Conference Call (Multicross)

JustASnell

An Unholy Draugr of Fanfiction & Existential Dread
If we're sticking like-minded people in Nodes, than Catherine from A Practical Guide to Evil has to be in a Node with Skitter.
 
As for Mother of Learning, the lich Quatach-Ichl would be a good choice to reck everyones day.
Hey, that's slander! QI isn't a sociopath nor a sadist, he's just a pragmatic ruler of a country with lots of enemies. If you're not a threat to him, he's quite civilised.

Another choice would be Silverlake.
Possible, but she's so self-absorbed that she probably wouldn't cause a lot of widespread harm in most circumstances. She'd work with Orochimaru to get herself endless youth, but in MoL-verse that doesn't require large scale human experimentation.

I mean, I would actually go with Sudomir, if we're talking good MoL counterparts to Bonesaw and Orochimaru. He's the perfect kind of nutjob for the role.
Yes, yes he is.
 
Arc 2 Chapter 4
Arc 2: Chapter 4: Exotic Ideas


Chris tugged on a wire inside the Hyper Cannon project, his eyes following its winding path through the machine. It was one of the high-voltage cables that fed into a whole bunch of little power distribution points inside the cannon, most of which he didn’t even know what to do with. It was an unfocused, sloppy design, especially compared to Armsmaster’s or Dragon’s work. He pulled a section of the wire free from the casing, checking one of the little distribution points. It was a ball covered in power outputs and status lights that seemed to be slapped on wherever there was room to fit them.

He didn’t have anything to plug into this power line, but he had already made all of the power nodes and had to do something with them. He supposed it was just a downside of his power. It was more likely to give him a fragment or starting point than a full-blown blueprint. Or that’s at least how he imagined the difference between him and other tinkers worked out. Their powers told them how to make machines, his power told him how to make parts and would tell them how to put them together on occasion.
Ino!: Chris, the chakra metals are looking molten.
Kid_Win: Give me one sec!
Kid_Win: I’ll set up the machinery.
Hopping out of his seat, Chris looked around his room, trying to remember where he left the portal at.
Kid_Win: /kwlab find ‘Portal C’
A dozen little laser-lights in the ceiling came to life, and swiveled around the room to point at one of the many workstations. The underlighting on the station turned on, highlighting it further. On the station, Chris found a little chip with a thin holding cell for the portal, and moved it over to a single off-color 3D printer on a wall of similar printers. He popped the chip into a slot, and it loaded the portal into the special containment cell.

A light came on, indicating that metal was coming through the system. The printer whined as the servos began directing a tiny robotic arm to place the molten chakra-metal. Chris watched as Ino dropped the portal into her forge, letting the metal dribble through to the other side.

Kid_Win: Okay, so the system should now be printing with metal.
Kid_Win: Can you keep the forge hot while it runs?
Ino!: I can!
Ino!: But there’s supposed to be a special secret technique to cast chakra-conductive metal.
Ino!: This stuff was expensive, and if you botch it I’m going to be REALLY mad.
Kid_Win: The method I’m using to handle it is super smart.
Kid_Win: I have the system intelligently scanning and adjusting the extrusion and cooling based on the scanned properties of the metal.
Kid_Win: If there’s a secret technique, it’ll figure it out.
Ino!: Oh, okay!
zKazinski: So we’re starting the process of tinkering with lightning chakra?
Kid_Win: If it moves anything like conventional electricity, I’ll be able to use it.
Kid_Win: I’ve been taking scans of Dauntless’s Arclance in preparation to use exotic electricity alternatives.
zKazinski: It’s really more of an electricity-themed spiritual energy than an electricity alternative, if you think about it.
zKazinski: It might not have any properties shared with actual electrical energy at all.
Ino!: It’s pretty close to the real thing.
Ino!: It shifts between LIGHTNING-themed spiritual energy, spiritual energy containing electricity, and spiritual energy emulating electricity.
Ino!: Asuma says that chakra nature transformations aren’t just about the element, but also about what that element represents.
Ino!: His wind-chakra doesn’t have to be wind, it can simply be chakra that embodies the concept of cutting or speed.
Ino!: Water transformations sometimes turn into pure water, but they also sometimes just represents water. It’s weird and confusing and depends how transformed the chakra is and what part of that element is being focused on for that transformation.
Kid_Win: Basically, it’s an abstract pain in the ass.
Kid_Win: My power’s finally catching up with it, but it’s coping in really weird ways.
Ino!: And the seals aren’t getting any better. More weird poems.
tipsyGnostalgic: r they like
tipsyGnostalgic: board meeting designed poems?????
Kid_Win: What do you mean?
tipsyGnostalgic: like the product design team gathers round n suggests ways to beef their boom
tipsyGnostalgic: no fuckin loser poems goin into this badboy gunpowder replacing detonation rune
tipsyGnostalgic: get the good shit
tipsyGnostalgic: tinker designed poems 4 optimal explosions
tipsyGnostalgic: nobody needs 2 read it but the chakra
Kid_Win: That’s... apt.
Kid_Win: It’s not like a quasi-sapient mystical force actually assigns the poems a star rating and explodes based on critical acclaim. The ideas are more important than the quality of the prose.
Kid_Win: I imagine that my power put as much blood, sweat, and tears into its weird avant garde interpretation of a rhyme scheme as the next starving artist with no real creative vision.
zKazinski: Starving business artists?
tipsyGnostalgic: artists who go to board meetings
Kid_Win: Exactly. Like filmmakers or game developers, but for the poem industry.
tipsyGnostalgic: no creative vision
Kid_Win: Big Poem is upping its firepower with tinker-made gunpowder replacements.
zKazinski: I’m sure the shareholders are pleased.
Kid_Win: Oh, certainly.
Kid_Win: We’re pushing the limits of what can pass as a poem and still be profitable. New frontiers in explosive poem publishing.

Chris stepped up to the big screen and opened up a file. It was a series of images Roxy took on her phone, showing off his future-device from several angles. He had been reconstructing a model of the systems in his head, but couldn’t tell exactly what he’d be fitting into those things. Even more pressing was the mystery of why he needed two, and why one was a bit heavier than the other.

They weren’t identical machines, that was for certain. The best guess he could come up with was a storage device... but then why would it be kept inside of a super-tech card that stores items? And there weren’t any buttons or inputs, so the best he could think to do was crack one open and see how it ticked.

One could only hope that when they were done, he’d be able to put it back together.

He let the Node distract him while he went around the room and cleaned up workstations with various ‘idle project’ indicators on them, adding various ‘finish this project’ notes to a checklist in the Node and storing away tools in the little cubbies along the wall. When he moved a tool close to them, an indicator light told him which box each tool went to. Goddamn was his lab cool.

It probably cost the Guild a shitton to hook him up like this, even if the majority of that cost went into the wall of 3D printers and the touchscreen consoles at every workstation. Everything else was just fancy lights and tracking chips.

That coolness factor was often negated by Ino pointing out where a tool he needed was before he activated the cool lasers in the ceiling. She had recently begun practicing her ‘situational awareness’, which seemed to mean that she was memorizing everything going on around everyone at all times.

Kid_Win: So I’ve been thinking about those two of my machines from the time capsule.
tipsyGnostalgic: we saw u staring at the photo of them longingly
Ino!: That wasn’t just a stare.
Ino!: That was the longing gaze of an admirer towards the one they desire most.
Kid_Win: It’s true.
Kid_Win: The romantic infatuation I have with this red fuckball cut in twain has overtaken me.
zKazinski: At last we have an admission.
zKazinski: Let me record that for you, so we can bring it back up when we want to get under your skin.
Kid_Win: Thanks, I appreciate the effort you put into protecting my interests.
tipsyGnostalgic: robodating interests?
Kid_Win: Uh, no. Most robots are clearly out of my league, thank you very much.
Kid_Win: Jokes aside: Those things still don’t have any inputs.
Kid_Win: No ports, nowhere to charge them, no buttons.
Kid_Win: Nothing.
Kid_Win: I think I just gotta cut one open and see what it does.
Ino!: Couldn’t Roxy do it?
Kid_Win: Not if we don’t know what it does, we can’t!
Kid_Win: She might not be able to put it back together. Or it could explode.
Kid_Win: Tinkertech, y’know?
tipsyGnostalgic: ya thats most likely outta my skillset
zKazinski: And we get it over to you how?
Kid_Win: No clue.
Ino!: We could put it in a storage seal and pass the seal through the Node?
tipsyGnostalgic: the seal would have 2 be sooo small
tipsyGnostalgic: lil dinky seal
ModThunder: I could try to boost the portal and make it bigger.
Kid_Win: Really?
Kid_Win: I don’t see any commands for that.
ModThunder: It’s not a feature for the end-users.
ModThunder: I can do it, but I’m worried about the cost.
ModThunder: The cost of a portal is proportional to its surface-area, and they aren’t cheap as-is.
Ino!: See! A seal might be able to be slipped through if we roll it small enough.
zKazinski: Doesn’t the filter exert pressure on things passing through?
zKazinski: It could shred the paper if we did that.
Kid_Win: Not if we turn off the filter.
Ino!: That sounds like a bad idea.
Ino!: All sorts of things could get through!
Ino!: Like diseases or evil spirits.
Ino!: I don’t know which of your worlds have evil spirits but I’m not interested in dealing with that.
Ino!: I’d rather make it bigger and reinforce the paper somehow.
Kid_Win: Like putting the seal on metal?
Ino!: Oh, duh, it doesn’t have to be on paper.
tipsyGnostalgic: n how do u roll it up 2 fit it???
Kid_Win: Fuck.
Kid_Win: Foil has the same problem as paper.
Kid_Win: Okay, back to the drawing board.


The empty room Zorian stood in was one of the few places where he could practice in peace. The Royal Academy always had a shortage of big rooms without any flammable objects, undoubtedly because of the constant demands of an often over-enthusiastic niche of students prone to 'experimenting' with any and all spells utilizing such things — Zorian now included on that list.

He browsed through the Node, picking out a spell that seemed somewhat workable. Chris's spell. The spell was among the most complex he had ever encountered, but the majority of that could be tied back to the fact that Zorian couldn't quite tell what the spell was actually doing. Many spells operated on a somewhat instinctive level, the soul ‘learning’ the spell with time.

The possibility that Chris had made incorrect assumptions about the way the soul handled mana was something Zorian was painfully aware of. The knowledge that this was a fire spell only fueled that worry.

He stepped into the middle of the room and glided his hand through the air. He mumbled the incantation, trying not to slip on some of the oddities in it. Saying this word exactly six-and-a-half times, moving that hand in this exact manner. It was a bit of a strain, and painfully slow to cast. That, he hoped, could be practiced away.

At some point, a spiral of orange flame began to wrap around his arm and compress itself into a tight spring shape that covered from his wrist to his elbow. The heat radiating from the shape wasn't nearly as intense as it should have been. The shape made a final adjustment, wrapping a limb of mana around his thumb.
Kid_Win: Ohhh, so that's what that does!
zKazinski: If you don't mind me asking, what is it?
Kid_Win: It's a spring made of fire.
zKazinski: But why?
Kid_Win: Point it out from you and clench your fist.
Zorian pointed his open palm towards a pillar and closed his hand into a ball. The wisp of mana around his thumb was plucked off the structure of mana and fire, and the spring launched off his arm towards the pillar. It hit, causing it to rebound and bounce over Zorian's head. His attempt at dodging the projectile was a bit pathetic, sending him to the ground when the spring would've missed him by a mile. The bolt of fire bounced across the room, until one hit with a wall resulted in a sharp crack.

It began gushing fire from one end, propelling it around like a rocket. It bounced off columns, spun violently, and eventually wedged itself in a corner. Zorian kept away from it as the spring consumed itself to fuel the jet of fire. When he thought it was almost done, it exploded in a tiny blast of fire.
Kid_Win: Wow.
Kid_Win: That was amazing.
zKazinski: Was it supposed to do that?
Kid_Win: It worked exactly as I intended it. Everything that went wrong can be chalked up to user error.
Zorian glanced at the scorch marks on the ground. That was the most unusual thing about this. Usually, magical fire didn't leave any ash or soot -- they burned pure mana. After a few seconds, the marks began to fade as tendrils of smoke rose from the ground. Was this thing burning ectoplasm?

He had to question so many things about the design of this spell, but that sort of eccentricity was completely unexpected and off-the-wall that he had to question if it was brilliant or moronic.
zKazinski: "User error"?
Kid_Win: Yeah, you're supposed to program in a movement path when casting the spell.
Kid_Win: Set how long the jets burn for, if it bounces during certain stages, when it explodes. Stuff like that.
Kid_Win: Obviously, the more fuel you burn before detonating, the wimpier the boom.
zKazinski: And when exactly was I supposed to be setting all this?
Kid_Win: Throughout the whole process.
Right. Second attempt, then.

Standing with his back against a wall, Zorian started casting the spell again. It was a costly spell that burned through his already below-average mana reserves fairly quickly. The second casting would probably have to be his last. As he went through the steps, he carefully tried to monitor the structure of the spell. Through his mana, he could tell that this spell went deep in terms of complexity. While he wasn't a stranger to modifying spells on the fly, Zorian could only begin to imagine how differently this spell could behave between two different castings.

He ended up making something simple, just because he doubted he could handle much more: it would launch, jet across the room, then explode.

When he clenched his hand shut, the spell began to spray fire down his arm. It launched off a fraction of a second later, but even the short exposure to the jet left him grasping at his elbow and clenching his teeth. His jacket sleeve smouldered, and he quickly patted out the embers.
Kid_Win: Dude are you okay?
Kid_Win: I’m so fucking sorry.
zKazinski: I’m okay.
zKazinski: It won’t kill me.
Kid_Win: I had no fucking clue that would happen I should’ve warned you.
zKazinski: Seriously. It’s fine.
zKazinski: Wounds won’t last more than a few weeks. My body resets.
Kid_Win: Oh. Right.
Taking a few steps out the door, Zorian started down the hall to whatever area he could reach first that would also pass as an infirmary. People gave him glances as he passed, wisps of smoke still drifting from his arm. The air felt cooler than usual around his arm, which only accentuated the warm feeling that seemed to originate just below the surface. He was even bleeding a little.

“Zorian!” somebody called out. He saw Benisek — a guy with a gut and a haircut that had slowly approached ‘bowlcut’ with each year. He had cleaned it up for this year, but that didn’t do much for loudmouth tendencies. “What happened to your arm?”

“Fire,” Zorian said through gritted teeth. Now was not the time for niceties.

“Okay, but how?”

“Help.”

Benisek nodded. “Oh, right. Follow me.”
zKazinski: How did you get it so hot, anyway?
tipsyGnostalgic: thats just ur talents leakin in
tipsyGnostalgic: bein hot n stuff
zKazinski: Now’s not the time.
tipsyGnostalgic: kk sorry
Kid_Win: I think you pushed it too hard, too fast.
zKazinski: It’s certainly a versatile spell.
zKazinski: Dangerous, though. I’ll have to be more careful if I ever use it in the future.
They walked through the halls to one of the Academy’s alchemy labs. He hadn’t been in this particular one before, but the person in the room — probably a tutor, because he hadn’t even seen her before — rushed over to help him out. Zorian was instructed to remove his jacket while the woman dug around a shelf of finished projects for a jar of ointment.

There wasn’t a chance in hell he was letting a random instructor rub his medicine in, so he rubbed it in himself. There was a grit to it, like a small amount of sand was in the ointment. Not a satisfying texture by any means.

After thanking the woman, he stumbled his way back to his room in one of the Academy’s apartment buildings. Sleeping through pain was something he had gotten used to during his time in the sewers. He wasn’t excited to start again, but kept his mind on the Node until he passed out.

He focused on studying through books on the languages of his Node-mates. He was making progress, and he was almost ready to ask Thunder to let him trying holding conversations with Chris and Roxy un-translated. Ino would follow shortly. It took almost an hour before his physical-self drifted to slumber, dragging his Node-side mind with it.

He woke up late in the morning. His arm felt like shit. He applied the ointment and a layer of bandages, hanging his arm up in a crude sling. Not the necessary sort of treatment for this type of wound, but he wanted a reminder not to use his arm for anything or move it too much. Tugging a fresh jacket on, Zorian opened the door to the hallway.


 
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Sorry for crashing SB by uploading an entire video game to it! /s

For real, I had a lot of fun making this, and I hope to include more interactive segments (...with better graphics...) in the future!
 

Xenolis

Verified Dank|Bad Meme|Borowski or Wazowski
Oh gosh, this is amazing. You're bringing flashbacks of the Homestuck days now. Can't wait for more
 
Yeah, this is way too advanced for a site like this, and for a platform like Google Slides. And I mean that in a good way.

DON'T FOLLOW THE RULES
 

GoldenCookie

Mass-Produced Pastry
"It's a book on secret love letters. It's filled to the brim with information on bypassing divination spells using mundane techniques such as not touching the paper. This is the sort of thing that is exceptionally helpful when organizing a fake bombing campaign whilst trying to avoid being hunted down by divination-wielding assassins in dark sewers."

You even got the tone of homestuck right. I think I'm in love.

With the fic.
 

Shuubuu

Aspiring Horticulturist
Am absolutely amazed by this. You built a tiny video game out of freaking google slides. GOOGLE SLIDES! I love it <3
 

Glazt

99 Worm Fics Read and Haven't Written 1
YOU MADMAN, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE. Now, all standards for fanfiction have been raised to the utmost heights that nobody else can ever compete wiiiith! Glorious glory praise unto Pachy for this amazement.
Just what you expect from the author of spellslingers and tech geeks: computer wizardry.
 
I'm a bit confused about the slideshow bit. It's pretty cool and all, but is it actually a game? I clicked on the blue things, and nothing happened. And I just went next next next all the way through, and it seemed to be a comic-book-esque deal?

Is that what it is? Is there errors on my end? Did I do it wrong?

Or is everyone above just calling the slideshow a game, even though its not interactive?



edit:
So! Having just gone through the slideshow, and then back and tried it as a game...

Super cool.
But I think I prefer just reading the story normally, despite the super cool game you've tacked on to the end. I just don't really want to have to interact so much when I'm reading something, ya know?
 
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Dermonster

Break the world, see what falls out.
I'm a bit confused about the slideshow bit. It's pretty cool and all, but is it actually a game? I clicked on the blue things, and nothing happened. And I just went next next next all the way through, and it seemed to be a comic-book-esque deal?

Is that what it is? Is there errors on my end? Did I do it wrong?

Or is everyone above just calling the slideshow a game, even though its not interactive?
You actually click on the objects under the blue things to progress as intended. If that doesn't work... I dunno?
 
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