@Fergard: I presume Pet Shop won't be as powered as he is in the show, right? I mean he just rekt people left and right there. Perhaps instead of hovercraft, Horus can be... couch sized? I've got plans for his master too, so just you wait.
@mrstack: Risky Boots is hiding in Daedalus, then?
@Tenebrous Gaze: Accepted.
I suggest y'all move your tiny little butts to the discussion thread.
Name: Mike Schmidt
Age: 28
Species: Human
Appearance: Credits to original artist
Alignment: Initially Federation, soon to be Alliance, both unwillingly and unwittingly
Personality: Mike is sociable and friendly person, but despite this he seems to actively avoid anything resembling a social life. He also tries to avoid conflict whenever possible, at best being extremely polite and unoffending and at worst letting himself become a doormat and even somewhat cowardly. He also almost never uses swearing when he is calm. Overall, an incredibly boring person and proud of it. However, in the rare moments where his life is threatened and/or backed into a corner, he will display intense courage and determination in the face of insurmountable odds, as well as liberally swearing up a storm big enough to cause even the most cuss-happy gangbanger to cringe. In the years since he was fired from his first security job, Mike has become more paranoid, tempermental, and developed a bit of a snarky streak, due to being losing every single job since due to freak accidents. All of these incidents he blames on a creepy Marionette that constantly haunts him......
Skills:
- Multitasking: Mike is able to concentrate on multiple objectives at the same time, which is an ideal for his profession of security guard
- Resource and Time Management
- Basic Computer Programming: Surprisingly a requirement at some facilities, as the systems tend to glitch out and/or require rebooting
- Basic Gun Use: Another facet of security training, has knowledge of handling and maintaining a basic standard issue laser pistol
- Basic Self Defense Training: Useful in a pinch, but completely useless against anyone more skilled than an untrained punk armed with anything more than a switchblade
Powers and Abilities: None whatsoever
Weapons/Equipment:
- Tablet: loaded with various security based apps and videogames and can connect wirelessly with any security software he previously interfaced with before
- Billy Club
- Taser: Works at close combat range and the prong can be fired at a max distance of ten feet
- Standard Issue Civilian Grade Laser Pistol: Has three settings consisting of “off”, “stun”, and “kill”; used so rarely Mike often forgets he even has it
Backstory: Born in the residential area of moderately populated planet with no real use for the Federation, Mike Schmidt lived a completely normal, boring, and uneventful life. It was just the way he liked it. So much he went out of his way to be as normal as possible, not even making friends or having any attachments outside of family and schoolwork. He does not talk about it much, but really the first 18 years of his life do not make for interesting storytelling anyway. His story truly began at what was supposed to be a simple security job at the original and last open location of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a pizza chain that was finally going bankrupt by the end of the year. Unfortunately, being the night guards at this place proved nowhere near worth the 240 credit a week paycheck as the animatronics came to life at night to outright murder the security guards. In fact, it happened so frequently before Mike came along it became company policy to cover up the killings and file missing person’s reports. For some reason, either out of duty or out of concern the robots would try to escape the restaurant and kill other if he were not there, Mike stayed on for the entire week, miraculously surviving the onslaught. Thankfully, he was fired on the seventh day after tampering with the animatronics (which was surprisingly very easy to do) and setting them all on the lowest setting.....only for someone else to set them all on the highest setting without his knowledge and the result quite possibly being the worst night in Mike’s entire life.
- Despite his harrowing experiences, Mike realized that he actually had a surprising knack for being a security guard, and believing he had found his calling decided to devote his entire life to the profession. After signing up for a securities company, Mike traveled the galaxy, working for various companies within Federation space as a lowly security guard. Not the most glamorous of professions and being essentially dead end, but he enjoys it and hopes it one day becomes the springboard needed to jumpstart his career to become a full-fledged Stormtrooper. Unfortunately, after a year or so every single contract job he had ended prematurely due to the machinations of a mysterious Marionette that seemed to relish on causing him as much misery as possible. All of these were deemed as freak accidents despite Mike’s claims that an actual perpetrator was causing them, and his claims eventually started getting him in fewer and fewer job offers once people started figuring out there actually was a connection between him and the accidents.
- Mike was most recently sent to the docking bay of the planet Daedalus due to his mentor and current manager, Jeremy Fitzgerald, a fellow former employee of Freddy Fazbear’s, managing to pull some strings, and Mike being the only one available for the job. Because of the sensitive nature of the prisoner transfer, which includes the presence of two members of the Federation Council, one of whom, Bruce Wayne, is Mike’s idol, this job may be quite literally his finally chance at keeping his job at the security company. Mike hopes, prays, and believes that everything is going to go smoothly. Especially wishing for the absence of that freakin’ Marionette......
Name: Strider Hiryu
Age: Unknown
Species: Cybernetic (???) Human
Appearance: Beginning Mission
◊
Alignment: Alliance currently, Striders first and foremost
Personality: A stoic man of little words, but those words are often concise and to the point. A loner who very often avoids leisurely social contact, has little tolerance for any sort of shenanigans whatsoever, which includes anything and everything normal people would consider as fun. In fact, most of the times he seems to crack a joke, it is actually a serious reaction to something that should not illicit such a serious reaction. When facing against any opponent, Hiryu will always face it with calm, grim determination......even if whatever he is facing would normally cause even the most hardened of warriors to scream in sheer terror. While he himself is a force of good, when given a mission he will be completely devoted accomplishing it to where he will ignore everything else if need be, including other villains in his direct vicinity. He will mercilessly cut down anyone who stands in his way of his mission, or provides a big enough obstacle in his mission. Anyone.....
Skills:
- Stealth: Being trained in the ways of the ninja, Hiryu is a master of stealth, able to blend into the shadows and vanish as soon as no one is looking at him with the greatest of ease. However, the missions he is often sent to are either so dangerously suicidal and/or gone FUBAR to such a ludicrous degree that stealth basically becomes a nonissue at that point.
- Master Swordsman
- Expert Martial Artist
- Expert Marksman: Able to throw his kunai with expert precision
- Basic Computer Programming Skills
- Expert Pilot: Knows how to fly various small spacecraft due to Striders having to think up their own escape plans once a target has been eliminated
Powers and Abilities:
- Superhuman physical capabilities:
- Super strength - Can effortlessly slice through a normal human with his bare hands
- Super speed - Fast enough to dodge shadow tag bullets, which are specialized ammunition connected to an advanced tracking system designed to home in and hit targets at advanced speeds with 100% accuracy
- Double Jumping - Ability to jump a second time while in midair, defying the laws of physics
- Super human ability
- Enhanced vision - Can see farther and with more precision than normal humans and perceive things ten times faster than normal humans
Weapons/Equipment:
- Cypher Falchion: Cyphers are a class of plasma based weaponry developed by the Striders mostly for melee fighting. The Falchion is Hiryu's main weapon, one of the most powerful cyphers ever created. It is also one of the difficult to master, mostly due to its handle making it meant to be wielded like a tonfa. The length of its plasma blade is adjustable, has the ability to fire plasma bolts if swung fast and hard enough, and when coupled with Hiryu's immense strength can disintegrate weaker enemies when slicing through them. It also comes with a genetic identification chip, allowing it to only activate when being held Hiryu himself. Anyone else holding would only end up wielding a fancy tonfa.
The Falchion can be equipped with four different elemental mods, denoted by the color of the blade and Hiryu's scarf.
- Reflective: The standard mod, it can reflect projectile attacks back at the attacker and colored red
- Burst: Causes the target to burst into flames if it survives the initial attack and colored orange
- Cold: Freezes the target in a temporary encasing of cryogenic energy and colored blue
- Magnetic: Fires out homing energy boomerangs when swung and colored purple
- Energy kunai: Specialized throwing knifes that use the same type of plasma as the Cypher, mostly used for long ranged attacks and for hit far off switches. Has the same elemental mods as the Falchion, but they can only be the same element as the Falchion at a time (ie cannot used Cold kunai if the Falchion is set to Reflective). Only reason difference is Reflective kunai being able to bounce off surfaces up to three times before losing momentum.
- Vajra unit: Plasma based teleportation device. Allows for instant travel for up to 50 meters in a chosen direction, even through solid barriers regardless of most materials if it is thin enough. It also has the ability to cause a temporal effect where up to five copies of Hiryu can appear at the same time as well as an emergency function that allows instant teleportation from any situation that would be instantly lethal to a safer previous location up to 100 meters, aside from prolonged atmospheric exposure (ie drowning, slow infection/poisoning, etc.). It cannot teleport through plasma energy of the same wavelength as the Falchion, the copying ability only applies to hand-to-hand combat to pull off different fighting moves, and the emergency function only has up to five charges within a single 24 hour period. Using up these charges causes the unit itself go to into a standby recharging mode, causing it to be useless for 24 hours.
- Options: Three different models of energy based nanotech robots Hiryu can summon at will. They are tied to a summoning unit that loses energy depending on the Option used and its intended function. Recharges over time, but can be depleted quickly from overuse.
The Options are as follows:
- Option A: Spherical droids that orbit around Strider to fire plasma bolts at enemies, and can be used to hack computer systems
- Option B: A powerful robotic panther used mostly for combat, can also be ridden upon for fast ground transport and to leap distances Strider cannot
- Option C: Robotic falcon that can be used to fly great distance to different designated drop points and can attack enemies by either becoming a concussive wave of destructive plasma or drop energy grenades
- Glider: Specialized solar powered single person craft capable of traveling faster than light speed which then transforms into a self-propelled hang glider upon orbital entry. Specifically designed for short length space travel and planetary entry. Due to how fragile they can be, the Striders also provide agents with new ones whenever an old one gets busted.
- Climb Sickle: A simple sickle used for climbing.
Backstory: The Striders had their beginnings on the planet Earth. When they started exactly is unknown, but their goal from the very beginning is simple and straightforward: The assassination of any and all deemed too evil to exist among the living, ignoring all other factors such as politics and legality, and doing it for no personal gain whatsoever. At first they have stayed in the shadows, but as humanity spread across the stars, so to have the knowledge of the Striders. Eventually the Striders have well known throughout the political and criminal elements of the galaxy, and those who know of them can immediately recognize them by their cypher weaponry, the intense auras of power despite seemingly lacking any identifiable cybernetic and/or abnormal levels of spiral energy, and their stylish scarves that blow through an invisible wind. Even with the advanced search technologies and resources of both the Federation and the Alliance, extremely little about the Strider organization is known, especially where they work out of and how they managed to get a hand on any of their resources. Not even Ultron or G La DOS are able to find anything about even a single Strider aside whatever very scant information the organization is willing to give out.
As with all Striders, the past of the one named Hiryu is almost completely unknown. All that is known is that he was an orphan from a Japanese colony and he might have had a sister. Hiryu is also the youngest Strider in the history of the organization to ever gain the rare and coveted rank of Special-A Class. To put it into perspective for the layman, a single Class C Strider, the lowest rank, have the power and skill of an entire ten member squad of Spec Op Stormtroopers combined.
- Any previously established relationships?
- How did he get to Daedalus, our starting point?
The name of the target: Grandmaster Meio.
Hiryu is currently joining in on the raid on the prison transfer on Daedalus as sources indicate that one of the prisoners there may have key information concerning Meio and his greater schemes......
Finished
edited 11th Aug '15 7:34:45 PM by UdtheImp
DAMMIT MARK, STOP HITTING HELPY!!- Name: Mr. Bolst (most likely a pseudonym)
- Age: 35
- Species: Alien Guts
- Appearance: The Ultimate Warrior of Planet Guts
◊
- Alignment: Coalition of Planets
- Personality: A career soldier and bounty hunter like many of his race's off-worlders, Mr. Bolst has worked on both sides of the law- with the Zettonian lawman Berume to bring down the notorious weapons dealer Bandero, and as Chiburian mob boss Exceller's bodyguard. He's up for almost anything, as long as the money's good and nobody questions his methods. He is, after all, a proud Guts warrior, one of the mightiest of his kind... to hear him tell it anyway. In truth, he values freedom above all else- freedom to act as he pleases, and freedom for the citizens of M-87. While he's a terrible person motivated by greed and glory, he has standards, and in the past has proven to have a soft spot for children and the poor.
- Skills:
- Has an encyclopedic knowledge of tropes regarding dramatic speeches and confrontations.
- A passable spaceship pilot, but don't expect him to try making the Kessel Run.
- A martial artist of exceptional skill, though nowhere near as great as he says.
- Powers and Abilities:
- Durable Hide: Living in a civilized society where the leading causes of death are "attack by giant monster" and "eaten by predators" toughens up a species- doubly so under the influence of the Plasma Spark. Most M-87 citizens have a tough, rubbery hide that protects them from the jaws, claws, fire breath, and streams of acid of the wildlife. It can also shrug off small arms fire, but striking fighting styles and submission holds work just as well as they do on a normal human. This only protects them from actual damage- they still feel pain.
- Stun Bolts: Bolst, like most Gutsians, is capable of firing bolts of blue light from his eyes meant to daze and disorient predators.
- Invisibility: Rather than adapting to fight, Gutsians have adapted to evade and elude predators. As such, they can temporarily become invisible to evade detection. Oddly enough, it also hides them from smell- though hearing and mechanical sensors are not fooled. While it can last for up to two or three minutes if he stands perfectly still, his body can't keep up the illusion while moving, thus reducing it to a maximum of 30 seconds.
- Illusions: As a last resort, Guts can create illusions from spiral force to mask their retreat or allow them to attack from unexpected angles. These illusory doubles smell, sound, and look almost identical to their creator.
- Weapons/Equipment:
- A Galactic Light Spark, M-87's primitive equivalent of the Core Drills. The design hasn't changed much for millennia. Galactic Sparks are able to channel Spiral Force into the ancient artifacts known as "Spark Dolls" to revive the alien or monster lying within.
- Spark Dolls: Spark Dolls seem to be harmless animal or alien-shaped lumps of rubber, crystal, metal, or other natural material about the size of a human hand, but are actually the remains of an M-87 native completely drained of Spiral Force. A quick injection revives them and returns them to normal. He doesn't have any right now.
- Xio Devizer: More or less a glorified cell phone. However, its Gaodiction function can read animal vocalizations to translate the underlying emotion- usually limited to simple one-word interpretations like "Fear," "Uncertainty," or "Hungry."
- Victorium Crystals: These energy-storing crystals are a prized source of fuel and energy in M-87, where they are even used as currency. Elsewhere, they're just really pretty rocks- Victorium is so rare outside M-87 that almost nobody has heard of it, making it nearly worthless.
- Backstory:
- The M-87 Nebula. Known to its residents as the Land of Light, it is home to gigantic monsters, and one of the widest arrays of non-humanoid aliens in the cosmos. This is because of the ancient artifact at the nebula's center, predating any resident's memory- the Plasma Spark. This artificial sun produces massive amounts of Spiral Energy, to the point M-87's residents are utterly dependent on the energy to live. The numerous civilizations of this nebula have developed surrounded by the ruins of an ancient, highly advanced civilization of titanic beings. Archaeologists believe that using the power of Spiral Energy generated by the Plasma Spark, this ancient civilization evolved into beings beyond human or superhuman- they became Ultramen. Of course, such beings would be easily noticed if they still existed. Perhaps it was lack of resources to support an entire species of giants, perhaps it was a war, or maybe they just became one with the Spiral Force. Archaeologists are split on the exact cause of the disappearance, but they have come to determine that whatever the incident was, it created the Spark Dolls as millions of creatures and aliens were drained of their Spiral Force.
Fast forward to the present day, and we meet Mr. Bolst. Mr. Bolst was born and raised as a Guts Warrior, an elite cadre of soldiers... among a species adapted for trickery and escape, leaving him with numerous cowardly squadmates who were afraid to go into battle. Adding to this, Mr. Bolst has a legacy to live up to- his grandfather, the famed monster hunter Guts Gunner Garm. The pressures this created drove him to leave Guts to pursue his fortune in space. Now he works as a mercenary for various Coalition interests. His most recent work has been as a bodyguard and gopher for a Chiburian by the name of Exceller, a collector of Spark Dolls and fossilized remains, avid supporter of the Coalition, and don of M-87's more savory organized crime.
- Guts has come to Daedalus for the prison break: forgers in the employ of Exceller are aboard, and one knows the location of a Spark Doll made of pure Victorium.
edited 15th Aug '15 8:41:32 AM by Krautman
...and that's terrible.It took days upon days of deliberations, trying out, and crossing off of names to arrive at a true suitable character for this rp. Though the process was frustrating, the end result was worth it. In any case, my sign up. Sorry for the wait, Strat. XD
- Name: Birdy Cephon Altira (Shion Arita when undercover)
- Age: Early twenties.
- Species: Ixioran Alteran
- Appearance: Alteran true form.
◊ and Human undercover form.
◊
- Alignment: Federation
- Personality: Birdy is a rough and tough kind of girl, easily excitable and sharp tempered. Confident in her abilities, she tends to snark about during her fights as well as tease her enemies incessantly. Despite being rough around the edges, Birdy is very intelligent and takes her job as a Federation officer seriously, having very strong belief in upholding the law as well as a strong sense of justice and compassion. In her guise as Shion Arita, she acts more passive and cutesy- affecting a bubbly and ditzy persona so as to be more agreeable and amenable with the public. She is a surprisingly good actor, behaving much differently than her true persona does.
- Skills: Birdy is a woman of various talents. She is an efficient tracker and trained in both unarmed and armed combat due to her job as a Space Federation Investigator, though she much prefers to use CQC to subdue her targets. She is also knowledgeable in the sciences and mathematics, especially biology due to her home planet's technology base being greatly influenced by genetic and bio-engineering as well as her job being geared towards subduing the various nasty menaces of various races that the galaxy has to offer. Other than this, Birdy is a very good singer and actor, being able to easily get a job as an amateur idol and model. Sometimes the girl tends to delve deeply into life and moral philosophy as well.
- Powers and Abilities: Birdy is an Ixioran Alteran, basically a bio-engineered superhuman soldier bred for combat. She is superhumanly strong, tough, and agile- able to leap small buildings in single bounds and race along a highway faster than some of the cars driving in it for brief periods of time as well as punch through cement walls with ease with the aid of her special bio-energy. By concentrating the "flow of energy" onto a singular point, she can greatly increase the power and impact of her strikes. Birdy can also convert her bio-energy into strong electric currents with help from her suit, though she can't throw it as a ranged attack by itself, needing sufficient contact time to channel it or turn it into hard light to lend her strikes even more oomph and defense around said limbs.
- Weapons/Equipment: Her battle suit/uniform, though somewhat revealing is clad in an invisible skintight barrier that protects her body briefly from penetrative force such as blades and bullets, though with enough brute force they can get through the protective features. Another function of the suit has the function of lessening gravitational forces around the wearer for brief moments in time, allowing them to easily reposition themselves in midair and use it to cheat long distance falls. The soles of the feet can stick to metallic substances like a magnet and the heels have a propulsion system to help launch the user farther than their physical limits alone could do. Lastly the suit has an appearance changing feature that can instantly swap her clothes as well as dye her body's pigments a different color than her natural form's, allowing her to assume her Shion Arita identity.
- Also on her person are props such as smoke canisters, flash bangs, and explosive devices. The officer is also the owner of a small biomechanical spaceship in the shape of a dolphin/killer whale-esque shape named Lalailo
that allows her to fly at warp-speed to and communicate with the Federation's police headquarter planets, such as Birdy's very own home planet Oriotera. The spaceship also has a healing tank for when the hotheaded police officer gets all sorts of banged up.
- Also on her person are props such as smoke canisters, flash bangs, and explosive devices. The officer is also the owner of a small biomechanical spaceship in the shape of a dolphin/killer whale-esque shape named Lalailo
- Backstory: A woman who was groomed to be a super soldier and peacekeeper for the Federation ever since she was born, Birdy has gone through strict training as a child and gained the necessary skills to go after any criminal or wrongdoer that the Federation set their eyes on. Currently, she is on a long term undercover mission to tail after a certain group of criminals causing trouble on the Daedalus...
edited 13th Aug '15 10:21:33 PM by Makaioh
@Krautman:
- Interesting character. I'm not very acquainted with the Ultra series (I've only ever seen Ultraman) or its canon, so for the sake of understanding where Guts comes from, who or what is he/the species in the source material?
- Briefly or at length, who are the Zettonian Berume, and what is a Chiburian?
- What is the result of awakening a Spark Doll? Am I right in thinking it's a "Make my monster grow!" kind of deal? If yes, change "a quick injection" to "a lengthy injection".
- How temporary is the invisibility?
@Makaioh:
- Unless I hear any objections from current players, Birdy is accepted under the condition that you remove all of the grenades. I don't remember her ever using those in either the series or OVA, and nor would I estimate she needs them to beat the stuffing out of a great many things under normal circumstances. Where would she keep them, anyway? It's not like there are any pockets in her armor. If explosives and so forth would be handy at some point, they will probably be made available to player characters in general via an armory or what-have-you.
- No transfer gates to and from Lalailo, and the clothes-swapping should allow for one, preset disguise at a time (it can keep the memory of the clothes she was wearing when she swapped, if you like).
- Unless you intended otherwise, I'll operate under the assumption that Oriotera's existence and history, as well as Birdy's, are almost exactly as they were in the series prior to Birdy being assigned the Ryunka mission - except that Oriotera will be but one planet in the larger Federation, Tuto won't be present (at least not in the capacity of a buddy cop), and Mr. White Hair's powers might get axed if he yet draws breath.
- As you can see from this post
, we currently have three starting points. Head on over to Discussion and we'll iron out where she starts out at.
@darksidevoid
- Okay, so this tripped me up writing it too. The species name is Guts-Seijin, which means People of Planet/Star Guts. They've been recurring aliens since about Ultraseven, though this is more based on the incarnation from Ultraman Mebius- showa-era aliens had a lot of insane powers. The thing is, the usual translation convention for aliens in Ultraman is Alien [homeworld]- Alien Baltan, Alien Valky, Alien Zarab, etc. The thing is, I'm not sure how to pluralize that. Gutsians also sounds weird to me.
- Getting off topic ranting about aliens! Point is the character's actual name is Mr. Bolst, species Alien Guts, homeworld Guts.
- On Zettonians and Chiburians:
- In Ultraman, everything gets a boss subtitle. Alien Zetton/The Zettonian
◊ is known as the Transforming Phantom, though that's not really worth much since a lot of aliens can take on human disguises. Berume was one of Exceller's enforcers, trusted with control of Hyper Zetton. Here, Berume's probably a lawman of sorts in the Coalition, coming into conflict with the Alliance and Federation's interests.
- Chiburians/Alien Chibu/Chibullians
◊ (Boss Subtitle: Brain Alien) are aliens best described as "floating brains with tentacles." Exceller is the big bad of Ultraman Ginga S, but most of his schemes amounted to "mine Victorium, revive Dark Lugiel, kill the Ultras for inconveniencing me, take over Earth." I'm just seeing him as a mob boss here, illegally mining Victorium and other precious materials.
- In Ultraman, everything gets a boss subtitle. Alien Zetton/The Zettonian
- I don't think there's ever been a hard cap put on the time limit for alien powers- usually the Ultraman, Attack Team, or what have you figures out a way around the alien of the week's crazy powers using science. I'd say something reasonable like... 20-30 seconds if he's moving, longer if he stands still?
- The generic Light Sparks like they have in M-87 is a "Make My Monster Grow" sort of deal, yeah. The one Ultraman Ginga had in that series let him turn into monsters, though, and Victory in the sequel could use monster limbs. I'm imagining those would end up as priceless artifacts or something though.
Mr. Bolst of the Guts Star is accepted as long as you add in that time limit on the invisibility.
For the foreseeable future, signups are now closed. Because geez, seventeen players is a lot.
edited 15th Aug '15 7:37:25 AM by darksidevoid
GM: AGOG S4 & F/WC RP; Co-GM: TABA, SOTR, UUA RP; Sub-GM: TTS RP. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new Empire.@darkside: The grenade was the battery sized Element Destructor that Tuto gave Birdy to blow up Bacillus, sorry for not making that clear. But without Tuto, she wouldn't get the thing anyways so I am okay with your decision on this.
The history is also generally the same but she didn't go to earth and no Ryunka was stolen since that would just open up a whole can of worms. So at the moment she's only going after general criminal scum. Oriotera is also just one planet of the Federation as you've said since I think in Decode it was simply the the police headquarters base planet. Here in this verse, I guess this is just one of the various law enforcement agencies littering the galaxies too. The clothes swapping and no warp gate I am also fine with.
Anyways, thanks for helping me out with my sign up.
edited 15th Aug '15 10:25:41 AM by Makaioh

@darksidevoid: With "move across the air" I did mean by acrobatics. By shapeshifting, it was meant for creatures like snakes, birds and also aliens that she comes across, like the Tinkerbats. And I'll be down with making her half-Twili, if it's alright with Falkon.
Your works are one trope short.