Sparkly Soldier
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Posts
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Joined
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I haven't tried the Lv1 farm yet, but I did try to team up with a blaster friend and it didn't really help: I think with six fragile minions already swarming the enemies, having one more fragile character in the mix wasn't making much difference. But then I discovered an Ouroboros mission and tactic that seems to work great for a Necro/Dark MM: level 34's "protect the war walls" map with the Rikti. You'd think the Rikti's energy damage would be murder for the undead, but they tear through the Rikti bosses in seconds with almost no damage. I've been alternating between running the War Wall mission, which is a large open map with easily spotted groups of enemies, and street sweeping the Rikti in Founders Fall in flashback mode: not having to worry about diminishing returns and finding better enemies is alone worth it. It's about a level an hour, but a very stress-free hour, and Shade's now reached level 41. Thanks for suggesting Ouroboros - trying the flashback missions instead of AE never would have occurred to me! Katie Hannon's hopefully still on schedule for next Sunday, but since that's a whole different topic, I'll post tomorrow on the Guardian board for anyone who wants to join in.
(Edit: Delaying the Katie TF to make sure that character's all set to lead it and that Shade's safely at 50. Post to come next week!) -
Hmm, that brings up a whole bunch of points I hadn't really thought about, like does exemplaring down still preserve the same XP progress rate. I haven't done much with her second build, so it wouldn't be hard to redesign it that way and see what happens, and she does have vet powers to help out at level 1. An hour a level is a little slow, but it beats my best time of two hours a level. I'll give that a try this weekend - thanks! Likewise for just picking a fun arc, which I only hesitated on because of worries about how exemplaring affects XP. As long as it's the same rate, and especially if Ouroboros lets you take advantage of Patrol XP and Double XP, that work as well as AE farming.
I logged on a bit last night to forego AE and just street sweep in Founders' Fall, and that actually worked about as well as AE does since she has a ton of Patrol XP. On paper it looks like the cold-based Winter Horde should be easy for a cold-resisting, darkness-based AT and the Circle of Thorns a pain, but in practice the Circle bosses go down in seconds compared to the struggle the snowmen can put up. Maybe the Winter Horde's just not a good choice...
Anyway, I'll hopefully be around Saturday night for teaming. I'm on Guardian server right now, though with enough transfers to move around, and I've never really teamed, apart from helping a few people on their arcs and one Terra Volta run, so I'm wide open on anything anyone wants to do. Maybe DFB? I've never actually tried it, so maybe one run before the servers close is in order. But I could definitely use help with building Virginia's Katie Hannon TF late next week (once Double XP's over, I'll clear Croatoa with that character so she'll be ready storywise), so even if it's not this weekend, teaming offers are very appreciated.
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If teaming would help, I guess I have one or two friends I could sidekick up and ask to join me each night: they know what a big deal this is and they're in their twenties, and if teaming gives extra XP all around, it'd help them too.
I'm on the Guardian server right now, though moving to a more populated one like Virtue isn't a problem at all. Schedules are a little trickier, though I'm hoping to be free some Thursday and most of Friday night at least. For now, I may just focus on a few other characters who are much closer to their personal endgame stories.
Oh, I really could use your help in a week or so, and anyone else who wants to join in! The Katie Hannon Task Force awaits for rogue Cabal heroine New World Daughter as soon as I get her through the second half of Croatoa. I can round up three other people I know personally, which would leave room for at least two volunteers. I'll focus on getting her there and PM you if you like with a time that everyone's getting together. I've never led a task force at all (and so I'm studying up on Paragonwiki to learn what to expect), but Virginia Dare versus Mary McComber is just too perfect an ending for her saga... ^_^
So teaming, try to do more damage myself (makes sense, the pets aren't exactly what I'd call efficient killing machines) and take advantage of the double-XP weekends (oh, but would they affect AE, or is that the time to get Shade back into old-fashioned street sweeping?). Thanks, I'll give them all a try! -
...and power leveling has turned out to be a disaster.
Right now my Necro/Dark mastermind Astorian Shade is at level 36. I'm trying to race her to level 50 since her backstory is tied into Dark Astoria and defeating Mot would make the perfect ending for her story in the game. I originally wanted to do that through story contacts, but with the game ending on November 30th, it's no longer an option: I work full time, many of my evenings are busy, so I only have a few hours here and there to play. After trying several AE farms that aren't geared for masterminds, I tried to make my own, a farm of nothing but bosses with the Winter Horde to take advantage of the Necro pets' resistance to cold and ability to overwhelm single targets.
Well, at 1/1 it's painfully slow and boring. I spent almost three hours fighting them and, while I was never once in danger, I never gained a level either. Even at 3/1 it's agonizingly slow (and prohibitively slow - I simply don't have enough free time between now and then to progress at that level), but 3/2 adds lieutenants who drop almost the same XP as the bosses, which helps a bit. Only now each mob is enough of a challenge that clearing it becomes an involved debuff-filled battle, and worst of all, I played two hours tonight and got half a level's worth of XP. It seems like I was actually gaining levels faster just playing through missions, but I'm scared to start them up again only to wind up wasting even more time.
I finally got so exasperated that I tried 4/8 just to see what'd happen. Needless to say, the only thing that died were the pets, almost instantly.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to farm a Necro/Dark mastermind to level 50 ASAP? I'm not trying to cheat the playing experience, and the moment I get to Dark Astoria I'm turning the difficulty back down just to focus on the story, but there's only a little more than a month left and my best AE run netted me two levels in almost four hours. I don't have any IO's (and really don't know anything about them at all, although I've read that, being an MM, they wouldn't be of much help for the pets) and I don't have an SG or any higher level friends to call upon to sidekick me along with them. Until now I've been almost entirely a solo player running through contact arcs. -
Quote:Originally Posted by MentalMaden
What's the point of the beast if he looks normal and only "changes" into a beast. I mean it could be a good show and all, but that's really not the point of Beauty and the Beast.Agreed completely. The producers defended it in a Q&A as the show being about "the beast on the inside," which, according to them, is much more interesting than "a guy who looks like a lion" (insulting the very show that you needed to riff for inspiration, classy!). Except that, no, no that's not more interesting. A man who's a beast "on the inside" is what we call a jerk, or maybe a psycho depending on the level of beastliness involved. They're a dime a dozen.Quote:Originally Posted by Dark One
I'm betting it's only "unkempt" to a very minimum. Just enough to make the girls swoon over a 'bad boy' on the run. Unlike say, a Dr. Hobo unkempt where he keeps dead squirrels in his pockets.
That's the problem nowadays. They're trying, IMO, for the 'tortured soul who just happens to have rakish good looks and is just dangerous enough that daddy would lower the glasses' rather than going for the truly disfigured 24/7 and they would have to actually get to know him. The original B&B, at least, captured the fact that the Beast was actually beastly looking.
Anyway, the thing I miss most is something I haven't seen many critics talk about: the World Below. The original show had a modern fairy tale feel with a secret underground city beneath New York, the conspiracies surrounding its existence and the culture clash between the modern Catherine and Vincent, who grew up in a medieval, monastic setting. By taking away the World Below and Vincent's lifelong isolation from civilization, and replacing it with a military experiment and the "beast" as a man born and raised in the modern world, the whole heart of the story's been ripped out. At that point, why even claim it's a reboot of the '80s show? Why not just call it something else? -
Croatoa, or technically Salamanca. I love its atmosphere.
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Quote:The rednames live! And thank you!Originally Posted by Alpha Wolf
I sent an e-mail to Skippy Sidekick that the Beta server is down.
-Alpha Wolf
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Oranbega map + Defeat All + 1 hour or less to play =
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Yukiko "Yuki-yo" Yoshida, a fledgeling Templar on the Daemon server. I'm still boggled that the only MMO where I could successfully reimagine Sparkly Soldier Yuki is a game that's set thematically between Lovecraft, Buffy/Angel and Supernatural. Okay, so in this one she's a grim, katana-wielding med student with an ordinary cat rather than a giddy, energy-blasting anime fangirl with a talking cat, but still! It's not a replacement for CoH (though neither it nor any MMO out there really even tries to be), and I'm going to be busy with CoH until/unless its servers shut down, but since I do like Lovecraft, Buffy, Angel and Supernatural, and the combat system is pretty fun, it'll be waiting.
By the way, ignore what the "system analyzer" says about your system. I have an NVidia GTX 460 video card, which it claims can't run it, but it runs beautifully and smoothly at High settings all around. But at the same time, if you do have an NVidia card, you might want to roll back from the very latest drivers (the ones released a few days ago), since they don't seem to work well with the game at all. -
And with this last bit of proofreading, I'm done for the weekend...
Sparkly Soldier Yuki: For the Future
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=297604
If anyone's actually reading and enjoying these, please let me know. It's depressing to feel like I'm posting them for only one person who's saving the stories on principle. But thank you Llydia for working so hard to host and save them all.
The last CoH story I'll write, and the first new one since Promise and Homecoming (these last four were much older stories I had never turned into final drafts or posted anywhere) will hopefully be coming this week or weekend, forum access willing. -
Epilogue
"Your men failed."
"Yeah, well, we had some complications," Big Tony's gruffly defensive voice answered over the phone, "like that Sparkly Soldier kid who's been making the news. She was there, and helping Arakhn for who knows what reason. It would've worked if it weren't for..."
"I warned you she'd be there," the caller cut him off, and even through the digital distortion the anger building in its voice couldn't be missed, "your men were supposed to be in and out before she showed up. She wasn't supposed to be a part of this at all!"
"Look, this isn't a pizza delivery," Tony retorted, "they got there as fast as they could! Anyway, hey, it's Paragon City, these things happen. But it's not like we won't get plenty more chances. All we have to do is wait a little while for things to cool down and then..."
"This was a mistake," the voice interrupted, "I'm calling off the hit."
"Hey wait a second! We had a deal!"
"And I'm keeping the deal. You have half the payment in your account for services rendered so far. I just have no further need of those services, that's all."
"Okay, fair enough. But what about the future? You said you had plans for it, and she wasn't a part of them. What's going to happen to those plans now?"
The caller tapped the keyboard to disconnect the line and then sighed deeply, flinging her headset onto the desk and closing her eyes for a moment to listen to the sound of Yuki downstairs with her parents, the three of them watching an explosion-filled movie together.
"I guess we'll find out," Mira whispered to herself.
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Part 2
"Bet you regret coming to Earth now," Yuki said in a hollow voice that somehow sounded more defeated than the woman doubled over on the floor a few feet away, her right palm lifted toward her enemy with a cold, steadily building white glow, "huh, Nictus?"
Most of Arakhn's face paint had dribbled away into streaks of sweat and blood, leaving only the battered face of a beautiful red-haired woman who might have just been finishing college this year, her blue eyes burning with righteous fury between dizzying waves of pain.
"You think I regret it," she laughed bitterly through bloodied teeth, "look at you!
"What do you hope to gain," Arakhn snarled up from the ground, still clutching her stomach with one arm, "another badge for your collection, your name in the papers, some extra autographs to sign? So you can tell your friends how you beat the evil Nictus?
"I've fought to save my kind from extinction," she rasped through a sudden, gurgling coughing fit, "I've spent every minute of a hundred centuries raging against that nightmare, trying to save billions of lives. How does that weigh against all your trophies and medals?
"I've been fighting for the future, hero... what are you fighting for?"
Yuki had already dropped her arm, the electric white glow fading from her palm and gradually subsiding from the rest of her body, leaving an ordinary teenage girl standing above the young woman, her expression riddled with confusion, sympathy and wrenching guilt.
"But that," Yuki began in a soft, broken voice, "that's why I'm..."
A clatter of tommy-gun bullets suddenly cut off her words, sparks raining down from the dangling chains and bolted steel beams adorning the loading dock, the rusted warehouse doors kicked in to let crimson sunlight and ominous silhouettes slant through the dusty air. A half-dozen men in pressed business suits stood on every side, machine guns aimed at the pair.
"Big Tony sends his regards," their brawny leader quipped in a thick Brooklyn accent, and then he motioned to the rest of the men, "alright boys, take her down!"
Bullets sliced through the air as Yuki lifted up and swung around towards the mafia thugs, both her arms raised to fling out a translucent blue shell of energy around herself and the silently watching Nictus. The bullets pounded against the shell, tumbling harmlessly away to the floor, and another burst of energy swept through her school uniform and enveloped her.
"You want some too," the young girl growled, her body suddenly glowing, her clothes rippling with crackling white sparks of energy, "then come on!"
"Oh isn't that cute," the purple-clad hitman rolled his eyes to his underlings, "the kid thinks we're after her. Everybody ignore the half-pint, I want Arakhn in a casket!"
The words hardly had time to finish crossing the thug's lips before the woman collapsed on the floor had suddenly leapt up into a quick, feral sprint, charging their leader and grabbing him by the shoulders to knock him out with a headbutt. She snatched his gun away in another instant, leaping up and twisting around in a roundhouse kick that sent another one of the Marcone gunners tumbling over the railing as she landed on her feet with a swaying groan.
Arakhn aimed the gun in one white-knuckled fist over her right shoulder, a single icy blue eye meeting the rest of the men before she pulled the trigger. The bullets rattled across the stairs and steel catwalks in a clinking shower of sparks, sending the team of assassins ducking and scattering about the crates and pillars. Their own rattling bursts of gunfire streaked through the air, one of them piercing the back of Arakhn's right palm, the young woman giving a sharp cry and flinging the smoking handle of her own gun aside as she caught the railing behind her with her left hand and gave a lithe, acrobatic flip away from the clattering bullets.
"But she," Yuki stood forgotten by everyone amid the chaos engulfing the warehouse, murmuring her bewildered thoughts aloud, "she told me she couldn't fight back..."
The Council assassin scrambled across the room and snatched one of the hooked chains dangling nearby, bracing her weight against, twisting and flinging it with all her ebbing strength to slam and rattle across one of the walkways, sending the gunner who'd been peppering the floor all around her with machine-gun fire darting for cover. Another bullet sliced her right calf, sending her tumbling onto one knee with a fierce animal cry, glaring up at the thugs standing above her on the catwalks... and finding the sight of them obscured by a pulsing blue energy shell.
"Stay down," Yuki muttered softly, one arm still raised to keep the force field lifted around them both as she looked over at the woman, and then she turned her stare back up to the rest of the criminals, "if you guys don't want a fight, just leave right now!"
"And what," Arakhn hissed, "do you think you're doing?"
"The only reason they're a threat to you is because of me," she answered amid a silent lightning storm of bullets flashing against the force field, "so I'm balancing things out.
"Alright, fine," Yuki growled at the hitmen, and she let the shimmering blue sphere drop again, instead flinging her arms left and right, open palms sending a hailstorm of crackling white energy bursts across the catwalks and loading ramps, her whole body aglow with energy as she twisted toward one assassin after the other, One by one each of the clattering guns grew silent, until only wisps of smoke and pained groans remained of the assassination attempt.
"I guess," Yuki sighed as she turned back around toward Arakhn and, not quite sure what to do, offered her hand to help the wounded woman to her feet, "we're even then."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Arakhn answered softly, and as soon as she grabbed Yuki's hand the electric white glow surrounding the young girl began to sweep and flow through her arm, pouring through the villainess's own black suit as she tightened a crushing grip around the wincing teenage girl's hand. Arakhn's mottled black bruises smoothed themselves into pale flawless skin, flakes of blood crumbled around wounds already sealing themselves tight, a limp and broken body steadying its balance and gradually gathering all its strength again as the young girl's life drained away through that ruthless grip until she finally collapsed into helpless spasms.
The Nictus suddenly wrenched Yuki off the floor like a rag doll, the crushing fist around her hand replaced by a bruising clutch of her chin as Arakhn hoisted her up by the head to glare furiously into her eyes, Yuki's clouded eyes reflecting a smoldering stare that swirled with living darkness once more. A moment's silent glare, and then a quick, hard punch into Yuki's stomach, her body flung to the concrete, her head smashed against the floor, once, twice, and then Arakhn lifted and effortlessly tossed the dazed girl across the loading dock with one arm.
"But we're getting closer," she smirked as she paced toward the fallen schoolgirl, and then her burning eyes alit on the silver camera-like device that'd tumbled out of Yuki's blazer, just a few feet away from the girl's shoulder, "and as for this toy you've brought me..."
And with a pained, coughing moan, Yuki flung her left hand out toward the weapon, a wave of blue-white light racing across the floor and smashing it into bits of metal.
"No matter," Arakhn replied with smug indifference, turning her gaze back toward the heroine sprawled limp across the floor, Yuki's groans muffling any defiant words she might've offered, "I'm sure our own scientists can figure out how you pulled off that trick.
"Now," the assassin continued as she grabbed Yuki's collar with one hand, hoisting her halfway up off the floor to snarl right into her face, "here's how this is going to play out. I don't know what brought you here or what this little temper tantrum was about, but the Marcones just tried to kill me and you didn't. So I'm choosing to make them my priority, not you. But if we ever cross paths again, I promise that you will have my undivided attention. Understood?"
"Unless you've decided to reform," Yuki muttered groggily, "we're going to meet again."
"I'm counting on it," the Nictus gave a very unpleasant smile into Yuki's dazed brown eyes, and then let go of her collar, the girl's head bouncing on the concrete again as Arakhn turned back around to walk into the middle of the warehouse. She stretched her arms out as she paced toward the shadows, darkness billowing out like a cloak around her to engulf the platform, and, without ever breaking her stride, both Arakhn and the remaining Marcones vanished.
* * *
"I just need my bookbag," Yuki shyly asked the City Hall clerk, staring pensively down at the polished floor and casting a few shamed glances up at the heroic statues lining the foyer before the kindly clerk came back with her satchel. The girl gave a grateful wave and then slipped out through the double doors between a group of gray-clad bureaucrats, darting across the sunlit marble square and then slowing down as she turned toward the train station. From afar, she could be any ordinary girl on her way home from school, her slight limp and a few dull bruises here and there just the mark of an athlete who takes her after-school practice too seriously. She glanced furtively about as she walked and finally flung her satchel over her arm and opened the zipper to let Mira's beady blue eyes peek out from the shadows above her right shoulder.
"How did it go," Mira asked quietly with a careful glance around for passersby.
"Well," Yuki answered with a slight shrug, "Shadowstar spent five minutes praising my quick thinking in destroying the prototype to keep it out of the Council's hands."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Then she spent the rest of the hour furious that I assaulted an FBSA employee, stole a prototype anti-Nictus weapon and gave Arakhn a working demonstration of it. Sunstorm, Azuria, Rebecca, none of them really said anything. That was actually worse..."
"Right," Mira sighed forlornly, "what happens now?"
"Kip was, um, really nice about being knocked out," Yuki said with a guiltily abashed frown, "he's not going to press charges, and the FBSA isn't going to mark my record. But I'm off active patrolling for three months, and I have community service every weekend until then. I'll be at the library as Sparkly Soldier Yuki, reading to kids, giving talks, things like that."
"That'll be good for you," Mira answered from the satchel, "being a hero doesn't just mean fighting all the time. It'll help remind you of the people you're fighting for."
"Yeah," Yuki nodded a little and stared down at the cracks in the sidewalk.
"What happened with Arakhn? I know you said you helped her, but... why?"
"The things she said, the reason she's doing all this," Yuki answered softly as they walked through the swaying shadows of the trees lining the sidewalk, "she's kind of like us, Mira. It just made me think there has to be another way, it can't just be us or them."
"And then she," she hesitated a moment, shaking her a little as she tried to gather her thoughts, "well, she said she couldn't fight me. But then she fought so hard against those Family goons. She could have fought me, even without her powers. Who knows, maybe she could have won without them. But she didn't try. And that made me realize something."
"That she was faking it and playing on your guilt?"
"Of course she was," Yuki replied with a small, sheepish laugh, "but it's more than that. Even with how I was acting, even with what I did to her, she thought I was a hero. She thought if she could just make the line I was crossing clear enough, than I wouldn't cross it. She was even betting her life on it. In her own weird villainous way... she believed in me."
"I won't exactly be joining her fan club," Mira's voice whispered from the satchel slung over her shoulder, "but she's right about that, at least. I'm proud of you, Yukiko."
"Thanks," Yuki said quietly, glancing down again as she paced along the curb.
"And you were right," Mira continued, "we shouldn't just wait for the future. If it can't be changed then there's no harm in trying, right? We'll try to learn everything we can in the present and see if there's something we can do that'll stop the war from ever happening."
"Yeah, I'd like that," Yuki smiled a little as she climbed up the ramps, emerging from the sunlight and into the fluorescent white glow of the monorail platform just as the outbound train arrived, rushing past the railing and sliding gradually to a slow, hissing stop.
"Train's here," she whispered to Mira as she zipped up her bookbag, "see you soon."
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Part 1
"I was expecting more of a fight," Yuki growled, hardly sparing a breath to swing another glowing white fist at the last of the guards. The black-clad Galaxy soldier went flying across the warehouse and slammed across a stack of crates, sinking unconscious beneath the tumbling avalanche of wooden boxes and palettes. The loading dock echoed with the clattering impact and faded into silence again, save for the stealthily pacing footsteps of the older woman striding fearlessly among the dangling chains and steel beams. Her bright red hair fluttered beneath the ventilation fans, eyes clouded with swirling darkness fixing their smirking gaze on the slight teenage girl standing before her, still dressed in her navy-blue school uniform.
"What can I say," the woman said with a soft, predatory smile, "they're only human."
"Not like you, huh?"
"You've done your homework, Yukiko," the woman answered with a light curious tilt of her head, glaring yellow lights casting the black skull painted across her pallid face into starker relief, her dark leather bodysuit with its flared collar, her cleavage bared by the deep V running down the length of her torso as her fists flexed and tightened in their black gloves.
"Oh, we know all about you, 'Sparkly Soldier.' You've made quite a name for yourself," she continued as she casually lifted her right hand toward the girl, "but I don't believe we've had the pleasure. My name is Arakhn. And you, hero, should... learn... your... place!"
Waves of shadow quivered through the warehouse, the air humming, the concrete ground throbbing and suddenly buckling into a shallow crater beneath the schoolgirl. Gravity reached out of the cement cracks like an invisible fist, tightening around her shoulders, wrenching her to her knees, then down to her elbows and shoulders, squeezing the sudden cry out of her lungs to leave only a choking, wheezing gasp of air. The villainess drew closer, the cold lavender glow of her eyes fading back into writhing shadows as she stood at the edge of the sinkhole, gazing down at the young heroine who hadn't even bothered to wear a costume to this fight.
"Did you really think you'd even last a second against me?"
"No," Yuki muttered, her voice hissing through teeth clenched more by the crushing gravity flooding the crater than her own fury, "but I was kind of curious."
She reached her right hand beneath her blazer, fumbling for a second as the Nictus watched curiously, and then suddenly drew a small, rectangular device, gleaming silver with a large motorized lens like some mad scientist's reinvention of the camera.
"Say cheese," Yuki snarled, and she clicked the shutter with a flash.
* * *
"But you're a cat," Yuki sighed at the doorway of her bedroom, staring with blank, almost resigned confusion at the small plushy grey cat wearing a headset and typing cheerfully away on her computer, flipping quickly between a screenful of stock options, an online market and a swashbuckling fantasy game with quick clicks of the mouse between her paws.
"No, I'm a soldier stuck in the body of a toy cat," Mira answered back with a glance over her shoulder and then started typing faster again, "and it's not like anyone online knows about the toy cat part. You wouldn't believe how much money I've made this month alone, between the freelance programming, portfolio investments and Wentworth consignments..."
"Programming jobs? You're a programmer?"
"I've been hacking Nictus security networks since I was 10," Mira shrugged, "and they're mostly based on computer languages today, so it's not that hard to figure things out. Anyway, we're off to a pretty good start on your college fund. Now Yukiko, if we can just do something about your homework grades. I know you're fighting crime, but you still need to..."
Yuki dropped her bookbag and flopping across the bedsheets, the mattress creaking as the young girl looked blankly up at the ceiling for a moment and then rolled silently onto her side to stare at her dresser mirror. A sad smile played at her lips as she looked at the notes and photos stuck along the frame, her dark eyes glittering with tears.
"Look," she murmured lightly, "it's Cerulean..."
A group of hardened Carnival of War soldiers stood gathered for a picture snapped in the abandoned transit tunnels of First Ward, their blue-robed leader somehow managing to look put out even with his face shadowed by a wide-brimmed wizard's hat as Yuki stood beside him, beaming at the camera and flashing a bunny ears sign over his head. And just beneath his picture, a piece of notebook paper scrawled with the final version of the battle speech Yuki had stayed up until nearly dawn coming up with, the very first night after she met Mira....
"An angel of heroic resolve," it read, "preserving the past and fighting for the future! Legendary radiant Sparkly Soldier Yuki! Protector of innocents!"
"He was so annoyed having to stop in the middle of everything for a picture," Yuki continued quietly to herself, "but he did, and he even called the rest of the troops back and made them gather around too. I was going to give him a copy when we left, and some extra pictures for everyone else too if they wanted them, so we'd all remember each other."
"Yuki," Mira began, putting down the headphones and turning away from the computer.
"I killed him, Mira."
"You saved him," her mentor sighed sadly, "he was corrupted by the Talons until you freed him. I know it's hard, but he thanked you for that, with his dying breath."
"It was his dying breath because I killed him," she muttered back, her voice small and absolutely devoid of emotion except for a slight tremble in her words.
"You saved Katie," Mira offered in a soft, uncertain voice.
"Saved her," Yuki scoffed bitterly, suddenly lifting herself upright to sit across the foot of the bed, "I plugged her into some computer, turned her into a zombie and left her there! I didn't save anybody, Mira. We might as well have never gone there at all."
"You kept things from getting worse for them."
"And kept things just as bad as they were before. That's all we've ever done, isn't it?"
"This," Mira sighed a little and shook her head as she hopped from the study desk onto the bed and sat down beside the young girl, "isn't just about First Ward, is it?"
"They're going to die," Yuki's voice a trembling whisper, her arms wrapping tighter around her chest to hold herself as she stared off into space, "my friends are going to die. All the people we've saved are going to die. And if Mom and Dad live long enough, they'll die too."
"You don't know that," Mira said sharply, "not everyone's going to die. I'm proof of that, and so are you. It's not the end. We'll still be fighting to make things right."
"WE'RE LOSING!"
The words came out in a hoarse, furious scream, loud enough to leave the bedroom window panes shuddering, the otherwise empty house ringing with Yuki's shout as Mira suddenly drew back from her student and nearly tumbled over the edge of the bed.
"That's why you came back! That's why you're here, because we're going to lose! And all we've been doing since then is making things happen the same way all over again!"
"I know, but we can't change the past. All we can do is..."
"Why not?"
"Huh?"
"I said why not," Yuki quickly asked.
"Dr. Solaris said the process only creates non-zero trajectories," Mira began slowly, trying to remember the right words herself, "so anything that happens in the past..."
"Forget all that," Yuki snapped, her voice quickening with each word, "did he try it? That's what makes it an experiment, isn't it, he didn't really know what'd happen. I've been making choices ever since you got here, so why can't I just choose something different?"
"Like what," Mira asked nervously.
"Like something I'd never have done the first time," Yuki replied, and she suddenly flung herself off the bed, springing to life in a purposeful scramble about her room.
* * *
"So the little girl's got some fight in her," Arakhn said softly as Yuki gripped the rim of the crater with her fingertips and suddenly fling herself free of the pulsing gravity field to flip through the air and alight on her sneakers across a catwalk behind the Nictus.
"You have no idea," Yuki growled, and she suddenly leaped over the railing, dark blazer fluttering around her shoulders, her pleated skirt whipping across her thighs as she aimed one open palm at the black-clad assassin and sent a quick flurry of white energy bolts crackling across the loading ramps. Arakhn somersaulted backward onto another one of the platforms hanging above the docking bay and watched as the schoolgirl slammed onto her feet again, her dark hair fluttering, glowing with white sparks, her dark uniform glowing with silently flashing waves of psionic energy. The Nictus couldn't help but smile a little with admiration.
"Perhaps you'll be of some use after all," she murmured with a malevolent purr as she leaped back down from the overhead railings, the dangling chains left rattling as she stalked toward Yuki, "once the fragment's in place, of course. But first things first..."
Arakhn lifted her right arm and flung her hand out toward the girl. And nothing happened.
"Huh," she muttered as she lifted her gloved palm curiously up to her face, and then shot her arm straight out again... just in time to have it snatched by the enraged schoolgirl leaping at her, twisted and yanked forward to flip the assassin across Yuki's shoulder, flinging her hard onto her back across the concrete floor. The older woman stared blindly up at the overhead lights for a moment, trying to clear a head unaccustomed to the ringing pain suddenly filling it, and then she caught the glowing white knuckles of Yuki's fist smashing across her face.
"Blood," Arakhn lifted her glove back from a nose and lip dripping red, staring down with dazed, ordinary blue eyes at the crimson streaks on her fingers with a mixture of shock and stomach-twisting fear, "what did you do to me... what did you do to me?!"
"You like pretending to be human," Yuki spat as she charged at the stunned woman, her glowing fist raised for another blow, "why don't you see how it really feels!"
* * *
"Sunstorm mentioned this device," Yuki glanced over her shoulder at Kip, flashing a nervous smile to the goateed engineer before turning around to look back through the window at the empty, hermetically sealed white laboratory on the other side, at the gleaming silver box perched on the corner of a workbench. The rest of the SERAPH office stood just as empty for the weekend as the lab, leaving only the young engineer sitting at his desk in the City Hall basement, filling out forms and darting between various status updates on each computer.
"What's it called," she asked.
"Well, technically it's classified, but with your FBSA clearance," the pony-tailed inventor fidgeted for a second and then suddenly darted over to the window beside her with a giddy impatience, "okay, right now we're calling it a quantum inhibitor, but that's a little misleading. It actually amplifies the quantum-level bond between a Kheldian and its human host. Check this out, it uses the Copenhagen equations to collapse the Kheldian probability wave into a classical state that's governed entirely by the host's own biochemical processes."
Kip suddenly noticed the look on the young heroine's face.
"Oh, sorry," he smiled wryly, "how much of that made sense?"
"Well," Yuki answered as she rubbed the back of her neck with her right hand, "the words 'it actually' were very clear. It's just the rest of it that's sort of fuzzy."
"You'll learn about the other stuff when you're older," he chuckled, "but the gist of it is that it completely suppresses a Kheldian's powers and reverts them to the same abilities as their human host. It only works for a few minutes, but with the right strategy that could be enough to bring even the most powerful Nictus into custody without a fight."
"It almost looks like a camera," she said curiously.
"That's because it kind of is," he replied, "it uses the observer effect to collapse the Kheldian's wave form, so part of the process is that, well, it takes pictures."
"Huh," Yuki murmured to herself, and then in a still softer voice, "I hope it doesn't hurt."
"Oh no, it's completely painless. They won't even know what happened."
"Not that," she shook her head with a sigh.
And she slammed her fist across the back of the engineer's head, knocking him forward against the shatterproof glass and sending him tumbling across the burgundy carpet.
* * *
"Fight back," Yuki screamed at the battered shape staggering backward across the loading ramp, and then sent its head twisting back across one shoulder with another hard blow, both her fists clutched together like a glowing white hammer, "I said fight back!"
"I can't," Arakhn gasped, catching herself against the steel railing behind her and spitting out a mouthful of blood before glaring back up at the charging heroine.
"Fight," Yuki snarled viciously, backhanding the assassin and sending her tumbling sideways to the ground again, her face paint misshapen with bruises, "back!"
"I CAN'T!"
Arakhn lifted herself atop her wobbly knees and elbows, gloved fingers curling, clawing at the ground, azure human eyes blazing furiously at the glowing, crackling shape of her opponent, all the defiance that'd been drained out of her limbs distilled into that glare.
"You sealed my powers, but you've kept all of yours. Would it help if I held up two little fists against your energy bolts? If I wagged my leg around to try to kick you away?"
"Shut up."
"Would that make it easier for you," Arakhn hissed at the approaching girl, "you couldn't defeat me, so you froze me inside this shell so you can beat her instead."
"Shut up!"
"And I'm not going to pantomime a useless fight just to ease your conscience about it!"
"I said," Yuki suddenly shouted, "shut up!"
And she swung her glowing fist furiously down into the woman's gut.
* * *
"Are you crazy," Mira shouted into her headset as she sat in front of the bedroom computer, the screen flashing with Yuki's cheerful face and cell phone number, "the FBSA is looking for you, they even called me trying to find you! They think you've been compromised, that maybe the Council's controlling you somehow. I'm not so sure they're wrong."
"You know what this is about," Yuki's voice answered flatly, "Arakhn's at an old warehouse in Independence Port right now. I don't know what the Council's planning there, but they must be trying to keep a low profile. She's only brought a few guards."
"I don't have a clue! You've attacked SERAPH, stolen their prototype weapon and now you're talking about Arakhn and her guards and... oh no," Mira breathed silently to herself, and then she began to speak again after a moment, her voice softer now, "Yuki, no, this isn't the way. Listen to me, we'll figure things out. Just come home first, okay?"
"We have to try to change things," Yuki's voice sounded numb, almost metallic through the internet phone connection, "I can't keep being myself. That's what messed everything up the first time, isn't it? I have to change the future, and you know Arakhn's part of it."
"We don't know that! We don't know if she had anything to do with the shadow storm!"
"But she's in the future," Yuki answered, "she's the one leading the Nictus."
"Seraphea's fought her before," Mira quietly admitted, and then she suddenly shook her head wildly, nearly knocking the headphones off her plushy ears, "but Seraphea wouldn't have done this! Yuki, listen to me! She's not like that... you're not like that!"
"I'm not Seraphea," Yuki said coldly, "and if Arakhn dies, maybe I never will be."
The click seemed to echo through the headphones, leaving Mira staring at the screen, blue marble eyes alive with panicked worry as she tried to call Yuki back, then again, then a third and fourth call. No answer, probably not even a ring on the other side since she'd almost surely flipped the phone off. Mira tapped a paw against the desk, fidgeted helplessly with the headset for a moment, and then took a deep breath and began to type wildly on the computer.
-
Sparkly Soldier Yuki:
For the Future
Prologue
"Cut the tough-guy act, Tony. You want her dead as much as I do. You'd pay twice what I'm offering you just for the chance. Consider this your excuse to make her a target."
"Yeah, and maybe this is my excuse to make YOU a target!"
Big Tony didn't become a made man with the Marcone family by letting some digitally altered voice over an unlisted phone line tell him what to do. Then again, he also didn't become an underboss by letting his pride get in the way of a golden opportunity. He took off his fedora, shaking his head a little at his lieutenant as they paced back and forth along the sunset docks, running his fingers through a thinning snatch of dark hair and then lifting the cell phone to his ear again. The truth is, he would pay everything this client's offering and more, just for a chance to take down the biggest headache the Family's dealt with since Manuel went up the river. And this wasn't some crank call: the down payment sitting in his bank account's proof of that. So if he could take care of her and actually get paid for the opportunity, all the better.
"How many Superadine shipments have you lost because of her," that crackling, digitized voice continued on the phone, "she's nearly cleaned out the Family in Steel Canyon, and really, how much longer can your boys keep hiding out on Striga? I'm giving you an opportunity to finally deal with this problem, make some money along the way and get Emil Marcone's attention doing it. You move up the ladder, and we're both free of her meddling. What do you say?"
"You know what," Tony muttered as he shook his fedora and flipped it back across his balding head, "I say what the hell, let's go for it. But I want to know one thing first. You seem to know all about our beef with her. What's yours? What are you getting out of this?"
"I have plans for the future," the voice answered, "and she's not a part of them." -
(Ironically, my most cheerful and innocent character gets the darkest, most violent CoH story I've written. The premise emerged from the First Ward arcs, as the missions there have a way of assigning your character dialogue that didn't really fit with a character like Yuki, unless maybe the hopeless futility of the place was really starting to get her. That interpretation actually made sense: First Ward's events would leave anyone emotionally damaged, much less a sheltered and idealistic middle school girl, and her initial excitement over being told that she's destined to be a heroine in a future war would naturally give way over time to the grim realization that the war is coming and she doesn't know how to stop it. Those two themes merged with the game's alignment concept to inspire a story that, in a sense, is Yuki's own personal vigilante morality mission, a moment that decides whether she's a heroine or something else.
This story involves her character premise, and it's a complicated one. Yuki is a hopelessly anime-addled girl destined to lead a war against the Nictus in a post-apocalyptic future. Her mentor is the talking stuffed cat Mira, actually a psionic mutant who projected her mind back in time to... well, I'll just post her bio! The AE arc "Mira & Yuki: A Sparkly Soldier's Tale" delves much more into the details of her origin and both their personalities.)
Quote:Edit: On November 25th Yuki led Task Force Astral in the Moonfire TF, arresting Arakhn and becoming an honorary Peacebringer. There was so, so much more to her story, but that makes a nice ending to her high school adventures.Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some get knocked flat on their backs by talking plushy cats from the future. Yukiko Yoshida was an ordinary schoolgirl until Mira, a psychic time traveler from a devastated future, found her projected mind accidentally stuck in the body of Yuki's toy cat. When the bewildered pair came under attack by Mira's alien pursuers, Mira hastily transferred all her remaining psychic energy to Yukiko, where it manifested as the magical girl powers Yuki's always wanted. Recalling that her mentor Seraphea, the future champion of the human resistance, used to joke about receiving her powers from a talking cat, Mira realized that Yukiko is destined to become that heroine. Now Yuki splits her days between fighting evil, learning how to master her newfound powers and worrying about boys.
-
People who post these kinds of threads remind me of the people who use a eulogy to talk about how much they disliked the person who died, and defend it by saying they were "being honest." In both cases, it's useless to try to reason with them. If they don't already have enough empathy to understand why it's a bad idea, no amount of words will grant it to them.
-
Okay, the first three COH stories I ever wrote are now proofread, cleaned up a bit and posted. They form something of a trilogy between them, since they're all about the same character and the first two are directly connected...
Astorian Shade: The Fall
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=297584
Astorian Shade: Survivor's Guilt
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=297586
Astorian Shade: Manifest
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=297587
That leaves one last existing story (one about Sparkly Soldier Yuki herself) to proofread, and one more about New World Daughter to sit down and write (right now it exists in the form of several pages of densely scribbled notes), and then that's everything, or at least everything there's a chance of getting ready in time. I hope you like them. -
-
(This was the last story I wrote for Astorian Shade, a few months ago, a little after reaching level 30 and based on her costume as an incarnate - yes, I was a little impatient. It was inspired by a fight in Brickstown with Crey's agents, and deals with her beginning to awaken as an incarnate. Proofreading and preparing this story for posting really, really made the fact that she probably won't get the chance to go back to Astoria and face Mot all the more painful.
EDIT: On November 25th Astorian Shade defeated Mot, led a team against Adamastor and experienced the most perfect ending to her story possible. I wish there was time to write an epilogue, but I'm glad to have finished her journey.)
Chronologically it takes place several weeks after the events in "The Fall" and "Survivor's Guilt.")
Astorian Shade: Manifest
"Keep the other apparitions engaged with regular and N2 ordinance! Voltaic Tanks, focus your fire on the girl! Alternate your attacks, don't give her an opening!"
Crey Industries might strive to keep a sterling, if rumor-plagued, reputation throughout the rest of the world, but here in Brickstown Agent Brooks hardly needed to worry himself with details like that. The field agents scattered across the sunlit street in their crisp black suits, ducking and rolling behind mail boxes, bus stops, any sort of cover they could find while a pair of armored Voltaic Tanks leapt down from their rooftop vantage points to fire hissing blue electron beams at the mirage of a girl hovering in their midst. The PR boys could figure out how to counter any wild stories the pedestrians fleeing the intersection might tell the reporters lately. Right now the Crey agents had a job to do, and Brooks for one loved the smell of ozone in the morning.
"How are the EM readings," he panted into his earpiece, ducking back against the corner of a building as he braced his automatic pistol tighter against his chest.
"They're fluctuating," a youthful voice crackled over the observation team's channel, transmitted from a hidden black-ops control room in some unsuspecting Crey office or another. Details like that are need to know, but Brooks could hear the nervous enthusiasm in the young man's voice. Probably some hot-shot kid angling for an early field promotion.
"Spectral readout's dropped by 46%," the operator breathlessly continued, "and the main apparition seems to be weakening as well. I think you've got her."
Something reached around the corner of the building to grab for Brooks' arm, cold spindly fingers snatching his wrist and trying to rip the gun out of his hands. Something clammy, as still and lifeless as the grave. He whirled around the corner with a sweeping kick, slamming the dessicated ghoul back against a brick wall. A hard wrench of his arms away from those withered claws, a flick of the safety on his gun and, with three quick firecracker bursts, the creature slid down into a crumpled heap of bony limbs, a puppet cut loose from its strings.
"Damn it," he shouted into the earpiece as he switched the channel back to his own scrambling, wildly firing team of agents, "I said don't give her an opening!"
Still, he had to admit his men seemed to be getting things back under control. The girl hovered a few feet above the asphalt, flinging her arms this way and that as she tried to deflect the electron beams with smoky jets of shadow. Just another day in Paragon City, a downtown intersection crackling with lightning orbs and dark energy as a Crey security team tried to take down a ghost heroine and her undead minions. She could almost be human, with her brown hair and plaid school uniform, her dark eyes narrowed with something between fury and growing fear. The sort of girl a guy like him would have nervously hemmed and hawed over asking out back in his own schoolboy days. Well, that was then... and this is now.
"Say goodnight Casper," he snarled, and he raised his gun with one outstretched arm to empty the rest of the clip into the translucent shape of her forehead.
It didn't kill her, of course - ghost and all - but it did break her concentration and send the horde of gaunt, ominous phantoms she'd started to conjure up behind her tumbling right back down into formless dust. More importantly, it gave the Voltaic agents enough time to recalibrate their powered suits and fire two perfectly timed energy blasts at the girl. Her pressed white blouse burst into a fiery wreath, her skin fading to ash gray beneath the crackling flames, and when the crimson glow faded away after a moment, the pale, pretty girl had given way to a tortured shell of its former self, its scarred face blindfolded with gauze and barbed wire.
"Now there's the Astorian Shade I've been hearing stories about," Brooks smirked as the phantom flopped out of the air like a drowning fish, and then to the rest of his men, "don't worry, she's just too weak to keep up her secondary form. This means we've got her."
He motioned for another blast of electricity to knock her flat across the sidewalk, and then he flipped the earpiece channel back to the observation team.
"Tell R&D their ionization strategy passed with flying colors, and let the Revenant Hero team know we've bagged them a ghost," then a flip of the switch back to his security team, "oh, and go round up the rest of those test subjects. They couldn't have gotten far."
* * *
Being a ghost doesn't mean being free of pain. It just means different things cause it. She hardly noticed the hard concrete scraping against knees that are more a visual metaphor than an actual body, and her breath panted in quick, ragged gasps out of the mere habit of having once been alive. But the crackling energy of the electric bolts, the frigid blasts of the cryo rifles, each shot perfectly calibrated to disrupt her manifestation on a quantum level... they hurt, they burned and stabbed through her like searing needles, they even made the bullets slicing through her intangible shape hurt. Had the people she'd tried to rescue gotten away?
Do you remember?
Crey's agents gathered around her, their motorized suits whirring, radios buzzing, dark sunglasses reflecting the sun as it set behind the grimy warehouses of Brickstown. A motley assortment of armored soldiers and suit-clad agents focused now on preparing for extraction. They hardly seemed to notice her anymore. Subdued, contained Not a threat.
Do you remember my whispers in the crib? The echo of my voice in the womb?
The priests of the Banished Pantheon had hardly noticed her either, once it became clear that no matter how much they tortured her, no matter how much pain they milked from her fragile body, it would never be enough to complete the ritual. She lay bleeding and dying and they hadn't even cared enough to gloat over it. Discarded, useless. Forgotten and ebbing away...
Your power is neither nature nor magic.
Not born of man's knowledge, nor the machines he builds.
And a voice whispering promises she'd already forgotten by the time she'd learned to talk, promising that even pain could be a path to power, even this could be destiny...
It is not written into the cells of your body.
Their leader paced along the curb and spoke into his headset, saying words she didn't have the strength to discern anymore. But out of the corner of her eye she could make out the tear-streaked faces of the people she'd tried to rescue, captive once more, waiting hopelessly for the armored vans that'd take them back to the labs, back to the experiments.
It wasn't gifted to you by death. The rituals merely unlocked a part of it.
Enough to save you from dissolution. To make you more than a ghost.
The voice still promising, still whispering to her, a stinging in the back of her eyes that tinged the red-lit streets with a pulsing white glow, that told her this is destiny too...
Remember my promise. Remember who you were born to be.
* * *
"You see," Agent Brooks told his men with a sideways nod to the fallen, ash-gray specter, "whether it's a hero, a Rikti or even a ghost, it always comes down to firepower."
"You think you know power," the phantom suddenly snarled, and this time her voice sounded different. She'd sounded like an ordinary girl at first, and then a little raspier, her pained groans sounding hoarse in that blindfolded form she'd collapsed into. Now another voice seemed to rise and join hers. Not male or female, but filled with quiet, understated menace.
"You... know... nothing!"
And with those words, the whole intersection exploded into light.
"Well now," Brooks muttered to himself with a soft, trembling bravado as he gradually dared to lower his forearm from his eyes, "there's a neat trick."
White feathery wings beat the air, blowing newspapers and litter across the pavement in slow rhythmic gusts, the plumage drooping into a deep red hue along the lower edge as they raised the girl a few feet above the ground once more. She'd changed too, her scarred cheeks a flawless ivory now, her blindfold replaced by a silver Venetian mask that covered her eyes with its impenetrable slits, her plaid skirt now contrasting a buckled, palladium-hued leather bodice that reflected the fiery wisps of light sweeping and wrapping silently across her body.
"Double the beam intensity, fire on," he started to bark to the Voltaic tanks, and the words came out as slowly and incoherently as if he'd been talking underwater. The air pulsed outward around the girl to envelop the street corner in shadowy waves, seconds stretched and twisted into minutes by each silent throb. He could see the wisps of fog wrapping around the pair of armored agents, but he couldn't possibly shout a warning fast enough to keep it from seeping through the mechanized joints, the men clutching their throats and tumbling across the concrete.
"Do you comprehend our nature, Agent Brooks?"
Two voices speaking in calm, tranquil unison, the girl and something else entirely.
"Fire," he shouted into his microphone, "just take it down now!"
"We have a problem, sir."
It took a moment for Brooks to realize the words had come from his headset, from that young and now panic-stricken voice back at the command station.
"What problem? We're a little busy here!"
A machine gun flurry of bullets clattered uselessly against that gleaming bodice, and then a howling wind, tendrils of white mist and black shadows ensnared the agent who'd fired the gun, flinging him against a wall to silently drain away every struggle, every scream.
"We are the very dawn of life."
"It's the target's readings. They've changed."
"Changed how," he shouted, then frantically switched channels, "try freezing her!"
The hulking, gleaming white shape of a Cryo tank rose up behind the winged figure, aiming his cannon and unleashing a beam of glittering ice shards into the radiant glow. He must have gotten her attention, at least, because she flung her right hand out at him, flexing her palm as though drawing him closer... and instead pulling a thin red stream of light from the seams and joints of the suit, sending the agent tumbling headlong across the ground.
"We are older than the Pantheon. We are greater than Mot."
"The overall pattern's still basically spectral," that faraway voice answered, "but the energy signature's something else entirely. Her attacks don't read like a ghost anymore."
"Then what do they read like?!"
That silver mask half-hidden behind her dark hair turned toward him with a slow, pitiless inevitability, heedless of the Crey agent's trembling gun. Her feet lifted higher off the ground, her wings beating steadily, silhouetting her against the crimson sunset…
"I am power made manifest."
"They're reading," his voice soft and hesitant, as though admitting to a condemned man that there's nothing anyone can do, "they're reading like Statesman, sir."
"I am the Well made incarn-"
At that instant, something snapped and gave way in the angelic figure, and in another moment she tumbled and bounced across the concrete, her wings dissolving into motes of light in the wind, her plaid skirt and pallid cheeks suddenly ordinary and human again. The air hung heavy and still in the twilight, the silence a deafening ring in Brooks' ears as the aura surrounding the girl faded away to reveal the rest of the squad scattered limply about the street.
"Well," he panted, "whatever that was, at least it's... gah!"
He suddenly tumbled to his knees, clutching uselessly for a few seconds at the ethereal wisps of fog twining his limbs and slinking around his throat in tightening coils, and then he fell flat across the pavement, joining the rest of the retrieval team in dreamless sleep.
"What," the crouched girl gasped in quick, choked breaths as she lowered her open palm, one last burst of strength spent conjuring the attack that'd knocked the Crey agent unconscious. Her lungs ached more from the habit of breathing than necessity, her painfully skinned knees and elbows forgetting for the moment that they had no nerves to feel such pain.
"What was that?"
After a few more gulps of air she rose to her feet, swayed and then caught herself against a streetlight. She took another breath, steadied her voice and then closed her eyes, speaking directly into the cellular airwaves with only a slight shudder to betray her bewilderment.
"FBSA registered hero Astorian Shade, MAGI department. Eight suspects incapacitated at the west intersection of Mashu Bridge. Crey Industries security team, human experimentation. They're alive, but barely. Bring ambulances," and she tried to flash a weak, unpracticed smile to the dumbstruck captives huddled by the curb, "it's okay. You're safe now."
* * *
"There's been a change."
Mender Ramiel had long since learned to feel a twinge of dread at such words, especially when they crossed the lips of one such as Prometheus. He cast a worried glance across the perpetually golden cloudscape of the Mender's Enclave and turned to face the titan.
"It's about the Well, isn't it?"
"It's about the Incarnate destined to bring you here," the azure figure answered grimly, "the one we've met in this timeframe has already begun to awaken."
"But that can't be right," the Mender blinked with confusion and suddenly shook his head, "the one in this timeline isn't strong enough yet. We've both seen that."
"No, she's not," Prometheus replied, turning to gaze thoughtfully across the sky at the islands drifting around the aerial city, "the spark ignited within her, but burned only for a moment. That's probably the only thing that kept her from being consumed by its power."
"You mean," Ramiel asked with the hesitation of one who already knows the answer.
"It tried to pull her onto the fast path."
"I see," he answered slowly, losing himself in worried thought for a moment and then finally giving a rueful smile, "that'll certainly keep things interesting."
-
(This story takes place the same day as the story "Astorian Shade: The Fall," with the immediate aftermath of Dark Astoria's transformation and her reaction to it as a level 25 character with deep ties to Astoria but nowhere near ready to go back there. Right after Issue 22 came out I took Shade through Ouroboros and the Echo of Dark Astoria, and this story emerged naturally from that experience, and from where "The Fall" left things emotionally.
"Survivor's Guilt" is the last story dealing with the day of Mot's awakening, though there's one more story set several weeks later: Astorian Shade: Manifest.)
Astorian Shade: Survivor's Guilt
Through all the phantom possibilities and yawning abysses between them, Mender Lazarus always found ghosts the most unnerving. Living people trace their temporal probabilities into the future, but ghosts just bleed gradually away into their own pasts. No future world lines at all, a presence that can only be inferred from the effect it has on the rest of causality.
Still, an experienced mender can learn to discern such shifting probabilities with hardly more than a moment's thought. As the spirit glided across the the shimmering pool of the courtyard toward him, the translucent afterimage of a pale young woman framed against the perpetually cloudswept sunrise and tranquilly floating islands, he recognized her face in the displacement of air and light and gave the approaching figure a cheerful wave.
"Ah, Astorian Shade! Silos has been asking for you. It seems we're approaching a critical juncture in the time stream and, since history has already recorded your involvement on the side of the Menders, he's hopeful that you'll speak with him about..."
The specter swept right past him to stare into the ornate golden alcove of Ouroboros, her eyes narrowing to focus on the brilliant crimson glow of the Pillar of Ice and Flame.
"I'm going to Dark Astoria."
"Why would you go back there," Lazarus blinked in confusion behind his ocular filters, "after all, you're the one who... oh," and he quickly broke quickly away from his thoughts, his voice softening a little, "from your time frame, the change just happened, didn't it?"
The bobbing outline of a girl gave no reply, but she hadn't move away either. He took that as its own answer and so gave a nod toward the fiery crystal looming before them.
"Well, so long as the Dark Astoria you're looking for is part of your past, the pillar won't have any trouble taking you there. But I should warn you, what's happened in Astoria is now a part of history. We call such regions of time 'echoes.' There's no way to change them."
"I know," she answered quietly as she turned and began her flight toward the crystal pillar, into the crackling glow of its temporal energy, "I just want to see it again."
* * *
Talos Island. The sun's out. Springtime, warm breeze sweeping the grass in front of the sealed security gates to Astoria. The guard stationed at the entrance stands his ground, his gun aimed warily at the others, the shambling figures I've conjured from the cemetery shadows. I'd never really order them to attack, and perhaps the guard sees through the bluff, but he doesn't take the risk. He probably doesn't think he needs to, with the gates sealed so tight.
"Astorian Shade. I know you're still attuned to this phone line, so just listen to me."
Azuria's voice crackles like paper burning to ash. She shouts through the telephones that I whisper to with a thought. I pound my fist against the steel gates, harder this time, and it hurts, like lightning coursing through my arm. Reinforced blast doors as tall as a skyscraper, a meter thick iron wall locked by electromagnetic clamps, threaded with security sensors. They're solid. But they're not supposed to be solid, not to me. They did something else to them.
"Terra Volta's nearly doubled its output to Astoria's war walls in the last hour alone..."
Electricity. Science. That means nothing. I raise the enchanted axe Azuria gave me so many months ago, swinging it hard against the dull gray plates. The blade stops an inch short of the metal, crackling, the razor edge glowing white. It's not just pain. It really is lightning.
"...Vanguard's setting up psionic barriers and every mystical group in the city's casting every seal we can think of. The Midnight Squad, the MAGI department, even the Circle of Thorns, everyone's focusing their efforts on keeping Mot trapped behind those walls."
"Good," I answer her voice with thought and radio waves, "then it's still in there."
"It works both ways. Mot can't get out, but nothing else can get in either. Astoria's sealed off completely, physically and mystically. Even a ghost can't get inside."
"You're lying."
I brace the axe in both hands and draw back, swinging it even harder, hard enough to cleave through that shimmering blanket of magic cloaking the steel, hard enough to bite into the solid doors for a second. And the energy throws me backward again, knocking the axe right out of my hand this time, leaving me bobbing in the air like a dandelion seed.
"You must have agents in there," I hiss aloud, "they must have gotten in somehow!"
"A few," she concedes, "but... I'm sorry, but you're not strong enough yet."
"This isn't about strength," I snarl back at the blue sky and cellular signals.
"Then what is it about? Suicide? We almost lost you last night!"
"...that was different."
"You're right, it was different. You were miles away in Atlas Park, inside MAGI's protective barriers and you still barely held onto yourself. What do you think will happen if you step inside Astoria itself right now? Remember how it felt last night, remember how hard it was breaking free, except now imagine that it never, ever stops. That's what you'd be walking into."
It's useless. The others tumble to the ground with a silent wave of my hand, their withered shapes collapsing into lifeless shadows and dust again. The guard lowers his gun with a sigh of relief and says something to me, something that's meant to be sympathetic, but I don't hear him. The axe lies fallen at my feet, forgotten, and I sink to my knees to join it.
"I thought we were helping," my voice no longer defiant, just a dejected monotone now, "Miriam said if we keep fighting the Pantheon and stopping their plans, then eventually we'd be able to take Astoria back. And maybe then... I just... I wanted to go home..."
"I know," her voice small and far away, and then a long pause.
"There's a voice mail I think you should hear," she suddenly says, "the call came into City Hall a few days ago and somehow it got forwarded to Supergroup Registrations. They sent it back to us yesterday morning, but things have been so busy since... anyway, I'll dial it in."
* * *
"Silos told you the details," Lazarus asked the ghostly girl as she emerged from the shadowy stairwells of the inner sanctum. The trip through the crystal, and her tour of Astoria's fading echo, had taken exactly thirty seconds Ouroboros time, the same as all trips through the Pillar of Ice and Flame. How long the visit had seemed to her, he could only guess.
"A temporal incursion in the near future," she answered in the distant, quiet monotone he'd already grown accustomed to, "the Shivans are attacking Atlas Park. Part of the Coming Storm you speak of. I'm being sent to help a mender who's already there."
"Oh," he replied with a mischievous glint hidden behind his metallic monocles, "be sure to tell the mender assigned there that I said hello. He's something of an old friend."
"I see," she said tonelessly, already starting to turn away toward the crystal pillar.
"Did it help? Visiting the echo of Dark Astoria, I mean?"
"It... it wasn't the same."
"Relative to your time frame," the mender shook his head sadly, "no, it wouldn't be."
After a moment's hesitation, he suddenly spoke again, his voice lowered a little beneath the spring breeze rustling perpetually through the ornately arranged poolside trees.
"Perhaps I could speak with Silos and get his permission for you to go back further, before Astoria ever fell. Of course we can't allow the past to be changed, and I doubt changing its fate would be possible even for us, but if it'd give you a chance to say goodbye..."
"No," she answered quickly, as though she'd already considered and forced herself to reject the idea, "they wouldn't know it's goodbye. And I couldn't leave them again."
The elder mender paused and then opened his mouth, only for her to speak first.
"Tell me. Is this future fixed as well? Can the people there be saved?"
"Oh yes," he nodded quickly, "the events you'll be witnessing were never meant to have happened at all. The more people you save, the better off the future will be for it."
"Then I shouldn't keep them waiting," she said, and so turned and vanished back into the alcove, into the heart of the pillar and its forever shifting veil of future possibilities.
* * *
"This is Detective Matthew Habashy, I'm calling to leave a message at MAGI for Astorian Shade. We just got this week's crime stats: Hellion activity's down another 40%, their recruitment rate's dropped by more than half and crime in Atlas Park's at an all-time low.
"There's a story going around that the Hellions are cursed and any gang member who harms an innocent will find himself haunted by you at midnight. I don't know if that's how you really work, but however you do it, you've made a big difference. Many of the ones you've brought in are swearing off the gang completely. I have a quote from one of them here, hold on...
" 'Yeah, I saw her, and if that's the kind of thing that goes bump in the night then I'm done with this occult stuff. You play with fire, you get burned, you learn to stop playing with it.'
"A few of them are even asking the FBSA about becoming registered heroes. There's no telling how sincere they are, but just having them ask about that at all is unheard of.
"I know it probably feels like the same old grind day in and day out, but you've really helped change things around here. Dana and I are even leaving for a cruise next week, to use up some of the vacation days I've been ignoring and start making up for lost time.
"She wouldn't be here today if it weren't for you, and that's true for more and more people these days. Take care of yourself, and give us a call whenever you get a chance."
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(This is actually the very first story I wrote about a COH character, way back before Issue 22 came out, as a way of exploring what the changes to Dark Astoria meant for the character Astorian Shade, who at the time was only level 20. Astorian Shade is the ghost of a teenage girl who was sacrificed when Astoria first went dark, originally emerging from the fog as a spirit of vengeance but gradually redeemed as a heroine with MAGI and Azuria's help. Her origin story's elaborated upon in the AE arc "Forsaken People: A Tale of Old Astoria." This story isn't what I would call a sequel to that arc, since it was more about Astoria itself, but it does continue her development as a character.
Because this was written before the Dark Astoria makeover and I didn't want to be spoiled on it, I kept the details of Mot's awakening to a minimum. I still haven't gotten Shade to level 50 to play through it, though apparently I lucked out in a few details lining up with how events unfolded according to the new exploration badges.
This story continues with "Astorian Shade: Survivor's Guilt," which takes place later that day.)
Astorian Shade: The Fall
Journal of the Modern Arcane Guild of Investigation
Azuria's Report
March 5th
As of tonight, there's been a change in the being known as the Astorian Shade. I hesitate to write this entry so soon after the fact, but the need for as clear and detailed an account as possible must outweigh any emotional considerations. I've supplemented this report as needed with audio transcripts gleaned from the remote viewing sigils.
The situation in Astoria had been deteriorating for some time, and I had advised Astorian Shade against returning to the aid of her former home. Needless to say, she wasn't happy with such advice, but she did abide by it. She instead stayed behind in the MAGI office tonight to help me do research on a possible link between the Hellion's infernal masters and those of the Circle of Thorns. There are times when she could so easily be taken for a normal girl. She assumes human form for days at a time now, and the sight of her sitting at a table, idly kicking one leg against her chair while reading a book, can seem so disarmingly ordinary at times.
"The terms of the contracts sound similar," she'd said with a glance up from the book, while I was looking through the shelves for one of our confiscated Oranbega scrolls, "and there's no mistaking the demons they both summon. It could be a rival archdemon of the same order, trying to forge a new deal to usurp Lilitu's contract with... no... nononoNONO!"
I whirled around at that first panicked syllable, thinking she'd realized something awful about the research we were doing. But that wasn't it at all. Something had flung her off the floor to hover in a bobbing wind above the toppled desk, clutching her head in her hands and flashing with a subliminally quick, cold white light that seemed to cast monstrous shadows across the bookshelves. More than that, I could suddenly sense something else in the office, a psychic presence radiating from her in pulsing black waves, something monstrously evil.
That's all I needed to know to grab my cell phone and wake up the rest of MAGI.
"Gregor, this is Azuria. Something's happened to Astorian Shade: possession, maybe even an exorcism. I want a level 7 containment ward placed on City Hall right now. Get a team ready and prepare the marks. I'll stay here and try to counter the..."
The lights flickered and a silent shock wave rippled through the office as the hovering girl burst into flames with a raspy scream. That same scream flooded the sizzling phone for a moment and then it went silent, the receiver dead. I've only seen her true form a few times, a pale apparition in ashen clothes, blindfolded and horribly mutilated, and I've never actually witnessed her fiery transformation at all. Still, I knew enough about her to think I understood what was happening, that she'd simply lost her concentration and changed form.
"Astorian Shade," I said in a raised but calm, steady voice, trying to be an anchor of confidence against her thrashing turmoil, "listen to me. You're stronger than whatever's trying to control you. Focus on my voice and fight against it. Remember who you are."
"Astoria is burning," she winced through gritted teeth, her blindfolded face turned down as she convulsed against that inner struggle, "it's awake... it's consuming us!"
Then she burst into flames again, and changed into something entirely new.
Pale leathery wings beating the air to hold her aloft, her modest clothes transfiguring into leather and steel before my eyes, a face that had alternated between ethereal beauty and tragic grotesquery now just a blindfolded skull, despite the pale flesh of the rest of its body. She spoke again and each syllable rose in cadence with another, ominously whispering sound that swept around her like a whirlwind, an inhuman language I nonetheless instantly recognized. She was speaking Enochian, the language of the gods. The language of the Scroll of Tielekku.
"Semeroh emetgis i quasb. Teloch niiso bagle nonci-to."
Until that point, I'd vaguely assumed this sudden attempt at possession had something to do with the Circle of Thorns, a desperate effort to stop our research. But that was all just a coincidence, and the meaning of her Enochian words made the truth terribly clear.
The ancient seal is broken. Death comes for you all.
"Mot," I whispered to myself as I stared at the winged nightmare she'd become.
My next thought was the sickening realization that I'd made a horrible mistake. She's not stronger than the thing she's fighting now. Maybe she will be someday, but not yet, and telling her to fight this battle was just making her lose it all the faster. Now that I understood what she's up against, my mind raced to to think up a different strategy. And as I tried to think, she seemed to grow calmer, her struggles gradually ceasing as that inhuman voice spoke again.
"Pashs astel erm camascheth - nai chramsa efe galsuagath rudna."
Children playing with trinkets - I'll smash your precious vault to dust.
The first Enochian words she'd uttered might have been as blind and meaningless as a birth cry, but there could be no mistaking the implications of that statement. The thing wrestling with her for control was becoming aware of its surroundings now, learning enough about me and the MAGI department to threaten us. But in a way, that gave me hope: a god of death has no reason to make threats unless it can't immediately act on them. Despite the eerie stillness of her hovering form, she must still be inside, still fighting against it and holding it back.
"Shade, listen to me," I said firmly, practically holding my breath between each word to keep my voice from trembling, "you have to let go of Astoria. You can't save it.
"You can't save them," I repeated steadily, making myself stare calmly into the face of that blindfolded skull even as her hovering form continued to subtly shift and change, "they're like a whirlpool and if you don't let them go, they'll pull you all the way down with them. They don't have a choice, but you still do. I'm sorry, but you have to let Astoria go.
"You're not a spirit of vengeance," I continued amid the flapping gale of its wings, and I couldn't keep my voice from building into a quick rambling panic, "you're a hero of Paragon City. You're not bound to Astoria, this is your home. And if you don't let go, if you don't let Astoria fall, then you're going to fall too and everyone here will die! Nothing can save them anymore, but you can still save the rest of us. You're not bound to Astoria, Mot can't claim you!"
I don't know if I was trying to reach her, or bluff the eldritch thing trying to overtake her, or maybe just trying to convince myself. But it worked. Or rather, her time as a hero in Paragon City, saving lives, showing mercy to her enemies, reluctantly making friends with the people she'd met, that worked. It made her more than an echo of Astoria, more than its avenging ghost. She had grown into something that, in the end, Mot couldn't reach out of Astoria to snatch away. She gave a convulsive shudder, another, human cry of searing pain and suddenly collapsed onto the carpet, that skeletal phantasm instantly fading away into an auburn-haired girl once more.
And, as Gregor and the ragtag team of magic heroes he'd assembled scrambled down the stairs and into an office suddenly as calm and seemingly ordinary as ever, the Astorian Shade did something I'd never imagined from such a being. She started crying uncontrollably.
March 6th
Daybreak has only confirmed the terrible reality of what the events at City Hall last night seemed to herald. Mot has broken free, and Astoria is now lost to us. A landscape that had once seemed abandoned and shrouded in mist now seethes with demonic life, an otherworldly corruption that threatens to engulf the planet. The destruction is being held in check, for now, and the metaphysical effect on Astorian Shade has been thankfully minor. That deathly apparition she changed into seems to remain as a kind of scar, an unwanted link between Mot's power and herself that afflicts her during times of overwhelming stress, but she retains her free will even in that form. I am confident that she remains a steadfast hero and ally to the city.
The emotional toll of Astoria's fall, though, is another matter. Her existence as a spirit had been entwined with the rest of the ghosts in Astoria, of the people she knew in life, and she drew her strength from them. Though she still has a channeler's aura, she's confided to me that those ghosts seem to have vanished, that she can't hear their voices anymore. For the first time since the day she died, she feels completely alone. As cruelly ironic as it might seem given her spectral nature, she may be, in a painfully real sense, Astoria's sole survivor.
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Thank you again for everything (and I mean that - what other staff would keep moderating the boards and hosting special events on their own time?), and hopefully we'll see you again out there soon.
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Quote:I really like this idea and the one described in the document that the Well is just life energy itself, suggesting that the way it interacts with people is more a manifestation of how that energy interacts with their consciousness than a real personality of its own. It clashes a little bit with how the Well seemed to work, but not irreparably so: did the Well abandon Cole as its champion, for instance, or did Cole's own expectations about the Well create a self-fulfilling prophecy? The second answer's so much more interesting, and the idea of heroes tapping into the planet's life force just seems more appropriate, than the Well as a temperamental and morally shady gatekeeper of power.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Are you sure the Well is truly sentient? The Well never actually speaks to us, the Well speaks to us through others. But so does LSD.
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Quote:Welcome to the real world. Work takes time and money and, unless we're dealing with James Cameron or Scrooge McDuck, budget and time deadlines will get in the way. You'll notice that there were things that were on the agenda after being seemingly put off forever, such as the moonbase and the end of the Coming Storm storyline. Just because things can't be done right when the creators would like to do them doesn't mean they never get done. It means they sit on the back burner until they can come back to it.Originally Posted by Armath
It is pretty much irrelevant at this point, but while that document reveals a very impressive amount of knowledge, it gives me the opportunity to say that i would...never subscribe to the game again. Why?
Because in every other question the phrases "we didn't/don't have time" "too much work invovled" keep crawling up like maggots. I'm sorry, but i'm talking genuinely out of interest and not personal spite. If you can't do this or do that or you have no time, why did you bother with anything at all? Why did you bother creating things if you cannot maintain them? For example, you said that Grandville (as you have described), was a "poorly made in the first place" and you explain us in the end that it "It would’ve been, I believe, 2 solid months of an artists time to fix it; unfortunately, it was time we never had.", or that a second ouroboros, which is pretty much new content would put a huge strain on your resources. Well, that happens with new content now doesn't it? I was very dissapointed by these answers. All these interesting (and sometimes vital proposals for the modernization of the game) would probably never come to fruition even if the studio hadn't closed. Meh...
People have a habit of idealizing creative projects like movies and games into a purely psychological exercise that should never be held back by anything but the creator's vision. In reality, there are limits to what can be done, and the document shows the nitty gritty realities of how Paragon was balancing what they wanted to do with what could feasibly be done with the technology, the budget and the deadlines involved. If the fact that there are limits at all bothers you, you're going to be very disappointed with how pretty much any creative industry works. Even authors have to deal with deadlines once they have a publishing deal.