radio414

long long long journey gets a 7/10 from me

“Draw!” Peter said. His emphasis was doing a lot of heavy-lifting hiding his uncertainty. The duel had turned into a Sisyphean task, after all; he’d spend resources over and over trying to clear Charlie’s board away, but setting back up seemed effortless for the captain, and they’d caused Peter to spend even more resources protecting things he’d already made. This draw was important for a lot of reasons, Peter determined (he hadn’t actually looked at it yet, but he had decided it to be so). It was important because, while he still could see a pretty clear opportunity to punch through, if he didn’t, Charlie’s Frightfur Sheep was going to eat his Twin Burst alive before the rest of their monsters turned their attention to Peter. He slowly flicked through the cards one at a time in his hand. That one was his very first draw -- if he could just find the other piece he’d be good as gold. That one was the Blue-Eyes he’d gotten, like, a couple turns ago. And just behind it was… “I activate the spell card Trade-In!” Peter said as he immediately slid the card into a slot. “It lets me discard a level eight monster from my hand to draw two new cards. I choose…” Peter hesitated. A new line appeared to him. If he could get Blue-Eyes onto the field, he could bring back his trap card, which could protect him pretty well and that could give him another draw after that. It wasn’t like he’d be in too much danger of losing with that setup. His life points were high enough and - “Oh come on.” It was his mother’s voice in his head this time. “Are you trying to win or are you trying not to lose?” He hated to admit it, but she was right, wasn’t she? He’d had this card since turn one -- okay, technically turn two but whatever -- shouldn’t he be working towards getting it on the field? “I’m going to discard this copy of Blue-Eyes White Dragon,” Peter said. “You remember this one, right? And from these two cards…” He peeled them off one at a time. The first one, well, that was no help. But when he looked at the next one, his eyes widened. Peter imagined them even literally lighting up. He looked at the card, at the board Charlie had presented to him, then back to the card. After a few deep breaths -- he wanted to really make sure he got this right -- he slid the card into place and said, “I activate the card ‘Bingo Machine, Go!!!’” As he spoke, a large hand-operated mechanism as indicated by the name appeared behind him. Its cage was about five feet in diameter, as evidenced by Peter looking like he could fit neatly inside it. “What this card lets me do is pick out three cards that mention Blue-Eyes White Dragon, and then one of them gets randomly added to my hand.” Out popped Peter’s deck from his duel disk, and he riffled through it, pulling cards to the front as necessary until he’d made his selections. He’d found all three copies of the same card, of course, but he figured he had to go through the rest of the song and dance anyway. It would be rude not to, after all. His choices materialized as tiny capsule balls inside the bingo machine’s cage, and Peter gave the crank a turn. Just one was enough -- the machine kept spinning on its own until a capsule popped out. Peter read the name on it aloud. “Chaos Form,” he said. “I think I’ll activate that right now. “It’s a ritual spell,” Peter said. “But it also lets me banish Blue-Eyes monsters from my Graveyard for its materials. Just one Blue-Eyes lets me summon a new level eight monster from my hand. So!” The lighting of the field darkened significantly and a large circle of runes -- indecipherable text -- glowed a deep azure blue right in the center. Inside the circle itself was the transparent image of a Blue-Eyes White Dragon, menacing the entire field with its presence. It didn’t do much else, though; before it could, it split into eight blue orbs of fire, which then positioned themselves equidistant from each other above the runes, and their glow grew more intense. “I summon Blue-Eyes Chaos MAX Dragon!” There was a flash. A thunderclap! When the room returned to normal, a new dragon stood in the middle of it all. It only had one head, but who needed more heads anyway, especially with fangs like those? Its scales were dark -- a stark contrast to all of Peter’s other monsters -- but its eyes and highlights still glowed with that familiar blue. And it was huge! Even the Twin Burst Dragon paled in size to it, the fact that the gymnasium seemed to contain it at all was a miracle of hologram technology. “This thing has four thousand attack, did you know?” Peter said. He made no effort to hide his confidence. “And there’s a lot of text on this card. None of it makes it stronger than your Sheep, I admit, but that’s not your only monster, now is it? “And you could say that all your other monsters are in defense position, but, well, let me just read off this last bit here.” He held up the card. “‘If this card attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict double piercing battle damage.’” Peter looked back up at Charlie. “How much defense does your Mouse have anyway? One hundred, right? “Battle! Chaos MAX Dragon, blow through Fluffal mouse and continue right on to the captain!” The dragon didn’t even bother with its breath weapon. It leapt into the air, ascending with amazing force, each additional wingbeat generating its own gale. When it reached its peak, it paused for just a moment before diving back down, charging straight at the stuffed mouse. The impact blew a massive amount of dust everywhere, and the only hint of the results was Chaos MAX Dragon’s triumphant roar before things settled again. (Charlie: 2700 -> 0) It was over. The room was silent. Everything was still. Peter exhaled, and that single breath turned into a pant. Part of him still couldn’t believe that he’d managed it, and the rest of him was still dealing with the adrenaline. But it allowed the world to speed back up again. He could barely tell, but was someone taking pizza orders? How did they feel about pineapp- No, before he did all that, there were still important matters to take care of. He crossed the field over to Charlie almost trepidatiously. He wasn’t sure how the captain was going to react to the loss, but he did know he had to find out. He reached the other side. Now that he was up close, the height disparity between the two was pretty apparent. Charlie was, like a head taller than he was. He also wondered why he bothered noticing that now of all times (and also, like, that was a common occurrence) but he ignored that question for the moment too. Peter stuck his hand out. “Thanks for the game,” he said. “I think I can tell why they made you a captain.”

Elsie leaned out from her broom, looking down (literally, of course, though maybe a little bit of figuratively as well) at the -- now three -- Jaegers below her. “That’s, uh, that’s the dragon slayer one, right?” she said. “I think so,” Corbin said. “And that’s five of us now. Practically an ensemble.” “Okay, are they going to fight?” “It’s either that or play mirror man, I mean.” Elsie nodded along and adjusted her posture and grip. That was- well, the lack of lumbar support wasn’t not a problem with extended broomstick rides. Magic -- like everything -- was supposed to be the solution there, but she’d forgone most of that after her fight with Tricky. She was pretty sure she wasn’t riding on fumes or anything. As if on cue, her broomstick took a massive dip, nearly wrenching itself out of her control for a moment before she pulled it back up. Corbin had to flutter off his perch for a moment, and when he landed it was on Elsie’s shoulder. “You okay?” he said. “I’m not talking about this. I’m fine.” Elsie waved down at the group on the ground. She was pretty sure none of them saw it, but she hoped it was a silent encouragement for them to actually start their spar. And then Alexandre struck, and what a hit! Elsie even got a rush of adrenaline just from the sound of the impact, though what was more impressive was how the dragon slayer just stood there and took it. He didn’t even take a step back to brace himself unless Elsie had missed something. And she might have! It had left her breathless. There didn’t seem to be much of a fight, though. It wasn’t like the dragon slayer was actually fighting back or anything. After the initial strike -- while Elsie couldn’t hear anything going on -- it looked like they just had a full conversation after that. Alexandre threw another punch and, yeah, it knocked his opponent back a little, but it was like… “That’s it?” Elsie said. Then she said it again, but louder this time. “That’s it? Hey!” She was starting to feel her strength coming back to her, but she immediately started spending it on guiding her broom back down safely, at least to a point she was sure she was in earshot of everyone again. “You’re just going to throw a punch and then talk about it for a bit? That’s not- that’s not why I invited everyone here, you know. I said something like, ‘Oh, if you want to come fight,’ and then I went all the way up there to get a good view and it’s like, I wouldn’t have done any of that if it was just going to be, like, a slap to the chest and that’s it.” “Maybe don’t throw a tantrum at two people clearly physically stronger than you when you’re already spent?” Corbin said softly into Elsie’s ear. “Maybe?” But Elsie ignored him. “Frog boy and I had this whole thing, too,” she said. “Like, there was a chase and there was fancy flying and some brilliant magic involved if say so myself.” She gestured at Tricky. “I mean, you agree with me, right?” before turning her attention back to her main issue. “I don’t know if you do any of that, but, I don’t know, this stuff?” She mimed a punch. “I know we don’t want to kill each other just yet but it seems like a waste of time, don’t you think? Your time, if not mine.”

“Fake, huh?” Chris said. He fiddled around with the coin, even holding it up to the light as he tried to spot the tell-tale signs of forgery, but he couldn’t. Not that he didn’t believe Hector; Chris’ brief interaction with Leo had told him that yes, of course Leo would be the type to carry fake coins. He pocketed it all the same. After all, who knew when it would prove useful, even if it was just to shove back in Leo’s face the next time they met. He finished off his eggs, mostly out of spite (“A scrawny kid like you couldn’t possibly need all that,” Leo had said. Well, Chris sure showed him) and stood up from the bar. “Company’s coming over soon, Hector,” Chris said. “You’ve met them all before, I think, but, um, I did want to let you know. I’m gonna go clean up.” He pulled a few coins out of his pocket -- not the one he slipped the fake into, his other one -- placed them on the bar, and left to use the washroom. Oh, for warm water! Every time Chris thought he’d gotten used to it, that he knew the shock of the first splashes of cold running down his back and could anticipate it and prepare for it, the sheer frigidity proved him wrong. It proved him wrong so hard. Were he back in Ellwood manor, this would have been one of those sensations he’d never have to know and yet… The thing about cold water, though, was that it also washed all that wistfulness away as well. Chris couldn’t think about any of that for very long as he dealt with not freezing, and when he finished, there were enough other things to do that he was able to keep his mind off it in other ways. And when he finished, he gave himself a final look-over, dried off, and went just outside the tavern to meet the people he knew before they even had to come in.

I went and checked Twisted Metal osts and I really couldn't tell you.

Yeah, but do you know how to Madison? The Anxious Battle For Sanity, written and performed by Antonio Sánchez, from the film Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

Not a musician, but presumably it's because artists who make longer songs are interested in slighter variations in their sequences and/or longer transitions between them, which increases the song length. See also: ambient and ambient-inspired music (which I can't put here because it's drastically longer than the limit here so have a Justice song instead).