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Post by Zylaa on Oct 24, 2006 18:43:45 GMT -5
I can't lie: I'm delighted to see this continuing. ;D Yeah, it's almost over though. Next chapter is the last one. Please don't kill me for dropping this so close to the end. Why not? You'll just come back to life for the 4,813,079th time. *readies the murder weapons*
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Post by phoenixblessed on Oct 25, 2006 14:00:52 GMT -5
Just to confirm things... Tdyans is a turtle? XD
Crystal vs. Kiddo... that'll be interesting. But I vote for beating up Ikkin. :3
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Post by lunariiku on Oct 29, 2006 11:06:37 GMT -5
UpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdate UpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdate UpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdate UpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdate UpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdate UpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdate UpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdate UpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdateUpdate UpdateUpdateUpdateUpdate
(Please!)
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Post by lunariiku on Oct 29, 2006 11:06:53 GMT -5
Oh gosh I stretched the board.
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Post by Crystal on Nov 2, 2006 7:22:42 GMT -5
FANART! Just to guilt trip Kiddo into finishing this! I was gonna full-colour it at first, like my earlier one of Kiddo. www.deviantart.com/deviation/29927600/My computer had other ideas. I was just about finished and working on the background, he shut down on me. Fine, I thought. I'd recently saved, so there wasn't much problem. Well. Uh. Yeah. I swear, I was practically in tears. Anyway, I rescanned, gave it a quick sepia job and put it up. I need a new computer, and I'll name that one Calculus.
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Post by phoenixblessed on Nov 2, 2006 16:49:42 GMT -5
That stinks about your pc. Your picture looks awesome still. ^^
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Post by Zylaa on Nov 2, 2006 21:34:45 GMT -5
^_^ Crystal/Posessed Sexy Centaur forever! That pwns. Unlike your computer, which should be tortured.
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Post by Kiddo on Nov 7, 2006 20:26:52 GMT -5
Posessed Crystal/Centaur 4eva! <3 I like the grayscale, actually. But kick your computer for me anyways.
I'll try and update tonight. TRY, mind you.
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Post by Kiddo on Nov 7, 2006 21:26:47 GMT -5
In retrospect, it was all very simple. I should have figured it out. We all should have figured it. But myself and my ninja friend Crystal were too busy waving our swords around and being the heroes. We thought this was something that could be fixed just by our usual means – fire and violence. The rest of the mods were just over thinking things. We expected malevolence and to be honest, we had our reasons. I was possessed and it took phoenix fire to get me out. There was darkness, creatures inside of that, and something we really didn’t understand beyond it all. But I suppose despite all that if we were as talented in our duties as we liked to believe this would have been solved from the beginning.
Even mods screw up. Thank goodness for Tdyans though.
We didn’t take bets. We didn’t even speculate on what would happen. I stayed at the ninja HQ and helped clean up from Rider’s ill-timed raid. Eventually Crystal showed up, then Stal, then the rest of the mods. Even Rider. I was quite surprised by this.
“Okay, so why is everyone lounging around my HQ?” I asked in the calmest manner I could, “This is supposed to be a ninja HQ.”
Which was greeted by rounds of “I’m a ninja” from the various members and a couple “I’m a pirate and I don’t care.” Rider just gave me the finger and stared suspiciously at a bottle of sake she’d swiped from somewhere.
I resigned myself to the worst and settled in with the crew. We were in the main room where there was a supply of cushions, tables, and a television in one corner. It really wasn’t so bad. Someone got out a chessboard, a couple of us worked on writing, and Stal started a video game tournament. This went on for a good while and I eventually fell asleep in a corner with a sheet of writing on my lap.
“Tdyans is back,” someone whispered, shaking me awake. I started and rubbed my eyes. I could see that it was dark outside and the person who had woken me padded off. No one else was in the room. They had probably gone to see what had happened to Tdyans.
So I raced for the exit, spread my wings, and flew to the NTWF mainland and to the admin meeting building. Tdyans was at the front of the room but she wasn’t talking yet. I noticed that I was the last to arrive.
“I didn’t get nominated for anything, did I?” I asked nervously.
“Actually, you did,” Tdyan said calmly and I wanted to swear. “In fact, everyone got nominated.”
That confused people. I carefully took a seat as we all murmured and rustled uneasily. Obviously Tdyans was dropping a bit of a bombshell on everyone here.
“Okay, what do you mean by that?” Spot asked.
“I mean I found out what was causing the voices in the underdeep,” she said, “and that it’s going to need everyone’s help.”
We were quiet as she explained. It didn’t require a Stal-length dissertation although I did see him make a move for the whiteboard once or twice. In fact, it was really quite simple and I felt very foolish when she was finished. Foolish and more than a little bit guilty.
“Oh,” was all I said when she told us what the voice was and I think I spoke for everyone at that.
You see, Crystal and I had opted for violence and that was what we got in return. Fitting. But the voice was a personification of an emotion, a feeling that was so strong and so deeply buried that only the underdeep had brought it out. An emotion that the individual was working so hard to hide that it manifested and let us know about it in a broken way about what was wrong.
“So what you’re saying,” Ikkin said to summarize, “is that someone in the NTWF is getting ignored.”
“Exactly.”
The possession? A desire to be someone else that could make themself heard. The underdeep took that and ran with it. The singing? Straight out of stereotype – the lone figure standing by themself in a mysterious place while singing a haunting song. The siren that lures people to it in a vain attempt to find company while dragging the sailors into the deep in the process. The shapeshifting? Changing to be something that the person would notice. I saw a siren. Crystal saw a centaur. Creatures we would notice.
I felt very guilty.
“I got out of there just by talking to it for a while,” Tdyans continued, “I just sat there and talked. It didn’t do much talking back and when it did what it said didn’t make much sense. Just fragments and pieces of dialogue. But this is a figment of the underdeep so that much can be expected. The overriding phrase I got out of it was ‘lonely.’ Make of that what you will.”
“It’s loneliness,” Patjade finally said after a period of silence, “That’s all it is. We’re so used to the underdeep spawning something destructive and terrifying that we didn’t know how to react to that emotion.” She laughed.
“So how do we fix this?” I asked.
“Find whoever is lonely,” Tdyans said, “Maybe it’s a couple people. Either way, we need to start looking for anyone who is sitting out by themselves or staying quiet where everyone else is talking. Get others to help you. If we find whoever is the source of this emotion it’ll dwindle and the figment will be gone.”
The meeting broke up after that. I went off on my own and wound up on a cliff overlooking the ocean. I had a store of rocks near me and was tossing them in, one by one, although most of them were lost in the whitecaps below and I never saw them land. I heard someone approach and sit down next to me. It was Crystal.
“Kind of ironic, huh?” she asked.
“That we screwed this up?” I said, “I suppose so. But honestly, we all thought it’d be something with fangs and claws that had to be taken care of with a blade. I guess there’s something to be said for having more level-headed admins on the team.”
“Definitely.”
We were quiet for a bit after that and she tossed a couple rocks in herself.
“I wanted an epic battle,” I said.
“As did I. These normal problems are a bit more difficult to handle. I mean, the voice is still there and we still need to find whomever it is that figment belongs to. That’s a lot of work left.”
I chewed on my lip. The moon was dipping low and in another few hours the sun would rise. We’d been up most the night waiting and then in that meeting and now I just had too much to think about to sleep.
“No more fun and games for a bit, I suppose,” I said, standing, “Time to pay attention and do our job.”
“Right,” Crystal said and stood with me.
“Hey. I bet you anything that Rider is snoring on the White Weewwo.”
“Oh?” There was a glitter in her eye. I shook my head. No mischief. Something else.
“So that means we’ll have a head start. If we find this person that is alone in here we’ll be able to recruit her to the ninjas before she can recruit her to the pirates.”
A grin broke over Crystal’s face.
“Brilliant,” she said.
And we both broke into a jog towards central NTWF. Normal, mundane problems were at hand.
THE END
Okay, okay, a bit anti-climatic, I know. But at least it's finished, right?
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Post by phoenixblessed on Nov 7, 2006 21:35:57 GMT -5
*still wants to know who the lonely were/was*
Wait a minute... her? >>
*applauds* ^^
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Post by lunariiku on Nov 7, 2006 22:08:42 GMT -5
That was awesome! *copies and pastes in word processor* Just in case I never see this board again. ^__________^
*applauds*
So.. who was the lonely person(s)?
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Post by Ikkin on Nov 7, 2006 22:36:32 GMT -5
Great job, Kiddo. ^_^ I love your writing. And, this does seem to be a fitting end to the story.
Nice to see this story finally get a proper ending. Especially considering the effect it's had on the forum mythos... it's kind of hard to remember a time before the Underdeep was a part of NTWF stories. XD
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Post by Crystal on Nov 7, 2006 23:30:41 GMT -5
Ninja recruitment!
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Post by Scar on Nov 8, 2006 6:40:20 GMT -5
Aww, poor loneliness incarnate. And true, I expected everything to go down in in flames of glory as well xD Nice job, Kiddo ^_^
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Post by Ice on Nov 8, 2006 16:25:11 GMT -5
Quite spiffy, Kiddo!
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