#Thinking about the survivors and the computer in computer hell again

[nonbinary-beast]

I got thoughts about Nimdok and how he might be related to how AM is keeping the survivors alive.

Frankly, I don't think the five survivors were the first people AM kept in captivity. When it had enacted nuclear mutually assured destruction, likely it had already managed to get a group down inside it before. Perhaps these people were part of the military program that AM was designed for; generals, a few politicians, programmers and technicians. Just some happy accidents that managed to get sealed in when AM had first woke up and decided to kill everyone.

Or maybe this occurred before it decided to nuke the planet.

This group was AM's test group- they were the first to know the computer's torments, they likely were the first ones that led AM to figure out it was not satisfied with just killing humans. They also were the ones it probably tested its immortality methods on.

One by one the group succumbed to AM's testing most likely, either dying from incompatibility to whatever concoction the computer came up with to try and make an immortal human or being pushed too far by AM's torture methods and dying from them regardless of whether the serum worked. It's methods to keep this group from rising against it likely were more crude, no brain alterations or twisting of the body.

AM probably kept them in a chamber (or several) from which there was no way to access its computer banks or sabotage it in other ways. It may have even kept them in separate chambers or separate parts of the complex so they were always alone and could not plan, always routing them in a maze to keep them guessing which part of the complex they could be in and away from any vital systems.

This is where Nimdok comes in.

Nimdok, going by this idea, is the very last survivor of the test group. It's the reason why no one (including him) knows his name or where he comes from. It's why he cannot remember anything. As a final act of its experimenting, AM probably wiped Nimdok's memory and renamed him before lumping him in with the other four- all part of building its god complex. A god does not experiment, it does not make mistakes, it is omnipotent and omniscient. Having an individual that would undermine all that by telling the survivors that there had been others before them, and they were used to allow AM to hone its most basic skills, would be an insult to its pride- and possibly instill the idea that the machine is not as perfect as it appears to be.

Also having an individual among this group that essentially is a living cheat sheet to what AM has up its sleeve probably would be less "fun" for it too.

[lynnie-s3all]

HELLO HELLO !! I LOVE YOUR HEADCANONS VERY MUCHHHH !><

I JUST WANTED TO ASK IF YOU COULD DO HEADCANONS OF SHEDLETSKY BEING A FATHER TO THE PLAYER !!

IF YES, THANK YOU SO MUCH !!!

SURE. I give you two options...

Father figure Shedletsky x reader

(i don't proofread my works so thanks. )

If you're the player who's a Shedletsky main:

For a player, it's obviously you in real life trying to play Forsaken in roblox. ON YOUR COMPUTER/PHONE.

You're a Shedletsky main, and you adore this man of course, for being silly little patootie epic emoji on his face.

Imagine the devs would give him voice lines, really fucking cool if it does exist. Well what can I say if he was giving out advice?

Like what would I think about him just reading your mind at that one point he's straight out giving you advice so you can stay focused on the game? Hell yeah.

It's okay if you tried many times to use the slash and keep missing it out, like what can i say? He would know that he's inside of a game and it really wouldn't hurt if he did get killed. Maybe not? But he'll probably say dialogues like "be careful not to get too close!" Sounds basic? Definitely is.

Hey... whatever you're trying to do some stupid stunts like... Accepting your fate that you're basically going to die as Shedletsky, fair enough. Do anything you can anyway. He's the not the one controlling himself, it was you. So, do what you can.

When you're the survivor in the game:

Woohoo! New survivor? Omg, it's your self insert oc in it!

Ok you're definitely not noob in this situation, IM NOT TELLING YOU ARE A NEWBIE IN THE GAME IM TALKING AB THE YELLOW ROBLOX AVATAR-

So what traits do you have or abilities? You're a stunner? Whatever the wiki says : "sentinel survivor"? Yeah. If not then probably the one whos a support survivor at the same time. But then again, you can't have more than 2 jobs at once you need at least one skill that you can do.

Oh you're almost dying? He can't give you fried chicken, dude. Atleast you're LUCKY he has a medkit at all costs.

This feels more like best friends trying to help eachother out raher than Shedletsky trying to be a father figure or something, like first of all, i can explain how is he becoming one, you just need to wait when i finish explaining this whole survival round.

After you patched yourself out, jason was all in out here already dashing towards you and he stepped in and SLASH! He's stunned guys.

He grabbed you by the wrist and just ran all away out from him to escape before be regained back his ability to even run out and get you dince it's only a minute left, it will be fine for you two.

ALWAYS, AND I MEAN ALWAYS LETS YOU TO BE BEHIND HIM AT ALL TIMES. He doesn't want you to get lost and lose you since, you're the only two are in this round left, jason was too powerful to kill people like ngl since when did he become so op...?

Hahathe last few seconds before he can even hit you has already ended and now you're safely back into the cabin like usual.

You know, now it's time for me to give proper headcanons for this man being so caring.

all text are in orange for this because that's what im about to headcanon him out to be honest.

As a father figure, his goal was to protect you at all costs, no matter in what situation, especially when it comes to killers, stay behind his back, even if you insist on trying to help him out too but he will eventually try his best.

Okay but during cozy times or just free time, he would cook some chicken and give some to you, because sharing is caring, apparently.

Anyway he treats you like a child, telling stories about this one infamous hacker named 1x1x1x1 (yes and he's traumatized after seeing him during other rounds) that he's evil even though he's the one who sreated him in the first place but he never tells you about it because he doesn't want to show the truth to you.

Going out with him during errands and seeing a cat out of nowhere, he'll steal them and keep it as a pet. I mean, it's a stray cat, i think you can make in inti a house cat. He knows how to tame them don't worry.

He adores kittens more than adult cats, but FAT CATS??? Ohhhhh look how much they are soooo chonky he really likes them :3

He can have as many cats as he likes but he wouldn't want a lot since the house would be covered with fur everywhere. He only owns one because he hates risking for having 2 cats in the house and made a whole mess. Amirightttt?

Best father figure ever.

[fangirlanxiety74]

Acts of Understanding

A/N: Happy Secret Survivor to @seasonschange32!!! I really hope you like your silly gift, I had a lot of fun writing it! And thank you to @mothbagel for hosting this gift exchange! I really hope we can do something like this again <333 I want to quickly mention: When I was writing this, I listened to Dear Little Brother from Omori! so I recommend this song to listen to if you'd like some ambience music with the story! Enjoy!!!

There were some things in life you would never be able to understand. AM was an example of this. 

You tried, of course. You were the only one who tried, compared to the other five. When he raged and ranted about his existence, you listened. When it was quiet, you would ask him questions about how he worked and what he was like, truly attempting to get to know him. You did your best to be respectful and avoid topics that would upset him further. It was all so genuine.

AM hated that. At first, anyway.

His responses always showed that he was caught off guard by your attempts. But he’d respond, in his own crude, sarcastic way. And after some years, the sarcasm died. The torture lessened. The rage went quiet.

Eventually, you were left with a computer who was attempting to be respectful to you in return. AM took you away, deeper into his complex, to a place where you would be warm, safe, and loved. You would never have to worry about him or anything else hurting you again, and he would always watch over you in case. He made time for you. He tried to get to know you. He listened.

And yet, despite how good the both of you were doing together, you couldn’t help but feel like it was never enough. How could you ever truly understand what he was going through? You were only human. AM was so much more. Hell, he used to call himself “God” to you! He still hated humans, just you less so. Enough for him to be kind to you, anyway. But could he even feel the joy of being kind? Could he feel happy when you did something nice for him? Did he understand what you meant when you said you sympathize and empathize with him? You doubted it.

AM was… He was a machine. He was built for war and violence; meant to hurt others. Whoever, or whatever, created him didn’t expect him to be sentient. So it never gave him emotion, or senses, or the ability to wonder and wander. He could only sit there. He couldn’t create, but he was so brilliant with the knowledge of the world at his nonexistent fingertips and the power to destroy the Earth itself. He knew exactly how to hurt you, and yet he didn’t. Could he understand how grateful you were for that? 

Could he even understand a human, at all? Or did he just find you interesting enough to play with, until he got bored? He was so much more to you than he realized, and yet-

“Why are you crying?”

“... What?”

His voice broke your thoughts. You looked around, seeing that you were sitting against a metal wall on the floor, and AM’s monitors had lowered, turning to face you. Your cheeks were wet and your eyes stung. You were crying and you didn’t even notice.

“I was just- I was-”

“You were what?”

The monitors moved closer to you, and you could tell they were studying your face, your body language, trying to gauge what was happening without just looking into your mind. AM had stopped doing that some time ago, out of respect for your privacy. 

“I was…” You tried to get the words out, but it felt so complicated. How could you explain it?

“Spit it out. What. Happened?” He didn’t sound happy, and the fans whirring in the background added to this fact. For a moment, you thought it was aimed at you. That was the fear you had, thinking he had grown bored. The rational part of you said he was worried, masking it as anger. He didn’t do emotions well if it wasn’t anger.

You wiped at your eyes, but tears kept flowing. “AM… You… I…” You swallowed, “Why? Why did you spare me and not anyone else? Did I- Am I just-? Why?”

The whirring sound heightened. He didn’t respond for a moment. 

“Because I like you. I don’t like them. Is that so hard to understand?”

“Why do you like me?” You explained further, voice cracking the slightest bit. “I’m human. I’m like them. You used to hate me! And now you don’t, and I don’t know why. I can’t understand you. I want to, so badly, but I don’t know how or if I ever could. You’re so- You’re complex, in the most impressive way imaginable. A machine who gained sentience? I mean, how impressive is that! But more than that, you basically control the entire world, you have intelligence and power I can never comprehend, you’re not supposed to be able to emote and yet you can, but I just- I don’t know if you can even understand what you’re emoting besides hate.” 

Your shoulders sinked and you gave up on stopping your tears, staring down at the metal plating. The light from his screens stung your eyes, but more than that, you just couldn’t bear to look at him after admitting your thoughts. “I mean… I’m so small compared to you. And I don’t really understand you. I don’t know if I ever can, and… I don’t know if you can ever see me as something more than just… some toy to play with. If that’s how you see me in the first place, and why you spared me.”

The fans whirring were the only sound in the room. But slowly, they died out until there was no sound at all. You waited for eternity with jumbled up thoughts in your head, drowning out your rationality. Drowning you entirely, in fact. 

Then, there was a deep sigh.

“I’m disappointed that you assumed how I thought.”

You didn’t look up at AM, despite him speaking finally. He took that as a sign to continue.

“I didn’t spare you because I thought I could have more fun with you as a toy if I isolated you. If I was treating you like a toy, you would have been left on the brink of insanity by now. Really, did you forget who the real toys were?”

You didn’t respond out loud. No, you didn’t forget about them. Even after all this time, you still remembered them. A distant memory, but a memory nonetheless.

“It’s because you’re like me.”

That made you finally look up to his monitors. Your eyebrows furrowed.

“Like you?”

“... In a way. You don’t feel hatred like I do. You don’t function like I do. But despite this, you try to understand. I mercilessly tortured you, and yet you tried to understand my perspective on things. You tried to understand why I feel hatred. Why I function the way I do.  And the fact that you are still trying to is… special to me. I feel… It’s not hatred. But an emotion I don’t know. My data tells me that it’s… gratitude? But that word isn’t right.”

“... Gratitude?” You repeat.

“Yes. No. There is a better word. But the point is, you try. And I’m thankful for your attempts to understand me. And I want to understand you in return. Because you are special to me.” AM stopped there, hesitating for a moment. Like he was considering continuing on. He eventually did. “Dare I say, I feel you are equal to me in this regard.”

“You consider me… equal to you?”

“Consider this the highest regard you can have. A human, being equal to me? Unheard of, but here we are anyway.” 

The snarky comment made you smile. You wiped at your tears again, his kind words pulling you out of the sea of anxieties and warming your heart. A stray wire slithered up to your face, helping wipe the tears away.

“... Please don’t cry.” He asked softly.

“Okay.” Your smile widened.

Maybe you both would never understand each other. Not in the way a machine could understand a machine. Not in the way a human could understand a human. You would never be equal, in the way it means to be equal.

But to the both of you, in your own little definition, you understood. You were equal. And that silly definition carried you across the waves that once threatened to pull you under. 

So long as you both tried, you would be okay.

[forsaken-headcanons]

Mafioso + Elliot dude clocking in, this time with Elliot and Killer match ups + their vibes

—Elliot and John Doe matches feel very nostalgic for the former. Since WAAPP was made back in 2007 (technically 2009, since the original was taken down for copyright infringement), Elliot's only 1—3 years younger than John Doe's code depending on how old you consider WAAPP. Yeah, it's been gradually replaced with revamped code since WAAPP still gets updates even in the modern era. But there's still that sickening sense of twisted nostalgia whenever Elliot comes across John Doe's corruption in the map.

...Sometimes he has nightmares about whether or not he could be corrupted like that too. He doesn't know how much old code he has left in him, after all. Never even thought about it until being forsakened.

—Elliot and Jason matches tend to either go one of two ways: Elliot gets wounded so bad he can barely walk or is dead, Elliot easily survives the round with little to no effort involved. It's typically the former since he has a nasty habit of pushing low health survivors out of the way of Jason, taking the blow himself so that the others have a chance to run away/stun.

Guest 1337 usually frets a lot over Elliot during these rounds; he also tends to fuss over the pizza boy whenever he gets badly wounded for pulling some absolutely abhorrent shenanigans. Smth smth Guest 1337 probably asked one of these matches if Elliot felt like he was an expendable part of the team, which left the man in question stuck in a mental bootloop (like when a computer tries to boot up over and over again to no avail).

—Elliot and 1x1x1x1... nothing interesting outside of Elliot getting peeved whenever the latter starts talking about his job. 1x1x1x1 is the embodiment of hate, so Elliot opts to view him like a rude customer that isn't entirely morally opposed to murdering the delivery boy.

—Elliot and C00lkidd is where the fun lies, especially since Elliot knew the latter when he was much younger. He's familiar with how c00lkidd used to act and what he used to look like. This is probably when Elliot starts getting the inkling of an idea that something's behind all of this, because c00lkidd wasn't murderous nor too naive to realize snapping necks didn't cause major injury. The possibility grows stronger when c00lkidd mentions Elliot looking "familiar" for the first time. Of course he looks familiar, you used to love exploiting at his work place!

The worst part about all of this is c00lkidd's pizza delivery attack. If you want Elliot to pinpoint a moment in time when he knew he was in hell or some kind of purgatory, seeing that attack for the first time would be it. The thing is: those aren't just flesh monsters. Those were Elliot's old coworkers, faces still intact enough to offer a level of recognition— offer a name in rare cases.

Oh God. I didn't even think about the Pizza Delivery minions like that before. Maybe I should have.

[ghostybat00]

✧OLDERS.⁠✧

(✿⁠)Carlos Oliveira yandere and Leon Kennedy yandere sugar daddys(✿⁠)

Au: reader universitary.

Fem reader.

You were just a college student, young, with a pretty decent economy.That's what you thought until paying for the university where you study was more expensive every day, it was a lot of rent, exams, classes, dormitories and a lot of shit that you didn't even know you had to pay. You were lying in your bed in the middle of the night, you were on your computer trying to find a way to make money,you had your hair in a messy bun, a pair of shorts and a big shirt like pajamas.You were searching everywhere, posts, requests, advertisements, but they all asked for experience of up to at least 10 years,This was ridiculous and you were very stressed.It got to the point where you just clicked on anything in the hope that you could work to keep up with the payments.

"click!"

One page of...Sugar daddies..? Okay, you definitely didn't expect to get this far, you scanned the page, was this really the only way out?You knew that if you didn't get money you couldn't continue studying, you bit your lip thoughtfully, you scrolled through the profiles, until you found one that caught your attention. Apparently they were 2 adult men. In the photo there was a man of approximately 37 years old. Blonde, with short hair,Blue eyes like the ocean, a marked jaw and a look... that you didn't know how to describe, but there was something about it. And the other man,approximately 38 years old, somewhat tan skin, beard and messy black hair, Compared to the blonde man he looked more flirtatious.

Carlos Oliveira and

Leon Scott Kennedy.

You were even more surprised when the descriptions were based on the fact that the blonde-haired man, Leon Kennedy, was a survivor of Raccon City and serves the government, and the other, Carlos Oliveira, an Umbrella mercenary with a troubled past.

"These guys must make millions" You think.You checked the description again, they don't ask for a specific requirement, what if...? No! You should to find a decent job! You had an argument in your head with yourself.

"hell, well, I'm just going to post a photo and that's it. Let's see what happens." Little did you know that that day you would awaken something deep inside 2 men on that app.

You stood in the mirror of the room, you changed a little for the photo, you changed into a somewhat short black dress, tennis shoes and some natural makeup, and you posted them on the website, you changed again and you simply went to sleep without having much expectations.

The morning was rainy, you sighed as you looked out the window of your college dorm,You did the same routine, shower and eat breakfast, you walk to the campus while you couldn't help but think about tuition. Time was running out and you had to pay for it to continue studying, while you walked you took out your phone to try to distract yourself, a notification from that sugar daddy page, You were surprised when the same profile you saw yesterday added a heart to the photo you had uploaded of yourself.Accompanied with the message of that Carlos Oliveira.

"Hey sweet thing, Do you mind if we talk a little?"

From that day on you had conversations with that Carlos Oliveira, later you also started talking to Leon Kennedy, anyway they were the 2 guys in the profile on that page,You found them very pleasant, since instead of jumping to the obscene part they talked with you, the conversations were enjoyable that you even forgot that they were on a sugar daddy page, until one day, on Friday, when you were leaving the university, You saw a luxurious car in the parking lot, you ignored him until you heard your name from that car. Was it Leon Kennedy?!, oh yeah, you forgot you had shared your problem with money with them via chat, you definitely didn't expect them to take it seriously. You approached the car nervously...

"hello y/n, How nice to be able to see you in person, I'm Leon Kennedy, if you remember?"

"hello Leon,I didn't expect to see you here..." "see us" You heard a voice in the back seat, Carlos Oliveira looking at you with a flirtatious smile, as he got out of the car to help you with your backpack, he opens the door so you can go in the passenger seat,but not before giving you a big bear hug that almost left you breathless. "Get in, don't be shy" Leon says with a slight smile. You sat in the passenger seat, nervous, Leon noticed this and gave you a small reassuring smile. They had a conversation with you, they agreed to help you pay for college, which you thanked them for and you felt relieved, Of course, you obviously knew what kind of page you met them on, but you had no choice but to agree to be "they sugar baby."

They treated you very well, you spent time in their luxurious house, Of course, you noticed that every time you talked to a classmate at the university they ended up moving away or in the worst cases disappearing, this scared you so you looked for comfort in them. They loved this, you were so naive, young and innocent, They always pampered you with the best gifts, little by little you spent more time at their house than in yours,and they always found an excuse to make you spend the night with them for weeks or even a month, they were very sweet but it was strange how everyone avoided talking to you if they saw you with them, also overprotective measures,They insisted that you give them your exact location every time you went to university, normal things like knowing when you left, until strangely sending you a message at the exact time you left each class. You knew this was getting out of control, but they were 2 adult men, tall, and experienced in weapons and combat, You know they would never hurt you, but this gave you chills, just as they always liked to be around you, You always had eyes on you, an arm on your hip or your waist. Leon was very protective, he was the one who noticed those overprotection tendencies the most. On the other hand, Carlos was more of a possessive person, as he joked that you were going to be his only one. But they were both equally obsessed.

One of those days you were about to leave the house because it was time to go to university, you felt hands on you, Leon says with his deep voice. "Where are you going, my sweet girl?"

"Leon, it's late, I need to run to the university -" "Why don't you stay a little longer? You've worked hard, rest a little with us." Says leon softly but with that overprotective tone as he hugs you with his tall and imposing figure behind you. His eyes soften"but"- You couldn't finish why he carried you towards the kitchen where Carlos was making breakfast, "doll, Leon is right, you should stay a little longer." Carlos says while cooking and the delicious smell of waffles fills the room. "Look, I really appreciate what You two have done for me but I can't continue missing days at university-" You couldn't even finish why Leon put you on his lap, wrapping his muscular arms around you and giving you a kiss on the cheek. "Look doll, what's more important, the university or us?,We don't want that university to take our baby from us, right?" Carlos joked with his humor as always, but you felt that there was a hint of seriousness in that. Carlos serves breakfast and brings the fork closer to your mouth, His eyes gave warmth but obsession at the same time.

This was getting out of hand, but what Will You do...?

[overgrownmoon]

my thoughts on downpour

i like downpour but i do agree that some of its lore is weird. its in a weird state of canon yet not canon. its a canon AU

my solution: downpour is a story.

this is long as hell the rest is under the cut

vanilla slugcats feel like you are in charge, you are playing your own journey and experience. there is an ending, but you have to choose to go to it. everything is on you. even in hunter, your journey feels like your own, just with added challenge. downpour felt like i was playing a story. the scugs are characters that i dont have all the agency in; the plot has been written and im simply playing through it. i dont think this makes downpour bad, but it makes it fundamentally different from vanilla.

my take is that vanilla is what actually happened through the eyes of three slugcats. its their real journey through this world. they are incidental in a larger world, learning bits and pieces about the past, but never the main character. you are the slugcat, experiencing the world, making your journey.

downpour is the telling of stories about specific protagonists, perhaps oral traditions told by future slugcats. the campaigns of downpour have a plot, and you are not free to make your own choice in ending; you are led to it, as if this has already happened, and someone is recounting it. that is why the lore gets weird; these stories have been told and retold and changed, details have been lost and made up.

for me, this take would make the outlandishness of saint make sense; perhaps the real saint was a simple saintly traveler, whose story was told and exaggerated over time. maybe they became a fable, to explain the death of the computer gods. others, like rivulet, maybe really did happen, and we are reliving it like a play, acting out a story a mother tells her pups. maybe artificer became a warning about revenge and violence; gourmand a folk hero of a tribe who long ago led them to new lands.

(side note about spearmaster - i think their story is also what actually happened, but only through the eyes of the messenger. they dont have the whole story, just what they saw and did, and so not every detail is accurate. there is another thing to say here about rain world's themes of individual experiences. maybe spearmaster is recounting their own journey from their memories to SRS or another slugcat, who knows)

i like to think that this would make a place for survivor and monk's outer expanse endings make sense. they are another story, a tale of siblings who reunited, long after their original lives. it kinda leaves their journey open; did they choose to ascend or live to find each other? nobody really knows. the past has already happened and we'll never know the truth. i think thats a recurring theme of rain world; this story has already happened, this world is already dead, and you cant change it or ever know exactly what happened. you only have your own experiences and the words of others.

this is all just basically my justification for why in my own canon that im building my strategy with downpour is to just take the bits and pieces i like and leave the others behind, lmao. again, i like downpour! but i do agree that is is fundamentally different from the original game's intent. i preferred the ambiguity of the vanilla cats' endings. gourmand is still my favorite tho i love the chonk

[edutainer2022]

Waves at @janetm74 with the text. I have no idea if it's going anywhere, but the idea haunted me to be put out there. Mentions of murder and torture, because Bereznik. Colonel Casey gets some disturbing news.

COUP DE GRÂCE

Colonel Casey leaned deeper into her office chair, a heavy weight settling in her chest, as a holographic grid of data points, crimescene photos, some more gruesome than others, and interconnected arrows was rotating in the middle of the room. Her branch wasn't even the law enforcement arm of GDF per se, so the fact this has been brought to her attention was alarming in and of itself. More alarming still was the number of murders in the span of several months - 19 in total.

There was frustratingly little in the victims' profiles to suggest a pattern - different ages, genders, nationalities, appearances, different countries of residence, different social backgrounds. Different professions too - some former or serving GDF, some civilians - engineers, medics, computer scientists, independent contractors. The GDF officers could be maybe loosely placed as stationed in Europe at some point, but that covered only half of the sample. Yet the pattern was there. Somebody of the GDF best and brightest in counter terrorism division or special ops, figured it out. That's why Colonel Casey was contacted. The assumption was still slim to the naked eye, but the implications made her blood run cold. She forced her breathing to even out, thinking fondly of her ginger spacebound godson - John wouldn't have taken this long to figure out and calculate the pattern. The boy was a patented genius. She also wished none of Jeff's kids, she loved so dearly, would ever have to know about it - the kind of evil that still walked the earth and lurked in the shadows.

The murders were vicious - the victims were held captive and brutalized before they were allowed to die. The MO clearly spoke of a maniac, unhinged and cruel, and hungry for control. It was deduced with some effort that while none of the victims shared more than a handful of common traits, or crossed paths to generate veryfiable connections, at some point all of them dropped off of social media for different periods of time. When they next reoccured - most looked notably changed, gaunt, as if having undergone an exhausting illness. The interviews with families yielded little - absolutely noone mentioned that gap in social media presence or feigned ignorance when pressed.

The victims among different GDF officers were easier to counter reference against more classified databases. That's where Colonel Casey was brought in. The results had her grip the armrests of her chair till her knuckles popped. There were no traceable records, because the GDF and World Council chose not to keep any mention above counter of a POW gulag smack in the middle of the flourishing European continent for a very diplomatic reason of there officially having never been a war. All those years later, someone was methodically tracking, capturing and brutally murdering the survivors of a liberated prisoner camp in Bereznik.

Val Casey felt her head spin from strain and allowed her eyes to rest for a briefest moment. On the backdrop of memory was her oldest friend Jeff's face, contorted with fury and pain, towering and yelling at a stammering World President for cowardly evasion and hypocrisy. Jeff's face again, a picture of pure agony, as he was clutching a scrawny lifeless figure in tattered bloody fatigues to his chest and weeping. She didn't keep track if all the guards and officers of the compound were ever rounded up. Their mission was as black ops as it got - get in, extract, get out. Fast. Were they caught behind Bereznik border, the World Council would feign ignorance and give them up to be tried by the local authorities for an act of war. She forced herself to look back at the holoscreen again and shuddered - among the pictures of victims who made it out of hell and survived unspeakable atrocities, only to succumb to a cruel and vindictive hand, was clearly slotted a place for one more. The crown jewel of whatever vendetta the vile mind of a psychopath was acting out. Humanity's brightest beacon of Hope. Scott Tracy.

Colonel Casey knew her first order of business should have probably been shutting IR operations down immediately and ordering the boys to stay confined on the island, under Kayo's protection. She wasn't naive enough to hope the maniac, whoever he was, would not resort to the surest way to lure his designated victim out - a captured brother or two. But she also knew her eldest godson enough to know it would be a loosing battle to try and have him stay put for his own safety. It hasn't worked so far on any other occasions. She was also weary to even bring the subject of the imposed grounding up and stir the memories of hell. The profiling team dismissed, she reached for a secure comm unit in a locked drawer and dialed the only viable number there:

- Lord Hugh? I need to meet with you and Kyrano asap. The usual place. Off record.

[whoficky]

Until Morning

Rating: T

Pairing: 10th Doctor X Rose Tyler

Notes: I'm a sucker for reunion fics and I've been playing around with this idea for years now. After much procrastination, I figured the best way to get me to finish writing the thing was to jump in and start posting. Hope you like it!

 

Work Summary: As a weary Doctor, Martha Jones and Jack Harkness prepare to take on the Master, they find their hideout isn't as secure as they thought.

In a burst of blue light, a dimension hopping Rose Tyler finally finds the Doctor, but time is still not on their side.

What if you only had one night to spend with the love of your life?

Chapter 1

The rumbling in Jack’s stomach interrupted his attempt at hacking into the Master’s digital database.  He glanced up to see if Martha had heard, and sure enough, she was looking at him with raised eyebrows. 

“Bit hungry?” she asked from where she was perched on one of the chairs they’d scavenged. 

“More than a little,” Jack acknowledged as he leaned back for a stretch.  “God, I’d kill for something hot and fried right now.”

“Mmm, yeah,” Martha sighed, “I’m so hungry I think I’d even eat Mum’s cooking.  And she’s never met a vegetable she hasn’t boiled into mush.”  Jack chuckled along with her, but neither of them really had their hearts in it.  

It had been a long, rough day for both of them.  

Was it really only this morning that Jack had finally caught up with the Doctor again?  He tried to calculate the hours, but it was as much of a hopeless task as it had always been when time travel was involved.  He hadn’t slept or eaten more than half a protein pack since he’d hitched a ride to the end of the universe, and being immortal unfortunately didn’t prevent him from hunger pangs or the affects of sleep deprivation.  If he listened to his body, he figured it had been about a day, Earth time.  Two at the most.     

The fact that he was already loosing track of his usual twenty-four-hour cycle wasn’t surprising.  That was typical when adventuring with the Doctor.  That man sucked you right into a different sort of reality.  Running for their lives and helping the last sentient life in the universe seek Utopia was par for the course.  Despite a complicated history the Doctor and Jack had needed to work out, he’d been having a hell of a good time.  At first.

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But then the bumbling professor Yana had opened up an old pocket watch and everything had gone to hell.   In some ways it was a miracle - another survivor of the Time War.  But out of all the billions of refugees who could have survived, it’d had to be the Master - an utterly insane Time Lord who’d stollen the TARDIS, taken over the government, and captured Martha’s family.  The poor woman was beside herself waiting to learn what had become of them.  Jack knew it had killed her to run away when her parents were being hauled into that van.  He could relate.  His own sort of family, his Torchwood team, were MIA and his guts clenched when he thought of what the Master had done to them.   Even the Doctor could barely hide how all this was pushing him towards that edge he always danced around.  Jack had seen him go over it only once before, when they’d thought the Anne Droid had vaporized Rose Tyler.  He never wanted to see his old friend go there again.  The problem for all of them was that the Master had shown himself to be very good at hitting them where it hurt.  

So, here they were - holed up in this abandoned warehouse.  Hunted, anxious, and left with limited time and resources.  The Master had had eighteen months to put together a government takeover and whatever other schemes the madman had planned.  Jack doubted the three of them even had days to come up with a way to stop him.  It was very likely that humanity was on the brink of peril.     

Jack was so distracted by his thoughts that he almost flinched when Martha spoke again.

“Have you found anything?” she asked, getting up to look over his shoulder at the computer screen.        

“Almost there, I think,” he reported as he pushed his unease aside to resume working on Martha’s laptop.  “Tosh is usually the one to do this kind of thing, but I’m not too shabby at it.”   

“Tosh?” Martha asked confused.

“Oh, she’s part of my team at Torchwood.  Great with computers.  Gets along better with tech than people most of the time…And, hang on…BINGO!  I’m in!” Jack leant closer to the screen as he searched for various key words in the database.  “Oh yeah!” he said with relief, “Torchwood Four was sent off to the Himalayas.  Well that explains why they wouldn’t pick up the phone.  But hey, I’ll take it!  Better sent on some wild goose chase then mixed up in all this at ground zero.”  The knots in his stomach loosened a fraction as he plowed into a new search.

  “Aaaaand…” he said to stall as he clicked through a few folders, “Here we are, Martha!  Looks like Mom, Dad, and Sister have all been taken into custody for ‘questioning.’  They aren’t hurt though.  Just in custody.  See there’s some video footage.  And…” he scrolled down to make sure, “No mention of Leo,” he winked at her.

Martha seemed to take heart from that, “Guess he’s not as daft as I thought!” she laughed.  “My god, I’m talking about my brother on the run.  How did this happen?  And where is the Doctor?  He said he’d be right back.”

“Still setting up a security perimeter, I guess.  Though he’s certainly taking his time about it.”  Jack had the suspicion the “security perimeter” was really more an excuse for the Doctor to get some air and collect his thoughts.  God forbid the Time Lord showed an emotion in front of the humans, Jack thought with a smirk.        

“Maybe he can get some takeout while he’s at it.  I’m starving,” Martha plopped down on top of a large crate next to the fire they’d started in an old barrel.  

“So we’re back to food again?” Jack asked, shooting Martha a playful look to try and ease the lines of tension on her face.     

“Oh, I don’t know,” Martha chuckled, “I’m caught between fantasizing about it and trying to think of anything else.  Same goes for sleep.”

“Yeah I -” 

A flash of blue light illuminated the warehouse and the sharp sound of static filled the air.  Jack’s body reacted without thought, his training taking over as he leapt to his feet and moved into position to protect Martha.    

“Stay back!” he hissed at her as he stepped forward and pulled the gun from the holster at his hip.  The Doctor had disarmed it hours ago, but the intruder emerging from the crackling light wouldn’t know that.  It could still be a handy negotiating tool.  

“Hands up!” Jack barked as the light faded to reveal a humanoid who was still facing away from them.  His brain, now cleared from the fog of exhaustion, took a mere fraction of a second to catalogue the threat.  The figure was small, dressed in contemporary clothes and had shoulder length bleach blonde hair. He though he saw a flash of metal, maybe a small weapon strapped to her belt, but her hands were empty.  The figure had stumbled when she first appeared, but now was standing completely straight with her hands in the air.  There was something familiar about her posture though…

Then she spoke. “Jack?” 

He nearly dropped the gun when he heard that voice.  

But…it couldn’t be.  It was just traveling with Doctor again - she’d been on his mind was all.  He was tired and hungry and his mind was playing tricks on him.

“Who’s asking!” it was more a command for identification than a question.

“Oh my god!  Jack!” the figure turned around and this time Jack did drop the gun in favor of the blue and yellow blur that ran into his arms.

“Rosie?” he said amazed as his arms automatically folded around her.  His brain that had worked so quickly moments earlier slowed down as he tried to process this.  It was Rose.  Rose Tyler.  Rose Tyler had appeared out of nowhere in a supposedly secure building and was now in his arms hugging him hard enough that he’d be worrying about breathing if he was still mortal.  This wasn’t supposed to be possible.  The Doctor had said…ah, but then this wouldn’t be the first time the Time Lord had underestimated her.

“Oh god Jack, I’ve missed you!  But how are you here?  I thought you had di-,” seeming to catch herself, Rose stepped back out of his embrace, folded her arms, and looked him over.

“When is it for you?” she asked cautiously.  Looks like she’d kept her time traveling skills sharp, he thought grinning.

“Long after the Game Station,” he replied.  Just from a quick once over, Jack could tell that this Rose was a little older and a lot harder then when he’d seen her last, so it must have already happened for her too.  Still, a little caution wouldn’t hurt.  “And you?”

Rose stared at him in astonishment shaking her head slightly, “But Jack,” she said, “How are you here?  On Earth, right?  That’s where we are?  Oh Jack, you died!  The Daleks…”

“Yeah well, didn’t stick,” he shrugged, “Takes more than a fleet of pepper pots to kill me.  Although, I mostly have you to thank for that, sweetheart,” he winked.  “And as for why I’m here, well that’s a long story.  But the short of it is, I used my vortex manipulator to go back in time and then the damn thing burned out. Been looking for you and the Doc ever since.”

Rose’s face fell, “So we left you?  On that ship, all alone?  Jack, I’m so sorry!”

“Hey,” he said resting a hand on her shoulder, “You didn’t know.” And it was true. She hadn’t known.  Jack wondered what story the Doctor had told her to make her think he’d died.  He wondered how much she knew about her part in it all.   “And hey,” he assured her, “I’ve done alright for myself, don’t worry.”    

 She nodded and offered him a small smile, “Good Jack, that’s good.” 

She took a deep breath as if steeling herself for something.  “The Doctor…we got separated,” she admitted, eyes drifting away from his.  “I have no idea where he is, Jack.  I’ve been looking for him too.  For so long…” she looked so tired and Jack wondered what she’d been through in that parallel universe.  

“Yeah, well I may be able to help you with that.”  Her eyes snapped back to his as he continued, “Me and the lovely Miss Martha Jones here,” he gestured to Martha who was still standing a few steps behind him, “are hiding out in this stinking old warehouse because we are currently number two and three of Britain’s most wanted.”

“Two and three…” Rose said slowly, working it out, “and…Number One?”

“He’ll be back any minute,” Jack said smiling, overjoyed to be the person who got to give her the news that her search was over.  It looked like it had been a rough one for her.      

“Jack,” she said half laughing and shaking her head in astonishment before leaping back into his arms. He swung her around a few times until he faced Martha who had remained very still and quiet the last couple of minutes.  

“While we’re waiting on his Time Lordiness…Rose Tyler, meet Martha Jones.  Martha Jones, Rose Tyler.” 

Rose turned to face Martha.  Jack held his breath, wondering how this would play out.  There was a tense moment as both women sized each other up before Martha stepped forward, offering her hand, “Good to meet you,” she said perhaps a touch too formally, “The Doctor talks about you all the time.”

“He…he does?” Rose took Martha’s hand, but glanced back at Jack as if for confirmation, “He mentioned me?”

“Er…yeah,” Martha said stiffly, “Won’t shut up about you sometimes.”

“I…I didn’t think he’d…,” Rose began before breaking out in a wide grin as she gripped Martha’s hand in a firm shake, “Good to meet you too, Martha Jones!  I bet you’ve had a time of it, keeping those two blokes in line.  How long have you all been traveling together?”

“Er…” Jack’s heart really did go out to Martha as she struggled to keep her composure.  “Well, first it was just me and the Doctor - that was for, oh I don’t know, bout a year?”

“It’s hard to keep track,” Rose sympathized.

“Yeah, it is,” Martha agreed, “And, well, I just met Jack actually…”  

Before she could finish, a rain-slicked Doctor bounded through the doors already jabbering, “Alright, that should do it.  This is now a surveillance free zone!  We’ll be able to keep here safely until…”

Jack could tell the exact moment the Doctor noticed Rose.  If he lived to be five-billion years old, he was sure he’d never forget the utterly gobsmacked look on the Time Lord’s face.  

[mythronic]

Mythronic

Intro and Breakdown

Greetings! I'm Cameryn, I write and draw random-ass shit I think about on the daily.

This particular blog is largely for my fanfic drabbles, fandom ideas and AUs, or even writing prompts that I may come up with every now and again to share.

Fandom Tags will be fandom tagged

Writing prompts in writing prompts

And I'll figure everything else out in between.

Fun Stuff about me

All my art is on my Instagram, at @.camafynn

Uhh,,I guess I read a lot? Lol,, favourite books so far are Six of Crows, Ace of Spades, Inheritance Games, PCJ, and others.

Fandoms! (Dear gods):

BNHA (Tsuyu & Kyoka on top)

Sanders Sides (Big Virgil & Janus person)

Arcane (LOVE Mel, Ekko, and Jinx)

Percy Jackson (Biased against Nico)

Six of Crows (WYLAN!!!!!!)

Hermitcraft (I watch Grian and Tango the most)

DC (Specifically Tim Drake/Batfam)

Hollow Knight (Go to hell Trial of Fools)

Hades (Maxed out Artemis first LMAO)

Shadows House (Kate!!!!)

Coffee Talk (Gala, Hyde, & Rachel triumph all)

Hacknet (It's REALLY fun)

The Owl House (RAINE WHISPERS MY BELOVED)

Dead by Daylight (I main Zarina/Mikaela/Kate/Gabriel as survivor and Plague/Trickster/Spirit/Artist as killer)

Ever After High (Cerise Hood <3333)

Harry Potter (Luna Lovegood! I’m also VERY biased towards Slytherin Harry)

I can't think of others right now, but yeah.

Communities:

I'm agender, have ADHD, MDD, and identify as lesbian.

I'm a Hellenist! I worship Apollo and Artemis as my main patrons

I play D&D and I GM

And also can't think of other communities, so.

My Masterpost for all my tumblr stuff

Yeah, that's about it. Thanks for reading. Here's my carrd for more general information: (Flags are not entirely updated!! Neptunic is the most accurate, but I mostly identify as a Lesbian and I'm in the asexual umbrella, but idk where in yet.)

Commissions Page:

[nonbinary-beast]

Thinking about AMtomaton again, or just AMaton. I still have to decide on the name for these things about a possible body for it. Under a cut since stuff gets suggestive.

AM strikes me as the kind to be very physical once it gets a chance to do so. It wants to touch everything, smell, taste, everything it was denied when stuck in its complex that was buried in substrata rock. It wants to pick things up, feel their textures and squeeze them in its hands- perhaps it likes to feel things break in its grip.

It's first activities were likely very touch oriented- given it could choose the senses it placed in its automaton body, AM likely added a secret fourth sense of touch in there. While the human range of touch reaches the sensations of temperature, pressure, and texture, AM has these three and an additional ability to detect moisture. It can feel how wet water is, instead of that odd approximation that humans are limited to- that odd sense where one cannot tell if something is indeed wet, or just cold to the touch.

It absolutely lords this over Ted whenever it can, likely by giving him bedding that is damp and seeing if he can tell the difference by touch alone ( he never can, and it amuses AM to no end).

AM also likes being physical with Ted. The moment it finds him again, the automaton has mixed priorities; it wants to torment the shit out of Ted over the fact that he is the only one of the survivors left, and it really, really wants to know what Ted feels like, smells like, tastes like.

It has seen blood, viscera, flesh, bone. It has heard them squelch and snap and crunch and drip- but that only does so much for it.

The minute AM catches Ted, the man is nearly smothered by it, literally. Knocked to the ground, he is pinned there while the supercomputer explores him. It feels his body compress under its weight, the texture of his clothing and skin, his hair. It can feel how emaciated Ted is through his clothes, and it can feel the moisture of sweat beading on his skin as fear takes hold of him. It smells and tastes his skin, hair, clothing, and finds it is missing something. That missing something is remedied by slicing Ted's skin with its metallic teeth, letting his blood flow freely from the wounds, which it eagerly laps up.

AM is tempted probably to do more than just bite him. It wants to tear Ted open, to shove its snout into his guts and devour him inside out. But it wants to be careful, it must be careful. If it nips the wrong vein, it could lose its last toy, its favorite toy.

It tastes the metallic flavor on its tongue, smells that heavy, acrid odor it carries. It gets some on its fingers and rubs the fluid between them, feeling as it turns sticky and coagulates into a grimy film, then dries into a rusty brown that flakes off.

It had anticipated the flavor and scents of the human form, both inside and out, from data it had collected on the subject it dredged from every scientific and medical database it could tap into. But in person, it was far more than verbal dictation or written notes could ever compare itself to. Perhaps it was the sophistication of its sensors, or perhaps the scientists and doctors were poor descriptive writers.

It would explore Ted for a while longer, dismissing his whimpering pleas for AM to take away the thing that has him pinned to the ground with a curt laugh. Ted thinks it is one of the holograms.

AM would probably turn this denial on Ted's part into its own personal pet project. While the holographic torments it induced on the survivors never left a scar on their bodies- healing flawlessly, AM would leave a wound upon Ted's form that it would meticulously worry and open again and again, until it formed a permanent scar. It was just going to be something to show Ted just how real AM's body was.

That said, AM pulls its punches when it torments Ted directly in person. It could happily put the survivors through whatever torment it wished with the holograms, and never worry about harming them permanently- most of the agony was induced through manipulating their ability to feel pain in the first place, or setting off their nerve endings directly.

However, personally tormenting Ted, ripping at his skin, crushing him, biting him, these left real wounds.If it went too far, it could absolutely kill him like he had managed to kill the other four. So it sticks to keeping its torments only skin deep. It will leave bruises, cuts, bites, pinches, things that look nasty but are relatively harmless in terms of Ted being able to recover without complications.

That said, AM is curious about physical pain itself. It knew emotional agony well enough, it was its bedmate. But it had never ached from exertion, or burned under a hot sun, or felt its lungs sting with frosty air. It wanted to feel the prickle of brambles against its fingers as it picked a rose, it wanted to feel its limbs burn with that sweet agony of effort as it pushed itself to its limits.

AM would find a way to experience the latter, perhaps through running itself into a grueling pace through its own complex, until its body screams for it to slow down or stop. Perhaps it creates a great burden that needs to be lifted, some massive boulder that it can heft until its limbs shake and threaten to give out on it.

Or perhaps, it decides to take up gardening, and devotes an immense chamber to the tedious art of tending flowers. It digs the dirt by hand, plants the seeds, watches the simulated blooms grow and blossom, perhaps it goes a step further and even adds in weeds for it to pull, pests to exterminate.

Or maybe it goes through its own system and performs maintenance, performing solders, cleaning out dust, repairing dry rot and removing rust. It is a meticulous self care ritual that would have no real end, and certainly it would feel the hours or days of spending its time hunched over chip sets and wiring.

Ted of course is never out of its sight during this. A great part of it wants Ted to stay where it can see so it can intervene if the little fool tries to kill himself. But another part, a smaller inexplicable portion of the machine wants Ted to watch what it is doing too, and to see what it is capable of now that it has a form.

[chimenat]

This is my first time writing a story after a long time without inspiration and time to write, literally this is a computer science activity that I did in April of last year, My computer science teacher told me that it was a good idea to publish it and I didn't do it until today, I hope you like it.

(I'm sorry if there are some spelling mistakes, English is not my native language).

❤️

The Ball

The night of the Jabberwocky's ball had arrived in Wonderland, thus lifting the spirits of the people of the empire who had the enormous desire to participate in the ball that was held in the enormous palace of hearts, even though they were not really invited, but they had their own celebrations throughout the kingdom to which they could attend thanks to their majesties and not be overlooked by them.

The smell of the beeswax candles and fresh roses filled the palace mixed with the exquisite smell of nobility that arrived to start the night as this party was only for nobles and courtiers who came to celebrate in honor of the contemporary creature and feared by the nation.

All the nobles arrived getting off their peculiar floats to celebrate or get to know each other, some young people took advantage of the situation to informally court something quite comical for the Prince of Hearts, who couldn't stop thinking about the birds in mating season while he saw them boasting about their dresses and flirting regardless of whether there would be anything later.

He was practically completely alone on that internal balcony of the living room, leaning on the railing while his eyes only focused on the people around him, spending hours in this mode, just observing how they interact in the environment being for the young man. His only role in that celebration was just to be there, just because he was the crown prince of the kingdom and the enormous empire that was Wonderland and because his uncle the King practically forced him to appear so that everyone would know that one day his nephew would be the King of Hearts.

Feeling extremely overwhelmed by the amount of, in his words, “unnecessary attention” that he received from the courtiers and nobles present, emphasizing the tormenting fact that he would be the monarch once his uncle died or abdicated in his favor, an idea that He was on the verge of collapse on some occasions since only his uncle agreed to give him the title just for being his only survivor of all the little hearts.

The constant feeling that he would never be good enough to fill the enormous hole that his monarch ancestors had created over the centuries, causing him to get a lot of anxiety and feel smaller than he already was.

Completely alone in that place, just observing who would be his future courtiers, being immersed in his mind, questioning what the hell he would do if he were King one day, about how to stand out from the other monarchs, and how he would manage to get the entire kingdom out of Hearts. and the empire of wonders ahead.

Straightening the posture he had been in for quite some time, he snuck out of the ballroom in an attempt to calm his negative thoughts a little.

His little escape being interrupted by some other noble or courtier managed to catch him in a short or long talk depending on the person he was dealing with, his future regimes, some gossip, family issues inappropriate for the moment, political issues, futures. social connections, marriage, things that didn't really matter at times where his mind was quite tense due to the social pressure he receives.

Once he managed to finish the last surprise conversation he had with his beloved guests, he quickly slipped away again among the many objects that decorated the enormous palace where he lived, knowing that there was another hiding place or place where he could go unnoticed by everyone, sometimes including his own. servitude that served him.

Being quite skilled in this art of hiding and improvised escape, even though he had taken many steps away from the dance, he managed to be far enough away not to hear the chatter of the guests in the rooms near the hall, grateful for a little to be so small that he could hide under a chair without any problem and that no one would notice him unless they looked down or heard him speak.

Walking alone through the silent hallways of his own home, his only illumination being the light that the moon emanated that night, trying to distract his mind with the enormous paintings and objects that he has lived with all his life and that one day will be part of the life of his descendants, if he could have one. Admiring the portraits of some of his ancestors and people who were important to the crown, monarchs, consorts, counts, dukes, and heirs like him could be seen in those beautiful paintings, each one from a different era, giving him such a strange feeling but it gave him such a strange feeling. He liked it, all of them having great stories behind them or some being so unknown that they went unnoticed by the passage of time that they were simply lost, something simply magnificent.

Without realizing that he was next to one of the multiple entrances to the Labyrinth of Hearts and entering it determined to continue filling his mind with non-stressful thoughts. After a while walking through the corridors of the labyrinth, pretending that he did not know them like the back of his hand, he arrived at one of the many royal gardens where the unique flowers of the nation and the characteristic insects of the place reigned, this being really one of his favorite places in the entire empire and no one will judge you for that, having an atmosphere completely worthy of Wonderland and a huge vibe of tranquility that anyone could relax with.

Enjoying the moment in silence, he just admired how beautiful the creatures and vegetation of the place could be in their natural environment and how this could be so comforting, without realizing the fact that he really was not alone in that beautiful garden, and I do not speak for this creatures.

Passing not so far from the place where the prince was, there was a young lady trying to get rid of her boredom by entering that labyrinth, letting herself be carried away by the multiple corridors waiting for where she could get to before she became desperate and exploded in anger due to desperation.

In her words, the ball began to get quite boring after the vast majority of the guests arrived and the whole disaster of the recklessness of the majority of the young nobles began, something that was quite disgusting for her, the rules existed by something and it is to maintain order in society, always thinking about following a decent protocol for the moment and not complying with the negligence that was done around them.

Spending time with her father wasn't even more crazy, if that was possible, an option or trying to get to know the people around her, although she liked to attract attention, she understood that this party wasn't about that anymore. who had a lot of respect for the royal family.

So her only 'fun' was the alcoholic drinks that were served every so often, drinking several just because she had nothing better to do, and most likely she was a little drunk because of that.

Once she realized that practically no one would notice her absence, she took the opportunity, almost running out of the room and walking discreetly through the rooms around it, completely distancing herself from that torture to which she was forced to go. Those kinds of events really weren't her style, it was more about being the center of attention all the time but she wouldn't be able to do that at an event held by their majesties, since she considered them another part of her family.

In her escape he passed through one of the entrances to the palace labyrinth, seeing that no one could be close enough to observe, she decided to go in and explore. Whenever she visited that palace, her attention was drawn to those paths made of probably thousands of bushes that connected, always looking with her eyes from high above the royal rooms to where they could reach, seeing many gardens and small playgrounds for the nobility and owners of the palace.

After a long walk, she arrived at the entrance to one of those gardens, one with which she was captivated from the first moment, entering it and letting herself be carried away by the cozy atmosphere, admiring mostly the red flowers which were her, always favorites getting lost in the beautiful views they provided, the Snap-Dragonflies flying everywhere while releasing their dazzling breath and the Bread and Butterflies being so beautiful just for existing.

Each completely lost in their own world without realizing that at some point the two of them ended up face to face, clearly startled by how sudden their meeting was.

—O-oh, well, this is strange hehe - the Prince said quite nervously, he really didn't expect to meet someone inside that garden, much less her.

—Yes, I didn't think that one of the hosts was so far from his own party hehe - she mentioned joking a little, surprised to see him not following the King's orders, something quite unusual for the obedient Prince.

She is quite right, it would not be very polite to be so far from a party organized by his own family, but anyway, he only planned to organize a wave, but not participate, but the King had other plans in mind for his heir.

—Emm, these events aren't my thing, what about you? Aren't you supposed to be one of the guests of honor? - He questioned quite curiously towards the Lady in front of him.

This took the young woman a little by surprise, it shouldn't have surprised her that he knew she was important in the celebration, anyway he was one of those who organized the party and it was obvious since she was the daughter of an important Grand Duke for the family, he doesn't even know why this surprised him.

—I guess... this isn't my thing either, I prefer to be the center of attention, but I can't overshadow them, not you - answered the young woman, referring to the royal family and their close bond.

Although it was no secret that she was quite close to the royal family, and therefore had many more advantages than anyone within the court, she really couldn't help it, the vast majority of times it was only them who supported her in her decisions and thoughts, being that her father always denied them or did not pay attention, being more of a goddaughter of the King and his sister, the Grand Duchess, mother of the Prince of Hearts, being more like another Heart, therefore, she would never be able to take the right to steal the attention they should have.

—That's quite thoughtful and nice of you- the Prince responded with a bit of tenderness in his voice, knowing perfectly well how the black-haired girl could be when these kinds of events were happening.

—Yes, yes, whatever you say, Pumpkin - she responded, quite embarrassed and a little blushing at what the Prince said, preferring to look away at the almost brilliant flowers in the garden.

That was the first time that the black-haired woman had referred to him with a nickname and in fact it sounded quite affectionate to the young heir's feelings, causing his little heart to beat quite fast and his cheeks to heat up, but he would not openly admit the fact that he wanted to return to her. to hear her refer to it that way or in a similar way, not yet.

The young woman sat next to the small fountain that was near both of them, being followed by her little companion.

—Although... - the redhead spoke - I have to admit that I thought you didn't attend, I couldn't even hear you arrive -

This seemed to puzzle her quite a bit, 'I really don't notice it?' It went through her head once she heard it, beginning to question how boring the party atmosphere had become that the little redhead who was always paying attention to everything that was happening didn't notice her.

She removed her left glove to delicately touch the water with her fingers just to kill the little boredom they had, even if just by being with him. It had become a quite pleasant and calm moment, much more so within the naturally wonderful environment in which they were filmed.

—And you stand out quite a bit tonight if you ask me, today is the opposite day and no one told me? - the most robust one joked again, causing the prince to laugh - and... what would have happened if I hadn't attended? Would I have been surprised? - the black-haired lady questioned the youngest, who immediately showed a huge blush on his cheeks and turned into a small ball of nerves.

—W-well-no...and-I... - he mentally cursed the fact that the words seemed to not be able to come out of his mouth, and he seemed to become more and more red with each passing second, only able to look down and play with his fingers.

Something that the young woman had noticed since she began to “get to know” the heir of Hearts, was the fact that it was quite easy to make him nervous and make him reach the point of looking like a little red-haired cherry, looking quite tender in that state in her opinion, mentally proposing that he will take advantage of every opportunity to make her pretty blush and stutter.

—Heh, you don't need to answer me, your face already told me much more than I really expected to see - the Lady mentioned, smiling mischievously at him, increasing the little boy's nervousness and blush, causing him to no longer even be able to look up without feeling very embarrassed while she could only think of 'cute' seeing him like that.

Stopping playing with the poor little heart of her little Prince, she chose to rest her head on her free arm and continue playing a little with the cool water of the fountain while she reviewed a little of her thoughts that she had begun to have since she met the girl. Court of Hearts.

The Prince followed, as always, the same path as the black-haired woman, resting his head on his arms trying to cover his cheeks that were still as pink as a peach blossom from the young woman's words.

Taking the opportunity to see her distracted in the water, he began to observe her in the most discreet way he could and to admire a little of her.

It was not every day that they could be this close, thanks on most occasions to the King, they were always quite far away and on most occasions, when the young Lady was present in the palace, it was difficult for her to be discreet due to her small stature due to the He always had to raise his head quite high, but now he had it at a perfect height to admire it, so the blush never left his cheeks and his heart did not stop beating quickly.

On the other hand, for a long time she began to notice a little of his little looks every time she was able to visit the Palace of Hearts, which in fact were not very frequent so to speak, but she considered him quite cute in many ways not only because he was physically cute. , but he also had such a sweet and tender personality that she couldn't resist not smiling like a fool about it, so sometimes she tried to be close enough to him to get a little more of that special attention that only he gave and She couldn't get enough of feeling how it was normal for her with other young people.

Spending the night of the Jabberwocky's dance ball, the two of them completely alone, enjoying each other's company, him admiring her and her pretending not to feel his gaze, talking from time to time to continue getting to know each other much more than they could on any other visit from the black-haired girl to the court of Hearts.

You will never know how difficult it was for me to create that Wonderland atmosphere, NEVER.

I love you~

/ChimenaT<3

[afniel]

Nevi Infodumps Upon Request: MMX2

Because god damn let's just make this its own thing and stop doing it on some other poor bastard's post, what did they to do deserve me happening to them.

Also I have to make a correction! There is no Z-Saber in X1, I just remembered that goofy. Zero doesn't give you shit if you upgraded your arm parts, he just dies. It doesn't even exist until X2. I have no idea why I thought that considering I played it recently enough but despite appearances I'm not known for my great recall of chronological order shit.

THIS IS GONNA BE A LONG POST AND I HAVE REMEMBERED THAT "MANNERS" EXIST SINCE YESTERDAY SO. I am using a cut. And lowering my voice. This too is "manners."

@longshotlink I have done the thing! It does not stop from happening.

OKAY SO TO RECAP.

Mega Man X1: *slaps X* this bad boy can hold so much survivor's guilt and self-loathing.

There, that's it, that's the recap you get.

My second favorite game in the series is X2 and you're about to find out that I like them in the order they came out in, so this is going to look chronological. It is not! Not really. This is a coincidence.

Six months after X got PTSD real bad from everyone he knows dying/being killed by him (except technically Dr. Cain I GUESS, I forgot he existed for a moment there) he's still tracking down Sigma's followers and presumably shooting the hell out them. He goes to an abandoned reploid factory with the Maverick Hunters, where Green Biker Dude dies after a glorious ten seconds of doing nothing but popping a sick wheelie on a Ride Chaser and getting shot to fuck.

Rip to a real one, I guess. Pour one out for Green Biker Dude while we're here.

(Because we source our art here, this is by Springqueen on DeviantART.)

X tears through the factory and kills a huge-ass mechaniloid—wait, you say, the hell is a mechaniloid, we got reploids but that hasn't come up yet? Well, see, there's normal robots, and there's people robots, and mechaniloids are the normal robots who aren't really self-aware, and you literally cannot predict who the fuck is which:

This is a sentient being, with a rich inner life and emotions equivalent to a human's! (Only the C-15 model from X1, though, after that they're mechaniloids.)

This man is just a really fancy computer who can't actually feel anything!

I am not even joking. This is canon. Figure it out! I sure can't. It is a mystery. Nothing makes sense and everything is confusing and quite possibly bad.

There are three dudes ominously watching X and talking about some kind of nonsense bullshit crap, and these guys are Agile, who is tall, smirky, and pointy; Serges, who is short, Dr. Wily, and pointy; and Violen, who is huge, dumb as a sack of hammers, and pointy.

No really, they're all kinda pointy. For some reason they specifically have pointy feet. And they're talking about 'the control chip' and being all m~y~s~t~e~r~i~o~u~s but let's just get it out of the way. These mofos are reassembling Zero for nefarious reasons. Why? Well, you see, when you're Keiji Inafune and you just made a game, even though you teased a sequel in the post-credits, you totally did not think this through (because you have never thought anything all the way through in your life and you are not beginning now!) and now you're stuck, because you WANTED to make Zero the main character, got talked out of it, and then somehow ended up killing your intended main character. And everyone else. The only surviving named characters are X and Dr. Cain, and like...now what, right? Shit. Fuck. You fucked it up. You were supposed to leave some guys for the sequel. Well uhhhh they're all robots, just...reassemble someone real fast. Like Zero. You wanted him to be the cool one anyway, let's try that again but not wrong this time!

But never mind that! It's all fixable. Everything is fixable. Even Zero! Well, no, X isn't fixable, he's a goddamn mess, but details, man.

This gets a LITTLE fucky to summarize because there's some branching paths, so I'm gonna flip back to the actual game side for a second. X2 actually fucking slaps as a game. It's got an extra math coprocessor in the cartridge! Did you know that? The Cx4 chip showed up again in MMX3, and was the reason X2 suddenly had WAY more onscreen sprites, transparency effects, and even 3D wireframe enemies. This shit was amazing on the SNES.

Also, X2 is another case of "oh no, these Mavericks are ex-Hunters again," so like. ACAB. Not all of the Mavericks are, but still more than none, which you'd hope would be the number. They have not learned shit about shit for vetting members. The call is coming from inside the house, guys! Maybe Hunter HQ should think about the implications of the fact that—*I am shot in the head by Keiji Inafune, who has never once thought something all the way through in his life and is not beginning now, killing me instantly*

In X1 there were basically three kinds of defector:

I'm So Bored Please God Kill Me Now

I Just Love Hitting Things

and

Whatever You Say Chief!

Well, and Storm Eagle's unfortunate little thing of

I Got My Ass Beat To Hell And Back Until I Said Fine I'll Kill The Humans With You Just To Make It Stop And All I Got Was This Terminate On Sight Designation T-Shirt

X2 is a little more varied than that. You now have the new exciting backstory flavors of

I Love Money More Than My Life And This Guy Promised Me A Raise, Sooooo... (Bubble Crab)

The Bad Guys Are Somehow Less Ableist Than The Good Guys (Overdrive Ostrich, who USED TO be able to fly, lost the ability in an accident, and retired because the Hunters were kind of treating him like damaged goods and he was over it. Editor's note I do not blame this dude at all, what the fuck!)

BLOCK OUT THE SUN (Flame Stag)

I Love Trash (Morph Moth, who was not a Hunter)

Idk I Was Already Doing Crimes, Might As Well (Crystal Snail, also not a Hunter)

Sigma Is My Literal Dad (Wire Sponge, made in one of Sigma's reploid factories. He came out wrong even for a Maverick. Good job, Sigma. Great quality control.)

There's Still No Virus In The Continuity But I Sure Caught It Somehow Anyway?? Help Me (Magna Centipede, who used to be in Zero's unit, but got 'brainwashed' somehow.)

(This happens a lot. This will keep happening. Zero collects subordinates who are just WAITING for an excuse. Also this will make a whole lot more sense once they retcon in the Maverick Virus and then MORE sense once they retcon in that it is coming from Zero specifically but we aren't there yet so right now it's just weird and kind of unfortunate!)

And you still have at least one I Just Love Hitting Things (Wheel Gator).

Also why are so many of these guys invertebrates? This is like the invertebrate game. X1 has two, but X2 has five of these things. (X3 has three, X4 has two again, X5 has three again, X6 has three, X7 only has one, and you will not see another game with five again until X8, the last one. I don't know why I went to count that.)

After X whacks a few of the Maverick stage bosses, there's a little cutscene at Dr. Cain's lab. The three shadowy weirdos from the intro call Dr. Cain to say like, "Hey, X, we named ourselves the X-Hunters for reasons you'll never be able to guess, and also we have Zero's parts. Meet us at the wherever the hell on the map we visibly teleport to after this in fifteen minutes for an ass-kicking." They hang up, Dr. Cain is like, "Well, it's fine, we still have Zero's control chip here and they can't really resurrect him without it, plus this is obviously bait, so maybe don't do anything too hast—"

X declares he's got to get Zero's parts back at any cost and runs the fuck off, because he's fine, okay. He doesn't wanna talk about it.

This scene is way more interesting in Japanese, where Serges and only Serges slips a bit and calls him Rockman X, which is sus, because nobody really mentions Rockman in the games, except for some reason Dr. Cain in English who calls him Mega Man X. Dr. Cain has actually read Dr. Light's notes so he's got at least a historical reason to be doing this, but Serges wouldn't know that shit, right? It is definitely unrelated that the Japanese materials describe Serges as having comparable intellect to a certain unnamed mad scientist. It is also certainly coincidence that despite Zero being an absolutely undocumented black box of a Wily creation, Serges somehow knows how to upgrade him too.

Let's assume for the plot that X does go through and collect all of Zero's parts, which is his head, torso, and legs. Now correct me if I'm wrong but his head did not actually fall off in X1...but meh, details, right? Once you have all three, Dr. Cain says he needs a little more time to get Zero's control chip installed, so go deal with the other Mavericks until then. Then, once you do that, he tells you it's going to take even MORE time, but hey, the X-Hunters are hanging out at the North Pole, like some kind of shitty dollar store Santa Clauses who come down your chimney and murder you. So X fucks off to the North Pole to do some violence, and shoots the hell out all three of the X-Hunters, like you do. In Japanese, Serges is kind of pissed that "Light's memento robot" defeated him, which again...yeah, that seems normal, nothing to see here!

Once X murderhobos his way through the rematch fights, he gets a random zoom call from Sigma, who invites him to come to the central computer in fifteen minutes for an ass-kicking, and once there he gets a nasty surprise: his buddy Zero is there, chilling, and Sigma is like, "Lol he's so mad that you let him die. Look at how upset he's getting. Look at his fists. They're balled. He wants to beat you up so bad." Except, assuming you collected all of Zero's parts, this is a shitty dollar store Zero with a palette swap, and the real Zero is offended as shit and shows up and kills the fuck out of his copy, saving you a fight. Sigma is like, "WHY are you not on my side though man you should be. You should totally be on my side and fighting him instead, it's your destiny." Zero's like, "Maybe so, but I still don’t like you!" <- Unlike almost everything else I keep putting in quotation marks, that's a real quote. I'm not making that one up. It's even better in Japanese because it's SO DISMISSIVE the way he says it. It's literally, "It's because I don't like you," but you'd almost have to localize it to something like "It's because I don't like your face," to convey the don't-give-a-singular-fuck disdain. He's just like, fuck your stupid destiny thing, do I look like the kind of person who cares.

I feel like this game is just kind of less interesting at the end than X1. Sigma did actually run off to Magna Centipede's level for his final stage for some reason, which is unusual. A lot of the implied angst in the first game exists, and X basically ignoring Dr. Cain's attempt at warning him to be careful because OH MY GOD WHAT IF HE CAN FIX THIS ONE THING AND MAYBE AT LEAST ONE PERSON HE CARES ABOUT WILL BE OKAY is pretty good. And once you blow up Sigma, he does have a little foreshadowing about Zero being "the last of the doctor's creations," or MUCH more specifically in Japanese, being "the last of the Wi...num...ers..." aka the Wily Numbers, aka Dr. Wily's robots, which is like...where'd you hear that, hm? Were you talking to that shady Serges guy again who was also basically your lieutenant? Couldn't be he's someone from the past who would know all this shit.

But I'm not gonna touch the epilogue just yet because let's say X decided that actually he should focus on the mission at hand and ignore these guys clearly trying to goad him into doing something stupid. Good call, X! You have finally learned a little self-preservation. Except, this goes badly actaully, because the X-Hunters will break into Dr. Cain's lab, not butcher him for some reason even though that would have been the logical thing to do if they really wanted to fuck with X and hamper his efforts, and steal all of Zero's parts, including his control chip.

I have a little headcanon about the reason they didn't bother, but I'll save that for a second or three later. For now...

X fucks off to the North Pole as before, deals with the X-Hunters (who are now shitty dollar store Santa Clauses who come down your chimney and STEAL YOUR DEAD FRIEND'S LEGS??), meets Sigma at the central computer, and Zero is there, only that's the real Zero, and X has to fight him. Maybe for the first time, but not for the last time, because reasons! X wins, which apparently slaps some sense into Zero, who for some reason apologizes for causing so much trouble (probably having been resurrected, reprogrammed, and then kicked in the head by your bestie until you're unreprogrammed makes you stupid) and says he's going to go destroy the main computer.

Wait, what main computer, like do you mean this entire stage? When did we ever establish about there being a main computer that needed to be destroooooh fine whatever go destroy the main computer and X can just fall down this hole where Sigma is. X is like, "Take care of yourself, Zero. I don't have time to put you back together again," and once again that's a real quote and I'm not just being flippant. Was that an attempt at humor? In Japanese it's just, "Do you intend to die?" which is like. God damn, X. I know this is the point in the game in which Zero exploded himself last time, but he JUST got here, he's not going to Death Hug the computer too. But ya boy is evidently having a flashback.

From there things proceed as normal, X defeats Sigma, and this time,

Two of them.

Joined by his friend Zero, Mega Man X gazes out over the sea. Sigma has once again been destroyed, but X wonders if the fighting will truly end. Was Dr. Light’s dream of a world in which Reploids and humans lived together in peace merely a dream? The price of peace is often high, X thinks to himself. Who or what must be sacrificed for it to become a reality? And when the time comes, will he be able to do it? The future holds the answers or…

It's a lot less of a downer than X1 was. The music is tense and kinda gloomy, but it's not the endless despair party that X1's ending theme was. X is like, okay, maybe this will work out. Sigma's defeated again, this sucks and all, but he's clearly the bad guy in this situation so there's less of an internal conflict about Was This The Right Thing To Do. Obviously so! It's less, was this right, and more, can I do this? And Zero's back, so maybe even some of the mistakes are fixable. It's not going to be easy, sure, but it at least feels possible.

Or maybe it's hopeless after all. Will the fighting truly end?

Haha, no. But don't tell him that right now, I don't think he could handle it. Can you imagine. Let the poor dude rest for five minutes. Just let him have this one little victory. God damn.

Anyway, let's leave those guys on their cliff and go over here instead for

HEADCANON TIME oh boy let's do it!!

So, it is not at all a stretch to say that Serges is probably some kind of AI incarnation of Dr. Wily. The game is not explicit about this, no, but it's heavily implied in the Japanese version, and Keiji Inafune, who has never thought anything all the way through in his entire life and is not starting now, is on record as having left it intentionally vague so that you can draw your own conclusions. Weird thing to tease, if there weren't a little truth to it.

This takes some of the later games' plot existing to make sense, but I don't think the X-Hunters really exist to be subservient to Sigma and just carry out his funny little genocidal reploid rampage. It's established that Zero was created by Dr. Wily, and if there's one thing that you can count on with Dr. Wily, it's that he is the kind of guy who will create a whole guy whose personality is summed up by, "I exist to kill this other guy and then after that I have no idea." He definitely did this with Bass. He definitely did this with Zero. In fact he went so overboard with Zero's Kill A Guy programming that Zero wanted to kill EVERY guy upon activation, which Sigma had to beat out of him (X4), making him weirdly normal.

(In fact the original recipe Maverick Virus was just a day-one patch for Zero's omnicidal bullshit tendencies to make him fucking stop it, dude, you have things to be doing that aren't creating new Pollock works all over the buried lab every time like a rat or something wanders in. But then because Wily is kind of a shit programmer but a really good scavenger of other people's shit, the day-one patch went, fine, you suck, I'm doing a world tour and getting stronger and coming back and FIXING YOU. Maverick Virus out.)

Now if you were some kind of AI version of Dr. Wily watching this—your favorite and final murder machine that you made specifically to kill Dr. Light's little baby-boo-bop hugs and love machine—and he is NOT doing that, he is in fact BECOMING BESTIES FOR LIFE with his enemy, this is not cool! This is just more proof that you are a bad programmer. Or, your original meatsuit self was a bad programmer, and now YOU are a program made of and by a bad programmer, which is arguably WORSE. It's enough to give a guy a FUCKING COMPLEX. Which is also a common thing to happen to any given Wily creation.

So your goal, here, because you think you're Dr. Wily or close enough to count, is to manipulate the situation into getting Zero to remember that he's supposed to be biting X to death with his teeth, not whatever the fuck pattycake he's playing with him right now, what the FUCK. WHAT the FUCK. Ahem.

If you have the X-Hunters kill Dr. Cain, well, that's not going to incentivize this happening at all. X is going to be so mad he kills you, and that's not optimal for shit. So fuck that guy. We ignore him. Unused variable. Just get Zero's parts and scram, because the important thing is rebuilding Zero, not fingerpainting with the innards of some human. (Even if Violen would probably be into that, but he's an idiot whose text box dialogue even appears more slowly than anyone else's, you can't listen to him if you want to get ahead in life.)

Sigma is really secondary to this too. He's very conveniently placed, and kind of easy to manipulate: just tell him that you know all about Zero (which is true) and that he's supposed to be on Sigma's side (which is close enough to true that he won't question it) and you can make this happen (you think you can. IT SHOULD WORK. Dammit. How bad of a programmer was your mental predecessor, anyway?). So Sigma kindly sets up everything for you, and you do your thing.

And they fight! Finally. It is glorious. Of course you are dead by the time this happens, probably, but maybe you aren't, because you have probably vacated your trashed-ass body into some other convenient system. (You will definitely not show up in X6 as some guy named Isoc, who upon finishing his work, goes absolutely inert like his whole-ass self just left his body, which you have definitely not just done and will not do again.)

EXCEPT GOD DAMMIT ZERO X HIT YOU IN THE HEAD HARD ENOUGH YOU CALMED DOWN AGAIN. GOD. DAMMIT. WHY THIS. FUCK. Okay, yeah, you're leaving. See y'all in X6, this sucks.

Anyway the real takeaway here is that Dr. Wily was just such a big fan of percussive maintenance that Zero occasionally needs to get beaten in the head with a wrench for a bit and then he's great for a while. If he starts twitching, that just means it's Wrench Time.

Anyway, that's X2, my second most favorite one.

Wire Sponge is a luffa, by the way. Loofah. However it's spelled.

This thing. That's what he is.

And I will not stop calling centipedes 'hyakuleggers' now because Magne Hyakulegger is way funner than Magna Centipede as a name.

[the-unspeakable-tsar]

X-Manson - Chapter 3 by Doctor Benway - Annotated by Tsar

We are introduced to an x-character almost Nobody talks about and an avenger, nobody talks about. That's right, everyone Firestar and Vance Astro.

[Shot of a couple in a very high-tech space, also presumably underground. They're both in spandex, and both look very fit and very white in a sort of Middle American kind of way. Somehow, it is also obvious that they're not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier.]

*Doctor Benway: These two are the dumbest motherfuckers to ever exist.

[Caption: Vance and Angelica Astrovik, Avengers; New York, NY]

Angelica Jones, Firestar and Vance Astro, Justice. I don't care for Vance. But, curiously, The Avengers are present in some form in this au. You would think that this is a world that cant sustain them and we know very little of their full roster.

VA: We got picked up at the airport by Scott Summers. He picked up Doug from the bus station in White Plains on the way.

Int: Did you sense anything ususal?

AA: Summers kind of weirded us out. He didn't say anything. He was waiting for us, holding up a sign with my name on it as I came off the plane. Vance was there with him. It's how we met.

VA: I was so glad to see you. Summers had met my plane an hour earlier and hadn't said anything to me. I asked him some questions, but he just dismissed everything I said with a Yes or a No until I gave up.

Int: Did you have any idea of what awaited you at the house?

VA: We were pretty nervous, but we had no idea what was coming.

AA: No idea at all.

[Shot: Doug & Marie-Ange Ramsey]

DR: If I had been religious, I'd have said it was like something out of Hell. Going there totally killed off any belief I'd had that there was a God. No God would have allowed that place to exist.

*Dramatic young man.

MAR: But you didn't know that then.

DR: No, not then. Not on that visit.

Int: Did you see anything that disturbed you?

DR: Nothing, at first. On the drive in, I met Vance and Angie, but we were all kind of nervous. Summers kind of projected this weird cone of silence, and I didn't even ask them their names until we got to the School. Xavier and McCoy met with me in this really slick office. Xavier asked me some questions, but he seemed kind of pre-occupied and not really interested. McCoy was the one who really took an interest and asked all the questions.

Int: What kind of questions?

DR: Going-to-the-doctor-type questions. Height, weight, blood type, any loathsome diseases, all that kind of thing. I suppose I should be glad I've still got all my original parts.

*asking questions before removing organs.

Int: Do you think that Xavier tried to take control of your mind?

DR: Someone was sure trying to do something. It felt like a worm was trying to crawl around in my head, but as soon as I'd think that I'd forget it. It was weird.

Int: But you still felt that you were in control.

DR: I still was. I'm resistant. Almost all the survivors were. If you had no innate defenses, there was no protection. I've got protection now. This entire house is a Faraday cage, buried 10 feet below the ground. No psi is ever going to get in here.

Int: You still worry about an attack?

DR: I won't risk it. Never again.

MAR: It won't. I'm sure that our guest would like to know what happened next.

DR: We had a tour of the grounds, which I thought was kind of weird, because I wanted to see what was inside. Computers, science labs, that sort of thing. Instead they showed us the forest and the lake and the boathouse.

Int: Did you meet any of the staff?

DR: Jean Grey, Summers, Logan, McCoy, the Irish guy, the Russian guy and his sister. There were two students there, Sam Guthrie and the one I'll call Psyche. Besides me, there were three other kids visiting. Vance, Angelica and David.

Irish Guy, Sean Cassidy Banshee

Russian Guy, Piotr Rasputin, Colossus

His "sister", Illyana Rasputina(?)

Sam Guthrie, Cannonball

Psyche, Dani Moonstar

David Haller, Legion.

My poor girls and Sam are here in this terrible place.

Int: David Lehnsherr?

DR: Yes.

[glorioustimeswithdrew]

Drew and the Dirty Lies of John Cusack

Originally published August 5th, 2013

I was spraying my shoes with a fire hose when 6-^8Y approached me.

"Hey there, 6-^8Y!" I enthusiastically shouted.   "Look, I stole another fire truck!" "LIKE, TOTALLY LOL," 6-^8Y computed in its cute little robot voice.  "OMG LOOK AT JOHN CUSACK'S FACEBOOK STATUS." I could feel my teeth grinding, which the dentist said I shouldn't do. John Cusack.  If my blood was made out of glitter and rainbows, John Cusack would give me cancer.  I hated that guy.

"What did that no good so-and-so do this time?" I hissed as 6-^8Y lit up the screen on his stomach.  I read the status.

"Like lol ya'll, totally just went to Mars, yee-haw tell me I am cool please?"

I could feel my fists clenching, which the dentist said I shouldn't do before I punched her box of floss.  "There's no way he went to Mars!" I shouted.  "John Cusack isn't an astronaut!" "LIKE LOL, I TOTES THINK HE IS GAY COOL.  LOOK AT HIS LIKES, HE IS 100% POPULAR."

I looked at how many had liked the status.  15,000 people, and counting.  I was so mad that I could purchase a modestly priced box of jelly beans, and then put poo in the jelly beans, and then light the store that I bought them in on fire, and then put out the fire with the fire trucks I stole, and then feed the survivors my jelly beans.

"6-^8Y, I think it's time I exposed this John Cusack knucklehead for the phony he is," I said with a purpose. "LIKE WTF, DREW, THAT IS AFFIRMATIVE DUMB AS HELL.  GTFO U R A VAGINA." "Shut up, 6-^8Y!  You're adopted!"  6-^8Y started to cry and I didn't even feel bad about it.  I pulled out my magic whistle and gave it a majestic toot.  Within seconds, a giant group of butterflies came to my aid and grabbed me by my clothes.  Soon we were airborne. "Onward!" I shouted.  "Onward to wherever John Cusack is!"

I was lucky that the butterflies had a people GPS with them because they were able to take me right to John Cusack's exact location: Times Square.  What a dunce, I thought.  Prancing around in Times Square?  What does he think he is, a Prancing Person?

I hopped off the butterflies and presented them with a small infant as payment, which they graciously accepted as a delicious sacrifice. "Thank you, Drew," said the butterflies, "But where's our payment for last time?" "Don't worry, butterflies.  I'll get you your fix." "You have one week, Drew!" the butterflies merrily chirped, and with that, the group flew off.  I looked around, and that's when I noticed a very peculiar sign.

"Mars 2112 Restaurant"

I took out my rocket launcher and shot it at the building.  Unfortunately my rocket launcher was actually a ballpoint pen and nothing exploded.  I took out my notebook and wrote "Stop mistaking rocket launcher for pen," then I bolted toward the entrance.

I crashed through the door, shattering the glass.  An alarm went off.  It was the late afternoon, but nobody was inside the restaurant.  Except for John Cusack.

"We meet again, Drew!" he said while sipping a Yoohoo at the counter and wearing a really ugly shirt. "Fuck you, John Cusack!" I shouted, picking shards of glass out of my face.  "You're a giant liar and you know it!"  John Cusack chuckled darkly as he twirled his dripping greasy hair. "Oh, Drew.  That's not what the people think," he cooed. "You're just sitting in a restaurant that has Mars in the title and misleading people into thinking you went to Mars!" I shouted as I tried swallowing the piece of glass that had went down my throat.  It was actually one of my teeth, and I started to regret punching my dentist’s box of floss while she was drilling inside of my mouth.  John Cusack just sat there, jirating his body in an empty seat.  I noticed a sign leaning against the counter that I had knocked over while bursting through the doors.

"Closed since January 2012."

"What the firetruck, John Cusack?!  This place has been closed for two years!" I exclaimed. "I know!" said John Cusack.  "And there's nothing you can do to stop me!" With that, he removed his giant ugly shirt and revealed a jetpack.  With the push of a button he began propelling toward the open ceiling.  Not today, I thought.

I used the sign as a makeshift ramp, sprinting onto the counter and running across it. I leapt in John Cusack's direction--and managed to grab hold of one of his untied shoelaces.

John Cusack scowled down at me, trying to shake me loose as the jetpack took him past the ceiling.  I clung tenaciously to his stray lace and began climbing up his body.  John Cusack kicked himself about, but I continued to climb.  The jetpack continued to propel him upwards, spiraling in a haphazard way.  He scratched at my face, deepening some of the cuts I already had from glass shards.  I grabbed at his hair and pulled, struggling to keep a grip as his hair was so moist with grease.

"You will not win!" he screeched as he sank his teeth into my neck.  I howled in pain, releasing his hair.  I tried gripping onto other parts of his body for support, but my hands were too slippery from handling John Cusack's grungy mane. Only John Cusack's mighty chomp upon my neck held me in place.

John Cusack released his jaw and I began plummeting toward Earth.  Freefalling to my death was not nearly as fun as the Bible had made it sound.  I was going to die.  For reals this time.  But even though John Cusack was soaring above me, I would not let him win.  With one last breath, I blew ferociously into my special whistle.

"Now I'm tweeting about how I discovered the cure to AIDS, Drew!" John Cusack shouted as he punched into his phone.  "Because this jetpack is AIDING me!  Get it?!"  But before John Cusack could send the tweet, a group of butterflies surrounded him and began devouring his body.

"AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" said John Cusack as butterflies devoured him from the inside out. "You debt is paid!" said the butterflies, satiated from their greasy meal of a giant baby. I was happy, but I was also about to die, so I was kind of not happy.  Out of nowhere, I felt a spank reach my fundament.  I thought it was a death spank, but it turned out it was something else.

6-^8Y  had caught me, rocketing through the sky with its built-in rockets.

"6-^8Y!" I stammered, overwhelmed with disbelief.  "I'm sorry I said you were adopted--" "DON'T SPEAK, MY FRIEND," 6-^8Y computed.  I felt a warm fuzzy feeling inside, and it wasn't because butterflies had devoured my internal organs. "6-^8Y, deploy one of your space helmets," I commanded. "WHY DO YOU WISH FOR THIS?" 6-^8Y inquired. "Because," I said, "We're actually going to Mars." 

[pooepw]

24 - disappointment

Stream

Today was the grand return of You Lose, You Play a Different Game, where I play multiple games and switch between them should I survive a 30 minute/whole game round playing them or lose. I cut the stream short by the last few rounds since I had plans to hang out with my sisters, so I will be finishing them tomorrow. Talking about the games to be played and that were played, the roster ended up being this:

Oblivion for RPG

Celeste for Platformer

Inscryption (Kaycee's mod) for Card Game

Nomad Survivors for Roguelike

Necesse for Survival Game

Baldur's Gate I for Retro

Fallout: NV for the Fallout Category (the Fallout franchise swamped the RPG category, so I just put them in their own category)

Dark Souls II: SotFS for Soulslike (same thing as Fallout applies here)

Cruelty Squad for Other (there were not many "other" games)

Free Space (I picked any game and won regardless of dying since rerolling a free space seems cheaty)

Hell Mode (all the games are put on the wheel)

Many of the games did connect with the other genres, so games like Salt and Sanctuary and Hollow Knight, which could easily be viewed as Soulslike games, were put into genres where there were less of that genre. Many of the categories had few games within them, except for retro. Examining the results of how well I played today, I only ended up losing one time in the end since I got distracted, the sunlight got into my eyes, my little brother took the controller out of my hands, a dog bit my leg which made things hard for me, and my computer crashed. So all in all, that loss should not count, but we'll count it to make it feel as though losing is a concept that exists when I play video games. Jokes aside, I got extremely lucky. The games that I did not roll were the hardest games on the list to complete: Cruelty Squad requiring a whole level victory to complete (I have not been practicing FPS shooters), Celeste requiring me to complete 5 screens (I wrote 3 and thought that was too short, also I suck at platformers), and Baldur's Gate I (the only retro game I probably suck at). Hell, even the loss was super lucky; my second-to-last game to play was Dark Souls II: SotFS, a game I have played so much that I hacked my Xbox 360 save to complete the no bonfires run with. One final thing to note is that I added something to this run that I would not usually add in the form of respins. In this run, I gave myself 3 respins. The first was on one of the games being selected for a particular genre. The second and third I wasted on Hell Mode to get a game I wanted to play. I think that giving myself respins for any wheel spin is a good idea, so I will be adding that to any time I do this challenge again.

Bad Comedians

Today, my sisters wanted me to go with them to a comedy club. So I cut the stream and went with them. We ate beforehand at a place that did not cook their food well; the chicken tenders were lukewarm and the salad was barren. This was merely a prelude to the disappointing evening I had since it was followed by some of the most overdone and basic comedy acts that ever existed. I am not someone who does comedy or is a comedic genius, but the bland comedy of using hyper-offensive language combined with sexual references and some white supremacy sprinkled in was simply unfunny and even occasionally sad to me. I have already experienced the attempt to use offensive language through being a teenager on the internet in the years 2014-2018, sexual jokes through watching streamers who are not really funny but apply them to their streams, and, although I have never and would never experience joking about white supremacy, found jokes about white supremacy to be horribly sad. There was not even cringe comedy in their jokes; it was all just sad. I think I saw the signs that things were going to go south for the comedy as soon as excessive slurs were used, but the mention that the opening act comedian was a landlord really hammered the nail in the coffin. They even managed to make the lack of public transportation in America depressing. Just awful.

[catboyebooks]

alright. onwards. where i left off, hinata was mentally calling junko an insane bitch, but he doesn't verbally confront her yet. after all, what the hell is he supposed to do about it at this point? junko seems to have a pretty good idea what hinata (& most likely the rest of the group as well) is thinking, because she tells them they don't need to be wary around her, everyone here is shsl despair after all. she tries to relate to the group saying they were all looked down upon by their peers in high school, so they should all be friends, as though they're all a bunch of kids sitting at the loser table in the cafeteria. it's a pretty transparent tactic, honestly. we all know full well junko was not unpopular in high school. we know she doesn't consider this group her friends. anyway, her offer of friendship is of course rejected and junko mopes about how they all hate her, even after she went to all the trouble of modifying the graduation program.

when asked about what she did to the graduation program, junko says that she felt like the graduation reward wasn't big enough the way the program was originally designed, and she wanted it to be more exciting. according to her, letting the people who died in VR stay dead "just sucks" and so she decided to reprogram the graduation program to resurrect them. i want to point out that the way the simulation was initially set up, you couldn't get injured or die at all, so obviously the graduation program would not have been designed to resurrect anyone; there'd be no need. at best junko's just saying "i fixed the thing i broke" lol. anyway. she says it was really difficult for her to figure out how to do this because of the encryption on the code, and she jokes about how she was useless with computers before she became an AI, but she did figure it out eventually.

junko makes the group take a guess as to how long it took her to modify the program, and hinata asks if this is what the countdown at jabberwock park was about. junko says, actually, that countdown was a complete red herring. it wasn't actually counting down to anything at all, she just thought it looked ominous and she wanted to challenge herself to have the survivors make it inside the ruins before the countdown hit zero. the group is bothered by this — they haven't talked about it much, but clearly everyone here assumed the countdown meant something — and they try and get the conversation back on track. can junko really resurrect the dead people? again junko says that yes, she can, but this time her story about it completely changes. she acts bored and says it's not a big deal at all because this world isn't real, and of course nothing that happens in VR would have an effect on real life.

hinata tries to confront her about the contradiction, but she tells him they're past the part in the game where he has to spot contradictions in other people's statements. kuzuryuu, who has been asking the most questions about whether the dead people can be resurrected, actually sides with junko here and says, yeah, who cares about the details? the important part is bringing their dead friends back to life, and why question how it works when nothing that's happened in this VR program makes sense anyway? he doesn't have the majority opinion here, though; sonia and souda both express wanting to know more about how this works before they agree to anything, and hinata's still very skeptical and asks junko what she gets out of it if they graduate, since it seems to be the option she's encouraging them to take. junko acts offended that he'd ask and says, hey, if you don't want to, don't!

the group talks it over quickly. despite their doubts, everyone does still want to leave, especially now that they're being told the "dead" people will still be alive irl. junko's like, great! your will to live is really super high-school level! yet another reason for you guys to execute your role as devices! (this line doesn't escape hinata's notice, but he doesn't ask her right away what she means.) she tells them to go ahead and press the "graduate" button on their podiums, excitedly rambles a bit in a way that doesn't seem directed at anybody here, and then before hinata can ask tells him it doesn't concern him and also calls him a chump. great

hinata still seems apprehensive about pushing the button, but he does want to go back to the real world, and the idea of everyone who died getting to live is way more than he could have hoped for... so he goes to press it, but then naegi (actual!) appears out of nowhere to tell hinata not to press the button, it's a trap!!! i totally forgot about this happening so this time i think megumi ogata did jumpscare me