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Well, home from EFNW with lungs full of crud.  Ironically, it wasn't the con that made me sick.  No, I felt it starting on the drive up.  I'm just sure that the cold bug  enjoyed all the reinforcements at the con itself.  Hopefully I'll kick it out by next week when I have to go back to work.

However, it turns out that 13 hour drives are really good for talking about stories and the like.  On the drive up, my friend Gina and I talked mostly about anime (she is a proud weeaboo (and knows if I spelled that right or not)) and on the way back came up with some interesting ideas.

So while at the con, I sort of tinkered a bit with a story that combines elements of Elissie's character in Cannon Princess with an urban setting.  Think 'Harry Potter goes to Stonewall High instead of Hogwarts... also, Harry is a girl.'  I only managed a few pages between panels, but it engaged me.  (...I was on so very many panels this year.... it was awesome, just... exhausting.)

On the drive back we came up with something else.  I dunno if it's been done before, but the premise seemed sound.  So I decided to share it with you.  This isn't one I'm going to write.  Just share.

'Have you ever wanted to be someone else for eight hours?'

In the near future, people have the ability to put their minds into artificially produced bodies called 'temps'.  First used for brain surgery, then surgery, then medical patients, a temp allowed a person to be active outside their biological body.  Paralyzed?  Have eight hours of walking.  Ugly?  Have eight hours of being a super model.  Dysgendered?  Have eight hours as a man or woman, or both!  Bored?  Have eight hours as an elf, or furry, or animal.

First rule: your biological brain, or nest, remains comatose.  Otherwise it's impossible to reintegrate the temp's experiences with the nest's.  If the nest wakes up after downloading, it can't be reintegrated.

Second rule: for every hour past the eight hour time limit (the current limit, in the past it was shorter), the temp is more and more difficult to reintegrate, causing neurological damage, mental instability, and even death.  Effects grow with time and damage is cumulative.

Third rule: if you don't reintegrate, you go ax-crazy insane as psychosis and personality fail.  After a few weeks, a temp essentially becomes a psychopath (and most are designed to shut down before this happens, but the shut down can be disabled for people wanting to 'push' the temp.)

Temps are generally quite pricey, and even the most basic model runs about 100,000 yen.  Fancier models designed after super stars or porn models can run a million yen.  And the most advanced models, that can pass for living people, up to an including pregnancy, start at ten million yen and up.  This means a temp can serve as a surrogate mother for women who don't want to actually give birth (and these temps are custom designed from the user's own DNA)

Needless to say, soon as temps became available, people started doing crime with them.

Enter the TTCU, Tokyo Temps Crime Unit, or Tengu.  This understaffed, underfunded, and overworked police unit is dedicated to managing, policing, and occasionally violently shutting down Temps when they are misused or go berserk.  Their simple mandate is far more complicated than everyone generally assumes.

Tanaka Katsumi is our protagonist.  She's just recently out of police academy, eager to go to metro, when she finds herself quite unexpectedly transferred to the Tengu.  She's not particularly happy about this change of events, wanting an assignment close to her family.  She doesn't temp, but her sister, who was maimed in a car accident, does (and who ultimately convinces her to give the tengu a chance).  She is short, black hair cropped short, with a some what plain and homely face.  She's a devotee of sword martial arts, kendo and kenjutsu, as well as a practitioner of judo.

Kurosawa Ito is her partner while she's in probationary training.  He's a vet, getting his start in metro, moving to vice, moving to homicide.  Then he accidentally shot a person he thought was a temp.  They weren't.  His transfer to the Tengu was seen as part punishment and part redemption.  He's half way to burn out and retirement, but still thinks the job's important.  He smokes way too much, drinks way too much, and takes particular pleasure in annoying his new partner, who he sees as part toy and part someone he doesn't want to repeat his mistakes.  He's tall an unkempt, usually in unwashed and rumpled suits, his chin covered in stubble, and his short hair in need of a hair cut.  Both his hair and eyes are brown.  His weapon is a non-lethal electroshock pistol.

Officer Nuku, aka Juro Goro, appears as a svelte, sexy cat girl temp with an extremely obnoxious and welcoming personality.  Nuku loves to embarrass and tease Katsumi with her frequent lapses in modesty.  Her bright blue hair, white furry ears and tail, are often used in place of more human expressions.  She's the team's temp specialist, knowing how the temp process works and able to analyze and examine the ins and outs of the system.  Her body is also amped for hand to hand combat.  In reality he is a large, overweight, painfully shy and socially awkward man who is very frequently regarded as some kind of technician rather than the outgoing Nuku.    He'd be a permanent transfer if he could.  His weapon, which he is horrible at, is an electroshock pistol.

Captain Toki Nori is head of the B division, and is constantly trying to get more personnel, more funding, and to do her job well.  Unlike the A and C divisions, she hates the politicking and sucking up that comes with the job.  Katsumi was thrown to her just to get her to shut up, and she plans on using Katsumi and never, ever, ever letting her transfer out.  She tends to get a little possessive and carried away when swept up in the passion for doing her job, but she means well, even if Ito annoys the crap out of her.  Her father was a police captain too, and she is always trying to prove herself worthy of being his daughter, being one of the youngest captains at the Tengu.  She is taller than Katsumi and Nuku, but shorter than Ito and Goro, with her prematurely gray hair tied into a bun.  Do not say she looks like your grandma.  She is an excellent marksman with an automatic pistol and a shotgun.

Jon Talban is a british expat who is the team's heavy weapon specialist.  He left England when 'the bad times happened' and now is making a living with his combat training in Tokyo.  The Ex-SAS soldier is generally easy going, and regards civilian work as 'a vacation'.  However, behind his easy going personality is tragedy.  While deployed in a military temp, a saboteur broke in and murdered almost all of his squad.  Talban 'woke' without disconnecting from his temp, killing the saboteur.  However his temp, no longer able to integrate and still in the field, went insane.  By the time it was brought down, it had murdered sixty seven innocent civilians brutally.  Talban is haunted by that.  Did the temp simply go berserk, or was that what Jon was always capable of?  Jon is a handsome man in his mid thirties, and very casually gay.  He is one of the few people who can mess with Ito, and Captain Toki lets him because Ito messes with her.  He's got bright blond hair that is kept cropped short, and usually dresses in ex-military clothes.

Nabi Tadao is another investigator, a bit younger and less burned out than Ito, but familiar with the potential for temp crime.  He does his job and does it well, though he's a bit of a straight man that gets some of Ito and Nuku's pranks.  He is, however, living a secret life.  When he's off duty, he temps into the body of a school age girl and participates in a seedier side of temp society.  Captain Nori is aware, and does not approve, but he does his job and she can't spare him.  She also hates to admit it, but he knows the temp underbelly far better than Nori ever will.  While he's technically 'not hurting anyone', he is quite aware how this makes him look to others.  Tadao is slightly taller than Nori, shorter than Ito, with well kept short blue black hair and round wire frame glasses.  He always dresses in a clean suit, with a bullet proof jacket underneath.  He uses an automatic pistol, and is a decent marksman.

Captain Hameya Ritsuki is captain of the Tengu's A division, and is a constant pain in Captain Nori's backside.  She's got ten times the man power and budget of any of the other divisions due to her ability to manipulate upper management.  She's a beautiful red head, busty, and enjoys antagonizing Nori obnoxiously.  She's shameless about promoting herself, plans to be the head of Tengu when the commandant retires, and from there, conquer all of Japan, or some such.  She is also sexually interested in Nori, but is horrible at expressing herself as anything other than obnoxious.  Nori's far too professional to ever think about such things, of course.

Captain Fukishimu Kin is the captain of Tengu's C division.  He's a laid back guy with dirty blond hair and and easy and professional manner who just enjoys the show and does his job.  Despite not having quite as many assets as Captain Hameya, he's favored to get the commandant's spot when he retires.

The series would involve the team investigating a number of different crimes, along with an over arching meta plot involving a temp that achieved sentience on its own due to the thousands of minds that synchronized into it.  Being purely digital, PT-122466329-S is capable of transmitting itself into temps as they are being uploaded from the nest, corrupting and assuming control.  It hijacks a temp who is the daughter of the general of Japan's self defense force and uses her to assassinate the russian ambassador.  Katsumi just happens to be passing by when she hears the shots and moves to subdue the temp rather than just destroy it.  Unfortunately it's this quick thinking that draws the attention of Captain Nori, and propels Katsumi into the ranks of Tengu, B Division.

Other crimes involve an industrialist who pushes his temps working in a dangerous environment to exceed the 8 hour window.  A military temp that is stolen by a soldier gone rogue trying to settle a broken heart.  A spouse stealing her husband's temp to murder the woman she's having an affair with, in order to frame him.  People forced to work the temp sex trade to escape debt, and is it still rape if it's not really you getting raped?  (Hint: yes it is!)  A bloody gladitorial arena where a human is accidentally torn to pieces by amped up temps.  A person using a temp to try and blow up a nuclear power plant.  An autistic person who kills their old body and then has to be tracked down, only to learn that they wanted a day so they could 'die normal'.  The stealing of an expensive, and pregnant, temp by a poor person needing it for his crippled son.  The psychological toll taken on military vets who keep having flashbacks and dying.  The crippling social effects of people unable to be what they want to be, and losing their identity to the temp.

Over all this is the Hijacker, who is attempting to annihilate as many humans as possible by getting Japan to fire its secret nuclear arsenal at Russia, and to start a nuclear war.

So yeah.  This isn't something I could ever write.  It's a visual story in my head, with dark and serious bits mixed in with comedic antics between members of Division B and the captains.

Next up should be Homelands 14.  I'm 6 pages in, and I'll share the sausage when I'm 1/2 done.  Thanks for sticking with me.