insertmeathere | Friday Meme Light: Cause It's A Bittersweet Victory (Ten Years Later Thread)

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Friday Meme Light: Cause It's A Bittersweet Victory (Ten Years Later Thread)

The clock continues to turn on the ship.

The last years have been of turbulence, surprises and great fights, but eventually, five years ago, the Ohm were defeated and slowly, peace was restored to the entire multiverse. The crisis was averted! Congratulations!

...However rebuilding universes takes time. Energy. Power. It still might be years off before you'll get to go home, and Stacy is truly saddened about that. Call it catch 22 if you will, but at least the life on the ship is a lot more peaceful now. The farms have grown, and now there's enough in-house grown food to feed everyone who doesn't feel like eating slop or eating slop in the sensoriums every day. That's a small comfort, right? Oh sure, there's still the surprise or two on it, but now there's slowly more places to stop, and Stacy has been a lot more lenient about people getting their shots...

As they sometimes say, life will find a way to flourish, anywhere it can. My, there's a lot more bellies around the ship than before...

And maybe. One day. Far off future. You'll get to go home. But that's not now.

Ten years is a lot of time for people to grow, personalities to change and emotions to emerge. How have your characters turned out of it?

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"Philip..." Hoshi was tempted to use "Raito", but knew that he didn't take kindly to that name.

"You know you can trust me with anything. I just want to help," she said, edging a bit closer to him.

"..."

Philip took a sip of his drink. "I was working on the Generation 42 attackbot again."

Sakura is sitting on the Great Wall of China in a beach chair, reading one of Jiraiya's novels and sipping a piña colada out of a tall glass with a paper umbrella in it.

There's a boom box on the ledge nearby playing orchestral music from a sector of the universes they visited eight years ago.

Take it with a grain of salt, but things have changed. Sakura's less reserved socially, and has found less and less reason to hold back on stating her opinions over the years. Don't like what she has to say? Don't give her a reason to say it.

As for what else has changed, DO WE EVEN KNOW?

Traces of Menageries path were clear enough, after all he had no natural predators to hide from. Claw marks in the walls, broken gnawed on bones left scattered about, and broken walls smashed rather then crumbled by time and natural causes.

As if she wasn't sure though a low growl echoed from somewhere deeper in the territory.

"Is there anything we could do to fully wipe Venjix out? I can transform again if need be." Even now, she was the type to do anything for the ones she loved. She wanted the family they were building to be free of any kind of problems.

"Still working on that," replied Philip, taking another drink of coffee. "Don't worry, I'll figure it out."

"Are you sure?" she asked, reaching out to touch Philip's free hand.

The years had done some good for Philip, after Venjix and everything else. He had thrown himself into his work and budding new family, and came out with some astounding process. Stacy had long since relinquished several drivers for him to study, and he was in the process of refining several more ideas.

"Time to test this," remarked Philip, holding up the Gaia Memory that was a C mixed with a X.

"Henshin." Plugging it in, his body shifted as Cyclone appeared, the middle of him separated with a prismatic band.

"Excellent. Now for the real test..."

Holding up another Gaia Memory, he clicked it.

Plugging that into the other side of the belt, he threw the second L-shaped lever as half his body changed into the familiar form of DiEnd Complete, half the cards on his chest and the signal pointer having a card with Cyclone Extreme and DiEnd Complete on the top.

"It works... YES."

Edited 2011-09-09 21:11 (UTC)

"Yeah, I'll be okay."

"All right." That's when Hoshi took him into a comforting hug, running her fingers through his hair.

"You look relaxed." Zouichi took a seat in the empty chair next to Sakura, leaning over before doing a brief double-take.

"Is that one of Jiraiya's books?" Wow, who'd have thought. Just a couple years ago she was scandalized about beach volleyball.

By now, little Wakana and Kazuki Hikari were born with Hoshi doing her best to shed the baby weight so that she could have her old figure back. She had the kids in one of the strollers the crew built and was overseeing Philip's progress.

"I'm glad it works, honey!" she said, giving him a smile as Kazuki and Wakana were gurgling happily for their father.

"Now we're only more powerful to help out, right?"

"It's all a carefully constructed act. Don't let me fool you!" A lot changes in nine years, Z. Or more a few things changed and she grew some appreciation for softcore pornography.

Romance novels are sweet after a fashion.

"One of his newer ones, yes." She closed it a little, offering it over to Zouichi if he wanted to look. "I used to think these had to be so much worse than they were."

Only a matter of time, huh? Not if Gandrayda had anything to say about it. Some had called it a sort of folly to even try, but she'd been working with med bay in the hopes of finding just the right DNA recombination that might be able to calm him down again.

Nothing had worked so far. But hey, after hearing what had happened with her and Phazon madness and how Samus had to kill Gandrayda's because of her own insanity, she could only try to fix someone else's so they didn't suffer the same fate she might have had once.

Zouichi took it, flipped through a few pages. "And now you understand his true genius? You know, I've never actually read any of these. Seemed sort of pointless at the time."

He handed it back to her. "I think adventure's more my thing, anyway. So, what are your plans for today?"

Studies so far had given some insight into Menagerie/Beastboy's physiology, genetic therapy had made his genes unstable to the point that with a thought he effectively took them apart atom by atom, molecule by molecule and rebuilt himself into whatever creature was in mind.

But since the madness set in Earth animals rarely made appearances, instead alien monstrosities, mythical beasts and the like had been his tools of choice.

For right now he was a dragon, sleeping inside the ruins of a building, smoke puffing out of the windows and holes in the foundation as a dire warning to any and all who would dare enter.

Her eyebrow quirked up. "Adventure, huh? Ask him about some of his other works. Or expand your idea of the word."

She was amused, if she didn't clarify past that. "As far as plans today, I very carefully made none. I'm off shift, I've got no current obligations, but I am almost done with my drink." A small sigh and a frown. "I should do something about that. What about you?"

Nima's heard that growl before, and the path is usually clear. She spins her staff, flipping open the wings of her glider, and takes to the air. She isn't trying to be stealthy, so the breeze that carries her announces her presence as well.

She scans the trail as she goes, landing to inspect the signs of progress where they can't be seen from the air.

There! Hunkered down in what looks to be the remains of a playground the Beast is resting under a jungle gym in the soft sand.

The form it has at the moment closest resembles a feline beast of sorts, but it has a sharp blade on the end of it's tail. Despite it's eyes being closed it's senses are finely tuned. approach with caution.

"Non-sexy adventure," he amended.

"Oh, I don't know. Apparently there's a delegation from an alien holobroadcasting network aboard, and they've demanded that we pay them in order to cross through this sector of space. That or take part in an elaborate martial arts cooking contest. I think I might join."

It was hard to tell if he was joking.

She let the book rest on her chest. "Oooh, are they looking for taste testers? Tell me they are."

He raised an eyebrow. "You want to be a judge? I think they were taking volunteers for the ship's side."

So how eaten is the creature? It was a deer this time, right? In that case, Nima doesn't have much claim on it. She's come to terms with the reality that animals not hers to care for are raised to be eaten by others.

It's never a good idea to take a predator's kill from it, anyway. Nima has been aware of this for plenty of time.

But this creature is, and was, more than a predator. It is not right that he should stay that way.

Nima lands at a distance that is not aggressive, but is distinctly within the creature's territory. She averts her eyes to the side, not meeting the creature's gaze yet, but her posture is not fearful, and neither is her calm, friendly voice.

"I'm back, my friend. You know that was not yours to take."

A single eye opens and the growl deepens. A massive paw extends out slowly to snag what's left of the carcass. It's almost impossible to tell what the creature once was, but enough of it's lower flank remains for the task.

Claws sinking into the flesh Menagerie draws it's kill closer to make his message very clear. This is mine!

So at some point, some very recent point actually, someone knocked Nima up - for the third time. This new pregnancy is early enough to still be at a high risk for miscarriage and so Nima doesn't miss a single minute of her daily six hours of praying and chanting in the Angkor Wat temple, calling an enlightened soul across time and space to live in the body she is building for it.

She's about as interested in confirming the identity of the father as she was for the child she gave birth to, and now raises communally with the rest of her Order, along with a number of orphans from the war.

Building a new temple, since that's what she seems to be doing, is an interesting and unexpected thing to have done with her life. Only a few other air nomads have awoken in the time she's been on the ship, and most of the new Order are not benders at all.

Her peaceful face as she chants is marred by livid scars from injuries she received during the course of the war, and an infection she almost died from. Her lips are torn and puffy with permanent damage, and she is blind in one eye. She has been offered, and turned down, surgeries to repair these.

Aside from this, and the inevitable maturity of ten extra years, Nima has not changed much.

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Friday Meme Light: Cause It's A Bittersweet Victory (Ten Years Later Thread)

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Philip: Side B

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