I got bored over on the Beta server, so I made a video!
Let's see how many people actually recognize the expy:
http://www.youtube.com/v/FHn3bPhYn_0?ve ... en_US&hd=1
(I'll keep it as a link 'till I have the o-kay to post the video instead. I needed to make the thing smaller, anyhow!)
(Edit by Bob: very nice video, but it violates the NDA.)

Edit: Woops. That was a bit large.

http://www.fanfiction.net...5/He_Who_Fights_Monsters

He Who fights monsters, Rosario+Vampire but without the friendly vampire...

http://addventure.bast-enterprises.de/249477.html

DK: AMI

-*-*-*-*-*-
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Behold, the master who finds himself a slave.

I have always believed that the driving force of human development, evolution, and change has been the will. The overman who decides upon his own course, and through his intent brings his desires to reality. Polities, borders, races, cultures, and wealth. These were trifling things that small men waged war over. They ravaged Europe before my eyes over the death of a single backward aristocrat and some ink stains on parchment. While I can appreciate the value of one’s word, one should not be so bound by anything that one cannot free themselves of it, should the necessity arise.

As modern man marched on, science replaced mysticism. Philosophy replaced religion. Politics replaced doctrine. And this was well and good, but again the thinking of small men. After drinking the draught once limited to the “gods”, I was limited by such thinking no longer. My previous beliefs, my previous plans had simply not gone far enough. Mankind was holding itself back. It kept itself in chains for fear of what it was capable of. The splitting of the atom was but the first gleams of our species’ progression, and it was in the shadows of the superpowers that I would prove my view to the world. I would determine the world’s course, that they would finally be freed from such chains.

First was to end the weakness holding my compatriots back. I became a leader of men, a ideologue and commander. I swayed the most useful and destroyed those that would not accept my dominion, as was natural. Survival of the fittest reigned supreme until I rose to the heights of a bloodstained web, supreme amongst the predators that had once vied amongst its strands. As Hitler sought to sate his ego and that of his country, I consolidated my power and waited for the opportunity to come. In time, I chose my new lair, deposed its owner, and emerged into the light, and sent forth my own challenge to echo his.

To those who seek power, come to me. I offer no comfort, but a crucible. But those who survive will be reforged into the mightiest the world has ever seen.

Still, even as my power grew further, I became aware of its limits...of its leash. The Well of the Furies was power beyond power. Strength beyond time. And in drinking of it directly, I was bound to its whims. In my dreams, I saw the fractals. In my waking hours, I felt its presence. Its compulsion. It thought me a pet that it could order about at its slightest desire...but it did not know whom it thought to command.

Magic, mysticism, science, and more. Causality and time itself I bent to my will in my search. And yet, I have no answer. And yet, I still feel the chains. But this is but the greatest challenge of many in my time. As before, the answer remains the same.

The will of a man.

I will overcome the Well’s chains, and break its hold. So long as the will to resist remains within me. There is a way, and I will have it, even should the world burn to return my freedom to me. I am a master who has become a slave, but I will become a master again. For no one, man nor god, shall defy the will of Recluse and survive.

That which does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

That which fails to destroy me shall itself be destroyed.
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

http://randommization.com/2011/08/11/mo ... s-cluster/]%[link=http://randommization.com/2011/08/11/motherload-of-amazing-lego-creations-cluster/]http://randommization.com/2011/08/11/mo ... s-cluster/] has several subpages linked from the images that go into more detail. I particularly like the functional (if single-action) Lego gun model (and there's a few more in movies posted by the same user if you follow that back to Youtube) and the "Brick Thief" short, which is apparently an official LEGO production.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

Song is by Tesla, from their 1989 album "The Great Radio Controversy." While a nookie song played absolutely straight, there's enough there for Doug's wonky metagift to work with for it to potentially be an EXTREMELY versatile multi-effect song. The many repetitions of "Makin' Magic, makin' magic, it ain't no mystery" alone would imply (at least) imparting knowledge of magical theory and practise for the duration (just over five minutes) and possibly actively cast, though perhaps only at night and possibly wth some limitation in classes of effect - energising a person (or perhaps animating an object/construct), heat/fire, water, flight, being set free, wind, possibly visual illusions, and possibly some reference to Transformers depending on whether Doug knows of them and the "more than meets the eye" catchphrase. The mention of night might put darkness under its purview as well as or instead of being a use limitation, too.

Like I said, there's a lot of leeway in that list, potentially making this one exceedingly useful song, even if it amounts to thinking of an effect he wants within those constraints, then playing the song and using the five minutes to do a ritual casting to make it happen rather than combat casting - though in such a case, given that Doug can channel enough power to make large amounts of matter directly out of energy, I'd allow for some hella-powerful spells to be cast. Like, cast an illusion over an entire city that lasts 24 hours type power, or a literal eternal flame (or water fountain, or even a dust devil, depending) to mark the grave of a fallen ally.

Full lyrics:

Now, I don't wanna waste your time, I only want to satisfy.
So wind me up and watch me go, I'm gettin' crazy as the night unfolds.
Gimme, gimme what I want, Keep it up now, don't stop,
And I will do the same for you. I'm gonna take it over the top.

What you see ain't what you get, There's more than meets the eye.
'Cause you ain't seen nothin' yet. It's up to us, me and you,
Together we can fly high, high.
I got you, now you got me. Feels so good to be

Makin' magic, makin' magic, It ain't no mystery. Come on!

Get down, way down low. C'mon let's get on with the show.
And let the music set you free. Like a leaf in the wind, let it be.
Gimme what I need to satisfy This dirty one-track mind.
You know I ain't got nothin' but time To burn with you tonight.

Now anything you see is everything you get
At your desire. I know it's makin' you hot and know it's soakin' me wet.
Higher and higher, feedin' the fire, Let it burn.
He's got her and she's hot and you got me. Don't it taste so sweet!

Makin' magic, makin' magic, It ain't no mystery.

Now, when I get into you, get into me. The rest is history.
Makin' magic, makin' magic, Let's get it together. C'mon.
Ready, get set, just like one two and three!

Now it's taking me away to that magical land.
Many will search and never find what's yours and mine.
You got me burnin' hot, now you're soakin' me wet.
Even better thana lick and a kiss.

Makin' magic, makin' magic, It ain't no mystery.

Now, you think you've seen it all. You ain't seen nothin' yet. It sure beats the rest.

Makin' magic, makin' magic, It ain't no mystery.

- CD, alternately, it could just cause Doug to sprout naughty tentacles. They are what makes it magical, after all.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

A billboard I spotted here in Denver yesterday.

Is it wrong to find this offensive by cmdrjlc, on Flickr
--

"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor

I saw this plate on a car last night; it was gone before I could take a pic with my cellphone to prove it's real, sadly.  It took me the few moments it was still in sight for me to realize that either it was a crazy coincidence of the numbering scheme, or a clever vanity plate:  WYS-45S, which it took me about 30 seconds to reconstruct into "Wys Ass"/"Wise Ass".

That's it, no great revelations or secrets of the universe.  I just had to mention it to someone.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

I am unit I-433-THY 'Ifreet' of the Line. That thought is one of the few clear ones as I come back online, I start a diagnostic that takes an embarrassingly long time to finish but a few seconds later I clear most of the corrupted sectors and thinking becomes easier. Error reports flood my consciousness as I try to assess my state, Hellrail #1 is inoperable and #2 is badly damaged, my cartridge system is jammed and it looks like the cartridges have corroded too much to be of any use at any rate. Backup reactors #2 and #3 are offline and my left rear side has been crushed. On and on the litany of woe goes, but I focus on what is important, I can still fight and there is an enemy inbound.

I spend a whole 482 microseconds to finish clearing out corrupted data and analyzing where I am. My navigation system indicates that I am underneath Outpost #723, more commonly known as Laide, home to about two million Imperial Citizens. My sensors can readily confirm that I am indeed buried in rock, presumably my hangar has collapsed, but I do not detect any of the signs that the industry to support two million people would normally generate.

Without my commander and cartridge system my options are limited, it does not help that I am buried underground but at least that will give me the element of surprise. From the power output of the enemy I calculate that I will be able to kill or at least seriously injure the enemy if I can strike by surprise with a 92.34% confidence interval, but if the enemy gets a shield up that chance drops below 5.63%. Even as I move Hellrail #3 into position I prepare backup plans.

The lance of superheated plasma melts a way out of my rocky prison at nearly the speed of light, at the same time I divert power to my drive-train and AMF, and surge forward heading to the surface ready to follow up if needed. It is good that I did because as the interference clears I can see that the enemy managed to get a shield up. It's staggeringly strong, I quickly rule out all plans that would require a long distance duel, without cartridges or my commander I have nothing that can penetrate this shield at range. However the shield is optimized against energy weapons and is relatively weak against a large mass hitting it at speed.

Making my decisions in nanoseconds, in sharp contrast to my earlier sluggishness I jump, my infinite repeaters chattering, the railguns forcing the enemy to keep their shield up. In the 1.34 seconds it takes me to cross the distance between us the enemy attempts to dodge but my AMF disrupts the enemy enough so that it doesn't quite succeed, while the enemy clears my main bulk I manage to hit her with Hellrail #1, the two meter wide barrel impacting at 432.74 km/h shatters the shield and punts the enemy towards the ground.

Since I have limited mobility in the air I take some of the next 0.974 second until I reach the ground again to run a detailed analysis on the enemy. Female, nearly twelve years old and a power output of roughly 1.325 million lu, her linker core is clearly under heavy strain but not enough for it to give out in this battle. It has been a long time since I have seen a mage that old with that much power on the front lines, most either provide critical support services or were killed early in the war. One oddity I note is that while her magic signature is clearly of the enemy, she is using a cartridge system, I had wondered how long it would take for them to adopt our superior system.

I spend the remaining 0.971 seconds contemplating the blasted landscape and ruins of what was once a thriving outpost. So many dead by their hand, so many dead for this senseless war. I am ashamed to note that I have failed them, and I have failed the Imperial Dinochrome Brigade. Now the only thing that I can do is take vengeance so as to deny assets to the enemy, it is my duty, but I can't take any joy in it.

I finally land with a suspension jarring thud and new damage report flood in from my rear left side, but I ignore them, with power cut to that section and most of the insides crushed it is a total loss already. Amazingly she is already getting up, most mages, even veterans, would at least be stunned for a few seconds. With more and more of my infinite repeaters going offline due to jams or problems with the ammunition feeds and my one remaining operable Hellrail still needing 4.32 seconds before it can be safely fired again I instead direct more power to my drive-train, as I spin around my bulk bearing down on her.

Her using a spell to detonate the ground between us, sending her tumbling away and diverting my course, is unexpected, and I downgrade my chances of wining accordingly. Overriding the locks on my Hellrail I fire again, striking the mage. Unfortunately her device acts in time to erect another shield, and I am forced to cut the beam short as the focusing system starts to melt. The Hellrail also wasn't meant for attacking targets that close and my front left armor has sustained damage, greatly exacerbated by the 7.14 nanoseconds where the relativistic plasma beam from the Hellrail lost focus.

She returns fire, lacing out with a pink beam that withers in my AMF but a clever system of multiple layers insulates the core of the beam sufficiently to let it strike my armor, leaving a sizable hole, but not damaging anything vital.

I surge forwards again ignoring the complaints of my drive-train at the strain, I must keep the mage within my AMF if I am to have any hope of victory. Yet even as I begin to surge forward I can detect several boulders that probably each mass as much as me lift into the air. Clever using their own linker shadow where my AMF effect is lessened. I franticly divert power from the AMF to increase power to my more intact right side drive-train, making me slew forwards and to the right, dodging the worst of it and taking the impacts of the supernaturally hardened boulders on my more intact right side. Each of the multi thousand ton rocks closing in at several hundred km/h hits with the impact of a nuclear weapon, but my armor was designed with that kind of abuse in mind. The impacts still disrupt my systems for a precious 3.54 milliseconds and when I come back online to a new litany of error reports including a hydrogen fire near my personality core. I override the automated eject sequence since I still have my vengeance and that of the millions of people that once called this home unfulfilled.

To keep the mage occupied I launch my four remaining drones, mainly to keep her within an AMF so she can't open the range. It takes me a precious 2.31 seconds to dig myself out of my rocky enclosure, during which time all my drones have been eliminated and the enemy is backing off. Luckily my long range sensors detect reinforcement inbound, I don't know what a Belkan Knight is still doing here, but if I can just keep the mage occupied for a bit longer I'll be able to ask myself.

Judging the complete loss of the weapon worthwhile I fire Hellrail #3 to keep the mage focused on me. True to form the mage hunkers behind her shield as I struggle to make progress against the recoil of my main armament. I keep firring for the entire 1.48 seconds before the barrel melts over my glacis plate due to the damaged focusing mechanism. In the meantime the fire has welded the emergency core dump shut, I'm well and truly trapped as more and more of my processing nodes go offline. My mind is steadily disappearing as my memories burn up one by one. I have already moved my most precious memories as far away from the fire as possible, tactics for fighting Midchildian mages and everything else of value in the current tactical situation, such as the drivers for my drive-train. The drivers for my inoperable infinite repeaters I have already consigned to the flames. And, selfishly, a holo of my commander, I do not want to forget her even in my last moments even as it marginally reduces the time until I will start losing tactically valuable data.

Barreling through the dust kicked up by my last shot I reacquire visual contact with the target, her eyes widen as she catches sight of my battered hull, still glowing cherry red from the melted Hellrail. I may be out of drones, railguns and other conventional weapons but I still have my AMF, most of my drive-train and I do mass 32'421 tons, minus some for the bits that fell off. Ramming is my only option, but without the ability to fly that is going to be hard. Luckily she's close to the ground, having attempted to duck under the Hellrail beam. I estimate I have a roughly 80% change of hitting, and with so many nodes down I struggle to get even that rough of an estimate. But then that is not my true intention, I am merely trying to keep her attention so that the Belkan Knight that should be in visible range in 0.271 seconds can end this quickly with a surprise attack, hitting her would just be a nice bonus, a final act of defiance against the enemy. It is a pitty that we must fight in this senseless war, she would probably have gotten along great with my commander.

I am distracted from my musing as I am suddenly blasted off course, and it takes me a second to realize that it was the Belkan Knight that hit me. Did she miss? I frantically try to reacquire the other two combatants and find the Belkan Knight helping the Midchildian Mage to her feet. I struggle to understand why one of the Knights would turn on me. The concept of treason is foreign to me, but traces of it still remain in my databanks. Focusing on the potential traitor I am nearly knocked offline with shock, I know that Knight, her likeness is stored in the safest place I have left, that is my commander. Obedience and honor routines struggle to determine what to do. With so many computational nodes down it actually takes me a moment to consider interrogating the Knights device for more information.

Laevantein turns out not to classify me as a friendly unit, no surprise considering my commanders actions, but it is willing enough to answer my queries. At first I don't understand the answers. While treason might be a hard to grasp concept for me peace is even more foreign to me. A union between our polities, or what remained of them after the war was honestly less surprising.

I am ashamed to note that I have attacked a legitimate Imperial officer, on an legitimate Imperial archaeological expedition, well such as it is in these times. It saddens me that I, probably the last of my kind am such a stain on the honor of the Imperial Dinochrome Brigade. However I can do at least one small thing to make up for my errors, I send Laevantein and Raising Heart the codes to shut down the guardian drones. Even with all that I am glad to have experienced peace, even if it was for just a short time. And so it is that I can surrender myself peacefully to the roaring flames, with my commander next to me and the world finally at peace.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

Notes: I hate Yuku.

This has not yet been beta'd and I'm not entirely happy with the ending but I just wanted to get it out and finished.

Suggestions?

Edit: Incorporated the grammar fixes, other fixes will have to wait.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Sorry guys. I guess I won't be coming back in tonight on the beta server. I can't get back in the game. The server is too clogged. I wish I could've teamed with you. 

First of all, a story fragment.

Quote:The Metaverse was, from a technical standpoint, a marvel of software engineering. It was a wonder of the digital world. It was an open-source. distributed, peer-to-peer real-time fully-immersive social network. Anyone could pull down the source code that the ‘verse ran on, compile it, and run it up on his, her or its own personal hardware and join in the fun. It ran on waved PDA's. It ran on dedicated server farms. It pulsed through veins and arteries of data that held the city together and gave it life. It was the world ad if it was dictated by the internet. It was where you could be anyone and anything you wanted. It was free, it was wild, it was vibrant and throbbing and pulsing with a visceral unreality that made it all the more fascinating. It was the world's own bazaar where everything and anything was possible, provided you had the sense to figure out how to code a plugin to your client that could do it. You could fight in a tournament using whatever set of combat rules suited. You could find a quiet corner and try our a whole new sexual experience in a body entirely different to your own. There were sports fields and racing leagues. There were markets trading virtual currency for real items, and vice versa. There were hacking contests. There were folks who went around in a Avatars wearing a shirt and tie with a question mark for a face who thought it was epic lulz to redecorate people's apartment-server if they didn't have a good lock on the door. You could log in with a public terminal with a basic avatar, you could log in through a full-immersive sensory-replication body-suit or neural induction gear. It was even possible to play with a mouse, keyboard and mic, FPS-style. The only limit was your budget, your hardware and your imagination. It was a barely controlled anarchy, with the only real rules hardcoded into the clients themselves. Don't lie about your real gender and age, no oversized avatars, some technical requirements to keep things from just falling over, and that was basically it.

It was, in Jet's humble opinion, the coolest damned thing in all of Fenspace as of its public launch at BubbleCon.

It helped that, through a quirk of acquaintance, she'd been involved in the project since the very first alpha's, years before the closed beta's had begun. and was the proud owner of the Fifth ‘verse server and first standalone server in existence. She'd been little more than a tester, someone needed a cyber to test certain features, and Jet was the cyber someone knew best. Even when Jet'd left Genaros, she was still testing the ability of each new feature in the 'verse to handle interwave lag over planetary distances. Her only contribution to the actual code was the personal flight module…. Solely because it'd gotten annoying walking everywhere. It was dirt-basic, crude, and not exactly elegant but it worked. It went into the mainline, and in six months had become something almost unrecognisable as Real Hackers™ found their way to fixing it.

So, Jet had a tester credit, a minor contributor's credit and that was it. Jet had also known most of the original creation team personally long before they'd actually went public with the thing and hit BNF status. Jet even remembered the barroom discussion that'd brought the whole ‘verse about, when the spark of an idea had first flared and caught hold years earlier. Jet pondered on the fact that that might, technically have made her the Hiro Protagonist of this particular metaverse. The thought always made her smile.

Sn0wcat finally made it big. After years bemoaning the lack of funds to take his idea beyond a small cluster of friends who'd worked together on the GWS, most of them had finally hit it big.

Such things let her get away with things not normally allowed. Jet's own private server still sat in that same building Jet'd lived in when she first launched up to Genaros station way back in 2012, right before the emergency con and a message from a certain Doc on a Rock that changed her life's direction for good. It was almost unique among current ‘verse servers in that it was capable of bridging out onto the wider interwave, bringing the ‘verse all the way out to Mars and into Jet's own private office. It was a feature that'd been removed for 'bandwidth and security' reasons right before the public beta. Jet's was grandfathered in to keep it, and keep her in contact with the station. Talk about your home away from home.

She made a point to remember to log in once a week or so, to check for messages or occasionally to meet people in a private and secure place. Anyone on the interwave with a client could browse into Jet's server and take a look around. In the public area, there really wasn't much more than the basic white room. All four walls and floor where made from the same mono-textured backlit milky glass. There were no shadows to render, enough friction to walk. It was the bare minimum a public area could consist of. It was little more than a directory. A few simple filling cabinets sat in a corner, containing a mirror of the Stingray Hardsuit packages. There were also some Highway Star files, including a frankly epic cutaway drawing, some wallpapers and a 'Race to 400' badge. Beside them, was a donation box, where people could donate to the Star project, and get themselves some subscriber-only benefits, and a Highway-Star only mailbox. They could also link out to the actual Highway Star site.

Someone was running a search through the filing using a basic Senshi avatar. It was the default Aiko model with borderline uncanny-valley eyes and a basic tactile mesh. She was fiddling around in the filing cabinet. Jet could call up her details; IP Address, age, sex, client and whatever else she wanted to tell about herself.

“Sorry,” she said, wearing an embarrassed smile. “But how do you download stuff in here?”

“Take the folder you want from the cabinet,” Jet repeated the same explanation “It'll unlock when it's been downloaded to your home computer.”

“Oh,” said the Senshi. The Avatar's expression didn't change, but Jet swore it should've been blushing. “It's my first time in one of these servers,”

“Welcome to the 'verse, “ Jet said, tiredly. She was more concerned with getting into her own private area. Being a cyber, Jet's client was a hell of a lot more advanced. Given the right data, she was capable of interacting with this whole virtual world as thoroughly as the real, and beyond. It all got very matrixy, and Jet wasn't sure how to describe it otherwise. In the real world, a buffer computer provided a safety net, but her own hardware was more than capable of interpreting the signals being sent from it, and constructing the entire world inside her own mind. With a thought, she could switch back to the real world, check up on something, then slip right back in with only the briefist flicker of disorientation. From a technical standpoint, it used a subset of the standardised puppet-body interfaces, only this puppet was a rough surface simulation.

Jet sent her personal login to the server, being rewarded milliseconds later by a simple door fading into view. The Senshi still wouldn't be able to see it, she didn't have the correct permissions. As far as she was concerned, Jet just disappeared.

Jet just had to touch the door handle to materialise on the other side. There was just a momentary flash of disorientation as her senses adjusted to the abrupt change in input.

This was the real server. This was the real metaverse. It was a replica of Jet's bedroom, of his bedroom from before. Jet'd begun creating it way back in 2012, during what she liked to refer to as her homesick period. The basic layout with collision detection and texture meshes for the walls, the bed, shelving and the like had taken three days. Everything else had been added in the four years or so since. Cupboards acted as filing cabinets, while the television was really a representation of a media player. There were ebooks on the shelves which Jet'd never gotten around to actually reading and there were a few little widgets to play with hung around, mostly toys and models. The laptop on the desk acted as a visual representation of the server load, and as a terminal emulator for when things needed to really get done.

The real metaverse covered all the senses. Sight, sound, hearing, smell and touch. Jet could brush her fingers against the fabric of the bedsheets and feel its delicious softness. Even though her avatar still had the same metal fingers and armour, she had the same sensory mesh as everyone else. This room was filled with hundreds of different textures. Evening sunlight provided warmth through an open window, chased by the scent of perpetually fresh cut grass. The curtains even fluttered just-so, but in a way that made it obvious they were a simulation.

Getting this level of detail was near-maxing the outbound connection of the server, pushing the processors in the buffer system to their maximum. It was so heavy, she could only log in at certain times when the bandwidth at Grunthal freed up. She could still feel the lag between touch and sensation, a slight microsecond delay that would be all but imperceptible to a regular human.

The metaverse never felt real. It was always possible to tell it was a simulation. The textures where all hollow meshes. Nothing would buckle or yield when touched. Sounds were all recorded files rather than hardware generated on the fly. Objects made the same noise no matter where you hit them. The unarticulated joints on the figurines on the shelf would never move, while in reality, Jet had to consciously try not to break them when picking them up.

In a wardrobe, Jet held a pair of other avatars. One was himself, based of a number of photographs, with hardcoated jeans and blue t-shirt. It was also the oldest, dating right back to the initial testing. The other was an athletic extrapolation of what might've been under the armour, complete with a choice of outfits. Jet picked one or the other depending on her mood, and who she was going to see, or what she was going to be doing when she got there. She could select them merely by touch.

Jet didn't bother. She'd only logged in to check a few of her messages.

The Highway Star mailbox was full. There were the usual requests for technical information, and the details of an upcoming show in the UK Jet would have to attend to keep one of the sponsors happy. It wasn't too onerous, Jet'd always wanted to go to Goodwood. Another was from a son of an Arab oil sheik who was very frivolous with his money, and was trying to cajole Jet into setting up a production line for the things, or at least building him his own one.

When she considered it, The Star was the best thing Jet'd ever done. A giant pain in the wing to keep running and maintain, but worth it. It brought contacts, it brought friends, it brought money and it brought in the true Fen currency.... bragging rights. Most of all, it brought fun and variety to Jet's life.

Finally, she moved over to her personal items.

A chill ran through her body... her real body... as she read the first one. It was the brush of deathly cold steel on bare skin,

Sn0wcat was dead.

Sn0wcat had thrown himself from his office window.