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1moremilgram-enjoyer · 7 months

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A Theory on the Kayanos' Murders

CW Violent murder, blood, mention of dismemberment

Hello members of the jury! I'm currently writing a few posts regarding the prisoners' murders and forgiveness and all that, so I decided I would explain my full theory on what the Kayanos' murders are, since while it's nothing out of the norm (I think), my exact interpretation gets a bit specific. And thus, I want to put all the evidence I have for my claims in one post so I don't sound insane when discussing these two.

(Yes despite what my previous posts may imply I actually believe Twokoto now lol. I still think Trikoto is perfectly fine, I just think Twokoto makes a bit more sense currently)

Again, it's nothing too wild; I believe Mikoto killed someone on the side of the road, the trauma from that caused John to be 'born', and then John killed at least two other people because he knew they were causing Mikoto trouble.

Claim 1: John killed people

A big part of this post is going to rely on the windows in Double. In case you're not aware, it's generally agreed that white windows are related to Mikoto while black windows are related to John. It's easy to tell from the first chorus, the start of the second verse, and the second chorus. Mikoto to the left, John to the right.

Additionally, when the windows are white, the train seems to be moving to Mikoto's left to the right (perspective from the first chorus), while when the windows are dark it moves from John's right to his left. This gives the impression that Mikoto and John are sitting across from each other, with Mikoto on the left side of the train and John on the right side. Here, I made a graph to help with the perspective because it is a bit mindfucky.

(Clarification: when I say "Mikoto's perspective" I actually mean our perspective while looking at Mikoto. Same with John. Apologies for the confusion)

Of course, that's assuming they actually are on the same train, going in the same direction, but I don't think that's too wild an assumption to make.

It's important to note this doesn't have anything to do with the window colors, which are exclusively used to differentiate alters, with the exception of the very end where John is seen with white windows long story. Rather, this perspective thing is a surprise tool which will help us later.

Anyways, now that we know the window thing, it's not hard to see how John has killed at least one person.

I mean, yeah. He sure do be killing in that shot. Black windows, so this is John. There's also this:

Although the kill itself has white windows in the background, the train compartment it happens in has dark windows.

Plus there's the whole "I saved you, right?" in the past tense. It can't be referring to John taking the fall for Mikoto's murder (we'll get there), since Mikoto hasn't been saved from that yet. Instead, it sorta has to be about John previously killing people that were stressing Mikoto out. Especially when looking at other lines like:

[Double] You’re overdoing it, you’re already broken But if you persist, I guess it’s my job to keep things on an even keel Me, the other you I’ll take it all on

The use of present tense in "you're overdoing it" implies this is being sung at a time when Mikoto is overworking, and it's now that John will "keep things on an even keel." Combined with him picking up the metal bat here, it seems he's talking about killing to ease Mikoto's issues.

Which, speaking of, I should probably say why John would kill anyone.

Claim 2: John's Motivations

[Neoplasm] Es: Can I ask… why you killed them? John: They annoyed me. Es: Who did you kill? John: Just someone who was walking around nearby. Es: … How many did you kill? John: Can't remember. I was first born back then, you know. It's kinda fuzzy.

Now, these claims aren't the most trust-worthy, but we'll get there when we get there. For now, all we have as a stated motive is "they annoyed [me]" (no pronoun used, it's ambiguous who they actually annoyed) and "to save Mikoto." The good news is that we actually did sorta see a situation where John tried to kill someone, meaning we can get an idea of what his modus operandi is.

I'm referring to the point in John Doe where John attacks Es.

[John Doe] Mikoto: I became a murderer… without even knowing it…? There's no way, no way… Es: Let's give it some time. The threads of your memory might untangle themselves eventually. Mikoto:*Gasping* Es: A murderer without memory of killing… in which case, how should I think of you… Hey, Mikoto– John: AAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!

Es does absolutely nothing between the time John starts fronting and when John attacks them. And if you look further, Es doesn't do much else. That means either John has some idea of what was going on before he started fronting, or he can feel Mikoto's resentment even though he isn't the one fronting.

This is where I acknowledge I am not an expert in DID, I'm not a system, and because of that there is a high chance I get stuff wrong, please correct me if I say anything stupid!

Although I unfortunately can't find any better sources for this than some Reddit threads, from what I understand it's possible for one alter to feel the emotions of a different alter who isn't fronting. This means John could have known Mikoto was getting really frustrated with Es, and decided Es had to die for that. However, it's unclear how much John knew about the situation, since he never says anything too specific.

As a result, it's possible John is willing to attack people because he can feel Mikoto hates them, even if he isn't fully sure why Mikoto might be frustrated at them. On the other hand, perhaps John does retain memory of what Mikoto goes through even when Mikoto is fronting. Again, I can't find good sources on how this works, but from what I've seen some systems do have alters which can share memories to an extent. I really hope I'm not saying anything horrendously stupid lol.

Anyways, the point I'm trying to make is that regardless of how it happens, John's desire to kill his victim(s) comes from Mikoto's frustrations with those people.

[Neoplasm] John: …! … I think… I might be the person Mikoto wishes he was. The person who stubbornly stands his ground, who doesn't cry himself to sleep from stress, who gives people their payback.

The fact he's represented by the Devil card, which is associated with people's darkest desires, supports the idea his actions are an extension of Mikoto's wishes.

This can also be inferred from the "neuron" scene in Double. You know the one, the one that goes "Doesn't matter if you didn't wish for it, can't get rid of me now". I interpret those silver star things to be representative of neurons, and it's animated in the way it is to represent Mikoto's thoughts (the words in blue) reaching John's conscious at the bottom (the red). I hope that makes sense.

So in short, I believe John found out Mikoto was getting bothered by certain people, and that's why he killed them.

Claim 3: Mikoto killed a guy

Alright so now the harder one to prove. Let me add up all the evidence.

Point #1: Mikoto is the Milgram prisoner, not John

This one is pretty straightforward. Since Milgram doesn't gather every single murderer in the world, John not being a prisoner doesn't mean he didn't kill. But the inverse is potentially true; if Mikoto is a prisoner, then he must have killed someone. Unless there's more alters and one of them is the prisoner, this makes some sense.

The counter-argument is that Milgram is very clearly not designed for systems, so it's possible Mikoto is only the prisoner because he's the host and no other reason. Still, it's worth keeping in mind.

Point #2: A murder on light windows

Take a look at this scene from Double.

As you can see, the way this is framed, it looks as if Mikoto is running away from John. Down to the horror movie motifs of "victim running - persecutor walking." This time, the windows on both sides of Mikoto are white, while the windows on both sides of John are black, instead of there being white and black across from each other.

Looking at the scene, which I can't really show you with still images and will need you to confirm yourself, is that John and Mikoto are moving in the same direction as the train. You can tell based on the relative speed of the objects outside. And yet, there's body parts outside of the train, which move from the front to the back. On the white windows. Which represent Mikoto. And there's an entire window between the left of the screen (where for all we know the windows could change) and where the blood appears. Here's a diagram.

So, uh, Mikoto? Who the hell killed that guy? It certainly wasn't John, especially because the body parts are outside. John was the one who got onto the train (see: cigarette), so I would argue a murder outside could imply it was performed by Mikoto, who notably doesn't usually ride trains. Although I'm not sure that reasoning makes sense to anyone but me.

However, the body being outside presents a much bigger issue for Mikoto's innocence. When John swings, and apparently causes something similar to happen, he's inside. We don't see the mannequin he supposedly hits, and God knows how the pieces ended up outside. Not to mention he for some reason swings at where the legs would be, instead of at the head like all the other attacks we see.

My point here is that this murder makes very little sense if John is supposed to have caused it. Because of all that, to me, this represents John taking the fall for Mikoto's one kill. Unlike the other John murders, which show the "victim" and make physical sense, this one doesn't show the victim and has inconsistencies because John didn't do it. The murder was originally in the white windows, and John is scrambling to make it look like it happened on the black windows, even though that doesn't really work as shown by the diagram above.

Am I taking these scenes too literally? Maybe, but even symbolically, what does it mean if blood appears when the windows are white? Surely there's at least a chance it's Mikoto doing this murder.

Point #3: 3rd Anniversary artwork

Let's first establish what the 3rd anniversary art usually represents. It's been pointed out by many before me that these pieces are closely connected to the prisoners' murders. This is clearest with Muu, Amane and Kotoko.

Muu is wearing her school outfit, but she has a shoe off, just like she did when she killed Rei.

Amane is wearing her Magic outfit, but she's holding her thunder wand, which places this image near her murder. Specifically right before her murder, as she's still wearing her black bow tie instead of her cloud medal thing.

Kotoko is holding her Jacques Roulet cap, a hat she usually only uses alongside her blue and yellow jacket. The only exception is during her murder, where she's wearing the outfit we see in the anniversary artwork while the cap rests on the floor.

The others all hold up with this hypothesis. Yuno is wearing her yellow shirt, the one she's wearing in Tear Drop near the end when she lets out a tear, presumably representative of her murder. Fuuta is wearing the hoodie and mask he wears throughout Bring it On, and he's holding his phone, which does fit doxxing Killcheroy even though it's more generic. Kazui and Mahiru are wearing the outfits they wear in the scenes of their respective lovers' death. Haruka wears his Weakness plain white outfit, which could point to any moment of his narrative, including the murder. And the only times we see Shidou physically kill (cutting off flowers), he's wearing the floral jacket he wears in the artwork.

I want to be clear. For most of them, the relation to the murder could just be because they don't have many outfits in their MVs. However, Muu's, Amane's and Kotoko's feel extremely intentional, and the fact none of the other ones contradict this trend makes it feel like it could be universal.

Which gets us to Mikoto's artwork. And in his artwork, he's holding (what looks to be) a vape pen. John smokes cigarettes, so that's definitely Mikoto. In the murder artwork. So, uh. Yeah. That certainly feels like he must have killed at least one person.

The only small contradiction is that his beanie is nowhere to be found, which is why I don't consider this definitive. However, the fact they specifically chose to make Mikoto hold a vape pen when every other prisoner can easily be connected to the murder feels... intentional.

Point #4: Swing and a hit

More Double screenshots.

So a few weird things. For starters, let's get something straight: there's two murders depicted here. Notice how the first image shows a Kayano swinging with a right-handed swing, then the second shows John (black windows) doing a left-handed swing. The important thing isn't the type of swing, but the fact they're different.

(I know I made some posts at one point about dominant hands, but as my beloved and extremely smart mutual accirax pointed out a lot of the time Milgram characters switch hands because it looks better for the animation, so they're sorta ambidextrous by default lol)

It's not hard to realize if you try to follow the motion yourself. The only way this works is if he swings one way, then the other, which doesn't fit the fact all mannequins are usually destroyed after just one hit. And it's not like it's an animation issue: you can literally fix this by flipping the image.

... Okay it does look a bit awkward but I think it works well enough. It's less weird than the swing changing mid-way through.

To me, this is similar to what I talked about before with the white window murder. John's subconscious trying to convince itself this was John by thinking back to a different murder that has nothing to do with this one. I have no idea if that makes sense.

And then there's the fact the background in the first image is pure white. This doesn't have to mean the one fronting is Mikoto, but why leave it ambiguous if it would have worked perfectly fine with black windows in the background?

Hell, actually, who says we're on the train? This is the only scene in the entirety of Double (apart from the mom phone call) where it's unclear whether we're on the train or not. And as we established, if there is a murder outside the train, it would probably be Mikoto murdering.

And don't get me started on the blood, the eye, and the noise in the background.

First, the background noise in this scene famously has baby crying noises. Could it be we're witnessing John's "birth"? Because if that's the case, then either John was born during the phone call with the mother, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you think about it, or John was born during or after the murder on screen.

This actually fits with the close-up of the eye. Despite the fact that "right-hand swing Kayano" seems pretty chill as he attacks the mannequin, right as the scene end, his pupils become smaller as if he's surprised by something. But what would he be surprised about? To me, it feels like "right-hand swing Kayano" was perhaps dissociating (I think that's the right term, please correct me if I'm wrong), and then John is born. Naturally, John gets surprised by the fact the first thing he sees is a dead person, explaining the odd reaction.

Funnily enough, this is actually supported by the very strange blood behavior. It's hard to describe, so bear with me. You see how there's one big orb at the center of the screen? And it starts with one small drop, which enters the orb, and then three small droplets come out the other side? Uh... Diagram?

This isn't normal blood behavior, of course (<- not that I know what normal blood behavior actually is, but I know how liquids work and this ain't it). It's imagery of something splitting, which in the context of alters, fits alongside the baby noises and the weird reaction to murder. Although I fully acknowledge the blood thing falls into the territory of "am I reading too much into this or is Milgram just insane?", so you know. Take it with a few metric tons of salt.

(Funnily enough, it does split into three things. Trikoto win? It doesn't convince me, but the interpretation is valid)

To recap, we have a strange murder with a white background, possible misdirection by showing a completely unrelated murder performed by John, baby noises, imagery of something splitting, and a reaction to the murder which could support an alter being born in that very moment. All of this could imply this "right-hand swing murder" is the moment John is born, which would mean the actual murderer is Mikoto.

Point #5: The tarot spreads in MeMe

This one is very abstract, but it can definitely point to Mikoto murdering someone. Take a look at the two different spreads we see in the first chorus (the first one flashes twice but it's the same).

These things are really complicated, and I should probably do a post about them at some point, but I'm gonna focus on the main things, that being the changes between the two spreads.

For starters, we see that the "querent" card, the one in the middle of The Wheel, is the reversed Hanged Man. Since this is the portrait besides The Fool in the water world thing, it can be assumed the reversed Hanged Man represents Mikoto. Thus, these are his spreads.

Then, the Outcome card of the first spread is the Devil. Since the Devil card on its own also flashes after the second spread, it can be assumed the Devil is also the Outcome of the second spread, as that's the only card which is not visible. Then, as stated before, the Devil card is related to John. This means the Outcome of the situation depicted in these spreads is John. In other words, this is the situation which led to John appearing.

Now we have to establish how we're supposed to read these things. I've explained it in another post, but basically, the only way we can tell how we're supposed to read the cards in The Wheel is by knowing the order they're drawn, so we can determine if the meaning is based on position or draw order (long story). We can do this by looking at the final spread, where it appears the cards are drawn Bottom->Right->Left->Top. This doesn't exactly fit any common way of drawing them, so we read based on position. Aditionally, since this is Japanese media and the card to the right is drawn before the card on the left, middle row of The Wheel is Future<-Present<;-Past. And based on the way the upright Page of Pentacles is placed in the final spread, if the name of the card is to the left the horizontal card is upright, if not it's reversed. If that doesn't make any sense to you, don't worry too much about it, I'll walk you through the important parts. You want a diagram? No? Well, you're gonna get one so-

After clarifying that, we can see that in these two spreads, while most of everything remains consistent, the Future and the Conscious change, the Challenge flips, and the Attitude is revealed. Let's take it one step at a time.

Let's start with the first spread. In the Challenge position (horizontal middle), we have the upright Queen of Swords. This card can represent anything you want tarot reading is so annoying a couple of things, including an authority figure. In the Challenge position, it could indicate there is a lack of communication, that the querent is being too "cold", in the sense they're not expressing their emotions correctly.

Then, in the Conscious position, the thing Mikoto is actively working towards, we have the Ace of Cups. This card can represent new beginnings, new relationships, good fortune, basically "good new things are coming your way." However, there is a slight change between MeMe's Ace of Cups and the IRL version, which could change the meaning a bit.

(No I don't know why MeMe calls it "Cup of Ace" that's just wrong lol)

As you can see, the IRL version has the water from the cup spilling on its own, while the MeMe version has the cup being intentionally spilt on top of a few mannequins. What I think this could mean: if you take the water spilling as a good thing (which is how it's usually interpreted, the idea is that spirituality is overflowing or something like that), the IRL version shows that new good things are coming no matter what, while the MeMe version has the water spilling intentionally because Mikoto is actively trying to cause new, good developments, such as new relationships (we'll get there). That's also why it's in the Conscious position, Mikoto is consciously trying to build a good new relationship.

After that, in the Future position, we have the reversed Wheel of Fortune. This can mean a lot of things, but it mainly has to do with a negative cycle in someone's life. In the Future position, then, this could mean a perpetuation of a negative cycle in Mikoto's life. Thus, in the first spread, if things continue as they are in that moment, the cycle of abuse Mikoto suffers at work will continue.

The Attitude card is obscured. I should note that this card can actually be read in a few different ways, but I think "Attitude" fits best here.

I'll also note the Subconscious card at the bottom of the Wheel ("so below") is the reversed Ten of Wands, which can represent Mikoto is feeling overburdened. Which we know certainly applies to his work.

Let's see here. Mikoto has a problem, possibly with someone in a position of authority, and feels overburdened. This could point to the Queen of Swords being a boss or a manager or something like that. It's upright because Mikoto isn't being direct enough in his desires; he's trying to 'play nice' and build up his relationship with the "Queen", that's what the Ace of Cups could represent. Not like I think his situation would actually improve if he told this "Queen" that he felt overworked, but still, the idea that Mikoto is bottling up his emotions definitely fits what we see of him. If he keeps it up, the cycle of (workplace) abuse will continue, represented by the reversed Wheel of Fortune. This would lead to Mikoto's darkest desires exploding; the Devil is the Outcome.

Let's move to the second spread. The Challenge is still the Queen of Swords, but reversed. This could imply the person giving Mikoto problems is still the same, but now the issue is that Mikoto is being too emotional. Again, there are a lot of ways to read these things, but I think that works.

The Conscious card is now the reversed Wheel of Fortune, which could mean Mikoto is actively aware of and possibly trying to break the negative cycle he's in.

The Future is now the Ace of Cups, which could imply there is a new relationship in Mikoto's future. This is where we acknowledge that the water can also represent consciousness, and in the MeMe version, it is being spilt over mannequins. And...

*sigh* The Ace of Cups can be associated with pregnancy, which fits the whole "newborn" thing John's got going on.

Indeed, I believe the new relationship in Mikoto's future is John, a "mannequin" receiving "consciousness." There is no other thing this could really allude to besides Milgram, which I don't think these spreads reference. However, if this really is about John, that would mean this spread is showing a situation before John's birth.

The Attitude card, which (according to most sources, there are conflicting reports on what the first card of The Wand is) represents how the querent is trying to achieve their Conscious goal, is the reversed King of Cups. This is most often associated with emotional repression, but it can also be connected to violence. Which is very interesting, because John has the same Attitude card in his spread. And we know how he approaches his issues (violence).

So all in all, Mikoto is having issues with an authority figure, and he's (possibly) being emotional about it. He's trying to break out of a negative cycle, and he's doing this either by repressing his emotions or by pulling a John (violence). In the future, this will lead to John's birth, which is why the Outcome is still implied to be the Devil.

This, by itself, doesn't necessarily imply murder. Again, the Attitude could be emotional repression and not violence. The weird thing is that the spread changed. And that means something had to happen to get the Future to change. The change can't have been John being born; that's still in the Future. And the thing we know happened is that the Conscious goal Mikoto was working towards changed, from wanting a prosperous new beginning or relationship to destroying an existing cycle.

Because of that, to me, it feels like the change between the first spread and the second is that Mikoto decided to let his emotions take over (reversing the Queen of Swords) and killed (reversed King of Cups) the authority figure who was causing him trouble, and this caused John to be born.

The final thing to note is that John's Past card is the Wheel of Fortune (upright). This could be read to mean the situation leading up to John's current situation is the destruction of a cycle, which fits the idea that Mikoto tried to destroy it before John was born.

Is this definitive evidence? Hell no! Tarot readings are so ambiguous that I'm pretty sure you can read these to mean whatever the hell you want them to mean. This is just my take on it, I don't even necessarily consider it good evidence because again, if you just take different meanings from the cards you can get whatever. But it's still something.

Point #6: John's insistence

Let's see what John says about the murders again.

So, as stated, John may have killed people without fully knowing why Mikoto was angry at them, but that doesn't mean this makes perfect sense. We know their victims weren't just "someone who was walking around nearby". Unless Mikoto regularly carries around a metal baseball bat for some god-forsaken reason, there must have been some kind of premeditation at play. John has to at least be hiding the real reasons for the murders, possibly because Mikoto might consider them shameful (more on that in a bit). This opens the door to the possibility he's hiding more than just that, and that makes a lot of his other claims seem a bit... desperate.

[Neoplasm] John: From [Mikoto's] point of view, he's being blamed for a crime he can't even remember. Es: If that's the truth, then… you're the one who committed the murder? John: Yeah, it's me. I killed them off. Es: … John: So Mikoto really didn't do it. Es: Is this really something that works that conveniently? John: Just put yourself in Mikoto's shoes for a moment! He was bottling up all his stress! He kept dealing with it all by himself the whole time, until it exploded! It's not like he just decided that he wanted to hurt somebody! Es: … John: He's not the type of person who could do stuff like that! He always looks out for others, always reads the room, always tries to get along with people around him! He can't do stuff like that… He was on the verge of exploding! That's why I was born. It's terrible, isn't it? My other self didn't do anything! Es: Even if that's true… Even if it wasn't what Mikoto wanted – someone's life was still lost. [...] John: I'm the one who did it! Mikoto didn't do it! You know that because of MILGRAM! I don't care about the law, I want to know what you think! Es: … John: Please… forgive Mikoto. I'm the one who did it.

The amount of times John tries to take the fall for every single murder is so insane it makes it sound suspicious. Why does he say it so much?

Still, I'll be honest, this might just be confirmation bias, as a lot of these lines can still absolutely be read with the interpretation that John is the only killer.

John: If I, the "John" personality, hadn't been born, I'm sure Mikoto would have reached his limit and fallen apart. Es: John… you… John: It's true that I was the one who wanted to destroy everything… and the weakness of Mikoto, who couldn't stand up for himself all alone, might have been the origin of that. But… that's all there is to it. Is that a sin?

So I don't consider this evidence at all, frankly. In fact, Neoplasm is one of the things which make me doubt the Mikoto-killer theory a bit, but I don't think it outright deconfirms it or anything. I'm just including this because I know some people think he's extremely suspicious here.

Point #7: Small visual stuff

1- The first time we see victims in Double, John's bat doesn't have any blood on it, which could imply the one who killed the mannequin(s) beside him was Mikoto.

2- The mannequin standing in for Death in the Death card is blue, a color most associated with Mikoto.

This one isn't great because you can read it more symbolically, with Mikoto being the main force of change in the system's life instead of someone who brings death. Though I'd argue the mace thing sort of implies something more violent.

3- At the start of Double, we see this:

The guy is shown as a blue and red mannequin, but what's interesting is that the blue part has a skull and the red part has a map thing. I don't consider this very important, but the blue with the skull could be indication of Mikoto having killed someone.

4- In Double, Mikoto is represented by antlers (I think that's what they are) in the same way John is represented by a crown of thorns ("savior", etc).

Antlers mainly represent strength, which feels a bit weird for Mikoto. I'm gonna be honest, I'm not confident on what these represent. But one possible interpretation comes from the fact they are always paired with the lyric (written on screen) "All I did was dream, so you find me INNOCENT, it’s that simple right?". The connection of the antlers with Mikoto's dream could imply Mikoto tried to use strength to fulfill a dream, which could imply he murdered someone to achieve something. Additionally...

*sigh* Antlers fall off after mating season, which could be connected to Mikoto "losing his antlers" after John is born, since Mikoto doesn't have to kill anymore.

I'm sure there are other interpretations, but I don't think this one is too bad.

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So, all of this, is it conclusive evidence of anything? I wouldn't say so, it's all still pretty vague. However, I believe all of it together points to Mikoto having killed one person, and this is what explains all this in the best way. Thus, I presume Mikoto did kill someone.

Claim #4: Mikoto's Motivations

CW for this section: potential stalking

I've sorta alluded to it in the tarot section, but I believe Mikoto killed someone in a position of authority over him as a result of workplace abuse. In particular, Mikoto was heavily overworked, possibly to the point this authority figure was somehow monitoring his home life and possibly even stalking him.

Let's start by the workplace abuse thing. This is an extremely important point in Mikoto's narrative; it's referenced in his Undercover silhouette shot, it's shown in the messages from "Chief" at the start of Double, the neuron scene from Double, his interrogation questions, etc. Mikoto is being overworked, to the point his boss/manager/whatever talks to him about work past midnight. It would be very strange, narratively speaking, if all of this didn't have anything to do with the murder. Also the whole "Queen of Swords is the Challenge/problem" could allude to an authority figure, which also fits this idea.

So then, what about the monitoring/stalking? Well, there's a lot of camera imagery in MeMe, for one. Most notably in the scene when Mikoto comes home and leaves his bag to the side as he breaks down, relating his stress to the idea of being watched. There's also an abundance of eye imagery in Double, especially in relation to Mikoto. This is also included in the MVs version of the Hanged Man card, which has a bunch of eyes around the mannequin. This alludes to some form of judgement or pressure, (<- Fuuta reference?) which could be connected to either societal pressure or, what I find a bit more likely, the judgement of Mikoto's higher-up(s) in his workplace.

Because of this, I believe one of Mikoto's higher-ups was heavily monitoring Mikoto's life even outside of work, which drove him to the point he felt he had to get rid of them. All he did was dream... of a better life.

This could also be why John hides the reasons for the murders. Even if he is actually aware of the full situation, he could be trying to hide that Mikoto felt tired from work, because in a way it's possible Mikoto would consider that shameful. I hope that makes sense.

Claim #5: Which is Mikoto's kill?

Assuming Mikoto only killed one person before John started taking over murder duties-

(I think that's a fair assumption, I think it would be weird if John only split after like three murders. Like, oh the first two weren't stressful enough to cause a split, but the third one is too much? What? There's something else that makes me think John split after just the first one, we'll get there)

-that begs the question: which one was Mikoto's? Well, since Double isn't exactly reliable for what the murders looked like, I'll only take MeMe's versions into account. There are at least three murders in MeMe: the Subway Murder, the Streetside Murder, and the Trash Bag Murder.

We know the Trash Bag Murder is different from the other two because the murderer isn't wearing a hoodie in that one, a fact which took me an embarrassing amount of time to notice. Unless he went home, changed, went back to dispose of evidence and still had the beanie for some reason (since he throws it away), it has to be different. And probably on a different day, too. Because of that, I'll henceforth call it the No Hoodie Murder.

Let's run through what we have. We see the Subway murder almost in full at the beginning of MeMe, where Kayano swings around his bat flippantly before killing a blonde dude with a simple overhead swing. However, right in the middle of that scene, we quickly cut to the Streetside murder, where we see Kayano hitting the victim with a right-handed swing.

After that we have a scene of John (because at this point it would be John) coming home and taking off his shirt. Since there is a Fool card portrait in the background, I'll call this the Fool Portrait scene. Notably, we never see John take off a hoodie or a beanie, meaning this is probably related to the No Hoodie Murder.

Then we have Kayano doing... something to the Streetside victim. It's unclear exactly what that is; I've seen some people say he's burying the victim, but to me that always looked like he's dismembering them to put them in trash bags. It's not too important, though.

An important fact is that in this scene we see his left cheek is blood-stained. This is consistent with the following bath scene, where we see John brushing his teeth with blood trailing down from his left cheek.

In the middle of those scenes, we see the clean-up for the No Hoodie murder. Trash bags and the beanie are disposed of in an illegal dumping ground.

Finally there's the bathtub scene, but frankly it's not very relevant to this discussion.

So, which one is Mikoto's? I'll start by ruling out the No Hoodie murder. There is an argument for it, though. It's definitely the most hidden of the murders, which makes it suspicious. Since the Fool represents new beginnings, you could argue the Fool Portrait scene shows John's "beginning". And since I said it's probably related to this murder, you could argue that means the No Hoodie murder is the first one.

However, that doesn't really convince me. Unless the Kayanos have multiple beanies (which is possible, but I'd find it weird narratively speaking), this would have to be the last murder in the sequence, while Mikoto's would have to be the first. The fact it was done without a hoodie also contradicts the 3rd Anniversary artwork reasoning, since Mikoto wears a hoodie there, but to be fair the lack of beanie makes the outfit somewhat inconsistent anyways.

Meanwhile, you could argue there's a symbolic implication that John and Mikoto have already split by the time the Subway murder happens, in the way the towers close and behind Kayano have lighting split down the middle between red and blue light.

(Yes this is one of the reasons I'm keeping the red and blue color scheme despite no longer believing RGBkoto)

No, I believe the Streetside murder is Mikoto's. It's technically the first one we see, but more importantly, the location matches Mikoto's prisoner card image, and the swing fits the Undercover kill-shot.

Since Mikoto is the Milgram prisoner, these two things would probably be related to his murder, not Johns'.

Funnily enough, you can also argue that this murder is too expressionless for John. Which sounds odd, considering John is usually the less expressive of the two, but funnily enough, the only times we see John express emotion is when he goes to do a violence, either because he's frustrated at the person who hurt Mikoto or because he's happy to protect him.

[John Doe] John: SHUT YOUR MOUTH!!! Es: *Gasp* John: YOU KEEP BLABBERING ON AND ON... I'M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU, YOU PIECE OF SHIT! *John continues to beat Es* John: GOING ON, AND ON, AND ON... ALL HIGH AND MIGHTY... LIKE YOU AREN'T JUST A KID! SERVES YOU FUCKING RIGHT! Es: …emember… John: HUH-!? I CAN'T HEAR YOU! YOU'RE NO MORE THAN JUST A KID. YOU UNIMPORTANT BRAT! Es: .........I'll remember you… you murderer…! John: HUH?! *Laughter* YOU PREFER IT WHEN IT HURTS MORE, HUH? Es: ......! John: THAT'S FINE... I'LL CRUSH YOUR FUCKING FACE. Es: Go ahead… and try… John: YOU DON'T NEED TO TELL ME TWICE! *Screams* [...] Kotoko: His technique is definitely that of an amateur… John: SHUDDUP!!! Kotoko: ...! *Sighs* I can't imagine that power from his muscle mass. John: ANNOYING... YOU'RE ANNOYING...! ARGH...!

This even fits the lackadaisical twirling of the bat in the Subway murder. It's one of the reasons I believe that one's John's.

Meanwhile, the one time we see a Kayano swing a bat without emotion on his face is the right-hand swing in Double, which as we established is probably Mikoto. Thus, the idea that John shows more expression than Mikoto when it comes to murdering holds up. The punch at the end of MeMe doesn't count because that's John attacking Mikoto, which is only metaphorical.

Still, this isn't exactly great evidence of anything, since John is still usually less expressive than Mikoto in general.

Anyways, which murder is Mikoto's isn't too important anyways, this section was more to satisfy curiosity than anything else.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And that's it! Again, this is just my interpretation and theories, it's perfectly fine if you believe something else. I know it isn't anything new, but I wanted to put it all in one place so I can reference back to it if, say, I'm answering an ask about whether or not I forgive the prisoners' murders (I swear I'm working on it lol). Anyways, take care!

#milgram #mikoto kayano #john kayano #milgram theory #meme mv #double mv

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jacenotjason · 6 months

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THE DEEP END - PART ONE

A/N: HEyy this is my first time writing fanfic in a lONG Time! I decided to do a sort of part one/prologue to warm up let me know what you think! ill do part two if this is received well

cw: discussion of murder

Inspired heavily by “The Lamb” by ItsJustHedy “Have you ever thought about it?” The neon lights of the Candy Club buzzed a quiet metronome for their conversation. The four of them sat in a booth in the back, milkshakes on the table. Roy sat next to Robert, Ross sitting beside Susie on the other side. Roy's question hung in the air, a palpable tension enveloping the booth. The lights flickered momentarily, casting fleeting shadows on the quartet's faces.

Susie, unsure of why she was invited to this clandestine meeting, blinked in surprise. She fidgeted with the straw of her milkshake, her eyes darting between the three members of the HatZGang. They weren't exactly her friends, but Robert had promised to treat her to a milkshake, and she was eager to escape whatever eldritch horror Pump would bring home that day.

As Susie sipped her milkshake, she realized the question had been directed at her. "Thought about what?" she asked, trying to feign nonchalance. She had been listening to the conversation, of course, but she asked in hopes that the question wasn’t related.

"Murder," Roy said, his voice low and almost playful. The word hung in the air, heavy with a tension Susie hadn't anticipated.

Susie's eyes widened, and she almost choked on her milkshake. She glanced around nervously, as if expecting someone to pop out and reveal this was all some strange prank. "Murder? Why would I think about that?"

“How would you do it?” Ross explained, “Just hypothetically, of course,” his eyes darted between his two friends, then to Susie as he repeated himself. “How would you do it?”

“...How would you?” Susie replied instead, attempting to direct the attention of the conversation away from her.

Ross looked away from her, looking down at the milkshake in front of him. His calm demeanor belied the gravity of the topic. "I’d do something untraceable, something that could be considered an accident. Like exploiting an allergy and poisoning them… Something that could be written off easily-”

“That’s so boring!!” Robert suddenly shouted, making Susie flinch.

Ross, undeterred by Robert's outburst, continued, his gaze still fixed on the swirls of his milkshake. “But it's effective,” He said, finally looking up from the cup, “A slow-acting poison, too, so there's no immediate connection. Just a sudden, unexpected end. It’ll be treated as a mystery or an accident. The person is dead, and I don’t go to jail.”

“That’s so lame! You don’t even see them die!?” Robert exclaimed, astonished that Ross wouldn’t want to witness the victim’s end. “The whole point of murdering someone is that everyone knows they’ve been murdered!”

“The whole point of murdering someone is that someone dies!” Ross, his patience tested, spat right back.

Robert wasn’t deterred. “You gotta do something gruesome!” Robert insisted, “Something people remember for decades! Something they’re not allowed to forget!!”

Roy, wearing a misplaced grin, interjected, crossing his arms as he addressed Robert. "Okay, what would you do, then?"

Robert's eyes gleamed with excitement as he leaned back, clearly relishing the opportunity to share his grand and macabre ideas. He pushed his milkshake towards Roy and leaned over the table to explain. Susie felt the knot in her stomach tighten, growing uneasy at the conversation.

"You lure your victim to someone that's going to be visited soon, like a school on a Sunday. Then, you kill them simply and easily, with a slit of the throat or head trauma, or something, it doesn’t matter. Then," Robert punctuated each word with a tap on the table, "full body dismemberment."

Susie cringed at the macabre imagery, her discomfort evident on her face. "What?"

"Dude, what?" Ross raised an eyebrow, his initial interest waning into something else. Not unease, but annoyance, as if he’d heard this before.

“Listen! Listen!” Robert continued, his smile unmoving. “You cut the body up into pieces and string them around the gymnasium! Like a fucked up wind-chime!”

“Robert, do you have any idea how long it takes to saw through bone?” Ross spat.

“Yeah! Dude, plus, where would we get a saw?!” Roy motioned between them, “We have like 20 dollars put together.”

Susie, desperate to steer the conversation away from its dark trajectory, interjected. "I mean... it doesn't really matter, since... This is all hypothetical," she forced a smile, hoping to diffuse the tension that lingered in the air. “...Right?”

The three boys suddenly silenced, looking at Susie. There was a beat of silence. Then another. Then another. Roy exchanged glances with Ross and Rober, the boys sharing an unspoken understanding. Susie's forced smile faltered, her attempt at lightening the mood falling flat in the face of their unsettling silence.

“Right,” Ross finally broke the silence, his tone casual and friendly, but Susie detected a lingering tension beneath the surface. She took a breath, grateful for the respite at least.

“Yeah, duh!” Roy rolled his eyes with a smile, “I mean look at Robert,” Roy grabbed Robert's arm and lifted it, “You think he can kill someone with these?”

“Hey!” Robert took his arm back with a laugh, breaking the tension momentarily. Ross and Roy joined in the laughter, and Susie awkwardly chimed in, the sound hollow against her inner turmoil. There wasn’t anything funny to her, the boys she sat with could very well kill her.

She let out a breath, allowing herself to breathe as she rationalized her thoughts. The gang wasn’t violent. Sure, they were jerks, but they weren’t murderers. Their bullying was never violent outside of shoves or foot-stepping.

Susie watched as the boys traded playful insults and laughed together, the conversation slowly returning to their previous topic. It was still jarring, but Susie continued to try and see the same playfulness they must be seeing.

“Susie,” Ross returned the attention to her again. She paused mid-sip and looked up at him, her eyes darting to the other two now watching her.

“Hm?” Susie blinked.

“You never answered.”

“...Answered what?”

“If you wanted to kill someone, how would you do it?” Ross asked her again.

“Oh I…” she shrugged. “I’m not.. I wouldn’t kill anyone..”

“Yeah, neither would we! It’s just for… curiosity’s sake.” Ross shrugged.

“I…” Susie fidgeted, looking between them all. “I guess… I-I’d do something simple. A mix of both of your ideas!” She gestured to Ross and Robert. “Uhm… something… easy to clean but… not boring?” She shrugged.

“Like what?” Roy pressed.

“Uhm…” Susie itched her neck, thinking. She tried to remember some more macabre books she’d read. “If.. I wanted to do something big.. Big enough to get on the news… I’d… probably do it in school. Just… stabbing someone is pretty easy…” She kept her eyes down on the empty milkshake in front of her, mixing the last bits. “You could... Slit someone’s throat and throw them in the pool?” She suggested, finally looking up at the boys. They looked like they had been waiting for her answer all night.

“I like that,” Roy responded.

“It’s clean,” Ross nodded.

“And violent,” Robert smiled.

Susie awkwardly smiled at their shared reactions. She felt a strange validation, having not received a negative reaction. She looked down at their empty milkshakes and stood up, “I’ll get us another round.”

“Oh, sweet, thanks!” Robert slid their glasses towards her, allowing her to take them up to the counter where Kevin finally looked away from the glass door to meet her. She set the glasses on the counter and requested refills.

The boys watched her leave before slowly turning to face each other again. They glanced at each other, attempting not to smile at the dark irony.

“That was so fucked, Roy,” Ross finally spoke.

“Yeah, that was dark. Bringing her here in the first place was bad, but making her choose?” Robert said, his words not correlating with his excited smile.

“You think she has any idea?” Ross asked.

All three boys turned to look over their seats, seeing Susie leaning against the counter as she waited for their drinks. She saw them looking towards her and waved. Robert kindly returned it.

“No.” Roy smiled, the two other boys smiling after him.

#the deep end #spooky month #the hatzgang spooky month #the hatzgang #hatzgang #spooky month hatzgang #hatzgang spooky month #spooky month roy #roy spooky month #spooky month robert #robert spooky month #ross spooky month #spooky month ross #susie spooky month #spooky month susie #fanfic #fanfiction #Spooky Month the deep end

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almightygremlinblob · 10 months

Text

Listen...I just like the idea of a dysfunctional family dynamic between them, ok?! Platonic ficlet (in which Legato and Zazie discuss the bible) under the cut!

CW: One mention of dismemberment. Overall tho, just sibling fluff between Zazie and Legato (and him being secretly soft with Zazie if you squint). My only knowledge of both of them is Tristamp (I have yet to watch 98 and I'm downright TERRIFIED to read Trimax), so this may be a little OOC

Word Count: 592

"You've been staring at that thing for ten minutes now."

"Leave, Beast."

"What's so special about it, anyway?"

"I'm. Reading."

"That doesn't answer my question."

Nails almost, almost dare to rake against the book he's holding. Legato takes a deep breath, trying to steady himself from becoming lightheaded because of how annoyed he is; his shoulders relaxing but his hands still visibly tense around his Bible. He sends a death glare to the dark-skinned child at his side, and it has absolutely no effect on them whatsoever.

Though their face is obstructed by that beetle-like insect, another part of them, no doubt, he can practically see the smirk on Zazie's lips - happy to annoy one of their favorite humans. They tilt their head at him. Annoying...

"Well?" He hears the faint buzzing of flitting wings. "You didn't answer me."

Legato lets out a long sigh.

"This book details the stories of the first humans and their...leader, so to speak, throughout different eras in their early history. Before we left Earth to look for a different planet to destroy...and because of that, it's also a devotional. One that I must read daily." Zazie puts their face close to the pages, observing the letters and then following Legato's slim fingers as he runs them through an illustration in the book; pointing to different parts of it as he explains to the smaller one, who was seated at the side of the big armchair he was in. "It tells of monsters and false gods. Of our creator, and his sinful, immoral creations...humans. And of their punishments for being so abhorrent."

"You were created like this? How interesting..." The Beast hums. "What kind of madman would create creatures as flawed as you and then punish them for being so?"

"That's..." 'That's a good point, I'm not actually sure.' Is what goes completely unsaid and, instead, Legato lets out an annoyed groan to mask the fact that he has no answer to that. "It's beyond us why we were created this way. So weak and feeble, too..."

"Ah, that's right..." Zazie leans back. "You Humans don't have generational memory, no? These things are how you pass down knowledge."

"That's correct, yes."

"But..." The Beast's body language is showing genuine curiosity, now. "Except for you, I don't seem to see many of you with very good memory..."

"Yes...humans are generally less capable than a lot of animals." Legato's eyes widen slightly, and he realizes where the conversation is going. Zazie tilts their head.

"How can you be sure this is history if you have no way of directly preserving the knowledge?"

"That's..."

Zazie pauses for a moment, before poking him in the cheek. "Do you actually read this as a devotional?"

"Enough!" Legato bats their hand away. "It's none of your concern why I read this!"

"What's actually in this book, Legato?"

"I-I already told you!" Legato grits his teeth, trying to keep the book away from the monster child - who flits about the armchair, hands reaching out to take it from him. Though it's of little use, Zazie eventually grabs hold of the book and flips about it - seeing strange illustrations of people burning or being dismembered; not at all looking surprised. "...Oh. That's why."

Legato grabs the book from the smaller one. "Enough! Just let me read while I ca-"

The door to the room opens, and Elendira huffs as she walks into the room, scowling at the both of them. "Beast. Bluesummers. Quit your squabbling! It's time for us to move."

Zazie snickers as Legato slams the book shut.

If you like my work, consider buying me a coffee!

#trigun 2023 #trigun stampede #trigun fanart #trigun #vash my beloved #legato bluesummers #legato trigun #zazie trigun #zazie the beast #my writing #my art

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ordinorultor-if · 4 months

Note

What's the age rating for this? And do you have a list of content warnings?

Howdy, thanks for asking, I totally forgot and will put those in the blog desc. in a second! So sorry for forgetting, everyone!

Age rating will be 18+. Content warnings include violence (including mild gore such as dismemberment), rape/SA and discussion thereof, and religious conflict.

Any further CWs will be added as needed. I don't want to the type of asshole that exposes people to content they don't want to see, and I am again very sorry to everyone for forgetting.

#ordinor ultor if #interactive fiction #content warning

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arp1033 · 1 year

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Oh shit, new podcast episode! It's about Nimona!

#podcast #indie #nimona

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ashyronfire · 5 months

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Red Sky at Morning || Chapter 56: Just Blood, Nerve & Bone

Title: Chapter 56 - Just Blood, Nerve & Bone Rating: M Characters: Grimm, The Grimm Troupe (including OCs), The Radiance Warnings: Introspect-Heavy, Found Family, Pre-Canon, Time Travel Fix-It Adjacent, Grey-and-Grey Morality, Torture, Aftermath of Torture, Dismemberment, Graphic Depictions of Violence, The Author Likes Gore

Summary:

He heard it, then—memories like echoes, phantom voices that resonated through his mind, for him and him alone. Ghosts of the past sang a melancholy requiem for a life left behind. Secrets unraveled across the dream for Grimm’s eyes alone: the past, a mother entrusting a small and sickly millipede child to a far-too-young Deimos, still a mere hatchling himself—It will be okay, my sweethearts; look after each other, love one another, I love you—and then she was gone.

Author’s Notes: CW on this chapter for mentions of suicide. This fic doesn't usually deal with those themes, but it does come up here and is discussed rather frankly though not depicted on screen. Be advised.

CURRENT CHAPTER || READ FROM THE BEGINNING

#ashe writes #red sky #hk fanfic #hollow knight fanfic

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gavinom123 · 1 year

Note

I didn't know who else to ask for this, but is there an English translation of NO SALVATION? Been searching but they all seem to be in Japanese, and I cannot find a doc like for ZENO daily life.

Also, love your shading!

There isn't! While some people have floated around the idea of translating it, all of the translators who have considered it so far have dropped the project very quickly once they played a bit more of the game. To put it simply, I am personally of the opinion that no salvation should never receive an english translation, nor that anyone should really play the game--especially on the english side of the marutoku fanbase as that trends very young--because of the severity of content present in the game. There have been large portions that I just straight up refused to read out to my friends while we were playing because it was so intense, and we're only about halfway through the game currently. The game is centered around horrible people doing legitimately detestable things, so the content warnings present reflect that. I'll put the CW list that my friend compiled for me under the cut but please be aware that the majority of these content warnings are an inseparable part of the game and its plot, and are also very much in your face when present.

And thank you! shading is something I have a lot of fun with so I'm happy to hear you like it lol

murder, rape, CSA, necrophilia, pedophilia, child death , child abuse , human trafficking, non-consensual sex work, attempted forced-suicide, suicidal ideation, rape used as torture, human experimentation, mass murder, explosions, burning to death, drowning, asphyxiation, grooming (non-sexual), child assassins, discussion of suicide notes, vomit, manipulation, kidnapping victim falling in love with their kidnapper, injury to genitalia, attempted strangulation, dismemberment, intentional blinding via needle, eye trauma, chronic illness, fatal illness, torture, forced necrophilia, forced rape

I feel like it is necessary to mention as well that one of the two main characters is a necrophiliac serial rapist. When I say it's inseparable from the game, i really do mean it unfortunately :(

While I'm at it, I'm also going to bring up that the only reason it's not R18 is because there's no explicit sex shown on screen-- there are still significant amounts of sexual content and references, just no detailed onscreen sex. JP rating standards are different from EN ones in that is the only requirement for a game being R18 vs R15, and if it were an EN game it would absolutely be rated Explicit/R18.

#gav answers #no salvation #[adult]

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quill-n · 1 year

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Here it is, y'all!! the ✨lore post✨ for my living doll au :]

CW// discussion of murder, implications of violent acts, implications of body horror/dismemberment, mild grief/themes of loss, very minor suggestive themes?

Er, it's more of a plot post actually? The storyline~

(super long post, I'm sorry lol)

EdgeJeanist centric + some background EraserMic family, rooftop trio, and Mt. Kamui + also Rumi and Keigo being annoying (affectionate) ✨

edit: (whispers) Please check out my animatic for this au if you haven't seen it yet, I worked so hard on it ty <3

Ok, so it starts out with Tsunagu.

[Current time frame is roughly adjacent to the Victorian Era, but it's more of a fantasy-ish world not exactly rl]

He's a tailor who enjoys his craft very much 🧵🪡 But he gets *ahem* ✨hate crimed✨ (murdered) (also hate crimed though. it was a hate crime.) (his corpse was left to rot.)

Fortunately for him, a benevolent spirit passing through the living realm discovered him. Pitying the poor soul whose life was unjustly cut short, he gifted Tsunagu a chance at another life—along with some spooky cool new spirit realm abilities and a brand new look ✨

Back in the living world, in comes Shinya—who was familiar with (and lowkey crushing on) Tsunagu at the time.

He's the first to notice that his favorite tailor is missing, so of course he starts searching. That ends up getting him killed as well, though. (Can't let there be any witnesses, right?)

HOWEVER Tsunagu finds him and uses his newly gifted abilities to (literally) stitch him back together—like a doll :)

Shinya wakes up in the spirit realm, undead and wrapped up in one of Tsunagu's scarves <3

("A gift. To celebrate the start of our newfound afterlives," Tsunagu had said when he asked about it)

In honor of the spirit's kindness, they vowed to use Tsunagu's gift to rescue lost souls who were similarly fucked over in their lives ✨

✧

Over the years, their relationship solidifies—it doesn't progress (romantically (yet)) or anything, but they're close.

(edit: actually, I've decided that they're fuck buddies. it makes more sense for the plot in my head, I think. I'm also a sucker for fuck buddies to lovers. and now this is a fuck buddies to lovers story.)

They live in a mansion in the spirit realm, fulfilling their vow and offering second chances to those whose first chance was ripped away from them. Tsunagu is the head of the house, making sure everything is in order (and lovingly referred to as The Seamstress by the dolls); Shinya is his closest friend and confidant.

Most of the dolls leave after they're revived to explore the spirit realm and find their own path, but some of the dolls choose to stay. Of which include Rumi: a victim of a brutal serial killing, Keigo: who was wrongfully hanged for a crime he did not commit, and Shinso: an unfortunate casualty from a violent accident.

(Shinya stays too, of course.)

✧

Ok, we're switching focus for a sec and also fast forwarding

Closer to modern day, we have Aizawa, who runs an orphanage with Nemuri, and Bakugo, who was recently orphaned.

Bakugo is (as anyone would be) distraught and unstable with his grief over losing his parents. He decides to try reaching out to the spirit realm to at least talk to them one last time, but it backfires as he encounters a demonic spirit and it attacks him.

Aizawa hears the commotion and rushes over to find Bakugo only half alive and critically injured with a curse on his soul. The effects of the attack are far beyond what human doctors would be able to mend.

Luckily, Aizawa has his own connections to the spirit realm (via a guardian spirit named Hizashi who visits him regularly).

He remembers Hizashi telling him about a certain spidery spirit who might be able to help, and he rushes to bring Bakugo to the spirit realm (leaving Nemuri in charge). The ritual costs him an eye and the spirit realm is dangerous for living humans, but it's a price he willingly pays.

✧

Back to the mansion

It's a fairly normal day for everyone, taking care of household chores, tending the garden and whatnot—until a living human comes desperately knocking at the front door.

Everyone freaks out for a moment because this is unheard of. Despite that, Tsunagu welcomes Aizawa in and rushes Bakugo to the infirmary with no hesitation.

Tsunagu just manages to get Bakugo stable. However, he can't fix everything and the curse still remains, slowly but surely draining away at Bakugo's life. He's stable for now, though. Now, they just need to figure out how to save him for good.

Tsunagu also patches Aizawa's eye up, and they speak for a moment, discussing what happened and what they can possibly do. But with no clear answer, they decide that Aizawa would stay in the ✨Doll House✨ with Bakugo until they can find a cure.

(On a lighter note, I'm imagining a scene where they bring Aizawa to the dining hall so he can get something to eat, but since none of the dolls nor Tsunagu need to eat anymore, their kitchen is pretty much empty (save for some moldy bread and questionable canned meat lol). So Rumi and Keigo go on a silly little side quest to obtain some Edible™ food for their guest.)

✧

Anyways.

Have I mentioned that Shinya is down bad for Tsunagu? Has been for the past two centuries? Because he is, and Rumi and Keigo know it. Tsunagu knows it too (and also knows that the feelings are reciprocated, but neither of them have made a move).

Problem is that because of the whole "holy shit you saved me and brought me back to life (literally)" thing, Shinya wholeheartedly believes that Tsunagu is. totally out of his league.

And that only hits harder when Tsunagu starts spending more time with Aizawa. Nothing more than working with Bakugo, but time spent nonetheless. It makes Shinya anxious and just a tad bit jealous.

Why wouldn't a living person who, despite being in a damn near hopeless situation, risked everything to try and save someone.. be more attractive than... a servant with a life debt..?

He tries not to worry about it because no, that's stupid, there's no reason to be jealous—

But then Tsunagu gives Aizawa a scarf. One of his hand-made scarves, of which the only other person who owned one (other than Tsunagu himself, of course) was Shinya.

It unsettles him a little bit. (It shouldn't, he tells himself, but it does.)

✧

What unsettles him more though is the state that poor Bakugo is in.

He spends the next several days alongside Tsunagu, desperately trying everything they could to reverse the curse. From potions to incantations to cantrips...

Nothing seems to work.

✧

Shifting focus again for a sec—to Shinso this time!

He approaches Aizawa not long after he arrives and just... asks questions.

They talk. About the living world, about what being alive is like.

(Shinso died when he was 16 years old, and he missed being alive more than all the others. He was the youngest out of all the dolls. No one was even sure if he would be able to grow up, or if he'd just be stuck at 16 forever.)

So he found comfort in Aizawa. This living person who could give him a glimpse into the life he couldn't have.

✧

Rumi and Keigo hang out with Shinya like usual—and being the little shits (affectionate) they are, they pester him about his relationship with Tsunagu.

He tries brushing them off, changing the conversation topic to Bakugo, but they read right through him ofc so he just. leaves. lol.

Essentially they follow him, trying to cheer him up lol

They pass by Bakugo's room and overhear a conversation between Tsunagu and Aizawa. Tsunagu is talking about how similar he and Aizawa are, in that Tsunagu is the head of a house of lost souls and Aizawa is the caretaker of an orphanage. Something they can connect over.

Shinya overhears all this. He's a little more upset about it than he would like to admit.

✧

Of course Tsunagu notices something is up, though

So sometime later, he finds Shinya and they have a little one-on-one chat.

It's not exactly that they sort things out... but they clear up the jealousy bit—and their relationship *ahem* strengthens. *ahem ahem*

(It's not exactly settled though, and it's not like Shinya's insecurities just suddenly vanished. those are definitely still there.)

✧

More days are spent trying to save Bakugo, along with no success. Bakugo is looking worse by the minute.

(Shinya and Tsunagu continue to..... *enhance* their relationship when they're not busy, too. but that's besides the point.)

Things are interrupted when a living doll shows up at the door alongside a guardian spirit.

(The doll is Shirakumo, and Hizashi is the spirit.)

They brought a recently deceased girl—no older than ten years old—for Tsunagu to bring back to life.

Everyone's... heartbroken. at how young she is.

Eri is scared when she wakes up, absolutely terrified of everyone, and of Tsunagu specifically. She stays close to Aizawa, because he's the only living person there (aside from Bakugo) and everyone else is scary to her :(

(she ends up growing closer to Shinso too (after she realizes he's not so bad; he's also the only other kid there), she grows to see him as a big brother of sorts <3 )

✧

Later that day, in another vain effort to try and find a cure, Shinya goes through the garden to see if any of their ✨magic✨ herbs/plants would be any help. However, he ends up instead getting hit by some spores that essentially get him super drunk, and Tsunagu has to come rescue him. Again.

Cue scene of him just drunkenly fucking sobbing in Tsunagu's arms about how he's always been the one to save him and now he can't even find a way to save the poor kid so how can he ever possibly hope to repay him back for that and that he'd never be deserving of his love—

✧

The next day (sober and admittedly very embarrassed), Shinya spends the next day by himself in the mansion's library. He sorts through the books and files, trying to get his mind off things, and he stumbles upon a letter addressed to Tsunagu and signed by someone named Nishiya.

(It turned out to be a response to a thank you note Tsunagu had written for the spirit that had originally brought him back to life all those years ago.)

Shinya made two realizations in that moment:

1. If this spirit was powerful enough to gift Tsunagu his abilities and bring him back to life, then he might be able to cure Bakugo.

2. He could follow the address to find the spirit—Nishiya. It was risky, as not only was the spirit realm perilous to traverse (even for the undead), but there was no guarantee that he would even find this spirit.

But they were also running out of options.

He makes a plan to follow the address, finds a map he can use, and packs some supplies—some magic thread (procured from the Seamstress himself) to suture his body and soul back together should he need it—to bring along just in case. Rumi and Keigo also manage sneak up on him and convince him to let them tag along.

(Their reasoning was that Oboro and Hizashi were staying to lend a hand anyways, and they allegedly also had some connections that might help them find Nishiya. Which was pretty damn convincing.)

✧

The connections that Keigo had turned out to be a young spirit guide named Tokoyami

He leads them through the world, following the map they have. There's some obstacles on the road, but some other spirit guides (Sero and Kaminari :) ) help them get through ✨

Finally, they find a river marked on their map, on the other side of which should be Nishiya's home—except they happen to encounter the demonic spirit that originally injured Bakugo before they can cross

The demon realizes there are living souls involved and immediately decides that it's going to go finish the job, so Rumi and Keigo fight it to try and hold it back. They send Shinya to go ahead and find Shinji. Hopefully before the demon escapes...

... and Luckily he finally finds who he's looking for! Only... he finds him crying the river he just crossed.

When Shinya asks Nishiya what's wrong, he explains how he fell in love with a mortal woman (Takeyama) while he was travelling through the human realm, but she was dreadfully killed.

Shinya finds her and brings her back for him. because that's just what dolls of The Seamstress do :)

(Technically, he himself doesn't have that power, but he used the thread from Tsunagu that he brought. and also you don't just spend two centuries with a necromancer without picking up a few tricks lol)

When they reunite—this undead human and his ethereal god-like spirit—Shinya has this moment of realization

It doesn't matter if he doesn't think he's good enough for Tsunagu bc none of that matters, friendship is magic y'know (lol)

Still, Nishiya gives him more than he asked for as a thank you.

JUST IN TIME TOO. Rumi and Keigo are unable to hold the demon back any longer and it takes off towards the mansion. They take off after it.

✧

SO THE DEMON ATTACKS MANSION

Hizashi and Oboro reach it first, try to fight it, and pretty much get tossed aside by this thing :(

The demon reaches Aizawa and Bakugo; Aizawa tries protecting Bakugo and nearly gets annihilated instead—his leg gets mauled off by the demon :(

Cue angry spider Seamstress fighting the demon to protect his family <3

He manages to hold him off, but starts losing pretty quickly. this demon is POWERFUL ok

but then IN SWOOPS SHINYA!! ~With a ✨brand new look✨

Together with Tsunagu (and the other dolls + Hizashi), they manage to drive the demon off!! BEGONE DEMON yeah >:)

At the end, they have the whole heartwarming reunion thing, but NOT before Shin'ya uses his ✨new abilities✨ to lift Bakugo's curse... and it works!!

Shinya also stitches up Tsunagu, who was pretty badly injured in the fight with the demon... so now they match!! Tsunagu also sort of freaks out about where Shinya's been and why he didn't tell anyone and what the HELL is up with his new look and how glad he is that he's back—

(A side note about Shinya's ✨new look✨~ he's more powerful now, about the same level as Tsunagu (except he can heal the living instead of bringing back the dead).

He also has moth wings now!! His new role from heron out is to be a guide for rescued souls.

Moths can be messengers, symbols of death, but they're also attracted to light. In this case, he is a beacon for life :) )

Things are resettled from here, happy ending :)

Well, kinda. Shinya and Tsunagu have their whole thing, but Eri and Shinso can't follow Aizawa back to the living world...

BUT! that's ok because Hizashi and Oboro agree to take care of them in his stead :) and they make plans to visit the living realm (and for Aizawa to visit them) when they can <3

(Imagine those four exploring the spirit world together!! having adventures, waiting for the next opportunity to see Shota again 🥹)

now it is a fairly happy ending.

ok that's all I have!! I hope y'all like this. It's not my best work but I think it's still a neat world!! :'))

thanks for reading!!! <3

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darkx-the-dragon-kn1ght · 12 days

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Pokémon Reborn Screenshot Let's Play: Chapter 25

Hello hello, dear readers! It’s that time again, I hope you’re all ready to read about some more fascinating Pokémon hijinks, because that’s what this chapter is very much going to entail! We’ve had our fun, we had a sorta-kinda filler chapter last time, but that’s all done with. Now, it’s time to get serious again- it’s time to refocus! My plan is to prepare for and challenge Shade in this chapter, and I’m not gonna let anything get in the way of that!

But, even though the last chapter was partially filler and exploration, there was still stuff that happened, and it wouldn’t be good form for me to just skip the recap, so let’s get into that before anything else.

With Rock Smash in tow, Xera explores Beryl Cave. In doing so, she finds a very familiar Nidorina trapped in a Nuzleaf cage. She frees her and takes her in, giving her the name Selene.

Xera finds Beryl Caves leads out to a new area in Rhodochrine Jungle. This area has a strange-looking totem pole, which her Ill-Fated Doll reacts to. This causes an Elgyem to appear, who Xera catches and names Cephalon.

After completing her Beryl Cave exploration, Xera pays a visit to the Abandoned Power Plant, where Shade awaits. Nearby, she found the entrance to an entirely new area: Citrine Mountain.

Early on in exploring the mountain, Xera finds something frozen in ice in a wall. With an Ice Heal, she melts the ice and frees the Amaura trapped inside. She decides to take him with and names him Crystal.

Wandering the mountain’s slopes, Xera comes across a familiar-looking Croagunk. Though wary of her at first, the Croagunk calms upon seeing the Silver Ring of its former Trainer, and Xera is able to catch her and give her the name Dart.

Xera comes across a cave further down Citrine Mountain. Inside, she finds a very angry Beartic attacking a Smoochum. The Beartic proves to be very strong, and it takes the power of Crystal (who evolved into an Aurorus) to defeat it and drive it off. After this, the Smoochum becomes very attached to Xera and insists on going with her; Xera names the little one Yuki.

Exiting the cave after defeating Beartic, Xera encounters a blue-haired man who suspiciously resembles Cal, who was apparently sent to take care of the Beartic himself. He remarks about the coldness and cruelty of nature and survival, but still commends Xera for her ability to stand up for others before leaving.

Xera explores the Grand Stairway next, able to access more areas with Rock Smash and even receiving a Mining Kit from a hiker in the caves. She also uses Rock Smash to find a wild Solrock down in the caves, who she catches and names Zon.

While testing out her Mining Kit, Xera finds a Shiny Stone, which she later uses on Bloom to evolve him into a Roserade.

So yeah, the most plot-relevant things that took place last time were getting the Mining Kit and Bloom evolving. But hey, having more Pokémon is always good, so I’d say last time as highly productive. And it’s gonna be even more productive this chapter, because we’re gonna get ourselves even more Pokémon! And then we’re gonna fight an eldritch being! It’s gonna be great!

*CW: brief depictions/discussions of suicide, dismemberment, and death

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13

Part 14*

Part 15

Part 16

Part 17

Part 18

Part 19

Part 20

#pokemon reborn #pokemon reborn spoilers #pokemon fan game #pokemon reborn screenshot let's play

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sleepydross · 6 months

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Chapter One, Route_B: A Hard Left Turn

A Chapter of the 'SEER' or 'Spontaneous Edifice Emergence / Reification' Storyline. This is Route_B. For Route_A, see the link included.

https://www.tumblr.com/sleepydross/736565213088858112/chapter-one-routea-clerks-too-a-chapter-of?source=share

CW: Gore, body horror, extreme death and dismemberment, surreal concepts, disgusting imagery, a lot of really quite rude words (I said fuck folks Im sorry), implications of loss, plainly stated memory alteration and manipulation, horror in general.

Excerpt, 'Dreams, And Their Implications,' Dr. Alex Sing, 2023

'…The understanding of dreams has come a long way, in recent years. We've seen sleep studies, and brain scans, and complicated medical procedures involving the implantation of probes in the brain and the use of radiological dyes. We have seen brilliant doctors, brilliant scientists, translate the language of the brain into perceptible images, things we can look at to see what people see when they sleep.

What most of you haven't seen is the secret, concealed studies that have been done into dreams and their… atypical side effects on local reality. In a number of cases, highly active psionics (Humans with the natural capability towards psychic phenomenon) have outright distorted reality around them during particularly intense dreams. This is, in fact, a detectable distortion due to the common presence of exotic particles and low level radiation.

In fact, the fabric of reality is what we are here to discuss. Some time ago, scientists working for the Department of Unnatural / Supernatural Knowledge, DUSK, discovered that this fabric could be willfully manipulated - and unwillfully. The very concept of luck is a manipulation of randomness in a local area, not a change in reality itself, but a wrinkling of probability…

And with this discovery came the first breakthrough in direct measure of the fabric of reality.

With THAT discovery, the scientists of DUSK discovered that the latent alterations made by dreams were growing more widespread, even in those not terribly active, those lacking psionic capability. Concurrently, a rise in psionic capability was recorded, and has been recorded every single year since.

But the reason why eluded them, has eluded them. Their experimentation began in 1971.

We have questions.

Did their experiment cause this? Or did they merely expand human consciousness into uncharted waters?

We don't know what could lie in those terrible, black depths, in the ocean outside of our collective thought based tidepool…

However, we are smart enough to fear it, unlike our predecessors.'

"I want to know what the FUCK is going on!" Haller shouted, standing in the action room. The site was deep black, so far off the grid and so unregistered that no one present even had so much as a dress shoe on - the FBI and CIA had erected it for counter terrorism reasons, erected being a strong word for appropriating an abandoned warehouse near a defunct rail line about six hours outside of New York City.

Outside of the blacked out windows, only forest and darkness waited. It was the middle of the damned night, and Haller had just arrived. The helicopter on the roof was already working up to beating gravity into submission, the soundproofing turning the thump-swah of its blades into weak vibrations one could only detect if they knew there was a helo taking off in the first place.

On the main screen, in place on the north wall, she stared at satellite photographs of an area approximately as far from NYC as the black site itself, which was little comfort considering that the area was apparently, very suddenly, taller than the empire state building and approximately a half mile in diameter.

"Ma'am, I assure you, we're trying to figure it out," Agent Muskwe said, quietly. Haller watched him sip his coffee and gesture at the screen. "Ground images."

An image replaced the satellite photos, digitally signed as being taken by field team November, one of Haller's favorite teams. Their names were classified, but she knew-

"What the hell?" she whispered. The image description said that the picture was taken five hundred and seventy yards from the 'border,' which had not been defined in any meaningful sense. All she could assume was that it meant the border of the gray, formless, bizarre zone they had looked at from above - a cacophony of squares and rectangles, impossible rooftop geometries laid in and around and over one another.

The 'border' looked like a wall of roiling, nearly oily fog. The next image was zoomed in, and appeared to show trees near to the border withering, branches blackened and dark and odd - wrong, stripped of leaves, coated in some shiny, slick, dark grease. On this image, the description said that even five hundred yards and change away, it stank like the parking lot of an abandoned fast food restaurant. Colorful descriptions were included, of disgusting rot stink and french fry smell and the hellish scattering of other disgusting odors…

Spoiled beef, rotting chicken, soggy and deeply moldy bread…

These descriptions were wholly unnecessary, but greatly appreciated. Haller needed every detail she could possibly get.

"Skip the pictures. November would've sent video," she said, already irritated when the next image was just a further zoom into the fog. Through it, she could see light, the pictures having clearly been taken in the dark. "Show me that, make sure everyone who needs them gets the images."

"Yes, ma'am," Muskwe replied, and the screen went dark. Moments later, a video frame opened, and then played. Compares to the hardware of the past, it was the highest quality video she'd ever seen, especially on a screen so large - save perhaps in a movie theater. Their video, however, had all sixty frames per second, crisp and clear.

"Check for the recording," November One said. "November one. Steadfast. Check."

"November two. Iron. Check."

"November three. Resolute. Check."

"November four. Eternal. Check."

"Alright, gang's all here," Steadfast, November One, said.

"Christ, this fucking STINK," Iron muttered. "We ought get goddamn hazard pay for this shit. It smells like a rotting corpse tossed in a dumpster near a particularly fucking shit drivethrough."

"Oil and diesel, too… gasoline, maybe propane. Smells like chemicals, under and around it all," Eternal added.

"Button up, whiners. Iron, light rig, take point. Etty, back him up with the shotgun, and don't fuck it up and shoot HIM. Reso, pull up the rear."

"Sir, yes sir!" they said in unison. Haller smiled. She liked November for a reason, a lot of reasons. November One's insistance they call her 'sir' was one of them. Out there, doing the work they did, they had some latitude to be weird. It was better than sitting in a goddamn field office all the time, poring over the most irrelevant shit on Earth.

The feed swapped then, to Iron's lightrig camera, and then… the rig flared on, bathing the fog in shockingly bright light. They marched across the field, orderly and in a line, a weapon in frame now and then as they walked. The closer they got the fog, the stranger it got, less white than before, and then swirling in a shiny, chemical-sick rainbow like a dribbling of oil floating on a puddle.

"Can't do it, sir," Reso said, finally. The line stopped. "I'm gonna pop, man, just fucking howl and puke."

"Professional," Steadfast muttered. "Mask up, though. Making me dizzy, too. Ought to call for hazzies. Reso, get out that vial of peppermint oil."

"It's like White River all over again," Rso muttered - but he complied, dabbing some of that oil on the filters of their gas masks. They sealed the high tech things with faint hisses, lenses shining. The peppermint oil was an old trick, from back in the before times, when Resolute was a nurse. Designated medic suited him better, with a gun in hand. "Feed's a mess, sir. We need to drop the rig. It's too foggy, ought to use mask optics."

"Make it so," she replied. In moments, after shuffling, annoyance, grunting and bad static, the light rig went dark, and then hit the ground. Pale, ugly green flooded the frame, and suddenly… they could see, the footage digitally enhanced and highly processed in near real time. "Better?"

"Clear as day," Reso replied. They returned to their march, approaching that ugly, roiling oil fog again. Through it now, a huge glowing sign could be seen, standing on a thick red pole, like-

"Huh… Megaburger," Haller murmured, baffled by that. She knew the colors, knew the ghostly specter of its shape. Silently, before the fog wall, Iron removed his camera and pointed it upwards without slowing their approach. It continued upwards apparently indefinitely, obscuring everything inside. Weather patterns in the area had gone to shit, it was what first alerted them - something was wrong when they were getting hit by sheets of rain in the middle of a New York winter.

"Rain's warm, what the fuck," Iron spat. "Feels slick, too. Droplets are milky white, contaminated with something… and I can just detect what seems to be a whiff of urine, through the damned mask. We gonna die, sir?"

"Composition from the rapid sample kit said it's just some kind of detergent, gasoline, a bit of oil… also piss, yeah, piss… yeah… it doesn't make sense, but it isn't toxic, mostly," Steadfast replied, evenly.

"Mostly! Wonderful," Eternal replied, sounding exhausted already - but they marched on, into the fog, as Iron reattached his camera. What followed was an engrossing twenty minutes of them walking in a white out, cable-clipped together so they didn't lose one another in the thickness of it. Three times, they stopped to dab new filters with peppermint and stagger their swapouts.

Whatever the fog was, it was clogging them, fast.

That made it all the more surprising when they emerged into the parking lot of…

A Megaburger franchise.

"Stop it," Haller said, and the video paused. "We have record of a Megaburger there? Lavar?"

"No, we don't. Look in the background, though, and around it… No roads. Nothing. The walls just extend outward, and then…" he trailed off, and gestured for the video to be played, and then he said, "pause. See? Suddenly, kitty corner, the bricks change to cement blocks, like… smoothly, and it becomes a Fast Jimmy's, complete with gas pumps."

"What the Hell?" Haller asked. No one had answers.

"Command, do you read?" Steadfast asked. After a long pause, she said, "no signal at all. Local comms working."

"Pull out? Something's fuckin' wrong. This shit wasn't here when we got here, before the fucking fog moved closer," Eternal muttered. "Did anyone transmit the recording, from when the fog moved?"

"Did, yeah," Iron spat. "What's the word, Steady?"

"Sir, to you, dipshit… and no. We don't pull back. No signs of life, no hostiles… we're going into that damn burger joint. I want material samples, though. Etty, split off with Reso. See where those bricks go all… blurry? Get samples there," she ordered. "Something is wrong, so we're going to find out what the fuck is going on. As soon as you have the samples, get inside."

A chorus of 'yes, sir!' met her, and she and Iron marched on, the footage continuing to follow them.

"Do we have footage from the Eternal or Resolute?" Haller asked, and got a displeasing 'nope, no transmit from them, their feeds cut out the moment they split off,' which made her want to put a hole in something. "Fucking why, precisely?"

"Interference, of some kind. That fog, maybe, something about it makes signal transmission inconsistent? We only got all of Iron's footage because… well…" he trailed off, and Haller blanched, falling silent and watching. Like every other Megaburger in existence, the restaurant that Iron and Steadfast were approaching was a squat sort of building with an overly decorative roof of red metal, atop which was perched an offensively oversized, bizarrely cartoonish cheeseburger, and a huge cup beside it. Both were lit up, casting an array of yellows and reds out into the parking lot. This was all largely washed out on the white lines of the parking spots out front by the bright fluourescent light coming through the windows that dominated every wall on the front and sides of the store, stopping right at the line where the kitchen began.

Despite that no one was visible inside, the doors were unlocked, and they pushed through them, weapons at the ready.

"It uh, appears to be a burger store," Iron said, quietly, turning slowly to film the majority of the restaurant in the sweep. Chairs were pushed out, food was piled up on tables, cups were stacked halfway to the ceiling and puddles of dark, bubbling brown liquid coated portions of the floor. None of this, critically, had been visible from the exterior. "Stead, sir, something… this place is a fucking mess. It was not, in fact, a fucking mess looking in from outside."

"I'd noticed, trust me," she muttered. "It stinks in here, like it was just jam packed and they all took a shit before leaving."

Rapidly, the camera approached one of the tables and was brought closer to the food - what was left of it. Huge bites, larger than any human mouth could make, were taken out of massive burgers, each one the size of a dinner plate. Thick beef patties steamed, red on the inside and ruddy brown on the out, too fatty, the 'ground' beef used to make them more akin to strange, mashed together chunks of flesh, a melange of unmistakably…

Meaty, fleshy colors. Biological, awful.

They were burgers in the loosest sense, the buns bizarre and over-dense and mealy looking but with an incongruous shiny brown exterior that looked like it was applied after the fact just to try and make it look good. In place of lettuce, there was some unidentifiable, vaguely leaf-patterned green gel mess, a few squirts of too dark, too bloody ketchup… mustard that was more white than yellow - or maybe it was mayo…

"Sir, this food is fucked up."

"This whole place is fucked up," Steady muttered, tiredly. "Weapon at the ready."

"Sir," he replied, and the shotgun came into frame. He squared up, following her to the counter. For a few long moments, they just peered into the half-shrouded kitchen through a cutout on the wall behind the register, and then Steady shouted.

"HEY! IS THERE A MANAGER IN THE HOUSE?"

The silence that met her in response was almost deafening. Slowly, Iron turned in a half circle, looking around - and then there came a sound, a terrible sort of sound. It overwhelmed the microphone on both his camera and its twin on his helmet, this awful air-raid siren parody that sounded more and more like hundreds of human screams forming this rising and falling tide of sonic ugliness.

As the video feed glitched and static flooded the image intermittently, they saw the building shifting, bricks and glass crystalizing outward in wobbly, overly organic sheets from the front of the store. Rumbling appeared to shake the building, and Iron was forced to grab a pillar to retain his footing. When he hunched, they got to watch tiles splitting and sliding and growing, a wholly unnatural ceramic mitosis.

When all was said and done, the entire parking lot had been subsumed, and the restaurant was twice as large from kitchen to doors, with new pillars erected haphazardly, still sluggishly sliding across the floor tiles towards presumably their final positions. These structural icebergs clawed trenches in tile that rapidly 'healed' in their wake.

Iron rounded as if reacting to something, staring at the staggered Steadfast clutching onto the counter as the tile rippled in bizarre, shattering ceramic waves drifting out from the counter, which itself was pushing her backwards towards the entrance as the behind-counter area expanded. She howled, screaming in agony, arms wrapped entirely around a cash register at that point. Red and pink and dark blackish pooled around her feet, those waves of ceramic shredding her up to the like they were made for shredding. Flaying flesh away from bone was horrifying enough, but something worse was unfolding itself.

Behind the counter, a widening, grotesque door peeled open, the wood flexing apart into shiny tendonous strings and awful flesh as a rose made of meat bloomed forth from within.

That screaming siren continued, grew louder even, and the video distortion worsened until all that could be seen, in the center of the frame, was a figure resembling a human being, if that human being was lit harshly and unevenly from the front, and cast a shadow consisting entirely of flesh, of meat and blood and bubbly yellow fat. The mass the 'person' was stuck to the front of slopped against the wall behind the creature, with the flesh seeping through the access window to the kitchen.

Sounds of hissing and popping made it through as the scream-siren trailed off into silence told them that this creature had carpeted over the fryers in back with gore, not giving a singular microfuck about the consequences thereof.

"What can I do for you?" the terrible, blistered avatar asked, a few moments after the screaming siren stopped. This mocking, sick parody of a human torso was still clawing and pulling its way from the meat mass, and as the stunned operators watched, clothing 'grew' over it. Disgustingly, it appeared to be made of woven hair, a chaotic hellscape of interwoven white and black that formed a button down shirt and a tie that were all one piece. Thick pads of calloused skin came next that blackened into a kind of belt-like construction, whose buckle was dark, blackened fingernail approximating shiny plastic polymer.

This same black fingernail formed an approximation of a tie clip, and then a nametag - unreadable.

There was a face, if one could insult the concept of faces so grotesquely, with a lopsided slash of a mouth where the lips were simply just bloody, blistered, skinless facsimiles, dribbling red and this sickly yellow syrup that made its chin all pink and slick.

"F-Fuck, I was just-" Steadfast said, slurring, sounding half drunk with blood loss and pain, but midword… the building went still, and her voice simply ceased. After a long moment, she half turned to Iron. Her lips parted, and thick black and red flooded out - and then the nearly naked bone of her right tibia and fibia, clothed only in tatters and leaking veins below the knee, broke. She staggered, and the top of her head fell away.

For only a moment they were treated to an awful anatomical cross section of her lower brain before blood covered that up completely.

Iron screamed bloody murder, cracking, and in the last frames they could see a thick meaty tendril draped over the counter, forcing what looked a lot like french fries into the sticky black-oozing meat that kept all of Steadfast's thoughts for her, one by one. With each salty new stick of nightmares shoved into what remained of he brain she twitched, or gurgled wetly.

The last man standing legged it, out into the parking lot, and then into…

Another parking lot, leading towards another building.

Towards a Pizza Jam.

"No, no, NO FUCK NO!" he barked, frantic. The poor man rounded, camera directed towards the burger joint, which was rapidly filling up with what looked like squirming, barely human bodies, a pale pink slurry of meat and breading, and enormous waffle cut fries so big they could've been swimming pool rafts. "FUCK! FUCK FUCK!"

While he shouted fuck several more times, he dug in his equipment pack and drew out a gray plastic box, slamming it on the ground and opening it. In a flurry of movement, he tugged something out, pressed something that beeped, and then jerked the camera off of his vest and turned it to stare in the lens.

"Look, I don't know what you FUCKING SHITFUCKS sent us into, but if you don't find a way to EVAC ME, I am going to haunt you until the end of time! EVERYONE IS FUCKED!" he barked, before setting the camera on what was identified in a small block of text in the corner as a transmission relay meant to burst transmit large quantities of audio visual data. He stood up then, and pumped his shotgun. "I'm getting the fuck out of here. If I make it out… I'll get back, I'll call in, I don't know. I gotta move."

When he stepped aside, they could see that strange plant-like structures were growing rapidly from the pavement of the parking lot. In seconds, they formed into beetle coated monstrosities nearly metallic in apperance. Seconds after that, the crawling, bug-covered blobs resolved into passable (At a distance) imitations of cars.

They then promptly rotted, leaving thick black sludge on the ground, from which more bugs, more plants and more cars began to rise.

"Fuck this," Iron panted, and he booked it out of frame.

The video ran for two more four to six minute cycles of 'cars,' and then… abruptly ended in static, with a disquietingly wet crunch.

For a long, long time things were silent in the action room (which was still just the main, large, open area of the . No one spoke. No one so much as breathed, not in any meaningful or audible way.

Finally, Agent Haller said, quietly…

"Well, what the fuck was that shit?"

"Ma'am, that was the last transmission from Iron. It was digitally signed, with little corruption beyond the visual distortion caused by that… management… thing," Muskwe replied, softly. "I did not feel it prudent to warn anyone of the nature of the footage, as… I was… concerned."

"You were fucking concerned? Muskwe, I'm FUCKING CONCERNED! What were YOU concerned about?" she demanded, a cold, hard edge to her voice.

"I was concerned, to be honest, that I had gone gloriously insane, sir," he replied, evenly. "…and I did not have time to ask one of the others to watch it, to confirm or deny my own madness."

"Well, you're not fucking mad unless we all are," she muttered, tiredly. "Everyone saw all of that, yes? Confirm with a yes or no. We saw a team enter a construction hellscape through a wall of oily fog and then get lost or massacred near a fast food restaurant that appeared, to my highly… highly trained eye, to be a fucking LITERAL NIGHTMARE."

A chorus of 'yes' came, then, like a soft rainfall made out of agreement. Really, Haller had hoped for one to thirty answsers of 'no,' because having simply gone batty would have been much easier and much less terrifying. This, this reality, that they had all borne witness to, was truly quite awful.

It bordered on deeply shitty that it hadn't been, in fact, some manner of hallucination - though that alone might have convinced her to go visit a bureau shrink.

"…so what's our theory?" she asked, softly.

"Theory is so often inadequate in the face of actual answers," a soft, faintly accented voice said. This voice was cool, steady, like a small stream flowing in the coldest days of early spring - and it was faintly processed, oddly digital. "Quite a bummer, really, that all of you are now in the fold. I really do find it tiring to orient newcomers, but, perhaps I will assign that task to someone else."

Every firearm in the room was trained on the newcomer before they finished speaking. This… person, of sorts, stood there right next to Haller - or had been next to, but was then in front of, having Haller's gun pressed to their forehead. All of this was well and good, as they had the intruder isolated and contained under threat of-

Death?

Haller stared at the gleaming lenses, lenses staring back at her. The creature, whatever it was, was covered in metal plating, their head all polished glass that might've belonged to a helmet if it weren't for the exposted struts and odd pistons of the neck that emerged from under their chin and around the base of the jaw.

"What the sam fuck are you?" Haller demanded. They chuckled, a strange sound like chimes and rings layering over one another. It was a musical sound, understandable only as a laugh because this creature's head bobbled a bit with it in unmistakable mirth.

"That is a big question with a complicated answer, Agent Haller - but I am, to keep it brief, a robot of a kind - but not a robot, really. Think of me as a mistake made right, but in the weirdest way possible," they replied, a smirk touching their smooth but undeniably digital voice. "I am Doctor Alex Sing, or… that is the name I use now, to conceptually distance myself from who I used to be - security reasons, you see. I've come to tell you all what you just saw."

"And what, the fuck, is that?" Haller asked, losing her patience rapidly - and she didn't have much of it to begin with.

"A 'Spontaneous Edifice Emergence and Reification' event. We call them SEER events, for convenience," Dr. Sing replied, quite pleasantly, waving their hand vaguely at the screen. "We know precious little about them… but we are aware that this is a new, far worse form than we have yet seen. You will ask for credentials. Here, look at this."

Haller looked, the machine person having produced from seemingly nowhere a badge holder. The badge ensconced in said holder insisted that the good doctor was part of an organization called DUSK - the Department of Unnatural / Supernatural Knowledge. In place of a typical shield and eagle so popular in governmental insignias, this bore a strange kind of… seal, or sigil.

"I've seen this before," Haller said, dizzily. The sigil was a pentagram, but its outer circle appeared to be a serpent, devouring its own tail - and in the central pentagon, there was a familiar sign. Brimstone, sulfur, the Leviathan Cross, in all its distorted, time-twisted glory. "I've… I've seen this…"

"A brimstone symbol? Yes, the satanists are rather fond of it, but we were using it first, before even the founding of this nation and our adoption of the DUSK name," Sing replied, blandly, as if this was all very boring to her mechanical ass self. Haller tried not to stare at her hand, a thing plated and padded to function like a human hand, but with open gaps showing moving metal beneath, rods and pistons and tiny little gears. For a moment, there was silence, and then Sing lowered the badge and leaned in, her camera lenses whirring as apertures tightened. "But you don't mean… brimstone. You've seen the DUSK insignia before? Fascinating, and of course, perfectly understandable."

"How the fuck is it understandable? My head hurts," Haller said, her last as she stumbled back and sat down. Muskwe rushed up, and handed her a handkerchief.

"Your nose, ma'am," he intoned, and she pressed her fingers to it, finding they came away bloody.

"Am I going to die?" she asked, a bizarre dread settling in her gut.

"No! My goodness, now, silly, no. You've clearly been geist hexed, some time in the past. You'll be getting memories taken from you back, which is so exciting, isn't it?" Sing replied, brightly. Silence so profound it weighed down on the room like a flow of molten lead followed this, and the doctor tilted her robotic head. "…or perhaps… not, to normal… people. Well, I will enjoy it, anyway, for your sake."

"Goodie for you. Someone fucking shoot her," Haller muttered. No one moved, so she stood herself, bleeding profusely into Muskwe's hankie, and drew her sidearm. Sing did not so much as flinch at the weapon being pointed at her - instead, she leaned in, peering at it.

"Custom work? Very nice, Agent. That's a real stomper of a pistol, and not remotely enough to do me harm," she said, pressing her 'forehead' to it. "I understand. I've violated protocol, entered a black site unannounced, and freaked you right on out. Go ahead. Blow a hole in me, if it'll help. The faster we get you FBI nerds acclimated, the better."

Haller, in a moment of raw rage, confusion and vague nausea, pulled the trigger. Dr. Sing's head snapped back with a loud CLANK, and then… with several heavy ratcheting noises, it returned to its previous position.

"Very nice," Sing said, one of her 'eyes' shattered, a curl of smoke drifting out of it. "High powered, effective, and you're strong enough to muscle down the recoil. Gorgeous weapon, truly."

"F-Fucking what?" Haller demanded. "You're fine?"

"Robot, nerd. Kind of," Sing replied, evenly, as if disappointed. With that, she clapped her odd mechanical hands together and turned to face the room at large. "Congratulations, everyone. You've been formally recruited into DUSK. Your lives as they were are officially over, bummer, but the pay is fantastic, our insurance is better than you'd even believe, and… you get to know all the things you haven't been told about. Vampires, psychics, magicians, nightmares and pretty little machines like me. Ghosts, demons, people who can alter their bodies, secret dimensions and dark dreams that don't die. Your families will be justly compensated after your mock funerals."

"Fucking WHAT!?" Agent Crenshaw demanded, stepping out of the crowd and stalking up to her. "Fuck you! I have a DAUGHTER! She was just BORN!"

"Then unrecruit yourself, dipstick," Sing told him, dismissively. "Divide yourselves into two groups! People who want to give up everything you have, go over there! People who want to keep your lives and forget this moment… over there!"

"F… Forget?" Crenshaw asked, his pale, watery blue eyes wide with a mixture of confusion and panic. "How?"

"Geist hexing will eradicate the memories, sever the pathways to them in an irrecoverable way, effectively removing it all from your mind. A cover story will be generated, and provided to you upon your waking," she explained, patiently, as if speaking to an infant. The doctor raised her arm, and pointed behind her, the limb at an unnatural angle so that an index finger could be directed right at Haller. "You, of course, have no connections, so you have nothing to lose, Agent Haller. I'd like you on this case."

"You can't just MARCH in here, you fucking ROBOT FREAK, and TAKE CONTROL of a literal FBI BLACK SITE. What I am GOING to do is detain your ridiculous metal ass and then call someone higher up the chain to tell me what the HELL is going on!" Haller all but shouted, thoroughly fed up with the utter helplessness she felt as that robot's head slowly tilted backwards like it had when shot, but slower, until it hung down her back and the camera lenses whirred, apertures tightening as they took her in.

"Agent, I am your superior, now," she said, simply, raising a hand. She snapped her fingers, and then… brought her head 'upright,' again, turning around. Haller ignored this, instead staring at her people, all of her people. They were frozen, creatures carved from dyed ice, flickering crystal effigies of themselves. They looked tesselated, rock candy, like models from some kind of videogame showing their triangles as each vertex undulated faintly outward and inward about its origin. "I really need you to stop freaking out, Haller. You're special, I can feel it, and I need your help with this. This is a problem, Haller, one that will kill people - a lot of people, if left unchecked."

"T-The… meat creatures? The manager, the… fast food place? That'll kill people" she asked, softly.

"There's worse about this than all that. Figments that fully instantiate are difficult to kill, for starters, and it will continue to spread… BUT, you have the ability to convince these people that what they do in my service will save the world. I can't convince them of that," Sing told her, quietly. "Get it together. You saw what you saw. That SEER event ATE your people. Working together, we can potentially reverse it, before it eats others."

"Doctor Sing, if you can just make us forget, why do you need to do this? Recruit us? Recruit me?" she asked, after a long pause in which she approached the frozen-mid-stride Agent Crenshaw. When she touched him, she touched what felt like softly undulating planes of glass, a few millimeters from his skin - but this glass was warm like flesh.

"Because you are necessary. When I have feelings, strong ones, I've learned to listen to them. If we are going to stop this, I… need YOU, Anna," the doctor said. Haller looked to the robot, and didn't bother to ask how Sing knew her first name - no one knew it, that was part of her position. She was an enigma, as fake as fake could be, because it kept her insulated from the threats they faced.

"What did you do to my men?" she asked. Sing approached, and drew from the pocket of her suit jacket a handkerchief. When she dabbed at Haller's cheeks, it came back damp, and the Agent didn't even know why she was crying.

"Nothing. There are six men in stupid robes outside, all of whom are affecting what DUSK calls a 'working,' using what we call a 'castgram.' Your men are unaffected, but in this place, time is having a bit of a problem moving forward, except for us. It's not something done… to them, but to the space they occupy, in a sense," she replied, quite forthrightly. Haller was deeply unsure how to deal with this information, but she was forced to accept it. Muskwe was in the middle of spilling a coffee, and it looked like a cascade of crystal that had made it only halfway to the floor. Touching the undulating crystalline surface just above that coffee, she hissed between her teeth and drew her hand back.

It had been scalding hot.

"Thermal energy makes it out," she said, softly. "They're going to freeze to death."

"Perhaps that's why I need you - you've only just seen what civilians call 'magic' for the first time, and you're already working out the flaws. It's true. In about six hours, they would reach a cold point so deep that unfreezing them would, ironically, flash freeze them - their arrested bodily functions no longer warming their insides and all," Sing told her. "So… return to your previous position. I will signal to the men outside to drop the working. Get your shit together, and ride the lightning into an exciting new career in saving the world."

"You're fucking insane," Haller said, shakily. "You know that, right?"

"I'm afraid sanity and insanity are far more complicated than you have been led to believe, Agent. Want to find out how?"

Haller stared at this machine, this woman, this doctor, this interloper and mystery and strangeness of a person. Her eyes, green and stippled with odd flecks of brown, were wide with a kind of feverish anxiety mixed with uncommon mania.

"Yes, I do. I do, god and fucking Jesus Himself Christ damn me."

"Your Christ has been dead a long time, and his so called father with him," Sing murmured, stepping close to touch the cross that Haller wore around her neck. "But, perhaps he was never your god. This was never your cross to bear."

"How could you possibly know that?" Haller rasped.

"I know what I have to know - and it's tarnished, and worn, and has not been well cared for," the doctor told her, in a soft, slightly processed whisper. "It is not something you love… it's someone you remember."

"I hate this," Haller said, in reply.

"You get used to it," Sing insisted, earnestly.

"Do you?"

"Not really. Are you with me?"

Haller stepped back, finding her feet had left softly glowing blue prints on the floor, showing her where to stand. The mechanical doctor sing reached up, and unscrewed what appeared to be the housing of the camera that Haller had shot out. As soon as it was removed, it started sparking and fizzling, molten metal running off of it. Sing threw it carelessly over her shoulder, and a metal plate slid into place beneath the hole, sealing it.

"I am, if that wasn't clear," the Agent murmured.

"Oh, yes, I had figured."

And the robot snapped her fingers, and time lurched back into motion with a sickening blurring of all lights and figures, and a heavy smattering of air shuddering around them like patches of broken, floating glass.

#fiction #writing #gore #surreal #supernatural #conceptual #story #SEER storyline #Fantasy #Horror #body horror

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