Tag: El Goonish Shive

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“Easier said than done,” Grue sighed.

Noelle’s face disappeared from the webcam, and a blond boy popped up in its place.  Oliver?  “Trickster, Genesis is waking up.  She’s done whatever you had her doing.”

Oh, so doing her thing puts her real body to “sleep”? Makes sense.

Reminds me of the fairy doll spell from El Goonish Shive. It puts the real body to sleep and creates a directly-controlled fairy avatar of the caster somewhere else, which turns into a doll (that can be reanimated by the spell at a later time) when the spell is dismissed.

“Long stint,” Trickster replied, “She’ll be groggy.”

“That means Imp is probably done too,” Grue spoke.

Ah, yeah… I wonder whose boat she snuck on board to get back to shore. And she doesn’t know where the Undersiders went.

“She’ll need a ride back,” I finished his thought.

“Should leave her there for a bit as punishment for staying behind,” Grue grumbled.  Still, he stood and pulled on his helmet.  “But it’s not worth the grief she’ll give me.”

Hehe. 🙂

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Well, at least the mom thanked me.

Yeah! Look, it’s not completely thankless work!

“You’ll want to sterilize the place.  Rubber gloves, bleach.  Boil or replace every dish, every piece of silverware, toothbrushes, linens and clothes.”

Seems reasonable.

“We don’t really have the ability to do all that.  We don’t have much money, let alone those things.  Stores aren’t exactly open, and we don’t have running water or electricity either.”

Ah, shit.

Hm. Time for Taylor to generously provide them with some money to buy those things?

Geez.  “What have you been drinking?”

“We have a rain barrel and we have a water collector on the roof that came with the supply kit.”

Better than drinking the water on the ground, at least. Not great, though.

That’s not good enough for this many people.  “Do you have a propane tank?  One should have come with the supply kit.”

“It’s nearly empty.  We’ve been using the propane to cook rice, but we don’t have measuring cups, and if we use too much water, it takes too long to cook, and so we’re running out of the gas.”

And the oil pump’s broken, the guy who could fix it is dead, the well’s drying up, Don Paragon wants them to trade their last bit of oil for just a little more water, and things are just generally not great for them.

(Maybe it’s too early to make references to Nomad of Nowhere with only six episodes out so far, but I don’t care. I am an endless barrel of references!)

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“Good luck,” I told them, grabbing two black clipboards with attached notepads and handing them over.  “Come back around noon, we’ll eat, and you can give me an update on how things are going.”

Have fun!

“Will do,” Sierra replied.

My minions moved on to their morning’s tasks.  I headed back upstairs and finally let myself breathe.

Minions… I still think “drones” would be a fitting title, but I guess that would explain the salary.

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Fun fact #1 from the book of Revalation: The Four Horsemen (Conquest, War, Famine/Pestilence, and Death), were actually summoned by Jesus to punish the wicked.

Fun fact #2 about the book of Revalation: Originally the word apocalypse meant revalation. The Bible book being called both Revalation and Apocalypse associated the word with the end of the world.

Fun fact #3 about Revelation: Armageddon is the name of the place where the last battle is to be fought

I knew the last few, but the first one is new to me. Fits quite well with everything else I learned about the events of Revelation when I went wiki-reading during the chapter, though.

The Christian end times are pretty intense.

Also, I like when the word “apocalypse” is used for a revelation instead of a mass destruction. 🙂

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He was about to apologize when Dragon said, “Those prosthetics I gave you?  They were part of a bigger project.  Something I’d intended to use for myself.”

…

She was trying to make herself a body. A human-like body.

And she’s taking this opportunity to tell the truth about what she is, isn’t she?

I’m sorry, Dragon. I underestimated you.

She was a cripple?  He’d known she had survived Leviathan’s attack on Newfoundland, was it such a surprise that she’d gotten hurt then?

I suppose this is a quite reasonable first guess at what she’s talking about.

It would explain her aversion to showing her face.  One of the things she’d given him was a facial prosthetic.

True.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t know.”

“No, it’s not that,” she paused.  “There’s something you need to know about me.”

This is a big moment in their relationship and I hope we’re not about to cut it off before Armmaster’s reaction.

*scrolls down to see chapter navigation*

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When Dash regained consciousness, she found herself in a dark room. She
tried to shake her head but found that a taut leather strap held it firmly in
place. She struggled to move, but braces around her chest and limbs glued her
to a rack formed from a series of sturdy planks, which spread her legs wide
apart.

Well.

This took a turn.

Dash’s wings were the only part of her not tied down, and they fluttered
frantically while she struggled to escape.  As she writhed, Pinkie jumped
suddenly into her line of sight.

Oh, cool, she does have wings!

Hi, Pinkie, what’s up?

“Goodie, you’re awake. Now we can get started,”
Pinkie stated gleefully. She bounded into the darkness, and quickly reappeared
pushing a small cart covered with a cloth.

“Pinkie, what’s going on?
I can’t move!” Dash said urgently.

That is a very good question. This doesn’t look like a setup to make cupcakes to me.

“Well duh, that’s because you’re tied down,”
chided Pinkie.  “That’s why you can’t move. I didn’t think you’d need to
be told that.”

“But why? What’s
happening? I thought you said I was going to help make cupcakes.”

Dash is on a roll with her questions.

“You are helping. You see, I ran out of the special ingredient and I
need you to get more.”

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And yes, my standing theory is that the powers are usually the result of the Dandelions trying to help, but not always knowing what’s the best way to do that due to not really understanding humanity.

They might also be either unable or disallowed to do much other than empower, for that matter, kind of like the immortals from El Goonish Shive (who are limited by immortal law to “guiding and empowering”, though they can interpret that rather liberally to justify their actions).

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Jack waved him off.  “She’ll try.  So many have, and they’ve all failed so far.  But it’s good that it’s a little dangerous, a little risky.  It’s no fun if I know how it’s going to play out.  Some unpredictability, it gives spice to life.  Maybe I’ll kill her right after I see the look on her face.  Maybe I’ll escape and leave her to wallow in her misery.”

This is reminding me of a character from El Goonish Shive:

Though Jack’s enjoyment of the unpredictable seems a bit more subdued.

Escape?  From a fifteen story apartment building, against a supervillain who can fly and level city blocks?

Good point. What does he do, use a knife like a vaulting pole? Then again, the way his power was described, I’m not sure that would work.

Then again, Jack had done worse things than murder the child of a cape like Purity, and he was still here.

True.

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Glory Girl caught Roxy around the snout as the dog lunged for her, and threw her down at Lucy.

My mental images get weird when the names cause me to picture the dogs as other fictional characters. In this case, Glory Girl grabbed

image

this great gal by the nose and threw her down at

image

this asshole on the right.

(I think I liked it better when the name Lucy just reminded me of my friend.)