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| 2016-09-23: Crash Landing |
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Posted by: Bob Schroeck - 06-01-2025, 07:15 PM - Forum: Stories
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Crash Landing
by Brent Laabs
Antelope Valley, California, USA
September 23, 2016
Ursula abruptly dropped out of the leyline, and found herself flying above a desert landscape of scrub grasses and succulents, against a backdrop of dark brown mountains. The sky was bright and clear, except for the criss-cross of a few contrails, and the wind warm but tolerable. It was hardly the first time she had been forced out of the leyline, but they tended to open into lush spaces, not deserts.
She was also slowly losing altitude. She had been riding side-broom with Professor Azari[1] , who was kind enough to accompany her on her visit, since she had been exposed to the Wagandea poison. But their brooms became detached, somehow, and she was alone, still unable to keep herself aloft. She took a deep breath, and concentrated on the most important steps of flight: levitate, navigate, communicate. She looked for a place to land.
Ahead of her, she heard a woman calling out, "Hey! Over here!" It was the woman she was on the way to visit, standing in a barren patch of ground, easy to spot in a bright orange suit. That explained everything, didn't it. She waved back, then wrestled her broom to port in order to meet her friend on the ground, her scarlet hair fluttering on the wind behind her witch hat.
"It's so good to see you, Chariot," the woman on the ground called out.
"It's good to see you, too." The witch came in for a fast landing, and at the last second jumped off her broom into a roll on the sandy ground, strewn with small rocks. It was only a good landing.[2] She stood up and dusted herself off, patting down her robes. She only found a few tender spots on her body, but she supposed more soreness would come out later.
The other woman came over and wiped a smudge of dust off her cheek. "Still can't fly?"
"What do you think?" After all, whose fault had that been?
"Sorry, I haven't made as much progress on that as I had hoped."
Chariot turned to more important matters, "So, where are we?"
"Haven't a clue."
"Don't play dumb. Where have you taken us?" she demanded, looking over her old acquaintance. She was back to wearing glasses, square-rimmed ones. With her pale complexion and lavender hair, orange was a really unflattering color on her. But then, Croix Meridies deserved that suit, didn't she?
"I didn't take us anywhere. Certainly not to this miserable wasteland."
"Oh, come on!"
"Babe, I love ya, but if I was planning a jailbreak I wouldn't have brought a narc like you along."
"I am not a narc!"
"I didn't grass on you about the Dream Fuel Spirit. But harmless little Professor Ursula said, 'Oh yes, Your Honor, she incited all of the mobs."
"Croix, you almost started World War Three! What was I supposed to do, lie when the whole world already knew the truth?"
"You could have stood up for a mate."
"Do you even want me as a mate?"
Of all of the comments, this was the first time she was taken aback, and true concern showed on her face. "Of course I do. Of course I want your friendship, Chariot." She saw her friend glaring at her, and sighed. "I admit I made things too personal, when I thought you had given up on our dream, that you were fighting against what we always wanted." Maybe she wanted to prove herself better than Chariot, too, but she didn't say that part aloud.
"Croix, I still wanted it." Her heart had not truly given up. "Just not... like that."
"Hey, every one of those people agreed to altered emotional states in the EULA."
That defense worked in court, but it didn't work with Chariot. "You're a sociopath, Croix."
"Maybe I am." How was she going to gain the power to revolutionize the world without moving fast and breaking things? Or so she had thought, until that simple girl took the final step when she could not. "Maybe I'm the villain you think I am. But I've never stopped thinking of you as a friend."
Chariot's tone softened, "Oh, Croix!" Not knowing whether to forgive, or stay angry, or reaffirm her friendship, she simply sighed in a mix of resignation and acceptance.
"Still, we need to find out where we are." Croix took a smartphone out from under her bra, and started typing into it, hacking onto the local phone network.
"Oh, that's easy, we're in California. See those weird trees over there? Joshua trees. We're in the Californian desert. Those mountains to the south must be the San Gabriels."
Still staring at her screen, Croix remarked, "Oh, looks like you're right!"
"I did three nights at the Hollywood Bowl." Chariot had seen a good deal of the world, on tour as a stage musician, and had come through this desert on the way out to Vegas. "Wait a sec, are you even supposed to have that phone in prison?"
"Narc." It wasn't as if the prison guards could keep it from her anyway — the smartphone was of Croix's own design, with both magical and digital circuits. It could stay hidden when it needed to be. And honestly, why should a mind like Croix's be disconnected from the world and from magical research? What a waste that would be, she thought.
Chariot took a wand from her pocket, and the tip glowed a dull green, pale compared to the blazing sun. "We have magic here. We must be close to a sorcery crystal, or a leyline."
Chariot looked back at her maps app, switching to satellite view. "We appear to be right on top of the San Andreas fault."
"That makes sense then. Any Leyline Stations near here?"
"Huh, what the? There are no Leyline Stations anywhere. Not a single one, according to these maps."
"Huh?"
"And I can't search anything either. But maps work..." Croix mumbled. She went to some tech websites, then searched there, found the name of some news websites...
"What are you doing?"
"Bootstrapping." And from the news coverage, found her way to some local search engines. "I have a hypothesis, but you're not going to like it. Too many things are just a little bit different. I think we're in a parallel universe."
"Like in the stories?"
"Yes, but of course, they've been theorized for quite some time in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, as a consequence of all wave function probabilities being simultaneously true."
"I'll take your word for it. But Croix, what did you do?"
"I didn't do it! I didn't do anything."
"You expect me to believe that you weren't working on a way to break out, and just happened to end up on another dimension?"
"Of course I had ways to break out. I just didn't use them, because—" Croix took a deep breath, "Because I deserved to be in prison."
"Oh Croix!" Chariot finally gave her oldest, her best friend, a hug.
Croix didn't expect the hug, but she welcomed it anyway. "No really, I do. One can't just—"
"Of course you deserve it, silly. I'm just proud that you can admit you're wrong, and actually mean it." It sure didn't feel like a complement to Croix, even though she knew Chariot intended it that way.
Chariot broke the embrace, and said, "It won't do to have you dressed as a prisoner in another universe, not when you're reformed and all." She took out her wand, and with a swirl of green light, dressed both of them in a white witch's outfit, her old stage outfit, with a gold star on the hat band and red and blue accents. The traditional black robes were starting to get awfully hot out here in the desert, anyway.
Croix commented on the outfits, "We're twinsies once again."
"You looked awful in orange, anyway."
"I look great in anything, Chariot."
"So, you really can't get us home?"
"Oh, I'm sure I can, I just have no idea how to do it yet. Let me leave behind a few sensors, in case this site is important." She tapped on her phone, until it made a few sharp buzzes to indicate error. "Of course, I don't have my extradimensional storage in this dimension," she muttered to herself. She did have access to plenty of ambient mana, and the phone projected an intricate spell circle with both Luna runes and electronic symbols, which she then channeled enough power through to manufacture eight of her pixel magical devices — black cubes with simple blue polygons etched on the surface, each about the size of a chicken egg. She sent one of them flying toward each of the four winds for a hundred meters or so, laid one right at her feet, and pocketed the rest of the cubes.
Chariot held up her broom. "Well, let's get out of the sun. You're driving."
"I guess I am," as she hopped on the broom in front of Chariot. "Tia Freyre," Croix recited. The broom climbed upward easily. "We haven't done this since we were kids."
"Nope. What do you think, better than your flying Roomba?"
"Only since you're here," she told her back-warmer. "I'm out of practice with these primitive things."
"We should have plenty of magic to fly if you follow the ley line. Head west towards Palmdale."
The San Andreas fault is one of those geologic features which is near-impossible to spot from the ground, but very easy to see from the air, so Croix had no problem following it.
In mid-flight, Chariot asked, "So what makes you so sure that this is a parallel universe?"
"Oh, just weird things online. I could load map tiles from the open source projects, and the internet in general is the same. But all of the search engines seem to have different names. You ever hear of Google?"
"Like in cricket?"
"Google is the biggest search engine here. Oh, and right, the Daily Mail is a tabloid in this timeline."
"What, really?"
"Yep, looks like it's all muckrakers and paparazzi."
"Incredible."
"How the mighty have fallen."
Chariot exclaimed, "Oh, of course! It's right in front of me!"
"What?"
"The Moon!" And sure enough, there it was, a half moon on its way down to the western horizon, nearly dead ahead among the bright blue sky.[3] "It's normal!"
"So it is." Croix admired it for a moment, the particular arrangement of craters and maria she had known in her youth. "Let's not screw it up this time, shall we?"
In all earnestness, Chariot said, "I won't. I promise."
They neared the south edge of the city, and the scent of grilled onions and beef was wafting through the air. Croix saw the golden arches and asked, "Want a hamburger?"
"Sure. That restaurant down there, In-N-Out, is supposed to be a favorite for Californians." Chariot pointed to a different drive-thru across the street.
"Okay, sure! Can you change our clothes into something a little less witchy? I don't think we should stand out here."
After a minute or so of looking at the people below them, she cast the spell, "Metamorphie weisstyss." Chariot's own clothes were changed to a blue rayon blouse with a knee-length skirt. For Croix, she selected a plain white T-shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. She had thought about putting a funny saying on the shirt, but decided against it. Things seemed pretty normal so far, but with things like other universes, who knows? But some things were the same in every universe: "Do you have any money?"
"We can just pay electronically, I put the transceiver chip on my phone."
"Do you have any accounts opened in this universe?" Typical Croix, always thought that technology was the solution to everything.
"Oh," she said. "I could just hack their payment terminals."
"Croix, you've been out of prison for how many minutes now?"
"Okay, we'll do it your way." It had actually only taken her three minutes in this universe to commit her first crime, hacking her way into the telephone network, but who's counting?
The pair flew a few blocks down Palmdale Boulevard to a bank, where Chariot exchanged what few pound and euro notes that she carried into American dollars. Croix wondered if this was legal either — but banks create money all of the time, so it's no big deal. If it were Bitcoin — well, Croix's wallet file was almost certainly worthless in this reality, as the blockchain would have completely diverged.[4]
They took the broom back towards the restaurant, landing behind a nearby building for a bit of privacy — the place itself was pretty busy. Both outside and inside, the In-N-Out building was done up in white with red stripes for accents; the real palm trees outside were replaced with a small palm tree motif indoors.
They were about four groups behind in the queue, when Croix, looking at her phone, stated, "Did you know this place has a secret menu?"
"It can hardly be a secret if you found it already."
It had been pretty obvious, so of course she replied, "Fear my leet skills!"
They placed their orders without difficulty, then sat down in a booth away from the window, enjoying the cool air of the building. Croix sat down and decided to google her own name, as one does. She found no results, meaning she probably didn't have a double in this dimension. It was too bad, because it would have solved some problems. She could have gone to her alternate to ask for help — and if she didn't get it, she could always kill her double and take her place. Talk about the perfect murder.
But that wasn't an option. Searching for "Ursula Charistes", on the other hand — that had quite a few hits. "Wait, how does this even make sense?"
"What?"
The kitchen was noisy enough they couldn't really be overheard, so Croix came out and said it. "You're the star of a couple Japanese anime short films, Professor Ursula. Apparently you and all of Luna Nova are fictional in this dimension." Croix set down her phone on the white plastic table, flipping it around for Chariot to see.
"Fictional? An anime? Why would the Japanese even care about a story like ours?" Chariot wondered. "Oh right, Akko."
"Yeah, Akko. I guess that girl has grown on me after all. She reminds me of certain cheerful, goofy, reckless underclassman, after all."
Chariot complained, "Thanks, I guess."
"No really, the Claíomh Solais chose you two, not me. You two have something that I'm missing."
Someone called out "Fifty-seven!" on the PA system, causing Croix to rise from the booth. "I'll get it." She shortly returned with a tray of burgers and fries, and the pair tucked in.
"Mmmm." Croix said with delight, "Oh man, I missed food like this!"
"Was the food that bad on the inside?"
"Yeah, the food was way too healthy in there." She reached down in the hamburger wrapper, and removed a slice of tomato. "These burgers have too many vegetables."
Chariot said, "That's what I like about them." But if Croix was happy, she would have been even happier with McDonald's. Croix always ate junk food, and only managed to stay thin because she was often so wrapped up in work that she would forget to eat. "You should really try to eat better."
"Oh, not this again. Wasn't this place your idea?" Croix took another bite of the double-double cheeseburger.
"I mean, in general. You know, forget it." It really wasn't the time to reopen old arguments.
Croix grabbed a handful of fries and absent-mindedly ate them while staring at her phone. It was so typical of Croix to just forget the person she was with while she worked on some problem. All the same, Chariot had never minded it too much, that cute look of intense focus, the mind behind the face going a hundred miles an hour.
A couple minutes later, Croix spoke up, "Oh my, it says they're going to make a full series about our story, expanding on the short films, to be released next year. Are you ready to be a celebrity again, Shiny Chariot?"
"I don't know..." Once, performing the magic shows had been exhilarating, but after everything she had done, could she possibly show her face on the stage again? And Croix, well, she had never been one for the spotlight as kids, but with as confident as she had become when she returned to Luna Nova, maybe her grown-up self could handle the attention better than Chariot.
But as soon as she thought about what Croix Meridies would be getting attention for, she warned, "Croix, I imagine that the cartoon—"
"Anime."
"— the anime is going to tell our story, our real story. The Grand Triskelion. What does that mean for us, for you, if they find out what you did?"
"If they believe it — if it's accurate — chissà?"
They sat their finishing their food in silence thought, with the din of the kitchen and the customers reverberating across the white and red tile walls of the burger joint. Eventually, the younger woman spoke.
"Maybe it's best if we adopt new names, for now," decided Professor Ursula Charistes, née Chariot du Nord, who performed under the stage name Shiny Chariot.
"What is it with you and taking on new identities?"
She ignored the question and moved on to practicalities. "We're in California, so English and Spanish names would be best. Yes, how about that one. Shall I be Artoria North from now on?"
"Okay, that was way too fast of a decision," Croix Meridies concluded.
"It was on my list from last time. Artoria is an old name, a female variant of Arthur, the Celtic bear. And of course, North."[5]
"So you're staying on theme then?"
Artoria declared, "We witches are who we are, even when we try to run away. The truth we might be running from may be small, but it's as big as the promise of a coming day. So, by what name shall we call you, Witch of the Southern Cross?"
"Zut alors, what a waste of time." She came back from her task in a foul mood."
"What happened?" another goddess asked.
"Nothing. There was nobody there. No people, no tracks, no trail, no flowers. I spent an hour scouring acres of just desert and rocks. I am not a desert rose!"
"I'm sorry, Peorth. That's where the dimensional incursion was mapped."
As if they didn't have enough to do, Peorth was now being sent out on wild goose chases. The Yggdrasil sysops really had to get it together. "Report the error to the Goddess Relief Agency, s'il vous plaît."
- BL: I gave a name to "Unnamed Teacher With Black Niqab", it means "flame"
- RK: "Any landing you can walk away from is a good one." —Gerald R. Massie, 1944
- BL: This sentence is brought to you by Stellarium, a free planetarium software.
- BL: Unfortunately, BTC can't even solve fictional problems for fictional characters, let alone be useful for real, everyday transactions.
- BL: This is technically true, the best kind of true. Brittonic arth (bear) and the Artoria gens may have merged with Arthur from later Latin writers — or merged earlier via Arcturus, a somewhat nearby star connected to the Dipper by the mnemonic "arc to Arcturus". The female variant of Arthur idea comes mostly from Fate stay/night, but it's a great choice since it works in Latin. Just a normal short fic where I'm dealing with words in Old Brittonic, Irish, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Persian, and Japanese. Why do I do this to myself?
RMS: Because like the rest of us you've convinced yourself it's fun?
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| 2016-09-14: Educational Experiences |
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Posted by: robkelk - 05-25-2025, 11:09 AM - Forum: Stories
- No Replies
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Educational Experiences
By current and past members of the KanriKyara Project
The Masaki residence, Coquitlam, BC, Canada
September 14, 2016, 8:55 am PT
"If you'll come to order, class..." Garnett announced with a grin.
Everyone else looked up from their desks. Washuu-chan had pulled her classroom furniture out of storage where it had been since the Masu incident, and provided a room for Garnett and the younger residents to handle the necessary chore they had scheduled for today and the remainder of the week... and then she decided to take part in the lessons, as a student.
"Hai, sensei!" Sasami chirped in reply.
Garnett smiled at Sasami's eagerness to begin. "Let's start by reviewing the course syllabus. We won't cover everything that's likely to be on the high school equivalency exam, just the subjects that aren't focused on in Japan. Which means Canadian history and geography, and conversational English."
"But we all speak English now," Tenchi pointed out.
"You might have the skill, but do you know all of the technical terms? For example, do you know the difference between a noun and a gerund?"
"What is a gerund?"
"We'll cover that during the lessons, Aeka-hime. What we're going to review for the rest of this week and next Monday is what you would need to know in order to pass the immigration exam."
"That much?"
Simply by hearing that comment, Garnett knew that Ryoko was going to be her problem student.
5:27 pm PT
Just as Garnett was finishing up grading the practice tests that she had given to the people who were displaced to Coquitlam, a piercing scream cut through the evening air.
Garnett dropped her pen and made it to the source of the scream – the laundry room – in under fifteen seconds. "What's wrong?"
Inside, she found Mihoshi, teary-eyed and blubbering. With her was Aeka, her face ashen and her gaze vacant as she held up what look like a pair of panties... if a pair of panties had been attacked by voracious moths. And noxious chlorine fumes wafted out of the space.
"Oh, dear," said Garnett.
"What happened?" asked a voice behind her. She turned around to find Ryoko looking worried.
"Somebody asked Mihoshi to handle the laundry."
"It was her turn. Why?"
"She washed all of our underwear. And with far too much bleach."
Ryoko's expression changed from worried to annoyed. "How bad is it?"
Garnett sighed deeply. "Let me put it this way: how many clean changes of underwear do any of us have left in our closets?"
"Not enough for regular use."
"That was a rhetorical question... Well, it looks like we're going shopping after dinner."
Coquitlam Centre
7:09 pm PT
"Why are we going to the shop where we buy food?"
"There's more than just T&T in this mall, Aeka-neesan," Sasami replied.
"Think of the Coquitlam Centre as a shopping arcade and you'll have the right idea," added Garnett as the ladies walked past the bank at the mall's eastern entrance and made their way into the mall itself.
"And why are we not going to an actual shopping arcade?"
"The mall is still open, princess," Ryoko pointed out. With a salacious grin, she added, "Unless you were planning on going commando tomorrow..."
"You have made your point," Aeka said primly and quickly. Then she turned to Garnett, and as they continued walking, Aeka said, "These do not appear to be shops."
"You're right," Garnett admitted. She saw no reason to upset somebody who she had been hired to help. "The businesses in this corridor are all service providers. You'll see some shops once we're at the end of this row."
A few minutes later, they reached the end of the hallway and turned to the right. "We aren't going to that larger store?" Aeka gestured to the Sears that was now behind them.
Garnett shook her head. "You and Ryoko could probably find something that fit you there, but Sasami and Washuu-chan could only get what they call 'training bras' at Sears, and they wouldn't look good on them. And Mihoshi and I would have trouble finding anything that we could squeeze into."
"It is hard to find pretty clothes that fit women like us, isn't it?" Mihoshi commented innocently, causing both Ryoko and Aeka to glare at her. "And you're even bigger than I am." The glares shifted target from Mihoshi to Garnett.
"I don't know about that," Garnett said quickly, "but I do know that I'm wearing underwear that fits me properly. And here we are!" She stopped in front of a store that was simply named "Change".
"Oh, those are so pretty!" Sasami said while looking at the store's display.
"And it looks like they come in my size, too," added Washuu.
"Both your sizes," Garnett confirmed, trusting that anyone who overheard the comment would think she was referring to the two young-looking girls in the group instead of to Washuu's two forms. "I don't know anybody who needs an M cup, but they sell those here, too."
"An M cup?" Ryoko was amazed. "Is that really how big you humans grow?"
Garnett laughed quietly. "That's the far end of the size curve," she pointed out, "and most women who need that size have had cosmetic surgery."
The Juraians and other aliens looked at her in amazement. "Why?"
"Don't ask me," Garnett replied, not wanting to be glared at again by people who might be insecure about their self-images. That was another reason why she had brought her housemates to Change; the staff encouraged their customers to wear underclothes that both fit and made them look good, no matter what their body shapes were. "Let's just go in, get measured, and re-stock our underwear drawers."
The Masaki residence
September 15, 2016, 9:13 am PT
"Sorry I'm late," Washuu said as she hurriedly walked into the classroom. "I had to make some IDs for a group of displaced people in Ottawa."
"I thought that the girls from Academy City already had IDs."
Washuu nodded as she sat down. "You're right, Aeka-dono. But this set was for a new group of people from another reality altogether, who just moved into the Ottawa residence."
"We don't have room for anyone else here," Tenchi said quickly, not wanting to throw the harmony of the house out of balance.
Sasami gigged. "They aren't moving in here, Tenchi-niisan!" Then she turned back to Washuu. "Who are they?"
"Well, I could tell you before they're ready to be known to the rest of us," Washuu replied, "but then I'd be punished in the name of the Moon."
Sasami squeed in happiness. "I want to meet them!"
"Later," Garnett insisted. "After you've written the entrance exam, and after they're ready to meet other people who have been displaced here."
"Haiiiii..."
"So, what did I miss?" Washuu asked while sitting at her school desk.
"Iwasaki-sensei was telling us about the 1931 Statute of Westminster. There's something that I'm puzzled about, though. You asked the British Parliament for control of your own laws, except for your constitution?"
Garnett smiled at Tenchi referring to her by her family name; that put a bit of much-needed social distance between them. She nodded as she replied, "We couldn't agree on how to amend the constitution back in 1931. It took another fifty years before we came up with a system that both the federal and provincial governments could live with."
"A half-century?" Tenchi was very surprised. "Now I see why MacArthur insisted on writing the Sengo-Kenpō for Japan."
"That wasn't the only reason he wrote Japan's constitution, but it is one of them."
September 17, 2016, 8:03 am PT
"Tenchi!"
"Yes, grandpa?"
"Do you have classes today?"
The younger Masaki shook his head. "Iwasaki-san says they don't hold classes on Saturdays in Canada."
"Good." Katsuhito stood up... and abruptly threw a magazine at his grandson, who caught it easily. "You've been neglecting your physical training while you've been studying. It's time to correct that state of affairs."
Tenchi looked at the article that the magazine was opened to. "It looks interesting," he said after a moment, "but this says there are two sets of stairs so it isn't an uninterrupted climb, and the steps look to be gentler than the steps from the house to the shrine back home."
"You'll just have to jog up the stairs instead of walking, then. Go climb the Coquitlam Crunch. And climb it at least once a week while we're in this universe."
"Sure, grandpa," Tenchi replied, happy to get away from the women in his life for a couple of hours. "But where is it?"
"Have you forgotten how to read a map, grandson?"
"Oh, right. I'll go do that now."
False Creek, Vancouver, BC
September 18, 2016, 10:15 am PT
"I'll be honest with you," Garnett had told them. "I majored in business, not science. The only way I know to let you know what science we do and don't know is to show it to you."
So they spent an hour on the SkyTrain and went to Science World in downtown Vancouver.
"Yes, I know this wasn't the best choice if you're looking for a college-level introduction to science," Garnett admitted to Aeka while they watched as Sasami walked onto a stage at the museum. "But that isn't what we're here for. You already know most of this, and a lot more besides. What you need this week is an overview of what Earth doesn't know. Hang on, Sasami-chan finally has her hair loose and one hand on the Van de Graff generator."
Garnett got her cellphone out and started recording Sasami... just before the museum's staffer turned on the electricity and Sasami's ankle-length hair stood up on its own.
Aeka quickly moved her hand up to her mouth. It was only polite to hide her teeth, after all.
"That's the first time I've ever heard you giggle, Aeka-hime," Garnett said with a smile of her own, which she couldn't hide because she was too busy with the camera.
"We have the same kind of device back home," Aeka replied, "so I knew what to expect. Although of course we have a different name for them."
"It's an elementary application of electrostatic principles," Washuu added. "And Sasami looks like she's enjoying herself." Just then, they cut the power and Sasami's hair dropped back to behind her... and in front of her. Garnett was reminded of Cousin Itt from The Addams Family... but Sasami was cuter.
A moment later, Sasami was back with the rest of the group and Aeka was helping her put her hair ties back on. "That was fun! I wonder what I looked like, though."
"I got a video of you," Garnett told her. "Do you want to see it?"
"Sure!"
It took them a couple of hours to see all of the exhibits, at which it was just past lunch time. "Hey, have you ever had Cambodian food?"
"I don't think so," Sasami replied.
"I know that I haven't," Tenchi added.
Ryoko shrugged her shoulders. "Food is food. It's not like I care what it tastes like. Somebody forgot to give me taste buds."
"I didn't think you'd need them," Washuu admitted.
Garnett ignored the byplay that had become a recurring part of her life. "There's a Cambodian restaurant a couple of blocks away, and they make the best chicken wings in town. Want to see whether the lineup at Phnom Penh is around the block?"
"I suppose we could do that," Tenchi replied, at which point everyone else stifled their objections.
So they did, and the lineup was only a few dozen people long.
After they finally got a table, the Masakis agreed that the chicken wings were good, but so was the Thit Bo, one of the Vietnamese dishes on the menu.
"I see why this place had a lineup," Tenchi said. "Is this going to be on the test?"
"Probably not," Garnett replied as she reached for another chicken wing. "I just wanted to give Sasami a break from needing to cook a big meal today."
"Thank you, Garnett-neesan!"
The Masaki residence
September 20, 2016, 9:30 am PT
And then it was time for the newcomers to write their tests, either for their Adult Graduation Diplomas or their high-school placements.
All Garnett could do was wait... and hope she'd done a good job on her first big project.
September 22, 2016 3:49 pm PT
As everybody expected, Aeka, Sasami, and Tenchi were admitted into good schools and everyone else passed the Adult Graduation high school equivalency examination with flying colours.
As Garnett passed out the documents that had been couriered to her at lunchtime, she noticed one entry on Washuu's certificate. "You went with the Christmas Cake joke?"
"Why not? Don't I look the part?" Washuu grinned as everybody else sighed or rolled their eyes.
Garnett's reply was a simple, "Tenchi, here's yours."
"Thanks. Does this mean I'm an adult now?"
Garnett shook her head. "Sorry, but you don't legally become an adult until you're 19. Or 18 if you move east. Until then, Nobuyuki-san still has the final say over your life."
Ryoko teleported over to Tenchi and smiled seductively as she caressed his cheek. "You should have said you were 20, Tenchi. Then the two of us could have been adults together."
"Tenchi-dono would never lie about something like that," Aeka rebutted as she pulled Ryoko away from Tenchi. "Besides, I'm sure that he would be much happier if he wasn't dating an older woman."
"Three years isn't that much older! Not like some people..." With that, Ryoko glared at Garnett.
"You are certainly correct there." Aeka joined Ryoko in her glare.
Sasami stood on tiptoe and whispered to Garnett, "Haven't you told them yet that you aren't interested in Tenchi-niisan that way?"
"Twice to each of them and once to both of them, in addition to the times that you've heard," the redhead whispered back with a bemused grin. "I don't think they're listening."
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Posted by: robkelk - 05-18-2025, 01:52 PM - Forum: My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character
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A thread devoted to talking about telling the story, instead of to telling the story.
Deconstructions can be time-consuming to write. I just spent a half-hour researching the real-world answer to a question I had about a story element that's so inconsequential that it'll probably go unnoticed by the readers... unless, of course, we got it wrong.
The answer, by the way, is "Yes".
(Okay, okay... "Yes, five hours of "BD Pure Audio" lossless-format 7.1 channel audio will fit on a single Blu-ray audio disc or a single 50 GB SSD, so we can do a studio-quality master of the entire concert." At this point, I'm not going to say which concert, because there are at least three points in the devfiles where we might want to do this.)
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| 2016-11-22: A Little Lovebird Told Me |
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Posted by: robkelk - 05-18-2025, 12:43 PM - Forum: Stories
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A Little Lovebird Told Me
by Rob Kelk, based on ideas by current and past members of the KanriKyara Project
Welcome to the Displacees.yggdrasil message boards
Forum: Specifically General
Subforum: Juicy Gossip
Subject: They're in love!
Ruiko Saten (ruiko.saten@blossom) ![[Image: 12px-Gray_Light_Icon.svg.png]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b9/Gray_Light_Icon.svg/12px-Gray_Light_Icon.svg.png)
2016-11-22 11:55 PM UTC
OMG! They finally told everybody! Rob-ojisan and Mii-san and Ami-san are in love! With each other! I've known for weeks but couldn't say anything, but now I can!
Ruiko Saten
Just a normal girl
Ruiko Saten (ruiko.saten@blossom)
2016-11-22 11:56 PM UTC
Oh, drat - they just told me to keep it secret from everybody else. I can't figure out how to delete a post here...  Don't let anybody off the board know, okay?
Ruiko Saten
Just a normal girl
Skuld (skuld@yggdrasil) (Moderator)
2016-11-23, 12:04 AM UTC
>I can't figure out how to delete a post here...
You can't. And I won't, because Donaldson-san is already receiving person-to-person text replies to it.
Consider this to be a learning experience. Rumo(u)rs spread faster than you expect, especially in this world's Internet.
Skuld Ravenhair
Norn of the Future
Leader of the Valkyries
Sysop and moderator
Sasami Masaki (sasami.masaki@masakihome)
2016-11-23, 12:08 AM UTC
> OMG! They finally told everybody! Rob-ojisan and Mii-san and Ami-san are in love! With each other! I've known for weeks but couldn't say anything, but now I can!
Oh my gosh! I'm so happy for them!
... Oh... but the laws here in Canada though...
Rob Donaldson (rob.donaldson@blossom)
2016-11-23, 12:11 AM UTC
Which is why we weren't going to say anything. Mii and Ami are still in university; they can't afford any "scandal". (Me? I've finished my first career, and almost everybody involved in my new career has access to this forum anyway. I'll be fine.)
We haven't made any formal promises to each other in front of a priest or a judge, but that doesn't matter. They already know that I fully intend to stand by them for better or for worse. If people outside our circle want to try making legal trouble for my loves, they'll need to go through me.
Rob Donaldson
"Dont let anyone think for you; most people can barely think for themselves."
- Rare Earth, "The Giants You Can't See from the Ground"
Epsilon (epsilon@antigonish)
2016-11-23 12:15 AM UTC
> Rob-ojisan and Mii-san and Ami-san are in love! With each other!
I wrote three different replies to this offline, but I decided against posting any of them.
Rob, since when were you an iconoclast? You're not acting like yourself.
Rob Donaldson (rob.donaldson@blossom)
2016-11-23 12:15 AM UTC
Normally, I'm not. But this just feels right, for some reason.
Rob Donaldson
"Dont let anyone think for you; most people can barely think for themselves."
- Rare Earth, "The Giants You Can't See from the Ground"
Epsilon (epsilon@antigonish)
2016-11-23 12:15 AM UTC
> Normally, I'm not. But this just feels right, for some reason.
As long as you're happy. You are happy about this, right?
Sakura Matou (sakura.matou@appartements-mont-royal-sud)
2016-11-23 12:16 AM UTC
Sorry to interrupt, but the pizza place directly across the road from us is on fire.
Rob Donaldson (rob.donaldson@blossom)
2016-11-23 12:16 AM UTC
Don't apologize; that takes priority. We'll send you some help.
Rob Donaldson
"Dont let anyone think for you; most people can barely think for themselves."
- Rare Earth, "The Giants You Can't See from the Ground"
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