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nakanosorami · 5 years

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deluge/cherry, 19!

princess deluge/prism cherry - kiss good luck.

ao3 mirror

I wonder if everyone is here, Prism Cherry thought.

Her footsteps echoed from within the abandoned factory. This place used to make her nervous, but now its wear and the deceptic walls held warmth. After all, it was here that she met up with her closest friends every afternoon. A “secret base”, as they said. The fact that someone normal like Prism Cherry, considered boring by magical girl standards, had received an invitation to play with magical princesses was unreal in itself. It made her feel almost… special.

Upon reaching the underground part of the facility, Prism Cherry descended down a ladder with steel cool to the touch. It wasn’t long until she finally arrived at large, shiny door, complete with a number pad on the wall beside it. She didn’t have to worry about entering a combination. The first time she arrived, she was told that there wasn’t a need to set a password or anything. They’d probably never need one.

She entered the control room shortly after and was greeted by a gust of wind.

“Cherry!” Tempest cried, launching herself directly into Prism Cherry’s chest. Prism Cherry made a small noise from the impact and stumbled back a step. “Help me! Inferno’s gonna get me!”

“Don’t go crying to her!” She looked up to see Inferno approaching them, though she stopped a few steps away and pointed an accusing finger at Tempest. The flames dancing around her body crackled. “You’re being a big baby.”

Prism Cherry smiled warily and pet the top of Tempest’s head. After Tempest buried her face further in, Prism Cherry resigned to her fate as a cushion and redirected her attention towards the other girls present. “What’s going on?”

“Tempest played a prank on Inferno,” Quake answered from across the room, her arms folded over her chest. Her large tail flickered by her feet, and she lightly shrugged her shoulders, adding, “But I don’t think she should be too hard on her… It was cute, in my opinion.”

“Yeah, and I’m not a baby!” Tempest responded, muffled.

Prism Cherry’s hand came off Tempest’s head as the younger girl twisted back to stick her tongue out at Inferno. Inferno returned it immediately. It was so immature that Prism Cherry found it charming. She couldn’t imagine living a world where Inferno and Tempest weren’t picking on each other. Everyday, these simple interactions wove their way into her heart, and she was sure she’d keep the memories forever.

Before Prism Cherry could offer support, Tempest withdrew from her chest and flew to Quake’s side instead. She then hid behind Quake’s shoulders and continued to argue with Inferno. Quake flustered and raised her hands to try and diffuse the tension.

It was failing horribly.

“Hehe,” Prism Cherry giggled to herself, smiling at the display. Sure, they were messing around, but she knew there wasn’t any harm in it. The Pure Elements fiercely loved each other, of course. And speaking of… “Where’s Deluge?”

“Here.”

She turned around to see Deluge standing in the doorway, her head to one side and a slight smile on her face. Prism Cherry’s heart abruptly thumped and her cheeks warmed. Unlike the other Pure Elements’ smiles, it seemed like Deluge’s was softer, different, and only the corners of her lips drew up just a bit. It felt… reserved, and perhaps a hundred times more potent to Prism Cherry’s psyche.

“Did you just get here, too?” Prism Cherry asked, glancing down at the bag in Deluge’s hand.

“Mhm. I was here earlier, but I went to pick up a snack for Tempest,” Deluge replied, reaching into it and retrieving a bag of potato chips. She tossed them across the room. Tempest stopped antagonizing Inferno long enough to catch them, using her other hand to give a thumbs up. “What about you?”

“Oh, yes, I got here too a few minutes ago.”

Deluge nodded, and then she turns her head towards the other princesses.

“Then it looks like we’re all ready, right, guys?”

Tempest cheered and dove out of the room with a burst of wind spiraling after her, rustling Prism Cherry and Deluge’s hair as she flew by them. Inferno shot Quake a look, exasperated, and followed after, shouting, “You better finish that snack before we start!”

Prism Cherry offered what she hoped was an apologetic smile towards Quake, and the oldest Pure Element returned it, although it was a bit weak from the stress of mediating Inferno and Tempest’s quarrel. The color lingering in Quake’s cheeks complimented the gentle brown of her eyes.

“We’ll be in your care, Cherry,” Quake said kindly, smoothing down the ruffles of her magical girl costume. She dipped her head. “Let’s do our best today, okay?”

“Yes!” Prism Cherry squeaked, bowing completely. She heard a soft laugh from beside her, and she blushed again.

There were only two left.

“Well,” Prism Cherry began, rolling the toe of her boot across the floor, “I should go ahead and get everything ready.”

With a nervous bounce in her step, Prism Cherry made her way over to the control panel and settled in the chair facing the overhang of monitors. They flickered to life after she pressed a few keys, and with a breath of relief, she saw that the other girls had arrived in the forest training area as hoped. After she got a better look, she realized one was still missing.

“Hey, Cherry,” Deluge suddenly addressed her. Startled, Prism Cherry rolled the chair around and saw that Deluge had followed and was now standing beside her.

“Y-yes?”

“You’re… having fun here, right?”

Deluge’s tone was quiet, and the ocean blue of her eyes reflected the screens beside them like pools of liquid mercury. Her hand came forward to rest on the top of Prism Cherry’s head, and she stroked the rainbowed, translucent strands there. The warmth of Deluge’s hand sent a shiver up Prism Cherry’s spine, and without a doubt in her mind, her face had turned a vibrant pink.

“I…” She started, her voice wavering. Deluge’s hand stopped at the quiver and her brows drew in concern. Prism Cherry willed herself to continue on, and said, “I’ve never had this much fun before.”

“Really?” Deluge asked, and Prism Cherry saw her shoulders rise in surprise.

“Yes,” she replied, reaching up with one hand and settling it above Deluge’s own. Prism Cherry pulled Deluge’s hand down and held it in front of her, admiring the jewelry adorning Deluge’s fingers. She avoided meeting eyes. “I, um… didn’t really have friends before you talked to me. But now I have fun everyday. With everyone.”

While words came out stunted, she was earnest.

“I’m really happy you told me you were a magical girl, Deluge,” she went on.

Tenderly, Prism Cherry ran her thumb over the gauntlet wrapped around Deluge’s middle finger. She knew what she was saying wasn’t entirely correct. The Pure Elements weren’t true magical girls and knew nothing of the Land of Magic. She could pretend, couldn’t she? And avoid revealing that secret for just a little while longer?

Prism Cherry channeled her strength and said, “If it wasn’t for you, I think I’d still be alone. I really love everyone… but you’re special to me, and I love you a lot too.”

A small silence idled by before Prism Cherry finally looked back up at Deluge’s face.

The rise of Deluge’s cheekbones were dusted a delicate pink, as were her ears. Her eyes were also big, wide enough that Prism Cherry expected koi fish to be swimming within their brilliant blue depths, and her mouth was parted just slightly. When their gazes met, Deluge flushed again and the color became brighter.

“Aha… jeez,” Deluge laughed breathlessly, yet she curled her fingers around Prism Cherry’s to prevent Prism Cherry from pulling away. “You really have way more power than you think you do. I don’t think I was ready for that.”

“Oh, um!” Prism Cherry stammered, her legs anxiously fidgeting around from beneath her. “I’m - I’m sorry, I—”

Before she could finish apologizing, Deluge had already leaned down and towards her face. She saw a brief glimpse of Deluge’s eyes again, now sparkling like sapphires this close up, and then immediately felt a ticklish pressure against her lips. Prism Cherry went rigid in shock. Deluge’s lips… were very soft, like warm, feathery flower petals, and Prism Cherry managed to savor that feeling for a few quick seconds.

Deluge withdrew and the two of them breathed out in unison.

“D-Deluge…!” Prism Cherry gaped.

“That was for luck!” Deluge said, flashing her most iconic and refreshing smile. A cupid’s arrow struck Prism Cherry in the heart and she trembled, hovering on a precipice between yelping or fainting. Unlike the grins that Deluge, no, Nami, gave their shared classmates, this one reached her eyes. It was genuine, from the very bottom of Deluge’s heart. “I’m going to beat the others today for sure! Please watch me, okay?”

Deluge gave a short wave and quickly bounded out of the control room.

What… happened?

She slowly swiveled the chair back towards the monitors and sure enough, she saw Deluge enter and meet up with the other expecting Pure Elements. Prism Cherry knew they were waiting on her to set the match now, and she leaned forward and pressed the appropriate keys before covering her face with her hands. Her heart was pounding, whether from excitement or adrenaline, she couldn’t tell.

Peeking through the gaps between her fingers, Prism Cherry saw Princess Deluge wielding her powerful magic with the smile from earlier still on her face.

And Prism Cherry smiled too.

#prism cherry #princess deluge #princess inferno #princess tempest #princess quake #jokers #fanfic #Anonymous

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koderenn · 6 years

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Summary: A severed Force bond cuts deep into their healing past, as Ren and Rey struggle to redefine themselves and what they mean to each other. But with a schism running down the New Republic and the remnants of the First order in hiding, time is of the essence and broken hearts only get in the way.

Click here for Chapter 1

Poe dragged a chair next to the narrow bed, its metal legs screeching against the durasteel floor of the medical bay. He flipped it and straddled it, setting his forearms on its back and looking at the young woman in front of him with worry. Rey was still asleep, but according to the medical staff should be waking up any minute now. A monitor at the side of the bed beeped in rhythm to her heart rate and its screen blinked her vital signs. A soft yellow light overhead warmed the simple white and blue colors of the room. The clean soft curves and glass surfaces of the ship’s architecture reminding him of its manufacturer’s aquatic origin. The Mon Calamari species.

Poe rested his chin on the back of his hands, studying the crease between Rey’s brows and the light downturn of her lips, evidence of her discomfort even in her drug-induced sleep.

He rubbed his red eyes and unshaven face. The image of Rey hunched over, in pain, with tears streaking down her cheeks, was burnt and seared irrevocably in his memory. And the helplessness he had felt when he and Leia came across her, bloody and writhing outside the heavy metal doors of the medical bay with nothing but that man’s name on her lips, was a feeling he had never experienced before.

All her pain was because of him; currently sedated and recovering two doors down the bay. Anger boiled in his chest blistering and scalding at the thought of Kylo Ren and the atrocities he had committed. The leniency and forgiveness that Leia was showing was understandable. She was after all his mother.

But Rey…

Rey’s attachment to that man ran deeper than he could have ever expected. It was obvious that she genuinely cared for him. A lot more than he was comfortable or willing to accept.

Poe ran his fingers through his unkempt curls, dejectedly.

I doubt Rey ever felt like that for me.

He shifted in his seat pinching his eyes with his thumbs and willing the image of them together out of his mind. The acrid truth of their relationship stung too much. Instead he tried to focus on the last few days and the events that had transpired since then. They were equally as mind-blowing but at least he had found himself able to cope with them.

Barely.

The world was turning upside down and he didn’t know which end was what. There were Stormtroopers aboard the ship, wishing to defect. Coruscant was in rubbles and its fugitives were boarding Republic ships with any means possible. More than half of the First Order fleet was either surrendering or blowing themselves up. General Hugs with a handful of Star Destroyers had disappeared to Force knows where. And Leia…

Stars, Leia…

Leia was falling apart.

A sigh and slight movement of Rey’s head tore him out of his thoughts and he reached for her motionless hand squeezing it lightly. She mumbled something indiscernible, but quickly went back to her fretful sleep.

He couldn’t stay long. His presence was needed back at the bridge. And he had to figure out what he would do with all these people aboard the Resistance ships. The ships’ supplies weren’t enough to sustain everyone for more than a week or so. Normally Leia would have already been snapping orders around. But not this time.

“How’s Rey?”

Poe looked up startled to see a concerned Finn sticking his head through the open doors.

“She’s, uh…” He sighed. “Asleep. She’s still asleep.”

“Can I come in?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Finn stepped in as silently as he could. With all the commotion going on outside, Poe highly doubted Finn’s boots would be the ones to wake her up.

“I’ll stay with her, till you’re back,” Finn said. “There are messages coming in from the Republic fleet and Admiral D’Acy has just left to take over the helm on the Titan. You really need to get to the bridge.”

I know.

Poe rubbed at his face once more, before steeling himself and getting off the chair. He leaned in and set a kiss on Rey’s creased forehead.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he whispered back.

Poe patted Finn’s shoulder and turned to head out, when he caught hazel eyes trained on Finn, blood shot and racked.

“You’re up!” Finn exclaimed. A flutter of relief and joy went through Poe.

But Rey just sighed and a sheen of tears formed in her eyes. And the voice that left her lips was as broken as the city below.

“He’s gone, isn’t he?”

It was time to register his vitals again. Louise passed outside the Jedi’s room and peeked inside to make sure she was still asleep. General Dameron was seated next to her, pensive and quiet. Louise couldn’t figure out what it is that he saw on that woman. Well, apart from those supposed powers she owned.

She shrugged and walked down the medical bay’s corridor to the room with the bacta tank. The guard stationed outside winked at her and she gave him a hint of a smile in reward before going through the hissing doors. The room was quiet, the General and the Chief of Medicine having obviously departed some time now. Things were finally quieting down as the ship entered the night cycle. There were no more trauma patients coming in as the battle of Corruscant seemed to be coming to its end, finally. These past three days had been exhausting.

She was about to log into the bay’s records, when a crack resounded in the empty chamber and she snapped her head up, the hair at the back of her neck standing on end.

What was that?

Everything was still, apart for the waves of green and grey illuminating the room, and disappearing into its shadows.

She twisted her head towards the direction of the immersed man. His palm was set on the tank’s glass and spidery cracks were covering its surface.

Her eyes widened in horror and her gaze drifted to catch his dark eyes trained at her frozen form.

He’s up. Oh, my merciful gods, he’s awake!

Louise blinked at the terrifying realization and the glass shattered.

Bacta flooded the floor. Thick and muculent. And she remained transfixed, watching the man in the shadows scramble on unsteady feet for a moment or two and impatiently pull on tubes and cords. His broad muscled body straightened slowly and he stared at her through wet strands with burning eyes.

Kylo Ren was free.

Ren’s head hammered with an ache that clouded any coherent thought.

The room was dark and he couldn’t make out a thing about his surroundings. He tried to get to his feet, the slippery ground giving out from under him and making it difficult to properly steady himself. His right leg throbbed and piercing pain radiated around his ribs with every inhale of breath. Cords and tubes covered his body, and familiar anger rose inside him as he tugged everything off and straightened his back.

A woman was standing across the room, gaping at him.

He looked around cautiously trying to decipher his environment through the heavy haze settled in his mind. The pale curved surfaces of the chamber had nothing in common with the harsh charcoal lines of the Star Destroyers, and the woman’s loose attire was far from the constricting First Order uniforms. Which meant…

Ren frowned.

Where am I?

It was quiet in the room. And eerily silent in his mind.

Rey.

Worry crept in his chest, molten and corrosive.

He had to find Rey.

The woman in front of him snapped into action darting for a panel and punching a button that caused blaring alarms to go off. The ear piercing sound seared through his aching head. His palms flew to cover his ears and his shoulders hunched over like a wounded beast’s.

Ren gritted his teeth and instinctively waved his hand, tossing the woman to the wall with a loud thud. Channeling his pain, he gathered the Force and a rod detached itself from the wall flying into his hand, right as the doors opened to reveal a startled guard. A blaster was aimed at him and fired, but the bolt was suspended in midair a few inches away from his outstretched hand. Ren crossed the room in a few swift strides, brutally bringing the rod down to the man’s back. The guard dropped unconscious at his bare feet.

He swirled the rod in his hand in one fluid motion, approaching the now unguarded door.

Something felt seriously wrong and it wasn’t the wounds he bore. He felt empty. Alone. He groped for the thread of energy that tied him to the one person he madly wanted to see, only to realize he couldn’t find it.

Rey?

He stepped into a clean, brightly lit hall, with numerous doors running down its length. The white light stung his eyes and he brought the back of his hand up to shield them. A sterile bitter smell drifted to his nose, reminding him very much of that of a medical ward. He squinted, spotting a pair of metal doors at the end with the distinctive insignia on it. He was right.

A few members of the medical staff, he noticed, had shrunk to the walls, staring at him horrified.

Ren glanced down at his half-naked body, cursing under his breath. He needed to get a change of clothes if he were to have any hope of blending in and finding Rey, as amusing as that seemed. He gripped onto his only weapon tightly and darted for the exit, just as the doors hissed open and more men filed in. They looked scruffy and unkempt in their worn out beige and orange clothes, which resembled very much those of…

The Resistance.

Fuck!

His mind barely had time to reel over the staggering information, when weapons were leveled at him and more shots were fired. He clenched his jaw, flinging the bolts away from him in annoyance. He threw his hand out, wrenching a computer terminal from a wall and tossing its sparking bulk on the soldiers crouching at the entrance.

Ben clawed at the bond again, straining into the Force and frantically calling out Rey’s name, but the cold silence echoing back turned his insides into stone.

Where’s Rey?

Why couldn’t he feel…

Is she…

No. There’s no way she was… He quickly stomped at the thought, desperately un-rooting it from his mind because it simply wasn’t an option. His girl was fine. He’d find her. Fate was cruel, but not that much as to rip her away and let him live instead.

But the nauseating emptiness that ached and throbbed within him cast a heavy shadow on his hopes. He couldn’t feel the bond. He couldn’t feel her…

His vision blurred unexpectedly and his throat clenched, stealing the breath from his lungs.

No.

Ren bit his lip, drawing blood and iron as he tried to contain the agony in his chest spreading like wildfire through his senses. A grunt escaped him, threatening to morph into a primal roar. He gripped the metal rod white-knuckled, searching for a means to release the anguish and despair tearing at his insides.

Doors hissed open to his left and two men barged in the hall.

Ren immediately recognized them and crimson fury eclipsed his vision. He delved for the wide-eyed pilot first, swinging the rod in a side slash aiming for his ribs, but the man got lucky and managed to evade it in the last instant. The traitor reached for the blaster hanging on his hip, but Ren ripped it easily from his hand with the Force. He landed a hard kick on the pilot’s chest bringing him to the floor and aimed the blaster to his head, efficiently freezing all movement in the bay.

Eyes blinked at Ren in fear and awe and hate, hidden behind their blasters. His chest heaved and pain ignited his every breath, but it didn’t even compare to the gaping hole that pulsated inside him. The bond that once tethered him to Rey was no longer there. Replaced only by a raw chasm so deep and bottomless that it threatened to swallow his very sanity if he fumbled with its edges.

Rey was gone.

And nothing else mattered anymore.

“Ben?”

He swirled his head at the voice to his left. A young woman was standing at the doors. She looked frail and tired, with her slim figure clad in a plain medical robe and her long legs bare on the steel floor. Wide hazel eyes were staring back at him on a freckled face that he could map by heart. His girl made of sun and sand would be cold in such a room.

Ren swallowed. The stinging in his eyes distorting his desert girl into an illusion.

It wasn’t her.

This woman standing before him was a complete stranger.

She brought her hand to her mouth to stifle a sob and her eyes welled up with tears. She was looking at him.

It can’t be…

“Rey?” He heard himself rasp.

A blaster went off, but he was too distracted to stop it. The bolt stunned him, causing his knees to buckle and his body to sag heavily on the floor. The room spun and he fought for awareness as light steps approached him slowly, followed by a clicking sound. And then, a warm voice that colored his innocent childhood years spoke sternly, just as he slipped into unconsciousness.

“Sedate him.”

#reylo

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tech-battery · 4 years

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Lenovo improves ThinkPads running Linux but issues with problem machines remain

Last month, when Lenovo announced it was going to certify its ThinkPad lineup for use with Linux operating systems, my mind turned to one device, the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 2.

At the end of last year, I chronicled my issues with the device, and while it was fair criticism at the time that my use of Fedora might not have been the best, with news that Lenovo was going to offer to preload Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Fedora distributions, that choice was more relevant than I could have imagined at the time.

Since its announcement, a surprising number of firmware updates have appeared for the X1 Extreme.

It went unmentioned last year, but the Synaptics fingerprint reader on the laptop was completely useless until around two weeks ago. That brand of reader had long been a pain point when combined with Linux, so it is nice to see some support finally land.

As usual with new Linux compatibility, there are a couple of caveats. You can log in with your fingerprint, but GNOME 3 will not unlock its keyring until you type in a password, so it is best to type in a password when you log in, and use the fingerprint to unlock the lock screen thereafter. On the other end, once a fingerprint is registered, sudo will demand a fingerprint instead of a password. It's really hard to have your cake and eat it too when it comes to desktop Linux.

But the biggest pain point with the X1 Extreme by far was the hybrid graphics setup, which at the time appeared to be a choice between using only the Nvidia GPU or the Intel integrated graphics.

After scouring the web on and off for almost six months, I am pleased to report that a solution was found -- the xorg.conf lines are more or less what's in the documentation but I needed a BusID line for both the Nvidia and Intel device blocks.

I've been using it like this for a couple of months. The display will sometimes freeze for a few microseconds however, and every time, it feels like the X server has crashed until the cursor thankfully shifts when it catches up. So even when it does work, it is not the best experience on offer.

If not for the issues with having to connect external displays I discussed last year, one would be better off using either the discrete or integrated GPU full-time, rather than messing with Nvidia Prime output and X server configurations.

It will be very intriguing how a certified ThinkPad laptop with hybrid graphics performs when Lenovo begins to release them, but properly setting up the X server configuration would have saved many hours of searching for solutions and trial and error testing.

This leaves just one gaping issue with the device. An entirely known quantity but it still needs to be addressed: Battery life.

Part of the problem is that due to running hybrid graphics, and having no way in Nvidia's control panel or the BIOS to switch off the discrete GPU entirely, it is always sucking down an amount of power, even if tiny.

Head over to the Lenovo site and it will claim that this device provides up to 14 hours. That's at least double, if not triple, what you will get in the real world.

I once saw the power remaining widget say 16 hours in the first minute after I charged it to 100% and removed the power cord -- and I suspect a Lenovo engineer once did too, screenshotted it like I did, and wrote it onto a spec sheet. A minute later though, the fleeting fantasy was over and the laptop reported that less than 6 hours battery remained.

After months of usage, any time the laptop says over 4 hours of battery remains is a good time. Lurk in the Lenovo forums and you will see that regardless of whether it is Linux or Windows, this sort of number is par for the course.

However, there were a number of things I did to get that number as high as I could.

The big one is to install powertop to monitor power usage and get an idea of what is going on. One thing I would recommend is to enable the powertop service to automatically set a number of options to maximise power use.

One thing powertop showed was nine watts was headed to the virbr0 networking device. This virtual device provides connectivity to hypervisors, something I don't run with any frequency on here, so I switched it off. For similar reasoning, the ethernet port was disabled in the BIOS. Powertop also confirmed that Wi-Fi was sucking down a bunch of power and turning it off does make a genuine difference.

All up, if you disable all networking, put the screen down as low as you can possibly read it without giving yourself instant eye strain, and cross your fingers and toes, you might be able to eek out five and a half hours of battery life. This still means, should conferences ever return, you'll be heading to a power socket at lunchtime.

In the past hour, I've seen over 20% of the battery dissipate, and that is more or less the standard discharge rate now. At least it is now under 30% per hour.

I point all this out because I am a person who doesn't mind donning the gumboots and tinkering away in the Linux plumbing. After six months of this, I feel I have taken it to a point where there is little potential performance left to squeeze out of the laptop.

Lenovo needs to ensure it is able to provide a proper, workable, and optimised Linux setup on day one. Not months later when users scour forum posts looking for an issue that closely resembles the one they are having at the present time.

Doing it for the Intel-only machine, like the regular X1 Carbon, should be a cinch, but since the company said it was going to certify its entire ThinkPad range, it will have to deal with problem children like the X1 Extreme sooner or later.

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