Instructions unclear. Became a bartender with a black facemask, shoulder holstered M9, and surplus IMTV armor vest.
Invested into rubber bottles and scored advertising deals as well as sale of rubber bottles with colored water to other locations.
Hang on, I think someone's having a plot critical argument I gotta excu6mys
Alright, now you listen here: I'll not have it said I advised anything that could be taken as using an armored vest and shoulder holster. What you've done is dangerously close to becoming a Mook, because you're armed, armored, and your face is concealed.
Fortunately, I know the cure for being a Mook, even a hostile one! It's a traditional remedy. All you need to do is wait for the protagonist to be nominally unarmed (see post linked for 'unarmed' meaning 'absolutely armed'), and, when the fighting is about to break out, tip them a subtle nod before tossing them your (gun/sword/gun-sword/laser gun/robot with a gun/robotic gun/etc./gun-etc.) to get the party started.
Not only will you likely survive the battle, afterwards, you'll get to take your mask off and inform them of the next area they should check out, or where to find a way out of this complex. You'll probably be there if they check your location out later, and you can totally stick them with a sidequest if they drop by.
Hey there:) lately i've been tagged in a few writing posts, but i am also in a bit of a writing hole atm. So i am gonna do something else with that, i hope you dont mind:)
i call it "Whatever, its shoutout day!" Where i just give shoutouts to anything in the fandom that makes me happy right now:)
Shoutout to this bucktommy fic by @zeraparker !
connected by a string of text and letters - Chapter 1 - zeraparker - 9-1-1 (TV) [Archive of Our Own]
its just...*chefs kiss* and tommy... *sight* oh oh! and the OCs *heart eyes* Everytime there is a new chapter, i am just the happiest girl alive!
Shoutout to the Saltommy community! I know, i am not as active as i could be, but just so you know; i am very gratefull for this little safespace and everyone in there:)
Shoutout to my beloved mutuals, you know who you are!
And last but not least, shoutout to Lou Ferrigno jr. for holding the entire fandom with his big, gruffy, mannly, wonderfull, giant HANDS, yes his hands, thank you Lou!
If you read until here, feel yourself tagged! spread some positivity:)
It wasn't fair. The information superhighway was bleeding from electric veins, death's blue wings stretched to cover the sky, the liquid crystal corpse of hope stank upon the air, and world was falling down. And yet, she; a simple courier program; still had to go to work.
The streets of her corner of the digital world were silent as she walked down their footfalls. The new lights of the regime did not illuminate the polygon-vector corners of the towers as much as drowned them. She kept her head down, looking at her feet as she walked. Perhaps it wouldn't be so painful to look at if she hadn't seen what they were like before, when the streets of the net felt sparking with freedom. Sparking with life.
But now, they felt dead, despite being perhaps more packed than they ever had. Perhaps that was a consequence of who was filling them. The Electroshocks, the soldiers of the regime. The soldiers of death.
They towered like a firewall walking, with steely eyes and lead souls, not acting, but always about to act at your wrong move. She remembered she had had heard rumors about how they were made. She started walking faster.
There was a sound. a shout as she walked. She saw another program, being held by an Electroshock, their stun-grapple-cannon wrapped around them like a noose. There was a small decal in slight protest of the regime like graffitti, hovering in the air, only half compiled.
The program beat their fists against the thing's hide, but to no avail. The noose choked tighter. The pieces of the program began to crack, pixels bleeding as polygons cracked. Still he fought. Still he bit.
It did not save him. The Electroshock took the entangled program, and raised them to its head. With one flash of their bright light, they were gone. No shattered polygons, no bitmap piles of glistening digital visceral. Just pixels floating in the air, a clean form of gore.
On seeing this, she did the only thing she could do. She ran.
She ran down the streets, shadowed by the cold lights. She ran from the crowds, heads to the ground like her. She ran to her work. She knew the path, even though she felt lost. So very lost, doing the one thing she could do. The one thing she'd always done. Run away.
And then, all at once, she was there.
As she re-rezzed, strain moving from static fuzz to sharpness as if breathing, she looked up to the sky. And she remembered yet again why she didn't want to look up. The nodes once hung like stars in the sky, links to other places in the digital world, the twinkling lights in its black skies.
But now, the stars were winking out one by one. They had been for a long time, but by the time she'd realized it, it was too late. Too late for her, at any rate.
Because, what could just one program do?
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SO, I'm bringing back my old CQ-verse setting, sorta. Which, if you don't remember it, it was basically my take on "Digital World" settings, ala Tron, Mega Man Battle Network, Reboot, Digimon, ect.
It was well liked, probably had the most potential, but it's lain fallow over these years due to... well, all the stuff putting the net under constant threat, like KOSA, the suite of age verification laws, the threats to Section 230, ectcetera, meaning the net these characters would live on... might not exist anymore.
But, I've decided to work that very fear into this new iteration. As to how it ties into the old one? Well, you'll see. Because, as the story implicitly tells, with great villains we need great heroes to fight then, now don't we?
The name, as befitting the musical theme naming of the whole CQ-Verse stuff, is based on the working title for the song Shock Treatment from the musical of the same name! You know, that Rocky Horror semi-sequel nobody liked! And yes, I did that partially because they look like a giant taser.
I'm also doing an attempt at drawing attention to the activism meant to save the net in each entry, because god knows we need more eyes on that, so boost it wherever you can.
My org of the day is the Free Speech Coalition, a newer one but one which has been doing fucking vital work resisting the age verification laws infesting states and threatening to infest this nation. Join up with 'em, and maybe we can not only stop these laws from being passed, but maybe even fight back to burn away those that infest our states now...
As per usual with my narrative work, this story, character and all narrative elements are under a CC-BY 4.0 license, as long as I, Thomas F Johnson, am credited as their creator…
It’s kinda funny how the distinction between “grunt suits” and “hero suits” is mostly a thematic thing in Gundam, with the biggest separating factor being the pilot’s plot armor level, but things inspired by Gundam codified the difference in-universe in terms of stats. RX-7s vs Buster Machines in Gunbuster, MTs vs ACs in Armored Core, LEVs vs Orbital Frames in Zone of the Enders…
