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Danny and his friends are trapped in a Certain Death scenario that none of them can escape. As a last resort, Sam soups Danny in the Fenton Thermos to ensure that at least one of them survives. Using a tube of laser lipstick on the lowest setting, Sam engraves the cap with the following message:

"Press the "release" button on the side of this thermos as soon as possible. Lives are at stake."

Unfortunately, nobody finds the thermos in time. The villain who killed Danny's crew goes on to devastate all of Amity Park and the surrounding areas.

"The disappearance of The Phantom of Amity Park" goes down as one of history's greatest unsolved mysteries, while the ghost zone quietly adds a new epitaph to Danny's title: "The Missing King."

Many decades later - after both the villain and Amity Park have turned to dust between the pages of history - somebody finally finds the thermos.

And that's when the real story begins.

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I know that it's a widely accepted fanon that Alex Mercer can flawlessly impersonate anyone he's consumed, but I'm gonna drop a hot take here: he's actually a terrible actor. He can memorize lines just fine, but he can't convincingly deliver anything except for bland military comms like "Roger that, this is squad delta niner-niner, we are currently en route."

The only reason why Alex was able to get away with his terrible acting while infiltrating military bases in Prototype was because he didn't need any acting skills to accomplish his objective. As long as he appeared "in uniform," used the correct military jargon & followed (or pretended to be following) orders, nobody looked any closer.

Alex never even had to affect any kind of persona (other than basic military professionalism), because his own brand of "terse & constantly on edge" fits right in with the miasma of stressed, exhausted masses that are military personnel on the front lines of war.

In the game, there's an escort mission where Alex has to go undercover as helicopter pilot. I failed that mission SO many times, but I'm actually glad I did because on one of my many retries I got to hear the following line of dialogue:

Mercer (psyching himself up before responding to a radio hail): "Okay, okay. You can do this! Just play it cool..."

This man could be absolutely cooked in any espionage setting that requires real, actually convincing acting skills & not just memorizing all the words/phrases used in military comms.

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Headcanon time: Alex Mercer's instincts as a virus include the urge to dominate/destroy other pathogens.

On a primal level, his instincts see other pathogens as competition for the same food source. Competitors must be eliminated for the sake of survival.

On a cognitive level... Alex finds The Infected even more disgusting than humans do. Seeing one fills him with a sense of oh god KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT WITH FIRE - similar to the instinctual "squick" that humans feel when they encounter a large spider - which is why Alex prefers to smash Infected into unrecognizable paste when he fights them.

Alex's Infected Vision power (learned during the Manhattan outbreak to more effectively fight Elizabeth Greene's redlight virus) continues to evolve even after the outbreak is over, turning into a sixth sense for pathogens in general. Alex automatically detects the presence of non-blacklight pathogens in the area and can even identify specific strains if he's previously consumed them... And it irritates the hell out of him. Alex HATES sharing space with other pathogens, even the non-sapient microscopic ones.

Alex develops new powers to deal with them accordingly: any microscopic pathogen that comes in contact with his body automatically gets absorbed into his biomass and consumed.

Dana thinks it's hilarious that Her Sentient Virus Brother counts as a walking air purifier.

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Okay I get that Cole technically has the ability to disintegrate things on the atomic level (which could overcome Alex's regeneration)

BUT

Alex would not stick around long enough to be disintegrated. He's a paranoid mofo who cares more about surviving than winning: he wouldn't continue to throw himself at Cole after he's already been smushed to paste under an ice wall.

No, Alex would flee the scene the to replenish his biomass and search for answers on what the hell was that.

And then once he got his answers, Alex would freak out over how close he'd unknowingly came to dying and do what he does best: adapt.

Alex wouldn't actively seek out Cole for a round 2 (unless there's a crisis that makes fighting Cole unavoidable), but he would make sure to develop mutations that give him an edge against Cole's powers.

After that.... if the worst still happens, and they absolutely had to try and kill each other, my money would be on Alex. Mercer has more than just shapeshifting powers going for him, he's also got an army's worth of stolen combat training & weapon skills rattling around in his head.

Plus Alex is really good at infiltration & covert operations - if killing Cole because an absolute necessity, Alex could (and would) minimize any risk to himself by figuring out where Cole lives and decapitate the electric man in his sleep.

It's Time....

@insidetheskinofthesun @rabble-dabble @white-truesdale @darks-arts

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growing up queer in an ultra-conservative southern evangelical church gives you deeply ingrained guilt, shame, and grief that haunts you long into your adulthood, sure

but it ALSO gives you the bunny, the bunny, oooh I love the bunny I gave everything that I had for the bunny I don't want no health food when it's time to feed a big bag o' bunnies is all that I need

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i keep mentioning the bread pudding incident and not telling the full story and at some point i really should

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Three more categories:

4. The entire fandom refuses to believe that Captain Cross died. #CrossLivesB!tch

5. Existentialism about Alex being a single-person hivemind

6. Isekai where the nuke literally blows Alex into another dimension

Prototype fanfic seems to break down into three major categories:

Alex Mercer dates Desmond from assassin’s creed (wildly popular, not even a vague hint of the character’s personalties)

Midoriya from My Hero Academia has Alex Mercer’s powers for no reason. 

“If you didn’t want to be assimilated into my found family you should have killed me when you had the chance.” (my trash)

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If they ever reboot Prototype, there should be a karma system as a secret, hidden mechanic. Your only clues to Alex's karma level is the military's radio chatter dialogue, and the mini-cutscenes used for highjacking vehicles. They may change depending on how much of a dick you've been.

Unlike other games with a morality system, Alex's karma rank at the beginning of of the game doesn't start at "neutral." It starts at the lowest value possible, because everyone assumes the man-eating monster is pure evil unless proven otherwise.

If you keep civilians off the menu and only fight the military in self-defense, then the military's radio chatter regarding "ZUES" will shift to a more lighthearted tone (and even get a bit silly). Hijacking a vehicle will non-lethally evict the current occupants. At really, really high karma, the military will tense up but not automatically attack if they see Alex with his claws (or any of his other powers) out.

Becoming a hero is not an option. The highest karma Alex can get is barely above "neutral" status - at which point the military barely tolerates Alex's presence, and warily accept his assistance with fighting the infected.

At the highest karma, stealing an armored vehicle is much faster, since all Alex has to do is bang on the lid and imperiously order the driver/pilot to get out of the vehicle. When the military's radio chatter speaks of Alex, they talk about him like he's an urban cryptid (or a troublemaking stray dog) instead of a walking nightmare wearing human skin. The tone dissonance is as cheesy as it is hilarious.

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Blackwatch's escalating attempts to kill Alex Mercer:

- Whatever, just shoot the guy and call it a day

(Shooting him does no damage)

- Uh... okay. How about explosives?

(Rockets & grenade launchers only throw him off-course)

- Oh, for crying out loud... Time to bring in the big guns!

(Attack Helicopters just give him a free helicopter)

(The same goes for tanks)

- You have got to be kidding me...

- If conventional weapons won't work, then we'll destroy him from within! Time for Biological Warfare-on-Biological Warfare violence!

(The designer super-cancer created specifically to destroy Mercer at a molecular level barely slows him down, & he cures himself shortly after)

- What the hell does it take to kill this thing?!

- When all else fails, create supersoldiers to save the day!

(D-code soldiers - made & trained for the sole purpose of hard-countering Alex Mercer - don't even last five minutes against the walking meat grinder)

- Sigh... Okay, that's not working.

- We've tried guns, explosives, biological warfare, supersoldiers.... Oh, How about chemical warfare? We haven't tried chemical warfare yet.

(Alex develops a high resistance to bloodtox within hours of exposure)

- Screw it, let's just drop a nuke on him and call it a day

- He did WHAT

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Whenever Alex visits Dana in her new apartment, he prefers to use the front door as little as possible.

Using the door means going inside the apartment building. Which means passing Ken The Doorman.

Who wants to make small talk whenever Alex comes through.

Alex prefers to simply climb the building from the outside, and tap on Dana's window to be let in.

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Alex: "hold on- you know?"

Dana: "...that my older brother pulled a Frankenstein to make you?"

Alex: "that's not... Okay, that's technically what happened, but-"

Dana: "It totally is! He made you by using Mad Science to rez a corpse!"

Alex: "IT WAS HIS OWN CORPSE, DANA"

Alex: "so... You don't hate me for being a man-eating sentient virus wearing your brother's face?"

Dana: "..."

Dana: "To be honest, I'm more focused on all the Big Sister Privileges I'll finally get to lord over you."

Alex: "???"

Dana: "As a science baby that my older brother created, that makes me either your big sister or your aunt. Since there's no way I'm ready to be called "aunt dana" by someone who looks older than me, that only leaves the first option."

Alex: confused virus noises

Dana: "for starters, I'm claiming permanent dibs on the tv remote."

Alex: "o...kay?

Dana: "You have NO idea how long I've been waiting to say that."

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Alex Mercer isn't a judgemental person. He doesn't see the point in getting worked up over most things when he's got a lot of secondhand experience in disturbing hobbies from his victims, and is keenly aware that being a man-eating virus gives him very little moral high ground when it comes to committing crimes.

However, the few things he does judge is more than enough provoke him into Kill Mode.

At the top of the list is:

Threatening Dana, being willingly involved with biological warfare, threatening Dana, unethical human experimentation, threatening Dana, direguarding quarantine procedures during a deadly outbreak, threatening Dana, and people who cause unnecessary fatalities.

Oh, and threatening Dana.

Note the specification of unnecessary fatalities. Alex is fine with killing anyone who attacks him, and/or wiping out any number of people if it's necessary to prevent even greater loss of life down the line... But it's precisely because Alex has so much experience being the lever-puller in The Trolley Problem that he hates the idea of being wasteful with lives that were never on the tracks to begin with.

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After having a few years to sort through the tangle of stolen memories, Alex settles on a very "wise beyond his years" outlook on human nature. Consuming so many humans has given him plentiful references to choose from, so it's not all that hard for him to figure out people's reasons for acting the way they do.

His verdict on humanity: humans are just.... People. They do stupid stuff when they let their baser instincts drive, but at the end of the day they're just trying to get through their lives in one piece like any other organism.

He'll still tear you in half if you try to attack him. But as long as the situation doesn't escalate to violence (or biological warfare), Alex is suprisingly patient with people.

....however, being patient with people and being good at interacting with them are two VERY different things for Alex Mercer.

Alex may understand how people work, but that doesn't mean he's willing to mediate or play therapist. When put in front of someone who's acting like a turd (not being a threat, just a pain in the neck), Alex prefers to simply sit back and watch quietly with what he thinks is a neutral gaze.

His attitude could almost be described as "calm & unflappable," if it weren't for the fact that he often forgets to blink and stares like a creepy possessed doll.

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Alex Mercer uses his claws to chop vegetables... Very carefully.

The first time he tried it, Alex used a bit too much force and accidentally chopped Dana's cutting board (and the kitchen counter) in half.