yui

Still counts.

Characters I enjoy but am only okay with. Results are less meaningful if I don't have fun getting them, and hard work & dedication are how you become great at a character even if the character in question isn't particularly good (Ganondorf in Smash Bros).

OOC January 5th Like any MMO worth its price tag, Battle Horizon had cities to serve as in-game hubs for various player activities. At present there were only four, but the biggest and most popular one was Blue City, by far. There was never a boring day in "BC chat", though that being for better or worse was often a coin toss and/or up to interpretation. The functional parts of any other city, such as market boards, NPCs that served various purposes, duel arenas, and access to the game's fast travel system, could all be found in any major city, but the layout of it all in Blue City was sometimes noted to be especially intuitive and convenient. And all this was to say nothing of the city itself, added to the game a couple of major patches ago, and as such being the first city to not be part of the game on release. In-universe, the lore surrounding Blue City was that it had simply appeared one day in an area called Scale Valley, supposedly coming from the future. The metal streets and bright lights of the city certainly sold the image, along with the city itself being contained within a large dome built to ward off the dragons that inhabited the nearby mountains, the inside of which came complete with a simulated sky. In a stark contrast to the general overcast of the plains outside, it was always a sunny day in Blue City, and with the anniversary event a mere two days from beginning, activity in the city was ever on the rise. Ambitious new teams, hardened veteran teams, solo players who just liked to watch others do new raid content, and even PVP teams sparring with each other in response to rumors of new PVP content being added for the anniversary patch. To say the city was bustling with player activity would be nonthing if not accurate. Which included five players in particular. Not new players by any means, but certainly new to joining teams. Players by the usernames Teimei, TheLegend27, Crimson_Star, Ivy9d, and 9Inversions. It had been Teimei who conspired to create a new team in a bid to fill the power vacuum left by Royal Flush's breakup, despite the odds being stacked against her, and she had managed to recruit four other players to the cause. Strictly speaking, the minimum amount of players required for a team, and the amount recommended for doing a raid in the first place, was four. Not five. It wasn't uncommon, however, for raid teams to have a couple of extra members in case someone had to call out sick or busy on a raid night. Some larger teams even used numbers to their advantage by running several instances of the same raid at the same time to up their chances of success, but it was rare for a raid team to reach such a size. First, of course, the filled-out team charter had to be submitted to the relevant NPC in any major city. Which was why Teimei had messaged each of the other four players, assembling them all in a very office-looking building in Blue City where, at the desk just behind her, the NPC in question sat, ready to accept team charters and deal with a handful of other team-related services. The reason she had specified Blue City, the only major city locked behind story progression? Simple. Teimei knew this new team would be at a disadvantage from the start - relatively speaking, this was after all an assembly of a bunch of nobodies - and they wouldn't have time to coddle new players through the story and potentially the grind to get their deck functional. The fact that one could access Blue City at all meant that the bulk of the work for getting them up to speed was already taken care of, saving precious time. As the last of the members planning to join Teimei's team approached the building, they would spot another group of five players leaving the building, who earlier arrivals would have already seen enter and submit their own charter. And once they were inside, met with their future teammates, Teimei did a head count to make sure everyone was here. Pleased that everyone had arrived, the head of the fledgling team-to-be addressed her newfound companions. "Thank you all for coming. I know we don't all have to be here for the charter being submitted, but we're going to be working together from now on, so I'd like us to all take the first step together, as a unit. Additionally, I'd like to ask everyone a couple of questions, as a group. We're all a team now, and as such, we should make decisions as a team. With that in mind, I'd like to hear any suggestions you may have for a team name. And, also as a team, I'd like to know what you all think is the most important thing that makes a team successful. Not because I plan to copy others who have risen to success, but because I want us to blaze our own trail to victory, and eventually to that mystery boss everyone's getting ready for." HOST NOTES

She's Just In It For The Science

Next floor! On the way down, Robin received some quick healing to patch up her arm, bringing the "dread pirate" back up to full firing capacity, though not necessarily full health. The next floor down was still foggy, but now marshy as well. Lovely. More importantly, the skeletons here weren't mere skeletons. They had flesh on their bones! Those were zombies! Gross. Split into two groups, the hordes of the undead - and a pair of floating eyeballs as well - shambled about the room, though there were notably less of them on the starboard side. “That way first, I think,” Chris suggested. “It’s got less of them. Keep an eye on the other ones, though, don’t want them sneaking up behind.” "Yeah. I don't want to get strangled by those things. I'll take the lead, and uh, just make sure I don't get ganged up on or something." "I'll cover the two of ye and watch that lot over there," Robin nodded, keeping a wary eye on the other zombie-plus-eyeball group across the room. "Bet these fellows burn well."

ya like BASS? (i'm like three seconds over, it totally counts)

As night fell upon the land, something else began to fall as well. Rain. When Luca had warned the group to be careful when it rained, Abby had imagined she meant some sort of "wrath of God" type flood where it rained with such ferocity that even just standing on the ground meant getting swept away. And while she did get the "wrath of God" part right, it came in a different flavor from what she had anticipated. Lightning strikes of such intensity that it seemed going outside would be begging to get zapped. She was no doctor - though she'd been working on that before promptly getting sent to an entirely different world - but she had the feeling that testing her newfound durability against bolts of lightning wasn't wise. So instead, she simply watched the spectacle unfolding outside. She couldn't sleep, after all, so it seemed best to at least do something besides stare at the ceiling. Or rather, she could sleep, if she wanted, but with no feeling of being tired, there wasn't much of a reason to, was there? Plus, staying up gave her precious time to think more about the situation she'd wound up in. Her conclusions were threefold. That battle with the drengr had confirmed this wasn't a dream; one of them clawed her side in the action, which would have woken her up if it was. Nobody knew of any way to get back to her own world. She was stuck here, apparently destined to save the realm or whatever, and so, It would be a complete waste of time and mental energy to panic or try to force her way home. For now, the best course of action was to focus on the here and now, as she was often one to do anyway. After a night of rain, however, the sun was likely rising behind the gloomy overcast of the region. The rain had certainly stopped, at least. Breakfast was had, and although she didn't feel the need to eat, food was one luxury Abby was not about to pass on just because it was no longer a necessity. The muddy state of the roads was inconvenient, but Abby definitely gave at least one smug look to her fellow Exalted upon realizing she was the only one whose footwear was literally designed for this kind of thing. And, being the best suited for the new conditions, Abby naturally found herself ahead of the group, but only a little bit. Then a rather innocent question came out of the Sabrina kid's mouth. "So, uh, have any of you played...er....Pokemon?" "Ooh, I did, back in elementary school," Abby smiled, turning around and trying her best to manage walking backwards on the mud roads ahead. "I don't remember much since this was back in like, first or second grade, but a bunch of other kids were talking about it and I wanted in, so I got the game and picked that little chicken pokemon at the start." With a defeated sigh, Abby concluded her story with a harrowing, desolate truth. "Everyone else picked that blue thing though, with the... whiskers? Or something?" Sabrina looked over at Abby, looking down at the considerable height difference, as she tried to do the math in her head. "U-um, Torchic? When....was this again?" "Torchic, right! This was back in like, two-thousand and... three? Yeah." "Ah, yeah I, uh....didn't play that gen until the remake..." she hesitated then "AndIchoseTreeckosorry" Abby raised an eyebrow at the mention of a remake, stopping in her backwards stride as she did. "...remake?" "Oh, yeah! It was in uhhhh....Gen 6!" "Gen 6... Gen 6..." The gears in Abby's head turned. She remembered hearing someone talk about gens before, back then. But she couldn't remember what number her first game had been assigned. "So, uh, which one was I playing? I don't actually know." "3!" Sabrina said. "They're actually coming out with...9...soon. Oh, I guess...not gonna play that one huh." "9!?" Abby could feel the passage of time strike her all at once. That the game she played as a child was only the one-third point of the franchise's lifespan... "That's... a lot. Wow, I feel really out of the loop." She got the feeling that she was about to trip if she kept up this backwards walk thing, so Abby elected to turn back around. "Sorry to hear you're missing out on the hot new game. Instead it's just you, me, the rest of the crew, and this road. How you holding up back there?" "A-ah! This is nothing to a hero like me, no need to fret I am, uh, a-okay!" Sabrina wouldn't be able to see it from behind Abby, but a wicked smile formed on the shorter girl's face. "Great! Glad to hear it. Come on up to the front with me then, it's getting a bit lonely up here." Sabrina glanced at the others before awkwardly quickening her pace to catch up to her. Oh wow, she didn't trip like I thought she would. "Welcome to the front of the pack! Glad to have you up front with me." Glancing behind her, Abby raised her initial question again. "How about the rest of you? Holding up alright back there?"

"Well, I was part of Zodiac like, I dunno, hundred so years ago? Other than that tussled with em here and there but haven't we all?" Not very helpful. Anyone in Zodiac back during Thessa's stint with them was surely dead by now. Or very, very retired. Time to wing it, then. The hideout of the Moray Clan... entering any sort of gang hideout took her back, to be honest. There was that distinct something in the general atmosphere of one. Like stepping into a place where you know just by human instinct if you belong there or not. Like the back rooms of a store, or a police station. Although, instead of managers or cops, all that was waiting down here was a group of dumb kids. Smart dumb kids, obviously, since gangs run by idiots didn't tend to stay that way for long, but still dumb kids all the same. Dumb kids who seemed very particular about what was or wasn't their turf, by the sound of it. "Oh, huh, yeah we do have a thing for you I guess. But I don't much care about that thing, instead I'd rather know what you three think about this. Like, if the world is actually ending or not. It's kinda a big deal if it's true. I'm real curious what a group like yours would do if it ends up being real." "Well," Lachesis said, "if the end of the world does come, I guess we're all going to die." "Horribly," Atropos added. "But if it's an end of the world we can fight off, like, despite what your little packets might say, we do care about the people under our protection," Clotho said. "We'll manage." The discussion then went on to cover the idea of going on one final rampage before everything was destroyed, and the Fates declaring that this was not their intention. And a mention of grudges, in the context of Thessa's ability to simply wait until the offender died someday. Not a power Ember envied, to be honest, but she'd be lying if she said the option to simply do that wasn't one that sounded tempting. But she could think about the living fossil's powers some other time. Right now, it was time for business, and business she planned to do. "If I may… we should be getting back to the task at hand, as time is of the essence." He held the folder designated for the Fates in particular. "We're here as liaisons for the G3 Organization. So if you three could please allow us to get started…" That elicited a nod from Ember. With Override, it seemed to be straight to the objective. She could respect that. There was perhaps some room for some breaking of ice first, the usual niceties when doing business from one group to another, but calling a gang a business usually didn't feel right. "I'm just covering our bases at this point. After all, you are still criminals at this point...so if anyone is 100% trusting of you, even in these dire circumstances, it would be a bit of a mistake. Caution is all I'm taking with my actions, you understand." That, on the other hand, elicited a small heel kick from Ember, to Override's own foot. Nothing that would hurt, but something most people would probably recognize as the kind of thing someone did if they were sitting next to you at the table as a means of telling you to shut the hell up or at least not say the things you just said. In what world was "we aren't willing to offer you our full trust" a statement that would do literally anything good for business? Ember had hoped to leave the negotiating to these other two, but at this rate, she was starting to fear she'd have to take matters into her own hands. "Their pasts no longer define them... it's something a mentor of mine once said when I started at G3. I don't know if that's the case or not...but if they aren't trying to kill me, then they can't be all bad, am I wrong?" "And speaking as one with such a past myself," Ember interjected, "Most gangs can at least be trusted to uphold any sort of agreement they make. Backstabbers don't tend to get very far in the villain business, you see." "Ohhhhh is that the nerve?" Atropos said, moving back away from her sister and Override to meet Ember where she stood. "Well, my apologies for bringing it up then. I'm sure you're very trustworthy." As the other Fates chimed in, Atropos was responded to with a wave of Ember's hand. The kind that gave off the signal of "don't even worry about it." "I'd say she looks the most trustworthy of the three," Lachesis said. "She's right, too. The Peacekeepers love us and The Zodiac for being perfect little angels when it comes to signed and notarized contracts." "Two out of three is 'most,' right?" Clotho said, her head buried in the folder. "Statistically, yes, two of out three is most," Ember nodded. "And if I'm being honest, I'm curious how the negotiations with the remaining one will go, since we appear to be on the same page regarding them. But we're here to see what terms you girls would find acceptable for something that spans as potentially far out as April. Six months isn't a short time to agree to, after all, and every resource we spend negotiating with the big gangs is another resource we aren't putting toward investigating and stopping the end of the world." "This says it's just a temporary agreement until-" Clotho got close to a particular piece of language. "Oh, they want the Peacekeeper meeting to be Monday?" "That's the day before election day, isn't it?" Atropos said, looking over. "Interesting move from Mayor Gladwell." Lachesis took a moment to process the new information. Her power involved measurements, so it made sense she was in charge of managing her gang's resources. "I'm not going to say what a six-month hard armistice is worth without being at the negotiating table. But for one week? Right now? Easy: Two favors from each of you. Nothing dramatic, nothing illegal or that would put you in jeopardy of your job or whatever, but that's the price. One of which we can even clear off the books right now, if you want." "By all means, please tell us about these favors you'd like." In hindsight, perhaps I should have given the folders a bit more of a read on the way here... it seems to be working out well enough despite that mistake, though. "The first one for each of you is just a one-on-one meeting right here in the park. We'll split off, one pair goes that way, another goes that way, another goes --" Lachesis seemed to realize that the park really just had one pathway -- "back up the stairs, I guess." "Understood. That's fine with the two of you, right?" Ember asked, looking to her fellow heroes.

As the six-armed Morgan descended, with what seemed like a perfectly good sneak attack, she discovered that it was in fact not so perfectly good. Perhaps it was because Grigoriy was already aware of a second opponent, and so kept his guard up. Whatever the reason, Grigoriy had conjured a bolt of lightning that was about to strike Morgan from directly above. This was fine by her, though perhaps not ideal, but an assist would have been welcome all the same. And an assist she did receive! Trevor had created a barrier of wind above her, deflecting the shot and making her wonder how that actually worked on a physics level, if at all. Morgan was able to land safely thanks to the magical backup, and wasted no time closing some of the distance between herself and Grigoriy. The added arms - being longer than her own - gave her the freedom to attack from a greater distance without putting herself in quite as much danger. So that's what she did. Reaching out with the four skeletal arms, she had each one take a swipe at the man before her all at once, from different angles to ensure defending would be as hard as possible. She didn't plant her feet into the ground by any means though. Something told her that with some sort of wizard as her teammate, it would be ideal to stay light on her feet. That way she could strive to keep Grigoriy directly between herself and Trevor, making it all the harder to defend against both of them.

hosts reviews apps Yui: Fun dude. We talked more about his bio behind the scenes so not worried about the length presented here. Additional shoutout for being the only person here - myself included - to use one of the example duel skills. Accepted. Sai: I don't think he put enough detail in his fucking app. His avatar also doesn't match the theme of his deck. What a fucking loser. Accepted. Yui: Not the type of personality I'd usually expect you to go with. A change of pace is always fun. Bio is pretty neat. Very cohesive, solid app overall. Sai: I like the direction you took Roy this time. It's better than the Zai RP, which is not hard to do, but it is. Accepted. Yui: It was at the point of seeing Ivy's app that I realized. This is going to be an RP about a team where nobody in it is a team player. Sai: I like her character. I can't wait to see how she fumbles around with the team. Accepted. Yui: Garbage app. 10/10. Sai: And this was the start of the trend where almost everyone was the heir to a corporation. I like her better than the old version of her. She is no longer a screeching harpy. Accepted. Yui: Your text is tiny and you're short a duel skill. Also, I'm gonna need more details on her offline life story. Not quite up to the standards that I've been holding everyone else's apps up to; will have to discuss further with Sai. Lastly, a nitpick: we're in-universe for the anime so it's called Duel Monsters not Yugioh Sai: It's alright. Please do not use this fucking font size or color during the RP. I will find you if you do. Acceptance pending. Yui: Last-minute entry, but worth the wait. App is pretty well written. Lotta custom cards. Make sure not to lose track of em. Sai: I think it's pretty good. It's definitely the most detailed out of all the apps we've got. The first paragraph of your personality has won my favor. It is a good app. Accepted.

Team Founder

posting here cos it doesn't feel right putting it in the music thread

it is time for a certified hood classic