#qsmp x xcom

[rabbit-harpist]

digital painting of mike based on @factorialsotherfandoms’ qsmp xcom au.

feat. robot rat and mysterious stains (paint? chemicals? i like how the colors look)

[barbietoiles]

Uffffff yeah ok that was hard to read. Ouchie. Epic infodump 👍 rip spreen you were the best

Heres the ramon xcom backstory ask to motivate us both to do the thing <3 what could have possibly happened to my beautiful baby boy made in heaven by god himself?

- barbietoiles

Okay! Ramón hours (and that's the one time this infodump you're getting the accent as UK keyboard and I have to number-code it every time)

As per standard for egg backstories, contact warnings for child abuse. As less standard, this one has major (but qsmp-canonical) character death too

So, Ramon. Ramon comes in a set with Dapper and Leonarda, because do not seperate the eggy triplets. Of all of the eggs, these three are the only ones who have not been found to be defective, or for other reasons discarded or repurposed by the aliens. As such, they continue living in the main alien base. As high-quality bodies, the three of them are being slowly raised and trained - A1 as an example is low-quality and so speed grown, but this leads to some problems such as improper muscle mass distribution and neurological stuff not quite forming in the right shape.

So, um, quick side note incase you didn't catch this bit in my prior rambles - eggs in this setting are lab-developed human-alien(-sometimes also animal) hybrids, specifically 'grown' so they can be possessed by one of the senior members of the big bad alien race in control of the whole thing. These aliens have an incurable muscle wastage plague which is killing them, but a lot of brain-based magic, so are building themselves custom bodies with immunity to the plague that they can take for their own. High quality ones are custom made to a specific senior alien's requests, then allowed to just develop from babies to adults, at which point the alien then possesses them, consuming the soul native to the body and thus murdering the egg in the process. The success rate is pretty low as they have very high standards, but yk.

So! Back to the point.

Ramon, Dapper, and Leo are entirely unaware of their intended purpose. They live in... well, the nature of the base I do a bit want to keep secret, but they live there and are being raised mostly by human test subjects from previous experiments. The aliens don't have time for that, and because humans are both immune to the plague *and* the potential for brain magic, form the majority of egg DNA.

But these adults do grow old and die, as its been a long time since the aliens brought more back - at which point its alien babysitters which the three absolutely run circles around.

It's not happy childhood exactly, but think Promised Neverland style children being unaware they are being raised for the slaughter sort of thing. Hobbies and interests and learning are encouraged, as is sports and such, because it makes their bodies higher quality for the later possession! And so on.

This, however, all changes when the aliens capture a very specific human.

A bear-hybrid by the name of Spreen.

With the base being to the alien's knowledge... well someone has escaped before, but they tightened security since! So it's inescapable *now*. So the aliens just come and get Spreen when he's needed for torture or experiments, but otherwise Spreen is now responsible for the kids.

Spreen, kidnapped and tortured... Look, it's not a good situation, you know? He does not cope well with any of this, and it's usually the kids on the short end of the stick. He tries to be a reasonable adult about it all but, again, kidnapped and tortured and xcom!q!spreen has never been the best at keeping his frustrations in check. As Roier can tell you. He maybe could have been a fine parent on his own terms, but absolutely not on these ones.

And that.. it's not fine, but it's fine.

And then Chayanne and Bobby get rescued.

Now Chayanne and Bobby are in no way part of this group, but their rescue from their situation sparks *ideas* in the heads of the aliens. They notice how those two have psychically bonded to some of the main characters and... well... the aliens are *curious*.

And curious aliens means experimentation.

And the specific experiment?

Spreen and Ramon are forcibly soul-bonded to each other.

Now. A soul bond can be great. Telepathy, emotional awareness, in an eggs' case easier feeding for psychic powers development... But a forced soul bond? A soul bond naturally develops through being compatible plus shared traumatic and stressful experience over a prolongued time, or an egg can form one willingly, or instinctively if sufficiently injured or starved. (human-to-human and human-to-egg both work slightly differently)

So how do they force Spreen and Ramon to bond? Well the aliens aren't sure how it works, so prolongued physical and mental torture for both of them. Also forcing Ramon to call Spreen papa, because they caught wind of Bobby calling Roier that and think maybe it could be a part of it.

And it works.

But please consider that Spreen was really struggling already. And now he has an about 10 year old inside his head, constantly. Neither Ramon nor Spreen know how to keep emotions or memories or thoughts away from each other, but neither do they know how to share them. The two get forcibly mentally entangled, and can pick themselves from the mess but cannot keep themself to themself.

So now Ramon is different from his triplets. They try help, but also... what can they even do?

And being linked? Ramon can hear every frustration in Spreen's mind, every time he steps out because the kids annoyed him and he needs to go break something and calm down. Every secret Spreen has ever had, the ways he regrets what he did to Roier, the way he misses Missa, the horrors that were done to the Quackities...

... Just how much despite it Spreen does actually care, despite everything, and the fact Ramon is his favourite of the three.

It fucks Ramon up. It fucks Spreen up. The natural bonds are much better shielded from accidental memory and thought spillage, but there's basically no gap for Spreen and Ramon. For a kid? Utterly horrifying.

Now Ramon has some experience - the eggs all have some level of psychic connection to each other - but the thing with Spreen? Nothing like what he has with his siblings.

And the experiments carry on, testing the nature and limits of the soulbond.

Meanwhile, Dapper and Leo are sneaking around, the aliens distracted by their experiments. In their sneaking... They discover their true purpose.

And they do not want to die.

And they do not want their brother to die.

They... sort of know how to leave, but only sort of.

So one night, Dapper goes to Ramon's cell while Leo gathers supplies, getting him up. So the three of them can run away because gdi they're still triplets and besties both.

But waking Ramon wakes Spreen.

Though to be fair, Spreen is 200000% down for getting the fuck out of here, and is very willing to do things like grab things too high for them, use being all black fur to help them hide in the dark, etc.

They make it to the portal room.

Ramon gets out his tech goggles and starts trying to override the portal controls, so they can escape.

He nearly gets it.

The guards discover them missing, and find them. Start a gunfight. Which... is mostly the four cowering from bullets until the portal turns on.

Ramon activates it.

Guard shoots at the kids as they run.

Spreen jumps in the way, and is fatally shot.

Ramon knows the exact moment that he dies, because their souls are fused, and so bits of himself are being either torn off or dying beside him. It's... Ramon can do *nothing* but scream.

Leo manages to grab him and pull him through the portal, and Dapper manages to close it - at least for now - on the other side.

It is, thankfully, a long way from where they were - the strength of soulbonds lessens with physical distance. While this can be extremely difficult and traumatising for people... Ramon's bond was already traumatic, and the distance is enough to pull his soul just far enough from Spreen's that he doesn't actually die. Just. You know. Horrible trauma from experiencing death itself. Plus *everything*.

The triplets just... Ramon is still really sick and needs recovery time from this, so they hide themselves as best they can.

And stay hidden until some humans come by - one of whom, Fit, is very very familiar... not to Ramon precisely, but to Spreen's memories that Ramon accidentally saw...

(Side note - Ramon will not call anyone dad or papa or similar for a good long time, because of being forced to use it for Spreen. He also clings extremely hard to Fit, not just for familiarity but also because the wasteland nature of where Fit grew up means Fit's personal psychic field is *so* fucked up its literally impossible to telepathy with him. So, Ramon can get just enough of the bond to keep feeding psionic energy and not stop growing and developing because of a lack of it, without risking ever having the brain sharing thing.)

(Obvious recovery for Ramon goes from the fic already written where he tells Fit Fit will never be dad. Then one set after the aliens are gone where he nervously calls Pac pai [this is an au where everyone is in a polycule so I can have all my ships gdi. the fitpac needs more obvious but yk what bits i do and don't write get mess]. Then calling Fit dad. Then extremely nervously also soulbonding with Pac, one where the telepathy thing is plausible [though Pac is very practiced having both Mike and Richas in his head already]. Partly so he doesn't only feed from Fit. Feeding from one person psionically won't harm anyone and works, but if anything happens... Well Fit gently encouraged it, just in case anything ever happens to him. Just like Ramon encourages Fit to have many relationships, just incase he dies.)

[rabbit-harpist]

qsmp x xcom doodles

from @factorialsotherfandoms’ xcom au. loosely, i haven’t gotten to studying the armor yet, but the character descriptions were inspiring. these are very much doodles i played with, not super polished, but i thought you’d want to see them anyway.

first, a missa i like a lot and a jaiden.

playing with the missa skull tattoos. i love the idea, but i also tried to shade with colored pencils for the first time in a while and it’s rough.

pac e mike!!

good colors. he’s my favorite of this bunch.

quackity! with fluffy feather-ear things. i realized i actually don’t know how to draw a jumpsuit.

thanks for the references!!! it’s so much. i’ve read through it several times and it’s just lovely. need to draw cat cellbit and bagi at some point, and figure out roier’s spider eyes. want to figure out the armor, too.

[rabbit-harpist]

*bounces* Tag reply! Yeah Chayanne was already with the Assassin by the time Tallulah was created. She was kept at the main facility for a while, as maybe her connection to Chayanne meant she could connect to some new eggs! When this failed... Well, lesser ranked Elders don't need hearing when they majority telepathy anyway, and she has /some/, so its a workable flaw.

Asthma was discovered later, and everyone needs to breathe, and that's when she was given to the Hunter as bait. And, well, we know how that goes. But at least Flippa and Tilin were there too so they weren't alone. And also Chayanne was doing assassin training so could help with hiding (sneaking around to kill people) and gets injured enough he could talk her through basic first aid and that. But it's still all only telepathy. And horrifying for everyone.

She doesn't!!! Theoretically she has a number code, but that's not much. They just all call each other brother and sister and sibling and if they see each other there's more nicknames. In the fic Tallulah has only had a name for about five minutes! She's not sure what it is! Or means! She's scared and confused but Chayanne said she could trust his Dad (ie Philza, who was on the mission she got picked up) so she's trying.

Chayanne can promise it and it's /mostly/ true. It's after the attack on the airship, at least, so he's never going to fail in it. The ship they live on was attacked by the Hunter previously. The eggs got out okay, hidden and protected, but it was scary and Chayanne spent the whole time by the door with a knife. Because it was the kids and Quackity, and Chayanne with a knife is better defense than Quackity with a pistol (which Bobby stole to do better).

But! Chayanne and Tallulah will never have to be seperate again. Not unless they want to be. And! And she's getting to learn what hugs are!!! Which is very very important. Missa hugs are Chayanne's favourite thing, but Chaynne hugs are Tallulah's.

(Tallulah is like 5/6, Chayanne is 10/11. Well Chayanne is in all means. Tallulah is actually about 8 but her development was halted and she's been starved of the stuff the eggs need to develop all that time. It's... Bad but not the worst. The worst is Trump who appears around 2 but is only a few weeks younger than Chayanne. A1 has the opposite problem where she was forced to grow too fast and is like 3 months old but looks closer to 19. Yaaaay upset chronology. But sorry I'm rambling is the ramble okay I'll stop now before I get into the consequences of either growing too fast or not growing at all. Not growing is thankfully the easier to fix. Just fucking feed the baby regularly.)

please do ramble about eggs they are the eggs ever. the names thing… of course it makes sense that the federation didn’t give them their names, but since in the backstory pieces you’ve done for them they are referred to by name (of course, that’s how we recognize them) i just didn’t think of it. my girl tallulah has gone through too much. her and chay together… his hugs are her favorite thing…

[factorialsotherfandoms]

(XCOMau this would just be cute but Cellbit insisted on a lore dump and angsty internal monologue)

It is ten o'clock in the morning, and Cellbit feels barely awake. Roier is away visiting friends, Pac and Mike are holed up in their lab, Felps is... somewhere, doing something, he is sure. Bagi is about, playing in the mud with the children while Cellbit blearily sips at his coffee.

Give him another ten minutes, and he can use Pepito as bait to get Bobby and Richarlyson into a bath. Empanada is there, too, sat on her mother's shoulders more for the height advantage than the claimed attempt not to get mud on her petticoats.

That's four of the five children of their community, but where- he knows she has a tendency to turn invisible when stressed, a side effect of her genetics, but it shouldn't be that stressful, he thought-

A little hand tugs on his trousers.

Cellbit looks down, and let's his heartrate calm.

"Hope," he smiles at her. "Is everything okay?"

She reaches up her arms, and a thought nudges against Cellbit's mental shields. He puts his coffee down and reaches back, scooping the tiny one up and into his lap.

Pepito is, he thinks, physically a little younger than her. Pepito is so much less frail, though, roughing and tumbling like any child, rather than riddled with bruises and breaks and exhaustion from the slightest knock.

Cellbit loves her anyway, just as she loves him, and planting trees, and decorating the castle or Felps' hut, and helping run buckets of water up and down from the well. At least she is a quiet child anyway - if Richarlyson were sick in the same ways, he doesn't think he would manage.

Sick, ill, frail... Cellbit hates all the terms for it, what they mean for his little girl, but the one he hates most is the Federation's label of 'defective'. Both of the children who were his first - Hope and Richarlyson both - were labelled with it, like so many of the others. They are not defective, they are children, just children who needed to be loved.

Hope must feel his anger, for she looks at him with big eyes.

"Not you," he tells her. "Never you, you're perfect, my little girl."

Her doubt sounds in Cellbit's mind. She offers another thought, of herself, and Pomme, and Tallulah.

It takes him a second.

Ah. She's asking if her sisters can come visit.

There are already five children for him and Bagi to look after, two more... well, he needs to speak to Philza anyway. And whichever of the French wish to come, they are always welcome.

"If their parents come too," he tells her. "Tia Bagi and I can't watch seven of you."

The smile he gets is bright but small, before she pulls up her legs and curls against his chest.

Cellbit... he wonders, sometimes, if she doesn't remember something of her rescue. She was too starved, too abused, to unwell to even approach consciousness, a tiny, dwindling flicker of life in an otherwise deserted cell. And yet... every time she sits against him, she always curls up the same way - head on his right shoulder, ear to his collar bone and face turned in, legs curled so her left side presses against his torso, arms limp in his lap.

It is exactly how he picked her up, before, how he tucked her safely against himself and took her away.

He kisses the top of her head, and already she is half way to sleep. It worries him, it always worries him, how her stamina is so thin and her body so weak. Doctor Ruiz says it is unfortunately predictable, after six years of near total neglect - not even getting the food the other rejected children did. If she were human, Hope would be dead years ago. As she is not...

Nobody can tell if she will keep improving, or if this is her life forever. Nobody knows if this was the condition she was cast aside for, or a mark of the neglect. Nobody knows what tomorrow brings, only that they still have a today.

It is not the end of the world, though. It is not a death sentence, and not a crime; Felps' condition is different, but in that regard they are the same. Just because they both need more rest does not make their waking hours mean any less. Neither does it make them any less precious, or loved, or mean that that Cellbit will not perfectly happily curl up with either - both - of them in a pile of pillows for hours on end.

"Would you like a story?" He asks his daughter, knowing how she fears the oncoming dark, how terrified she is that any time she sleeps he might abandon her again.

A nod against his neck, and Cellbit melts at the progress to have found something that she loves, something she agrees to - asks for, sometimes - outside of her sister.

"Alright" he tells her. "Story and a nap, and when you wake up your sisters will be here."

Triplets, two rejected for their disabilities, the third given away simply because her sisters were "flawed" and their creators worried about a "contaminated batch". Richarlyson, too, with a missing leg, and Flippa's eyesight and Bobby's temper and Chayanne simply not being sonically adept... it goes on and on and on and Cellbit hates the Federation somehow even more than before, now they have decoded the documents on their children.

Calm, calm, calm, they're already dead and he's a little one to help to sleep.

Bagi has Empanada and the boys, he has little Hope. It is fine, it is fine, they are all going to be fine.

"Once upon a time there was a princess who lived in a beautiful castle," he tells her. "The princess had three brothers, two sisters, and a great many cousins and siblings and friends. The princess was kind and gentle and beloved by all, but, one day, an evil witch came up with a curse..."

[factorialsotherfandoms]

Hi! I just found your qsmp xcom au and I’m absolutely in love. I’ve been a fan of the game for years now and I’ve always thought it would make a good au but very rarely found fics of it, especially for a fandom I actually know and enjoy :) The way you write pac and mike especially is just so. Aaaaaaaa! If I didn’t already like them I surely would by now. I’ve actually been inspired by your au to try writing one for my own mcyt fandom, and I was wondering if you had any advice for doing a playthrough? I like to consider myself decent at the game, but I’m certainly not an expert. If there’s any settings you’d recommend or tricks to making the game more easily translated into fic I’d love to hear it!

Ah hi! Hello! Someone who has also played it!!! I definitely have an utterly normal and reasonable number of hours in this game

I'm really glad you enjoy it! And lmao I've enjoyed Pac and Mike for a while, but it really was in writing them for the au that they took over my brain. Kinda wish I had more with them, as I'm kinda trying to ration myself so I still have more them-focused stuff to write later, you know? It's a silly-huge project as, well, you know how little of the canon plot I've managed to actually write in the 100,000+ words (minus notes file) so far ^^;

Oh that'd be cool! I don't know so many of them, but yeah! It'd be really neat to see more (I recently got into Ordem and I keep having to slap myself from starting another au ^^;). It's... actually the second one I did, funnily enough - years ago I also had a Fire Emblem: Fates one going but err... Well I might have been a dumbass and written straight to ao3 drafts so I lost everything but some sketches for that.

Advice wise... I mean the main one is play it on the settings you enjoy? It is a long game, especially if like me you have DLC on when you play. Potentially longer still depending on if you mod it or not.

This is just some rambling I guess.

Do you want to deal with character death? If no, play it on an easier setting. If yes, play it on a harder one. Feel free to save-scum away as needed! Theoretically save scumming on harder still means no death but higher injury rate, but I'm bad enough at the game that happens whenever

Similarly, are you thinking more plot or more true to gameplay? If like me you're story more than accuracy when writing, and have the correct stuff installed to, consider increasing the avatar project counter and turn limits. It gives you more flexibiltiy to do non-optimal but amusing things. Like me not letting Pac and Mike split up, or making Philza occasionally running off like he's a ranger instead of anything sensible for a specialist to be doing.

Make a list of all the characters in your fandom in advance, even if you think you won't need it. You will thank me when you're 50 missions in, having to use this random major you picked up from a scan 3 days ago, and you're sat on the party loadout screen desperately trying to remember who you haven't used yet so you can customise them.

Take notes. No, more notes than that - I took what I thought were good notes, and still find myself wanting more details. This was actually easier on my old laptop where loading back to the ship after each mission took 35 minutes as I could type proper mini reports on my phone in that time. This... did not happen this time oops. My notes are a mess. The ones I published are the *tidied* ones.

That said, if something would work better for plot reasons? Just change it. You're writing a story once you sit down to write, and sometimes RNG sucks for that. Different character should have been shot for drama? Someone else should get to kill one of the Chosen as you linked their backstory in? Want more Avatars and them to be a bigger deal chatty wise? Just go for it.

What, if any, details from the original universe do you want to bring over? For me this was an after playing it thing, but it's worth thinking about. For example, do you want to keep potions, or are you using medkits? In the former case, how does that intersect with the worldbuilding? For QSMP working out how the eggs came in was one of the hardest bits, but I knew I both wanted them and didn't just want to make them units. Wanting the eggs and deciding they were ADVENT experiments (well Federation here) also influenced who went on missions. I didn't assign which eggs where (beyond Memory, A1, and Trump) until later, but I made sure that for all eggs with a combatant parent said parent went on at least one facility or chosen base mission. The exception to this is actually Tilin, as Luzu comes into the plot later (see my note about make a damned list of characters lmao), and both Quackities are non-com.

Actually that wise, the biggest question is what you do about the Commander, and their importance in getting through and into the final mission. For me, I'm using the eggs for that. For you? Who knows.

Are you doing fics before and after and off mission? If yes er I knew it'd be a big project but it spiralled out of control on me oops. Also… its not something that tends towards main characters, but you're unlikely to be able to truly keep it ensemble. Make sure to bring at least one fave on important missions, otherwise it'll suck to write them.

Maybe have a think about some character stuff before you start? Not everyone, unless you're like that, but having an idea for at least your favourites and plot-relevant people helps. Are you replacing Central, Shen, and Tygan with people from your fandom? Then you need to not use the people you replace them with as units. What about the chairman? (Early story for me his job is being done partially by Cellbit, then he's written out entirely later on). Are there specific classes you want people as? Less important for the first four, but something like PsiOps takes a bit of arranging. Are you willing to wait for the GTS for them, or are you fighting RNG? Are there any specific introductions you want? What does this need? (I knew I wanted Pac and Mike not to be there at the start of the game - I should write that huh - and their entrance to be dramatic. This meant I had to wait for an appropriate mission before I could adjust units and 'recruit' them. I actually had them premade and classed using the GTS, just not being used until I got a good mission for them. This ended up being... Well, if I write it people will see. It's on the to do list, but I need followup from the first Avatar kill first. Adjust where you need to of course, but it's easier to adjust something that already has the vibes).

If you premake your units, it doesn't necessarily remember your class preferences, and also it'll populate the long list of units you can buy before the units from say scanning or mission rewards. I just customised mine after i got them, but this does mean that my screenshots from the very first mission aren't usable (and in my notes I wrote using default names then fixed them). The first 4 characters are always 1 of each class, but I've yet to find a way to force them into specific classes. Consider that.

You will find yourself filling in worldbuilding and plot gaps. I'm sorry. I was adding stuff with bond mechanics (most of which i dropped) and

As for what I played on err... rookie (I can play up to hard, but am squishy and didn't want MCD to handle), double length avatar project (could fuck around), variable grenade damage on (I just like it), tutorial off (Jane Kelly was going to spoil all my character balancing, though I've still made reference to that mission in places), Lost&Abandoned on (I wanted a normal set of 4 to start and also already knew Bagi and Walter Bob were taking those roles), extended mission timer (see the messing about note)... basically I put it on the chillest settings possible so I could worry about in-character type stupidity rather than the complexities of the missions. Someone did frag someone at least once, though. Can't remember who, but it happened.

Um... Okay brain ran out. If you have questions ask away? I definitely have a brain today kinda honest. Also I played this back in like September so memory is a bit patchy, but see the note about considering doing another in another fandom lmao.

[factorialsotherfandoms]

Recursive fic circles? Recursive fic circles. guestcom2 on ao3 wrote a fic based on my xcomau, and now I write a fic in my au based on their fic...

TW: memory problems, drowning, mind control, minor past oc death, q!Forever mentioned very briefly, referenced previous torture

Felps does not remember anything.

Not from those ten years, at least; he was frozen, 'inactive', held in suspension of body and mind while his nervous system was used as a computer processor. That's what Aypierre says, at least, and Felps is inclined to believe him.

It feels true, at the very least: in one memory he is in the old control room. There is a party going on, a celebration of finally taking done of the large enemy vessels - mothership, they called it then, but they know so much better now. Pac and Mike were gone, Forever was drinking and socialising, Cellbit... Cellbit was antsy, so Felps stuck to his side. Laughter and delight, and the comms team hugging each other while the mission flies back.

And then...

Then there is Leticia, and her eyes turn Tazercraft blue, and before anyone knows what is happening she has put a bullet through Commander dos Santos' skull. Cellbit could do nothing for the possessed back then, not other than shoot them.

And they could not shoot them all when they were outnumbered five to one, and the bodies they wore were their colleagues', if not their /friends/.

Even if Felps had never put down his gun.

There is a fight, and an explosion, and Matthias grabs Felps by the throat. He struggles, he fights back, but his injuries, and being suffocated...

The last thing he remembers is Cellbit screaming his name - before rubble falls and knocks him to the floor.

Cellbit does not get up, and the next thing Felps knows it is ten years later, in a strange and unfamiliar place, and one friend is sobbing into his chest while three others are missing - presumed dead - and reality does not quite fit.

And Felps?

Felps remembers nothing. He knows that he remembers nothing, that he was frozen in time - in a coma, unaging as well as unthinking - for ten. Fucking. Years.

Except...

Except that while Felps has no /memories/, there are little things.

When he's handed an alien datapad, he can navigate it more easily than even Tubbo. Instinctively he knows every inch of the software, navigating around and pulling up what they need without even thinking about it - if he thinks about it, he cannot do it any more.

Felps does not remember where or how he learnt it - maybe it's just programmed in a way logical to him?

But it happens again, and again, and again.

He finds himself reading alien texts with ease, unable to pronounce or translate them but understanding what they mean. His grasp of tactics is improved, better able to judge the moments of friend and foe in aid of bringing people safely home. He knows the names of flowers he's never seen in eighteen human languages and four alien ones, and yet not his own.

Felps does not remember anything, it's just... It's just little things.

Little things, like how he hears screams, the screams of people he's never met - begging for mercy and help and release in languages he does not know.

Or when reviewing footage he sees a recording of a Federation worker, and instantly knows what they were doing four years ago, in intimate detail, down to how many bullets it took them to kill his new colleague's friends.

Or how it feels to break a neck - to have your neck be broken.

He keeps silent, he does not tell, he drags his hands through his hair and tries and tries and tries to bring the memories to mind - but just as Aypierre promises, they are not there.

It's not memory, not really, not properly.

It's...

Iron Mouse knows, because she caught him out - she calls it a stain on his soul. Doctor Ruiz knows, because you have to tell your doctor these things - she calls it trauma, both say his brain is just desperately trying to fill in the blanks. Aypierre knows, because Aypierre is a brain scientist who was also chipped, so if anyone understands he will - he calls it just filling in the blanks, says that there is no chance of Felps having been conscious enough to dream, let alone to remember.

He doesn't tell Cellbit.

If his best friend doesn't know already, then he does not want to worry him.

If his best friend doesn't know already, then it's better this way.

If his best friend doesn't know already, then there's no need to make Cellbit think he failed.

Not when he did anything but, when this it would be at worst inconsequential and at best a useful failure.

It is just that sometimes... Sometimes Felps feels a wire in his skull, and another in his spine, his limbs withered and chained as though he can move them. He is in agony, and pain, and his very being rejects itself in a desperate attempt to expel the devices feeding from his nerves.

Sometimes Felps dreams of a fluid too viscous to be oil in his lungs, of drowning for hours upon hours upon days upon years, and never, ever being allowed to die. Of being surrounded on all sides, of screaming for help and nothing coming out. Of a pitch dark nothingness, of being alone in pain and the dark. Of begging for death, and being granted no release.

... Sometimes, in the dark, half-asleep... Sometimes, Felps wakes, and there is a crushing hole in his chest, one that screams for his friends - his family. It is a gaping open wound weeping and bleeding and refusing to scar, destruction and loneliness and desperation incarnate, carved into his very soul.

He stops sleeping alone, and does not mention it - how can he claim to have missed his friends, to have a part in their loneliness, when does not remember ever being alone?

Just smile, play it off, do not think - at most it is just glimpses, anyway. If Felps were to add up every strange feeling or flash he has had, it still would not total a whole hour.

Less than an hour in ten years?

That does not count at all.

It does not count, because he says it doesn't, and reality may be fuzzy but he knows it cannot be real.

And then...

One day, in the archive, there is Cellbit, and there is Philza, and the two are discussing a mission - perhaps even a clue. Felps captured Philza for Cellbit, but mission complete he steps aside. He means to leave them be, to curl up in the blankets, to rest, to wait for his best friend in all the worlds to be done.

Except...

Philza passes him a sheet of paper that Cellbit has drawn on, sketched out what he saw - what Philza heard.

"Exthaldor," he says, without even thinking. "I don't recognise her, but they call themselves Exthaldor. She's dressed like a mid-ranked bureaucrat."

He looks up, sees horror and fascination in Cellbit's eyes - sees a pity born of intimate familiarity in Philza's.

"I don't-"

His breath picks up.

"You saw it in a datapad," Cellbit tells him.

"Maybe," Felps replies, grasping at straws as ash settles on his tongue. "I read a lot of them, and my memory is kinda shitty."

He did not read it in a datapad; if he did, Cellbit would know it too.

"I'm getting shots," Philza butts in, a hand on each of their shoulders to draw attention from each other, and onto himself. "If I'm explaining how /I/ know those fuckers, I'm doing it drunk."

"Are you sure-" Cellbit starts, but by the time he has found a question, Philza is already gone.

Instead he turns back to Felps, holds his hand as they wait for the panic to calm, and the viscous, terrible liquid to leave Felps' lungs.

(It won't, it never will; it isn't there, and Felps was never conscious to feel it so why-?)

But it's fine, it's fine, it's just a few words, and a newfound ability with technology, and his mind getting overactive imagining what his captivity must have been like, and intrusive thoughts trying to sympathise with horrors he missed, and- and- and Aypierre tells him he cannot remember those ten years, as every part of his brain was being written on and overwritten like an abused hard drive; the fact Felps remembers /before/ is a surprise enough itself.

So it must be, it must have been something he read in a datapad.

He squeezes Cellbit's hands a little tighter.

It must have been, it must have been, it's the only logical explanation...

And it is not like they are real memories, anyway; there are no words, no thoughts, no context - just pain, and glimpses, a few words in other languages and a deep, deep longing in his soul. Nothing useful, nothing concrete even, just flashes of momentary inspiration and an impression of long hours of suffocating both literal and otherwise.

It's not memories, it's just feelings, just his brain playing tricks on him, his flesh remembering things he cannot, some programming matching his oddities, muscle memory basically! It's just-!

Well, the alternative doesn't matter, does it?

Because Felps remembers nothing of those ten years; the alternative is too terrible impossible to consider.

[factorialsotherfandoms]

WIP ask game again!! “xcomau Pac & Mike illegally and traumatically obtain their first (and only) legal job circa a year after "leaving" prison” illegal and traumatic job acquisition my beloved. what are the boys getting up to?

hehehehehe thank you curly for asking the thing I was baiting you to ask me even if you've already seen the WIP <3

This is a fic in which the boys have a terrible time! They are mostly getting up to crimes! Crimes including theft. And grievous bodily harm. You know. The usual. But they only escaped prison a few months ago, and they'd reeeeally like to stay low enough profile to not get arrested again, you know?

And I'll put the rest of the ramble and also a snippet under the cut so people can like judge for themselves spoilers. But then again it's backstory fic so spoilers basically is meaningless woo!

So. Pac and Mike are homeless, doing their thing, living low profile in an abandoned warehouse at the docks. As they do. They're not *healthy*, but they're getting by. Pac's shitty prosthetic badly needs replacing, Mike has plans, but no materials or workshop, you know all their usual problems. For sake of being warm and also their natural curiosity, they get fake student IDs just good enough to trick the electronic door locks and hand out in the uni library with so many science books, and make use of their showers (they found some old thrown out ones and via more traditional breaking and enterting got them reactivated). When feeling rich the laundrette. You know, that sort of thing.

And then shit happens. Shit here means aliens. Aliens first drop a device spewing a gas designed to knock people out (the aliens need you alive), so they can then inject people with a poison that causes them to become hosts to new aliens, which hatch when you die (this poison *is* fatal if untreated in most cases, unlike the knock out gas which is only fatal if you're unlucky or get overdosed - the babies need enough poison in enough of your body so your heart still needs to be beating for a good few minutes. As an aside, later on they just chase down and infect people, early on it's knock out first for larger numbers. Also some cities get zombie gas instead. Second aside! Obviously very young and old and people with lung conditions or heart conditions tend to die from the knockout gas anyway, but so do avians - bird people in this AU *usually* have a weakness to airborn toxins).

Pac and Mike are chilling in their abandoned warehouse when this goes down, get close enough to see, and then decide to fuck off. When the gas reaches them - it's a gas it spreads - the aliens needing hosts are already clambering around and Pac and Mike don't know what they are, but they do see them stabbing people. Realising they won't be conscious long, they duck into a building and hide. In the process Mike is injured, and ends up with a small - but non fatal and without eggs as it was just a scrape not a full injection - of the alien toxin.

They pass out while hiding, expecting to die and Mike having horrible symptoms. Pac, however, gets woken up by some cops, sent now the aliens are cleared out to collect bodies and assess damages and all. Everyone is a bit surprised by the alive - most people this close to the epicenter got eaten because yk they tried to run like *sensible* but also they were being herded to their deaths by aliens with decades of understanding of human psychology. But also why bother chasing these two when more over there?

Pac panics, give some of the fake IDs which actually hold up to scrutiny, and weaves a sob story about getting fired from his uni research position when he lost his leg due to unsafe equipment, and Mike quit in solidarity, and they've been struggling since. He's absolutely a biochemistry lecturer he promises. Makes some rambles about the poisons himself. (also would have stabbed them if he thought he could take both) (He does *not* tell the cops about Mike getting scratched, but does later tell the paramedic)

Like the cops don't actually care, but get them both to medical attention. Mike does eventually wake up, still having a bad time as poison nobody has really had a chance to study - but it is a thankfully lower does. The two of them try and treat it themselves as the doctors don't know so they're just trying whatever to help the symptoms, and do manage to stumble into something which... doesn't cure it entirely, but gets the poisoning under control enough his liver can deal with it. Or, more to the point, gets other symptoms under control.

This draws attention. TBH, their IDs and Pac's sob story and rambles about gas drew attention.

It's not the cops who come over, it's the military officials ringleading the operation. Pac and Mike - in their fake names - are sworn to secrecy, then invited to a new initiative - a legally not military but rather side governmental department with a specialised combat force to deal with the alien forces. And the officials are... well to the officials these are two homeless, desperate, and bright scientists. It does not take much carrot to get them. Can underpay them massively and still get the research done, unlike stealing an actual uni person.

Pac and Mike are desperate, yes, but resist for a bit. They're put up in a hotel once well enough, and are noticibly treated better than the others. They know it's bait. They know it's fucking bait.

... Their warehouse is destroyed and they were struggling for food anyway and this is likely to happen again and they're *tired*. They know its bait, they know its dangerous, they *know* they won't be treatde this well once they say yes.

But they do it anyway.

As you can see this is a logn fucking fic and I hate writing longfics hence it still being in the WIP folder lmao.

Here have the end of Pac lieing to cops to get what he needs from them.

It's as the cops glance at one another that Pac realises that that is not information most people would know. He and Mike do - similar chemicals are common in less ethical security systems - but…

Fuck, fuck he's being looked at now. Mike's still out of it, and he himself is still not all there. How can he…

"Sorry, er, sorry. I'm-" fuck what was the name on that id. Doesn't matter. "Department of biochem. Used to be. But…" he gestures at his leg. "Didn't have lifts, and still can't walk somedays. Mikey quit with me when they couldn't guarantee ground floor labs."

It doesn't seem to make the two any less curious, though something in their expressions shifts.

"We've got a medical post set up nearby," the woman says. "We can escort you-"

"I'm not leaving Mike," Pac cuts across her, the one thing that really matters. He says it, clings to Mike's sleeve, breathes a moment. Still here. Still here. Mike is still here. "And, I don't… I just woke up from it. I don't think i can stand."

His eyes flitter between the pair.

"We can carry you to the truck downstairs. One of the medics will take you from there," the gentleman says.

He doesn't trust it. Pac does not trust it. It's easy - too easy. THis pair wear police uniforms. They don't know who he is, the fake ID exists in the government databases, but it's too fucking easy. They shouldn't, he shouldn't… Are they recognised? Do they realise? He can't… What if they hurt Mike while he can't defend himself? You beat people if you catch them running, right?

It's risky, so risky, if he could just… Just pick Mike up, then they could run. Avoid these cops, and disappear back into the now ruined city.

But… his body is still riddled with pain, and breathing is still a struggle, and Mike probably needs actual medical attention. He… shouldn't stop breathing. If the paralytic was going to take his lungs, it would have already. But… if it does… its a weird one. It might. And if it does, he needs a hospital. Needs help until his liver breaks all the poison down. Pac… its a weird poison. They should probably both be near help, just in case. The full symptoms aren't known. With how quickly they set in if they aren't dead yet it's not likely, but with so many unknowns… They should try be near a doctor.

It's just…

They can escape again. If they need to, they can escape again.

Still torn, but desperate and with Mike unable to help form a decision, Pac nods. The woman helps him up, while he watches the man scoop Mike into his arms. He's gentle enough, though, even careful with his spine; the only grounds that Pac can find to object is the screaming desperation to have his soulmate in his arms.

It's hard, staying conscious with the poisons inside his body.

He makes it half way down the first flight of stairs before his legs crumple, and the woman swings him into her arms.

He makes it to seeing Mike placed next to him in the truck before he passes out again.

[factorialsotherfandoms]

QSMP AU, Pac and Mike do chores.

The chores list is written two weeks in advance, and updated every Wednesday. It comes with a little flexibility, in case of missions or injuries, and has some bias for interests and talents. Everyone is supposed to do something, amounting to a couple of off-call periods week; one or two each will involve assisting the kitchens, the rest could be anything from laundry to grocery runs to cleaning. Tech repairs come under usual duties for the engineering team, and the scientists clean their lab, but there's a whole damned airship, and fifty-odd people's worth of living.

It's a little like prison chores, except not in a prison, and everyone from the lowest to the highest is on the rota, and it is Felps not Cellbit who gets priority on kitchen duty.

So, maybe more like the orphanage.

Mike is yet to work out who actually writes the schedule, but thinks it might be one of Tubbo's engineers from the constant grease stains on the papers. Whomever it is, they do at least know to keep him and Pac close. Sometimes they share grocery runs, or kitchen shifts, or assigned cleaning the same, large room. Or adjacent smaller ones.

This week, it is laundry instead; Pac has the linens and other domestic laundry, while Mike has the clothing.

It is the best job, and also the worst job. The ship itself has no laundry room and only just enough water for life, tech, and showers; laundry, like groceries, involves a trip down to the land. One of the resistance camps - not one of the important ones, really - is in the ruins of an old industrial unit. One of its prized posessions? A full sized industrial launderette.

The Order's engineers maintenance it and their scientists provide detergent, and in return they can make use of the equipment. The equipment was loud when new, and needs ear defenders now it is old. One of the locals taught them how to operate it, and supervises the pair, but otherwise its the two of them, and two trolleys full of laundry.

At least Mike's with Pac, though; they're the only two people who can talk without sign language in the place.

While they are split as clothes and domestics, most of the machinery takes two to operate anyway. It's a little different to the equipment for the prison launderette, the place they learnt to use these sorts of things; there, you needed four people to operate the machinery, and a guard to every team breathing down your neck.

It is just before dawn when Rosaline lets them in. She doesn't stay, knowing they know what they're doing and being needed on the farm, but she gives Mike the keys as she leaves. The trolleys are upended in the sorting area, where Pac gets to work. Mike leaves him to it, already over and prepping the machinery; there was a mission recently, so there is more bloody clothing than normal. Everything for the infirmary has to go separately, as does the lab equipment. Jumpsuits all get thrown in as one - or at least sorted by staining not colour - though people's nightwear, underwear, and off-duty clothing still need sorting.

They try not to pay too much attention to what belongs to whom, but sometimes it is obvious

As he thinks that Pac, with cracking, elbow-high rubber gloves, mentally laughs and nudges him. Mike turns, and looks, and sees him holding up one of Roier's jumpsuits, utterly soaked in dried mud.

That's going to be a bitch to get clean.

But, the memory of him falling face first into the bog is pretty funny.

Pac gets a little shove back, the memory attached, and they laugh together. With the machinery Mike cannot even hear things played in his ear defenders, but Pac's are wired up to an old MP3 player. Practiced at this, Mike slips into Pac's mind as he works, the pair of them both humming along to whatever music the original owner was into; they had found it in some rubble one time, and kept it about since. They added some of their own music, sure, but leave the original playlist intact. A little tribute to the owner, or something.

By the time the washers are ready for use, Mike has a long set of safety keys on a lanyard, and the mp3 player is playing some old Korean pop music. He double checks everything is working, then does a quick maintenance check for the other machines they'll need later, and heads back to Pac.

Pac gives him a wave, barely even thinking as he gestures Mike towards the largest pile. It is already more than even these machines can take so Mike splits it, weighs it, and dumps it on a cart. He drags it back through and loads up the first machine, measuring out the detergent for the combination of weight and soiling.

The bed linens are some of the most annoying, but also the easiest; standard formula for the cleaning products, and just blast them on the highest heat.

With a couple of trips all of linens are washing, and Mike is caught up to the finished piles. So, he sits opposite Pac, presses their toes together, and helps.

Each piece gets checked, and judged, stain remover gets applied to the worst of the damage, and a few stitches so damage will not tear more. Someone else will fix it up, but they mark the damage in bright threads just to be sure someone will.

With each load added to the machines, things get louder and louder. The launderette draws water from the river, at least, so there are no worries about that.

Still, they are Pac and Mike - they settle into one another, not gossiping so much as resting into one another's memories. Pac starts examining the upgrades Mike and Tubbo made to the propulsion system - Mike feels him turn it over and curiously examine the changed in the memory even as he swims in the thoughts of laughter, and sparring with Etoiles, and tales of nonsense after. They are not apart often, but even when they are, those parts of themselves remain shared.

They share it anyway. It is easier, like this, not to fall into memories of before, of the same work on different machines and with a guard breathing down their backs. Where if they were too slow they would be punished, but too fast and... Well, Pac was not the only person they knew who lost a limb in prison.

And the military wasn't much better; nobody breathing down your back, but surrounded by idiots who had no idea how to operate anything instead.

Here, though, just them, and with the launderette all day? The heat might be a lot, and the sound is loud, but they can go just as fast or as slowly as they want. Safety first, unlike with chores before.

Soon all of the machines are full. There are still a few more runs worth of laundry, but nowhere to put it yet. They pile it up in its groupings, and Mike scribbles notes on the whiteboard with the chemical maths.

With a bit of time between loads, but unable to leave the machines unattended, they take the one bit of time they will have to rest. There is a bench by the entrance where they sit, hand in hand, and watch the machines go.

It is hot - extremely hot - in here. They both have masks and ear defenders for safety, and neither is helping with that. Mike shoves a straw under his mask, using it to sip at his already warm water, while Pac just sits, and sweats, and Mike can feel Pac's mind drift into nothing but a slight ooze.

Stupid Pac.

Mike flops against his side, tucking his head onto his shoulder. Pac startles a little, drawing himself back in.

Back in, and then he rests his head atop Mike's, and shuts his eyes.

It's five minutes. They have nothing to tell each other that they do not already know, having swum in one another their entire remembered lives. Instead they just rest, preparing for the work to come as sweat drips together, and they press their heads together. Mike wraps himself around Pac and Pac wraps himself around Mike, and they float in the nothing between. Not one, not two, some combined sum of their parts which overlay and shift and rest.

And then the first of the washing machines pings to say it is done - washed, spun, and drained.

It is not the first they loaded, but rather one of the sets of clothing; bedlinens take a longer, hotter cycle, and hospital or lab gear even hotter still. Bleach, too; nothing like bleach and boiling water to sterilise clothing.

Neither Pac nor Mike open their eyes, but they stare at each other nonetheless.

It is Pac's body which rises, driven by an amalgamation of them both, dragging themself over to the washing machine, swaying slightly to the music in the headphones even as the other machines try to drown it out.

They collect up the laundry, moving it to the dryers. It is not a tumblr dryer here, not really, but first a press and then a heat rack.

Mike pulls himself out of Pac, and pulls himself to his feet. As Pac untangles the laundry, he grabs another of the piles, and sets it up to start washing.

It is loud, it is so loud, and gets only louder as more and more of the machinery is turned on.

The press and the rack take two to safely handle; it's another safety key needed. Pac is the better height for it, but still dancing; Mike nudged him over to the other body, and takes over.

Pac takes Mike's body to the other side, soul dancing too much to be trusted to keep his fingers from the rollers; Mike in Pac's body feeds the items in, and Pac in Mike's body collects them on the other side. Once collected they are laid out to, for better words, bake on a rack over a heated plate; there are tumble driers here, but they need the clothing to last. And, well, it's only fifty people's worth of laundry, not an entire hotel.

They are the two most dangerous jobs, and so Mike turns off the music. Pac keeps singing in his mind - music to focus is common, for sure - while Mike zeroes in with absolute intent.

There is also the other bonus of doing this in each other's bodies; Pac and Mike might be reckless with their own healths, but they would never dream of getting each other hurt.

By the time one load of pressing is done, another few machines are ready. Running all of the machines should really have a fleet of people on the press and rack, but there are only the two; Pac and Mike pick up the pace.

Then, once there is space, Mike takes Pac's faster body to collect and change over the laundry, while Pac uses Mike's to take the dry items from the racks.

This is not a launderette with machinery to do everything, but a set of metal frames and levels helps keep the folding neat.

And, once folded, it gets put back in the trolley; lab and kitchen and lab wear get their own bags, but everything is tossed in to sort later.

It takes hours. By the time everything is clean and folded and dry, Mike has no idea which body he is in, only that it is dizzy and thirsty and tired, and he even feel the sweat in his shoes. The other body catches him, and they curl up on the floor by the trolleys.

"... I should get everything turned off," Mike says, not moving. "You up for it, bro?"

Pac in the other body groans, and shakes his head. Pain spikes and flashes, and Mike eases himself back together until he is entirely contained within only his body - then nudges Pac out of it.

Back in his own body, Pac curls up and sips at another bottle of water; Mike leaves him to sort himself out, and picks back up the keys.

Turning things off is much faster than turning them on. Checking everything is correctly turned off and returned to its proper place takes longer, but not so long.

Upon returning, Pac looks a little more alive. Mike accepts the water bottle, finishing it off as Pac double checks his working, and also that they have everything loaded up.

And then... Niki will come get them when she comes and gets them. The laundry stays - loaded back onto the trolleys - in the storage room, while the two head outside. Rosaline takes back her keys, and the two of them find somewhere quiet to sit.

Not that anywhere in this camp is exactly quiet, but away from the machinery it could not possibly be called loud.

"I prefer groceries," Pac says.

"Hm?" The statement does not confuse Mike so much, rather than the fact there is talking at all. "We actually get to see sunlight then."

"Right, not in a warehouse all day. Again."

"At least we do daytime missions, usually; Bad doesn't see the sun on missions or on chores."

"Pretty sure he never saw sun before the invasion either, though."

Pac giggles, Mike grins, and they sprawl themselves out across the decaying tarmac to wait.

[factorialsotherfandoms]

Chapter fic are hard and take me a long time, but... well an offering of a few for me to work slowly on in the background. All are xcom au as I'm not doing chapterfic outside it unless random oneshots get complicated.

These are not the only chapterfic for the au, they are rather the chapterfic for the au where the emotional payoff has enough the previous pieces already in place to work (even if not everything)

[factorialsotherfandoms]

xcomau a little bit after the invasion. The Quackities are already kidnapped and the survivors from his group joined up with Phil's, but Spreen hasn't yet split off to form a new Spanish-primary speaking group yet. They're just having a chill late afternoon/early evening. Tiny little scene. Just them cheating at cards/having fun. (Standard disclaimer of I dont speak Spanish and by the time I joined the fandom Spreen was long gone).

Evening is drawing in fast, as it always seems to here. A couple of people run around, making use of the last dregs of true sunlight to finish some chores. Others are heading underground for the night, or into the smattering of buildings around.

Roier is not in either group. Roier has a watch shift in an hour, alongside Spreen, and is using the time to before hand to finish a couple more rounds of cards. Spreen is on his left, Missa is on his right, and Fit had been playing with them, but had wandered off twenty minutes ago.

He watches as Spreen discards and draws, barely paying attention to what he's doing.

Then Missa and... Roier has known Missa for years; that is not how he would usually move to draw a card.

He squints and...

"Missa?" He mocks offence, as though everyone at the table isn't guilty of the same crime. "Are you cheating again?!"

Missa's hands stop dead, looking at Roier with a scowl, "again?! I have never cheated in my life!"

Spreen mutters under his breath, hiding his lips behind his cards.

"You are! You do!" Roier rising up a little as he yells it. "I saw you, asshole!"

"I didn't cheat!"

"You absolutely cheat," Spreen manages a drawl, but everyone can hear the laughter behind it.

"Spreen!"

"See! Even your brother agrees! He's just letting you because it means he's winning!"

"I do not! It's a perfectly legitimate tactic!"

"I'm telling tour boyfriend you cheated."

"He is NOT my boyfriend!" Missa slams the cards down a little too hard to be truly offended. "And, anyway, he wouldn't care."

"You wanna bet?"

"With what? We don't exactly use money here."

Roier takes that as a confession, leaning back in the chair and looking for the correct guy. Eventually, he singled him out and shifts to English, "hey! Phil!"

"Huh?" Philza looks around the edge if the crates he is carrying. "Did you guys need something?"

"Missa is cheating at cards."

"And this is my problem because...?"

Spreen is full out laughing now, his own cards face down on the table. A table which Missa seems to be hiding mostly under.

"Fine! You all just leave me to suffer anyway!" Roier throws his chips all in, and definitely absolutely does not also cheat as he works through his own turn.

"If there's nothing else, I should get back to work. Have fun!"

The two of the three wave him off, while Missa finds his words again to call a very scrambled goodbye.

The man disappears, while Spreen and Roier both turn on Missa.

"I've never seen you so whipped," Roier laughs.

"Not your boyfriend, sure. I bet you want him to be," Spreen follows up with.

"Assholes!" Missa stands a little forcibly. "Which of you want lemonade? I think there was some left."

Everyone does. Missa leaves to grab it, and Spreen leans over to Roier.

"You wanna fix the deck while he's gone?"

Roier grabs it, and grins, "seeing as you offered... what do you need?"

[factorialsotherfandoms]

The first bit of plot (I’ve actually written anyway there’s a little that comes earlier) for the XCOMAU is now complete! First chapter is the mission as I posted here previously, the second is Tubbo explaining what they found to Fit (he missed debrief for I feel obvious reasons) and letting him see the actual report.

Chapters: 2/2 Fandom: QSMP | Quackity SMP, XCOM (Video Games) & Related Fandoms Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Fit (QSMP), BBH (QSMP), Foolish (QSMP), Jaiden (QSMP), Philza (QSMP), The Assassin (XCOM), Tubbo (QSMP) Additional Tags: Major Character Injury, plot? finally? i mean it's not a lot but it is plot, Missions, 5 characters stumble into human experimentation, will update tags for chapter 2 if/when i write it, Human Experimentation Series: Part 11 of Factorial's QSMP X XCOM AU Summary:

All roads lead to Rome, but all traintracks lead to The Facility - at least, that is what the Order's contact says.

(Writeup of the ADVENT Blacksite Mission, qsmpified)

[factorialsotherfandoms]

I've already lost it but thanks to that little fic someone wrote of Pac making Ramon the sniffer plushie I'm now thinking of that scene where Pac is sewing Mike's memories back together in the dreamscape and also them homeless ages like 13 and 11 and Pac making use of scraps supposed to be for repairing and adjusting clothes, or to use as pillows and stuff to make Mike a toy.

(The scene referenced is specific to one of my aus, but the idea of Pac sewing a toy for Mike out of supplies they struggled to get and might need because Mike is a younger kid and Pac will do his best to give him what kids should have even if Pac is a child too and shouldn't be in this situation can remain over all universes)

(Also if anyone has that fic to hand please can I have it again ;-;)

[factorialsotherfandoms]

QSMP x XCOM AU, finally some plot! (Though you'll have to wait for the plot in this one to get explained...) (Kinda suprised I got this done. Entirely uneditted as I'm leaving in 10 minutes)

This is still pretty early. Post Pac&Mike, pre-Cellbit. Infact, you may see Cellbit referenced a little... Jaiden, Bad, Foolish, Fit, and Philza explore a Federation Facility they were lead to by mysterious coordinates found tucked into a hidden supply cache...

TW: major character injury, background character death, corpses, violence

(Chapter 1/2, idk when 2 will be done but all the mission is contained here)

Following coordinates left by a spy of unknown origin is a fool’s errand, but then Foolish /has/ been assigned to the mission. Said sniper has taken it upon himself to distract Bad at every opportunity possible, and so Jaiden has stolen his command.

She presses on ahead, scouting the paths and signalling for people to follow. The low hills they arrived on give way to a road, and that is where she pauses.

3 fingers - an order to wait.

Fit crouches behind a fence, careful to make sure his grenade launcher is hidden, and squints for what she saw.

“Two guards and a sectoid,” she murmurs, Foolish hops down and into earshot. “Chances are as soon as we hit them, there will be alarms.”

“Can we sneak around?” Fit asks.

He is not against triggering the alarms and making some horrific noise, but they are here to investigate primarily. Tripping the security immediately… It’s a good way for any clues to get blown up.

Fit would know.

Blowing shit up is usually his job.

“We could try?” Jaiden chews on her lip. “But they seem to be going up and down the train tracks. Can’t see the building yet, if there even is one.”

“We should be fine,” Bad shakes his arms down a little, adjusting his grip. “Take them out fast, don’t let them call for help? A little surprise for them?”

“Up I go, then! Later!” Foolish is already crossing the road to a nearby petrol station, scrambling up to the roof.

They give him a moment to get into place, all analysing the terrain. Standard practice would be to have most of the group line up their shots, then Jaiden to distract the enemies by running straight in. As soon as they duck out of cover to deal with her…

Well Fit’s weapons are /messy/, but the others are all damned good shots.

Jaiden waits for everyone to confirm they are ready, then leaps out of her hiding spot. The Feds and their pet all turn their attention to her, stepping out of their cover to greet her.

It is their mistake.

One guard is down before it hears the gunfire, the other just as it turns to look. The sectoid tries to bolt, causing Philza’s bullet to only graze its shoulder, only for Jaiden to slice through its throat as it does. 

A shot from Foolish’s rifle puts an end to the other.

Fit checks for more danger, and sees none. Beyond the trees he can see what looks like factory smoke - likely their target. To the left, right, and behind is clear, leaving only onwards.

“All clear,” he tells them, and starts moving on.

Only to turn and realise everyone has frozen.

“Guys?” he asks.

Bad breaks out of it first, shaking his head, “ah, muffins.”

Fit tilts his head in a question.

“The Assassin,” Bad taps at his head. “Didn’t you hear her?”

Fit shakes his head, “not a thing.”

The others shake off the effect too, frowning at one another.

“Well,” it’s Jaiden who tilts her head. “If she doesn’t want us here specifically, that means we’re on track, right?”

“Right,” Philza nods. “And she’s still a bit off, yet; Niki mentioned good scrubland for landing around the back, just too close to be subtle, so it’s probably where she arrived too.”

“Did you train in the Wastelands to not get this bullshit or something?” Foolish asks. “Because, damn, not hearing her would be good.”

Fit looks at Philza.

Philza looks back.

“Something like that,” Fit says. “Takes too long to teach anyone, though.””

“Guys, let’s just get on with this,” Jaiden stretches. “She’s here now; we deal with her if she gets close. Just like always, right?”

“Yup!” Bad has Ghostie shift modes, his robot now joining Philza’s crow in keeping watch. “Let’s not give them time to sort their muffins into line.”

The rest agree, falling into formation, and Fit still is not entirely sure what they heard, but… 

Well, if it was important, Philza would have said. 

---

Beyond the treeline is a railway track, and beyond the track is a building made of concrete and steel. The emblem of the Federation sits proudly on the front, clearly marking out their target. Unlike city facilities it has no main front door, only two small side ones.

And outside of it are crates upon crates, scattered and stacked up. Every crate has a metal frame, but some sort of clear plastic reveals the green glow inside. On the sidings of the railway tracks is a flatbed cargo carriage, also stacked up with them, but those ones have a tarp pulled over to hide the worst of the glow.

And inside each and every crate, there is a perfectly intact human form.

“The fudge,” Fit breathes out.

He is not the only one, the group quiet and faces grim.

Hesitantly, Philza approaches the closest of the exposed crates. He kneels besides them, his Crow sat atop and looking down. He frowns as he looks first at his bird, and then at the screen giving him readouts from it.

And then he is still, very still, just quietly breathing and eyes skimming text as his Crow hops between the stacks of crates, taking readings both for records and Philza’s consumption.

Breathe in, breathe out; Philza is rarely so quiet.

It is… concerning.

Fit kneels beside him, listening to the others shuffle and looking at his old friend.

“Phil?” he asks.

“Dead,” Philza doesn’t even look up from the screen on his glove. “All of them are dead.”

Fit stands again, looking over the crates. If this many are stacked outside…

“And the goo?” Jaiden asks.

Philza shakes his head, and Foolish shrugs. Now he looks properly, Fit can see that they both also look a little shaken.

“We’re too late,” Jaiden replies. “All these people…”

“We’d need to run samples, but I think… I think we found the missing civilians.”

“Fudge, Max!” Bad turns sharply to Foolish.

“Max…?” Foolish replies. “Oh, fuuuuuck. Fuck, okay, we’ll just… You break it gently to him, alright?”

“Do you think we could…?” Jaiden starts, before shaking her head. “There’s too many of them.. I…”

“Take a moment,” Fit advises, knowing that, of the five of them, only he and Philza have much experience with the sort of tortures that the Federation call ‘science’. “We can’t help these people, but we can stop the fuckers taking anyone else. Breathe through it, and get fucking angry.”

Jaiden curls in on herself, while what little of Bad’s face can be seen is grim. Foolish is the one who takes the advice to heart, kicking at one of the low walls. Fit and Philza keep watch; everyone has known civilians dying before, hell the sanctuaries have been attacked often enough. But that is in fire and blood and anger, while these…

These crates, the putting of every corpse into it’s own storage container of goo, nearly piled outside a facility presumably for some sort of processing…

Well, it takes a few minutes, the first time. Emotions should be processed later, but you gotta get them into the boxes somehow.

But they do not have minutes, only seconds, because more trouble will arrive soon enough

Philza is the one to break the quiet, taking a deep breath and looking inwards to the group once again. “We need to-”

Whatever he was about to say, he cuts himself off as he drops to his knees. Above him, right where his neck had been, a long sword swipes through the air. As it does, an arm - a torso, a head - flicker into vision.

Purple skinned, hair pulled back, armour in red and black, two swords - Assassin.

“Good reflexes,” she twitches her head as she speaks, lips pulled in a mockery of - or maybe attempt at - a smile. "I had hoped your kind would never stumble across this facility, you know? Some things are best left unknown. But, now you have seen it… I cannot permit you to leave. Prepare yourselves."

As if.

Philza glances over, and Fit catches his eye. It’s a little dark but, while the Assassin talks about how wonderful it will be to kill them all, he nods.

Fit adjusts his gun.

Philza pulls a knife from his toolbelt.

It isn’t a combat knife, not really, but it still cuts flesh well as Philza sinks it into the Assassin’s ankle. He darts back, and Fit knows how this goes.

He opens fire.

The Assassin cuts off her words at the storm of bullets, a nasty hit to the shoulder as she jumps over the fence and into cover. Jaiden follows, cursing out her opponent with knife in hand.

Mud is kicked up and into Jaiden’s eyes, blinding her - and the following Foolish - just long enough for the Assassin to pull out her cloaking device.

Fit cannot fire, not with his allies so close, but Bad can. A shot from the rifle lands squarely in the Assassin’s back right as she fades from view.

“FUCK!” Jaiden yells. “Shit! Where is she?!”

The answering laughter echoes around.

“Is she gone?” Foolish asks. “Wait, no, she’s not gone. Stay close.”

Even though he knows that he will never see her coming, Fit still keeps glancing from side to side. His skin crawls with eyes on his back, the very familiar sensation of being hunted down his spine. Philza looks just as edgy, eyes a little wild as he presses against Fit’s good side.

The five form a circle, all looking out, guns ready for trouble when it comes.

And they wait.

And they wait.

And they wait, until Bad sighs and shifts his gun a little.

“She isn’t coming,” he says. “She’s waiting for us to be distracted.”

“Do we wait for her to get bored? Or press on?” Jaiden is equally as shifty, eyes narrowed as she looks arond.

“She doesn’t get bored,” Philza’s voice is a little distant. “If we wait, they’ll just bring more of the fuckers in.”

And that’s damned the problem, isn’t it?

All five pairs of eyes turn to the door, and then at everybody else. They need to enter, they know they need to, but with the Assassin in play… It’s a fucking death trap.

Fit looks at his companions again.

He is about to offer, when Jaiden nods, and pushes back her shoulders.

“I’ll go,” she says, already pulling out her sword. “Foolish?”

Foolish cocks a pistol, “always.”

The two of them enter, side by side. Fit positions himself behind them, ready for them to slip to either side of the door and allow him to fire on whatever is within. Foolish does, firing a few rounds from his pistol. Jaiden… sort of does, jumping over some scattered technology and charging an enemy out of sight.

Fit, however, cannot see whatever problem they have seen; he makes sure that Philza is keeping an eye out for threats from the outside, and also presses on in.

First assessment - threats. Three MECs, standing in some sort of algae-coloured water. Four Federation Guards to the right, one senior two with stun batons. Two sectoids and another guard to the left, Jaiden already there with sword in one hand, rifle in the other, and sparring all three at once.

Second assessment - location. Copper and brass looking technology, glowing in sickly green. There are walkways around the edge of a pool of tainted water, and the back wall consists of hundreds upon hundreds of giant tubes. Each is filled with glowing green.

Each contains a human corpse.

Third assessment - next action. Even if Jaiden somehow cannot manage two sectoids and a guard, an automatic fire submachine gun is not going to help her there. The other guards are A Problem, but MECs? MECs are his specialty.

The best cover he is getting is the sheet metal serving as a bannister for the walkway - MECs don’t care, not with small-scale rocket launchers, and those Guards are busy coming closer anyway. He hefts the gun onto the railing - he can support it himself, especially with the prosthetic, but he likes having knees - and lets loose.

Somewhere behind him, the door closes. Bad’s Ghostie drifts over, stunning the MEC not caught in the hail of bullets, while Fit hears the very familiar sound of a grenade exploding somewhere near the group of four guards. He does not have the luxury of protecting his own back, but they will all have to do.

“Do not touch the liquid!” Bad calls the group as Ghostie swoops back to him. “It eats flesh!”

Jaiden seems to take that warning as inspiration, because right after she yells “got it!”, one of the sectoids is flipped over the railing, and sent screaming into it.

It’s not an acid, any acid working that fast would surely damage at least the paintwork on the MECs, but it’s fucking grim. Something enzyme based? Fit’s seen some people try that sort of shit in the Wasteland, but never get it to work.

Might be, might not be; that’s not really Fit’s job.

He knows that some of the Order - Maxo, mostly, though Missa has been convinced to carry them too - do fancy shit with bluescreen bullets and EMP grenades. Fit, though? Fit likes to do this the old fashioned way. Just filling the fuckers full of lead.

Highly specialised, sharpened lead, designed to tear through metal with even more ease than flesh, but lead nonetheless.

He takes one down, dives under cover to avoid the small rockets another fires at him, and takes a smattering of shrapnel to the arm. He wears proper armour unlike some people he could mention, and it’s far enough away that it does not cut all the way through, but it certainly leaves scorch marks across the fabric.

It is nothing that accounts for how, as he stands, Philza screams, “Fit! Look out!”

Fit turns, and sees nothing; both MECs are reloading, the sectoids are dead and the guards are engaged. Maybe a late call about the rockets, but-

A cold chill runs down his spine.

“Your training fails you,” a voice whispers in his ear. He turns, catching the eyes of the Assassin as her cloaking device flickers off. He grabs at her, twisting himself away.

Cold, hard steel punctures through his armour.

He does not look. Fit does not look, but he can feel how her sword enters his back just below his ribs, curving up and escaping just after the next one.

One, two, three.

Waiting for the pain to kick in, Fit takes careful breaths around the blade. He’s survived worse. He’s survived worse. They’ve fought her off before. There are potions and medics right there. Don’t panic, do not panic, panic and you die.

And then the rips out the blade.

The agony hits, and Fit drops to his knees, pressing his hands to the wounds and gasping for air.

It hurts, it hurts, it /hurts!

“Take comfort,” she whispers to him, wiping his blood from her blade, “for there is dignity in death to a superior opponent.”

Fit closes his eyes.

A clash of steel.

From the floor he struggles them open again. 

Foolish is between him and the Assassin, her blades caught on his pistols. Jaiden, sprinting over, slashes down her back and the fight moves away.

“Phil!” Foolish yells. “And you, bitch, get away from him!”

With his assailant distracted and a bleeding tear through his chest, Fit pushes himself backwards, behind a counter. Worse place to fire from, but better cover. He runs on instinct, blood pooling inside him and leaving a trail across the floor. Hide, heal, get safe - he’s had worse, he’s had fucking worse, just fucking breathe.

(Or don’t because, shit, he has no idea how to tell if she caught his lung).

Moments later, Philza’s Crow stumbles a landing beside him. He can see the splash potion already prepared, the pink liquid in the throat of the robotic bird.

He lifts a hand, letting it apply it to the front, before shifting just enough to apply it to the back. Almost immediately the numbing component takes effect; now the burning is gone, he collapses once again. He can hear Foolish swearing as he fights, Bad answering just as instinctively, the clang of sword-on-sword, and the steady fire of either Bad or Philza’s rifle as the other enemies are kept at bay.

It’s Bad’s; as the weapon is still firing, Philza slides around the counter, medical bag already open and hanging off his shoulder.

“Fit?” he asks.

Fit gives him a somewhat listless thumbs up, “right here, Phil. Potion got the bleeding, just waiting for the painkillers, you know?”

“Right,” some of the tension in Philza’s shoulders drops as he examines the wound. He grimaces, but grabs some dressings and starts peeling off the backs. “Don’t have time to stitch this, with all this crap going on. Think you can manage until we get the fuck out of here?”

“You know me, Phil,” Fit hears the sounds of the fighting slowing down, the MECs no longer firing. “I’ve survived worse with less.”

He probably deserves the way Philza jabs his thumbs into old, tender scars as he tugs the skin together, and applies the dressings. The potion will deal with the blood, at least until the nanites run out of power. Then it’s just… Just keeping the wound sealed enough to breathe.

“Keep weight off it when you can,” Philza tells him, adding tape despite the dressings having adhesive. “As soon as we get to evac, you’re lying down and letting me look at this shit.”

There isn’t really time to agree. Fit is certain Philza was about to tell him to let someone else carry his heavier kit, only to be interrupted by Bad screeching in pain.

Philza is cursing and running before Fit has a chance to process the ungodly sound.

Still, needs must. Despite his wound, despite the painkillers not yet quite being fully working, despite the nanites still spreading into the bloodstream and stabalising the wound, allowing him to breathe, Fit pulls himself to his feet. Feeling a little weak he hoists his gun onto the counter.

It’s awkward to work like this, but he can; he directs his attention to the last of the Sectoids, and lets loose a hail of bullets.

It falls, and Fit looks around.

Jaiden is adjusting one of her vambraces, while Foolish reloads his pistols. Bad looks a little dizzy, but waves off Philza’s hands and drinks one of his own potions rather than apply it to whatever wound he has. Crow rests on some of the rails separating the walkways from the liquid, and Ghostie floats in its place.

The MEC wrecks in the liquid stand untouched, but the Fed whose corpse fell into it is slowly dissolving away.

“We good?” Foolish asks the group. “We forced a respawn, so she shouldn’t be back anytime soon.”

“I’m good to go on,” Fit replies, even as the others somewhat hesitantly confirm.

Whatever they are looking for, well… The missing civilians were some of it, and fuck this - fuck all of this - but the rest… Whatever their contact sent them to get? It’s in the back, isn’t it?

“Fit, you got explosives?” Bad asks.

“Do I have explosives,” Fit deadpans back. “What do you take me for, Bad, a reasonably human being? Of course I have fucging explosives.”

The slip gets him a look, but Bad must be feeling shitty as he allows it to pass, “we wanna meet up with Niki, right? Can you make a door in the back wall while we check that room out?”

A door?

“You won’t be able to close it,” he warns.

“Oh that’s fine,” Bad smiles a bit. “We don’t need to leave this place intact.”

“Just tell me where you want it, then.”

“Hm… Back wall, to the right? I saw an internal door there you can duck around once it’s set!”

“Perfect,” Fit ignores Philza’s glare, and hoists his gun back over his shoulder. “You four headed to that lab looking room?”

“Yup,” Foolish pops the p as he speaks. “See you in five!”

Fit waves his acknowledgement, waiting for the four of them to start heading over. Once they’re close enough to the back for any aliens in the last room to jump them and not him, Fit starts the other way around the walkway.

Alone, now, he can see how the liquid is not just dissolving the corpse, but is glowing as it does so. Bubbles he sort of expected, but glowing is fucking weird; even if they have to take samples of this shit, he isn’t touching it. Tubbo with glowing flesh dissolvant? Could probably make it work, but half of the field agents can’t be trusted to handle grenades, let alone that stuff.

Examining the wall Bad asked for a hole making in, Fit finds a couple of weak points. The area around the window is surprisingly well reinforced, especially given that the section next to it is cracked. Outside, a short, muddy cliff where the facility was cut into a slope, leading up to some shrubland beyond.

The facility is not exactly hidden, but why do the Feds need to hide the damn thing, when they already rule the world?

Despite the cracked section and the reinforcement, Fit still elects to lay the explosives around the window; upon examining the cracks, damaging that bit of wall further would just bring the roof down on them. If his maths is right - and Fit’s explosives maths is always right - he should be able to blow out the window and the section of wall below it, while keeping the top of the frame in place. It would be easier to just blow it out from the window but, again, the structural integrity of a shitty concrete job.

Given everything going on in this facility he’s a bit surprised the walls are /this/ bad, but perhaps the Federation enjoys cutting corners more than they enjoy their horrific science experiments going to plan.

Just through the wall beside him, Fit can hear the intense debate of the others. The wall muffles it a little too much to hear specifics, but it means they’ll be done soon.

It’s for the best; Fit really, really does not want to be stuck on the helicopter still when the painkillers wear out.

Careful of his wound, he sets the charges. He checks and double checks, before heading over to the room with the others. Enters, latches the door behind him, and moves away from it.

“Charges set,” he informs the group, already taking in the room.

It is a lab, yes, though of copper and brass looking faintly sickly in the glowing green light. Large vials of softly glowing liquid line the walls, feeding into some sort of device. The device runs through the walls and the floor, and up into a plinth in the centre.

On that plinth, being fed into by the processor, is a glass cylinder, barely larger than a syringe, filled with something viscous.

“Just a minute,” Foolish replies to Fit. “They’re arguing about if we grab whatever they’re extracting from the stuff outside or not.”

“The people,” Jaiden elaborates. “What they’re taking from the people.”

“We have to,” Bad is the one looking closest at it. “I don’t have anything to analyse it here, and it has to be important, right?“

“It looks like nitroglycerine,” Philza is frowning. “I’m not sure it’s /safe/ to touch that.”

Safety’s a bit laughable with the amount of blood covering everyone, but Fit understands the point.

Still, they gotta do what they gotta do.

Foolish seems in agreement with that sentiment; he ignores the continuing debate to simply walk over and grab the vial.

An entirely new set of alarms goes off, causing mildly irritated groans to pass around the group; it’s just loud.

Anything the others say with it going on, Fit doesn’t hear; years of working with explosives will do that, even if you have the sort of protection Fit has only recently learnt exists.

“Alright,” Fit waves for attention from the din. “Away from the door. I don’t think it’ll blow through, but this place is crap. I’ve seen lean tos more stable than this.”

In the Wasteland, sure, but that still means they were put up in ten minutes and not meant to last longer than a night.

There is not a lot of cover in this room, but they make do; Foolish and Philza, the least injured of the five, tuck themselves into the corners, using the wall itself as a shield. Fit, Jaiden, and Bad? They just about manage to be entirely covered by the machinery feeding into the glass. It’s not much better than the wall, but it’s made of metal and not shit concrete.

Fit gives a count of three for them to cover their ears, and hits the detonator.

The door does not blow in, and the walls do hold, but even with all his calculations the ceiling does crack. It doesn’t fall, though, so he considers it a win. They let the dust settle, then scramble back up.

“You three get out first, we’ll cover you,” comes Philza’s order.

With even more alarms and reinforcements surely on the way, there is no point in arguing or quibbling over who is incharge; Foolish passes Bad the vial, and the trio run.

Well, no, Fit cannot run - while the painkillers are working, the numbing effect has worn off. It hurts again, now, and he can feel where movement tugs at the dressings. Bad sees him stumble and offers an arm, helping him on while Jaiden runs ahead to lay the flares and call Niki back down.

They do not talk, busy with the necessity of movement. Behind them, Fit hears Philza swearing. Bad calls back a ‘language’, and Fit only hopes that Philza has the time to flip him off in return.

It takes forever and no time at all for Niki to appear and drop the ladder. Jaiden does not immediately scramble up, instead waiting for the two of them, picking off any aliens which escape Philza and Foolish’s aims.

Fit lets go of Bad, letting him climb up first. It takes a minute and some deep breathing to prepare himself, but Fit can find it in himself to follow.

He can almost feel the wound tear as he does.

At the top, Bad grabs his arm, hoisting him into the helicopter proper. Fit does not even bother getting to a chair, merely rolling out of the way of the hatch and cussing up a storm.

Bad does not scold him, and that’s a grim thought.

“Sorry,” he still says, when the man approaches. “Stings like a, um, muffin.”

“We’ll handle that later,” Bad sounds chipper, but he frowns as he checks on the dressings and sees blood. Two black hands, nails too long for gloves, press down on it.

Fit grunts, and leans back, watching as Jaiden swings herself in. She strips off her armour, grabbing one of the helicopter’s medical kits to bandage herself up. She looks exhausted; Fit feels it too.

It’s not long after that that Philza and Foolish appear. Fit offers them a wave, as Foolish pulls up the ladder and Philza comes over.

“How is it?” Philza asks.

“The dressings are bloody,” Fit replies. “Still had worse.”

“Well, fuck,” Philza takes over from Bad, who excuses himself to go sit with Foolish. “Pain levels?”

“I’ll live.”

“Fit.”

“What do you want me to day?” Fit asks. “It’s better than the last time I got stabbed through the gut?”

It is not exactly reassuring words for either of them.

“Alright, fuck, I think we have soluble stitches in one of these. Should hold until we get back and someone can fix you up proper,” Philza roots around in his bag, pulling out a couple of packets. “Wouldn’t recommend being conscious, though.”

Being unconscious while injured and on the transport? No fucking way.

“Phil,” Fit just says.

“I know, I know, I just have to fucking say it,” he opens one of the packets, rips off the top layer of dressing, and presses something gooey into the wound. “Try not to bleed out.”

“Trying my fucking best.”

Phil gives him a thin smile. That’s the last of the helicopter ride that Fit actually remembers, except for the fact he did make it back to the Avenger conscious, if delirious.

[factorialsotherfandoms]

Late time thoughts - you know how Cucurucho, Pac, Mike, and Cellbit's eyes glow when they use psionics? (Mouse gets pink)? Philza doesn't have psionics really, but he is extremely sensitive to it. This mainly shows up with the Assassin - even when she's invisible, he can sense if she's close, enabling him to dodge attacks even if he can't see her.

Well, I've concluded that when psionics tap at him, his eyes turn darker rather than glow. Like. Just a few shades darker. When psionics happen near him. A reflection of what they detect.

And now a little tidbit from the very end. Not fic writing, just mentions late au events

When the Ender King tries to posses him, the Ender King like Cucurucho is purple, just a different shade. (Rose is green, but not close enough to help). Cellbit is protecting everyone, so can only do so much to help. Spread very thin, and the Ender King is very powerful

Then we get this lovely bit of a scene where the Ender King is forcing Philza to point his gun at an ally. He manages to fight back on the mind control, but not completely - he can only manage to redirect the gun to point at his own head. However, when he does this, Cellbit notices that beneath the purple glow Philza's eyes themselves have turned black. Completely black. Which Cellbit realises is akin to but not the same as when his own glow red, that it means Philza is fighting back, so he then - while keeping the shields up over everyone else - starts yelling directions to Philza on how to shield himself, and how to fight back.

Between that, Cellbit extending his shield, encouragement from his friends, and just being bloody minded, Philza manages to move the gun again, aiming it at the Ender King that time. He can't get full control back, but he can with a lot of fighting regain an arm. Which is a big struggle, but also means he point blanks the Ender King in the face.

He is of course exhausted after that, but the mission must continue. So it does. He can pass out once hes home.

He has no idea his eyes are eaten by black during criseses where his latent psionics are trying to protect him. Fit /has/ noticed that sometimes they go dark, but assumed it was a trick of the light as it's very rare and always in weird situations, and also that's just the coloured bits. The black is everything. It's like... brain turned off crisis mode. But, yeah, fun!

[factorialsotherfandoms]

Prompt by @rabbit-harpist - Chayanne and Tallulah finally meeting in person. (Also @becauseplot as I saw you were also thinking of this one). I hope this is fine. I rotated it a few times too many oops.

Mention of injured child, but it's just the comfort that comes after.

Chayanne only sits still because Papa has him trapped. Dad isn't here, but his closest sister had updated him on that. She is here now, he knows that, her reaching out every few minutes to check if something scaring her is actually dangerous or not.

None of it has been; Chayanne is still a bit uncertain about some things here, but Dad is with her and would never let anything bad happen to anyone ever. So, he promises her it's okay, that he'll see her soon, that she just has to let Dad and the Doctor look after her and then they could see each other. That's what Papa had said, and Papa does not lie.

(It does not change the fact that he wants his sister /now/.)

She updates him on the other children she was with, too, just like she always has - and just like he does for her. He worries about all of them - Bobby and Pomme and Richarlyson and Trump and Allie and Dapper and Ramón and Leonardra and all his siblings without names - but he worries about her most of all. He can talk to her, and has been able to talk to her since the day she was dragged into life, listless and not yet screaming. He remembers things she cannot, and that he never wants her to, and now he finally, finally gets to see her!

Chayanne asked, once, what she looks like. She didn't know, and he doesn't know either.

Finally, finally, she lets him know that the Doctor has told her she can leave. There's more that she doesn't understand, and if she doesn't understand then she cannot explain it to Chayanne either, but what she does know is that Dad has picked her up, and is bringing her to see Chayanne.

Papa cannot keep Chayanne any more; he squirms his way out of Papa's arms, dropping to the floor and running.

"Chayanne!" Papa calls, also standing up to chase.

Chayanne is little, but he is fast. Papa is also fast, but Chayanne has the head start and knows where he is going; out the door, down the stairs, cross the balcony over the "subsidiary power generator", then-

He does not make it to the then. In the little walkway between that room and the next, he collides with Dad.

Dad only laughs, and ruffles his hair, and yells, "it's okay, Missa! I caught him!"

Chayanne does not have attention for his parents, though; he stares up at the little girl being carried on his Dad's hip.

She is much smaller than him, but then he knows people grow and that she has only been alive for half of his life. Curly brown hair, glowing yellow eyes, a patch on her cheek and neck where dark skin fuses with grey-purple insect shell. She is dressed in one of Pomme's dresses - one of the simpler ones, left open at the back so that little blue wings have the freedom to move - a little loose on her, but also too short.

Under it, Chayanne can see bandages - they make a thicker patch, and poke out of both the sleeve and neckline of the dress. He shudders, remembering the agonising pain from when she was shot.

She stares at Chayanne, before turning to Dad and tugging on his arm. He laughs, and Missa scoops up Chayanne, and Dad says, "I'll let you down once we get to the common room, okay Tallulah? It's still a bit dangerous here."

Chayanne can feel the warning in the back of his mind. He would sulk at being picked up again, except that Papa is picking him up, and Chayanne will never actually refuse him.

Instead he rests his head on Papa's shoulder, ignoring the way his parents talk to instead watch his sister. With one hand he waves to her, and she smiles back - fangs and all.

"/Is Tallulah your name?/" he asks her, in the same way they have always talked.

"/I think so!/" she replies. "/Do you like it/?"

"/It's pretty/."

"/So are your arms/!"

Chayanne looks down to where the glowing patterns on his arms are providing a low light. Wanting to make her happy he pulls up his sleeves, showing off more of the intricate - if random - designs.

He doesn't ask if she is hurting, because he knows that she is. He doesn't ask if she is okay, because he knows that she isn't. He doesn't ask about their sisters, because he knows the two Tallulah came with are safe, as are the ones already here, and that the rest of their siblings are dead.

Instead he shows off the patterns, and points out people they pass, and tries his very best to entertain her.

Eventually they make it to the common room - Chayanne's parents are always slow when they decide to walk and talk, no matter how impatient Chayanne is feeling - and set the two children on the floor.

"Chayanne, this is-" Dad begins.

Chayanne does not listen to him. Instead he runs across the room, and pulls his little sister into a hug.

"Careful!" comes the warning from both parents, one in English and the other in Spanish.

Tallulah is in no more pain from the hug than without it, so Chayanne does not let go. He tucks his precious sister close and he knows he cannot protect her, that the hurt is already done, that he could not even save Bobby when he was right there beside him.

But...

She's here now! Dad actually found her! Helped her! She's safe, and she's okay, just like he promised and promised that she someday would be.

He did not know what a hug was until Papa gave him one, and Tallulah is still a little unsure. Carefully he explains, in that silent way which comes most naturally to them, and she hesitantly wraps her arms around him too.

Carefully, he leans down and taps their foreheads together - the gesture of welcome, of comfort, of family that they eggs developed for themselves, before the adults of The Order came and taught them what hugs are.

That's when the tears spill. Not just Tallulah's, but Chayanne's as well.

"/It hurts it hurts it hurts/," Tallulah whispers into his mind. "/Big brother, I'm scared./"

"/You're safe/," he promises back. "/You're safe, you're safe, you're finally safe - I will protect you now. Together, we're together, we won't ever be apart again. You're home now, this is home, nothing will ever hurt you again, Dad and Papa won't allow it./"

Tallulah does not know what /home/ means, but that's okay. Chayanne is going to teach her.

And that starts with letting go, but holding her hand, and dragging her to the box of children's toys and accessories to pick out the first thing that she will ever own.