PARALLEL CANON
Imagine, if you will, the bad end to Side Order: Overlorder wins, everyone is pulled into the Memverse and loses their free will, and what was once a therapeutic VR space becomes an existential prison, grinding down countless souls into passionless sludge.
What ‘PUNISHMENT’ awaits the protagonist now…?
Oddly enough, they remain themselves-- Agent 8’s rebellious spirit must be definitively crushed before they are allowed into the normal workings of the World of Order. So they are locked in the Spire and given a task: complete all 30,000 floors without dying once (no hacks, after all) and they will be “freed”. Of course, each time they fail, they must start over from 1F.
The overwhelming challenge comes with a greatly expanded palette, but even as it becomes more saturated, the strength of their enemies increases in turn, far past the limits of the laws of physics, or even the laws of time and space. The further they go, the harder it becomes to even comprehend what’s going on around them, let alone react quickly enough to win.
But Agent 8 is nothing if not determined. The hope of being freed, and at least being able to learn what happened to Marina, Pearl, Acht, and the rest of the world, is all they have left.
For now they are totally isolated, with only a standard-issue drone and the cries of the Jelletons for company. As far as they know, they are the only sentient being within the Spire…
914 notes
·
View notes
Ghost rides the tube when he gets back from deployment. Just sits in the train car and rides it back and forth for hours. Watches the sun come up, and go down. Watches people get on in the morning, get on in the evening. To and from work. Normal people with normal lives, riding the tube. Sometimes he switches lines and rides out to the far zones, staring out the window to see the city fly past. It's so ordinary. Uninteresting to the people that see it every day. He crosses his arms over his chest and closes his eyes in the safety of the mundane civilian crowds, listening to the conversations around him as he does. Mothers with babies, friends on their way to class, drunks on their way home from the pub. Living people.
He gives his seat to an older woman, feels her grateful smile like poking a bruise. Picks up a dropped toy for a child and doesn't let his eyes linger on the way their parent kisses their head. People he's never going to mean anything to, but they mean something to him. Something that sticks in his throat, and makes him snap at the recruit that asks where he's been all day when he gets back on base.
948 notes
·
View notes
nothing makes me want to bawl like jupe's voice saying that "you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here" over the announcement system at the end of NOPE. in context or without it wrecks me every time.
274 notes
·
View notes
songs: “the mind electric” by miracle musical, “wings” by birdy / sansa fc: kaitlyn dever, monica keena, mya fc: ruby cruz, myranda fc: liv hill, arya fc: georgie henley, jeyne fc: dalila bela / paintings: “the pained heart” by arthur hughes, “a young woman playing an aulos” by charles-amable lenoir / quote: a feast for crows - sansa i
— “She awoke all at once, every nerve atingle. For a moment she did not remember where she was. She had dreamt that she was little, still sharing a bedchamber with her sister Arya. But it was her maid she heard tossing in sleep, not her sister, and this was not Winterfell, but the Eyrie. And I am Alayne Stone, a bastard girl.” / A Storm of Swords — Sansa VII
149 notes
·
View notes