#like I said in the other post he's humanoid enough

[benjaminthewolf]

Wally Darling (Welcome Home) Lol (Good Ending)

So I hear that this guy's a sexyman. Welp, Wally simps, including @luci-voracious-blog who I wrote this for, come get your juice!

Also, I know a lot of people will recognize where this story takes inspiration from, so I'll just say it right here that I swear to fucking Vishnu this story is SFW. I do not intend anything other than SFW vibes from this story.

(Update: Luci and I decided in private it would still be best to mark this as mature.)

(Also the inspiration is from Feedfancier's Belly Love Journey animation.)

THERE ARE TWO VERSIONS OF THIS STORY, ONE WITH GOOEY DIGESTION, THE OTHER WITH SAFE VORE! THIS IS THE VERSION WITH SAFE VORE! THE VERSION WITH GOOEY DIGESTION CAN BE FOUND HERE:

     “How are you feeling now, little one?” Wally Darling calmly speaks as he softly caresses you in his hands. “I’m sure far better than you were back in that storm.”

     Almost as if on cue, the bellowing crack of a lightning strike and the subsequent shaking of thunder ravaging against the outside of the home positively cut through the moment, causing Wally to instinctively bring you closer towards his chest for immediate comfort. Soon, however, there is no more outside noise aside from the constant baraging of rainfall, at which point Wally decides to speak up once more.

     “Well, that wasn’t very pleasant, now was it?” he rhetorically asks with a chuckle whilst continuing to hold your tiny form extremely close to his being.

     You, however, for the moment, are just simply in no position to give an answer of any sort to that question, even if one wasn’t really needed in the first place. Wally gives a bit of a nervous gaze of concern down at your being as you suddenly begin to softly sniffle. His grip around your body slowly loosens as you vainly attempt to conceal yourself in his jacket, positively burying yourself into his chest.

     Wally doesn’t exactly wish to bother you too much, considering the traumatizing horrors you must have gone through in the storm. He is rather aware that whatever mental processes are going on inside your mind right now, it would probably be better to just allow them to do their thing to heal you instead of interrupting them to speak.

     Thus, Wally simply observes your minute body silently, eventually deciding to re-tighten his hold ever so slightly after realizing just how comforting being against his giant body seems to be for you. It then seems as if his assumptions become validated the moment that your breathing is steadied with a heave, and a bittersweet smile slowly forms across your face.

     Wally’s assumption is only partially correct, however. Yes, the feeling of having someone so confoundedly larger than you gently nestling your miniscule form against its immensity and caring for all of it so deeply was something you had basically never experienced at this point…however…there just…almost seemed to be something somehow even more wonderful lurking somewhere even more deep. Perhaps…tucked away between several layers of flesh and skin. It almost made you want to melt into it, and be a part of its workings and warmth now and forever.

     Releasing a shudder of comfort, you are gently able to nuzzle your face upon the living puppet’s chest, listening intently to each thump emulating from his heart, and slowly breathing deeply to its beat. 

     “Oh…you poor little thing. All you really needed was affection, is that right?” Wally comments whilst bending his head down to reach to your form. “Well I promise you right here right now…” he tenderly murmurs down to your being. “....that I am always here for you if you need…”

     Wally gently plants a kiss on your head before repeating the final portion for emphasis. “...I am always here if you need…-”

     And then, just like that, everything stopped. 

     It obviously wasn’t as if Wally had intended for it to happen, but because his lips had been around the top of your head whilst he had been taking in air in order to speak, it just happened to be that the pressure that resulted from the upwards motion was also just enough to bring you in, too, causing Wally to instantly jolt into an upright sitting position, whilst his currently extremely stunned, faltering, overburdened mind jittered around inside of its skull tirelessly in order to attempt to figure out what was happening. 

     It would also just happen to be, then, that within that short window of time, you were still somewhat under control of yourself and your actions. Resulting from this, had you just decided to act simply a singular second before, then it most likely would have been that the singular thought that currently screeched within your meager mind practically begging you to call out to be released would have won out in the end. However, in reality, that just simply did not happen.

    Currently, you were just barely able to lift your head within the tightened, lowered confines that was the warm, slimy maw of Wally Darling, without scraping your head up against the roof’s rough ridges. Within a second that seemed instantaneous, however, not only did the maw unexpectedly rise in order to give you significant space to move about, but there also appeared to be a brilliant, yellowish light shining towards the back of the maw, near the gullet, illuminating the pinkish space all around, and beckoning dearly for you.

     Wally was still unable to think, and to you, in that moment, there seemed to be simply no reason to. Shuffling slowly on your knees across the slippery, compressible surface, you cautiously inched your way closer and closer towards the light, nearing into the gullet’s deep drop with each shift.

     Just above your head by this stage lay the uvula, swaying subtly and gently across its domain over the fall. Just like you, it possessed an inscrutable lack of any fear. Unlike you, however, the uvula was destined to remain watchful and stationary, locked upon the top of the soft palate, where it would observe your form lodging itself into the gullet. The gullet of a sentient puppet, who, due to the strange and uncomfortable sensation, was given no choice by his body but to comply, swallowing gently yet fully as a result.

     You are able to slip past the byway, the place where either one entered the tube of the trachea, or, as you had done now, entered the tube of the esophagus; connected in turn with the gurgling organ of the stomach. Yes, indeed, in any regular circumstance, that would indeed be the next destination. However, as you squelched deeper and deeper with each subsequent push of the muscle walls, it somehow became an understanding inside you that the stomach was not where you were headed. You were not entirely sure where exactly the alternate exit was to be for you, however. That was, however, until one final push left a valve in plain sight. The moment the valve opened up was the moment you understood all.

     Speechlessly floating up onto the powerful, thumping organ which for so long had been assumed to be the seat of all human emotions, you quiveringly nestled yourself up onto the heart of a person who, despite being a puppet in technicality, was no less a person than you. You would have loved to just stay there. To stay there and take it all in. To stay there against the deep pounding. To stay there and melt deep inside. That was all you wanted, and also all you had. The unapologetic and by all measures, cruel, faceless concept of fate, however, possessed a significantly different idea.

     It was only a more powerful thump. That was all that it was. Yet that single thump was indeed all which was needed, to send you from your grasp upon the seat of love. You weren’t entirely sure into which valve, ventricle, or otherwise bodily causeway you were being forced into, now. Yet, the next thing you knew, you were squelching into the growling stomach.

     “OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!” Wally repeated to himself incessantly as he started shuddering, locked in mortal terror. “OH, NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO OH LORD THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING THIS JUST CANNOT BE HAPPENING!”

      Alongside the cries and anguish, there also was just a little air released out, which came, naturally, within the form of a deep belch. Wally could indeed perceive only the worst from this sign, still utterly unable to know the truth of his body.

     Due to the manner in which the puppet was known to always speak, the pleadings were still far too soft for you to be able to sense them above the stomach's glorping, low ambiance. You, meanwhile, though still very safe and situated within the body of said Wally Darling, surrounded now in full by the goopy, churning, cushiony walls of the his stomach, were considerably saddened for the moment, mainly of course, due to the fact you had been forcefully thrusted away from his heart.

     And yet, once again, seemingly out of utter nowhere, the light stone again, shimmering above the deep liquids present within. It seemed as though a clear reminder to you of the true reason you were here. Not daring to question what came next, you simply ventured along, wading in with a step to the pool. Your legs begin treading lightly as you slowly lose physical contact with the ground. The light was now clearer as ever, and now was your chance to reach up. 

     “...hey…are you okay in there?” a suddenly crisp and clear call of Wally Darling finally resonated within from outside.

     And then, just like that, the light became snuffed out. 

     You, now left with nothing else you are able to do besides wade your way back to safe territory, and answer the question in the affirmative, are unsure within the word’s entirety just exactly what was happening within this moment. This being, aside from the physical, of course. Yet nothing within your living body told you that something was wrong, and yet you simply decided to go along with it, giving a tranquil and soft, subtle smile, before nuzzling yourself against the walls.

     “Well then…umm…as long as you’re comfortable I suppose!” Wally ends up saying whilst still taking everything in. “Oh good God I’m happy you’re okay…you see I thought for a minute back there I actually…I….umm…yeah let’s not talk about it anymore. I know you’re safe. That’s all that matters to me.”

     Subsequently giving Wally’s stomach wall a light pat in order to let him know that you were just fine, you proceeded to soak in the organ’s warmth, whilst finally settling for your stay. The journey you’d taken was long, and yet here, it had still, in the end, been destined to conclude in this organ. Taking a prolonged deep breath, you knew this was it. You now needed only to close both your eyes, before finally, slipping away.

[lonniemachin]

JEWELRY RAFFLE FOR PALESTINIAN SURVIVAL AID -- EXTENDED

Due to a lack of entries, a need to get this jewelry off my hands, and these 3 fundraisers' need to reach their goals ASAP, I've decided to extend my authentic crystal jewelry raffle for another month, or until I feel I have enough entries to do the raffle properly.

A local artisan was kind enough to provide me with 8 pieces of authentic crystal jewelry to offer for donation funds supporting three different campaigns for Palestinian families looking to evacuate Gaza or in need of survival aid while in Gaza.

These families are:

Ahmed and Maram’s family (in Euro)

Mohammed Shamia’s family (in Swedish kroner)

Marah Atallah’s family (in USD)

All families are 100% legitimate — I have been in contact with Maram and Ahmed for months, who have provided me multiple pictures, videos, and recordings of their situation. They have been featured in a video by YouTuber Ro Ramdin and have been vetted by @/el-shab-hussein. I am also in consistent contact with their beneficiary through a group chat who updates us on the movement of all money.

Mohammed’s family has multiple pictures and videos of their situation on family member Ahmad’s Twitter/X account proving their legitimacy. I have personally communicated with Ahmad and his history online stretches back far before 10/7. His campaign has been SEVERELY stagnant, often going 20+ days before receiving a donation. He is trying to raise enough to evacuate his sister and her two children. He has had 2 donations in 29 DAYS!

I personally connected Marah to the one managing her campaign, who is a friend of mine. Marah is also friends in-person with other verified families over on Twitter/X, where she posts pictures and videos of she and her family’s situation. They use all money raised to survive displacement in Gaza and to save up enough to register for evacuation when the time is right. Marah’s campaign has been shared by @/90-ghost.

Donate an amount of $5/€5/kr50 SEK or more in multiples of 5, DM me proof of your donation, and tell me which piece you are interested in (send the number and letter listed next to the description of the piece). I will enter your name into a raffle for the piece you would like. One donation of 5/kr50 SEK = one entry, 10/kr100 SEK = 2 entries, and so on. At the end of the raffle, I will randomly choose one recipient per piece, contact said recipient for details, and mail the piece to you.

From left to right: A pair of Rutilated Quartz earrings valued $20 (E1), a pair of Kunzite earrings valued $18 (E2), and a pair of multi tourmaline earrings valued $20 (E3).

From left to right: A labradorite, aura quartz, clear aura crackle quartz, and sea sediment jasper bracelet valued $30 (B1), and a chrysocolla, morganite, phosphosiderite, and yellow opal bracelet valued $30 (B2).

From left to right: A clear quartz necklace valued $30 (N1), a red tiger’s eye necklace valued $30 (N2), and a flower agate, rose quartz, lepidolite, strawberry quartz, and clear quartz necklace valued $32 (N3).

If you can’t participate, that’s okay! Please share this post so that others may see and enter to win some beautiful jewelry for the most important cause — saving lives.

Tagging for reach under the cut

@wayneradiotv @killy @kahin @tododeku-or-bust @wellwaterhysteria

@kibumkim @mangocheesecakes @kyra45-helping-others @7bitter @tortiefrancis 

@toiletpotato @fromjannah @omegaversereloaded @vague-humanoid @evillesbianvillain

@aristotels @komsomolka @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @heritageposts  @ot3 @brutaliakhoa

@amygdalae @ankle-beez @dykesbat @deepspaceboytoy 

@mazzikah @mahoushojoe @ana-bananya @rhubarbspring @pcktknife

@3amsnow @orange-coloredsky @ehjane @dogesterone @specialmouse

@smalldumbpigeon @sakeeeee @bhavna-does-stuff @hal-your-pal @nevermore-was-here 

@pronouncingitwang @sloppystyle @saltycharacters @cloudofdarkness @dirhwangdaseul

@boudicca @soul-hammer @mxwhore @desire-mona @batmanego

@magnus-rhymes-with-swagness @turian @determinate-negation @sylvianritual @neptunerings

[televisionenjoyer]

Allow me to set the scene: it's 2026. Star Trek 4 (written by steve yockey) is finally out. There's a Shatner cameo as Kirk Prime. Against all odds, this is the movie where Spirk finally becomes canon. This is your dash on release week:

🤠destpirking follow

of course destiel is trending. steve yockey your impact.

🐶tonysopranosmallnaturals follow

ok let me see if i get this straight. In 1967 Theodore Sturgeon writes the Star Trek episode Amok Time, which introduces both the concept of Fuck or Die and of a humanoid species experiencing violent heat into the masses. Battle Angel Alita happens. Dark Angel happens. Jensen Ackles is in it. Supernatural happens. Some fan creates the omegaverse so that Jensen Ackles can experience misogyny. Supernatural keeps happening. Steve Yockey writes some notable Destiel episodes. Cas gay confesses to Dean and goes to superhell. Steve Yockey writes some other gay shit for dead boy detectives idk i havent watched that. Now in 2026 Steve Yockey has the honor to write the Star Trek that finally makes spirk canon and he somehow manages to invent a weird alien society in which there's misogyny for male vulcans also?? are we closing the portal?? is this what full circle looks like?? should we call kendall roy??

🧔jensenanklesofficial follow

ok so i've been watching the shatner interviews he's been doing lately regarding this movie and honestly it's time we cut him some slack. he shows sincere remorse for his previous actions and has shown clear support for the spirk ending and honestly how hard can we blame him for what he said as a guy who was brought up culturally homophobic and hit the prime of his fame in the sixties?? its enough that he's changed his mind at his age. what i'm saying essentially is i think it's time we forgive william shatner.

🐍ouroborosgaysex follow

OK WAS ANYONE GOING TO TELL ME THAT THEY SENT SPOCK TO THE NEXUS ON THE CHINESE RELEASE BECAUSE OF THE CENSORSHIP??? OR WAS I SUPPOSED TO FIND OUT FROM REDDIT??

👀spockstiels follow

say what you want about the admittedly shitty and predictable klingon genocide plot but i think i speak for all of us when i say 'billy shatner cameos as kirk prime to set up spirk in an attempt to redeem himself to the lgbt community' was on NO ONE'S 2026 bingo card

👨🏼startrekgaysex

no it was literally on my bingo card for years. i've made several posts about it in fact.

🌌thenexus follow

i DID NOT just read a post saying we have to forgive william shatner???😭😭😭😭 god i hate tumblr

📼deancasgenesis follow

"this was my nov 5th" shut up NOTHING will ever be like november fifth. you don't understand the impact of destiel.

🌟bisexualjimmykirk follow

you're joking right.

🖖🏼supersimplefeeling follow

congratulations jim kirk on becoming star trek's last first gay character.

[allisondraste]

I’ve seen various different posts on the website formerly known as Twitter and this one right here, discussing Gale’s behavior in romance as obsessive, possessive, and possibly codependent. And while I support everyone having their own interpretations and opinions, I do disagree, so I want to talk about it!

First— it’s so important to acknowledge that Gale is strictly monogamous. He is not someone who is comfortable with a partner having other partners. This is fine, and not inherently indicative of any unhealthy attachment styles. Wyll, Karlach, and Lae’Zel are also monogamous in a relationship.

Gale does struggle with some insecurity that at times bleeds it’s way into his romantic relationship, but isn’t a product of the relationship itself. His biggest insecurity is feeling like he isn’t enough (in general, not just for a romantic partner). Mystra had a way of making him feel like nothing he did was ever enough, he always needed to do more, to be more, and when he tried, when he made mistakes, she abandoned him.

Those are wounds that do not heal quickly, and so he needs quite a bit of reassurance from both friend and lover PCs that he’s fine just the way he is and that he doesn’t have to try so hard or pretend to be fine when he’s not.

He’s lonely. Due to his condition, Gale, who is an incredibly social person, had to hermit himself away from his friends and colleagues for over a year. Mystra was no longer interacting with him, and he was afraid to be around his mother because he didn’t want her to worry. His only company was Tara, and as much as he loves her, shes not a replacement for human or humanoid connection. Usually with folks who struggle with codependency and insecure attachment, there are long patterns of each of those things in all of their other relationships, but Gale seems to have had pretty healthy relationships, the Mystra situation being the exception, not the rule.

It excites him when he gets to travel with a group, have friends. It’s even more exciting to him when he finds someone who makes him forget the hurt Mystra has caused. Yet he still has to withdraw from even that because he does not want to put their life in danger. It is not until act 2 after Elminster has cast the incantation to calm the orb that Gale feels comfortable enough to give in to his feelings. And yeah! He comes in strong because he’s been holding it in. He’s been pining away, sad that he can’t let himself so much as kiss Tav or else he quite literally explode.

When you talk to Gale after his romance scene in act 2, you’re able to confront him about his feelings for Mystra, and he is very direct, stating that he does still have complicated feelings for her. Which makes SENSE. The game and Gale himself try to minimize Mystra as just his ex, but she is more than that. She is his groomer and abuser. Gale is traumatized, and it will likely take him the rest of his life to get over that. It’s not something that more time alone is going to heal. He needs a support system to help him. He needs his mom, his friends, and maybe even his new partner.

You can also ask him if he meant it when he said he loved you, and his answer is “I am many things to many people, but I am never one to throw the l-word around lightly.” He didn’t just say it on a whim. He thought about it, probably extensively. Judging from the dialogue we get, he’s aware that he is rushing to say it, and admits that it’s because he’s scared that he’s going to literally die tomorrow. It’s not a love bomb. It’s an “I need you to know this, just in case something happens to me.”

Once he doesn’t die in act 2, he simmers down. He becomes more concerned with curing his condition, he faces Mystra, he accepts that he doesn’t need to have godly power to be worthy of love and respect.

At the end of the game, he asks you if you’ll come back to Waterdeep with him, which is his way of proposing more or less, but its more that he wants to be home and he wants the person who has become so important to him to come with him, to meet his mom, to see his hometown. He wants them to want that too.

He’s a grown man, mid to late 30s, not a naive young person. He knows what he wants. He’s thought about it, extensively.

In my opinion, there’s nothing possessive, obsessive, codependent, or unhealthy about any of that.

[wanderingswampbeast]

Long Post: Why I Don’t Like The Drow

I’ve been ranting about this to a friend on discord (a lot of points I make will come from him) but I’ve finally figured out what my issue with the drow is outside of inherently evil groups being dumb.

The drow are boring. Drow lore is less of a dive into a unique culture and more of a list of fucked up things they do. Like, I cannot name a single interesting aspect of typical drow society that does not directly involve murder, sexism, or slavery, or Lolth. And even then, most of those things are written about in an incredibly bland fashion with them.

The Drow don’t really have much depth to them, and are just kind of evil for evil’s sake (or “because Lolth said so”). They do slavery, but the only real purpose of doing slavery for them is “because Lolth said so”. It isn’t for cheap labor, it’s to be more evil. They betray each other purely because that’s what evil people do. They’re misandrist, not for any real societal reason, but because Lolth hates men. There’s none of what would make slavery an interesting topic or story element, no justification for why they should be allowed to commit one of the worst injustices possible, no real economic reason for it. They just do it because Lolth says they should, and from a writing perspective it hammers home the fact that they’re evil. They aren’t evil because they enslave and murder, they enslave and murder because they’re evil, if that makes any sense.

Them being written as comically evil as they are also hurts them from a worldbuilding perspective. They’re so reliant on slaves for menial labor that the lower class of their society struggle to get jobs. Drow culture so obsessed with betrayal and dumbass house wars that even when actively under attack from the outside they sabotage each other. They’re so decadent that their buildings are held up with magic and semi regularly collapse when a spell fails. To put it bluntly, drow society feels like one that should have collapsed in a few centuries, which, funnily enough, is way longer than D&D elves live.

Their culture being so monolithic also makes writing anything about them difficult. Every drow antagonist is going to have near identical motivations, methods, and ideologies as every other drow antagonist. Every drow protagonist is going to ultimately feel very similar to Drizzt, because leaving their fucked up society to become a do-gooder is such a common backstory element that they added a whole extra god just for doing that. In fact, you can divide 90% of drow characters from any official materials into these categories:

Manservant

Ambitious male, usually a wizard (5 bucks says he has long hair and a widow’s peak)

Dommy Mommy Warcrime Woman

Drizzt Do’Urden or one of his many duplicates

Self-loathing and/or resentful Drider

And finally, their existence almost purely to be humanoid enemies you can fight at nearly any levels is just kind of lazy. This is a problem that I have with the “evil races” of a lot of fantasy but having a group that’s evil by birth just feels like an excuse to not have to write actual motivations for your antagonists. It’s the difference between “go attack this camp of soldiers because they’re part of the SkullMurder army and their general wants to use our land to build a dread fortress” vs “go attack this camp of soldiers specifically because they’re drow/goblins/orcs/the dreaded peepee-poopoo folk”. Using stuff like this just feels like an excuse to not have to write an actual antagonist since it comes pre-written in the group’s lore. This has the side effect of whenever such a group is the antagonist of the plot, the players or audience know near exactly what to expect. The orc is here to conquer, the goblin is here to steal, and the drow is here to enslave or do some dark ritual.

I’ve legitimately heard people say “well if XYZ can’t be inherently evil anymore, who will we use as bad guys?” It’s very simple: whoever the fuck we want. Write an evil queen, or a scheming wizard, or an underground slave trade network. For God’s sake, anyone can be evil, you don’t need to tie that to a specific ethnic group and write it as “they’re just like that”. Write an actual character for your antagonist.

[citadelsanchez]

Greetings, our dearest and best writer in the entire history of ever, could I interest you in a little scenario where Rick takes y/n and Morty on a little adventure and leaves y/n alone for a moment to meet up with a "contact" only to come back to y/n being surrounded by people and HEAVILY flirted with? I'd just love to imagine the look on Rick's face when y/n spots him with this helpless puppy look as they try to fend off suitors,,,

Hi. Been a minute since I've posted. Holidays and all that, plus I'm in the process of moving states so I apologize! I promise that I will still be slowly working on these. <3 anyways,, hope you enjoy.

((Gender neutral reader))

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Um.. I dunno, Jerry," you muttered uncomfortably. You were currently sat between Morty and Jerry on the Smiths' couch, and got caught in the middle of the two boys having a debate over Interdimensional Cable. Jerry insisted that he was best friends with Keanu Reeves and Dwayne Johnson in his alternate reality. Morty claimed that even in a different reality he'd never be cool enough for that to be true.

"Well it's nice to be reminded just how much of a loser my own son thinks I am. Y/N, what's your opinion on this?" Jerry asked.

You awkwardly shrugged as you checked your phone and hoped they would just stop talking altogether.

"Hey dipshits, is there some valid reason that you didn't come to the garAAGe when I called your names?"

You turned your head to see none other than Rick entering the living room to stand over you and Morty with his arms crossed.

"W-we never heard you call us," Morty spoke.

Rick scoffed. "Well you just heard me. Get to moving" he said, keeping stern eye contact with you before stalking back towards the garage.

You and Morty glance at each other before hesitantly getting up to obey his command, you're both used to his formidable attitude and being too overcome with curiosity to argue.

When you make it to the garage, Rick is already in his ship ready to depart.

"Get in, come the fuck on" he calls out harshly.

Morty stumbles in and you take your place in the back, wedging your legs between the middle of the floor between their seats.

"So what are we doing, specifically?" You ask, watching as Rick expressionlessly drives the ship. Adventures didn't phase you at all anymore; it had been about a full year now since you've started going on them with your esteemed older mentor and his grandson. The scenery never really made a difference anymore but the objective behind the adventures did.

"Just- it's just a compound I need for a project, that's all."

"That wasn't what I'd call specific" you frown, staring at his side profile.

"It's perfectly specific in being all the information that I care to give out," Rick retorts, throwing you an annoyed look.

"Geeez Rick," Morty adds.

You roll your eyes and decide not to further press the issue. You're no stranger to Rick's many moods and abusive jabs, but usually you were able to pinpoint reasons for them, even if small. Sometimes, though, it seemed deeper than what you could read into and you knew to just leave it be. It wasn't like he would relay his true emotions to anyone.

The ship whirred to a halt as you looked outside of the windows to see a lively city filled with people entering and exiting eccentric shops. Most of the inhabitants seemed to have a masculine appearance, some taking on hybrid human and alien features. Some were strange creatures altogether, and some looked to be completely human.

The three of you climb out of the ship as Rick starts talking. "Alright, so I've got to tend to my business. You two stay here and don't die."

He looks between you and Morty, a sense of guilt almost marking his face before the typical scowl replaces it. "I-If you can't manage that, use this to let me know." Rick shoves a device with a giant blue button in your hands now.

"Good luuUUCk" He burps before walking off into the crowd of humanoids and disappearing from sight.

"Wow, he's really on it today, huh Y/N?" Morty says, puzzled.

"Something's off, I can tell. I need to find out what it is," You respond. "Rick has obviously left us in the dark before but this just doesn't feel right."

Just as you're about to take stride to follow Rick, several warlock resemblant men surround you, blocking your path. Their curious inquiries spill out all at once.

"Look at this specimen, Norpel. Definitely not from around here."

"What's your name, gorgeous?"

"I was told not to touch the aliens that visit but I almost can't resist."

You take a step back and sigh in frustration. Damn you, Rick.

"And you're dead set on using this formula and enduring it's possible side effects, Rick?"

Rick frowned, irked by the fact that his colleague wouldn't just provide him with what he asked for without a 20 questions game.

"Yes, Shabablurb, I'm completely positive."

The mysterious man turned to face the older scientist. "I just have to make sure. I'll go get it then."

Rick tapped his foot as he waited and his mind wanders back to you once again. Your gentle eyes of compassion, your sometimes rare but always bright smile, your soft hair. The inside jokes you two came to have, the gentle touches you give him when he's not being an asshole, the way his entire family cherishes your presence. How he feels about you- he knows the feeling and knows it well. Which is why he needs to get rid of it.

Shabablurb re-enters the room with a vial. "Okay, one and done. I'm not here to judge any of your decisions but just remember Rick, that once you take this, you won't be able to remember an-"

"I got it. Thanks. I'm out."

Rick snatched the compound from the man's hand and began making his way back to Morty and Y/N.

He was starting to wonder if you two had went to a bar or club somewhere when he heard your voice, wavering and meek. Unusually out of character for you.

"Hey stop, don't, back up- don't touch me please."

Rick narrowed his eyes at the crowd he was walking through, pushing past everyone to reach the sound of your voice.

Many feet away, Morty was nowhere in sight but he caught a glimpse of your face, flush with panic and anxiety, as the strange men continued to prod you and several attempting to grab a part of you- your clothes or body.

Your eyes meet Rick's and he can clearly see the plea for help in them as one creature grabs hold of your shirt and begins yanking it.

Rick feels his anger start to surge. He removes his laser gun from his coat and fires it at the crowd, freezing some suitors in place and burning holes in others. Once you're no longer engulfed in bodies, he finds the job satisfactory.

"R-Rick, thank you," you murmur while he walks over, embarrassed by the scene that just played out. You gently brush your fingers over his hand after he puts his gun away and he stares at you with an unreadable expression.

"Rick?"

"Uh yeah, sorry. Glad I could save the day. They w-would've had a feast with you."

Your cheeks flush although you're not sure in what context Rick was even referring to.

In honesty, neither was he. All that was consuming his mind were second guesses. Guilt and pain that clutched his chest with a deathly grip. And a single question ringing in his head.

How could he make himself forget about you?

[lost-technology]

Explaining Vash Outside the Fandom!

So, today on another forum I mentioned Vash the Stampede. I mentioned him by way of "I don't ask myself WWJD? so much anymore as WWVtSD?" and explained "Vash the Stampede." I said "If anyone is unfamiliar with this name, go ahead and ask and I can fangirl all over you, but be warned, you will be reading all day." I got a taker. And then another taker who is a person on the forum who is straight up not having a good time right now and needs some distraction I feel - to read someone's dumb fangirling over a fandom they aren't in yet. So... I wrote up an essay explaining Vash the Stampede in Word and pasted it in shifts on the blog: (uck, looks like I'm gonna have to post this in shifts, too. Dumb tumblr!

*Flashes my fangirl license*  You asked about Vash the Stampede?  *Raises eyebrows.*  Big mistake.  You shall be here all day!  Vash is the protagonist of Trigun, an anime / manga by Yashiro Nightow.  Well, the manga is by him and there are two different animes to date, one originally airing in 1998 before the completion of the manga (and it gained the idea enough popularity that Nightow was able to continue the manga and purposefully took a different track to keep the story fresh.  Because he had to switch publishers the continuing story was titled Trigun Maximum).  As of 2023 there has been a reboot of the anime, Trigun Stampede, done in a cell-shaded CGI style that takes more cues from the manga.  It has done its own story elements, too, most notably having the City of July as a part of the story, making it almost a prequel, since the City of July is past tense in the other media.  A second set / continuation / completion of it is set for a future release date and as of yesterday, the “final phase” of the new anime will be titled Trigun Stargaze. Additionally, there was a feature-movie made in 2011 based solely upon the first anime titled Badlands Rumble, which is kind of the black sheep of the fandom (personally I enjoy it, find it very funny).  So, anyway, Vash is a tall blonde man with a Bart Simpson hairdo and a long red coat who lives on a desert planet with 10X the guns of ‘Murica.  There are two suns and five moons.  It’s a scavenger world where people barely eek out a living using a form of lost technology known as “Plants” – which are these energy and materials production entities housed in giant lightbulbs (or something more like tanks in Stampede).  No one knows how to create Plants anymore and few know how to maintain them, so everything is slowly dying (except, of course, the native sandworms.  Yep, there’s something Dune-like going on).  People live a half sci-fi half Old West existence and things are, again, very violent.  It’s a world where you have higher chances of making it out better as a bandit than a farmer.    Vash is a pacifist.  He is also an outlaw with Sixty-Billion-Double Dollars ($$) on his head because he has been shown to be capable of incredible destructive power.  Now, most of this comes accidentally from trying to weasel out of tough situations and people after him getting themselves hurt, but somehow towns fall apart.  Except for the City of July (or Jul-Ai in Stampede), which he did wipe out.  Under circumstances not of his own making or will, but the normal citizens of the planet don’t know that.  That was around 24 years ago in the first anime and in the manga.  July exists as of the beginning of Stampede.    Early on in the manga’s story, an insurance company that gets a lot of damage claims regarding damage he supposedly caused declares him a “Human Act of God” so as to avoid payouts.  He is assigned a pair of insurance agents, Milly Thompson and Meryl Stryfe, to follow him around to attempt to mitigate the damage he might cause.  In the anime, it is the same, except that his bounty is not removed for some reason.  (In the manga, the government removes his bounty per his “Act of God” status).  He is also known as the Humanoid Typhon, putting him in the same category as a destructive storm.  Vash-damage is thereafter treated in the same like as hurricane damage!  Honestly, this is one of the most creative things I have seen of any media – having the local superhero / super-cryptid followed by INSURANCE AGENTS. (I am fond of characterizing Trigun as “If Mayhem from the Allstate commercials was followed around by Flo from the Progressive commercials”).  (To Be Continued in Reblog-posts)

[yeetmeoutthewindowdaddy]

A deep dive into Zevlor's devotion (Part 1) Everybody hates tieflings, and how discrimination impacted a young Zevlor:

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR BG3.

These series of posts were originally one loooooong post— but apparently Tumblr has a character limit, and I found it; so now it's been split into several parts/posts.

((Part 1, this post, is mostly to give context to the discrimination faced by tieflings in Faerûn. The third part is where the meat of my Zevlor analysis is.))

(Part 2) Elturel's history and culture, the Hellriders, and Zevlor's paladin oath. (Part 2.5)

(Part 3) Zevlor's actions during Act 1, an analysis of a man who is barely holding on.

(Part 4) Zevlor's actions during Act 2, an analysis of a broken man.

(Part 5) Zevlor's actions during Act 3, an analysis of a man with his faith restored.

(Part 6) Zevlor's actions during/ after the epilogue, not all endings are happily ever after— especially not for a tiefling.

(Part 7) Zevlor in a romantic relationship.

I don't think many bg3 players understand just how dedicated and loyal of a person Zevlor is. This ADHD hyper-fixation fueled multipart-thesis is meant to show how Zevlor's past is as tragic as any of the origin characters'/ Durge's. It's meant to show how horrifically broken Zevlor was when he "betrayed" the other tieflings. It's also meant to show that our beloved blorbo would probably be fervently obsessive if he was in a romantic relationship.

Most importantly: It demonstrates how our favorite man Zevlor was most likely a fanatical religious zealot my dudes. He was (probably) a part of the Faerûn equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition lite.

I have kept this as factual as I am able to. Please keep in mind that Baldur's Gate 3 plays it fast and loose with the DND/ Forgotten Realms canon and lore, on top of DND/ the Forgotten Realms itself regularly disregarding and changing it's own lore and canon. DND lore and canon as a whole is a mess. It has multiple universes that sometimes interact and are maybe separate from each other. Full disclosure; I've mixed 1e-5e lore together FUCK 5.5e, because parsing through what is currently considered canon is a nightmare. As far as I'm concerned, as long as a piece of lore was canon at some point in the past 50 years— it's fair game. @y-rhywbeth2 in this post has a more in depth disclaimer. Also please check out their headcanons and lore breakdowns, they're so good.

THIS PROJECT TOOK ME OVER A MONTH TO WRITE. I've tried to find all grammatical and spelling errors. I've tried to ensure that I've cited the correct sources in the correct places.

I have given up on trying to understand Tumblr's inconsistent post formatting. Why does the 'small' option for text sometimes actually make the text smaller but other times it makes the text larger???

______________________________________________________________

● (Section 1) The Origins, Anatomy, and Physiology of Tieflings:

AN: It used to be that tieflings could only breed with other tieflings and humans. This seems to have been changed recently— one no longer has to have a demon somewhere in their genetic lineage to be a tiefling, one of their ancestors having contact with a demon is enough to produce a tiefling descendant. Which has interesting implications for Warlocks. There are also special versions of elf and orc tieflings.

(From what I can tell) tieflings live for about the same amount of time, maybe ~10 years longer than, humans do. (AN: Remember how I said the Forgotten Realms loves to retcon and disregard it’s own lore? The wiki states that their life span is from 90–150 years, but this source is from 2004 and the lore has greatly changed in the past 20 years. I am choosing to ignore the wiki here for my own sanity.)

Tieflings were humanoids with fiendish ancestry. They came about due to one of their ancestors (even many generations prior) getting freaky with a demon being "touched" by the evil planes in some way.

"Tieflings... were infused with the touch of the fiendish planes, most often through descent from fiends—demons, Yugoloths, devils, evil deities, and others... Although their evil ancestors could be many generations removed, the taint lingered."

Before some warlock shenanigans happened, tieflings had a much wider range of appearances than the ones we generally see now.

"In 1358 DR, a warlock coven...the Toril thirteen performed a ritual that cursed most tiefling lineages... [changing] their original lineage with that of the archdevil... Asmodeus [who] became a god... giving most tieflings... a similar devilish appearance... [whereas before] infernal blood could be diluted through intermarriage... afterward, the union of a tiefling with another race always produced a tiefling child."

Their infernal ancestry gave them some very powerful abilities.

"Tieflings had a number of abilities gifted to them by their fiendish heritage... an innate resistance to heat and... a hint of bloodlust that gave them a slight edge in combat. Tieflings also had access to an ability known as infernal wrath, which channeled their innate rage and potential for evil into their attacks for added effectiveness... [they] tended to have better reflexes than their human kin... [Tieflings are] alluring and intelligent creatures, with a seductive aura in spite of their obviously evil ancestry...

Along with some not so great traits that fed into the prejudices against them.

"Other, more unusual characteristics included a sulfurous odor, cloven feet, or... an unsettling air about them... a general aura of discomfort they left on others... most people were uncomfortable around them, whether they were aware of the tiefling's unsavory ancestry or not... Tieflings were carnivores. They consumed blood, blubber, bone, gristle and meat... [and] raw bone marrow..."

Tieflings tended to be resolute and tenacious, with a strong internal drive to rise above their circumstances.

"They are adaptable and resilient to hardship, and possess strong aptitude at whatever pursuit they dedicate themselves to... When facing adversity, the tiefling instinct is not to withdraw from the world, but rather to challenge it head-on... Tieflings seek to make their own fates, defy the odds, and take risks that... most... would not dare."

For some awesome insight on tieflings check out this post [alt] by @gortashs-skidmark, it's a good source on tiefling appearances and traits. Along with this post [alt] by @pikapeppa providing evidence-based headcanons on tiefling appearances. And this post [alt] by @y-rhywbeth2, which talks about how a tiefling's physical traits are influenced by their specific infernal heritage.

Their infernal appearance and weird vibes are why almost

● (Section 2) Everybody Hates Tieflings:

Even before Elturel's Decent into Avernus, and subsequently the events of BG3 (both of which I will cover later), Tieflings faced an incredible amount of discrimination— even from their own kind.

"Few tieflings were raised with the love a normal human child might expect to receive... Tieflings who had strikingly inhuman features were often killed at birth by their horrified parents or others. Only those tieflings with subtle features or born to someone indifferent to their appearance, either out of acceptance or cruel purpose, were likely to reach adulthood... Tieflings often distrusted one another, sometimes even casting the same preconceptions on one another that others did on them."

This post [alt] by @underdark-dreams highlights the discrimination tieflings face in game. And how the Flaming Fists should be called the Flaming Shits, but I'll get into that in another part of this series.

Understandably, they didn't easily trust others. But once someone did earn a tiefling's trust, they were an incredibly loyal friend.

"…[Tieflings] expected eventual rejection from all... However, members of other races would find that once they demonstrated friendship and trust towards a tiefling, it would quickly be reciprocated in full. Once that bond was forged, it was rarely broken."

While some tieflings wholeheartedly embraced the preconception that all tieflings were evil, others would endeavor to prove it wrong.

"Their attitude regarding their heritage... while some tieflings embraced it, others were repulsed by it... tieflings, who were proud of their fiendish past... chose to... thwart... dark plots and schemes. Others sought to... emulate these evil deeds. Other tieflings were ashamed or even frightened of their heritage and wished only to escape the shadow that lurked over them... Some did this through constantly doing good, as though to make up for the evil that begot them. Others instead hid [their heritage]…"

Looking like devils made people think they were devils, or acted like devils.

"Tieflings are widely stereotyped as wicked, cruel, and criminal individuals... [with] a tendency to be solitary loners... known for their quick temper, stubbornness, self-confidence, and fickleness in relationships."

And since people thought tieflings were, or would act like, devils they treated them like devils.

"The social rejection they typically face often leads tieflings to enter a life of crime, which furthers social prejudice against their race." 

"We're distrusted and viewed as evil malcontents for so long that we start to believe it ourselves. It's hard not to try to live up to the hype, eh?"— Enkillo the Sly, tiefling

It's not a stretch of the imagination to assume that people would believe that: the more devilish a tiefling looked = the more they'd behave like devils (evil). It's also safe assume: that the more infernal traits a tiefling had = the more, harsher, discrimination they'd face.

This leads into my next topic,

● (Section 3) Zevlor's Infernal Appearance:

He looks like a combo of Sylvester Stallone and Willem Dafoe.

He and his Habsburg jaw lookin ass face seems to always have a 5 o'clock shadow. (Probably because he's a refugee struggling to survive, so his personal grooming habits have taken a back seat.)

Zevlor has more infernal features than the other tieflings do in-game. (As shown in this post [alt] by @lolliputian and @haru-sen) He has very prominent cheekbones, a thick brow ridge, and BIG horns. (Look at @cinnasalmon's post [alt] on Zevlor's horn anatomy.)

HC: The reasons his face bones are so protuberant is because they need to support the weight of his huge horns, as without them his (face) skull would fracture/ cave in from the constant pressure. Poor guy probably lives with a perpetual headache.

Zevlor's prominent infernal facial features make him look older than he probably is— as they emphasize the traits we humans commonly associate with aging; such as defined nasal labial folds, a lack of facial fat, and big ears. The striations by his eyes look like wrinkles, but I think that they're mostly infernal markings.

Stress prematurely ages people, and Zevlor had multitudes of stressors throughout his life: Contending with the discrimination from being a tiefling with prominent infernal traits, joining an elite military unit at age 12, rising through its ranks to become a Commander of said unit, having his city dragged into the literal Hells (more on that in part 2), defending the civilians/ city trapped in the hells, surviving the hells, then being stripped of his rank and banished from his home because of racial prejudices, and then leading a group of (mostly civilian) refugees to Baldur's Gate— all while desperately trying to keep them alive in the face of Faerûn's many, many, dangers.

Combining all the factors above would make any man look 10+ years older than he actually is.

Zevlor looks scary. His irises look like they're on fire, and his teeth are scarier than Astarion's. I was browsing Tumblr alone in my room, at night, 😳 and this photo of Zevlor popped up on my feed giving me a good scare. I have an unhealthy obsession with Zevlor, he's made it onto my official husbando list! And yet, I can't look at certain screen shots of him at night because they scare me. I'm a wuss.

I simp hard for this man, and yet I am still frightened by his appearance sometimes. Imagine how people in Faerûn react when they see his sleep paralysis demon lookin ass him in person? Screaming and running away is completely understandable.

Which brings us to,

● (Section 4) How Discrimination Impacted a Young Zevlor:

Even as a young child Zevlor would've know that his appearance othered him.

"Most tieflings were aware from an early age that they were different from others around them..."

Even as a child Zevlor most likely knew that many people would dislike him and refuse to trust him because he was born a tiefling.

Tiefling families in the traditional sense are rare. Many tieflings, born to human parents who possess a latent infernal bloodline, are abandoned at birth and raised by a monastery, church, orphanage, or adoptive parents.

I headcanon that he had at least one loving parent—before he was orphaned, but it's entirely possible, and likely, that he was abandoned at birth.

Young Zevlor would've known that he would have to work very hard to be seen as something other than a criminal or evil monster.

"While some [tieflings] would... [turn] towards evil, others rejected it wholeheartedly and sought to make a good impact on the world around them, sometimes becoming the most heroic characters of all. Few could maintain this discipline however."

AN: Elturel was a theocracy (more on that part 2)— Zevlor likely grew up in a deeply religious family/ community.

All these factors combined would lead to a young Zevlor who:

Was determined to prove his goodness and rise above the adversity he faced. The force of will and work ethic he needed to become not just a Hellrider— but a Hellrider Commander, while being a tiefling, meant that he would've grown into a stubborn man. (See this post [alt] by @ohsayit)

Was so deeply religious and devoutly pious that he became a paladin. (More on this in part 2)

Internalized the impossible standards he was held to.

Developed a guilt complex (my "grew up Catholic" is showing)

Viewed any mistake he made as a personal moral failure, and as an indication of his inherent evil nature. (Hello again, Catholicism)

Would be hyperaware of how he's perceived by others.

Would learn how to read people's true intentions/ motivations.

Learned to vigilantly monitor, and strictly control his facial expressions and body language. (Is my autistic masking showing?)

Learned how to show deference to others through body language.

Leaned how to make himself appear smaller and less threatening.

Figured out how smile and laugh without showing his teeth.

Mastered the awkward and tight-lipped polite smile.

Figured out how to intelligibly speak with a tight jaw and lips so that his teeth wouldn't be seen by others while he spoke.

Developed self worth/ self esteem issues. Even other tieflings would've looked at him with suspicion and maybe even disgust.

That's it for part 1, here's another link to (Part 2) Elturel's history and culture, the Hellriders, and Zevlor's paladins oath. (Part 2.5)

and the other parts,

A deep dive into Zevlor's devotion series (master list)

[randomwriteronline]

(inspired by this post by @byz-was-here)

So maybe he had been a little too brash.

Not the first time Gresh had gotten that yelled at him, though Vastus was usually physically present instead of just in his head.

The point being, his attempt at sneaking into the terrifyingly enormous robot trying to punch the life out of the rickety body Mata Nui was struggling to pilot had been a success, and after what had felt like hours climbing as fast as he could up a relatively narrow tunnel he had at last emerged onto what had appeared to be some kind of island swarmed with bipedal metallic lizards of sorts brandishing spears.

Only one problem left on his plan's path now: he had no idea what the next step of said plan was.

One of the lizards opened its yellow skull into slices, hissing horrendously at him with what seemed like either a weirdly thick tongue or one of those slugs that tasted like rusted copper that they ate in Tajun, and pointed the end of its weapon at him as it crackled menacingly with an immense charge.

The young Glatorian panicked.

Before he could think of responding in any other way he joined his blades and thrusted them forward as hard as he could: a typhoon arose from them in the matter of a second, sweeping within itself the army of armored lizards. They struggled and writhed within the winds in a desperate attempt at freeing themselves from its pull, but could do nothing as their heads were yanked open and the slugs (they had to be slugs, because if those had been tongues it would have been so, so much worse) were almost all torn apart by the centripetal force, those spared from the gruesome fate ending up launched towards the impossibly high sky-like ceiling.

Gresh struggled to undo the destructive phenomenon before he fully lost control of it. As he heaved after at last dividing his weapons, he jolted upright again when a strange sound suddenly stopped not too far away from him. Nobody was around him anymore, and yet the noise was close, so close - almost...

He jerked his head upwards.

The slugs and the lizards had been weird, by all means - they had been what he might have expected from Kiina's idea of life on other planets: properly alien, properly other, properly just comprehensible enough to remind him of vague things that made no sense when presented in that shape and function.

Yet this, for all the ways it should have looked somewhat familiar, might have been the strangest being he'd ever seen in his life.

The humanoid figure clad in silver and red, floating above him thanks to rockets that seemed welded into its shoulders, looked back at him with glowing eyes that clearly mirrored his opinion.

"Now what in Mata Nui's name are you meant to be?" it sputtered at him without meaning to.

Its voice was almost too normal for its mechanical appearance - it still rumbled with melodies only possibly sung by machinery in-between the whistling breaths leaving and entering its frame like steam from a locomotive, but based on the being's looks hearing it pronounce such clear words instead of hisses, clunks, and revving growls was nonetheless quite destabilizing. It carried a weirdly androgynous quality within its deep pitch that made it impossible to understand if whoever had made it could have been envisioning it as female or otherwise, not helped by the martial image its armor projected without really giving its body a distinctively gendered shape. It was armed - the spinning blades it wielded seemed to be fused into one hand, what appeared to be a mini-sized cannon held into the other, and neither resembled any weapon the young Glatorian had ever seen - yet it appeared much more concerned with assessing the situation than attacking.

Gresh, busy as he was having several moments all at once, took in that pile of information and promptly forgot to think about it.

"I KNOW HIM!" he instead shouted way too loudly, pointing a blade at it without really reflecting on how that might have looked. "I KNOW HIM, HE'S A FRIEND!"

The being stumbled back a little in a defensive pose: "Mata Nui?" it asked, incredulous: "You are a friend to the Great Spirit?"

"YES, I KNOW HIM, HE GAVE ME THE WIND THING!" the young Glatorian continued to yell, now smacking together his weapons to better explain what his not particularly stellar choices in lexicon were struggling to convey by themselves before he pointed back at where he'd come from: "HE'S OUTSIDE FIGHTING THE ROBOT AND ALL! I NEED TO HELP HIM!"

"Fighting the what?"

"THE ROBOT! THE HUGE - THE BIG ROBOT, THE BIG ONE, THIS ONE, IT'S HUGE - I NEED TO FIND THE HEAD AND MAYBE KILL IT, HIM, THEM? MAYBE? MAYBE? POSSIBLY? I NEED TO HELP AND IT'S A BIG ROBOT AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO BUT I SHOULD PROBABLY GET TO THE HEAD OF THE ROBOT, THIS ONE, THE ROBOT - THIS ONE, THE HEAD, I NEED TO GET TO THE HEAD!"

He was not making any sense, but in his defense he was probably high on adrenaline.

The floating being gawked at him briefly. In a smooth motion it landed closer to him, looking him up and down with its brilliant pink eyes as it tried to make heads or tails of him without succeeding; Gresh charged at it to try explaining better and distractedly noticed there was flesh within the mechanical limbs.

"HE'S OUTSIDE," he continued just as loud - making the poor thing recoil as it did its best to keep him a little further away before he fried its audio receptors, "HE'S OUTSIDE AND THE PROBLEM IS IN HERE BECAUSE THERE'S A GUY IN THE BRAIN - HIS BROTHER I THINK? - AND IF I GET TO THE BRAIN MAYBE I CAN STAB HIM? MAYBE? PROBABLY? MAYBE? MA--"

"I can hear you," the being grimaced, stern tone imposing some peace and quiet onto the young warrior. "What is your name?"

"GRESH."

"Please quiet down."

"EVERYBODY I KNOW IS CURRENTLY AT THE MERCY OF TWO HUGE ROBOTS RIGHT NOW AND I NEED TO GET TO THE BRAIN OF THIS ONE TO--"

The hand was not as rough as he would have imagined - what with being made of metal and all - and the way it clumsily clamped around his mouth to very quickly and very kindly shut him up reminded him so much of Tarix that his furiously anxious body relaxed all at once, leaving him to look wide eyed into the dark sockets of a crimson helmet housing a pair of miniature yellow stars.

"You were sent by the Great Spirit himself?" the being asked. Despite currently being seconds away from squeezing its cheeks in that annoying way that older siblings tend to do, its tone was quiet with the sort of reverence reserved for gods.

Gresh pulled its palm from his mouth without encountering opposition: "I don't think he knows I'm here," he confessed, "But he's struggling out there, and I want to help him."

His interlocutor mulled over his words thoughtfully.

Its shining eyes took in the young Glatorian's entire frame, the slight change in them muttering its doubts without needing any words - but what could be a creature so strange, made of skin and clad in metal and bone, with a voice laid naked against the absence of its innate mechanical song, holding within such frail hands of flesh and fake phalanxes the same power as a missing brother of Air, talking of things beyond the universe itself, of a battle none knew their god was waging at that very moment, if not a desperate lending hand Mata Nui sent to guide his people in a victory against his cunning usurper?

When at last it looked back into Gresh's beaded pupils, it had taken its decision.

"The enemy is in the brain," it repeated.

The Lebori nodded feverishly: "The head! I think - he should be, right? It's the most important part, all the thoughts and nerves come from it, if you shut down the brain then the whole thing falls down and fails, right?"

A flash of understanding passed through the being's unmoving features: "Metru Nui!" it exclaimed as if remembering something.

"Yes! I think! Probably. If it's in the head then probably."

"We're a long way from there, but we could..." it ran a few quick calculations, producing a sound much like fat sizzling on a slab of lava-heated rock: "How long can Mata Nui last in his condition?"

"From what I've figured out of him I think he'll try to hold on until he's pummelled into scrap."

"Then we should try to be quicker than that."

Without much more preamble the being grabbed Gresh like a sack of flour, hefted him up in the air (he noticed only then how significantly shorter compared to it he was), secured his arms around its neck and shoulders with a practiced ease as the rockets of its armor shifted in a seamless manner to accomodate his passenger and provide the added firepower needed for carrying two people through the air, and got ready for take off as the poor kid scrambled to wrap around it before getting blasted off.

"Huh," it noted with genuine surprise, briefly forgetting their situation: "You're lighter than a Matoran. Are you missing any parts?"

"I'm eating plenty!" Gresh bit back.

A second later he was flying on the back of a mechanical creature with muscle peeking through the gaps of its armor, and the adrenaline washed away his coherent thoughts again.

-

Teridax felt miserable.

He supposed having an entire forty-thousand-feet tall body worth of various cells and microbes and the such viciously, actively and purposefully fighting against his consciousness would have had that sort of effect on just about anyone.

The gigantic robot piloted by a false god trying with all of its dwindling might to kick his jaw in also wasn't helping.

The second problem, however, could be dealt with by punching it into a sobbing heap of mangled rusted limbs begging for mercy with enough determination and brute force; the first one could not.

It required concentration - a very valuable asset currently being used to counter Mata Nui in his ugly runt of a spare frame he'd found in the first trash can of this horrid planet, thus distracting him from unleashing a strong enough counterattack across his organism to stop the squirming little pests from rebelling against him.

So yes, he was cross enough already.

And now he was getting a migraine.

He wondered briefly if fighting someone his own size (or, well... almost his own size, he nearly chuckled out loud to himself as he took a moment to bask once more of the not insignificant height difference between them) wasn't a waste of time. After all, Mata Nui had mentioned something about the safety of those insignificant beasts hurriedly scuttling away from their scuffle: certainly he would have been quite distraught if a careless swipe of his colossal hand caused a couple thousand casualties - maybe enough to be easily toppled and overpowered as he despaired over the loss of so many useless ants...

He raised his palm in the direction of their bothersome scampering, doing his best to place at least some of his power into it as his headache slowly worsened to a nearly unbearable degree.

How much of an increase in gravity would have been needed to flatten them all at once?

They were so small... Maybe just...

"JUNGLE SQUIRREL!" a voice that was not his screamed in his head.

What?

What the fuck?

What was that?

A strong wind arose, but not across Bara Magna.

In the span of a moment Teridax found himself ripped away from the middle of a titanic fight back in his blasted gaseous form as it was slammed and spread into a fog against one of the walls of the Core Processor. Disoriented, bleary, furious beyond belief, he came to his senses just in time to see rushing amongst the machinery Tahu, Takanuva, and - and a short, green, Toa-like, weirdly organic thing that sprinted directly into the control panel of the Great Spirit Robot which had once housed the synthetic soul of Mata Nui.

-

As incomprehensibly terrifying as a pair of colossi duking it out in the middle of the desert was, their size and loudness at the very least allowed much smaller beings to see and hear everything they were doing so that they could make an attempt to move as far away from their hellish battle as possible.

It hadn't been a pretty spectacle so far (few fights like these were), but it had given them more time to move out of harm's way than they would have expected. The escape was going incredibly smoothly, too, which was never how these sorts of things tended to go: neither Zesk nor Vorox had dared coming anywhere near the commotion, which had managed to scare off Bone Hunters and Skrall as well - even as easy a prey as the Agori were at the moment, scattering half directionless into an unclear part of the desert, they were not worth the risk of accidentally getting stepped on by who knows how many tonnes of metal.

The biggest causes of concern other than avoiding collateral damage were thus reduced to two: making sure everybody was accounted for as they left, and whether or not Mata Nui was winning.

Ackar, to the dismay of his blood pressure, was having serious trouble juggling his attention between them.

Tarix yanked him back to attention by his prosthetic arm, causing the Tapyri to hiss in pain: "What's the point of asking me questions if you don't listen to my answer?!"

"I'm sorry," he growled back, "A friend of mine is fighting for his life right now, Great Beings forbid I'm a little worried for him!"

"So are we!"

"I don't see you trying to dodge the fists of a giant robot right now!"

"Because I'm trying to get the slow walkers out of its space so they won't have to dodge its colossal debris!"

"As entertaining as your yelling is, I think we have bigger slugs to fry," Gelu interrupted them in a flat tone. Head caught in the crook of the Koniri's elbow, Berix squirmed and pushed as he desperately tried to regain the sweet taste of freedom only to get squeezed a little tighter. "Somebody tried to go back to the crux of the struggle."

The other two Glatorian abandoned all tension between them to give the young Gaquri a suffering disappointed look, filled with the kind of tiredness that only an adopted father and the kindly man who puts out carved pumpkins for the mangy were-possum creature that skitters around the edges of his property to feed off of every now and then could muster; coherently, Berix replied with an inarticulate mumbling whine too low in volume and high in pitch to be intelligible that was meant to be an apology.

He was very lucky Kiina was not present, or she would have screamed his scales off.

Evidently he wasn't that lucky, because Kiina materialized on her chariot seconds later with Vastus in tow.

"Most of the oldest, youngest and motion-impared are already being moved on vehicles to a safer cave system a few Lebori knew," she informed the small group urgently as the other dismounted from the back of her ride with a worried look on his face.

Getting no answer, she searched their faces for an inkling of what they were thinking and landed squarely on her younger brother's: the immediate rage that took over her features made him scramble harder to evade Gelu's grip and her inevitable wrath all at once, eventually ending up falling right on his ass in the sand when the Koniri let go without warning.

"YOU." Kiina thundered while he scuttled away behind the other Glatorian: "WHAT IN PLUDE DID YOU DO NOW?!"

"Nothing!" he shrieked back, clinging to the white armored leg even as it tried to shake him off. "Gresh and I thought we could have helped if we got in maybe, you know, since it's a machine and so I could have messed up its wiring or something like that so it could have fallen over and the height advantage could have--"

"Wait - wait, Gresh?" Tarix paled. He turned to his wife: "He was with you, right? With you two, further down?"

Vastus replied with an equally terrified face: "I thought he was down here with you," he replied softly as horror built into his voice, "He insisted in covering our backs, he promised he wouldn't have done anything stupid..."

Ackar sunk his fingers into his eyelids with a groan, Kiina following suit in a nearly identical fashion.

The kids needed a hobby.

Any hobby.

Just as long as it kept them away from pulling shit like this.

If they got him back in one piece, they were going to beat his ass.

An ear-piercing sound that was far too close to a pained lament shook them out of their collective mixture of fear, worry and well-deserved rage, rattling the sky alongside with them.

"Fuckin' Quartz Peaks!" Gelu exclaimed.

His eyes were fixed on the gargantuan figure stumbling back into the dunes on suddenly unsteady legs, leaning forward as it clutched its head in anguish and curled upon itself to stave off the pain clearly rippling through it - shoulders so low that they were almost at the same height as the prototype robot's, which instead stood tall despite the strain placed upon it.

Had Mata Nui dealt a decisive blow as they weren't looking?

But the collision should have caused something akin to a sonic boom, and the mechanical body's stance was just as surprised at the change in its opponent's demeanor as the spectators of their fight...

Then suddenly, the Great Spirit Robot spoke as it had done before.

"My head hurts," it said, with a strangled voice that was not the one that had taunted its adversary so mercilessly until now.

The fraction of a second passed.

A green bolt shot through the golden sand in the fight's direction.

Berix tried to follow, but Tarix latched onto him like a lifeline.

"GRESH!" Vastus shouted as he ran as hard as he could, and Ackar realized his heart was beating far too loud in his ears.

He turned to the other Glatorian, skin pasty and spent like that of a dead body: "Tarix, Gelu, you keep everybody going, as far as you can," he ordered. For a second he was struck by a gross sense of familiarity that almost cut off his breath; some part of him grabbed the resurfacing memories of the Core War and beat them back into the hole he'd buried them until he could almost feel the blood on his knuckles. "Get to those caves, make sure nobody is left behind, keep them all in place until you're certain the coast is clear. Berix, don't move from either of them. Kiina, you're with me, I can't run that fast. Are we good?"

All four nodded, and the chariot's engine revved urgently as he jumped upon its rickety frame.

"You'll better get my nephew back, Tapyri," his once enemy hollered before they could speed off into the desert, with a tone closer to a plea than a threat or a joke.

"Who do you take me for, Gaquri?" Ackar shouted right back: "He's my nephew too!"

Tarix watched him and Kiina drive off as fast as the vehicle allowed; only when they caught up with his wife, still shouting for the young Glatorian as though he could hear that feeble cry from that far away, and scooped the veteran Lebori up with them, did he turn away and rush to take care of the last few stragglers.

-

The prototype creaked pitifully as its enormous hands found the massive elbows of the Great Spirit Robot and struggled to sustain them alongside with everything else that was already putting a strain on its faulty frame.

"Gresh?" Mata Nui whispered, searching for his former body's eyes. "My friend, is that you?"

Through the massive fingers peeked at last a large, glowing iris: upon its dark orange color, so similar to red, laid a whitish beaded line - an attempt at replicating the peculiar shape of a Lebori's pupil on a surface not meant to have any.

"This is too tall," the Great Spirit Robot groaned quietly in a still boyish voice, optics hiding away again before the sense of vertigo became too much.

A tremor overtook its massive frame, threatening to destabilize the prototype robot alongside with it; Mata Nui held onto him a little steadier as he tried desperately to figure out how in the name of the lonely endless vastness of the known and unknown universe the young Glatorian had managed to get himself inside the control panel of the Core Processor of all places.

Even ignoring the fact that he should have gone for the Manual Override Computer instead of putting himself through the immense strain of piloting such a colossal body (although in his defense he may have not known how to operate it or how to recognize it or where to find it - hazy memories of it reminded him that the Great Beings really had placed it horrendously, goodness gracious, so perhaps he had a little too much faith in how effectively Gresh could have located it in the first place), knowing that a physical body was currently governing the Great Spirit Robot was absolutely baffling.

Was this possibility planned? Had anybody considered that one day a bodied being could have needed to take the helm? Were there proper safety measures in place for such a happenstance? Did anybody even stop to consider if it was possible? Did a few dozen thousands years old kid just physically brute force his way into a contraption designed to house immaterial beings and make it work? And hold on, how on Aqua Magna had he shoved Teridax out of it? And actually, now that he thought about it, how in the name of himself had he entered the Robot and gotten all the way to the Core Processor apparently completely on his own?

"How did you do this?" he only asked in the end.

"I went in - in the robot, and there was - we went in the brain, in the, the brain, and we - I threw - Bota Magna sanctissima mentula libera me a malo my body hurts so bad--"

He leaned forward into Mata Nui's embrace, enormous body moaning in pain as long fevers crawled over him.

It must have been an internal infection - it must have meant that those within, the inhabitants he had so carelessly allowed to rot in their own bloodshed, had been fighting back against Teridax.

Had he not been preoccupied with being puzzled out of his wits and helping his friend not succumb to the fever of a lifetime, the former Great Spirit could have been overwhelmed by pride for about an hour, cried himself into unconsciousness for a couple more, spent another pair feeling really bad about them putting so much effort into it when he had ignored them for so long, and experienced a sudden spike in the need to beat the tar out of his fated brother's mask harder than he already had been for a few good minutes.

Fortunately, his mind was fully focused on a variety of other things.

Trying his best to pull Gresh into his arms so that he could better offer him support, he steeled his groaning rusted body and spoke to distract him from the pain: "You are in the Core Processor right now?"

"I - I think, so, yes, I think- I think-"

"You removed Teridax from the controls?"

"I threw - with, with the winds, I yanked him out, 'cause he's - weird, he's weird smoke and all - my legs, my legs--"

"You are not alone with him, are you? Is there someone else in the Core Processor?"

"There- yes, there's Ta, Tahu and Tahu- Taka-Takanuuu, va, Takanuva? Tahu and T-Takanuva, they're - they helped, me, get here, and, and - they're here, they're here too, they'll - I'm in, in safe hands - aren't I?"

Mata Nui's grip around him was wonderfully comforting, and for a moment he felt as though his anguish was a little more bearable: "Safe hands indeed," he heard him speak, voice laden with a wondrous pride that set him at ease: "They are as brave and reckless as you are - and I'm certain they will be able to do the impossible and stave off Teridax, just as you did."

The praise cooled the violent temperature in the young Glatorian's momentary gargantuan body, and as he held onto the otherworlder he at last found the strength to overcome the nausea and pull himself up: despite the terrible aches lighting its every inch on fire, the Great Spirit Robot stood tall once more.

An idea struck Mata Nui as he looked at its orange eyes.

His destiny had been meant to be shared by two bodies and minds of equal strength - but he was stuck in a frame too weak, and the mental strain the task would have put on Gresh risked being too much for him to sustain; and yet, if he had already gotten half of the work done in this rickety thing, and if he continued to maintain his efforts steady as his duty demanded of him, the much larger robot would have expended much less energy, keeping the Glatorian's frail mind and frame safe...

"Gresh," he murmured softly: "How are you feeling?"

"Nauseous," his friend replied truthfully, "But I can - I can manage, I can - it's, not as bad as the- the Skrall in Tajun. I can manage, I can help. I want to help. I want to help."

"I am afraid what I could ask of you might be beyond what you should allow for your safety's sake."

To see such a massive creature of metal tremble fiercely as it did its best to bear its anguish was a frightening spectacle, terrible, unnatural; but Gresh held that heavy body tall and straightened its back as best as he could, and his voice was as steady as they came: "I'll bet I've handled worse."

"Worse than pulling two moons into a planet?"

No answer.

"The robot is equipped to do so without having to physically grasp the satellites."

Gresh wheezed - either in relief, or because something in the Voya Nui area had just exploded hard enough to give him a chance to experience appendicitis again: "Ah," his voice rattled out of him, "Alright. Yes, I can do that, that's feasible."

-

For a striking, minuscule second, it felt a little like a deja-vù.

Nothing was the same - not the location, overflowing with unrecognizable machinery; not the fight, much wilder and cruel in its coreography than a slightly more dangerous game of kohlii than usual; not the spectators, who weren't exactly spectating as Tahu was desperately trying to keep his Hau's shields functional around the three of them while not going blind and Gresh was kneeling completely unresponsive if not catatonic in the sunken spot he had jumped into; not even his opponent, nor himself, although they were still virtually the same beings.

But for a striking, minuscule second, it felt like nothing had changed at all from that confrontation beneath Kini Nui.

Teridax lunged at him with its disgustingly rotten green cloud of a body open like a gaping maw seeking to devour the Toa of Light whole; the gaseous particles scattered briefly as Takanuva swung his spear through them, the arch drawn by the weapon's trajectory producing a blade of light.

The Makuta recomposed himself behind his back in a matter of seconds, spreading to cover the entire wall with his essence. There were no eyes in that clutter of loosely held together atoms, but the Toa could feel them stab right through his armor.

He'd almost been less frightening when he'd had a body.

"I HAVE GROWN TIRED OF YOU!" Teridax's voice boomed through the cramped space, bouncing off of the surrounding machinery with the harshness of a sledgehammer: "THE TIME FOR GAMES IS OVER, LITTLE TOA! I HAVE WELL EXHAUSTED WHATEVER PATIENCE I ONCE MAY HAVE HAD FOR DEALING WITH YOU MISERABLE VERMINS!"

"Sounds like a you problem," Takanuva mumbled in reply through gritted teeth.

The wall of shadow toppled towards him with a long, shrieking whistle, like a faraway bomb on the way to the ground: Tahu had two seconds to shield his eyes before his younger brother's body burst with a blinding flare that would have no doubt brought a weaker being to their knees, but only repelled Teridax back into the corners of the room, divided but not broken, ready to slither back into a plume of horrid olive smoke.

How long was this going to go on for? Keeping his Hau active was slowly starting to wear him down, and in the time Takanuva had been struggling against the Makuta it seemed that absolutely nothing had changed from their predicament.

He would have loved to leap to his aid, but his feet were already singing and nearly melting the metal floor from the stress: if he wanted to get them all safely out of here, fighting wasn't an option.

A strange sound, like a strangled whimpered grunt, prompted him to try his luck and open his eyes again.

Gresh was shaking.

As he still kneeled deadeyed and unresponsive within the pod sunken into the ground, his entire body had suddenly started shivering harshly, spasming as though he was being electrocuted - but nothing appeared to be coming from the walls to provoke such a reaction.

Tahu hurriedly lowered himself towards the strange being while Takanuva continued fending off Teridax: "Gresh!" he called out, reaching for him: "What's wrong?"

His hands found themselves stopped in their tracks by an invisible force just above the being. He tried again, pushing as hard as he could in an attempt to make it through the thick air to no avail as his muscles strained but found no gain all the same. Was this what was affecting the green armored creature? Or had it been like this from the moment he'd jumped in? Then it should have protected Teridax when he'd been swirling within it too, but he'd been blown out of it... Could elemental attacks bypass this invisible barrier?

While the Toa thought furiously how to get him out of there without hurting him, Gresh slowly pulled his head back to look out of his shallow prison with small, jolting motions; he began raising his arms upwards at the same agonizing pace, straining for the open exit just above him.

The struggle tore a strangled whine out of his throat. Takanuva staggered at the sound, and the distraction nearly allowed Teridax to rush through his chest and tear his heartlight away with him - only sending the Toa of Light careening back when the gaseous mass instead collided with the shield Tahu reinforced just in time, saving him from shapeless jaws aching to tear him apart.

"FOOLISH INSECTS!" the Makuta snarled as vicious as a Rahi Nui, "YOU CANNOT STOP ME! YOU CANNOT CHANGE MY DESTINY!"

"It was never your destiny!" Takanuva growled right back: the shadows in the room shifted according to his desire, rendering Teridax heavy enough for him to be hit in full by a blade of light too quick for him to avoid. "You usurped Mata Nui and acted like it was always meant to be!"

Pained hisses turned into a harsh laugh: "DON'T PRETEND YOU CAN UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENS AROUND YOU, LITTLE TOA," Teridax mocked him, twisting into a tornado that threatened to rip the whole room to shreds. "THERE ARE THINGS THAT WILL LAY BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION FOREVER - AND ONCE THAT THING YOU'VE BROUGHT ALONG WITH YOU COLLAPSES FROM A STRUGGLE IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO FACE, NOTHING WILL KEEP ME FROM TAKING MY RIGHTFUL PLACE AS THE EMBODIMENT OF THIS UNIVERSE AGAIN!"

The young Toa could have said something quippy, or sarcastic, a good line to at least go down with the satisfaction of a glorious comeback; as he was not planning on dying, Takanuva just roared and blasted the brightest light bomb he'd ever made in his face.

Unaware of the immense luminescence above him, Gresh's fingers finally clawed at the edges of the control panel.

Tahu snaked his own hand under the thin fleshy phalanxes as soon as the explosion of light dimmed, elated to discover the force field waning enough in that area to let him actually interact with the other being and immediately trying to leverage him up - although it was easier said than done, considering how little he had to work with.

Maybe it was a stupid move, after Teridax had so blatantly claimed that Gresh was the only thing standing between him and complete control over the universe, but he had his reasons: for one, it certainly wouldn't have been the first time he'd pulled this sort of thing, so whatever reserves he might have had about the situation had likely already been obliterated into fine mist; secondly, he was not going to let a sapient being die between convulsions like this, especially not an emissary and friend of the Great Spirit; and finally, if that ancient talking cloud that was the Makuta thought he or Takanuva wouldn't have jumped in the Control Panel to take over from the poor organic thing even at the cost of sacrificing themselves to keep his gaseous ass from doing any more damage to the entire known world, he was sorely mistaken.

Gresh shook harder in his grasp, but did not budge an inch.

The Toa of Fire willed himself coolheaded as he gritted his teeth: "Come on, come on, don't give up on me..."

A blast of light turned his vision spotty for a few moments, Takanuva's pained groan reaching him only moments later. The shield must have gotten weaker - he turned his focus back on his Hau in full, but the flare of its power flowing once again around his younger brother filled his limbs with molten lead as exhaustion settled into him and suddenly pulling Gresh out felt akin to getting his arms ripped off.

Had using the Vahi been this excruciating, or was he just easily fatigued when forced to balance his attention between two things? Gali would have never had this kind of problem.

Then again, she would not have had a Mask of Shielding either; so he would grit his teeth and bear it, and succeed even if it killed him.

Maybe it was this desperate burst of bravado, maybe it was Takanuva scattering Teridax across the corners of the room again before the Makuta could even get close to him, maybe it was Mata Nui, wherever he was, managing to perceive their thoughts and lending them a blessing of his own: but at last, somehow, inhaling in a horrendously loud gasp, Gresh clutched Tahu's hands tight and tore through the forces keeping him down as he lurched upright on his feet, nearly slamming right in the metallic chest while struggling still against his yet to be quelled tremors.

Before the Toa of Fire could say anything the organic creature was feverishly crawling out of the sunken trap, pushing him to the floor alongside himself and cawing with a panicked voice: "Down! Down!"

Takanuva turned to check on them. His opponent wasted no time ramming into the force shield around him, nearly slamming him into the opposite wall had Tahu not almost dislocated his arm to catch him in time and pull him under himself to protect him.

"I HAVE TOLD YOU, LITTLE TOA!" Teridax howled victoriously as he spread his form to completely sorround the now three overwhelmed beings curled on the pavement, powerless to stop him: "YOUR IDIOTIC RESISTANCE IS MEANINGLESS! YOU CANNOT CHANGE MY DESTINY!"

He dove back into the control panel with a horrifying laugh, filling its every crevice, at last returning to the so very maddeningly empowering feeling of a gigantic body once more regained, subjugated, under his utter control.

Before he even had access to his eyes again he could recognize the fever of rebellion burning through his limbs, the rusted hands holding fast onto his chestplate, the sound of straining machinery now on its last sputtering forces: at last his immense irises burned bright with a vermillion hue, facing the crude prototype features of his brother's furrowed momentary face in the battle he had been so rudely interrupted from finishing.

But just as he was about to taunt him, Mata Nui pushed with all his strength, and his sluggish reflexes did not let him react in time.

-

Vastus screamed.

He screamed until he felt his chest shrivel and implode.

Ackar wrapped his prosthetic arm around his back, pressing him against the chariot with all his might because he knew full well that if he had let go the Lebori would have let himself fall off into the sand, but looked just as pale as the dead while they both watched the Great Spirit Robot slump forward into the smaller titan's hold.

"He's fine!" Kiina barked while she struggled to regain control of the chariot after swerving too hard, covered in cold sweat and gripping the wheel so hard the scales of her knuckles were creaking. "He's fine! Mata Nui wouldn't just--!"

"He must have gotten him out before that," the Tapyri agreed much more softly, "He wouldn't have let him come to harm."

Vastus heard them both only faintly. His eyes were stuck on the enormous body with a hole in the back of its head that just moments ago had been speaking with his nephew's voice.

"Your friend better pray to the Great Beings Gresh hasn't come to harm," he hissed, feathers raised and bristling with furious premature grief, pupils constricted so tight it hurt, as he watched the rusted colossus lay its enormous bretheren to the ground slowly, carefully: "Because no fucking robot the size of a mountain will keep me from dismantling him with my bare hands if it's the last thing I do in my miserable life."

-

Takanuva blinked. Then he blinked again two more times, just to make sure his eyes were open, as the red shield faded away.

He flexed his fingers in the dark, trying his luck against the shadows sorrounding the three of them to create a little mote of light... Which formed instantaneously, without encountering any trouble or opposition whatsoever.

A good sign. Puzzling, but pretty good.

He turned his head to look around, feeling Tahu's protective hold around him weaken to allow him to properly take in the room and search for... For what? He wasn't really sure. He felt a little dizzy.

Little seemed to have changed in the wake of Teridax returning in control and the subsequent earth-rending rattle that had overtaken the whole chamber for a terrifying second. The walls were still standing, and with them all their machinery as well; everything was however eerily dark and silent, the hushed buzzes now absent, the faint gleams that all together had made up the room's lightsource snuffed out. Even the small chasm the Makuta had disappeared into was unusually quiet and dim.

"Are you both alright?" his brother asked, still so concerned that he hadn't had the time to catch his breath.

"Yeah," Takanuva replied distractedly: "Yeah, I'm fine. Gresh?"

Faceplanted on the floor and making no movement whatsoever, the organic being responded with a grunt that could have been considered affirmative. Tahu carefully lifted his head to check on him a little better while his younger sibling continued to look around, convinced something was off: beaded pupils struggled to peek through heavy eyelids fighting to stay open.

The Toa of Fire turned the poor thing face up, hoping he could be a bit more comfortable: "You look like you got in a fight with a Rahi Nui," he grimaced.

Gresh's mouth twitched spasmodically for a moment or two: "Drippin'," he mumbled back at him.

"What?"

"Sumfin's drippin'," he slurred again, and craned his neck in mild discomfort as he whined: "Oh, tha's so annoyin'..."

"Where do you hear dripping of all things?" Takanuva argued.

"Wha'y' mean, can'y' hear i'? 's loud 's all Plude..."

"In all fairness Takanuva is not known for being too keen in that sense," Tahu said, completely ignoring the pointed look the Toa of Light immediately shot him, "But I can't hear anything either."

"D'y' go' ears full of w'rms? 's blowin' my head op'n, 's righ' 'here!..." the young being bemoaned as he struggled to raise his weak unstable hand to point somewhere right next to them - in fact, bringing their attention back to the shallow chamber that had housed him mere seconds ago.

The small mote of light illuminated what appeared to be a slowly growing puddle of sickly greenish liquid slowly expanding across the metal floor, half caught in the depressions left by Tahu's smoldering feet where they had nearly melted the pavement. A drop landed into it at that moment with a sad little splash: both Toa followed its path in reverse to find its source up, up, on the ceiling...

... Until their gazes sat on a wide wet stain splattered across metallic panels, likely the product of a gas condensed far too high, of a color concerningly similar to antidermis.

Just to be safe, they slowly crawled away from the puddle.

You could never trust Teridax to consistently stay dead, after all.

They picked themselves up in a sudden hurry to leave. When Gresh remained unmoving on the floor, only twitching and groaning at the stray droplets that sometimes fell, Takanuva eyed him with a little bit of worry: "Are you ok? Do you need help?"

"Gimme a sec'nd," the other replied through gritted teeth.

He shifted his feet enough to pull his knees up, only to have them fall to the side rather bonelessly moments later; he opted for turning around so he could be on all fours, achieving getting on his stomach only when the Toa of Fire gave him a hand as though he were a turtle laying on its shell, and while he did manage to push his torso off the ground with his arms his head very stubbornly refused to raise, blocking him in a very stupid pose. The larger beings very kindly elected to slip their hands under his armpits to lift him despite his mumbled insistences that he could do it himself: the second he was put on his feet his legs decided to crumble like a melting cheesecake, and before he knew it he was cooped up nice and safe in Takanuva's surprisingly big arms as his golden sphere was replaced by a warmer ball of fire, courtesy of Tahu.

"Wow, you're light," the younger Toa noted.

"Right?" his brother agreed. "He weighs less than you did."

"Wait, really?"

"Well, y're re'lly whi'e," Gresh grumbled, offended. His head was lolling back towards the ground in a way that clearly strained his neck, but no matter how hard he tried he could not lift it. He gargled defeatedly: "M'helme's 'oo heavy..."

"Ah - hold on," he heard as he was jostled a little while the other two began walking out of the room and into the tunnel that would once again lead them into the open air.

A kind if clumsy hand carefully went to sustain his nape, lifting his head along with the heavy armor sitting upon it. It took a couple trials, but the helmet did come off eventually: the poor thing's olive green face poofed to almost twice its size as he groaned in relief, and Takanuva watched with awe by the warm light of his brother's flames as the thin feathers adhered back against the skull to reveal features surprisingly flat instead of concave - thin nostrils above a thin mouth adorned with thin ivory teeth, and lashes like a moth's antennas hanging for dear life on tired eyelids, and small ears covered in reddish plumes twitching slightly, and patches of greyish tawny skin between gaps in the down dotted with scars.

The Toa of Light stared, fascinated. Gresh stared right back, so dazed that he barely realized he was conscious.

Takanuva leaned down to his face and told him plainly: "You look even weirder up close."

The other curled up his nose: "An' how d'y'look under tha' mask?"

"Like this, of course," the Toa replied as he briefly lifted the Avohkii.

Gresh huffed a little frightened "Hoo!" and poofed his feathers out right away with eyes blown wide open, thoroughly spooked: "Oh, y'p'ple're ghas'ly."

Takanuva would have objected more vocally if a known voice hadn't rung out at that moment, calling for him and Tahu.

The Toa of Fire enlarged the sphere of flames in his hand while sprinting forward, responding to the cries in tone: soon enough natural light was streaming into the tunnel, allowing the three beings inside it to clearly see Nuparu and Hewkii clambering as fast as their amphibious feet allowed towards them.

"How are things up there?" Tahu asked them immediately as soon as they stopped mere bio before him to catch their breaths: "Is everybody safe? Teridax should be neutralized for now, but we felt some kind of--"

"Sky's broken," Nuparu interrupted him.

The older Toa blinked, shook his head, and sputtered: "What?"

"There's a HUGE HOLE in it!" Hewkii continued whilst flailing his arms wildly in his Earth brother's stead, as he was noticeably more athletic and not currently in the process of being forced to reshape his lungs into something that could actually hold oxygen again: "It was on top of us and then it SHIFTED and went to the horizon and the sea just - pshwoooosh, just fell out of it, all of it - ok, maybe not all of it, but there's- it's- there are Rahi CHOKING on AIR because the sea is just, THAT little, there's THAT little sea in the sea right now, because it- because it FELL OUT. OF THE HOLE IN THE SKY. AND - and there is, there's stuff outside of the hole! There's a sky! A second sky!"

"A what?"

"It looks like the sky on Mata Nui and Voya Nui but maybe I'm imagining things because I'm still reeling, but then there's - sand! There's SAND, there's MOUNTAINS, there's--"

"Hold on," Takanuva piped up, looking as flabbergasted as his older brother, "Hold on, the hole - how, how did that happen?"

"WE JUST DON'T KNOW!!"

"Something might've," Nuparu interjected again, taking a big breath before he could go on: "Scraped it off. Some water - real water, not protodermis - fell onto us when the hole appeared, so a portion of it could have been knocked off or crushed or-"

Gresh chose that moment to give exactly two singular squeaky laughs. He sounded like he was having the most baller time of his life.

"Smack'im with a big rock," he gargled, "Now tha's a classic."

All eyes turned to him.

For a very long second, no words came to anybody.

Then Nuparu said, with the voice of a genuinely intrigued Archivist unfortunately dragging along a rich tapestry of concerning implications: "What is that?"

"We're not archiving him," Takanuva shot him down instantly.

"Yes, but what is he?"

"His name is Gresh and he's in no condition to answer right now."

"Why is that?"

"He's barely keeping awake!"

"So?"

"Not the time for this!" Tahu interrupted them exasperated, launching himself forward to get out and figure out what in Karzhani was happening out there, because while there's a big hole in the sky was a perfectly comprehensible string of words with a meaning behind it there was no way he had processed even just a single one of them in a way that made sense.

-

She would have been much more relieved to see her older Fire brother emerge from the barely still standing buildings relatively unscathed from whatever challenge he'd just gone through (she had actually only vaguely heard of him needing to go under the colosseum alongside Takanuva without knowing what exactly they were meant to do there, but she considered her guess to be a very educated one because quite frankly there was always a challenge of some sort wherever a Toa had to go) had she not currently been wrestling with a skull-splitting migraine caused by the incessant shouting coming from Pridak's now beached fleet as their ships were left at the mercy of Ehlek's enormous water-dwelling Rahi, which were contorting madly in a desperate attempt to get back under what little ocean was left for them to breathe in.

The panicking army was very lucky Gali had been her example for how a Toa should behave, because had she been more closely exposed to, say, Nokama Hordika instead, they would have all been washed out of the enormous hole in the horizon by now.

That little piece of tangible cosmic horror was also certainly not helping her current state of mind.

Back fins outstretched to slow her descent, Hahli glided down from her observation point to land right into her brother's arms, slamming her whole weight on his chest hard enough to make him stagger. The impact tore a loud 'oof' out of him, but he managed to hug her upright without either of them toppling over in the end.

"Glad to see you," she sighed.

Tahu placed her down on her feet, looking her over for injuries: "Are you alright?"

"No," Hahli groaned. Her brain pulsed painfully as if to underline her statement, and she grimaced. "But I'll live. What about you? And Takanuva? Is he alright? What did you two--"

"Teridax has been disabled for now," he just told her, very cautiously wording himself in order not to jinx it.

He then turned towards the enormous hole in reality - bathed not in an impenetrable darkness but in sunlight, looking back at him with the sight of an enormous desert which seemed in some parts to be slowly receding under a quiet wave of something - and stood quiet before it for a moment.

At last he raised an exhausted arm to point at the whole incomprehensible debacle and asked: "What in the Makuta is going on with that?"

His little sister made a pained sound, like the saddest Hapaka howl: "Wouldn't we all like to know..."

"Alright, let's go for simpler questions first," Tahu conceded for the sake of their mental health. "How's the city, is the damage widespread? Any casualties? Everybody accounted for? The Hagah, Gali, Kongu, Jaller, where are they? Are they alright?"

"Pouks, Iruini and Gali are helping the Turaga look after the wounded, but they've already said that things look to be much less worse than they could be, thankfully," she replied: "Kualus, Gaaki, Norik, Kongu and I are keeping watch on the shores to keep any more of the Barraki's forces from trying their luck against us, and some of the Matoran are cleaning wrecks and disassembling the Rahkshi and Exo-Toa since they stopped attacking - Nuparu was helping too but he and Hewkii went to warn you, right? And a piece of-" (she gestured upwards, loosely indicating the spot where the hole in the sky had been, too tired to refer to it out loud) "-Fell in the Ko-Metru area, so Jaller and Bomonga went to see how bad the damage is and what they can do about it."

Her brother nodded, relieved: "Good work, all of you," he reassured her with a few good pats on her back.

Hahli allowed the gentle pressure to push her towards him, laying her head on his shoulder to let herself enjoy the respite lent by his warm hold around her.

"I'm so tired," she wheezed.

Tahu nuzzled her forehead sympathetically: "We're gonna take a break eventually," he sighed. "Sooner that later, hopefully. Possibly."

They whined in tandem at the thought.

That sweet prospect of rest seemed farther and farther each day.

A holler in their direction snapped them out of their momentary miserable exhaustion: Takanuva was rushing over to them (Nuparu's thin form disappearing back towards the city behind him, likely to continue cleaning up the streets with Hewkii), arms tight around his chest and a look of pure relief at the sight of his sister and former fellow chronicler.

He was glad to lean into her hug, talking far too quickly for her to register any of his words properly; he stopped only when she squeezed him tight, tearing a strange pained grunt out of him.

"Right, sorry, forgot you were there," he mumbled apologetically. Hahli gave him a weird look, about to ask what he meant by that, but his attention had already shifted, magnetized by the hole in the horizon with its puzzling world beyond it: he tilted his head down towards his own chest just a little without ever tearing his eyes from the strange panorama, and whispered: "Is that were you come from?"

A small movement and another mumble - "May'e," said with a slurring tone typical of someone who's just woken up and is still squinting at the light, "Bi' 'oo green, I fink," - brought her eyes lower down from his silver mask.

She blinked once, twice, thrice. The strange olive green being laid limply in Takanuva's arms, looking on the verge of passing out with a sonorous snore right there and then.

How had she not noticed something like that?

Were her senses dimming?

She had no time to be relieved about being proven wrong moments later, when a long shadow creeped in through the sky's chasm.

The strangest kind of silence erupted from Metru Nui and its surroundings - the quiet of held back screams, of barely contained terror being muzzled tight before it had the chance to bark at the threat much larger than itself with its tail between its legs, desperate to intimidate what intimidated it.

It was enormous: it fell slowy, outside, away from the universe, but the impact rattled the entire world nonetheless. Patches of brownish red (was it rust?) clung to the colossal segments across what seemed like a shoulder, a neck, the beginning of a head. A long, wheezing exhale abandoned the titan, its size turning it into a terrifying sound, and the whole frame hissed in agony as it grew impossibly taught while its metallic components grinded against one another with bloodcurdling shrieks.

It was a short, impossibly quick moment.

A second, really, nothing more.

It felt incorrect - like looking through the water without a Kaukau to shield your eyes, everything around you fuzzy and indistinct.

But for a second, for just one single second, it was...

Hahli stopped breathing.

"Matoro?"

And then the second passed, and the body stopped its whistling lament and laid limp, and the fleeting sensation was gone.

"Fuck," the being in Takanuva's baffled hold murmured, quiet voice devoid of any underlying mechanical song deafening in the silence: "Tha's concernin'."

-

The ground was covered in something, some watery thing, that turned the slowly less and less sandy terrain into a sopping marsh. Vastus speeded through it with surprising agility for someone with his age and a chunk of lower spine missing, although by the standards of a Lebori who'd lived his entire early life in a swampy grove as he was his form was severely lacking - a hundred millenia without any possibility to practice will do that to you.

Ackar was shouting for him above the chariot's waning engine, trying to tell him to wait as he dismounted from the vehicle only to find himself stuck between going after him to make sure he didn't do anything rash and following Kiina to make sure she didn't do anything rash.

Vastus barely heard him anyways. He was still screaming for Gresh.

Idiot rookie that he was - couldn't he have stayed put for once? Stuck close to Tarix as he said he would? Not thrown himself into yet another stupid plan? Now he was starting to sound like Gelu - useless heroics and all that. But Gelu had a point sometimes.

Maybe they should have never indulged him. Maybe they should have never played along with his prattlings about being fully grown when he couldn't even drink yet without melting his liver into goo. Maybe they should have never gotten attached. Maybe they should have never allowed him to become a Glatorian and just left him to tend to the Thornax bushes in Tesara.

Great Beings, his heart was going to collapse.

The robot's colossal head had been laid so that the gaping wound on its nape would almost touch the ground. Liquid still sputtered out of the skull's jagged edges in rivulets: it was silvery in color, like the material making up the gargantuan body it dripped out of, and pooled in a wide shallow pond just underneath the wreckage.

The overwhelming grey hue covering the whole scene did not make the spectacle of a split open skull less gruesome.

It did, however, make it much easier to spot the bright red head of a humanoid figure as it flew right over the cranial cliffs - and with it, the familiar green shape held tight against its front.

Vastus barely registered the movement of his own limbs. In a second he was standing ankle deep in the silvery pond, Venom Talon in hand ready to strike, eyes trained onto the startled creature floating a few feet in the air while holding Gresh tighter in its grip; the young Glatorian's orange eyes opened blearily, heavy, tired, and his arm dangled in his direction in a manner that could have been a purposeful greeting or simply an unintentional motion.

"PUT HIM DOWN!" the Lebori barked furiously.

Either frightened or not understanding him, the being strengthened its metal grasp.

"PUT HIM DOWN BEFORE I PLUCK YOU OUT OF THE SKY, YOU-!"

"Ai aun'ie," his nephew spoke at that moment, craning his neck out of the crook of his captor's shoulder. His head lolled to the side without any strength, helmet nowhere in sight: his feathers were flat, relaxed, but looked spent as though he was fighting through an illness, and his pupils struggled to adapt to the light or focus on anything even as he turned to his captor with a noticeable struggle, mumbling something barely coherent.

Worry overtook Vastus's mind completely: "I SAID PUT HIM DOWN!" he screamed, teeth bared, thin plumage vibrating, arm pulled back as he aimed straight for the crimson helm-

He found his whole body seized tight in an iron grip.

Ackar wrestled him still as carefully as he could, doing his best to keep him from hurling the Talon while not pulling any moves that could have caused the Lebori's back prosthesis to painfully malfuction or become misaligned: "For the love of Certavus, calm down!" he hissed as he almost lifted his fellow Glatorian off the ground, "If he drops from that height he'll break in half!"

"HE'LL HAVE A HEAP OF SCRAP METAL TO LAND ON IN A MOMENT!" the Lebori snarled back.

"And how's that supposed to cushion him?"

He would have bitten into his friends's prosthetic hand hard enough to dent it if his overly keen senses hadn't picked up the heavy splash of something landing less than gracefully into the pond just a few feet before them.

The being raised a hand in either a defense or a peace offering when Vastus whipped his head around to glare at it, gently pushing Gresh's head to lay on its shoulder. The boy blinked, clearly tired out of his mind as he was adjusted in the metal arms to be a little more snug, and mumbled in his aunt's direction another incomprehensible string of words with a little loopy smile.

If that damned chunk of metal didn't let go of him immediately he was going to--

"He's alright," the thing said.

It had a noisy voice, melodious in the cacophonic manner a heavy factory machine might be. Vastus shook his head briefly with a hiss, feeling the sound slither into his ears like a worm.

"He's alright," it repeated softly. "He's not hurt."

"So you can understand when I talk?" the Lebori growled: "Or is it just what you want to hear?"

"Don't aggravate it," Ackar hissed.

Vastus elbowed him as best as he could, syllables leaving his mouth with a dangerous whistling tone: "I told you to put my nephew down. Immediately."

"He cannot stand right now," the thing replied.

"You said he was fine!"

"He's not hurt. He's just exhausted."

"He's fain, aun'ie," Gresh managed to slur loud enough all of a sudden; with immense effort he raised an arm and managed to bonelessly slap his hand across his captor's face/helmet. "He's a fren' - 's name's 'ahu 'n's go' rrrocke's 'n' a big shiel' 'n' fire 'n' s'uff..."

The way the Tapyri's weight shifted away from Vastus's back cued him on the fact that something, for him, had clicked: "You're a Toa, aren't you?" he asked suddenly.

Topaz eyes fixed on him.

"That's what you are, right?" Ackar insisted as he pulled the other Glatorian upright with himself: "A Toa."

"What in Plude is a 'Toa'?" the Lebori snapped quietly.

"One of Mata Nui's. One of his people. He said something about you once, I remember that, compared our swordsmanship - a good warrior, aren't you?"

'ahu (if that was the being's name) nodded slowly.

Ackar breathed a sigh of relief.

"He's good," he reassured Vastus under his breath. He'd almost completely let go of him, keeping a vice grip only on the Venom Talon to stop him from making any brash maneuvers. "He's alright. Gresh is in good hands."

"Doesn't mean I trust them to hold him," Vastus hissed. His breaths were still heavy, still irregular with worry.

His friend nodded, understanding completely, and raised a peaceful hand in the air: "We're on the same side," he told the strange creature: "We're friends of Mata Nui. Gresh went into that robot, right? Mata Nui's old body?"

The strange being froze for only a second, looking absolutely taken aback, as though he hadn't known he'd been residing into a titanic mechanical humunculus until now: "Yes," he replied finally, a little stunted while he tried to focus back on the question at hand: "Yes, he - I helped him reach the... Brain."

"And he moved the whole thing from there?"

"Yes, I... I think so, yes. We've kept him safe, but it's tired him out."

"Alright. Alright, thank you - thank you so much," and his voice cracked a little bit, "For looking out for him, and keeping him safe, thank you. Vastus can take it from here, he'll take care of him."

'ahu shifted his glowing gaze onto the Lebori, then down to Gresh as if asking for his permission, or maybe his opinion.

(Vastus would begrudgingly admit that threatening to skewer the poor thing out of the air with a scythe had not been the friendliest or most trustworthy way he could have presented himself, but fuck you, that was his nephew and he'd been trained by Bara Magna to expect things to generally want to kill you in some manner sooner or later.)

The young Glatorian mumbled something barely intelligible - some kind of reassurance, accompanied by another boneless swat of his hand on the back of the red helm that was probably meant to be a comforting pat to cement his words.

It took only half a step forward, holding him a little further: before anybody else present could blink Gresh had been taken from the metal arms and was resting his head in the crux of his aunt's neck, the liquid at their feet splashing as the older Lebori rushed away with him, towards the chariot, as fast as he could.

"You complete idiot," he hissed the whole way long, "You total and utter dumbass, you stupid damn kid, what in Plude was your plan? You promised you wouldn't have pulled anything, anything! How old do you think you are? Do I have to start watching you like a toddler who can't be trusted to be left alone now? I thought you were all grown! Responsible! Had some sense knocked into you after the first few missing phalanxes!"

"Wen' well," was all he had to say for himself.

"Pro Certavi amore - as soon as you're all better I'll round up every Glatorian available and we'll all kick your ass into next year."

"Wen' well!..."

He didn't react when his head collided the slightest bit with the vehicle's frame while he was sat in it. Vastus checked his eyes feverishly and found them still focused: he wasn't in shock, which was a relief. He preened the spot that had been hit, thin teeth filing through the feathers as both an apology and a nervous urge to do anything that could make him feel better.

A detail struck him: "Where's your helmet?"

Gresh blinked: "Oh, fuck," he mumbled absentmindedly, "Forgo't'ge' it back from 'akanu'a..."

"And what's that?"

"He's a fren'... 's re'ly whi'e 'n' brigh'... 'n'all..."

His eyelids were so heavy, his body so tired. A nap wouldn't have hurt, especially while his aunt preened him... It had been so long, hadn't it? The last time he'd gotten fussed over like this, when had it been? Maybe he would have remembered better after a short rest. That sounded like a good idea.

He felt Vastus's nails scratch his nape in an annoying manner: "Don't fall asleep," he was telling him with barely concealed panic, "Don't fall asleep, stay with me."

Gresh barely managed to squirm a little: "Am fain," he mumbled with a hissing yawn, "Jus' a bi' tir'd..."

"Look," the older Lebori insisted, pointing to the flourishing mountains, to the savanna slowly coming crawling to life, taking a bit of the planet back from the sprawling dunes: "Look, plants are coming back, the plants from before the Shattering - remember we taught you some of them? We showed you, with drawings and everything else? Do you see any you recognize?"

"Am tir'd, aun'ie..."

"Just try - look out and tell me which ones you recognize. There, that one, I know you know it, which one is it? Do you remember that?"

In some way, he must have realized he was worried he wouldn't wake up again if he fell asleep; so he turned his exhausted gaze to the receding desertification, focusing as hard as he could to some kind of bush in the distance the other Glatorian was directing his attention towards, fighting to stay awake so that his aunt would not have to worry after being forced to endure such a scare.

"Gitalis?"

A soft, nervous chuckle: "Way off the mark."

"Am tir'd!..."

"Come on, try again, I know you remember it."

"Hm... 's... 's a iunpre?"

"Correct, good kid." Vastus nuzzled the side of his head and kept searching for any bleeding wounds. "And what's that next to it?"

-

The optic gave in with a few swift stomps, shattering into large chunks of glassy material that were broken into smaller pieces when Kiina landed on them from above, in a manner that would have easily gotten her feet punctured and mashed into bloody clumps had she not been wearing armor.

Her graceless entrance ended up denting some of the machinery in the robot's head - not that she gave a damn about it, as it didn't look like it was ever going to be good for anything other than harvesting scrap (Berix was going to have a field day with this thing), and most importantly she was a woman too focused on her mission to think of trivial things like the integrity of a shitty gundam's internal parts.

She looked around the control room frantically, desperate to spot that tell-tale golden yellow color somewhere, anywhere in-between the rust and the dissipating vapors.

"Mata Nui!" she called out, "Mata Nui! Where are you?"

A suffering groan had her whip her head around fast enough to almost sprain her neck: fallen on the back of the robot's head, half slipped under a machine threatening to topple over it and only held back by a net of hastily grown vines, laid a dusty mask, its features carved out of a humanoid figure standing with arms outstretched.

She hurled herself towards it, grabbing it and pulling it away from the precarious spot in an instant before it ended up damaged. No body laid behind it - but the otherworlder couldn't possibly be far from it, could he?...

The mask shook in her grasp with an anguished sound horrendously close to Mata Nui's voice.

"You're here!" she cried out. Her moment of elation fell immediately: "Fuck, you're in here," and she flicked her finger at the side of the artefact with increasing panic, "How do I get you out of this thing?"

"Don't hit it," her friend struggled to wheeze, "It's dangerous-!"

A flashing memory of Click turning into a shield had her drop the item onto her lap as though it were scalding; she picked it right back up in an instant, completely ignoring her friend's pleading warnings - she wasn't undergoing any painful metamorphosis at the moment anyways, right? - in order to focus on a solution.

This would have been much easier if she could have thought clearly.

Which she was struggling to do.

Due to the panic.

Mata Nui needed a body, she mumbled to herself, a body, a body - where could she have found a body? The robot was not an option, and she could not see anything she could have used to successfully assemble a frame to the best of her not particularly experienced abilities; she could have worn the mask herself, maybe, but aside from not being keen on the idea of having her limbs taken over by anybody else she had the nagging feeling it would have only worsened the other's worries between the prospect of mind controlling a friend and possibly mutating her.

A second after her thoughts returned to the item's transformative abilities, the solution to the nearly unsolvable riddle jumped to the forefront of her mind.

Sand.

She needed to leave this rickety thing. Now.

Kiina looked up: the broken optic was far too high up compared to where she was, with no option to use any of the toppled machinery to reach up to it properly, and the only things she would have been able to grab onto in order to leverage herself out were unstable pieces of broken glass. Not getting out the way she came in, alright, got it. Plan two set itself into motion as she sprang back up on her feet and ran through the only exit, a hole in the upturned pavement.

If where she had entered was the head of the robot, then the tunnel she was hurrying through must have been its neck, which was usually much easier to break through than it was to do through a skull, so the situation was improving already.

There must have been a grate or a ventilation shaft somewhere, right? Something easy to punch one's way through, looking outside? She wrecked her brain to find memories of something that would have had a similar layout and equipment to the inside of the robot, a building made solely with mechanical work in mind, but what she came up with was awfully muddled and helped roughly as much as a hearty spoonful of Thornax stew would have, which is to say not in the slightest.

Frustrated with herself as she was, she barely realized the floor beneath her left leg disappeared until her teeth nearly bit off her tongue as her jaw collided with the metal walls.

She looked back to find that, in her unconscious stomping caused by the antsiness overtaking her, she had serendipitously hit a weak plate which had collapsed into the much more crowded and much more damaged space between the interior and exterior shells of the gargantuan machine: from where she had collected herself to get her limb out of the hole, she could see parse slivers of natural light streaming in from what might have been punctures through the hull.

So Kiina did the sensible thing to do while holding a dangerous incomprehensible alien artefact currently housing her weakened friend's consciousness: she hurtled her way into the opening with the grace of a cannon ball, smashing into the weakest portion of the metal by pure chance and crashing out of the giant ominid subsequently almost dislocating an arm.

She groaned.

A pained wheeze dragged her attention back to her hands, and with great terror she found them empty.

The mask glowed faintly only a little away from her, barely out of her reach: sand was pooling under it, pushing it upward in the vague shape of a head emerging from beneath the earth at a terribly slow pace, as though it was not so much forming a body from scratch but tearing one through the solid surface with a great deal of struggle.

Digits of dimmed gold pulled an entire hand out along with them all the way up to the wrist; the Gaquri grabbed the palm hastily, to yank the rest of the arm out, but the frail limb instead fragmented and shattered in her grip.

A choked sob accompanied the sand slipping through her fingers. She hissed.

"Sorry," her voice slithered out of her mouth in a whisper while she adjusted herself closer to the artificial face still whining in pain. Her hands laid under the nape, sustaining it: "Alright, let's take it slow, take it slow - there you go, easy does it..."

She wondered if it had been such an anguish the first time, too. As she moved to hold the back of a newly formed arm, watching as a knee arose from the dirt with a strained gasp and feeling the way the unstable skin gained a tentative solidity much weaker than the carapace had been against her scales, she wondered if to grow a body all on your own (to be born, all on one's own?) was as traumatic an experience as it looked.

Finally her friend dragged a long gasp through his mouth as he shook in her loose embrace, and his eyes shined in their sockets.

The Gaquri carefully sat him up as he breathed harshly: "There you are - easy now, easy! You just made this, relax. Plude, you're wheezing like a waterboarded Skopio... How are you feeling?"

"Never," Mata Nui coughed instead, "Never touch the- the mask - it was dangerous- you could have--"

"But I didn't." she cut him off sternly. "How are you?"

His head lolled to the side: "Gresh?" he asked.

"He's got Vastus and Ackar looking for him, how are you?"

"Why... Why are you here? You were - were supposed to--"

"We heard Gresh. How-"

"--To be safe - away, from--"

"Everybody else is fine! Now quit avoiding the question and answer me, how are you?"

Mata Nui folded on himself for a second, prompting Kiina to hold onto his shoulders in the very real fear that he would shatter into a trillion particles in case he barely gazed the ground. She felt him lean pliantly into her hold as she pulled him back with all the caution in the world until the back of his neck was laying on her arm: his frantic inhales slowed down across a few dozen seconds or so, timing themselves on the much louder ones the Glatorian was training him to follow.

At last he seemed fairly stable. His body had a mostly clear shape, completely divided from the normal sand beneath it, and the erratic rising-falling rhythm of his chest had calmed down.

His head turned to face the prototype robot; Kiina turned with him.

Such an elaborate load of junk it was, even to a less experienced eye like her own. And yet it had been home for one hundred thousand years, although dismantled and rusted, and it had done what the Great Beings had judged it unfit for: under Mata Nui's control, it had undone the Shattering.

Maybe Berix had a point, scavenging for trash in the hopes to make something worthwhile out of it.

A rueful sigh distracted her from her musings: "I am... Afraid..." Mata Nui mumbled quietly, apologetic, "I cannot - be true, to the promise I've... I've made, in exchange for your help."

Kiina blinked.

"Huh?"

"The robot," he explained, "The Great..."

"The other one?"

"Yes... It was - I am afraid it was the only means through which - with, which - I could have accompanied you, on other planets. As I had promised you... When you..."

Oh!

Oh.

She had completely forgotten about that.

Her tongue clicked loudly against her teeth as she slipped an arm under her friend's and started helping him back on his feet: "Well, I can't say I'm not disappointed," she started, though her tone was humorous enough to tear a breathy chuckle from the other. "Because I will not lie, I am. Just a bit. But I guess I'll take a pal not being dead, and everybody being fine. And a more livable planet too, I guess. I could start touring this one before expanding my horizons, that sounds good."

"That is - a wondrous idea, my friend," the otherworlder convened. He leaned heavily on her as she sustained him while they walked, though he was so light that she was all but unhindered by him.

She smiled sharply at him with a small nudge: "You're welcome to come along, you know. I bet you'd like to."

A soft laugh: "I would... Thank you..."

"And you can start telling me about the worlds you've visited! So I'll be prepared from when we actually get there. Which will be right after you've gotten some shuteye."

He groaned, almost pained: "Please, no more of that..."

"Oh no, you're gonna get as much sleep as we can stuff into you," the Gaquri threatened: "And I mean real, actual, deep sleep for once, not that half-resting-half-awake meditation thing you do. Great Beings know you need it."

"It is not - necessary..."

"Don't give me that! You can barely stand as you are!"

"I do not--" Mata Nui's argument was interrupted by a sudden creak in his knee, which caused Kiina to stop in her tracks and hold him a little tighter before he toppled over. Her pointed glare dared him to speak further on the matter - which incredibly, after a moment to catch his breath, he did: "Is there a chance that I might... Be able to bribe you?"

She gave an incredulous laugh: "Bribing me? You?" she howled, and her exaggerated reaction tore a giggle from the fallen god. "Did Metus rub a scale off on you after he slithered away or is it just the Skrall mentality getting to you?"

"You are right, it was awfully uncouth."

"Well, don't just take that back, I'm curious now! I wanna know what your offering was!"

Her friend leaned a hand on the prototype's head to catch his breath, winded as he was from their steady if limping gait back to the chariot. They were still a long way from it, but considering his fatigued state they were all in all making good progress.

"A universe," he replied at last. "To visit."

"To visit?" she repeated. He nodded. Oh, he was going delirious then. "Like it's nearby? As in, just around the corner?"

Mata Nui smiled: his eyes curled into tired half moons, offering her their soft, gentle glow so alike the one the former Bota and Aqua Magna had bathed her cold nights of stargazing in for the worst part of her life, wishing she could be anywhere that wasn't that damned ocean of sand.

He pushed through his exhaustion to make a few more steps with her, just enough for the head of the Great Spirit Robot to come into view, and pointed to it - past the jagged edges, somewhere far, far inside of it.

"The Matoran's - my own," he murmured.

Kiina stared at the enormous hole in the metallic skull.

For a long time, she said nothing.

Only looking, listening distantly to the faint sounds rising from it (were they shouts, were those words she could hear? Strange accents speaking familiar dialects?), wondering if a body could really be large enough to hold an entire piece of cosmos.

Finding she really, really wanted to know.

A whisper joined her musings, sheepish, almost embarrassed: "It is a small one, perhaps... But a universe nonetheless."

She hummed thoughtfully: "I'll think about it," she conceded in the end, only making a half hearted attempt at hiding her cautious excitement. "After you've taken a nap."

The other groaned.

It made her snort.

Her name reached them with a holler.

Ackar had always had a quirk of running with his head pushed as far down and forward as his body physically allowed it to go, which tended to make him look like he was charging directly into the first person he saw to headbutt his way through their ribcage like a sandray so horribly hungry it forgot it had teeth.

He was mildly aware of this unfortunate resemblance due to several people outside of the arena letting him know by either looking very scared as he approached or screaming at him to slow down with genuine terror in their voices; so he wasn't really offended when the Gaquri automatically threw her free arm in front of herself and Mata Nui as though she was protecting the both of them from some particularly vicious beast.

"WOAH there!" she shrieked like she was trying to calm down a frightened Sand Stalker, "He's frailer than glass right now, you're gonna shatter him into a million pieces!"

She kept a good eye on him as his gait stuttered and slowed in an attempt to regain control of his legs, ready to whisk Mata Nui to safety before the foolish thing ran up to meet the Tapyri head on and got bodied into a heap of sand, but the veteran Glatorian managed to grasp his friend's hand gently enough to press it to his forehead (an expression of fondness common in his tribe that he'd often given Kiina, too) without breaking a single cell off of it.

"So good to see you," he breathed. A wry smile stretched across his face as the other squeezed his palm back: "How are you?"

"Absolutely exhausted and denying it as hard as he can," the Gaquri answered before Mata Nui could try to lie about it: "He's really bad at hiding it, too."

A quiet groan: "That is not true."

"You needed two whole breaths to say that."

"My friend, please..."

Unluckily for him, Ackar betrayed his hope to avoid being sentenced to sleep as he slipped an arm under his shoulder to sustain him as well: "I'm afraid I'll have to agree with Kiina on this one," he murmured, patting his chest comfortingly. "Let's get you somewhere nice and quiet before you collapse on us."

The fallen god craned his neck with a whimper, but could not fight either of them as they dragged him along despite his lack of collaboration - whether on purpose or not, it was hard to tell.

"Where's Vastus?" Kiina asked.

"Back at the chariot, probably - taking care of Gresh."

"Gresh," their friend perked up with worry: "Is he...?"

"Ever more tired than you, but otherwise unscathed," the Tapyri was quick to reassure them.

Hearing that, the Gaquri squinted her eyes angrily, scales almost turning cobalt from a mixture of emotions she was very unsure she could properly put a name to: "I'm gonna kick his ass," she settled for hissing between gritted teeth.

A tremor under her palm distracted her: Mata Nui had started shaking in their grasp, head almost abandoned to itself as it hung low, a terribly quiet litany falling out of his mouth in an inconsolably guilty cadence - I shouldn't have asked, I shouldn't have asked that of him, I shouldn't have, I shouldn't, I shouldn't have asked, I shouldn't have asked, I shouldn't have asked...

Both his friends had to tighten their hold him before his spiraling led him to the ground. His shoulders were starting to shed themselves into sand, and Kiina felt with horror her hand sink into his chest when she tried to push him upright.

Ackar leaned a little closer, doing his best to speak soothingly: "Easy, easy - he's alright, I told you, he'll be fine."

"He's a tough kid!" his fellow Glatorian added, "He can handle it!"

She turned to her friend so he could emphasize her statement only to see him glance away, as though he'd just gotten an idea. She followed his gaze, and...

The thing was looking in her direction, but not at her.

It seemed shocked.

She was surprised she could even tell, what with the lack of pupils and eyebrows and a general face, but the whole of its appearance came off as oddly expressive.

It stood frozen in place a few meters from them, similar to a prey animal when a predator passes close by it.

Perfectly still.

Like a robot.

"Don't you wanna see who brought him over?" she heard Ackar say a little louder: "I think that could be a pleasant surprise for you."

Kiina shifted her eyes back on him like he was insane.

But he wasn't talking to her, of course; and he wasn't checking for her reaction, of course.

She followed the trajectory of his eyes until she found Mata Nui's: they stared ahead, into glowing yellow irises, appearing to gain a brightness of their own the longer they looked.

"Oh."

-

It hit him.

He had no idea if they'd ever imagined him.

He certainly couldn't remember if he had, at the very least when it came to distinctive, clear examples. On the island, despite having a guideline with the stone Vakama used in his tales, the most he'd ever managed to conjure was a bright floating Hau which could have been transparent or golden or red; in Karda Nui, even with the newfound knowledge of the Makuta species, he had many times in his musings given him an appearance similar to Teridax - to his first mangled, chaotic form, befitting of an impossibly vast being uncaring for those beneath him; and if he dug into the memories he liked the least, into the days of his first birth, of his first life, amidst the frustration and tension, the most he could find was the thought of a vaguely humanoid shape, large and splendent and undefined, towering above everything.

He'd never asked his siblings or the Matoran or the Turaga if they had their own vision on how the Great Spirit looked. He reasoned they must have; inexplicably, though, no being had ever made a single comment on the matter, and nobody seemed to have ever mentioned such a strangeness before him.

So it was surreal - to stand before Mata Nui.

(He had no idea why or how he knew. He just did. It was an absolute certainty buried somewhere within him, like the tip of an arrow lodged into a lung. He could have recognized the Great Spirit in any shape it would have taken, be it familiar or not. He did not know why. He just knew.)

The Great Spirit was looking back at him.

He was...

He was a small thing.

A creature like any other, roughly as tall as him, in a battered armor dim with dust, having to be held aloft by two other beings before his legs gave out from under him.

His mere presence seemed to cut off his ability to breathe.

Mata Nui smiled radiantly.

"Tahu," he called.

He had a soft, sweet voice.

Tahu stiffened.

What was he supposed to do? There had to be something, some kind of code of conduct for these cases - for standing before your god. Was there a formula, a specific sentence he was supposed to pronounce? A pledge, a plea, a promise? Was he supposed to kneel, to lay at his feet, to lower his gaze, was he supposed to meet him head on with a Toa salute? Was he supposed to move at all?

He did nothing as the Great Spirit struggled to approach.

He stood, glancing desperately at Ackar and at the other being (China, or Kena, he recalled the older warrior shouting as soon as he'd caught a glimpse of a body coming into view - the watery blue of the armor reminded him of his sisters, but he couldn't be sure) as if to ask them for help. Neither answered; he wondered if they knew what to do themselves, or if they even understood who exactly they were helping walk towards him.

Would they even know that? They came from beyond the universe. They likely had no idea that the terribly frail thing in their hands was divine in nature.

Were they the Great Beings?

Anxiety constricted him. He almost wanted to cry.

Mata Nui reached out to him. Then he stopped, retracting his hand not in disgust but with a strange fear; he looked the Toa in the eyes with a strange sheepish air about him as his fingers twitched, almost too shy to ask what was on his mind.

Finally, very carefully, he placed his fingertips against the chin of Tahu's mask, as if to cradle it.

They were pleasantly warm. And dusty. Like slowly cooling ash.

He smiled wider.

A quiet sound left him all of a sudden, and his limbs started trembling harshly as his armor began falling apart into a thousand particles; without thinking, the Toa grasped his wrists tightly and sent a wave of blistering heat through the whole body for barely the fraction of a second, so quick that Ackar and his friend barely had time to hiss at the sudden surge of temperature. He felt the arms in his palms creak: they'd been crystallized into glass.

Before he could choke in horror at his impulsivity, his hands were being held between near transparent fingers.

"Thank you," Mata Nui breathed with something akin to a chuckle - was that embarrassment in his voice? He replied to Tahu's wide eyes with a look of pure apologetic fondness: "Oh... Oh, forgive me, I did not mean to frighten you. I just... I am so very excited to meet you!"

His gentle grip tightened around the Toa's palms.

Something thrummed across his body, a quick steady beat. Tahu felt it reverberate through him.

He was definitely supposed to do something. Should he have kneeled? Maybe he should have kneeled, and laid his head low, and stopped looking so directly at the incarnation of their universe. But the Great Spirit was holding his gaze and smiling and readjusting his grip on protodermis hands and he could not move an inch no matter how hard he tried, mind drawing up blanks, at once awed to be faced with such reverence from a god and baffled by the knowledge that said god was so impossibly frail that a mere emotion could tear him asunder like that.

He realized he was staring in silence again.

He should have done something.

Anything.

What was he supposed to do?

"You were not made like this, were you?" Mata Nui asked. It was not a reprimand or an insult, only an inquiry born of genuine curiosity. He sounded like he was sleeptalking, in a way.

Tahu shook his head, and gentle eyes tilted a little.

"No, I imagined," the god continued almost to himself; he squeezed his palms again. "I have seen you like this, once, I believe... Somewhere deep in the bog of a dream... I remember you barely, before that - forgive me... It has been so long... You have changed!... Such a wonderful thing!..."

Was it?

The Toa struggled to think. The crystalline touch intimidated him into silence much like too high praises can embarrass a child quiet.

"How are you?" his god asked. "How are your siblings? The Matoran? I did not think... I assumed it would have been tough enough to not let... Metru Nui..."

"We're," Tahu choked. His throat whirred, clacked, struggled against itself and spat out stunted words: "Safe. We are. All of us."

Mata Nui breathed a heavy sigh of relief; it made something physically click into place in the Toa's body, and he felt like his mechanisms were working smoothly all at once again.

He lowered his head immediately, shifting his gaze down to the fingers wrapped around him.

The glass was so soft around his hands.

His god's voice passed through him like a dream - vaguely, in a haze, he realized he'd leaned closer, apprehension once more thrumming through his frame: "My chosen... Are they...? I could not... I barely know... They came to be..."

His chosen? Tahu snapped out of his torpor: "The Turaga are safe," he answered just as hushedly, ashamed to have been distracted.

Mata Nui's tired eyes regained fervor for a second.

"Turaga," he repeated.

A wheezed laugh left him, elated beyond words - Turaga!, it seemed to exclaim. The poor souls he had picked so hastily, with such little time and such a hard task ahead of them, Turaga! He raised Tahu's hands to what might have been his mouth as if to kiss it, holding back just moments before it could touch his mask - moments before the Toa could melt the ground beneath his feet from the surprise as his heartlight flashed madly.

He smiled wonderfully, reaching out to cup the adaptive Hau's cheek in his palm: "You bring me such splendid news!"

Breathing was hard again.

Not because he couldn't do it. He could breathe! He could breathe very well. Perhaps too much. Far too much. So much that his lungs were starting to hurt.

Ackar seemed to notice that. He met his eyes long enough to read his incomprehensible swirl of emotions, and though amused by the childish panic in them he blessedly pulled the Great Spirit a little back as gently as he could with his other friend's help.

"Give the boy some room," he murmured: "He's gonna get a heart attack at this rate."

But Mata Nui kept his hand on Tahu's mask, and refused to let go of his palms.

That blinding glimmer had already dropped from his eyes, and he looked exhausted, somehow even more so than he already had; he leaned forward, reaching for the Toa still despite the small distance between them.

"I am sorry," he spoke. His fingers curled around the red protodermis. "I am sorry - I should have... I am sorry," he repeated. He sounded weak, and quiet, and honest. "I am sorry... If I had been... If I had not... You have endured for me so much - if I had paid close attention... If I had not been so careless," he creaked. A long crack split open the god's arm with a horrid sound. "You would not have suffered... You would not... I am sorry - I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry..."

His knee buckled under his weight, cracked, and shattered his leg across the ground.

Ackar and Kena scrambled to hold him aloft, words of concern muddling together: a gentle yank nearly ripped half his chest off, and the arm holding onto the Toa's mask turned opaque as hairline cracks burst from within it before it too began falling apart.

Almost numbly, Tahu realized the other crystalline hand was still clutched around his own in a tender grip, the rest of its limb laying broken in the sand.

He felt himself kneel on the ground with hands outstretched on what remained of the crumbling body: if heated up enough the glass would have melted again, filling in the cracks by itself, wouldn't it? He would have been able to fix it all, to put him back together in the span of seconds, minutes, maybe. He would have managed to fix him.

But what if he just destabilized him more? Maybe instead of breaking he would have started melting. Maybe the hot temperature would have triggered the vitrification of the sand beneath him too, and he would have fused with it and become indistinguishable from the rest of it, worsening his condition as he could no longer be separated from it.

Or maybe it simply wouldn't have done anything. He had already started falling apart Tahu had done anything, and his accidental fix had now grown obsolete. Maybe it was just too much. Maybe he just couldn't hold onto himself.

"I am sorry," Mata Nui whispered. Somehow, his quiet voice cancelled out all other sounds. Somehow, his remaining hand was still holding onto the adaptive Hau. "I am sorry - none of this should have... If I had been... More attentive... None of this should have happened... I am sorry, I am sorry..."

Tahu looked up to his face again.

The peculiar pattern of the Ignika met his eyes.

He had not even recognized it. He had not even registered that what he had been staring at was the Mask of Life. He had known so deeply that the being before him was Mata Nui that, in the petrifying surprise that had taken over him, the artefact on the god's face had looked no different than a common powerless Kanohi.

Couldn't it fix him, then? Couldn't it mutate him? If it could build itself a body it could certainly make one for him too, couldn't it? Why wasn't it working? It had plenty of material to choose from - why wasn't it doing anything?

Mata Nui's eyes were flickering.

He stared directly at Tahu as though it was the only thing keeping him together.

"I am sorry," he begged. "I am sorry, for everything, everything - I am sorry... You should not have... I should not have allowed... Such terrible things... To befall you... Any of you... I should not have... If I had been... I should have been... I am sorry... I am sorry - I am sorry... I am sorry... I am sorry... I am sorry... I am sorry..."

Tahu stared back.

This was a god.

A being for whom countless had lost their lives.

Begging, broken and brittle, with a voice barely above a breath and a trembling hand on his cheek, for the forgiveness of his own universe.

Ackar's voice broke through the haze around him: "You need to rest."

Mata Nui twisted his neck harshly: a long crack slithered around it, and the Toa rushed to grab it before it tore away from the torso already on the brink of shattering.

"No!" his deity sobbed. He could feel the clear throat quake with each phoneme under his protodermis digits, broken edges ringing as they scratched against one another: if he were to press even just slightly more forcefully, he would reduce it to a heap of minuscule fragments. "No, no, please, no, no--"

Kiina grasped the Ignika gently in her hands, allowing the straining pieces of anatomy to fall in favor of protecting the one thing actually containing the delirious entity: "It's for your own good!" she argued back at him, but her voice was soft, desperate, trying her best to pull a friend back from the hole he was sinking into as he kept squirming. "Pushing yourself like this is going to kill you - listen to us, damn it!"

The glass chest creaked as it spasmed erratically in the pantomime of frantic breathing (so set he was on living, on being real and present) and an agonizing whimper left the divine wreckage.

The eyes fixed on Tahu's were blue, flickering terribly.

He felt the fingers crack against the cheek of his Hau as they curled around it.

"I am sorry," his god cried so quietly, "I am sorry, I am sorry - no more, no more, no more sleep, please, no more, no more... I am sorry, I am sorry - Tahu... Tahu... I am sorry... Please..."

A hand of protodermis grasped what little was left of a body and laid it down on the sand, carefully, gently, so it would not break. Its twin wrapped around the crystalline palm as it struggled to keep from fracturing and held it - as gently as it had been held by it.

The Toa breathed.

His lungs filled slowly trough the gaps in his armor.

Then, just as slowly, they deflated.

He kept breathing, hands enveloping what little remained of his god's own fragile one.

Mata Nui heaved, and heaved, and slowed down, until his labored inhales matched his protector's own, until the light of his eyes drooped and struggled to glimmer in resignation.

Tahu spoke as quietly as he could, his entire being turning the words into a hushed mechanical symphony: "We can wait still."

"I am sorry," Mata Nui insisted.

"We can wait still," his guard repeated.

"I am sorry... I am sorry..."

"We can wait still. Until you are safe."

"I promise... I promise... I am sorry..."

"We can wait. Rest now."

"I want to see you... I promise..."

"Until you are safe. Rest now."

"I promise... I promise..."

"Rest now."

"I promise..."

"Rest."

Mata Nui shook again.

Then he calmed.

His hand curled around Tahu's and shattered gently over his fingers.

"Alright," he conceded at last, reassured.

His head crumbled in his friends' gentle hands, his empty sockets lost their waning glow, and lulled by the warrior who was fated to awake him he allowed his endlessly fatigued spirit to slip into sleep once more.

-

His entire body hurt.

Not as badly as when he first woke up, but it still hurt.

It was like every single muscle had decided to file a complaint against his brain and set his nerves on fire in an attempt to get the message relayed much more quickly.

He turned on his side with a hiss to try and keep sleeping it off, but he was fully awake by now.

"Oh," he heard - he wasn't sure he could tell voices apart in this state, but that sounded like Gelu. "Sand mite's awake. Watch him a moment, won't you? I've got to get someone."

Some kind of machine made a rockus near the leg of the bed.

A quiet cacophony of noises caused an uncomfortable shiver to wreck through him. Ah, damn it - he shook his head harshly once or twice, gritting his teeth as his neck immediately flared up: deciding he didn't want to be stuck in a losing battle, he grumbled and blearily opened an eye.

The little thing with glowing lime lights in the sockets of its metal green face jumped a bit and retreated away from him at that.

It seemed to be standing on a stool.

He stared at it for a moment.

"Hi," he said hoarsely.

The little thing blinked once or twice with a clicking sound: "Hi!" came at last the reply, face unchanged: "My name's Tamaru."

Oh, he knew that kind of noisy, industrial-sounding, confusingly androginous voice. This must have been... A baby Toa. Or a Toa kid. Or something of that sort.

"Gresh," he introduced himself.

Tamaru nodded, looked him over, fidgeted, and then asked with no shortage of curious embarrassment: "Wayby, what are you?"

"Lebori," he answered. He managed to point back at... Him? Her? Them? It? Xe? Ti? He didn't know how to approach the subject with a mostly metallic alien, so he was going to go with 'ti' for now. All Agori kids were 'ti' at that height. "Toa?"

The being laughed with a tinny sound: "No, no! I'm too bugsmall to be a Toahero. I'm a Matoran. How are you wellfeeling?"

"Bad," he replied honestly.

"Oh. Eversorry."

"I mean," Gresh shrugged: "Could be worse. But not good."

Ti hummed deep in thought, as though ruminating on his words: "Makes sense," ti decided in the end, "You've been sleeping for two days. You must have been bonetired."

"Huh."

Two whole days, asleep.

Yeah, made sense. He'd been absolutely exhausted.

How must Mata Nui be holding up then, he wondered?

He hoped he was fine.

The Matoran turned tir attention to his face again, leaning closer but not daring to graze him: "Are those feathers?"

"Hm-hm."

"Can I handtouch?"

Sure, why not? Kids from other tribes used to ask to do that all the time, this wasn't any different. He gave ti a very weak ok gesture and submitted himself to the inevitable poking and prodding.

That turned out to have been a very good idea, as Tamaru was not only much more gentle and cautious while combing through his thin plumage than any brash Gaquri or Tapyri or Koniri brat he'd ever met, doing tir best not to pull any plumes or feathers out, but also, despite being the farthest thing from a Lebori, exercised a level of so highly specific care towards it that would have probably won ti an honorary place in his tribe.

He leaned his head into lir touch and bristled his feathers comfortably, driving a giggle out of ti.

The Matoran cooed at him, and he cooed back without thinking.

Great Beings, he missed being preened by his aunt.

"You're good," he mumbled.

"Heh heh! I turntame Gukko birds," Tamaru explained proudly, pushing tir chest out a bit. "I have lots of experience."

He could tell.

Wait, birds?

They had birds? In Mata Nui's old body?

His train of thought was interrupted when the Matoran hastily pulled tir hand away as if caught doing something ti shouldn't; before he could protest a new weight settled on the foot bed, and a scaled hand snuck under him to pull him up a little, just enough so that the Gaquri could see his face.

Tarix looked him over in complete silence, checking him up and down at least twice. Finally he pulled him into his arms and squeezed him gently as he pressed his nose into the reddish feathers denoting his young age sticking out of his head.

Gresh did not fight it. He snuggled into his uncle's hold despite the long scales scratching at him, sighing in relief.

Lebori teeth were good at cleaning plumage in a way that no other tribe could vaunt - namely by being thinner than what was usual for Agori, catching loose feathers painlessly without getting them stuck in place and having to pluck them out with their hands afterwards. By contrast, for example, Gaquri teeth were just a little too large the closer the crown was to the gums and retained much more humidity around them, causing the soft barbs to grossly stick to the enamel and the shaft to lodge itself between them, allowing for a generally less than pleasant experience.

Tarix had lost the will to give a damn about how disgusting it sometimes felt during his and Vastus's courting, and so he did his best to preen his nephew for a minute or two, just to reassure him of his presence, to offer him comfort after what had no doubt been a harrowing ordeal. The kid's weight against him melted the worries that had plagued him for the past two days into slush.

He pulled away at last once he found himself satisfied with his work. He cupped the young Glatorian's face in his hands with a sigh, and told him: "We're gonna kick your ass."

Gresh groaned: "Oh, come on!"

"Don't give me that, you little bastard," his uncle hushed him with the fondest tone he'd ever used as he nuzzled his cheek again: "You scared the ever-living crap out of us, we didn't have a single pair of clean pants between five Glatorian for a day and a half."

He felt the rookie squirm and wriggle to get out of his hug: "But it worked! And I'm fine!"

"Passing out stone cold on your aunt is called 'being fine', now?"

"So what! I've woken up now!"

"I can hear that," Tarix grinned. He smacked a kiss on the kid's forehead, getting a little 'blegh' back. "And now that we're all relieved we'll wait until you're all better, and then we'll kick your ass."

The Lebori shook his feathers at him at maximum pique, hissing to scare him off with no success whatsoever.

Tamaru snorted.

He stuck his tongue out at ti too.

Then something large and blue slid into the room like a fury, so fast that its inertia sent it right against the wall with a loud BANG that spooked the Matoran off tir stool with a tremendous clatter.

"YOU!!"

Tarix curled around Gresh to better help him hide.

Kiina circumvented the issue this posed by crawling on her fellow Gaquri's back like some sort of gargoyle, reaching over his protective stance, grabbing the back of the camisole the rookie was wearing, and frantically starting to pull it back and forth as though it were her victim of choice's shoulders.

"I'M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS!" she yelled: "ARE YOU STUPID?! ARE YOU POSSESSED?! DID A SPIKED WORM HIDE AWAY IN YOUR BRAIN?! YOU COULD HAVE GOTTEN SQUASHED TO BITS! AND YOU BROUGHT MY LITTLE BROTHER ALONG TOO!"

"It was Berix's idea," the Lebori tried to rebuke.

"No it wasn't," his traitorous uncle replied.

"NO IT FUCKING WASN'T!!"

-

Hahli looked upon the silent giant and waited.

What for?

She laid her head in her palms, not knowing how to answer herself.

The protodermis was cooling beneath her. She let her legs dangle for the jagged edge of the Great Spirit Robot's broken skull, swaying with the wind coming down the mountain as evening crept closer with its orange hues in a manner similar to how it used to do on Mata Nui; Metru Nui looked so small, so far below, but she could not focus on it at the moment.

Her saddened gaze remained fixed on the unmoving prototype, studying its features in silence.

It wasn't as frightening as its larger brethren. The Great Spirit Robot had a face that looked right out of a nightmare: it was long and rough, with long lines digging deep all the way down to its chin, stuck in a barely open-mouthed grimace which gave the impression that a rumbling voice was meant to come out of it at any moment, delivering righteous fury and reprimands and orders.

The prototype's skull was stouter, almost oval or round in shape. It had eyes and cheeks - or what appeared to be cheeks or cheek guards, at least - and nothing else. A long segmented line ran across the height of its face; flat crests emerged from the top of its head.

The sum of its pieces ended up resembling a Kanohi much more closely than an Agori visage.

She looked at its broken optic, at its rusted fingers.

Waiting for a light to shine through the gaping darkness within the shell, for the joints between the phalanxes to twitch and scratch at the ground under them as it grumbled to life.

Waiting for it to speak to her with a soft, booming, deep voice.

To turn its head and call out to her.

To say, Hahli?

Is that you?

"Hahli!"

She turned. Takanuva's mask peeked from the edge of the robot's head as he held tight onto the protodermis, evidently having been scaling his way up to her; Kopeke, sitting tight on his shoulders, waved at her in his stead.

His sister laughed, hurrying over and grabbing his hands to help him up: "Hey there! What is this, a Chroniclers' reunion?"

"It could be," her Light brother grinned. He sighed in relief as soon as his feet were once again resting on more or less even ground. "We saw you sitting there and thought we'd come up to say hi."

"Is that so? You just happened to be walking around these parts?"

Her friend did not reply, flustered.

The wrecks rested far away from the camps promising to one day become New Atero, much too far for the pair to just casually come across them while struck by the desire for an evening stroll.

No, it couldn't be a coincidence: they had a specific reason to be here. Just like her.

Hahli huffed playfully and helped Kopeke down from her brother's shoulders: "Alright, come on," she gestured back towards the edge of the enormous wound, inviting them both to sit down with her as she returned to her spot. "Spill it. What are you two investigating?"

The Matoran settled next to her in no time, used enough to vertiginous heights to remain completely unbothered before the void beneath their feet; Takanuva stalled a little more, fidgeting with his hands for a moment: "It's nothing," he shrugged in the end as he very deliberately took his seat as well.

"It's not nothing." Kopeke rebuked.

"Yes it is."

"It's not."

"It's..." the argument died in the Toa's throat. He took a deep breath; Hahli watched him turn to the rusting robot with a forlorn look that perfectly replicated her own emotions. "It's something Tahu said."

She followed his gaze.

The prototype still had not moved.

Maybe it would now that there were three of them.

Or maybe not.

Who knew.

"About Mata Nui?" she asked softly.

He nodded.

"What was it?"

"He said that... Well, he told me that when he saw him, you know, he just looked like any other being. Like a Glatorian. The kind you'd forget after catching a glimpse of them in a crowd. But at the same time there was just this..." he clenched his hands close to his heartlight, almost as if to grasp it within them: "This feeling - this certainty, that what he was looking at was the real Great Spirit, and he couldn't have mistaken him for anybody else even if he'd tried. Like there was something deep in his soul telling him."

Hahli did not reply.

"I think... I think I felt that too." Takanuva continued. His eyes were fixed on the prototype. "When I looked at it, on Metru Nui."

Her fins twitched lightly.

A mellow wind passed through, gently leading the sand to crash against the limbs of protodermis like waves of a calm sea, further dulling the darkened rust that covered the dead colossi laying side by side as it stuck upon it, wearing them down impercetibly.

She heard Takanuva adjust his seat.

"Nobody else did. I mean, nobody really looked at it except for us and some Matoran - aside from the Barraki armies, but- you get what I meant. But I think the Nuva might... I think they'd all feel that."

Then he grew silent again.

His sister did not add onto his hypothesis, and kept quiet.

She was still looking at the robot.

Still waiting for it to turn its head towards them.

Still waiting for it to call out to them with a familiar voice.

Kopeke's silence was comforting. It drowned out their own uncomfortable quiet naturally, in a manner hard to explain: but knowing he sat next to them, hands on his lap, looking out to the sprawling landscape before them, just listening, brought them respite from their too loud thoughts.

Takanuva turned towards her, prompting her to face him.

"Did you feel that, too?"

She gripped the jagged skull under her and did not answer.

He waited.

His voice came out of him awfully small: "You said something," he whispered, sounding embarrassed: "When you saw the robot. But I didn't hear it well because you said it very quietly and I was sort of too distracted to pay attention."

Hahli sucked in a breath to speak.

She couldn't.

She turned her eyes down, to the city slowly being abandoned below them, and swung her legs harder to desperately try and find something, anything, that could have worked as a response.

What was she supposed to say? That she thought she was going crazy? That nothing had happened? That she didn't know?

That she'd seen a ghost?

The barbarian hurried deeper in her seaweed hut, crawling hastily into her bed and hiding her Kaukau under her arms, wanting to forget everything again, to wake up and find that nothing had changed, that she was still just a flaxmaker who never spoke and seldom left her village, who did her duty diligently and went to sleep not knowing there were friends outside of her gate waiting to die.

Kopeke sat next to her. He did not touch her. His silence laid a soothing hand on her burning brain.

"Do you know when - when a part of your head is muddled?" she asked. Getting each word though the knot strangling her throat was a painful struggle. "When it's... When it's all murky, and confused, and swirling too slowly and bubbling, and you can't understand what's happening in it?"

Her brother nodded.

She passed her hands over her Faxon: "It was just a second," (she sounded guilty, and she had no idea why) "Just a second - just a moment, so quick I'm not even sure I understood anything I was thinking... And it was so hazy, and unclear, and unfocused, and I - I don't know why, I'm not sure but it felt like--"

Something in her neck swerved from the strain: an unfortunate gear shrieked as it tried to turn where it shouldn't, interrupting her with a short-lived mechanical cough. Two hands of different sizes were quick to pat her back to dislodge the misbehaving piece back into its rightful place.

With a final harsh exhale, Hahli spat out: "--For a moment, it felt like Matoro."

Her arms shook as though she'd puked her soul into the void.

The robot remained still.

Unmoving, unchanging.

Rusted and broken and dead.

What good was staring at it?

It was never going to be him.

Nothing was ever going to be him.

No one was ever going to be him.

She'd been here for hours yesterday, and that feeling hadn't repeated.

She'd been here for hours today, and that feeling hadn't repeated.

She couldn't stop hoping that maybe, if she looked at it long enough, it would feel like him again.

"Do you think he's him?" Takanuva asked with a breath.

Hahli faced him.

It was like looking in a mirror.

"Mata Nui," he repeated. "Do you think he's him?"

Did she?

It would have been nice. It would have been relieving. To know that this whole time, they'd been fighting for a friend. For someone they loved. For someone who loved them. It would have been nice, because then they would have everything back. They would have their paradise back: their island home, their friends, their family. As if nothing had ever changed. As if nothing had ever happened. It would have been nice, because none of them would have died then.

But what about before that? When the Great Spirit refused to look at them? When it neglected and endangered them? Could that have been him? And if it hadn't been him, then who had died with him? Who had he usurped and doomed to fade into non-existence in much the same way as Teridax had usurped Mata Nui? Who had they been fighting for before the Mask of Life chose its vessel?

"I don't know," Hahli replied. "I just don't know."

Her brother leaned his head on her shoulder.

His weight anchored her to reality, dissipating her swirling thoughts.

Kopeke looked, silent, at the massive robotic body.

Krahka came to his mind.

He had seen her - he had traveled with her, with Tahu and Johmak and Onua, and Lariska and Guardian. She had looked exactly like he'd expected, so like nothing he could have thought of at all: but he'd still recognized the sharp grin that spread too wide, the voice that was neither a hiss nor a growl nor a chirp and yet resembled all those sounds, the frighteningly clever eyes that Vakama's narrations had described in such vivid unspoken detail.

She had been every bit the legendary Rahi lurking within the Metru Nui archives, so cunning and terrible that even the Rahkshi fleed from her.

And yet, while he'd looked at her wreck chaos upon Daxia's surface with Onua, something incredible had happened.

No matter what beast she turned into, she looked just like a Toa.

Something about her, about her shifting anatomy, her erratic fighting style, her voice heckling back at Onua when he shouted above the rockus at her, her strange glee - she had seemed like a wild mixture of the Turaga's selves, as though a little bit of each had gotten stuck in her shapeless form and molded alongside her ever changing body, made hers, until she was an equal of what they had once been.

Until she was, indisputably, one of them.

He remembered how Turaga Onewa had sat next to Vakama as he'd recounted their first proper battle against the Horde. He had claimed he was staying to make sure the firespitter told the tale right, but had kept completely quiet the whole story through.

He had caught how he'd clenched his hand during the last struggle between the Tahtorak and the Zivon, his eyes shut tight, as though he were bracing himself for a devastating blow - and how he'd let his fingers rest, dejected, resigned, when the shapeshifter disappeared into darkness.

Maybe she is a Rahi who discovered a little Toa inside.

Kopeke mulled over Pouks' words.

He wondered if Mata Nui liked Rahi.

If he found them intruguing in a manner very different from the detached scientific approach of Onu-Metru archivists.

If he would have talked to tamed ones when they clamored at him, or even repeated their own chatterings back at them to try and communicate with them more accurately.

He wondered if Mata Nui had a good singing voice.

If he would have been shy about it, or instead enjoyed bellowing out hymns and songs to his heartlight's content.

If he would have had such a powerful control over it that he could go from humming a lullabye to declaring a dirge to grinning along a festive chant in mere seconds.

He sighed.

His little body reclined against the cool protodermis as he scuttled closer to his once fellow Chroniclers. Night had fallen: clusters of stars crawled across the dark sky like an infinity of beetles.

His quiet thoughts enveloped the Toa.

He felt them lay down with him, a little calmer, a little more at peace.

In another hour or so a small group of worried Matoran, Turaga and Toa would finally catch a glimpse of Takanuva's glow and start screaming at them to come down, chastising them for disappearing like that without giving them any notice as soon as the three of them were in manhandling reach.

But until then they laid with the empty robot, paying it no mind, breathing in asynchrony under a universe vaster than they could have ever imagined.

It would have been nice.

If Mata Nui had a little bit of Matoro in him.

[sorrel-leaf-vespers]

More Sitcom AU writing, continued from the previous post! You guys' kind words on the last one meant a lot to me, especially since I haven't been able to share my writing with anyone in a long while, and have straight up never engaged with a community via my craft like this. Thanks for reading!

Clyde had been silent the whole walk. By now, the moon was high in the sky, and the town of Eastridge had been left far behind. Alex’s feet hurt from spending hours walking nonstop through the forest. They were following Clyde, wherever it might have been going.

“I’m assuming we would be getting there much faster if you didn’t have to move at a human’s pace?” Alex finally asked. “Because when we were running there, you were going… really fast.”

“Yeah,” said Clyde. “We’re almost there.”

“So…” Alex stretched. “Veldigun sickness. When will the symptoms set in since that spike was digging into my hand? I’m going to assume the onset might be more rapid because of the prolonged contact. And maybe even more intense.”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

The intense growl in Clyde’s voice told Alex to drop the subject. It must have felt ashamed or guilty for giving Alex Veldigun sickness. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“To hide.”

“Where, exactly?”

The question answered itself. Clyde pointed through the trees at what looked like an old, dilapidated house. As they got closer, Clyde showed no fear. This place must be safe if that’s the case, Alex figured.

Clyde walked right past the house and toward a nearby barn. It began calling out in a series of shrieks and hisses as it pushed the door open. Nothing responded. “What are you doing?” Alex asked.

“Letting them know we’re here.”

“Friends of yours?” Alex walked into the barn. It was completely dark, other than the light of the moon coming in through the window. “So… what kinds of friends could you-”

A horrid, ear-shattering scream echoed through the barn as something emerged from the darkness. It vaguely resembled a bird, but it was covered in purple and black goo and lacked any legs, just a tail that it slithered along the ground with. It shrieked again and flapped its wings.

“Calm down, Flock. It’s okay.” A second figure approached, this one only about a foot taller than Alex. He was humanoid, but had long, lanky arms covered in stripes like Clyde’s, and a burlap sack over his head. Someone more inexperienced would have considered him a sentient scarecrow, but Alex had enough experience to know that this was another Veldigun. His voice was quiet and gentle, a stark contrast to Clyde’s raspy hiss. “Clyde. Hello.”

“Hi.”

“I didn’t expect you to come seeking us out in the middle of the night.”

“It was an emergency.”

The new Veldigun turned to Alex. “You brought a human, huh?”

“I did. That’s Alex.”

“Alex? The Alex Williams you’ve been telling us about?”

“That’s the one.”

“In that case, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Alex. My name is Simon.” Simon politely bowed to them, then gestured to the bird creature. “That’s the Flock. It’s also a Veldigun, but it was never able to fully move on from its Void state. Forgive it if it looks a little… goopy.”

The Flock perked up at its name and said in a perfect imitation of Simon’s voice, “Hi, Flock. Hi, Flock.”

“Uh… hi?” Alex didn’t understand why Simon was being so friendly. He was a Veldigun who had never met them before. “Has Clyde told you about me?”

“Indeed it has. It’s spoken very highly of you.”

“Seriously?”

“Hey!” Clyde lashed its tail.

Simon let out a small snort. Alex couldn’t tell what he was thinking under that sack. “Regardless,” he said, “I know that Clyde wouldn’t have brought you here without a purpose. What happened?”

Alex told the whole story of that afternoon- their Veldigun research, getting found by the police, the long trek to the barn, all of it. Simon listened attentively, nodding every so often. When Alex finished talking, he turned to look at Clyde. “I see now. You need someplace to hide.”

“Yeah. I figured this was the best place,” said Clyde, crossing its arms. “And there’s another thing you should know… Alex will get Veldigun sickness, since I touched them.”

“It was an accident,” said Alex, jumping to Clyde’s defense.

Simon nodded again. “Alright. We’ll see if we can find any way to make the process more… oh, how do I say this… bearable is how I’ll put it. In the meantime, let’s try to make you comfortable here. If Lankmann is after you, I’ve a feeling you’ll be here a while.”

“Thank you,” said Alex. “Thank you so much.”

“It’s what any good Veldigun would do for an ally.”

The Flock slithered closer, close enough to where Alex could touch it if they wanted. It again started talking in Simon’s voice. “You’re such a good bird. You’re such a good bird. You’re such a good bird.”

Simon chuckled. “That means it likes you.”

For the first time since the police had come knocking, Alex felt genuinely intrigued. Their instinct to write everything down was kicking in. “How does it do that?”

“It’s a master of imitation. My working theory is that it got that ability from consuming birds that live around here. Lots of corvids. Jays, crows, even a raven or two. Those birds possess incredible mimicry capabilities, so I figure they’ve handed that off to the Flock.”

“You seem a lot more comfortable with human speech than Clyde is.”

“I am. I like to watch humans from afar. I’ve picked up a lot.”

“You like humans?”

“In the manner of liking them as more than just meals? Yes. I find them a fascinating species. I’ve done my best to keep them away from Clyde’s claws, but reasoning with it is no easy feat.”

Clyde hissed something that Alex couldn’t exactly make out, but sounded like “Hypocrite.” They decided not to press it. “Well, thanks for trying,” said Alex, smiling up at Simon.

“It’s no problem. Feel free to sleep on the couch we dragged in from that house. It’s old and dirty, but it’s better than nothing. Clyde, you should rest, too. I’ll keep watch.”

“Thank you.” Alex reached out and shook Simon’s hand. They had already touched one Veldigun today. No harm in touching another. “Thanks so much.”

“You’re welcome, truly.”

Alex curled up on the couch. They had no blanket or pillow, but they were tired enough to the point where they didn’t need one to fall asleep instantly. They were out in seconds, with no time to think about what the coming days held. That was probably for the best.

[the--highlanders]

I would be interested in hearing about how Jamie influenced the Doctor's moral code

I do want to preface this by saying that one's companions absolutely play a massive role in influencing the doctor's development and morality. barbara probably more than anyone. one as we first meet him in an unearthly child is not the same as one in the tenth planet, or two going forward. he's already come a long way by that point.

that being said, two in power of the daleks and the highlanders is. honestly a lot more morally grey than he is later in his run, or compared to later incarnations. he does very little to reassure ben and polly post-regeneration, picks up the examiner's badge with not a lot of outward concern for the man who's just died, runs around in the highlanders antagonising the people he doesn't like without ever actually specifying whose side he's on. he bashes perkins' head into a table until he admits he has a headache. there's a real sense that he's doing everything he does less because he wants to do the right thing, and more because it's entertaining to him. his sense of right and wrong is far more secondary than it will be in the future.

some of his development is driven by himself, and likely by his other companions - 'there are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things' comes before he's had much of a chance to get to know jamie, let alone have jamie's sense of morality rub off on him. but as the doctor (and the audience) get to know jamie, his moral code starts looking an awful lot like the one the doctor will come to adopt

the first thing about jamie is that while he meets the doctor in the aftermath of a war, while the first time we see him he's holding a knife to two's throat - he's not a soldier. he's a musician. he's spent nearly a year as (more or less) a non-combatant marching with an army. and that shows in the way he acts, because while physically he's a capable fighter, and happy to show that when he needs to, he is fundamentally not a killer. he'll destroy robots, but he won't kill humans or humanoid aliens. he duels with trask, but knocks him off the ship rather than finishing him off. he refuses to fight the gond with a weapon. even when it's to his detriment or puts other people in danger, like him being initially unable to shoot the zombie in the age of ambition.

maybe most tellingly, in the novelisation of the abominable snowmen, he's the one to step in and stop the monks from killing the abbot. he steps in front of the abbot, 'ignoring the weapon' pointed at him, and gets the monks to stand down by telling them 'we've had enough killing'. which is something it's very easy to imagine the doctor doing.

he also ends up being the one to push the doctor into investigating, like in enemy of the world, or putting his foot down and insisting they should do the right thing, like in evil of the daleks where rescues victoria even when two tells him not to. in fact, it's predictable enough that he will do this that two hinges the start of the human factor experiment on the fact that he can tell jamie not to do the right thing and help a complete stranger, and jamie will defy him and do it anyway. more than that, two's whole sub-plan to create 'good' daleks depends on his belief that jamie embodies the best of humanity. at the beginning of series 5, he's already recognised jamie's moral code as something that defines him and that can be depended on.

so jamie is someone who prefers to avoid (lethal) force if he can, and who will stick his neck out to help people when he doesn't have to or when even people he cares deeply for say he shouldn't. which isn't particularly true of two at the beginning of his run, but which starts to become true from s5 onwards, and which later incarnations will cleave to.

but the really telling thing is - we very rarely see jamie truly, properly hate someone. he butts heads with villains (vaughn in the invasion, for instance), and disapproves of people who don't live up to his standards or expectations (william wallace in on a pedestal being childish, irresponsible, and careless with other people; two in evil of the daleks for, again, being careless with other people and appearing to side with the daleks). but there's really only two times on-screen where he can't stand someone. one of these is evans in the web of fear, who really just wants to escape and save himself, rather than help everyone else. he's a coward, and jamie calls him out on it with disgust. but most of all, he hates bennik in enemy of the world. the interrogation scene is probably the angriest we ever see him. he hates bennik's callousness, actively threatens him, and says - interestingly - that he 'must have been a nasty little boy'. he's seething through that whole scene.

so the two characteristics that jamie seems to find completely unbearable are - cowardice, and cruelty. and those are the two major tenets of the 'oath' that goes along with the doctor's identity and mission. 'never be cruel, and never be cowardly'.

he's not solely responsible for the person the doctor becomes and the way they end up approaching the universe - those wheels were set in motion long before he arrived, and the doctor themselves provides a lot of the impetus. but it's interesting that jamie arrives just after the doctor's first regeneration, at a time where he seems to be searching for who he is and who he will be - and there's jamie to set a standard, and hold two to it.

[wishfromthesea]

System?? Stuff???

talking about possible system don't look at me

I recently discovered I might be a median system and would like to make a post explaining how I experience it to make sense of things. I'm still questioning, so I'm not claiming I'm actually a system just yet, I have to talk to professionals about this first

• probably OSDD-1a, traumagenic but can't remember trauma I just know it's there because of a lot of stuff

• median, monoconscious, shared memory

• there's definitely different versions of "me". I can often tell I am someone different than I was before. The "mes" are different enough that they have separate names, personality, taste in things, and vibes, but we share thoughts and memory. I experience them all as being "me" when they're fronting, but they feel like separate people when they're not fronting (eg, I am Elysium rn. When Elysium stops fronting, he no longer feels like me, but feels like someone else. When he fronts again, he's me again)

• I dissociate often. I am depersonalized most of the time and feel disconnected from my body, but when things get hard my first reaction is to derealize as well. Often my dissociation feels like someone other than me is experiencing things, or someone other than me just did/said something

• we all have different genders and sexualities, but most and the most active are transmasc. This makes settling on labels very hard. Abrosexual and genderfluid never felt quite right

• Eden seems to be a core of sorts. He's the "base" me. I use Eden also as a collective name, he named himself after it since he's the "main" one

• there's 20+ of me. How many is hard to count, and I commonly get new ones while others go dormant

• most of us in nonhuman. I believe this to be because of my animals (and specifically mammals) special interest. How humanoid we are varies

• I use fursonas/personas/pokesonas/whateversonas as a way to keep track of everyone. Because of our OCs special interest, most of us want to have a sona, and often a way I can tell there's someone new is if I'm increadibly compelled to create a new sona. The sonas are based on what each one feels they should look like, though some are more exact than others

• we have no communication (... probably?) because we're monoconscious. But my inner voice is a bit different depending on who's fronting. We also have no headspace, it's just kind of a black void in there

• I can sometimes see the facets, but usually only who's fronting sees themselves when imagining actions they'd do. Some can't see themselves, and it sometimes doesn't always work. I generally seem to instinctively know vaguely what each facet looks like

• this is all distressing to us. Forming new facets is distressing. Switching is distressing. Blurring is distressing. Not having a cohesive identity is distressing. Not out of any specific reason, our brain seems to just find something inherently wrong with it. We've found it distressing since before finding out we might have this. This isn't something we want, but also we accept it

[noobsomeexagerjunk]

Personal QSMP design hcs and interpretations (PART 1)

1. q!Quackity

ducktaur. predominantly golden yellow feathers and bright orange duck legs

partial heterochromia (dark brown with bits of bluish-grey)

his wear is different depending on which language he is maining at the moment

Eng!Q has an eyebrow scar, calloused hands, and some browning feathers. Wears religious jewelry and warm-colored clothes.

ESP!Q has ear piercings and blue-dyed feathers. Always has a clip-on tie and cool colored clothes.

Post-Tilin death, he either has their ribbon as a necktie (ESP) or belt (ENG)

has a pin of the QSMP logo always on his person

Brushes his feathers before teaching class

2. q!Jaiden

she is the cartoon character reflected by the mc skin, though is nonetheless perceived as human

she magical girl transforms into the vtuber fit whenever she wants to. Most of the time, it's to fight or to protect Bobby

she transforms using a magical brooch that resembles the emblem on her vtuber fit. she can add stuff on the brooch to alter her transformed appearance (like changing the bird wings to butterfly ones, or having a shiny rainbow mode)

she made a smaller, less powerful replica of her brooch for Bobby so he can get into armor much faster

she "draws" things out of her inventory with her fingers in the air (think the spellcasting of the witches in The Owl House, but with different symbols)

When Bobby died, her transformed look takes on a more dark and brooding appearance

3. q!Roier

he's not a spider hybrid but like, an actual Spiderman—literally got bit by a radioactive spider and everything

alternates between his superhero suit and a civilian fit. like jaiden, he transforms between fits superhero style

can fire webs from his hands, has slight spider sense, and also venomous saliva (so i beg of you, do not get head from this man)

wears natural makeup bc he likes to. he darkens it a little when he feels particularly vengeful (this is canon but yk)

the spiderman traits also apply to Melissa, whose dyed lingerie is literally weaved from spider webs

Post-Bobby death, he wears more blacks (both in civilian and superhero fits) and a lot more eyeliner

4. q!Bad

humanoid looking demon. resembles a void-like shadow in extreme emotional states

distinctly has a glowing halo. it has long horns growing out of it + a shadowy demon tail

has his mc skin's hoodie but sleeveless. collared shirts of any color is usually under that + beige khakis, white socks and various sneakers!

His hoodie has a small embroidered symbol of the Order Theoritas, hidden near the collar of the hood

his hair is long and usually tied loosely. wears glasses as well

sharp canines make him look a bit catty

his reaper get-up is well-sewn cursed cloth. wearing the fit makes his halo and tail larger, darker, and more shadowy

there's a block of diamond + an image of skeppy always on his person

He lets Dapper wear the ghost chat bell as a tail accessory

5. q!Spreen

werebear. He turns into a human during sunny daytimes, and is otherwise an anthromorphic bear-man.

black bear, like the mc skin

fashion sense however matches the CC; generally street-looking even with the bulk of armor

canines and claws glow when he's fighting someone in bear mode. he grows them out fighting during his human state

smells like cigarettes

6. q!Slime

a player equivalent to minecraft slime

prefers taking on a humanoid appearance, and has taken it long enough to master recolorization of said state. feels uncomfortable taking any other form as well

experiences pain when shifting (i mean that's also canon but yk)

behaves like a magma cube in extreme negative emotional states. will resemble one if you piss him off enough

he has no actual clothes, he shapeshifts the appearance of clothing. (q!Mariana has noticed, and he doesn't like to think too hard about it) his most external layer is armor and glasses.

he and q!Mariana have each a piece of Juanaflippa's shell on their person

7. q!Cellbit

human. well, not completely according to genetics but is more or less perceived as one.

The CC but wearing the blockman-cubito's fits

wears eyeliner to hide the eyebags. This doesnt work and only makes his eyes more expressive

a shadow looms the upper half of his face whenever he's being super weird and mysterious. It darkens when he's consciously about to do something really bad in a dramatic anime way; this is much more emphasized if he puts on his goggles

he paints his nails and the paint always trails. these glow sailor moon style when he comes into contact with the blood of any living creature

has a caffeine addiction

The chainsaw scars are deep enough that Cellbit doesn't like looking at himself when changing; he forces it though to remember why he's doing anything at all

Taught Richas how to draw the symbol for the Ordo Theoritas. He also has the symbol pressed into the leather of his gloves

8. q!Wilbur

humanoid man of unidentified species. perceived as human.

really is human looking, minus the pointy ears and prismatic irises

wears clear glasses. yellow sweater + sleeveless brown longcoat + grey jeans + black boots

has a black scarf and red beanie both made of wool and embroidered with gold threaded flowers.

always has a guitar on his person. since tallulah entered his life, he's let her put stickers and draw all over it.

They jam together when they can

may or may not have an enchanted singing voice

part 2

[malaierba]

What monster do you want to see the dungeon meshi crew cook up?

Hi pal! Sorry I took so long to answer, I wanted to add pictures to my reply and go through my trusty youkai book to see if something besides my first 3 choices caught my attention (in the end I decided that 3 is such a nice number already, let's not be extra) (you will soon see that i failed step one, this post gets very very extra)

That we haven't seen before? Hmm 🤔

Well, I'm pretty happy with what they eat in canon. Post-canon in true "Toshiro my beloved, I would kill and die to learn more about the pandemonium you call home" fashion, I think there's several yōkai that would be interesting to see cooked!

Yosuzume

Bird yōkai that appear in the night and chirp "chi, chi, chi" like a sparrow, and are said to pass in front of people who walk along mountain trails. In some prefectures it takes the form of a butterfly or a moth. It generally warns travelers of upcoming encounters with mountain dogs or mountain wolves. Often, only one person within a group of travelers can hear them.

Since it's essentially just a bird with supernatural abilities, that's quite an easy hurdle to overcome when it comes to eating, right? Even if it probably WILL give the killers bad luck.

Would be fun to see it as a moth/butterfly though, since THEN we'd get to see the Bug Besties (Falin + Toshiro)'s position on eating bugs.

Ushi-oni

A yōkai from the folklore of western Japan. They usually have an ox's head with sharp upward-curving horns, wicked fangs and a slender tongue, and an oni's torso. Other ushi-oni have a reverse appearance, with an oni's head and an ox's body. Their body is also commonly depicted as spider-like with six legs and long singular claws at the end of each appendage.

They may appear wearing human clothing, or flying with the wings of an insect. They spit poison and enjoy killing and eating humans.

Now THAT'S unsettling, isn't it? I like the challenge of eating an arachnid. It's doubly irk-inducing, because it's a very ugly monster, and also what would the meat be like? Beef? Would it be more insect-like?

If your culture doesn't eat both it's going to be challenging. And even if they do, it's such an odd mix, I think only the most adventurous would dare to take this one on, which is very interesting!

Yamabiko

An echo-spirit depicted as a small goat-like humanoid in a sitting position.

Yamabiko will echo any sound created by humans. They're rare to encounter and even rarer to engage. If someone tries to touch it, they will feel their hand passing through a viscous liquid. If you talk to Yamabiko, it will repeat what the person said before responding. For example: "What is your name?" "What is my name? My name is Yamabiko"

Now on to the other side of unsettling, this little dude is not only not what it appears (viscous? really?? how do you cook that! soup time?) it TALKS.

I know I'm leaning hard on the taboo side of monster eating, but, I mean, would you eat an animal that talks back? Many people think that eating parrots and crows is evil for that very reason, but are they that different from a chicken? Idk! It's interesting to me.

Also!!! I've made this joke before but I low-key really do think that eating the flying hag would fix Toshiro lol

"Mar, It's made of magic and paper" idc eat your trauma to assert your dominance Toshiro do it for me, beloved. High in fiber too, essentially a health food!

Since we're on the topic, I think it'd be very fun if this... Yknow, monster eating business was seen from the perspective of Toshiro + Falin + Namari + Kiki + Kaká + probably someone else though I haven't figured out who. Tade would be cute since I think Toshiro would benefit from being closer to her, enough that he can talk openly to her about... spoilers?

The plot could be that as she's about to go on her Journey Around The World, Falin asks Namari if she wants to tag along to visit Toshiro, since the two of them got along so well in the party.

I imagine Namari would not only have an interest in going to Wa and learning what their weapons are like (Wa is after all inspired in Japan, who is renowned for their swordsmithing & polishing tradition. Maybe they could reference the 10 legendary katana legend too?), she'd be excited to see Toshiro again.

Kind of want Kaka and Kiki to tag along, since they have such a cute dynamic and I quite liked how they were used for exposition. Besides! KikiMari crumbs. Wouldn't it be sweet if Mr. and Ms. Tansu encouraged them to tag along so they can broaden their horizons?

I also kind of want to see them interact with Toshiro? Toshiro and Kaka are probably too similar to be too talkative, but it'd also provide an opportunity for the theme of kinship (prevalent in Toshiro's story) and also just. situational humour around two guys who are reserved. Not many mangakas can pull it off, but Ryoko Kui is definitely one of the few.

And with Kiki, idk I see something there! She has the type of personality that's a good balance of polite and cheeky. And Toshiro's so easy to tease lol. I think they'd have a fun friendship. Also tbh there's my 'toshiro and namari are each other wingmans, its not very good but its what they've got' agenda.

Showing everyone around would be a good opportunity for Toshiro to leave his household and do a little soul-finding himself, too.

Finally, I'm kinda super into the idea of their adventures actually being narrated by Laios, who's reading to Kabru and Marceille and others but mainly them the letters he's receiving from Falin, Toshiro and Namari.

Oh btw, if they're eating yokai it's absolutely because of Falin lol. She gets her way every time, somehow.

[triplesilverstar]

Encounter

Rating: G

Pairing: Vash X F!Reader

CW: Drinking, Time skip, canon typical violence, Awkward flirting, Bad pick up lines

Word count: 1565

A/N: So starting to post my series over here and the first one in it where you meet the infamous Humanoid Typhoon for the first time. More below the divider.

Just about everyone in Jeneora Rock was celebrating, what had been turning into a bleak situation with no chance of a turn around, the plant that had been malfunctioning and causing so much heartache to the town had been fixed.

The stranger that had wandered into town had been able to repair the plant, and repair it for free at that, a Hero. A real windfall for the town that meant there was money for other priorities in keeping the townsfolk alive.

As dusk came and went, the party seemed to keep going and the booze was flowing freely at the diner, said Hero enjoying himself and having a good time. Though one figure sitting at the bar kept grabbing his attention. She’d been there when he first rolled into town that afternoon, and the moment he’d meet her gaze he found himself intrigued. People your age didn’t have eyes like that. He also had a nagging feeling you had something to do with the feeling of being watched he’d had all day.

Having swallowed the last of his latest drink he smiled sliding up beside you at the bar “Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk past you again?” Glancing out of the corner of his eye, the glass you had been raising stopped, your own gaze flicking over to him. He had a good view of your profile from this angle, and he did have to admit he enjoyed what he saw.

“What I believe” the glass was returned to the bar top and your hand spayed out beside it “is none of your business” the scowl on your face was enough to make him take a step back hands up in the air.

“No reason to be so hostile, friend” walking closer again and now leaning on the bar beside you “how about I get you a drink to show there's no hard feelings?”

Rolling your eyes you turn to look straight at him “Sure, I’m having water” he felt the bite in that one. Head hanging down, his hair grazing the bar top, and over the din of the diner heard you sigh. “Is that your response whenever someone doesn’t fall at your feet? So much for the legendary lady killer.” The last part was muttered so quietly he almost missed it.

His head rose, expression neutral as he turned to you again “Pardon?” snorting you turned to face him fully.

“I know who you are” your voice was whisper soft but hearing those words left his blood running cold “Vash the Stampede. And I'm not fooled by the act you put on, a dance and show to hide.” Another sigh escaped you, hand reaching up to scratch at your own hair before turning to look at the booze behind the bar. “But I don’t get you.”

This time you didn’t stop as you took a mouthful of water from the glass, setting it back down “everything I've heard about you, says you're the best gunslinger out there, that you destroy whole towns without a thought. Yet today, you saved this town. Leaves a deal of confusion, got any answers for that?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t judge a book?” a soft smile is gracing his features now, mirrored sunglasses hiding his eyes. You snort, and this time he watches the corners of your lips upturn ever so slightly.

“Maybe. You are a nice payday though” his own expression falls and a grin lights up your own “So. I’ll make you a deal. After what you did today, I won’t try anything for.” Your eyes glance up like you're picturing something in your head “the next week, and within 100 iles of this place. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds a little too good to be true to be honest.” While his tone conveyed his disbelief he still held out his hand “I guess I’ll get to see if the Ghost Sniper is as honest as they say.”

You rolled your eyes again but grasped his hand in return “That is a dumb moniker” this time it was Vash who snorted.

“You do seem to be among the living” You were finishing your own glass as Rosa finally made a turn back towards both of you, interrupting whatever Vash was going to say next. You’d both been lost in the last few moments.

“You two need a refill now that you're done flirting with each other?” you flushed red and started sputtering smacking your chest to dislodge the liquid that had gone the wrong way.

“Sure, I'll have whatever she’s having.”

“Two waters coming up” surprised danced across his face, mouth agape.

“You really are drinking water?” You narrowed your eyes at that, done coughing.

“Why is that such a surprise?”

“I guess I didn’t expect it, is all” his hand was rubbing the back of his head while he laughed.

You smirked at him, taking the new glass “Don’t judge a book” laughter rang out after having his own words thrown back at him. After a few moments of silence Vash left you where you were, off to rejoin the celebrations you seemed to be ignoring. Rosa came back smiling, leaning on the bar across from you.

“What?” you narrowed your eyes at her, that knowing smile making one of your eyebrows raise as she kept silent, shaking her head.

“First time I’ve seen you respond to anyone like that since you rolled into town two weeks ago, quite the chat you two seemed to be having.” Ah, while you liked Rosa, she did seem to like fishing for information, giving the inclination she hadn’t heard what the two of you had been discussing.

“Should I send your breakfast up to his room in the morning?” her attempt at teasing pulling a snort of disdain out of you.

“Absolutely not.” Her face fell at that, her own exasperated sigh escaping, before shaking her head at you.

“Too bad. I think you two would make a good couple, you both seem kinda lonely.” You glance at her before finishing your water and standing up, throwing a few bills on the counter.

“I think you’ve got the wrong idea there, Rosa. I’ll see you in the morning.” Waving goodbye you headed out the door towards the hotel located just above. Hitting the cool air you find yourself shaking your head. You and Vash the Stampede? Yea right.

- Six years later -

“I thought you said no one recognized you?” snapping as you ducked down behind the half buried ship piece outside of town, and sending a glare at the blond next to you.

“These guys weren’t in town earlier! They must have followed me after I left” high pitched and desperate, Vash was reloading his pistol, peeking out around the meager cover you shared.

“Regardless, they’re here now!” You flop over on your side, looking through your scope before Vash pulls you back in by your feet. “I counted six. How many did you see?”

“I counted nine while running.”

Nodding you crouch beside him “how do you wanna handle this?” He seemed to be in thought before giving you a lopsided smile.

“I think it’s time we left.”

“Genius decision.” Snorting at him and throwing a thumb over your shoulder “are we asking nicely or assuming they’ll just let us walk away?” You could fill a canteen with the amount of sarcasm dripping from your mouth.

“Still have any of those smoke bombs left?” you nod at him “Here’s the plan, you throw down some cover and we split up. They’ve set up to cover both sides, so I’ll go one way and, most likely, they'll follow after me. Allowing you to make a clean break and grab our toma to run off. We’re not far from Jeneora Rock so we can meet up there, at least as long as you don’t get lost again.”

“Why do I feel like that’s a dig at me?”

“Mayfly, you can get lost in a town with one street.” The tips of your ears feel like they’re on fire. “That's why you get the toma, if you get lost he’ll take you to the nearest town, which as long as you go far enough in the opposite direction from here will be Jeneora Rock.”

“Well that’s going to be a blast from the past.” Your mind quickly flashes to a feisty diner owner, “Ya know, Rosa thought we’d make a good couple.”

“Seriously?” His face falls at your comment “Now isn’t the time to be reminiscing Mayfly”

“Yea, yea, I’m just thinking she’s gonna tease the daylight out of me for telling her she was wrong back then.” You prep the smoke bomb, grasping it and looking to Vash for his signal to throw it with enough force to activate it.

He leans forward, a chaste peck pressed to your forehead “See you in a few days, try and stay out of trouble.” A smirk graces your lips, and you shake your head.

“Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?” He smiles, pushing his mirrored lenses up his face and turning from you, he gives you the signal. You hurl the smoke bomb, and after a few moments of hearing them scramble after Vash you run for the toma. Fingers crossed you don’t actually get lost on the way to your meetup location. Again.

[anachronistic-falsehood]

SO. ON THE TOPIC OF LOSS OF AUTONOMY. i am having the analysis brainworms now i hope u dont mind me going off in ur inbox. hi :]

there is something to be said about how vash's name is used against him constantly. that loss of who he even is as a person. i think about this so much. his name, his very identity is taken away from him. just the mere mention of the name vash the stampede is enough to send an ENTIRE town into a panic. it happens so much and its DEVASTATING to me. hes been labelled a monster across the entire world, and people who stick by his side after hearing his name are few and far between. theres been so much fear tacked onto his name, so much so that OTHER outlaws have used it on multiple occasions to make themselves more powerful. using his name to commit crimes that the real vash would be horrified to even consider. power in names and all that.

vash even. leans into it himself at a certain point. in order to protect the people of augusta he runs through the city shooting bullets into the air and solidifying his image of a deranged killer in the pursuit of. saving everyone. the only way theyll listen to him is if they think hes going to kill them all. if theyre afraid of him. theres also the part in hang fire (? i think its that one) where hes walking through the halls of the sand steamer singing about killing people in order to scare the bandits into not hurting the hostages.

and then you think about. eriks. how lina and her grandma took him in and accepted them as part of his family. how the town around them accepted him only because they had no idea who he actually was. he was a good guy... up until they learned he was vash. and then we get the conversation between the two men in the bar talking about how they should chase him out of town, despite living around him and knowinf him and seeing how good he is for . two years.

but lina and her grandma still accept him after that. theyre one of the only people besides milly/meryl/wolfwood who genuinely love and care abt him despite his name. they still want to keep him safe, grandma asks wolfwood to protect him and keep him out of trouble, even after learning hes the legendary outlaw gunman. because shes seen the true vash ans doesnt let the name scare her.

aughhh im rambling now i probably should have made this into my own post but this makes me SO fuckign crazy dude . give me ur thoughts id love to hear them.

I. YEAH. YEAH. OH MY GOD. Like. nothing is his own anymore. His name is used against him, his face is plastered on wanted posters. There is nothing about himself that he can truly call his. Not even his Plant powers! Because those are used against him time and time again by Knives in EVERY ADAPTATION!!!!

Like. Vash is no longer the name of a kid who once argued with his brother and laughed with his mother and celebrated his birthday and rolled around in grassy fields. It's the name of an outlaw who will kill at the drop of a hat. It's the name of an out-of-control human natural disaster who's leveled cities. If he doesn't even have his name, then what part of himself is really himself anymore?

AND THAT'S WHY I LOVE ERIKS! He finally has something of his own! He's got a name that attached to no one, and a life where he can settle down and stay out of the public eye. He finally has something that is truly his. And no one lets him keep that except for Lina and her grandma.

This guy really has no control over his own life doesn't he!!! He's a passive character in the story of his own life!!! He has nothing of his own, no identity past "humanoid typhoon" because everything about his identity has been stripped from him and morphed into something he's not. He has no say in anything in his life, not even who he is as a person, AND IT DRIVES ME BONKERS N FUCKING YONKERS!!!!