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Name: Joyce Ingram Race/Species: Human Age: 16 (and very hormonal) Height: 5'1" Weight: 117 lbs Eyes: brown Hair: GREEN MOHAWK, BISH. (dyed, of course. naturally a brunette) Profession: student/waitress at the on-ship bar (though the student part is debatable) Weapons: always carries a loaded gyropistol and she knows how to use it Medical Conditions: None Other: Joyce looks nothing like her father. In fact, they don't even seem related, except for the shared stubborn personality. Her parents divorced when she was little. She'd lived with her mother until her mother died in the line of duty. Her mother was a cop. Her closest relative is her father, whom she hasn't seen since she was 7. After 9 years of contact only by futuristic webcam, it's rather awkward.
Name: Alex Ingram Race/Species: Human Age: 47 Height: 6'2" Weight: 212 Eyes: green Hair: dirty blonde, buzz cut Profession: Communications Officer/Contact Specialist Weapons: Neuroflayer Handgun, though he's never actually used it and probably will miss Medical Conditions: Trembling Blood Disease (causes an irregular heartbeat) Other: He doesn't feel like he can tell his daughter what she can and cannot do because he wasn't there for most of her childhood. Half of his right arm is missing, due to a terrible misunderstanding. The ship had come into contact with a group of aliens none of them knew. Mistakening them for a different race, Alex tried to present them with a strand of glass beads, a tradition of the Atransians. Unfortunately, these were not Atransians. Offended, thinking that Alex believed them to be too poor to afford glass beads on their own, one sliced off the hand that was holding said beads.
COMMON MEDICATIONS (if you post something mentioning a medication not listed, please PM me so I can add it to the list.) Icalrim - helps the body adjust to changes in gravity; small white capsules Narime - Medication for motion sickness; rectangular red pills
PLANETS KNOWN OR ENCOUNTERED (please PM me with a description of a planet and its inhabitants to have it added) Qib'Dyio Quintus (Kib Dyee-oh Quintas) - a planet of trade and commerce. Wares from all over the universe are sold here. The shops accept almost any form of payment, whether in raw goods, Federation credit banknotes, or in various forms of currency. The original inhabitants of this planet resemble octopi and squid. The skin color varies between them, and they are unique in their individual appearance. These beings walk upright on four of their eight legs. The other four are their arms. The suction cups that cover these tentacles allow them to use the sides of buildings as walkways, avoiding the crowded streets below. The entire planet is covered in bustling cities, with small patches of farmland here and there. Almost all of the food is imported from other planets. The government is a democracy. Kabea (Kuh-bee-ah) - The government here is a monarchy. The inhabitants of this large planet are a gas-based race of serpent-creatures. Their limbs are not so much specific, but are used for multiple functions. They consume energy. By tradition, they are a race of negotiators. They can change genders under certain conditions. They are very literal. They come from a low-gravity, watery, mineral-rich world. Kabea thrives on agriculture, though they do not consume what they grow. Instead, they export it to Qib'Dyio Quintus. They are the main supplier of food to the planet. Razcay-Yhitnu (Razz-kay-Yuh-hit-noo) - This planet neighbors Kabea. The inhabitants worship the Kabeans as gods. They have an elaborate caste system. The beings here are shapeless and gray. They have no obvious sensory organs - yet display definite senses of a mysterious nature. They have two under-developed manipulatory limbs. They come from a cold, resource-poor world. Their planet has no moons. They do not reproduce, but instead infect and transform other beings into new members of their species. Jadruv-Efyef (Jah-druhv-Eff-yeff) - The Jadruvians are a semi-liquid race. They have tentacular limbs which can discharge sticky fluid to trap and ensnare others, or to make webs. They are a peaceful society, ruled by a democracy. Their species is very diverse in individual appearances. They come from a low-gravity world. Individual members can merge their bodies to produce more powerful or different "composite" members. Do not make jokes or comments about Jell-o. You will be killed. Uzome (Ooh-zohm-ee) - This planet is hostile towards all outsiders. The inhabitants are short and stocky, covered in a thick plate armor for skin. They are omnivores, but prefer to be carnivorous. By tradition, they are a race of warriors. Their society is dependent on one technology: weaponry. A past war nearly destroyed them completely, and they now survive by raiding any passing ships. They are merciless towards the weak - even among their own species. If, while pirating a ship, they find someone they deem strong, this person will be brought back to their planet and, if they are not crushed by the strong gravity, they will be sacrificed to the Uzomean god.
Joyce walked towards her father's room, a schedule for the week in her hand. Alex's shift had ended recently, so he was relaxing in his room. She pressed the communication panel on the door. "Dad? It's me." A yellow light blinked for a moment before turning green. The door slid open and Joyce stepped in. "Dad? Hey, Dad? When we stop for supplies on er..." Joyce glances at the paper in her hand, confused on how to pronounce Qib'Dyio Quintus. "Kwib-Dih-yee-oh Quintus? Can I go shopping? I've heard the planet's got some awesome stores... I wanna get some of those awesome sunglasses I saw on TV!" "It's pronounced Kib Dyee-oh Quintas and no." "Aw, c'mon! Please? I promise I won't spend much!" "Fine. Here's a Twenty Credit banknote. Just don't forget to take two Icalrim pills. You remember what the gravity difference did to you last time you forgot."
Some of the crew are merchants, others explorers and stellar cartographers. Their goals? Trade, to strike it rich, to start a new life, to discover new worlds, to make allies, and more. The occupants of the ship are a mix of various species and races, aliens and human.
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Necessity makes even the timid brave.
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Her father looks upon her and sees his greatest mistake. The man looks upon his daughter and sees his greatest mistake.
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The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
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She was trusted and valued by her father, loved and courted by all dogs, cats, children, and poor people, and slighted and neglected by everybody else.
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Had he looked with greater interest and with a father's eye, he might have read in her keen glance the impulses and fears that made her waver; the passionate desire to run clinging to him, crying, as she hid her face in his embrace, "Oh father, try to love me! there's no one else!" the dread of a repulse; the fear of being too bold, and of offending him; the pitiable need in which she stood of some assurance and encouragement; and how her overcharged young heart was wandering to find some natural resting-place, for its sorrow and affection.
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[voiceover] There have always been ghosts in the machine. Random segments of code, that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. Unanticipated, these free radicals engender questions of free will, creativity, and even the nature of what we might call the soul. Why is it that when some robots are left in darkness, they will seek out the light? Why is it that when robots are stored in an empty space, they will group together, rather than stand alone? How do we explain this behavior? Random segments of code? Or is it something more? When does a perceptual schematic become consciousness? When does a difference engine become the search for truth? When does a personality simulation become the bitter mote... of a soul?
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By the way, some of those black-helicopter storm-trooper folks stopped by, asking about a transgenic teenage killing machine. I said you were out.
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Nothing went wrong with me! I'm doing what I was made to do, what we were taught to do!
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Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
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There's nothing sadder than a puppet without a ghost, especially the kind with red blood running through them.
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You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.
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It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.
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A machine becomes human when you can't tell the difference anymore.
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One, a robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; Two, a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; Three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
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“You’re kidding? Nobody thought to tell you about the birds and hell butterflies yet?”
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Final damage assessment:' 20% 'Immediate repairs required.' 'Main systems shutting down.' Her visual cortex was the first thing to go, the power leaving almost as soon as her fist had connected with the Menos' mask. She didn't even get a chance to see whether her strike had done any damage before all her other functions began powering down, unable to sustain themselves. She had been designed to endure more than this, to fight longer than this. But while her systematics claimed that she could suffer 50% damage and still fight, her actual body had never been given a chance to truly prove itself. And now that it had had its chance, she had failed to meet expectations. Luckily for Ururu, consciousness had left her long before, so these ideas did not go through her mind as she fell. She felt nothing.
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"Um, Urahara-san..." She gazed curiously at the merchant once the coughing had abated, already feeling a little bit fuzzy (the only way she could describe the feeling). "I've been wondering this for awhile now, but... is Ururu-chan your daughter?" Ururu had just begun to reach for a cookie when Orihime asked her question. "Eh?" The little girl blinked, blushing as the words sunk in. "Aah!" HER, Urahara's daughter? She could only wish it were so. He had saved her; he had raised her; he had given her the only real home she had ever known. But she was just a shop worker, nothing more. "Ah? My daughter?" Kisuke paused and glanced to the side over to Ururu, smiling softly. If they only knew... One day... Not today though but one day, very soon... Kisuke knew that he would need to tell Ururu of exactly how she came to be, so different and unique than other girls her age. Reaching out, he moved to brush a few dark strands of hair away from Ururu's face. "Ururu isn't my daughter, Inoue-san, but she is like my own." "I can tell!" Snapping out of her thoughts, Orihime selected another cookie, dunking it in her sake for added flavor. "There's... a bond between you two, actually. I can almost see it. But I can tell she makes you very proud and Ururu-chan obviously loves you a lot! That's how it should be!" She nodded happily to herself, refusing to let herself get even a little bit wistful. She needed to explain to Orihime that she wasn't Urahara's daughter, but a barely repressed wish that she WAS kept her from acknowledging the truth. Maybe if she hoped enough, prayed enough, pretended it was true, maybe then she would be. "Thank you, Kisuke-san," she murmured as she put the cup down. She blushed as his fingers brushed her hair, feeling warm at the paternal contact. Moments like that made it so much easier to pretend he really was her father. His words, though, took her by surprise. Like his own? He really saw her as like his own? All-too-familiar tears welled up in the little girl's eyes, threatening to spill out as Orihime added her own thoughts. 'Don't cry, stupid!' Jinta's voice scolded in her mind. 'This is a good thing!' Quickly grabbing a cookie and biting down on it, Ururu scooted closer to Urahara, wishing that the bond between her and the shopkeeper was something tangible so she could hold onto it and never let go.
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Jinta almost reached for her pigtails to start pulling. Again with the apologizing. He swore she did it too often. The thing about apologies were, if you said it too often, they started to lose their meaning. That and, if you kept apologizing for the things you did, you left people with the impression that you believed you had to apologize for your actions. That you were, somehow, inherently wrong.
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Urahara's talking about her cookies had stopped Ururu in her tracks, distracting her temporarily from her mission with a little thrill of bliss. He was complimenting her cookies and tea! She nearly squeed. But Orihime's little winces and quiet cries of pain couldn't escape Ururu's notice, and the girl panicked accordingly. "AAAAH! ORIHIME-SAN!" she cried. "Don't do that! You'll only make your injuries worse!" What if she had hurt Orihime for good? What if Orihime would be spending the rest of her life in pain because of her? .....what if Orihime DIED because of her? Orihime's heart was somewhere around there, right? What if she had broken Orihime's heart and that's why the girl was crying in pain and at any moment she would fall over dead! SHE HAD KILLED ORIHIME! "Kisuke-san!" the little girl mibbled, her gaze flitting from Orihime to Urahara so quickly, she nearly hurt her neck. He had told her to go make tea, but Orihime was hurt and it was her fault. How was she supposed to make tea when she was practically a murderer? Murderers didn't make tea! Murderers were caught by policemen and went to jail! Ururu didn't want to go to jail, and she really didn't want Orihime to die or be hurt or be anything except happy. Anyone else, of course, would have realized that if the injury had truly been serious, Urahara would have done something about it, but Ururu was too quick to hate herself to think of such things. The little girl bit her lip, about to cry, convinced that everything was falling apart around her.
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'You should try to be more like Yuzu-san,' she told herself. If she could be brave like Yuzu, then she could better help Urahara with the store. She could do more than just clean and fetch groceries and unload new stock. She could wait on customers (even though the store really didn't get all that many)! She could.....do lots of things that she couldn't think of right now but most certainly would be able to think of if she were more like Yuzu.
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Any thoughts of leaving immediately fled Ururu's mind. There was too much power in the air, too much of it alien to the Urahara Shouten. Her protective instincts would not let her leave unless she was absolutely ordered to.
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"We have some candy!" she then blurted out, desperate to distract both Yuzu and Jinta from her earlier slip up. She grabbed the other girl's proffered hand and tugged her over to the jars of candies, almost forgetting to be timid. "We carry lots of kinds that hu--normal stores don't have! They're really yummy!" Ururu loved the candy carried in the store, and sometimes wished that it could be the only thing she ate. (Then, of course, she scolded herself for not feeling properly grateful to Tessai for making wonderful dinners.) "And over there Kisuke-san has boxes of really pretty comic books.....Aaah, but he won't let me look at them. He says I'm too little." Truthfully, Ururu didn't quite see what height had to do with looking at pretty art, but if Urahara said it was true then it had to be so. "I don't think he'd let you look at it either." Yuzu wasn't that much taller than she was, after all. Ururu looked around the store, trying to think of other things Yuzu might be interested in. "Ummm.....I think we carry some cat toys for Yoruichi-san, if you're interested...?"
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Analyzing Damage: .002% Target: Kurosaki Ichigo Upgrading Label to: Threat Initiating: EXTERMINATION MODE In response to this new and immediate threat, Ururu's reiatsu flared, vastly increasing her speed. Conscious awareness faded as energy was relocated to key areas, leaving her with only one thought in her mind: destroy Kurosaki Ichigo. With that, she grabbed his arm, pushed herself into the air, and aimed a powerful kick straight at his head.
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He didn't direct any hard looks to Tessai for his slip, seeing that the man was steering away from that conversation now. No harm, no foul. It had been a valid question after all. Just not the time to answer it. They were at a picnic with many people around, after all, though those people were giving Mayuri and his companions a great deal of space. He'd tell her, very soon. He just wanted to make sure she wouldn't feel too awkward finding out just how different she was from naturally created people. She was different... but she was so special to him. She was after all, one of the projects Kisuke was most proud of, no matter what the Chuu-ou 46 Shitsu had said about her.
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The girl reminded her of herself, a little. Maybe more than a little, if she were honest with herself. Quiet and reserved, so willing to do anything to help her creator, a distinct lack of self-confidence... Was there something about the way they were created that made them similar? More uncomfortable thoughts. (Nemu's thoughts on Ururu) Well... Her prototype did not know she had been created as part of a project, then? She caught that more from Urahara and Tessai's reactions, obviously keeping the fact from being mentioned aloud in front of Ururu, than from any of the actual words she word. Nemu was surprised, although she did not show it. She wondered, curiously detached, how the girl would take the information when she found out. Mayuri had made it very clear from her first days that she was simply a scientific experiment- and, as time wore on, mostly a failed one. She'd never thought of herself as a normal person, or a normal shinigami. For the girl to someday find out she was not normal... Nemu's gaze lifted slightly, briefly regarding Urahara before dropping again. Was it a kindness to keep that fact from the girl? Nemu wasn't so sure it was. Still, Urahara-tai.... Urahara-san did not seem to regard Ururu as a failure. He was kind to her, patted her on the head... Nemu's throat felt strangely tight, but she couldn't quite place why. Some strange emotion seemed to be affecting her. Had her prototype turned out better than herself, despite all of Mayuri's hard work? Perhaps that was why she could never please Mayuri.
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Ururu perked up immediately upon being given a task. "Okay!" she told Tessai, and immediately fluttered about, setting up what Tessai told her to. She thrived on chores and assigned tasks: anything that made her feel useful.
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Ururu could have cried when she heard Urahara's voice. He would make everything better; he always did. And he had said: She's mine. Despite how Ito-san was glaring at her, despite the fact that Urahara had to apologize for her, the little girl felt a thrill of bliss. She was Urahara's, as long as he wanted her to be. "I'm sorry," she repeated, either to Ito or to Urahara. Or both. Wiping her hands futilely on her skirt, she glanced up again at Urahara and thus caught sight of Mayuri and Nemu. Mayuri she didn't quite recognize, although she recognized his reiatsu as captain level. Nemu, though, she remembered from the building with the Arrancar. The little girl looked down quickly, unable to face another person who knew of her failure to help Orihime. "I'm sorry," she whispered again. Apologies, it seemed, were all she was really good for.
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Good....job? Ururu stopped rubbing her sore fists, amazed and embarrassed by this compliment from the older woman. She had done a good job. She never did a good job; she was always messing up and making a mistake or not doing enough or... Good job. Ururu wanted to cry from happiness. But she couldn't. She had to get back to the shop quickly; Tessai and Urahara would be worried, and Jinta was probably having to actually do his chores, which would make him cranky.
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Ururu screeches, more startled than in pain and falls from the hole. Her pupils shrink to pinpricks. "Activating mode:... Genocide." Well, s**t.
Ururu shifted herself out of Chris's arms and stood. "Pain receptors... shutting down. All non-vital memory and thought generators... shutting down. Back-up power sources... turned on. Strength modifier... turned on. Genocide Mode activated."
-- The battle finished, Ururu's body tumbled from the ceiling hole, leaking a mess of... wait... she's basically a robot, but she bleeds?!
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"Calculating damage ratio... 57% Calculating energy levels... 20% Calculating current level of danger... ERROR: Cannot calculate danger level, continuing to next step... Starting up emergency power supplies... Blood loss ratio: critical... Internal damage ratio: moderate... Terminate mode: Genocide... Pain receptors and thought transmitters: temporarily offline Strength modifiers: deactivated."
"Calculating... danger...: ERROR: Cannot... calculate danger... calculating... danger... Error: cannot calculate... dan...ger..."
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Miggrator · Wed Jun 25, 2008 @ 08:58pm · 0 Comments |
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