RPGWW

by **ChristianC** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 1:52 am

She was unsure! She'd been unsure ever since she first woke up in the simulation, ever since they told her what she was going to do, what she was going to learn. She'd been unsure about meeting the other kids, about meeting Thirteen, going here on a camping trip. She'd been unsure about her role in the team, and she'd gotten unsure in her own abilities when Kid'd gotten away... but how was she going to tell Thirteen this? She'd probably never felt anything like it, so confident, quiet, and mysterious. Acting like she knew everything, but never helping anyone by telling them what they should... should do...

Her hands clenched a little and she shook her head, her pony-tail whisking slightly with the movement as she harumphed, "I want to." she stated bluntly, looking at Thirteen. If the strange girl would just keep pushing the subject, she'd... she'd just have to look for a way to do it herself, but she didn't like how she, how everyone was treated like... like they had to learn everything the hard way.

by **Shinigori V2** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 1:57 am

"I don't believe you." Thirteen says.

by **ChristianC** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 2:02 am

"I want to get back our sister!" she yelled at Thirteen, angry look on her face mingling with a little fear, "A-at least tell me where I can g-get one of those hairbands then!" she glared at Thirteen, trying to keep her tears from welling up. Why was she being so mean?

...Then, suddenly, smoke started to appear around her... no, it came from Alexis, her limps fading quickly as more and more of them exploded into smoke, forming a vague, but humanoid shape. Then, trails of small flames began to form, swirling around her, through her, as the clouds formed into a more... Alexis-ish kind of shape, although much bigger. Interestingly, the smoke retained... mostly the same colors as before, so the image was that of a smoke cloud made to resemble Alexis as much as possible.

"W-what?" her voice, like Lauren's, was exactly the same, and she raised her hands to look at them, or, well, if she had eyes, she'd be looking at them.

by **Shinigori V2** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 2:19 am

"Look at that." Thirteen says. "You've begun to patch."

by **Idran1701** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 2:21 am

"...Alexis?" Sam watches, wondering what exactly happened there. At Thirteen's comment, he only grows more confused. "...How? How'd you do that, Thirteen? You didn't give her anything that I saw. What happened?"

by **Shinigori V2** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 2:27 am

"Patches are as much about time as much as physical presence. I provoked her into patching herself."

by **Kelne** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 7:30 am

Well, that was one problem solved. Emily felt like smacking her forehead for not thinking of that solution. Still, Sam had come up with it, so all was well. As to stopping Kidritta from beating them all up, she did actually have some thoughts along those lines.

"If Kid's hallucinating, maybe we can use that," she said, "Get her thinking we're characters from those movies, perhaps. If we're not real, we might as well be familiar not real people she's not likely to beat up out of hand. We'd have to be able to alter our appearances, or at least change our outfits to pull it off, though." The outfits, as they'd seen from the swimmers, were somewhat malleable. Whether they could make serious modifications at will was an open question, though.

by **BrainWalker** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 9:02 am

Now seemed like as good a time as any to bring back an overlooked question.

"I was kind of wondering about that. Especially since activation of the patch can apparently be psychosomatic, as well as the effects." Being able to look up word definitions on a whim was an incredibly useful talent when dealing with Thirteen.

"But, I'm pretty sure I had an idea a couple minutes ago that got ignored what with forest noises and Alexsis and patching and all. Can I get a little input on that?"

((sorry for the cop-out post, little time to get ready for work in the mornings.))

by **Shinigori V2** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 9:14 am

"I could try to transmit it. It would take...Some time to find the commonalities. However, we'd have much more luck if I found her patch; it's got a specific fix to her error." Thirteen says.

"Hey..." Janet adds. "If she's...Crazy? I mean...You know what I mean...Anyway, would it matter if we looked right, so long as we...Acted right?" She puts a hand to her hip, holding her chin in the other.

by **Idran1701** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 4:29 pm

"So...like...pretend to be movie characters?" Sam mulls this over for a few moments. "I never really saw any of Kid's movies, though, an' I don't really know anything about them. What kinda movies did she make before?"

by **BrainWalker** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 7:38 pm

Max was quick to respond to Sam's question.

"Well, she mostly starred in martial arts action movies. You know, the kind of movie where the plot only makes just enough sense to allow for people to beat the crap out of each other and jump motorcycles over explosions and stuff. You probably know the general character clichés, too. Random faceless ninja, secret agent, vaguely foreign-sounding military soldiers... or really, just vaguely foreign-sounding dudes in general. These kind of movies shouldn't be hard to fake at all. Well, except for the being really good at beating on people with your bare hands."

Max thinks for a second, and then remembers one other thing. "Oh, and I guess if she was really the 'Hooded Rider,' she's technically in a couple extreme sports documentaries, but I don't think that counts for what you were asking."

by **Shinigori V2** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 1:31 am

"Yeah, I don't think documentaries would matter." Janet says. "It's not like any of them, at least that she'd have been in, were more than file footage and people talking about how she came out of nowhere or whatever." She glances over towards Alexis, and smiles. "How do you feel? Okay?"

by **ChristianC** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 2:13 am

The Alexis-cloud listened to the others talking and it seemed to take a while for it to notice Janet's question, but then it turned to her, and the girl's usual bumbling, half-quiet voice spoke up. "Y-yeah, I'm fine... I think... it feels a bit... weird..." the large smoke wunderkind gave a slight shrug and then seemed to think of something, judging by the barely noticeable look of surprise on her smoke-face.

"K-Kid was talking about elves!" she said, maybe a bit louder than she'd hoped, "She said... ah..." automatic recollection systems kicked into gear nigh-on instantly, "The elves are a people of the forest in all of the literature. They are one with it, and now I'm one with it. If you think I can't tell you're there... You are sadly mistaken."

Her voice had even taken on the exact same tone as that which Kid had had, although one still heard it was Alexis, and not their errant sister, who spoke.

"Maybe if we... ah... try to convince her we're elves?"

by **Kelne** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 5:50 am

"Okay, so, we need two things - first, we need to find Kid's patch. Second, we need to keep her distracted while somebody sneaks up behind her with it," Emily said, "I think I can handle that last bit; A good villainous monologue ought to be plenty distracting. Hopefully she won't try to attack me until after I've detailed the full extent of my diabolical plans."

Emily actually seemed to have a bit of a grin on her face. Clearly, she had someone in particular she was thinking of channeling. Finally those drama classes were going to be put to good use.

by **Animala** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 4:48 pm

Lauren pinched herself as the patching finished, just to be sure she was back in one piece. "Oh, wow, this is amazing! I'm sure I'll be able to catch up to her now."

Animal companion, huh? I wonder how that works...

((Visiting family on Saturday, won't be posting. Sorry, it's been a crazy week))

by **Besyanteo** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:58 pm

Well, crap. Crap crap crap. That hadn't panned out so well. Now they'd need to find her again... and when they did, they might as well have the patch ready and waiting. Which... no one had really said, so Thirteen apparently wasn't working on that yet.

"I guess Thirteen should grab Kid's patch while Max tells us about any movies Kid has been in that had elves? If there were any. I hope she's not hallucinating totally randomly..."

by **NebulaQueen** » Sat Oct 03, 2009 9:03 am

There were certain disadvantages to having a computerized brain.

The last thing Silvie saw was 13, hovering above the lake. Did she always have to be that vague? Typical; she was just like that at the base, too. That was pretty annoying. Still, the trip wasn't all that bad; the base was really cool, like the hideout from Tokutatsu Seiben Force, and she got a totally sweet cape. It was like Thirteen's, only ten times better.

Hey, wait a minute!, she thought. I don't have a cape! And I didn't even talk to her! And the show's called Toku-Septa Squad!

This was...this was weird. She only met Thirteen a couple of days ago, and they only talked once; how could she remember talking to her some other time? Silvie tried to scowl at Thirteen, ready to demand an answer, only to find that she couldn't. She couldn't move her face. She couldn't move her arms. She couldn't move her fingers or toes or anything. In short, she was stuck.

She wasn't the only one, though; everything else seemed frozen in place. Thirteen continued to hover, as obnoxiously mysterious as ever, while Max stood at the shore, with a goofy look on his face. Her heart began to pound (Wait, I don't have a heart anymore, she reminded herself), a sick knot twisted in her stomach (Or a stomach), and she began to feel truly, genuinely afraid.

And then, as soon as everyone had frozen, everyone had moved. However, they weren't unstuck; instead of hitting unpause, it was more like someone hit the "next scene" option on a DVD. Instead of walking, everyone - including herself - were instantly in a new spot. She looked around, or tried to, at any rate, and only had marginally more luck than when she was stuck at the shore. There was a brief moment of actual movement before everything froze again, only to unstick a moment later. This time, though, instead of returning to what was normal, everything was...jerky. People moved like characters from bad stop-motion animation, when they spoke either she couldn't hear them, or she heard them moments after they had spoken (and even then, they were hard to understand; they sounded like a scratched CD at best), and the "scene" around her would constantly skip forward a few seconds. Silvie could only see snippets of what the others did; people walking, people talking, and Kid - holy crap did Kid just flip someone over she just flipped someone over she did what the heck was going on why would she even-

She couldn't react, though; every time she tried, it was too late, and the scene had moved. Now Lauren had gotten headbands and people were turning into smoke or clouds and there was something about pushing Alexis to-

...hey, didn't she push Thirteen, once? Not really push, but - oh yeah, training! She pushed Thirteen to the limit. Every morning she had Thirteen do fifty mega-pushups, seventy five cyber situps, and two hundred pullups on the digital chin bar. "Come on!" she shouted, as she clapped to keep rhythm, "Do you call this training?! My grandma could train better than this, and she trains little yappy rat dogs!" Then, later on, at the punching bag... "Woo!" she shouted while Thirteen's fists and feet smacked against the punching bag, "Yeah, that's the spirit! See, I told you you could - oh man, nice headbutt!"

Yeah, that was great - wait a minute, that didn't happen either! Silvie began to shake, just on the verge of panic, when she looked around. She was at the basecamp with the other children; in fact, she had been with them for some time. Jerky and clipped as they were, she remembered walking with them, in a vague sense. The worry continued, and she tried to think about what they were talking about. They were talking about elves, weren't they? That's good, she knew what they were - hey! What did elves have to do with anything?! Were they really talking about that, or was her memory just messing with her again. Silvie bit her lip and, after she glanced around, she pinched her hand. Just to make sure that, at least, was real.

...unfortunately, it was at that moment that her hand chose to turn into a cloud of ...a cloud of something. Silvie yelped and watched as the rest of herself continued to change, and a text file popped in her head: Patch Notes?

by **ChristianC** » Sat Oct 03, 2009 1:46 pm

Well, Lauren's patching was done! She didn't... look different, really, but Alexis was sure that her sister had improved quite a bit... well, hopefully. I mean, 1.1... that's a pretty big step from 1.0, right?

The Alexis cloud looked at Silvie, the 8 foot cloud wunderkind taking a few steps towards her. "S-Silvie, are you alright?" Was Silvie patching as well? She blinked, or, thought she blinked, could a cloud blink?

by **BrainWalker** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 2:28 pm

"Elves? That doesn't..." Max raises an eyebrow, and trails off while trying to remember any movies Kid starred in that didn't involve a modern setting.

"...Oh! Oh, that's right! Yeah, you know how fantasy has been seeing a resurgence lately thanks to those Ringworld movies a couple years ago? Well, I read on a news site that Cinematheque was working on an action-oriented fantasy film called Castelian, with Kidritta playing one of the major roles. She was cast as a half-elf, torn between her human and elven families, who are on opposite sides of a building conflict. Whole thing sounded pretty awesome. Kid was apparently excited about the opportunity to fight with some seriously oldschool weapons for a change. They said her manager fought really hard to get her the role, but no one was really sure why. I guess... in retrospect, it was probably because she could finally play a role without having special effects 'fix' her ears. Huh."

Max tilts his head, pondering. "You know, that was probably the movie she was working on before her accident. At one point, her character gets caught in a naval battle and ends up shipwrecked... I guess she wasn't working on Ninja Surfer Kid 6, after all. And if it's something she was working just a couple days ago, it could explain why that's what she's hallucinating about..."

Suddenly, a lot of things started making sense to Max.

"But, since it's still in production... or was... I don't know a whole lot about it. I mean, there's a war between the forest elves and one of the bigger, eviller human kingdoms, and there's all kinds of crazy fantasy races like orcs and beast-men on the elven side, and these totally sweet dark elf assassins working with the humans, and there's magic and ridiculous siege weaponry, and apparently the movie has kind of an pro-environmental theme, but that's about all I know."

Max thinks hard, trying to come up with anything he might have missed.

"I want to think I heard a rumor that the big plot hook is that the dark elves were secretly behind the whole thing, and there's a point in the movie where Kid's character discovers that she might actually be half dark-elf rather than half wood elf, but that turns out not to be the case. Yeah, normally I try not to spoil myself on movies like that, but some guy in the comments on that article was being a di- umm, a jerk."

by **Animala** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 7:07 pm

Lauren chewed on her lip. The rush was fading, and the problem was still there. She hugged her knees to her chest and closed her eyes. Why did it have to be so hard? Being a hero wasn't supposed to be like this.

Another shouting match. Mom didn't understand. She wouldn't understand. If Dad--She didn't understand. She always wanted her to stop making trouble, to stop fixing problems, to keep her head down and let people get hurt. But you can't do that. Mom had sighed, and the tiredness and sadness in that sound had hurt her more than all the angry words--she didn't want to hurt anyone, honest--and she had said "Lauren...someday you're going to have to learn that the real world doesn't work like your stories..."

Her eyes shot open and she jumped to her feet. "I know! I know how we can do this!" Lauren wanted to laugh, it was all so simple. Mom was wrong again, as usual. "The heroine is trapped in an illusion by her enemies. She flees into a dark forest..." Lauren was using what she hoped was a dramatic narrator's voice. "...where she is pursued by her foes. Trapped, surrounded, and at the end of hope, she reaches deep within herself and finds a new power to vanquish the darkness."

Lauren switched back to her normal voice and started bouncing on the balls of her feet again. "It happens all the time in these stories. Thirteen won't even have to find her patch! If we bother her enough, we can get her to patch herself!"

by **Besyanteo** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 8:41 pm

Enzo blinked. Wow, could it be that simple? Really? It fit the stereotype, and they'd seen the psychosomatic... thing in action with Alexis. It seemed ridiculous, but honestly? They were prepubescent children who were digitized and put into a computer, wandering around a natural environment inside an unformatted section of hard drive space, realizing their respective touches of destiny, and waiting to receive their robot bodies. Ridiculous should probably leave his vocabulary for a while.

"I... wow. Uhm. I guess let's try that."

by **Idran1701** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 10:37 pm

"...Hey, that's a really neat idea, Lauren! An' that way we don't hafta figure out how to get Kid to use her patch either! So we just gotta...um...find her, and scare her or something? I don't really know a lot about those kinda movies, but I can help! My legs're almost working again too, an' I wanna go out an' find her so I can help." He grins - everyone in this family is so cool! And they all know about different stuff, so all together, they know everything almost! They're the perfect team!

by **Spleen** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 10:53 pm

"Is that gonna work?" Darren asked, skeptical. "Can we really freak the girl out enough to make it just...start? I don't think we should go on what they do in some story. It ain't a power inside her, it's a piece of software. Does that mean if I start kicking Sam in the head, he'll patch because of me getting him mad beatin' up on him?"

by **Shinigori V2** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:50 pm

"I think he'd kick you back before that." Janet says. "But Darren's got a point...I mean, she's...Kind of got the advantage on us, she knows...Karate or whatever."

by **ChristianC** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 4:17 am

Alexis was still floating around, occasionally moving an arm so fast it left a thin trail of vapor behind. She was walking up to Sam, a little worried look on her face. "S-sorry I ran away before... how are your legs?"

She nodded along as Lauren spoke, it certainly seemed like a good idea, and she was going to say that when the others spoke up. She bit her lips and thought as hard as she could... which felt kind of weird, as there was a lot of stuff going on inside her head... but she couldn't really say that her mind was occupied, because this was more like... her sinuses clearing, or something. Stuff was going on, but it wasn't in her thoughts... in her body?

"D-do we have to get close to her? I-I mean, we could try to convince her that s-she's surrounded, and that resistance is h-hopeless...?"

by **Kelne** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 6:13 am

"I think we can do it," Emily said, "As long as we keep her attention divided between us and she can't call on her speed, I don't think she'll rush to the attack." After all, Kid had run rather than sticking around to fight anyone. Of course, the plan did hinge on getting her really worked up, so she might well come after them. They'd just have to be on their toes.

by **NebulaQueen** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 10:20 pm

The lag had finally ended for good. However, Silvie couldn't quite pay attention; right now, she was distracted by her fingers. She stared at the vaporized, cloudlike version of her hand, before she looked down at the rest of her (or rather, what she could see of the rest of her), and it was the same. From head to toe, she was a reddish orange, vastly taller (taller than Alexis, even) and puffier cloud version of herself. It was weird, but it was a better sort of weird than what she went through earlier. She could listen to what the others were saying now, she could actually see again, and hey, this was pretty cool. It was strange, though - even if she was just air, she felt ...well, tougher than before. Bigger, stronger, and other strange adjectives for a girl made of colored steam. Anyway, she wasn't all that different. Her clothes, her hair, and everything else was still the same, even with the weird vapor.

Emily's voice snapped her out of her reverie, and she thought back on what the others just said. "Well," she added, "I think it could work. And anyway, we're getting patched too, right? So we should really be able to take her."

by **Spleen** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 10:50 pm

"I ain't been patched," Darren pointed out. "None of the guys have, it's all you girls it's happenin' to."

by **Shinigori V2** » Wed Oct 07, 2009 2:57 am

"And not even all the girls." Janet says. "Emmy and I still haven't."

Thirteen glances at the sky again, sharply. "Mere chance. My simply being here seems to have triggered Silvia's."

by **BrainWalker** » Wed Oct 07, 2009 11:19 am

"I'm down with Lauren's plan, but if we're seriously going to try to pressure Kid into patching herself, we need to have a plan, or people might get hurt."

Max looks over his brothers and sisters.

"I think we should have the people most likely to be able to put up a decent defense -- namely Lauren and Silvie -- and the people most able to get the heck out of the way of an attack -- myself, Emily, Lauren again and maybe Alexis -- in the front, and everyone else behind us. You know, just in case. And by 'in front' I guess I mean 'in the inside circle,' since we're apparently planning to surround her."

Max considers variuos issues with the plan, and folds his arms. "So, I know Emmy's taken some drama classes, but does anyone else have a special talent for acting? Or bluffing? It's pretty much the same thing, only with less direction."

by **Shinigori V2** » Wed Oct 07, 2009 4:22 pm

Janet blinks, and gives Max a weird look. "Not that this has anything to do with anything, but that..Sounded weird, I guess. Like you're playing in a table-top game or something."

As she speaks, the two patching girls slowly shrink back down to the normal sizes, completely patched to version 1.1.

Alexis:

Spoiler:

Silvie:

Spoiler:

by **ChristianC** » Wed Oct 07, 2009 4:44 pm

Alexis blinked a couple of times as she shrunk back to her usual self. Then she looked down on her hands, balling them into fists a few times, and then looked up at the others, smiling a little. "Wow..." she closed her eyes for a bit and then seemed to relax, letting her arms fall to her side. "S-she's not going to be able to run away in the forest t-this time, I promise."

by **BrainWalker** » Wed Oct 07, 2009 8:54 pm

Max looks at Janet, mildly offended. "What? It's a valid question. Acting is basically just professional lying, just in a... like, with a specific concept in mind. What, would it have been better if I had said 'fibbing' instead of bluffing?"

Max turns, folds his arms, and mutters "Besides, playing pen and paper adventure games doesn't make you weird."

by **NebulaQueen** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 10:14 pm

Ahhh, that was more like it. Silvie smiled; now she was back to her old self (her old digital self, at least), and while she was small again, she could still kick butt. Even better than before! And speaking of which...

"Alexis is right!" she exclaimed. "Between her and me and Thirteen, there's no way she can get away...and hey, Max had a pretty good plan, right? If we all work together, doing what we're good at, we can take her."

by **Shinigori V2** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 10:34 pm

"Oh." Thirteen says. "I'm helping subdue her? I'm not sure that is a good idea." Thirteen frowns, turning to look over the field.

by **NebulaQueen** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 10:54 pm

"And why not?" she asked with a frown. "It can't be worse than any of us."

by **Shinigori V2** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 10:55 pm

"I guess that would depend on your point of view." Thirteen says.

by **NebulaQueen** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 11:00 pm

"So spill it!" Silvie crossed her arms, and said, "Tell us why it's a bad idea."

by **Shinigori V2** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 11:02 pm

Thirteen doesn't say anything, just narrowing her eyes at the field.

by **NebulaQueen** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 11:10 pm

Silivie huffed, and uncrossed her arms.

"You know," she drawled, her hands now balled into fists, and resting against her hips, "If you really wanna help, you'd think you'd...oh, I dunno, say something for once."

She didn't really expect her to say anything, but she was still annoyed. What was so special about the field, anyway? It was probably something stupid. She'd tell her how stupid it was ...after she took a look.

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