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doodlingadventures · 4 years ago

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BOTW2 Theory time!

I may have had a moment of galaxy brain (hours before the nintendo direct and I don’t remember typing it xD) over on twitter and I want to elaborate on the theory I have now that we could see the teaser!

Ok so, after seeing the trailer, I still don’t think it’s gonna be the whole time on the past, but I still think we’re gonna be mind-traveling back in time in some sections, using the memories sistem from the first game. Only, instead of experiencing it as a cinematic, you play through it as the “original character”. If you’ve ever played memories sections on a video game, or the first games of the Assassin’s Creed saga, you know how that goes: you’ve got a clear objective and a few things you cannot do because the character didn’t do them. Obviously Breath of the Wild stands out for the freedom it gives you in completing most tasks, so I think the limitations on this case would just be “don’t die�� or “don’t fall from the sky” xDD

I think this because the trailer very pointedly differentiates the Link from the skies from the Link on the ground (or No-Ponytail link and normal Link) using the green garb and the champions garb.

If you check the trailer, you’ll notice that Sky Link always wears green and ground Link wears blue, even if skies Link’s boots sometimes change, both maintaining the “cursed arm” (have you noticed how we never see their face after the cave scene is over?). Maybe it’s because to do the sky stuff you need that special garb, but if you look at the tapestry from the original game

You’ll see that the ancient hero wears blue, white AND green (also the glowy yellow hand). This is why I think present Link is seeing the memories of the ancient hero trought the sky trials (to give them a name). In this case he is not proving himself, like he was during the Sheikah shrines, he is gaining the knowledge/power neccessary to seal Ganon once more. Obviously we’re playing through it, but by videogame logic, that’s how it was originally done because it’s the original character doing it, so we’re learning of it. Maybe we’ll even unlock cinematic memories as the trial is completed or in another way, seeing as that’s how the original also told us part of its story.

I also think green cloth Link is the ancient hero because of how Ganondorf looks.

No, not the dried bacon skin! xD I mean their clothes! They’re both that one shoulder free plus skirt style

You can see sky Link’s brown cloth under the green part. It’s more or less the same style of garb, with the difference of Ganon’s being longer, and more decorated with gold and stuff (which makes sense if Ganon the Gerudo King in this game too, nothing shows your status like jewels).

This detail would technically make sense if they’re from the same era, and, especially, if they’re from the same society/group of people.... < <

Which takes me to my next part of my theory! And pure speculation territory xD

Ok, the green glow, the cursed arm, the ghost arm. What the hell is this (aside from the obvious substitute of the Sheikah slate) and why is it there?

There are small glimpses of it during the trailer, that the sky constructs seem to work with the same energy of the arm/seal of Ganon

(which, again, sheikah slate 2.0) but, why did it exist, why is just an arm what seals Ganon, and why does the depiction of the ancient hero show him with a glowy yellow hand? Is it their actual arm but with runes, or is it like a prosthetic?

Ok, so, my theory is that it is actually a sort of magic prosthetic. What if the ancient hero lost his arm for a specific reason, and the people that used this green magic (The Zonai maybe) not only gave him a new arm so that he could have two arms again, but for the explicit purpose of stopping and sealing Ganon. Something that seems it’s what’s going to happen to present time Link, the malice takes away his arm, and he gets it replaced by the seal arm.

Maybe, like with present Link, the reason Ancient hero lost his arm too was because of Ganon, but just not in a lost battle or something.

We’ve already seen on the first BOTW that each race and group of people, while living on the same period, they wear different and characteristic styles of clothing. Think the difference between the Hylians and Sheikah, the first wear a more medieval-european style of clothing (mostly) and the second it’s lightly inspired by traditional japanese (and the ninja theme). And when you look at the Gerudo, the Rito or the Zora (what little clothing they wear xD), again, it’s completely different from one another. So it’s not too wild to assume that maybe if Ancient hero and mummy Ganon have a similar clothing style, they were part of a same group. Which is curious because we know this Ganon is Gerudo, he wears gerudo symbols on jewels and clothing, and ancient hero was almost certainly Hylian, given what we know of him.

This could be because just like in Ocarina of Time Ganon feigns loyalty to the royal family of Hyrule to later seize power. OR, maybe it’s because (bear with me, I’m just having fun here xDD) ancient hero was part of Ganon’s army?

On the first trailer we could see a mural that shows someone marching on a horse, with long hair and the gerudo symbol on his back, followed by what looks like soldiers.

So it’s probably Ganon with his army traveling or conquering or other stuff. And maybe, Ancient hero was part of that army. What if, just like in the present Ganon’s malice takes away Link’s arm, Ganon took away Ancient hero’s arm?

Why tho? Well, maybe in his endless thirst for power, Ganon did something that collided with ancient hero’s morals, and he stood up to him?

(Sorry I’m using this one, but I don’t know how to better portray this idea. Also it’s much more juicy and dramatic if Link and Ganon were once friends xDD Just swap bravery for courage. Yes JKRO sucks for what she has said and done)

What if, at that moment, the triforce of courage showed on ancient hero’s hand (it has shown both in his right and left hand in diffferent games, so why not the right hand in this occassion), and Ganon, recognizing the threat, chopped off the ofending arm and left him for dead, prompting all the events that would lead to the sealing of the calamity?

Just a thought xDD

What do you think? Too far fetched? Maybe a bit of possibility? Will Zelda be allowed to DO STUFF INSTEAD OF HAVING TO EB RESCUED AGAIN??? Let’s see what Nintendo gives us, I can’t wait for 2022 to arrive!

#Legend of zelda #botw #breath of the wild #botw2 #breath of the wild 2 #nintendo #spoilers #theory #botw2 spoilers #just in case #ganon #ganondorf #ancient hero #link

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sparkie96 · 4 years ago

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Me, half asleep: hmm chreon

Me, suddenly galaxy brain and wide awake: Chris leaves for edonia before leon can tell him that he's pregnant, he never gets the chance to tell him, chris loses his memories, leon has their baby and then about a month later re6 happens and he and Chris reunite but it's bittersweet bc Chris doesn't remember who leon was to him, cue to the angst of leon having to deal with being alone and thinking chris was dead for his entire pregnancy, and then them mending their relationship as chris heals, and Chris meets the baby and they become a proper family

Me, exhausted from this apparently v taxing thought and now half asleep again: hmm chreon

It had been a long and tiresome six-months plus the oh so fun trip to China...which Chris lost his entire team twice to the same woman who had had an indirect hand in nearly killing his mate and his mate’s partner as well as said mate’s adoptive daughter and the key to stopping the C-Virus. And a tiresome couple of weeks where he took some time off to himself.

Chris shook his head as his escort drove him out to the ranch Leon supposedly now owned thanks to the late Adam Benford. The agent said he had a surprise for him and Chris was practically vibrating in his seat, wondering just what the surprise was. His memory was still a bit fuzzy, so he remembered Leon and wanted to get back to him the whole time he was in Edonia...he just didn’t know his name or the reason why he needed to get back so badly. And then there was...something else. It involved Leon and a grainy picture of some sort...but try as he might, he couldn’t remember what it was.

Hopefully his memory would kickstart back to normal by the time he got there. He really wanted to relive “Memory Lane” with his beautiful Omega. He wanted to experience the emotions that came with those memories. He wanted to remember them too, cursing his broken memories and his damned Amnesia.

The truck pulled up to the ranch, surrounded by miles of grass and fields of corn. Chris’s heart pounded in his chest as he gazed upon the breathtaking sight, unable to believe that this very beautiful but kind of isolated property was now his home too. The truck pulled into the driveway, the driver; Nadia, informing him that they were here. Chris stared out of the window, butterflies beating their wings inside of his stomach and making it churn nervously.

“Captain?” She asked, “Everything alright?”

Chris drummed his fingers on the door, eyes staring at the front door of the home anxiously, “Y-Yeah,” He lied, “Just...nervous...that’s all. My head isn’t so good right now so…”

She gently laid a hand on his shoulder, “You’ll be alright. Agent Kennedy’s been filled in on the situation that occurred over the last several months by Captain Valentine. He’s a good person. He’ll understand.”

“I know,” Chris replied with a slight cant of the head, his other hand toying with his seatbelt, “I just...I don’t want to disappoint him or upset him if he brings up something and I can’t remember…”

Nadia gave him a reassuring smile and a squeeze, “You couldn’t if you tried. He loves you.”

Chris looked to her, smiling a small smile back before giving a nod. With a deep breath, he undid his seatbelt as she unlocked the door to let him out. She bid him farewell and good luck, waiting until he was completely out of the truck and had shut the door behind himself before pulling away. She gave a friendly honk before driving back in the direction of HQ.

Leaving him in front of the house.

Chris turned to it, timidly walking up the gravel and to the wooden porch. He ascended the three steps there, pausing to stare at the door once more. He didn’t know why this was so hard, nor did he know why he was so nervous. There shouldn’t have been something ominous about this whole thing. This was home...his family was inside. His mate and their silly cat. Though, there was a little voice in the back of his mind saying that that was not all that was inside...that he was missing a little detail.

Opening the screen door, he raised his fist and knocked on the solid front door. And then...he just stood there...waiting. He didn’t try to peek through the glass in the door, figuring that would have been rude or it would have ruined the surprise planned for him.

There were footsteps on the other side, Chris holding his breath as they approached the door. Through the frosted glass, he could see a mass of blue and white and beige and brown. He could hear every click of the locks as they were undone, Chris taking another deep breath as the pounding grew louder in his ears.

His breath was caught in his throat again as the door opened, Leon’s smiling face looking up at him, blue eyes clearly filled with tears.

“Hey…” Chris greeted awkwardly, but then gave a soft “Oof!” as Leon nearly tackled him, hugging him tightly.

“Hey, Big Guy.” Leon’s muffled voice replied in his shoulder, the Omega’s face buried in the fabric of Chris’s shirt, “We missed you so much…”

...We?

“I missed you all too.” Chris replied, hugging him back as Leon pulled away, the two meeting for a soft chaste kiss, “You and that goofy cat.”

Leon looked up at him as they parted, canting his head to the side, “...You don’t remember…” He paused mid sentence and gave a nod, “Wait...of course you don’t. Sorry, my mistake. The Post Traumatic Amnesia…”

“What don’t I remember?” Chris asked a bit too quickly, his heart still pounding in his chest. This was exactly why he didn’t feel like he was ready enough for this. This is why he had been putting off coming here for weeks. His worst fear was happening...he was upsetting his mate.

As if sensing his distress, Leon shook his head and carefully cupped Chris’s cheeks, holding his face in his hands, “No, no, no! It’s okay! It was my mistake! That’s why I had a surprise for you!”

Chris calmed down a bit, taking more deep breaths and counting in his head to ten, “Right. You said there was a surprise…”

Leon nodded with a warm smile, “Yeah...I have someone I want you to meet.”

Chris furrowed his brows but let Leon take his coat for him, the Omega telling him that it was okay to take his shoes off by the front door. While Chris did that, Leon shut the front door and locked it, waiting until Chris was settled before taking him by the hand. Chris allowed him to lead him further into the house, going down the hall and to one of the rooms at the end of the hallway.

“You probably don’t remember this,” Leon began, “But...a couple months before you went to Edonia, I was pregnant.”

Pregnant...Leon had been pregnant? Chris thought about what Leon had said earlier...about how “We missed you…”. We…

Leon let go of his hand, opening the door with the little characters on it, looking back at him with a smile.

“Chris,” Leon began, pushing the door open and revealing the crib inside, a little red-headed baby staring back at them, giving the biggest smile he could manage with a pacifier in his mouth, “I want you to meet your son: Oliver Kennedy-Redfield.”

Chris’s heart was fluttering...but not out of nervousness. The Alpha was in awe, smiling as tears welled up in his eyes. He had a son...he had a family who had been waiting for him all this time.

He was home at last.

#Send Me Asks #First Meeting #Chreon #Omegaverse AU #Post Resident Evil 6 #Chris Redfield #Leon S. Kennedy #Oliver Kennedy-Redfield #Sunday Funday

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thelittlesttimelord · 3 years ago

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The Littlest Timelord: The New Doctor Chapter 14

TITLE: The Littlest Timelord: The New Doctor Chapter 14 PAIRING: No Pairing RATING: T CHAPTER: 14/? SUMMARY: With the Doctor newly regenerated, he and Elise must now navigate their new relationship. The Doctor is an old man and Elise is a headstrong young woman. She is no longer the scared little girl the Doctor saved all those years ago. Will Clara be able to keep them from killing each other?

Clara was clearly getting ready for another date when Elise and the Doctor arrived.

The Doctor was watching her laundry spinning in the washing machine while Clara checked her makeup.

“The Satanic Nebula,” the Doctor suggested. He stared at her goldfish. “Or the lagoon of lost stars. Or we could go to Brighton. I've got a whole day worked out.”

“Sorry, but as you can see, I've got plans.” Clara gestured to her outfit.

“Have you?”

“Look at me.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“No, no, no. No. Look at me.” Clara flipped her hair.

“Yep, looking.”

“Seriously?”

“I think you look beautiful,” Elise told Clara.

“Thank you, Ellie.”

“Why is your face all colored in? Are you taller?” the Doctor asked.

Clara raised her foot. “Heels.”

“What, do you have to reach a high shelf?”

“Right, got to go. Going to be late.”

“For a shelf?”

“Bye.” Just as Clara was about to leave, the phone in the TARDIS started ringing. “There you go, you've got another playmate.”

“Hardly anyone in the universe has that number.”

“Well, I've got it.”

“Yes, from some woman in a shop. We still don't know who that was.”

“Is that her now?”

“There are very few people that it could be.”

“Maybe it’s Kate,” Elise suggested. It’d been a while since they’d seen the head of UNIT.

The Doctor reached out to answer it.

“Don't,” Clara said.

“Why not?” the Doctor asked.

“Because, if you answer it, something will happen.”

“What?”

“A thing”

“Huh. It's just a phone, Clara. Nothing happens when you answer the phone.” He picked up the receiver.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The next thing they knew they were sitting at table, each holding a memory worm.

Clara and Elise screamed.

“Doctor?” Clara asked.

“Don't touch it.”

“Where are we? How did we get here?”

A man and a woman sat across from them at the table.

The man had half his head shaved with computer chips attached. “Who are you? Sorry, what's going on? I don't understand.”

The woman was dark skinned. Her cheeks transformed into the worm’s horns before fading. “Ah! What is that thing?”

“It's a memory worm,” the Doctor told her.

“What happened to your face?” Clara asked.

“Deletes your memories.”

“Did you see her face?”

“How did I get here?” the woman asked.

“The same way we all did, but we've all forgotten,” the Doctor said.

“And who are you?”

A metal case sat in the middle of the table. It played a recording.

“I am the Doctor, a Time Lord from Gallifrey. I have agreed to this memory wipe of my own free will.”

“I am Clara Oswald, human. I have agreed to this memory wipe of my own free will. Do I really have to touch that worm thing?”

“Yes, you do. And change your shoes. Elise, you’re next.”

Elise heard herself sigh. “Do I really have to do this?”

“Yes.”

“This is a bad idea. Fine. I am Elise Smith, daughter of the Doctor and River Song. I have agreed to this memory wipe of my own free will.”

“Okay, you're next, Psi.”

“I am Psi- augmented human. I have agreed to this memory wipe of my own free will.” Psi took a chip from his head and examined it.

“I am Saibra, mutant human. I have agreed to this memory wipe of my own free will.”

The case unlocked and a golden light shone from within. Two screens popped up. A golden K in a circle was shown on the screen before a hooded figure appeared.

“This is a recorded message. I am the Architect. Your last memory is of receiving a contact from an unknown agency. Me. Everything since has been erased from your minds. Now, pay close attention to this briefing.”

A planet appeared and zoomed in to show a bank. An advertisement started to play as the Architect spoke.

“This is the Bank of Karabraxos, the most secure bank in the galaxy. A fortress for the super-rich. If you can afford your own star system, this is where you keep it. No one sets foot on the planet without protocols. All movement is monitored, all air consumption regulated. DNA is authenticated at every stage. Intruders will be incinerated. Each vault, buried deep in the earth, is accessed by a drop-slot at the planet's surface. It's atomically sealed, an unbreakable lock. The atoms have all been scrambled. Your presence on this planet is unauthorized. A team will have been dispatched to terminate you.”

Someone banged on the door. “This is bank security. Open up.”

The video kept playing. “Your survival depends on following my instructions.”

“Open up and you shall be humanely disposed of.”

“There's another exit,” Saibra said.

“All the information you need is in this case,” the video said.

Psi took a chip from his head and plugged it into the case.

“What are you doing?” the Doctor asked.

“Downloading,” Psi told him.

“Ah. Augmented. Nice.”

“The Bank of Karabraxos is impregnable,” the video said.

The Doctor took a device from the case.

“Please stand away from the door. We do not wish to hurt you before incineration,” the guard ordered.

Elise rolled her eyes. How considerate.

“The Bank of Karabraxos has never been breached. You will rob the Bank of Karabraxos.”

Soon, the five of them were running down a corridor.

“Okay, okay, okay. Stop, stop, stop. Far enough,” the Doctor said, panting.

Can’t handle all the running, old man? Elise asked. She received an eyeroll in response.

“Augmented human. Computer augmented, yes? Mainframe in your head?”

“I'm a gamer. Sorry, who put you in charge?” Psi asked.

“You're a liar. That's a prison code on your neck.”

“I'm a hacker slash bank robber.”

“Good. This is a good day to be a bank robber. Mutant human. What kind of mutant?”

“Like he says, why are you in charge now?” Saibra asked.

“It's my special power. What's yours?”

Saibra sighed and took Clara’s hand. They watched as she transformed into Clara. When she let go, she was herself once again. “I touch living cells, I can replicate the owner.”

“Your face, when we first saw you...”

“I touched the worm.”

“You can replicate their clothes too?”

“I wear a hologram shell.”

“Like Christmas,” Elise said, even though only the Doctor and Clara knew what she was referencing.

The Doctor pulled out the object he took from the case. “Human cells. DNA from a customer, maybe? A disguise to get us in?”

“We're actually going to do it? Rob the bank?”

“I don't think we have a choice. We've already agreed to.”

Saibra sighed and touched her thumb to the object.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Elise had to admit that the bank was beautiful.

“How long can you maintain the image for?” the Doctor asked Saibra.

“For as long as I like.”

They entered the bank.

“Question one. Robbing banks is easy if you've got a TARDIS. So why am I not using it?” the Doctor asked.

“Question two, where is the TARDIS?” Clara countered.

“Okay, that probably should be question one.”

“Hopefully it’s not having a temper tantrum this time,” Elise said.

The Doctor turned to her. “At least we’re not stuck on a pirate ship with a murderous mermaid.”

An alarm started going off and security grills came down around all the exits. “Banking floor locking down.”

“They know we're here,” Saibra said.

“Banking floor locking down.”

A woman entered with two men dressed in suits. They walked up to a man with a briefcase.

A monster wearing an orange jumpsuit and a straight jacket entered. It had two eyestalks and was led by two armed guards.

Elise, instead of being scared, just felt sorry for the poor creature.

“What is that?” Saibra asked.

“I don't know. Hate not knowing,” the Doctor said.

“Excuse me, sir. I regret to say that your guilt has been detected,” the woman said.

“What? That, that's totally ridiculous,” the man said.

“Is it, sir? Well then, we will certainly double-check. The Teller will now scan your thoughts for any criminal intent. Good luck, sir.”

The man put down his briefcase.

“Interesting,” the Doctor said.

“What is?” Psi asked.

“The latest thing in sniffer dogs. Telepathic. It hunts guilt.”

The creature emitted a high-pitched noise that caused the man to grab his head in pain.

“What about our guilt?” Clara asked.

“Currently being drowned out,” the Doctor told her.

“What's he doing?”

“If he has a plan, he's trying not to think of it.”

“Ever tried not thinking about something?” Psi asked.

“No,” Clara said.

“You may have to,” Saibra said.

The creature roared.

“Ah, criminal intent detected. How naughty. What was your plan? Counterfeit currency in your briefcase, perhaps?” the woman asked.

“No, not at all. For God's sake,” the man said.

“It doesn't really matter, we'll establish the details later. The Teller is never wrong when it comes to guilt. Your account will now be deleted, and obviously your mind. Suppertime.”

The armored guards held onto the creature’s chains as it moved closer to the customer. It’s eyestalks came together and a ray was focused on the man’s head.

“It's wiping his mind. Turning his brain into soup,” the Doctor explained.

Elise felt tears well up in her eyes.

“Your next of kin will be informed, and incarcerated, as further inducement to honest financial transactions,” the woman said.

The man started screaming.

“We've got to help him,” Clara said.

“He's gone already. It's over,” the Doctor told her.

“He's in agony, look at him.”

“Those aren't tears, Clara. That's soup.”

The creature pulled it’s eyestalks apart.

The man stopped screaming and one of the suited men caught him. The front of his head was caved in.

“Account closed. Take him away. He's ready for his close-up. Apologies for the disturbance. Everyone have a lovely day.”

Elise was right. This was a very bad idea.

#twelfth doctor #twelfth doctor imagine #twelfth doctor fanfiction #doctor who #doctor who fanfiction #doctor who imagine #clara oswald #clara oswald imagine #the littlest timelord #the littlest timelord: the new doctor #time heist

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prince-toffee · 4 years ago

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Fallin’ For A Fallin’ Angel II

His eyes slowly opened, struggling to keep apart as they adjusted to the bright light. A pained grunt escaped his throat as the clone began to regain his consciousness. HTK 218-666 did not know where he was. His mind was sluggish, trying to process whatever had transpired. The first thing he truly noticed was his comfort - not often did he awaken to softness, never infact. 218′s pod was hard, metallic, cold and jagged. With malfunctioning cables - they didn’t serve much real purpose now as the ex-general had used up all his Life Force rations. The cables that binded to his neck, back and arms were more of an ornament than a necessity - to make the the crashed wreck feel more... homely. It was a familiar feeling - not a pleasant one, but a one he knew.

But then it hit him, he wasn’t in his pod, was he. He opened his eyes to see something above him. Some sort of rectangular canopy of fabric, held up by four pillars which descended all around him. And a light pinkish red veil surrounded all the sides between the pillars. A force field perhaps. Was this a prison?! Was he captured?! The defective clone shot up, looking around his new unfamiliar surroundings. There was a sheet of thin fabric covering him, it was smooth and cool to the touch. 218 flanged the cover off. Only then realised that most of his uniform was gone.

Which wasn’t a novelty to him, back on The Velvet Glove uniforms weren’t gifted until after the cloning process and then taken away again when put into storage. Being bare wasn’t new. What 218 was worried about was perhaps they had searched him, maybe taken samples - his wounds seemed healed.

Who? Who was it? Who captured him? The memories slowly returned back to him, bit by bit as he strained his mind. There were attackers, creatures of the desert. He remembered he was near victorious, but his will power was not enough, he was knocked out. He was weak. Brother was right. ‘Near’ wasn’t enough. He failed, again. 218′s fist tightened and he grew infuriated at his own shortcomings, he had to make this right. He looked over himself, his wounds were tended to, strange. He had to make sure if all the injuries were sealed up right. But first, the forcefield.

He looked at the pink veil, it was see-through, probably taunting him with freedom on the other side, no doubt. He had to be careful, it could incinerate him on contact for all he knew. One of the plush stuffed bags that was placed under his head was thrown at the forcefield, but it did not react - it simply flew through it. Curious. Did someone accidently deactivated it? Was the plushie bag some sort of unlocking key? That could be his chance. He gently and slowly pocked it with his finger and pulled it back as quick as possible. His brain module took a moment to read what the nerve receptors had came back with - nothing. No pain. No resistance. No forcefield.

Now braver with the confidence of a survivor, he pocked his whole hand through, and even waved it around. Success! Next he poked his head through looking from side to side. No guards. A pitiful prison. He noticed the tattered remains of his uniform, no good, it was already worn out - past its time. 218 already had the lower half of the uniform already on him, he didn’t know why it was left on. He placed a foot on the floor then the next. His muscles screamed at him, but he managed to stand. It seemed his defection was getting worse. It seemed like his feet were the next to fail.

He did not like his defective form on display, so he reached for the covering that was laid onto of him and draped it around himself.

He pushed on, literally, and doors to the room weren’t even locked. Perhaps this was no prison. As the clone opened the doors he was hit by waves of incredibly bright light and loud noise. 218 was in some corridor or porch, because he looked apon a busy hustle and bustle of a town square at work. Few steps forward and he was holding onto an ornate wooden railing, he looked down at the society at work. The town was constructed at the foot of the mount on which the castle stood in which 218 was in. Marketeers selling, customers buying, children running through the streets. 218 did not know how long he had been unconscious, but it looked like a busy morning with the rising... moon... and suddenly he remembered why he hated this planet.

218 also noticed a strange statue at the centre of the town. Chiselled out of stone, a tribute, he was familiar with such things - countless worlds under the control of the Horde had erected tributes in the image of their holy lord and master. But what creature held dominion over this world?

The being was in the position of natural wings a part of her physique, it reminded him of the Horde insignia - the wings of the vampire. This was terrible. These people were living under a false idol, praising a pretender. This was unacceptable. He had to save these people - bring them into the light. Perhaps... this was it! The redemption he was waiting for! He could save them, direct them to their true saviour. He could save them!

He began to walk off, he was still in his capturer’s base of operations. He had to get out. The thought of rallying the people below briefly crossed his mind, but he shook it off - he clearly needed to get back to the crash site, return to the repairs. Fixing the warship and leaving that miserable backwater planet was imperative! But all the bots were destroyed, defences weakened, and his assailants knew where he would be - there was no more hiding. He wouldn’t be safe back there. So where now? He couldn’t exactly blend in with the local populace.

Just then his thought process was cut off as another person walking in the opposite direction bumped into him. 218 didn’t have much weight to him so he got pushed out of the way quite easily. The individual in question who was storming off was not of the same race as the invaders at the wreck. Their skin darker, shorter, no scarlet exo-skeleton over their body. The creature had short violet hair and what looked like oil and grease on her clothing. “Hey buddy, watch it!”

“...Watch what?” 218 asked to himself quietly under his breath. The passer by clearly didn’t hear him, nor did they care to. 218 reached large stairs, leading down to the town square. It looked like the guards occupying the top of the stairs were both distracted by some raving salesman. This was his chance. However, he was startled by a voice behind him.

“Ah, so I see you have woken up.”

The clone spun around to see a tall figure cloaked in shadow. The intimidating character set 218 slightly on edge. The figure wore a black cape and black uniform, body biologically the same as all the other native beings around this complex.

218 could have sworn that the mystery man’s eyes lit up with a spark of red. It was probably nothing - a trick of the light. The Horde trooper remained silent, so the figure decided to take the lead on the interaction. He stepped forward, into the light. 218 unbenounced to himself clutched closer the blanket sheet.

“Heh, welcome back to the land of the living, my friend. You slept like a log.” 218 simply listened and stayed quiet, partially because he didn’t know what to say, this wasn’t the way he thought the situation would play out. He did not know he was going to be greeted, not after what happened in the wreck.

He saw the creature look him up and down examining his form, as his chest lay bare. But there wasn’t much to look at, due to the defection he couldn’t keep on weight - all fats and necessary nutrients degraded quicker than normal, as did his body cells. He was a walking corpse. A shameful form in the eyes of his Brother. The individual stopped mere few small centimetres away from 218, their chests almost touching. The caped being was a head taller than him. “I’m glad to see you fit enough to attempt an escape.”

218 swallowed down on his heart attempting to jump out of his throat. His voice was not as deep as 218′s but held just as much authority. “Ah, I see had the splendid pleasure of meeting Princess Minerva, her winning charm never seems to fade with time, hmm.”

Her?... The clone guessed the creature he was referring to was the being that had stormed off, pushing 218′s shoulder. Her?... He did not know what that was.

The towering scorpion looked back at 218 looking as if he was expecting something. 218 didn’t get it. “Not one for jokes are we? Well, not every one is a zinger. I’ll work on it. Don’t let that discourage you. Come on. I can’t exactly let you go right now, but I’d rather we speak as civilised people rather than have those prickly gents over there force you to follow me.” The scorpion pointed with his claw at the two spear wielding guards whom had positioned themselves behind the clone. Ready to strike. That made 218 comply with the peaceful option, of course.

218 followed close behind as the individual led him through the corridors and hallways and down a stair well. The soldier memorised the whole journey backwards just in case he had to run out and escape. “Oh, Ra-dammit, haven’t even introduced myself. I just presumed you knew who I am, but well, you don’t look like you’re from around... anywhere. Do you know who I am?” He asked softly, and curiously. 218 just stared back without words.

“Yeah, course you don’t. Nobody does, nobody cares. I’m the King of this kingdom and what do I have to show for it? What do I truly have, huh?” He looked back at 218 with annoyance in his expression, the clone simply starred back. “Well, my name is Niro, King Niro if you want to be formal, I guess. But like I said, nobody cares.” Niro? Noted - 218 thought to himself. And a ‘king’ was ruler of some sorts, 218 was pretty sure, his troops had encountered all sorts of societies and civilizations on their voyages across galaxies. This was a figure of power standing infront of 218. He didn’t know how Niro compared to other worlds’ authorities - opposition to his Brother never lasted long. You never really got to know them before heads started rolling. 218 was not apart of guest accommodations, he was a general - a soldier. On the frontlines until the end. He didn’t ‘get to know’ people, he ended them.

“And what’s your name?”

“HTK 218-666. Top-General of the 218th Legion. Brother amongst the ranks of the Galactic Horde.”

“...Cool... So you’re not from around here, figured.” They approached a dark rusted door with two guards at it’s sides. They both bow at the sight of their king, and each pulled down a lever on the wall behind them. The ‘klank’ was heavy and loud. 218 then beard many gears and cogs turn and the rusted door began to raise upward. This so called Niro strolled inside, he of course followed. He briefly turned back to see the four guards remained outside as the door shut back down.

The clone quickly turned back, narrowing his eyes at the table that stood infront of them. The room’s walls and floor were all metallic, dark, from what 218 could tell, they were scorch marks. All around the room. “What is this?” Niro slowly made his way around and sat opposite the clone on the far side of the table. He gesture to 218 to do the same.

“So you do talk. Great. We’ll be doing a lot of talking. Please, my friend, sit.” He extended his claw towards the empty seat. But there were no guards in this room, he had no power over 218, 218 was weak, he admitted that to himself, but one on one, surely he could take him. But then what? Four armed guards still waiting outside, possibly hundreds more patrolling the complex. He was trapped.

“And please don’t try to escape, I know you’re thinking about it. You see this glass sheet behind me?” Niro knocked on the glass as he leaned back on his chair. “It’s one way glass, my ever so trusty Force-Captain is on he other side. One word and she pulls a switch and electrocutes this entire room. And don’t worry about me, I won’t feel a thi-”

“Because your hide is electrically resistant.” 218 recalled to himself the confrontation at the power core back at the ship - the scorpion soldiers were unaffected by a direct current of electricity from a dislodged cable. He needed to think of alternate offensive techniques.

“You’ve got quite the keen eye. So you know what’s at steak - you, getting fried.”

Fried?

“I just need to ask you a few questions.”

“You threaten me first, and then you want me to comply? Negative. I will tell you nothing. An assault on the form of Prime is a crime throughout the known universe. Unhand me and bring me back to my Brother and you will be forgiven.”

“Forgiven? Who- wait, universe? You mean that which is beyond the barrier?”

This conversation was puzzling 218 more and more he did not understand what this creature was talking about. Did- did he really not know what the ‘universe’ was? From the looks of this planet it was incredibly primitive, but THIS primitive? It could be that these naïve natives haven’t yet discovered interstellar travel. This idea led to more bad news, if so, then this world could not yet offer resources needed to fix the warship.

“You’re an alien, from outside. Please, tell us more.” The king leaned over more, clearly eager to listen, encouraging 218 with his captivation with the topic.

218 realised this was unsafe, he had already told those people too much, much more than they ever anticipated to hear. He couldn’t let the secrets of the Horde be taken from him by a backwater people. He could not fail his Brother again. “I will say no more.”

Niro looked displeased. “Opal.”

In that moment the room went red, the sound of... some thing veering up, a machine of sorts maybe. But 218 did not have time to think too much about it, because the shock came soon after. The air did not change, there was no heat, it was cold rather. The pain was quick to spread, started at the bottom of his feet and shot up to his brain. It felt like having nails hammered through his organs. He was weak. He only lasted a few seconds in silence, after three he let out a scream. The pain disappeared as soon as the first tear formed at the edge of his eye. The room lost its red glow and reverted its colour palette back to the dead still greys and silvers.

“Sit.”

He complied.

“I must admit that was a bit too much than I would’ve approved, Opal.”

“You cannot break me, for I am already broken. I will not fail my Brother again. I will have nothing out of me.”

In that moment of defiance 218 and Niro looked into each other’s eyes. The scorpion king saw the devotion and pride in the clone’s eyes, the willingness of self-sacrifice. Niro knew the man opposite him was going to die for whatever cause he believed in. That spark of determination. The same look he saw in the mirror every morning in his own eyes. Both of the men spotted the room once again turning into a dark shade of red. Niro watched the enigmatic man shut his eyes and took in a shaky breath. Niro knew very little about the man infront of him, but he knew in that moment he accepted his fate. A conviction and dedication few have.

“STOP!”

The Hillian king exclaimed at the sheet of glass behind him at his Force-Captain. The colour faded away, yet it didn’t completely disappear. The voice of the Force-Captain came through the window. “Sir, he took out an entire detachment, this is an interrogation room - he’s being interrogated.”

“Force-Captain, are you disobeying a direct order from your king?”

The Force-Captain did not respond, but the shade of red did veer and disappeared. The captain remained silent in that Niro hoped was shame. The king turned back to the frightened prisoner. 218 chose to reopen his eyes, he looked at Niro in confusion - weighing out his options. Was trust earned in this moment or was it a ruse?

“Why not just kill me?” 218 asked.

“Like I said: we’re here just to ask you some questions. I would only kill you if you were a threat to Scorpion Hill, you’re not.”

218 knew he shouldn’t have, but he kind of took offensive from that, he was dangerous.

“But trust me, she wanted to. You killed her husband, on that scouting party. Through those eight hours of unconsciousness I had to make sure she wouldn’t kill you. Best sleep you’ve had in a while I’m willing to bet, by the looks of that train wreck to live in. Do, you... live in there?”

“A ship wreck, and yes I have taken residence in it for shelter a- have you said eight cycles?!”

“Hours, but- sure.”

“This is unexpectable! I have already wasted six more cycles than usual! So much possible productivity gone! I must return to the repairs immediately!” 218 rocketed up onto his feet ready to walk out.”

“How- what? Hold on, what repairs?”

“I will tell you no more.”

“If you won’t tell us, we can’t help you, friend. Its simple as that. You appeared from nowhere - your a mystery. And so you are seen as a threat. People hate what they don’t understand. Help me understand.”

“Niro, was it?”

“Yes.”

“All you need to understand is - if you return me to my spacecraft, if you aid me, you will be rewarded and welcomed by my Brother. He can show you all the light. He can offer you a perfect world.”

“Who is your brother?”

“Horde Prime.

The Emperor of the Known Universe. The most powerful being in existence, his empire is endless - far superior to whatever your world holds. But give into him and he will take you in and make sure faction a jewel in his empire.”

“I’ll have to decline on that offer. I find that the more power people have, the more they see themselves as saviours. You’re not going anywhere.”

“But the Horde can gift you, reward you, the empire has collected and melded technologies from across numerous galaxies - he can give you interstellar travel, advanced communications, synthetic nutrition, biological enhancements, limitless knowledge of the cosmos, language, salvation, weapons-”

“Weapons?... What kind of weapons?”

Of course, should’ve known. 218 knew this might be his only way out of this predicament, he needed to tell this Niro what he wanted to hear, “The Horde has taken dominance over countless systems, many by force. To do this the engineers and scientists of the Horde had to develop instruments of destruction which could topple armies. I can give them to you. I was a general - I hold the accumulated knowledge of dozens of battalions I have commanded. Horde Prime needs me, I am crucial to the cause. Help me and the knowledge to conquer worlds, can be yours.”

218 saw Niro deliberating, thinking over everything said. He had a lot to consider, but 218 needed the answer now, he needed to rush him, make him slip up - act rash. 218 needed to return to his Brother’s side, his Brother needed him! He was one of his top generals. And bringing a world with him for the Horde to assimilate, an offering to show he wasn’t a waste, a failure. Brother would see that 218 was worth something - a useful tool, a loyal soldier. THIS was his redemption.

“This ‘Horde Prime’ is he really that influential? Would he have the might to liberate Scorpion Hill from the mercy of other kingdoms?”

“There has never been a mightier lord in the universe’s history.”

“And if I decline?” Niro decided to test the waters.

“Then my Brother’s wrath will rain down on you, and a different party would be blessed with the fruits of my Brother’s labour.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it. Other kingdoms of Etheria are not so welcoming to outsiders from beyond their walls, not to mention from beyond this dimension. Scorpion Hill is your best bet. The others will simply label you - mad.”

“Than you accept?” 218 raised the brow at the talking king.

“I suppose I do.”

Niro agreed to aid the alien man, if he was a man, he was no fool of course, he knew that spark of devotion in those eyes meant he was telling the truth, but that spark had the possibilities to burn forests. Niro needed to watch his own back. But he also needed to see more - how good were these weapons - was this prisoner worth keeping around. Niro extended his claw to 218 in acceptance, however 218 did not quite understand the motion, he stared at it discombobulated.

“Am- am I supposed to do... something with that?”

“Oh boy.”

---

After a far too long explanation of what a hand shake was, the two did. 218 was lead off by the guards back to what was then labelled his quarters and Niro returned to Opal’s side behind the one way glass in the observation room. He could tell she was displeased, no, more like infuriated. Understandable.

“Your highness, may I speak freely?”

Here it comes. “[sigh] Opal if you want to berate me then just get on with it.”

“Are you insane!??!”

“Aren’t we all?” Niro replied calmly juxtapose to the loud bark of his Force-Captain.

“He killed a full detachment of our troops! I cannot even explain how untrustworthy he is! You don’t even know his name!-”

“Yeah, I do. It’s 321-123 or something to that effect.”

“You’re joking around? Why are you joking around?” Opal placed her hands on her hips eyeing the king waiting a twist.

“Cause the talk’s not over yet. First of all, you saw his physique, that man’s made out of match sticks, with all the guards clogging the corridors there’s no chance he’s escaping. Especially now that he doesn’t have the home advantage. He’s trapped and he knows it.”

“What if he wants to be there? The whole alien story, it’s- it’s out there. He could be a spy for BrightMoon, or the Salineas, the princess of Dryl wasn’t happy with the deal. Dozens of other smaller kingdoms too.”

“Second of all, Scorpion Hill is home to a multitude of races, from all around Etheria, I’ve seen them all. I know my people. I don’t know him. And those eyes? Eyes of a believer. He’s not lying, and if he is, you get to say ‘I told you so’. And we know how much you love that.”

“We’re taking a huge risk with this. The Council of High Priests will be hounding at the door the moment they find out. I’ve managed to hold back the paperwork’s circulation, but they will find out. And that man you just let out, interrogated in secret - is a walking omen of bad mojo to them. We could be- no, we are in serious trouble!”

“Third of all, he can be the answer. If what he says is true, and I believe that he is. Then this man, if he is a man, can be the way by which I can free Scorpion Hill from the parasites that drained it of its life. With those weapons hierarchy won’t mean much, and what do those crooked old fools have? A wooden stick, some holy water?”

“You- are you serious!? You’re planning an overthrow. Don’t get me wrong Niro, I hate the council, just as much as you and I’d stand by your side until the moons crash down, but it’s a spider web, the council is tied to dozen other kingdoms and unknown benefactors - you pull that string and heaven’s gonna fall on your head.”

“And last of all, we match out - war - kingdom after kingdom, until we’re truly free.”

Opal looked at Niro, his eyes narrow and his claw bending steel in its grips, the desk gave in under his claws strength. Niro grew more and more irritated with each day in his position of powerlessness. He knew she was worried, maybe even scared, but she knew why he was willing to risk it all. Niro would fight armies single-handedly, if he had to, his blood boiled for a fight - for his people. This individual, whoever he was, was in deed an omen of the council’s worst fear, but if Niro played it right it could be an omen of a brighter future.

Opal placed a hand on the king’s shoulder, she felt the need to persuade her old friend out of whatever crazy act he was about to write, she began, “Niro-” and ended, as a guard entered the room with an announcement and a pant in his voice from the urgent sprint.

“My lord, Force-Captain.” They bowed, “The scout survivor from the last mission has woken up.”

“Like I said the talk’s not over yet. Led to the infirmary soldier.” The three marched off with haste. It did not take long for them to reach the infirmary, all the medical staff bowed as their king entered. He ignored the gesture as he often did, he said countless times to treat him like anyone else, or at least no bowing. Niro hated the feeling of superiority, of being worshipped to. In his eyes he was just someone who wanted to make a difference. He got to the resting bed of the survivor, bruises all over his body, many blood stained changed bandages. The Hillian soldier attempted to salute to the royal, but pulled their arm back the moment they felt something crack.

“Easy soldier, rest. Can you talk?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fantastic.” Niro pulled up a chair next to the injured scout and sat down, “Mission report.” For the next half an hour Niro questioned about the mission and about the enemy they had met there. New details came to light: robots, traps, some sort of power core, a savage yet resourceful opponent. And their name.

“And then he proclaimed himself as - Hordak, my lord.”

“Hordak.” Niro repeated, the name lingering on his tongue. Curious.

#hordak #king niro #nidak #horo #scorpia's grandfather #part two #slow burn #fallin for a fallin angel

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professorspork · 4 years ago

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ANOTHER BUSY DAY IN THE ANDROMEDA GALAXY

I started the day running errands on Havarl, culminating with finishing off Jaal’s loyalty mission! I took Vetra with us thinking ‘hey, if anyone knows sibling dynamics...’ but then she factored into all of that absolutely 0%, lol @ me. but no matter! Jaal was super flirty as we made our way to the Forge, and it was adorable when he was like “HERE MEET MY FRIEND SO YOU CAN SEE AKKSUL IS WRONG” and bodily dragged me toward his siblings. their fight was absorbing and intense; I LEGIT GASPED WHEN HIS SISTER SHOT HIS BROTHER. LIKE!! the whole confrontation with Akksul felt super weighty and I really enjoyed it-- keeping my trigger discipline to not shoot that dude was really hard! there was a split second there where his bolt was headed toward Jaal’s face and I was like “if I kill off Jaal in his loyalty mission I’ll be so upset” but nope it all worked out, he has a bitchin cheek scar now, and the respect of his people, and I got a forehead touch so y’know. i melted. GOSH. then I died laughing at Akksul’s not-apology email.

now Jaal wants me to meet his mom(s) but Helen said that’ll lock in the romance, so I’ll probably wait just a little longer so I can uh keep having FWB sex with Peebee and ?maybe??? flirt with Vetra at some point? altho I teasingly called her MOM last time we were in Kadara Port so maybe not. (Jaal still hates it there, he’s so grumpy and it’s cute, but I digress)

this one got even longer than usual so doing a cut

one thing that I really like, that the game navigates in interesting ways, is that to the angara, we’re all just “Milky Way people.” like. so much of the original trilogy is about navigating the differences between all these aliens, and like, some of that is here too, esp with the krogan, but it’s actually really neat the way we’ve flattened out. and even with the krogan it’s still night and day-- like. comparing what Tuchanka is like in ME2 when Wrex is still solidifying his status as warlord is miles away from what it’s like for me to wander around New Tuchanka or, especially, just run into random krogan out and about (like the nice water scouts. WHY COULDN’T I JUST GIVE THEM THE WATER? but I’m getting ahead of myself). I know some of it has the Watsonian explanation of, like, only forward-thinking, open-minded krogan would be interested in the Initiative in the first place, and some of it is the Doylist explanation of ‘well people really liked that Charr/Ereba romance so let’s have more sweetie pie krogan’ but like. overall. it’s interesting, and I’m sure there’s more angles I haven’t considered.

I traced more of those comm buoys for Addison and learned that the doctor she’s obsessed with ran away to get pregnant! I definitely read that whole situation as Addison being in love with this lady and tbh it still doesn’t refute it? but I won’t get any more progress until I make a new outpost. the whole idea of ‘the first human baby born in Heleus’ thing is really cool, though, and I’m invested.

then I went to Elaaden! I feel some kind of way about Lexi diagnosing all of these scavengers with Brain Disease, but I can’t put my finger on it exactly-- other than, I guess, my general discomfort with pathologizing criminality. I was glad she said we couldn’t vaccinate people without their consent, but the whole thing smacks as very... self-conscious on the part of the game creators? like they thought people would say “hey it’s a huge plot hole that the Initiative screened every person before putting them on the arks and yet so many of them do crimes, explain that to me” and they were like “oh yeah shit that makes no sense, it’s not like people faced with the existential crisis of being in a brand new place 600 years away from everything they’ve ever known with no way back and not enough resources and multiple things wanting to kill them might just make desperate, risky choices, that’s not good enough, obviously we need to explain it with BRAIN DISEASE.” come on.

I made it to New Tuchanka, where the postings on the terminals are literally my favorite part of this whole game. THE ONE KROGAN WHO WANTS GINGERBREAD. THE ONE WHO DOESN’T WANT TO FOCUS ON CONS AND SUGGESTS A “PRO-VERSATION.” THE ONE ABOUT THE “PROBLETUNITY” OF MATING SUGGESTING WATCHING KRANTT HARDLY WAIT. THE ONE WHO INVENTED BLOOD RAGE FOR GUN TURRETS. but also, the best one, my favorite one of all: KRANTT THE RAGENING LARP. there is nothing I would not give to play Krantt: The Ragening.

I sort of tripped and fell and decided to finish Drack’s loyalty mission even though I intended to do more Elaaden things first, and that was a blast. Vorn is so presh! and also Drack is my dad so there’s that. I loved that Vorn helped save the day with a poison vegetable, and I love that Kesh pretended not to like the flower he got her. it was like-- okay. real talk, I just spent like 20 minutes trying to find proof that there is, in fact, a scene in parks and rec where someone gives April a friendship bracelet and she pretended to hate it until they threatened to take it back and could not find it ANYWHERE and felt so gaslit until I realized that that scene was not about April at all but Louise Belcher so. GOOD JOB ME. anyway. it was like that. kesh pretending her comm was broken when Tann tried to talk to her is the oldest joke in the book but I laughed anyway.

and then I TOOK SPENDER DOWN FOR GOOD. I’m a little miffed that neither Kesh nor Tann got to be in on that discussion; like, I recognize he was Addison’s underling but given all the bullshit he pulled with the krogan I especially felt Kesh deserved to be there? at one point there was a dialogue tree where I could either say it was Addison’s fault or Spender’s fault, and I picked the latter because I think they both such but Spender sucks worse, but in hindsight I wish I’d stuck it to Addison more because my dialogue was way too nice. when faced with the choice of jailing or exiling Spender, I picked jail despite my desire to defund Nexus Militia because I was scared if I exiled him he’d just come back as a worse enemy because of all his off-station contacts. when reviewing the choice in the codex, though, it narrativized my choice by saying I imprisoned him knowing he “would never survive life on the run from his former associates.” that wasn’t my assumption at all! quite the opposite! I jailed him thinking he’d start a coup from without if I didn’t, and it’s really interesting to me that the game isn’t framing that as a concern Ryder would have reasonably had. anyway, now Brecka has his job, which is good because Brecka is the best.

before leaving I unlocked my last memory, and SURPRISE MY MOM IS ALIVE. WELL. FOR A GIVEN DEFINITION OF ALIVE. i don’t know why I’m surprised; of course my dad sucked that much. but also, the fact that all of that got nestled in with the reaper ‘reveal’ (if you can call it that) felt... very strange? like. this is such a personal, emotional thing for Ryder. obviously for the player harkening back to the trilogy is supposed to be a gut wrench, and objectively, yes, I can see how the knowledge that they might have narrowly escaped certain death is a big deal, but like. the reapers aren’t HERE. they aren’t relevant. my MOM, on the other hand, is and is, apparently! it’s occurring to me I didn’t even try to find her mis-labeled pod, I was so turned around by all the benefactor stuff after the fact. anyway.

swung by Kadara to get drinks with Drack and had an epic bar fight, and then Lexi p much lectured us both abt it because Drack is like 90% spit and duct tape at this point. him talking about raising Kesh giving him a new lease on life was VERY sweet, tho, and his line about how parents aren’t the finish line, they’re the starting line was very good.

went back to Elaaden, which Jaal called “a big planet” while discussing hunting someone down and AU CONTRAIRE, JAAL, IT IS A MOON. wish I’d had Drack with me when I found Annea’s water because I bet he would have had better dialogue than Cora, but alas. felt very weird giving control of the reservoir to the Nexus, but like. Annea being like “you can’t, this is my emotional support monopoly on a vital natural resource” just wasn’t gonna fly with how I’m playing Ryder. I was gratified to hear the Nexus guy at Paradise say we were giving the water to everyone, including krogan and scavengers, because I 100% did not trust Tann not to overrule him with some shitty call.

then I went to the Remnant ship to stop Morda from making a bomb out of the drive core, and it was all going swimmingly until I traced the signal to that cave inside the flophouse and suddenly my triangle button stopped working, making me unable to activate the console. YIKES. a quick google of the issue tells me that this mission is buggy for a lot of people and reloading from an earlier save tends to help, but I tried that and the issue persisted so I gave up for the evening. hopefully a fresh start tomorrow and time for the ps4 to cool off is all that is required.

#leah plays mass effect andromeda

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worryinglyinnocent · 5 years ago

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Fic: Till It’s Gone

Summary: After being stranded on Destiny, Rush faces a tough decision about his relationship with Belle, still on Earth, after she gives him an ultimatum regarding their future.

Written for the @a-monthly-rumbelling prompt: Let Her Go (song)

Rated: T

Till It’s Gone

You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. It was one of the old sayings, something that Rush had always known but had never paid any attention to until he was forced to take a long hard look at something and realise that the old sayings had indeed had some truth to them.

The first time that he had been made to confront this particular saying was after he had lost Gloria. He’d known what he had with her, obviously. They had been married for over twenty years and he knew that they had been soulmates. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what he had with her, as that once he no longer had her, he came to the crushing realisation that was it. It was over. There was never going to be a ‘later’. All the things that he had promised in his own mind that he would do later, that he had to keep working and he would do it later… There was no later. There never would be.

What he hadn’t known he had with Gloria was opportunity. Time.

Now he was staring this hateful phrase in the face again as he looked out at the ribbons of faster than light travelling past the window of the observation deck. This time, it was true in the much more well-known sense of meaning. He had lost Belle, and it was only now that he realised just how much she meant to him.

He loved her. He had told her that he loved her, and she had told him that she loved him back. That had never been in doubt. What had been in doubt was his ability to fully commit to their relationship when there was always a spectre hanging over him, the spectre of the work that he could never let go of, because letting go of it meant letting go of Gloria. He’d not had enough time with her before, and now that he had wasted that time, he needed to make sure that it was worth it in whatever way he could.

Belle had always understood his obsessive need to discover the mysteries of the cosmos. She was a widow herself; they both knew what they were getting into when it came to new relationships whilst the tragedy of losing a soulmate was still looming large and would likely never fully fade.

But Belle had a limit, and Rush would admit that your boyfriend getting stranded on an Ancient spaceship several thousand galaxies away from home would push most people’s limits. As much as he isolated himself from the rest of the crew, it was impossible not to know what was happening behind closed doors with so many of them together in close quarters. At first he had been rather pleased that his relationship with Belle appeared to be surviving the long distance when so many others, apart from perhaps Camille and Sharon, seemed to be falling apart.

Now though, it was clear that he and Belle were just the latest victims.

The next time I see you, Nick, I want to see your face.

It was such a simple sentence, and it had been spoken with such sadness. Belle had been in tears as they had parted, and now, hours after returning to Destiny and leaving the stones behind, Rush was still staring at the faster than light, still ruminating on what he had just lost.

The trouble was that it was so open-ended. It was not really an end unless he chose it to be. Belle had said that she didn’t want to see him again via the stones. He could read between the lines enough to know what she really meant. She wanted him to commit to getting them all home. She didn’t want this to go on indefinitely. She wanted a proper relationship with him. In person.

Rush was left in a quandary. It was a choice he had never yet had to make, because nothing this far-reaching and life-changing had ever come between them before. Gloria had always been the elephant in the room, but it had always been manageable before. Belle had been apprehensive when he’d taken the Icarus position, but she had consoled herself with the thought that it would not be forever. Now there was no such promise in place.

They might never get home.

They certainly weren’t going to get home if he wasn’t working to get them home. If he chose to keep chasing the knowledge of the Ancients instead.

Rush smacked his hand against the glass. This wasn’t fair. This was his life’s work, this was what he had poured everything he had into for the last few years, and now he was facing the choice to give it up.

It should have been an easy decision to make. Life’s work versus girlfriend of a year. Looking at it from a cold, hard, logical point of view, which was Rush’s default point of view on everything, much to some people’s chagrin, it was a no-brainer.

He couldn’t understand why he was so incredibly angry about it, nor why he was missing Belle more now than he had done throughout the entire rest of the time that he had been separated from her, despite only having seen her a few short hours ago.

Rush had always been able to get by on very little sleep, and since being on Destiny, there was so much for him to be doing at any time that sleep was more of an annoyance than a necessity. TJ had kept threatening to knock him out to make him get some rest, saying that not even he could get by on no sleep whatsoever, but Rush had resisted her so far. He had managed to avoid her, disappearing from the console room whenever she was in the area, but truth be told, he had no desire to sleep for deeper reasons than needing to get more work done.

He lay back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. The last few times he’d slept, he’d dreamed of Belle. She always danced through the world in front of him, leading him on into the unknown. He was always compelled to follow her, no matter what was happening around him. She’d pulled him away from the bits of Destiny that he was trying to unlock, his attention always on her instead of on the maths. When he tried to ignore her, the figures swam in front of him until he had to look away, catching Belle’s smile again in the corner of his eye, and he was powerless to do anything but follow her.

She was always out of reach, no matter how much he might try to speed up and catch up with her, no matter how much he might stretch out towards her. And then, without fail, no matter what else had happened, no matter where he was, he would lose her, leaving him feeling alone and bereft.

Rush sighed. Someone would probably tell him that it meant that he was missing Belle, and that he should be making the choice to get back to her instead of continuing with his work. That without Belle, his work meant nothing. He was not the kind of person who put much faith in that kind of pseudo-science, but he couldn’t deny that his subconscious brain was trying to tell him something, even if it was in a manner that he didn’t want to address.

He thought of the chair, of the memories of Gloria that he would rather forget as he tried to crack Destiny’s master code. Things that he wanted to forget and put to the back of his mind so that he could concentrate on the bigger picture. It was not that he wanted to forget Belle, far from it, just as he did not want to forget Gloria, just the very end. If only things didn’t have to end. If everything could just stop in the middle.

Rush felt his eyelids droop, exhaustion finally getting the better of him despite fighting it for so long. By now he had come to expect the image of Belle hovering at the edge of his vision, always there, but never to touch. No, he had given up that privilege when he had made the decision to keep working towards Destiny’s higher purpose rather than trying to get back to her, and now she was haunting his dreams as his penance.

He didn’t even try to resist her this time, even as he got closer and closer to solving Destiny’s mysteries and discovering the secrets at the centre of the universe. He let her lead him away, tempting him with the promise of what he could no longer have. It was good to see her at least, even if that was all he could do. It was good to know that she was all right, wherever she was. He knew that his dreams had nothing to do with Belle’s reality, but in these sleeping moments, he liked to kid himself that everything was okay, that Belle was happy.

He wished he knew if she was happy or not.

Rush sighed. It had been so long since he heard Belle’s voice, even though he saw her face every time he closed his eyes.

The phone seemed to take forever to connect, and he looked at the unfamiliar face reflected in the glass of the phone booth as he listened to it ring.

“Hello?”

“Belle, it’s me. It’s Nick.”

“Hi Nick.” Her voice was soft, almost wonderous in its disbelief. “It’s been so long. How are you?”

“We’re ok.” He wasn’t sure how to tell her what he was going to tell her. It was such a leap of faith he had to take. Rush had taken many leaps of faith during his time on Destiny. He had trusted in the ship more times than he could count; he trusted in Destiny and his own intuition more than he trusted the rest of the crew at the best of times.

Now he had to trust in Belle. He had made the decision, but what if, in the end, it was all in vain? What if she had moved on after all? What if she was going to move on in the next three years that they would all be incommunicado?

“Belle, I know you don’t want to see me via the stones, but I had to talk to you.”

“That’s ok, I understand. What’s going on?”

Rush explained the situation, with the drones and the stasis pods and the three long years that would pass in the blink of an eye for him and would drag on for everyone else on the ground.

“We’re trying to get home,” he said eventually. “I want to see you again. In person. Properly.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone for a long time, and Rush could feel his heart beating hard in his mouth. Had he made the wrong decision? Should he have gone with his head over his heart and decided to continue with Destiny’s mission, even if it meant that Belle would haunt him for the rest of his days?

“I’ll be right here waiting,” Belle said at last. “Stay safe, Nick. Come back to me.”

The next time Rush slept it was blissfully dreamless.

#A Monthly Rumbelling #rushbelle #rushbelle fic #Nicholas Rush #Belle French #Fic: Till It's Gone

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turquoisephoenix · 5 years ago

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What's A Little Galaxy-Wide Destruction Between Friends?

A Ratchet and Clank One-Shot

Five days after saving the galaxy from the Deplanetizer, Elaris is greeted by an old friend, who wishes to talk to her, vent a little, and give her life advice. Unfortunately for her, her old friend also happens to be a freshly transformed robot version of a dangerous criminal madman that everyone believed was dead. Elaris & Dr. Nefarious friendship Characters: Elaris, Dr. Nefarious, Lawrence, Qwark (mentioned) ��———————————————-

Author's Notes: I saw the movie and immediately made the connection between Elaris and Nefarious, and by god, I was going to get this down. I realize this isn't the first "Nefarious talks to Elaris about her job" fic out there, but I kinda wanted to write a version where Nefarious and Elaris were friends before the whole evil thing kinda split them apart and, despite everything, they still have positive feelings about each other. It was a challenge writing Nefarious as a mixture of absolutely terrifying and also completely vulnerable and a bit in a fragile state. It's been a bad last couple of days for Nefarious. Also I was going to explain where Lawrence came from but it also came off as more "fitting" that he just *has* Lawrence.

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

"Yep, this sure is Umbris alright."

Elaris, technical support of the Galactic Rangers and one of the saviors of the galaxy a mere five days ago, was doing a menial patrol shift above the atmosphere of Umbris with no one to keep her company.

Despite not being in her expertise and despite this being a rather boring shift, Elaris had asked to be on Galactic Ranger patrol today. She got a few questions from her coworkers - after all, today was double XP weekend and a holiday event in League of Legendaries and they expected her to be holed up in her lab for days - but she won out in the end. She took the same spaceship she normally did, a beaten up little thing that could be best described as "dependable" and "cozy" and nothing more.

She didn't want to admit it out loud, but she was getting cabin fever from being in her in the lab, just a glorified broom closet, all day. She was kinda hoping that, by helping with the Deplanetizer and helping to save the galaxy, she would at least get a bit of a laboratory upgrade as a reward. Instead, with the media breathing down their necks and Qwark doing his big apology tour, her tiny comments of "can I please get a proper laboratory?" were written down as "things to do later" as they asked the new rookie Ratchet question after question of his upbringing and his mysterious past.

And she couldn't help but feel that she was going to be in that broom closet for quite a while now.

Sitting alone in a spaceship - with no sound to greet her but the steady hum of all the ship's computers - while keeping an eye on the airspace of a muddy, near uninhabited planet was at least brightening her mood a bit and allowing her to clear her head.

Anything to get her mind off the fact that the weapons technician before her died in the process.

That was the biggest bummer of the whole Deplanetizer ordeal in her eyes. At the end of the day, Dr. Nefarious was dead. He fell from a space station onto the surface of planet Umbris and that was that. Elaris was hoping that they'd be able to arrest him and that she'd get a chance to talk to him somehow, but instead they found a barely identifiable pile of flesh that had his DNA.

She couldn't help herself. She felt sad that he had to die like that.

Her other coworkers in the Galactic Rangers thought that she was being too idealistic about her old science partner and friend, that Dr. Nefarious was too far gone even before he tried to blow up the entire galaxy with a giant laser. But she wasn't asking for any miracles. She just wanted to ask him why.

And if he was thrown into a maximum security cell for the rest of his life after she asked him what was going on in his giant skull of his, that would be enough for her. They haven't spoken in two years and it'd be nice to hear his voice again, even if his voice could not be described as pleasing to the ear.

But now she couldn't, because he was nothing but a pile of squishy goo on planet Umbris.

Fitting to her mood, as she contemplated her now dead friend, the lights in her spaceship began to flicker ominously. "No, no, no, no-" she pleaded with the ship's computer before the lighting system went dead.

"Oh come on!" she shouted to the spaceship as she was enveloped in darkness. The universe sure knew how to tell sick jokes sometimes. Muttering about budget cuts, she got up from her seat and walked towards the back where she could probably whack the power supply with a wrench until it began working again.

She didn't get that far. She entered the hallway connecting the cockpit to the other small quarters of her spaceship while complaining about how she should've checked the fuses before she left headquarters when a shape with glowing eyes detached itself from the shadows, skittered over to her position, and then suddenly pressed her against the wall in the span of two seconds.

"Don't. Sound. The Alarm."

Elaris stood paralyzed, a cold metallic claw wrapped around her face. The main source of illumination in the dark hallway came from piercing red eyes set in black, empty eye sockets of the most terrifying robot she's ever seen. It was a bony creature with sharp metal claws and fearsome wings, looming over her even in its hunched over position, smelling of the same harsh cleaning chemicals used to remove blood stains off of metallic surfaces. Acid green lighting came from the creature's skull, transparent and revealing the many horrible devices whirring within.

Her immediate thought was that some horrible zombie robot had risen from the grave and came to wreak vengeance for his fallen crew as she stared at the skeletal features. Her mind racing, she wondered just what ancient pirate curse was roaming around this sector as the creature watched her squirm.

"Elaris, it's me." the horrific creature said in a electronic voice that sounded oddly familiar. The voice was high and gravelly and grating to her ears, but it unlocked memories of several years ago when her fellow Galactic Ranger Dr. Nefarious was yelling at Qwark from another room that yes, he was still working on the Combusters, Qwark, and that if he continued rushing him he was going to shove them right up his-

"Nefarious!?" Elaris shouted, which sounded like "Mmmarmemous?" through the hand placed on her mouth.

"I am going to let you go now, and when I do, I want you do not run away or to scream or anything like that! I just want to talk!" Dr. Nefarious continued. "Got it?"

She nodded, her brain immediately noting the cosmic irony in this situation. Gently, he removed his hand from her face and quietly backed up a step, watching her as she shrank against the wall. Immediately he cackled in the kind of laughter that sounded more anxious than joyful.

"Good! Good! You're not calling the Rangers or trying to pull a weapon on me! You're actually going to listen to me that's-" he quickly broke out in a giggle that sounded both nervous and utterly deranged. "You know honestly I didn't expect to get this far!"

As the panic melted away to be replaced with a more cautious fear, Elaris could examine him more closely. She worked with sentient and non-sentient robots on a daily basis - hell, one of her coworkers was one - but he looked...uncanny.

He was breathing for one, something even the most realistic robots never did. His movements were too lifelike, from the way he could set his jaw to the movements of his eyes. He was very twitchy, his parts fidgeting in a way that was normal with organic lifeforms but looked neurotic on robots. This was not a simple consciousness transfer into a robot double as a back-up in case his organic body was destroyed; this robot clearly worked from the same blueprint as his original body.

Or was his original body, just horrifically modified.

Mentally she placed her memory of Nefarious over this creature and could pick out places where things were missing. He was skinnier, his facial features gone as if forcefully removed. If Nefarious had built himself a robot double, he would've remembered his ears and nose. Something about this robot creature seemed...wrong.

'He didn't plan this,' Elaris thought. 'Something else did this to him.'

"What....happened to you with the Deplanetizer?" Elaris asked. 'I thought you were dead' remained unspoken but very much implied. She reached out to touch him and he flinched away from her hand with a tiny yelp, a very fresh and vivid memory of pain flashing through his databanks. She withdrew her hand and he exhaled - there he was doing more things that was really creepy for robots to do - and ran a hand up his glass dome of a head.

"I survived the fall from the space station to the planet's surface. Thankfully my prototype armor suit was able to keep me from not dying, falling from a great height like that, but I was badly injured, and I was swarmed by a bunch of repair droids. They're programmed to help with situations like a rescue but they were confused. They mistook my armor's energy frequencies as a part of me so they..." a tiny sob got caught in his throat from the memory as his shoulders sagged and he looked down at his hands. "-ha...thought I was a robot..."

He paused and looked up at her and a heavy silence fell between them. The very implications of what he said hung in the air. She said nothing but judging by his changed expression, which looked absolutely wounded, her face was betraying just how horrific she found this. Another not-quite-a-robot sigh.

"...I kept telling them to stop. I would black out at times, so I don't even remember how long I was being operated on. Even when my vocal cords weren't online yet, I was pleading for them to stop. They...left a big SQUISHY pile of my removed organs and skin and bone in a corner and still I was screaming at them to reverse it!"

Suddenly he slammed the palms of his hands into the wall and his voice turned into a harsh, metallic yell.

"AT ONE POINT THEY PULLED MY BRAIN OUT OF MY SKULL WHILE I WAS STILL CONSCIOUS!"

"Oh..." She wasn't sure what else to say beyond that. Sorry? Ouch? She wasn't sure if a friendly assuring pat on the back would do it in this situation either since he seemed very adverse to touch right now.

"I needed to talk to someone - besides Lawrence -and well, I knew what your spaceship looked like, figured, oh hey, might as well talk to an old friend!"

And climb into the spaceship uninvited through an airlock and mess with the programming for the lights so that he could surprise her in the cloak of darkness without the risk of her shooting him first (because who can blame her?) but he didn't mention that.

"That's why I'm here. To vent a little and finally tell you stuff I've been meaning to tell you! You know, before my mind snaps and I become a mindless creature of destruction with my new robot body."

Elaris stared at him, trying to decipher if that last part was a joke or an actual worry of his. Nefarious always did have a dry sense of humor. It didn't help like his smile looked absolutely terrifying.

"Like...?"

Another deep robotic breath. Did he have lungs? Did the repair bots keep some of his organ systems intact?

"I want you to quit the Galactic Rangers." he said, pressing the tips of his fingers together.

"Wait, what." was her immediate reply. The gruesome metal skeleton of her former science partner was going to give her career advice?

"Hear me out! I've been meaning to have this conversation with you for a while now after I left but, wouldn't you know it, I was tied up with work." The word "work" was doing a lot of heavy lifting in this conversation. He said it real casually, like the prison escape and the faking of his own death in order to join up with a criminal and start blowing up planets was just another blip on his resume.

"Elaris, I know how they're treating you. They gave you my old office after all. You know, the one that's just a glorified converted broom closet!" She winced, his words cutting deep. "I know exactly how they behave and I know for a fact that they just treat you like a doormat and like an automatic weapon dispenser! They call you a Galactic Ranger but you're not a part of their little friend group! They see you as a nerd, a passive little thing they can push around! You're not one of them!"

"I'm a little confused..." she started, saying the understatement of the century. She didn't get this patrol shift to get a pep talk from an undead robot after all. "You come onto my spaceship, back from the dead, all the flesh torn from your bones, but...instead of asking me to join you, get the recognition you truly deserve and have all your dreams come true by storming the galaxy side by side, yadda yadda, you...just want me to hand them a pink slip and leave?"

"Elaris, despite what it looks like, I'm not trying to sound like a lunatic here." he said, dragging his hand across his face.

"I just want you to get a better job than the one you have now! I don't want you to continue to be abused by those people - by QWARK - until the bitterness inside of you grows and grows until you snap and become just. Like. Me!"

"And I'll be honest - I don't want what happened to me to happen to you! LOOK AT ME!" he said, gesturing at himself.

She was about to respond with a retort that she was positive she wasn't going to land on a planet full of repair droids while wearing highly experimental armor that confuses them and they turn her into a robot in an incredibly gruesome and long surgical procedure, but Nefarious could see she was thinking just that and held up a hand, silencing her.

"Please....just get a desk job or a job working at a computer repair store. Anything where you don't have to work with Captain Qwark. He's using you the way he did me! And trust me, he's never going to stop! He's never going to change! He'll abuse you and think nothing of it because no one cares about people like us!"

"But I won't end up like you!" Elaris shouted back, their faces so close that they were nearly touching.

Nefarious's voice suddenly dropped to a normal speaking volume.

"How can you be so sure?"

Silence fell. She opened her mouth and then closed it again, withering under his gaze as he folded his hands underneath his chin and examined her. The worst part about it was that he didn't look smug or mocking. He just looked tired.

"Why do you even care?" she asked, dodging the question.

"Because I like you, Elaris. All the other losers in the Galactic Rangers can go end up in a black hole for all I care but I don't want you getting hurt!"

Elaris had to admit, she was a little stunned hearing that come out of his mouth. 'Well, chalk that up as one positive trait for Dr. Nefarious, he actually has the capacity to care about other people while he's going about trying to blow up other planets.' she thought to herself as she tried to decipher his concern as genuine or just an insane whim.

"That's all?" Elaris asked.

"That's all." he replied. Elaris couldn't help but make a little snort of disbelief in response, causing the robot to instantly be defensive. "What?"

"Oh nothing. Just a little amused that you look like the specter of death and climb into my spaceship after returning from the dead, emerging like a horrendous butterfly out of a fleshy mound of rotting flesh, one of the most wanted criminals in the entire galaxy, but you came into my spaceship to admit you still have feelings for me."

She immediately regretted saying that for two reasons. The first reason was that she realized that she shouldn't be making fun of the madman who had just been turned into a robot. The second reason was that caused Dr. Nefarious to start ranting very loudly, and that made Elaris realize that one of the side-effects of being turned into a robot was the loss of the ability to have an indoor voice.

"Yes, YES, it sounds crazy!" he screamed. "I sound crazy right now! That's the problem with this new robot body! Instead of being emotionless, like what you'd expect when you're transformed into a robot, it's like the exact opposite happened! All of my emotions have been intensified a thousand degrees! This worry became a paranoia! My hatred is now burning with an intensity of a thousand angry suns! My bitterness is like raging venom in my heart!"

"You have a heart still?"

"I DON'T KNOW!!! See? SEE? I'm SHOUTING! I'm MONOLOGUING! I don't MEAN to shout but then it just comes out ALL LOUD AND INTENSE AND GOES ON FOREVER aaaaaand oh GOD I am losing my mind aren't I?" His last vestiges of sanity - tiny and rapidly going extinct, but still there and doing a valiant effort to keep him from being totally lost to reason - suddenly halted his rant in mid-sentence, causing him to drag his hands across his face. It's been a week for Dr. Nefarious, where being hit in the face with a wrench by a Lombax was the least of his worries.

"-please tell me I don't look like a complete nutcase right now."

Elaris sucked in air through her teeth and looked away from him in embarrassment. "Uh...do you want the truth or a little white lie?" she asked.

"I don't know! Give me whatever makes me feel better!"

"You don't look like complete nutcase."

Nefarious narrowed his eyes at her as she smiled innocently back and he looked ready to say something when suddenly a very crusty, digitized version of the pop song "Your Eyes Are Like Quazars" started playing.

"Hang on." He pulled out a cell phone out of his belt - flip phone model - and held it to the closest thing on his metallic skull that could be called "an ear". He shot her a "I'm sorry I know this looks rude but this could be important" look at her as a very dignified voice rang out from the other line.

"I do hate to bother you, sir, but you might want to wrap up whatever it is you're doing to that Galactic Ranger-"

"We're just TALKING, Lawrence!"

"-right. Anyhoo, there is another patrol ship heading your way and I'd hate for your current plans of lying low for a couple months to plot out your next scheme of horrible vengeance to be ruined because you wanted to talk to your old girlfriend."

"SHE'S NOT-ugh, fine. FINE, I'm GOING!" he said, and hung the phone up with an undignified clack of the flip phone closing in-between two metal claws.

"Just think about what I said, Elaris!" he yelled dramatically while pointing at her as he shoved his phone away in his back pocket. She wasn't going to question why he had pockets as a robot. There were a lot of things about this situation she was just not going to question.

"I wouldn't do this if I didn't have this fear that you're going to walk the same path that I did! Call it weakness or the last remaining thread of my former organic self! ...or craziness. I dunno. I'm kinda playing it by ear at this point." he said, twirling a finger in the air, as he started to move his way towards the airlock.

"Wait, before you go-"

She reached out and grabbed his hand, and when he turned to glare at her, eyes filling the hallway with a harsh red light, Elaris briefly wondered if she made a horrible mistake and that this was going to be the moment where he snaps and uses his cold metal claws to claim his first victim in a gruesome robotic rampage. But then his expression softened and he just looked grumpy, the killer robot expression fading away.

"I know you're planning something! Just promise me that your next mad scientist-"

"-Vengeful-" he corrected.

"-Vengeful scientist scheme doesn't involve the mass murder of millions of innocent people like last time. Do something, I don't know," she gestured in the empty air as she looked for the right word, "-nonlethal this time? I'm asking for the bare minimum from you. Please?"

"Why Elaris, I'm shocked." he said, placing his one free hand on his chest. "I'm surprised you didn't aim for something higher like 'quit being evil' or 'turn yourself in'. You could be saving the whole galaxy right now by stopping me!"

"You asked for something smaller, so I'm asking for something smaller. I'll keep what you said in mind. At the very least, I'm going to ask for an actual office rather than the broom closet the next time I come into work. I'll quit if they-" The 'they' meaning 'Qwark' in this case, "-start pushing me around again, I promise."

"If they push you around, push back. Push back until they bleed." he hissed.

There was something in that statement that reminded her of a day that happened at Galactic Rangers Headquarters two years ago. Dr. Nefarious - the Nefarious that still had flesh and skin - was busy stirring his coffee and talking to his trainee Elaris about the new episode of Annihilation Nation when Captain Qwark 'accidentally' bumped him while walking past, spilling it on his shirt. This caused Nefarious to throw down his coffee mug down on the ground and yell "It's a good thing we're on the same side or else you'd be DEAD, Qwark! DEAD!"

He quit several days later to start plotting an evil scheme that involved atomizing all of Aleero City.

"I will." she said with that comforting memory still hanging about in her brain. "Thanks for still looking out for me." And with those words, she let go of his arm and let the supervillain go.

He stood there, looking like he had something more to say, but then he decided to turn around and skitter into the shadows, disappearing from her sight. There was the sound of an airlock opening in the distance and then he was gone, disappearing like a bad nightmare.

Two minutes later, Elaris was able to get the lights working again in her little spaceship just as Cora radioed in and asked if everything was alright. Elaris cheerfully lied and said "sure, everything's fine, nothing's happened since you last checked in, lighting's a bit funky but otherwise nothing new!" and then she was alone again, still staring at Umbris.

As she sat back in the driver's seat and stared out at the endless sea of stars and planets stretching out in front of her, the rest of her patrol shift weighing down on her shoulders, she had to give voice to a lingering thought in her head.

"If this is just a really weird dream I'm going to be so mad."

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

Back in the current makeshift lair of Dr. Nefarious (a repurposed garage situated on the surface of planet Umbris littered with the broken corpses of several dozen repair droids), the vengeful scientist-turned-robot was brooding dramatically in a chair as his butler Lawrence polished him. He sat there, hand propping up his skeletal chin, and sighed. Giving an old friend some helpful life advice never turned out the way you wanted it to.

"So how did it go, Sir?" Lawrence asked in a tone of voice that implied that he really couldn't care less.

"I asked her to quit the Galactic Rangers, and in return, she asked me to not kill anyone in my next evil scheme." he said nonchalantly as his butler sprayed him with cleanser and started wiping his glass dome of a head. "I think she's worried about me, Lawrence!"

He didn't say it out loud, but he was worried for Elaris too. Maybe he should've asked her to join him after all. He saw the news articles coming out involving the Deplanetizer incident. All the praise was aimed at Ratchet and Qwark with nothing mentioning Elaris. He was certain that she had a hand in moving the entire space station. At least if she was working by his side, two vengeful scientists, both outcasts from the Galactic Rangers, she'd get the recognition she'd truly deserve!

The irony of him plotting out her delightfully evil future after warning her not to become evil like him didn't even cross his mind.

"Did you tell her 'why don't fret, my dear, my next evil scheme merely involves turning all organic lifeforms into robots with a giant non-planet destroying laser'?"

Dr. Nefarious laughed maniacally.

"Of course not!" he yelled, springing from his chair and knocking Lawrence aside. He was practically strutting like a peacock, his feet crunching as he stepped on discarded robot parts, as he marched his way towards a wall, where a giant red button just waited for him to slam his fist into.

He cackled in glee as the room was suddenly illuminated with the hologram of a massive, planet-sized device, the latest of evil concoctions pulled from his brain, now converted into wires and chips by the cruel hand of fate.

He called it the Biobliterator.

"I want that part to be a surprise!"

---

END

#ratchet and clank #elaris #Dr Nefarious #Ratchet and Clank Movie #turquoisephoenix tells a story #Dr. Nefarious #Fanfic #Lawrence #this takes place in the reboot universe #Implied gore #some headcanoning going on here in regards to how Nefarious got turned into a robot

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starstruck-xavier · 4 years ago

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Homesick

last night i ran out of conditioner before shampoo. so i wrote this hhfgjfhgjfd

ao3 || wattpad || bthb masterpost || fanfiction masterpost

words: 1956 ships: implied LAMP warnings: none, just lots of sadness! bthb prompt: loneliness fandom: sanders sides

summary: Why does the conditioner bottle always run out before the shampoo bottle? Logan huffs a sigh and continues to shake the bottle in his hand, silently interrogating it, trying to get as much out of it as possible, but all that’s left is already in his other hand, outstretched, easily containing the hair product that fits snug in there despite the tremors that always torture his muscles like a soft breeze that constantly annoys you rather than caressing you gently, rushing through your tree branch arms and blowing your hair into your face. Your unconditioned hair. In which Logan is a (figurative) tree trying to survive in the (figurative) desert.

X - finished, O - work in progress @badthingshappenbingo

Why does the conditioner bottle always run out before the shampoo bottle?

Logan huffs a sigh and continues to shake the bottle in his hand, silently interrogating it, trying to get as much out of it as possible, but all that’s left is already in his other hand, outstretched, easily containing the hair product that fits snug in there despite the tremors that always torture his muscles like a soft breeze that constantly annoys you rather than caressing you gently, rushing through your tree branch arms and blowing your hair into your face. Your unconditioned hair.

He mentally curses the manufacturers for not making the bottles at least translucent. If he could see the levels where the physical limits of the product sit inside their containers, maybe he could work towards having them run out at the same time. Alas, now he has to use just the shampoo for a few days, his hair coarse and rough until he has an excuse to buy both bottles again. A distant friend’s sardonic voice in his head suggests just using the rest of the three-quarters-empty shampoo bottle in one go; Logan exhales through his nose, barely a laugh on the outside as he works the pitiful lump of conditioner through his roots.

Ever since he moved away for work, Logan has felt like his tree roots haven’t been the same. Parts of him were cut away in the uprooting process, left behind, useless, lifeless. The grass that always surrounded him and kept him company is back there, spreading itself back over the mound of dirt that’s left to replace him. If he stays here long enough, his roots will readjust again in the desert sand and he’ll be stuck here forever. The tremors increase at that thought, an awful jerk of the arms, the breeze teetering on a gale that threatens to pull the dying leaves from his head, losing even more of himself.

It takes a little too long to realise that the feeling of leaves being torn away is merely him subconsciously pulling at his own hair, his fingers digging into his skull with hopes that he could crack it open and switch off his brain. Another sigh escapes him as he brings his hands down to hug himself loosely, and he hears a shrill but soft voice catching on the drum of water hitting his back, telling him that sighing gives you wrinkles.

Logan wishes he could hear that voice for real, in person, muffled into his shirt or whispered against his lips or exclaimed excitedly from a different room, just any proof that they can both be physically together again. He doesn’t want to think about the muffled sobbing, the whispered goodbyes or the excited helloes that crinkle in his computer speakers from millions of lightyears away, just reminding him of how far away they are. His other friends’ words and shouts and gasps and cries and heartbeats all too sound distant from all the way up there, in his brain, distorted and faked up by the mirage of memory, but this one specific person just might spur him to quit all of this, move back there.

And God, does he want to.

If only life was that simple. If only Logan could call his boss, say he doesn’t want to do this anymore and live out the rest of his days with the ones he loves most, but life doesn’t always work out. The inspirational, empty, cursive-written words in frames that litter every local furniture shop he wanders through say to live every day like it’s your last, that home is where the heart is, to make your life the best experience ever, but how? These signs don’t come with an instruction manual on how to go about these things, only how to hang it on a wall so you can look at it every now and again and smile at the aesthetics, the way the letters curve around each other and how the display compliments the kitchen cabinets, the meaning not even discernible because the cursive is so hard to understand. As Logan tilts his head back into the shower stream to bid farewell to that last pump of conditioner, he faintly pictures the face of a friend who would jump at the chance to buy another one of those signs.

The sardonic voice comes back with a witty quip. Logan smiles to himself.

His branches creak in the wind that continues to shake him around as he steps out of the shower and grabs an old towel, not caring which one, just hoping that he can scrub with it at his skin hard enough to peel the scratchy bark away and reduce himself to what he really is. Human, small, mortal, confined to the constant ticking of time much like any other creature, but with a much shorter lifespan than something as amazing and significant as a tree. His arms jerk again and that sardonic voice grows soft and endearingly grumbly, telling him to breathe in. The leaves on his head susurrate and crinkle with the towel absorbing the extra rainfall from them.

The hair feels coarse and rough already, deprived of the usual amount of conditioner that he would use if the manufacturers had made the bottles translucent and made his life a little more bearable.

Usually, Logan would make calls from the cellphone, but this time it seems to be calling out to him, temping him to walk over to the table where it sits and make the call, say “I quit” and be happy. Why is that never easy? He fleetingly considers taking note of that question to ask his therapist, but then remembers where he is.

Half the world away.

Suddenly, he just feels so homesick. A crushing, awful, guttural loneliness sinks into his bones and grinds down every single one of them into a fine powder, scattered across the grey carpet like ashes in the wind that whips around him relentlessly and has him shaking so hard that he’s sure he’ll pass out like this. Tears suddenly drip onto the table, sugary sweet sucrose escaping from the phloem in his roots, mixing with the water from his xylem, those hollow, empty tubes made of nothing but dead cells powered by living ones. Dead cells inside him, having exhausted themselves, all for him to mope about and feel this dreadful melancholy creak and snap inside him like a discarded twig, making him tremble even more, reduced to a sobbing mess, his body on the floor but his mind back home.

Home is where the heart is, a theatrical voice floats in the wind akin to sycamore seeds, twirling about like ballerinas. Perhaps that’s why he’s been feeling so empty and depressed lately; he left his heart behind when he left. It’s still at home, galaxies away yet only on the other side of the tiny, pathetic little earth at the same time.

A familiar ringtone shakes Logan out of his head, leaves rustling as he picks himself up off the floor to look at the phone screen. He answers the video call, not bothering to wipe the sucrose tears from his face, adorned with tiny little world-weary wrinkles from a lifetime of sighing, and his three favourite people in the world are looking back at him. They all remind Logan of individual flowers, their soft, youthful, conditioned flower petals sprouting into different styles atop their crowns whilst his own leaves hang limply with moisture, wet from the shower yet still dehydrated of proper care and gentle hands running through it while he quietly dozes in their arms. If only he could do that now.

The one on the right is like a rose; a bold red, passion for romance, loud, boisterous acts of affection that Logan could never fail to shy away from. Even the rose thorns are only reserved for the people who try to hurt his loved ones, something rarely shown but exceptionally beautiful in its own way. Then, to the left, is a purple zinnia, enduring and long-lasting despite the hardships he’s been through, a calming violet that symbolises his transformation from a reserved brick wall to a soft and loving human. In the middle, however, is the most beautiful blue forget-me-not that Logan could ever lay eyes on. He’s full of memories - a string of fairy lights with blurry, candid polaroids pegged across, captioned with words that Logan could read again and again. The blue in his eyes shines like a polaroid lens through his circular glasses and Logan briefly registers him asking if he’s okay.

Logan tells them everything. He misses them, his roots have been left behind and now he’s stuck in this desert, dehydrated and sunburned. If he were a cactus rather than a tree, brittle and spiky on the outside so no one can get too close, he’d be able to survive all the way out here, but his softened insides are crying out for home, and he just feels so bad and wants hugs from them because he can’t just ask for hugs at his new workplace, that’s unprofessional, and he doesn’t even have any friends here, so, so, lonely, lonely, lonely.

Their voices sound like the monsoon season. They sink into his roots, revive his xylem and provide a little colour to his dying leaves. Suggestions make their way to his ears, the main ones being that if he really isn’t enjoying his work he should come home, that they’ll be here for him, the gate unlocked so he can be welcomed home whenever he’s ready. Somehow, hearing it from them makes the idea feel a little less insane.

So, around an hour later, with a fond smile pulling at his lips as he waves goodbye to them with a promise of return, he hops from one call to another, like sycamore seeds twirling in the wind with a newfound determination to plant himself back at home, where he belongs.

The phone rings once, twice.

Only another hour later, as he sprawls out underneath the plain, white bedsheets, it really sinks in. Within a matter of days, Logan will be catching a plane home, granted his wishes after divulging to his boss just how much his mental health has deteriorated over the months. Upon hearing the news, the gale shaking his branches around ceases again into a simple breeze, still there, still adding kinetic energy to every single atom in his body, but it’s not so bad anymore. His leaves are still shaken and falling out, clattering faintly against the pillows and the mattress underneath him from the stress damage, but that shrill yet soft voice sounds again in his head, telling him that in due time, when he returns to his deep blue, galaxy-adorned bedsheets, the leaves will grow back with new life, a beautiful, healthy green.

While he packs his things, he makes a point to leave the quarter-full shampoo bottle in the bathroom alongside its fully drained friend. When he returns home he’ll go to the local grocery store, greet the manager like he’s always done upon visiting, and pick up two bottles, one labelled shampoo, one labelled conditioner.

Because even if the bottles are opaque, it’ll feel so, so much better to be able to fill his entire hand with product until it nearly spills over in his excitement to be where he belongs again, that part of him doesn’t even care that he may run out of conditioner again before his shampoo.

When he has his soulmates with him, the question of why the conditioner always runs out before the shampoo will be the last thought at the front of his head.

#badthingshappenbingo #bad things happen bingo #sanders sides #sanders sides fanfic #sanders sides fanfiction #logan angst #logan sanders #ts logan #xavier's fanfiction

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mca-attack21 · 6 years ago

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New Earth

This imagine is based off of Season two episode two with the 10th Doctor. This is my Masterlist!

You and the Doctor had stopped on Earth so you could gather the last of your belongings and move 100% into the TARDIS. It was a big step, but you were ready. Watching him regenerate, and knowing in that moment that there was nothing that you wouldn’t do for him, that you loved him in a way that you had never loved anyone before, it made the choice an easy one. New face or not, he was still your Doctor.

After you put the last of your belongings into your room, you went to meet him at the Console. “Where are we off to this time?”

“Somewhere farther that we have ever been before,” he beamed as he started hitting buttons.

When you stepped out of the the TARDIS you were greeted by a view that looked like something from the Jetson’s. “This is the year five billion and twenty three,” the Doctor declared, “We are in the galaxy M87 and this is New Earth.”

“It’s just- I mean it’s-” you were at a loss for words, laughing at how utterly fascinating it all was.

“Incredible? Fascinating? Mind-bobbling?” he teased.

“All of the above and more somehow.” The world around you seemed more vivid than anything you had every seen. You felt connected to it, invigorated by it, “I am never going to get used to this am I?”

“Not if I can help it,” the Doctor beamed.

You turned and took the Doctor’s arms in yours,“Seriously though, I can’t even wrap my head around the fact that this is my life now. I love it, all of it, these places, the adventures, you, it’s perfect.”

“You too, now come on,” he said before pulling you away from the TARDIS. He stopped and spread his coat out on the ground and the two of you laid there and took in the view as the doctor started explaining the history to you. “So the year five billion, the sun expands, and the Earth gets roasted,” he recalls.

“Wasn’t that our first date?” you interrupt smiling at him.

He nodded, “Anyways, the plant is gone all rocks and dust. But the human race lives on, all spread out across the stars. As soon as the Earth burns up they become nostalgic and create New Earth. And here we are in New New York,” he continued, “But strictly speaking, it’s the fifteenth New York since the original. Which makes it New-New-New-New-New-New-New-New-New-New-New-New-New-New-New-New York” he rambled on earning a laugh from you. “What?” he asked.

“Your just so happy, it’s great,” you answered.

“New-New Doctor,” he replied returning your laughter.

“So shall we go visit this New-New York? The city so astonishing they named it twice?” you asked getting up from his coat.

“Well I thought we might go there first. It’s a hospital and someone has summoned me there,” the Doctor explained showing the message he received.

“Well, if duty calls,” you said pulling the Doctor behind you this time.

The two of you made it to the hospital and the Doctor revealed to you that he didn’t much care for hospitals. You thought it funny that a man such as he who faced all of the dangers that he had faced would have anything against hospitals. But then again everyone had their share of fears both rational and irrational. At least he hadn’t told you he was afraid of spiders. You looked around the hospital as he went on about all the things that had been curable by then. You stopped when you noticed that the nurses were all cats. The Doctor called to you from the elevator but the door closed before you could get in.

“They have a second lift, What floor?” you called after him.

“Floor 26, and watch out for the disinfectant,” he answered.

“The what?” you questioned.

“The disinfectant,” he tried again.

“The what?” you shouted back.

“The dis- oh you’ll figure it out,” he said quietly to himself.

When you got off the Elevator you didn’t see the doctor. In fact, it looked like you were in the basement. Not where you were supposed to be. “Y/n, please follow me,” this creature said as it walked away.

“Is this ward 26?” you asked following him cautiously. He led you into a small room that had a projector playing a film of a woman. The moment she spoke you recognized the voice.

“Peek-a-boo,” Cassandra said revealing herself. She was the ‘last human’ if you could even call her that. She was nothing more than a flattened out face at this point.

“What is this Cassandra? How are you even still alive?” you demanded already beginning to back away searching for a way out.

“You mean after you murdered me? My brain survived. And the skin that was torn apart was taken from the front of my body. This piece is from the back” she explained.

“So you’re talking out your…” you couldn’t even finish before bursting out into laughter. “What’s the point of this Cassandra?” you demanded.

“Oh you will see,” she whispered.

Suddenly you were held in place by a force coming from the wall, “I can’t move, Cassandra let me go!” you yelled as you tried to break free.

“Chip activate the Psycho-graft” she ordered her slave. He obeyed her, “bye-bye trampoline and hello beautiful body,” she snarled

And with that she took over your body controlling your mind, She took a moment to try to get used to the new physical form. She then accessed what memories she could. This is when she realized what a mistake she had made. The man you had been with earlier was the Doctor. Just as she was trying to figure out how to approach the situation your phone started to ring.

“What is this?” she asked.

“It is a primitive communication device,” Chip explained

She answered and it was the Doctor, “Y/n, where are you?” he asked.

Casandra tried to fake your accent, “I got turned around in the elevator, but I’ll be up in a jiffy sir.”

“You’ll never guess! I’m with the face of Boe. Remember him?” he asked.

She laughed nervously, “Of course I do that big old...boat race...thing.”

“I’ve got to go, see you in a moment,” he said distractedly as he noticed the Duke of Manhattan had been magically cured of a disease that wasn’t due to be cured for another thousand years. When he saw you he grabbed you and explained that something was going on. He went through the hall on a case by case basis explaining that medicine was way advance, too advance. He wanted to go behind the scenes and figure out what was behind this. “Cause if they’ve got the best medicine in the world, why keep it such a secret?” he finished.

“I can’t Adam and Eve it,” Cassandra answered trying to play the part as Y/n.

“What...what’s with the voice?” he questioned looking at you.

“You know, New Earth- New Y/n,” she said

“Well I can talk, New-New Doctor,” he joked.

But his face fell when you didn’t seem to pick up on it. Cassandra noticed this and threw yourself at him. “Terminal’s this way,” she said hoping that would satisfy his incessant need for answers.

The Doctor walked over to one of the computers and looked through it. Everything seemed pretty straight forward. “There has to be something I’m not seeing,” he muttered.

“When I was down stairs, the Cat-Nurse-Nun things were talking about an intensive care unit, but it isn’t there,” Cassandra added.

“Good work,” he said

“Why hide a whole department? It’s got to be there somewhere. Search the subframe,” she ordered.

“And what if the subframe is locked?” he asked pulling out his sonic screwdriver.

“Then try the installation protocol,” She answered.

“Yeah, of course. Why didn’t I think of that?” he mumbled under his breath with a slight roll of his eyes. He then unlocked a secret room where there were thousands of pods. He used his sonic screwdriver to open one, only then did he realize what was going on.

“I’m so sorry,” he spoke to the thing inside.

“What is that? It’s so disgusting,” Cassandra asked.

The Doctor closed the door before opening another to confirm his suspicions.

“What disease is that?” Cassandra asked

“All of them. They have been infected with every known disease,” he answered.

“What about us? Are we safe?” Cassandra asked.

“The air’s sterile, just don’t touch them,” he answered before closing the door.

“How many patients are there?” she asked looking at all of the pods.

“They aren’t patients” the Doctor stated.

“But they are sick,” she tried.

“They were born to be sick. They are meant to be sick. The exist to be sick. No wonder the sisterhood has a cure to everything. They’ve built the ultimate research laboratory with human lab rats,” he fumed.

“Why don’t they just die?” Cassandra asked insensitively.

A Cat-Nun-Nurse spoke up, “It’s for the greater good. The sisterhood has sworn to help.”

“What? By killing?” the Doctor spat.

“But they are not real people. They are specially grown. They have no proper existence,” she explained.

“What’s the turnover? A thousand a day? Thousand the next? Thousand the next? How many thousands? For how many years? HOW MANY?” the Doctor screamed.

“Mankind needed us. They came to this planet with so many illnesses, we couldn’t cope. We did try. WE started with clone meat and then biocattle. But the results were too slow. The race would have been completely wiped out. So the sisterhood grew it’s own flesh. That’s all they are. Flesh. Think about all the humans out there, healthy and happy, because of us.”

“But if it is because of this then their life is worthless,” the Doctor argued.

“Who are you to decide that?” she questioned.

“I am the Doctor. And if you don’t like it-if you want to take it to a higher authority, there isn’t one. It stops with me,” he bellowed.

Cassandra spoke up, “Just to confirm, none of the humans in the city actually know about this, do they?”

“We thought it best not to….” she started, but the Doctor had had enough.

“Hold on. In some sick way, I can understand the bodies, and I can understand your vows, but the one thing I can’t understand is- what have you done to Y/n?” he questioned.

“I don’t know what you mean?” she returned.

“I am being very, very calm here. And you want to be aware of that. Very. Very Calm. And The only reason I’m being so very, very calm is because I know that the brain is a very delicate thing. Whatever you have done to Y/n’s head I want it reversed,” he explained forcefully.

“We haven’t done anything,” she said.

“Really Doctor I’m perfectly fine,” Cassandra tried.

“These people are dying and Y/n would care,” he continued.

“All right Clever Clogs. Smarty-pants. Lady-killer,” Cassandra said using your hands to mess up the Doctor’s hair.

“What happened to you?” he asked more to himself than anything.

Cassandra spoke up again, “I knew something was going on in this hospital. But I needed this body and your mind to figure it out.”

“Who are you then?” he asked

She leaned up to his ear before seductively whispering, “The Last Human.”

“Cassandra?” he asked

“Yes. Now wake up and smell the perfume,” she said before knocking him out.

When he woke up he was in one of the infected pods. “Cassandra, Let me out!” he demanded.

“Aren’t you lucky there was one pod open. Standing room only,” she chimed.

“You stole Y/n’s body” he said.

“You know Doctor I wouldn’t be so worried about her. Because I have thought of this moment for a very long time. I’ve come up with a thousand ways to kill you. And now that is exactly what I’ve got. One thousand diseases. They pump the patients full every ten minutes which means you’ve got about three left. Enjoy,” she taunted.

“Just let her go Cassandra,” he pleaded.

“I will. Just as soon as I find someone younger and less common. Then I’ll junk her with the waste. Now hush-a-bye Doctor. It’s showtime,” she stated getting ready to watch him meet his maker.

Just then two of the Cat-Nun-Nurses appeared and threatened Cassandra. She called out plan B and chip went on to pull down a lever that released the patients on the floor. The Doctor was released and went after Cassandra. “What ever you do don’t let them touch you” he warned, grabbing your hand and pulling you away from the action. Cassandra soon took the lead and led to a room. Now she/you and the Doctor were trapped.

“What are we going to do now?” she asked.

“Well for starters, you are going to leave Y/n. Because that psycho graft has been banned on every civilized planet. You are literally compressing her to death,” the Doctor shouted.

“But I’ve got nowhere to go. My original skin is dead,” she whined.

“Not my problem. You can float around in the sky for all that I care. Now get out. Give her back to me,” he demanded.

So that is what she did. She left your body and went straight into his. You stumbled forward- your head was pounding. You watched as Cassandra flaunted the Doctor. Just then the door burst open. The infected zombie-like people started towards you.

“What do we do?” Cassandra cried.

“Go up the ladder,” you answered. She pushed you out of the way racing for the ladder. You followed closely behind. The two of you were nearing the top and were being closely followed. “You have to get out of him so he can figure something out,” you called up to her.

“You have to get out of him,” she mocked, “god it was tedious inside your head. Hormone city.”

“Cassandra listen to me. We are going to die if you don’t let him have control,” you reasoned.

When you got to the elevator shaft Cassandra had no idea how to open it. You told her to use the sonic screwdriver and when she couldn’t figure it out she forced herself back into you so the Doctor could swoop in and save the day. But he refused to open it until she left you again. This left Cassandra no choice but to inhabit one of the zombie bodies. The Doctor quickly opened the elevator shaft, “Nice to have you back,” he said offering you his hand. At the last possible second Cassandra entered your body again knocking you to the ground.

“Last warning Cassandra,” he growled.

“The women was so lonely. Inside her head. She just wanted to be held. All their lives they have never been touched,” she muttered.

The Doctor helped her off the ground and led her into the next room. It was the ward where the Face of Boe was earlier. He had figured it out he knew how to cure everyone. He started to grab every bag of antibiotics he could find. “ What are you doing?” Cassandra asked.

“I’m being the Doctor” he said before hooking something up in the empty elevator shaft and testing it. “Come on Cassandra you’re so eager to stay alive, why don’t you live a little?” he asked.

She had no intention of doing so, but the infected had started to enter the room it was her only choice so she jumped on his back and the two shot down the elevator shaft. The Doctor then mixed all of the medicine together. He used ran in through the sanitation system and lured them in after him. Soon everyone had been cured.

The Doctor took Cassandra back upstairs. Now that everything had been figured out he wanted you back. But before he could do that he had remembered the Face of Boe. He went to him and had a telepathic conversation. The face revealed that the Doctor inspired him and that he was no longer ready to die. The Doctor asked about the secret, the whole reason he was here in the first place. But the Face of Boe revealed that they would meet again. A third and final time. With that he beamed away.

“And now, for you. I want you to leave that body. You need to go Cassandra, you’ve lived long enough,” he said.

“I don’t want to die.”

“No one ever does.”

“Mistress- I kept myself safe. For you,” Chip came in.

“A body and a volunteer!” Cassandra exclaimed.

“Don’t you dare. He deserves a life of his own,” the Doctor warned.

“It would be an honor,” Chip replied. And with that she left you and went into him.

“Oh! Are you alright?” The Doctor lunged to catch you as you stumbled forward about to faceplant onto the floor. He slowly helped you back to your feet and let you go only for you to nearly fall again. “Y/n, are you okay?” he asked as he guided you carefully over to one of the beds.

“Yeah, I think so,” you answered slowly keeping your eyes shut to keep out the harsh light. When you did open them you were met with his, which were filled with concern. You smiled up at him, “Hello.”

“Hello, welcome back!” he greeted as he pulled out his sonic screwdriver and checked you over. “You might feel weak for a bit, but that is perfectly normal. No long term damage, you’ll be fine after a good night’s rest,” he explained.

“Oh look at me I’m nothing more that a walking Doodle,” Cassandra complained.

“Come on Cassandra you can’t stay in there I won’t let you. I can take you to the city they can build you a skin tack,” the Doctor urged

“As lovely as that would be I am afraid we don’t have time Chip is only a half life and even now he is failing,” she stated before falling forward.

“His heart is racing so, I’m dying. But that’s okay,” she conceeded.

“Come on, there is one last thing that I can do,” he said before helping her up. He took her into the TARDIS and took her back to the night of the video, She went to herself and was able to tell her that she was beautiful before dying. The Doctor watched it play out and then returned to you.

“So how are you doing now?” he asked as he re-entered the TARDIS.

“My head hurts a little, but I’ll live,” you answered.

He placed his hands on your temples and asked, “May I?” You nodded and then felt a tingling sensation and the headache was gone.

“What was that?” you asked.

“I removed the leftover pressure from the psycho-graph,” he explained, “Seriously though, are you alright? I know what is like to have someone in your head. To feel trapped inside your own body having to watch someone else control you. And it’s not easy,” he said sitting beside you.

“I’m fine Doctor, I promise. But if at any point I am anything less than fine, you will be the first to know,” you answered.

“Good that, now off to bed with you,” he said kissing the top of your head.

#dw imagine #dw x reader #DW imagines #DW #doctor who #doctor who fanfic #doctor who x reader #doctor who imagines #doctor who imagine #10th doctor #10th doctor x reader #10th doctor imagine #10th doctor imagines #tenth doctor #tenth doctor x reader #tenth doctor imagine #tenth doctor imagines

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averagescribbles · 5 years ago

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when we see the sun again ~ part i

pairing ~ Winter Soldier!Bucky x OFC

summary ~ Anastasia Kolensky has lived in a perpetual cycle of training, dancing, and going on missions for as long as she can remember. When a new group appears in their complex, she and the girls of the Red Room have to decide what to make of the “Winter Soldiers”.

warnings ~ mentions of violence, seduction, slow burn, this has a ridiculous amount of exposition, please bear with me

a/n ~ This won’t really follow MCU cannon because it was written before The Black Widow movie came out, this will be a mix of what hints of knowledge I have and some aspects from the comics, this will be a pretty dark version of the Red Room, I don’t know why the paragraph spacing is weird it’s making my OCD crazy, I promise I’ll fix it when I figure it out haha

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Anastasia was a dancer. It was visible in the picturesque line her body made standing idle, the way she seemed to float above the ground with every step, the quick steps of her feet between her opponents’.

The Red Room didn’t need to train her to be attractive. She was a natural enigma that drew the attention of any man that caught sight of her into curious infatuation. Maybe it was the way she held herself, with perfect posture but shy enough to keep her eyes cast down, her cheeks flushing pink when they complimented her. Maybe it her slender body that hid years of training and muscles gained from ballet which piqued their interest. Perhaps it was the peculiar galaxy held within her eyes, green and brown and blue and gray framed by long strands of her thick dark hair.

The other girls envied her; she never needed to spread her legs to get men to spill their little secrets. Just the thought of getting to hold her or press their lips to hers drove men to do the strangest things, their judgement clouded by herr.

She could hold a gun to a man’s head and instead of struggling to escape, he would just stand mesmerized, wondering how something so beautiful could have led him to his last breath. She would give an apologetic smile, the gun would make a familiar click, and he would see his life flash through his eyes in the green and blue and brown and gray of hers.

She would wipe the blood of her hands, staining herself red with only one thought. Let him be the last one.

What she wouldn’t give to go back, back before she woke up in a cold white room with only one code that’s existed as a constant heartbeat in her mind since then, 211908, 211908, 211908. Back to a time she didn’t have a fragment of a memory of. What she wouldn’t do to save her fallen sisters that stained the room a sickening shade of scarlet.

But every mission she’d return, report back with enough intelligence to complete her weekend. The Headmistress, beaming with pride at her success, would hand her a pair of handcuffs and opened the door to a room full of beds. Anastasia finished early, she earned her twelve hours of rest.

Her exhaustion would overcome her and she would collapse into her bed, barely able to click the handcuffs against her wrist.

The girls’ schedules were intense. On Mondays through Thursdays, they worked on their individual missions from 8pm to 3pm, and they come back to the ballet for two shows from 5pm to 9pm. Every Thursday morning, they received new teams for the weekend after scrimmaging before they leave to wrap up their own missions. They move into shifts at midnight that night. Twelve hours of gathering intelligence, practicing combat, working on team missions, training in dance, and finally, twelve hours of blessed sleep.

It wasn’t as horrible as it sounded. The cycle was a comforting pattern for Anastasia, keeping busy that often helped distract her from the fact that the beds in the room had decreased in number throughout the years. Any moment her mind wasn’t occupied, images of limp limbs and red blood were forced into her vision again. Twelve hours of sleep was enough to keep her strong for the weekend, and it was short enough to prevent her from laying awake at night, unable to free herself from the clutches of her mind or the handcuffs that kept her physically tied to her bed.

“Anya.”

A whisper turned her attention to the bed beside her, where Vlada was laying awake.

“Hmm?”

“You’re awake, I know,” Vlada said, softly chuckling. “Your breath may be even, but that only fools Headmistress Countonya, not me.”

“I know,” Anastasia whispered back, smiling. Vlada was the best trained in the Red Room. Ever since the beginning, she had always been ranked first. Not only was she a combat mastermind, but she had complete control of her feminine wiles and could easily tell people’s thoughts just by watching them for a few moments, something that has kept Anastasia always in close second with her.

“You are thinking about something. Did that German man put up a fight? Or,” her eyes widened dramatically, “did he put his hands up your skirt?”

“That’s not really funny,” Anastasia said. “If he had, and he did not, Countonya would kill me.”

“They’re probably saving you for some big important man,” Vlada said. “A government official, perhaps? Or maybe you will become the wife of some American spy and send back intel in stereotypical Christmas cards with two happy children and a white picket fence in every picture.”

Anya shook her head, unable to hold back some amusement at her dear friend’s wild propositions. “I don’t have a clue what they want to do with me. I’m guessing your man wanted you in bed?”

“It was either me or Nikolina. I could tell he was a rough man with no boundaries. After she lost her rank to Helena on Thursday, she needed a break.”

Vlada shrugged it off, but the dark reality of not having control of their own bodies was too familiar to all of the girls in the Red Room. If told, they would immediately destroy their feet for dance, overexert themselves during missions, spread their legs to any man, and even kill each other. Actions once considered horrible were not foreign to them anymore.

They lay in silence for a few moments, listening to the comforting breath of the other eighteen girls fast asleep in the room. There was nothing unusual, they were just short thirty girls that had trained alongside them but disappeared slowly over the years.

Anastasia turned to look at Vlada and knew the same question haunted her each night.

“Where did the others go?”

———

Sunlight spilling into the room from the small gaps in the curtain woke the girls up. A jingle of keys approaching in the hallway was followed by the cream of the door opening.

“Good morning, girls,” Headmistress Countonya said, beginning to unlock each one from their beds.

“Good morning,” replied an chorus of voices. Some girls were sitting up in bed and stretching, others buried their faces back into their pillows.

“It’s an important day today,” Countonya said, finally freeing Anastasia from her handcuffs. “For the first time, another group of exceptional soldiers is joining us. You will not be working on your missions today. They’re arriving today, and I believe it will be courteous to let them meet all of you.”

This shattered the foggy morning haze in the room. Anyone outside of the Red Room was kept at least an arm’s length away. They only knew each other for support, and there was no saying what bringing a new group of people into their world would entail. Their fifty girls had already been shaved down to twenty. Would the addition of more people result in the loss of more of their own girls?

Nervous thoughts were scattered through the room as the girls piled on their clothes. On went lacy underclothes, mostly out of habit for most of the girls. Out came black shirts and skirts and debates on whether or not to wear heels. They crowded around the mirrors in the bathroom, putting on makeup and pinning their hair into place.

Unlike the other girls, Anastasia was done getting ready in a few short minutes. She simply threw on a black blouse and the girls’ standard skirt. A few strokes of a brush was enough to do her hair, which fell in natural waves to her waist. She slipped on a pair of flats and walked out of the room, passing the full and noisy bathroom on her way out with a smile.

Headmistress Countonya was speaking with a group of people, four men and a woman. Two were very large, all brawn and pure muscle. They held themselves high, above everyone else, but Anastasia noted their toes awkwardly fidgeting in their shoes, a telltale sign of a lack of understanding in the conversation they were in.

The third man was slender and tall, he almost had the body of a dancer. He was obviously the brains of the group, considering the fact that he was the only one directly talking to Countonya.

The woman, blonde and straight-backed, held her arms crossed and was shooting dirty looks at the third man, who never once met her gaze.

The final man stood outside of the circle, barely sighing hearing distance of their hushed tones. He had icy blue eyes, which gazed around the room in thought.

Anya suddenly felt her stomach drop. She knew she recognized him from somewhere. Was he involved in one of her missions? Was he a witness she didn’t realize she needed to fix? It didn’t matter where she knew him from- what scared her the most was that she couldn’t remember who he was at all.

Just as his eyes landed on hers, the woman judged him back to attention, and the break in stillness resulted in Countonya looking back at Anastasia.

The Headmistress lost her large smile during the brief interruption but immediately put it back on, walking gracefully over to Anastasia, arms outstretched.

“This is Anastasia,” she said, her hands landing on Anya’s shoulder and arm. “She’s one of our best, and the most excellent dancer we have.”

The five murmured greetings in return to Countonya’s introduction.

“Now,” she said, turning back to the girl and raising a hand to straighten a lock of her hair. “I need you to go get everyone so we can properly introduce ourselves to the Winter Soldiers here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she responded before immediately turning on her heels to go.

She swiftly ran back to the girls’ room, her heart beating faster than it should while she tried to search her brain for how she could possibly know the man. Somehow, all she was drawing was a blank. There was nothing but their brief encounter that just happened in her mind.

Anastasia shook herself free of the worry, telling herself there was time to discover the truth later. She stuck her head into the doorway, the girls putting on their stockings and tossing shoes around inside.

Before she could open her mouth to say anything, Ekaterina was already responding.

“Jesus, Anya,” she said, hairpins in her mouth as she pulled her thick hair into a flattering updo. “Not all of us can wake up, get dressed, and leave looking as perfect as you.”

“Oh, no,” Anastasia said, remaining in the doorway. “Countonya wants you to hurry up. I’m happy to wait.”

“Why?�� Gennediya stood straight and joined Anastasia in the doorway. “Are they all incapable old men that are only capable of ‘long-distance intelligence work’? Are they going to be our new partners.”

“No, no,” Anya responded. “I honestly don’t know. There are four men and a woman.”

Vlada came out of the bathroom, pushing her long blonde hair over her shoulders. “C’mon, everybody. Don’t want the Winter Soldiers to be Summer Soldiers by the time we go out there.”

As she passed by Ekaterina, who was applying lipstick in the mirror, she smacked her hand and warned protests of the girl.

“That’s your fifth layer of lipstick. Any more makeup and Countonya will wonder why our dear sister Ekaterina was replaced by a oil painting.”

All of the girls’ burst into excited muttering while they left the room, Ekaterina the last to come out with significantly less makeup on her face than before. Anastasia was joined by Natasha, who nudged her playfully, gesturing back at Ekaterina.

“I think she wants to bed one of the new men,” she whispered.

“Is that a surprise?” Anastasia responded, making Natasha giggle.

The girls immediately got into a straight line based on their rank when they fell in sight of Countonya. Vlada, Anastasia, and Natasha remained the first three as always and the other girls shuffled into their new positions, which they received last Thursday. Ljuba, who was last for the second week in a row, couldn’t help but visibly be shaken at the remembrance of the other girls that were once at the end of the line and didn’t live to see the next day.

“Vlada,” Countonya said, beginning the role call.

“211914,” she replied automatically, stormy gray eyes locked ahead. One could tell just from Vlada’s stance, arms clasped behind her back and feet a shoulder’s width apart, that she was a fighter. She was beautiful, with long blonde hair that fell down her back, but her eyes, clouded with thousands of thoughts racing through her head, often intimidated people. Anastasia’s eyes unconsciously grew brighter. That was one of her best friends, at the head of the group, being the leader she was trained to be.

“Anastasia,” Countonya called out, moving to the next girl in line.

“211908,” the girl responded. She knew she wasn’t as impressive as Vlada. Though they were closely ranked first and second as always, Vlada could hold the stance of a soldier while Anya simply stood in fourth position, her body taking every opportunity to dance. While most girls half-hazard the art because it was a mere cover for the Red Room, Anastasia embraced the art form and poured her passion into it.

“Natasha.”

“182110,” the redhead responded, face set in a straight expression Anastasia knew was a ruse to convince Countonya that she was not the joking mess Anya knew her dearest friend to be. She stood like Vlada, but puffed out her chest and straightened her back more, making the curve of her body over-exaggerated. Countonya raised an eyebrow as she passed, and when she had moved on, Natasha looked to her side and shot a wink at Anastasia.

“Gennediya, Vera, Stanislava, Helena,” Countonya continued going down the line, the girls responding with their codes mechanically.

The Winter Soldier with icy blue eyes followed his group and Countonya, disinterest written all over his face. His gaze wandered back down the line and eventually landed on Anastasia’s. For a brief second, his brow furrowed and his eyes grew cold, locked in a gaze with hers. Then, his shoulder twitched, perhaps a nervous tick, and he returned to the group, his back a little straighter than before.

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes x ofc #bucky barnes x oc #winter soldier!bucky barnes x oc #winter soldier!bucky barnes x ofc #red room #the red room #natasha romanoff #natasha romanov #bucky barnes series #winter soldier #winter soldier x oc #winter soldier x ofc #james buchanan bucky barnes #james barnes #james barnes x ofc #bucky barnes fanfiction

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agentdammers · 7 years ago

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Grand Torchwood Rewatch 1x12 & 13

IF YOU FALL I WILL CATCH U I’LL BE WAITING........ T I M E A F T E R T I M E

One season down...... It’s a Finale Double Whammy, just as it aired back in 2007! Crumbs of Jack Lore drop into our laps, some absolute plot bullshit takes place, an old man is there!!! fuck it let’s get this over with

content warn: pisstaking, fun having, oh! plot bullshit!, i absolutely lose my fucking mind, Owen Harper!!! I Won’t Hesitate Bitch

1x12 “captain jack harkness”

- a thought before we dive in, but man owen gets A LOT of story stuff over the course of the 2 seasons he’s in right??? like more story stuff than ianto and tosh combined. interesting

- AH FUCK!!! A VOTE SAXON POSTER. REMEMBER WHEN?

- so..... here’s a thing. “Ohhh people have heard music from a derelict building! better send torchwood in!” how... does that come about? Could it be squatters or something??? fuck it, let’s send in a Secret Government Agency! they’ll sort it out. i mean we don’t know what they do exactly but i imagine at least one of them is a ghostbuster or something lmao, whatever

- OH NO THIS CREEPY OLD BITCH!!! i forgot how scary he looked!! god, this dude must be a million, or a vampire, or likely both

- tosh’s eyes get SO BIG WHEN THAT GUY ASKS HER TO DANCE I LOVE HER SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!! she’s the best one!!!!!!

- wish i could wipe this episode entirely from my memory because that fucking reveal when the Real jack harkness introduces himself? F U C K

- speaking of tosh, finding it extremely unconvincing that she, a tech nerd, would go out with a laptop with an almost completely flat battery... like, c’mon. she would be prepared

- Gwen cooper, a fully adult woman: haha me and my friends;;;; came here 4 a dare;;; cos its spooky lol....

- the camera on this show has me fucking SCREEEAMING “He wears a cravat.” THERE’S A DRAMATIC SLOW MOTION ZOOM IN ON THIS GUYS FUCKING CRAVAT AND THEN ON IANTO’S FACE LOOKING AT IT AND ITS ALL IN FUCKING EARNEST LET ME DIE!!!!!!!!!

- the dance they’re at is called “KISS THE BOYS GOODBYE DANCE”, which is what my finishing move would be called if i was a character in a fighting game

- ianto and owen slapfighting over their shit girlfriend experiences fucking owns genuinely lmao

- tosh pops the top off a tin and then cuts her hand open on the obviously blunt fucking lid?????? jesus christ

- “I’m tired of living in awe of the rift!!!” .....................first i’ve heard of it. I love that owen is talking as though the rift has been a major fucking factor throughout the entire series up until this point, rather than a thing that’s just been vaguely fucking referenced as the reason why a bunch of weird shit just seems to happen in cardiff. no, im not standing for this. You can’t pull out the rift at the eleventh hour and then talk about it as though it’s a Hugely Important plot device when the biggest role it’s had over the stretch of the entire 11 Whole Ass episodes prefacing this was to allow the plane to come through in “out of time”. y’all have barely mentioned the rift this entire time and now you want to act like its the hellmouth??? eat my ass!!!!!!

- and continuing on that note: apparently they’ve had a machine that can manipulate the rift in the hub......... the entire goddamn time. but no one thought to MENTION it i guess!!!!!!!! pfft, why would THAT be important??? right???? right?????

this plot bullshit almost makes me feel bad for how harsh i was about “cyberwoman” but, i will admit.... despite this Absolute Fucking Nonsense, i do find the jack and tosh storyline in this episode really fun and interesting. its just unfortunate that all the stuff arrrrround that is some kind of fic scrawled in the back of a kid’s math book.

- also the size of owen’s fucking NADS in this episode!!!!!!!! “Don’t compare yourself to me.” SAYS MAN CRYING OVER THE GIRL HE KNEW FOR ONE (1!) (SINGULAR) WEEK!!!! as opposed to ianto’s longterm girlfriend being turned into a monster and eventually murdered by his own team!!!! Like, i understand that’s owen’s problem actually goes beyond that, and its not so much about diane herself but about the fact that he let himself feel close to someone again after his fiancee died but for us, The Audience, watching this as it airs... we haven’t unlocked owen’s tragic backstory yet. and without knowing all that it just makes owen look really bad and like a huge fucking tool lmfao.

- NEVERMIND THE END IS GAY AND SAD AND Y’KNOW!!!!!! i am a man of simple pleasures, at heart, and so... i’ll let it slide. jack meeting his namesake knowing that he’s going to die and them having a moment is more of the kind of emotional content we would get in episodes of doctor who, and its Just Right

- in honesty, theres a bunch of stuff about this ep that i DO like. that tosh gets a prominant role for a change, while gwen gets to do fuck all. the whole Real Jack story. owen gets shot and pops a tit out at the end. its just unfortunate thats its all wrapped up in this rift thing thats been wheeled out last minute for a Big Season Finale with no real foreshadowing or build up to it at all lmao. but, moving on...............................................................................................

1x13 “end of days”

- RHYS BUNS DETECTED, A SOUND WAY TO KICK OFF ANY EPISODE

- lovely reading voice ianto’s got..... i also like owen acting up to make sure we know that they remember him being shot in the shoulder last episode lol.

- “owen, if you open the rift you’ll break it” (owen opens the rift anyway) “owen, you opening the rift broke it” (owen GASPS IN DISMAY, ME??? REALLY?) yes bitch open your ears

- “So are we going to sit around crying into our lattes or are we gonna do something about it?” OWEN..... IS THIS. SUPPOSED TO SOUND BADASS I.... GENUINELY CANT TELL? IT SOUNDS BAD, OWEN

- jack was so likeable last ep now he’s a DICK. gwen calls him out on how he talked to owen and he’s really fucking catty at HER for no reason at all????

- i haaaaaaaaate this scene in the hospital where a Mystery Illness has all the fucking symptoms of the bubonic plague but apparently every doctor in the entire hospital never did high school level history and are all incapable of recognising it. if fucking *i* know what symptoms of the bubonic plague are im sure they didn’t need Absolute Brain Genius Owen Harper who is seemingly the only person with any sense in cardiff to come in and diagnose it. i also hate how owen just like casually mentions to the doctor yep, this is caused by people falling through time dude yknow!!! like they do!! expect more of this to keep happening probably idk!!

- “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU OPENED THE RIFT WITH THIS MACHINE WE HAVE THAT’S FOR UHHHHHHHH UHHHHHHH OPENING THE RIFT *big fuck off galaxy brain*” thats basically this episode.

- i love that owen has followed jack all this time but NOW in a crisis is the time to actually lose it and start questioning his authority bc they dont Actually know who jack is like???? you’ve been fine not knowing this entire time before??? thats not to say that jack isn’t an entire dumbass himself. he expects them all to follow him blindly and its so creepy. he’s like a cult leader, and as they all have Torchwood Stockholm Syndrome that ive mentioned in previous episode run downs they’ve all just gone along with it.

- owen having a little cry on the way out is such a Good scene bc he puts on such a brave and defiant front tho 💕💖💘💕

- i dont know why the really quick flashback to diane flying off in the plane made me lose my fucking mind, its just like “LMAO IN CASE U FORGOT: SHE WAS THE PLANE LADY. I KNOW SHE WAS ONLY IN FOR LIKE TWO MINUTES, BUT DONT WORRY ABOUT IT.”

- gwen for fucks sake!!!!!!!! not again!!!!! after all the cryptic shit and lies she’s told rhys up until this point, she now knocks him out and locks him in a cell and STILL offers no explanation. this poor fucking dude!!!!!!!!! and it’s about to get even worse for him...

- the way gwen screams “RHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEUUUUUUUURRRRRSSSSS”

- YES EVERYONE REBEL AGAINST JACK!!!!!!! FUCK THIS DUDE!!!! you’re doing what a creepy old dude who is Absolutely Definitely evil wants, but still

- why does gwen start doing shit on the computer when toshiko, the computer expert, is standing right there, like.............

- JACK TRYING TO SMACKTALK TO ENTIRE GANG LIKE HIS OWN CLOSET ISN’T CHOCKFUL OF FUCKING SKELETONS

- i forget, does anyone know jack’s immortal apart from gwen? or was it just the shock of owen actually Shooting Their Boss? the only onscreen death i can recall of his after suzie shot him was in “cyberwoman”

- god, minutes ago they were all like FUCK JACK!!!! JACK DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO SAVE US AFTER ALL!!! and now theyre all crawling back asking jack to save them all from cgi pig Ganon and its just..... a lot to happen, over the space of about half an hour.

- the ending is so anticlimatic and also why does sucking all the Yummy Life Energy out of jack make abaddon die?????????? Though in its defence... after like 3 bowls of cereal, i too am like OUCH OOF MY BONES

- aaaaaaaaaand rhys is back! will he get treated any better from here on out? i dont remember!!! guess we’ll see.

- bit much of gwen who’s actually known jack the shortest time of them all to be like NO, let ME be with him uwuwuwuuw

- ahhh!!! ianto smelling jack’s coat ;_;

- aaaand jack’s back too. AND HE GETS TO HOLD A CRYING OWEN? FOR ME? oh you shouldn’t have! this Almost makes up for all that rift plot bullshit (almost. i still know what u did.)

- ANDDDDD OH SHIT. FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE GOOD ENDING. HERE COMES THE TARDIS. FUCKING YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...............................and there it goes. one season down. sorry this one was so long!!! i love and appreciate anyone to takes the time to read these posts. thank u!!!!

#grand torchwood rewatch 2018 #LONG POST #i got mad abt plot shit A Lot during this finale

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perkoform · 7 years ago

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By Izaak E. Wolfe

PUPILS OF THE ALCHEMIST- Preface Authors Note: “Life is for those of us whom are already dead, and if you comprehend this notion, then you too must be stuck in the ‘ether’. In unison, many of your pseudo-peers may at once begin to nod their heads, attempting to hurry along whatever point it is that you’re trying to make, because using their own thoughts is usually too mentally taxing. Following an obligatory smile with a nod whilst sprouting gleaming pleasantries such as “oh yeah, I know exactly what you mean!” with not a thought in their skull but what they’re having for lunch. Autonomous white Rabbits full of hollow, all essentially doppelgangers: Clones cut from the same cookie-cutter cloth of which Lewis Carroll pulled the wool over Alice's eyes. The very same rodents that are oft caught ‘running late’ wasting precious seconds digging holes until they fall asleep in one, killing time until they drop. You will come to know them well. The kind of under prepared, over opinionated personalities that might read through every book in an entire library just to get to the end of every sentence, staring through ripe meaning and symbolic psychic puzzles, not to ponder, or provoke thought, and certainly not to explore the realms of scribes and oracles in a place that can never be defined: understanding words merely as distractions, the kind of mind that would buy a bar napkin if it were leather-bound just so they could say they've got it on their bookshelf. These are the dreamers. They rarely, if ever, awaken. I for one, have always been of the opinion that when free from the burden of earthly interruptions the human brain starts to unlock dream like visionary experiences, Deja Voo and insights far more significant in nature and depth than what can be found tossing and turning, blurred by the restrictions of ‘sleep’. " Charles Luna Foxx 2016

Chapter One

“The Heart that told no tales..” My smirk falls flat to molten hell. Disturbed by signs of life, I gasped to earth. “Ughh…” The phone was ringing. You can bet I was ignoring it. My breath smelt like I had spent Valentine’s Day French kissing an ashtray. Finding my own feet stumbling like a rigid rag-doll off my favorite chair; a heavy head was snatched from swollen hands. Temples pounding, Teeth grinding: Last night is stuck on that damned black-box flight recorder… Here, renegade neuro-terrorist’s commit espionage against their own life source. Receptor sites planning to pull the plug on grey matter that is the only thing integrating them with awareness. They will stop at nothing to destroy any and all traces of the last 24 hours. Direct orders from suits in the cerebral cortex were to “swipe magnets on the audio tapes”. Perhaps in the grip of some advanced interrogation, these sadistic rhetorical sabotage methods employed by our hideous obligatory enemies are indeed working, using some of the most effective tools of self-destruction that our hedonistic Universe has to offer, such as Amphetamines and Tennessee Whisky. Memory pulls a blank, and a glance around the study leads me to a solitary conclusion; this hangover is only just beginning to show its putrid mug shot. The stiff neck and near total absence of writing on the pile of pages beneath my jaw seems to indicate that I passed out colder than a corpse in the Arctic. It would not take the likes of “Sherlock Holmes” to conclude that I was neck deep in the narcissistic floodwaters of Moonshine misery, with not a bridge left to burn in my hearts splintered drought. After countless hours awake at the writing desk, with a brain so sore and sorry it all but caved in to intoxicant fueled hibernation: The empty bottle of Jack adjacent to my puddle of drool confirming this hypothesis. I greet today with a smile. A smile so big and fake that hopefully it conceals my gnawing sense of spite for all existence, or at least my dental plan. When I see the light it never hesitates to scorch my prying eyes, so I still wonder why people stare at shiny things like headlights to a frozen deer. Head spinning. Reeking of liquor, don’t know up from left on a compass, so bed ways is right ways right now. In a sloth like manner, I half tiptoe as if my own shadows footsteps were going to stamp out any hope that may be hiding, still virgin to the stench of bitter fate, in the far off shadows of a distant peaceful galaxy. So I tear the blinds shut, eat some sleeping pills, and before I could even say “fuck off world." BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP Slamming my fist against the ‘snooze’ button, I hissed as if there was someone listening: “..YOU KNOW I AM AWAKE YOU SADISTIC TIME KEEPING BEATBOX! Ughh!!”. With my face buried into my pillow, I try and think of one reason why I should get back out of bed. Whiskey is certainly not one of them. If I didn’t have college, I swear to GOD I would have thrown that fucking alarm clock out the window. I must admit, I became extremely depressed and aimless after the death of my father, and even though it was up to me to become the life blood of the family butcher shop (pun intended), I decided to shut the place down. I can barely get to sleep at night, especially not to wake up at 4 30 every morning to chop up bits of flesh and bone, elbow deep in entrails before midday. I couldn’t do it, and after the Dean tuned from a clockwork intellectual to madder than a fuckin’ hatter overnight... I’ve only been attending classes where the new girl sits opposite me. The rest of my lectures I frequently skip to “study” in the dark corners of the universities extensively cluttered library. It is more than coincidence that I have taken up a few of the classes that this enigmatic temptress frequents. From day one, it was apparent that she has an obsessive thirst to master any and all of the subjects she chose, with the outcome or topic seemingly being of a lesser importance to her than that of the process itself. So it was Anatomy, Biology, Chemistry, Taxidermy, Psychology, Latin, Surrealist Art, even the optional extracurricular sessions such as Cryptography and Journalism, 5 days a week. I don’t know why I didn’t drop out and get a job in the town Abattoir, the pay is good, and I don’t have a weak stomach. But I’m glad that I don’t live in that meat hook reality. Not wanting to miss a second of her company, even though we were strangers, I had a cold shower, got dressed, and hurried to the University, with a terrible headache, but the promise of a new day was not yet lost. I was haphazardly piecing together a port-folio, and I look up and our eyes met, and quickly flicked back to our “work”. There it came, and oh my, this was the first time I had heard her voice, and at once I was drowning in Ambrosia honey from the swarming beehive of my mind. “Hello” The beautiful stranger was smiling at me. “Have you seen the golden scarab??” she inquired under her breath, looking almost as if she had asked me the time… “..Oh I.. I.. Uh…I beg your Pardon?” She repeated once more, barely above a whisper. “Have you seen the Golden Scarab?” her eyes locked firmly onto mine. Unsure what she was referring to, shaking my head, “Sorry.” She blurted “Oh never mind. I was making an in joke, ha, I thought you reminded me of someone.. I’m mistaken.. How terribly rude.. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Veruka.” “Miss Veruka Luxx, I can assure you, it’s a pleasure to be met. I’m Arthur Lilly.” I replied, but she was already lost in her workbook, writing fiercely. I could read paragraphs from the corner of my eye, from where I was sitting. The paragraphs were describing in full an artistic process, subconscious snapshots, perhaps an indulgent outburst praising the randomness embraced by the paper game, “consequences”. The “Exquisite Corpse” method was used by William Burroughs and many before him. I overheard her mumbling, something about synchronicity, and something in a language I failed to recognize, whilst preparing a short film required for an assessment. My contribution was just footage of life-prisoners from Alcatraz, back before the rock was broken and became yet another unkempt piece of tourist crap floating in the San Francisco Harbor, I thought it was intriguing, In between 1943 and 1945 surgeons experimented on the murderers of murderers, the rapists of rapists, Lobotomizing the prisoners and then put half of the test subjects in isolation with food and water and half in a cell with a wilting rose in a vase and no drinking water. The lobotomized inmates with food and water refused to eat or drink or sleep until they died, using all conscious energy to claw at the walls.…The other half, refused to watch the rose die, every time the thorns were bare and the petals fell, wilted, the inmates burst into a fit of grief, crying their eyes out until their tears found the cuttings…. and the rose returned to vibrant health, bringing a smile to their face, and that, right there, soppy bullshit aside, the prisoners with roses managed to see the flower through its cycle, like clockwork, when those petals returned, those inmates were found dead with a smile on their face. I liked the contrast, but spliced the footage poorly and overdubbed readings from the novel “The Diving Bell and The Butterfly.” Everyone in class was looking through the projection screen behind me with a thousand yard stare, and “Thank you Mr. Lilly. Now Mr. West, Your presentation is up next.” Mr. Peaslee boomed from his desk as I returned to my seat. My eyes were back on the strange Veruka as my new accomplice lent forwards and said softly, “Alcatraz Island has some incredible wildlife, but that rose is one of the rarest in the world….. One of.” I nodded, “There are some divine books on all kinds of sacred ornamental plants in the Vulshwaltz wildlife section, I have to return some after class and choose my reading for the week. Perhaps you would like to join?” I said, as charmingly as possible. She looked me right in the eye “Really?!” she said with a wicked grin. “I’ve not been too welcomed by the other students… I’ve been so lost while trying to get to know the Campus that the Library has thus far been untraceable! I need a new friend who can show me around actually..” Veruka laughed, I was transfixed by lust and just as I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could stumble over even one syllable, the bell rang out and class had been dismissed. “Oh, what!? You haven’t seen the Vulshwaltz Library at all yet!?” “No! I hear it’s like a literary maze though. I’d be delighted to get lost in the ‘History’ section with you anytime you like! If you’ve got no plans for lunch, you could even take me there right now, Mr. Arthur.” Her smile was intoxicating. I grabbed my school satchel, and we walked towards the door. “Well Miss. Luxx, only a fool could refuse such an honest request! Right this way my friend.” And with that, we walked down the corridor. Her pupils were gleaming behind her glasses, but for a second as they caught the light, In my mind, a golden scarabs reflection, scurried away. We stood still for a second as we exited the halls and I took great delight in Veruka’s excitement as it was her first time in this room, seeing hundreds and thousands of books, billions of pieces of peculiar information bursting at the seams. Dusty, leather-bound manuscripts, with instructions to decipher every language and symbol that is of use to mankind and even a few hundred pages of thus far indecipherable ancient tongues or perhaps the quotes of modern day secret societies, encrypted in plain sight. There are countless impressive Libraries in the World, But there’s only one of the “Vulshwaltz Vaults”. The lights hang down from the ceiling in glass flowers, downward like Belladonna Atropa flowers. I’m not sure if the “Deadly Lampshades” are there because of the irony, that old saying that everyone who works in a Library goes “mad as a Hatter”, or simply because the architects of our massive University had some, dare I say, questionable influences? “oh my goodness! Those Nightshade light fixtures are something out of Bella Lugosi’s wet dreams! Ahah!” Miss Luxx grinned in astonishment. “One almost wishes they were real, except for the fact that we would all be dead!” A cold, stern voice hissed back “They ARE real” the voice continued “and you ARE dead precious.” Of course, I knew this voice to be our very own, very proud, and equally VERY strange Librarian, Mrs. Nancy N. Escher LaTrisk. “I’m sorry?” Veruka said slowly. “The Flowers are real. They’re as real as any other lampshades, don’t you know?” Explained Mrs. LaTrisk, taking a sip of her tea “and you must be dead my dear! The last of Mr. Peaslees’s students never got to see graduation because they were all bored to death!” she said, turning the hourglass on the desk in front of her upside-down. “Mr. Arthur Lilly! I was under the impression your mother taught you manners!” Mrs LaTrisk was smiling at me. “OH! Of course! This is my new classmate and I’d have to say I’d take her as a friend over most of the chaps, Miss Veruka Luxx! I see you’ve spotted our humble Librarian, Mrs. LaTrisk!-“ “My name is Nancy Neri Escher LaTrisk, The boys call me Mrs. LaTrisk, But you can call me Nancy darlin’, Seeing as I’ll be calling you by your first” There was an awkward silence, at which point Mrs. LaTrisk drank some tea and exclaimed “anyway, Busy busy, always work to be done..” and she turned her attention to a copy of ‘Hidden Faces’. “oh yes, Mr. Lilly, your order arrived yesterday. It’s on my desk next to the typewriter” A brown paper satchel contained my new copy of ‘The Strange case of Dr. Jeckll and Mr. Hyde’. “Magnificent! Gracious Mrs. LaTrisk” “Righto, Well.. my oh my.. strange woman. Arthur, Is there anywhere we could sit and talk in private?” Miss Luxx blinked rapidly as a cool breeze swept through the room. As we walked deeper and deeper into the cacophonous life sized maze that Mrs. LaTrisk refers to as the “Bermuda of Books”, we found ourselves indeed lost in the history section. Veruka was pointing out a small window in the wall; she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small gold telescope, and beckoned me to have a look, directing my gaze to a plume of smoke funnelling out of a chimney in the most beautiful house on mount Titan. “Exquisite telescope Miss. Luxx, Where did you get it?” I said, intrigued. “Oh this is one of the smaller ones; I have a collection of telescopes in my study.” She looked through the eyepiece “I like to keep the fireplace on while I’m at Vulshwaltz so when I get back all tired it feels like home.” “That’s where you live?” my jaw dropped. “You live in a mansion?” “My grandfather’s in hospital so I’m taking care of the property. You should come and have a few drinks with me tonight. Otherwise it’s just me, the animals, and a big empty house...”

Chapter two

-Perpetual Vermin in the Illusion of Time and Space- “Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau.“ I fumbled for notepad, attempting to look as if I were paying attention. The lecture was nearly over, and the bell would allow our dismissal from class no doubt very soon. I sat watching the clock hands go sloooowwwwllllyyy around from the corner of my vision, scribbling on my page a crescent moon, and the more I scribbled, it seemed the lecture were as if I was listening to it from a great distance. The blood drained out of my head, the ceiling pushed towards the sky, along with a room full my peers rendered brain-dead while the tables where they sat began to stretch and contort like a perpetually elongating hallway. A half a minute could last two million years.. Perish the thought. Sometimes I wonder just what exactly Salvador Dali mind had the persistence to remember behind his wild eyes as they observed a slice of camembert cheese melting in the sun. I glance quizzically at the empty chair to my right, “where in the hell is she?” I wondered. Her absence made me oddly uncomfortable. The divine and peculiar Veruka Luxx been my best friend for more than year now, but she remains as much of an enigma as when I first came to know her. Veruka and I, one could rightfully assume, shared a peculiar fascination in what would be most certainly considered taboo by the majority of our society. Veruka has a profound affection for Taxidermy, stuffed and preserved animal corpses, not to mention her absurd obsession for the languages and customs of ancient and lost civilisations. Our interest in all living creatures was naturally mirrored by our fascination for the “process of death”, the afterlife, the before life, and the possibility to reanimate the corpses of the deceased shortly after dying, using a customised injectable solution. We had killed, maimed and also reanimated the bodies of several rabbits, stray cats, rats, and guinea pigs, some even with promising results if the subjects managed to survive the process of animation for more than a few minutes. We have been a tad over absorbed in our little projects recently, and the nature of these experiments warranted my cause for concern. Luxx and I spent nearly all of our spare time engaged in “Staring at the bottom of the fountain of youth”… Yes, I suppose that’s one way to phrase it. Among other things her devotion to the subject of reanimating a multitude of deceased creatures knew no bounds, which fuelled my fascination and desires to assist her secret studies and to cover our trails all the more, from anyone whom might happen to have otherwise stumbled across our secret laboratory. Both Veruka and I were honorary students at the Vulshwaltz University in the town of Atlas, a rather expensive college, with infinite halls, chandeliers, libraries, top of the line science equipment (which we had slowly constructed our laboratory from, one beaker at a time, considering we were so trusted by Dean Allen Halsley himself, that he authorized us to stay behind to clean, autoclave and pack away every single piece of glassware unattended after classes, and the school had so many resources they didn’t appear to even ponder all the bits and pieces of “written off” laboratory hardware that the faculties staff would immediately replace.) Between the windowpanes were the endless paintings spaced perfectly evenly across the tall walls of the corridors, depicting everything from the Salem witch trials, The sun god Ra making his rounds in the minds of Egyptian painters and sculptors, and more typical of a white collar institution, images of decadent Kings and Queens from centuries otherwise mostly forgotten (all of them remarkably pale or blood red in the face, It often bemuses Luxx and myself to liken King Henry VIII’s face to that of a plump tomato ripe to burst. God awful inbred monarchy.) I look up from my scribbling, and she’s standing right next to me snickering at my absent mindedness, I wonder how long she had been standing there? The classroom is completely empty, and the clock tells me that the bell rang out about 15 minutes ago.. “Ground Control to Major Tom!?” She said with a smirk. “It’s time to go” “Where on earth have you been!” I croaked, flustered. “You scared the shit out of me, I thought something must’ve gone wrong” “Well” Luxx rolled her eyes, for a moment I could see my pupils reflecting back at me in hers, and a shiver went up my spine. “I’ve finally tracked down a recently deceased Human subject on which we can test my new formula.. Grab your things.” Her smile was both unsettling and comforting. We cleaned the science room, we cleaned the condenser, separatory funnels, catalyst reaction vessels, test tubes and various beakers, and using the key that the Dean entrusted us with, we opened the Haz-Chem safe, removed a couple of necessary precursors and once the classroom was packed up and tidy, Miss Luxx steered my attention to her unusually playful state of mind. We soaked in the evening as we began heading home bound, the place I had come to know as home, our humble abode, a sprawling property which Luxx was taking care of for her grandfather while he was in hospital. From the dust to the trees which touched the clouds, to the house that we had been using to conceal our gruesome experiments on deceased creatures which we would catch and put to death before attempted reanimation of their cadavers, sometimes yielding no result, sometimes a few unnatural flinches and as with most of our more “fortunate” incidents the creatures would turn rabid and rip their own bodies to pieces, after attacking anything in sight… But we pushed on, Luxx insisted that it was a simple matter of getting the right blend of synthetic compounds into the next formula, and something told me she was right. We left Vulshwaltz by foot, and with every step, the sun would sink deeper into the horizon, until at last we scaled the base of the mountain. It wasn’t long at all before I could see 54 rue du Chateau. The finest piece of architectural indulgence on the whole of the mountain, I bet her grandfather must’ve been proud, having built it by hand, brick by brick, brushstroke by brushstroke. Obviously, it was both mine and Veruka’s favorite place in all of Atlas, except for the Cemetery and the Library at Vulshwaltz. Overcome by dizziness, I was quick to catch my breath but for a peculiar moment, I almost thought these feelings of Deja Voo were rising to my attention as a hint that maybe this, right now, could all be just a dream. Then I remembered that even nightmares are more inviting than what lays in wait. As Miss Luxx explained what would be our plans for the evening, I unpacked our bags and polished a new glass beaker I had stolen for the lab. We headed upstairs for the attic, and my dear friend grabbed a spoon from the kitchen. Like ruby wine in flickers of the moonlight, I watched her lips tremble as she spoke. She weighed out precisely a quarter gram (250 milligrams to be exact) of our new silky powder and mixed it up. Luxx jabbed the needle in my arm and pulled back red, as I volunteered to Ginny pig our new batch of Amphetamine Salts. Suddenly I could feel a lightning storm pounding through my temples, as all of the blood rushed to my head, Luxx gave me a sickly smile, there was no denying we were both high as all fuck and I could not follow most of what she was saying because she was talking so fast and her eyes were utterly intoxicating. She stopped speaking mid-sentence, seemingly out of nowhere grabbing me by the neck and before I could blink she had pushed me up into the corner of the Attic, and with an incredible lust, our lips locked, and tongues entwined. My heart must have skipped a seismic thud, for this is the first time we stepped beyond the boundary of friends, and essentially the first time I had seen Luxx’s passion flare up for anything that still had a heartbeat. “Well, that certainly got your attention. Hah!” She smiled. I was breathless. “Work first, fun later, Hmm?” She looked me up and down. With that, she turned on her heels and took me to the false wall we had fitted in-between the cluttered, dusty Attic, and the hidden door to our surgical laboratory. She opened it and flicked the lights, revealing a lifeless figure stretched out on a long white table. Luxx, I could tell, was getting terribly nervous about something. The recently deceased human subject that Veruka had acquired was a frail old woman, whose face was extremely pale and the shade of blue that her lips had turned indicated that she had been dead since at least this morning. “Well well well! This is charming Luxx! Just fucking charming!” I mocked. The smell of necrotizing flesh was already near unbearable. “And what the fuck happened to her I wonder??” Luxx cleared her throat, “Well, hmm. It has been a long day indeed. Her family live not a great distance from here, I’ve known her son Edward for many years. As I was picking through my books before our late afternoon science class, studying the lineage of Queen Nefertiti when all of a sudden there were tremors on my doorstep accompanied by the deranged howling of what I presumed to be a badly injured German Shepherd. I rushed outside to find the howling was coming from an old woman writhing gruesomely in the mud on my driveway.” Shaking her head, Miss Luxx beckoned for one of my cigarettes. “I recognized the unfortunate Witch as Edwards mother, phoned his uncle immediately to alert him of the situation and ask if I could be of any medical help, as she was by now curled up twitching on my porch, grasping for dear life. He told me that she has been slowly going mad for years and by his voice… Well I could tell it had been driving him to drink, because he was slurring his concerns and at the same time attempting to hit on me. So as the family could not contact a competent doctor because of the particularly fatal strain of Flu that’s becoming somewhat of an epidemic in town recently, and screaming and delusional as she was when she arrived, the old woman appeared to assume an almost catatonic state of consciousness all in a matter of minutes, at the same time I could hear snoring on the other end of the receiver so I furiously hung up and carried her inside to my guest room, soon she was fast asleep after seemingly having made a miraculous recovery from her primitive psychotic episode.” With the upbeat melancholic chirp of a pessimist, I butted in “….And then?????” with an eyebrow raised above a bloodthirsty smirk, almost puzzled by my own sincerest solemn sarcasms, Luxx sighed “Her son Edward was suddenly knocking at the window, he said nothing except that he would stay by her side no matter what… Knowing I could trust Edward not to snoop around the house, I was beginning to ready myself for the back to Vulshwaltz, because I just needed your comforting presence after the intensely unexpected chain of events, by now I knew I was too late for class, but that was the lowest of my priorities. The incident seemed to reach an almost level of calm, but at that exact moment, the phone rang just as I was leaving home…. all I could hear was static noise and maniacal laughing in the earpiece….. Shrugging it off, I hung up just as Edward eerily called to me from the guest room. He emerged looking as though he had already long since mourned for his dear mother’s sanity, almost with a sigh of relief he said softly that she had just then passed in her sleep. I hid my smile behind gritted teeth… Mentioning that his uncle has already drunk away his inheritance, Edward also happened to mention, to my utter delight, that her final will declared that after death, her corpse was to be donated for the purposes of science, and because Edward has been a close neighbor for years, it goes without saying that he had already become well aware of my overachieving at University, The backlog of Anatomical Knowledge that propelled my status from a nerdy exchange student to an ‘Honorary’ Teachers Pet, not even mentioning the Deans trust in my ‘responsibilities’, …anyway, you can guess that it wasn’t very long at all before I had convinced Edward to go home to try and get some rest. He said his farewells under the impression that I had already arranged a hearse to Vulshwaltz’s medical research facility…. But after he left, I just hauled the lifeless bitch upstairs and rushed into town to find you so that we may finally take our experiments to the next frontier of reanimation…. To bring about the strange state of existence known as “Life” back to a completely rigid, non-responsive, breathless human cadaver…… “ The lovely Veruka Luxx burst out into hysterical laughter, unable to wipe the smirk off her divine face. Slightly disturbed, and still unable to stop thinking about Luxx’s soft and tender lips, all the while trying desperately to ignore the smell of the dead woman whom we were about to attempt to bring back from the spirit realm, to once again, in some post-mortal fashion, walk among the Taxpaying, Booze-Addled piles of flesh and bone, most commonly recognized as the “Living”. Apart from not being much good for conversation, the main difference between that of the “deceased persons” and of their more animated, opinionated, compulsively breeding counterparts, the “Living persons”, is simple. One has completed their cycle and has joined the “Land of the Dead” for the rest of eternity, while the other is still absorbed in the comparatively temporary distractions of day to day humdrum human emotions; From Serenity to Fear, From Kinship to Solitude. How fucking poetic. I’m to sober for this. Too much is never enough… My thoughts were racing. The air seemed to be getting thicker… “Hmm… The body’s whereabouts shouldn’t arouse any suspicion as long as no-one else in Atlas knows about her death, and provided her family doesn’t speak to anyone regarding her disposal requests” I said hastily “which I imagine they would not have any need to mention as a casual conversation topic to anyone of importance…. then we’re in the clear… Quick thinking by the way, my darling.. Any fresher and you could skin the fat off her and sell it down the butchers as offal.” I scoffed. Smiling dryly in acknowledgement, her eyes met mine and then looked quickly down at the tip of a .3 ml syringe that she had filled to the brim with a concentrated solution of her new “embalming concentrate” as we had deemed them), and I began preparing a large vein on the side of the woman’s neck for injection, as the solution had to enter the blood stream as CLOSE to the brain as possible. Luxx impatiently yet precisely performed the injection while I checked the cadaver for any vital signs of life. We waited for an hour, and Luxx mixed and injected more solutions into the subjects’ neck relentlessly. Just as we were preparing to admit failure, call it a night, and throw her corpse into the incinerator, without a seconds notice the old woman’s eyes darted open WIDE, and she let out the most ear-drum piercing blood curdling screams, wailing and screeching imaginable, far too unearthly for any human to possibly conjure the sound in their most depraved nightmares, let alone the breathless lungs of the dearly departed. Suddenly the undead subject stood up, froze stiff again, and fell on the floor with several liters of blood rapidly gushing out of her eyes, nose, mouth and ears. I gasped, unable to muster a word, and was frozen with fear. Luxx just shook her head, rolled her eyes and groaned with failure, she snapped. “Fuck.. Fuck.. Fuck… I think perhaps next time we should wait, at least another hour, before re administering the formula. I’ll put the incinerator on so we can dispose of her remains quickly.” Luxx leaned toward me and kissed me on the cheek. I stood, bewildered, horrified, and shivering. “Oh.. What a waste” I blurted, Naturally questioning my beautiful associates mental stability, but as my faith in her was still unshaken by the gruesome occurrence, I began to question my own sanity… As Veruka turned up the furnace to its highest setting, near 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, she hummed along to an unknown yet strangely familiar tune, and the impromptu cremation of our elderly lab-rat was complete…… not much is left of that wrecked atrocity save a red hot pile of ashes. Attempting to appear un-phased by the evening’s festivities, I mopped up ankle deep pools of fresh human blood from our laboratory floor, as thoughts of what consequences lay in wait for us if we were ever to be caught grew steadily more grim and unavoidable, all the while, Luxx’s near total and complete disregard for such consequences proceeded to add entire Galaxies of increasing volatility to the already crumbled fault-lines of rationality and common sense… I was trapped aboard a sinking ship of her obsessions, pulling me into an Ocean of demise that was overflowing with my own poisoned curiosity’s, and it would be Veruka herself, who unwittingly sealed my fate with a kiss…. Run, Rabbit, Run… Because when you’re walking such a very fine tightrope of morality, whilst attempting to survive on a steady diet of endless hedonism, there is simply no time to slow down.. On that note, Veruka and I sat by the fireplace, drinking tea into the morning. Something I can’t shake about the look in the old bats eyes, embedded into my memory, will forever gnaw at me. I’ve seen that soul sucking glare before. For a second I was lost in the void of her pupils, the cry of the storm, and as I looked out from the old woman’s vacant stare, I actually was looking up at myself the moment blood poured from her every orifice. I was shocked, trembling, sweating, and whiter than a sheet. Looked as if I’d seen a ghost, a fucking Kodak moment... With every second, it seemed further in the past, until all I saw was my drug-devouring Morticia Addams, My Venomous Vixen…. Veruka was snuggling up next to me on the rug in front of her fireplace, and I feel her jab another shot of speed into my arm…. No warning…!?!??!!!!!! ….my vision trembles wildly…. Before I could even think, she is laughing and taking off her dress. Always an ice-cold intellectual machine; a vixen, brunette, green eyes and spectacles…. Even with a frozen heart like hers, I’d still be willing to bet my life that she could keep me warm in Hell…..

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