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Thanks Kyo! I really appreciate that you stuck with it to the end with my slow and sometimes intermittant pace of writing. A lot of the imagery from this story are things I picture in my head. I feel comfortable with the dialogue, but I think a lot of the imagery gets a bit half-baked when I try to put it down on a page.
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Lol. Which server is it referring to? Your sig says Protector/Victory/Freedom.
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Does it have to be from a comic book?
Either one of these would be epic:
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Thank you everyone that followed this story. It wasn't really conceived as a story with a definite end, more as the start to an ongoing episodic thing. More like a comic book. My intention was to use the incident with Bulb as an arc that would bring in the other characters, and hopefully reveal some interesting information about those characters in the process.
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"Wow. Great shindig he's got going on here." Love Tap pushed one of the oak double doors shut behind her, adjusting the lace sleeve of her violet and and black cocktail dress with her other hand. "I got like an army of gangbangers out there drooling over me. Where are all the cute girls?"
Recursive smiled from her perch on the staircase. She hadn't dressed up for the occassion, just an ordinary pair of jeans and a tshirt.
"Well, I think maybe he wanted to show us off. You and me. Even Soft...what did you do to her?"
"Haha. Nice eh? It's a new upgrade. I'm about to transfer sensory information from my body to hers. Muscle memory, tactile information, even some sympathetic nervous system kinda stuff..like eye dilation. Blushing."
"Yeah she's still green but she actually looks like a real woman...I mean, you know, a human woman." She reflexively looked around to see if Jessica was in the area. "Did you dye her hair?."
"Well sorta. She can ingest dye and distribute it to specific parts of her body. Once we got the hair the right consistency, the color wasn't an issue."
Love Tap strolled into the center of the lobby, looking around. "Where's Proxy?"
"He's in the kitchen. That's where he wants us all to meet him. A toast or celebration or something..."
"Aren't you happy?"
"I guess." Recursive shrugged.
Voices became audible outside the mansion doors. They swung open violently and FD stood there cradling Soft in his arms, her slinky black dress barely covering her assets. A hot pink stiletto dangled precariously from her left foot. The other foot was bare.
"Ouch ouch hurt ouch hurt ouch ouch."
"OK SOMEONE CHECK THIS CRAZY ***** OUT SHE STEPPED ON SOMETHIN."
Love Tap ran her fingers over the bottom of Soft's foot. "Um, here it's..." She pulled something off of Soft's skin and held it in her palm scrutinizing it. "It's a small rock or um..maybe a dried up bean or something. You gotta have beans everywhere, huh tacoboy?"
FD laughed and tried to dislodge Soft, who clung to his chest like a monkey the moment he started to put her down. "Hey you know you should eat more beans ya know? Then you poo poo more and maybe ya won't be so full of crap. And by the way, yeah you made soft all hot but now she a complete wuss man, like can't even get a little pebble in her shoe?What the hell?"
"Meh, she'll be fine. She's new to this, just need to make some adjustments..."
FD managed to dislodge Soft so that she merely stood next to him, clinging to his left arm.
"Thank you thank hunka hunka man thank my hero my hero mmmm mmmmmm mmmmmm."
FD wiped his eyes with the back of his free hand, then brushed the wrinkles out of his silk dress shirt, checking his watch and other assorted pieces of bling. Recursive smiled.
"Don't worry, you still look pimp."
"Hey I got an image to uphold. Now what's going on? Proxy wants us for a toast or something?"
"Yeah, I believe he's in the kitchen."
___________________________
"What the hell man?!? What is that thing?" In the center of the kitchen area, tables had been pushed out of the way to make room for a large, upright rectangular object that was covered by a huge tarp. Proxy stood at a counter off to one side holding two bottle of wine. As they filtered in, he handed one to Recursive.
"What the hell did you put in my kitchen?" Proxy smiled.
"That my friend is a work of art to commemorate the defeat of Bulb, the victory of our dear Recursive, and the coming together of this group as a team. We will accomplish great things in the future."
"So what is it? Who put it here?"
"I commissioned little Toobit to craft it and place it here."
"Haha that punk robot kid? He did this?"
"Yes he did. Go ahead and take a look."
FD looked at the others for a moment, gauging their expressions in an effort to prepare himself for the unveiling. Then he grunted and took hold of the tarp and ripped it away. The women laughed as the object was revealed: a life-size replica of a porta-potty made out of sand.
"What?!? WHAT?!? That ******* put a crapper in my kitchen???"
Proxy raised his hand. "No. No. Not a crapper. Read the description."
There on the front of the door was an inscription in large block letters:
MEXICAN SPACE SHUTTLE
The room erupted with laughter.
"HAHAHAHAHA, OOOOH YOU A******S! I HATE YOU ******* HAHAHAHA I HOPE YOU ALL DIE IN A FIRE HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA RACIST BASTARDS!!! I'M GONNA DROP THE SPACE SHUTTLE'S PAYLOAD ON YOUR HEADS JERKS HAHAHA."
After several minutes, Proxy was able to get them calmed down enough to listen again. He took Recursive, the wine still in her hand, and positioned her in front of the sculpture. She looked at him.
"Really?"
"It's tradition.."
She broke the bottle over the space shuttle, laughing, and as the stain of the alcohol spread over the sand they could hear Toobit's faint, childlike voice humming fiesta music from the inside. -
The craftsmanship on those plushies is amazing. Gratz Deebs hope you feel better soon.
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Recursive stepped through the doorway, entering a small chamber with slick reflective walls. The entrance closed behind her and everything faded to darkness except a small wedge shaped beacon of light overhead. A dark shape like a clockhand began moving from left to right. It stopped, with an audible ping as an orange glyph lit up for a moment. Recursive slid further into her corner of the space as she heard doors slide open. Something entered in the darkness, she heard it step into the corner opposite hers. Then the unseen doors rustled as they slid shut and the arm of the beacon began moving again. If the thing were some sort of elevator, Recursive could sense no physical motion in any direction. Everything was still and quiet though she could feel the other occupant's presence in the far corner. And as the clockhand moved all the way to the other side, she felt a pressure. The air was thick on all sides, pressing in on her like the bottom of the sea.
The floor jerked hard beneath her and she almost lost her balance. There was a loud crack, followed by a ripping sound, and the walls of the elevator collapsed out, toppling away from her, sliding across the ground and then falling into an abyss. Recursive gasped at her surroundings. She and Bulb stood on a precipice, like the top most point of an immense needle of rock. There was a square landing where the elevator had stopped, then on one side there was a short flight of steps that led to an even smaller outcropping that held a card table and two folding chairs. Beyond that, on all sides, was a sheer drop.
The vertiginous view over the side showed rolling clouds of red vapor hundreds of feet below, the maelstrom punctuated by fire and intermittant discharges of lightning. Her hair whipped in the wind, as she looked up in the sky at alien stars flickering in the distance.
Bulb, now looking more or less like a featureless grey mannequin, took the lead and descended the stair way to the second platform and took a seat in one of the flimsy folding chairs. Recursive stared at it for a moment, marveling at the lengths she'd taken to be rid of this bizarre creature. She glanced again into the depths at the side of the landing, musing over the symbolism of the venue. What was the statement? Were there dire consequences for failing to achieve resolution at this point? She looked again at Bulb sunk into the cheap chair against the backdrop of endless night and stars. Was this a comment on mortal concerns in the face of a deeper, utimate reality?
She pictured FD, as he would look standing there at the edge of oblivion. In her imagination her turned to face her, hands on his hips, scowling. He threw his hands in the air in a "what now?" gesture. Stop smoking crack bish, get this crap over with...
"I hope you know what you're doing Callie."
Recursive made her way down the steps and took the seat opposite Bulb. It had no had no eyes, or mouth, but she could tell by the angle of its head that she had its attention. She laid her left hand palm up on the table in front of her left shoulder. A light began to build in the palm, swirling with shadows and strands of light. Recursive's whole body began to shiver and tremble slightly, shrinking and changing color until she was no more. Callie sat there, slightly hunched over staring into the small globe of energy. She looked at Bulb.
"Give me your gun. I'll give you this for your gun."
The thing sat motionless for a long moment. Then it lifted its left hand. It waved it back and forth as a grey mass began to take shape in the palm. The angles and curves lengthened and hardened until it became a shiny, snub-nosed revolver. Bulb laid it on the table. Callie laid the ball of energy on the table and took the gun in her right hand, cradling it in her hands and holding it flat against her chest.
Bulb scooped up the ball of energy and absorbed it into its body. It convulsed violently, rocking its torso back and forth and almost upsetting the card table. It's surface expanded and contracted, hardening in some areas and becoming soft like flesh in others. It formed eyes, a mouth, a noise, a mass of hair on top of its head. Callie watched wide-eyed as the thing took on the appearance of Recursive. Her face, hair, figure..even the uniform from the alternate reality. It's face squirmed, the eyes moving independently of each other as it tried to approximate human physiology. It managed to focus its gaze on the hands, the outward shape of Recursive's fingers, bending and waving them frenetically then running them over the surface of the card table. It became still for a moment, suddenly focusing its blank idiotic gaze on Callie as if it had forgotten she still existed. The new Recursive's lips trembled as it stared.
"Wa...wha ..hu..hu..wha...wha......"
It ran its fingers over its lips, feeling the vibration. Suddenly it giggled, it's eyes bulging, the pupils dilated like saucers.
"Ha....ha......ha....ha....
Suddenly Bulb stood up, planting its hands on the card table, leaning forward, the black hair spilling into its face.
"Hahahahahahahahahahaha"
It got closer, thrusting its face directly in the vicinity of Callie's, the lips drawn back in a sneer. The eyes quivering and bulging.
"AH HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"
Callie flinched slightly,just for a moment. Then she placed the barrel of the gun directly against the simulacra's forehead and pulled the trigger, firing a single round into the false Recursive's skull. The face shattered, viscous grey liquid splattering out the other side. There was an inhuman wail that fractured and multiplied like hundreds of glassed breaking at once. The thing clawed at the hole where it's face had been and staggered back blindly.
Callie sprang to her feet and clutched it, the life force flowing back into her body as Bulb crumbled and deflated like a baloon caked over with dried up mud. Slowly, Recursive returned to being, looking at the cast off skin of something that had tried to become her. The remains turned to ash in her hands and were carried away by the wind.
Recursive picked the revolver up off the table. It remained solid, presumably because Bulb had given it away. She turned it over in her hands, examining it from all sides. Then on a whim, she tossed it over the side, sending it spinning into the churning gasses below. As she watched it fall, her eyelids began to grow heavy, the sensation so intense that she could no longer keep them open. Her body straightened, falling backwards as her feet lifted up off the ground. She heard the faint voices in the room, felt the plush surface of the casket beneath her. She caught one last glimpse of the stars shimmering in the distance and felt an odd pang of melancholy as the dream world came to an end.
"Goodbye Bulb. Goodbye Callie." -
I got a commission request last night, so I'm taking a break from my Feral Kitty revamp. This one is a colored linework commission:
I'm doing a value study of the Face and chest area before getting into doing cleaner linework over the rough sketch.
The character is Grav Mistress, a gravity/forcefield/fire controller. -
Quote:You mean you're not?!?
Though John has em lookin all Asian -
Where would this transfer be taking place?
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The stairway led Recursive to a overblown theatrical La La Land, the Wizard of Oz drained of color and little people but abstract and stagey in much the same way. An enormous paper moon hung in the sky overhead, slowly making its way across a grey wash of space twinkling with gaudy rhinestone stars. The landscape was a rolling tableau that lead off to a bright horizon line to the right, darkness to the left. Along the way were rectangular depressions in the ground, precisely formed like perfectly cut slices from a layer cake. She stepped off the stairway and walked to the edge of the nearest one to take better look.
"Oh hey there Missy! Watch your step there!" A middle aged man sat in the bottom of the hole, slicking back his greased hair with a comb. He was simply dressed in fades blue jeans, tennis shoes and a white tshirt. He nodded to her as he finished with the comb, rising to his feet and sliding it into his back pocket.
"Oh..hi. Who are you?"
"I'm you, hahaha. And me. Both of us really."
"What? What do you mean?"
"Hold on a minute babe."
He went to the side of the hole and leaned against the side, his head and shoulders clearing the edge. A short distance away there was another hole. He stared at it for a moment listening, then there was a sound...a baby beginning to cry. In another hole further down a woman stood up, strings of pearls around neck contrasting with the slick, shoulder length black hair that cascaded over the straps of her evening dress. She waved.
"I've got this one Frankie."
"You sure doll?"
"Yes, it's my pleasure."
The woman hoisted herself out of her space and walked to the source of the crying, lowering herself gently into the nearby pit. A moment later she reappeared, smiling with an infant nestled over her shoulder. Recursive's face went a little slack as she watched the woman and child.
"Are these pits...are they supposed to be graves?"
"Yeah. We've all passed on. All of us much sooner than we deserved to, if you ask me, especially the kids. So much wasted potential. We are so happy to have you. We all feel blessed, really. It's really a pleasure to meet you."
"Me? I don't understand....what is this place supposed to be?"
The man shrugged. "Conceptual space. You know...a visual metaphor. I'm not good at explaining this stuff. Look over there, up on that hill."
To the right the ground rose up into a small hill. There was an open grave at the summit and a teenage girl stood next to it. She was thin and pale, shifting nervously and playing with the necklace of beads she wore. Recursive recognized the striped top she wore as something Mrs. Greene had tried to make her wear that first week after emerging from the coma.
"Is that..."
"Callie Greene. She's been waiting to talk to you. Go on up she can explain it better."
Recursive made her way to the hill, passing people of different ages, ethnicities and genders that waved to her from their symbolic grave sites, their clothing and manner of speech calling out from different eras of history. She reached the top of the hill and stood next to Callie. She stopped playing with the beads and looked up.
"Callie?"
"Oh hi! You look great! I really like your super suit, it's so cool..and sexy.."
"Callie...are you dead?"
"No. My body is alive. We are all in it. All of these people together make up who you are. We are all alive in you. That's why you can understand things so quickly. That's why you have powers and talents and knowledge of so many things."
"Who are they?"
"They call themselves the unfortunates. We are all different incarnations of the same person, passed down over time. We all died in tragic ways..we weren't able to fulfill our potential in life. We weren't able to use our gifts..."
"But Callie your still alive! Your parents are grieving for you..your not living your own life."
"If this hadn't happened, I would be dead within two years. A brain tumor."
Recursive took a step back and looked her up and down, frowning. "You're just a child."
Callie smiled. "You don't understand. Through you, we are all alive. More alive than we were in our own times. It's a wonderful opportunity to be something incredible, to shape events...help people..."
"Help people? But Callie, what am I doing? These people I'm with...they're killers. They're criminals.And I don't have any sense of what I am or what I'm suppposed to do. I'm just being dragged along with them."
"You are the conscience of the group. They need you, in ways they don't realize themselves. Even Proxy doesn't understand."
Callie pointed in the distance towards the glowing section of the horizon. "That way is towards the future. We extend beyond the present towards both the past and the future. I've talked to a girl that is close to the horizon line there. She says the line moves and the future shifts and changes. And sometimes there's a future where everything ends and nothing continues. When you came into being, that outcome was pushed further away. These people you are with will help you stop the end of the world. Everything hangs on you being one of them."
Recursive heard a noise behind her. She turned and a door had appeared on the hill behind her. She looked at Callie, suddenly conscious of time passing.
"I was supposed to have considered what I would sacrifice for this arbitration."
"Nothing. Proxy didn't steal anything from this creature. It's merely a parasite that followed him back from its world. It's a liar and a thief. We won't let it take anything from us."
"But what's going to happen? How do I resolve this?"
"We've been thinking about it. There's nothing you can do. Don't worry about it...I know that's hard to take."
Recursive laughed. "But how am I going to get rid of this thing?"
"You won't do anything. It will fall to me." -
Another update. Mostly on the woman but also some detailing on the soldiers/jailers.
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Samples of my work and rates are on my deviantpage. Click on the sig to go there.
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I started the process of refining the image, mostly on the female and the blanket. -
Here's a color study. I'll probably blow it up to maybe 11 x 17 and go with this color scheme. -
Ah, I thought it might be an abbreviation. I do a lot of volunteer work for art nonprofits, so their project is familiar territory. Coincidentally an art collector friend of mine is buying a condo down there, although I'm not sure whether he's looking in Miami or Ft. Lauderdale.
Best of luck VV! -
Cease.
The message came to Recursive not as sound. Not even as a word in her head. Something was expressing a concept directly to her mind, the specific language manifesting itself like bubbles on the surface of a pond. Bulb froze for a moment, a wave of distortion rippling through it's body, lights flashing like a swarm of fireflies in the shell of its head. Recursive pulled away, scrambling up the sand and turning to look behind her.
It wasn't a statue she had seen earlier. A woman stood on the beach. She was completely monochromatic--grey skin, long white hair that cascaded down over her shoulders. She had small horns protruding from her forehead, white eyes with no discernable pupils. She wore pieces of armor that darkened in Recursive's view even as the hair and eyes began to glow brighter. Her ornately plated boots reached her thighs,the shiny leather of her ebony bodice accentuating the curves of her hips and torso. She smiled slightly, the fluted curves and spikes of her shoulder pads and gauntlets turning and twisting slowly at the edge of her sillhouette. Recursive's eyes widened as she spotted the same woman farther down on the beach. Sitting on the edge of the stone structure. Visible in evey area of the horizon she looked. There was even one standing out in the water.
Something flashed in her peripheral vision. Bulb had a pistol now, a snub-nosed revolver opposite the dagger hand. It swung up, slowly with the pace of a dream, moving past Recursive and taking aim at the grey woman. The muzzle flashed. Once. Then two more times. There was no sound. Smoke rose languidly from the barrel, like milk poured into oil. The bullets left no mark. They didn't even seem to reach the target, simply fading, only the small bursts of orange flame indicating that anything had happened at all.
The woman turned her gaze on Bulb, golden fire rising in her eyes. They shot forth rays of copper light that struck Bulb in the chest and engulfed the thing's entire body. Bulb spasmed and then started to dissolve, it's form melting away and becoming indistinct, shrinking slightly as well until it became a glowing cloud of smoke shaped vaguely like a human being, roughly the size of Recursive.
Rise.
Recursive got to her feet, noticing that the fatigue and soreness from the water had left her. The figure pointed back towards the water. The darkness rolled back, exposing an ocean floor littered with skeletal remains of humans and other creatures. Some of the remains were scattered and broken vestiges of conflicts. Others were unclear. One skeleton stood upright in the sand, leaning back as if looking up into the sky. Another was curled up in the image of slumber.
The first test is the will to survive.
The woman turned back inland, and without taking a step the three of them were suddenly standing before the stone edifice. Recursive couldn't place exactly what the architecture was supposed to be. At first she took it for a large stone tomb, but then she could see stairways and openings to other areas. Almost like the exterior of an ancient temple. The woman was everywhere now, at least six more visible looking down at them from the roof of the structure. On closer inspection it seemed that there wasn't even uniformity to building materials. The wall in front of them was carved from marble. Elsewhere there was sandstone, clay, brick, and even poured concrete. There were gothic arches, Grecian columns, and Asian burial mounds all visible on the rising landmass further inland. The place was elaborately adorned with statuary, but every time Recursive settled her gaze on one, it turned into another manifestation of the grey woman.
Recursive's vision blurred and again they were moving, walls and entryways bleeding past as they were shifted elsewhere in the complex. The dizzying panorama ended in a small vaulted chamber with two prominant archways before them, a large stone fountain to the rear. The archway to the right was filled with shifting points of light and warping lines of color and form. Some sort of otherworldly abyss that made Recursive dizzy as she tried to make sense of it visually. The indistinct mass that was now Bulb's body "walked" over to archway and passed into it, being absorbed into the swirling confusion.
The archway to the left lit up, exposing a simple stone stairway that curved downwards out of sight. The apparent guardian of the place looked at Recursive, her thoughts flowing between them.
Before the arbitration you must enter this space of reflection. Consider what you are willing to sacrifice to achieve resolution.
She smiled slightly again, pointing towards the steps.
On impulse, and for reasons she never understood later, Recursive reached out to touch the woman's face. "You were alive once? Like me?" Her hand passed through, feeling nothing, and she found herself on the top of the stairway. She glanced back, but there was only a curtain of darkness behind her. -
Here's a value study of the composition. The idea is to get everything to read in a small thumbnail before I go crazy rendering everything out. I'll probably do a color study as well before blowing this up and painting over it. -
Quote:Depends on the implementation. The proposal I made above is structured to address a problem with the extant pvp systems--which is that the best odds for success involve getting your character to 50 (for the max slots), getting all the accolades, and investing a lot of money in IO sets.
1. Assuming the devs keep on with ZONE pvp in it's current format (that's an assumption I 100% stand by based on various dev comments), would a /duel option be really that loved? Think before you answer this and keep in mind I haven't seen one of the old pvp group that says that current i13 pvp is fun.
A duel function could be aimed at people who are taking a break from leveling and would like to fight someone that was roughly their level, at a similar stage of slotting.
Quote:2. If there were an option to do the pve stuff in the pvp zones without having to do pvp (a toggle that you could turn on that made you immune) would that be alright? That is you can get shivans, nukes, etc., without ever having to pvp in the pvp in the pvp zones, would that be okay for the devs to implement?
I don't think it would be reasonable to include going after things like shivans and nukes. These are potent items and I believe that the devs factored in the idea of pvp when structuring these rewards. It's already a joke, because BB and Warburg are dead zones on most servers anyway.
Quote:EDIT: Those so vehemently against it are so (at least from what I comprehend in this thread) because they don't even want to SEE it AT ALL while they pve. They LIKE that they can go to another zone and do pvp and see it when they want to.