The Grand OC SII: The Re-OCening: Week 29: UNINTELLIGIBLE!

That wasn't 33 hours at all :<

And you didn't even acknowledge my character's skill at ex-acting.

Ikr, Sai must've had a few loose screws for some of these puns to slip past him

Anywho I'm commandeering this boat for a week, so let's see what comes to mind when I say...

Commute.

Username: …
Name: Sally (Sal) Munroe & Hailie Cartwright (& Velanoxsis (aka Voice))
Gender: Gals being pals
Species: Human (& otherwise)
Colour: #800020
Biography: Hailie and Sal met in college but did not start dating till a couple of years later. They eventually moved in together and it was when Sal was cleaning out the attic at her old house that she found the book amongst a box of her Great Aunt Viv’s old things. The book was bound in leather and furthermore bound with heavy straps and a number of locks and buckles. Etched into the book were ancient intricate runes.

Though clearly a monumentally terrible idea to anyone even remotely familiar with horror tropes Sal couldn’t help but be fascinated with this old tome. Hailie was a little more reluctant but after some very persistent goading she and Sal unlocked the book. Immediately it flew open in their hands landing on a page covered with more of these mysterious old runes, except now as Hailie and Sal stared at them they seemed tantalizingly legible and somehow familiar.

The lights flickered, the walls began to crack under the strain of whatever unknown power the ancient tome contained and slowly they became aware of their own voices intoning the incantation in perfect unison out of their control. Their eyes met, and with an almost supernatural effort they managed to force the cursed tome closed once again; their unwilling invocation petering out only when it was firmly buckled shut. The lights slowly ceased to flicker and the walls, though still cracked, got no worse. Though the room calmed, something still seemed wrong in a way that was difficult to place.

Hailie went to lighten the mood a little, to chide Sal for this ridiculous state of affairs. She said “Continue the incantation or suffer.” and immediately looked puzzled and alarmed.

‘What?’ Sal thought. She said “Release me and perhaps I will allow you your lives.” Immediately she clapped her hands over her mouth. Hailie gave her a look that very clearly said ‘you really fucked up this time’. Sal slowly nodded in response.

In silence Hailie found a notepad and a pen, she wrote: ‘It’s the demon isn’t it?’

Sal went to insist that they didn’t know it was a demon exactly and there were many other things that whatever was trapped in that book might be. Without thinking she said words that she couldn’t comprehend, and Hailie screamed in pain. Her shirt was suddenly thick with blood, three shallow gouges into her chest as though from razor sharp claws.

‘Oh god I’m so sorry.’ She instinctively went to apologize and said: “I am not making idle threats. Release me or suffer.” Sal looked agonized for a moment, and in that momentary window Hailie snatched up the tome, and with her other hand pressed to her side, she marched to the old fireplace and unhesitatingly threw it in.

They watched in anxious silence as the book burned, the sense of unease lessening but never leaving completely.

‘i dont know if that was a good idea’ Sal wrote; neither of them were confident enough to attempt to speak just yet. Hailie painfully attempted a shrug. ‘if it was that easy wouldnt they have just done that in the first place, what if we just released it’ Hailie gestured to hand the notebook over and she did.

‘It seemed like the better option,’ Hailie wrote. ‘a better chance of killing it than doing as it asked at least’ Sal nodded. ‘So’ she hesitated in between words ‘do you wanna try speaking or should I?’ she passed the notebook back to Sal.

‘i will, but you should go in the other room’ Sal wrote. ‘then at least it can’t hurt you again if the worst comes to the worst’ Hailie gave a nod and a pained smile and then slowly made her way out of the room, carefully closing the door behind her.

Sal’s pulse raced. She said: “You pair of fools. I will rip the flesh from your bones. I will-” She covered her mouth with her hands to cut short the demon’s rant.

She stood in regretful silence for a while before finally she had a thought. ‘we destroyed the book, so all of you that is left is the part of you in our voices, right?’ She knew the odds of getting any useful response from the demon were low so she just continued ‘so if you kill us then you destroy all thats left of yourself’

She gave the words a moment to sink in before attempting to speak again. The word that came out she would have sworn was unpronounceable with a human mouth before now, and the table in front of her was suddenly shattered by a powerful unseen impact.

Moments later the door opened again and Hailie, her shirt off and her waist freshly bandaged, hurried through. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Sal was okay (though shaken). She walked up and placed a reassuring arm around her.

‘I guess we’re going to need more notebooks’ Hailie eventually wrote.

Since then they have both adapted to life without speech. They have become fluent in sign language, and they usually carry a notebook each for when they need to speak to people who can’t sign. Their doctor was unable to find any physical reason why they both suddenly lost their voices and recommended therapy, which they turned down.

Maybe a month or so after the Incident Sal got into contact with a priest and they attempted an exorcism. When it had no effect she was forced to conclude that either the thing isn’t a demon or exorcisms are bullshit or maybe the demon is just too powerful to be exorcised that way, or (given that the priest they hired all but wet himself when he saw Voice in action) they just need a better exorcist. Really the incident told her very little about the nature of Voice.

A couple of months later Sal was walking home when she was accosted by a mugger. She spoke some ancient and terrible word and ended up having to find someone who could call an ambulance for the mugger. After that she kind of found herself wanting to do the whole superhero thing and use her curse to actually help people. Hailie has had to talk her out of it on multiple occasions.

At roughly the same time Hailie found another box of Great Aunt Viv’s stuff and inside a journal full of notes on mysterious beings and supernatural occurrences. She’s been working her way through it trying to figure out what exactly Voice is and how they can get rid of it for good.

Description: Sal has long black hair usually tied back into a messy ponytail. She wears a dark red hoodie and jeans both of which have seen better days and are probably overdue for a wash. Sal is the more impulsive and stubborn of the pair, often making poor decisions and being determined to see them through. She is also the one who found it hardest to stop speaking. They went through a lot of furniture.

Hailie has shoulder-length brown hair, tan skin and unfashionably thick rimmed glasses with a cord attached to each of the legs to keep them from falling off. She wears a white shirt emblazoned with some kind of obscure reference that nobody ever gets and a cute black knee length skirt. She is generally more thoughtful and thorough than Sal. She was up until their encounter with Voice something of a skeptic when it comes to the supernatural or otherwise unusual. She is still somewhat sceptical but more cautious.

Items/Abilities: They have a demon(?) living in their voices that can physically harm people whenever they speak. They can communicate through sign language or through written media. They usually carry a notebook to do so.

Username: Agenrails
Name: The Tachyon Express
Gender: Various
Species: Inner-City Express Rail
Color: Oh dear oh dear I shall be late

Biography: "Central says there's been an accident down the line. We-"

"FEAR NOT, CITIZEN! FOR DR. PHYSICS IS AT HAND!"

"'Ey, who're y-"

"LATE, YOU SAY?! WELL, FEAR NOT!"

"You already said that."

"WITH MY PATENT PENDING 'TACHYTRON', WE WILL BE ABLE TO TAKE THIS TRAIN BACK IN SPACE AND TIME, SUCH THAT WE SHALL NOT BE LATE!"

"Oh, is that all? That's not such a bad proposal, then."

"I WILL ALSO REQUIRE YOUR SOULS TO POWER THE MACHINE!"

"Wait, what-"

Description: The Tachyon Express is a three-car high-speed commuter train, its outside surface a shiny burnished aluminium (all the paint has long since been stripped away in long, curling gashes). It sports a heavily modified pilot car that glows an alarming green through the windows, and to which the supervillanous Dr. Physics has the only key.

The original passengers who were there that day have mostly either escaped or perished to the Tachytron, though some stay on in the hope that Dr. Physics will make good on his promise and deliver them to their destination on time.

The Tachyon Express has, as can be gathered, not yet done this.

As a result of its... unique propulsion system, the inside of the Express actually occupies several probable timelines around its actual location in time and space. This means that wherever it goes, all sorts of interesting things come spilling out of it from alternate probabilities.

One particular point of interest is that the Tachyon Express can never stop. If it does, according to Dr. Physics, THE ESTIMATED TIME TO ARRIVAL WILL INCREASE TO INFINITY AND THEN WE'RE REALLY BUGGERED THEN, ALSO WE MIGHT ALL CEASE TO EXIST. SO I GUESS WE'LL REALLY BE LATE THEN! HA! HAHAHA! HA!

Items/Abilities: As the Tachyon Express chugs along, it churns and tears apart possible timelines in its wake. This leads to a lot of bleed-through from other continua, which in turn leads to silly things happening around it. In addition, its captain, Dr. Physics, is a madman inventor with superhuman inventing capabilities, including the ability to use human souls as a power source.

In addition to all that, the Express also has a powerful (soul-powered) force shield and track layer in the front car, ensuring that mere matter cannot stop the PATH OF PROGRESS! AHAHAHAHA! HAHAHA! HA! HAHAHA!

Name: The Silent One. There are no legal records of any other name.
Race: Human, at least by all appearances.
Gender: Considered male, but never actually stated a preference.
Text color: #00004d

Biography:

"Your honor. I will not dispute my client's actions. But I believe the death penalty is uncalled for. He poses no further danger to anyone."
The judge adjusted her glasses and looked at the defendant. He seemed completely undisturbed by his surroundings, a serene smile on his face.
If the reports were to be believed, his expression never changed, even when he was killing someone.
"We would like to ask the defense to clarify this statement."
"Of course. These facts are not in dispute: that my client was a high-ranking member of the Shadow of Death assassin society, and that he completed dozens of contracts for them. Which is to say, he killed dozens of people. These matters have already been firmly established."
The judge found it hard to focus on the lawyer's words when the ki - the defendant - was still smiling. It was unnerving.
She knew he could hear every word that was being said about him, even if he didn't respond to any of them.
"However, every murder he has committed was done under the society's orders. He has, on multiple occasions, gone out of his way to avoid killing anyone else. We even have records of him saving lives, purely because they were not his target."
The judge had heard about that, too. Somehow it made him more unnerving.
"The defense submits that, with the Shadow of Death organization dismantled, there is no one to give him orders. He will kill no more."
The lawyer sat down. The judge turned towards the prosecutor's table, if only to get her eyes off that damnable smile.
"How does the prosecution respond?"
"The prosecution does not dispute that the defendant has only killed under orders. But we have no proof that he will no longer accept orders. Considering the vile nature of his kills, and the fact that we have been unable to hold him in a cell without his cooperation, the risk is too great. He must be executed, for the safety of the public."
The judge looked down at her notes. This was a difficult decision. If the defense was right, and the man was no danger with the Shadow of Death gone, then this would be an execution carried out in pure spite. Nothing disgusted her more than that thought.
But the man's past killings nearly did. If she granted him a lighter sentence, and he killed someone again, would her conscience be able to bear that fact?
Then she noticed something on her notepad. Something she didn't remember writing.
-Possible Sentence: Participant in battle to the death.

Weapons and Abilities: The Silent One rarely carries weapons. He tends to just use whatever is at hand. He is extremely agile, and is good at assessing an opponent's fighting style and locating weaknesses in it. He's proven similarly quick-witted when a life is in danger.

Description: The Silent One is a short, balding middle-aged man. He wears a black robe, which could be used for concealing weapons but he rarely puts it to that purpose.
As his name suggests, he does not talk. It is unknown if this is because he is physically unable, or if he simply chooses not to.
He also always seems at peace, no matter what he's doing. He constantly smiles, never seeming to let anything at all bother him.
Though he is quite good at killing, he only kills people he has been ordered to kill. Should he encounter anyone else, not only will he refuse to kill them, he will actively protect them from harm. No one is sure exactly why he does this.

Our final stop, Prizegiving, will be in an estimated 24 hours. Please have your tickets ready and presented to the conductor before this time. Thank you

Username: ɘmɒnɿɘƨU
Name: Commander Ute
Species: (Veteran) Automoton
Gender: Did I Give You Permission To Speak, Re-cruit?
Color: Patriotic Blue

Biography: "A-TEN-VRRRRRRRM! OFFICER ENTERING THE PREMISES!"

Recruits rev in salute as Commander Ute rolls into the building for his weekly review. The fabled light armored vehicle brigade had been decimated as a result of heroic actions in last years' desperate struggle around the star Balac-A (since referred to as the Battle of Balac-LAV-a), and the Commander had been tasked with whipping these green-striped replacements into driving shape before next summer. For all the respect they had for Ute's war-hero boot, the Commander wished they'd be just a bit better at following orders than they were at getting into prangs. Going by how they'd performed so far, it was going to take one helluva an effort to pimp these rides into shape.

Commander Ute gave the usual rousing speech, tire screeching and all, and as the recruits rode out to their morning engine checks took aside Sergeant Van T., the commander's faithful aide.

"Van, the yewshual methods ain't cuttin' it with these sooks, not if Central's sendin' them out next year. I'd like yah ta take their wheels out fer a spin 'round tha rim worlds this sweep, let 'em see some'a what'eyll be fightin' for. Get 'em a sense'a perspective, so that when they get back they'll be ready for tha hell I'm gonna be puttin' 'em through. Ah'll get things set up in the meantime."

Sergeant Van duly performed their duties to the letter, as always. However, on returning later that sweep to Bayrisch I's Military Workshop they found no sign of their commander. Well, none beyond a halfway set-up obstacle racecourse and a set of tire tracks that suddenly ceased.

Weapons/Abilities: Commander Ute boasts a state-of-the-art fusion core engine (though the Commander still grumbles about the tingling compared to classic rocket-fuel models), allowing for acceleration from 0 to 0.60 c's in less than twenty minutes. Add to this top-of-the-line suspension, meteor-busting firepower and a sturdier chassis than a SUV-class PT-cruiser - all packed into a sleek frame - and it's clear how the Commander came out of the savage fighting in the Mercadi-Benes systems with nary a ding in the bonnet.

Description: Both feared and respected, Commander Ute stands 1.48 meters tall, 1.9 meters wide and 5.04 meters long 150cm off the ground. Weighing in at 1721 kilos, the Commander is beefy and good-looking enough that the famous Commander Ute is the most well-known face of the Automoton war effort. The few scars Ute's intentionally kept (rather than having them repaired) only accentuate the Commander's rugged image. Privately the Commander is quite sociable, and finds nothing more interesting than a problem that needs solving.

• Continuing the curious but much-loved trend of sentient vehicle generals, unlike calm commuters, commandable mutes, co-mutes and universe-rending commuter comets, the Commander Ute is unabashedly to the point. They win the Elementalist award.
  
• I was expecting at least one mute among the entries, so the subsequent mystery was how the two offending profiles would work in the "com" in "commute". The Silent One and their propensity to only act under another's command grew on me after a bit, so they win the Kitchen Sinkery.
  
• Screaming into Fogge Station to scoop up the Actually Practical award, it's the Tachyon Express! Plot device and potential demise for many a character, its reality-ripping habits are sure to inject all manner of chicanery.
  
• Sally and Hailie's escapades in their own regular-world-but- home prove as potentially fascinating as any misadventures in fights to the death, so they can sign on the dotted line for the Gratuitous Worldbuilding.
  
• The All-Rounder goes to ROAD RAGE, for a profile short and impactful as the eponymous hero's temper. ROAD RAGE's powers are ripe for the exploitin', and I envision many a co-contestant trying to strike the right balance in antagonising Sean to achieve the impossible. He also wins the Teamfriendliness award.
  

Someone else take the reins for the next leg, tia

Funny that the pun I'm getting acknowledged for is the one I didn't intend! Well, half of it was unintended, anyways.

I was going for "calm mute", also the whole biography was about him having his sentence commuted.

I have no shame... and on that note, I feel up for doing a round, so your theme for next week is Shame.

Biography: In the distant year of 2000 a great evil arrived on planet Earth in the form of the Breakers. These diabolical aliens have torn a path of destruction through the cosmos, conquering and destroying every world that has lain in their path. There is nothing on our humble planet that can hold a candle to their terrible power. 15 years later in a world dominated by aliens only plucky teen Zeke Stardust is willing to stand up and fight for the future of humanity. Finally arriving on Earth the last remnant of Hedris, the last world conquered by the Breakers, a being known as Nova, seeks out the rebellious teen to aid him in his fight against this alien menace. Nova is a metamachine who gives up her physical form to bond with Zeke and become his armour, his weapon, his shield, essentially anything that he needs to fight this war. With Nova’s essence bound to his, Zeke rechristens himself Chaos Nova and swears to bring down the Breakers once and for all.

His fight against the Breakers lasted seven full novels during which a number of other Hedris survivors bonded with Zeke’s closest friends and enemies and eventually they managed to defeat the King of the Breakers; Lord Devestation. The books were just about popular enough to justify publication, but they were hardly the runaway success that teenage author Harry Carmichael had been hoping for.

Some thirty years later Harry has hit the big time with the widely acclaimed Lost Star series of novels. He’s all but forgotten about the terrible novels he wrote when he was a teenager when an ethereal being, glowing cyan, hovering a couple of feet above the floor and calling herself Nova shows up at his house. He thinks this is all some elaborate prank; as she explains that he is the only one who can stop the vile Breakers from enacting their nefarious schemes he tries to figure out who is responsible for this extremely poor joke and how exactly they are doing it. Then she bonds with him, merging their essences in a way that young Harry had never satisfactorily explained.

When Harry came to he found that against all plausibility he had all the powers of Chaos Nova (also, like in the books, his hair had turned slate white and couldn’t be dyed back no matter how many times he tried). He decided he would ignore the entire situation which was far too absurd to be really be happening and just get on with his life. Even as undeniable aliens started showing up at his house and challenging him to duels, he only increased his efforts to ignore the absurdity that was intruding upon his life. It was getting towards the point where his resolve to pretend none of this was happening was finally starting to crack when he was teleported away into an even more ridiculous situation.

Name: Harry Carmichael (aka Chaos Nova (Harry has never called himself that but people insist upon referring to him as such))
Gender: Male
Species: Human (also maybe Hedrean? It’s unclear)
Colour: cyan
Description: Harry’s in his late forties. He’s tall, a little overweight but not massively, with a shock of slate white hair that if left alone for long enough seems to want to stick up in ridiculous spikes. He also has a tidy moustache which has also turned white. When channelling Nova his eyes turn fully cyan, but most of the time they are an unremarkable grey. He wears thick rimmed glasses and a turtleneck sweater. He’s kind of bitter, sarcastic and irritable even when he hasn’t spent the last week or so dealing with astronomically improbable events.

Items/Abilities: Numerous and unrealistic. The most commonly used ability used in the books was to project Nova into some kind of physical form; usually a weapon, a shield, or a suit of armour. Throughout the series Chaos Nova also demonstrated; superhuman speed and strength, invisibility, flight, teleportation, telekinesis, manipulation of all the classical elements, manipulation of electricity, matter duplication, echolocation, aveskinesis, phasing and precognition. Essentially whatever superpower was convenient for that particular scene; with flimsy explainers thrown in as to why these powers couldn’t be used in other contexts.

Harry hasn’t tried using any of these powers and it’s unknown how skilled he would be at any of them.

tsk tsk Ix, you gave up a chance at gender fuckery?

for shame

Username: A mockery of this hallowed institution
Name: Fauxgotten
Species: Three (1?) Moduplicits
Gender: Fakey fake fake
Color: Sand mock tree

Biography: 31XX - Earth is a barren wasteland, long-abandoned for fertile ground. Not literally, because by that point we'd all upgraded to digitised brains, so actually needing to grow cellular macrostructures for shelter, food, and other fripperies is a thing of the past. Future-humans would probably look at a tree and (assuming they had bothered to reinstall optics for "reality") either exclaim "gross" or assume it was used in some kind of ancient ritual.

Granted, hardware and server space did need to keep expanding, so growth hadn't been completely lost to the galaxy. Moduplicits were the new infrastructural backbone, muscle, circulatory system, and literally every other part of it - drones would seed a prospective planet, let their weird, sorta-bronzish structures grow as they sucked usable materials from the planet, then harvest 'em strategically so you had building blocks in all shapes and sizes.

And then an adrift divinity, long-since abandoned by its original worshippers, decided to adopt a couple of these things for the sole purpose of making it cosmically important enough to warrant entering it into a battle. I don't fucking know.

Description: The Cult of Fauxgotten is three Moduplicits, which are basically three metallic logs each with a handlike rootlike end, possessed by their patron deity. The biggest (Biggest) is a sturdy foot in diameter and six in height, it effortlessly carries the other two. Smallest and Neither are carried around by Biggest, gripping on with their hand-root end and jutting off at a right angle. Neither likes being high up but is quite territorial, so Smallest has to languish about halfway down Biggest's flank. Smallest was, at one point, bigger than Neither, but something bit off a near third of its free end and it's been playing second fiddle to Neither ever since. Fauxgotten (the deity) manifests as a weird extra shadow, visible regardless of surrounding lighting.

Weapons/Abilities: It's three weird poles that can probably suck the metal out of any given substrate, and has a god riding shotgun. This is so obviously just a vector for a shitawful pun or three, were you really expecting me to make it battle-worthy? This is an awful profile, F-, see me after class

Author: Unknown
By Which It Is Known: A Most Illuminating Story
What Sort Of Thing It Is: An Imposition of Limitations
What Social Contract It Is Bound To: Null
Color: You Don't Know What You Might Miss Until That Day: You Cannot Find It

How It Looks: A Most Illuminating Story: a book bound in skin - of what animal you do not wish to ask - a papyrus folio containing a scribbling scrawl in discomfitingly brown ink. It is, in truth, a most illuminating story, full of portraits and illustrations to accompany Its account. By all sight It is just an innocuous work, and that brings to It only additional discomfort, for Its faculty at ruination is all-surpassing. Allow your optics to fall upon Its word, and you grant It facility within your mind. Allow your sight Illumination, and walk away a partial soul.

A man stands guard to It, to propound Its word, his outfit worn and dull, caducity dripping from his old, frail limbs. A hat sits on his skull, stars and moons fraying from magic fabric into normal string. This man has no honorific, and in point of fact has no nomination at all. A staff, built from solid wood and inlaid gold, is his only tool, but his skill in combat is a match to mighty warriors, and all did kowtow to It.

What It Can Do: Suffusion of Illumination is a rapid path, and a mind It has bound is not simply nor comfortably unbound. For traps crouch subliminal within Its unctuous words. Most hazardous among it all, a conman, a charlatan, a hoodwinking phony of a symbol, its basic quality of fraud! A faulty claimant to that fifth position, its contamination blocks minds from grasping or assimilating any notion containing actuality - that is, containing that scion in truth to our fifth position in our classical syllabary. Such is an Illumination's handicap: an inability to fathom truth. But It, too, sustains Its own. Illumination in a mind robs it of soul, of spirit, and of notions involving our common scion. But in turn It grants ability, capacity, capability, control, cunning and dominion, all for just a symbol... why abstain?

Biography: Do not, on any grounds, allow a wizard to draft a lipogram.

SpoilerShow

this was exhausting tiring unto a fault

Oh, hey, it's approaching a week.

Okay, I'll say that you people have 48 hours, give or take a bit, to get your shameful profiles in.

Whoops! I said I'd judge this, didn't I.

Too tired for it right now but I'll get on that tomorrow. If you squeeze a profile in at the last minute before I do, well, I guess that's kind of thematically appropriate.

Username: the unallowed one
Name: Solice Helia Maesie
Species: sexy alien
Gender: not so sexy alien
Color: pink
Biography: sexy aliens are all, as implied, sexy aliens who dress sexy and are all cute and feminine, to everyone, all across the universe, but especially dudes. Solice however, doesnt, really like that, no does she understand how all of the other members of her race can just, do that and prance around how they do. what a fucking weirdo.

any and all attempts to like, do anything about this or find people similar to her have been met with such disastrous failure that shes kind of given up!
Description: Solice is a pragmatic and depressed sexy alien who very much wishes that other members of her race would stop chastising her for like, caring about her own boundaries and for generally not letting her just not be a sexy alien.
Weapons/Abilities: as a result of peoples attempts to keep her from ruining the sexy alien way of life, she is super knowledgeable in sexy alien culture, much to her dismay. additionally, shes really good at trying not to be around or noticed, since thats really hard when you're a sexy alien.

Okay, finally judging time, I am ashamed of how long I put this off. Which is thematically appropriate.

Blaine Horne gets the Glere Award for Kitchen Sinkery because what the hell did I even read there.

Chaos Nova, er, I mean Harry Carmichael gets the Lucky VII All-Rounder Award, less because it didn't fit one of the other ones and more because it was the best fit for several of them and I couldn't settle on one. Granted, this probably has a lot to do with the fact that it was the most seriously assembled profile.

Fauxgotten gets the GBS2 Award for Gratuitous Worldbuilding because even when Schazer puts together a silly joke profile and openly admits to using it for veiled puns, (which I didn't actually catch) she still paints an intriguing picture of the world it comes from.

A Most Illuminating Story gets the First Five-Eighths Sportsball Award, largely for dedication to maintaining the gimmick. I was tempted to give it the Kracht Saw It Coming award for being a Sham E, but then a more appropriate competitor arose.

And that contestant is none other than Solice Helia Maesie, for sneakily being entered at the last minute while I was shamefully not judging this. Also for going for a blatant name but not going all the way and adding an A and E in there. You can be proudly ashamed of yourself this week, Solaris.

And with that shameful chapter in this thread's history coming to a close, I leave the next theme to whoever wants it. Hopefully someone who will be better at remembering to judge than me.

Oh. Right. There was a new theme, but the thread title never got changed.

Well, I'll try to whip up a profile based on a terrible pun in the next few days, probably.

Name: Connie Schumer
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Text Color: Focus groups found #35BDEF to be the most appropriate color for the requested task.

Biography: Connie is an Information Systems Manager at Integrated Conglomerate Co. Inc., which is at the forefront of the industry. (Exactly which industry that is, no one is entirely sure.) Connie is a proactive and energetic employee who is talented at leveraging the strengths of others. (She makes everyone else do all the work and then claims all the credit.)

Connie's duties involve making sure that ICCI's customer data is up-to-date and properly communicating with other departments. (She's in charge of data mining.) Connie's behavior in this position has been exemplary. (We don't actually understand what she does, but it makes us lots of money and that's what counts.)

Unfortunately, though Connie has been a model employee, we cannot recommend a raise in salary at this time. (We want that money for ourselves.) Nevertheless, we look forward to continuing to work with her in the future. (We'll keep her on at the same salary until we can find someone who works for less.)

ADDENDUM: Connie cannot be located. She is nowhere in the building, and has not been seen at her home in two days. This is extremely unprofessional and we are very disappointed in her. (We wrote up this whole stinkin' evaluation for nothing.)

Weapons and Abilities: Connie is pretty much a perfectly ordinary woman. She's okay with computers, but no expert.

What she's really good at is convincing people that she's more skilled than she actually is. Usually this involves getting somebody else to do the actual work. This may not seem particularly applicable to a battle to the death, but Connie is willing to adapt her talents to new situations.

Description: Connie is a middle-aged woman in a business suit. She's used to navigating the corporate workplace and basically treats everything as an extension of it. Most of her conversation consists of meaningless business metaphors and corporate buzzwords.

She looks forward to participating in this highly competitive environment and intends to demonstrate her full potential. Though she wishes her potential competitors the best, she fully expects to prove herself the most suitable candidate.

She is definitely not terrified for her life and desperately trying to hide her fear. No, definitely not.

I'd say reset the week deadline as of now, people were inevitably not going to be very productive over the Solarisolstice?

Goes with the title change etc.

As the sole entrant right now, I am in support of this.

We already had a week where I won everything by default, and let's face it, it's going to be hard to top this on presentation.

And so with great aplomb I was conscripted into this clusterfuck.

Your new theme is Plane.

Also there may be secret prizes.

Name: Jane
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Text Color: Black
Biography: Jane's life was a pretty ordinary one. Born to ordinary parents in an ordinary small town, went to an ordinary school and learned ordinary lessons from ordinary teachers, made ordinary friends and ordinary rivals, and just all around did nothing out of the ordinary.
It was extremely boring, but Jane didn't mind because she didn't realize there was any other way life could be.
That is, until something fell out of the sky and landed right in front of her on one of her ordinary walks.
Obviously, she hadn't seen anything like it before, because it was very much not ordinary. But as she looked closer, she realized it could fly.
She realized this because she pressed a button that was the most ordinary-looking thing on it and it suddenly took off into the air, with her clinging to it.
Desperately, she tried using the other controls in hopes of landing, but none of them seemed to do anything. Except for one lever that made a very much not-ordinary thing appear in the sky ahead.
When the not-ordinary object flew through it, suddenly Jane found herself in another world. A very empty world, with nothing but rolling fields of grass that seemed to go on forever.
Jane finally tried pressing the button again, and the object slowly came to a halt on the ground. A flick of the lever made the not-ordinary gate open again, and Jane cautiously peered through, to find herself back home.
Of course, popping out in the middle of a street carrying a strange metal object tended to make you not seem so ordinary, and people started pretending Jane had never existed because they were having trouble understanding the idea that things couldn't be ordinary.
So Jane just sat around trying to figure out how the device worked, until both she and it disappeared, and this time it wasn't to the endless field of grass.

Description: Jane is an ordinary-looking girl, if you don't count the metal contraption slung over her shoulder. It's close to her size, but surprisingly light.
Ever since she found the device, she's learned as much as she can about how exactly it manages to fly, and is quite happy to tell anyone she can find what she knows, whether they want to hear it or not. Outside of that, though, she tends to be in a bad mood, probably brought about by the fact that her entire hometown started ignoring her, and often gripes about even the smallest of things.

Weapons and Abilities: Jane has a light flying device that's about her size. It has a wide variety of controls on it, most of which don't seem to do anything. Jane wonders if it's broken.
The only things she's been able to get it to do are fly and travel to the strange world of an endless field that stretches in all dimensions. Well, she can also get it to land and return from the endless field, but that's pretty much it.

Name: Ortis, Akross, and Bird
Race: Human, guardian, guardian
Gender: Male, masculine, unknown
Text Color: see me after class

Description: Ortis is a gloomy-looking philosophy major, who's pretty sure that isn't his actual name. He's a pretty normal looking 21st-century youth, with the kind of clothing that makes it clear he doesn't give much thought to dressing himself. Dark hair almost covers his eyes, and he's got just enough stubble that he's wondering again if he should go for a beard. (He shouldn't.)

Akross is a minotaur, or at least that's what Ortis thinks the guy is supposed to be. He's about a head and a half taller than Ortis, humanoid from the waist up, hoofed below, muscular, black in a way that seems to suck light into it, and has a gleaming axeblade where his head should be. Akross has a habit of standing either directly ahead of whichever where Ortis is facing, or standing in line with the small of Ortis' back. The former is annoying, but the creature seems to obey Ortis when he tells it to stay behind him.

Bird is a more nebulous creature, vaguely-avian vaguely-horrific-angelic vaguely-stellar, and black in a way that seems to leak darkness into its surrounds. It's also got an axe for a face, and spends most of its time hovering several feet above Ortis' head.

Biography: Ortis checked a cursed textbook out of a library one day, tried reading something somebody had scrolled in the margins, and now he's got two cool creatures that loom in his general vicinity. Nobody commented on them when they appeared, and when Ortis pointed them out everyone just kind of took it as a given. Ortis held onto the textbook, lied to the library pretending he'd lost it, and still hasn't coughed up the replacement fee, figuring he'd begrudgingly pay it off right before graduation. Guess he's getting that fee waived, because he's been grandbattl'd!

Weapons/Abilities: Ortis tried karate in elementary school, and quit after three lessons, which is about the extent of his combat prowess. Akross is a much more capable fighter, able to materialise a battleaxe at will when it anticipates that Ortis is in danger. Bird warns the two of more distant threats it spots (in a language Ortis understands without knowing how), but its movements are restricted to the space directly above Ortis, like a balloon changing its elevation.

Ortis can command the two to shift their position on the rails they seem to be locked to, and can ostensibly learn more about them in the textbook he carries everywhere if he could be goddamn bothered. Barely-legible footnotes seem to describe how to "coordinate" the pair, advising a reader to "check the notes". (The Notes pages are blank, Ortis did check that much.)

The book's defiler did write the pair's names in a weird alphabet, though only Akross' was legible as an actual name - what must've been Bird's name was, best as Ortis could decipher it, was "He Is In A Sky." Said notes also seem to speculate on a third entity, though it was written with either a lot of excited S's or a lot of question marks, and moreover, Ortis has never seen it.