radio414

“You’re… notetaking?” It wasn’t that Peter didn’t see the point -- obviously, there was a point -- but he also, like, shouldn’t he be the one doing more work. He lost, after all, and the only reason he wasn’t tearing out paper and joining Makoto in the process was, well, his problems were pretty clear-cut. They’d been there during his duel with Charlie, too, as far as he could remember, but now that he’d lost, they were a bit more pronounced. “Uh, I guess I need to work on how I use my protection effects. There was probably a point where I used one I shouldn’t have or the other way around. “It’s hard because they’re all slightly different, right? And half of them again have some other effect, too. My parents are pretty big on drilling all this into me and I mean, I try, but it’s still hard. But, um, yeah.” Overall, Peter took the loss to Makoto well enough. The things he was saying weren’t false things to pass the time. In fact, he took it better than even he had expected -- he felt almost okay. To be fair, winning hadn’t exactly been the goal for him; his goal had been to get through a game having demonstrated progress. And he had. He remembered. Peter looked over at the holographic duel between Hana and Terry, which was going about as swimmingly as could be expected (that one was intentional). Well, there was some hesitation going on on both duelists’ parts but that was to be expected, right? Not everyone had had the same upbringing as him, poor things. Surely they’d get used to it eventually, though, right? They had to when meets came around. Makoto was still scribbling away when Peter looked back. He didn’t want to distract her, but, while he was collecting his cards back up and shuffling them together, he did get a little curious. “What about you?” he said. “What are you writing down?”

Each minute was an eternity to Melissa. She’d tried all her tricks that normally passed the time, too, like prayer or crying or… okay, those were the two big ones but even after a few psalms and thoroughly dried-out eyes, the only other thing she could do was keep checking her phone for responses to the scant feelers she’d sent out. Jun, Kyouko, Gabby, they were safe (or safe enough) and she’d texted her location out to the people that had asked, but nobody else seemed to be responding in a timely manner. Which was fine, like, they probably had other things to worry about, but that “fine-ness” didn’t exactly give Melissa any peace of mind. But she also wasn’t about to just go and text everyone again either. She could imagine a scenario almost like the one she found herself in, just with a monster on the other side of the stall door. If she held her breath, she could escape its notice, but any errant noise would give her away. A phone buzz from a follow-up text could be just that noise. And of course, right as she thought it, the bathroom door opened up, and, right on cue, Melissa sucked in a huge lungful of breath and tried to hold it for as long as possible. She could hear metal scraping on the tile floor, then tapping on each of the stall doors in turn. Only when they finally spoke did she even think about breathing out. It was Kyouko. “Anyone home? I’m looking for whoever’s friends with this runt behind me.”Did Kyouko really have to call Gabby a runt? It didn’t really matter, they were all reunited at last and that was enough for right now, but the thought still stuck out in Melissa’s mind even as she went to embrace both of them, Gabby first, though she eventually pulled in a reluctant Kyouko as well. It was when she came back out that she realized exactly what Kyouko had explained to her. A bat? Whacks? “Is that- was that what Souji was talking about with duel space? Do we have to be fighting these things?” she said. Then, after a breath, “I don’t know. I don’t have a plan or anything. My plan was just hiding here until it stopped.” Melissa looked at Gabby, then Kyouko, then back again, “I’m sorry, I feel like you came here to rescue me. Jun’s coming too -- I told her where I was too. But that means, I don’t know, going somewhere else, doesn’t it? Where else is safe? Do you know? “I really don’t mean to be a burden like this. I just- you asked, so I answered. And I don’t mean to blame this on you- either of you. I really am grateful that you’re both here. But if you need to go somewhere else, you can do it now, and I’ll be happy having seen that you’re alright. I just- I’m stuck, I guess. I’m stuck here where it’s safe.” Someone knocked at the door. “That’s probably Jun,” Melissa said as she walked to the door. It was a trepidatious walk -- “probably” didn’t mean “definitely,” after all -- which made her all the more relieved to find that it was! Jun too got a hug, right there in the doorway before Melissa pulled her inside to join them. “It’s good to see you’re safe,” Melissa said. Surprised by the sudden affection, Jun smiled and said, “Glad to see you too ‘Lissa! It was a bit touch and go before getting here,” the girl adjusted her hat as she said so, “but-” she stopped as she saw everyone else. Brightening even further, she said, “Oh, even Koko and Gabby are here! It's like some kind of party! Man, with classes cancelled and all of us here, it’d be the perfect time to go see a movie or something. But well,” the girl sighed as she looked back to the entrance, a bit disappointed. It was obvious why, or it was to Melissa, at any rate. Guilty thoughts swam into her head again, and she almost went into another long apology without meaning to. But no, she managed to stop herself and instead reflected on what she could do to help. Because, well, maybe she couldn’t fix it, but she sure could try. Like she had said, after all, these people had come for her. She took another deep breath. “Alright, if I had to make a plan, I’d start with why this is happening. Or why, or- well, I guess duel space is why, right? A better why then: why this specifically? Our class was attacked by Mokey Mokey and then I came here so I haven’t seen much else, but you all surely must have had some other experience.” She gestured at Kyouko. “Like, where’d you get that bat? I guess we start there and work our way out?”How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down on the collar of his robe. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore. -Psalm 133 (NIV)

Killing didn’t get any easier, even with rats. Especially with how it died, twitching like it did before falling over onto the cold dungeon floor. Chris just stood over it for a moment or two while Sergei and Lana dealt with the other rats further on. He couldn’t dwell for too long, though; his attention was diverted by whatever was going on earlier in the dungeon. It was weird to even think that there could be an earlier, given how close to the start everybody already was, but no, there was definitely noise coming from the way they came. It didn’t sound like adventurers either, though the melee made it a little difficult to know for sure. If it was actually adventurers, they probably had less to worry about, right? Like, they could either work together or one of them could just go the other way, hopefully without too much arguing about who did what. But if it wasn’t… “Hey, Estellise,” he called out before getting closer and motioning back to the beginning of the tunnel. “You hear that, right? “I’m going to- I’ll be in eyesight but I just want to check it out. I’ll be right back.” With that, he took off down the hallway.

Lachlan spent a lot of words on just saying he could walk and even then when he was finished he still hobbled along beside her pretending that the “yes” part of his answer was in any way honest. The “maybe, I think so,” part, sure, whatever, but a not-insignificant part of Elsie just wanted to scoop him up right then and there and just cart him out. Well, what she wanted was to escort him to wherever he said to go -- a thought that surprised even her -- but in the meantime, she just said, “Alright, well, listen, it’s not every day that one gets to ride on a witch’s broomstick, like, I know the stereotype is that we’ll sweep kids off their feet and take them to castles in the clouds or whatever but that’s not about to happen here. We’re already on one of those.” She laughed at her own joke, regardless of how funny it really was. Corbin didn’t. But Lachlan wasn’t paying attention. He was busy staring behind her, at something on her broom’s head. Wait, was something back there? Now that she was paying a bit more attention, the weight balance of her broom had shifted a little bit. Plus, Lachlan was saying things like “Hi there,” and “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” which would be weird (or rather, weirder than Lachlan already was) if there weren’t. But it’d have to be something smaller, like a cat or a- Or a frog, which was what it was. A rather large one had attached itself to her broom like it was planning to hitch a ride. Elsie’s first instinct was to shake it off -- she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to but it was the first thing that popped into her head. But after a few shakes that were more obligatory than anything else, she paused, thought a moment, and looked around. The battlefield was largely the same as it’d been when she’d last looked. Lucine and Wada’s fight was progress and the cat lady had gone over to bother the Dragon Slayer but besides that, well, there was only one other big difference that she could see: Tricky had disappeared. Elsie sighed. “King of Frogs, huh? Okay, you can come too, I guess.” She looked at Lachlan, who was still half-staring at her excess passenger, half-limping along at an irregular speed that Elsie had difficulty matching. Every time she thought she was matching it, it changed just a little bit. She did want to match it, though -- if he was staring at her newest passenger frog, she was staring at him just as much in case he tripped or something more unfortunate happened. Corbin, though, interrupted her thoughts. “You know, if that cat woman keeps bothering him,” he said, “he might just throw her instead of that beast.” It was something that hadn’t even occurred to Elsie. Maybe she took it too seriously because of that, but it sufficiently increased her desire to leave from “at Lachlan’s pace” to “at Elsie’s pace,” and Elsie’s pace was significantly quicker. She seized Lachlan by the collar and lurched forward on her broom, making a final lunge towards the exit door, making before any throwing of anyone else could ensue. The impact of what she’d just done didn’t quite hit Elsie until they were safely outside the arena. “Sorry! Sorry, Lach!” she said, hopping off her broom to check on him. “Oh, Hecate, that- yeah, sorry.” She turned to the frog. “You too. I mean, you probably, I don’t know, you probably weren’t expecting a bumpy ride like that.“ To Lachlan, she said “If you’re really hurt, um, the medical ward’s this way, I think, and we can go there. If you’re not, um, wow, but I was going to go see Jekyll, ‘cause he’ll probably be watching this all with a scrying orb or something and it minimizes the crossfire. Unless,” -- she looked back at the frog, -- “you had some other idea? Or were you just hitching a ride out of there like we were?”

Chris didn’t even register that Sergei had shifted the rat so his sword would strike true (or truer, like, he thought his aim was pretty good) until it happened. But the rat didn’t even have the good decency to die like it was supposed to! It just rolled into the wall and righted itself to go on the attack again. “Watch your feet!“ Estellise called out as a bolt of her light magic struck that same rat. For a moment, the magic illuminated the entire room, and Chris saw how feral the rat in front of him really was, its blood-crazed expression only exaggerated by its wound and its singed fur. The light faded quickly, though, and the way the rat was moving meant he had to act soon. What else could he do? He slashed his sword in a downward arc, aiming to take the rat out for good this time, or at least protect his ankles.

Can't believe I missed one but fortunately it gives me a chance to respond to a non-question so there's that. The question first, though: This was a difficult one because it was a Christmas tradition for my family (okay mostly my mom but everyone else helped (or "helped")) to make all kinds of cookies but I guess I can narrow it down to four: 4) Girl Scout Tagalongs. A semi-controversial pick, from what I understand. The internet, in it's effort to be as "unique" (scarequotes mine) as possible, has, from what I've seen, divided between Girl Scout Cookies being the best things ever or overpriced garbage funding a garbage institution, and of course it is only in extremes. But my aunt gets me a bunch every year so I have positive associations and the peanut butter and chocolate "Tagalong" buiscuts are the best ones they have (frozen Thin Mints are a close second) so I'm putting those here. 3) Chocolate Chip. The classic, but it's a classic for a reason, and despite the aforementioned tradition fading away as everyone got older, these are the ones that still get made every year. Not really much more to say about them, really. 2) Springerles. Speaking of tradition this is, like, actual recipe-passed-from-mother-to-daughter-type stuff. You said you bake a lot in your AMA, so I assume you know what these are, but in case you don't, they're these square (or ours were square) German biscuits that are firm and thick and have little designs stamped on them. The ones I remember had just a hint of sweetness which means I didn't always like them but now I really do. There's also a little bit of a "forbidden fruit" aspect to them for me because we were always welcome to have the other cookies we (mom) made but mom would only let us have a few of these. 1) Macarons. These count as cookies, right? I'm not French and Google says they're "confections" but I'm saying they count. Not something we made but something we were always excited to have, On the rare occasion I do get to have one, no matter the quality (I'm not a cookie or confection connoisseur), it's always difficult not to just stick the whole thing in my mouth. No, you got it. I mean, I'm not saying I'm not crazy when it comes to this specific sound. And I don't make a big deal of it to anyone when it happens because I know it's a silly thing to be bothered by, but that doesn't mean it doesn't still happen. The one way I can try to describe or explain it is that I've never liked the sensasion of erasing a chalkboard either (like, the physical action of doing so); the feeling of the eraser brush going over the board feels weird to me. So I may just have gotten those two feelings conflated in some way but that's why. It also doesn't help that I was taught in school on dry-erase boards so chalkboards were a bit more foreign to me growing up.

it's entirely possible; it's a pretty well-known song