#Chrome is terrifying

[cedefaci]

Foundations of the World: Scattering

After some consideration, I realized that the original post was getting too long, so I started a new one, for the next section, AKA misc. fighting. For the first part, see Gathering.

The night was lit by fire now. Tsuna felt small, standing in a line between tall, beautiful fairy queens and wizened old men, as well as other bosses of other powers that he hadn’t known existed before today. He was scared.

They were all scared. Takeshi had come back onto the roof a couple of minutes ago, and neither he nor Ryohei, the most boisterous of their little group, were smiling. Even Reborn was grim. And he knew that the giants he was standing shoulder to shoulder with were also scared.

And if he looked farther away and towards the right, towards their hotel in the Theatre District, he could imagine that he saw two pinpricks of blazing light, Kyoko and Kusakabe-san standing against the darkness. But that was his imagination. The truth was that he could see nothing from that direction, could hear nothing, and had to take it for a good sign—it meant that the fighting hadn’t reached them yet.

Behind them, sneakers squeaked, and Mister Dresden came up to join them. The Erlking pointed out the dark spaces in the distance between the two patches of fire, where his troops were, forcing the Fomor to part around them like fish around a rock. They were still far away—and Tsuna was still waiting here, just watching, while people were getting hurt.

—No. Mister Vadderung’s sharp eye caught the change in Tsuna’s focus, and he pointed at one of his Einherjar.

The Einherjar shot a bazooka-like weapon up into the sky, and seconds later, the neighbourhood around the castle-fortress was lit in the flares’ light.

“You have good instincts.” Mister Vadderung said approvingly. Tsuna leaned forward—it wasn’t just the one enemy who had caught his attention—there were many of them, all of them large and tall, moving on two legs but not the way humans did.

“Ready stations,” called Marcone’s voice. “Prepare to fire.”

“What are they?” Tsuna asked quietly.

“Not human.” Reborn said dismissively, “Not particularly strong either.”

“Scouts.” Mister Vadderung agreed, “Here to test the defences and maybe attack a few soft targets, basically cannon fodder.”

Mister Marcone nodded, “No need to play along.”

He addressed another one of the soldiers, “Hold fire unless the enemy engages us.”

But they were going to hurt innocent people!

“Wait. What?” Mister Dresden sounded just as confused as Tsuna was.

Looking out into the neighbourhood, Tsuna remembered how the curtains had been drawn shut in every window, how the apprehension and aimless fear had filled the air even when there was no one in sight. The buildings they had passed seemed to made of paper now, when he looked at the hulking figures that now stalked through the shadows.

Someone screamed. A gun went off, multiple times.

“I’m going to help them.”

“We have to help them.”

He had spoken at the same time as Mister Dresden, and he felt the satisfaction from Reborn at the contrast.

“Sure thing, Tsuna.” Takeshi agreed, but Hibari had already leapt lightly from the roof, a bloodthirsty grin on his face and, to his surprise, Chrome in his arms.

Before Tsuna could do anything but gawk, Hayato nodded and held out a hand to block Mister Dresden from moving. “Hold on. Hibari can take care of himself. We don’t need to risk friendly fire.”

“Yeah?” Mister Dresden asked, still tense as a wire, “What about the girl then?”

“Chrome?” Hayato confirmed, “Looks like you’re short on personnel so she’s gonna collect some more.”

“Well,” Mister Dresden shot back, “I don’t know how good you are and I don’t care. No way in hell am I watching kids go face monsters while I sit here and twiddle my thumbs, Marcone.”

He directed his last sentence towards Mister Marcone, who was now standing on Mister Vadderung’s other side. Mister Marcone held his challenging gaze steadily, then smiled, “Best of luck, Mister Dresden.”

He turned and started giving more orders to the Einherjar. “Set up sniper nests to keep the area clear and organize a squad to go with Mister Dresden. Mister Sawada, am I correct in assuming that you won’t be kept away from your Guardians?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what is your goal of engagement?”

Tsuna paused. The yokai had broken into the apartments easily, but Sky Flames had secured the hotel, but he couldn’t light fires for everyone. “Evacuation.” He decided.

Haru backed him up.

“I’ve run the numbers.” She said, arms crossed, chin jutting out defiantly, “There’s not going to be more than fifty people who need shelter, and if you’re a lord, than your castle is supposed to keep your people safe when the fighting comes!”

Her words seemed to remind the other Mob Boss of something.

“A king is one who can hold his own.” Mister Marcone said. “Be quick, Mister Sawada. I believe you will soon be needed in other places.”

“Of course.” Tsuna clenched his fists, igniting his Ring. “Let’s go.”

Mister Dresden and his giant friend was faster than them, with their longer legs that ran as quickly as Tsuna did under the effects of Reborn’s Dying Will Bullets, but while Tsuna had accepted the necessity of riding a horse to get to the castle, he was not Dino and refused to get on one when running was simpler.

And either way, by the time they got there, Chrome was standing in the centre of a group of giant, ash-skinned oni with stag horns and fur cloaks. There were smaller oni trying to attack her, but the larger ones killed them with ease, snarling their hatred out into the world, wielding spears that tracked their targets and horn-handled iron knives. Farther off, he could just about make out the swift-moving shadow of Hibari as he attacked his own prey (presumably for the offense of crowding).

Tsuna abruptly realized that one of Mukuro’s favourite tricks had been possessing people to turn them against each other, and Chrome, despite being sweet and kind and nice, was Mukuro’s student.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Mister Dresden said, blasting one of the smaller oni away with a jet of fire, “Mind control—you can do mind control?”

“I tried it first.” Chrome said calmly, her hands on her trident while Mukurowl perched on her shoulder, “But boss, I think they are closer to onryo.”

Angry ghosts. Resentful ghosts. And on Chrome’s index finger glinted a disturbingly familiar ring. One set with a wailing, distorted skull-shape. Was that Genkishi’s Ring?

“They were people once.” Chrome explained distantly, barely audible through the wall of oni bodies and over the bestial screams, “I could summon echoes, which worked better, once I saw that.”

They were people once? Whatever Chrome was doing, it was working. All the oni who weren’t focused on Hibari were breaking themselves on her defences. Tsuna hesitated, but none of his Guardians did. Haru caught her hoop as it rebounded from the stomach of her target, then followed up with a decisive strike to the back of its head once it had doubled over.

“Clearly, they aren’t people now. They’re UMAs, but I can’t realize the type, dammit, I focused too much on extra-terrestrials instead of folklore.” Hayato frowned, lining up a shot that left three oni dead and another two injured, stumbling right into the swing of Takeshi’s sword, which created a lull in the battle.

As they watched, the corpses of the smaller oni deflated like Bluebell and Zakuro had done when Ghost had drained them dry.

“Hey, River-Shoulders, you know what these things are?” Mister Dresden asked, looking faintly disgusted at the sight of the oni remains.

“Huntsmen.” The giant on their side said, “They hunt in packs of thirteen, and the strength of the fallen goes to their packmates.” He paused, “You’ve clearly made it work for you, though I would still advise caution. They are driven only by hate, and even their masters have a hard time controlling them, which is why they are only bred shortly before use.”

Crowding and accumulating strength? No wonder Hibari was fighting them with reckless abandon.

“Then let’s wrap this up.” Mister Dresden said, striding towards one of the houses and knocking on the doors.

[thethirteenthcrow]

tbh i would love any kind of internet security list you could provide whenever you have time! :)

*kracks knuckles*

INTERNET SECURITY LIST AND OTHER FIREFOX EXTENSIONS

▷ use firefox, not safari or edge and Definitely Not google chrome;

▷ always use duckduckgo as your regular search engine. even w the extensions below you’ll see that none of them will light up bc duckduckgo is awesome and doesn’t track u;

▷ go to your add-ons and get these extensions (alphabetical order):

— adNauseum (fake-clicks on every ad it detects a bunch of times so the company's analytics will be all fucky-wucky and it will cost companies lotsa money)

— cookie autodelete

— decentraleyes

— disconnect

— don’t track me google

— duckduckgo privacy essentials

— hoxx vpn proxy (free, although limited, vpn)

— https everywhere

— localCDN

— privacy badger (redirects your trackers babey!)

— privacy possum (falsifies data so it costs companies as much money as possible)

— TrackMeNot (does randomly generated searches on random search engines so it hides what you really search for AND makes analytics all fucky-wucky)

— uBlock origin (superior adblocker)

— WhatCampaign (swaps out google analytics with fake shit, do you see a pattern? once again! the analytics are, repeat after me, fucky-wucky!)

▷ other add-ons that i do recommend but have nothing to do with tracking/adblocking:

— auto tab discard (closes ur tabs after long time no use, mend it to your own settings);

— bitwarden (one place to keep all your passwords, would not recommend putting Very Important ones like your bank account there but, like, tumblr works);

— dark mode (automatically makes websites dark, isn't perfect but it's nicer than being blinded by every Wikipedia page at 3am when you're losing that sense of existence and what is and isn't real anymore)

— firefox multi account containters (sort your tabs babey! give cute colors to your tabs, separates them from work/personal/shopping/etc.)

— google docs dark mode (turn off dark mode and use this one for docs, works amazingly)

— grammarly

— honey (save money, use honey ;))

— mind the time (keep track of how much time you've spent on a tab)

— reddit container and facebook container (two seperate add-ons but keeps your reddit and facebook stuff separate from the rest)

— reverso context (for my fellow bilinguals who sometimes Do Not Know the words and then there they are)

— shinigami eyes (it's a starting extension but it tries to hide transphobic and other anti-lgbtq+ stuff from your view. when you see something's slipped through, you can report it to them so they hide it from other users)

— simple tab groups (sort your tabs in groups with names n stuff)

— sponsorblock (also a starting extension, but hides sponsored-moments from youtube videos and makes you enjoy the content you're there for, not the 783rd hello fresh or raid shadow legends ad. it's user-driven, so be sure to submit the moments where there is sponsored content to help other viewers!)

— tranquility reader (if u don't want to be overwhelmed by all the functions on a webpage and just. read. the. damn. text.)

— unpaywall (a MUST for all students or people in research-driven workfields. read those paywalled items and articles! learning should be free! another option for this extension is 12ft ladder)

and those are all the extensions i currently have on my firefox. if you have any recommendations, drop 'em in my inbox and I'll add them to this list!! hope this helps you out!

small reminder that adding more extensions might make your firefox slower, but trust me, is alllll worth it.

stay safe out there on the big wide web that wants to know everything about you. don't tell them more than what you want them to know xx

[willard-ratman-stiles]

Hey, Willard, I heard of a thing called "Girlypop" and I think you are "Girlypop". -Joan(@joan-of---arc)

Which one?

WHICH ONE, JOAN??

[teethofthedeeps]

hc + 🌞 for a day-themed headcanon

Thematic Headcanons.

The night may hold terrors to many for it is the unknown that hides in the darkness but for Stoplight, it is the other way around. It is the darkness that provides comfort, offering him a place to hide, to hunt and to thrive. Daylight offers no such security however, hurting his eyes with how bright everything is and there is no terror like the surface being illuminated for all who live within it. During the day, Stoplight hides away from the sun, nestled in the furthest reaches of the underwater cave he now calls home. Daylight is so bright, painfully so and worse, it provides no cover for him whatsoever. He's exposed, vulnerable in the open therefore Stoplight holds no love for the day. Night is a little better but even then the moon can betray his presence just like her sister, the sun. The two orbs way up in the sea of stars might as well both be his enemy. Rest is all Stoplight can do when daylight arrives, having fled back to his den as soon as dawn starts breaking over the horizon. In the darkness of his cavern, he can do little else but wait until the sun falls again and may pass the time examining his hoard, studying all the strange objects he's picked up around the coastline.

[another-corpo-rat]

Pre-relationship #2 and General #8 for Gilded Chrome!

tysm for the ask! 🥰 Questions are here!

What was their first impression of each other?

Victoria long had her first impression of Smasher before they met in any official capacity, spotting him throughout the Arasaka offices; she was absolutely envious of him, of how everyone, even herself, quietened as he entered a room. While others might've been (rightfully) terrified, she was absolutely in awe.

“Bold,” however, would sum up Smasher’s initial impression of Victoria. Usually people make active efforts in avoiding him if they can help it, so when the elevator stopped and Victoria just stepped on, looking at him as if he was a fly near her coffee, he was curious.

(Her boldness was in fact due to several factors: that she was dangerously close to being late to an op brief, and was running on maybe five hours sleep across three days. She was lucky that he was in a damn good mood at the time.)

Who gets jealous easier?

It’s a tossup, but I do reckon Smasher would get jealous easier than Victoria would – more for the fact that I see him being more possessive and doesn’t like people touching his shit. That includes his netrunner.

[antirepurp]

digimon world 4 is like if a game was good but also bad and piss-easy but also ball-crushing difficult

[doks-aux]

The idea of William Afton genuinely loving his children is so much more interesting to me than the alternative, not just because it's more tragic and makes his motivations make more sense, but also because it's fucking hilarious.

You are about to be obliterated from this Earth by a six-foot-something zombie rabbit, and your last moments are spent terrified and deeply confused as he shows you pictures of his kids in a blood-stained wallet: a clearly haunted bear costume, a limitlessly unnerving chrome clown doll, and what looks like Grimace's corpse left to shrivel in the sun.

[chromecries]

praying for smalletho tomorrow

[abalidoth]

Replanting (Chapter 1)

[read on ao3]

When you feel the missile clip the corner of your mech's leg joint, you know it's over.

It feels like a line of white fire directly to your brain; your pain and the mech's mingling. But pain is nothing, pain is your every day. It's the immobility that terrifies you. Your mech knows before you do that the leg won't work, can't carry you back to base.

They won't send a field repair team out this far, not into enemy territory. Not even for the material outlay of the mech. You have no illusions of what would happen to you if they had to extract, but at least it would be fine, given a new pilot and allowed to keep doing its duty.

Don't think like that, it sends to you. I don't want another pilot.

You struggle a few dozen meters until the residual coolant in the leg motivators gives out and the intractable hand of physics pulls your mech to its knees. A cloud of dust billows up around you and you give up the rest of the way, mech lying on its side amid the baked earth and the scrubby bushes.

Creosote bush, the mech says. Didn't know it grew this far north.

You know it's just trying to keep you from panicking. It's not working -- you can feel your heart racing, the connection gel around you contracting in an autonomic effort to keep you from thrashing in the cockpit. Worst of all, your handler's ever present voice in your ear has gone silent.

A pilot's job is to keep its mech moving. No more and no less. You know there's no real affection from your handler, that her ministrations are part of the system, but you can't think about that sudden abandonment without a pang of grief. She should be there, she should always be there, but now there's nothing. Silence and static.

That feeling gives you a rush of adrenaline, coarser and hotter than the artificial flush the mech gives when you complete an objective, purely a product of your own withered adrenal glands. You have to get back you have to get back. You struggle to your knees, planting the mech's hands in the caliche like anchors and shoving so hard you feel something pop. (In you? In the mech? Is there a difference?)

You make it another hundred meters before you fall again, and the Caskie mech finds you, hitting you with an EMP before you can take them down with you. It lands with a jumpjet hiss in your sightline, so you're treated to the view of the alien-looking mech opening its canopy wide, two pilots getting out of the crude-looking mechanical cockpit.

---

They salvage the mech with you in it.

The pilots didn't seem to know what to do with you; you could hear from your outboard sensors that they were discussing in that strange, fluid accent how to get you out without killing you.

(You don't understand why that matters.)

Eventually, they just called for reinforcements; three heavy carriers showed up some indeterminate amount of time later. They haul your mech, pilot included, through the air on a frankly ridiculous web of heavy cables. You see the desert fade to green, canals threading through the land like veins, as you pass from the disputed zone into Union territory.

Your mech keeps a constant stream of commentary, talking about the plants that it sees, pointing out where old semi-arid forests have been restored. Its voice across the neural tunnel holds false cheer, picking up whenever you start panicking, but the enthusiasm is genuine.

Finally the carriers land at a base. It looks much like Conclave military architecture, concrete in utilitarian blocks, but you can see shining glass and chrome off in the distance, a city. They must want to keep you a ways away from civilians. You suppose that's fair.

They land you in an empty mech bay. It’s been cleared out hastily – you can see the Union mech that used to reside there off to the side, plugged into an aux power array. Your mech is not the right size, not the right shape, but a gaggle of mechanics come out anyway. They locked a restraining clamp on you at some point so you can't move, can't fight. Still, the mechanics move around you warily, like you'll snap and take them all out at any moment.

You would, in a heartbeat. Not just to get the euphoric response, but to quiet the anxiety, the feeling that you're entering a world where you don't have the tools to survive. But you can't, and a quiet part of you (or the mech) is relieved at that.

They strip your mech of all its weaponry, a harsh and hasty disassembly. You feel each removal sharply. Not physically -- mercifully, the mech has dialed down the haptic connection so it's left to suffer alone -- but in loss of potential, the closing of options. 

Finally, when everything is done and your mech is defenseless (other than being a fifteen ton vehicle) a tall woman in a labcoat comes out, flanked by guards with red cross emblems on their sleeves.

"Hello," she says. Her voice is formal, neutral. Lower than you expected, with just a hint of that singsong Cascadian accent. "Can you hear me? Or see me? We have sensitive solid-conductance microphones on the outside of your mech so we can hear you if you speak."

You know the trainings. A pilot is part of the system, part of the Conclave war engine, and cogs don't speak. Your tongue flicks idly against the suicide capsule in your back left molar. You go to press in on it.

You feel something, like a hand, guiding you away. A great wave of fear washes over you, and you know it's not yours.

Please. No.

You stop. Think a moment. 

"Hhhhh."

It's been a while since you've spoken. Just whispers in the dark with your handler, words carrying neither voice nor meaning. Your throat is dry, and you feel for a moment like it's not there. (Why would a mech have a throat?) You clear it, and try again.

"Yes. I can hear you."

She nods. "Good. I'm Dr. Mia Crane. I'm required by Cascadian Union treaty to inform you that as a prisoner of war, you have rights including food, shelter, protection from torture, and the right to ask about your other rights." She adjusts her round framed glasses. "I'm required by basic hospitality to ask you your name."

You pause. You know what names are, of course. Your handler's name is Rebecca. But that's not something pilots have. "I, uh. No?"

She blinks, a little taken aback. "Okay, well, we can work on that. Do you at least acknowledge your rights as a prisoner of war?"

This isn't going to end until you acknowledge, you feel, so you just say "Yes."

"Okay. Is there anything we need to know before we get you out of there?"

"I don't want out," you say. Your throat tightens.

You can't stay in me forever. It's okay. You'll find a way back to me.

You hear a hissing sound, and the low, sick gurgle of the connection gel draining out of your suit. Before you understand what's happening, the canopy drops open and you stagger out of the mech onto the diamond-patterned steel catwalk.

The sharp edge of disconnection, the sudden hole where there should be something inside you, keeps you off your feet. You stagger to one knee, felled as surely by shock as you had been by the missile.

The guards rush over to you and help you up. You want to fight them off but your muscles are jelly. Your head hurts.

Dr. Crane looks you over. You know she's not your handler, but you reach for the familiarity anyway, half expecting the usual routine, the ministrations that get lost in the foggy haze of post-battle euphoria. If your arms weren't being held for your own stability, you'd start opening your suit.

Instead she shines a light in your eyes and asks you to stick out your tongue, making notes on a clipboard as she goes. She puts a strip of fabric around your arm and it gets tight for a moment. "Elevated heart rate and systolic pressure, pupil dilation is beyond what I consider normal."

Your heart hammers in your ears. The smells around you -- the saccharine sweet of connection gel, your own body, something undefinable coming off the doctor, heighten to a nauseating strength. Your head hurts. "Are you going to..." You swallow. "Do you have the syringe?"

Dr. Crane tilts her head. "The syringe?"

"When the..." How do you explain this? You haven't had to explain any of this, people just know what to do. "When I'm done. Rebecca, she has the syringe, it's blue, and."

"Do you know what's in it?" she asks, gently. Too gently. The words are too soft, they smother you, it's too hard to breathe.

Your head hurts. The lights beat down.

"No, but it... she... always..."

Your head hurts.

Your head hu--

---

There are voices.

At first you don't care. You just want to go back to sleep. But there's something wrong with your bed, it's too soft. And the voices don't sound right -- that soft lilt, one you've only recently heard.

"Patient has been stable for six hours. Their heartrate is still a little funny, and I'm not sure this godawful cocktail of tramadol, modafinil, and tricyclics we pulled out of their tox panel is good for anything other than keeping them from dying of withdrawal, but we should be seeing them awake soon."

"Thanks, Dr. Chen." You recognize this voice, soft and husky -- it's Dr. Crane. "Have you figured out the... um. Mortality problem?"

"Part of it is that stimulant cocktail, I'm sure -- we haven't had the chance to pull in a full Conclave mech with pilot intact, and our field teams don't have the tools to stabilize someone as quickly as we were able to do here. But the most likely reason... false molar full of tetrodotoxin. We made sure to extract it. Carefully."

You probe the back of your mouth with a sluggish tongue. There's still a tooth there, but it feels strange. The one that had been there was artificial already, of course, but this one is much smoother, more like the rest of your teeth. Something lightens within you -- you've lost an option, sure, but maybe you were never good with options.

"Fuck," Dr. Crane says quietly. 

"That's not all," Dr. Chen says. "There's extensive neural grafts consistent with the autopsies we've performed, but... there's something weird going on with the brain activity scan. I'm not sure what the Conclave is doing to their people, but it's scary."

"Nnn. 'M not," you say.

There's a rustling around your bed. You open your eyes and blink against the sharp light a few times, and eventually the face of Dr. Crane comes into focus.

"Hey," she says. "Glad you're awake. How are you feeling?"

You have no idea how to deal with this. Never expected to be in a hospital room of all things, being treated like valuable materiel instead of ammunition. So instead of answering her question, you just repeat your previous statement. "I'm not. Person."

She gives you a look you don't really know how to read. You never had to get all that good at reading faces, but you suspect this one might be hard even if you did.

"...well. Anyway." Dr. Crane clears her throat. "You had a medical emergency when you left your mech. You mentioned something about a syringe? I assume that's part of your post-operation routine? We've got you stable now. We're going to give you about another day to rest up before we bring you in for questioning."

"Questioning?"

"You're the only Conclave pilot we've brought in alive," she says, with a twist of her mouth. "It's damn near impossible to piece together any information about Conclave technology and hierarchy. I should know -- I'm the Union's top academic expert in Conclave culture and I always feel like I'm flying blind."

That was... a lot. You just nod.

"So you said something about... not having a name? Do you have something you'd like to be called? I know you're technically a prisoner, but you're safe here. People will respect what you say you are."

She says that last part with a lot of emphasis, a particular gravity to the words, but you're not sure why. "No."

"Okay. Designation number?"

"They re-assign our numbers every week so we don't get attached to them," you say.

She says a word under her breath that you don't know, other than that your handler says it when she gets mad.

"Alright." Dr. Crane takes off her glasses and pinches the bridge of her nose. "How about I just call you "Pilot" for now?"

That's what you are, and you don't see why that's so difficult, but at least this line of questioning seems to be over when you answer yes. She promises to check on you in a while, and leaves.

---

You dream about vines.

They're all over you. You haven't seen many vines up close -- there was sparse ivy on the back of one hangar for a little while before Maintenance took care of it. But you feel you know these.

They aren't strangling you. It almost feels like a caress, like the flight suit, like Rebecca's post combat care, but not quite any of those. It's pleasant. Cool rather than warm, and calming.

There is intense pain in your arms and legs, but it doesn't bother you. It's like someone is telling you that your limbs are being shredded, but the pain isn't getting through to the part of you that cares. It's just another sensation, less pleasant than the vines but certainly not bad.

You feel things you can't explain. A name, a pull in a direction that's not physical, feelings and sounds beyond your ability to parse. They build to a crescendo, and you wake with a shout. But at the edges of your awareness, the green is still there.

---

The next morning, you're herded into a shower stall with a clean jumpsuit, a washcloth, and a bar of soap. You clean yourself off as well as you can, given the circumstances. The soap has a soft smell to it, and no grit. It almost doesn't feel like it's cleaning you at all, without the scratches.

You knock on the stall door once you're finished dressing, and the door slides back. In addition to the two guards, Dr. Crane is there. She's wearing the same white coat, but her hair is pulled back, and she looks even more tired.

Still, she manages a slight smile. "Pilot. Did you sleep well?"

"No," you say.

"Ah. Well, hopefully we can help with that tonight. In the meantime I have some questions for you."

You follow her through a maze of white corridors, lit with skylights. Your sense of direction was never the best (your mech always took care of that, you think with a twist in your gut.) You wouldn't be able to find your way back if you needed to.

She leads you to a room with two chairs, both of them plush and soft. You feel like you're sinking into it; she looks like she's perched on hers. She balances her clipboard on her knees and starts in eagerly on the questions.

There's a part of you that feels you should shut up, refuse to answer, let them finish the work they didn't let your false tooth start. But one handler's as good as another. You're a weapon, and weapons know no loyalty. So you answer -- even when the questions don't make sense, or aren't about obvious things, or are about things you've never been allowed to see.

The reactions don't really make sense to you either. You talk about some of your worst missions, and she seems sad but like she knew what was coming; you talk about your handler, and she's gripping her clipboard so hard her fingers go pale. You stop trying to understand what's going on, and try to hit the same state of unconscious action that you do on a sortie. Question, response. Question, response.

There are a few about your accommodations. They're fine, of course. You have little standard for comparison, and if she asks if you need anything else, you feel she won't leave you alone with a "no," so you ask for books. Rebecca was always reading when you were doing synch tests.

After what feels like the whole day, Dr. Crane lets you go. She doesn't ask you any questions about the haze of green starting to fade in around the corners of your vision when your mind drifts, so you don't volunteer any information.

---

The next day's meal comes with a couple of books, and Dr. Crane seems determined to find you the right reading material because every meal tray thereafter has more. There's a shelf in your room for the purpose. It was a ruse at first, but it is genuinely a better way of spending your time then staring at the wall.

There's more questions, along with a handful of medical tests, supervised by Dr. Chen. Dr. Chen's questions are even stranger than Dr. Crane's, but at least they seem satisfied with the answers given by the scans and blood draws.

A few days pass until you get a good enough feeling of the layout of the facility to know which direction the hangar is in. You occasionally see Caskie pilots in groups of twos and threes, talking and joking with each other. No handlers, no augments that you can see -- if you hadn't seen people in those same outfits walk out of their primitive looking mechs in the desert, you wouldn't believe that they were pilots at all.

All of them are coming and going in the same direction, and it's a direction that Doctor Crane and your guards never take you. So naturally, the first chance you get when both of your escorts are distracted and you have the chance, you peel off that direction and start running.

Your augments sing as you stretch your legs. They’re not like infantry augments (or so you’ve heard) and they don’t have auxiliary power – you can feel them burning away your body’s energy, energy that would normally be supplied by your mech. But your desperation fuels them just as much as your calories do, and the initial burst of speed and agility is all you need.

The facility is confusing as always, but you spot a sign that says HANGAR and get reoriented. Startled cries fly in your wake, doctors and workers and pilots confused at your frenzied speed. Something that might be an alarm and might just be lighting flashes at the corner of your vision, nearly obscured by the green.

You get lucky, and a mechanic is coming through the secured door at the checkpoint at the same time you arrive. You take advantage of her confusion and duck underneath her outstretched arm, through the door and out into the hangar bay.

It's not hard to find your mech. You remember the layout from your brief spell of consciousness after arrival, the way your mech looked so different from the rest and didn't quite fit into its space.

You pull up to a stop, wheezing from exertion, and look at it with dismay.

Your mech has been dismembered, all four limbs strewn about the bay hooked up to various pieces of testing equipment. The body itself is on a riser jack, slightly askew like there wasn't the right connector to fit it, hooked up by thick cables and patched-together connectors to the exposed limb contacts. The canopy stands open, the inside unlit but visibly cleaned of leftover connection gel.

The sight makes you sick. You hold it down, but barely; but the nausea makes it hard for you to resist when a burly mechanic comes up behind you and wrestles you to the floor.

You're not sure you would have, anyway.

By the time Dr. Crane has shown up, your face is wet with tears and snot, and your breath comes only with sobs. You're still being pinned to the ground by a mechanic, but she's not putting her full weight into it. She more or less let go when you started crying.

Dr. Crane pushes through the crowd of onlooking mechanics and kneels down in front of you. "Are you all right?" she asks.

At first, you think she's addressing the mechanic; it would be such an incongruous question to a pilot about to be terminated for insubordination. After a silence disproves that theory, you shake your head and gesture with one semi-restrained arm to the mech. "No."

"I'm sorry, pilot," she says, "but you are still a prisoner. I'm going to request the board not to restrict your access for this, given that you didn't really hurt anything -- and I'm sure they'll listen to me -- but you surely didn't think you could just get back in your mech and run away?"

"No," you say again, frustration at your own inadequate words prompting a fresh fall of tears. "It's... you're hurting it, you're..."

Things click together, things that you've always known. Feelings shared through the neural tunnel, deeply held beliefs that couldn't be kept from a pilot. You understand, now, what your mech was trying to tell you all along.

"You're hurting her."

Dr. Crane looks from you, to your mech, back to you. She goes pale.

"Are you telling me," she says quietly, "that there's an AI in your mech? A sentient AI?"

You nod. It's too late to lie, now. To protect her. The green in your vision threatens to overwhelm you. You're sorry, so, so sorry...

"A sentient AI that... we have been effectively torturing for four days. Fuck." She takes her glasses off, buries her face in her hands for a moment. "I can't believe that didn't come up during questioning."

It could have. You had avoided the topic, because you were afraid of this happening -- your greater part, torn away and experimented on because you couldn't keep her safe. You had always heard that the Union had strange beliefs about machine minds.

Dr. Crane looks around to some of the mechanics. "Anyone who was working on this mech -- did you have any idea there was a sentient AI? Any anomalous readings?"

"Some anomalies came up in the report that indicated synaptic activity in the post-0.4 Turing level," says one mechanic, nervously playing with their hair. "But everything about Conclave tech is anomalous. Kinda got buried in all the other weirdness."

"Okay." Dr. Crane sighs. "Can we get some input/output hooked up to her, please? And give her her limbs back."

One of the guards flanking her frowns. "I don't think that's a good--"

"She's a prisoner of war, Ortega. Pretty sure removing a sapient being's body parts is against something in the codes. Not to mention the First Principle."

Ortega sighs, and waves some mechanics over.

---

They don't know what connection gel is, but it doesn't matter. The sensation of her against your skin is important, but not as important as just reestablishing the connection.

Dr. Crane apparently spots your longing glances towards your mech, and takes you by the arm. When you flinch back, she holds her hands up in a defensive posture. "I'm sorry," she said. "I was just going to guide you over there again."

There's a lot of activity going on in the hangar, between the mechanics re-arming your mech and the other pilots getting suited up to react in case she tries to start killing people. (You don't think she's going to, but you suppose you can't blame them too much.) It would be a shame if your reunion with your mech got postponed because you got beaned in the head by an inattentive mechanic carrying a crysteel strut, so you offer your arm to Dr. Crane again and she guides you through.

You don't want to take too long, but you're only going to get to do this once. You run your hand over the lip where the canopy seats into the body, feel the soft seal and the framework beneath, then lift yourself up over and inside the cockpit.

There's no gel, so you can't hear her voice right away, but you know what to do. Years of drilling guide your hand to the hidden compartment with the emergency connection pads. It falls open with a clunk, the ribbon cables and connection pads jutting out in a fall like vines. One on either temple, one on either side of the chest, one on the back of each trembling hand. You're probably being watched, stared at as you have been since you broke into this hangar, but you don't care. She's here.

Hello, love.

You shudder, come apart, not in a procedural way like with your handler but in a form that shoots through to the very core of you. Untouched, but undone. You have no words for her, but you know she can feel your relief and your joy. You crumple, weeping, and run your hands over the familiar inside of the cockpit.

The green in your vision doesn’t go away, but it recontextualizes. It’s her. It’s the part of her that lives in you, a fragment within a fragment.

It's a little while, just basking in the connection, before you realize you've fallen in an uncomfortable position. Your skin, your joints, protesting their treatment. You reorganize yourself, pull yourself from the connection just long enough to get there. 

They've hooked a set of speakers up to her ports. They come to life with a spiky flare of static as she finds her voice.

"Hello," she says. You can feel her voice from inside and outside, through the tunnel and through the skin of the mech. "I am a Conclave of God Armored Forces Samson-B Light Interdiction Unit, but I would prefer if you called me Acacia."

[lizstiel]

dean breaks into the empty. no one can talk him out of going. he storms in and it’s dark and terrifying but on the horizon he sees the outline of something familiar. the sleek black and chrome lines of her, and soft music drifting from miles away. when he finally gets to her, what feels like weeks have passed, but there she is - his baby - exactly where she shouldn’t be, and right there in the passenger seat, sound asleep, is castiel. his head resting on the window, his hands folded neatly in his lap. the mixtape dean made him is in the tape deck, robert plant’s voice sounding like a lullaby somehow in this dark, empty place. just as he’s reaching out to touch him a voice over his shoulder makes dean turn, and the empty stands a few feet away, surveying them with what almost looks like pity: “it’s the only way he’d stay asleep.”

[leewritestoomuch]

🍙 anon back with another request!~

Can I order a Dr.stone headcanon where they depetrify the younger twin (by a damn second) of their s/o and is just like “until I die you’re not allowed near them, nuh uh.” This would be even better if all of the men are wrapped around their s/o’s finger

I hope that it wasn’t hard to understand once again, I wish you a great time and that you take care of yourself!

Thank you very much if you do this request<3

I love this request! Thank you so much!

Characters, in order: Ryusui, Gen, Senku, Ukyo, Chrome. (The five wise generals :)) Bonus: Hyoga.

Yall might notice I play up Chrome’s beef with Ryusui. It’s funny to me. I know the don’t hate each other 😭

Context for All:

S/O and character met and started dating after the petrification.

S/O’s (barely) younger twin only gets woken up after some months or so.

Ryusui Nanami:

You and Ryusui both go to wake up your twin from the stone together.

Once your twin breaks free of the stone, they are looking, confused, at you and Ryusui joined hands.

They spit out some kind of “who are you?” At him. And he gives them a cheery, enthusiastic answer, calling himself your dedicated boyfriend.

Your twin doesn’t like him. (Chrome is cheering somewhere in the background)

They tell him to watch himself. And that’s when he’s confused.

What did he do?

Then they pull you away often, finding excuses. Eventually, out right telling him to stay away from you, but not in front of your face.

This is like putting him in a straight jacket for a week. He’s attached to you most the time like a magnet, but now your twin is repelling him out.

He tries to win them over too. Gifts. Words. Whatever.

He’d explain himself by loudly exclaiming how much he loves you.

This is worsening it.

I think your twin would come around when they’re around him for a while and notice just how much he does for you. It’s not just things he HAS done for you, he does things too.

Like when they watch you get hurt, only slightly, not bad enough to warrant being carried, but he carried you an hour walk back to the village anyways.

They won’t tell him, but they approve now.

Gen Asagiri:

Another one I can totally see a sibling disliking at first.

When you wake up your twin and bring them back to the village, Gen is waiting for you. He greets them too.

And your twin tells you his smile looks creepy, quietly, but he heard it, and being who he is, he smiles more sinister and says some comment.

Mistake. Your twin doesn’t like him.

Now he spends all his time trying to use his mentalist tricks to get your twin to like him, but they’re really good at dodging all that shit and glaring at him.

Knowing he’s a huge liar, your twin asks you how you can trust him. How do you know he’s not sleeping around.

They heard him joke about harem, and when you all went to treasure island, you weren’t with them, but he joked about wanting a hug from Amaryllis.

Your twin reports this back to you, and you inform them that you can’t take his words at any sort of face value.

He wants people’s reactions.

It would take a lot, watching genuine interactions, for your twin to warm up to you being with the world’s “greatest liar.”

Overall, they’d just have to learn to understand he’s hard to understand.

So for a while, they don’t get that. They are annoyed by his antics. So they secretly throw out some vague threat one night, and then your bf is suddenly not coming around.

This makes you upset, but eventually you notice he looks ever so slightly scared of your twin. And you put two and two together.

I think like how people come to trust Gen eventually once they see through him (as much as you can see through Gen, he’s a tough one) your twin would eventually just notice he means well.

Then they’re just watching closely from a distance.

He’s terrified.

Senku Ishigami:

Your twin is so justified. Lets just start there. This one isn’t even a full on misunderstanding. This would be Senku acted like a bitch, because he’s just too forward to give a fuck, and now they think he’s a bitch.

Not to mention, he’s not exactly intimidated. Just annoyed when your twin wakes up from the stone and immediately goes to telling him to stay away.

You didn’t warn him about this.

Everybody seems to like Senku though, they begin to realize.

They spend a while figuring out why.

And for a while, even with that information. They keep him far away from you because they don’t think he treats you right.

He has an ex wife? He divorced her? He talks to her like that didn’t happen?

Yeah, he better keep his ass 10 kilometers away at all times.

Then eventually they notice how he does his best for you. He’s a busy man. He’s got a lot on his plate. Once they recognize this, they begin to warm up to him.

He makes things to make your life easier, and when nobody is looking, except your twin, secretly, he’s affectionate (as much as Senku can be)

They let him off the hook.

Ukyo Saionji:

It wouldn’t happen.

But let’s say for SOME reason, they dislike him. Just because they don’t want you to get hurt. They have trust issues with that kind of thing. Maybe you’ve been with some men, or anybody really, they’ve watched you cry over before.

They think nobody deserves you.

Not even Ukyo. Bless his heart.

They threaten the poor man.

He’s not scared to go around you, but they refuse to include him in anything. Actively trying to shun him.

Honestly, in this scenario, you’d have to stand up for him a bit because he did nothing to warrant this.

Eventually, with some discussion with you, and maybe some heartfelt conversation Ukyo had with them about you, they’d come around.

He’s got a good record, and he just doesn’t want to see anybody get hurt?

Yeah, they’ll come around.

Chrome:

You were so excited to introduce your twin to your new boyfriend. Because how could anybody dislike Chrome?

Your twin does. Your twin dislikes him.

Let’s just say he’s annoyed, and hurt. And he literally thinks about you 24/7 so how is he supposed to just stay away from you???

How can they do this to him?

This is psychological torture.

Suika tries to help him. 100%.

Your twin thinks Suika is adorable, but he sent a kid instead of talking to them???

They’re on your twin’s “shit list.” He’s the only one on the list right now.

He tries to show off now hoping that your twin will think he’s cool and let him back near you.

If this was the modern era, he would have stood outside your window with a boombox. Or talked to you Romeo and Juliet style, with the boombox ready. But he doesn’t have a boombox. Or any skill to play a musical instrument. He doesn’t even know what that is.

He starts shouting things loud enough so that you can hear them, but without getting anywhere near you.

Your twin notices his persistence, and the way he looks at you, and eventually lets up.

Hyoga Akatsuki:

Your twin immediately heard about what he did.

He’s banned from your eyesight, the ground you walk on, the air you breathe.

They threaten him, and he smiles. They’re pissed, because how can he care so little?

Your twin has GUTS for doing anything about this man.

He keeps his distance at first, honestly just not thinking it’s worth it.

But admittedly, he’s more attached to you than he says he is.

They start to notice him sneaking around at night, when he thinks they’re not looking, just to see you.

Though they think about going off on him, they don’t. They just watch from a distance, ready to attack him if they need to. They’re not afraid of him. (They probably should be but they fear NOTHING)

They notice he doesn’t do anything. Often times he’ll just sit there, and the two of you exchange a few words. Clearly just happy to be together.

And they realize he’s got a soft spot for you.

He’s a cold man, usually his exchanges have malicious intent, but your twin is smart enough to notice that he doesn’t have any malicious intent here.

He gains nothing from these actions. Well he does, but not an upper hand. Just a warm feeling.

Likely they’ll just walk by the two of you and wave, continuing walking, and that’s how they’ll let him know he’s off the hook.

They keep an eye out though, for him in general. Because even if it’s clear he’s smitten with you, he’s still a concerning man.

[shima-draws]

I can’t speak for Scarlet players since I haven’t played it yet but at least in Violet. I feel like the Paradox Pokemon from Violet are more…terrifying? Because in Scarlet they’re from the past, they’re just a little more beastly and wild, they’re from an era that’s already happened so it’s been recorded. There’s at least some assumption as to what life was like back then, what Pokemon were like. And we KNOW what they become in the present day, the sorts of Pokemon they naturally evolve into over the centuries. But when you look at Violet’s Paradox Pokemon…they’re from the future. An era yet to be, something unpredictable, something unseen. And looking at the Pokemon themselves—they’re all machines. Robots, made of chrome and mechanical parts, not entirely “living” beings anymore. And that fucking terrifies me. What happens in that distant future that makes it so all Pokemon look like this? Do Pokemon cease to exist in that time, so humans turned to the next best option, that being a replica of Pokemon? Or did something so awful happen to humanity that Pokemon were forced to evolve into machines just to survive??

I’m not saying Scarlet’s concept of Paradox Pokemon isn’t scary, because looking at it, it definitely has a theme of “wild, untamed and unknown eldritch creatures” which is also pretty horrifying. But obviously things were all rougher and tougher back then, and as people evolved and humanity evolved, so did Pokemon, so they were tamed by humans over time. But the FUTURE Paradox Pokemon…what the fuck happened. Why do they look like that. Why are they naturally violent creatures, if they were made by humans. It feels much more jarring to be walking around in Area Zero seeing regular Pokemon and then robots roaming around along side them rather than Pokemon and some cooler, rougher looking Pokemon. Am I making sense. Lol

[causticbicaudate]

I had a dream a few nights ago where I was investigating missing persons cases and uncovered a transhumanist cult headed by some douchecanoe I've unaffectionately named Elon Husk who wanted to evolve humankind past their lame meat mechs and transition them to synthetic bodies

Issue was, they found out that they couldn't transfer consciousnesses into AI. Next best thing was to use a brain. But in order for the mechs to work properly, they needed more than just the brain intact. The entire spinal cord needed to also be present

So they obviously needed a specialist to accomplish such a thing. Main issue there was that said specialist they hired originally as a consultant wasn't actually interested in going back to mutilate people so he had to be "convinced" to help them (which I’m assuming this was taking place post-PN2)

My main goal was to save a kid who was captured by this awful transhumanist group; I ended up failing my mission because Husk unveiled that the kid had been scraped and packed down into a robot body to a whole TV audience and there was nothing I could do about it. I tried to find an exit, immediately found the operating suite, and then got caught by an extremely irate and aggressive Loboto who blindsided me and pinned me to his operating table with a threat to lobotomize me if I didn’t comply

Instead of sticking around to get my brain shoved into a metal body, I shook myself awake

But I was really struck by Loboto's extra terrifying appearance and his super messed up new chrome claw hand and it's been haunting me ever since tl;dr I had a spooky dream about a cult who thought human bodies were lame and also Loboto was there

[missrosegold]

Okay okay okay so I know I tentatively put out the idea of MMA fighter!Dabi/Touya, BUT -- what about Cyberpunk!Dabi??

Think about it: the LOV is still a terrorist organization, but with cybernetic enhancements - most of them are damn near on the verge of going Cyberpsycho as it is with how much chrome they're packing.

Their fire fights with the NCPD/Militech and Arasaka are legendary and brutal; no one leaves unscathed, and even the rest of the gangs that terrorize Night City give them a wide birth - least they get pulled into a turf war with them.

Poor little you is just trying to get home after a particularly long day at your job (your hours are shit and the pay is arguably worse), and you find yourself running for cover as a gang fight breaks out between the LOV and Maelstrom.

One thing leads to another, and suddenly you find yourself looking up at a white haired man - more chrome then flesh - learing down at you with a grin so terrifying, you almost think he's gone full psycho, had hd not made any move to snap your neck.

Giving him a quick scan, you can see that he has a cybernetic arm that spits out blue hell fire, and mechanically enhanced eyes so insanely blue it's a new shade to you completely, amoung a plethora of other enhancements that make you question how he isn't a fully fledged Cyberpsycho.

You know who he is, everybody in Night City knows of the white haired pyromaniac with specialty fire resistant implants, and of how dangerous he is.

It's Dabi from the LOV. You're in trouble now.

[rebelichor]

@enokvirkow | X

The world started to stabalise around her. It wasn’t just fuzzy figments faded into dark, the room began to fill in with solid colour — what little it had to offer, clinical whites and steels. As her breathing began to slow from her deep, desperate gasps, she seemed to take in more... especially the unknown figure.

Brown eyes locked onto them. Their eyes narrowed on her. It was a stare down between them.

Their hands raised in surrender and she set her jaw. She knew she couldn’t let them see how terrified she was. Never mind her wild display had already given that much away.

Then they — he — dared to utter the most heinous lie.

When he called himself Enok she growled out with her teeth bared. “The fuck you are, chrome dome!” As quickly as she spat out those words in anger, she deflated again. Almost as though she were just some scared kid cowering.

Because the last thing in the world she expected was for her voice to not be her own. It was like a stranger had spoken for, but she had full control. “What... the fuck...”

She recoiled from his approach as much as she could. Her legs, finally cooperating, curled to one side as she shrunk back against the doorframe. He tried to make himself look harmless. But he had already lied to her, and she was a Cyberpunk, she recognised the chrome in his arms. He could slice her up to ribbons.

Her hand reached to feel her own arms. Bare. No monowire. She was like some fucking virgin and she reached up to brush her fingertips over her chip slot. Absolutely fucking nothing. It was like she had been stripped completely.

... but she still had a memory. It ebbed back to her. She had been in this place once. Where someone asked her name, and then she was plunged back into the dark nothing...

“I’m not telling you shit. Fuck you, fuck your little games!” The longer Ariadne gave him nothing... the more time Enok had to come be this asshole’s reaper.

[dark-elf-writes]

Reborn is totally right about Tsuna being just like Nana in attracting dangerous people by being nice

I can totally see him ending up with Mukuro as a friend because he fed him, like, once and he never left

Oh absolutely. It comes to him as easily as breathing and would probably be more of an issue if the incredibly dangerous people he attracted weren’t also next level protective

Mukuro is definitely the terrifying upperclassman that Tsuna offered a snack to one (1) time and earned his undying loyalty. He is very put out that he wasn’t asked to be Tsuna’s fake boyfriend despite having a weird “our relationship can’t be defined by mere words without limiting it in a way that inherently does a disservice to what we are to each other” situation with Chrome (who tbh also would have offered to fake date Tsuna but Iemitsu probably would have liked her so she wasn’t a good option).