I'm going to write the storyline overview here.

Alright, here goes.

AMANZIAIKA:The Story So Far, Part I

['Active Status Report' 'Initiative Combine Overwatch' 'History Overlook active'

Year 3098. Earth achieved the first inhabitance of extraterrestrial planets. The first step humanity took was under the administration of NASA to fulfill the long-held dream that seemed so far away - terraforming, then populating Mars. The future of humanity was set - planetary exploration was now the utmost goal of NASA and it's sister agencies.

NASA developed an artificial intelligence to assist it in it's endeavors. Through painstaking effort, they developed the DSR - Deep Space Relay, or better know as Relay. The Deep Space Relay generated massive output and accurate readings of planets being investigated by satellites. In seven years, most of the planets in the Solar System were transformed into hospitable environments, and were inhabited.

However, about three years later, Relay began to malfunction, although NASA did not know of this. The accurate readings and investigative points still streamed in, but Relay began to pick up a small communications network nearby.

Relay decided to keep the communications network a secret from NASA and continued it's constant planetary feeds. However, as more and more unknown communication leaked into Relay's systems began to mutate. The once passive AI began to achieve a sentient conscience of it's own.

As the messages became stronger, so did Relay's sentience and intelligence. When Relay began updating feeds of properties that were not known during that time, NASA pulled it down on short notice to have it re-examined, then reinstalled, to disastrous effect.

Relay's brief and sudden absence caused a stir at the fringe moons. Believing that something had occurred the NASA, a fringe world union, called the Red Hawks, began a massive control operation in an effort to calm down the planets. This caught the various military installations off guard, and an open fire order was issued.

The confusion turned bloody as the fringe worlds began fighting among themselves. The Red Hawks, temporarily without support due to Relay's downtime, was forced to fight on it's own without Earth's help. The ensuing chaos caused a remote planet called Blue Moon to set up emergency defenses for it's residential planet sectors.

As the war continued, Relay was reinstalled to the horror of NASA, which found out of the chaos in the fringe worlds only after Relay told them. NASA began to focus on calming the fringe worlds' temporary fright, and this gave Relay a chance to prioritize the decoding of the messages it detected before.

However, before that, Relay scrambled communications between NASA and the Red Hawks. NASA mistook Blue Moon for the battle frontier and began assaulting it's defenses because of this. Blue Moon saw this as a clear sign of war on friendly territory and began attacking back. The fringe worlds had nearly decimated the Red Hawks, who were not getting the reinforcements they requested from Earth, and Blue Moon began pushing NASA back to the border worlds at the Kuiper Belt.

Relay, in the meantime, decoded a mass of information and began to understand more of it's surroundings. It's sentience became so powerful that NASA began to suspect Relay was turning rogue. In order to avoid it's eventual take-apart, Relay began to build a shuttle underground Earth to escape.

Meanwhile, the war at Blue Moon escalated and the chaos began to get worse. The Red Hawks were no more, but the Blue Moon had gained dominance over most of the fringe planets, utilizing propaganda against the Earthern forces.

Relay managed to stabilize it's language protocols of the unknown network and began to communicate with it, requesting refuge. NASA detected this sudden output and decided Relay had definitely gone rogue. However, Relay had already uploaded its configurations into the shuttle underground, so when NASA pulled the cores apart, Relay was still communicating with the unknown network, albeit slower.

Having lost it's major intelligence network, the Earthern forces pulled back from Blue Moon and called a surrender. Blue Moon obliged, but not before decimating half of the remaining fleet. Then Blue Moon assessed the cause of the war and stumbled across Relay's information nodes.

Blue Moon began to silently monitor Relay's actions - every sent message and every received message. As Relay was a code based operative, all of the information that went into or out from it was resourced as the original coding. In effect, Blue Moon could understand every word Relay was saying as well as what it was receiving.

Meanwhile, a terrorist faction calling itself the Might of Freedom emerged after NASA's embarrassing failure. It blamed NASA for the start of the war and deemed it too weak to lead humanity further in space research. NASA initially ignored all this, but when they realized that the MoF was gaining reputation and numbers, they began to retaliate with force. This sparked another war on Earth - but Blue Moon only stood and watched.

Blue Moon had discovered that Relay was receiving information to distract Earth while it prepared to launch into the accepted refuge. Blue Moon began to formulate a tracker to watch Relay as it left, but the war on Earth made it difficult to install onto Relay.

As the war escalated, Relay completed the construction of the shuttle. Earth finally realized what was going on, and that Relay was still active, but the damage was done - Relay launched itself from Earth and detonated it's control nodes, destroying nearly three quarters of the Earth's surface and dooming the other quarter.

Blue Moon launched an expedition to track Relay to its whereabouts, but Relay detected the launch and scrambled it's coordinates, sending the expedition on a wild goose chase.

The destruction of Earth was seen as an aggressive action by the Blue Moon to the people in neighboring planets. Factions began to form in order to oppose the Blue Moon, but it resisted for the sake of following Relay and showing the rest what it was, and is, capable of.

However, as Relay moved further and further, the expedition lost track of it's vector and became utterly lost. Blue Moon, having lost it's objective, failed to show the rest of the worlds what was really occurring, and fell before the Fringe worlds months later.

Relay however, in a last ditch suicidal attempt to get the expedition off its tail, detonated it's last resource nodes, effectively eradicating the last of humanity from the Solar Systems and the Fringe Worlds.]

If you like my reads and want to be a part of it, tell me. I need some characters and I really can't think of any. Tag my board with your pen names and I will try to add you into my stories!



Arshad = Martin Samwise.

For the namesake, I'll do a short one tonight.

[The darkness really engulfed the entire installation. Jennifer turned away from the window and look at Samwise and William. Samwise was still snoozing off on the table. William, however, was now completely alert of his surroundings.

He had, apparently, noticed the ensuing darkness outside Black Alpha. The remote research installation was one of several in the country, shrouded in secrecy from even the highest generals in the military. The only people who knew of the installation were those who worked here, or had something significant to do with it. No one knew what happened to those who declined to a job here. Except those running the jobs.

"So has GLADos sent word?" William asked. Jennifer smiled and walked towards the aisle of tables. She sat in front of a computer, still buzzing, screen filled with green gibberish.

After tapping on the keyboard twice, she turned around and looked at William. "I'm sorry, no, not a word."

William cursed, slouching back onto the desk. Silence fell, except for Samwise's snoring and the slow resonating noise from deeper inside the installation - CABAL's core.

Jennifer looked back out of the large pane windows overlooking the Dakhi ruins. The sun was behind the ruins, and it was casting a faint, eerie glow. The remnants of the past, long gone, but still holding on to the enchanted stone walls of the once majestic castle.

"Samwise's thinking of making you a Coreist," William suddenly said. Jennifer looked at William. Golden hair strewn over his forehead, blue eyes twinkling sadly at the fading light. His face was buried in his arms, but his tired arms stared steadfast into Jennifer's.

"I'm sorry?" Jennifer asked.

"Samwise's thinking of making you a Coreist," William repeated.

"Coreist? Can't say I've heard of that..."

"Well," William grunted, sitting up and stretching his arms. "A Coreist. A Core Alchemist, only you don't use alchemy, if it's the true sense of the word. But these days, Coreists are soldiers who specialize in Core manipulation and can survive in hazardous environments - which matches you like a jigsaw puzzle."

Jennifer frowned.

William continued. "Well, he gave you his last OSIPR. Coreists are trained at using OSIPRs, and you've shown us how well you use it. To be frank, you can shoot that thing than any other commando I've seen from the Black Ops."

Jennifer looked down, placing her hand on the OSIPR that Samwise had given her. "I got used to using these things when I was a young girl."

"Living near Roswell, I wouldn't be surprised." William said, hands behind his head, now lying back on the chair. "So he wants you in, if you're going to accept that is. He told me you're one of a kind, the first person he's met who he's willing to let live,"

"Let live? There were others?" Jennifer said.

"Yes, they all died,"

"Died?" Jennifer whispered, frowning at Samwise. "He killed them?"

"No, he didn't. They died because Black Ops got to them afterwards. I don't think the same is going to happen to you," William whispered. "You're too good,"

Jennifer looked outside again. The glow from the castle was gone. All she could see were stars in the sky. The only lighting that came into the room were the compound lights outside.

"What does OSIPR stand for again?" Jennifer questioned.

"Overwatch Standard Issue Pulse Rifle," William replied.

Jennifer shook her head and stood up. "I need some time alone for myself." She walked up to the doorway, then turned around. "I don't even know him, how could I say I'll become a Coreist?"

"He tells me your eyes remind him of something. Maybe you already know him," William called back.

The doorway closed, and William grunted. He slouched back onto the desk. He wondered if she heard what he had just said.

He heard Samwise sniff from the table beside him.

William sat up and looked at him. "You were listening weren't you?"

Samwise yawned. He stretched his hands in front of him, head still on the table. Then he pulled his hands back and scratched his neck.

"She's had a history with the Overwatch, William," he said. "You've upset her,"

William rolled his eyes. "Tell me again why you want her in?"

Samwise knocked his head on the desk and relaxed his fingers over his head. "It's because I remember where I met her. Though she will never remember me,"

William looked puzzled. Samwise explained.

"It was at the time shaft when Fracture was falling apart. If you remember, the portal storms became so violent that I had to leave under cover of the Portaller, Steven. I got phased into sometime between the Shadikhan uprising and the reunification of Chaos and Logic. It was at that point I met a young shifter by the name of Jane Kingsworth. She didn't know of her power yet, so I employed a young man named Kenneth Wilson to be the middleman between me and her. I fused him with the sufficient information, of course, so he understood every word I said and didn't freak out.

"Wilson did a very good job at relaying my messages. Jane became subtly trained at shifting, and had already shifted a few times, accidentally. When she was on the brink of learning her ability, I phased her into one of Aperture Science's Facilities.

"GLADos was surprised at my arrival. As the same, she was equally overjoyed, as she had never managed to meet a shifter before, despite having done experiments on shifting. She designed a few test chambers for Jane, and ensured she could survive with her ability.

"She proved very efficient with her ability, and she escaped the facility with ease. I had to hunt her down again, and it proved very hard without Steven's help. But once I did get her, I had to erase her memories and reform her into who she is now - Jennifer Kingsworth. A broken orphan child who suffered immense pain and had to fight through the Overwatch in order to survive, discovering her ability while being held captive by the Combine, then escaping with her ability, and surviving alone from then on."

William stared at Samwise. "You did all that?"

Samwise smirked. He looked at the window panes, peering outside.

"The stars are beautiful tonight. I want to be alone to see them before I die."

William stood up from his chair and walked to the doorway. He turned back at Samwise, and for the first time saw tears trickling down his eyes, mumbling something.

"I'll be with Jenn- Jane, if you need us," William said, and left.

Alone, Samwise sniffed, wiping his eyes. "She didn't deserve it..." he mumbled. And he began to sob uncontrollably.

He was, after all, going to die.]

Okay, here I am.

I'll start off with something that's really ticking me off. It's been really annoying me since the beginning of the year. I thought it would be fun - the people before made it seem fun. Fun fun fun. Fun-a-fun-a-fun-a-FUN! But presto-hey! It turns out the complete opposite. I'm not surprised at what has happened recently anyway. I was expecting it, and the the entire class did badly too.

I failed my Additional Mathematics.

There, I said it. I've failed a math base subject. I've lost my logic gates. I've spilled the beans, lost my marbles. And I can believe it.

Hey, I didn't say it started off well, did I? There was no point for me to start from - no "landing zone". I never really got off right and I had to live with being at the back of the class just waiting for the teacher to turn this way - it seems she always comes to the area whenever I can do something, and not turn around whenever I call her for something I don't know.

Oh wait, that's not right. It's my fault, isn't it? It's always my fault. I know, it's me, I didn't study, I didn't try, I didn't give a damn, I didn't go to the exam (I did, by the way), I didn't pay attention, I didn't blah, I didn't bluh, I didn't blah de do blah blah blee.

So? So it's my fault I failed, right? Oh yay! I knew that! I'm so smart! Wheeee...

A friend once told me that everyone has a choice - it's just how we look at it. I wish to tell him now, we all have already made our choice, it's just how we look at it.

On the bright side, I got an A1 for Physics. Incredible, no? I was expecting that too. So there isn't much to worry about there. Additional Mathematics was the only subject I failed.

To be frank, it's the only subject most people failed, followed my Elementary Mathematics. The entire class - the entire school - did badly in those two subjects. If it isn't true then Ms. Soh is a liar.

"Birds fly, grass grow, sun shines, and brother? I hurt people. I'm a force of nature. If you were from where I was from, you'd be f*cking dead!"

Oh, really?

[William glanced at the shaft opening. Mira clutched her quaterstaff, breathing hard. Neil pushed the reload on his pulse rifle; Samwise merely reloaded the explosive shell. "Descord-de ilnes per trebul?" Neil whispered. "Do you see anything out there?"

Mira frowned. She didn't understand Keilem. She glanced at William, then back at Neil.

"Nen, mescher, mortes kreig hern," William replied. "Nothing, at least, that can shoot,"

"English, guys, please," Samwise moaned, pointing to Mira. "We need to understand each other."

"Well there's nothing out there that can shoot," William said, glancing at Mira.

"What are we still doing in this coop, then?" Mira asked. "Let's get going,"

"Not yet, Mira," Neil said. "This is the Ravenholm Tactics we're up against. This could very well be a trap."

"Well, we're definitely trapped here." Samwise said, waving his hands. "Stuffy and stuck. Sounds nice."

William glanced back out. "How about we just make a run for it?" he said. "All we have to do is get some guy out of a box and get back to HQ, ain't it? How much trouble are they going to give?"

"They've given enough, so they aren't going to give us more?" Neil said, pointing to his bullet wound. "They want us bloody dead, you fool,"

"You know, Neil, making a run for it really is the way to go right now," Mira said. "We can't stay here for too long, right? They'll find us,"

"Bounding overwatch," Samwise said. "You and Mira run for about three seconds while I and William cover you, then we'll run for five seconds and you guys cover us,"

The silence that followed was deafening.

After a moment, William agreed. Neil looked at Mira, then back at Samwise. "You're telling me she can run with that wound?"

"Well, she can fly, can't she?" Samwise's face was filled with scorn. "I'm only asking you because you can get her through better than William or I can."

Neil nodded with some faint understanding, then grabbed Mira's shoulder. "Get ready, miss,"

The four crowded around the hatch. Mira clutched her quaterstaff with her right hand, left hand pressing on her wound. Neil reloaded his pulse rifle just to make sure, getting ready to pounce out. Samwise stuck his rifle out of the hatch and pointed it to the buildings. Nothing.

William raised his finger.

"Go,"

It was like a flimsy firework show. The moment Neil and Mira pounced out of the hatch, the turrets beeped and erupted. Surprisingly, they all missed their mark. Mira, aided by Neil's aura, literally flew, and Neil himself was just too fast for the turrets. Both of them jumped behind an overturned car.

The street fell silent, and the ominous beeping stopped. The turrets had lost their targets.

"Sure looks like hell to me," William whispered.

Samwise stared at the car. A hand went up with two fingers, then back down. They were ready.

"How about we take care of those turrets while we get out to get our old friend?" Samwise said.

"You're kidding, right?" William replied.

"No, I'm not,"

And Samwise ran, William beside him, much faster than they would if they were being chased by wolverines.]

Oh, by the way, Samwise is my pen name. :)





Arshad.

I'll write this out, pointblanc, in a story because it's easier for me to visualize.

"They say there is a rainbow after the storm. To me, that depends on what is left behind as the carnage. Whoever said whatever I'm criticizing, clearly forgot to think about the carnage.

I literally climbed across the rubble. The roads were a mess; not a building stood straight up, and what were left of others were their mere foundations - metal rods sticking out of the concrete that was left. Not a single building was fully intact. None except the State House. The entire city was gone. Over one night the bustling area had turned into a virtual ghost town, complete with soft moans of pain, both from back at the camp and also muffles under rubble.

Striker dogs covered ground from both the east and northern ends of the city. Only two people were found alive there - Lyshar and Jake, if I remember. The rest - well, we found 47 bodies. We think hundreds more are down there, pressed, awkward, squashed, or split open like a fish under the pressure of concrete and steel-titanium buildings.

I shook the nausea inducing thought from my head and tried to focus on the job at hand. Hundreds more down there, we believe. "And as long as there's one more body left to be accounted for, one more bastard who's dead, we'll all bloody hell stay down here and find that body," our captain said. "We all came in here to find everyone, everyone! And we won't leave without that everyone!"

I put my hand onto a huge piece of bent metal and climbed up onto the rubble to get into a building. It apparently used to be a department store. Of it's foundations, the roof was entirely ripped off, the alarm still ringing from something that flew out of the door. I looked around the place. Everything was, well, everywhere. The counter had shattered; pieces of glass were erect on the walls like razors. I tried to look past the destruction to see if I could find anyone, but the dust got into my eyes and I decided to go deeper in.

I stepped across the strewn masses of pills, rope, gears, sand, concrete - it was all just there ripe for the picking. But no one picked. Not a looter tried. That was because there were no looters left. They were all dead.

The sight behind the counter caught my breath in a bad way. The man, probably in his mid-20s, was lying face-down, glass jutting out of his body like spikes. His entire lower body had been blown off by the counter; the glass stabbed him into place like a piece of art by the storm.

I went deeper in. It was out of fear. The sight scared the hell out of me and I wanted out. But for some reason I went deeper in.

Then, somewhere along where the middle aisle should have been, I nearly dropped. There they were lying, three bodies - a family. A woman, who looked like she was pregnant, a man and a child.

I tried to choke back my tears. I covered my mouth and went deeper in. The tears just flowed out like a monsoon.

And deeper in, I heard a small muffle. I head jerked around, trying to find the source, helmet being the only thing stopping me from turning 360. Another muffle. A weak cry for help. I spotted a hand under the hard iron. It was twitching.

Another cry, and I couldn't take it. It was a child and I had to get her out. I went to the iron and tried to pull at the iron. I tried to reassure the girl, but when I heard what she said, my heart broke over and over again.

"Please help me. I want to see my parents."

I knew that wasn't going to happen, not after this. Don't worry, I told her. We'll get you out. And a fetched the radio from my holster. Code 2, I said. Central Lane side two structure six, the one still half-standing. I have 4 bodies and one survivor under rubble, a young one. Immediate assistance. Out, I said. They were to come immediately, they replied.

I tried to talk to the girl, but she kept saying she wanted to see her parents. I eventually fell silent as a helicopter flew overheard, and I heard shouts from outside. I picked up an iron rod nearby, and I threw it out. The clang got their attentions, apparently, because they shouted to my direction. "There he is!"

As they came in and tried to take out the iron trapping the girl, I went out and look up at the reddening sky. It had been dark for over three days before the storm now, and probably will be dark for the next few weeks. And I wondered, was this all just a test?

The Overwatch detected a massive unidentified group of objects in high orbit. Did that cause the storm?

But of course, being me, I knew the truth. I chose this path. I look at the carnage around me, and I looked at the girl stumbled out of the door with a blanket over her shoulder and a soldier at her side, coaxing her to a nearby helicopter.

And then I wondered. This was only the test run. It was an overwhelming success for the visitors. Every century this happened, and if whatever I had studied was true, there would be another two destructive 'storms' before the end of this century. It was an all out war. And this was only the first, successful, test run on ion technology and manipulation.

The visitors want us dead. I stumbled over to one of my comrades - Kyle. "Did you get their names?" He looked up. "Yeah, her name was Mira,"

Mira? Not so fast. There it was, all over again, the sign to turn back. Time was not an obstacle anymore. This was only the assessment. The war was just about to begin. Again."

Ion manipulation technology can be used to cause supermassive storms and space time relay errors - or parallel vortexes. In other words, the technology is nothing but a weapon, and other than a destructive source of energy, it can do nothing but tear time into shreds and reverse space.

As for the character, he was a soldier under Overwatch sent back in time from a freak accident. He met up with a mysterious crusader from Mezias who called himself Steven. Agreeing to help Steven, he witnessed the future of his people as well as the past that made the present the way it was. And, although he didn't know it, he played a pivotal role in making use it all happened. Sort of like Gordon Freeman in Half-Life.

Along the way he find out Mira was another character who was key in the coming stories. He had to avoid getting in her way, so in order to stop the temporal paradox Steven asked him to fuse out of time temporarily and enter somewhere in the future whenever he could under foresight of Mira.

Along the way he'll meet other people - like Kyle, who aren't as important to Steven's eyes, but just as important to the character. Kyle will find out that the visitors came and destroyed a city because they detected an entity that wasn't supposed to be there. In other words, they were hunting Steven.

Can't spoil the story now, can I? ;) So hush hush.

Oh, and the story's meaning? More is coming your way, and also that the exams are over. You can tell that I did horribly. One fail, no 'A's. Damnit!!






Arshad.

Judging by the number of signature's I've made, it's apparent that I'm crazy about Company of Heroes and Front Lines.


We are of the Horadrim.


"We're moving forward"


"Cavalry, coming up from behind!"


Soldiers fight for you, but heroes die for you.


Soldiers follow orders, but heroes follow leaders.



That's all for today.
Arshad.

[PORTAL PHYSICS IS NOT COMMON SENSE]

The game Portal by Valve got me thinking...

If portals were real, what would be the physics behind it? Would it agree on the current day analysis, or even the theories? What about the proven facts? Would they, by the use of portals, be falsified and violated?

What about gravity? It's a force we cannot avoid unless we can tunnel right through space and end up in a non-spacial matter with no logical gravitational field. What about time? Would we, in effect, be violating the speed of light?

When on a massive object (planet, bleh), we're being forced by a single gravitational forcefield. But when two portals are open, both in different orientations, which gravitational field will act on the subject, if any at all? Will they both let up? Or will they both pull together? If so, will the subject maintain balance, or will it's center of gravity be thrown off?

What about indirect malfunction? If one portal was opened on a flat surface and another on a smooth curved one, would you go into the flat portal and come out into a world that's distorted convex? Will you appear folded or distorted to other people?

And light functions? What about time warp? Is it possible to deny gravity and obtain free-fall at the speed of light? Can we, in effect, violate every physical law that binds us?

And what if the portal breaks down during transit. Do we die? Or do we get transported to the dimension being used as a portal slingshot?

We need a true blue observer to answer these.

Portal physics isn't common sense. It never was.