The Exposition Dragon

He/Him (sort of; It's complicated) American with ADHD.

[tobiasdrake]

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[sexycraisinthanos]

Super big fan of people not dying after being redeemed

Not just in a “live in the world your actions created” way but also in a “you deserve the love that would have prevented you from becoming like this” way but also in an “I hate death as punishment for trying to be better” way

[young-vandal]

[tobiasdrake]

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy 2125 - Suspicions Vindicated

Day 16. THINK FAST!!!

Let's think through the physics of this for a moment. A deadly spinning blade of doom is coming at our face. We stand our ground and throw a kick. Even if our kick connects, there is a pretty decent chance that the spinning sawblade comes straight down into our chest anyway.

Leap Suit here is armed with a deadly weapon and you've got bare fists. We are not looking to trade damage right now, Takky.

There's more proof that this is Hiruko or Takky. A G'ie would have screamed "G'IEEEEEEE" as they died.

Is that bad for the other timeline?

Nah, they're probably fine. In Serial Battles timeline, we were told that anyone who dies in a parallel timeline just gets knocked back to their home timeline.

Then again, it didn't work out that way for Kalamity or BoC Eito. So who knows?

Somehow, I don't think she's going to be very interested in sharing details about last night with us. Call it a hunch.

There's Leap Suit 2 to finish the job. Mission accomplished. Say goodbye to your physical body again, G.

No! They can't do this! I HAD A WHOLE PLAN AND EVERYTHING!!! I REFUSE!!! G'IEEEEEEE!!!

Yeah, that! That's it! That's the sound! Thanks, G!

Wow, I have no idea what the fuck we're going to do for the rest of this timeline because I was totally braced for G'ie serial murders.

I will say, it's been nice to see that my suspicions about Queen Nozomi have been vindicated. I've speculated for a while now that it seemed like Nozomi still existed inside the Queen to some capacity.

Like, the G'ie didn't just kill her and puppet her body around. Her consciousness still existed in there, with all of her personality characteristics and quirks and flaws. It's just that her consciousness was subordinate to the G'ie, which could direct her or assume total control of her whenever she desired to.

Queen Nozomi was still Nozomi but with the G'ie making her think this or that, motivating her to do this or that, or sometimes stepping in directly and blurring the line between where Nozomi ends and the G'ie begins.

Watching the way Takky's mind operated with G at the helm, I feel like we got a firsthand look at precisely that dynamic. A subordinate consciousness being indirectly influenced with invasive thoughts and, from time to time, directly controlled.

Contrast Retsnom, who devoured Darumi and then impersonated her but the original Darumi was consumed and destroyed in the process.

[tobiasdrake]

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy 2124 - Coming Right At Us

Day 16. If we're going to find a body, today's probably the day.

Oh, never mind. Just our usual post-battle full-day fatigue.

G, where the fuck are we and also why!?

I'm really going to need you to not be in my face right now.

G, DID YOU ATTACK HIRUKO!?!?

Is that the Sponsor!?

No, that's not possible. We're over a week too early for Kalamity's arrival, and she arrives in the other timeline. She wouldn't have split in transit and arrived in two timelines at once.

...that's either Hiruko or Takky.

But why are they...?

Takky, they're coming right at us.

Takumi: Hiruko's safe. That's what's important right now.

That's not what I meant. I don't think Hiruko was in any danger. They weren't brandishing the power saw at her. They might have been checking to see if she was okay.

I think they're here for G. That power saw is for cutting your skull open so they can pull her from your brain.

They are definitely after you, Takky! Not HIruko! Which means they're after G! She must have attacked Hiruko in the Bio Lab, and Leap Suit 1 over here got the drop on her.

Leap Suit 2 should be around somewhere too.

[tobiasdrake]

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy 2123 - Roasted Over Flames

Day 15. Straight to bed after battle day, so we probably won't find out what happened last night until tomorrow, if anything did.

Frogs and birds, mainly. Hey, G? How picky are you about whether it's cooked or uncooked? Would fried chicken work?

I don't know. I guess that depends. Could the chicken then have consumed a male after it was fried?

...uh... It'd be a hell of a trick if it did.

Then no, that sounds unappetizing. Would you roast your meals over flame until it destroyed the entire purpose of its sustenance?

Well...

I like my burgers well done, so... arguably yes.

Oh, hey, Shion! Are you here to call out G and possibly explode her out of Takky's brain?

Hey! Rude!

Oh, relax. By now, you're in the Revive-o-Matic with Takky so it wouldn't work anyway.

Somehow, that didn't seem to stop you in the other timeline.

I'm guessing that preparing a few more of those bombs is probably out of the question, huh? At least, not without compromising the loading up of the missiles.

...

I'd like to place an order for seven!

Yes. Which is why you should drop what you're doing and satisfy my requisition. It's much more important than whatever Sirei had you doing in the Defense Room, I assure you.

It's me. He's talking about me. Hey, on a scale of 1 to 10, how stabbable is this guy?

Negative 5.

What?

He is so unstabbable that you will fall right through him and possibly catch on fire in the process.

I will keep that in mind.

I feel like he's testing us with these conversations but I also don't feel like he knows what he's looking for. Shion had to spend a whole cycle researching the G'ie over in the Box of Calamity timeline.

...G, was that you?

That felt like you and that sent a chill up my spine. Is this related to the journal? To whoever was allegedly here before us and died writing it?

Go to bed, Kay. I'll see you in the morning.

At least tell me if I'm right! Why are you so cryptic all the time!?

[tobiasdrake]

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy 2122 - Shoot the Moon

Day 15. The Paragons have shown themselves.

Yeah, that's kinda the drawback of fusing.

It's cool that you get a power increase out of it but if you lose then that's two powerful warriors your side loses instead of just one.

Like. If Goku gets killed, then Vegeta can try and figure something out. If Vegeta gets killed, then Goku can try and figure something out. But if Gogeta gets killed, then who's supposed to figure out how to beat this guy!?

...are you asking me?

Yes.

...why?

Answer the question, G.

...Naruto?

...

The Prince of Tennis?

...

I don't know these references!

Takumi: What about Gohan? He's the strongest in the universe, right?

I-Wait-What-Huh?

...oh shit, I forgot you actually--

I pick Gohan! He's the strongest in the universe!

What-- G! You can't just cheat off of Takky's homework!

Too late! No takebacks!

Dammit, Takky! See what you did!?

Oh we're doing this! Temporal-senpai's trying to shoot the moon. That's why she went and warned us to be ready for today!

Wait, hold up. Why would she want to shoot the moon? Aren't all of your people up there?

No, G, it's a figure of speech.

In the card game Hearts, the goal is to avoid collecting either the Queen of Spades or any cards of the Heart suit. At the end of each round, those specific cards are tallied up and penalty points are applied to whichever players are holding them.

However, there's a high-risk high-reward trick called Shooting the Moon. If one player can collect every single Heart card and the Queen of Spades, they incur no penalty points and each other player instead incurs 26 penalty points, the sum total of all the aforementioned cards.

Hiruko is trying to execute her Perfect Run. Or, at the very least, practicing for it since she can't execute it without Eito here.

By wasting the bomb on Szanshin and Valla-Garzo?

Not wasting. When Szanshin and Valla-Garzo are defeated, V'ehxness suddenly shows up and consumes their cryptoglobin. This makes her insanely over-the-top powerful, forcing us to rely on the bomb to fend her off.

But if we nuke Szanshin and Valla-Garzo before V'ehxness can get them, she's denied that power-up and either has to face us at her normal level or slink off with her tail between her legs.

Better luck next time, V'ehxness! We may have bought ourselves a window here but there's several more Paragons that we're going to need to deny V'ehxness if that's the angle Hiruko has in mind for this.

And, plus side from Hiruko's perspective, that shut them up before they could start talking about their orphaned child. So we don't hear that and start wondering what that means.

She's never liked letting us find out about Futurum, after all.

[tobiasdrake]

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy 2121 - The Cruelest Irony

Day 15. I wonder if we're actually going to play out today's battle or if it will be like Pakron?

The cruelest irony of today's battle day is that there aren't two Paragons out there. There's three.

I do wonder why that is. If they hit us with four or five Paragonis at once, we'd have a very hard time fending them all off. Especially if V'ehxness was one of them.

Just as before, Sirei's death means Tsubasa can finish the bomb in record time. We should be good to get through this without losing anyone.

At least... Not anyone but who we've already lost, that is....

Oh cool, we're actually paying attention to them!

Gonna be honest, after how Pakron went, I totally expected Fused Szanshin/Valla-Garzo to just show up on the field with no explanation.

[tobiasdrake]

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy 2120 - Shhh. Sleeping.

Day 15. Today, we face Szanshin and Valla-Garzo. Today, we see the fruits of Tsubasa's labor. And today, we maybe see the fruits of G's labor too.

Or did G get her last night?

...

That was not a rhetorical question, G.

...

Don't you ignore me!

Shhh. Sleeping.

YOU DON'T SLEEP

...

Where the hell is Darumi?

She's also been around enough loops that she might not want to get too attached to us, since any of us could be the next to die in any given timeline.

That's possible. Her insomnia keeps her up at all hours. But still....

You think I might have targeted her last night instead of Hiruko?

...you seriously expect me to speculate my thoughts on your recent activities to you?

Yes. I like hearing you speculate.

...

(sigh)

Yes, I think you may have gone after Darumi last night. You didn't seem very happy about finding that journal. You made Takky hide it. But you can't make Darumi unread it, can you? She knows about it, which means if there is something in there you want kept hidden, she needs to be silenced.

Ooh, interesting theory. Let's see how it plays out.

She's not wrong. Takky, you should apologize.

Takumi: For what!? My face!?

Yes. And after you've apologized to her, you can apologize to me for the same because I've had to look at it for twenty years of time-looping!

Nah, I'm sure it'd be fine. You should ask her! It'll be fun.

...that proves nothing. You should still ask her! It'll be fun!

For me!

No, I'm with Shouma. What was even the point of dragging him along to 2LDA if we're not going to utilize the fruits of his labor?

"Unstable"? The hell does that mean? Are you going to explode like a well-puffed balloon?

HIRUKO

YOU'RE ALIVE

That means it has to be Darumi. By process of elimination, if anyone died last night, it was Darumi.

G, tell me you didn't start with my Bestie.

G.

G!

Shh. Meditating.

YOU DON'T DO THAT EITHER

[tobiasdrake]

To everyone who told me that I'd super enjoy Lois from My Adventures with Superman: Y'all were correct. She's spectacular.

Given the title, I was kinda hoping she'd be the protagonist of the series and was a little weirded out when the first episode opened on Clark. He is literally the only character who cannot be the "My" in "My Adventures with Superman".

But at least she settled into a deuteragonist role pretty quickly.

[tobiasdrake]

Also, she is definitely the older sister of Luz Noceda. There is a strong personality resemblance.

[jcogginsa]

The first image we saw of her even looked like she was wearing one of Luz's outfits https://static0.moviewebimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/article/WnKxLrs2iHeib6RWqAtNTBGKRuN4h8.jpg

[tobiasdrake]

To everyone who told me that I'd super enjoy Lois from My Adventures with Superman: Y'all were correct. She's spectacular.

Given the title, I was kinda hoping she'd be the protagonist of the series and was a little weirded out when the first episode opened on Clark. He is literally the only character who cannot be the "My" in "My Adventures with Superman".

But at least she settled into a deuteragonist role pretty quickly.

[tobiasdrake]

Also, she is definitely the older sister of Luz Noceda. There is a strong personality resemblance.

[tobiasdrake]

To everyone who told me that I'd super enjoy Lois from My Adventures with Superman: Y'all were correct. She's spectacular.

Given the title, I was kinda hoping she'd be the protagonist of the series and was a little weirded out when the first episode opened on Clark. He is literally the only character who cannot be the "My" in "My Adventures with Superman".

But at least she settled into a deuteragonist role pretty quickly.

[tobiasdrake]

Ohhh, that's why Pomni's a jester. I get it now. For a long time, it's seemed like a totally arbitrary choice. But no. It makes sense.

She mentions in her anecdote of how she got scanned into the Circus that she used to explore old abandoned videos and put the videos up on YouTube.

Pomni's a YouTuber. And what is a YouTuber the modern-day equivalent of?

[floatingquaker]

Within the context of the Circus, it also makes sense. Within a royal court, the jester is the only person who can make fun of the king without immediately being put to death since its their job to do so.

It's telling that she was the first person to call Caine out on how bad he is at his job in the penultimate episode, and even when Caine retaliates in fury, she gets the least traumatizing nightmare scenario because Caine doesn't really know a lot about her past compared to the other Players.

[tobiasdrake]

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy 2119 - Paranoid and Defensive

Day 14. That's the end of Free Time. Guess we should hit the hay and rest up for tomorrow's battle.

If the diary didn't time travel then could it be possible that it was forged? But why? Why would a serial murderer forge evidence of an impending serial murder?

Oh, that should be Tsubasa to let us know that the bomb's finished.

Or Gaku to let us know Tsubasa's dead.

Or that, yes.

Takumi: It might just be Darumi here to talk about the journal.

I could see that too. Go on, answer it.

You weren't anybody's guess! Are you here to talk time-shop, Hiruko?

So that's a yes, then.

Yeah, she's like that. You'll get used to it, Takky. Just give it time and don't worry too much about figuring out what it means.

Don't you usually want him to figure out what it means?

Not when he's taking marching orders from YOU, I don't!

Okay. But I know what it means, so I don't know how that would actually protect her.

Don't question my logic! It makes sense in my head, okay!?

That second one is my main question. What was the point of dropping by with this message? Why couldn't we just be surprised tomorrow like everyone else? Unless she's going around telling everyone, which she may be doing.

Still. I'm not sure how this short of notice helps us in any meaningful way.

G, no. Whatever this is, it's not allowed! What the hell are you up to now?

Nothing, Kay. You're so paranoid and defensive this timeline. You heard Hiruko. We have an important battle tomorrow, and I think we could all use a good night's sleep.

[tobiasdrake]

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy 2118 - Eat the Disgusting Burger

Day 14. One last day of Free Time before Szanshin and Valla-Garzo get here tomorrow?

Guess we gotta do breakfast first.

Hey, Tsubasa! Great job still being alive! Keep it up. I believe in you.

I don't.

Hush, you!

Want to make a bet on if she survives the week?

It's cheating if you kill her yourself, G.

Oh. Damn.

He definitely wants that one! Takky, eat the disgusting bean paste burger. For science.

It can't be any weirder than some of the shit sit-down restaurants will put on a bun and call a burger!

Hate it or not, the twins are going out into the field with us. So it's only natural that they'd want to avoid dying while they're out there.

Again, you are going out into the field with us, Kako. It's better that you be able to defend yourself out there than need to rely on Ima's protection.

Though I do understand why Ima wouldn't see it that way.

Do not take him up on that, Kako. Takky is not to be trusted.

Good for him. We may see Swolema by the end of the month!

Tomorrow, actually.

As much as I'd love to spend today's Free Time hanging out with everyone, we actually do have serious plans today. We're out of Textiles.

That's one problem solved!

[tobiasdrake]

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy 2117 - Shōnen Manga Protagonist Boys

Day 13. Another day of Free Time before we presumably find a body tomorrow! I just hope it's finished in time....

Kyoshika's clue is #Exercise Machines, for which this is the only item. And... yeah. That checks out. Of course this is Kyoshika's.

I mean, if it's not, it is weird to just walk up and hand you a sex toy.

So. Takky, I think you have to marry her now. It's the law.

You're right, this is exactly the conversation that would naturally follow the gifting of a masturbation tool.

More awkward than the gift!?

So I'm pretty sure I caught:

-> The Prince of Tennis -> Kenshin Himura -> Naruto Uzumaki

The point is, you like shōnen manga protagonist boys. Specifically, the kind that actually live in a world and are good at things, and not the loser nobodies who the universe cosmically decides should be treated as special anyways.

I'm pretty sure none of those guys was "I was a retail clerk but now I'm reincarnated as the Infinite Demon Lord!"

Oh yeah, by all means. We all know she'll always be your #1 anyways.

I guess this is the #Party Clothes for Kurara.

I don't really see the connection but okay.

[tobiasdrake]

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy 2116 - For the Cosplay

Day 12. That was an ominous start to a day but now we're on for Free Time.

Kyoshika.

Kyoshika, tell me you don't....

Hiruko swims in your grime and detergent, Kyoshika!

She might actually pull your head off over this!

She better not! I need her body intact!

I never thought I'd say this but Takky, I need you to buzzkill this right now!

It's just like in the fairytales? What does she mean by that?

She means that she owns a fucking washing machine back home and knows goddamn well what they are but she's doing it this way anyways for the cosplay of it.

Okay but she doesn't want to use a washing machine. She wants to feel like Naruto Uzumaki. This is a real conundrum.

Takumi: It's really not. She should just use a washing machine.

You heard the lady, Takky. This is a valid use of your meager capabilities.

Uh, I think she just did. What else are you going to do with your life? Long division? Frankly, this is probably going to be the peak of your entire career.

She's got you there. This is how wealth disparity works, Takky.

Takumi: Shouldn't she at least be paying me, then!?

Mmm, depends. The further into late-stage capitalism you go, the more wage slavery begins to just look more and more like regular old-fashioned slavery.

You know what, I'd be remiss not to mention that this might be the most relatable you've ever been in your life. That's fair.