thenashira | Game Update: August II 2377

Weather & Recap ⭐︎ By Daylight ⭐︎ By Starlight
🎶 Recommended Listening: Answer - BUMP OF CHICKEN ♪
august ii 2377
EPISODE 8: When You Wish Upon a Spark...
August 16 - 31

NOTE: As a reminder, there will be no event or missions this month while the mod team takes a break. The game update contains prompts for all of August II, so play around to your heart's content!

Star Suite: The Training Room has been unlocked! Special training machines are now available to the Nova Knights, and they now have access to a new Star Suite power, Sparkle of Life. More details about this power are included in the Starlight section. The Rewards page has been updated with information about the next unlockable room, the Portal.
Constellations: 2/7 Constellations captured. The Nova Knights have the Dancer and the Three Sisters.

Weather: Chalra City's hot hot summer continues! While August isn't quite as hot as it was last month, it's a good deal more humid and stickier. Whether it's a swimming pool or a beach, Chalra City residents are flocking to the water to cool off and relax. Sunbathing in the park is a popular activity on cooler days, and local shops and restaurants court young shoppers by offering special services and sales suited to the student wallet. The highs for the month average around 90°F/32C° with lows around 78°F/25C°.

Recap: The Nova Knights got some badly needed wins in the first half of August! Not only did they rescue the Three Sisters from the Harbingers' clutches, but Dirk and Reese escaped from the Abyss more or less intact as well. They managed to foil most of the Harbingers' plans at Littleneck Beach, but the Harbingers got away with their stolen energy, and whatever they were harvesting from the folks consuming Potari Sweet. The Harbingers have since disappeared from Nautis's magical radar, however, suggesting that they're prioritizing their defenses over a proactive attack.

BY DAYLIGHT
⭐︎ Summer break is over — it's back to school for all students. Hope you did your summer homework, or at least copied it from someone else last minute!

⭐︎ As the summer swelters on, the Midnight Diner serves up a Chalra City summer favorite: finger food-sized fried chicken with a spicy yogurt dipping sauce known by locals as pieces and beach sauce. While beach sauce is typically associated with fried chicken, Chalra City residents will put it on just about anything, and everyone's got their own recipe. Master's beach sauce is known to pack a powerful chili kick.

⭐︎ Chalra City commemorates the end of the summer with a fireworks festival on the waterfront running from the 26th to the 28th. Chalra City's artisans take great pride in their craft, and they spend months preparing three consecutive nights of elaborate fireworks displays on the waterfront, each more fantastic than the last, leading up to a truly show-stopping finale on the evening of the 28th. The festival is only active at night, but much like the Smoketree Promenade's midsummer event, there are plenty of food stalls and street vendors to occupy people's time before the fireworks go off. Sparklers are a popular toy for children and adults alike!

In Chalra City, the fireworks festival is about more than just tasty food and spectacle — it's an important opportunity for community togetherness and gathering with friends and family. There's an enduring old custom in this part of Atlace of making wishes on fireworks — if you make a wish aloud as a firework goes off, it may come true, and conveniently, the noise of the fireworks drowns out all but shouting. Of course, most people will agree that it's just an old superstition, but sometimes you can hear a murmur of voices intermingled with the deafening pops and cracks, so perhaps some of the Chalra City folk are a little more superstitious than they'll readily admit. Everyone needs a little something to believe in.

And it wouldn't be a true Chalra City summer event without a little competition! On the evening of 27th, the festival holds a spicy food eating contest hosted by the celebrity comedian Wakaba. Contestants will be tasked with eating a variety of hot sauce-coated foods, with the spicy factor increasing with every round; in between rounds, while the contestants take a brief breather, Wakaba asks them a variety of personal questions, most of which inevitably end on a joke. While there is a small cash prize for winning the contest, the real incentive is bragging rights.

BY STARLIGHT
⭐︎ Hope's Prophecy: Thanks to their past life as a diviner for the Oracle, Hope may occasionally receive prophetic dreams that give the Knights a hint about what's to come. Hope did not have a prophetic dream this time around either, but there's always next time!

⭐︎ Hideout Status: The Aquarium has 20 new quartz shrimp in addition to the four goldfish! The massive tanks are still mostly empty, but it's a start.

The Training Room is now accessible! If you were expecting a classic gym experience, think again — rather than conventional workout equipment, the Training Room holds what appear to be a series of arcade machines with a decidedly Hassalean aesthetic. Apparently, this is how the Nova Knights in their past lives honed their skills! There are currently three working arcade-style workout machines in the Star Plus training series: Star Plus Blazer, a target practice game to help hone weapon proficiency; Star Plus Light Catcher, a Whac-a-Mole style game where you bop cute little star-shaped monsters; and Star Plus Beats, a drumming game with two large drums that helps with magic power circulation.

There are more workout machines, but the rest are all out of order...who knows, maybe you'll find a way to repair them someday!

⭐︎ Star Suite: Another Silver-level Star Suite power has been unlocked! The Nova Knights can now use Soul Flash, a Silver-level finishing move that cleanses ordinary people who have been temporarily possessed or changed by the Abyss. The overzealous beachgoers who had drunk Potari Sweet, for instance, would have been cured in an instant by Soul Flash!

Star Suite powers cannot be alone; they must be used in concert with at least one other Nova Knight, and the more Knights who participate, the stronger the attack. It can only be used once per supernova transformation. Characters in eclipse lose access to Star Suite powers for the duration of their eclipse.

⭐︎ Maomao's Garden: If Maomao has made any crucial progress, she hasn't shared it with anyone. Instead, she's just fully taken over the Lab and relocated the entire hydroponics garden there for better study. Trespassers will be hissed at.

⭐︎ Nautis Updates: Late in the evening of the 15th, Nautis informs everyone with unusual gravity that two more of their number have been claimed by the Abyss: Sunbeam and Crescent. As far as she can tell, they're not in one of the more surface-level pockets of the Abyss like the last few Nova Knights, but somewhere deep and as of yet unreachable like Nova Zenith. The Harbingers have gone to great lengths to hide themselves from Nautis, so it'll take time before she can find a way that deep into the Abyss. She urges everyone not to lose heart — their friends aren't dead, only captured, and the Nova Knights are coming for them.

> I know it's hard to think about having fun at a time like this, but... > I just don't think it's good to dwell too long on what's already happened! You've got to take all that emotion and let it drive you forward! ( ◡̀_◡́)ᕤ > Besides, you know they wouldn't want you giving up at every setback! We'll prove their faith in us and rescue them for sure! > So you have to make sure to take care of yourselves, OK? > We've got some of the training machines up and running if you want to feel productive about your emotions ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧ > I hear this city's got some great fireworks...I know! You should all go take pictures for me! ^_^ > After all, it's not like I can go myself... Don't you want me to enjoy the fireworks? Don't I deserve to witness beauty too? > I've been hard at work trying to put together what the Harbingers did to the Three Sisters and everything... > The Constellation will recover, but yikes, those clowns really did a number on it. What they did was basically sacrilege! Don't they know these are precious artifacts of Hassaleh's Ocean Temple?! > It really fries my circuits to see those good-for-nothing villainous losers abusing priceless pieces of our history (｡•̀ ⤙ •́ ｡ꐦ) > The Constellations' magic was never meant to be used so directly...I don't think they have any idea what they were tampering with. > Thank the stars they didn't! They could have done much worse than mess with some drinks. We can't let another Constellation fall into the Harbingers' hands again! > But it seems like they're laying low for the time being... So I think it's time for everyone to take a load off! ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

⭐︎ Intel: Although it's still unknown as to how the Harbingers' ship managed to disappear itself from Nautis's sensors, a conversation overheard by Dirk and Reese during their escape strongly suggests that while Mistiluxia clearly has dealings with the Abyss, the other Harbingers may not even know of its existence.

That doesn't mean all is quiet on the Nova Knight front, however. Even though there doesn't appear to be real any Harbinger activity on Earth these two weeks, there is an uptick in drinks monster sightings — more specifically, slushie monsters. While many of the monsters the Nova Knights face are directly summoned by the Harbingers, some, like the drinks monsters, are a byproduct of the Abyss's influence on Earth. So while there may not be a bigger Harbinger plot to foil, these monsters still need defeating! It is really hot out, though...would getting hit by just one frozen slushie attack be all that bad?

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And while the tension leaves their shoulders at that explanation, they do look a little... saddened? By what their friend tells them. "I wish that weren't the only way to keep you safe, Nat. I trust you to know what to do with your body, but something about sealing off your heart still doesn't feel right to me."

"... Thinking about it now... I used my power to reach into my heart and pull forth something I was not sure was there, and likely did not have a use for, even if I were to produce it."

She paused. Somehow, she pales at the thought, as if she's not pale enough. "It's not 'sealing'. It was 'I foolishly tried to push through before I was ready, and of course I reacted like a blizzard at the thought'."

If Natalia didn't look so visibly shaken by all of this, Hope might be willing to have a little more fun in their response. But this seems like it was a very big deal, and they come closer and offer their arm in a request for something halfway between hooking it around Natalia's shoulders and hugging her outright.

"You did what you had to do. But you've been taking care of yourself since then, right?"

"Yes. The break from school was welcome."

"Good." They smile, and they feel like they can actually relax again, until a thought comes to their mind. An idle one, and not a happy one, but one that's snuck past their mental walls a couple times now. They sigh, and they pull back from Natalia a little.

"Would it suck if I didn't come back to school?" they ask, and they sound nearly defeated about it. Nowhere near like they've already made a decision, but.

"Eh, I'd miss you," she says, as if that opinion doesn't matter. "But don't let that enter your calculation."

"That means a lot more than you think," they say, giving their friend a grateful look. "I'm not going to do anything yet, I'm just... thinking about it. I've been worried for a while that, I don't know. Maybe I only got this job because of who my dad is. And it feels like that hammer is gonna fall sooner rather than later, if I'm right about it."

Not, hopefully, a totally out-of-left field idea. They gnaw at their lower lip. "I like doing it, and I think I'm okay at it, but Everwave is a big deal and I just don't size up."

"... How do you figure? We got Shelley, don't we?"

Hope barks out a laugh, not expecting Shelley to catch any strays in this one even though they totally should have. "Well, who knows, maybe he threatened the administrators with being thrown into the Abyss." It's appropriate to joke about that, right? Sure. Whatever. "And maybe I'll get better at it when break's over. I've grown kind of a lot lately, one way or another."

They consider, though. "Not too much. I still like drinking the occasional Orange G and kicking ass at shooters in my free time. If I ever stop liking that, you should definitely check in on me."

"I will be honest: all of my experience with shooting has been at target ranges and light gun games."

"Wanna head down to the net café near me one of these days and give a shooter a spin?" They grin. Could be fun. "I can go easy on you. We could head back to my place and chill when we're done if you want."

"... Sure. Sounds easy enough." She reaches to put her helmet back on...

~ ~ ~

Once she's used to KEYBAM, though, it turns out that having had proper marksmanship and tactical training makes her an absolute terror with any kind of scoped rifle.

Natalia is shockingly good at this. She's fragging noobs at a twelfth-grade level and giving Hope a real run for their money. None of the kills Nat's actually landed on them have felt unfair, and it's actually made them play a lot more defensively than they've been used to. It's kind of exciting. Between rounds, they take their hands off the controls and turn in their seat to Natalia next to them. (They've got, of course, a tall Orange G can next to them on the other side of the keyboard from their friend. They're having fun, don't worry about it.)

"I had no idea you'd be such a natural at this stuff. I guess I should be glad that you're too dedicated to your studies to become a pro gamer, huh?"

Natalia pauses, leans back. She has a cup of water next to her keyboard, which she quietly sips. "That, and... I do not enjoy settings such as these. Something about it feels a little too familiar."

Ah. Hope doesn't know what to say for a second, but they nod in a quiet, somber sort of agreement. Glancing back towards their screen, they feel the corner of their mouth tilt downward.

"You wanna head back to my place?" they ask, thinking that it might be good for Natalia to be in any situation that isn't this one right now. They try for a joke. "I don't want to brag, but you'd be the first guest I've had in months."

"Either that, or a game like this that doesn't feel like I'm controlling a little robot on a live fire exercise." That's quite the Codeword: Counterpunch there

Game Update: August II 2377

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