Current Events > Teen Titans CYOA: Romance Resurrected Part 11

(+) Yeah! (+)

B

"I think she'd appreciate the moose," you say.

You put in a token and start the machine up again. The moose is buried underneath a snake, so you use this turn to move the snake out of the way. Then you put in another token and grab the moose arond the body. It's a hefty stuffed animal so it stays firmly inside the claw, and then drops down the chute.

"And our souvenir shopping is complete," you say. "Let's get these sent right away."

"Alright, I know a shortcut to the outside," Nella says.

She leads the way to the closest mall exit. You then go the long way around the outside to where Shadowfax is parked. You bring out some packaging and wrap up the beluga whale and big moose nice and tight. Then you bring out another Magi-Courier, and have it fly away home with the packages in its belly.

A) Go back to the arcade
B) Head back to the house
C) Check by the museum
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A
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A)
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Cartridge88 posted...

C) Check by the museum

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A

The three of you go back inside and back to the arcade. With what's left of your tokens, you decide to play other prize games. There is one you like, with all the prizes in plastic capsules. You see the poster beside the machine previews the types of prizes available.

"They don't have any spooky toy jewelry," you tell Raven. "Do you want more shiny, sparkly ones? Or do you want some of these glow sticks instead?"

"Let me see the sparkly ones," Raven says as she walks over.

There are various "gold" and "silver" rings, rings with pretend gems in all different colors, colorful bead necklaces and bracelets.

"I guess these are okay," she says. "Split your tokens and get me some of those and some glow sticks."

"Okay," you say.

You put tokens in and watch the machinery go to work. A little robotic shovel arm takes aim at the rotating tub of prizes, then plunges in. It scoops up a capsule and brings it over to a little slot to dump it in. You hear the capsule in the chute and bring it out.

"Let's see what you won," you say as you hand it over to Raven.

Raven pops the capsule open and gets a silver ring with a blue gem, as if it were sapphire.

"Nice," Raven says as she puts it on. "Keep 'em coming."

You have four tokens left. The ring Raven just got would've been the fifth token, so how to divide the rest of the tokens?

A) Two more for jewelry, two for glow sticks
B) One more for jewelry, three for glow sticks
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Cartridge88 posted...

B) One more for jewelry, three for glow sticks

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Malcrasternus posted...

Cartridge88 posted...

B) One more for jewelry, three for glow sticks

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scubasteve42 posted...

Malcrasternus posted...

Cartridge88 posted...

B) One more for jewelry, three for glow sticks

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B

You go with the jewelry game one more time, and watch the little arm scoop. The capsule goes down the chute and you bring it out. Raven opens it up, and it is a bracelet of emerald green beads.

"Not bad," Raven says as she looks it over in the light.

She puts it on the opposite hand from her ring while you go over to the glow stick prize machine.

This machine has a strange contraption that's part roulette and part vending machine. The glow stick packages sit on the vending machine slots with the coil spring keeping them in place, and you can see where the center axel is to rotate. The entire thing has a Plexiglas shell, with the only opening being at the bottom, where no normal arm could reach up to grab one of the prizes. All you have to do to play is put in a token and press the "SPIN" button.

The machine starts up, and the roulette spins around for several full rotations. It stops after another quarter rotation or so, and the coil turns to push the package off and to the opening. You grab that and take a look.

"We've got standard green," you say.

"Nice," Raven says as she takes the package.

You go again, the roulette spins, and you pick up what it drops down.

"A set of red glow sticks," you say. "Hmm, might be able to do lightsaber battles now."

"Oh, sure," Raven chuckles. "We'll flip a coin for who's the Jedi."

You put in your last token and the roulette spins once again. It drops another package and you pick it up.

"Ah, yellow," you say. "Another Jedi color."

"Really?" she says.

"Well, the original trilogy only had so much graphic capability," you say. "In the new trilogy, they introduce characters with colors other than red, blue and green."

"Neat," Raven says. "So the Jedi will get green and yellow and the red goes to... the Sith?"

"Yes, very good," you say.

Raven smiles and holds onto the glow stick packages.

A) Head home
B) Swing by the museum
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Cartridge88 posted...

B) Swing by the museum

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Malcrasternus posted...

Cartridge88 posted...

B) Swing by the museum

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Malcrasternus posted...

Cartridge88 posted...

B) Swing by the museum

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b
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B

"Let's start heading back," you say. "We can swing by the museum to see what it's like."

"Sweet," Raven says while Nella grumbles.

"Just make it quick," Nella says.

The three of you head back out and return to Shadowfax again. You all put your helmets on and you pull out of the parking lot.

Nella manages to direct you to the museum, but with some back tracking and confusing "shortcuts". The museum isn't busy at this time, so that's a good sign for your trip out tomorrow. The parking lot has plenty of space, but it also has parking meters. You'll need to trade more money to make sure you have spare change.

The museum building itself looks nice, with two floors and lovely columns and arches. There even appears to be a nice seating area around the side, might make for a nice outdoor lunch afterward.

"Okay," you say. "Looks good. We'll be just fine for tomorrow morning."

"Good," Nella says. "Now can we go home?"

"Yes, fine," you say.

A) Get dinner on the way home
B) Have dinner at home
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A.
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B
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A
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b
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A) Get dinner on the way home
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A

"We'll get something on the way home."

"Okay, but let me call ahead," Nella says. "I wouldn't want Grandpa Al to be in the middle of making something if he doesn't have to."

"Oh," you say. "I was just thinking for the three of us."

"What?" Nella says. "No, no, Rory, that wouldn't be fair. We can't be eating something completely different from everyone else."

"Yeah, that is a little inconsiderate, Rory," Raven says with a slight head tilt.

"Well ordering dinner on the go is a habit," you say. "Even before adding you to my journey, I've been taking care of myself."

"Well, how about we go light, then?" Raven suggests as you turn Shadowfax around. "Just a side dish and some drinks to go with what Alessandro and the family is preparing."

"Alright," you say. "Perhaps some..."

A) Fries
B) Onion rings
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B
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B.
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Malcrasternus posted...

B.

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B

"Onion rings. Nella, do you want some, too?"

"Um, where were you planning on getting onion rings?" Nella asks. "Sometimes they're better from one place than the other."

"Well which one is the better? We'll go with them."

"Okay, head for Burger King," Nella says.

Nella directs you around and you quickly stop inside to get three orders of onion rings and three medium Colas.

"Oh," Nella says as her phone rings. "They texted back. Do you want to be inside or outside for dinner?"

A) Inside
B) Outside

sorry for being lazy with this one
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B.
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B)
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B
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b
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B

"Outside sounds nice," you say. "Another big picnic meal together sounds nice."

Nella nods and texts that back before you all head out again.

You return to the Null-Xenos home and have the ladies go in ahead while you put Shadowfax in the garage.

"Good ride today, boy," you say. "Don't worry, we'll be going for some real driving soon."

"How soon?" Jonas asks.

You're a bit startled that he was there at all, but you look over and see him walking over from the back corner.

"Jonas," you say. "What're you doing in here? Everyone's supposed to be heading to the back for another picnic meal."

"I know," he says. "It must be so nice for you to just drive around on your bike wherever you want."

"It is," you say. "But if you're trying to act like things were so easy for me, my other cousins already did this act."

"What do they have to complain about?" Jonas sneers. "They're still part of the true Null family, aren't they?"

"There's no 'true' Null, main line, any of that," you say. "At least their won't be anymore. I swear that to you."

"Sure, sure," Jonas says. "Just like we all promised to see each other again when we were kids, but it's been a decade since."

"Because of our families," you say.

"Because of YOUR family!" Jonas shouts. "Your grandfather, my Great-Uncle, and your parents, they couldn't take Grandmother Radella at her word. They thought she was jealous and spiteful, but she was just concerned."

"And that judgment is on them," you say. "It has nothing to do with us."

"Sure, sure," Jonas says. "Let's go have dinner. In the garden like you said, right?"

Jonas turns and walks out the back door.

A) Leave the subject alone
B) Have him talk it out with you
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B
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B.
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Malcrasternus posted...

B.

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B

"No," you say as you follow out. "You're not bringing this up just to brush it off. You have something more to say, don't you?"

Jonas is silent, but you see it on his mind behind that scowl.

"Your family..." he begins. "Our family, The Nulls, somewhere along the way, lost their way."

"Yes, letting the other families pressure us with the marriages. But that's what I'm saying, there won't be that system anymore."

"That's nice and all, but that's not it," Jonas says. "There's a dark secret in our family's history."

You're almost frozen in place.

"The Fortun Family?" you ask.

"How do you know that name?" he asks back.

"I met the last living member of that family earlier this year," you say. "Her name was Isabel."

"Why are you saying 'was'?" he asks, a look of uncertainty on his face.

"She gave me no choice," you explain. "She combined Light and Dark in an attempt destroy everything in this world, just like her ancestors."

"And why do you think her ancestors were going to do that?" Jonas says. "You probably think it's for the same reasons Isabel had. It wasn't. It was because the Null Family wouldn't accept them."

"What proof do you even have of this?"

"Well, oddly enough, a book at the Numismastic Museum. Black leather, with a rather strange symbol on the spine."

A) Believe him
B) Don't believe him
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Cartridge88 posted...

B) Don't believe him

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Malcrasternus posted...

Cartridge88 posted...

B) Don't believe him

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A.
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A
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b
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B

"Oh, of course, the museum we're visiting," you say. "I'm not going to waste my time for a book that won't even be there."

"You may think that now," he says as you move past him. "But just you see. Black leather, with gold trim. The symbol on the spine is a square tilted on a point, with a capital Greek letter Xi inside. It'll be filed in the section matching Rorek IV's era."

You try to tune that out but you can't ignore it. Either way, you put it out of your mind as you join the rest of the family in the back.

"What was keeping you?" Raven asks as you sit beside her.

"And where's Jonas?" Nella asks. "Oh nevermind, there he is."

Jonas joins everyone but sits farther away from you this time.

"What's with him?" she asks you.

"Don't worry about it," you say while Raven gives you your share of onion rings.

Dinner is delicious, and filled with you and Raven recounting stories for everyone. Obviously the interest is on the stories of heroics, given that Raven is a Teen Titan and you're an honorary member. Though Nella and your many distant Aunts do enjoy the romantic anecdotes. And as with everything, you leave out the more sordid details.

As for the meal, the onion rings go well with Great-Uncle Al's briam, the baked dish of mixed vegetables ranging from zucchini to potatoes to red onions, which is itself delicious. Then the baklava is equally delicious for dessert, the cinnamon and honey on the dough washed down with tall glasses of milk.

After dessert, you and Raven excuse yourself to prepare for bed. You and Raven brush your teeth and change into sleeping clothes. Raven's already wearing her Planet of Zeus shirt.

"So are we going to play lightsabers with our glow sticks?" she asks.

"No, not tonight," you smile. "We can do that tomorrow night."

You give her a kiss good night, and then the two of you turn in.

The next morning, you and Raven get ready, preparing your own breakfasts. You and Raven head out on Shadowfax and return to town. Traffic is a bit heavier because of morning commute, but you make it to the museum well enough. The museum itself is not heavily busy, just like yesterday. You put in plenty of coins for the parking meter, then pay the ticket price for admission of what would be about $30 American.

You and Raven walk through the lobby and see some items already on display, such as a the history of this building itself. The museum itself is housed in the mansion of the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, formally known as "The Palace of Ilion". It was built between 1878 to 1880, and there is a picture of the building from 1910 to show how it and the neighborhood were back then.

You and Raven find your way through the halls and other exhibit halls to see the coins, medals, stamps, weights, manufacturing dies and various other items, all as they were in the 14th century BC. Raven is lightly impressed, but because of what Jonas said, all you can think of is getting to the library. Not that you can find the book he described, but to see that it isn't there and know he's just trying to mess with you.

"Here's the library," Raven says.

She leads the way up the stairs and down a new hall. You see all the books and files from over the centuries and even millennia.

A) Go looking
B) Don't go looking
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B) Don't go looking
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b
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A.
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Malcrasternus posted...

A.

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COIN TOSS

B

You won't let Jonas ruin your good time so you just ignore anything in the range of Rorek IV's life.

Raven marvels at the selection, and with help from her English-to-Greek language guide, she asks the museum employee for assistance. Then with some help from you when the guide fails, she explains what she wishes to read.

The employee, with cloth gloves, carefully carries a very old tome over to the observation table. He then provides Raven with her own cotton gloves and she puts those on before slowly opening the book.

"Wow..." she marvels at the remarkably preserved pages. "This looks amazing!"

"Indeed," you say. "Now let's see... Oh well this is the preface, that's boring stuff."

Raven carefully turns the page.

"Oh okay, this might be something," you say. "This is essentially a census from ancient times. Let's see..."

You skim over the words, translating it as best you can from ancient Greek to modern English.

"Well obviously per any census, you have the column of names over here on the left, and then the numbers are in the Greek numerals over here. Adding this apostrophe essentially told you it was the number and not the letter."

"Oh, so by that logic, an alpha is one, beta is two, and so no?"

"Yes, until you get past theta. Then it's representing units of 10. Iota is 10, kappa is 20, and so on, until sigma. Sigma is 200, tau is 300, and so on until they used 'sampi' for 900."

"Sampi?"

"As a capital, it looks like if lambda had a third leg branching off the right. As lowercase, it looks like an archer's bo being held by two stick-man arms."

"Oh, yeah, I think I see that," she says. "Those must be total population values then."

"Yes, I'd think so, too. Okay, given this is the ancient Greek, you use the ancient phonetics of their alphabet. Alpha was an 'ah', like in 'father'. Beta was the B, like 'better'. Gamma was a hard G, that 'get' sound. Delta was D, Epsilon was short E like in 'pet'. Zeta was of course Z, like a 'zeh' or 'sdh'. Eta was the even shorter E, theta was T like 'top'.

"Iota could be both short I and long I, so the differences between 'light' and 'machine'. Kappa was obviously just a K, Lambda was L, Mu is M and Nu was N. Xi is X, Omicron was a short O like 'hot'. Pi was P, Sigma was both styles of S, such as... Well, 'styles' has both. Tau is T like at the end of 'hot', Upsilon is both types of U, as in 'loon' and 'ruse'. Phi was also P, but could have a P-H 'fff' sound.

"Chi was C as in 'cat', Psi was P-S as in 'laps', and Omega was an A-W like 'saw' and 'paw'."

"Yeah, that was in my language guide," Raven says. "It also has their modern uses."

"Well you should've told me that," you chuckle. "In that case, help me translate some of this."

Raven chuckles as she opens her guide book to the pronunciation guide.
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You find many Greek names, like Afroudakis, Andreou, Axiotis, Barlos, Coumantaros, Diamantopoulos, Dragoumis, Floros, Glezos, Kondylis, Kontogouris, Kyrkos, Lekkas, Marangos, Mylonas, Nevrakis, Orologas, many forms of the "Papa" surname derived in a very similar fashion to the Norse "[blank]son", Rodocanachi, Spheeris, Taskasaplidis, Tychia and Vovos.

"Wow," Raven says. "I wonder how many of these families still live in this area."

"Well let's see how many made it to the next census," you say.

Raven nods and carefully turns the pages. A lot of names did carry over, but you do lose some "Papa" families along the way. Raven carefully turns other pages, and other names drop out while others come in. Then on another page, a rather interesting piece of documentation comes up.

"I believe this is asking for a name change," you say. "The timeframe lines up with the period when Rome started rising. They weren't an empire at this time of about 300 BC, but it was strong. A rare Greek-Rome marriage at this time, it seems. The Tychia family of Greece wished to change their name to match their Roman in-laws, so in both Greece and Rome they would be known as... The Fortun family..."

"As in Isabel's family?" Raven asks.

"It seems so," you say. "I didn't realize they were around that long."

Jonas' story of the black book creeps into your head again.

A) Continue to ignore it
B) Tell Raven about it
C) Go looking for it
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C
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B.
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B)
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b
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B

"Maybe Jonas is on to something," you sigh.

"What's Jonas on to?" she asks.

"You remember the biography of Rorek IV? How we discovered there were seals and enchantments keeping the truth hidden?"

"Yes, and Roberta Rivers asked you not to break the last one," she says.

"Jonas didn't mention the book at the Null family estate, but he happened to know the name 'Fortun'. He knew something else about our family's history with hers from something here in Greece."

"There's something that specifically chronicles Isabel's ancestry aside from a census?"

"Again, not in so many words, but that was the implication."

"And? Did he know what the book looked like?"

"Yes, but," you say, stopping Raven from standing up, "I'm not going to bother looking for it. We already know the reality of the Null family reputation isn't what everyone makes it out to be. I don't need to know all the dark details."

Raven nods, accepting your decision.

"For now," you say, "how about we take a lunch break? I can run and fetch..."

A) Burgers and fries
B) Pizza
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