#Sanitization Chambers

[tamagotchikgs]

i need to be put into a Machine and left there for a couple days

[nevermind-i-forgot-whats-that]

Sometimes, as much as I love internet communities and spaces, I really think a lot of people have spent so much time in sanitized, morally pure echo chambers that they lose sight of realism and life outside the internet.

I live in Alabama. My fiancée and I cannot hold hands down the street without fear of homophobic assholes. We have an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. We are one of the poorest states in the US with some of the lowest scores on metrics related to quality of life, including maternal mortality, healthcare, education, and violence. It’s not a coincidence that we are also one of the most red, one of the most Republican states in the Union. In 2017 the UN said the conditions in Alabama are similar to those in a third-world country.

Trump gave a voice to the most violently racist, sexist, xenophobic groups of people who, unfortunately for most of us in the Southern U.S., run our states and have only grown more powerful since his rise to power. The Deep South powers MAGA, and we all suffer for it.

We have no protections if they don’t come from the federal government.

I know people are suffering internationally and my heart is with them. However, this election is not just about foreign policy - we have millions of Americans right here at home living in danger, living in areas where they have been completely abandoned by their local leaders. We need this win.

No candidate is perfect, but for the first time in my voting lifetime I’m excited to vote. I’m excited for the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz ticket because they are addressing the issues close to home. They’re advocating for education as the ticket to a better life, but without the crippling student debt. They’re advocating for the right to love who you love without fear and with pride. Kamala has always been pro-LGBT+ and so has Tim. Again, if you’re queer in the South, we don’t have support unless it comes from the federal government, and we absolutely will not have support if the Republicans regain the White House.

Kamala speaks in length about re-entry programs to reduce recidivism and help people who have been arrested and imprisoned regain their lives. Tim Walz supported restoring voting rights to felons. In the South, you know who comprise the majority of felons? Members of minorities. It’s one of the major tools of systemic racism and mass disenfranchisement, and arguably the modern face of slavery (there are some fantastic documentaries and books that explain the connection between the post-Reconstruction South and the disproportionate rates of imprisonment for BIPOC). Having candidates who recognize this and want to restore the freedom and rights to people who have come into contact with the criminal justice system? And keep them from having to go to prison in the first place? That’s refreshing. That’s exciting.

I would *love* to live in a country where women’s rights are respected, where LGBT+ rights and protections are a given, where we treat former criminals and individuals experiencing mental health crises with respect and dignity. I would *love* to live in a country where education is free of religious interference and each and every citizen is entitled to a fair start and equal opportunities.

But I don’t live in that country. Millions and millions of Americans find their rights and freedoms up for debate and on the ballot.

Project 2025 poses the largest threat to the future of our democracy as we know it. We are being called to fight for the future of our country.

We have to put on our oxygen masks first before we can help others.

You don’t have moral purity when you wash your hands of the millions of us who are still fighting for own freedoms right here.

The reality is that a presidential candidate is a best fit, and not a perfect fit. But comparatively speaking? Kamala is pretty damn close.

[sillyfairygarden]

angry that i left the [redacted]smp fandom before i could crank out some banger ass animatics. i have a folder full of songs that make me oueeeugh now.

[navillee]

Zayne's subtle sub behavior pt. III

Let's bring some specific scenarios, shall we? What if Zayne is a secret sucker for your scent?

Back to the first appointment you had with Zayne after long years no see, even though he called out his own bluntness towards you out after you had left the doctor's chambers, there's another detail that kept taunting him other than his own behavior: your perfume. You see, Zayne isn't the type that has the best sense of smell, not when his nose got so habituated with the permanent smell of hand sanitizer, saline solution, and literally organs. He didn't even use a cologne, not after he watched a nauseous patient throwing up at Greyson's white coat in his internal days, at least. However, when you open the door, the vicious aroma filled up the entire chamber, imbuing Zayne's brain into an obsessed state that led him to act, as he would say, outside his own expectations.

As he headed home that day, all he could think was you. How you're even more beautiful then he could remember, how he could listen to your heart beat through the stethoscope – the reason because he became what he is now – his stupid nervousness that made it difficult to break the ice – quite literally – and that even more stupid cologne of yours. He wasn't able to focus properly for the rest of the day, and some voice at the back of his mind told him that the feeling would get worse when he got home.

One hour after diligent obsession, he made up an entire list with perfumes that presented in the description, the same aroma he felt emanating out of your skin. But it was nothing but innocent curiosity, it shouldn't cross any silly behavior out of him beyond that, right?

Two days after, before getting to the hospital, he saw himself at a perfumary. The excuse was that he needed to buy a cologne to himself, but ops! Why is Zayne standing on the feminine section, asking for the employee about some really specific perfumes? "Is that for your girlfriend?" His ears blushed, looking around while trying to find your scent, between every sample brought by the seller. "Just an old friend." He answers when he finally finds the one that matches exactly with the aroma that had him crazy two days prior.

He ended up buying it together with a masculine one that matches yours perfectly. At least, it was what the seller said so.

When he gets home that same day, he finds himself staring at the perfume bottle, unsure of what to do with that. He sprayed a little in his wrists, closing his eyes automatically as he inhaled the aroma. A long and heavy sigh left his throat, his muscles tensing up as he finds himself in such a pathetic situation as this one. What was in his mind now? He was acting like an obsessed perv!

Even though the perfume was objectively the same, something was missing. Even better putting: someone's missing. The scent of the perfume was good, he isn't denying that. But it wasn't divine as it felt on you.

Maybe your skin components bring out the scent differently from how it does on his wrist. Or even can be the fact that what droves him crazy two days prior was more to do with the concentration of your natural body sweat mixed with a small concentration of cologne.

Oh, poor doctor Zayne, even though he felt that sharp feeling of frustration on his guts, that didn't stop him from spraying your perfume on his bedsheets, letting him be enveloped by the closest he could get from your scent now.

He felt so relaxed that it didn't take long for him to fall asleep. So serene, damped in dreams about being closer to your, smelling that tempting aroma straight from the font.

When he woke up in the middle of the night, he couldn't feel more pathetic as he noticed how hard he was. That happened before, of course, when he was a teenager/young adult dealing with hormones. It was something mechanic that could be solved by taking a cold shower. But this time is substantially different. The images of the dream he had with you still cristal clear on his mind, and it would be such a waste not take advantage of them to solve his throbbing problem.

His closes his eyes again, guiding his hands inside his sweatpants, letting out a suffered sigh as he touched the sensitive skin of his hard cock.

It started just on the tip, but the movements migrated to fast, desperate ones in no time.

His leg muscles spreading them apart from each other and making his toes curl on top of his back arching was a clear indicator that he had never done that. Not outise the mechanical approach, where Zayne just was solving a biological reaction caused by muscle relaxation. No, that time he has you in his mind. To drunk on his own thoughts, gritting his teeth as the needy moans and raspy grunts insisted to scape, proving to himself how piteous the whole thing was.

He called your name until the entire time like it was some sort of pray. Begging you to bring your sweat, to finally make his bedsheets smell perfectly, just as you did with his on his hospital room that day. To make it divine, something only you can do.

Divine like in his dream, where you both fucked in his office, where he was reduced to his knees to adore you, like the servant he always knew he is. Where you praised and degraded him like he secretly desired you to.

"Oh...p-please! Have mercy on m-me~" Was the last coo he vocalized before relapsing all his dirty lust in ropes of thick warm cum all over himself.

His frenzy passed by, and after he cleaned himself and changed the bedsheets, he got back to sleep, ashamed by his own actions, hoping you somehow could be merciful enough to forgive his sin, after all, you're his goddess and he was just being your loyal devoted, right?

[snovyda]

You see, from what I have witnessed, people outside of Ukraine are getting an incredibly sanitized version of this war's events. It's all part of the bigger practice, obviously. Just like the topics of ww2 are being sanitized in education.

When a prominent Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko had a public reading of her book in Zurich, she was explicitly warned to not mention the war, because "that would be traumatizing for the audience". They don't want to even hear anything that would be traumatizing!

Well guess what: it should be traumatizing. Nobody should be comfortable with this. Or with what has been happening in Syria, or Myanmar, or anywhere else.

"Kyiv still stands 😎" our allies say, because it's comfortable to say that and not "Mariupol lies in ruins, Mariinka, Volnovakha and Bakhmut are wiped off the face of the Earth, and we are still refusing to provide the aid Ukraine has been requesting for more than a year now after we made it give up on its defense capabilities in the first place".

I keep thinking about all the mass graves that we keep discovering on the liberated territories. And about all the mass graves that keep growing on the still occupied territories. About torture chambers, about filtration camps, about the mass kidnappings of children. About all the rape, organised, sanctioned. I keep thinking about the 7-year old girl whose body was recovered from one of the mass graves, with traces of sperm from 7 different men on her. About the children whose parents were tortured, raped and executed in front of them. And vice versa. About photos and videos of human heads russians put up on tree branches and poles near their positions.

Feeling uncomfortable? Good. You should be.

[juniperpyre]

i think my key issue with the sanitization of death eater characters is that it feels like people do not see their stories as tragic or empathize with the characters until we have a hc that's like "actually they were morally good the whole time!"

regulus black and severus snape are tragic characters and child soldiers no matter what side they were "really" on. even barty crouch jr, who may not have been groomed into being a death eater, is tragic when you spend a second to consider his relationship with his father. there are plenty of death eaters who we know are taking after their fathers in joining the cult. lucius malfoy, who was a prefect when the marauders enter hogwarts, most likely spread the death eater ideology, since the ideology is just a more extreme version/logical endpoint of what already existed in the wizarding world.

to me, these ideas are not headcanons, because they are heavily implied by the text. when jkr mentions malfoy in the deathly hallows that is not for no reason.

mallfoy's acceptance of snape and position of power are both highlighted in this sentence. we can infer that snape felt a sense of community for the first time in Slytherin. with malfoy as a prefect we can infer that the culture of Slytherin house lifted up bigots and those with an important family name.

this is a culture that breeds more bigotry. we know that Dumbledore did not step in to stop this cultural development in the 90s, after already seeing what it could do!!! so we can infer that he did not in the 70s. so a bunch of children were left alone in an echo chamber of hate. of course some of them became fanatics!!!

this doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable. but we cannot expect children to overcome cultural and political hegemony all alone. like.... that's just not how the world works. and it's tragic that children are fodder for fascist's wars, especially when the fact that the children were abused or neglected makes them more vulnerable to be fodder.

regulus and severus weren't treated as people, their humanity was denied by the fascist they served, bc that's how fascism works. exploring their characters as they are in canon, with full humanity, without needing to change their stories to see that humanity, is much more interesting to me. it is much more in the spirit of redemption and restoration.

[steveyockey]

While visiting the Majdanek concentration camp I, at that time a still fervent Zionist, had a strange revelation which I still cannot explain. While standing in the gas chamber—the walls covered in scratch marks and the hauntingly soft blue stains left behind by so many administrations of Zyklon B—it occurred to me: there was nothing ontologically evil about the perpetrators, nothing ontologically righteous or defeated about the victims; their fates were contingent on history. If this, even this, was contingent, then there must be something about the structure of the world that made it so.

When the Zone of Interest cuts to the Auschwitz of the present day, this memory rushed to the surface. That scene—long and wordless—seems to suggest that our contemporary atrocities will one day receive a similar memorialization, that such memorialization always sanitizes atrocity by placing it firmly in the past, even as we continue to live in a present it created; that we are, in turn, already sanitizing our own atrocities in the present. Even that, most chillingly, the Polish workers, like the Polish servants at the Auschwitz homestead, will continue to polish and clean Höss’s trophies. Höss and the Nazis may have lost the war, but present events make clear that their ideology lives on, polished up.

As the film ends with a cut to black, Mica Levi’s score fills the void: an ostinato of screams and trudging strings. The screams continue to pitch up, more voices added, a cacophony of screaming, and still the trudging line: history continues as one single catastrophe.

Walter Benjamin wrote that "Marx says that revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps it is quite otherwise. Perhaps revolutions are an attempt by the passengers on this train – namely, the human race – to pull the emergency brake.” The train: a resonance he could not yet have known. Unlike other concentration camps, the Nazis did not have time to destroy Majdanek prior to their retreat from the rapidly advancing Soviet forces. The bulk of the camp is not only intact, but theoretically still operational. The brake has not been pulled. Can you smell it? We’re in the zone of interest. We never left.

[nardo-headcanons]

Writing Scientist Characters

this post is mainly an excuse to post a certain list of lab supplies I've made for a friend and infodump about lab work. but feel free to use this as a little resource when writing characters who are scientists and/or lab nerds. who knows, maybe it'll be of use.

General thoughts

Many people think it's a stereotype that scientist or nerd characters talk using complex technical jargon. While that is true to an extent, there actually is some kind of lab jargon. It varies across different labs and fields, but one thing they have in common is that it seeks to simplify, not the other way around.

gelelectrophoresis becomes elpho

microbiology becomes mibi

deioninized water becomes aqua dist

biochemistry becomes BC

sodium hydroxide becomes NaOH

They will probably not call a glass of water "silicon dioxide and h2o".

...and more. feel free to get creative. If you're writing in any other language than English, you can throw in one or two anglicisms as well. Also, most scientists will never gatekeep their work, and in an opposite fashion, will not shut up about it unless you make them. And no, most chemists do not know the entire periodic table by heart, only the most relevant elements. (main groups and a few commonly used metals of the subgroups) When it comes to characters doing the lab work, keep in mind that there are a lot more people involved than the scientist themself. Most scientists are more occupied with paperwork and data analysis, it is the laboratory technicians and assistants that do most of the practical work. They often have more lab experience than the scientists themselves.

Things you can have your lab nerd character do instead of making random chemicals explode

writing a lab report (and losing their mind over excel)

degreasing the glass bevel stoppers

removing the permanent marker from beakers (labeling is important)

complaining about the lack of funding of [their field] research

cleaning glassware

preparing specimen for examination

googling the most basic equations for their report

checking if the glassware and utensil collections are complete

steal single use plastic pipettes from their lab

pirating expensive textbooks

A list of laboratory supplies and utensils you can have them work with

Laboratory general (chem + bio)

Erlenmayer flasks, beakers, precision scales (3 digits), glass rods, metal spoons/spatulas, screw on glass flasks (autoclave compatible) test tubes, stopcock grease, dispensers with sanitizer and hand cream, gas burners, heating plates, eppendorf pipettes, pipette tips, Peleus pipetting aids, squirting bottles, liquid and powder funnels, incubator/drying chamber, round watch glasses, magnet stirring plates.

Microbiology Autoclave, petri dishes, agar plates, innoculation loops (reusable and metal), clean bench, microscope slides, microscope, drigalski-spatula, test tubes with clamping lids

Histology

Paraffin bath, water bath, scalpels, scissors, razor blades, microtomes (rotating microtome, slide microtome and freezing microtome), histocinette, tweezers (various kinds), ocular

Biochemistry

Sequencing robots, eppendorf tubes, gelelectrophoresis chambers, centrifuge

Analytical Chemistry

Photometer, kuvettes, burettes, mass spectro meters, UV bank (for chromatogrophies), pyknometers, melting point meter, porcelain mortars, pH paper, analytical scales (4 or more digits)

Prep Chemistry

Tripod/standing material, miniature lifting platforms, spiral condenser, colon condenser, round bottom flask (three necked and y- necked), filtration material, Separating funnel

Electrical engineering

Electric generators, Soldering iron, Clamp connectors, plugin connectors, ohm’s resistors, plug in lamps, condensers, transistors, PCBs, amperemeters, voltmeters, multimeters

Mechanics

Tripod/standing material, metal hooks, metal rods, mechanical stop watches, marbles, metal springs, Newton meters, laser motion detectors

Optics

Prisma (various kinds), various glass lenses (concave, convex, biconcave, biconvex), laser pointers, optical bench, mechanical iris diaphragm, looking glasses, monochrome lamps, lamp filters

Most used chemicals

Deionized water, ethanol, NaOH, HCl, H3PO4, NaCl (+ physiological NaCl solution 0.9)

Useful websites for writing science stuff

DNA sequence generator (simple): http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~mmaduro/random.htm

DNA, RNA and protein sequence generator: https://molbiotools.com/randomsequencegenerator.php Annealing temperature calculator: https://tmcalculator.neb.com/#!/main

Medicine name generator: https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/medicine-names.php Anything chemistry related: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=chemistry

Commonly used software:

MS Excel

Yenka

CASSY Lab

LabView

SpectraLab

LIMS

LaTex

Slack

Scientist friends, feel free to add onto this.

Have fun writing!

[xantchaslegacy]

Keen Sense and Curiosity

Some more Phyrexia happenings; check out the story on Ao3 too if the spirit moves you ;)

The cavern was empty.

As empty as any place could be on a plane where even metal lived, and tunnels of living flesh laced through the world from surface to core, and back again.

Walls of matte metal enveloped the cavern, carved smooth in some places by patient hands, and elsewhere patched with stretches of rougher-hewn, and more frequently, unhewn steel. Pools of varying depth and size blotched the cavern floor, brimming oily fluid; a mixture of effluvia that seeped in from the Hunter’s Maze above, and runoff from the labs that pumped in through meat-pipes from the Surgical Bays below.

The liquid churned, filled the air above it with the thick scent of life. It glowed, reflecting the false sunlight of the Hunter’s Maze that shone through tunnels of mirrored steel, flooding the space with a placid light. The fluid hummed in many low notes, a liquid choir that sang, just then, for no-one.

Even absent the creatures of Phyrexia, the cavern was active.

Active, but empty.

Two predators stalked into the cavern.

Glissa and Vorinclex prowled through the space. Side by side, elf and hulking praetor, scanning for danger by sight and smell and sound. Watching each others’ flanks with the practiced instinct of packmates.

Glissa tapped her scythe against the porous steel of the cavern.

Nothing of concern, as far I sense.

Vorinclex growled, low, and lumbered forward.

I smell nothing alarming. Stay alert.

Glissa sniffed her concurrence and fell back to the shadows, watching her companion as he went.

Phyrexia’s tongue was efficient, but the language of beasts had a guttural elegance that script and speech wanted for. That the "civilized" coveted.

Vorinclex sniffed the air once. Twice.

“Prawn.”

Speak of the devil .

Jin-Gitaxias strode into the cavern through a rounded tunnel that sloped upward from the Surgical Bays. Two chrome-capped cronies accompanied to him, chattering in their sanitized tongue.

“Hm.” Jin turned his head at the sight of Vorinclex. “You aren’t tardy.”

“As agreed.” Vorinclex’s voice, guttural even when he displayed the full and disarming range of his articulateness, rolled from his throat at a growl in Jin’s presence. “Brave of you to saunter out of your sterile little bunker.”

“As agreed.”

This cavern was a compromise of a rendezvous. One of many pockets between the Hunter’s Maze and Jin’s Surgical Bays that had formed as a semi-organic side effect of the intentional terraforming that had created the layers of their new Phyrexia.

The place had proven of interest to both factions so far, exacerbating the developments of predators in the vicious swarm, and (by the accounts of the Progress Engine) expanding the scope of Jin’s research with equal explosiveness.

It was one of the precious few, if not only, places in Phyrexia where the Vicious Swarm and the Progress Engine dwelt in equal measure, and felt equally comfortable.

Or equally un - comfortable, Glissa mused . Depending on who’s around.

“Vorinclex.” Jin-gitaxias’ voice, metallic and self-important, rang through the chamber like a bell. “It is surprisingly civilized of you to leave your attack dog behind.”

G lissa only sneered from the shadows at that. It was impossible that Jin-Gitaxias did not now she was there.

Vorinclex snorted. “We are praetors. We do not fear to fight our own battles.”

“Battle…? This is a simple trading of knowledge to benefit both our factions in the work to come. I understand if such a complicated notion frightens a simple brute. If you prefer to turn your tail...”

“I would not waste a chance for Phyrexia’s evolution,” Vorinclex spat. “Though I doubt I’ll find anything useful to the Swarm in the body of some sulking cell-scraper.”

“I am equally skeptical,” Jin replied, “that the mass of flesh that transports your meager brain will prove of any interest to our synthesis. Still, Norn will insist we work more collaboratively sooner than later. What she wishes, we must actualize. Better we begin such efforts in advance. In any case, further exploring the opportunities this space has to offer for our experimentation is worth a pointless hour of diversion.”

“Your portion of this space,” Vorinclex corrected. “The properties of these pools will be a boon to accelerate the development of the swarm’s best predators.”

“That is the agreement,” Jin said. “Wasted as it is on you and yours.”

Glissa scowled. The arrogance of the Engine’s Praetor was a sort of grating that only the self-proclaimed “civilized” could manage.

“That is part of the agreement.” Vorinclex prowled closer to Jin along a strip of metal ground that divided two of the pools, and sat up on his haunches, lording the few inches of height his current body had over the other praetor. “Sharing this space. Are you ready to share your secrets as well?”

“For the good of Phyrexia,” he added, smirking with his voice, if not his actual maw. He dislocated his jaw, and spat something at Jin’s feet. A red-white blur bounced once with a dull clatter then lay still on the cavern floor.

A phyrexian’s head and upper body, red-muscled and clad in plates of white porcelain steel.

“A souleater,” Jin observed, in his dispassionate way.

“One of Norn’s,” Vorinclex said, picking at his teeth with a finger on his smaller limbs. “A lurker. She may approve of our cooperation, but I will not suffer her eyes and ears where they have no business.”

Glissa smiled grimly. The cavern had been cleared of members of the Swarm and the Engine alike in preparation for this meeting, in some cases by force. Those efforts had revealed this member of Norn’s Machine Orthodoxy sects, lurking about the sub-layer. She had personally beheaded the agent herself and eaten its body with Vorinclex.

Jin-Gitaxias stooped slightly to inspect the half-corpse at his feet. “Norn will be displeased with her servant’s dispatching.”

Vorinclex licked his chops. “Are you displeased?”

“I serve Phyrexia’s greater ends. I have no opinion on small matters.”

“So it pleases you to come here for Norn’s benefit?”

“There is every chance our Great Synthesis could benefit from this exchange,” Jin replied. His jaws hardly moved as he spoke. Glissa wondered if his vocal chords even required motion of the mouth to communicate, with all the modifications he’d made to his body. “Allow the two most advanced specimens of our respective factions to examine each other and find how our best qualities can be shared between our...separate efforts to advance Phyrexia. It will certainly benefit your blind efforts to learn from us, and Norn will undoubtedly want you operating at a greater capacity than you do now.”

“Our glorious, ineffable leader,” Vorinclex snarled.

It’s good he speaks like that all the time, Glissa thought. Otherwise his scorn for Norn would be a more open secret.

“Our flawless mother.”

Jin-Gitaxias was harder to read. Glissa wished dearly to know what he actually thought of their self-proclaimed ‘mother.’

V orinclex spat into the pool. “ Your flattery would be wasted even if she was here to hear it .” He tilted his head, appraising Jin. “Shall we begin, or would you like to waste more time with words?”

Jin held up a closed hand, then raised a single index finger.

“I will insist on taking my observations first,” he said. “If you can contain yourself that long.”

“Please.” Vorinclex spread his arms wide, and his shadow fell on Jin’s toadies as well as the praetor himself. “Observe. I know you can’t wait to see what a real phyrexian looks like.”

“It is not eagerness, simply concern is that your own clumsy analyses will damage my instruments before I can take your measure.”

Vorinclex huffed, and lowered his arms to his sides while Jin turned to his attendants, who were busy pouring steaming liquid into a basin. Jin dipped his fingers into the stuff.

Sterilizing, Glissa realized. The acidic smell was powerful, even at a distance . Since the Swarm and the Engine had begun making joint use of it, each had introduced elements to the odor of the place, and while the acidic curdle of the Progress Engine's experiment pits did permeate the place, it usually melded queerly well with the more vital, vibrant scents of the Hunter's Maze, making a smell that was inoffensive to a hunter's nose, and even invigorating, at its best.

“So much ceremony,” Vorinclex observed. “I could inspect you twice over in the time it takes to complete your pageantry.”

“At least one of us needs to approach this exchange seriously.” Jin raised his hands from the bowl and began cleaning them on his apron, wiping each digit with a slow meticulousness that seemed maliciously deliberate. He looked to Vorinclex, still squatting on his haunches. “Will you lie supine for me?”

“Guess.”

“Hm.” Jin snapped, and his transcriptors snapped to attention. “Prepare to take notes.”

They chattered in affirmation.

Jin’s hands, those massive, long-fingered things that made Glissa think of blightwidows, began probing at Vorinclex’s shoulders, tracing along the massive spiked plates that protected his upper body. The light scrape of chrome on bone-steel rang like a chime through the cavern.

“Grand,” Jin remarked. “Such ostentatious plumage is likely effective in scaring off other simple beasts, I presume. I doubt our synthesis has much need for...bony shoulders.”

“Still,” he added, “It has a certain animal charm. It suits you.”

"When you find yourselves in the wilderness of a new plane, with nothing but your test-tubes and little needles to defend yourselves against the incomple at , you'll feel different."

Jin made a dismissive *click*-ing sound. "I have faced the strongest among the incompleat and triumphed." his hands trailed down from Vorinclex's bone-spurs and dragged way across his collar and breast. another crisp metallic note sheared the air. "This robust musculature, on the other hand…" His fingers splayed over the chest, probing at intervals with prods that brought soft huffs to Vorinclex’s breath. Jin’s other hand began taking measurements of Vorinclex’s arms, working its way from shoulder to arm to wrist to-

-Vorinclex seized Jin’s fingers, and lifted the arm above his head with a casual tug.

“A practical demonstration,” he growled, cutting Jin off. “Strength like this emerges through the struggle of life against life and death. Something that doesn’t happen in your test tubes and operating tables.”

“Untrue at its premise,” Jin replied, mildly. “In any case, the structure of your muscles can be examined, and reproduced by construction or artificial growth.”

Vorinclex cocked his head by the slightest degree. “I’ll believe it when I see it. How will you learn the structure of my flesh?”

“Our oil and research have yielded have many ways to examine what lies within. Lenses that can see past base matter. Magical tracers injected into the body and tracked with external scanners. However-”

Jin’s finger thinned, a subtle and silent shifting of the metal in his digit that Glissa might have missed if not for her eyes, compleat with a hunter’s acuity.

“I prefer to look for myself.”

Glissa tensed. Jin meant to cut Vorinclex open. She would allow it, of course, so far as Vorinclex was prepared to allow it, but would be ready to spring to his side should the need arise.

Jin, however, simply stood, half hanging by his wrist, looking at Vorinclex with his sharpened digit raised.

“Well?” Vorinclex sounded vexed by the pause. “Will you or won’t you?”

“We civilized people call this ‘waiting for permission,’ Jin said, enunciating the last three words with an insufferable deliberation.

Vorinclex barked a laugh, and released Jin’s hand. “When does the great butcher prawn wait for any thing’s permission? What sort of Phyrexian waits and does not just take what it intends?”

Jin ‘tsk’-ed through grit teeth. “Discourse between praetors should have more weight and social depth than the intercourse of beasts.”

“What do you know about the intercourse of beasts?” Vorinclex shifted, closing the distance between them. “Fine. This is permission to take whatever measures and make whatever cuts you need to slake your idiot thirst.”

“Whatever measures? I will remember that.”

Jin’s blade sank into Vorinclex’ upper arm with a disquieting ease. The muscle there was dense, as Glissa knew from hunting and scrapping with her companion. If the lack of resistance gave Vorinclex any pause, he showed no sign.

Nor did he look bored. He was watching Jin intently as he drew the blade down and lay open the topmost layer of Vorinclex’ skin and steel-twined muscle.

“The musculature...” Jin pulled aside Vorinclex’s hide and sliced deeper into the limb. Red and green and black dribbled in oily clumps from the cut. “...Impressively dense, as expected. Supply. Pliable. The proteins comprising the circulatory system...”

He trailed off, muttering and slicing. His unsharpened fingers working aside the fibers inside Vorinclex. Every few seconds he pulled a needle of silver from his knuckles and sank it into the flesh, marking a spot in the meat. Vorinclex’s gaze followed Jin as he moved down the arm, exhaling to punctuate each piece of Jin that was slipped into him.

"You've let the growth of your organics guide the development of your mechanical components," Jin observed. "A common thread in the Swarm specimens I've explored."

"They work in harmony," Vorinclex replied, as if explaining nursing to a newborn. "These components want to work as one, so there is no need to meddle in the finer details. A creature need only to act, and the instincts of the oil will guide the organic and its modifications to the best natural conclusion."

Jin scoffed. "Without adequate guiding intelligence...without intent, you are wasting time and resources with an uncoordinated approach."

"Oil is intelligence. Where you see only a vector, there is a guiding natural brilliance already present in the oil that outstrips the capacity of any sapient mind. Even yours, prawn. You say I waste resources? I say you waste time trying to bend the direction of an already perfect path to compleation."

“That’s as good as an admission of complacency,” Jin replied.

“It’s efficient use of our energies.” Vorinclex reached down and tapped one of the needles thrust through his upper arm. “unlike this.”

Jin only scowled at that.

After the arm came an incision along the back, then a cut along Vorinclex’ backmost thigh, down to the knee. The muscle within was vivid red and a maroon cocktail of oil flowed down the limb to the ground, where it soaked into the floor and trailed off into the pool behind him.

With every prod and pin from Jin, more of these fluids leaked down Vorinclex’s body in minute rivulets.

Still, Vorinclex stood as high on his haunches as he had at the outset.

“Another beast might have fallen from being cut open in this way,” Jin remarked.

“A lesser beast,” Vorinclex replied.

M ore cutting. More needles. Jin chattered away all the while as he cut deeper and deeper, until his probing found Vorinclex’s internal organs.

“Some actual efficiencies,” Jin murmured, shifting aside steel-mesh sacks and crocus-flesh enhancements, “And more than a few vanity organs that I presume let you play at being king of the beasts.”

“Not a king, just an aspiring apex.”

Jin fell silent after a period of further muttering and poking. His fingers ran the length of Vorinclex’s splayed-open leg, flank, and arm, tracing the patterns of muscle fiber within.

After a minute of this silence, Vorinclex stirred.

“Is something displeasing you, prawn?”

“The lack of something has me...intrigued.” Jin ran his sterilized digits through the fibers of Vorinclex’ arms. “It is known you boast a prodigious healing capacity, and yet I see nothing at work-”

“Watch your fingers,” Vorinclex said, interrupting.

The meat of his arm began joining with a sudden, soft, squirming, sucking noise so low and quick it barely registered to even Glissa’s ears. Jin withdrew his hands, but the closing muscles bunched around the longest of his fingers, and the digit came away trailing a gobbet of Vorinclex’s flesh.

Jin held up the stringy chunk of shuddering meat, turning it over in his fingers.

“A healing that must be triggered consciously. Interesting.”

“A healing that can be subdued intentionally,” Vorinclex cut in, as the rest of the cuts began sealing all along his body. “Aren’t scientists not supposed to jump to conclusions?”

J in ignored the question. “I will take this as a sample.” He held his hand out, and one of the transcriptors scuttled forward, producing a jar with a black seal about its lid. Jin popped the seal off and dropped the meat into the jar. H is minion shuffled back away, nearly tripping as Vorinclex growled at it, spattering the ground with spittle.

Having deposited most of the flesh. Jin wiped the rest from his fingers into a smaller tube, and examined it by the light; a series of metal tunnels reflected the false sunlight of the hunter’s maze down into the caverns; more than generous to see by.

Satisfied by what he observed, Jin tucked the test tube away in a slot in his flank. He spread the remaining smear of oily tissue onto Vorinclex’s arm, along the line of the now-healed cut. His other hand hovered above the healed-over incision on the leg.

“My pins are still inside your-”

“They are mine now. Carry on your examinations.”

“In that case-”

With a deft movement – a pull at the leg and push to the chest so subtle Glissa barely registered either, Jin unbalanced Vorinclex and flipped him into the pool. Vorinclex was too large to submerge fully in the fluid, and he displaced enough of the humming green stuff that Jin’s transcriptors were obliged to shuffle hastily backwards from the splash. Vorinclex let out an angry yelp, but Jin strode into the pool in two smooth steps and, straddling Vorinclex’s waist, grabbed his head in one massive hand. Jin continued vocalizing his examination as if nothing at all had happened.

“These teeth,” Jin murmured, his voice dropping in volume as he leaned in close to examine Vorinclex’ mouth. “Ingenious in form for affecting lethal lacerations in prey, though they are not especially well-rooted. Prone to falling out in the process of your...consumptions, I’d hypothesize.”

“Teeth break,” Vorinclex growled back. “Better to get good use out of them a few times and have a robust body to push new ones into place.”

“Wasteful.” Jin loomed closer. Vorinclex would have a front-row view of the blue praetor’s pristine, regular rows of chrome teeth. “Better something that lasts.”

“How long would it take you to replace those trinkets in your mouth if I savaged you right now? I can push out new teeth in seconds. I don’t need to go crawling back to a lab to replace my fierce parts.”

“You’d break your teeth a dozen times on mine before you even scratched my mouth.” Jin moved his face bare centimeters from Vorinclex’s, as if he meant to test his hypothesis on the other praetor there and then. “So savage away. But not until I’m finished with you.”

Jin’s fingers ran leisurely down Vorinclex’s side, fingers curving around from chest to back, probing his musculature and carapace with minute twitches, before coming to a rest on hips, where groin met thighs.

“Powerful legs. Claws and teeth that could render steel to fragments. You have excelled in your advancements toward animal perfection.” Jin dragged two fingers back up along Vorinclex's flank, the chrome making a surprisingly soft sound as the tips trailed over the metal-shod bone and exposed muscle.

Vorinclex snorted. His voice spoke dismissal of Jin’s comment, but he seemed, to Glissa’s eye, to almost preen at the comment, like a wolf showing off its coat.

“I am testament to the Swarm’s success. We have taken life that once barely subsisted and hobbled along among tangles of rust and created an ecosystem of thriving, ever-improving predators.”

Jin grunted at this newest failure to provoke Vorinclex. It was such an annoyed, base sound that Glissa had to suppress a giggle.

“Regardless of this...low success,” he said after a pause, “I hypothesize there might still be shortcomings in your Swarm.” Jin’s left hand snaked under Vorinclex’s gut, while his right slithered down Vorinclex’s thigh.

“And I would hypothesize those weaknesses might be reflected in your own...form.”

“You’ve seen me inside and out. Look as long as you like, you’ll find nothing resembling weakness.”

“We will see.”

Jin continued to inspect Vorinclex’ chest and neck. He kept up a constant monologue of numbers and measurements, his transcriptors at rapt attention. Neither had materials for writing. Sound recording devices built into their skulls, Glissa mused.

“You will be the first to attempt traversal across planes,” Jin commented after a while. “Our research to date suggests this will be a catastrophically traumatizing experience for your body.”

“I look forward to new hunting grounds.”

“There will be immense pain and an almost complete immolation of your form.”

“Is that all?” Vorinclex affected a yawn. “Good to know. I’ll bring my rubbers.”

Jin grumbled again. “It is regrettable Vrig failed to divine the secrets of Memnarch’s soul-traps...we might have achieved Phyrexia’s interplanar ends without such needless agony.”

Glissa stifled another giggle. It could not have been plainer Jin was hoping the comment would lead for a chance to expand on his tedious science.

“Research and development? Limited?” Vorinclex’s feigned shock was somehow more and not less pointed when growled. “Imagine my surprise.”

“It takes astoundingly little imagination to imagine you surprised,” Jin’s fingers darted suddenly to Vorinclex’s thigh, forefinger and thumb pressing into the veins below the hips.

Vorinclex grunted once. A soft bark that indeed betrayed surprise.

Glissa tensed, again.

“Curious.” Jin’s fingers had paused along the inside of Vorinclex’s thigh. “I would have suspected this organ here might be rendered obsolete by a...properly evolved creature.”

Vorinclex did not squirm. He was too proud, to perfect for such a thing. But he did shift noticeably under Jin’s observation

“Such a novel shape the tissues have taken.” Jin’s hand shifted under space where Vorinclex’ hind legs met. “The Grand Evolution is abundant with its own surprises. This feels like...an advancement of the Crocus blooms, yes? Grafted onto...no...grown from your body?”

Vorinclex did not shy away from Jin’s gaze.

“Some creatures among the swarm yet benefit from physiological stimulation to encourage breeding.”

“It yields rapid generations and equally explosive improvements in biology,” he added, sounding as defensive as an apex predator of Phyrexia could.

“The father of machines disdained such methods of reproduction,” Jin mused aloud. “Much of old Phyrexia did, at least on the nine spheres.” His hand had disappeared up to his first elbow, and it did not escape Glissa’s notice that the fingers on his right hand were running through the fur on Vorinclex’s back, caressing the spine. “‘Grow’ is our watchword. Not ‘breed.’”

“The father of machines failed,” Vorinclex spat. “And perhaps he disdained procreation because he was too preoccupied with writing into the scriptures his own sad failures to acquire the mate he desired.”

“And who have you been mating with?” Jin inquired. “Beasts? Elves? Wurms? I would have guessed you and yours were too busy trying to eat each other and preening your muscles and metal at one another to find time to breed.”

“I will take a sample,” he added, gripping tight onto Vorinclex’ fur.

“Don’t waste breath talking about what you will do. Do it.”

“Mm.” Jin withdrew his hand from the spine with a jerk and a sound like a canvas torn in two, pulling out a clump of spined hairs from Vorinclex’ back.

Vorinclex tensed and growled.

Jin’s other hand came away from between thighs, and Vorinclex jerked this time. Jin held between thumb and forefinger a strip of tissue.

“I presume your healing is as robust in your crocus organs as it is in your muscle?”

Vorinclex rose up, though not to his full height, dripping pool-fluid. “Prodigiously robust. You can inspect closer, if you dare place your head where your hand was bold enough to wander.”

“Regardless,” Jin replied, clinically smug, returning his hand to Vorinclex’ leg. “That the most advanced among the Swarm...the apex of phyrexian evolution, even, would possess such an organ...” He trailed off, and made a series of soft clicking “tsk”s. “I would think that you might think it...weakness.”

Vorinclex lunged toward the edge of the pool. Jin, not expecting the move, was thrown forward and landed in as semi-sprawled position in the shallows. Glissa suppressed a laugh to see the praetor so prone, his little skirt and apron askew about his legs.

“You are losing focus, prawn.” Vorinclex's voice was dangerously low as he prowled forward to loom over Jin. “I am ready to take my turn.”

“Impatient,” Jin clicked. He pulled back the skirt, perhaps to keep it from getting wetter, though it was thoroughly soaked from what Glissa could see. The fluid of the pool also, had shifted in color, while they stood in it, from an acid green to something more like the blue-green light when Lyese and the Eye of Doom both broke the horizon together.

“Worried that I’ll break you?”

Jin hummed, a raspy vocalization of frustration . “Not at all. My concern is that your clumsy pawing will not yield the data your swarm need s to adequately better itself.”

“Never mind my paws, Jin. I have my other ways of taking your measure,” Vorinclex rumbled. His maw thrust forward, to within inches of Jin’s neck. From her place, Glissa could hear his breath. See it steam along the metal of Jin’s jaw.

“A predator can probe by scent and taste alone.”

“Bestial senses,” Jin scoffed. “Your means of analysis are as crude as those you use to advance your evolution.”

Vorinclex responded by placing his forelimb across Jin’s shoulder, pushing him down into the shallows of the pool, and sniffing further down the other praetor’s neck, approaching his shoulder.

“Hm.”

He stopped there, inspecting the metal of Jin’s collar in a slow circuit. Jin seemed unsure what to do with his head as Vorinclex probed, and opted to remain still. Vorinclex moved almost painfully slowly, and Glissa could not help but wonder what was driving this uncharacteristic display of patience.

V orinclex’s breath continues to fog on Jin’s chrome surface as he moved, leaving a misty, matte trail on the shining body that faded quietly as he wandered across Jin’s form .

Jin kept silent for several more minutes as Vorinclex probed further down, inspecting chest and shoulders. Every few seconds he would adjust his fore-paws, never pressing down on one stretch of Jin’s body for too long, but never taking off enough weight to allow him to rise, either.

“How are you recording this?”

Jin’s voice was strained, the already metallic voice reverberating as if spoken through a funnel of steel. Almost as like he’d run a long distance.

Vorinclex paused at the question. He was just then running the edge of his snout along Jin’s elbow, and he made a slow, deliberate trail of Jin’s head as he re-positioned himself to look Jin in whatever portion of his face would best correspond to eyes.

“Recording?”

“Yes.”

“I will remember, of course,” Vorinclex placed a broad paw over Jin’s midsection. Maroon-muscled digits closed around Jin’s silvery, snake-like spine. “An apex’s eyes miss nothing. An apex savors every meal it takes the measure of.”

“You intend to eat me, Vorinclex?”

“If I ate you, Jin-Gitaxias….REALLY ate you, I would not get to see the despair in you when the Grand Evolution crushes your Synthesis, and all the other fool dogmas of Phyrexia under its heel. When all is one with our mighty Swarm, when all are free of sapience and weakness...perhaps on that day I will eat you. But no sooner.”

“But since you brought it up...” Another paw closed around Jin’s corded spine, though Vorinclex kept his weight on his hind legs so his weight did not crush the other. “I can’t think of a better use for you than nutrition to fuel the Great Evolution.”

“Can’t think, that is one among many defects,” Jin rasped. “No imagination. No critical thought. Nothing beyond instinct. Fitting traits for a king of beasts.”

“Your opinion,” Vorinclex growled, shifting forward so his shadow fell of Jin. “Me, I like my current position.”

“You don’t dispute it?”

“I wouldn’t want to waste your time debating with a mere beast.” Vorinclex’ jaw shifted into something only a few would recognize as a smile. “This spine of yours...” He pressed forward slowly, and Jin sank further into the pool, a glowing mix of oil and other fluids washing over him. “Strong. Stronger than it looks. I’ve torn apart wurms with less durability.”

“The result of rigorous research and development,” Jin said, the pride tangible enough that Glissa could detect it even in his metallic monotone. “Not the sort of strength one could just evolve through blind-”

“And yet,” Vorinclex continued, pressing down further. “Even with such a strong support, I suspect there’s no real backbone beneath it. That must be why your posture is so slovenly.”

“Ah-” Jin started to say something, but whatever it was caught in his throat, and instead a low, tinny buzzing noise came from his chest. his fingers found the hollows in Vorinclex’s forearms. The same forearms that held him in the pool. His fingers wove their way into the space, gripping onto the other praetor’s limbs.

“Ah, it looks like I’ve found something.” Vorinclex, if it was even possible, leaned in closer, bearing down on Jin. “This can’t be where air flows through, so I can only assume I’ve hit a nerve.”

“How-ah!” Jin cut off again into more buzzing.

"I'm gleaning more than you know." Vorinclex' hands were almost entirely submerged in the pool, but it was clear from the movement of his arms that he was probing the length of Jin's spine. "I'm intrigued by how you've arranged your nerves to run the length of this tube-body of yours. Incredible use of space, but not without its tender spots…As for your form..you could have a raptor’s grace, if only your limbs were not so inefficient in proportion to-"

Jin’s hand jolted up Vorinclex’s arm, and pressed at a spot just below his jaw, where head met body. Vorinclex’ weight shifted suddenly to one side, and Jin used the momentum to roll the both of them sideways, splashing through the pool, which hummed with tripled vigor.

Jin rolled atop Vorinclex, and for a split second Glissa’s leg’s fell into a crouch in preparation to strike his head from his body-

But Vorinclex, using the sheer advantage of his weight, carried the roll another turn, and pinned Jin beneath him, once again half-submerging his chrome form in the fluid.

They remained that way for long seconds, Jin humming hoarsely, and Vorinclex’s arms tremoring.

“Very clever, little prawn,” Vorinclex said, finally. “All that time spent studying was not entirely wasted.”

“Your evolution has granted you some low advantages,” Jin conceded in his tinny rasp. “I am beginning to re-evaluate my chances of thriving in your death-trap of a home.”

The pool fluid around Jin was slowly turning a more metallic sheen, a mixture of blue, purple, and black metallic. Where it dispersed into the blue-green, it became more muted, but seemed to churn with a thick urgency

"Of course you would not survive in the Maze. Your form has been molded to fit into your filthy operating theatres."

“So I should simply remain in my labs in perpetuity?”

"I didn't say that. You and your meat-molders are more than welcome among the Swarm. I'm intrigued to see how perfect your form could be if you let the oils of the Maze shape you into a true predator."

"You said I would not survive."

"Because you would never embrace it. It isn't in your nature. If you could come down from your chrome pedestal, and hunt and adapt like any other beast, you could be something tremendous."

“You underestimate me.”

“That was never a problem. That you overestimate yourself is.”

“I am capable of cooperation and collaboration, it is others who are too insular or insecure to take full advantage.”

“I’m taking full advantage now, or didn’t you notice?”

“You have lingered unusually long on my spine.” Jin shifted his grip on Vorinclex’s left arm, his fingers moving closer to the shoulder. “It is an unparalleled example of compleation, but I wonder how useful the time you are spending on it is now.”

“Lower then.” Vorinclex shifted his grip, and his attentions, to where Jin’s skirt began. If you insist.”

“‘What is planted below will determine what flourishes above.’”

Vorinclex paused, one of his fore-paws beginning to pull back apron and skirt. “Poetry?” He asked, scorn clear in his growl.

“One of Sheoldred’s prophecies,” Jin replied. He kept a grip on the nearest of Jin’s paw’s. “One I have been pondering at length when my schedule allows. Her counsel and her company have been more useful than seeking cooperation from you or the furnace-rat.”

“Sheoldred.” Vorinclex spat the name as if it had been a bone lodged in his throat. “A waste of your time. If there’s one thing more useless than your science it’s prophecy and soothsaying. The only reality you should care about is the reality of flesh and fangs.”

“They have proven exceptionally useful, her prophecies,” Jin replied, almost sing-song through the grate of his voice. “She has been my most fruitful partner outside the Engine.”

Vorinclex grunted, and leaned further into Jin. The chrome praetor sank another few inches into the pool.

Jin's own arm shifted as Vorinclex's did, his fingers still clinging to the hollows in the other praetor’s arms.

Vorinclex seized Jin’s shoulder in his maw and, with a quick thrust of his head, tossed him further into the pool. Before Jin could even conceive of rising up, Vorinclex was looming over him again, this time with a massive limb planted to either side of the chrome Praetor’s head.

“Enough talk. I’m not done knowing you.”

Keeping his left paw planted, Vorinclex cradled Jin’s head in his right. The muscle of his arm began to distend and lengthen. Moments later, branches of flesh were snaking under and across Jin-Gitaxias. Vorinclex’s lower arms began to distend as well, and resumed the probing at Jin’s legs.

An exasperated sigh escaped Jin as the upper-arm tendrils splayed his arms out, binding his limbs to the ground and tethering b etween his long fingers.

“Silence is a waste. I have plenty of additional data I might gather from observing your clumsy pawing.”

“Speak to your toadies if you wish. I don’t mind your noise.”

V orinclex pulled back Jin’s skirt in one swift motion, and a rip cut through the humming as his skirt tore along one side, revealing sleek legs of chrome.

“The leader of the Swarm is notably and conspicuously preoccupied with my lower anatomy,” Jin said, conspicuously loudly. Louder at least than his trascriptors would have needed him to speak to hear. “His probing, already indelicate, becomes borderline frenetic as his bestial sensory organs take account of the perfection of my form.”

The distended muscles around Jin’s upper body tightened audibly. He did not abate in his monologue, but the fluid around him grew more intense with it’s churning, and deepened in its dark-metallic tint.

“-seems completely capable of processing auditory information, even when preoccupied with pursuits of base interest-”

Vorinclex bared his maw, and something not dissimilar to his distended arm-muscle snaked out. It was not a tongue exactly, as sapient creatures of flesh might understand it, but a sensory organ modeled after crocus organisms Glissa had perfected with compleat frogmites.

Just now, this organ took the measure of Jin’s legs, probing the knit of cable and struts that joined below the waist, extending into chrome-capped knees.

“-searching perhaps for an equivalent anatomy to his own, not appreciating that, unlike the cumbersome designs of the Swarm, creatures of the Progress Engine make use of modular bodily components that may be included or exempted from certain activities based on their applicability to the situation at-”

The tendrils about Jin’s chest began to writhe, and pulled his arms from a T-formation to up above his head, dragging him further up along the bank.

“-ah-”

Vorinclex’s secondary arms moved up again to Jin’s core, leaving the explorations below to the tongue. His palms rested along the segmented coil enveloping Jin’s spine.

“-feeling to measure the reactions of my nervous system to his probing and brutalization. A simplistic approach, but showing more attention to detail than one might expect from-”

Jin’s ankles and feet received more lingering examination. Vorinclex tested the durability of each digit with his snout, pushing them to the extent of their flexibility. The construction of Jin’s heel seemed of particular interest.

“-most likely having discovered yet another anatomical superiority his own faction lacks in-”

Two tendrils wound a spiral around Jin’s neck.

“-a curious maneuver. What sort of response he hopes to elicit is a mystery, as even he must know respiration in a specimen as advance as myself is-”

Jin cut off suddenly as both tendrils slithered into his mouth and down his throat, writhing all along their length as they went.

Vorinclex gave no outward sign he was conscious of what his arms were doing. Glissa had no doubt he was enjoying the opportunity deeply regardless.

The opportunity, and the rasping, muffled sound of Jin attempting to continue his monologue.

Vorinclex brought one of his smaller arms up to the side of his head and tapped around where his sheltered ears lay. He favored Jin with a shrug.

Jin’s muffled attempts ceased suddenly, and a rattling vibration started up in his chest.

“His tactile limbs navigate the obstacles of my internal organs with unexpected efficacy. A lifetime meandering through the unorganized hazards of the Tangle and the Hunter’s Maze have helped develop a low cunning useful for-”

A voicebox somewhere on his body, built into the chest, maybe. Glissa smirked from the shadows. Leave it to Jin-gitaxias to build in redundant systems to make sure no one could ever shut him up.

Vorinclex’s maw had returned to Jin’s midsection as his tendrils lifted Jin’s arcing spine out of the fluid. His tongue traced over each coil of the segmented spinal spikes that fanned out around Jin’s back.

“-that he can carry out so many parallel probings of my form is astounding, especially given the thoroughness. It is of course a shadow of the theoretical network efficiency our faction has already accomplished with the vedalken mindmeld, but nevertheless-”

Vorinclex released his grip on Jin’s spine, but his body remained bent over the surface of the pool, as if straining of its own volition.

“-able to contort my body from within using his tendrils-”

That he can keep rambling on with several tons of muscle and steel shoved down your gullet is incredible enough, Glissa mused.

“-tendrils prove resilient to the acids of my stomach and the abrasive metal components of my internal-”

Tiny offshoots of Vorinclex’s arms, thin fibers of metal and crocus-perfected flesh, w o rked like roots into the crevices of Jin’s upper body. The fluid all around them was properly churning now with the combined effects of their movement and the essences leaking from both of them into the pool.

“-provided his brain is capable of such memorization, the beast should have explored enough of my innards to form a rudimentary map of my major external organs.”

“A fair exchange of information.”

Glissa almost started at Vorinclex’s voice. He’d been silent for nearly a half-hour.

Jin shuddered and tsk-ed. “This is...not equitable...I did not explore you nearly as deeply with my dissections-”

“I can feel your pin-probes working their slow way through me, collecting information,” Jin cut in. “Spare me.” He moved his face closer to Jin’s. “What is your conclusion on my own research technique, hm?”

Jin turned his head. “You were studying my actions. My reactions. Taking note of how I grapple with you, and my stimulus response to your aggression.”

“Obviously. This is how a predator learns.”

“Learning...what use is learning to you?”

“Everything learns.”

“Your evolution is a mindless charade. You mean to tell me you have a use for the scientific process?”

“You misunderstand the Grand Evolution, and you do degrade it by comparing it to evolution writ large. Even at it’s basest, evolution is not a process of becoming the biggest, the strongest, or the most fang-filled-”

“As if any of those things are prized or rare in our Phyrexia,” Jin observed.

Vorinclex made a rasping sound that Glissa knew to be a chuckle. “Evolution simply rewards whatever creature can rut and breed best. What makes a new generation that survives to do the same in perpetuity wins.

“Our Grand Evolution is more than just evolution as the flesh knows it. We see a process failing, we see a useless limb or vestigial encumbrance, and we remove it there and then. A jaw formation fails to aid a predator in its hunting? The jaw must go. A venom fails to kill outright from a single bite? The glands that produce it must be replaced. A creature like you-”

Vorinclex leaned into Jin, his voiced dropped to a strained snarl. "You are s quandered potential. You've coated yourself in such potent metals. Hacked yourself and your septic underlings into such ingenious shapes. But now you languish in front of vats and corpses, those clever bodies untempered and untested against real strength."

J in barely stirred at the commentary. “Your approach is both more scientific and more reckless than I thought. No concern for long-term consequences. Short-sighted and slapdash modifications.”

Vorinclex pulled his head back. “You got me talking again, silver-prawn. You’re such a fool I forget how clever you can be.”

“More flattery than I anticipated.” Jin raised a hand and brushed the side of Vorinclex’s jaw. Vorinclex leaned into the gesture, almost imperceptibly.

“Interesting.” Jin’s hand came away, and he inspected something along the back of his thumb. “Heightened levels of adrenaline, even compared to your baseline.” He wiped the thumb on Jin’s forearm. “I will take samples for my research.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

Jin half-rose to a seated position, long strands of Vorinclex' arms still draped around his shoulders. He looked to Glissa like one of the vedalken draped in their bulky suits.

With the same hand he’d caressed with, Jin flexed, and the middle finger elongated, thinner than the scalpel-finger had been, until it was needle-fine. One of the transcriptors waded into the shallow of the pool, and affixed a clear container to the back of Jin’s hand.

Vorinclex carried on tasting the air about Jin’s neck and face all the while, arm draped round the other praetor’s back.

As the Transcriptor waded out again, Jin slid the needle into Vorinclex’s collar with a smooth deliberation. A snake slipping into a burrow. Vorinclex showed no overt sign of feeling it, though he kept steady, even as his probing increased in intensity about Jin’s chest. If Jin's instruments were as fine-tuned as he claimed, they were sure to have picked up on the rumble within Vorinclex' chest, mixing with the sounds of the fluids in the pools.

The glass vial on Jin’s hand began to fill.

“Under the fallen father, Phyrexia developed many variations of oil, as you well know.” Jin leaned forward into Vorinclex’s shoulder. “Substances found in the artifacts of planes explored during our many years of exploration, powdered powerstone, the fluids of the many lesser creatures whose bodies we mastered...we produced glands to resist acid and fire, to fuel sleepless hulks and unailable plague vectors.”

A fluid, clear and green-tinted, and laced with golden filament, filled the glass. More still poured into the container at a thick flow.

“The oil is an art we have all benefited from and contributed to. Even you beasts of the swarm.”

“I’ve touched the inside of you, prawn. Your oils are not more impressive than mine, just different.”

“Did you enjoy their taste, Vorinclex?”

Vorinclex laughed – a thundering rumble from his gut.

“I should be asking if you are enjoying the taste of me right now.”

“Ah, yes, I forgot you were in there.”

Jin bit down, hard, severing the tendrils Jin had shoved down his throat.

“Ah-”

Vorinclex pulled his hands up, tearing the thinner cords of sinew and steel. His fore-arms re-formed in full with a sharp, violent sucking sound, and he pounded back down into the pool, dousing them both.

Jin, for his part, vibrated with a grinding noise from inside his chest. His needle had snapped off in Vorinclex’s neck.

“Now that is what I would call fair exchange.”

Vorinclex spat into the water, and stalked back up out the side of the pool, shaking out his coat as he went, splattering the walls and floors with the fluid of their exchange. Jin clambered back up the bank of the pool, reclining with an arm balanced on his knee.

“You’ve ruined my skirt.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a nicer one somewhere.” Vorinclex stretched out his forelimbs. “Was that useful for you, prawn?”

“It was not entirely unproductive,” Jin replied. His transcriptors approached him from behind, still muttering away.

“I could learn even more if we had our entire network of caverns and pools at our disposal.” Vorinclex’s claws flexed. “If you were willing to let me hunt you through the space, I could glean multitudes about how you tick...if such a thing interested you…?”

“Guess.”

“Hmph.”

“A moment.” Jin turned to his transcriptors and, with a single deft swipe of his hand, separated their domed heads from their bodies.

The heads never hit the ground; Jin plucked them out of the air with his other hand, and tucked them into a compartment at his waist. The bodies slumped in place, sagging but standing upright.

Vorinclex sniffed. “Failed in their recording?”

“Succeeded, which is why I will be taking their knowledge into myself. It is an unnecessary risk to have such valuable data wandering around inside beings so susceptible to bribery or abduction. Here-” Jin waved a hand over the bodies, and began collecting the jars and other vials they had assembled. “A gift – you may eat those. I have no more use for their ambulatory parts. These were grown from samples of myself; they can be your consolation prize, since you cannot have me.”

“A waste of resources.” Vorinclex looked down on the bodies with disdain. “Phyrexia is still a closed system until Norn can break through to new hunting grounds. Can’t your research make use of them?”

Jin looked up at Vorinclex, but did not answer right away. He continued to collect the samples the transcriptors had gathered.

“Most likely,” He said at last. “It was only a goodwill gesture.”

“I eat only what is worth being eaten. Those septic corpses are worth nothing.”

“Hm.”

“The exploration of your form is goodwill enough,” Vorinclex rumbled.

“I will offer something else then.” Jin made a strange gesture; a movement of the hand from chest to side. “We are, despite valid criticisms, among the pinnacles of our factions. Your crocus creations-”

“Glissa’s Crocuses. They are the fruit of her labours.”

Jin clicked irritably. “The crocuses are, despite their crudeness, well suited to aiding the sort of newt and germ generation the progress engine has perfected. We might then make children from our respective materials-”

“Yours and mine?”

Jin paused, but Vorinclex pressed on.

“You and me, specifically?”

“It is a proposal with immense promise.”

Vorinclex tilted his head. “I would be...curious to see what comes of it.”

Jin leaned forward, and Glissa imagined for a moment she saw his jaw clench into a smile. “An understandable position. We have this space here, and Norn will approve of anything that could add such potent forces to Phyrexia. If you would only-”

“I won’t,” Vorinclex cut in, with a sudden, unmistakable edge.

“...why?”

“What does it matter ‘why’? I said no.”

Jin hummed in exasperation. “We have already seen great leaps and bounds in our respective factions’ grand designs. Why not join our own materials to see what can be made anew for Phyrexia? Urabrask and Sheoldred have their own project underway, and even the tangle has a fine specimen resulting from your proximity to the Furnace.”

“Norn will have no children of mine.”

"The swarm is already committed to her expansion. To our expansion. What does it matter whether they are of your direct lineage?"

"There is no singular "Swarm" to be committed. Glissa and I don't limit where our hunters range, and I won't deny them whatever killing grounds the Orthodoxy open for Phyrexia. They're free to join Norn's conquests whatever way they please.”

Jin hummed with irritation. “If they are free, then...I ask again, why not-”

“If a phyrexian I spawn chooses, they may follow Norn. If a predator can make itself mightier on the flesh of the planes she wishes to open up, I welcome the chance. If the creatures our factions collaborate on here are meant for her schemes, so be it. What I will not do is personally sire for the sole end of adding to her legions. I won't give my own brood to be her tools. She has you for that, prawn."

Silence. Jin turned away, and busied himself with extracting the vials and other samples from the bodies of his transcriptors, tucking them into a bag at his waist, and several slots along his back.

“It’s a wasted opportunity,” he said at last, not looking up. “This space has already proven useful to our efforts beyond measure. I foresee much great progress being made here.”

“That’s why we were here to-” Vorinclex’s gaze swept the cavern. “Yes. That’s why we agreed to this.”

“I am trying to discover the way forward for all Phyrexia. Not just for Norn’s benefit.”

“Then you should look up from your dissection tables, Jin, and see the world Norn is making with clear eyes, and how you contribute to it.”

“As you do.”

“I know what I am contributing to, and how I am contributing.”

Jin hummed. “I am not ignorant.”

“You don’t have to be ignorant to fool yourself.”

Jin hissed at that, so low it was almost lost in the humming of the cavern, but still he hissed. He turned away from Vorinclex.

From the transcriptor’s bodies, Jin extracted two more vials – long, empty lubes of glass. He waded out into the pool, and knelt.

The fluid was much changed by their activities. From acid-green to blue-green, to something that seemed to Glissa’s eye like colored quicksilver, shimmering form purple to blue to green to black to purple again. It sang a markedly more complex tune now than the humming of the fluid in the other pools.

Slowly, Jin tipped the vials into the fluid and filled them up, stopping each with a plug of gummy black material.

“I will test incubating my next batch of larvae in the fluid from this pool,” Jin said, tucking the vials into compartments in his breast. “It has absorbed some of my own essence, which should at least...counterbalance any defects you might introduce.”

“I’m sure the notion does not make you uncomfortable,” Jin added, somehow baring even more of his teeth than usual. “I do not fear to create life for Norn’s Phyrexia.”

Vorinclex said nothing, but regarded Jin for a few seconds longer.

Then, still without a word, he lowered his maw into the fluid of the breeding pool, and began to drink.

And drink.

Jin just stared. Glissa realized her own breath had caught in her chest.

And still, Vorinclex drank deeply of the stuff, and the humming of the fluid shifted, chords of sound rippling through the cavern as he sucked the glowing stuff up into his maw.

When he at last lifted his head, minutes later, the gaze of every other person in the chamber followed the movement.

He merely licked his chops, and stretched out his shoulders with what Glissa knew to be intentional effect.

“Meager,” Vorinclex noted at last. “But, if I cannot eat you, that’s the next best thing. Maybe you managed to leak a useful mineral or two into the pool.”

Then, with a deliberate grace, he looped out of the pool, leaving Jin to watch him go in silence. Iridescent, humming fluid dripped from his sides onto the spongy metal floor, which soaked the liquid up with a greedy haste.

Glissa smiled at Vorinclex as he rejoined her, then back at Jin, shooting the latter praetor a tight smirk and sneer.

Your scientist has been pleasantly rattled.

Vorinclex grunted.

He’s not mine. And now I’m liable to be sick.

Glissa snorted a laugh.

They began their climb back to the Maze. As the breeding pools disappeared behind them, Glissa patted at Vorinclex’s flank, where Jin had cut into him and delved inside. He rumbled his appreciation, but when she went to wipe the fluid from his jaw, he pulled away.

She let him be. There was much work being done, and yet to be done still. This diversion had certainly been trying enough on its own.

As the light of the Hunter’s Maze began to fill the tunnel, Vorinclex’ tongue slipped out the corner of his mouth.

Almost absently, he began to lick traces of fluid from his chops.

"Keen Sense and Curiosity” is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.

[givemearmstopraywith]

i've spent most of my weekend reading survivor testimony from auschwitz for a research project and i think what im getting is that people have a very very difficult time grasping to the depth of depravity that went on during the holocaust, myself included, because most of what is included in the historical record is too disturbing to portray in media and just "inconsequential" to be taught your average history course (unless you're specifically learning about the holocaust in depth no class is going to talk about the state of the latrines in auschwitz, the fact that it smelled constantly of burnt bones, or exactly what sort of food people had access to). and i think this has led to a real anesthetizing, even sanitizing, of genocide and atrocity in general. it is enabling both reactionary jokesters who make gas chamber jokes and also literal holocaust denial. it is also enables denial of genocide in general, and people who can joke about world war three when there are millions of lives at stake.

israel has played a huge, frankly pivotal, role in sanitizing the holocaust at the expense of survivors and their children. israel has reframed the holocaust as a political and economic tool that can be use to bludgeon colonizer agendas into global consciousness at the expense of humanizing victims. a vast majority of israeli leaders had no direct connection to the holocaust. they did not survive a genocide: they lived in another country. golda meir was american. netanyahu is american. david ben-gurion was happily creating murderous colonizer policies in palestine during the war. it is the sanitization of the holocaust by israel (as well as countries like the us that were absolutely complicit in allowing the holocaust to go on as long as it did) that has led to people being unable to grasp the severity of what's happening in palestine too. and zionists wonder why so many holocaust survivors and their descendents support a free palestine.

[satureja13]

There she is. Albaleyh's ship. Great A'Tuin II And while poor Ji Ho explores how intergalactic travel sickness feels with his new - so much more intense - feelings, the others are in utter awe. Even Vlad turned away from Ji Ho for a second to look at her. Jack: "Wow." Vlad, who reads a lot: "She really looks a bit like a turtle." Jeb is a bit worried: "And she is huge! Look at the X-Wing in comparison! Are you sure we can handle her, Rubyn?" Rubyn: "You prepared thoroughly. Take your time to get used to her. It'll be just awesome once you'd adjusted and she moves, you'll see." They are still talking about the ship, aren't they? Sai can't wait for the huge ship to finally move!

Rubyn docked the Falcon and the Boys went aboard. They just stepped into the ginormous cargo bay when poor Ji Ho collapsed. So sudden that Vlad, who was just a step behind his Bonded, failed to catch his fall: "Gods, Ji Ho!"

Usual plan was to take a short round to explore the ship so Rubyn could show the Boys the main attractions of Great A'Tuin II before she has to leave...

Rubyn: "Vlad, take Ji Ho across the bay. This is where you'll find your quarters. Stay with him and let him rest. The others can show you around later, hm?" Ji Ho scrambled up. No way he is keeping Vlad from taking a look at the first spaceship he's ever been on! (Minus the Millenium Falcon that had brought them here ^^') Ji Ho: "I'm fine!" But even if Vlad wouldn't sense through their Bond how awful Ji Ho felt - he could see how pale he was. And the cold sweat on his forehead. Rubyn, as the highest-ranking officer on board: "This is an order." And so they left. Ji Ho only reluctantly. He felt even more awful now...

And the first thing Ji Ho explored on the first* spaceship he's ever been on, was the talking toilet 'Potty Mouth 2.0'... Potty Mouth 2.0: 'You must feel awful. Don't worry. I'm happy to clean up, sanitize and spray the scent of the wild flowers of Vergon 6 after you left. I hope you'll have a quick recovery.' Ji Ho: "Eh - why, thank you..."

Before Ji Ho could slip into their bed, Vlad had to help him to get rid of his sweaty uniform and wash up. Well, that was not what Ji Ho was wishing for yesterday when he wanted Vlad to be with him under the shower... No one wants his loved one to see him like this...

Ah finally, the bed! Ji Ho could barely keep his eyes open: "I'm fine now. Quick, go and join the others for the tour." Vlad: "I'm not going to leave you alone. We are going to explore everything together. Once you feel better." Vlad is still talking about the tour, is he?

Vlad feels Ji Ho's inner turmoil through their Bond and he knows exactly what Ji Ho was thinking. He's worrying he's going to ruin this whole journey for Vlad. Whenever they'll have to use the shuttle to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations - make small steps for a Boy but giant leaps for mankind - he's going to be sick. And Vlad would want to care for him. And miss it. But Vlad doesn't care - he only cares for Ji Ho. Vlad reassured him and Ji Ho felt his sincerity: "This is a slow ship and we have a long way to go. Means, we have a lot of time until we reach our first destination. I'll talk to Jeb and Kiyoshi and we'll figure out a cure. Don't worry." 'Don't worry'. That's what Potty Mouth 2.0 said too... Ji Ho closed his eyes. Too exhausted to argue. Since they all didn't sleep last night to prepare for the tests, Ji Ho is so, so tired. Soon he fell into a deep sleep. And Vlad stayed by his side. It will help Ji Ho to recover faster when his Bonded is close to him.

The first - and most important - halt on the tour are the transporter chambers. Rubyn: "Don't you ever go near them - let alone enter. This is where the crew vanished in - and what eventually lead to B.D's imprisonment. I tried to turn them off but somehow they're still malfunctioning..." Saiwa gulped: "Understood." First thing under his command will be to block the entries to these horror chambers ö.Ö' No member of his crew is going to vanish here under his watch!

And when they turned around, they saw where B.D's kids must have had their playground... Rubyn let out a short sob: "Albaleyh couldn't bare to come back after B.D had been arrested. I hope you don't mind she didn't clear the kids' stuff away."

Saiwa, determined: "We are going to do everything in our powers to bring him back to his family!" The others nodded grimly. This is so sad.

They continued their tour. Rubyn - now full of pride: "And this is the bridge - connected with the engine room!" Jack: "Whoa!" Oh, Jack can't wait to show Vlad around. This is going to be so awesome!

And there is Moogie's, the bar!

'Starlight, star bright, falling star that I'm seein' tonight

Time is rollin' on and I, I'm the one who's wrong I'm the one should be movin' on, oh babe A heart can only stand so much It needs to touch someone, someone

So, it's up to you, do you love me too? I get so confused when you throw excuses my way, oh baby I need your love to hang on Please tell me that love ain't gone forever

Where is my rainbow, where is my sunny day? (There's a star for everyone who's lost) Where is the fantasy, who took the dream away? (There's a star for everyone) Where is my star, who took the dream away?'

There's a Star for Everyone - Aretha Franklin This song would have totally fit to be on one of the 'Awesome Mix' tapes from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies :3

Outtakes Vlad, who startled Ji Ho when he started to wash him: "Forgive me."

Ji Ho: "It just was a bit unexpected ö.Ö' "

Ji Ho: "Em - keep ...keep going?" Vlad: "Sure?" Ji Ho: "Yes." Vlad: "O - Ok..." Now that was what Ji Ho was wishing for yesterday!

From the Beginning 🔱 Underwater Love 🔱 Latest

Current Chapter: starts ▶️ here Last Chapter: 'Here comes the Sun' from the beginning ▶️ here

📚 Previous Chapters: Chapters: 1-6 ~ 7-12 ~ 13-16 ~ 23-29

[republicsecurity]

Standard Chastity/Underwear/Diaper Component of the Armor Suit

The Standard Chastity/Underwear/Diaper Component is an integral part of the advanced full-body armor suit worn by Cadets, Conscripts, Reservists and Intendurds in the Security Forces, Lifeguards, Paramedic Corps and Nursing Corps and training academies. This component is designed to ensure hygiene, control, and comfort for the wearer, whether used in conjunction with the full armor suit or as a standalone piece of equipment.

Design and Features

Material: Constructed from high-density, hypoallergenic synthetic fabrics, the component provides durability, flexibility, and breathability. The inner lining is coated with an antimicrobial layer to prevent infections and maintain cleanliness over extended periods.

Two-Chamber Design: The component features a specialized two-chamber design. One chamber securely encases the penis, while the other accommodates the scrotum, ensuring both are protected and kept in an optimal environment. This design helps in preventing chafing and maintaining hygiene, even during extended periods of use.

Chastity Mechanism: The chastity feature includes a secure, ergonomic cage designed to prevent unauthorized sexual activity. Made from lightweight, medical-grade polymers, it ensures comfort while maintaining strict control. The cage can be adjusted to fit various sizes and shapes, ensuring a snug but non-restrictive fit.

Waste Management: Integrated into the design is an advanced waste management system. This includes absorbent layers capable of handling urine and fecal matter, which are quickly wicked away to prevent discomfort and skin irritation. The component can be easily cleaned and sanitized, whether worn as part of the armor or independently.

Compatibility: The component seamlessly integrates with the full-body armor suit. Connection points allow for the automated removal and disposal of waste, managed by the suit’s internal systems. When worn independently, it functions efficiently, ensuring the wearer remains hygienic and comfortable.

Security and Monitoring: Equipped with biometric sensors, the component monitors the wearer’s physiological state, transmitting data to the suit’s central processing unit or an external monitoring system. This includes tracking hydration levels, waste excretion, arousal and other vital signs to ensure optimal health and performance.

Comfort and Fit: Designed for extended wear, the component features adjustable straps and a contoured design to prevent chafing and discomfort. The fit can be customized to each wearer, ensuring it remains secure without impeding movement or flexibility.

Usage and Maintenance

Usage: The Standard Chastity/Underwear/Diaper Component is designed for continuous use up to 7 days, with a standard operational period of 5 days. This duration ensures that cadets remain in peak condition during extended training exercises or deployments, without the need for frequent removal or maintenance.

Maintenance: Regular cleaning and sanitization are required to maintain its functionality and hygiene standards. The component can be detached from the suit and cleaned using standard military-grade cleaning agents. Replacement parts and servicing are available through authorized personnel and facilities.

The Standard Chastity/Underwear/Diaper Component exemplifies the blend of technological innovation and practical application, ensuring cadets maintain hygiene and comfort during their rigorous training and operational duties.

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Dracula AU, Pt 3

Lena's anxiety lessens only slightly when Kara assures her that no one was hurt. When Kara lifts her hand to unlock the cell, Lena halts.

"Don't." Bitterness grinds like glass in her throat. "We don't know it won't happen again."

Tears of helplessness glitter in Lena's eyes. It's been weeks of this, each day eroding her sense of reality. And now she's imprisoned, trapped in a cell with none of the contact that had served to ground her even slightly.

"I don't know what to do," Lena confesses, her voice cracking helplessly. Her tears spill onto her cheeks. "Kara..."

"We'll figure it out," Kara vows. "We always do."

And this time, they have to.

----

Trapped in her cell, there's little for Lena to do but sleep. After weeks of torment, she's exhausted, and with nothing to keep her busy she slips into uneasy sleep. But this time, she dreams.

She treads through thick mist, heavy and cloying in her throat. It disorients her, so much so that it takes her several moments to realize what she's looking at when the mist parts to reveal a dark, unfamiliar chamber.

It's several moments later that she realizes her body is not her own. Her limbs feel heavy, her motions clunky as she turns to survey the space around her. When she sees a crumpled heap of a body, clearly dead, in a shadowy corner, she knows exactly what's happening.

The mind sharing goes both ways.

"I'm in the sewer," she says aloud, recognizing the echo of flowing water bouncing against the stone walls. Her words hiss behind unfamiliar teeth and lips. She can only hope that the words travel across the link to her own body, that Kara will not only hear her, but remember.

She narrates all that she sees. A dilapidated crate to one side, with an ancient book sitting atop it with tattered pages in plain view. She doesn't recognize the language printed on them, but the letters are reminiscent of the cyrillic alphabet.

When she exhausts what's in the chamber, she ventures into the narrow passageway beyond. She needs to know where she is, but the cramped corridor gives her nothing but the stench of sewage. She wanders aimlessly, uncertain of how far she travels. She speaks her path-- a left here, a right there... until she hears the scuff of a footstep not her own.

She freezes, then ducks out of sight as a sanitation worker turns a corner at the far end of the tunnel. Lena swallows when the scent of his sweat tingles in her nose, his pulse thumping in her ears. Hunger tears at her throat, and she digs clawed fingers into the concrete wall she hides behind her, to fight the ravenous urge to feed.

No. Not just feed.

Hunt.

The man moves on quickly, unaware of her presence. Only when his scent is once again replaced by sewage does Lena release the wall, and turn the corner once more. If a worker is here, there must be a point of entry nearby.

She traces the man's path to a ladder, haloed by sunlight cascading through the open manhole above. The light sears her vision, causing her to recoil. But she grits her teeth-- her fangs-- and pushes through the pain to take one step, then another towards the light.

Hope sparks in Lena's mind-- beyond learning where she might be, perhaps, just maybe, she could kill this monstrous body altogether. She might perish in the light along with it, but Lena can't bring herself to care. It's time to end this.

Almost as soon as the thought forms in her mind, another presence uncurls in her consciousness. The monster slowly wakes, a vague identity that sharpens with every step she takes. Soon, it begins to struggle for control, slowing her progress to a shuffle then a halt. Pain lances through Lena's mind as the monster's mind rails against hers.

It would be so easy to let go-- she WANTS to relinquish control, to return to the familiarity of her own body. But she fights. For every last inch, she clings to control, desperate to gain something, anything, to aid them.

Pressure builds in Lena's chest, shortening her breath. She's not going to make it to the ladder, let alone the daylight above. But just as her consciousness snaps away, she catches sight of a small placard riveted to the wall of the tunnel.

"Hayward!" she shouts, just as feels her consciousness snap away. In a blink, she's back in the Tower, safe in her cell. Chest heaving, she scrambles to her feet. "Hayward Street! Kara--!"

She whirls around, eyes wide as they meet Kara's.

Kara lifts one hand, waggling the small voice recorder held in her fingers. Kara did hear-- and reacted just the way Lena had hoped.

A grin spreads across Kara's features.

"We've got him."

[coolskeleton59]

Alright, so whats on this "Sanitation" floor?

[* You look around.]

[* You are in a reasonably sized lobby-esque room, looking completely clean and polished- in complete contrast to where you just were. There are multiple posters hanging around reminding employees that they need to wash their hands and wear gloves, shoe covers, and face coverings at all times before entering the main section of the floor.]

[* Up ahead on the opposite wall is a sterilization chamber that you'll need to walk through to access the rest of the floor. The aforementioned gloves, shoe covers, and face masks are dispensed directly in front of the sterilization chamber.]

[bringthekaos]

Jayce never liked going to the undercity, specially the lower levels. It's wet, cold, dark, the air stings and the streets are dirty

But since his "reconciliation" with Viktor, going there feels like a escapade from the poster boy duties, a place where he can truly be himself again. And Viktor's lab feels exactly as how their own lab felt, back in their golden days, organized chaos, coffe, and sense of familiarity.

He is home

Ughhhhh I love this one so much.

Jayce hasn’t felt at home in Piltover for a long time; if you were to ask him when it stopped feeling like home, he can’t really pinpoint a time… he just knows the last time he felt truly at home, felt content and safe and happy, he was in the lab, working with Viktor.

And he’s tried, in the many years since Viktor’s banishment, to get it back—to recreate a home for himself. He talks to a therapist that encourages creature comforts, surrounding himself with things that bring him joy. But this is more of a hindrance than a help, because Jayce doesn’t really find comfort in things. But he tries it anyway—collecting stones and gemstones like he used to when he was a boy. But walking on the beach alone to seek them out just reminds him of the people that used to take those walks with him—his mother, Viktor.

He tries his mother’s old recipes, the ones that used to make him run down the stairs as a kid when he smelled them cooking. He tries listening to his father’s vinyl records, the ones that are so burned into Jayce’s mind that the walls of his boyhood home practically echo with it… but all any of this does is make him ache with nostalgia—yearn for the days when he was a carefree boy with nothing but homework and schoolyard crushes to trouble him. No one idolized him, no one expected the impossible of him. He didn’t have to earn love. It was freely given.

And he was just about to give up—accept that he was never going to feel at home anywhere ever again. Accept that home is an idealized concept, and… not meant for people like him, who once took it for granted.

That is, until those first few nights spent at Emberflit after his reconciliation with Viktor. Viktor built air filtration vents into every room, so the house has a crisp, almost sanitized smell to it, but… Jayce finds that he likes it. Loves it, even—it smells like steam and hot metal… like Viktor himself. He loves the weak light and how it makes the space feel small and intimate. He likes that never-ending hum and tick of Viktor’s gadgetry, the gurgle of chemicals boiling in their beakers. It becomes like a symphony to Jayce’s ears, and he finds that without it, he feels uneasy—the silence of his lab in Piltover made all the more foreign.

He knows this is ass-backwards, that he should not feel so at-ease down in the depths of a city that despises him, breathing moderately-filtered toxic air and writing on a busted old blackboard with repurposed chalk. But he does feel at-ease, he feels safe and comfortable in a way he hasn’t felt in years. And he’s actually kind of embarrassed that it took him this long to figure it out. Home was never a building, it was never a collection of polished stones shining in a windowsill. It was never warm meals or music-filled halls.

It was this. Working into the wee hours of the morning, and sharing a mug of cold coffee. Dozing in uncomfortable chairs to the sound of another’s voice. Passing notes back and forth and leaving ridiculous and sometimes wildly inappropriate doodles on the page before handing it back.

He feels stupid, only just now understanding the meaning behind the saying “home is where your heart is.” It’s been said so many times, but it always rang hollow, it never really clicked. But he gets it now. He may return to Piltover, he may spend whole months up there at a time, splitting his obligations between his lab, his apartment, the Academy, the Council chamber. But his heart resides at Emberflit Alley.

[yourbestpalpercy]

“Applicant 10,038…do you really think you’ll be able to escape? I watched over your tests, I saw how you cheated. You may be smart in some regards but you could barely beat some tests that weren’t even intended to be hard! What makes you think you’ll be able to escape?” Commander Tartar’s voice bellowed over the loudspeaker as 38 ran through the various, terrible chambers. Tartar sounded like it was currently enjoying 38’s struggle. She had just barely managed to crawl her way past the Villi and Belly Phases. She was here now though…at the Intestinal Phase, able to take a moment and catch her poor breath at last.

Her heart was absolutely racing. 38 could barely, just barely catch her breath as she sat against the wall, hand on her heart. 38’s hands shook. She had been almost caught one too many times in the Coccyx phase and almost killed too many times in the Villi and Belly Phase but- but here she was. All she needed to do was get out of this phase and maybe, just maybe, the exit was on the other side. What was her plan for getting back to Octo Valley? Honestly, she didn’t know. Her mind buzzed like a million, angry bees in a jar right now. A jar that was constantly being shaken again and again every minute or two. Sh-She would figure it out though!

38 finally took aim at the button and shot at it, seeing the door open to- …lasers. So..so.. so many lasers. 38 felt her heart sink immediately down to her toes. The lasers weren’t moving but with how many little gaps and places to mess up there were, 38 immediately felt that there was no way she was getting out of this place.

The loudspeaker crackled overhead once more, making 38 realize that it had never been turned off. A new voice spoke as 38 went back to the old checkpoint to see just how many attempts she had to get past this phase, “Tartar, if I could pipe up with my own idea for a moment…” Tartar didn’t respond but 38 heard a shuffling; no doubt it was from him moving in his chair to look at the second voice, “I could try to hunt down Applicant 38, maybe? I’m fairly good at platforming and getting around I’d say.”

Another shuffle; Tartar probably moving to face the microphone again, “Everest, no, you cannot go through and hunt down Applicant 10,038, I will not allow it. You’re far too fragile for how dangerous my security system is. It would be impossible for you to even get to the Intestinal Phase with how little platforming experience you have considering you’ve only done about 12 out of the 80 tests there are. I can’t have you getting hurt or sanitized, Polar Bear. I’d know better than anyone just how easy it is to harm a precious human like you. That’s not to mention the new tests that are being added with a whole new plethora of new kinds of challenges,” The new voice apparently was either named Everest or Polar Bear.

Admittedly, 38 thought the first name was fairly pretty which, if 38 was thinking of the right person, was very fitting. Polar Bear, however, was very dopey and didn’t match the assumed human’s beauty whatsoever. 38 remembered fighting her in one of the tests and she knew enough about her to know that Everest was Commander Tartar’s little saint that they adored like a 12,005 Polémon DX Deloxys Gold Star Holo Rarequeazea card (a card 38 actually had at home by the way). 38 could only roll her eyes as Commander Tartar proceeded to continue to act like Everest was a little fragile butterfly over the loudspeaker for everyone in the facility to hear.

“...Tartar…” Everest groaned (38 could tell that Everest was rolling her eyes too), “The loudspeaker is still on. Everyone can hear you,” A sharp screech shot through the speakers, causing 38 to squeal and cover her ears as best as she could to keep the noise out. The noise was accompanied very shortly after by, “I AM!? UH-! Everyone in the facility- please ignore that-! Just get Applicant 10,038! Do not let them escape! Btw,” Oh my Zapfish, he unironically said btw out loud, 38 almost died of cringe on the spot, “I highly doubt that Applicant 10,038 will be making it past the Intestinal Phase so, 1,869 and Elite, please make your way down to the Intestinal Phase. Oh, and 7, you go too. Get ready to collect Applicant 10,038 when she inevitably fails…” Tartar’s voice became much crueler as it spoke the final word. The loudspeaker shut up quickly after and 38 sat there for an extra second, her body still shaking from the noise.

38 didn’t even realize that she was still standing on the checkpoint, revealing she had 5 attempts. When she did though, she looked up at the status above the checkpoint and saw the 5 attempts she had. You’d expect relief to fill her, that was exactly what she needed right now to get past this segment hopefully. …But instead, 38’s eyes locked onto one of her other statuses.

Slightly sanitized.

That…that didn’t make any sense! When- 38 shook her head. She couldn’t waste time being stressed about being possibly sanitized. The checkpoint had to be broken, time had clearly worn down the checkpoint after all. That status condition had to be the result of someone else who nearly escaped.

38 stared ahead at the lasers before her and aimed her splattershot, beginning to shoot out light blue ink to coat the ground before her and the ground on the other side of the lasers. She turned into her octopus form to regain ink before continuing to coat more ground on the other side of the lasers.

All it took was a small, reckless brush up…

38 respawned back at the checkpoint, the door closed once more. Her ink was still on the ground and her total attempt count had been brought down to 4. Her status now read ‘Partly Sanitized’. 38 grew worried and noticed that up to her wrists and ankles had gone from her mocha skin to sickly, pale, puss-colored green skin. 38 let a shudder run down her back before she charged the door again and opened it with a single shot of her blue ink.

38 let out a determined huff and turned back into her octopus form, swerving through the ink and ducking under the first laser grid without harm this time. Admittedly though, she was very tempted to jump over the bottom laser. 38 popped back out of the ink and turned back to the first laser grid. That bottom laser looked like it was jumpable…right?

38 stared at the laser for a long time before shaking her head and focusing on the second laser grid which was just a singular laser pressed rather close to the ground. She could still swim under that, right? …Right? 38 stared at the laser for a while, longer than the first laser grid, before she shot a large puddle of ink out of her splattershot, making sure that both sides were coated. Again, she swerved through the ink and attempted to dart right under the laser.

Pain shot through her pain for just a second before she respawned, yet again at the checkpoint with the door closed yet again. 38 felt a defeated feeling rising up in her chest before she let out a rough huff and shot the button with blue ink and opened it once more. 38 didn’t even bother checking her status this time. A status that ominously read ‘Moderately Sanitized’. 38 didn’t even notice how her arms and legs, up to her knees and elbows were now that same, pale green that her ankles and wrists were before. One of her eyes were partially red and the ends of her lighter blue tentacles were now a much more visible lime green which had already started to fade into deep blue. 38’s body felt colder now as well.

38 transformed back into her octopus form and jumped over the first laser grid. One of 38’s tentacles got too close to the laser for comfort, nearly causing her to respawn a third time. When the second laser grid came up, 38 jumped over it this time and swerved into the wall. ‘Ouch!’ was the only thought that 38 heard as she emerged from the ink, holding her head weakly in her hands.

Whoops-!

38 stumbled back and fell backwards onto the second laser.

…38’s grip on her splattershot tightened to the extreme as she let out a rough hiss of pure anger. She threw her splattershot to the ground and kicked it at the door. The scraping and the collision noise filled 38’s ears. She looked up at her status again, noticing this time just how cold her body felt along with how green her skin now was. There were only a few, flick traces of her mocha colored skin and her status now read ‘Mostly Sanitized’. 38’s anger was replaced with a dread-filled, heavy, sickly feeling that swiftly started creating a large pit in her stomach.

38 couldn’t afford having any dumb mistakes anymore. She did not want to be a part of Commander Tartar’s mind controlled army. She did not want to share her cousin, Karaage’s, fate (or, as he insisted on being called now, Elite). 38 swam through the ink and quickly picked up her splattershot once more. She shot another spray of blue ink at the button and completely locked in.

38 swam under the first laser with ease, trying to ignore her newly strange thoughts that asked why she was doing this and why she was trying to run from Denewiah (thoughts she attempted to silence with ‘I’m trying to help it with improving its security system’). She jumped over the second laser just as easily. She was much more careful this time. 38 didn’t swerve through the ink and she didn’t slam her head into the wall this time.

She emerged from the ink quickly and took a moment to catch her breath. Immediately after, 38 took aim with her splattershot once more and coated the ground ahead of her and after the third laser grid with more of her light blue ink. If she could just get past this, she could hopefully make it out of this hellhole and back to her parents to tell them that she found her cousin, Karaage.

38 took a calming breath, deeply worried. The thoughts about Commander Tartar still flooded her mind before she leapt through the third grid. For a moment there, she worried she wouldn’t make it. She- she did though! She might actually get through here!

38 fired at the wall, creating a line of ink she could swim up. She slipped through the grate…and immediately was filled with even more dread as she saw the next lasers. ‘There’s more of them!? Are you SQUIDDING me!?’ Her arms dropped to her sides before she groaned sharply…and then heard the door downstairs open up. ‘Crap, he’s here! I gotta hurry up! Wait, why? Commander Tartar is my boss- SHUT UP!’ 38 spotted another checkpoint right in front of her and eagerly activated it. Looking up, 38 found that her status condition still read ‘Mostly Sanitized’. …Guess she really was that close to being sanitized. Her attempt count didn’t go up one either, leaving her at 1 attempt left still.

38 frowned at the sight and looked back at the grate downstairs. Two sanitized octolings in their octopus forms were rapidly shooting through the hallway. AH! 38 sprayed another line of ink in front of her and swam directly in between the first 2 moving lasers, just as they closed, almost causing her final death in the process. Of course those octolings wouldn’t be affected by the lasers, they were already sanitized!

38 then saw the second pair of moving lasers, having almost charged right into them while trying to escape the sanitized octolings. This set was only one laser, moving up and down slowly. A movement that filled 38 with dread just as she heard, echoing from behind, “There she is!” 38 looked back and saw only one familiar face, Karaage.

38 scrambled to fire at the second one and managed to duck under the laser before it came down on her. Karaage wouldn’t let her splat him that easily though, the best 38 could do was keep running.

And believe me, she did. Right now was probably the most focused 38 had ever been! Karaage wasn’t too far behind and every time he got close, he would attempt to grab 38 only to miss as she ducked under his hand and managed to place a kick directly into his stomach. Karaage screamed and fell back into the sanitized laser and was shot backwards by the force of it as well. There. That should hold him for…eh, a few extra seconds. 38 spun back to the final grid of lasers for this part.

There were two, moving up and down rather quickly.

38 felt that large pit form in her stomach once more, a pit made worse by Karaage’s laugh, “You know you won’t be able to get past that! You should just give up! You might end up not being blended if you do,” Karaage pulled himself up off the ground, still nursing his head a little.

38 stared at Karaage. His words sunk into 38’s skin worse than ever. She now stared at her own self. Karaage…was right. 38 knew she couldn’t get past this final laser. A final octoling sprang up from the grate leading back to the first floor. It wasn’t that second octoling Tartar named. She looked different, having blue eyes instead of the red, evil ones that 38 had seen on every sanitized octoling so far.

Karaage met her eyes before turning back to look at the new octoling, “Oh! Finally! About damn time, 7. Clam it all! You’re so clam slow!” Karaage hissed at the new octoling. A death glare formed on Karaage’s face. 38 had never seen it before.

“I’m no slower than you, shuckface! I was just pulled into a conversation randomly, so sorry for not showing up until now!” The octoling flipped him the bird, with an expression of pure hatred twisted across her face, her eyes burning with rage.

38 felt a spike of worry run through her just as she swung back to the lasers-

Everything instantly went black and the last thing 38 felt was a sharp, burning feeling that contrasted with how cold she felt at the same time. 38 had been too close to the laser…

She only heard one last thing; Karaage. “Damn you, 7! I missed my dumbass cousin running into that laser!” He sounded like he was growing increasingly more frustrated.

***

…38’s coldness got worse and worse. She felt dead, very, very dead.

“Good job, Elite,” That was Commander Tartar…

“Ah, you know I could do it. I shoved her face into the laser myself! I watched as she became sanitized in my own hands! You should’ve been there! It was exhilarating!” Elite. 38 didn’t even know his face, how did she know his name?

“Elite, shut up, she FELL into the laser, you’re the one who got pushed into the laser. Stop making up meaningless bullshrip.” 7. How did she…? 38 didn’t even know 7 either, but yet… she knew her name…

“You shut up! You weren’t even paying attention! How would you know what happened!?” Elite screamed at 7 suddenly and Denewiah let out a rough sigh before shoving them apart, “Enough fighting with 7, Elite, and stop making up lies. Even if she did fall into the laser and you were the idiot to get shoved, I’m still congratulating you two for even getting her back to the infirmary. …2…uh, where’s 1,869?” Commander Tartar asked just as 38 opened her eyes. She felt dopey… “Oh, she’s awake faster than most. Interesting.”

38 lifted her head only to set it back down immediately and decided to just look from where she currently was. She was in a bright room and was lying in a bed. To her left was 7 and to her right, much farther away of course, was Elite who seemed amused by her even waking up. And, just in front of her, was the android she had somehow managed to outsmart.

Its eyes narrowed a little at the sight of 38, tucking its hands behind its back, “Applicant 10,038, can you tell me what 9 + 10 is?” 38 stared at Commander Tartar and carefully sat up in her bed, “Uhm…21?”

Denewiah groaned, “You’re stupid. Great. Exactly what I needed right now,” Commander Tartar rubbed his temples before spinning around and starting to leave the room, “Whatever, you can be a guard, can’t be too hard. 7, Elite, show our newest recruit around the Kamabo Labs please…”

Elite looked at 7 with a disapproving look again and once Commander Tartar was far enough away, he said, “Yeah no. I’m not being stuck with either of you again,” Elite crossed his arms before approaching 38, a smirk coming onto his face. 38 couldn’t hide the worry coming onto her own face.

“Welcome to Commander Denewiah Tartarus’s army, Nakji…”