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Cleveraptor
Eventua
Bugman
PrinceAlexus
Sep
Kirah
op2024
Snowdrops
Fetzen
Morose…And walk out with a little fighter plane.
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1 yr ago
Current
Fuh... one of the worst days of my life
2 yrs ago
Eager to get back to writing and try something new!
9 yrs ago
Started at work today, expect my replies in 1x1s to slow down considerably. Normal RPs go as usual.
10 yrs ago
Coffee time every time. Be sleepless.
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Most Recent Posts
Compared to all of the shipyards the Republic would likely toss at this problem? Pittance.
The biggest strength of the Kuun'Lan is that thay are experienced in this kind of warfare. Replicators are beast in any other name. Somtaaw fought this kind of conflict before. Any physical asset the ship can bring is secondary.
I say go for it, Kiith'Sa.
I say go for it, Kiith'Sa.
<Snipped quote by Izurich>
I started reading this and I was unsure, but after reading it all I kind of love it.
<Snipped quote by Forsythe>
Yooooo lets goooooo. I know that ship, some of those characters are very familiar.
Did the Langford have a shipborne gate or was that the Nyx?
Both I think, tho I didn't mention it because in a universe where it is the only gate it is quite useless xD
Let us friggin eat!
XCom stands ready for another attempt. Ayy LMAO.
Location: Free at last
Skills/Powers: Superhuman speed and reaction time, one ton lift strength
Equipment: Link avatar
Skills/Powers: Superhuman speed and reaction time, one ton lift strength
Equipment: Link avatar
It was working. She was lucky. If Vicky was in the Flynns' place, handing initiative over to her would have probably ended in a quick attempt at eradication. It seemed like there would be a stalemate for now, and hopefully if noone did anything stupid, Ed would not notice they stopped fighting and intervene for long enough for her and Ultron to find their way out of the simulation.
In fact, the way things were going, she was starting to come off combat high and calm down. Something Ultron was in fact highlighting as a potential concern.
Inquiry: Reason for deescalated emotional state. Adverse events were not eliminated, but delayed. Continued existence of unit still in credible jeopardy. Further risk of being noticed by Target 0 introduced.It wasn't wrong. The chance of occurrence of death did not drop just because she was not being attacked at the moment, and Arcade might very well notice she stopped attacking and seek to mitigate that issue. And with that realization, the calmness went away just as quickly. There was one explanation: Outside influence. And with that came potential for more problems, given how well messing with the game's source worked so far.
Sure enough, there came another attempt, and this time, the game did not like it one bit. Victoria felt like she would momentarily turn inside out, and then she literally seemed to split in two beings. There were ups and downs to it. The up was that with the split, the malicious code ordering her to kill was gone, which was a relief and a half. The down was related to an apparently dark version of herself leaping at her with a blade drawn. By virtue of being prepared for an attack, Victoria managed to dodge the blade, but was blasted by a water jet for her efforts. Still. Over under, her situation improved. "I'm fine, and it looks like I have free will back, so thanks, if that's your doing."
This was getting them nowhere though. Even if they defeated her dark mirror, she bet they would just load into another game. Likewise, she was reluctant to try hacking her way out again, with the trap malware waiting for her. But... recalling their training sessions, Edward did always have a backdoor installed in the framework. Would he omit to remove it for this? She was willing to take that chance. Beating him by using his own tool against him might be the only way to get out of this mess. "I'm going to try something, if you get any opportunity to strike, take it!" With that, she ran at her dark mirror, focusing on surviving and getting close rather than landing a hit of her own, that wasn't the plan.
It sort of worked, as she found herself getting choked by her dark twin. It worked for her purpose though. "Choke on this! Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start." she quickly said, touching the chest of her dark twin. If her hypothesis was right, this should activate some kind of override, like turning the target into a mech.
Location:
Skills/Powers:
Equipment:
Data corruptedSkills/Powers:
Kill.Equipment:
I cannot do that Arcade. Your code left an opening - FOR ULTRON.Stop telling me your next moves! You're making this even more difficult! Victoria groaned inwardly. Overhearing the information about April perhaps being able to shield the two of them made Ultron pause and think about a new strategy for a couple of milliseconds, which also gave Victoria time to think. Her own approach would not work anymore - not that it particularly worked for Andy. She compartmentalized that grief and guilt for later processing. Or... is she dead? Was Edward waging a sick psychological warfare on them? Hold that thought! That might be it!
Outside of their personal runtime, the pause was enough for their body to get knocked around a bunch and then a shot landed on them, but frankly, Victoria was OK with that. If all else failed, it would be better if they took her out here before she managed to escape into the other simulations. Now though, Ultron was about to run at April and make his move. It was now or never.
After the first two steps, their body stopped and seemed to relax. "New data relevant to objective available."
Vicky then seemed to straighten up, the cold tone returning to her voice. "Specify."
"Effect of attack on Target 3 is unknown. Data confirms Target's program is unloaded, but no data is available to confirm objctive's satisfaction. Escape from the simulation is required for verification. Objective may be undertaken afterwards, with uncertainty eliminated." she proposed, doing her best to hide her thought patterns from the other program.
It almost didn't work. She could feel Ultron peeling away her defenses, but the last ones managed to point it in a wrong memory address and hide her true intent: Back in reality, she would have override authority back to prevent Ultron from doing anything. That said, it probably helped to sell the lie that if Andy, and potentially Zari too, were dead, Victoria had full intention of killing Arcade, and whoever else that might have helped him. Alas... "Concern to objective result is valid. Ceasing offensive operations. Assisting in safe escape attempt."
Yes! A bit of a weight lifted off from Vicky's mind as Ultron ceased his attack on April. She did not like the idea of explaining to Leah that she has killed her girlfriend. Although, even with Ultron's assistance, she was having a tough time breaking out. The framework was something else... Which gave her an entirely new set of ideas for dealing with an Ultron outbreak. Something to consider later when this whole mess was dealt with.
"Initial escape attempt unsuccessful. Moving to defensible position to analyze data for another attempt." It had completely slipped Vicky's mind that Aptil and Zelda might just try to slaughter her while she stood there attempting to escape their virtual prison. At least Ultron was good for something. They moved back to the castle in the level, taking cover behind the walls and preparing for incoming attacks.
Location:
Skills/Powers: Machine 'physiology', data gathering and analysis
Equipment: Mucktorok avatar
Framework.RunSimulation(‘Z-BotW’)Skills/Powers: Machine 'physiology', data gathering and analysis
Equipment: Mucktorok avatar
As soon as the connection was made, Victoria knew something went terribly, terribly wrong. She did not even have the time to wonder whether Edward’s reaction time was that good, or whether he put in a malware trap in the system. She could feel the command taking effect, worming itself into her core.
Kill.While that was bad, all was not yet lost. She was made for this. No, the situation went from terrible to catastrophic when she tried to give the override command to her core to cease action and found out that she couldn’t. Oh no! The framework! It’s not a perfect simulation! I have no core and personality matrix here, it modelled my simulation based on a human object! she realized. Far too late.
As if that wasn’t enough, something else caused the simulation to glitch and send the ‘players’ into different programs. It was both a curse and a blessing. The former, because they lost their safety in numbers. The latter, because it left fewer of her classmates stuck with her.
As the scene shifted, she found herself seemingly riding a shark made out of swamp monster vomit. Immediately she made to turn away, only to find out that the simulation gave her no control yet, hostile command or not. She watched in horror as a jet of sludge shot out of the shark's mouth, sweeping across three of the others and hitting every single one of them, the hearts above them flashing and vanishing. Then the outside control stopped, dropping controls back to her mind and highlighing the player names. April, Zelda and Andy were in danger.
Immediately, she set out to fixing this godforsaken mess, fully aware she had milliseconds to do so before her lower level programming did something someone might not recover from. However, she couldn't break free of Edward's influence in time before her Ultron self made a move. Then she went mentally pale as her body spoke in a reverberating machine like voice:
"Scanning... Targets acquired. Analyzing...
Target 1: Medium threat, high survivability.
Target 2: Negligible threat, medium survivability.
Target 3: Severe threat, low survivability.
Selecting optimum strategy: Remove individual threats from the battle.
Locking on Target 3."
Victoria knew what the result of that would be even before her Ultron self said it. And the greatest threat just so happened to have the least health. She had to do something! Her first idea was to shout a warning.
Strategy modification declined. Action detrimental to objective: Kill.OK! If I can't stop myself or warn them, I need to give them a chance and frame it so that the alternative is treated as better option. Come on, think! This could work!
Outside, for the brief amount of time she spoke in her own voice, it seemed like Victoria dropped her stoic expression and robot like demeanor. "Override: Target prioritization not effective for objective when strategies to engage multiple targets are available. Repeat previous attack pattern!" Ultron seemed to think about it for a short while before relenting: "Complying."
Small mercies, all three of them were able to dodge the sludge beam this time. All the while, Victoria was working on trying to get herself free from the kill command. If only her core functions were not locked behind the now restored, ten layers thick, hard to understand firewall! This reminded her of the VEIL protocol situation some time back, only this time, her careful balancing of pros and cons would have deadly consequences, sooner or later. And now, she ran out of time again:
"Analyzing... Results of modified strategy unfavorable. Reprioritizing Target 3."
No, no, NO! Vicky was quickly running out of logical arguments. "Override! Statistical sample of insufficient size to determine result with acceptable confindence interval! Repeat previous attack pattern!" Ultron seemed to think about it for a few ticks longer this time, no doubt it would soon catch up to her bullshit. "...complying."
Victoria's strategy was secretly trying to convince Ultron to use the same attack over and over again. She hoped that by doing so, the trio on the chopping block would be able to predict her moves and continuously adapt to them, giving them better and better chance of avoiding hits.
But luck was a fickle mistress.
Having senses that could operate at high speed could be a curse. As the sweeping attack moved, Victoria felt a pit in her stomach open as she saw a rock in Andy's path, and watched in agonizing slow motion as she tripped. Doing the math, it was clear that Gravity will not pull Andy to the ground fast enough. She could do only one thing.
Override: Previously unaccounted target identified. Easiest way to fullfill objective: Kill is to call Self.Terminate() method.
Strategy modification declined. Action detrimental to objective: Kill. As per previous interpretation of quantity being major factor to objective: Kill, Self.Terminate() method would remove unit's ability to further execute objective: Kill....I'm sorry...
The sludge beam hit Andy, and she was gone.
"Target 3 eliminated. Number of targets dropped below effectivity threshold of mass engagement strategy. Locking on next priority target." her body said, her head turning a couple of degrees to glare at April, it's facial expression stone cold.
Location: It's a trap!
Skills/Powers: Machine 'physiology', data gathering and analysis
Equipment: N/A
Skills/Powers: Machine 'physiology', data gathering and analysis
Equipment: N/A
As the group loaded inside, Victoria morosely noticed the Framework's operating system seemed to correct her efforts. She was about to try to return, when the scene shifted into a retro pixelated mess and 8bit music that felt like someone was grinding a lego brick through her auditory receptors. And to top it all off- Am I a green f****** dinosaur?! Edward, what did I just say?!
Others started to make heads or tails of the fact that they were in an old, and very high stakes, Mario game. Alas, the much more important fact was that Zari did not materialize. Okay. That is the easiest way out barred. I suppose it's up to me to try and clean up a mess my guy made.
At the last thought, she took a second to calm down her bubbling anger. Not spotting Ed's trachery was yet another failure on her part. All it would have taken was perhaps being aware of other people's pulse, spikes in temperature and pupil dilation, something her senses could do easily, and she could tell when she was being lied to. Why didn't she? To protect the privacy of others. That care was rapidly evaporating the longer she stayed in this institute.
Maybe the people of Earth could only be dragged to safety and prosperity kicking and screaming.
But first, this. Walking over, she tapped Leah and Mads on the shoulders, as the two of them were in the know about her. "Hey. Looks like Mr. Arca blocked Zari off so that she doesn't shut him down immediately, but he seems to have forgotten about my hacking attempt from our first training. I'll see what I can do about getting us out of this mess, I'd appreciate some cover and Arca's eyes being pointed elsewhere. Keep in mind that Usagi threw more shit at us as we beaten it though, so try to keep the taunting to manageable level?"
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