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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. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    I really recommend you do so now.

    The jokes are hilarious, so much so that you'll feel like you're dying.
     
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  2. Assblaster5000

    Assblaster5000 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Oh don't worry, I am.

    Definitely feel like dying too!

    God fucking damnit Alfa.
     
  3. Fellow

    Fellow Know what you're doing yet?

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    Wouldn't want to transfer sites again.
    :D
     
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  4. Threadmarks: Summer's End (part 12)
    Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Bullshit
    Start


    Turns out? It's a small universe.

    I haven't toured the whole star system-. 'Star system'! A quick bit of mental arithmetic shows it's not even as large as the orbit of Jupiter, so either we're in some sort of New God Dyson sphere-. No, no, even Darkseid wouldn't make a Dyson sphere decorated to look like the Source Wall. It would be too much like waving his own failure in his face. And Izaya certainly wouldn't.

    That is actually the Source Wall. The universe has shrunk until Earth and the sun are all that's left. If Mercury or Mars survived whatever the hell did that, they didn't survive the expansion of the sun. It's just Earth, and the sun, and the Source Wall, and the dust.

    I got close enough that it should have pulled me closer. That's what happened last time. Does the Source Wall here not work like the one in Universe 50? I'd sort of assumed it was, you know, the Source, but I suppose that physical laws could be different enough for it to interact with its environment differently from one parallel to the next.

    The universe is smaller than a star system.

    Okay. Okay. I know that it's possible to escape. The Sheeda did that repeatedly with the Castle Revolving. I don't know if the… Size of the universe-.

    THIS IS RIDICULOUS! THIS SITUATION IS RIDICULOUS! AND I'M RIDICULOUS FOR BEING HERE!

    Haaaa. Ugh. Haa.

    I need to stop thinking about it. Just get back down to Earth, tell people, then grab a few Low Born and teach them how to play frisbee or something.

    I need to stop thinking about it because my thoughts are looping around in a decidedly unhelpful manner.

    And… At least I know why the Bleed membrane instability generator didn't work. The Bleed is still there, but the physical laws which allow us access to it have changed. We can probably adapt-.

    A red.. beam… Flashes past me. Not close by, but light scatter in the dust cloud makes it clearly visible.

    What? This is… This is not a good time for something stupid to be happening.

    I pull my handholds slightly, and the booster beetle farts out a cloud of burning rocket fuel. We designed it to contain more than I'd need for the journey they thought I had planned, and I didn't even get that far. I'm heading back to Earth-.

    There are more red beams WHY ARE THERE MORE RED BEAMS!

    I mean, they're not aiming them at me, at least not with any accuracy, but they're punching through the clouds…

    Mother Box, am I seeing things, or..?

    Ping.

    I can feel… An etheric… Motion. Something's… Rising from the planet, and… Drifting, towards the sun. Did I not notice before? Or… Was it not happening? It's-.

    I gasp for breath as my armour dims!
    Fortify!
    The beetle's flying as fast as it can, but I add a little extra oomph with my aero-discs as we head into the uppermost clouds. I'm not sure exactly where we're landing OR WHY THERE'RE SO MANY RED BEAMS IN THE ATMOSPHERE but with the mood I'm in I'm not going to worry about it. The booster beetle isn't going to explode if I can make a controlled landing, and it's not going to have that much fuel left anyway.
    Fortify.
    My kingdom for a radio. One that actually works here. I try feeling for Artemis but get absolutely nothing.
    Fortify.

    It's hard to tell exactly what's going on. I'm not used to these precise weapons and the light-scatter that this environment generates. But it looks like THEY'RE SHOOTING EACH OTHER WHY ARE THEY SHOOTING EACHguuuh!
    Fortify.
    Right. When I panic, it gets worse. If I didn’t just fail to see it, the planet started getting drained when the shooting started. Assuming that the mechanism is the same, that means that with people fighting for their lives down there the whole place is being drained faster.
    Fortify.
    I wish Luna was here. This sounds like a pony problem.
    Fortify.
    Only with more killing, obviously.
    Fortify.
    Ah. Okay. Whatever's feeding on the world's suffering doesn't like love. Definitely a pony problem.
    Fortify.
    Lights over there, lights over there. I can't really steer the booster beetle directly, but if I angle my aero-discs slightly I can aim away from both of them. Ambush is my best bet. Find someone, grab them and find out what just happened.
    Fortify.
    I know that time's gotten sort of fuzzy without clocks or days, but I can't have been away that long.
    Fortify.
    Can I?
    Fortify.
    I never bothered trying to understand the effect of gravity on time as experienced at the personal level. I don't think anyone… Perhaps outside some of the more fanatical Source-focus religions who build their monasteries and prayer halls around the Source Wall back in the twenty first century, knows how the Source Wall affects time, if at all.
    Fortify.
    Alright, we're low enough. I twist my hands and the booster beetle chokes off its fart exhaust. Apply upward thrust with the aero-discs, angle so that we get a little lift from this ungainly thing… It's definitely lighter coming back than it was taking off. Shame it won't live all that long; I'd love to show it off to my children. But it'll probably be recycled once the biomechanists have given it a once-over to see how well it fared. They're still that human, at least.
    Fortify.
    Beams and a sense of conflict from a direction I'll call west. Ideally I'd like to come down near the edge of that, but though Sheeda air cavalry only make up a minority of their forces they are perfectly competent in using them. Without the rocket plume the booster beetle isn't that visible, and without the glow of my rings neither am I… But Sheeda can scry through this murk reasonably well. If they're keeping an eye out and want to shoot me, then they'll shoot me.
    Fortify.
    And of course the beam goes right through the booster beetle's head.
    Fortify.
    For goodness' sake.
    Fortify.
    Pushing off my aero-discs I hurl the beetle in the approximate direction that shot came from and then drop. Even a terminal velocity fall won't do me any damage and given everything that's happened I think that a bit of the old ultra-violence is just what Desaad ordered.
    Fortify.
    I draw my daiklave and start switching between optical modes until I find one which-. There we are.
    Strike Them Down.
    I'm not as powerful when fighting on an ally's behalf as when I'm fighting on my own, even less so when the alliance is as uncertain as the one between Artemis and myself on one side and Lord Caeryg on the other.
    Strike Them All Down.
    And there are the fly-riders and I'm coming for you, you miserable bondage-elves!
    Leave None Alive.
    I don't use my sword on the first. Like an ironic bug on the windshield she and her mount splat across my armour, their remains falling to the ground where I can already see the zombherds directing their charges to recycle the fallen.
    Well Maybe One.
    "I need one of you alive."

    I charge, because while those flies are pretty agile their speed is a bit rubbish.

    "The first to surrender-"

    The closest comes close to bringing their pivot-mounted gun to bear before I cleave through him and his gun and his mount.

    "-gets to live."

    I grab the part of the gun with the fuel cell analogue and throw it at the fly trying to manoeuvre behind me for a shot. It detonates in the rider's face and he fails to correct his course before slamming into the remains of the fly I just bisected. They don't explode but their fly does lose a wing and they begin to tumble towards the ground.

    The zombie children don't have to wait until things are dead to eat them.

    I grin as I look at the survivors.

    "How about it?"
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2020
  5. Katillno

    Katillno Verified Nobu fan

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    Holy shit the universe being that small implies a lot of dead aliens
     
  6. WhiteNoise

    WhiteNoise Making the rounds.

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    Ridiculous.
     
  7. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    'the whole'

    'ridiculous'

    'maneuver'

    So much for the Sheeda not being evil.
     
  8. Assblaster5000

    Assblaster5000 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Well at least now we know that whoever the Big Bad is they seemingly like to hang around Earth.

    Also, building right up against The Source Wall, that seems... a small bit uncompliant with OSHA.
     
  9. webxro

    webxro Benevolent Bystander

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    Ok, I am almost out of theories, the only thing I have left is that they wrap the source wall around Earth to trap something inside. But who the fluck can wrap the source wall ? Because the entire universe being the size of a dyson sphere is bad bad news.
     
  10. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    The Source maybe.

    Well and the Presence if they're two distinct beings.

    Hell Darkseid could still be behind this, I think he once corrupted the Source Wall.

    And as far as we know the rest of the universe could somehow be still fine and Earth is just surrounded by the Wall.

    I mean probably not, but it's a possibility.
     
  11. Assblaster5000

    Assblaster5000 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Less than a dyson sphere actually, those fuckers are big. Especially since if you're going to make a sphere variant instead of a dyson swarm you're probably just going to make it into what basically amounts to ring-world anyways, with housing, manufacturing, and so-on.
     
  12. Fellow

    Fellow Know what you're doing yet?

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    That's a pretty big dyson sphere
     
  13. moralrelativity

    moralrelativity Recovering pendant.

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    "REDICULOUS", so many times has GOT to be a reference to something. No idea exactly what though.
     
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  14. Assblaster5000

    Assblaster5000 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    If I'm remembering that story correctly than Darkseid failed in his goal of corrupting The Source Wall, but he did have the ability to do so.
     
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  15. Fellow

    Fellow Know what you're doing yet?

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    ???
    Doesn't a dyson sphere only encapsulate the sun and not the whole system?
     
  16. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    Yep, and now this is a Darkseid that has had a long, long time to refine his powers so he may be able to do it now.

    Assuming this is Darkseid.

    Another person that could have done this is Nekron or William Hand. In the whole New Gods vs Green Lanterns story Hand damaged the Source Wall, but he just let Relic out if I remember correctly.

    It's unlikely it will be him though since it's a part of the n52.
     
  17. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
    Weird. My Word document just decided that it didn't feel like checking that one. Isn't in my customer dictionary or anything.
     
  18. Assblaster5000

    Assblaster5000 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    It... depends, on quite a lot actually.

    Sometimes a star is the system, but since we're talking about Sol here that's a bit irrelevant.

    The size of a proper Dyson Sphere is based on what you want it to do really, but as I said, if you're going with an actual sphere, which we probably won't do unless there's some insane development in material science in the next few thousand years, then you're not going purely for a massive power plant, you're going for an actual habitat, which means the size can go from "Surrounds the start plus a bit" to "Does half a galaxy even count as a Dyson Sphere anymore?"

    TLDR, if you're making a big fuck-off ball around the sun it's probably going to be a megastructure that takes up most of the material on hand, i.e. most of the solar system.

    Edit:Apprently QQ doesn't like my usual formatting for TLDR, fixed.
     
  19. BlueMangoAdea

    BlueMangoAdea Alive. For now.

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    Huh. Maybe Grayven should check if the universe's expansion rate is slowing down when he returns to present.
     
  20. Whenever Possible

    Whenever Possible Versed in the lewd.

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    My guess: the Sheeda are ridiculously far in the future. As in, so far into the future that the universe has started to contract. The Earth should have been consumed by now with the rest of the universe, but the Life entity is still on earth, still shielding life even as entropy is trying its best to consume everything left in the universe. And that's why biotechnology doesn't corrode and fail almost immediately: because the Life Entity's power over Life affects Life first and foremost
     
  21. Chojin Patriarch

    Chojin Patriarch Veteran Lurker

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    Oh, that implies so much destruction. On the other hand, now we have an idea why the Rings aren't working: No power source for them. I doubt they were ever designed to operate using only the output of a single world...

    Honestly? It's probably a good thing Earth is blanketed in constant cloud cover. Could you imagine seeing those vast figures in the sky, all scowling in rage or screaming in horror, a trillion eyes all glowing with the light of the Source shining down like stars...

    Or perhaps that pull is relative to the surface area of the Universe? If it were as powerful here as it was there (with a vast, whole universe), Earth and Sol would have been engulfed long ago. And for the Source Wall to exist, it must have something to contain...

    Admittedly, that's escaping back down the timeline. Space is largely irrelevant in that dimensional direction. If the Castle Revolving is tied to Earth, and it likely was, it wouldn't matter about the size of the Universe at any given moment. As for size: That sounds slightly larger than one AU, the distance from the center of the Sun to the center of Earth's orbit. That's 150 million kilometres (93 million miles.) Tiny on cosmic scales, but enormous to a Human.

    Deep breaths, Renegade, remain calm. If Sinestring were functioning, he'd be chewing you out for succumbing to existential panic.

    Focus on Earth, Renegade. Focus on your goals. Remember what you came up here for: To find out what this Vampire Sun really is. And, ideally, how you can kill it.

    <R-Dash> Oh, Come on! </R-Dash> Really? And those are Sheeda beams! Someone's making a play for his head now? Are these chucklefuck pain-elves so stupid, so selfish... :rolleyes: No, wait. Of course they are!

    At least he got to see something. and once he kicks the asses of the people responsible for this dumbass move, he can try again. Maybe once he Rules the Sheeda (ideally with a Cold Iron rod upside their skulls) they can try not to be cunts!

    ...Are they firing blind? Can they not see him, or is he just in the way of something.. else... Turn around, man! Look at the Sun!

    And I have my suspicions about why she's struggling. Either she's not getting enough power from beyond the Source Wall, assuming the Source has shrunken as much as the Wall has, OR she's soaking in a near-infinite sea of energy, because there's almost nothing else drawing power from an infinite reservoir...

    Looks like the Sun is taking a deep pull of Earth's energy? Is... Is it feeding on the conflict below?

    Seriously, what the fuck is going on down there? Did a global war break out the second he got out of the clouds?
    Fortify.
    Did the Sun cause this? Is it influencing them somehow? I mean, beyond what it's doing already. And did it just try to absorb the emotional energy he just felt?
    Fortify.
    Honestly, would you want to expose Luna to this... This madness?
    Fortify.
    Looks like it's Righteous Face-punching time, one thing Grayven is honestly good at. I get the feeling he's really going to have to conquer all these fucks, if only to keep them on task.

    ...What if Time itself is being distorted and consumed the same way Space has? Could whatever's caused all this do something like that? Argh, this whole situation is just raising more questions!

    And that's not even considering what the hell is going on with whatever's on... In the Sun? Could it be consuming reality itself? Feeding on the Source like a leech and collapsing the universe each time it suckles? Good god, fuck Lovecraft, this is horrifying.

    Maybe you can convince them to make another one to take home with you after this is done. Presuming anyone survives this at all.

    Oh, come on! Fuck you, narrative convenience! Sod's Law functions even now? Looks like it's the fast way down, then, unless...

    Well, at least it'll put him in a better mood. Killing a few bastard-elves in 'self-defence' should soothe his temper a little.

    Maybe if you'd gone for the Conquest approach in the first place... Then again, two against a whole city is bad odds...

    No, wait, you need information! Like, who's fighting, where Artemis is likely to be, and who's skulls you need to collect to end this.

    First time I've seen a windscreen splatter a bug. +10 circumstance bonus to Intimidation checks as an added bonus.

    Likelihood of anyone accepting that offer: Low. Until you make a few more examples...

    Two down, thousands more to go. Some would call that a good start...

    Admittedly, being pulped by the impact with the ground will probably make it easier for them to eat, anyway.

    Yes, I can just picture them glancing at each other, trying to decide to kill their buddies and declare "Hail... whoever you are!" Completely in character for these fucks.

    Well, looks like Grayven's going to have to Conquer the Sheeda after all, if only to stop the sudden surge of energy feeding the Vampire Sun. Hopefully it won't take long. And if Melmoth turns up, well... Ol' Swirly-cheeks is in for a bad time of it...

    Godspeech:
     
  22. Assblaster5000

    Assblaster5000 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    I'm deeply displeased that people are starting to drift towards my own crackpot "theories" about what's going on here, and I don't know why.
     
  23. Agent Orange

    Agent Orange Experienced.

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    It can't be just a lack powersource. They were mostly charged when he tripped into hot tub time machine. If it was just the power the constructs should've been working fine until he ran out of battery. Something is actively disrupting them/draining them as soon as they form.

    If it is feeding on conflict than the moronic Drow mentality is big part of why everything is as fucked up and desolate as it is. You'd think the awareness of the conflict/suffering=increased rate of drain would make them more peaceful not less. Or you know, spur them into relocating downstream.
     
  24. Assblaster5000

    Assblaster5000 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    It could be more an issue that with just one species left The Emotional Spectrum has been tapped out, meaning that the rings can't work because there's no way for them to work. The thing that let them operate in the first place just doesn't exist anymore.
     
  25. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    Well they may take the emotional output of a planet to make them, but to use them with only just one species left, yeah that may be different.

    All the while he himself is having one such panic.

    And we thought some of them were good.

    In the words of that talking dinosaur cyborg thing from TTS.

    "Most likely I suspect"
     
  26. Assblaster5000

    Assblaster5000 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    You're not wrong, but how dare you disrespect Our Dearest Dinonquisitor, Master Of Man's Lore like that?
     
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  27. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    Ehh, while what they are doing is very, very stupid it isn't something new.

    Real people keep doing stupid things even when there is a shit ton of evidence that proves why doing that is stupid and will just lead to everyone losing in the end.

    Maybe they don't know that increased conflict makes the drain faster. Hell this could be the first real large scale conflict they had in their societies history because the King and Queen aren't there anymore and the ship that has kept their society functioning is also gone.

    Looks like Melmoth was telling the truth.
     
  28. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    Because that's what Magnus called him once, or at least something similar to that.
     
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  29. Assblaster5000

    Assblaster5000 I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Magnus The Chicken ain't got shit on Dino Boi's endless knowledge.
     
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  30. Ganurath

    Ganurath Apologizes For Nothing

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    The Sheeda and their world are all that exists in their future because they're the only part of their era to appear in comics. That's my theory, anyhow.
     
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