Not only was it because, as one of the senior technicians behind Survival of the Fittest, he was responsible for fixing all of the really complex computer issues that went on, but also because as time had gone on, he'd gone from being someone fairly well-connected in the organization to someone who had seemingly fallen out of favour. His newest assignment was all but proof of that, as he'd been basically assigned to watch and babysit one of the former 'employees', the infamous H. Brandon Garnett, while he did menial grunt-work and basically just wandered around and couldn't do any damage.
Garnett was an interesting case; for certain. He'd completely abandoned Survival of the Fittest during the Kaige/Rice/McLocke incident, and Danya had gone after him subtly, but with a show of force that had probably intimidated the hell out of pretty much everyone who had any degree of doubt as to the man's sincerity. Ever since, nobody had dissented on the topic of Survival of the Fittest - not a whisper, an offhand remark, or a comment. Everyone just kept focused and tried to avoid talking about the moral ramifications of what they were doing. Sure, everybody felt it and had a degree of doubt about it, mass murder was mass murder, either which way around it, but nobody dared speak up. Doing so seemed to equal the removal of vocal chords and getting tossed on the island yourself.
No thanks.
Of course, Lucas Grossi also found himself rather annoyed because thanks to the incompetence of SOMEONE (he had an idea, but opted to keep it to himself - it just wasn't his style to kiss any ass), a virus was running rampant upon the SOTF mainframe. He'd remembered it immediately - Jack O'Connor's virus had been in the systems once before, and easily cleaned, but with the overhaul they'd done, nobody had anticipated it to make an encore performance and wreak even more havoc on the new system. It had been a full ten hours that the system had been down and glitchy, and they had absolutely no idea what was going on in the game. They didn't know who was still alive, what the danger zones were...for all Grossi knew, the collars could have all simeltaneously exploded, killing absolutely everyone. They had no cameras, no visuals, nothing.
At the moment, Grossi was working on trying to restore some sort of tracking system, to try and discover who had died since they lost the system. Unfortunately for him, he wasn't having much luck. All he got for most of his troubles was a Street Fighter 2 screen, and it tended to remind him far too much of Dennis Nedry's 'hacker crap' from Jurassic Park.
Ah ah ah, you didn't say the magic word. Ah ah ah.
Ah ah ah.
Ah ah ah.
Fuck.
Sighing in exasperation, he glanced across the room at Garnett, who almost looked to be enjoying himself. The man obviously had no love lost for Danya, or Survival of the Fittest, but he was here on a single perogative for himself - survival. Grossi knew it as well as anyone; it was a miracle that Garnett wasn't dead, and even that didn't mean that Danya trusted him.
Trying a few more combinations of numbers and letters to try and get through the foreign programming, Grossi blinked in surprise when he found that he'd managed to somehow get through into the main system. Not wasting any time, he tried pulling up the student profiles and locator map. He heard a beep, and the screen kicked him back to the wall of text, with a corrupted status message - something about danger zones.
Great...just fucking wonderful...how're we ever going to sort all of this out...and where's Danya? Longest I've ever seen him away for, and in this kind of a crisis? I'd be surprised if any of us survive the week...
Sighing, Grossi turned back to work.
-----
OOC Things!:
Alright folks. I've got to apologize for the length and quality of this announcement. This isn't the best, and I know that it really doesn't hold the high standard that you're used to, but it's been a really crazy month and a bit here at SOTF. With that being said, there are some very, very important changes occurring, effective immediately. I'll go through the need-to-know information in order.
Danger Zones:
The danger zones have all been cleared, and will be replaced with the Graveyard, the Caves, the Barracks, and the Hospital.
And the Marsh. For fun.
Everyone in one of those threads has fourty-eight hours to "what are you doi-get the fuck ou-we're all dead!". Otherwise, your character is forfeit, and I reserve the right to eat his or her brains as I see fit.
Inactivity
This has become a ridiculous problem, and I'll be the first to admit that I've been as bad about it as anyone. Thanks to this, I'm not going to come down on anyone and be a complete bastard about it, but I will be evaluating things on a case by case basis. We have an insane amount of inactive characters, and the staff will be going through them, contacting handlers, and so-on. We'll have a post on this within the near future.
Rolls
You guys didn't SERIOUSLY think that we'd be doing a whole month without rolls, did you?
To make up for lost time, I've gone ahead and rolled ten different 'lucky' winners. Evan Angler
Danesfort Zygmunt
Lulu Altaire Edgar Hoskins
Sato Koizumi
Renee Valenti Vera Lang
Bree North
Leo Curtis
Trish McCarroll Hayden O'Guinn
Madison Connor Nicholas Nutbrown
Abel Williams
For the record, I think these rolls fucking suck. Unfortunately, that's the way that the dice go. You have three business days to either swap these out, hero them out, roll null them out, or kill 'em off. As always, please post a link to the death and if you are using any of our fun party favours to save your guys.
BKA/BDA
We had a contest, as always, and there were winners, as always. Congratulations to:
Scipher, for winning Best Kill Award with J.R. Rizzolo!
and
DetectiveArcher for winning Best Death Award for the death of Petra Andrews!
Scipher has won a Type 67 Silenced Pistol, which J.R. can pick up at the Hospital (which is a danger zone, but it's cool) and DetectiveArcher has won a roll nullification card. Congratulations to the both of you!
Staff
As some of you are no doubt aware, things have been going very slowly over the last few months for SOTF. We've had a huge inactivity problem amongst handlers and staff, and not a whole lot is getting done. The staff have evaulated, and the following changes are occurring, effective immediately.
First, it is with much regret that I am informing everyone of Megami's decision to step down as forum administrator. She is unable to handle her real life workload and balance the demands of administrating this roleplaying site, and until she's able to sort out her busy schedule, she has decided that the best decision is to step down. As such, effective immediately, I am now the head forum administrator.
*cue screams and running away; mass protests and rioting*
Meg will be staying with us as an honourary staff member, though, and contributing when she can, and will of course be welcomed back with open arms. We hope to see her back soon, and on behalf of everyone here, I think we owe her a huge debt of gratitude for putting in as much work as she has.
Naturally, though, as I've been a huge proponent of the 'you can't run a site like this by yourself' idea, I've decided that it is in the best interests of the site (and my own sanity) to name a co-administrator immediately. I'm sure that very few of you will question this choice, because the person in question has (in my eyes) proven themselves as organized, active, and someone who can be relied upon to help keep things in order when the going gets tough.
So without further ado, I'd like to congratulate Crash on his promotion to co-administrator of the forum. I think he's going to do a hell of a job, so congratulate him, all of you.
That's just about it for this month, I promise you that we will be getting back on track. The staff will be around for you to contact - if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to do so.
Thanks all, and lets keep SOTF going strong!