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With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

Discussion in 'Creative Writing' started by Mr Zoat, Jan 27, 2019.

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  1. Istaran

    Istaran Know what you're doing yet?

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    The ideal 'counter' to Paul will always be to make him want what you want him to want.
     
  2. Someguy Somewhere

    Someguy Somewhere The Critical Fumbler

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    Guess I'm rusty...haven't read that one in a decade or more. Carry on.
     
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  3. Coda

    Coda Versed in the lewd.

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    Missing closing single quote before the double quote.

    Copper patina isn't rust (it isn't even an oxide; it's a sulfate), and unlike with iron it's stronger than the unreacted metal. It protects the metal from corrosion. The Statue of Liberty was probably green within a decade of its installation.
     
  4. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
     
  5. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    Not here there aren't, otherwise LePaul could just Greedport out.


    The general concept of Political Corruption includes the concept of enemies of the political elite just randomly dying.

    Realistically speaking this is not a battle LePaul should be able to win so long as he's in the Anti-Heartland.
     
  6. BR549

    BR549 This is filth! FILTH!!

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    You know, here's an interesting question...

    How different is Smileyworld from Fallout America pre-nuking?
     
  7. Ardy

    Ardy I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Fewer microtransactions, but only barely.
     
  8. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    Yup, and here's an obligatory history lesson to go along with your information that someone might want to forward to Mr Zoat.

    https://www.copper.org/education/liberty/liberty_reclothed1.html

    Basically put, LePaul fucked up badly and basically destroyed an irreplaceable cultural artifact in a way that would realistically turn a good portion of the American population against him.
     
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  9. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    More magic. Less power armour.
     
  10. Windona

    Windona Beetle Queen of Crackshipping

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    Sure, people would miss the green color, but wouldn't the Orange Ring make it in perfect repair if that's what Paul wanted to do?
     
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  11. Caerwen

    Caerwen Know what you're doing yet?

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    [​IMG]
     
  12. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    Only if he had taken a perfect scan of the statue before he did it.

    And even then, it wouldn't be the same to a lot of people because it would be missing the history.
     
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  13. Threadmarks: Fallout: Iowa (part 6)
    Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    4th November 2282
    06:12 CDT


    "Hey, Mutie Chief!"

    I raise my right hand and wave at the group of Enclave soldiers heading for morning exercises. That's apparently my name now, and I think their use of it marks my promotion to 'house mutant'.

    Progress, of a sort.

    Central Iowa is… Nice, actually. The main settlement is surrounded by walls of rammed earth, wide enough for a walkway to have been included for the sentries to walk along at the top. The buildings… Mostly barracks and sheds at the moment, are built with walls of reclaimed bricks and stones, held together with newly created mortar. The roofs are corrugated iron, and noisy as heck when it rains. But good quality building wood isn't something that grows quickly, and there aren't enough quality animal hides in Iowa for the locals to use instead.

    The ground is covered in some of Diana's quick-growing grass, the shade of green looking somewhat.. odd to my eyes. It's quite a bit brighter than what I remember of the pre-War plant, something that's carried over into the improved plants growing in the carefully marked off fields outside of the stockade. Even the G.E.C.K.-supercharged land around here can't grow much in winter, but land for wheat and potatoes to be grown is closest to the walls, fields marked out with metal poles and wire fences. Actual trees have been planted at sites marked out for future settlements, in the hope that the wood will be ready for construction work when they get that far. No birds singing; their migratory instincts would get them killed by the radiation clouds. But there are chirping sounds coming from the insect enclosures and a quiet hum from the bee hives under the grunts and exercise songs coming from the 'National Guard' soldiers.

    All in all, not a terrible place to live.

    I nod at the guards outside the settlement's 'research centre', and they let me through without issue. I think this was some sort of meat processing plant before the war, but it has since been repurposed into somewhere for the scientists of the 'Iowa Environmental Protection Agency' to work in. Mostly they do soil and crop analysis, making sure that the G.E.C.K. is still doing its thing and we're not all getting unknowingly irradiated. They've also got a back room filled with partially assembled suits of power armour that they haven't actively tried to hide from me but didn't include in my tour.

    Hey, if they want to spend their time doing that it won't be me who goes hungry.

    Now, where is-?

    **Doctor Rubens?**

    **W-huh-? Oh. The-. Krono. I'm in the electronics workshop.**

    I nod and walk down the corridor in that direction. Until recently, vehicles were a rarity in the wasteland, and even today the trucks in my convoy represent an appreciable portion of the total functioning vehicles in North America. But doing farm work without either tractors or draft animals is extremely hard work, so the IEPA's engineers and scientists have been hard at work turning recovered vehicle wrecks into farm vehicles. Of course, right now the remains of the robots that attacked us are taking priority.

    I open the door at the end of the corridor, entering the workshop from the side. The closest vehicle will eventually be a combine harvester, the high-torque engine system from a Great War tank powering a newly built wheelbase and the rotating harvester. Once it's finished, anyway. At the moment it's a mechanical skeleton that probably won't be finished until July, with the partially-welded harvester sitting off to the side so that it doesn't get in the way.

    The electronics workshop is at the end furthest from the garage doors. There's an actual clean room for delicate work, but since we're not exactly doing a lot of precision work here it's mostly just used for creating the micro vacuum tubes virtually all local advanced technology relies on. Next to that there's a couple of workbenches with power packs, volt and amp meters, soldering irons and such other tools of electronic engineering that the scientists and technicians here might need.

    Doctor Rubens glances up from the robot leg she's disassembling. She's wearing overalls that were once pristine white, but have now been reduced to a pale grey. Most enclave clothing is that colour, a little lighter or a little darker. They like wearing pre-War uniforms but there are only so many of those around and while they are hard-wearing the dyes do fade eventually. Cotton production has started returning to the NCR, Texas and the RRG but… Ah… At the moment it's mostly used for underwear more than anything else as other clothing can be made from the more readily available leather or fur. Twin Mothers is basically the only place that has wool.

    "It's not RobCo."

    I nod. "I suspected."

    "This leg is more like a human cybernetic. I've seen similar things in Washington on a few occasions. Though the design is obviously different."

    "Have you been up all night?"

    She jerks, tearing her eyes away from her work to look at me.

    "It's morning?"

    "Yes, it-."

    "Then I guess it's time for my morning stimulant!"

    She walks over to a thermos flash and unscrews the lip, peering at the contents. Then she pours out a cup's worth of Costa Cafeinada's 'enhanced' product into a ceramic mug and puts the mug into a microwave. That's probably a terrible way to drink good coffee, but that would only be an issue if Costa Cafeinada made good coffee rather than relying on the highly addictive chemicals they've bred into their coffee plants.

    "I'm not sure that's a good-."

    "Oh please." The microwave pings and she extracts the now-steaming mug from it. "I filtered out their weird chemical additives. It's just coffee." She slurps down a mouthful before returning to her station.

    "It's still highly addictive."

    "The day I take lessons on narcotics from a mutant tribal is the day I move to China."

    I mean… Technically…

    "You didn't know that… China is currently a capitalist monarchy? In as much as it… Still exists, I mean."

    "China is communist."

    "China was communist in much the same way that the Enclave was the government of America. When the bombs fell, it stopped being the case to any significant degree. Since they didn't really have Vaults it was the groups furthest away from the big cities that survived to rebuild, and… One of those places was Taiwan. The… Taiwanese ended up occupying most of the region around Beijing, killing off what was left of the central communist party."

    She's not moving, just staring at me.

    I smile awkwardly. "So about the robot..?"

    "So, it-? We.. won..? The War..?"

    "You could see it like that? I don't think the current Emperor likes America very much, and China is a going concern while America has only reassembled itself at the state level, but you definitely beat the communists with a little help from your allies."

    I'm not entirely sure how Taiwan managed to remain independent after America pulled out, though I suspect the short range nuclear missile batteries and the truly ridiculous number of sea mines still in the region might have had something to do with it. Then when America went on the attack after the invasion of Alaska they were only too happy to host the Americans in return for 'development aid'.

    "But the robot?"

    "Yes-. Yes. I was about to crack open the CPU and see what I'll need to add to the wish list in order to access it." She puts the mug down and picks up a head from the parts bench. "It's not a pre-War design so I doubt that I'll have what I need here."

    I nod as she puts it down in front of a hydraulic metal cutter. She clamps the head in place and picks up the cutter.

    "Okay. Power on…"

    With a little difficulty she gets the end of the cutter to grip the head, making a small incision. Then she moves the cutter and makes another close by before turning the cutter and snipping out the metal between the two incisions. That lets her get one prong of the cutter inside so that she can cut around the edge, peeling back the armour to reveal-.

    Dr. Rubens pokes the substance in the skull's interior.

    "Why is there a brain in this robot?"
     
    Last edited: May 31, 2022
  14. hance1986

    hance1986 A pitiful excuse for a man.

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    in
     
  15. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    "built"
     
  16. Coda

    Coda Versed in the lewd.

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  17. iamnuff

    iamnuff Connoisseur.

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    Why wouldn't there be?
    Robobrains are a known thing, right?
     
  18. Bloodalchemy

    Bloodalchemy Versed in the lewd.

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    You wave twice in the same sentence.
     
  19. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
     
  20. Chojin Patriarch

    Chojin Patriarch Veteran Lurker

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    Greeeaaat. Still, it's better than them aiming kicks, or worse, guns, at you, I suppose. It probably helps that you (and I'm guessing here) don't look all that different to a 'normal' American. No green skin, scaly patches or random gribbly bits they can see. :rolleyes: So of course they're polite.

    And said animals are probably better used in the fields than for food or other materials.

    All very pastoral, in a 'military community' kind of way.

    For 'defense purposes only', no doubt... Still, their resources to waste.

    Though I suspect the troops would probably insist on having full bellies rather than good armour, if they knew. An army marches on its' stomach, after all.

    Heh. Putting all those unnamed NPCs to good use, eh?

    To be fair, most people never needed to travel, so working cars or trucks weren't that useful.

    No need for it when they don't have crops it can be used to harvest yet, after all.

    Because the Fallout universe never really embraced the transistor, did it?

    Ah, nothing like having the delicates in a comfortable embrace, rather than a leathery one, eh?

    They do have a certain design sensibility, don't they? Very mid-century sci-fi...

    Amusing that he's more interested in her health than information on the robot. Understandable, since losing any decent scientific mind would be a blow out here.

    ...The building does have windows, right? Someone's focused.

    Ah, a liquid breakfast. :rolleyes: A true scientist...

    Well, good to see evidence of some decent trade, at least?

    Eh, let her be. Some people just can't function without the brown sludge.

    Gee, thanks for that darling stereotype. Not all mutants are frenzied drug users, you know...

    Ah, the middle Kingdom rolls from one extreme to the other once again, eh?

    Krono, did you break her brain? People need those smarts!

    Total nuclear war has no winners, kid. The only way to win is not to play.

    Independence through superior firepower, eh? How... American.

    I'm sure Krono's people could find something in their treasure trove of science fiction tech to do the job.

    After all, damaged as it is, there's not much chance of breaking it worse, really.

    ...Yesss?

    Oh, boy. Cyborgs. The big question is, was it willingly donated or not?

    Well, there's a turn. Presumably that's why they were so fast and responsive. There's some things meat brains do better than metal. Still, that doesn't bode well. From the sound of it, they weren't attacked because they were intruding on someone's turf, they were being raided for parts. Which raises another question: How will whoever's behind this view this little colony? Invaders... Or a stockpile of components?
     
  21. KaiKolo

    KaiKolo Know what you're doing yet?

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    Has the Enclave ever stated that they intended to continue the war against the People's Republic of China?

    The Enclave does claim to be the continuation of the United States government, they seem obsessed with the past, and Anti-Communist propaganda was ubiquitous before the Great War.

    It wouldn't be too much of a stretch for the Enclave to want to finish what the old government couldn't in regards to the PRC.
     
  22. megrisvernin

    megrisvernin Connoisseur.

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    Probably down the priority list after 'reclaim America'.
     
  23. DAT_NOOB

    DAT_NOOB Accused of writing in a far away land

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    Ha! and Paragon Paul said Taiwan reclaiming the mainland (on earth-16) was a pipe dream!
     
  24. Ganurath

    Ganurath Apologizes For Nothing

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    China of Earth 16 has the Great Ten. China of Fallout had a lot more problems than Iowa did for being downwind of United States Strategic Command.
     
  25. edmantgoog

    edmantgoog Not too sore, are you?

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  26. Prince Charon

    Prince Charon Just zis guy, you know?

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    There are some Doctor Who references in Fallout, that I don't think are limited to 'Hey, who turned out the lights?'
     
  27. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    They also get a bit confused when he tries to explain where he's from.
    Actually, no. Power armour is so much a part of their identity that they'd be okay with half rations if it meant that they could still fight.
    Bethesda occasionally forgets that point.
    Oh, definately. As far as they're concerned they're still at war with China, and Enclave Reborn actually allows you to nuke China.
    Covered tomorrow, but that was actually pretty unusual and robobrains only exist in a few places.
    The Tardis is literally in the first game.
     
  28. BR549

    BR549 This is filth! FILTH!!

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    Now now. The proper term you're looking for is 'Human Resources'.
     
  29. moralrelativity

    moralrelativity Recovering pendant.

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    moments -> contents
     
  30. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
     
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