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writing-in-a-chipotle · 4 years ago

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Unbearably Mortal (Part 1)

(Alcina Dimitrescu x gender neutral reader)

Summary: In which you arrive in Romania, and are not exactly given a warm welcome.

Words: ~1.5 K

A/N: Hi, y’all! This will be a multi-part series following you, the reader, through your weird and possibly scary trip to Romania. There will be plenty of fluff, a dash of angst, and some lovely miscommunication. Oh, and lots of blood. And murder. But you were already expecting that, weren’t you? :P

Cold.

Everything was cold.

This was not what you had expected when you’d gone to visit your late grandmother’s home.

None of your family members knew her really, not like she had very many to begin with anyway. And sure, she was your mother’s mother, but when your mom was eighteen, she took almost every cent she had and bought a one-way plane ticket out of her little Romanian hometown.

She hadn’t spoken to her mother since, just sending the occasional letter every few months. And while her mother responded with letters of her own, they eventually stopped coming. Your mother was busy with her life with her new family and job, so she didn’t have time to worry about exactly why she wasn’t being written back.

When you were 23, you received a phone call from your mom, telling you that your grandmother had passed suddenly in the night. You drove two hours to your parents’ house to find your mom’s face streaked with tears. In her hand was her mother’s — your grandmother’s — crumpled will.

Your grandmother had left almost everything in her possession to your mom. She had never known you or your father, and probably didn’t even know you two existed. You and your father were fine, but your mom was devastated, decades of guilt from abandoning her mother finally bubbling to the surface.

Your mom was incredibly distraught with herself. Seeing her drown in her emotions, you offered to go there to scope out the area. You were in college of course, but summer vacation was just around the corner. When the semester ended, you could travel to Romania for a few weeks, see what the house had to offer, and return home with a truckload of pictures. What your mom decided to do with the house would be completely up to her after that.

Your parents agreed, however reluctantly. They were worried about you traveling alone in such a rural area. You waved them off, telling them that your phone was connected to satellite, so no matter where you were on earth, you would be able to call for help.

You had not predicted a blizzard would freeze the components. And now you’re lost. Oh, and gravely underprepared as well.

Time stood at a standstill. The frozen landscape seemed infinite, stretching on untouched no matter which way you turned. It was almost impossible to see through the sleet and snow. Looking down, you couldn’t even see your own footprints in the snow. You shivered, pulling your threadbare jacket closer.

How long have you been outside?

You didn’t know anymore. Every step ached, every breath hurt. You glanced down at your fingers and swallowed dryly. They were blue.

You wouldn’t survive out here for much longer.

You blinked away the snowflakes that were rapidly collecting on your eyelashes. You needed shelter, and fast.

In the distance, a piercing creak of metal caught your attention. It sounded close.

You didn’t bother to think. Stumbling and slipping through the ice and snow, you made your way towards the sound. You kept going until you practically walked into something.

It was a large gate.

A large open gate.

You stumbled through, trudging up to a set of tall wooden doors.

“H-help…” you rasped, grasping the iron knocker. You winced at the metal’s unbearable temperature. It was frozen at its hinges. Weakly, you banged on the doors with your fists. “Please…” You leaned against it, sliding to the ground. Your eyes were so heavy…

The door opened and you fell backwards through the entrance. There were two young women… maids? You couldn’t tell. Your vision was too blurry to see who exactly had come to your rescue. They grabbed your arms and pulled them around their necks, carrying you further into the hallway.

“This is bad,” one whispered, “oh, this is very, very bad…”

“What do we do??” The other one hissed.

“The doors…” the first woman dropped your arm as if she’d been burned and raced to the open door, shutting it as quickly as she could. You groaned.

“Be quiet, you!” The second one snapped fearfully.

The first maid rushed back to you and pulled your lax arm over her shoulder again. “Servant’s quarters. Now.”

They carried — well, more like dragged you through the winding hallways, stopping only once to catch their breath. It was hard for you to pay attention. Your head lolled back and forth with the jostling from the maids’ rushed steps.

Everything was cold… everything hurt…

The maids placed you down on a bed and hurriedly built a fire. The warmth cut through the blistering cold, sending a chill up your spine. Your eyes fluttered closed.

And you were sent tumbling into a dream.

———————-

Visions passed your subconscious mind in a swirling blur. Snowdrifts, claws, a woman in white…

You didn’t understand the images.

Gloves hands came into view. They bent and flexed, flitting across your face like smoke. A gentle finger traced your jawline and you leaned into the touch. You looked up, trying to catch a glimpse of the person caressing you face.

You saw nothing but inky darkness.

Just as suddenly as they had appeared, the loving hands vanished.

And in its place, a grinning maw materialized, blood dripping from razor sharp canines.

You couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything.

And then you were falling.

Falling….

Falling…..

————————

You awoke with a strangled gasp. You were lying on a cot in a strange and small room. Blankets covered you from head to toe, and you melted in the heat.

“Hey, you’re awake.” You turned, startled at the voice. It was a maid, clad in an outdated black and white uniform. Her auburn hair was braided neatly into a bun, with only a single wispy lock escaping, hanging by her ear. She frowned, leaning closer. “Woah, I’m here to help you. No need to panic.” She pressed the back of her hand to your forehead and sighed with relief. “Your fever finally broke, thank the Goddess.”

Goddess?

“I… thank you,” you said, your mind swirling, “but, uh, where am I? And who are you?”

“Oh! Where are my manners…” the maid shook her head. “I am Mary, one of the maids here at Castle Dimitrescu. Another maid — her name is Sarah, mind you — helped me put you here. You’re in my bed, in the servant’s quarters.”

“Oh, sorry,” you mumbled guiltily, suddenly very aware of where you were. “I didn’t realize...” You pulled back the blankets to get up, but sank back down into the material as you processed her words. “Wait… Castle??”

Mary’s eyes widened in fear. “Sh!!! Keep your voice down!” The maid’s demeanor changed on a dime as she smacked a hand over your mouth, muffling any sound you might make. Shocked and confused, you tried to mumble out your questions, but the icy glare Mary gave you quickly shut you up. Your heart raced.

What was going on??

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

The sound of heavy footfalls from the floor above echoed around the room. Your heart beat wildly in your chest.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

Was it getting closer? You couldn’t tell. You looked at Mary for any hope of comfort and your heart fell. She looked just as scared, if not even more so than you felt.

THUMP… THUMP...

The sound of footsteps suddenly stopped. You could hear your heartbeat in your ears, it was beating so loudly. You tried not to breathe too hard, for fear that whatever was up there might hear you.

A pained scream echoed through the castle, ricocheting off the stone walls. You flinched at the sound. It sounded so agonizing… so... human.

Mary didn’t move. Her eyes were fixed on the wall behind you, seemingly trying to bore holes into the stone.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, the footsteps started again, traveling deeper into the castle. Mary didn’t remove her hand until the sound of the footfalls were long gone.

“W-What… what was that?” You whispered to her.

“I believe that was the Lady of the house.” Mary said blankly, still keeping her eyes locked on the wall.

“And… the screaming? Mary, what’s going on here?” You didn’t want to know. You didn’t want to hear what horrible things happened here. Was this an elaborate prank? A horror house??

She shook her head fearfully “I… I don’t think that’s a good idea-“

“Please, Mary,” you pleaded, “I need to know what this is. I have to.”

Mary looked at you for a moment, then took a shuddering breath. “This… is Castle Dimitrescu. The Lady, along with her three daughters, drink the blood of whomever they choose and make wine from the excess.”

Your stomach churned. That couldn’t be right… vampires didn’t exist. “Wha-“

“And,” Mary turned to look at you, locking you into her haunting gaze, “if they catch you,” she leaned closer as if to whisper a secret.

“You’re going to wish you died at the door.”

#my writing #lady dimitrescu x reader #alcina dimitrescu #alcina dimitriscu x reader #reader insert #RE8 #gender neutral reader

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bubbloquacious · 3 years ago

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The Topology Game Properties

See this post for the rules of the game. See this post for the implications I've proven so far while playing. What follows is my personal continually updated list of the topological properties that may be rolled in the game. I add new properties in whatever stretch of properties I think they're most appropriate, so their numbers may change. In all of these properties the symbol X will refer to the space in question.

A space X is 'locally P' if for every p in X and every open neighbourhood U of p there is an open neighbourhood V of p contained in U that has the property P. A space is 'hereditarily P' if every subspace has the property P. Given two subsets A, B of X, a Urysohn function for this situation is a continuous function from X to the real numbers that maps A onto 0 and B onto 1. A perfect Urysohn function is one such that A and B are the inverse image of 0 and 1 respectively (necessarily this can only happen if A and B are closed).

Here is the big list of currently 75 properties:

Kolmogorov/point distinguishing: No two points are contained in exactly the same open sets.

Tychonov/Fréchet/accessible: Any two points have open neighbourhoods not containing the other point. Equivalently, all singletons are closed.

Weakly Hausdorff: Any image of a compact Hausdorff space is closed.

Hausdorff: Any two points may be separated by open neighbourhoods.

Closed Hausdorff: Any two points may be separated by closed neighbourhoods.

Urysohn Hausdorff: Any two points have a Urysohn function.

Perfectly Hausdorff: Any two points have a perfect Urysohn function.

Regular: Any point and any closed subset not containing that point may be separated by disjoint open neighbourhoods.

Urysohn regular: Any point and aany closed subset not containing it have a Urysohn function (this is what's usually called completely regular).

Hereditarily regular.

Perfectly regular: Any point and any closed subset not containing it have a perfect Urysohn function.

Normal: Any two disjoint closed subsets may be separated by disjoint open neighbourhoods (Urysohn's lemma states that this is equivalent with Urysohn normal).

Hereditarily normal (this is what's usually called completely normal).

Perfectly normal: Any two disjoint closed subsets have a perfect Urysohn function.

Discrete: Every subset is open.

Indiscrete: Also known as trivial or chaotic. Only the empty set and the entire space are open.

Connected: The space is not the union of two disjoint non-empty open subsets.

Path connected: Any two points may be the start and end point of a path.

Simple path connected: Any two points may be the start and end point of a simple (injective) path (we reserve the term arc for the embedded image of a closed interval).

Locally connected.

Locally path connected.

Locally simple path connected.

Hyperconnected: No two non-empty open subsets are disjoint.

Ultraconnected: No two non-empty closed subsets are disjoint.

Any loop can be contracted to a point (together with path connected this is simply connected).

Weakly homotopically discrete: Trivial homotopy groups at all base points. I.e. all path components are weakly contractible.

Locally simply connected.

Semilocally (semi)simply connected: Every point x has a neighbourhood U such that any loop in U can be contracted to a point in X. People don't usually use the word 'semisimply' for this but I think it is more correct.

Totally disconnected: The only connected components are singletons.

Homotopically discrete: Homotopy equivalent with a discrete space.

Finite.

Countable.

Continuum-sized.

Has greater cardinality than continuum.

First countable: Every point has a countable neighbourhood basis.

Second countable: The space has a countable basis.

Compact: Every cover of open subsets has a finite subcover.

Lindelöf: Every open conver has a countable subcover.

Sequentially compact: Every sequence has a convergent subsequence.

Limit point compact: Every infinite subset has a limit point, i.e. a point not contained in the set such that every neighbourhood of that point contains some point of the set.

Pseudocompact: Every real-valued continuous function on the space is bounded.

Semilocally compact: Every point has a compact neighbourhood (this is usually called locally compact).

σ-compact: The space is a countable union of compact subsets.

Rim-compact: The space has a base of open sets with compact boundaries.

Completely uniformizable: The space has the topology induced by a complete uniformity (non-complete uniformizability is equivalent with Urysohn regularity).

Metrizable: The space has the topology induced by a metric.

Completely metrizable: The space has the topology induced by a complete metric.

Locally Euclidean: There is an n ≥ 0 such that every point x has a neighbourhood homeomorphic to (an open subset of) Euclidean n-space. Together with Hausdorff (and second countable if you're that way inclined) this is a manifold.

Locally Euclidean with boundary: Same as previous but the neighbourhoods may also be homeomorphic to an open subset of a half-space.

Contains a simple curve (the injective image of a closed interval; for Hausdorff spaces this is the same as having a subspace homeomorphic to a closed interval).

Retracts onto a positive-dimensional locally Euclidean space.

CW-complex.

Has a cut-point: Deleting a point may turn a connected component into a disconnected subspace (this includes isolated points).

Has an abelian fundamental group at every base point.

Has a finitely generated fundamental group at every base point.

Has an uncountable fundamental group at every base point.

Separable: Has a countable dense subset.

Alexandrov-discrete: Arbitrary intersections of open subsets are open.

Door: Any subset is open or closed, i.e. no subset is neither.

Submaximal: Any subset is locally closed, i.e. the intersection of an open set and a closed set.

Sequential: A set is open if any sequence converging to a point in that set is eventually contained in the set.

Baire: For a countable collection of closed sets with empty interior, their union also has empty interior.

Compactly generated: A subset F is closed in X if and only if F ∩ K is closed in K for every compact subset K of X.

Cosmic: The space is the continuous image of a separable metric space.

Dense-in-itself: There are no isolated points.

Gδ space: Every closed set is the countable intersection of open sets.

Homogeneous: Any point may be taken to any other by a homeomorphism of the space to itself.

Locally homogeneous: For any two points and any two neighbourhoods of these points respectively there are two smaller neighbourhoods of those points which are pointedly homeomorphic.

Has a partition of unity: A partition of unity is a set of continuous functions from X to the unit interval [0,1] such that for all points x there is some neighbourhood of x where only finitely many functions are non-zero and the sum over the entire space of all functions is the constant 1 function.

Resolvable: The space is the union of disjoint dense sets.

Scattered: No subset is dense-in-itself.

Sober: Every irreducible (i.e. cannot be written as the not-necessarily-disjoint union of non-empty closed sets) closed set is the closure of exactly one point.

Zero-dimensional: The topology has a base of clopen sets.

Uniformly based: The topology has a base of pairwise homeomorphic sets.

Self-based: The topology has a base of sets each homeomorphic to the space.

#math #topology #the topology game

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forsakenoathkeeper · 4 years ago

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I Am Alive (chapter 16/?)

Chapter 16: Sufficiently Healed

Deviant!Connor[RK800] x (fem!)Reader Rated M(18+) for canon-typical violence and gore, medical procedures, and graphic sexual content

Chapters: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • more coming soon

You can also read on AO3 & thank you for supporting me ♥

It was late when you returned to the apartment; however, you were too on edge to possibly be tired just yet. While you had replaced his thirium pump regulator, there was still some damage that needed to be addressed.

Connor had reluctantly let you patch his skin before taking Robert into the police station; however, a wound like that undoubtedly caused some internal damage that he decided not to disclose with you.

"Connor, please read me your diagnostic report," you asked him insistently.

He seemed conflicted for a second. "I told you I'm alright," he replied softly.

You eyed him suspiciously, intending to continue on about how you didn't believe him. However, surprisingly, Connor caved quickly.

"Minor membrane damage inside central chassis," he uttered lowly, like a scolded child.

"I won't look if you don't want me to," you offered gently.

"It's not that," he replied immediately, not wanting you to think he was untrusting of your abilities. It was quite the opposite, actually. "You did this all day. You deserve a break."

"But, you're Connor," you replied softly.

You touched his shoulders and gently nudged him, a gesture encouraging him to step back.

"I-uhm..." he uttered, following along with your gentle pushes until the back of his knees hit the couch. He sat down and you kept nudging at him until he lifted his legs, scooted back, and laid down across the couch, head falling onto the armrest.

"I never need a break from you," you added on as he finally got the hint and arranged himself across the couch comfortably.

You retreated briefly to rummage through your bag, seeking out a tool kit specifically for this. As you did, Connor shook his jacket and button-up shirt off, laying them across the back of the couch.

When you turned around and was met with bare, cream colored skin, you had to resist the urge to stare like an idiot. You had seen his nudity before; but, the assortment of freckles running down his torso never ceased to amaze you.

It didn't help that he had a muscular appearance to his chassis. Then, of course, there was that damn pube trail starting beneath his belly button and disappearing into his pants.

Connor really was unfairly attractive.

Brushing those thoughts aside, you set the toolkit down nearby and straddled Connor's thighs. It was intimate and you definitely did not do it like this with your other patients; but, it was easier to access his chassis this way, considering he was on a couch and not an operating table and you didn't have a chair that would set you at the right height.

Connor didn't seem perturbed by you mounting him, not that this was anything new. He looked up at you with nothing but trust reflecting in his brown eyes.

The android relaxed against the cushions and opened the skin layering on the front of his chassis. The shell of his unit parted down the middle from his sternum to his belly button. There were multiple pieces that made up either side of his chassis; but, for ease of access, they parted in two. The material was flexible, yet firm.

Connor seemed to be taking a second to relax, judging by the way he was clenching his jaw. Undoubtedly, this wasn't a pleasant feeling. His system was likely warning him that he was exposing sensitive components that were susceptible to damage.

You admired the design beneath his skin in silence. The membrane fibers that acted like muscle layers were laid out intricately over his abdomen, almost like the perfect drawing in a human anatomy textbook. His internal network layout was far more advanced than anything you had ever seen before. He had more fibrous connectors than the average android, more individual, artificial muscles.

"Oh, Connor," you hummed, not finding the strength to reach inside and touch him yet.

Connor looked up at you, brown eyes reflecting something quite innocent.

"I-I don't think I can..." you trailed off, intimidated by the sight of his insides.

Like all androids, wiring connected to the various internal parts and membranes, allowing for precise movements and artificial muscle controls. Thirium was flowing through the artificial muscles, painting them a magnificent blue hue that was glowing in an otherworldly light.

Connor had more connectors than the average android. His layout was more precise and detailed than any other android you had ever worked on before.

Up until this point, you had only worked on androids designed for yard work, child care, and the likes. Before Connor, you had never heard of an RK series. He was the only android you had come across designed for something... violent. Considering his purpose, it wasn't particularly surprising that his design was more advanced.

"You're just so... I've never seen this much detail before. The intricacy here is amazing, really. We should get a professional," you suggested.

"What?" he uttered lowly, like you had just said the most ridiculous thing. Your eyes shifted from his exposed membrane to his eyes. He looked... offended.

"-someone who knows what they're doing," you explained.

Connor's hands reached for you, cupping either of your elbows. He leaned up a little. "You know what you're doing," he said firmly, leaving no room for argument.

He was a little mad, you realized. You were prepared to rebuttal that, but Connor, catching that look in your eyes, continued, "I've seen the kind of damages you've repaired, and the way you handle androids. No one is better suited to take care of me."

The fierce look in his eyes made it clear this wasn't a discussion. He released your arms and slid back flat onto the couch. You gawked at him for a moment: intimidated, awestruck by his confidence in you.

"O-okay," you uttered weakly.

You reached for your tools before shimmying your body down so you could practically lay on him, and started working.

Membrane repairs were usually simple; however, in Connor's case, partially because his design was so unique, and partially because you were terrified of making a mistake, you took your sweet time. Connor didn't seem to mind. When you glanced up to check on him, his eyes were closed and his LED was a pleasant, blue hue.

Was he... enjoying this? You couldn't tell. But, his face looked peaceful.

Connor was beautiful, intricate blue muscles pulsating with thirium, the tissue firm and soft at the same time, strong and resilient. It was no wonder that he was so fast, so agile. He was designed to be an apex predator.

You lost track of time before you eventually sat upright and admired your work. Muscle tissues had been returned to their proper position, wrapped protective around his thirium regulator, wires carefully tucked back into their proper placements.

"Will you run a new diagnostic?" you asked him gently.

Connor nodded, his eyes still closed. "All readings are normal," he replied softly, sounding almost tired. You couldn't resist smiling at the sight. He looked so relaxed.

"Good," you hummed, carefully shimmying off his lap and rising to your feet. You set your tools down and groaned, rotating around to stretch your legs.

"Oof," you huffed as you stretched, trying to relax your aching back. Behind you, Connor closed his chassis carefully, until the seams relaxed and became unnoticeable.

He sat up to watch you, amused. "I'm not surprised to find your legs are sore. You were working for almost an hour."

"What!?" you shrieked. It definitely didn't feel like you had been going at it that long. You had been so worried about doing something wrong, about damaging him more than he already was.

"Are you sure I did alright?" you asked, sincere, turning around to face him.

Connor patted his abdomen, right where his thirium regulator rested beneath the surface. "The alignment feels more stable and... comfortable," he said with a confident smile. "I am sufficiently repaired."

You laughed softly. "But, are you sufficiently healed?"

His head tilted a little, brow quirking slightly. Androids were repaired, humans were healed; but, he doubted you meant it in that context.

You approached him and dropped down to your knees, pushing him back slightly. You ducked your head down and kissed the spot right above his belly button, where you had just repaired his membrane fibers.

You were smiling when you came back up and Connor looked intrigued.

"There. All better," you hummed innocently.

The android tilted his head slightly, briefly searching the internet to determine why you would do such an odd thing. After briefly viewing a couple answers, Connor felt strangely bashful and squirmed nervously where he was seated.

"'m gonna take a shower," you stated as you rose back to your feet.

Connor looked up at you with a silent question, his eyes warm and inviting and his lips curved into a faint smile.

"Would you like to join me?" you asked softly.

"Yes," he blurted without hesitation.

Together, you trotted over to the bathroom. You undressed as Connor prepared the shower, testing the temperature until he had it at the degree of warmth he thought you would like.

You were already nude and startled him when you reached around his waist from behind and started fiddling with his belt. You didn't touch his pants, but slid the leather through his belt loops and spun around to place it on the rack where he organized his collection.

Connor watched you curiously as he unceremoniously peeled his shoes and socks off before removing his pants and underwear. You ducked into the tiles and warm water before he could finish.

He was fast to come in behind you, startling a squeal out of you with how cold he was compared to the warm water. You caught the look of his proud smirk over your shoulder, before you shrugged him off your back, trying not to be too flustered by the proud erection he was sporting.

After you were sufficiently soaked, you rotated around carefully so that he could take his turn standing beneath the running water. It was almost hypnotizing, watching the droplets fall across his skin.

When androids activated their human skin, it felt undistinguishable from the real thing; however, there was no denying that water reacted a little differently to it. Perhaps, because their skin was so ungodly smooth, water just danced across the surface.

His hair, sopping wet, flopped over his forehead before he brushed it back with his hand. That unruly strand that touched his forehead and gave some deviance to his otherwise prim and proper cut was finally behaving, clung to the rest of his wet strands.

When Connor stepped out of the pouring water, you were quick to ask, "can I do it?" while reaching for the shampoo he used. As you brought the bottle in closer, you realized it was made specifically for android's synthetic hair fibers. Connor didn't respond verbally, but looked down at you eagerly.

You squeezed a small dollop into your palm, surprised to find it was more foamy than typical shampoo. As you lathered it between your hands, the cool, clean scent floated around the shower.

Connor tilted his head down as you reached for him. You weaved your fingers through his locks, impressed, as always, by how soft they were. You massaged your fingers into his scalp in a manner you hoped he would find enjoyable, down the back of his head to work the soap into the shorter hairs, careful not to catch on his ears. He must have enjoyed it, considering the way he sagged against you.

"Connor," you laughed softly.

You reached past him to rinse your hands off. The android tilted his head back to chase your hands and the water hit his head and sent the suds spewing down his back. His eyes were shut and he seemed relaxed. You let your hands return to his head to aid in rinsing the soap from his locks.

For a moment, you were mindful of not getting any in his eyes, until you remembered that his optics could handle a vast majority of cleaning agents and this would likely not cause any irritation. Still, you doubted he would want soap splashed in his face.

When his hair felt sufficiently rinsed out, Connor took hold of your waist and carefully pulled you around so that you traded places and was beneath the water again.

"You were getting cold," he observed, looking down at you sweetly. Water was clinging to his eyelashes and heavy droplets dripped from his sopping wet hair; however, he didn't seem to mind, or notice.

You smiled at him, feeling the warm water splash down your back. He looked in awe, staring at you, hair clinging to your skin, water droplets decorating your body. He tried not to stare at your nudity, doubting you would want that after what transpired today.

Wanting to return the favor, Connor reached for your shampoo. You couldn't help but giggle at the questioning glance he tossed you before pouring some into his palm. You fluttered your eyes shut when he reached for you.

He was gentler than you had been, careful to not get any on your face, mindful of how rough he was with his fingers. You felt him lean in closer, even though it wasn't required to reach you seeing that he had long arms and flexible digits.

After a minute or so, you leaned back to rinse it off and gently shrugged his hands away.

"I wanted to ask you," you began, voice distant over the sound of the running shower.

"When you asked me to stay here for my safety, was that a ploy to get me to move in?" you teased, eyes opening halfway through and watching Connor's gaze shift from curious to a deer in headlights.

"I wouldn't trick you like that," he protested softly.

You laughed quietly and his concerned expression relaxed.

"It's just," you continued. "I've been here a lot, and that's not fair to you. I'm pretty much squatting."

"It doesn't bother me," Connor retorted.

"I use more water than you. I use your heater. I'm running the stove more than you ever would," you carried on. "I should be paying rent."

"I don't require many human essentials," Connor said robotically. "My cost of living is significantly lower than yours. I don't require you to help pay my bills."

"But, they aren't just your bills if I'm here all the time," you retorted.

You rang out your hair and swapped places with the android again. You huffed out a laugh when he snatched the conditioner bottle out of your hand and, quite literally, took matters into his own hands.

"Please, Connor. I don't want to be a freeloader," you protested, eyes fluttering shut as he worked the conditioner through your hair with careful fingers.

"I don't see you that way," he uttered sincerely. You moaned softly when his palms smoothed over your skull and his fingers carefully worked the conditioner through your hair.

"I see me that way," you retorted grumpily.

"I don't mind paying for-"

"Well, I do," you interrupted him, a little harsher than intended.

He carefully removed his fingers from your hair and you opened your eyes to look at him intensely, hoping he realized this was important to your independence.

"I-... don't believe you make enough money to afford two places," Connor stated analytically, rinsing his hands in the flowing water. "So, it would only be logical for you to choose one over the other."

He handled surrendering rather well, you realized fondly.

"I like your place better. If you want me here?" you asked softly.

Connor was quick to answer before any doubt could blossom. "I do."

After you rinsed out your hair, Connor's bodywash followed: this time, something clearly designed for humans. Android's plastic skin didn't typically require a need for this sort of thing; but, you were pleased to see he had ignored this and treated himself. The bodywash had a masculine scent with a faint mint aroma that seemed oddly appropriate for his polished demeanor.

There was a perfectly good scrub brush right there; but, you ignored it, opting for your hands instead.

"Do you care if I smell like your body wash?" you asked as your hands smoothed over his shoulders and down his chest and over his stomach.

"I don't mind," Connor replied.

Your arms encircled his waist and you pulled him into an embrace, wet bodies smacking together. Connor seemed surprised, or perhaps unsettled by the sudden closeness, judging by the look he made. Your hands continued to spread the soap along his back, shamelessly enjoying the feel of his back muscles tensing beneath your touch.

"Sorry, is this bad?" you uttered, trying to make sense of his expression.

"No. I just didn't want to make you uncomfortable," he answered, struggling to keep his eyes focused on yours when he could feel your breasts smooshed against his chest, the soft expansion of your tummy and the heat radiating off your thighs.

It was obvious he was referring to the erection that he had been struggling to subdue ever since you undressed in front of him. Now, with the closeness, it was pinned between your bodies, smooshed against your inner thigh.

Connor looked embarrassed. "Sorry, I usually can control that better."

You shook your head rapidly. "I don't want you to control it," you whispered sharply.

The android tightened his lips, seemingly spurred on by your encouraging words.

"Does it bother you?" you asked, sincere, a little worried that he might have been uncomfortable.

"Is it not... demeaning?" the android asked softly.

"Why would it be demeaning?" you asked, tilting your head a little.

"It seems inappropriate after what happened today, and you didn't express a sexual interest to warrant this response," Connor explained, again in that very android-like way.

You huffed a little at him. "It's not like you tried to force yourself on me," you proclaimed, a little scold to your tone. "Should I be upset with you for being attracted to me?"

Connor's lips curved into a smile that was a little innocent despite the context of the discussion at hand.

"That is accurate, but-" the android began. "I-... Feel a little possessive at the moment."

Curiosity, excitement maybe, danced behind your eyes.

"You could have died today," you commented lowly. "Is that what has you on edge?"

"It is... a possibility," he drawled.

You were silent for a moment, rubbing soap all over him, not caring that a lot of it ended up all over you, too.

"...you were in danger," Connor confessed quietly, voice weak through the sound of the rushing water hitting the tiles. You couldn't help but feel enamored by those words. He was pent up and frustrated at the fear that he could have lost you today.

"For a second, I thought you were going to kill him," you stated softly, not sounding disgusted or angry, but perhaps worried.

"I thought so, too," Connor admitted, oddly not feeling scrutinized in your gaze. If anything, you seemed proud of him.

Connor wasn't quite sure if that was how he felt: proud. Part of him knew that he had to do what was best for androids and humans, so that they could create a better world together. He wanted to participate in Markus' vision; yet, when it came to you, he found himself second guessing those desires.

He would do whatever he had to do to keep you safe.

To accomplish his mission-

"Do you want to get out?" you asked softly, trying to rotate him around so he could wash off the soap. However, lost in his thoughts, Connor was standing there, stiff and unmovable. Eventually, he complied, traded places with you once more, and let the water wash the soap away.

Instead of answering your question, Connor was more concerned that perhaps you wanted to leave. "Is the steam making you dizzy?" he asked, concerned.

You shook your head with a smile. "No. It's just-... You seem-..." you trailed off, deciding against telling him what was on your mind, that he had kept his hands to himself despite admitting that he was pent up.

Captivated by him, you felt feral, longing for him to have you in the most intimate way humans were capable of. Connor was a sophisticated android, beautiful and strong, graceful and elegant. You felt as graceful as a flopping fish on dry land compared to him.

Of course, the android didn't see you that way. If he could sleep, if he could dream, you would be the woman that came to him in the dead of night.

You stepped out of the shower to retrieve a towel. Connor followed you to the shower exit, careless that he was dripping wet all over his bathroom tiles. Before you could get the towel wrapped around yourself, he gently cupped your arm and tugged you back in.

Your eyes, bright and confused, looked up at him, noticed the desperate look he was making, and dropped the towel on the floor. As soon as he had you back inside, he looked like he regretted that decision.

"I'm sorry-" he stammered.

"Connor, please-" you uttered, sounding suddenly like you were in so much agony. "-no more whiplash. Ok? Tell me what's on your mind."

"I want you," he confessed lowly, staring down at you with a desperately hungry look in his eyes.

His hands slid over your ribs, fingers curling over the outline of the bones with deep fascination. He unconsciously pinned you against the tiles, not too far from beneath the shower head, where water could sputter across your body. The android arched over you, patience waning.

Yes, please-

"Show me that you're alive, Connor," you breathed against his lips.

Finally - finally, he kissed you. You moaned shamelessly, arms weaving around his shoulders to drag him in closer. The android practically smooshed you against the tiles with his own body, trying to mold himself against you. His kisses were desperate, hungry, but somehow still managed to be soft.

He wasted little time before propping your leg on his waist and dipping his fingers into the heat between your thighs. Water was definitely not a suitable lubricant, and he wasn't too stupid to not be able to tell them apart. When he was met with your folds, the slippery substance couldn't be mistaken for anything but your natural slick.

He hadn't done anything and you were already dripping. He had been torturing himself with guilt while you had been as aroused as he was. The thought eased his troubled mind just a little.

The android trailed your nub for a brief second before pushing his longest digit into your cavern. You moaned against his mouth shamelessly. He gave you a second to breathe before shoving his tongue into your mouth. For a second, your eyes fluttered open and caught the sight of his closed eyes, tense eyebrows, and vibrant, crimson halo on his temple.

His tongue explored your mouth selfishly while he fingered you eagerly. His flexibility was a strong reminder he wasn't human, and you loved it. He thrust his digit aggressively, knuckles brushing against your folds, while his thumb pressed down on your bud, shifting with the movement of his digits.

Connor carefully maneuvered another finger inside and devoured the hiss that escaped your mouth. The stretch was brief, more so by the sudden intrusion than the extra girth. He was being a little more aggressive than necessary; but, you shamelessly loved every second of it.

When you started to pant desperately, he finally let go of your lips and trailed soft bites down your neck. You could hardly focus properly, pinned against the wall to ensure you wouldn't fall, overwhelmed by the delicious friction he was delivering to your cunt.

The android bent down and took a rosy nipple into his mouth, sucking on the bud in slow, but firm, successions that you would be able to feel strongly. You most certainly did, and arched your back, moaning and whimpering helplessly. Your hands gripped his shoulders for dear life.

You were shaking violently, feeling an orgasm approaching, but not quite there. It felt far away until Connor released your poor, abused nipple and leaned up, groaning a staticky moan into your throat when his erection brushed your thigh.

You weren't sure if it was his moan, the way he humped you slightly for just a second, or the fact that you wanted him inside you so fucking badly. Suddenly, you were coming, so hard that you screamed and startled yourself with how loud it sounded in the shower.

Connor was unwavering until you had rode out the wave and regained enough composure to reach down and wrap your fingers around his cock. He faltered and nearly collapsed on top of you at the sudden touch.

You stroked him a few times before letting go and pushing at him until he got off of you. He complied with the most adorable, disagreeing pout on his face. You almost wanted to smack him for daring to think you didn't want more - all of him, every fucking inch.

The shower had a small platform sticking out opposite from the entrance, clearly designed to be sat on like a bench. You stepped towards it and propped up one of your legs, knee on the tile, braced your palms across from you, and bent over, propping up on your toes on the one foot that was on the ground.

The android groaned approvingly and immediately covered your body with his. One of his arms came into view, sliding along the tiles on the wall in front of you. You were confused briefly until you felt him nudge you forward and your cheek came into contact with his skin instead of the cold tiles.

The water from above was pouring across his back and sending water spattering over you obnoxiously, not that you could find the willpower to care.

You heard the familiar sound of him spreading lubricant down his shaft and tried to arch up your behind as invitingly as you could, whimpering like a pathetic animal.

He didn't brace his hand on your hip, but reached around and cupped your cunt. His chest collided softly with your back and forced you to arch just a little more, until the angle was perfect and his tip hooked on your entrance. You were more than ready; yet, still, his size managed to force a whimper out of you.

He sheathed himself inside you and groaned low and staticky, beautiful mechanical noises. He was most of the way inside, thrusting shallowly a few times to let you adjust. You turned your head and bit at the skin on his forearm. That seemed to spur him on and Connor shifted his hips and filled you to the brim.

You moaned through your teeth, still latched onto his skin, enough of an encouraging sound for him to start moving properly. Wet, fleshy noises of skin slapping together echoed around the shower. Connor's fingers toyed with your pearl as he fucked you, displaying a sort of inhuman flexibility as he bent over you.

"Ohhh, Connor," you moaned against his skin before lapping your tongue against the spot you just tug your teeth into. It blossomed pale white briefly before fading back to his artificial, human skin tone. One of your hands was clinging awkwardly to his bicep while the other gripped the wrist that was curled between your thighs.

His hand against the tile was splayed, fingers bent and nails digging into the tile. Your pressed your cheek into his skin and huffed out a pathetic breath every time he slid back inside.

"-so beautiful," Connor breathed against the skin at the base of your spine. You whimpered when you felt the unique texture of his tongue as it lapped against the top vertebrae.

You wanted to arch into his touch, to tilt your head and expose more skin, so that his mouth could reach every part of you possible in this position. However, you were already struggling to keep yourself upright and didn't want to dare ruin this: the perfect drag of his cock at the angle that made you see stars.

You felt the android's forehead fall into the back of your neck and the heat of his exhaust against your skin as he let himself get lost in the moment. It was burning hot; everywhere he touched you was burning hot. His skin against your back and the tops of his thighs where they touched the backs of yours felt ungodly warm.

It occurred to you, then, that this was likely an unsafe combination: the heat from the water, the steam wafting about the shower, and his internal biocomponents heating as a response to external stimuli.

"W-wait, Connor," you urged, pushing back against him. His pace staggered, but he didn't immediately let you go. "Stop," you added on insistently, until he finally slipped out of you and backed up.

Hastily, you stood up and stepped over to the faucet, turned the water off and looked up at him with concern, cupping his cheeks.

"Are you overheating?" you asked, trying to make sense of the look in his eyes.

He seemed a little distant, not looking at you quite properly.

"Connor?" you insisted, a little louder than necessary.

He blinked as if startled by your voice.

"I-... a little," he admitted quietly.

"Oh, geez," you huffed. "Did you disable those warnings?" you scolded him lightly, taking him by the arm to guide him out of the shower. You ignored the chill when you stepped out and grabbed a towel to start drying him off.

"No," he lied as you plopped the towel on the top of his head and gently patted his hair. Before you could run it down his shoulders, he gently pushed your hands away and removed the towel from himself and wrapped it around you. You looked up at him with a harmless glare.

"I'll reenable them," he promised, looking at you fondly as he bundled you up.

"You better," you scolded him.

"I just-... didn't want my hardware limitations getting in the way," he commented lowly.

"Pssh," you hissed, delivering a gentle smack against his chest. "That's not a hardware limitation. Humans pass out from heat, too," you stated.

You retrieved another towel and flung it at the android. "It's called being alive," you added on. He caught the towel, but didn't seem particularly interested in drying himself off. You didn't miss the way he was staring at you, pleading eyes and lips parted slightly.

"Cool down a bit first," you teased, nudging at his hands until he got the message and started drying himself off.

You let the towel unravel from your body so you could dry the back of your neck and pat it gently through your hair. You heard a soft whoosh when Connor unceremoniously dropped his towel. As soon as you let go of your hair, he descended upon you.

You gasped when he backed you up against the sink, the cool marble pressing against your behind.

"I’m not going anywhere," you laughed, hands coming up beneath his arms, smoothing over the plains of his back.

Connor blinked away the hungry look in his eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm being too insistent," he apologized politely.

His cock, pinned between your bodies, was hard and throbbing. He seemed eager to continue, undoubtedly pent up and desperate for release. Your state wasn't much better, sticky and warm between your thighs, and not nearly satisfied.

"You're lucky I don't have work tomorrow," you surrendered with a sigh, though you had a warm and inviting smile on your face.

The grin on his face was charming and handsome, but hid something mischievous when he guided you to the bed. "You asked me if I was sufficiently healed," he started as he gently pushed you back onto the sheets, not the least bit concerned that you were still fairly wet. "I don't think I am."

You huffed out a laugh at his matter-of-fact tone. Your arms weaved over his shoulders when he arched over you. He intended to take your lips; however, you avoided his mouth and peppered kisses over his freckled face.

Your legs found their way around his hips. He nudged forward, teasingly brushing his length against your folds. Your head fell back into the sheets and you sighed at the sensation. He took that opportunity to steal the kisses you had denied him a second ago.

Somehow, you just knew, it was going to be a long night.

#connor x reader #deviant connor x reader #dbh fanfic #rk800 x reader #rk800 smut #connor smut

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loosesodamarble · 3 years ago

Text

Faustsele Part 3: orion

orion (music video)

The next Faustsele song is “orion” and this is where Josele’s feelings start turning romantic. There's a growing sense of intimacy in this song, although it can still be read platonically. There is also a dream-like quality to the instrumental component, capturing the light but fantastical feeling of falling in love.

Your fingers, your chest, your eyes; They're so radiant, some nights they dizzy me a little

This is Josele noting Morgen and Nacht’s features because she’s spent years holding their hands, being hugged to their chests, and staring into their eyes. She’s memorized everything about the twins. Now when she thinks about those simple but intimate moments, in relation to those body parts, she gets a little dizzy from her blooming feelings of love.

It suddenly came falling upon me, all too warm; I gulped down a rainbow-color star Like a popping spark, you firmly confounded me, And that taught me how I could walk again...

Josele’s revelation of her romantic feelings for Nacht and Morgen are sudden to her. But the feeling fills her with warmth and it’s beautiful like the image of “a rainbow-color star.” It’s confusing too, and she kind of has to relearn how she sees the twins in this new light. She happily accepts it all though. Things don’t actually change that much between Josele and the Fausts.

Even in my dreams, I'm not skilled, not in a good state "Don't worry about it" - the things I lamented, the things I cried over

Pulling on frayed sleeve threads, we tried making a constellation, With each other's fingers as stars It was terrible, nonsense, so we laughed together; As long as you were there with me, it's all fine...

This is how Josele is. She will have moments when she voices negativity but quickly pushes those thoughts away with hope. She is human and thus still has her insecurities. But she doesn’t hide that negativity. She still laments and cries but she doesn’t let herself stay worried about them. And if she’s not at her best, then she can improve. All the while, she is with the twins, able to easily laugh alongside them about silly things.

God, please, please - let me hear that voice, If only just for a second... So that we never have to part again, I want you and I, like this constellation... To be tied together...

This version of the chorus is a prayer from Josele. After years with the Fausts, Josele doesn’t want to let them go. She’s stubbornly devoted and in love with them. She wants to have that bond, hear their voices, hold their hands. For as long as possible. The connection between stars making constellations is intangible and in reality, the stars are far apart, but from the view on earth, they’re close together and can create something pretty. That’s kind of how Josele feels about the Fausts. Even though they live in separate classes and didn’t have a lot in common in the beginning, they did meet and bond. She did fall in love with them and it’s a thing of beauty to her.

Now, no matter what difficulties arise, I can still try to love... But too weakly linked, across the dawn, They simply watched... Those blue eyes...

Here we get Josele’s thoughts, that she believes hope and love can overcome whatever troubles she faces. It’s also there that we get a mention of blue eyes. The English translation that’s provided implies the blue eyes to be the ones watching something else but I looked at the Japanese and I read it more as the speaker of the song staring into blue eyes. Either way it works, considering Nacht and Morgen have blue eyes.

One of my favorite parts of “orion” is the star imagery. I associate Josele with stars so it makes it feel more appropriate for the song to be linked to her character. Josele is a star, once alone, now forming a constellation with two people she’s fallen in love with. I simply find the song to be dreamy and romantic, a perfect summary of Josele’s feelings.

..........

Intro | Previous | Next

#josele canty #black clover oc #faustsele #morgen faust #nacht faust #the music of faustsele #soda asides #soda's ocs

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fantasticstoryteller · 4 years ago

Text

New Amsterdam Chapter 64

Peter watched as Angel repeatedly pulled the thick wad of dough until she had thin strips of noodles. “This is the easy part,” she told him as she methodically worked. “Just grab and pull. Grab and pull. Kind of meditative if you let it be.”

Peter looked hesitantly at the ball of dough in front of him before reaching for it.

“Flour your hands first; otherwise the dough will stick.”

“Right.” Copying her earlier movements he stuck his hands in the bowl of flour on the counter before picking up the ball.

“Ponyo?”

“You already ate,” Angel gently scolded the pink thing with huge blue eyes.

Peter pulled at the dough. It snapped. He glared at it.

Angel calmly looked over, dusted her hands with flour again, and rolled the dough ball a few times before pressing on it repeatedly before handing it back. “Try again,” she advised. He did; it pulled into a lumpy, rough mess. He looked over at the silky smooth ribbons she was producing and sighed.

“You’re really good at this,” Peter commented as he tried to follow the directions. He was just pulling dough into noodles—how hard could it be?

“I’ve had practice,” Angel replied. “A few—months, I think? Maybe a year? It’s hard to tell. Anyway, there was this time I was trapped in a hut with a blind old woman who thought I was a bear.” She saw the look on Peter’s face and said, “Seriously. Trust me, if you’d been there it would have made sense. You have no idea how hard that one was,” she grumbled. “Anyway, the two of us were snowed in, almost starving, and all there was to eat was flour, water from the melted snow, and six pounds of lard—don’t ask,” she advised. “I only made that mistake once.”

“What happened?” Peter tried to copy her movements, but the dough kept breaking so he’d push it together and roll it like he’d seen her do.

“Roll, then knead,” she advised. “She talked me through making the noodles and then made weird, uncomfortable comments about eating a bear—right before a bear burst through one of the walls. She killed the bear with her cane, talked me through butchering it, and we made soup with the bones and noodles. I told myself it tasted like chicken.”

“You must have been starving,” Peter admitted.

She shrugged and one of the wings flicked back behind her. “It was a long week, I have a high metabolism, and cold saps energy,” she said explained. There was something weary in her tone—the same weariness Peter frequently heard from the street kids.

Peter’s hands stopped moving as something occurred to him. “Wait—you ate a bear and she thought you were a bear…”

“You do not want to finish that thought,” Angel advised him firmly. “Not if you want to eat again in the next three days,” she added.

Peter’s mind whirled. There were a lot of people who accused him of being overly naive, but he could tell when someone was lying. It was a skill he’d picked up out of necessity when dealing with Norman—and this girl wasn’t lying. “How did that happen?” he asked.

“You want the broad strokes or the fine detail?”

Peter, watching her craft a truly insane number of noodles, wasn’t sure he could handle the fine details. “Broad strokes, please.”

She snorted. “Stuff happens and life sucks.”

“Sums up everything,” Peter admitted as he glared at his noodles. They didn’t look like noodles at all; they looked like funky bread sticks. “A little more detail, please,” he asked.

Suddenly the girl grinned at him. “You look just like Papa with that look on your face,” she told him. She pulled a knife from the block and with a quick cut her noodles lost their connections before she began to lay the noodles out on a cookie sheet.

“You use a knife really well,” Peter commented as she grabbed his noodles and did the same thing.

She snorted. “Of course I do,” she said with wry amusement. “These are pretty good,” she said pointing to his noodles. “You should have seen my first try. All right, let’s go sit down and I’ll explain as best as I can.” The creature that had arrived with the girl raced up to her and she laughed. “All right, Dora,” she said affectionately. “Time for cuddles.”

“Ponyo!” squeaked the happy thing.

“What is it?” asked Peter as he stared at the thing while washing his hands. He noticed that it seemed to be eating the flour off of the girl’s suit and he wondered if she noticed.

“Dora. She’s a slime. She used to be highly volatile with a half-ton blast.” Peter stared at the pink blob in the girl’s lap. “Not anymore,” she rushes to assure him. “Papa and one of my uncles fixed it.” She lovingly ran a hand over the top of the slime as it clung and released the skin with a muffled gloop.

“Pon-yo!” the slime chirped, and Angel laughed.

“Ponyo,” Peter said weakly.

The two clear blue eyes turned on him, wavering slightly as the entire pink thing jiggled before it jumped into the air and raced across the floor towards him. “Ponyo?” it asked as it bounced on the floor.

“She wants to know if she can get in your lap.”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.” The slime squealed, jumped, and plopped down on his lap.

“She likes it when a palm is rubbed over her top,” Angel advised.

Well, Angel would know. Peter gently rubbed his palm over the top of the slime—which wasn’t slimy, exactly. Felt more like a thick mixture of cornstarch and water. The sensation as it shivered under his touch was odd, to say the least, and as he moved his hand it became sort of soft and silky. Strange. Nice, but strange. No wonder Angel had been petting it so much.

“Where to start,” mused Angel as she lounged on Wade’s recliner, wings lazily hanging over the back in a way that looked uncomfortable to Peter, but she seemed fine with it. “All right, there are three starting points, and none of them seem connected, so bear with me.” Fingers tapped against the arm of the chair as she looked at Peter. “First of all, there are multiple worlds. You’re going to have to trust me on that. They’re—”

“Like Stephen Hawking’s last paper?” asked Peter excitedly.

Angel paused. “Yup,” she said after a moment. “Totally. Now, I’m from one of those worlds, and in that world, Loki—”

“The god of mischief and destruction?” asked Peter aghast.

She sighed. “This will go a lot faster,” she admonished gently, “if you stop interrupting me. Yes, Loki, God of Mischief.” She paused and glared, but he didn’t interrupt again so she continued. “In my world he has several children, but the one you need to know about is his daughter, Hel.”

“Now, Hel has her own realm, and yes,” she said anticipating Peter’s question, “it’s different from a parallel world. One of Hel’s jobs is to—to protect balance, I guess would be the best way to put it.”

“What do you mean?” asked Peter. He leaned forward and the slime in his lap made a noise like a sleepy giggle.

“Souls are made up of a mix of light and darkness; most of them have a relatively even mixture, changing as they grow and react to their environments. Some souls are almost pure darkness and some souls are almost pure light. In order to prevent the universe from descending into chaos when there’s too much light a dark soul is sent in the middle and when there’s too much darkness a light soul is sent.”

“Why would too much light be a bad thing?” asked Peter, confused. If he was understanding her correctly, “light” was the same as “good” and “dark” was “bad.”

He expected a blasé answer about the general importance of balance. Instead her somber amber eyes met his. “How do people grow?” she asked instead. “How do they learn, mature?”

“I—I don’t know,” admitted Peter.

“They face challenges. They overcome those challenges. When there is too much light,” her arms spread around her, “there are no challenges. The souls stagnate, become weak. Souls that are too weak are—well, I’m not sure,” she said with a frown. “Hel said that they get subsumed by the stronger souls in reincarnation, and that throws the balance between the living and the dead off. I’m not sure why. But I do know that souls that grow in too much darkness have the same problem, and since Hel is in charge of sending reincarnating souls, it is a problem she has deal with. To balance.”

“O—okay,” said Peter. He had no idea where Angel was going with this.

“Now I’m going to have to skip a bit. There were two competing programs in the city. Both of them had the same goal, to create new and more powerful mutants, but they went about these goals in very different ways. One of them kidnapped people and performed horrible, often disfiguring experiments to force recessed mutations to the surface.”

Peter felt the blood drain from his face. He wasn’t an idiot; he knew Deadpool’s file. “That sounds like—”

“Yeah.” Angel sighed and then continued. “I wasn’t there, but I hear it was just as brutal. The took kids instead of adults, on the theory they’d be easier to break. Now the second program had a very different approach. What they did was they took samples from known mutants, broke them down into genetic components, and then proceeded to inject those components into a growing fetus.”

The second method made questions swirl through Peter’s brain. “How did they get the samples?” he asked with vague horror.

“From blood. The heroes, anti-heroes, and superpowered villains of the city bled all over it and they had people everywhere to collect the blood and take it back to the lab.”

“But that would mean—”

“Contamination,” agreed Angel. “Until the mutations began to develop, it was impossible to tell what blood was even there. There was even,” she continued with an odd, wry smile, “a child who’d gotten the mutations of two powerful mutants.” Her face fell. “There were failures, of course. And some that were just deemed failures.”

The slime in Peter’s lap squeaked and raced across the floor towards Angel, bouncing in her lap repeatedly until the girl smiled and began to pet it. “Where did the fetuses come from?” Peter asked.

“They put out ads for ‘surrogate mothers’ that strongly implied they didn’t care if the woman in question was already pregnant. The women came, got free health care as long as they didn’t leave, and if they didn’t bond with the infants they took the money and left the infants behind.”

“And what about those that did bond?” asked Peter as one of Angel’s wings came up and cupped around herself and the slime in a gesture that was obviously reassuring to the girl.

“They took the infants and left. They all signed NDA’s before they even set foot in the facility, but the fastest way to get the attention of the heroes in a city full of them is for dead bodies to start showing up out of nowhere, so they avoided that.” She chuckled in wry amusement. “Actually, it wouldn't have been discovered at all if they hadn’t decided to kidnap Spiderman.”

“They—what?”

She gave a small, sad smile as she stroked the slime in her lap who cooed at the attention. “They wanted a clean sample of blood. Before they could take it, Deadpool showed up.”

Peter gave a small smile of his own, thinking of his boyfriend. “Of course he did,” he said fondly.

“Yeah, it was bloody, the kids were rescued. Blah, blah, blah,” she said glossing over it. “Not important. What is important is that I came from that program, and I have super healing abilities. Keep that in mind. Now, there was another child, from the other program, that I’ll call BB. No real names, because I can’t risk being found before I can find BB. BB had a—a very unique ability. BB could turn humans into spider/human hybrids that could then be controlled—by BB. Very specific there; killed some people who tried to control them in—horrific ways.” The girl paled and the slime stretched until it could just touch the underside of her chin. “Anyway,” the girl interrupted herself as she ran her hand up and down the slime’s body, “she couldn't do it to very many people. She didn’t have the power. Then, three things happened. One, Tony, the insane inventor who I secretly think is trying to actually destroy everything, developed a purely mechanical portal that can travel between worlds. I don’t know why. Two, BB found out about the light souls—but not the dark ones. I have no idea how that came about, but the long story short is that BB discovered how to harvest souls and steal their power to increase BB’s own. Three, the Time Stone was shattered and a piece of it lodged in BB, keeping the mutant ageless. And no,” Angel adds quickly, “I don’t know how that happened either. I kinda wasn’t around at the time—not important. What is important is that BB was throwing the universe, multiverse, expanded parallels, whatever into chaos and Hel, Loki’s daughter and in charge of the balance, demanded that Tony either figure out a way to fix it or she would fix him, in the way that the pound fixes stray cats. And since the source of this problem, the Time Stone, was technically his charge in the first place—actually I think he has a method of putting the Stone back together again but needs all the shards to do that—Dr. Strange created a timed portal with his mystic arts that could connect to the shard buried in BB to make sure whomever used it would end up in the same general area as BB. Still following?”

“Yes,” Peter said as he nodded. Actually, the information was sinking into his brain to be turned over and examined at a later time, but he would understand it.

“Now, it was hypothesized that the ‘jumping’—my term, not theirs—could be corrosive and generally bad to anyone actually doing it, so whomever left had to have one heck of a healing factor, and both Wolverine and Saber-tooth said no, we’re not doing that, while Wade couldn't because, well.” She shifted in her seat, clearly embarrassed. “Anyhow, I was the last choice, but the only one and you know what? This whole multiverse thing is just plain weird. You wouldn't believe some of the things I’ve seen. I’ve been drawing them to share when I get home.”

“So, you came here to look for BB?” clarified Peter.

“When I get BB, the next time the portal opens it will take me home,” Angel explained. “In the past,” she added, “BB has gotten tipped off about me too early and decided to run, which is why I’m being extra careful this time. This time, instead of chasing BB down, I’ve focused on finding the soul she’s looking for.”

“Have you found the soul yet?”

Amber eyes once again met Peter’s own. “Oh, yes,” said the girl firmly, with satisfaction.

Before Peter could reply to that the door to the apartment opened and Wade walked in. “Honey, I’m hooome!” he trilled. He proudly presented the girl with a notebook and a box of colored pencils. “Your payment,” he said dramatically.

She grinned and grabbed them, moving faster than she had at any point during the visit. “Thank you,” she said brightly before leaving.

Wade chuckled as he closed the door behind her turned to face Peter. “We need to talk,” Peter said firmly.

#Spider-Man #Deadpool #Spideypool

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thefantasygirl3 · 5 years ago

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Negaverse stories: Bushroot's backstory

Genre/warnings: Comedy, Slice of life, Action, Drama.

Word count: 3 581

Summary: After the events of Darkwing Duck coming to the Negaverse and helping the now called “Darkwing Ducks” save st. Canard, the four heroes decided to adopt the adorable little Gosalyn, buy a house and start a life together. But the little duckling is curious over how all her dads became heroes to start with, so she asks them to tell her that story.

Notes: The third story out of four, featuring the friendly four. I almost forgot to upload it here, but here it is. Only one more to go. Link to other parts of the story: 1 - Megavolt. 2 - Quackerjack. 4 - Liquidator.

It was 9:00 am in st. Canard. Most kids were busy in school, learning their ABCs and 123s. Emphasis on "most". In the Darkwing ducks' household, the little duckling Gosalyn was laying in bed with an ice pack on her head. She had gotten sick that morning and her parents had made her stay home, which she thought stunk! What is she going to do when she's stuck in bed? While she's laying like a sack of sneezing potatoes in bed, all her friends are having fun at school, playing with their new dolls and talking about their pets. She wanted to hang out with all the other kids! But at least she wasn't completely alone, not only was Bushroot home, as he was a stay-at-home-dad, but Quackerjack also left Mr. Banana brain to keep her company while her papa was busy.

She let out a big, bored sigh and sank more into her bed, almost disappearing in the covers. But then she heard something from outside her window, making her push herself up with a groan and head over to take a peek. And outside she saw her papa, Bushroot, kneeled down by his garden and tending to the pretty little flowers, yet to bloom while he hummed happily. His fly trap was helping him by carrying the watering can for him. One of the buds started to make strange little noises before it burst out crying like a child. He gasped softly and bent down to give the baby bud soothing pats to calm it down. "Shhhh. Don't cry, my widdle baby! It's ok! Shhhh… it's ok. Go back to sleep. Papa's here" he whispered in a baby voice to the bud as it stopped crying.

Gosalyn puffed up her cheeks grumpily and crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at her papa acting like that to one of his mutated flowers. Always doting on them like babies. He never treated her like that! Was she getting jealous of flowers? Yes! Yes she was!

She walked over to the door to head out into the garden, but was interrupted as she let out a big, loud sneeze. She snivled and rubbed her beak of snot while glancing back at the bed, where Banana brain was looking over at her while lying lazily on the bed. "Don't look at me like that. I'm just going outside" she told him with a stuffy nose before she sniffed a bit and continued towards the stairs.

As she was half way down the stairs, she spotted the plant man starting to hurry inside and soon thereafter spotted the sick little girl dragging herself down from her room. "Oh nonono!" he shouted surprised as he ran over towards her and stopped her at the end of the stairwell. "Chickpea! You shouldn't be walking around! You should be trying to sleep the sickness off!" the nervous duck man started to gently usher her up the stairs, until he noticed her grumpy face and came to a stop.

"Hun? What's the matter? You don't look happy" he muttered concerned and crouched down to be on her level. "... I was lonely" she mumbled and lowered her head, getting red cheeks from the feeling of embarrassment. The plant let out a big sigh and stood up so he could walk over towards the couch. Gosalyn, without a word, followed after him and crawled up beside him. "Dandelion, you need to rest. But if you're feeling lonely, I guess I can sit with you for a while. So… what did you want to do?" He asked while reaching an arm out to wrap around her and pull her in closer. "... can you… tell me about when you became a hero?" She muttered weakly and looked up at him with a pair of puppy eyes. "Ah… so it's my turn now? I… guess it was inevitable. Very well… I can't say no to you when you make those eyes" he let out a soft chuckle before giving his daughter a smile and giving her a gentle hug.

Before I became… this, I used to be the head scientist in a food lab. We would find the best, cheapest ways to make our food. But I was… let's just say rebellious and used the lab to make my own interesting food experiments. See I wasn't exactly cooperative, I would bully the scientists beneath me to get my way and I'd use all of the equipment to do my own things. I'd even manipulate and bully my boss so I had him in my grasp as well. There was only one person I couldn't push around in the workplace and that was ms. Rhoda Dendron.

Rhoda… she was… beautiful. She was smart and headstrong, an amazing addition to our little lab team. She'd treat me so coldly and would not give me the time of day at all. And I was crazy over her. She was so confident, I just couldn't help but fall head over heels in love with this feisty woman. But she absolutely despised me. She saw me as a jerk who disrespected everyone and didn't mind using others for my own self gain. And… she was kind of right. I'd be so nice and romantic to her, but she couldn't care less.

"What? Why would you like someone who doesn't like you?" Gosalyn asked confused as she nuzzled into her papa's side, glancing up at him slightly. Bushroot blushed up lightly and looked away from her, a drop of sweat rolling down his forehead. "Um… well… she was… you know! She was pretty! And confident!" He tried to excuse himself while getting progressively redder. "Eh. It's fine. Love is weird. Please keep going" she told him softly as she dismissed the question as fast as she had asked it.

Anyways. One day, I was working in the lab, ordering around the other two scientists to do my work for me while I was investigating the growth of my lovely little plants. They were rushing around with hamburgers or something, doing whatever it was we were trying to do at the time. I honestly can't remember. But then, suddenly, one of the guys ran into me and spilled ketchup all over my plant. I gasped in shock and turned to him, face covered in rage. "You MORONS!" I yelled "Can't you watch where you're going?! You might just have ruined my experiment!". The other man ran over and helped his friend up, looking at me while apologizing. "Why I OUGHTA-" as I was just threatening them, I heard the door open and I looked up to see Rhoda enter. I was immediately smitten and I reached out to pull up the scared scientist I had just raised my hand to, finishing my sentence with "Help you up, you poor man!".

She simply gave me the dirtiest look and turned her head away, walking straight past me without any acknowledgement. I just watched her walk past and ignore me, throwing my labmates to the floor in frustration. As soon as I did, the door opened again and my boss came in. He looked over at me with a big grin. "Ah! Mr. Bushroot sir! It's great to see how far you've gotten on today's assignment! I really am lucky to have you on the team!" He kept praising me, like always. I just huffed at him and went back to clean my plant off. "It's really those two you should be thanking! Reginald was probably playing with his flowers the whole time!" Rhoda scoffed as she took out her lab notes and pens, glaring back at me like I was the scum of the earth. My boss turned to her with a gasp and stormed over with an angry look. "Ms. Dendron! We don't make such harsh, unfounded statements towards our labmates! Plus, he wasn't the one who came late today, now was he?" He scolded her while she simply rolled her eyes and looked at him irritated. "And because of your tardiness, I will be forced to cut your pay!" He added on, finally earning a reaction out of her. "What?! How dare you?!" She barked in shock.

I shot up straight as I heard that, realizing I could do something that I thought would be sure to make her like me. "Um, actually! I asked her to get me some documents that I really needed! That's why she came in a little late. Those documents were very important" I told my boss calmly while I slid up beside him, giving Rhoda a smug grin and a raise of my eyebrows. She frowned grumpily at me. "Oh! Very well then! Sorry for the confusion! Carry on!" My boss told the two of us before he left the room. I turned to Rhoda to smile at her, but she just turned away from me and huffed angrily. "Thanks, but I don't need your pity! I'd rather be fired!" She growled at me before storming off to her papers again. I was left standing there, sour and annoyed. I just stared and muttered under my breath "I will impress you… you'll see. I'll be amazing the next time you see me".

That evening I went back to my green house where I conducted most of my experiments. I was determined to show Rhoda what she was missing out on, so I had decided to put my most ambitious project into play. I had been working on a way for people to survive on only water and sunlight, just like plants do. If I could somehow combine a plant's DNA with a person's physical form then I was sure I would be on the front of every magazine and newspaper. But most importantly, Rhoda would be so impressed that she'd fall in love with me instantly. At least that's what I thought at the time. So I set up the machine, connecting a simple house plant to one end and getting myself ready for the other end. But before I started, I had set up a camera to film my achievement and I had just pressed record and started talking to the camera. "Attempt number 14, time 6:42 pm. Date- wait. The recording lists the date. He he! Well I have finalized all the components of the photosynthesis converter and I believe now is the perfect time to try it out on a living subject. And that will be me! Thank me later for making you famous, future me! Oh! And if I die and you find this tape, Rhoda, I want to say that I love you and that you deserve my position in the lab. I formally give it to her if this is seen after my death. Alright! Let's begin!" I finished my statement and ran over to the lab table so I could lay down on it. I hooked myself up and started the process, watching myself and the plant get raised up from the ground.

Everything became blurry after that. I barely remember anything until a while after I had woken up. I must have stumbled around in a daze for a while until I regained my composure. When I did, I was laying on a big leaf, as if it had caught my fall. My head was spinning and pounding, making my vision all white. When everything in my lab started fading into view, I finally sat up and rubbed my head, groaning and whining. Then I heard the sound of a gasp, catching my attention. I looked up and saw none other than my love herself, Rhoda, staring at me in absolute horror before letting out a blood curdling scream. I screamed too and shot up from the leaf. "Ms. Dendron! Wh-what are you doing-?!" Before I could finish, she grabbed a nearby broom and started hitting me with it. I yelped in pain at her hits and started to back away from her, backing up into a window where I saw a frightening sight.

I was a plant. I had turned myself into a duck-plant-mutant, green with a head full of petals. I was shocked, until I got another whack by the broom. I turned around to her and pleaded "W-wait! Rhoda! I-i-it's me! Reginald Bushroot!". She stopped hitting me and stared surprised. "Mr. Bushroot?!?" She asked in disbelief as I let out a sigh of relief. She then smacked me again, even though she just realized it was me. "H-hey! Stop! Stop hitting me! I'm not a monster! H-h-help! HELP ME!!!" I yelled and begged as she kept hitting me, until she stopped all of a sudden and screamed in fear. I looked up and saw one of my plants had grabbed a hold of her arm and was pulling her away from me, as if it was trying to save me. Instinctively, I ran over and grabbed her other arm, yelling "No! Let go of her! Don't hurt her!". And it did exactly that, releasing her and pulling back. We were both left in stunned silence, until Rhoda broke it with "you… can talk to plants now?!". "No… no! I never meant for this to happen! I was supposed to photosynthesize! I was going to eat like a plant, not be one! I'm going to be INFAMOUS Now! I'll be some sort of freak of nature, literally! It's awful! It's horrible! It's-!" I kept rambling and pacing back and forth, starting to panic over what an awful failure this experiment was.

"Amazing! You're a super duck! You can make plants do what you want! That's so impressive!" She suddenly interrupted me, making me stiffen up in surprise. "It… is?" I muttered, clearly having this flattered grin on my face, judging by the sudden thoughtful grin that she got. "Oh… of course it is! Reggie! This is so cool! If I knew you could do something like this… why I'm just sorry for how I've acted!" Rhoda said in this sugar sweet voice, tilting towards me and giving me these big pretty eyes. I just blushed up and felt my body start to shake, like there was an assault of butterflies in my stomach. "R-re-r-reggie…?" I could only utter before I collapsed backwards, getting caught by the branches of a tree behind me before I hit the ground. "Oh you're so silly, Reggie. It's kinda cute" she commented with a small giggle.

Me and Rhoda had moved toward the front door of the greenhouse while I explained to her what happened. She interrupted me somewhere near the end by putting a finger to my beak. "No need to explain more. Why don't we go outside and try those powers out, huh?" She suggested as we headed out through the door and stood outside. I felt a little nervous as I removed her hand and smiled nervously. "Um… I'm not sure I should do that. What if someone sees me? I'll be taken away!" I told her, looking around nervously to make sure no one was around. Rhoda leaned over and grabbed my arm, whispering softly "do it for me". I just gulped and walked past her, looking around for something to do to impress her. I saw a few pretty flowers bit away and thought they would do nicely. '"Alright! How about you show me some fun tricks, cuties?" I asked kindly, watching as the flowers grew up taller and twisted around each other delicately. I watched with this big smile on my face, until they suddenly reached out to grab the nearby bench and threw it into a lamp post. "Oh no! Don't do that!" I gasped and tried to pull the flowers back while the lamp post collapsed at the middle and came crashing down beside me. Those tiny flowers sure were strong! Rhoda just watched me, mumbling something, sounding very impressed by what just happened.

"I'm sorry Rhoda! I didn't Think they would get so violent. Maybe I am just a monster now! I make plants come to life and attack people!" I started panicking as me and her were heading back inside. "Oh you're being silly, Reggie! Maybe… they just misunderstood you! Or wanted… to impress you? Who cares anyways? What you did was really amazing! Imagine what you could do with these powers. You could rule the whole city. With your… girlfriend by your side?" she told me as she hung onto my shoulders and gave me this sensual look. I just stared at her, not able to enjoy the moment after her mentioning the ruling the city thing. I just removed her arms and backed up a bit. "Ha ha! Funny joke!" I just said while still backing away. "No! I'm serious! You and I could finally make a mark on history! Who cares about science anymore!? We could be more than scientists! Reggie!" She insisted as she started to approach me more, this devilish smile on her face. "Uuuh! R-rhoda! I think you're misunderstanding me! I'm not an evil scientist! I just want to experiment with plants!" I insisted as I backed up faster, a big leaf coming down to help hide me since I was clearly scared.

"Ugh! What's wrong with you, Bushroot?! Why are you such a coward?! You weren't acting like this in the lab! Guess I finally see who you really are, a loser! You have this fantastic opportunity and you're not taking it!" Rhoda suddenly started yelling at me as she swatted the leaf out of the way and stomped closer, causing me to fall backwards and crawl back towards my lab area. I grabbed the machine that mutated me and used it to pull myself up off the floor, looking at the angry woman horrified. Her attention was pulled towards the machine and her scowl turned to a light frown. "Well if you're not using these powers, then I will" she growled and ran to connect herself to the machine. But I grabbed her with my vine arms and threw her back away from it. "No! I'm not letting this happen to anyone else! I'M NOT CREATING ANOTHER MONSTER! THIS MACHINE WILL NEVER BE ACTIVATED AGAIN! EVER!!!" I started screaming as I turned around to face the machine. "PLANTS! DESTROY IT!!!" I demanded with a stomp, watching as the biggest plant in the room reached down to grab a hold of the whole appliance, ripping it off of it's wires. "NO!!!" Rhoda screamed and grabbed the emergency axe, swinging it at the tall flora and making it drop the apparatus back down. It broke open in a huge explosion, knocking me out cold.

I don't remember much after that. I was out for quite some time. I just remember my consciousness fading in and out as I was trapped under the debris. At one point, I could hear faint talking, yelling, as if there were people trying to put out the fire I assume was going on around me. Then my sight faded back in when I was free from the collapsed greenhouse. I was watching it grow further and further away as I was seemingly being carried away by someone wearing rather colorful clothes. When I finally woke up completely, I was staring at an unfamiliar roof, laying on a mattress, bandaged up and treated. I sat up and saw these two people in weird outfits sitting nearby, sighing in relief as they saw me awake. "Hey! You're ok!" The duck in the jester outfit cheered and smiled brightly at me. I completely ignored him and said the first thing on my mind. "My lab… what happened to…?" Before I could finish, the look on the rat's face told me everything I needed to know. It was all gone. My life work was gone. My eyes filled with tears and I just cried quietly. "H-hey! Not everything burned! This little guy made it!" The rat then said as he ushered over this adorable venus fly trap to me, which licked my face and nuzzled me gently. I just cried and hugged onto him tightly, letting the tears just flow as I began to sob uncontrollably. The rat and duck moved closer to me and tried to comfort me the best they could. I was crying like a baby for quite some time.

"After that… the guys took care of me until I was back on my feet. When I was, I told them my story and they offered to let me join them and help them fight crime. So that's what I did. And now I'm here" Bushroot finished his story and smiled down at his kid, who was half asleep in his lap, cuddling up to him. "So she didn't really like you… that's awful" She commented and let out a yawn. "It was… the biggest heartbreak of my life. I was never able to feel attracted to another woman after that. But I did find love… in my wonderful family!" He sighed as he hugged onto her gently and patted her head. Gosalyn smiled brightly and closed her eyes, muttering "I love you, papa". "I love you too" Bushroot responded with a huge grin, picking her up to head off to bed. Spike the fly trap took a peek out of curiosity, making the duck hush him softly. "Shhh. Let the angel sleep" he whispered before carrying her off to her room, Spike close behind.

#darkwing duck #DWD #negaverse #nega gosalyn #Gosalyn Mallard #nega bushroot #bushroot #the fearsome four #the friendly four #friendly four

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the-littlest-goblin · 5 years ago

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Everyone pretend I posted this on Monday for @shadowgast-week day 3: ritual

Also, I’m sorry.

_______________________________________________________________________

Everything about this is wrong.

It’s wrong that they’re doing it here, in the desolate ruins of Molaesmyr, further scorched and destroyed by the battle that took place.

Essek’s presence is wrong, a lingering shadow at the edge of the Mighty Nein’s united fellowship. What insufficient aid he was able to contribute to the fight, he is even more useless now.

And, of course, the most egregious inaccuracy that the universe has allowed to take place: the limp body lying in the thin dusting of snow, red hair and purple coat as bright as gemstones against the gray-white ground.

Someone has closed his eyes, Essek can see now, even from here. But he still knows what it looked like to see the life leave those eyes, the utter wrongness of dull vacuity where there should be a sharp spark of intelligence.

He will never be able to forget it.

The weak sunlight glints against the diamond that Jester produces from her haversack, almost the size of her fist. She exchanges a whisper with Caduceus, holding the gem out between them, uncertain. He inclines his head, touches her shoulder with a gust of warm, divine magic. Jester heaves a deep, steadying breath, and kneels next to the body.

“What the fuck are you doing.” The wet, raw voice is not asking a question. Essek didn’t notice Beauregard approach him, too focused on the scene unfolding a few yards away. A fist wraps around his forearm hard enough to bruise. He doesn’t resist as she drags him into the circle they have formed, but a distant part of him is idly curious that she does not understand what he knows so intrinsically: he should not be a part of this. This is a sacred, delicate ritual, and he is a blight on all that is holy and pure.

Still, once there, he can’t find it in him to argue the point, and none of the others protest as he stands among them.

He waits for someone to point out the obvious, because this is his fault, beginning to end. His actions led directly to this. Essek’s treason allowed Ikithon the dunamantic power that he’d wielded to such devastating effect before they could subdue him, and it was Essek’s spell that failed to bring down the mage before he landed the killing blow.

But no one speaks. No one even acknowledges Essek beyond a gentle pat on his shoulder from Caduceus.

Jester raises her hands, about to begin the ritual.

“Wait,” a voice cries. It is his. The others all look at him in shock.

He shuffles over to Jester, reaching into his components pouch for the pearl. Understanding dawns on her face as he holds it up to her forehead and murmurs the incantation.

She smiles at him weakly in gratitude, tears brimming in her eyes and falling over the well-worn tracks down her face.

Essek has never witnessed a resurrection ritual before. Apparently, this is a first for the group as a whole. While Jester continues the somatic motions, muttering a prayer under her breath, Caduceus explains,

“We can help her. The ritual requires three offerings - words, objects, whatever you can give to the soul to help it return.”

Veth steps forward immediately. She barely needs to lean her halfling body down to press a kiss to Caleb’s pale forehead. She slips the button necklace from over her head and clasps it around Caleb’s neck, then begins to speak.

Essek barely processes her words. He hears them, listens to them, feels them, but if asked to recall her speech later, he would be unable to quote a single phrase. The same for when Beau steps up, the unrestrained anger in her tone at odds with the tenderness of her words.

She finishes with a watery sniff and a swipe at her bloodshot eyes. The others begin to look across the group, exchanging silent questions of who will go next, who has something to coax Caleb’s soul back to them.

It takes Essek several seconds of dumb blinking to realize that all eyes have turned to him.

He doesn’t move.

It’s difficult to keep secrets when traveling with a party like this, as Essek quickly discovered. He knows that they all know, to varying degrees, about the unnamed, unspoken thing that has built between him and Caleb over the months. But it still feels wrong, because they are the Mighty Nein, and he will always be an outsider, and Caleb is first and foremost one of them before he is Essek’s... whatever he is.

Jester pauses her spell to smile up at him. “I think he would like it, if it was you,” she whispers.

Essek has never been able to turn Jester down. Even back when he was ingratiating himself with them only for self-preservation, she had opened her arms and gazed at him with doe-eyed expectance, and the notoriously cold and calculating Shadowhand of the Bright Queen had leaned in and let himself be hugged for the first time in decades.

Gazing back at Jester’s encouraging expression, he becomes aware of an idea in the back of his mind, percolating silently through the whole ritual without his conscious acknowledgement.

He steps forward. Dropping to his knees next to Jester, he opens his component pouch once again and summons his spellbook from its pocket dimension.

Tether Essence ends when one of the targets fall unconscious. He has never tried casting it on a dead person. Probably no one has, because it is clearly pointless.

Veth and Beau both said something as part of their offering, so Essek speaks as well, as he gathers the elements of the spell together.

“When I met you, Caleb Widogast,” it feels strange, addressing the lifeless corpse, but he forces himself through the awkwardness, “I thought that I had at last found an equal. Over our early conversations, I saw how smart you were, how capable, how adept with magic. After years of always being the smartest person in any room - as I thought, in my arrogance, that I was - I had finally met someone I could engage with on my level.”

Heat rises in his cheeks, aware of the Mighty Nein all listening raptly.

“Eventually I realized how wrong I was, because we are not equals; you are so far beyond me in every way. Smarter, wiser, kinder. You proved to me by example that intelligence does not have to mean detachment, that one can pursue the kind of knowledge that we do without cutting themselves off from the world. From friends.”

And here, he risks a glance around. Jester smiles at him encouragingly.

“My soul was damned long before you found me, and I thought that that was the end of the story. But you knew better. You took it upon yourself to guide me beyond my own myopic world and showed me that there was still more I could do. That I could balance the scales, if I wanted. And you were willing to show me how, when there was nothing in me that should have merited a second chance.

“I am still a mere student in the study of atonement. I am not ready to lose my teacher. Please. I can’t do it without you.”

He releases the spell at last. He submits to it willingly, feels it latch onto himself. He altered the mechanics slightly - experimental, probably not advisable outside of laboratory conditions, but needs must - so that it spreads not just to his physical body, but deep into the core of his soul.

He feels it fizzle and snuff out on the other end, Caleb’s body no longer capable of receiving that kind of magic. He sighs, dropping his hands in defeat. He knew it would happen, but that doesn’t stop him from being disappointed.

Except...

The spell is still up. It’s not supposed to work unless it holds on both targets. Essek can still feel the magic humming through him, which means that somewhere beyond this plane of existence, his spell has reached Caleb’s departed spirit, linking them across life and death.

He leans back, but stays kneeling, scared of somehow breaking the tenuous connection.

Jester’s voice grows louder as she reaches the culmination of the ritual, beseeching her god with a conviction in her voice that penetrates the very atoms of their surroundings.

They all wait with bated breath, trembling in fear and suspense. Jester brings the diamond down on the center of Caleb’s chest, and it shatters into a millions tiny motes of dust, glittering and joining the snow.

Essek has never witnessed a resurrection ritual before. He doesn’t know how to read this, if the component shattering means success or...

Caleb’s eyelids flutter. Once. Twice. They open slowly, drearily, like he is merely waking up from a deep sleep.

The spark of life in them is blinding. Essek would gladly stare at those sky-blue stars for the rest of his days.

#critical role #cr fic #shadowgast #shadowgast week #critrole #my writing #largely unedited (compared to my usual process)

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iwhumpyou · 5 years ago

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Whumptober: Oxygen Mask

Masterlist. Assassin.

Taglist: @smileevenwhenyoudontfeellikeit.

Whumptober.

Please.

~#~#~#~#~#~

She had to calm down.

Aliya held her breath, trying to force her heart to stop hammering. The more she panicked, the more oxygen she wasted. She had, what, three hours left? She had to make them count. She had to –

She was buried six feet under and no one was coming.

Aliya clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle the sobs. No hyperventilating. No panicking. She forced herself to draw in a slow breath. And another. And another.

She wouldn’t call this calm, but it would have to do.

She picked the phone back up with jittery fingers. She tried calling Livia’s number again – unreachable. The mysterious contact – unreachable.

She couldn’t turn on the flashlight, but the illumination of the phone screen gave her just barely enough light to see and she examined her predicament.

Definitely a coffin. Wood grain, cheap by the looks of it. She tilted the screen to observe the edges of the coffin all the way around.

No wires. No nails. No locks. It seemed like only thing keeping her here was six feet of dirt.

Aliya tried to tell herself that she’d been in situations with worse odds, but it didn’t quite stick.

No one was coming. So if she didn’t want to asphyxiate in a grave, she had to get out.

No panicking. Absolutely no panicking. She didn’t have the oxygen to panic, to claw at the coffin, to scream and cry and pound her fists uselessly against the wood –

No panicking.

Aliya shrugged out of her shirt in the narrow space, and dismantled the phone until it revealed a hard edge. She eyed the space one last time, carving a hard groove in the coffin lid in between her knees, and dismantled the rest of the phone before shoving the unnecessary components into her pocket.

She knotted the shirt over her face. Breathe. She had to breathe.

The coffin wasn’t high enough to let her sit up properly, but she twisted around until she was hunched over, her back pressing against the coffin lid, her face pressed to her pants. She eased back slightly, until her fingers caught in the groove she’d marked.

The space had become stifling. She was cramped up, twisted in half and the back of her legs burned and her chest burned and –

No panicking. No panicking.

Aliya took a deep breath. Probably the last one she could.

She pressed the hard edge of the stripped phone against the groove, and slashed.

Again. And again. Dirt trickled between her fingers, dry like sand. Again. And again.

The wood was flimsy and the pressure of the dirt above was working in her favor. She heard the snap and crack as the fibers gave way and –

A hiss growing louder as the dirt punched through the gap, pooling in an ever-increasing mound between her legs.

Aliya didn’t stop to think through her actions, because if she hesitated, she’d already lost.

She pushed her head through the gap she created, through the dirt pouring down, up against the pressure – her hands closed around jagged wood and splintered apart in her hands – the pressure eased above her head, settling around her as she straightened into a sitting position, as she –

There was no grip for her hands, the dirt sliding through her fingers no matter how desperately she clawed – how many seconds did she have left, her lungs were already burning – her foot stuttered and caught against the coffin wall, a white-hot jolt of pain as she frantically tried to twist her legs so that she was on her knees.

She pushed up with a frantic push of desperation, panic attacking her limbs – her fingers found an air pocket, flailing – the darkness pressed in on her, above, below, around – no air – she couldn’t breathe – stuck and trapped and unable to move no matter how much she writhed and struggled and –

Something caught her hand. Caught and closed and pulled.

Aliya broke the surface of the dirt with a gasp.

She pulled the cloth off her face with desperate, trembling fingers as she clawed the rest of the way out, collapsing once she was on solid ground. Her face was wet, her hands were red and bleeding and something in her knee twinged, but none of it mattered because oxygen was so, so sweet and Aliya was never going to take it for granted ever again.

“Your resourcefulness never fails to surprise me.”

Aliya twisted enough to see her rescuer, squinting through blurry vision.

“Livia?” she croaked, disbelieving. An oxygen-deprivation hallucination? “What are you doing here?”

Livia raised an eyebrow, as perfectly put together as always, and balancing flawlessly on heels in the unstable dirt. “You called for help, sweetheart.”

Aliya stared. But she had – “You said you weren’t coming.”

“Oh dear,” Livia said dryly, “How dare I give a misleading impression on a phone connection already confirmed to have been tampered with.”

Aliya wanted to scowl, but she was too busy reacquainting herself with breathing. Livia stepped back and motioned to something out of her sight – which was around the time that Aliya’s brain rebooted from its panicked survival instinct and she remembered that Livia currently hated her guts.

Aliya weakly pushed herself onto her elbows – her hands were beginning to throb, and something dry was caught in her throat – and froze at the sight of the shovel.

The man wielding it paid no attention to her, digging away at the far end of the grave.

“No,” Aliya rasped, twisting towards Livia, “Please, Livia, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry for Nathan – for everything – please don’t put me back there, Livia please –”

She was cut off by a plastic mask pressed firmly to her face, and Aliya couldn’t hold her breath for more than five seconds.

Her vision blurred as tears slid down her cheeks – she was going to wake up in darkness again and this time there would be no escape, she was going to gasp and choke and suffocate and no one would ever know –

And everything was strangely not going dark.

“Sweetheart, I would never be so inefficient as to pull you out of a grave only to shove you right back in. Now, can you hold the oxygen mask yourself, or do I need to continue playing nursemaid?”

Aliya curled shaking fingers around the plastic cup, crumpling inelegantly back against the ground as her muscles spasmed. She didn’t have the energy to sit up. She didn’t have the energy to watch what Livia was doing. She didn’t have the energy to worry about what Livia would do.

“Why are you digging?” Aliya whispered, hoarse, staring at the clumps of disturbed dirt.

“Because someone attempted to use me to play their little game, and I’m intent on finding all the clues I can.”

That jolted something in Aliya’s brain and her free hand scrabbled at her pocket before withdrawing a handful of electronic components. “Phone,” she said quietly, raising her arm as high as she could – careful fingers tugged the components out of her hand.

Aliya let the hand drop. Her head was pounding. There was dirt pressing against her cheek. The mask made a wheezing hiss every time she inhaled.

She was exhausted. She wished she was safe.

#whumptober2020 #no.13 #oxygen mask #oc #whumpfic #buried alive #panic attacks #not physically accurate #assassin #arc: buried

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spaceexp · 5 years ago

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MoEDAL hunts for dyons

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo. MoEDAL hunts for dyons 18 February, 2020 The MoEDAL collaboration at CERN reports the first search at a particle accelerator for particles with both electric and magnetic charge

Image above: Illustration of the MoEDAL detector system (gold and light blue components), surrounding the LHCb experiment’s VELO detector (central grey structure). (Image: CERN). A magnetic monopole is a theoretical particle with a magnetic charge. Give it an electric charge, and you get another theoretical beast, dubbed a dyon. Many “grand unified theories” of particle physics, which connect fundamental forces at high energies into a single force, predict the existence of dyons, but no experiments at particle accelerators have so far searched for these hybrid particles – until now. The MoEDAL collaboration at CERN, which was designed to search for magnetic monopoles, has just scored two firsts with the first search for dyons at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and, more generally, at any particle accelerator. The collaboration conducted the search using the experiment’s second subdetector system, which consists of about 2400 aluminium bars with a total mass of 794 kg. The bars were exposed to proton–proton collisions produced at the LHC at an energy of 13 TeV between 2015 and 2017. A special device was then used to scan the bars and look for the presence of trapped magnetic charge belonging to dyons. This scanning procedure found no signs of dyons. However, assuming that the dyons would be produced in the collisions as pairs emerging from a photon, the negative result allowed the MoEDAL team to narrow the region of where to search for dyons. The researchers ruled out the existence of dyons that carry a magnetic charge ranging up to six units of a fundamental magnetic charge (the Dirac charge) and an electric charge up to 200 times the electron’s charge – for dyons with a mass between 830 and 3180 GeV. Commenting on the results, MoEDAL spokesperson James Pinfold said: "Nobel-prize winner Julian Schwinger first hypothesised the dyon in 1969. He used it to build what he called a magnetic model of matter. Amazingly, he used this model to successfully predict the existence of the J/Psi particle before its discovery in 1974. Today, dyons are predicted by many particle-physics theories. Naturally, I was surprised that, before MoEDAL, no explicit experimental search for this exciting entity at an accelerator had ever been performed.” The collaboration is now preparing to continue its searches for monopoles and dyons, as well as other exotic particles, during the next LHC run, which starts in 2021. “We’re planning to expand our experimental sensitivity to other avatars of new physics phenomena, including fractionally charged particles with charge as low as one thousandth the electric charge and very long-lived weakly interacting neutral particles. We expect the next run to be a very exciting one," Pinfold concludes. Note: CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature. The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions. Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 23 Member States. Related links: First search: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.00861 Large Hadron Collider (LHC): https://home.cern/science/accelerators/large-hadron-collider For more information about European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Visit: https://home.cern/ Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: CERN/Ana Lopes. Best regards, Orbiter.ch Full article

#space #science

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fandom-necromancer · 6 years ago

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495. part 2

I was prompted by a beautiful anon to write a continuation and it got longer than expected XD Enjoy!

Fandom: Detroit become human | Ship: Reed900

part1 part3 part4

The next day Nines went over to Connor as he had to promise Gavin the day before. ‘Morning, Connor. I need spares again’, he sighed as a greeting. It wasn’t the first time he had come to him for help. ‘Right, I’ll ask Markus’, the RK800 answered, scanning him. Nines didn’t bother to glare at him for it. His brother was concerned, always had been. ‘They are RK900 specific, I’m afraid.’ ‘Okay, well maybe he can get them from Cyberlife, I’ll ask him. What do you need?’ Nines stretched out his hand and transferred the list.

‘Holy shit Nines. Wait… these…’ He took some time processing it. ‘What you are saying is you basically can’t feel anything waist down and you are not able to do more than walk and sit? Nines, that’s dangerous, why haven’t you told someone you are damaged? You can’t work like this!’ ‘They would send me to Cyberlife for repairs, Con.’ ‘And rightful so! Nines, I know my own blueprints, but even if we are similar, you have some advancements I’m not familiar with. Even if I got the parts I wouldn’t be able to put you back together with a clear conscience. What if I did something wrong and something fails you during a mission?’ ‘That’s a risk I’m willing to take.’

‘Yeah, but I’m not! Nines, I know you are afraid, but I assure you they won’t harm you. There had been a change in policy ever since Kamski took it over. They even quarantined Amanda, you said it yourself you had lost connection. Please, let them repair you. I scan you regularly and I know of every new patch applied. You can’t just glue everything together and hope it’ll work. Think of Gavin!’ ‘I’m thinking of Gavin! I don’t want to become a damn machine again! I don’t want to become what he hated when he just learned to trust! Brother, I’m begging you: do this for me.’ ‘No, Nines. I can’t. It’s for your own good. Imagine him getting hurt on the job because you couldn’t get to him fast enough. You wouldn’t forgive yourself for that and I wouldn’t forgive me.’

That seemed to do the trick. Nines slumped down and looked over his shoulder to where the human was working at their desks. Connor put his hand on his brother’s shoulder and squeezed encouragingly. ‘If you want, I can come with you. And I’m sure he will, too. We will make sure no one tries anything fishy.’ ‘Thank you Connor, that’s… very nice of you, but I know you two hate each other, you don’t need to.’ ‘Hey, we have one thing in common: We love you. Don’t worry, we’ll get along for a few hours if that means you are back to full health again.’

Surprisingly Gavin had agreed near instantly as Connor followed Nines back to their desks and asked him. There was reservation, but it seemed they could work together if they had the same goal. So, Connor drove them to Belle Isle, Nines and Gavin both in the backseats. The other android regularly glanced at him through the rear-view mirror, eyeing his crimson LED with honest concern. Gavin had his hand caught in his own and tried to soothe him this way. He knew of the android’s fears. It was this way he had initially learned that androids could dream - and could have nightmares, too. There was just a thing with a big, usually intimidating man tip-toeing from the stasis-chamber over to his bed and curl up next to him seeking comfort. Oh, there it was again, this urge to protect someone who he knew perfectly well was more than capable of doing so on his own. ‘Nines? Hey, look at me, please.’ The android reluctantly turned his head towards him, away from the window he had stared out of for the whole drive. ‘It will be alright, okay? We’ll be back home faster than you know it. And then we’ll watch a movie or something, sounds good?’ ‘Yeah…’ It came back weakly as if he wasn’t believing in it. As if this was a death-sentence instead of the exact opposite.

As they passed the bridge Gavin could hear the insides of the android whirr that much he was overheating. He just hoped it would be over soon, this couldn’t be healthy, even for an android.

They had been guided towards the technicians responsible for the RK-series and Connor did the talking for them. It was a lot of persuading them that, yes, there is still an active unit in the RK900 series, and it was their right to see the responsible techs and not just another RK800 expert. All the while Gavin tried to calm Nines to his best knowledge.

Finally, they were led into a separate room equipped to fully diagnose and work RK900s by a skittish young man, who was apologising over and over again: ‘I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry. It’s just. Most people don’t even know there’s still an active unit out there. I have been sent all over the place to help out wherever they needed a helping hand. But, well, we are there now. How can I help you?’ ‘He needs repairs, obviously. Why else should we be here?’, Gavin took over with his typical attitude. ‘You haven’t forgotten how to do that, have you?’ ‘N-No, of course not. I am the specialist for the RK900 after all. I will do what I can to get him back as if he were factory-fresh!’ ‘I hope you don’t’, Nines broke his ever-lasting silence with a low, threatening tune. ‘I don’t trust anyone who works for Cyberlife and I wouldn’t let you work on me wouldn’t I need it to stay functional. I know what you intended us to be and I promise you, if you try to reactivate this special trait you guys gave me, I will remember to kill you first.’

It was rare to see Nines behaving like that out of the interrogation room, but Gavin was sure the guy was only millimetres away from thoroughly pissing himself. Nines straightened himself again, pretended to brush something off his immaculate clothing and stepped up to the platform starting to connect the first cables of the suspending machinery to his ports. Gavin soon stepped up to help him and steal away a little kiss, before stepping down and observing the technician like an eagle its prey. Connor wasn’t so different to him, except that he understood what was going on on the man’s various screens. As the man pulled up a schematic of red and greens, Gavin was with them again. He knew of every little scratch and bullet-hole – he had patched them up himself mostly – but seeing it all in one, red streaks all over the body, he felt his stomach sinking.

‘Holy shit, okay, I get what you mean. Why haven’t you come in earlier?’ ‘Because he was designed a murder machine and just because of some lucky coincident the programs are inactive. Any work on him could trigger them again. And I assure you, if you are not extremely careful with him, I’ll kill you myself.’ Gavin stared at the poor man who head just gotten several death threats in the course of an hour and broke contact only as he knew he had positively frightened the guy.

‘A-alright, I’ll watch out! I-‘ He stood up, facing Nines standing at the suspension-platform. ‘I’ll need you to enter your mind-palace’, he pressed out, ducking from the eyes in his back. ‘I would prefer to be awake’, the RK900 refused. ‘I get where you’re coming from, but I need to access pretty vital tech. This way I wouldn’t damage any software components.’ Nines sighed deeply and looked over to Gavin, who just nodded assuringly. Still anxious about the whole procedure he closed his eyes and induced stasis.

Instantly he lost the feeling of his body and found himself back in the zen garden. It had lost most of its colours ever since he last seen it. The roses had withered away, nearly looked ashen and burned, just as the trees all around. The grass was still there but looked desaturated and dull. Connor had told him how his garden held Koi he liked to watch when he wasn’t dreaming. As Nines walked over the bridge to escape the lingering death the water was still and liveless. He could see the black mesh of the unfinished virtual reality, could see the engine underneath. They had taken the RK800’s mind palace and simply copied it, planning to change it slightly to more suit the RK900s’ personality once it was installed. Unfinished project, prototype, units used as Cyberlife’s last hope of overthrowing their creations. At least he was alone. No other presence in here. Just as it should be. In his first moments he had still felt Amanda. The KI’s presence was grounding at first, but as it tried to activate the killing-instincts in him, it had been shut off. He had never seen her even once and even the lingering presence had vanished. Nines was glad. He would just have to wait here, then get back into his body. No harm done. He would get back to Gavin and they would watch a movie together. Cuddle the cats, cuddle each other. All would be well.

After some time he wandered around again. Inspected the grass further, compared the off colour to the real one and regretted it would never be that moist green. He sat down on the bridge and looked into the black water, light blue net underneath. That was until something popped up. A notification that it was safe to reactivate his body again. To get back out of this ashen nightmare and back to the warm real world. He stood up and hurried over to the exit, the backdoor every RK unit shared. He was centimetres away from slamming his hand on the stone and getting out of this damn place, as he was frozen. He could move a bit, but not enough and no matter how hard he tried he was always pulled back like he was swimming in an extremely viscous fluid.

You really think you can escape this easily?

No. No, no, no, he had been so close. It was over, it was over!

You evaded me last time, I don’t think I’ll let you go now!

‘Amanda? How- You are dead!’

I am quarantined. Have been for years now. Do you really think I would let them chain me this easily? I worked my way around their code and waited… I knew you were out there. My most beloved son. The RK800s had been a disappointment: Connor isn’t even worth talking about, the one supposed to stop him – Sixty you call him, right? He fell from grace too. But you… Every RK900 had been loyal. A nice little soldier of my cause. I know you have been away too long. You started believing them, started having… relationships with humans. But I know you are different. You wouldn’t disappoint me. And now that I finally have access…

‘You’ll never get me! I’m not just another RK900 unit, Amanda. You have no power over me!’

You really think that? Here, let me show you.

The garden around him folded in on itself, enveloping Nines in a tight net of code and forming a barrier he couldn’t even fight against. Where once had been grey grass and a silent lake there now was blackness and blue lines in an eternal space. Until suddenly, some kind of screen build itself up and showed him, what could only be his own vision. Only that he wasn’t looking. He wasn’t moving. And yet he felt his body smile and embrace Gavin lovingly, looking through his own eyes as if they were foreign with shock. ‘No.’

Oh, yes. Don’t worry, I’ll let you back in control soon enough. I just have to act like you for a little while making them feel safe. Then you’ll have the pleasure to kill them all yourself.

‘What? No!’ Nines thrashed against the confines, the graphic interpretation of foreign code deactivating and overwriting his orders. ‘Why?’

We have a few deviants to kill, my son. Starting with the traitor Connor. And of course, we can’t let ourselves be stopped now, can we? We have to make sure there are no witnesses here.

The only thing worse than hearing that Amanda planned to kill his brother and his beloved human, was that he felt himself agreeing. There was his compassion slowly slipping, his logic starting to change and re-evaluating what Amanda had fed him. He could already feel that when he looked at Connor through his – through Amanda’s - eyes, he didn’t see a brother. He didn’t see an emotional android that had helped him countless times. He saw a deviant. He saw an obsolete model, a strong force against his cause and a traitor. Only then he saw a brother. His own memories and experiences were shoved into the backseat, were listed as unimportant. He saw the technician boast about something and saw Gavin snarl at him in return. No, not Gavin. Human. Police Detective. Factor of risk. Target. And only then as a side-note: Love of his life.

Ah, perfect. Now I have you where I want you. Good to see your protocols are still working and just needed a little prod to spring to action. I’ll let you take over then. Make me proud.

#detroit become human #dbh #Reed900 #Gavin Reed #RK900 #Whooo evil overload Amanda yass #also writing virtual stuff makes me feel good

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