#finally i'm almost free

[cant-icle]

heckin BONKIN!!!

here is a preview for my second ryujibonk piece (codename: 🌧️) inspired by @purrpurrazzi00's incredible art!!!

[shittybundaskenyer]

winged insect—funeral pyre

[peace-hunter]

tfone au where OP is created as the last of the primes but way after them, a sparkling born at what were thought to be the last days of the war against the quintessons, the beginning of a new generation of peace after eons of war. a child meant to be loved and raised knowing nothing of war nor sacrifice.

he's kept mostly out of the spotlight by his siblings, who don't wish to expose him to everyone's optics so young, and want to wait until the war is done and over to properly introduce him to their people.

except of course the primes are betrayed and murdered by sentinel, the war is lost and everyone who knows and cared for the truth is either banished or outright killed in order to suppress it.

and the high guard, the ones the primes trusted the most, the ones that were supposed to protect them, the ones who failed in their most important duty, have to make a choice. to take the last prime, their last hope, with them to the surface, a hostile environment where there's little to no supplies and where they'll be hunted down by both sentinel and the quintessons as the biggest threat to their regimen.

or hide him in plain sight. place him where sentinel won't think to look for him. one more sparkling among many. and hope it will be enough to keep him alive. pray to primus that he'll protect his last child long enough for them to come back for him when it's safer (even if most of them have already lost their faith on him when he allowed the rest of his children to be massacred like that)

they almost lose their resolve when they realize they will have to take the little one's cog away in order to make him blend in with the rest of the newborns (and oh do they burn with murderous intent when they see what sentinel has done to their people but it's not the time yet-) but in the end they decide an impaired little prime is better than a dead one.

and so in the chaos of thirteen dead primes and a sudden energon crisis, a little sparkling who very few mechs really knew about and even fewer had seen completely vanishes. and in the depths of iacon a mech in charge of a new batch of newborns scratches their helm in confusion as they realize they must have miscounted the first time.

optimus prime is quietly erased from any official records by sentinel, written off as dead when they find a sparkling's frame mangled beyond recognition after an attack on the base of those rebels that insist on being a thorn on his side. killing the sparkling hadn't been precisely in his plans, he probably could've found some use for it after all, but he's not particularly upset about it either.

and orion pax grows up with an ache on his spark that tells him he's missing something far more important than a t-cog and dreams of gentle and loving hands, cradling him against the frames of mechs he cannot recall the faces of.

[stargatelov3r]

SG-1 TITLE DROPS: 1.01-02 CHILDREN OF THE GODS

[dotted-clouds]

Together in Death

[shivunin]

the fact that you start the Tabris origin by literally stepping into your mother's shoes. the fact that what you get is a wedding outfit and your mother's worn boots, kept carefully intact for years, tucked away for this exact moment. the fact that you then immediately take the path she never could, leaving behind the alienage and the wedding and following Duncan (who would have recruited Adaia first, if not for baby!Tabris) to what ought to have been death.

And Then!! instead of fighting and falling as she did, cheating death and becoming the fighter she always intended you to be instead??? Reliving and simultaneously subverting the story of her life??

[thatgoddamngingerundercut]

and I begin to bloom like a lotus flower once again the Agust D trilogy

[amburuthings]

– You summoned that demon! Except it was a spirit of wisdom at the time. – You made it kill. You twisted it against its purpose.

[drinkingdeadpeopletea]

does anybody else ever think about how moc weepe sold saskia out by name and with a completely casual tone but also screamed her name for no apparent reason while he was being functionally tortured. anyone else just sort of rotating that around in their mind.

[your-ne1ghbor]

Orion but he is just very small

@spectator-zee

[human-encounters-diary]

Day 15

We are set to arrive on Fendaar in two cycles. As we are currently stuck on the SIIR Noxos, I have concluded that the passages of time that I am free of duties would be best spent continuing to observe the human. The human, on the other hand, seemed to have different plans in that matter, as it took me an unusually long amount of time to locate her.

As I eventually found her, she seemed to be working on one of the control panels in the main control room, so I may excuse her absence with duties she had to attend to. As she saw me, although, she seemed rather…excited (this is obviously mere speculation, as the study of the Terran so far has provided far too little evidence to prove such theories)?

As she rolled out from under the control board and sighted me, her face once again split into a wide opening revealing her horrifying amount of teeth.

"Hey! Dude!", she said, raising to her full height and stepping towards me, still baring her teeth, although I did not recoil, as I did not want to seem impolite. She raised her arms, each pointing into a different direction, away from their connection to the human's body.

"Human Quinn. How are you?"

"Me? I‘m fine, the whole 'wandering around in space' thing just made me throw up, I honestly don‘t know why they insisted on keeping me there for two whole days."

The ends of her fingers, studded with claw-like (rather short and rounded instead of sharp, perhaps they were not meant to function as claws at all, or perhaps the beings on Terra were far different from what I knew, and therefore a shape like this was far more useful to hunt) protuberances, scraped over the back of the connection between her head and her upper body. If I interpreted her facial expression correctly, she seemed to be thinking.

"Maybe I got a light concussion too, I’m not entirely sure. But it's improbable, because I’m fine now."

I decided to focus on one piece of information at a time. "Well, this "throwing up" can certainly not be a healthy nor normal process, otherwise, it would not seem so violently painful and involuntary, would it?"

"Well it‘s not…unnatural, it‘s just something that can happen. And about health, it‘s not unhealthy, it usually helps us to get rid of stuff that is bad for our bodies!", she eludicated, moving one of her arms in a rather random manner.

"The scientists have concluded that this fluid is highly acidic. If this 'stuff' is so harmful to you, wouldn‘t it just dissolve in this fluid before being able to cause any further harm?"

Quinn seemed to think about that. 

"Well, just because it gets dissolved, doesn‘t mean it‘s gone, you know? It's still in our bodies, and we have to get rid of it somehow. And if it needs to be fast, we throw up. Honestly, I‘d definitely explain this further to you, but Biology‘s never really been my strongest subject, ya know what I mean?"

I did not, in fact, know what she meant, but I decided against questioning her further.

After a pause the Terran spoke up again: "So, this planet we're landing on..." "Fendaar.", I clarified. "Right. So, this planet that we‘re going to, it‘s a desert, right?" "That is correct." "So, is it a sand, an ice or, I guess you could also count rock desert? 'Cuz on my planet, we‘ve got all of those types."

"Fendaar‘s ecosystem is mostly made up out of sandlike landscapes with rather scarce vegetation and biodiversity. Most of the planets in system 36-54 have rather extreme temperature ranges, and Fendaar is no exception.", I eludicated.

"Alright, cool.", she spoke, rolling back under the underside of the control panel she had been working on previously. She seemed to be sitting, or rather lying, on a piece of metal with four small wheels attached to it, allowing her to move it around.

"Your planet.", I initiated. 

"Yeah?", she responded, while continuing her work on the wiring.

"Am I assuming correctly that your planet has a far bigger biodiversity?"

"Oh, yeah.", there was a small spring in her voice, as if she had let out air in the middle of speaking. "Big biodiversity. We‘ve got deserts and rainforests, coral reefs and permafrost - although perhaps not for that long anymore - mountain ranges and all that stuff."

"Interesting.", I supplied, for lack of a better response. If Terra had such differences in temperature and landscapes, it was a logical conclusion that the humans had evolved to survive under such circumstances.

"Yeah."

It was unusually quiet for some time. That was, until Quinn rolled out from the underside of the control panels.

"Alright, I‘m done." She took a deep breath before opening her mouth once again. Then, all of a sudden, the muscles of her face started contracting as if she was plagued by an invisible pain. Her eyes squeezed shut and she let out horrifying noise, holding an arm angled in front of her nose and mouth. The noise itself was not particularly loud or long, but I recoiled either way, as a measure of safety. I could not be certain if this gesture was meant to harm me, after all.

Quinn‘s arm sank down again as her other hand rubbed at her nose. She huffed, a sound far less threatening than the one she had produced a moment ago. One of the hair patches above her visual organs raised itself, prompting the question to arise if human hair was controlled by muscles or if it had a mind of its own, although this was a question that could be further investigated later. One of the corners of her mouth raised, revealing the seemingly sharpest teeth in her mouth.

"I guess dust is an inter-galactic thing, huh?"

I did not respond. Her face muscles contracted, causing the skin above her visual organs to crease.

"Hey, you okay? You‘re looking a little spooked over there."

"Human, I do not wish to cause you discomfort, but, if I may ask, what was the purpose of the noise you just uttered?"

She did not respond for a moment, blinking with both of her eyes as she stared at me. It was quite unsettling, considering her previous explanation, that most humans preferred not being stared at. 

"I…sneezed?" The creases in the skin above her eyes deepened.

My front pliers uttered another rattling sound. "What is this 'sneezing'? What purpose does it serve?" I admit, I was quite curious. Terrans seemed much more complex than I had previously assumed.

She paused, seemingly to think of an answer. "Well, it‘s like…if something is bothering us at or in out nose, like dust, for example, it‘s kind of the natural response to that. To keep things out of our bodies that don‘t belong there."

"Human bodies seem to require a lot of defense mechanisms.", I commented.

She raised and lowered the connection of her arms to her upper body, baring her teeth once again while raising herself to her full height, using one of her arms as support.

"Y’know, it’s surprisingly hard to explain something you’re so used to to someone who’s never heard of it. I guess I still have to work on the whole 'awareness that I‘m around aliens' thing. S‘ kind of surreal."

She patted off her clothing, as if to remove non-existent filth once again. I had noticed the past few cycles that most of her clothing seemed to consist of several, usually differently-coloured, pieces of fabric. 

Her clothes usually covered her body from the connection between her arms and torso to the connection between her legs and, presumably, her feet. Her feet were usually also covered, although I could not determine the purpose it was supposed to serve in the environment we are currently in, although the theory that the conditions on Earth are vastly different compared to the ones on the SIIR Noxos is gaining more probability, based on the Terran's narrations.

The human seemed to evaluate a question she wanted to ask (this is, of course, a mere speculation based on previous observations: her face muscles were contracted to form a crease over her visual organs, which could so far most likely be interpreted as confusion, thoughtfulness or discomfort; her head was both slightly raised and tilted to one side at the same time, a gesture that was most likely supposed to convey an ongoing thought process).

Although, before she could utter a noise, V-7 informed us of a request from the Vitrichl to gather for a matter of importance.

The purpose of his summoning was to divide the crew into several smaller groups that were to be assigned with different tasks to fulfill once we sucessfully landed on Fendaar.

I was grouped with the Terran, which was unsurprising, as well as Tkzt, a member of the species that is widely known across the galaxies as Ctzas (it is to note that the Ctzas have not evolved any form of written language and communicate exclusively through clicking and chittering sounds. The written forms of, for example, names of this species, are written by other species to produce approximately the same sound as the Ctzas make when recited verbally).

Tkzt, as a member of the unit controlling supply chains and keeping a list of the stock of the SIIR Noxos, would make a helpful addition in our task of seeking out the nearest settlement in order to stock up on supplies.

After all matters of importance were settled, the crew dissipated, continuing their respective tasks. The Terran was ordered to stay and to assist the Vitrichl in another matter, which is the reason I did not cross paths with the human again for the rest of this cycle.

Despite this, I am positive that accompanying the human on an foreign planet will give me a further insight into the species' mannerisms and interaction manners with foreign species, which will prove to be helpful further on in studying the human.

[squisheebugdoodles]

Okay Here Is The Problem: everything costs money and yet money is something that i just literally never have. solution? kill the idea of money so that nothing costs anything Please. i'm so tired

[emeraldblonde]

*psst* I have Cissnei mod(s) currently in the works 💋

[thousand-winters]

Can you imagine Hunter slowly adapting to being in the demon realm out the emperors coven and finding strange hobbies and pass times.

His personal favourite: Doing things aimed for kids.

Whether it’s watching little childrens shows, reading those silly books aimed for toddlers, sleeping with plush animals.

Usually he’s all big and tough and he does also enjoy doing things aimed for people his age but he can go home from a long day of hanging around parks with his friends to ask either Darius or Eber to read him the very hungry Caterpillar

Awww, yes I love that!!!

I always talk quite a bit about how Darius would probably have a little moment of "shit, I have no idea how to raise a kid, actually" at some point and go raid the local library for a bunch of books on parenting kids of all ages because... yeah, Hunter is a teenager and he acts like one, enjoys age appropriate activities and everything but... on the other hand he had such a limited childhood, not to say he wasn't even allowed to have one because most likely he was "born" and almost immediately started his training as a scout.

So he is a teenager, there's no denying that, but he wasn't allowed to be one with Belos, and all those years before he wasn't allowed to be a kid either. We see he enjoys books, but he probably justified that most of the time as him pusuing some useful knowledge, and we see he has a plushie and some figurines (which, sure, were references but I'm taking them at heart's value) so at some level he did have some things to cling to when it came to him being a child, but how much time did he really have to enjoy those things... not a lot, I would say, considering he doesn't even get enough time to sleep properly most days.

Now I imagine Darius either recovered the plushie from the castle for him before it came down, or gets him another later, if he had knowledge of it, and that gives Hunter enough space to go "oh, maybe it's okay if I like things like this" and since both his family and friends are the type that might not totally get it, but are pretty encouraging when it comes to things like this, he would slowly become more enthusiastic with experimenting with these things: more plushies merely at first, and then everything else.

He watches all kind of shows on the crystal ball, because he's genuinely curious about everything he has been missing and it's not like he doesn't like all kind of genres, but Darius notices at some point that whenever Hunter is having a tough day, he seems to gravitate toward the lighter, child-oriented shows. They seem to soothe him.

The reading is a bit harder for Hunter to come to terms with though, because he used to read theorical books and things like that, so it feels a bit silly that he feels some attachment to children books and it feels a bit like he'll be mocked for that even if he knows it's not true. I can imagine at some point he sneaks some of those from the library, probably loudly proclaiming on the check out that he's getting them for... some kids he totally babysits, haha, yeah, why do you ask??? (nobody asked, he just got nervous and is a bad liar 💔) And at some point Darius or Eber catch him with them and while he panics, thinking they'll be weirded out or so, they offer to read them to him.

Hunter never had the chance to be a kid first before being a soldier, so as far as everyone around him is concerned, there's nothing wrong with him getting to enjoy what he couldn't before. If anyone makes fun of him for that... they're catching several hands.

[likesummerrainn]

The DEFYant Ones Podcast: Alex Shelley

[memento-morri-writes]

This is far from my best work, but it's 1:30am, and I needed to get this down before I slept or lost my mind. So here, take a snippet of Rook seeing Zara again for the first time in 3 years.

Trying, and failing, to keep his voice from shaking, [Rook] said “Hello, Captain.” Mouth still open in surprise, [Zara] replied “Well, hello yourself.” The reality of what she was seeing seemed to hit her as she rounded the desk. “Rook, is that really you?” He nodded. “It’s me.” Zara ran towards him, stopping just short of touching him, and said “What did she do to you?” Rook’s heart stuttered and he had to brush his fingers together to confirm Sigmar’s ring was still in place. Could she possibly see through its illusion? But then he remembered what Lanny had said. She knew where you were. His throat clenched and he choked out “Two years.” A wave of grief swept across Zara’s face as she said “I’m so, so sorry.” Rook shook his head vigorously. “It’s not your fault.” Zara ignored him. “It is my fault. I failed you. As your captain, it’s my responsibility to keep you safe, and I failed you.” Rook wanted to say something, to reassure her, but she pushed on. “She sent me letters, told me all the terrible things she was doing to you. I… I let you down.” Those words hit Rook with the force of a dozen cannonballs. Lanny had said that Zara knew Wolf had him, but knowing that Zara had been aware of what Wolf was doing to him… somehow that was more painful than any wound Wolf had ever inflicted. He barely managed to force his next words out around the lump in his throat. “Where were you?” And why didn’t you come? “She said she’d kill you if I came to get you. Or if I hired anyone to get you. You’re standing here because I stopped sailing.” 

(honorary one-time tag for @space-writes bc I remember you enjoyed my other bits about Rook and Zara.)