Happy Halloween!

[mosaic_archive]

It might be a good idea to carry an umbrella when walking in the open area of the Nexus today. Not because of rain, however, but because of a light shower of wrapped fun-sized candies that started when a threshold number of portals reached midnight on October 30th (or the first second of the 31st, depending on how you look at it) and will continue until the same conditions for midnight October 31st.

The free candy is perfectly safe. The ground fog playing over the grassy field, however, carries an LOL with the following effects: If someone is not in costume they suddenly will be (mun's choice), and may have abilities to match whatever they're costumed as. An example would be someone in a ghost costume gaining the temporary ability to float or walk through walls. If someone is already in a costume they might get related abilities, but will otherwise be partly immune. All effects will wear off at the same time as the end of the candy shower.

In other words: Happy Halloween, everyone.

Comments

[dee_lorean81]

That's all right, because Dee happily sucking away on a lollipop herself. And making plans on talking her dad into bringing some of this candy home with them.

Doc frowns. "Hmmmm -- there must be something about the weapon that amplifies the force it exerts on whatever it lands on. . .though I'm admittedly not sure how. Particularly with the force you're talking about -- small tanks? Really?"

"I'd blame video game logic," Marty says, snorting at the comment about Dr. Wily. "Well, good for him, I suppose. Less everybody else, but yeah."

Doc leans in for a closer look once the weapon is summoned. "Interesting. . .though it makes its ability to crush things even more confusing. It looks more like it would pierce whatever it landed on."

"How high can it go?" Alice asks, curious.

[pogo_boy]

"I've bounced as high as some of the big Transformers that used to come here," Quint replies. "So... about the same as a two-story building."

"I'd do a demonstration, but I don't want to bury a bunch of candy in dirt or have it fall in a crater... that would just be a waste of good candy."

[dee_lorean81]

Marty whistles. "Holy crap. Doc and I met one of those guys -- well, girl in our case -- before, and -- yeah. That's pretty freaking high."

"I should say," Alice agrees, eyes wide. "And I thought I could get some good height on my jumps when I visit Wonderland. . ."

Dee, overhearing the bit about wasting good candy, shakes her head and pops her lollipop out of her mouth. "Yeah, no. That would be about as bad as just leaving it here all over the ground."

Doc tries not to smile. "Dee, we can't take all of it back with us."

"I'm not saying we don't share," Dee replies, gesturing to Quint, Blaine, and the others.

[pogo_boy]

"It's still going to take a long time to clean up," Quint says, looking around at all the scattered candy. "But it wouldn't be good to just leave it littered either." He frowns slightly, thinking it over. "Maybe I could request some drones to help gather it up at least. Not Metools... they don't have hands. And not Magflies either... candy isn't magnetic... maybe Battons. They don't actually have hands either, but they do have a retractable pincher they usually use when hanging upside down/" A chuckle, and he adds, "They'd even fit the Halloween theme."

[museicalmarty]

"That's for sure," Marty says, looking around with him. "I don't think the anti-violence field protects against tripping on a Snickers." He grins as Quint mentions the Batton drones. "Retractable pincer? Makes 'em sound like a crane game. Hopefully they're better at grabbing stuff."

"I suppose we could go find some shovels, if you think it would help," Victor comments.

"I'm not entirely convinced the Nexus doesn't clean itself up," Alice admits. "I still remember the time I got splatted by strawberry tarts thanks to some cartoon bomb. No sign of it the next time I came for a visit."

[pogo_boy]

"If this place cleans itself up," Little Blaine decides to ask, even though it means taking the lollipop out of his mouth, "then would all the candy disappear?" Because that would be a bad thing, he thinks.

"I know I haven't been cleaning all of it," Quint semi-jokes, though most outside of his family wouldn't know about his sometimes compulsive cleaning habits. "I think it would make the extra candy disappear, so if we want to claim any of it, it needs to be gathered up. I'm calling Wood for some Battons... They can at least get it all together, and maybe sorted into piles by what it is, and then we just have to carry off what we wanted."

[clockwork_doc]

"That sounds logical," Doc agrees. "Anything someone's put a claim on stays -- anything extra eventually gets vanished. By what, I don't know, but I think trying to figure out the inner workings of the Nexus is an exercise in futility."

"Sorted by kind of candy or brand?" Alice says, picking up a piece. "Because this particular wrapper is written in a language I haven't seen before."

"Multiversal Nexus, multiversal candy," Doc theorizes. "If we can find a way to check any of it for additional LOLs, or other magical effects, that might be a good idea too." So far it looks like the candy storm is the extent of the strangeness, but -- better safe than sorry, right?

https://megaman.fandom.com/wiki/Batton

[pogo_boy]

Quint looks at the wrapper and frowns slightly. He doesn't know that one, either... which means more portal investigation might be in his near future. "I was thinking by kind of candy, but it depends on what I can get the Battons to understand. They're just drones, after all."

And flying in overhead is a fairly decent swarm of round bat-like robots.

[museicalmarty]

"Maybe we could have an 'other' pile for stuff we don't know," Marty suggests, before looking up as said drones fly in. "Oh! Yeah, definitely appropriate for the holiday."

[pogo_boy]

"Maybe," Quint says. "Like I said, it'll depend on what I can get the Battons to understand. Drones are kind of... turtles all the way down." He chirps something up at them in an encoded compressed binary message that totally ruins the illusion of being a human child. The Battons circle in a sort of holding pattern and approach Quint one at a time.

With each one, he finds the nearest different piece of candy, shows it to the Batton for identification, places it as the start of a pile, and then has them start a grid search of the area for any matches still lying on the ground - a quick addendum he made when he realized he didn't want them stealing any candy someone had already picked up - and to bring it and add it to the pile before resuming the search where they left off. He'll have to explain it to each one individually, assigning each to a different candy.

There were reasons humans got so frustrated at working with drones that they came up with Robot Masters in the first place. Luckily, the compressed binary message is a lot faster than using English... or German.

Little Blaine watches this, going back to his lollipop for a bit.

[museicalmarty]

"They're -- what?" Marty asks -- but it seems the question will have to wait a moment, as Quint starts instructing the Battons in their task. Despite knowing very well that Quint and his compatriots are mechanical, the fact that they look so much like flesh-and-blood humans means it's still weird for the group to see him chatting with the drones in binary. It cna't be be denied that it's efficient, though -- he seems to be going through the group pretty quickly with those chirps.

Dee sucks on her lollipop as well, watching, before looking over at Doc. "So when are you going to learn how to speak Car?"

"Give me some common words and grammar rules and I'll give it a shot," Doc replies. "Though I imagine I'll have a terrible accent, given I have vocal cords and not an engine."

[pogo_boy]

Quint looks a little embarrassed once he's got all the Battons set on their assignments. "Sorry. That's kind of a common phrase back home. It means 'dumb', but in a certain simple AI way. You see, there used to be this program over a century ago called the Logo Turtle. It drew pictures, but you had to tell it how exactly. Like, to draw a square with sides fourty turtle-steps long would be 'forward 40, right 90," and you have to repeat that four times."

"Some drones seem smarter on the surface, and I've even seen some where their AI has developed to where they're more like pets... and a few extremely rare cases that are like people. But most of them? It's turtles, all the way down." His siblings have tried to weed the 'special' ones out of the general drone groups, and find them names and homes, so when sending for a batch like this he doesn't expect to find any smart ones here.

And he might be right... as the drones each start piling up their assigned candies, he notices a Batton contentedly piling up every kind of M&M mixed with Skittles and a few other kinds that are essentially the same shape and sold in a packet. Even though he had them go by visual identification and tried to instruct enough to search for 'variants' to keep from having to have a separate pile for every flavor of lollipop... Oh well. He had to admit they did look the same. "Maybe I should have done searches by printed names on the labels, but then there's the language issue..." He picks up what might be an M&M packet that seems to be labeled in Tolkien Elvish.

[museicalmarty]

"Oh, jeez, that thing," Marty says with a laugh. "Yeah, I actually got to play with one of those in school once. It was kind of a pain in the butt to make it do exactly what you wanted it to. Could make some cool patterns, though. But yeah, now I get what you're saying. You gotta be super exact, or. . ."

"Or you get M&Ms and Skittles grouped together," Doc says, having noticed the same drone that Quint has. "Which, admittedly, is a pretty easy mistake to make if you're going strictly by visual similarities rather than something like flavor."

"Mmmm," Alice says, tossing and catching her own mysteriously-labeled piece of chocolate. "Well, we already know that we can't save all of it. And we can help correct the mistakes the drones make. They won't try to group them together again if we start moving Skittles to a separate pile, will they?"

[pogo_boy]

Quint nods. "And most drones only eat e-tanks. It's not something they'd understand."

"That's sad," Little Blaine comments quietly, taking a brief break from his lollipop. "I like tasting things... at least the things I've tasted so far."

Quint shakes his head. "I told them to pick up candy on the ground, within the borders of the field, and that wasn't already in a pile. Otherwise they'd keep picking up the same items they already sorted."

Little Blaine is giving curious looks to the M&M and Skittles pile. He remembers the other wrappers - the Kit Kat and the Crunch Bar had mentioned chocolate too. "I like chocolate. What do Skittles taste like?"

[museicalmarty]

"Can they even taste stuff?" Marty has to ask, looking at the Battons flying around. "I mean, you say they 'eat' e-tanks, but do they actually use those mouths to do it?"

"Even if they do, I can't imagine they have any concept of what they're missing," Alice says, before looking over at Blaine. "And I'm afraid not everything tastes as good as candy."

"Mmm -- wait until you have your first experience with brussel sprouts," Marty says, making a face.

"Or artichokes," Victor says, going ahead and starting to sort out the Skittles now that he knows the Battons won't try to put them back. "Though I'm probably biased in that case -- I'm allergic."

"Not like chocolate," Marty tells Blaine, going over to help. "They're supposed to taste like fruit, but they're mainly just sugar. M&Ms are the ones that are chocolate."

(I found the Turtle online! XD) https://turtleacademy.com/playground/en

[pogo_boy]

"They wouldn't have the sensors for that," Quint says. "Though we do usually upgrade the ones that get smarter, both so they can eat things and taste them. With the normal ones... there really isn't much point."

"I don't think I can be allergic," says Little Blaine. "Can I try some of the Skittles?" He doesn't know if it's allowed, since he still hasn't finished all of the lollipop.

It liiiives XD

[museicalmarty]

"Yeah -- I don't think turtles care much about the taste of stuff," Marty says with a little smile. "People, on the other hand. . ."

"Don't see why not," Marty says, glancing over at Quint for confirmation.

[pogo_boy]

"More candy won't hurt him," Quint says, and smiles as he adds, joking, "Because of the composition of the e-tanks, there are actually jokes that we run on sugar." He'll pick up one of the Skittles packets and opens it, tipping some out into his hand and lining them up by color so Little Blaine can see.

Little Blaine hesitates for a moment at the red one, but picks a green one first.

[museicalmarty]

"Similar chemicals involved in both, I'm guessing," Doc says with a little smile of his own.

"And it's Halloween -- having maybe a little more candy than is healthy is kind of the point," Marty adds, grinning. So yeah, if Blaine's indulging, he'll grab a Kit-Kat out of the appropriate pile for himself.

[pogo_boy]

"Sugars do tend to be one of the easier organic compounds to convert to electricity," Quint says. "Well, that or alcohol, but... um... that actually doesn't work out so well for us. And not just because most of my brothers look underage."

"That tasted a lot different from chocolate," Little Blaine said. "It was more like the lollipop, but also different. I liked it too. But does all food taste different?" Because that was going to be a lot of new data to process.

[museicalmarty]

"Oh? I hope it doesn't cause a reaction like mine," Doc says, grimacing. "Yes, Part III got that right, by the way. I don't know what it is or how it affects me so quickly -- just that it's apparently common on my mother's side of the family."

"Yeah, pretty much," Marty informs the little ghost. "I mean, some stuff tastes similar, but I don't think there's anything that's exactly like some other thing."

"You'll get used to it," Dee assures him. "Lots of stuff is fun to eat."

[pogo_boy]

"Not exactly, but... the way we process organic food gets confused by alcohol, and it doesn't go through all the steps it should and... well, the short version is we can actually get drunk, but it's because of a fuel contaminant problem and surges that cause similar symptoms. Including the hangover until the damage is repaired." Quint's facepalming by the end of his explanation. "It hasn't happened to me yet, but I've had to deal with the results in a few of my siblings."

"Like how you said Skittles were supposed to taste like fruit?" Little Blaine asks. "It is fun," he adds to Dee, "but there are so many new things now."

[museicalmarty]

"Aha. Judging by your reaction, that's quite bad enough," Doc says, nodding at the facepalm.

"Guessing you have some interesting 'my brother or sister got drunk and caused some shi-mayhem' stories," Marty adds, quickly switching words as he glances at Little Blaine. Yeah, maybe what he assumes is an actual kid's already heard worse, but he should at least make the effort to keep it a little cleaner.

"Yeah, basically," Marty says. "And yeah, there are, but nobody says you have to eat everything all in one go. You can keep trying stuff slowly."

"Right," Dee nods. "Nobody's gonna make you eat." She assumes, anyway.

[pogo_boy]

"Yeah, plus anyone who does repairs or helps out the medics... well, you get to where you really want to smack the people who stumble in needing help because they did something stupid that they knew would cause them problems, but they just thought it would be funny at the time. It's not just the alcohol... just that that one comes up a lot. Almost as much as the barbecue recipe one of my older brother's made." They actually have a whole filing cabinet for records of certain kinds of injuries. One whole drawer is given over to anything indirectly caused by Heat's Special Recipe Barbecue, which can't cause any direct damage to a Reploid or Robot Master, but, well...

Little Blaine was about to comment that he likes to eat as long as he doesn't try everything at once, but this mention just makes him say. "I think I don't want to eat that."

[museicalmarty]

"I don't blame you there," Alice says, shaking her head as she twirls her tail. "If there's anything that gets up my nose, it's people diving head first into stupid actions when they ought to know better -- either from past experience or simple logic." She sighs deeply. "But then again, from what I've seen, 'common sense' is most inappropriately named, so. . ."

"It's human nature," Doc says with a little shrug. "And Reploid nature too, apparently."

"Alcohol or that barbecue recipe?" Marty asks, raising an eyebrow. "'Cause neither sound great. . . Dare I ask what's in the recipe?" He's pretty sure it's not human-edible, but he's darkly curious.