Posts #211-215: 16-17 April 2000

Post #211, by Mog116

"We keep running into each other, know that?" Mog was standing behind Jenny in the apartment hall. Jenny slammed the door shut in surprise. "What're you doing here!?" Jenny asked Mog. "Came to ask you if you called your parents yet." "I did! My dad went Crazy! They're gonna arrest us!" "They can't." "Your righ the can't! If the arrest us..." "If they arrest us they will go to jail themselves. When I called my mom a while back she bought the island. They can still kill us, but then our parents would kill them. My mom owns the Island, so we do to, but there is one way the can arrest us and that's for running away.

What the f---???

Your... mother owns the island.

.... yeah.

But they can't arrest me, because I called my mom 3 days ago. If you get arrested I can bail everyone out." All this didn't assure her, though, mainly because she couldn't understand Mog because he said it very, very fast, as though he had planned that to happen and rehearsed the whole thing.

Watching the posters each try to figure out a way to make themselves important makes me smile.

"Umm... They can still claim the name under America! There's a loophole in that law." Mog stared at the wall a while. "Oh... Oh No! You're right! We have to warn the others." Mog and Jenny headed to the speaker room that controlled every speaker on the Island.

He had to have been high as a kite when he wrote this.

---

Post #212, by Tengu Man/Makron

The mysterious referee had gone his way north a little, having barely any problems except for a few small snakes and some cattle in his way. He found a large desert and went inside.

You know he's a badass because he so easily handled all that cattle.

Also: ...went inside? A desert?

"Whatcha need?"

"To know where I am, really, and directions."

"This is the Dusty Dunes Desert. It's big and not very populated, but a lot of sunbathers like to come here. West of here is the city of Threek, and east of here is the city of Fourside."

Threek, as some of you probably know, is the truer transliteration from the original Japanese of what in EarthBound is called Threed. As his handle suggests, Tengu Man was an early pioneer of wannabe-Japaneseism, which swept the gaming-oriented portions of the internet like a tidal wave around 2004-2005.

The boy pondered this to himself, "I never doubted it could be possible... But maybe I should bring back proof." then he spoke out loud, "Thanks."

GEE, I WONDER WHO HE WILL CHOOSE TO BRING BACK AS PROOF.

(If you don't understand that bit of sarcasm, then you obviously have never read a Tengu Man post, or even heard anyone talk about Tengu Man, in your life, ever.)

He left and went west, towards Threek. When he got there, he looked around, noting the large yellow circus tent in the center of town, and the rather interesting graveyards north of the town. He then came up with an idea.

"I can bring of THEM back to the party..." he rushed northwards, a smile on his face...

Back at the party...

"Has anyone seen that mysterious referee?" Chris asked, "I wanted to thank him about the swim meet."

If you want to put money on that, I'm willing to bet Chris actually could not care less about the referee.

"Not lately, probably in his room." said someone else.

Two punctuation errors from Tengu there. It was his Achilles Heel.

He went up and knocked, but got no answer.

"Peculiar..."

The door then opened. Chris shrugged and went inside, hoping to find the mysterious referee. He didn;t see anything except an answering machine with a note on it.

You know, it's interesting that Chris is Tengu's chosen vessel here; Tengu is conspicuously avoiding even referencing PSI322. Those two had a rocky relationship, to put it kindly. I suppose this was one of those periods where Tengu and PSI got in some IF-related snit or another recently.

"If anyone cares where I am, check in on this answering machine. - The Referee."

"Why not?" Chris turned it on.

Almost all other posters would have ended their post at that point, allowing Chris to decide whether he cared or not, but Tengu would never do such a thing. Tengu foreordains what other AC's are going to do, which is why his posts are so long. And if you tried to do that to his AC, he would flip out.

The referee's voice came in loud and clear:

"Since you do care, I'll explain... If you came to thank me for the swim meet, your welcome, but I've come upon a big discovery.

Hinting at ESP, there. A subtle little 'I'm awesome'. Tengu was pretty good at this IF thing.

As you know, the Syndicate found this island for us, BUT... that doesn't mean this island was empty before that time. I've seen buildings and other structures here, like a ghost town. This has made me to believe that the continent already has some inhabitants, if not a platoon of 'em. Dare I say... we may have come upon THE biggest discovery in the midst of SM.net history, and even EB's history itself... More will come as I find out..."

See how important Tengu has made himself? Mog116 better be taking notes.

If Chris were smart, or if guruzeth were around, there would be a post right after this one saying 'actually, the Syndicate knew that all along.'

Chris began to ponder, but remembered he had other things he had to tend to, and left...

---

Post #213, by Little Yoshi

Tim quickly got the phone in his boat working.

A not-so-subtle way of saying, I don't need your stinkin' cell phone.

By the way, this remarks me of Item #139 That Irks Me in The Dark Knight*: You know the scene with the two ferries, right? Captain A notices that the radio isn't working. Then Captian B notices that his radio isn't working. They both just shrug helplessly and concede that there's simply no way to communicate with the other ship.

Why the hell didn't they use one of the 400 available cell phones?

Possible arguments, shot down:

(a) "There were no cell phones on the prisoners' boat." Bulls---. It would have been mandatory for at least a couple of the cops to carry one.
(b) "There wasn't reception out over the river." Also obviously wrong. You can't go anywhere in New York Gotham and not have crystal-clear cell reception.
(c) "The Joker somehow jammed the cell phone signals." That's basically the only semi-plausible explanation, but come on. The movie loses all kinds of credibility for not at least having a passing reference to someone trying a cell phone and saying 'no good, there's no signal!' Also, this is highly problematic since the Joker was using a cell phone to communicate with the passengers via the ships' intercoms (that's how Batman was able to figure out where he was), which one presumes would be impossible were the signal jammed.

Back to your regularly scheduled Gathering...

* Item #1 is Maggie Gyllenhall, and for good measure, Item #2 is Maggie Gyllenhall. Let's move on.

"Hello?" his mom said.
"Hi Mom, this is Tim!" I said.
"How's Eagland?" She asked.

Not sure if that's Tim's typo, or if he's cutely having good ol' ditzy Mom not knowing what the island's name actually is and misstating it. I'm going with the former, as the latter is semi-clever and therefore probably beyond Tim's grasp.

"It's great, though I've had to battle off monsters for the island," Tim said.

For The Island©!

"Monsters?! They weren't big ones, were they? Are you hurt?!" Mom replied.

Sheesh, Mom, I'm an AC. I have super-lasers.

"Don't worry Mom, I'm just fine...at this minute, but I've overheard something about that the FBI are going to drag us home," Tim said.
"Whew! You're okay! Now, about the FBI, I'll have Dad look over the laws about that."

I can't believe anyone's giving this load of FBI bulls--- the light of day.

"Well, Mom, I love you alot! Bye!"Tim said
"Bye!"Mom said. Tim waited. He never hung up on someone, he always waited for them to hang up first. Beep. Beep.

Haha. That's actually kind of interesting. I like reading about people's weird idiosyncrasies. I refuse to ever eat the last {piece of candy, cookie, potato chip crumbs, whatever}, even if it's something I love so much I considered marrying it, such as Junior Mints, on the theory I might really need it later, or someone else might want one later. Eventually it gets old and has to be discarded, but I've long since bought another package.

Tim hung up the phone, to see a Kraken looming overhead. Suddenly, the world around Tim became black, and he knew what that meant. An even battle!

I'm pretty sure Krakens don't fly. Like, almost positive.

Hey, you guys ready for an EarthBound clinic? I got one coming up right now!

Tim quickly fired defensive lasers.
32 HP of damage to Kraken!

Kraken has around 1000 HP. Tim's just getting warmed up.

Kraken emmited a pale green light!
It had no effect!
Tim fired his offensive laser!
123 HP of damage to Kraken!
Kraken breathed fire at you!

It's just 'Kraken breathed fire!'.

Tim's shield made the fire go away!

Kraken's fire breath has the same effect as PSI Fire Gamma, but is not blockable by any shield.

Tim equpped the Masamune instead, and slashed!
Just missed!
Kraken used a Crahing Boom Bang attack!
Tim's shield made the thunder disappear!

Unlike with PSI Thunder, no kind of shield can block the lightning from a Crashing Boom Bang or electrical shock attack. Tim should have referenced the Franklin Badge instead.

Tim's shield disappeared!
It didn't hit anyone!
Tim used Leap Slash!
352 HP of damage to Kraken!
Kraken breathed fire at you!
793 HP of damage to Tim!
"Thank goodness for my guts rating!" Tim said.
Tim used Lifeup y!

Gamma. It looks sort of like a little y.

Tim recovered 512 HP!

The result of Lifeup Gamma is always '[character]'s HP are maxed out!'

---

Post #214, by NessJeff

"Mog, this is a six on six battle. Select your best, I'll select my best. From my level 76779 or something like that."
"I'm dead, right."
"Not neccesarily. IF you can exploit weaknesses properly, you have a 1 in 647,768,868,567 chance of winning."

So why the hell would I bother playing? Do you think I, and/or all humanity, exist for the purpose of helping you feel like a winner?

"Never tell me the odds."

That quote's already been done. Like eleventy billion times. But most notably by QC/PP on this very thread.

"For my team I select, Paula! Sora/Biyomon(Digimon are considered attacks of the digidestined, by thebattle menu) Izzy/Motimon, CheeseLeoMon(Some are my own creation) Drew(Yes, I programmed me in. I am a weakling compared to Paula.)

ROFL

and Joe/Gomamon."
"Very well, I select..."

---

Post #215, by Superspeedy/Mankey Boy

Meanwhile, at David's and Poryhedron's hotel room:

• David called his dad, whose also named David at work.

"Hello. Cerlione's," said Lou, a worker at dad's store.

Based on that information, I could have tracked down SS/MB's identity, home address, etc. in like 5 minutes.

"Hello," said David.
"Hold on," said Lou.
{two minutes later.}
"Hello?" said Dave's dad.
"Hey, daddy!" said Dave.

In case you were wondering whether SS/MB's age was a two digit number. It was not.

"Monkey Boy!" exclaimed his Dad. (Monkey Boy is one of the many names dad calls me. Sometimes he calls me "Buddy!" or "Dudeio" (pronounced Dude-E-O))

That's heartwarming.

"Did you get home from school early?"
"No, dad!" said Dave. "I'm vacationing at Eagleland island. [whispering:]Keep that a secret."
"Eagleland?" said his Dad. "That sounds like the country from Earthbound."
"It's a secretly discovered country/island discovered by the so-called 'syndicate' of Starmen.net! Waffle, another EB fan from New Jersey, is here, as well as some weird Pikachu and a pokémon author character I made."
"Who? Which AC?"
"Poryhedron!"
"What's he, a Pikachu?"
"No. He's a Porygon: a pokémon made entirly of computer code!"
"Figures!"
"He can talk, too!"
"Do you mean he can say more then his name?"
"Yep!"
"Let me talk to him!"
"OK!" He turned to Poryhedron and said, "He wants to talk to you."
"Hi!" said Poryhedron into the phone. He was holding the phone up to his head using his PSI.
"You better protect my son." said Dave's Dad.
"I will," said Poryhedron.
"How long is this vacation?"
"About 5 days, since the start. And today ain't the first day!"
"Okay. Put my son back on the line."
Poryhedron floated the phone over to Dave, who grabbed it.
"Come home when it's over!" said Dave's dad.
"I will. Bye!" said Dave.
"Bye!" said his dad.

• Dave hung up the phone.

He's using the bullets to mimic EarthBound's text style, by the way.

"Come on, Poryhedron!" said Dave. "Let's find Waffle and Pikachu, and enjoy the sights and festivities."
"Okay!" said Poryhedron.

Sorry for the lack of annotation, but... I just really have no comment on this post. I'm just kind of staring at it with my mouth open.