#and updating the system when it is released next month

[moonmaenad]

I'm pretty sure Hestia had a hand in this job. Going to thank her with a baked good

[bogleech]

If you backed the Mortasheen kickstarter four years ago (...but until this morning, I still thought it was three...) check your email or the project page. The digital prerelease version is available to all backers. It's 318 pages, with only around 10-15ish pages of extra stuff that will come in the physical version later this year. When that starts shipping to backers, the extra content will also be added to the digital release in a free update.

Digital should be available for the general public to buy in the coming months, and the physical version will be up for new preorders when the kickstarter run starts to ship out. We'll be trying to get it on the shelves of actual stores in at the end of the year or starting next year, even if only indie stores end up wanting to carry it.

This has eaten so much of my time that I went bald and started greying since the original announcement. Haha.

Other artists contributing to the final book:

@latenightagain

@samsketchbook

@galusaurus

@biomechanicalmush

@witnesstheabsurd

@revretch

@iguanamouth

@kombuchaclock

@slithergaunt

@sabedilemon

@beachboogeyman

And some others, who don't currently have tumblrs to link to that I know of

The core gameplay system was developed by Morgan Mullins, who doesn't use social media! I've still never fully learned all of the system myself, not having free time for gaming or even the right brain to memorize ttrpg mechanics, but @gutsygills did, and used that system to build and playtest each and every single last monster while revising and expanding the mechanics for the last year or two straight. Without her effort this release would still be nowhere in sight.

This TTRPG has been a project in development now since roughly 2010, and a world I've developed since almost 2001.

Everyone who wants to be able to buy it in at least some form should finally be able to by the end of this year, the 200+ kickstarter preorders just demand attention first.

[humanjarvis]

caleb music headcanons

i'm receiving word about possible pirate caleb x siren reader myth and although that was not in my long and detailed plans for him (i've been playing this game for 2 months) it made me actually write these

caleb doesn’t pay much attention to his music taste. to him, music is mostly background noise—something to help pass the time while he’s studying or cooking

he isn’t very picky about genre; he’ll listen to anything, but low-stress indie songs bring him comfort. he finds new ones by shuffling a 12-hour playlist that updates weekly, but he has two or three bands that he checks up on every few months to see if they’ve released anything new 

has an undiscovered love for techno instrumentals, though

he seems disinterested in music on the surface, but it’s honestly because he cares about your taste in music more than his own

he would listen to the songs you liked when he’d drive you home from school, letting you practically use his dashboard as a punching bag while you impulsively switched between your top playlists. if his infotainment system had been sentient, it would’ve sighed every time you got into the car 

he takes note of your most played artists, looking them up to feel closer to you (and to see if they’re playing a show near you anytime soon—if so, he saves up to surprise you with tickets once or twice a year) ((two tickets. you’re going with him. together.)) 

his research comes in handy when you quiz him on boyband trivia, and the playful grin on his face hides his twitching eye when you gush over how cute you think the leader is 

caleb comes to truly appreciate music when he realizes how much it means to you. he comes home late one night to find you dancing and singing around the living room, bathed in the color-changing mood lights from your floor lamp and wearing the noise-cancelling headphones he got you a few months back 

he’d walked in on one of your frequent “music nights,” as you called them, and he was so enamored by the sight that he rarely missed one after that 

every music night since then, you switched out your headphones for a speaker in the corner of the room and welcomed caleb into your mini-raves. he seemed to have missed the “rave” part of the memo, though; he mostly remained idle on these nights, perfectly content to sit on the couch just watching you, outside of the rare times you managed to pull him up to dance with you 

you, on the other hand, were all over the place—sometimes you’d stand looking forlornly out the window, pretending to be in a sad music video; sometimes you’d make up your own choreography in the middle of the room; and sometimes, during the most energetic songs, you’d crawl all over him in excitement

caleb’s favorite music nights are the ones where you sing for him. don’t get him wrong—he loves having you use him as a jungle gym when a hype song is playing—but he can’t hold back his anticipation whenever a slow song comes on shuffle. each time, you collapse onto the couch next to him, turning your face into his shoulder

while your pulse slows, you begin reciting the lyrics you know by heart, the vibrations going straight into caleb’s chest. he pulls you closer to him and thinks this is an intimacy he’d like to live in forever, you crooning with your fingers in his hair 

pressed flush against caleb’s body, you eventually drift off to the rhythmic beating of his heart, and music night is over, for you at least 

but the night goes on a bit longer for caleb, who’d memorized lines from the ballads you sang to him and secretly downloads the songs after, so that the next time he’s away, he can listen to them and pretend it’s you 

[qwertyprophecy]

Mortholme Post-Mortem

The Dark Queen of Mortholme has been out for two weeks, and I've just been given an excellent excuse to write some more about its creation by a lenghty anonymous ask.

Under the cut, hindsight on the year spent making Mortholme and answers to questions about game dev, grouped under the following topics:

Time spent on development Programming Obstacles Godot Animation Pixel art Environment assets Writing Completion Release

Regarding time spent on development

Nope, I’ve got no idea anymore how long I spent on Mortholme. It took a year but during that time I worked on like two other games and whatever else. And although I started with the art, I worked on all parts simultaneously to avoid getting bored. This is what I can say:

Art took a ridiculous amount of time, but that was by choice (or compulsion, one might say). I get very excitable and particular about it. At most I was making about one or two Hero animations in a day (for a total of 8 + upgraded versions), but anything involving the Queen took multiple times longer. When I made the excecutive decision that her final form was going to have a bazillion tentacles I gave up on scheduling altogether.

Coding went quickly at the start when I was knocking out a feature after another, until it became the ultimate slow-burn hurdle at the end. Testing, bugfixing, and playing Jenga with increasingly unwieldy code kept oozing from one week to the next. For months, probably? My memory’s shot but I have a mark on my calendar on the 18th of August that says “Mortholme done”. Must’ve been some optimistic deadline before the ooze.

Writing happened in extremely productive week-long bursts followed by nothing but nitpicky editing while I focused on other stuff. Winner in the “changed most often” category, for sure.

Sound was straightforward, after finishing a new set of animations I spent a day or two to record and edit SFX for them. Music I originally scheduled two weeks for, but hubris and desire for more variants bumped it to like a month.

Regarding programming

The Hero AI is certainly the part that I spent most of my coding time on. The basic way the guaranteed dodging works is that all the Queen’s attacks send a signal to the Hero, who calculates a “danger zone” based on the type of attack and the Queen’s location. Then, if the Hero is able to dodge that particular attack (a probability based on how much it's been used & story progression), they run a function to dodge it.

Each attack has its own algorithm that produces the best safe target position to go to based on the Hero’s current position (and other necessary actions like jumping). Those algorithms needed a whole lot of testing to code counters for all the scenarios that might trip the Hero up.

The easiest or at least most fun parts for me to code are the extra bells and whistles that aren’t critical but add flair. Like in the Hero’s case, the little touches that make them seem more human: a reaction speed delay that increases over time, random motions and overcompensation that decrease as they gain focus, late-game Hero taking prioritising aggressive positiniong, a “wait for last second” function that lets the Hero calculate how long it’ll take them to move to safety and use the information to squeeze an extra attack in…

The hardest attack was the magic circle, as it introduced a problem in my code so far. The second flare can overlap with other attacks, meaning the Hero had to keep track of two danger zones at once. For a brief time I wanted to create a whole new system that would constantly update a map of all current danger zones—that would allow for any number of overlapping attacks, which would be really cool! Unfortunately it didn’t gel with my existing code, and I couldn’t figure out its multitudes of problems since, well…

Regarding obstacles

Thing is, I’m hot garbage as a programmer. My game dev’s all self-taught nonsense. So after a week of failing to get this cool system to work, I scrapped it and instead made a spaghetti code monstrosity that made magic circle run on a separate danger zone, and decided I’d make no more overlapping attacks. That’s easy; I just had to buffer the timing of the animation locks so that the Hero would always have time to move away. (I still wanted to keep the magic circle, since it’s fun for the player to try and trick the Hero with it.)

There’s my least pretty yet practical solo dev advice: if you get stuck because you can’t do something, you can certainly try to learn how to do it, but occasionally the only way to finish a project within a decade to work around those parts and let them be a bit crap.

I’m happy to use design trickery, writing and art to cover for my coding skills. Like, despite the anonymous asker’s description, the Hero’s dodging is actually far from perfect. I knew there was no way it was ever going to be, which is why I wrote special dialogue to account for a player finding an exploit that breaks the intended gameplay. (And indeed, when the game was launched, someone immediately found it!)

Regarding Godot

It’s lovely! I switched from Unity years ago and it’s so much simpler and more considerate of 2D games. The way its node system emphasises modularity has improved my coding a lot.

New users should be aware that a lot of tutorials and advice you find online may be for Godot 3. If something doesn’t work, search for what the Godot 4 equivalent is.

Regarding animation

I’m a professional animator, so my list of tips and techniques is a tad long… I’ll just give a few resource recommendations: read up on the classic 12 principles of animation (or the The Illusion of Life, if you’d like the whole book) and test each out for yourself. Not every animation needs all of these principles, but basically every time you’ll be looking at an animation and wondering how to make it better, the answer will be in paying attention to one or more of them.

Game animation is its own beast, and different genres have their own needs. I’d recommend studying animations that do what you’d like to do, frame by frame. If you’re unsure of how exactly to analyse animation for its techniques, youtube channel New Frame Plus shows an excellent example.

Oh, and film yourself some references! The Queen demanded so much pretend mace swinging that it broke my hoover.

Regarding pixel art

The pixel art style was picked for two reasons: 1. to evoke a retro game feel to emphasise the meta nature of the narrative, and 2. because it’s faster and more forgiving to animate in than any of my other options.

At the very start I was into the idea of doing a painterly style—Hollow Knight was my first soulslike—but quickly realised that I’d either have to spend hundreds of hours animating the characters, or design them in a simplistic way that I deemed too cutesy for this particular game. (Hollow Knight style, one day I’d love to emulate you…)

I don’t use a dedicated program, just Photoshop for everything like a chump. Pixel art doesn’t need anything fancy, although I’m sure specialist programs will keep it nice and simple.

Pixel art’s funny; its limitations make it dependent on symbolism, shortcuts and viewer interpretation. You could search for some tutorials on basic principles (like avoiding “jaggies” or the importance of contrast), but ultimately you’ll simply want to get a start in it to find your own confidence in it. I began dabbling years ago by asking for character requests on Tumblr and doodling them in pixels in whatever way I could think of.

Regarding environment assets

The Queen’s throne room consists of two main sprites—one background and one separate bit of the door for the Hero disappear behind—and then about fifty more for the lighting setup. There’s six different candle animations, there’s lines on the floor that need to go on top of character reflections, all the candle circles and lit objects are separated so that the candles can be extinguished asynchronously; and then there’s purple phase 2 versions of all of the above.

This is all rather dumb. There’s simpler ways in Godot to do 2D lighting with shaders and a built-in system (I use those too), but I wanted control over the exact colours so I just drew everything in Photoshop the way I wanted it. Still, it highlights how mostly you only need a single background asset and separated foreground objects; except if you need animated objects or stuff that needs to change while the game’s running, you’ll get a whole bunch more.

I wholeheartedly applaud having a go at making your own game art, even if you don’t have any art background! The potential for cohesion in all aspects of design—art, game, narrative, sound—is at the heart of why video games are such an exciting medium!

Regarding writing

Finding the voices of the Queen and the Hero was the quick part of the process. They figured that out they are almost as soon as writing started. I’d been mulling this game over in my mind for so long, I had already a specific idea in mind of what the two of them stood for, conceptually and thematically. When they started bantering, I felt like all I really had to do was to guide it along the storyline, and then polish.

What ended up taking so long was that there was too much for them to say for how short the game needed to be to not feel overstretched. Since I’d decided to go with two dialogue options on my linear story, it at least gave me twice the amount of dialogue that I got to write, but it wasn’t enough!

The first large-scale rewrite was me going over the first draft and squeezing in more interesting things for the Queen and the Hero to discuss, more branching paths and booleans. There was this whole thing where the player’s their dialogue choices over multiple conversations would lead them to about four alternate interpretations of why the Queen is the way she is. This was around the time I happened to finally play Disco Elysium, so of course I also decided to also add a ton of microreactivity (ie. small changes in dialogue that acknowledge earlier player choices) to cram in even more alternate dialogue. I spent ages tinkering with the exact nuances till I was real proud of it.

Right until the playtesters of this convoluted contraption found the story to be unclear and confusing. For some reason. So for my final rewrite, I picked out my favourite bits and cut everything else. With the extra branching gone, there was more room to improve the pacing so the core of the story could breathe. The microreactivity got to stay, at least!

A sample of old dialogue from the overcomplicated version:

Regarding completion

The question was “what kept me going to actually finish the game, since that is a point many games never even get to meet?” and it’s a great one because I forgot that’s a thing. Difficulties finishing projects, that is—I used to think it was hard, but not for many years. Maybe I’ve completed so many small-scale games already that it hardly seems that unreasonable of an expectation? (Game jams. You should do game jams.)

I honestly never had any doubt I was going to finish Mortholme. When I started in late autumn last year, I was honestly expecting the concept to be too clunky to properly function; but I wished to indulge in silliness and make it exist anyways. That vision would’ve been easy to finish, a month or two of low stakes messing around, no biggie. (Like a game jam!)

Those months ran out quickly as I had too much fun making the art to stop. It must’ve been around the time I made this recording that it occurred to me that even if the game was going to be clunky, it could still genuinely work on the back of good enough storytelling technique—not just writing, but also the animation and the Hero’s evolving behaviour during the gameplay segments which I’d been worried about. The reaction to my early blogging was also heartening. Other people could also imagine how this narrative could be interesting!

A few weeks after that I started planning out the narrative beats I wanted the dialogue to reach, and came to the conclusion that I really, really wanted it to work. Other people had to see this shit, I thought. There’s got to be freaks out there who’d love to experience this tragedy, and I’m eager to deliver.

That’s why I was fine with the project’s timeline stretching out. If attention to detail and artistry was going to make this weird little story actually come to life, then great, because that’s exactly the part of development I love doing most. Projects taking longer than expected can be frustrating, but accepting that as a common part of game dev is what allows confidence in eventual their completion regardless.

Regarding release

Dear anonymous’s questions didn’t involve post-release concerns, but it seems fitting to wrap up the post-mortem by talking about the two things about Mortholme's launch that were firsts for me, and thus I was unprepared for.

1. This was the first action game I've coded. Well, sort of—I consider Mortholme to be a story first and foremost, with gameplay so purposefully obnoxious it benefits from not being thought of as a “normal” game. Still, the action elements are there. For someone who usually sticks to making puzzle games since they’re easier to code, this was my most mechanically fragile game yet. So despite all my attempts at playtesting and failsafes, it had a whole bunch of bugs on release.

Game-breaking bugs, really obvious bugs, weird and confusing bugs. It took me over a week to fix all that was reported (and I’m only hoping they indeed are fully fixed). That feels slow; I should’ve expected it was going to break so I could’ve been faster to respond. Ah well, next time I know what I’ll be booking my post-release week for.

2. This was my first game that I let players give me money for. Sure, it’s pay-what-you-want, but for someone as allergic to business decisions as I am, it was a big step. I guess I was worried of being shown that nobody would consider my art worth financial compensation. Well, uh, that fear has gone out of the window now. I’m blown away by how kind and generous the players of Mortholme have been with their donations.

I can’t imagine it's likely to earn a living wage from pouring hundreds of hours into pay-what-you-want passion projects, but the support has me heartened to seek out a future where I could make these weird stories and a living both.

Those were the unexpected parts. The part I must admit I was expecting—but still infinitely grateful for—was that Mortholme did in fact reach them freaks who’d find it interesting. The responses, comments, analyses, fan works (there’s fic and art!! the dream!!), inspiration, and questions (like the ones prompting me to write this post-mortem) people have shared with me thanks to Mortholme… They’ve all truly been what I was hoping for back when I first gave myself emotions thinking about a mean megalomaniac and stubborn dipshit.

Thank you for reading, thank you for playing, and thank you for being around.

[hiiraya]

loml

pairing: natasha romanoff  x reader 

words: ~3.3k

warnings: angst, happy ending (?), literally just self-indulgent writing, messy writing, listen to loml by taylor swift to get in the sad mood

a/n: merry christmas everyone! the last thing I posted was january of 2022 and it's literally about to be 2025 - I've been in a reminiscing mood lately and this was something I've had in the drafts for months, I figured I should just release it to get it out of my system. your girl has been missing someone bad bro and the urge to tag them in this is insane ♡ anyways, hope they see this lmao

“Have a safe flight and text me when you land, yeah?”

“I will, I will. Get home safe and update me as well, okay?”

You release your cousin from your hold, giving their shoulder a quick squeeze as they pull away. You do a last minute check with them to make sure they hadn’t forgotten anything important - something you were always prone to do when travelling by yourself. The memory of you almost missing your international flight because you had rushed home and back to the airport within record speed, all because you had forgotten your passport of all things. 

“I’ll fly out to see you next time, so you can show me around.” You smile.

“Are you guys serious? I told you to leave early so that this exact thing wouldn’t happen!”

Your eyebrows immediately furrow at the familiar voice, catching one last glance of your cousin as they enter the security screening area, waving to them while you mouth one last ‘text me when you land!’ as they leave your sight, before turning around to find the source of the voice.

No way it’s her, you thought. What’s she doing here?

As you get closer to the arrivals board, your questions are answered. Standing there in all her glory, is the one woman you never thought you’d lay your eyes on again.

“Natasha?”

You see the puzzled look on her face as she registers your voice before she even lays her eyes on you. Watching as the confusion turns to irritation - whether it was towards you or whoever was on the other side of the phone, you couldn’t tell (most likely both) - you watch as a deep sigh she releases as she glances at the board in front of her once again.

“-that’s another 10 hours before you guys even land.” She sighs, exasperation lacing her voice.

“Hey, listen if you need help-”

She holds a finger up to silence you, eyes meeting yours in a piercing glance. “I don’t need help, and especially not from you Y/N L/N.”

At her words, you look down, the sight of your shoes a welcome one as you take a second to recover. Honestly, you thought to yourself, I deserved that. 

“Yes, it’s Y/N- no I did not! I swear I didn’t know that they were here.” You hear her mutter from beside you. Deciding to save the both of you from further embarrassment, you turn your attention elsewhere, wondering what your cousin would say once you eventually tell them about who you ran into immediately after they left.

You lift your head back up when you hear Natasha mumble "you guys pick the day before Christmas of all days to be late for your flight” followed by a quick goodbye before hanging up the phone, watching her scope the airport for her next step. 

You could just leave and pretend this ever happened.

“Come on, Nat, I promise I just want to help.” You find yourself saying instead. “I can take you to your hotel when they get here.”

Well, there's no going back from that now.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Are you seriously asking me that right now?”

You really needed to stop opening your mouth.

“Okay, you know what, I deserve that.” You pause. “Listen, I’m not going to force you to come with me, but the offer is still there if you want it. You’ll get a free ride, plus you can use my apartment to rest and freshen up while you wait.”

 -x-

"I can't believe you talked me into this."

You spare a glance to Natasha, who was currently sitting in your passenger seat.

"You're the one that followed me to the car?"

She rolls her eyes at your confused tone, choosing to ignore what you said and instead checking her phone - most likely waiting for an update from whoever she was speaking to on the phone before. "I can't believe they missed their flight."

"Who's they?"

"Yelena, Maria, Wanda," she answers. "Oh, and Yelena's friend Kate too. I don't think you've met her."

You bit the inside of your cheek, because you already know that you didn't get to meet anyone named Kate while you were still together. You honestly didn't get to meet many of Natasha's friends whenever visited her - it was something you always fought over. It felt like she was ashamed of you, always wanting to keep you hidden, a secret she never planned on sharing with the world.

You refrain from asking any follow up questions - if Natasha wanted you to know more she would tell you.

Instead, you ask: "Did they manage to catch the next flight out?"

She nods. "I'm honestly surprised they did, considering how expensive it probably would've been. But knowing Maria, she probably would've pulled some strings to make it work."

Natasha finally looks up from her phone as you come to a stop, looking at the building you had just parked in front of.

"Where are we?"

"My apartment, I figured we could drop off your bags and you can freshen up before I show you around." You open the door for Natasha before moving to grab her bags from the trunk.

You lead her inside, setting her bags down in the living room before turning around to face Natasha - holding your arms out as you gesture to your living space. It's the first time she's ever stepped foot into this place, having only seen it through a phone screen since you were the one who would fly out to visit her when you were still together.

"I'll grab you some towels so you can freshen up, but make yourself at home." You say, gesturing for her to follow you down a hallway. "The bathroom is the first door to your left, there should be a spare toothbrush under the sink- wait did I give to my cousin? Well, we can grab you one while we're out but everything you need should be here."

You know you're rambling but you don't stop in fear of saying something stupid (which knowing you, is highly likely).

"If you want to take a nap, the guest room is just a little further down the hall on the right - I just changed the sheets so everything should be fresh."

It's not the way you wanted to be showing Natasha around your home for the first time, but you'll take what you can get. It'd be so easy to waltz back to the way things were, before everything fell apart but you didn't have the right to that anymore. You weren't a part of her life anymore.

You didn't know if she already had someone new in her life, maybe you were overstepping in so many ways and that it was best to just keep your distance. After all, you did promise that you just wanted to help. You were here to keep her company until the girls arrived and take her to the hotel when they finally did get here.

You know it's for the better to just move on, that after today she'll be gone and it'll be like she never made a reappearance in your life. But how could you when you know deep down that you still haven't fully moved on and that she'll always hold your heart in her hands?

Natasha's voice cuts off your reverie, bringing you back to the present as you hand her the towels.

"Give me an hour to shower and rest my feet for a bit, I wanna go out and explore while we wait."

 -x-

"Do you see that one over there? That's a hammerhead shark! They're one of the most powerful sharks in the ocean."

Natasha hears the little girl gasp, watching their eyes going wide with wonder. She can't help the small laugh that escapes when she sees the young girl lean closer towards the glass before loudly whispering, "is it going to eat us?"

You laugh softly, and Natasha can't help but think that she's missed hearing the sound of your laugh, something she thought she wouldn’t hear again. It comforts her slightly to know that it hasn't changed after all these years, and that  she can still easily recognise the sound as being yours only.

"It won't eat us! Sharks don't eat humans," she hears you explain. "They're more interested in fish and seals, than they are humans. But they are really strong swimmers, and they can smell things from miles away - even in water!"

She'd been watching you answer questions about sharks for the past 5 minutes, after a curious little girl ran up to while you were looking at the shark tank and asked if you knew what type of shark was swimming in front of the glass.

"Do sharks talk to each other?"

"They don't talk like we do, but they do communicate by using their bodies and how they move through the water. Some sharks even make sounds by rubbing their teeth together, kind of like a secret language that only they can hear."

It doesn't take long for the girl's mother to find the three of you, sighing in relief as she sees her daughter, looking up at you apologetically.

"Sorry, she's probably been asking you a million questions."

You give the woman a friendly smile and shake your head. "It was nothing, I loved answering all of her questions." You tell her. "It looks like you might have a future marine biologist on your hands."

"Let's leave the lovely ladies to enjoy the rest of their date, bubba."

"Oh- it's not-"

"We're not-"

The mother and daughter are already walking off before either of you could finish your sentences, leaving you and Natasha standing in front of the shark exhibit with red cheeks and thundering heartbeats. 

Natasha catches your eyes as you glance at her in a shy glance, and she knows it's too late. The warmth that passes through her as you smile, the same warm and knowing smile that you used to give her when everything was still okay was almost enough to bring her down to her knees.

You interrupt before her thoughts can spiral any further, clearing your throat before gesturing with your head the direction of the next exhibit.

"Shall we keep going?"

 -x-

Natasha sits across from you at a small café by the beach. You mention to her that it was your secret place, one that you go to when you wanted time to slow down and just have a moment to catch your breath. After the little incident at the aquarium, you guys decided it was best to just sit and people watch for the time being to avoid any more awkward interactions.

The warmth emanating from the cup of coffee did little to chase away the little chills that ran down her spine every time Natasha caught you gaze lingering on her for longer than you must've realised.

She told you about the plans that she and the girls had made for their vacation while you filled her in on your own life, telling her about your cousin that had just recently come to visit you just before Christmas.

"I'm glad you chose to come with me." You admit after a pause in conversation, voice soft. She turns to look at you, your eyes meeting hers with such an intensity it made her breath get caught in her throat. "I missed getting to talk to you like this."

She can tell that you spoke without thinking, the widening of your eyes giving you away. You look away, muttering a quiet "sorry" before lifting your drink to your lips in an attempt to hide the flush of your cheeks.

She was supposed to be over you. She'd told herself time and time again that she had moved on, but seeing you again, and being here with you, she couldn't deny that she was still in love with you. Having you so close yet so unreachable leaves an ache in her chest.

Throughout the time you two had been sat at the café, she watched you with fondness at the way your eyes lit up while you spoke with excitement in your voice about the things you and your cousin had gotten up to in the week they were with you; Natasha realises that she missed you too - and the comfort that you brought her just by simply being near.

"Nat? You okay?" The worry in your voice only deepens the ache in her heart.

"Yeah, no, sorry - I'm okay." She answers with a shaky nod, breathing deeply. She allows herself to feel her emotions, knowing that it would only do harm if she tried to deny herself this moment with you.

"I missed you too."

The sadness settles deep within her chest, the way you looked so shocked at her words - and she wonders if you were expecting her dismiss your words.

Her phone pings loudly from where it was placed on the table, the text tone sounding off four times in a row as her screen lights up between the two of you.

Natasha!! We've landed :D - Wanda

Sestra, we're on our way to the hotel now, tell lover girl to drop you off now - Yelena

Hi Nat, sorry again - we'll be there in 30 minutes! - Kate

I'll check us in if we make it to the hotel first, Nat, just let us know when you're there - Maria

You both watch as each text pops up on her phone, knowing that your time together was coming to an end.

Natasha watches as you ponder for a moment - wondering if you were going to add on to your words from before now that she's admitted that she missed you too. For a second it does seem like you're about to say something, but instead you just shake your head slightly to yourself, clearing your throat and as you look away, flagging down a waiter to pay for the meal you shared.

"We should probably get going if we want to get to the hotel at the same time as them."

She allows herself a moment to watch as you gather everything, absentmindedly listening to you talk about leaving now so we don't hit traffic - though I guess it's fair to make them wait, considering they made you wait like 10 hours, that's a practically a whole day wasted where you guys could've been sightseeing!

Natasha knows your putting on a brave front - she can see it in your eyes as you gather your wallet and keys, but she begrudgingly gets up after you pay for the bill, walking back with you to your car.

Already dreading the moment she has to say goodbye.

-x-

"Well, I guess this is where I leave you."

Pulling up at the front of the hotel, you catch a glance of Yelena, Kate and Wanda through the window. Even though you couldn't see her, you knew Maria wouldn't be too far away. Probably checking everyone in, you assumed as you parked your car near the entrance.

You do your best to avoid looking at Natasha, taking your time in getting out and grabbing her bags from the trunk, knowing this could very well be the last time you see her again. The thought alone breaks your heart all over again - you can recall all the times you've begged the universe to let your paths cross once more. Now that your wish has been granted and you're preparing to say goodbye to her once again, you deeply feel the loss of her from your life before it's even happened.

She's already watching you as you close the trunk. You hope that she can't see the tears that have been slowly building up since you started the drive to the hotel. You refuse to let yourself hope that the look in her eyes could mean anything order than gratitude.

"Thank you, Y/N, for today." She tells you softly.

"It's was nothing, Nat," you say with a smile, before softly adding, "you're welcome and I hope you guys have a Merry Christmas."

Getting lost in the silence that falls between you; you miss the way she's looking at you as you stare down at your shoes, waiting for her to grab her things and go so you can drive back to your apartment and sulk for the rest of the week. You wonder if she can see the way your hands are shaking as you wait for the inevitable goodbye.

"Y/N?"

You hum in response, not trusting your voice to stay steady if you decided to use actual words.

"I had a really good time today."

You tilt your head in curiosity. You've had a hard time all day trying to gauge if Natasha was having enjoying herself or not. There's no doubt in your mind that she would've said something if she wasn't.

"And it got me thinking," she continues. "I don't know- maybe I'm reading into everything wrong, and you can absolutely say no. You'll probably say no, because this is crazy, but I had to say something before I lose my mind-"

"Nat." You interrupt. As endearing as it was to hear her ramble on, to see her getting more and more flustered as she kept talking, you knew she'd work herself up before she every got to what she actually wanted to say.

"Breathe, love."

You nod encouragingly after she takes a deep breath, giving her time to gather her thoughts.

"Maybe it doesn't have to be so wrong, you know?" She starts. "To try again."

You try to hide the shock that you feel, but can't stop the way your eyes widen ever so slightly at her words. Never in a million years did you expect her to even say yes to spending the day with you, let alone suggest giving your relationship another go.

Does she mean just a friendship or an actual relationship?

Is she just saying that because of today?

What if she realises she doesn't actually mean that later on?

What if this was just a joke and she was just waiting for you to say yes so she can go "aha! I was just kidding as if I'd be serious."?

What if-

"We're different people now, don't you think?"

Confused but curious to know what else you had to say, she nods. "I'd say we are."

"We're older than we were before." You add. "We know a lot more about ourselves now, I'm not the scared kid I used to be."

You're scared of making the same mistakes you did all those years ago. But you also know that you're more than willing to learn from those mistakes; to stay and communicate to make things work instead of running away at the first sign of trouble. Because if there's anything you want more in the world, it's to make this work with her.

But just as much as you are scared, you can't help but be excited. Excited and honoured to learn more about this new Natasha, and fall in love with her all over again. You can't wait to find out what stayed the same, and what changed about her. Whatever she was willing to share with you, you'd gladly take.

"I could love you properly this time."

She gasps softly, and your heart pounds at the prospect of already scaring her away.

The thought of her friends seeing this happening through the window of the hotel briefly crosses your mind - you wonder if they'd approve of you making a return to Natasha's life or if they'll make you work for it after the way things ended between you two.

But she smiles, stepping into your personal space to wrap her arms around your neck and all thoughts leave your mind. The only thing you can focus on is Natasha pulling you closer so her words are only for your ears and your ears only to hear.

"I could love you properly this time too."

[anonymoussoulx]

Chapter 2 of The Last Divine has been released!

Hi everyone!

We're kicking off the weekend with a bang! Chapter 2 of The Last Divine has been released!  Aside from the content update itself, this Chapter will come with a few other significant changes. 

Updates with chapter two will include:

Choices that raise affection with a love interest are now marked with a heart

The music in chapter one has been changed to create a more immersive experience

The Divine Dominions points system has been adjusted so that players will now discover their specific abilities in Chapter 4 (which will allow me to incorporate more choices associated with that between now and then)

A Light Version of The Last Divine will now be published with every major update, which will be available for players who prefer to read with a light/beige background and darker text (versus a dark background with white text)

Updated Personality Titles

Important!- In order for Chapter Two to run without encountering a bug that will prevent you from reading most of the chapter, players will have to restart the game from the beginning of the first chapter. Using a prior save file will result in an error. 

A huge thanks to all of my beta readers! You guys helped me sort through the chaos and really figure out what I wanted this chapter to be. I want to thank 0650snno/solrein, PLanManz, and starshinegirls, as well as the rest of my beta readers for all of their help and feedback! If you are a beta reader not listed here that would like to be listed, please check for an email from me :)  Major changes to the versions you all ready will occur when MC and her companions arrive at the town of Burthrope.

Regarding future updates, it will probably be a few months before my next significant update due to IRL stuff that will have me out of commission for a couple months. But moving forward, this is what you can expect to see:

the ability to toggle music on and off (this one is kicking my ass, I've already tried implementing it twice haha)

the ability to change text size and font 

more MC customization options (freckles, piercings, scars, amab or afab, additional hair colors)

a riverbed scene between MC and her chosen LI :)

Thank you so much to everyone who's waited patiently for this update! I've been a huge fan of all the IFs and visual novels the insanely talented creators on this site post, it's wild to finally be dipping my toes into the other side of things myself. Even more wild to think people are actually interested in what I'm writing! As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on the chapter! Feedback is so helpful in letting me know what works well and what needs some extra help haha!  

Check out the second chapter here!

Happy Gaming! 

Anonymous Soul

[intimidatingpuffinstudios]

Hey! I saw Steam update TSSW2, which I assume is to add the export option in preparation for the next book, now that you've submitted it.

Last time I played TSSW2 was like 5 months ago or something, and I left it on the last page of the game so I could technically get into the game and export my save. But I wanted to ask if you added some code changes to book 2 that would make it better for me to actually replay it once more so that my exported save is clean and proper to avoid any bugs in book 3?

I was about to post about that! The game has been updated, yes!

I've added some extra content here and there, so everyone needs to replay from the start to get everything firing correctly for book 3.

Sorry about that 😂 But I don't think they've added the save system yet at all.

That usually happens closer to release, and they let me know when it's ready.

But I will see if I can get some more info about when it's gonna happen!

Long story short, yes, you need to play from scratch but no saves yet.

(It would also be helpful if people started playing TSSW 2 from the start again to let me know if the update caused any bugs!)

[ms-demeanor]

Hello! First, I wanted to say thank you for your post about updating software and such. I really appreciated your perspective as someone with ADHD. The way you described your experiences with software frustration was IDENTICAL to my experience, so your post made a lot of sense to me.

Second, (and I hope my question isn't bothering you lol) would you mind explaining why it's important to update/adopt the new software? Like, why isn't there an option that doesn't involve constantly adopting new things? I understand why they'd need to fix stuff like functional bugs/make it compatible with new tech, but is it really necessary to change the user side of things as well?

Sorry if those are stupid questions or they're A Lot for a tumblr rando to ask, I'd just really like to understand because I think it would make it easier to get myself to adopt new stuff if I understand why it's necessary, and the other folks I know that know about computers don't really seem to understand the experience.

Thank you so much again for sharing your wisdom!!

A huge part of it is changing technologies and changing norms; I brought up Windows 8 in that other post and Win8 is a *great* example of user experience changing to match hardware, just in a situation that was an enormous mismatch with the market.

Win8's much-beloathed tiles came about because Microsoft seemed to be anticipating a massive pivot to tablet PCs in nearly all applications. The welcome screen was designed to be friendly to people who were using handheld touchscreens who could tap through various options, and it was meant to require more scrolling and less use of a keyboard.

But most people who the operating system went out to *didn't* have touchscreen tablets or laptops, they had a desktop computer with a mouse and a keyboard.

When that was released, it was Microsoft attempting to keep up with (or anticipate) market trends - they wanted something that was like "the iPad for Microsoft" so Windows 8 was meant to go with Microsoft Surface tablets.

We spent the first month of Win8's launch making it look like Windows 7 for our customers.

You can see the same thing with the centered taskbar on Windows 11; that's very clearly supposed to mimic the dock on apple computers (only you can't pin it anywhere but the bottom of the screen, which sucks).

Some of the visual changes are just trends and various companies trying to keep up with one another.

With software like Adobe I think it's probably based on customer data. The tool layout and the menu dropdowns are likely based on what people are actually looking for, and change based on what other tools people are using. That's likely true for most programs you use - the menu bar at the top of the screen in Word is populated with the options that people use the most; if a function you used to click on all the time is now buried, there's a possibility that people use it less these days for any number of reasons. (I'm currently being driven mildly insane by Teams moving the "attach file" button under a "more" menu instead of as an icon next to the "send message" button, and what this tells me is either that more users are putting emojis in their messages than attachments, or microsoft WANTS people to put more emojis than messages in their attachments).

But focusing on the operating system, since that's the big one:

The thing about OSs is that you interact with them so frequently that any little change seems massive and you get REALLY frustrated when you have to deal with that, but version-to-version most OSs don't change all that much visually and they also don't get released all that frequently. I've been working with windows machines for twelve years and in that time the only OSs that Microsoft has released were 8, 10, and 11. That's only about one OS every four years, which just is not that many. There was a big visual change in the interface between 7 and 8 (and 8 and 8.1, which is more of a 'panicked backing away' than a full release), but otherwise, realistically, Windows 11 still looks a lot like XP.

The second one is a screenshot of my actual computer. The only change I've made to the display is to pin the taskbar to the left side instead of keeping it centered and to fuck around a bit with the colors in the display customization. I haven't added any plugins or tools to get it to look different.

This is actually a pretty good demonstration of things changing based on user behavior too - XP didn't come with a search field in the task bar or the start menu, but later versions of Windows OSs did, because users had gotten used to searching things more in their phones and browsers, so then they learned to search things on their computers.

There are definitely nefarious reasons that software manufacturers change their interfaces. Microsoft has included ads in home versions of their OS and pushed searches through the Microsoft store since Windows 10, as one example. That's shitty and I think it's worthwhile to find the time to shut that down (and to kill various assistants and background tools and stop a lot of stuff that runs at startup).

But if you didn't have any changes, you wouldn't have any changes. I think it's handy to have a search field in the taskbar. I find "settings" (which is newer than control panel) easier to navigate than "control panel." Some of the stuff that got added over time is *good* from a user perspective - you can see that there's a little stopwatch pinned at the bottom of my screen; that's a tool I use daily that wasn't included in previous versions of the OS. I'm glad it got added, even if I'm kind of bummed that my Windows OS doesn't come with Spider Solitaire anymore.

One thing that's helpful to think about when considering software is that nobody *wants* to make clunky, unusable software. People want their software to run well, with few problems, and they want users to like it so that they don't call corporate and kick up a fuss.

When you see these kinds of changes to the user experience, it often reflects something that *you* may not want, but that is desirable to a *LOT* of other people. The primary example I can think of here is trackpad scrolling direction; at some point it became common for trackpads to scroll in the opposite direction that they used to; now the default direction is the one that feels wrong to me, because I grew up scrolling with a mouse, not a screen. People who grew up scrolling on a screen seem to feel that the new direction is a lot more intuitive, so it's the default. Thankfully, that's a setting that's easy to change, so it's a change that I make every time I come across it, but the change was made for a sensible reason, even if that reason was opaque to me at the time I stumbled across it and continues to irritate me to this day.

I don't know. I don't want to defend Windows all that much here because I fucking hate Microsoft and definitely prefer using Linux when I'm not at work or using programs that I don't have on Linux. But the thing is that you'll see changes with Linux releases as well.

I wouldn't mind finding a tool that made my desktop look 100% like Windows 95, that would be fun. But we'd probably all be really frustrated if there hadn't been any interface improvements changes since MS-DOS (and people have DEFINITELY been complaining about UX changes at least since then).

Like, I talk about this in terms of backward compatibility sometimes. A lot of people are frustrated that their old computers can't run new software well, and that new computers use so many resources. But the flipside of that is that pretty much nobody wants mobile internet to work the way that it did in 2004 or computers to act the way they did in 1984.

Like. People don't think about it much these days but the "windows" of the Windows Operating system represented a massive change to how people interacted with their computers that plenty of people hated and found unintuitive.

(also take some time to think about the little changes that have happened that you've appreciated or maybe didn't even notice. I used to hate the squiggly line under misspelled words but now I see the utility. Predictive text seems like new technology to me but it's really handy for a lot of people. Right clicking is a UX innovation. Sometimes you have to take the centered task bar in exchange for the built-in timer deck; sometimes you have to lose color-coded files in exchange for a right click.)

[snowdrop520]

Ikemen Sengoku Official Web Post: Message from the Developers

[ 22.06.2025 ]

Link to post.

As of the 22nd of June 2025, Ikemen Sengoku: Romances Across Time celebrates a major milestone, its 10th anniversary. We extend our deepest gratitude to all who have supported us over the years.

Ikemen Sengoku began as a small seed with a goal to become an “IP that would last a decade”. That seed sprouted when being watered with your love, and has since grown to become more than just an app; it branched out to stage plays, anime, merchandise, and much more. We truly believe it was thanks to your unwavering affection for the warlords, that this tree has grown so large and full.

Now, as we reach this point of our ten year journey and embark on a new decade together, we are proud to announce the launch of our new app: “Ikemen Sengoku: Romances Across Time – Eternity”

Why The New App?

The existing app has built a long and meaningful legacy with our playerbase, and every member of our development team is deeply attached to it. In preparation for this 10 year anniversary, we have held countless discussions about the future of Ikemen Sengoku beyond this point.

The team wishes to keep Ikemen Sengoku running and bring you joy for many more years to come. However, as the years went by during the long-term operation of the existing app, various issues have accumulated — issues that must be addressed.

Despite having received many requests regarding the system over the years, this app was built on a foundation from ten years ago. This makes any significant improvement works and updates extremely challenging, and this is something we have always felt sorry about.

In April 2022, the app experienced a major service disruption due to unauthorised third-party access, which resulted in the corruption of our data. The process of fully recovering the lost user data took over a month, and we sincerely apologise for the immense inconvenience and concern this incident caused. Since then, we have been working hard on reinforcing our security measures, migrated servers, and upgraded the system to prevent reoccurrence.

With the next ten years in mind, we carefully considered the best way to proceed and ultimately decided that launching an entirely new app would be the most effective and lasting solution. This new app will be our platform to continue delivering heart-fluttering experiences for many more years going forward.

About the New App

The new app, Ikemen Sengoku: Romances Across Time – Eternity”, will continue the theme of “a dramatic love worth putting your life on the line for”, which is the core of Ikemen Sengoku. It will introduce new experiences such as a commu (bond) points feature to bring you closer to the warlords, a cards system where you can enjoy voiced lines and beautiful illustrations, and a brand new story arc: Act 3.

From here on, all new content – including main story routes, sequels, and events – will be added to the new app.

Previously released main story routes and sequels will also eventually be ported over. However, only a selection of warlords’ stories will be available at launch, but will be included over time(※).

The new app will also feature major improvements such as enhanced visual storytelling with blinking character sprites and more immersive scenes. We hope you will enjoy visiting the old stories in their richer, more expressive versions.

System improvements that were difficult to implement in the existing app, such as free avatar item placement and free premium currency (the word used here was “diamonds”), will also be included, making for an even more enjoyable experience.

(※) Due to system differences, some distribution formats and bonuses may differ; further details will be provided at launch.

About Act 3

As previously mentioned, Act 3 will be delivered through the new app. This new arc will be kicked off with the release of Nobunaga Oda’s second sequel.

In Act 3, a new enemy force – the Ashikaga Forces – appears, travelling back in time to the warlords’ pasts in an attempt to twist history and seize complete control of the era. As the protagonist, you will witness your beloved's past firsthand and grapple with your emotions. It is a story about time travelling, that asks where your true happiness lies – past, present, or future? Act 3 will bring even more dramatic and emotionally resonant romances, as you're forced to question your values and confront new threats. In the main stories, sequels, and second sequels that unfold in Act 3, one of the branched out routes will feature illustrations and scenes of the warlords as children, offering a glimpse into their innocent younger selves. In the second sequels, you will also be able to experience a wedding ceremony with the warlords and illustrations, so we hope you will look forward to these heartwarming additions.

Additionally, for warlords who were planned to receive their sequels in Act 2, those will also be delivered through the new app. Please stay tuned for more information.

About the New Warlords

Starting from Act 3, the new faction – the Ashikaga Forces – will introduce five new warlords: Yoshiteru Ashikaga, Hisahide Matsunaga, Kanbei Kuroda, Saizo Kirigakure, and Sen no Rikyu.

These new characters with unique characteristics compare favourably with the warlords you have come to know and love, and will add greater depth to the Ikemen Sengoku world.

With a total of 22 warlords, there will be plenty of new encounters and interacting with these new warlords will also allow you to see new sides of the existing warlords. We will continue to dive deeper into each warlord’s personality, portraying them even more vividly.

Data Linking

To ensure a smooth transition for long-time players of Ikemen Sengoku, we will be holding a data linking campaign between the existing app and the new one.

Do note that due to system limitations, transferring all saved data and items will not be possible. However, we will do everything we can to provide fair rewards and facilitate a smooth transition.

What you can transfer:

Based on your “Charm” and “Princess Points” in the existing app, you will receive special items in the new app e.g. story chapter tickets, gacha tickets, closet space, and items to boost your “Princess Points” – please refer to the in-app data linking page to check which rewards you qualify for.

A new feature called “Sengoku All-Time Ranking” will be introduced in the new app, which combines your “Charm” and “Princess Points” from both apps for an overall ranking.

Some rewards earned in the existing app will also be gifted again in the new app. Details on the eligible events and bonuses will be shared in future updates.

※ This campaign is limited to players who have cleared the tutorial in Ikemen Sengoku before the release date of the new app.

Instructions on how to link accounts and the reward details can be found on the data-linking page. If you generate a data link ID by 8th of July 0000hrs JST, you will receive 20 story chapter tickets to use in the existing Ikemen Sengoku app as a special gift.

The Future of The Existing App

The existing Ikemen Sengoku app will cease to receive new event updates in September 2025, and will continue to host rerun events until the end of December 2025. From that point on, all new “long stories” i.e. main story, sequels, second sequels, and events will only be available on the new app.

...

Further details on Ikemen Sengoku: Romances Across Time – Eternity will continue to be published on the official website and social media platforms. We are working hard to bring you something truly special, and sincerely hope you will look forward to it.

The subtitle Eternity reflects our heartfelt wish for the bonds we share with you will continue for many more years to come, and that the love between you and the warlords last for eternity.

If Ikemen Sengoku, now a fully grown tree, has at any point in your life offered you sweet fruits or the comfort of shade, we couldn't be more grateful to have played a role in that.

Finally, allow us to thank you once again from the bottom of our hearts.

Thank you for continuing to love the warlords.

Because of you, they have grown stronger and now walk on a path leading to brighter days.

We humbly ask for your continued support of Ikemen Sengoku and its warlords.

[sanguinesky-if]

[Dev Log] December 2024

Hello, I apologize for the delay in releasing the dev log.

I'm currently away from home because a couple I'm friends with urgently asked me to pet-sit their animals while they took an unplanned business trip, so I didn't have time to prepare a post in advance.

This dev log includes:

A reminder of the release date for the public update.

An answer to the question of when to expect the next update.

Information about content that will be released this month [in honor of the New Year and the anniversary of the demo release].

A small addition to the "Secondary Rivals" section in the Romance System Overview.

Let's start from the beginning.

[Reminder] Public update release date

The public release of Chapter 3 Pt. 1 is scheduled for December 7.

Thank you for your patience and support!

A small note for my patrons: I really appreciate your help and support, but please note that saves from the Patreon demo will not work on the public release [since the files will be merged, as mentioned in the Patreon demo release post]. However, I will keep a working Patreon demo link for you where your saves will still work until the next update is released. I hope this will be helpful!

When will work begin on the next update [Chapter 3 Pt. 2]?

The work on the outline for the current draft I have for Chapter 3 Pt. 2 will begin after the New Year [a month after the public release, which is scheduled for December 7].

What was accomplished last month?

L's Side Story release.

There were some grammatical errors and a few coding inconsistencies because I used one of the variables incorrectly in the penetration moment ["the MC takes the initiative" scene]. Both issues have been fixed, and I apologize for the inconvenience. To my patrons, thank you so much for your support, patience and for helping with the errors. I'm glad if you enjoyed the story!

Bug fixes in the extended version of the demo.

There weren't many, but I still found a fixed some [mostly grammatical, as usual].

About my plans for the current month.

December 17 will mark the anniversary of the demo's release, and with the New Year approaching, I want to create something special to celebrate both occasions.

Throughout December, I'll be working on a collection of winter/New Year's themed short interactive stories, one for each of the ROs [featuring choices for the MC's name, gender, and one bold/shy flirt option].

Planned release: [Patreon]: end of December / first week of January. [Public]: a week after the release on Patreon.

I've also decided to release one of the stories in December before the full collection comes out.

It means the most-voted story and the most-voted alphabet will be released this month as bonus content on Patreon [I'm still waiting for the poll results since I released the post a little later than planned].

Secondary Rivals [a minor addition].

A small addition has been made to the Romance System Overview in the "Secondary Rivals" section:

Options marked [♡] establish relationship with the secondary rivals and unlock special scenes and narrative changes later on the story.

Thank you for reading to the end and for your support! Have a wonderful week and days after that! ♥

[daggerfall]

Studio Director letter is out! Some interesting things for 2025...

Moving away from the chapter released in June model. Likely to help take some of the stress off the devs to follow such a strict content release cycle (remember they unionized and already moved away from the year-long story arc after High Isle).

Moving into a new system called Seasons, 3-6 month periods of themed stories including quests, dungeons, events, and crown store items, starting in April 2025. (As long as they still release at least one trial a year I don't foresee this causing too many issues...)

Potential separation between PvP and PvE (bless), potential vet overland option(?), and I'd love to see how something like Craglorn style zone difficulty scaled up to 2025.

Further updates to the start prologue, updating base game textures and art assets (would love for the maormer in Khenarthi's roost to look like Summerset and High Isle maormer), and hopefully hiding prologue quests from new players to avoid pied piper'ing them to content out of order

Possibly returning to old zones for new content, stories focusing on the OG guilds (!!!), and maybe still releasing big zones but in smaller chunks

Next big announcement will be in April 2025 (also when the new Season will release) but we will still get a content release in March apparently (unsure what they're releasing... Hopefully it's still dungeons).

Have a wonderful new year and 2025!

[typewritingyip]

Arcturus Two

Masterlist

—

Logs: Pilot 2672

Name: Clifford Rothschild

Callsign: Cliffjumper

Cliffjumper was originally from New York state, a graduate of Cornell, and spent most of his life among the vastly intelligent and wealthy. When the pilot program was first announced he and several friends of his applied as a joke, not anticipating selection or later compatibility. Out of the twelve of them who applied, three were found compatible and one died within a year of being a pilot. He went to work for Mecha as a favor to an old friend, knowing several of the scientists and engineers on staff. Fairly young in the program, but always wanting to know and learn more he volunteered for the Arcturus Program. Pilot 2672; single, no children, mother and father reside in upstate New York, fourth son of eight children, applicable for Arcturus mission.

One Year Till Arcturus Two Launch

Pilot 2672 was sent to intermediate training for his solo mission to collect data and information on the enemy past our atmosphere, he will spend the next year preparing for the mission and the last six months working with NASA as well as other space agencies to prepare for the trip. He enters isolation three months from today to prepare him for his extended isolation. As of the moment, he states he’s enthusiastic about the venture and quotes, “looks forward to seeing space.” Logs will be filled at specific intervals to keep files updated on pilot and mech suits condition, limited classified information will be added and later redacted at time of release. Each log will end with a status of information and condition.

Two Weeks Post Arcturus One Launch

Pilot 2672’s timeline has been expedited in the recent loss of contact with Arcturus One, them being unable to launch the relay satellite before going offline. Their control is <REDACTED>. He is to enter isolation immediately, to enter training with NASA along with the various other agencies immediately, all contact with the pilot will be remote from this moment on in preparation for his departure. His mech has been moved into R&D and taken off the duty roster. Pilot 12437, name Stacey Rivers, callsign Slipstream is re-assigned to 2672’s coastal region, moved off suspension. Launch date remains the same temporarily. Loss of Arcturus One remains in Mecha’s systems, do not release to the public. Information expected, condition atypical.

Nine Months Till Launch

Pilot 2672 is displaying mild signs of distress, attempting more conversation than permitted with <REACTED> who is unauthorized staff. Mech upgrade is 27% complete, exterior plating upgraded for sub-zero temperatures with the average temperature for space calibrated and oxygen tanks installed. Multiple staff are being authorized for a mental health check of pilot, clearances required. Pilot of Arcturus Two continues to ask about pilots of Arcturus One, maintaining public response and clarifying classification status. If his condition continues to worsen, Pilot 3535 is on standby for reassignment. Information expected, condition typical.

Six Months Till Launch

Pilot 2672 is no longer displaying concerning behavior, maintaining communication with authorized specialists and unauthorized communications have ceased. Pilot 3525 deceased, removed from standby, updated Pilot 4807. Suit testing begins in one week's time, 48% complete. Preparation testing was successful and pilot is preparing for next stage, once his mech is fully upgraded he will have access to the cockpit for further needed testing. Flight simulations start in twenty four hours. Movement to location <REDACTED> necessary. Pilot still has frequent questions of Arcturus One, further limiting his status and classification. Information expected, condition typical.

Three Months Till Launch

Cliffjumper, requesting to be labeled as such in further documentation, is displaying concerning behavior and negative attitude towards authorized specialists. Time in isolation has been terminated based on medical professional guidence, still deemed safe enough to participate in the mission. Pilot 4807 removed from standby, sent back to typical assignment. Questioning of Arcturus One status remains frequent and answers remain to public information through NASA, the entire Arcturus One mission is now classified aside from limited NASA false releases. Maintains limited contact with not sanctioned personnel. Mech upgrades 76% complete, cockpit viable for further testing. Pilot undergoing updates to installed tech, projected integration time; five days, sixteen hours, and thirty-seven minutes. Information expected, condition typical.

One Month Till Launch

Cliffjumper seemingly has returned to typical status, no longer acting out nor asking about Arcturus One mission. Integration procedures were successful, limited information in file on request of Dr. Shockwave citing potential copyright claims upon declassification of documents, procedure <REDACTED> was successful. Medical records sealed until pilots’ return to Earth. Pilot no longer seems hostile after an attempted assault on staff and unsanctioned personnel. Updates made to both drift compatibility technology and integrated software. Mech upgrade 97.6% complete, projected to be completed before launch date. Repaint complete with heat resistant paneling installed. Information expected, condition typical.

Launch Day

Pilot refused to speak with anyone on the day of launch, including close friends and family who he had not had recent contact with, and has limited his contact with sanctioned personnel. Did not pass drug screening for blood alcohol content night before flight, passed in morning. Negative for any narcotics. Cleared for flight day of launch by medical personnel. Mech upgrade 100% complete before launch.

Any concerns held by personnel at Mecha were not voiced nor were any formal reports written on Cliffjumper’s current status. <REDACTED> maintains, pilot prepared for launch with no further updates. Information expected, condition typical.

Two Weeks Post Launch

Nominal readings, data remains consistent, anticipation of loss of contact remained till several hours after typical loss. Pilot regained optimism after that point, remaining in contact for an extended period and requested communication with sanctioned personnel. Mech suit remaining stable and data flow continues to what is supposed to be a typical level. Communications remain stable and pilot seems enthusiastic, speaking of <REDACTED> over the comms. Information unexpected, condition atypical. Status: Active

Three Months Post Launch

Pilot vitals, typical. Mech suit data, typical. Communications, stable. Information expected, condition typical. Status: Active

Six Months Post Launch

Communication with Pilot 2672, Cliffjumper, has been lost. Last known location, <REDACTED>. Information released by NASA to the public before Mecha could alter information. Public remain unaware of loss of Arcturus One, family received stipend to remain silent on loss of pilot. Public funeral will be broadcast at six pm local time. Cliffjumper logged as MIA, last known coordinated logged and data being received remains under review. Status: Unknown.

Logged data of Arcturus Two archived and closed, remarked to classified status and further redactions needed. Government assistance requested and awaiting approval. Signed off on by coordinator, Pilot 2162 of South East Coastal Region. Confirmed by department lead, <REDACTED>.

—

New File: Arcturus Three

Logs: Pilots 3141, 6986, and 17741; Medical Advisor Requested

Name(s): <REDACTED>

Callsign(s): <REDACTED>

Two and a half years away from the launch of Arcturus Three, pilots maintain current statuses and are unaware of results of Arcturus One.

———

A/N:

I don’t think I can actually begin to describe how much of a pain writing this was. I don’t know why, I loved the idea when I first thought about it but man, I will not write another one like this for a while.

Part Eleven will be out in the next few days hopefully, I haven’t had much time to work on it.

I’m so thankful for all the support I’ve been getting on the Arcturus missions, it means so much to me.

Tags!

@lunarlei68 @whirlywhirlygig @loop-hole-319 @pixillandjester @alek-the-witch @not-a-moose-in-disguise @goddessofwind8water @neurologicalglitch @dersereblogger @pixel-transformers @mrcrayonofdoom @wireplaces @twilightfreefaller @original-blog-name-2 @devilangel657 @robbin-u @childofprimus @miniartistme @starwold @tea-enthusiasm @valeexpris606 @celticdoggo @bird599

And once again thank you to @keferon for this amazing AU

[gasgasdaily]

People might only remember the F40 being the best supercar of the 80s but many forgot that the Germans had an ace up their sleeves and was built from the ashes of rallying.

Top to bottom in anti-clockwise: Porsche 959 - Porsche 959 Paris-Dakar form climbing a dusty ledge - Porsche 953.

Porsche has always been built to race but most of their race series was road racing, rallying has always been a back burner. Even in the post-war 40s-60s, the rallies that the factory Porsche team got involved with were long distance rallies like the Targa Florio or the Panamericana but for dirt rallies, its mostly ran by privateers and it actually did well enough.

Thus, when the Group B format was released by the FIA and having witnessed how Audi showed potential with their AWD on the dirt rallies of WRC in 1982, Porsche expected to build a car to race in Group B. However, with Audi and the others already competing in the WRC, the Porsche works team didn't want to fight for the limelight thus they entered a more quiet series back then but even more demanding, and that's the Paris-Dakar, which unlike the actual WRC, doesn't require the restrictions for the already laxed WRC Group B regulation. They wanted to prep the car for 1984 but that didn't materialize in the end.

By the mid of 1983, Porsche realized that they could not complete the car on time for the 1984 season as they could not find a way to test the whole car with the drivetrain. However, some engineers remembered that they were still making the 911SC chassis and they could work with it so they got 5 of them and stuffed the AWD system in there whilst turbocharging the 3.2L flat-6 engine the base 911 came with and took the cars to compete in the 1984 Paris-Dakar Rally with 3 competing and two others as spare and it was codenamed as the "953". Results were rather satisfactionary and with 300hp from the turbocharged flat-6 plus Porsche's reliability, Porsche managed to clock the overall win with the 953 the very season it competed with the other 2 that it entered with one at 6th and the third at 25th thus Porsche liked the results alot.

The 959 was debuted to the public in 1985 at the Frankfurt Autoshow but again it faced problems as Porsche still can't produce it till the very next year but, the reception of the car was rather good so Porsche continued tweaking the car whilst giving the spare chassis and engine that were done to be prepped by Rothmans to compete in the 1986 season. With the new engine that has a smaller displacement at 2.8L vs the 3.2L from the 953, coupled with a twin-turbo system, it makes approx 444hp but it was potent enough for the job and with the car being entered in the '86 season, it once again won and this time, every single car, all 3 of the 959s entered got into the top 10s and with one even clinching the win. However, like many other carmakers, Porsche's dreams were shattered as Group B was disvowed the very same year the car was set to compete in that class.

That did not really stop Porsche's ambition as they finished building the road-going version of the 959 and it also performed well. With the same hp figures of the Paris-Dakar Rally version, the "Komfort" version performed well that it was the fastest vehicle of all time being able to do 198mph/318kmh before the Ferrari F40 took that title a few months later when it launched. Porsche wasn't done still. Whilst making the 959 for customer orders and hearing that the F40 had taken their crown for the "fastest car on earth" title, Porsche wanted to take it back thus they started to push for an update on the existing 959 and they pushed out an "S" model by 1988. What Porsche did was to swap the turbos to a set of bigger turbos and stripped off all the unneeded items in the car like aircon, electric windows and the suspension levelling tech just to save weight and, it did work. It was eventually tested and it reached 211mph/339kmh, taking the crown back from Ferrari.

In total, 343 959 were built from 1986-1993 with 8 being built for their Paris-Dakar team, 29 "S" variant (Fun fact: Bill Gates owned an S that had the aircon reinstalled in there) and the rest being the normal "Komfort" variant.

[mythauragame]

Development Update - February 2025

Hello everyone! Miyazaki here with February's development update for Mythaura. We covered a lot of ground this month—it is probably the single biggest month for us in terms of development. We're excited to tell you about some of the things that we've finished up and look forward to sharing even more features with you in the future.

Note: Last month we'd said that we'd be posting about Wolfwasps...that's postponed until next month. We will be posting Wolfwasp lore as well as hosting a ✨radiant✨ giveaway.

Co-op Demo

Players will be able to explore the world of Mythaura—both overworld locations like Talon's Rest as well as the procedurally generated Wild Areas—in groups of up to three players. If there are only two players, you can add an additional Beast to the party lineup.

Players can no longer be added to a Party if they cannot access the Party Leader’s location (e.g., if the area is not yet unlocked in their game).

When a player joins a Party, they will automatically move to the Party Leader’s location. Any location change must be agreed upon by all Party members.

By default, only friends can invite you to a group. However, we are exploring options for players who may want to allow invites more freely or block them entirely.

If a player disconnects, they can freely reconnect and will be placed back in the same location.

Forums

The Forums are the heartbeat of Mythaura's social scene. Whether you're looking to share your most recent PVP builds, recruit people to join your adventuring party in the Waspwood, or talk about how excited you are for Patch 8 of BG3 to come out (not that anyone's excitedly waiting for that, of course), the Forums will have a place to house your discussion.

Mythaura's Forums feature a Reddit-style posting system, with the ability to create nested replies.

Forums will feature:

Trending threads: What are the most popular recent threads? This feature will showcase threads that are receiving the most engagement at the time.

Tags: Players will have the ability to tag their content, helping other players find and sort through relevant content.

Thread following: Keep updated on threads that caught your interest. We know you're waiting for your favorite artist to release the baby Basilisk Glamour they've been teasing for a while.

Markdown styling to customize your posts exactly how you'd like them

Bug Bounties

During our Closed Beta window, the Bug Reports category will be special in that it will function as an issue tracker. Each thread can be marked as a duplicate of another and have a status & severity tied to it, allowing users to follow a bug, reply to indicate they have also encountered a bug, and see what status a specific bug has.

Bug Statuses

New: The default status

Confirmed: A programmer has been able to replicate the bug and confirm its real

Duplicate: This is a duplicate of an already-existing bug

Fixed: It’s been fixed!

Closed: Closed without fixing, such as if this turned out to be user error.

Severities

Low: Typos, minor visual glitches, asset issues, and browser-specific issues that do not impact gameplay.

Moderate: Functional bugs that cause inconvenience but do not break core mechanics.

High: Major bugs that significantly impact gameplay, progression, or player experience.

Critical: Urgent security vulnerabilities, game-breaking exploits, data loss, or anything that could severely affect the integrity of the game or its economy.

To encourage thorough testing and reporting, players who discover and report new bugs will receive a Shard reward once a programmer has confirmed the issue. Rewards scale based on the severity of the bug. Only the first player to report a bug is eligible for a bounty—duplicate reports will not receive rewards. Players who provide exceptionally detailed reports, including steps to replicate the bug, may receive bonus Shards at the discretion of the development team. If a bug is found to be abused before being reported, the player may not be eligible for a bounty and could face consequences.

User Profiles

Beasts are at the very core of Mythaura gameplay, so we want to ensure that you have several ways that you can show off your cast of characters with the rest of the site.

Featured Beast Groups

The Featured tab allows players to showcase collections of their favorite Beasts in a slider. Players can group beasts into customizable folders with a name and background. Up to 5 groups can be featured on your profile. Show of your favorite beast collections!

Abode

The Abode contains all of a user's Beasts. The two-toned background on each of the Beasts is based on their combination of Elements.

Gallery

Galleries are collections of items users would like to showcase.

Galleries are a separate inventory, so an item in a Gallery cannot be added to the satchel or sold until removed from the Gallery.

Stats

The Stats page will showcase a player's statistics across the Gameplay, PVP, and Forums categories.

Dossiers

A literal blank canvas! Enter your custom HTML and CSS to make pages that are uniquely yours.

Winter 2024 Rewards Reveal

Winter 2024 Glamour: Shire Unicorn

Winter 2024 Companion: Ornaboros

Winter 2024 Solid Gold Glamour: Quetzal (Young)

Year of the Snake Companion

Happy Year of the Wood Snake, everyone! It seems that with the arrival of the New Year, a colorful companion has slithered its way into Mythaura.

For the remainder of the Ko-fi shop being open (through the end of 2025), the Auspicious Ophidia will be available for purchase in both its non-radiant and radiant forms. Sponsors of ALL levels may purchase these companions.

Kirin Expressions

This month, the expressions team—the ever-talented Luci, Sour, and Koa—finished all expressions for the adult and young Kirin. (I'd like to give a personal shoutout to Luci for making the "sad baby"/fourth expression so pitiful...what did they do to deserve feeling like that 😭)

Osstelids

Sponsored by: Lomon

Our final sponsored Companion comes from Lomon, who came to us with a wonderful design for a fairy + ferret creature. Thank you for sharing your vision with us and letting us implement it into the game!

Reminder: NPC Design Contest

As we begin to populate Talon's Rest, we'll need plenty of NPC designs—and that's where you come in!

We've created a Google Form for you to submit up to three Beast designs for consideration. Please be sure to include the Beast Creator code or else your entry will not be considered.

In addition to their design being used for a shopkeeper, winners will receive a bundle of useful items for their adventures through the local Wild Area, the Waspwood Forest.

The winners will receive*:

1x Soulshift Coin (breed-changing item) of your choice

1x Godspeed Potion

3x Lockpicks

3x Crude Torch

3x Travel Rations

3x Small Energy Potion

3x Small Health Potion

1x Beta Key

NOTE: * These rewards will not show up in your rewards lookup tool since that tool only looks up Ko-fi rewards, but they will be applied to your account directly!

Writing Updates

Main story three-act outline completed

Main story greenlit

Intro quest currently being storyboarded; script to follow

Mythaura v0.35

Co-op Gameplay: Players can now form and manage co-op groups. Integrated co-op battles and overworld interactions and adjusted co-op parties to allow global co-op in any location.

Forums Buildout: Built out functionality for forums such as categories, likes, replies, thread collapsing, tags, locking & pinning recent/popular threads, following and forum search.

Social Features: Introduced a friends list, online/offline status, and user search.

User Profiles: Profiles now include additional customization and feature a nice design.

User Settings UI: Initial build-out of the account settings screen.

Beast Grid Redesign: Overhauled the Abode Beast grid design.

Beast Groups: Beasts can be added into groups freely created by users and then features on their profile.

Battle UI Improvments: Cleanup of battle UI and implementation of informative ability tooltips.

Battle Running Mechanic: When running from a battle, the enemies now have a free round of attacks. Only one beast needs to initiate the run sequence.

Battle State Retrieval: When you close your window while in a battle, you will just load right back into your battle when you return. Multiplayer & PvP battles that are completed while away are excluded.

Class & Species-Specific Overworld Abilities: Introduced unique abilities based on class and whether the species flies.

Stealth Mechanics: Sneaking now limits elite enemy aggro range and encounter rates.

Elite Enemy Detection: Added elite enemy detection, idle behavior adjustments, and footstep sounds for improved immersion.

Boss Encounters: Introduced bosses in towns and wild areas.

Fishing Minigame: Added 28 unique fish, catchable in an interactive minigame.

User & Beast Dossiers: Introduced an initial version of the dossier system.

Settable Pronouns: Beasts can now have pronouns set that NPCs will use in dialog. By default, this is linked to your beast's gender, but can be changed. Users can also set pronouns, which will display in their profile and forum header in the future.

In-Game Currency Display: Shards and gold are now visible in the UI when shopping or viewing inventory.

Added Time-Based Passive Effects: Which will allow us to add time-based effects, such as using a torch and having Illumination for 5m.

Cipher Buildout: Began build of Cipher features.

Thank You!

Thanks for sticking through to the end of the post, we always look forward to sharing our month's work with all of you--thank you for taking the time to read. We'll see you around the Discord.

[snoozykazoo]

we're on tumblr again yay✨

Hey everyone! And welcome to Snoozy Kazoo's first ✨TUMBLR DEVPOST!!✨ We'll be releasing these every month from now on as a way to keep everyone updated on Snoozy Kazoo news!

If you're new here, hi! We’re Snoozy Kazoo, a game dev studio of six guys who make dumb, silly, and fun games. You might know us from the games Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion and Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, available HERE and HERE!

Let's get caught up! In this issue we're covering a new mobile release, anniversaries, and... our NEW GAME? 😳😳😳

What's Snoozy been up to?

Ok I know what I said earlier, but let’s be honest: if you’ve stumbled deep into the mines enough to find your way here, you’re surely familiar with our beloved Turnip Boy. We just passed by his anniversary of robbing a bank on January 18th! Aww! They grow up so fast… But it’s a good thing he’s not robbing banks anymore, that’s a crime, you kn-

Aw crud he's doing it on your phone now

Snaps my fingers disappointingly. Aw man. Yerrrrp. Turnip Boy Robs a Bank is now on iOS and Android devices near you. His mindless yet fervent desire to wreck crime upon the world seems insatiable. It’s really unfortunate, except for the fact that it’s honestly really fun watching him go at it.

The game is available TODAY on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store! Re-experience the game or force your friends to — its fun either way!

Ahhh the beloved Turnip Boy. Surely your next game will be about him right?

Heehee nope!

Excitingly, in November, we announced our next game: Hobnobbers! A co-op mall-looter where you rob malls for your goddess!

If you haven’t already wishlisted the game yet, well… go wishlist it! Go make your friends wishlist it! Wishlist wishlist wishlist! It really helps us beat the Algorithm Overlords, so literally every single wishlist counts!

I already know about your little crow-gnome mall-looting game you do not shut up about it. What else is new?

We also released a new devlog over on our YouTube! We’ll be releasing one of these every few months, so make sure to subscribe!

In it, we’ve covered the game’s conception till its early development, which means a lot of concept art. Honestly, let’s toss a little bit more of it over here; it’s always exciting to see behind the curtain!

Now get ready for... 🥁🥁🥁

Woah! What’s this little place? Perhaps the chance to get to meet different members of the team and bombard them with questions to foster a parasocial relationship with them? No way!

Introducing… Alexis! Our Unreal Developer!

What are you most excited for in Hobnobbers?

I’m very excited for a lot of different technical aspects and seeing people’s reaction to the game! I want to see all of the systems come together to create a perfect storm of chaos. The randomly generated map ontop the hexes system, with events like Money Storms, Floods, and Fairy Circles of Doom, is going to make each run completely unique and you’ll never know what kind of madness you’re getting into! On launch day I intend to be hopping into games with people (and fixing any bugs that crop up).

What’s something you’ve worked on in Hobnobbers recently that you’ve found particularly frustrating?

The level generation for the mall has been a particular nightmare, but in a very fun way. The mall is generated from bottom-to-top and each floor tells the floor above it about the different combinations of rooms that it can generate. This allows us to have those iconic vertical levels that overlap eachother with walkways above the floors below! This has required a lot of tuning in both making the parts that generate, and how to place them to get results that are always interesting (without bugs). Not only do we have to generate each floor, we also have to generate each store! Accounting for the size and placement of these is a constant challenge when making segments but I made a blender template that speeds it up quite a lot.

What pitch did you end up bringing to the pitch competition?

My pitch was a game about a vampire who was ousted from their castle by another vampire, and is trying to take it back. You would have to sneak back in through various pathways that challenge you in different ways, some would require parkour skills, others would require puzzle solving. And while you’re doing all of this, the AI learns and adapts to your behavior setting traps or blocking off paths in a constant game of cat and mouse. I am still extremely passionate about this idea, and fully intend to pursue it one day!

Awesome! Thank you for your time! 😊

Okie dokie that’s a wrap for now

In future devposts, we’ll be including questions sent in by the community! Feel free to send them in over here on Tumblr, or join our Discord and ask questions in the “ask-the-devs-❓” channel!

See you soon!

— Kiki

[hugmekenobi]

S3: The Bad Batch (14)

Chapter Fourteen: Flash Strike

Gif by @chaioticcoffee

Hunter x femaleJedi!reader

Series Summary: Ever since Eriadu, Clone Force 99 had been a fractured squad. Months have passed but you're finally back with the Batch but Omega is still out there and you won't stop until you find her again.

Chapter Summary: The Batch try to get behind enemy lines as they arrive on Tantiss. Echo makes an unexpected ally and Omega has a plan of her own.

Masterlist for S1 and S2

<Previous Chapter

Genre: Friends (idiots) to Lovers (we're in the lovers stage now)

Chapter Warnings: Limited (Y/N), canon-typical violence, injury descriptions (blood cuts, blacking out and bruising), needles and injections, Hemlock, torture references, angst

Word Count: 5.1K

Author's notes: Not even a lovely bout of food poisoning swiftly followed by my period immediately after was going to stop me getting this out on a Wednesday lol so here it is! Can't believe the next on is the finale!

“We’ll be exiting hyperspace soon.” Hunter informed the group as he came down from the cockpit.

“The base’s scanners will detect us once we’re on approach.” Rampart fretted.

“Then we’ll detach from the science vessel’s hull before then and infiltrate on foot.”

“The jungle is deadly.” Crosshair said in warning.

“Yes, exactly. At least listen to him.” Rampart begged.

“Well, how is Echo gonna get off that ship?” Wrecker reminded his two brothers, not liking the idea of leaving Echo unaided in this mission.

Hunter couldn’t afford to let his mind worry about that too much. Echo was highly capable, and Hunter knew he could handle this. “He’ll find a way.” The alarm beeped to signal the impending hyperspace exit. “Get into position.”

The three of them donned their helmets again and readied themselves for what was to come.

--

Echo hid the trooper’s body in a supply closet and plugged into the ship’s system. He couldn’t look for long however due to the sound of droid footsteps approaching and so he had to go hide in the closet.

--

Hemlock walked into the control room. “What’s the status of the science vessel?” He asked Scorch.

“En route, but we have a potential security breach. Clone Force 99 infiltrated the orbital station with former Vice Admiral Rampart.”

“Where are they now?”

“They fled aboard a stolen shuttle when the science vessel departed. They could be tracking it.”

Hemlock debated the courses of action in his head before deciding, “Dispatch fighters to monitor airspace. I’ll consult with our… guest for any further information he can give on the strategies they may implement.”

--

As the vessel entered the atmosphere, Hunter got ready to act. “Disengaging.”

As soon as the shuttle released from the science vessel, they were immediately bombarded with a squadron of Imperial fighters. Reacting too quickly and too organised for it to be a coincidence- no, they were expecting them.

Hunter sped up the ship and carried out evasive manoeuvres.

--

Hemlock returned from the cells to get a status update. Unfortunately, the prisoner had been rather uncooperative this time around, but it was no matter, he understood clones and how they acted- especially this squad. He could handle this himself. And he was due a visit with you anyway so perhaps you could shed light on what they may do.

“Our fighters have engaged a rogue shuttle.” A technician informed Dr. Hemlock.

“Lock down the base. Neutralize the threat, Commander.” He ordered Scorch.

“Activate laser cannons.” Scorch directed.

--

Between the fire from the base laser cannons and the fighters, standard manoeuvrers weren’t cutting it. Hunter had to get a little bit creative with the flying now and he started with a divebomb towards the ground.

--

Omega and the kids sat bored around one of the tables as they played with the puzzles, but a deep rumbling echoed around the vault.

“What is that?” Eva asked nervously.

Omega rested her hand on the table as she listened and analysed the sounds. “Laser cannons.”

--

“Doctors, there is a base-wide security alert.”

Emerie and Dr. Scalder turned to the science tech who told them that news.

“Follow lockdown protocols. I’ll secure the lab. Monitor the children in my absence.” She said to Dr. Scalder.

Dr. Scalder sneered slightly at the request, “Your concern for the specimens is unwarranted.” But she did as she was told as Emerie walked away.

--

Omega took in the scene through the windows above her with deep intrigue.

“What’s going on?” Sammi whispered.

“They found us.” Omega breathed.

“Who?” Jax asked.

“My brothers.”

--

The ship took another concerning sounding hit.

“Deflector shields are failing.” Crosshair said hurriedly to Hunter from the co-pilots chair situated just behind him.

Hunter dived again, only this time he turned the ship around, so the ship’s weapons were facing the enemy fighters. He fired on them and managed to take out a couple before he slowed and pulled back on the engines and allowed the remaining ships to fly past him.

That moved allowed him to lose them for a second and fly the ship closer to the jungle terrain, but it wasn’t long before the fighters had regrouped and were right back on top of them. “There’s no time to land.” Hunter said. He engaged his comm, “Wrecker, prep the rappel cables.”

“On it.” Wrecker confirmed as he removed himself from the seat he was in.

“On it? On what?” Rampart asked anxiously.

Wrecker only chuckled as he undid Rampart’s over-the-shoulder restraint. “You don’t wanna know.”

“Autopilot engaged.” Hunter confirmed as he and Crosshair went down to join Wrecker.

--

Hunter readied the hatch and all four of them attached to a cable.

“What do you expect me to do?” Rampart questioned in disbelief as he worked on mentally preparing for whatever the clone had planned.

“Try not to hit anything on the way down.” Hunter advised unhelpfully as the floor opened up.

“Whoa! You’ve got to be kidding!” Rampart screeched as he worked out the intentions of this ill-conceived and hellish idea. This entire affair was getting worse by the minute. Suddenly, Erebus didn’t seem so bad.

“Lines ready.” Wrecker said before he and Crosshair made the first jump down and detached once they were in a clear enough space.

Seeing that they’d made it, Hunter gave the order for him and Rampart, “Now!” He yanked Rampart down before the Imperial had the chance to second-guess.

Hunter’s cable descended fine, but Rampart got stuck before he’d barely started to drop.

“Wait! The cable is jammed!” He shouted down to Hunter.

Hunter really didn’t have time to think of a delicate solution, nor did he care about finding one. He drew his blaster and destroyed the hoist that Rampart’s cable ran through. He caught the panicked and screeching Imperial by the forearm as he fell past him, and the shuttle being destroyed by the fighters took care of the rest of their descent into the jungle.

--

“Confirmed hit.” The technician stated. “The shuttle was shot down and crashed in the jungle.”

“Have patrols search the crash site.” Hemlock instructed.

“Sir, our science vessel is on final approach.” Scorch informed him.

“Have the entire ship searched and the crew scanned. No one leaves that hangar without authorisation.” Hemlock made his final order before he left the room.

--

Echo mused over ideas in his head. He knew he couldn’t stay hidden in here forever, but he didn’t exactly blend in. even if he got off the ship, sneaking around Tantiss would be no easy feat, especially with no cover to rely on.

He paced up and down the small closet space and he titled his head as he stared down at the trooper and a new idea began to take shape.

--

Donned in new stormtrooper armour, Echo exited the closet and scomped into the system again.

He’d managed to get more of a look this time before he heard the droid footsteps. He unplugged and casually walked away, acting as if he was patrolling the area but the droid’s voice stopped him.

“Wait. You are not authorised to be here. This area is under my jurisdiction.”

“Ah, well, I was, uh, checking the manifest.” But even to a droid he knew he didn’t sound convincing.

“What is going on here?”

Echo didn’t let the droid get any closer to him. He blasted it straight in the chest and as he looked between the droid and his scomp, he saw another opportunity to complete his new identity.

“Thanks for the hand.” He quipped as he exited the shuttle the same way he’d gotten in.

He joined on to a squad of troopers leaving the hangar.

Now, his infiltration could begin.

--

 Crosshair and Wrecker were making their way through the thick jungle terrain.

“I don’t see ‘em.” Wrecker groaned. “Should we break comm silence?”

“No. we continue toward the base. Hunter will head that way too.” Crosshair said as he took the lead.

“A-Are you sure we’re headed in the right direction?”

“I’ve been here before. It’s not a place you forget.” He shook his hand out as he felt the tremors return.

“You broke out of here once. At least this time you’re breaking in.” Wrecker said, doing his best to provide some comfort.

“I’d rather not do either. But Omega didn’t leave me behind when she could have. I owe her. And (Y/N), she’s one of us too. I have to do this.”

“Plus, we’d never hear the end of it from Hunter if we didn’t.” Wrecker said with levity.

Crosshair managed a short chuckle, “Hmm, that too.”

The rustling of leaves and sounds of footsteps approaching caused them both the sharpen up again as they readied their blasters but the person that emerged was their brother so they could relax.

“See? He found us.” Crosshair stated smugly.

“Did, uh, Rampart make it?” Wrecker asked.

“Unfortunately, yes.” Hunter replied dryly.

“I heard that.” Rampart came panting into view. “You three truly are defective clones.” He grumbled. “If you had any common sense, you wouldn’t have come here. You won’t get out of this alive.”

Hunter squared up to Rampart. “We’ll take our chances.” He glanced up. “Incoming.”

The four of them took cover by a rock as a scout shuttle flew overhead. Only when is passed by, did they start walking again.

--

“Why haven’t our vitals been taken today and where did everyone go?” Eva asked, her voice barely above a whisper as she clutched the straw doll tightly.

“I don’t know. This is weird.” Jax stated quietly.

Omega matched their volume so as not to arouse suspicion. “I need to scout out what’s going on and see if I can find my friend.”

“Your friend?” Eva asked.

“You didn’t arrive alone?” Sammi inquired.

Omega shook her head, but she didn’t know how much to let them in on, especially if they weren’t aware of the potential they had. “Hemlock wanted her too; I think for the similar purposes you were all taken or possibly something else, but I don’t know what. And this is my best chance to find out and to find her, before the others come back. If something happens, and I’m not back in time, cover me.”

“Cover you?” Eva repeated in confusion.

“What does that mean?” Jax sought out clarification on the order.

Omega forgot that most kids didn’t actually grow up with a military family. “Keep watch. If the droid’s come snooping, stall them.” Omega instructed.

“How?” Sammi asked.

“You’ll think of something.” Omega said with sincere belief in them. She stole a glance up at Dr. Scalder who was engaged in talking to a droid and she saw her opportunity. “I’m counting on you.” With that, she left the table and set off to her room where she could access her new means of travel inside the walls of Tantiss.

--

The Batch and Rampart continued to make their way through the terrain, ensuring they were avoiding the many scouting parties that had been sent out.

Crosshair noticed Rampart’s drop in pace and jutted him hard in the back with his rifle. “You fall behind, you get left behind.” He said in response to Rampart’s pained grunt and backwards glare.

“You used to believe good soldiers followed orders.” Rampart commented as he picked up his speed a tad.

“Depends on who’s giving them. The Empire betrayed us both.”

“And you think you can fight them? That’s not you. You’re like me. Loyal to no one but yourself.” Rampart came to a halt.

“I’ve changed.” Crosshair said as he passed him. He wasn’t about to let Rampart of all people get in his head about this. He knew he was different now and that’s what mattered here.

“Sure you have.” Rampart muttered doubtfully as he watched the clone join the other two ahead before he went to catch up.

--

Blending in with the other Imperial troopers had been easy enough, even if the mechanical hand felt a bit unnatural but so far things were going smoothly but slowly. He needed a plan that involved knowing where it was that he needed to go.

Echo broke away from the back of the squad he was trailing as he passed a terminal. Making sure that the cost was clear, he took off the fake hand and plugged into the system to get a layout of this place and it was then that he saw the map of how to get to the lab that he figured had been the place where most of the testing that Omega had talked about occurred.

--

Hunter indicated for the group to stop and hide behind the treeline as a squad of troopers were in the area a few metres away from them. He knew going straight and behind them wasn’t a safe option so he led the way to the right that would see them hopefully work around them.

However, the path led them to a steep rockface.

“So, do we, uh, go around?” Wrecker suggested.

“No. It’ll take too long.” Crosshair said. “Especially with dead weight slowing us down.” He referred to Rampart as he heard the deep and unfit sighs leaving the Imperial as he lagged behind them.

“By all means, take your time.” Rampart groused to himself as he went to sit on a rock away from them all. “It’s not like we’re being hunted down.” He closed his eyes and leaned back against a surprisingly comfortable part of the cliff.

“Ground troopers are already scouring the area. Climbing is our best option.” Hunter theorised.

Wrecker groaned. “I knew you were gonna say that.”

Any further debate was cut short as a deep growling got all of their attention and they saw the creature rousing from sleep behind a terrified Rampart.

Hunter kept his voice low, and calm reached his hand out to Rampart to encourage him to do the same. “Slowly step away.”

Rampart darted back behind them all, but his panic was all he could focus on as he stared as the huge bear-like creature.

Wrecker anticipated Rampart’s petrified scream and covered his mouth with his palm as he dragged Rampart away.

Rampart gathered himself enough to weasel out of Wrecker’s grasp, “Shoot it. Now!”

They’d come too far and were too close for it all to come crashing down now. He couldn’t let that happen. “No. Blaster fire will give away our position.” Hunter objected as he and Crosshair also kept backing away.

“Our position won’t matter if that eats us.” Rampart hissed fearfully and he wasn’t about to wait around for that to happen- let the clones die, it wasn’t his problem anymore. He set off at a run.

The others only watched him go. Their focus had to stay on the animal which let out a guttural growl and charged at them.

They ran and split off in an attempt to surround it.

Hunter managed a few swipes of his vibroblade and Crosshair succeeded in hitting it’s face with the end of his rifle but where things started to go wrong was when Wrecker decided to jump on its back. He was tossed off with ease and that meant the animal was focused entirely on him.

“Wrecker, look out!” Hunter shouted as loudly as he could without giving them away, but it wasn’t enough.

The two of them watched in as the creature savagely swiped at Wrecker’s chest and through hm across the jungle into the trunk of a tree. They dashed over to him and saw the nasty gash that had breached his chest plate and cut through to his chest.

“Come on.” Crosshair encouraged roughly as he and Hunter pulled Wrecker to his feet, and both took an arm around him to support their brother as they retreated further into the jungle.

Fortunately, the gaps between the trees were too small for the creature to follow them but that relief was short lived.

Despite their best efforts, Rampart’s careless fumbling had alerted the Imperial’s to their location and a blaster fight ensued- a less-than-ideal situation for them, especially with Wrecker seriously hurt- but the added chaos had brought the animal back around to take care of the soldiers for them, allowing them to hide once more.

However, Wrecker was still badly wounded.

And Rampart was now nowhere to be found.

And they could count of the fact that the troopers would find him.

And Hemlock definitely knew they were alive and here.

--

The tight spaces and avoiding the sensors within the walls had made the sneaking around rather slow and tiring but it had been worth it.

Discovering that the Zillo Beast was here and being contained not too far from the vault had sparked an idea for the development of her escape plan and now she hoped her instincts were right in terms of the path they were taking her on to find where you were.

She felt along the walls, seeking out any discrepancies to mark changes in location and when she found such a change, she took the gamble and used her tool to scrape away at the new set of panels and began to push her way through.

--

As Omega came out the other side and entered what appeared to be a prison cell, she was pleased to see that it paid off but when she came to actually crouch in front of you, her breath hitched in distress as she saw you. She gently shook your shoulder and called your name.

Your internal body clock was going off, so you roused under the assumption that the calling of your name came from your usual visitors so when you saw her face, it shocked you. “Omega?” You whispered.

“Yeah, it’s me.” Omega replied quietly.

Judging from the deep furrow in her brow and the concern behind her eyes, you looked as bad as you felt. You offered what you hoped was a reassuring smile as you asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I came to find you. I think the others are here. We can leave this place soon!” But the news didn’t get the reaction from you she’d hoped. You were looking at her with profound disbelief. “Couldn’t you hear the cannons?”

You’d thought you’d heard a faint booming, but you couldn’t be sure that you hadn’t hallucinated it or been told to believe it. After all, this had been a scenario Hemlock had tried before. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.” You admitted with a heavy, weary sigh. At least you could believe her though, this wasn’t a figment of your imagination.

Omega had never seen you look so defeated before and it disturbed her a great deal. She needed to free you. “What does he want with you?”

You adjusted yourself slightly with a wince. “He wants me to join his operatives. He’s- he’s pretty insistent about it.”

“You can’t!”

“Yeah, I worked that one out for myself.” You attempted to kid, but it fell flat. “What about you? Did he tell you what he wanted?”

“My blood can be used to help replicate an individual’s M-count. But don’t worry, I’m working out a plan for me and the other kids to escape and find Hunter and the others.” Omega informed you.

“There are more children?” You repeated in dismay.

“There are three more of us and a baby. I still don’t fully know why they’re here. My guess is they’re like you.”

“A baby?” You didn’t think Hemlock could repulse you more yet somehow, he’d managed it. And if these kids were like you, they were in all kinds of danger.

“I’m helping them, but I can get you out of here first.” Omega insisted as she started to pull out her implement to work on your cuffs.

“No, you need to leave.”

Omega paused, “What?”

“You can’t help me. You can’t stay here any longer.” Your internal alarm clock had gone off for a reason and the fact that Hemlock was running late solidified the fact that they were here, but it also meant he could arrive any minute. In fact, you could hear distant footsteps.

“But why?”

“Omega, please. Go.” You insisted through a pained whisper as the noise of footsteps grew nearer.

“I can’t leave you like this.” Omega objected.

“You have to.”

“But-”

“Those kids need you. It’s not fair that you have to look do this by yourself, but you need to get out. You can’t worry about me right now; escaping is your objective. You know that it is.”

Omega felt like she was being pulled in two different directions. “I don’t want him to hurt you anymore.” She said tearfully.

“As long as I know you’re okay, he can’t hurt me. Go.” You begged.

“I-”

“Omega…” You implored, your throat choking up as you saw the conflict written across her face and you wished you didn’t have to send her away. “Please.” You couldn’t stand the thought of her getting caught or witnessing what Hemlock had planned for you, it was already bad enough that she’d seen you like this.

Omega still felt torn about it but deep down, she knew you were right and, even though part of her was yelling at her to help you, she forced herself to do as you said. She brushed your cheek before she stepped back into the gap in the wall, righting the panels as she did so.

--

As the door started to slide open, you also made a strong mental note with yourself to not give away what Omega had figured out.

--

Omega had barely made it behind the wall before the door opened fully and she hardly dared to breath as she stayed still behind the walls and heard the faint echo of footsteps and murmur of your voice.

--

“Ah, Dr. Hemlock. You’re late today.” You took in his entourage which consisted of a scientist you did not recognise and another trooper. “And no Emerie? Couldn’t have anything to do with what’s going on outside, could it?” You acted like her absence was of no bother to you when in actuality the absence of someone who seemed to be the only one to hold some sense over what amount torture was reasonable for a person to endure was most disconcerting.

Hemlock took a deep breath to calm himself. Your persistent deflections and smart-mouth remarks despite the fatigue and pain written across your battered face and body was maddening. He had yet to find the secret to breaking you, he had come close a few times, but it hadn’t quite been enough, and that was proving to weigh on his mind, especially with the appearance of Clone Force 99. “How do you know of their arrival?”

“Well, one, you just told me.” You quipped with a lethargic but still smug smirk.

Hemlock nodded to the trooper who slapped you across your cheek.

Recovering from the blow, you spoke again, “Plus, you gave it away as you walked in here. You’re nervous.” You stated simply. “And why else would you be if there wasn’t a threat to your base? And with the only new additions here being Omega and myself, it makes sense that it’s them. You took us away from a rather loyal and protective family who won’t stop until we’re back. And from the activation of the laser cannons, it sounded like they’ve found us.” You deduced, acting like it was the most obvious thing out there. “The very fact that they have reached this place makes you nervous.” You repeated with a stiff shrug of your shoulders as the chain rattled behind you.

“Please, the activities of your squad offer warrant no true concern. They are a mild irritant, nothing more.”

Your shattered and pained state made it hard to get the tone right, but you hoped the low chuckle you emitted gave the impression of the mocking pity you felt at his attempt to hide it from you. “I may not be able to use the Force to choke you to death in the way I’d like to but don’t think it can’t help me in other ways.”

“Clone Force 99 are as predictable as any other clone group. They pose no threat to me or my ambitions.”

“Then why bother coming here? I’d have loved some time off.” You griped tiredly.

Hemlock took a knee in front of you and took a harsh grip of your chin. “Tech was more resistant to my methods this time. It would appear news of his squad gave him more resolve than I anticipated this time around. He failed to divulge what strategies they may utilise. I am here to see what you can offer.”

Omega had to bite back her shocked gasp. Tech? Alive? Surely that wasn’t possible.

You ignored the comment, he had worked this angle before too. You only hoped Omega was back on her way now, it wouldn’t do her any good to hear something like that. “You think now all of a sudden I’ve changed my mind about joining you?”

Hemlock got to his feet, but he now found himself particularly pleased by your predictable resistance. What he was about to inflict on you would be most satisfying. “Ready the droid.” He ordered the assistant scientist next to him.

You shook your head as the droid approached you. “You know, for a scientist, you sure don’t seem to learn.” Those were the last words you said before the needle pierced your skin.

Omega knew she couldn’t linger any longer, so she started her journey back to the vault.

--

Omega was making her way back from your cell, when she came to a sudden halt as she heard distant but still disturbingly recognisable raw screams of pain- they were your screams of pain.

She stopped to let one of the sensors past and released a shaky breath before she reminded herself that she needed to get back quickly or this all would be for nothing.

--

Echo had managed to sneak into the lab and had plugged into the system to analyse the records. He was appalled by the sheer number of clones that had undergone testing here, but he paused as he reached Omega’s record. However, before he could take more of it in, the door opened. He quickly removed his scomp and reattached his mechanical hand.

Emerie observed the trooper carefully. “Troopers are not allowed in here.”

“It’s, uh, a special security patrol. Uh, i- it’s all clear.” Echo stuttered awkwardly to the female scientist. Not wanting to hang about, he started to walk away.

Emerie ran it through in her head. No trooper had ever come in here before, and no trooper had a scomp attached underneath a makeshift prosthetic hand. And no trooper had ever shown an interest in or had the means of accessing secure lab files. But there was one soldier she knew of that matched that description. “Echo.”

Echo stopped short.

“That’s your name, isn’t it?” Emerie asked, a tad nervously. “Omega talked about you all.”

Echo turned to face the woman.

“I’m Emerie.”

Her name was familiar to him too, but it didn’t bring with it any comfort. Echo sighed, “Omega told us about you too.”

“She said her squad would eventually come for her.”

“Not just her.” Echo marched towards Emerie. “We’re here for all the prisoners you’ve been experimenting on, including (Y/N).”

“I- I was doing my job.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before.” Echo said unsympathetically. He took of his helmet and spoke to her with equal parts anger and disappointment. “You’re a clone. How can you be part of this? Omega saw something in you. I want to believe that she was right. Tell me where they are.”

The words from the clone were what she’d been trying to deny to herself for a while now, but she couldn’t do it anymore. She didn’t want to do it anymore. “Omega’s in the vault but (Y/N) is being held in another prison cell. You won’t get anywhere near them without my assistance. If we’re gonna free them and those children, you’re going to have to trust me.”

Echo furrowed his brow slightly. That was new information. “Wait, w-what children?”

“Omega is not the only child confined inside this base.”

--

Omega made it back to her room just before Dr. Scalder came into her room with the droid for the vitals check and her resolve for escape was stronger than ever.

She and the kids reconvened back at the tables was Dr. Scalder left the vault.

“What took so long?” Eva asked.

As much as it pained her, Omega pushed you to the back of her mind. You were right, getting these kids to safety was the priority and once she did that and found the rest of the squad, they could help you. “I found something big. I have a plan, and I’m gonna need your help.”

--

More screams from Hunter, begging and pleading for your help.

More hurt and agony coursing through your body.

More longing to just give in.

To do anything to make it stop.

But that's what got you to wake up, you couldn’t do that. However, as you opened your eyes, you were face to face with the monster of your nightmares- Hemlock. His grin as sadistic and as twisted as ever, something you'd imagine he'd wear once he made some kind of monumental breakthrough in his research.

It took you a moment to get your bearings once more; the familiar bite of the binds and intense ache throughout your body told you that you had been subjected to another torment. Had things really gotten that bad that you're blacking out and forgetting periods of time? The last thing you clearly remembered was the droid injecting the serum, so you fought to remember what had happened before that needle went into your neck. Omega, the other children, Hunter and the others…. they were here and you weren’t going to jeopardise them.

Thankfully, despite the grin on his face, you knew you hadn’t given anything away. There was a deep frustration behind his eyes that he couldn’t hide. The grin was merely because he relished the pain you were in. “Man, you’re having a rough day, huh?” You rasped.

The comment resulted in a punch to your mouth from the trooper, your lip splitting open once more, but the way Hemlock’s shoulders heaved in irritation made it somewhat worth it.

Hemlock got ready to put you through another round when the sound of a comm beeping stopped him.

“Sir, they need you back in the control room.” The trooper interrupted.

Hemlock tightened his jaw but headed for the door.

You somehow managed to get yourself into a more vertical position as you called behind him, “They’re coming for you. You’re not leaving this place alive.”

Hemlock clenched his hands into fists before he walked out.

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