[FFML] [Sailor Moon] Double Exposure 1-4 [Dark/Comedy]

[Paul Durant]

Responding to all four at once, to cut down on message volume.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brian Randall" <durandall at gmail.com>
To: "The Fanfiction Mailing List" <ffml at chez-vrolet.net>
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 4:26 PM
Subject: Re: [FFML] [Sailor Moon] Double Exposure 1 [Dark/Comedy]


> Yeah, this is much delayed and greatly overdue....  So.  As usual,
> take what comments are worthwhile, ignore those that aren't.
>
All right then, I will. And for all spelling and grammar corrections, assume 
I went ahead and made the changes unless I say otherwise.

>>    "You'd be correct. Doctor Phillip Akens, Hoffmann Institute." He was
>>  a tall, dignified-looking African-American, around forty, his hair just
>>  starting to grey at the edges. He extended an opened hand, which the
>>  Japanese man stared at for a few seconds before Akens retracted it with
>>  a nervous cough. "These are my colleagues, Doctor Nadine Neary, Doctor
>>  Donna Truitt, and Mister William Wheeler." He gestured behind him and
>>  pointed to, in turn, a small, slender woman of mixed Asian descent with
>>  an unfocused, genial smile, a taller woman with long, dark hair and a
>>  tank top to show off her well-toned arms, and a broad-shouldered man
>>  with unkempt shoulder-length red hair, camo-patterned pants, and a
>>  jacket that went down to his knees.
>
> grey -- gray

I was under the impression that, what with Grey aliens and Grey Poupon, 
spelling it with an 'e' didn't have to come with the whole suite of British 
spellings for 'colour' or 'armour' or all that. I know spelling it 'gray' 
never looks right to me.

>>    Akito opened the door and winced at the sight within. Akens' eyebrow
>>  arched, Neary looked queasy, and Wheeler let out a slow whistle. The
>>  office was a shambles; papers and lab equipment lay strewn all over. The
>>  doctor's large oaken desk had been overturned and splintered in several
>>  places. Most notably, what appeared to be Dr. Otoyo hung upside-down
>>  from the ceiling, covered in electrical burns, his legs below the knee
>>  fused into the plaster above them with no visible means of entry.
>>
>>
>>    "Doctor Akito, you've come to the right people."
>
> I like this.  Like a classic x-files-esque sci-fi movie opening.

That's exactly what I was going for. That and irony value when they screw 
everything up.

>>    Dr. Tomoe did summon such a creature, a being of warped, insane
>>  energy straddling between our world and theirs, but this was not his
>>  intention. Indeed, he's not even aware that it arrived in our world at
>>  all via the open portal he was using to test for the arrival of Pharaoh
>>  90. The Fader simply saw a gate to our world, took it, and traveled
>>  toward the nearest source of energy it could find. Luckily for Dr. Tomoe
>>  and unluckily for us, he was not testing the gateway in his own backyard
>>  or the monster would have fed on the equipment in his basement; instead
>>  the closest source was the cyclotron at Tokyo University.
>
> "straddling between" seems to be missing something to me, like
> "straddling the barrier between", maybe?

I think that's right, that you can "straddle" something to mean "sit on top 
of it", but you can also "straddle" to mean "be on both sides of something" 
(like an issue, or a dimension.)

>>    Truitt shoved him aside with a hand curled around a locksmith's pick
>>  set. "--Get the door? Why gee, I hadn't thought of that. It isn't like
>>  it's my job or anything." She knelt over and glanced at the doorknob,
>>  selected a pick from the fold-out set, and started to line it up with
>>  the keyhole before she stopped and just turned the doorknob. Met with no
>>  resistance, the front doors of the Tomoe residence swung open.
>
>Akens: "I could have done that."

Truitt: It was a VERY delicate procedure, a layman wouldn't understand!

>>    When Kaolinite captured the girl and secured her pure heart for the
>>  Pharaoh, it would be clear to all who was the greatest servant the
>>  Pharaoh had. And it would especially be clear to that bitch Cyprine, who
>>  was going to be demoted to rinsing out the centrifuge so fast it would
>>  make her head spin.
>
> ZIING.  Bad pun.

You know what, I wasn't even making a pun there! I originally wrote "rinsing 
out the autoclave" but I changed to because I didn't think people would 
recognize what that was. (It's a super-oven used to sterilize equipment.) I 
thought "centrifuge" was a more recognizable sciency thing, changed the 
word, and forgot about it.

>>    Chibi-Usa stopped when she heard a car horn, not so much startled as
>>  confused. She looked around and realized she was in the middle of the
>>  street, blocking the path of the van that was now honking at her. The
>>  driver was a dark-haired woman, American or European, and she was
>>  screaming loudly and animatedly in a language Chibi-Usa didn't
>>  understand. She looked at the woman, shouting and waving her arms, for a
>>  long and morose moment. She was so angry, impatient. She was probably
>>  unhappy too. Did this screaming woman have friends when she was young,
>>  people to show her the goodness of the world? Chibi-Usa didn't think so,
>>  and when she walked away from the van the thought of it almost made her
>>  cry. People deserve to be better than that. Hotaru deserves to be better
>>  than that.
>
> ...I think that it would just piss Donna off to know what was going
> through Chibi-Usa's head right then.

In the sense that it's really condescending or in the sense that it isn't "I 
need to get the hell out of this person's way"?

>>    The long-distance bill alone from this night will be over one
>>  thousand American dollars, not to mention the costs of rescheduling a
>>  day's worth of classes. The Hoffmann Institute will never see an invoice
>>  for this, because every party involved is about to have much bigger
>>  problems.
>
> I get the feeling the Hoffmann Institute would not pay this invoice,
> regardless.  <_<

Oh, hell no. They barely pay their own agents, how the hell they gonna pay 
your phone bill?

>>    Akens shrugged. "Depends. If it is more in its dimension at the time,
>>  it just gets driven back. It vanishes. If it's more in ours, it's forced
>>  all the way in, and it should be unable to teleport or make use of the
>>  energy it's been storing up."
>
> 'Should' being the operative word here.

The word "Should" is a big flashing neon sign that says "THIS WILL NOT 
ACTUALLY HAPPEN."

>>    In the backseat, Pluto stared off to the side, in silent
>>  contemplation. Neptune and Uranus were willing to make the ultimate
>>  sacrifice. So was she. But Usagi wasn't. No, Usagi had said "I won't let
>>  anyone be sacrificed," and she said it with the same conviction that
>>  they'd said they would die to stop the Silence. Neptune and Uranus think
>>  that means she's weak, naive, foolishly optimistic. That she'd be dead
>>  if not for cynical people like them willing to do ugly things so she can
>>  keep herself pretty.
>
> Tenses, again.  Or is that intentional?

I'm honestly not sure. It's what Pluto is thinking, and she's thinking about 
what they think, in the present tense... it probably should be past tense 
anyway.

>>    He peered down into the hallway and spied a bluish glow coming down
>>  another hall toward the cyclotron room. In a few seconds, he saw its
>>  source: a man, or what appeared to be one, faintly luminescent, dressed
>>  exactly like a Naval crewman, of the USS Eldridge on October 28, 1943 --
>>  though his plane of origin was nothing so mundane as that. It moved with
>>  a quick, determined gait toward the cyclotron.
>
> That's pretty DARK*MATTER textbook, as I understand it.

Well, yes. This textbook was "Xenoforms: Aliens, Demons, and Abberrations" 
(TSR11648 like you even CARE)

>>    This time, everyone heard it, though only Dr. Akens and Dr. Neary
>>  could understand the Japanese in which it was spoken. "Moon crisis make
>>  up!" howled a disembodied voice, "Moon Crisis Make Up! MOON CRISIS MAKE
>>  UP!" with each repetition becoming more desperate and hoarse.
>
> Aren't their transformation phrases and attacks actually in English,
> though?  Or would that have been too much...?

ELL brought this up, and I probably should not have said it in that way, 
because it isn't in Japanese. I am going to say it's so heavily accented 
that those present who didn't speak Japanese assumed it was, and didn't 
puzzle out a meaning.

>>    "That's it! The DEVICE!" William shouted in a moment of revalation,
>>  and yanked the device away from its wall socket.
>>
>>    Donna realized what he was doing and dove to stop him, but was too
>>  slow, and she only got as far as "What are you doing you id--" before
>>  Wheeler threw the rotating magnetic resonance disruptor at the
>>  creature's head.
>
> Hmm.  If the Fader powers it, I suppose it doesn't even need to be plugged 
> in.

That'd be it.

>>  HISTORY: William Wheeler joined the US Army directly after his
>>  graduation from high school in Moscow, Idaho. He served a four year tour
>>  of duty, three months of which was combat duty as part of UN
>>  peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan, and declined to re-enlist. Upon
>>  his return home he found that his father's farm had been siezed by the
>>  IRS for nonpayment of taxes, and this caused William to believe the
>>  government was out to harm its citizens. He joined a fringe militia
>>  group called the "New Patriot Church of Liberty", and stockpiled weapons
>>  as he preached to his neighbors about the imminent peril the government
>>  had placed them in.
>
> Is this from the DARK*MATTER books?

Uh, somewhat? Bill, Philip, Donna, and Nadine are all sample characters from 
the beginning of the DARK*MATTER book, the October 1992 Idaho truck stop 
incident is the intro adventure they were made for, "Exit 23". They each had 
two-paragraph "Background and Personality" writeups , but I added and 
subtracted and recontextualized as necessary to make them more pathological. 
Bill didn't need much changing, but the other three did.

The two other sample characters, Doug Nichols and Officer Jane McDermott, 
are only in the musicals.

>>  William exhibits a fascination with firearms of all types that in any
>>  other occupation would be disturbing and unhealthy but here may be the
>>  most sensible habit of any of his teammates. When informed that, of the
>>  many conspiracies existing within the US government, the IRS was exactly
>>  as it claimed to be and had no plans to spirit away tax dissenters in
>>  the night or to sell citizens' true names to foreign banks, he was
>>  actually a bit disappointed.
>
> More than a bit, I expect. :p

Well, he recognized it was good thing that it wasn't going to happen; he's 
not a total heartless lunatic.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brian Randall" <durandall at gmail.com>
To: "The Fanfiction Mailing List" <ffml at chez-vrolet.net>
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 1:10 PM
Subject: Re: [FFML] [Sailor Moon] Double Exposure 2 [Dark/Comedy]


>>    Two gurneys are in the back of the ambulance, holding the two most
>>  wounded victims of the incident at the University of Tokyo. The eyes of
>>  the EMT back with them nervously flicker between the patients and the
>>  screens that show their vital data, wishing there was more he could do
>>  for them. The eyes of the two girls on the gurneys, the purple eyes of
>>  the short and frail one and the blue eyes of the blonde with the
>>  odangos, are blank and stare at nothing.
>
> Technically, odango is already pluralized.

I didn't think anything was pluralized? I mean, I know you don't add an S to 
pluralize Japanese words, but that rule I broke intentionally. I didn't 
think "odango" referred exclusively to multiple things, does it?

>>    Nadine put her hands to her temples; she wanted to do this in
>>  response to the ringing and head pains for a while but waited until she
>>  could make the action an insult to Bill as well. She winced when she put
>>  pressure on the left hand but passed that off as all part of the same
>>  disdainful response. "Yeah, Bill. Because that's what complicated pieces
>>  of interdimensional machinery do: they work great when you wing them at
>>  people's heads. Especially interdimensional people who would have
>>  otherwise left us alone and let us wait another five days to fix
>>  whatever was wrong with the machine."
>
> Should 'interdimensional' be 'inter-dimensional'?

I've seen "interdimensional" several times.

>>    Donna Truitt chewed her lip nervously, waiting for news. All around
>>  her doctors rushed back and forth, speaking with an urgency that barely
>>  encroached on panic. The accident at the university hadn't been too
>>  severe, the hardest hit had been the four of them, plus the Space Girl,
>>  plus the blonde who must have been hit by a piece of debris outside, and
>>  even then the four of them had some bruises and scrapes but were mostly
>>  okay. Apparently, that hadn't been the main event -- there was another
>>  explosion, larger by orders of magnitude, at the same time at some prep
>>  school on the other side of the district. Even though it had been before
>>  classes even started, the school had been for some reason packed with
>>  students, and now the hospital was packed with students.
>
> I'm not sure about that last sentence, seems a bit clunky.  Mostly due
> to repetition of 'packed with students' (though, that may be
> intentional).

Intentional.

>>    By "their fault" she meant "Bill's fault", of course.
>
> Nice.

They're characters from an RPG system. You know you've had that type too.

>>    "You didn't hear? Apparently that whole place collapsed like three
>>  minutes before our little fiasco. You can take that off your conscience.
>>  Now if you will excuse me, the people are in need..." She pulled the
>>  mask back on and sauntered on down to the hospital's cafeteria where the
>>  patients were being held.
>
> One wonders if serving her oath is a coping mechanism, despite her
> statements not to worry.  Interesting.

Wonder no more, it very very much is.

>>    Then the portal through which the Pharaoh was entering exploded -- it
>>  didn't suddenly expand, didn't turn its evil black light white as Sailor
>>  Moon's love purified it, didn't even "explode with magic" -- it blew up,
>>  an Earth-shattering CHA-THOOM that left her ears ringing and her lungs
>>  gasping for air. Mugen had already collapsed twice before, but each time
>>  it was like it was condensing itself, casting off all unnecessary pieces
>>  to prepare for the final showdown. And now, the building had decided
>>  that its components no longer amused it and flung them away. Sailor
>>  Saturn was talking when it went up, so it didn't seem like she had
>>  expected this, or that this was the ultimate fatal power she was going
>>  to have to use. And there wasn't a Pharaoh running around, so it
>>  obviously wasn't the explosion created when he arrived in our world.
>
> This is actually more hilarious the longer I think about it.
> Pharaoh's got to be mighty pissed to have been defeated by crossed
> wires and a misplaced Fader.
>
> The hot-dog rotisserie won't help, either.

What really doesn't help is the fact that the last thing anyone said before 
it happened wasn't a statement of resolve or a called attack or anything 
like that, it was "What are you doing you idiot?"

>>    "She is NOT a Sandman!" Nadine crowed with satisfaction. "Because
>>  first off, she's unconscious and her body hasn't dissolved into a pile
>>  of sand, which is why we call them 'Sand'men. And second, Sandmen are
>>  damn near made of cybernetics from what we can tell, and Space-Girl is
>>  not. She's only got a couple implants -- left arm, both legs, and the
>>  left side of her abdomen -- and they're not very big, either. You see
>>  that?" She tapped on a part of the X-ray Donna was holding that looked
>>  like any other part, a mush of black and white and grey. "See that metal
>>  hunk inside the bone? That's not debris, there's no entry wound. No,
>>  that piece of metal was there so long that the bone grew around it. But
>>  that's not what makes it a cybernetic implant -- you see this?"
>
> Should they be discussing this where she might wake up and hear?

Why? It's not incriminating, doesn't indicate she's a killer cyborg who 
wants them dead. Nadine figures she would already know about it, like you'd 
know about that time in the fifth grade you were wearing rollerblades and 
holding a rope attached to a bicycle and you got dragged down the street 
having a lot of fun until you hit a pothole and broke your collarbone.

>>    "These are muscle wires, they're wires used for robotics that
>>  contract when you run a current through them, emulating the contractions
>>  of a human muscle. Now these ones are actually mixed in with her muscle
>>  tissue, underneath it! They don't go up the whole length of the arm, but
>>  they do go for the length of that piece of metal in her bone, and a
>>  couple of them are still connected to it!" Donna looked around to see if
>>  this discovery excited anyone as much as it did her, and it did not.
>
> ARG!  "these ones" is improper grammar.  But ... this is spoken, so. >_>;

She's one of the smart ones, she shouldn't make errors like that, I will 
change it.

>>    "So, wait, how does this explain her warping in with a magic scythe?"
>>
>>    Nadine's smile narrowed. "It... doesn't."
>
> Yeah, I figured.

But it's still cool, right? Guys? Come on...

>>    Phil interrupted. "But the last time we did that it was about Bigfoot
>>  and by the end of the day I'd hit him with a folding chair."
>>
>>    Donna raised a finger to correct him. "You did not hit Bigfoot with a
>>  folding chair, Phil. You threw a folding chair AT Bigfoot, you missed,
>>  and then you ran away screaming." She shook her head and rolled her
>>  eyes.
>
> Heh.

Well, do YOU want to get into a fistfight with Bigfoot?

>>    "The reason we are still here is, we found a, let's say a
>>  'hitchhiker', 13 year old kid, whoooooo, 'got in to the party without
>>  buying a ticket', and we wanted to make sure she was all right... She
>>  just woke up, apparently the oh I'm gonna say 'guy she hitched a ride
>>  with' was a real rough trick who goes by the handle of 'The Silent One',
>>  and he was forcing her to do all kinds of crazy things before she told
>>  him to take a hike... That may be an alias, he also goes by 'The
>>  Silence', 'Pharaoh 90', 'Isci ba Fan'... Yes, that's what I said... She
>>  said that he was keeping her in the truck for a while before she jumped
>>  out, and she feels real bad about... Oh, so now code phrases are
>>  annoying? Not when I'm trying to figure out a way to say 'Lizard-men
>>  have stolen our Jeep with the Tesla Coil still inside it' in nonchalant-
>>  ese?...
>
> Heh.

LIZARD-MEN CANNOT DRIVE STICK. This is important later.

>>    Donna turned back towards Bill and Nadine, who'd stopped pretending
>>  to be talking about other things so they could try and figure out what
>>  the hell they were just talking about. "That was the Director," she
>>  sighed. "He says he's going to hop a plane to Tokyo as soon as he can
>>  and that we are to, quote, 'Make sure nothing happens to the girl -- in
>>  fact, I want you to recruit her by the time I arrive!'"
>
> Isn't the director of the Hoffman institute a Gray?

Yes he is! And as fearsome as Isci ba Fan is, he's still a Grey with poor 
impulse control.

>>    They walked back to Hotaru's room, wondering how the hell they were
>>  supposed to convince a Japanese teenager who may or may not be
>>  suicidally-depressed, who may or may not be a living focus of evil, and
>>  may or may not be the target of a band of righteous magic warriors, to
>>  join up with the world's most destitute secret conspiracy, and more
>>  importantly why they were doing so.
>
> Nice.

If you'll permit me to be a slight bit pretentious, I'm trying to take a 
standard crossover trope -- "we're organization from Series A and we think 
that you, person from Series B, are everything we need!" -- and turn it 
around: in this case, that declaration gets made through a childish loss of 
sense and everyone else thinks it's a real bad idea.

>>  Combat Information:
>>  Weapon:         Score:    Range:   Damage (O/G/A): Type:
>>  Unarmed       4/2/1 +1  Personal   d4s/d4+1s/d4+2s LI/O
>>  Gun           3/1/- +1 As Weapon         As Weapon   HI
>>  Folding Chair 4/2/1 +1   9/18/36 d4+1s/d4+3s/d6+3s LI/O
>
> He has points in Folding Chair? O_o

No, that's why he has to roll under a 4 to hit!

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brian Randall" <durandall at gmail.com>
To: "The Fanfiction Mailing List" <ffml at chez-vrolet.net>
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2008 11:52 PM
Subject: Re: [FFML] [Sailor Moon] Double Exposure 3 [Dark/Comedy]


>>    Pharaoh 90 chose to operate like this because, and deep down he
>>  realizes this, he is squeamish. He is capable of directly controlling a
>>  human mind but almost never does so, and even then only for incredibly
>>  short periods, because it is gross. To him it is like wearing someone
>>  else's dirty underwear, only instead of putting it on his groin he is
>>  putting it on the immaterial essence of his mind which is arguably more
>>  valuable. Even when he put into motion a plan that required close
>>  contact with his summoners, he psionically crafted a separate
>>  intelligence and used it to possess the human he was using as a focal
>>  point, one that was far less intelligent and skilled than he was, just
>>  so he wouldn't have to get his soul dirty by touching icky human brains
>>  with it.
>
>You know, this is a novel approach to cthulian intelligences.  It's
>not that we're too fragile to them, it's that we're too disgusting,
>much the same way we might view insects, or bacteria.  I've also never
>seen someone try and give this guy personality, so props for that.

Well, I can't take credit for that. That is how Isci ba Fan works, he can 
possess people but he usually doesn't because it's goddamn gross. Of course, 
Isci ba Fan as described in the "Xenoforms" book is significantly less 
Cthulian than the Pharaoh, and neither one had a whole lot of personality, 
so I did do something. Honestly? What I like best is the fact that he's 
kicking his own ass for letting his squeamishness get in the way of 
destroying the world, instead of laying ALL the blame on the Death Busters. 
Nice to know your hateful alien intelligence can take responsibility.

>>    And instead, he was trapped again, worse, locked in a space that was
>>  no space, expansive and claustrophobic, a dull gray he could sense even
>>  without eyes, for the past 58 hours and 45 minutes. Unable to see or
>>  effect the hated human world at all, he's had a lot of time to reflect
>>  on his past mistakes, on how they led to this current failure, and
>>  Pharaoh 90 has made a decision.
>>
>>    He is absolutely done fucking around.
>
> Yeah, I could see that, too.

PHARAOH RESOLVES NOT TO MAKE SAME MISTAKES!
Next: A whole bunch of new, different mistakes!

>>    "Your English is really good," Bill said more to fill up the awful
>>  Silence than to actually communicate an idea, "I bet that took a lot of
>>  practice."
>
> capitalization Intentional?

Yeah, but I probably shouldn't.

>>    "I don't. They just think I do because I got this autistic kid to
>>  open up and tell us where his dad -- who was some kind of crazy wizard
>>  guy -- where he ran off to so we could stop him from blowing up Spokane.
>>  And the only reason I could do that was my cable had been on the fritz
>>  and one of the only shows I could get was the one he was obsessed with."
>
> Was it Monk?
>
> It was Monk, wasn't it?

Sadly, this is 1995, and Tony Shaloub is still on "Wings".

(It was the X-Men cartoon. Don't ask him why he didn't just turn off the 
TV.)

>>    Makoto got ready to admonish Usagi about how this was serious and
>>  pretending there wasn't a problem wouldn't solve it... and then she
>>  realized son of a bitch, Usagi's right. That inner spark, that point of
>>  light, was there and simmering with the same intensity it ever had. It
>>  must have faded back in instead of appearing as abruptly as it left, and
>>  like the fabled frog in the pot of boiling water the changes had been
>>  too gradual for any of them to notice. It hadn't come back as of 8 AM
>>  this morning, which was the last time any of them checked, but that left
>>  seven hours afterward for it to gradually seep back. Minako, Ami, and
>>  Rei, all coming to the same realization, blushed and turned away in
>>  unison and felt like colossal jackasses.
>
> Colorful language for a shoujo fanfiction, but about perfect for
> DARK*MATTER as I understand it.

Should I change it anyway? When it's just Senshi in the room nobody would 
use that terminology.

>>    "Those were Mugen Academy students," Hotaru said without looking at
>>  either one of them. "They're still under the Pharaoh 90's control and
>>  they want to bring me back to summon him. If they took me, I would have
>>  had another chance to kill him."
>>
>>    Donna thought about that for a second. "Yeah, Bill, what did you go
>>  and do that for?"
>
> Donna's for letting Hotaru run off alone to try to take on Pharaoh 90?

No, but Donna's for taking shots at Bill. See how she agrees with why he did 
it, but says "You totally weren't thinking about that at the time."

>>    Minako and Makoto looked at each other, then Minako spun and kicked
>>  open the door to the room next to Usagi's. It was occupied, but by an
>>  eldery man who seemed not to respond to the loud noises or Minako's
>>  sudden intrusion -- it'd have to do. Makoto dug through her pockets for
>>  her wand, flinging aside newsstand reciepts and Tootsie Roll wrappers
>>  and spare change, Minako slammed the door behind them, and almost in
>>  unison they cried:
>
>eldery -- elderly
>
>And that's going to make an awesome (and totally unbelieved) story for
>the great-grandkids.

Assuming seeing it didn't give him a heart attack!

>>    She stopped, and they switched seats, Bill immediately identifying
>>  the source of discomfort in the backseat as his Mosin Nagant sniper
>>  rifle laid across the seat with a blanket thrown carelessly over it.
>>  Hotaru got into the front seat, buckled her seatbelt, and with two
>>  fingers holding her transformation pen opened the road atlas and began
>>  to navigate Donna toward the Juuban Hilton. It would be much later when
>>  she recognized the significance of this event, if she thought it was
>>  significant now she would not have done it. It was the first time after
>>  her recent attempt at suicide-by-Silence that she had put herself in a
>>  position where another person trusted her, no matter how minor the role.
>
>Interesting.

Should I cut it anyway? It's a significant event, psychologically, but none 
of them know that.

>>    The daimon turned to face them with its huge red LED eyes and wide,
>>  functionless metal jaw; it could only turn its head so far and ended up
>>  facing a point 30 degrees away from them. "SHUT UP!" it shouted, "SHUT
>>  UP SHUT UP SHUUUT UUUP JUST SHUT UP!" Its voice was harried and a bit
>>  panicked; to the extent a electrical-demon-robot has an identifiable
>>  tone of voice.
>
>...what was this thing made out of? O_o

A power transformer. That's why the power went out in the hospital. 
Transformer turned into a monster.

>>    "GO AWAY!" the monster howled, waving its arm as it built another
>>  charge. "GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAYAWAYAWAY WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE!" Venus
>>  peeked her head around the corner and almost instantly another discharge
>>  of electricity, one mercifully less intense, streaked from the daimon's
>>  body directly into her face. She yelped and was thrown backwards a good
>>  two feet, luckily Moon grabbed her and was able to get her back behind
>>  the cover of the wall before the monster could discharge again.
>
>Some of these sentences are very long with many clauses (lots of
>'and's).  You might want to try cutting them up a bit?  Not sure how,
>though, and it does also work as a style, if unorthodox.

I tried cutting them up, but they just seemed really choppy, so I'll keep it 
as a style.

>>    She slowly, deliberately dropped her shoe on the ground and lined her
>>  foot up with Usagi's boot. The daimon had rotated around to face her
>>  completely and appeared to have built up a full charge but was doing
>>  nothing, unless repeating "HURRY UP HURRY UP WHY ARE YOU TAKING SO
>>  LONG?" counted as something.
>
>Very high frequency, it seems. o_o

You mean, "Electricity doesn't even WORK that way?"

>>    "No, they all were suprised to see us, and they kept getting in each
>>  other's way duiring the fight, and they would all try to get into room
>>  409 before they started really going at us even though we were outside
>>  it. It's like they all just thought nobody else was going to get Hotaru
>>  so they had to do it, and they all showed up at once. Anyway, it took us
>>  a while, and by the time we dealt with the last ones the first ones were
>>  coming back to consciousness, but we got them stuffed into a supply
>>  closet and we tipped over an ice machine in front of it. Ami was going
>>  to check on the other floors and see if anyone needed help getting out
>>  and I ran down here to see if you needed any." She paused and looked
>>  downward. "Sailor Moon, where did your other shoe go?"
>
>suprised -- surprised
>duiring -- during
>
>4 is considered an unlucky number in Japanese culture, because the
>word for it is 'shi', which is also 'death'.  Often, hospitals will go
>from floor 3 to 5.

I know that, it was intentional. This particular hospital doesn't skip the 
4th floor, because the guy in charge knows that just means the 5th floor is 
really the 4th.

>>    "Do you think that things made of love conduct electricity?"
>
>That is a very unique line.

That's what I was going for.
>>    "Bill, you said this was a mixtape, are there any songs on this that
>>  aren't 'Free Bird'?" Donna slapped the "off" button on the car stereo in
>>  disgust rather than switching to the radio. She mashed the 'eject'
>>  button on the tape deck with her thumb, meaning to throw the tape out
>>  the window, but apparently Bill became a damn mongoose when his Skynyrd
>>  tapes were in danger and he snatched it away from her in the blink of an
>>  eye.
>
>mixtape -- mix-tape -or- mix tape

I have always, always seen it as all one word, mixtape.

>>    "The herald of catastrophe, I am Sailor Saturn!"
>
>Very nice.

I went through like five different inro lines before I found one I liked. 
But I'll be honest: I really, really like it.

>>  Coffee Mug 14/7/3 +1 Personal d6+2s/d6+3s/d4+1w LI+En/O
>
>...
>
>I guess it had to be done, though. o_o

It's actually slightly less effective than punching them. But cooler.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brian Randall" <durandall at gmail.com>
To: "The Fanfiction Mailing List" <ffml at chez-vrolet.net>
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 5:54 PM
Subject: Re: [FFML] [Sailor Moon] Double Exposure 4 [Dark/Comedy]


>>    "Nooot exactly," said Nakami, chewing on his cheek a little.
>
> Isn't....  Isn't this guy a Grey?

Yes he is! But he can appear to be human, and he still has cheeks.

>>    Yeah, something like that. You know the horrible boogeyman that
>>  lived in your closet when you were five years old, the one who your
>>  dad could never find during the daytime? The one that came out at
>>  night every night and just stared at your quivering form underneath
>>  the covers? And you didn't dare to lift your blanket, to expose one
>>  square inch of your body because you knew, you KNEW that was all it
>>  took for him to each over and flay the flesh off your bones. So you
>>  just sat there with your eyes wide open, paralyzed with fear, and
>>  hoped to God you wouldn't fall asleep or he wouldn't just decide to
>>  pull the blanket off of you and rip you to shreds right there? And
>>  every single morning when you woke up you wondered how you were even
>>  alive and the only conclusion you could ever draw was that he was
>>  toying with you. My boogeyman's name was Isci ba Fan, and he's been
>>  menacing my entire extended family for as long as we've existed. The
>>  last time we tried to do something about him he killed around ten
>>  thousand of us and we rammed a STARSHIP into its FACE and we still
>>  couldn't destroy him. And ever since he's been showing up at family
>>  reunions from time to time wearing someone's peeled skin, just to let
>>  us know he's there. And all of us pretend he's a superstition because
>>  we all know he's real and he scares the living shit out of us.
>
> to each over --  to reach over
>
> You switch between 'it' and 'him' for El Morte Grande.
>
> Does this mean that he finds Grey minds less disgusting to interact with?

No, he just didn't have anything else to do. and no other means of escape. 
In fact, Grey minds are a bit more of a hassle since they all have at least 
some psionic awareness -- he can still crush them, but it's slightly more 
annoying.

>>    The charging daimon had totally ignored her up until she finished
>>  that sentence, at which point her head jerked to the side like a dog
>>  hearing a can opener. "YOU!" it howled as it changed its course to run
>>  towards her, "YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE YOU HAVE TO COME BACK
>>  WITH ME RIGHT NOW!" One of the thing's bright orange legs looked
>>  mangled but it ran at her with hardly a limp.
>
> her, "YOU -- her. "YOU
>
> So, I'm guessing that all of these daimons are being controlled
> directly by Number One Death, only, he's not as great at bossing them
> around as he thinks?

Close. He programmed commands into them like they did to the Mugen students 
to get them to walk over to the school and give up their hearts. He just is 
a really, really, really, really bad mind-programmer and didn't think of 
like 85% of the situations the daimons would have to deal with. Or think 
that they might need to actually communicate with each other, since he 
doesn't really communicate with people, and thinks looking at what they are 
doing and making a guess as to what that signifies is enough.

This is said explicitly later, if it was really bothering anyone.

>>    Before the severed head even hit the sidewalk the daimon was gone
>>  with a 'POP!' and a puff of smoke. In its place was an ordinary
>>  commercial piledriver (though dented and beaten beyond use) and,
>>  floating above it, nine glowing red gems. They resembled the one on
>>  Hotaru's chest, though none of them were so ornate or had so many
>>  points.
>
> I may have missed this earlier ... should that be 'pile-driver'
> instead of 'piledriver'?

I always see "piledriver", but I always see it in the context of "wrestling 
move". Are they spelled differently?

>>    -- had been stolen. Uranus was nearly apoplectic with rage upon
>>  discovering this and had Neptune not been there to calm her down it's
>>  possible she would have killed the next person she saw with her bare
>>  hands. Not precisely likely, but certainly possible. Lacking
>>  automotive transportation, and with public transportation service
>>  during a mass youma attack spotty at best, they ran. When they arrived
>>  at the Narita airport, they did not find a team of FBI agents ready to
>>  load Tomoe Hotaru onto a plane back to Quantico, Virginia. And in the
>>  time it took them to get there Michiru remembered from 'Silence of the
>>  Lambs' that Quantico was where the FBI training academy was, not its
>>  headquarters.
>
> Heh!

That's not the last time Quantico, VA will be mentioned. Because I really 
like the way "Quantico" sounds.

Say it. "Quantico".

>>    Its body was a dull rust color, which made sense as it appeared to
>>  be made out of old, rusted metal. Its legs were just metal cylinders,
>>  its arms had long lag bolts that looked to take the place of biceps.
>>  Its right hand was two steamshovel-scoops that clacked together, it's
>>  left hand was a rivet gun. Rivets ran up and down its torso and legs,
>>  stained with even deeper patches of rust. Mars ducked behind the
>>  corner to talk to Mercury.
>
> The worst of a Rosie and a Big Daddy, all in one.
>
> steamshovel-scoops -- steam-shovel scoops

Yeah, and it stops and pounds at every steam vent waiting for Hotaru or 
Chibi-Usa to come out.

>>    The daimon had enough of a head start and enough momentum to make
>>  it to its target first, and it leapt into the open stairwell like
>>  Arnold Shwarzenegger leaping towards the landing strut of a
>>  helicopter. It hit the ground with a horrible CRASH and more piercing
>>  metal-on-metal screeching, and the people in the station (who
>>  apparently did not notice the monsters outside until just now)
>>  screamed and fled as the monster rose to its feet.
>
> I thought it'd be too big to fit!

It is, it scrapes the ceiling and can't stand, I will change it to say it 
"tried" to rise to its feet.

>>    The monster pushed itself backward onto its rear, with its knees in
>>  front of its chest, and fired repeatedly at the toll station Mercury
>>  had ducked behind. It seemed to have abandoned its triumphant tone and
>>  was now shouting "GO AWAY! YOU AREN'T DOING ANYTHING!" like all the
>>  others. Mercury winced a little every time she felt the dull impact of
>>  a rivet hitting the tollbooth, and put her hands above her head to
>>  shield her from shards of broken glass.
>
> shouting "GO -- shouting, "GO
>
> Ichi-Shi seems to be in denial, doesn't he?

"I will make my programmed daimons hate it when their work is interrupted, 
so they won't want it to happen! That way, they will find a way to make sure 
they are left alone even if my program doesn't cover how they're supposed to 
respond! This is exactly how programming demon brains works."

>>    When the incoming sawblade was split into two pieces by a vaguely
>>  spiral-shaped cut down its middle and wobbled harmlessly to the
>>  ground, it actually took Hotaru a second to realize that she'd sliced
>>  it out of midair. Behind her, Bill pulled out a fistful of ammunition
>>  and swore when he realized he'd grabbed the wrong caliber of ammo. He
>>  dropped the rifle to the ground and pulled his revolver out of his
>>  jacket.
>
> Gordon Freeman: Yeah, those hit much harder.

Gordon Freeman shoots people with a crossbow that flings sizzling sticks of 
rebar. Don't question his choice of weapon! (Plus, the rifle is out of 
ammo.)

>>    That's why when the monster spun to face her, pinkish ooze leaking
>>  out of its lower body, it was able to backhand her into a wall without
>>  her dodging it.
>
> Mm.  She's going to have to overcome these confidence issues, methinks.

Well, wouldn't you? Even if you weren't also the Messiah of Silence, you 
wouldn't be used to being able to kick ass all of a sudden.

>>    The daimon fell backwards to the sidewalk, right leg severed at the
>>  knee and left leg severed at the thigh. It flailed its arms wildly and
>>  shouted "STOP DELAYING THINGS! YOU ARE DELAYING THINGS!" Bill took a
>>  second to judge how far it's arms would go, waited for it to swing the
>>  saw downwards, then jumped next to the creature's head, put the barrel
>>  of his gun in its eye, and fired three times. Pink ooze sprayed from
>>  the back of its head, it gurgled for a split-second and then reverted
>>  to the Black and Decker circular saw it had spawned from.
>
> shouted "STOP -- shouted, "STOP
>
> Score one for the mortal!

Well, if mortals can't kill them, what does everyone outside of Tokyo do 
when youma and daimons show up?

(in chapter 7 I reveal it involves explosives, power tools, and on occasion 
jet engines.)

>>    "One, here." Donna reached into her pocket and produced a white
>>  albuterol inhaler, which she passed to Bill, who passed it to Hotaru.
>>  Hotaru shook it up, pressed the trigger, and inhaled deeply,
>>  immediately coughing almost all of the medicine out without effect.
>>  "Two, I went to take care of those hypno-assholes, then I figured I
>>  needed to get us another set of wheels. Which leads into three, some
>>  asshole had this thing parked across two spaces with the top down and
>>  one of those push-button ignitions like they have on racecars instead
>>  of keys. Nobody who would do that deserves to have this car. Why, what
>>  the hell have you been doing?"
>
> That stuff tastes nasty. :x

I never got to taste it, I coughed it out as soon as I inhaled.

>>    Mom and Dad had gone to the hospital to visit Usagi, and Shingo
>>  didn't come because they were worried he might still have the flu and
>>  pass it on to the patients, even though that totally cleared up like a
>>  week ago. He loved his sister and all, and he'd want to visit her
>>  eventually, but he figured letting her stew a while might teach her to
>>  take so long in the bathroom every morning.
>
> teach her to -- teach her not to (?)

I have heard it used like that. "That'll teach ya to take the car without 
asking," etc. Closeley related, I suspect, to "that'll learn ya."

>>    Luckily the one suitcase they could salvage before the paramedics
>>  arrived (to ask questions about why they were digging through a car
>>  wreck) was Bill's; he wore the biggest clothes and the others would
>>  look stupid in them but they would fit inside them, and it also
>>  contained an M16, 5.56mm ammunition for it and 7.62mm Warsaw Pact ammo
>>  for the Mosin-Nagant. Nobody asked how the Hell he got that through
>>  airport security because nobody really wanted to know.
>
> I'm not sure I want to know, either. o_o

I know I don't!

...shit.

>>    Donna pulled her own pistol, a bulky silver .45, and leveled it at
>>  the man's head before he could pick up. "Bad day to be on duty, G-
>>  Man," Bill helpfully added as he stepped in around her with the G-
>>  Man's gun.
>
> Oh, the MIB.  Was wondering what took them so long.

Oh, these are men in dark suits. The MiB show up in the next chapter. You'll 
be able to tell.

>>    Bill and Donna corralled the two agents into the center of the room
>>  and set about finding some way to restrain them. Phil came back up
>>  from the basement stairs and shook his head. "No good. Place is
>>  cleaned out -- even took the Faraday cage off the walls." He leaned
>>  into the banister and shouted upwards, "How's the second story look?"
>
> The Faraday cage?  That's....  'kay.  Those are so easy to make, one
> wonders why they'd bother.  But then, these are the people who
> confiscated everything Tesla owned after his death, so....

The answer to this and many other questions: Because they are dicks.

>>    The cooperative one blinked. "Why, the FBI, of course."
>
> *snrk*

I originally didn't have the next scene, and this line was the stinger to 
end the chapter on. I added the next one because I thought this wasn't 
actually going to be funny. Now, I think in the grand scheme it's better 
with the next scene there, but it's nice to know someone found it 
chuckleworthy.

>>    The attack was over, and it looked like the forces of goodness had
>>  come out on top. Once the dust had settled (and Haruka had reported
>>  her car stolen), the nine of them -- Ami, Minako, Usagi, Chibi-Usa,
>>  Rei, Makoto, Haruka, Michiru, and Mamoru -- had all assembled in a
>>  room at the Hikawa Shrine to hash out what was going on and what to do
>>  next. The 'Inner Senshi' were gathered around the table in the center,
>>  while Haruka, Michiru and Mamoru were standing behind them and leaning
>>  in to hear what they were saying. Makoto was in a wheelchair with her
>>  leg elevated and still visibly disoriented from the painkillers,
>>  Chibi-Usa was clutching on to the Luna-P like a life preserver. Minako
>>  had a pad of paper and a pen to take notes; more because she needed
>>  something to do with her hands than she needed notes to refer back to.
>
> I'm surprised they didn't elect to keep Makoto another day. >_>;

She wouldn't let 'em! And I would like to see them try and keep her! Well, 
they could probably just stick her with some Thorazine or whatever, but 
still. They didn't know she was walking on her leg, they thought she tripped 
or something, so it wasn't as urgent.

>>    "And Sailor Saturn ended up in the custody of people who claim to
>>  be, but are not, FBI agents," added Haruka. "If she wound up at the
>>  Toudai explosion it's possible they were responsible for it. They
>>  might have been at the Mugen site, but now that I think about it there
>>  weren't any places for them to be hiding. Maybe we heard what they
>>  were saying through the portal." She paused and ran her fingers
>>  through her hair, sighed. "In any case, I don't think they're with the
>>  Death Busters, but I don't think they're up to any good."
>
> Actually, other than their misinformation (which could have been
> intentional), how do they _know_ that the HI crew isn't FBI?  I would
> expect that, to them, all extra-japanese agencies would be met with
> roughly the same amount of disdain, so why bother making the
> distinction?

FBI guys know what is going on? Have a chain of command? Don't claim 
jurisdiction in Japan? Are about law enforcement and not wierding around? 
And they wouldn't exactly respect the FBI, but when they think the 
alternative is the Black Moon: American Style, the FBI looks good by 
comparison.

>>    "So you think that whatever was inhibiting our powers was
>>  preventing them from attacking as well?" asked Mamoru. "That it might
>>  not have been directed at us, but something that stopped magic in
>>  general?"
>
> ...might it be something that looks like, but is not, a hot-dog 
> rotisserie?

Might it indeed!

>>    "Maybe," Minako shrugged. "Maybe the reason these big horrible
>>  threats to humanity always work through layers of underlings is that
>>  they're really bad at being actual commanders?"
>
> 'shrugged' is not a speech indicator (copy-paste 50-reply long
> flamewar thread about 'smiled'), so I'd suggest:
>
> "Maybe," Minako -- "Maybe." Minako
>
> Also, some malaprop.

Damn it, how did I miss that opportunity? Some mangling of "too many chiefs, 
not enough Native Americans" needs to go here.

>>  Second Sight   [0]: After an aggravating fiasco in Spokane, Washington
>>  involving a warlock making heavy use of 'glamours', I&R Team Rho was
>>  assigned to be trained in the piercing of illusions by a known mystic
>>  and psychic. Dr. Neary, however, had to attend her sister's wedding on
>>  the weekend the lessons were performed and could not receive the
>>  training. A make-up appointment was made, but the psychic died of a
>>  cerebral aneurysm before the meeting could occur -- something that
>>  Nadine thinks he should have seen coming. Though Nadine has no
>>  enhanced ability to pierce illusion, she is immune to the
>>  metacognitive effects that surround youma and other creatures and
>>  prevent people from recognizing them as a threat or remembering their
>>  attacks, this can most likely be directly attributed to a phenomenon
>>  known as the "PC Aura".
>
> Wait, she gets the benefit without having to pay for it?  HAX!

She doesn't get to see through illusions, she had to be told Hotaru and 
Saturn were the same person. I wrote that before I decided why people 
freaked out when a daimon came around, and she doesn't have to pay for 
anything. all player characters explicitly are immune, as are most named 
NPCs.

ps in advance: YES I know the mechanic for daimon-freakouts doesn't fit for 
half the stuff that happened. GET OFF MY CASE. It was hard enough to come up 
with a justification that fit anything that still fit the quality of 
"mechanic".

Nothing about how she didn't do the mystic meditate-under-a-waterfall 
kung-fu mind training because she had to go to a wedding?

> Haiku of my lament:
>
> Forgive my spelling,
> my U.S. education,
> is the source of blame.