Sutoratosu

Oh well. There will be other opportunities to drop perfectly placed memes, I'm sure. Afterall, there were plenty throughout the original :feelsgd:

Lols, no bro. I legit considered throwing in that reference along with the The Hills Have Eyes, Persona Wild Card, Rage against the Machine, Big Brother, and 1984 though. and I mean it, I was so close to typing: No. No... there was no black and white. There was never any black and white. There was only ever 50 shades of grey. but... I figured that 5 was enough references in one post already ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Don't want to overdo em and cause them to lose their power afterall XD

just out of curiosity to see who knows abit of the Esoteric subjects and the like... I will give all the rupees in my pockets right now to whomever figures out what I'm talking about in that post (Regarding the fool) and I will do nothing but laugh if your answer is Persona. And in advance, the answer is actually very simple.

"Hmmm... At least I'll be a very useful tool then. This might just work..." "And so it is the Walls that have eyes, not the hills..." The Tarot Wielder mused. "The year, is none other than 1984. There is no freedom, but somehow we must all find a way to rage against the machine." With that cryptic analysis said and done Ethic dropped the veil, finally revealing himself as he let the Magician slip back into the background of his mind yet again, just like a program not needed at the moment. He gave one look to Annie, nodding. "I suppose we should get moving then. Big Brother is watching, after all." Without another word, he headed back off down the corridor he'd come from. The fact that his back was exposed to someone else gave him no trouble... not now, not after that bit of information. "She's obviously still going to try something in the end... but I should be ready by then." Ironically, he felt no shame in the plan he had concocted, as much as he thought he would've... or the old him would've. There was no more for that idealist, no more room for the fool who had once said and preached so many things but acted in such vast contradiction. He was the wild card no longer. For his number was greater than zero now. Morals were fine, but Morals untempered by the vicious fires of intellect and reason would do nothing but create a world of further restriction and needless boundaries. That was the one thing he had learned. Sometimes you have to adapt. Sometimes there are exceptions that have to be made. And sometimes there are some decisions that have no right or wrong path, only the one you choose. The world was no longer black and white. The world had never been black and white to begin with- it had simply been something he had conjured up as a boy to justify his own hatred and villainization of That man. No. No... there was no black and white. There was never any black and white. There was only ever a molted shade of grey.

I procrastinated my ass off all of last school year. How I managed to do it and not fail, was that I worked my ass off at the last minute on most of the major assignments worth actual points towards my final grade and ignored shit like homework. So yeah. My strategy is the striking cobra. Wait till the last minute... then spring into action like a crazy man. I've literally stayed up all night on the day directly before an assignment was due- meaning that I would finish that bad boy in the early morning around 4 or 5 am, and it would be due in a certain class later on that day. And know what? I've worked my ass of em and know I have when I end up getting an A on it despite having only had a few frenzied hours to compose the thing. Perhaps I just work better under stress. ((Not kidding, I once made an entire god damn speech about Procrastination for AP English because it was that night and I couldn't think of a damn topic. I gave it in class later that morning, and guess what? fucking A. Both from the instructor and my Peer Reviews of it.)) So yeah... there's my way. Don't try it though. Cause I've decided to drop it for the senior year. Because shit gets very real in your head when that clock is ticking away and you know you only have so much time to do this left. A bit too real Seriously. I'm not responsible if you decide to copy my style of Procrastination. You have been warned. Do your work, or feel the hurt. That is the bottom line here. Even I knew that in the end, and I never challenged this ancient system. Procrastinating is one thing, but when it's gets bad enough to the point where you're a failure out of sheer laziness, it crossed the line into whole new territory. You can put it off till later, but you'd better do everything in your power to make damn sure it's completed and in the hands of your professor or boss when they ask for it.

"Ah, so you intend to just use me like a tool then...Marvelous. Simply Marvelous." "Alright..." Ethic began, not bothering to keep up the echo tactic. He had no illusions down here. He heard the cold apathy in this woman's voice. He saw it on her face. No matter how that proposition was phrased, no matter how carefully calculated, all it boiled down to was that cold hard fact. But what could he really do here anyway? Say no? End up getting beamed in the skull and losing even more time? Hell's bells, there was probably little point in even keeping the veil up anymore. But he still preferred taking this one step at a time. "It sounds fair enough... on the basic premise. But tell me, just what is it that makes this maze impossible to cross on your own? What, is it alive or something? Does it shift at will or something, like in James Dashner's 'The Maze Runer'? Or does it just use mind tricks to screw with your head that it's useless after a certain point unless you have someone to help orient yourself?" As much as his words may have sounded like it, He wasn't joking about the first theory. Or any of them for that matter. He'd seen and heard crazier things go on here... all of them had. If lovesick zombies were capable of rising from the ground and groping each other like tipsy TSA personnel, Tables could be the size of football fields and have food as big as a house, and bookshelves spawned shadows whenever you opened a tomb...

Quincy's Insanity confirmed! Though... I think we've all had enough confirmation of that debate for a long time XD

So yeah, like the title suggests, I was cleaning out my school maintained google drive for the new academic year and I came across an old folder filled with past projects and assignments for various classes. One of them being a journal that I wrote up for AP World History in Sophmore year as part of a partner project and ended up getting us an A for. It's been a long while, and was interested to go back through it again to see just how big a difference has appeared in my writing now compared to then... and I figured, why the hell not let others have a sight of it too? This was finished back on November 22, 2013. Nearly a full two years ago, a full month before I ever found this community and several more months before I started getting involved in the Roleplaying forum here and got interested in considering trying my hand at writing stories again. The class was given a project based on aspects of life in the middle ages, with each set of partners being assigned an occupation. We had to produce some type of peice of evidence of whatever job we were given, be it a journal maintained by someone in the field, a tool they would've used, etc. Me and my partner, a then Senior and a pretty cool guy, decided that I would write up a journal and he would make a plague doctor mask to go along with the general concept of the narrative. The following is that journal. It is told from the perspective of an alchemist and herbologist living in england during the time of the black plague. The thing basically details his travels throughout the isle as a plague doctor of sorts who actually does try to make an effort towards legitimately helping his patients using what knowledge of herbs and medicine he had, rather than conning them and exploiting false hope and desperation for his own gain. Again, this was 2 years ago. Feel free to talk about it or whatever if you want. You could even constructive criticism, I guess... though just be warned, you'd be pretty late.. though there is a bit of inconsistency towards the end of the account that I missed back then. Anyways, yeah, just thought I would share this.

It's nice to have old tactics at times. And come to think of it... this is rather funny in a strange way... I have no recollection whatsoever as to whether or not Ethic ever even learned Marcus's name back in the original RP. Oh well, might as well play it safe and use a name I knew for absolute certain he used to denote the man.

"So I was right on the money... only question is, if I were to drop the Veil right here and right now- what would she do?" Ethic stayed where he was, gazing up at the black wall. "Hmmmm...Naaaah.... I don't know. This kinda looks- and feels -like a ambush from this whole location right here. That rock earlier had to have been some type of luring tactic- She had the capability to take out my skull before I could even notice she was-" He stopped his conspiracy theories for a moment. That was exactly it, now that he thought about it. While yes, an ambush would make theoretical sense down here in order to temporarily impede someone; luring them into a secluded, dead end corner and offing them before going on about one's way... Why would she go to the trouble of something so elaborate if that rock back there would've done just as well? "Well, this is quite the predicament." He thought to himself, backing up and making sure to keep eyes on the blonde all the while. "On one hand, going to all that trouble wouldn't make sense... and she didn't exactly strike me as the dull and rash type when we had to work together back in Gluttony... but on the other... This is the big bang. The end game. The last minute of the final inning of the last game of the season. Just about anyone could be capable of anything here if they think it'll mean getting whatever it is they came down here for... and for all I know, I could've completely misjudged her this entire time. Well... guess there's only one way... confront her using the same tactics I used with old Psychopath." It should've been easy enough. These walls seemed to provide as good an echoing effect as the halls of the third circle for the most part, if the voice from earlier was any indication of the acoustics. And even though he didn't have the same cover of darkness the vast reaches of that long ago visited ceiling had provided, right now he had something that was arguably far better. He backed up even further, still keeping his eyes on her. "Well..." He began in a raised volume, his voice reverberating more or less in the manner he'd hoped for. Just like back then in the old times, without visual sensory information, it was probably gonna be hard to tell exactly where a sound was coming from when it's bouncing over and over again more than a rabid hare. "It's been quite some time, hasn't it? That rock earlier nearly killed me. I presume there's a reason why it was just off by ever so slightly."

The former leather-tramp stayed where he was for just a moment, listening to the footfalls of the retreating party. There were very few individuals he knew of here who could've slung a stone with as much force as that...only two in fact. And while they're abilities might've been similar in their basic functioning from what he had gathered during the past, only one of them had blonde hair. "If it's her... I'm not going to be able to hold out at close quarters," He thought to himself, gazing right at the spot where he'd seen the flash of the assailants head just moments ago. "even if I were able to use two effects at once, there would still be a chance that her own amplification levels would outclass that of The Chariot and Strength...if she were pursuing me right now, I could probably manage to snare her easily enough, but as it is with her running away..." He couldn't help but scoff at himself a little though, thinking back on it. "Look at me, sitting here and just going off a basic assumption of their identity... still, even if it isn't her..." He had already made his decision. That type of raw, physical power would be an issue. Running in blindly and out in the open was liable to get him killed... and lose him that much more time. And time was something he had no abundance of. "Number 1, The Magician." Ghalen demanded under his breath, the verbal affirmation more the product of sheer preference of execution than necessity. Within the next instant, the cost hit him. It was a strange feeling. A feeling he could recall back when... when what? He couldn't recall. He just knew that there had come a time when he had died, and something more had come after it... he could recall darkness, he could recall lying on his back, that he had experienced it multiple times. And he could recall the empty feeling that always came with it... but he couldn't recall where or even what the place was or why he used to go there whenever he got offed. Regardless, the feeling of Invoking the Arcana was similar to it, that feeling of a blank slate, emptiness, just in a smaller degree that gradually grew the more and more if he overdid it with feeding them. It was the feeling of being lost. The feeling of having lost something, but yet not even having the memories needed to even know what you had possessed in the first place. Along with the piece of his own soul he had just sacrificed to slake the thirst of the Card, Ethic knew that he had forgotten something. Losing Soul was different from life force... he knew from prior handling of the old effect of the Death Arcana that with Life Force, you just gradually felt more and more exhausted the more you used. And then whenever you exhausted your stores, you're body gives out and you died. With soul... there wasn't the mercy of being relieved by a relatively quick death if you fucked up with your management. The more you used up, the more and more of yourself you lost. Memories, aspects of your personality and identity. You slowly lose the things that tell you who you are and how to function. And once you were out, that was it. You have nothing, and you become nothing, and you stay nothing until someone either comes along and gives mercy to the empty shell of a man that was yourself, giving you a chance to restart with a full clip again... or until your body wastes away into nothing. The two aspects were like a Laptop really. When you expended your Life Force, it was the same as depleting the battery. When you expended the Soul... It was the same as deleting all the Operation System and Program files, bit by bit, slowly and one root directory at a time...until the Hardrive was a blank slate. He felt the the subtle energy surging in. Felt the connection being made. Much like with a computer program running in the background, the Arcana he had just satiated was ready, it's constant presence in the background of his mind, ready to be used at a moment's notice, with just as little as a bit of thought and intent. And he knew just what he was going to use it for here. Ghalen continued to stay till, working quickly with a deft mental touch. Once upon a distant time, the card he wielded would've granted him the power to burn those who stood in his way to nothing but a charred husk, but times change, people change; and The magician had since adopted a power more akin to it's namesake. He knew what to do, and how to do it, and the card knew just as well as the same transparent yet oh so fragile veil of projection it used to work it's magic began to form around the man rather than empty air as it usually did. The space around him rippled and morphed ever so slightly for a moment as he formed the needed thoughtform and programmed the veil, just as he had so many times. Though there was no more indication aside from the minor disturbance that had just ended, Ethic knew the Programming had worked. He knew that the rays of the light spectrum, instead of bending and folding together at his will to create fake visual information perceived by the eyes as conjured images as he usually used it for, would now instead be bent around the Veil, rendering himself virtually invisible... all within a matter of seconds. "That's what experience and experimentation will get you..." He thought to himself, heading off towards the same path his latest visitor had just taken. "The magic might be as fragile as a glass doll...not really something I've ever figured out how to work around or fix, but... it'll still do what i need it to." ((Whether or not the Magician's effect worked properly or backfired was decided via coin toss due to certain restrictions keeping me from accessing the Wheel))

Arya looked down at Lill- Layla's unconscious form yet again. Goddesses. They were the freaking goddesses. This... was crazy. But yet... she had to admit, it made sense given the context of what she had just seen. Up until now, the girl had always thought they existed, somewhere, simply withdrawn from the mortal world for whatever reason- perhaps to allow the human race to develop on it's own, or they had gotten bored, or, as she had more often thought, perhaps even because they had simply gotten tired of all of them and were just waiting for the day when the hairless apes finally finished digging their own graves and died off -But... now she had proof sitting right infront of her. And strong proof at that. "This just keeps getting ever more stranger..." "Um... Lady Alexus," She began, careful to keep her voice a bit more controlled this time around. "What exactly did you mean by reincarnation? Aren't you...well, immortal?"