Good morning, evening and or afternoon to you again dear readers. I, NPCBurner, Lord of Raccoons, am returning to you all once again with another fun journal. I’d like to start this journal by thanking the readers and commenters of my previous journal, but I sadly cannot. Why? Because, Inkbunny, probably the second most popular site for Dense is currently under constant DDoS attacks and due to moving to a new server and other things is frequently down. So at the time of me writing this, I can not access it to get the names. Sorry all, but thank you all the same. That aside, I’ll pull back the curtain for a bit to state that the next Dense installment may be a tad delayed. Dayjob and life falling apart a tad, today is my friend Rokku-D’s birthday and I still haven’t finished his gift story, and due to me also working with all the feedback we received from “Home Sweet Oum” I lost a lot of writing time and actually have to replace the next on the story list with another story that has to be rewritten. So instead of a story staring Deiro, Alex, and Joseph, you may be receiving different story staring Deiro, Alex, and Joseph, or one with Deiro, Kevin, and Joseph, or a Zoe comic, or something I’ve gotta pluck out of the air. I will be posting the gift story I make for Rokku after I give it to him first, but obviously, that’s not a planned Dense installment(though it will still be a fun read for all.) Okay, that out of the way, the raccoons are going to drop the curtain again and we can get to the journal proper. Okay, then now we’re gonna get to a more interactive journal. This one will be interactive in two ways. Way number one, as you will know dear reader, I don’t give these journals spotlight. I learned the lesson “High Guardian Spice” somehow missed and put my work first and myself off to the side for those with interest to find. On Inkbunny these are posted as Journals that only followers get alerted to, same on DA but they’re lost among dozens of other Journals. Pixiv, due to them not having a journal system these get posted as Novels. HicceArs actually didn’t even get journal #2 because that site is still being built and as such isn’t that convenient for me to use. There’s also Baarag, but I just link one of the other Journals there. I rambled there for a bit, but long and short is, way number one is I want your input. Do you think the contents of these Journals of worthy enough to be posted with some fanfare-like regular post? Leave your feedback in the comment whether it be a “Yes”, “No”, or a better alternative for me to do these. Interactive way number two is far more fun. Hopping onto these Journals topic “Shonen Dense”, this journal will be taking all twelve kids and applying some shonen properties to them. Or put bluntly, “what bllsht anime powers would the Dense kids have if Dense wasn’t a slice of life comedy?” Well, that’s not fair to say really. You don’t have to be a Shonen battle Manga to give your characters anime powers. Hell my most recent favorite show “Epithet Erased” is actually an ensemble comedy, but those characters have anime powers. Well, it’s far too deep into Dense to introduce powers now, so just a fun little journal topic this will remain. Firstly, let me set up “my” rules. When it comes to anime powers I follow two basic rules. The first rule is that the powers/abilities must relate to the character in some way. I follow this rule because I believe that it is a part of their character. Nothing wrong with giving someone a power because it’s cool, but I more enjoy the deeper connection and impact powers have when they have a deeper connection to their user. The second rule is "one singular power per character". I follow this because it is, in my opinion, one of the greatest creative exercises there is. Inspired by series like “Needless”, “Area D”, “My Hero Academia”, and “Epithet Erased” every character is given a singular simple basis for their powers/abilities and it’s effectiveness, strength, and power relies purely on the user’s creativity and resourcefulness. As much as I’d love to spend five pages going over “Uten and Bermuda Athroport” I know I’m long-winded enough in these and we’ve got twelve kids to go through, so I’ll spare you all that until later. Though as I said, those are “my” rules, you in the comments(or DM’s for Pixiv because the comments have a character limit) can give your own input and ideas about the powers I’ve given or ones you think fit the kids. Hell, you can even give those now before seeing what I put. That said, I’m going to be very general in all of these because powers can fall into numerous categories, and fantasy, sci-fi, and mecha Dense may be future journal topics. So I’ll just be giving more general explanations for what powers/ abilities I give the kids, nothing specific, named, or definite. Savy? Okay, let’s begin. Alex: The prodigal son starts us off. Tell me, dear reader, what type of powers do you think dear little Alexander would have if I gave him any? If you answered Illusions, Hypnosis, and or Shapshiting, you’re on my wavelength. Since all the powers are based around the kid’s characters and personalities, it’s only fitting that the proud trap gets powers that match his love of screwing with people. In some other doc lost on my computer, I gave Alex a power called “Soul Eater”, a power that allowed him to, upon making eye contact with a target put them in a hypnotic trance that allowed to manipulate their senses. Sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, once he had you under his trance you were putty in his hands. A power as many of you can imagine makes his two sides more distinctive from each other causing the idea that they’re two different people far more convincing. It’d also mean teasing is far easier as instead of trying to poke your nerves with his action and words, he can poke them directly. Finally, as you all can guess, Alex isn’t a combatant, so having the power to put people under his trance or even just erase themself completely from someone’s perception to make a quick getaway is their M.O. when trouble comes around. That said it does have obvious weaknesses like it doesn’t affect the blind, it doesn’t last forever like the Shikai of one Sosuke Aizen and can be dispelled. Though I will also equip each kid with a weapon for then their powers fail at the end of their section. Alex’s is the Rosary Whip, a specially made whip with beads intertwined in it. Brittany: Time for more utility! Yeah, I’m not the spectacle fighter type, so don’t expect a lot of big flashy destructive powers. That said who would expect such a thing from the young Lady Quinn. As you can guess Brittany’s powers all revolve around the theme of investigation, her named power being “Reenactment”. Her power allowed her to resonate with an item and go into a semi astral projection like state that would allow her to rewatch past events that occurred around said object within a relative distance to it. She is also limited in what she see’s as recent events can play out like a hologram, but the further back the events go the more blurry and distorted they become until it’s out of her rewind range. A very fun power really and perfect for a girl with a love of history and mystories. Obviously, time passes by different in her astral investigation then it does in real-time so she’s not 100% vulnerable, but she is cut off from the present time while doing so. Okay, so maybe hers is a tad more specific than others, but hey that means you have more room to suggest things. Brittany’s weapon, fitting her style would be a utility parasol. Sword, basic shield, flint-lock pistol, and short grappling hook all in one. She’s a non-combatant and has a power that leaves her a sitting duck, so I’ve no problem giving her a higher tier weapon. Carmen: Can’t go wrong with classics, and nothing’s more classic than superhuman! Carmen had “Olympian” a three-tier booster power that would allow her to double, triple, or quadruple her physical stats following the respective tiers of bronze, silver, and gold. That said, the power had another variant called “Limit Break” because to achieve the higher tiers she first had to reach the limit of her current state then surpass it to access the next. So your basic Kaio-Ken Super Sayin go further beyond power. I can’t think of any power more fitting. Oh, that said it has the drawbacks of while hitting a new tier does refresher her when the power deactivates her body is instantly hit with all of the strain and fatigue that achieving each tier brings. Though the power also scales with her base stats, so say if her bronze level is what her stats would be at age 18, at 18 her bronze would be Superman levels of power. Now then, with a power like this, no weapons are needed. All or nothing, if she can’t do it with her hands, she’s gotta try harder until she can. Catherine: A wrench. I’m stating Cat’s weapon first because, as you can imagine her powers would make any weapon kind of irrelevant. Cat’s listed power was “Gear Head”, a power that allowed her to upon contact with any mechanical device learn it’s complete specs from what it’s made of to how to assemble and disassemble it. Cat is a support type always having powers that involve taking things and modifying them to the highest efficiency or breaking them down to make something completely new to serve whatever purpose she needs it too. Short sweet and to the point. The drawback is that she needs to make physical contact with something to activate it, but she’s a smart girl who with enough use could figure out most machines without even using her power. As stated before her weapon would be a wrench, but in all honesty, just give her a toolset, and say being a weapon is their secondary use. Deiro: Now here we have an interesting one. Deiro wasn’t made from scratch by me, so his creator Rorian actually had a power lined up for him. A power I dubbed “Binary Tounge”. Deiro has the power to control and manipulate electronic devices, a fitting power for a gamer boy. I kind of prefer it more than the pixel-based power I would’ve thought of, though in a modern world can be very overpowered. It has set limitation, of course, like he has to be adjacent to whatever device he’s communicating with if he doesn’t have a signal booster, his hacking potential is quite limited since he has no display to work with while using his power, and of course, things with VPN and strong security are much harder to control, but his is less refined so with time it could develop into something more solid. Now we reach the fatal flaw of the weapon section. I’m not arming kids out of nowhere, each weapon they get is within reason accessible to them within the context of Dense. Before you point it out, Brittany’s parasol is made by Cat, they’re good friends and knowing that Brittany’s power leaves her vulnerable would make sure she has adequate protection. Deiro is a harder kid to equip, so I’ll leave his suggestions fully open. Dina: Now we reach the kid I have no clue about. Dina, like Deiro, was made by someone else originally, but unlike Deiro she was originally a character made with power. Her creator Draven had her as a pyrokinetic fox, so the only thing I can think of for her is a power called “Firefox”. I at least did some work to make it fit her character by making it a fox variant of Tamaki Kotatsu(Fire Force) ignition ability “Nekomata”, complete with its use resulting in her having to wear a revealing fireproof outfit to use it without restraint(because the fire would burn her normal clothes). Something Dina is not a fan of due to her body issues, but that’s a topic for another time. So yeah, “Firefox” a cross between Tamaki Kotatsu and Hina&Hikage’s Ignition abilities from fire force. She is also on the no weapon list for now. George: Did somebody say super speed? Well, I certainly didn’t because that’s too obvious, and actually a hell of a lot more flawed then most people think. A Formula One race car isn’t driving vertically up the side of a building no matter how fast it’s going. George may be a fast one, but his speed is kind of a side of effect of what he truly has freedom. “Freerunner” was another of my more interesting ideas, as it was a power that basically made his body emit a constant force field that reduced the effects of drag, air friction, and gravity on him while in motion. I even came up with a super move for it, where he could charge his field up, then release it in a burst to produce a speed boost or double jump. George is his name and mobility is his game. I couldn’t deny the idea of him running up walls or across the surface of the water, but I learned from the speed force that superspeed is way overrated. He does run fast, but that’s more of a result of running so damn much as opposed to his power itself. Weapon wise, his are more equipment than an actual weapon. As many learned recently George’s mom is a brilliant scientist, so like Brittany, he gets some higher-end stuff. Super running shoes with retractable razor spike cleats(again, speed alone isn’t getting you up a building), and taking a note our of “Attack on Titan” his signature suspenders can fire out like grappling hooks to help with quick turns, mid-air maneuvers, and snarring. Joseph: God mode baby! Sadly I’m only partially joking. Due to reasons, I can’t go into because of spoilers for later Dense installments, all of Joseph’s powers are incredibly powerful while being equally uncontrollable. One of his first power was called “Dream Eater”, a power that caused him to emit a psychic wave that caused different effects from putting people to sleep, to paralysis, to hallucinations, to drowsiness, etc. If it could be connected to sleep “Dream Eater” could cause it, but as stated his powers are uncontrollable so “Dream Eater” would go off at random and is the Shonen explanation for his narcolepsy. His other power is “Lucky?”, a pretty standard probability control power, he can cause events to result in a positive or negative outcome. Though again it’s uncontrollable so it activates at random and he can’t always control which outcome he’ll create. Ultimately Joseph is still on the working list, my preferred end goal is to make “Daydream Believer” an Alice in Wonderland themed power that would serve as a combination of “Dream Eater” and “Lucky?”, but that will come in due time. Joseph’s weapon is an arsenal of things from his magic kits, from a fireball launcher to collapsible cane, to throwing cards, things that would also supplement his powers like George’s Kevin&Tina: Of course the twins would be together, they were baked out the same time so they’d develop the same if not similar powers. That said initially they did have two different powers. Kevin had “Shooting Star” which allowed him to charge things in his hand and throw with incredible force, while Tina had “Gravitation” a standard gravity ability. I really liked these ideas, but since they’re twins I wanted to line up their powers a bit more. So what can produce the same effects as the original powers while fitting the theme of the twins? Magnetism of course. So Tina got “Magnetism(+)” and Kevin got “Magnetism(-)” a power that causes the twins upon activation to produce a specialized magnetic field that they can also apply to things they touch. They also possess the power to shift the field on the item they touch, so Kevin still gets his fastball by turning something in his hand to (+) and Tina can still float around while sitting on a basketball by making them both (-). That said they can’t change the polarity they were born with so if they activate next to each other they’re stuck to each other. I’ll end this explanation by asking you to imagine how a water balloon fight would go with these two with them can make the balloons beeline straight to the other. Weapon wise, Kevin gets a bat and baseballs, while Tina gets balls that she wields as like a morningstar with her magnetism as teh chain(yes I know it goes against the “This is what they use without their powers” rule, but they can still use them without their powers. Just not as effectively.) Toma: Almost done, and another easy one nonetheless. Toma is the last main kid not made by me, and as such came with a power already attached. The original Toma is a vampiric shadowmancer, so seeing as Dense Toma is an albino with sun sensitivity, I developed “Solid Shade”. It still has some detail work to do, but it is a power allows him to essentially pull shadows up and reshape them. The functionality is pretty set in stone, he can shape shadows into weapons, objects, and even make a Kamen rider-esque suit out of it, just need to figure out how the actual shadow gathering works. One way was him literally just pulling up shadows, while another was he uses a special matter that exists at the edge of shadows that he can manipulate. Weapon wise, Toma has access to an arsenal of costume and prop weapons from more franchises so I can name, so you can take your pick on what he’ll bop someone over the head with. Zoe: Best for last, we have Zoe. She is actually one that I never fully decided on. In the past, she had things like “Light Paint” and Life Paint” which functioned the same way in that she could condense either lifeforce or light particles at her fingertips and forge a colorful neon matter from them, but those never fully fit in my opinion(despite me being the one coming up with them). I wanted her to have a power the matched her bright cheerful spirit while also matching her artistic nature. If I had to make a third attempt at power for her I’d probably make one called “Prismatic Platoon”, which would cause her to produce a bright flash and create seven single-colored duplicates of herself, or even just “Prismatic” that would allow her to make seven single-colored duplicates of something she’d hit with a flash beam. Well, I guess that’s the good thing about all of this being overview, I don’t need a 100% defined power(despite me giving so many already). As for weapons, Zoe will rock a rifle since, fun fact, in Dense canon she actually is trained to shoot with one. She really only uses her paintball rifle(and even that just for art), but she’s still capable a cappin a foo from the hip at 40 yards. Welp, that’s enough rambling from me for today. Like I said at the top, feel free to comment on this all til your heart’s content. Also, comment on whether or not you think I should give these journals more spotlight. Also also you can submit ideas for future topics. Until next time dear reader. Burner out!!