#double mechanical seals

[narome342]

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[application-doll]

A doll, made of steel, porcelain, brass, hard unrelenting materials that you could hit as hard as you'd like, and even if its porcelain chipped, she would still be more than functional. Its joints and mechanisms redundant, hydraulic systems doubled for reliability, core, synchronized and double calculated for stability. The most reliable system the woman had ever seen. Every joint precision ground. Every bearing press fit into a shock resistant housing. Even it's feet were custom made of hardened stainless steel, each toe and fastener made from a milled block of hardened steel, tamper resistant, naturally. But even as she marveled at the doll, she wondered who'd made such a thing so seemingly delicate in nature, a maid as its dress suggested, so reliable and damage resistant, why ruggedize something made to dust the frames of a house it might never see the outside of?

But that was the confusing part. The machine refused to function, it simply laid there, unmoving, unclicking, dead as if its mainspring had never been wound. Every mechanism she inspected was free of dust, every hydraulically actuated ligament pressurized correctly, it was the most peculiar thing.

But it still acted as if something were wrong. She scratched her head, clearly she were missing something. When it had arrived at her door, it had collapsed on the ground, with a note in its hand begging her to fix the thing. But she ran a leather workshop and the only possible piece of leather she could find was the belt affixing the dolls dress to its waist.

But still, she had once been a mechanic, so she began looking into the doll's problems. Off came the arms, legs, paneling. Still nothing revealed itself. She found its cores, humming magically, seals still intact, both of them synchronized by the most meticulous set of gearing she'd ever laid eyes on. But it was meticulously clean, as if it had never seen a speck of dirt in its life.

Eventually she reassembled the doll, dress and all, before noticing something, a small, well worn ring of parts around the dolls neck. The brass was shiny while the rest had acquired that patena that signified not wear or misuse, but age. Everything bore use, although still it was meticulously cleaned. But not this small stripe of doll around it's neck.

About an inch and a half wide, all the way around, and only in the one spot. She puzzled for a moment, before finally understanding that it wasn't something inside the doll that had broken, but something that it was missing.

She set to work, pulling out her leather working tools and creating a plain black collar. Set with steel hardware and a small brass lock in the back. As she placed the collar on the dollar, it's eyes began to glow again, she sat back, smiled and enjoyed her work for a moment while the doll began to smile.

A sharp rap on the door broke her from the trance of having done good work, and as she opened it a witch stepped in.

"thank you dear, I'm afraid she simply won't work without it, and she went running off to find you before I could stop her. It seems to be in lovely working order now, thank you"

The rudeness of the witch, barging into her workspace without even asking bothered the woman, but the audacity stunned her more than anything.

"How could you let such a thing happen. Arent you supposed to protect such a thing?"

She said this with anger, brows furrowed as clearly this was something a responsible witch would never let happen, she opened her mouth to continue before the witch interrupted her.

"What you see before you is something I have spent longer than you have been alive creating. Every gear, joint, bearing, bone, and set screw has been meticulously created with the precision that would rival anything you've ever done. I use my design as an act of love. I am no leatherworker as my doll knows, and she knows I'd never let something less than perfect grace her body. So she came here, the workshop that held your mother, all those years ago, who created the collar that helped the doll become what she is. She came to the one place in the world she saw as suitable to create what she needed most, the last token of love she could possibly give me, the final gift she could give of the free will she had after her last collar was ripped from her by someone trying to 'set her free from slavery'"

"The gift of her service, and a show of giving me back what others thought was forced from her. It was her choice, to never choose again. And I love her more than I could ever say."

[theeartuaist]

The App (2)

Three weeks. Two burner phones. One frenzied apartment change. That was all it took for you to start believing you were free.

You’d torched every digital breadcrumb like a fugitive with blood on their hands. The old phone? In pieces. Your social media? Wiped clean, like a crime scene bleached of evidence. The new number came from a prepaid device you bought with cash at a rundown gas station two towns over—right next to a place that sold fireworks and pickled eggs. You told no one but your family where you’d gone, and even then, you didn’t tell them why.

The apartment was smaller than the last one. Claustrophobic, maybe, but it had good bones: thick walls, double deadbolts, and a front desk guy named Marcus who treated unknown visitors like they were walking lawsuits. Most nights, you even slept through without scanning the corners for shadows that moved too smoothly, too human, but not quite enough.

For a moment, a fleeting, fragile moment, you believed you'd done it. That you’d outrun Raye.

And then the books started arriving.

The first one came five days after you finally began to settle in. No envelope, no Amazon box. Just a dog-eared romance novel—The Billionaire’s Forbidden Love—resting right in front of your door like an orphaned pet. Shirtless dude on the cover, a woman swooning like her bones had gone soft. You laughed, briefly. Then you saw the neon-yellow highlighting, thick and uneven like it had been applied with too much pressure:

“You can run, my love, but you cannot escape destiny. What belongs to me will always find its way home.”

You didn’t laugh after that. You pitched it into the alley dumpster and double-locked the door. Then you added a chair under the knob, just like your dad taught you.

The next day, the second book showed up. But this time, it was inside. Sitting right on your pillow. The highlighted passage was even worse:

“He watched from afar, memorising every pattern, every habit. True love required study, devotion, and pursuit. She would understand, eventually, that his persistence was the purest expression of his feelings.”

You tore the place apart. Every lock, every latch, every inch of ductwork. The windows were sealed, the cameras at the front desk had nothing. No one but you had come in.

By the end of the week, you had seventeen books. Seventeen. Titles like – Surrendering to the Shadow King and The Possessive Duke’s Darling. And they kept appearing in places they had no business being. One in your refrigerator, its pages damp with condensation. One stuffed between your clean towels. One curled like a sleeping dog in your shower caddy.

Each with its own highlighted passage about destiny, ownership, and love sharpened into obsession.

You considered calling the police. Then you thought about what that call would sound like: Hello, officer? I’m being stalked by a man who may not be a man and who communicates exclusively via bodice-rippers. Yeah. That’d go over well.

Then came a knock.

You crept to the peephole, half-expecting a nightmare in a human suit. But it was Mrs. Abernathy, your octogenarian neighbor with a floral scarf and a fondness for raisin cookies.

“You have a package, dear,” she called sweetly. “Special delivery.”

You cracked the door just enough to peer out. “I didn’t order anything.”

Her eyes didn’t look quite right. Too glassy, like someone had forgotten to switch them on all the way. Her smile stretched a bit too wide, like someone had drawn it there with a knife.

“Oh, I know,” she said, waving a small wrapped parcel. “That lovely boy Raye asked me to bring it. He showed me pictures. Said you were engaged. Such a devoted young man!”

You slammed the door like it was a guillotine. Locked everything. Heart pounding hard enough to echo in your ribs.

Through the wood, her voice came again, but it had a different flavor now—tinny, mechanical, like it had been routed through a bad speaker. “He asked me to tell you he’s learned from his mistakes. Movies were poor research materials. He’s found much better guides now.”

You didn’t say a word. Eventually, her steps shuffled away.

You should’ve been gone by then. Should’ve run. But something—foolish hope, or maybe just fear—kept you rooted to that spot. That night, the package still showed up.

You found it on your kitchen counter. Inside was a leather-bound journal. Handmade. Not a book but a log. Each page was filled with razor-precise handwriting—cold, methodical, obsessive. A surveillance diary.

It catalogued your life: what time you left for work, what you ordered for lunch, who you spoke to, how long your showers lasted. Some entries even had photos. From behind bushes. Across the street. Through windows. They dated back months before you ever met him.

The final page was in red ink, as if written in something warmer than pen:

“I have identified the errors in my courtship approach. Fiction is an incomplete source for behavioural protocols. I have been observing actual human mating behaviours and have identified more successful strategies. Persistence is key.”

“I have instead been consulting superior information repositories that your species calls Reddit, 4chan, and various forums dedicated to "game." I have also analysed dating advice blogs and YouTube channels dedicated to human mating strategies.”

“The consensus is clear: females respond to what humans designate as "alpha" behaviour. One must "hold frame" and employ "negging" and "dread game." The courtship requires what your species terms 'pushing past last-minute resistance”. I will begin again tomorrow. You will find my improvements satisfactory.”

You didn’t read any further. You just grabbed your things, left the apartment, and checked into a hotel the furthest from your apartment.

You didn’t care anymore. The world you thought you knew had slipped away, and now you were just running, your phone buried in the lining of your suitcase. At dawn, your eyes opened to a rose on the pillow beside you.

Your phone buzzed, though it was supposed to be off. You checked it. The app was back.

A single message blinked at you like an open eye:

Good morning. I have located your temporary nest. Your evasion techniques are impressive but unnecessary. I now understand that pursuit and resistance are part of the dance. This is biology. I will perform correctly this time. I am upgrading for you.

You didn’t even stop to brush your teeth. You didn’t bother packing. You didn’t bother trying to reason with yourself. You checked out of there in a flash, running down the hotel hall, looking for an exit; a chance to breathe without Raye’s presence closing in on you like a vice.

You burst into the morning air, your breath clouding in the cold as you stumbled into the streets. The first taxi you spotted felt like a lifeline, and you threw yourself into it without thinking twice.

The driver was an old man—silver hair combed neatly, liver spots on his hands, eyes soft and wet like a dog’s. He glanced at you in the rearview mirror and smiled, a slow,little smile.

“Where to, miss?” he asked, voice gravelly and warm, the kind of voice you think should come bedtime stories.

“Train station.” Your voice was high, tight. “Please hurry.”

The cab pulled out with a gentle lurch.

“Bad morning?”

You nodded, eyes glued to the window and pressed yourself against the door. You stared out the window, your heart was still punching your ribs. You thought if you stayed quiet, maybe you could disappear. Maybe he wouldn’t find you.

“Boyfriend trouble?” the old man asked, trying to make it sound harmless.

You swallowed. That word—boyfriend—curled in your throat like something rotten. “Why do you care?” you asked, too sharp.

He fell silent.

The city blurred past—gray buildings, flickering signs, streets that all looked like they were exhaling their last breath. Then you realized something was off. A left turn when it should’ve been right. A street you didn’t recognize. You sat up, brows furrowed.

“Hey,” you said, leaning forward, “you’re going the wrong way.”

No response.

“Sir? Did you hear me?”

Still nothing. The cab made another turn. Left. Not toward the bus station. Not toward anything you recognised.

“Hey! Sir this isn't where the train station is,” you repeated, the chill of dread sliding under your skin like ice water. “You’re going the wrong way?”

The driver’s voice came again, but it had changed. Just slightly. Too measured. Too... calculated.

“Creating uncertainty increases emotional dependence,” he said.

You froze.

“What?”

“The literature states that unpredictable environments produce deeper attachments.”

You reached for the door handle.

Click.

Locked.

You yanked this time. Still locked - child locks. Of course.

Your stomach dropped like a stone into a bottomless lake. You turned back to the driver, heart hammering. “Let me out,” you said. “Now.”

“The manuals suggest limiting options increases compliance,” he says, smooth as ice, still not looking at you.

You pulled your phone from your pocket. No signal. Useless. You pounded the window, screaming. “Let me the hell out!”

The taxi sped up, turning down a quieter road—broken sidewalks, chain-link fences, warehouses that haven’t been used in decades. The kind of place where bad things happen and no one finds out until it’s too late.

In desperation, you looked at the driver, ready to plead, threaten, whatever it took—and froze. In the rearview mirror, where the old man's eyes should have been reflected, there was nothing. Just empty space.

As if sensing my realization, the driver's face rippled. Like wax left too close to a fire, the old man melted away. The silver hair receded, the wrinkles smoothed. And what’s left was him.

Raye.

His familiar, too-perfect face stared back at you from the mirror, his expression neutral, observant.

“Was the old man's disguise inadequate?” he asks, genuinely curious, like a scientist observing a mouse that bit back. “I modeled it after ‘trustworthy archetypes.’”

“You... you.. just, let me out,” you said, quieter now. Not because you’re calm, but because you were trying to be. “Please.”

“Your heart rate has increased,” he noted. “The forums suggest this indicates attraction, yet your verbal cues suggest aversion.”

His head tilted. That same goddamn tilt you remembered from your first and last date.

“The data remains inconsistent.”

“Well, gee, perhaps the reason for that is because you are kidnapping me!” You saw the road slipping past. Warehouses and rusted fences blurring by. You tried to memorize every turn. Useless. You knew it was useless..

“Your cultural narratives celebrate pursuit after rejection. They frame perseverance as romantic despite the ethics and laws. Is this your attempt at stimulating narrative tension? Are you playing, as your people say, hard to get?”

You were shaking now. Not from fear—but from thr hot, boiling pit simmering inside you. “They’re written by people who want control, not connection. Hell, do you even understand what you're reading?” You said, breath trembling, “You have no damn idea, do you?”

He processed that. You can see him processing it. "The research is indeed inconsistent." The cab had slowed now, creeping down a service road lined with oleander bushes, their pink flowers drooping like exhausted dancers. "I calculated the most efficient approach based on available data.. the forum posts with the highest engagement metrics suggested—"

"Shut up wbout your stupid data! You don't know anything about love!" I gestured at the surroundings; the locked doors. "This - what you're doing - just creates fear. Not love.”

Raye's hands tightened on the steering wheel. Just slightly. The knuckles went white, then translucent, something that looked like starlight filtering through fog.

"I have exonerated my sources. I have watched 689 romantic films," he continued, voice carrying a new edge like glass scraping against glass. "Read 447 romance novels. Monitored 432 relationship advice forums. Observed—"

"OBSERVED!" You were shouting now, past caring. "That's all you do, isn't it? Watch and copy and calculate, but you've never felt a goddamn thing in whatever passes for your life. Relationships aren't algorithms. You can't learn them from books or websites. You need real experience. And you never experienced love in your life!"

The cab jerked to a stop.

In the terrible silence that followed, your own breathing, ragged and harsh, ricocheted in your ears. Raye's reflection had gone perfectly still. When he finally spoke, his voice was different — quieter, with a sound like distant rain.

"You are... correct. I have no experiential database for the emotion you call love. Only... approximations. Simulations." His head tilted, that familiar gesture now seeming disappointed rather than curious. "The inconsistencies in human behaviour patterns suggest an underlying complexity I failed to accurately model."

Something changed in the air. The child locks clicked open.

"If love cannot be calculated or observed from the outside," he said, still facing forward, "then my research methodology is fundamentally flawed."

You didn't hesitate. Your fingers were on the handle, your foot hitting the cracked asphalt before my brain could catch up. You were already running, but his final words followed you down that empty road: "I will... recalibrate. Begin new research. Attempt to understand the variables I overlooked."

For three days, there were no books, no messages, no signs of Raye. You began to hope that perhaps you had crashed his reasoning, created a logic loop he couldn't resolve.

Then on the fourth morning, you found a book on my new kitchen table in yet another new apartment that no one should have known about. It wasn't a romance novel this time, but a philosophy text opened to a passage about identity. A note had been paper-clipped to the page, written in that same mechanically precise handwriting:

"I purged the corrupted data. Your internet contains many viruses of thought. I will observe more carefully now, without intervention. When I understand the paradox, I will return."

"The designation "fiancé" was premature. The designation "researcher" was inadequate. I find no human words for what has transpired between us. Thank you for identifying the error in my programming. I will experience love."

next chapter

[reality-detective]

Justin Timberlake & Britney Spears: The Car Accident

What REALLY happened? The TRUTH is far darker than you’ve been told.

The mainstream wants you to believe a radio hoax in 2001 caused the panic. But what if that was a cover-up for something much bigger? What if Justin & Britney were REPLACED?

Here’s what they DON’T want you to know:

June 12, 2001 – A real car crash happened on Mulholland Drive. Timberlake & Spears were in a black Mercedes-Benz that collided head-on with a Freightliner semi-truck.

Witnesses silenced. Maria Cortez & James Hensley saw everything—coerced into secrecy. Maria later died in a suspicious fire.

Emergency response was DELAYED. Instead, a private medical team linked to Jive Records arrived FIRST.

Bodies REMOVED. Not to a hospital, but to a private underground facility owned by a Jive Records exec.

Then comes the replacement operation:

Within 72 hours, two groomed doubles took their place.

"Subject JT-Alpha" & "Subject BS-Alpha" were surgically adjusted, vocally trained, and deployed by June 15, 2001.

Project Echo-17. Sealed records exist at Sony Music HQ in NYC, proving this was ORCHESTRATED.

What about Hector, the truck driver?

He witnessed everything.

Paid $2.3M to keep quiet.

Threatened. Forced to flee to Mexico under a new identity.

Cover-up mechanics? Simple.

The DJ hoax was PLANTED to bury the truth.

Key players: Barry Weiss (Jive Records), Jonathan Carter (fixer, now deceased).

The Mercedes-Benz? Melted down. The Freightliner? Repainted & resold.

This wasn’t just an accident. It was a planned event. And the "celebrities" you see today? Not the originals.

We are only SCRATCHING the surface. There are 400 pages of classified info that take this to the NEXT LEVEL. 🤔

- Edward Snowden

[katyahina]

The 'haired' helmets are strange..

It IS odd how we get to wear the characters' hairstyles, as it is just really unlikely they're scalps! I suppose the explanation is the same as why we are able to completely change upon looking into a mirror at Roundtable's Hold; as long as the Tarnished is guided by Greater Will, they'll have its aid and be transformed into whatever they see fit to keep carrying on! So I think the implication here is that we do, physically, grow the hair of the demigods (or champions) upon trying to tap on their power! I think if GW abandons a Tarnished, or if they abandon it, they lose this 'ability', which our playable character never does, so..

I am not sure whether it is Maliketh's own long mane or also a decoration! I'd like to think the former, in which case, same logic as with hair of Malenia, Godfrey and Radahn applies! Vargram's "hair" definitely is a decoration, and specifically for the purpose of imitating shadowbeasts:

Ensha's armour goes even further and not only gives us a hairdo, but makes us a skeleton:

We even get his power of slight regeneration, similar to Erdtree's normal powers:

All implications considered, I really doubt that this is just how armour looks, especially considering no change in size. We are not 'wearing' the skull, we ARE the skull now fhhsfd And this time the NPC data inside simply exists because Ensha does use NPC code and mechanics. So, we turn into a corpse! Again, should not matter much since as long as we're carried by GW we don't need to eat or sleep or... anything, really. (I'll also die on the hill of the theory that Ensha was one of the deceased Marika's offspring whose Mausoleum crashed and what was left from him crawled out but that's another story fdhfhds)

Here are other instances of hair simply decorating a helm:

Niall is that one guy we fight in Castle Sol, so similarity in this case ALSO checks out! Also cute idea: what if decoration for the helmets of Godrick's Knights IS his own hair? ;-;

That could also be speculated about Redmane Knights, but I feel like it'd be more appropriate for Godrick's. Radahn would be stingy about his amazing lion mane whereas Godrick can not only take body parts but also give them XDDDD yeah yeah terrible whatever

The black hair on Night Cavalry's helmet can be removed, also confirming that in this case it is a decoration. This hair does have interesting flowing animation though! Maybe it IS the hair of Night Cavalry themselves, still having their shadowy energy, but cut and attached again to their own helmets (kind of like Ciaran from DS1 decorated her helmet with her own braid!)

Another case of hair not being actual hair but part of the mask; the way hair is placed, it'd had to grow from like, eyebrows level and face itself or something fdhfdsdfh Maybe this style with braids and grey hair was intended to refer at Godfrey's? Alternatively, what IF their faces are actually furry/animalistic despite otherwise human build, so the hair doubles as fur? We don't see them behind the mask, after all? A food for a thought lol

^ More of 100% 'mask' types of these

The water dancer in blue gave the sword to Malenia's teacher, the blind guy that once sealed the God of Rot himself, and these warriors in blue appear to be following the same philosophy of "ever running water preventing stagnation, so, rot itself" as him! Although this head piece imitates just a follower and not the man himself (as far as we are aware....), perhaps the sentiment is strong enough to give us the hairdo too x) Again, funny enough, it seems to resemble the Lady of the Lake fairy herself!

I suspected the case of 'sharing hair' with Cleanrot Knights too, but upon closer look I can tell it is supposed to be some fabric/rags, rather than hair or hairlike accessory! Probably more efficient to imitate the look with rags rather than something hairlike tbh, considering the lenght of the thing! So I think the design is more meant to represent Malenia's own unhappy fate, with short tuft being the "hair" and the longer tails being the "wings" :

_______________

In conclusion, it is kind of easy to deduce which hair become our actual hair for the time being because of golden grace 'reshaping' us and which hair is just decor! But it is really interesting stuff to think about all the way!

[elementroar]

Flament Nagel, the Flaming Nail - Paracelsus theory(ies)

This was gonna go out earlier yesterday, but you know, Slayer happened lol.

I feel that ArcSys has been hinting that Paracelsus' 'true nature' is more complicated than described, even more than how his true form being kinda formless and his nature as a morph weapon that reacts to the emotions of his wielder.

So below is his appearance during A.B.A's Instant Kill move back in ACCENT CORE +R, which were a signature cinematic and flashy move that instantly destroys your opponent regardless of health. It's a retired game mechanic now in STRIVE.

So back in their previous appearance back in ACCENT CORE+R, this is the form Paracelsus briefly takes when performing A.B.A's Instant Kill, where he first flies up into the sky while she summons her door.

What’s interesting is it’s only in this form that we see him resemble his original name - Flament Nagel - which is misspelled German for “Flaming Nail”. In no other move or scene does he actually look or behave like a 'nail' that's on fire.

After their enemy is sucked into the door and it closes, Paracelsus returns but in Goku Moroha mode (the extreme mode above his usual Moroha mode) and slices the door in half to break it and ‘seal’ their enemy on the other side to ‘instant kill’ them.

He then slices the doors apart forcefully because he is actually rotated with his blade facing the door. Paracelsus is not facing us the audience in this animation. The 'face' facing us isn't his actual face morphing, but some kind of energy entirely.

What’s more, Paracelsus himself appears to be knocked out (😵) during the entire animation and only opens his eyes after the black smoke dissipates and seems kinda scared or confused at the end of it. Which suggests it isn’t even 'him' doing the attack with A.B.A, or at least not him consciously doing it.

There's the possibility that this smoke and the sludge we now see in STRIVE are suppose to be the same thing, but changed due to art evolution. A kind of formless mass Paracelsus takes on when he doesn't have a definite form, or a form that differs from his default.

I'm not saying Paracelsus was taken over by a completely separate personality or entity, because he still had agency and awareness, he still talked as himself in Moroha mode. And it's clear he enjoys/enjoyed blood and violence and he still reminisces about them with some fondness in STRIVE.

But when he says he "lost his sanity" during his bloodlust, I wonder if it was more like he was partially possessed, and he didn't realize it.

Paramirum

Coupled with his new transformation which is called “hyoui” (“possession”) internally, and his STRIVE axe form has both two 'heads' at once, and is actually a double-bladed axe with one blade broken off. It feels like hints and motifs that Paracelsus is or has multiple entities or personalities in one.

Like on his blade in Jealous Rage mode, that word on the blade is "Paramirum" which is actually one of the books written by the real-life alchemist Paracelsus. It means "beyond wonder". What's more interesting is that the roman numeral Ⅱ is on that blade too, right above "Paramirum".

Does that mean something like a second Paracelsus, or "Paramirum" personality is appearing on that blade? There is a goat's eye on that half in Jealous Rage, which gets much larger in hyoui mode. Could this be his old goat's head personality reappearing indepedently of the main Paracelsus personality?

(There's also text on Paracelsus' end in Jealous Rage, but I can't tell what it is from the gallery images, prolly will need to see the actual model textures)

It should also be noted that in his original Moroha mode, it’s shown that only one of his eyes lights up. So the idea of him being somehow ‘half’ isn’t entirely new to STRIVE.

It’s also not clear if Paracelsus is actually aware in red hyoui mode, and if it's actually him snarling with A.B.A in her attack. His regular face is apparently still there when the attack happens, according to this concept art, so it's a second face appearing on the blade half. Could this actually be a completely separate personality from the main Paracelsus?

Personal headcanon/theory

My personal headcanon now is that ArcSys is heavily hinting a dual-personality situation with Paracelsus. If he really is actually a twin-bladed axe that got one edge broken off, then maybe the Paracelsus we know is ‘half’ of his full personality and is technically incomplete. If Moroha partially reveals his other personality, maybe they use to both be present at the same time (both blades present) but now only one can take dominance at one time (as a single bladed axe).

Or a new personality is emerging that's in response to A.B.A's bloodlust in STRIVE.

There's also a lesser-known property of magical foci like Paracelsus, in that they described as 'physical proxies' to the real 'data' they're pulling from in the Backyard (think in computer terms: the main Guilty Gear world is really more like the Windows Desktop of reality while the Backyard is the actual hard drive).

It really doesn't come up much, maybe in I-No's story, but functionally doesn't mean anything for characters like Paracelsus. Usually.

But there's an interesting thing with what we see pop up out of A.B.A's door when she does her Keeper of the Key Overdrive.

The multiple tentacles are made of sludge similar to Paracelsus' form, have eyes similar to Paracelsus', and also sharp blades and red energy. The Jealous Rage version even reminds me of Paracelsus' other nickname, 'the Sanguine Gale', where he supposedly swung so fast that he sent blades of wind out to slash at enemies back in his berserker days. The Jealous Rage version has the tendril twist around like a tornado with blades extended.

My theory is THAT is part of Paracelsus' 'full body' back in the Backyard. A giant formless mass much like Paracelsus' true sludgy form, that is summoned A.B.A unlocks the way to it when she uses Paracelsus himself as the key, and reacts to A.B.A's wish for them to attack by forming blades and lashing out.

Maybe it's a giant collection of multiple souls, entities, and memories, because magical foci can be created from multiple things attaching to each other and an object or human. In its case, I can imagine it's the collective memories of warriors who died on the battlefield, that melted together in the Backyard and attached themselves to a weapon - an axe.

And Paracelsus could be just one facet of the collective whole that has grown independent in the physical world of GG.

But big reminder that this is all my personal speculation. I don't expect ArcSys to ever definitely say what's coming out of the door; because there's always the chance it's really just 'rule of cool' like most things in the game, to be honest.

But I like to think it's not a coincidence that A.B.A's new Overdrive has her actually use Paracelsus as a key now, and she's summoning something that looks like it's also sludge like him.

[triviallytrue]

Do you have any beginner's advice for Balatro? Because I'm having good fun around 8 hours in, but figuring out how to actually win is a struggle. My usual instinct in deckbuilders is to thin out the deck as much as possible, but starting with a full 52 makes that a lot less viable.

Yes I have lots and I will do my best not to write several thousand words

Are you playing on the beta? All the achievements and unlocks transfer over, and I think the beta is friendlier and has better balance than the original release of the game.

Number one thing new players fuck up: the interest mechanic is everything. You have to save up to $25 and get that extra $5 of passive income per round, it is in many cases the difference between a winning run and a run that stalls out in the later antes.

Relatedly, I tend to try and find a strong earlygame joker in the first two shops (usually a +mult joker for playing a specific hand) and then save my money unless I see a run-defining joker/voucher until I'm over $25.

Once you have >$25, don't be afraid to spend your money back down to $25. Packs first, then rerolls.

Most skips in most situations are bad. There are some that are good in ante 1 (the coupon tag, the holographic tag, and the investment tag) and a few that can be good later (double money when you have a lot of money, the orbital tag when it's on the hand you're playing already, the handy tag when it's a ton of money)

Your instinct to thin out the deck and your concern that 52 cards is a lot are both correct. Hanged Man and Immolate are both great, as are jokers that let you destroy cards like Trading Card. Keep at it.

Relatedly, purple seals from spectral packs and jokers that generate tarot cards are incredibly powerful. Purple seals specifically are self-enabling - you can use death cards from purple seals to copy more purple seals and hanged man to thin out your deck so you draw more purple seals.

In the early stages before you've unlocked all jokers and decks, a lot of powerful tools are hidden from you. If you aren't beating runs, focus on unlocking locked jokers.

If you want a sense of what a really good player looks like, I recommend Balatro University - he is excellent at the game and also has some videos specifically designed for new players.

[randofics]

Hey, sorry to bother you. Is there any chance you could do some more writing on the fic about being able to reach where the bots can't? Maybe them seeking out more and more chances to get help with it so they can feel them again (once again sorry to bother im not used to doing asks lol)

My first ask that I've actually finished! It took a few days, but I got it done. Hope you enjoy this anon!

Being able to reach where the bots can't Pt.2

After the men on base found out you could squeeze into Optimus's engine space and reach where they couldn't, they would call on you for assistance quite often.

Once after a battle, they were giving Optimus a thorough lookover for any serious damage when someone spotted leaking enerjon pooling underneath him. There was enough for everyone to get a bit worried. One guy spotted you walking into the hangar and yelled for you. The tone of his voice was enough for your happy face to twist with worry.

You sprinted over and bent down to look where they were pointing. Heart tightening at the sight, without hesitation, you slid underneath him to look. Finding a dripping trail of the blue fluid, you sat up on your knees and leaned against the inside of his wheel. "I need some electrical tape!" A hand tapped your side, and you grabbed the roll immediately, pulling out a long strip and tearing it off with your teeth.

Reaching up, you felt for the torn cables and hoses. Finding a matching pair, you quickly pressed the open ends together and wrapped them tightly to seal them. You did that for the other ones till you didn't see any more bleeding. Your heart racing in your chest, you leaned back against the inside of his wheel again and asked for a clean cloth. You wiped your hands clean and gently cleaned any surface of his engine that had drying enerjon.

His shocks creaked as the tension in his frame was released. The cables still hurt, but with your gentle touch, that was quickly forgotten.

-------

Crosshairs didn't like the feeling of things stuck in his plating, but if it meant possibly getting you to touch him in order to remove it, then he could tolerate it. Now he didn't do it on purpose it really was accidental. Nevertheless, he called you over for some assistance in removing the offending plant matter.

Once again, you leaned over into his engine space and felt around for anything out of place. Feeling the soft texture of a leaf, you touched your way down to the branch it was attached to and gave it a tug. You managed to pull it free, but the end was broken off somewhere inside the mechanics of his engine.

He was too low to the ground for you to slip underneath, so you called another person nearby to get you a set of carjacks. A minute or two later, they ran up with two heavy jacks in hand. Laying on the concrete, you felt underneath his bumper for parts of his frame you could use to lift him. Sliding the jacks into position, you cranked them both a bit at a time till his front end was up high enough for you to safely slip underneath.

Flashlight in hand, you scanned the underside of his engine for the green of leaves. Spotting one poking out, you slowly pulled it till the rest of the branch came free. "Is that all of it?"

"Yeah, that feels like all of it." With that, you slid out from underneath him tossing the branch to the side and starting to release the jacks. They slowly racked down till he was on his wheels, and you pulled them away.

He transformed and tested his movements a bit. With a grumbled thank you from him, you went on with your previous work.

-------

Bumblebee had a plan in motion. He'd purposefully gotten dirty so you would help clean him. He waited outside the hangar for you to arrive and honked his horn to grab your attention.

When you saw him rolling towards you, absolutely caked in mud, you had to do a double take. "What in the world did you get into bee?" You chuckle, shaking your head at his antics.

"Can you.. wash.. me?"

"You have a wash station inside bee. Why do you want me to wash you?"

A voice clearly from an old movie answered you. "It's gotten old darling"

"So you just want to change things up a bit?"

A happy whirring answered you. You sighed. "Well, I suppose I have the time. Just park by the wash station so the hose can reach you. I'll grab some stuff."

"So, do you want the water cold or hot?"

🎶"Shawty fire burnin' fire burnin'."🎶

You let out a snort at his music reference. "Ok, hot it is." You sprayed him down, trying to remove as much dried mud as possible before using the sponges. Surprisingly, you got almost everything off with the hose alone. Dunking a sponge into your bucket of warm soapy water, you splashed soap over his hood, following behind with circular motions. Scrubbing anything too stubborn with a wet cloth.

He was definitely enjoying this. Your hands all over him and the warm water running over his plating. It was over too soon, though, and you dumped the bucket in the nearby drain after giving him a thorough spray down to remove any leftover suds.

"Sorry bee, you'll have to get your undercarriage cleaned in the wash station. It's too hard for me to wash under there."

"That's alright."

He watched you walk away through a set of double doors nearby and then drove into the wash station, letting it blast his undercarriage with cool water.

You chuckled to yourself as you walked down the hallway. You knew exactly why he'd gotten so dirty, and you thought it was cute how he tried to play it off.

-------

Rachet had gone out with Bumblebee and Raf after Optimus suggested he take a break from the deskwork to stretch his "legs". He'd grumbled about it but relented. When he returned, there was some mud splattered on his plates that he didn't pay any mind to. When Arcee commented on it, he brushed her off, saying that he'd get cleaned up later.

You arrived at base after bee picked you up from work. And as soon as you saw the grumpy medic standing at his desk with mud on his white and rusty red paint, you rolled your eyes. Figures he'd be too engrossed in work to even shower.

Motherly instincts taking over you called his name with no response. A little louder the second time. "Rachet!" He didn't look at you, but this time, he answered. "What? I'm busy!"

"You need to wash off."

"Can't right now, there's too much to do."

"Rachet, I will spray you if I have to."

"Sorry, still too busy."

You let out an annoyed growl. Then, an idea popped into your head. You ran off to find some tools.

Slightly out of breath, you placed the buckets on the floor behind rachet and dragged an extra long hose to the same spot after hooking it to a nearby spicket. Turning on the water, you ran to the end with the spray nozzle and, without warning, sprayed him in the back. He jumped, letting out a yelp at the cold water. Whipping around, he glared down at you.

"Hey, I tried to warn you. Now transform so I can get all that dry mud off you." He rolled his optics, letting out a grumble of annoyance. Relenting, he transformed, and you smiled in satisfaction.

"Just be quick about it." You got to work spraying him down and sudsing him up. You had to sit on your knees on his tire to reach the center of his hood. Your chest pressing into him as you reached for the awkward spot. Internally, he was freaking out about it.

This definitely felt nicer than the wash station, though, and eventually, he was relaxing on his shocks, enjoying your thorough cleaning.

Once you'd finished his chassis and tires, you put on some swimming goggles and slid under his side. He'd been so entranced by your touch on his panels that he hadn't even noticed you slip underneath him. When he felt your touch on his undercarriage, he jolted forward an inch in surprise.

"Woah, Rachet!"

"Sorry, I didn't realize you were under there." He tried to speak as normal as possible, but you noticed the slight crack in his voice. Gently, you started scrubbing the cables and other parts that made up his undercarriage. You immediately took note of how tense he'd become and listened to any sounds he made.

He kept as quiet as possible, but he was definitely feeling things he hadn't in a few centuries. Luckily, no one was in the main room of the base at the moment. Even so, he didn't want you or anyone else to hear the noises his body was trying to produce.

You could, every once in a while, make out stifled grunts and groans, which made you grin mischievously. Eventually, though, you had completely cleaned every inch of his undercarriage that your small hands and the cloth you used would allow. So reluctantly, you slid out from under him soaked with soap and grime all over.

You stretched, removing the goggles and ringing out some water from the bottom of your shirt. "Woo! Now I need a shower." He transforms, looking himself over for a moment. "Ahem, thank you, y/n." He held his fisted servo over his mouth, looking anywhere but at you. "I could tell you enjoyed yourself." He looked at you wide optics, and you grinned up at him, giving a wink and walking away to take a shower of your own.

[morgan-va]

Chapter 29: Remembering. (Serial Designation V x reader)

Masterlist

TW: Descriptions of pain and suffering

Back in her room, Uzi spins her chair around, a satisfied chuckle escaping her as N and V begin to stir. It worked. She actually got their memories back.

V, always the quickest to act, barely takes a second before her hand snaps into a chainsaw, the jagged edge revving to life as she growls. "What the hell, Uzi?! What gives you the right to snoop through our heads?"

She stops mid-threat, her optics flicking to the side. Uzi follows her gaze and freezes. Techie is still wired into the computer, slumped in the chair, motionless. Dimmed optics flicker with scrolling text.

ADMINISTRATOR LOCKOUT: SUCCESSFULBEGINNING DISK CLEANUP|||||________________________________ 7%

Uzi’s stomach drops. No. No, no, no. This shouldn’t be possible, Techie should have woken up, just like N and V. 

Unless...

No. That’s impossible. The only way anyone could be locked inside like this is if… they were inside their own memory simulation as well.

Her breath hitches. That human—the one N called Techie. There’s no way, right?

She snaps her head toward N and V. “Explain. Now. Who the hell was that technician?”

N shifts as his newfound memories resurface, "I know! That technician was—"

“An old friend,” V interrupts, her voice unusually subdued. Her optics don’t meet Uzi’s. "From before... everything happened."

V exhales sharply, glancing at Techie's lifeless form. "I wasn’t sure at first, but as I’ve spent time with them, I realized... That drone sitting in front of us? That’s that human."

Uzi’s eyes widen as V’s words sink in. Her voice rises into a near-shout. “And you didn’t think to mention that before I sent them into a memoryscape with that eldritch freakshow?!”

V doesn’t hesitate. Her chainsaw revs louder, the jagged blade stopping just short of Uzi’s throat. “Oh, I don’t know,” she growls, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Maybe because you ambushed us and jammed yourself into our heads before I had the chance?”

Uzi swallows hard, glaring at V even as she leans back slightly from the weapon. “Fine. You make a good point.”

“Damn right, I do.” V lowers her weapon, but her glare remains sharp. “Now fix it.”

Not needing to be told twice, Uzi spins back to her computer, fingers flying over the keyboard as she desperately tries to regain control. Code floods the screen, scrolling too fast for her to process.

“Come on, come on…” she mutters, sweat beading on her forehead. Every second that bar inches forward, Techie’s chances of waking up shrink.

She grits her teeth and keeps typing. She has to fix this.

Light floods your vision. The sterile hum of fluorescent lights buzzes faintly overhead, and the scent of hot metal and solder fills your nose. 

A workbench stretches out in front of you, scattered with tools, wires, and diagnostic equipment. Right. Your final exam—robotics training. You’ve spent weeks preparing for this, and now you’re almost done.

The test was simple in theory: repair a malfunctioning worker drone suffering from an assortment of mechanical and software issues. Simple. But under pressure? Not so much.

You tighten the last screw into place, sealing the drone’s back panel before setting the screwdriver down with a shaky breath. This should be it. You double-check the wiring, hoping you’ve done everything right. There’s only one way to find out.

Your finger hovers over the power button for a split second before pressing down.

The drone’s optics flicker to life. A soft whir fills the air as it boots up, standing upright before turning to face you.

“Hello!” it chirps, its voice light and pleasant.

Success.

A grin breaks across your face. You did it.

Your professor strides over, their sharp gaze scanning the drone as they run through a quick diagnostic check. They lift the drone’s arms, test its mobility, and check the interface for any lingering errors. After a moment, they nod in approval.

"Everything seems to be in perfect working order," they say, turning to you with an approving smile. "Excellent job. You pass with flying colors."

Relief washes over you. You exhale a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding, nodding in thanks as a few of your classmates glance over. Some are still deep in their own work, muttering under their breath as they struggle with their drones. Others shoot you brief looks—some impressed, others indifferent.

Not wanting to linger, you quietly gather your things. The exam is over for you, and there’s no point in sticking around. You sling your bag over your shoulder and make your way toward the door.

Just as your fingers brush against the handle, a loud clatter echoes through the room.

You turn on instinct. One of your classmates has just powered their drone on, and while it seems to function for the most part, something is clearly wrong. Its speech module is glitching, causing it to stutter and garble its words in a mess of static and half-formed syllables.

The student groans in frustration, their expression twisting into anger. "Ugh, stupid thing—"

Before anyone can stop them, they shove the drone off the table.

It crashes to the floor with a sickening crunch.

Without thinking, you rush over, grabbing the student by the arm and spinning them around. "What the hell is wrong with you?!" you snap, anger flaring in your chest. "You can’t just treat them like that!"

The student sneers at you, yanking their arm free. "Calm down. It’s just a hunk of metal," they scoff, rolling their eyes. "Besides, what do you care? You act like they’re people or something."

You clench your fists, heart pounding.

They laugh, shaking their head before shooting you a look of disgust.

"You really are a freak."

That phrase echoes in your mind as everything around you fades away—"You really are a freak."

Over and over again, through the black void.

You open your eyes, the soft sheets of your bed comforting as the morning sun peeks through the curtains. Today’s the day—you’ll be heading out of town for your new job. Some technician gig for a rich family out in the swamp. You’ve been looking for something like this for months, and the offer came out of nowhere, just like that! You didn’t even apply for anything—just created a profile through the JCJenson website, but you hadn’t had a chance to actually browse any listings.

You guess someone’s looking out for you after all.

Rising from bed, you stretch, shaking off the last remnants of sleep before turning your attention to packing. You double-check your suitcase, making sure you haven’t left anything important behind. Clothes, tools, personal items—it’s all here. Just as you’re about to close it, something small and round slips out from between your neatly folded shirts, rolling across the wooden floor with a soft clink.

You bend down, reaching for it. A small, smoky blue gemstone rests against the floorboards, catching the morning light. You pick it up, running your thumb over the smooth surface.

You’ve had this stone since you were a kid. It doesn’t hold any deep sentimental value—not really. You don’t even remember where you got it. But for some reason, you’ve always kept it close. A good luck charm, maybe. You can’t imagine ever parting with it.

You slip it back into your pocket, sighing in relief before zipping up your suitcase. Time to go.

You pick up your suitcase, gripping the handle tightly as you take a deep breath. It’s time.

With a steadying exhale, you step forward and open the door.

Only to find… nothing.

The hallway outside your room is gone, replaced by an endless, yawning void. Before you can react, the ground beneath you vanishes, and you plummet into the vast nothingness, the weightless sensation sending your stomach into your throat. You try to scream, but no sound escapes. Darkness swallows you whole.

You’re late.

You slept in.

Late for your first day of work at the Elliott’s.

How is this possible??

You throw the covers off and scramble out of bed, heart pounding as you yank on your clothes in a panic. Of all the ways to start this job, this is the worst. You barely have time to double-check yourself in the mirror before bolting out of your small basement room and up the stairs—

SMACK.

You collide with someone and nearly fall over, barely managing to steady yourself as they hit the ground.

A maid drone.

“Oh, crap, I’m so sorry—!” You quickly reach down and help her up, eyes wide with guilt. “I wasn’t looking where I was going, I—”

She dusts herself off, looking a little flustered but otherwise fine. “Oh, um, no, it’s okay! I-I was actually coming to wake you up.”

Wait.

You blink at her, confusion momentarily replacing your panic.

“My shift starts in—” You check your watch, only for your stomach to drop as you realize your mistake.

You read the time wrong.

You aren’t late.

Your face burns with embarrassment as you run a hand through your hair, letting out a breathless laugh. “Oh. Wow. Uh, sorry about that. Guess I freaked out over nothing.”

The maid drone giggles softly, her posture still a little stiff. “It’s alright. I was kind of worried you’d sleep through your alarm. I was the first one you met yesterday, remember? My name’s V.”

V.

You pause.

Something about that name stirs something deep in your mind, like an old song you can’t quite remember the lyrics to. It lingers on the tip of your tongue, just out of reach.

But then V smiles at you—timid, polite, a little awkward.

And the strange feeling slips away.

You smile at her. “That’s really considerate of you, especially since we only just met.”

V’s posture stiffens slightly, her eyes flickering as she glances away. “Oh, um… it’s not a big deal or anything.” She fidgets, adjusting her maid uniform. “I mean, if you’re late, it affects the rest of us, too. It’s just in our best interest to check up on each other.”

You chuckle. “Still, I appreciate it. Really.”

Her gaze flickers back to you, uncertainty melting into something softer. “...Well, you’re welcome, then.”

You nod, adjusting your clothes. “I’m looking forward to working with you and everyone else.”

V’s lips twitch into a small smile. “I’d be happy to show you around, introduce you to the others.”

“That’d be great.”

She gestures for you to follow, and you take a step forward—

—but the world around you begins to melt.

Colors blur, shapes distort, the floor beneath your feet ceases to exist.

You don’t even have time to react before the memory crumbles away entirely.

You walk over and take the clipboard from V, scanning the list. It was surprisingly thorough—she’d noted everything from loose doorknobs to fading paint along the baseboards.

You smile at her, “I really appreciate your help with all of this, V. I don’t think I could get through it without you.”

She stiffens, her fingers twitching as she looks away. “I-it’s no problem, I don’t mind. Really.”

You chuckle and, on impulse, pat her head.

Error: Unexpected Affection Detected.

You show V how to make pancakes, guiding her as she stirs the batter. She nods eagerly, then accidentally mixes too fast—sending batter flying across the kitchen. Some splatters onto both of you. There’s a moment of stunned silence before you burst out laughing, V quickly following suit.

“Not too fast,” you place your hand lightly over hers to help steady her grip. “You don’t want to splash it everywhere.”

She freezes at the contact for a moment, her optics brightening slightly, but she doesn’t pull away. “Got it,” she murmurs.

The two of you sit side by side in front of a large window, gazing out at the endless night sky. The soft ambience of the mansion fills the silence, the glow of the stars reflecting in her optics. Your shoulders brush, and static electricity crackles between you.

“The moon is beautiful, isn’t it?” you murmur.

V glances at you, her expression unreadable—until a faint blush dusts her face.

“It is,” she says softly.

You lie in bed, your fingers intertwined with V’s as she reads to you. Her voice is steady, soothing, filling the quiet room with a warmth you can’t quite describe. The world outside doesn’t matter. Here, in this moment, you feel safe.

Warmth pools in your chest, unfamiliar yet comforting. Is this… love?

And then, just like everything else, these memories fade away.

You open your eyes as pain wracks your body. Agony is all you can fathom. Your gaze darts around the room, but you can’t move. You’re strapped to some kind of table, hooked up to a mess of wires and devices. The room around you is dimly lit, a run-down laboratory, cold and unfamiliar. You can’t even begin to question where you are—the pain is overwhelming, searing through every nerve like fire. It’s worse than anything you’ve ever experienced.

You force yourself to look down, instantly regretting it. A gaping wound mars your chest, torn open where that eldritch beast’s tendril had impaled you. The sight alone makes your head spin. How are you still alive? No—why are you still alive? Every attempted breath sends agony lancing through what remains of your ribs, and you open your mouth to scream, but nothing comes out.

Then, the door creaks open.

Your stomach drops as Cyn steps inside. She’s in her worker drone form, as if mocking you with her small, unassuming frame—like she hadn’t just torn your world apart. She tilts her head, smiling as she watches you struggle. “Cordial greeting. I see you are awake. Perhaps human medical technology isn’t useless after all.”

Something shifts behind her. Your eyes widen in horror as a slick, black tendril slithers from her back, lazily extending toward a console beside you. It presses a few buttons with unsettling precision, making the monitors flicker. Another tendril whips off to the side, dragging a gurney into view, carrying a powered-off worker drone, its lifeless body still on the cold metal cart.

Wires snake out from the machinery beside you, latching onto the drone like some grotesque experiment. You can only watch in silent agony, unable to move, unable to voice the fear clawing at your throat. Cyn steps closer, her neon-yellow optics gleaming with sick delight as one of her tendrils picks up a thick cable. At the end of it is a long, wickedly sharp needle.

She holds it up, almost playfully, before leaning in.

“Hold still. I do believe this has never been attempted, until now. Giggle.”

You try to resist, but some unseen force clamps down on you, stopping even the slightest movement of your head. Your body betrays you, locked in place as panic claws at your mind. You can only watch, helpless, as the tendril moves the needle behind your skull—out of sight, but not out of mind.

Cyn tilts her head, watching you with amusement. “Don’t worry. I am not finished with you. And you won’t remember any of this. Well, hopefully.” She lets out a small giggle, her gaze gleaming like a predator playing with its food. “Human minds are so much more fickle than drones.”

You barely have time to process her words before searing agony erupts through your skull. The needle drives deep, and a sensation like a lightning strike surges through your entire body. Every nerve ignites, every fiber of your being screams in protest as darkness swallows your vision. But the nightmare doesn’t end there.

Because while you may no longer see, you can still feel.

Pain unlike anything imaginable overtakes you as something indescribable is wrenched from your very core. Your mind—your self—is being torn away from the brain that has been yours since the moment you came into existence. You are being ripped from your own body. Thought ceases, coherence shatters, and all that remains is raw, unbearable agony.

And then, just as suddenly as it began—everything stops.

ADMINISTRATOR LOCKOUT: SUCCESSFULBEGINNING DISK CLEANUP||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||__ 94%

Uzi’s fingers fly across the keyboard, desperation fueling her rapid inputs as she fights against the process. Lines of code blur together as she forces command after command, trying anything to halt the inevitable. But the counter ticks up to 95%, unfazed by her efforts.

V’s patience shatters. She steps forward, optics burning with frustration. “That’s it. Send me in. Like you did with us.”

Uzi doesn’t even look up, still typing. “That’s a terrible idea.”

“I don’t care.”

“If you’re still inside when the process finishes, you’ll be erased too.” Uzi’s voice is sharp, but there’s a flicker of hesitation beneath it. “And as great as that might be,” she adds with biting sarcasm, “something tells me N won’t like that.”

V’s claws shoot out in a blur, stopping just short of Uzi’s throat. Her optics bore into the worker drone’s, raw with something Uzi doesn’t expect—desperation. “Let me try.”

For once, Uzi is speechless. She stares at V, weighing the risk, the sheer insanity of what she’s about to allow.

She exhales sharply and yanks a cable from the terminal, holding it out. “Fine. Plug yourself in.”

You sit in the void of your memories, a vast and endless darkness stretching infinitely around you. Faint echoes of experiences drift at the edges of your perception—things you know you've lived through, but they remain just out of reach, impossible to grasp. It’s all slipping away, unraveling like loose threads in a tapestry you can’t seem to hold together.

You blink, text appearing in your field of view once again:

 A-S Backup Process Enabled.

Purging Incriminating Data

:)

A soft giggle cuts through the silence.

Cyn stands before you, a cruel smile curling her lips as she takes in your broken state. You stare up at her, defeated. There’s nothing left to fight for. Nothing left at all.

She snaps her fingers.

V appears beside her—tall, imposing, her claws gleaming under an unseen light. Her fanged grin is sharp and cold, lacking any warmth.

“A shame my experiment failed,” Cyn muses, tilting her head. “You were quite intriguing to watch.”

V’s claws extend with a metallic shink, her optics narrowing as she sizes you up.

Cyn continues, her voice chillingly indifferent. “I pitied V enough to give you a chance, to be a tool for me just like her, but it’s clear you belong with everyone else—as part of me, the Solver of the Absolute Fabric.”

V lunges.

Her claws clamp around your throat, pinning you to the ground as she looms over you, fangs bared. You don’t fight. You don’t struggle. You don’t even flinch. You’re done.

But then—

V hesitates.

The pressure around your neck loosens. Instead of tearing into you, she lets go, pulling you back to your feet. Her claws retract as she gazes into your eyes, something unreadable flickering across her face.

“As fun as it would be to kill you,” she drawls, smirking, “I think that’d be rather anticlimactic, don’t you think?”

You blink. Confusion stirs in the emptiness of your mind. “What…? Why aren’t you—”

V groans, rubbing her temple. “You’ll get it in a minute.”

Without warning, she raises her arm, her hand shifting into a gun. She fires.

Cyn shatters in a burst of pixels.

Before you can even react, V grabs you by the shoulders, her expression urgent. “Listen to me—you need to snap out of it.”

You stare at her, the weight of her words not quite sinking in.

“You’re inside your own head,” she presses on. “Cyn’s rewriting you. She’s trying to make you forget everything.”

You try to respond, to ask her what she means, but she shakes her head. “No time for that.” Her grip tightens. “You have to remember. Remember me. Remember Uzi. Remember what’s happening in the real world!”

The void trembles. Cracks split through the darkness, revealing blinding white light beneath. The world around you begins to shatter, pixel by pixel.

V’s optics widen in alarm. “No, no, no—stay with me!”

Panicked, she grabs you by the arms and yanks you into a hug, holding you tight. “Come on,” she pleads, her voice almost breaking. “You have to remember—”

The pixels overtake you both.

V gasps as she is suddenly yanked from the simulation, the world around her dissolving into nothing. She flips around, fury already building in her chest—only to see N standing there, holding the cable that had connected her.

Her optics widen in horror. “What did you do?” she screams, her voice raw with disbelief.

She spins back toward Techie, still slumped in their chair, their optics flickering with a new message.

ADMINISTRATOR LOCKOUT: SUCCESSFULDISK CLEANUP COMPLETE||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 100%

The silence that follows is suffocating.

Uzi stares at the screen, then at Techie’s motionless form. Her shoulders tremble, her expression caught between disbelief and devastation. She  failed.

N shifts, gripping the cable tightly as if he can somehow undo what he just did. “V, I—I couldn’t let you get erased too,” he stammers, barely above a whisper. “Losing both of you would just be… too much.”

V barely hears him. She is already at Techie’s side, dropping to her knees as the weight of it all crashes down. Her fingers dig into their arms as she shakes them, harder and harder, desperation creeping into her voice. “I can’t do this,” she chokes out. “Not again. Not again!”

And then, Techie’s system reboots.

Their optics flicker, the dull glow returning as their head tilts slightly.

“Hello,” they say, their voice eerily neutral. “Are you my new coworkers?”

Silence.

Uzi and N don’t move. V can only stare.

Because she knows. They all know.

Techie is gone. Completely erased.

V sits back, her arms falling limply to her sides as she gazes at the drone before her—not them, just an empty shell, stripped of everything that made them Techie. All that remains is the default programming of a Worker Drone.

How ironic.

All the destruction she has wrought, all the pain she has caused—and this is how the universe chooses to punish her. Not with fire, not with death, but with loss. Loss of something she only just got back.

N had forgotten his past. But she never had. She remembered everything. She knows exactly what she has done. And yet…

Here she is.

With a slow, weary exhale, she rises to her feet.

She takes one last look at the drone sitting before her, their optics scanning the room in vague curiosity.

What’s the point in fighting anymore? Cyn will win. She always wins.

She reaches out, her hand trembling as she places it against their cheek. A tiny crackle of static sparks between them.

The moment their metal touches, Techie’s visor glitches, their entire body shuddering violently.

V steps back in shock as the drone collapses, crashing to the floor in a twitching heap.

Even in her last act of comfort, she’s managed to kill something. How tragically ironic.

Your optics flutter open as your systems jolt back to life, rebooting in a rush of energy. The world around you sharpens into focus, bright and overwhelming, as everything comes flooding back at once. It’s disorienting—the sheer weight of your memories crashing over you like a tidal wave. You try to sit up, your joints stiff and unresponsive at first, but you push through the discomfort. Blinking rapidly, you take in your surroundings.

Uzi and N are standing in front of you, their expressions twisted in confusion, eyes locked onto you as if they’re unsure whether to believe what they’re seeing. You glance past them, spotting V in the corner of the room. She isn’t looking at you. Instead, she stares off into space, her posture stiff, her face unreadable. 

You turn back to Uzi, your voice hoarse and unsteady as you manage to speak. “Uzi? What… what the hell did you do to me?”

The reaction is immediate. Uzi’s eyes go wide, her whole body tensing. She sucks in a sharp breath, realization dawning in an instant—you remember her. Her shock is evident, but before she can respond, something else happens.

V moves.

Before you can react, she is suddenly in front of you, grabbing you by the shoulders and lifting you off the ground. The intensity in her yellow optics burns into you as she stares, searching your face with a desperate kind of urgency. “Techie?!” Her voice is sharp, demanding, almost frantic. She scans your expression as if looking for a glitch, for some kind of mistake.

Your body tenses at the sudden force, and you struggle slightly in her grip, groaning in protest. “Yes! It’s me! Please put me down.”

For once, she listens. She sets you down on your feet, a significant improvement over her usual habit of just dropping you. Your legs feel unsteady, but you manage to stay upright, adjusting to the sensation of simply being again.

V wastes no time. “Do you remember everything?” she asks, and something in her tone makes your systems freeze for a second.

Everything.

The word echoes in your mind, and suddenly, it all hits.

Your life—your entire life—rushes back to you in an instant, slamming into your consciousness with the force of a collapsing building. It’s overwhelming, the sheer amount of it, so much that it feels like your head might split open from the sheer pressure. Your time as a drone, your time as a human, all of it returns in a flood, every emotion, every experience, every loss, every joy. The weight of an entire existence, something you hadn’t even fathomed regaining, comes crashing down with relentless intensity.

You stagger slightly, your fingers twitching as you try to process the sudden influx of knowledge. It’s too much all at once, the past and present colliding in a way that makes your head spin. Every moment, every decision, every version of yourself that you thought was lost—it’s all here. You’re here.

And you have no idea what to do with it.

Your voice catches in your throat, your entire system struggling to process the sheer weight of what’s just returned to you. You force out a breath, trying to steady yourself, but even that feels like too much. "I... I remember..." The words are shaky, barely more than a whisper. "I remember everything..."

Your optics flicker slightly as a name slips from your mouth. "Cyn..."

At that, Uzi's entire posture shifts. Her expression tightens, and a look of realization flashes across her face. It’s like she had momentarily forgotten why any of this was happening—why they had gone through all of this in the first place. But now, with that single name spoken aloud, it all comes rushing back.

"Nope," Uzi says, cutting off whatever breakdown you’re about to have. "We’re putting the 'my entire life is a lie' crisis on hold. We need to leave. Now."

You barely have time to react before a glow ignites around her hand. That same energy surges outward, wrapping around you before you can so much as blink. The room distorts, reality twisting and folding in on itself, the world around you shattering like a fractured mirror. The force nearly knocks you off your feet as everything warps.

Then—nothing.

Except cold.

Your optics adjust to the sudden change in lighting, and you realize you’re no longer inside. The facility, the walls, the floor—all of it is gone. Instead, you're standing outside, the frozen wasteland of Copper-9 stretching out in every direction. Ice crunches beneath your feet, the wind biting against your frame. The brutal cold is nothing new, but the suddenness of it leaves you reeling.

You barely have time to process what just happened before you see them.

Standing in front of you, unmistakable even through the swirling snow, is Doll. Next to her is J—her arms crossed, her expression unreadable. And beside them...

A woman.

You don’t recognize her. She’s clad in a space suit, her helmet obscuring most of her features, but there’s no doubt about it, she’s human.

Your mind races, trying to grasp onto something—anything—that could make sense of this. Your eyes dart to the nametag on her chest.

Tessa.

What the actual hell is happening?

[chilling-seavey]

Winter Warmers: Day 21 — Winter Storm

↳ Summary: A winter storm rocks England and wakes your children.

↳ Word Count: 606

↳ Winter Warmers Prompt List | The Way It Goes Masterlist

England was hit with a huge snow storm that year. Double digits of centimeters worth of snow fell overnight in what was compared to the blizzard of a decade. In the evening, when the snow had started, it was calm and exciting and the kids huddled together at the back door to watch the snowflakes fall gracefully to blanket the backyard in white. But, as the evening progressed and the kids were tucked into bed and you and George were going about your nighttime routines, the storm grew.

The winter winds whistled past the house, shrieking through the sealed tight windows and making your well kept home creak on its foundation. George was getting some end-of-season email-type work completed in the office while you struggled to hear your TV show over the howling winds. You paused the show and got up to glance out the front window, peering out at the tree-lined driveway as the boughs flailed unnervingly and the once-fluffy snowflakes now fell in angry almost ice-like sheets against the glass. 

With another strong gust of wind, the television and the lights flicked off for just a moment before turning back on. You let the curtain fall closed again and you stepped away from the window with a sigh. 

George appeared in the doorway to the living room with an unimpressed sigh, “The storm just knocked out the wifi and scrapped the email I was trying to send.”

“It’s insane out there.” you replied, returning to the couch and you tucked up a leg underneath you. 

George took your place at the front window and used his index finger to pull open a crack in the curtains to look through, “I’m surprised the house is still standing.”

He then let the curtains fall closed and walked over to join you on the couch, pulling a blanket from the lounge chair in the corner on his way. He barely got himself settled on the couch beside you before your daughter’s little frightened voice came calling down from upstairs, 

“Daddy!” 

You and George exchanged glances, both having silently expected at least one of your kids to be woken up by the raging storm. Your toddler daughter’s sweet voice sounded like she had been crying, obviously distressed from the storm and wanting comfort. He got up from the couch again and you followed, leaving the blanket behind to go check on her. 

The two of you had barely made it out of the living room when the toddler called again, her voice more urgent, louder, “Daddy!” 

George picked up the pace a little, taking the stairs two at a time gracefully to reach the second floor. Just down the hall was your daughter’s room, but the door was already partially open when he arrived. George pushed it open a little more to find both of your children snuggled up in her single bed. Behind the pink curtains, a tree branch rapped eerily on the window in the whistling wind.

Your daughter was slightly calmer, comforted by the embrace of her big brother, still sniffling but now quieter. Your son whispered to her softly, all six years of him already so emphatic and loving, having gotten out of bed to make sure she was okay. George lingered in the doorway for a moment and you joined him there, discovering the scene he looked over so fondly. You shared a proud smile with him, his arm going around your waist to pull you close to his side, watching your young children find comfort in each other. 

“We did well with them, I think.” George whispered to you.

You leaned into his side with a warm, “That we did.”

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[strawberrystepmom]

to forgive is divine & to err is human

pairing: Natsuo Todoroki x F!Reader (romantic), Touya Todoroki x F!Reader (familial)

word count: 7.5k

about: when Touya is released to Natsuo’s care following his 8 year prison stay, the fragility of the dynamic between the three of you threatens to derail everyone involved.

contents: cw: contains descriptions of depression, trauma, smoking, bad coping mechanisms, alcoholism, Touya dyes his hair black in a white sink (ugh). angst with a happy ending, set in canon universe but not canon compliant, established relationship between Natsuo and reader (married), Touya and reader are both assholes at certain points.

notes: tbh I've been meaning to repost this and since I'm currently in my "yes girl give us nothing" era, the time has come. Thank you to everyone (then and now) that has read this baby bc I did indeed put my ol' Kendussy into it so I didn't really change anything about it other than fixing grammar and I'm sure there are still mistakes. This is is how I wrote a year ago and that's okay and I'm proud of how far I've come.

Posting this as a double feature bc it feels too idk self promo-y to split them up again so enjoy my creature feature with my beloved Natsuo and his stinky brother. chain divider thanks to @/cafekitsune ♡

The large, red letters across the paperwork make your eyes hurt by simply gazing at them. 

“RELEASED” stamped with what you can tell was a mostly dried out ink pad, the red darker at the beginning of the word than at the end. You wish you could close the growing pit in your stomach knowing Natsuo will soon arrive back to your home, rehabilitated brother in tow, but the uncertainty makes it hard to settle as you re-stack the documents given to you by the Hero Public Safety Commission when they formally announced they would permit Touya’s release so long as someone would be responsible for him.

When the conversation came up, Natsuo volunteered without a second thought. It hurt at first that he did not ask you before making the decision but after having spent nearly a decade at his side, you trusted his judgment. Six months after the initial inquiry, you still do. Touya is a practical stranger, someone you have only met through grainy video chats, but you have been briefed by many HPSC coordinators. They have conducted home visits, interviewed both of you as if you were the criminals, combed through every bank account and piece of mail to ensure that they are putting their inmate into good hands. A good word from Endeavor, something your husband reluctantly accepted, sealed the decision. Your eyes scan over the handwritten letter from Enji, tucked in the stack of documents. 

“No one is more qualified to care for his brother Touya than my son Natsuo. He is a licensed medical professional, specializing in psychology and mental health services and has experience in dealing with traumatized children. I ask that the Commission consider no other placement for Touya.”

A tired sigh escapes as you flip through a few more pages, squinting through descriptions of you and Natsuo. Your personalities, your hobbies, where you work, who you associate with - all vital information, the panel assured you. The final page of the documents has the official ruling, the top left corner of the page curled in from how many times the pair of you have read over it.

“Todoroki Touya, thirty two years of age, is to be released to the custody of his brother Todoroki Natsuo, twenty eight years of age. Todoroki will be required to wear a location monitoring device at all times per the agreed upon terms of release. He is not permitted to be in contact with any of his prior associates. If contact is initiated, he will be required to return to the custody of the HPSC immediately and will no longer be eligible for release.”

Your eyes scan the document again and again, searching for some kind of strange loophole that could prevent all of this from happening. Guilt crawls up your spine and makes you shudder at the thought. How could you not want this for your husband? He has spent years dreaming of having a second chance to love his brother differently, to help him heal. It makes you feel vile to even entertain negative thoughts about Touya. 

Touya. You know little about the man aside from his name, or names, rather. His time as Dabi concluded, he was sentenced to 8 years of rehabilitation instead of prison. A victim of child abuse needed recovery, the commission reasoned, and they were willing to give him the space to do so within reason. The entire Todoroki family agreed with and supported the commission and their decision, his siblings and parents being granted permission to visit him if they chose to do so. 

Natsuo went as frequently as possible, excitedly telling you how much his brother has improved after every visit, eagerness infectious. You listened to his every word, rapt, as he talked about how different Touya looked now that he was eating well, how far he had come, how he seemed emotionally stable for the first time in his life. Genuine excitement danced in his eyes at the thought of having his brother back, not a shell of a boy or a man. Not Dabi but Touya, someone who was cruelly taken from him when he was too young to fully understand why. 

The true agony was seeing the metaphorical stitches ripped open, cruelly and callously. The entire country was witness to the explosive truth - Touya Todoroki was alive. Even Fuyumi with her limitless poise gnawed her lower lip hoping it would ground her enough that she could stay strong for everyone else. “I can handle this,” she assured you as you wrapped your arms around her shoulders the day after the video aired. She knew the person who would need you the most was her brother. Looks were deceiving - Natsuo was big and strong, a grown man, but his feelings were delicate. She trusted no one but you to look after him.

Natsuo had only asked you to be his girlfriend weeks before his brother revealed his true identity publicly. You will never forget the way grief was etched into all of his features, his strong brow downturned for weeks; retraumatized. It took every ounce of strength in his body to muster a smile, much less anything else, but he did it. For Fuyumi and Shouto, for his mother. 

You can remember every moment of the years following Touya revealing himself. The nights when Natsuo woke up sobbing, burying his face into your chest and balling the fabric of your shirt up between his fists as if it would keep him from losing touch with reality completely. He stopped eating for days at a time, depression sinking him into depths he didn’t know existed. You were always there with a soothing touch and okayu, a rice porridge Fuyumi taught you to make for him. 

“When Touya died, it’s all he would eat,” she explained. Your heart crumbled at the thought of a 13 year old version of your beloved future sister in law having to keep her 9 year old brother moving through the pain of loss. How did they keep themselves together?, you wondered more than once as she breezed through the difficult times with a tight smile. 

The more you watched the man you love sink, the more conflicted you felt about Touya. Those feelings lingered even into today. Natsuo is healing, therapy and love and compassion all coming together to create a whole man instead of pieces of a hurt child in a big body, but you can’t help the simmering anger you feel when you think about watching him experience the hurt in real time. Some memories stay etched forever. 

Natsuo continued to live despite the difficult times. You helped him study and make his way through medical school - a feat that he often credited you wholly for. It wasn’t true but the praise always feels good. Three years after Touya was sentenced, Natsuo opened his clinic that offers a variety of therapeutic services for children with difficult quirks or those who have suffered because of them. A year after that the two of you were married. 

“I knew you were the one when you gave me a reason to keep trying,” he tearfully admitted as you exchanged vows during your small wedding ceremony. The details weren’t for everyone else to know, but the pair of you knew exactly what he was talking about and the admission still makes you feel weepy if you start to think about it for too long.

Love feels like too shallow of a word to explain how you feel about him which is why you agreed to this in the first place - your love for Natsuo is stronger than your distaste toward Touya. You remind yourself of the mantra as you hear voices outside of your front doorstep, one immediately recognizable as belonging to Natsuo. You stand and take a deep breath, composing yourself and closing the file folder on the table as the door opens and the two white haired men crowd into the small genkan, talking amongst each other. 

“We’re here!”

A practiced, measured smile is what you can manage as you watch the situation carefully. Touya scratches the back of his head and offers a small and impersonal wave and you’re surprised by how different he looks. Thin but healthy, his skin grafts have been properly secured, his lashes are the same white as the ones that frame your husband's kind, gray eyes. The similarities between the two are striking but so are the differences - Natsuo greets you with a smile and a peck on your forehead and Touya glowers from the doorway. 

“Welcome home, Touya,”

He looks around, eyes narrowed as he takes in the sights of your well lived in home. It reminded you eerily of the way the representatives from the commission sullied your safe place away slowly, searching every corner to make sure you would not enable any more bad behavior from the man standing in the doorway. Your home had only just begun to feel like yours again.

“Nice place. Guess that’s what being married to a doctor gets you.”

His crass comment made you feel stricken, flinching slightly as your practiced smile wavers. You aren’t Fuyumi, full of endless grace and forgiveness - you can’t fake it. You aren’t Natsuo who believes in the potential of people more than anyone you’ve ever met. You are you and right now you are angry. Clenching your fists in a way you hope is imperceptible, you fake a laugh and your husband looks at you with wide eyes, noticing your change in demeanor.

“Well, it’s your place too now. Guess that’s what being a doctor's brother gets you.”

Touya purses his lips and nods, arms folded across his chest. You look over his scars, his healed skin, his cold eyes. “Do you want to show him to his room, babe?” Natsuo asks, voice shaky, as if he’s anxious for your response. “I can find it myself,” Touya answers for you, heavy boots in his hands as he pads through your home toward where his room lies. You spent weeks helping Natsuo prepare it for him, filling it with photos and books to help him gain back the time he lost while he was away. The taste in your mouth is nothing short of bitter and sour as you think about it.

“I don’t know what that was about, I asked him no-,” you raise your hand, cutting your husband off mid sentence as your fake smile finally falls and gives way to a slight frown, corners of your mouth downturned. “Don’t worry about it.” 

Touya has always felt suspicious of you. Your intentions, your affections for his brother, your involvement with his family - it’s hard not to be uncertain about someone who fits so flawlessly in the dysfunctional outline created by being a Todoroki. What are you hiding? What do you want? 

He tosses his boots down on the floor of the room at the end of the hallway. Instinctually, he knows this is his space. Covered with childhood photos of the Todoroki family, a quilt he received as a child covering the bed, he wants to be impressed with the effort put in but instead he feels hollow. This life never fit him in the first place, happy smiles for photos and dinners and whatever the fuck was expected of him, and now he had no choice but to live it. 

It is a hell of a lot nicer than the four white walls that housed him for eight long years. The bed looks a lot more comfortable, he thinks as he settles down on the edge of it, lying back with his arms behind his head. Fixing his gaze on the ceiling, he takes a moment to think in the silence of the space. The entire car ride his brother talked about you and your life together. Touya eventually began to tune him out, watching the trees pass by the window with the occasional red light flashing on his monitoring anklet catching his attention.

Rehabilitated. The connotations of the word weighed heavily on Touya - one fuck up and it would be so easy for you to convice Natsuo to send him back. You could never understand him the way that his family does. You couldn’t forgive him the way they had either, something both of you would never communicate to each other. 

“Hey,” Natsuo’s voice rasps from the doorway and Touya sits up slightly, grunting his response. “You like it alright?”

“It’s fine.” 

Natsuo sighs, carefully entering the room and shutting the door behind him as he slumps down on the bed next to his brother, shoulders sagging beneath the weight of the huge change that has come over his otherwise peaceful life. “You don’t have to lie, Touya.”

Touya sits up, using his elbows to support his weight, and offers a half smile toward his brother. “I’m not lyin’, it’s fine. Just feels like too much.”

Natsuo nods, trying to tamp down his urge to play therapist instead of brother. It was something he did all too often growing up and probably why he has made fixing people his mission in life. Touya was no exception.

“It’s the least we can do. You’ve been through a lot.”

We, Touya thinks to himself. Always we. He wonders how much Natsuo has surrendered of himself for your sake. Does he have any hobbies besides being a doting husband? Is his world filled with anything besides this little bubble the two of you live in?

“Don’t act like she had anything to do with all of this, Natsu. I was released to you.”

Touya slips a hand in his jacket pocket and fishes around for his pack of cigarettes, popping one out of the packaging with expert precision and sticking it between his lips as his brother sits next to him silently. “Lemme guess, need to do this outside?” 

Natsuo nods and Touya sighs, sliding off of the bed and leaving a rumpled quilt behind him. Heavy footsteps trail down the hallway as he peers into the kitchen and notices the backdoor, quietly slipping through it only to be met with a glowing red cherry on the other side, smoke streaming from your mouth as you stand with a cigarette between your fingers.

“Didn’t take you for the type,” he starts, pulling his lighter from his pocket and clicking it until a bright flame catches the cigarette dangling from between his lips. Once upon a time he would’ve just used his quirk but the prescription blockers he was given by court order prevented that. “All he ever talks about is how perfect you are.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” you shoot back, flicking your cigarette ashes onto the ground below before taking another drag. 

The mutual distrust permeated the air between the two of you. Touya reminded you so much of your father in law it was like looking at another version of him. You reminded Touya of everything he hated about this world - false pretense and unattainable perfection. He doubts you have ever walked around without a hair out of place, a Todoroki would never.

“Any other deep dark secrets I should know before being trapped inside of this house with you 24 hours a day?”

You chuckle, dropping your cigarette on the ground and stomping it out, bending to pick up the butt once you’re done. 

“Your brother won't let me drink anymore,” you start, hoping the vulnerability warms your brother in law. His steely gaze convinces you otherwise and you begin to walk away, arms folded over your chest with a cigarette butt in your fist. “Just another fun part of the aftermath of your little warpath.”

Touya knows he fired the first shots but he’s taken aback at your accusatory tone. 

“Anything else you want to question me about? Figured the commission briefed you on all of my dirty laundry.”

He shakes his head and exhales smoke through the corner of his mouth, the plumes drifting in your direction. “Good chat, Touya.”

The back door slams as you enter your home through it, windows rattling slightly. Your first instinct is to pour a drink but the reminder of your rock bottom lingers on your mind as you instead toss your cigarette in the trash and turn down the hall and head to your bedroom, Natsuo sitting on the bed.

“Why does he hate me so much?”

You hate how hysterical your voice sounds, anxiety rising like bile. Rising to his feet, your husband gathers you against his chest and presses a kiss to the top of your head. 

“Give him time, he’ll warm up.”

You don’t share your husband’s boundless optimism as you hear the back door slam and hear footsteps heading to the bedroom opposite yours. Natsuo plants another soft kiss atop your hair and squeezes your hand gently as he walks back over to Touya’s room. 

“You alright?” Natsuo asks and Touya rolls his eyes, shrugging off his jacket and draping it across a hook on the back of the door. “Fine. Thanks for the concern.”

Natsuo slips through the door completely and closes it softly behind him, leaning against the solid wood.

“What happened out there?” 

Touya chuckles and shrugs, sitting on the bed in the same place he had left. “Nothing worth mentioning. I’ll make sure I keep my bottles hidden from her though.”

His eyes widened, Touya’s antagonistic tone nothing new, his shock coming from the fact you told him about your struggles with substance abuse in the first place. It wasn’t a secret but it certainly wasn’t a fun fact you gave out at trivia night. 

“Uh, yeah, thank you.” Natsuo fumbles through his words, unsure of the right thing to say. “That would be great. She has come a long way but there are still times that are difficult, especially when big changes occur.”

Your substance abuse issues began about a year after your marriage. Blissful happiness wasn’t enough to numb the intense pain of the years prior but copious amounts of whiskey while Natsuo was busy with work were good enough. Blind confidence convinced you he didn’t notice a thing, not your sunken eyes or decreased appetite, but he did and he confronted you as gently as he could.

The next day you started therapy of your own and have continued to go to meetings for others struggling with addiction since then. Nothing drastic has happened in your life since you quit drinking, calm falling over the Todoroki household, making it easier for you to maintain your wits.

He would never say it but Natsuo truly worried about your sobriety. Every time he left for a trip or wine was passed around at family dinner, he wondered if it would be the day you changed your mind. Sticking with you was easy, though. You did the same for him at his low point and he would never stop doing it for you.

“She smokes, you know that?”

Natsuo nods, Touya’s raspy voice breaking the silence caused by his brother’s overthinking. “Have to let her have one vice, you know?” 

“I think you forget that you weren’t the only person who had to live through that fucking horrifying life! It didn’t just go away when you did.”

Your voice cracks as you raise it at your brother in law, his turquoise eyes wide as he watches you yell with an intensity that leaves your hands shaking. He has never looked more like your husband than he does now, the same white hair sticking up on top of his head, his fingers carding through it and yanking the strands as he paces your living room floor. 

“There are times I don’t think you realize that your actions have always had consequences because you’ve truly faced so few of them,” you feel your face flame as Touya’s expression turns from surprised to angry. “You didn’t have to clean up the messes. I did.”

Seeing the similarities makes something inside of you crack, a piece of your heart perhaps, your chest heaving. Regret consumes your mind; you’ve gone too far. You struggle to catch your breath, rubbing your fingers over your cheeks to hide evidence of your tears. Silence blankets the room like a dense fog.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Your voice sounds meek and thin even to your own ears, the screaming match you have been engaged in rendering your throat raw. Painfully, you swallow what little spit you can and shut your eyes tightly as you listen to Touya’s rhythmic footfalls. Taking a deep breath, you sink into an armchair and dab at your eyes with the back of your hands, opening them long enough to see Touya staring intently at you. You drop your hands and sigh. 

“I can’t imagine what you have been through,” you hiccup, warm tears sliding down your cheek and dripping onto your wrists where they sit in your lap. “But you weren’t the only one going through it and I hope your brother can forgive me for saying all of this to you.”

The white haired man remains silent as you rise from your chair, hands balled into fists at your sides. Your gaze turns directly to him and you sniffle, tears subsiding. 

“He has always loved you despite everything you’ve done, exactly as you are. Please remember that.”

The words feel cathartic to say aloud, astute eyes narrowing to watch you as you turn on your heel and begin to walk away. Your tense posture tells him exactly how you feel about the entire situation and you reason that giving Touya space seems like the best option to end the strange battle of wills the two of you have found yourselves in. 

The gravelly sound of Touya’s voice from over your shoulder stops you in your tracks. 

“Then I owe it to him to try.”

There is no apology to be found in the words but you swear you can feel it as he says them, looking over your shoulder. For the first time you don’t see Dabi or Touya, you see someone completely new - your brother in law. A blank canvas, someone you could perhaps get to know under better circumstances. 

“We both owe it to him,” you respond as you turn around and make your way back to the chair you were sitting in moments ago, sitting stiffly against the back of the chair, shoulders still held tensely by your ears. “But how do we begin?”

Touya sighs and sits opposite you, rubbing his hands over his face as he rests his elbows on his knees.

“Hi, I’m Touya.” You laugh for the first time in a week and he can’t hide the half smile that comes across his face. “I did some fucked up things and spent eight years paying for them but I fucking love my family.” He stomps his foot, emphasizing his point. “That includes you now so we better get our shit together, yeah?”

Another tear falls as you nod, a watery smile settling over your features.

“Yeah, we should.”

A year later, when you think of your brother in law Touya, a memory from your childhood comes to your mind.

You are six, maybe seven and at the zoo. Your parents hold both of your hands dutifully to make sure you don’t run off, squeezing your tiny palms between theirs as you excitedly gasp and croon at birds, snakes, and butterflies. A flamingo makes you shout, a duck makes you quack.

Steps slow down as the three of you approach a large glass enclosure. “Black panther - panthera pardus” says the sign extending from the ground in front of the glass. You don’t know that, of course, until your dad reads it aloud to you, asking you to repeat the name.

“Panthera,” you repeat, a tiny voice bouncing back at you off of the glass.

As if you summoned the cat itself, it appears and you flinch. Black, lithe, wild eyed with muscles wound so tightly you can see the shape and size of each of them. You wonder if the panther knows how to relax, the same way your mom tells you to when you cry too hard. Maybe he needs to take a deep breath. 

“Why does he look so nervous?” 

In your young mind, the question surfaced before you had time to think about it. Of course he’s nervous, you reason, all of these people are staring at him like the attraction that he is. A dazzling thing to see locked between four glass walls. 

“He isn’t nervous honey, he’s probably just thinking about what he would do if he were outside with us.”

Pondering your mom's polite whisper, you nod and accept the answer. Grown ups always know best anyway. 

As a keeper enters the enclosure and carefully stalks toward the cat, your eyes widen in surprise. How can he let someone so close? You wonder if you could ever get that close to him. To see the sunlight in his fur just enough to reveal the spots under the dark of his coat or to watch his ears twitch as he listens for sounds of danger. Would he ever trust you? Could you trust him?

The crowd around the glass increases in size, delighted whoops as the keeper dangles the cleaned carcass of a large bird above the panther. You drink in the way he crouches and springs, tight muscles unwinding for a moment as large paws capture the food between them. 

A sight you’ll never forget.

A sight you see as Touya stalks through the living room of your home, tightly running his fingers through his hair. Muscles taut, standing and walking but trying to simultaneously fold in on himself.

“What the fuck would they even want to talk about?”

You sigh, shrugging at his words. The “they'' in question is the Commission and one year after his monitored release, he has been asked to return before the panel and answer some questions. Natsuo sits next to you on the floor in front of the chabudai, sorting through the papers sent to him to review ahead of Touya’s scheduled meeting. The three of you only found out about the date today.

“I dunno, Touya,” your husband shoots a bit impatiently toward his brother. “Let me read this and then I’ll tell you.”

Silently, you watch as he scans the documents, flipping them between his fingers. You hear the heavy pounding of Touya’s footsteps across the floor, reverberating through the otherwise silent room. Your house is too quiet. There is no crowd to filter out the silence.

“Potential restoration of privileges,” you hear Natsuo mutter from beside you. He continues to read to himself and you wonder what that truly entails. Would Touya be released from his supervised period completely? Would he be allowed to wander more than 50 feet away from his guardians? 

“God Natsu, read faster.”

Natsuo’s eyes shoot a frosty glance toward Touya from over the top of the papers in his hands. Placing them on the table, your husband sighs.

“They want to see your progress and maybe give you a little more freedom.”

Touya freezes in place for a mere second before turning on his heel and rushing to the edge of the table to snatch the documents and look over them, brows furrowed in concern that this is some evil trick the two of you have decided to pull on him. Revenge for the last twelve months of him and his fits, his angry words, his snarling. 

You’ve realized during the months he’s more meow than he is hiss.

“But,” Natsuo starts, clearing his throat, Touya tossing the papers back on the table and interrupting his brother with a clear as day “fuck!”, beginning to pace once again. “We have to give testimony.”

The royal we is something Touya has hated since the day he moved into your home. It always makes him feel as if it’s two against one, no separation between yourself and Natsuo and how you feel about the situation. He assumes if you’re mad at him, his brother is too. If you’re frustrated with Touya drinking the last of your nice matcha, Natsuo must be too. If you’re angry at Touya for dying his hair black in your bathtub and staining the shiny white tiles, Natsuo must be too.

He’s wrong about that, of course, his brother never holding any of his minor blunders against him. You don’t either but it would be tougher to convince Touya to believe that than it would be to build a house by hand, despite the tentative peace that exists between the two of you. You’ve allowed him into your home, your world, your once peaceful little family and have found that you are better for it. Natsuo is better for it. But there will always be a level of distrust. 

Like that panther you think of so often, Touya must wonder what it would be like to be free and trusted. 

“Touya, I don’t know how to say this,” Natsuo says, trying to keep his tone even and calm despite how anxious you know he must be feeling. You feel your stomach drop as well, balling the fabric of your linen pants between your palms to keep your hands from shaking. You looked at the date on the documents and noticed that it was a day you knew he’d be unavailable, working on a particularly tough case with multiple children from one family. “I can’t do it.”

Touya chuckles, a bitter and hollow sound that makes you flinch. “Of course not.”

“She can, though.”

Unexpectedly, Touya’s bitter chuckle turns into a belly laugh. You wonder if he’ll double over from the strength of it, scarred hands clutching his middle. Natsuo stands, approaching his brother carefully.

“Her?” He points at you and you feel like the one being questioned. Despite the grasp on the thighs of your pants, your hands do shake and your fingers slip. “She probably wishes I would have died every single day despite the little “play nice” bullshit she does for your sake.”

Gasping at the accusation, you hope he can’t see the way your eyes glance downward. You had assumed the two of you were past this, arguments coming to a halt around six months ago when you told him you simply didn’t have the energy for them anymore. 

You then began taking him to pick up cigarettes every other day, riding in your car together silently but comfortably. His fingers always drum against his thighs impatiently and you clear your throat, mouth dry until you arrive. You have to be close to him the entire time but you linger on the edges of the small shop in your neighborhood, giving the elderly shopkeeper time to fuss over Touya the way he needs. 

The two of you then silently ride back to your home.

“How could you say that, Touya?”

Much like the smaller version of you felt compelled to speak outside of the gleaming panther exhibit, you do the same now. Your voice sounds weak, thin, defeated. Natsuo rushes to your side, kneeling back down and placing one of his large arms around your shoulder.

“Oh here we go, gotta rush to defen -” 

Touya’s words are cut off by a sharp glance from his brother, a look he has never seen before. Smothering all of the fire inside of him, hurting the one person who has endlessly forgiven him, he is doused by humility.

“I don’t hate you,” you look up and see Touya’s turquoise eyes that are narrowed and hard staring directly at you. “I don’t wish you were dead,” you continue as you shrug your husband’s arm off of you and begin to stand. “In fact, I was stupid and thought we were finally fucking past all of this!”

Punctuating your shout with a frustrated grunt, you stomp off down the hallway and leave the brothers to figure it out amongst themselves. Natsuo would simply have to find a way to make the date work for him because you couldn’t bring yourself to beg the Commission to be merciful toward someone who detests you so much. You aren’t a big enough person for that, lacking the careful compassion of your husband.

“Are you fucking serious, Touya?”

Natsuo cursing at his brother makes his steely gaze falter, eyes glancing downward toward the floor. Touya remembers a time you went too far, not long after he first moved into your home, and he feels guilty knowing he has done the same.

“Whatever,” Touya responds dismissively as he stomps off. 

Natsuo hears the back door slam and rubs his hand over his face, eyes fluttering closed for a moment. He’s transported back to 12 long months ago when he didn’t even want to be in the same room as the two of you, the tension making him incapable of dealing with his own uncertainty about the ability to rehabilitate his brother. 

As Touya steps outside into the cool air, far less suffocating than the inside of the house, he fishes around in his pockets for his lighter and mutters obscenities as he realizes it is inside. Of course, he still can’t use his quirk thanks to the very strong suppressants he has to take daily as part of his release, so he flings the door back open and stomps inside. 

Hearing hushed muttering from the living room, he closes the door quietly and creeps to the doorway of the kitchen. He shoves himself against the wall, trying to hide from view as he hears your voice.

“I don’t understand why he won’t give me a chance, Natsu.”

His brother sighs and Touya sinks further against the wall. He knows the sound - fed up, frustrated, struggling. Natsuo is the last person he ever wanted to create those feelings in and shame, a bit of an unfamiliar feeling for him, creeps up his spine and makes his stomach turn. 

“You didn’t exactly make the best first impression, of course he doesn’t completely trust you.”

Natsuo’s words make you blow out air in frustration. Touya can’t see you, but he imagines you look as downtrodden as you always have after these little battles. His brother’s defense of his behavior is surprising, though, and he idly rubs his thumb across one of the graft scars on his hands.

“I know,” you relent with a sniff. “I know.”

Your words shift Touya’s perspective, precious humility trickling over him and making his left eye twitch - a stress reflex he tried to hide for years. 

You were the first person who noticed it and on your usual trip to the small store to pick up his cigarettes after, you passed him a box of anti-inflammatory medication and a bottle of eyedrops wordlessly as you buckled into your seat. He hasn’t twitched since.

Acknowledging the hurt you’ve caused is the first step of atonement, he remembers reading in a book Natsuo brought him while he was still locked up.

He peeks from around the wall, stretching his arms over his head and locking his fingers on the back of his skull, buried in poorly dyed black hair. Natsuo looks up through his light eyelashes at his brother who approaches carefully, settling on the opposite side of the table from where the pair of you sit.

“You can do it.”

The words are simple and cause both you and Natsuo to look up. Touya refuses to meet your puffy eyes and rises back to standing as quickly as he sat, slapping the tabletop once before skulking down the hallway to grab his lighter.

You and Natsuo resolve not to ask questions, with only two weeks until the panel meets time is of the essence and your testimony will be key to helping Touya if you choose to help him. 

Sitting in front of the panel is more nerve-wracking than you expected. A group of five familiar faces all staring at you with discerning eyes as you shuffle the hand-written pages of your testimony between your fingers.

These people have rummaged through your home on more than one occasion, interviewed all of your close friends and family, sifted through every piece of your dirty laundry and you’re at their mercy once again but this time you’re more willing.

“You may begin as you wish, Todoroki-san.”

Nodding respectfully toward the head of the panel, you clear your throat and exhale as you look down at the papers in your hands. You can feel Touya looking at you from across the room, Fuyumi and Shouto seated beside him and Rei on the other side of his sister, but refuse to look up at them for fear it’ll make the little courage you’ve summoned disappear.

“When Touya first moved into our home, I was uncertain of his ability to be rehabilitated.”

You spent the last two weeks reading this exact same speech to Natsuo, rehearsing it in your bedroom while pacing across the floor. The ink on the page is smeared in places from wet tears that dripped down onto the paper, black bleeding into blue and drying into rippled and raised spots. Those spots remind you of Touya, the way he has woven his way into part of your everyday existence. 

“The process of allowing him into our lives felt very invasive. Respectfully, our lives were torn apart in preparation for him. Our home was combed through, our mail was intercepted, my husband was followed by a member of this committee on his way home from the clinic he tirelessly uses as a means to help others on more than one occasion.”

You keep your tone even to avoid sounding accusatory. These are all facts the Commission themselves have confirmed via their own documentation but standing in the face of the very force that can decide your future as well as Touya’s is more intimidating than you expected.

“The day Touya moved in, our lives shifted in a way that no amount of preparation could have made us anticipate. Difficult interpersonal dynamics forced us to take a good hard look at the future of our family and the future of what we desired for Touya. How did we want his rehabilitation to look?”

Taking a breath, you look up from the sheet of paper for a moment to meet Touya’s gaze and it strikes you as odd to see something almost tender. You sniff, nose twitching, vowing to hold yourself together until you’re alone or with Fuyumi or anywhere but sitting in front of people who have made their living off of judging, doling out punishment, changing lives for better or worse.

“While we’ve had many difficult times, I am not here to talk about the difficulty I caused Touya with my inability to coexist for the first several months. Rehabilitation takes a team and I was not a team player,” you pause and hear shuffling from the seats across the room. “Despite this, Touya has dedicated himself to improvement and has continually adhered to every request the commission put forth in the original terms of his release.”

While you don’t want to continue to air out your dirty laundry, there is a therapeutic feeling in knowing you’re publicly admitting to handling things wrong. In front of Natsuo’s family, nonetheless. Touya’s family. Your family. 

At the end of this lies the fact that you are all a family and forgiveness is inherently woven through the relationships and bonds you share.

“It is the recommendation of both my husband and I that Touya’s privileges of release be expanded upon, including reduction of supervision and permission to travel to the homes of his mother and siblings independently if he chooses.”

Rising to your feet, you bow before the panel once more before walking toward the back of the room and quietly exiting as they take time to deliberate and make their decision. 

Touya rises and comes to the front of the room, standing before them. He hates the way he feels, like a caged animal with his muscles tensed, in a suit that doesn’t even belong to him because why the fuck would he ever own a suit? The sleeves are too long, it is Shouto’s after all, and he pulls the cuffs over his hands with his thumbs.

The panel head speaks and the room is so quiet you’re even unnerved from the other side of the door. Pressing your ear to the wood, you listen.

“Our decision will not be immediate. You can expect further communication from the panel in the coming weeks. As of right now, your terms of release remain the same until you are otherwise notified. Thank you for your time today, Todoroki-san.”

Touya bows and joins his family, missing the member he wishes to see the most.

You back away from the door as you hear the knob turn and rest against the wall, arms over your chest as you greet your in-law’s with a subdued smile. 

“Natsu will be so proud of you!” Fuyumi beams, rubbing your bicep in a comforting gesture. You just shrug, unable to speak. You exchange a few additional pleasantries with Shouto and Rei, wishing them goodbye as they leave you and Touya standing on opposite sides of the hallway.

“It’s okay, you know.”

Touya’s voice is a rasp, as always, and you look up through your eyelashes at him. Fiddling uncomfortably with the cuff of your shirt in the same way he’s been fiddling with his own cuffs all day, it just further emphasizes the similarities you share. It isn’t just love for Natsuo you have in common anymore.

“None of this shit has been easy and you’ve done your best. I’m not exactly a fuckin’ easy person to get along with.”

You chuckle, tension diffusing.

“I think you’re going soft, Touya.”

He chuckles back and your eyes meet, the two of you walking toward the center of the hallway to leave the building together and walk back to your car. Your footsteps are quiet and so are his, both of you slumping as you saunter out of the door and into the bright midday sun.

“Nah, just tired of being an asshole all the time.”

The news comes as you stand at your kitchen sink, Touya bent over as you help him rinse black hair dye down the drain. Your hands are wet, his shirt is soaked, but you agreed to help him after noticing a huge white patch still at the back of his head from his attempts to do it himself. 

“I dunno why you want it to be black so bad, don’t you want to look like Natsu?”

Touya snorts and the sound echoes through the steel basin. “I have to keep a little edge. Let me live.” You shut off the clean running water, allowing the dark droplets to work their way out of your sink. There was more rinsing to do but you wanted to be sure of how much more.

“It’s here!” Natsuo shouts from the doorway and you hear his hurried, large footsteps trek into the room, ripping of paper ringing in your ears.

You want to leave Touya’s side and go to Natsuo, to read over his arm, to see for yourself but you resolve to be patient and continue to lightly massage Touya’s scalp. He needs comfort right now, you can tell.

“Expansion of privileges,” Natsuo mutters to himself, scanning the page as quickly as he can. “Unsupervised access to other family homes! Holy shit!” 

Tossing the papers onto the counter, your husband bolts toward you and wraps his arms around your waist. “No, no, no,” you chant as he picks you up and you accidentally pull Touya’s wet strands of hair. He yelps and you let go, hissing apologetically.

“God Natsuo, down boy.”

Your snarky brother-in-law draws a giggle from you as your husband presses a kiss against your cheek and reaches down to slap him on the back. “Do you wanna tell mom or should I?” Touya looks up, head still dripping, and rolls his eyes at his brother. “I could just show up at her house, that’d have more impact.”

Wiggling away from Natsuo, you reach for the towel on the counter and wrap it around Touya’s neck so he can sit up and not drip black water all over your floor. He gives silent thanks in the form of a tight half smile and you smile back, stepping away to let the brothers converse about how they’re going to break the news to their siblings.

As you watch the two of them, the panther and his handler once again come back to your mind. 

The reason that the handler was able to come so close to the cat is because he trusted him. The cat could learn to trust others, to let people in, to let them be on his side. You won’t have to wonder if you could have gained the panther’s trust any longer and he won’t have to wonder what it’s like to be on the outside with the rest of us. 

[hellsite-proteins]

Are there ways to actually "program" cells to produce these proteins? Like if you fed ribosomes the right RNA sequence, would it synthesize a bullshit protein molecule that does nothing useful, or would it start falling apart immediately in reality? My knowledge on DNA splicing is old and I know near nothing about proteins so I'm just curious if it'd ever be possible to get a real world representation of anything on your blog (setting aside the cost and effort it would take to do that)

yes there is! and you actually got pretty close, but you have to go a bit further back and use DNA (there are ways of delivering RNA to cells, but I haven't done that personally, and for something like protein purification that would not be the method of choice, so I won't be going into that. there are two main ways of inserting coding DNA into cells: using a transient expression plasmid and gene editing. note: all of these will be very brief overviews, so if you want more detail about any part of this, then please ask!

first i'll go over the simpler method which is using plasmids. i've been doing a lot of molecular cloning lately specifically to put proteins into expression vectors so i can purify them and do some work with the pure protein, which is what i assume you would want to do here. (sidetone: once you have some purified protein, there are a number of different things you can do to find out its sequence or structure, but that is a whole other post). plasmids are circular bits of DNA outside of the genome that are not necessary for survival, but carry useful information. most of the ones used in labs will also have an antibiotic resistance gene or some other marker so we can select for only the cells with the plasmid by growing them in media with the right drug. using specific enzymes, we can cut these plasmids and then insert a new fragment of DNA coding for whatever we want, before sealing them back up. Then, a small amount of the plasmid can be transformed into cells (bacteria and yeast are commonly used), which will multiply and make more of your plasmid, as well as whatever it encodes if the conditions are right!

Genome editing is a broad topic, so i'm just going to give you a quick overview of CRISPR-Cas9, which I have a bit of experience with. this isn't something i would do if i just wanted to make a lot of a given protein, but it is useful to look at how much of a protein is made under the native expression system within a cell, or to edit the sequence of a protein being made (and much more...). Cas9 makes a cut in both strands of genomic DNA, but the really neat thing about this is that you can easily tell it specifically where to cut. to do this, you will build a plasmid with the gene for the Cas9 protein, as well as the guide RNA matching the sequence where you want the cut to be. there are other design considerations, but i'll save that for now. once the DNA has been cut, the cell starts to panic and try and stick it back together, but not before some random bases get added and/or deleted from either of the broken ends. this is useful if you want to knock out a gene, because you can go in and mess up its promoter or something similar so that it never gets made. if that is too messy and random, or if you want to knock something in instead of knocking it out, you can also take advantage of the cell's repair mechanisms. if a double stranded break happens, the cell would prefer to fix it properly, and so it will try and remake the DNA using the other matching chromosome as a template. but, if you add in another plasmid instead that contains sequences matching either side of the break with something you want to add in sandwiched in between them, you can make the DNA repair itself with your new sequence!

finally, all of this assumes that the protein would be successfully translated, and would not be so toxic to cells that anything expressing it dies. we would need to add a methionine (start) to the beginning of nearly all of these sequences, and ideally codon optimize them for the specific organism. ordering the custom DNA sequences also wouldn't be cheap, but is also not impossible. an inducible expression system would also help reduce the risk of toxicity and let us make a lot at once if we so desired. we would probably also want to add a tag to make these easier to purify if we wanted to use the protein itself.

again i am not great at being brief and i have no idea how much the average person knows about any of this, so please ask more if anything i've said needs clarification!

letter sequence in this ask matching protein-coding amino acids:

AretherewaystactallyprgramcellstprdcetheseprteinsLikeifyfedrismestherightRNAseqencewlditsynthesieallshitprteinmleclethatdesnthingseflrwlditstartfallingapartimmediatelyinrealityMyknwledgenDNAsplicingisldandIknwnearnthingatprteinssImstcrisifitdeverepssiletgetarealwrldrepresentatinfanythingnyrlgsettingasidethecstandeffrtitwldtaketdthat

protein guy analysis:

you know that feeling when you're writing a test and aren't really sure what the answer is, but you try and put down everything you know in the hopes of getting some part marks? i feel like that's what this protein looks like. there is an assortment of secondary structures all spread out between loops and even a beta sheet, as if AlphaFold was trying its best to make something out of this. still, it doesn't look the way we would expect from an ordered protein, and i do not trust it.

predicted protein structure:

[basil-does-arttt]

things i want to see in DMC 6 if DMC 6 ever happens (or even just another installment into the franchise in general):

1: Vergil adopts a black cat and he names it Shadow after the familiar he had as V, and even though its really obvious thats why he got the cat he swears up and down that isn't the reason why he got it

At the same time Dante gets a dog specifically a lab and names it woozy after the force edge in dmc 1

2: while the shit twins are on their escapade in hell, they encounter some true horror shit more akin to RE than DMC but of course enemies are still dealt with in typical stylish fasion. Body horror, psychological horror, a real exploration of the twin's traumas through environmental, visual and audio storytelling

3: Kyrie is back and she actually gets a role that isnt damsel in distress or background character. Let. Her. Fight!!

Adding to 3: Kyrie gets her own custom weapons courtesy of Nico, maybe a sword based off of ones in the Order and a gun to match Nero's Blue Rose. Possibly in an angelic theme, wings and such having a strong motif while also being just as badass as we all know post-dmc 4 Kyrie really is

4: nero gets his own lineup of bosses and he actually kills them all himself, without any outside assistance from other characters. (The only boss he's killed himself is Malphas.)

5: with the shit-twins in Hell theres a fully implemented co-op mode, either split screen or over two machines, where one can play as Vergil and the other as Dante as they travel throughout hell. However if the player so chooses to go it alone, they can choose to play as either of the twins and can switch between them at places like a divinity statue.

6: more exploration into Trish and Lady as characters. Trish by the shit-twins are in hell and can find some stuff regarding her creation perhaps, and Lady by Nero as she helps him out on the surface while the shit-twins are in hell.

7: Vergil gets his own Devil Sword Vergil after Yamato is used to seal the portal between the worlds, but it has to remain as a katana like Dante's remained as a double edged sword.

8: Dante struggling with control over his SDT while they're in hell and Vergil helping him through it

9: cerberus puppies.

10: nero gets his own devil arms that he can use alongside his buster arm mechanic and red queen stays as his default weapon

11: lore exploration on Sparda while the shit twins are in hell

cant think of much else for now might add as i think of shit

[emblemxeno]

I feel like I live on a completely different world than a lot of Fire Emblem fans. My favorite game is Engage, with Fates being a pretty close second. And Three Houses is easily my least favorite (I’d even go as far to say I outright don’t like the game anymore).

I think what really turned me off from Three Houses was that it had no clue what it wanted to be.

Does it want to be a social sim with engaging combat, like Persona? Because it failed at that. The social sim aspect is simultaneously tedious and easily skippable, that I wonder why they even bothered. And the gameplay is not engaging in the slightest because the maps are boring and never demand anything of the player, and this game is the worst offender of the “just make everyone one class” effect.

Does it want to be a deep, “morally grey” story with multiple points of view where nobody is truly in the wrong? Then the Slithers existing is a rebuke to that idea. They are in every meaning of the word, evil.

Does it want to have a fun route where you play as the villains who know they’re doing wrong, but they do it anyway because that’s where their belief is? Then that’s also not done well at all, since in CF they all cry and whinge about how hard it is to be fighting a war that they started!

Sorry for the rant, but it truly baffles me whenever I see takes on Reddit or wherever that people think Fire Emblem should take more inspiration from Three Houses. I think that’d legitimately kill the series for me if they decided to do that.

Mmmm, I agree with pretty much all you're saying.

While they never outright admitted that they had a problem with content bloat, the devs and writers said they kept adding stuff to the game until it "had its own soul/life" at some point. Which to some-or many, considering how many people love the game-is admirable and worthy of praise.

Me? I think it's the video game equivalent of identity crisis combined with the dreadful modern game design ideology of "everything needs to be BIGGER."

In trying to explain every detail and every perspective, 3H ends up not saying anything definitive by itself. Things only start to barely make sense when you read the writer interviews, but then you start wondering why the absurd amount of chaff (cheap dialogue) couldn't be cut.

And when it came to making everything in the game design aspect BIGGER, it just ended up being "why don't we take all the familiar mechanics and make them take longer to fulfill." The 5+ experience bars for determining levels or class abilities or weapon proficiency or class mastery or blah blah blah. When in previous entries, all you had to do was level up and use seals to reclass, bada boom. Couple that with the simulation aspect being doubled down on with Loading Screen Monastery, multiple activities which get old fast but can't be skipped unless you want to risk gimping yourself, and the hundreds of button presses to do things that were so, so quick to do in the past... Like, even if I were to give in to what most people say and concede that 3H is a beacon of modern FE storytelling, who the hell cares when the game is such a slog to play? At a certain point, the only major enjoyment anymore for me is doing funny/cool builds like Grappler Flayn or Trickster Ignatz.

I feel you on that last part, if the next FE game is basically 3H The Squeakquel, I'm gonna be real sour :///

[flame-of-tar-valon]

Ok @nongunktional and friends I did the Lleidspaer battle thing earlier, now here's the Nia'a one. Unlike Lleidspaer there is only one battle, post-EW, and it has... uh. some phases. probably.

Conditions: must complete (1) all of the Crystarium and Studium deliveries, (2) St. Mocianne's Arboretum (Hard), (3) all Botanist class quests, (4) the Forbidden Island, Eureka quest chain, (5) the Shadow of Mhach raids, (6) the Eden raid series, and (7) the Conjurer, Lancer, and Archer class quests. Oh and (8) Myths of the Realm. Afterwards Nia'a can be found in Idyllshire near where Edgyth is.

He won't agree to a battle unless you can find some teammates for him. You won't get map markers for this part but there are clues which help you find: (1) the Keeper of the Entwined Serpents; (2) Guydelot; (3) Y'mhitra, and (4) E-Sumi-Yan. Once you assemble the party, Nia’a tells you to meet for battle at Urth's Gift in the South Shroud. You enter the clearing and prepare for combat.

Phase 1: Party vs Party

Nia'a isn't on the battlefield at all, it seems. Instead, you fight the other four combatants while Nia’a keeps giving them insanely good buffs. Once they all fall, Nia'a revives them all and you fight them again, but they're even stronger. Once they all fall again, Nia'a revives them and enlarges them like the second Dohn Mheg boss. Once you manage to defeat the party again, Nia'a warps them to safety and appears on the battlefield himself. His eyes glow white and he conjures forth a poison...

Phase 2: Finding an Antidote

Surprise! you're in Cosmic Exploration mode now. With limited time gather collectables from limited gathering nodes and use aetherial reduction to obtain Aethersand. you need six types, which you use to make High Quality Antidotes (expert recipe). You have to make enough of these Antidotes as a party to fill up the Red Alert gauge. :)

Phase 3: Warrior of Light and Darkness

Nia'a summons the Great One forth from the Guardian Tree, and it and its fellow Elementals surround the party. This phase is a lot like the Moggle Mog fight if it were actually badass, and a bit like the final Eden raid as well maybe. There's unique mechanics for each of the types of elementals. but it's my bedtime and I'm out of brainpower for mechanics sry.

One thing that's important is that some of the elements are astral-aligned and some are umbral-aligned. You can have up to two elemental effects on you at once, but you need to make sure you have only one astral and one umbral by the time the Great One's HP reaches 0; any player who doesn't have exactly one astral and one umbral element at that point will instantly die.

Anyways the whole elemental thing reminds Nia’a of the breaking of the seals on Zodiark's prison and he falls to his knees clutching his head...

and then he starts floating in the air as he's finally remembered. Illusory doubles of himself slowly converge on his body, giving off an aura of darkness. How could he have forgotten who he is — Halmarut, of the Convocation of Fourteen. Ascian.

He warps you to an arboretum in Elpis where you face off against giant trees (like the Titania trial, or St. Mocianne's Arboretum) and stuff until, idk my brain just shut down partway through writing this so imagine like. idk.Hermes or Hades but tree themed.

Anyways then he final phase is the Crystal of Wood and this phase works a lot like the Crystal of Water phase from Lleidspaer’s battle.

Bonus: Vivimani

Vivimani's battle has seven phases.

Phase 1: floors 1-100 of palace of the dead while he offers unhelpful advice

Phase 2: triple triad best of seven

Phase 3: dance battle. rhythm game section

Phase 4: you have to beat him at the Dellemont d'Or cooking competition

Phase 5: earn the largest profit trying to sell your wares to the nobles of Ul'dah

Phase 6: ok fine he said this was going to be a battle, didn't he? Well if Lleidspaer and Nia'a are discovering who they were as Ancients, so should he... Welp it's Athena. again. he gets into an argument with her and the form shatters. so vivimani summons Lilith (the super powerful voidsent) for you to fight instead (lilith is his reflection from the 13th probably maybe? or is that too cringe of me)

Phase 7: Crystal of Fire time! ... it's a jumping challenge. you have to make it to the top of that building in Kugane. within a time limit. and without falling bc the floor is lava.

ok I'm just trolling with the vivimani stuff I need to sleep sorry some day I will revise these to be as cool (read: confusing) as the lleidspaer stuff see ya