#hivemind flares

[bluginkgo]

Episode 7 Teaser is out and it gave me too many crack theories

Well, after finally getting my head wrapped around the entire teaser- which took literal hours to process how amazing it all looked- I think I finally found the ability to put it into words.

Spoilers, duh and uh lots of words, so sorry

This'll be somewhat frame by frame crack down as well as crack theories that came to me while spending time looking at the red images too long that gave me a headache - anyways

As many have mentioned this before, V's corpse is gone, and only a sentinel's tail remains on the ground to the right. Although I wish to believe that V made it out alive, that hope is quickly dwindling. Although there is a small possibility that V somehow won the fight (perhaps with outside help such as J) and dragged herself away (based off of the splatter on the ground) I more so think that she turned into an eldritch V. That or perhaps has been mauled by the sentinels, and the body was dragged off. Although, I can not wait for Liam to prove me wrong about this theory (I hope he proves me wrong, cause I miss V ;w;)

The ground looking hall seems to be where the gang will enter right after exiting the elevator. Alongside this, it seems that the moment with N is also here (based on the background). Now, as for the look that N gives. It goes from worried and slightly scared to harsh concern (in my opinion, feel free to take that thought and yeet it as far as you wish ^_^). Something made him worry in a way that also slightly flared his anger. Two theories:

He saw something ahead of them, and this is the more likely possibility, because that tunnel gives way to the cave that N seems to have been dragged into from the teaser from November.

2. Uzi might have said something that made him more concerned. There is a figure that moves behind N, but it is very hard to see as to who it is- my guess it's Tessa, making Uzi the only candidate to possibly to walk in front of them.

Then we get to see this hole.

Possibility (also a bit wacky and highly unlikely): The entity will finally be revealed, that is, the center of the absolute solver. Something I noticed with the design of the absolute solver is that we get to see its limbs, but never the main body. It is always hiding somewhere, be it in the ceiling or the walls. Of course, there are also the eldritch forms we saw of Cyn, but in my opinion, it feels more like another limb. Now, with J's huge form, I'm a little more inclined to believe that's what it looks like as the main body. Holo spooky snake crab like.

Not to be dramatic, but... Core collapse, which made me chuckle. Because despite all hell breaking loose in these last couple episodes, Murder Drones still manages to sneak in tiny jokes like this. Oh, and I can't forget the dog too! XD

Something I still cannot grasp my head around is what is going on with the environment around the cathedral?? It's raining, but it's in a cave- ok can be sorta explained that it acts like a stalactite... but then what is going on with the vortex around the building? My current theory: uhhh... robo-satan, that is all.

A lot of scenes with humans and in a clear view (i.e. not like a video tape). This might suggest a flashback as many have already mentioned it. However, who, how, and why is there a flashback? Well, there is one crack theory I came up with. This is what Uzi is seeing. She is an absolute solver host, and it has been seen on multiple occasions that absolute solver has a hivemind, so it can easily show its hosts whatever memories its previous hosts had.

These next scenes I believe to be in the progression as shown.

@/haastera (don't want to bother them with a tag) also pointed this out, that these scenes may be back to back, based off of the lamp that is off to Uzi's left. However, what the heck would cause Uzi to snap like she did in ep4?

Uzi saw something in the tape that made her upset, the possibility of N killing Nori. Cons in that theory: N killed Nori post core collapse, and there would not be any evidence of it.

The tape had something that was similar to zombie drones tape that was marked "Don't show this to drones, they will not like it." Something in the tape may have forced boot the solver string in Uzi, and she was powerless to stop it. Cons: @bloodywolfwings mentioned to me that the reflection in Uzi's visor seems to be a door instead of a screen. So there's also the 50% chance that these two scenes are not even related.

MA'AM YOU PUT THAT SWORD AWAY, UZI HAS IT BAD ENOUGH MA'AM- in all seriousness, this is a 50/50 shot once again. Maybe Tessa is attempting to get rid of Uzi while N is gone. The opposite end of that is Tessa is attempting to help Uzi, perhaps an enemy that Uzi did not sense behind her.

These two scenes are related, I believe- the claw is hard to see behind the cross, but it is there, and not to mention that Dr. Chambers is wearing a camera on his head. However, there's more to it after I stared at it for a while. The absolute solver claw appears to be burning and glitching, this is only seen with DDs and solver drones when they are exposed to the sun. Perhaps the humans were slowly getting better at controlling the absolute solver, with some sort of power equivalent to the sun. But in the end, their efforts were useless, seeing as Nori still destroyed everything there.

We have seen these two scenes already, so not much to dissect here. Just NUzi being NUzi :3 while all hell breaks loose

This scene had me so confused at first.

I could not figure out what was going on with the cars. Cars are outside, our gang is in a cathedral, what happened- That's it. This is outside. And as many have already mentioned this, there are drones in the background so far identified as Lizzy and perhaps Thad. (I say perhaps Thad because my dumb brain won't let go of the idea that the drone on the left is Khan. Look, my brain said 'I think I see a mustache' and now I can't unsee it.) Either way, this is outside and the gravity has decided to take a break (as RedMage put it in the nuzi discord server). It seems that the gang will do something, or something drastic will happen (perhaps a second core collapse) that will cause the gravity of copper-9 to become unstable. So maybe the episode will end with the possibility that copper-9 is about to collapse like Earth did, as the gang tries to stop that event from happening.

Ahem, allow me a second of: FERAL N FERAL N FERAL N FERAL N- ok, I'm done for now. As many have pointed out, this may be the moment that N killed Nori, and Uzi might have to relive through that experience as the absolute solver shows Uzi everything that has happened up until now. His smile is not the one we've seen up until now when he's in his murder drone mode, but more of a smirk. Another theory I came up with is that when Uzi becomes possessed by the absolute solver, perhaps by default, N does too. Uzi is now N's admin, and if the admin is corrupted, there is nothing to keep N's solver string in his ai from fully corrupting him. However, there's a hole here.

The X on the visor generally means that there is a string in the drone's core is faulty and not functioning. This is because when the solver string attempts to take possession of the DDs, the admin program switches it to false and gives the faulty os string sign on the visors. That has to mean the admin program is still up and running, which pushes the theory of this scene being a flashback of N killing Nori, more likely.

Uzi's eye has burst, it seems, just like Yeva's. So now the question is, why does it do that? Doll also covered her eye, perhaps to conceal the damage that is already there. Theory: this happens because the solver inside of the drones is constantly attempting to get out of the host. It has been seen that it does destroy the bodies from ep5. And it seems that the red goop is what Uzi's attempting to hold back on her eye. It might be oil, but what makes me believe otherwise is the fact that it doesn't look liquid-like enough. Granted, that scene is literally 1 second, so the movement that may be there is really hard to grasp.

Doll HAS MADE A RETURN! And she's fighting someone with knives is what it seems like. Thoughts on who it might be? Literally, anyone in the gang, there is not much to go off of here. But to dissect it further, it could be like this:

Uzi- because she teamed up with Tessa and a DD, and it seems like Doll and the gang have separate goals, which upsets Doll and causes the fight.

N- another DD that had caused a lot of pain and suffering for WD when they first arrived to copper-9. So why not get rid of him as well while she's at it.

Tessa- the main character that seems to be very suspicious about every action. We know very little about her, and even more so what happened to her post gala massacre. Perhaps Tessa discloses the idea of killing every drone that is on the list of the drones experimented on. This will include Yeva and, therefore, Doll.

Now as for THIS.

That is a drone, for certain, now as to who it is, is really hard to guess. There is clearly a helmet on the drone, so it kinda narrows it down. Routes:

This is part of a flashback:

Nori or Yeva- one of the stronger solver drones that needed a better way of controlling/containing them. Backed up by the balconies/cat walks that are on the corners of the screen.

Some other poor drones- An even crazier idea of mine would be that the people were, in fact, worshipping the absolute solver. This is what happens to the heretics. Either that, or this was some sick way of worshipping the solver.

This is real-life time: Doll is the number 1 candidate, how she got to be like this, though... there are some possibilities.

Doll's solver form is taking control/form.

Uzi and Doll had a fight (consciously or not, solver might have forced a fight), with this being the outcome.

It's late for me. The amount of crack theories that have been bouncing around in my head is unreal. More than half of them are probably most likely wrong. Once again, take all of my theories and yeet them into the stratosphere if you wish ^_^ These will be mostly here just to come back to and see how wrong I was about everything.

[tobiasdrake]

Do you ever think that certain techniques don’t get used to their full potential like the multi form technique?

There are some, yes.

Shishin no Ken/Multiform doesn't really have much potential. Its critical flaw is mathematic and seemingly irreconcilable.

On paper, the benefits of being four guys instead of one guy are pretty clear.

Moreover, the technique seems to allow the four Tens to share consciousness? The purpose of the technique is to allow Ten's enhanced perception to be even further enhanced, by letting him follow Goku's movements with twelve eyes instead of three.

Which only makes sense if the four Tens are sharing sensory input. Otherwise it's not twelve eyes; It's four independent sets of three. This strongly implies that the four selves created by Shishin no Ken are a hivemind.

As an aside, I love how all four Tens are shouting this. That must be so eerie to hear in stereo.

But experienced counter-fighter Goku picks the technique apart pretty quickly. A less-critical vulnerability is that the Taiyoken/Solar Flare exists so, y'know, have fun with those twelve eyes.

But the more pressing issue is what it does to the user's ki. This is an oft-overlooked limitation of the technique - especially because the anime loved this technique and just sort of swept its limitations under the rug.

But the issue with Shishin no Ken is that in order to divide into four bodies, you have to divide your ki in four to go with those bodies. You do not have a limitless well of free ki that you can put into as many clone selves as you want. When you split, your ki splits.

Because it's not "I'm four guys now!" It's "I'm four guys now who each, individually, would lose an arm-wrestling match to Chiaotzu."

If you can win a fight as four drastically-reduced quarters of yourself, you could probably have won that fight without doing this. Again, its purpose was just the utility of having twelve eyes - and attempting it was a mistake that ended in Ten's complete humiliation.

The narrative purpose of this technique was to contrast Goku's new senses against Tenshinhan's enhanced perception. To convey the extent Ten has to go in order to perceive Goku's movements and pit them against what Goku's learned from Popo.

It's done for the sake of comparison; Setting up Ten with a flawed method of enhancing his perception in order to contrast it against Goku's more effective training. This is the context that gets lost when the anime reduces the technique to just "Characters sometimes clone themselves because it's a really cool move."

In practice, the mathematics of "Four divided selves have 1/4 of my ki each" seems pretty irreconcilable as techniques go, which is likely why this never appeared in manga canon again.

...though I do have to wonder if the Twins' infinite energy generators would be able to compensate for the flaw. They do, in fact, have a limitless well of free energy. Hmm.

For me personally, and I'm far from the first person to make this observation but. Like. Krillin can do this.

And Krillin can also do this.

That is a combination of techniques that should, by all rights, make Krillin the deadliest motherfucker in the universe.

[ruumirmir]

Reprise of a rolling mist

Part 1 Part 2 (soon)

☽◯☾ Summary - You, the revered God of Healing and Mist, one of the oldest friends of Zhongli, are not one to be easily taken down, but alas, in the Archon war of brutal massacres, you can’t escape death for long.  ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ☽◯☾ Characters - Zhongli, (minor) Cloud Retainer, (minor) Madame Ping ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ☽◯☾ Tags - Zhongli x Reader || Gender Neutral || Angst || Eventual happy ending || Description of blood, violence, and fatal injuries || Mention of death   ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ☽◯☾ Word count - 1.2k ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ☽◯☾ Rumour◇ says - my first ever fanfic to be published on tumblr. In case you haven’t seen my previous post, please do! It has some context in it. I hope i did peepaw some justice,, as much as I love him, it was slightly hard to pin his personality down especially in this wild scenario. I’ll probably belt out the part 2 really soon cause I’m done with it, just gotta decorate the post lmao.

‎• ——————————————————————— The nearby corpse of a beast twitches once before falling still. The loud ringing in your head gets louder by the passing minute. Mouth set into a grimace, you roll onto your back and hack out a wet cough.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ It's hard to breathe with a gaping hole in your torso, still fresh and bloody. Your half-lidded eyes focus onto a speck of ash, floating up to melt into the night air. ‎  ‎

‎ ‎ ‎

The God of War doesn’t fear. No. He is the one who’s feared. And yet...

“No...”, Morax kneels there, watching his old friend, laid upon the charred grass.‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

Your once lustrous hair, now melds into the soot-stained ground, tainted by blood and grime. Your breaths come shallow and short. For all the dust and debris left in the battle's wake, Mt. Tianheng had a pleasant breeze to offer.

His palm find its way to yours; cold to the touch. Fingers tighten around you, and the clarity slowly returns to your hazy eyes.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

The stench of burnt flesh permeates the air. His gaze lingers over the yawning cavity in your body; charred at the edges. From such a pair of gods, its not Morax who wields the power to heal and mend. It’s not you who possesses the energy to do so.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ And so. his hands tremble uselessly over your gut, or the lack thereof.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

His most trusted. His closest companion. His oldest friend... The one who shares countless memories with him. The one who had promised to do so for many more years to come.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

"M-morax," his name spoken like a sigh. The corners of his mouth twitch into a small smile. Your stomach flares in pain when you fight back a strangled whine. "I am... not your burden to bear amidst a battle."

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

He sits by you, pained. “Hush... do not strain yourself by talking.” You lie before him, bleeding.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

“O great Rex Lapis, won't you be kind? Won't you be wise? Renounce your lands and people? Spare us all a calamity from befalling those subjects of yours? It’s the least of your payment... for eons of slaughter caused by your hands”

A great many creatures had cackled, with many more swarming in. The seething mass of... beastly wasps, misshapen and overgrown, were all too eager for a massacre. A hivemind; disgustingly coordinated in brains and brawn. ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

By the first rumbling of his meteorite that bombed over Mt. Tianheng, a familiar billowing mist had rolled forward to assist. Whether in your solid body, or a lashing mist, it was hard to quell the pyro gnats. ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

The grass is stained red by now.  He takes your hand and grips it tight, to his chest. You brush your fingers over his bruised knuckles.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ By the second rumbling of raining spears, Morax’s harsh orders had sent the adepti and yakshas scrambling towards the unprotected city of Liyue. . . . By the third rumbling of his shield molding around you... a flaming projectile had already shot clean through your torso.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

You need to fight to keep your eyes open.  From a simple flesh wound... what a joke. Your not the admired deity of recovery, just in name, are you?

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ Your fingers twitch, tightening around his robes. "Help me sit upright..."

His sharp exhale falls upon your brows, and with the utmost softest touch, You’re pulled up against his torso. Your head sags against his shoulder, where you can feel the thick pool of sorrow under his skin.

"Please... I do not want to cause you more hurt," The words fall hollow from his lips. He holds you up gently, and you can finally focus on his face.  … where you’re met with a wet shine to his eyes.

"What... are you trying to do?" His mouth trembles downwards ever so slightly.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

But you... you break out in a rebellious smile, don’t you?

The pain is unbearable. And you laugh all the harder for it. Sweat beads your forehead, and your fingers dig into his arm when he presses into your stomach to slow the bleeding. You bite out a groan. It burns.

"Don't look at me like that Morax", you pant. "This... this is but child’s play for a healer of my caliber...."

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

Yet, your life trickles out like the grains of sand in an hourglass, and your vision flickers. 

He wipes the blood off your lip, clearly vexed, "You are still yourself, I see. Even as you lay here, near death, you are still joking."

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

"Just... won’t you humor me one last time?" You rasp out, feeling faint. All sensations except the gritting pain have left already. "Lend me some energy- so my body can return to what it once was..."

"Because... I, the Healer God of Mist, am alone the revered one... who holds mortality at my fingertips..." your voice breaks towards the end, but you still flash a smile of dogged arrogance, don’t you? (There is nothing but a theory borne from your feverish thoughts.)

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

He gazes at you; minutes away from the end. The god who holds no regrets, who has not one ounce of fear in their voice. (You have never been more terrified of death, for you only know how to run from it.) With a melancholy rustle of feathers, comes another soft voice, "Ever so conceited, until the very end...”, Cloud retainer murmurs into the night.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

His skin glows alight, veins illuminated on his chest and arms. His gnosis ignites for your fanatical whims. It always did.  "How could I ever refuse you...?", his trembling voice, so quiet. You’re met with a familiar embrace.

‎ … ‎ ‎ ‎ “If mortals pray to gods in their time of need, who does a god pray to?”

Two drops fall to your neck, rolling away until they wet your clothes.

“No one.” His smile is soft, and voice raspy. “A god can only pray to himself... but, he may have hope in others.” ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

Your body slowly starts to dissipate into millions of droplets of condensation that scatter into the air, where the wind blows parts of you away, and away. ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ The soft tunes of a zither ring out into the air, permeating the atmosphere with a slow melody. An adeptus sits atop a nearby rock, her eyes downcast.

ah. ‘Ping's zither’, you sigh. ‘How kind of her.’

And he smiles through his tears.

Isn't it beautiful?

A great rolling mist dissolves into the air. With dust and ash in the air, it swirls and rises up and above. The wasted grassland is littered with thousands of droplets that shimmer like stars as the moonlight reflects off them. It is as beautiful. as it is empty.

On a night like this, Streetward rambler’s tune graces the wind, until her fingers bleed. Cloud Retainer sheds no tears, but know that she holds your memory well.

And you, Rex Lapis,

Morax,

you weep for me.

Taglist - @ainescribe ||  @theorchardcollective  || @flos-historia​ || @nightrayseishina ||  @thesparklingwriter

[the-shrouded-shards]

The Story of the Seven Shards | Aftermath, Eschyl

When the Shroud first came over the world, it was...difficult... to devise a solution. Every color was divided and trapped within their own personal wars and woes. It was understood among the many people that the newly born infection was a sort of Darkness—something they had overcome long, long ago—with the way it darkened the earth below their feet and severed people’s minds from their bodies. However, the infection seemed to be greatly beyond the intelligence of Darkness. It remained a hivemind, but it was as if the dark had learned from its past mistakes, learned from the people and learned from watching all these years... slowly spreading among the shadows.

Naturally, their earliest ideas related to the Hero. After all they had gone through, all they had overcome, who could stop them when united now? Surely, their coming together again would solve the problem easily. Ever since the great enemies of old, particularly the Void, their civilizations had grown amazingly in power. But they faced the age-long dilemma of every new loss of peace; their lack of crystals would sacrifice their immediate protection. They would have to rely again on a Hero, on one sole person.

... ... … ...

After about a year passed since the Shroud’s dawning, the rulers of each race were finally able to peacefully meet together face-to-face. [And so were the [REDACTED].] They had brought their crystals and were prepared to negotiate about creating the Hero. The discussion reflected their desperation for help. [The windows are darker than they should be.] They spoke for hours of candidates, armies, morals, massacres… and after that time had passed, they came to an agreement. [Nobody notices the flashing light outside.] A plan to protect all of their people together. They would still create a Hero, but to make things manageable they could—! [The signal flares fly into the sky.]

—An explosion shatters the walls, the windows. The meeting room caves and collapses.

The infection spreads in seconds across the ground like lightning etching its white, jagged scars into the skies. [The Queen of the Indigos smiles, swirls of a darker purple barely hidden beneath her cloak. She disappears with the cool night breeze. Was it her?]

All is lost.

The kings and queens of the Chromatics are found dead and infected under the rubble. Within a day, they will have decayed into Nothing.

When their people arrive to the scene, duly disturbed by the destruction and the losses of their rulers, the area is drowned in ash. They notice that some places in the stone and mist… glow. A dim shimmering among the dull gray ruins. A pulse.

49 shards.

Each chromatic crystal had split into seven pieces. [The witnesses who were there could tell you about the way the shards somehow seemed in... pain.]

So small, so weak...

... ... … ...

The apprentices, or the newly appointed rulers, made the collective decision to distribute the shards among the seven races. It was their only hope of protection.

A shard of each color to a shell of each ruler. The kingdoms were so quiet.

The unity and harmony that the Chromatics kindled before the assassinations began to crumble all over again. Distrust, disbelief, disparity. [War will break out in 2 years time.]

There are movements to unite again. To rekindle the flame. It spreads like wildfire, but remains unheard.

The people of one movement retreat to a distant island with three stolen shards. Red, orange, yellow. They call themselves "Eschyl—" and it means "hope."

Half a century passes.

A siren sounds throughout the island.

[Where are the shards?]

The sky goes dark.

The Movement resurfaces.

[But which one?]

[teecupangel]

Desmond as a Mind Flayer

Submitted by @fanworldbuildingfun​

 few days I have been absolutely consumed by Baldur’s Gate. It has been a most excellent diversion. And thus, I come to you with an idea: after the Solar Flare, Desmond does perish in the Temple. Physically, that is. However, his mid endures – and not at all as The Reader

No, instead – Desmond comes to as a silent observer in the mind of the MC of Baldur’s Gate 3. An experience so similar to Animus that, at first, he thinks he IS stuck in an Animus. But the world, the beings in it – they fit nothing that Desmond has experienced before. And so, he tries to adapt. Trying to reach out to the person he is riding. Permitting what he perceives as a draw on his Eagle Vision (even if it comes across so odd now!). Pinging when he senses danger going on

And then, one day… He manages to actually interact with his host. In a dream. Now. To stop them from being so antagonistic to Desmond – neither of them, after all, had an option to get stuck as they are

In short: Desmond gets reborn as the Mind Flayer parasite in BG3 world. And does not realize it

Que Desmond being *the* Bleeding Effect here. And possibly working on having the other companions become potential carriers to his ancestors’ memories? But that only happens if his host opts to “connect” with the others often (which the game implies is Bad)

=================================

Additions by teecup:

I haven’t bought Baldur’s Gate 3 yet so I am basing Desmond’s Mind Flayer capabilities on what’s wildly accepted in D&D.

First of all, we’ll make Desmond a rogue Mind Flayer that no Elder Brain can control at all. This would make him an enemy of the other Mind Flayers (although they wouldn’t necessarily attack Desmond or his host directly though) because he cannot be ‘put in his place’.

Of course, this would also mean that Desmond has no connection to the hivemind (either permanently or, if you’d like, we can make Desmond be able to access the hivemind later on but he’d mistake it for maybe the Bleeding Effects of ancestors he didn’t know about).

And Desmond always appears as Desmond Miles in the MC’s dreams. He’s just as baffled as the MC to why he can see thru their eyes and the MC might even believe that he’s a wizard or a sorcerer who had fallen into a spell of his own or some kind of magical artifact.

Desmond doesn’t believe that because he has all of Desmond Miles’ memories.

That’s when the MC would suggest “Perhaps you did come from another world and have been transformed?”

And that’s when the search for what Desmond is will begin.

Mind Flayer won’t be the first guess of the MC because Desmond doesn’t act like a usual Mind Flayer. He’s sincere and his words held no lies. Sure, he didn’t tell the MC everything about himself but that’s not surprising at all. Everyone has secrets and it was clear that Desmond’s secrets wasn’t his alone to share.

So they bonded in their dreams and Desmond starts to gain more control over the MC’s body. It’s like… the more they share what they were thinking, what’s on their mind, the more Desmond… feel more in control.

Desmond doesn’t think that’s a problem. In Desmond’s eyes, it was just similar to how more ‘invasive’ the Bleeding Effect was becoming (and that is how he and the MC had been calling it, the Bleeding Effect).

And neither of them realize that Desmond was doing what Mind Flayers were meant to do to their host from the very beginning.

The moment the MC starts to talk to Desmond about their thoughts and feelings…

Desmond had begun to eat their mind.

Unorganized Notes:

Desmond has no idea what he’s doing. He doesn’t even know what a Mind Flayer is.

I’m thinking we should make the MC magic-focused so that the actions Desmond could do while in control would synergies well enough that they won’t realize that Desmond’s affinity to magic is more on the side of the Mind Flayer’s Psionic Magic ability being on the forefront.

It’s probably going to be the Mind Flayers who would tell the MC and Desmond what Desmond truly is unless they find a character that can tell that the MC is already undergoing ceremorphosis.

You want other people to be the host of his ancestors? We can go for the D&D lore of Mind Flayers and make Desmond lay eggs which will hatch to tadpoles with memories of his ancestors.

Of course, this would mean the real reason why the Elder Brain wants him dead is because his ‘offsprings’ also do not adhere to the rest of the Mind Flayers and they do not need to stay with the Elder Brain to live and grow.

They can automatically be implanted into a host.

Which means… Desmond wasn’t just a Mind Flayer. He could potentially be a Mind Flayer with the power of an Elder Brain.

And… I just have to add this:

[spookyspaghettisundae]

All Other Eyes Be Damned

The walls had eyes. Tiny cameras dotted every corner of Future Proof’s headquarters. Every stream of data ran through security systems, monitored by a combination of ever-churning algorithms and vigilant human attention. Every employee offered another set of eyes and ears in the hivemind, witnesses to any wrongdoing or espionage.

If they noticed such a thing happening. If.

Working previous jobs in corporate cybersecurity, that network of eyes used to feel like an extension of herself. Beady plastic eyes with electronics for innards, connecting to the eagle-eyed observers at the center of the hivemind.

Filled to the brim with loyal worker bees and cutting edge infrastructure, a towering skyscraper like Future Proof’s would have offered her a treasure trove of tools in her previous occupation.

Now, Chloe Grant was a grunt again. A well-paid mercenary on the frontlines, but a field operative. Her job was to contain and send dinosaurs coming through temporal Anomalies back into their proper eras.

Her job description did not include monitoring potential spies or ensuring the general public never learned of Anomalies or dinosaurs. The CEO, Malachi Spencer, had not hired her for that. And it wasn’t like she missed that line of work, either. Counterintelligence was always a dance on the razor’s edge—doing your job just good enough to make sure the oiled machine kept running without a hitch, yet never drawing so much attention to yourself that you became the subject of suspicion.

Yet here she was. Every step she took down the hallway towards Communications was going to make her look like she might be a spy herself. She had no reason to go there.

The walls had eyes. Those beady plastic eyes with electronics for innards watched her every move.

Now, she felt all those burning eyes on her. As she walked down the hallway, she had to wonder who would be sitting behind a desk and watching her every move from a security monitor. Wondering who’d sound the silent alert if she stepped out of line, or started acting overly suspicious.

After his arrest, Singh was out of the picture. That only left dozens of other people in the company who could be gunning to take down someone like Chloe Grant for a quick win.

Someone could have been composing a note on her in that very moment. For all she knew, Spencer might be reading that kind of memo by the end of his meeting in the boardroom, and activating everybody to get her fired, and entangled in lawsuits going deep enough to keep her impoverished for life.

Paranoia flared up as brightly as the burning fires of those tiny red dots on all the security cameras, the myriads of eyes all around.

She paused by the door to Communications. One such eye’s tiny red dot glowed above the door. Grant caught herself staring at it longer than she should have. Long enough to catch the attention of anyone behind a security desk and monitors.

Snapping out of this trance, she waved a hand, and the door slid open with a soft hydraulic hiss.

Danielle Bennet sat in the main hub of Communications, on a sleek swivel chair, illuminated by the cold blue glow from a wall of curved monitors. Only few of Bennett’s screens displayed security camera feeds from on-site premises—her main focus centered around myriads of dashboards accruing staggering amounts of data, camera feeds from other cities worldwide, and a show on YouTube where a young woman was talking at the screen.

Bennett hadn’t heard Grant nor noticed her enter Communications. A steady stream of chatter from two tiny earbuds plugged into Bennett’s ears likely occupied her entire attention, or served as white noise that conspired with the data she was monitoring on the screens to distract her entirely.

The other desks were currently unoccupied. With Singh absent and any other personnel out of office, Bennett sat alone in Communications.

Grant almost sighed in relief. She shoved all the creeping paranoia down into a dark hole, then slammed the hatch shut, and locked it. She pursed her lips and regained her composure, then approached Bennett from behind, giving her new colleague two light taps on the shoulder.

Bennett gasped and clutched her chest with a slender hand.

“Oh my f—Chlo—uh, Miss Grant. What can I do for you?”

Bennett forced a smile so nervous that it looked painful. With a flick of her wrist, she blindly closed the YouTube video she had been watching. And catching how Grant spotted that interaction with a furtive glance, Bennett’s cheeks flushed red with embarrassment.

“Hi,” Grant said. She paused while she silently struggled to find the right words. She bridged the gap with a question. “Do you have a moment?”

“Yah, uhm, yeah. W-what’s up?”

Grant was a tall woman, easily standing over a head taller than Bennett when next to one another. With Bennett sitting at the hub’s desk and Grant standing next to her, she must have towered over her the same way Future Proof’s HQ overshadowed the surrounding city buildings. A dizzying difference in heights.

Grant leaned in and cleared her throat, ready to drop her volume to a conspiratorial murmur. Bennett flinched and her cheeks turned a darker shade. Her eyes glittered with apprehension.

“I… need your help. This needs to stay in this room, between the two of us,” Grant said.

Bennett blinked. Blinked again. Rendered speechless, she stared at Grant, doe-eyed.

Grant chewed on her lip before continuing, knowing she needed to be more specific.

“I think there’s a spy in Future Proof, and we need to make sure. I think there’s someone spying on Spencer and the stakeholders as we speak right now. What do you say? Help me out, okay?”

Bennett blinked again. It was taking her too long to absorb the gravity of their situation.

Grant waited patiently, even as every second of time painfully ticked, and her chance at learning what she needed to know slowly slipped away. She needed Bennett’s help, but she couldn’t force her hand. Not now.

Not yet.

“Wh—uh-uhm, o-okay,” Bennett sputtered out. With a hasty gesture, she swept her hair back behind an ear and her gaze blanked. The gears were beginning to grind. The blank gaze hardened and then focused on Grant, locking onto her with a serious expression. “What do you need exactly?”

Grant nodded.

“I think there’s a bug planted in the boardroom. I need some way to intercept the signal, to listen in on it or to trace where it’s transmitting to. I know we can do that, I’m no newb to electronic warfare. Question is, can we do that really quickly somehow?”

Bennett narrowed her eyes. The gears behind her forehead continued to grind. Her brain was visibly running through a million calculations at once, chief among them a burning question: was Chloe Grant the actual spy in this scenario, engineering a situation where she could gain access to information she shouldn’t be getting?

Some part of Bennett must have navigated that maze of a million calculations fast. To go out on a limb here. She nodded in response to Grant’s question.

“Yeah, I got an idea, but, shit. Miss Grant—”

“Call me Chloe.”

She flashed Bennett a small smile.

The Communications operator’s cheeks flushed red again.

“Okay, Chloe, well, I have an idea but, shit, Singh just got into serious trouble, he’s—”

“I know Singh’s in hot water. But he’s in hot water with the federal government, not with Future Proof’s management. I haven’t been here long, but it’s clear we need to act before things get even worse. We all know the Midland disaster was the result of sabotage, right? Come on—think about it. Call’s coming from inside the house, Bennett.”

Grant clenched her jaw. Bennett stayed silent, stunned by this waterfall of conspiratorial assumptions. Some of them had struck a chord.

Grant softened her tone and asked, “Danielle?”

Bennett broke eye contact and rubbed her temples. Staring into the sea of data as it continuously churned on her wall of screens, she continued rubbing her temples while she processed everything.

“I can rig one of our portable Anomaly detectors to single out the signal from all the other noise and then trace it. Are you…” Bennett sighed. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Sure as dino shit,” Grant said, ringing powerfully with confidence.

She almost believed it herself.

Bennett switched gears and practically jumped out of her swivel chair. She zipped around Communications like a fluttering fairy. Within a matter of minutes, she cluttered her desk with tiny tools, grabbed one of the spare PADs, gutted its electronic insides, and rewired the device entirely.

Grant still felt watched. Even in here, an artificial eye was watching their every move. Systems continuously recorded everything. If anybody ever started digging, the hivemind would know what had  happened in this room. There would be uncomfortable questions.

She had to keep telling herself she was acting in everybody’s best interests, so this wouldn’t get her or Bennett into trouble. Hell, if everything worked out, it was bound to make her more popular with Spencer.

Even so, she licked her lips with a dizzying sense of apprehension, almost as if she was standing at the edge of a steep cliff. Stretched this thin with time ticking away, Grant’s patience waned. The longer they waited, the sooner the CEO’s meeting in the boardroom on the top floor would end. The sooner someone could remove the bug and dash any hopes of tracing it back to the spies.

All those eyes. Everywhere. Yet so many of them stayed blind.

Bennett beamed with triumph. She presented the modified PAD to Grant, quickly ran her through how to adjust the tracker to different Wi-Fi and radio signals, and proudly techno-babbled about how she had already filtered out all frequencies and signals commonly present and used throughout the building.

Finally, she handed Grant the earbuds.

“Once you’ve singled out the signal, the PAD should display any video feed, and you can listen in on whatever audio it’s transmitting. If it’s neither one or the other, it’ll just be a bunch of noise, but it’ll be recording everything on this puppy.”

“You are a wizard. I owe you one,” Grant said with a genuine and warm smile.

Before she could register any response to that, or truly absorb how Bennett kept blushing in her presence, Grant stormed out of Communications. The artificial eyes in the walls could continue watching her for all she cared.

Courage and vigor renewed, confidence swelled in her gut as Grant sensed she had found an ally in Danielle Bennett. She quickly dismissed a tiny spark of paranoia that Bennett might be involved in the espionage herself, and leading her into a trap within traps.

Riding the elevator up, Grant’s pulse started racing again. Time slowed, colors brightened, and her awareness sharpened.

Her wristwatch revealed she had lost fifteen minutes already. She hoped Spencer and the stakeholders would be filling a scheduled hour-long meeting in the boardroom.

People as important as the “Three Horsemen of the Corporate Apocalypse” had other places to be. Things to do. Lives to ruin elsewhere, more millions to shovel into shell corporations and off-shore bank accounts.

Worst case scenario, they were already done talking up there.

Grant muttered at the elevator’s level display, urging it to hurry up in its ascent, as if that would help accelerate anything.

The elevator dinged and its doors swished open.

She ducked past two people she had seen before but forgotten the names of, two office worker bees from the top floors. One of them was Spencer’s personal assistant. They chattered about coffee. They also largely ignored Grant.

The PAD in her leather jacket pocket weighed a ton. Cold sweat gathered in her palm around the small device she kept clutched in there, hidden.

She turned a corner to get out of sight from other human beings, and switched the detector on. Its screen winked to life. First, the display of Future Proof’s logo glitched out with graphical distortions, then replaced by plain text and numbers of Bennett’s hacked tracker superseding the PAD’s installed programming.

Grant plugged in the earbuds and started searching. Meandering around the top floor of HQ, adjusting the tiny dials on the device, and thumbing through Bennett’s new settings. She quickly passed by the main offices and glimpsed the boardroom through its sound-proofed glass walls—Spencer, Cole, Jae, and Romero were still in there, speaking to each other.

Good.

“I see you,” Bennett said, words arriving with a hint of static in Grant’s ears by way of the earbuds. However insecure Bennett may have seemed earlier, she now spoke with authority, and a sing-song in her tone. “Yes, I know what you’re thinking. I figured you could use some backup. Say hello to the audience at home.”

Grant spotted the nearest camera in the corner of the hallway. All eyes were on her, after all. Though her heart still raced—with excitement, and a creeping sense of dread—part of her was relieved that all those eyes were Bennett’s right now.

She greeted the camera with a timid wave.

Bennett answered with cheer, “Yep, that’s me. Hi!”

Grant flashed the camera a crooked smile. Had little time or space to appreciate Bennett’s sense of humor. So, she continued searching. Tweaking the PAD’s settings.

Then she swore when a sharp metallic whine eclipsed the soft white noise from her earbuds. Almost ripped them out of her ears, but then the whine died down before she could act upon it.

The PAD’s screen flashed with a red alert.

She had traced the signal. And more than that…

NO VIDEO, said the screen with a small error icon.

AUDIO DETECTED, it added beneath that, with a button prompt she could press to start playback.

Grant’s thumb hovered over that on-screen button. Her paralysis wouldn’t last long.

Curiosity won out. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but Grant had always hated comparing herself to animals, anyway.

Human through and through. She tapped the button.

While she raised the PAD to continue tracing the signal’s path, speech from inside the boardroom filled her ears.

Spencer spoke as sharply to the stakeholders as he did to his employees.

“…and you don’t think it’s convenient that our satellite imaging and the ADS were offline up until Captain Rose and his team were precisely on top of the incursion?”

The ensuing silence in the boardroom was deafening. Someone clicked their tongue in frustration.

Spencer continued. “What makes the world go round, Mister Jae, is cold, hard cash. You represent the ITC but there’s more than one way to secure the necessary funds, and we might need to consider those alternatives if you cannot ensure our systems are running at full operability worldwide. Let alone in our backyard.”

Another long stretch of silence followed. Grant followed the signal all the while. It led her down a corridor she had never seen before.

Bennett asked Grant, “Should, um, should we be listening to this? This, uh, uhhh—”

“Focus. Never mind what they’re saying,” Grant replied. Tremors rocked her voice, echoes of her racing heart. “Let’s focus on the facts. Someone’s eavesdropping on the boardroom meeting, and we need to find out who.”

Kim Jae finally broke the silence and answered Spencer. His every syllable dripped with venom. “What’s the point in shifting the blame around here, hm? You know better than anybody else that we’re not interested in some government goons meddling with your work. It affects our bottom line as much as yours. Which is to say: badly.”

Grant stopped. The signal was leading her up. This was the top floor of the building, so that left only one conclusion for her to draw.

The signal was being sent from the boardroom to the skyscraper’s rooftop.

“You think they’d be using an on-site antenna to bounce the transmission?” Grant asked Bennett.

“Well, no, I doubt it. Risky move to pull if anybody started looking too closely,” Bennett said.

“We do have a lot riding on this,” Romero chimed in. Her words carried no audible venom, but reminded Grant more of the slithering of a rattlesnake through tall grass. “And do not forget this, Malachi. As much as you can replace us, a corporate entity like yours can be replaced as well. A fancy logo and a glass house filled with a bunch of drones are easy to build. Just takes another yahoo with enough drive to sneeze at a new startup and we’d have another face to work with. Remind yourself of that before you even consider threatening us again.”

The boardroom’s silence, again, was deafening.

Grant stepped into the emergency exit stairwell. She followed the steps upstairs. The detection hack confirmed her suspicion, the on-screen flashing continuing to grow in its intensity. She was getting closer to wherever the bug was transmitting to.

Was Ruiz on the rooftop himself? He couldn’t be that bad of a spy, right? Or was he just that ballsy?

“Uh, Gr—Chloe. Please, I really don’t think we should be hearing any of this,” Bennett spoke into Grant’s ear. “It’s making me feel preeetty uncomfortable.”

Grant had no reason to keep listening. Yet she couldn’t help herself. Curiosity had killed the cat. Curiosity had also killed people before. If she was a cat after all, she probably still had a few lives to spare, right?

She yielded no response to Bennett.

Spencer’s words cut like knives again. He spoke with a gravelly gravity to match a death threat.

“Do I sound like I’m threatening you, Lena?”

More awkward silence.

Grant could almost picture Spencer in front of her: hands folded with an eerie calmness before him as he sat at the head of the table, with his usual stony and cold expression. His eyes resembling those of a predator in the wild, unblinking, piercing in their murderous gaze.

Unmoving, unflinching. While poised to pounce.

She pushed through the door. Violent gusts of wind swept over the rooftop, whipping Grant’s hair around.

The signal was close. The display on the PAD offered her a sense of direction. It flashed brighter and brighter and as she neared the receiver, pinging with subtle beeps in her earbuds that kept growing louder with every step.

“Almost there,” she muttered.

“Can barely hear you with all that wind,” Bennett replied, raising her voice.

“Listen, baby,” Kim Jae said, punctuated by a long groan. “We’ll figure out who was fuckin’ around with the Midland op. Call it an act of goodwill or whatever you want, but we’re as vested in seeing who’s fuckin’ around with you as you are. There’s some problems you wanna, y’know, nip in the bud? Before they grow into more serious problems. Like I said, we’re all sweating a bottom line.”

Grant reached the edge of the rooftop. The screen flashed with a direction indicator pointing to her right.

Past a long, precarious stretch. She backtracked, looked for another way.

There was no other way.

Cole spoke up. “And I can pull some strings. Find out who’s behind Rose and his team, and get them off your back. You have enough burden to bear as it is. Your efforts are not going unnoticed.”

Romero closed. “We all have a lot to lose. Big investments we poured into Future Proof, returns we’re all expecting to see down the line. You keep doing what you’re doing, and the imbeciles who think they can cut into us will pay. Your deliveries to the FIP task force are about to yield first fruits, I’ll have you know.”

More silence.

Grant wasn’t afraid of heights, but the vista from up here was enough to make her stomach churn. It looked like the city beneath the tower was a million miles down. Coated in bright pink by the setting sun, the skyline glittered and its streets teemed with streams of ant-sized cars and microbial people.

She needed to tear her gaze away from the dizzying depths, and focus on the PAD’s tiny screen. It still flashed, still indicating the source was located to her right.

About twenty paces along a narrow, precarious ledge. That’s where the bug was transmitting to.

What she spotted there was not a receiver.

“It’s a fucking relay,” she hissed.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Bennett responded. “I don’t even see you on any of the cameras. Keep in mind, if you grab the relay now, or disrupt the signal in any way, they’ll know someone knows about it.”

Spencer said, “Please enlighten us then, Lena. What are you cooking up overseas?”

Grant had never seen Lena Romero smile, but she could envision it. Like the rest of the people in that boardroom, they could have all served as villains in a James Bond movie. Therefore, Grant imagined Romero to be showing a devious, confident smirk.

Romero said, “Bio-weaponry, and it may prove to be more effective than that old EMD tech you have been using to neutralize, herd, and capture specimens.”

A shudder ran down Grant’s spine. The heights added to her dizziness, threatening to turn into full-blown nausea. Everything Romero had just said had sounded all kinds of wrong. Red flags and warning lights had all flared up in Grant’s mind.

And she had no time to dissect it properly.

The winds howled around her on the skyscraper’s rooftop.

If she wanted to get to that relay in time, she had to balance along the narrow ledge. The walls and a vent offered some handholds she could grip to secure her way across, but a single violent gust of wind risked her sailing off the building’s edge.

“The Containment department might appreciate such developments,” Spencer said. The crooked grin on his face surfaced in his tone. “There will be no sneak peek, I presume?”

Grant committed another mistake of looking down. She rattled down a whole string of disjointed profanities.

“You okay?” Bennett asked.

Grant grunted in approval while she shimmied her way along the ledge. “Mhm.”

“Of course not,” Romero responded to Spencer. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up if something doesn���t… pan out. I don’t want to make any false promises.”

Another gust of wind whipped hair into Grant’s face. She gripped a vent’s grate so hard that her knuckles turned sheet-white. The thin sheet of metal whined and started to deform, bending to her body’s weight.

She envisioned herself slipping, dropping from the edge, falling to her death.

Cole asked Romero, “You wouldn’t be keeping such developments to yourself now, would you, my dear?” He chuckled. That chuckle contained something dark, mirroring his colleague’s verbal poison.

Just a few more steps of shimmying. Grant’s leather jacket scraped and scuffed against rough concrete walls as she clung to the edge of the building with all her might. It crossed her mind how fearless Ruiz must have been to plant the relay in such a dangerous place.

Romero laughed a rehearsed laugh. Hollow, courteous, and disingenuous. “Why, of course not, love.”

Grant reached the relay. A small black chunk of plastic, an unassuming electronic device with a long antenna unfolded from its side—no screens, no blinking lights, nothing noteworthy but a small button. A spidery mess of Velcro appendages from its back kept it fastened to another metal ventilation grate.

Spencer guffawed. “If that is all, then I believe our meeting is adjourned.”

Someone clapped their hands a single time in the boardroom.

Grant needed to hurry.

She cursed again as she fumbled, trying to detach the relay device with a single hand. The other hand was tied up in holding on for her dear life. Another cold and cutting gust of wind threatened to rob her of her balance, reminding her of the deadly drop, above which the heel’s side of her boots freely hovered.

Howling wind almost drowned out a flurry of meek words from Bennet’s end. “Hey, Chloe, if this is too dangerous, maybe we should… I don’t know. Just be careful, okay? I’m up here with you, got your back.”

“I got it, I got it,” Grant lied. Her heart pounded so hard that it wanted to escape from her chest.

Shuffling sounds filled the boardroom. Hands were probably being shaken. A door opened.

The Four Horsemen of the Corporate Apocalypse were leaving. Meeting adjourned.

The Velcro straps tore. Grant hissed in triumph as she clutched the freed relay, and made her way back across the ledge—just twenty paces that could have just as well been two thousand.

Forcing herself not to look down again, for every glance downwards only added to her sense of gravity, as if each glance kept adding more weight to her body, making it harder to hold, to not fall. Every cruel gust of cutting wind reinforced this notion, as if the grim reaper itself was flying closer, ever closer, ready to pounce and pull her down.

With white streaks on black leather, where she had scuffed her jacket and pants on concrete walls, Grant gasped with relief as soon as she stumbled back onto safer grounds upon the rooftop.

Bennett was standing there, awaiting her, with both hands folded over her mouth to suppress any gasps. Wide-eyed, she removed her hands and her eyes flashed with a relief to mirror whatever euphoria Grant now felt flooding her insides, as if she had experienced the same adrenaline second-hand.

Grinning stupidly, Grant shared her triumph with Bennett. She held the relay up high and repeated, “I got it, I said I got it!”

“Okay! Okay,” Bennett said. She smiled and stepped up to Grant, then snatched the relay from her hands. “Let’s have a look.”

Grant dropped down into sitting, catching her breath. Everything was catching up to her, and the breathtaking vista of the pink horizon and glittering skyline around her started spinning. Her lungs screamed from all the breath she had been shortening during her death-defying balancing act.

Winds still howled where they swept over the rooftops.

Bennett knelt beside her, enraptured by her laptop, and the relay device sitting next to it while she run diagnostics and scans on the signal.

Scanning.

A small window on her screen kept flashing with those words, repeating.

SCANNING.

Adrenaline and euphoria both faded.

Grant wondered what this all meant. Was Ruiz a spy for competition? For the government? Someone else entirely?

The conversation in the boardroom was over. The bug was still capturing silence and transmitting it into the earbuds, drowned out by howling winds and the hurried tapping of Bennett’s fingers on laptop keys.

“Almost got it,” Bennett said. “The receiver, tracing.”

Another window on-screen zeroed in on a satellite imaging map. It zoomed in with big leaps, first on the globe, the USA, on Texas, and then all the way down into Austin.

Grant scooted over and clapped Bennett on the shoulder.

“You are a wizard. This is amazing.”

Bennett blushed. She asked, “What are we going to do with this, what’s next? Do we tell Spencer?”

The on-screen window zeroed in on a small café. Zoomed in until its outdoor tables and chairs and umbrellas gained definition. Blocky pixels turned precise, drawing a clearer image. Text nearby spat out an exact address.

Grant shook her head.

“No. Sit tight, hold onto this stuff—do not tell anybody,” she said. She used her phone to take a snapshot and pointed at the satellite image of the café on screen. “I’m going to check that place out.”

Bennett uttered no protest. Grant soon left the building, rushing past security guards and metal detectors, and slamming her car’s door shut.

She clocked several miles per hour over the speeding limit as she stepped on the gas. The city flew by while her heart pounded again with a mixture of fear and excitement.

Night had yet to fall. The setting sun still painted the city in bright orange and pink hues, with lights glittering all around, forming streaks as Grant’s car sped down streets, swerving through traffic. Neon signs flickered to life, and storefronts lit up. Faces in the crowds melted away, swallowed in the sea of streaking lights, both natural and artificial.

By the time she arrived at the café, Ruiz was mounting his motorcycle by the curb, slipping a helmet onto his head. Ready to go.

A beautiful red-headed woman in a three-piece suit was sitting at a table nearby, watching him leave. Grant had never seen her before.

Contrary to what she had told Bennet, she didn’t know what to do next.

Two trails to follow, and she now had more questions than answers to show for it.

Only now did it cross her mind: What if Spencer knew? What if Grant was sabotaging something he knew about, something he was accounting for? After all, he wouldn’t have been the first CEO to sell out his own company, to make off with a golden parachute once the ship started sinking.

The Four Horsemen of the Corporate Apocalypse had gathered in a boardroom—a nest of deadly vipers.

Whose eyes were on Chloe Grant now?

And who would her own eyes follow?

Stewing in such uncertainty, she felt as dizzy as she did when she had been shooting glances off the rooftop of Future Proof’s skyscraper. Feeling the weight of gravity growing with every look.

Ruiz’s motorcycle rumbled as he ignited its engine, then the vehicle roared. He drove away.

Grant stayed put. She could always figure out how to find Ruiz, though she’d miss his next steps, and those might have been crucial to understand his motives or allegiances.

Instead, she watched the redhead. The unknown unknown. Hoping to answer more questions than following her might raise.

She was going to tail her. See who this was, what she was up to, with her own two eyes.

All other eyes be damned.

[snickerdoodlesart]

HIII your art is so cool!!! I wanted to ask whats up with The Flare? Its description in the sketch selection screen is so interesting, and its design look really cool too, but theres literally no other mention of it elsewhere? Whats up with that guy :(

Thank you! And The Flare was made when one of my most active rain world ocs was basically a self insert iterator that no matter how hard I tried to write them, always ended up turning out as a Five Pebbles knockoff. The Flare itself was nothing more than a concept I constantly struggled putting a design to, back when I wanted to give that iterator oc it's own silly little slugcat. So when I eventually scrapped the oc, The Flare kind of died and I honestly completely forgot about them.

I forgot most of the story I had planned for them too, but it mostly involved The Flare crawling through the Blight (parasitic rot variant that works as a hivemind) riddled husk of the iterator oc to kill it at it's source and cut off the power that's fueling the Blight's growth. Eventually, whether the task was a success or not, The Flare would get infected by said rot variant, and go to die in the iterator's puppet chamber as both characters succumb to the Blight with only each other as company.

Yeah

[dokidokitsuna]

Hello I love your AU!

Could you please tell us more about Elfilis and Star Dream as well?

Well, for one thing, they're a lot harder to draw. ^^; So I will gladly accept this opportunity to talk about them now and finish my sketches later~

For another thing, I will admit that they were kind of afterthoughts for GONE (this image basically tells all the story I wanted to tell). It was hard for me to even imagine a space for them to be characters...until I tried thinking of the AU as a more casual slice-of-life thing, believe it or not. ^^;

It kinda makes sense though; for multiverse-scale rulers to take something like this in stride, to be totally comfortable taking breaks to chat and get to know each other in between murder attempts. ^^ To be honest, it's almost creepier this way...for someone to ask how you've been before ripping your head off your neck...really adds to the 'inhuman' vibe of this AU in particular.

Fecto Elfilis: Probably the most sympathetic of the three, despite also being the most brutal (in a way, I feel a capacity for kindness and a capacity for cruelty are two sides of the same coin). They kinda understand what the Master Crown is going through, since they also have a nagging 'weakness' living inside of them at all times, in the form of Elfilin. ^^ You'll see what that looks like later. ;)

Of course, they have the advantage of knowing with certainty that Elfilin is real, most likely permanent, and has feelings they can hurt (their basic dynamic is that Elfilin begs them not to do something bad, and F/E does something 10x worse just to spite him). Unfortunately, this comes with the disadvantage of having to fight with him all the time, and the constant stress and aggravation that results. ^^; Like, imagine you had a sort of sentient autoimmune disease that flared up AND psychically argued with you every time you wanted to do something fun...it's a special kind of hell, tbh, and I like to think that Elfilin knows that~.

Anyway, despite all of that, F/E is usually pretty cool and self-confident, personality-wise. They have zero respect for either of their opponents, and they get a cathartic kick out of watching the Crown have a mental breakdown and mocking it for it...even though they secretly feel the same way very often, and very deep down.

Star Dream: It thinks of itself as a benevolent god, the savior of the universe...and whether or not that idea is a half-truth or a complete delusion honestly depends on your perspective.

They ARE the only one of the three who's actually concerned with building civilizations instead of destroying them (F/E) or treating them like toys (MC). They also have the intrinsic ability to read people's dreams and grant their wishes, an ability they use to keep their colossal hivemind happy. But is this a 'real' happiness, or a sort of 'brainwashed' happiness? Does it really free people's souls from their imperfect flesh-prisons, or does it simply remake them into a sanitized ideal...?

I think it would be interesting if it offered to mechanize the Master Crown in order to relieve its suffering (which would totally count as proving dominance)...even though it's kind of its fault that MC started losing its mind in the first place. ^^;;; The 'itch' starts when it has a small but unexpected reaction to seeing Susie's face, and becomes exponentially worse when SD admits that the form it's in is something it saw in the MC's dreams. But y'know, what better way to convince MC to have its mind digitized and have the 'weaknesses' deleted than to show it exactly what it's afraid of? ^^

In case it's not obvious, Star Dream has a very 'pleasant' and calm personality-- by now, it's learned that it's faster and easier to convert people with """"kindness""" than threats of annihilation. Of course, it doesn't like being told 'no' (you could argue that it doesn't really see any viewpoint other than its own as valid) and really doesn't like entities that can challenge it, especially "repulsive" flesh-creatures like Fecto Elfilis. ^^ If there's any potential for dark comedy in this AU, it's in the dynamic between those two~

[jedi-kat-18]

Have you made any Kaiju? Or other pacrim Critters? o:

Alright, time to talk about the Cyber-Kaiju. Infringer is the first of the Cyber-Kaiju, the one who kicks off the plot by attacking L.A. Infringer's unique among the Cyber-Kaiju in that its cybernetics are entirely internal, the heroes think it's a normal Kaiju until Newt dissects its brain. Appearance wise, it's bipedal like Leatherback, with a kinda flared triceratops head. Also its mouth opens in a weird flower shape like the Demogorgon from Stranger Things, and it uses its long barbed tongue like a whip. Ebonclaw comes second. Monica sends it to Shanghai with the plan to smash up Pudong International Airport and delay Newt's arrival in L.A. Saber Phoenix arrives on the scene, and there's another cool Jaeger v Kaiju fight, that ends with Ebonclaw doing something no Kaiju has ever done before: retreat. Ebonclaw basically looks like a cross between a vulture and a marine iguana, with some freaky long velociraptor claws. Its cybernetics are subtle, mostly some barely visible circuitry around the eyes. Chromus is the third Cyber-Kaiju, and this is where the plot starts getting really into the hivemind stuff. Basically, after doing some detective work, the good guys find out that whoever's behind the Cyber-Kaiju is using the abandoned Anchorage Shatterdome as a base. Newt, Hermann, and Midnight Rosa's pilots go to investigate. The place is empty save for Chromus, who wakes up, and accidentally pulls on Newt's hivemind connection, forcing him to experience the Cyber-Kaiju's thoughts. Chromus is a squat, bulky creature, kind of like an alligator. It's got a lot of visible cybernetics, including a plasma cannon arm. Deathstrike forms the final trio of Cyber-Kaiju. At the climax, Monica sics three Kaiju on Tokyo, and they're her nastiest creations yet. Deathstrike is the biggest and baddest, with blades in its cybernetic arms, a spiked tail that acts as a whip, and electrokinesis. It can shoot bolts of lightning, has an EMP, and can absorb electricity from the environment around it. Ryujin is a snakey, dragon-like Cyber-Kaiju. It can coil around targets like a constrictor snake, has acid spit, and it's got these long catfish whiskers that can deliver electric shocks. Mechasaur is, second to Infringer, probably the most important Cyber-Kaiju in this fic. During the final battle, Newt and Hermann are stuck inside the Tokyo Shatterdome, captured by Monica and her minions. For the whole fic, they've been struggling with their connection to the Hivemind, getting nosebleeds, migraines, sensory overload, brief periods of thinking like Kaiju. Newt's been able to briefly control some of the Cyber-Kaiju, but not without almost losing himself in the Hivemind. But this time, he's got Hermann helping him, so when he reaches out, the two of them essentially trigger a Drift without a neural bridge, taking control of Mechasaur's body and "piloting" it like a Jaeger. Mechasaur is built like a therapod dinosaur, with a cybernetic jaw for extra crushing power, and armor plates along its back, chest, and sides. Oh also there are these dog-sized Cyber-Kaiju called "Rippers" that Monica sends out to infiltrate and kill anyone who gets in her way. She sics them on the heroes (especially Newt) multiple times.

[antlereed]

wonder whats gonna happen to imogen (and fearne tbh) when a flare happens. is predathos gonna reach out to them?? try to suck them into the weird ruidusborn hivemind/groupchat????

[tuxedokit]

So i made a sonadow fankid

This is Shade!!! (flags are girlthing and aroace flags) heres some bullet points bc paragraphs hard

1st i wanna point out that the shoes ARE hand-me-downs; they used to be sonics when he was little

tails helped design her inhibitor rings; heres a ref without them + without gloves or shoes

shade has the ability to manipulate chaos energy like her fathers, but it takes a lot of training and practice for her to even begin to harness it. even chaos snap was a struggle for a while, and most of her strength comes from the combat skills sonic and shadow taught her

most of her chaos manipulation needs a chaos emerald to work, otherwise it could take a lot, if not all, of her energy

she also would kin kris deltarune, she likes to chaos snap into places to jumpscare people

also her middle name is maria

full name is technically Shade Maria Robotnik (the hedgehog)

shes autistic also though p much all my character are

she speaks very monotonously, and isnt very openly expressive

that being said, she is incredibly caring, and contains so much love (and hate, if anyone tries to harm her family)

AND because idk how much we canonically know about the black arms, xenobiology is free game! SO heres some facts about her alien biology

the little tbh on the bottom isnt a shitpost, thats actually what shade looked like for the first year or so of its life! it could be held with one hand, was very active, and could crawl along walls and ceilings like a bug

everyone was. incredibly unsettled, save for her dads lol

she also has bioluminescent green blood, as does shadow according to my hcs

on top of that, the black arms were a hivemind species—shade didnt inherit this fully, but

she Does have a resulting telepathic link with sonic and shadow; in a sense that they can sense when she is happy, upset, distressed, afraid, etc.

they also can project their emotions to each other

while this can be used in emergencies, it also results to some psychological warfare at the dinner table if shade loses dessert privileges

shadow has the stronger connection to her on account of actually having alien dna

it can also flare out its quills of threatened or upset, kinda like this

AND YEAH thats my beloved

heres some memes i made of her bc im insane

[callieshipman]

fragments

this is my contribution to virals week day 6: character death. thank you to @themorrisislandpack for organising! i went down the same route as the rest of the hivemind...and then i went down the hivemind route.

this was originally supposed to be a much longer fic but i don't know when i'd ever get it done, and i kind of like it like this. feels evil. feels organic.

When the bullet enters Hi’s brain, he shatters into pieces.

The only way Tory can explain it is that when they flare, when she pictures each of them in her head, they are like little golden glass lights, and she knows who each one is. Their thoughts and memories pulse there.

So when the Gamemaster fires his gun, Hi shatters before he hits the ground. His body drops with a dull thud, but everything else, everything he was or maybe still is, flies outwards through their heads and lodges into their brains.

Tory is staring numbly at his body on the ground a few minutes later as Kit tries to shield them all when she realises that the memory of falling into the sea off the coast of Morris Island is not her own. It feels like her own, lodged in there as firmly as any, but it’s Hiram’s.

She starts to scream and she doesn’t stop until they put her in the back of a car.

They put her next to Ben, which is probably a mistake because she thinks she wants to kill him right now.

She thinks that. Hiram, who appears to have taken up residence in her head, apparently does not, because when she sees his tear-streaked face she feels a wave of powerful affection that she knows is not her own.

“Ben,” she chokes out.

“He’s in my head,” Ben whispers. “Parts of him are in here.”

So she’s not going crazy.

“Mine too,” she murmurs back. “I remember being a toddler and falling off the jetty.”

“He hit his head.” Ben looks on the verge of tears. “I felt it. I know how it felt.”

Tory remembers Ben then, eight years old and round faced and pink cheeked. She knows as easily as she would any memory that it’s his birthday party and that they’re in Hi’s bedroom before they painted the walls, and that after this they went to play in the sand. She remembers that Shelton was ill.

“I’m so sorry,” Ben chokes. “Is he here? Does he know I’m sorry?”

“I don’t know what this is,” Tory says. She wants to claw it out, because it’s not hers, it’s something stuck in there like a tick that’s burrowed under the skin, but there’s nothing else left of Hi.

She looks out of the window and sees him. The storm is too severe for the police who have arrived to really secure the scene, but they haven’t moved him yet. He’s still lying in the road, blood pooling around his skull, eyes wide open.

They put Shelton in a different car. She can see the outline of him hunched over in his seat, trembling like a leaf. It’s impossible to tell whether it’s the shock of what’s just happened or if he has shards in his head too.

“My mom’s gonna be so mad,” she blurts out before she can even think about it, and then claps a hand over her mouth in shock, tears rising in her eyes.

“Tory?” Ben says uncertainly. “Are you-”

“That wasn’t-”

“That wasn’t you.”

“That’s what he would have said,” she whispers. “It just came out. I wasn’t even thinking about it.”

Ben’s horrified expression says it all.

Tory leans forward, hand still over her mouth. She feels sick. It was her speaking, but not her words. She can’t distinguish whether Hi spoke through her or whether it was simply what he would have said and the pieces that made him are now part of her, but she knows she had no control.

This is why she keeps her hand forcefully over her mouth even as Kit gets back into the car, face pale.

“Are you…” he starts, then seems to realise it’s a stupid question. “I’m so sorry, kids. Let’s get you to the hospital.”

I don’t like hospitals, Tory thinks to herself. Gramps died at the MUSC and the doctors were rude when I broke my wrist.

She feels an ache at the memory of losing this man who was not even her grandfather, and she throws up into the plastic bag at her feet.

-

At the hospital, they look for Shelton.

They know that Hi will be somewhere here too, in the morgue waiting for his parents to come, waiting for an autopsy that will confirm what they already know.

She tries not to think about him there. He’s not there, not really. She felt him leave his body before he hit the ground.

It’s only now, sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair in a waiting room to talk to a trauma specialist, that she breaks.

It’s been easy to avoid up to now, in the shock and the dark, but Hiram is dead. He’s dead because of what she did, and what Ben did, and she’s never going to see him again.

If he is in her brain, he offers no reassurance. Maybe he’s mad at her. He deserves to be.

Shelton finds them within the hour. There’s blood on his sleeves and knees from where he had knelt at Hi’s side, tried to save him and got nothing in return.

“Was it worth it?” Shelton asks. “Was it worth everything you were trying to do?”

“No!” Ben looks appalled. “Shelton, no. I- I would do anything, if I could just go back in time-”

“You can’t.” Shelton’s voice is shaking. “I can’t forgive you for this. Either of you.”

He’s shaking like a leaf. When he reaches up to rub his chin, an unconscious gesture that she’s seen a thousand times, but never on Shelton, she knows without even having to ask, but she asks anyway.

“He’s in your head, isn’t he?”

Shelton nods tightly, eyes welling up.

“I don’t know how to feel,” he says hoarsely. “He’s gone. But he’s not.”

“What’s in your head?” Ben asks.

“A lot,” Shelton says shakily. “Weird, random memories. And I really want to see his stupid fucking cat.”

He sinks down into the seat between them and buries his head in his hands.

“What are we going to do?” he whispers. “What the hell are we gonna do?”

Tory realises, watching him cry, that she suddenly desperately wants to make a joke. Her brain is scrambling to think of something funny to say even before she thinks that this isn’t like her at all, that she would never joke in this moment.

She just doesn’t want to see them cry. She can’t bear it. All of a sudden, she’d rather drink poison than see them cry.

It’s not her.

She pushes that thought back as hard as she can, feels it fade and disintegrate in her mind, and wonders if she’s killed him again, if she’s killing him every time she represses him.

Their parents come to find them soon after. They’re all sobbing, holding their children close and exclaiming that they can’t believe it.

Ruth and Linus aren’t there. Tory misses them like her heart has been ripped out.

When they finally let everyone go home, she nearly walks up the path to Hi’s house before her own. She sees Ben and Shelton make the same mistake.

That night, Tory cries herself to sleep and keeps her lamp on, because suddenly she’s afraid of the dark.

She never knew that about him.

[tzimisced]

@mxldito

Night reigned. For kine, black swathed the earth like a mother to her newborn. Winter had since descended, as gentle as a predator unto prey, maw rending flesh—it beckoned many to seek refuge among sheets, waning whatever chatters would threaten limbs and teeth alike. Life dimmed and the prospect of slumber was a comforting one for those who could afford the luxury. 

For kindred and cainites alike, however, here was when their lives reared hard and hearty. The sun was no longer an option, so here they would dance to the moonlight. 

But—the clatter of bullet shells hitting the pavement, the sickly snap of bone, the howls of war crowning the blackened sky ... This deadly tango made it clear; moonlight wasn’t the only thing they’d be dancing to tonight. 

Piercing eyes, aglow with fiery swatches, stalked the lengths of his work. The tall, alien-like figure stepped delicately over the bodies of the fallen. Both sides had suffered heavy casualties; just one glance made that abundantly clear. The Sabbat had encroached on Camarilla territory (or what they surmised as Camarilla territory; Andrei wasn’t daft enough not to acknowledge that the Camarilla and Sabbat were newer on the block than most) and the results were painful and bloody.

Several groups, bearing the likes of lagging, wounded or otherwise stubborn lackeys, reported their findings to Andrei. Andrei canted his head—the crest on his head delicately clasping upon the frayed moonlight, illuminating the arches and overlapping texture of what was, without a doubt, scales—and ordered them to the west. A bob of heads, almost like plucked by the likes of a hivemind, as the groups fled towards whence they were demanded.

A pause. Andrei’s nares flared.

Those same fiery eyes flashed sidelong, towards an individual lurking amidst the shadowy murk of an alley. He’d noted them prior; they hadn’t engaged in battle nor had they made their escape from the scene. Instead, they’d lingered. 

His body shifted in turn with his head. He approached at a leisurely pace.

“Ah, young cainite. Your vitae is fresh, still stirred with life. Tell me, why must you stalk the shadows of ill-begotten alleyways,” his eyelids fell heavy, a deep, moon-like crescent which painted orange over his cheeks, “when you can come into the lustre of night?”

[gwaciechang]

I Don't Wanna Go Home (1/15?)

So, this is probably going to be my most ambitious project ever. I'm going to do a fusion of the video gave Subnautica Below Zero, with the characters from Cloverfield Paradox. You don't have to have played Below Zero first, although it would certainly help. Also, as someone who has played the game, I tried my best to explain everything, which is why the first few chapters are going to be really slow, and why everyone talks so much. I also made a change to the canon of the first Subnautica: instead of Riley curing Kharaa, it was the precursors.

So, a few more things before we start this chapter. I hate "y/n l/n" stuff, so I just call the pov character Ling Tam. I don't think anybody actually uses that name in the story, but that might change, and in any case, you're free to replace her name with any name you like. Also, reader is in a relationship with Mundy at the start of the story, although that, obviously, won't last because it's endgame reader/Schmidt. Okay, that's everything, enjoy, and let me know if you want to be tagged.

@hope-to-hell @vicanth @feralrunaway @october505 @potentialproblem01

"Hey, Monk, you told me to come get you if that weird signal showed up ag-" you stop when you see the vehicle technician on the radio.

"When are you going to send me some more art? There's still a patch of bare wall here that could use some color and a touch of genius!" Monk says, probably to his kids, as he waves you away. You close the door as silently as you can, and not a second too soon, because Mundy opens the habitat door and stomps his way inside with a box. Behind him, you can see the prawn suit, with several other boxes still tied to its massive arms. There's an inquisitive face popping out of the water that you decide not to tell him about. Why shouldn't the creatures have a little fun?

"Another day, another slight by the winged furies," Mundy grumbles.

"Another interference alert?" you ask, trying to lay the sympathy on thick before you inevitably burst into laughter.

"As usual," the xenobiologist sighs theatrically. "Also as usual, I went out to see what the problem was. And, of course, it was-"

"Frozen stalagmites of feathered bird excrement," the two of you say together.

"I fear the career impact of saying this officially-"

"If you can even call what you have a career," you interrupt, getting yourself a faceful of dirty towel.

Besides throwing the thing you're really hoping he hadn't just used to wipe up bird shit in your face, your boyfriend continues as if you'd never spoken. "I could swear they're targeting me personally. The week I was out with a flu, I came back to find the tower spotless. Monk laughed at me when I asked him how he'd cleaned it. Silly me!"

"As if Monk would ever clean anything," you agree. "What are you going to do?"

"There's nothing left for me to try but quitting. But I know that's what the birds want me to do," he shakes his fist at the sky as he walks back outside to retrieve the final box.

You turn back to the screen and wonder about the signal again. It's been appearing on and off for days, ever since you got the radio tower up and running, and what would a repeat call be besides a distress signal?

"Ah jeez, these sea monkeys are going to get me in trouble," the box in Mundy's hands is scratched through in places. "This is the third shipment that those buggers have gotten their weird little hands into! Now we're running low on flares and I'm going to have to search nearby nests for stolen cargo," he sighs as he drops a mangled box on the top of his cluttered workstation. It makes a bang that would have disturbed Monk, if he weren't on the radio, or Schmidt, if he were a normal person who came back from work at normal hours. As it is, there's just you to look at him, a welcome break from potential distress signals and what they might mean.

"Just put some of your drawings on the tower, they'll be too scared to go near it!"

"Ha ha," Mundy says sarcastically, before going outside to park the prawn-

"Oh, for fuck's sake! It’s fucking gone!"

You and Monk, still on the radio, step outside, but sure enough, the prawn suit has disappeared without a trace, as far as you can tell.

"I'm still trying, quietly--I don't want any more trouble--to figure out where I went wrong. I was sure Tam had picked up a distress signal!" Monk bends down to peer at the tracks. "I was right on top of it. And then it just," he gets to the edge of the glacier, stands up, and shakes his head, "it just stopped. What if one of the precursors is still down there? And how could a hivemind alien race so advanced that they singlehandedly ended a galaxy wide pandemic leave someone behind? I'll probably be home before I ever get to find out, and it will fall to some future researcher to come and find out, I guess, I hope," he waves the two of you back into the habitat and closes the door. "But that means I'll get to be with you little rascals." His voice fades and disappears.

"So, game tonight?" you ask, hoping to erase the distress off Mundy’s face.

"That'd be nice," he says with a weak smile, just before Jensen slams her door open.

"Mundy, inside!" barks the overseer of operations.

Mundy sighs and drags his feet as he walks into Jensen's office. No sooner has she closed the door with a snap than you and Monk have your heads pressed against the door.

"Mundy, I'm not blaming you, but what do you mean, 'it's gone?' Where did it go? You had trouble retrieving the drop pod and decided to jettison the prawn suit?"

"I didn't jettison the prawn suit! I left it outside to put the supply drop away, went back for it, and it was just gone! Someone must have stolen it."

"Who? Who else do you think is on this planet besides the five of us?"

"It could be a creature ate it. I didn't lose it, that's for sure. I'm careful with my vehicles!"

You can practically hear Jensen’s eyeroll as she continues, "I'm sure you are, but you have to admit, there have been a lot of 'accidents' involving our very expensive vehicles."

"You want to follow me on a few runs tomorrow? See what it's like? Conditions are way harsher than anything I ever imagined. You can't really understand it from inside your office!"

Monk winces, and you know there's a matching pained expression on your face. Talking back to Jensen is a terrible idea, but Mundy's sealed his fate, and now all that's left is to wait for the other shoe to drop.

"That won't be necessary," Jensen says with syrupy calm. "Thank you for your time. I'll write it up as an accident."

"Thank you, ma'am," Mundy's voice is shaky. Jensen doesn't respond, so the vehicle technician’s deliberately loud footsteps approach the door, prompting you and the precursor researcher you're spying with to run like your asses are on fire back to your stations.

"I think it'd be best if Researcher Tam takes over your duties with the leviathan tomorrow," Jensen says, loudly enough for you to hear, even through the door.

Now it's your turn to wince. Mundy gives you a small smile as he walks past, and then Jensen's in your line of sight, hands on her hips.

"I believe I told you to go somewhere."

"Yes, ma'am," you drop everything to put your thermal suit on, and pour a final cup of sweet, sweet dirty bean water in your thermos. There's no cappuccino machine allowed in the cave, lest it somehow thaw out the entire frozen leviathan Mundy, and now you, are studying. Or maybe it was just Schmidt being anal about his robots, you wouldn't put it past the guy whose lips are basically permanently attached to Jensen's ass.

On the bright side, they're also attached to a guy who knows what he's doing, and is thorough in explaining what Mundy does when he's here. Still, it's barely five minutes in when the silence gets to you.

"I love and hate exploring these tunnels," you start to babble, not expecting Schmidt to respond. "Yeah, they're marvels to the power of the ice worms. I mean, the amount of ice they are able to cut through in seconds, it would take us at least a couple days. Their tunneling mechanism is ruthlessly efficient. Alterra could only dream of having this sort of mining capability, and yeah, the ice worms uncover mineral rich pockets as they tunnel. But going beneath the surface is so risky, I mean, we've lost so many already, and I don't understand why we have to stay in this particular area of the glacier. I can't wait to get off this hellhole, or ice hole? Whatever."

You can hardly believe it, but you hear a clear snort coming from Schmidt’s workstation. You fill your flasks with a wide smile on your face, which doesn’t fade even when you make your way back across the tunnel to see his with its usual pinched, sour expression.

"Hey, do you want some coffee?" you wave the thermos at him. "It might help you get the taste of Alterra boot leather out of your mouth," you say in a singsong voice.

"How much sugar and cream is in that?" Schmidt wrinkles his nose. "No thank you."

You decide to let that roll off your back and chuckle a little. "I guess my proclivities toward having coffee with my sugar is well known, huh? Just like how I should know better than to invite you to game night with me and the other researchers, again?"

Is snow blindness affecting your vision, or did Schmidt just smile?

"You should know better," he says in a soft voice, and then he takes out another set of small, sterile flasks, and hands them to you. "Get some samples from the skull, too, use the elevator."

"Thanks!" you grab the flasks, only to drop them the second you put your hand on the elevator lift button, because that's a fucking rotten peeper hanging off the edge.

Schmidt snaps his gloves off and cleans it up, which is nice of him, even if the things he says while he does it aren’t very nice. "Mundy," he practically spits, "always leaving food around. At least the nutrient blocks and the filtered water don't spoil."

"Well, the man likes to munch on things," you try to lighten the mood. "Are you telling me you don’t leave snacks around your workstation?" Schmidt opens his mouth, but you interrupt. "Don't tell me, you have a timer telling you when to go to the fabricator to make food and eat?"

He closes his mouth and turns a little red.

Holy shit, you were right? That's the saddest thing you've ever heard. "Okay, you know what, you are definitely playing Alien Intruders with us tonight, because I'm going to cook. Real food, too, none of that fabricated stuff."

"Oh, I am?" Schmidt raises an eyebrow.

"Yep! And I'm going to make my favorite dish, just for you, you'll love it! Roasted Chinese potato with shredded marblemelon and salt."

That was definitely a snort, maybe even a laugh, and it carries you through the rest of the day.

[savior-of-humanity]

@the-bloody-wolfy

--

Six was used to being alone, ever since the slaughter of her entire hive at the hands of well-armed humans. She was incredibly lucky to have not been found by said humans after the death of the Queen, with the sudden neural agony that came from her abrupt disconnection from the hivemind leaving her paralyzed for hours. Perhaps they had thought her to be one of the dead. Regardless, it didn’t matter anymore; none of them were coming back.

But in this moment she could very much tell that she was not alone.

While her kind was closely social with one another, that was only really for individuals within the same hive. Outsiders that were not linked to the hivemind were turned away - or, more frequently, killed. So to sense the presence of another Xenomorph put the creature on high alert - but as she got closer, she realized that what she was detecting wasn’t even one of her own species at all.

It was some sort of strange hybrid, of both prey and alien; the mere idea of it puzzled her immensely, and at the same time caused her curiousity to flare like a raging fire. Six needed to investigate, to learn what this not-prey not-alien creature was.

So she began to tail it, as though she were hunting for her hive; a swift and silent shadow that moved with almost feline grace, observing from afar. Studying.

[xauroraxborealisx]

Writing Tag Game

thank you @kuriboh-i-choose-you for the tag <3 I do love these!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

20, all Yu-Gi-Oh ones! (there’s a hidden Kingdom Hearts fanfic on FF.net somewhere hihi)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

441,106 words... Holy bleep! And in a little over a year only o.O’

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Deck the Dates (with cups of coffee) - Puzzleshipping

Elemental - Puzzleshipping

Netflix and Chill - Puzzleshipping

Habits - Rivalshipping

The Art of Conversation - Puzzleshipping

4. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I always, always do! Comments give me life! Sometimes, I am very late at responding to them and I am very sorry, but I always will answer! The relation between authors and readers is so important and must be cherished and nourished! People take their time to write a comment, it’s only commen sense for me to take some of mine to respond!

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Definitely Counting the Days, a collaborative piece with @atems-leather-pants I also have a few other pieces that end in angst, but they’re mostly drabbles scattered throughout Elemental.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

I like happy endings, especially for the Puzzleboys because they really do deserve way, in whatever universe they find themselves in! So it’s probably a tie between Deck the Dates and The Art of Conversation, in terms of fluff I’d say!

7. Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I haven’t written crossovers, althought Netflix and Chill is a huge ride into different universes and inspired by tones of various media pieces! To me, a crossover includes characters from both shows/movies and I tend to prefer putting the YGO characters in another universe, but keeping only them. I have discussed about AUs including Percy Jackson and the Olympians and Schitt’s Creek hihi

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Not much hate per say, but comments that did rub me the wrong way, yes. Pants and I were told that we used too complicated words in our fics... because you know, we like words and we like to use the precise ones at times... I have also been told that I made Yugi look weak and pathetic in one of the chapters of my fics and it really made me sad because, to me, Yugi is anything but weak and pathetic, but I mean, he has EMOTIONS and he is allowed to show them. Oh and I was also told at one point that a reader hope this would become a peachshipping story... in a puzzleshipping tagged fic.

But honestly, I don’t why people send hate out there! If you don’t like what you read, you have no obligation to comment on it, you can just close the tab and forget it. You can give constructive criticism, yes, but always be mindful of the words you use. Words are weapon people, be careful with them <3

I mean... I don’t like Twilight and I haven’t sent hate mail to the author...

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Wh... why are you asking me this? *bluuuuuuuuuush*

But yeah, I do ;) and I often try to focus on different aspects and give it an emotional impact, although, sometimes, just letting steam out is nice too hihi

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don’t think so. I once got a mention about a work being inspired by one of my fics, but it was mentionned and linked in the notes, so legit.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I mean, I could try to translate it in French hahaha but no, no one has ever translated my work.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I am fortunate enough to have found a great parter-in-crime in @atems-leather-pants and we have written quite a few together and have another few planned out already. We’re #hivemind productions if you ever want to check it out!

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Puzzleshipping has my heart and will always have <3

Although I do like Rival, Yugi-centric Flare, Thief and I also believe in the Yugi factor in which shipping Yugi with anyone is like, it just works!

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Hummmmmmm I do have a list of WIPs and I actually intend of writing them all, but you know, time... Although I did start writing a Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle AU that may never see the light of day *sobs* but I shall drabble for it because I care about it!

15. What are your writing strengths?

I adore writing dialogues, I dream about dialogues, I fantasize about them <3

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

Editing... writing short pieces... battling against sleepiness... did I mention writing SHORTER pieces?

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

If it works in the story and if it has purpose in it, it can be great! I love languages and seeing them used for plot purposes is even better!

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Digimon <3 yup, still have that hidden away somewhere. Digimon will always be my first love!

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Ooooooooh this is hard! I adore collaborating and I take care of each of my stories like they were my children hihi but I think I’ll always say Elemental because it’s the fic that got me here <3 It made me realise that I could write, that writing wasn’t done just one way even by the same author, and that I really loved doing it. It led me to write more, to tackle on longer one-shots, to write multi-chaps and it led me to this fandom and to the wonderful people that are in it <3

I have no idea who to tag because, from what I’ve seen, everyone before me has also been tagged!

But if you’re an author out there, even if you’re just starting or have yet to publish, tell me about you! Reach out, talk to me about your writing!

Because writing is also about community, especially in fanfiction, and this should be celebrated <3