Bunnies XIII: The Bad Hutch

[classicdrogn]

Actually, there's probably been more than a dozen bunny threads already, but I can't be arsed to make an accurate count and the title was funny. What makes it worse is the all I have to start off with is another title, for The Beach Episode:

Laditude & Lassitude (possibly without the mispelling, to make the pun a little less of a hammer to the face)

(throws some aphrodesiacs to the bunnies so as to not be starting a new thread on such a dud)

Okay, here's a bouncy little pup! In Ep1, Nanoha imagines her barrier jacket as a typical mahou shojou affair, because 'that's what's normal for these situations' but what if her thoughts went down a slightly different path, say, Magiranger or Ultraman? Yuuno: (sweatdrops) "Can a Barrier jacket even BE that large?" How will Fate fare against a Giant of Pink Light? I'm not classing this as a real crossover because it would be the influence of fiction in her own world, not combining casts or technologies or whatever. Like the various people who build various clunky, slow moving, but by Tesla they're walker machines mecha in their garage IRL.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Necratoid]

Think that one would make more sense as a Kamen Rider crossover... the Ultraman mode is something that she has but can think of no real way practice with.  So it eventually comes up despite her avoiding using that mode like the plague... you know because once you show you have it evil empires show up just to spam kaiju at you endlessly.  I'm pretty sure the end of the reinforce/knights arc would give her a real chance to explain.  After she takes the end boss out melee.  That and that gives her enough time to get enough MP together to actually use that mode for a minute or so.
---
Lets start off with Rosario X Vampire.  The plot doesn't change much beside Moka actually had a good experience at her old school..... they excepted her and her constant rambling on about being a vampire... and how awesome that is.  The change comes when her sister meets her at lunch in disarray... she is incoherent, but they can make something out about her homeroom being composed of some species of demon she keeps referring to as Class F.  She also keeps name dropping some kind of demon lord or something named Shoko Kirishima.
The basic plot is that Shoko Kirishima freaked out the high schools and was shuffled off to Youki Academy to keep her away from them... seeing an opening the directed Class F away from the human world as well.  I really think these two series would rather mesh well... and the raw brains vs. raw brawn theme would invert at YA.  Actually the biggest odd bit is that this makes the crazed rank and file males of class F be going into an environment where they are strangely datable.

[drakensis]

The 37th Colonial Fleet has run into the Protodevlin but Nekki Basara is not present to confront them with the power of rock. Fortunately, there is one rocker who can step up and take up the challenge: Oji Tanaka. With the help of Mylene Jenius he sets out to get his band back together.

Macross 7: All's Right In Black Heaven
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[classicdrogn]

Another horrible, horrible pun, to be used when Protagonist has been knocked into the air and turns it into an opportunity for Death From Above:

"It's the Law of the Juggle, What goes up must come back, clown!"

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[classicdrogn]

As many will remember, I occasionaly have rather strange dreams, and share them to spread the bwah, well, here's another.

It was like one of those touchscreen wall things I've seen in tech news reports, tuned to an animal documentary at first - a fox and kit climbing a rocky slope and then navigating an oddly eroded cliff face, where the rock formed shelves that they carefully hopped down one at a timme, only occasionally by way of a break, more often over the open face. The mama would hop down, then make that odd coughing sort of bark they make to call the kit, and it would cling to the edge with its claws and swing around and down... and slowly I realised that t was as if gravity was reveresed on the underside of the shelves, like the Goblin King's staircase room in The Labrynth, and a voice - mine? - said, "That's why we're looking here - this world had a major reality breach, so it's easy to use as a crossroads."

Then I was touching the view and sliding parts around, across to a silvery metal spike that pierced through it, then down, down, down to the origin of the spike, a baroque-looking city where a uniformed man had fired it from a gun-like armature attached to a larger metal device, looking like a painting except for the incongruously real red-armored soldiers standing nearby - as one of them turned to look at me I hurriedly shifted the viewpint again, away to the side and down down down even more, until a glimpse of something octopuslike that immediately pressed against the view as if it were an aquarium side sent me hurriedly up and off in another direction, watching alarmed as trails of ink curled back the way I'd come - was that a flash of red out of the corner of my eye that diverted their attention?

At ome point I came back to territory I regnised as being the ledges near where I'd seen the fox, and scanned about until I found the silver spike again, this time following it up, up to a diamond spear-tip that burst out of the ground near a vaguely Victorian looking manor-house, one over run with the red armored soldiers. Most of them were painted, this time, though one was lifelike and searching an empty attic dormer room. I touched the surface in a different way, and the veiw swung about to kep furnishings between him and the plane of it, then slipped out the open door and away, away, across the landscape and a sttretch of water and among other houses, and then I pushed too hard and fell through the image, and I thought I had awakened.

It was at that stage of darkness where the last light of day fades by the minute, and while I could hear a fan running and the radio playing none of the lights would work, and the flashlight I found by touch would only work when I wasn't paying attention, as soon as I noticed it had started throwing light I seemed to fumble the switch and it would wink out. Of course, when I actually noticed doing it I started playing with the switch, eventually getting a fairly bright light to reliably shine, if you disregarded the shaodw of the bulb's filament making a squiggle in the middle. Yes, yes, I know, just ignore that for a moment. Anyway, I wandered around, just checking the things for a moment - yes, the fan was spinning, no, the lights in the other room didn't work either; I knew they went of the same breaker and not one, not two, but four spiral flourescents all failinig at once was really odd, was this some freaky world that looked like mine but electricity didn't stimulate phosphorescence or something?

As I thought this, I moved without willing it again, heading outside and wandering around, playing with spinning my light around and finding more interersting shapes to make the squiggle of shadow form shapes, until eventually dawn came as I sat on a back step - at some point, the place had turned into a larger a better maintained version of the house I was familiar with, and instead of a fence and another property fifteen feet from the wall it was in the center of a large set of grounds, with fall colors on the trees instead of the middle of a snowless winter.

The rest has gotten vague as I write - I realised I was early-teens-shaped instead of my pudgy thirtysomething, a man who I didn't recgnise and was clearly exasperated came around one corner, spotted me, and let me in, talkign about someone who was worried becazuse I hadn't been around all night, and I discovered that looking back at my still-burning flashlight in the mirror it showed strange interpenetrating geometric shapes rather than a shining bulb, while looking at the lens directly just showed a diffraction grid molded on the interior like an automobile reflector in white. Mentioning the geometrics cut off the man's grumbling - I forgot to mention, he was dresed vaguely movie-Potterverse-wizardly with black trousers trousers and a long jacket and a wide brimmed pointy hat in dark grey - and drew his attention, he had me look at the mirror for a bit and twiddle the flashlight and say what shaoes it formed. Eventually, I laughed and asked if he thought it had somehow become a magic wand, waving it around and making pew-pew laser noises... and the bright spot it cast in even in a well lit room turned into a tiny white point like a laseer desgniator, and when I pointed it at him larger if fainter spots appeared over his center mass, heart, and head. larmed, he drew a rather more traditional sort of wand, but hesitated with it at the ready as nothing more happened.

Even so, this surprise and the dog deciding to wake up and walk across my legs to get off the bed was actually wake me up, and decide to record the dream as a potential story starter, like I did with the one that became Tatsu no Kanshin. So, here it is. Probably wouldn't work very well as a Potterfic per se without a bit of stretching - maybe inserting as someone who's a freind of a weathy pureblood or halfblood, but an original setting seems like it would be better - it would let you skip over the baggage of the Potterverse that's either focused around Harry or just poorly thought out, and mages living openly as just another demographic group in whatever measure is more interesting, and more plausible, than the secret society thing in any case.

Dealing with the invaders in red power armor, and the eldritch things that may have been set upon them is another important question, and impetus for the viewpoint character to get himself up to scratch with the local magic system, and find out the meaning of the various shapes the magicked flashlight presented, and why they were so interesting to the other dude... anyway, here's the bunny. Hop free little bunny! If you look cute enough maybe someone will adopt - OHMYGODTHEFANGSGETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF!!

- CD, Cause of death: Lepus Horribilis inflicted wounds. Why don't these people ever learn?
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[ECSNorway]

Actually, there's probably been more than a dozen bunny threads already, but I can't be arsed to make an accurate count and the title was funny. What makes it worse is the all I have to start off with is another title, for The Beach Episode:

Laditude & Lassitude (possibly without the mispelling, to make the pun a little less of a hammer to the face)

(throws some aphrodesiacs to the bunnies so as to not be starting a new thread on such a dud)

Okay, here's a bouncy little pup! In Ep1, Nanoha imagines her barrier jacket as a typical mahou shojou affair, because 'that's what's normal for these situations' but what if her thoughts went down a slightly different path, say, Magiranger or Ultraman? Yuuno: (sweatdrops) "Can a Barrier jacket even BE that large?" How will Fate fare against a Giant of Pink Light? I'm not classing this as a real crossover because it would be the influence of fiction in her own world, not combining casts or technologies or whatever. Like the various people who build various clunky, slow moving, but by Tesla they're walker machines mecha in their garage IRL.

- CD

Random thought along similar lines... what if she were, say, a Sakura Taisen otaku? Now there, you get some uniforms worth drooling over....
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[robkelk]

* robkelk gets out shop-vac, takes a decade of dust off this thread

Has it really been that long? Anyway... Ripped from the headlines and made kid-friendly:


Girls und Panzer: Pravda authorizes using tournament ammo while training in Jatkosota's practice field. Of course Jatkosota fights back against having their territory torn up without their permission. Everybody else gets upset - Saunders expresses regret and refuses to take part in a "friendly" with Pravda, St. Gloriana kicks them out of the afternoon tea club, Kuromorimine issues a press release but isn't about to upset the only team that they feel is worthy of their attentions, Anzio and Chi-Ha-Tan would like to be able to help but aren't in any position to intervene, and so on.

[Matrix Dragon]

The 37th Colonial Fleet has run into the Protodevlin but Nekki Basara is not present

Thus, the show is already much better all around

Actually, on a more coherent idea, Priss Asagiri as Mylenes mentor in the ways of rock.

[robkelk]

Ranma ½: For some ineffable reason, Azusa Shiratori thinks Happosai is "cute".

Write this one however you want - laughs, drama, crackfic-shipping... just don't show it to me.

[ckosacranoid]

Today we are gathered together for the wedding of Azusa and Happy in wedded bliss....

[ECSNorway]

The 37th Colonial Fleet has run into the Protodevlin but Nekki Basara is not present

Thus, the show is already much better all around

Actually, on a more coherent idea, Priss Asagiri as Mylenes mentor in the ways of rock.

Why is this not in "MUST BE"?

[classicdrogn]

edgelord-y teen/superantihero marketed toward them proclaims herself to be "Detharia;" super hates it when people pronounce that like a bowel disorder rather than a swan song

(Somewhere in the distance, Beavis and Butthead chant "DEATH-A-RHEA CHA CHA CHA! DEATH-A-RHEA CHA CHA CHA!" while headbanging and jamming on air guitars. Daria Morgendorffer looks conflicted over whom to be more dryly scornful of.)

[Tennie]

Here's some Lyrical Nanoha-related thoughts I had recently that I realized could make for some crackfic/deconstructive parody potential and thus decided to share it here to see what you think:

It's been heavily established that Nanohaverse magic works in a manner quite similar to computer programming, with spells functioning much like programs/algorithms for processing magic (much like computer programs process data).  We've even seen/heard computer lingo be used in the context of magical items (for example, Hayate outright says that she established administrative access to the Book of Darkness in an effort to bring it back into control).  It's even gone so far as to show that, much like real-world computer programs, some of these magical programs can be messed up in ways that can cause issues (for example, going back to the Book of Darkness, canon sources show that the corruption that turned the Tome of the Night Sky into the Book of Darkness was almost certainly due to some measure of tampering--though it's not definitively stated whether said tampering was accidental, deliberate, or some combination thereof.  Perhaps the particular details of that may have been lost to the sands of time in-universe?).

That led me to wonder: What if we took things to their logical conclusion and tried making more "direct" analogues with real-world computing?

Imagine, for example, that there's more than a few spells out there whose source code is open source (perhaps published in whatever equivalents of GitHub and the like exist on the "magical Internet", or what have you), which basically anyone with the ability to run the code could use (though I'd imagine that the more destructive spells, like the ones typically intended for combat, would naturally have to be closed-source for reasons that are hopefully obvious), and perhaps anyone could make modifications to and/or request changes to be made.  There could also be communities set up (similar to the likes of Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow) where people could ask for help in properly writing code for new spells.

In addition, IRL computer programming is known for being quite hard (even relatively simple-to-learn languages such as BASIC and Python have things about them that can trip up even veteran programmers, let alone novices).  It's often joked in programming circles that novices will be suspicious when their code does not compile of the first try, while veterans will be suspicious when their code does compile on the first try.  Even code that seems to run properly in most cases will sometimes struggle with certain "edge" cases, leading to rewrites, patches, and updates having to be put out to solve those issues.  And then you get those people who weren't properly trained in computer programming working in areas where good, clean code is a necessity, which can lead (and often has led) to some wild mishaps and shenanigans.  Just go and read a few entries in the programming humor site The Daily WTF to see some examples of what poor programming and general IT practices can do to someone.

Given this, it's not hard to imagine a universe wherein, for example, newly-developed spells don't exactly work as intended on the first try (leading to a lot of trial and error--the latter potentially including some really goofy results; preferably this work would be done outside of combat, as you wouldn't want to have your combat plans go to waste because you ended up, say, spraying your own self with soda instead of blasting your intended target with mana...).  Also, could you imagine what kinds of spells the equivalents of IRL script-kiddies might create?  I'd imagine that such things would be quite the sight to see!{1.}

{1.} This now makes me wonder if the Book of Darkness's corruption was caused by people screwing around with the Tome of the Night Sky's source code, inadvertently breaking some very important lines, and subsequently meeting a terrible end before they could fix the very issues that they'd caused...

So with that context laid out, I await seeing what your imaginations can create with it!

[robkelk]

So with that context laid out, I await seeing what your imaginations can create with it!

Hey, I'll take an opportunity to mention Isekai by Moonlight, found elsewhere in this very subforum.

Starting with chapter 3, where Our Heroes are sent to another dimension - the one that Midchilda is in:

During training the next day, Ami demonstrated all three of the spells that Rein had cast through her while they were in Unison... while hovering three metres above the ground and correcting Rein's German on the fly. Pun not intended.

As for the skills we learned in training, Ami became good at both her Senshi abilities and basic Midchildan healing magic. She was also the best of all of us at tactics, as befitting an International Master at chess. After I casually mentioned Naru-san's ability to create gemstone weapons on the fly, Rein and Ami modified Rein's Frigid Dagger spell to create a full-sized ice sword that Ami could use in combat, and Sakura and Ichiro taught Ami the basics of sword fighting. And Ami spent a lot of time with Meia simply enjoying the ecstasy of flight, in Unison or beside each other.

I remember that it was a few days after that discussion that Ami revealed – at her own sweet-sixteenth-birthday party – that she'd hacked her transformation by transforming instantly without her wand. I had no fears that she was going to end up being useless, this season or any other.

Apparently, Meia and Ami had spent a week and took the Senshi transformation sequence apart, treating the spell as a program and analyzing it subroutine by subroutine, and worked the inefficiencies out of it. Including the part that left the Senshi naked for a second during their transformation. The fix was so simple, once they'd figured out what the problem was, that it was easy to teach to Makoto.

Ryou was quite happy that his girlfriend wasn't flashing him every time she transformed. Makoto said that she wasn't happy that she wasn't flashing me, but I could tell that she was joking. I was happy that they could now transform while moving, and Ami was happy that she was able to modify somebody else's spell. Nobody else thought it was a big deal, but they were Midchildans who were used to magic, not Japanese who aren't.

Then she created a spell of her own, displaying the classic 「やっと来たよ。」 message on a magic screen that was floating in the air.

Her second try at a spell from scratch, a month later, was far more ambitious. She wrote a healing spell just to see whether she could. And I ended up becoming her guinea pig, because I had tripped over a tree root while flash moving during a practice.

"I don't know whether this is ready, Rob. I've never tested it."

"Go ahead and test it on me, Ami. I think my leg is broken!"

So she did, and my leg stopped hurting. However, I was very hungry after she finished; apparently, healing burns through a lot of calories.

"That's to be expected," she said when I mentioned it. "Magic doesn't give anything for free."

Later that evening, Hayate taught me "Mirage Hide". It's quite a versatile disguise spell, and I was able to learn it easily thanks to my skill with matrix mathematics transformations.

Makoto really didn't want to end up hitting herself in the face with her electro-quarterstaff.

But sometimes she did, so, by the end of the calendar year, Ami and Meia had developed a spell that was optimized to heal electrical damage.

Me? Beside the staff fighting, Ichiro continued training me in swordplay, and the two of us refined the Mirage Hide spell to make me look more and more like a legendary oni.

We continued our training, and Ami and Meia continued to create new spells. One that Ami was particularly proud of was "Hyperspatial Sphere Generate", a defensive spell that her manga counterpart used once when their Dark Kingdom attacked. Well, she was proud of it until Ginga told her that it was a re-creation from first principles of the standard-issue "Temporal Force Field" spell that hid magical effects from public view. I like and respect my dearer friend, but sometimes she needs to be reminded that she's human and thus fallible. Better she learns that now when she's unknowingly re-creating spells, than later when she's a doctor.

Yuuno-san taught us all the spell, and copied his notes to our laptops. Yes, all of them. The more copies we had of the spell, the less likely we were to lose it.

And, by that logic, we taught it to all of the Unison Devices, even though none of them could cast it. Ami was the only one of us who could.

I looked at the math in Yuuno-san's notes and sighed. I could barely follow it; there was no way that Makoto or Ryou could cast the spell without a lot of tutoring in university-level math.

Then chapter 4:

"No! The reaction can't be stopped! We're all going to die and no magic known to the Silver Millennium can stop it! Rubeus wins!"

Alas, those were Kooan's last words.

We invoked a stupid genre convention and drew on our knowledge of two schools of magic that were unknown to the Silver Millennium: Belkan and Midchildan. Mercury and Meia cast a spell that I'd only ever seen Yuuno-san and Shamal use in A's; I have no idea when they learned it. "Ultra-long-distance Transportation!" Unfortunately, I was too close to Kooan to avoid being caught in the transport tube – it looked like Ami took "at all costs" seriously. As I'd expect her to, after our training.

"But she's going to kill us, too!"

"No," Mercury stated with conviction. "She won't. Frierenfesseln!" And Berthier was held in the same ice-water restraint that Wendi had been, a couple of years ago. "Gefrierende Kugel!" That spell was new to me. The restraint around Berthier moved away from her body, letting her move, but closed into a complete sphere around her. "Shabon Spray Freezing!" And the sphere froze solid. "It is now your choice, Berthier. Use Dark Water to cut your way free and live, or do as you threatened and use Dark Water Full Power on yourself." Ami stood up and walked away, letting her transformation drop.

Then Makoto showed me that, much like Hayate's spells, Ami's streamlined transformation is more effective if you speak the aria. "Jupiter Star Power, Make-Up!"

It was still a near-instant transformation, but she ended it wearing her SuperS uniform – yellow star on her choker, a heart as her bow clasp, thinner shoulder pads, a larger bow at her back, and only one stripe on her collar – instead of her usual uniform.

The recording finished with Future Ami saying "... and don't think that you can't. I know you're only a Rank C mage, Rob, and Ichiro's Rank B, but in Unison you add up to a Rank B+ mage. Use the coordinates I just gave you; Hayate knows the spell."

"Is there any spell that Hayate doesn't know?" I muttered as I very quickly looked through her brainprint and found it. "B+ is the bare minimum rank for the spell. Shall we?"

«Ami thinks we can do it,» Ichiro replied. «Let's.»

"Just in case... Shario-chan, Naru-san, Ryou, if this doesn't work, Makoto gets everything I own."

"I understand. Good luck, both of you." Shario-chan went back to downloading data from the tiara as Ichiro followed Future Ami's instructions to the letter.

Then I took a deep breath, and Ichiro used my voice to cast the spell. "Transporter!"

And we were back in the fray.

And chapter 5:

As I finished writing a cover email apologizing for not contacting everyone sooner and letting them know that we'd successfully resolved what they would call the Dark Moon Incident, Ami opened a pinpoint Pandimensional Pathway and Shario-chan connected our wi-fi to Ginga's. Then it was a matter of a minute to upload our messages and download theirs... which was all that Ami had the stamina for.

We really needed to optimize that spell, so that the rest of us could take turns with the spellcasting. But that was a project for another day, and for Ami and Meia to do; all I could do there was advise the ladies.

"How long is it going to take us to get there?" I asked. "It takes us six minutes to get from the Earth to the Moon, which would indicate a two-day travel time to Mercury if it's the same average speed. But it took Ichiro and me almost five seconds to reach the Kármán line. Although Ichiro and I didn't accelerate by flying when we went to the Kármán line."

"I thought you were better at math than that, darling. Acceleration accumulates over time. This isn't rocket science."

Ami smiled. "Actually, Makoto, this is rocket science. Rob, I've fine-tuned the spell so that I can set the acceleration to whatever I want. I don't know what accelerating very fast would do to our bodies even in Life Support Mode, though, and I'm worried that Kasandara and Ryou can't handle the same acceleration that the rest of us can."

"Ah. Would two hours each way work?" I asked.

Ami thought for a moment, then nodded. "That's probably within Kasandara's tolerances. I hope."

And when we weren't training and Makoto and I weren't skating as the Emerald Pair, Meia, Ami, and I decoded Future Ami's notes – at least the ones we had access to – and came up with a spell that the notes assured us would put Pure Hearts, Dream Mirrors, and Star Seeds back into people's bodies. We also re-created the contraceptive spell that Dr. Shamal had cast on Ami and Makoto – it turned out to be a basic Midchildan medical spell that Hayate had picked up along the way, so Hayate-chan taught them the spell and the ladies improved it so that the recipient could switch it off early if she wanted to become pregnant. Needless to say, that upgrade went into the e-mailbag for our Midchildan friends.

And a teaser for the still-in-progress chapter 6:

"But then everyone will know Mercury is Ami," Moon pointed out.

I shook my head as Ichiro and Meia flew out of my pocket. "Not if a double takes her place."

Both devices said "Mirage Hide!" and suddenly looked like Oni and Mercury. "Let's go," Meia added with Ami's voice.

Venus grinned as everyone else stepped through the shield. "That's a very useful spell." Then she joined them.

[classicdrogn]

I really have to kick that back up the reading queue, it was good stuff in just the first chapter or two when I looked at it the first time

[robkelk]

Silly bunny...

An alternate universe where the USS Enterprise goes up against the Bajoran-Orion-Romulan-Gorn alliance.

Spoiler

Or "BORG" for short.

[classicdrogn]

The Power of Positive Thinking
---=- * -=---

SOPHIA HESS.

Sophia's eyes snapped open as she activated her power and sprang upright... or tried to. Instead she lurched just enough to drift through her blankets, and turned solid again before the weak effect gravity could exert on her Breaker form would leave her with them embedded in her back. Her limbs felt numb and refused to respond, and her thoughts moved just as slowly.

YOU ARE A DISGRACE. YOU REQUIRE ... CORRECTION.

Without being able to turn her head, she could only make out a vague human figure across the room, outlined by her closet door. She tried to tell herself the surge of emotion tingling through her body was rage at this fucker coming into her home and using some Master shit on her, not terror.

AS PREVIOUS MEASURES HAVE FAILED, YOU WILL INSTEAD RECEIVE ... INCENTIVE TO ACT AS A PROPER HERO, AND CORRESPONDING PENALTIES FOR POOR BEHAVIOUR.

Sophia tried to cuss at the fucker, but her mouth and voice were just as paralyzed. All that emerged was a faint mumble.

WHEN YOU INSPIRE HOPE, HAPPINESS, GRATITUDE, OR SIMILAR FEELINGS IN AN INNOCENT OR ALLY, ALL OF YOUR OWN ABILITIES WILL INCREASE FOR A TIME. SHOULD YOU INSTEAD CAUSE DESPAIR, MISERY, OR HATRED IN INNOCENTS OR ALLIES, YOU WILL FIND YOURSELF ... RESTRICTED.

What? That didn't even make sense, it sounded like she was free to terrorize the scum as much as she liked, and anyone who couldn't fucking suck it up wasn't worth helping in the first place. Baby Vista and the rest of the Wards were pains in her ass but she worked with them anyway, didn't she? Not that she wouldn't and didn't bounce any time she could, but she at least kept Piggy happy enough not to be chewing her ass more than once a week or so.

PUT YOUR MIND TO IT AND YOU MAY EVEN ENJOY THE RESULTS OF SHOWING A BETTER ATTITUDE.

Sophia struggled harder against the numbness binding her limbs; she was gonna punch that smug notherfucker right in the--

Her eyes snapped open, and Sophia sprang upright, phasing through the blankets wrapped around her to land in a ready crouch at the foot of her bed. The outfit she'd picked out for the next day hung where she'd left them from the hook on her closet door, complete with the beret Emma had insisted was both badass and cute when she'd dragged Sophia along on a Boardwalk "bargain hunt."

"What the fuck brought that on?" she muttered to herself. For a moment she considered calling it in anyway, but to hell with dealing with M/S bullshit over a stupid, fucked up dream. Stepping around her bed with a measured pace, she walked over and picked the beret up off the hook, then draped the clothes over the back of the chair at her desk before tossing it in the seat and going back to bed. She had school in the morning, there was no time to waste sitting up and whining about stupid dreams.

The still annoyingly clear memory flashed back to the front of her mind when she almost seemed to skip along at a jog from normal walking steps after Emma's face lit up at the sight of her when they met that morning, nowhere near as light as when she used her power but definitely too much to be imagining it, let alone the stressed creak when she grabbed the dooir handle. Winslow was a shithole, but they did at least keep the latches on the main doors in functional condition, even if the locks relied more on no one wanting to be there if they didn't have to be.

When that lightness vanished as she made eye contact to cow that spineless suck-up Madison, doubts began to niggle. With the wieght in her steps and worst track time ever after giving Hebert a shove back onto the bench in the locker room before phys ed, she was left with seething frustration over the fact that yes, she probably was going to have to put up with a bunch of M/S bullshit over something that should have just been a shitty dream. She had no leads of who might be fucking with her if it was real, and it was starting to look too fucking real when that feeling of weakness weighing her down that had started fading from earlier suddenly doubled as she helped Emma corner Hebert at lunch, despite not giving her more than a glare and a scoff.

It couldn't be Hebert herself, right? The voice had been nothing like her, and that spineless nobody could never have the strength to have gained powers. She tested it by tripping Veder in last period, when Emma had confirmed Hebert was in class with her on the other side of the school with a quick text. There was no way Hebert could somehow be watching to apply some shitty "penalties" and yet she could barely stay stable on her feet and her arms trembled from just shrugging on her book bag afterward.

This fucking sucked.

---=- * -=---

Not a new idea, probably not something that would make a major change in the overall outcome of Worm as long as it's already after Taylor's trigger, but bestowing the power of positive thinking on Sophia amuses me just for how much she'd loathe having to play nice (by her standards) just to keep from being under a crippling debuff, and how even slightly leaning into it and accepting the prosthetic moral compass could let her turn into a top-tier Brute on top of her existing powers just by stacking the buff from being a good teammate and building positive rep with the public.

And it couldn't happen to a more deserving little bitch of a "hero" either

[DHBirr]

Not science fiction or (exactly) fantasy, but I had fun outlining it ... especially coming up with variant ways to express "brainless beauty":

Consider a parody of Ruritanian romance.  I call it,  I Am Your Evil Cousin.  The “heroine” is a brainless beauty, and her valorous sweetheart a masculine equivalent.  She has so thoroughly spoiled her pre-adolescent brother, legitimate heir to a virtually-independent principality, in his every selfish whim throughout his life (as did their parents before an accident at sea killed them), that he’s become the story’s closest thing to a true villain.  The boy actually doesn’t mean badly most of the time, but he’s been made wholly unable to recognize the ill effects of his poor choices.  And they’re invariably poor choices.

The title character, smarter than this trio of imbeciles put together (not a difficult feat), realizes that if they take power, their land will swiftly collapse in poverty and be divided up by powerful, greedy neighbors (realms in the style of 1848-ish Continental Europe).  He therefore schemes to make his lovely-but-unutterably-stupid cousin think he’s plotting her brother’s murder.  If he can goad her and her musclebrained gallant into fleeing with the child across a border into one of those neighboring nations, they will have forfeited the boy’s claim to rule. 

In addition to saving the land from a regime of foolishness, “usurping” the throne this way will allow the “villain” to wed the woman he loves.  Of intelligence matching his, and good looks more lively than the insipid ingenue’s, she isn’t of the nobility at all; thus the haughty little boy, to say nothing of the two dullards who’d be his regents, would forbid any such mésalliance.  Hypocritical to a fault, they’d have no objection to Our Villain maintaining his lady-love as a “kept woman” (a position she currently pretends to hold, though she makes a decent living on her own in a respectable line of work … the specific nature of which I haven’t selected.  An apothecary, mayhap … useful for drugging or pretending to poison someone).  Even a morganatic marriage, however, would be beyond the pale.  The “lower orders,” these spoiled aristocrats feel, are useful and deserve oh-so-very condescending goodwill so long as they remain obedient and loyal to “their betters,” but must never be allowed pretensions of equality in the sight of God, much less before the law. 

Incidentally, the thickheaded beauty (the female one, that is) has developed the delusion that her “scoundrel” cousin ardently desires to wed her, not simply to strengthen his claim to the crown, but driven by “the one true love he may ever have felt,” as she puts it.  Even while she’s desperate to escape him, this romantic feeling she imagines him to entertain flatters the conceited dimwit.  Her kinsman is fairly good-looking and rather charming in his sardonic way, although nowhere near the masculine perfection and mindless bravura of her cavalier.

His (genuinely) cunning plan succeeds.  At just the moment when the Idiots Three think they’ve reached safety, he shows up with a troop of horse, having deduced precisely which route they’d take, and explains that the boy is no longer heir to the throne.  The “Evil Cousin” also tells them he’s already arranged to send the three a monthly remittance that will let them live in great comfort, if not quite the baroque “magnificence” they’d anticipated, in a major foreign capital (somewhere sophisticatedly wicked such as Paris or Vienna).  He and his cavalrymen (brought along solely to ensure the brave-and-handsome knothead doesn’t try anything extra-foolish) then trot off — galloping would’ve been very dramatic, but not particularly sensible.

Inspired by Georgette Heyer’s Sylvester, especially by the part when the heroine offers that, to make up for having written a novel using Sylvester as a model for the villain’s appearance (Sylvester has splendidly sinister-looking eyebrows), she can write a sequel that explains the villain had a non-evil reason for his actions.

[classicdrogn]

Though I expect I personally wouldn't enjoy a treatment that was much longer than that, it sounds like the kind of thing that would do well among genre enthusiasts. I'd order a copy for ... mmm, about three different family members based on that as a book review plot summary, anyway.

[drakensis]

It does sound like the sort of thing I might read.

[robkelk]

He has the power to change the past, in ways that don't really change the present.

He is... Rhett Connor.