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crossover_chickYeah -- between the weather being kinda crap, more drama with the fence people (they're supposed to arrive in a week and a half; I'll believe it when I see it), and some bullshit in my to-do list, it hasn't been the greatest Wednesday --
Work – Well, it was a busy day back at work, as I expected – though not THAT much happened while I was gone according to my coworker, there was enough to catch up with in regards to calling people back about credit card stuff, going through e-mails to see if various things had been resolved (not fully!), and doing all the GLs from the past few days (as, remember, the last two days of my vacation, Monday and Tuesday, were in fact days off for everyone). The day certainly went by! But apparently we now need to watch out for mice in the office and possible shitheads in the parking lot, so – that’s fun. *wince* Not exactly the best news to come back to! Meeh. . .
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark – “Into The Deathlands!” With Edvard’s cool personal ghost field demonstrated to work quite well (and stick to Barnaby’s absurdly fancy carriage), the only bit of planning left for the gang was acquiring explosive material! Kasimir reminded everyone he had demolition tools, the scamp, but Zillah was of the opinion they’d need something more hefty. Barnaby agreed to go chatting with his various workers and such and rolled his three dice in Sway –
And his best result was a two. As Luke thinks that overpowered explosives are a lot more fun than underpowered ones, the result was Barnaby getting a small bucket-sized container of leviathan distillate that was past its “sell-by” date and thus TERRIFYINGLY volatile – not that Barnaby knew that, as he’d also brought back another fuck-ton of booze. XD With the danger bucket secured, everyone chose their loads (Barnaby going light as always, Edvard going medium, and Lilith, Kasimir, and Zillah all going heavy), agreed all the named Gut-Cutters could come along on the mission (though Edvard demanded to hear the adorable voices of the three who hadn’t spoken yet, Thistle, Frog, and Ticktock, forcing Luke to come up with something appropriately goofy on the fly), and Luke totted up the dice for the engagement roll. It WOULD have been a four-dicer if Luke hadn’t remembered that Kasimir and Barnaby had made enemies of the Rail Jacks during the infamous balloon race (Barnaby was like “are those the ones we killed?” and Kasimir reminded him “No, the dead ones were Red Sashes, you just decided to spray the champagne we won in their faces because you didn’t think it was good enough to drink” XD Also Barnaby, you got their leader very drunk with the power of your charisma and I still kinda ship it XD). But they still got three dice for it being bold and daring, exposing a weak point (namely that nobody investigates train crashes in the deathlands like they should) and having friends help (all the adorable murder-children!). Luke rolled –
Best result was a five! That was a success with a complication, meaning the group (with the help of the Gut-Cutters) easily boarded the last car of a freight train heading out down the Imperial Line without being noticed. . .but as they settled into said car, they discovered that they weren’t the only passengers. Namely, a very disturbing fellow named Walter was also there, using the train as a way to escape Volisport. Edvard attempted to keep him distracted with a puzzle book – and then, after Walter said he’d never learned his numbers, a coloring book. Walter promptly started eating the crayons. XD He then began talking about having a drink, so Kasimir attempted to sneak him a vial of slumber essence –
And rolled a two, meaning that Walter was able to smell the ingredients in the vial. Lilith quickly claimed that that was her slumber essence, she needed it to sleep on the train, and Walter handed it to her. Cue Edvard trying to hand over his OWN vial of slumber essence, rolling a one, and Zillah having to claim it was HER vial of slumber essence. XD Barnaby then pulled out a bottle of whiskey to drink on his own – at least, until Walter swiped it, took a heavy swig, then tried to get the girls to toast with their slumber essences. The ladies rolled to see if they could fake drinking it – and Lilith got a six, a perfect success!
Zillah, by contrast, got a three, and thanks to a lurch on the line, took a bunch of slumber essence up the nose. XD She dozed off to dreamland (despite Barnaby being sure that it would take a lot more slumber essence to knock her out, with all her muscles and such), and Lilith decided it was time to take drastic measures, made eye contact with Mumbles, and nodded. Mumbles happily messily slaughtered the guy, and Lilith promptly justified it to the others as “I didn’t like his vibes, he was clearly going to kill us with a crayon.” (A very anxious Barnaby asked about HIS vibes, and Mumbles glanced at Lilith – fortunately for Barnaby, Lilith was like “no” and got her settled with a toffee and a coloring book instead.) Of course, since they weren’t QUITE out of Volisport city limits yet, the death did cause the giant spirit bell to DONG – Luke assured them that the crow and Spirit Wardens wouldn’t be able to chase the train (and Bug ended up kicking the corpse out of the back of the carriage anyway), but it WOULD count as killing when they were totting up the Heat. Everyone considered this fair. :p
With that sorted, and the train passing through the ghost field barrier soon afterward (Lilith unwisely brought up if she needed to shield her spirit bottles against that, and Luke made her roll – she did successfully keep her ghosts intact, but got a minor complication, which Johnny made into a complication for LUKE by saying now her ghosts had French accents XD), it was time to get on the move – the gang only had about half a day to actually get this heist sorted, after all! Edvard pulled out some of his smelling salts to revive Zillah – they worked wonderfully, but unfortunately Edvard got on the wrong end of her sleep-punching as she woke and ended up with Level 1 harm and no shoes thanks to being punched out of them. XD Kasimir then got the gang to all copy him on a group Prowl roll, and the highest result was a five – success with a complication! This allowed them to get through two carriages of freight without being spotted (the first Rail Jack they passed being sound asleep) – but when they reached the THIRD carriage, not only was the Rail Jack awake (if reading a book and not paying much attention to her surroundings), but Edvard spotted a crate of Shrek Lanthorns (his TV-like device he invented while invading Astor headquarters last season), was overcome with rage, and kicked it apart, causing enough noise as the Lanthorns spilled out to get the Rail Jack’s attention. Everyone managed to hide as she came over, but as there was only a thin aisle down the center of the car thanks to all the various freight, nobody wanted to chance trying to go past her. . .
That is, until Lilith came up with the idea of throwing a toffee down the other end of the carriage to cause another noise to distract her further. She rolled a six, and Andy found and played the “guard alerted” sound from the Metal Gear Solid series. XD The Rail Jack indeed was distracted trying to figure out where THAT noise had come from, allowing Zillah to sneak up behind her and choke her out. It took some precious time, thanks to her partial success, but the Rail Jack did indeed hit the floor. However, when the gang looked ahead, they saw TWO Rail Jacks in the next car up, one at either end of the carriage. Edvard, who’d wanted to do the cool daring thing from the beginning, said they should try going along the roof, and Zillah actually agreed, pulling out steampunky goggles and breathing cloths for everyone from her bag. Which everyone was happy to take –
Except Barnaby, who complained the goggles didn’t go with his coat. XD He quickly changed his tune once he actually went out, though – while the others were getting a good look at the horrible bleached desert of the deathlands, with its fossilized trees and howling winds (at least, everyone HOPED it was the wind), Barnaby wasn’t seeing much of anything because he promptly took all the ash to the face and got temporarily blinded. In fact, Luke ruled that the ash was slowly making him more and more longsighted the longer it lashed at his corneas. Barnaby, at this point, was like “fine, give me the goggles” –
Only to be informed by Edvard that he (Edvard) had tossed them off the train. XD This group is so mean to each other. . .well, we’ll see if Barnaby needs glasses by the end of this particular adventure! And we’ll see how the gang does on the roof of the carriage (with the Gut-Cutters clinging to the sides – they’ll be fine, they do this all the time) tomorrow! :p
2. Continue writing Valicer In The Dark, “Home Sweet Lair”: Check – after Smiler told her point-blank “I don’t care if you talk to nothing sometimes, I still want to get to know you better,” Victor asked Alice why she talks to nothing occasionally, and so we have entered the Mandated Alice Sums Up Her Life History For Victor (and Smiler, in this case) section of the fic snippets. XD She’s given them a bit of backstory on her pre-fire life and the creation of Wonderland, and will be moving onto her time in Rutledge either tomorrow or Friday. And this time, she’s gonna have two people shocked she was committed that young. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: No check, unfortunately – in keeping with this being a mildly shit day, I ended up not being able to watch Gray’s latest because of the combination of YouTube and our internet provider being a dick again – basically, the video was doing that thing where it would load a tiny bit, play, stop, buffer, load a tiny bit, play, stop, buffer, rinse and repeat. I tried some shorter videos in my “Smile Always Alton Towers” playlist to test if I could maybe watch something else, and even sub-minute ones wouldn’t load properly if I tried to watch them at a decent quality. *growls* I remember this happening last month too, though I don’t recall if it was around this exact TIME of the month. But it’s really fucking irritating.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – since I couldn’t watch anything on YouTube, I used the time to fiddle with a couple of my Smiler Otherland drafts a bit more, bulking up the “Domains” and “Outfits” posts a bit. And, when everything seemed to be loading properly again (as tumblr was going really slow too earlier – also, my Victor Luvs Alice dash has gotten converted to the new look, ugh), I took a look through my “Song Saturday” tag for something for this Saturday, which led to me looking through my “Poets of the Fall” tag, and me realizing that the video I’d used for their song “Lift” had gone walkabout. So I did a new post for that song using the official video on the band’s own YouTube channel. So THAT’S done and dusted, at least.
Yeah, I'm just glad I WAS able to get that Song Saturday sorted. . .and now I have to head to bed, as I'm already running behind. *rubs face* Hopefully tomorrow will be a little better. . .or, at the very least, allow me to watch that GrayStillPlays video. *sigh* Night all!
Work – Well, it was a busy day back at work, as I expected – though not THAT much happened while I was gone according to my coworker, there was enough to catch up with in regards to calling people back about credit card stuff, going through e-mails to see if various things had been resolved (not fully!), and doing all the GLs from the past few days (as, remember, the last two days of my vacation, Monday and Tuesday, were in fact days off for everyone). The day certainly went by! But apparently we now need to watch out for mice in the office and possible shitheads in the parking lot, so – that’s fun. *wince* Not exactly the best news to come back to! Meeh. . .
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark – “Into The Deathlands!” With Edvard’s cool personal ghost field demonstrated to work quite well (and stick to Barnaby’s absurdly fancy carriage), the only bit of planning left for the gang was acquiring explosive material! Kasimir reminded everyone he had demolition tools, the scamp, but Zillah was of the opinion they’d need something more hefty. Barnaby agreed to go chatting with his various workers and such and rolled his three dice in Sway –
And his best result was a two. As Luke thinks that overpowered explosives are a lot more fun than underpowered ones, the result was Barnaby getting a small bucket-sized container of leviathan distillate that was past its “sell-by” date and thus TERRIFYINGLY volatile – not that Barnaby knew that, as he’d also brought back another fuck-ton of booze. XD With the danger bucket secured, everyone chose their loads (Barnaby going light as always, Edvard going medium, and Lilith, Kasimir, and Zillah all going heavy), agreed all the named Gut-Cutters could come along on the mission (though Edvard demanded to hear the adorable voices of the three who hadn’t spoken yet, Thistle, Frog, and Ticktock, forcing Luke to come up with something appropriately goofy on the fly), and Luke totted up the dice for the engagement roll. It WOULD have been a four-dicer if Luke hadn’t remembered that Kasimir and Barnaby had made enemies of the Rail Jacks during the infamous balloon race (Barnaby was like “are those the ones we killed?” and Kasimir reminded him “No, the dead ones were Red Sashes, you just decided to spray the champagne we won in their faces because you didn’t think it was good enough to drink” XD Also Barnaby, you got their leader very drunk with the power of your charisma and I still kinda ship it XD). But they still got three dice for it being bold and daring, exposing a weak point (namely that nobody investigates train crashes in the deathlands like they should) and having friends help (all the adorable murder-children!). Luke rolled –
Best result was a five! That was a success with a complication, meaning the group (with the help of the Gut-Cutters) easily boarded the last car of a freight train heading out down the Imperial Line without being noticed. . .but as they settled into said car, they discovered that they weren’t the only passengers. Namely, a very disturbing fellow named Walter was also there, using the train as a way to escape Volisport. Edvard attempted to keep him distracted with a puzzle book – and then, after Walter said he’d never learned his numbers, a coloring book. Walter promptly started eating the crayons. XD He then began talking about having a drink, so Kasimir attempted to sneak him a vial of slumber essence –
And rolled a two, meaning that Walter was able to smell the ingredients in the vial. Lilith quickly claimed that that was her slumber essence, she needed it to sleep on the train, and Walter handed it to her. Cue Edvard trying to hand over his OWN vial of slumber essence, rolling a one, and Zillah having to claim it was HER vial of slumber essence. XD Barnaby then pulled out a bottle of whiskey to drink on his own – at least, until Walter swiped it, took a heavy swig, then tried to get the girls to toast with their slumber essences. The ladies rolled to see if they could fake drinking it – and Lilith got a six, a perfect success!
Zillah, by contrast, got a three, and thanks to a lurch on the line, took a bunch of slumber essence up the nose. XD She dozed off to dreamland (despite Barnaby being sure that it would take a lot more slumber essence to knock her out, with all her muscles and such), and Lilith decided it was time to take drastic measures, made eye contact with Mumbles, and nodded. Mumbles happily messily slaughtered the guy, and Lilith promptly justified it to the others as “I didn’t like his vibes, he was clearly going to kill us with a crayon.” (A very anxious Barnaby asked about HIS vibes, and Mumbles glanced at Lilith – fortunately for Barnaby, Lilith was like “no” and got her settled with a toffee and a coloring book instead.) Of course, since they weren’t QUITE out of Volisport city limits yet, the death did cause the giant spirit bell to DONG – Luke assured them that the crow and Spirit Wardens wouldn’t be able to chase the train (and Bug ended up kicking the corpse out of the back of the carriage anyway), but it WOULD count as killing when they were totting up the Heat. Everyone considered this fair. :p
With that sorted, and the train passing through the ghost field barrier soon afterward (Lilith unwisely brought up if she needed to shield her spirit bottles against that, and Luke made her roll – she did successfully keep her ghosts intact, but got a minor complication, which Johnny made into a complication for LUKE by saying now her ghosts had French accents XD), it was time to get on the move – the gang only had about half a day to actually get this heist sorted, after all! Edvard pulled out some of his smelling salts to revive Zillah – they worked wonderfully, but unfortunately Edvard got on the wrong end of her sleep-punching as she woke and ended up with Level 1 harm and no shoes thanks to being punched out of them. XD Kasimir then got the gang to all copy him on a group Prowl roll, and the highest result was a five – success with a complication! This allowed them to get through two carriages of freight without being spotted (the first Rail Jack they passed being sound asleep) – but when they reached the THIRD carriage, not only was the Rail Jack awake (if reading a book and not paying much attention to her surroundings), but Edvard spotted a crate of Shrek Lanthorns (his TV-like device he invented while invading Astor headquarters last season), was overcome with rage, and kicked it apart, causing enough noise as the Lanthorns spilled out to get the Rail Jack’s attention. Everyone managed to hide as she came over, but as there was only a thin aisle down the center of the car thanks to all the various freight, nobody wanted to chance trying to go past her. . .
That is, until Lilith came up with the idea of throwing a toffee down the other end of the carriage to cause another noise to distract her further. She rolled a six, and Andy found and played the “guard alerted” sound from the Metal Gear Solid series. XD The Rail Jack indeed was distracted trying to figure out where THAT noise had come from, allowing Zillah to sneak up behind her and choke her out. It took some precious time, thanks to her partial success, but the Rail Jack did indeed hit the floor. However, when the gang looked ahead, they saw TWO Rail Jacks in the next car up, one at either end of the carriage. Edvard, who’d wanted to do the cool daring thing from the beginning, said they should try going along the roof, and Zillah actually agreed, pulling out steampunky goggles and breathing cloths for everyone from her bag. Which everyone was happy to take –
Except Barnaby, who complained the goggles didn’t go with his coat. XD He quickly changed his tune once he actually went out, though – while the others were getting a good look at the horrible bleached desert of the deathlands, with its fossilized trees and howling winds (at least, everyone HOPED it was the wind), Barnaby wasn’t seeing much of anything because he promptly took all the ash to the face and got temporarily blinded. In fact, Luke ruled that the ash was slowly making him more and more longsighted the longer it lashed at his corneas. Barnaby, at this point, was like “fine, give me the goggles” –
Only to be informed by Edvard that he (Edvard) had tossed them off the train. XD This group is so mean to each other. . .well, we’ll see if Barnaby needs glasses by the end of this particular adventure! And we’ll see how the gang does on the roof of the carriage (with the Gut-Cutters clinging to the sides – they’ll be fine, they do this all the time) tomorrow! :p
2. Continue writing Valicer In The Dark, “Home Sweet Lair”: Check – after Smiler told her point-blank “I don’t care if you talk to nothing sometimes, I still want to get to know you better,” Victor asked Alice why she talks to nothing occasionally, and so we have entered the Mandated Alice Sums Up Her Life History For Victor (and Smiler, in this case) section of the fic snippets. XD She’s given them a bit of backstory on her pre-fire life and the creation of Wonderland, and will be moving onto her time in Rutledge either tomorrow or Friday. And this time, she’s gonna have two people shocked she was committed that young. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: No check, unfortunately – in keeping with this being a mildly shit day, I ended up not being able to watch Gray’s latest because of the combination of YouTube and our internet provider being a dick again – basically, the video was doing that thing where it would load a tiny bit, play, stop, buffer, load a tiny bit, play, stop, buffer, rinse and repeat. I tried some shorter videos in my “Smile Always Alton Towers” playlist to test if I could maybe watch something else, and even sub-minute ones wouldn’t load properly if I tried to watch them at a decent quality. *growls* I remember this happening last month too, though I don’t recall if it was around this exact TIME of the month. But it’s really fucking irritating.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – since I couldn’t watch anything on YouTube, I used the time to fiddle with a couple of my Smiler Otherland drafts a bit more, bulking up the “Domains” and “Outfits” posts a bit. And, when everything seemed to be loading properly again (as tumblr was going really slow too earlier – also, my Victor Luvs Alice dash has gotten converted to the new look, ugh), I took a look through my “Song Saturday” tag for something for this Saturday, which led to me looking through my “Poets of the Fall” tag, and me realizing that the video I’d used for their song “Lift” had gone walkabout. So I did a new post for that song using the official video on the band’s own YouTube channel. So THAT’S done and dusted, at least.
Yeah, I'm just glad I WAS able to get that Song Saturday sorted. . .and now I have to head to bed, as I'm already running behind. *rubs face* Hopefully tomorrow will be a little better. . .or, at the very least, allow me to watch that GrayStillPlays video. *sigh* Night all!
