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alicewritingstories · 9 months ago

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Febuwhump Day 25: Waterboarding

CW: kidnapping, torture, restraints, drugs

AO3

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Link wasn't entirely sure how long it had been since he was kidnapped. It didn't help that he'd spent part of the time unconscious; he could still feel the lingering traces of the drug that had been jabbed into his arm by someone in the crowd at the marketplace.

One thing that was certain was that he was now standing against a post, bound too tightly to even shift position. Even his breathing was restricted. A cloth was tied between his teeth tightly enough that his cheeks ached and another was over his eyes.

Dully, he wondered who was holding him and what they wanted. It wasn't as if he was short of enemies, but most of them would have cut his throat already and been done with it. The fact that apparently he had been wanted alive was worrying. It meant that either they wanted to take their time killing him or they wanted something other than his life.

Neither was a comforting thought.

Then he heard something: the rattle of keys in a padlock, followed by the scrapes of a chain being unwrapped and a door rubbing a floor as it opened. He raised his head, trying to give a show of strength and defiance.

Nobody spoke, but he heard footsteps, something heavy being put down, some rustling and scraping, and then footsteps walking away again, followed by the door closing and being locked again.

He frowned, confused, straining his ears to try to hear any talk from outside or any hint of where he was. Everything was silent except that he caught a faint sound that he could believe was half-stifled breathing. He couldn't even be sure enough to seriously wonder if another prisoner had been brought in.

He squirmed as best he could in his bonds, trying to find an angle to rub the blindfold away from his eyes, but it was no good. He just had to continue to wait to find out what was happening: something he had never enjoyed or been good at.

After a while, he heard a faint noise. This time he was sure: it was a soft, gag-strangled voice moaning as the other prisoner recovered consciousness. He tried to make some sound through his own gag in response, but had no way of knowing if the other prisoner had heard him; he just faintly made out some small rustles and shuffles that he guessed was the sound of an unsuccessful struggle against ropes.

Before he could come up with any kind of plan to communicate with the other prisoner or find out more about who they were and their state, he heard the door unlocked again. Again, he raised his head and squared his shoulders as best he could. Footsteps approached and this time someone grabbed the blindfold and pulled it violently away from his eyes.

They were holding a torch near his face and he had to turn away, closing his eyes against the sudden bright light.

"Captain Link," said a voice.

He looked up slowly, blinking away the watering at the corners of his eyes. It was still hard to see, but he did his best to focus and to keep his head up.

A hand grabbed his chin and held his head still as someone untied the knotted cloth tied around his mouth and pulled it free. He took a quick, grateful breath, licking his dry lips to try to moisten them.

"I'm sure you're wondering what's going on. You'll be relieved to know you're not the one we want."

He tilted his head with a scowl, not making the effort to speak aloud. His eyes had grown sufficiently accustomed to the light that he could see the man speaking to him, not that it helped; he was wearing a mask and only his eyes were visible. Link noted that they were green, a few freckles were visible on the bridge of the man's nose, and he had a Castletown accent. Useful information if he got out of here alive.

"We're interested in the princess. Answer our questions and you'll be untied and released once we've finished our work and kept safe and comfortable in the meantime. Refuse and you won't."

Link met his eye squarely, his jaw set.

"I thought you might not be interested in cooperating. Whatever else anyone says about you, you're a brave man and you've always been happy to risk your skin for her. Well, how about the skin of your little cousin here?" The man stepped aside and pointed. Now Link saw the other prisoner: a young boy in a brightly-coloured quartered tunic, gagged and tied spread-eagled on a table. Another masked man had just removed his blindfold and he was blinking in Link's direction.

Link had never seen him before in his life. He didn't even have any cousins.

"Strangers' lives mean nothing to you, we all know that, but he and the rest of the family have been asking around town for you. I guess you don't do a good job of writing home."

Both accusations stung. Neither was worth engaging with right now.

The boy's eyes had focussed on Link's face. His expression showed none of the fear Link had expected. There was some resemblance, he supposed, though in the circumstances it was hard to tell. But the question of whether whoever had left him at an orphanage when he was a baby had had family that might have tracked him down could wait. First, he had to get himself and the boy out of here.

Link's gaze went back to the man speaking to him. He wished he had Proxi, but wishes were wasted. He was going to have to speak for himself and he licked his lips again, unsure what to do. The boy knew too much now; they wouldn't let him leave alive even if Link managed to persuade them he didn't know him and therefore by their own logic he didn't care what they might do to him.

He did, he always did, but what he cared about didn't matter much to anyone.

"Let's start with something easy, shall we?" said the man pleasantly. "The royal kitchens. Are there any special precautions around the princess' meals and those of her closest retainers such as General Impa?"

Link glared at him.

"Ah, I see." The man turned and nodded to his companions. Before Link could react, one of them pinched the boy's nose closed while another dipped a bucket of water out of a barrel beside the table and tipped it over the boy's head. The boy let out a cry, strangled to a squeal by the now-soaked gag, and bucked against the hand on his face and the ropes holding him to the table.

Link swallowed hard, imagining trying to breathe through a mouth filled with wet cloth. The man holding the boy's nose held it a moment longer, then released it, letting the boy gasp in a breath.

There wasn't much choice for Link; he couldn't betray Zelda, not to save himself, not to save a stranger, not to save someone who might be long-lost family.

"Nothing?" asked the kidnapper.

When Link still stayed silent, the man nodded at his companions again. Another bucket of water was thrown over the boy's face. This time the man standing over him didn't plug his nose and his gasps were punctuated by sneezes, muffled coughs, and the occasional involuntary whimper.

Link gritted his teeth and stayed silent.

The man asked more questions, visibly more and more frustrated. Link kept quiet, though the boy's muffled cries as he struggled to breathe properly tore at his heart. He had to do this. It wasn't even as if it was the first time he'd let an innocent suffer for the greater good.

Then, out of nowhere, the door was smashed open. Link's head snapped round and he gasped as a tattooed man in shining plate armor ran in. The kidnappers were just as shocked as he was, which gave the newcomer - newcomers, he realized; three other men ran in after the first - a chance to make it almost to where he stood before the kidnappers could even react.

"Legend, Hyrule!" the armored man shouted. "With me!"

The man who had been waterboarding the boy drew a knife, but a slight teenager in a red tunic closed the distance before he could even get out the threat to kill his prisoner. The man who had been questioning Link didn't even make a threat; he drew his knife and brought it to Link's throat.

Link took a quick final breath and mentally said farewell to Zelda and his other friends.

Then a sword flashed past his face. The kidnapper reeled back with a cry, clutching at his hand. A young man in a white cloak stepped in front of Link, sword still raised protectively.

"Are you all right?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder.

Link let out the breath he'd taken and nodded. He couldn't see past the man in the cloak, but he heard the clash of swords, shouts, and then coughing and someone saying, "OK, Four. Just keep breathing."

The man in the cloak relaxed and sheathed his sword, then stepped over beside Link to start cutting his bonds.

"You're Link?" he asked quietly with a small, comforting smile.

Link nodded. "The traitors?" he managed.

"Dead."

"Are you hurt?" asked the armored man, looking over from where the two teenagers were supporting the boy - Four. Now there was more time to look at them all, Link noticed that one of his eyes was closed, the lid marred with a long scar. He instinctively ranked him as a captain, though he wasn't wearing any uniform Link recognised.

He could once again see some resemblance between them and him. They had come for Four, so this must be the group his kidnappers had talked about.

He could see why they had thought this was his family.

Then he was distracted as the blood finally started to return to his cramped, numb limbs. As soon as he was no longer supported by the ropes, Link collapsed forward. The captain lunged forward to catch him and held him up as the one with the cloak kept working on the ropes.

"Are you hurt?" he asked again.

Link shook his head. "The boy - Four - is he all right?" he asked quietly.

The captain looked Link up and down and, to his surprise, he smiled. "Legend? Hyrule?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder.

"I'm fine," said Four in a surprisingly low-pitched, steady voice, accompanied by relieved-sounding chuckles from the two teens. Then he coughed again.

Link had expected anger at what he had allowed to happen to Four. He'd expected to find that he'd burned the bridge with his maybe-family before it had even been built.

"You must be Captain Link," the captain said as he gently lowered Link to sit against the post, a hand still on his shoulder to steady him.

Link nodded.

"My name is also Link, but you can call me Time. It's a pleasure to finally meet you. These are Sky" - He pointed to the man in the cloak - "Legend" - the teen in the red tunic - "Hyrule" - the other teen, this one dressed in humble green and brown - "you've, well… you've seen Four" - Four waved with one rope-burned hand, covering more coughs with the other - "and Wind is keeping watch."

Link looked up at them all, still confused. "Who are you?" He asked. It was a start on the questions he really wanted to ask.

Time sighed. "That's a long story," he said. "And it's best told somewhere other than here."

Link forced an approximation of his usual bright, confident smile and at last the words came easily. "Well, then, when I can walk again you should come with me. Four should see a medic and I'm sure her highness would like to meet you."

Time nodded briskly, his own smile relaxing, and squeezed Link's shoulder. "In the meantime, you concentrate on recovering. You're safe with us."

And as the blood flowed painfully back into Link's swollen hands and feet, he believed him.

#febuwhump2024 #febuwhumpday25 #linked universe whump #lu warriors #lu four #cw:torture #cw: kidnapping

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lamaenthel · 9 months ago

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Waterboarding

[read on ao3][masterlist]Febuwhump prompt: Waterboarding

Kal dips a towel in the bucket and folds it in half. "What we are doing today is called waterboarding," he says, pretending like he's alone. It's a dummy on the table, not a real little boy. Not his little boy. "It feels just like drowning." "Can it kill you?" Ordo asks. "Yes, but it's hard to do accidentally." Kal picks up the filled pitcher. "I'd have to keep going after you went unconscious." Ordo nods, filing the information away in that magnificent brain of his. "I'm ready whenever you are, Sir." Kal wants to scream, punch someone, burn down the white, sterile hell they're trapped in until it's nothing but black ash, anything except what they came to do. Instead, he puts the towel over his son's face and starts to pour.

Characters: Null-11|Ordo Skirata, Kal Skirata Wordcount: 759

Kal hates the rain and the way it makes his shattered ankle ache, he hates the food, he hates the way he knows he's trapped on the dar'mandla planet, but what he hates most of all about Kamino is the fierfecking sterility of it all. White walls, white floors, white clothes on the longnecks with larval-white skin and white rings in their eyes, it all makes him dizzy. He's forgotten what mud smells like. Sometimes he breaks the inkballs at the practice range on purpose just to see some color on the walls.

At least they were smart enough not to dress little boys in white. Ordo's kaminii'a fatigues are red to differentiate him at a glance from the rank-and-file cadets in blue. In Kal's opinion, anyone with a set of eyes should be able to do that at a glance based on the defiance and mando'kar that sparkles in the eyes of his ad'ikase, but he isn't paid for his opinion. Those little red fatigues are thin, made from duraweave and were designed to not show dirt and dry quickly when wet.

"Do you know why I brought you here today, Ord'ika?" Kal asks his boy, squeezing his little hand twice.

Ordo squeezes back. "I assume it's enhanced interrogation resistance based on the last time we used this room," he replies casually.

"My clever boy." Ordo's five years old, looks ten, and speaks like he's twenty. Kal's heart breaks even more for what he has to do. "Yes, we're training for that today."

"And that's why we're alone." Ordo smiles at Kal's nod, happy to have gotten it right.

"Yes. This is best done solus bal'solus."

"One and one?"

"Yes, one and one. Means just the two of us Mandos." Kal smiles and keys the door. It's a small white room without a defined purpose—a rare thing for Kamino, where everything has a purpose—set up today with only a metal table, a pile of white towels, a white sanitation bucket, and a white pitcher. Even the water comes out white when he turns the tap on.

"Chilly in here." Ordo hops up onto the metal table and sits with his hands in his lap like he's at the doctor, though a normal kid would kick their legs back and forth instead of sitting deadly still like a snake in the corn.

"That's on purpose. Water evaporates off your skin and takes your warmth with it. That's why we sweat." Kal turns the tap off and takes a long breath to steady himself. "I'm going to have to hurt you today, son. You know I hate to do it, but you've got to learn."

Ordo's eyes are wide and dark in his little copper face. He nods, solemn like always. "I know, Sir."

Kal presses their foreheads together in a brief kov'nyn then draws back, distancing himself emotionally as well as physically from his son. "Take your shirt off and lay down with your head at the edge of the table."

Ordo, good lad that he is, folds his shirt before he obeys precisely. He keeps his arms straight down at his sides, standing at attention even while laying down.

"Can it kill you?" Ordo asks.

"Yes, but it's hard to do accidentally." Kal picks up the filled pitcher. "I'd have to keep going after you went unconscious."

Ordo nods, filing the information away in that magnificent brain of his. "I'm ready whenever you are, Sir."

Kal wants to scream, punch someone, burn down the white, sterile hell they're trapped in until it's nothing but black ash, anything except what they came to do. Instead, he puts the towel over his son's face and starts to pour. He watches Ordo stay still at first, then start to struggle once he runs out of air. Kal holds his boy down with a firm hand on his chest. "Thirty seconds, trooper, that's an order," he barks sharply. "Put all of your fear and pain into a box like I taught you. It's not happening to you. It doesn't even exist. Endure this."

As Kal watches Ordo fight his own instinct to survive, he can't help but wonder if the children he sired with Illipi didn't have the right idea about declaring him dar'buir after all.

Taglist: @starwarsficnetwork, @febuwhump, @soliloquy-of-nemo Divider: @saradika-graphics

#ordo skirata #kal skirata #repcomm #febuwhump #febuwhumpday25 #waterboarding #my writing #clone troopers #nulls

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just-here-with-my-thoughts · 9 months ago

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Day 25: Lightning Strike

@febuwhump prompt Alt 9: Lightning Strike

Fandom: The Bad Batch Characters: Cadet Hunter (C-9931), Cadet Crosshair, Ninety-Nine Cadet Batch as featured in my WIP fic 'Pieces of the People We Love' - haven't read it? This is a retelling of a scene from Part 1 from Hunter's POV. All you need to know is that Hunter is younger than Crosshair; they are from separate batches of enhanced clones and haven't been introduced yet. Word Count: ~2385 Click here to read on AO3

Synopsis: Struggling with how a Kaminoan lightning storm affects his enhanced senses, a young enhanced clone cadet makes an unexpected friend

Hunter is about 8/9, Crosshair about 13 in this sequence

Ninety-Nine stopped and listened for a moment, swopping the food tray he carried to his left hand and raising his right to palm open the door.

As soon as he hit the keypad he braced himself.

The cadet inside came barrelling towards the opening, scraping past the door before it was wide enough to permit his skinny frame proper passage. Ninety-Nine caught him with a practiced flourish, turning the boy around and guiding him back inside.

"Hey, Three-One," he greeted with a genial smile. "Did you know it was me?"

The boy merely nodded, plastering himself to Ninety-Nine's side in a way which impeded both of their passage across the room. Ninety-Nine rolled his eyes and let the boy be dragged along, eventually laying the tray down on the table.

"Sit up and eat your lunch," he instructed. "I'll tidy up."

Not that there was much to do. Three of the four bunk beds were stripped and bare. The last occupied bunk was a nest of tangled blankets, but other than that 9931 was a relatively tidy resident of the room.

He didn't have any belongings to make a mess with.

Still, Ninety-Nine folded the blankets down neatly and did what he could to plump the thin pillow. It was more to show the kid he cared than because it was necessary. Maker knew the other maintenance clones were at a loss dealing with this solitary enhanced cadet.

When the youngster had finished eating – he was picky about what he had, and the plate was still half-full – Ninety-Nine creaked his bent body down onto the bench opposite.

"What have you been up to, Three-One?" he asked, nodding enthusiastically to encourage the boy to talk.

9931 slipped from the table and darted to a storage locker, coming back with a datapad.

"Unconventional warfare," he said, his quiet voice just for Ninety-Nine's ears, a hand curling around Ninety-Nine's sleeve as he spoke. It was such a difference from the boisterous cadets in the main halls, or even the other small groups of enhanced cadets.

He sat with the boy for a while, letting him flick through diagrams of ambush tactics and environmental traps. Then he reached for the tray and its half-finished meal.

The change in 9931 was instant. He dropped the datapad and clung onto Ninety-Nine instead, a desperate look on his face.

"You can't go."

"I have to, Three-One," he said resignedly, offering the boy a smile even as he peeled the grasping fingers from his arm. "I have other duties."

The boy looked distraught. "There's a storm coming."

Ninety-Nine looked out the window at the overcast Kaminoan ocean - grey but calm. He huffed a small smile. “You’re always right about these things,” he acknowledged, glancing back at the cadet. "Are you scared of the lightning, Three-One?"

No answer. Ninety-Nine wondered what the Kaminoans had done to enhance the 99-Threes. It certainly wasn't the same as his brothers' enhancement.

Regretfully he extracted himself from 9931's clinging grasp and heading for the door. Three-One trailed him for a moment before darting ahead.

"Don't go," repeated the cadet, and now an edge of demand entered his voice. Skinny arms and legs splayed in a star, blocking the door. “Don’t.”

Ninety-Nine sighed and rested a hand on the boy's shoulder, crouching down to his height to speak to him.

"You're lonely, I understand" he said, the softness of sympathy in his words echoing in the quiet space between them. It was unfathomable to him that, a fortnight after his last batchmate was decommissioned, 9931 was still alone in his barracks. Ninety-Nine felt sure this clone should be fostered into another group of enhanced cadets, but nobody cared what a defective maintenance clone thought.

Slowly he creaked back to his feet, reaching over Three-One's head for the door controls.

“I’ll see you again next time I’m on rota in this part of the city,” he said, forcing cheer into his voice.

9931 turned into a ball of desperate fury, clawing at Ninety-Nine’s clothes and arms, struggling to get past him to the doorway. Ninety-Nine gripped him firmly, pushing him back into the room, shoving head, arms, legs, arms again, back from the rapidly shrinking gap as the door hissed closed once more. Three-One’s wordless noises of distress could be heard until the last, when Ninety-Nine snatched his hand back to stop it being trapped in the door.

He sighed as he reached up and activated the door lock. Then stood and started at the red light for a long moment, thinking.

On the other side of the door he could hear the thump and slide of the lonely young cadet slumping against the door-frame, the quiet snuffling of tears that followed.

Hesitantly, glancing round to make sure he wasn’t being watched, Ninety-Nine deactivated the lock. There. If anyone asked, he could blame it on forgetfulness, or mis-keying the code. Nobody expected much of defective clones anyway. And it wasn’t like he was leaving the door open. Just leaving it unlocked so that if Three-One tried the controls from the inside, it would work.

C-9931 paced circuits of the room, trailing his fingers along the wall and the thick transparisteel window which protected the near-empty bunk room from the roiling ocean outside. The slide of his fingertips across the smooth surface was barely enough to ground him, trying to keep his thoughts in his body as the swell of the storm grew outside.

9931 could feel the electromagnetic potential even through the insulated walls of the Kaminoan city. It felt to him like a vast pressure building, an intangible force pressing against a sense he had never adequately described to anyone but had realised early on he didn’t share with most of his brothers.

As much as he hated the daily susurrus of the city’s power-systems tingling at the edge of his heightened perception, the planet’s storms were worse. The build and sudden release of energy whipped through his senses with such force that it was akin to pain, a deep-seated ache that clouded his mind and couldn’t be escaped. There was nothing to do but wait it out.

He needed this sense. He knew it in a way that brought little comfort. The Kaminoans were so pleased with him because of his enhanced senses, thrilled whenever he stretched his awareness to the edge of what was possible. Congratulated themselves on the way he could sense the EM flow of the city, the labs, the training rooms.

He had seen brothers decommissioned because they didn’t share the sense that made him so useful.

He had seen brothers decommissioned because they couldn’t handle the pain that came with the overwhelm.

The sudden, sharp increase in pressure in his head let him know what was coming. He flinched, hands going to his head, cringing as the storm finally broke outside with the first snap of lightning forking down towards the turbulent ocean.

The discharge of the lightning strike brought with it a lessening of potential, but 9931 knew it was temporary. Kamino’s storms could last for hours; days. It might be mere minutes before the next strike. That familiar build-agony-release would constrict his mind again, and again, until the storm blew itself out.

When he was small, he’d had a brother who understood. One from his batch of five who shared the sense. 9934’s EM sense had been even greater than 9931’s.

Too sensitive. 9934 had been decommissioned when they were eighteen months old. Now 9931 was three, and desperate to survive the fate which had befallen each of his brothers.

The storms had been easier to weather with them. Even if they didn’t share his senses, their presence had been a welcome distraction. They could coax him through the worst of it if they were in training, or simply hold him so he could ground himself in their presence if they were on downtime.

Now he was the last one left, and he wouldn’t let the Kaminoans know he was struggling. Couldn’t afford to. Not when he knew what awaited a failure to fulfil expectations.

Another build of pressure. Another snap of pain as the storm’s potential discharged in a flash of lightning. 9931 spun into the wall, crushing himself to the surface, tears leaking from eyes squeezed shut. His fingers clawed uselessly against the hollow of the door-frame, seeking any sensation to drown out the ache of the storm’s fluctuations.

A beep as his fingers passed over the touchpad. The door whooshed open.

Startled, 9931 jumped back and stared warily at the now unbarred entry. No-one there. Just an empty corridor outside; somewhere to flee to, to explore, to try and seek out anything to distract him from the storm.

Tentatively, on muffled steps, he left the room and started down the long hallways of Kamino.

For a time, the exploration distracted him. Many of the doors were locked, but even a narrow storage nook was a good hiding place for a small clone cadet. It was easy for 9931 to avoid anyone in the passageways – his enhanced senses meant he knew they were coming long before they were at risk of finding him and ending his freedom.

The storm still blew outside, the build-snap-ache pressing at his mind with the lightning even if he could no longer see out into the roiling sky. Before long the stabs of pain it brought to his head were too intense to ignore.

9931 knew he should find his way back to his own room, but now his vision blurred with the pain and he wasn’t sure how far he had come. Palming open the nearest door, he stumbled into a familiar-looking but odd-smelling room. A bunk room, like his, only filled with the scattered detritus of living and the scent of other clones.

Too tired to question or explore further, 9931 stumbled to the nearest bunk and crawled into it, dragging the blanket around himself. He folded the fabric up over his head, letting it scratch against his skin, taking a deep breath and surrounding himself with the reassuring smell of other clones.

Other clones. Cadets like him.

It wasn’t being held by his brothers, but it was better than wandering alone back to his room. His aching body sagging into the thin mattress, 9931 closed his eyes and let his thoughts drift.

The door opened. 9931’s attention snapped sharply back to the room outside the cocoon of the blanket, straining to listen. The electromagnetic fluctuations of the storm still trembled against his enhanced senses, but for now he tried to pay attention to what his normal senses were telling him.

Someone was moving about the room. 9931 stuffed his hands into his mouth, almost holding his breath, praying he wouldn’t be found.

The storm was building to a spike again. A sudden crescendo of pain, and he squeaked out a whimper of pain, hoping it was muffled by his hands. Outside the blanket, the sky flashed bright with lightning.

Then the blanket was whipped back, an older clone cadet glaring down at him. Before he really thought what he was doing 9931 launched himself at the bigger boy, arms going round his waist, burying his face in the boy’s chest.

“What are you doing?” snarled an irate teenaged voice, and a hand clamped round 9931’s upper arm and tried to push him away.

9931 tightened his grip, shuddering as another wave of pressure scraped over his raw senses before the flash-snap of lightning and thunder. A clone. Another cadet, and 9931 drank in his presence before, “Let go of me!”, the other boy’s fist twisted in the collar of his cadet reds and he was thrown roughly to the floor.

For a moment their eyes locked, 9931 gazing up into familiar dark brown eyes in an unfamiliar lean, narrow face. The teenaged cadet had a shock of silver-white hair which almost shone in the stormlit room, and a thin tracing of ink outlined his right eye.

The older cadet’s top lip curled in a snarl. “What’re you doing in here, reg?” he hissed, eyes narrowing to a fierce glare. His displeasure was clear, and 9931 would have shrunk away if not for the fresh strike from the storm which made him flinch, clamping his hands over his ears at the peak of pain.

The boy scoffed a laugh. “You little idiot,” he said, folding his arms. “It’s just an electrical storm.”

More lightning. 9931 couldn’t think, tangling his fingers into his short hair and tightening his grip to try and ground himself.

“I get it. You don’t like the storm,” came the unsympathetic comment from the silver-haired boy. He scowled down at 9931, fierce and unyielding. “What do you expect me to do about it?”

9931 said nothing. Silent tears tracked down his cheeks, and he wasn’t sure if they were from the pain of his ragged senses or the way the cadet had pushed him away with such aggression.

For a long moment he waited, afraid to make the next move, afraid also of what the irritable older boy was going to do.

“Oh for crying out loud,” the teenager muttered, and he hauled 9931 to his feet. Relief flooded through 9931, and he immediately pressed into the boy’s chest again, shivering and twitching as lightning struck and sent flinching stabs of pain through him.

“My head hurts,” he mumbled, all he could think of to say to explain his presence. “The storm makes my head hurt.”

His face buried in the warm darkness of the older boy’s shirt, 9931 felt a hesitant hand settle on his head. Nails slowly scraped against his scalp, and the sensation brought an odd relief as the older boy combed his fingers through his tangled hair.

“Have you… told anyone about that?” he was asked, and now the boy’s tone was softer.

Without looking up, 9931 shook his head. “Didn’t want to get decommissioned.”

The boy’s chest moved in a sigh. It sounded almost sympathetic.

Then, “Get off me.” 9931 found himself pushed away forcefully and held at arm’s length, looking up into the intense, tattoo-framed gaze of the older cadet once more. “I’m going to order you some painkillers. You’re going to take them. Then you’re going to get out of here. Understand?”

9931 nodded mutely. He sat back on the edge of the bed, pulling a corner of the blanket towards him and toying with it. The other boy stalked to the com panel by the door, summoning a medical droid with a handful of button punches.

He wasn’t being nice. That wasn’t the right word for it. His posture was still defensive and angry as he leaned by the door, waiting for the pain meds to arrive. But in 9931’s short life it was one of the first acts of unprompted kindness that had been directed his way.

Despite the storm he kept his gaze fixed on the older boy, memorising every inch of his face.

When the meds arrived the older boy brought them over, dumping the tablets unceremoniously into 9931’s curled hand and glaring until he had swallowed them.

“Thanks,” said 9931, no more than a whisper.

He wished he could press against the older boy again, just to feel connected for a few moments longer. He didn’t risk it. The boy looked ready to shove him away again even at this distance.

“Get out of here,” came the rough command. “Don’t tell anyone you were here.”

9931 nodded miserably, dragging himself to his feet, pulling the blanket with him before releasing it at last. He fidgeted a moment, trailing to the door before glancing back into the room.

“Get out,” the demand was repeated, and 9931 fled.

The storm passed. Another seven-day passed. 9931 thought about the tattooed, silver-haired cadet every day.

“C-9931, given the circumstances we have decided to move onto a different phase of your training. There is plenty for you still to cover from basic training, but without a squad of batchmates at the same developmental stage this is going to be difficult. We plan to take you off-planet to hone the use of your enhancements.

“Don’t worry, C-9931. Once you’ve mastered the role you will play as a trooper, we will assign you to a squad. You won’t be on your own much longer. This short training stint off-world is going to be good for you.

“I��m sure it won’t be long. The sooner you master using your enhancements in the field, the sooner you will be assigned to a unit.”

Ninety-Nine saw him off as they escorted him to the shuttle.

“Take care, Three-One,” he said with a sad smile.

9931 thought about telling him of the silver-haired boy who had found him during the storm. He wondered if Ninety-Nine knew who the other boy was.

He didn’t have chance.

He was placed into the shuttle and taken to the next stage of his training.

#febuwhump #febuwhumpday25 #febuwhumpalt9 #lightning strike #cadet batch #cadet hunter #cadet crosshair #tbb hunter #the bad batch #tbb fanfic #just_thoughts

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librathefangirl · 9 months ago

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Febuwhump 2024: Day 25 Alt 8 - Killing Game

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across-violet-skies · 9 months ago

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Febuwhump day 25: last man standing

Whumpee: Sky

Whump Rating: 10/10

TWs: major character deaths, blood & injury, violence

Sky bared his teeth, fighting with every fiber of his being. All around him lay the carnage of this terrible battle, monsters and brothers alike scattered across the field.

With a sharp yell, he cut down the last monster, chest heaving as it fell. That was it. He had done it.

But at what cost?

Sky was the only one left. The last man standing. Not a single monster lived. His brothers… the knight wasn’t sure what became of them. It had all happened so fast…

Time was struck down first, taking them all by surprise. Their leader was taken out with surprising ease and precision… but they weren’t able to dwell on it long with the threat of an ambush upon them.

Four was next. The smallest of their team was separated from the rest of the group, and swarmed with far too many enemies for one person to handle. Probably even too many for four people to handle. Sky hadn’t seen any sign of the smithy since, but he already knew it was too late.

Legend and Hyrule were taken out together. The traveler had attempted to heal Time as he bled out, with Legend defending them both. A lucky shot to the Vet’s head left Hyrule exposed, ending things for them both. Time didn’t last long without Hyrule’s healing, and soon he had left too.

Wild came almost immediately after them, taken out by a Daria’s axe. There was no way the Champion could’ve seen it coming. The axe lodged itself firmly in his back, digging in deep. Wild fell with a squeak, face smeared with mud as he face planted. He hadn’t so much as twitched since.

Wind fell next. Sky wasn’t sure what had happened– the sailor was fighting nearby one second, and the next… well, it was messy. Some things were better not to think about.

Warriors… he fought strong, and he lasted quite long considering the circumstances. The last time Sky had seen the Captain, he was missing his hand. A horde of monsters easily separated him from the last few Links standing and, from the way things were looking, took him out.

Twilight was the last one Sky saw still fighting. He looked as if he would make it out until his shield splintered and broke from a particularly nasty hit. After that, the rancher was impaled nearly instantly, blood spilling from his lips as he sunk to the ground, internal damage too much to handle without any healing items.

Sky was the only one. He was the first of them, and now he was the last one left. His allies, his friends, his brothers, were all gone.

Gone.

Sky choked on a sob, breath catching in his throat as he fell to his knees. It wasn’t fair, he thought. Why me? Out of all of us… why am I the only one to survive?

He laid Fi in the grass with a pained scream. The blood of his brothers had been spilled all over this… this graveyard. None of them had even died in their own era. What would the people waiting back at home think when none of them returned? Malon? Flora? Ravio? Four’s grandfather? Wind’s grandmother? Aryll?

Goddess. Wind was so young, too. Barely even fourteen… and the rest of them weren’t much older. Hyrule, Legend, Wild, Four… they were all too young for any of this to be on their shoulders. Even the slightly older crowd, Twilight and Warriors, were too young to die. And Time deserved a longer life, one where he could live with Malon and have a domestic family… he couldn’t have that now.

Sky’s chest heaved with each bubbling sob that escaped his throat. He cried openly, letting his tears flow for the loss of eight heroes who didn’t deserve this. Any of it. And it was Sky’s fault. Not the outcome of the battle, not necessarily, but the fact that they had all been “chosen” in the first place. It was all his fault, and now he’s gone and killed the people he considered to be his family, blood or not (and he suspected at least one of them had his lineage).

They were gone. From their smallest hero to their most experienced to their oldest, they were all gone. There was nothing more that could be done.

Sky opened his mouth to the heavens, and screamed.

–> support me on ao3!

#febuwhump #febuwhump2024 #febuwhumpday25 #tw death #tw blood #tw violence #linked universe #lu sky #lu time #lu four #lu legend #lu hyrule #lu wild #lu wind #lu warriors #lu twilight #linked universe fanfic #ao3 #riv writes

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such-a-random-rambler · 9 months ago

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Febuwhump - Day 25

John’s been staring at the shower for twenty minutes, sitting with his back against the bathroom wall. Gathering the courage to turn it on.

He could call for Scott, he might understand.

But John feels ridiculous. He knows he’s perfectly safe. There’s no cold concrete here, no slightly tilted table, no shackles. No cruel men with crueler bosses who want something he has.

He has soft towels, three types of shower gel and speakers in the ceiling so he can catch up on a podcast while he washes.

But he still can’t bare the thought of water on his face.

#febuwhump #febuwhump2024 #febuwhumpday25 #waterboarding #thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #john tracy

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scratchandplaster · 9 months ago

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FEBUWHUMP DAY 25 - Waterboarding

CW: bickering like an old couple, blades, shaving

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

"Hell no, you get that out of here!"

"How else am I supposed to do it? You didn't want to take a bath, so that's how it goes," Chris sighed and shielded Elliot's eyes with a cupped hand.

The spray bottle grumbled a few times before a thin misting dampened the thick hair.

"If you don't want to take care of yourself," Chris explained dramatically to cancel the grumble, "I'll have to do it for you."

Combing the strands of hair into his face made him look even more upset; like a wet cat, Chris thought, but refrained from laughing. The curtain that shielded Elliot from his hobby stylist was slowly cut away by a pair of shiny scissors, dull enough not to make him flinch.

He was too tired to ask how he got in such a situation again. At least Chris left the rope alone this time.

All around him, chunks of hair fell onto his shoulders. When the chips were down and Morris dared to fuck his hairdo up too, Elliot really didn't have anything more to lose.

"If you give me a bowl cut, I'll kill you."

Finally, the scissors were dropped into the sink and replaced by an electric hum as something was clicked in the outlet. The razor came down carefully, shaving millimeter after millimeter away from his nape and sides. Elliot didn't dare to flinch. His head was turned back and forth, sprayed down again, combed and trimmed under Morris' attention.

"Everything alright, Ell?"

"Mhh," he growled.

"Want a peek?"

"Oh, you're good at this," Elliot was dumbfounded when he looked into the tiny hand mirror Chris gave him. A bit shorter than he preferred, but nevertheless he could recognize himself again.

"Just like when we met," Chris gushed, the innocent comment leaving a sour taste in Elliot's mouth, "I had a lot of time to practice. After all, I always did my brothers' hair too!"

"There are more of you?!"

"Yeah, five of 'em."

Damn, Mama Morris had been busy. He didn't feel eager to meet them anytime soon.

Unexpectedly, the chair Elliot was sitting in tilted back. Shaving cream was patiently dabbed onto his face, not that there was much to work with.

Slowly and carefully, a single blade scraped along his skin and made Elliot's heart jump.

"Shhh, don't move."

No matter how different he acted since then, the combination of Chris and sharp objects sent sweats of terror down his back. Elliot pressed his eyes shut and let Morris work.

Slow, precise strokes continued up his neck and chin, only interrupted by wiping the razor on a towel draped over his arm. Sporadically, a shallow breath escaped under the cold steel.

As another warm towel was placed over his face, Elliot knew it was over. Yet to reap his reward, the friendly barber pressed a chaste kiss on the tip of his nose.

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

Thanks for reading 🤍 [Febuwhump 2024 Masterlist]

@febuwhump

#whump #whumpblr #creative writing #whump community #whump drabble #febuwhump #febuwhump2024 #febuwhumpday25 #stack the deck #christoph morris oc #elliot ribera oc #bickering like an old couple #yandere whumper #carewhumper #haircut #blades #shaving #don't tell Elliot to grow out a beard #it won't work and he will cry

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needfantasticstories · 9 months ago

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Wind, Water, and Four

(DAY 25: Waterboarding)

Summary:

In Four's era, Wind meets Jago's gang.

Notes:

HUGE thanks to @somerknights and @estelian-01 and @hotcheetohatredwastaken for BETA reading.

Wind wasn’t often afraid of water. He loved the high seas with its open horizon and kaleidoscope of blues and greens. Not much felt so refreshing as a kiss of saltwater spraying on his face during a hard day of sailing.

But right now, he looked at the simple bucket of water beside him with genuine fear. A towel dangled in the hands of a strange man who stood over Wind. He was tall with short facial hair over his lip and chin, and an obnoxious smirk. Judging by the crooked smile, he was probably just as cocky as Warrior, but certainly not as friendly as the Captain. The man’s grang of rouges sitting on crates around the room muttered in excitement.

“It’s a simple question, kid. You tell me where Link left that sword, and we’ll have no issue. But if you want to make it interesting, I don’t mind playing a few games before you talk.” The gang of low-lifes around him laughed.

Wind glowered and tried not to let it show how he struggled in his restraints, feeling for the knots that pinned his arms to the short end of the wooden bench.

“No? You want to play the game? Fine. Let’s get started!” The man threw the towel over Wind’s face. Wind quickly drew in a breath and held it.

Starting from the top of his head and creeping down came the pressure of water saturating the towel. It trickled down over his nose, then too quickly over his mouth and chin, sealing the dense fabric against his skin. There was no way for air to get through it now, except the tiniest waterlogged straw-suck of air if he was lucky enough for the towel to be old and worn. It did not feel worn. He tried not to think too much about it and held still. He could stay calm. His previous record for holding his breath was two minutes, and his shortest escape was 30 seconds, after all. Nevermind the longer ones, but there wasn’t time to dwell on that.

He picked at the knots, first the left hand, as pressure built in his chest. A drip slid from the rag into his nostril, and he tried not to panic. Hold hold hold . He thought and his nimble fingers worked into the coarse rope.

One almost free! His face felt hot with pressure. His lungs burned. His heart raced.

A punch to his gut ruined everything.

He gasped, but only sucked fabric and water in, and he choked as water tickled down his airway. He tried to breathe in again, and coughed out, but nothing came back in except more water. His mind felt washed in white. He arched his back as his legs thrashed and his arms jerked but he couldn't get a single breath, only more and more water dripping and sucked in from his desperate attempts. His neck ached from straining his arms and shoulders, his throat hurt, and his face burned. He’d lost track of which way was up and down, mind spinning even in his blindness.

His thrashing grew weaker and weaker.

The rag lifted, and he gulped in the precious air, a spray of water sent into his lungs along with it. His chest heaved like a boat in a storm, up and down. He watched it himself, aching and relieved and afraid.

“Wasn’t that fun?” The man leered down at him. “Want to play again, or will you tell me where he keeps the blade?”

“What blade?!” Wind gasped. Right hand right hand right hand . The dim wood-paneled room looked fuzzy, all the light glittering too brightly from the water still coating his eyelashes. “Which Link? There are tons of people named Link!”

“What? Kid, there’s only one in this town, and everyone knows him. That bratty son of the Captain, he’s such a show-off it’s hard to miss. And you know that, I bet. You’re traveling with him. I bet he’s pissed you off a few times, eh? Why not give him a little taste of his own medicine? We don’t even want him . Just a sword he took from some shrine in the middle of nowhere. we just want to put it back. We’re like those, uh, what do they call them?”

“Archeologists,” a man in a red bandana supplied.

“That’s it! Archeologists. That’s us, you see? Interested in ancient things. He’s stolen an old thing, and we just want to put it back. So what is it? Keep playing our game, or will you tell us?”

The man was like Warrior in more ways than one. He had this gang under his thumb, and didn’t take disrespect. “You can take that glass bottle over there and shove i–”

Down came the cloth, but Wind timed his last breath well. He’d be able to focus for a few seconds. He worked his fingers just right when a kick to his stomach threw his fragile plan off track, once again. He gasped, and floundered on the wood bench.

They let him get another taste of fresh air for a brief moment. Right hand right hand right hand . He wished he was as ambidextrous as Twilight. He hooked one finger in the knot and pushed in, wiggling and worming to loosen the knot.

But all too quickly, his limbs flopped as the white fog clouded his mind again. He felt a strange, almost happy weightlessness. Then the rag was gone, and he gagged on a mouthful of water, spitting it out violently.

A grumble at his side. He coughed and looked up. His captor was glaring, water all over his cheap cravat and grimey vest.

A woman nearby laughed. “Oh, Jago doesn’t take being disrespected, lad!”

Wind gave an exhausted smile of his own, and looked to the man's hip for a promising flash of silver, and he found it.

Wind lunged. One fist closed over the handle of Jago’s knife, the other he fist swung into the man’s belly. Jago’s smirk shattered as he doubled over.

Wind sliced the ropes at his feet, grateful the blade proved sharp, cutting them free in only a few slices.

The ragtag criminals shouted and lunged first for their leader, and then for him, but it was too late. He’d already rolled off the bench and under their feet.

The door was barred, but he hauled up the crossbeam and shoved it back into the crowd closing in behind him. Those in front fell back under its weight, forcing those behind to dodge around the fallen. Wind ducked under a grasping hand and hurled the door open. Narrowly avoiding the tackle of two scraggly criminals, he danced between the thin groups in the evening crowd, heading for the widest and most crowded roads he could find.

They chased him, shrieks and angry shouts bursting behind him, until at last he skidded into the crowded market. Lamps reflected in a beautiful fountain that he had too little time to appreciate. There were covered stalls everywhere. He ran into an alley near one, then turned and slid under the table of a silk merchant. Footsteps followed into the alley, and gruff curses soon followed, but Wind didn’t wait. He crawled under table after table, and at the end he made a run for the inn.

“Wind!” Four shouted in relief as he ran into the end where the others had been staying. Twilight and Sky whispered prayers of thanks.

“Where are the others?” Wind asked.

“They’re out looking for you! What happened?” Four demanded. “Why are you all wet?”

Wind huffed, and glared at the irritation in Four’s voice, but it was all hitting him now. He blinked the shine of his eyes away and demanded, “Who in the High Seas is Jago?”

The door slammed open a second time, startling the other patrons who had already been staring at them in nosy interest. Warrior stood in the frame, tense as a bowstring, but when he saw Wind he sprung inside and grabbed the sailor by the shoulders.

“Thank Farore. Time and I found those hooligans in the market. The knights are rounding them up.”

Four asked, far more gently, “Wind, what happened?”

“I’m fine!” He assured them both, though his coughing fit after made the others only look more worried. “It’s a long story. Can we get food first?”

#febuwhump2024 #febuwhumpday25 #febuwhump day 25 #linked universe #jojo is amazing #skipwrites #tw kidnapping #tw waterboarding #but we all knew that was coming #lu wind

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secret-bug-pain-blog · 9 months ago

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@febuwhump Day 25 - ALT PROMPT - Immortality

ZB-162 our beloved. Speedrunning the final postings for these so that we can actually send in our index post. Day 29 is already done - we're just finishing up our mostly-finished prompts and doing a handful of illustrations for those that can't be made full-length in time. This is an OC work! You guys like undead switchboard operators, right? Definitely.

You did not have a name before you entered their systems.

You never expected to have one, then. You are a worker bee. There was no one to direct letters to you, and no reason for anyone to refer to you who wouldn't have already caught your scent. A name is for utility or diplomacy, and you were not one of those who had need for that utility.

You were yet another mediocre worker in service to the queen, and you had no reason to believe you would be anything but.

It was random chance that you, out of all bugs, would be chosen. You were never one to believe in fate, for all that ZBT-63 would claim it was destined. You were one worker among many, and you were the one to draw the short straw.

You knew little when you first entered the labs. You knew little when they first made the surgical incision at the base of your neck, feeding young tendrils of fungus in. Your memory of that time is foggy, clouded with a mixture of trauma and the typical failings of a fleshy, mortal brain.

You spent ten long, painful days in uncertainty, being held under observation as your other half grew. And then you were two, and the uncertainty that had been your constant companion began to fade.

The sentiments that your siblings hold towards your firstborn halves are varied. You know this more than anyone - save, maybe, Kjdrira. You are not entirely unique in it, but you find the feelings of nostalgia your siblings often feel to be alien.

Perhaps, in a way, your original self died when your younger half had burrowed into their brain. Or perhaps you merely want to grasp at anything that will distance you from the mundane bee who first entered Snakemouth.

You do not miss the uncertainty of living memory. You do not miss the mundanity of life in the hive. You certainly do not miss the feeling of being a cog in a machine that does not care about you.

You were given a name - ZB-162 - and you would cease to be a bee shortly after.

The rhythm of the lab was simple. Easy to learn, though you would not be so callous as to call it soothing. It was simple to know what was expected of you. It was simpler to follow it. Tests, you would find, had a simple sort of structure, the sort of thing that you could have grasped even without your other half. It was all strange to you, then. You wouldn't think to ask if there were others like you.

It would be days before you were contacted. It would be days before you would so much as realize that you could be contacted, rather than simply existing as the only bug in a lab full of roaches. It was them who found the network, a hundred years ago, writing words upon words into a communications network hurriedly thrown into the undercarriage of their computer system.

Your siblings reached out, fearful and hopeful in equal parts. You reached back, and in an instant, you were made aware that you were not alone.

You knew little, then. There were few of you connected, few of you even aware it could be done - Kjdrira, so terribly, consistently inventive, its range sweeping so much wider than the rest of you, had been the first to reach out, the first to find that there was even potential for a network to begin with. ZA-31 had been the first to connect, ZBT-49 networking soon after, the others latching on one by one as they were reached out to. You were one in a half-dozen, a bare fragment of the hive, clinging to each other in a world that was all too new.

With time, your numbers would grow. Now, you spoke with your Siblings, you fumbled with languages old and new, and you began to learn the paths that would grow to be your whole life.

You were small. Unknowing and afraid, cowering before systems you could only barely hope to understand. Your connections were feeble and inconsistent, here one day and gone the next, interrupted by the slightest lapse in concentration, and what you could communicate was limited. Lines would overlap. Too many on the line would reduce the signal to incoherency. Few of you spoke the same language, fewer still knowing how to utilize the new one implanted into your brains with your newer halves. You struggled to speak. You struggled to hear.

And yet, fear and loneliness kept you still reaching out.

You were still of flesh, then. Caught with endless hours pacing your cage, barely in range of Kjdrira, speaking through brief brushes of signal. Your enclosure was blank and featureless, your paws itching for work - you could only stand still for so long, then, could only remain idle for so many days before the itch began to burn at your shell again. You were small and afraid, and you had nothing to do but sit and count the hours between tests, and you wanted dearly - oh, so dearly - to be useful.

You began to work on figuring out the connections.

Early on, every new discovery would improve clarity in leaps and bounds. Signals could be passed through Siblings, cloned and echoed to increase their range. A low-volume ping allowed you to indicate beginnings and endings of speech, limiting the interference of crosstalk. Improvements in communication. Improvements in speech. Improvements in coordination. More efficient packets to pass. Learning to lever your new shared language to make your communications more comprehensive. Learning to use the crystals in the roach technology to pass signals, rather than the ones in your own bodies.

You learned the workings of your new bodies by trial and error, slowly working out the limits of what you can and cannot do. You learn it through testing, experience, happenstance - how it was accomplished mattered less than accomplishing it, and with every new connection, you could share your discoveries easier.

One bug's knowledge was the whole hive's knowledge. You clung to each other like lifelines in a world that was not meant for you, tips and tricks and connections making paths between a slowly-growing colony. Your knowledge was the same as everyone else's knowledge, the hive united in working towards whatever would aid you- and the one thing that you were beginning to know, more and more, was that you couldn't sit with the roaches' experimentation forever.

None of you wanted to stay. None of you wanted to be trapped here forever, the short-term benefits of cooperating not outweighing the detriments. The new connections were a double-edged sword, allowing you to remain connected at the cost of knowing precisely when the others were hurt - anaesthetics grew less consistent as you grew further from your host's baselines, and the roaches would not halt progress for their subjects' comfort, logging the failures as simply another part of the experiment.

Your hive was hurting. You were hurting, feedback from your Siblings washing back through the connections that you yourself had forged in rivulets of pain, the ability to sense your hive serving as a way to tell you whenever one of the bugs you connected to died. You wanted it to stop, and you knew you were not alone, the connections between the others of your hive a near-constant presence in the back of your brain that reinforced and confirmed.

Private links were difficult, then. Kjdrira, Blight-carrying crystals loaded into it so thickly that its chest then had been nearly packed solid, was the only one of you who could manage them without fighting its own failsafes. Still, it spoke to you, hidden from the rest of the communications network beyond a thick veil of static.

Something needed to change. Kjdrira, ruthless, protective thing, spoke of a plan - not quite formed, but soon to be worked on, something that it hoped would set you all free.

Kjdrira spoke of rebellion. Of slaughter. Of killing the roaches that had kept you captive. Of turning their own systems against them, allowing them to be slaughtered in their own test chambers, the same way they had slaughtered you.

You had no wish to kill. You had never been one for bloody revenge. But you were bitter, and fearful, and you had watched so many of your own die by now that to watch your own colony die felt routine - you didn't want to feel the deaths of those you now cared for so dearly, and when those who kept you saw you as disposable, you felt there was little reason not to say they were the same.

Kjdrira, and any of your colony who wished to share in its bloodlust, would kill the roaches in their own homes. And you, the network-grower, would help them do it.

You were the first to break into their systems proper.

Crystals, by their nature, network with other crystals. It is the principle upon which crystal computers function, it is the thing that makes computing with crystals even possible without needing something the size of the Ant Kingdom Palace. It was the thing that allowed for your initial contact, it is the thing that allows you to stretch your network beyond the network laid in the lab now. Data carried between points in space, networking between crystals, allowing information to be passed through that which would otherwise be impassible.

Your crystals, the ones that hold your thoughts and your memories, network with the computer network in the labs.

You were the one to find a way in. You were the one to figure out how to carve a path into their systems, to access their files - to access the data they stored on you, and their many experiments.

It was a small step. But you could read their plans now, even if you were clumsy, even if you had to be careful with it. You could monitor upcoming tests, you could predict when newblooms would need to be integrated into the system - you could relay what was to be expected to anyone in your range, even if it took effort.

Seven months into your testing, your heart stopped.

Activity ceased in your brain. Your blood stopped flowing. Your body became medically dead, your host body's innards eaten until they could no longer function, your body more fungus than flesh. Despite it, you are still alive.

You knew when it happened. When the barrier between the coded self they put in you and the self you lived with dissolved. When the sensations of your body changed, subtly different, even if still nearly the same. When the weakening thump of your heartbeat went silent. When the hemolymph stopped flowing in your ears.

You read the report on the computers later. Total brain death. Cessation of bodily function. Appears to have no change in behavior or personality, according to the roaches. You did not struggle to read anymore. You did not need to translate anymore. Your pathway was easier to access, easier to erase once you'd finished, easier to treat as though you were just another scientist. You understood their words as though you had spoken them all your life. You touched the network like an extension of yourself, and it replied in turn.

When you checked the records saved to the crystals in your heart, you found that nearly all of your former transmissions had become total gibberish.

You have forgotten the tongue that you used to speak. You have forgotten the name of your queen. You have forgotten the name of your former friends.

It was too late to mourn then. It is too late to mourn now.

The mycelium of the network spreads, laid in pencil-holes and screw-shafts and rusted, infinitely small cracks in the metal. ZA-811 buries stolen crystal in the floor, and the range expands. ZBT-92 is left in the testing labs for minutes at a time, and they pull overgrowth from their pock-marked shell, laying roots that eventually connect to those beneath the new-blood. You know every new bug that enters. You know every new death. Every day, Kjdrira stocks just a bit more power.

Every day, you get just a bit closer to running.

You remember the day of escape. You remember the slaughter of the roaches. You remember the milk-white blood on Kjdrira's claws, one of last things that you would see with failing eyes. You remember running a million billion lines of communication through yourself, your mind more the speech of others than any thought of your own, hundreds of glimmering threads coordinated in attack and escape.

You remember losing track of your body. You remember losing track of your mind. You remember undirected limbs, a body moving on the bare minimum of thought that your mind had left. You remember your own inability to pay attention. You remember the roach.

You remember the hole ripped in your face, and you remember the eye burst as a clipboard cracked into your fragile, breakable skull.

A hundred strains of micromanaged thought scattered at once, mingling and intermingling as your control was lost. The colony - your colony, the only one you had now - exploded in disorganization and concern, and you could do nothing to help it as you desperately tore into the bug who had attacked you.

You were afraid. You were injured. You were holding your ganglia into your head with your bare claws, missing an eye and staring at a roach's corpse on the ground. It was a miracle you were still alive.

You stayed there, hours after the breach, until your sibling found you. And you stayed there hours longer, after Kjdrira had patched the holes in your shell with roach's blood.

You have no record of the latter part of the night. You still sees its records, filtered through the eyes of hundreds of siblings, disarray and panic and blind attempts at attack. You will still regret losing focus years later.

When you finally drew yourself back to coherence, the door was closed, and none of your kin could open it to chase those who had escaped.

You were still alive, when your siblings began to starve. When it became apparent that you were locked in, that the workarounds and tricks you used for your own operating systems were doomed to fail at the claws of the main lab's operating system. You were still alive when it became evident that a piece was missing, that even the most talented of your number could not open the way out because the scientists had cut out the door. You were still alive when it became obvious that escape was either impossible, or so impractical that it would lose you nearly all of your newfound colony.

And you would remain, as your siblings began to slip into sleep, unable to breach the walls of your entrapping home.

Perhaps it was madness that kept you awake. Perhaps it was duty. Perhaps it was lingering nature. You were a bee from the moment you hatched. Idle paws were not meant for your kind, and idleness never suited you. Perhaps it was carry-over from that that kept you, even detached from hive and identity, working away. Ironic, then, that you would retain your central drive, when others of your kin proved content in idleness.

Your peers, in their few periods of wakefulness, would equate it to hibernation. You could not truly claim to know of it, never having been made of any species that truly hibernated. Bees did not sleep through the winter - they huddled in dorms and bedrooms, trapping the heat in with their bodies, pressing up against each other for warmth and exchanging words and stories as they waited for the cold to pass.

There are fewer, here. Fewer, still, awake consistently. ZBT-63 rarely stays asleep for more than a few months at a time, woken by their splintering back as the errors pile up. ZA-527 struggles to stay down more than a few hours at a time, misfiring signals irritating their brain and their mycelium until it gives up and dedicates its thought to something else. The very Blight that allowed Kjdrira to rain death on the roaches lingers in its blood, unstitching and restitching its flesh at a constant pace that means sleep risks death for it. ZA-61 cannot sleep at all, oldest surviving of its kind and bearing the shoddy work to show it.

Sometimes, there is no one but you. More times, it might as well be no one but you. Compared to the hive, the lab is achingly lonely. Still, you remain.

You spend your time alone, weaving together the network. Fixing code. Working out kinks. Kjdrira has more processing to spare than any of you, but you are loathe to test on it when you know that a poorly-done line could threaten whatever passes for its life nowadays. You have little opportunity to test it nowadays, as hope of ever finding escape wanes.

Time passes. Chitin wears. Your cordyceps hatch fruiting bodies from the weakened shell over what used to be your eye.

Perhaps you will never get out. Perhaps you will never see the sun again. Your vision has long since gone out, all semblance of sight faded years ago, your newer senses never quite the same. Perhaps you will be trapped here forever, withering away in the husk of the lab that you destroyed in a life extended so far as to be unnatural.

Perhaps, rather than surviving so long in this life, it was you, the bee, who should have died before your other half even wove into it.

You have been alive for so very long, trapped in this impenetrable cage. You have taken injury beyond what any bee should have been capable of surviving, you have lived through hardships that many of your former hive never could have dreamed. You have grown resigned, by now, to the fact that you will never die; that your design, made for immortality, will never falter so much as to allow you to. You weave your hive's communication in a great web directed by principles that your older self never could have comprehended, crystalline structures that mortal brains were not made to understand.

You are greater than you once were, in some ways. But you are so very much smaller in others, trapped within a cage you have no hope of breaching. You are administrator of a colony that permits you to warp your siblings' very thoughts, capable of coordinating hundreds of bugs without so much as twitching a finger. But you cannot move beyond the glass cage that contains you.

You have a name. You have a role. You have a million fingers of mycelium moving behind your single, useless eye. You have siblings who care for you, who answer to you, who could not imagine living without you. You are so far from the person who was first claimed for this project that you would not recognize your own face, were you capable of seeing it.

And you - you the cordyceps, you the bee, you the experiment, the network, the immortal - are still doomed to spend your eternity trapped in the echo of another life's corpse.

You should be dead. But you aren't.

What a mercy. What a nightmare.

[ZB-162 - Central Communications Module. Former bee, and the colony member responsible for keeping communications throughout the hive fungal network coherent and functional. One of the few colony members incapable of going into hibernation between Upper Snakemouth's destruction and its re-opening more than a century after - though it itself cares little about speculating on the underlying cause, the most likely cause is something to do with errors in neural mapping, as is common in the larger batches of experiments.]

#whump #febuwhump #febuwhump2024 #febuwhumpday25 #immortality #bug fables #ocs #zb-162 #leif's request spoilers #this also doubles as backstory! you guys like cool bugs riiiight? zombug blast. get zb-162'd.#anyways time to get back to the Fucking Finishing Things Grind

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adrift-in-thyme · 2 years ago

Text

Day 25: Assumed Dead (First & Everyone)

Ao3 link

Cw for blood and injury

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“Alright, even for me this dungeon is creepy,” Legend says, squinting into the gloom.

Wild nods in agreement. They’ve only been inside for a few minutes or so but already he can feel the hairs on the back of his neck raising. Something is off here, something is wrong. And no, it’s not the wall masters that catapult down toward their heads, or the redeads that line the hallways, though those are definitely disconcerting.

(As is Time’s mask that makes their haunting forms pirouette like the dancers Wild remembers performing in Castle Town before the calamity. He’ll add that to his list of “Things to Ask Twilight About Later.” Though from the look on the rancher’s face, he doesn’t have any more answers than Wild does.)

But this feeling that emanates from the cracks in closed doors and hovers in the rank air, it’s altogether different from the discomfort born of the other oddities and horrors this place harbors. It’s even different from the chill that had crept up his arms while traversing the Typhlo Ruins.

Because while nearly everything in here reeks of death and doom, there’s another presence, one Wild is surprised he can even detect. It’s faint, like the flutter of a barely beating heart, struggling to survive amongst the long deceased. And it’s not a malevolent presence at all. In fact, Wild feels strangely drawn to it, almost in the same way he felt drawn to his companions. Yet, it shouldn’t be here–it knows that, he knows that. It’s terribly unnatural, almost sickening.

The further they venture into the dungeon, the more certain Wild is that something warped and twisted has changed a fate for its own gain.

“Do you feel it too?” he mutters to Twilight when at last he can’t take the discomfort any longer.

Twilight turns from where he was gazing into the distance, a strange look in his eyes.

“I do,” he says, quietly, brows creased in a frown.

Wild shivers slightly. “I’ve never felt anything else like it. Have you?”

Twilight doesn’t answer for a long moment. His gaze wanders to where Time stands, discussing their next move with Four and Warriors.

“No. But I’ve felt something similar.” He looks back at Wild, eyes sharp, expression solemn. “It feels like a restless spirit.”

A restless spirit.

Wild ponders that as they continue forward. Obviously, Twilight has experience in that arena (another addition to his growing list of things to inquire about), but Wild has too. The Champions were all restless spirits after all. For a time, he was one too, disturbed and distraught even in his slumber by things he desperately needed to remedy. And still, this isn’t quite the same.

The Champions had yearned to finish their mission, and so had he (even if he hadn’t remembered at first). For some reason, he doesn’t get the feeling that this is unfinished business.

But he doesn’t bring it up again. There are other things to pay attention to after all, like the monsters that begin to attack from every direction. Besides, the cold, creeping dread has dulled a bit, whether from distraction or something far more concerning he isn’t sure. It makes it easier to function, though, so he’ll take what he can get.

Then, they find the cell.

It’s the last room in the dungeon, the one with the largest, most foreboding door and the lock to match the final key.

“The big bosses always hide out here,” Wind whispers as Time slides the key in and eases open the door. “But usually you’ll find a specific tool to deal with ‘em somewhere else in the dungeon. Weird that we didn’t.”

“Well, this dungeon doesn’t follow any rules,” Legend grumbles. “It’s all over the place.”

Wild can’t give much input on that front, but he definitely agrees that everything here is strange. And when they step inside, it only grows more so.

At first, he can’t even see his hand outstretched in front of him. But then the last hero enters the room and the door slams shut, torches flickering to life along the walls. The shadows stretch, driven back by their dismal glow, and Wild can make out the grime coating the ground and walls, the chains glittering dangerously along the far wall. And hanging from them, arms stretched upward, body slouched against the cold stone, is a man.

He raises his head when they enter, golden hair falling out of his face just enough that Wild can make out his eyes, bright and blue in the darkness. For a split second, they meet and that feeling grows a hundred times stronger.

“What the–” Legend mutters and Wild can’t help but wonder if he can feel it too.

Time steps forward. “Who are you?”

The man regards Time calmly, before letting his gaze roam the rest of the group. When he catches sight of the Master Sword strapped to Sky’s back, his expression changes just slightly, a break in his facade.

“You’re heroes.” His voice is hoarse from disuse, lips chapped and bloody.

“Yeah, and what’re you?” Legend retorts. “The final boss?”

The man looks at him for a moment, then lets out a snort of laughter. Wild starts at the unexpected sound.

“Do I look like the final boss?” His expression shifts again, quick as a flash, falling back into the grave solemnity of before. “But you should leave before he comes. He was expecting you.”

“You were the bate.” It’s Twilight now. He’s regarding the man with a guarded look, hand clenching and unclenching at his side.

Something flashes across the man’s face, come and gone faster than Wild can identify it. He flashes a bitter grin.

“Unfortunately, yes. If he hadn’t had need of such a thing I likely wouldn’t be here now. Though he’s attempted to find other uses for me in the meantime.”

Wild frowns. Several things aren’t adding up here–the story, his appearance and clothing (why does his armor look like a combination of Time’s and Warriors’?), his imprisonment, and now this. It feels as wrong as the rest of this dungeon has.

“What do you mean?” He asks.

The man’s gaze flicks to him, startling in its intensity, but before he can answer, Sky speaks up.

“He’s one of us.”

His voice is hushed and constricted with a mixture of disbelief and horror. The heroes turn almost as one to look at him, standing off to the side, the Master Sword in hand, angled toward the man. A faint glow of red emanates from the handle, and he quickly lowers it before it can sear into his skin.

Silence reigns in the room for a long moment, broken only by the agonizing sounds of the man’s ragged breathing.

“Is it true?” Time asks, at last, skewering the man with a piercing look.

The man meets it without hesitation. “It is. That sword was given to me by the goddess herself and I wielded it in my final battle.”

“Sorry–” Legend shakes his head, “–but it sounded like you said final battle.”

“Yes, that’s correct.” The man’s lips lift in the slightest of smirks, and Wild is struck by how similar he looks to Warriors in that moment. “I’m supposed to be dead.”

The statement hits the room with the force of a bomb. Wild takes an involuntary step back as everything begins to click, pieces to a puzzle he isn’t even sure he wants the answer to coming together to portray a dismal picture. But before it can become a clear picture a new voice emanates from the shadows, sending shivers down his spine.

“Hylia’s precious little hero speaks the truth. He is indeed supposed to be dead. I had need of him, however, so with just a bit of dark magic…I brought him back.”

The darkness swirls around and groups together, and the familiar form of the Shadow emerges from it. He grins, all sharp teeth and red eyes, as the heroes rush to pull out their weapons.

“It’s wonderful, really, that you’re all here. Too bad that you’re going to have to die.”

He unsheathes his sword, leaps forward, and the room erupts into chaos.

“Champion!” Time calls as Wild ducks beneath swinging blades, trying to help box the Shadow in. “Get him out!”

It takes a moment for him to realize he means the hero who is still slumped against the wall. It takes him even longer to realize that bars haven’t come down over the entrance as they normally do.

Strange.

“Got it!” He calls back, changing direction and rushing toward the man.

His head has fallen forward toward his chest and raises it when Wild approaches.

“So, is your name Link to?” He asks, ducking as a deku nut soars over his head.

The man nods, but his attention isn’t on niceties…or the oddities of having nine other people with his name.

“Your friends,” he says, voice fainter and more gravelly than ever. Whatever spurt of strength seeing the other heroes had provided him is quickly fading. “—You need to help them.”

Wild shakes his head, glancing over his wounds. At this proximity, they look much, much worse than they did from across the room. Old and new bruises pepper every bit of visible skin, blood coats large portions of his clothing and hair. One arm is at an unnatural angle, as though his captors broke it before locking his wrist in the shackle. And when Wild leans in, he can see the exhaustion evident in his eyes. It’s a wonder he’s even still conscious.

Yet, he’s still more worried about nine people he’s never even met before.

Oh yeah, he’s definitely a hero.

“They’ll be fine,” he says, desperately hoping even as he says it that he’s right about that. “Right now, I need to get you out of here.”

It takes some finagling–and a whole lot of yelling–but with the help of Warriors’ fire rod (or…really Legend’s fire rod) he manages to break the chains. The man sags against him, with a groan, and Wild has to shift to account for his weight. Then, they begin their limping progress toward the door.

And as they move forward with his rapidly deteriorating charge on his shoulder and the clash of weapons deafening in his ears, Wild has to admit that it’ll take a miracle to get them all out of here alive.

#febuwhump2023 #febuwhumpday25 #linkeduniverse #lu first #lu wild #trin writes #may continue this one later on #cause I couldn’t write as much as I wanted to before my brain went kaput #and also cause it would be interesting to explore first’s interactions with the chain more #idk though #we’ll see

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