Exactly what it says on the tin.

----------------

Epsilon

I wonder what Danny Choo would think of Fenspace. I doubt he'd actually bother with getting involved, seeing as he's busy with his own stuff, but I
bet he'd find it interesting just the same.

Blades, 01 

Kings Row

 

The girl fled along the alley way, she had no idea where she was one minute she was walking home, the next she was on a lab table in some sort of armor with some guys shooting at her and she was now being chased by….. something, every now and again she’d see a pair of red eyes glaring from the darkness, as she stumbled around the corner, she spotted a dumpster, with out pausing she leaped in.

Carful she crawled into the corner of the dumpster and curled into a ball. Slowly she removed her helmet to wipe the tears from her eyes, she waited for what seemed like an eternity before poking her head out, right into the path of an oncoming boot.

 

***

 

Dib looked at the Crey representative, a miss Lana Natllen, she seamed less than impressed by their location, a ratty old warehouse in the Hollows, but he didn’t really have the time to arrange anything better at such short notice. He received a call form MiMi a couple of minutes ago to say that she was successful in her mission. He watched as the rep strode back and forward, like some caged animal, A small read out in his glasses showed that she had a large amount of cyber gear, meaning she was either a infiltration model, or he was getting his first look at one of Crey’s Scimitar units.

She turned to Dib. “Look, mister Membrain, my employers do not enjoy having their time wasted-” she was cut off as a figure dropped from the roof. The lights shined off it’s dull metallic armor, the faceplate bare except for two red optics. A armored figure was slung across her back

Dib spread his arms “just in time, Miss Natllen, allow me to introduce MiMi”

MiMi dumped the figure at Lana’s feet

“As you can see” Dib continued “MiMi has succeeded on the… errand I sent her on.” He held up a hand “and before you ask, yes, I sent MiMi to… acquire a rouge scimitar unit, which it appears she has.”

Lana knelt down next to the unit and pulled a device from her pocket and ran it over the prone figures neck.

“Interesting” Lana exclaimed as she examined the readout.

“What is it?” dib asked.

“This is a rouge unit, but according to this, there was a security breach ten seconds before it went rouge.”

“I did that” MiMi sid.Lana and Dib turned to her, they had almost forgotten she was their, she was that quite.

“Explain” Lana braked at her

“Of course” MiMi replied in a calm tone. “My master told me to capture a rouge unit, instead of waiting for the off chance that one of your unit’s went rouge, I tracked down one of your labs, and activated the unit before triggering the alarm, then I waited till she was several block away before hunting her down and bringing her here.”

Lana glared at Dib. “I could have you killed for half of what your droid did.” She hissed.

“But you won’t” dib replied calmly

“What makes you say that?”

“Simple, I believe your employer will be quite interested in my units, my prototype was able to infiltrate your facility, she activated, let lose and captured one of your units and finally brought it here without alerting a single hero…. Now, if my prototype, built on a shoe string budget, could do that, imagine what I could do if I had Crey backing me?”

Lana glared at Dib for several seconds before speaking.

“I will have to contact my employers, if we chose to back you, you will hear back from us.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I doubt you’d be in a position to care about that, good day mister Membrain.”

“May I keep the rouge unit then?” Dib asked

Lana stoped, turning back to Dib. “Why should I hand over such an expensive unit?”

“How about I give you forty five percent of my research, as a trade, I believe your employers would find it a worthy trade” Dib handed over a data drive.

Lana paused to think about it, on the one hand, she would probably get torn a new one for handing over a Scimitar, but on the other, she lacked the equipment to transport the unit and if what Dib had said about his A.I. research was true….

“You may keep her. In her current stat I doubt she’d be good for anything.”

Dib gave Lana a grin that chilled her blood.

“We shall see, good day ma’am.” Dib motioned to MiMi to pick up the girl and leave.

After they had left Lana took you her phone and punched in a number. “Yes sir, I made contact, yes sir, no sir, the unit….. it was destroyed, no sir, yes sir.” With the conversation finished she hung up, smiling to herself she held up the data drive, what the bosses didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.

 

***

 

One week later

 

Dib smiled as Lana entered the lab, he couldn’t help but be amused by the fact that Crey had made her the liaison between him and the mysterious “chairman”. She obviously hated him, but that was a trivial thing.

“Hello Lana.” He smirked as her lip twitched slightly in disgust.

“What is it you want too see me about Dib?” she barked

“Oh I was just wondering if you would like to see the work I did on the Scimitar you left me.”

“It’s finished?”

Dib nodded and led Lana down to a training room where two women were sparing, one Dib cleared his throat. “Girls, we have a visitor.”

The two stoped and turned to face them, this was Lana’s frits look of them with out their armor, they both stood in simple fatigues, one was rather plain looking, a face that could easily be lost in a crowd, the only feature that stood out was her dark red hair and a slightly clunky cybernetic right arm. The other woman was more impressive, well toned with a mane of orange hair, but what made her stand out was the almost predatory look on her face.

Dib indicated to one then the other. “Miss Lana, allow me to introduce unit zero and one, or as I call them MiMi and Teyla.”

Lana turned to Dib. “You named them?”

“Yes, I found the A.I. respond much better when treated like people.”

“And they are loyal?”

Dib flashed Lana a smile devoid of warmth. “Allow me to show you, Teyla, break your right index finger.”

The orange haired woman stepped forward. “But Sir, if I do that my combat efficacy will be severely dropped.” She replied

“Don’t worry, MiMi will take you to the medbay afterwards.” Dib replied

Teyla nodded and grabbed her finger, with a swift twist and a horrid crack she snapped the digit.

Lana looked on in slight disgust. Dib turned to her and flashed that same inhuman smile. “Is that loyal enough for you?” he asked

“Yes I believe it is, when shall you have the next unit ready?”

“Oh, in a week or so, depending on how long the neural download and editing takes.”

Lana nodded. “I shall see you then, Dr Membrain.” With that she nodded and left.

Dib motioned for MiMi to take Teyla down to the medbay before heading to his lab, after a while MiMi returned to find Dib checking the holding cells.

“Why did you lie to her?” MiMi asked.

Dib slowly turned. “And what did I lie about MiMi?” his replied icily

“You told her that Teyla was unit one, but she is unit four, why?”

“It is something we humans call keeping an “ace in the hole”. And before you ask what that means it’s simple, one day Crey will no longer find me useful and on that day I plan to use whatever’s at my disposal to save myself, so having a few units off the roster will help.”

MiMi nodded. “I understand sir”

“Good, now I need you to collect more samples, here’s a list”

MiMi took the file Dib handed over and left.

Turning dib continued down the corridor to a heavily armoured door.

“Ahh, dear Gaz” he spoke to it “If only you could see how it’s all coming together, at the rate I’m going, we should be able to return home within months… and then I can show them all, I was right.”

On the other side of the door, a figure stirred slightly the chains that pined her to the ground ratted as she turned to the door.

“unfortunately, I’m not sure if you would be able to help me anymore, but don’t worry, the unit I made using your mind is more than willing to help me. Good day Gaz.” Dib turned and left, smiling at the scream of incoherent rage echoed from the cell behind him.

They added Buttcapes to Widows (female model only) in Arachnos Costume generation
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

What are everyone's thoughts on Windows 7?

There's a lot of hype going on out there about the beta that was released a little bit back, but there's been grumbles from beta testers that sounds
rather disconcerting, as well as Microsoft's history regarding how their beta releases reflect on the 'finished' product.

Here's a list of my own misgivings on the matter.

For one thing, I've always been a big believer in a streamlined product. Graphical niftiness, while nice to look at (and I certainly will not deny that it
is nice to look at), simply doesn't matter when it comes to getting the job done. For certain, you can bet that no amount of shininess is going to
convince the higher-ups in the DoD to buy into Windows 7. They'll only care about two things: 1) Is it secure? and 2) Will it get the job done?

Another qualm that I have is the stupidity of the general public at large. I honestly think that a person needs to attain a certain degree of intelligence
before they're allowed near a computer. If Microsoft's mission really is to make an operating system that is usable by anyone, then I fear for the
computing world at large. I will, however, grudgingly admit that most people don't really know how a television operates and yet they use them all the
time. But to this I would use the counter-point that computers do not simply read data like a TV does - it manages it, and it is the person behind the
keyboard that dictates how that data is managed, whether they realize what they are doing or not.

One other thing, and this is the one that I think bugs me the most: do we honestly need such a radical departure? I mean, I'm going to have to get used to
an entirely new operating system here eventually and it's not going to be entirely by choice. It is going to be because the people at Microsoft have
mandated it to be so. Do you have any idea how much that goes against my grain? What Microsoft could do is that, with all this wonderful UI niftiness, they
should make a GUI that is COMPLETELY modular. You prefer the older task bar? No problem. You want something with a Mac OS-X flavor? Done. How about
getting rid of that windows logo on the start-button? Easy as pie. And all with a fair minimum of screwing around, too, through the use of a module-manager.
Mozilla does a nice job of this with their plug-ins for Firefox and you don't catch too many people bitching about it, except to say, "Man, I wish
someone would make a plugin that did z instead of just x and y."

So, in conclusion, what I really want to know is this: Should I abandon all hope in Microsoft? Should I prepare myself for the possibility of having to rely
solely on a Linux-based system? Or am I just being my paranoid self again?

When it's released by the company that licenced the anime.

http://funimation.com/f_index.cfm?page=news&id=553]FUNimation licences new FMA anime, promises to release subs the same week they're on Japanese TV

(I'm told Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is a retelling, not a sequel.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

From Popcap:

http://popcap.com/games/pvz

My word, that's a catchy tune.

Veronica Mars/Buffy Crossover, with Veronica & Co. in Sunnydale around Season 2. Xander was involved with Lily Kane prior to her murder. Veronica's
dropping hints to Buffy & Co. about upcoming events.
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

The Electric Light Orchestra
song. Afflicts those in the AoE with surreal hallucinations, as though they had one foot in sanity and one in madness. Alternatively, grants a temporary
powerup to a target with the side effect of putting them in a Playboy bunny outfit.

I have a biomod that I've been wanting to use for a character in my stories - a Wolverine-based biomod, basically. Metal-reinforced skeleton, rapid
healing, and the claws. There is NOT enough metal in the human body to pull it off easily - even if the person in question was chibified, I don't think
there would be enough extra mass from the original character to compensate. The Jason's own reinforcements were less metal and more organic-based - carbon
fibers grown in place and interwoven in the bone structure and muscle density altered...and in that situation, not only was he chibified, but he had a lot of
extra mass to start with to scrounge for materials and energy. The person I'm considering for this mod doesn't.

Now...one view of handwavium is nanotech, and it certainly seems able to act as such. While it wouldn't be able to conjure metal out of thin air, does
anybody have a problem with metal that's in direct skin contact with the person while they're being biomodded being slowly absorbed as a resource?
We've seen non-living prosthetics - even fake cat ears, once, I believe - absorbed and altered to be made real, so I think this would be reasonable. Does
anyone object to this being used? I don't plan on going overboard with either it or the healing factor; the healing will actually place quite a load on the
body if needed; it doesn't draw power/materials out of nowhere. The last factor was the claws. We've seen new structures grown in biomods before, so
I'm hoping people don't think it would be too unreasonable?

I just wanted to run this idea by people before including it in the story that I wanted to write. Please, let me know if anybody has problems with it?