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catboii · 1 year ago

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← Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 → Full Thread

[Day ####]

In the morning, despite not falling asleep at all, at the sound of her alarm Agent 23 gets up and follows her normal routine, getting up and making coffee while she drops two slices of bread into her toaster. She feeds her dog, Goldie, and ruffles her head fluff while telling her how much better she’s looking.

When she gets into work, she’s almost dreading going into the chamber with her charge, as she feels like they made so much progress, but it was all dashed in one shocked gasp.

However, once she’s in the first chamber, the little creature perks its head up, hopping over to the final doorway ready to greet her. She can physically feel the relief flooding her body like adrenaline, from her chest out to her fingers. Every muscle relaxes by the time she’s through the final door, and she reaches her hand out to pet the crow’s head, but instead it flaps its huge wings and jumps onto her forearm. She isn’t expecting it, and it’s a lot heavier than any parrot she’s ever held at the zoo as a teenager, and her arm droops. The creature flaps to stay steady, and she pulls her arm up and out, supporting its weight fully. “Oh. Hi there.” The creature trills and headbutts her in the chin, its fluffy feathers tickling her nose. She feels silly for worrying about anything now, and she starts instead to worry if the creature felt similarly, like maybe while she was gone it had worried that she wouldn’t return. With her other hand, she pets the back of the creature's head, and it butts her chin again, this time keeping it there while she pets it. They stay like that for a while.

“Crowvid,” she starts, while sitting with her legs outstretched, the creature perched on the tip of one of her shoes. “Is there anything I can bring you? Like the chess set. If I’m allowed to bring you something to play with, so you’re not bored…” The creature has already hopped down onto the floor, and is now holding out one of its feet, as if clutching something and swirling it. “Are you miming something?” She watches it do this a little longer and tries to guess what it’s trying to say. “Are you stirring something?” It shakes its head and instead of the smooth round swirling motion, it instead swishes its foot around more randomly. “Are you- drawing something?” The creature drops the pose and nods vehemently, hopping up and down with its wings outstretched. “Oh! What are you drawing?” The creature stops and shakes its head again. “You’re… not drawing anything?” She thinks for a moment longer, the crow just looking up at her with its head tilted. “Are you asking me… for something to draw with?” Again it hops up and down nodding. “Ahh! That makes sense. Alright. Wait right here.” As she gets to her feet, the crow hops over to her feet and puts one clawed foot on her shoe, as if to grab her. “What’s wrong? I’ll be back as soon as I can, alright?” The crow slowly takes its foot back, and hops back one step. “Alright. Wait here.” She avoids adding ‘like you could go anywhere if you wanted.’

In less than twenty minutes, she returns with a sealed packet of printer paper and some marker pens. She had to sign off for each pen individually, but if somehow this creature can draw something recognisable, it would be a big step in the research, and if she can make enough progress with this job, she could even start thinking about putting in for a promotion. The year before she had started thinking about applying to become a researcher, but there was a lot of work you need to do beforehand, and you need to ultimately be referred by your department’s overseer, and they aren’t likely to do that unless you’ve made some waves, and gotten a name for yourself. Before this, she was just another Agent, sat around writing notes about objects that didn’t do anything beyond give some people the creeps.

She places everything on the floor as she kneels down, still not having the authorisation to bring in a chair. Something about it being too large to account for. The pens roll around on top as she puts it down, and once it’s down and she starts to undo the bottom of the packet, Crowvid tries to pick up one of the markers with its beak, but it can’t quite do it, they’re too round and slippery for it to hold. “Just hold on. I’ll help you in a second, okay?” Once the packet is open, she pulls out a few sheets in one pull, and puts them down between herself and the bird. Crowvid straightens the papers with one foot as it looks at the pens. Agent 23 takes one, pulling off the cap and holding it out at the end so it can take it with its foot like it showed when miming.

It takes the marker and awkwardly starts trying to draw something. It’s just a bunch of squiggles the best she can tell, and she turns her head from one side to the other, trying to see anything recognisable in it. Eventually the crow drops the marker and digs at the paper, throwing it away as it uncovers the next piece. 23 reaches for the discarded piece and looks it over. She still can’t quite tell if anything is here, but as she looks back to crowvid, it looks like its very carefully marking out shapes. Possibly letters.

It makes short marks on the paper, dashes, over and over, joining them together to make a shape. It keeps hopping back on one foot, not dropping the marker as it reviews its work from a distance, then going back to it. There’s a recognisable P and R, then a triangle. 23 watches, astonished, as the creature continues to very attentively write out P R A C T in very large letters on the paper. With no more room, it pulls that piece away and gets another ready, although slightly marked from the leak-through, and it finishes the final letters, reading I C E. It drops the marker and pulls that piece away, lining it up with the other, spelling out “PRACTICE”. The animal looks up at Agent 23, whose mouth is open slightly, and it looks proud of itself, if a crow could look proud of itself.

“You… You just wrote that. ‘Practice’?” She looks on, still stunned. Not only can the creature understand her, but it can write… “Okay. How did you learn to do that?” As far as the paperwork suggests, the creature wasn’t picked up in this country, it was picked somewhere that primarily spoke a form of chinese. If that’s where it was from, how could it write in english?

The creature hops back over to the pile of papers, picking up the pen and again and with great effort and concentration, dashes out something on the page. This time it doesn’t look like letters at all, just a jumble of curved lines. Eventually it stops, puts the pen down and looks up at Agent 23. She falters as if she’s missing something obvious. “Um. It’s um.”

The creature looks down at the drawing, circling the paper to look at it from her angle. After a moment it goes back to the other side, and starts drawing something else, smaller. It doesn’t pick the pen up so far this time, and seems to be putting more effort into drawing straight lines. After a while, an image starts to appear. “Oh. is it a bed? Do you want a bed?” The crow shakes its head and carries on drawing something else. A small arrow. The arrow is pointing from the bed to the squiggly mess of shapes. “Is it a blanket?” The creature drops the pen and jumps up and down excitedly, letting out a small caw. “Oh, and those are cushions!” It hops up onto her knee and headbutts her in the chin again. “Alright. I’m sorry. It’s a very good picture! I’m just not used to talking to someone like this. I’ll get used to it!” After she finishes saying this, she realises she said ‘someone’, implying that she thinks Crowvid isn’t just ‘something’, but she doesn’t correct herself now.

Again, she leaves the chamber to go and fetch a blanket, or a sheet of some kind, and some cushions, which is something they definitely have. Some of the Anomalies have certain comfort needs, and so cushions and the like are easy enough to obtain and sign off. Although she does have to sign different kinds of waivers than for the chess set and papers, as cushions and sheets can be dangerous with the risk of smothering or choking. This usually feels condescending, as some of the inanimate objects use cushions because if they’re in contact with certain hard surfaces, they have certain effects, but usually this can be negated with cushions of different materials. Having to sign to say ‘I understand the receiver of this object could smother me or someone with this object and I take responsibility for the consequences’ feels stupid when you’re using it with something like a little wooden box that can’t physically move, and therefore cannot smother you in any way.

When 23 returns, Crowvid has drawn some other things, some papers strewn about the floor, some apparently ripped up by its claws. She places the blanket and cushions on the floor beside the wall where it normally sits to relax or seemingly sleep, and she wanders around, looking over the doodles. One of the pieces is almost a shape she feels she should recognise, and she notices that its redrawing it, looking back and forth between the two. It’s a rectangle about half the size of the piece of A4, and there are some squiggles around the edges. On the discarded piece there’s another rectangle drawn just inside this, and there are some squares drawn in the middle, with wiggly lines that may indicate words. As she watches it draw the second version, she exclaims, “is that a phone?”

The bird drops the marker and squeaks in surprise, as if it wasn’t finished and it didn’t think she would figure out what it is. She pets it on the head, thinking. “I’m not sure that I can do that… But I can see what I can negotiate.” At that, the creature pulls away from her hand, looking up at her with wide eyes. At first she thinks it’s thankful, but there’s something in the way it’s stiffened that makes her think something’s wrong, maybe it thinks this is impossible and she’ll get in trouble? So she keeps talking. “I’ll have to get the Overseer to sign off on something like that. Normally it’s only a case of filling out some forms and getting the… Well, someone higher than myself, to approve it. But a phone?” The crow has settled again, and is back within reaching distance, so she returns to petting its head, and it lets her, its feather’s fluffing as it nestles down onto the ground. “I’m sure I can think something up though. I’ll ask when I leave in a bit. My shift is nearly over.” The crow is now half leaning against one of her legs, and she runs her fingertips over the small, soft feathers of its forehead. It closes its eyes under her touch. “Is there something you want it for? Is it for writing on?” The creature shuffles, pulling out one of its legs from under its fluffy body, making the looping gestures that earlier meant ‘drawing’, rather than writing. “Drawing?” It drops its foot and nods slowly, settling again.

At the end of today’s shift, she scoops the bird up, who flaps uncertainly at the new movement, and she gently places it down on top of the blanket and pillow pile. She pulls at the free side and folds the blanket over the creature’s body, tucking it in crudely. It trills and she smiles down at it. She almost wants to kiss it on the head like she does for her dog when she puts her into bed. But she resists. They’re not quite that close yet.

#posted ooc.#drabble.#exp ts.#ts pt9.#scp stuff.#timeline-wise we're not even at getting back on the blog lmao #I was thinkgin abt uploading this to smth like AO3 just for the accessibility and formatting. but. idk if I wanna link my old fic stuff #so i'd have to make a new one. or a new pseudo or w/e it's called #hmhm.........#I'm gonna make the next part kinda short (hopefully). bc there's gonna be alot of time skipping.#and if I succeed in my plans then it'll cover like a month+#then pt 11 will be the climax. and if there's anything else to tie up there'll be a pt12 ig #BUT I also wanna write up a super short* (for me) TL;DR for the whole thing. so if anyone did wanna know what was happening-#-but didn't wanna read like 15k words. they can still see lmao #readmore.

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starry-bi-sky · 6 months ago

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how do you clone a fey? that's trick question; and fey love those!

@the-navistar-carol (<333) brought up a good point while I was talking about my changeling danny au with her -- Dani! How would she exist in this au? Danny's a changeling - a fae. How would Dani, a clone of him, be created? How do you make a fey? Not through any means that Vlad is doing; you can't make a fey through unnatural means, considering the Fair Folk are nature. And Vlad's not a fey himself -- he's a halfa, even if he could make a fey, it's not in his best interest too. He's a powerful ghost, but even the weakest fae can overpower the strongest ghost. He won't want a clone of Daniel to be more powerful than him.

(In a three tier hierarchy it goes Ancients -> Fae/Mythos -> Ghosts. They all live in the Infinite Realms, but on different Planes. The fae live above the Ghost Zone in the Fey Wild, while the Mythos live beside the Wilds or down in the ghost zone depending on where they are. Places like the Frozone, the Athens Acropolis, and other such large islands climb throughout all three Planes.)

(While Ghosts can travel into the Fey Wild, its generally advised against as the ectoplasm tends to manifest differently there due to close contact magic. It can make it rather disorientating for a ghost, and as human spirits, the Fae living there would jump them faster than they could blink. So unless you're willing to play mind games with 'steal thy name eat thy face' fae, most ghosts keep out of the way of the Wilds. Fey can travel down into the Ghost Zone, they just don't bother.)

That's of course, not taking into account if Vlad even knows Danny's a fae himself. Vlad doesn't ring me as someone who really cares much about ghost culture or the going ons of the GZ. He might be aware that fae exist, but the moment he realizes he can't use them for personal gain he just doesn't bother with them. The risk is greater than the reward, and he'd rather not get eaten. But lets assume he's aware by now that Danny is fey, and has to take that into account while cloning him.

So, how does Dani exist? Good question! Honestly; i'm not sure. She might not exist at all, or if she does, she's more halfa than fey. Vlad would need a lot of human dna and ectoplasm to balance out all that fae magic. He manages to steal DNA from Jack and Maddie to do it, and since Jack's fey ancestry is very dormant its much easier to use alongside Danny's DNA.

In turn, it results in a little girl whose more human-ghost hybrid than clone. With that little extra boost in fey magic making her not a fey, but still relatively powerful. Dani is less of a clone and more of a lab-grown little sister. It's a rather tedious, complex process that has Vlad tearing his hair out trying to figure out. But he does eventually figure it out.

#dpxdc #danny fenton is not the ghost king #dpxdc crossover #changeling danny au #danielle fenton #danny phantom #still no mention of DPXDC yet so i'm adding the DP tags if thats alright lmao #how do you clone a fey? trick question! you can't. you can only make something that's not-quite fey but has ties to them.#dani's fey ancestry is an ounce of water compared to the bucket of everything else. which is more than the drop in the pond compared to jac #but not quite as powerful as changeling daniel. whose more fey than human at this rate. which is very fun to think about in terms of #his rogues haha. imagine going into the human realm about to cause chaos only to come face to face with a baby fey. a changeling.#i'd simply pass away a second time. where is your parent. human raised or otherwise?? are they nearby??? shit i thought fey hated urban #cities. what are YOU doing here baby man. im going to get eaten holy fuck. that's so many teeth.#. oh. oh you think you're a ghost. hm. hmhm. i can work with that. lets just. make sure you keep thinking that okay :) great :))#like jumpscare dude. i just saw my afterlife flash before my eyes. hello unsupervised fey child. holy fuck are you teeny tiny.#vlad probably uses some of his own dna to get the halfa effect so really dani's more of a lab grown *half* sister. Danny's gonna end up #stealing her anyways in the end. his sister now :). non-human danny my beloved #catch me using fey and fae interchangeably. my bad #some food for thought sorry if its hard to understand.#steal thy name. eat thy face fey

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