I've been looking back and to the side recently, which resulted in 'Back in Black' and the resurrection of a couple of other ideas I'd meant to intro to TD1940 - they'll stew for a while yet, but at least one more TD1940 short will be coming around for Christmas.
Then I took another look at 'Empress' New Robes'. I said a while ago that I wanted to do a rewrite, but now that I've taken a long, hard look at the whole thing I've decided that I really didn't like the way it was going. It was too contrived, made too little 'sense' (if anything I've written makes sense at all, that is), and needed a serious kick in the arse to get beyond being a cookie-cutter sort of story.
Then I had me a depression, chugged down too many energy drinks in one sitting, put on some Iron Maiden ... and decided, to hell with it, I'm going experimental.
I'd been a lot of things during the past few years, and waking up has never been a very pleasant experience.
Wait. Let me rephrase that. Waking up after a Crossing has never been a pleasant experience. For one thing, the whole 'waking up' part of that sentence implies one of the reasons.
The first time, I ended up coming to in the middle of having four triggerhappy vigilantes shoot me full of holes, and a few minutes away from turning the surrounding countryside into something out of a Fallout sourcebook. The second, I had to break my way out of a cloning tube, ended up being a dead ringer for fandom's poster child of shota yaoi. That's not even mentioning the megalomaniacs, Angels, and various things in-between that happened there. Or the conflicting memories. Eh. The third time, which had been the one immediately before this one, I ended up face-down in the Pacific. During a storm. If it hadn't been for the AT Field and specific physiology that came with being a half-Angel of the Evangelion kind I'd have drowned to death.
Still, those times had been different from this most recent attempt, if only in that I'd always been traveling on my own, so to speak, before now.
No idea how I'd gotten started on this trip, and neither am I certain what ended up throwing my disembodied spirit out of the wrecked D.D., across Reality, and into what had been slated to be Kaworu Nagisa's body ... and the sort of energies released by an Impact type event can't really be called easy to control either ... this time, though, I hadn't been trying to ride things out on my own.
Not that things had gone according to any sort of plan this time around, either.
That much was obvious enough as soon as I was back to my senses, and surrounded by red.
Alright, maybe I'm being overly dramatic here, but it seemed like every single emergency LED on the board was glaring at me, and the whole thing was amplified by the fact that the shell of the ship around me seemed like it wanted to fall apart on me at a moment's notice.
You know how some mistakes could have been avoided if you'd just put a little more thought into things before committing?
Case in point ... the Ulysses had been built with riding and harnessing ambient energy in mind. It's auxiliary source of propulsion was a cluster of gravitics nodes of the model used in Bianca smallcraft, and tertiary consisted of the traditional series of maneuvering thrusters, but the primary was still an array of energy sails that had been slaved into sync with my AT Field via direct neural feedback.
They worked well. In fact, they worked too well, since I vaguely recalled the scramble to have them bleed off excess energy - a failed scramble, I might add. The concentration breached terminal levels, tore a hole through the Between that I'd always experienced during Crossings - and tossed the ship back into Reality, or _a_ Reality at least, at the sort of relative velocity that went very much past excessive.
Which was when things really went to hell.
Or what else would you call plowing into atmosphere at relative speeds somewhere within a fraction of C?
In the end, the Ulysses had blown ninety percent of its sail capacitors, over half of the grav nodes, and the hull had been twisted almost beyond recognition - that last bit was only partially due to the re-entry. Most of it came from digging a kilometer long furrow through the desert sands, when the effort of keeping the whole thing, myself included, from burning up finally registered. Luckily, by then I'd managed to bleed off enough speed and heat that I didn't end up an anonymous puddle of slag.
Still, when I did come back to my senses, the most concerning thing wasn't the fact that the ship I'd spent the better part of five years of work on was little more than a heap of very expensive scrap - judging from what readouts still worked - or the fact that, from what I recalled of how the planet looked from orbit, I wasn't any closer to being home than I'd been last time. It wasn't even the fact that the energy and heat bleed on reentry would likely have any sufficiently advanced culture scrambling to get somebody out here ... that was something I felt I could more or less deal with.
No, it was the bit where I woke up and discovered that, out of the blue, one of the other acceleration couches in the crew compartment held a very much unconscious brunette in what looked like a school uniform, and who looked like she'd just come out of a war zone herself, judging by said uniform's state.
And that, in a nutshell, is how I met Fujino Shizuru.
---
Demonbane Ltd.
presents
Incarna: Schwarzweiss
the 'Empress New Robes' remake
by Griever
Copyright 2006(c)
---
What, exactly, do I mean by experimental?
Well, since it's a song that had me motivated to do this, it'd be only fitting to build the fic around said song.
Have you ever felt the future is the past, but you don't know how...?
A reflected dream of a captured time, is it really now, is it really happening?
Don't know why I feel this way, have I dreamt this time, this place?
Something vivid comes again into my mind
And I think I've seen your face, seen this room, been in this place
Something vivid comes again into my mind
All my hopes and expectations, looking for an explanation
Have I found my destination? I just can't take no more
The dream is true, the dream is true
The dream is true, the dream is true
Think I've heard your voice before, think I've said these words before
Something makes me feel I just might lose my mind
Am I still inside my dream? is this a new reality
Something makes me feel that I have lost my mind
All my hopes and expectations, looking for an explanation
Coming to the realization that I can't see for sure
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, to save me from myself
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, please save me from myself
The dream is true, the dream is true
The dream is true, the dream is true
I get up put on the light, dreading the oncoming night
Scared to fall asleep and dream the dream again
Nothing that I contemplate, nothing that I can compare
To letting loose the demons deep inside my head
Dread to think what might be stirring, that my dream is reoccurring
Got to keep away from drifting, saving me from myself
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, to save me from myself
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, to save me from myself
Lost in a dream of mirrors, lost in a paradox
Lost and time is spinning, lost a nightmare I retrace
Lost a hell that I revisit, lost another time and place
Lost a parallel existence, lost a nightmare I retrace
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, to save me from myself
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, to save me from myself
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, to save me from myself
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, to save me from myself
The dream is true, the dream is true
The dream is true, the dream is true
-Dream of Mirrors, Iron Maiden
Keep your fingers crossed, people.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm
Then I took another look at 'Empress' New Robes'. I said a while ago that I wanted to do a rewrite, but now that I've taken a long, hard look at the whole thing I've decided that I really didn't like the way it was going. It was too contrived, made too little 'sense' (if anything I've written makes sense at all, that is), and needed a serious kick in the arse to get beyond being a cookie-cutter sort of story.
Then I had me a depression, chugged down too many energy drinks in one sitting, put on some Iron Maiden ... and decided, to hell with it, I'm going experimental.
I'd been a lot of things during the past few years, and waking up has never been a very pleasant experience.
Wait. Let me rephrase that. Waking up after a Crossing has never been a pleasant experience. For one thing, the whole 'waking up' part of that sentence implies one of the reasons.
The first time, I ended up coming to in the middle of having four triggerhappy vigilantes shoot me full of holes, and a few minutes away from turning the surrounding countryside into something out of a Fallout sourcebook. The second, I had to break my way out of a cloning tube, ended up being a dead ringer for fandom's poster child of shota yaoi. That's not even mentioning the megalomaniacs, Angels, and various things in-between that happened there. Or the conflicting memories. Eh. The third time, which had been the one immediately before this one, I ended up face-down in the Pacific. During a storm. If it hadn't been for the AT Field and specific physiology that came with being a half-Angel of the Evangelion kind I'd have drowned to death.
Still, those times had been different from this most recent attempt, if only in that I'd always been traveling on my own, so to speak, before now.
No idea how I'd gotten started on this trip, and neither am I certain what ended up throwing my disembodied spirit out of the wrecked D.D., across Reality, and into what had been slated to be Kaworu Nagisa's body ... and the sort of energies released by an Impact type event can't really be called easy to control either ... this time, though, I hadn't been trying to ride things out on my own.
Not that things had gone according to any sort of plan this time around, either.
That much was obvious enough as soon as I was back to my senses, and surrounded by red.
Alright, maybe I'm being overly dramatic here, but it seemed like every single emergency LED on the board was glaring at me, and the whole thing was amplified by the fact that the shell of the ship around me seemed like it wanted to fall apart on me at a moment's notice.
You know how some mistakes could have been avoided if you'd just put a little more thought into things before committing?
Case in point ... the Ulysses had been built with riding and harnessing ambient energy in mind. It's auxiliary source of propulsion was a cluster of gravitics nodes of the model used in Bianca smallcraft, and tertiary consisted of the traditional series of maneuvering thrusters, but the primary was still an array of energy sails that had been slaved into sync with my AT Field via direct neural feedback.
They worked well. In fact, they worked too well, since I vaguely recalled the scramble to have them bleed off excess energy - a failed scramble, I might add. The concentration breached terminal levels, tore a hole through the Between that I'd always experienced during Crossings - and tossed the ship back into Reality, or _a_ Reality at least, at the sort of relative velocity that went very much past excessive.
Which was when things really went to hell.
Or what else would you call plowing into atmosphere at relative speeds somewhere within a fraction of C?
In the end, the Ulysses had blown ninety percent of its sail capacitors, over half of the grav nodes, and the hull had been twisted almost beyond recognition - that last bit was only partially due to the re-entry. Most of it came from digging a kilometer long furrow through the desert sands, when the effort of keeping the whole thing, myself included, from burning up finally registered. Luckily, by then I'd managed to bleed off enough speed and heat that I didn't end up an anonymous puddle of slag.
Still, when I did come back to my senses, the most concerning thing wasn't the fact that the ship I'd spent the better part of five years of work on was little more than a heap of very expensive scrap - judging from what readouts still worked - or the fact that, from what I recalled of how the planet looked from orbit, I wasn't any closer to being home than I'd been last time. It wasn't even the fact that the energy and heat bleed on reentry would likely have any sufficiently advanced culture scrambling to get somebody out here ... that was something I felt I could more or less deal with.
No, it was the bit where I woke up and discovered that, out of the blue, one of the other acceleration couches in the crew compartment held a very much unconscious brunette in what looked like a school uniform, and who looked like she'd just come out of a war zone herself, judging by said uniform's state.
And that, in a nutshell, is how I met Fujino Shizuru.
---
Demonbane Ltd.
presents
Incarna: Schwarzweiss
the 'Empress New Robes' remake
by Griever
Copyright 2006(c)
---
What, exactly, do I mean by experimental?
Well, since it's a song that had me motivated to do this, it'd be only fitting to build the fic around said song.
Have you ever felt the future is the past, but you don't know how...?
A reflected dream of a captured time, is it really now, is it really happening?
Don't know why I feel this way, have I dreamt this time, this place?
Something vivid comes again into my mind
And I think I've seen your face, seen this room, been in this place
Something vivid comes again into my mind
All my hopes and expectations, looking for an explanation
Have I found my destination? I just can't take no more
The dream is true, the dream is true
The dream is true, the dream is true
Think I've heard your voice before, think I've said these words before
Something makes me feel I just might lose my mind
Am I still inside my dream? is this a new reality
Something makes me feel that I have lost my mind
All my hopes and expectations, looking for an explanation
Coming to the realization that I can't see for sure
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, to save me from myself
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, please save me from myself
The dream is true, the dream is true
The dream is true, the dream is true
I get up put on the light, dreading the oncoming night
Scared to fall asleep and dream the dream again
Nothing that I contemplate, nothing that I can compare
To letting loose the demons deep inside my head
Dread to think what might be stirring, that my dream is reoccurring
Got to keep away from drifting, saving me from myself
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, to save me from myself
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, to save me from myself
Lost in a dream of mirrors, lost in a paradox
Lost and time is spinning, lost a nightmare I retrace
Lost a hell that I revisit, lost another time and place
Lost a parallel existence, lost a nightmare I retrace
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, to save me from myself
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, to save me from myself
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, to save me from myself
I only dream in black and white, I only dream cause I'm alive
I only dream in black and white, to save me from myself
The dream is true, the dream is true
The dream is true, the dream is true
-Dream of Mirrors, Iron Maiden
Keep your fingers crossed, people.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm