissolve the Dail on Friday

The government just finished putting out a giveaway budget and hopes the rosey glow from that will carry them through. For the most part the glow is real. The amount of new Porsches and new BMW's and Audis rolling around - along with all the fancy houses I'm doing work in - suggests *someone* is winning from this government. Or at least, not loosing at any rate. Simon Harris is popular with a lot of people.

On the other hands, rents, house prices, fuel prices and electricity prices are through the roof. A lot of smaller businesses like pubs, restaurants and even smaller concert venues are going to the wall because of it. I guess some people are partying. Others are paying for it. The Temu Nazis will feed on this. The undercurrent of malaise is real - and there's already been an attack on a canvassing politician.

The Green Party will probably be crucified - because that always happens to the junior coalition partner. Sinn Fein basically evapourated in the polls recently and have been kicked by a few scandals - it looks like they're going to try to be the majority partner in the next coalition.

I'll go Social Democrats, Green Party, possibly labour, whatever local random independants hold my fancy, and then hold me nose for the FF/FG crowd because - well, what we have is better than the alternative, I guess. The current administration is just about tolereable in a "Won't doom us all" sort of way. A vote for them is a vote against the more dreadful alternatives

If it weren't for the utterly painful fuel (1.69 a litre of petrol was the cheapest I got recently - most of this is taxation) and electricity prices (#1 in the EU, Beyond even Germany once VAT is accounted for), the Greens have been fairly successful with the Bottle deposit scheme clearing up a lot of waste on beaches (When the bloody machines actually work), and the cheap public transport being welcome. Less hair-shirt stuff please. My private car is my only private personal space in this universe.

On the other hand, with the State coffers massively overflowing there's the vague sense that this government has ended up with a bit of a lottery win and is in real danger of following the same trajectory as most lottery winners.

----

Things that might matter:
Check the Register.
I think you can apply online - though you can only vote in this if you're a Resident British Citizen, or a resident Irish Citizen.

---

2016-09-30: Scouting Report

Posted by: Bob Schroeck - 11-05-2024, 08:51 PM - Forum: Stories - Replies (10)

Scouting Report
A "KanriKyara" Story
by Robert M. Schroeck

Evernight Castle
The Grimmlands
Somewhere in the Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia
September 30, 2016

Emerald Sustrai stood at one of the tall, stone-framed windows which ringed the conference hall at the very pinnacle of the crystalline castle, staring out at the landscape below. Star-speckled red skies and sharp upthrust blades of bare black rock punctuated by faintly glowing purple crystal outcroppings surrounded the castle in every direction, only to give way green jungle and blue skies just a few short miles away.

A few short miles that might have well been hundreds.

She suppressed a sigh at the sight. She had no idea how that worked, and frankly didn't care. She just wanted to get the hell out of this place, but trying to travel even just the three miles overland through the Grimms' native terrain — no. She wasn't suicidal.

Staying was tantamount to suicide as well, though. How Cinder and Salem had failed to remember that at the fall of Atlas she had thrown in with Team RWBY and the others fighting against them, Emerald had no idea. But surely, sooner or later those memories would return. In the first few days after their arrival in this world it had quickly become clear to Emerald that Salem and the rest had come from years after the last events she remembered. By the sound of it, Salem had triumphed over Ozpin and his allies, in the process collecting the four relics. She had united them to call the Brother Gods who had cursed her, only to have her victory snatched from her. It was only the assurances of the being who had called herself Hagall that had kept Salem from lashing out at everything and everyone around her.

Emerald shifted her focus from the distant jungle to the reflection of the room behind her in the glass, and in it studied Hazel Rainart. The huge man sitting at the obsidian slab of a table, scowling and his arms crossed, was another traitor to Salem's cause whose betrayal was seemingly unknown or forgotten. In the few weeks they had been in this new world, this "Earth", they had carefully felt each other out. Unlike herself, he had been unaware of her recent history, and had initially been suspicious of her — but in the last few days they had finally and very tentatively forged an alliance of sorts.

Now if only she could stop being freaked out by the fact that the last she had heard before awakening in this world was that he had been quite thoroughly and definitively dead.

Still keeping her focus on the reflection, she studied the others seated at the table. On the far side Arthur Watts sat next to Hazel. Watts was another she had thought dead, killed in the fall of Atlas. But here he sat, just as snide and arrogant as ever. Unlike Hazel, he was one she sincerely wished had stayed dead.

The two across from them, closer to her, were blocked from view by the high, irregular backs of their chairs, but she didn't need to see them, not really. To her left, that psycho Tyrian, no doubt squatting in his chair as usual. To her right...

Cinder.

There had been a time when Emerald had given her all to Cinder — her loyalty, her devotion, her love. But that time was past. It had taken her far too long, but she'd finally seen what Cinder was: just as much a psychopath as Tyrian, and on top of that a nihilist, delighted to follow a monster and join in the destruction of the world.

It had broken her heart, but the decision was... well, not easy. But nowhere near as hard as it could have been. Emerald couldn't follow, couldn't love, someone like that.

Someone who would happily burn the world to ashes in the service of Salem.

And then there was the new fifth member of the group, seated at the far end of the table from Salem's massive seat. He was no one she knew from Remnant and indeed professed no knowledge of their world. But he had much to offer Salem, and claimed a certain sympathy with her goals. Emerald studied his reflection: not yet in his thirties as far as she could tell, tall and slender with shaggy, violently purple hair and golden eyes, wearing a white lab coat over a dark suit of an unfamiliar cut.

Who are you, Jail Scaglietti? You and your army of girls?

Behind and to the side of his seat stood one of those girls, the one called "Uno" — "One" in this new language they had discovered they all spoke. Uno bore a strong resemblance to her master; given that she seemed no older than herself, Emerald wondered if she were Scaglietti's daughter, and if so, what kind of parent he was to her. She certainly seemed as devoted to him as Emerald had been to Cinder. In contrast to her ... father? employer? ... Uno's hair was a much more subdued lavender-grey. In it were a pair of odd, bulbous clips resting above her temples, but they didn't seem to constrain its locks in any way. She was dressed much like an office worker, which seemed appropriate given her role as his secretary and general factotum.

The room's doors crashed open and Emerald spun around at the sound, just in time to see Salem glide in, followed by one of her tentacled horrors. As everyone rose from their seats, she soundlessly made her way to the far end of the table and settled herself into the throne-like seat of glowing violet crystal there. The floating horror drifted into position near her right hand. The bone white of her skin made a stark contrast against the table and her equally black gown.

Reluctantly, Emerald made her way to her usual position behind and to the left of Cinder's seat, where she was joined by Mercury. She suppressed a grimace at his proximity; he was just as much a nihilist as Cinder, and irritatingly arrogant, to boot.

"Cinder, Doctor Watts. I see that you have returned from your mission."

"Yes, master." Cinder inclined her head respectfully, which sent her raven hair swinging briefly across her face.

"What do you have to report?"

Cinder and Watts glanced at each other. Watts smirked and made a "go on" gesture. Cinder narrowed her eyes at him, then drew a breath.

"First off, master, the... Hagall did not lie. This is a very different world from Remnant — large, vibrant and heavily populated." She reached into the bag which sat upon the floor to her right, and withdrew a number of books. "We took the liberty of... acquiring a number of reference works, and they all agree — at last count there are nearly seven and a half billion humans living on this world, occupying almost every bit of habitable land from one pole to the other."

Tyrian made a disbelieving sound. Cinder smirked at him. "Seven and a half billion humans and no faunus," she amended.

Salem raised an eyebrow. "Indeed?" she said quietly.

Cinder inclined her head slightly. "Yes, master. The only beings even vaguely like faunus exist solely in their myths and fiction. I will admit that the only settlements we could reach were small backwater villages and towns, but if anything like faunus existed in this world they would at least be known, if not actually present. Spoken of at least, mentioned in the references and texts we found." She shook her head. "No, there are no other intelligent races. At most some speculation that certain sea creatures may be sapient but too alien for meaningful communication."

Salem nodded thoughtfully. "Intriguing. And what of the humans' level of development?" she asked.

"Confusing," Watts said. "In many ways they are much more advanced than Atlas ever was. If the sources we acquired are to be trusted, we have found ourselves in one of the poorest and most isolated parts of this planet, but the richest nations take remarkable levels of luxury and technology for granted. They have multiple communications networks far superior to the CCTS, for instance — among other things they are not dependent upon a few monolithic transmission stations." He scowled at the thought. "Much of it is not even found on the planet's surface."

"Oh?" Salem looked intrigued.

"They have possessed the capability to leave the planet for over sixty years," Cinder explained. "They routinely use this to place communications relays into orbit around the planet."

"There are thousands of them, with more going up every day," Watts growled. "Even if we wanted to cripple their communications the way we did Remnant's, we couldn't reach them. Nor could we do it fast enough to keep the redundancies in their systems from simply ignoring our efforts until the rest were repaired." He grimaced. "I don't even want to get into their corresponding data network, also decentralized and designed to route itself around damage. It reaches everywhere, even the villages just outside our borders. And yet they have only the most primitive robotics." He shook his head.

"No military robots like Atlas?" Salem smiled. "This is good news."

"Not necessarily, my lady," Watts cautioned. "They do not use military robots because they do not need them. There are nations in this world that field standing armies numbering in the millions of men. And while they do not have Dust to power their weapons, their alternatives are... disturbingly effective. Possibly superior to Dust weapons. Again, if our sources are accurate."

"We found mentions of something called 'nuclear' and 'thermonuclear' weaponry," Cinder picked up seamlessly. "And pursuing details we discovered that many of the greater powers ruling this world have weapons powerful enough to wipe entire cities off the map with a single blow — weapons whose destructive power is measured in square miles of devastation and millions of deaths. And they can use the same means they employ to emplace their communications relays to deliver these weapons anywhere on the planet in a matter of minutes."

Watts snorted. "The smallest of these nations could steamroll Atlas and never notice them."

Salem's eyebrows rose. "Well. Isn't that interesting."

Emerald strove to keep her expression neutral. "Interesting" wasn't anything close to what she'd call it. "Terrifying" was more like it — but it looked like Salem didn't consider the prospect of a military force larger than the entire combined human and faunus population of Remnant armed with kingdom-killer weapons at all intimidating. Instead she looked... intrigued. And perhaps a bit covetous.

Not for the first time, Emerald considered that there was something seriously wrong with Salem.

"Doctor Watts," the Grimm Queen continued, "How hard would it be for us to get our hands on some of these weapons?"

"That... is hard to say, my lady," Watts replied carefully. "Given just what little we have learned so far about this world's resources and conflicts, I would expect access to and control of these weapons to be far more carefully guarded than that buffoon Ironwood guarded his."

Cinder nodded. "There appears to be an entire criminal class whose sole reason for existence is to defeat the security measures implemented on their communication and computing networks, and both sides have been engaged in a running battle of wits for decades." She turned a smug little smile on Watts. "I suspect that they have evolved defenses that dear Arthur here would be hard-pressed to understand, let alone bypass."

Watts snarled at her for a moment before Salem cleared her throat meaningfully. "Children," she chided gently, and Watts reluctantly schooled his features into a more neutral expression. "Arthur, I expect you to dedicate yourself to mastering this world's technology."

"If I may, my lady?" Scaglietti spoke for the first time.

Salem lifted a single eyebrow. "Yes, Dr. Scaglietti?"

He inclined his head, his ridiculously purple hair almost glowing with the magenta light reflecting from the table. "While I cannot be sure from such a brief description, it would seem this world's technology may share some similarity with that of my own. Perhaps I might be able to aid Dr. Watts in his investigations?"

Salem considered this for a moment, then nodded. "Indeed. Please do so."

Scaglietti inclined his head again. "As you command, my lady."

She smiled approvingly at him, and Emerald suppressed a shudder. It had been bad enough with just the original members of Salem's inner circle. Scaglietti seemed to be an entirely new flavor of crazy that was blending entirely too well with the others.

"Very well." Salem's gaze swept over the table, including Emerald and Mercury in its darkly malevolent path. "Our two doctors will work together on this world's technology. Cinder, take a day to rest, and then I want you to go back out to learn more about this Earth. I have several specific tasks for you to perform, but we will go over them later."

"Yes, master," Cinder replied, lowering her head.

Salem continued. "Hazel and Tyrian, I want you to patrol the borders of our land, such as it is. There have been several incursions over the past week by the local humans. The Grimm have handled them so far, but I would like to see how you fare against them. And perhaps you can capture a few to interrogate."

"Yes, ma'am," Hazel rumbled, while Tyrian squealed with glee, clapping in delight.

Psycho.

Salem rose as if to leave, but paused. "I want to emphasize," Salem said, gazing down at them, "that just because we have found ourselves in a new world, our long-term plan has not changed. It has merely... expanded in scope. It is also now about more than the betrayal of Remnant by the two Brother Gods, but the betrayal of all of humanity in every world by dozens of gods and demons alike. Our goals have expanded in proportion to the scale of the betrayal. It is no longer enough to simply end Remnant by summoning the Brothers. It is time to take all the gods' and demons' toys away from them." She smiled grimly, her lips a thin, feral line. "My ultimate goal has always been the end of existence. We have simply learned there is much more existence to end than we thought." She bared her teeth in a snarl. "We will rise to the challenge."

A ripple of assent, ranging from Hazel's affirmative grunt to Tyrian's delighted laughter, ran around the table, and Salem's snarl transformed into a benevolent smile. The only exception was Scaglietti, who bore an expression of genial agreement. But something behind his eyes... Emerald wondered just how much he actually supported Salem's cause, or if his presence was simply an alliance of convenience. She glanced at Mercury, who wore a self-satisfied smirk as he stood on the other side of Cinder's seat.

Cinder and the other members of the inner circle stood, and Salem swept back out of the room, followed by the Seer. As the door shut behind Salem, Emerald caught Hazel's eye. He gave an almost imperceptible nod, and Emerald returned it.

Unlike meetings, meals in Evernight Castle were not "all hands" affairs. Its residents normally ate on their own schedules, and even Cinder and her coterie rarely dined together unless it served another purpose to do so. Emerald had never been so glad of this as she had been since their arrival on Earth, and this day in particular.

She had retreated with her dinner to a spot she had long thought of as her private retreat in Salem's tower — not so much a room as simply a space, a void in the castle's crystalline structure so close to breaking through the outer wall that the crystal there was practically a purple-tinted picture window. It was only reachable through a twisting path that took her through both proper hallways and near-unnavigable fissures in the tower's structure. And out of long habit she used her Semblance to ensure that anyone who might have seen her making her way there, didn't.

When she had first found it, it had simply been a literal hole in the wall. But the regular formations of Evernight's crystal structure had given it a reasonably level floor, and even a couple upthrust blocks that could serve as tables. Over the subsequent months she'd brought in a Dust-powered lamp, a few small rugs and a folding chair (all "liberated" during visits to one kingdom or another) to make it a bit more comfortable; she was surprised and pleased to find that they were all still there after the transition to Earth.

She laid her dinner down on the larger "table" and dragged the chair closer. She unwrapped the meal and settled down to eat. The eternally-dark sky of the Grimmlands rarely shed enough light to let her see through the crystal "window" but today she was "lucky" enough to dine to the sight of the spires of rock and black pools below instead of her own reflection, lit as they were by the light leaking in over the border three miles away.

Three impassible miles. Even with the Grimm concentrating on locations of the natives' incursions, she could never cross them undetected and unmolested.

Not for the first time she wished Salem had let Cinder take her and Mercury on the expedition to explore the lands beyond the boundary. An "unfortunate accident" faked with her Semblance — Emerald had already decided on being swept off by a raging river, which would conveniently eliminate the need to leave a body behind — and she would have been free.

But no, Salem had wanted the "scouting party" to be smaller, more innocuous. And now she was sending Cinder back out alone for further information.

Still, Emerald mused, sooner or later, Cinder would want her team with her. She needed to be ready.

The first step, as in any plan, was information.

For the past few weeks, as the two of them had felt each other out, Emerald and Hazel had disguised their meetings as lessons she was taking from him on improving the efficiency with which Thief's Respite used Dust. It wasn't difficult to believe — Hazel possessed perhaps the greatest mastery of Dust use that she'd ever seen or heard of, and even if he didn't wield a weapon of his own he still had a level of knowledge and insight which had actually allowed her to make significant improvements to her guns. Of course, the price of that was having to make and load her own Dust shells rather than buying off the shelf, but the results were definitely worth it.

Of course, that it allowed the two of them to sit together with their heads next to each other muttering softly as they built and rebuilt each improved generation of her ammunition, effectively disguising their conspiratorial conversations as technical discussions, was the real reason. The improvement in her weapons was an unexpected and wholly welcome bonus.

"Can you get me a copy of everything Cinder and Watts found out?" she murmured a bare foot from his ear as she packed a custom shell with the improved version of her preferred blend of Dust.

"That's a lot of material, quite a bit more than than their summary covered," he replied just as softly.

"I've got plenty of time," she chuckled. "What else is there for me to do?"

A week later, an archive holding the entirety of the scouting report appeared "mysteriously" on her scroll, thanks to Hazel. At least she hoped it was thanks to Hazel...

It took Emerald nearly a month to get through its contents. That didn't include reading any of the larger reference works which someone — she wasn't sure who — had painstakingly scanned in page by page. She could only assume that Cinder and Dr. Watts had given Salem a private in-depth briefing on their findings, because just as Hazel had said, their scouting report held so much more than the simple, brief statements they'd given upon their return.

Like maps, she realized early on. Local maps, regional maps, world maps. All of which she copied from the archive and stashed in her scroll's main storage. They were confusing, though. If she read them right, and the unit conversions were correct, Earth was much larger than Remnant, with at least twice as much landmass and even more ocean. Which went a long way to explaining just how huge the population was. But the gravity was the same? She may not have had much of a formal education, but Emerald had had enough to know that the bigger a planet was, the more gravity it had.¹

She shook her head. There had to be an error somewhere, as unlikely as it seemed. There was no way this "Earth" could be 25,000 miles around.

Still, best to be safe and plan as though the numbers were accurate.

November 9, 2016

Hazel caught her in the corridor just outside her quarters. "I just heard."

Emerald nodded. "She detected the arrival of a Grimm on the west coast of the North America continent. She's sending us to recover it so she can investigate how it got there." She shuddered. "Cinder says she's hoping to learn how to call more from Remnant."

"And you've made your decision," he said plainly.

She nodded. "First chance I get."

"You have your new ammunition?"

Emerald smiled and held up the bag she'd slung over her shoulder. "After all our work? Of course."

One corner of his mouth quirked upward. "Good. And good luck."

"Thank you."

Hazel reached into one of the pockets of his jacket, and Emerald found him pressing a handful of Dust crystals into her considerably smaller palm. "Here. Just in case."

Emerald bit her lip, and then gave into the urge. She threw her arms around Hazel's neck and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you," she repeated in a whisper. "I promise, I'll find a way to get you out of here, too."

Hazel chuckled tectonically. "Don't worry about me, girl. Just take care of yourself."

She nodded. "I will."

And without another word she turned and ran for the Bullhead platform.

To be continued in Channeling Mana.

RMS: I won't go into all the specifics here, but based on maps and globes seen in Volume 1 and 2 of RWBY, either Remnant is noticeably smaller than Earth or the city of Vale is the size of Texas or bigger. And there's plenty of evidence that Vale is no bigger than a mid-sized "real world" city. Another way of approaching the issue, worked out by my collaborator Brent based on actual physics, suggests a planet a bit larger than Mars... so yeah. As for gravity, Remnant's humans are proportioned the same as Earth's humans, and things seem to fall at the same speed as they do on Earth. Both point to a similar or identical gravity to Earth's.

This is not endorsed by Rooster Teeth in any way. Views, opinions, thoughts are all our own. Rooster Teeth, RWBY, "Team RWBY", "Ruby Rose", "Yang Xiao Long", "Weiss Schnee", "Blake Belladonna", "Team JNPR", "Jaune Arc", "Pyrrha Nikos", "Lie Ren", "Nora Valkyrie", "Team CFVY", "Coco Adele", "Fox Alistair", "Velvet Scarletina", "Yatsuhashi Daichi", "Team SSSN", "Sun Wukong", "Scarlet David", "Sage Ayana", "Neptune Vasilias", "Salem", "Arthur Watts", "Tyrian Callows", "Cinder Fall", "Emerald Sustrai", "Mercury Black", "Hazel Rainart", "Grimm", "God of Light", and "God of Darkness" are trade names or registered trademarks of Rooster Teeth Productions, LLC. © Rooster Teeth Productions, LLC.

Fic Update Thread: 56th edition

Posted by: Norgarth - 11-04-2024, 05:27 AM - Forum: Other People's Fanfiction - Replies (57)

	yeah, the creative juices are not flowing right now. Previous thread Beware of Cloud (Beware of Chicken fanfic) https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/...-106267064 A Cuckoo Born in Iron (Gundam:Iron Blooded Orphans SI) https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/...-106272359

2016-09-18: Moving Days, Part III

Posted by: Bob Schroeck - 10-30-2024, 09:15 PM - Forum: Stories - No Replies

Moving Days, Part III
A "KanriKyara" Story
by Robert M. Schroeck

Douglass Gardens Apartments
Sunday, September 18, 2016

"Hi," he shouted over the idling cycle engines. "My name's Keiichi Morisato. My friends and I were told you could help us?"

I traded a glance with Peggy, smiled and shook my head, then turned back to Keiichi and held out my hand. "I'm Bob Schroeck," I said as we shook. "This is my wife Peggy, and we're the managers here at Douglass Gardens. I take it Bell sent you our way?"

His eyes went wide. "You know Belldandy?" he asked.

Peg and I laughed. "She's kind of our boss," Peggy said.

"One of them, at least," I amended. "Do you know... well, what's going on?"

He glanced at his companions — one of whom I tentatively identified as his sister Megumi — and after a shared look of incomprehension, he turned back to me. "We haven't a clue. One moment we were in Whirlwind's office, and the next we were in an empty lot in a neighborhood about a mile or so that way." He waved westward down Hamilton Street. "Belldandy showed up, gave us your address and took off again."

"Mmm," I said, nodding. "Yeah, sounds about right. The Celestials are in emergency mode right now, and barely have time to breathe."

"Emergency mode?" the one I thought was Megumi asked.

"Yeah, they..." Peg started, but I raised my hand.

"Hold on, let's do this inside. Park, come on in, and we'll explain everything," I said. "No point standing out here when we can be sitting comfortably."

Half an hour later, we were all sitting around the TV in the living room in our apartment. We'd gotten all the introductions out of the way. Yeah, the girl I'd thought was Megumi was, and the other two were Chihiro Fujimi and Sora Hasegawa — names I recognized, at least. Peg and I had given them the whole spiel — what was it, the third time that weekend we'd done it? — complete with selected episodes from both the 1993 OVA and the 2005 TV series, both of which we had in our collection — and we were letting them adjust to the idea.

"Okay, then," Chihiro finally said. "What happens now?"

Peg and I shared a grin. "We give you a place to live," she said.

"It's what we're here for," I added. "You just have to decide who rooms with who."

"In that case," a new, familiar voice said a full-length mirror that purely by coincidence hung conveniently where someone could step through it as though it were a door, "I would like very much to share an apartment with my husband, if I may."

"Hi, Bell! Come on in!" Peggy said with a broad smile on her face as Belldandy did that very thing and joined us in the living room.

"Belldandy!" I called out at almost the same moment. "Please make yourself comfortable," I added.

Bell smiled benevolently at us as she glided around the various chairs to where Keiichi sat. She bent down to give him a brief but very obviously loving kiss before turning her attention back to the rest of us. "I'm afraid I'm too busy to do more than make a token appearance and request I be included among the new residents."

I huffed. "Like you have to ask," I said with a smirk.

She beamed. "You may feel it goes without saying, but it still is only proper that I do ask."

"And our answer remains the same." I smiled. "How could we possibly say no? I presume you two will want a one-bedroom to yourselves? Given that you're still newlyweds?"

Belldandy blushed prettily before looking to Keiichi, who was doing an almost stereotypical "nervous anime male" thing with his hand behind his head. "Yes, please," she said.

Peg and I traded smiles, then I nodded briskly. "Done! Peggy, you want to set them up so Bell can get right back to the very important business of saving the multiverse?"

"Right," she said and got to her feet.

As she led Keiichi and Belldandy over to the "office" area to set them up with an apartment, I looked back at Chihiro, Sora and Megumi. "How do you three want to work this? We have enough room to give you each your own apartments, and big enough units that you can share one if you'd rather do that instead."

For a moment they were silent as they looked at each other. Then all three started talking at once.

Long story short, Bell and Keiichi got their newlyweds' nest in Building 3. Megumi and Sora decided to room together, and Chihiro was happy to have a one-bedroom to herself. We had to put them all a couple doors down from where the open units actually began, because we still had to clean up the apartments the Bakuon!! girls had used the previous night. But that was okay, it let us put them all adjacent to each other with shared front and back porches.

Anyway, once she got her key and took a quick look at their new place, Bell rushed back to Heaven via the apartment's bathroom mirror to pick up where she'd left off in emergency operations. We took the other four out to do Funtom-funded shopping for the usual immediate displacee needs — clothes, toiletries, and initial groceries, and once all the necessities were handled anything else they might want or need, within reason.

Just to complicate matters, in the middle of all that I fielded a call on my cell from my Uncle Arthur in which he let us know that he and Aunt Linda would be on the East Coast and thus able to visit sometime towards the end of October. Which would be great, we hadn't seen them in all too long, but at the moment it was just one more thing in a way too busy day.

And when all that was done with, we had our second "welcome" dinner of the weekend. As thirty-some people ate and socialized, it occurred to me that this was not going to be a sustainable tradition. There was enough room for the current crowd to not feel cramped, especially if they spread out over both floors of the community center. But it wouldn't take many more new residents before it would simply be impractical. Not to mention before we reached a point where Funtom's accountants refused to reimburse us for the meals.

Belldandy put in another appearance, staying just long enough to eat a small plate of chicken hibachi and cuddle with Keiichi for a little while. Before she left again, she pulled Peggy and me aside.

"I'm sorry," she began. It was the closest we'd been to her since the previous weekend, and I realized that behind the immortal beauty and the serene gaze, I could actually see the stress in her eyes. What a difference a week had made. "We have our hands full in Heaven at the moment, and I haven't been able to acquire all the paperwork Keiichi and our friends need." She gave a brittle little laugh. "Or myself, for that matter, now that I will be spending far more time here than I initially planned."

"Is there anything we can do to help with that?" Peggy asked.

Bell nodded. "There is, in fact, something you can do. If you contact Robert Thompson at the Boston residence — I believe they're calling it Warehouse 13 now — he and one of his residents can arrange everything we need."

I nodded solemnly. "We'll take care of it first thing in the morning."

"Oh, thank you so much," Bell said, and hugged us both. "I'm sorry, I need to leave now."

"Go, go, what you're doing is more important than us," I said, waving toward the mirror.

"No, you are very important, too," she said.

"Just not that important!" Bob countered with a smile.

"Don't forget to say good-bye to Keiichi first!" Peggy admonished as Bell turned toward the already shining glass.

Belldandy gave an embarrassed little giggle, "Oh, of course!" She dashed around various of our residents to where Keiichi was sitting chatting with Sawako and Lafarga, dipped in to kiss him, then dashed back to the mirror. She practically dove through the gleaming portal it became for her, in too much of a hurry to traverse it more gracefully.

Monday, September 19, 2016

First thing in the morning, as I had promised Bell, we left a message at Warehouse 13 explaining we had five people needing paperwork and asking for a call back. Then we headed over to the community center, where we got a bit of a surprise.

"Okay," I said. "I didn't order that."

"I didn't order it, either," Peggy replied.

I shook my head. "I'll be the one to ask the obvious question. Where the hell did that come from?"

"That" was a cabinet — about shoulder high with two full-length doors, nicely finished hardwood or a very convincing veneer, positioned in a previously unoccupied space along one wall of the community center's "living room", blocking one of the few power outlets one could easily reach in the room. It hadn't been there the night before. Peg and I'd been there past eleven cleaning up from the welcome dinner, and we could both testify that no anomalous furniture had made itself known to us by the time we shut off the lights and locked up for the night.

"Is there anything in it?" Peg asked.

I nodded sagely. "Good question. Cabinets do usually hold things."

She gave me a flat look. "Go open it."

I gave her my own flat look right back. "If something jumps out at me, I'm blaming you."

She swatted my upper arm with the back of her hand. "Just go."

"While you stand safely back here," I muttered as I headed toward the mystery furniture.

"Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah," she snickered, grinning broadly while rapidly nodding her head.

"What a cruel woman I married," I jokingly muttered as I approached it. "Sends her husband into mortal danger while she stands back where nothing can get her." I grasped one door handle in each hand.

"Yup. And don't you forget it," she sing-songed back at me as I yanked the doors open, then ducked.

Nothing happened.

"How's the mortal danger?" Peggy asked from her safe location outside the living room.

"Surprisingly undangerous," I said before looking up.

"Well?"

"My god," I said. "It's full of amps."

And it was. Four shelves each holding three miniature guitar amplifiers thoroughly filled the interior of the cabinet, leaving almost no room for anything else. Each one was about a foot tall and maybe 14 inches wide, with a full array of little knobs, an input jack, and various labeled LED indicators, one of which was glowing a cheery green. I straightened up, reached in, and took one out, grasping it by a handle that had been molded into the top of its black plastic case. As I did, I realized it had been sitting inside a form-fitting pocket or rack, at the bottom of which was a little round pad I recognized as an induction charger like the ones we had for our cell phones. I glanced at the amp I held, and realized that its green LED was now out.

I stepped back from the cabinet and brandished it at Peggy. "Amplifiers. Miniature, guitar, twelve each. Someone has given our girls a present."

Peggy was at my side in just a few steps. "Twelve? We have only, what, six guitarists."

"Right now, at least." I shrugged as I put the amp back in its socket. "And you never know who might sit in."

"I suppose," she mused. She looked the cabinet up and down as I shut the doors. "But where did it come from?"

I gave her a look. "Have you forgotten who our bosses are?"

"But..."

I held up a hand. "I'll call the support line later and ask. Okay?"

She pursed her lips, then nodded grudgingly. "I suppose."

One of the next things on our agenda that morning was a task that we would have taken care of on Sunday had Keiichi, Megumi, Sora and Chihiro not shown up literally moments after the world's cutest biker gang had departed. Which was cleaning up the apartments said biker gang had used.

"Cleaning up" makes it sound like they'd left a mess behind. They hadn't. But we did need to do a few minor things, like collecting the trash, making sure the sinks and tubs were clean, neatening the living rooms, and finally stripping the beds, followed by washing and folding the linens before returning them to the units. They really hadn't been there long enough to make a mess of the apartments, nor did we really expect them to. But there was some basic housekeeping that needed doing. (Less for Hayakawa's apartment, to be sure, but still...)

One thing I noticed — I don't think that Peg did (and I didn't mention it to her) — was that while one pair of girls had slept in separate beds, the other had shared a bed. Based on more than a quarter-century's experience with a shared bed, I was certain from the state of the covers that there had been some major cuddling going on. (Although given the evidence at hand, no more than that.) I couldn't remember which pair had taken which apartment, but I felt it was highly unlikely to have been Hijiri and Lime. Besides the age difference and Lime's characterization in the anime, in real life she had struck me as almost asexual, at least insofar as I could realistically determine something like that after socializing with her for only a few hours.

Which left Onsa and Rin.

What I remembered of the anime made that pairing... unlikely. But not so unlikely as to be impossible; god knows I've seen odder couples form (and stick) in a dozen different shows and real life. Not for the first time that weekend I regretted never watching all the way to the end of Bakuon!! — for all I knew they got together in the last episode or something.

Whatever. It wasn't really any of my business. Nor was it my job to speculate on relationships, especially between displacees who didn't live at my residence. I wished them the best of luck (and an amicable break-up if/when one happened), and went back to stripping the bed.

Once the laundry and restock of the apartments was complete, Peg and I retired to our apartment just in time to receive a call back from Robert "Call me Kestrel" Thompson, which I put on speaker.

"Good to talk to a couple more of my fellow managers," he said after the greetings and introductions were done with. "You're the second and third ones I've spoken with."

"Who was the first?" Peg asked.

"Brent, out in California, just a few days ago."

"Brent Laabs?" I asked.

"That's him."

"I know him — he and I and a few others run the All The Tropes wiki," I said. "I guess Funtom got their money's worth out of the ad they posted on my forums. Anyway," I interrupted myself, "that's neither here nor there. Belldandy told us to call you to get all the paperwork for four new residents who just showed up yesterday — and herself."

"I can do that for you — well, me and one of my residents. I'm sure you've heard of him — HAL 9000."

I felt my eyebrows crawl up into my fading hairline. "HAL? Really?"

Kestrel laughed. "I get the feeling everyone's going to react like that. Yes, HAL. We — well, he — set Brent's undines up with full histories and paper trails, and we can do the same for your new folks. Who are they, anyway?"

"A few people near and dear to Belldandy's heart," I replied. "Chihiro Fujimi, Sora Hasegawa, Megumi Morisato and last but certainly not least as far as Bell's concerned, her husband Keiichi Morisato."

"Husband?" Kestrel sounded as surprised as I had felt just a few moments earlier. "Really?"

"Yes, really!" Peg said with a laugh.

"Two years now, at least here," I added. "They got married when the manga ended in 2014. We don't know how long it's subjectively been for them, though." I paused, shot a sly grin at Peg, and continued, "They still act like newlyweds, so take that for what it's worth."

"Wow, no pressure, huh?" Kestrel said with an obvious smile in his voice. "I'd better tell HAL to pull out all the stops, especially on hers."

"Can't hurt to butter up the boss," Peggy giggled.

"Okay, so how do we do this?" I asked.

"Right," he said. "We'll do this the same way we handled the undines. That means a video call with your new residents sitting in. HAL interviews them for what they need, and takes stills from the video link for anything that needs a headshot."

Peg frowned. "Won't someone get suspicious if they're wearing the same outfit in every photo of them?"

"No worries there," Kestrel said. "HAL can do this thing that's like Photoshop cubed, and creates different clothing on every image he uses. Very realistic, too. Generative image editing, he calls it.¹ He's not very imaginative, but for that kind of thing he doesn't need to be." Kestrel laughed again. "He says he enjoys using that function, because it's something he wasn't allowed to do while he was serving in a scientific role."

"No, I guess he wouldn't be, would he?" I mused. "Don't want your data archivist idly altering your photos."

"Yeah, that would be kind of counterproductive." He chuckled. "Anyway, we can take care of this whenever's convenient for your people. Tonight, tomorrow, now — whatever works."

"What about Bell?" Peggy asked. "She's incredibly busy right now and probably can't just pop in for a phone call."

Kestrel considered that. "Well, we can do up everything but sit on it until she can give us a moment to take a headshot. Or maybe Keiichi has a photo of her in his wallet?" He shrugged. "We'll work it out one way or another."

"Sounds reasonable." I glanced at Peggy, who was already picking up her cellphone.

"Let me phone them right now," she said.

Long story short, Keiichi and co. were available, not really having anything else to do at the moment. Fifteen minutes later we were in that video conference. An hour after that, everything was set.

"I have arranged for everything that can be delivered by mail or express to be so," HAL said. His voice, while not quite exactly the same as Douglas Rain's, was still close enough to be eerie. "I have sent an email to your displacees.yggdrasil accounts with the locations and hours of all the offices and institutions where you must pick up your paperwork in person. You should have everything you need in your hands within a week if you do not delay." Fortunately their motorcycles — like the Bakuon!! cast's bikes — had arrived with local license plates in place instead of Japanese, plates that already had valid records in the MVC² systems. Why that had been handled automagically and nothing else was, we couldn't figure.

"Thank you, HAL," Kestrel said, his face replacing the iconic red-lit lens. He was a heavy-set guy with glasses and a five-o'clock shadow, which hadn't matched the mental image I'd formed in speaking with him on the phone first. (Then again, I'm usually wrong about that kind of thing.) "That should be everything," he went on, "so I guess..."

"Oh, wait!" Peggy interrupted him.

I turned to look at her. "What's up?"

"The knights and Ascot," she said. "They're... um..." She trailed off as her dysnomia — an infrequent problem which hadn't bothered her much in the last couple weeks — suddenly kicked in and once again messed with her ability to express herself. I frowned and wracked my brains for why those four kids were relevant to the call at hand.

Those four kids...

Oh, of course. "Right!" I patted her hand and turned back to the monitor. "Kestrel, we also have four displacee minors who just showed up on Friday morning. Well, we have more than just them, but they all got IDs and paperwork from the Celestials. Except the kids don't have any family with them, and the paperwork didn't include anything about who's looking out for them. Can HAL set us up with guardianship papers for them?"

"If I may, Kestrel?" HAL said, his camera lens avatar returning to the screen.

"Sure, go ahead."

"Thank you. Bob, do I correctly infer that the minors are Japanese?"

"Yes and no. They're all from an anime, yes. Three early-teen girls with Japanese names who are native to Japan in their home timeline, and one pre-teen boy with a Western name who is not."

"Well, where the three girls are concerned, it's not strictly necessary to do anything formal. This could be handled simply by generating letters ostensibly from each set of parents, asking you as 'family friends' to take responsibility for their children during their time 'studying abroad'." HAL paused minutely, before continuing, "A step beyond this would be to insert records of the deaths of said fictional parents into various databases, along with probated wills appointing the two of you their legal guardians, but I do not believe it is necessary to go to such lengths. Similarly, I think it would be unnecessary at this time for us to establish either Residential Custody or Kinship Legal Guardianship through the New Jersey state court system."

"And if it turns out we do need something like that?" I asked.

"If at some point there is undesired official interest in one or more of the children," HAL replied, "then I can quickly create the necessary records, backstopping them far more thoroughly than anyone is likely to pursue. It would take me no more than a few minutes."

"Fair enough. And for Ascot?"

"I would presume that is the pre-teen boy? Depending on the records and history created for him by the Celestials, we could do a similar 'informal' request, or if necessary set up a Kinship Legal Guardianship."

"What's that?" Peggy asked.

"A kinship legal guardian is what I believe you meant by simply a 'guardian'. It is a relative or family friend appointed by a New Jersey court to raise a child when its parents are unable to do so. We would have to establish a far more extensive history including building a paper trail for his fictional parents, a valid reason for the transfer of guardianship, providing evidence of the year of pre-existing care that is required before the guardianship can be granted, and of course all the court records surrounding the matter."

"Sounds messy," I said.

"It is a rather complex web of interconnecting and mutually supporting documentation," HAL admitted. "I do believe I would quite enjoy the challenge of constructing it."

I chuckled as I shared a glance with Peg. "Tell you what, HAL. Far be it from us to keep you from enjoying yourself. Let's start with the simple 'watch over my kid' letter for Ascot, but in the background go ahead and enjoy building your web. That way if we turn out to need it, you'll have it ready to go."

"That is acceptable. Thank you, Bob. Thank you, Peggy."

"No," I said, "Thank you, HAL."

"Yeah," Peggy added. "Thanks."

"Just one more thing," Chihiro said after we'd ended the video conference and she and the others were preparing to go. "When you called us earlier we were in the middle of discussing what we wanted to do with ourselves now that we were here in this world,."

Keiichi nodded. "And we decided we wanted to restart Whirlwind. But to do that..."

"...we're going to need a garage to work out of," Chihiro continued, "and seed money to buy tools and equipment to replace what we left behind in... in our old world."

Peg and I exchanged looks. "Funtom?" she asked, and I nodded.

Turning back to our new tenants, I said, "No guarantees, but Funtom might be willing to spot you some startup cash — although I know it won't be a gift, you'll have to pay them back, or maybe give them a piece of the company."

Chihiro nodded. "Yeah, I kind of expected that."

"Another thing," I added, one forefinger raised. "I'll be willing to act as a go-between at the start — in fact, I'm pretty sure that's one of my responsibilities as a manager — but before I make that first phone call, I think you'd best have a proper business plan drawn up. Funtom's not going to just throw money at you and hope for the best. They're going to want to know that they're investing in a venture that's going to turn a profit."

"I can do that," she said, then flashed us a quick grin. "Did it once already when I started up the old Whirlwind."

"Okay, good," I said. "Now, as far as a garage, well... we definitely can help you there."

"You can?" Megumi asked.

Ten minutes later we were at the end of the parking lot between buildings 8 and 10, the second lot on the west side of Annette. Unlike the other four lots... well, five, if you count the short lot next to buildings 13 and 15... anyway, unlike the other lots, this one had a building at the end.

It was, as you might have already anticipated if you've been paying attention, a garage.

More correctly, it was eight one-car garages with separate doors under a single roof, the whole built of cinder blocks painted white. As we understood it, the pre-Funtom management of Douglass Gardens rented them out for an extra charge above and beyond the basic rent to tenants who thought their cars were too special or delicate to be left out in the weather with those belonging to the hoi polloi. And according to some of the paperwork left behind for us after the sale, it was quite the premium.

Somehow that made what Peg and I had in mind all the sweeter. I'd quickly explained my brainstorm to her out of our new tenants' earshot and she had agreed it was a good idea. (For which I was glad; I hadn't looked forward to trying to convince her if she hadn't.)

I walked down the length of the building, unlocking the doors with the keys on the special "garage" ring, and lifted each one to reveal the bays within. "So here's the deal," I said as I did. "No one in the complex has their own car yet."

"And if they did, well, we've got a lot of parking spaces," Peggy said.

"Right," I said, lifting another door. "At the moment we only have the two vans for the complex, and they live next to the community center. So this entire building is unused and is likely to stay that way for quite a while... unless you think you can run your new Whirlwind out of it."

"You're serious?" Keiichi blurted as the four of them started chattering among themselves.

"As Gary Oldman,"³ I replied with a grin, and Peggy whacked me on the upper arm.

It was obvious that my Harry Potter joke had gone completely over his head, but he grokked what I'd meant. The four of them started crawling through the building, testing light switches, rattling doors, picking through the odd box left behind by a former tenant... As they did, I put the cherry on top.

"If you think you can use it," I said, "we'll let you have it rent free for six months. That'll cut down substantially on your start-up costs. At the end of that six months, assuming the company is at least breaking even, we can negotiate a proper rent."

Chihiro stopped what she was doing and came back out to face us. "Rent-free? Really?" She narrowed her eyes. "Why would you do that?"

"It's what we're here for," Peggy said, rolling her eyes.

I tilted my head at my wife. "What she said. We're not just here to give you a room and fix dripping faucets. We're here to help you find a place in the world and make a good life for yourselves for as long as you need it."

"It doesn't cost us anything to let you use a building no one would be using anyway," Peggy added. "It helps you, so why not?"

Chihiro nodded slowly, a thoughtful look on her face, before turning back to the garage and gathering up the other three. Then they huddled and talked. Peg and I moved away from them to give them some privacy.

"You think they'll go for it?" I asked.

Peg shrugged. "They'd be stupid not to."

The huddle broke and the four of them came over to us. "Well?" I asked.

"It's not perfect," Chihiro started. Keiichi rolled his eyes. "We're going to need to add work benches, and tool cabinets, maybe put in doors between the bays, and we'll want to turn one of the units into a proper office and another into a storeroom..."

Keiichi leaned forward with a grin. "We'll take it."

She sighed, but smiled. "Yes, we'll take it."

"Excellent," I said. "We can work out the details tomorrow, but for now, you have a garage." I tossed the keyring to her and she caught it clumsily. Chihiro looked down at it, then back up at us, and smiled even more broadly.

"Thank you," she said, before she and the rest went back to checking out their new workplace.

"You're welcome," I murmured even though she was already out of earshot.

"That was a very kind thing for you to do," a familiar female voice said from behind us. I gave a little yelp of surprise as Peg and I spun around to find Belldandy standing there, a black cat I hadn't seen in a week or so calmly and comfortably resting in her arms.

"Belldandy, hi!" Peg said brightly while I got my heartbeat under control.

"Bell! You startled me," I finally said.

"I'm sorry." She petted the cat, who was looking at me with what I swore was a smirk on its muzzle.

I nodded toward the feline. "Oh, is that your cat?" Peg, I noticed, had already stepped several feet away, as always mindful of her allergies.

"No," she replied. "He's his own cat." Somehow I expected that. The cat seemed even more smug than a moment ago, too. The hell that's not Toltiir. "As I said, that was very kind of you."

"It was the right thing to do," Peggy said, shrugging.

"What she said," I said.

"Regardless, thank you." She made a short bow, abbreviated in deference to the cat in her arms, which despite the change in its perch remained unconcerned and comfortably in place. "And now I must go again; honestly, I shouldn't have spared even this short visit, but I had an opportunity to give Mr. Thompson and HAL the photograph they needed, so I was in Midgard already."

I held up a hand. "Go, Bell, we know how important your work is. We'll take care of them, don't you worry."

Belldandy smiled. "Once more, thank you," she said, then dropped something shiny at her feet. As she said "Farewell," I realized it had to be a pocket mirror; it began glowing with the distinctive white light of Belldandy's transport medium. She stepped into and disappeared, dropping down into it as though a hole had opened up beneath her feet.

With that smirking cat still in her arms.

After that we had a late lunch, and then... the next thing on our agenda for the day. Three days earlier we promised Ascot we'd let him check on his "friends". I had thought the playground area at the very end of the complex, almost the farthest point from Hamilton Street, might serve. So before we went back home for lunch, we diverted slightly to check it out.

As I thought I'd remembered, it was well-surrounded with trees or buildings on three sides and a jog in Annette Court took it out of direct line-of-sight from Hamilton Street. And, probably most importantly, there looked to be enough room for Ascot to summon one of his kaijuu-lite creatures at a time.

At least, if the summoning or the creature didn't do any damage to the landscape. If at all possible, I'd rather avoid having the street, the playground or one of the service buildings wiped out. The problem there was that I had a vague recollection that more than a few of his summonings were rather energetically pyrotechnic. So while Peg made sandwiches for us, I located our box set of Magic Knight Rayearth and did a quick Google lookup for episodes.

Ascot first appeared in episode 6, where he summoned a mini-Mothra he called Atalante. So I cued it up, and Peg and I sat down in the living room with our lunches on the coffee table to watch.

Other than its size and mass, Atalante's summoning was rather prosaic: a glowing circle of power formed in midair, through which it appeared. I would have said there was nothing about it to draw any unwanted attention — except it appeared in mid-air. Whatever was underneath it needed to be able to withstand its multi-ton bulk dropping down on it. Which would no doubt shake nearby buildings — including the nearby houses outside the complex.

Not to mention that it made typical kaijuu noises at typical kaijuu volumes.

"That's... going to be noticed," Peggy said, reaching the same conclusion I was.

"Yeah." I quit the episode and advanced to the next.

In episode 7, Ascot summoned Pajero, a manta ray-like creature that dug its way up from under the sand of a desert. Watching its arrival, I was already shaking my head — between its size (much bigger than Atalante) and the damage it would cause just showing up there was no way we could allow that in the complex. "We're going to need to find an abandoned quarry or something," I said around my sandwich.

"Or something, yeah."

Episode 8 was next. Ah, there's what I was remembering. Big Seal of Solomon, pillar of fire, very loud explosion, very loud giant wolf-like creature. Yeah, no. No way. Episode 9's giant snail showed up with a blast in an equally noticeable column of light. And Capella from episode 10 needed to be summoned in a largish body of water — which we very much did not have handy — with its own column of light, and was just as loud and growly as the others.

Having finished off our lunches we stopped there. There were still several more episodes with summonings but according to the list from Wikipedia those were the big ones. Plus, I'd seen enough.

So had Peg. "We can't use the playground," she said, shaking her head.

"No question," I said as I ejected the disk and put it back in its case, then slid the case back into the box. "Last thing we need is the Franklin cops coming by to investigate an explosion and a pillar of light."

She snorted. "And giant monster noises."

"Yeah, that too." I returned the box set to its place on the DVD shelf. "Let's think about this logically. We need someplace that's accessible to the public but still not overrun by people, that's remote enough that his bigger summonings won't be noticed, wild enough that any damage they do will be unnoticed or ignored as natural, and close enough to be convenient."

Peggy shook her head. "Not asking for much, are you?"

"Only the world, love, only the world."

We didn't want to disappoint Ascot, but fortunately, our displacees had come from somewhere in between the first and second seasons of Magic Knight Rayearth — before Ascot grew a couple feet in height, but after he stopped being a bad-tempered brat.

Whatever relief we felt at not having to face a monster-enhanced tantrum (and the subsequent rebuilding costs), though, was more than wiped out by Ascot's heartbroken expression. "I can't see my friends?" he asked softly. Behind him, Hikaru and Fuu looked almost as downcast, and Umi stepped forward to lay a hand on his shoulder.

Peggy dropped to her knees and swept Ascot up in a hug. Out of the voluminous robes and oversized hat he'd worn in Cephiro, he seemed even tinier that he had when he'd arrived. "Not yet. We don't have the room here to do it safely. And we don't want anyone to call the police because they got scared."

I knelt down, too, putting one arm around Peg and laying my other hand on Ascot's back. "We're looking for someplace nearby where you can call your friends. We promise we'll find somewhere for you. That's what we're here for."

"And we will," Peggy added vehemently as Ascot wrapped his arms around her. "We'll find a place."

"So..." Peg asked when we were back in our apartment. "Any ideas yet?"

I pulled out my phone and dropped into the leather armchair. "A couple. I need to do a little research before I can say for sure."

Rutgers University
College Avenue Campus
New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
Tuesday, September 20, 2016

It was shortly after lunch on Tuesday that Yui and Ritsu noticed the small group of confused people clustered around a bench on the Rutgers College Avenue Campus. The two had just left Brower Commons Dining Hall and were heading down the stairs to the left and past Stonier Hall, toward the center of the campus, when they spotted the clearly distressed group to the right of the Computing Center entrance.

"Ricchan?" Yui murmured.

"Yeah, I see them. They're not students," Ritsu replied.

"And they're too upset to be tourists or visitors, I think," Yui said.

Ritsu nodded. The group was definitely out of the ordinary for the Rutgers campus: a girl in her tweens and a slightly younger boy, four adults — a man and a woman seated on the black metal bench with the boy between them, and two women dressed like office ladies who almost seemed to be standing guard to either side of them — and a teenaged girl with long magenta hair that hung down to below her waist. Their clothing, now that Ritsu thought about it, looked a bit out-of-date and perhaps a bit too heavy for a day that was already creeping above 80° Fahrenheit, even if it was mostly cloudy.

The two "guards" looked ready to assault anyone who got too close, only pausing in their vigilance to glare and not-quite-snarl at the teenage girl, who was the only one of the group who didn't seem worried. The tweenage girl also seemed annoyed at the teen as well. Definitely not a group of lifelong friends.

As they reached the bottom of the staircase, Yui said, "I think I know who they are," and suddenly broke into a trot to cross the small plaza to the group. Ritsu shook her head, smiled and followed at a slower pace. The "guard" with long purple hair twitched, her hand reaching for her waist before she scowled and stepped forward.

"Excuse me," Yui said, bowing carefully so as not to dislodge the backpack in which she held the books for her afternoon classes. "You look like you're lost. Maybe we can help?" Everyone else in the group looked up at her in surprise.

"I doubt it, kid," growled the purple-haired "guard", stepping forward to stand in front of Yui.

"Arisa, behave yourself," chided the older woman on the bench, and the office lady scowled and stepped back. "But I believe Arisa is correct — I doubt there's anything you can do to help us."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Ritsu said lightly as she reached Yui's side. "I've seen those expressions on a lot of faces over the past few days, including my own."

"What would you know about it?" demanded the other "guard".

"Well," Yui said, sharing a glance with Ritsu, "have you just found yourself someplace strange without any idea how you got here, or why you're speaking English?"

The couple on the bench exchanged a look before the man cautiously said, "Yes?", stretching the word out. He had a massive shock of hair hiding his eyes, and a lit cigarette hung from the side of his mouth. "How did you know?"

Yui gave them her totally unconscious but utterly effective "we're best friends, you just don't know it yet" smile. "Because it happened to us last week..." She turned to Ritsu. "Last week?"

Ritsu nodded. "Last week."

Yui nodded back and turned back to the group. "Last week. You're on a version of Earth called 'Refuge', you're in the United States, it's 2016..." this got a collective in-drawing of breath from the adults, "...and there are people here to help folks like us."

Ritsu nudged Yui with her shoulder as she dug her cellphone from a pocket. "I'll call Bob. You go do that thing you always do with strangers." She grinned and shook her head. "Guess we're cutting class this afternoon."

"We'll just copy Akira and Ayame's notes," Yui said absently, then asked, "What thing I always do with strangers?"

It was about 1:30 on Tuesday afternoon when I pulled one of the residence vans to a halt at the curb of College Avenue next to Brower Commons. I put it in park and turned on the four-ways just in time for Ritsu and Yui to show up leading a gaggle of people who (other than the two children) bore the increasingly-familiar shell-shocked expression of the newly-displaced. For a moment I wondered who they were and what show or movie they were from — and then I spotted the teen-aged girl with waist-length magenta hair.

Oh boy.

If she was who I thought she was, Funtom needed to call its insurance company yesterday.

Ritsu yanked open the passenger-side front door and leaned in. "Hey Bob, we got some new customers for you and Peggy." Behind me I could hear the side door sliding open.

"Yes, thank you so much, Ritsu." I twisted in my seat to look back at my new passengers. "Hi, Yui. So who are our new friends? Everyone, just climb on in and take a seat."

Yui was beaming as she helped them in one by one. "Well, this is Akiko Natsume-san, and Kyusaku Natsume-san, and Ryunosuke-chan," she said as she helped an elegant-looking woman in her thirties, a somewhat disheveled-looking man around the same age, and a young boy into the van. "And Arisa-san and Kyouko-san" — two more women, these in their twenties and looking like the world's angriest office ladies — "and Eimi-chan" — a brown-haired, red-eyed girl who looked to be about twelve, and at the sight of whom I had to suppress a certain amount of trepidation, because I recognized her... and everyone else who'd gotten in. "And this," Yui concluded proudly as she helped the teenaged girl in, "is Atsu-nyan!"

"Hiiiii!" said Atsu-nyan — the magenta-haired teen who could only be Atsuko "Nuku Nuku" Natsume — in a perfect copy of Megumi Hayashibara's voice.

"Hi, everyone," I said as Yui and Ritsu climbed in and closed the doors behind them. "I'm Bob Schroeck. My wife Peggy and I are the managers of Douglass Gardens Apartments. I understand that Ritsu and Yui gave you a quick explanation of what's happened to you?"

Akiko and Kyusaku traded glances over Ryunosuke's head. "Yes, but it's frankly difficult to believe," Akiko said.

I nodded as I turned back to the steering wheel. "Yeah, everyone says that at first, and usually for a few days afterwards. We'll have proof for you when we get back to the apartments. Now, is everyone belted in?"

A chorus of yesses in tones ranging from grudging to excited answered me. "Okay, then," I said, turned off the four-ways and put the van in gear. The door locks automatically engaged, briefly alarming some of them but when nothing dangerous happened they calmed down. I had to wait for a campus bus to pass by first, and then I pulled into traffic. "Now," I said as I accelerated, "Douglass Gardens is part of a network of residences set up to house and support persons like you who have been ejected from their home timelines..."

Well, long story short — after so many iterations do you really need me to go over the whole process in detail again? — we got the Natsumes and hangers-on settled in. Along the way we had to show them their show, of course. A few questions confirmed that they came from the early-90s All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku OVA series — their native year was 1992 — which was a slight problem at first because we didn't own a copy of it. Fortunately it turned out to be on Crunchyroll.

They hadn't arrived with luggage, so after that we had to make a quick run to Brunswick Square Mall and the ShopRite on Route 18 to get them all set up with enough clothes and supplies to carry them through the next few days. When we got back, that Celestial trainee (we still didn't know her name) showed up with their paperwork. Then it was time for GrubHub and Midori and yet another welcome dinner which was even more crowded than the last. We ended up suspending the "no food in the studios" rule just to get a bit more eating space without spreading everyone across two floors.

Handling the introductions was a bit more complex a task as well. The sheer number of residents we now had made it a bit harder to get everyone familiar with everyone else, but we got a good start on it, and with luck the rest should handle itself over next few days or weeks as people ran into each other. I'll note that Ryunosuke and Ascot hit it off almost immediately, and I foresaw the pair of them becoming holy terrors around the complex in short order.

And then there was the moment when Yui, with a very obvious twinkle of mischief in her eye, dragged Azusa over to Nuku Nuku and solemnly proclaimed, "Azu-nyan, meet Atsu-nyan. Atsu-nyan, meet Azu-nyan."

Nuku Nuku tilted her head as a very human expression of confusion flickered quickly across her face. "Are you a cat girl, too?"

Azusa sighed. "Yui-sempai seems to think so." Yui giggled.

That's all I managed to overhear before the responsibilities of being co-host of the dinner party dragged me elsewhere, but I noticed that while Yui, ever the social butterfly, had moved on to other targets, Azusa and Nuku Nuku were still talking fifteen or twenty minutes later, and had started to accumulate some of the other members of Wakaba Girls. Not long after that Peg and I spotted the lot of them heading toward the studio and practice rooms. It looked like our cat girl was going to get her own private concert.

I didn't have much time to think about that, because just about then I heard an angry female voice just barely audible above the walla of conversations. I looked around; the hallway to the practice rooms and the recording studio was closed off, so it wasn't coming from there. I craned my neck, looking for the source of the voice which, while it wasn't exactly comprehensible over the party noise, was definitely getting louder.

"There," Peg said and subtly pointed. Ah, yeah. Over by the archway that led to the foyer/coatroom that kept the main door of the community center from opening directly upon its front room, Arisa Sono (now in jeans and T-shirt) was growling something I still couldn't make out at Lafarga while poking him aggressively in the chest with her forefinger. Given that he was a good foot and some taller than her, and proportionally wider and heavier (even out of his armor), the effect was almost comic. He was looking down at her with the kind of half-puzzled, half-amused expression you might see on a wolf being assaulted by a soft fluffy bunny, which only seemed to fuel her fury. Her peach-haired partner Kyouko had an arm around her, trying to pull her away from the blond swordsman, but didn't seem to be having much luck.

"Well, shit," I murmured to her. "C'mon, let's break that up before it turns into a real fight."

"Yeah," Peg said as we started making our way though the crowd between us and them. "He could probably put her through a wall if she actually annoys him enough."

A moment later I grabbed her wrist and pulled her poking hand away from Lafarga's chest. "That's enough, Ms. Sono."

She spun on me and snarled, "Who the hell are you to tell me what's enough?"

"I am your apartment manager," I said calmly but firmly. Over her shoulder I shot Lafarga an apologetic look. He just smiled and walked off while on the other side of her from me, Peggy and Kyouko were doing their best to hold Arisa in place in case she decided to go chasing after him. "I am the person who is making sure you have a roof over your head and food to eat. I strongly suggest you control your temper."

This stopped her cold for a moment before she continued glowering at me. "He..."

"I don't care," I interrupted her. I gestured with my head to the foyer. "Let's continue this somewhere more private."

"Encouraged" by her partner and my wife, Arisa reluctantly followed me there. That I hadn't yet let go of her wrist probably had something to do with it as well. I did release it once we were out of sight of the rest of the dinner party, though. As she rubbed it with an exaggerated theatricality, I picked up where I left off. "Ms. Sono, like I just said, you need to control your temper." She tried to object, but I didn't let her get a word in. "This is not your home world, where you could apparently commit violent assault on a daily basis with no repercussions beyond a slap on the wrist from Mishima. This is a world with much stricter laws, where your former employer is a fictional character with no influence, where you cannot indulge in recreational violence without risking arrest or imprisonment.

"Further!" I continued, stomping on her next attempt to say something, "this apartment complex houses a large number of children and young adults. Their safety and well-being comes before anything else, least of all your temper. I don't pretend to know what led up to the moment we just interrupted, but I'm pretty sure that nothing justified the level of anger you were demonstrating. If you can't control yourself, we're under no obligation to continue offering you a place to live."

"You've got no right to threaten me like that!" she growled.

"Arisa!" her partner said in a pleading tone.

"I have every right." I tried to stare her down. "You are living here at our sufferance. If my wife and I decide that we do not want you in our residence, out you go. You are not entitled to a place here, and you are not entitled to bully or attack the other residents. If you cannot act like an adult, and if you place any of our other residents at risk because of your behavior, You. Will. Be. Evicted." I said the last slowly and firmly, emphasizing each separate word.

"And no other residence has to take you in," Peggy said, somewhat more calmly than me.

"Yeah," I said. "If no other residence will accept you, you will be on the street."

She shook herself free from Peg and Kyouko. "Lady Akiko won't allow that!"

"Lady Akiko is as much a penniless refugee dependent on our charity as you are." I leaned in closer to her. "She has no influence or power with which to save you from yourself except perhaps begging. And do you seriously think she will debase herself for you?" I straightened back up. "I think maybe you should call it a night. Ms. Ariyoshi?" I spared a glance for her partner. "Could you please see that Ms. Sono gets back to your apartment?"

Kyouko chewed her lip for a moment before nodding once, briskly. "C'mon, Arisa," she said, taking her partner's arm, "let's go." It took a little tugging but Arisa started moving — towards the exit since Peg and I were blocking the way back into the community center.

"You haven't heard the last of this!" Arisa declared angrily as Kyouko pulled her through the door.

"No, I suppose I haven't," I said just before the door shut with an entirely anticlimactic "click" of the latch. I let out a long breath.

"You okay?" Peg asked as she stepped forward and took my hand.

I turned to look at her. "I'm about to fall over from nerves," I admitted, finally giving into the shakes I'd been suppressing up to then. "I've never been good at trying to intimidate anyone. And I was terrified that she was going to take a swing at me and I wouldn't be able to block or dodge in time." I grimaced. "I'm 54 and I never was good in a fight."

"If she hit you, she'd've been out on her ass before you got back up," Peg said with a smile.

I smiled back. "I'm glad you have my back. But it still would've hurt like hell." I turned back to look at the door outside. "She's going to be trouble, I know it."

The next morning we posted a new rule for the apartment complex on the Douglass Gardens area on displacees.yggdrasil and as a voicemail sent to every apartment's mailbox: No firearms were permitted in Douglass Gardens, even if they were properly licensed and secured. If a resident was found with a firearm in their apartment or possession, they would be subject to immediate eviction. And anyone found with illegal firearms — unregistered, unlicensed, or otherwise not permitted for civilians — would be immediately turned over to the cops.

Yes, of course it was because of Arisa. The crazy bitch had a demonstrated history in every version of Nuku Nuku of taking out her frustrations with high-caliber weaponry. We did not trust that she wouldn't flip out and start shooting up the place if we allowed her to own so much as a BB gun. And to be honest, we didn't entirely trust that she wouldn't just say "fuck it" and shoot up the place anyway.

I sent an email to this effect to Sebastian, who replied minutes later that should worse come to worse, Funtom had a facility in Wales where she could be placed safely.

I responded with a suggestion he reserve a room for her.

He didn't reply.

Douglass Gardens Apartments
Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Helen Imre pulled her Hyundai Sonata into the space behind the managers' office/apartment next to the other Sonata parked there and looked curiously at the back door with its green awning. It was, she thought, all very strange. Bob had been unemployed and looking for a new programming job; Peggy had been effectively retired since several years earlier when her employer had moved their main office out of the state and she'd declined to move with it. For them both to suddenly and without warning take jobs as apartment managers — and move out of their home of more than fifteen years to do so — was utterly unexpected.

That it had caused her some personal inconvenience was relatively minor. While she worked in the local library across Demott Lane from the Banzai Institute, she lived in a row house with her husband Attila in Allentown, Pennsylvania, an hour and a half away. To save on gas and other expenses, she crashed in Bob and Peggy's guest room two nights a week, after spending an evening eating dinner and socializing with them. Except she hadn't since the beginning of the month, between the move, the settling in, and apparently a whole raft of new renters showing up and needing help.

But finally, for the first time in two weeks, she could go back to the schedule they had all been very happy with. Work was over, she was here, and they had a backlog of episodes for the Asian dramas she and Peggy had been watching at the end of August.

A minute later she was standing at the back door to their apartment, her overnight bag slung over her shoulder, and rang the bell. It swung open to reveal Bob. "Oh, hey, Helen. It's after five already? Wow," he added, looking back over his shoulder. "We kinda lost track of time." From behind him the sound of Peggy and two other women talking drifted out through the door. "It's been that kind of day."

"And I'm just delighted to see you, too," Helen said with mild sarcasm lacing her voice. "Can I come in?"

"Um," he glanced back over his shoulder. "Yeah, I guess." He stepped aside and motioned her in.

"Well, thank you," she replied. "I wasn't looking forward to standing any longer on your steps in this heat."

He closed the door behind her as she took a look around. She was in a dining room, on the far side of which from her was a kitchen. And to her left was a large living room, part of which had been sectioned off into an obvious "office" space, with a desk, a wall-mounted box in which hung sets of keys and a couple of file cabinets. The rest of the living room was... well, a living room. Peggy and two women were sitting there. All three had stopped talking when Helen came in.

"Oh, hi, Helen!" Peggy said, then glanced up at the clock over the couch on which the two other women sat. "Wow, it's almost 5:30!"

"Yes," Helen said, again letting just a touch of sarcasm enter her voice, "It is."

The two strange women glanced at each other, then stood. The profoundly beautiful one with a massive cascade of ash-blonde hair to her ankles (Helen's eyebrows rose at the sight), said, "You have a guest, and we're about finished here. We should go." She was dressed in a style Helen could only call "domestic", in slacks, a cardigan and loafers — in distinct contrast to the other woman, who looked like she was cosplaying as a hippie right out of the Sixties, with her dark-lensed granny glasses, overlarge smock top and harem pants in jewel green, and Birkenstocks. All she needed was a fringed leather vest and a headband to hold back her own voluminous golden blonde hair.

"It is the first time you've seen her since taking the job, after all," Hippie-Chick added. "Don't let us steal any more of your evening from you."

"Um, Helen," Bob said, stepping into the living room behind her, "I'd like you to meet two of our new bosses..."

The hippie waved a hand dismissively. "I'm not one of your bosses — I'm more... boss-adjacent."

He snorted. "If you say so. Helen, this is Novalis, the Archangel of Flowers..." The hippie chick gave a little wave. "...and Belldandy Wishbringer, Norn of the Present." The walking tower of hair bowed slightly in a manner Helen realized was Japanese.

She looked back and forth between them before turning back to Bob. "Bullshit."

"Oh, dear," the Belldandy cosplayer said with what sounded like genuine distress in her voice, then turned to the hippie. "Shall I prove who we are, or would you care to?"

"Oh, let me." The hippie tilted her head, looked over her granny glasses and grinned at Helen. Her eyes were a startling green the exact same shade as her ensemble. "Why should you have all the fun?"

"Belldandy" giggled and gestured toward Helen. "By all means, then."

An eternal moment later, Helen stood, silent, staring at the two women. Bob started reaching for her when she suddenly smiled broadly. "Oh, cool! And thank Gods! I always hoped the world was more interesting than it seemed!"

Bob blinked and turned to Peggy. "Okay, that's not the usual reaction..."

Peggy rolled her eyes. "It's Helen."

Belldandy beamed, and Novalis laughed. "That it is, dear," Belldandy confirmed.

"So," Bob turned back to Helen, "Belldandy's not just one of our bosses, she's also one of our tenants — the one who gets the best service of course." He grinned at the whole room. "She and her husband Keiichi — yes, that Keiichi — have an apartment in the next building over."

"Belldandy and Keiichi..." Helen repeated, a look of interest on her face.

"Yup. And Novalis comes around to make sure our house plants don't die."

"You," Novalis said while visibly suppressing a smile, "are not as funny as you think you are."

"Anyway," Belldandy declared firmly, "We must go. We will keep an eye on the situation with Ms. Sono, and take such action as needed should it be necessary."

"Thank you, Bell," Peggy said, followed closely by Bob. "We've been worrying about her."

Helen thought fast to seize an opportunity. "Before you go, you wouldn't happen to have need of a librarian or archivist, would you? I have nearly thirty years experience..."

Belldandy and Novalis traded looks. "I personally do not," Belldandy replied.

"Nor I," Novalis added. "But... Bob, could you give her a card for Funtom Property Management? I don't know for sure, but I would imagine they must have a local office where you could inquire."

Helen turned to Bob. "Funtom Property Management?"

"The company Peg and I officially work for. But it's run by the Celestials."

Novalis' brow creased the tiniest bit. "By a demon, to be precise."

"A demon?" Helen looked at Bob.

"I'll explain later," he said. She nodded.

Helen then watched as two of her oldest friends traded goodbyes and hugs with a goddess and an archangel. Belldandy stepped over to the full-length mirror that was a new fixture in the Schroecks' living room and, with one last "Good-bye!", disappeared through it, exactly like she did in Ah! My Goddess.

Novalis turned to Bob and Peggy and said, "Do let Yui and Ui know that I enjoyed meeting both of them, please."

"We will," Peggy replied with a smile. "They certainly enjoyed meeting you."

Novalis smiled broadly. "I don't think anyone has ever called me 'Leese-sama'.⁴ I believe I like it. Farewell!" She waved grandiloquently, and turned into a pillar of brilliant light that exited through the ceiling of the living room.

As Helen blinked purple afterimages out of her eyes, Bob plopped into the leather armchair facing hers. "So I'm guessing you're wondering just what the hell is going on here." Peggy stretched out on the sofa, leaning on the arm closest to Helen.

She shook her head clear, then glared at Bob. "Only a lot."

"It's kind of a long story," Peggy said apologetically.

"I am staying overnight, you know," Helen pointed out, a bit more sharply than she intended.

"Well, in that case," Bob replied, and began to explain.

In Nomine and the characters thereof are copyright © 1997 by Derek Pearcy, Steve Jackson, and Steve Jackson Games. In Nomine is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy.

RMS: It's ChatHAL! Or maybe Unstable Diffusion?
RMS: New Jersey has a Motor Vehicle Commission, instead of a Division (or Department) of Motor Vehicles, like many other states.
RMS: Gary Oldman played Sirius Black in the Harry Potter films.
RMS: "Novalis" is pronounced "nova-LEESE".

A far future teaser...

Posted by: Bob Schroeck - 10-23-2024, 03:01 PM - Forum: Drunkard's Walk VIII: Harry Potter and the Man from Otherearth - Replies (10)

Even though most of my output currently is directed toward My Apartment Manager Is Not an Isekai Character, I am still doing work here and there on the in-progress DW projects. Just to reward you for your patience and forbearance, here's a little something that I've had staged in my dev files for quite a while now. It is actually the (incomplete) third of DW8's four epilogues, and while it dangles tantalizing hints of what happened during the course of the story, it doesn't really have very much in the way of spoilers. I'm figuring it should be just enough to re-invigorate the flagging, and whet the appetites of those still waiting eagerly for more...

Epilogue III

Life's like a movie,
Write your own ending,
Keep believing,
Keep pretending.
-- "The Muppet Movie"

June 18, 2015
Nineteen years later...

Albus Dumbledore slid deeper into the shadows cloaking the end
of the booth in which he sat and stared into the amber depths of
the glass of firewhiskey before him. It wasn't Ogden's Finest --
even if his budget had allowed for it, he wouldn't waste Ogden's
on a drink on this of all days.

He picked up the glass and held it before him. "To Douglas
Sangnoir and Harry Potter," he muttered the annual toast too
softly to be heard by anyone else in the Leaky Cauldron. "Merlin
damn them both." He took a swig and toughed out the mouthful of
rotgut as steam shot from his ears.

In a year it would be an even two decades since the pair had
utterly and completely undermined his plans for the future of
Wizarding Britain by defeating Voldemort and his Death Eaters.
And not just defeating them, but doing so in a dramatic and
public manner using magics beyond those known to any other
witch or wizard of the time.

*And without me there to guide it all.* That was the worst part.
The mystic power of the DA, collectively and individually, was
undeniable, and when they attributed it all to Douglas, well,
that sealed the fate of Albus Dumbledore. Harry's star rose
while Albus' began its slow fall to ignominy.

At least Douglas, however much they had disagreed on methods and
means, had been above it all, even refusing an Order of Merlin.
"The kids did everything -- I was just there as backup." Not
that anyone believed his denials. The stories had spread of him
striding unaffected through a veritable storm of Killing Curses
to strike Voldemort down with a punch, then falling to a point-
blank curse from Tom himself just to *get up again* -- well, the
carefully-crafted folklore around young Harry had faded away in
the face of the *true* stories about Douglas Sangnoir, the now-
legendary Man-Who-Would-Not-Die.

And Douglas' subsequent "mysterious disappearance" upon his
departure from this timeline had only served to deepen his mythic
status, just as Harry's childhood hidden in the Muggle world had
deepened his. What had a mere man like Albus Dumbledore to offer
Wizarding Britain when it had two living gods in its recent
history to inspire it?

At the thought of gods, Albus scowled and took another swig of
his firewhiskey. Of all the things he hated Douglas Sangnoir
for, calling the Norns to Hogwarts was one of the greatest --
because afterward they had *never left*. For nineteen years now,
they had roamed the halls and classrooms with impunity, only ever
glimpsed by the staff at a distance, but *always* available to
the students. Albus doubted there was any student who had
attended Hogwarts in the last two decades who hadn't met one of
the gods who seemed to have taken it upon themselves to keep a
close and personal eye on *his* school. And although he
suspected their presence had as much to do with the continued
appearance of magical abominations among the children as Doug's
teachings had, he knew that it was also a direct message to him
-- that they were *always* watching and judging him.

Damn them.

A commotion at the Muggle-side door of the Cauldron dragged his
attention away from his firewhiskey, and his scowl deepened. It
was one of the abominations, Lavender Brown, in robes of the
brown and saffron which had been her signature colors since her
fifth year. With her were several of her pack, impeccably
dressed, as always, in the height of fashion. And... Albus
squinted and peered. Four young women accompanied her, wearing
outfits that were neither recognizably Muggle nor Wizarding...
and one looked to be almost a twin to Brown, right down to
wearing the same colors.

Was one of her hands *gold*? How odd.

From Brown's gestures and what little he could overhear at this
distance, it was clear they were strangers to the Cauldron and
Diagon Alley, and she was playing tour guide.

Albus shook his head and ignored them. Brown practically ruled
British werewolves these days, and under her influence they had
prospered even as "unfortunate incidents" dwindled away. It was
perhaps emblematic of his fall and the rise of the D.A.'s power
in Britain that when Brown had turned her eyes toward improving
the lot of her followers, abundant supplies of wolfsbane potion
had suddenly appeared, and new werewolf legislation more liberal
and comprehensive than any he had ever hoped to see had sailed
through the Wizengamot with appalling ease.

Her casual dismissal of his offer to advise her on that
legislation only underlined the degree to which his influence
had declined. Albus took another swig and reflected on how he'd
become an artifact of the "Bad Old Days", an unwanted fossil.
Even most of the Weasleys, who had always been his staunchest
supporters, now thought of him as an out-of-touch antique,
although they were too polite to say so to his face.

And the "why" of that all came back to Douglas -- Douglas and his
philosophy of overwhelming victory on the battlefield and off.
Under his tutelage the members of the Defense Association had
accepted and embraced his maxim, "Never leave an enemy behind to
attack you again". Far too many had seen the aftermath of
Voldemort's first campaign, erroneously concluded that nothing
had changed and sought to strike out at those who had followed
Tom even after they had been given a chance at redemption -- a
chance that those like young Severus had eagerly grasped.

Albus scowled into his firewhiskey. If there was anything he
hated Douglas for most, it was the murder of Severus Snape. (He
barely wrestled down the automatic urge to add "the Betrayer and
Oathbreaker" to the name, even in his private thoughts.) With
his death Albus had lost the greatest demonstration that his
approach had been the only correct way, that forgiveness could
trump hate. Instead, the Ministry and Wizarding society as a
whole now returned violence with violence, evil with evil,
depriving those who had foolishly embraced the Dark of the chance
to repent and turn back to the Light. Instead the massacre of
Tom and his followers had become a *model* for the Ministry's
future dealings with those who would overthrow it.

It didn't matter that Britain had enjoyed nearly twenty years of
unheard-of peace and prosperity because of it, that the economy
and population were both booming, and that two would-be Dark
Lords (poor, deluded Draco, Albus briefly mourned) and their
followers had been cut down almost as soon as they'd risen. The
stain on the nation's very soul would prove even more corrupting
than Voldemort's influence ever had. Albus *knew* it was only a
matter of time.

He just hoped he would live to see the day that it happened, when
Wizarding Britain would come crawling back to him to save them.
It was that hope, not some "curse of life" those gods had claimed
to have laid upon him, that had kept him going all these years.

In the meantime, the darkness had grown endemic. The resurrected
Myrtle Warren (he refused to acknowledge the hyphenated
"-Sangnoir" she preferred) had finally, after a half-century
hiatus, graduated with honors and gone on to become the first
certified Ministry necromancer in nearly a century, undoing all
Albus' efforts to bury that irretrievably Dark magic once and for
all. And Pansy Parkinson -- Harper, he corrected himself -- now
headed a cult of Darkness. Oh, they didn't call it that, but
there were hundreds of wizards and witches who had been deceived
by her claim that Darkness itself was Neutral and sought to
balance the evil done in its name, while extolling the concept of
"good" Darkness with talk of warm summer nights, the womb and
other nonsense.

Pansy had grown *dangerously* clever, he noted, and not for the
first time. Considering her sweet, endearing dimness as a child,
Albus suspected she had been possessed by some dark entity during
her fifth year, possibly even at Douglas' behest, and what had
posed as her since then was actually some manner of supernatural
evil in disguise. He shook his head. If only she had accepted
her proper destiny as Draco's loving wife -- both of them might
have been saved.

And he still had no idea what Hannah Abbott had become, except
terrifying and profoundly *dangerous*.

Fortunately not every student had been corrupted by Douglas'
influence. Percy Weasley had become an invaluable ally over the
years, replacing his father as Albus' loyal man in the Ministry.
Percy was in total agreement with him that the abominations were
a threat to traditional Wizarding culture, and had dutifully
proposed law after law restricting them and the magics that they
practiced. Sadly, none had ever made it past committee; like
Albus himself, young Percy had found himself in the minority as
the new generation swept into power.

Albus took another sip of his firewhiskey. A shame, that. A
good, pliable boy, Percy had been one of Albus' choices for a
future Minister, too, but like his father before him he'd been
sidelined into a dead-end post in the Ministry because of his
politics. Such a pity he'd never reconciled with his family,
either.

Lavender Brown, her retinue and her guests had now left the
Cauldron's tap room, but in their wake a wisp of conversation
drifted back behind them, with a single recognizable word:
"firstborn". Albus scowled. Yet another perversion of the
proper order of things. The Muggleborn were supposed to keenly
desire assimilation into the greater Wizarding population, not
rejoice in their origins. That was the prime reason he'd seen to
it that no Hogwarts student had been truly punished for using the
term "mudblood" -- the sooner a Muggleborn or half-blood child
learned that their origins did them no favors, the sooner they
would become truly Wizarding. It was only logical, and had
worked so well with so many. Of course, some -- like Dolores
Umbridge -- went a bit too far, but that was the risk one took
when working to sculpt an entire society. It was another
pollution of Wizarding culture that Albus was sure he could lay
at Douglas' feet.

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