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Eloquent Conversationalist
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 Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2010 9:07 am
A short distance from the buildings of squad 12's laboratories is a patch of several types of terrain. Each the size of an American Football field, they provide ample area to study the effects of inventions in a variety of terrains. Closest to the buildings is the meadow area, followed by a dense forest, desert sands, beach, and deep water environments. With the exception of the beach environment, none have any real transition between them. One step and the surroundings drastically change.
The meadow is predominantly flat, some smaller hills across the field all covered in knee-high grasses. An open area with high visibility and a few minor trenches to keep a person aware of hidden pitfalls.
The dense forest area is a thick copse of trees, so thick that a canopy of branches chokes out most light from the floor. This area is lush and full of various plant life. Going through this area requires a great deal of dexterity and agility, or a long time. Because of the nature of this area being for testing, many of the trees are gnarled and twisted, and no animal life larger than an insect can be found here. Experimentation keeps animal life in check.
The desert area is the only one with a barrier seal to keep containment. Such is a practical matter for the sake of keeping the sand in one place. Home to a half-dozen dunes of various sizes, the air is stagnant. The barrier that keeps the sand in also acts like a greenhouse. Penetrating it is not difficult even for new shimigami.
The beach area is a transition point for both desert and aquatic areas. Born out of necessity, this area is more often used for relaxation than for experimentation. The waves never reach more than a foot tall, but beyond that fact the replica is quite relaxing.
The aquatic zone is deceptively simple. Looking like a pond, the area is several dozen feet deep, allowing for underwater experimentation. Similar to the forest area, kelp and other sea plants are prolific where the sun can reach. Animal life is limited to plankton and krill, the occasional shrimp or crab. The ecosystem is complete here, but lack of variety and experimentation keeps other life from flourishing here.
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Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2010 9:12 am
(( Arrival from Lab 5, sorry for the short post, but after writing there, creating the grounds, and such, I am tapped of creation for a moment. sweatdrop ))
Arriving in the meadow area, Charles stands and takes a deep breath. Inspired by his success over in squad five, his smile is infectious and confident. Pulling out his visor, he puts it on and politely waits for his partner for this purpose. In this case, it is William Stark from squad 10. This spar should prove an interesting challenge!
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Eloquent Conversationalist
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Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2010 3:47 pm
William walked right behind the doctor, making sure nothing happened that he did not see or hear. They finally arrived in a place similar to Squad Ten's Training Grounds, but it was only similar in the loosest of sense. The place was amazing to William! Six very different terrains all fully sustained within a certain space. "Woaw...." was all William managed to say when he saw the unnatural artwork. "H-how is this possible? It's amazing!" He eyed the forest terrain with anticipation. "That forest eerily reminds me of my birthplace," he thought to himself while he waited for the doctor to say something to him or instruct him on what they were going to do.
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Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 6:11 pm
Charles hears the comment about how this is possible, and can't help but smile. "Do you forget so quickly? Anything is possible- only a matter of probability. As for the how, let's just say it is highly technical, and would take a while to explain. Suffice it to say that each of these areas are maintained and supported to test creations in both appropriate, and non-appropriate environments . . . research is key to dependability." Out of the corner of his eye, Charles notes a set of three lower-ranked shimigami from his squad closing. Oddly enough, he recognizes them from the gate when he went to try and pick a fight. Guards, and there is only one reason they would be coming here.
Turning his head to the right, Charles uses his left hand to raise his visor above his eyes. "It's alright. This man and his companion came seeking aid, and are causing no trouble. Both appear to be from squad 10, please log that in." As they reluctantly leave, Charles replaces his visor, and subtly presses a button on it. Still with his back to William, he smiles with the subtle heads up display reading full sync with his weaponry and the mainframe not far away. Turning his head to face forward again, he now is facing fully away from William.
"For future reference, my squad values records, and you really should check in at the portal. My captain is so very fond of knowing what is going on here. Those guards would likely have tried to apprehend you- and invalidated this research. I wouldn't have enjoyed that . . ." He is as ready as he will ever get. William is in the Meadow area, his weapons are charged, the HUD is linked, and a silent smile is felt within his mind as a certain spirit likes his plan from a mental web. Assuming the distraction of this area, combined with the thought of incarceration for trespassing, was enough to divert attention, Charles shoves his reiatsu into his feet, launching himself high.
Turning mid-air, he uses his interface gloves to fire something off his right thigh, a faint ripping sound as the sharp blade fires outward. In order to maintain his control without obvious reaches for controls, his gloves are set to specific touch points for use of his weapons. The SHODs, DARTs, and his arm holsters are currently linked into them, and he is sure that with a few adjustments, several other surprises can be made to appear as a seeming force of will. Due to his jump the blade, not unlike a kunai, fires towards William. Fired blindly from mid-jump, the chances of it hitting or even doing damage are negligible, but the surprise will work well for the first portion of his experiment.
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Eloquent Conversationalist
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Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 7:18 am
William looked around him in wonder at the place. Two people began walking toward him, but he paid them very little attention when the doctor dismissed them from the area. "Of course I should have never forgotten that key point about possibility. So I assume we're going to try and replicate the fight where I changed then?" His eyebrows furrowed at the silence and he looked around, "Doctor?" The sound of air splitting and an ever so slight whirring sound from a hole flying through the air signaled that a projectile had been tossed at him. There was a sudden thunk at his feet where the blade had impacted with the ground only a few centimeters from his foot. "Woaw hey!"
For a moment he was somewhat disoriented by where the blade might have come from, but upon looking at the angle it had stuck into the ground there were only two options: far away and above him. His eyes darted up to where he could now see the doctor, and he was astounded to see him so high off the ground. "I take it that we are indeed trying to replicate the fight. Fine then," he said as adrenaline rushed through him. He swung down with his arms and his swords clicked into place next to his fists. His feet dug deep into the ground and propelled him in the direction of where the doctor was to land.
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Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 10:36 pm
Charles is glad for several reasons when the blade leaves a dull thud in the ground. First, it was a warning shot- rather than a cheap one. No use in overstimulating the test subject. Second, the impact registered on his HUD, and a small minimap appears on the lower right of his field of view. Third, this weapons test will work dual duty with stress on William. He just hopes that if push comes to shove, he can get through to a cat. Charles has never even considered that eventuality, though it does sound interesting . . .
Back to the matter at hand! As he lazily drifts downward, his landing zone is not difficult to discern. With a burst of reiatsu he alters course, and his body orientation to boot. Pressing the trigger again, a small woosh of air is heard only by him. His clothing is already ripped in the right place for exit, and as he looks directly at William, the weapon flies far away from his subject . . . and buries itself in the grass some distance away. Charles smiles as the second blip on his screen lights up exactly where he was hoping.
The burst of spiritual pressure does not divert his course far, and as he lands, his grip easily finds something for both hands. His left grips a small, fat cylinder from one of his belts, his right grips his sword handle. Worn on his back, handle facing downward, the unusual angle does not lend itself well to many aspects of combat. Still, Charles only smiles wide as he comes to a landing with William almost literally flying towards him. Without a word, he already has several options for his next move . . . or moves as the case may be.
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Eloquent Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2010 2:29 pm
William was almost perplexed by the sudden change in direction that the doctor had made, but he was truly confused when a projectile flew well away from him in another direction. He frowned and thought, "Now that can't have been an accident; I'd better watch for traps." His last thought made him make a mental note of where the projectiles had flown in case they were traps of some sort. The potential threat memorized, he charged at his opponent as fast as he could. When he got close, he noted that his opponent was reaching for something and the fact that he had used projectiles meant that William had to stay on his highest guard. He also slowed to a reasonable speed for striking before making a swift right jab at his opponent while his left guarded his body. "Do you have a name doctor?" he asked in mid-jab.
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Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2010 10:56 pm
Charles is pleased with the change in tactics William employs. Above all else, he respects the mind, and despite the limited avenue of combat the obvious wheels are turning. Charles also notes the concerned look his opponent glances towards his latest DART. Yes . . . keep clear of them for now . . . He understands that his time to pull his test off is limited, and begins to consider how to set additional units.
That process is disturbed by William making his inevitable counterattack. Standing with his left forward, Charles tightens his grip on the sword behind and to the right. As William moves close with a jab at his left, options flash in his mind, and he decides against his blade- for now. Instead he pulls backward, pursposefully falling to his back while squeezing the cylinder in his hand to arm the device. "I should apologize."
As the waist-high grasses rise up to swallow him, he lightly tosses the item up. "I am not a doctor." With a wide smile, he sees his device begin to detonate. Shaped like a large can of tuna, this is a shaped charge grenade. Dubbed a "shockwave" the blast is focused away from up or down, instead giving a blast wave of about four and a half meters in a circle around the device. Safe directly beneath it, Charles waits for the shattering boom to echo away to hop to his feet, confident that the blast wave would have knocked back his opponent that was only a couple feet away to jab him.
"My name is Takena, 3rd seat of squad 12." Smiling wide, he takes his earlier stance, and rifles through his belt for a split moment for another device to hold in his left hand. Feeling what he was hoping for, his right hand returns to the handle at his back. With the high grass, Charles should be able to see where William landed. Unfortunately, with the blast, and a breeze, finding a consistent hole in the grasses is more difficult than it seems.
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Eloquent Conversationalist
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Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2010 3:28 pm
William watched the doctor moves very carefully; his movements would betray his expertise in combat which he hadn’t yet confirmed. “If I can learn his specialty, then I can choose an appropriate way of attack.” The one thing that had thrown him off about the doctor was that when he swung his jab at him, the doctor fell instead. Instead of watching the doctor fall to the floor, William watched a round object fly into the air. His first thought was that the thing was a butterfly mine, hence the doctor’s drop to the ground. His mind panicked and the only two things he had been able to do while he watched it soar was to hear that the doctor was not a doctor and throw his arms up in front of his face.
Everything slowed down to slow motion for a second while he tried to pull himself away. A spark jumped between his arms, shocking him and sending him flying only a split second before the mine-like thing detonated. That wasn’t to say he wasn’t hit by the mine, oh no it had still hit him badly, but it had not hit him as much as it would have had he not been moved. Somersault over helpless somersault, William flew back at least twenty or thirty meters, landing in a motionless heap in the tall grass. His ears rang while his limbs failed to respond from disorientation. His mind slipped into unconsciousness a moment later, but he did not sleep.
“Grah!!” William yelled in an attempt to rid himself of the shockwave. He sat up panting and very much in pain, but he was no longer in the grassy meadow he had been fighting in. Instead he found himself in something of a jungle; one that he’d been to before and fairly recently. It was the same stormy jungle he had been in after drinking too much in the bar and passing out while sitting down. “W-where the hell am I?” he asked in confusion while he slowly got up from the ground. The thunder grew louder and the lightning came closer. “s**t what was that thing the doc-no scientist had used? It looked like a mine, but it didn’t seem to kill me….or at least I don’t think I’m dead.”
The lightning and thunder grew louder and louder while the rain trickled through the canopy at an ever increasing rate. “Wait a minute; I’ve been here before-” At that very moment, a lightning bolt struck the ground right next to him, sending him flying back to the ground a meter or so to his left. “What the *cough* hell?!” he said while he tried to lift himself off the ground once more. Something heavy was pinning him to the floor; something that was moving. A black furred leopard head lowered itself next to his head and if he didn’t know better, the leopard was smiling. A second later, and he was flipped onto his back by the leopard’s paws. It placed it’s paws on his chest and said, “Live you idiot. Oh and try sneezing.” The leopard’s paws began to glow dark blue as sparks jumped through its fur everywhere. Suddenly, the sparks all lanced down its two front paws and into his chest.
Once again, William shot up but this time he was in the Grassy Field again. The sound of the shockwave was still traveling across the planes. His head still hurt, and he felt as if he had swallowed some numbing medicine. Slowly, he got up from the ground and looked around for the man that had knocked him into another world. He stumbled and almost fell back down before his vision focused again. “Enough, enough….wha-what the heck was that mine thing, and I think I might have found the answer to our original quest. Just….no more fighting; I’ve already been wounded in two spots from throwing knives before and now that shockwave thing. I’m done for today if you don’t mind.”
((Longish, but such internal world posts can't really be that short.))
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Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2010 9:59 pm
Charles sees William rise far away. Internally surprised in a pleasant way from the effectiveness of the blast, he smiles despite himself. Being a defensive fighter, to hear William call an end to the experiment is quite disappointing. For a moment Charles even considers forcing the issue. Such would be futile, and even he realizes that. Sighing, he replaces his newest module back into his belt. Standing up straight, he looks around and the HUD shows him just were his projectiles landed.
"Pity. I was beginning to enjoy that weapons test. Of course, I didn't expect the shockwave to be so effective. I'll have to remember that for next time. SO! Figured out something, have you? May I ask what revelations have come to light?" Walking through the high grasses, Charles has no difficulty in retrieving his weapons. A part of him is sad only two shots were fired, and the weapon was never truly tested. He shrugs and mentally notes that is the cost of greed. by insisting on putting down a large cadre of DARTs, he wasted too much time.
Shutting off his visor, he removes it, and tucks the optics into a pocket of his bandoleer. "As per what I did hit you with, that was a special variant of grenade. No fragmentation, just pure force. That was my 'shockwave' model. Above and below are nullified to enhance 360 degree pushback. I had planned on testing my other variant, as well as these . . ." holding up a single weapon from the ground, he shows that there was a bit of technology attached to the blade where a handle normally was. " . . . but that will evidently have to wait."
His smile is genial again, but the interest is obvious in what William might have learned from this. That, and despite his station, he enjoys showing off a bit.
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Eloquent Conversationalist
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Posted: Sat Jun 26, 2010 8:12 am
William watched Takena pick up items while he held his own head from ever so slight pain. The visor and technological part of his opponent was astounding but even technology had its limits. “An effective grenade, but it could be used to more controlled effect…not that it wasn’t effective, ow.” He gently massaged his temples to try and relieve some pain while he thought. “Its design means you’d have to throw it perfectly flat into the air or you might hit yourself with it. Might I suggest making it into a staff top or a spring-loaded cane top that could launch it perfectly level into the air? Easy reloading would make it a fast crowd control weapon or something not to be messed with. Heck, if you could make the blast go straight off the top of the staff and forward it would be a really strong weapon.” The ideas were flooding into his head now, but he needed to stay on the original subject of the entire exercise.
“But now onto the original problem. When I was hit by the shockwave, I was sent to another world. I don’t know if I was knocked out or not, but I found myself in a stormy jungle of sorts. A leopard attacked me there and told me to live and…to try sneezing. Taking that into account, I distinctly remember sneezing before changing into a leopard last time, and then again before changing back a moment later. If I’m right, then I think I just need something to make me sneeze in order to change.” William looked around but couldn’t find anything that would make him sneeze. “Got any pepper or a feather?” he asked somewhat jokingly.
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Posted: Sat Jun 26, 2010 8:11 pm
Replacing his DARTs in their holster on his thigh, Charles approaches with a soft smile. William offers an explanation that equates to being knocked into his own mental world. Without looking, he draws out three small devices- one is the shockwave grenade, another is a sphere, and the third is half a sphere with a flat side- like a ball cut in half. "Oh, I have several variants for different purposes. The shockwave is a crowd control device, but I have a general fragmentation grenade and a unidirectional blast. Each has several unique abilites and uses . . ."
Smirking even wider, he hears the explanation and request and he has to chuckle. "You do recall the last time you asked me for help, correct? Naturally we can make you 'sneeze,' but do you need to power up to do it?"
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Eloquent Conversationalist
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Posted: Sun Jun 27, 2010 3:25 am
William looked at Takena with confusion, "Power...up? What like that one television show in Real Life where two guys would yell at each other in the middle of combat, gain colorful auras and spiky hair, while apparently becoming super fast slash strong?" It had been such a weird show that had done the same thing over and over again, yet it had captured the audience of hundreds of thousands of children of which most were boys. "No, no, I think I merely have to sneeze. And remind me never to mess with Squad 12 unless I really know what I'm doing," he added with a chuckle upon seeing the explosives.
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Posted: Sun Jun 27, 2010 10:56 pm
Having missed out on that fad due to dying far too early in the history of Earth to watch it, Charles stands confused for a moment. Colorful auras, yelling, and pausing in the middle of a fight to scream? Sounds idiotic. Before he could ask what that abomination was about, William makes him smile with a reference to his explosives.
Charles lightly tosses the one in his hand up and catches it mid-air. "Trust me on this, my companion. You never know what you are doing with us. For instance, from these toys, to radical environmental adustment, to blade augmentation- Nothing is out of bounds for us, or me. My grenade mods are the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I had planned to test out a sonic weapon with my DARTs, the blades I have on a seemingly non-useful firing mechanism. I will tell you this- I missed you on purpose." Charles winks playfully and looks around.
Picking up a blade of grass reluctantly, he slowly strips the blade down into a bare tether. A wisp of material firm enough to hold shape, but pliable to any resistance. "Sneezing is a response to stimuli. One must aggrivate the inner reaches of the nostril to inspire a sneeze. The urge to expel any foreign matter depends on the hairs within the nose . . . now- hold still." Hardly dignified, but Charles has no compunction about lightly pushing his tether up William's nose. Twisting his fingertips, the tether begins to spin within William's nose, teasing the hairs there- likely to inspire a sneeze in record time. Disgusting to some, and less than dignified to most, this is a part of the experiment Charles had begun. He sees this as just another method of gathering information . . . and is justified through that logic for shoving a shred of grass up a shimigami's nose.
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Eloquent Conversationalist
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Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2010 5:43 pm
William thought about the man’s words of darts and found them strange. “If the darts were also a secondary weapon, then I can only thing of them making a pulse or shock wave as well. Maybe a barrier like in Halo Three.” He pondered at the words and found himself thinking about the real world once again; his mind did tend to wander. He had been listening to Takena in the back of his mind, but he hadn’t been paying any attention to his surroundings at all. Thus he almost jumped at the strange contact. “Wha—hey! Wh-wha’re you—ah, ah, ahCHOO!” William’s sneeze sent him to his knees, or at least he thought it had sent him to his knees. As it turned out, he was actually standing up but on four legs. “Gods this feels weirrrd. Oh not that stupid ‘Rrr’ thing again…”
He felt his new body carefully; everything seemed to scream for his attention now. His nose told him a thousand different things were nearby while his eyes caught the movement of every single bug within the area up to a good twenty meters or so out. His ears picked up the wing movements of those very same insects. His breaths came very fast but no matter how fast they got, he didn’t hyperventilate. The senses were getting far too intense and definitely overwhelmed him. “I think I’m going to be sick….ngh…” he said while he slowly lowered himself to the ground. His head was spinning, and his stomach was doing the tango with it. He felt muscles contract on his hands that had never been there before, making his claws dig into the ground to try and steady himself.
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