#The (Small) Workshop Project (Part 5) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

monstersdownthepath · 9 months ago

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Homebrew Horror: Caligine, the Sweltering Saint

(Art by @fishfacedterror!)

The twisted, self-described "Saint of Spices and Suffering" known as Caligine has numerous other titles with varying levels of detail and alliteration, is one of the youngest and most obscure of the shadowy demigods known as the Velstrac Demagogues. As such, his cult is quite small, but it grows every day as it draws in eccentric spice aficionados, brave gourmands, and all manner of uncommon men with tastes and habits bordering (or surpassing) the inhumane. Whether they wish to experience entirely new forms of suffering or simply test their tolerance, the "Trials of St. Caligine" call to all kinds.

Because Caligine prefers to experiment on the willing rather than the unwilling (if only because the willing are more likely to appreciate the molecular gastronomy at play), he is among the most peaceful of all the Demagogues in relation to his interactions with mortal life, going so far as to place his personal workshop just a three days' walk from Shadow Absalom and encourage patronage and trade with its citizens for exotic ingredients he would otherwise not have access to... but do not confuse 'peaceful' with 'harmless,' and do not believe 'prefers' means 'will only.' Anyone who disrupts his experiments is very likely to become a part of them, and the internal excruciations he delights in causing are a far different torture the common flesh-flaying and bone-breaking of most velstrac, a fact on its own which draws fiends from all over to experience them, fiends which have FAR fewer qualms disappearing Caligine's clientele for their own hideous projects.

While most of the fatalities he causes are the results of his gastric atrocities, Caligine relishes the occasional combat, both to make use of the runoff of his many experiments (it's still good for something) and to relieve the tedium that comes with waiting for endless vats of ingredients to boil down into something worthwhile. Despite his primary occupation as both a chef and a chemist, he is a terrifying and resilient combatant regardless of the range one fights him at, either hacking his foes apart with his enchanted cleaver and breaking their bones with his wretched tongue up close, or hurling truly impressive amounts of caustic explosives at more distant foes.

Despite his ferocity in battle, the Saint is willing to live up to his title in his own bizarre ways. An offering of especially rare or exotic ingredients or powerful, unique potions and poisons may see him pausing his assault long enough for one to reason with him. He may even bargain with those he was just trying to kill to get his hands on something he's never seen before (a challenge in and of itself!), and honors all promises he makes to the best of his abilities with very little litigious twisting, something which may change as he ages. He has been known to even provide healing to victims he's butchered or slain, though his prices for doing so always include submitting to his gastronomic experiments, something which has made many a victim wish they had stayed dead.

Saint Caligine CR 27

Lawful Evil Large Outsider (Evil, Extraplanar, Kyton, Lawful)

Init: +14; Senses: Darkvision 60ft, Keen Scent, See in Darkness; Perception +29

------ Defense ------

AC 44, touch 24, flat-footed 29 (+14 Dex, +1 dodge, +20 natural, -1 size)

HP 740 (34d10+544) Regeneration 30 (Deific and Mythic)

Fort +35 Ref +24 Will +24

Defensive abilities Mithridatism; DR 20/Epic, good, and silver; Immune Charm and compulsion effects, cold, fear effects, petrification, sleep; Resist Acid 30, Electricity 20, Fire 30; SR 38

------ Offense ------

Speed 40ft, climb 40ft

Melee Cleaver of Caligine +45/+40/+35/+30 (1d8+12 plus 1d6 Acid and 1d6 Fire/19-20/x3), claw +38 (1d8+5), tongue +41 (2d6+9 plus 1d10 Acid or Fire plus grab), OR two claws +41 (1d8+9), tongue +41 (2d6+9 plus 1d10 Acid or Fire plus grab)

Ranged Bomb +48/+43/+38/+33 (10d6+8 Acid or Fire)

Space 10ft; Reach 10ft (15ft with tongue)

Special Attacks Coated Tongue, constrict (2d6+14 plus 1d10 Acid or Fire), Ring of Telekinesis (DC 22/CMB +41), Unnerving Gaze (60ft, DC 34)

Infusions Prepared (CL 20; Concentration +28)

1st- Abjuring Step x2, Anticipate Peril x2, Expeditious Retreat, Long Arm, Shield 2nd- Barkskin, Blur x2, Touch Injection, Twisted Innards, Vomit Swarm x2 3rd- Fly, Haste, Heroism, Nauseating Trail x2 (DC 21), Toxic Blood (DC 21), Thorn Body 4th- Arcane Eye, Detonate x2 (DC 21), Fire Shield, Greater Invisibility x2, Spell Immunity 5th- Delayed Consumption x3, Grand Destiny, Overland Flight, Resurgent Transformation 6th-Caging Bomb Admixture, Heal x2, Mislead x2 (DC 24), Walk Through Space

Spell-like Abilities (CL 34; Concentration +41)

Constant--Discern Lies, Freedom of Movement, True Seeing At-will--Dispel Magic, Plane Shift (self and willing targets only), Teleport (self and willing targets only) 7/day--Acidic Spray (DC 22), Beguiling Gift (DC 18), Contagious Flame (DC 24), Tongues 5/day--Caustic Eruption (DC 24), Overwhelming Poison, Wall of Fire (DC 21) 3/day--Quickened Fireball (DC 24), Incendiary Cloud (DC 25) Transmute Blood to Acid (DC 26)

------ Statistics ------

Str 28 Dex 38 Con 42 Int 27 Wis 20 Cha 25 Base Atk: +34; CMB +44; CMD 68

Feats Brew Potion, Cleave, Close-Quarters Thrower (Bombs), Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Wondrous Item, Dodge, Improved Critical (Handaxe), Great Cleave, Multiattack, Point-Black Shot, Precise Shot, Power Attack, Rapid Shot, Splash Weapon Mastery, Throw Anything, Two-Weapon Fighting, Weapon Focus (Bombs)

Skills Acrobatics +24, Appraise +38, Bluff +15, Climb +22, Craft (Alchemy) +55, Diplomacy +22, Disable Device +24, Escape Artist +24, Knowledge (Arcana) +38, Knowledge (Dungeoneering) +38, Knowledge (Engineering) +28, Knowledge (Geography) +25, Knowledge (Local) +23, Knowledge (Nature) +45, Knowledge (the Planes) +31, Perception +29, Profession (Chef) +54, Sense Motive +28, Sleight of Hand +24, Spellcraft +45, Survival +25, Use Magic Device +37 Racial Modifiers: +12 to Craft (Alchemy) and Profession (Chef) checks.

Languages Abyssal, Aklo, Celestial, Common, Draconic, Ignan, Infernal, Shadowtongue; telepathy 100 ft.

SQ Alchemist Abilities, Crucible

------ Ecology ------ Environment any (Plane of Shadow) Organization Solitary (unique) Treasure Triple (Cleaver of Caligine (a +3 Flaming Burst and Corrosive Burst Handaxe), Ring of Telekinesis, Saint's Spice Bag (a Handy Haversack with three times the normal storage capacity), 1d8+4 random potions levels 1 to 3, 1d3 potions levels 4 to 6)

------

Combat: On any given day, Caligine always has 1d4+3 generically useful spells ready via Delayed Consumption, such as Death Ward, Haste, Cure Critical Wounds, Protection From Energy, and always at least one instance of Greater Invisibility, invoking them the instant they're needed. Caligine begins most fights with Greater Invisibility, then using the granted breathing room to tailor himself to his enemy's apparent might with whatever combination of extracts he feels will give him an advantage. His first order of business in any fight is restraining the hardiest-looking opponent with his tongue to suppress any resistances they may have before striking them with his more debilitating spell-likes such as Transmute Blood to Acid. As a pain fanatic, he doesn't care if he catches himself in the area of his own spells or if he grapples a creature that harms him to touch. He will use any poisons he has access to as early and often as possible, on both his enemies and himself. If his opponents prove particularly vulnerable to poison, he will often teleport away just long enough to craft some especially debilitating ones, bless them with Overwhelming Poison, and teleport back to continue. He utilizes his bombs primarily against foes who keep out of his reach, but will gladly use them against much closer enemies if they group together.

Morale: The Sweltering Saint rarely fights to the death. If brought to below 50 health, he will often concede to his foes' might and congratulate them on an excellent battle, especially if his enemies used Acid or Fire damage or poisons on him. He will attempt to placate/reward them with an offering of powerful potions and, perhaps, more alchemical items at his disposal. If his enemies reject his surrender, he will teleport or shift away, or simply flee with Expeditious Retreat. If he cannot, only then does he fight to the death.

------ Special Abilities ------

Alchemist Abilities (Ex): Caligine has several abilities similar to those from the Alchemist class:

He can can prepare and use extracts as if he were a 20th level Alchemist with the Infusion Discovery. He knows all Alchemist formulae; the above list is his most common selection if he anticipates hostility.

He has the Bomb ability of a 20th level Alchemist with the Fast Bombs Discovery, capable of swiftly hurling caustic chemicals which deal either Fire or Acid damage (Reflex DC 28 dodges the splash damage). He adds his Intelligence modifier to his bomb damage, as well as damage done with other alchemical splash weapons. His bombs have a range increment of 40ft, and he can create 42 bombs each day.

He can create items with incredible swiftness, crafting any alchemical item or poison in a single full-round action and most potions (see Crucible, below) in just 1 hour, provided he succeeds the Craft (Alchemy) check and has access to the materials to do so (he is always assumed to have the materials on-hand so long as he has his gear).

He can apply a poison or oil to a weapon as an immediate action. This includes his own natural weapons, which exposes him to any poison he uses, but see Mithridatism below.

Coated Tongue (Ex): Caligine's tongue is frighteningly dexterous, uncannily strong, and is coated with countless chemicals with deleterious effects on anything touching it. It is always a primary natural attack, and he can grapple and constrict a creature with his tongue without gaining the grappled condition himself. A creature grappled by his tongue has any Fire or Acid Resistance and/or Immunity they possess suppressed while they're grappled, and for 1d4+1 rounds after the grapple ends.

Crucible (Su): Caligine's mastery of chemistry allows him to perform feats that many consider impossible: He can have multiple Delayed Consumption effects in place at the same time. In addition, he can craft potions of spells up to 6th level instead of 3rd. However, a 4th level potion takes one day to create, a 5th level spell takes two days, and a 6th level spell takes three.

Mithridatism (Ex): Caligine is not immune to poisons, but most poisons have an effect on his physiology that is far outside the norm. Whenever he would take ability score damage or drain from a poison, instead he gains a +2 alchemical bonus to his attack and damage rolls, as well as ability checks and skill checks for 1 round. He gains this bonus for each different poison affecting him, and the bonuses stack. In addition, Caligine recovers from ability score damage at a rate of 1 per minute, and ability score drain at a rate of 1 per hour.

Unnerving Gaze (Ex): Any creature that succumbs to Caligine's unnerving gaze becomes suicidally convinced that they can survive his trials, taking a -10 penalty to the next saving throw they make against one of his spell-like abilities or a -10 penalty to their AC against the next alchemical bomb attack he makes against them.

#pathfinder #Homebrew Horror #original concepts

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ragana62 · 1 month ago

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Homeslice! What are you Beetress headcanons?

Salutations new chum!

I have way too many, pretty sure Tumblr might actually institute a post character limit on me if I tried listing them all. But. I will list many.

1: I’m a die hard Autistic Wiress truther (even if I will also accept the SOTR version of events, because she’s still clearly autistic and it’s clear that whatever other effects the torture might have had it might just be a little easier for her to get overstimulated and shut down after it which is fair. When I have chronic pain flare ups, I’m absolutely way easier to push from functional to ‘I’m not saying anything, if you touch me I will literally lose my shit because I can’t have literally any additional sensory input right now or it will be a problem’). This isn’t fully beetress but it is 100% how I view her so it’s an important starting off point.

2: To that point, Wiress and Johanna are actually friends. Beetee is the only person who gets it (mostly because he’s the only person who recognizes half of the things they say to one another that everyone else is reading as insults as jokes, despite the fact they say all of them with a completely straight face and deadpan tone. The Nuts nickname isn’t an insult, it’s an inside joke (I’ve actually got a one shot fic planned for that bit of headcanon tbh)).

3: It comes up in Hum, but I don’t think Wiress is the only one who has a hard time finishing sentences/thoughts. I think it’s very much a both of them thing, where they’re just so used to not having to because they work together more often than not so they know that ‘can you’ with a certain gesture in a certain direction means ‘please hand me the 3/8 inch wrench from over there, I can’t find mine right now and I can’t set this down or the whole mechanism will fall apart’.

3.5: I also think they’re both just kind of the sort of people where they get very caught up in ideas and then the second the inspiration goes away, they drop them, so they’re very much in the habit of doing similarly with half abandoned projects they each have. It’s why they actually share more patents than they have individually. Of course a lot of people who bought into the ‘Wiress is crazy’ narrative think it’s because she’s just his assistant at this point, but it genuinely is that they go back and forth in terms of ‘oh I had this idea, drew up some drafts for it, started working on a prototype, realized I didn’t have that one specific part I needed, and then forgot it for six months’ vs. ‘I found the drafts and vague start of that prototype in a drawer in the workshop while looking for something else and liked it so I just finished it up, here are my notes on what I tweaked to improve it somewhat’.

4: Pure fluff one: Beetee likes being the small spoon. Which is great, because it means Wiress can just kind of roll away if it gets too hot or she’s getting touched out or whatever else. It’s just comforting for him, and he knows it’s easier for her and at the end of the day he’s just a bit of a cuddler so he’s not going to say no to cuddling in a way that works better for her.

5: They have no mirrors in their house. Any mirrors that they do have because the Victor’s Village came pretty standard built as is are covered. Wiress may not have completely lost her mind in her games like some of the others, but mirrors still freak her out sometimes if she’s in the wrong headspace when she catches her reflection in one. It actually contributes to their images as ‘absentminded/scattered genius’ types because unless their stylists insist on the matter, they’re not spending any time at all fixing their hair/checking to see how their outfit looks in the mirror before going out, it’s just about functionality.

6: Similarly, Beetee hates thunderstorms. To the point where even heat lightening or the sound of thunder in the distance is enough to set his anxiety off. If there’s a storm, he can’t be in a room with windows, because more than hearing it, it’s the sight of the lightening. So on nights when there is a storm, they usually just stay up and hunker down in their workshop together, because it’s the one room that has absolutely no windows and isn’t a bathroom, and they can just tune it out together.

7: They never had kids of their own, but they did functionally (and fully unintentionally) adopt a bunch of local strays. It started with just bringing broken machines they found in shops while out back home to fix because ‘this toaster looked sad’ type logic. By the time it had escalated to Wiress luring in local stray cats during storms because she didn’t want them getting hurt in the flash flooding that was projected and Beetee needed extra cuddles, Mags was already issuing vague warnings that they ought to get spare rooms ready because that’s always how it starts. They didn’t listen. But their house absolutely is the local ‘I need help with my homework or project/I’m hungry and can’t go home for whatever reason/my parents don’t get off their shift at the factory until 8 can I hang out here until then it looks like it might snow/etc.’ house.

8: Beetee made their wedding rings. They look a bit shit compared to the nice Capitol fancy ones some of the other victors have because he’s really not a jeweler by any stretch of the word, but it’s okay. They were always going to be a bit rough on them anyway, and you can’t even tell anymore which scuffs or burn marks were on them originally and which came from getting too close to a soldering gun or the like while working on a project.

9: They both made it out of their games pretty much uninjured. That being said, they have more than enough scars on their hands specifically to give any of the other victors a run for their money. Burns from getting a little clumsy with a blowtorch, scratches from fiddling with unfinished scrap metal, just daily life stuff for them. It’s a bit of a game with the other victors, making up horrifying stories to tell the newest victor as to why they have so many scars, because when they’re all dressed up for mentoring it’s genuinely hard to tell that the rest of their bodies aren’t just as scared as their hands. The current winner is Finnick, who started a rumor that Wiress won her games by wrapping her hands in barbed wire and just punching everyone to death, mostly because the fact he actually convinced someone that that was a believable possibility was genuinely the most surprising thing of all.

10: They both swear like sailors. Like sailors in punk bands in fact. Not even to be edgy or daring or cool like some of the other victors do. They just are both ‘words are meant to be used precisely’ people, and sometimes the right word for a situation is ‘fuck’. It’s actually a problem for their media teams/escorts, because they will fully be halfway through an interview about their latest invention only to realize that the answer they gave Caesar about how they came up with the idea in the first place was ‘it was a real mind fuck, I’ll tell you, but sometimes this shit just comes to you in the weirdest ways’ and their escort is actively bashing his head against the wall off camera because they can’t say that on daytime Capitol TV.

11: On the subject of them being ‘words are meant to be used, language is meant to be precise’ people, Beetee refuses to call Wiress pretty/beautiful/etc on principle. Something that deeply upsets several of her friends and actively almost leads to a group of other victors running off to fight him on her behalf until she elaborated (everyone was a little drunk at the time, all has long since been forgiven). He insists on specificity in complements. It’s always some shit like how ‘her eyes contain the fire of a thousand suns’ when she’s rambling about something she’s passionate about or the like. Alternatively, he has also just walked right up behind her at a Capitol Party and in front of several of their friends said ‘Your style team should know better than to put you in that shade of blue by now if they want the dress to be worn by anything other than the floor’. Finnick did in fact steal that line, despite joining in the general horror everyone else reacted with because ‘wtf Beetee it’s like 5:30 they haven’t even brought out the canapés yet, we aren’t drunk enough for this shit yet’.

#asks answered #beetee latier #wiress #beetee x wiress #hunger games #head canon #hunger games headcanons

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rollo-rolls · 2 years ago

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How To Convert Eyelashes

I was asked to make a tutorial on converting eyelashes. Well, here it is. Dirty, badly explained tutorial by Rollo. I'm assuming you know how to work with required programs, it won't teach you the basics, just a process of converting eyelashes from ts4 to ts3.

Requirements:

S4Studio

s3pe

TSR Workshop

Sims 3 Pack Multi-Extracter

These files (full credit goes to @gruesim)

Graphical program that works with .dds files

Let's go:

Open the desired lashes in S4Studio. Export diffuse of the ones you want to convert (you only need the black ones). You can also export the thumbnail. Close the program.

2. Unzip the folder that you downloaded from this tutorial. You will find a .dds files called "sclub eyelash". Open it up in the graphical program. Make a black layer above it and hide it for now.

3. Now open up your ts4 eyelashes file. Start from the upper eyelash, crop it and go to the sclub eyelash.

4. Paste it, click ctrl+i, it will make ts4 eyelash white.

5. This is the worst part. You have to make the ts4 eyelash fit to the sclub one as close as possible. Use every method possible!

6. Unhide the black layer and see if your eyelash look alright. It may need some sharpening.

7. Now crop the bottom eyelash and follow the exact same steps as for the upper eyelash.

8. It should look more or less like this. Bottom eyelashes are always harder to adjust and may need even more sharpening.

9. Merge your upper and bottom eyelashes, duplicate the layer. Click ctrl+a, ctrl+t, then right mouse button and choose "Flip Horizontal".

10. Voila. You should have a complete set of your new shiny eyelashes! Save them as .dds. You can close the program. We're moving to TSR Workshop.

11. New Project -> New Import. Import Eyelashes AFBase from the downloaded folder.

12. Name your project, name your file and click "Next".

13. You should see this. Go to Texture tab and click "Edit" on the Transparency Map.

14. Import your eyelashes and click "Yes" when asked.

15. You should see your lashes, yay! But this is TSRW, they won't look exactly the same in game, as they look here. If you want a set of eyelashes, add more presets.

16. Now this is important. If you want to see your eyelashes in Accessories, go to Project tab, Clothing Type and change it from eyeliner to glasses. You also have to do this if you have more than one preset in one file. They won't show up in Eyeliner section. If you want to have set of eyelashes in Eyeliner category, you have to make each preset into seperate file. Also, eyelashes are recolorable ONLY in Accessories section. Don't forget to check Categories section to see which outfit has the eyelashes available.

17. Now you're ready to export your file! Export -> To Sims3Pack. Use the Sims 3 Pack Multi-Extracter to convert your sims3pack to package file. We're moving to s3pe.

18. THESE STEPS ARE ESSENTIAL! Open up your shiny new package in s3pe. Click on the GEOM with the right mouse button.

19. Click Replace and choose AUID.simgeom from the downloaded folder. AUID is for adults, CUID for kids and PUID for toddlers. We have one more step to do.

20. Now click on the CASP normally (left mouse button) and click Grid on the bottom of the program.

21. A small pop up window appears. Scroll to the very bottom and find a line called OverlayPriority.

22. Change the 8 to 2. This will make eyelashes not being visible through hair that's covering eyes.

23. Save your package. You're ready to test your converted eyelashes in game!

Here they are. Nothing fancy, it was a quick conversion :D They're also compatible with S-Club eyelash sliders ^^

Btw, you don't necessarily have to convert both upper and bottom eyelashes. You can have upper or bottom only. Play with the lenght, not all eyelashes have to be very long. Convert it for males, kids, toddlers. You just have to remember to change the options in TSRW and replace the correct .simgeom file in s3pe. There is a lot of possibilities and you'll probably get better in this than me :D

Good luck! ♥

#s3cc #ts3 tutorial #ts3 #rollo's tutorials

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6azia · 5 months ago

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Research | Silco x m!reader

—summary. Y/N goes back to Viktor

—content warning. Shimmer

—word count. 3,2k

—azia‘s notes. Oh gosh I'm soo bad in summaries

Part 3↞ ↠Part 5 𝔐𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔩𝔦𝔰𝔱 𝕾𝖍𝖎𝖒𝖒𝖊𝖗'𝖘 𝕷𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙

The lab was quiet again, save for the faint bubbling of a few beakers and the scratch of Singed's pen as he recorded observations in his journal. Silco stood by the doorway, his cigar now extinguished, but the scent of burnt tobacco lingered in the air. His sharp eyes flicked toward the far corner of the lab, where Y/N was wiping down his workstation. Jinx had long since wandered off, content to tinker with her latest project.

Silco stepped closer to Singed, his voice low and deliberate. "Tell me about him. Y/N. Where did you find him?"

Singed paused mid-sentence, his pen hovering over the page. He tilted his head slightly, as though considering how much to share. "He came to me," he said finally, his voice calm and measured. "Desperate, like so many others in Zaun. Smart, though. He learns quickly, faster than most."

"And his past?" Silco pressed, his tone edged with impatience. "What does he want?"

Singed set his pen down and looked up at Silco, his expression unreadable behind his mask. "I don't pry into the pasts of those who come to me, Silco. It's irrelevant. What matters is what they can do now."

Silco's jaw tightened. He didn't like vague answers. "And what can he do, beyond meddling with shimmer?"

"A great deal," Singed replied cryptically. "He has potential, though his motivations are his own."

Silco narrowed his eyes, dissatisfied. His instincts told him Y/N was hiding something, but Singed wasn't the type to betray confidences easily. With a curt nod, Silco turned away, his thoughts racing.

Later that evening, Jinx was clinging to Y/N like a shadow, her arms wrapped tightly around his as they sat in the workshop. "Don't go to Piltover, Y/N," she whined, her voice muffled as she pressed her face against his shoulder. "It's boring up there! And those fancy topsiders don't deserve you."

Y/N chuckled softly, the sound strained as if his mind were elsewhere. "It's just for a bit, Jinx. I need to... handle some things."

She shook her head violently, tightening her grip. "Nope! You're staying here with me! We can work on my bomb together. You promised to help me make it work."

"I will," Y/N said, his voice soft but firm. He gently pried her arms off him and crouched down to her level, looking into her wide, pleading eyes. "As soon as I'm back, we'll finish it together, okay? First working bomb, I promise."

Jinx's pout melted into a bright grin. "You'd better! If you're lying, I'll blow up your lab." She giggled and skipped off, already scheming what modifications to make to her invention.

Y/N watched her go, his smile fading as he exhaled deeply. He grabbed his bag and headed for the door, his movements deliberate but heavy with a kind of weariness.

The trek to Piltover was uneventful, though Y/N couldn't shake the weight of Silco's gaze from earlier. He lit another cigarette, the glow of the ember lighting up his face in the dark. The bitter smoke filled his lungs, grounding him as his thoughts spiraled.

He hates me now, Y/N thought bitterly, flicking ash into the wind. I can feel it. He doesn't trust me, and he probably never will.

And yet... There was something about Silco that intrigued him. Maybe it was the intensity of his presence, the way his sharp words cut to the core of a person. Or maybe it was the twisted sense of loyalty Silco inspired, the same loyalty that made Jinx adore him so much. Y/N didn't want to understand it—didn't want to admit that some part of him almost admired the man.

He took another drag, exhaling smoke into the cool night air. Piltover's glittering skyline came into view, the stark contrast to Zaun never failing to make his chest tighten. But tonight, it wasn't Piltover itself that occupied his thoughts.

It was Viktor.

The small vial of shimmer in Y/N's pocket felt heavier than it should have, its purpose clear in his mind. He didn't tell Jinx, and he certainly wouldn't tell Silco, but he was here for Viktor. Whatever judgment or disdain Silco had for him didn't matter right now. All that mattered was reaching the one person who might truly understand why he did what he did.

Y/N snapped out of his thoughts, realizing he was standing just inside Viktor's modest apartment. The space was small but orderly, filled with bookshelves crammed with journals, blueprints, and strange trinkets from his experiments. A faint scent of oil and paper lingered in the air, along with the comforting warmth of a kettle simmering on a small stove. Viktor turned from his desk, his cane resting against the edge, and smiled faintly at the sight of Y/N.

"You're finally here," Viktor said, his voice carrying a hint of teasing. "I was beginning to think the streets of Zaun had swallowed you whole."

Y/N shrugged, setting his satchel down on a nearby chair. "Let's just say I had some... distractions. But I made it."

Viktor gestured toward the seat opposite him at the small dining table. "Come, sit. I've been going through some theories that I think you'll find fascinating."

Y/N settled into the chair as Viktor poured two cups of tea. The table between them was covered with scattered notes and sketches of intricate designs, but what caught Y/N's eye was a diagram showing a series of overlapping spheres, each labeled with equations and annotations.

"What's this?" Y/N asked, picking up one of the papers.

"A thought experiment," Viktor began, his voice laced with quiet enthusiasm. "The multiverse theory. I've been contemplating how every choice we make could lead to entirely different realities—branching off like rivers into an infinite sea of possibilities."

Y/N tilted his head, intrigued. "You're saying there could be other versions of us? Other... worlds?"

Viktor nodded. "Precisely. If the theory holds true, every decision creates a divergence—a new universe born from that choice. Somewhere out there, there may be a version of you who never left Piltover. Or a version of me who..." He trailed off, glancing at his cane before continuing. "... who walks without aid."

Y/N leaned forward, his curiosity growing. "But how would you prove it? The math alone must be impossible, let alone the technology needed to observe another universe."

Viktor's eyes glimmered with determination. "It's a monumental challenge, yes. But not entirely impossible. If we could manipulate quantum particles—the building blocks of reality itself—we might be able to create a connection. A doorway, so to speak."

"And the risks?" Y/N asked, raising an eyebrow. "If you open a door to another universe, how do you ensure it doesn't destroy everything? Or that what's on the other side doesn't come through?"

"That's the delicate part," Viktor admitted, tapping his fingers on the table thoughtfully. "Stability would be the key. It would require precise calculations and energy levels beyond anything we've harnessed before. But imagine the knowledge we could gain. The advances in medicine, technology, even understanding the nature of existence itself."

Y/N smirked faintly. "Let's just hope the other versions of us aren't better at this than we are."

The two laughed softly, the tension of the heavy topic easing. After a moment, Viktor reached for a loaf of bread sitting on the counter. He tore it in half, offering one piece to Y/N.

"It's not much, but it's all I have to share," Viktor said, his tone apologetic.

Y/N took the bread with a grateful nod. "Better than nothing. Besides, it's good to see you're still eating. You forget sometimes when you're caught up in your work."

The two ate in companionable silence for a moment, the simplicity of the meal grounding them after their abstract conversation. When they finished, Viktor rose carefully, gesturing toward a small couch near the window.

"Come," he said. "Let's rest for a bit. My mind is already spinning with possibilities, but I doubt either of us has the energy to theorize further tonight."

Y/N followed him, settling onto the couch as Viktor took the nearby chair. They sat quietly for a moment, the dim glow of the city beyond the window casting soft light into the room.

"You know," Y/N said after a while, his voice low. "Even if there are other versions of us out there, I think this one's not so bad."

Viktor chuckled softly. "Not so bad indeed. Though, I wouldn't mind stealing a bit of luck from one of those other realities."

Y/N leaned back, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. "Luck's overrated. We make do with what we have, right?"

Viktor nodded, his expression thoughtful as they both fell into a comfortable silence, the weight of their shared musings settling into the quiet night.

"Do you have it with you?" Viktor suddenly asked, breaking the wholesome moment with a hesitant voice.

Y/N hesitated, a syringe in his hand trembling slightly as he looked at Viktor. The faint glow of the Shimmer within the vial reflected off Viktor's determined expression. This wasn't just experimentation; this was risk—unknown, uncharted, and potentially deadly.

"You're sure about this?" Y/N asked, his voice low, almost a whisper.

Viktor nodded, his face calm despite the slight tremor in his hands. "We've theorized enough, Y/N. The composition makes sense—at least in principle. If it works..." He trailed off, his gaze flickering to the sketches of the Hexcore scattered across the table. "It could give me what I need. The strength to keep going."

"And if it doesn't?" Y/N countered, his voice sharper than he intended. "We don't know what this will do to you. This isn't some minor serum—it's untested, unstable. It could... it could kill you."

"Or it could give me time," Viktor replied, his voice soft but resolute. "And time is something I don't have in abundance."

Y/N sighed, running a hand through his hair. He knew Viktor wasn't going to back down. The man's resolve was as unyielding as steel, and his desperation to continue his work was palpable. "Fine," Y/N muttered, kneeling down beside him. "But we don't push it past this one dose. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Viktor said, rolling up his pant leg to expose the pale, thin skin of his upper thigh. His muscles were taut, his body tense with anticipation.

Y/N filled the syringe carefully, every movement deliberate. The faint luminescence of the Shimmer seemed to pulse in rhythm with his own heartbeat. "This will hurt," he warned.

Viktor's lips quivered into a wry smile. "Pain and I are well acquainted."

With a deep breath, Y/N positioned the needle and pressed it into Viktor's thigh. The Shimmer flowed into his body with an almost hypnotic glow, disappearing beneath his skin.

At first, there was nothing—just the faint hiss of Viktor exhaling sharply. But then his body convulsed violently, his hands clenching the edges of the couch as a searing, white-hot pain ripped through his leg. His head snapped back, a guttural cry escaping his throat as his muscles seized uncontrollably.

Y/N's eyes widened, panic flashing across his face. "Viktor!" he called, gripping his shoulder. "Stay with me!"

Viktor's hands shot out, one of them clamping onto Y/N's upper arm with a bruising grip. His nails dug into Y/N's skin as his breath came in ragged gasps, his face twisted in agony. The veins in his thigh began to glow faintly purple, the light spreading slowly through his body like cracks in a fragile glass.

"It—burns," Viktor choked out, his voice barely audible over the sound of his labored breathing.

"I know, I know," Y/N murmured, his own voice trembling. He stayed close, his free hand hovering uselessly over Viktor's arm as if he could somehow will the pain away. "It's the Shimmer taking effect. Just breathe through it—it'll pass."

Viktor's grip on Y/N's arm didn't loosen; if anything, it tightened as the convulsions grew more violent. His entire body felt like it was being torn apart and rebuilt simultaneously, the Shimmer coursing through him with a ferocity that left no part of him untouched. Every nerve was on fire, every muscle straining against the overwhelming surge of energy.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the spasms began to subside. Viktor's body slackened, his grip on Y/N's arm loosening as he slumped back against the couch. His chest heaved, each breath ragged and shallow. The glow in his veins dimmed to a faint shimmer, the only evidence of the Shimmer's presence.

Y/N exhaled shakily, rubbing the marks left on his arm. "You're insane," he muttered, though his tone was more relieved than accusatory. "That could've killed you."

Viktor managed a weak chuckle, his head lolling to the side to look at Y/N. "And yet... it didn't." His voice was hoarse, but there was a spark of something in his eyes—determination, perhaps, or maybe triumph.

"How do you feel?" Y/N asked cautiously, his eyes scanning Viktor's face for any signs of distress.

Viktor flexed his fingers slowly, then shifted his leg experimentally. "Stronger," he said after a moment. "But... unsteady. As though my body is unsure what to do with this new energy."

"That's because it doesn't know," Y/N said, his tone still laced with worry. "Your cells are adjusting to the Shimmer. We don't know how long this effect will last—or what it'll do to you in the long run."

Viktor nodded, his expression thoughtful. "But for now... it is enough."

Y/N didn't look convinced, but he said nothing, choosing instead to sit back and observe Viktor carefully. The room was quiet save for their breathing, the faint hum of the Hexcore sketches a distant reminder of the weight of their actions.

Viktor glanced down at his thigh, where the faint shimmer of the injection site still lingered. "Perhaps," he said softly, more to himself than Y/N, "this is the first step toward understanding what the Hexcore could truly achieve."

Y/N didn't respond, his gaze fixed on the faint glow in Viktor's veins. Somewhere deep in his chest, unease began to coil, tightening with every passing moment.

Viktor's breathing slowly evened out as the pain began to ebb, though his body remained tense from the ordeal. Y/N stayed close, kneeling by the couch, his eyes never leaving Viktor's face. There was an exhaustion in Viktor's expression that went deeper than just the Shimmer's effects—an exhaustion borne of years of relentless struggle.

As Viktor's body finally relaxed, Y/N let out a soft sigh. He reached up hesitantly, brushing a strand of damp hair from Viktor's forehead. The small, vulnerable gesture surprised even him, but in that moment, Y/N didn't care. Viktor looked so fragile lying there, his usually sharp, determined features softened by fatigue. It made something tighten in Y/N's chest��an ache he couldn't quite name.

"You push yourself too hard," Y/N whispered, his fingers lingering near Viktor's temple for a moment before pulling back.

Viktor murmured something incoherent, his head lolling to the side as sleep overtook him. Y/N watched him for a moment longer, his expression softening with a mixture of pity and quiet affection. "Stubborn genius," he muttered under his breath, shaking his head fondly.

Realizing Viktor wouldn't be comfortable staying on the couch all night, Y/N carefully slid one arm under Viktor's shoulders and the other beneath his knees. He stood, lifting Viktor with surprising ease despite his own lean frame. Viktor stirred slightly, his head resting against Y/N's shoulder, but he didn't wake.

Y/N carried him to the bedroom, the sound of his own footsteps muffled by the quiet hum of the city outside. The room was small but neatly organized, every surface cluttered with notes, diagrams, and tools. Gently, Y/N laid Viktor down on the bed, adjusting the pillows to make him more comfortable.

As he pulled the blanket over Viktor, Y/N hesitated, his gaze lingering on the scientist's face. Then, with a sigh, he sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned back against the headboard, pulling Viktor close so that his head rested on Y/N's chest. Viktor's body was warm, and Y/N could feel the faint, rhythmic beat of his heart beneath his palm.

"I'm not letting you go," Y/N murmured, his voice barely audible over the sound of Viktor's breathing. He closed his eyes, listening to the steady rhythm of Viktor's heartbeat. It was a comforting sound, one that grounded him in the present and soothed the gnawing anxiety in his mind.

It wasn't long before Y/N felt his own exhaustion creeping in. His eyes grew heavy, and before he knew it, he had drifted off, his arms still wrapped protectively around Viktor.

The soft creak of the apartment door opening went unnoticed by the two sleeping figures. Jayce stepped inside, his brow furrowed as he glanced around the dimly lit space. He had come to check on Viktor, worried after not hearing from him all day, but what he found stopped him in his tracks.

As Jayce approached the bedroom, he saw them: Viktor and Y/N, tangled together on the bed, their expressions peaceful in sleep. Jayce froze, his chest tightening as he took in the scene. For a moment, he simply stood there, unable to look away.

Viktor's head rested against Y/N's chest, and Y/N's arms were wrapped securely around him, their bodies fitting together as though it was the most natural thing in the world. There was an intimacy to the scene that struck Jayce like a physical blow—a closeness he hadn't realized he craved until now.

He clenched his fists at his sides, his jaw tightening as a wave of emotions crashed over him: anger, jealousy, confusion. He and Viktor weren't in a relationship—had never been—but Jayce had always considered their bond special, something unspoken and unique. Seeing Viktor like this, with someone else, made him feel... betrayed.

Jayce took a step back, his mind racing. He wanted to wake Viktor, to demand answers, but as he looked at his partner's peaceful expression, he hesitated. Viktor looked calm—more at ease than Jayce had seen him in weeks. And Y/N... Y/N wasn't a threat. At least, not to Viktor.

With a heavy sigh, Jayce turned and left the room, closing the door softly behind him. Whatever this was, it wasn't his place to interfere. Not now. As much as it hurt, he would let Viktor have this moment—this fleeting reprieve from the struggles they both faced.

Jayce stepped out into the cool night air, his mind a storm of conflicted thoughts. Inside, Y/N and Viktor remained asleep, undisturbed, the faint sound of Viktor's heartbeat a steady reminder of what Y/N was trying so desperately to protect.

#arcane x male reader #arcane silco #jinx arcane #silco x reader #silco x male reader #slow burn

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evan-on-the-internet · 1 year ago

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writing some Manberg/Las Nevadas era Tubbo hcs for @best-vice-evr/@las-nevadas-business because I'm bored

warning; discussions of various types of abuse, alcohol, trauma, subconscious victim blaming (very specific), unhealthy behaviors, and overall a not very healthy situation.

I'll add more if I missed anything, but I think that covers most of it.

1. He sits out in the hallways most nights, waiting for the noise to stop. It's more to confirm that Quackity ended up asleep and resting.

2. Tubbo has a habit of taking on more than he can handle, to try and lighten things for Quackity. It usually works, so he never really stopped.

3. on the nights that Tubbo can't sleep at all, which are a majority of them, he ends up trying to fix up the messes Schlatt leaves behind. It always ends before dawn though, not wanting to risk waking the older ram up.

4. Tubbo knows a lot of medical information to better suit what injuries Quackity has, to ensure that the avian is receiving the proper treatment.

5. The only gift Tubbo received from Schlatt in the Manberg era of things was a locket with a picture of Tommy in his L’Manburg uniform in it. He still wears it around most days.

6. on the nights Tubbo went to visit pogtopia, he would only leave if Quackity came with him. It was more of a safety thing.

7. In the Las Nevadas era of things, Tubbo genuinely believes his experience in the Manberg era wasn't scarring in comparison to what Quackity’s experiences were like.

8. Tubbo likes using the ‘:]’ and ‘:[’ and all its variants like Quackity, but he also uses the emoticons —(⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)— like Schlatt.

9. Tubbo has more of Quackity's genetics and generally takes after Big Q, with the exception of a few things from Schlatt. (Like his Ram traits, and the way he acts when he's overly stressed out.)

10. Tubbo genuinely didn't know what a healthy, stable marriage was meant to look like until he met Ranboo. And as a bonus; he was terrible at hiding that he liked them. He was also awful at hiding that he liked Tommy.

11. Tubbo's a light sleeper, he always has been and always will be. It's just how he is.

12. Tubbo very frequently makes sure that Quackity is intaking a healthy portion of food every day, always setting aside a bit of his own meal to give to Quackity. It eventually ended up in him having disordered eating habits. (He'd do it all over again, because it meant that Quackity actually took care of himself. And that was all he wanted.)

13. Tubbo's known about Quackity's cannibalistic habits since a few nights before the funeral for Schlatt was held. To keep the peace, he never said anything about it — but he's known.

14. Tubbo regularly visits Schlatt's grave, bringing him dried out flowers and small trinkets. He hates what their life was like with Schlatt in Manburg, but a small part of Tubbo misses him. It hurts a bit more every time, but Glatt is making things better.

15. Tubbo is mostly sober, occasionally taking a few sips of something alcoholic. He’s almost always sober any other time though.

16. Tubbo's a bit of a collector, taking trinkets and anything he deems ‘pretty.’ Most trinkets are in his bedroom, but a few are in his workshop too.

17. Speaking of his workshop, Tubbo spends a lot of time in there — mostly because of his projects, but as mentioned in headcanon two, it's also a habit to try and take on more than he can handle.

18. The official cover of the song ‘fries’ from the show Adventure Time is the way Tubbo invisions his relationship with Schlatt. Something more soft and bittersweet, rather than the mistreatment and hurt it actually was.

19. THE ONLY HC I'M WRITING FOR POST–RANBOO’S DEATH: Tubbo planted an entire garden of pretty flowers (mostly alliums and white flowers) after the passing of his beloved partner, and takes Michael to visit the garden every night before bed.

20. Tubbo tended to stay away from Schlatt unless the older was entirely sober, mostly because he wanted Schlatt's attention and he wanted to be positive that it was REAL. Like, Tubbo understood that the loving attention wasn't ever as genuine as it was when Schlatt was entirely and fully sober.

21. Speaking of — Tubbo slowly started to become more and more comfortable around Glatt, until eventually they had a pretty wholesome relationship. Especially since Glatt has shown that he can, and will, act better than Schlatt ever could.

22. whenever Tubbo gets really silly, he acts like a little kid with a ton of stimming (usually flailing his hands, stamping his feet onto the floor like hooves, and doing silly little spins)

23. Tubbo has been taking care of others more than himself since the very first month Schlatt was drunk almost daily. He never really learned to put himself first — he still has a ton of issues with it.

24. Tubbo was in denial of being trans for awhile, not wanting to accept the fact that he was just a bit different. After a long talk with Quackity though, he calmed down, and started to accept it. (My silly boy :[..)

25. Anytime an adult is drunk, mostly Quackity, Wilbur, or Glatt, Tubbo tends to avoid them. Alcohol still makes him uncomfortable for the most part.

26. Tubbo feels most comfortable around Quackity, and always has for the majority of it. Although, he's definitely working his way to being more comfy around Glatt— and he's come to view Wilbur as an honorary parent. He still favours Quackity though.

27. As said in headcanon eleven, Tubbo is a very light sleeper. Anything, even the softest of noises, could wake him up, since he's so familiar with having to be ready for ANYTHING as soon as he wakes up. It's almost impossible for Tubbo to sleep soundly, unless he's asleep in Quackity's nest.

28. Tubbo is very emotionally stunted. He doesn't really take the time to feel his own emotions, but he tries to hold the space in his heart for the people he cares about. He holds as much space in his heart as he can for the people he cares about, but he doesn't really leave any space for himself.

29. Tubbo very frequently forgets to take care of himself, and when he does, it's never for as long as he subconsciously craves. As a bonus, he frequently forgets to take breaks when he's working — since he's never really had the chance to.

30. As said in headcanon eighteen, there are two songs I associate with Manburg hornsduo. The official cover of the song ‘fries’ from the show Adventure Time, but also Vampire Empire (the demo & the full version) by Big Thief.

AS OF NOW THIS IS CLOSED!!! MOSTLY BC I DON'T HAVE ANY MOTIVATION >_<

If I do end up getting more ideas, this will be updated :)

#c!tubbo #ctubbo #c!quackity #cquackity #c!schlatt #cschlatt #Manberg #Mangerg era #pogtopia #pogtopia era #Las Nevadas #Las Nevadas era #dsmp #dream smp #I'm not very skilled at hcs My apologies #:((

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eccentric-nucleus · 3 months ago

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anyway i've been rotating game mechanics in my head for a while and i think i'm slowly approaching a gameplay loop that could be engaging and mechanically robust and thematically appropriate to the kind of game i want to make

(i've been watching youtube videos of so many, like, shallow incremental/'roguelite' games that just have 1. a simple minigame with some level of mechanical nuance that you play one round at a time, 2. an upgrade tree you buy stuff from between rounds. sometimes there is also 3., a ftl-, slay-the-spire-, peglin-, style progression graph that you move along. very simple game concept, very mechanically robust, but not really doing much else. it's a perfectly fine style of game but if anything it's informing my gamedev desires by negation b/c i don't want to do anything at all like that)

anyway this is shaping up to be an exploration-dominant game where the main gameplay loop looks like, 1. wander the desert for resources, 2. find a big ruin or artifact that needs complex analysis or repair, 3. return to town to Collect Your Crew and head to the scavenge site, 4. repair the thing and/or haul it back to town. repeat with variations. this might end up kind of taking some inspiration from death stranding via way of the involved walking and carrying mechanics. we'll see about that part. but there's some mechanical hooks for actions -- navigation; carrying capacity; tools and knowledge needed for repair; npc relationship values for willingness-to-work-with-you; anything about 'upgrading' your workshop, the town, your ways of travel, etc -- and there's enough crunchy numbers involved so that you can just have tools that are like "+1 to leveraging" or w/e. there's actually a little incremental game that i played a while back that i'd want to take some things from, like, oh yeah here's tools for dealing with electronics. here's tools for dealing with very small things. here's tools for dealing with very large things. just mush all that into a pot and hope something 'fun' and 'interesting' eventually emerges from it

also now there would be a mechanical benefit to being in a relationship w/ brulvundojn, namely, he's willing to haul all your scavenged junk around sometimes. that's very funny.

a lot of my gamedev stuff has been pretty aimless b/c i never really have like... a big project i really want to work on? it's all just "well i might as well work on this", or mostly-aimless tech noodling. committing to a big project is scary b/c it's totally possible to spend like 5 years working on a game, finally post it, and get absolutely zero response.

idk if i'm really ready, emotionally, and also practically, to try to really dig in to one big project that i'm putting some hopes and dreams on, but it is a little reassuring now to have, you know, an actual concept for the primary mechanical loop of the game. that's kind of a big piece

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whentherewerebicycles · 5 months ago

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phew today was kind of tough. fortunately work dynamics were blissfully undramatic apart from my general bleh feelings about having to leave my beautiful well-lit office with my work bestie for the cold dark storage closet office. but whatever, it is what it is and i found some promising colorful rugs on facebook marketplace that i think might work in that space. also people often work downstairs on the sofas so i can always set up camp there if/when i need to escape my depressing new accommodations lol. and i did get a lot done, largely because i invented various projects for myself and set about industriously completing them. i guess the hard part was just that man i do not see my kid at all mon-wed. he wakes up around 7 and we have to leave around 7:40, and i have to spend a good chunk of that time rushing around getting ready. then i pick him up around 4:45/5ish and rush home so we can walk the dogs before it's pitch black out, so i'm "with" him but not really able to interact with him beyond talking to him until we get home around 5:30. we got some good playtime in from 5:30-6 tonight because i decided to do dinner afterwards, but then he's so tired from daycare he starts getting crabby and begging to go to sleep by 6:15, and when i've pushed him to try to stay awake a bit longer he ends up having a huge meltdown. idk it just sucks to really only get ~30 min of quality face-to-face time with him where i have no other pressing demands on my time/attention.

bleh. i am trying to remind myself that like ok i knew mon-wed was going to totally suck, and i was right, but now it's over for the week. thurs/fri i still have meetings and stuff, but i can drop him off closer to 8:30 on thurs and 9 on fri, and then i can pick him up a bit earlier and have all that time from the commute back. and then sat/sun he's mine all day apart from a few small tutoring obligations. it's fine. i think i also might need to just get comfortable with setting much firmer boundaries around my remote days... our office culture is very much like, your WFH days are WFH unless we need you to come in for an event! so like next week someone signed me up to run a workshop on thurs so i'll have to go into campus that day. but i put my foot down about this friday event and was just like nope, sorry, can't do it. i think i can also talk with my direct report and just be open with her about like... i want to protect my time as best i can for family reasons, so let's just keep that in mind when we say yes to stuff, and i will do my best to advocate for your WFH days to be fully WFH too. and i think she will be totally on board with that. i also am already committing myself to saying Absolutely Not to events that go later than 4:30, and have blocked off my calendar so people can't put meetings on there after 4. nope! nope. and i have email on my phone (so i can access my calendar) but not teams, and i've made a promise to myself to never reply to a work email on my phone (because if i'm reading email on my phone instead of my laptop i'm working at a time i shouldn't be working). blahhhh okay. i can do this! it's just that i thought it would be A Lot and it turns out i was right... it is indeed A Lot.

#parenting tag #this too shall pass #i also just gave myself total grace mon-wed for the house descending into chaos #thurs-sun will be for laundry and cooking and tidying

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coquettemouse · 9 months ago

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Ykw, I like your account and your art! *gives you headcanons on my Leo is the genius and madness trope idea*

—

1. Unintended Harm: Leo’s inventions are incredible, but sometimes they go awry, causing unintended harm or chaos. Despite his good intentions, a small miscalculation can lead to explosions or malfunctions. Each mistake chips away at Leo’s confidence, and he becomes more withdrawn, constantly second-guessing himself and his abilities. His fear of hurting others with his genius makes him hesitant to fully unleash his creative potential.

2. Dreams Turned Nightmares: Leo’s sleep is often filled with vivid, strange dreams that blur the lines between reality and his creative mind. In these dreams, his inventions come to life, some turning against him. He wakes up drenched in sweat, unable to shake the feeling that his mind is betraying him, as if his genius is pushing him toward madness even in his sleep.

3. Constant Restlessness: Leo is rarely ever still. His hands are always fidgeting—whether he’s tinkering with gadgets or just doodling designs on scraps of paper. His mind races faster than his body can keep up, and he often feels like he’s running out of time, even though there’s no real deadline. This restlessness borders on mania, leaving him exhausted but unable to stop moving.

4. Disorganized Genius: Leo’s workshop and workspace are a chaotic mess of tools, parts, and blueprints, yet he knows exactly where everything is. To the outside world, it looks like complete disarray, but in Leo’s mind, there’s a method to the madness. His friends, especially Jason, are often baffled by how he can navigate such a cluttered space, but Leo thrives in it—his environment mirrors the chaos of his thoughts.

5. Talking in His Sleep: On the rare occasions when Leo does manage to get some sleep, he talks—sometimes muttering blueprints or engineering terms, other times blurting out half-formed ideas. His friends are used to hearing strange phrases from him at night, but sometimes they catch him talking about his deeper fears or insecurities in his sleep, or crying out for someone.

6. Craving Validation: Despite his outward confidence and self-assured demeanor, Leo craves validation from others, especially those he respects. He hides his need for approval behind jokes and sarcasm, but deep down, he’s desperate for someone to tell him he’s not just smart, but good enough. This constant need for validation can push him to overwork himself, causing mental breakdowns.

7. Morality vs. Curiosity: Leo’s natural curiosity and genius sometimes clash with his moral compass. He’ll often come up with ideas for inventions that are dangerous or ethically questionable, and the temptation to see if they work is strong. There’s a subtle madness in this, as Leo occasionally has to stop himself from crossing lines that even he knows he shouldn’t.

8. Self-Sabotage: Sometimes, when Leo is on the verge of a major breakthrough or success, he’ll unconsciously sabotage himself. Whether it’s through overthinking, accidentally breaking something, or abandoning a project at the last moment, Leo’s fear of failure manifests in this self-destructive behavior. He hates the idea of disappointing others, so it’s easier for him to sabotage his own work than risk letting someone down.

9. Hallucinations of Ideas: On particularly sleepless nights, Leo starts to see his inventions in front of him, even though they don’t exist yet. He can visualize every gear, every wire, every component—but the more he focuses, the more distorted and surreal these visions become. It’s as if his genius is literally driving him to see things, and while he tries to play it off, these hallucinations sometimes frighten him.

10. Emotional Burnout: Leo often pours all his emotions into his work—when he’s sad, angry, or anxious, he channels it into creating. But there are times when he’s so emotionally drained that he can’t bring himself to build anything. These periods of emotional burnout make him feel lost, like he’s broken without his genius. It’s during these times that Leo’s thoughts turn darker, as he worries that without his inventions, he’s worth nothing.

11. Tapping into Old Knowledge: Leo has access to ancient knowledge passed down from his godly heritage, but sometimes this knowledge overwhelms him. He’ll find himself constructing things he doesn’t fully understand, or recalling designs and blueprints that feel “alien” to him. It’s as if he’s tapping into something older and deeper than his conscious mind, and the experience leaves him both in awe and slightly terrified of what he might unlock next.

12. Inventor’s Remorse: Every time Leo completes an invention, he feels an intense, short-lived satisfaction before being hit with remorse. He worries that it’s not good enough, or that he could’ve done something better. This feeling leads him to tear apart his creations and rebuild them again and again in search of elusive perfection, feeding into his cycle of genius and madness.

13. Guilt Over Success: Leo is incredibly aware of the fact that his genius sets him apart from others, and sometimes he feels guilty for it. He knows his intelligence can make others feel inadequate or overshadowed, and while he tries to use his talents for good, the loneliness of being on such a different mental wavelength can lead him to question whether his gifts are a curse.

14. Fear of Outgrowing His Friends: Leo is terrified that as his genius grows, he’ll become too distant or too strange for his friends to understand. He loves them deeply, but the further he dives into his inventions and ideas, the more he feels like he’s losing his connection to the people he cares about. This fear haunts him, leading him to keep parts of himself hidden, even when he’s surrounded by his closest companions.

Those are very interesting headcanons actually! I like to think him and Piper working together to bring a machine to live, just like they did with Festus. Piper as one of the only people he trust to get into his workshop

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amadeusgame · 1 year ago

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Development Sidequest: The Mystery Game Jam

Back in February, I planned out my next several months to help stay on track for Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee ~ Episode 1 ~Waltz to release this Fall. I had a good chunk of work planned for April:

Mechanics - prototype + implement all "Must-Have" new mechanics for the full game

Background Art - finish 1-2 new backgrounds (to avoid screwing up my wrists again drawing all of them at the last minute) (also because I learned that how I draw the backgrounds impacts how I write the scenes)

Sprite Art - finish 1-2 new sprites

Music - fully flesh out a placeholder track for 1-2 BGM pieces

Narrative - write first draft of all scenes through a certain point in the game (naturally these scenes will change when it comes time to implement, that's just how this goes)

Marketing - prepare + announce 100 Wishlists celebration; make + publish press kit

Which is a lot, but doable if I'm working at it consistently. I'm only working part-time, and Amadeus is my "real" job, so to speak. Right?

Wellllllllll...... there's this little thing called the Mystery Game Jam.

Suffice it to say that I did not accomplish all of the above, but I DID write an entire mystery game. More below. Stay updated here: linktr.ee/amadeusgame

I heard about the jam, and thought back to my previous devlog where I discussed at length how doing other random projects when I was "supposed" to be working on Amadeus has been so valuable for me. I also felt that it would be wise to get more mystery writing experience doing something low-stakes and small-scope, to pull away from this single massive project for a bit and just work on the craft of writing. It would help me learn more about my own process. Also, it would be fun!

So I got a group of people together and gave myself the role of writing our game. I've had a ton of help brainstorming, solving plot issues, and generally improving things thanks to my teammates; the whole process has been collaborative (which is what makes game jams fun). However, I've been responsible for actually writing all of it.

As a result Amadeus had to get put on the backburner, because it turns out that brainstorming + outlining + coordinating + finalizing + writing-with-full-implementation-directions, a complete mystery story- that doesn't have a thousand plotholes- in a month, is a ton of work. Fun work! But a lot of it. As a result, what I actually accomplished from my April to-do list for Amadeus is closer to...

Prototyped "save/load" mechanic

Implemented mechanic that can create pauses mid-text-appearance for dramatic effect

Researched and sketched 1 new point-and-click background

Have sketches for 2 BGM pieces (but both need to be more fleshed out to be usable as placeholders)

Outlined draft of narrative for 1 new scene in the intro (but needs a lot more detail/workshopping)

Planned 100 Wishlists celebration (but didn't get everything ready to announce)

Made draft + format of press kit

Which is, honestly, still a decent chunk! I'll have to do some work readjusting next month's to-do list to account for the fact I'm a little behind, but it's reassuring to see that even in a month where most of my energy was dedicated to a side project, I still got a lot done.

This is where the portion of the devlog directly relevant to the game Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee draws to a close. That 100 wishlists celebration announcement will be coming next month, along with a separate announcement. Lots of news coming in May!

As always, all relevant links here: https://linktr.ee/amadeusgame - I will also add our Mystery Jam game here for a bit when it comes out, so you all have something new to play! Check back after May 5, 10PM Pacific!

For the remainder of this log, I want to discuss the process of writing our Mystery Jam game. I have learned so much from it and it's been an incredibly rewarding (if, at times, difficult) process. Collaborations are such a completely different beast from solo projects.

Mystery Game Jam Retrospective

It's a bit strange to write a retrospective when the game jam isn't actually over yet, but my role is mostly finished and I've handed it off to our implementation guy who is hard at work. You're doing great, S1x. Keep it up!

I've done a ton of game jams in the past, but they were always weekend-long jams and I was always just doing audio for them. I've never done a month-long jam before, and I've never taken on a primary role that wasn't as a musician. This was a lot of firsts for me.

I truly believe that game jams don't teach you as much about game development as they teach you about project management. To actually finish a game, so many things have to happen that are all interdependent, and you have to figure out what to do first and who to talk to at what stage so it all somehow comes together on a super-strict deadline. This interdependency is even more apparent for mystery games, where it's fully expected that the player will be paying attention to clues all across text, visuals, and interface. You can't give a completely finalized asset list to artists until you know exactly what every aspect of your mystery will be, otherwise you'll end up forcing your icon artist to re-draw the same asset a bunch of times to match the tweaks you made to the story.

So the biggest obstacle in making this game was that we didn't reach the "details of mystery are completely finalized" stage until over halfway through the month, mostly because I kept putting it off (I'd overwhelmed myself by giving myself all this and also Amadeus homework). We also had to coordinate across time zones and work schedules which introduced additional delays. We got to that point eventually though! Notably, once I had figured out some important things...

This is a collaboration. I was trying to do too much big braining on my own at times when what I really needed to do was schedule a voice call with teammates and bounce ideas. Talking things out with our background artist in particular helped a lot with getting past some hurdles that were really not working.

I am not a writer who can design a mystery puzzle in a vacuum and then add characters as set dressing on top. Once I realized I was stuck, I decided to just start writing out the prologue scene to get a feel for the characters and setting; this forced me to create unique characters who had a reason to be there, and those reasons gave me ideas for the mystery. It turns out that designing a puzzle is a lot like solving a puzzle: if one angle isn't working, take a break and try another angle. You'll learn more about the puzzle, how it works, and eventually all that knowledge will come together and you'll figure it out.

This is a game jam game. This is (probably) not going to be anyone's magnum opus. This is going to be a very fun silly knockoff Ace Attorney game with a robot detective. I'm generally good at keeping a chill attitude for weekend-long game jams, but because we had a month I was taking it way too seriously at first.

Most importantly... it's not reasonable to write an entire new mystery from start to end in a month while also doing a ton of work on Amadeus and working part-time. So I eventually told myself it was OK to ignore everything else except work and the game jam for a while, and focus on this.

(...I also spent about 20 hours obsessively working on my Very Spoilery Ghost Trick ROMhack when I was overwhelmed, as a sort of escape. It was obvious that my brain was refusing to work on the game jam so I just let it do what it wanted for a few days. Sometimes the ADHD wins.)

Reaching that key point-- the point where all of the details were finalized and everyone knew exactly what needed to get done-- was a huge milestone. But even after that, I still had to actually write the words for all of it. Writing in the sense of "mapping out the major plot beats and details of the mystery," and writing in the sense of "actually writing, line-by-line, the text of the game along with implementation instructions" are completely different skillsets. I already knew this from my experience working on Amadeus, but I had to re-learn it here.

Fortunately, by the time I was sitting down writing words, our musician had written some total bangers for the game and I was able to listen to those to really set the tone for what I was writing. If a certain dialogue box cues the "totally-not-objection" theme, then the energy for those next few dialogue entries should be VERY high energy. Listening to that theme while writing made sure it matched! And once our player character artist had designed the MC, I was able to find that character's "voice" much more easily to match the energy of that character. The work of other teammates helped inspire me to do my own work, and have more fun doing it.

I really like doing these collaborations because it's fun to make something completely different than what I would make alone. I also like collaborating because there are certain changes I'm forced to make to my workflow in order to make life easier for my teammates. It forces me to be more organized. I have to do more pre-planning so I'm not forcing artists to revise their work 20 times, and so the implementation engineer only has to implement once with a few exceptions, and can easily swap out placeholder assets when those come in. Thinking ahead like this is a really good habit to get into in general! Even as a solo dev if I learn to make my own life easier in this way I will save myself the headache.

Will I learn that lesson? Most definitely not. But hopefully I'll take something away from this. For example, the awesome beautiful spreadsheet I made to format my scripts for implementation:

(I'm still not the easiest person to work with, though. I'm kind of bossy. While I do try to at least not be every artist's worst nightmare, it's definitely in everyone's best interest that my big major long-term project is a solo work.)

I'm excited to see how it all comes together in the very end. I'm excited to see what people think of it. Where, on the spectrum of "too obvious" to "moon logic," am I landing on average? Just how weird is the pacing of reveals? These are questions that a non-game-jam game would be able to answer in a playtesting/beta phase, but this is a game jam game, so you get what you get. Making it has been really fun. Look forward to it when it comes out! It will be posted by S1xplus, our implementation engineer. It should end up on my itch page as well.

Look out for ROBOT DETECTIVE: THE CASE OF THE AUTOMURDERATED INTERN (working title)!!

#Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee #devlog #indie game dev #mystery game jam #mystery game writing

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masterkirby · 1 year ago

Text

Chronopolis (1982) Piotr Kamler

meet with the artist, notes:

screening during Timeless Film Festival in Warsaw

⚪ opowieść o kuli we wszechświecie

⚫ a story of a sphere in the universe

⚪ a wzięło się to z zachwytu nad geometrycznymi kształtami, jakie dwa kolory piasku robią, przemieszawszy się w pudełeczku, które się traca

⚫ for which the idea came from a love of geometric figures, and also shapes that arise from mixing two colours of sand in a small box and flicking that box

⚪ atomy, kulki, materia, czas

⚫ atoms, spheres, matter, time

⚪ z czego ta kulka jest urocza i plastyczna, bardziej jak piłka

⚫ but the sphere in the story is cute and malleable and springy, more like a ball

⚪ plastyczna i skoczna i zmienna w przeciwieństwie do nieśmiertelnych zamieszkujących Chronopolis, twardzi, ze skały, niemalże nieruchomi, niezmienni

⚫ it's malleable and springy and CHANGEABLE as opposed to the immortal inhabitants of Chronopolis; they're hard, made as if from stone, almost immobile, a constant

⚪ gotowi odejść na rzecz tańca i przemijalności?

⚫ but they're ready to leave and make room for dance and contingency?

⚪ przepiękne rzeźby Kamlera

⚫ the figures are really beautiful, Kamler's that is

⚪ w czasie robienia filmu cała pracowania zawalona figurami i makietami

⚫ when the film was being made, his whole workshop was overfilled with figures and elements of the set

⚪ Krystyna Kamler odpowiedzialna za strój marionetki

⚫ Krystyna Kamler made the marionette's costume

⚪ opowiadała, że te rzeźby wzięły się z potrzeby jej męża do robienia rzeczy rękoma

⚫ she told us how she thinks that her husband makes figures because he just need something to do with his hands

⚪ na co on zaprzeczył, że to ma bardziej ideologiczny wymiar (nie nazwał tego tak), tj. reklamy i wszystko komputerowo tworzone w ciągłym ruchu, a animacja ma za sobą stałość, zatrzymanie

⚫ to which he disagreed that there's a more idealogical (he didn't use that word ofc) reason behind his drive, i.e. in opposition to the constant movement of ads and computer made films; where behind animation there is lack of movement, a stop

⚪ rzeźby i animacja, a rysunek; obok projektów zawsze, ale nie częścią "dzieła"

⚫ making figures and stop animation vs drawing; besides his animation projects there were always drawings but as a kind of antithesis, never part of the actual project

⚪ ale robił też animacje komputerowe

⚫ but he also did start doing computer animation

⚪ szczególnie że to pozwalało działać bez większego finansowanie, projekty mniejsze, łatwiejsze do robienia samemu

⚫ especially since this allowed him to work on a tighter budget, without waiting for financing, allowing him to work alone easier

⚪ bo właściwie sam zrobił Chronopolis przez 4-5 lat i jak ktoś z widowni go spytał o inspiracje, to powiedział, że unika inspiracji jak może, że niczego nie oglądał

⚫ because he liked working alone and he made Chronopolis by himself in 4-5 years; when a member of the audience asked him about his inspirations, he said that he avoids all and any inspirations

⚪ co mnie osobiście rozbawiło, bo chwilę potem opowiadał, że kompozytorzy eksperymentalni (Pierre Schaeffer, Iannis Xenakis, Luc Ferrari) pracowali po swojemu i trudno było się z nimi dogadać

⚫ which was funny because he soon said that working with experimental composers (like Pierre Schaeffer, Iannis Xenakis, Luc Ferrari) was difficult because they did their own thing and there wasn't really real cooperation

⚪ mówił, że Luc Ferrari właściwie skomponował ścieżkę do Chronopolis po fakcie, ale że zaproponował coś, co właściwie oddawało wizję Kamlera, przyjął to

⚫ he admitted that Luc Ferrari composed the score after the animation was finished but since he proposed a sth that was in line with Kamler's own idea for the film, he accepted it

⚪ ktoś inny spytał o kwestię narracji przez Michaela Lonsdale'a, na co Kamler powiedział po prostu, że to nie w tym filmie

⚫ someone else asked about the Michael Lonsdale narration thing to which Kamler replied that it was not a thing for this move

[might add more notes later]

#Chronopolis #1982 #Piotr Kamler #meeting notes #experimental cinema #stop motion #animation #cinema

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dashinhfuzzydeer · 5 months ago

Text

Chapter 5

The scent of burnt roses lingered in the air, a stark contrast to the opulent dining room where the King family and the Heathens, had just witnessed Landon’s dramatic act.

Landon, his face a mask of barely controlled rage, had incinerated the bouquet Vaughn had presented him, a declaration of war more than a rejection.

He’d turned on his heel, ignoring the calls of his family, and retreated to his room, the door slamming shut with a resounding thud.

Vaughn, however, remained unruffled, a picture of composure amidst the chaos. A gentle smile played on his lips as he turned to Levi and Astrid, Landon's parents.

"I apologize if my actions were wrong to offend him"

He said, his voice smooth as silk as if apologizing for the scene he knew he caused all under his wish.

"Perhaps if you could point me to his room, I could speak with him privately? There's no need for anyone to be bothered".

The room was silent, everyone still reeling from Landon’s outburst. Even the notoriously composed Heathens seemed taken aback.

But they were also keenly aware of the dangerous game they had been made a part of, with Vaughn standing at its center, dancing dangerously with Landon.

Nikolai, ever the optimist, gave Vaughn a thumbs up while hugging Brandon, Landon's twin and said,

"Maybe you should vi-vi, your 'wifey' seems very angry on you"

He got hit on the arm by Brandon for that while Vaughn gave him a look that told Nikolai to not call Landon that, the yellow mask Heathen however was lost in eyes of his lotus flower.

While Killian, who never took anything seriously until he saw danger, smirked, his arm protectively around Glyndon’s waist and said,

"Yeah, maybe take some dark chocolates because he looks like he is on his periods"

Glyndon gave him a glare for this but he just kissed her cheeks with a smirk that earned him a glare from Levi and a giggle from Astrid.

Annika offered him a small, cautious wave, and Cerighton, her boyfriend, hugged her close, looking sleepy like he always does.

Gareth, ever the diplomat, gave him a knowning nod as he continued his conversation with Landon’s parents to distract them while Jeremy and Eli, Landon’s older cousin, looked like they wanted to be anywhere else.

Even Aiden and Elsa, Landon's uncle and aunt, couldn't hide the looks of warning they sent his way. Each family member conveyed the same unspoken message – 'be careful of what you do' as Eli spoke up, giving Vaughn the direction he needed to know.

"The fourth room on the right to the second floor"

Vaughn nodded at him with a small thanks, gave them all a final, assessing look, a silent promise of his intention to win over, not just Landon, but his entire family, before excusing himself.

He knew he was walking into a storm, but he was never one to shy away from a challenge, no, infact he was that bison who loved to walk right into the storm. He made his way through the expansive house, his footsteps deliberate, until he reached Landon's door.

Without knocking, he pushed it open, stepping inside.

"You Heathens really have no manners do you?"

Landon said, his back to Vaughn, voice laced with sarcasm as he delicately shaped the wings of the morning star he was bringing to life.

Vaughn chuckled, closing the door behind him as his eyes roamed the Landon’s beautiful abode of a room, filled with unnaturally beautiful and meaningful sculptures, each piece a mystery to decode with their unique construction.

"Common Wifey, soon we will be married. There's no need for such formalities between us. No need for barriers, I mean, we're going to be sharing a bed soon"

He however was meet with pure ignorance from Landon who refused to acknowledge his existence, lost in his statue and finding it more worthy of his attention over his fiancee.

His workshop was Landon’s sanctuary, a chaotic symphony of clay dust, metal tools, and the raw, potent energy of creation. But today, it felt suffocating. He was hunched over his current project, a towering sculpture of Lucifer, the fallen angel, his face a mask of intense concentration.

Every line of muscle, every feather on the sculpted wings, was a testament to his meticulous artistry. He ignored the footsteps that echoed on the concrete floor, the presence of another man in his domain.

Vaughn, however, was not easily ignored. He moved with a quiet confidence that belied the storm he carried within him. He paused before Landon's earlier works, the discarded pieces that stood like silent sentinels of their creator's journey.

The first was an angel, weeping, cradling a sword that looked too heavy for its fragile hands. Vaughn reached out, his finger tracing the contours of a sculpted tear. It looked so real, so raw.

"These are incredibly detailed"

Vaughn murmured, his voice a low rumble that cut through the heavy silence.

"What’s your favorite food, Landon?"

Landon’s head snapped up to look at Vaughn, his dark blue eyes narrowed in annoyance as he scoffed and said,

"Why bother making small talk asshole? You probably already know the answer. Isn’t that what you people do? Dig up every scrap of information?"

Vaughn’s lips curved into a slow, predatory smile at Landon’s comment as he spoke up.

"Indeed, I know a great deal about you, Lyubov. All the data available with a little digging, your family history, the art schools you attended before Royal Elite University"

He paused as his hazel eyes shifted to Landon who continued to work on the sculpture as he spoke with an unknown intensity dripping down his tongue.

"But that’s not knowing you, is it? Not knowing you as intimately as I should, considering you're my wifey. I should know everything about you"

He let the word roll off his tongue like a delectable piece of forbidden fruit. Landon bristled at the endearment and the implied ownership.

"Don’t"

He growled, turning back to his sculpture, his hands working the clay with renewed ferocity. He didn't dignify Vaughn's words with an answer.

And Vaughn didn’t press. Instead he surveyed the workshop, his gaze lingering on a half-open box of cherries tucked away in a corner.

His steps took him to the trash can at the end of the room as he pressed the paddle under his leather boots to open the lead and peaked inside, taking note of dried cherry pits along with fresh ones coated with saliva, indicidating that Landon had savored on them not long ago.

They were accompanied by a bunch of cigarette buts and broken sculpturing tools, roughed papers or broken art pieces.

"Let me guess, it's cherries right wifey?"

A genuine smile softened the sharp edges of his features but the knowing look in his eyes were speaking otherwise.

Landon froze. His head whipped around again, his eyes wide with a mixture of surprise and suspicion as he looked at Vaughn looking up at him with a innocent smile, as if he didn't figure out something in few minutes that took even his family almost a year to figure out.

"How did you…..?"

Vaughn chuckled, pointing to the cherry box by Landon’s bedside as he spoke up,

"I can see them. And that reminds me, my own favorite food happens to be beef stew".

Landon blinked, looking between the box and Vaughn before turning back to his sculpture. He could feel Vaughn’s gaze on his back, a tangible weight as he spoke,

"You are one observant fucker, aren't you? And nobody asked"

Vaughn chuckled again at Landon’s comment, a low, rich sound that vibrated in the small space. He moved on, now stopping before the sculpture of a man kneeling, his face hidden in shadowed hands.

"Yes, I am, Very observant"

He began to pace slowly, his eyes cataloging every detail of Landon’s domain, observing it carefully as he casually strolled around and spoke to words that seem to fall deaf to Landon’s ears.

"Infact, I’ve noticed a few things about you, wifey, in the short time I’ve been here. For example, You smoke when you're stressed, I can smell the lingering tobacco clinging to the air even now"

He paused, circling around another sculpture, this one a soaring Pegasus with beautiful detailed wings of a angel and details of each and every strand of fur created on top of it as he continued to speak,

"You love your McLaren more than you love people, you stayed in middle of nowhere bleeding to make sure it won't get stolen"

He paused again as he looked around the room, taking a brief note of each and every single sculpture as he spoke with a calculated analysis,

"You express your emotions through your sculptures, I can tell the pain and rage in it the lucifer you are working on"

His words send a shiver of danger down Landon’s spine who tried to remain indifferent but the more Vaughn spoke, the more the hair behind Landon's neck started to stand up.

Vaughn turned to Landon, his gaze piercing, focused on the bandage on Landon’s head, covering a wound he caused as he spoke,

"You know flower language. You understand the meaning of the Bouquet I gave you, didn’t you?"

Finally, his eyes flicked to a dressing table across the room, where a bottle of perfume sat, its scent subtly permeating the studio and radiating faintly off Landon’s skin.

"And you have a very distinct scent, a mix of petrichor and sandalwood. Probably from that perfume you are using recently"

Landon’s hands stilled on Lucifer’s wings. He felt a chill run down his spine, a stark contrast to the heat that had been building within him from rage. He turned, his eyes wide with a dawning horror of every detail Vaughn was picking.

"How…?"

Vaughn smirked, a flash of something dark and dangerous crossing his innocent face, behind his glasses as he spoke,

"What’s wrong, wifey? Did I discover something you wanted to keep hidden?"

He took a step closer, his presence filling the space as he stood closer to a statue of the demon that Landon had created last week.

The pieces started to clicked into place.

With each observation, each detail unveiled by this terrifyingly perceptive man, the truth began to form a horrifying picture in Landon’s mind.

The meticulous precision of the Bratva Heir, the calculated strategies, the ruthless efficiency…it all pointed to one man.

And now, looking at the smirk on Vaughn's face, Landon saw the pieces of the puzzle fall into their rightful place.

The forced marriage, the sudden accept from the criminal underworld on their company's good, the sudden fall of the King Empire's shares and their disappeared money......…it was all the handiwork of Vaughn, the man standing before him.

The man who called him wifey.

Landon’s breath hitched in his throat. Vaughn Morozov, the charming, observant, eerily attractive man who had claimed him as his fiance, was not just some heir to a mafia empire.

He took a good look of Vaughn, he was clearly less built than the other Heathens thought much taller, showing that physical fight, altist the raw, brutal one aren't his pluse point.

Those glasses worked to accompany his eyes that had detoriated due to heavy focus on studies or technology probably.

He was the architect of his misery, the puppet master behind his forced engagement, the man who had engineered the complete destruction of everything Landon had known.

His heart pounded against his ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage. He had been so caught up in his art, so consumed by his grief and anger, that he had failed to see the predator hiding in plain sight, the wolf disguised as a lamb.

The workshop, once his sanctuary, now felt like a cage. Vaughn wasn’t just observing him, he was dissecting him, taking him apart piece by piece.

And the realization that all of this was intentional, calculated to trap him, filled Landon with a cold, gut-wrenching dread.

He wanted to scream, to fight, to lash out, but he was frozen, caught in the web of Vaughn’s carefully constructed game.

He knew, now, that he had been played, and he had been played brilliantly. And the worst part of it all was the horrifying realization of how deeply Vaughn already knew him, far better than his own family did.

How had he fallen for this?

How could he not noticed what is in front of him?

He stared at Vaughn, his mind racing. This wasn't a marriage of convenience; it was a calculated move, a power play.

He was a prize, a trophy, a possession in the hands of a man who saw him not as a person, but as a tool in his grand chess game probably.

Vaughn's smirk widened, his eyes gleaming with a dangerous light, at this moment, even Jeremy Volkov looked like a less difficult obstacle and Nikolai Sokolov looked less of a trouble compared to this man who was nowhere near their built, but definitely more intelligent than all of the Heathens combined.

"Cat got your tongue, wifey?"

Vaughn asked, his voice a silken purr that sent shivers down Landon's spine as his Hazel eyes observed ever muscle that twitched in Landon's body.

He had only just begun.

Landon knew, with a sinking feeling, that his nightmare was only just beginning.

And he was trapped, completely and utterly trapped, in the web of the man he was supposed to marry.

However, Landon wasn't the one who gave up before putting a fight to death. He will crawl his way out of this mess if he must.

Landon scoffed, finally turning to face Vaughn completely and abandoning his sculpture, fury blazing in his eyes.

"You orchestrated this, didn't you?"

Vaughn raised an eyebrow at him, his amusement evident as he took a step towards landon.

"Orchestrated what, exactly?"

He was met with a annoyed snarl from the living greek god everyone in the Brighton Island flawed over.

"Don't play coy with me, Vaughn Morozov"

Landon snapped, stepping closer with his fists clerged tightly from anger, veins popping from the adrenaline.

"You are the one who stole more than nine billion dollars from my grandfather’s empire. You were behind the Bratva’s seizure of those cargo ships. You hold more than thirty percent of my family's market shares"

Landon’s eyes twitched as venom dripped down his lips that could burn the world down.

"And this…......this marriage? You were the one who proposed it"

He finally stood infront of Vaughn, being slightly shorter than the other so he had to tilt his head up a little to look at the future Pakhan as he accused with hundred percent accuracy.

"You planned all of this"

Vaughn's composure faltered for a split second as Landon spoke those words. He was honestly impressed. Landon had pieced it all together, and so quickly, too, not even his fellow Bratva heirs could do it so quickly.

He allowed a unhinged, predatory smirk to creep onto his face, finally showing Landon the Bratva heir hiding in the mask of a innocent finance as he didn't even deny it.

"You are astute, my little wifey. How did you deduce all that?"

Landon crossed his arms over his chest, his jaw clerged as the sound his teeths gritting inside his mouth was audible in the room, his gaze sharp on his fiancee as he spoke.

"The timing of it all was too perfect. The King empire almost collapsing, the fall starting right after i had first put your psycho doctor on his place, the Bratva swooping in to save us, not with money, but with…....marriage, yeah, like you guys are that kind"

His blood boiled inside his veins at the sheer audacity of this man to not even deny any of this, just standing in his room casually, relaxed and smiling at the volcano of emotions boiling inside Landon.

"It was too convenient. And then there are my siblings and cousins and their…....love for Bratva heirs. I get it now......You did it so that they would all be bound to the stupid mafia heirs they love, and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it"

Landon took a step closer, grabbing Vaughn’s tie and tugging on it harshly to bring the two of them closer as his deep blue eyes pierced into the hazel ones while he asked,

"Right?"

Vaughn let out a low whistle, admiration for Landon's sharp wit completely clear in his eyes as he spoke up,

"You're right, Wifey. You truly are a genius. And yes, I did do it to make sure my bratva brothers and sister got what they wanted – to be with their Kings without you being a thorn in their side"

Landon scrowled, holding back the urge to punch this man squeeze on the face and causing a trouble for his entire family and their empire by angering this fucker's father,

"So, why me?"

Landon asked, his voice taking on a dangerous edge and showing to have no patience to beat around the bush as he spoke up,

"Why did you go to your father, the Pakhan, for this marriage of all things? Why not just let me play the field with Mia?"

Vaughn’s smile turned sly as he shrugged casually and dropped the bomb as if they were talking about weather.

"Niko and Kill didn’t want you dating their precious sister and cousin, so here we are"

Landon rolled his eyes and really held himself back from going downstair and punching those two barbarians who have their hands all over his younger siblings as he spoke up,

"So, it's alright for your Heathens to date mine, but not me? How hypocritical is that?"

Vaughn laughed, the sound rich and genuine but the words contrasted his tone as he spoke up with sarcasm dripping down his lips,

"We’re mafias, we don’t play by the rules. Isn’t that what we do wifey? Dig out all the dirty information and do whatever we want to do?"

Landon’s spoke back, his voice was drenched in sarcasm to shoot it right back at Vaughn as he tsked,

"And that’s it? That's the only reason the future Pakhan wants to marry me? To keep me away from one of the Bratva Princess?"

Vaughn took another step closer, his proximity making Landon's breath hitch. Up so close, he could smell Vaughn’s aftershave still lingering on his skin along with his cologne that smelled heavy of a scent he couldn't pin-point, probably some strong russian perfume.

His eyes met Landon's, and there was a spark there that wasn’t entirely amusement, but something darker, more intense and twisted than anything else Landon has ever seen.

"No, Landon. I don't want you as my other half to keep you away from some bratva princess. I want you."

For the first time since they met, Vaughn said his name and it send a visible shiver down the sculpture's spine. He tried to hide the shudder of his shoulders and but failed as Vaughn seemed to notice it, a smirk tugged in his lips for getting this reaction from Landon.

He placed a hand on Landon’s cheek, his thumb caressing his jawline and smuging some clay sticking to his face across the sharp cut of his face as he spoke up dangerously,

"Landon King, the man who can single-handedly trouble all the Bratva heirs and walk away unscathed. The arsonist who walked past all of Heathens's security and set the mansion on fire. Who kidnapped not one but two Bratva heirs for getting tangled with his siblings and walked unhindered into their den to declare his interest in their princess........I want that Landon by my side. I want you, the chaos, the unpredictable storm, to rule with me, over Bratva one day"

The words were spoken like a vow.

Like a unhinged universal fact.

Like a declaration of of a emperor that can't be denied.

Vaughn, for all his veiled words, spoke these ones with so much rawness that they took away the the air from Landon's lungs.

"I want your chaos to control Bratva one day, Wifey"

Landon stared into Vaughn's eyes, feeling a strange mix of fear, intrigue, and something akin to excitement.

He was left speechless for a second, searching Vaughn's hazelnut coloured eyes for any tint of deception and he found nothing but the naked, confident truth in his words.

Landon was taken back, for having the world reject him for his chaos, it was a first for him who tossled the universe around to have Landon’s chaos.

For people trying to calm Landon’s storm, this was the first time who wanted Landon to unleash the full strength of his strom.

Landon had always been a whirlwind. A beautiful, destructive cyclone of brilliant ideas, impulsive decisions, and a heart that beat so loud it threatened to shatter his ribs.

He’d grown used to the world recoiling, to people wanting him to temper his edges, to quiet the storm that brewed within. He was a masterpiece of chaos, and for most, a masterpiece that needed reining in.

He was taken aback. The world had always sought to tame him, to mold him into something more palatable, more predictable.

Yet here he was, this man who will forcefully hold his hand for the rest of their life, wanting him with every chaotic, fractured piece of his being.

It was a first for him, a universe he had tossed into a frenzy, now embracing him in his rawest form. Vaughn didn’t want the calm after the storm; he wanted the storm itself.

Landon found this situation so fucking unbelievable and so ironic that he couldn't help it, throwing his head back and laughing.

His eyes wrinkling as he laughed till his stomach hurt, clutching on his stomach as the genuine laugh that echoed through the room while Vaughn just stared at him.

When he finally calmed down a little, he looked up at Vaughn, meeting his lion like eyes with his own that held the depth of ocean in them as he smirked, a unhinged devilish smirk that everyone in the Brighton Island feared as he spoke,

"Careful to-be-pakhan, you don't want to open the pandora's box to unleash a plague on humanity now, do you?"

Vaughn however returned his smirk with his own devilish one, stepping closer and leaning near Landon’s face as they held a unbreakable eye contact with their smirks never leaving their lips as he spoke up,

"As a matter of fact wifey, I am really eager to open the box. You see, I am a very curious man and a very selfish one who cares less about the world and more about himself"

Landon stared into Vaughn eyes silently for a brief second, taking note of how his pulips worked before stepped back, turning around to go back to his sculpture.

The smirk however never left his face as he spoke up a challenge very smoothly,

"Then you'll have to win me, future Pakhan, because Landon King belongs to no one."

Landon invited Vaughn on a dangerous dance of manipulation and domination.

And act of annihilation and destruction.

A rhythm of pure chaos with his demons that he ruled.

And Vaughn’s smirk widened, a predatory gleam in his eyes as he stepped on the dance floor where their genius minds will clash and dance together in a fiercity that can burn the world down.

"Game on, wifey"

The tension in the room was thick, a magnetic pull between two powerful forces.

This was no longer a forced union, a calculated move on a chess board - it was a battle of wills, a dangerous dance of desire and ambition.

And Landon, despite his anger, found himself drawn into the game, a willing participant in the chaos that was about to explode. The scent of clay and burnt cigarettes still hung heavy in the air, a reminder of the fire that had just been ignited.

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dantent · 10 months ago

Text

Chapter 5 - This Is Everything I Never Wanted (Silco x OC)

Warnings: Canon-Typical Violence

The next day Ren went to work with a hooded cloak covering their head. After every turn they took, Ren made sure no one was following them. If they payed close enough attention they could hear footsteps behind them, but whenever they turned around, no one was there. A sense of paranoia seemed to follow them around, all the way to the brothel. Once inside, they wearily approached Babette's office. The yordle sat inside, working through some papers when Ren arrived.

"Good morning, Ren." she greeted them.

When Ren didn't answer, she looked up from her work. Her eyes widened when she saw the state the mechanic was in. Dark circles made their eyes look sunken and their lips trembled while they looked at the woman. Babette only saw the scared child in them that darkened her doorstep a decade ago.

"Babette," they called out to her, "I fucked up."

"Tell me what happened." she left her desk and sat down on the couch with Ren.

And so they did. They told her exactly what happened yesterday. Everything about getting sent away from the workshop to meeting Silco at the Drop. Ren confessed that the girl they had met about a month ago was Silco's daughter. Obviously, they didn't know and they greatly emphasized that to Babette but the woman still shook her head disappointedly. Once Ren was done with their explanation, the Madam gave them a cigarette to calm them down. Ren gladly took it and started smoking as they leaned back.

"I don't know what to do with you, Ren." she sighed. "Getting away from... him is one thing, but getting away from Silco?"

"I don't ask you for anything, Babette." Ren huffed out the smoke. "I know this is beyond anything you can do."

"My advice is to stay away from them." she lit a cigarette as well. "Try to make excuses and hope Jinx will lose interest in you."

"And if it doesn't work?" they covered their eyes with their right hand, trying to ease their headache.

"Get out of Zaun."

Ren tried following Babette's advice and avoided both Jinx and the Drop itself. A day went by - Jinxless. Then another, and another. When they were at home, they worked out as much as they could. The faster they got stronger, the better chance they had at survival. Besides working out, Ren also brought some of the smaller machines home, so they could fix it even when their shift ended. It wasn't with permission of course, but they needed a distraction.

After about a week, they ran out of small gadgets they could bring home, so they ended up buying scraps from the market, or found some of it in the trash. They began making their own weapon, since they didn't quite have to money to buy one. Ren found a few ruined ones lying about and took them home to take them apart. Some of the parts could be salvageable, so they took those and put the rest away for later use. They spent days drawing out their plans and making them real. Of course, it wasn't an easy job. Many of the parts didn't end up being compatible, so they either had to take them apart even further, or go find new parts for the weapon.

Never in their life had Ren been this focused on a project. Even in Piltover, they usually took their time making the equipment. The more they worked, the more they were paid. It was simple business, and not like topsiders were lacking the money to pay them. But even if then, they spent a lot of time outside the shop. Ren often went around the edges of Piltover, looking at the sea, watching the sunset or laying in the grass. Only this part of their past did they miss. The freedom of the wealthy.

When their hands were too soar to make gadgets or work out, they slept. All their dreams were horrific in a sense. Whether they relived the losing of their hand, or being chased down again, they always awoke in cold sweat. It was a sense of hopelessness that followed all their dreams. If they yelled for help, no one heard them; if they tried to run, they were frozen in place. Ren felt like being trapped within their own dreams, since not even those could help them escape reality.

Ren was, without doubt, crumbling apart. They barely visited bars anymore, afraid that someone would find them. This fear was the only thing that motivated them enough to work harder. It was nearly two months ago that Ren returned to Zaun and their muscle growth was very visible. Some of their shirts they couldn't even wear anymore, so they had to buy new ones.

Today was like any other day for the past two weeks, Jinxless; or so Ren hoped. When they woke up, they couldn't quite remember their dream. It was one of the better scenarios; when they didn't remember. Ren had their usual routine; eat, take a bath, brush teeth. Once they were done with that, they moved over to their dresser and chose some clothes for themselves. The mechanic took a liking to wearing dark green pants with a sleeveless black turtleneck. What was funny about the turtleneck was that it sort of had sleeves, except they were removable and Ren always wore it on their forearm. Since it was body slim, it never slipped off and felt quite nice on their robotic arm.

When they were done with everything, Ren left their apartment. They were running out of different routes they could take by this point, so they always just combined some of their previous attempts. Once they were at work, the day went by as usual. Some chatting with their co-workers here and there, working on their projects, etc. Babette kept a close eye on Ren and everyone who interacted with them since the Silco incident, but she never made attempts to talk to Ren besides work. So once their shift was over, they went home; on a different route as always.

At home they worked out for a while, then ate something so their body wouldn't give up. It was already around midnight when they finally passed out while working on a gadget of theirs. They awoke at their table, a blueprint stuck to their face. Once they removed it, some lines were still visible on their skin but not too bad. Walking over to the mirror, they checked the state of their hair. It has grown quite a lot but thankfully Ren managed to keep the front acceptable. The back of their head was a different question though; they just believed it looked good. With some makeup, they touched up the dark circles under their eyes, careful not to get conditioner on their face tattoos.

Technically they didn't have to go in today but Ren didn't feel like staying in their less than amusing apartment. Once they ruffled up their hair with some products, they were ready to leave, but a knock on the door stopped them. Rather banging if anything. It sounded similar to what they heard when a certain blue haired menace found herself on their doorstep. And surely enough, once Ren looked outside, it was Jinx who stood outside their door. The mechanic froze in place, hoping she would think they're not home. From the peephole they could see the girl look around the bottom of the door, twisting her head in search of something.

"I can see your shadow." she finally said, getting close to the peephole. Her big blue eye was looking straight into Ren's silver one. "Come on! Open up!"

Ren sighed before pulling away the chair and getting the keys to open the door. As soon as the door opened, Jinx flowed in like she was but a breeze. The mechanic often found it weird that she was able to move so fluidly. She was still clumsy of course, as most people her age are, but her movement held enough confidence already.

Once she was inside, Ren immediately locked the door behind her and pulled the chair underneath the handle. Jinx chuckled behind them. "Yeesh, not even I'm that paranoid."

"What's up, Jinx?" Ren turned to her, crossing their arms in front of them.

"What's up with you?" she rushed to them and firmly held into their upper arm. The girl squeezed it a couple times while giggling. "I can't believe that you're getting musclier by the second!"

"I have just been working out more." they shrugged.

"Yeah, can see that." she smiled while stepping back. "So you coming with me or not?"

"Where?" Ren raised an eyebrow.

"To the bar!" she jumped up, an arm to the sky, as she announced her destination, a wide smile on her face. When she saw that Ren didn't share the same sentiment, her arm slowly fell to her side as the smile was wiped from her face.

"Listen, Jinx," they sighed, "I don't want to go back to The Last Drop."

"Why?" she whispered, eyes snapping to her shoes.

"Well... I mean..." they struggled. Ren didn't want to hurt her feelings but also wanted to keep their head. "I have to think about my safety first, Jinx. And I can't just barge into Silco's place anytime you want. Especially not without his permission."

"But he let's you!" Jinx looked back up at them. "I got grounded for not telling him about last time... and he banned me from the brothel. But he said it's fine if you come back now! Aaaand, he said he wants to talk to you."

"Silco wants to talk to me." they repeated. The room suddenly felt colder than it was and shiver ran down their spine. "Why?"

"Dunno." she shrugged. "Please come with me?"

They were in quite the dilemma. On one hand, they wanted to refuse and never go back to the Drop again. On the other, Silco wasn't known for his patience, and making him wait was a sure way make themselves an even bigger target than they already were. Ren truly wished for a force more powerful than them to get them out of this situation, alas nothing happened.

The mechanic took a big breath. "Fine."

"Yippee!" she lunged at them, pulling them towards the door already.

Jinx simply kicked the chair out of the way, almost breaking it. She was so rough with the keys Ren thought they were going to get trapped inside the apartment. Thankfully she managed to open the door and left it to Ren to lock it behind themselves. Once the obstacles were out of the way, she pulled them towards the Drop.

The way was already familiar to Ren. Jinx didn't bother going on a different route than last time and Ren wasn't surprised by that. With her carefree attitude, they doubted she ever thought about the dangers of someone following her around. So the mechanic made sure to keep an eye out for potential danger. Thankfully the worst they got was a couple curses thrown at them as they sped through the crowd. Jinx managed to flow through people rather fast but in turn slammed Ren into everyone.

Before Ren could get hurt from bumping into fellow zaunites, they finally arrived at the bar. The guards didn't even look at them as they entered. Sevika was nowhere to be seen, unlike last time they were here. Even now though, there were some goons hanging around. Some of them were playing billiards, others were having a drink and lounging around. When the two entered the bar, a few goons shot them a dangerous look, practically inviting Ren for a challenge. They didn't pay them any attention though, instead they let Jinx take them to Silco's office.

When they were going up the stairs, Jinx pulled Ren fast enough to almost fall down but thankfully the mechanic caught themselves just in time. Jinx didn't stop for a second though, and soon they were standing in front of Silco's office. The girl opened the door without knocking and walked inside as soon as it was open. Ren followed behind her, closing the door once they entered.

Silco sat at his desk, only glancing up at the two. He had a drink in his left hand and some papers in his right. Jinx let go of Ren's arm and rushed towards her dad. The man slightly pushed himself away from the desk so Jinx could jump in his arms. After a quick embrace she pulled away and walked to the middle of the room.

"Well, I uh... gotta get the... things!" Jinx passed Ren as she rushed to the door. "I'll be back soon!"

She walked out before Ren could even mutter a question. They looked at the now closed door with their heart almost jumping out of their chest. It was one thing to talk to Silco while Jinx was around, but they didn't want to speak with the crime lord in private. Still, they knew it was rude to keep him waiting, so they slowly turned around, trying hard not to show fear. Under Silco's mismatched gaze, it was impossible though. It felt like he could smell the fear on them.

"Hmm, it seems we're left alone." he muttered before taking the final sip from his glass.

Ren didn't say anything just nodded at him. Silco raised an eyebrow. For a moment Ren wondered if he could move the one on his scared face, since he only ever seemed to raise his right eyebrow. As the Eye of Zaun put his glass on the table, he made direct eye contact with the mechanic. He then lazily clasped his hand and rested them on the table.

"Are you planning on standing the whole time?" Silco asked, motioning with his head to the small stool that stood in front of the couch.

As if by magic, Ren immediately hopped down. Of course they weren't allowed to sit on the fancy couch. For a moment they hoped that they were going to be able to work comfortably but they only got a stool. They supposed it was still better than angering the crime lord. Ren wasn't quite sure what they could say in this situation, so they just hoped that Jinx would come back fast. Sadly that's not what happened.

Silco finally sighed. "To make this less awkward for the both of us, seeing as Jinx wants to have you here, why not talk?"

"Yes, of course." they nodded but had no idea how to achieve that. Nevertheless, they tried their best. "So uhm... Having a nice day?"

For a moment Silco didn't move. It was as if time stopped. He didn't even blink. The only way Ren knew that time, in fact, didn't stop, was because they heard the noises of the street. Albeit they were truly muffled, in complete silence, they could make out some of it.

"To make this less awkward you ask me about my day?" When he finally spoke Ren almost jumped off the stool.

The mechanic cleared their throat. "Well, I don't know what else we could talk about."

Silco remained silent again. Ren cursed themselves in their head for being such an idiot. If they ever had any chance at gaining the Eye's favor, they just blew it.

The man opened his mouth to speak, but the door burst open before he could utter a word. Ren quickly whipped their head around, only to see Sevika stumble in with an open wound on her right arm. They gasped when they saw what kind it was, because it was done by the very weapon they designed topside.

Ren remembered it as clear as day. The enforcers asked the shop to make new weapons and Ren got to work on it. At first they were happy to work on a bigger project but soon they realised just how cruel it was. Once the bullet shot out of the weapon at found its target, it would release three metal chains with spikes on them, that would tore into the flesh like saw. Even when they were building the prototype, they were skeptic about the morality of such weapon. But they did end up building it. And once it was done, it malfunctioned and shot Ren straight in the arm. It was the reason why their robotic hand became a robotic arm. Back when they first got their hand injury only their hand had to be fixed but after this incident almost their entire forearm had to be replaced with robotic parts. They panicked and began tearing the chains off and ripping themselves with it. That day they decided to cancel the project and tell the enforcers no one deserved to be shot with this.

"Where is Jinx?" the woman asked, wincing as her right arm brushed past her side.

"You're making a mess." Silco answered without much care. He took a longer look at the blood flowing down Sevika's arm.

"You said-"

"The plan's changed." he said before standing up and walking over to a dresser.

From this angle Ren wasn't quite able to tell what was in the dresser, but they did see Silco pull out a med kit. He then brought it over to Sevika who finally sat down on the couch. She was grumbling something under her nose but a sharp glare from Silco was enough to shut her up. He handed her the kit, before walking back to the desk.

"Stupid new weapons they got." Sevika muttered as she opened the med kit with what looked like a robotic left arm. The mechanic finally understood what the poncho over her shoulder was for.

"Wait!" Ren got up from their seat, a hand raised towards Sevika as she was about to pull on one of the chains.

"What." she groaned.

"I have dealt with this before and it's a hard process to pull those out without further damaging yourself." they explained, frozen on their half standing spot. "I can help get those out."

"This is a new weapon, how could you have seen it before?" she questioned them with a pointed look.

"I've seen... the prototype." they shrugged. Ren didn't exactly want to tell her that they were the one who made this weapon.

Sevika only stared at them with an angry look before Silco's voice interrupted the both of them. "Let them."

The woman turned her head towards her boss, before giving up and letting Ren take over. They started moving through the bits with precision. With each part of the shattered metals taken out, they got closer to fixing her up. If they squinted, this was just like putting together machines; except they apologised everytime Sevika winced at the pain. They weren't aware of what Silco was doing, and didn't have time to think about it. If they messed up just once, they could easily do lasting damage to Sevika's arm.

Ren had to admit that it was weird being so close to the intimidating woman. Yet she never made a move to push them away or hurt them in any way. Neither did Silco stab them in the back. It was a nice silence the three of them stayed in, only being broken up by the occasional winces and sounds of chain hitting chain. Ren didn't know how much time it took them to finally get to the bullet, but thankfully that was the best part about this process. Because of the chains, the bullet barely penetrated Sevika's arm and Ren was able to remove it without much trouble. By no means were they a professional but they have grown used to removing failed projects from either their own or their co-workers flesh.

Once they cleaned up the wound and made sure everything was set, they began closing it up. Sevika was visibly in pain but there's wasn't much the mechanic could do about it. Thankfully she took it well and didn't pass out, like many of Ren's co-workers did before. They finished up relatively fast, getting away from the woman to let her breathe. She looked down at the stiches, the corner of her mouth turning upwards only for a moment for Ren to catch.

"Huh, not bad." she stood up and so did Ren.

Only then did they look down at their hands. Their right hand was stained red while the left one had splotches of red liquid that wasn't wiped off. Down at their feet, they saw the metal chains on the floor. There was blood all around them, staining the wooden floor of Silco's office. Speaking of which, they forgot that the Eye was still with them in the room. When they turned around, they saw that he was sitting at his desk, writing some papers. Ren didn't even hear when he sat down or started working.

"I trust you'll be able to carry out you job now?" Silco asked without looking up.

"Sure." with that she stepped away from Ren, only addressing them while facing the door. "Keep up the work out, mechanic."

With that she left the room. The mechanic looked helplessly between Silco and the mess they made and finally they made eye contact. Silco didn't seem angry, rather unbothered by what had happened.

"Clean that up." was the only thing he said before returning to his work.

Ren nodded, despite knowing he wouldn't see it. They turned to the bloody chains, wondering where they should start.

"There's a trashcan in the left corner and the bathroom is down the hallway, to the right." he gave the orders. "You should find something to wipe the blood off with in there."

"Right." they whispered to themselves then left to find it.

The mechanic followed Silco's instructions and soon they found a door to the right. Once they opened it, they found themselves in a bathroom. After a short inspection, they found what looked like a used rag, already stained red by blood. They gathered it and tossed it in the sink to get it wet. When they successfully rinsed it out and got it wet enough to wipe off the floor, they rushed back inside.

Once there, they saw that some chemicals were prepared by the small table in front of the couch, most likely placed there by Silco. They walked to the mess they made and picked the chains up from the floor. Ren threw those away before getting on their knees and taking the chemicals in their hands. One appeared to be a liquid they weren't familiar with but the other was just baking soda. Ren gently pushed the rag to the floor, making it soak up as much blood as possible. When the rag couldn't take anymore, they poured the baking soda and the unknown chemical over it, hoping that they would have a reaction. And they certainly did.

Ren left a little time for them to take effect, and they glanced up at Silco. He was peacefully sitting at his desk, working on something. But as soon as Ren stared at him for a few seconds, his gaze landed on the mechanic. They immediately looked away, embarrassed that they have been caught staring.

Because they didn't dare look back up at the Eye, they started gently wiping off the remaining blood from the wood. Thankfully the chemicals worked and they were able to remove it without staining the floor. When they were done, they left the office once again to rinse the bloody rag off and leave it to dry. Upon returning, Silco stopped working, giving them his undivided attention.

"I suppose these past two months at Babette's have taught you how to clean." Silco started.

Ren could barely contain their surprised gasp. But of course Silco knew where they worked and what they did. It's not like it was a secret, and a man with power like his, could easily get this information. Then they remembered Jinx saying she got banned from the brothel, which probably meant he found out through her. Still, getting the info of how long they've been working there was definitely from other sources.

"But I assume you haven't alway been a janitor." he slowly motioned for them to sit down again.��

Ren followed his instructions, maintaining a neutral facade. "No, sir."

"Mhm," he nodded, "a mechanic I heard you've been."

"Yes."

"Why change careers?" he questioned.

Ren didn't know if Silco was genuinely interested in their life or rather wanted to gather information for blackmail. Most likely the latter though. Despite their suspicions, they answered his question honestly. "Hard times, sir. I do what I can to earn money."

"A little contradicting, don't you think?" he opened a drawer and grabbed a cigar for himself. Then he reached for the cutter and trimmed the end of the cigar. He then lit it, lazily bringing it to his lips and huffing a cloud of smoke. "You implied you'd do anything to earn money, yet when it was offered to you, you refused. So what is it that you're after, Ren?"

"I don't understand what you imply, sir." they shook their head.

"Money, respect, power, there are many things people desire. What is it that drives you?" Silco explained, his eyes staring into Ren's soul.

"Survival, I suppose." they shrugged.

"Is that why you have worked for Piltover?" The question came without warning.

Ren's mouth opened in surprise. For a moment they didn't know how to respond. They didn't realise Silco could gather information about them even from Piltover. So they only managed to mutter a single word. "What-"

"I've done some research and none of the Rens I found was you." he lifted a paper, reading off of it. "Almost as if you haven't existed in Zaun until two months ago, when you started working at the brothel."

"Well-"

"Don't interrupt me." his eyes snapped to Ren, who immediately shut their mouth. "Now, I found this discovery... unsettling, to say the least. No one has heard of you, or seen you; not even my best informants. That is until I found records from a workshop who sold parts to Piltover. And wouldn't you know it? Someone named Ren has been picking up most of the orders for over eight years now."

Ren opened their mouth to speak, but Silco raised a hand to silence them, so they shut their mouth in no time. Once the Eye made sure they were staying silent, he continued.

"Upon further digging, I found that the very workshop you have been working at, is directly connected to the progress of hextech." he said the last word like it was poison. "Not only that, but you supplied the enforcers with weapons. I have no doubt you created the very weapon that hurt Sevika just today."

"I wasn't trying to-"

"Don't make me repeat myself." he scoffed. "I don't need excuses. I need an answer. What are you after?"

Ren's hands clenched after hearing the accusations. Whenever they were falsely accused of something, they could feel their blood run hot and it took all their strength no to blow up on the person. So Ren closed their eyes for a moment and let out an angry sigh.

"With respect sir, I have already told you." they said in the lowest tone they could muster. Ren didn't even think about what trouble this might bring to them. "I've done what I've done for survival. Yes, it has left a sour taste in my mouth to work on things that can hurt my home, my people. But I didn't have a choice!"

"There is always a choice." he muttered. Even from this distance, Ren could see how his gaze darkened. His hands were clasped together in front of him, as he laid his chin on his knuckles; cigar left in the tray.

"Yes, death." Ren nodded. "But I won't stop fighting for my life. If the Undercity taught me one thing, it's that. And for your interest, sir, I had issued those very weapons that hurt Sevika to be destroyed because it was far too cruel for any living being. I dismantled the prototype myself and tossed the blueprints into fire. I don't know how they made it anyway."

"So you admit it?" he raised an eyebrow.

"That's not-" they buried their face in their hands, trying to calm down, "I didn't want to hurt my home! I didn't want to give weapons into the hands of the very people that have been destroying my home since my childhood! But I didn't have a choice!"

They stood up, rage completely taking over their body. Ren was infuriated that Silco would accuse them of intentionally hurting the very place they grew up at. Zaun was their home. Every crevice of it, no matter how gruesome, was part of them. Whether they liked it or not. So many of their beliefs, opinions and habits were all based on zaunite standard. They may have left Zaun but Zaun never left them.

"Life isn't so different for us at topside!" they continued. "No matter what we do, they still see as as sump rats! And when they hold a piece of cheese above our heads they expect us to jump at it and have us dance for our 'prize'. I learned how to survive up there and I'm sorry that it's not up to Your Majesty's standards."

Silco didn't say anything to Ren's tantrum. Or rather didn't react at all. He stayed as still as he possibly could. The only indication of life was that his eyes slowly followed Ren's movements. Then he finally moved, getting the cigar out of the tray again and lazily bringing it to his lips. Silco huffed out a cloud of smoke before speaking.

"If survival is your main motivator, why befriend Jinx?" he questioned them.

After a second, Ren's body relaxed somewhat, and their raised hands fell to their sides. "Jinx? She- I just helped her."

"For what reason?" he huffed again.

"I saw a child in need and helped." they shrugged. "I didn't even know she was your daughter until-... Well, until she brought me here."

Silco's right eye twitched ever so slightly. It was obvious he didn't believe them but there wasn't much they could do about it. Not like they could prove anything they have just said.

Before the both of them could say anything though, a knock turned their attention to the door. Silco permitted entry to the person outside and the door opened. Two tall and muscular men stepped inside, an enforcer following behind them. Not just any enforcer, but the sheriff himself. Ren and Marcus locked eyes and the man froze in his place. The sheer panic that was written all over his face, not because of Silco, but because of Ren, showed them that something was wildly wrong.

Ren slowly turned away from the sheriff, looking back at Silco. They could swear that they saw a hint of a smile but in a blink of an eye it was gone. Silco motioned for the sheriff to come closer but Marcus hesitated. After a couple seconds and a sharp glare he grabbed the stool next to Ren and hopped down on it. The goons walked behind him, keeping him trapped from both sides as Marcus looked up at Silco.

"Marcus, how kind of you to join us." he feigned happiness. "I suppose introductions aren't in order."

"Yes, we... have met." the sheriff cleared his throat. "They shouldn't be here while we discuss-"

"I believe otherwise." Silco repeatedly tapped the table with his pointer finger while looking at Marcus.

"Sheriff." Ren greeted him.

"Isn't this such a happy reunion?" Silco put his cigar out before clasping his hands. "Except... I quite vividly remember ordering our dear sheriff to take the sole survivor of the explosion to prison."

Ren's eyes widened as they whipped their head to the sheriff. He glanced at them before turning away in shame. The mechanic's breathing became heavy as they processed the information. It all made sense. The money Marcus had offered them was from none other than Silco, who no doubt payed that amount to silence the enforcer. Ren's fists clenched again, knowing well enough that Marcus had lied about them needing to leave Piltover. They had to use all their strength not to punch him in the face right then and there.

"I told you there was a witness, I couldn't-"

"Oh, did I ask if you could or couldn't do it?" Silco countered. "I told you to do it, no matter what."

"A Kiramman dragged them away from the fire, I can't control that situation!" Marcus was ready to jump up from the stool but one of the guards pushed him down.

The sheriff's face looked so beaten. He clearly wasn't shaving lately and there were dark circles under his eyes. From the corner of his eyes he looked up at the mechanic, but not even his guilt ridden face was enough to stop the disgusted scowl from Ren. They were sure that if looks could kill Marcus would be six feet under now. All of the things Ren built up for themselves was gone, because a whiny little cop was too afraid to speak up. Then their attention turned to Silco.

He was responsible for the lie in the first place. But he didn't know who he was sending to jail, that much was clear. Ren was still mad at him nonetheless, for being ready to send one of his own people to prison for something he knew wasn't their fault. But why would he do that? Why was the Eye of Zaun so concerned about workshop in the first place. Perhaps he wanted it gone because it was in relation to hextech. Yet that didn't make sense, because they only just made the tools that the scientists worked with. If the shop was gone, it would only set the scientists back for a couple days if not less. Silco wouldn't take such a risk if he was as smart as people said.

"I can't help that your little hellspawn-"

"Watch your mouth!" This was the first time Ren heard Silco yell, and it still wasn't a loud noise. Not louder than his usual tone anyway. It was rather a whispered yell, one that still sent chills down their spine.

His hellspawn. Jinx. Ren could feel their legs almost giving up beneath them, only being able to stop themselves from falling by stepping back. It couldn't have been her. Sure she had problems, Ren was aware of that, but blowing up an entire workshop wasn't something she would do. Not while people were in there anyway. The mechanic could only stare in front of themselves. Who was to blame for this? The sheriff, protecting his own life, the Eye, protecting his daughter, or the girl Ren helped in a dark alley one night. They simply couldn't decide. It was all too much for them to bear. But they couldn't just walk out; it would mean they're weak. Ren couldn't allow Silco seeing weakness in them.

So they took a big breath and turned towards the Eye, expression as neutral as it possibly could. He was watching them, no doubt looking for a reaction. Ren didn't know if he found what he wanted, but Silco turned his eyes to the sheriff. They simple weren't willing to look at him. Silco on the other hand seemingly took joy in watching the terrified man squirm in his seat.

"You'll soon learn, boy, that crossing me is a dangerous game." he finally said. "I won't allow another hiccup. Do you understand me?"

Marcus stayed silent for a moment before talking. "Yes."

"Luckily for you I found some use for this one." Silco leaned back. "Now get out of my sight."

Ren finally turned to Marcus. He was practically torn from his seat by the henchmen and kicked out of the office. Once the door was slammed shut, Ren looked at Silco again. The man was eyeing them like a predator it's prey. It unsettled them to no end, scaring them even. But they still held onto the anger they had.

"You payed him to frame me?" they whispered.

"Hmmm? Yes." he stated it as a fact, clearly not caring about the mechanic. "I wasn't aware who I was putting behind bars, if that's any consolation."

"I'd say that makes it worse." they sighed. "Jinx. She-"

"Yes." he nodded, watching as Ren shook their head in frustration. "Oh? Are you angry at her? Perhaps even wanting to hurt her?"

"No!" they looked at him, bewildered. "No, I- She's just... She's just a child. I wouldn't hurt a child."

Silco didn't answer immediately. Instead he studied Ren's face. The mechanic wasn't quite sure how to react. They weren't exactly close to Jinx but her presence was welcome to them before. She was always strange but so lively that she made Ren forget about their problems for even just a fleeting second. Now to find out this same girl has caused such disaster was beyond upsetting. But something in their brain clicked, and they had realised they were in a far worse situation. Silco wasn't just going to let them go with all this information.

"Are you going to kill me?" Ren questioned him.

"I have no reason to." Silco answered. "Jinx has grown fond of you. Although I doubt the feeling is mutual."

"I... I need time." the mechanic admitted. "But I don't hate her."

Silco simply hummed. "Jinx wants to learn from you."

"What?"

"You are to work with her on setting our case forward, rather than setting us back like you've been doing for years." he explained.

Ren stuttered, trying to form a sentence but Silco simply didn't let them.

"This wasn't a request." his tone lowered again. "Jinx sees potential in you, prove to me that you're useful or I'll get rid of you myself."

"But I can't always be here for Jinx, I have a job." Ren countered.

"Congratulations on your new job." he said it in the most monotone voice Ren has ever heard. "Now get out of my office. You start next monday. I trust you'll sort everything out by then."

Ren knew it was of no use to argue against Silco, so they just sighed. "Yes, sir."

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