"No. Listen to me on this one." Bell asked politely.

"BUT-" Buttercup started, but Blossom shot her a gaze that could melt mountains. Buttercup stopped mid-word and grumbled, reluctantly listening.

Bell glanced around the fighter bay, which was devoid of any indication of life or life having lived here. The fighters did not exist and whatever spare parts and other things were kept in here, they were gone now. The ship, like the last one, had probably been quickly and effectively gutted from front to back, turning it into no more than a cheap ride with guns on it. Barasia didn't need a limousine as opposed to a simple barge that could get her one place to the next. Why even bother with this ship, then? Why go to some faraway future place to get ahold of it if all you needed it for was transport and blowing stuff up? There was a large blast door to one side, leading to a maze of corridors beyond, no doubt. That would not suit them well even if they were in groups of two and in constant contact. With each turn looking exactly like the last, they might never find what they were looking for. Bell glanced above the door and grinned at what met her eyes: a small duct, blocked by a mesh grille, that was probably too small in width for anyone older than a teenager to squeeze into. But being the diminuitive tyke-warriors that they were, their bodies could fit into that duct without a problem. "In there is a maintenance shaft which runs one end of the ship to the other. That'd be the best way to start. We have no idea where Barasia is so if we cover both ends of the ship and work back toward the middle, we'd have a much better chance at finding her."

Buttercup, neither convinced nor satisfied, turned to Bell and glowered, "Can't you just lock onto her brain signal or something? You got that from her when you did that nano crap to her, right?"

Bell shook her head, "Every time she recharges, installs something new or undergoes a refit, her brain signal alters. Right now, there's nothing coming from her that is even similar to what I got from her last time. That means she either regenerated a hell of a lot over the last few weeks, or... must have pretty much re-installed her entire system."

"And... that's not a good thing, is it..." Blossom asked, to which she was responded with a shake of the sugar-topped head.

"Do we get to decide who our partner will be-"

Bubbles was cut off by Bell, who loudly declared, "Blossom is with me."

Buttercup gawped at her for a moment, still hovering above the cold metal floor, before blurting out a furious "WHAT!?"

"I know this place well from the diagrams I have, and I decided to take Blossom with me. Is... there a problem with that?"

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Bloodsguar Studios member

WE ARE ALL GRIDS

Knew it. Although that metaphor about the mountains melting was slightly off. You should've done it with icecaps instead. That...well, your choice really. Just trying to say SOMETHING constructive.

_________________
The Life and Times of Shad Staydamind PPG fic; finished. part 1/3
Dual Minds Think Alike PPGD fic, part 2/3; finished (trilogy is on an indefinite hiatus)
Hidden Angels Original, ongoing fiction. (also hiated. Stupid college!)

Mountains are considered solid, immovable objects. The metaphor of even these not standing up to her insisted that Blossom's glare was quite intense. Take it or leave it.

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Bloodsguar Studios member

WE ARE ALL GRIDS

Hehehe Naturally Bell insists being with Blossom...aw...her fondness for her is just too adorable to me. Does Blossom even suspect anything of the sort? Man, what would Dexter's reaction be if he realized he had competition...and the competition was another girl? XD

Ah, the ol' airshaft ploy. You'd think villains would've learned to at least place 2-inch thick metal grates at certain intervals...or else make CERTAIN they aren't wide enough to be navigated. I wonder if Barasia will know they're doing that, or if this will actually manage to throw off whatever Barasia just sent to play Minataur in this Labyrinth?

Things are soon to get good/horrific methinks...

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Harry intentionally used the occlumantic link to see Voldemort's thoughts. He was flicking lit matches at Lucius Malfoy.
"Your pain bores me," said Darth Nonose. "Go fetch Severus. I have some death for him."
Wazit_Blade: "Gah! J-Dude just invaded the thread!"

Competition... If that ever happened, I wonder what Dexter would do?

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@Kusang: Hehehe...exactly

You know, I'm surprised Barasia didn't think of just putting a slow acting poison in the ship's air to easily get rid of the original three PPGs. I'm glad she's at least being a LITTLE sportsman, but Hell, Portal's homicidal, monotone and likely schizophreinic supercomputer "Glados" thought enough to use her environment to try getting rid of the protagonist. This is what she says after you destroy her morality module and unknowingly put her into murder-mode...

http://media.putfile.com/Neurotoxin

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Harry intentionally used the occlumantic link to see Voldemort's thoughts. He was flicking lit matches at Lucius Malfoy.
"Your pain bores me," said Darth Nonose. "Go fetch Severus. I have some death for him."
Wazit_Blade: "Gah! J-Dude just invaded the thread!"

Buttercup glanced at Bubbles, who seemed no less than terrified that she had to share an almost-empty spaceship with her aggressive emerald sister. So what if Bell was just relying on pictures? Buttercup had a chance to be alone with Bubbles. A chance to torment her. A chance... to have a decent talk with her. "I... I guess not." Buttercup responded. Neither Bubbles nor Blossom had voiced their opinion, but Buttercup took their silence as an agreement. Dexter would still be on the line, hopefully, to help them if things got messy. Buttercup hated being assisted in any way, shape or form. But in this instance, a little extra backup would not go astray. She wondered what the Professor was doing right now. Was he still pretending as though this was not a big deal? Was he still thinking positive and by doing so, ignoring the entire situation? Buttercup growled. So much for reassurance. Well, at least it was better than being alone up here. Perhaps Bubbles was willing to listen to her complain. It's not like she'd have much else to do. "Where do you want us to go?"

Bell glanced at nothing for a moment, consulting her schematics. It was like being given an old treasure maps with pathways and obstacles all marked out for her. The only problem was, there was no X on this one telling them where to go. The duct went only two ways, but it covered the entire length of the ship in order to provide maximum amount of access. Those small things could easily be used to their advantage. "Well... one end goes toward the front of the ship and the other goes to the back... I suppose that, at the front, there'd be the main weapon. At the rear would be... the engines, I suppose."

Buttercup liked the idea of taking out either of those. Without the main weapon, the entire terror of this ship would vanish in the blink of an eye, leaving it as just another satellite in orbit with no sort of tactical merit. That other weapon that had fired on them earlier would probably be a problem, still, but nowhere near as potent. Yet, if they took out the engines, the ship would be going nowhere. That way, all manner of weapons from the planet below could be trained upon this ship the moment the rest of the population were alerted to it, and it would be a sitting duck. It would also stop Barasia from getting to the sun, in order to perform that diabolical act of hers and turn the solar system into an easy-bake oven. It was one thing to allow Barasia to slowly and methodically blow the Earth to pieces. But it was another entirely to grant Barasia her ultimate desire, and thus put countless other lives upon countless other planets at risk. She was the toughest, the most headstrong, and by far the one to care the least about tactics. But duty came before any of that. Bell and Blossom were always getting the fun. It was time she did something to make a real difference. "If it's ok with you, I'll take Bubbles down to the engines."

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Bloodsguar Studios member

WE ARE ALL GRIDS

Hehe, Dex has competition, how sweet.

If I was up there, I would probably go to the weapon and blow it up, so it couldn't fire. I would've saved countless lives.

Heres a question for you all: If Barasia was somehow defeated ( I know, perish the thought.) what would you do with the ship? Would you keep it and terrorize the nations and make them pay large sums of money? Would you sell to the highest better? Would you be nice and give it to NATO so the could study it?

On a side note: I did the Magic thing Kusang. I got blue.

Shadow: PWND! just kidding.

JD: that, creped the hell out of me.

Kusang: I been thinking that Exact same thing for So long now.

BTW, your not a politician, you just don't have an anus.

Grimreaper: hmmm...BLOW UP SCHOOL'S!!!!

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Name: NG



Word's, spoken from the master.

Fine fine, I take it! I'm not good at metaphors, that I'm not...at all. So no, I have no other suggestions. At least, no suggestions that don't sound aggressively stupid.

...yes, I know what you said before and frankly, I don't want to embarrass myself.

_________________
The Life and Times of Shad Staydamind PPG fic; finished. part 1/3
Dual Minds Think Alike PPGD fic, part 2/3; finished (trilogy is on an indefinite hiatus)
Hidden Angels Original, ongoing fiction. (also hiated. Stupid college!)

Ah, so the girls are really going for strategy here. Is Barasia going to end up regretting allowing them to plumb the ship's depths at will?

@Grim: Personally, since the thing doesn't belong in this time-frame, I'd cruise control it into the Sun. Although really, it's a nice ship with a big gun, but it's not the best out there. The Dominatrix is about 500 meters long (1640 feet long) and while possessing a high class weapon, it CAN be trumped. Look at it's size when compared to something like the Queen Mary 2. Impressive eh? To us, who never built an armed space cruiser, yes.




However, to those like the civilization in the game EVE Online...It's not quite as impressive (though arguably I don't know the scale of ships in "Freelancer" where the Dominatrix and Matriarch originated from)






Notice the Dominatrix in the bottom left corner (boxed in red) of this image, next to the Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty. The Dominatrix would definitely be classified as a Cruiser, and is dwarfed by nearly any battleship, battlecruiser, several cargo freighters, and especially the dreadnaughts. I'd compare the ships here to the Titan class warships in EVE, except there's no need. For the sake of understanding though, a Titan is on average about 15 kilometers long.

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Harry intentionally used the occlumantic link to see Voldemort's thoughts. He was flicking lit matches at Lucius Malfoy.
"Your pain bores me," said Darth Nonose. "Go fetch Severus. I have some death for him."
Wazit_Blade: "Gah! J-Dude just invaded the thread!"

Is that Tarazed I see?

While we're on the discussion on ships...nah, sorry. I always feel left out of this stuff because...well, sci-fi isn't my forte...at all (at least not the kind where huge complex battleships are concerned)

As for what I'd do with it...hmm...can that Diamondback punch a hole in the timespace itself?:P I have a...theory I've had in mind for a while. Top secret. Sorry.

_________________
The Life and Times of Shad Staydamind PPG fic; finished. part 1/3
Dual Minds Think Alike PPGD fic, part 2/3; finished (trilogy is on an indefinite hiatus)
Hidden Angels Original, ongoing fiction. (also hiated. Stupid college!)

There's no Tarazed on there.

_________________
Bloodsguar Studios member

WE ARE ALL GRIDS

Whoa! Check this out! We get to see both the Matriarch AND the Dominatrix in action!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Matriarch and other Freelancer ships...Matriarch doesn't show until 25% into the vid though. And what do you know? Matriarch type battleship fights another Matriarch type battleship 0_0

http://youtube.com/watch?v=H_HDaJc7hLc

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Barasia's in trouble here...Some guy in a fighter takes on the Dominatrix...and wins! No utilization of the Diamonback gun though...just the turrets I guess.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=dpaezC1RzEU

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Harry intentionally used the occlumantic link to see Voldemort's thoughts. He was flicking lit matches at Lucius Malfoy.
"Your pain bores me," said Darth Nonose. "Go fetch Severus. I have some death for him."
Wazit_Blade: "Gah! J-Dude just invaded the thread!"

Twas a joke. Just saying that one of those ships looks like it, but only by half. If I had a pic myself I'd show you but...can't seem to find it. Let's see...hmm...nope. Nothing else to say here I'm afraid. I'll await the next update.

Added after 4 minutes:

Actually, I still have something before the next update. Allow me to take a page from a certain thread and allow you all to display your favorite villain quotes. Could be from anything. Book(novel, novella, short story, manga), TV, movie, video game...also any genre. Let them loose now!

_________________
The Life and Times of Shad Staydamind PPG fic; finished. part 1/3
Dual Minds Think Alike PPGD fic, part 2/3; finished (trilogy is on an indefinite hiatus)
Hidden Angels Original, ongoing fiction. (also hiated. Stupid college!)

"How 'bout NO!?" (Doctor Evil)



"Why would Barasia be THERE?" Bubbles squeaked.

"Who said she was? If we take out the engines, how will she get to the sun?"

"Oooohhh..." muttered Bubbles, the fact dawning on her. "B-But what about the weapon?"

Buttercup glanced at Blossom, "You guys can deal with that, right? We can't let her vaporise a city every few minutes while we try and pop her tyres, after all." she reminded with a strange yet logical metaphor.

Blossom nodded, "Yeah, we can do that."

"The weapon's plasma-based with a cathode-ray system... if we busted that, it'd be a rather big explosion." Bell murmured, more to herself, "Unless we could do it remotely... like... with a power overload or something..."

Blossom gasped, "The core! This thing has to have a big floating core thing, right?"

Bell glanced down, gritting her teeth, "This one has backups and is nowhere near as huge. Barasia learned a few lessons from last time."

"Shit..." cursed Buttercup, "And even if we're chasing superweapons or engines, there's still Barasia herself. I don't think we can go through any option without being royally screwed..."

Bell's mind told her something else, something that she would remember far more clearly than the others. 'And... all this time... she might begin her upgrade... and if she succeeds in that, then she won't need superweapons or engines. She'll embody all that within herself...' "You realise that... by waiting, things aren't getting better for us..."

Buttercup tilted her head, "Dexter?" she called out, hoping her comm chip would still work despite the distance. She heard a faint crackling and knew right away that something wasn't right with his little trinket, "DEXTER!"

A filtered, garbled voice came through their chips, interrupted every now and then by static and signal loss, "-ey! Don't shou.... m trying to.... unicate but there's... erference.... some sor.... dampening field... ocking the signal!"

Blossom was relieved that he was at the very least still alive. That meant that Megaville hadn't been reduced to dust yet. "Alright, we gotta move. I don't care what you do, just..." she glared at the two girls who would split away from her own group, "don't get hurt, ok?"

"No promises." chuckled Buttercup.

"I'm SERIOUS!" Blossom squealed.

Buttercup blinked, "Okay, okay! I'll... I'll be careful." she felt the urge to destroy something rising already. Why couldn't she just go nuts and blow the entire ship up from within by herself?

Bell looked up at the grille that blocked the passage, "Now, we gotta get rid of that thing someh-"

Buttercup threw her arm outward and from it shot a single bright burst of cedar-green light, slamming into the mesh grille and exploding loudly and violently, spitting charred and molten fragments of the blocking metal flying away as though a missile had just struck. Blossom and Bubbles yelped and recoiled at Buttercup's sudden outburst. Her eyes were narrowed and a smirk fixed upon her lips. The smoke, dust and smoldering fragments settled, leaving a sizeable hole where the divider had just been, the remnants still attached now blackened and scorched. Buttercup blinked, eyeing the rather frightened Blossom with satisfaction. Half the numbers = twice the effort. "There. Done."

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Bloodsguar Studios member

WE ARE ALL GRIDS

Eh? Shit? Royally screwed? The heck's up with that?! I thought Buttercup limited profanities to hell and damn. Oh well, nothing to fret about too much. Even if it does turn me off a bit.

Should've known that there'd be interference. Another few yards and all communication will most likely be lost. Also, they don't have to worry that much. Barasia is upgrading right now. Problem is...how long does it take?

_________________
The Life and Times of Shad Staydamind PPG fic; finished. part 1/3
Dual Minds Think Alike PPGD fic, part 2/3; finished (trilogy is on an indefinite hiatus)
Hidden Angels Original, ongoing fiction. (also hiated. Stupid college!)

I got EL 78 today, Shadweiser.

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Bloodsguar Studios member

WE ARE ALL GRIDS

FINALLY!! I'll get back home today so once we get back in contact I expect an explanation!

...you know what I refer to.

_________________
The Life and Times of Shad Staydamind PPG fic; finished. part 1/3
Dual Minds Think Alike PPGD fic, part 2/3; finished (trilogy is on an indefinite hiatus)
Hidden Angels Original, ongoing fiction. (also hiated. Stupid college!)

Not a clue.

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Name: NG



Word's, spoken from the master.

That post was directed at Griddles. Pay no mind.

_________________
The Life and Times of Shad Staydamind PPG fic; finished. part 1/3
Dual Minds Think Alike PPGD fic, part 2/3; finished (trilogy is on an indefinite hiatus)
Hidden Angels Original, ongoing fiction. (also hiated. Stupid college!)

ahh....I understand now

great update, btw

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Flowerpuff Girls Forever <3

Funneh.

Looks Buttercup's getting a chance to be wtih Bubbles... I wonder what will happen between them... *smiles deviously*

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BTW, I'm

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Name: NG



Word's, spoken from the master.

Um...Next-Gen, I've no idea what you refer to. You posted no link to this color quiz. Mind sharing please?

Also, how's that little collaboration going?

Added after 1 minutes:

Never mind. I see it.

Added after 6 minutes:

My color's the same as yours it seems. My favorite color blue.

_________________
The Life and Times of Shad Staydamind PPG fic; finished. part 1/3
Dual Minds Think Alike PPGD fic, part 2/3; finished (trilogy is on an indefinite hiatus)
Hidden Angels Original, ongoing fiction. (also hiated. Stupid college!)