#thank you both!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

factorialsotherfandoms · 3 months

Note

xcom tallulah? what horrors has my girl been through?

(also her hybrid traits if you have ideas for them, because ooo glowy chayanne i want to draw more eggs)

@becauseplot I am very amused the both of you are asking the same. And absolutely no you are not being too much it's just getting to dinner time here (please feel free to keep sending me eggs or even characters I love this)

Also by living target practice I mean living target practice.

And yes, glowy Chayanne!!! Tallulah's I'm still working out :/ She does however have little non-functional allay wings, however. And bits of her skin have dark purpley-blue, insect-shell like "armour". It is tougher than natural skin, but not by a lot, and it doesn't heal quite the same - there's a piece on her shoulder which clearly has crack-shatter from being shot with a bullet, looking a bit like if you shoot glass. Also very bright yellow eyes. it's not all her skin with the insectoid plating - not even most of it - but she has it. Whereas for Chayanne just all his skin is purple and his hair white (though he absolutely is with A1 on team steal hair dye. Unfortunately the ship has a lot of pink and not much yellow or black. Makes sad faces at his godfather until Tubbo makes him some, once he learns that's a thing he can do)

Right now Tallulah... Hopefully shorter than Chayanne, but we'll see...

TW once again for child abuse, injured child, child sickness, and child murder! Also Tilín and Flippa are here a bit.

Tallulah is one of the younger eggs. She's from the same batch as Pomme, but problems with her... let's call it incubation mean that while she was supposed to be finished before Pomme, she was actually released after.

Which. Was only the start of the problems. Having clearly had problems developing, she was immediately subjected to a great many tests. Her hearing problems were therefore detected within hours of her 'birth', and should have been sufficient to have her immediately glooped down back into raw parts - just like what happens to kidnapped humans. When they tried to drag her to the reprocessor, however, it became apparent that she had full communication telepathy with one of the other eggs - narrowed down over the next few days to Chayanne. As she realised what was happening she screamed along the psionic bonds between the eggs, and it was very obvious to the psionically sensitive aliens handling her that she also got a reply. This... made her much more useful. If at creation she had full telepathy with one egg, then maybe she could be trained for more. She was for one of the lower Elders, anyway, if she could get short-range telepathy then what need had she of ears?

Training was hard. Psionic training involves heavy mental discipline and is incredibly physically taxing. Lots of meditation and fasting, but for periods longer than a child should be meditating messing her up somewhat - especially with punishments for not sitting still or asking for food. She developed some abilities, but not the ones they wanted from her.

It also made her asthma, missed during the initial checks, suddenly much more obvious with the increase in physical stuff. This was... more of a problem. Already imperfect with her hearing, the asthma was a step too far.

But she was also older, now, more expensive to melt down and, well, the Hunter got through his targets quickly. And once he'd killed an egg, he'd give them the corpse and then they could melt them down anyway! The Hunter, one of the Elder's darling Chosen Children, would be happier, and they'd get the corpse to melt down soon enough. This way, everyone is happy! Except Tallulah and all the eggs connected to her, but they aren't real people to the Feds so who cares.

So Tallulah is given to him.

Now. There are 10 eggs which are considered full successes - Dapper, Ramón, Leo, A1, and 6 who are not canon eggs and are dead-because-of-possession. Trump could also be considered successful, but because his Elder died before he was old enough to be possessed, he's treated as a corpse. For every successful egg, there are 10-20 failures. A lot of these are noticed as defective early, and turned back into gloop. Some are cut open and used to determine what went wrong - especially when a whole batch fails, or most of one. The majority, though... The majority are given to the Hunter.

See, the Hunter isn't like the Warlock or the Assassin. He isn't training Eggs, he's using them to train himself. He does not consider non-living targets suitable practice, as even a good robot just does not react like a person.

See, the Hunter is, well, a hunter. He releases the eggs are released into a carefully managed environment, and every so often he goes and hunts them down. Stalks them, snipes them, scares them and makes them run to practice hitting moving targets from absurd ranges. Snipes them in their sleep, and so forth. Some sneaky eggs survive a little while, but he finds them eventually.

So, Tallulah is thrown into the next delivery for him. There's a couple of other eggs there. None of them last very long.

When they are released, Tallulah has the sense to run. She immediately hides herself, and waits to find out what is going on.

She discovers pretty quickly when she sees some of her nearby siblings die.

Her asthma does not let her run much, but she is very good at hiding - much better than most. There's bugs in the environment - a little bit of forest blocked off on all sides by thick glass - which she learns to eat. There's a stream for water, though going to it is dangerous - the Hunter when he hunts knows to find them there, and he does not give warnings when he is about.

Somehow, she lasts a week.

And then two weeks.

And then she finds more eggs. These two have been there longer than her, carved out hidey holes well hidden all over the map. They are the best of friends, and each other's only friends - Tilín, and Juanaflippa. Those two had been sent together, and managed to evade him for months. Flippa wants to steal his gun and shoot him back; Tilín would rather use it to shoot the glass and escape. While nervous around a new egg they take a liking to Tallulah, and the three team up.

It's hard - it's so hard - now Tallulah is watching not only for herself, but for all three of them. Chayanne does his best to help, but he isn't there, and he only knows what Tallulah tells him and very strong emotions - he talks her through panic attacks, encourages her to keep running, lets her know if the Hunter is visiting the Assassin and so she and hers have a little bit safe.

Flippa is their ringleader, the loudest and brashest of the three. Tilín is a little snarky, but extremely anxious. Tallulah... she isn't sure where she fits in. But she is there.

Food is both harder and easier with three - the other two have worked out which berries are edible, and Tallulah knows all about the bugs. Flippa won't eat bugs, says they are her friends, but the three manage. They just about manage.

Starved of psionic energy none of them grow, and all of them are sick, but they survive.

They nearly don't.

One night, Flippa and Tallulah go down to the river to get water. It's usually safer, usually better to go at night. Sometimes the Hunter goes hunting in the dark, but he tends to stick to the light - night vision is not his problem.

Not that night, though - that night he hunts in the dark.

There's a trap set at the river. Flippa triggers it. With Chayanne talking her through it Tallulah gets Flippa out, but by then the Hunter is coming for them.

Both girls run. They run and keep running, doing their very best to escape. It's not possible, not usually and not with Flippa's injuries from the trap, but they try. They run and they run, and then the Hunter shoots at them. It's dark, and it's late, and their buckets are abandoned and they have no water, but they're small and it's dark and the Hunter is a long way away.

He shoots, and misses, and misses, and misses and-

And Tallulah never knows why she moves like she does, only that she has a terrible fear, and throws herself behind Flippa.

A bullet, aimed right at the shorter Flippa's head, hits Tallulah in the shoulder. She screams as it hits the carapace she has in place of skin there, cracks shattering outwards across the whole of it. It is agony, it is horror, she hears Flippa and Chayanne overlap - Chayanne inside her head and so louder - both screaming. She's grabbed, and pulled and somehow, somehow they get away.

They get back to Tilín, hidden away deep and dark in their current cave. He heard shots and hid himself even more than usual, tucked far away and barely visible.

None of them get much sleep after that. Tilín does his best to patch them back together, digging the bullet out of Tallulah's shoulder - it was a just bullet, thankfully, not weird tech, but it still goes deep enough to damage the muscle beneath. They don't have water, and bandages are only a concept they know about because of Chayanne. Flippa's ankle has giant metal teeth marks in it from the bear trap, the bone beneath broken. It's still easier to treat, however, than shattered carapace. It does clot, but Tallulah does not molt, not like a real bug. Instead it grows more like bone than true insect carapace, alongside her.

It doesn't heal like it, though - just clots, and the waxy layer extends over that clotting. It remains an obvious weak point, but also proof of survival; once with adults who care she makes sure to pad it, protect it from further damage, and then covers the entire area with long sleeves and high necklines.

But that is not yet - not even Chayanne has been rescued at that point. It is another year or so before help comes - Chayanne wanted to ask his parents to go for her sooner, but he didn't know where she was either, and once they did find the Hunter's base... he knew it was already top priority, they just couldn't do it.

And he apologised to Tallulah every night for failing to ask, promising that she's strong, and she'll be okay.

By that point the bushes have mostly been destroyed, the Hunter back to trying to bait them out. The bugs are also sleeping - Flippa takes the hit hardest, but both Tilín and Tallulah are also sick.

And then, one day, the glass breaks.

Sick and in pain and terrified the trio still sneak out. Tallulah watches their backs while Flippa steals weapons and Tilín pretends to know the way.

Flippa has a gun, and she intends to use it.

From Chayanne they know about how the Chosen respawn, and even how to get into their chambers; the three put their sneaking skills to use, breaking in.

Flippa tries to set up a shot, Tallulah and Tilín pretend they have confidence in her - she's seen the Hunter do this a lot, after all.

And then there are adults, one grabbing Flippa and taking the gun away. The three are terrified, expect trouble, but Tallulah recognises one - Philza - from Chayanne. She calms the others down a bit, already sick herself.

The after she doesn't remember, just waking up in a strange place, with a man playing a guitar at her bedside. He says his name is Wilbur, Philza - his dad - asked him to watch her while he works. Flippa and Tilín are already up, about and causing trouble, and Chayanne has been forced to get some sleep. He tells her she was very sick, but that she's safe and she's okay now.

And Tallulah... She wants to believe him.

She looks at his guitar, and thinks of Chayanne's happiness with his parents, and with bad hands writes if he will be her papa. Wilbur... Hesitates, says he wouldn't be good at this, that he's not reliable and she deserves better than him.

But he's gentle, and he's kind, and Tallulah is starving for something she does not know, but knows he can give her.

Her dejection seems to convince him, but he makes her promise to wait a few days before bonding to him.

She does, and finds she still wants him, and Wilbur relents.

She is haunted, but she is loved, and is that not what matters in the end?

Much later, when they are sure it is safe for one person to have multiple eggs - proven by Cellbit and Memory - she will also take Philza as a parent. But not until after the war, when Wilbur returns to traveling. It's not safe to take her with, but she'll get sick without a parent, and Philza is looking after her anyway, so... It makes sense, in the end.

#qsmp x xcom #thank you both!!!#ask and answer #qsmp Tallulah #qsmp au

9 notes · View notes