Fabi: The Professor's Assistant, the Saboteurs and everyone following everyone else

      August 2013 

      Sage Tunstall pedaled over to a couple of homeless people and gave them the lunch her Uncle Tate had packed for her. She hated those artificial lunches-that-come-from-the-store-in-a-box, but didn't want to throw it away, because the landfill was already so ****ing full. It didn't need more manmade, artificial, wasted ****. She’d already bought a nice spinach salad at the organic grocery place back in Watkins Square, anyway.

      The wind blew a few strands of hair around her face as she coasted down the hill and around the corner. STARBUCKS! Sage swerved to avoid the line that stretched out the doorway and narrowly missed a tree. Stupid coffee. Stupid landscaping. Also, there really ought to be a bike lane. Why the **** wasn't there a bike lane? Or at least a shoulder in which people weren’t parking their dirty gas-guzzling cars? Seriously. 

      A few more blocks and she'd reached the alleyway. She pedaled past it without a glance, parking her bicycle at a park a block or so away. She chained it to the fence, then walked off in the direction she’d come, this time turning into the alleyway and looking for the door. Where had the old man put it? 

      She glanced along the walls, next to the trash cans and recycling bins (apparently the idiots here didn’t have a compost bin) around the metal gate at the end. Then she looked under the pile of banana peels and facepalmed. Of course it’d be there, a small square trapdoor this time. It looked barely big enough for anyone to fit through, but then, it also looked like it didn’t lead anywhere but into the ground, no hole or anything. When Sage put her foot through it, though, it went through the dirt. She swung it around, searching for a ladder or something, then realized that the other side was sideways. In one swift motion, swung the other leg through and fell through, ending up lying on her back on the floor in the hallway outside the professor’s workshop. 

     *******

     The two figures in black exchanged glances as the girl disappeared. She hadn’t seen them, and they knew that. They also knew where the door was, even though it had automatically closed and the banana peels automatically replaced themselves almost immediately. And now they were going to use that information to their own advantage. Joy. After several minutes, they left, but they’d be back soon enough, probably at night. 

     Fabi opened the gate she’d been hiding behind and started back towards the street, but a man in a grey suit stepped out of nowhere and blocked her path. She sensed the gun in his pocket, preparing to stop a bullet if necessary, but he didn’t draw it. Instead, he pointed. 

      She raised her sword too slowly; she knew that even as she began the motion. When the man pointed at her, it was like a galaxy, stars all over her vision, blinding her. She still had her metal sense, though, and the man had a pair of daggers in his coat. It took all her energy to focus, but he wasn’t moving, watching to make sure the galaxy finished her. The daggers twisted and bent, it felt painstakingly slow, but it was fast enough that the man didn’t have a chance to react. There were more voices now, some of them familiar, but she couldn’t recognize them. She heard a scream cut off, but she was drifting away from it all, farther into space, away from everything she knew and loved. Eventually, she closed her eyes and welcomed the dark void. The stars were gone, and there was…nothing.

     *******

     The professor wiped his brow as Sage left. His assistant had a good heart, that's why he hired her, but sometimes she was a little too...animated. When she started off on a passionate rant about how the planet was pretty much doomed, he couldn't keep up with everything she said as she paced and gestured wildly. Granted, he was a bit diverted by preventing her from knocking over various pieces of intricate machinary, but still, it was exhausting and hard to keep up with.

      They'd made good progress, though, on the machine, the masterpiece which could potentially save the planet. He finished the last bit himself, welding on the flat piece with the inverted handprint. This was the piece he could use to channel his power into the machine, which would then shunt the world's air pollution into an empty dimension. At least, that's what was supposed to happen. 

      When the professor had finished for the night, he locked his lab and went home to drink some tea and then sleep. The figures in black were waiting. The one on the left pulled back her hood slightly, revealing pale skin and a few strands of light blonde hair. "Are you ready for this, Harden?" she asked in an accent that was most likely Scandinavian. 

      The man, Everest Harden, responded in an American accent from someplace southerly. "Of course I'm ready. Why wouldn't I be?" The woman shrugged and headed over to the door, stopping over it and wrinkling her nose. Harden got the message and swept aside the banana peels.           

     The woman opened the trapdoor gingerly, then slipped through, silent as a cat. Harden followed a little more doubtfully. So he wasn't ready, then, the woman muttered under her breath with a small snort. She didn't bother to wait, heading straight for the machine. She'd been trained for a long time, trained to be efficient. It was time for her to use her training, now that she was finally out in the world.

     A quick, deft motion and the woman in black had swapped out the sensor plate. She readjusted the wiring slightly and smiled. "Do you have the seating chart?"
     Harden, who had been pretty useless so far, jumped and hurriedly pulled it out. He read off the seat numbers of several prominent Sanctuary officials.
     The woman smiled wider and hooked up a device that looked sort of like an iPad with a bunch of extra cables coming out. She typed in several commands, and then they were gone the way they'd come. The plan would work, of course. Even the professor's genius couldn't counter it. And even if He did somehow, they'd still get what they wanted. Chaos.

((Chaos as in disorder, confusion and fear, not Adra's creation of the same name. This doesn't refer to an actual being, really. Just clarifying. Also, sorry it's not all the way done, but I felt like I had to post something because it's been a while and I don't want this blog to die before it's begun.))

Fabi: Bios

Fabi: Bios

Um, I need to know this much, and any other info you have lying around would probably be useful.

Also: If you're making a new character for this, please don't make a shunter, as it would be boring if everyone could just go back. If your character can shunt usually, there's something preventing that. Somehow. Magical abilities are allowed, though, unless the dimension specifies otherwise.

For each character who will be shunted:
How would you describe them if you didn't know their name? (red-haired woman, evil-sword guy, mustache dude, nail-biting girl, etc.)
Appearance.
What they would wear to a scientific demonstration.
Personality (if different from in the MC/Blogland RP)
Who do they already know?
Occupation
Back story (As much as you think will be important to the plot. Again, if I already know this, or should already know, you can skip this part)
Magical ability (again, if I don't know. And if it's something unusual, details on what they can do would be nice)
Weapon(s) of choice/fighting style
Reaction to appearing somewhere that's definitely not the theatre.

Example:

Fabi S.
Quiet girl, thinking girl, fidgeting girl, something like that.
She's pretty ordinary looking, I guess. A bit above average height, neither skinny nor fat, light brown hair, blue eyes, a few light freckles and pimples and other spots on her face. Also her nose is extra pinkish in the summer.
Well, since it's an important occasion with plenty of goverment-y official-ish people, she'd probably try to dress up. I imagine she'd wear a nice jacket and a white shirt with buttons and a collar, but she'd have her normal casual black pants and sneakers on. :-P
She's me, so... Some things you can't necessarily tell on the blog: has trouble staying still, doesn't usually say out loud when she's upset, can't stop thinking. And then the rest is me, so...yeah.
She knows whoever, I guess. Up to you all. :-)
She's freelance, but has done work for the American Sanctuary, usually tracking/following potential criminals. She also deals in information and intelligence, though that's not usually something the Sanctuary hires her for. She also does random jobs including assassination, assassination prevention, guard, bodyguard, thievery (if she believes it's a good cause), research, research, research. ((In practice, I feel uncomfortable having her research others' creations, though, so I'm not really sure if her research skills will come into play)) Oh, also she makes weapons with her metal-bending abilities.
((I'm skipping back story for now, since mine is kinda boring))
Fabi bends metal. Basically she reshapes it, it's easiest to melt it into little droplets, but she can di creative stuff too, and if she can concentrate enough, or is going insane (either works) she can actually make the metal heat up to the point where its too hot to touch. Also she can sense metal, sort of like x-ray vision, except it doesn't apply to bones and stuff, just metal. And she doesn't see it, exactly, it's like another sense entirely, and it gets stronger as she works at her metal-bending.
Fabi generally fights with a sword, though she can use anything metal. And she generally doesn't remember to completely melt the opponent's weapon because of the adrenaline. She does manipulate her own sword to lengthen and twist in unexpected directions and she uses her metal-sense the best she can.
Fabi would probably think it was a conspiracy plot at first and ask who everyone was to see if there was any connection. She'd try to pretend not to panic, but would fidget a lot, and would take charge of the situation only if no one else did. I imagine she would realize what was going on to some extent, at least the fact that they had been mistakenly shunted, but she wouldn't really know what to do about it.

And anything else you want to include. As I said, if I roleplay with you a lot, or you're in the MC, I probably can write your character based on that. And the number of characters you want to include is up to you, I guess, as long as it's reasonable.

And I'm going to start writing the intro now, I think. And I'm going to need the bios before I can finish it, but the beginning should be okay...

So...yeah. Any questions, comments, concerns, feel free to let me know.

Fabi: How Stuff May or May Not Work

Okay. So this is how I think it will work:

I'm going to start, and I'll write the part where the shunting experiment goes wrong and sends people to another dimension. I'll need profile/bio things for any characters you want included. If you want to write it from your character's perspective later you can as well. It's optional. And then someone else (Ember may have volunteered) will invent the first dimension and do two posts--a first chapter and a brief description of anything she wants to specify about her world. Anything minor that wasn't specifically said about a place can be decided later by whoever's writing at the time. And then people who want to write for the dimension can do so, and we probably need a writing order or people can split up, whatever works. Because it's not just called the Shunting Experiment because it's an experiment that goes wrong in the plot. The entire collab is an experiment, really.

And if any of that sounds like it won't work, or you have a different idea, then comment! I'm open to suggestions and ideas of any kind, and I would love input on this idea.

Also: After the collab has started, I'm leaving the option open for anyone to guest write a dimension without joining the collab, if no one else has a particular idea that time around. Unless anyone has an objection to this.

So, um, I might start like advertising this collab in Blogland, but if I'm really annoying you, you can tell me to shut up.

Fabi: SO IT HAS A BLOG NOW...

...WHICH PROBABLY MEANS IT'LL ACTUALLY HAPPEN AT SOME POINT IN TIME.

I haven't the faintest idea how to run one of these things, though. I mean, I can add authors and yeah, play with the font, formatting, etc., but as far as the actual logistics behind it..like getting people interested, getting the working together bits to work out okay, and all those little details like that...I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING. How exciting!

Copy-and-pasted idea summary from my blog:

Earth is polluted, almost to the point of an apocalypse, so Professor So-and-so decides to try an experiment to move the pollution to an empty dimension. The most powerful shunter in centuries. s/he arranges a demonstration to hopefully save the planet, but it goes awry (possibly through sabotage?), sending random audience members (aka the contributors) traveling from dimension to dimension, and no one knows how to stop it (until the collab is over)

Then, everyone could take turns coming up with a dimension. Like, anything. One person would set the stage and specify anything important they wanted to have in their dimension and then anyone else who wanted to try would have a turn and then we'd all be automatically shunted to another dimension. If the characters split up, they wouldn't necessarily appear in the same place in the next dimension, so different people can write at once (after the first person has invented the dimension) and if anyone was touching someone when everyone was shunted again, they'd join. And anyone who dies dies.

There can be anything in a dimension, alternate endings with SP characters, (Like Tanith with no remnant! :D or Sanguine being from somewhere other than Texas. That'd be weird, but the whole point of this would be a fun experiment-y thing, so weird is okay)

And that's my idea as it currently exists--subject to changes depending on what people want to do.

And if no one wants to do this, I might write it myself, because it sounds like fun, to me anyway. :-)

BUT PEOPLE READ THAT AND COMMENTED OR TALKED TO ME ABOUT IT. AND NO ONE READS MY BLOG! SO APPARENTLY THERE'S INTEREST IN THE IDEA. SO I GAVE IT A BLOG NOW. 

AND THE ANSWER TO EVERY QUESTION IS "I DON'T KNOW."

EXCEPT IF YOU'RE ASKING TO JOIN. THE ANSWER IS YEAH, IF I DON'T LOSE INTEREST IN THE IDEA. FABI CAN BE FLAKY AT TIMES AND FORGETFUL. ALSO SHE GETS BORED REALLY EASILY.