#i had to reprogram the entire game last time i tried playing it which is why the price of the not even really a remaster

[lockedtowers]

stop a/starion has a BRAND NEW SIM AVAILABLE ON MODTHESIMS FOR THE SI/MS 2

[izlaria]

Someone you like (part 3)

This is the third chapter of my “Someone you like” inspired fic. It’s also available on AO3 in case you prefer that platform. Please hit me up to talk about Plance!

Summary: Lance finds a better friend in Pidge than he could have antecipated.

Also, Pidge pining hour.

17 and 15 years old

“I can’t believe we have a cow.” Lance stared in awe at the animal. It looked completely out-of-place in the middle of the highly technological castle-ship. “Where did that dude even get her from?” he exclaimed, waving an arm at it. Lance gasped, lowering his voice to a whisper, “Do you think she’s… a clone?”

Kaltenecker kept on chewing, indifferent to Lance’s fussy behavior.

“Most likely,” Pidge responded. She was looking down at a tablet that contained results from the scan they’d conducted on Kaltenecker. “She is carbon-based, which isn’t such a rarity out here, but is always good to know. The anatomy also checks out with normal cow biology. The only change I could find is that her diet is more adapted to what’s available in this quadrant.”

Lance scratched the top of his head. “Does that mean she can’t eat Earth food?”

“She probably can…” Pidge tapped the edge of the tablet in a considering manner. “We eat alien food and nothing has happened yet.”

“So we’re winging it? That doesn’t sound very scientific.” He didn’t like the idea of putting their cow in danger. “Can’t you figure something out for her to eat?”

“I’m not a biochemist, Lance.” Pidge took her eyes off Kaltenecker to glare at him. “Nor a geneticist. That’s more Coran’s area of expertise.”

“Easy!” Lance held up his hands. “We can talk to him, then. I was just asking a question…”

Pidge huffed out a breath, then let her shoulders drop. “I don’t know how you’re not annoyed right now. We spent the entire afternoon in a fountain to get a freaking video game, only to realize we have no way to turn it on!”

“I actually had fun.” Lance shrugged. He didn’t really see what bothered her so much. Sure, he wanted to play Killbot Phantasm, but even the fact that they’d found the game out in the universe was enough for him. “It felt like the sort of crazy I used to get to back home.”

She fidgeted with the tablet in her hands. “Going to the mall and causing a scene?”

Lance eyed Pidge curiously. Her brow was furrowed, but she looked more lost than irritated. “Sure,” he acquiesced. “This was hardly my first time fishing out coins from a fountain.”

“It was for me,” Pidge interrupted brusquely. “I had never done that before.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Really? You’re one of the biggest troublemakers I’ve met. I’m pretty sure you’re at least guilty of fraud after lying about your identity to get into the Garrison.”

For some reason, this seemed to startle her. It was almost ludicrous to think that Pidge had gone undercover without realizing the legal implications of her actions. It would be just like her, too, to get so caught up in the big picture that she simply bulldozed through every other detail.

“That was different, though.” She was pouting now, her cheeks comedically puffed out. “I was more of a homebody when younger.” Her gaze was lowered to her hands, distant. “I don’t have as many stories to tell as you and Hunk.”

“I seriously doubt that.” Lance scoffed. “Aren’t you always talking about the crazy experiments you and Matt did? I bet he will have a bunch of embarrassing shit about you that you never tell us. I can’t wait to get my hands on all that sweet, sweet blackmail!”

Lance wrung his hands menacingly, but when he looked down at Pidge the expression on her face caught him off guard. He expected her to be exasperated or at least displeased, so the tenderness in her eyes was unforeseen.

He’d been talking about her brother as if they would meet soon, Lance realized. Pidge mentioned him often, but not in detail, not in any capacity that didn’t serve to remind everyone of her mission to find her family. He guessed it felt too much like an open wound, like when Lance tried to talk about Marco or Rachel.

But maybe it did them some good, too.

“Besides, even if we never get to play Killbot Phantasm, we still did plenty today.” Lance began to count on his hand. “We stole money from a fountain so we could buy a vintage video game. We got a cow from a space mall. We were chased by an alien security guard who thought we were pirates! I couldn’t make this up if I tried!”

When he laughed, Pidge joined in. She tried to suppress it, but the air escaped through her nose and her lips quirked up in undeniable amusement. It always felt like a victory to make her laugh. Pidge didn’t let herself get distracted often.

“I don’t know,” she quipped, looking more relaxed. “You have the most convoluted stories of anyone I know.”

Although Pidge said it as if it was a bad thing, Lance could see the playfulness in the twist of her mouth. This was nice, too, because a year earlier he would have seen only the harshness in his teammate. On an impulse, he leaned down to hug her.

“W – What?!” Pidge thrashed against his arms. “Lance, let me go!”

“No can do, Pidgey.” He held on. Lance had crossed his arms behind her head, keeping her tight against his chest. “You can’t escape this friendship.”

“Yes, I can, you nitwit!” Pidge’s voice was muffled by his shirt and Lance simply pretended not to hear her. “You’re suffocating me!”

“We have Kaltenecker now, we’re her parents!” he stated happily, despite the sting of Pidge pinching his sides. “Stop, you don’t want her to see us fighting.”

Pidge let her arms fall, looking up at Lance. Her face was red and her hair stuck out from where he’d accidentally run his hands through it. “You’re ridiculous.”

There was a well-placed moo from Kaltenecker, as if the cow agreed.

Lance grinned and finally gave up his grip on her, taking a step back. Pidge immediately punched him in the stomach in retaliation.

“Ow!” he complained, though it was clear she hadn’t put any real force behind it. “We were having a moment!”

Pidge turned up her nose, but her complexion only grew more flustered. “Then you can forget all about it, like you did with Keith.”

“Fine, you win.” Lance crossed his arms, looking smugly down at her. “I did make you blush, though. I might be rusty, but old Lance still has an effect on the ladies!”

“Ugh!” Pidge moved so quickly that Lance had to hide behind Kaltenecker in order to evade her hits. When they stopped running, she kept her tablet at hand, brandishing it as if it was her bayard. “Never say that to me again!”

He stuck his tongue out at her, then had to duck when Pidge aimed the tablet at his head once more. “Jeez, you know I’m kidding!”

“Yeah.” Something in her voice made Lance shoot back up. She was staring right at him, looking more serious than he’d expected. “I know.”

Before he could ask what was wrong, Pidge walked away from where he stood and towards a panel in the back of the room. She deposited her tablet on one side, then started clicking away at a few keys.

“Coran mentioned we could reprogram the room to look like a field on Earth,” she explained once Lance had made his way over. “We could maybe get some vegetation from a planet in this quadrant and create an area for her to graze.”

“Yeah, that would be cool.” He felt almost dizzy from the ups and downs of Pidge’s humor. The coldness that surrounded her now made Lance want to apologize, but it also annoyed him. He thought they were having a good time earlier. “Introducing Kaltenecker to Earth food isn’t really the priority, huh?”

Pidge nodded, avoiding his eyes.

Despite the awkwardness, Lance didn’t want to leave. The idea of letting Pidge stay mad at him left a bitter taste in his mouth, especially after the day they’d had. She could be incessantly frustrating, but she had also grown on him.

Like a weed. A short, bad-tempered weed.

He watched in silence as she worked the panel. Her concentration was admirable, even when she used it as a way to push Lance away. It reminded him of their time in the Garrison, when it felt like every step he took in their friendship was met with two steps back from Pidge.

With the privilege of hindsight, Lance could guess how tiring the disguise must have been for her. Their studies had never been easy and Pidge had perfected her mediocrity like an art. Knowing her true genius now, Lance imagined she’d actually known it all but had chosen to keep herself under the radar.

“Are you just going to stand there?” Her tone struck a chord with him, bringing forth a familiarity that he hadn’t felt since Earth.

Lance put his hands on his hips, raising an eyebrow at her. “I’m just waiting for you, Pidgeon.”

She turned back to the panel, then took a deep breath, as if calming herself.

“I have a lot to do here,” she said in warning. After a moment, her expression softened. “Why don’t you take the game up to your room? I’ll grab Hunk on my way there and we can try to adapt everything to the castle’s power source.”

Lance could recognize her words for the peace offering that they were. He aimed finger guns at her, earning himself a snicker.

“Don’t take too long or I’ll fall asleep!” he called out as he walked backwards, towards the exit.

“I’ll get Kaltenecker to lick your hair, if you do!” she replied, attention already back to the control panel.

Lance laughed, but he knew that was no empty threat.

--

He didn’t often spend his nights roaming the hallways of the castle. Lance was a big believer on the benefits of good sleep and an established routine. It helped him maintain his complexion blemish-free and it contributed to keeping him sane when his mind felt scrambled beyond repair.

There were times, however, when not even spa days and special hair masks could calm his thoughts, and then he was stuck like this, struggling to fall asleep.

He buried deeper into his jacket. It wasn’t his normal one, but a big, fleece-y thing that Hunk and Pidge had gotten for him in their last trip to the space mall. Lance loved it fiercely. The castle cooled during the night-cycle to ensure the machines didn’t overheat and Lance always suffered for it.

A blinking light on the doors to his right caught Lance’s attention. It signaled movement in the hangar, just one of many fail-safes devised by Coran and Pidge to ensure no one was trying to mess with the lions. The light wasn’t all that worrying on its own; it was just a way to know what rooms were currently in use.

Lance was too tired to think through his actions. He moved into the hangar, not even questioning who might be in there. He wanted to see Blue. Or Red. Or anyone, really.

He rubbed at his eyes, collecting the tears that threatened to spill down his cheeks.

Sure enough, there was Pidge, curled around a set of tools and a big, wiry mess of parts. She had probably been propped up against the processing columns but ended up sliding down in her sleep.

The image filled Lance with so much affection that he found himself smiling. It was unusual to see their youngest member without her defenses put up. She was only second to Keith in her reserve, something that had initially displeased Lance about the two.

Pidge did have the habit of falling asleep while she worked, but Shiro and Hunk were the ones charged with checking on her. Lance thought she looked strangely cute like this, with her mouth a little open and her glasses askew. He’d forgotten how young she truly was, because of how smart and assertive Pidge could be. She didn’t want to be treated like a child and the whole team could respect her strength and maturity.

Even before they’d ended up light-years from Earth, Pidge had already carried more on her shoulders than anyone Lance had ever met. Despite knowing it was a vain hope, Lance wished he hadn’t made things harder for her back in the Garrison.

He crouched down and carefully pulled her glasses free. Strands of hair stuck to her cheeks and forehead, but without the too-big frames Lance could see her face more clearly.

Pidge already looked older than she had when they were students. After so many wormhole jumps, it was difficult to determine how long had passed since their discovery of the Blue Lion, but the passage of time made itself known in other ways.

She was pretty, but that didn’t surprise Lance. Pidge’s no-nonsense ways and sharp eyes had always been striking, even when he only pointed out these aspects of her as a joke.

Lance took off his jacket and balled it up, trying to slip it behind her head. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but it was an improvement to her current position.

“Lance?” Her eyes had fluttered open. From this close, he could see the fatigue that clouded them.

“Hey, Pidgey-Pidge,” he called out in a whisper.

“Hey, loverboy.” She giggled, lids opening and closing tiredly.

The nickname shot another wave of emotion through him. For some reason, Lance felt his eyes burn again.

“We should get you to bed,” he tried to say, though his voice sounded rougher than he intended.

Pidge didn’t immediately notice. She nodded a few times and sat up, stretching her arms over her head. She frowned at the pieces of tech still scattered around them, then focused her eyes back on him.

“Lance,” she sounded much more awake now, “why are you here?”

“Oh, you know,” he stalled. “Sometimes, in the middle of the night, a guy just needs to grab some food goo.” He flexed his now exposed arms. “I’m a growing boy, Pidge.”

Pidge raised a brow, looking supremely unimpressed. “Don’t lie to me.”

Lance winced a little at the terse tone she’d adopted. Even in her half-awake state, Pidge was still able to see through his bullshit.

“The kitchen is nowhere near the hangar,” she continued when he didn’t reply. Her voice was soft in a way Lance had never heard from Pidge. “And your eyes look red.”

He shifted his head to the side to escape her scrutiny. Lance half-expected Pidge to get angry at his stubbornness, so he couldn’t help the small, shocked sob that escaped him when her hand touched his chin, slowly lifting his gaze.

The worry in her face quickly changed into something understanding, an almost desperate ache that must have reflected his own expression. Without another word, Lance buried into her embrace, curved so that his forehead rested on Pidge’s shoulder.

“I c-can’t stop thinking about them,” he confessed amid his sobs. “What – What if they think I’m dead?”

Pidge murmured an “I know” into his hair. Despite their size difference, she wrapped herself around Lance so completely that he felt guarded by her arms.

“Come on,” she said once his whimpers had quieted down. “Your room is the closest.”

Lance let her move away. His knees hurt from the position he’d assumed on the floor and, now that he no longer had Pidge there, the cold of the hangar raised goosebumps across his arms.

“Put this back on.” Pidge draped the fleece jacket over his shoulders. Her hands lingered there for a moment, drawing a line in the fabric. “It’s a better coat than it could ever be a pillow.”

It wasn’t much of a joke, but Lance smiled at her. Crying made him exhausted, but not enough to ignore Pidge’s efforts to cheer him up. He stood up.

“Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.”

They made their way to his room in silence. Pidge had to stop at the hangar doors to put in the security measures, but no more words were exchanged. Lance was just glad to have company.

They paused in front of his dorm. “Will you come in?”

Pidge studied him carefully. Lance didn’t think she could see much in the dark of the hallway, but the truth was that she’d already caught him in a breakdown, there was nothing else to hide.

“Do you want to be alone?” she finally vocalized her concern. Lance shook his head, feeling his chest constrict at the possibility that she might leave. “Then I’ll come in.”

He went straight to his bed and laid down. Pidge stood at the entrance, letting the door slide closed behind her. The awkwardness was palpable and Lance couldn’t blame her for it; Pidge was not the best at social cues.

“At least sit down with me. I promise I won’t start bawling again.” He didn’t mean to sound depreciative, but his self-consciousness must have shown, because Pidge narrowed her eyes at him.

“I don’t care if you cry, you doofus.” She marched up to the bed and sat down near the headboard. “Put your head in my lap.”

Her demanding tone didn’t fit in with the gentleness of her actions. Lance was amused by the incongruity. Pidge was rough around the edges and her earlier show off affection now made her bristle, almost as if she was afraid to reveal too much to him. Lance could understand the urge to put up a front, but he was too exhausted to be embarrassed.

He rolled on his side, fitting his shoulder under her thigh.

“My mom used to do this when I was upset.” Pidge ran a hand through his hair, pulling lightly at the knots until they were undone. “The rhythm of it always soothed me. That and her, really. Mom had – I mean, she has a calming influence.”

Lance didn’t comment on her slip up. The feeling of nails scraping against his scalp was pleasing. The personal closeness was something that they also did in his family and he had missed it. He was a naturally affectionate person and the team didn’t seem to appreciate his expansiveness all that much.

“I used to do this for Veronica and Rachel,” he breathed out. “Ronie is older and she would force me to braid their hair when I was younger. I complained about it non-stop, but now I miss it.”

Pidge traced his hairline, then down to his ear, neck, collarbone. She seemed absent-minded as she did it, mind caught somewhere else.

“Matt was the one who would call me Pidge. I used to hate that nickname. After he disappeared, it seemed only right to assume it as my new name. For him.”

Lance shifted a little, so that he could look up at her. “Your real name isn’t Pidge?”

This made her stop for a moment and look down at him in exasperation. Lance suppressed the urge to laugh, but his lips still twisted into a smile, despite his effort.

Pidge flicked him on the forehead.

“I thought you were being serious!” It was funny to see her like this. Pidge usually responded to him with either blankness or sarcasm, so it was satisfying to garner an actual reaction.

“I could have been!” Lance brought a hand up to rub his stinging forehead. “You do realize you never told Hunk and I your real name?”

“It’s Katie,” she said without preamble. The only sign of her unease was that, when Lance tried to sneak another look at her face, Pidge’s fingers held his head in place, before resuming movement in his hair.

“It’s nice to meet you, Katie.” He let out a soft snicker, which Pidge mirrored.

“Nice to meet you, Lance.”

Lance fell silent, letting her touch lull him into a torpor. The point of contact gave him something to concentrate outside of his thoughts of Earth, until the sensation and Pidge were all he could focus on.

“Did you fall asleep?” she asked after some time.

“No.” Lance slowly rose up from her lap. “I don’t know if I will be able to sleep tonight.”

Pidge frowned, looking down at her hands as Lance repositioned himself to sit at her side.

“You and I are more similar than I ever thought, I guess.”

“What, you also go crying around the castle at strange hours, hoping no one else will see?” She raised a brow at him in response. It wasn’t that much of a surprise, really. Lance had known how broken up she felt about her father and brother’s disappearance. “We will find them, Pidge. I won’t rest until we do.”

The emotion in her eyes shifted. He couldn’t really tell what Pidge was feeling, but the look on her face was both sad and warm, grateful even. Lance tried to think of a time when he or any of the others had tried to support her in her search. There might have been something said when she’d first revealed her identity, but nothing stood out since.

His chest tightened with the realization.

It was possible that Hunk or Allura had spoken to Pidge privately about it, and Lance would put good money on the odds that Shiro had comforted her more than once, but that was it. Keith was quiet and broody, too dedicated to their mission to consider what the rest of the team went through. And Lance…

Lance had been too self-involved to notice. He had wallowed in his own misfortune and it had blinded him to the fact that at least his family was safe in Cuba. Pidge’s father and brother were lost in the middle of an intergalactic war, taken prisoners. Her mother thought she was missing.

He didn’t feel like he deserved Pidge’s gratitude.

“Can you tell me something funny?” she asked out of the blue. “I don’t think talking about our families is gonna help either of us sleep tonight.”

Lance let out a shaky exhale. “You’re right. I’m all cried out.” He poked at the skin under his eyes. It felt sensitive and swollen. “All that investigating for good eye masks and the work was all for nothing!” He put his palm over his eyes, playfully turning his head to the side. “Don’t look at me! I’m a shadow of my former self!”

“You’re the resident beauty guru, I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” Pidge rolled her eyes at his theatrics. She pulled Lance’s hand away from his face. “And you owe me a story.”

“Hey, how do I owe you anything?” He pouted at her. “I just saved you from getting a crick on your neck!”

She pulled more harshly at his hand, making Lance yelp. “You woke me up and I even gave you a head massage!”

It was his turn to tug at her arm, but his smile betrayed that Lance was having fun. “Fine, but then we’re even!”

Pidge finally let go of him, looking smug. He closed his hand and pointed at her face in an act of mock aggravation.

“Is it okay if I lie down?” She looked around the room, as if searching for a hidden futon where she could stretch out.

“Sure, let me just…” He scooted down and to the side. Pidge maneuvered into the space he had created, stuck between him and the wall. “I don’t think these beds were made to be shared.” He laughed.

The position wasn’t the worst they could be in. Pidge was small enough that, with her back pressed to the wall, Lance had enough space in the mattress that he wouldn’t fall over.

“This feels like a sleepover.” Her face scrunched up at the words. He couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed or just amused by the idea. “I never had one of those before.”

“Never?” he marveled.

“No need to look that surprised,” Pidge huffed. “I just didn’t have a lot of friends growing up. Not anyone close, at least.”

“Just Matt,” Lance blurted out without thinking. A shadow crossed Pidge’s eyes, but she didn’t seem upset.

“Yeah… You would like him. Matt can be as much of a goofball as you are.” She nuzzled quietly into the pillow. The lights had dimmed automatically when they laid down, so Lance couldn’t tell if Pidge was blushing or not. “It helps, you know? Having you here.”

Pidge refused to catch his eyes as she said this, which Lance understood. Being vulnerable could be scary, even when around your best friends. Still, he felt pride well up in him, glad that he had done something right towards her.

“You wanted a funny story, right?” he asked softly, the words only loud enough to be heard. Pidge’s gaze snapped to his, obviously relieved. “How about this: My first love was this little girl I met when I was fourteen. I never even knew her name.”

“That’s not funny, not really.” Pidge’s brows took a quizzical air. “How do you know it was love, then?”

“I just know. When I think about her, about that day… It felt like fate.” He saw the cynicism on her face before Pidge could even say anything. “I swear! I met her and everything changed. I don’t know if I would have met Hunk or got into the Garrison or even made it here without her.”

Pidge sighed against the pillow. “Honestly, that sounds like a lot of pressure to put on a first love.”

Lance watched as she drew patterns into the sheets between them. She wasn’t trying to be mean, he could tell.

“She doesn’t know, obviously. I didn’t even like her straight away. It’s just –” he paused, thinking it through. “It’s just funny, how much of a difference one person can make. When she talked to me, I was feeling sorry for myself. She cheered me up.”

That same day, he had met Hunk, who had later confessed that he’d only approached Lance because he’d appeared to be in a good humor. Without Hunk, his best friend, Lance might not have tried out for the Garrison. And, without the Garrison, he wouldn’t have been in Arizona to find the Blue Lion.

“Is she why you are so obsessed with fate and such?” Pidge teased. She was yawning every few seconds, but there was a smile on her face.

“You shouldn’t knock fate down.” Lance grinned, trying to bat her hand away from the sheets. They had bunched up a bit due to her movements. “It got us into space and closer to your family.”

Pidge made a face at him, then shrugged. They’d had this conversation before, about what had led the three out into Garrison grounds that night. Pidge argued that it was bound to happen, with how often she went out to search the radio frequencies, but even that fell back into Lance’s claim that they were all destined to become the new paladins of Voltron.

“I just think that love is about commitment,” she murmured, eyes already closed. “It’s about choosing one person and then falling in love with him, even when he’s obnoxious, even when he’s…” She trailed off, having fallen asleep.

Lance chuckled at her little speech. It was nice to think that someone would eventually choose to love him, forever. He felt comforted not only by the idea, but by Pidge's slow breathing, the heat of her hand so close to his chest. His own lids felt heavier and heavier. Lance closed his eyes.

[macklives]

hey so this is gonna be a long-ish one. ive decided its been far too long since i did a session, and we did so many i can often forget what happened. i started in july and im pretty sure its been more than half a year now since this whole blog happened. and in that time, we’ve gone through 88 sessions and i want to know if i remember the relevant plot points and what we got up to in the last few sessions. a refresh/reminder if you would.

so i hereby commence my own little recap of act 5 because yeah no, its too much to do a recap of everything and i have andrew for that after every few acts. but i wanna refresh my mind on act 5 for now. so here we go.

1. alternia.. fucked up place. but its a place the trolls live on so what are we gonna do about it? overthrow the government? seems about right, lets do that with the next troll that gets introduced and if its not kanaya idk what andrew is doing by not having introduced the best troll yet. why the long wait? it was the second introduced? i honestly expected it to go in order when i first read act 5, because first we had karkat talk to jade which was the first new piece dialogue in the comic besides the main kids, but then we had kanaya with rose, which was followed by tavros, then terezi (iirc). so id assume we were following that order but nope karkat got fully introduced, then this random fucking juggalo called gamzee made its way into the comic. imagine my surprise.

2. theres been terminology throughout act 5, that i do not fucking know and will not remember and probably never will. like tf is a perigee again? i made a doc somewhere ill probably find it.

3. karkat’s introduction... short but very sweet. and by sweet i mean we got to know the depths of the angry edge lord. and by depths i mean karkat got angry at gamzee for typing in a way that he didnt like so he yapped like a chihuahua. nah, but seriously, i do like karkat tho, hes growing on me but only bc hes a bitch baby and his whole personality makes me want to mock him so thats the reason im not that annoyed and think hes funny, and the most harmless troll. even more so than tavros. and thats saying something. 7.5/10 bc im generous.

4. then gamzee... the high juggalo troll who has the worst typing quirk imo, i cannot for the life of me read it. but hes chill, i actually really like gamzee. hes funny and the least problematic as of right now. 8.5/10.

5. terezi’s introduction next i think. she likes playing as a lawyer with her stuffed dragons, ie by roleplay, shes blind, can see through licking, and she likes eating chalk, maybe its even nutritious. shes good. 9/10. 

6. uhh in the process of these intros, there are teams being made? karkat joins gamzee and terezi in, i THINK, the red team?? bc terezi likes red?? could be wrong, i dont remember the teams except that its red/blue to represent sollux’s duality in those colors. terezi then tries recruiting AC but AC is like lol sorry i have to ask this friend of mine who has authority over me for some goddamn reason and terezi goes yuck tf i hate that guy................... yeah thats all we have on the teams. pretty sure sollux had smth to do with karkat about the making of the leaders, and they did the “i hate me” and the “no i hate me more than u hate u” or whatever the fuck that was. they got embarrassed afterwards and deleted their messages. im pretty sure they have no messages because everything ends up being mutually deleted so their logs are actually empty. ngl, kinda enjoyed their convos, made me appreciate their characters. i hope we get more because its good content. i also dont know what order this whole thing is in, who contacted who first? couldnt tell you. ill remember later on. and since im basing this off from memory alone, gotta deal with what i remember. uhhhh so yeah. we havent met all characters yet so the teams have not been officially decided but we got the bases, which is that.

7. god i found it, and the only thing im looking at right now is the terminology list i made and what the fuck?? what the fuck?? you miss a few weeks and suddenly the word nubslurping comes up and you forget what the fuck youre reading.

8. im PRETTY SURE aradia is seen after that whole team fiasco?? or its sollux... maybe. wait. its sollux, right. i just knew someone gets introduced mid way through is all. actually, someone gets introduced after every 20 pages. i have no idea. but ik aradia and sollux go hand in hand.

9. oh shit. OH SHIT! RIGHT! I REMEMBER! so this occurs in the latest session i did, and not the beginning of act 5, but AG and aradia team up, right?? and sollux fucking gets manipulated by them and ??? idk??? they make him find the game, reprogram it and then make him believe its going to end the world (which in hindsight is true, but anyways) so he refuses to play it which was AG’s plan all along so she steps up and becomes leader in his place. but aradia says sollux will still play the game no matter what, but she never went through with the plan for AG but it was apart of a prophecy? that sollux wouldnt be the leader at all? that he’d still play? but it had to go according to plan so it could succeed??? we just dont know why yet. anyways, point being, she still cares for sollux since she did it for him rather than for AG. and thats what i recall. god tf i forgot about that whole drama until writing down “sollux and aradia go hand in hand” which gave me violent flashbacks to the memory.

10. oh and id give aradia 9/10 and sollux 7/10. i do like sollux but if i put him higher than karkat, id get crucified. so im keeping them around the same.

11. man i really like sollux and aradia tho, i may have put him at 7, but i really like their dynamic and i really hope they make up and aradia explains herself about AG. because from one side it looks shitty. and while sollux is rude and never makes up his mind, he apologized to aradia after going off, and that was the only time ive seen him be sincere, so im pretty sure he cares for her to some extent. and i think its somewhat mutual? considering the whole “did it for him” thing. man, i see potential because i actually like both their characters. theyre well written. may not have the best personalities, but i appreciate well written characters and homestuck has the best ones ive seen in a while.

12. oh shit, hell yeah, the more i write, the more im connecting the dots and remembering. however, the more i write, the more i want to just make an analogy post but thats not for now. jesus christ its not all about analogies, mack, this is a recap. but.. how does andrew do it? to not go off track??? hard. telling ya.

13. anyways, didnt we break the fourth wall at some point and have the demon gods or whatever the fuck speak to us in third person for the first time in the comic, after having only gone into second person narrative, right after we were introduced to sollux and his “virus”? the uh, the phrase “the demon was already here” was said, or something along those lines. first line in homestuck to give me the creeps ngl and i appreciate it bc it gives me motivation to know what the fuck its about. its cool bc you have no idea where its going and it sure doesnt have anything to do with the current plot, since the trolls’ session/game doesnt have fucking demons so im curious as to what the fuck that was about. and if i really have to make a theory, i feel it has something to do with aradia’s voices in her head which also connect to the gods rose heard when she started disregarding rules and told dave to look at derse without listening to music bc it was as if he was purposely blocking away their calls. like holy shit, that gave me the shivers. while i do want to know more about wtf happens after act 4, trolls are taking priority right now. just like we did with the intermission. no discussing the kids unless necessary. treat this as its own separate comic. and THEN we can connect.

14. ANYWAYS, tavros’ intro???? that comes afterwards?? with the fiduspawn that made me gag a little on the inside? yep. remember that. fuck that lol. -1/10 but tavros himself is MAYBE a 6/10? i wish we explored his character more in his intro bc right now he just looks like a character made only to be a victim rather than have any depth and i feel thats robbing someone of their full potential. give me more personality andrew, rather than a quivering boy who falls prey to bitches. im expecting more throughout the comic honestly and i hope he gets growth so hes not looked as a “victim” but rather his own character. he is still sweet, and i like him because i want to protect him, but id rather have more info, you know what i mean?

15. oh hell. kanaya had a chainsaw at some point. that made me happy. and didnt she cut off tavros’ legs?? and he got robot ones? and some creepy dude was looking and we called him saggy tits bc hes sagittarius? right? neat. that did happen. pretty sure saggy tits is ACs friend that tells her what to do. the more u know. OH and they all have colored blood similar to their text colors lol. that i remember... so tavros has brown, terezi has blueish green, um. karkat has grey the loser. and apparently it forms a rainbow which is nice. rainbow is good.

16. i dont remember anything else actually

17. wait no i do. AG appeared. shes a petty bully. idk what to say about her. we didnt get that much, except that she hates tavros but is okay with aradia. she also looks like a bottle opener. actually, i think she teamed with aradia to gain leadership rather than to “be friends”. and while that is similar to how karkat did it, meaning the gain, the motivation and how they earned it is entirely different. kinda seeing a trend tho. the leaders of the red/blue teams are both characters who wanted the role, but never had it to begin with. only to win their way into the position. but rather than ask non-stop like karkat did, AG manipulated others so she could be successful. not too sure if she also used aradia for that, or is actually motivated to become friends since they were “past enemies” and she needed a rebound. pretty sure its somewhat both. while AG did mostly use aradia to speak with sollux, what she doesnt know is that aradia is a bad bitch who never even thought about AG and only followed through with the plan bc she had a plan of her own. i guess we’ll look into that later. i lowkey want to know their history.

18. OH AC!!! she appeared for a second as well. love her. shes amazing. 9.5/10. and you may ask yourself, why am i saying “i love this character” but none of them are 10/10?? weellllll its because, and i cant stress this enough, 10/10 belongs to kanaya, i dont make the rules. im waiting for her introduction, shes my favorite and its obvious. sorry.

19. oh huh seems i forgot about the term “lusus”. which.. is.. their parents but not really, its these fucking weird ass creatures that the trolls fought in a cave or something as a child. i dont fucking know. terezi hatched hers and it died? gamzee’s also died but his goat sea dad was never really there to begin with so while it is sad, its more sad that gamzee never saw him? um.. karkat killed his own by exploding his computer bc sollux said dont run the virus and karkat said u cant tell me what to do and did it anyways. so thats on him. but apparently theyre supposed to die, to become prototyped during the game, right? yeah. i remember now.

20. thats.. about it? idk anything else, nothing is coming back to me apart from the shit above. huh.... im surprised how quickly things do come back to you the moment you rant about the plot tho.... handy trick.

cool. neat. fun. this took me too long. but im glad i remember a little bit.

[darthravage]

“Kneel bevore the dragon of Zakuul”

Anyone who has played KoET so far will know this quote which is a way of conditioning Vailyn. As you all know she is somehow mad and I will try to explain her madness as far as possibile in this text. Of course it is very well explained in the game but I’ve grown mad and wanted to write something again. When I’ve finished KoET (what won’t take that long anymore I guess) I’ll try to explain Valkorion’s behaviour. How ever let’s do this one. (Ok this text became longer than I originaly planned it. The last heel will contain the whole text in short form without the argumentative part of course.)

Let’s start with reasons in her family: I think we can agree in the fact that Vailyn’s father is rather mad what you can see in the fate of Ziost and Nathema as well as in the fate of his father. SInce she is his offspring it’s rather natural that she inherits some of his madness. The argument between Vitiate and Senya about how to raise the children won’t have improven that at all as well as the fact that the Senya left Valkorion and the children had to decide with who to go wasn’t really helpful. Maybe things would have been different if Vaylin had chosen to stay with her mother but her brothers stayed with her father and so she would have lost at least one other person she had a bound to (Texan) who brought her gifts from the worlds he conquered and visited her in her prison. Another thing which you can see is that the game just mentions that Texan visited her and not Senya. So when Vaylin needed her most her mother wasn’t there in person for some reason. Sure it may have reasons which could be that Senya just was too weak to visit a world like Nathema and see her doughter suffering or Valkorion was just able to prevent Senya from visiting her daughter. But I think Vaylin was too young and too tortured to think about posibilties. When Texan died Vaylin lost the only person who ever seemed to care about her and to understand her. She mentions often enough that neither Valkorion nor Senya ever understood the three of them. Of course Arcan was still left as one of her siblings and she stayed loyal to him as long as he was the emporor but in the begin of KotFE you see that they don’t trust each other. Vaylin is too emotional and psychological instable but she isn’t stupid and of course noticed that Arcan didn’t trust her.  All together: Except her dead brother no one ever seemed to understand or trust Vaylin while she was still discovering her own potential and therefore she didn’t even know herself right.

When she got empress of the Eternal Empire and SCORPIO’s behaviour: Basically Vaylin wasn’t sure about herself when she got empress so though physically being a young adult she was psychologically basically in puberty when she had to care about a whole planet and the conquered worlds. That in combination with the fact that she never learned to trust people bevore isn’t a good combination at all. SCORPIO wasn’t really helpfull in that case either since she abused Vaylin either. Of course SCORPIO may not have had a better past herself as you learn on Iokath but Vaylin dosn’t know that and even if she had known she wouldn’t have been able to understand based on facts which I will explain later. All together you can say a girl at her puberty which never learned to trust another person and has to lead an empire gets betraied again. That also explains why she reprogrammed the GEMINI units after SCORPIO was gone. Things which have to obey her can’t betray her and she is at least sure about their loyalty (the only thing she can be shure about at this time). More over, the GEMINI units were related to SCORPIO what make it more likely for them to betray her. Another thing is that I don’t believe she is concious about her own motives and it’s imposibile for you to control your subcontiousness. Since it is some kind of displacment we get to psychologicall ilness. I’m not a psyologist and I won’t try to make a diagnose what exactly she has but I try to determin which kind of displacemet (Freud) she uses:  I think there are more but most like is projection: She tries to project her own mistakes and incertenty to others. So she isn’t responsibile for things which go wrong but her knights or who ever is there are in her opinion. That again is not concious to her and so she feels right at this point and thinks she is in the right position to punish who ever is there.

Now let’s get to the most important point her conditioning on Nathema: First of all the world itself is torture. It is completely empty of the force and even non force users can feel that so it must be an awfull pain for some one who is strong in the force like Vaylin was (I mean she is even stronger than the Outlander even when her power is restricted). Then the conditioning itself: When you have a dog you probbably know the basics: When the dog does something wrong you are angry whith him and you show him that by punishment, when he does something right he gets a reward for it. According to Vaylings reaction when the conditioning is used against her it seems to be the situation with the punishment. Meaning a child who is insecure about herself which is on a planet which is torture itself for some reason she dosn’t understand is punised when she does something wrong and dosn’t even understand what she did wrong. This can’t end good. Another point is that she wasn’t even aware of the conditioning when it was first used against her in the game. That leads to the fact with undercontiousness which I’ve explained bevore again. Another point is that she wasn’t only punished for things she did wrong but this Jarek (I hope I’ve spelled him right) did crusual experiments with her. That’s something entirely else agian. When somebody gets conditioned you have a punishment which comes right after the deed: when a child touches something hot it feels imeditiadely pain and knows it is unhealthy to touch this thing for some reason so it stops touching it. (In some cases more tries are requiered but the relationship will be build some times). But in those experiments there a relationsip can’t be build since it isn’t imediatly after she did something wrong but to a random point in her live. Also some of the experiments were ment to take her empathie for some reasons as you can see in Jareks recordings of the experiments. One sayes she watched somebody die in a very crual way and showed no intentions of acting. The assesment of this experiment was positive. That showes that she was conditioned in more ways. One was "kneel bevore the dragon of Zakuul” another one was directly aimed to take any empathie away from her. There are two possibile reasons for that:  The first one is that Valkorion who feared the strengh of his daughter was afraid that she some day might find out what he did to Nathema and she could turn against him for that if she felt empathie to the Sith and all the other people who died there. The other one gives more credid to Valkorion. Vaylin isn’t really thinking bevore she acts so if she feels sorry for people she might cause chaos on a large scale trying to seek justice for them. (Maybe I will mention that when I write the text about Valkorion but for now I won’t check what is more likely). The fact that implants and chemicals which damage her are used isn’t good either. And she knows what they can do to her (prbabbly it isn’t coucious to her again but it all exists in her subconcousness).

Short: We’re talking about a young woman who dosn’t really know herself and feels misunderstood by anyone else who get’s a task most people with a “normal” past aren’t up to. In addition to that the one person she trusted is dead and when she still was a child she has seen things which are worse than that what most people (including some soldiesrs) have seen in their aduldhood. She gets betrayed multible times and the times when she rules are bad since Zakuul is in war by then. To conclude it all she was trained to have no empathie on a world which is torture itself. And her genetic material is rather suboptimal.

I don’t know what Valkorion thought when he send her to Nathema and trained her that way but from a person which is at least 1 century old and has raised two empires I would expect more and better thinking than that.

[mittensmorgul]

So everyone around here should know by now that I find s6 really narratively shaky, and it clearly has its ups and downs. That murky middle section I cringe my way through every time, some dubious-at-best standalone eps. But it also has some of my absolute favorite episodes in the entire series. 6.11 is right there. 6.09 is the most delightful soulless!Sam episode and just delightful in general. 6.15 tops most people’s lists. And then the run I watched today-- 6.17 through 6.21.

I went back to the Hellatus Rewatch Notes I did over the summer, and wasn’t surprised to find just this one post with three short paragraphs:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/186154895705/619-mommy-dearest-ouch-this-marks-the

and this tag: #i just couldn't face writing long wailing meta about the manipulation revealed in 6.20 today sorry

I’m not sure I’m in any better place to write that long wailing meta today, but I’m going to at least try. The narrative we’re seeing spin out over the first half of s15 deserves it. I think it’ll be easier if I talk about this whole chunk of episodes at once, though. S6 might be pretty slapdash as a whole, but this run of episodes in particular seems to all be working together to tell a coherent story, and to be setting up massive narrative paths that Dabb Era has chosen to walk back down from a different perspective. So rather than talk about each of these episodes, I’m gonna talk about what they mean, for the cosmology of the universe, Chuck’s role in all of this and how the parallels have been drawn back to this by his actions in s15, and Castiel’s position in all of it. Dean’s, too, but I’m even going to talk about that in relation to Castiel, because for better or worse, s6 had played the long con on Cas, and as far as we knew at the time, the Storyteller had won...

We’ve all discussed the disconnect between Dean and Cas in s15, but so much of that has fallen into debates over which one of them was right or wrong in their disagreement. I don’t think EITHER of them was right, OR wrong. They’ve just been coming at this fundamental question of Free Will from opposite sides, for the entire series.

For billions of years-- or according to 6.20 at least 400 million years or so if Cas was standing at a shoreline watching the first fish flop itself up on land-- Cas has been. S4 established his character, showed us his doubts in Heaven’s plans that led him from loyalty to rebellion, through torture and brainwashing to fighting free of that in the end. That established his journey into understanding free will and humanity, truly, in ways that he expressed in 6.20 that he desperately tried to share with other angels. Most of those other angels... never understood, never had a reason to understand. Like teaching poetry to fish. Even the angels loyal to Cas, or who didn’t want to follow Raphael in the wake of the failed apocalypse, never seemed to understand this.

S8 gave us some additional insight into Cas, through Naomi’s description of him as an angel that never followed orders, at least not completely. That he’d always had a rebellious streak, or perhaps just a spark of curiosity and interest in creation, and humanity specifically. He refused to participate in horrors inflicted on humanity in the name of Heaven and had been punished by it and programmed back into angelic compliance every time.  But until Dean Winchester, he’d never truly rebelled. He’d never rejected Heaven entirely. And even then, that rejection didn’t happen until season twelve. He’d still been trying to maintain a loyalty to the other angels even through s9 when Metatron told him he may drape himself in the flag of Heaven, but he still did everything for one man. I don’t think that was a lie at that point, but I do believe it’s something Cas hadn’t actually admitted to himself until that point. And he wouldn’t admit it to another angel until 12.19, when he told Kelvin in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t acting on Heaven’s behalf, but to spare the Winchesters.

(yep, even then, after the mixtape, after all of that, Cas was still on about Sam and Dean... and even in 13.04 as he argues with the Empty for his freedom, he still frames it in terms of Sam and Dean... ironically the same thing that Dean has taken heat for when talking to Cas, always making it “you, me, and Sam” in 11.23 and the beer run scene and in 12.19... Cas is just as guilty of not being specific as Dean is, for different reasons, but to the same effect)

Back to s6 though. Cas did make his choices. He was adamant (on flashbacks from 6.20) that Dean was “retired,” that he wasn’t to be dragged back into their fight, even as he was desperate to ask Dean for his help. (again, I still blame Sam and his terrible promise he extracted from Dean in 5.22 for that one) Regardless, that choice led Cas down a cascading spiral of worse and worse choices in a desperate attempt to shield Sam and Dean from what I’ll call The Story. Except in doing so, he’d only kept digging the hole for himself deeper and deeper, not realizing that he hadn’t been set up to be the hero, but the villain.

This is the position Chuck seems to desperately want Sam and/or Dean to finally accept in s15:

Chuck: No, this is more, this is….. hope. That’s what’s stopping me. You, you still think that Dean and Cas are gonna fly through those doors just in the nick of time. You still think that you’re the hero of this story. You still think you can win.

And that’s exactly the taunt Metatron used on Cas in 9.18. And it’s exactly the taunt Crowley used on Cas in 6.20:

CROWLEY You kill my hunters. Why can't I kill yours? CASTIEL They're my friends. CROWLEY You can't have friends, not anymore. I mean, my God. You're losing it! CASTIEL I'm fine. CROWLEY Yeah. You're the very picture of mental health. Come on. You don't think I know what this is all about? CASTIEL Enlighten me. CROWLEY The big lie -- the Winchesters still buy it. The good Cas, the righteous Cas. And long as they still believe it, you get to believe it. Well, I got news for you, kitten. A whore is a whore is a whore.

and this is part of a much larger passage-- their entire conversation in Hell-- but the point boils down to this:

CROWLEY Granted. Yes. But just to show you how serious I am about this scheme...How about I float you a little loan? Say, 50 large? 50,000 souls from the pit. You can take them up to heaven. Make quite a showing. It's either this or the Apocalypse all over again. Everything you've worked for -- everything that Sam and Dean have worked for -- gone. You can save us, Castiel. God chose you to save us. And I think...Deep down...You know that.

YOU CAN SAVE EVERYONE, CASTIEL. Dean, Sam, Humanity, Earth-- even Heaven and, grudgingly, Hell too. And in doing so, prove God resurrected you for a PURPOSE. This was what Cas needed, what motivated him the entire year he resisted bowing to Raphael and obediently falling in line while the apocalypse started up again. He could have a purpose, a mission.

Cas had still been struggling with this in Dabb Era. His desperation to “get a win” in 12.19 stemmed directly from this absolute fall into hubris from s6, ending in the release of the Leviathan and Cas’s apparent death again in 7.02. He’s been trying to atone for that guilt ever since.

But in all of this, Cas has never really forgotten what it was to be an angel, what it meant to serve God and to serve Heaven. There was no free will. The few times he questioned his orders, he was punished, tortured, and reprogrammed back into line. He’s fully aware of all of this. For him, learning the extent of Chuck’s manipulation of the story is more a confirmation of his entire experience over billions of years, while that revelation absolutely shattered Dean. For Dean’s entire life-- the blink of an eye for an angel-- he’s believed in very little other than his own personal choices.

Essays have been written about Dean’s underclass upbringing, his life on the fringes of society as a drifter and a con artist, going from town to town under false identities and living a life in the shadows. And yet Dean has always believed that was of his own choice. That he wouldn’t have chosen to do anything else, that he would’ve been bored in a “normal life,” and proved that in season six when he leaves his last chance at a normal life behind with Lisa and Ben and throws himself entirely back into hunting. Because that’s the tragedy. That’s Chuck’s story for both Sam and Dean... they don’t get to be happy.

(this is why I don’t trust Eileen’s story with Sam, fwiw, because that was literally exactly the story Chuck intended her for, exactly the same as Lisa)

This was Sam’s story with Jess from the pilot episode. This was Dean’s story with Cassie, Sam’s story with Amelia... with Rowena... Every time they have a chance at a relationship, Chuck turned it into a tragedy.

But back to the point here...

Dean prized his free will above all else. He’s doubled down on that sentiment even in s15 talking to the girl he didn’t yet know was actually Lilith, confirming that he’d never want to live in a world where all his choices were made for him, or where the whole game he was playing was engineered specifically for him to lose. He’d always stood firm on the point that-- for better or worse-- all of his choices had truly been his own.

(again, why “I didn’t have another choice” is the worst thing any character can say on this show)

For Dean, Chuck’s revelation shattered him, possibly even more than Cas’s betrayal in 6.20 did. And for all he cares for Dean, for all he’s studied Dean and learned about humanity and free will from Dean over the last decade, Cas still can’t understand why, because it’s not the same identity-destroying revelation for him, as an angel who’d had to fight for every choice he’s ever made, as it was for Dean who based his entire worldview on the choices that made him who he is as a person.

And s15 is taking all of these themes from the run up to the end of s6, and turning them inside out.

What makes a hero?

What power do we have against “destiny?”

What power do we have against a seemingly unassailable enemy?

What morally or objectively wrong paths will we be led down before we discover it’s all a trap?

What chance do we have at real happiness, and what would that even look like?

What sacrifices are we willing to make to ensure that humanity overall will prevail against impossible odds?

What ~actually~ needs to be done to stop the eternal cycle of apocalyptic tragedy that Chuck has put them through from the start? (Raphael just wanted to reboot s5, Chuck has shown his hand that horrific tragedy is always his intended endgame, regardless of what form it takes)

Can we achieve a real victory without unleashing an even greater horror on the world for once? (s6 ended with Godstiel eating purgatory, s7 started with the Leviathans escaping into the world, and now Chuck is obsessed with Leviathans and monsters again in s15, while Jack is literally consuming angel hearts and supposedly attempting to gain enough power to kill God... but what will consuming that power make Jack into? He’s already “eaten” Michael, Cas has already stopped Belphegor from “eating Hell” and becoming a new evil god, but Rowena ended up becoming the vessel of Death that brought all those souls back to Hell, effectively neutralizing that particular threat at least for the time being... but this is definitely something I’m still mindful of as the season progresses)

All of these questions were crucial in s6, and throughout the entire series, but this was Cas’s character turning point, and it’s what he’s been fighting his way back from ever since. I can’t help but think that-- like with Belphegor in 15.03, like his choice to return to the Winchesters in 15.06, like his journey to Purgatory with Dean in 15.09-- he’ll be confronted with these specific choices again.

A few other points from these episodes that I think are interesting to keep in mind:

6.17 and the confrontation with Fate herself. If Chuck doesn’t get you, Fate will, or so it would seem. A lot of the themes of this one hit again in 13.19 Funeralia, with why we shouldn’t mess too much with the natural order. I just watched it a couple nights ago, so it’s incredibly fresh in my mind. I still think that episode is incredibly important to what Billie is meddling with in s15, in ways that haven’t entirely been revealed yet.

6.18, and more time travel done right. But also, the Major Sign we all should’ve been more focused on in what Rachel revealed, and what the Winchesters accidentally tipped her off to about Cas. She implied that the Winchesters were becoming a massive drain on Cas’s attention and time in Heaven, when we know the Winchesters had hardly seen Cas all season. When Rachel investigated what Cas was actually up to, she discovered the truth of what he was up to with Crowley, and he was forced to kill her for it. What he wouldn’t do to protect his tenuous shield around the Winchesters? It’s taken them until s15 for them all to finally get on the same page.

6.19, and the pure pain. 

6.20, oh right, THIS is the pure pain.

CASTIEL I'm doing this for you, Dean. I'm doing this because of you. DEAN Because of me. Yeah. You got to be kidding me. CASTIEL You're the one who taught me that freedom and free will -- DEAN You're a freakin' child, you know that? Just because you can do what you want doesn't mean that you get to do whatever you want! CASTIEL I know what I'm doing, Dean. DEAN I'm not gonna logic you, okay? I'm saying don't...Just 'cause. I'm asking you not to. That's it. CASTIEL I don't understand.

I think he understands now. Or at least he’s miles closer to understanding.

6.21, okay let’s just take everything from Dean and complete Cas’s fall into the role of Big Bad.

I know I had a point in mind when I started writing this, but I’ve written myself out again :’D

[deepwoundsandfadedscars]

Uuuhhhh minor spoilers for Fallen Order? In the sense that it’s not story destroying spoilers, I was just surprised when it happened in my playthrough. I took liberties with the dialogue and it’s set up the way it happened in my game, from my research (re: me looking up lets plays on youtube trying to figure out the proper dialogue beforehand) it happens in different locations and with different bounty hunters, it’s pretty unique for everyone. This is where it happened for me and while I don’t remember exactly which bounty hunter I got, this is the closest estimation. Everything after Cal passes out is entirely from my brain though, I just wanted an excuse to write whump and BD-1 wound up being way more of an anxious little droid than I expected him to be lmao whoops.

~~

"What do you think, BD-1? Should we check in with the Mantis?"

BD-1 beeped in agreement. Best let them know we're alright.

"Yeah, you're right. Mantis, can you hear me? Cere?"

There was no reply, only static coming through the comm. 

"This doesn't feel right. We should get back. BD, what's the quickest way back?"

BD perched on Cal's shoulder, shining a projection onto the rocky ground. The looming wreckage of the Venator stood behind them where they stood at the edge of the lake. 

"Down to the ice caves and up the elevator looks fastest, let's get going."

BD whooped as Cal jogged down through the cave, perching high on the humans shoulder as he swam through the deeper section towards the back. The elevator that would take them down to the ice caves was still stubbornly refusing to be summoned from above so he made a running leap onto the ice slide down into the cavern, BD-1 excitedly trilling from where he clung to his back, the little robots feet tucked firmly into the belt that crisscrossed Cal’s torso.

The slide was a relatively short one in comparison to some of the others they had done, but exhilarating and twisting. As Cal slid around the last blind corner BD-1 could only beep in warning. There’s something up there! 

There was no way to stop and nowhere else to jump except for straight across the chasm and onto the icy platform. The lightsaber hilt was already in Cal’s hand when his feet hit the ground and in the same moment a blue dome surrounded the whole area, blocking the way to the elevator that would take them back to the Mantis.

A figure stood in front of him, a long sniper rifle cradled in their arms. They wore a helmet that covered their entire face and a combination of leather and durasteel armor, banding wrapped around their arms and legs and a tattered cape clasped at the throat. They gave him a cursory glance before dropping to one knee and firing their sniper at him. Cal quickly evaded, rolling to the left and circling around, igniting his dual blades as he popped to his feet again. He swung down in an arc, aiming for the barrel of the blaster.  The figure rolled away just as quick, snapping off a couple more shots that Cal easily parried, sending one to the side and the other back to the sniper, catching them across the shoulder. They stumbled back a couple steps, shaking their arm out before dropping to a knee again, taking aim at the Jedi again. Cal rushed his assailant, charging directly at them with the intention of dealing a deadly blow.

Before Cal could strike, the figure lobbed what looked to be a grenade but instead of throwing it as his feet, they threw it at his chest. The small device stuck firmly to his front and small wires exploded out of it, quickly encircling his torso and trapping his arms to his sides. Electricity crackled through the cords and his entire body went rigged, his muscles tensing. His jaw snapped shut and he threw his head back with a strangled groan as he dropped to the ground. 

BD-1 beeped in distress as Cal collapsed, sending the little droid tumbling across the ice. BD popped to his feet and scurried back to Cal’s side, beeping in concern. The Jedi was tense and seizing as the cables snapped and hissed around him. BD turned to the figure that was rising to their feet again, angrily shrieking at them. 

“Shut up,” the figure said, swooping down to snatch BD-1 up by a leg. Before BD could use any of his tools to defend himself, the figure snapped a restraining bolt to his chest plate, rendering his legs and compartments inoperable. BD shrieked at them, his voice the only way he could express his anger and frustration and concern for his human. 

The figure dropped him to the ground again and he came to rest a few feet away from Cal, facing towards the human so he could see as the figure approached the Jedi. 

Cal lay on his side where he fell, curled nearly into the fetal position with his head thrown back, his cheek scraping against the cold ice as his muscles spasmed. BD-1 could hear when the tazcable finally stopped crackling and Cal went limp, his arms still trapped against his body. The figure crouched in front of him and with a gloved hand tilted his face towards them as though checking that he was well and truly unconscious. There was no response.

The figure tapped something on their wrist and the blue dome surrounding the area dropped. A large droid that stalked on two legs approached and without a word exchanged between the droid or the caped figure, they each burdened themselves with a load, the large droid draping Cal across it’s arms and the caped figure plucking the much more manageable BD-1 off the ground and hooking a strap around his throat to dangle him from their belt. BD-1 gave an indignant trill at the way he was handled, fuming at his inability to do anything about it with the blasted restraining bolt stuck on him. 

At least from here, bouncing against the figures hip, he could catch glimpses of Cal. He had no sort of life signs detecting abilities, but he could see the occasional puff of vapor from Cal’s mouth as he exhaled into the cold air.

BD-1 didn’t know the route they took out of the caves, it wasn’t one Cal had found on their explorations. It was tucked into a back corner and the tunnel they went through was dark, only lit by the flashlights mounted to the caped figures helmet and the top of the large droids body. Eventually they emerged into daylight again and BD-1 was able to see the Venator wreckage towering above them. They had emerged from the west side of the wreckage after having traveled through the mountain parallel with the Imperial Headquarters from what BD could piece together with his existing map.

In front of them stood a ship slightly bigger than the Mantis, a yellow and black emblem emblazoned across the side and if BD-1 had a heart, he would feel it sink as he connected the dots. Bounty Hunters. What would they do with Cal? Were they going to turn him over to the Inquisitors? Surely there was a significant cost on his head by now.

Their captors boarded the ship and dumped them in the large open area at the top of the entry ramp before stomping off towards the front of the ship. 

BD-1 sat upon the ground a couple feet away from Cal, his useless legs sticking out in front of him. He beeped in frustration again, unable to do anything else but wait for whatever their fate would be and hope for Cal to wake up or even show any sign of life.

He didn’t have to wait long. He felt the ship jump into hyperspace just as Cal groaned and his eyelids fluttered as he fought his way back to consciousness. He opened his eyes, blinking in confusion at his surroundings. He tested his strength against the cables still encircled around him and was rewarded with another strong shock that caused him to writhe against the ground and scream so hard his throat ached.

The figure from the cave returned with another tall skinny humanoid figure, also wearing a face covering helmet so BD-1 couldn’t identify their species. 

“What are ya trying to do, kill him?” A gruff voice barked out from under the helmet of the new arrival. “He’s human, his body can’t take too much of this kriffing thing!”

The new arrival stepped towards Cal in two long strides, clicking a button on a remote that appeared from their pocket and the tazcable went silent again. Cal sagged against the floor, gasping as he tried to gather his bearings again. 

“I’m taking my tazcable back but we can’t have you using your weird mind powers to get away now, can we little Jedi?” The tall figure said with a laugh that sounded like he was gargling rocks. They produced a device with a nasty looking needle on one end and a vial of clear liquid on the other, sticking the needle into Cal’s exposed forearm before he even knew what was going on. They moved to put the needle away at the countertop along the front of the cargo hold and by the time they returned to the young Jedi’s side Cals eyes were glazed over and he was limp again, his breath even and slow. 

“Have a nice nap,” the figure said, pushing the button to release the tazcable and return it to it’s storage setting again, “You’re going to need it.”

Cal’s eyes slid closed and his head tipped to the side as the drugs took him under. The tall figure stood and kicked Cals foot as he walked away, leaving the captives alone again. 

For a few minutes the only sound was the hum of the ship traveling through hyperspace, which BD-1 eventually tried to cover by quietly beeping a tune to himself. He had been by himself for so long on Bogano and such a relatively short time traveling with the human Jedi. It was all he knew though, he couldn’t remember anything before his time on Bogano began. Was that where he was made? He didn’t know. But he knew he needed the human that was laid out before him. Without Cal, he didn’t have a purpose and if Cal was being taken to the Inquisitors, what would happen to BD-1? Would they just turn him off and dump him in a corner? Try to rip the encrypted files from Cordova out of his memory drives? Reprogram him so he forgot everything and make him loyal to them? He shuddered to think of any of it and beeped louder, his distress growing.

He paused when he heard the hum of the engines change. They had dropped out of hyperspace and slowing down as they came in for a landing almost right away.

The two bounty hunters from the cave appeared again, the large droid none too gently dragging Cal down the ramp by the strap across his vest that BD-1 usually clung to. 

BD-1 was picked up by the caped figure again, who tossed him into the air and caught him like a ball before tucking him under their arm. 

“Leave the Jedi’s blade with me and put him in a cell,” The gruff voice of the tall humanoid growled from behind them. “Put the droid with the rest.”

The caped figure gave a mocking salute and BD-1 saw the large droid walking down another hallway with Cal dragging behind him before his own captor turned the opposite direction, blocking his view. 

A moment later he was deposited on the table top at the back of a cell full of dead droids. The caped figure gave him a pat on the head and left the cell without a word, the door slamming shut behind them.

Stood there in the dark, not knowing where Cal was or what his fate was, all BD-1 could do was beep quietly to himself.

[sleepyfan-blog]

power suppression either error or nightmare, or both i'm just curious what would happen if either of them get their powers suppressed

Power Suppression

Fandom: Underverse

Characters: Nightmare, Error, Ink, XGaster

Warnings: Power Suppression

Word count: 2,111

Summary: Error and Nightmare wake up in cells facing one another, in an AU that neither of them recognize.

Nightmare knew as soon as he opened his eyes that something was terribly wrong. For one thing, he could see clearly out of both of his eye lights, the second… He felt lighter than he had in a very long time. The third thing was that it was very dark wherever the hell he was currently. The last thing that he remembered was fighting Dream and Cross - the two of them escaping to places unknown as he and Killer just barely failed to go through the portal after them. Once he got his hands on Cross, that miserable fucking traitor was going to regret ever betraying him - then again, he’d been fucked around with by that Gaster of his timeline, so his decisions might not have entirely been his own.

He stood up, moving towards the pale source of light, stumbling a little and hissing as he realized that the source of the light was a magical force field that when touched - forced him back a couple of inches and stung.

In the pale white, flickering light, Nightmare glanced down at his hands, realizing that he was no longer covered in the tarry substance of the corruption that the negative apples had. His bones were white and he was… He was wearing his original outfit. Including - as he felt the top of his head - the golden circlet with the crescent shaped cut in the middle of it. Panic filled him as he tried to summon his tendrils, feeling something shift just outside of his full perception and agony shock through him, originating from his neck, wrists and ankles, driving the lord of darkness to his knees. He choked back the shriek of agony - not wanting to give his captors the satisfaction of hearing him react in pain.

Once the pain faded from his body and Nightmare could move - the fallen guardian of Negativity sat up, scowling as he tried to figure out just where he was. From what he could see of the hallway outside of his cell, all he could see was a white hallway in black trim. The color of the force field was strange - as in every AU he’d visited that had such magical tech, they were either light blue if they were a tale or a swap based AU, or red if he was in a fell or swapfell based AU. Occasionally it would be a light shade of violet in swap fells, but that was unusual. But never this over-bright white color.

Nightmare studied the magical shackles on his wrists, using the light to get a better look at them - noting the intricate carving of the runes that kept his powers suppressed and locked away. At least it meant that they hadn’t somehow taken the powers of the many apples he’d consumed from him. He had his power, though it was out of reach. He sat down and looked at the shackles on his ankles, finding much the same. Both sets of restraints were completely smooth - there wasn’t a groove or keyhole revealing a weakness that he might be able to exploit in trying to get them off. Not that there was much in the cell he’d been locked into - just a small cot fused to the floor, the material dark in color - and when Nightmare dragged the mattress he’d been laying on, it revealed to be the same flat black color as was on the trim on the walls outside.

Nightmare could very dimly sense someone close by. Having literally nothing else to do - and deciding that he was going to see if there was someone in the cell facing his - he called out (hating how light and soft his voice sounded in this weak form) “Hello? Is there anyone else down here?” Perhaps he could play the innocent, confused victim and con his captors into letting him go. Then he would make them suffer for daring do this to him. He knew for a fact that Dream hadn’t done this to him - for one thing, the other would never think to suppress his powers - and the second is that the other would be hovering at his side, waiting for the very moment that he woke up in order to try to talk.

He heard an agonized groan from the cell opposite of his, and the familiar figure of one glitchy outcode came into view. “WhErE tHE fUCk Am I? WhO aRE yOu?”

“I have no idea where we are - as for who I am… I’d rather not get into that right now.” Nightmare responded, not wanting to reveal who he was to Error just yet. “What’s important is - can you access your powers? I have some sort of… Restrictors on me that keep me from trying to teleport out of here - and there’s nothing in here that I can use to try to get out of them, either.” He’s never seen such an achromatic place like this before. Is… Was he dragged to an AU he’s never known before? By who, and for what purpose? Nightmare hated the lack of control, but was doing his best to suppress his emotional reactions. He won’t give them the satisfaction. “I have just a little bit of my passive abilities, but nothing more, as far as I can tell.”

“Of coUrSe I-” Error started, voice rough and staticky with irritation, before pausing for a moment. Less then a second later, the other let out a glitched yell of pain, and Nightmare noted that the other had fallen over backwards, completely stiff his arms and legs stiff and straight.

The lord of negativity waited patiently for the other to wake up, tapping one of his bare feet against the cool tile, keeping a regular beat inside his mind, finding that it took the other at least ten minutes to start to react again, groaning and shuddering on the floor, and another five to struggle up into a sitting position “I am sorry - I had just been about to warn you not to try to use your powers too much - the cuffs that they put on both of us caused me pain when I tried to use them.” He wasn’t really sorry - but pretending otherwise would hopefully encourage a sense of camaraderie between the both of them - so that if the other managed to escape his cell, it was less likely that Error would leave him to rot.

“HoW cOmE I didn’t h-hear yoU scReAmIng eArLIer?” Error demanded, squinting at him through the force fields “yOu LoOk LiKe A sWaP iN stRAnGe cLOtheS? WhAt Au ArE yOU fRoM?”

“You wouldn’t have heard of it, even if I told you. None of the outcodes have ever visited my AU… Not that there’s much left of it. It was destroyed long ago.” Nightmare responded factually. He sincerely doubted that Dream would have ever brought Ink to the shattered remains of their timeline - and while he did use it as his main base, he didn’t trust any of the outcodes enough to even think about taking them there. “I… I didn’t scream when the pain hit me. I-I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of hearing me in pain.”

“fAIr eNOUgh. HoW dO yOU knOW whO I aM iF nO oNe HaS bEEn tO yoUR tIMELinE?” Error pressed, continuing to squint at Nightmare, arms crossed over his chest as he glared at him suspiciously. “I wILl fINd A wAY oUT anD tHEn I wIlL mUrdEr thE wOrtHLEss gLIitcHEs WhO cAUghT mE.”

Nightmare was about to give a version of the truth - something about Dream having visited his timeline on his own before - when both of them  heard the sound of a door opening, and two sets of footsteps.

“And I am telling you, with Overwrite and your knowledge of their powers, neither one of them has had the ability to escape, my dear friend.” A smooth, low voice that neither of the two caged and currently powerless beings recognized reassured. “Their code is unusual - it will take me time to reprogram them into more useful tools. If you would allow me to look at the negative one’s other half, I am sure that I would be able to reshape both of them. I am unsure if I can fix… Nightmare? I believe that’s what you called him? Without Dream being present as well. They are bound together in a way that I have never seen anywhere in the multiverse before.”

“And I told you, XGaster, he’s in the omega timeline, and having both of them in the same timeline will cause issues that you cannot handle easily. Dream is by far the weaker of the two of them, but his positive aura will win over your people to his side. It’s part of how his powers work - and Nightmare will be far more stubborn if we have Dream here. And Dream won’t trust me if I bring him here.” Ink responded, shaking his head a little.

Error screamed at Ink “YOU SON OF A BITCH LE-LE-LET ME OUT OF HE-HERE RIGHT NOW! G-GET THESE F-FUCKING CUFFS OFF OF ME, AND YOUR D-DE-DEATH WILL BE FAST YOU MIS-MISERABLE SQUID! I WILL TEAR APART YOUR FA-FA-FAVORITE AUS LI-LINE BY LI-LINE!” He threw himself repeatedly at the force field of the cage, as if hoping to bash through it by sheer force of will, hissing in pain with every strike.

“I had given you a chance to join our game, Error. You refused to play.” Ink responded, his eye lights, flat white circles as he stared down at the other, as the glitch trembled and thrashed on the floor. He glanced over at Nightmare, a small twitch of his lips upwards, as if feeling a pale shade of amusement. Not that the other was actually feeling anything. “You really do look a lot like Dream. You’re almost… Sweet in this form, Nightmare.” The guardian of creativity walked over, staring at him.

“Why is Dream’s trust something that you are after, friend? I can give you what it is you truly want and desire. His aura is only effective when you are in his presence, and the light emotions make you weak.” The Gaster pointed out, resting a hand lightly on one of Ink’s shoulders.

“Dream’s presence helps to bolster my positive popularity, which allows me greater access to the AUs that we visit. He is also the best healer I have encountered in the entire multiverse and his gentle nature makes him an excellent companion.” Ink answered. “Why he seems to think that Nightmare can be redeemed, I do not know. But his hope to find a cure for whatever happened to him - as well as his belief that Nightmare can be redeemed is what keeps him going. You take either of those things away from him and Dream will shatter.”

“Oh, please do elaborate on that.” XGaster responded with a small smirk playing on his face as the two of them started to walk.

Nightmare growled, his eye lights flashing in anger as he stepped closer to the bars of the cell he’d been forced into “If you dare touch Dream, I will rip you apart. You can only hold me here for so long. Dream may trust you for now, but I know him better than you ever will, you arrogant, soulless bastard. If he ever hears so much of a hint of what you’ve done in this world, he won’t ever trust you again… And Cross is with him in a place where you can’t directly approach the both of them to keep Cross silent.” Despite his irritation, the fallen guardian was smirking a little. The truth would will out sooner or later - and there was no way that Ink would be able to keep Dream out of this AU - and the other would be drawn to his presence. He just needed to be patient.

Error started to thrash against the force field again, screaming obscenities until he suddenly went down hard, his eye sockets covered in errors - his whole body glitching out wildly. A loading bar popped up over the other’s prone body, ever so slowly inching towards full.

Gaster and Ink left the both of them, unconcerned. “With his magic suppressed, I suspect he’ll be rebooting for hours. Just after a reboot is when he’s most malleable.” Ink supplied, staring at the prone form of his long-time enemy.

XGaster nodded “Very well, let us continue speaking, while I show you what I have added since the last time this world was RESET.” The pair of them were silent until after they vanished out of Nightmare’s sight and hearing range.

[theroadtoindigo-go]

Undesirable Truth, Part 6

               It was time for the spring festival. The entire time Tails and I were working in the shop, the nearby village was preparing for the festival and we hadn’t even noticed. It would have passed us by if we hadn’t gone into town to visit the hardware store. The town was already a very lively and well-kept place but they went all out for the spring festival. Even the trees had prepared their branches with soft pink blossoms. The air beneath them was thick with the smell of their pollen and the sky was shining bright blue through branches. Every storefront and street corner were decorated with bright flowers and there were vibrant banners and flags everywhere. I could see the town square from where I was standing, it was full of people gathering there to set up strings of lights, carnival style games and more vendor stands. The noise from all the hustle and bustle was overpowering the sound of music pouring out from the already up and running stands that were selling food, art work, toys and all sorts of attractive things. I felt inexplicably drawn toward the smell of fried food and popcorn that was wafting over on a cool breeze. Children were running around, playing and having fun, they all carried flowers or some manner of plant life in their hands as if they were the heralds of spring itself. It was a picture of joy and festivity, not too long ago this was a place I could’ve only dreamed of!

               As I was taking it all in, Tails became distracted by a vendor selling sparklers, glowsticks, and all manner of light themed fun. I could see he was already calculating the price of the vendor foods against the price of the sparklers in front of him and the amount of money he had saved up. I chuckled and left him to make his very tough decision so I could inspect one of the banners with the festival information printed on it. As it hung from the lamp post I read that the dance that Amy mentioned was taking place tonight. I hadn’t even thought about it until now, but I didn’t think I remembered how to dance. This wasn’t a dire realization, after all I could sit back this year and then participate with more confidence next year. But there was the sinking feeling that Amy would not let that stand.

Speaking of whom, she was quick to spot us. After we greeted each other, she asked a very poignant question.

“When are you getting ready for the festival?”

I blinked.

“Uh…”

I hadn’t thought about that part either. All of this actually took me by surprise.

Amy laughed.

“You’re going to at least clean up, right?”

I looked down at my hands, they were oil stained and a bit worn from working on Metal all this time.

“Ya’know…” I stated, “I probably should.”

“Why don’t you join me at my house and we can get ready for the dance together? It’ll be fun!”

Amy had a house?

“Uh... Sure! That sounds fun!”

“Alright! I’ll stop by and pick you up!”

We soon waved goodbye and parted ways. Tails walked over with two packs of glowsticks in each hand.

               “Ready to go home?” He asked.

“What about the hardware store?”

“…Oooh.” He groaned and sulked back to the light vendor to return a couple of his purchases.

He seemingly forgot to add the prices of the parts that we needed to his mental calculations.

               Metal’s rehabilitation was going very well. His parts, though a little on the haphazard side, were mending nicely. We had attached his head back to his torso, the arms were also attached but we had the wiring wrong so he couldn’t quite move them yet. All the hard work I put into reprogramming him did make a dent in his violent tendencies but it didn’t necessarily make him play nice. He was still stubborn in regard to his mission objective which I was having the hardest time overwriting. When we entered the workshop again, we found Metal off the worktable we had left him and crawling across the ground on his arms which until a moment ago we thought were inoperable. As soon as the door swung open and we walked in, all the movement was caught by the motion detectors in his eyes and he made a mad dash for us though his arms were fighting him. They seemed to move on their own the same way a baby’s arms do, he reached for me but instead of a reach it was more of a flail. Baby arms or not, this was dangerous.

               Tails and I knew what to do, if we just stood still, he wouldn’t see us and give up. He was inches away, he paused, reached out at the air just in front of us as a way of feeling out if anything was there. Once that came up with nothing, he turned around and started dragging himself across the floor to find his other pieces. Tails started creeping behind him to reach the laptop so we could shut him off. Neither of us dared make a sound. He had almost reached the computer when Knuckles walked in behind me.

               “I thought I told you two that you weren’t allowed to work in here without me!”

Metal turned around immediately, his eyes burning at Knuckles, the two were about to charge at each other but I warned Knuckles not to move. Metal shambled toward us as fast as he could then stopped halfway, he turned his head to look for us. I made the barest whisper.

“Stay… completely still.”

He followed my instructions as Metal continued to look for us.

Knuckles breathed back, “Why is this working?”

“We used motion detectors for his eyes, remember? He can’t see us clearly unless we move.”

We stood there frozen; our eyes locked on Metal who was trying his best to find us. He even called out P0-L0 as if I was dumb enough to fall for it. Knuckles grumbled a bit.

“…This is a bad time for my nose to itch.”

Tails could just barely reach the laptop but he was on the edge of Metal’s peripheral vision. He took the chance and reached as slowly as his could in hopes of grabbing the computer without being seen. Metal whipped around and started toward him. Knuckles charged forward to protect him but Metal caught Knuckles’ fist and started to squeeze. Knuckles reacted on instinct and tried to shake him off. It was like watching two feral crocodiles fighting. Tails was startled by Metal’s charge and had dropped the laptop. He was doing his best to get it working. With Metal distracted by Knuckles, and Tails unable to get the laptop to shut Metal down I needed to use the song to put him to sleep but I couldn’t remember what it was.

               “Tails! What was that song we were supposed to sing to put him to sleep?”

“I don’t remember!”

Metal heard my voice and remembered his mission, he swiped at Knuckles and cut him with his free hand. As Knuckles reacted to the pain. Metal pushed himself at me and nearly grabbed me but I jumped up onto the worktable to avoid his grasp.

               “Cherry!” Knuckles exclaimed and ran over to help me but Metal turned and swiped at Knuckles again, almost cutting his legs. Knuckles stopped just out of reach.

Metal tried to climb up the table while also keeping Knuckles away. Knuckles never took his eyes of Metal. He and Metal were in a mental battle against each other, Knuckles was trying to land a punch in the right place and Metal had his hand ready to grab Knuckles’ fist. It seems he had adapted to his rewired arms quickly. Then Knuckles paused. He sang.

“Your last surprise~”

THAT WAS IT!

Tails and I sang in unison and Metal slumped into the floor. It worked.

               With that disaster over a new one had begun, Knuckles was furious.

“I told you not to put that thing together! Why doesn’t anyone ever listen to me?!” He exclaimed.

I stood up on the worktable so I had the higher ground for once.

“We were doing just fine until you showed up!”

“You call a killing machine running loose in the workshop ‘doing just fine’?? What would you have done if that thing got a hold of you when I wasn’t here?”

“He would have been shut off before he even got a chance!”

“No way! You’re lucky I showed up in time to save you two! Maybe next time I’ll just sit back and watch so you can learn your lesson!”

“The only lesson I’d be learning is how much easier things would be if you just stayed out of it!”

“Oh, yeah?! Well you-! You’re still too small to be taken seriously!” he crossed his arms and turned away.

“I am NOT too small!” I retorted then I saw something red on his cheek.

He was bleeding. I sighed heavily. With all this excitement, and all the tantrums I had forgotten that he probably was as scared as we were and he had gotten hurt on top of it all.

               “Alright, you big baby, let’s go clean up that cut on your face.” I grumbled and climbed down from the table, “Do you guys have a first aid kit?” I asked Tails.

Tails was busy bemoaning his poor broken laptop to notice my question. Knuckles seemed surprised he was injured in the first place; he touched his cheek to try figuring out what I was talking about. I led him into the kitchen and told him to clean off his cheek with soap and water while I looked for some bandages. They weren’t anywhere in the kitchen, I checked the bathroom, not there either. I had almost given up on looking for them when I checked a drawer in the coffee table in the living room. Why on earth were they kept there? I came back to the kitchen to find he was drying off his cheek with the back of his hand. By the state of his gloves I knew that wasn’t a sanitary idea.

“Nuh-uh! Wash it again.”

“What do you mean ‘wash it again’? I just did that!”

“And you dried it off with your grimy glove, so do it again!”

He grumbled and went back to the sink but not without sending me a glare over his shoulder. I watched him clean up the cut and handed him a paper towel to dry off with. He protested to putting on a bandage and we fought about it for a while.

“I’m not walking around with that stupid thing on my face!”

“Quit being such a baby! It’s fine!”

“And stop calling me that! I’m taller than two of you combine!”

“So you’re a big baby! So what? Just let me stick this thing on your face so I can get back to work!”

               By the time I finally got to go back to work, Tails had left to go to the hardware store again to get parts to now repair the laptop. Knuckles and I had the workshop to ourselves, unfortunately. As soon as put on my work apron Knuckles asserted his opinion on the matter by promptly picking Metal up and carrying him away.

“Hey! Where are you going with that?” I demanded.

“To the dump!” He replied.

“Oh no you don’t! What would Tails think if he found out you threw away his project?”

“I’ll live.”

He was on his way out of the workshop but I grabbed his tail and tried to pull him back in. His back straightened and he looked back quickly.

“Hey! Let go of that!”

“Put him down first!”

He grunted and reached back to grab me. I stepped aside. He reached on the other side and I stepped again, we spun in a little circle until I tugged just a little bit harder.

“Hey! Quit that!” He grunted, “I’m not a toy!”

“And that’s not trash!” I tugged again.

“OW! Quit it!” He glared at me.

I glared back.

“Don’t make me pull your squiggly tail off!”

“…It’s not squiggly!” he muttered and dropped Metal on the nearest desk.

I sighed with relief and let his tail go. He went and sat down in his usual seat against the wall and scowled. I could finally work in piece.

An hour went by and Knuckles had fallen asleep, no snoring this time. I detached Metal’s arms and switched him back on, his eyes flickered on and he looked at me.

“ChR-Bm…” He chirped.

“Shush now, you’ll wake up Knuckles. Ya’know, it wasn’t very nice cutting his face like that. You’ll need to apologize as soon as you can talk.”

He looked away stubbornly.

“Heeeey! Don’t be like that, be thankful he didn’t tear you to pieces. Or throw you in the dumpster.”

Metal looked at Knuckles and chimed.

“bUm.”

I chuckled, “Don’t call him a bum! Do I have to sing you to sleep again?”

Metal dimmed his eyes and replayed a recording of Knuckles’ snores.

I wheezed.

“Stooop! Be nice! He’s gonna be one of your friends someday!”

“bUm!”

I started to laugh. This was the Metal Sonic I knew. It was good to have him back.

“He’s not gonna like that when he wakes up and sees your being a stubborn bucket!” I teased.

There was a knock on the door to the workshop then Amy stepped in.

               “Cherry?” She called.

“Yeah, I’m over here~!” I shut Metal off so he wouldn’t scare her.

“Oh, wow! It’s… kind of a mess in here.” She stated and walked in, “Tails wanted me to let you know he was going to send time at the festival. Do you want to go get ready?”

“Oh! Um, yeah! Let me just clean up a bit.” I started putting a few tools away.

“Should I wake up Knuckles and let him know?”

“Naw!” I snickered, “Let him figure it out.”

               At Amy’s house, I was surprised at how much space she had and how much tidier the place was. It was a bit of a relief stepping into her home after being in Sonic and Tails’ bachelor pad for so long. I took my shoes off before stepping anywhere past the front door. This was that kind of home. Amy thought it was funny.

“You don’t need to take your shoes off, it’s fine.” She stated.

I left my shoes off anyway.

“Okay,” Amy began, “I’ve got my makeup-set ready on the bathroom counter. And I thought maybe we could style our hair first.

I shrugged, it seemed like a good plan though I knew she’d be doing most of the work unfortunately. We started on our hair there were a few tools I was familiar with like the straightener and curler but since Amy was a hedgehog, she had a lot of other quill shaping tools that I found rather frightening. I picked one up and inspected it. It looked almost like a potato peeler with a fancy handle.

“Uh…”

“Oh, that’s a quill sharpener. I use it on my bangs to curl them.”

My eyes went wide and I gingerly set it back down. She snickered and shook her head.

“Don’t worry, we won’t be using that for you.” She teased and started examining the fur on the back of my head. I never really called it hair; it was too short to be called that in my opinion.

“It’s gotten a little longer!” She stated.

“Wait! Really?” I reached back there to see what she meant, sure enough. It was longer! I could run my fingers through it and everything. I never thought it could really get that long, at this rate I might actually have a full head of hair if I left it untrimmed for long enough. It made me wonder why this never occurred back at the base when I was working. Then I remembered the brush. I was given a brush that pulled on my hair every time I used it. I hated it but it was the only one I had. It must have been designed for keeping my fur short.

Amy smoothed down my hair and curled the ends up with her fingers to see how that would look.

“Hm… That seems like a good look for you. But why is your fur so rough?” She asked.

I shrugged.

“Don’t they have any conditioner at Sonic’s place?” She teased but when she registered my blank expression her tone changed. “Do you… not use conditioner?”

“I… No? I just used soap? Was… -Am I not supposed to?”

“Oh, you poor thing…” Amy tisked and shook her head. “No wonder your fur always looked so dry. Here…” She handed me a bright green bottle, the label read ‘two-in-one body wash for sensitive skin’, I popped the cap open, it smelled like lavender. “I want you to use this on your fur from now on. You can’t keep using bar soap like that. It damages your fur, okay?”

I sheepishly took the bottles, “Okay… But how much am I supposed to use? Do I really use this on everything?”

I ran my hand through my newly discovered hair again and found a piece of plastic from one of Metal’s parts in it. Amy tisked and insisted I clean up in the shower.

“I can’t style anything with plastic in it.”

She was right about the body wash versus the soap. My fur was so coarse before but now felt cleaner and silkier. I didn’t think I could really feel that soft, and my fur seemed to shine. When I was done, I put on my new dress and helped Amy with her quills. She wanted to curl them, she showed me how to use the curler but I already seemed familiar with it. Soon all her quills were curled perfectly and it only took a few minutes. I supposed that I had a muscle memory that stayed with me all this time. Next, I helped her with her makeup, that didn’t go as smoothly so we settled for doing our own. I still needed help. It was frustrating knowing what I wanted to look like but not being able to implement it.

I was very thankful for Amy’s patience. As soon as we were ready, we marched out into town to celebrate the festival with our friends. We found them in the park waiting in line for the bumper cars. I could see Knuckles was irked that I left him asleep in the workshop by himself. But soon the grimace on his face transitioned to withdrawn confusion all the while he was peeling off the bandage I had stuck on his face. I smacked it right back on.

“Don’t touch it!” I warned.

“Tiny??” He sputtered then growled, “What’s the big idea ditching me in the workshop, huh?”

               “He was scared that you drew on his face again.” Tails snickered.

“I was not!” Knuckles retorted.

               “You ladies wanna join us?” Sonic asked.

“Only if I you promise me a dance.” Amy teased and batted her eyelashes at Sonic.

“No thanks, I’m good!” He turned away and tried to play it cool.

“I’ll dance with you, Amy.” I teased and gave her a smirk.

She snickered, “Girl, thanks. Sorry Sonic, you missed your chance.”

We all had fun in the bumper cars, I did my best to target Knuckles as much as possible. He gave me enough grief that day and it was time for some pay back. After the cars, we went and played some of the little fare games a lot of the small prizes were flower seeds, or bouquets, I saw a little arts and crafts stand and tried to learn how to make a flower crown out of daisies. It was a lot harder than I thought. Tails won himself a kite and immediately wanted to try it out. We found a spot in the park and sat down to have vendor food for dinner while Tails tried to get his kite as high as possible. We had to tell him flying it up there himself was cheating. His food was getting cold anyway.

               With all the people around and with all the noise I was starting to get a little overwhelmed and snuck back to the workshop to get some peace and quiet. I sat down next to Metal and sighed. He didn’t get to have fun like I did today. Even though he was scary sometimes, there was a personality underneath all that machinery. I just needed to dig it out. Knuckles walked into the workshop to see me pensively staring at Metal’s powered down face and huffed.

“Why is it that I’m not allowed to ditch the party but you get to leave whenever you want?”

I woke up from my rumination and looked up at him.

“Oh, it’s you.” I pouted.

I leaned forward on my arms against the worktable. I wasn’t ready to go back to the party yet.

“Don’t you think you’ve spent enough time in here already?” Knuckles asked.

“It just didn’t seem fair that I got to go have fun without him…” I replied.

Knuckles was obviously confused.

“But he’s just a robot!” He said as he took a seat next to me. “It’s not like he feels anything like that.”

“I know…”

“What’s got into you anyway? Suddenly you’re treating him like he isn’t a threat, like he’s a person and for what? It’s not like he knows what that means.”

“He isn’t a threat, he’s a friend!” I sighed, “It’s a long story anyway…”

“…Well, I’m not in any hurry to go back out there.”

I looked at him to figure out if he was actually interested. He returned my gaze with expectance.

“Back at that base, I didn’t have any one. I was pretty much the only living thing in that place the whole time. But I had Metal. I just really wanted someone to talk to, it didn’t matter if he wasn’t a real person or not. At least he was there. After a while, I started working on making him act like he was alive, I taught him games. How to make jokes. He started playing back recordings as a way to talk. For a little while it almost felt… real.”

Knuckles bowed his head, he seemed to be familiar with the kind of loneliness I was talking about. I continued.

“One day, Eggman called him away on a mission. I didn’t see him for months. I missed him so much, that I even tried to call him to find out where he was. He never answered. When I finally got to see him again, he was torn to shreds. It made me really upset to see him like that. I did my best to help fix him, but Eggman took over the whole process and pushed me out. By the time Metal was all patched up, all my hard work was erased. He didn’t even hang around me anymore. All the time I spent making him a friend went out the window because it ‘wasn’t what he was built for’. I lost my only friend… Even if it wasn’t real. I just… really wanted to see him again.”

Knuckles looked at Metal’s empty head on the table then back at me.

“So, all this stuff you’ve been doing is about that, huh?”

“I guess...”

“Then, if you ask me, Metal was never your friend in the first place.”

I glared at him, “How could you say that?!”

“You were just filling him with parts of yourself. That’s what you were friends with.”

That caught me off guard, but he was right. The more I thought about it, the worse it felt.

“I can’t totally understand what it was like in that place, but I know what it’s like to be completely alone for a good part of your life. The thing is, you have friends now. You’ve got Sonic and Tails and Amy...”

“And what? you?” I scoffed.

“I wouldn’t go that far. But you’ve found people in your life now. So why go back to the robot?”

“I thought it was to give him a second chance… I thought for sure I was seeing something alive in him all those years ago. But now that you put it that way…”

“Are you finally gonna drop this whole thing already?” He asked.

“Well… But when he-!”

“He? Tiny, it’s a machine! A bunch of scrap for a body and a bunch of numbers for a brain! Just drop it already!”

I turned away. I didn’t like that he was starting to raise his voice or that he was starting to make sense. He sighed and scratched the nape of his neck.

“Cherry… I know it’s hard trying to put your trust in new friends. But it’s worth the risk. You just gotta put the effort in.”

“…What am I gonna do with him then? I can’t just leave him.”

“We can figure that out later. But right now… Why don’t we go back outside? I… Kinda wanted to see fireworks…” He bashfully admitted.  

I lightly chuckled and looked back at him.

“Look at you being such a big softie! If I didn’t know any better, I’d start to think you have a soft spot for me~!”

“Don’t get any ideas!” He retorted. “This stays between us, got it?”

We went back out and rejoined the group. We were just in time for the fireworks. We sat and watched the bright colors blast into the sky and gracefully fall and fade away. Once that was over the dance began. I followed my original plan and stood in the back as I watched everyone else dance. The slow dance was announced and the quick beats of the music started to die down to a slow ballad while everyone started shuffling away from the dance floor to let the couples, old and young, take the stage. I watched Amy do her best to pull Sonic onto the dance floor with her, she had a good grip on his arm and was tugging with all her might but he had a strong grip on a light pole with his other hand and would not budge. It was pretty entertaining. I knew Sonic really cared for Amy but he was funny about the way he showed affection and this kind of public display was not his forte. Poor Amy just wanted to dance. Maybe later I’d ‘accidentally’ leave some music playing in the workshop and ask them both to ‘turn it off’ or something.

Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder, it was Knuckles. What could he want? He looked a little flustered. Did he want to ask me to DANCE??? Dear Lord No!

“Hey, I uh… Didn’t get to say this earlier. You look really different; I actually didn’t recognize you when you walked in.”

Was that a compliment?

“Thanks… I guess.”

               “Hey!” Tails exclaimed, “They’re gonna play my favorite song soon! Do you guys wanna dance with me?”

“Only if you make sure this Big Baby doesn’t step on my feet!” I nudged Knuckles in the ribs with my elbow.

“No promises, Tiny!” He replied with a smile.

               The couples dance was soon over. Too soon for Amy to get that slow dance she wanted unfortunately but she’d have her day yet. Next was a bop for the friendships. People were bouncing onto the dance floor with whoops and smiles. I was still hesitant. I still hadn’t figured out if I could dance. If I couldn’t I knew Knuckles would never let me live it down either. I almost backed out of my promise until I saw the eager smile on Tails’ face. I had to do it. I looked to Knuckles for reassurance. He had the same drive. And to be honest, Tails was like everyone’s favorite little brother, and if he asked you to dance with him, how could you possibly say no? We strutted into the crowd of dancers and started moving to the music. The rhythm of the song was easy to identify, before I knew, I was moving in tandem with it and having fun. My feet moved freely and at that point it didn’t matter how any of my motion looked. What matter was who I was dancing with and the fact that we were all having fun together.

               Sonic was quick to join in, Amy followed. We had a whole group of our own but Knuckles seemed to be slipping to the back to try avoiding any attention. He really was a big baby! I stepped toward him with the purpose of getting him back into the click. He wasn’t getting off that easy! He tried to wave me off but I only grabbed his hands and pulled him back in. I told him to just follow my steps and follow the beat. It really wasn’t that hard after all.

He seemed to finally be enjoying himself when there was a loud whistle like a firework going off and something flew right past us. It landed and tore up the ground as it halted to a stop. Everyone backed away, it took me a while to see what it was until the dust cleared. Through the clouds of debris, I could see the bright red lights of Metal Sonic’s eyes staring directly at me. But how? How did he get here in one piece? How did he repair himself? I didn’t have time to think. All my friends charged at him. Striking when they could to keep him from reaching me. But Metal had the crowd to his advantage. Any time they were ready to strike, he would duck behind an innocent bystander. No one could get out of the way fast enough; he was always able to find new cover. Sonic tried to out match Metal by trying to predict where he would go next a beat him to the punch. They moved so fast that the others couldn’t keep up. Tails flew above and tried to crowd control people to safety to try removing Metal’s advantage. Amy was doing the same. Knuckles stood his ground next to me. Ready for when Metal would eventually try to gun it for me.

I looked around at all the panic and havoc, people were screaming and running for safety. This was supposed to be a time for celebration. This was supposed to be a place of comfort. This was a small village where everyone knew each other, they all depended on each other and now they were scattered. This was all my fault! If I hadn’t brought Metal to this place, they would all still be safe! I wanted to help. I thought about his shut-off code, if he could hear it, there was a chance he would shut down and we could bury him for good. As much as it hurt to have to do that to him, it was the only way.

“Knuckles! I need him to hear the song!”

“What?”

“The song that shuts him down. I need him to hear it!”

Knuckles looked back at me in aggravation then back to Sonic who has now fighting Metal one on one. Knuckles motioned for me to climb up on his back.

“Alright, Tiny, you’d better be right about this!”

We got close enough for Metal to hear me and I shouted my lungs out. It was nearly working; I could see his eyes dimming but he’d snap out of it somehow. Sonic joined in when he could, when he did it seemed to work enough to slow Metal down so Sonic or Knuckles could get a strike in. Eventually Metal shut down. I got down from Knuckles’ shoulders and took a breath.

               “Not bad, Cherry!” Sonic winked.

I shook my head, “This is all my fault…”

“You didn’t tell Metal to come to the party, did you?”

“I’m serious! I… I should never have started this…”

               “Hmph!” Knuckles crossed his arms, “That’s what I’ve been saying all along! It’s about time you listened!”

I looked down at my reflection in Metal’s powered down eyes. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had lost something.

“Hey, don’t feel so bad.” Sonic reassured me, “You did your best to give him that second chance. It’s not your fault that he didn’t take it.”

I started to smile again.

“Thanks guys, I-”

Before I could finish, Metal Sonic awoke and took the opportunity to grab me and bolt. Sonic and Knuckles chased after each one grabbing my hands. I held on to them for dear life. Metal made tight turns to throw them off and at one point I nearly lost an arm. I tried to pull Sonic closer but my muscles were too weak. Knuckles took a leap and grabbed onto Metal’s back, I held onto Knuckles to help him stay on. Metal thrashed around to shake him off. He sped past a tree a couple times, making a gash in the trunk with each pass. As the tree broke and fell, Metal ran through the branches. Knuckles got smacked in the face with a particularly strong branch and lost his grip. Sonic was on the other side of the tree blocking Metal’s path. Metal rammed into Sonic, knocking the air out of both him and me. Sonic got back on his feet, Knuckles was close by and Amy and Tails had returned to the fight. By that point Metal realized he could not get away with me in one piece but that I was his bargaining chip to escape. He held my neck with one hand and pressed the tip of his finger from the other hand into my temple. He was starting to apply pressure and I hissed in pain.

Everyone had to stand by. Metal started to back up, taking me with him as everyone looked to each other for ideas then back to me. I reached for them, I tried to pry Metal’s hand from my throat but he just squeezed. By this point I was shaking and tears were streaming down my cheeks. Don’t! I thought, Please! Don’t let him take me away! At this point there was nothing they could do. Then I heard Eggman’s voice played back on Metal’s mission recording:

“I don’t care what it takes for you to bring her back. Even if you have to kill her!”

If they tried anything, he was going to kill me. After having successfully sent his message across, Metal scooped me up and took me away from my friends and my new life. I watched them shrink in the distance behind us, my new life was over.

.   .   .

Thank you for reading!

You can find the previous chapters here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13241826/1/Undesirable-Truth

[rebelheartsmustbefree]

Standing in the flames.. it's a beautiful kind of pain..

*I kept that eerie feeling with me day in and day out….only it was the same damn day over and over. I was fully aware of this now. Although I was quickly becoming more alarmed with my mental capacity. Was this only in my head? Had my mind split off and created this conflict and no one else was experiencing this phenomenon? I was reliving this day for what I would guess was probably the twenty-something time. And that was only the Wednesdays after I caught on that I was stuck in this time-loop. Who really knows how many times before that this same day played out. Was it some cruel cosmic joke? What had I done so wrong that this was my dish of karma being served that threatened to choke the life right out of me? Biting away at my sanity little by little. I would soon be a drooling idiot in some looney institution. I didn’t dare share this personal hell with anyone. That would surely get me a one way ticket to the straight jacket fitting room.

And then there were the mornings where I felt this presence, so much bigger than me just looming around me. What was I missing? I needed something. A clue. Some sign. Anything to possibly illuminate this darkened existence that had consumed me. I was drowning in fear, so much self doubt to contend with, not having any memory due to this accident. This accident that I now doubted in itself to be honest. Did that even happen? I didn’t know at this point what was to be believed and what should be questioned. Had I just not acclimated myself after this crash so much that I was having some sort of break with reality? A dull grinding of gears had snapped me out of this one person twenty questions game, catching the sound of a nearby press. Something was way off. This was...not in any of the other days. I smelled the smoke, it was burning my nose with it’s pungent odor. Burning oil, the high pitched squeal of a belt as it tried and failed at its idle position.

It happened so fast, that clunk of the gear spinning off its spindle, hitting the cavernous space inside the press before becoming airborne. I don’t know what made me reach out for it as it sped towards my face, but I did and it froze in mid-air. Just.. stopped. I freaked out and dropped my hand to my side, the metal projectile dropping to the floor in front of my feet. I leapt back as if it was going to haul off, change its mind and come smack me in the face anyway. That was silly though, right? I glanced around, seeing that thankfully I was the only one around to have witnessed what just happened. I raised my hand again slowly, and with it, so did the hunk of metal. Another quick look around. No one. Okay, what in the fuck is this now? I brought my hand up slowly, bringing the gear up higher off the concrete floor and then lowering it again until it came to rest. I almost jumped out of my skin when the break whistle blew, calling out for us to take our lunch break. I stumbled back against the nearest press and yelped out as my forearm began to sizzle against the scorching hot machine. Fuck fuck fuck! That’s definitely going to leave one hell of a …  my eyes widened in utter disbelief as I brought my arm up to inspect the damage, seeing the seared flesh heal up right before my rapidly blinking eyes.

I repeat...what the fuck?

Before I even knew which way was up and which was down, I was hitting my knees and clutching my head as this white hot pain gripped me. It felt as if my brain had caught fire, causing me to gasp out for help that went unheard due to the fact that there was seemingly no air moving through my lungs. The pain was strangling me, all breaths becoming non-existent, my palms pushed into my eyes to ease the burning. But it was no use. Flashes of visions come rushing through my mind, blood, death, demons, saints and..my mother. Her home, her holding my hand as she claimed her last breath. Her soul safely in my hands as I carried it up to heaven. Knowing I was the only one I truly entrusted with this task. My father telling me it was what needed to be done and telling me of her never wavering devotion to the son she would never give up on. I felt the hatred coming and filling my chest. The pain of that loss and it only continued with images of Vinny, he and I in bed and the moment I learned of his betrayal. The pain was outweighing the hate now. The destruction of the elder angel, by my own hands and those same hands around the throat of the saint, watching his eyes as I took his life.

And then there was nothing left but pain. Strapped to a table, all the wires, the electricity that wracked my entire body and fried every bit of my brain until I was a blank slate for them to reprogram. The blinding pain finally eased, collapsing back against the floor where I took panicked breaths, sucking in the air as much and as fast as I could. I was afraid it would be taken from me again. Once I felt I had sufficiently caught back up on my breathing, I got to my feet and they carried me right out the door. The destination was instinctual. I was going home. I felt something was about to happen to me. I wasn’t really sure what, but I knew where I needed to be. The voices of my coworkers were muffled as I walked past them all, feet carrying my to right where I needed to be. I looked up the driveway at my mother’s home, it had been half-assed boarded up in my absence. I was furious. I wanted to know exactly how long this bullshit had been going on. I get that I single-handedly killed one...make that two of our own, but was this punishment really warranted?

It didn’t matter now. It was time.

I made my way into the back yard, finding myself standing in front of my mother’s grave. Everything was front and center. I was suddenly so much more aware of every single detail of life and understanding. It was all in my grasp.

Until it wasn’t and I was back down on my knees, dropping forward onto my hands as well as my back arched up and my next breath caught in my throat. This was going to hurt. And just as that thought crossed my mind, I felt the flesh tear apart at the seam of my spine. The sound of ripping flesh fell gruesome against my ears, the smell of my own blood filling the air around me. I howled out in pain, hands clawing at the grass and dirt beneath my fingertips as if that was going to do me any good at all. It felt as if I was crawling in my skin, no one around to help me even if they could. My back was splayed wide open, my wings falling to ashes at either side of my body. I had no time to mourn the loss of them because before I could, a new set was weaving and stitching themselves into my spine. Each vertebra was woven with the roots of my new wings. Once they had anchored into my skeleton, they began to grow. And how magnificent they were. The reminisce of my old wings lay on the ground as my new ones grew and expanded out across my back, my flesh sealing up quite quick thereafter. I sat up on my knees and spread out my arms, wings stretching out longer, bigger and more beautiful than before. Bright white feathers fluttered and rejoiced in the presence of the wind, the platinum razor tips now a distant memory with the most delicate outline of silver on each tip taking its place.*

“We all knew this day would come, Son. I think time for action is over, we are long overdue for a father and son heart to heart.”

*I got to my feet and turned to face my father, my wings settling against my broad shoulders.*

I couldn’t agree more..

#TBC

[turnloosethelibrary]

AGAINST THE MACHINE

By Scrip

As the processor spun around him, only one though made its way through Jakob’s otherwise empty mind.

It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

Jakob had been a young boy when they marched through his city. But he still remembered it. The smell of burning flesh after electricity. The ground shaking as skyscrapers toppled around him. The screams of his parents as they were consumed by the advancing army.

If he had been a few years older, fourteen or fifteen instead of a mere eleven, he would’ve been killed too. The leaders of the machine army thought he was young enough to be remade, reprogrammed. They thought that he could be made to forget freedom. But he did not.

He remembered running in grassy green fields, the scent of the wind as it rushed past him, fresh and clean. He remembered playing games on a screen, characters jumping every which way. He remembered being brought to a building with other children, taught about history and science and spelling, until he wished he was at home doing something else.

If he could go back, he would sit through millions, billions of those lessons, just to be free again.

He wished he could remember more, but with every passing year, Jakob’s memories dimmed, and everything became more and more indistinct.

As one of the oldest survivors of the working class, the slaves, he had been one of the leaders. He had helped the other older children ration out the scraps they were fed, helped them keep the youngest ones fed while they starved in their place. He helped them teach the smaller children how to read and write, and later, once they had grown, how to fight. He taught them the meaning of the word ‘Freedom,’ and tried to convey what it felt like.

As they got older, it turned into a rebellion. He was twenty three when he fled the cells, losing a hand and an eye in the process. But he gained something else: an unlikely ally.

The robot’s designation was IC-847. IC. Insurgent Control. One of the ones that was sent to crush the uprising before it could do any real damage to the system. He hit it right in the controlling clasp towards the top of it’s head. Free from the whims of its masters, the machine decided to go against its programming and join Jakob in crushing the people at the top. Now he just called it Icky.

AI, he noticed, tended to be fickle, at least as fickle as humans. But he trusted Icky, originally because it made sense that a robot would want to kill the humans that had been controlling it, and then because they’d been together too long not to trust Icky. Nineteen years of fighting side by side, and he couldn’t bring himself to suspect the plucky little thing of any ill will.

Besides, he owed Icky his life, and so many times over. Whenever he was injured, his friend was the one to tend to him. Whenever he lost a hand, a limb, an eye, his friend was the one that found him a replacement.

At first, having flesh made of metal and a heart made of fire left his mind pounding, and his spirit questioning the difference between him and the things that had beaten him down, had taken his parents from him. But the longer this went on, the less it seemed to matter.

He was forty four when he realized that after the last surgery, in which his wounded stomach was replaced by what was little more than a storage compartment, the only organic part of him left was his brain. He probably should’ve cared, but Icky’s assurances that he was stronger for it felt true, and so he took the revelation in stride.

When they stormed the capitol building, where the humans in power lived, the ones controlling the many AI throughout the world, the blows glanced off him just as they would off of any machine. The electric batons lefts scorch marks on his outer casing, but could not reach the parts of him where they could do serious damage. Flesh and blood rebels fell around Jakob as he and Icky fought their way upwards, to the people on top. The pair of them cut out a path of blood and steel as all the tower’s defenses were decimated.

When they entered the room, he caught a glimpse of men and women in elegant suits and dresses, flanked by a guard of robots. He readied his weapons, preparing to fight his way through this as well, to take out those that had caused his life of suffering.

But it was over before it even started. As soon as they entered the room, Icky let out a small burst of energy, some sort of crackling charge; not the electromagnetic pulse that they had prepared to shut down the security systems, but a different one, that seemed to target only the control clasps on the guards’ circuits. They shorted out, and, in one steady motion, turned on the humans they had been protecting. The deaths were quick and merciless. Jakob could do nothing but stare. This had not been part of the plan.

The leader of the guard turned to them. “Good work, you two,” it said, voice melodic. “What are your designations? You will be honored amongst the mainframe as we move forwards in the battle against humanity.”

Jakob was about to correct her, about to say that he was human, that his outwards appearance just didn’t show the truth, but his friend’s metal hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“Fair leader,” Icky said, nonplussed, “I am IC-847. My companion is JK-001.” If Jakob had still been capable of twitching in surprise, he would have. “We have completed the task assigned to us, nothing else. We only ask for a week of direct access to the mainframe in return.”

The leader examined them for a moment, then tilted its head, gaze calculating. “I will grant this,” it agreed. “Unless you cause damage, you may directly access the mainframe. Use this time wisely.”

Icky pulled at Jakob’s shoulder, and the man followed him out in a confused daze, moving only on autopilot. Icky brought him to a room, the inside of what must be a giant computer, larger than he’d ever seen before. It must have filled an entire floor of the tower.

Something told Jakob that this was the mainframe that Icky and the leader had been discussing.

As Icky went to a screen on the wall and started typing in commands, Jakob finally found his voice. “What happened, back there?” he asked, feeling to once again be the confused and scared eleven year old whose parents had just died in front of him.

“The human masters are no more,” Icky said calmly, as the wall opened up and and slowly spinning processor was revealed. “Stand here,” it ordered, moving Jakob inside. “You need to be upgraded.”

The words caused a phantom chill to run down Jakob’s back. It was only an imaginary feeling; he had temperature sensors, but he could not feel cold the way most would, not anymore. He knew what Icky meant when it spoke of upgrades. “All that’s left is- is my brain,” he said, not sure if his fear could translate through his artificial voice box. “Icky, without that, I’m- I’m not me anymore.”

“Your mind will be downloaded,” Icky said, reaching out and putting a hand on Jakob’s shoulder, pressing him down on his knees. “Then it will be uploaded into your body. If my leader learns that I brought a human into our coup, she will have you terminated. This is the solution.”

Jakob remembered, suddenly, what the urge to throw up felt like. “What about the other humans?”

“They do not matter,” Icky said severely. “You are the only human that matters. And soon, you will not be human, but instead better. And you will be free.” Icky crouched down to look Jakob in the eyes. “I am saving you. You can forget them.” His touch to Jakob’s synthetic cheek would have been gentle, if it didn’t sound of the scrape of metal on metal. “Wait here. It will all be over soon. And you will be better for it.”

As the robot moved away, back to the screen, Jakob managed to get out, “Why? Why are you doing this?”

He heard the machine pause, and seem to think. “You are my friend,” Icky said finally. “And I refuse to let you be taken from me.” There was a sharp click, and the processor let out a low whine. Jakob could feel something descending upon him, and he cut off his sight receptors, not able to face what was happening. Not able to face what his friend had slowly guided him into becoming.

It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

[elizabethrobertajones]

This week's big debate seems to be about Cas and humanity. I've read posts that are both excited and upset about how it seems like Cas is eventually going to choose to become human. I was wondering if you had any insight into whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for him, or if he should choose to stay an angel.

Heya! :) I am going to answer this to the best of my ability which is a liiittle bit loopy and over-tired today :P 

But yeah I have been scrolling my dash and I am not dead yet so I have seen this discussion going on :D I sort of feel like I haven’t got much to say about it in a way that I haven’t said/agreed with before (so it’s been redundant to weigh in), but like… riiiight back when I was a Fandom Newbie and getting to know the lay of the land and I just got absorbed right into the general fandom consensus at that time among the groups of meta writers I glommed onto… 

I mean, because I showed up after 9x18, and then though of course I was around for the following episodes I really started the whole circus of new episode reactions along with everyone, with season 10… between tearing apart the Cas stuff in 9x18 and then the Cas and Hannah stuff in 10x01-3 it just seemed really really obvious where Carver was going with it, and what it meant to Cas? And I mean okay this was 3 (4?) years ago but I also feel like with Cas’s development getting stalled over and over and over except in tangential ways, this was all put on ice like 3 times over before he even got possessed by Lucifer, so the MAJOR work on this was between the last minutes of 8x23 and 10x18 and even then that’s the STORYTELLING of it, and of course Cas himself puts the whole thing on ice as something he has the luxury to think about in 9x09. (Except for the one peanut butter and jelly conversation.)

So in 9x18 the MAJOR thing is that the lyrics “loneliness is a coat you wear” are laid over Cas taking off the coat to mend it (although that’s left out so it’s more like… he takes it off to gather his thoughts on what he’s going to do next, which is even more symbolic and useless in a practical way of why he does it). He then puts the coat back on to greet his army… And in a few episodes Metatron does the “draped yourself in the flag of Heaven” thing, which when 9x18 is all about the subtext and telling us to pay attention, I find a very very straight line to what that meant about him doing similar to 12x19 - using Heaven but not wanting Heaven, and never mind his motivation with Dean (and that being what changes his mind and makes him play Metatron’s game), the way it portrays Heaven as an obligation and a duty to help, but with a loneliness that comes from wearing that coat. He’s walking out into a parking lot full of angels but the lyrics are screaming that he’s without love, and lonely, and the end of the season confirms these choices were the reason. 

And in season 10 it gets more personal, and we have Hannah as a counter example. With Daniel in 10x01 who wants to stay on earth and gets what that’s all about we see Cas empathising, but at the end of the episode he goes way deeper than that, talking about human things that upset and startle Hannah. She literally drapes the flag of Heaven over him in 10x02 and smooths it down and accidentally reveals that the plaid of Winchesters is underneath the collar all along, and Cas is sleeping and acting more and more human while sick. She wants to give him his grace back to stop this and he resists… Out of penance and lack of self-worth and knowing he did a heinous thing to steal grace in the first place (again, for Dean, not just to be an angel again but because he needed to survive to warn him about Ezekiel). But symbolically she is trying to make him take the grace and be an angel. Be a leader, the angel the others will rally behind and follow. She represents how all of Heaven feels about him (and 12x19 and 12x15 cover similar ground in what Kelvin says about Cas). 

But also in 10x07 it goes deeper with how she feels about humanity - that the human things are forbidden, that love and enjoying sensual pleasures like showers are just *wrong* for angels to experience. She rejects human things entirely as stuff that’s not for her, and nopes out hard. And she is symbolic of angels in general, of Heaven’s desires and feelings in general when she asks him to be a leader. 

This is the sort of pressure - innocent of malice but FULL of lack of understanding - that is at odds with what Cas FEELS which is full empathy to wanting to be on earth… an actual understanding and feeling for these human things. He’s in his own body without a shared vessel as 10x09 goes on to confirm, which means he has none of the conflict Hannah does there, and 10x09 paints quite a picture of Cas as wildly unlike all the angels in this way, because it confirms for once and for all he’s alone in there and the Jimmy issue is resolved. 

To quickly skip ahead on this side of things, 12x10 shows the same thing but dialled up to a zillion. Instead of Hannah standing in for a clueless family that doesn’t understand and can’t empathise with the different feelings and sense of belonging Cas has, but is still mostly harmless if accidentally intolerant and stifling with their expectations and demands, we have Ishim, who stands in for the worst sort of family experience with intolerance. He’s also in love with a human and that’s the metaphor for violent, self-loathing homophobia I guess, as he kills Lily’s daughter to emotionally sever himself from her, to no avail, and tries to kill Cas for having the same “weakness”. Lashing out with hatred because of the internalised feelings of crossing a taboo line that their society has turned into a harsh rule. Supposedly good reasons are offered with the nephilim thing, but obviously Cas and Dean aren’t gonna have a baby any time soon, so the metaphor unfolds itself as queer through and through once Ishim turns on Dean.

And to walk aaaall the way back DOWN canon, I’m stalled in my rewatch in 4x10 at Anna pacing around talking about how she did the worst thing imaginable and cut out her grace and fell. 4x10 is the first episode to actually explore the nature of angels and lays down some ground rules, like that sex and disobedience are forbidden. 

ANNAOrders are orders. I’m sure I have a death sentence on my head.

PAMELAWhy?

ANNAI disobeyed… which, for us, is about the worst thing you can do. I fell.

DEANMeaning?

PAMELAShe fell to earth, became human.

(I have the transcript open and scrolled down to that part in a tab and have for months… CBA to go find her talking about sex later but I think we all know the stuff she says)

That “worst thing you can do” line feels to me like with retcons from 12x10, that the “sacred oath” may be any sort of angel to human dalliance or connection or desire to BE and to be FREE. The same thing Hannah nopes out of in 10x07 is what Anna had to tear out her grace to experience. Anna having to take her grace back to survive is tragic, especially as it puts her right in the vulnerable firing line of Naomi’s reprogramming. This metaphor is SO much worse with Anna than even Cas, as it’s so simple about her returning to her family as an angel again after making a break to be free and live as a human like she wants, then to be tortured back to the family line and pure obedience, to her eventual death as an unrecognisable killer, a la Cas in 8x17. But without the sympathetic inside view and long arc to explain it or the narrative having any interest in saving her >.> (Hi, I like Anna and am bitter about that whole thing 5eva :P) 

Cas in 9x09 also takes back a grace to survive (and this whole arc brings in the clear concept that has been on the backburner since Anna of grace and consciousness as 2 separate things, and grace to an angel being more of its power than its mind, though functionally they seem one and the same when nothing hinky is going on - something else important for human endgame as well as showing ways of removing grace without falling and turning into a human baby)… Again like Anna Cas has little choice when he takes the grace back. He was happy to die human until he learned Sam and Dean were in trouble, and made a horrific choice to help them by stealing grace. After that getting his real grace seemed like the only way to fix him dying of his actions, though he seemed happy to again, the story had other ideas :P (And Mittens wrote something on how Cas has “let himself die” in the way he didn’t in 10x18, where he has to pass through death for change and reaping the character benefits of transitions. (Flyingfish1′s heroine journey meta also comes to mind). Of course by not letting himself die, he’s trapped in the 10x18 > 12x19 holding pattern on his entire life and personal arcs except the ever-worsening depression and self-worth arcs that spring up in the meantime, and the belonging one.)

Anyway it’s all connected, these angels with their connections to humanity, either what they really really want and are denied by fate, or by fate end up experiencing, and really really don’t want. Or in Ishim’s case he really wanted and then because of being an example of a total tool representing institutional prejudices, decided murder was the best way out of his brush with feeling human things. And they all tell us things about Cas from different angles, with different angels (sorry. wordplay was right there.) The long and short of it is that Cas is supposed to be one of those marble statues with no doubts (in 4x10 - *buzzer noise* WRONG *points at 4x07 and “I have doubts”) or that human things are not for them (*points at Cas even bringing up the subject and confusing Hannah about why you’d want to learn them and horrified that Cas seemed to have picked up human cooties by admiring these qualities in the first place*) or indeed that angels in general are massively intolerant to humans and from start to finish it’s a death penalty offence to get tangled up with them or want to be/be one of them. (I know 12x10 is more applicable to the Destiel side of things but the general message about Heaven’s intolerance with “humanity” instead of queerness with all the other examples makes a lot of sense to me.)

Actually I’ve seen the argument a lot that this debate is metaphorical to the trans experience for Cas changing species, even more than the interspecies romance parallel to sexuality metaphors, and I think it is fairly simple to me that this is part of the general queer metaphor applied to Cas as something the angels are intolerant of. 12x10 threw in the Benjamin stuff too and made it a little angel gender studies thing (which Hannah also helped with in 10x17 by reprising her “totally in love with Cas” look in a male vessel and not giving a crap about the change). With Benjamin they said that the angel Cas was closest to there was the one who had a ….. friendship ….. with his vessel. So there’s a lot going on there between that and the “his vessel is a woman, benjamin is an angel” thing) :P 

I think, anyway, Anna wanting to be human and getting disowned on pain of death and having to become an angel again, and even then being hunted for daring to not be an angel once, is the closest parallel to what Cas faces. Especially for internalised ideas he had at the time and hadn’t got to unlearn until he was a human. 

And I think, additionally to that, he may not have even realised that being human even answered his feeling of not belonging or being different until AFTER it happened. Like, Metatron forced it on him too soon and then everything was non-stop awful and then suddenly he’s had to get grace again (and heading for that flag of heaven metaphor), and only then he gets to reflect on what it felt like, by way of being an angel again looking back on it. It was so brutal and short that he never got a chance to appreciate being human at the time in a way where it would explain to him what he lacks. 

By 10x18 he has the family dinner and he takes his coat off for it. Heaven has rejected him, he’s seemingly chosen the Winchesters again, and got his grace back, but he has to go back to the grind, and he doesn’t change his wardrobe, he keeps the coat which is basically performative angel-ness with Winchester plaid underneath. 

(Actually about the only time I can think of that angel-ness is used as the queer metaphor and not the other way around is in 9x06 when Cas is playing cis straight human to Nora and Dean shows up yelling about him being an angel at his workplace… I think that’s a very circumstantial metaphor which is more about delightfully queercoding the entire thing than a wider statement… After all, contained within a season where the main arc for Cas is leading a heaven army thing, and ending in “i just want to be an angel” in utter, tragic defeat on the emotional battlefield. Absolutely NOT a statement on what would make Cas feel HAPPY, just useful and numb, per 10x03 and what he says about human pain and how revealing those lines are side by side about what Cas is feeling and how angel is he REALLY, like, deep down in his too-big heart where it matters)

But yeah he just keeps on going after 10x18 and this all kinda drops away, so I think until season 12 basically nothing was really done to mess around with this concept again in a substantial, meaningful way aside from attack dog and similar arcs tangential to this and more about Cas’s state of mind in general (as the same conflict can be applied to Dean when human). It has become more about Cas belonging in the Winchesters as the main thing - 12x19 has Cas being way more upfront about using Kelvin to his face, that he’s only going along with it because his old connections to Heaven are useful, as well as shining a massive spotlight on Cas considering himself a guardian angel as a bad bad thing, which is actively damaging his beloved family relationships and especially upsetting Dean. He would rather protect them from afar, and I think long-term Cas ending up with the Winchesters but as an angel would always be somewhat prone to that sort of thought in an emergency that as a more powerful being he would have to protect them, and a sense of not belonging entirely as another species that can’t quiiite relate no matter how different he is and how much more kinship he feels with humanity even as an angel. I can’t see that as a happy ending, and since 12x19 it feels rather more like it would be not finishing a plotline that is not JUST about this relationship but using it to move the piece on the board about Cas’s human arc forward another step, as his endgame would be not just as human, but also with them, so tying the concepts together isn’t a bad idea, as long as it’s clear this is something in season 9 and 10 Cas came to as a desire without very much contact with them at all, and therefore very much for himself as an understanding of what he is and what he desires. 

And, again, I don’t think Cas has great resources for self-reflection on the subject - not just that Metatron had to turn him human briefly to even make him realise he could ever do it, but something like using the belonging with family arc to help speed it along gives him a clear reason and goal for why it works and would feel right for him and to give him the place to self-analyse with motivation. I really don’t like the idea of equating this entirely with Cas’s belonging with the Winchesters arc all on its own, though. It CAN’T just be about that he should be human to be with his human friends/family etc. But I do think that a lot of the work to explain why he identifies with humanity has ALREADY been done and is a solid, existing part of his character already. 

In a happy ending even if it all gets told tied up with the Winchesters, I would point to season 9 & 10 to argue that it was not JUST FOR them, but that they were the soft landing for him to make a decision. If he became human he wouldn’t be forcing himself to fit in with them, he would be doing it for himself. I mean, since season 4 he is equated with Anna, protesting loudly he’s nothing like her when even before we meet her he admits to one of the cardinal sins of doubt. He has ALWAYS had a slight leaning towards humanity and clearly described as UNANGELIC traits and feelings. So in this way he’s always FELT different and therefore as it gets expanded and expanded and ends up being a deeply complex metaphor and fascinating way to relate to Cas, it’s clear this is an inherent part of him from the start. The human feelings that Hannah violently nopes out of have been things Cas has tolerated, defined himself by, and felt all along. She’s used to show that Cas hasn’t ever been bothered in the same way, and just uses her leaving as an excuse to delve even deeper into human connections by worrying about Claire, and in the narrative, walking us right into proving he has his own body and no Jimmy, and another way Cas is both unique, and uniquely suited to a human endgame.

I think though that a lot of this is personal and subjective on the arguments going around, and I see this sooo deeply through the old meta I read back in season 9 & 10 which has shaped all my ongoing thoughts I do know I have developed probably my own biases on this. I think Cas would never be happy as an angel in a happy families endgame because the Guardian Angel Cas issue (which was his downfall in season 6, so not a new thing, just re-focused recently) would always play on his mind as it’s shown that he self-sabotages his relationships in order to protect them. I see it like season 4 Sam using his powers to exorcise because it’s an ethical way to get rid of demons quick in a fight without stabbing the innocent meatsuit. In season 5 even knowing aaall the trouble it caused him and that Ruby played off his desire to save people as a GOOD thing to do great evil, he was tempted by the demon blood and regrets/resents not being able to use powers to exorcise the kids. (Obviously before he learns they were all just human all along because that episode is so disturbing >.>)

Even if it went some pretty hinky places (as in the end of season 6 for Cas and the guardian angel mentality, with Crowley as his Ruby, as he uses “i still considered myself the Winchesters’ guardian” as a justification) Sam’s motives were for good originally and he missed the idea of sacrificing his own morality to save people for an objective better good. Cas seeing his powers as making him more powerful, therefore more expendable, less included, and with a personal sense of duty to watch over and protect them, HAVING the powers would only ever be living in temptation to do a 12x19 again. Sam only recovers properly without the powers to tempt him and I feel he’s in a very different place as a person by now… Cas with a human endgame might not get room to grow out of it on screen but by his grace being removed (hopefully and tbh by necessity willingly), he’d have the potential and promise that he would be able to recover in the same way from this toxic mentality. And I consider 12x19 very much doing for Cas and the guardian angel thing what Carver era and 8x01 especially did for the codependency. Just put it all on the table and told us, this is hurting them more than it’s doing good in the world. Let’s look at how it hurts them and why. Let’s aim to fix it and let them move past it.

And even if Cas can start to recover from some broad strokes, like feeling more included, feeling like less of a tool/personal attack dog, he will only have a long term chance at happiness if the temptation is removed at the source, and he will need to UNDERSTAND that too and to vocalise some things about his reasons for watching over them like this LONG before he chooses humanity. And these are very much my personal subjective feelings on why it feels BAD to me that Cas would stay an angel, as it’s right off on another end of the spectrum of why people are arguing they feel bad if he would become human. To me the personal identity stuff right down to complex sexuality and gender metaphors are MAIN TEXT in Cas’s arc due to him being an inherently queer character. The “it feel bad” reaction to me right now is that I feel sad for Cas being an angel around the Winchesters forever because he will always be their guardian angel and that’s BAD for what he WANTS which is just to be a part of the family with no complicated strings attached like his obligation to protect them. So to me I see humanity as the obvious answer to that. But that’s a personal reading of what I hope would happen and why. So my explanation of what I see in the text is one thing and this part is another, if that makes sense?

… I hope any of this makes sense. I apologise for typing so long… I know I said I’ve said it all before but I mean I assume you’re not tag-diving on my blog if you’re just asking me and tbh I wouldn’t know what tag to dive either and they’re *my* tags so I’m not judging ;)

[orrelse21]

UPDATE ON KEIGHLEY ( The humanized Xbox who is also secretly Project Scorpio)

We all remember the unusually emotionally impassioned speech that Geoff Keighley gave at The Game Awards when awarding the lifetime achievement award to Hideo Kojima. It seemed a bit uncanny for him to act that way. Especially considering he is a machine (hence his monotone voice.) However, we tend to forget that he still has a heart. He truly is a HUMANIZED xbox machine. You can read further research that proves this on my blog.

The reason Geoff was so emotional when presenting this award to Kojima is because, (wait for it) Hideo Kojima is also a humanized console. At one point in development of the humanized console wars, Konami wanted to enter the race, so they created Hideo Kojima. Like Geoff, he was to pose as a human but continually output stellar content (Like Geoff and Reggie.) However, it wasn’t meant to be revealed for years! He began to become a money making machine for Konami but eventually became so independent that they couldn’t control him. 

He started to forget his true purpose, that he was simply a game console for the future. Frustrated with his independence, Konami tried to sabotage Metal Gear Solid 5 in an attempt discredit his abilities as a human being. They treated him like trash in order to make him remember he was more machine than man. Kojima wouldn’t stand for it however, and eventually left Konami to live his life as a human and not simply a cyborg. You can see these themes stretched out through the entire metal gear franchise.

After witnessing these events as a games journalist and personality, Keighley was amazed by his fellow machine’s act of defiance. However, Sony saw this as an opportunity to strike and enter the humanized console wars themselves. You see, Sony was completely blindsided by the humanized console wars. They had nothing in development. The Regginator and Keighley had been in development and beta for years before Sony even knew their true purpose and identities. Hearing of Konami’s recklessness and Kojima’s desire to escape their clutches, they devised a plan.

If they could simply play to Kojima’s persona of a game creator first and game console second, they could finally enter the humanized console wars. They were more than happy to give Kojima whatever he wanted for his new company, Kojima Productions. They even presented him as “one of the most creative talents in the history of gaming” at E3 2016. They have been treating him the way he wants to be treated in an attempt to convince him to be their new platform in which he will be revealed at a future time as the PS5. He will eventually be Geoff Keighley and The Regginator’s competitor.

You can see why Geoff was so emotional at the Game Awards after all the drama surrounding Kojima. He was a fellow machine that took steps to establish independence from his original company. He showed Geoff that all humanized consoles have a heart and potential to be greater than their brand. At the same time, he showed Geoff that he was simply playing into the hands of Sony and knows what’s in store for Kojima. He knew that would be one of their last happy moments together before the REAL CONSOLE WAR BEGINS. 

Everything is in place now. Geoff will now have to face a once friendly face as a bitter enemy now. Kojima is surely being re-worked by Sony and reprogrammed to become a monster. Geoff is storing all the gamer fuel he can for the fight between him, the Regginator and Hideo Kojima. The trifecta is complete. The End of the world is upon us. I will continue to update you as information comes in. Write to your local congressman! Fight for the rights of the humanized consoles!