SIGINT

The Technology Planet - Frixion Prime - Open

	Frixion Prime — Inner Streets @Antarctic Termite

With her left hand, the little girl slowly pushed against Ayem's right, as though comparing the sizes of their hands. Skin met cold metal, but the girl didn't seem to mind. She was too enraptured by the wonder of it all. In her right hand, she continued to hold the combat knife, pointed towards herself — but it didn't move. It was frozen, just like the rest of her, as she gazed with her jaw hanging open into the artificial structure. She was completely oblivious to the woman's caution, not even realizing that she was being kept at arm's length. She wasn't even paying attention to that sort of body language to begin with.

"I...guess that makes sense..." She admitted glumly, "Well, I can't throw knives anyway, 'cause they're too heavy, but yeah..." Her right hand fell limply to her side as her face soured. "But still...knife hands. There aren't any left? That's not fair! You're supposed to aaask before you take the last of something, like, like, like the last sugar cookie, or the last sugar cube, or the last...sugary thing!"

The little girl's attention quickly moved on, though. Her brain moved in an odd direction, but it moved a mile a minute. Tossing the combat knife between her emaciated hands like it was a toy, she answered the talltall lady with a beaming smile. "My name's Mary! M-E-R-Y! Like the girl with the little lamb." She added helpfully, "Having a lamb would be cool...but I'd rather have a bunny."

Thankfully deterred from the subject of self-amputation, her mind began to wander again. "If she's far away...I'm gonna need...food. Lotsa food." Mary thought out loud, still juggling the combat knife as her head turned up and away, unfocused eyes indicating a (comparatively) deep train of thought. "And I'm gonna need a flying thingy...and, um...I think that's it. Yay! I only need two things!" Without any fear, Mary reached out with her hand, taking one of Ayem's knife fingers and avoiding its blade with surprising precision as she did so. "Let's get the food first! Come on, come on~! I wanna get lots of candy~!"

The Technology Planet - Frixion Prime - Open

	Frixion Prime — Inner Streets @Antarctic Termite

"Nope~!"

The little girl smiled widely as she admitted, without complaint, that she had absolutely no idea what she was doing.

"She flew off into the sky." The girl explained helpfully, "I dunno how to fly, so I can't follow her...and I dunno where she is..." She pouted expressively, kicking at the ground in disappointment. "So, I thought, maybe someone else might know..."

"But! But!! You've seen her, right!? You've really really really pinky-swear-promise seen her!?" Like a lightswitch flipping on, the girl was jumping up and down excitedly. She pivoted moods like an improperly calibrated accelerometer. "Wh-which way did she go!? Where was she when you saw her!? I gotta chase after her!! I gotta!! I gotta I gotta I got—"

The little girl, who had up to that point been literally bouncing with energy, suddenly stopped. Staring wide-eyed at the talltall woman holding the paper, she froze, like a toy whose batteries had abruptly died. It was only after a gasp of unbelievable amazement, the kind of look you'd see from someone viewing an eclipse or a fireworks show, that Mary's trembling finger slowly pointed upwards.

"You...you..." She began, slowly, with a trembling voice. "You...you have...you have...knife hands." The little girl finally finished her thought, her eyes locked onto the fingers that gripped the paper. "That. Is. AWESOME!! I want knife hands, too! I wanna cut off my fingers and replace them with knives! It'll be sooo cool!!" She proclaimed, already pulling back one of her sleeves, and unsheathing what looked to be some kind of high-tech combat knife from her hip that had been hidden beneath the hoodie. She was literally intending to amputate herself at that exact moment. "Where'd you get yours!? How long have you had them!?"

Love Bomb Piracy Front - Prologue

	Stolen Ship — The Bridge @JaceBeleren

The bespectacled girl's head slowly turned upwards at the metal woman, her eyes devoid of recognition. Her mouth moved slowly, but there was no sound. At the very least, she wasn't screaming — even if only because she was beyond that point.

She was reliving another event, from another time. Another death, from another place.


<sup>...Was that right? Was she really dead?

That girl...can't be dead. Because...</sup>

<sub>...even now...she's still dreaming.

The same dream, every time she sleeps.</sub>


Blinking vacantly, SIGINT's blood-stained, trembling hand reached up, with so much strain that it seemed like she was trying to lift a dumbbell simply by raising her own shoulder. The data drive dropped into her hand, its outside painted crimson. With all of her energy expended, the arm dropped down to the floor again, her gaze lowered to focus on it against her reddened hand and the metallic floor.

Her movements were more robotic than even Diana's own. Like a machine that had shut down, her blank gaze remained downward, with only the trembling of her fingers to indicate that she hadn't stopped breathing. With effort that could have pulled the moon down from the sky, her fingers slowly, very slowly, closed over the drive, gripping it weakly.

SIGINT

As discussed in Discord, profile was opened for editing following SIGINT's successful joining of the Love Bomb Pirates. This editing is now complete and pending re-approval.

For comparison, the original raw text has been stored in a pastebin, here. It may expire after some time.

Changelog:
Mnemonic - added more detail, no meaningful changes
Hacking - minor grammatical fixes, no meaningful changes
Thermo-Optic Bodysuit - SIGINT's Contraband item, upgraded to a rank 4 device from its previous rank 3.
Added: Complete camoflauge, as opposed to partial. Now grants proper invisibility instead of a blur effect.
Removed: Energy resistance, it just didn't really make sense.
Robotics - Added a bunch of missing detail, and a new robot schematic, The Frisbee, inspired by the Penumbra's astrionics suite, and constructed using materials from the Smuggling Network critical point.
My Room - A new feature which lists out what SIGINT's workshop is like aboard the pirate ship, and the mundane gear it contains. This also includes her Friend Ship upgrade, Bunnies (via Colin).

The Technology Planet - Frixion Prime - Open

an innocent eight year old child

The Technology Planet - Frixion Prime - Open

	Frixion Prime — Inner Streets @Antarctic Termite

"Hey! Heeeeey~!"

A small girl nervously bounded across the street, completely heedless of a car that very nearly hit her in the process, as she accosted a complete stranger on the other side of the road. Thinking she might be homeless, he averted his gaze and pretended to ignore her — only to recoil when he suddenly had a paper shoved in his face.

"Have you seen this person!?" The little girl pleaded loudly, pushing it up closer to him as though five centimeters wasn't enough distance to properly view it. "I'm looking for her! It's really important!!"

"I— I dunno, just...go away." Her face fell at the rebuke, pouting as the stranger made all haste to leave her presence. Why did no one want to talk to her? Was it because she smelled bad? She did smell pretty bad. Probably. Her sense of smell had reached an automatic shutoff point of some kind, so she didn't actually know how bad she smelled, other than that it was bad enough that her 'secondary brain' had activated an emergency-level protocol in response.

Well, it probably wasn't that bad, anyway.

"Hungry..." The girl muttered, listlessly making her way down the street, as she gingerly held the piece of paper with both hands. The person on it was really important. She had to find them, no matter what! But, with no idea where that person was, and...literally no investigative skills whatsoever...she was reduced to asking random people on the street. Which, to her earnest shock and surprise, was not working.

Her last box...drawing a small, cardboard box from her hoodie pocket, she emptied it over her mouth, dumping six or seven sugar cubes directly onto her tongue, chewing them like light snacks just before tossing the box over her shoulder. She'd need more food soon, but that was fine. She could—


Oh, hey! Another person!

Wow, she's tall! Like, super-duper tall. Taller than tall. Talltall. And she looks lost. That means she doesn't have anywhere to go, which means she has nothing better to do than look at paper and listen to someone talk!

The perfect target.


Meanwhile, the girl quickly running towards her was about as short as short could get. Not even ten years old, if she wasn't so loud, people would probably walk into her without noticing. She was wearing a black hoodie over a tracksuit, both of which, along with her shoes, were caked in...something.

It almost looked like amber, but a detailed analysis might betray the fact that a large amount of mucus, blood, and sputum had apparently been melted into the fabric of her clothing. There was no way that could have come from just one episode of a bad cough. It was every time she threw up over herself, or wiped her mouth, or anything...and some kind of persistent, ambient heat source had made sure that every molecule of it was bonded nice and snug with the polymer hoodie.

To call those clothes dirty was an insult to dirt itself. They needed to be laundered in unicorn blood before they could be called 'safe to wear'. And dear stars above, the smell. If one of the four horseman walked among the streets of Frixion Prime, there was now a decent approximation of what it might do to a person's nose.

Unnaturally dark hair, dyed a jet black, peeked out from underneath the hood, cut in a jagged and uneven fashion. Her deep, red eyes were filled with a childlike glee that sharply contrasted the rest of her body, her cheeks sunken and her limbs eerily thin. The bones in her hands seemed to push up through the skin farther than usual, and her arms had barely any muscle on them at all. Even without the state of her clothing, she gave the appearance of someone who should really be in a hospital.

Despite that, however, through the force of sheer childlike boundless energy, she pressed through her own physical state towards the ultimate goal of...being a pest, probably, or whatever it is she wants.


"Heph yooph!!" With a mouthful of half-chewed sugar spewing from the corners of her mouth, the little girl approached the talltall stranger, shoving a piece of paper in her face and swallowing the 'food' in a terrible rush. "Hey! Hey you! Have you seen this person!?"

^{artist interpretation}

"It's super duper ultra important, I gotta find her!" The little girl pleaded, pushing the paper as closely to the woman's face as she could reach, which was not very. "Pleeeeeeeease say that you've seen her? Pretty please!?"


...As if saying please would make it more likely...

Love Bomb Piracy Front - Prologue

	Outskirts of Frixion Prime — Intersection

"You idiot!! They followed you here!!"

"I...no— I— I was sure that—"

The earth above them rumbled with the sound of marching thunder, rolling along the ground like a wave of hatred and warped desire. The bunker's doors didn't hold for even a moment. The girl's sentence was interrupted by a blast of heat and light, as the moonlight made its way into the underground.

She screamed. The younger girl grabbed her arm, and began to run.

...What was she saying, back then?

█̸̸̛͜͝▄̛̕͟▄̧̡̕͟█̨͟͞▄̴͟█̡̕͟͢▄̢́■̡̡̕▄̸̀͞ ears were ringing from the explosion. The world seemed to roll around like clothes in a dryer—

"As long as we stick together..."

Was that it...?

No, that couldn't have been it. That was from a different time.

But I think...that girl remembered those words, in that moment. In the moment when her hearing was lost, in the perfect, silent clarity of deafness, she could sound out her memories in her mind.

It was dark. █̨҉▄̷̨̀▄̵̢█̧̢̀͘͢▄̴̢̧̛͝█̸̸͝▄̢́͟͟ couldn't see at all. Couldn't hear at all. Could only feel that hand, gripping her tightly, dragging her along.

But in the end, she lost even that.

All she had left was the feeling of the cold, hard ground, an̴d t̷he b͢u̴l̀l̵et͢ t҉h͝͏͝a̡̢̧t ͢h͢a͏́d ̢͠͏ri͠pṕ͝ed̶̛͢ t̵̢h̶͜͟͜͟r̷̡͢͞ó̴̕͡͞u̡҉̀ģ̶h͠ ̨̀͘͠ḩ̸̛̀͘e̵̢̕r̶̡͟͠ ͠͝c̶̡̢͘͡h̶͢͟͠e͜s̴̴̵̀̕t̢̧

---

A primal, shrill scream overcame even the sounds of the surrounding gunfire, as a blade was driven mercilessly into the digital screen.

The screen that bore her face.

On the surface of the planet, a little girl no older than eight or nine was breathing heavily, standing over the remains of what was once a billboard, having fallen from its perch amidst the chaos and weaponry. The top of her black hoodie was pulled back, revealing jagged, jet-black hair that looked like it had been haphazardly cut with a sharp knife. Her eyes were a deep red, pupils dilated from adrenaline, waxing and waning like the light of a passing comet.

The glass shards at her feet flickered as the image 'died'. At least, in her mind, it had 'died'. She had 'killed' it, after all.

From the moment she saw her face, the only option left was to 'kill'. And in that intersection, surrounded with her face on every screen, replacing every hologram, she had killed, and killed, and killed, and killəd, and killed and killed and killəd and killəd killed killəd killed killəd killəd killəd...

Until every visage of that smug grin had been wiped from the face of the planet.

Until every screen, every projector along those streets had been destroyed.

With the hiss of escaping gas, a slot on the hilt of her knife opened up, spewing forth a jet of evaporated nitrogen, along with a glowing heat sink. It clattered against the wall, raising smoke from the dry grass like the ashes of a cigarette, as the little girl slowly sheathed the knife against her back, catching her breath.

"This is a scheduled test of the hydroelectric dam release mechanism."

An automated, robotic voice came from the distant bridge, where the fighting was. But, none of that concerned her. Instead, light-headed from the physical exertion, she looked up at the sky, towards a small, red 'star' that was rising away from her.

"This test was scheduled on null and all residents were informed on null."

"Canal sector twelve has been evacuated as of null. The test will begin in negative eighteen seconds."

That 'star'...

The ark that bore her into the sky.

"...You said that...we'd stick together..." The little girl's voice emerged languid and hoarse. She held back her need to cough, keeping her body perfectly still. Even as the ark sailed far away from her sight, even as the muddy rapids rushed along behind her, her vision remained focused on that single point. "But...you abandoned me...back then..."

Eventually, her throat gave out. The girl held her stomach as the fit reverberated through her lungs, coughing up blood and sputum in equal measures. For how long, she didn't know. It splashed against the ground, like deep, dark raindrops. It stained her hoodie, it stained her shoes, showing dimly even against the black surfaces.

Her body was covered in her own blood, just like back then, just like at that faraway time, in that faraway place, in the faraway dream that she saw every time she slept.

"And you've...abandoned me...now, too...huh...?"

Hanging trails of blood, like reddish-brown icicles, clung to her lips. Wiping her mouth weakly, she walked through the puddle of her own mucus, listlessly shambling forward.

"It's fine, though. Even if you leave me behind, again and again, I'll find you."

"Just like I did, back then..."

	Stolen Ship — The Bridge @Antarctic Termite @LPRKN @JaceBeleren @Styxx Acheron @HeroicSociopath

Just like back then.

Someone had died in front of her, just like back then.

Shot through the chest, from behind, just like back then.

Just like her.

Blood that wasn't hers coated her side and shoulder. One of the lenses of her glasses was coated over with red death, dyeing half of her vision and blurring the other. The girl's fingers twitched slightly, her body locked up as though she had met the eyes of a basilisk.

Someone was...yelling. Scrambling, running.

—ears ringing, the world seemed to roll around like clothes in a dryer.

But it was her body that moved, while the world stood painfully still. The moment she had tried to take a step back, the girl's leg had given out, and she'd fallen backwards, her head rattling against a raised console.

Even as her glasses tilted over her head, and blood oozed down her arm, she didn't notice.

Her eyes were focused on a faraway place, a faraway time. A dream that she had every time she slept.

_"...h..."

Her voice almost didn't make it out of her throat. The girl's eyes were wide, her jaw hanging open like the face of a broken doll.

_"...how..."

The girl's head shook slowly. The sight in front of her couldn't be real. It couldn't be. It was a dream, like it always was. The same dream she always had. She had seen this death over and over and over, in her mind.

So, it couldn't be real. Just like the darkness around her wasn't real, and the bunker wasn't real, and the people with guns weren't real, and the smell of wet earth at her nose wasn't real, and the creaking of rotting wood beneath her feet wasn't real, and the weight on her arm wasn't real, and the gently fading heat in her right hand wasn't real.

She'd wake up soon, any second now, at the same point in the dream, at the same time. At the moment she looked down and saw, just barely in the deep darkness, that blood-splattered hair, she'd wake up like she always did.

But she stared at the blood-splattered hair, on the brightly-lit ground, atop the metallic tiles, and the dream continued.

_{"...how many...times..."}

The girl's hands slowly raised to the sides of her head, one clean, and one covered in the blood of th͡at͢ pe͘r̶son͠ w̴h̵o ͏ha̢d̴ l͝oók̴e͢d҉ ̛f͠or ͜h̨e͢r͝ ̡a͡n͟d tri̴e̸d ͢to͞ ̕s͢av̴e͢ ͘ḩer̕, only for her to make it out alone, unable to do so much as carry the corpse away from that place. Her own life too heavy, the limit of what she could bear on her shoulders. Warm crimson stained her hair and ran down her neck as her hands pressed tightly over her ears, and her head sank into her knees.


<sub>"...how many..."


"...times..."


"...h...how..."</sub>

Expanding Horizons Feedback Thread

@Rilla Hopefully this is the right place...I was going to post it in Harbringer's FAQ thread since it was a living document, but they've since stepped down from the position, so I wasn't sure if it was still being updated.

Anyway, I see a couple of 'mission' recruitment threads, like this one. I'm assuming that a mission consists of a task that must be carried out by approved characters, facing opposition controlled by the person GMing the mission.

My question is: Does a thread GM need to be staff, or can we, as players, create and run missions for other players?

And by extension (if yes), what limits are there in terms of the scope and staff approval of the opposition inherent to the mission?

I had a conversation with Circ regarding this in the Discord chat, and I wasn't super clear on what the response was, but the way I ended up reading it was, "If an NPC has any capability/intention of affecting a PC, in any context, they must be submitted and approved as a PC themselves". I'm honestly not sure if that was a correct reading of the response, and the conversation was pretty short, but that was something that I wanted to get more detailed clarification on.

As a smaller example, in a thread going on now, we have the Love Bomb Pirates fighting a group of faceless armed mercenaries run by the thread GM. But in searching through the FAQ and similar resources around, I couldn't find guidelines on whether or not we were actually allowed to run mooks as opposition for ourselves, as said mercenaries are not employed by any currently approved PC. The existence of the thread (retroactively) contradicts my reading of Circ's ruling on the matter, which caused some confusion amongst ourselves when I brought it up in our group chat.

I like making stories for people, and running missions and creating subplots is definitely something that I would do if I understood the bounds in which I was able to do so, so I really just wanted to get clarification on that. Are 'missions' of this nature solely a staff-run thing, or do we have the capability to make similar missions ourselves? Can these missions involve hostile NPCs or hostile phenomenon (e.g. negative space wedgies)? What approval process is involved? Etc.

Thanks!

Fate/Empty Providence

Considering how fast a battle between Servants would progress on the ground, given their speed, she could well be in the air for multiple turns. In fact, she might not have even reached the apex in her flight trajectory yet, come to think of it.

I'd say just grab her if you happen to get a chance, or if it's just what you want to do. Otherwise, we can just say that her exact position is...

up in the air

Fate/Empty Providence

Izumi Airi — The Sky

---

For the briefest of moments, the green grass was above me, and the blue sky underneath my feet.

Moving my legs just a bit, in that short moment, it almost felt like I was walking on a cloud.

It was...the first time I saw the world spin.

---

Airi was used to moving quickly. When she really pushed her body to its limits, even her own perception of the world was distorted in that instant. The familiar tug on her stomach, the smell of scorched rubber as the soles of her shoes were worn further and further down.

But that...was nothing compared to this. A spinning world was replaced with darkness, as the G-forces took their toll on her. The smell of burning rubber was replaced with the stench of scorched earth.

That familiar experience was taken from her, pulled and warped into something outside of the realm of common sense.

The sky beneath her feet...looked the same as it did on that day, five years ago, perhaps six. But what she was seeing wasn't a memory, but reality, as her wind-shot eyes opened with a start.

"WHAT"

Craning her neck against the clouds and screaming wind, she saw the field beneath her emerge, along with a good deal of Northern Shinto. There was nothing to jump from. Nothing to kick off of, nothing to grab onto. Just air, sky, and a smoldering, red-hot ground, which was rapidly falling away before her eyes.

"THE"

Her hoodie rippled in the wind currents, whipping at her sides as the worn drawstrings unraveled that much more. Even if she had been a magus, she might still not have understood what was going on beneath her, or even what had just happened.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU—"

Of course, this, this, was a Berserker's idea of keeping his Master safe.